Just Two Good Old Boys
We never mean any harm!
Just Two Good Old Boys
092 Just Two Good Old Boys
Imagine a world where election results surprise even the most seasoned political analysts, and record-breaking voter turnout shakes up traditional voting patterns. Our latest episode kicks off with a lively discussion on these surprising outcomes and the unique voting processes in states like Arizona, California, and New York. We inject a dose of humor with a debate on the perspectives of pessimists versus optimists in politics, and weave in personal anecdotes about the joys and woes of traveling with airline and hotel loyalty programs. It's a conversation that blends political insights with personal stories, providing both entertainment and information.
Venture with us into the fascinating intersection of market trends and political maneuvers, starting with a quirky tale about a malfunctioning truck horn. We dive into how elections influence the stock market and cryptocurrencies, with a spotlight on Tesla and Bitcoin's notable surges. We also explore geopolitical developments, including potential diplomatic shifts with Trump's anticipated comeback, and contemplate domestic strategies like Supreme Court expansion. Our conversation delves into the broader implications of these political shifts, offering a dynamic exploration of the changing landscape.
Our episode also navigates through a variety of intriguing topics, from the makeup of the Supreme Court to cultural phenomena like Casa Bonita's renovation. We reflect on media personalities, political discourse, and the cult of personality in politics, all while maintaining a humorous and optimistic lens. Along the way, we share stories of airport security antics, ponder the quirks of immigration policy, and celebrate holiday traditions that highlight the diversity of observances. With this episode, we aim to provoke thought, elicit laughter, and foster a deeper understanding of the ever-evolving political and cultural landscape.
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Howdy man. How are you today? I'm doing well, gene. Yourself I'm alright. You back home, I am, thank God it's cold here, though I gotta tell you it is on the nippy side. Yeah, we were in the 50s this morning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, some people would consider that warm, but yeah, yeah, well, this is Texas.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, oh man, arizona still has not called the race Shocker, but you know 81.5 in right now, at the time of this recording, and Trump's got 52.74% of the vote. Mm-hmm, come on, call it, just so we can. Why are they even bothering counting at this point? Well, I mean, it matters because we one need to see the overall number of votes. I don't know if you saw that thing going around, uh, comparing, you know, the 2020 election to previous and this election you got 16 million more votes than anybody in the history exactly you know, oh, that's not odd, that's not something to even think about I think what we just did is both have a little shoulders up emoji going on there exactly
Speaker 2:you know, yeah, it's one of those things when you look back at history, there are several moments in history where you just go. You know, I don't know what the truth is. I just know I'm being lied to. Mm, hmm, mm, hmm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah it's. I would think people in Arizona ought to be embarrassed right about now. California.
Speaker 2:What about it? They still haven't finished counting votes. Oh well, I I mean they're only at 63 percent in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they, you know whatever but uh organ same thing, but washington same but remember uh, on election night, uh, they called california, as soon as uh one minute after voting stopped.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, I mean fair enough. It's not like California is going red, but have you seen the map of the counties? Yes, oh my God, is this fucking brilliant man? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, there's a few maps.
Speaker 2:And my favorite one is the there's no perfect state.
Speaker 1:And then oklahoma's circled because every county went for trump yeah, so there's, there's a few maps, three maps, I think that are interesting and fun. One is the county map that you mentioned. The other one is the map that shows the delta change between last election, this election. Oh, yeah, the arrows, yes, yep, the arrows. And then the third map is something I saw on Twitter, which is hey, you know all those states that pledge to send their delegates for the popular vote, and then it's, it's showing the, the, the entire country, in red. Yeah, pretty close like yeah, uh, okay guys.
Speaker 1:No, I think this is as much of a mandate as we could have hoped for.
Speaker 2:Well I mean, you know new york is pretty much done counting there at 96. Harris got 55.8. Trump got 44.2,. Call it the fact that New York he closed the gap on New York so much it's insane. New Jersey, same thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The fact of the matter is this was a huge, huge shift in voting.
Speaker 1:He didn't win everything you know, but the shift in minorities blacks, Hispanics, that's what I was going to say when you were going to stop talking.
Speaker 2:Well, good luck getting me to stop talking. I know right.
Speaker 1:No, it's exactly right. So when you look at New York high percentage, it's not like more white people went and voted for trump in new york. It's that minorities voted for trump in new york. Yeah, yeah, it's. It's fascinating and, uh, I I hope the days of listening to and buying the lies of the left have come to an end, for, uh, for people that have historically provided the uh, the base for the left we'll see.
Speaker 1:I I'm hopeful, but we'll see yeah, I mean, if people end up being disappointed four years from now for voting for Trump, obviously they'll not vote for the next guy. But I think next four years are going to be pretty good, at least the next two years. I do suspect that, like just about every other president, the midterms will result in the loss of the House.
Speaker 2:the midterms will result in the loss of the house. We'll see. You know I I don't want to count chickens that far out, but what I'll say is it really all depends on the old guy. So yeah, but I mean you were pretty black pilled about this election, Absolutely. I ended up being right.
Speaker 1:But remember I have there. There's a good reason for being black-pilled is I win, no matter what, either I was right, or I get what I actually want.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, if you're constantly a pessimist, then, yes, everything is on the upside.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Well, you know the old saying what's the difference between a pessimist and an optimist? What's that? A pessimist is an optimist? What's that An optimist or pessimist is an optimist with experience?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, that's true.
Speaker 2:Well, anyway, man, it progresses on. Work's been crazy. I got to get on a plane here next week again and it looks like more and more stuff coming at me, so I'm going to be a busy boy coming up. Are you going to get?
Speaker 1:your miles for your status?
Speaker 2:I don't think there's any way no, not airline no, and I'm going to go from titanium to platinum on Marriott, it looks like. But that's okay. At least I maintain platinum Because I'm just a year or so away from that lifetime platinum status. So that that will be, you know nice yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:It's always nice going on trips with other people that have status, because then you know we can be on the same floors and you know stuff like that well, yeah, and you know the people who don't travel a lot, don't you know it's?
Speaker 2:why are you giving up so much for those perks, or why does that matter to you?
Speaker 1:well, if you're doing it anyway, it matters a lot it does, and part of it too is just I've said this before I I think people who don't travel, or don't travel much for work, they don't realize just how much you're giving up by traveling for work it's, it's not just.
Speaker 1:It's not just that you're, you know you're wearing clothes, that that you have in the bag with you, but it's all the little stuff you don't get to do because you're not at home. Yeah, like your wife, but I'm well, but no, uh that's obviously a joke Nobody actually does that at home.
Speaker 2:But oh, the sad truth.
Speaker 1:But you know, going to the gun range and reloading ammo if you're into that kind of a thing, and car hobbies if you're into that kind of thing, and computer hobbies if you're into that kind. It's like there's a ton of stuff you give up by traveling for work yeah when we get done, with when we get done with this podcast.
Speaker 2:I gotta go work on my truck, my, uh, my horn reloads. You're what. My horn went gay. Oh no, something happened to it. It went from.
Speaker 1:You know, a normal sounding horn to this oh, so one of the two, uh, one of the two, uh, horns is busted yeah, so I gotta go get a replacement. Yeah, that's okay you know, actually a truck with a european sounding horn, because you know that's what they all sound like in europe. It's, uh, exactly, that's actually kind of funny exactly, yeah.
Speaker 2:So going back to the election, you know it, we're. We're less than a week out and it is amazing the turnaround of the world instantaneously with tesla went up over 100 points uh.
Speaker 1:Energy companies a couple days.
Speaker 2:Energy companies went through the roof. Yep Bitcoin through the roof.
Speaker 1:Bitcoin 16,000 up in one day. Yep, yep, yeah. And this is what I was. When I was talking to my dad about the election, I said the biggest thing I'm looking forward to is a positive attitude in the market, which should lead to an increase in business spending. Which leads to stability Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:lead to an increase in business spending, which leads to stability? Well, but when you look at Saudi Arabia's moves, when you look at Russia's moves, when you look at Hezbollah?
Speaker 1:Actually I haven't paid attention. What's Saudi Arabia doing? I haven't seen anything on that.
Speaker 2:They kicked out a bunch of Hamas representatives. Did they? Yes, instantly a bunch of. Hamas representatives, did they? Yes, instantly Russia came out and Putin came out and said you know, we're going to continue to do BRICS, we're going to continue to develop a unified currency, but the US dollar is not going anywhere. Wow, that's pretty cool. They said that they will continue to trade oil in US dollars. Wow, that is like.
Speaker 1:And he's not even in office, yet no, no, it's just oh fuck, we got to deal with this guy again I love it, I think. But I think it's more than that. I think that they recognize that, hey, if we had an opportunity to get rid of all these stupid sanctions, let's start negotiating oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And I think you're going to see, by the time trump is in office, the israeli conflict will be wrapping up and over. I think you will see the ukrainian conflict wrapping up and over. I think you will see saudi arabia coming to the abraham accords and probably redoing the petrodollar deal. Yep, I mean all these things are trump is. The stage is set for trump to get a lot of really early good wins.
Speaker 1:All that low-hanging fruit is going to come yeah, yeah, yeah, and I I hope that this is all great for international stuff, but I hope he gets some some domestic stuff done as well. That he was talking about.
Speaker 2:Is it bad that I kind of want him to lose the house? What, yeah, why? Because jamie raskin was out there saying, if the democrats win the house, that they're not going to certify the election for trump. Oh yeah, I, I would, please, please, do. Let's just get this over with. Let's go down that road.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I'm right there with you. I think it would be a very interesting move by them that would result in the elimination of their party.
Speaker 2:Something Mm-hmm, mm-hmm yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's wild stuff. Yeah, it's uh. Oh, what did you think of my um, my, uh, I? I don't want to what? I guess I was about a paragraph on x that I wrote in wanting to be consolatory, and yeah, make nice with democrats yeah, yeah, I, I, I.
Speaker 2:There's a lot I agree with in there and there's a lot, you know, I don't what well, like getting rid of the filibuster.
Speaker 1:No, I don't think we should do that no, but I know, okay, okay, but you understand what I was writing. I mean, yes, I do, yes, let's give them what they want and screw them over hoist them on their own petard. I got you yeah, I'm fully tracking.
Speaker 1:Okay, I want to make sure you work. Yeah, yeah, obviously these are two things that we don't want, but it's kind of like they they've been saying that this is gonna happen, right and so okay. Well, if it's gonna happen, let's put in three more conservative justices and replace two of the older guys. Let's put five on the bench and see how they like it again.
Speaker 2:I actually think there needs to be a constitutional amendment codifying the Supreme Court's makeup. But that's me, yeah, because right now for those who don't know, the US Supreme Court the number of justices on the Supreme Court is actually determined by Congress. It is not a constitutional function.
Speaker 2:So right now you know we've got nine justices. That historically has been more or less the number, but there have been, I think, as few as seven war. There were issues with the court and justices, you know, being appointed and things happening while states are not represented, amendments being passed while states are not represented. You know that whole period was kind of bad, but yeah, yeah did I tell you about the libtard that I owned, no.
Speaker 2:So I'm sitting at this, this conference, and I'm sitting at breakfast and having this conversation with this guy and he starts going off about Trump and everything else. And how can we have a felon president and all this? I'm like you do realize the just insanity of that statement when you look at the charges right and we go back and forth and you know that this guy is a beltway guy who literally represents small municipal, uh power companies and he's just a total fucking flaming liberal and does not represent, at least politically, the people he is literally paid to represent, like this guy's literally a paid lobbyist for this group and it's just insanity.
Speaker 2:And you know he's talking about these felonies. I'm like, well, let's break this down. Let's look at the first set here. These were misdemeanors that, through a novel legal theory, were enhanced to felonies and oh, by the way, pretty much any developer in new york could be called out on this and it's it's bullshit, it's a bullshit charge. It shouldn't exist. And we just start going through the list. And he got so. He, it was the, the liberal tears memes you see on twitter in person live, and it was fantastic that's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then you know what I've been posting on the x, which is uh embrace the schadenfreude what you've been shit posting, it's okay I'm not shit posting, I just uh, I think there's too many pussies in the right.
Speaker 2:I yeah well uh strike while the iron's out yeah, you know a friend of mine at the conference. After that conversation with the liberal guy he quoted Team America world police to me. Well, he said fuck, yeah.
Speaker 1:No, he said the world needs more dicks, ben, like you because dicks fuck the assholes and they also fuck the pussies and without the dicks to fuck the assholes, the pussies are just shitting on everyone, or the assholes are just shitting on everyone, or the assholes are just shitting on everyone.
Speaker 2:It's like oh, that brings me back, man.
Speaker 1:It is a good movie. You know, what I saw recently is a documentary about East Buckelew, like a docker street, about um, no, uh, about um. The guys, the what's their names? The Trey, trey and yeah, and the other guy, matt.
Speaker 2:Matt and.
Speaker 1:Trey and specifically their acquisition of the restaurant.
Speaker 2:Casa Bonita.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm going to take that vitamin B12 right now, because obviously my brain is shutting down. So, yeah, casa Bonita. I've heard, I remember or I saw a story that talked about them acquiring, and then I saw one where the workers were bitching about not having tips because they wanted tips even though they were getting paid a salary that's substantially higher than what any other restaurant pays. You know typical Colorado liberal bullshit, but holy shit. Watching this documentary, first of all I didn't realize what Casa Bonita was. I had no clue until I watched this like historically.
Speaker 1:Enlighten me. Um, I will. And then two, I had no idea how much of a uh money dump this was for them. They bought casa bonita for three3.5 million For how much?
Speaker 1:$3.5 million, and before opening day they had spent $24 million. The whole place had to be gutted and redone. Yeah, so Casa Bonita was a brainchild of a developer in denver that had bought a shopping mall right before a downturn of a market and, uh, his, his mall was empty. Uh, couldn't get stores to lease there. So he came up with this idea of turning it into Disneyland, because he already had them all, and so he started hiring workers to build out a themed restaurant, and that had the wild west as its theme, and so there was like black bart and a variety of western characters.
Speaker 1:And while he was working on this or you know, funding it, planning it, whatever um, he'd apparently gone to mexico seven times, and in the process of construction, casa bonita became more and more of a mexican restaurant than just the wild west one. Originally it was going to have mexican food, but it was basically a wild west themed place, and uh, and they ended up building I mean, to me it reminds me of wisconsin dells, which probably doesn't mean anything to most people listening to me no, wisconsin dells is a little town in the middle of wisconsin that is a 100 tourist trap that people go to from the midwest to go there for like a couple days or a week to do touristy things.
Speaker 1:Uh, and it is. It is kind of like a disney world or disneyland, um, but with public streets instead of being all enclosed and private, and you pay for tickets at each thing rather than just having one pass that lets you walk around the entirety of it.
Speaker 1:Okay. So this is that, but in a mall that's been converted to a giant restaurant. I can't remember how much it was, but I want to say something around 64,000 square feet, which is a good sized restaurant. Yeah, but they have like a pool with cliff divers and the cliffs are two stories tall. So they're not obviously huge cliffs like they are in mexico, but uh, um, but with pool divers. They've got, uh, actors portraying different wild west and mexico characters that are interacting with the kids. They've got a um, uh, what else is it like different areas within there. I mean, it's a place is huge, it's ginormous and I can see how kids and representative of cartman, uh, which was, I guess, trey this was a place that trey really loved when he was a kid and he wanted to bring his kids to it, but it had closed down, I think even before covet. It can kind of shut down.
Speaker 1:And then, um, I can't remember what the initial cause was. I guess it was just really crappy, the food sucked and it was getting very old. Oh, I remember it was. Was that the guys that built it originally sold it to some german company in the 90s or early 2000s and they, um, that company never put a dime into it, they, they just held on to it and extracted uh, uh profits from it without maintenance or improvement, and so it just became extremely run down. It's the kind of place that you don't really want to it. It kind of became like crusty the clown, you know, instead of a clown kids want to go see. They're like, uh, no, ick. So. So they ended up buying it and then completely didn't realize how much work it needed, like everything had to be literally gutted and replaced rather than fixed, and so this was a boondoggle for them for sure.
Speaker 1:Okay, but yeah, it was, uh. And to add to the issue, as I kind of suspected, um trey is a bit of a control freak, so he kept tweaking things along the way as it was getting built out, um, and it's understandable. I mean he's trying to recreate his childhood. But also you can see on the faces of the people actually doing the work and managing the place and everything else that it's kind of like, okay, how about we just freeze what we have and get opening date set up and not constantly be adding, tweaking, changing things? But it's a good documentary, um, I recommend. I think it was on amazon. Okay, cool. So that was my non-political rant okay, oh man, well, forget.
Speaker 2:Oh man, well, let's see here. Uh, I, I don't know where to go after that, so you stumped me you read any books, you watch any movies? Yeah, I've been I've been reading uh, what is it? It started out okay and then it just died the Day America Died and it's eh no recommendation there on that one. The Babaverse books were good. I do recommend them. They're getting a bit formulaic. Have you ever read Ringworld by Larry Niven? Yeah, when I was probably in college. It's very much.
Speaker 1:Ringworld-esque.
Speaker 2:Who's it? By Dennis E Taylor. Okay, they're fun, they're funny, good sense of humor. So I would put it right there, kind of a mix between Ringworld and any Andy Weir book you've ever read. So if you like Andy Weir's sense of, humor it's very much the same sort of thing. Okay, and there's a good series out there.
Speaker 1:And what's the?
Speaker 2:setting the Babaverse. So this guy is an entrepreneur, he makes a lot of money and then he dies and his he paid for cryogenic freezing, so he's frozen and then, hundreds of years in the future, he wakes up as an artificial intelligence that his consciousness has been transferred.
Speaker 1:Consciousness has been transferred. Oh, so it sounds like. What was that TV show Futurama?
Speaker 2:Kind of. Yeah, yeah, it's very Futurama-esque, okay, which, by the way, did you see the meme that I sent you? Not sure. So it's, the professor Fry is wearing a blue state. It's a white T-shirt and it says the professor fries wearing a blue state. It's a white t-shirt and it says blue States on it, and the professor's holding a pill and says I can't swallow that. And then the professor's wearing a MAGA hat and it says well, good news, it's a suppository.
Speaker 1:I did see that. That was funny. Oh, it made me happy. Yeah, yeah, and you're the one that's saying well, you know, yes, mm-hmm, I'm saying what I I'm. I'm just saying, I think, embrace the schadenfreude that's my message.
Speaker 2:That's my message for this week indeed, indeed, you know, there's nothing wrong with a little bit of just revelry. But what we got to understand is and I did, you see Flynn yesterday on the cultural war. So it was pretty good and he made a great point. We're D-Day plus one or two right. We've stormed the beaches of Normandy.
Speaker 2:We're on the hills but, victory in Europe is not yet done. There's a lot of stuff to still do. Completely agree with him. It was actually a pretty good episode, good. So what happened with Tim and the blonde and some others that are now apparently working for some other people? Do you know? I do know, now apparently working for some other people, do you know?
Speaker 1:I do know You're the Tim Pool Boy.
Speaker 2:Subscriber.
Speaker 1:I am the Tim Pool subscriber and I was even planning on canceling my subscription because I wasn't sure if that show was going to stick around, because Tim wanted to end the show. I think he said it to Daily Wire, yeah, and then lately the show's gotten really good because it's got Daily Wire people on it, so I've been enjoying it. Man, I like having the Daily Wire folks just be on every single show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I'm not a big fan of Michael Knowles and some of the others.
Speaker 1:I want more of Jordan on thereael.
Speaker 2:Knowles is funny dude he's funny, but he's still a pedantic ass yeah, he's too catholic uh, he's great, he sticks in the catholic, his catholic nose into everything.
Speaker 1:But so is the the comic writer guy. Uh, everything's all about like well, freedom tunes, yeah, freedom tunes, uh, and it should be this way. It should be irish, it should be catholic. You know, it's like jesus christ, dude. No, how about?
Speaker 2:no, well, you know as as uh, someone of somewhat irish descent on my mom's side yeah no yeah, we can learn from this.
Speaker 1:We can do better yeah, but on balance, I actually do enjoy them in limited quantities. So I because they do take a little more extreme opinions and I think extreme opinions bring about more interesting conversation, um so so Matt uh Walsh was on yesterday and, uh, they were talking about abortion and and he was like, well, ideally abortion would be banned in the entire country. Uh, from conception, from you know, day zero, from day zero, no abortions.
Speaker 1:But I'm also realistic enough to know that I'm not going to get that with Trump or most politicians, so we just have to look at incremental progress Right but him saying that what I love about it isn't necessarily that I agree with no abortion from day zero, but that it pisses off the Democrats, pissing off the right people, and I appreciate that.
Speaker 2:One thing I'll say and this has happened over and over again in this election. You know, there's been quite a few. People say, well, trump's not going to do this, so I'm not voting for him. People say, well, trump's not going to do this, so I'm not voting for him. You know one phrase that just reminded me of over and over again is don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Yep.
Speaker 1:That is true, and sometimes I'm very guilty of forgetting that myself. There's your opportunity to admit that you are as well.
Speaker 2:No, actually I'm pretty good at incremental improvement Like this is. What I want is incremental improvement. It's something I've learned over the career is a continuous improvement process is the way you should do things. You take a step, you evaluate the step.
Speaker 1:Is it?
Speaker 2:right, then you do something else. You don't wait to try the most perfect answer you can find. You find the best answer you can find, you try it and then you iterate. And that iteration is really, whether it's cybersecurity, whether it's anything. It gives you a win, quick, up front, that then you can take and use. Or even if you fail, well, you can learn from that. And how do you iterate over time?
Speaker 1:Yep, I agree. I've been a big fan of debbing for many, many years dimming edward dimming yeah, don't know him. Oh, you should, that's where that comes from. Okay, you know, some improvements dimming cycle plan do I'm familiar with lean six sigma.
Speaker 1:I'm familiar with hpi this is all the precursor of that 1920s. He was a? Uh well, I'll let you read up on him to yourself, but he was a statistician in the United States who uh proposed, uh, this theory of continuous improvement for American companies. That never caught on here in the United States after a world war two. Uh, he went to Japan as part of an american rebuilding delegation and japanese companies really loved continuous improvement and deming cycle and he ended up staying there for a long time and he is considered to be the like, the, the patron of the japanese industrial revitalization post-world war ii. He's the reason that japanese car companies almost put american companies out of business. Indeed, yeah, and I would have known nothing about him, but I got hired by the deming institute to do some it work when I was young and so I ended up finding out who this guy was.
Speaker 1:So this was not a college related thing. This was like a oh, what do you all do? But, uh, it was fascinating and I, I was, uh, became a big fan, uh, instantly well, you know the, so I.
Speaker 2:My first exposure to continuous improvement was HPI, human Performance Index, and that's an industry thing, especially in the power industry, and it just clicked and made sense to me. So, yes, yes, and I don't know what to say to it.
Speaker 1:It makes total sense. It's, uh, the correct way to go. Uh, so I just retweeted an x and image that a friend of mine sent me a link to, which is a map of the 2024 election without male votes.
Speaker 2:So it's just the female vote oh, oh, male, yeah, it's all red.
Speaker 1:No, it's all blue. Oh, yeah, yeah yeah, yes. Because the Benler subtracted out Almost yes and the message is repeal the 19th yes, which is a sentiment I've been agreeing with for a long time. I think women have better things to do than vote.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I don't think we need to eliminate all women from voting, but what I will say is we should repeal the 19th and get rid of universal franchisement and start to say okay, who actually should vote?
Speaker 1:There has to be some stake in this. No single woman. And we'll be good to go.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, you know, I don't think you're going to win that one.
Speaker 1:I'm making allowance for married women, man.
Speaker 2:I don't think you're going to win that one bud.
Speaker 1:I'll give you that one. I know I'm not going to win that one. It doesn't mean I can't say it.
Speaker 2:I understand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just because you have a plan for perfection of the country and you know it's not going to come true. What did we just talk about?
Speaker 2:Don't let the good be the, don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. Okay, we can.
Speaker 1:And then I keep coming back to that quote from the Indian guru of the 80s it's retarded, yeah. It's like democracy is the government, uh, of the people, for the people and by the people, but the people are retarded, yeah you sent me one uh recently of his on uh tolerance, which I thought was pretty interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:He said the people that push tolerance the most are the most intolerant people. He says I don't want to tolerate things, I don't want to be tolerant, I want to let people live, but I'm going to be arguing with them. I'm going to be telling them why they're wrong the whole time, and I'm doing that because I want them to be arguing with them. I'm going to be telling them why they're wrong the whole time, and I'm doing that because I want them to be better. And he's got a lot of those clips. I mean, the people that became his followers were clearly a little bit too into him, obviously.
Speaker 2:You know, cult of personality is a hell of a thing, it goes both ways it does.
Speaker 1:But just because he had crazy followers and 100 rolls royces, um doesn't mean that there aren't things that he said that were not right. I mean, I found plenty of examples of things where man's speaking the truth. I would never join a cult myself, you know, I'm more of a starter than a joiner, but uh, yeah, just saying oh yeah, I I'm not much of a joiner in general it's like that uh quote, which you probably remember better than me, from Mark Twain and probably many others after him I would never want to join a club.
Speaker 2:Oh, that would have me as a member. Yes, indeed, indeed, indeed. But you know, there are so many things here, so many things to say. I will just say I am glad we are moving in the right direction, if only temporarily, right?
Speaker 1:it remains to be seen where this actually goes, and I I am well, I'm right there with that generally optimistic I'm right there with that general that this is not the conclusion of four years of trying to get Trump in office. This is the beginning of two years of trying to get the work done that Trump campaigned on and, man, if they let that time slip, it's going to suck.
Speaker 2:Well, you know what? We're just going to have to wait and see what it, uh, what it all comes out to. But I, I am, uh, like I said, cautiously optimistic. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And what'd you think of uh Matt Walsh's, matt Walsh's um tweet, x post whatever you want to call it uh troll, where he says okay, well, now that trump's in, let's get uh project 20, 2025, if, oh, and yes, and everyone lost their fucking money yeah absolutely like you.
Speaker 2:Just got trolled by someone who has been trolling you, whose picture makes money making movies that are trolls, and yet you just stumble all over yourselves to go oh see, we told you. Oh, they admit it. Oh, you're an idiot, all right it's hilarious, it really is funny.
Speaker 1:Uh and yeah, and and uh. When asked about that on tim pool, uh, he says well, if you actually read the documents that they published on project 2025, it's basically a whole series of resumes for positions. It's like it's basically a large document saying you should bring this person in to do this and it. You know it's from the heritage foundation and not from trump's office. But he also did say that that he did feel like Trump kind of overdid, pushing away from it a little too much.
Speaker 1:And to an extent, but you know he won the election, so yeah exactly, and in the end, that's that's the important part here, and the fact that he's already having a huge impact after winning, but before being in office, is proof in the pudding winning but before being in office is proof in the pudding.
Speaker 2:Indeed, I again, I I do not want to over or underestimate what we see going on the these changes. I mean, it could all collapse, it could all go wrong, it could all go bad.
Speaker 1:But we might have monkey pox from escaped monkeys, oh you saw that one oh yeah, 40 something.
Speaker 2:Uh, some odd rhesus monkeys uh escaped from a research facility. Yeah, but nothing to see here uh, they're too young to carry disease, yeah what?
Speaker 1:what I also love.
Speaker 2:How is that a statement put out on the news? Seriously, like what the fuck are you talking about?
Speaker 1:Monkeys escape. Usually, when there's an escape, there's a couple of them. How do 40 of them escape? Is this one cage housing 40?
Speaker 2:monkeys, Well, but even beyond that man, again the statement of they're too young to carry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, look, I've watched eight monkeys more than once, I know how this shit works, yeah uh, movies, movies predict that was a great movie. I love that movie.
Speaker 2:I remember when I think it's 12 monkeys, but yes oh yeah, 12 monkeys.
Speaker 1:I love that movie. Uh, I like it so much I even removed the number of monkeys from it yeah, you deleted four deleted four of them because, uh, they're really. I mean, it was named 12 monkeys but there weren't actually 12 monkeys in it. But, uh, it's a great movie, uh, if you like science fiction, if you like dystopia, if you like um, um, something that has a little bit of a mind fuck in it.
Speaker 2:Indeed yes.
Speaker 1:And, uh, I I loved the end of the movie where you see two of the characters that you've seen in the movie in the dystopian world sitting on an airplane in first class pre dystopia Like, uh, this is how it starts, yeah, so yeah, it's fascinating stuff. And also, what were those monkeys doing?
Speaker 2:In the movie or in reality it's obviously a bioweapons facility or some sort of research facility I won't default to. It's a bioweapons facility. But it is obviously you know something here, so yeah, bioweapons.
Speaker 1:And then next thing you know they're going to blame it on some natural, you know, hurricane coming through or something. Yeah, well thing. You know they're going to blame it on some natural, you know, hurricane coming through or something, yeah, Well, you know. Now there's a headline I didn't dig into. I'm curious to see if you had that that said that there's one of these gotcha headlines that said Revealed that Biden administration told FEMA not to help to help trump voters yeah, I've seen that.
Speaker 2:Um I I don't think it's quite that. It's definitely trump areas and we can debate the the efficacy and meaning behind it, but yeah so did you read any more in the headline?
Speaker 1:Because I just read the headline, I didn't read anything else.
Speaker 2:I've seen the headline, I have not read the story. Okay, so we're in the same boat. Yeah, unfortunately. Sorry, you know I've been busy.
Speaker 1:They have been sitting on an airplane. What else have you got going on?
Speaker 2:Well, the fucking Wi-Fi didn't work. Oh no, oh no, really, that's yes it totally and they still charge me for it. Okay, what airline did you?
Speaker 1:fly united.
Speaker 2:Okay, so united wi-fi, no good no, normally it's great, but this one was by one of their subsidiaries, mesa air. You know it was a little jet, and it just showed which. What jet was it? Which model? Uh, one of the m, one of the canadian ones, that's uh, first class is three, seats of two and one, yeah, but then the coach is uh four yeah so two and two right and uh.
Speaker 2:So it's one and two, and then it's uh, two and two yeah, and I, I get on the plane and I, you know I'm, I'm in boarding group one I always have room for my overhead. Always yeah, yeah, and they make you check it, this motherfucker no they didn't make me check it, but I had to go five, six, seven rows back to find overhead space.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God.
Speaker 2:Which I'm at the. I'm literally first row of coach.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know everything else, so you know.
Speaker 1:I'm getting on the plane early, everything else so I you know I'm okay, I'm getting on the plane early.
Speaker 2:I'm getting off the.
Speaker 1:No, I'm not wow, yeah, that sucks. Yeah, yeah, I, I really dislike those planes. Uh, the embryo 175 was my favorite small plane um the 145 turbo props I remember them, but I I avoided taking them. I always tried to find a flight that had jets on there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a little finicky, little turbo props.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But the 175s were great. The 175 first class has got to be the best first class short of the transatlantic planes, sort of like 747s because it was. You had wider seats than you do in a large jet, and they were. They had more space between them and they had. They were all nice, leather, like it was done up as a real first class.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you probably put these in the same category. Uh, I don't. But like a 737 max is pretty nice. But you know, that's essentially international business class seats, not the same thing United does tend to put more international type seats the Polaris seats on United are pretty nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah yeah, and United has always had a nicer business class American sucks Local. Yeah, american is very it's minimalistic. I mean it still has plenty of legroom and the food's actually been pretty good lately.
Speaker 2:But yeah, they don't ever put international seats into domestic jets on American ever One thing thing I'll say is out of all the airlines I've flown, and I've flown some pretty nice airlines right, I've flown emirates, I've flown singapore, I've flown qatari yeah, uh, I've I've done lufton's non-government job.
Speaker 1:yes, exactly, I do not have a government job.
Speaker 2:no, I know, we keep, I know we keep saying that I did drive by the NSA facility in Maryland, though, oh shucker, a couple days ago.
Speaker 1:Didn't go in, didn't go in.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll take you down to the NSA facility in Fort Worth next time we're here. Uh-huh, yeah, uh-huh.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I've flown a lot, even a GN, and you know I've flown a lot of the different airlines and I've flown all the US domestic ones, except I refuse.
Speaker 1:Southwest, yeah, Southwest is the worst airline man yeah.
Speaker 2:I refuse to. The people love it.
Speaker 1:The people who love it love it. What kind of airline determines what seat you get, by where you stand in line?
Speaker 2:What the hell man? And want their customers to self-sort in that line?
Speaker 1:Uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah, I would like a shittier seat, please. Okay, go back there. Yeah, are you kidding me? And they're not that much cheaper. They're maybe 20% cheaper.
Speaker 2:No, no, oh, oh. So I don't, if it was between, like flying Spirit or Southwest, I'd probably choose Southwest. Yeah, spirit is absolutely the worst.
Speaker 1:I had one client where his personal assistant booked him on Spirit and I told him to fire her. I'm like, are you nuts? Booked him on spirit and I told him to fire her. I'm like, are you nuts? What? How? First of all, if I would have seen that my ticket was on spirit when it showed up on my phone, if somebody else bought it, I would have had a very stern talking to with that person and obviously made him refund the ticket and get a ticket on the real airline, not put up with it and fly in it. But then how do you? How do you not fire her the second time? She does it Like that's not a real airline. Don't ever book on spirit.
Speaker 2:Well, where I was going with this, though, is the best food on an airline hands down that I've had is Singapore Singapore air best.
Speaker 1:I've never flown on Singapore I haven't flown on some of the middle eastern ones that you have, um, but I have flown on cafe and that is my all-time favorite airline. Uh, the food. It wasn't so much that the food was super tasty that impressed me. The food was good. It was the fact that when I woke up in the middle of the pacific, there was a stewardess and yes, I said stewardess standing right next to me with a smile on her face and saying would you like anything? And I said, yeah, I'd love a lox bagel, but you know I'm not expecting you to. And she says we'll be right there, sir, and then brings me a fucking lox bagel, like off the menu.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the kind of shit that I have never, ever gotten on american airlines well, so you, you should go on a trip to europe sometime soon, and you should fly I'm gonna wait till they're fully bankrupt yeah, yeah, well, the I'm telling you life hack. There's a, there's a couple of these Singapore airline flights that go from New York and Houston to Manchester, yep, so you take that as your long business leg over and then you, from Manchester, you can fly wherever on whatever airline.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And you know kind of your gateway to Europe. Well the uk now that they're out of the the eu. But yeah, you know that that you can get a non, you can get an economy plus ticket on that singapore airlines flight from houston to manchester for like six hundred dollars really, yeah, that's pretty good an economy plus and you can get a regular economy if you want to do that and I don't know why on that long a flight anyone would but you can get it for like 500 yeah which is a domestic flight yeah, that that really is.
Speaker 1:That is kind of nutty, um, but I I don't really flight coach, so right, what's, uh, what's the business?
Speaker 2:but the business class. But the business class is, you know, like.
Speaker 1:Five grand.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, no, it's not even that much, let's look, yeah, yeah, let's do while we're talking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my biggest price surprises have consistently been on my trips to Mexico, where the first class tickets are under a thousand dollars, and in the United States, without leaving the country, you cannot find a first class ticket which really is a business class ticket for under a thousand dollars. So it's actually cheaper for me to fly to Mexico first than to fly business inside the US.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so right now Economy Plus from Houston to Manchester is $644.
Speaker 1:That is extremely cheap.
Speaker 2:Yeah, on Singapore.
Speaker 1:On Singapore Airlines. Yeah, yeah. Now when you flew, what were you flying? You can get it as cheap as $599. What were you flying? Were you in business or in as $5.99. What?
Speaker 2:were you flying? Were you in business? Oh, business, yeah, yeah, I was going to say I'm trying to find the business class ticket here.
Speaker 1:I think the cheapest I've ever flown to Europe in business was $2,600. But they've been substantially more than that recently.
Speaker 2:Where.
Speaker 1:From where to where To Europe, from where to where, like Chicago or Minneapolis to Amsterdam.
Speaker 2:Why were you going to Amsterdam, Gene?
Speaker 1:I used to go to Amsterdam all the time. I was, you know, you know this, I was Adam Curry's handler. You were a pot smoker, got it? Oh, yes, yes, me the pot smoker who can't metabolize THC. Yes, so you say it's like the most inefficient way to waste money Pay for something that doesn't actually affect you. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:All right, let's do. How long of a trip? One month.
Speaker 1:I don't care, Just look up the price dude. I think two weeks is probably plenty enough for a cheaper price all right, I had to go to singapore's website, singapore air website to pull this up.
Speaker 2:So sorry for the uh, you know whatever. Yeah, so right now just picking random dates, uh force, uh. Four four thousand six hundred ninety nine. Yeah, that's what I figured but that's not bad.
Speaker 1:I I mean it's not good either, but yeah, it's not bad. I think uh, united probably is more than that.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, easily, yeah yeah, yeah, and that's the point is, if you look, if you look at these and one of my favorite hacks is, especially if you're on a big, long international trip is just do a series of one ways. It oftentimes ends up cheaper than booking all the way through and it gives you the flexibility you want absolutely, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And people, I think, have got the wrong impression generally about one-ways, thinking that oh, that's more expensive. It almost never is no, like I've saved money booking one-way flights, even from here to Seattle, versus trying to book round trips. They have business rules on their websites when you're booking. They have business rules on their websites when you're booking and a lot of times you can bypass the rules, meaning get into a different pay class of ticket on some of the legs if you book directly, so directly with each airline.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, directly with each airline. Yes, yeah, well, yeah, directly with each airline. But even, um, you know, uh, even just using the same airline that if you have multiple segments that you're going to do like if the airline flies, let's say it goes from Seattle to LA to, uh, austin, so it's kind of a dogleg shaped trip.
Speaker 1:If I price those segments individually, I may actually save money or just doing a round trip that uses the same damn segments, same thing with. Uh, like an american, I can book flights that are code shared with alaska airline if I'm going to seattle, yeah, or not even seattle, if I'm going to a number of different cities, they'll, they'll code share with Alaska.
Speaker 1:If I go to Alaska website, I can save a hundred bucks on those segments obviously that's the thing you're not going to know unless you try so if you're trying to book a big trip and it the airline you're trying to book through gives you multiple carriers in the same alliance or whatever, that they have you're better off going direct yeah, it's unfortunately when, um, when we went to self-service and away from travel agents which happened quite a few years back at this point but what travel agents used to do for you when you were their customer was all this stuff was finding the most cost way to get you from A to B.
Speaker 1:At the time you were trying to be there, yeah, and then they made a small commission that was paid for by the airlines or hotels, but they did that work. Then we went to a self-service system where you just get on a website and you book your own stuff. And you book your own stuff and the airlines and hotel chains realize that you're not sophisticated in this and therefore you don't know what a good deal is, and so all they have to do is just put little flashy ads that says save 30%, and then you click on that and you're actually paying more than you would if you did some research and booked things directly yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know my company uses concur and it can be a pain in the ass on both the expense report, auditing and just everything, but there are times when it is beneficial, like when you really get in a jam. Now, if you have any status with an airline, you're better off, but that's a whole nother conversation. I did just send you a story that I want to talk about, though.
Speaker 1:Okay, so open it up here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so A&M is formally inviting several companies to build some SMRs. Formerly inviting several companies to build some SMRs on the RELLIS campus here in Bryan.
Speaker 1:Where did you send the story? I don't see it Signal.
Speaker 2:I don't see it in Signal. Did I send it to the wrong person? You?
Speaker 1:may have.
Speaker 2:No. I sent it to you. Oh, it's sitting here spinning. Yeah, it's stuck. Signal's been doing that a lot lately. Yeah, you'll get it eventually, anyway. So Abbott has pushed some of this, but A&M has officially offered land and grants for companies to come in and build some small nukes. Oh wow, Cool.
Speaker 2:So A&M has a two megawatt yeah, I remember you said that's a research get me a tour of that, yeah, but anyway, what it comes down to is this would be a functional power plant and proving out the technology and everything else, so hopefully they can get some nrc approval and go forward.
Speaker 1:But uh, it's a good start and this would be a salt based reactor small modular reactor, so the technology is not yet defined.
Speaker 2:But they're setting aside acreage and saying, hey, we have land, we have this, we have the interconnects, come do. This.
Speaker 1:Got it okay interesting yeah, that's, that's very cool yeah, and they're.
Speaker 2:They're tying it into a lot of education dollars because A&M has a nuke engineering program that you know. Right now we've got the pulse reactor and they work with Vistra and Comanche Peak and the. South Texas Project to get people you know trained up. But that's really 70s technology. Ultimately, both of those are, so this would be interesting, even though Comanche Peak was built in the 90s. It's really 70s technology.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, both of those are, so this would be interesting. Even though comanche peak was built in the 90s, it's really 70s technology. Yeah, I might know a thing or two about it because I used to work for the company that owns it.
Speaker 1:So there's that yeah, yeah, and that's one of the nukes I I got a tour of, so that's interesting. Uh, the the change with trump coming in. Um, nuclear science is something I'm I'm really hoping for as well. Yeah, me too, because it is retarded that we are letting a technology that is clean and safe and cheap or should be if it wasn't for the regulatory bullshit just go unused.
Speaker 2:Well, and I mean it's really sad because countries like the UAE have more modern programs than we do. Yep, how does that happen?
Speaker 1:Well, they have the money and they have a monarchy. Mm-hmm, the monarchy is the key here.
Speaker 2:Well, and you know, if we look at the last two plants to be built here in the US Vogel 3 and 4, I mean that bankrupted Westinghouse based off of just construction overruns and the NRC's stupidity. So hopefully they can rein some of that in. But we'll see.
Speaker 1:Well, I hope that Musk can rein some of that in. I hope so. Get rid of the unnecessary agencies.
Speaker 2:I hope so, man.
Speaker 1:But, you know what Trump's got to stay alive between now and inauguration day yes, but I am fairly confident that vance is gonna be on the same kind of uh. I mean I want to say he's as good as trump, but I will say that I think vance has impressed me a lot. Yeah, I think he will maintain a lot of Trump. Yeah, I remember you weren't so hot on him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you know, hey, Trump has at least a proven track record.
Speaker 1:We got to see the rest of it, yeah, of not accomplishing things by putting the wrong people in place. So hopefully this time around he'll have a better track record. Am I wrong?
Speaker 2:A little bit. I think he accomplished a lot, but you know, I think he didn't accomplish an awful lot as well. Hopefully he will get there.
Speaker 1:He could have and hopefully will this time. So Trump 2.0, I'm definitely hoping, is going to be a more impactful presidency Indeed.
Speaker 2:Indeed.
Speaker 1:What else we got. I mean, we're kind of like rushed through this stuff without really Well, you know, we did two episodes last week. There's like a 20 minute episode saying yeah it was longer than that it was. It was 22 minutes and go check the episode.
Speaker 2:God damn it. Yeah, you really fucked with CSB by putting it out on the same number.
Speaker 1:I know, right, I know, and, and, and, so I I talked to you about this, ben, but I hadn't talked publicly about it. Um, and, incidentally, now that you're listening to this episode, you're hearing us talk about this. This is all on purpose, so this episode will actually be and you probably noticed this and thought what the hell out of order as well, and I'm literally doing that to fuck with CSV, and I'm sure he's not the only one.
Speaker 2:What do you mean? This will be out of order.
Speaker 1:Well, this episode's number is actually skipping one.
Speaker 2:So we're going to do 92? Yeah, you're evil, I know, I know.
Speaker 1:It's actually worse than that, because I went back and I renamed the short episode to 91. So this will be 93.
Speaker 2:Or is 93,.
Speaker 1:now that you're listening to it, this is episode 93. So this is the explanation for why this is just a little bit of trolling. That's all it is.
Speaker 2:We love you. Csb, Don't stop yes.
Speaker 1:Keep promoting our show.
Speaker 2:While Gene sits there and fights with you on broadcast. I know, but it's so funny.
Speaker 1:Well, but I also give him call outs. But he CSBlol, CSblol. Exactly he. He was listening to the other show that I do with darren unrelenting did you do a show friday?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, hey, you're back on track, okay yeah, no, when would I have? Listened to it, dude I.
Speaker 1:I didn't get home till like seven o'clock last night, the least you could do is listen to it. When you get home is the first thing you do, hey, so on that show.
Speaker 2:You don't want to know what. The first thing I did when I got home was.
Speaker 1:No, I don't want to hear about your butt plugs at all. So on that show I talked about the fact that I was playing video games on my trip and then I kind of started posting some videos and the channel's really growing Like it's going gangbusters here. I, in fact I think the first line in that episode was a clip of of me saying YouTube loves me, which is shocking to me because I've never had anybody watch my YouTube channel, Even when I was attempting to post content. Now I just started doing it literally because I have two friends that started playing this game called Elite Dangerous and so kind of. Instead of explaining things twice to them because I'm kind of lazy, I just want to do it once by recording a video so they can both watch the video. And I'm getting like a whole bunch of people uh, watching them. I'm getting like 10 000 views per video. Uh, my, my videos are being shown on youtube's recommended like 75 000 times I have no idea.
Speaker 1:I wish I knew. I don't know. I have, I literally don't know. But I'm going to keep cranking out videos because you know, I mean, I play the games anyway. I might as well make videos. But uh, anyway, on there darren said, after the uh, the summary of the show and then lower down where it says you can get gene's uh merch here. He didn't have a link and so csb was like posting on x. Like darren, you didn't. You didn't include the link.
Speaker 1:No, you had a little voice you did not put the link in here, so and I saw then I don't know, I didn't look, I so I'm just assuming he's right. So I I text darren. I was like, dude, what the hell, here's the link. You forgot to put it in. And then he replies back with a picture saying, uh, no, dumbass, it's in there, it's always been in there. And I was like, oh, okay, and so then he posts on x I think csb is more blind than I am. Wow, ouch, I know right. And then csb apparently saw it too and he's like, oh, I swear to god, no, he didn't say I swear to god, I swear on robotics, that I did not see it I swear on ai yeah, csb is.
Speaker 1:Uh is good that way so, yeah, anyway, my only point with it is, uh, it made for an enjoyable laugh, uh, after doing the yesterday.
Speaker 2:I will say this CSB, I've got an AI project I need to talk to you about at some point in time, Like I may have a useful context for reasonable language models and machine learning.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:Yep, interesting. Yep, I am actually currently. It's funny because I've been talking to some interesting agencies and people.
Speaker 1:Well, not agencies but people. No, of course not. You would never talk to an agency. Go ahead.
Speaker 2:I've been talking to some people who have some AI models used by the intelligence agencies, um, and working on some of this, but I really want to. I'm pushing my current employer to allow me to put this out as an rfc and it's been a long time since I've written an rfc, but I and for those who don't know, that's a request for comment, it's a way of publishing a standard or something in an open source way that allows people to contribute to it and I I think I may have the beginnings of a new methodology.
Speaker 2:That's not revolutionary, it's really iterative of how we do cyber security assessments and maturity modeling.
Speaker 1:Well, you ought to have somebody like me on there too.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe you know cause, Cause you need a job.
Speaker 1:Cause experience. Well, that too, but uh, uh, yeah, no, I was, uh, I was on the uh working group for writing the cloud security Alliance. Uh, you know, the know the original. I've been on a few of them too, but the.
Speaker 2:The point is, if you so deep, deep baseball, a lot of people will probably get tired of this, but whatever. So if you look at like c2m2 and you know they have the crawl, walk, run levels of maturity, but if you think about um, that and let's say you're building a new facility well, they want you to be at the run level of facility immediately.
Speaker 2:You're building something new. There's no excuse you should be at this level of maturity. The problem with that is that doesn't take into account economics. Right, the what is your risk profile do? You really need every security control imaginable for something that's not really that risky that seems like a waste of money.
Speaker 2:So how do we define what the appropriate level of risk is? How do we have something that's risk-defined, risk-informed and not only show our work but show, okay, we're going to go for the highest risk reductions first, and then we're going to have that continuous improvement that I've been talking about and iteratively lower the risk until we reach the company's risk tolerance threshold that the CEO, lawyers and everybody else have said. Yes, we are willing to lose $20 million a day here.
Speaker 2:Okay well, let's get there. And then we say, okay, we've done our job. From a cybersecurity security standpoint, whether or not you meet the regular regulatory burdens, that's a whole different thing.
Speaker 2:But from a cyber security, cio, cso standpoint. We've done our job. According to you lawyers and cfo ceo, we, we have met your risk tolerance and here's how we're doing it. And really the problem has been how do you do all that level of analysis, and humans are not great at doing that level of analysis. So this is some area where machine learning and a large, a significantly well enough informed large language model could be useful. Yep, and there's a lot more detail that I'm not sharing right now because technically it's ip, but yeah, no, that totally makes sense.
Speaker 1:I mean, frankly, if you're not using ai for some of this?
Speaker 2:soon.
Speaker 1:No one is right, but I mean soon. Then you're going to fall behind, because you're I guarantee you're not the only one with this idea.
Speaker 2:Oh, I hope I'm not.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like I said, this is not some lightning strike, this is iterative this is oh, of course we can do this now. This makes sense. We should do this. Why aren't we doing this? Yeah, but unfortunately there are a lot of ideas like that that don't ever catch on. So we'll see. But I hope I get to put it out as an official rfc, put my name on it and let it run.
Speaker 1:That would be great so we'll see, man, I dig it yeah, I dig it yeah, and then I gotta go to dallas next week.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, airport stuff. So we do a lot of work with airports and airport security and tsa stuff and I knew you were for tsa. I do not work for tsa. Fuck tsa. I fuck with tsa every chance I get. Yeah yeah you know what's amazing to me? I walked through the metal detector in Houston and my belt doesn't go off.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I walked through the metal detector at one of the Washington airports and it goes off Absolutely, and I'm like I just did this the other day. Come on, what the fuck? Can we not have a standard setting across the board here? They do not, no, no, it's all. Can we not have a standard setting across the?
Speaker 1:board here? They do not. No, no, and it changes day to day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I remember who calibrated it this morning.
Speaker 1:I remember in going through Logan in Boston and I swear to my watch set it off. I've never had an instance where my watch sets off the metal detector. They either have somebody pressing a button as you walk through or this thing was on maximum and then cranked to 11 above that, yeah to where, like literally anything will set it off I mean, it almost makes you a prince albert I, I wouldn't do that, but I it'd be pretty funny if somebody did and then walked through there and then explained it.
Speaker 1:Can you go through the little microwave thing with the Prince Albert, I wonder?
Speaker 2:I don't know, I wouldn't do it regardless. Does that heat up, woo?
Speaker 1:Hello.
Speaker 2:Ah, boy, get a burn down there, that's no good, or a woman with you know, we're not going to tell you what a.
Speaker 1:Prince Albert is If you don't know, you're better off not knowing, or you can look it up yourself. God, the the the.
Speaker 2:oh, what was his name? Miss Doubtfire, I'm blanking who's? The actor Robin Williams. Robin Williams, there we go. Robin Williams, robin Williams, there we go. Robin Williams had a great one about Prince Albert Victoria. How I want to be remembered. Oh man, I am so sad he's dead.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, but I mean he's dead because he was sad yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so aren't we all, though? Aren't we all just dead, no, dead, no dead inside alive, for now at least. Yeah, I don't know, I mean the way your knee almost took you out, dude, I don't know, that was not fun, dude I mean, if you go lame again like that, we're gonna have to treat you like a horse I know right, yeah, you don't get.
Speaker 1:You don't get to use my own gun for that. Oh, come on, I know you have ulterior motives. You've been eyeing my guns for a while now. I mean, who else you're gonna get? All I know is if I, if I had you into catalog my guns after I'm dead, you'd end up saying I had one gun no, I don't want a lot of that israeli crap you got oh, whatever, we totally want all that israeli crap I got oh, it's all good, it's all fun.
Speaker 2:I you know. I am glad that there have been. You know as much as the country brace for it. I'm glad there haven't been a whole lot of wild protests or riots, yeah, but DC dude, DC was wild.
Speaker 1:We're confused, Like they weren't sure if they're supposed to write it.
Speaker 2:DC was wild Shit boarded up like security, a very enhanced security presence all over the area and nothing.
Speaker 1:But I think that that was all done under the auspices of when Trump loses, we're going to have another you know uprising coup by the crazy Trump supporters. Well, it makes you think, which is only in their minds, obviously.
Speaker 2:It makes you think two things. Well, I don't know about that. Hold on, because it makes you think two things. One especially know about that. Hold on, because it makes you think two things. One, especially when you look at the vote totals and everything else, this was potentially too big to rig and I'm sure there were some shenanigans going on. So how much more of a landslide happened here. But beyond that, I think they were prepared to have what I would call false flags and agent provocateurs go out and start shit. Yeah, that would cause issues and they would be ready for it. And oh, look at what happened, right? Uh, we, we have to lock down, we have to take away the guns, we have to do this because of this, like, I think they were ready for that. I think that's what they were expecting yeah, otherwise there's no logical explanation for this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I think there's also the summer of love to look back on and you never know what's going to kick off a bunch of those people, those people. Honestly, I I really think that part of the reason we're not seeing more protests right now is because the people that would be protesting are tired from doing all the uh pro-palestinian protests that they've been on.
Speaker 2:I mean it's the same people.
Speaker 1:It's the Black Lives Matter, the anti-Israeli, pro-palestinian stuff. Not only are they funding the delivery of the bricks by the same people, it's the same people marching.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the brick deliveries never happened in the DC area that I saw.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I asked you about that when you were in DC. That was one of my questions. It's like have you seen any of the Rick sitting on the corners at all? And it was interesting. You said no.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't, but they were sure it was enhanced. Uh, the other thing that we talked about on the last episode is it was shocking how empty bwi was when I flew in, like it was empty. I've never seen that airport that deserted, and even flying out it was still pretty deserted.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it's um. I'm trying to think uh are the politicians. They're not in dc right now. Right, they're all at home uh are the politicians?
Speaker 2:they're not in dc right now. Right, they're all at home. Uh, I, I think they're all in break. I mean, congress isn't in session right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, so they're on break, which means there's nothing for the lobbyists to do there either, which means probably a lot of the people that would be making the airport more busy are not there right now. I guess what I'm getting it is I. I think this may be a seasonal issue that you saw, not specific to the election itself no, I, I, I go to maryland.
Speaker 2:I go to that airport almost every year at the same time oh, you do, yeah, in the fall okay, every november ish, yes, and it's normally more busy.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, yes, interesting, okay, so then it's not seasonal.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I'm just telling you. For the last several years I've been up there over and over and over again this time of year and I've never seen it like this Mm-hmm. Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing what happens I really hope the three-letter agencies start getting dismantled and going away. Uh, I, I selfishly want trump to start with a atf and fbi and then slowly move to at least changing the mandate of the NSA and CIA, and I want us out of fucking Five Eyes. I want that pulled out, done, gone.
Speaker 1:I totally get where you're coming from. I don't see that happening ever.
Speaker 2:I think that Don't't see that happening ever. I think that don't don't be an asshole gene.
Speaker 1:Well there are too many arguments to to be in five eyes, to pull out of five eyes.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:You can be in five eyes, but no American laws.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, but no, no, nsa, cia, you eyes but no American laws Right, exactly, but no, no, nsa, cia. You cannot get information on American citizens like. There has to be some restriction there. Remove the FISA court. Make it be a publicly declared I'm all.
Speaker 1:I'm all for the same stuff. I'm just saying is it likely to happen? The answer is no. I think that it's more likely that the fbi will shrink. I think that the mission of the cia could change. All those things I think are more likely. But removing america from five eyes, I just don't see any president, including trump, doing that.
Speaker 2:Well, hopefully we at least get rid of the ATF.
Speaker 1:I would love to see that. And then, as I posted in my little paragraph that I posted last night on X, like getting rid of the NFA and getting rid of the ATF, both of those would go a long way towards making America a safer country. Yeah, agreed, it'd be a good thing and I would love to have a law passed that explicitly provides a um a legal cover for any private landowner utilizing firearms in defense of the border of this country.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know, I've told you my dad's idea.
Speaker 1:If you live on the border, you ought to be able to shoot.
Speaker 2:I've told you my dad's idea.
Speaker 1:What's that?
Speaker 2:So his idea to secure the border and he said this in jest, but his idea is you go down and you carve a swath across the entire border of 100 yards football field wide across that is a no-man's zone. Nothing grows there, nothing's there. It is dead mineral soil only. This is your dead zone, right. And then every 500 or so yards you put up a deer stand on the other side and you let rednecks pay to sit in those deer stands. And if you make it across alive you're in you, but if you don't.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that that that sounds funny, but also that sounds like a scene out of Apple oh God, I'm going to butcher name Uh, epilept Apple. Oh God, I'm going to butcher name Apaliptica. What was that movie that? Yeah, Apocalypto, that's right.
Speaker 2:You saw that right. It's been a while.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you remember the end of the movie. There's a scene where the main character basically got saved from having his heart cut out. However, uh, his saving grace, uh, is only for that portion. So instead he now gets to run across a no man's land, and if he makes it all the way across, then he gets to live, but while's running he's got a bunch of guys shooting arrows at him. Yeah, so I thought it was a pretty good movie. The not having any English in the movie, I think, does make it a little more difficult for people I'm used to watching movies in languages I don't understand, like Chinese.
Speaker 2:Or how you grew up. Yeah, exactly, and so such an asshole, and so I mean how you are now what, uh, you know english.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly how you are now, yeah, I look, I've watched a lot of bollywood movies. Why? I think they're funny. I enjoy movies that are funny. Uh, they have cool dancing and music in them. And and have you seen the bollywood action heroes? They're like halfway between superman and james bond. They're, they're great. They just, you know, they'll catch bullets with their teeth. Uh, literally okay so anyway, it, it was um, it was, it was interesting yeah, have you tracked the peanut story?
Speaker 1:no, oh the squirrel. Yes, I have tracked. Yeah, I actually posted some memes about him, yeah it poor little guy.
Speaker 2:Well, and what happened to the raccoon? Why haven't we heard anything about the raccoon? Yeah, I guess rocky wasn't all as interesting compared to peanut yeah, moose and squirrel yeah, yeah, the um the best meme I saw is I want a government that is too small to have five people raid a house to kill a squirrel yeah, yeah and I I don't understand the the laws that have to do with not having pet squirrels, like even if there is such a law, why?
Speaker 1:why is there such a law?
Speaker 2:what the hell the argument is. It's a animal that could carry rabies, so and so what?
Speaker 1:I okay, I I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just I mean, I don't I don't yeah, okay, okay, but okay, so it can carry, so humans can carry rabies right, there are vaccines for humans, cats and dogs and you can't use that in scroll.
Speaker 2:I don't know, not that I know of, I mean I bet you can't use that in a squirrel I don't know, Not that I know of. I mean I bet you can. Regardless, the whole absurdity of it is them raiding this guy's house. Yeah, and then when the squirrel bites someone, because you know they're doing crazy shit and it was hurt yeah. Yeah, they put it down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they cut its head off in front of the guy. No, that's what he said.
Speaker 2:Ah, okay, I haven't heard that I watched the video.
Speaker 1:I watched the video with him, okay.
Speaker 2:Well, anyway, you've seen plenty of videos of cops shooting dogs preemptively. Oh, yeah, yeah, oh yeah. No regard for life. Just remember the government is your enemy, no matter what, no matter if you think you're in its good graces now, eventually, it will turn against you, right? Yes, it's the turtle and the scorpion. You know, it's in its nature it is To be slow. No, you know the story about the turtle and the the turtle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I know the story. I'm just trying to be funny.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know the poem Ozymandias.
Speaker 1:I don't. However, you have actually asked me that and then recited it previously.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, anyway, it's a good reference.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, so I don't know what else to say. Dude, I'm kind of just happy at the fact that I don't have to think about politics again for a while at least, and it's taking a bit of a downer that I've been feeling for the last three, four months off my shoulders, so I'm happy about that Well hopefully you'll stop being so damn black pilled and maybe, maybe now move on, at least for a few months.
Speaker 1:eventually, you know, I'm gonna be just as black bill as ever, but maybe for a few months I can uh, let that rest well, let that.
Speaker 2:I'll ask you this gene, should we? I I've, so I've got a hundred dollar travel credit I need to use here before it expires. Should we book? Book flights to DC for the inauguration?
Speaker 1:Ooh, interesting Hmm.
Speaker 2:Do we want to go ahead?
Speaker 1:and do that. If we do, we should probably do it now.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's going to be big in the yeah, I think it is so. There's my biggest argument against going is I don't like cold weather and getting arrested and potential felonies.
Speaker 2:I don't mind that but the cold weather been arrested?
Speaker 1:of course not uh--huh. Okay, I'm pure.
Speaker 2:Sorry, anyone who knows Gene. I'm the embodiment of purity itself. I just picture Tina talking about you and liking young skin.
Speaker 1:That just reinforces my purity, jesus okay, I'm back well I just hope I have a uh adopted uh kid soon too oh yeah, hey, aren't you glad I drew your attention to? That. Oh, that was hilarious man. What we're talking about is ben ben on x. Ats me for this video of a.
Speaker 1:I don't know where she's from the uk, I suppose yeah, somewhere in the uk yeah, this, uh, what appears to be a college-aged female talking about how she wants to come to the us and experience going and getting a slurpee ata 7-eleven, amongst other things. It's like, yeah, I just need somebody to adopt me. And I'm like, oh, okay, so she's well, my comment was gene, take your shot yeah, yeah, right, and I was like yep, already, already sent in my, uh, my proposal there yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:She was very cute yeah. Redhead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, definitely my type, and I mean I'm obviously this was all done to get views, but I thought it was pretty, pretty good, pretty well done, and it completely bypasses the normal kind of political stuff and just, you know, showing somebody who wants to experience America.
Speaker 2:Well, it was actually tied into the election, though, right. Because she starts off saying don't leave the US, Don't do this yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and.
Speaker 2:I want to experience that culture.
Speaker 1:Well, and here's the thing that version of the us that she wants to experience was starting to not exist under biden yes, I agree and we have an opportunity under trump to restore some of that.
Speaker 1:It's part of the make america great. Uh, idea it in in. It's kind of americana, you know. It's the america that people who've watched old movies have a sense of what america is. It's not the america with 25 million undocumented males in early 20s walking around nefariously, which is what we got under biden yeah, well, and you know people have asked where's trump going to get the money to deport? Mexico pay for it well, no, but uh that's what he said last time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but where are we getting the money to ship them around the US?
Speaker 1:Where are we?
Speaker 2:getting the money to pay them. You know what was it Over four million dollars that New York City gave out in aid to the illegals there. You know we are wasting tons and tons of money. And here's the thing you and I are both actually pretty pro-immigration. We want to brain drain the rest of the world, bring us the people who should be here, and I would even say you're huddled masses, if anyone wants to come here and work and there is a job for them.
Speaker 2:I think the legal immigration methodology should be very, very easy. Do you have a criminal background? Yes, okay. Well, what is that? Let's look at that. Okay, if you have a criminal background, I don't want to just throw the baby out with the bathwater. Are you reformed? Are you violent? What is it? All right, you're not MS-13. You're not a rapist. You're not this. You're not that Okay. You're not this. You're not that Okay. Well, you know what. We're going to provisionally take a chance on you, but if you get caught with any crime of any matter other than like a Class C misdemeanor, you're gone. You're here provisionally. But anyone who is not in that category, if and let people come in and do whatever menial labor they want to do for whatever price they want to do it for. And you know, if we really truly had a good economic reset and we are looking at here's the thing we cannot be the salad bowl. We have to go back to being the melting pot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the fondue.
Speaker 2:Yes to being the melting pot. Yeah, you know the fondue. Yes, the the idea of. Yeah, I'm, I'm irish and I have my irish heritage in new york, but, god damn it, I'm an american. Right, that is what needs to happen. The italians same thing, um, but if we, if we really want a economic revitalization in this country, we have to start being a manufacturing country again, and what that means is we need actually more social striation, more levels of the social ladder. To accomplish that, we need low-skilled labor, we need high-skilled labor, we need every step in between. And instead of killing the middle class the way we have, and the poor are getting poorer and the middle class is is shrinking and the rich are getting richer, let's add a whole bunch of rungs in that ladder and make it so someone can move up and in so doing, say you know what, if you're around the world and you're poor, but you want to work and you want to get your start here, come here, we've got a place for you. Let's do it. I'm fine with that.
Speaker 1:Well, there's also one other element that nobody who seemed to be talking to is that there absolutely is a way, especially for 20 something men to can be done as a non-US citizen, and it is a path to US citizenship and, frankly, we've talked about this before. I think it ought to be. One of the predominant paths to citizenship is service in the military Service guarantees citizenship.
Speaker 2:Exactly exactly, and it does. And you've read starship troopers?
Speaker 1:I never have. I just saw the movie. Oh dude, the book is so much better, I'm sure I I don't doubt it, but I I find it ironic that verhoeven's movie was meant to show the the evil and brutality of uh fascism and instead it became a cult hit where people love quoting all the sayings uh, it's classic.
Speaker 2:It had the opposite effect of what he was trying to do in it yep, he made them look like nazis, but they ended up being the good guys well, not only that, but like the kind of nazis you want to join have you ever seen the, the movie about, uh, the nazi moon base?
Speaker 1:yeah, I love comedy, yeah dude the, the first of all the chick in that movie fucking hot yeah.
Speaker 1:The totally Aryan blonde chick. Oh yeah, and the song that or not, the song, the speech she gives was, I found, very powerful. I played that to a lot of people because it kind of it's in English and it's for an american audience. But it kind of takes the whole idea of the nazi pro-aryan speeches at the beginning of the war, where there was a lot of hope and a lot of confidence, not not the stuff toward the end of the war where they were losing to the russians who they compared they're considered to not be anywhere near, uh, equal to them. But yeah, I thought it was a great movie. I, I, I found and and it had a lot of really good tongue-in-cheek aspects. Do you remember when, when the united states said, well, you know, there's something that we haven't really told you and, like one of our scientific satellites, all of a sudden like starts to transform itself, like a transformer and turns into a space gun yeah, and then all the other countries have the same thing, you fuckers.
Speaker 2:You violated the treaty, so did you, yeah, and, by the way, this movie is iron sky, it's hard. Yeah, If you haven't seen it it's up there with Idiocracy, and God Bless America. I still think out of the three, God Bless America is my favorite.
Speaker 1:Really, I think Idiocracy is my favorite out of those three, but I really enjoyed all of those movies God Bless America I saw after you told me about it, but I watched it and it was enjoyable.
Speaker 1:I I just felt a little bit too close to home well, no, like the language the girl is using clearly written by somebody way more mature than her. Yeah, and you get that in in some movies, like if you saw juno, you remember about the? Uh, I didn't watch juno, I didn't watch that shit. That was back when uh, ellen page was like a cute young woman and not a disgusting young man, um, or not even young, just a disgusting middle-aged man. But you know, it, it was.
Speaker 1:it was the same kind of thing where, like, you have this character who's supposed to be in high school speaking like New York intelligentsia. I got a little bit of that vibe out of this movie as well. Yeah, you know good stuff Good stuff. Iron Sky I recommend people watch. It was a Kickstarter movie and they did a great job with it.
Speaker 2:Yes, and they turned a black guy white in the movie. So there you go.
Speaker 1:They did.
Speaker 2:The ultimate racist move.
Speaker 1:They fixed him, they fixed him we're going to hell, gene.
Speaker 2:Oh my god what?
Speaker 1:no, we're just saying what the movie said. We're not saying they fixed them. We're just saying in the movie the germans saw that as fixing him.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly yeah yeah, well, on that note, I think we're good man yeah, yeah, let's wrap her up.
Speaker 1:Um, all right, we should be more or less back on standard schedule, although we are coming into holiday season, so everyone keep that in mind. In the us, we got thanksgiving, we've got christmas and we've got black friday, which is about a week's worth of time when nobody works and they all just look at Amazon to see what they want to buy cheap.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you can figure out which holidays Gene actually celebrates.
Speaker 1:Black Friday I'm not racist. That's why I celebrate Black Friday. I don't know about you, my friend.
Speaker 2:I celebrate Christmas. Yeah, you know, this is a real pet peeve of mine. I have always I, I hate I.
Speaker 1:This is something you hate holidays, you know I I hate lying to my kids about santa claus.
Speaker 2:I fucking hate it. I don't want to do that. I like, I want to be the commercial you guys like. No, this isn't about santa claus. This isn't about anything. We'll give gifts and all that, but it's from mom and dad and this is representative and about christ. Right, I really have been trying and want and I've got opposition on this what I I really want how dare you deny santa claus?
Speaker 1:are you santa claus denier?
Speaker 2:because that's what I'm hearing yeah, yeah, I just I want my kids to grow up knowing why it's called Christ Mass, not anything else.
Speaker 1:Well, that's because when the Christians took over a pagan holiday that everybody loved, they decided that, at the very least, let's rename it.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, anyway, we can all agree Jesus was not born on december 25th, but it's okay yeah, but who cares?
Speaker 1:I mean the holiday is basically winter celsius. I mean it's been around a lot longer in christianity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, but my point is the. The. The thing for me, and what I want my kids to remember, is why we celebrate that Right.
Speaker 1:I the reason why I celebrate it is we're Americans to understand that everybody knows that I'm talking about me personally but yeah, yeah, I know, I know I'm just trying to give you a shit, dude, cause Christmas is a mercantile holiday that has very little to do with religion. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think if you look at christmas traditions in europe like pre uh, pre-mercantilism, I think what the black beats yeah, yeah, you got that in the netherlands um, germans have been celebrating christmas for a long, but it was never about, you know, just shopping for presents the way it is in the United States. The United States really kind of took over Christmas and turned it into a very big mercantile holiday. Yeah, so I guess you could always be a Jehovah's Witness. No, I couldn't, just not celebrate Christmas at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I could not be a Jehovah's.
Speaker 1:Witness. I am very much pro-Christmas. I appreciate the fact that there are a lot of people that are celebrating the birth of a Jew and on that, note.
Speaker 2:We'll talk to you next week. Gene Sounds good.
