Sir Gene 0:24

Hey, Ben. Welcome back. How's the trip?

Sir Ben 0:26

It was good. In some ways it was long because it was over two, you know, two weeks and then short because it was, you know, not a lot of time in any given place. So

Sir Gene 0:37

Right, right.

Sir Ben 0:38

was a whirlwind for sure.

Sir Gene 0:41

Well, it was, what, two weeks?

Sir Ben 0:44

Yeah. Two weeks.

Sir Gene 0:45

It's substantial.

Sir Ben 0:47

Yeah. It's a it's a long time to be in foreign countries.

Sir Gene 0:51

Yeah, it's nice, huh?

Sir Ben 0:53

Yeah. By the way, I want to give a shout out to the UAE passport control guy who not only didn't stamp my passport on a sequential page, but stamped it right in the middle of the page, asshole.

Sir Gene 1:07

You'll get plenty of those.

Sir Ben 1:08

Oh, yeah. Just because it could, you know. Fuck you.

Sir Gene 1:12

They just don't care.

Sir Ben 1:13

No, they do not.

Sir Gene 1:15

Mm-hmm. Well, you got plenty of stamps.

Sir Ben 1:19

I've got a few.

Sir Gene 1:20

You just didn't get the British one.

Sir Ben 1:23

I did not, but you know, it's

Sir Gene 1:25

you'll be back. That's

Sir Ben 1:26

I I got a German one. I got a Greek exit stamp. I got a Doha or Qatari barcode sticker followed by an exit stamp. And then uae,

Sir Gene 1:40

You didn't get Spain.

Sir Ben 1:42

I'm sorry.

Sir Gene 1:43

Spain,

Sir Ben 1:44

No, cuz I was inside the Shing zone. So travel inside the shing zone doesn't, there's no passport control.

Sir Gene 1:50

Oh, really? Didn't. Used to be that way. Used to be for Americans. You'd still get passport stamps.

Sir Ben 1:55

Nope. Inside the eu there is no passport control. It's like a domestic flight. They do validate that you have your passport and things like that, but nah, no stamp.

Sir Gene 2:06

Oh, well that's alright.

Sir Ben 2:09

Yeah. I gotta tell you, out of all the places I went Athens is definitely the one I would pay to go back

Sir Gene 2:15

Going back there, huh? Okay.

Sir Ben 2:17

Yep. Qatar is, feels fake as crap and is a total panopticon. I don't, I did I send you the video of my hotel room in Qatar?

Sir Gene 2:28

I don't recall.

Sir Ben 2:29

All right. I'll have to send it to you. So I was on a diplomatic floor in this hotel, which was weird. And you walk in and it's, as soon as you get off the elevator, as soon as you get off the elevator, it's like a spaceship, like it's total sci-fi and you know, it's this is, you know, under surveillance and all that, and you walk into the room and it's, you know, got high ceilings. It's nice, but it's a total white spaceship. It was a freaky, freaky room. Yeah.

Sir Gene 2:58

White is good.

Sir Ben 3:00

I

Sir Gene 3:00

so when you when you go into Riyad

Sir Ben 3:03

hopefully I'm not but we'll see there, there we we're working on a,

Sir Gene 3:07

you gotta complete your Middle Eastern trip.

Sir Ben 3:09

yeah, we're working on a thing for a Saudi company right now, so who knows.

Sir Gene 3:14

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 3:15

No, my, my next most likely international trip right now is looking like South Africa,

Sir Gene 3:20

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 3:22

so that'll be fun.

Sir Gene 3:23

Yeah. Well, given how things are completely falling apart there,

Sir Ben 3:27

Yeah, right.

Sir Gene 3:28

having brownouts on a regular basis

Sir Ben 3:30

I'm definitely tagging the company security and being like, y'all are going with me

Sir Gene 3:36

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 3:38

But yeah, the trip was good. It was, you know, crazy quick thing, but got it done. So

Sir Gene 3:44

So, where shall we start? Do you wanna start with the banks or something?

Sir Ben 3:48

actually I wanna start with the engineering of an emmp that you sent me.

Sir Gene 3:54

Oh yeah, sure.

Sir Ben 3:55

That guy's an idiot.

Sir Gene 3:56

Okay.

Sir Ben 3:57

So one of the things that tells me he knows nothing about the power grid is he kept spelling out the acronym for epri. I have been a member of EPRI and it's called EPRI for the Love of God and the tests that they did. Well, controversial, and for people who don't know this is pri released a paper while back talking about the potential effects of a emmp generated by a nuke in low earth orbit on the power grid. And he keeps saying, eh, you know, maybe it wouldn't be that bad. And so on. He's totally misunderstanding how a grid stabilization works. And b, how a instantaneous surge over, you know, a couple potentially a hundred miles would knock off. Not, you know, he talked about the, and, we'll, we'll put a link in the show notes or something, but he talked about, you know, oh, the grid can be resilient. This, that, and the other bull crap. You know, first of all, you're gonna knock a lot of generators off that are at all on that transmission line, so the generators are gonna go off. So now you have much less power available on the network. And then, Your demand doesn't, hasn't necessarily gone anywhere. And then you have the induction of DC voltage on transmission lines, which would wreak havoc with transformers. I mean, the,

Sir Gene 5:17

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 5:17

there are lots of things and while his premise that likely the equipment will survive and so on, that's possible. I, I, I will grant him that. But what he, what he's in,

Sir Gene 5:30

this is not his area of expertise. He, he's got a PhD in astrophysics.

Sir Ben 5:35

okay, well, good for him. But my point is a sufficient E m P to do what EPRI was talking about would cause massive grids, destabilization, just from a grid management standpoint. So like ercot management of power load and distribution. And you would have a, at at least a regional blackout. Now, I can tell you that inside

Sir Gene 6:02

region you mean Ohio.

Sir Ben 6:04

Yeah, I'm a large, a large

Sir Gene 6:05

everything's happens.

Sir Ben 6:07

Now I will tell you that if something like that happened to Ercot, the likelihood of Ercot going into a black start is extremely high. Just, just because of our isolated nature. And, you know, if you lost all of a sudden 15, 20% of Ercot grid, I mean, you're just, you're done.

Sir Gene 6:27

my understanding is that the best way to position a a nuclear generated E m P device is via balloon launched from Mexico.

Sir Ben 6:42

I don't know about launch from Mexico,

Sir Gene 6:43

Oh, I read that somewhere. I don't

Sir Ben 6:45

a, a high altitude balloon is definitely one of the options. Especially considering that aircraft have a hard time getting up to altitude. You know, we, we, we don't have. Bomber that could do an airburst that's detonation at a high enough altitude. So yeah, balloon would definitely be one. I C B M would be another.

Sir Gene 7:04

Mm-hmm. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, short of ICBMs, more like. Just a, you know, unfriendly, kind of a non non-nuclear war starting event.

Sir Ben 7:17

Oh, I think if someone detonated an E M P or there was radiological material

Sir Gene 7:21

probably just some rented balloon from Poland that's registered in Ukraine, so who knows?

Sir Ben 7:26

Yeah. Well, if there was a balloon flying over us territory with radiological material on it, number one you could detect that. And number two, that would

Sir Gene 7:36

feet. No fucking way.

Sir Ben 7:37

If you're close enough to it. Sure. We've got some pretty sensitive detectors, dude.

Sir Gene 7:43

how you gonna get close to it?

Sir Ben 7:44

Flight.

Sir Gene 7:46

Are you gonna be able to detect it by zooming past it at 700 miles an hour?

Sir Ben 7:50

Yes,

Sir Gene 7:51

Mm.

Sir Ben 7:52

depending on the shielding and so on. Yes. So if we are talking about someone like Russia or China doing this, maybe not because they will have enough experience to have a well shielded warhead that, you know, would not give off a huge radiological signature. But if we're looking at, you know, we could say North Korea or something like that, then that, that's likely to be

Sir Gene 8:16

they have yet to get a balloon that stays up further than Japan

Sir Ben 8:20

you, you, you mean a

Sir Gene 8:21

North Korea. No, no, no. Balloon

Sir Ben 8:23

huh?

Sir Gene 8:24

like their balloon tech is not sufficiently good enough. They have a balloon last that long.

Sir Ben 8:28

Well, I'm sure they could buy it from China.

Sir Gene 8:30

I'm not sure China wants to sell that to'em.

Sir Ben 8:34

Yeah. Well, it, it'll.

Sir Gene 8:36

America overestimates the friendliness of China in North Korea.

Sir Ben 8:41

True. China sees North Korea as a vasal state and nothing but labor labor

Sir Gene 8:46

worse than that, it's, it's an occasionally useful, but mostly annoying vaal state.

Sir Ben 8:53

Yes. It's the annoying little brother, if you would.

Sir Gene 8:55

Mm-hmm. it's the one that runs around kicking everybody in their shins and then goes and hides behind you.

Sir Ben 9:01

Yes.

Sir Gene 9:02

It's that kind of brother.

Sir Ben 9:03

So, you know, it was interesting because there's some there were some leaks that came out and I'm trying to remember the the US officer who was quoted, but there was a memorandum sent out, I think, I believe it was Air Force that was predicting that due to the elections 2024 would be when we fought the Chinese over Taiwan. So we'll see.

Sir Gene 9:26

Yeah. That's I remember that. Anything else in that video that caught your eye?

Sir Ben 9:32

No, it was just really annoying his EPRI comments because again, being in the industry and knowing it you know, I've, I've got some friends who were actually involved with that EPRI study, so,

Sir Gene 9:44

Oh, okay.

Sir Ben 9:45

Yep. So do you want to go to the banks or Ukraine?

Sir Gene 9:51

We can go to the banks. Let's do that.

Sir Ben 9:53

Okay.

Sir Gene 9:54

Actually, before we go to the banks, I was gonna mention now you gotta find it here. Baba Baba. Where is it? It is, oh, here. It's so for anybody that wants to protect themselves against an emmp strike if you go to emmp shield.com, you can get a discount on an Emmp Shield by using the discount code Grift cast that'll get you 10% off of the

Sir Ben 10:23

It'll totally work.

Sir Gene 10:25

It is, it's it is approved by the Department of Homeland Security. In it is, it is.

Sir Ben 10:29

I, I would like to see a publication on DH S'S website.

Sir Gene 10:33

have, they have approved this, this was designed per DHS spec. They're pretty reasonably priced. They're built to mill standard, 180 8 dash 1 25 dash one, as well as mil, mil standard dash 4 51 G. So it

Sir Ben 10:48

you have no shame. You're shameless

Sir Gene 10:51

10% off if you get it. It's a great deal. I re I recommend everybody have at least a couple of those in their house. And the, the best thing is there's a$20,000 insurance policy in case it doesn't work. They'll, they'll cover

Sir Ben 11:03

doesn't work, you you, you won't be able to collect So,

Sir Gene 11:07

besides the point. It's a great, it's a great deal. Anyway, let's move on.

Sir Ben 11:11

yes. So, Silicon Valley Bank.

Sir Gene 11:15

Yeah.

Sir Ben 11:16

That, that's actually a big one. Yes. The ripple alone effects, I don't think a lot of people understand because, you know, you have startups some of which that I used to work for that have money in Silicon Valley Bank. Adam and John were talking about, and this is something I was unaware of, but apparently in a lot of

Sir Gene 11:36

contractually obligated. Yeah.

Sir Ben 11:38

yes. In venture capital funding, sometimes you're there are covenants in there that require you to use svb. I know of several companies that had hundreds of millions in that bank and you know, they're definitely scrambling and we'll see if they make payroll tomorrow.

Sir Gene 11:57

Yeah. I think with the companies that I have direct connection to through friends, it's about 386 million right now,

Sir Ben 12:05

Yeah.

Sir Gene 12:05

which is not, not a small amount of money.

Sir Ben 12:08

and and you know what a lot of people don't realize is we're gonna see a culling of the herd of startups right now.

Sir Gene 12:14

Kinda was hoping for that, but I'm really not sure that's gonna happen simply because it really seems like the F D I C is pledged to cover, to make everybody whole, regardless of like with no limits,

Sir Ben 12:28

they haven't yet.

Sir Gene 12:30

No, but the pledges were something. I mean, if, if you look at the the market that I don't think it's really dropping the way that it would have they not said that.

Sir Ben 12:41

Well, I, I, I hope you're right because I just exercised some shares in a former company. So,

Sir Gene 12:47

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 12:48

you know, hopefully they don't go

Sir Gene 12:49

well, I, I hope I'm right for your sake, but really, I kind of hope I'm wrong because the it, the problem is there's no penalty for failure in as long as you're a friend of Democrats, you can fail all you want and you fail.

Sir Ben 13:03

Yeah. And you know, I, I agree

Sir Gene 13:06

had an A plus E SG score.

Sir Ben 13:08

Yes, I'm aware. And we'll, we'll, I think we can get into the ESG stuff here in a second because there's other contractual obligations I know of in some of the venture capital funding, especially from like BlackRock and so

Sir Gene 13:20

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 13:21

You know, but one of the issues we have, again, tomorrow's the 15th and a lot of companies are going to be scrambling to make payroll, so, we'll, it'll be very interesting to see what happens there. I think if F D I C hasn't put enough liquidity in there for at least payroll, then you're going to see several startups go under just because of that. I mean, people are going to revolt.

Sir Gene 13:48

Well, they can try.

Sir Ben 13:50

Oh, I, I, I know several people who work for startups who are watching to see if they get paid tomorrow, and if they

Sir Gene 13:56

Yeah. But anybody that quits a startup, if they miss one payment of salary, probably somebody I would've fired anyway.

Sir Ben 14:04

Why is that?

Sir Gene 14:04

Because those people live too close day to day. They're, they're gonna be problematic. They're more susceptible to getting lucrative offers to jump ship in a heartbeat. You want people that can absorb a little bit of fluctuation that work for startups. Now, for large companies, you don't need that. But if you're in a startup, you wanna place a premium on people that can actually deal with the up and down waves.

Sir Ben 14:26

yeah, what I would say is some of the people who I'm talking to who are planning on potentially jumping ship are extremely financially stable. They are not people who live paycheck to paycheck by any stretch, it's a thought of the

Sir Gene 14:39

for'em to do this. Yeah. There's other reasons for'em to do it then.

Sir Ben 14:43

When you have some startups keeping literally the entire company funds in one bank account. In one bank,

Sir Gene 14:50

Yeah. That's just stupid

Sir Ben 14:51

well, the, the financial, the finance officer needs to be fired,

Sir Gene 14:54

Yeah, yeah.

Sir Ben 14:55

know, at the very least.

Sir Gene 14:58

Yeah. I mean, making payroll is pretty pretty important. And for a lot of companies I work with, when, if you find yourself in that position where you're a week out and you can't make payroll, you, you stop focusing on everything else and you get a bridge loan, you, you've secured something immediately. So you can cover that payroll and then you spend the next two weeks trying to figure out how to stabilize that position. But generally, unless your company is like, got shit credit, most companies can get a bridge loan for payroll in just the signature.

Sir Ben 15:35

Yeah, it also depends on how big their payroll is. You know, there, there, there are some companies that are offering to step in for some companies as well. So there's a lot of interesting things going on around that.

Sir Gene 15:46

I know somebody was, I, I don't know if Musk himself, actually, I think he did say it. I saw a tweet. He's contemplating buying Silicon Valley Bank.

Sir Ben 15:56

yeah, that was thrown out there and, you know, given what he's trying to do with Twitter and potentially turning it into a bank, You know, that would be a vehicle to do it. But I, I don't know that he wants it. I don't know that he needs it. I don't know why he would buy it, you know?

Sir Gene 16:13

well, I know why he wants it. I was part of his bank the first time around. I actually had an account there. And I think that what's interesting to me is the sort of conspiracy theory stuff in terms of how this. This instability at Silicon Valley Bank came about

Sir Ben 16:34

Go on.

Sir Gene 16:35

well, now I don't know how accurate or true or how much he covers, but story has been floating around that Peter Thiel is the guy that really kind of ensured that they would be upside down by last week telling a whole bunch of people to pull money outta there.

Sir Ben 16:54

Yeah, he, he was definitely part of that. He did put out

Sir Gene 16:58

was Elon's partner

Sir Ben 16:59

yeah, he did put out some information saying that

Sir Gene 17:02

Yeah.

Sir Ben 17:03

Valley to pull your accounts and people did

Sir Gene 17:07

So I wonder if this was a coordinated move to get that bank to go under to be able to buy it.

Sir Ben 17:17

I, I don't know that I buy that.

Sir Gene 17:19

Well, like I said, it's a little conspiratorial, but you know, it's fun.

Sir Ben 17:23

yeah. So E s G and, you know, the social governance aspect of this, the fact that they had an A rating is

Sir Gene 17:33

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 17:35

somewhat interesting, but, you know, without really looking at the books, was that used as a lending decision? Was that part of why they had made potentially risky investments? You know, that, that's a,

Sir Gene 17:47

Well, let's start with this. Are there any non-risky investments that would get you an A rating?

Sir Ben 17:52

Potentially,

Sir Gene 17:53

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 17:54

But you know, I mean, are, are you assuming that all companies that check the diversity box are risky?

Sir Gene 18:01

Yeah.

Sir Ben 18:02

Why?

Sir Gene 18:03

Because decisions are not made based on business grounds. They're ma made based on social outcome

Sir Ben 18:11

Hmm.

Sir Gene 18:12

So it's basically you're, you're competing on a different playing field when you do that. You're not competing with people that are hiring purely based on merit. You're competing with people that are also hiring based on diversity. And incidentally, it's not just like, you know, ethnic diversity. It's also electrical generation diversity, how much crap generation you have versus solid proven colon gas. It's, it, it, they're basically decisions that are for the quote unquote good of the planet versus good of your.

Sir Ben 18:48

Yeah. Or it could just be something as simple as hiring decisions and things like that.

Sir Gene 18:54

Yeah. But I mean, it's a combination of all those things, I think.

Sir Ben 18:58

Hmm. Okay. So my, the bank that holds my mortgage is pretty much at their five year average. So they're not gonna fail. Damn it.

Sir Gene 19:07

Here I'm gonna send you the link to the SVG report from or the SVG report on their esg. The SVG e ESG is what I just sent you. We can look at that later. But yeah, I think the bottom line is like the bank would not have gone under for any single one of these things. I think this is a combination of multiple factors that led to. The the, and incidentally, I'm still a little confused exactly on how it went under, I guess it's just liquidity because its assets were like 300 million higher than its liabilities. Yeah.

Sir Ben 19:44

Well, it was just a run on the bank. They didn't have enough to cover deposits and,

Sir Gene 19:49

that shouldn't make the bank go out the business. I mean, they should

Sir Ben 19:53

well,

Sir Gene 19:53

shut down the early for the day.

Sir Ben 19:55

right? But that's when the F D I C stopped comes in and says, okay. So part of it was liquidity and then part of it was what really started to signal to people, you know, the issues is because they had invested in quite a few 10 year bonds at a cheaper interest rate than current. And they were doing a fire sale to try and cover The withdrawals.

Sir Gene 20:14

Yeah.

Sir Ben 20:15

So, and it looks like the British Bank, h s, bbc bought the overseas operations.

Sir Gene 20:23

Oh, really? I think I used to have some accounts with them. Huh, interesting. So I, I don't know. We'll see what happens. I, I think that people are a little confused by like, trying to take their money out of regional banks and then moving'em to national banks. I, I would say that national banks are less secure. There's a higher percentage of chance that if a national bank does go under that there's gonna be a compromised deal and you're gonna get screwed.

Sir Ben 20:59

there is a potential and I would.

Sir Gene 21:01

under 250 K, it may not matter.

Sir Ben 21:04

Yeah. And that that's something for people to consider is how much they have in each individual institution and account. And you have to remember also that it's per signer, right?

Sir Gene 21:14

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 21:16

having a bunch of bank accounts at one bank doesn't necessarily protect you.

Sir Gene 21:19

Yeah, absolutely. And, and also don't forget that it's not just having accounts, it's also the liquidity aspect. Like, one of the things that we saw with both this bank and the other two that shut down is that the availability of liquidity to the, a number of exchanges of cryptocurrency have been severely impacted by this because those were the banks they were using for the their transactions to convert crypto into US sellers.

Sir Ben 21:55

So if you're being conspiratorial, it might even be a thought that especially Silicon Valley Bank would be a hit job on Bitcoin

Sir Gene 22:04

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 22:04

because of the exchanges.

Sir Gene 22:07

I, that may be, but I think it's fairly unlikely given that it is very highly tied into the Democrat machine. And I think that the, the idea of anybody be willing to dump their friends that they have brunch with on Saturdays in order to jostle the ability of people using crypto to liquidate that crypto, I think it's, it's a little too far from Markham's razor.

Sir Ben 22:35

Okay.

Sir Gene 22:36

And it's also gonna be interesting to see if there's any conversations in the next month or so about the national and cryptocurrency.

Sir Ben 22:45

Yeah, well there, the, the Fed hasn't said anything, but there have definitely been feelers put out about central Bank digital currency. So,

Sir Gene 22:54

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Cuz I think there anything that happens in the banking sector allows them a, an opportunity to present this as a solution to a problem.

Sir Ben 23:07

well, I think the problems would have to get much worse before that would be a

Sir Gene 23:11

You're really just trying to give'em ideas at this point, aren't you?

Sir Ben 23:15

I'm just saying it would have to be a lot worse before the public would you know, go along with a revaluation of the dollar,

Sir Gene 23:21

But I think it's a neat, I don't, I think it's an easy sell. I think all you gotta do is you just, you roll it out right now and you say 100% covered by the United States government. Like if you have money in the bank, only the$250,000 of that is covered and the rest you're likely to lose. If you have money in US Digital Dollar, which is not just backed by the US government, but it, it's not a bank, it's a it, it's not tied to any bank. It's literally money owned by the US government. I think you could get away with convincing people pretty easily.

Sir Ben 23:57

Yeah. But then the problem is you're gonna, the reason why I don't think the Fed would do that directly is you're cutting out the middleman on, you know, lenders. So we're totally, if we go to a Central Bank digital Dollar, one of the things we would be doing would be, you know, essentially transforming our banking system. And that's a huge part of the.

Sir Gene 24:16

Yeah, we'd be nationalizing our banking system, which I think is something that the same people that want all the progressive politics coming to the US that have been winning lately, I think they're all for that. I, I think that a state command economy with a state operated banking system is very much in their plans.

Sir Ben 24:36

Well, that's a scary thought because I, I don't know. I, I, no, I just think that there's enough of the donor class to those people who, you know, are in finance and working in the banks.

Sir Gene 24:51

Yeah, but again, I think the, the idea here is that it's, it's for the little people. It's not for us. Like we'll still be able to do banking overseas. They won't, we just won't be able to do banking in the us.

Sir Ben 25:08

Okay.

Sir Gene 25:09

Oh. And we'll, we'll see. It's all interesting to watch the, you know, the way I operate is I, I throw something that sounds very like, wild out there and then a year goes by or a couple years goes by and it's like, oh look, I predicted that two years ago shit's actually happening. Well, speaking of shit happening What about Mexico joining bricks? That seems like an interesting idea.

Sir Ben 25:30

Yeah. I don't know that that's actually gonna happen, but,

Sir Gene 25:34

Oh, I think the US would very much like to prevent that from happening.

Sir Ben 25:37

I, yeah, I think the US

Sir Gene 25:39

But on what grounds? I mean, they're a sovereign country. They're, they're allowed to do whatever they want. I mean, I can't imagine the US as a neighbor. Okay. And Ukraine was a failed. What?

Sir Ben 25:51

Hey, don't disagree.

Sir Gene 25:52

Yeah. I'm just

Sir Ben 25:53

is Roisha doing?

Sir Gene 25:55

I'm just saying that this is, this is, this is completely predictable. I talked about it in my I think it was on Seine Speaks about seven or eight months ago, is that that by supporting Ukraine from 6,000 miles away, the US is really opening itself up for retribution done in exactly the same way by both China and.

Sir Ben 26:18

well, it, it will be interesting to see what happens.

Sir Gene 26:21

Yeah. You and I also talked about it more recently, but I just want to make sure that, like, I, I talked about it way back when.

Sir Ben 26:28

well it would be interesting because it would, you know, I don't know how they can join bricks without violating nafta.

Sir Gene 26:35

I thought we got rid of after, didn't we get rid of the after

Sir Ben 26:37

Well, we've got NAFTA too in place,

Sir Gene 26:39

Hmm. Okay.

Sir Ben 26:41

Binds Mexico and Canada closer to the US So it wouldn't be clear to me that they could join Bricks given that trade Alliances.

Sir Gene 26:51

Don't know that there's anything in NAFTA to prevent them from dreading bricks.

Sir Ben 26:54

We have sole, I believe in NAFTA two, we have sole most favored nation status.

Sir Gene 27:00

Okay. Because the thing about bricks is it's a, it's a loose con conglomeration, so, It doesn't impose a whole lot of requirements on nations that wanna join it.

Sir Ben 27:12

Yeah. But it opens up some trade deals that I think NAFTA two would potentially prohi prohibit.

Sir Gene 27:18

Mm-hmm. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if it's not in there because I don't think anybody in the US ever thought that there's any risk of Mexico being friendly with China or Russia.

Sir Ben 27:32

Maybe I'm

Sir Gene 27:34

to admit, I've not read an after two, so I can't, I can't say one word or the other without reading it first.

Sir Ben 27:41

Yeah, so it's interesting because I see the news on Twitter and I'm trying to see if there's anything on it. But there's no major news story about Mexico joining bricks.

Sir Gene 27:54

Oh, no, no, no. It's, it's only news that I've, the only sites that I've looked at that have, that are Indian, Chinese, and Russian,

Sir Ben 28:02

Very

Sir Gene 28:02

brick nation sites.

Sir Ben 28:05

Yes, exactly.

Sir Gene 28:06

Mm-hmm. I'm not sure anybody in the US even knows this is going on,

Sir Ben 28:10

Hmm. Well, it, go ahead.

Sir Gene 28:14

no, I, I was gonna say, but I, I think that this, like, they don't even need to join bricks. Right? All, all that needs to happen is for the issue of Mexican freedom of trade with other nations such as bricks to become a political issue in Mexico. and that will be enough destabilization to get the US involved in a military action.

Sir Ben 28:42

Yeah, and I think

Sir Gene 28:45

Well, ultimately it's all, I think that, that would, that would make both Russia and China happy.

Sir Ben 28:50

well, it would certainly distract from, you know, Taiwan.

Sir Gene 28:53

Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Which I watched the video you sent to me about Taiwan

Sir Ben 28:58

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene 29:00

and I thought was it was pretty good with just a couple of small exceptions or areas that I think the, the guy missed.

Sir Ben 29:07

Okay.

Sir Gene 29:07

one is he didn't talk at all about India and India, both with Russia and with China have increased trade with Russia. Their importing a hell of a lot more crude oil and are in the process of building the largest refinery in the world. So, like non mentioning either of those situations, I think it either dates the video like he finished it way bef like a year ago, and then just published it recently. Or he's just neglecting it cuz he's unaware of it. I don't know. But yeah, I've been saying for a long time that up until recently and probably up until let's say 15 years ago, Russia had way more new pointed at China than they did at the West, than any single country in the West because China was the big unknown, the, the people that will be smiling to your face while stabbing you in the back. And so the relations between Russia and China have always been very precocious.

Sir Ben 30:29

And I, I, I don't think they're going to flat out normalize, do you?

Sir Gene 30:34

No, I mean, I think both countries are very much like, you know, keep your enemies close, but your friends closer or the other way around.

Sir Ben 30:43

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene 30:44

Like this is a, this is an opportunity for China to get cheap, raw materials from Russia like way more than they normally would. And it's an opportunity for Russia to be able to sell products that Europe is no longer buying.

Sir Ben 30:59

Yeah. I will say though that the Chinese are not necessarily getting as cheap of an oil as they are on the surface. So when you look at that price for, you know, the discounts that they're getting, that, that's great, but the problem they have is the supply chain and having to go all the way around the horn of Africa and everything else, you know, so until they get a pipeline really in place, which, you know, that's not easy to do over that terrain.

Sir Gene 31:25

it, it takes time, but I think there's two of'em in the works across Mongolia right now.

Sir Ben 31:29

yeah. Again, though, that's not the most forgiving terrain, so it's gonna take a

Sir Gene 31:33

a desert.

Sir Ben 31:35

And a frozen desert at that

Sir Gene 31:37

yeah, yeah, I mean, it's a high, it's a high desert. It's not a low desert.

Sir Ben 31:41

correct.

Sir Gene 31:42

Yeah. But I don't know. I, I think his, his point about like China needing water from Russia was a very interesting as well. But I will say that the, the lake that he's pointing out to, that ain't gonna happen. I can tell you that cuz that's, it's probably the most famous lake in, in Russia. It's it's a lake that like, they, they make bottled water from there. They take it out of that lake and sell everywhere. Not just in the country, but all over the world. And it's got, at least by Russian standards, it's got pristine water.

Sir Ben 32:17

Hmm.

Sir Gene 32:18

now I'm

Sir Ben 32:19

I, I don't know. I

Sir Gene 32:20

if that would be

Sir Ben 32:20

would trust those standards

Sir Gene 32:22

Yeah, I know. Right? Right. So I, I don't know that I would. But, but it's certainly not something that is going to be traded in and, and put into Chinese control very easily. I think a lot of Russians would protested that happening. So, but it's not to say that's like the only source of water in Russia. I mean, honestly, the the, the deluges that happen all through Siberia when the snow melts they turn what is normally like a, a little tiny stream into you know, eight foot, nine foot deep 80 feet wide rivers. So there, there is a certainly plenty more water that can be piped from Siberia to China.

Sir Ben 33:05

the problem you'd have with that is capturing it.

Sir Gene 33:07

yeah, yeah. Like they'd have to make a fairly substantial damned up reservoir somewhere, either in Mongolia or on the border there.

Sir Ben 33:14

But do they have the geography for that, given how flat Mongolia is?

Sir Gene 33:19

Yeah, I don't know. It may be on the, on the steps from Mongolia down into China, maybe on Chinese territory. I don't know. Hard to say, but I'm sure there are people working on all this shit. Like I, I would be surprised if these were not topics that are being discussed in the the high level meetings that are happening between China and Russia right now. It's a good opportunity for both of'em. It's like they, they, they could utilize each other a lot more successfully right now because of what's going on with us and effectively being hostile both towards their interest in Ukraine and in Taiwan.

Sir Ben 33:52

Now one of the things that, that video pointed out that I don't necessarily agree with on the water issue. You know, he's saying that China needs this water,

Sir Gene 34:02

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 34:03

not if they're gonna have the demographic collapse that others are predicting.

Sir Gene 34:08

Yeah. Yeah. They could use less water. The other thing is, I mean, China has a huge coastline. They could also go desalination route as long as they have the energy to do it.

Sir Ben 34:17

Yeah. Desalination though poses its own problems as I was just in a country that gets 99% of its water from desalination.

Sir Gene 34:26

What's the main problem?

Sir Ben 34:27

What you do with the brine?

Sir Gene 34:29

You sell it.

Sir Ben 34:31

What do you mean you sell it? It's

Sir Gene 34:32

You sell it as exotic Himalayan salt.

Sir Ben 34:35

No, no, no. The, it's not just salt that's in there? It's, you know, lots of other crap.

Sir Gene 34:42

Well, I don't know what else is in there.

Sir Ben 34:44

Whatever's in the local seawater. You take out the freshwater and then you're left with a brine of crap.

Sir Gene 34:51

Yeah, but isn't that the same water you'd be drinking from anyway?

Sir Ben 34:54

No, Jean, you don't drink seawater.

Sir Gene 34:56

Well, okay, fair enough. I mean, It's salt water sells the o, like it's connected to the ocean. I don't think there's a whole lot of poison in the ocean unless it's manmade poison.

Sir Ben 35:09

Okay.

Sir Gene 35:11

If you increase the concentration of salt in water as you would when you're doing desalination, you're going to kill all the organic organisms.

Sir Ben 35:20

Yes.

Sir Gene 35:21

So, you know what, which are you talking about? Like, like heavy metals or what are you talking about? What poisons are you referring to?

Sir Ben 35:31

Hold on. Washington Post wpo. Wpo. Wpo.

Sir Gene 35:36

Mm-hmm. there's a paper record for you.

Sir Ben 35:39

Yeah. So what's Desalinated water anyway? Is Desalinated water safe to drink? Opponents of de desalination have alongside the technique hurts the environment cleans up the water. Big challenge for fish marine life. And the blackish shulty waste that's left over after the fil water is filtered disposal of it becomes a problem. It's energy intensive, which

Sir Gene 36:03

It's literally salt.

Sir Ben 36:05

it, it, it's salt and other trace minerals. But again, what do you do with it? So,

Sir Gene 36:09

I mean, we, how much do you pay every month to buy sea salt in a can?

Sir Ben 36:15

yeah, I understand.

Sir Gene 36:16

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 36:18

But you've got other

Sir Gene 36:19

I, I think, I think what they're referring to, which is what you're misinterpreting here is. The poison of having a high salinity backwash for the fish and other critters that live close to the coastline where desalination plants exist

Sir Ben 36:36

Right.

Sir Gene 36:37

they will turn the local environment inhospitable to biological life, but it's not poison

Sir Ben 36:45

well first of all, hopefully they're not pumping it back into

Sir Gene 36:50

Well, some places

Sir Ben 36:50

ocean. You know, some of the mid east states are actually using old oil wells and injecting it there

Sir Gene 36:57

I mean, they could also just dump it in deserts and, you know, just let the, the

Sir Ben 37:02

and kill the desert even further.

Sir Gene 37:04

But there's nothing alive in the desert anyway just, just to get more humidity into the local micro climates. And then leave the salt on the.

Sir Ben 37:14

Okay, well anyway desalination has its issues. You have to do something with it, and it does require a shit ton of energy. You know,

Sir Gene 37:22

It's, it's definitely energy intensive. But that, and that's the thing is if, you know, but, but there's, there's a good news on the horizon for energy because fusion is here. What was that noise

Sir Ben 37:35

it was me trying not to laugh

Sir Gene 37:37

was you snorting?

Sir Ben 37:39

fusion is not here

Sir Gene 37:40

Hmm. It's kind of here.

Sir Ben 37:44

In what

Sir Gene 37:44

here commercially viable, but it's definitely here in terms of proof of concept.

Sir Ben 37:50

In what way? Gene,

Sir Gene 37:52

I sent you an article

Sir Ben 37:53

when, when, when did you send this?

Sir Gene 37:55

today. Do you not check your fricking messages for me?

Sir Ben 37:59

Not all of them. No. you send a lot of

Sir Gene 38:01

the electro, fuck you. No, it's just, if you keep scrolling up, you'll see the nuclear fusion is changing new way to achieve nuclear fusion heian.

Sir Ben 38:12

Well, I have not seen any proof of concepts

Sir Gene 38:15

Well, you should watch that video after this recording and you'll see how you, you could do fusion now very easily.

Sir Ben 38:21

mm-hmm.

Sir Gene 38:22

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 38:23

and how are they doing it enlightened me.

Sir Gene 38:25

well, they're creating plasma, which is done being accelerated at its at its com counter component through use of magnetics very fast.

Sir Ben 38:35

Yeah. So using magnetic constriction to generate plasma has been how every tobis reactor has ever worked.

Sir Gene 38:43

Yeah. This is much

Sir Ben 38:44

new. Okay. The, the energy demands though. So The way

Sir Gene 38:49

energy demands are very high, but it's a net positive. Like they're, they're demonstrating that they can produce energy. This is not cold fusion. This is not some bullshit science. This is hot fusion. and it's, it's something that is gonna require a lot of energy and technological know-how to do, but I think we're on the cusp of it.

Sir Ben 39:08

we've been on the cusp of fusion for a very long time. But the way fusion reactors and most designs work today is they use a lot of electrical energy to generate very strong magnetic fields to compress a material. Usually deuterium, cuz heavy water is nice that way,

Sir Gene 39:27

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 39:28

but they compress deuterium into the point where it becomes plasma and starts to fuse. Because one, once you compress it to that point, you've got, you know, lots of free atoms. Right? So plasma is a state of matter beyond gas where there, where there essentially is no uh uh, ties or entanglements.

Sir Gene 39:52

Yeah. The, the electrons are all free.

Sir Ben 39:55

Yes.

Sir Gene 39:55

Yeah, so they're, they're actually starting with hydrogen three, but yeah,

Sir Ben 40:00

Okay.

Sir Gene 40:00

helium three, not hydrogen, of course.

Sir Ben 40:02

Yeah. So h e three you know, is, has been long theorized as a potential fuel for fusion because of similar reasons.

Sir Gene 40:12

And there's a shit ton of it.

Sir Ben 40:14

not on earth.

Sir Gene 40:16

The whole backside of the moon's full of it. That's

Sir Ben 40:18

you go. I, I I was about to say, not on earth. You know, it, it was funny because during the 2000, was it eight.

Sir Gene 40:27

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 40:27

Presidential debate, or maybe 12 when Newt Gingrich ran and he proposed moon bases to mine, helium three, and everybody made fun of him. But it's like, no, actually that's not a bad idea.

Sir Gene 40:42

Yeah, absolutely.

Sir Ben 40:43

actually, you know, Uhhuh you know, it strikes me that most people have really no clue about the Chinese space program. And, You know, it, it, it's shocking to me how few people realize, you know, China has their own space station, China is an orbit constantly. You know, they're doing lots of things up there that we as a country can't do so

Sir Gene 41:06

and then not only do they have their own space station, it is more roomy than the iss.

Sir Ben 41:12

well.

Sir Gene 41:12

much newer, so all the

Sir Ben 41:14

that's what I was about to say.

Sir Gene 41:15

a lot more compact. Yeah, they're, they've got so their space station's made out of three pieces right now, and there's one additional, fairly large one that they're contemplating launching. When they first built it, they built two identical, have modules. Assuming the first one would probably blow up on its way up there.

Sir Ben 41:33

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene 41:34

So they built a backup right away. Well, the first one made it, now it used every bit of rocket fuel to get to its orbit. And remember, if you remember the there was a lot of anger happening about where the, the rocket's gonna crash. That was the the upper stage of that delivery vehicle. But they got it into the proper orbit. And so now they're, they're talking about sending the backup up as well, which would give them a essentially double their, their have volume in the station.

Sir Ben 42:06

Well, I think Space Force has their next target.

Sir Gene 42:11

Yeah. Yeah. We'll see.

Sir Ben 42:14

so question for you. What the hell's going on with the Russian modules on the International Space Station?

Sir Gene 42:19

They're getting old.

Sir Ben 42:21

Eh, but yeah, the Soys escaped capsule sprung a leak. They had to cut it loose and then the other Russian modules sprung a leak.

Sir Gene 42:29

Yeah

Sir Ben 42:30

one report was tying it to potential micro meteoroids, but I don't know. It's interesting that only the Russian segments were the ones that were failing.

Sir Gene 42:37

exactly. I, I think that there is something to be said for just shoddy workmanship as well. You know,

Sir Ben 42:44

I'm shocked. Are you saying Russians do subpar work?

Sir Gene 42:48

I'm, I'm saying that right now. No one's really giving too much of a shit about the quality of work on anything other than military equipment. So I think that could be a part of it. I'm sure, given that there were two of those instances very quickly, I think somebody's gonna lose their job as a result of that, probably. But rose Cosmos is, oh, they've got a, still a very good record, and they've I think they'll, they'll figure out what's going on and. Russian

Sir Ben 43:18

you think it was sabotage?

Sir Gene 43:20

I doubt it. I don't, I really don't think it would be. I mean, it's a very minor sabotage. If it was sabotage,

Sir Ben 43:28

Mm-hmm. I mean, it's just a black eye for Russia, geopolitically.

Sir Gene 43:33

eh, no one really cares. Even, I mean, it's just, I don't, I don't know, man. I think it's certainly a possibility that it could be sabotage, but I think it's just as likely just bad luck and chatty workmanship,

Sir Ben 43:49

Yeah, I will say that the soyus capsules have been absolutely the most reliable space transport ever designed.

Sir Gene 43:58

mm-hmm. Yep. Not, and, and the most uncomfortable ever designed.

Sir Ben 44:05

Why do you say that?

Sir Gene 44:06

The interior volume per, per astronaut is like a foot. It's tiny. Absolutely tiny. Like not only would I not

Sir Ben 44:15

is getting their ideas on economy

Sir Gene 44:17

Yeah, exactly. Not only would I not fit in there, I don't think youth fit in there, frankly. I mean, they're, they're just ridiculously cramped where you're literally every, every Cosmo that's touching the other two guys.

Sir Ben 44:31

Yeah. This is how Jean calls me Fat

Sir Gene 44:35

Well, I mean, you're not fat. That's my point, is like, you don't even have to be fat. You'd still have problems sitting in that thing. The, they just a couple years ago, literally just a few years ago, I think it was right when the when the SpaceX first human rated caps went up, was the first time that they made a modification to allow people taller than five eight to be able to get in there.

Sir Ben 44:56

Yeah, I wouldn't fit,

Sir Gene 44:57

Uhhuh But imagine you're making a capsule, literally. To fit exactly. A certain type size human, and nobody bigger than that.

Sir Ben 45:09

Well, I mean that's pretty standard for a lot of cockpits, right?

Sir Gene 45:14

Yeah. But then you look at the SpaceX one and like you could put a six foot 11 person in there,

Sir Ben 45:18

Yeah. Well, yeah. The SpaceX capsules are definitely different than what we've seen previously from

Sir Gene 45:25

it's like there wasn't no bagel in there.

Sir Ben 45:28

Yeah. And it's running windows. So what's your

Sir Gene 45:31

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Sir Ben 45:32

you know, shit,

Sir Gene 45:33

It's all touch screens.

Sir Ben 45:36

Yeah, but not flown from the capsule though. That's the thing.

Sir Gene 45:40

What do you mean?

Sir Ben 45:40

It's pre-programmed.

Sir Gene 45:42

Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, they gotta give people something to do, so that's why you have touchscreens. So you could play some games while you're being shuffled up there.

Sir Ben 45:48

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene 45:49

It's autonomous. I mean, it's really the same mechanism as the space or the Tesla cars.

Sir Ben 45:54

Yeah. And Same mechanism as like Blue Horizon uses and so on.

Sir Gene 45:59

No. Blue Horizon doesn't have a capsule, but yeah,

Sir Ben 46:02

Jeff Bezos. Yeah. They do

Sir Gene 46:04

no, they have a penis. They don't have a capsule.

Sir Ben 46:08

Yeah.

Sir Gene 46:08

And then the penis is suborbital, so totally

Sir Ben 46:11

Depends on your, yes. But, you know, it's, it's hilarious to me that he designed that rocket that way. Yes.

Sir Gene 46:19

He is the chief designer.

Sir Ben 46:20

Good God.

Sir Gene 46:23

Nobody, nobody

Sir Ben 46:25

I

Sir Gene 46:25

at it would say anything else.

Sir Ben 46:27

Yeah, I, I remember what I was gonna say. I remember I was driving back from Dallas. I was coming back down to College Station and when that the SpaceX man crew was going up and I had it streaming on my phone and I real, I had to pull over

Sir Gene 46:47

You watch it?

Sir Ben 46:48

well, I had to pull over and watch it. And dude, I'll, I won't lie, I teared up for America to be returning to space in

Sir Gene 46:56

They did a great production with it. Yeah. The two dads.

Sir Ben 47:01

Yep.

Sir Gene 47:02

Mm-hmm. the space Dads going up,

Sir Ben 47:05

Well, you

Sir Gene 47:06

reclaiming American superiority in space.

Sir Ben 47:10

yeah, and you know, it, it's, it's one of those things that just for an American company, regardless of the subsidies that Musk has gotten and things like that, But for an American company to be, the pathway for NASA to get astronauts back into orbit is huge. Now that said, I, I want to see, you know, NASA's NASA's answer come out. I actually wanna see that damn thing built

Sir Gene 47:36

Which thing?

Sir Ben 47:38

the new launch vehicle.

Sir Gene 47:39

For what, which one are you talking about? Sls.

Sir Ben 47:42

Yes.

Sir Gene 47:43

Well, we saw the first light of it.

Sir Ben 47:46

Unmanned and, you know, but I, I, let's finish that program. Let's actually get it going and let's start sending people,

Sir Gene 47:56

I mean, the crazy part of that program is that it basically relies on SpaceX to bring the people down to the moon and back up in a in a rocket that is way the fuck bigger than the, the capsule that's gonna bring him from the moon back to the earth. I mean, it's, it's such a ridiculous plan. If you look at it, I know why they're doing it. It's all based on contracts, but the idea that they're gonna use SpaceX as the landing vehicle in use the Starship, which has a capacity of a hundred people, they're, they're gonna use that to land on the moon and go back up. But then they're gonna use a capsule built for six people. To transfer from Earth to moon and Moon back to earth. It, it's asinine.

Sir Ben 48:50

Well, we'll see. You know, depending on when this actually goes, I wouldn't be surprised for some contracts to go the wayside and them to actually build a lander. But

Sir Gene 49:01

I, I'll tell you what I was super happy about and I couldn't believe it when I first heard, but then I realized, holy shit, they actually managed to do it. Is to see that the everyday astronaut is going to the moon.

Sir Ben 49:14

What do you mean?

Sir Gene 49:16

The, the, the, the guy, you know, the guy, or maybe you don't know the guy, but there's a YouTube channel called Everyday Astronaut, which is a channel that really has been pumping out probably the best videos about SpaceX for five, six years.

Sir Ben 49:32

Hmm?

Sir Gene 49:33

And it's a channel I can't remember the guy's actual name, but he, he, he went by everyday Astron. He was a commercial photographer, and he bought a Russian space suit off of eBay years ago, like a big orange one, right? And then he did a series of photos for a photo book called Everyday Astronaut. And you could just Google it to, for you or anybody on, on the internet, just google everyday astronaut photos and you'll see the pictures from that book. And they're very, very good. I mean, he was a very good photographer. And so you have things like, you know, just like, like a guy with a lunchbox walking into the NASA headquarters

Sir Ben 50:12

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene 50:13

they're just kind of neat little future, sort of like 1950s future rocket stuff, photos instead of paintings. And so they, there's definitely composites there, right? So there, there's some green screen involved, but they, they look really nice. And so he started doing that. Then he started he was super excited about what's going on with SpaceX and he started doing videos of the launches. And then he started doing explanation videos. I don't know what, what, what else they call'em, like training. They're not really training vi, but like he did a, a video on the history of SpaceX and he did a, a set of videos on like the different rocket engines and what are the pros and cons of different types and is an Aerospike the best engine? Why is nobody using it? Then he did a video. That's the history of all rocket, all Soviet rocking engines and different models and how they differ and all that stuff. He's been doing like one a month basically of these space technology related videos. He also

Sir Ben 51:15

have you bought your space suit yet?

Sir Gene 51:18

no him. I'm, I'm definitely not going, but I think it's cool shit. But my, my point with this guy is like, he, he ended up making a t-shirt that he designed that Elon wore was like paparazzi, photos of Elon wearing it, came out and then of course made this t-shirt super, you know, everybody wanted it. And then he ended up meeting Elon and then they got to be friends. And so he's done a number of videos, like with Elon for a whole day, walking around SpaceX and talking about different components and you know, checking out different areas of, of they're

Sir Ben 51:55

Production.

Sir Gene 51:56

no, what's, what the hell's there? I forget the name of the city. They're building down the off of south Padre there SpaceX Town or whatever they're called. But just, it, it's, it's been an interesting thing to watch cuz I started watching him way before he had any access to SpaceX and then the latest thing that just came out a few months ago was that he's been chosen as one of the civilians to fly to the moon.

Sir Ben 52:19

Interesting. Is he actually gonna land on the moon or just

Sir Gene 52:23

No, no, It's, he is gonna circle the moon. So he is gonna do the same thing that the the pre Apollo seven guys did.

Sir Ben 52:30

you mean pre Apollo 11?

Sir Gene 52:32

Well that's what the government would like you to think.

Sir Ben 52:35

Okay. Uhhuh, Uhhuh.

Sir Gene 52:37

saying.

Sir Ben 52:37

Uhhuh,

Sir Gene 52:38

So

Sir Ben 52:39

next thing you'll tell me is there were more Apollo missions than

Sir Gene 52:42

we want all the way through Apollo 25. Everybody knows that it's a fact.

Sir Ben 52:46

Uhhuh. Uhhuh And where are you finding this information? Gene?

Sir Gene 52:50

easily, freely available. You just gotta look. It's free of mine. People don't, don't believe all the CIA propaganda.

Sir Ben 52:58

Hmm.

Sir Gene 53:00

So,

Sir Ben 53:01

So ha, you've spent how much on fake space ships?

Sir Gene 53:08

we're not gonna go there.

Sir Ben 53:09

Ah-huh

Sir Gene 53:10

not a number that needs to ever be mentioned by anybody, through anybody.

Sir Ben 53:13

Okay, but why haven't you bought a real spacesuit?

Sir Gene 53:17

Well, there's no point in buying a space suit unless you're gonna go and the first thing you do is get a ticket. And those tickets are pretty fucking expensive right now. Think they're in the a hundred million dollar range,

Sir Ben 53:26

Huh.

Sir Gene 53:27

which is just barely, but outside of my range.

Sir Ben 53:30

Just barely Come

Sir Gene 53:32

barely by a lot of zeros, but yes,

Sir Ben 53:34

There you go. Yeah. Uhhuh Uhhuh

Sir Gene 53:38

no. I mean, what's the point of, of owning a suit if it's never gonna get used, you know?

Sir Ben 53:43

Oh, I would totally have one to just throw in the corner of the office.

Sir Gene 53:48

Yeah. As a prop, I suppose, but I, you know, like I don't have any prop things. I don't have like sci-fi guns or any, I mean, unless you count the I w I guns as sci-fi guns,

Sir Ben 53:59

kind of,

Sir Gene 54:00

kind of, they look like it, but they're fully functional. But I've never been into the whole buying, like, you know, lightsabers and things.

Sir Ben 54:09

Yeah. Nor nor have I, you've you've never seen my office have you?

Sir Gene 54:13

Mm-hmm. Nope.

Sir Ben 54:14

So, if I were to turn on a camera, which you'd see behind me is a very messy work bench and then a couch.

Sir Gene 54:21

sewing a machine and, you know,

Sir Ben 54:23

No, no, no. But you'd see some paintings and, you know, probably not what everyone would expect. Now. You would see a Piy P eight and a Piy P 11 on one of the bookshelves blinking away. But yeah.

Sir Gene 54:36

Hmm. Where, where is the where do you keep all your CIA clothes?

Sir Ben 54:42

I, I don't have any CIA clothes, Jean, and I don't know what those would look like.

Sir Gene 54:46

Okay, sure.

Sir Ben 54:48

I I will, I I will say that I definitely stood out in all the countries that I went to when I wasn't at work because I wore what I wear when I'm in the us So I was in jeans and a polo running around, you know,

Sir Gene 55:02

usually wears. And so you do have your CIA clothes?

Sir Ben 55:05

Uhhuh

Sir Gene 55:07

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 55:08

But you know, I, I, I gotta tell you, it was definitely interesting and fun in Dubai, cuz I spent the majority of the time I, the Middle East I spent in Dubai and I could have gone to, you know, the mall there and done whatever shopping, you know, in the expensive part of town. But instead I went to basically an open air market in the poor side of town and holy crap. What a difference, you know, because where, where I was staying was in downtown Dubai. I mean, I could see the tallest building in the world from my hotel. You know, right there, not like far away. But it was interesting because, you know, in the worker area you know, people were hanging their laundry out on their balconies, things like that. A haircut was five Durham, which ends up being like a dollar 50, dollar

Sir Gene 56:03

Yeah. I think it's a little over three. Derma dollar.

Sir Ben 56:05

3.6, 3.7. Yeah.

Sir Gene 56:07

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 56:08

Yep. So anyway it was just very interesting. Lots of counterfeit stuff, lots of things like that floating around. But yeah,

Sir Gene 56:15

get your fake Rolex right there.

Sir Ben 56:17

no, I didn't buy anything. But it was interesting to walk around and see. But you know, one of the things that struck me about the U A E. That really just absolutely, I did not understand till I went there is in Dubai, 91% of the population is expats.

Sir Gene 56:36

right?

Sir Ben 56:37

So 91% of the population has

Sir Gene 56:41

I wouldn't say expect they're foreigners,

Sir Ben 56:43

Okay. Well, yes, that is a key thing because the Emirati are the only ones who are citizens and there is no immigration. There is no naturalization. There is no way to get a UA

Sir Gene 56:56

you can Marion

Sir Ben 56:57

parent or

Sir Gene 56:59

you can Marion.

Sir Ben 57:00

You could marry Ann. Yes. But that's very, very

Sir Gene 57:02

I've looked at this

Sir Ben 57:04

Yes. The, the other thing that's interesting is that if you invest like a million and a half bucks, you can get the quote unquote golden visa, which gives you the right to stay in the UAE for up to 10 years. Now that can be revoked at any given time, things like that. And yeah,

Sir Gene 57:20

Yeah. Well, I, I fully support that model. I think that people that own the country should ensure that they're in charge of who gets in and not just let every, every, Tom, Dick, and Harry come in with no

Sir Ben 57:37

Yeah, but I mean, a path to citizenship would be nice and some guarantee of rights, you

Sir Gene 57:43

necessary. I don't think it's necessary.

Sir Ben 57:45

Well, I mean, I would never live in the UAE because of things like that. Now I

Sir Gene 57:50

wanna become a UAE citizen

Sir Ben 57:52

No given their

Sir Gene 57:53

you from traveling to Israel, ever.

Sir Ben 57:56

Yes, this is true.

Sir Gene 57:58

Yeah.

Sir Ben 57:58

Which by the way one of our, one of the business partners that's headquartered in Tel Aviv

Sir Gene 58:04

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 58:04

a asked me, oh, so, you know, Hey, since you're gonna be over here, why don't you stop in? And, you know, it was like, yeah, not on this trip, guys. I, I'll need another passport for that

Sir Gene 58:14

E. Exactly, exactly. That's not gonna happen on this trip with hitting all these Arab countries.

Sir Ben 58:19

You know, with, with some of the Abraham Accords and things like that, it's gotten better. But and you know, Israel will put a sheet in your passport and stamp that. But you know, again, when I, I wasn't gonna go to to Israel before the Middle Eastern trip. I'll just say it

Sir Gene 58:35

Yeah, exactly.

Sir Ben 58:37

so,

Sir Gene 58:37

Yeah, exactly. But it sounds like it was a pretty good time, all said and done.

Sir Ben 58:42

oh yeah. One last thing. On the flight home

Sir Gene 58:45

And what airline did you fly back?

Sir Ben 58:47

Emirates.

Sir Gene 58:48

Emirates. Okay. And then you flew out which one? On the way out

Sir Ben 58:51

What do you mean?

Sir Gene 58:52

to, there you did Singapore Air.

Sir Ben 58:54

Yeah, Singapore era was the one on the way out. But anyway, it was funny. We definitely jogged to miss Ukraine on the flight path, but then it was just up and over, so I flew over both Teran and Moscow

Sir Gene 59:09

Yeah. I was gonna ask about that. So your, your trip through Iran and through Russia went without incident, huh?

Sir Ben 59:14

We lost wifi once we got over Russia and it never really came back. So that was kind of

Sir Gene 59:19

Oh, it never came back. That's interesting.

Sir Ben 59:20

Yeah, it was spotty.

Sir Gene 59:22

Hmm. Yeah, cuz I mean, I would certainly think that there's a high likelihood you're not gonna have wifi when you're flying over Russia, but it should have come back afterwards, I would think.

Sir Ben 59:32

I mean, it was, you know, geostationary satellites providing the wifi, but there was something wrong with the, with the access point on the plane. That was the issue. And I, I, I will say that the Emirates a three 80 is a, is a neat plane. I'm glad I flew on it, but I gotta tell you, I prefer Singapore. Everybody puts Emirates business glass on this pedestal, and it didn't live up for me. The food on Singapore was way better. The seats were different. So on the Singapore Airlines, I had a seat that I could recline quite a bit, but to lay flat, you had to get up and lay it flat. Which, that, that was a bit of a pain and something to get used to the Emirate seat. You could just push the button and lay flat. But the, the Emirate seat was narrower than the Singapore seat, so, And, you know, I'm not a big guy, but I've got pretty broad shoulders and it was a little narrow for me.

Sir Gene 1:00:27

Hmm.

Sir Ben 1:00:28

Al also interesting point Singapore on their h b o Max had, you know, house of Dragons and whatever, uncensored, right.

Sir Gene 1:00:36

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 1:00:37

Emirates under their H B O Max had a very small selection, of approved content.

Sir Gene 1:00:45

Interesting.

Sir Ben 1:00:46

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene 1:00:47

Yeah, it, it's when you're at a point in, in air travel where you're critiquing Emirates Airlines business class, you're, you're in a small group of people, my friend.

Sir Ben 1:01:00

I, yeah. And I don't wanna sound elitist. It was great to fly it. I'm very

Sir Gene 1:01:04

Too late for that.

Sir Ben 1:01:05

N how so?

Sir Gene 1:01:07

Oh, yes. Oh, Emirate's. Not all it's cracked up to be people don't, don't bother with it.

Sir Ben 1:01:12

I'm not saying that at all. I mean,

Sir Gene 1:01:14

like you were saying

Sir Ben 1:01:15

let's put it this way, if I'm in Dubai again, I will fly Emirates again home

Sir Gene 1:01:19

let me ask you now, you're, you're probably gonna travel again before too long. What airline are you gonna fly?

Sir Ben 1:01:24

What do you mean?

Sir Gene 1:01:25

Well, when you're flying and your next trip, what airline are you gonna buy tickets on?

Sir Ben 1:01:29

You know, I'll try and stay with the Star Alliance, um, just because of United and everything else probably, uh, are, are united. Um, yeah,

Sir Gene 1:01:40

No, you're not playing fucking united

Sir Ben 1:01:42

Okay.

Sir Gene 1:01:42

and not after

Sir Ben 1:01:43

I'm go, if I'm going to South Africa, then yeah, I might be flying Polaris. So,

Sir Gene 1:01:48

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 1:01:49

because, you know, flights I, I will see this. The problem with Emirates though is, you know, big expensive flight and you basically get nothing for'em because they don't partner with anyone. Qatar. Yeah. Yeah. Qatar, I flew Qatari Airways as well, and Qatar Airways is part of one world. So that tied into my American stuff. And, you know, living and working in dfw, I had, you know, had to fly American. Yeah. So I, I, hell, I still have gold status or

Sir Gene 1:02:19

I'm, I'm both

Sir Ben 1:02:20

than gold status. And on American. Yeah.

Sir Gene 1:02:24

Nice. Well that's, that's fun for you.

Sir Ben 1:02:27

Yes.

Sir Gene 1:02:28

What else going on?

Sir Ben 1:02:29

I don't know, we're recording at a different point in time because wife and kids and everybody are

Sir Gene 1:02:33

Yeah, people don't

Sir Ben 1:02:34

break stuff. Yeah.

Sir Gene 1:02:35

So Biden's doing a deal with Australia to get them nuclear submarines apparently, cuz that I guess is gonna help with China.

Sir Ben 1:02:43

actually that started under Trump. So originally the, the Australians were going to purchase French diesels and Trump threw out that, oh, well, we'll, we'll give you nukes and there you go.

Sir Gene 1:02:57

Yep.

Sir Ben 1:02:57

Now, n nuke propulsion, not armament.

Sir Gene 1:03:02

Sure. But how do you

Sir Ben 1:03:04

Ah, I mean,

Sir Gene 1:03:06

I

Sir Ben 1:03:06

there are in

Sir Gene 1:03:07

nu nuclear sensors that'll pick. Nuclear radioactive material within a certain area, you're not gonna be able to tell whether they're nukes or whether they're nuclear part submarines.

Sir Ben 1:03:18

well, it definitely would be a

Sir Gene 1:03:21

I can tell you it, it's definitely gonna be taken as an affront by China.

Sir Ben 1:03:25

as it should be. 100%.

Sir Gene 1:03:27

Yeah, cuz then shifting, shifting from the US to Australia is a good move for the us. I don't think it's a particularly smart move for Australia.

Sir Ben 1:03:35

Well first of all, China is hostile to Australia geopolitically to begin with. Um,

Sir Gene 1:03:42

say that they, they've done a huge amount of investment in Australia,

Sir Ben 1:03:48

yes. Because they need the Australian coal.

Sir Gene 1:03:51

so people in Australia are hostile towards China. I would say that, but I don't think China is hostile. I mean, if they were hostile to Australia, then they would be not doing any trade with them. They would be boycotting them.

Sir Ben 1:04:03

Well, they're not because they have to have the Australian coal. China is very, very dependent upon imports especially for their electric grid. You know, they, they burn a lot of coal and that almost all of it comes from Australia. I think Australia supplies like over 60% of China's coal.

Sir Gene 1:04:20

And Australia is basically just made of coal.

Sir Ben 1:04:24

Coal and visible material and lots of things. Yes.

Sir Gene 1:04:29

Yeah. Which is probably not for the next 20 years, but I think at some point there's gonna be a big fight for Australia.

Sir Ben 1:04:35

Well, I mean, just the uranium deposits alone would kind of indicate that now, you know, the, the problem you have with Australia is you have such a large territory held by so few people,

Sir Gene 1:04:46

Yes, absolutely.

Sir Ben 1:04:49

you

Sir Gene 1:04:50

it will almost be as easy if we're trying to take over Australia as Taiwan.

Sir Ben 1:04:53

In all honesty, it would be probably somewhat easier in some ways. Taiwan has been building up for a fight with China since, you know, the 1940s. The the Australians have not. Also the Australian military, you know, they don't have the investment that,

Sir Gene 1:05:11

They wear shorts.

Sir Ben 1:05:13

has.

Sir Gene 1:05:14

Yeah. And they still wear shorts,

Sir Ben 1:05:16

Okay,

Sir Gene 1:05:16

which is funny. It's just funny seeing a, an army wearing shorts. That's all.

Sir Ben 1:05:22

why, why is that

Sir Gene 1:05:23

looks funny. I don't know. It just, it kind of hearkens back to British rule in India

Sir Ben 1:05:28

Yeah, yeah,

Sir Gene 1:05:29

the, the official British uniform was shorts.

Sir Ben 1:05:32

Well, I, you, yeah. That's another interesting tie-in to the Middle East because I had to use the British plug, you know, over there because they were all British protectants back in the day. So yeah.

Sir Gene 1:05:43

PR protector. That's a good way of putting it.

Sir Ben 1:05:45

That is the official designation that they had.

Sir Gene 1:05:48

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 1:05:49

Yeah. They weren the,

Sir Gene 1:05:51

by the British.

Sir Ben 1:05:53

yeah. Yes, definitely occupied.

Sir Gene 1:05:57

you know, I think it's gonna be a bit of a race here between like how quickly we can get, and by we, meaning anybody on earth can get reliable fusion energy going, because that's gonna be the downfall of the Middle East. And really any countries that are big exporters of oil and coal,

Sir Ben 1:06:19

so talking to several oil companies in the Middle East part of why I was over there, man, the ESG is strong with them.

Sir Gene 1:06:28

really,

Sir Ben 1:06:29

Yes.

Sir Gene 1:06:30

like all the, the gay stuff.

Sir Ben 1:06:31

They are definitely focused on sustainability and renewability. I mean, you know how big of a deal business cards are in the Middle East. So I had one of the executives, this is how bought in he was, he handed me his card two-handed and you know, set it down and he said, please take a picture for sustainability instead of actually giving me his card, which I found

Sir Gene 1:06:52

oh my god, that's annoying as hell. That's called a souvenir.

Sir Ben 1:06:56

Yes. Well, I I've got several of them, so from different people, but y yeah, they are definitely trying to move away. You know, the, the international shipping organizations are pushing fuel reduction strategies that are absolutely insane if you ask me. I mean, they're, they're talking about being carbon free by 2050.

Sir Gene 1:07:16

Yeah.

Sir Ben 1:07:17

How, how, which is not possible. Now, part of the way they're doing that is by saying, you know, if you use biodiesel, that's carbon neutral. If you use fuel synthesized from carbon capture, that's carbon neutral, things like that.

Sir Gene 1:07:31

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 1:07:33

And they're even bringing back the possibilities of you know, trading ships being nuke powered. i e the in a Savannah.

Sir Gene 1:07:42

Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's wild that they're seriously contemplating on stuff.

Sir Ben 1:07:47

Well, I mean, the Savannah should have caught on as a class of ship. You know, it, it, it absolutely, that should have been a revolution in the transport of goods. I mean, but, you know, politics around visible

Sir Gene 1:08:02

Yeah. No, I, I don't mean that part. I mean, just the idea that that they're, they're really giving a shit about all this hydrocarbon stuff.

Sir Ben 1:08:09

Hmm. Well, I, I think they're at least playing lip service to it, you know? But I mean, oil is very cheap over there. Gas was like a dollar, five a gallon after doing the conversions.

Sir Gene 1:08:22

Dollar five. Hmm. Yeah, that's, that's pretty cheap.

Sir Ben 1:08:27

Yeah. Um,

Sir Gene 1:08:28

actually cheaper than Russia is right now.

Sir Ben 1:08:30

Yeah. What do you think of Netanyahu's move in in the Golan Heights?

Sir Gene 1:08:36

So I have to say, I have not been following this, so

Sir Ben 1:08:39

Oh,

Sir Gene 1:08:40

I've, I've maybe seen one story on it, so,

Sir Ben 1:08:44

Yeah. So the, there's been several, but essentially what he has done while no one was watching was pol replaced the military government in, you know, you could say the West Bank or the Palestinian Territories, whatever you wanna call it, the disputed area. And he's replaced it with a civilian government basically saying, this is no longer disputed. This is ours.

Sir Gene 1:09:07

Yeah. Well, I think they should have did that a long time ago, frankly, and that would be my take on it. But you know, I believe in a doctrine of conquest. We've talked about this before. So I think when you, when you win a war and you occupy land afterwards then unless there's a really good reason not to, it should be a part of the country.

Sir Ben 1:09:30

Hmm. Sterilize all the men take

Sir Gene 1:09:32

I don't I don't like the No, you just export'em. But I, I don't like the idea of of doing this administrative stuff the way the US did in Germany, you know, it's, it's administrative zones are I, I think they're, they have a much higher cost. And they brilliant. Breathe resentment.

Sir Ben 1:09:53

Now what do you think of the US occupation of Japan and how

Sir Gene 1:09:57

Same thing. Yeah, same thing.

Sir Ben 1:10:00

Yeah. But from that we got a very close ally and it wasn't a country we could have ever permanently

Sir Gene 1:10:05

I don't understand why we couldn't have a 51st through seventh State in Japan right now. In the last 60 years. They, it would've been everybody would be speaking English.

Sir Ben 1:10:16

So I don't know that the Japanese would've capitulated to that

Sir Gene 1:10:19

I don't think they had a choice cuz we made nukes.

Sir Ben 1:10:22

Yes. Well, secondly it sure would change the China position today, wouldn't it?

Sir Gene 1:10:27

Yes, it would. Having United States off the coast of China and Russia incidentally, literally within a hundred miles would make the US position very different than it is right now.

Sir Ben 1:10:39

Yeah. If we made it out of the Cold War, but,

Sir Gene 1:10:43

I don't see why we wouldn't have, I mean, we

Sir Ben 1:10:46

Well, that would've been massively more provocative towards both the U S S R and,

Sir Gene 1:10:52

you were ever gonna do it, that was the time to do it.

Sir Ben 1:10:54

again. Absolutely. And same thing with Taiwan. You know, recognizing Taiwan as a free and independent state

Sir Gene 1:11:00

The Philippines absolutely should have become part of the United States. There's no two ways about that.

Sir Ben 1:11:05

I don't know that the Philippines would agree with that.

Sir Gene 1:11:07

Again, back in the war would've been the perfect time to do it. I'm not saying doing it right now.

Sir Ben 1:11:12

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene 1:11:14

So you can do it in only two instances. Can you take land like that. One is if you win as an occupier or two is if you win as a liberator. That's the only two times that you get to take land. Anything else results in very high cost.

Sir Ben 1:11:33

Yeah. I mean, we've definitely seen some territories annexed in the past where that's not necessarily the truth, but, okay. I mean, look at the Hawaiian

Sir Gene 1:11:41

tell you this, if

Sir Ben 1:11:42

conqueror, or we weren't a conqueror or a liberator in the Hawaiian

Sir Gene 1:11:45

oh, we stole those, those were completely legally stolen.

Sir Ben 1:11:48

Right. But they, they're ours now,

Sir Gene 1:11:52

Well,

Sir Ben 1:11:52

we weren't seen as liberators. And we weren't seen as conquerors.

Sir Gene 1:11:55

yeah. Yeah. But I mean, there was no treaties. They were literally just like, okay, this is now our land. They, the, the Hawaiian Islands effectively we're, became part of the United States the same way that the state of New York became part of the United States. We just declared it as such.

Sir Ben 1:12:13

Well, isn't that what you do?

Sir Gene 1:12:16

Well, yeah. I mean, but more recently there were actual treaties, which is how like Alaska, for example, was purchased. It was a hell of a good deal too.

Sir Ben 1:12:26

I thought your narrative was that it wasn't actually purchased.

Sir Gene 1:12:30

Well, the, the papers were never signed, so you could make an argument that it was never purchased.

Sir Ben 1:12:35

Was the, was the check cashed?

Sir Gene 1:12:36

Yeah, I'm

Sir Ben 1:12:37

payment received

Sir Gene 1:12:38

I'm pretty sure the payment was received. Yeah.

Sir Ben 1:12:40

Okay.

Sir Gene 1:12:41

That was the main thing they were looking for was the payment.

Sir Ben 1:12:44

Yeah.

Sir Gene 1:12:44

Yeah. Which, incidentally, the reason that Alaska was sold because of the, the, the Russo, Japanese War, they needed

Sir Ben 1:12:54

Finance financing. Yeah.

Sir Gene 1:12:56

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 1:12:57

Well, and you know, it wasn't exactly much of a colony at the time. You know, there weren't a lot of people

Sir Gene 1:13:03

there's 10 people there,

Sir Ben 1:13:05

Yeah, exactly.

Sir Gene 1:13:06

I know.

Sir Ben 1:13:07

The population's doubled.

Sir Gene 1:13:08

I honestly, I suspect that the number of orthodox churches in Alaska has probably remained static for, ever since it was part of Russia.

Sir Ben 1:13:18

Yeah, so two

Sir Gene 1:13:20

I don't think it's changed at all.

Sir Ben 1:13:21

The, you know, Alaska is intriguing, but it's someplace I've never been and really have no desire to go to.

Sir Gene 1:13:28

I wouldn't mind going there for some fishing. And it's beautiful country. I mean, I would, I would not mind going there with just a camera and no real, you know, reason to, besides that,

Sir Ben 1:13:39

Yeah, sure. But

Sir Gene 1:13:40

I watch a YouTube channel that, that has bears like streamed constantly from Alaska and they're super awesome.

Sir Ben 1:13:46

Yeah. I'm, what I'm referring to is like actually living there, you know, and you know, you have the whole male to female ratio being all screwed

Sir Gene 1:13:54

not a good, not a good deal for males up there. No,

Sir Ben 1:13:57

No, no.

Sir Gene 1:13:58

but the average pay is about double, so there is an upside to living there. And in fact, I've met a, a handful of folks that have gone to Alaska for three to four years in their twenties and then come down to live, you know, in the lower 48 with a a half a million dollar nest.

Sir Ben 1:14:19

Hmm.

Sir Gene 1:14:20

That definitely set sets up your life pretty good. What's that?

Sir Ben 1:14:25

This, this this has to be wrong. The ratio okay. That, that makes more sense. So this first I blame Bingham. You have me using Edge for the show because of, you know, whatever. As Alaska has the highest male to female ratio with 10 men for every a hundred women, that's bullshit. And then when we actually get down into the actual statistics, it's 109 men for every a hundred women.

Sir Gene 1:14:52

Oh, that's actually closer than I expected. I thought it would be like, you know, 30 or 60, 60 to a hundred kind of ratio. Hmm. That's actually not as bad as I, it probably used to be worse back like 50, 60 years ago.

Sir Ben 1:15:06

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene 1:15:07

More people have. Gone there. But I, again, I think Alaska is, it's a kind of place that you go in order to accomplish something. Not the kind of place you go to just like live the rest of your life.

Sir Ben 1:15:24

indeed.

Sir Gene 1:15:26

Cause that's gotta be warmer I

Sir Ben 1:15:28

Yes.

Sir Gene 1:15:29

I could not live in a, I mean, I grew up in the frozen north, so I kinda know a little bit about it, but I, I would never choose to live in a place where the Celsius temperature and the Fahrenheit temperature crossover, like that's too fucking cold. And I've experienced that multiple times in my life.

Sir Ben 1:15:53

Oh, that's funny. What temperature is that, by the way? I

Sir Gene 1:15:56

40 degrees below zero, 40 below.

Sir Ben 1:15:59

Yeah.

Sir Gene 1:15:59

Where it doesn't matter which scale it's on, it's still 40 below

Sir Ben 1:16:04

Yeah. No, thank you. Uh,

Sir Gene 1:16:06

water freezes so fucking fast. You breathe out your breath from your lungs and you can see the lice crystals falling down the ground.

Sir Ben 1:16:13

Yeah. I, I will say that have li having lived in North central Idaho, part of me definitely misses it. But it never got that cold. I think the coldest it got up there was 15 below. Well, we lived there which is plenty cold. Yeah. But you know, it, it, and it's not somewhere where I'd necessarily ever buy a house or live, but definitely go and visit and go skiing and do things like that, you know?

Sir Gene 1:16:35

Honestly, there's not a whole lot of difference between 15 below and 40 below. It's once you get to about 20 below,

Sir Ben 1:16:40

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene 1:16:41

anything colder than that is not like, you can't really tell without looking at a thermometer. It's, it's all too fucking cold. It's all in the range of two fucking cold. So

Sir Ben 1:16:55

I, I think anything below zero Fahrenheit is too fucking cold,

Sir Gene 1:16:58

oh, oh, at this point in my life, anything below 32 Fahrenheit is too fucking cold.

Sir Ben 1:17:04

Hmm.

Sir Gene 1:17:05

I don't, I don't want, like, you know, if, if I could just move somewhere without it affecting anything else in my life, like internet connectivity or whatever, I would totally be living in Central America

Sir Ben 1:17:18

Well, I mean,

Sir Gene 1:17:20

it is it like the concept of ice coming down from the clouds doesn't exist?

Sir Ben 1:17:27

Right. But the, the problem is, it, there's several problems with that. I mean, Belize, a lot of people expat to Belize because it, they use the US dollar. They're primarily an English speaking country with decent property protection laws. But yeah, I don't know. Central America is too politically up in the air

Sir Gene 1:17:48

I think I need to go there. Check it out. I mean, like I, I, I was in Costa Rica for a while and Costa Rica was nice, but I also had a very unique experience in Costa Rica. So,

Sir Ben 1:18:01

to tell

Sir Gene 1:18:02

well, I, I'll write a book about it at some point, but I've told you some of this stuff. Like, I, I one of our ga I, I lived next door to the Russian Embassy down there,

Sir Ben 1:18:11

Mm-hmm. and You call me a spook.

Sir Gene 1:18:14

You are a spook. So I basically, I lived in Nicaragua Embassy down there, and one of our games was to, to kick footballs over the fence to the Russian Embassy and then have them kick it back. And we just played football across the fence basically. But when I was there, it was it was very nice. I had, but that's the thing, it's like, you know, I had a driver, I had two bodyguards with dogs and machine guns, fully automatic machine guns. It was a. A lot more of an experience that you would see in a movie about Columbia than like typical American tourism. So I thought it was great. I almost died a couple times, but at that aside, it was great.

Sir Ben 1:18:57

What year was this?

Sir Gene 1:18:59

this was in the late nineties.

Sir Ben 1:19:01

Okay.

Sir Gene 1:19:01

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 1:19:02

Have you ever heard this song? Send Lawyers, guns and Money?

Sir Gene 1:19:06

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 1:19:07

Oh, I'll, I'll send you a link, but the lyrics are, send lawyers, guns, and Money. Shit has hit the fan

Sir Gene 1:19:14

Yeah.

Sir Ben 1:19:15

Yeah.

Sir Gene 1:19:16

Well, the, the one thing I will say is that it was a, it was fairly surreal in a lot of ways, and unfortunately a few of the people that I hung out there with are they, they've lost their freedom. It's the best way of putting it. There's three people in American prison and two in Russian prison.

Sir Ben 1:19:38

Okay. Well, interesting. So this is perfect for you. The way these lyrics read. I went home with the waitress the way I always do. How was I to know she was with the Russians too? Gambling in Havana. I took a little risk. Send lawyers, guns and money. Dad, get me out of this Anyway, it it goes on.

Sir Gene 1:20:02

That's pretty good.

Sir Ben 1:20:03

yeah.

Sir Gene 1:20:04

Yeah. And so there are definitely places in Central America where you can go have fi, I mean, let's put it this way. You can bring a million and a half and put it in the bank, in the Emirates, or you could bring a million and a half and have fun with it in Central America and live like a king.

Sir Ben 1:20:21

Yeah.

Sir Gene 1:20:23

you're probably odds of, of disappearing are equal in both countries.

Sir Ben 1:20:28

Well, especially, you know, it was funny because I was sitting around the table at a country club in in the Dubai Hills, which is their equivalent to, you know, Beverly Hills. And we were talking about, you know, how, you know, what we kind of felt about the surveillance state and everything else. And it was funny because there was one kind of uncomfortable moment where one of, one of my coworkers said, yeah, let's change the subject before he loses her hands. And, you know, it, it was a little bit of gallows humor, but there was definitely some truth to that, you know?

Sir Gene 1:21:05

Yeah. Well, you're, you're definitely better knowing that there's some truth to it than thinking it's just a joke.

Sir Ben 1:21:11

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. All right, man. Any anything else?

Sir Gene 1:21:17

I'm trying to think if there's anything else that we

Sir Ben 1:21:19

Have you ever been to Honduras?

Sir Gene 1:21:21

On foot.

Sir Ben 1:21:22

What do you mean

Sir Gene 1:21:22

know, I, I don't know what the airport's like, don't ask me about that.

Sir Ben 1:21:26

Yeah. So one of the other lines in that song is, and I'm hiding in Honduras.

Sir Gene 1:21:31

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 1:21:32

I'm a desperate man.

Sir Gene 1:21:34

Yeah. That sounds more like John McAfee though.

Sir Ben 1:21:36

Yeah. Dead or alive? What do you think?

Sir Gene 1:21:39

Oh, he's dead.

Sir Ben 1:21:40

Yeah.

Sir Gene 1:21:41

I'm pretty sure. Yeah. I'm, I, I'm pretty sad about it. But yeah, I, I think he had a crazy life. He, he did so much awesome stuff. But he still ended up getting killed too. I mean, he ended up dying too early.

Sir Ben 1:21:57

Oh, he was killed. There's no doubt. If he, if he's dead. Now I will say that in 2016 when he was running for president before. You know, really the Trump and Wagon got started. I definitely have one of his M 16 shirts, which was a cool shirt.

Sir Gene 1:22:15

Nice.

Sir Ben 1:22:16

yeah,

Sir Gene 1:22:17

Yeah. And

Sir Ben 1:22:17

I, was always a fan of McAfee. I, if he would've gotten the Repub or the libertarian nomination in 2016, I might have voted for him over Trump.

Sir Gene 1:22:27

he is a crazy fucker, but I've always liked his kind of crazy.

Sir Ben 1:22:30

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene 1:22:31

And I did get to have drinks with him about a year before he died. So that was, I'm glad that happened because otherwise I would've felt like I.

Sir Ben 1:22:43

Well, congratulations. I've never met the man. So

Sir Gene 1:22:46

Oh, really? Oh,

Sir Ben 1:22:47

when would I have

Sir Gene 1:22:48

yeah. I, I bought'em bought, bought'em a white Russian. We, we both had white Russians.

Sir Ben 1:22:53

I have met Kevin Mitnick.

Sir Gene 1:22:55

Hmm.

Sir Ben 1:22:56

I

Sir Gene 1:22:56

I've been at, I've been at events that he's spoken at, but I've never met him.

Sir Ben 1:23:00

Yeah, I've met Kevin Mitnick. I've met HD Moore. You know, I, there, there's some pretty good names on the list that I've, you know, had some pretty good dealings with,

Sir Gene 1:23:11

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 1:23:12

but yeah.

Sir Gene 1:23:14

Yeah. That's why. Yeah. I don't know. But there is anything more to cover. I think we've talked about most of the topics that I texted you about. Did you watch any of that Tim Pool episode?

Sir Ben 1:23:24

Which one?

Sir Gene 1:23:25

It was the one

Sir Ben 1:23:26

one from last night? Yes.

Sir Gene 1:23:28

the one with the guy that, that has the

Sir Ben 1:23:30

The ranch. Yeah.

Sir Gene 1:23:32

yeah.

Sir Ben 1:23:34

Which apparently Tim has invested in

Sir Gene 1:23:37

Yeah, of course he is. Yeah.

Sir Ben 1:23:39

Yeah. I think Tim's getting a little freaked out by the economic

Sir Gene 1:23:43

he is. I think, I think there's a few things happening. I think first of all, I think Tim's income dropped cuz things were going so great until he decided to be a prick. And then combine that with the greater uncertainty in the financial markets, the bank going down, yada, yada, yada. I think Tim, he, like, he's repeated the phrase, ah, you know, me, I, I'd just be living in the van down by the river so many times. Now it's almost like he, he wants to make sure nobody's surprised if this was to actually happen.

Sir Ben 1:24:16

well,

Sir Gene 1:24:17

about it, I said I'd do it, I'm doing it. It's

Sir Ben 1:24:19

yeah, I think there's an ego protection there for sure. But yeah,

Sir Gene 1:24:23

Yeah. For a guy that drives$120,000 Tesla. Yeah. Let's, let's have you. In a van by the river. Okay.

Sir Ben 1:24:30

I mean, it'll be a really nice fan.

Sir Gene 1:24:32

It'll be a fucking, yeah, it'll be a Airstream it won't or something.

Sir Ben 1:24:38

Yeah. Well, I, I tell you, I, I definitely could have gone the hermit lifestyle, um, you know, but I, I chose a wife and kids instead, but there's definitely part of me that could build a little shack down by the river hunt, fish, go do odd jobs here and there and be great.

Sir Gene 1:24:59

Yeah. Well, when the emmp go off, we won't have plenty of practice for that.

Sir Ben 1:25:04

Yeah.

Sir Gene 1:25:05

Speaking of Emmp are you doing any kinda off premises data backups?

Sir Ben 1:25:10

Professionally, or what do you mean?

Sir Gene 1:25:12

Personally?

Sir Ben 1:25:12

Some why?

Sir Gene 1:25:13

would your computers all just lose all their data

Sir Ben 1:25:16

Well,

Sir Gene 1:25:16

or are you backing up anywhere else?

Sir Ben 1:25:18

I mean, some of that is personal, but you know, I, I do have what I would consider,

Sir Gene 1:25:24

Out of Texas is what I mean. Are you banking up out of

Sir Ben 1:25:26

yes.

Sir Gene 1:25:27

Okay, good.

Sir Ben 1:25:28

And what I would say is I also have, you know, you can get a tough book, pretty cheap. You can put it in a metal box and shield it pretty cheap, and you can put a lot of interesting information on said tough book

Sir Gene 1:25:42

sure. Yeah. But I mean, so you're saying keeping one locally, not somewhere else?

Sir Ben 1:25:47

As part of your bug out kit. Yeah.

Sir Gene 1:25:48

Yeah, because I u I used to have a number of locations throughout the United States with storage.

Sir Ben 1:25:56

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene 1:25:57

And after a while I, I, I think actually it was after I got divorced, I was like, you know what? There's a lot of money I'm spending for no good reason. And so I consolidated everything back down, but I used to have basically a two month supply of everything, including ammo and guns spread around the country in a number of different locations.

Sir Ben 1:26:18

That would be expensive.

Sir Gene 1:26:20

It, it gets to be after a while. Yeah.

Sir Ben 1:26:24

Esp. I mean, where are you, where are you storing these?

Sir Gene 1:26:27

Yeah. Well, I mean, they were, they were all storage facilities. They're, they're basically shipping containers.

Sir Ben 1:26:33

Hmm. Yeah. That would get expensive. And you'd have the risk of, you know, anyway yeah, data is kept lots of different places for me. You know, when I was really, really worried about it, I used to use several different companies, including like Spider Oak back in the day. You know, a bit of data that I care about is unfortunately in Google, but you know, That's neither here nor there. Any critical data that I have to keep safe. Number one, my computer, my nas, and then, you know, offsite backup. So

Sir Gene 1:27:05

Yeah. Yeah. And I think the offsite backup is pretty important. I need to find a good Brazilian isp. I, I don't have one down there right now,

Sir Ben 1:27:15

what

Sir Gene 1:27:16

anyone's got any suggestions somebody that will gimme a virtual server down there,

Sir Ben 1:27:21

Well, that's easy.

Sir Gene 1:27:22

a good one.

Sir Ben 1:27:23

Like I think one on one has some South American

Sir Gene 1:27:26

got one and one-on-one, but I don't have'em there.

Sir Ben 1:27:29

well, one and one has some South American data centers that you believe. And they're, they're, they're a rock solid hosting company. They've been around for forever. Um,

Sir Gene 1:27:38

I've probably paid'em about 50 grand at this point.

Sir Ben 1:27:42

Oh God, I, I don't even want to think about how much I've paid one and one and my, my wife, we've been tracking budgets and you know, in the spring is generally right now is when all my domains renew and she's looking at it going, what are all of these? And why do you have them?

Sir Gene 1:28:00

Yeah.

Sir Ben 1:28:00

Don't worry about it

Sir Gene 1:28:01

I, I've actually, I'll tell you offline, I, I actually just started using a different domain company. I basically, how they all get you is they give you the super cheap price on your first year and then you're fucked every year after that. So I, I started looking like, who has the cheapest renewal rates? Cuz that's who I'm gonna move to. Cause that first year doesn't matter.

Sir Ben 1:28:22

so I, I, I use Huffer just because they've been a great domain provider for a long time and they've got They're not super expensive and they have things that I like, so, yeah.

Sir Gene 1:28:34

I've always used name.com because they, they were one of the first companies to do all the international domains. Like, I couldn't do a lot of'em on the one-on-one. I couldn't do'em on Amazon. I couldn't do'em on a lot of American ISPs. But name.com always had oh, you know, I got back my Libyan domain. I was so happy about that.

Sir Ben 1:28:54

what Libyan

Sir Gene 1:28:55

I, I had a Libyan domain that ended up disappearing. I guess there was some issues with Libya that we had or something, I don't know.

Sir Ben 1:29:04

Yeah, we killed Kadafi.

Sir Gene 1:29:05

yeah, something like that. And I finally got it back, so I'm, I'm very happy about

Sir Ben 1:29:10

I mean, don't you remember Hillary Clinton's statement? We came,

Sir Gene 1:29:13

I do, I do. I, I know it's annoying when, when you know politicians fuck up your personal business. But I'm just happy that I got it back. Well, I, what else would.

Sir Ben 1:29:22

Stopping the gold back. Dinar,

Sir Gene 1:29:24

yeah, well, it could have been that, I mean, that's what they were charging in for the domains with, but dude, don't even get me started on the whole that whole fiasco. Yeah. So I guess bottom line is keep at least a chunk of your money in your mattress, folks. Not all of it, but certainly some of it at this point, it's not a bad idea.

Sir Ben 1:29:46

yeah, I mean, eh, I, I won't go that far, but, you know, watch your bank accounts, have some cash diversify, and realistically, depending on what happens, cash may or may not be, you know, valuable.

Sir Gene 1:29:59

the thing is, I

Sir Ben 1:30:00

ammo always is,

Sir Gene 1:30:01

ammo is, is definitely valuable. People will take ammo, so, and ammo pricing is, it's still going down as far as I can see.

Sir Ben 1:30:10

Yeah. There were shit, I meant to send this to you. There was a gun deal at Bud's Gun Shop on I forget which nine millimeter it was, but it was one that I thought you'd be interested in and they were giving

Sir Gene 1:30:23

or

Sir Ben 1:30:24

the, a gun and they were yeah, the Smith and Wesson competitor, nine Mill. If you buy it in, then you can get 200 rounds of ammo included for just$1.

Sir Gene 1:30:33

I don't, I really don't need any more fucking handguns. There's one I'm looking at, but I really don't need anymore. The only one that I, well, the one I don't have right now is anything in five seven.

Sir Ben 1:30:45

It's an expensive cartridge.

Sir Gene 1:30:47

there it is an expensive cartridge. But there, there's I think four manufacturers of that, those guns Now Palmetto being the cheapest and Ruger makes one. I think Smith just. Has one that came out, and then of course the, the original five seven from FN National. So, but I, I always

Sir Ben 1:31:08

rather have a 10 millimeter

Sir Gene 1:31:10

eh, just get a 45. It's better.

Sir Ben 1:31:14

Boy. Let's not start the cartridge debates

Sir Gene 1:31:17

well, I mean, look, I got more 40 caliber rounds than any other rounds right now, and it's, it's a good round. But I still prefer 45 and 10 millimeters is just,

Sir Ben 1:31:28

between 45 and 40 and 10 millimeter.

Sir Gene 1:31:32

yeah, 10 is right between those two. It's, it's a smaller round than the 45 is just a hair bigger than the 40, but it's got more powder than the 40, but I still prefer the 45 over both.

Sir Ben 1:31:46

Yeah, so the 10 millimeter is to the nine is to the 40 cals. The nine millimeter is to the three 80

Sir Gene 1:31:56

Mm, I don't think it's that much difference.

Sir Ben 1:31:59

I. Okay.

Sir Gene 1:32:03

I mean, it's definitely more powder, but, but talk about an expensive round dude, cuz nobody fucking uses them.

Sir Ben 1:32:09

Yeah. Well, I mean, you're the one talking about expensive rounds, so I'm just, you know,

Sir Gene 1:32:14

Mm, yeah, no, I, I know. But the five seven is an interesting round. Although we can't buy the good five seven rounds,

Sir Ben 1:32:25

why is that

Sir Gene 1:32:26

Seal Corps.

Sir Ben 1:32:29

okay?

Sir Gene 1:32:30

That's so it's N ffa.

Sir Ben 1:32:32

Right, I understand. Well, not

Sir Gene 1:32:35

that, that whole cartridge. Back when I was first developed and the the P 90 came out, the, one of the requirements of that cartridge was penetration of level three armor.

Sir Ben 1:32:51

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene 1:32:52

that's achieved with the seal core rounds. And you can carry a lot more of those rounds than other rounds with similar ballistics. So that was an awesome gun and I love the P 90 ever since it came out.

Sir Ben 1:33:05

Yeah, I would love to have one. But the problem is, you know, I don't want the civilian version. I, I

Sir Gene 1:33:10

no, exactly. The, the benefit of the P

Sir Ben 1:33:14

barrel sticking out.

Sir Gene 1:33:15

Yeah, it's, well, the civilian version has a barrel, the PS 90, but it's beyond that. Like the whole advantage of that gun is that it's a zero recoil fully automatic gun.

Sir Ben 1:33:27

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene 1:33:28

if it's shot in semi-auto mode, You then it really is no better than the pistol that I'm looking to get.

Sir Ben 1:33:36

Well, yeah. And you know, the, the P 90, one of the cool things about it was it was actually meant to be a offensive sidearm. You know, it was issued as the first offensive sidearm, and part of that was the 50 round clip and everything else, you know, it's a, it's a

Sir Gene 1:33:53

the magazine. Yeah.

Sir Ben 1:33:54

Yes. Magazine. My God,

Sir Gene 1:33:56

Yeah.

Sir Ben 1:33:58

I know this ain't no M one grand getting loaded with a clip, but

Sir Gene 1:34:01

they? Yeah. And I, that's, I love it when people that are supposed to be like firearms experts start talking about clips that you, you snap

Sir Ben 1:34:10

And I, I, I know, I know the difference. I

Sir Gene 1:34:12

I know you know the difference. That's why I'm making fun of you. Cause you do know the difference. So the bottom line is, if I could get, which I can't in this country, an actual P 90, then I would love that. But if I can't get the P 90, I'd rather have the pistol. That's kind of my, my whole thing on it. But I don't, I don't think I need any more nine millimeters. I sure as hell don't need any more, any other guns of, of any caliber at this point. I, my whole spending spree that I went down at the end of last year, or in large part thanks to you asshole,

Sir Ben 1:34:47

how did I any of that?

Sir Gene 1:34:49

cuz you had conversations with me about different cartridges and that got me to buy the guns. So I blame you fully.

Sir Ben 1:34:56

Uhhuh. Uhhuh,

Sir Gene 1:34:57

but, but at this point I'm set. So I, I've got obviously the, the regular 5 56, I've got the the 300 blackout. I've got the the six five grenville. I've got the, what is the other one, the six five, not Grenville, the other one. What, what the hell's the other one? I'm trying to remember.

Sir Ben 1:35:19

Creedmore.

Sir Gene 1:35:20

Yeah, got one of them And then what else did I get? There's something else I got that's in that similar size. Oh. And then I got a couple of of 7 62 by 30 nines. So

Sir Ben 1:35:34

And you

Sir Gene 1:35:34

all set on, on

Sir Ben 1:35:35

I almost have purchased a Palmetto State AK a couple of times. It's, it's tempting just cuz of the price point, but I haven't,

Sir Gene 1:35:46

You know what they've got on sale right now

Sir Ben 1:35:49

what's that?

Sir Gene 1:35:49

I'm, I'm sort of tempted to buy, although I totally don't need it. Is they have a actually let me pull up the page real quick here. It's a shotgun. It's a shotgun with a. Based in the uk.

Sir Ben 1:36:03

Mm. Yep. I've seen him.

Sir Gene 1:36:05

But the interesting thing about'em and I, I always thought they were kind of neat until I got my iwi

Sir Ben 1:36:11

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene 1:36:13

which is even cooler. But the thing that that's neat about it is you can reload it super fast because it uses magazines, which, you know, most shotguns, you load'em one cartridge at a time or this thing you could just swap magazines and load'em really fast.

Sir Ben 1:36:33

Yeah. And you know, that's fine. I just, you know, when I'm, when I'm, so I have a home protection shotgun that's, you know, 18 inch barrel, but everything else is for hunting. So, you know, the, those types of semi-automatic shotguns are just not useful to me.

Sir Gene 1:36:53

Well, what do you mean not useful to you?

Sir Ben 1:36:57

I mean, if I was going to spend money on a semi-automatic shotgun, it would be for hunting purposes with a very long barrel and, uh, you know, it would probably be, you know, like a benelli.

Sir Gene 1:37:08

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, did, by the way, did I send you that video of a guy with a benelli hand tossing eight clay pigeons up in the air and shooting every single one of'em?

Sir Ben 1:37:20

No.

Sir Gene 1:37:20

That was pretty impressive. I I'll see if I can find who I sent it to and then send you a copy as well. But, you know, he's just holding onto'em in his left hand and he chucks'em up and then boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, before any of'em hit the ground.

Sir Ben 1:37:35

Yeah, I think the, the what is it? Ick, some of his

Sir Gene 1:37:38

Oh, yeah,

Sir Ben 1:37:39

are pretty damn impressive.

Sir Gene 1:37:41

You know, his daughter's really good too. Have you seen her videos?

Sir Ben 1:37:43

I, I have, yeah. Yeah.

Sir Gene 1:37:45

She looks like a female version of'em though. It's hilarious.

Sir Ben 1:37:47

that's very unfortunate.

Sir Gene 1:37:49

I know. It is. I, that's, that's in the context. I meant it in is it's unfortunate that she looks a little too much like him. But yeah, it's

Sir Ben 1:37:56

Well, and you were you were so obsessed with what's her name on the chocolate commercial?

Sir Gene 1:38:03

no, I wasn't obsessed. I was just like, I, it, it surprised me how tall she is.

Sir Ben 1:38:08

Yeah, but I mean, well, that are Jeremy Borings. Short.

Sir Gene 1:38:12

Well, yeah, j I mean, we knew Germany was short, but, but she's really tall.

Sir Ben 1:38:17

Yeah

Sir Gene 1:38:17

she was in another video recently and Brett Cooper's who we're talking about, but she was another video I watched recently. I watched a bunch of

Sir Ben 1:38:23

Ben. the the female Ben Shapiro, by the

Sir Gene 1:38:26

It was a foot taller than Benton. Literally literally a foot taller. Yes, yes, absolutely.

Sir Ben 1:38:32

What do you Ben Shapiro is like four eight. I mean, come on.

Sir Gene 1:38:35

oh. He's like five seven.

Sir Ben 1:38:37

She's not six seven

Sir Gene 1:38:39

well, she is with heels. No, I'm, I'm telling you, she's a six footer man. Like without any heels. And then with heels. She's definitely over six. But she was on with Michael. What's Michael guy's last name on there? No, no, no, The part of the the band crowd, Michael.

Sir Ben 1:38:55

Michael Knowles.

Sir Gene 1:38:56

Noles, right, right. So they did a show with Noles where they're going to different Starbucks

Sir Ben 1:39:01

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene 1:39:02

and Knowles is an shorter than her, and Knowles is not a short gang.

Sir Ben 1:39:08

wouldn't know. Never met him.

Sir Gene 1:39:11

Fair enough. But he's like, he like, he's the same height as Ted Cruz. How tall as Ted Cruz? I always thought he was like six foot.

Sir Ben 1:39:18

No.

Sir Gene 1:39:19

I don't know. I don't know. But either way she's, I think she's the tallest person in their studio.

Sir Ben 1:39:26

Yeah. Ted Cruz is five eight. He's shorter than me.

Sir Gene 1:39:28

Oh five eight. So Noles is like 5 8, 5 9 and, and she was taller than Noles, so she is six feet. For sure. That makes sense. I mean, you know, she was an actress in the model chick, so they like them tall.

Sir Ben 1:39:43

All right, man. Well, I think we've beat the dead horse.

Sir Gene 1:39:46

Okay. If you say so. I mean, we talked a lot about your travels, so I figured I want get all the other stuff in as well.

Sir Ben 1:39:52

Well, we did talk about other stuff too. Thank you. And, you know, 20 minutes ago I asked if there was anything else and you said no. So

Sir Gene 1:40:00

Well, there isn't,

Sir Ben 1:40:02

Okay,

Sir Gene 1:40:03

oh, it's a talker Rev. That's what it's, it's a talker. Rev Bull pup, 12 gauge semi-automatic shotgun, and it's white.

Sir Ben 1:40:13

So, you're, you're starting to accessorize your guns with your

Sir Gene 1:40:16

Okay. I'm, I'm, I kind of would like one of these that totally matches my tracksuit. Holy shit. I'm okay. I'm, I'm hitting the buy button right now.

Sir Ben 1:40:25

you are not Gene.

Sir Gene 1:40:26

I am. I wish you could see my screen. I'm so buying this.

Sir Ben 1:40:29

Oh

Sir Gene 1:40:30

totally goes with the tracksuit man. You would not believe how well this fits.

Sir Ben 1:40:35

Oh,

Sir Gene 1:40:36

And it's a talker app.

Sir Ben 1:40:38

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene 1:40:39

Ordered. There we go.

Sir Ben 1:40:41

tracksuit, shotgun.

Sir Gene 1:40:43

Huh.

Sir Ben 1:40:44

How much was it?

Sir Gene 1:40:44

300 bucks.

Sir Ben 1:40:46

Oh, that's not bad.

Sir Gene 1:40:47

No. No. It's not bad at all.

Sir Ben 1:40:49

Eh?

Sir Gene 1:40:51

I mean, it's not, you know, free, but given that I don't need any guns right now, this is about as much as I'm willing to spend

Sir Ben 1:40:57

so I actually am I, I'm on Palm Meadow State's website and looking at this, uh, yes I did.

Sir Gene 1:41:04

Mm-hmm.

Sir Ben 1:41:05

totally a tracksuit gun.

Sir Gene 1:41:07

track suit. Again,

Sir Ben 1:41:09

Yep.

Sir Gene 1:41:09

I don't know if I'm allowed to to show, I guess I am allowed to show that on YouTube, aren't they? Like, as long as I don't load it. YouTube has a bunch of weird requirements around guns.

Sir Ben 1:41:19

Yeah, load it. And there's a, there's some other requirements around you know, not modifying or repairing and things like that.

Sir Gene 1:41:27

Yeah, but it, it's yeah, so look for it. Once I pick it up, look for it in a future video.

Sir Ben 1:41:34

Cool.

Sir Gene 1:41:35

See, you got me to buy another goddamn gun. I can't believe you did

Sir Ben 1:41:38

How did I get you to buy a gun?

Sir Gene 1:41:40

You got me on this whole topic.

Sir Ben 1:41:43

I don't think that's how that went.

Sir Gene 1:41:44

No, pretty much cuz you said, what else do you wanna talk about? That got me to buy a gun.

Sir Ben 1:41:49

No. What gets you to buy a gun is you're like, Ooh, this'll match my Adidas

Sir Gene 1:41:54

Yeah, I got some really nice Adidas shoes that just came in. So I got'em in red and white and so that matched both the red tracksuit and the white tracksuit. Now I need to get a red version of a gun. It's for the red tracksuit. These, these are, these are what the kind of problems that YouTubers have. Like streamer problems?

Sir Ben 1:42:15

How was that a, I I'm not a streamer, so I wouldn't know.

Sir Gene 1:42:18

No, cuz you gotta like, you gotta look cool. That's the thing.

Sir Ben 1:42:22

Yeah, because tracksuits are so cool.

Sir Gene 1:42:25

They are for my demographic.

Sir Ben 1:42:28

and on that note,

Sir Gene 1:42:30

I heard it was somebody opening a beer already.

Sir Ben 1:42:32

Well, I, we're wrapping up,

Sir Gene 1:42:34

Oh, you are opening a beer. Okay guys, we'll, we'll catch you all in about a week, give or take.