Gene 0:24

Howdy. Ben, what's going on today?

Ben 0:26

Hey Gene. It's been a crazy

Gene 0:29

brisk morning.

Ben 0:30

Yeah, it's pretty chilly here too. What's not quite literally, but yeah, we were in the forties this morning.

Gene 0:37

Yeah, I, I got an alert and said it was supposed to freeze overnight, so I think it's warmer now, but

Ben 0:42

Yeah. We didn't get quite that cold, but we, we are tomorrow and it looks like we might even have a white Christmas.

Gene 0:48

Really? Well, that's not good.

Ben 0:50

So we're supposed to get down to 30 tonight and then by Christmas morning we're supposed to be at 25 and there's a 10% chance of precipitation. So

Gene 1:00

Woo. Damn.

Ben 1:01

Yeah. Friday we're supposed to be down to 16.

Gene 1:06

That's even cold. So you think the park grid's gonna shut down as usual?

Ben 1:11

Well, it's not necessarily as usual, but it, it all depends. It's really gonna, so first of all, haha, wind learned its lesson and do they have de-icing ready? Are the gas compressors

Gene 1:23

in line?

Ben 1:24

I'm sorry,

Gene 1:25

Why are they getting wind in line?

Ben 1:27

what do you mean?

Gene 1:28

Well, they're, they gotta get in line, man. They gotta get on, get their act together.

Ben 1:32

Yeah, well, when it comes down to is They, people say, oh, well wind in North Dakota, and so on. Yes, but those windmills were built for it. These windmills don't have electric de-ICERs on the blades and things like that. So if the blades build up a ice sheen on a blade and it causes an imbalance, they have to shut'em down. So literally, they have to fly helicopters around spraying de-icing fluid, which is petroleum based on the

Gene 1:57

is wonderful. Wonderful. Let's just pour gasoline everywhere. Why don't we,

Ben 2:02

well, it's not quite that, but it's the same sort of thing that they spray at like an airport to

Gene 2:06

oh, yeah. Kerosene. That's, that's great.

Ben 2:08

Yeah. Anyway, so there are a few variables that will matter. It's not gonna be as cold as it was during uri, so at least there's that. It's not gonna be as widespread across the state, so at least there's that, but there's definitely a potential for, some, some issues here. So,

Gene 2:25

you're not kidding. So, forecast is 58, high 15, low on Thursday,

Ben 2:30

yep.

Gene 2:31

19, low on Friday, and 26 low on, on Saturday.

Ben 2:35

Yeah, you gotta remember, I'm a little further south and east than you, so, we're, we're not hitting the same same temperatures as it pushes down, but this is a huge cold front that's coming through the entire United States. So our, our coldest temperature's gonna be a high of 28 on Friday and a low of 16.

Gene 2:53

Hmm.

Ben 2:53

So,

Gene 2:54

Wow. Yeah. That's,

Ben 2:58

It, it, it's gonna be a big enough portion of the state that it's gonna be interesting. South Texas project really shouldn't see that big of freezing temperatures. They were the the nuke that kicked off during URI because they had a level transmitter that froze up and the operator punched the unit off. But yeah, so we, it, it, we'll see there, there have not been a great deal of changes from Yuri to now,

Gene 3:18

Yeah.

Ben 3:19

it takes a while to make changes.

Gene 3:22

Yeah. In that direction. If they had to make changes that somebody was subsidizing that be happening overnight.

Ben 3:28

Yeah. Well, so

Gene 3:32

so get your generators ready, folks. You're in Texas.

Ben 3:37

well,

Gene 3:38

Long dark winter's coming. We'll get a, feel a little bit of Europe here for a few days.

Ben 3:42

oh baby, it might just work out just fine. The real, the real question is whether or not the gas compressor stations stay online because what caused so much of the problems was gas compressor stations not being registered as critical infrastructure

Gene 3:58

mm-hmm.

Ben 3:59

they could get a cheaper power rate. And then they, because of their own environmentalist stuff had moved to, either battery or renewable backup power that was unreliable. So,

Gene 4:11

Yeah. That's nuts.

Ben 4:13

Yeah. So as a result, you had a gas curtailment which caused several gas power plants to trip off, which caused even more problems. And it was just like this cascading event. So I think most of the gas compressor stations, encore and sherry land and the other transmission companies in, in Texas transmission distribution companies have rectified those registrations and listing them as critical infrastructure. So, like during uri, because I was on the same block as a hospital, I never lost power

Gene 4:41

Yeah. It's funny how every single one of my friends was on the same block as a police station, thers, building a hospital or something else,

Ben 4:50

Well, and that Yeah. And that's the thing is, they're, they're gonna keep the power on at what's considered critical infrastructure for as long as possible. Just because you, we wanna conserve the diesel fuel of the gas generator of, of the generator, of the hospital and fire station and so on. So those critical

Gene 5:07

Oh yeah. What an inconvenience that would be if somebody had to use a generator. Oh my God.

Ben 5:12

Well, no, it's about fuel. It's about conserving their fuel.

Gene 5:15

Mm-hmm. for what?

Ben 5:16

In case we can't get more. So taking it as long as possible and people who have to realize we came very close in during URI to a Black Start event, that would've taken a very long time for Texas to recover and would've been a societal changing event.

Gene 5:34

and, and explain what that is to people.

Ben 5:37

So a black start event is where, part of the reason why Ercot went into rolling blackouts and why that's a thing is because you have to balance d load and generation capacity on the grid. You cannot have more load than you have generation. It's just physics. And so we have a couple of things. You have to balance load, and then you also have to balance frequency response. Frequency response is making sure everything's at 60 hertz. The regulations say that if a power plant drops below, I think it's 59 0.4 hertz for more than five minutes, five and a half minutes, something like that, they have to kick off because they're affecting the frequency of the grid. Well, the problem is when you have this load imbalance and you have this massive shift in power availability, your units can't ramp and necessarily meet the inertia of the grid to alter frequency response sufficiently. So we, we came very close to tripping on frequency response, which as far as I'm concerned, that sh that in a situation like we had during uri, that shouldn't be a thing. That should, that rule should have an override in place at every generator that exists. But that's not the case. So as a result, we came in within a few minutes of tripping off every power plant in the state of Texas. Had we done that and we would've, the entire state would've been in. No power is being generated. You have to go into what's called blackstar. So you can't just take a normal gas power plant or a normal coal power plant or a nuke or any of'em and just start'em up. You have to have what's called a blackstar unit that has a local diesel generator that has enough fuel and can produce enough power because all these power plants literally take power to start. So you have to have a local generator that can start independently, that then can provide enough power to usually get a combustion turbine, which is the easiest and quickest to get up, up and online and producing enough power for its own parasitic load. And then it starts a bigger unit, and then that starts another unit and that starts another unit. And you slowly restart all the units in the state of Texas and literally to full

Gene 7:49

would that take?

Ben 7:50

Well, so in simulation, so theoretically on paper, ERCOT says they can do it in a matter of days in simulation, they have never done it outside of basically three to four weeks.

Gene 8:03

Mm-hmm.

Ben 8:05

Everyone I know says full grid restoration would take well over a month.

Gene 8:10

Hmm.

Ben 8:11

So you're looking at literally before you know anyone but hospitals and places like that, getting power, rotating blackouts to the hospitals and so on. They would be the first, and they would still be on rotating blackouts for probably a week to two weeks. And everyone else is just in the dark while these power plants are coming online. And that's assuming that you don't have any equipment damage from all these plants tripping off. So when they trip off and it's a hard trip and they don't have, I mean literally you have to put, so if, if everybody goes into the dark, one of the things that has to happen is these turbines and everything because they're hot metallurgically. If you don't put them on what's called turning gear, right? As soon as you shut down, you can actually warp the shaft and then you, you're done. You've gotta rebuild that turbine. So assuming that generation has what they should have for backups to be able to put on emergency turning gear for their turbines, assuming they don't end up with tube bleaks, assuming you know that there's not a lot of physical damage from that very hard trip, then you can come back. But, okay, maybe the company running a generator hasn't tested their turning gear in a while and oh shit, we can't, we can't get in turning gear and now that turbine has sagged and is going to be inoperable till it can be rebuilt. You know how much of that happens? And if that happens, then delay even further to a full grid restoration.

Gene 9:45

Wow. Yeah. Let's not find out.

Ben 9:48

Exactly. Anyway, so.

Gene 9:50

why don't we just have more like localized inverters and then not give a shit about the frequency.

Ben 9:56

Well, frequency response is, is a huge thing because you have to be, because the way three phase power works, so you want everything synchronized. And if a generator starts slipping out a phase, number one, it's really bad for the generator. And number two, it affects the, a whole frequency respond of the entire. You have to remember, especially at transmission, everything is interconnected. And you don't really want to do inversions, so you don't wanna do a DC tie. So our connection to the western and eastern grid in Mexico for that matter is through a DC tie.

Gene 10:29

That's what I was thinking.

Ben 10:31

yeah. And that's where you can get out of sync and it won't matter. But those are very inefficient. So converting from AC to DC then back to AC again, is a pretty inefficient process.

Gene 10:43

Well, what if we did a gravity generator there, or gravity battery rather?

Ben 10:50

dude.

Gene 10:51

pump water in the tower on our side and they drain it on their side.

Ben 10:55

Talk about Yeah, sure. Super efficient. Uhhuh,

Gene 10:59

then you can, fill it with fish and have fishing on top and there, everything, it'd be great.

Ben 11:04

Yeah. That, that's not how that works.

Gene 11:06

gotta think outside the box, that's all.

Ben 11:09

Yeah. I mean there, there are some startups trying to make gravity batteries an actual reality and working. Actually one of the, the battery technologies that I've seen that shows some promise is basically salt having a container of salt that you make molten and it stays hot enough, long enough to then be useful in steam generation later.

Gene 11:32

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben 11:34

I mean, the real answer is that we can build clean coal plants. I've, I've, I've been around them where you've got 99% mercury removal, 99% NOx removal. I mean, you can handle this. And as far as particulate matter with electrostatic precipitators or a bag house, you can basically not put a lot of particulate matter up in the, the air

Gene 11:59

how do they do that? Do they just cool off the exhaust a lot and have the particles drop down or what?

Ben 12:04

no. So there are two primary forms in use. The electrostatic precipitator is the older one. Literally. It's basically passing through an electro cathode and a anode.

Gene 12:15

particles stick to it.

Ben 12:16

Exactly, so basically think of your home air filter that has ion technology or whatever, same sort of thing. You've just, just got a charged electrical field that pulls the particles out to one side, and then you literally have a, what's called a knocker, because as you can imagine, that fly ash builds up on the anode side. And so literally they have a big hammer that hits that and knocks the ash off and falls down. The more efficient and newer style is called a bag house, and think of it as nothing but a series of vacuum cleaner bags that the flu gas passes through. So literally,

Gene 12:52

That's newer. That sounds like a more basic technology.

Ben 12:57

it's actually more complicated and it's more efficient because you don't have the huge parasitic load. So the problem with the electrostatic precipitator is it's, it's functional, it works well, but you're talking about several megawatts of energy, constant drain To run that electromagnet versus a bag house is, you've basically got these filter bags that you replace every once in a while, so it, it's actually cheaper to run because you don't have as much of a parasitic load. Anyway, the, and the, the fly ash can actually be captured and used as an inert component in concrete, for example. So it has a commercial application. The bottom ash is usually sent back to the to the mine as landfill material when they're doing mine reclamation. And then you have then you have your absorber, which is where most of your s o two. So you have an s e r catalyst layer, which is a lot of your mercury removal, stuff like that. Then you go into the baghouse, baghouse gets your fly ash, and then you go into your absorber, which is this huge, tank that's filled with a limestone slurry that's constantly raining down. And it basically goes through this limestone slurry mist as it's going up and out. That's why a lot of times you'll see on coal plants with an absorber, you'll see white stuff coming out of the the stack and people go, oh my God, look at how much smoke it's producing. That's not smoke. If you were to not use the absorber, you would not see the flu gas at all. It's that clean. But what you're seeing is because it's hitting that limestone slurry that's constantly raining down, it's evaporating. So it's creating cloud, it's creating moisture. So you're just seeing water vapor come out, but that limestone, slurry absorbs all the, so two. And it also in so doing makes artificial gypsum, which then can be used and is sold as a byproduct and used in drywall.

Gene 14:52

Hmm.

Ben 14:53

So we can make a pretty efficient coal plant using liite. I'm not even talking using higher orders of coal, but the literally the cheapest dirtiest coal that there is.

Gene 15:03

Well, I, this is the only coal type I know. What's the, what's a better coal?

Ben 15:07

You have like, anthracite there's several orders of coal. Yeah. Like Pennsylvania coal, that sort of stuff is anthracite. Yeah. Which is more useful in the steel

Gene 15:17

I believe.

Ben 15:18

I'm sorry.

Gene 15:19

I think that was made from different brand of dinosaur.

Ben 15:21

It, it's just older, more compressed.

Gene 15:24

Well, I, I like, the, the CPOs make one type of call and then the anthropos make a different type of coal. So it's all, it's all based on what kind of animals used to live there.

Ben 15:33

Yeah. Plant matter is what makes most coal is antique re riverbeds.

Gene 15:40

Right. Riverbeds that were full of little critters walking around, then dinosaurs falling in, and then drowning, and then turning into coal. I get it.

Ben 15:49

Mm-hmm. mostly plant material.

Gene 15:52

plant, well, that's what they ate. Of course. It's mostly plant material. What? It's like vegetarians. You can make coal out.

Ben 15:58

Yeah. Well, y Okay. Anyway.

Gene 16:02

Hear in Canada they're about to

Ben 16:04

Yeah. Well, that's the, that's the joke is I eat plant-based meat.

Gene 16:09

That's true. Yeah. I mean, I will say plant-based meat actually tastes better than meat-based meat.

Ben 16:16

Well, exactly.

Gene 16:17

Have you eaten carnivores? They don't taste good.

Ben 16:20

Exactly. Well, I mean, it depends, fish is good

Gene 16:25

fair enough. But it depends on the type of fish too.

Ben 16:29

right? But pretty much every fish that you eat is a, by definition of

Gene 16:33

Oh, there, no, no, no. There's a ton of fish that are plant eaters.

Ben 16:37

Okay. Most of the fish that I eat are carnivores,

Gene 16:40

Mm-hmm.

Ben 16:41

Or at least I'm nevers,

Gene 16:42

yeah. I mean, if you eat a lot of tilapia, you're eating, you're eating an omnivorous fish cuz

Ben 16:47

who eats tilapia?

Gene 16:49

Most of this country most of the United States,

Ben 16:53

That is a, most of the tilapia that

Gene 16:55

it's a pet fish that they started eating.

Ben 16:58

and it's a farm raised piece of crap. Freshwater fish. No, you, you gotta get like a good flounder or red fish,

Gene 17:05

is, don't you?

Ben 17:06

Yes,

Gene 17:07

It's alet.

Ben 17:09

yes. I understand.

Gene 17:10

Yeah. It's a, it's a. a relative that was grown for size rather than cool looking coloration for the aquarium. Trade

Ben 17:20

Right. Well, anyway, regardless, my point is natural fish that you would eat are most likely predators. But yeah, I, I agree. Like I've never liked

Gene 17:32

not a predator. Well, you probably don't eat any freshwater. See, I grew up fishing in freshwater, so I, I've eaten a ton of freshwater fish.

Ben 17:38

I, I mean I've eaten bass and trout and stuff like that, but I prefer brackish and saltwater fish.

Gene 17:45

Yeah. I like salmon,

Ben 17:48

I like ocean caught salmon is okay, but river caught. No, thank you.

Gene 17:55

Yeah. Well, the bears like it.

Ben 17:57

Yeah. And bear doesn't taste very good. So what's that tell you?

Gene 18:00

No, bear does not. I have had bear and it, it is not a meat you necessarily want to ever eat. It is, yeah. It's greasy and it's, it doesn't have a pleasant flavor. It's almost musky.

Ben 18:11

Well, yeah, I mean it's like eating a boar, same in bears are related to pigs, so that's makes sense. If you get a big bore or something. I'm sorry.

Gene 18:20

Pigs are more closely related to people than bears.

Ben 18:24

Fair enough. But bears are still related to pigs. That's why we call it a bore and a

Gene 18:30

I'm mentioning bears because I've posted a few videos of bears and people seem to really like them.

Ben 18:36

well, bears are

Gene 18:37

Positive comments about people wanting to get bears instead of dogs Next time.

Ben 18:42

Oof. I don't know about that.

Gene 18:44

Yeah. Well, you didn't watch the videos apparently.

Ben 18:47

Dude, you post a lot. And if it's just stupid shit, like bear videos. No, I now political videos, I'll generally

Gene 18:54

a video every 15 minutes. It's not that much.

Ben 18:58

anyway did you see the Tucker Carlson bit on jfk?

Gene 19:02

No

Ben 19:02

so Tucker Carlson came out and officially questioned the CIA's involvement in the JFK assassination.

Gene 19:09

I saw the tweet from JFK Jr.

Ben 19:12

Yep.

Gene 19:13

Saying, well, after 60 years, the mystery of my uncle's death has finally been solved.

Ben 19:17

And, and there's supposedly evidence coming out that will prove CIA's involvement.

Gene 19:27

But we all kind of knew this anyway.

Ben 19:29

absolutely. But it's like, we also knew that Twitter was censoring based off of government

Gene 19:33

we did.

Ben 19:35

So I, I, I don't know, man,

Gene 19:37

we knew that rich people are pedophiles.

Ben 19:40

a dude Gene@Genespeaks.com and a lot of people would say, you're a pretty wealthy dude.

Gene 19:47

What?

Ben 19:48

A lot of people would say you're pretty wealthy. So

Gene 19:50

No, no, no, no, no. I'm not wealthy at all. I'm divorced guys. There's a difference. Divorced single male occasionally works. That's very different from a rich dude, but no. Who else will buy Balenciaga in like$3,000 T-shirts, shit like that? Not me.

Ben 20:07

Not me.

Gene 20:08

No. I wear the cheap stuff. Adidas.

Ben 20:13

Anyway, it's very interesting to see what all's coming out and people, the, the response to some of the Twitter files, now, this JFK thing that I don't want to get off of yet, but some of the response to the Twitter files that the mainstream media has done is, oh yeah, we knew that already.

Gene 20:27

Mm-hmm.

Ben 20:29

You were calling this a conspiracy theory just a few months ago. What the hell?

Gene 20:33

Literally. Yeah. And then did you see that Musk is getting pushed back from kicking off the reporters?

Ben 20:40

Yeah. And he's already changed and given some amnesty and stuff on some of them, but I, I, I think he needs to e especially Keith Oberman and what he's doing, dude. But Keith Oberman, like during the Bush era, I liked Keith Oberman. I watched Keith Oberman cuz he was keeping, he was hitting George W. Bush harder than anyone else.

Gene 21:04

Mm-hmm.

Ben 21:05

And I'm a fairly conservative guy, but George W. Bush was not a conservative president.

Gene 21:09

Mm-hmm.

Ben 21:10

Well, conservative in the libertarian fame, let me put it that way. I am by no means a Republican,

Gene 21:16

definitely was

Ben 21:17

I'm sorry.

Gene 21:18

compared to Al Gore, he definitely was.

Ben 21:21

Yeah. And compared to Carrie too, but yeah.

Gene 21:25

But yeah, I think what he musk, if I was given him advice, which I'm not, but I think what he ought to do is really engage the politic, or sorry, the legal system a lot, start filing personal lawsuits against all these people for the additional costs and expenses that he has to incur as a result of their actions. You can do something perfectly legal and then be sued as for a result that your actions achieved. And that's like you can that happens all the time. There, there you, they're, they're, you don't have to do something illegal in order to be sued and lose in court for your actions.

Ben 22:11

Yeah. In civil

Gene 22:12

Private, yeah. Civil court, that's what I'm saying. I think he oughta utilize the civil court system and start filing tons of lawsuits.

Ben 22:17

I don't, I don't know if that'd be worth it, man, but maybe

Gene 22:20

think it would get the message across much better than, oh, Elon Musk, he just likes to restrict free speech. He lied to us about being a free speech advocate.

Ben 22:29

well,

Gene 22:30

just a Nazi.

Ben 22:31

yeah, well, I think he's proven himself not to be, that I don't

Gene 22:35

Well, I don't know. He banned Alex

Ben 22:36

acting as an oligarch.

Gene 22:39

He's, he's definitely no oligarch. There's no two ways about.

Ben 22:43

Right.

Gene 22:43

Guy, he's got his own car system. He is got his own rocket system. He is got his own communication system, and now he bought the the news communication system. That's, that's pretty much normal. Garrick.

Ben 22:56

Yeah, which he is definitely turning into, a financial app more than anything.

Gene 23:02

Mm-hmm.

Ben 23:03

I don't think he's really cares about anything else.

Gene 23:05

Yeah. Well, we'll see. We'll see. But it's, I think that he's not going to get much to change in just simply banning a, a reporter. I think it's going to get more people to start posting and publishing his whereabouts.

Ben 23:20

Yeah. Well, I mean, there's already a huge subreddit on it. An interesting thing on this is that he, and I'm sorry.

Gene 23:27

I hate Reddit.

Ben 23:29

Yeah, I'm not a big fan either. Well, I used to be until they really started going woke. Reddit was good up until Trump and then it went off the deep end.

Gene 23:40

Hmm.

Ben 23:41

But anyway, so, he announced recently that Twitter was going to start its ranking algorithm what would go to the top and bottom based off of retweets likes and mutes or blocks from the new bl blue check mark. Users not legacy. So you have to be a paying member to influence the algorithm.

Gene 24:06

That's probably a good thing,

Ben 24:07

Well, number one, it eliminate, it pretty much eliminates bots from being able to influence the algorithm because, at eight bucks a month it doesn't scale for a bot network. And then two, it it, it really democratizes it because anyone who's willing to pay for it can influence the algorithm, which I think makes sense.

Gene 24:27

Yeah. Yeah. I mean my preference, which is what old Twitter used to be back in the first couple of years, is simply

Ben 24:36

Reverse

Gene 24:36

that you see. Well, yeah, the shit that you always see is the shit of people that you subscribe to and you see everything in order

Ben 24:43

Mm-hmm.

Gene 24:44

like that. To me, why would you, if you run out of things to stick in there, then start adding things of people you don't actually sub to. But why am I getting stuff coming in from people that I just don't give a shit about?

Ben 24:58

Yeah.

Gene 24:59

Like tweets from Elizabeth Warren or somebody? Well, just, just cuz I subscribed to AOC doesn't mean I want to see what Elizabeth Warren's saying.

Ben 25:09

well, I mean, because they're trying to be a little bit more than, that basic and mastodon, but, Mastodon seems to work well and it's just purely reverse order.

Gene 25:20

Mm-hmm.

Ben 25:22

Yeah.

Gene 25:22

Yep. And then you can control who you want us to hear from by subscribing or not subscribing to them.

Ben 25:29

Indeed.

Gene 25:32

So, I don't know. It's it makes sense. So what else going on? I kind of jumped in with the weather stuff right off the get-go.

Ben 25:38

Yeah. Well, one of the things we should talk about, well, we'll save that to the end, but I don't know what El what else do you have right now?

Gene 25:44

I don't know. I wasn't prepared. I assumed you'd have shit to talk about, man.

Ben 25:49

Well, I, yeah I was trying, anyway, gonna have

Gene 25:52

Oh, what do you think of Trump's card thing?

Ben 25:54

oh, that's a good one. So I'm really interested to see if the N f T thing was meant to come out after the free speech announcement, because it certainly seems like doing it beforehand was a shoot yourself in the foot moment

Gene 26:09

Uhhuh.

Ben 26:10

versus, had he done the free speech statement then done that, it would've been a great joke.

Gene 26:17

I, it's, yeah, because everybody was confused on is this, what is this? Is this a joke? Is this fake? Is this a troll? Is there's no way that Trump could possibly do something like this for real

Ben 26:29

Well, I mean, he did do it for real and he made 4.5 million off of it.

Gene 26:34

Yeah. Probably lost 4.5 million votes in the process.

Ben 26:38

I don't know about that. Again, I, I wonder if it wasn't internal sabotage releasing that infomercial before the free speech announcement, cuz the, the free speech announcement was good.

Gene 26:48

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, I don't know, man. I think a lot of this stuff is really working well for DeSantis.

Ben 26:57

Yeah. And that could, that could be part of it too.

Gene 27:01

Mm-hmm. And the only thing that I, that I've heard from the pro-Trump crowd is, well, DeSantis is like, he's just one of the, one of the standard political class, he's, he just is gonna get in there and just work with the Democrats. Like, where you, where are you getting this?

Ben 27:23

Yeah.

Gene 27:24

working with the Democrats in Florida for the last three years. So, I don't know. I don't, I don't think anyone's good at anything. I haven't, let's put it this way, I haven't heard anything that sounds negative about DeSantis other than Trump threatening to talk about his personal life.

Ben 27:44

which we'll see. That'll be very interesting to see what happens.

Gene 27:48

I can't imagine anything that anyone would. Care about negatively that Trump could mention short of pedophilia.

Ben 27:55

I think there's still a large amount of the voter base that there are several things that could be mentioned that would be a red line.

Gene 28:04

Like what how many times did Trump cheat on his wife? How many times,

Ben 28:08

yeah, but that was all straight

Gene 28:09

in order to Oh, the straight sex? Oh, you thinking gay sex?

Ben 28:13

Well, I, I think that or by, or, like some of the Jerry Falwell stuff about the Kuck Ry and all that, I think that's a major impactful thing for a lot of evangelicals. I'm not necessarily saying I give a shit, but I'm saying that

Gene 28:27

No, I evangelical. I don't think, what, who are they gonna vote for

Ben 28:31

I don't know. They, they voted for Trump,

Gene 28:33

Trump's been, Trump's been to a lot of places

Ben 28:36

Yeah. Including

Gene 28:37

the Playboy mansions to Epstein Island

Ben 28:40

did not fly on the Lolita Express and left

Gene 28:43

he had his own plane. Yeah. I mean he was not like Clinton He was there every weekend.

Ben 28:48

Yeah. 20 some odd

Gene 28:49

Uhhuh, But but he did fly to Europe to pick up several wives. The bazaars they sell those at, they got all kinds of things there. Boys, girls, you name.

Ben 29:01

Well anyway, regardless, he, he, he, he didn't get caught unlike some other politicians having get, having been caught. So I don't know, we'll see what comes out about DeSantis

Gene 29:13

speaking of weird sex shit. You hear that statement from the son of the guy that was into Pelosi's house?

Ben 29:21

Oh, yes. Climbing that his dad may have been a sl sex slave

Gene 29:25

Yes. Yes. Because his dad has never been a Republican, hates Republicans. Always been a Democrat, and is into kinky shit.

Ben 29:34

is or isn't.

Gene 29:35

Is

Ben 29:36

Yeah. Well, and one of the things I'd say to that is we don't have any evidence of it, but I wouldn't preclude it. And, where's the statement from the guy saying that that's what was going on? It sounds like his son's just purely speculating there, so I don't

Gene 29:51

Where's the video from? The ring doorbell that shows this guy showing up? That's what I'd like to see.

Ben 29:57

Well, you're assuming they have a ring,

Gene 29:59

They have a ring doorbell

Ben 30:00

how do you know that?

Gene 30:01

that I was mentioning.

Ben 30:02

Okay, so where, where are all the cameras? Where, where are the body? Where's the body camera footage? Full body camera footage not edited from the police, right.

Gene 30:12

Yeah. Where's the sex dungeon camera footage. That's why I'd like to see,

Ben 30:15

Exactly.

Gene 30:16

no, actually, nevermind. I'd rather not see that.

Ben 30:18

Yeah. I, I don't know, Lisa, off of what you and Darren were talking about, you you watched some pretty interesting stuff occasionally there, man.

Gene 30:27

What were we talking about? I don't listen to that show.

Ben 30:32

you don't listen to your own show. The you don't remember what you said about the Mormons

Gene 30:35

Oh yeah. Mormon porn. That's right. Yeah. I've seen Mormon porn. Who hasn't.

Ben 30:39

I mean, but why would you seek that out?

Gene 30:43

Well, you don't seek it out. You click in a little thumbnail and then you go, oh, it's Mormon porn. Well, then you wear, then you wanna know what happens after that.

Ben 30:54

Oh,

Gene 30:54

Is that how you watch porn? You just, it's a storyline. Oh, well this is, this is taking that weird twist. Interesting.

Ben 31:01

Watching porn for the story is like what? Playing video games for the graphics

Gene 31:07

Have you seen the graphics in video games?

Ben 31:10

I have, but usually the game play is what matters, right? I mean, yeah. Anyway,

Gene 31:16

on Star Citizen It's a game with beautiful imagery in no gameplay.

Ben 31:23

Okay. Little bit. You said you and your friends are making up your own kind of quests and things to do.

Gene 31:30

Uhhuh. Hey, that's, that's cuz that's the only thing to do in that game. We, in fact, speaking of, we just celebrated second anniversary of the what do they call'em? The, the Guild or whatever. The one that I'm in, in star citizen.

Ben 31:45

Mm-hmm.

Gene 31:46

So we had giant spaceship battles in luxury lighteners. We had a race across the desert on one of the moons. I think I came in one of the last places in that. And then we had a pub quiz where we all went to the big bar in one of the planets and microtech, and then did a pup a bar quiz of trivia around the game where I, I didn't know about 75% of the answers.

Ben 32:18

Wow.

Gene 32:18

So I, I learned that I'm pretty bad at this video game yesterday.

Ben 32:25

Yeah. Well, getting

Gene 32:27

anybody that wants to join the the link to the signup code is right in the description.

Ben 32:32

getting back to the Pelosi and some of the sex scandals, did you look any deeper into the ELs gate stuff that we were talking about last time?

Gene 32:38

Not really. I mean, I kind of, I ate lunch after that and kinda lost interest,

Ben 32:44

No. No.

Gene 32:45

but I saw while we were talking about it, I was flipping through some images and there's definitely some cute costumes there,

Ben 32:52

there's some sadistic

Gene 32:54

nerdy, naughty nurse type stuff. Mm-hmm.

Ben 32:56

There's lots of really weird stuff, but, Hey,

Gene 32:59

Yeah. There is a little bit too much. Well, so I'm not familiar with the movie, having never. I, I've heard of the character cuz I know that what's her name? The chick That's

Ben 33:10

Elsa,

Gene 33:11

ELs. Well, yeah. Who plays Elsa?

Ben 33:12

It's a cartoon.

Gene 33:14

Okay. There's a lie. Who, who voices her.

Ben 33:16

I have no idea. Never watched it.

Gene 33:19

Oh, okay. Well I've heard of the character, let's put it that way. And

Ben 33:24

I'm sure you've seen a parody or two.

Gene 33:26

no, no, but I, but I know that Kristen Bell. Kristen Bell. Kristen Bell that she is the voice of the bad guy chick in there. Whoever Elsa's nemesis is,

Ben 33:40

No clue.

Gene 33:42

I don't need, I don't know either. But, but she, I've always liked her. I always thought she was cute. And then she had a kind of a smart ass character that every character she played when she was young was a smart ass, I dunno about these days. And I remember her talking about how she she took her daughter to Halloween and dressed up as the character that she actually voices. And her daughter said, whoa, I wanted to go trick-or-treating with Elsa instead. This is a nice little fuck you to mom.

Ben 34:11

Mm-hmm.

Gene 34:11

Uhhuh. I'm sure her daughter didn't mean it that way, but it came off funny.

Ben 34:16

Right, but you want to be the hero, not the villain.

Gene 34:19

Right, right. Which, Some people, I guess

Ben 34:22

Well, I mean, everybody's the hero of their own story. Right,

Gene 34:26

Which could be the villain of somebody else's. Yes.

Ben 34:28

exactly.

Gene 34:29

Mm-hmm.

Ben 34:30

So what do you think is going on in Arizona? Any Carrie Lake Haney shot?

Gene 34:36

I think it's, it's awesome that it's happening. I'm very happy that it's happening. But Does she have a realistic shot? I don't know. I mean, if it gets escalated in the courts, I think they're gonna shut it down.

Ben 34:49

Well, I, I mean, okay. Let's say she finds a three to 4% error rate in the sample ballots that they're going to let her look at.

Gene 34:57

Yep.

Ben 34:58

That would represent enough ballots to potentially overturn the election. So do you do a statewide recount? Do you say, okay, we have all these people who weren't able to vote, who were disenfranchised? I mean, it's an absolute constitutional

Gene 35:15

don't think a recount does anything because a recount includes a bunch of fake votes and then it precludes people that showed up to vote from voting because the machines are broken.

Ben 35:24

which is why I said you have a constitutional crisis in Arizona. Do you do a redo of the

Gene 35:29

I don't think so. I think you'll leave it alone. And I think what the legislature needs to do is pass a new law that says in the state of Arizona, that the election day starts six weeks before election and ends exactly on election night. And then anybody can show up during those six weeks to vote. In a physical location, get rid of the mail-in ballots altogether.

Ben 35:52

Yeah. Well, I, I think having an absentee ballot, if you're going to be overseas or traveling or whatever, and you,

Gene 36:00

I, I don't, I disagree on that. So I, I think it comes from a good place, like you wanna be inclusive,

Ben 36:06

well, what, what about active duty? What about active duty military personnel?

Gene 36:10

I don't care. It doesn't happen in any real organizations, any board I've ever served on, any organization. If somebody's not there physically, you don't lose your vote. You

Ben 36:20

No. But you can also usually designate proxy.

Gene 36:23

No. I'm, I don't like that. Fuck it. If you, if you're not

Ben 36:26

in the examples you are citing, generally you can exa, you can

Gene 36:30

No, because I usually put in a motion to not allow that. But anyway, the, you, you can imagine me on the board of

Ben 36:39

I, I don't imagine you Board of

Gene 36:43

But it, it's,

Ben 36:44

Oh.

Gene 36:45

I think physical presence has to be part of the process. You should not be able to vote if you're not physically present. And part of that has to do with verification to prevent duplication of votes. Part of that has to do with verification to prevent down, full on voter. Yeah. Ballot harvesting, illegal votes, changing of votes before the actual election. I think. So this isn't this, this is not at all a libertarian perspective, but I think ultimately the only way to ensure a fair vote is to have open votes.

Ben 37:24

What do you mean?

Gene 37:25

Your name with what you vote.

Ben 37:27

Oh, absolutely. I think the secret ballot has to go away.

Gene 37:30

Okay. Well, we're on the same page. That's a very minority opinion. Most people do not like that.

Ben 37:35

I understand. But you know, what we have is a secret ballot being abused. Our forefathers wanted the secret ballot so that you could express an opinion that might be unpopular, but it, it is rife for abuse. And you know what, some people may not vote the way they would for a a closed ballot, but you know what? That if you are not strong enough to express your will publicly, then maybe you shouldn't express it. I, I can say without a doubt, it will not change the way I vote.

Gene 38:07

Mm-hmm. Dude name. Ben.

Ben 38:10

I'm sorry.

Gene 38:11

What's, what's your email again? Dude name ben.com.

Ben 38:13

Yes.

Gene 38:14

Mm-hmm. Right there, women,

Ben 38:17

what,

Gene 38:18

but you just said

Ben 38:19

what did I say?

Gene 38:20

if, if you're not strong enough to handle having your vote publicly available, maybe you shouldn't be voting woman.

Ben 38:26

I didn't say women.

Gene 38:28

You implied it.

Ben 38:29

No, I didn't. I just, I,

Gene 38:30

heard it. I heard you imply it.

Ben 38:32

No. Anyway yeah, I, I, I, I agree with you that a actual there I should be able to go on the State Department website put in my LA and, maybe it's not published, maybe it's not public record or, publicly available. But I should be able to go into the website, put in my last name, my first name, and my social security number, or my voter ID, or whatever it is, and be able to look up and see what, how my vote was tallied.

Gene 38:56

Mm-hmm.

Ben 38:57

That would be ideal.

Gene 38:59

Yep. Yeah.

Ben 39:02

so before ballot harvesting though, when we just had physical voting in person, you had the, the busing that would occur. So you had people literally saying, Hey, we will get you on a bus. The Democrats were notorious for this in certain communities and busing people to the polling places to push the vote. It was the, probably the first form of ballot harvesting, as it were. And a lot of times they'd say, Hey, we'll buy you lunch or whatever afterwards, and getting people to

Gene 39:30

I mean, the first form of ballot harvesting is politicians lying about what they're gonna do in the office.

Ben 39:36

well, that's not ballot harvesting, that's just

Gene 39:38

around forever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, you're harvesting ballots, votes for yourself. Vote harvesting. It, it's, I know it's a popularity contest. There's no two ways around it. And what we've got is basically the, the old school. Watch a Miss America on TV and then dial an 800 number or more like a, a number you're paying for I can't even remember what those numbers were. Like

Ben 40:05

one 900

Gene 40:06

Yeah, there you go. 900 number to, to vote for your favorite contestant. And nothing says you can't vote more than once, cuz they'll happily take your money. That's what we got right now in the, in the voter system, is that there's so many ways to fake votes and the assumption is, well, nobody would do that except that they've actually come out and said they did it.

Ben 40:30

Well, there've been people prosecuted. Now the question is, is it's ever, is, has it ever been enough to overthrow an election in the onesie here, here's the thing. During the 2020 election, a lot of people, a lot of the lawsuits got thrown out on standing because the number of votes that that lawsuit represented would not be enough to affect the election. But you had hundreds of lawsuits. So in aggregate, could it have, I don't know.

Gene 40:58

Yeah, no, that's a good point. Quite likely it could have. I think this is my personal take on this, so I don't have any rationale behind it, but I, I really think that the Supreme Court with its actions effectively demonstrated to all lower courts that. The best thing for our branch to do is to not meddle in politics. So we're gonna come up with whatever bullshit excuse we can to just not take on these types of questions.

Ben 41:30

Which is cowardly at the very least or insidious at worst. But know, I, I, I think that legislatures need to do what Florida has done. I think Texas, Arizona, and several other states need to really get in line with making sure that you have the vote voter rolls cleaned, cleaned up. I think you need to limit or eliminate mail-in voting. And then you'll see some differences. But all that said we're seeing some increases in violence. The,

Gene 42:05

And we're gonna keep seeing him

Ben 42:07

I'm sorry,

Gene 42:08

and we're gonna keep seeing him throughout the year,

Ben 42:11

this, this Twitter stuff. I think is waking some people up. And it's interesting to see the divide in how people are interpreting the severity of this, because I think a lot of people are going, holy crap, the government really was doing that.

Gene 42:25

Yeah.

Ben 42:25

are taking it as validation. And then the liberals are saying, well, of course, why wouldn't they be?

Gene 42:29

Right. Well, because somebody's gotta protect us.

Ben 42:33

right.

Gene 42:33

For. It's to protects us from hearing things that could be controversial.

Ben 42:39

yeah. Well, and so you've got the Twitter stuff, you've got the FTX and Sam Bankman Freed, which holy crap, they arrested him right before he was supposed to testify before Congress. There's no coincidence

Gene 42:51

Totally amazing timing.

Ben 42:53

Yeah. Which he's, he, he, he's gotta just be the fall guy, man.

Gene 42:57

you think he's too stupid to have done anything?

Ben 43:02

I, I don't know if he's stupid or not. I, I haven't followed him personally enough to have an evaluation of him. He was certainly set up to be, this smart guy, which, he, he could be just a dumbass that's being perpetuated as

Gene 43:17

Mm-hmm.

Ben 43:18

And or he could be smart and his ego's so inflated that he wasn't paying attention to what was happening. His intelligence doesn't really matter to me, but I think he was the guy left holding the bag,

Gene 43:28

Mm-hmm.

Ben 43:29

if that makes sense.

Gene 43:32

He didn't seem to, he, he doesn't act like a scared little mouse, which is usually the way that people that were left holding the bag seem to act.

Ben 43:43

Oh,

Gene 43:43

He seems way overly confident for somebody that was just a pat.

Ben 43:50

Mm. Unless he's just such an egotist and so full of himself and it so overinflated that he has a disproportionate self of self of worth, or batteries are narcissist. I mean, if he's truly a narcissist and thinks he can do no wrong, that's the way you would act.

Gene 44:31

Exactly. Yeah. If he's a narcissist. So I guess he could be a patsy narcissist, but, or he could be a guy that just is a because of his parents' connection and the way that he grew up and the fact that he did, went to the right schools, got the right degrees, did all that stuff worked in the right places after college, that anything he does is okay.

Ben 44:56

Yeah. Well, I, I don't see how he gets out of this unscathed, but I could be wrong.

Gene 45:05

they could find somebody else out of that group to blame and shift, shift it, and then make him out to be the idiot that got taken advantage of.

Ben 45:16

Maybe. But how do you do that without implicating Alameda?

Gene 45:20

Oh, I think she's the one that's gonna end up Oh, the company? Yeah. Yeah. I think his girlfriend might be the fall guy.

Ben 45:26

I don't know, maybe,

Gene 45:27

She looks super dumb and there's already been articles about how she is now. Responsible for the single biggest trading loss ever in the history of the United States, meaning no single trader had lost more than she has.

Ben 45:45

Yeah. Well, it's definitely when you look at both of them, these are not attractive people

Gene 45:51

are fucking the worst kind of nerds out there. Th there would be a 1980s sitcom making fun of these kids,

Ben 45:59

in in, in Indeed.

Gene 46:01

or even in the nineties sitcom, maybe not a 2000 sitcom, but definitely a nineties sitcom.

Ben 46:07

Yeah. Well, just the entire look and anyway, I, I, I don't

Gene 46:14

I, I've mentioned it before and I'll, I'll say it again. The the, the lack of bullies in modern American culture is negatively affecting future generations

Ben 46:28

Yeah, I agree. And kids are so, it used to be, A teacher wouldn't just immediately stop a fight. The punches would have to be thrown. Stuff would ha and then they'd step in. But now it's, so, I mean, even when I was gonna school, so when I was in high school, I would, I had been homeschooled and private school and, and went to public school and when I was, was in public school some kids tried to bully me and that didn't go over well. And I got threatened with suspension multiple times for defending myself. And it's

Gene 47:04

Mm-hmm.

Ben 47:04

no, I'm gonna defend myself. Well no, you just need to come tell us. Yeah. Fuck that. No. But that was what was being encouraged even in the, early two thousands of, oh no, no, don't fight, don't hit back. Cuz then you'll get suspended too. Yeah. Fuck. You're not gonna suspend me for defending myself.

Gene 47:22

Yeah. Or even if you do get some sentiment. So what?

Ben 47:25

Exactly. My parents had my back on that. So in fact, I, we were

Gene 47:30

in your permanent record.

Ben 47:31

it was funny, we were sitting in the principal's office because I had gotten in trouble for it was in what gym class or something? This guy shoved me to the ground and I got back up and showed him and we had this little shoving match and they were threatening to suspend me. And, I was like, he has, he assaulted me first and the principal said, well, you, you, you just can't respond. And my mom turned to her and said, the fuck he can't. If someone pushes you, punches you, you hit

Gene 47:56

Mm-hmm.

Ben 47:57

and all right, So, yeah. Yeah, it was interesting. But you know, most parents would never back up their kids to the authorities. Oh, the authorities say you did something naughty.

Gene 48:11

Yeah. Well, it's I don't know. It, it, I think this is, again, part of that whole, it takes a village mentality, which is counter nature frankly, because as primates and mammals, this is literally what everything that's related to us does. This is what childhood is for. Why do you think kids don't go instantly from being babies that would die if left alone to being full grown adults? Because there's that whole middle portion where you have to learn in compressed amount of time without getting yourself killed, the limitations of who you are.

Ben 48:46

Mm-hmm.

Gene 48:47

And if you take that away by being a helicopter parent, by not letting your kids fail at anything, not letting your kids fight back, not letting your kids learn how to deal with bullies. And incidentally, part of learning how to deal with bullies is to not personalize everything. And, you can throw a punch or you can make a good joke and disarm them.

Ben 49:11

Mm-hmm.

Gene 49:11

And there are a lot of ways to deal with it. But you're not gonna learn any of those ways if the quote unquote adults take care of it, because,

Ben 49:20

W

Gene 49:22

You're gonna end up with, we have right now a whole generation, a large generation of people in their twenties and getting to be thirties that are incapable of dealing as a mature, mature adult to stress in life.

Ben 49:38

in conflict in,

Gene 49:40

Yeah, yeah. Conflict, which is stressful, but I, even beyond conflict, they're, they're literally like, they can't live a normal life doing gig jobs without being on all kinds of antidepressants.

Ben 49:54

Yeah. So I, I think part of this is the rise in school shootings because if, you go back to your childhood, my childhood, and really I'm at the tail end of it. But if you fight back, whether with words and wet or physically,

Gene 50:12

yeah.

Ben 50:13

even if you get the shit kicked out of you, you stood up for yourself, you don't feel helpless and hopeless. You don't feel impotent. Where these kids today, the teacher steps in, takes care of it and they didn't do anything. There's this, there's this feeling of, I, I can't even defend myself. Right? So that anger builds and, if you feel that you can't affect a situation, that's when. Violence really starts to kick in when you feel bullied, repressed, ignored, impotent to change the outcome. I mean that for, especially for a young male, that's the most emasculating, horrible thing that could possibly happen to you.

Gene 50:56

Yep.

Ben 50:58

And I, I mean, I, I can totally see that being why in the seventies we didn't have these school shootings, even though we had gun clubs in the schools,

Gene 51:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well that's part of the reason we didn't have any shootings cuz there was guns in schools as there ought to be.

Ben 51:12

Well, yeah.

Gene 51:14

yeah, I, I just think that all of these things are, are symptoms of parenting that went awry and one of the most one of the topics that I brought up on No Agenda Social that caused the most replies, even though I didn't do it for this reason, was when I talked about spanking

Ben 51:37

Mm-hmm.

Gene 51:38

and how it's unfortunate that it's not being practiced as much these days because it, it works and it's a, something that people need to understand the difference between actual child abuse and correcting behaviors of a child through physical pain.

Ben 51:55

Mm-hmm.

Gene 51:56

It, it'd be no different than with I would say the same thing about a pet, like you can abuse your pet and there are people that do, and it's. But you can also use physical pain, which electric collars, that's what they are. They're they're physical pain to train your pet.

Ben 52:13

And they are highly effective,

Gene 52:15

Yeah. Yeah. And I,

Ben 52:17

if you proceed with a warning. So you do a beep or a vibrate and you give the command again, and then shock as a result.

Gene 52:25

and I'm not suggesting you take that collar off your dog and put it on your kid, even though Ben is, but

Ben 52:30

no.

Gene 52:31

but this has been standard practice for us as a species, and not just for our species, but for related species, because it works. Again, this is, we're battling literally millennia of training and conditioning of our species and saying, well, now we know better. Now we can just talk to children and, and use rational arguments with them. And that will work equally well. No, it won't.

Ben 52:59

Well, let, let me

Gene 53:00

brains are not fully matured.

Ben 53:02

no. And they're not. And I, I practice spanking in my house and my rules on

Gene 53:07

Don't be admitting that.

Ben 53:09

I do. And I, and I think I, I think it should be, my rules are I never spank a kid if I'm angry. So if I'm angry, he's not getting spanking, even if he deserves it or whatever, because I don't want to be.

Gene 53:20

Yep.

Ben 53:21

know, you never spank a kid out of

Gene 53:22

So you just have Consuela spank the kid.

Ben 53:26

No, there is no Consuela. Anyway the next thing is I always say, no, don't do that. Here's why. And then if he persists, there's the one warning of do you want a spanking? He persists that. There, there's no other warning. It's just papa. And if that persists and he keeps on, he gets another one. There was an incident where he was putting a wagon on the coffee table the other day, and I told him, no, you're not gonna put that up there. And I took it down and he put it back up there. And I said, no, don't do that. Do you wanna spank it? And he did it again. So I spanked it, took it back down. He did it again. I spanked it third time. Okay. Obviously he's gonna be stubborn and

Gene 54:07

you're not spanking hard enough, clearly.

Ben 54:10

Well, I, I don't wanna spank too hard. So the third time I just took the wagon and it went away. And he threw a tan temper tantrum and a fit and just let him do that. And when he is ready to come back and be a rational human being, we can, we can play, we can have a talk. But until then, you just get to go over there and cry.

Gene 54:26

Yeah. Now if you wanna emotionally scar'em for life, you take that wagon, you put it in the fireplace, and you light a fire.

Ben 54:34

Well, one, I don't have a fireplace in the house. And two I think burning plastic is not a great idea.

Gene 54:41

Yes. Yes. This is a wagon. Say Rosebud on.

Ben 54:45

I'm sorry. What?

Gene 54:46

This is a wagon. Say rosebud.

Ben 54:48

No, it's, it, it was a some Lego

Gene 54:51

You know the reference I'm making though, right?

Ben 54:53

I do not.

Gene 54:54

Citizen Kane?

Ben 54:56

Oh, okay. Yeah,

Gene 54:57

Yeah.

Ben 54:58

yeah,

Gene 54:58

That was what kind of made that character, the, the man he ended up being was the fact that his father burned his it wasn't wagon. I think it was like a

Ben 55:08

Some toy. Yeah. I

Gene 55:10

Yeah, yeah, it was, yeah. But it, the I don't know if it was a brand name or just whatever, but it's had Rosebud written on it.

Ben 55:17

Mm-hmm.

Gene 55:17

Yeah, it was like a not a skate thing, but a thing you'd go down a snowy mountain with what the like a toboggan kind of thing? It's like a thing, yeah. I believe could, it's been many years since I've seen that movie.

Ben 55:29

Yeah. Same here. Yeah. Anyway. No, I, I believe in corporal punishments. I believe you, you try and talk to him. You try and you, you, but I think that, do you want a spanking that, that verbal warning beforehand is the same thing I would do with my dog on the beep on the electric collar. Right.

Gene 55:47

right now. And I also don't believe, or don't, I mean, it sounds silly to say believe, but I don't, I don't like the idea of corporal punishment in Catholic schools. Like that definitely should not happen. It's one thing to cause pain in your own kids. It's something else to have a bunch of people that don't have sex causing pain in other people's children.

Ben 56:10

Well, I, so I don't think that it's the school's job to administer corporal punishment at all.

Gene 56:18

Yeah, that's what I'm, that's literally what I'm saying, but it's,

Ben 56:21

I'm saying COR Catholic or otherwise, I don't

Gene 56:24

Oh. Oh, I see. So you just wanna be more inclusive of other schools.

Ben 56:27

Y yeah. What I'm saying, I, and this is something that goes back to a conversation I had many years ago with a guy that worked at a power plant. And I was in the break room with some of these guys that worked at the power plant. And this one guy said, man, we need to pay our teachers more. And I said, oh, yeah, so and so why? Well, they're raising our kids. And I just looked at'em and said, then you're doing it wrong.

Gene 56:54

Mm-hmm.

Ben 56:55

But, but that really is the mentality. I mean, schools aren't raising our kids. And when you look at what's going on in the schools, gee, I wonder why there's a jump in gender dysmorphia,

Gene 57:07

Yeah. Like that, that school in Chicago. Holy.

Ben 57:10

Oh man. It, I mean, so you can say what you want, but, and they're defending this as sex ed. No, I don't think introducing toys is sex ed. And I, I'm not against them. I'm not against their use in whatever relationship you have, whatever you wanna do, go do as an adult. I don't care however many people you wanna do it with of whatever gender, I don't care.

Gene 57:33

Should we have sex ed in school to begin with? Isn't that something the parents ought to do?

Ben 57:37

absolutely.

Gene 57:38

Yeah.

Ben 57:39

And if, and I mean, it's like, well, first of all, we shouldn't have public schools to begin with. And the argument,

Gene 57:46

We shouldn't have a department of education to begin

Ben 57:48

yeah, the, the argument people say is, well then a lot of pe a lot of kids wouldn't get educated cuz their parents wouldn't do it. Well, that sucks for them. They had shitty parents.

Gene 57:56

Mm-hmm.

Ben 57:57

Same thing that goes for sex ed. If you don't teach your kids about sex and what to do and how to stay safe and everything else that's on you. Well, yeah.

Gene 58:07

They're not gonna not know about sex. Guarantee you that.

Ben 58:09

If, well, I don't know. I don't know with what was that?

Gene 58:12

That was my watch bumping the microphone.

Ben 58:15

Damn.

Gene 58:15

That's a weird noise.

Ben 58:17

anyway, with all the the exogenous estrogens and lots of things going on, the, the interest in sex has definitely declined.

Gene 58:26

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's very true.

Ben 58:28

And y'all have to remember, I've also got a 20 year

Gene 58:31

Yeah. You got

Ben 58:32

17 year old in the house,

Gene 58:33

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben 58:34

I'm, I'm just astonished by their behavior because I, I would act very differently at their age.

Gene 58:39

Mm-hmm. Yeah. There's the whole thing about like cuddling, just when I first heard about it, I was like, yes. And I was like, no, that's it.

Ben 58:51

Yeah.

Gene 58:52

What, why? What's the point?

Ben 58:57

Oh, man.

Gene 58:58

I'm like, okay, I, are you trying to make somebody feel better and then, get'em to a point where they can have sex or what, what, what is this cuddling thing?

Ben 59:06

Well, I mean, you remember the first steps, right? Was always kind of the cuddling and then the

Gene 59:11

But it had to be a step. It wasn't the end result.

Ben 59:14

Not at all And it was a very short-lived step to be clear.

Gene 59:20

Uhhuh Exactly. Exactly. No, it, it's, it's absolutely changed the way that that American teenagers interact

Ben 59:32

Well, yeah.

Gene 59:33

think it's gonna have long term effects on a lot of things. I think whether people want it or not, the, the birth rate is going to fall quite a bit further than it's already, and we will be losing population, not gaining popul.

Ben 59:49

well, Yeah, I think the birth race is gonna decline for a couple of reasons. Well, one, this rise in gender dis fourteens that are being

Gene 59:58

Sterilized,

Ben 59:59

well, they're, they're, they're being affirmed in their mental illness whether it be transitory or not. And that affirmation has permanent consequences.

Gene 1:00:10

Yeah.

Ben 1:00:11

I, and he, here, here's my thing, like Lair White and some other people, I actually personally know I have no problem using whatever pronouns because they're going through steps and they're presenting. They're

Gene 1:00:24

Dude, if Blair White wasn't using, she, I would still call her a she, because she looks like a, she.

Ben 1:00:30

Exactly.

Gene 1:00:31

just a natural response is to stick somebody looks like a female. You call a female, somebody looks like a male you call a male. Same thing with buck Angel. The one of the oldest, sort of well-known transsexuals is buck just looks like a short dude, but he's looked like a dude for 20 years,

Ben 1:00:53

Yeah. Well, what it

Gene 1:00:54

yeah.

Ben 1:00:56

what it comes down to is transi. If you're truly gender dysphoric, which. Historically trend gender dysphoria has mainly affected males not females. And if you're truly gender dysphoric in, in your adulthood, that is the last step or whatever. Okay. Maybe I don't know how effective it is for a lot of people, but you know, people who have body dysmorphia where they don't feel like they should have a right arm, you don't cut that arm off.

Gene 1:01:26

right?

Ben 1:01:26

People who are bulimic you don't go, yeah, go throw up or anorexic, oh yeah, you are a little

Gene 1:01:32

Well, unless they're hot looking, then they become a model,

Ben 1:01:37

Okay? The people who care about these people generally do not affirm their dysphoria.

Gene 1:01:45

right?

Ben 1:01:46

This is the only time where we are affirming this dysphoria and, for teenage and developing young males and young females who are going through a confusing time in their life, definitely not the time to do it, especially with hormone blockers, ma double mastectomies, all these things. And it's not clear to me

Gene 1:02:07

not,

Ben 1:02:07

doing more harm than good.

Gene 1:02:09

athletics and literally, let's say we take these people at their word, right? So that this like, Athlete. Dude feels like a woman. So he ends up getting a driver's license that says he's a woman and then can compete against women in athletics, having a huge biological advantage.

Ben 1:02:39

Mm-hmm.

Gene 1:02:40

Having that huge biological advantage with the mentality of a typical woman would make that person not want to compete because there would be too many people that would feel bad as a result of him competing.

Ben 1:02:56

Mm-hmm.

Gene 1:02:58

So I would argue that by their actions, a lot of these, not all, but a lot of these male to female trans people

Ben 1:03:09

Mm-hmm.

Gene 1:03:10

are actually not at all acting like the sex that they're saying. They feel like

Ben 1:03:22

Okay. How

Gene 1:03:23

it's not, it's not about wearing dresses, because if that's all it is, you're a transvestite. You just like dressing in dresses. Who's that? British comedian does that. He's very out about

Ben 1:03:34

Eddie is,

Gene 1:03:35

Yeah. Eddie Isard guy's had a beard forever. He talks like a dude, he might haves. Had sex with other men, I don't know. But he's also had sex with plenty of women. But, but he just, he's one of those guys that, well, they're all married. Bowie is married too, and we all know about him. But the guy just enjoys wearing women's clothes. Okay. So that doesn't make him a trans person in the American sense of the word, because we've shifted away from transsexual and transvestite to transgender, which is a made up thing. So, gene@ergen.com, and so in my mind, if you're truly dysmorphic and you see yourself as a woman, then you ought to act as a woman, not just dress as a woman.

Ben 1:04:29

Gene, you're making an interesting point and one of the things you just said that I haven't ever thought of or pared out, but there has been a move. So before it used to be transvestite versus transsexual, and now we've introduced transgender because gender can be fluid and is not necessarily tied to biological sex. However, up and through, I would say the early two thousands, even the terminology then for gender dysmorphia, gender dysmorphia was tied to biological sex.

Gene 1:04:56

Absolutely.

Ben 1:04:58

That's

Gene 1:04:58

Yeah. It's a, it's a bullshit made up thing. So when I was young, like a hundred years ago,

Ben 1:05:03

Well,

Gene 1:05:03

The term. Exactly the, the term gender. In fact, I remember a teacher saying, I, I'm gonna, this is not a direct quote, but it's a, it's a paraphrase or quote, remember a teacher saying that people have sex, words have gender, people do not have gender. Like that was an actual thing taught in school because that's what it meant back then. And somewhere in the last 40 plus years that completely got thrown out the window and people now have gender.

Ben 1:05:39

Well, they're trying to introduce the concept because then it's arbitrary

Gene 1:05:45

Yeah,

Ben 1:05:45

biological.

Gene 1:05:47

I almost have like, a, a clear view of people that say that, there, there's a million different genders if you just put it out as acumatic, that you can invent your own category of something and then say, I'm now a purple rhino Nous.

Ben 1:06:07

Yeah.

Gene 1:06:08

Okay, well whatever that means, you do you, but it doesn't mean I have to call you that, cuz I, I will still see you as who you are, not as what you think.

Ben 1:06:21

Well, and that goes to the whole thing about, Blair White being a in Buck Angel being good examples of people who present a certain way and you're going to naturally call them the pronouns that they would want to be used, even though you may or may not know whether or not they are. But that goes to societal negotiation, right? So to, if I were to come out and say, I'm trans today, call me, she, her people would look at me. I've got a beard, I'm clearly present as male,

Gene 1:06:48

call that a beard?

Ben 1:06:50

a goatee, whatever you wanna call it. I have facial

Gene 1:06:53

coup. A couple of facial hairs growing on his chin. Okay. All right.

Ben 1:06:58

Anyway, the point is,

Gene 1:07:00

I'm the king of beards. Goddammit.

Ben 1:07:02

okay, great. What it comes down to is I really like how Peterson puts this, their, your identity and how your scene has to be part of a social negotiation, right? You, you have to conform to a social norm of some kind and to just be able to flip that and then demand that everyone agree with you is just nonsensical.

Gene 1:07:24

Yeah. The, the whole idea of like rock and roll lifestyle and what a lot of teenagers for many, many years tried to emulate is non-conformity. It is idea, Hey man, you can't define me. do my own thing. Well, we've gone from that to, Hey man, I'm gonna define me and I'm gonna force everybody else to follow my definition.

Ben 1:07:45

Mm-hmm.

Gene 1:07:46

What?

Ben 1:07:48

Well,

Gene 1:07:48

that's not how that works, buddy.

Ben 1:07:51

and this just goes back to, I, I have a real hard time with, if someone wants to say, Hey call me ZR or whatever, okay? I, I may not agree with you, but I will defend your right to say it, but that doesn't mean you get to make me say it.

Gene 1:08:07

right?

Ben 1:08:08

And we, this cancel culture that we've embarked on, kind of has always been there to an extent. Basic moralities of a culture in a way is somewhat of a cancel culture. But at the same, I'm

Gene 1:08:21

used to burden witches.

Ben 1:08:22

Yeah. Well, I, I think hopefully we've evolved from that, but now we're going in a even worse direction because now anyone can be burned for the slightest transgression,

Gene 1:08:31

Mm-hmm. But you mean like looking at a chicken wrong at the farmer's market and making the chicken not lay any eggs, which a witch would do on a regular basis? That sounds like a transgression to me.

Ben 1:08:42

Yeah. A Anyway, I, I just, I don't know where, we got away from, I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will deve defend to the death your right to say it.

Gene 1:08:53

Yeah. Well I'll tell you, we got tired of saying that cuz I say that all the time and I'm done with it. I'm not gonna defend shit anymore. Let people fight for their own rights.

Ben 1:09:02

Yeah. Did you did you see what I posted on in Na Social the other day?

Gene 1:09:08

Most of your polling PO posts are just me referencing some other posts from somebody else. What'd you post?

Ben 1:09:15

No. I, I posted a quote from Revolt in 2100, which is a Highline novel where Lazarus Long leads a revolt. And anyway, it, the quote reads like this, and it's one of those that I think is just brilliant. The keystone of UL tyranny, not force, but secrecy, censor censorship. When any government or church for that matter undertakes to say to its subjects, this, you may not read this, you may not see this. You are forbidden to know. The end result is tyranny, oppression, no matter how holy the motives.

Gene 1:09:50

Yeah, I'd agree with that.

Ben 1:09:51

Well, it goes on. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked, counter wise. No amount of force can control a free man, A man whose mind is free. Not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything you cannot conquer a free man. The most you can do is kill him.

Gene 1:10:11

Yeah, no, I agree with that. Where, where does the term hoodwink come from? Do you.

Ben 1:10:15

I do not. Do you know the origin?

Gene 1:10:17

I do not, but whenever I hear that word, I think of somebody putting a hood over somebody's head so they can't see.

Ben 1:10:25

Hmm.

Gene 1:10:26

But I don't know if that's where it comes from and I'm too lazy to Google it,

Ben 1:10:30

Okay.

Gene 1:10:31

but I was curious to see if you knew, cuz you're much more well-read than I am.

Ben 1:10:34

No, but I can Google the Entymology

Gene 1:10:36

I guarantee you you've read way more books. Like I, I haven't read the book you just mentioned, so.

Ben 1:10:41

Oh. So I h line's one of my favorite authors. I think I've read pretty much everything he's ever written. And the Lazarus long character is definitely one i I like.

Gene 1:10:50

Cool name too. I like that.

Ben 1:10:51

yeah, he, he definitely some inappropriate things in those books that Reading as a kid, I didn't really realize until rereading them as an adult that I'm like, huh, okay. Yeah. The verb is, it's derived from a hood, something covering your head winked to close one's eyes. So yes, the, your, your sum summarization of the etymology is accurate, that it's someone putting something over your head so you cannot see.

Gene 1:11:23

Yeah.

Ben 1:11:24

So metaphorically blinded

Gene 1:11:26

Yep. Good. So I was right and I got somebody else to Google it.

Ben 1:11:33

Here,

Gene 1:11:34

Those are two of my favorite things.

Ben 1:11:37

Yeah,

Gene 1:11:38

right and having other people do work. Yeah. But I think I, I, I asked you for an example, and I, I'd like to hear one of things that you found a little more inappropriate as an adult than didn't notice when you were a

Ben 1:11:50

I can think of several examples in, so, in the moon is a harsh mistress. It's full of polyamory, right? In group marriages and things like that. Which you can argue on the validity of,

Gene 1:12:02

But weren't you living in Idaho at the time?

Ben 1:12:04

yes,

Gene 1:12:05

Ah, well there we go. That explains a lot why you didn't notice it.

Ben 1:12:08

why?

Gene 1:12:09

All those communes of

Ben 1:12:11

Oh, please,

Gene 1:12:13

living in Idaho. I've, I've watched movies.

Ben 1:12:16

Yeah. You, oh, bullshit. Anyway no, where we were was very, very, very conservative.

Gene 1:12:22

Conservative communes. I, I know about those.

Ben 1:12:25

Communes. Anyway the other thing would be like in Rand's writing, there's a lot of what could be described as rape scenes in Ra in Rand's

Gene 1:12:34

Oh yeah. She liked that.

Ben 1:12:36

Oh yeah. She was definitely one of

Gene 1:12:37

She was into rape big time. Yeah. Rape fantasies galore.

Ben 1:12:41

I mean, it's very clear in both the Fountain head and Atlas Shrugged, right?

Gene 1:12:47

She very much sees archival female and male characters as dominant and submissive. Not, not in a, any kind of a weird Catholic way, but as a

Ben 1:12:59

will yield to another. Now it, it, it could be argued that the main characters, so Atla shrugged. Perfect example, Hank and Dagney hookup, even though Hank's married but Dagney is competent and Hank's wife is not. Hi, hi. His wife is definitely one of the users, one of the takers.

Gene 1:13:18

Yep.

Ben 1:13:18

Yeah. So,

Gene 1:13:21

Well, then again Anne Rand also did that, hooked up while she was married.

Ben 1:13:26

I'm sure.

Gene 1:13:27

Yeah.

Ben 1:13:28

But anyway, in some of some of

Gene 1:13:29

remember the guy's name. Tom something.

Ben 1:13:33

I, I don't

Gene 1:13:34

The guy she hooked up with.

Ben 1:13:35

Okay. Don't care. Her political philosophy is what interests me, not her views on anything else.

Gene 1:13:41

Yeah. Well, he was one of her early followers.

Ben 1:13:44

Yeah. So, the, the other thing I'd say in, in Hein Line's book, there's every single one of Highline's books are pretty hypersexualized in lots of ways, which I just didn't pick up on as a kid.

Gene 1:13:56

Yeah. So I wonder if you would, now, if you're read any George R. Martin stuff,

Ben 1:14:01

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Only as an adult,

Gene 1:14:04

pretty hypersexualized?

Ben 1:14:06

eh, no more so than Highline or Rand.

Gene 1:14:10

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But definitely the books have more vivid sex than the TV show.

Ben 1:14:18

Yes,

Gene 1:14:19

Yeah. I, that's why I is that he does enjoy writing out the sex scenes

Ben 1:14:25

Yeah. And then oh, what was that author he wrote the oh, the Commonwealth Universe. Do you know who I'm talking about?

Gene 1:14:35

Uhuh.

Ben 1:14:35

Peter F. Hamilton. He's another one. Peter

Gene 1:14:38

I don't think I've read a single thing by him.

Ben 1:14:40

Oh, really? He's got some good.

Gene 1:14:42

Hmm.

Ben 1:14:43

They are long though.

Gene 1:14:45

Well wait until January when my audible subscription resets, then you can start sending me recommendations again.

Ben 1:14:52

Okay. Yeah. The Pandora Stars series and the Commonwealth Universe is pretty, pretty decent by Hamilton. But yeah, there are lots of good books out there, so

Gene 1:15:02

there was. I read a lot of science fiction when I was a kid, and I definitely remember, well, I don't remember right now who, what books they were, but I think it was a whole series of books I read. But in the world that was created, the there were slavery and all the slaves were distinguished by not wearing clothes.

Ben 1:15:26

Hmm.

Gene 1:15:26

So if you were a slave, you couldn't wear clothes. And

Ben 1:15:30

familiar with the

Gene 1:15:31

yeah, I'm trying to remember who it was. I may have been a Terry Ett thing a series of books. But like, it seemed just, as a kid, no different than somebody describing somebody who's wearing some particular type of clothing. Right? It's like, oh, okay. Well that's how it, that's how they're,

Ben 1:15:49

It's just the way they are distinguished,

Gene 1:15:51

an adult, it's just kinda like, that's fucking kinky

Ben 1:15:55

Exactly. Exactly.

Gene 1:15:57

Uhhuh

Ben 1:15:58

yeah.

Gene 1:15:58

Yeah. Kids don't and shouldn't notice these things until they're older.

Ben 1:16:03

Well, it's like anyone who's watched kids movies especially Disney and Pixar and all that, there's a lot of innuendo, which you could say is them grooming? Or you could say that it's being put in for, the adults or whatever. And there is a question on that.

Gene 1:16:23

Oh, absolutely. And I think historically that's that that has happened over many, many years is that kids have been used in things they don't understand. But adults seeing it would be

Ben 1:16:38

Well, but the

Gene 1:16:39

recognized like a teddy bear wearing BDSM outfits

Ben 1:16:42

but the question is, okay, is that for the adults or is

Gene 1:16:46

and clearly, oh, it's totally for the adults.

Ben 1:16:49

Okay. But do you think it

Gene 1:16:50

gonna be for the kids.

Ben 1:16:51

but do you think it sub subliminally affects the kids,

Gene 1:16:58

I'm not a psychologist, so that would require much more training in that department than me. I just play one on tv. So

Ben 1:17:06

your gut feel?

Gene 1:17:08

my gut feel probably not,

Ben 1:17:12

Well,

Gene 1:17:13

it does in excess, but I guarantee you there have been plenty of kids in situations that adults saw as, something that could be perceived as being kinky or whatever

Ben 1:17:28

Huh.

Gene 1:17:28

that the kids were absolutely clues about

Ben 1:17:31

Well, you know I'm, yeah.

Gene 1:17:33

the kid is made to do that over and over and over or seize the gratification in the adults like, with a priest or something. I just, I don't think it would have a long-term negative effect because you'd have to understand some kind of a connection and then later find out that it was a perverse connection. But if, if, let's say you walk in on your kid and your kid's like wearing his sister's clothes, your immediate reaction is like, oh my God, my kid has decided that he's changed his gender. Your reaction is why are you fucking with your sister's stuff? She's gonna get mad if you do. It has nothing to do with what An adult, like, if you came in and I was wearing your wife's clothes, that would be a different reaction, right? Because I'm not a kid.

Ben 1:18:22

happy to say that you could not possibly fit in my wife's clothes.

Gene 1:18:25

What? There you go. But let's say I could, I mean, it's like there's no

Ben 1:18:30

to fit in my wife's clothes.

Gene 1:18:32

there's no there's no sort of childhood innocence there, right? That is clearly an adult person making a conscious adult decision to do something kinky.

Ben 1:18:44

Right.

Gene 1:18:46

So I think with a kid, if you don't make a big deal about it, and if they don't, if they're not made to do it, I don't think there's any long term kinda effects.

Ben 1:18:57

Well, I I you say that, but you know, I, I have my thoughts and my, the way I view things and I look back at what I read and

Gene 1:19:09

mm-hmm.

Ben 1:19:10

what I watched, including we put on the Little Mermaid for my son the other day cause he really likes ocean stuff and rewatching that and the whole Ursula thing clearly,

Gene 1:19:23

have the hots for the mermaid when they were young?

Ben 1:19:26

well yeah. But anyway, the Ursula's description and what she's talking about is definitely sexualized. And then you had the cover of one of the VHS tapes with the dildo on the castle. It's actually not in the movie. It was on a cover. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So the cover of one of the VHS tapes, one of the original vhs, a VHS tapes released at the Little Mermaid had one of the underwater castles shaped in the form of a dildo. And this is a movie that came out in

Gene 1:19:53

You kidding?

Ben 1:19:54

No, Google it. This has been a thing of Disney putting this in. Yeah, absolutely.

Gene 1:20:00

And what do you think they did that just as a tongue in cheek kind of thing, or

Ben 1:20:05

I I think that there have been perverts that have worked at Disney since Disney has been in, in

Gene 1:20:10

Well, I totally, I totally agree with that. I, I think that it is somewhat unnatural, especially for men, but also to some extent for women to just spend their entire lives dealing with children.

Ben 1:20:22

with someone else's children,

Gene 1:20:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Someone else's children, but even with your own, like they grew up eventually, like you get over that,

Ben 1:20:29

right? But I mean, there have been many things put into look at both a Lion King and a Ladin had imagery actually in the movies. You can argue about Buzz Light ear getting a, Boeing sort of moment. But you know, the, all that, I doubt you're gonna pick up on, but the, that, that cover on the Little Mermaid was pretty egregious and they ended up changing it. So if you look up the cover today, it's

Gene 1:20:54

So there's a movie that came out in the seventies that, I dunno if it's been on TV since, frankly, but I thought it was really cool cuz I was a kid. But it's called Bugsy Malone. Have you seen it?

Ben 1:21:06

No

Gene 1:21:07

Okay. So Bugsy Malone was a, a movie about the Chicago mobster scene.

Ben 1:21:14

Uhhuh

Gene 1:21:15

Shot with a all child cast.

Ben 1:21:19

Okay.

Gene 1:21:20

So it has like a 12 year old Jodi Foster in it. It has Scott Bao, beyo,

Ben 1:21:29

Mm-hmm.

Gene 1:21:29

It's basically child stars and every, every character in the movie is a kid that is probably no older than 14, but somewhere between nine and 14.

Ben 1:21:40

Mm-hmm.

Gene 1:21:40

Including the all the mobsters, the gangsters, the the dancers and the clubs everybody. And watching that as a kid, it looked really cool cuz you could identify with, the, the actors, right?

Ben 1:21:54

Yep.

Gene 1:21:54

Watching it as adult. It's a little creepy because they're doing adult stuff, but they're kids.

Ben 1:22:00

Well, let me, are they doing just gangster stuff? Are they, is there what kind of component is that? You

Gene 1:22:06

Well, I mean, there's, there's definitely love stuff.

Ben 1:22:09

Okay.

Gene 1:22:10

There's no, there's no sex, right? But they're playing adults with adult emotions. And Jodi Foster plays Talula, I think, and she's like

Ben 1:22:20

never been a Jodi Foster fan.

Gene 1:22:22

oh, I have But uh, she was in the, quite a few for the time, very like, here's the thing, Jody Foster that, and I think Brook Shields had in common is they were taught, cuz I don't think this comes naturally. As children, as child actors to, to act very seductively in an Lolita kind of adult way.

Ben 1:22:49

Mm-hmm.

Gene 1:22:50

Because the thing about Novak's book Lolita, right, is it's, it's not just a, a perv who's into teenage girls. It's about a teenage girl who acts like a sexualized woman. And I think that's the similar characteristic to what Jodi Foster and then Brook Shields had in their early careers, is that they were essentially trained on how to act as a somebody, that was maybe 20 or whatever, but it's somebody who's really hot and sexualized but doing that while they were 11, 12, 13, 14 years old.

Ben 1:23:37

Hmm.

Gene 1:23:37

So those I, I think are and, and movies by both those actresses have been used as examples of sort of Lolita in America type films. And in fact the the remake of Lolita, the movie the chick that was in that movie, I think did an excellent job of playing the character. And then she just pretty much disappeared outta Hollywood. Like that movie kind of ruined her

Ben 1:24:03

Okay.

Gene 1:24:04

because I don't think you can be a child once you learn how to act as an adult.

Ben 1:24:14

I've never watched watched the movies of the subject matter, so wouldn't know.

Gene 1:24:20

okay. Well, have you read the book

Ben 1:24:22

I have not,

Gene 1:24:23

No. Okay.

Ben 1:24:24

no.

Gene 1:24:25

Oh wow. A book I've read that you haven't,

Ben 1:24:27

I've read some other books though.

Gene 1:24:28

But it's a I think that the, the movies are great, actually. They do a very good job. The in the, the remake. The guy that played Dracula guy, what was his actor's name? He plays the, the Bad Guy. I can't remember the guy's name. It's not the Gary Oldman Dracula. It's the previous Jack the previous Dracula before that.

Ben 1:24:50

I, I can picture who you're talking about.

Gene 1:24:53

Yeah. But he does a, a, a good, I mean, it's like the actors are really good. Melanie Griffiths, isn't it? She's an excellent actress. It's good me. A little slightly disturbing theme, but, but done very well.

Ben 1:25:08

In what way? What was the disturbing

Gene 1:25:10

Well, just what disturbing theme is. Okay, so here's the base requirements. The book is that a guy ends up dating this divorce woman who's got a daughter, and he is mesmerized by this daughter. She's beautiful, she's smart. She's know, articulate. She, she is attractive obviously, but at first he is, he, he's sort of controlling it in himself. And then the interactions with daughters start becoming more sexualized and it's driven by her, like her sitting outside sun tanning and then asking him to come put sun lotion on her back. And then, it kind of starts that way and then it keeps moving

Ben 1:25:59

So she was grooming him

Gene 1:26:01

Well, that would be, I think, a little bit of a perversion on things. He's the adult in the room, but, but she's a very sexualized young woman.

Ben 1:26:11

but seduction is grooming in,

Gene 1:26:13

Yeah. If, if you want to call duction, she was definitely seducing him. No, no two ways about it. To the point where he then, Wants to run away with her because, she wants a, a life a certain type of life that her mother's not gonna allow. And from the, it's not the guy's fault perspective, then it's absolutely this young girl, like controlling this adult man using her sexuality to go along with her plans and what she wants to do.

Ben 1:26:44

To be clear, it's still his responsibility.

Gene 1:26:48

Yeah, yeah, obviously. But but then, so that, that's sort of the f the f early part of it, and then it goes darker because after they eventually get away, and I think what ends up ha, I, I don't want to give out too much of the plot line if you read the movie, but let's just say they figure out a way to get away from the mother and they're traveling on their own. And it's a, there, there are some people that are a little suspicious and obviously he's saying, well, I'm just with my daughter. And then people are like, aha. Right. But then towards the middle or maybe the latter part of the, the movie, in the book, you. You start seeing the suspicion in the guy because this girl's like disappearing. And she's like, oh yeah, I just went to the store and got, and now in his mind he's thinking she's cheating on him. And it turns out she is with an even older dude. So, and that's who, Frank Ella, that's the actor. Ella plays that guy. So anyway, it's a, it's, it's a totally psychological, it's a, it's one of those fun. It's very twisted. It's psychological. It's a, it was a, one of those books that your cheeks turned red if somebody caught you looking at, at the bookstore back when it was written, which I think was in the 1930s.

Ben 1:28:16

Yeah,

Gene 1:28:17

And then I'm sure it was on the band list in a lot of places. But there's two versions of the movie, the black and white one with the Pink Panther actor what's his name? The guy played the Detective cuso,

Ben 1:28:30

I never

Gene 1:28:31

Peter Peter, something. Really? Wow.

Ben 1:28:34

Some of my friends did because

Gene 1:28:36

The early movies, the originals were just a total parody of James Bond,

Ben 1:28:43

Right.

Gene 1:28:43

and then they kind of developed their own thing and they became a little more. Looney a little, little more like craziness, but the, the first couple Yeah. A little more cartoony.

Ben 1:28:55

was literally a cartoon.

Gene 1:28:56

And then there was, well, yeah, the, so the Pink Panther had nothing to do with the panther in the cartoons originally. It was a name of a diamond from Africa called the Pink Panther.

Ben 1:29:06

Right.

Gene 1:29:06

And then so again, the first, the first movie, and I think the second one were very much just sort of James Bondish parodies that were very funny. But anyway, long story short that he was in Peter Peterson, something in, in the black and white one. And then in the second one was a, a different actor. But Frank Ella is the guy who played the, the sort of the evil bad guy. The, the real pedophile

Ben 1:29:32

Hmm. Did you look at that Azure, Baja YouTube channel I sent

Gene 1:29:36

I did. It was awesome. I love it.

Ben 1:29:39

Dude, so this guy started out a little over a year ago and he, he doesn't speak any English. In fact, the only word he says is super,

Gene 1:29:49

Mm-hmm.

Ben 1:29:51

but he built up this outdoor kitchen. So, a little over a year ago, he starts with the oven and then he builds up this outdoor kitchen, builds up this little place. And I don't know what he did before. I don't really care. But you can see the production quality increase as he's gotten money from YouTube, which based off of his numbers, he's gotta be getting close to a million dollars a year right now, easily. But it's a very much a thing you can throw on in the background and just kind of just have in the background and the noises of nature and where he is at is just absolutely gorgeous. And some of the food he's cooking looks absolutely amazing.

Gene 1:30:24

It does, it

Ben 1:30:25

it's for, for those who don't know what I'm talking about, it's wilderness cooking on YouTube and Instagram.

Gene 1:30:32

yeah. If you search for a Wilder's cooking, you'll find it. And it's just literally a silent in the sense that the guy's not describing what he's doing. Cooking beautifully shot, wonderful ingredients. And in a, in a very interesting setting. It's outdoor I wouldn't call it wilderness. Yeah. I mean, he doesn't live like in a wilderness full of trees around them. He's in a different type of wilderness.

Ben 1:30:57

Well, I mean,

Gene 1:30:58

more, more in the biblical type of wilderness. Yeah.

Ben 1:31:03

where, where he is at is definitely off the beaten path, even for Asai, John being pretty off the beaten path. But and he's right there at the foothills of the caucuses and it's just beautiful. Beautifully shot. I mean, it makes me wanna move to a third world country,

Gene 1:31:17

Yeah. That may not be a bad thing.

Ben 1:31:21

No. And definitely the, the goal is one day to have a ranch with a outdoor kitchen like that, where I can just cook with wood. That'd

Gene 1:31:29

know, the, the Ojai women are pretty hot. Just saying

Ben 1:31:34

I, you will have to send me some examples because I don't, I, this is not something I know

Gene 1:31:39

Okay. Yeah, they're, they're kind of like the Kardashians, a better looking

Ben 1:31:44

well, cuz it's right on the border of Eastern Europe slash Middle East,

Gene 1:31:49

mm-hmm. Yeah. It's, it's the Silk Road kind of transitional location. So it connects Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

Ben 1:32:01

Yeah. So anyway, it's I definitely recommend it for people to check out. It's, it's pretty cool the way he did a whole ribeye. Did you see that one where he split the bones and cut

Gene 1:32:14

Mm-hmm. No, I didn't watch that one.

Ben 1:32:16

Oh my God. So

Gene 1:32:17

watch some more.

Ben 1:32:18

he takes the, the femur from the cow and probably some other probably another bone, cuz he splits four of them, but he cuts the bones all to the same length and then splits'em in half. So the marrow is exposed

Gene 1:32:29

Mm. Yes.

Ben 1:32:30

the rib eye and he seasons it and sears it, and then he cuts it in half and takes the, takes the whole ribeye and puts it together and then puts the bones around it and wires it all together. So the marrow is against the meat

Gene 1:32:45

Oh, wow.

Ben 1:32:46

he takes some fat and puts it on top and he puts all these vegetables in this clay pot at the bottom and then puts it in the oven to roast and, oh my God. So he gets it out and he's got this whole ribeye roast that he's done as a kind of an exposed standing rib roast. Takes the marrow, puts it all together with the veg. Oh my God, it looks delicious.

Gene 1:33:08

Yeah. Yeah. It, it, there, it says as much about production quality as it does about the food itself, when you can just about taste the food by, by watching the video.

Ben 1:33:20

Well, and in, in the US we don't, most people haven't ever even tried marrow

Gene 1:33:25

Mm, yes.

Ben 1:33:27

and a lot of people don't like it because of a texture thing, but it's the way he's using it, almost like a spread on the meat and the veggies. Oh, it looks delicious.

Gene 1:33:35

well, it's great on bread.

Ben 1:33:37

Oh, yes, absolutely. And Mar marrow is so healthy, we beef broth and the way we used to use the bones and the whole animal, we've gone away from that.

Gene 1:33:47

I have broth in the fridge right now.

Ben 1:33:50

Mm-hmm.

Gene 1:33:51

And yeah. It's it's a, it's a great base to use for all kinds of dishes and soups, stews,

Ben 1:33:58

Yeah.

Gene 1:33:58

Just the, the flavor is rice almost by itself. It's grew.

Ben 1:34:03

Well, and that's the thing is people used to use marrow, whether they knew it or not, by boiling the bones to the point where you had a bone broth. Right. I mean, the term bone broth really is boiling to the bones where they literally come, they, they, they just dissolve into a powder

Gene 1:34:20

Mm-hmm.

Ben 1:34:21

and then, you strain that out, so you strain out the solids. And what's left is this incredibly rich nutrient dense stuff that we just don't take the time to do anymore.

Gene 1:34:33

Well, who cooks anymore? I mean, most Americans don't.

Ben 1:34:36

Well, So since we haven't talked about it, but are we gonna do an episode on Christmas or are we, we gonna try and move that around or what?

Gene 1:34:45

Well, I guess it's up to you. I don't, I don't do Christmas, so for me, I'm happy to do an episode, but if you want to skip a week, I'm fine with that as well.

Ben 1:34:56

well that are we, I'm off that Monday.

Gene 1:34:58

with that as well.

Ben 1:34:59

I'm off the following Monday. If you wanna do it then. Okay. So I'll be talking about how it turned out, but I have a whole standing rib roast so, a whole ribeye roast bone on that I'm gonna be doing for Christmas. And yeah. So normally when I do one of

Gene 1:35:17

be at a Chinese restaurant.

Ben 1:35:20

normally when I do one of these, I do it in the oven and reverse here, but this year I'm going to be a little brave and I'm gonna actually do it

Gene 1:35:26

Now, not everybody knows what a reverse series is. You wanna explain that?

Ben 1:35:30

Yeah. So reverse here is the way I cook my steaks. It's, it's, it's a awesome method and I encourage everybody to play around with it cuz it's the way to go. So the reverse sea method is you start out at a low temperature. So the conventional way of cooking and searing is you start out hot especially on a roast, is you sear the outside of the roast and then you cook it slow. The problem with that is you get on the, you get a lot of gray matter on the outside of the roast instead of, you get a a, a le a. Let's say a quarter inch thick band of well done on the outside with a reverse. S what you do is you start out at like no high hotter than like two 50. So two 20 is usually where I put it to smoke, two 50 worst case. And you, you bring it up to temperature and once you hit that one 15 ish mark, I usually don't go over one 15 cuz I like medium rare, leaning towards rare. I take my steak or my roast off and I let it rest while I crank the fire up as hot as I can get it. And then I also usually use beef tall or something to slather on the outside to encourage to encourage searing. And I let that fat render render really well on the outside. And once that's done and you just sear it, you're at a generally perfect medium rare and you can go a few degrees higher and get perfect medium if you want. And like given my wife's Peres and everything else, I'll be taking the staining rib roast. Unfortunately the medium instead of medium rare. But it's a great method of cooking and not overcooking your meat. It's all about going based off of temperature, not time, and doing each individual cut of meat to that temperature. So for instance I, I, some people in the house don't like fatty cuts of meat, so they get filets and I'll eat a ribeye. Well, that filet is gonna be a very different thickness than my ribeye. So by cooking them to said internal temperature, I can get everybody's steak or whatever I'm cooking to what they want it to be.

Gene 1:37:26

Mm-hmm.

Ben 1:37:28

Anyway, it's a, it's a neat way of doing it.

Gene 1:37:30

Yeah. It's, I think it's becoming more popular.

Ben 1:37:33

Yeah. So what I'm planning on doing is I, I'm going to take, I'm gonna do my normal dry rub seasoning. So I'm gonna take this roast, cut the bones off, season it and then reattach them for the smoking portion. But the way I'm gonna season the outside of the roast is my normal salt pepper, garlic blend. And then I'm going to make an herb butter fresh her butter and garlic and slather that all on the outside to make a nice crust. Then reattach those bones and smoke it with some pecan and hickory for a good long

Gene 1:38:07

Ooh, Hickory.

Ben 1:38:08

Yeah. Yeah. Give it some kick. And then I'm gonna do that reverse serum method on it. So, oh. Also I'm going to make a, an injection a garlic. Herb injection that I'm gonna inject into it as well. Just so I get some flavor penetration. Because one of the things when you're doing a big roast like this, if you just season the outside and you don't do the injection,

Gene 1:38:27

Mm-hmm.

Ben 1:38:28

you, you don't have that seasoning carry on through. So if you get a middle cut piece, you just have the outside, which some people who really are beef connoisseurs like that, other people, may not. So I, I tend to try and please the crowd, which is seasoning, so, yeah.

Gene 1:38:45

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, it's good that they like seasoning now. Everybody does.

Ben 1:38:50

Yeah. Anyway, so that's that's what we're having for Christmas dinner.

Gene 1:38:55

Awesome. That's good stuff. No, it, it's I think it's important to have meals around the hearth and to actually cook and involve family in it. If you. Because it's really getting to be a, a lost start. I mean, I think most people, male and female I, that I've met in the last 20 years just admit to not cooking.

Ben 1:39:21

Well, and even the people I know that are having get togethers and everything, a lot of them have it catered and it's like,

Gene 1:39:26

Mm-hmm.

Ben 1:39:28

yeah. I mean, it just means like, I'm not saying I'm gonna go out and cook every day because I don't, I get off work and I'm tired, or I haven't taken anything out, or haven't gone to the grocery store or whatever. So we will order out. I'm not saying we don't do that, but you know, I try and cook at least half or more of our meals a week. Wife does breakfast for the kids and everything every morning. I don't eat breakfast personally, but whatever. And yeah. I think cookies is important and, I don't like cooking for myself, but if I'm cooking for any amount of other people, it, it's, it's an act of service for me. It's something I enjoy.

Gene 1:40:05

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I, I love cooking too. And this is one of the, I'd say the downsides to being single is you don't cook as often because, I mean, technically, I guess there's no reason that just to cook very small amounts of food, but. I'm used to it. I guess it's just kind of easier to cook meals for, many people. So if there's an event or something, obviously then cooking a much larger meal. In fact, like my, my wedding gift to Adam and Tina was having me come in as a personal chef for dinner, and I cooked them a either four course or five course meal. I don't remember. And, it took all evening but it, but it was very nice. That's back when they still lived in Austin, just like half a mile away from me.

Ben 1:40:58

Well, and cooking is one of those things that actually scales well, in general obviously it reaches a point of diminishing returns, but it's actually easier to cook for, four to six than it is for one or two.

Gene 1:41:11

Mm-hmm.

Ben 1:41:12

So, yeah.

Gene 1:41:15

Yeah. Yeah. And if you're just cooking like a steak or something, it's, it's pretty straightforward. But if you're, if you're going to try and do a full meal with the sides and then make something from scratch rather than just simply thaw ingredients outta your. And then doing that for every meal, every day for one person, that is just not worth the time. And hence, I tend to cook a lot less these days.

Ben 1:41:41

Well, and you a lot of people don't eat leftovers anymore, but I, I like leftovers and I grew up on'em. And, a lot of times what I'll do is if I make a big batch of chili or gumbo or whatever I'll vacuum pack it and freeze it. and then you've got a easy meal when you don't have a lot of time or something that, you know you don't have a bunch of groceries in the house. Well, I can, I can make a pot of ice and throw out that gumbo and heat it up, in 20 minutes. So

Gene 1:42:11

Yeah. Yeah. And well, and, and stuff like gumbo is perfect for multi-day meals.

Ben 1:42:17

it's one of those things that it gets better as it goes, but, but at the same time, you don't wanna eat the same thing for three days in a row. So that's where throwing it in the freezer for a week or a month or two is okay.

Gene 1:42:27

right. Yeah. And there, and there's some stuff that I still make because I have a, fond childhood memories that a lot of people don't necessarily make. Like, if you look in my freezer, I've got some packets of calf liver. And so I'll, I'll cook liver up with onions and it just reminds me of.

Ben 1:42:47

liver and onions can be absolutely delicious if done right.

Gene 1:42:50

It is delicious

Ben 1:42:51

Yeah. A a lot of people

Gene 1:42:52

it's not something a lot of Americans eat.

Ben 1:42:56

Well, I mean, you're, you're talking to a white boy who eats minuto, so,

Gene 1:43:00

There you go. Yeah. You've got a good, you've got a good pal. Well, and, and you like a lot of different ethnic foods.

Ben 1:43:05

Oh yeah, absolutely. It, it, it, so I grew up going all across the Southern United States and eating a lot of different stuff. And we had we had a, a, an a guy who worked for my dad named Beto, who did a lot of cooking on board boat, and he's the one who exposed me to a lot of actual Mexican food and things like that, including minuto. And it, it's when you grow up eating it or you're not exposed to it as a odd thing and you don't even know what it is. Okay. You may or may not like the texture, but you know, so yeah. But I'll eat oaa or lingua tacos and stuff like that. I'm not a huge fan of like sweet breads and stuff like that,

Gene 1:43:47

Mm-hmm.

Ben 1:43:48

but like, liver, liver can be absolutely delicious.

Gene 1:43:52

It's, it's great for you.

Ben 1:43:54

absolutely. And again, that's another thing that we've gotten away from is,

Gene 1:43:59

Getting vitamins from food

Ben 1:44:00

yes, eating the organ meat was an important part of the nutrition.

Gene 1:44:05

I mean, you ever watch your cat, like, go through a, an animal,

Ben 1:44:11

Oh, organs

Gene 1:44:12

start with their organs, Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, that's where they go first. That's the important stuff. And if you watch some of the videos that I post on No agenda,

Ben 1:44:21

Bears everything.

Gene 1:44:22

well, not embarrassed, but there's one in particular, there's a, a Puma named Messi like for the football player, the soccer player. So, he, he's been living in a house pretty much his whole life, but they feed him a very nutritionally appropriate meal. So it includes organ meat, it includes some bones in there. It includes a variety of things that his natural diet in the wild would have, even though he's a puma living in a house and wouldn't really know what to do in the wild.

Ben 1:44:56

Okay. Well, I mean, again, going back to what our, what our ancestors were doing, even just a hundred, let's say 130 years ago, dramatic difference. But I, I think if you look at how healthy people were at the turn of the last century versus today, they died from hardship and accidents and things like that. But they were absolutely more healthy than we are today.

Gene 1:45:23

Oh yeah. Absolutely. And I, I, I think all these things start off with good intentions, right? We want to feed the world. That's what the Archer Daniels Midland lo slogan used to be, is the, we're the supermarket to the world. So they, they want to do things that increase the productivity of crops. They want to do things that increase the stability of longevity of foods so that foods can be transported and stored longer. And all these things, unfortunately, if they're successful, ultimately lead to what we have right now, which is an obesity epidemic in this country. And not just in this country, but definitely in this country. And an awful lot of people suffering from diseases that we don't have. Like we, we can't pinpoint where they come from. The percentage of Americans that have some type of allergy is insanely high compared to Asia and even parts of Europe.

Ben 1:46:24

Well, and how it used to be just a handful of years ago, which part of it definitely could be related to the amount of vaccines we're giving. It also could be due to the hyper sterile environments that we have. So in general, Americans have a whole lot higher propensity to autoimmune disorders than the rest of the world. But we are also one of the cleanliest societies in all of the world. So

Gene 1:46:47

Well, the Japanese might have something to say about that, but yeah, it's pretty clean.

Ben 1:46:52

Yeah, but they, I I, I hear you and I hear that they also have a very different vaccination schedule, which is why I brought that up. So I think it's a host of combination of things that add up to this. But I mean, think back to the 1970s. A peanut allergy wasn't a fucking thing and now

Gene 1:47:10

I remember in elementary school every day for lunch, if you finished your lunch you could go and get a peanut butter sandwich, like if you were still hungry.

Ben 1:47:20

Yeah.

Gene 1:47:22

I don't think they have peanut butter in schools, period. These days. They're considered toxic.

Ben 1:47:27

Yeah. Well, flights, I mean, airlines in my memory used to hand out nuts.

Gene 1:47:32

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you can still get nuts in first class.

Ben 1:47:36

Okay. Well, not if there's someone with a nut allergy on the plane,

Gene 1:47:40

Yeah. They don't let those people in first class

Ben 1:47:45

oh,

Gene 1:47:45

out a form

Ben 1:47:46

this is gonna be part of your airline scheme. I see. So,

Gene 1:47:50

Yeah. Gene Airlines would definitely have that as a policy. I am very, very thankful for the fact that my fingers were playing in. And I was getting all kinds of pathogens into me as a youngster because I don't, I'm, middle-aged, getting to be an old dude and I, I have never had any allergies to anything.

Ben 1:48:11

So I will say this, I had never had allergies ever in my life until Covid Covid last year. Since then, I have had this constant nasal crap that I, I'm, I, I don't know what it is. I've gone to the doctor a few times. I've tried allergy medicine and not a lot. Seems to affect it. Some will remediate it, so I don't, I don't know what's going on, but,

Gene 1:48:36

what kind of, you haven't mentioned this, so what, tell me about your medical disease. Tell me

Ben 1:48:41

Sure. Offline, cuz I don't wanna gross anyone out, but no, it's just congestion. Chronic congestion since covid of last year.

Gene 1:48:47

So you got a stuffy nose?

Ben 1:48:49

chronically though, like every day,

Gene 1:48:52

So your sinus infection of some type of what you're thinking

Ben 1:48:56

but it, it, it's clear. It's not like it's bacterial.

Gene 1:48:59

amba.

Ben 1:49:01

okay,

Gene 1:49:01

You got on swimming in dirty water

Ben 1:49:06

But I don't think that's the case. I mean, if you consider the Atlantic dirty, if you

Gene 1:49:11

Oh hell yeah. That's a horribly dirty No, the golf's clean. The Atlantic's super dirty

Ben 1:49:16

Yeah. So, yeah, been to Florida since then, but yeah, it,

Gene 1:49:20

And you can't, the only event you can pinpoint is covid.

Ben 1:49:23

yep. After Covid and I get.

Gene 1:49:26

Well, we do know that.

Ben 1:49:27

drip that is just terrible.

Gene 1:49:32

Interesting. Now, do you drink milk?

Ben 1:49:34

No, I do

Gene 1:49:35

Okay. Because that's a common effect of people that are developing milk allergies as you get a postnasal drip.

Ben 1:49:42

I mean, I eat cheese, but

Gene 1:49:44

Yeah. That, that's

Ben 1:49:45

not every day. And I, no, I don't drink milk,

Gene 1:49:48

yeah.

Ben 1:49:50

so, and I don't consume a lot of milk products. I don't eat

Gene 1:49:53

yeah. Well, cheese doesn't have whe and I think wave is one of the bigger causes of the milk allergies.

Ben 1:49:59

Yeah,

Gene 1:50:00

Interesting. Yeah. Well, it could be an allergic reaction, but it also, you gotta remember that for whatever covid is, it's still a virus. And viruses make your immune system less reactive to all the other pathogens that it has to deal with because they're so damn focused on the virus, which is why you tend to pick up secondary and triad diseases afterwards.

Ben 1:50:24

Bacterial infections and so on. Yes,

Gene 1:50:26

Mm-hmm. So something could have crawled its way in through your nose and, and then, normally you've beaten it off, but because it got in there during covid, it's established itself.

Ben 1:50:38

maybe. But whatever it is, if

Gene 1:50:39

Have you ever watched the wrath of con

Ben 1:50:41

No Gene. That's only the f my favorite movie of all time and definitely

Gene 1:50:46

had you watched that there, there's, someone's got a problem with their potentially postnasal animal living in there.

Ben 1:50:53

Yeah, I think that went in through the ear. Not really. Yeah.

Gene 1:50:56

well, they, they are connected.

Ben 1:50:57

Yes, they are. Yeah, yeah,

Gene 1:51:00

especially once the thing goes in through the ear and through the eardrum.

Ben 1:51:04

yeah. What a great movie.

Gene 1:51:06

that is an excellent movie. Ricardo Maltana and his prime.

Ben 1:51:09

Yeah. Well, and just the, the battle scene and the tactics and everything. A fantastic movie.

Gene 1:51:18

unrealistic battle scenes. Yes.

Ben 1:51:20

How so?

Gene 1:51:22

Oh, they're, please, that's not even the question. They just not applying any laws of physics whatsoever,

Ben 1:51:30

How so?

Gene 1:51:32

the way the ships are flying. Dude, come on.

Ben 1:51:35

What do you mean?

Gene 1:51:38

How

Ben 1:51:39

them moving in three dimensions. They showed them moving with inertial forces. That would be accurate. Because you can't stop on a diamond

Gene 1:51:46

We, we need to rewatch that movie because I, I don't remember any inertia at all in there. They're just sort of moving around in straight lines.

Ben 1:51:55

The best representation on a sci-fi TV show that I've ever seen of actual good physics

Gene 1:52:02

the expanse.

Ben 1:52:03

the Expanse. Yes, that was good. But before that, Babylon five.

Gene 1:52:07

Hmm.

Ben 1:52:08

In fact, the fighters on Babylon five are exactly what you would think of for an actual space fighter because of the way their engines are aligned and being able to flip maneuver, but not be able to stop and turn on a dime, not not being able to arc, yeah.

Gene 1:52:24

Yeah. And I actually just did an episode of my on YouTube talking about the realism of Starships in Star citizen

Ben 1:52:32

By the, by the way, Gene, did you see the video game play clip I sent you?

Gene 1:52:37

video game play clip. No, I don't think so. Wouldn't

Ben 1:52:39

I, I said it's on you. No agenda social.

Gene 1:52:42

Oh, really? Oh, I didn't,

Ben 1:52:44

It was an app mention of you too.

Gene 1:52:46

Yeah, that's usually what your stuff is. What, what was it from? What game?

Ben 1:52:49

It's some first person shooter, but the commentary on it's really the, the right

Gene 1:52:53

oh, that, yes, I saw that. Yes. Well, you should have said first person shooter. I was thinking of space game. Yeah. I, in fact, I, I listened to that clip last night probably right after you sent it while I was talking to a buddy of mine that I played video games with on the phone, on the speaker phone. And I played that clip and he was laughing his ass off and I was laughing my ass off, and it was hilarious. Do you wanna describe the clip?

Ben 1:53:15

People can go find it. I think it's just a great metaphor for Gene and i's relationship. So

Gene 1:53:20

Or any male's relationship. Go ahead. Tell'em, tell'em what the clip is.

Ben 1:53:23

Just, Hey guys, if I was going through something, could I ever rely on you? Fuck no. I hope you die.

Gene 1:53:28

Yeah. Yeah. It's basically, these guys playing video games together online and for whatever reason, one of the guy's like, Hey guys. Yeah. If I'm, if I go through something, can I rely on on you for support? And instantly with no hesitation, he gets like, the other four guys know, Nope, hell no. You gotta be kidding me. No. And just the best reaction. And then the guys decide to like, top Yeah, pylon, top each other. And I can't remember all the, the, the details, but one of'em

Ben 1:53:59

going and finding the clip.

Gene 1:54:00

it's, yeah. Do you have the exact name? We can link it. I can link it. Yeah, I'll link it in the video. So you, you, if you can click on links in the podcast, you'll be able to watch the video. It's pretty damn funny.

Ben 1:54:10

Yeah. And on

Gene 1:54:12

Good times. And then I got a question for you. Somebody asked me,

Ben 1:54:16

okay,

Gene 1:54:17

is Ben ever going to figure out how to do live streaming on no agenda stream?

Ben 1:54:21

ah, we will consider that after the first of the year.

Gene 1:54:27

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ben 1:54:28

Yeah. At the very least, I'm gonna get with Bemrose and put in It put our, our, our audio in rotation. So at

Gene 1:54:36

Well, that'd be nice, wouldn't it?

Ben 1:54:37

yeah. So just as an a, a discovery mechanism, even if we're not broadcasting live,

Gene 1:54:42

Yeah.

Ben 1:54:44

because you like to edit and do things and Yeah.

Gene 1:54:48

Well, I do, but mostly, and people, if um, if I don't do it, you'll become super apparent. But the biggest thing I do is I take out the ums because both Ben and I have a tendency to not have dead air.

Ben 1:55:03

Yeah.

Gene 1:55:04

So we, if we're talking and we kind of are scratching our heads mentally and going, ah, what am I thinking? We'll, we'll say, and um, and, and it's that um, that I take out,

Ben 1:55:14

Yeah. And pauses, you

Gene 1:55:17

I, I'm taking, I, I've stopped doing that because we have much shorter pauses now than we used to.

Ben 1:55:25

Yeah. Well, we're, we're getting better, I

Gene 1:55:27

Yeah. Be I think So we're, we're picking up when, when the other person stopped talking, because initially the reason you have pauses that are naturally long is because you're, you're thinking, is he done yet? Should I give him more time before, I jump in to continue. And I think, like with Darren, there's no pauses. And I think with you, we're getting to that point where there's no pauses between us speaking.

Ben 1:55:47

Well, and it's, once you've talked to a person long enough, you get a feel for their cadence of speech, and also you get more comfortable interrupting as well,

Gene 1:55:55

Yeah, that's definitely a big part of it is you want to. uh, You don't wanna interrupt. See, there was an uh, right there that, that I'll see if I can leave in for that purpose only. But you wanna get to a point where it doesn't sound like you're necessarily interrupting somebody, but you are jumping in at just the right point in time.

Ben 1:56:16

Exactly.

Gene 1:56:18

Well, shall we wrap it up? I know you said you wanted to take your kid to go take photos with the Santa Claus.

Ben 1:56:24

Yeah, I got two kids, actually four of'em that are gonna be in the picture of Santa today. So

Gene 1:56:29

Well, even the older ones are doing it.

Ben 1:56:31

yeah, the older ones are doing it just to be in the photo with the younger ones at mom's request.

Gene 1:56:38

Yeah. I would totally not do that if it was

Ben 1:56:39

yeah, if I was, if I was them, I'd be like,

Gene 1:56:42

like, screw it, screw that.

Ben 1:56:43

But they're acquiescent enough kids that they'll do what mom wants. So,

Gene 1:56:49

you. All right. Well, when we come back from the next episode, I'll have to ask you how long you think they'll be before they move out of the house? 26, 36 or 46.

Ben 1:56:58

oh no. We, I'll answer that question next. I'll leave it out there, but

Gene 1:57:03

All right, Ben, we'll talk to you next week.