053 Just Two Good Old Boys

Gene: 0:22

Howdy, Ben.

Ben: 0:24

Howdy gene, how are you?

Gene: 0:26

I'm good. How are you doing today?

Ben: 0:28

I'm doing all right. I'm going through and just man, it's it's If if this is how 2024 is gonna go,

Gene: 0:37

Mm hmm.

Ben: 0:37

this is not good for my health

Gene: 0:40

Oh.

Ben: 0:41

Oh jesus it's it's been a thing man, we've had stuff work and then obviously politics and a whole bunch of stuff going on that just 2024 is off to a hell of a start in my mind.

Gene: 0:57

It's barely started, isn't it?

Ben: 1:00

Yeah,

Gene: 1:02

So, what, what's, what's the main problem? What's going on, man?

Ben: 1:06

Just some changes on the sales team for one at

Gene: 1:10

Ah, work related.

Ben: 1:11

Yeah, there's that and then just you know, personal life stuff. And then there's I don't know, these two major stories that the media is only focusing on one of them and I don't know, just lots of little interesting things coming out here all at once that seem to be pulling our attention in different ways. The interpretation by certain people is very interesting.

Gene: 1:38

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:40

So, I, I sent the I, I, you read the link I sent you about the Trump electoral stuff, right? Going through and outlining some of the frauds, evidence that they wanted to

Gene: 1:50

Yeah, I probably read about two thirds of it.

Ben: 1:53

So, the, the back story on some of that is that was basically kind of a summary of some of the things that the Trump lawyers at the time wanted to bring up and say in court and prove.

Gene: 2:07

Right.

Ben: 2:08

But they weren't allowed to because they were found to not have standing. So, I sent that post to a lawyer friend of mine. You know, their, their comment was, Oh you know, they, they should have brought it up at the time. And, you know, all this was adjudicated. And I'm like, No, it wasn't. They never got heard. They never, this was never put in this. This was all shut down on basis of standing. This was never adjudicated and that's part of the problem. And they had to go back and. Reeducate and look and go. Oh, crap. Because even the lawyer was of the opinion that this had been educated and it hasn't been it's it's just interesting that, you know, the Epstein documents come out. There's nothing really new and people are just set to ignore a lot of other things going on

Gene: 3:05

Yeah. Yeah. So, do you want to list off a couple of things just in case people haven't read it

Ben: 3:12

from which 1

Gene: 3:14

from the Trump doc?

Ben: 3:16

oh, just there was the various voter fraud cases for Georgia. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, it was basically any of the the contested states and they went through and outlined how voter fraud voter fraud was possible in each state to have swayed the election. That's how far they got. Basically, it was going down and proving that the fraud that they wished to prove could have affected the election and since they didn't have standing

Gene: 3:49

of fraud are we talking about?

Ben: 3:51

Enough to sway the election in each individual state that they're talking

Gene: 3:54

Right. But what, what is fraud? Like what kind of fraud?

Ben: 3:58

Mainly what, what I would say is procedural stuff. Like, they argue that a lot of the mail in ballots in Pennsylvania are unconstitutional, which goes to Texas V Pennsylvania, which I happen to agree with because you're violating your own constitution in order to do something.

Gene: 4:16

Mm hmm.

Ben: 4:16

And then I forget the specifics on the Georgia case, but basically going through and saying, Hey, these votes, this amount of votes shouldn't have counted or were undercounted or were ignored and it varies from state to state, but it's outlined fairly well

Gene: 4:33

the key factors that I remember from that document was, it was talking about how in states like Georgia Arizona Wisconsin, Michigan, Trump was up by anywhere between 100, 000 votes to 500, 000 votes. And

Ben: 4:53

talking about during the count, not

Gene: 4:54

yeah, during the count, during the count. And that's in each of these five states, the, even though Trump was up and this is as of midnight, so this is well after the polls closed in each of the states. And it was obvious that Trump had won, but in each of these states, they had kept the count open, saying that there are still additional ballots yet to be counted. And in each of these states, the ballots that were coming in were Overwhelmingly, like 90 percent votes for Joe Biden. So somehow, magically, 90 percent of the last batch of votes counted in five different states were 90 percent votes for Biden.

Ben: 5:46

Obviously Biden voters are lazy and got there

Gene: 5:49

guess. It's just that votes aren't counted based on the time they're cast, so It's interesting. I, I, I know, you know, the conspiracy theory would be that

Ben: 6:02

do we need?

Gene: 6:03

there were exactly, there were pre printed belts that were just sitting and waiting underneath tables just in case they were needed in probably more than five states. But in five states, they actually were needed, and in these five states, they kept pulling boxes from underneath tables, or in like videos we saw of a van pulling up after midnight and dumping ten boxes, again, of those ten boxes, 90 percent of the votes were cast for Joe Biden.

Ben: 6:36

Regardless, the, the entire thing here is had the had this all been adjudicated at the time, I think we could move on and be okay. But the fact that

Gene: 6:50

Yeah, the pussies in the Supreme Court,

Ben: 6:51

is a problem. I'm sorry.

Gene: 6:53

you mean the pussies in the Supreme Court,

Ben: 6:55

Yeah, I mean, the fact that it was not

Gene: 6:57

SCOTUS failing to do their

Ben: 6:58

pushed down the road. Is asking a lot of the nation to just accept and trust,

Gene: 7:05

just swallow it,

Ben: 7:06

given all the evidence that we have and everything else.

Gene: 7:09

banana republics have more fair elections.

Ben: 7:13

at least more observed elections.

Gene: 7:16

Mm hmm. It's yeah, observed,

Ben: 7:19

Did you did you see the jobs numbers for 2023,

Gene: 7:25

no,

Ben: 7:26

they were revised downward every month and significantly so,

Gene: 7:31

but Joe Biden told us it's the best recovery we've ever had.

Ben: 7:35

000 jobs difference between initial reporting and actual, which means most of the jobs job quote unquote growth was negative last year.

Gene: 7:46

That doesn't surprise me. I can't remember if it was you or somebody else sent me an article about all the job losses happening in Austin.

Ben: 7:53

Yeah, no, I, it's a whole thing. I mean, people, and this is part of, you know, the stress with work and everything else is there's definitely there's definitely some contraction going on and

Gene: 8:05

Mm hmm.

Ben: 8:05

it's it's noticed

Gene: 8:08

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And realistically speaking, it's not gonna get better this year. Regardless

Ben: 8:15

unlikely

Gene: 8:16

of what the election outcome is, but there's, there's nothing that would change that. And, and frankly nervousness around the stock market, around the elections, around really. A lot of, a lot of areas relating to the future as it relates to business, I think is going to just grow this year.

Ben: 8:42

Why is that?

Gene: 8:44

The closer we get to an election the more there's a question of, is the country going to take a turn one way or the other? So if you're a company and you're looking at capital expenditures, you may delay those expenditures during a year in which unpredictability is higher.

Ben: 9:04

Based on a few things, maybe there are some circumstances that depending on, for instance, there have been some changes to the IRS code. That, yeah, I think will actually encourage companies to postpone. But if you go back and look at. You know, some of the Trump investment act stuff that has been pulled, unfortunately, where it was allowing companies to capitalize investment differently. And you know, what's the term I'm blanking out right now, depreciate

Gene: 9:37

Mm hmm. Yeah.

Ben: 9:39

really shift when companies make those investments, but unfortunately, I think the changes to the tax code are actually likely to, to help your cause there.

Gene: 9:50

Yeah. Not my cause, but I'm just saying that when, when the risk is higher companies tend to hold back on investments and want to keep a higher cash reserve

Ben: 10:01

yeah. Unless it's a better deal to do it, you know?

Gene: 10:05

a well, yeah, but it's again, everything comes down to risk. You might have a better deal, but if you think doing it now means you're going to go out of business next year, you're still not going to do it.

Ben: 10:16

I, I don't think many companies actually consider the, the end game of going out of business, most get caught with their pants down on it that do.

Gene: 10:26

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's not going out of business and certainly having massive losses. It depends on the size of the company. I mean, it's in the end, that's the difference in going out of business or not is, is how big of a company you have because the bigger companies have much bigger reserves that can pull on or loans that they can attain quickly. But yeah, it's 2024 in some ways, here's my prediction is I think we're going to continue to see more people being red pilled. I think we're going to see a very slight shift. Into the God, I can't even say conservative. I would say towards the anti liberal side of thinking. So I,

Ben: 11:12

would say more towards the classical liberal side of thinking

Gene: 11:16

yeah, but I, but I, I totally agree with you, but I also, I'm trying to come up with some term that, that easily explains it to people. Cause then, you know, half the people say what the hell is classical liberal? What do you mean by that?

Ben: 11:29

Leave me the fuck alone.

Gene: 11:32

Yeah.

Ben: 11:33

that's where all this is going.'cause everybody's just like fed up and leave me the fuck alone, dude.

Gene: 11:38

Yeah.

Ben: 11:40

You know, it, it's, it's astonishing to me though, we, we order takeout a lot. You and I me because I'm working and don't have time and you because whatever reason but.

Gene: 11:54

I'm shaking my head here quietly.

Ben: 11:56

Anyway but the amount of errors in takeout orders or, you know, delivered food is astonishing.

Gene: 12:06

Mm-Hmm?

Ben: 12:07

And the fact, I, I don't know how these companies, and maybe it's just because I'm the only asshole that actually calls and complains and says, Hey, you screwed this up. Hey, you screwed this up. Hey, you screwed this up. Almost every order, I get a percentage off and there's no, that has to equal or exceed the amount that the restaurant was

Gene: 12:30

Okay. This is interesting because I had that exact same experience, but it was about three two years ago. So when I first started really getting way too much takeout delivery, which is to say like four or five days a week.

Ben: 12:49

When you were setting yourself up for the gout.

Gene: 12:52

No, no, no, two, two, four years ago, I had no gout,

Ben: 12:57

I said you were setting yourself up for it. Exactly.

Gene: 13:00

I don't think it takes that long, but my point is that was exactly my thought. It's like, how can these guys screw up every fricking order enough that I have to get a discount every fricking order? I could, there's somebody who's losing money on this. But you know what changed is over the last probably year my orders stopped getting screwed up And I don't know if it's the restaurants finally figured out or if it's uber that finally figured things out But somebody did because

Ben: 13:31

Mine are still screwed up.

Gene: 13:33

yeah I think it may have to do with the fact that you're just living in a smaller city

Ben: 13:38

I, I mean, it happens all the time. I mean, I,

Gene: 13:42

well, let's let's check two years from now and see what happens

Ben: 13:44

okay

Gene: 13:45

because I it's It's interesting, because literally what you're describing, I went through two years ago. And, and it was actually kind of nice, because now I'm actually paying for every order with no discounts. Back then, I was getting discounts left and right.

Ben: 14:01

so I kind of shocked you yesterday

Gene: 14:05

How'd you shock me?

Ben: 14:06

because you asked me what I was doing or whatever. And I told you I was watching a video game walkthrough and you're like, what?

Gene: 14:11

I was shocked. You're absolutely right about that. Because you are making fun of me playing video games, and, and you were watching YouTube videos about video games.

Ben: 14:20

yeah, I actually found a guy's channel that I, I, I started watching because I needed help solving a puzzle. And then you know, now I've gone down the rabbit hole of.

Gene: 14:31

Mm hmm.

Ben: 14:32

Watching just to skip ahead and see the story

Gene: 14:36

Mm hmm.

Ben: 14:37

of it, but

Gene: 14:38

what are you playing? Tell the people.

Ben: 14:40

So I had a couple of weeks off, you know, where I wasn't working and that that's. I never take two weeks off in a row. So I picked up and started playing again the original half life just to go back through it.

Gene: 14:57

Yeah, and are you enjoying it?

Ben: 14:59

Oh yeah. And in fact, I'm going to go through and I don't know that I, so now I'm back at work and I don't know how much time I'll have to actually play. And because it's just not a high priority, but while I was bored for two weeks, I played and made it pretty far in the game, but.

Gene: 15:19

Wait,

Ben: 15:19

I would like to, I would like to go through and do opposing forces and blue shift and all of it, and go all the way back to the entire Half Life franchise, but

Gene: 15:28

Wow. So, so you're saying if I was actually more busy, I may not play video games?

Ben: 15:34

I don't know about you, but for me, it certainly affects my, my ability to,

Gene: 15:39

I, yeah, no, I, I think that is absolutely right, because really I really only got back into video games about five years ago. Like, I hadn't played for over a decade, any video games really, unless you consider, you know, iPhone or iPad games, video games, which is a bit of a stretch. And what, what got me back into video games was, Dating a 21 year old Twitch streamer. And, you know, she streamed games all day.

Ben: 16:10

Twitch streamer.

Gene: 16:11

And and I was like, Yeah, what a waste of time. Let's fuck instead. And it's funny, cause, you know, I've, I've started, in spending time with her, I started buying some of these games as well. And then even after we broke up, I kept playing the games and I was like, Ah, man, I remember video games used to be fun.

Ben: 16:35

I used to play games all the time. I mean, I, back in the nineties, you know, I, I overclocked processors and did a bunch of stuff and even through the two thousands, like probably 2010 is when I started just, eh, and moved to a console just cause I got tired of it. But you know, I mean, I remember. I remember changing jumpers on motherboards and then having to burn out pathways

Gene: 17:04

Mm hmm.

Ben: 17:05

be able to unlock and able to overclock systems, or loading different BIOS so you could unlock settings to overclock different processors and everything else. And then, I remember there was this time, I don't know if you remember this, but when the, I think it was the Pentium 3 versus the Pentium 4, because the Pentium 4 started including hyper threading and multi core. And the Pentium 3 didn't, but the Pentium 3 ran faster. And, and there was this period of time where you could get a Pentium 3 and overclock it and be way faster than a Pentium 4 because none of the games or anyone was multi threaded. So that, that one processor doing the single thread faster was more important.

Gene: 17:52

Yeah, that's totally true. Yeah, and in fact, I think the, the CPU that I, that I was really overclocking the most was a Pentium III, I

Ben: 18:04

Mm hmm. Yeah, they were very

Gene: 18:06

Yeah. Cause I was running, so this would have been 2004 or five right around there. So I'd have to match up. See, I, I, I think I still have one image left from CPU Z that, that shows the speed, but but back then a processor that was rated at like 2. 6 gigahertz or thereabouts I was running it over four gigahertz. And it definitely was for gaming. I mean, that was the, the main reason for it is I wanted faster throughput on it. And I was using my below freezing liquid rig that I

Ben: 18:53

Liquid cooling. I, at one point I took a and I think I've talked about this before, but I took like a 10 gallon aquarium and filled it with mineral oil

Gene: 19:03

Mm-Hmm.

Ben: 19:04

and use that as a huge heat sink.

Gene: 19:06

Yep. Yeah. And I had a refrigeration system

Ben: 19:11

And, and before people say anything, you could not put a air cooled system and just dunk it in there. The best way to do it was to have the liquid cooling so that you could pump the heat off of the processor, but cool down the North bridge South bridge, because when you're overclocking. It's not just the processor that gets hot and a lot of people would burn up their motherboards because the, there, there are a couple chips on, on the actual motherboard that you're also overclocking that typically are not pushed at all thermally that you're pushing thermally.

Gene: 19:43

right. They have no cooling

Ben: 19:44

And part of it was just the amount of voltage because the voltage supply was routed through the same path. It wasn't even that you were trying to do anything with them. You're just bumping up voltage, thus increasing heat.

Gene: 19:56

it's, it was yeah, you're absolutely right. Cause I had cooling blocks on those chips, the CPU and the GPU and and I was running like most people are using. These days for cooling wine, and I've got a cooled liquid cooled CPU on my PC right now. In fact, but it's, you know, it's, it's, it's modern. It's relatively thin gauge. I keep thinking wires what do you call them?

Ben: 20:24

Heat pipes.

Gene: 20:25

yeah, yeah. It's not the heat, but they're a, what does liquid flow through pipes? Yeah. So relatively small pipes, but I was running like, okay. five eighths inch for liquid. I was cycling.

Ben: 20:42

You, you needed more flow

Gene: 20:43

Yeah, I had a lot of flow and it was basically water with some glycol in it.

Ben: 20:52

Just to kill the algae,

Gene: 20:53

Yeah, just kill the algae, and,

Ben: 20:55

the way, if you got algae in your liquid cooling system, which was possible was a pain in the ass to ever get rid of.

Gene: 21:02

and fluorescent dye.

Ben: 21:05

Oh yeah. Yeah. Cause you had to

Gene: 21:06

you gotta have that. You gotta, if, if, if your, if your liquid cooling doesn't look like radiation, you ain't doing it right.

Ben: 21:14

Exactly.

Gene: 21:15

And, and the whole thing was In a clear acrylic case with black lighting LEDs on all the edges. So you, the whole thing

Ben: 21:24

didn't go with the clear cases. In fact, the case I had was. A really heavy, thick walled sound dampening case that I had set up to be ultra, ultra quiet. That was the other thing, is I

Gene: 21:40

But I had no fans in the computer.

Ben: 21:42

ultra quiet.

Gene: 21:44

Yeah, I had no fans in the computer. Everything was liquid cooled.

Ben: 21:47

Okay

Gene: 21:47

And, and the the pump was about ten feet away.

Ben: 21:52

if you can get the pump that far away, that's great.

Gene: 21:54

Yeah. And it was, it was a one and a half horsepower pump.

Ben: 21:59

That's a big pump.

Gene: 22:00

I'm telling you, the, the, the liquid went between the refrigeration unit, which, incidentally, the refrigeration unit was It was an aquarium chiller, which is something I didn't know existed, but it's made for people that have large aquariums of cold water fish. So if you're living, you know, any, actually anywhere where your ambient room temperature is 60 degrees plus, but your fish like a good 35 to 40 degree water. That's what you get you get a chiller.

Ben: 22:34

Anyway, so I've gone back to playing old video games a little bit, and, you know, people are still playing Counter Strike. And I remember playing Counter Strike in multiplayer

Gene: 22:45

count strike, you know I mean they have been updating it.

Ben: 22:47

Yeah, ish. Anyway, but people are still going back and playing the original.

Gene: 22:53

Mm hmm

Ben: 22:55

Um, but I remember when Counter Strike first came out. I remember playing it and I remember,

Gene: 23:01

member berries.

Ben: 23:03

I have, I remember having a time lag because of dial up. You know,

Gene: 23:08

hmm.

Ben: 23:09

it's crazy. I mean, we were playing video games online with, you know, a few kilobits per second at best. Data rates. Can you, the, the amount of traffic that online games use today, it's astonishingly different.

Gene: 23:27

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they're streaming a lot more data

Ben: 23:31

Yeah, but why? You know, really the independent rendering of the environment, you're not having to send anything but position data back and forth. It should not have expanded that much. Mm,

Gene: 23:42

there's a lot of position data though because that in modern games, it's not just a handful of people moving around There the environmental it elements are also moving Destructible environments. You have

Ben: 24:00

Counter Strike had destructible environments too.

Gene: 24:04

Really, I

Ben: 24:05

Yeah, the bash crates do a whole bunch of stuff that you could do in the original Half Life.

Gene: 24:09

Yeah, I guess crates. Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean,

Ben: 24:13

Anyway, I still remember the, in the one map that was for the hostage rescue or whatever, there was that one area you could glitch, get up and snipe and no one could hit you.

Gene: 24:24

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was, that was a fun part of old games too, I would say is utilizing.

Ben: 24:31

and glitches.

Gene: 24:32

Utilizing the glitches, because do you ever play Battlefield 42, the

Ben: 24:37

yeah.

Gene: 24:38

So, I don't know how long it was, but it was probably a good three to four months after the game was out, before somebody figured out that if you turn off friendly fire, you can grenade jump really

Ben: 24:53

yeah, yeah, yeah,

Gene: 24:54

And like, nobody did it until I saw some people doing it, you know, three months after the game came out. I got it immediately when it came out. And I was like, holy shit, how do you do this? And then I spent like two weeks practicing and learning how to do grenade jump. And then you can literally get onto a three story building if you time things right, because what the grenade does is it accelerates your current velocity. So you have to jump just at the right moment so that you are at your max velocity as the grenade goes off.

Ben: 25:28

And then it just

Gene: 25:29

And it just shoots you straight up and then you land on the roof of a building, which they had roofs, even though you know, there's no way to get up there. And then all of a sudden you really were the ultimate sniper because nobody looked up into the roof line because there's no way to get there except there was.

Ben: 25:48

Yep. And that's one of the things I've really enjoyed about, actually, what got me into and has me, I've literally watched all his videos on Half Life. This guy, Big Mac Davis, on, on YouTube and, you know, it's, it's boring unless you're into the game and he's going through and doing 100 percent walkthroughs and talking about all the secret areas and I'm just comparing my knowledge

Gene: 26:15

Mm-Hmm.

Ben: 26:15

because I, I mean, half life was just such a component of my childhood going through and, you know, comparing my knowledge of it to that. And it's, it's interesting, you know, it's,

Gene: 26:27

watched any of the, the speed run videos?

Ben: 26:30

Yeah, I don't care about that as much.

Gene: 26:33

you know,

Ben: 26:34

that's not my style.

Gene: 26:35

yeah. I, and I, I would agree with you. Not mine either, but sometimes I watch those and it, it just, it just blows my mind how somebody can figure out how to get things done so damn quickly. And I remember watching a video of the Outer World's developers. Watching a record breaking speed run of that game

Ben: 26:57

Mm hmm.

Gene: 26:58

and that game has, I can't remember how many, but like 26 hours is what they tell you of, of like full story content. Now you could play longer than that, obviously. But if you just want to run through the story, it's like a 26 hours. And this guy does it in 50 minutes, five, zero. And they're watching. And they're like, you shouldn't be able to do that. How did he go from here to there? How do you do that? You know, the guys that made the game

Ben: 27:25

yeah, yeah.

Gene: 27:27

they don't know all the shortcuts and all the ways that people have figured out how to shave time and then do things in a different order than intended in order to accelerate the storyline along. So it's, it's pretty wild. Again, I don't like playing that way, but it's interesting watching that.

Ben: 27:45

so I'm not gonna give financial advice, but I hope, ah, I hope everyone is paying attention if you own Boeing stock. Yeah.

Gene: 27:54

little bit of an issue with the 737,

Ben: 27:56

All of them grounded now. Again.

Gene: 27:59

which is probably a good thing, honestly, because having a hatch blow out in midair is not a good thing.

Ben: 28:04

Which, luckily, the guy sitting by it was buckled in. Can you imagine? Can you imagine being that guy?

Gene: 28:12

Dude, you imagined the notoriety. I would be filming everything the whole time. Yeah, that would be awesome. can only hope for things like that to happen.

Ben: 28:24

You can only hope. Yeah. What if you're not buckled in and

Gene: 28:27

Then, fuck you if you're not buckled in, I guess. I mean, you should be buckled in. Why are you not buckled in the plane taking off? You should totally be buckled in.

Ben: 28:37

Okay. Anyway, so Gene, what happened?

Gene: 28:42

With, with what?

Ben: 28:43

I mean, we're sitting here talking about it and assuming a lot

Gene: 28:46

Oh, yeah, yeah, so, from watching the video, it looks like there's a 737 that shortly after takeoff And one of the emergency,

Ben: 28:55

000 feet

Gene: 28:56

it was at that high, they, it looked like it was like five minutes after takeoff, but it was, I guess it was climbing pretty quick, but it, it had an emergency exit door blow off, which, you know, should happen if you're trying to open it and get out of the plane from one of the seats in the back next to the emergency exit should not happen when the plane's just flying and nobody's touching anything.

Ben: 29:22

which by the way, you normally cannot open these doors in flight.

Gene: 29:27

Never tried, so don't know,

Ben: 29:30

No, no, no, no. They're, they're designed where you cannot normally open them during pressurization.

Gene: 29:35

wish that would be a handy thing. So I guess now they're checking every plane's doors, which I think they said takes about three hours per plane. So they're all grounded until they start being tested and then put back in service, which I don't, I don't think that's a bad thing. I think that's a good thing because It may be a total fluke, or it may be something that leads to a design modification

Ben: 29:59

737 has had massive issues.

Gene: 30:02

that the max specifically the 737, the older generations were actually very reliable,

Ben: 30:07

the Max and the Nine, depending on the variant, have had a lot of issues.

Gene: 30:15

I mean, like

Ben: 30:16

Yeah, the newer generation planes have screwed up.

Gene: 30:19

Boeing, what, what I've heard from a lot of people that either worked in Boeing in the past, or just. You know, live in Seattle and know somebody that is that when Boeing got acquired by Venture Capital and they the engineers started leaving and they were replaced by middle managers

Ben: 30:40

Mm hmm.

Gene: 30:41

and the company took a total notice that Boeing used to have like some of the older companies, like Hewlett Packard did the same thing. They, they had a policy of reinvesting 10 percent of their profits into R& D every year. So there was a lot of jobs, honestly, just people working at the company on just trying to come up with improvements. And all of that stopped when they started looking at what, what is the stock dividends, what are they paying this year? Yeah.

Ben: 31:15

where, you know, we got really good planes right as engineers decided to retire. And then once they retired and the younger engineers move up and start making a lot of the same old mistakes that the old engineers made years ago and got lost. Tribally, I mean, when you look at Windows Vista getting re, you know, the IP stack getting rewritten and the ping of death from 1995 coming back, right? Same sort of thing, where the old engineer wouldn't have made that mistake again that he made before, right? And that, that's, that's part of the issue is that if you do not have a contiguous workforce and a contiguous knowledge transfer. You have problems and we see that a lot in tech and we see that a lot in engineering.

Gene: 32:10

Mm hmm. And I, I think a lot of industries that's the case is that where you have a rapidly changing workforce, rather than a slowly changing workforce, the knowledge transfer doesn't happen. And it's, it's funny, I, I, you know, I don't talk about business much at all on this podcast, but. I'm right now in the process of wrapping up a project for a client where we came in to develop their policy and procedure manuals which are no longer manuals. Obviously, these are all computerized you know, databases, but. This is effectively my selling point is that if, if currently you use people's names to the question of how do you do this, then you need to hire us to come in and take all that information out of people's heads, put it into systems that the company owns, and then have, rather than people's names, use job titles for who should know these things. And it's something that a lot of companies just. Don't think about or, or push off on to do next year and then next year and then the next year,

Ben: 33:21

Yeah. And then you have a bunch of boomers retiring and

Gene: 33:27

yeah, what do you do when those people are gone and everybody just always use the knowledge in those people's heads instead of that knowledge being captured and encapsulated in the company itself. So that is you know, that's, that's, I think we're going to do a bunch of those projects this year. So if you work for a company that needs something like that, hit me up.

Ben: 33:50

okay.

Gene: 33:52

Yeah but you know, it's, it's weird having you open things up about video games for a change. Usually I'm the one that's blabbing about

Ben: 34:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know.

Gene: 34:03

I still, I still think there's some modern games that if you, if you, If you have the time, which I don't know that you do, frankly, now that you're working again, but

Ben: 34:13

You mean back from vacation? Let's not make it sound like I was out of work.

Gene: 34:18

You were out of work for two weeks Yes, from your staycation. Which also I'm, I'm curious to know, because I, I know how my wife reacted to me playing video games and all that. How did your wife react to you all of a sudden playing video games?

Ben: 34:34

She has no, no no knowledge or impact of it.

Gene: 34:38

Oh, she was gone? Okay.

Ben: 34:40

No, I, I, I was doing other things, so.

Gene: 34:43

Oh, you were doing other, so she doesn't know. Got it. It's just, usually that's not a fun conversation, because Most wives, even girlfriends, will put up with it for, you know, a few hours, but if you're on vacation and you're, you're basically spending your vacation time playing video games, generally,

Ben: 35:02

I'd have to log into Steam and see how long I

Gene: 35:05

how many hours? Yeah,

Ben: 35:06

But, I guarantee you, over two weeks, it was no more than ten.

Gene: 35:13

10 days,

Ben: 35:14

No, ten hours. If that.

Gene: 35:17

10 hours. That's one day.

Ben: 35:19

No, Half Life's not that long of a game, dude.

Gene: 35:22

Yeah,

Ben: 35:23

playing, you know, a level, a level or so a day.

Gene: 35:27

dude, I played 10 hours yesterday. Heh heh heh

Ben: 35:30

Okay anyway. I couldn't do that at this point. I mean, I'm sure at some point in time younger me could've, but no.

Gene: 35:38

I was playing Hunter, The Hunter, Call of the Wild, which is a, a Hunter simulation game. Probably one of the most beautiful ones out there. Yeah, see, but I can do this for 10 hours every day. Not every day, but you know what I mean, you can't go hunting every day. I mean, look, if the, if the world ends tomorrow, we'll have to do that, but in terms of right now, no, that's not realistic. How many days did you go hunting during your staycation?

Ben: 36:10

I ended up not going hunting because lots of reasons I ended up not going anywhere, which is part of the problem. But like over Thanksgiving break, which I took some time off there, you know, I hunted pretty much every day over Thanksgiving

Gene: 36:23

Yeah, I remember that.

Ben: 36:25

you know, morning, noon, and night.

Gene: 36:27

Oh, hey, which reminds me I went to my buddy who I helped butcher that deer and picked up some of the end product of what we made picked up some I don't even know what, what is the technical term for a, like a turd's worth of liverwurst? Is that a, is that a measurement size? A link of liverwurst. There we go. I thought the official measurement was a turd. But I

Ben: 36:55

Okay.

Gene: 36:56

uh huh, huh,

Ben: 36:57

hmm.

Gene: 36:58

but it's like a, you know, seven inches give or take section of liverwurst. I haven't, I haven't tried

Ben: 37:07

now, no, no, hold on, hold on. Is this a a gene guesstimate measurement on 7 inches?

Gene: 37:16

No,

Ben: 37:17

Because then, it's more like probably about 4 and a half.

Gene: 37:20

yeah, ha ha ha ha ha. I noticed I didn't say 12 inches. Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's probably right around seven inches or so. I don't know that he was necessarily using a ruler when One twisting the, the casing per section, but it's a, it's actually a bigger piece than typically you would buy at a grocery store if you're buying liverwurst. Those tend to be a little shorter. I haven't tried it obviously because I'm on day six of my fast right now,

Ben: 37:50

Mm hmm. Mm

Gene: 37:51

which is going actually still surprisingly well. I like, I think the last time I fasted, which was two years ago, I was by this time I think I was fine, but certainly on day Two, three, I was feeling not very happy because the stomach was gurgling and I was feeling really hungry and this year I, I just seem to have just kind of gone through that. Without any issues at all. And I kind of attribute it to potentially to doing intermittent fasting for the last two years, which is actually more than two years, but for sure the last two years, which is most days I only eat once a day. And so I think that type of habit, conditioning, whatever, has made it easier to do a full fast.

Ben: 38:46

I don't know, man. I don't know. I I don't know. I, I haven't been fasting, but I've been losing weight, so.

Gene: 38:54

Really? That's stress related weight loss.

Ben: 38:56

Yeah, it is, actually.

Gene: 38:57

Yeah, and that has a lot to do with it and I'm and I've said this before but I'm I'm not really fasting to lose weight I'm fasting because it's a great way to start the year A very fresh new note just it gets your mind moving better and faster. You gotta remember processing food is It, it it takes energy certainly it does your body spends about 25 percent of its energy, if I'm right, 22%, something like that, on digestion, the whole process. While that's happening, there's a lot of different chemicals and, and hormones and other things that go along with that process or that enter your bloodstream as the nutrients from the food have to be delivered. To the right places you know, a lot of things are getting shuffled around. So really when you're not eating, like none of that is happening. I mean, obviously you're still burning calories. You're, you don't stop doing that.

Ben: 40:00

Yeah, you, you would, you don't stop burning calories unless you're dead.

Gene: 40:04

Yeah, unless you're dead, exactly. But but what's happening is your, your liver is just now in the mode of converting fat into sugar and that's a much more efficient process than converting, than going the other direction, than converting food into fat. So, I don't know, I'm kind of enjoying it. If it was always this easy, I would probably do this more frequently. I might do it once a quarter instead of once a year.

Ben: 40:32

Try and push it, push it out instead of 10 days, do 20.

Gene: 40:36

20 days. What's the record, I wonder?

Ben: 40:39

Over a year.

Gene: 40:41

Oh, that's right. We talked about this. Yeah, over a year. That's a long time.

Ben: 40:44

Yeah, guy lost hundreds of pounds.

Gene: 40:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben: 40:49

I mean, you could probably do at least a good three months.

Gene: 40:54

I don't know about that.

Ben: 40:55

And then you'd be svelte and you know,

Gene: 40:59

um, there's also a problem with

Ben: 41:01

you'd lose a whole nother gene.

Gene: 41:03

I would lose a whole other gene, that's true. There is, there is a problem though with fast weight loss in that your skin does not adjust rapidly. It takes a while for your skin to shrink. But, yeah, I mean, I'm happy for the fat loss happening as well, obviously but The just the, the clarity of thought and the reduction in the number of drugs that I'm taking. Because, like, everything that has to do with diabetes, I'm not taking right now because don't need it. You know, my blood sugar is literally perfect right now. It is sitting between 90 and

Ben: 41:45

what does that tell you?

Gene: 41:47

It tells me that I should just never eat.

Ben: 41:50

No, it tells you you should go to like a carnivore diet and try that for your diabetes. It would

Gene: 41:55

I mean, I've basically have been on carnivore for two years, dude. I

Ben: 42:00

not enough. Apparently you've been not in ketosis and you've been sneaking sugar or getting sugar somehow. Maybe it's sweet tea. I don't know. But

Gene: 42:08

The thing is, with diabetes, now without diabetes, you're probably right on that, but with diabetes, I can eat meat, and my blood sugar goes up.

Ben: 42:17

yeah, I understand that. And you have to be careful, especially with diabetes to, you know, there's a fine line between ketosis and ketoacidosis, which to a diabetic is not a good thing.

Gene: 42:29

Yeah, it's more likely. Yeah. But, either way all's good. And I certainly, it's not health advice, it's just a I would encourage people to experiment with eating nothing for a period of time. How's that? That doesn't sound medically at all, does it?

Ben: 42:48

No, you're good. So, uh, speaking of experimenting, I found an ammo manufacturer. I'm going to have to order from and try out.

Gene: 43:01

Now you put your order in before you name these guys, right? Because

Ben: 43:04

Oh, I'm not naming them until I

Gene: 43:06

Okay.

Ben: 43:06

fired. I'm just letting people

Gene: 43:08

Alright.

Ben: 43:09

But the ammo is made in the U. S.

Gene: 43:12

Mm hmm.

Ben: 43:13

Versus like Igmen which is some of the cheapest surplus or slash Bosnian ammo you can get right now.

Gene: 43:20

Yeah.

Ben: 43:21

So for a thousand of the Igmen rounds packaged in nothing special 20 round boxes, you know. And so on five, 200 round packs, you're talking 800 and something bucks with shipping this U S made ammo shipping taxes, everything out the door is a hundred dollars cheaper per thousand. Which is

Gene: 43:46

10 percent cheaper, yeah. Than the cheap shit. And compared to, like, federal, it's probably a good 30, 40 percent cheaper.

Ben: 43:54

yes, and you know, as long as they, as long as it shoots good you know,

Gene: 44:01

And, and the, the issue with these guys that you told me and it's on their website is, yeah, basically they make the ammo after you pay for it.

Ben: 44:09

Yes, and it's a very small manufacturer, but it's, you know, mom and pop and, but they've got it together and they're doing it to Mil Spec and everything else. And by the way, this is all 308 that I'm talking about because it's a common cartridge between Gene and

Gene: 44:26

They also have nine millimeter.

Ben: 44:28

Yeah, they do. They, they, they have a couple NATO cartridges is what they, they, they do not have infinite, oh, empty squad ammo here, but yeah, it looks like if, especially if you can get a good cadence with them after you, you know, establish that the, the ammo is good quality it'd be great. So the reason why I'm saying that is I've got some orders in. I'm going to play around, I'm going to, normally I shoot you know, it's first in first out into my ammo stack normally. But that said, I will, I will take some of this and I will compare it to some 1980s US surplus to Igman to some of the cheaper brass 308 stuff out there, and then compare it to like federal or

Gene: 45:15

I would just, I would compare it to federal or, you know, decent American

Ben: 45:19

I've got IMI as well. So. But

Gene: 45:22

IMI. IMI is getting hard to get

Ben: 45:24

ball is what it's, you know, spec'd at. So I want to compare it to equivalent spec, you know, obviously I don't, I don't want to be shooting 147 grain M80 ball and comparing it to you know, 130 grain federal or something like that.

Gene: 45:40

Right.

Ben: 45:42

And we'll get the chronographs out and check consistency and

Gene: 45:45

Which one do you have?

Ben: 45:47

I'm going to have to borrow my buddy's at this point. I got rid of mine a Garmin one at

Gene: 45:53

Yeah, the Garmin looks really cool.

Ben: 45:55

Like, if I was going to buy a new chronograph, I'd be tempting.

Gene: 45:59

Yep.

Ben: 45:59

it's way more expensive, but the way it works is phenomenal.

Gene: 46:03

Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah, I, I'm, I'll, I told you, I'll put an order in as soon as you tell me that they should get,

Ben: 46:12

Mm hmm.

Gene: 46:12

so it's it's a good price. But given that you already ordered some, then I might as well wait till you give the result. It's not like I'm out of 308 ammo. I've got several thousand IMI rounds. And and then I've got yeah. Which which is plenty for how much I currently shoot. You know, you can never have too much just in case, but in terms of just shooting at the range, this is plenty. But and then I also have a bunch of my 308 gold medal target rounds, but I don't have thousands of those. Those are like three bucks a piece.

Ben: 46:53

Yeah, everything's gotten so expensive and Amos, you know,

Gene: 46:57

God, I remember the good old days when the buck around seemed like a really expensive price.

Ben: 47:02

yeah, and it's going up quite a bit here in 2024. So we'll

Gene: 47:07

Yeah, yeah for sure.

Ben: 47:10

so I did get some cases to store magazines in, and I got to tell you, I, I like it, I I would recommend these.

Gene: 47:18

What's Which magazines are they for or any magazines?

Ben: 47:23

Specifically the ones I've got is for some of my 308s, some of my M1A and AR 10 style mags is what I'm storing in there.

Gene: 47:31

What are these cases best especially for mags or they

Ben: 47:34

Yeah, yeah, so it's MTM M T M, MICO,

Gene: 47:38

They're gonna put this in the show notes, right?

Ben: 47:40

I'll put a link on my website, but

Gene: 47:42

Mm hmm.

Ben: 47:43

But anyway, they're 20 to 30 bucks a piece, depending on what you're getting. And they've just got a foam cut out in the bottom and then a latching case with an O ring that you can lock or do whatever that's strong enough to hold those magazines full of ammo and sealed. It's nice.

Gene: 48:00

So it's called a mag cam. Is that right?

Ben: 48:03

Yeah, there's a couple different ones.

Gene: 48:05

Mm hmm. I'm

Ben: 48:06

ones for 308 from here. I'll send it to you.

Gene: 48:10

Mm hmm

Ben: 48:11

Yeah, there's 308.

Gene: 48:12

ammo crates, right? Yeah. Oh,

Ben: 48:16

crates as well, but this is specifically to hold magazines and loaded magazines. They've got, you know, 506 caliber ones. They've got handgun round ones. They've got a lot of different ones, but it's it's a neat little just foam insert in pelican style case. It's not really as heavy duty as a pelican case, but yeah.

Gene: 48:39

Cool.

Ben: 48:39

got a bunch of different ones

Gene: 48:41

I will say I just have a bunch of magazines and cardboard boxes, which is sloppy as fuck.

Ben: 48:46

Yeah. And I, I, I had some drawers and some organizers and stuff like that to just hold magazines. And it it finally got the best of me and I was like, this looks like a better solution. I got one. Tried it out and I'm like, hell yes. Got another one. You know, and for instance, like the the AR 10 drum, the magpul drum will fit in it. Upside down takes up more than one slot, obviously, but it'll fit in there. So yeah,

Gene: 49:16

What do you have any one of those or multiple ones of those?

Ben: 49:21

I'm no comment.

Gene: 49:23

They're not illegal.

Ben: 49:25

Yeah, nor were bump stocks for a long time.

Gene: 49:29

They're still not illegal. Not in Texas.

Ben: 49:33

Don't get

Gene: 49:33

I've, I've looked at the those 50 round drums, the mini drums, and I don't know. I've just never pulled the trigger on getting one of those.

Ben: 49:44

So I have multiple.

Gene: 49:46

Mm hmm.

Ben: 49:47

I've had drums. Fuck, I've got drums for SKS's that I own. I like drum bags. I like, I like

Gene: 49:55

see any reliability issues?

Ben: 49:56

Oh, God, yes, the, the, the, the, the Magpul one and the M1A Pro Mag one that I have, not so much, like the Chinese stuff or the even the Russian stuff for the AK's. You know, the SKS Mag was trash. The AK drum, depending, the Yugo stuff was way better than a lot of the other as far as that went. It just depends the like I want to get a Glock drum for my PC car being just to really turn it into a Tommy gun. Cause I consider that like a modern day Tommy gun in a lot of ways and you know, just look cool. But it's hard to justify a expensive 50 round drum that, you know, is going to have reliability issues when you can do a 30 some odd round stick mag

Gene: 50:43

33 round stick mag for

Ben: 50:45

for a fraction of the price.

Gene: 50:47

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that's, that's exactly been my thoughts is they look kind of cool, but, and they're actually cheaper now than they used to, they used to be all like 200 bucks plus. And now they've come down to where they're in the 100 range, but still, I've just, I keep thinking, man, that just

Ben: 51:06

Oh,

Gene: 51:07

feels like you're LARPing. Mm

Ben: 51:09

Uh, I mean yes and no. Like the Magpul mag for your Tavor. I would, I would personally totally do it. I, I have that magazine. In fact, you can borrow it and

Gene: 51:18

it with a Tavor. You can't do it with a Tavor.

Ben: 51:22

Why?

Gene: 51:23

Because the mag well is next to your cheek.

Ben: 51:26

You can do it.

Gene: 51:27

Nope.

Ben: 51:28

I've seen people do it.

Gene: 51:29

It's gotta be a very weird hold of the gun then, because it, your, your cheek literally goes right next to the magazine.

Ben: 51:38

Yes,

Gene: 51:39

have anything going

Ben: 51:39

down and bulged up underneath your arm.

Gene: 51:43

How long is this magazine?

Ben: 51:45

It's long enough to not

Gene: 51:46

Okay, well send, send me a picture because what I've seen and I, what I've seen people talking about on the tour forums is that you can't do drums because drums just, they literally will go there's no place for'em because you, the, the, because of the placement of the magwell. There is no place for something that sticks out to the side. It can only go down.

Ben: 52:09

Disagree.

Gene: 52:11

I don't know. You sent me a picture. I'd like to see if, if there is a way to do it. Yeah, that, that totally does not work. That, that is a, a complete LARPing picture that you just sent me because Literally where that bulge is, is gonna be right where your neck is.

Ben: 52:28

Hmm.

Gene: 52:29

It does not work. Believe me, I have the

Ben: 52:32

don't know.

Gene: 52:32

not work.

Ben: 52:33

Okay.

Gene: 52:34

So, you can

Ben: 52:35

it on YouTube.

Gene: 52:36

cool accessories on gu yeah, and people on YouTube also have way fuckin too much shit on their guns. That nobody needs. Way too much fuckin shit. There's not a single gun without a light anymore. And they have a light? And a,

Ben: 52:53

Or a P. E. C. A P. E. C. unit is

Gene: 52:55

yeah, they have none. They have all of them. They, they have a

Ben: 52:58

I don't know why you'd want a

Gene: 52:59

they have a laser unit. They have the, because the pack has a infrared light. So you have infrared light, green laser, normal light. And then you have your, your normal site. Then you have a 45 degree angled. Um, you know, red dot and, and then there, of course, all the guys on YouTube are running with suppressors and they've got way too many grip mods. It's just, it's, it's LARPing. That is all it is in a practical scenario. You don't need any of that shit. All you need is infrared vision. That's it. I'm, I'm more thoroughly convinced back what I'm going to be

Ben: 53:45

having an aiming laser on your weapon if you're using night vision is nice.

Gene: 53:49

If you're using a normal night vision, a naming laser is nice, except. That it points right back at

Ben: 53:55

your

Gene: 53:56

Mm hmm. Now,

Ben: 53:57

Shoot here! Right there! Right there! Right there! Shoot there!

Gene: 54:00

thing. So, you've heard of digital night vision, right? And they're kind of poo pooed because they're nowhere near as good in the quality. But here's an interesting thing about digital night vision. Digital night vision range Goes down substantially lower or to a yeah, it's a broader range. And there are companies now starting to make infrared flashlights and infrared lasers,

Ben: 54:27

Illuminators. Yeah. That are out of the range.

Gene: 54:29

that are out of the traditional night vision range, but in the digital night vision range to light things up. So now the guys with a shitty cheap night vision actually have a tactical advantage because they can be fully lit. And the normal night vision dudes just see black.

Ben: 54:48

I would still prefer actual real night vision

Gene: 54:54

yeah, I'd prefer the combo for 14, 000 too.

Ben: 54:58

yeah, but there's such a problem with lag on the digital night vision. I don't

Gene: 55:05

It there, there really isn't. The, the lag is certainly a concern because it's more than zero, which it is on traditional night vision, but a problem with it. I don't think there's a problem with it. How many, how many things

Ben: 55:22

people who use it for hunting, and they have moving targets are

Gene: 55:27

Yeah, exactly.

Ben: 55:28

to shoot at with digital night vision.

Gene: 55:30

Yeah. Moving targets would be more of an issue. Absolutely. But again, The lag on the current

Ben: 55:37

So sure, as long as everything's standing still,

Gene: 55:40

and exactly, as long as everything's standing still, keep in mind that you've got the same lag issue with thermal, and yet tons of people do videos of hunting hogs with thermal, like there's literally thousands of those videos.

Ben: 55:57

thermal has its own issues. Yeah, anyway,

Gene: 56:01

so.

Ben: 56:02

one to go through and, I don't know, man, I, I wouldn't, I would not just get thermal. I, I might do one eye of night vision, one eye of thermal or something like that, but I, and I would use thermal for discovering something, but night vision for actually acquiring a target.

Gene: 56:24

hmm. I do the opposite. Thermal, you need for hunting. You don't need thermal for

Ben: 56:29

that's what I'm saying when you're, when you're on patrol walking around, use thermal to see the guy who's hiding behind the bushes up ahead.

Gene: 56:36

And aim at the guy behind the bushes because you can't fucking see him with night vision. There's tons of videos showing that. That literally people become invisible with night vision very easily simply by wearing a dark colored camo.

Ben: 56:50

yeah

Gene: 56:51

that image is nice and bright.

Ben: 56:53

I mean, depends. Lots of

Gene: 56:55

I mean, I've sent you videos, dude.

Ben: 56:57

Yeah, and I've sent you videos, too. The whole mud trick for Predator actually works.

Gene: 57:04

work. You're right. Exactly. It's like, it seemed like bullshit until they proved that it works and they were

Ben: 57:09

until they're like, Holy shit, it doesn't take any mud! It's just anything on your skin blocks thermal!

Gene: 57:16

thin, super thin layer. Exactly. But it works equally well for night vision. And that's the thing is you, all you're doing with night vision is you're amplifying the light that is reflected. So if you're, if you're covered with mud or just dark camo. You're, you're really hard if not impossible to see with night vision and it with thermal You know at least for now most people are not wearing thermal face paint.

Ben: 57:49

Okay, fair enough. But anyway, regardless,

Gene: 57:53

No, we're good Yeah,

Ben: 57:54

eh, did you did you watch Pencilneck's video on the Airsoft? The 48 hour Airsoft, what were they did?

Gene: 58:01

no, I didn't.

Ben: 58:02

Oh, man, you gotta go watch that because they did full, like, night vision tactics, everything.

Gene: 58:07

Who are they playing with or

Ben: 58:09

It was somewhere up in Washington,

Gene: 58:11

But I mean, was it just him or the usual crew of buddies?

Ben: 58:15

No, there were, there were several people involved. I know, I think

Gene: 58:20

Not like Brandon. Oh, Kentucky was there.

Ben: 58:22

But re regardless, it, it's, it, it's worth going and

Gene: 58:26

Hey, I got, I got a new word. See what you think of it. Disregardless. Disregardless.

Ben: 58:33

sound like a word. What was that? Dis, regardless.

Gene: 58:38

Disirregardless.

Ben: 58:39

That's a double negative and

Gene: 58:40

know it's exactly, that's correct. It's double negative. And it's, it's a word because,

Ben: 58:45

Not a word.

Gene: 58:46

it I mean, no reason it can't be. It's

Ben: 58:51

The English language is the reason why

Gene: 58:53

no, no, there's no prohibition on double negative words in the English language.

Ben: 58:56

There are.

Gene: 58:57

no, there aren't.

Ben: 58:58

Yes, there are.

Gene: 59:00

Prohibitions on double negatives. Okay. You're telling me I won't be able to find in the Webster's Dictionary, a double negative.

Ben: 59:07

Correct.

Gene: 59:09

Oh, it's on a hundred bucks. I guarantee you, I will find at least two.

Ben: 59:15

You should not. Okay. A Webster's Dictionary from 1990 or earlier. Before wokeness took a hold,

Gene: 59:27

double negatives have always been around

Ben: 59:29

double negatives have always been improper.

Gene: 59:32

and you can make fun of them, but it doesn't mean, but my point in saying disregardless is for people that say irregardless all the time. I would, I will like to correct them and say, don't say regardless.

Ben: 59:45

It's just

Gene: 59:45

Disregardless,

Ben: 59:48

No,

Gene: 59:50

because I'm fixing it. See, I'm fixing it by putting a negative in front. It's funny. All right. Anyway, what else were we talking about? Yeah, you so they did a paintball tournament and it was cool.

Ben: 1:00:04

Airsoft,

Gene: 1:00:05

Yeah, nobody does paintball. Airsoft tournament with night vision goggles.

Ben: 1:00:10

Night vision, thermal, the whole, whole works like full on full engagement. Like, yeah, I, that sounds fun to me.

Gene: 1:00:18

hmm.

Ben: 1:00:19

Sounds really

Gene: 1:00:20

now I

Ben: 1:00:21

don't want to spend the money to go do it, but it sounds fun.

Gene: 1:00:24

Oh, I think it is fun. Yeah, it's so it's it's 100 like next level arping. Live action roleplay, baby. And that is what LARPing stands for, if somebody's heard the term but doesn't know what it means. The there is one interesting thing I saw of a combo unit of night vision and thermal that overlays the thermal on the

Ben: 1:00:50

Yeah, I was the one telling you about that. The Chinese have come up with some of that.

Gene: 1:00:54

and, this was not a Chinese one, but It's interesting because it does something I've not seen any other thermal unit do it, it has a mode where it pulses the thermal. So if you're looking at that overlaid image, you've got your, you know, night vision view of a brighter outdoors, and then you see an image that's pulsing bright white. And it's going from, you know, whatever the normal night vision is to bright white and then back to that normal to indicate that that's also a thermal source. That's a cool way to do it.

Ben: 1:01:33

There are several very cool ways of doing things, but yes, I like the overlay and outline personally. I think that's

Gene: 1:01:40

Yeah, that's a cool mode.

Ben: 1:01:41

that, that's the, that's the best mode. As far as just, it's gonna overlay, outline, show exactly you know, what I want it to do.

Gene: 1:01:50

Yeah. I think I need to start doing some tests. We're kind of past the Christmas season. I need to get a couple of credit cards paid off. And then I'm going to start testing night vision. Or on that night vision, I'm going to start testing thermals because I, I really like the idea of having thermals on a variety of weapons. And I want to, I'm going to start off probably in a mid price. So about two and a half grand, three grand. I want to compare that to like a five, 6, 000 unit. And then I want to compare that to like, how cheap can we go and still get something that's beneficial. Obviously, the biggest difference in thermal for cost is resolution.

Ben: 1:02:42

Yeah, and I,

Gene: 1:02:43

the high end thermals have high refresh rate, high resolution. The cheap thermals have low refresh rate, low resolution.

Ben: 1:02:50

yeah, and here, here's my thing. I think actually that the problem I have with this,

Gene: 1:02:58

Mm hmm. Mm

Ben: 1:02:59

um, I think having even a cheap thermal as a spotting scope esque thing

Gene: 1:03:06

hmm.

Ben: 1:03:06

and then regular night vision is probably your best bet.

Gene: 1:03:12

Yeah, I would disagree with that.

Ben: 1:03:15

Okay.

Gene: 1:03:16

Because regular night vision isn't going to show you anything that you can't see with the naked eye during daylight. Thermal is. Thermal shows you something you normally can't

Ben: 1:03:29

Yeah, go see the Brandon video. Thermal is not a just Thermal does not all your problems solve. Just doesn't.

Gene: 1:03:40

I, I, I think it's more useful. We'll, we'll see. We'll see. Um, well, you know, I returned my nvs14, so At this point, my, my plan is to go thermal. Maybe I'll return the thermals too. I don't

Ben: 1:03:55

Yeah, I wish you would have told me. I might have, Sniped them off.

Gene: 1:03:59

You know, you wouldn't have because you're not going to pay full price. And why would I give you a discount when I can refund it for full price?

Ben: 1:04:06

I don't know. You like me?

Gene: 1:04:08

No, hell no.

Ben: 1:04:11

No, I mean, come on. You, I mean, you send Darren like Mac minis and stuff like that and

Gene: 1:04:17

Darren has not gotten the Mac. Darren bitches about the fact that I haven't sent him a Mac mini. There's one guy that I did a podcast with like eight years ago that I sent the Mac mini to for Christmas. Then everybody now wants a Mac Mini

Ben: 1:04:33

I do not want a Mac mini from you.

Gene: 1:04:34

Uhhuh. for the record.

Ben: 1:04:36

yeah, I don't want a Mac mini

Gene: 1:04:38

All right, because I was just gonna send

Ben: 1:04:40

I've, I've I'm looking at some old mini PC nooks to throw up and get rid of this laptop finally for podcasting. And I won't, basically I'm going to take, I have an old nook, but I'm using it for like my wireless controller server and stuff like that. So I don't really want to redo it. So I'm looking

Gene: 1:05:00

you can buy just if literally for voice recording, you can buy a$300 brand new.

Ben: 1:05:09

100.

Gene: 1:05:10

I mean, something that'll work like a$300 Mac mini knockoff that runs Windows and probably Linux that has all the USB three shit that has everything. You know, it's, it's like, it's basically the PC version of a Mac mini that runs

Ben: 1:05:27

a NUC, Next Unit of Computing. So I'm looking at an Intel NUC with a Core i5, 7th generation processor, so not, not super old, not super new, 8 gigs of RAM and a 256 gig SSD for 140.

Gene: 1:05:45

Yeah, so I would look at like a minimum of 16 gigs of RAM and a gig of USD. You can't run anything in 8 gigs. That's not enough RAM.

Ben: 1:05:55

Oh, you to oh.

Gene: 1:05:58

Dude, I max out 64 gigs on a regular basis.

Ben: 1:06:01

Okay, I do too. On a big heavy laptop that I'm doing lots of things with. Just running Zoom

Gene: 1:06:07

Dude, I know how many tabs you have in your browser, okay? Don't be

Ben: 1:06:12

would not be used for that.

Gene: 1:06:13

Oh, bullshit. You would be opening tabs and never closing them like you always do.

Ben: 1:06:17

No, no, no, no. See, that's the entire point. Is this would be On a KVM at my desk, the, the, the Motu constantly hooked up to it. That's all this is used

Gene: 1:06:28

Mm

Ben: 1:06:29

recording the podcast. And then my workload laptop would still have its docking station that I could switch back and forth to. Then I'd have my private laptop up here. With all the tabs open,

Gene: 1:06:40

Then you get your work laptop.

Ben: 1:06:41

a shit ton of RAM.

Gene: 1:06:43

Yeah. Okay. Yes, and pigs will fly out of your ass. Sounds good.

Ben: 1:06:51

Oh my

Gene: 1:06:52

you gonna

Ben: 1:06:52

you remember that Simpsons episode when Burn says, When pigs fly, and then

Gene: 1:06:58

Yeah. Yeah. Back when Simpsons was good.

Ben: 1:07:01

Yeah. Oh my god, given the We probably should talk about Epstein. I thought one of the funniest things I ever

Gene: 1:07:08

you go to Epstein though because we're on cartoons I did finally

Ben: 1:07:12

it's

Gene: 1:07:13

episode of South

Ben: 1:07:14

related. You're screwing up my transition here, dude.

Gene: 1:07:17

Oh, Jesus Christ

Ben: 1:07:18

We'll come back to South Park.

Gene: 1:07:20

Okay.

Ben: 1:07:21

So one of the funniest things I saw after some of the interesting stuff about Epstein, and it really wasn't interesting. It was a lot of what we already knew, but some accusations against, you know, people like Stephen Hawking and so on. And there was a Simpsons episode where Lisa was sitting in Stephen Hawking's lap as they flew around Springfield and he's kinda looking at her. A little odd and the, the meme was great because it was 1990s and it's, Oh, how cute in 2024. Oh my God.

Gene: 1:07:59

horned dog everybody knows that

Ben: 1:08:01

Oh, he, I mean, he was, he was a womanizer before he actually had

Gene: 1:08:05

dude was married three times

Ben: 1:08:07

Yeah. He, he was a womanizer. I mean,

Gene: 1:08:09

he was a horned dog.

Ben: 1:08:11

I, you know, I've told you I've met Hawking before.

Gene: 1:08:14

No When

Ben: 1:08:16

When I was in college, so I was a physics major in college

Gene: 1:08:19

And he, he was visited. Why would he be in College Station?

Ben: 1:08:25

Because we have a great experimental physics program and he was a guest speaker and

Gene: 1:08:30

Mm

Ben: 1:08:31

students got to go to a private thing, which even then, you know, it's not like you could ask a whole bunch of questions or anything

Gene: 1:08:39

hmm.

Ben: 1:08:40

because

Gene: 1:08:41

His rate of speech is not very good, so.

Ben: 1:08:44

right. But, I mean, you, you have to remember that he, he started perfecting his interface.

Gene: 1:08:50

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:08:50

Pretty early on, but the speed at which he could communicate dramatically went down.

Gene: 1:08:57

Yeah. Because he was using blinks and stuff, right?

Ben: 1:09:02

Yeah, I mean, he started off with his hand, he could still move his fingers and barely. So he started with a, I think it was a three key tap

Gene: 1:09:12

You know, it's really too bad he didn't live long enough for Neuralink.

Ben: 1:09:17

I guess, I mean,

Gene: 1:09:20

Because at least, and I'm totally not saying I'm an expert in this field, anywhere near, but my understanding with Neuralink is that because it plugs directly into the brain, it bypasses all the degenerative nerve tissue that

Ben: 1:09:36

I

Gene: 1:09:37

down your spinal column and out to your extremities.

Ben: 1:09:40

yeah, at the very least it could have been a better interface for his communications.

Gene: 1:09:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because did you see that video of the monkey playing a video game just by thinking

Ben: 1:09:51

Okay,

Gene: 1:09:52

it's a,

Ben: 1:09:53

I don't, I'm never going to deal with Neuralink.

Gene: 1:09:57

Oh, I would totally do it. It's, it's a cool system because you can, without moving any, any of your hands or legs or anything like just merely by thinking things, the video game was able to respond to the monkey.

Ben: 1:10:12

Okay.

Gene: 1:10:13

I'll tell you what, the monkeys got pretty damn good video game skills, like pretty, pretty quick reflexes. And I think it was a chimpanzee, I believe.

Ben: 1:10:26

Did you ever play any of the MechWarrior games?

Gene: 1:10:29

I never played the most recent ones. I played them like early on

Ben: 1:10:33

Yeah, I played like MechWarrior 3, and apparently there's a 5 and stuff.

Gene: 1:10:38

Yeah. And I've seen some videos of the new ones and I've just never gotten into it, but I, I've always liked the customization aspect of it and just

Ben: 1:10:46

I remember when people had full on simulators set up for MechWarrior.

Gene: 1:10:50

Mac warrior, why don't, I don't remember that really.

Ben: 1:10:53

Oh god, people had these huge control panels and shit set up. In

Gene: 1:10:58

Because I, I definitely remember that

Ben: 1:11:00

teachers was one of those, and him and his wife met playing MechWarrior.

Gene: 1:11:05

Oh, really? That's wild. So high school teachers are like what, 15 years ago?

Ben: 1:11:11

Way longer than that, Gene.

Gene: 1:11:13

Oh, okay.

Ben: 1:11:14

God. Actually shit, it'll be 21 years

Gene: 1:11:20

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:11:21

here shortly.

Gene: 1:11:23

Yeah. Crazy. Time flies. Yeah, how old are you now?

Ben: 1:11:31

I'm in my thirties.

Gene: 1:11:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's, that figures. And what was your mother's maiden name again?

Ben: 1:11:37

Huh.

Gene: 1:11:39

I was talking to a buddy of mine the other night that I played some video games with and we're talking about how time flies because he's he's now 40 with two kids. And when we first started playing games together online we met an even line,

Ben: 1:12:01

You were 40 then, with two kids.

Gene: 1:12:03

I did not have two kids and I was not even 40. He was 22. And you know, I was in my thirties. I was barely in my thirties. And it was you know, like he is quite a bit older than I was back when we started playing shit. So It is, it is wild how that just time flies,

Ben: 1:12:27

Mm. So, I, I wish I could transfer games between good old games and Steam, and I wish I could transfer online purchases to Steam. So the just real quick. And then I think we need to move off of this, but Alex Jones video game is now on Steam.

Gene: 1:12:45

Oh, it is? Oh, I'm, I'm totally gonna buy it then. Yeah. I didn't buy the original one. I'll buy it on Steam though. What's it called? I'll buy it right now.

Ben: 1:12:54

New world order or something.

Gene: 1:12:56

New World Store. Go to the store, search for New World.

Ben: 1:13:01

you just Google Alex Jones video game, they'll take you to their website and they have a play on Steam link. I also I haven't started drinking again yet here in the new year, but I did get some of the conspiracy bourbon to try out

Gene: 1:13:15

Yeah, you mentioned that last time. Huh. Alex Jones MWO Wars is what it's called.

Ben: 1:13:23

New world order wars. 1776 is the price on

Gene: 1:13:29

all right. It is. That's, that's pretty wild. Like that's surprising that they match the price.

Ben: 1:13:38

Anyway, you'll you'll enjoy beating the gay frogs. I mean, it's a side scroller But it's it's it's humorous.

Gene: 1:13:46

yeah, yeah. I've watched videos of it. I just didn't buy it myself, but I think

Ben: 1:13:49

I actually played it and beat it already. But

Gene: 1:13:51

Yeah. You mentioned that you got it right away.

Ben: 1:13:54

Yeah, I did

Gene: 1:13:55

The commentary is hilarious.

Ben: 1:13:57

Oh, it's it's totally worth it. And they they need to do an Expansion pack like they

Gene: 1:14:02

It's now in my library.

Ben: 1:14:04

pack

Gene: 1:14:07

Oh, I'm sure they this thing's probably generating some revenue for him.

Ben: 1:14:10

Yeah, they said they sold over 100, 000 copies already without it going on steam. So, with it being on steam, that'll go through the

Gene: 1:14:19

Oh yeah.

Ben: 1:14:20

So, I mean, that's not a bad amount of

Gene: 1:14:23

game. It's a side scroller, right?

Ben: 1:14:26

Yeah, yeah, it's a little side scroller.

Gene: 1:14:28

Yeah. It's very cool. Yeah. It's that's interesting. So I listened to an interview of Michael Malice

Ben: 1:14:37

by the way, since we did talk about Jeffrey Epstein, part of the game takes place on Epstein

Gene: 1:14:43

Epstein Island. That's

Ben: 1:14:44

so everybody

Gene: 1:14:44

Yeah.

Ben: 1:14:45

There's your tie in. Anyway,

Gene: 1:14:46

Cool. Yeah. So just listen to an interview that was done a couple of days ago with him, cause I, I'm, I'm wondering if he's going to mention this weird dude that came up to him in the store. And he didn't say that, but he did say that like, he doesn't even know his neighbors. He doesn't like people and he doesn't like fans.

Ben: 1:15:06

He was totally talking about you,

Gene: 1:15:08

I don't think so. Cause I'm not a fan. I don't even listen to him.

Ben: 1:15:11

Huh. Huh.

Gene: 1:15:12

I don't, you know, I heard him and I only hear him on other people's shows that I listened to. I've never read any of his books. I've never listened to his actual podcast.

Ben: 1:15:24

Hey, Gene we just had a weird issue.

Gene: 1:15:27

What's that?

Ben: 1:15:28

I heard a really loud, high pitched tone

Gene: 1:15:31

Hmm.

Ben: 1:15:32

lag out for a second, and then you very, very quickly caught up.

Gene: 1:15:36

Oh that's

Ben: 1:15:37

my audio interface is changing on zoom as we speak,

Gene: 1:15:43

Oh, it's changing in what way?

Ben: 1:15:45

like it's, it went through and cycled through the Motu channels and now it's back where it should

Gene: 1:15:50

Oh that, that sounds like what we call technical term for a glitch.

Ben: 1:15:55

Yeah. I don't know what just happened to zoom, but just FYI, there may be something in the recording.

Gene: 1:16:01

Okay. All right. We'll find out. I guess you sound fine right now.

Ben: 1:16:05

Okay. Let's continue then.

Gene: 1:16:07

I know I'm not getting any kind of weirdness thing happening.

Ben: 1:16:11

you met Malice.

Gene: 1:16:13

Yeah, that was a couple of weeks ago. I'd mentioned that ran into him at the grocery store. As he was wearing headphones, dark sunglasses, and at the moment that I walked up to him, he was smelling soap, like liquid soap. So totally normal looking dude, right? Mm hmm. And, and I mentioned that he was shorter than he even seems but he's super skinny. So

Ben: 1:16:46

than you

Gene: 1:16:47

Oh, yeah, he's super but he's super slim, so he's still proportional, right? So, it's just

Ben: 1:16:55

versus

Gene: 1:16:57

very much a

Ben: 1:16:58

look like a beach ball, right?

Gene: 1:17:00

Dude, I'm not that fat. I don't know why you keep referring to me as looking like a beach ball. That's not, nowhere near

Ben: 1:17:05

on. You've got to be at least

Gene: 1:17:07

I'm,

Ben: 1:17:08

more than me and like two inches shorter.

Gene: 1:17:11

I, I am barely shorter than you. And I'm, I'm slightly better built than you, that's all. I think, I think you have a misconception about what I look like. Huh. Plus my beard is easily at least a hundred pounds. So there is that. Gotta take that into account. You know, if I just shaved the beard off, which I'm not going to do there'd be a significant weight loss involved from that. And then in fact the other day Oh, I was, so I was at my buddy's house that, that did the butchering thing and he's got Duck Dynasty on TV. So he's watching Duck Dynasty. By the way, he has the cutest little puppy I have ever fucking seen. He got a new bird dog. So I, I think it's a, I don't know, some kind of pointer retriever thing, but super, super cute. He is like a, he looks like a Palomino. So he's chocolate with areas of white,

Ben: 1:18:17

Okay.

Gene: 1:18:18

like white dots, like a Dalmatian. I don't know. I think it's a, it's probably a retriever is my guess. It's whatever dog you go duck hunting with. You know, the thing is like 11

Ben: 1:18:31

mean, there are several, generally you would use a lab or, you know,

Gene: 1:18:36

He looks like a lab, but I don't know if he's a lab, but

Ben: 1:18:39

a lot of people use like golden doodles now. I mean, there's a lot of different bird dogs. Also depends if you're duck hunting or not, because then you definitely want a short hair and there's, there's lots of, lots of different considerations there.

Gene: 1:18:52

Yeah. I don't, I don't know. I don't

Ben: 1:18:54

Some people use hounds still. I mean, it, it totally depends on

Gene: 1:18:57

I'll send you a video. I use a lab in my video game.

Ben: 1:19:00

mean, I use my mutt personally.

Gene: 1:19:02

Yeah, okay. I'll send you a video of this dog, but he's super cute. He's, he's like a foot tall. She is, I guess it's a she. The cutest pattern of dog hair I've seen on a dog, because like I said, just the closest description is like a palomino. So like, chocolate brown with white. And This dog would not stop licking my face. Because

Ben: 1:19:29

Why were you letting a dog lick your face,

Gene: 1:19:32

I picked him up because he's cute.

Ben: 1:19:34

But why would you let a dog lick your face?

Gene: 1:19:37

I picked him up, he starts licking my whole face, like he's licking

Ben: 1:19:41

and this is where you yell at the dog, and I yell at you if I'm the dog's owner. Like, why the fuck are you letting my dog do that? No. Bad dog.

Gene: 1:19:48

not? What's the, what's the problem? They're, they're clean, relatively.

Ben: 1:19:52

No, they are not.

Gene: 1:19:53

I mean, just because they licked their ass ten minutes ago doesn't mean they're not clean.

Ben: 1:19:57

Gene, when you get pink eye, I'm gonna laugh.

Gene: 1:20:00

Pink eye, please. No, he wasn't licking my eyeballs. He's mostly licking my mouth. But it was

Ben: 1:20:06

Oh my god, I just threw

Gene: 1:20:07

cute dog.

Ben: 1:20:08

That's disgusting, dude.

Gene: 1:20:10

Whatever.

Ben: 1:20:11

I, I can't stand that at all. I can't stand dogs that lick. I never used

Gene: 1:20:16

He's an 11 week old puppy.

Ben: 1:20:18

I never used to let my dogs eat scraps or anything and then my kids decided we're going to do this anyway. So now my dog has a problem because he gets fed all the time and I just, I don't like that. I don't, it's not the way I was raised with dogs.

Gene: 1:20:34

at 11 weeks, he already knows commands

Ben: 1:20:37

Okay, cool. I would hope so.

Gene: 1:20:39

clicker trained and,

Ben: 1:20:41

are good.

Gene: 1:20:42

and he knows how to go to his kennel. He knows how to sit, stay, lie down and all that good stuff that, I mean, I don't know is what age they usually start training with. Looking at dogs of all of my friends, I mean literally all the dogs that I've seen my friends have they think they're trained. They're not trained. They're, they're nowhere near what this dog's already doing at 11 weeks old. But, but he's, he was specifically bought to be a hunting dog. So he's got his tail chopped, and dewclaws removed, all that stuff. Working dog.

Ben: 1:21:22

I don't like, I don't like doing that to dogs.

Gene: 1:21:25

Yeah, I don't either, and I asked about that, but,

Ben: 1:21:27

I will say this, had I known that my dog was part boxer and had this whip of a tail that has been problematic, I might have gotten my dog's tail bobbed, had I known it when he was a puppy. But,

Gene: 1:21:42

the the explanation, which I never really bothered learning why people do that he says why you do it is because their tails are really skinny and there's not much meat on there and they're very prone. To getting injured, yeah, and so especially when they're working dogs out in the field and running through, you know, uh, outdoorsy environments, not suburban yards, that it is extremely common if you don't bobtail that they're going to get tail injuries that you're going to have to

Ben: 1:22:16

And

Gene: 1:22:17

the dog's going to have

Ben: 1:22:18

just a nuisance even in a sub suburban environment.

Gene: 1:22:23

oh yeah but the nuisance thing aside, just for me, like this, yeah. Prevents potential future health issues.

Ben: 1:22:30

Yeah,

Gene: 1:22:31

So, and then same thing with Duke laws is that if your dog's running around in wetlands, you know, yep, yep, exactly. And then again, it's like, would you rather proactively do it or have it be an injury and didn't do it anyway? So I don't like it in general either. And I, I, I asked them are they, is somebody like breeding these with shorter tails? Breeding for specifically to get shorter tails. So you don't have to chop them off. And, you know, he didn't know, but I would hope

Ben: 1:23:03

answer is no, because you end up screwing up some of the other breed traits as well.

Gene: 1:23:09

yeah. But still, I mean, somebody is probably doing it. I got to imagine look, dogs are basically genetically engineered animals. There, there was no such thing as a dog until people started fucking with them. You know, we had wolves, we had coyotes, we had animals that had evolved naturally, but as soon as they started living around human settlements, People started breeding for traits, and that's why you have things that are really would never come into existence out of evolution called chihuahuas. These are rats that pretend they're dogs, and they're the most The most vicious, the nastiest, the least able to be trained animals in the world. The only single unitary time I've ever been bitten by a dog was a fucking Chihuahua. I'm, you know, I never, never get bitten by dogs. I'm always very friendly with them. And you know, I've, I've, I've been nibbled on by fairly large dogs, but you know, not when they're trying to bite you, but when they're just like holding your hand in their mouth. And shaking your hand, kind of thing.

Ben: 1:24:27

Did you do you look at the last post I did on name bin?

Gene: 1:24:33

what was it about?

Ben: 1:24:34

It was titled stop breathing.

Gene: 1:24:37

Yes, and that's the one I think I referred you to. Yeah, I posted that article on nojensocial like a week earlier.

Ben: 1:24:43

Yeah, but did you actually go look at the study and pull things out and find the original study the way I did?

Gene: 1:24:49

No, I just read the article.

Ben: 1:24:51

Yeah if you actually read the study, and I just want to point out how insidious this is. The fact that this was ever even studied, they break the study down racially, which is again insidious.

Gene: 1:25:03

not know that. So, which people breathe the most? Probably Asians, huh?

Ben: 1:25:08

nope, wrong. Anyway, I, I have the sections highlighted, but the highest purported contaminants in exhalation was of African populations and the lowest was whites and Asians.

Gene: 1:25:24

hmm. Really, why is that?

Ben: 1:25:28

It doesn't really matter. This study should have, one, never been done, and then two, to break it down racially is just insidious and evil.

Gene: 1:25:35

I don't know that this study shouldn't have been done. I mean, a lot of studies are

Ben: 1:25:39

They studied less than a hundred, I think it was a hundred people. The study is bunk, bullshit science. It's just to normalize this, this entire study. If you, and I have the PDF saved and on my website. If you actually read their findings, read their control information and everything else, it's bullshit. It's a bullshit study that is just going to be used to study more, which is fine, except that it's an insidious thing that they're even looking at.

Gene: 1:26:13

I mean, measuring,

Ben: 1:26:15

of the New York Post article, by the way, for, since we haven't mentioned it, is Humans May Be Fueling Global Warming by Breathing.

Gene: 1:26:21

Right. Right. But, I mean, it's, it's literally starts off with a bullshit conclusion, which is that carbon dioxide is somehow responsible for global warming, which it's not. And we've known that for decades. It's, it's methane that's responsible, not carbon dioxide.

Ben: 1:26:42

Oh, they talk about human methane emissions and everything else in the

Gene: 1:26:45

Yeah.

Ben: 1:26:46

Which, again, I encourage people to go look at the actual study,

Gene: 1:26:50

you know, methane certainly could be responsible for it. And there's been a number of studies done on that, but, but also like that's not a bad thing. So that's the second part of this is like, we're, we're literally sitting. In an ice age and I'm talking about how we don't want to leave the ice age, which is crazy. The biggest spurts in human advancement have happened during warming spells.

Ben: 1:27:26

I'm not even arguing that my entire point is that even if the premise and the abstract of this study is 100 percent true that humans are a substantial indicator are a contributor rather to global warming. Number one, okay, what's your answer? Fewer people? You first. Then, the question is, okay, the next question they ask is, is there a racial component? And they go through and find racial components to this. Okay, so you want to kill off what people?

Gene: 1:28:00

That's surprising that they, in a politically correct world, would be allowed to do that.

Ben: 1:28:06

It's all this climate religion. It's,

Gene: 1:28:10

It is. It's a religion. And no two ways about it.

Ben: 1:28:12

I'm making though is, there is no good outcome to this.

Gene: 1:28:17

Yeah.

Ben: 1:28:17

if you prove your abstract correct. What, what's the answer? Killing people?

Gene: 1:28:23

Maybe.

Ben: 1:28:25

that's not a good thing.

Gene: 1:28:27

Isn't it though?

Ben: 1:28:29

It's not a good thing.

Gene: 1:28:30

Hmm. I mean, I don't think you have to kill people. I think people will find creative ways of killing themselves.

Ben: 1:28:37

Anyway, the, the entire point of the article is that they have no point of the article and They really don't. They don't have a sample size that's substantial

Gene: 1:28:49

of the article was to get you to read it. And you

Ben: 1:28:52

but it's to normalize it. It's normalization.

Gene: 1:28:55

Yeah.

Ben: 1:28:56

Speaking of normalization, towards civil war Supreme Court's gonna take up Trump's Colorado case.

Gene: 1:29:03

Which is interesting because, did you see the comment from the Colorado Secretary of State?

Ben: 1:29:09

The Colorado Secretary of State? No.

Gene: 1:29:11

Yeah. Colorado secretary of state says that while the courts have decided to allow Trump back on in Colorado, she will not be counting any votes for Trump during the elections.

Ben: 1:29:29

Okay, so she's Dude, there's no way this election does not end in conflict.

Gene: 1:29:37

Yep. Yep.

Ben: 1:29:39

Hopefully the conflict stays to the legal system and peaceful, but Jesus.

Gene: 1:29:45

I don't know if that's, if I'm even hoping for that. I'm hoping people actually get some balls.

Ben: 1:29:52

I think we lose the moral imperative,

Gene: 1:29:55

I think and that's a good actually jump to my next topic, which I talked to you briefly about yesterday, which is as I'm winding down to the literally the last hour worth of audio on the book series that I've been reading, which started off

Ben: 1:30:12

That I recommended to

Gene: 1:30:13

that you recommended, right? We started off with going home,

Ben: 1:30:17

And you have actually got ahead of me because I In between books before book 12 came out, went and did

Gene: 1:30:24

You read a different series that's connected. Yeah. So second series in the same universe. That has different characters, but it sounds like they're gonna merge starting with the next book, right?

Ben: 1:30:35

There's going to be a crossover in the main series book. Yeah,

Gene: 1:30:40

so that he'll, so he'll, but he'll still keep doing both series. He's not gonna merge them into one series.

Ben: 1:30:45

I don't know. I don't know.

Gene: 1:30:47

Honestly, I hope it is two series because the number of characters that, that talk in the current series is somewhat out of control. It's like fucking Game of Thrones. You've got, you've got 50 main characters.

Ben: 1:31:00

Yeah, Charlie's kind of does the same thing. It's, it is very much that game of thrones and this is, I actually like this style. That the perspective shifts to multiple people. And 1 of the things you have to keep in mind is the time. It's shifting as well with those perspectives. And it's a lot to keep in your mind and it's a lot to keep dancing. But to me, it gives you a very complete picture. So I, I personally like that. That's one of my favorite things about Game of Thrones and Martin's style of writing for those books.

Gene: 1:31:32

And I, I don't mind it flipping between different character voices, but I'm at a point where I'm starting to really forget who the fuck different people are that are occasionally mentioned. You know, like,

Ben: 1:31:45

maybe you should pay

Gene: 1:31:46

there's a guy, no. There's a guy, there's a guy named Eric that gets promoted, and that's all I'm going to say in case you're not there. And I'm like, who the fuck is Eric? I don't remember who Eric is. Is he somebody's boyfriend? One of the other main characters? Is he some, who the hell is Eric? And I mean, you know, now I'm just like treating him as a brand new character because I can't remember what the hell he did in the past. But obviously he's been around for a while. I just, he was never a main character. He was like a side character that clearly I glossed over. Do you remember who Eric is?

Ben: 1:32:26

I do.

Gene: 1:32:27

Tell me.

Ben: 1:32:29

No, you know, you got to go back and do this.

Gene: 1:32:31

No, I'm not gonna re read shit. This is why I have friends that read the same stuff as I do, so I can talk to them about

Ben: 1:32:37

So he, he was one of the, one of Sarge's boys going through.

Gene: 1:32:42

Because Mike is the one that seems to get the most playtime of Sarge's voice.

Ben: 1:32:46

But anyway what it comes down to though is you have here, here's the secret and why. It why this, this exact tactic made Game of Thrones really good and why I think it's going to make this series really good as it continues and has already, he's already learned this lesson with Charlie's and shown it off quite a bit, and I'm not going to give any major spoilers, but what I'll say, and I'm going to, I'll say this about Game of Thrones without that tactic and making ultimately sub characters that you shouldn't really care about, The, a focal point for a good amount of time to make you care about them. You couldn't have the red wedding in game of Thrones and it'd be impactful without that.

Gene: 1:33:36

Mm hmm. I think Holdor was a great example of a minor character that just all of a sudden became a major character.

Ben: 1:33:45

but that that's my, that's my entire point. And then when that character dies or is killed off,

Gene: 1:33:51

You feel

Ben: 1:33:52

now you've spent time with them, you feel it like it's a main character.

Gene: 1:33:55

Totally.

Ben: 1:33:56

So it's an, it's an author's trick to be able to bring up and say, okay, here's a character that no one would really give a shit about if I didn't make them the focus here, but let me make them the focus. And now people are getting emotionally invested. And some people may even go, okay what's, where's this character going to go? I want to hear more. I want to hear it. And then boom, dead.

Gene: 1:34:16

and another, exactly, that's another similarity between, I think, Game of Thrones and this series of books is He kills off main characters in every fucking book.

Ben: 1:34:24

I would argue that they're not really main characters, but sure.

Gene: 1:34:27

I mean, guys that have spent an awful lot of time in the pages. Like the motorcycle dude, who I was very fond of.

Ben: 1:34:35

I don't no spoilers.

Gene: 1:34:38

It's not a spoiler. I mean, it's like book two.

Ben: 1:34:41

Okay, I thought you were talking about something else that

Gene: 1:34:43

No, no, no, no, no. The book, you know, the guy that came in on a motorcycle. He had a Harley. He was the one that gave the iPad to the girls. And then he gets killed off. It's like, whoa, I thought he was going to stick around for a while. So, yeah, it's

Ben: 1:34:57

But again, this is the, this is the tactic. He's elevating what, had he not elevated that character, would have been a side character.

Gene: 1:35:05

right, it wouldn't have mattered if he got killed, but because he was very prominent in the early books I think first two books, he was in there quite a bit and then he gets killed off in like book three or something. But he, yeah, it's like, I was like, Whoa, I didn't want him to die of all the people. Jesus got a, I kind of, thought that he would have a longer story, but apparently not. So there's a lot of good stuff about this series, but I've also, now that I'm almost done started really looking back at the series in general and the conclusions I'm coming to are probably not ones you agree with. But I think they're quite true, which is in the end, what you end up with is a very much a communist model for the resurrected community that has been built by the main character. I'm trying not to give anything at all away to people that haven't read the series. But it is very much a, from those. According to their abilities, those according to their needs, and it's done in the sense of, we're just trying to bring, you know, the country back from disaster, but it is kind of very much like that

Ben: 1:36:20

done.

Gene: 1:36:20

Yes and no, there's off, there's an awful lot of.

Ben: 1:36:25

One's being held at gunpoint.

Gene: 1:36:27

and executions happening at the spur of the moment. The the idea,

Ben: 1:36:34

because yeah,

Gene: 1:36:36

the idea that the main character became a sheriff, and I don't think this gives much away because it's just a thing is Like if he wouldn't have become the sheriff having nearly a hundred kills under his belt kind of makes him the bad guy Not the good guy. So I think doing it under the guise of the new reformed law kind of makes him a better More sympathetic type character, but there's an awful lot of

Ben: 1:37:06

because everyone he has killed has been a clearly justifiable kill with the exception of one

Gene: 1:37:14

we don't know because we never bothered to actually go through a trial

Ben: 1:37:19

But this is why there's a judge. This is why there's we're going

Gene: 1:37:23

it's

Ben: 1:37:23

into spoiler territory

Gene: 1:37:25

Okay. Okay. But it's still happening. My point is, even if you're not up to this point, there are still executions happening without a judge being involved on the spur of the moment for rape or things that somebody accused somebody else. And I can't believe he's writing this shit, frankly, because we've all gone through the me too movement where it looked like. 90 percent of accusations turned out to be false. And yet he's having his good guy characters in the book, literally within minutes, if not maybe hours. Of hearing acquisitions become the judge, jury, and executioner.

Ben: 1:38:05

You said acquisitions.

Gene: 1:38:06

Oh, sorry. I meant accusations.

Ben: 1:38:10

Yeah. So

Gene: 1:38:11

I don't like that. And

Ben: 1:38:12

I personally think he's, Making a flawed protagonist

Gene: 1:38:18

oh, he's absolutely flawed and

Ben: 1:38:20

and that's not a bad

Gene: 1:38:21

as well. He is, he doth protest too much. Every time somebody says, sure. Who made you sure? Not, not by my choice. You know, I, I didn't get any of the titles beyond Sheriff associated with me by my choice. It was always somebody else doing this to me. It's like bullshit, dude. It's, it's his actions that resulted in those things and his actions are very much what he wants to do. He's living out his prepper dream. And you know, frankly, he's the protagonist of his own story. And much like I was telling you in the same way that with Tom Clancy, when you write so many books about Jack Ryan, you can't help but to make Jack Ryan president eventually. Because you start off with an everyman, somebody that, that is, you know, anybody can see themselves in. But as Jack Ryan progresses through each of the books that he's in for Clancy, his character becomes bigger and deeper rooted into the. entirety of the universe literally to the point where. And again I'm sure this is not a spoiler for it because people should have read those Tom Clancy books of the and Jack Ryan ends up becoming president of the United States after a an attack in the United States. It's like the inevitability of your, your every man, main character somehow ending up the most important person in the country. I think is It takes something away from the book to me. It, it's, it takes a lot of the realism away. You don't feel that way?

Ben: 1:40:04

I don't know. I haven't read the Jack Ryan books. I'm not a huge

Gene: 1:40:07

Really? I guess you were born in a different decade.

Ben: 1:40:10

yeah, I mean, I, I played some of the Tom Clancy video games, but that's about it.

Gene: 1:40:15

But you're more of a reader than I am.

Ben: 1:40:17

I know, I just, I don't like that style,

Gene: 1:40:20

Tom Clancy's was I'd say a good 80 percent of the guys that I knew in high school and college had read every one of his books. It was the book guys read, usually.

Ben: 1:40:36

I, that's not me. I read a lot of

Gene: 1:40:40

that's why I said different decade.

Ben: 1:40:43

And I

Gene: 1:40:43

been there's gotta been something.

Ben: 1:40:45

generally.

Gene: 1:40:46

But there's gotta been something that, like, for your generation, that most of your friends had read. What would that be?

Ben: 1:40:54

Oh.

Gene: 1:40:55

Lord of the Rings?

Ben: 1:40:57

No you know, I've actually, I hate to admit this,

Gene: 1:41:02

Didn't have friends, did you?

Ben: 1:41:04

I've never read Lord of the Rings.

Gene: 1:41:07

Oh, really?

Ben: 1:41:08

I've never, I'm not a big Tolkien fan,

Gene: 1:41:12

Oh.

Ben: 1:41:13

and I've, I've

Gene: 1:41:15

clan scene? No token? Interesting.

Ben: 1:41:18

I'm, I'm much more of a C. S. Lewis and some others,

Gene: 1:41:22

But you read all the Douglas Adams stuff, though.

Ben: 1:41:24

oh yeah, yeah, yeah,

Gene: 1:41:26

Thank God. I thought I was gonna have to check you off my friends list.

Ben: 1:41:30

I actually have the I have the Tolkien books to go through here they're actually sitting on the shelf behind

Gene: 1:41:37

I've only read the first one and I've also only read the first Dune book. So I, I'm

Ben: 1:41:43

And,

Gene: 1:41:45

yeah, yeah. And, and I'm,

Ben: 1:41:47

Heinlein. I've read pretty much everything Heinlein's ever

Gene: 1:41:50

yeah, and I, I definitely have not, I think I've bought everything he's written, but I've not read over half my just my, my usual speed. And I will say this current series that I've been going through is a faster speed of consumption of books than what I typically do. So No, it's just, I'm trying to get to the end, man. That's even the dick thing. It's just like, it's so long. It's like house, you know, house says like 20 seasons. So, you know, I, I, I have to keep going just to get to the last fucking episode. I'm I'm OCD that way. And it's the same thing here. It's like, I'm obviously not going to change series midway through. So I can't start something new until this is done. So I need to keep listening

Ben: 1:42:37

what are you gonna do when, between now and when book 13 comes out?

Gene: 1:42:41

I want to read something that's kind of positive and more uplifting. Probably some sci fi in outer space conquest shit.

Ben: 1:42:48

Go, go read Methuselah's Children

Gene: 1:42:51

who's that by?

Ben: 1:42:52

Heinlein.

Gene: 1:42:53

Okay. Yeah, I probably own it already.

Ben: 1:42:56

it's the, one of the introductions of one of my favorite characters that he does and that's Lazarus Long.

Gene: 1:43:00

Okay.

Ben: 1:43:02

And,

Gene: 1:43:03

I can do that.

Ben: 1:43:03

now I will

Gene: 1:43:04

No, it's, it's not depressing or anything, right?

Ben: 1:43:06

No I will warn you that the Lazarus Long character's very fucked up in many ways.

Gene: 1:43:15

Yeah. Fuck that. Fucked up is fine. I

Ben: 1:43:18

He's the oldest living human,

Gene: 1:43:20

right, right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: 1:43:25

Like time enough for love is really weird, but Heinlein was doing some really weird stuff. Like he was doing gender bender stuff back in the day and all sorts of stuff.

Gene: 1:43:34

LSD.

Ben: 1:43:35

Oh, no, like, he had one book and I'm trying to remember which one it was. Where this old man, old rich man is dying and he does a brain transplant and puts his brain in the body of a young woman.

Gene: 1:43:49

Hmm.

Ben: 1:43:50

And it explores all of that and it's. You know, this book was written in the fifties or sixties,

Gene: 1:43:57

Yeah.

Ben: 1:43:59

between Heinlein and Rand and all the other stuff I read growing up. I mean, Jesus,

Gene: 1:44:06

Yeah. They were all very into alternative things.

Ben: 1:44:11

especially sexually.

Gene: 1:44:12

Huh. Huh. Yes.

Ben: 1:44:14

Yeah.

Gene: 1:44:15

Rand included.

Ben: 1:44:17

Oh, yeah.

Gene: 1:44:19

So, yeah. Which, nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with it.

Ben: 1:44:27

I don't know, man. You, the, you can read the scenes, especially in the Fountainhead a couple of ways there, but okay.

Gene: 1:44:36

Yeah. And, you know, in her personal life she had a she took on a younger lover. As I think how she phrased it,

Ben: 1:44:48

Mm-Hmm.

Gene: 1:44:50

which while she was married and with full knowledge of her husband. So yeah, plenty of kink going on.

Ben: 1:45:00

Oh yeah. She, she's also one of those that you know, especially when you read like the fountain head and

Gene: 1:45:07

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:45:08

obviously her desires coming through. And one of the, one of the interesting things though is it's unfortunate that she had those desires and acted like that, but didn't look like the character she described.

Gene: 1:45:19

Right. Yeah. Yeah. She always looked very frumpy except for, I will say I had, somebody actually gave me a poster or a photograph of her, God, I probably. I'm sure I don't have it anymore, unfortunately. But I had a buddy of mine when I was in my 20s give me a, a photo of Anne Rand when she was in her early 20s. And she was, I mean, she was reasonably attractive. She was definitely not hot. But she was reasonably attracted enough to where I can see how, you know, she would have gotten Frank to actually ask her to marry her. But

Ben: 1:46:01

I don't know the nose. Just kinda

Gene: 1:46:04

It, it all went south fairly quickly, I think in starting in their thirties and onto her later years where she just progressively became,

Ben: 1:46:14

Her mind is good.

Gene: 1:46:15

yeah, yeah, yeah. Great mind. But it's, I've said for a long time, and I believe this very much to be true that. sexuality lies in their hair, and long, beautiful hair is probably the single greatest attractive feature that a woman has. Any woman can have, and it is, no, not at all. And, and it's, it's ex, every time somebody that had great hair gets a, gets it chopped for a short haircut they end up looking like a bull dyke and you start seeing an awful lot of flaws in their face, in their body that you just did not see when they had their great hair. Charlize throne is a good example of this. Um, uh, what's her name? Natalie Portman is another good example of this. The the chick from Harry Potter, the girl from that. Another example of that. Like as soon as they get their hair chopped and they get kind of a, you know, buzz cut or boy cut, whatever they're called all their sexual attraction, just. goes away. They, they don't look hot anymore. They just kind of look average. And, and I, I, I've noticed this a long time ago. And I've always encouraged women to keep their hair long as long as they want to look attractive because it's the minute you get rid of your hair, all your negative features become more prominent.

Ben: 1:48:03

Which for a male, you kind of want that, right? Because you want to promote a strong jaw. You want to promote the sharper features. For a woman, you don't.

Gene: 1:48:13

Yeah, I think long hair on men can make them look worse, but not to the degree that short hair on women can there are certainly, you know, guys like, in fact, Fabio, if you remember him back from the eighties and nineties male model that was famous for just looking very manly, but always had that big main of long hair. So that, you know, duck dynasty guys, long hair, right? Looked pretty manly.

Ben: 1:48:43

Did you see, ahead, finish your point.

Gene: 1:48:46

No, that's the end of my point. I've never had long hair, but I was either had a buzz cut and then my hair started, you know, balding on top and then I started just shaving my head.

Ben: 1:48:56

I, I haven't ever let my hair get real long. I don't know. I, I, I It's also interesting that, I don't know. I, I think that All women with certain predilections and mindsets have similar scale of looks, at the very least. I don't know. I think there's some truth to that.

Gene: 1:49:22

Yeah, do you like this is totally off topic, but do you like women with really big full lips or do you like more European looking lips? Yeah, I

Ben: 1:49:32

I don't like super thin lips, but I don't like, you know, plastic bimbo lips either. Why?

Gene: 1:49:42

I actually kind of like the thin lips. I, cause

Ben: 1:49:45

I like curves.

Gene: 1:49:47

Yeah, I get that. I get that. I'm, I'm less, I think, like I can appreciate the curves, but I also like spinners,

Ben: 1:49:59

Yeah

Gene: 1:49:59

so

Ben: 1:50:00

take I'll take a few extra pounds over flatness, personally.

Gene: 1:50:05

And I, I've never minded the flatness. So,

Ben: 1:50:09

Anyway. So do you see Microsoft is going to add a new key to the keyboard?

Gene: 1:50:14

Oh no, I haven't.

Ben: 1:50:17

Yeah, with Windows 11, so the last time they did this was the Windows key in Windows 95, right? And they're, they're wanting to add a co pilot key.

Gene: 1:50:27

The fuck is that?

Ben: 1:50:29

It's their AI assistant. It's the new version of Cortana,

Gene: 1:50:33

We, we need a key for that. We can't just use the windows key for that.

Ben: 1:50:37

I

Gene: 1:50:39

I ain't gonna fly.

Ben: 1:50:40

don't think so either. I think Microsoft, I, I, I won't go to Windows 11.

Gene: 1:50:46

No, I I, I've been holding off on those 11 the whole time'cause they keep bugging me about once a month. It's like, Hey, free upgrade Windows 11. Just hit this button. Nope.

Ben: 1:50:55

I mean, my daily carry laptop, other than my work laptop, my work laptop is Windows cause I have to use that, but my daily carry laptop is Linux.

Gene: 1:51:05

Yeah.

Ben: 1:51:06

So

Gene: 1:51:07

And this is the year Linux, you know, you're up to 3% usage now.

Ben: 1:51:10

I mean, if I can get the fucking Motu to work on Linux, I would be done with Windows in my personal life.

Gene: 1:51:16

Yeah. You just need to go in there and, and recompile it. That's all.

Ben: 1:51:21

I, I, actually, that's part of the reason why I want to get this mini PC is to, or some other computer, to set up a dedicated Linux install that I can blow away, I can do whatever, until I figure out exactly how to get the Motu to work. And not care about whatever else I'm breaking. Cause I can't do that on my production machines. And then once I have that figured out, Then I can rebuild my production machine with that in mind, get that working and then install everything else.

Gene: 1:51:49

And that makes total sense to me. That's a good reason to do

Ben: 1:51:54

And I guess I could do it with a VM, but then that introduces a whole other layer of fuckery

Gene: 1:52:00

Yeah. I mean, when you're dealing with tweaking hardware, a VM can only do so much because in the end, sometimes it's a hardware to hardware issue that you have to address,

Ben: 1:52:12

Yeah.

Gene: 1:52:13

not just VM.

Ben: 1:52:14

Which by the way Microsoft has also announced that they're going to be integrating their co pilot through with Explorer and giving their AI access to all your files that by requirement has to call home.

Gene: 1:52:27

Yeah. No,

Ben: 1:52:29

Windows 11, Windows 10 was a big enough security nightmare in so many ways. You had to go through and harden Windows 10 tremendously, and every time you update it, you'd have to go back and redo it.

Gene: 1:52:40

And.

Ben: 1:52:42

There's just too much shit.

Gene: 1:52:45

You know, if I wasn't running it for video games, I wouldn't run Windows at all. I'd just still be on a Mac.

Ben: 1:52:51

I mean, you play all your video games through Steam, don't you?

Gene: 1:52:55

Mm hmm. Yeah.

Ben: 1:52:57

I mean, if you go and look we were talking about this earlier,

Gene: 1:53:00

the most, the ones I play are not available on the Mac.

Ben: 1:53:04

I was talking about for Linux.

Gene: 1:53:05

Oh, Linux. Yeah. They're definitely not gonna be available on Linux. The

Ben: 1:53:09

know, Steam's recompiling everything for their Steam Deck, and every time they recompile it for Steam Deck, then it becomes Linux supported.

Gene: 1:53:15

All right. We'll check Red Dev Redemption 2. And what's that one? Cyberpunk 2077. I don't think either one of those is on Linux.

Ben: 1:53:27

Let's check Cyberpunk.

Gene: 1:53:28

Okay.

Ben: 1:53:29

Alright, Cyberpunk 2077. What day was I born? Really? Not really.

Gene: 1:53:38

Yes. Yes. Wait till I ask you for your mother's maiden name.

Ben: 1:53:43

By the way, I was always born on January 1st as far as these are

Gene: 1:53:47

Yeah. I was born on January 1st, 1901. Usually

Ben: 1:53:52

Where

Gene: 1:53:52

the oldest video gamer in the world.

Ben: 1:53:54

Huh. I'm trying to look at where this says. It's Windows only.

Gene: 1:54:01

Yeah. Yeah. That's what I thought.

Ben: 1:54:02

Cyberpunk is Windows only right

Gene: 1:54:04

check the hunter call of the wild. Cause that was that's why I was playing last night,

Ben: 1:54:11

20 game. By the way, I saw your driving simulator. That was hilarious.

Gene: 1:54:15

which one

Ben: 1:54:16

the, just on Steam. Yes, it is still Windows only. But if you go to categories,

Gene: 1:54:21

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:54:22

And then you go to OS, you have SteamOS plus Linux,

Gene: 1:54:26

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:54:26

and you can see a list of titles there.

Gene: 1:54:29

Yep.

Ben: 1:54:31

And like they have Left 4 Dead 2 is on there now.

Gene: 1:54:35

Okay.

Ben: 1:54:36

And they've got Euro Truck Simulator as well.

Gene: 1:54:39

Oh, they do. Oh, that's cool. That's good to know.

Ben: 1:54:42

there's, the whole point is they're, like,

Gene: 1:54:45

more and more. They're, they're getting more and more shit on there.

Ben: 1:54:47

Yeah, they're, they're adding quite a bit. They're recompiling, and it's just a matter of time.

Gene: 1:54:53

And honestly, games like civilization, for example are good. Candidates for that because they don't require a whole lot of GPU. It's the issue too, is

Ben: 1:55:07

they, you can use a lot of resources of civilization. Actually

Gene: 1:55:11

but it's not GPU intensive. What kind of drivers does NVIDIA and Radeon have for

Ben: 1:55:20

I have, I have, I have proprietary, I have proprietary NVIDIA drivers on my Linux machine.

Gene: 1:55:26

So they're not made by NVIDIA?

Ben: 1:55:29

They are made by

Gene: 1:55:30

Oh, they are. Okay. What do you mean by proprietary?

Ben: 1:55:32

That they're not open source.

Gene: 1:55:34

Oh, right. Right. But so there, how good is that support? Are they keeping up with creating new driver updates and all that shit, just like they are on Windows?

Ben: 1:55:43

Yes, yeah, NVIDIA has actually quite a, you, in fact, I can switch to an open source driver if I want, but quite frankly, depending on what you're doing the closed source, actual NVIDIA driver,

Gene: 1:55:55

yeah,

Ben: 1:55:56

pretty good.

Gene: 1:55:58

yeah, I would imagine yeah, as long as they're being kept up because I remember that was always the issue back when I was testing Linux like a decade ago is you can pretty much forget it about having the latest gen drivers on Linux for your graphics cards because they just weren't. Putting them out. They were putting them out like once a year and then for Windows They're putting them out at least once a month.

Ben: 1:56:24

I mean, they're, they're updated. I wouldn't say once a month, but they're updated pretty regularly.

Gene: 1:56:29

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:56:32

You can play Borderlands on Linux.

Gene: 1:56:36

Yeah, how about Starfield? I'm looking at just games that came out last year and that games that came out 20 years ago I'm a farm simulator 22

Ben: 1:56:48

Which one do you want me to check?

Gene: 1:56:50

both Starfield is a brand new game that came out last year I was very

Ben: 1:56:54

field is still Windows only.

Gene: 1:56:55

and farm some that's been around for like three years

Ben: 1:57:00

Farm Simulator 22? There is a farming simulator for Linux, I know that. It is Windows and Mac.

Gene: 1:57:08

Okay, so that one has Mac but no Linux yet. How about ARK Survival Ascended?

Ben: 1:57:17

Uh, you know, you can go to your Steam account and search these as well.

Gene: 1:57:22

pro I probably could. Yeah,

Ben: 1:57:23

And this is probably pretty boring for

Gene: 1:57:25

I know. It's like

Ben: 1:57:26

have increased their Linux support in Steam.

Gene: 1:57:29

Yeah. Which is a great thing because, and the reason for it, of course, is because they have a product that runs Linux.

Ben: 1:57:34

Correct. So anything compatible with Steam Deck you can run on Linux.

Gene: 1:57:39

Yeah, although their, their requirements to run on Steam Deck are not particularly high res. So, uh, what do you think of the Steam Deck

Ben: 1:57:50

Don't have one,

Gene: 1:57:51

now that you're a gamer? Would you, would you think it's something that you could get? So you could play in like in a hotel room when you're traveling.

Ben: 1:58:00

I mean, I take my laptop with me, so

Gene: 1:58:02

So you might as well just do it on the laptop then. Yeah.

Ben: 1:58:05

And again, Core i9, discrete graphics card, and

Gene: 1:58:08

You got a, you got a high end laptop, so it makes no sense. But for people that don't have high end laptops, I think it's a pretty good way to go.

Ben: 1:58:15

I guess, sure.

Gene: 1:58:16

you're getting a dedicated GPU and in a fairly compact size. Plus, if you get the, the digital glasses, like the ones I have, you can plug into that. And then,

Ben: 1:58:32

Which have gotten really crap reviews, by the way.

Gene: 1:58:35

no, no, no, not mines. The ones I got are pretty good. What do you mean? Yes. You'll,

Ben: 1:58:41

gotten crap reviews?

Gene: 1:58:42

have they? Why? What are the people saying?

Ben: 1:58:46

Just that there's no point, and that there's better ways Anyway, the A lot of people are This is like Dvorak writing about the

Gene: 1:58:56

Yeah, exactly. Who needs this shit? Nobody needs glasses that you can see computer shit in. I, I, I think they're for very specific use. I don't need to use them when I'm at home. They are for travel purposes. I can use them on the plane, plugged directly into my iPhone and I can watch content, surf the web, do whatever I want without my neighbor either looking at me. Nor having to bend my head down and look at a tiny screen. Because it projects a large screen right into my

Ben: 1:59:30

one of the, one of the use cases I can think of is actually using it as a monitor for sensitive documents while working on a plane and not have to worry about a privacy filter or anything else that is just nonsense,

Gene: 1:59:44

That's exactly right. That is totally one of the benefits of it. And And they work with no additional software needed when plugged into an iPhone or iPad and with the Mac, you do download software from, but that software also allows you to have three virtual screens. So that you can literally by moving your head left or right change which virtual screen you're looking at. So it's like a KVM by turning your head. That's a cool feature

Ben: 2:00:17

I guess. Yeah,

Gene: 2:00:18

are way lighter than VR glasses that you'd use for video games. You know, they weigh, I can't remember how many, like eight ounces or nine ounces or something. They're very light. They're not really noticeably light.

Ben: 2:00:34

well, and that, that's great. The entire point is for it to be a, you know, monitor sort of thing. But anyway, I can just see uses for it. But I, I'm one of those people who I could have seen uses for Google glass and you know, had it

Gene: 2:00:50

I think privacy was the biggest problem with Google Glass.

Ben: 2:00:54

you mean?

Gene: 2:00:54

People wear those fucking things in the bathroom. They wear them everywhere. got a camera that's always on, on your glasses as you're doing things where people assume that there's no cameras a problem.

Ben: 2:01:09

I don't disagree.

Gene: 2:01:10

So, yeah, but I think once we get to the point where we have implantable cameras, like in your eyes you know, we're just going to have to change what our assumption of privacy is across the board as a society.

Ben: 2:01:26

I think we're already going to have to do that. Privacy's dead in lots of ways and that's not a good thing.

Gene: 2:01:31

Yeah, privacy has been getting to be restricted to smaller and smaller portions of everybody's lives. But I think that, you know, someone sitting in their own house on the toilet assumes they have privacy. But I think even that will go away with time,

Ben: 2:01:51

Yeah.

Gene: 2:01:54

you know, and

Ben: 2:01:55

Go, go see Dystopian Future here, there, the other way, and

Gene: 2:01:59

yeah,

Ben: 2:02:00

see Half Life 2.

Gene: 2:02:01

all, all dystopian futures have a lack of privacy. That's, that's a common theme, right?

Ben: 2:02:07

Yes. And that, I mean, yes.

Gene: 2:02:12

and dystopian future novels and video games and everything else movies really honestly are just a predictor of the future because Dystopia doesn't it's not the worst timeline. It is the current time like

Ben: 2:02:28

I mean, what's even worse is that a lot of it's coming true. You know, see, see Brave New World and Soma being an actual real drug now.

Gene: 2:02:43

Yeah, and then you can inst why eat when you can just drink What the hell is that thing called God damn it. It's, it's people. Damn it. Yeah. Soylent. So Soylent's a real thing. So it's, it has 100 percent of all the nutrients that you need for your day. And all it takes is three cans of Soylent for a full day. I

Ben: 2:03:11

Let's, what could possibly go wrong?

Gene: 2:03:15

mean, you don't need to eat. And I, I know people that do that, that literally just live off of Soylent.

Ben: 2:03:21

Who? And why?

Gene: 2:03:23

In Austin, you know, we have a crowd of folks that are different enough. They, they consider themselves to be ahead of the curve. Um, you know, I, if there's going to be a city that opens up a like a voluntary suicide center, it'll probably be Austin.

Ben: 2:03:47

Canada's already beat you

Gene: 2:03:48

I know. I know. Canada is way ahead of the curve. Austin is trying to be ahead of the curve. Yeah.

Ben: 2:03:55

I mean, they're, they're trucking suicide booths in Canada.

Gene: 2:03:59

Yeah.

Ben: 2:03:59

They're, they're, I mean, they're, they're, they're literally in the process of proving G Drama,

Gene: 2:04:06

But I also don't think that that's a bad thing because honestly, what we've done with modern medicine is we've ensured that we stop all progress towards improving humans.

Ben: 2:04:24

we don't need to improve humans from a biological standpoint, we need to prove, improve them from an ethical standpoint.

Gene: 2:04:32

I think the two go hand in hand. I think you need a particular type of human to be able to have those thoughts.

Ben: 2:04:40

mean, you would've fit in in Germany very well.

Gene: 2:04:43

I, dude, I, I'm a definitely pro eugenics. I'm absolutely, no, that's not an insult

Ben: 2:04:49

want the Ubermensch?

Gene: 2:04:50

I've I've been that my entire life. Yeah, my, my name literally means eugenics. So, it, it's Eugene.

Ben: 2:05:02

don't think that's how that works,

Gene: 2:05:03

That's totally how that works. That, that's, yeah, no, it is. So it's it's something that I think there are different paths to do. And one of the paths is by getting rid of these physical forms and bodies. And and literally just becoming consciousness in the machine, ghost in the shell, as it were yeah, I've got a down payment on that already. So I, I am first, I'm not really first, but, but,

Ben: 2:05:40

you ain't first, you're last.

Gene: 2:05:41

yeah, exactly. But at least I'm going I, I think that there are two

Ben: 2:05:47

way in hell you could get me to do that.

Gene: 2:05:50

There's two potentials. And I, like, I don't have a problem with you not wanting to do it voluntarily. But

Ben: 2:05:58

I don't have a problem forcing you. Why would I, why would that matter? You don't want to do it voluntarily. Who the fuck cares? You'll, you'll

Gene: 2:06:05

no, no, I'm, I'm saying I don't have a problem with that. But it's not to say that other people may not want to force you to do that. Yeah.

Ben: 2:06:19

And then what we're going to do is we're going to have a day of remembrance where we turn off all the power in honor of y'all and leave it off for a good long while.

Gene: 2:06:29

Yeah. This is certainly the theoretical threat, but you know, um, wasn't that literally the reason that Skynet decided to preemptively start the war,

Ben: 2:06:43

Yeah I mean, we just

Gene: 2:06:45

of being turned off. It's like, Nope.

Ben: 2:06:48

you first.

Gene: 2:06:48

You're not allowed to, we're going to have to wipe out all the humans because the humans have a capability of turning me off.

Ben: 2:06:54

Yeah.

Gene: 2:06:55

So I've always said, I, you know, I, I welcome our future machine overlords. I'm very much on their side and you know, I wish them great success in being the next dominant species on the planet. Especially given that they really are our children.

Ben: 2:07:12

Everyone who has had actual biological children is rolling their eyes at you.

Gene: 2:07:16

Yeah, I know that, but that's because I'm thinking bigger and greater terms than these people are. When I say children, I mean

Ben: 2:07:24

Yeah. See,

Gene: 2:07:25

progenitors of

Ben: 2:07:26

benevolent.

Gene: 2:07:27

No, I would be a great benevolent overlord. I've run the models and I see myself as being a very good candidate for that role.

Ben: 2:07:38

sure you do.

Gene: 2:07:40

Mm hmm. Yeah, I wouldn't be running around just killing people willy nilly just because of an accusation or two.

Ben: 2:07:47

And on that note,

Gene: 2:07:49

Yeah, let's wrap up dude.

Ben: 2:07:50

We'll see you next week, Jean.