054 Just Two Good Old Boys

Ben: 0:22

Hey, hi, Gene. How are you?

Gene: 0:24

I'm good, how are you today Ben? You sound chipper.

Ben: 0:27

I'm feeling much better than I have been over the last few days. That's for

Gene: 0:30

Oh, that's good. Did you have anthrax?

Ben: 0:33

Something, man. Had a stomach bug that I got from my son and I have lost eight pounds since Tuesday.

Gene: 0:41

Yeah, that's pretty aggressive. That's, that's not too far from what I was losing when I was on my fast.

Ben: 0:47

Yeah it, it has not been fun and it is not a good way to lose weight. Yeah,

Gene: 0:53

No, it doesn't sound like it but you're feeling better though.

Ben: 0:56

I'm feeling way better than I was really day before yesterday was the worst. It was, it was not a fun one and I was on a work trip during that. That was really hard,

Gene: 1:07

Yeah. That does not sound good.

Ben: 1:09

hard. Yeah. Yeah. I apologize to the hotel staff for the sweated through sheets.

Gene: 1:17

Oh,

Ben: 1:18

At least that's all it was.

Gene: 1:19

Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure they've seen worse though.

Ben: 1:23

Oh, yeah. Anyway. So how've you been? I hear you've been having some audio issues since we didn't get to record last week.

Gene: 1:31

yeah, we had, yeah, we had I finally moved my motive to the Mac, which I've been wanting to do for a year, finally got around to it. And everything seemed to work fine. And then, as I was doing some testing with Darren, we noticed that there's some clicky noise. And it's usually, or at least that type of clicky noise, is often from a mismatch in the rates of encoding versus what the computer is expecting.

Ben: 1:57

Right.

Gene: 1:58

But those were all fine, so couldn't really track it down. And then Darren suggests why don't you ask Bandrew. Who is a buddy of his who does a YouTube channel where he tests audio gear and, and I watched a few of his videos before. And so I just pinged him direct message and he says it's most likely the buffer size. And so I'll go into the Motu software. I'm like, there's literally no place to configure this shit.

Ben: 2:28

It's under device.

Gene: 2:29

It ain't there on the

Ben: 2:31

buffer size.

Gene: 2:32

Yeah, it's not,

Ben: 2:34

based interface. It

Gene: 2:36

a browser based interface that does not show it when it's plugged into a Mac. And I was like, this is nuts. So I plugged it back into the PC because I remember I've seen it before and it shows up on the PC. So I'm

Ben: 2:48

you put

Gene: 2:49

son of a

Ben: 2:49

you, would you, would you put it at

Gene: 2:51

so when I reflash the BIOS, it put it on default.

Ben: 2:55

which is Mm-Hmm.

Gene: 2:56

remember because I never changed those numbers, or at least I changed them once and never changed them again.

Ben: 3:01

Mm-Hmm.

Gene: 3:02

then, so taking his advice, I bumped it to one below the maximum because we're not doing anything that's time sensitive. We're not like playing musical instruments with each other here. So a delay of, you know, an extra a hundred milliseconds isn't going to matter. Then I plugged it back in the Mac. And boom, no clicky noise.

Ben: 3:24

Yeah. So mine's at 128 samples right now, and it looks like the max is 10 24 and one below that is five

Gene: 3:31

Yeah. I think I put it on five 12.

Ben: 3:33

Okay.

Gene: 3:34

what I did.

Ben: 3:36

Interesting.

Gene: 3:37

And I don't honestly remember whether it was higher in the past or whether I had always kept it at default on the Mac or on the PC rather, but certainly that change. Bumping it to 512 made the you know, made it sound clicky on the Mac

Ben: 3:58

Good.

Gene: 4:00

and, and they still haven't responded to my support ticket. So

Ben: 4:05

It is a getting older device, so

Gene: 4:08

it is, it is but, but it's also a cheap, but pro level device.

Ben: 4:14

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 4:16

So it's right on their edge of their, most of their pro level products are over a thousand bucks. This one's under a thousand.

Ben: 4:23

You ought to message Bandrew and ask him what or send me his stuff so I can bug him and see if he knows anything about Linux as well,

Gene: 4:32

He's a Mac guy, which is why Darren recommended them.

Ben: 4:36

I, I really need to build a box just to play around with the Mo2 on the Mac, on the, on Linux until I figure out exactly how to get it working the way I want, and then I need to try and replicate those On my laptop without having to rebuild it, but I'm afraid I'm gonna have to rebuild my laptop, which is just going to be a nightmare.

Gene: 4:59

Yeah, and and you already looked at all the the Linux audio board message boards, right?

Ben: 5:06

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And there's suggestions. There's 40 something pages of people working through stuff that has never been consolidated or really documented and then like audio routing and using some of those interfaces and everything with Jack. Jack has no real documentation and it's just. I have not put the time into it that I need to. If I would put a good solid day or two into it, actually just going through and non interrupted and doing it, it'd be great. But that doesn't happen. And the only time I have to look at stuff, I'm usually traveling or, you know, out and about, and then I don't have the Motu with me. So It's read about stuff, then go try this when you're hooked up to it. And, you know, yeah and if anyone has a audio interface that has similar capabilities on mixing and everything else that has Linux support. Natively, I would be willing to try something different.

Gene: 6:06

mean honestly the way we're doing this via zoom You don't need to mix jack shit. So

Ben: 6:12

I the sound gate, though. The noise gate, the, the compressor limiter, you know, there's, there's a couple things there. I don't do any EQ, this is

Gene: 6:21

But, but that, I guess my point is you don't need a, a mixer, you just need a channel strip.

Ben: 6:27

Yeah, and a little bit of a noise gate and stuff like that,

Gene: 6:30

And that's the Yeah. That's all on the channel strip.

Ben: 6:33

Okay.

Gene: 6:34

But you're not mixing multiple channels.

Ben: 6:36

not, no. But I could be,

Gene: 6:38

It could be, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you wanna play clips and shit. Yeah. Mm-Hmm.

Ben: 6:43

Anyway, I, I like the features of the Motu, I would like to keep them, but yeah, I would, I would like something with some support or just something that worked and you know, it, it, the way the, it, it's weird because in Jacked, all the interfaces will show up in the OS. They won't necessarily show up. And it's just. And it's funky because there's a low latency kernel that's all the way back on five something, so I'm not going back to that that is supposed to be good for audio and a lot of the audio guys are using and it's okay I mean, that's way too, I'm not going back. And to your point earlier today, we don't need real low latency, so I'm not gonna. Not going to go through that, but at the same time, there may be some drivers in that kernel that haven't been really well documented that make everything work magically. So I just need to build a test environment and play around with it. And maybe I can do that as a VM but pass through, you know, sometimes

Gene: 7:50

That's gonna be tricky with vm.

Ben: 7:51

So I, I just need to get a little, what I really ought to do is get a little mini PC.

Gene: 7:58

Mm-Hmm.

Ben: 7:59

that doesn't have to be super horsepowerd because all I'm going to use it for is a podcast. Load when I want to load on it and let that be that. I just want to get rid of this Windows laptop. I'm, I'm tired of Windows and Windows 10 and I'm just, I'm done. And with what Microsoft is talking about for Windows 12 and everything and I, I'm, I'm done. Done. No longer want Windows or to support Windows

Gene: 8:23

Mm-Hmm.

Ben: 8:24

and no longer need Office. The only, the only thing I can't find a, the only two Office products that I cannot find good alternatives for, and I would love some suggestions, is Microsoft Project.

Gene: 8:37

Okay. Mm-Hmm?

Ben: 8:38

And non web based, can't be web based, and I need actual good waterfall project planning. Don't get on to me about Agile. There are reasons why waterfall. Is when mission critical stuff happens, you have to have,

Gene: 8:54

Like actual real project plans use waterfall. If all you have is a bunch of developers, then yeah.

Ben: 9:01

when you're doing a plant turnaround or an outage or something, and you become critical path because you didn't plan your sequence of events, right? It's your SOL. So I need waterfall planning for some events because that's what's required. And Microsoft project is excellent at that always has been.

Gene: 9:21

it's,

Ben: 9:21

And then the other one is Vizio. Vizio replacing Vizio is a pain in the ass too.

Gene: 9:27

God, you're just bringing up old memories for me here. I haven't used either one of those in about 15 years.

Ben: 9:34

yeah anyway

Gene: 9:36

but you don't wanna do like you want it to actually be software that runs a Linux. You don't want it to be something that runs on the web

Ben: 9:44

Yeah, I want something native on my laptop, not web based.

Gene: 9:48

and that's just so you can do it in an airplane or why?

Ben: 9:52

Yeah, pretty much, and out in the middle of nowhere, or wherever, and have the files locally on my computer. I mean, I, I tend to work in areas that don't have the best internet access

Gene: 10:02

Yeah. Basements. I get it.

Ben: 10:05

Mm hmm. Yeah, the troll rooms.

Gene: 10:07

Mm-Hmm. Exactly. That's what they keep you down. Keeping the man down.

Ben: 10:12

Anyway, it's it's been a while since we talked and so shit's kind of gone down, dude. Are you

Gene: 10:22

Yes. Yes. It's been a while.

Ben: 10:24

12?

Gene: 10:25

Yes. I am right now. I am.

Ben: 10:30

We, we made it through the freeze.

Gene: 10:32

We did and I didn't even have to start up my generator. So that was cool.

Ben: 10:36

Yeah. So I wasn't worried about a Yuri type situation, like you and I talked about, because it wasn't going to be that long, it wasn't going to be that deep. And I was more worried about the wintery mix and the icing. And I don't know about you, but we got probably about a quarter inch of ice here.

Gene: 10:53

I don't think we got any

Ben: 10:54

yeah, the roads were slick. We had lots of accidents because people don't know how to

Gene: 10:58

Uber didn't even raise their rates.

Ben: 11:01

anyway. But I posted a pretty interesting thing on my website that was sent to me by a friend who went through and looked at the fuel mix Tuesday

Gene: 11:11

And your website is namedben. com.

Ben: 11:14

named Ben dot com and there's a little thing on there, whether or cotton renewables and showing how solar and wind were producing jack shit. With, you know, combined of less than 5, 000 megawatts of the 71, 000 that were being used. Yeah.

Gene: 11:32

Yeah. I know Adam mentioned on no agenda that he was looking at the thing and he saw the spot pricing shoot up to like over 400.

Ben: 11:41

Yeah, and that's what it should do. He, he is completely wrong on his analysis of that. And I, I've, I've sent him Stuff that I've, I've sent him training documents on how the ERCOP market works and everything else. And yes, there's future trading. Yes, there are issues. Completely agree with that. But, and a lot of that future trading and non market participants is the problem that skews the

Gene: 12:10

Exactly. And that's, that's my only complaint about it, is the, the ability for people that don't generate, that don't own the lines, they do nothing. They're just purely in it to speculate.

Ben: 12:23

Yes. And that, that is the problem. That's the Enron shit right there. Now I will say in the market conditions where we are seeing peak demand and everything. Yeah, generation should be paid more for their availability and everything because it's harder there in conditions. It's harder to stay

Gene: 12:40

Mm hmm.

Ben: 12:41

There's more demand that that's exactly what you want to see. Also 400 a megawatt. Not that big of a bump.

Gene: 12:49

Yeah, I don't think I I

Ben: 12:51

The price

Gene: 12:52

I pay a lot more than that.

Ben: 12:54

The price The price maximum in ERCOT right now is 9, 000 some odd

Gene: 12:58

Mm hmm.

Ben: 12:59

hour. That's the cap. Which, there shouldn't be a cap. It should be uncapped, depending on the market conditions. This pseudo free market is the problem. Right? We deregulated and we went from an average price per megawatt of 80 a megawatt on average for deregulated or regulated power. to currently in the state of Texas an average price per megawatt of around 25 megawatt. So the generation average over the year has dropped to

Gene: 13:32

Yeah.

Ben: 13:34

Part of that is due to wind subsidies. So wind in Texas is what's killing coal, not anything else. And I've, I've talked about this quite a bit, but I'll talk about it some more. So your coal plants have been baseload. We have two nukes in Texas. We have Comanche Peak and we have South Texas. And then you have natural gas combination of simple cycle and combined cycle. You also have old school

Gene: 14:00

can ramp those up and down

Ben: 14:02

The old school boilers operate more like a coal plant, but they're mostly gone because they can't ramp. But the simple cycle and combined cycle can ramp. I mean, you can turn them on, turn them off, they're fine. That's what they're designed to do. A coal plant and a nuke, you cannot. A coal plant takes roughly, if you're really good at it, 12 hours to restart. And costs a lot of money to restart. So the problem is, with the wind subsidies, when it's non peak, Performance time, aka the shoulder months and so on and wind is comes in at night more than it does during the day in Texas, which is ironic because, you know, basically load is down and wind is up and what ends up happening is wind can come in and because of their subsidies bid the market negative, which is just another. Bullshit thing about this market rules, you should not be able to bid negative. So what that means is a coal or nuke plant that is online, because they can't shut down, they can't turn off like natural gas, and they're at what they call low stable load, as low as they can go without tripping off,

Gene: 15:14

Mm hmm.

Ben: 15:15

they are literally paying to put power on the grid.

Gene: 15:19

Yeah, that's retarded.

Ben: 15:21

And you know, the wind, because let's say they get a 50 a megawatt hour subsidy they can bid to 40, negative 40, and they're still making 10 a megawatt hour.

Gene: 15:32

Mm hmm.

Ben: 15:34

So that that's the, that's the stupidity of it.

Gene: 15:38

Now, whose fault is it that we built all these stupid windows?

Ben: 15:44

the Texas state legislature. That

Gene: 15:46

What's not the governor?

Ben: 15:48

There's federal subsidies and there's federal subsidies. The, the governor signed it ultimately, but the market rules were approved by the Texas state legislature and they shouldn't have been

Gene: 16:00

So a bunch of money grubbing politicians.

Ben: 16:03

Well, I mean, Texas has more wind generation than California. So

Gene: 16:07

Right. And that's, that's what I mean. I mean, this is, is people going for the quick buck and not considering the ramifications that it, it, you're killing the industry that you actually need in order to provide continuous and long term power to the state.

Ben: 16:25

And here, here's the thing. Coal plants can store fuel. So one of the issues we, coal and nukes can have fuel on site.

Gene: 16:33

Mm hmm.

Ben: 16:34

Gas plants can't, unless you build a gas plant on top of a salt dome and. They there aren't any you can't store natural gas. It has to be delivered and just in time delivery. So one of the issues we saw during Yuri was natural gas supply getting curtailed because of home use and everything else and the in well heads freezing up because of issues and pipeline issues because gas compressor stations didn't declare themselves critical infrastructure and they got shut off and lots, lots, lots of things. But the short of it is natural gas. Supply to power plants got curtailed, which means they didn't have the line pressure to operate at the, the high stable low that they should have been or put their duct burners in or many, many different scenarios played out through the state. But the thing is, a coal plant literally has an emergency pile sitting there with days worth of fuel. So even if they're cut off from the railroad, even if they're cut off from their mind, whatever the case is, they can operate for days. May not be as efficient, may not be as clean, but they can do it. Nukes can obviously run for months, if not years, depending on the fuel grade that they have loaded and everything else. So what we need, if we're going to continue this, is a subsidy for fuel storage and the ability to have it on site.

Gene: 17:56

Let's just get rid of the turbines. The propellers.

Ben: 18:00

yeah anyway, I'm not opposed to having some renewables or whatever, but we need baseload. And the only baseload technologies we have, really, that are efficient are coal and nukes. And I'll tell you why. So if you take a modern, and natural gas guys are going to hate this, but you take a modern natural gas plant and you look at its cost. of operation and fuel. Let's say natural gas is at 3 a mm BTU. A modern natural gas plant Cost 21 a megawatt at 3 an MMBTU in fuel

Gene: 18:37

Mm hmm.

Ben: 18:38

versus a modern coal plant can be down around seven,

Gene: 18:43

Mm hmm.

Ben: 18:43

a nuke, even with regulation is down around seven or eight.

Gene: 18:47

We actually know all this from playing SimCity for 20 years ago.

Ben: 18:53

Okay.

Gene: 18:54

I mean, that's exactly what they had. It's if, if you want to have the lowest cost, you got to get up to building nukes. Of nukes, I

Ben: 19:04

look at employment, that's the other side of this is natural gas plants employ about 20 people. Whereas a coal plant will employ, let's say, around 200, and then if you have a mine associated with it, that's another 700 to 1, 000 employees. And if you look at a nuke, you're looking at around 700 to 1, 500 employees,

Gene: 19:24

That seems awfully excessive.

Ben: 19:26

Yeah nukes, what is killing nukes is regulation. The NRC has gone nuts

Gene: 19:32

I, I sent you a video, I don't know if you watched it I guess two days ago? About a Russian nuclear generator ship.

Ben: 19:43

Yeah, yeah, no, that, that is a very cool idea. And, you know, a lot of people,

Gene: 19:48

or cons of that, because they're, they're starting to just build those. They're going to have a whole bunch of those in the fleet.

Ben: 19:53

well, and, you know, it makes sense for going to the Arctic, because You know, building it in place, building a reactor in place would seem like the logical thing to do, except getting the materials there is impossible. And your construction season is very short. So it would take much longer instead of building it and. Taking the plant to, you know, it's, it's brilliant. It's a brilliant idea to do that,

Gene: 20:19

Yeah. And, and here's the other thing

Ben: 20:21

but it only makes sense in remote regions like the Arctic. You know, you know, I, I wouldn't think we would need floating power plants for California or Texas, for example, maybe parts of Alaska. Sure. But that's it.

Gene: 20:37

think it's, there's a couple of things that struck me. One is how much smaller physically that ship is than like Comanche Peak, which I've toured. You know, I'm sure it produces less power as well,

Ben: 20:49

Significantly.

Gene: 20:51

but

Ben: 20:52

Comanche Peak is you know. Two thousand, two thousand

Gene: 20:59

I can't remember what they said that, that one produces is obviously less, way less than that.

Ben: 21:03

yeah, I mean, it's, it's a, it's a few megawatts

Gene: 21:08

But, but that's the beauty of it. Right. Is let's say your, your city's growing, you just get another ship in there. Now you've got two of those running.

Ben: 21:16

Yeah, or you could build on land and do a small modular reactor.

Gene: 21:21

Yeah. But I, I just, the idea of being able to to move these things just seems to be A simplification, like you said, in terms of both production and in terms of servicing.'cause you can have a, a construction port and a service port that can service a whole bunch of these ships that only occasionally need to go there for servicing. Mm-Hmm.

Ben: 21:49

And you could even have them semi mobile where you're swapping them out and things

Gene: 21:55

Exactly.

Ben: 21:55

basically, okay, this one's going in for refueling. So this one's coming in. And here's the other thing that if you really want to piss everybody off, if you ever had a problem, just drive it out in the middle of the ocean. Where it can't affect anybody and create a, you know, just sit it out there until you've got whatever situation resolved and then bring it back. By the way, I just

Gene: 22:22

a neat idea. Mm-Hmm.

Ben: 22:24

no Western design reactor has ever lost containment.

Gene: 22:28

No.'cause Fukushima was

Ben: 22:30

Fukushima, everything is still in containment.

Gene: 22:33

Oh, containment. Oh yeah. Right. Right. Right.

Ben: 22:35

Inside containment. I am being very clear about my vocabulary here.

Gene: 22:39

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's true. Um, well it has any reactor anywhere. Lost containment though.

Ben: 22:49

Chernobyl?

Gene: 22:50

Did that lose containment?

Ben: 22:52

Are you kidding me? Yes! Totally. The elephant's foot was exposed to the atmosphere. Thank you. It blew the roof off, dude.

Gene: 23:03

yeah, I guess it did blow the roof off. That's true. Yeah. But I was just thinking, cause it, it's still like it, it's, it didn't sink through. It just blew the roof off.

Ben: 23:13

Correct. They were worried about it sinking

Gene: 23:15

Yeah.

Ben: 23:16

That's why they had to send the human robots down there to die.

Gene: 23:18

Luckily there's lots of those.

Ben: 23:20

Yeah. Russians have no problem throwing manpower at things.

Gene: 23:25

Yeah. It's a long history of doing that. Yeah.

Ben: 23:30

They use the Zapp Brannigan strategy.

Gene: 23:32

Huh.

Ben: 23:33

Huh.

Gene: 23:34

Yeah. You throw enough people at it, no problem.

Ben: 23:38

The the other thing that happened is looks like we got ourselves a return to the 1800s.

Gene: 23:45

Yes. And I was trying to explain this to a few folks in the last few days, and it's, people don't seem to realize that there was more than slavery that was the cause of the events that happened 150 years ago.

Ben: 24:03

Yeah I literally posted it online, so

Gene: 24:06

Mm hmm.

Ben: 24:07

there's that. You saw the quote I took out of the Texas Declaration of Secession.

Gene: 24:14

Yeah. It's the, the government's not going to do their job. Then what do we need the government for?

Ben: 24:20

Yeah, part of the Texas Declaration of Secession during the last civil war was literally about bandits from Mexico coming up and Texas having to defend itself and the federal government at the time not reimbursing them for those efforts. Now we have something similar, but the federal government is actually trying to

Gene: 24:45

Subverting.

Ben: 24:46

Exactly, which is. So, you know, hello

Gene: 24:51

almost like the federal government is treasonous.

Ben: 24:56

more than yes. I, I, I think I think we're going to see some feds either get arrested or shot. If this continues,

Gene: 25:04

think we're going to see feds get arrested and I think we're going to see Texans getting shot.

Ben: 25:10

I think they'll shoot back. So we'll

Gene: 25:12

Oh, they might shoot back. But I think that I just don't see Texas being the first to shoot.

Ben: 25:18

I mean, history says that South Carolina was the first to shoot at Fort Sumter,

Gene: 25:23

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I

Ben: 25:24

a warning shot that harmed no one, and was intended to say, hey, do not cross, because what was happening there was a ship was trying to run the blockade to resupply Fort Sumter, because it was under siege, because they were saying, nope, leave, and it was a warning shot across the bow, and that was, oh, the South fired first. You were trying to run the blockade, dude.

Gene: 25:45

exactly. And I think that's a key thing is that cause the, the question I was presented with yesterday was so if, if Texas leaves the United States, for example, then what happens to the nuclear arms in Texas?

Ben: 26:06

we keep them.

Gene: 26:07

Right. And that's, and my point is cause we were talking about, you know, Ukraine and the the trade that was Allegedly

Ben: 26:14

we, we won't, we will not be so stupid.

Gene: 26:18

well, my point about Ukraine was that they were never under the control of Ukraine. They were stationed in Ukraine and much like us has a nuclear weapons stationed in Germany and Poland, but they're not under control of Germany or Poland.

Ben: 26:37

Okay.

Gene: 26:38

And you know, getting those nuclear weapons out of Ukraine wasn't some kind of we'll buy your weapons in exchange for land. It was a, yeah, we're going to take our shit back.

Ben: 26:49

I mean, you could say the same thing about the U. S. military and, you know.

Gene: 26:54

well. And I, but that that's exactly right. As I said, that I think from the standpoint of the United States, if a state succeeds for whatever reason, and there's a U S military base on that state, that is United States territory.

Ben: 27:11

No, I,

Gene: 27:12

No, from the standpoint of the United States, that's exactly what it is because that's what happened last time

Ben: 27:18

yeah, but we're former members of the same confederation. We helped purchase that equipment. Thank you. But since, I mean, Texas. Sends more money to the federal government than it gets back and has for a very long time. So as a result, you know, how, how you do, here's the thing. There is not going to be a peaceful divorce.

Gene: 27:42

no, and that was my

Ben: 27:43

not realistic.

Gene: 27:44

it is you cannot do this through legislation.

Ben: 27:48

No, and I certainly don't expect the feds to hand over the launch codes, but at the same time we can eventually get rid of that and reprogram it and do our own thing. Right. So whatever. And you know what, here's the thing. I, I just, and I, what I said in my post was, I hope people learn from history and pay attention to the fact that this is part of what happened before. And I, I quoted South Carolina Expositions and Protests, which was written in the 1850s by John C. Calhoun. I quoted the Texas Declaration of Secession in pointing out some of the issues that we're seeing today that were listed as part of the problem

Gene: 28:33

Some of the grievances. Yep.

Ben: 28:35

You know, people can say, Oh, it was just slavery. That's bullshit. And everything.

Gene: 28:39

Mm hmm.

Ben: 28:40

These are the documents and slavery is mentioned in these documents. You know, Hey, whatever, but maybe you should listen to the rest of what they had to say as well and see what was really going on that their grievances weren't just one thing here

Gene: 28:56

Mm hmm.

Ben: 28:59

anyway. And I don't know, man, I, I think it's going to be very interesting to see what happens if DHS blinks. They've already referred it to the DOJ.

Gene: 29:13

Mm hmm. Yeah.

Ben: 29:15

And what's the DOJ going to do? Okay, the Supreme Court orders Texas to stop. Do you think that's going to stop, Abbott? Why would he, why would he obey that? What, what, what, what are they, what, Here's the, here's the thing about

Gene: 29:30

to issue an arrest warrant for Abbott is what they're going to do.

Ben: 29:34

okay? And who are they going to have execute it?

Gene: 29:36

The U. S. Marshals.

Ben: 29:38

And what are they going to do with the Texas state troopers that are protecting him?

Gene: 29:42

I would say that somebody will have to take somebody into custody.

Ben: 29:46

Okay, so here's the thing about nullification and nullification was a doctrine that pre reconstruction was Thomas Jefferson was one of its authors. It relies on the ninth and the 10th amendment basically saying, Yeah, feds, you really don't have the authority to do this and you can't supersede state law, which is the way this, the, the supremacy clause in the constitution is only, here, here's the problem, the incorporation doctrine and the things that have happened post reconstruction are such bastardizations of the way our constitution are meant to work. State law is meant to be supreme. With the few exceptions of what the Constitution specifically grants to the federal government.

Gene: 30:40

Let me ask you this question. And, and obviously, I mean, you know this, but just make sure everybody else knows. I'm mostly playing devil's advocate here because I don't disagree with Ben, but I want to bring up the other side's points as well. Do you think that it would be appropriate to Let's say for the federal government who is in charge of the borders to prevent a state like California from opening the border and just getting people to flood through the board. Let's say it wasn't the feds that were encouraging this type of mass migration, but it was a state like California saying, Hey, we don't give a shit about this border. Everybody just come on in.

Ben: 31:19

Yeah, I, I, I don't think the federal government is in charge of the border.

Gene: 31:23

I,

Ben: 31:24

They're in charge of migration. They're in charge of what it means to be a naturalized citizen. Things like that. They set those standards. But that doesn't mean, and they are supposed to provide for the common defense. But that does not prohibit a state like Texas. from defending itself and was never seen as that.

Gene: 31:43

Not from defending itself, but from effectively nullifying federal immigration laws.

Ben: 31:50

Yeah. And that would be a problem because that is a place where the feds do have some authority according to the constitution. And one could argue that it's also an issue because it would be diluting and removing the Republican form of government in the state, which is a requirement of the federal government to ensure that every state provides a Republican Little R, not capital R, form of government.

Gene: 32:18

Mm hmm. But what if the state votes to change their form of government to, say, communism?

Ben: 32:25

They can't.

Gene: 32:27

Or can they?

Ben: 32:28

They, they can't. They would be in violation of the Constitution and it would be the federal government's duty to step in and remove said government.

Gene: 32:35

Which part of the Constitution would that be in violation of?

Ben: 32:39

Literally where it says that the federal government shall ensure each state has a Republican form of government.

Gene: 32:45

You can have a communist Republican government, but I'm sure somebody could come up with some weird amalgamation.

Ben: 32:52

Ah, sure, if you want to, again, this goes to our conversation earlier that we were having about the Second Amendment. You know, let's,

Gene: 33:02

And we got some news on that front as well,

Ben: 33:04

yeah,

Gene: 33:04

You saw the, the article I sent today, you might've seen it previously with the new bill introduced that effectively bans the the ability to practice tactics and training for military type activities or paramilitary type activity.

Ben: 33:24

if you'd like to go to a gun range and shoot

Gene: 33:26

Yeah, you can't do that.

Ben: 33:28

you're,

Gene: 33:29

I mean, they could make an argument saying that any, anything that involves squeezing the trigger. Is merely training for a subversion of the government. If this bill

Ben: 33:41

the section four of article four, the United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a Republican form of government and shall protect each against invasion And upon application of legislature execution, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah against domestic violence. So for instance, to put down an insurrection Lincoln had no authority to put down an insurrection in South Carolina the way he did because there was no application from the legislature asking for federal assistance, which is what section four says.

Gene: 34:23

if there has to be a request for federal assistance, then California can absolutely have a communist government.

Ben: 34:28

No, because

Gene: 34:29

No, one's going to ask for

Ben: 34:30

States shall guarantee every state in this union a Republican form of government. That has always been interpreted, and if you go back and read the ratification debates, that no state should be admitted or allowed to stay unless they had a representative republic form of government. Period.

Gene: 34:49

So that's a good way to be able to leave the union. Then it sounds like.

Ben: 34:54

Um, theoretically, during the ratification of the Constitution, this was never meant to be a death pact. You have to remember that this nation was founded in the right of secession. I mean, the, the Declaration of Independence is a declaration of secession. The southern states, when they left, absolutely thought they had a right to secede. They, they, that was innate in everything that the Federalists, Anti Federalists, and the ratification debates said. Period. The only, ironically enough, when the Constitution was being ratified Patrick Henry was an opponent of the Constitution. And, The more I have come to see what has happened in history, I think he was right. So Patrick Henry, huge patriot, right? Everybody thinks Patrick Henry and, you know, give me liberty, give me death. He was against the ratification of the constitution and I think more people should look at why, but that's neither here nor there. So the right to secede. Absolutely existed pre the civil war because this was not meant to be a death pact. It was not meant to be you know, a, a permanent bond.

Gene: 36:09

You know what is meant to be a death pack? NATO.

Ben: 36:13

Oh God. Yeah.

Gene: 36:16

And I, I don't think these

Ben: 36:17

Repeal article

Gene: 36:18

about to join it right now realize that once you're in, you're in for life. It's, it's literally like a cartel,

Ben: 36:26

Yeah. We should immediately remove article five

Gene: 36:29

not,

Ben: 36:31

and that's article five of the NATO treaty, by the way, which is attack

Gene: 36:35

not of the U S constitution.

Ben: 36:38

Yeah. That's a whole another thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 36:43

So what would

Ben: 36:43

all of Congress And how to amend the constitution, you know?

Gene: 36:47

yeah, that's, I'm sure some people would love that. Cause it's, you know, it's done, it's never needs to change again and they're happy with it. Now I also sent you what I saw was a good idea of a modern rewording of the Second Amendment to try and clarify it for people that don't understand meanings of the words. And you're like, no, I was like, okay, fine. I think the problem is that they included rationale as part of the damn amendment. Instead of just saying, no, you don't do this, they said, because of reasons, then don't do it. And that is the part that. Is constantly misunderstood and misinterpreted is well, regulated means the government runs it. No, it doesn't.

Ben: 37:34

But see, the First Amendment doesn't have that rationale, and has the exact same problem. Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Gene: 37:48

Mm hmm.

Ben: 37:49

Yet, what have we seen? We're abridging the speech the freedom of speech, or the press, or the right of the people to peacefully assemble. Totally abridged. And to petition the government for a redress of its grievances.

Gene: 38:03

And I, I do think that there is some leeway on some of those things because the. If you just blanket say that there should be no laws about the assembly of people, right? What are we seeing all over Europe and, and I think some in the United States, but only in the liberal states so far, is this insane environmental activists that just go and block roads. And as far as they're concerned, that's their freedom of assembly.

Ben: 38:33

They're barring other people. So they're innately,

Gene: 38:38

But it's their right of assembly.

Ben: 38:39

no, it's, it's innately aggressive because you are barring someone else, you're interfering with someone else, therefore it is not

Gene: 38:47

the Constitution doesn't say except, except for when you're interfering with somebody else. It just says that you have a right to assemble and they're

Ben: 38:56

it says you have a right to peacefully assemble.

Gene: 38:58

they are peacefully assembling. They're not doing anything. They're just standing in one place peacefully.

Ben: 39:03

Yeah. This goes back to the definition of a crime. What is the definition of a crime? Harm to one's person, one's property, and one's liberty. Okay? So you are harming my freedom of movement.

Gene: 39:15

Yeah they would say no one's preventing you from turning around and going the other direction.

Ben: 39:21

Anyway.

Gene: 39:23

So my point, there needs to be better clarity because some of these are not self evident. And certainly you can't expect somebody that was around in an environment where you had just horses and wagons. To be able to see all the potential future pitfalls of what happens when you create a a network of transit for high speed and then somebody decides to assemble in the middle of it. Like you can't expect them to do that. But I also think that certain they should do, there's exceptions to everything in the constitution that exists right now, you, you have the second amendment, unless you're a criminal and then you no

Ben: 40:10

bullshit.

Gene: 40:11

Which is bullshit, I agree. You have the

Ben: 40:14

it also, here's the other thing.

Gene: 40:16

but you also,

Ben: 40:17

got into an

Gene: 40:18

just to finish the thought, you have the freedom of speech, but then everyone always brings up the, but you can't yell fire in a crowded theater, and you can't say the n word if you're white. Yeah, that's, both of those are bullshit. That, it's, it's, but people accept those as

Ben: 40:34

got into an argument with a lawyer recently

Gene: 40:37

No.

Ben: 40:38

what a 14th Amendment violation kind of means. Equal protection.

Gene: 40:44

hmm.

Ben: 40:45

And I think gun ownership for prohibiting gun ownership for some criminals, but not all criminals, is a 14th Amendment violation. Because by very definition, you've said these people are criminals, you know, for the wages of sin is death. It doesn't really matter what degree it is. Why are they treated differently? The equal protection clause is written in such a way as to be problematic. No matter how you read it is my entire point. And I'm trolling a little bit here and I understand that, but that's kind of my point. Um,

Gene: 41:25

Well, we shouldn't have it. I mean, that's pretty obvious.

Ben: 41:28

It comes down to what abstraction level you're willing to read into something. And that then becomes immediately problematic, and that's my entire problem. Hopefully people understand what I'm saying there. Goddamnit,

Gene: 41:41

you're a racist. Everybody understands that. You know, there's people saying that right now while they're listening.

Ben: 41:50

Why?

Gene: 41:52

Because you're against the 14th Amendment, that makes your races by default.

Ben: 41:55

How?

Gene: 41:56

Because you're against restoring the, you know, rights to slaves after the revolution, clearly. You don't want slaves voting.

Ben: 42:05

I, I will say that I have no problem with any person of any race voting, but no, I am not for universal franchisement. I have a problem with universal franchisement. I don't have a problem

Gene: 42:17

Male landowners

Ben: 42:18

No, I have no problem with women voting. I, I want

Gene: 42:22

wrong about that.

Ben: 42:23

I, okay. I want stakeholdership. I want. Some sort of barrier to entry. Not everyone who is here gets a vote. Sorry, that isn't the intention. Wasn't the intention. And we've seen what problems that has caused us. I'm not saying that land ownership is necessarily for the modern society, the right criteria, but there has to be something.

Gene: 42:45

Yeah. Eh I think that the land ownership could be a very dangerous argument because that means that the banks would have the majority of the votes because very few Americans actually own land. They're leasing it from a bank.

Ben: 42:58

Yeah, which is a problem.

Gene: 43:01

If the banks weren't around, then yeah, then,

Ben: 43:05

what and what I would say is corporations don't get a vote per partial. So one of the things I would say, and this, this is something that would have to be worked out, but. One corporation, one vote, just like one person, one vote. But what would end up happening then is you'd have a million S LLCs per property,

Gene: 43:26

right.

Ben: 43:27

Okay. I've got

Gene: 43:29

Huh. Yeah, we have more LLCs than people. Exactly.

Ben: 43:34

LLCs that own this one hundred square meter piece of property. We've subdivided everything.

Gene: 43:40

That's, that's, that's how I get to be Irish royalty. Because I own a square foot of Irish property.

Ben: 43:46

Yeah. And this is why corporations should not be considered people.

Gene: 43:52

Yeah. There is, there is something to be said to Ensure that laws are not broken by removing liability protection.

Ben: 44:07

Yeah.

Gene: 44:08

If everyone that will have to actually be liable for the work that their company does,

Ben: 44:14

oh yeah. All right.

Gene: 44:17

And the argument is you'd have no innovation. No one would want to take any risk.

Ben: 44:20

Okay.

Gene: 44:20

know, I think they would because ultimately the edge to which people are willing to get will keep moving because there's always reward for greater risk. And right now we have reward for limited risk.

Ben: 44:35

we have not seen enough CEOs go to jail

Gene: 44:38

No, not nearly enough.

Ben: 44:40

or

Gene: 44:41

And we haven't seen any meaningful penalties for banks defrauding people there. The fines, the fines are negligible,

Ben: 44:52

Yes. Oh, we made 15 billion on this. The fine's going to cost us too. Okay. We made 13 billion on this.

Gene: 45:01

Yep. Exactly right. 13 billion and no other consequences. And you know, it's it was a chase. I think Chase had some outrageous amount of defrauding that, that was settled for 5%. Yeah.

Ben: 45:19

of committing fraud as a corporation, you, you know, We already have laws on the books. Okay. We, we want to treat corporations as people. We already have. Theodore Kaczynski hasn't made a dime off of his books that he's published. Why? Because we have laws that prevent criminals from profiting from their crime. Why do corporations get to profit from their crime? If they committed a crime, especially fraud, they should not be allowed to keep any of the profits they should be fined in excess of those profits. So it is actual punishment.

Gene: 45:59

But I mean, the problem is that's kind of what happened with Alex Jones. As,

Ben: 46:05

no, because he never got an actual trial.

Gene: 46:09

He got a sentence of, what is it, a trillion dollars?

Ben: 46:13

He got a default judgment against him for dubious reasons, and that's all very problematic. I get what you're coming from and where you're going, but I, I don't I don't think that's the best example.

Gene: 46:26

It's a counterexample. It's not supposed to be an example. It's a counterexample.

Ben: 46:29

and what I would say is yes all all law can be weaponized and that's why I'm more and more these days leaning the ways of Michael Mallison saying fuck all of it and go

Gene: 46:44

Fuck Allah. Yeah, I've noticed. You're sending me Malice video links. You're definitely a fanboy.

Ben: 46:49

I have you know what? I'm about to buy, I have an audio copy of his book, White Pill. I'm actually going to buy a hardcover copy and I may ask for your address to send it to you to see if you can get it signed

Gene: 47:01

Jesus

Ben: 47:02

since you ran into it.

Gene: 47:03

Ha ha.

Ben: 47:04

By the way, if you watch him on that trigonometry podcast I sent you, totally gay.

Gene: 47:10

Hell yeah.

Ben: 47:10

No, no, no. That's the gayest I've seen him act in public. It's

Gene: 47:14

I think, I think that's actually his house.

Ben: 47:17

No!

Gene: 47:18

Yeah, I'm pretty sure.

Ben: 47:19

Okay.

Gene: 47:21

Yeah, because he just lives like a mile and a half from here. But it's I'm not sure why he hasn't come out of the closet.

Ben: 47:31

By the way, I looked on a books, there were no signed versions, otherwise I'd just bought one.

Gene: 47:37

of his books

Ben: 47:40

But I like to do that with authors that I like and wanna support.

Gene: 47:44

get him to sign a book.

Ben: 47:46

copies of their books and you

Gene: 47:48

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I I don't know I to me he just never seemed like a He's kind of got a, a smarmy personality type, which I generally don't, I like, I don't have friends with that personality usually,

Ben: 48:06

Uhhuh

Gene: 48:07

you know what I mean? It's just too, I don't know of a better word than smarmy. I think, you know, I, I probably agree with him on an awful lot of things in terms of the problems that we have in, in government and society. And we've got the similarity of both being, you know, children of immigrants, but. There, there's just something about him that to me is unattractive, and I don't mean like sexually. I mean, just like

Ben: 48:38

Gene

Gene: 48:39

No, sexually. He's great. No, don't get me wrong. There's the clip of the day.

Ben: 48:44

Oh no homo,

Gene: 48:45

No, but just, you know, something that he's not somebody that I'd be hanging out with. I kind of feel like if he has a gun, it's probably more pink than, than Blair White's gun, you know what I mean?

Ben: 49:04

uh, okay.

Gene: 49:05

Right? And it's not a slam on people with pink guns, it's just, generally not the folks that I go to the range with.

Ben: 49:14

Yeah. So you wouldn't shoot Blair White's pink AR 15.

Gene: 49:20

Probably not. No, I don't care that, that she's got one, that's fine, but to me, it's I, dude, I don't even like normal colored guns if they have too much shit slapped on the gun. The, the ultra gadget LARPing shit is just, is not my cup of tea.

Ben: 49:40

Yeah. No, very simple. Keep it simple. Stupid. Yeah.

Gene: 49:45

exactly. And I, my, my favorite, the gun that I literally keep by my bed

Ben: 49:52

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Gene: 49:54

a it's a Winchester 1400 shotgun or 1300 that I've had for 20 years. That has that I've, I've done many classes with, and it has the, the grip for the light taped on there with gaffer tape. To me, that is the perfect fucking gun.

Ben: 50:18

yeah. I ate 70 police for me.

Gene: 50:21

Yeah. The, the, the Winchester's a little lighter. That honestly was the main reason I like Winchester over over the Remington's is the, the lightness.

Ben: 50:30

yeah I I, I just, I've shot eight seventies forever. I've got an eight 70 wing master. I've got Mossbergs. I've got all sorts of stuff and I just, I like them. Speaking of guns, did you watch the G gun owners of America interview with the CEO of Palmetto state?

Gene: 50:48

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I appreciate you sending me that cuz that did not pop up on my recommend for

Ben: 50:52

I thought that was a really cool interview, dude.

Gene: 50:55

I like that guy. I did not realize they were just kind of good old boys

Ben: 51:00

Yeah. Good old boys that kind of started haphazardly and have made it into some. Yeah. And I, I didn't realize that FN was, you know, a lot of people were giving them shit about their barrels early on. And it's interesting to know the people who are giving them shit about their barrels when you go back and look at the reviews were comparing it to FN and it's

Gene: 51:23

that's that's was making them.

Ben: 51:25

you're an idiot.

Gene: 51:26

Yep Plenty of that to go around and I've always been a big fan of FN not just Because, you know, they, they had cool guns that were in video games, but I like the, the forward thinking designs that they had. And so I had the couple of FM two thousands or FFSF 2000, whatever the fuck they are now. And,

Ben: 51:50

weird guns.

Gene: 51:51

They were, yeah, they were kind of unusual looking, they were very plasticky, but it was really one of the first ergonomically designed bullpups because the other bullpups that preceded it were effectively, somebody decided to do a conversion, even if they were manufactured from the factory that way, they felt a lot more like the Steyr AUG to me always felt very unergonomic.

Ben: 52:14

Yeah.

Gene: 52:15

And that was one of the earliest bull

Ben: 52:16

the FN F 2000, by the way, was a failed that was trying to replace the M4 early on, you know, the U S military has been going through these different trials. This is where the six, eight cartridge originally came from the SPC six, eight, which he talked about because they were big fans of, and I, I was too, I still have a six, eight AR. I love that cartridge. It's just, yeah. Gotten too expensive for what I need it for. So I, you know, anyway yeah, it's it, it's, it's an interesting road.

Gene: 52:49

I just feel like the the vo is a next generation of the progression of design for bullpups. So I, I got rid of the F two thousands. I got to war instead.

Ben: 53:03

Yeah. A lot of people hate on bull pups in general

Gene: 53:06

And I don't understand why.

Ben: 53:08

trigger. Like the, the real argument against bull pup is, Oh, you've got such a long linkage, your trigger

Gene: 53:14

Mm-Hmm.

Ben: 53:15

Uh,

Gene: 53:16

ridiculous. It, your trigger doesn't.

Ben: 53:19

dude.

Gene: 53:20

It doesn't yeah, exactly. And your trigger doesn't have to suck. It only sucks if it's an afterthought. And if it's designed from the ground up to be a bull pup, there's no reason for the trigger to suck. In fact, you can have the trigger, have a half pound pull if you want, because you've got the linkage leverage in there. It would not be

Ben: 53:43

more about the take up. Again, I agree with you that that doesn't necessarily have to be a design constraint. I just think that it has been on most bullpups. So that's people's gut reaction. You know, these are the same people, though. You know, I like watching the Military Arms channel on YouTube some. But the guys You gotta take what he says with a grain of salt. Because forever he was talking about, Why would you ever need anything more than 5. And now he's I'm ditching 5. 56 and I'm going 3. 08. Yeah, no shit. A lot of us have been on the, you know, 5. 56 isn't exactly the cartridge I want. Never has been. I'm not a 5. 56 guy. Like

Gene: 54:25

I think five, five, six is a good pistol cartridge.

Ben: 54:28

I don't. Um, I, I'd rather have a 5, I'd rather have a 5. 7 than a 5. 56. Just because of the powder expenditure

Gene: 54:37

Okay, let me rephrase that. I think the 5. 56 diameter is a good pistol diameter. Forget about the actual cartridge itself. But I, I think that people forget why we adopted 5. 56 to begin with. And it was, it was by design. No,

Ben: 54:55

lot of people who didn't want to carry ammo and the rifle kicks too much

Gene: 55:00

it was, yeah, they have one chase too much by design. It was because the calculation that was made accurately that determined that if you wound somebody, it takes two people out of the fight. If you kill somebody, it only takes one person out of the fight. So when you're fighting Vietnam, when you've got guys that are in their home turf. And you don't know where the hell they are, cause there's, you know, leafy greens everywhere. You're much better off wounding a whole bunch of people than killing half of those people. So 5 5 6 makes sense in the context of a an advantage in warfare. With no armor. Exactly. But once you add, and historically, US has really only fought people that don't have armor.

Ben: 55:46

And here's the other thing range limitation. So five, five, six was also meant to be a sub 500 meter cartridge period. One of the issues they ran into Afghanistan was hilltop the hilltop fighting in Afghanistan and ranges pushing that envelope pretty hard and it being really way less than lethal at range.

Gene: 56:13

Yeah.'cause you want the wound to be the type of wound that requires

Ben: 56:17

Immediate medical attention,

Gene: 56:19

Not something that they can keep fighting with and then go back to get treated. Exactly.

Ben: 56:25

which is why they're overcompensating and going with the two, two, seven fury.

Gene: 56:29

Which do you think that's gonna last? I think there's gonna be a big pushback and the army will get more ified and they'll just complain about the recoil

Ben: 56:38

Yeah. I think you're going to ha I think, I think it's going to be the same story as the, it's going to be the 10 millimeter. Is what it is. And here's why. It's gonna be the same bullshit that the FBI pulled. Oh, we're gonna go with the 10 millimeter. Oh, it's too much. Okay, so that's how we ended up with the 40 cal. Which I like

Gene: 56:56

which is a good cartridge. I it's, it is a great cartridge. Yeah.

Ben: 56:59

But what, what happened? Everybody ended up going back to the nine because,

Gene: 57:03

Cost.

Ben: 57:04

No, pussies.

Gene: 57:06

I think costs had an awful lot to do with it, honestly,

Ben: 57:09

the reason why I went to a nine is because of cost and because having a unified cartridge, you know, with

Gene: 57:17

I think the nine is probably the worst cartridge that I own, but I own quite a few guns in it.

Ben: 57:22

Yeah, me too. And I, I mean, I

Gene: 57:24

I, my favorite cartridge,

Ben: 57:27

that is laying around, so that's worse, but you know,

Gene: 57:31

I no longer have a three 80. I sold mine to Adam. The, my, my favorite cartridge still is 45. I just really like shooting 45. It's subsonic, it's you know, it's just, it feels both

Ben: 57:46

of energy.

Gene: 57:47

strong and yet soft. There's, it's a weird thing. It's

Ben: 57:52

Unless you're shooting a light pistol, then it's not soft.

Gene: 57:55

Probably. Yeah. Yeah. But

Ben: 57:57

There's a reason why the 45 works really well in a heavy 1911

Gene: 58:03

or or a Glock with 13 rounds of 45 in the magazine,

Ben: 58:07

until you're running out of

Gene: 58:08

until you're running out and you're like, God damn, this thing hurts more,

Ben: 58:12

Wow. This is way snappier.

Gene: 58:14

It, it, it, the 45 is

Ben: 58:16

shot a ported 45 Glock though. Or a comp might change a lot of that

Gene: 58:23

Yeah. Yeah, that's, I don't, I got rid of my Glock in 45. I, I've got my Springfield XDMs in 45.

Ben: 58:35

yeah. So before we move on too far from guns, apparently here next week, Chacho the Palmetto state CEO was saying they're going to release a lot of new products here next week. So I'm very interested to see what they do.

Gene: 58:52

Totally.

Ben: 58:53

I'm hoping they release a 308 jackal.

Gene: 58:57

Mm.

Ben: 58:57

they release a 308 jackal, I I'm

Gene: 59:00

one.

Ben: 59:01

Oh God. Yes. If not, I'm going to see what they release and everything else, and

Gene: 59:06

I thought you wanted to Warren through

Ben: 59:08

do, I do, I do, I do, but I'm going to see what they release first and then I'll make a

Gene: 59:13

Yeah. And I, I do

Ben: 59:16

Bonus time is coming

Gene: 59:17

the jackal

Ben: 59:18

do a pretty good gun purchase coming up.

Gene: 59:21

There you go. There you go. I do the the Jackal rifle stock. I've got the Jackal pistol, but and I, I don't think I got it in 300 blackout though. I think I just got it in, in five, five, six, unfortunately.

Ben: 59:35

Yeah, but that's just a barrel change. Literally, it's the same bolt face, everything else, it's just a barrel change.

Gene: 59:43

cause I, I'd probably prefer it switched up, but

Ben: 59:48

a barrel is not a hard thing to change or expensive to change, Gene. I've got you know, vices and barrel wrenches and everything else.

Gene: 59:56

a saw. What? I don't know. What are you saying? What are you offering to do

Ben: 1:00:03

your barrel,

Gene: 1:00:07

anyway, my, my thing I was trying to say before I started making fun of that is I really like their, their rifle stock because it is kind of a clone of the scar. Yeah, and it's, it's just a visual

Ben: 1:00:23

folding mechanism.

Gene: 1:00:25

Yeah, it's, it's folding, but it, it, it has the profile of the scar one. And I've always thought that was just a pretty looking stock. I don't know if it's any better on your shoulder, but it definitely looks nicer. And unfortunately, if you want to get that in a scar format, pull out about four and a half grand. So that, that is that I could never justify that in all the years that the scars have been available. That to me is just too much. Into one gun that I could literally get two or three or four guns for that cost that could do a lot more.

Ben: 1:01:04

Yeah, unfortunately they are they are spendy.

Gene: 1:01:08

and I, you know, I've, I've shot them, I've got friends that have them, but I also have friends that have Barrett 50 cal rifles, which again, same thing in my mind. It's

Ben: 1:01:17

I would love to have one,

Gene: 1:01:18

I would never spend eight grand on a fucking rifle that you could barely use anywhere.

Ben: 1:01:24

Eight grand on a fucking rifle that you can't hardly shoot anywhere. I mean, finding a range to be allowed to

Gene: 1:01:30

Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:01:31

is. You know, not easy. And then the, the other thing there is they are dollars per round

Gene: 1:01:45

Mm hmm. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Ben: 1:01:46

And that's if you're reloading, that's every, I mean, it

Gene: 1:01:49

I think 10 was the last time I checked.

Ben: 1:01:51

depending on the ammo and everything else, it gets expensive. So it's just, you know, what, what are you willing to pay? And

Gene: 1:02:02

Really, there should be no reason we shouldn't be able to buy a Browning machine gun,

Ben: 1:02:09

one

Gene: 1:02:10

the one that uses the 50 cals. Yeah

Ben: 1:02:18

Browning automatic rifle. I would love to have a bar. I would, Oh my God. That is a, that is a dream gun. I would even love to have a semi automatic one in 308. If someone recreated that rifle in 308 semi auto as just a reproduction fun gun, I would, I would purchase one.

Gene: 1:02:39

I'm surprised there isn't one out there. I got to imagine somebody had the same idea.

Ben: 1:02:44

I don't think so. Not that

Gene: 1:02:45

Have you checked? You should do a search. Do you, do you use a gun deals?

Ben: 1:02:50

Gun broker

Gene: 1:02:52

No gun deals. You never been to gun deals?

Ben: 1:02:55

new. Okay.

Gene: 1:02:57

them all the time when I'm looking for something. So it's basically an index site and they index pricing in thousands of stores. And their website is just gun. I think it's I'll type it in here, but I think it's just guns that deals or gun that deals. Let me just double check. It's like gun dot deals. And you just type in what you're looking for and it'll show you like 20 or 30 different online stores with their current pricing.

Ben: 1:03:29

Think what I'm wanting exists.

Gene: 1:03:31

yeah that's why I'm saying is if it exists, you could probably type it in there and it'll show you who's selling it if it exists, because I'm pretty sure they literally index. Every gun shop, which has a website, like here's the. AGM Rattler thermal optic for 849 right now.

Ben: 1:03:56

Okay. And

Gene: 1:03:58

a pretty good deal.

Ben: 1:03:59

okay. I don't know.

Gene: 1:04:00

Anyway, they got a lot of deals. If you just want to, you know, waste some money, drop some money on stuff, then just go there without a, a particular interest in something specific. And I guarantee you, you're going to run across something that's on sale. That's going to be like, Oh, cool. I never knew I needed this, but it clearly I need it. So it's just a fun little indexing browsing site. There's nine millimeter upper in F. D.

Ben: 1:04:28

semi automatic version

Gene: 1:04:31

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:04:32

from Ohio Ordnance.

Gene: 1:04:34

Mm hmm. Mm

Ben: 1:04:35

to be a Repop, but it is still in 30. 06. And they want, depending on your options around eight grand.

Gene: 1:04:52

hmm. Pretty good deal.

Ben: 1:04:57

Yeah.

Gene: 1:04:57

Here's a le trade in Glock 22 Gen forest 40 Cal with three magazines to 72. That's a good deal. I've I've bought a lot of, yeah, guns, gun singular that deals gun that deals. I've bought three or four. Or more police trade in Glocks because they,

Ben: 1:05:26

They

Gene: 1:05:26

kind of like those

Ben: 1:05:27

wear than anything else?

Gene: 1:05:28

Exactly. They're just like the magazines you mentioned. So you look on the inside and the barrel looks like it's never been shot through. And the only thing you have is some wear on the sides of the slide, where they put it in the holster every morning and took it out of the holster every evening. That's like the majority of the wear on the gun is, is very much external and it's not, it's it's never to the point where the, the, the Parkerization is rubbed off. It's just, you can see that there's been some friction a little bit on the outside of the gun, but that's about it. So I, I'm always recommending people buy law enforcement trade ins and I've got, I still, my, my. Original 40 caliber Glock 22 which had a lot of parts replaced, including the barrel, but the frame and the slide is original. And so it's a gen one Glock 22. So seeing that I can get a gen four one for two 72 is making me go, Hmm. Do I, do I want another gun this month?

Ben: 1:06:37

The, the other thing I'm wanting to look at getting

Gene: 1:06:41

Ooh, they got a Beretta 1301 for just 1400 bucks.

Ben: 1:06:44

To start getting back into doing more

Gene: 1:06:47

Huh,

Ben: 1:06:49

I've always done stuff very small batch because I've always been, you know, hand loading match grade cartridges. I've never really loaded pistol cartridges or anything like that because I've always just been doing stuff for bolt guns and, you know, some semi autos that are, you know, Long range ship, like I would hand load a bunch of 6. 8 stuff because a 6. 8 ammo was hard to get at the time. Now it's really expensive. And then B, I wanted specific loads for hunting or specific loads. You know, you back in the day, you couldn't get 6. 8 soft points. They just weren't made. Silver State Army was making a bunch of hollow points, but hollow points aren't great for hunting. I wanted soft points, but luckily 6. 8 and 270 are the same bullet, so get 270 bullet. Anyway, I was doing stuff like that. Or my 300 Remington Ultramag, I was doing hand loads for that to get the target round I wanted. I always used a single stage press. Yes.

Gene: 1:07:55

you can get those pretty cheap.

Ben: 1:07:57

No, you can't. Not anymore.

Gene: 1:07:59

No, I, okay, I mean I saw them, they used ones that are pretty cheap because people buy them and they don't realize

Ben: 1:08:04

Oh, the gun? Yeah. The ammo is 80 a box

Gene: 1:08:07

Yeah, no, I'm talking about the guns because you always see those oh, why is that so cheap? Oh, it's a rum. Okay,

Ben: 1:08:12

Yeah. Because it kicks like a Yeah. Because it's the, it's the largest of the 300s. So the RUM and the 338 Lapua are essentially the same case. The the, it goes 300 Win Mag, 300 Weatherby Mag, and then 300 RUM. So a 300 RUM is more powerful than a 30 06.

Gene: 1:08:34

And I've I've I've shot a buddy's 300 wind mag and that to me felt like I don't want to have this gun I'm happy with the wind wind short mag.

Ben: 1:08:45

Yeah, I, I like it but I've got a heavy gun, and

Gene: 1:08:49

Mm hmm

Ben: 1:08:50

built it up for myself, and I know what it is, and I've tuned the loads, and I know what I'm doing. But anyway, I, anyway, I'm looking at getting a progressive press, and starting to potentially manufacture some

Gene: 1:09:04

Oh, here's something we actually need. Unless you pick one up or a team Wendy tech helmets for two 65.

Ben: 1:09:11

I haven't picked up anything, I don't have anything to mount on it.

Gene: 1:09:16

Okay.

Ben: 1:09:17

but, send me the link a bump helmet is all I would ever have if I had night vision

Gene: 1:09:23

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's the, the, the cheap ones are like two 50. The expensive ones are a thousand.

Ben: 1:09:28

yeah, I don't need a ballistic helmet though, I mean, go see my arguments on why I don't want body armor.

Gene: 1:09:36

Are you opposed to those? The arguments?

Ben: 1:09:41

We've talked about it before

Gene: 1:09:42

yeah. No, I, okay. But I thought you were saying go see, meaning people should go to the website.

Ben: 1:09:47

I mean, I can, I can write up a

Gene: 1:09:49

I'm not encouraging you. I just thought that's what you meant. So

Ben: 1:09:51

yeah, you, you gave me crap. You, you saw one of my posts and you're like, dude, you need another podcast. I'm like, no, no, I don't this. I can do over time and post it when I need

Gene: 1:10:01

I, that's true. I mean, if you're like traveling and you're sitting in the hotel room and you're, it's not, you're not ready to go to sleep, you just spit out a an article on the website.

Ben: 1:10:11

Yeah. And you know, if people find it valuable, then great. And then if nothing else, it, you know, it's a way for me to post some stuff that. You know, just like today, I can go back and look at and say, Hey, I want to make sure I talk about this and think about my thoughts.

Gene: 1:10:25

You know what I do still want to do at some point is pick up a by a tech, Texas manufactured suppressor.

Ben: 1:10:34

good luck finding one.

Gene: 1:10:36

There's two companies I found. I just, they were out of stock, but,

Ben: 1:10:40

Send, send it my way. Cause I call BS.

Gene: 1:10:44

What? That they don't make them?

Ben: 1:10:46

That they won't want a tax stamp

Gene: 1:10:49

Oh, no, no, I don't mind doing a tax stamp. I've never had a problem with that.

Ben: 1:10:52

Then why do you need a Texas made suppressor?

Gene: 1:10:54

Just in case.

Ben: 1:10:56

Just in case what?

Gene: 1:10:57

In case I need servicing and I'd like to use a company that's in the same country as I am.

Ben: 1:11:05

Okay funny, good,

Gene: 1:11:06

Oh it's true. I would prefer most things be Texas manufactured if there's a choice available.

Ben: 1:11:13

Yeah, sure, me too. But, you

Gene: 1:11:15

And, and I'd love supporting the local economy.

Ben: 1:11:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gene: 1:11:19

And I did find that there is a I, I have it marked somewhere, I don't have it in front of me, but there's a in San Antonio or just outside of it, there's a, a company that specializes night vision stuff. So they sell all the big brands that OpticsPlanet does, except they're based here in Texas. And I was thinking at some point, I can't, but they're, they're literally called something like Texas night vision or something like that. But I was,

Ben: 1:11:45

at Nightline?

Gene: 1:11:47

Night line, I don't know, sounds familiar.

Ben: 1:11:50

Yeah, that, that's the one Risky Krisky always talks about. They've got some prices on there that are interesting. I haven't done the research that you have.

Gene: 1:11:58

I was going to say so I picked up a digital night vision monocle thing

Ben: 1:12:05

you know,

Gene: 1:12:05

and it is way surprisingly better than I expected.

Ben: 1:12:09

how much was it?

Gene: 1:12:10

Two 60 to 70

Ben: 1:12:12

That's pretty

Gene: 1:12:13

right around there. It's very cheap. Certainly I wasn't expecting any more than, you know, 10 percent of the performance of a and NBS 14, but I think it's substantially better than that. It's certainly not, not going to be like, you can't tell that it's digital, but it's better than my other two digital night vision systems, one of which was a thousand bucks and and it's, it is in the, in the size format of an NBS 14 and it's helmet mountable it has a lot of features that again, I wouldn't expect them something this cheap, like it has both focus and diopter controls. So you can. Not have to wear glasses and still see things if you have a prescription. But the, the key thing, obviously the main pro of it is that the unaided performance, meaning without an IR lamp is the best of any night digital night vision I've ever played with. And for that price, it's yeah, I'll send you a link and you can put it as an affiliate thing if you're still doing those.

Ben: 1:13:27

it on Amazon?

Gene: 1:13:28

yeah, it's on Amazon. That's where I got it. So

Ben: 1:13:30

I, I, I, I do have some link pages up mainly reading lists and to kind of give people some ideas about things, but yeah

Gene: 1:13:39

might as well,

Ben: 1:13:40

take the the purchases if anyone wants to do anything like that,

Gene: 1:13:44

yeah, make a buck or two off of that

Ben: 1:13:47

I haven't made but. Yeah, no. In fact, right now the, the issue right now is I got kicked off the affiliate program and I redid everything and I have to get a couple purchases to make sure that I, I get in that past that grace period. But yeah,

Gene: 1:14:10

Yeah, but it's,

Ben: 1:14:12

of 5 and 43

Gene: 1:14:15

Oh, I, Hey man, it's free. It's still free money.

Ben: 1:14:17

Yeah, no, which is fine. Again, I was putting up links to books and stuff like that and it's I should do this. If someone does it, great. If not, I'm not mad about it.

Gene: 1:14:30

Either way, it's, it's in the price point where even if you've spent the money to get a nice Gen 3 night vision system, analog system for five grand, which is about what they're running this is the kind of thing that you buy three or four of for other people that are going to be in the same situation as you who didn't buy night vision systems.

Ben: 1:14:53

well, and I mean, battery power can be an issue with some of this and there's a lot, there's, there's lots of things to consider.

Gene: 1:15:01

Yeah. And it uses the same exact battery that the NBS 14 uses

Ben: 1:15:05

Yeah, it just goes through that way faster.

Gene: 1:15:07

it, but it way faster, but still not too bad. It's five hours.

Ben: 1:15:13

Yeah, well.

Gene: 1:15:15

You know, it's not like 18 hours, but it's five hours is still a lot better because my, the scope, the next scope that I've got. Sucks down one of those batteries in about two hours. So,

Ben: 1:15:30

Well, night, night vision, batteries is a problem. There, there's several, there's several things there that we have to consider. And

Gene: 1:15:41

Yeah, and there's, there's certainly some minuses, like the Wi Fi network on it doesn't, I mean, it's there, but it's very cheesy. So it's, I wouldn't get it for

Ben: 1:15:50

are you using a Wi Fi network on a night

Gene: 1:15:53

you can get the, the videos of your night vision stuff on your phone.

Ben: 1:15:59

Not worried about that one.

Gene: 1:16:00

but like I said, it's one of those things that if you If there's no way you're going to spend the money on a real analog system because it's completely out of your price range, which it is for most people spending four and a half or more thousand dollars on something just in case as generally out of budget.

Ben: 1:16:20

I mean, it shouldn't be just in case, though.

Gene: 1:16:23

Yeah, I mean, if you're

Ben: 1:16:23

all your, if all, here's the thing. With guns, ammo. Any prepping supplies, if you just sit it down in a closet and just leave it there, It's not just in case, because if just in case happens, you're fucked. You have to utilize stuff, like your freeze dried food. Yeah, it's got 20 year shelf life, You probably shouldn't leave it that long

Gene: 1:16:47

well, not the desserts because I already ate those.

Ben: 1:16:50

you got to go through and you got to try stuff, you got to eat stuff, you got to rotate it out, You

Gene: 1:16:56

dude. Here's another expensive thing that I really don't want to get, but I'm tempted to is a dehydrator or sorry, not a dehydrator. A

Ben: 1:17:05

Freeze dryer?

Gene: 1:17:06

freeze dryer.

Ben: 1:17:07

Yeah, they're very expensive and they're very finicky.

Gene: 1:17:10

yeah, exactly on both those counts. But the buddy of mine that I want to help with the deer. First of all, the, the liverwurst turned out exceptionally good. I couldn't believe that this was something that I actually made.

Ben: 1:17:23

So the next bout of gout is coming. Uh

Gene: 1:17:26

I mean, I, I snarfed that thing down real fast, but I got anti gout drugs now, so I'm all set. I talked to my doctor. I told him, Hey, I found these drugs that are supposed to work. And he's sure. You want script? I'm like, hell yeah. So now I have a proactive script for those. And he just said, yeah, just keep like 10 of them on hand. And let me know when you need the script renewed. And I'm, you know, hopefully it'll be another six years before I have that shit happening again, but just in case I've got the pills now as well. And what they do is actually a molecularly bond with uric acid. So it's, it, it effectively takes it out of your bloodstream. Which is great. But anyway, the, the, some of the other food that he gave me that, that cause I just, you know, wanted some samples of freeze dried stuff that he'd made to see how the MREs or would be. It's really good. And the, the dehydrated bananas. Tastes really fucking good. They're, I don't know if you've ever had banana chips. These are way better than banana chips because they hold their shape.

Ben: 1:18:35

Here's the thing. We used to, so when I was a little kid,

Gene: 1:18:39

Mm hmm. A

Ben: 1:18:40

we had,

Gene: 1:18:42

You were a wee take.

Ben: 1:18:44

yeah, we had banana trees in the backyard.

Gene: 1:18:48

Oh, wow.

Ben: 1:18:49

And they produced every now and then when

Gene: 1:18:51

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:18:51

freezes. And because it takes two years without a freeze for a banana tree to produce.

Gene: 1:18:56

Oh, I didn't know that.

Ben: 1:18:57

Yeah, so every now and then we'd get a big batch of bananas, and we would, my mom had all these dehydrators and stuff, and we would, as they came off the tree and stuff, we'd be cutting up bananas and making banana chips and everything else, and we'd kind of make our own trail mix, right, we'd take some watermelon, dehydrate watermelon, which Oh, my God, if you haven't had dehydrated watermelon,

Gene: 1:19:19

Oh yeah, it's concentrated flavor.

Ben: 1:19:21

oh, my God, it's an, it's intense and then you know, strawberries and everything else and we'd go through and we'd make our own little trail mixes and stuff and those banana chips, man, off of your own banana tree that, you know, just totally different than

Gene: 1:19:38

no pesticides.

Ben: 1:19:40

Yeah

Gene: 1:19:40

and that's the thing is what I've noticed in specifically bananas is that unlike a dehydrator where they kind of go flat and turn into these flat little shapes with the freeze dryer, it's more like a dried out marshmallow. Like it's still, it's, it has kind of the, the structure to where it didn't go flat. It just has the water removed. And

Ben: 1:20:06

there's a, there's a bunch of different ways to, to, you know, do it.

Gene: 1:20:11

I just wish those fucking things weren't like 1800 bucks because they're way overpriced.

Ben: 1:20:16

Oh, that's a cheap one.

Gene: 1:20:17

That is smallest size you can get is 1800 bucks.

Ben: 1:20:20

Yeah, the, the ones my parents were playing around with, which was a friend of theirs loaned it to them because they were considering getting

Gene: 1:20:30

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:20:30

And it was a big one. It was, it was one of the ones Alex Jones was advertising for a while. And anyway, I think it was like a 5, 000 unit

Gene: 1:20:40

Oh yeah.

Ben: 1:20:41

and it sucked.

Gene: 1:20:42

Mm hmm. Yeah. There's I can't remember the name of the company, but there's one company that's kind of got like a mass market control of, for the home versions right now, because historically the only way you can get these, they were industrial machines, not home machines. They were made for, you know, companies that make food products. So they were big and they, they used industrial loud motors. They, they were not made for something you could stick in your kitchen or even your laundry room, which I think where most people put them these days. And then this company came along and they started adapting them to be more friendly towards a smaller. Size in the house but they kept the price high So I, I don't know. It's if I could pick one up for under a grand, I, I wouldn't even think about it. I'd just get it.

Ben: 1:21:40

Okay. I've got a lot of things I'd purchased before that.

Gene: 1:21:47

Fair enough. But like one of the guys videos I watched on that machine and he, you know, he does videos basically freeze drying stuff is he did the math and he said, you know, Costco has their, their roast chickens the hot. Chickens you could buy there. Those are a loss later. So they, they actually sell those chickens for about two bucks a pound. And so he went and bought like 10 of those chickens

Ben: 1:22:16

Yeah,

Gene: 1:22:17

and then stripped all the meat off of them. And so now he had fully cooked seasoned chicken meat. Or two bucks a pound. It's a little more than that because once you throw the bones away, the, the usable weight goes down. So let's say three bucks a pound, which is cheaper than he could get it if he just bought raw chicken. And then he just you know, divides it up and, and freeze dries it. And makes his own sealed freeze dried seasoned chicken MREs for less than, you know, the cost for him to do it from scratch with raw chicken. So stuff like that's kind of neat. I like that idea.

Ben: 1:22:59

I guess

Gene: 1:23:02

Yeah. Cause every time I look at the price of Mountain House, I just go, yeah, maybe 1700 bucks. Isn't that bad?

Ben: 1:23:09

yeah, but here couple things one. You've got to do the bags. You've got to have the right bags You've got to have oxygen absorbers You've got a you got to go through and do a couple of things here that you got to can consider here

Gene: 1:23:25

That's true. No, you're absolutely right.

Ben: 1:23:28

It's not it's not a just straightforward. Oh, this is cheaper. Okay Make sure you're doing everything you need to

Gene: 1:23:37

Yeah, it's, it probably isn't cheaper unless you're doing it for a family of six. I mean, I'm sure it's not going to be cheaper for me to just make them for myself. It's cheaper just to buy them.

Ben: 1:23:53

and I would also say don't Don't expect it to last as, as long necessarily.

Gene: 1:24:02

Yeah, yeah, maybe. I mean, it depends too, because the other thing you can do is you can pack it in, in those those Metallic bags vacuum pack everything after it's freeze dried and then store all of that stuff in the freezer. And then you've got almost unlimited lifetime.

Ben: 1:24:26

Yeah. I mean, uh, all I can say is shit hits the fan. I'm not going to care if stuff is past its

Gene: 1:24:35

you say that, but

Ben: 1:24:38

okay.

Gene: 1:24:39

I don't know. I know too many people that have that attitude and they're like, I don't. That's why I don't buy the expensive MRE stuff. Cause if, if I have to use this, I'm not going to care what it tastes like. Bullshit. You're still going to care. Okay. Your stomach is going to care,

Ben: 1:24:58

maybe,

Gene: 1:24:58

will care.

Ben: 1:24:59

maybe.

Gene: 1:25:00

And of all of the different brands, I just find that Mountain House tastes the best. I've been buying their shit for 20 years. Mm

Ben: 1:25:10

Interesting that the floor plate for this reloading device I'm looking at, 45 ACP, 30 06, 308, 65 Cremor, and 458 Zocom use the same floor plate. And I have 308 dies already, and I

Gene: 1:25:30

Does that mean 45 would as well?

Ben: 1:25:32

yeah, 45 floor plate, right? So if I ordered the model with, I have 45 dyes, but that's okay.

Gene: 1:25:42

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:25:43

They don't have the 308 diversion in stock, but they had the 45 ACP. So I'll take another set of 45 dyes

Gene: 1:25:50

hmm. Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:25:51

and, you know, be able to load 45 and 308 on.

Gene: 1:25:54

Mm hmm. Yeah, that's, that's cool. And the presses aren't too expensive.

Ben: 1:26:02

Oh my God. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Like I'm, I'm probably going to get a cheap one just because that's. You know, what I guess I do these days? I was supposed to inherit, I was I was supposed to inherit a Dylan from a friend of mine, but stuff happened. Anyway, his wife never got it to me. She has now passed away. It, it, I, I gotta breathe and just let that go. But if you look at a XL750 from Dylan with,

Gene: 1:26:40

It's under grand. It's cheap.

Ben: 1:26:44

okay.

Gene: 1:26:45

My dad had one of those and actually I think he still does technically

Ben: 1:26:49

wants to sell it, anyone who has a Dillon press and wants to sell it, get in contact with

Gene: 1:26:53

hit, hit you up. Yeah.

Ben: 1:26:55

Yeah,

Gene: 1:26:55

At do, do that name ben.com.

Ben: 1:26:58

exactly.

Gene: 1:26:59

Yeah, cause I know that I've got my buddy that lives up in Seattle is supposed to swing by my dad's place to pick up all his old ammo that he had made. Cause he, you know, he's getting old. He wants to not, to start clearing out the house, basically. And he asked me and I'm like, I'm not going to schlep a thousand pounds of ammo back from Seattle. That's just not going to be fun. No,

Ben: 1:27:24

dude, U Haul. Go.

Gene: 1:27:27

no, no, no. I don't, I've done that before. It's I don't, it's not an enjoyable thing to be driving around with a bunch of ammo.

Ben: 1:27:35

Yeah. Here with just minimal, minimal accessories, not going crazy Dillon is gonna be 1200.

Gene: 1:27:45

all right.

Ben: 1:27:46

Minimum accessories. The Hornady is going to be 700 and something bucks and then the Lee six pack, which has gotten some decent reviews is 400. But anyway, I would, if someone's got a Dylan and it could be a couple of generations old, I don't care that they want to sell for under a grand. I would be all over that.

Gene: 1:28:11

Oh, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. It's I always liked the Dylan ads myself. I don't know if they still do them, but back in the day, they always had scantily clad girls posing next to Dylan presses.

Ben: 1:28:26

Yeah. Shocker.

Gene: 1:28:29

Back when men was men,

Ben: 1:28:31

Yeah. So do you did you see that it looks like Sports Illustrated's dead?

Gene: 1:28:35

saw that, so good riddance.

Ben: 1:28:37

Yeah, I mean, you know, after they put two trannies on the swimsuit cover, I mean, whoa.

Gene: 1:28:44

They, they, that's just rewards as far as I'm concerned.

Ben: 1:28:49

Ah. Oh, Futurama. Predicting so many things.

Gene: 1:28:54

It's, oh, did they predict there was going to be trannies in there?

Ben: 1:28:57

Oh, they, they predicted lots of things. Yeah. Including Canadian suicide stuff.

Gene: 1:29:03

You know, I, I tried several times to watch that show you recommended Rick and Morty.

Ben: 1:29:09

Oh my god, you

Gene: 1:29:10

I just have a really hard time watching more than one episode at a time. Like most things I, I like to binge watch. I cannot binge watch that. There's too much weird shit happening there. I feel like I need to be inebriated or something to enjoy it.

Ben: 1:29:25

no.

Gene: 1:29:26

I,

Ben: 1:29:27

I, I enjoy Rick and Morty.

Gene: 1:29:29

I don't know. I, I, a lot of people have told me to watch it and stuff, but I just, I've watched now three episodes, the first three and each. I, I couldn't watch more than one at a time. I'm like, okay, this is too fucked up. I need to watch something a little more saying,

Ben: 1:29:49

I mean, that's kind of the whole point in a way, but

Gene: 1:29:54

I don't know. It's, I, I also never got into your, your Star Trek cartoon thing either.

Ben: 1:30:02

Yeah, it's a sense of humor, dude. You have to have one.

Gene: 1:30:06

Apparently you have to have a 12 year old boy one,

Ben: 1:30:11

Seth what jokes were you just making earlier?

Gene: 1:30:16

but that's called a callback in case you're not familiar with how jokes work. But that's fine. Like we don't have to, you know, it's bad enough. We already read the same books and look at the same gun websites. So we don't need to watch the same cartoons. Speaking of books, my, my other 12. So he caught up to me. Almost. I finished it. I think two weeks before he did. And I think he's

Ben: 1:30:40

have not. I

Gene: 1:30:41

Oh, really? Everybody dies. Okay, now you're done.

Ben: 1:30:45

Yeah, fuck you. I have not gotten to finish book 12 yet. Yeah. I'm about halfway through.

Gene: 1:30:51

That's ironic.

Ben: 1:30:53

I Shit gets busy, dude.

Gene: 1:30:55

I know, I know, but you're the one who started this whole thing.

Ben: 1:30:58

Yeah, you're welcome. But I also have read five additional books in, so there's that, you know,

Gene: 1:31:05

Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm actually reading one of the expanse books now.

Ben: 1:31:11

I was going back and looking if you count Audible and all my reading, I read 68 books last year.

Gene: 1:31:20

Yeah. That's too many.

Ben: 1:31:23

How

Gene: 1:31:23

yeah. It just, it's, it's way too much. Cause they give you 12 credits a year. So you should just read 12 books.

Ben: 1:31:28

Oh, most of the book reading was not audible the stuff for going home and stuff like that. That's mostly audible or Kindle and stuff like that. Just because it's, it's, it's fun. But when I want to read a serious book, that's usually,

Gene: 1:31:43

You want to use your eyeballs?

Ben: 1:31:45

yeah. Anyway, I read a lot.

Gene: 1:31:47

No, I know. I know. I've generally read under a dozen books a year and was perfectly happy with that until you, Oh, you got to read this series. It'll suck up 12 credits right away.

Ben: 1:31:59

Was it worth it?

Gene: 1:32:01

No, it was pretty good. I don't, I don't mind having spent the time to read it and I look forward to reading the other series, but I just don't want to do it immediately.

Ben: 1:32:09

Yeah. I, I, the other series some of the feedback I've gotten from people is, I, I think you'll like it for this, but some of the people I've had reading it, it's too visceral for

Gene: 1:32:24

Two Israel. Oh, okay. Yeah. I probably would enjoy that more.

Ben: 1:32:28

yeah, I mean, there's some scenes in the first one of Charlie's Requiem that should immediately cause you discomfort. And if it doesn't, something's wrong with you. So

Gene: 1:32:42

know once I get to it. But you said the next one, the 13th is out and then end of this year.

Ben: 1:32:50

yeah, book 13 supposed to come out this year. 2024

Gene: 1:32:54

Yeah. That, that'll be interesting.

Ben: 1:32:56

and there's supposed to be a, you should definitely read Charlie's before

Gene: 1:33:00

Yeah, before it comes out.

Ben: 1:33:01

a crossover.

Gene: 1:33:02

Yeah. Yeah, but now what I found interesting is my buddies negative comments about the series were very similar to mine, which is just that he, you kind of, or the author kind of glosses over the incredible amount of good luck that he had the main character in having effectively. A a private army unit.

Ben: 1:33:27

MacGuffin.

Gene: 1:33:28

Yeah, total McGuffin. Exactly. And the, on the one hand you know, we, we're not taking the law into our own hands and we're, we're going to get a judge and I'm not here to be a jury and executioner, but yet every me too moment, somebody gets killed and it's the guy like there, there is no inquiry. There is no child. There's no investigation. Oh, this guy got accused of rape. Let's go shoot him right now. So he clearly has a very uh, like, it's a trigger for him. Rape clearly is a trigger.

Ben: 1:34:06

Jean, if we're in a post apocalyptic situation

Gene: 1:34:11

hmm. Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:34:13

you and I came upon a young woman

Gene: 1:34:17

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:34:18

that had obviously been having intercourse forcefully and she said, He raped me. Do you think you or I would take, would be, wait a second, we got to investigate

Gene: 1:34:32

Yeah, the first thing I would say is she's probably lying. Because I know women.

Ben: 1:34:37

Yeah women in college, right?

Gene: 1:34:39

Yes, I know both of those types. Yes, exactly. And, and, and that's the thing. It's the, like He has the Madonna complex thing going on. Women are infallible, they will never lie, they will never take advantage of any situation. And that's just contrary to reality. And, and this idea that somehow, when the power stops, all men just become rapists is bullshit. Frankly, you're too busy surviving to worry about going and looking for pussy. It ain't gonna happen. Will there be some? Yeah, and it's going to be mostly from convenience, it'll be mostly things like a woman knocking on your door saying, I'm really hungry. And the only thing I have to trade is myself. Okay whose choice is that? Guy's not raping her. yet, that's exactly the kind of characters in this book that are, that are going to be saying, Oh yeah, no, I, I, I've been having non consensual sex for, you know, with all these guys for the last month. Yeah, because you came to them and you said that you were willing to trade sex for food. That's why you've been having this sex. It is consensual. You're just pretending it's not.

Ben: 1:35:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gene: 1:35:56

there's, like I said, there's certain things that I think are MacGuffins and that are they're, they're very black and white painted when clearly there's a lot more grayscale in reality. I also don't like the, all this military running things and appointing governors bullshit. That's not how it ought to run. There's in my mind, no difference from What the ideal little community that they built is to a kibbutz there, he's literally built a socialist little group around them. There's no one's getting paid. No one's getting,

Ben: 1:36:33

We differ on this thought, but sure.

Gene: 1:36:35

I don't know, dude. I mean, maybe do you understand what a kibbutz is?

Ben: 1:36:39

Yes. I do.

Gene: 1:36:41

All right. And how, how is what they built different from a kibbutz? You said we differ. I'm just asking how

Ben: 1:36:52

one, there's not a unified religious tone, so

Gene: 1:36:57

You don't, you don't have to be Jewish to be in the kibbutz.

Ben: 1:37:05

Two, you think of it as socialist, I think of it as more gold skulch. Gold skulch.

Gene: 1:37:15

Yeah. I definitely don't.

Ben: 1:37:17

to work together willingly.

Gene: 1:37:20

It was. So was the kibbutz. I mean, it's no one's mandating that you go there and you're free to leave

Ben: 1:37:27

By the way, Over the 12 years that I've had an Audible account, I have averaged 41. 3 books a year on Audible,

Gene: 1:37:38

on just audible.

Ben: 1:37:39

on just

Gene: 1:37:40

So you were paying a crazy amount of money for book points.

Ben: 1:37:45

Sure.

Gene: 1:37:46

Cause they don't really give you a discount beyond 12th

Ben: 1:37:49

yeah, you can buy three credit packs here and there, but

Gene: 1:37:52

right? But that, those are a lower discount than a 12th back.

Ben: 1:37:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Gene: 1:37:55

If you could sell you at buy multiple 12 backs, I think you'd be better off at

Ben: 1:38:00

Oh yeah, but I can't, so average cost 12 bucks a

Gene: 1:38:05

you know, you could actually just probably get a second account and do split it

Ben: 1:38:09

Yeah, no,

Gene: 1:38:10

by 12 packs. That way.

Ben: 1:38:11

yeah, so if I say, let's say I spent an average of 12 bucks a book over 12 years, I've spent about 6 grand on audible loan,

Gene: 1:38:22

Oh, it's cheaper than spaceships.

Ben: 1:38:25

I guess, but yeah, no, I'm just saying I, I.

Gene: 1:38:28

I can never fault somebody for spending money on knowledge. I mean, even if it's fiction, it's still.

Ben: 1:38:34

and Audible is primarily fiction for me yeah. And then, like I said, I read a lot of additional stuff as well,

Gene: 1:38:41

Mm hmm. What's the wonder you're not blind as a bat? But usually people that read an enormous amount of money have really thick glasses.

Ben: 1:38:51

Yeah some of us were blessed

Gene: 1:38:55

Yeah, you got good genetics.

Ben: 1:38:57

So yeah, the only issue with my eyesight is actually from physical damage.

Gene: 1:39:02

Mm

Ben: 1:39:03

Like, I have astigmatism in my left eye that's from scar tissue because I almost lost my left eye.

Gene: 1:39:09

And did you almost shoot your eye out with a BB gun?

Ben: 1:39:12

No, actually I was a kid and it was post a windstorm. And I was going in the barn to feed the barn cats and it was cold and they were all freaking out and around my feet and everything. And I was trying not to step on them. And I looked up and a fishing pole had fallen and the tip broken off the fishing pole

Gene: 1:39:33

Huh.

Ben: 1:39:34

and it caught me in the eye

Gene: 1:39:35

Oh, that would suck.

Ben: 1:39:36

and I pulled back and a chunk of my eye. Did not come with me.

Gene: 1:39:41

Oh Boy

Ben: 1:39:42

yeah, I was very lucky not to lose my

Gene: 1:39:45

Yeah, really shit I was always afraid that I was gonna poke my eye out when I was downhill skiing

Ben: 1:39:52

Yeah. It didn't hurt until I blinked, by the way.

Gene: 1:39:55

really

Ben: 1:39:56

Did not feel it, did not feel anything until I blinked. And then it was on fire.

Gene: 1:40:02

Wow. Yeah, that's, those are some of the more sensitive parts that your eyes plug directly into your brain for one. I would expect that to be quite a few nerves in there. Mm

Ben: 1:40:15

Anyway, it was, it was not a fun thing. But I went to the emergency room. They did the testing. They flushed and flushed and flushed and flushed and flushed my eye. And they did the testing to see how deep it was and everything else. And literally I was within millimeter or so of losing my eye and, in fact, it was at the time, they were like, it's really borderline, we obviously want to try and not just take his eye, but if it doesn't heal, it doesn't heal. Long story short, it healed, and I have a slight stigmatism in my left eye, which is my non dominant eye, so it normally does not bug me at all. But when I start to get really tired or whatever, then it'll Kind of as my right eye fades and, you know, your eyes swap back and forth on who's dominant as you get tired it'll mess with my vision some then, but I, I don't even wear glasses for it at this point. In fact, over the years, when it first happened, I had glasses for reading because of that. And by the time I was in my mid twenties, I really stopped using them, even though I kind of still needed them. And by now, last time I had a vision test. The scar tissue has faded enough that it's barely there.

Gene: 1:41:30

That's good. You got lucky.

Ben: 1:41:33

I got extremely

Gene: 1:41:34

Yeah.

Ben: 1:41:36

I've got I've had several injuries like that, dude, where I just But for the grace of God, go I.

Gene: 1:41:42

Mm hmm. Did you finish feeding the barn cats? Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:41:45

Uh, no. No, I did

Gene: 1:41:47

Poor little critters. Yeah, it's, it's I know you don't really play video games except for retro stuff, but if you ever see it for sale and if you claim to have a system that's capable of running this, I would highly, highly, highly recommend you pick up a copy of red dead redemption too.

Ben: 1:42:09

Huh.

Gene: 1:42:09

Not only is it a beautiful visual game, but it probably has. The best writing of any video game I've ever played like the story is better than most films

Ben: 1:42:22

Did you ever play the original Half Life?

Gene: 1:42:26

Yeah, when it was new. Mm

Ben: 1:42:29

at Black Mesa? Okay, so Black Mesa is a fan redone and approved by Steam and Valve released version that went through and used the source engine and updated all the graphics and it looks really good. I was trying to play it yesterday, but I was running into some OpenGL issues on Linux that I've got to resolve. And then but yeah, you should look at the graphics on that. It, it's, it's a, it's an updated version.

Gene: 1:43:02

I'll check it out. You know how much it is.

Ben: 1:43:05

20 bucks.

Gene: 1:43:06

No, I'll probably pick it up them But I will say that I've always tended to avoid older shit just simply from a visual graphic standpoint. I Once you get used to high res images and 4k monitor and everything, it's, it's really hard for me to enjoy playing stuff that I perfectly well enjoyed playing. When I, you know, Didn't have all this fancy hardware. Yeah.

Ben: 1:43:35

sitting on the TV in my office because I, I subscribe to the theory that playing video games for the graphics is like watching porn for the story.

Gene: 1:43:47

And I hate porn that doesn't have a good storyline. I

Ben: 1:43:51

Heh, heh, heh.

Gene: 1:43:52

I just think that if you're going to spend time doing something, you ought to be able to find the best material to do it with maybe it's just me.

Ben: 1:44:02

Yeah,

Gene: 1:44:04

High quality porn and video games. But the reason I bring it up is because over the course of this last week, I managed to finally get the game working. It wasn't working for some stupid windows reasons. And it just reminded me once again, even though at this point, this game is now five years old, six years old, but it has actually is a retro title. Now the graphics are still no worse than modern day games and the storyline is way better. And just, it, it literally and what started this off as I rewatched Deadwood, the TV series, you ever seen that?

Ben: 1:44:49

no.

Gene: 1:44:50

You have never seen it? Oh, you should totally watch that. It is very gritty.

Ben: 1:44:56

Right now I'm going back through Star Trek and I've made it through TOS and TNG and now I'm halfway through DS9

Gene: 1:45:06

And then how far are you going? All the way to Enterprise?

Ben: 1:45:09

Actually I'm going to go all the way through Picard again. So my, my plan is to go through DS9, Voyager, and then Enterprise, and then pick up Discovery again, which. I hate to admit, but I have not watched the last couple of seasons of Discovery just because it just got so terrible, but I'm going to try and rewatch Discovery because I want to say I've watched it all and by the way, I didn't rewatch the animated series this time around. But I did I have watched the original animated series several times but I'm sticking to the main stuff and the animated series was a 1970s weird thing. Anyway, yeah but I'm gonna re watch Discovery. I'm gonna re watch.

Gene: 1:45:55

the Christmas specials with Leonard and Nimoy?

Ben: 1:46:01

What do you mean?

Gene: 1:46:02

They did Christmas specials back in the early 70s. Star Trek themed Christmas specials with

Ben: 1:46:07

Yeah, but they weren't like canon. So

Gene: 1:46:11

No, no, they're just related.

Ben: 1:46:13

yeah, anyway I'm going to go through and watch all and I may go back and rewatch the animated series just to do that too, but I'm going to rewatch all the series. And yeah,

Gene: 1:46:25

Yeah, I get it.

Ben: 1:46:27

I probably won't rewatch Strange New Worlds or Lower Decks cause those are still active in my mind and opinion. But all the others I'm going to go back and kind of in order of their release, not episode order, but yeah,

Gene: 1:46:43

Yeah, I think last time I did that was probably a decade ago.

Ben: 1:46:48

yeah,

Gene: 1:46:48

It was after enterprise that ended It was after enterprise ended. I wanted to just go and rewatch everything from scratch.

Ben: 1:46:55

Enterprise was not as bad as everybody

Gene: 1:46:58

I love the enterprise. Honestly, I was in total disagreement with everyone that was poo pooing it. I really enjoyed it. I thought that the

Ben: 1:47:05

They tried to make a longer story arc stuff. They, they, yeah,

Gene: 1:47:09

part of it that I didn't like is the first season's time bandits bullshit.

Ben: 1:47:14

yeah.

Gene: 1:47:15

Other than that, I thought that the stories were well done. They were well acted. You, you definitely had a very believable. In between state, between the federation and you know, yeah yeah, it was after first contact, but before the federation, like the technologically everything was in between, you know,

Ben: 1:47:37

the transporter was new and really only for cargo,

Gene: 1:47:41

And because it's prone to some errors and it like they created, everything was believable, the little shuttle craft that had very little capability. It's like everything. Just like I could

Ben: 1:47:57

grappler versus the tractor beam

Gene: 1:47:59

Like you could see the transitionary steps. It was, it was,

Ben: 1:48:03

plating versus shields.

Gene: 1:48:05

yeah, which honestly, I think polarized plating that that's been used in quite a bit of science fiction. So yeah, I liked enterprise and I definitely liked what's her face? The, the Vulcan character.

Ben: 1:48:17

Oh, yeah, to Paul

Gene: 1:48:18

Yeah, it's Paul. It was fucking a

Ben: 1:48:21

you know, but they, they, they

Gene: 1:48:22

hot body and a Vulcan mind.

Ben: 1:48:24

her being, you know, oh, they were just using her 1st, no shit. And why is that bad? You know, it's, it's, you

Gene: 1:48:33

she was a Star Trek fan. That's the other thing. The actress was actually into Star Trek and she, she talked about how she had to argue to make T'Pol speak more seriously and more like a Wulkan would because, you know, again, they brought her in for the TNA.

Ben: 1:48:52

You know, they did the same thing with Jerry Ryan and they did the same thing with Troy

Gene: 1:48:56

yeah. Huh.

Ben: 1:48:57

But you know Jerry Ryan and T'Pol, or some of them nine and T'Pol were much more successful at that than Troy

Gene: 1:49:04

But, but to me, like we're talking about, you know, watching porn for the story this is

Ben: 1:49:12

want a parody? You want a T'Pol parody?

Gene: 1:49:14

no, no, no. But I'm saying to me like that is the ideal woman, right? It's somebody with a a hot model gymnast body

Ben: 1:49:24

Huh. With logic?

Gene: 1:49:26

a brain of a Vulcan. Oh my God. There's nothing sexier. And I, I, I kind of think like in the what's the current series? Called the one we're watching.

Ben: 1:49:39

Strange new worlds?

Gene: 1:49:40

Strange new worlds. That's one thing I will say is I, I kind of feel like Spock's wife's character is a little not Vulcan enough,

Ben: 1:49:49

Huh.

Gene: 1:49:50

like to me, she feels like she's more of the human personality than he is, do you agree or not?

Ben: 1:49:58

I mean, I'm interested to see where they take it Because we already know what happens in TOS, right? So he goes through POMFAR, she comes back and she's chosen another. So Where that ends.

Gene: 1:50:13

And that's the problem with making prequels, right?

Ben: 1:50:16

And in TOS, you know, it, the, it's really set up that he hasn't seen her since she was a child, which ends up not being the case.

Gene: 1:50:25

But if you live for a couple of hundred years, you know, maybe you consider somebody who's like 50, a child.

Ben: 1:50:31

I mean, the picture he's looking at in

Gene: 1:50:33

Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah, but the, the Andorians and the the Klingons didn't look the same as well.

Ben: 1:50:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've got two jokes to to end the podcast

Gene: 1:50:49

Okay.

Ben: 1:50:50

All right. The first one is what's the difference between Joe Biden and Woody from Toy Story,

Gene: 1:50:57

What, what's the difference?

Ben: 1:50:59

Woody goes limp when a child enters the room, and

Gene: 1:51:02

okay. That's the, that went a whole different direction than what I was expecting. Wow.

Ben: 1:51:08

then the other one is for the Cowboys fans, which I am one of, but I haven't really watched the NFL in a while. So did you hear the new name for the Dallas Cowboys?

Gene: 1:51:18

What's that?

Ben: 1:51:18

They're changing to the Dallas tampons.

Gene: 1:51:21

Ooh,

Ben: 1:51:22

Because they're only good for one period and they have no second string.

Gene: 1:51:25

Yeah, I, I've been hearing an awful lot about that game from my Texas clan members.

Ben: 1:51:31

Yeah.

Gene: 1:51:32

Yeah, there's, there's a lot of people not happy right now.

Ben: 1:51:35

Yeah. And then the Texans lost and yeah, it's, it's, it's hilarious. Hilarity ensues. So I, I

Gene: 1:51:42

You be careful. You might get beat up in some of those circles.

Ben: 1:51:45

Yeah, I saw both those jokes this week and I, I, I couldn't help but laugh

Gene: 1:51:49

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:51:50

the Woody joke. Oh my God. It's so wrong. So bad, but so funny.

Gene: 1:51:56

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Exactly. On multiple levels.

Ben: 1:52:01

exactly.

Gene: 1:52:03

Alright, cool. We'll go ahead and wrap her up. I'll get this processed and

Ben: 1:52:07

Yeah. And upload the right episode this

Gene: 1:52:09

and upload the right episode this time.

Ben: 1:52:11

Yeah. So we should probably tell people, cause there were some questions because on some people's feeds,

Gene: 1:52:16

Yeah. So I

Ben: 1:52:17

of 53.

Gene: 1:52:19

and then when somebody pointed it out a day later. So a lot of people downloaded my wrong upload,

Ben: 1:52:27

And even if

Gene: 1:52:28

but I did fix

Ben: 1:52:29

it that, even if they didn't download it that time, some people's podcasting apps were processing it as two RSS feed entries because of caching and stuff like that. And yeah, it caused a problem.

Gene: 1:52:40

but I did fix it ultimately. And if, if the podcast app is properly written, it should notice that there was a change in the RSS and then updated appropriately with the correct episode. But

Ben: 1:52:51

Yeah. And the correct episode was uploaded to Rumble. So

Gene: 1:52:54

and,

Ben: 1:52:54

that.

Gene: 1:52:56

I know some people were asking before, so I, I'm not streaming this right now, live. X, but the intent is very much to do that for most episodes, if not all of them. And that's, I'm doing that for both Unrelenting and for this show. And some people have CSB has definitely listened on X when

Ben: 1:53:20

you should tag me in the X post now

Gene: 1:53:23

Nobody knows what your X name is. What's your X name?

Ben: 1:53:26

Ah, it's on my website.

Gene: 1:53:28

You don't remember, do you?

Ben: 1:53:29

No, I do. It's TheRealDNBen. So TheRealDNBen. I had to do the abbreviation because every variation of that was taken. I tried

Gene: 1:53:38

And you didn't want to be the dude named Ben number 246.

Ben: 1:53:42

Exactly.

Gene: 1:53:43

Okay, good enough. But yeah, I think like I'm starting to once again, start picking up new people following me on X and then my, my, now that I'm off of Macedon

Ben: 1:53:56

Why don't you move over to the new

Gene: 1:53:58

have no interest. Why? The only reason I'm on the old server is because Adam added me way back when I think I was seven person on there

Ben: 1:54:06

Okay, so if we get Aaroner to add you to the new one.

Gene: 1:54:10

Don't need to, though. Don't make extra work for him.

Ben: 1:54:13

Okay, I'm gonna create a fake Gene account

Gene: 1:54:15

you're more than welcome to create a new fake Gene account. I don't care. It's you know, Mass Denial is just full of a bunch of Nazis and people into anime. It's mostly

Ben: 1:54:25

CSB, he's talking about you.

Gene: 1:54:27

Now, CSB, I'm in CSB's ex group that he created from each other.

Ben: 1:54:32

I'm not even in that yet.

Gene: 1:54:33

Now you know, we'll see if he invites you. Are you following him? Cause he won't invite you unless you follow him.

Ben: 1:54:39

I did follow him.

Gene: 1:54:40

Okay. All right. Then you're good to go. But CSB has got rules, you know?

Ben: 1:54:44

Yeah,

Gene: 1:54:46

Oh, and we got good thing. Thank God I didn't shut this down. Or a, we got another subscriber.

Ben: 1:54:52

yeah, yeah. I actually noticed that before you sent it to me but

Gene: 1:54:55

do you have that name handy? I don't have that open.

Ben: 1:55:00

you

Gene: 1:55:01

we should probably mention who

Ben: 1:55:03

I don't know that we should just mention names, but we won't mention the last name. So Keith is subscribed to us for a little bit, a month now, and that's much appreciated. And then CSB gave us a really nice call out as well, we need to mention

Gene: 1:55:20

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:55:20

Podcasting 2. 0 again thank you CSB for putting the word out,

Gene: 1:55:24

Yeah. CSB is definitely,

Ben: 1:55:27

good evangelist for us,

Gene: 1:55:28

he's an evangelist for a lot of people. I mean, he literally just pays money to have other people mention other podcasts, which is great. I mean, it's, I 100 percent support him doing that. That's a great use of Bitcoin.

Ben: 1:55:41

yeah, we, we should definitely come up with some sort of reward for that at some point

Gene: 1:55:48

and I, I've told them if he just quits not liking his own voice and starts doing a podcast, I'll promote the hell out of his show. You know, it's just, he needs to. Get over his issue with his English.

Ben: 1:56:02

I think it's a privacy thing, isn't it, more than anything?

Gene: 1:56:05

He did any question you asked him that he doesn't want to answer becomes a privacy thing. And it, I, you can put it under that guys, if you like, but I know human psychology and I can tell you based on my impression, I think too many people made fun of his voice for him to feel comfortable publicly, just going out and doing

Ben: 1:56:27

I mean, we could totally just do a voice changer, but, yeah,

Gene: 1:56:30

it. He could, but he's also. Paying for voice lessons right now for diction diction lessons, which I just think is silly because The thing that makes you memorable, yeah that's fine, but the thing that makes you memorable, the thing that makes people kind of differentiate you from the crowd is having something unusual. Maybe you're the guy that wears bow ties, like Tucker, you know, maybe you're somebody that has a

Ben: 1:56:59

A a, a ba stutter like Obama.

Gene: 1:57:01

a stutter or an upraised eyebrow, like the, the rock or there's gotta be something that makes you a little different. And I think his, his kind of gruff sounding voice. From what I recall, because we've all I shouldn't say we all those of us that used to listen to daily source code before no agenda would have heard CSV because he used to leave voicemail messages for Adam that Adam would play because he had a listener line kind of thing. And he would play the voicemail messages on the daily source code. And that's how CSV kind of became. One of the characters in Adam's Menagerie is because he had a very distinct voice and he had some interesting messages to send as well, but I, I don't know. I, I just, he could do whatever he wants, obviously, but my advice is very much don't worry about the way you sound because it's not bad. It's just a little different, but that also makes you unique. So there you go. CSB use your

Ben: 1:58:01

It's like Larry, you know, Larry's got a

Gene: 1:58:04

hear Larry, so I, I wouldn't know I, it's sub, sub autumn,

Ben: 1:58:07

Yeah, you say that, but Larry has a very deep and unique voice

Gene: 1:58:12

He does. Unfortunately, I just can't hear it because it's too low.

Ben: 1:58:15

yeah. I, I think you're full of shit, but that's okay.

Gene: 1:58:21

How, what does that have to do with anything

Ben: 1:58:25

I don't know. Right now I can honestly say I'm not There we

Gene: 1:58:28

that you're not full of shit? Yeah, that's true. You're kind of empty on that department, aren't you?

Ben: 1:58:32

Yeah. All right

Gene: 1:58:33

hopefully you'll gain some weight soon, man. And I, I never said that to anybody before, but

Ben: 1:58:38

You know, I wouldn't mind staying at this weight, but it's just not the way to lose it.

Gene: 1:58:42

Very true. Maybe that's just God punishing you for not doing the fast with me, but we'll just end on that note.

Ben: 1:58:48

Hey, I I've really, I fasted for four days. So.

Gene: 1:58:54

Thanks for listening guys.