Texas Rivalry and Weight Loss Journey

Speaker 1 0:25

Howdy Ben. How are you doing today, gene? I am better than I deserve. It is a chilly but beautiful day here in College Station, texas, and we are getting ready to beat the hell out of TU, tu, yep, tu.

Speaker 2 0:42

Texas University.

Speaker 1 0:44

That's what they've been known as for a long time around here. Okay. Yeah, and you can't spell stupid without T-U.

Speaker 2 0:52

And, of course, your team is the Collegeville Farmers.

Speaker 1 0:58

Well, we were known as the Farmers for a very long time.

Speaker 2 1:02

That's what I bring it up. I'm an avid historian of sports teams.

Speaker 1 1:06

Yeah, college Station literally was a train station at the college and the town built up around it, and hence the name, and texas a&m. The aggies, uh, farmers fight man, yeah nice this is a.

Speaker 1 1:23

This is a very old rivalry in uh, you know tex Well in the nation as far as college football and one of the funny things is the Aggies always get made fun of that Our fight song is about beating Texas. Well, texas fight song is about beating Aggies Everybody thinks of. You know the eyes of Texas? Well, that's their school song. Our school song is the spirit of Aggieland has nothing to do with UT. They're different. They're different things here and people, people have to remember that.

Speaker 2 1:58

Yes, I'm sure people are remembering all kinds of funny things. Well, I wish your team the best of luck. I have no horse in this race.

Speaker 1 2:07

uh, literally you do, so hopefully you win well, uh, you know, I'm a third generation aggie and all I can say is uh you can get into a better school got it. Actually I did uh, you know. You know what my uh parents and grandparents told me what's that you can go anywhere you want, but if you want us to pay for it, it'll be Texas A&M Huh.

Speaker 2 2:35

Okay, that's actually not too dissimilar a speech. I got for the University of Minnesota myself as well, but not for the same reason.

Speaker 1 2:43

Yeah, what was the reason?

Speaker 2 2:47

Oh, I think the reason is, if you're within close enough distance where, uh, we know what the hell you're up to, then we'll pay for it. If you're off partying somewhere else in the country, uh, have fun, hmm.

Speaker 1 3:04

Interesting. Uh, so you messaged me a little while ago and said Alex was having a meltdown. Yeah, total meltdown.

Speaker 2 3:17

I was lucky enough to watch it live on X because he's streaming now on X nonstop and he couldn't find the clip and he was going to play.

Speaker 1 3:31

Not the end of the world.

Speaker 2 3:33

It sure sounded like it to him and it's like the one thing that I just want to do and I can't do it. And he started crying or tearing up I should say Not crying, tearing up and then he said you know what People like you all want to be slaves, you don't want to change anything like. He started going down that whole rant and he said I, I'm just gonna go home. I'm just, I'm done. I'm done for the day, I'm gonna go home. Oh, so it was quite entertaining to watch, uh, as I getting ready for the show, doing my pre-show prep, which consists of turning down volume in a variety of different things.

Speaker 2 4:15

I don't even do that. I was going to look at X to see what the top stories are, but I got caught up on watching Alex. I didn't even really like and yeah, he just he looks good. He's lost a lot of weight, man, I think he's definitely working with a trainer apparently. Yeah, mr ozempic and uh, so that part of it's good but you think he's actually on.

Speaker 1 4:41

Oh, I guarantee you he's on something 100 percent what do you say?

Speaker 2 4:45

that. I guarantee you that that shit works. It is good. It's the only thing that, basically, when I tried it, I did it for like two months. Uh it, it just made me forget about food, just completely forget about it like that thought would you want to do?

Speaker 2 5:08

Well, when you want to lose some weight, that's not such a bad thing to do, Not that I think about the food all the time. But you know like Occasionally you start kind of feeling a little hungry and you're like, yeah, let's see, Do I want to look in the fridge or want to go out? Don't want to? Just get some food delivered? What are? You know like? Those thoughts didn't occur for two months. Get some food delivered, whatever. You know like those thoughts didn't occur for two months. So shit totally works. I mean, you can talk about pros and cons of it. But here's the other thing. People don't really realize, I think, especially on the conservative side, because they like to blame all drugs in one category of drugs.

Speaker 2 5:44

Ozempic is just a brand name for a proprietary process, because they can't patent the actual ingredient. They can only patent the process that is used to manufacture it. Because the actual ingredient is in your body all the time. All you're doing is cranking up one of the naturally occurring hormones that your body always has in it anyway. Yeah, so it's not a drug, in the same way that mRNA is not a vaccine. This is simply an artificial increase in a naturally occurring substance. It's no different than the stuff that I take on a daily basis, which is insulin. Insulin is another hormone in your body that is naturally occurring but is also used as a drug to manage diabetes. So I'm not on the Ozempic is bad bandwagon. I think that a lot of people just kind of threw it into the.

Speaker 1 6:51

You know, oh, look at these fangled bad drugs Anything you have to be on for the rest of your life. I think is not ideal.

Speaker 2 6:57

All right, so I should stop doing insulin right now.

Speaker 1 7:02

I mean it depends. Can you control your diabetes with you know diet and exercise.

Conspiracy Theories and Legal Battles

Speaker 2 7:13

If I don't die before that happens, sure, okay. I mean it's it's kind of a live or die kind of scenario. So this is no different and nothing says you have to take it for the rest of your life. It's one of those things where if you want the benefit of it for the rest of your life, you can take it, but if you don't, then don't. And I will say it is much easier and I say this from personal experience, having lost a lot of weight twice in my life and then gained it back twice, but not immediately, like years later, like years later. But, um, it is much easier to maintain a weight when you're within about 15 percent of quote-unquote normal body weight than when you're like 50 above normal body weight, because, uh, trying to go lower when you're carrying that much weight, uh takes substantially more work and it's not again, it's not a theoretical thing like. I've actually gone through that process myself more than once and, uh, that's been my experience with it so I I'm all for zempic.

Speaker 2 8:25

I think people and I mean I don't care what the brand name is frankly, before a zempik was a zempik. It was commercially available for research purposes as a generic drug for about ten dollars.

Speaker 2 8:38

Because it's not a drug, I mean, it was as a generic substance but you needed to have a medical, uh, research lab, jewelry license to get it yeah so it's like no, all they did was just come up with a process to manufacture it quickly, and that's the part that makes it actual ozempic yeah, well, I lost a lot of weight just through stress well, that's, uh, yes, and that you know, that's losing weight, my eating habits yeah, losing weight through stress is the silver lining on the negative of stress, which also reduces lifespan.

Speaker 1 9:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know who wants to live forever anyway.

Speaker 2 9:17

Well, I sure as hell don't, but anyway. So, sidetracked off the whole Alex Jones thing, my point was I get it. Talk about a guy who's stressed right, Alex, with the shit happening almost on a daily basis where they literally are buying companies with his personal future earnings.

Speaker 1 9:39

What a load of crap. Yeah, that was a very interesting play by the Onion and the sandy hook families and the judge, uh, in that case has now opened up, so the it's a different judge than just past summary judgment over it right and they have opened up a can of worms by doing that. And the reason why I say that is the judge is now looking at all past records, looking at a whole bunch of stuff that alex has been claiming.

Speaker 1 10:12

Hey, this is, this is not real, this is not real, this is not. This may bite him in the ass. Hopefully, I, I, yeah, hopefully, I mean, how awesome would it be if the judge came back and said you know what, after reviewing all this, this was such horseshit.

Speaker 2 10:28

Da, da, da, da da yeah, and I think, alex, losing two of these cases, um, it really does point to a need for tort reform, because I think this falls into cruel and unusual, even though it's a civil case and not a government case, because if we're able to simply, through the courts, take a person's future livelihood, we've just created a slave.

Speaker 1 11:05

Well, and there's summary judgment. Yeah Well that's the part that should make it easier to overturn, frankly yes, and quite frankly, this is people say oh well, that was just because alex didn't present evidence, didn't do this, didn't do that bullshit, he didn't they didn't accept it. And the problem is, if you have some, if you have a judge biased against you, that isn't going to let you win you're not going to win. Yep.

Speaker 2 11:36

That is totally true, yeah, but I would love to see how the harm that came to these people totals the GDP of France.

Speaker 1 11:51

Well, that's what they were asking for at one point in time.

Speaker 2 11:53

That's not what they got but I mean it's. It's just retarded the. I can see some mild uh annoyance from having some people think that you're an actor if you're actually not an actor. I mean actors are despicable so clearly that would're an actor if you're actually not an actor. I mean, actors are despicable so clearly that would be an insult to call somebody an actor. But I don't see that insult being worth that amount of money.

AI Limits on Social Media Platforms

Speaker 1 12:21

Well, and I don't think he ever mentioned my name, except for, like, maybe one person except for like maybe one person which brings up a whole nother aspect of this is, even if you say, okay, you don't believe any of the conspiracy theories about Sandy hook and you think Alex Jones knowingly lied about it, he didn't name them, so how are they slandered?

Speaker 1 12:49

right, right, right yeah I mean this is this is a big free speech argument and you know where I fall on it. Yeah, um, yeah hate, free speech. I'm sorry, yeah, hate free speech, I know, yeah, no, that is not my MO, but no, I think that what it comes down to is A I'm sorry, but I still, to this day, have a lot of questions around Sandy Hook and why the hell things were handled the way they have been and were demolishing the building right after while investigations are not fully complete. You know things like that.

Speaker 2 13:30

There's a lot of very suspect things there it's in the same category for me as like dumping osama bin laden into the middle of the water immediately after quote-unquote killing him, aka witness protection program that it just doesn't make a whole lot of logical sense.

Speaker 1 13:56

And then they're asking us to just accept it as is yeah, well, and not only that, but some of the stories that have come out. Um, you know, if you put some of the seal team six guys stories side by side, every single one of them that was part of that raid.

Speaker 2 14:13

Not every one of them. I heard that every single one was said maybe, maybe not, but anyway, definitely check into it.

Speaker 1 14:20

Just saw something with one of them, um, probably yesterday. That was the guy who actually pulled the trigger, but anyway, the the point is and there and that's funny because there were a couple of them claiming to have done it at one point in time, but that's the incinerator. There the point is, when they got their story straight, like you could put them side by side and they were almost telling word for word the same story- yeah, they all memorize the same document exactly. Because, that doesn't happen. Naturally is my point no.

Speaker 1 14:50

Did you have a good Thanksgiving, Gene.

Speaker 2 14:52

Yeah, I think. So I had a pretty good Thanksgiving. I got a lot of video game playing in and I made it past 1,000 subscribers on Thanksgiving.

Speaker 1 15:04

Day. How about that? You're monetized on.

Speaker 2 15:06

YouTube. I'm monetized on YouTube Exactly For now. Yeah, I'm monetized on YouTube Exactly. For now, hey, I'm already making money, more money than I'm making here.

Speaker 1 15:14

I would hope so. I know right, and you know. What's funny, though, is it's just a matter of time until they find this podcast, link it to your other channel and demonetize it. Oh, I already had one of those.

Speaker 2 15:26

No, I didn't get demonetized. That's a good point, but I did have one person leave a commentary saying, yeah, I really like your gaming content, but given your politics, you could go to hell.

Speaker 1 15:37

Really. Yeah, that's funny.

Speaker 2 15:42

I know right. It's like thankfully there's a block and ban on YouTube, so that works well.

Speaker 1 15:49

I have never uploaded anything to YouTube. Mm-hmm. Just not enough done. Yep, yep I get it Well, congratulations.

Speaker 2 16:00

Well, thank you. It's such a minor thing, but at the same time, it's something I tried to do twice in the past and failed. So this time around it actually worked, and I do have to do a call out for CSB. Oh yeah, he was championing you there, spreading the word yeah, and while I will say, given the number of comments that I've received and everything I kind of, I think most of this was very organic from what I see on the YouTube. Where did people come from? It wasn't by clicking links on X.

Speaker 1 16:41

But it wasn't a big Polish contingent.

Speaker 2 16:45

I'm sure the guy that told me to go fuck off probably did come from x, so that's my guy.

Speaker 1 16:53

What's that?

Speaker 2 16:54

that or blue sky or well, yeah, I, but I don't think it was. Was he posting on blue sky? I hope not. I don't know. I don't know I've got a uh, a lurker um account on blue sky, but I sure as hell don't post on blue sky okay it's funny to see those videos. Are you on there at all? No you know what blue sky is, though? Right, yes, I do it's. It's. It's basically the liberal twitter. Yeah, created by the original guy who created twitter, where all the liberals went to Jack Dorsey.

Speaker 2 17:27

Yeah, exactly, well, he did create Twitter. He was one of? Yeah, Well, it was his company.

Speaker 1 17:37

What do you mean? One of? But I don't think he was the singular inspiration behind. It is my point. Yes, he was one of the founders and CEO, but that's like saying Steve Jobs created Apple he did yeah, but you's like saying Steve Jobs created Apple, he did yeah, but you're ignoring Wozniak.

Speaker 2 17:53

Wozniak was playing in the garage, jobs created a company. There's a difference here. I get your point, but you know. So bottom line is it's a liberal Twitter hell.

Speaker 1 18:07

And with they said they had like 30 something thousand reports in one day already. What like this is. They haven't even the scale it this company is going to fail because it cannot scale the way they're setting up their protectionist shit.

Speaker 2 18:25

It's going to fail they're claiming now because there's a lot of uh celebrity media, people that have left twitter, that are on blue sky now and they're. They're saying the blue sky has 30 times the amount of engagement of twitter, that it's a real company and twitter has failed and no one really realizes it yet, but it's actually already done.

Speaker 1 18:46

I don't know I would agree.

Speaker 2 18:50

Twitter has failed.

Speaker 1 18:51

X, on the other hand, is growing like crazy dude x got me to finally pony up and pay for a blue check mark did they now? Yeah, wow, yeah what was the?

Speaker 2 19:05

rationale for you.

Speaker 1 19:07

The Black Friday half off. Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 19:14

And just the ads. Getting rid of the ads For like a year prepaid, or what do you get? The half off of yeah.

Speaker 2 19:19

Hmm, maybe I should do that, because I actually can't. I had a yearly membership and then I canceled it when they started giving away blue chip check marks for free. I'm like that's bullshit. So you're basically saying is you plebs, you gotta pay for them, and then the people that are celebrities don't fuck that. That was the whole point of giving them to everybody else for money, as you basically are saying it's worthless well, I, I don't know about that.

Speaker 1 19:46

I don't mind paying for a little bit extra engagements as far as getting word about the show and things like that.

Speaker 2 19:55

Well, no, I'm all for you doing that.

Speaker 1 19:57

And you know when you're talking 120 bucks a year versus 60 bucks a year or whatever it is that's a big enough difference that you know six bucks a month who cares. That's a big enough difference that you know six bucks a month who cares.

Speaker 2 20:09

But Mm, hmm, mm hmm Well, I will say I I'm using Grok way more than I thought I would.

Speaker 1 20:18

So you are paying for Twitter.

Speaker 2 20:21

Oh, of course, but that's because I bought a year and then I cancel it but I still have it. Yeah, just a year, but I'll renew it. At this point I I mean it's kind of it's proven to be more useful than I thought initially I have not yet played around with grok.

Speaker 1 20:38

I'll start working on it. But yeah, I, I just don't think much of any of these ais. I told you surprisingly enough um, what's the microsoft Microsoft one? Copilot has been the most useful for me professionally because if I and I use it like a search engine, if I ask it a question, it immediately gives me the references. I basically ignore its answer and go to the references and find the information I want. That's where it's useful. But you know, relying on any of these AIs to really answer a detailed question is foolish. You know, and I'll give you an example. I was asking a question on a NERC SIP regulation to do with supply chain management, so SIP 13. And it was pulling information from old documents still published on their website versus the actual enforced regulation.

Speaker 2 21:39

That's not helpful no, no, that's a good point and I I think, I I think this could be solved in the future by adding a standard, either separate text box, or just having a format where you can sort of direct it to sources that you are more cinched in it, because it's got information from all kinds of stuff, including bad sources. Yeah, and it would be nice to either limit what its sources are allowed to be or maybe do a weighted grading and just do like a plus and then give it a couple of links so it'll treat those as a higher priority than stuff that it just sort of knows from the initial training, and you know why that will never happen why is?

Speaker 2 22:32

that cost uh, yeah, but also I think I think we're getting closer and closer to just running these locally. You don't need to run this, the ais, uh, in the cloud and use somebody else's.

Speaker 1 22:47

You're you're fully well some of us are fully capable of running them locally.

Speaker 2 22:57

Um, who isn't capable of running it locally?

Speaker 1 23:01

People that predominantly use their phones. Uh, I mean, you say this, but when you look at like the new Google Pixel 9 and everything else, part of the chip design that they put into that was to be able to locally run AI. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 23:16

And Apple did the same thing with the iPhone 16, where their big selling point in fact, for people upgrading to it is the on-phone AI. Yeah, so you don't have to rely on some third-party cloud-based thing. I think there's some benefit to it, like having Siri locally or Google Talk or whatever they call it on the Google side having that local so it never leaves the phone. That's a plus right, yes, but also I think that there's no way you're going to have the equivalent of a chat, gpt or grok level of.

Speaker 1 23:59

Well, you don't have the storage. Yeah, exactly. So it's not quite the same thing, but you do know what you can have is the query and the voice recognition locally versus going off, which is what Google has done to a large extent. I'm still playing around with the stock ROM right now and debating on whether or not I'm going to change what's loaded on my Pixel 9 right now.

Speaker 2 24:26

So, what are you thinking?

Tech Security and Niche Networking

Speaker 1 24:35

right now and I gotta tell you well again. So for the average person who mildly cares about, security or you know fair. I'm glad you came honest and said mildly well, I mean, I okay for the person who cares, uh, about security more than the average iPhone user, right.

Speaker 2 24:53

That's somebody who cares a lot, because average iPhone user you know they care about their security quite a bit Uh-huh. That's why they have a phone like an iPhone with good security.

Speaker 1 25:06

Uh-huh, mm-hmm with good security, uh-huh. So with android 15 and what they've done on a lot of the granular permissions and everything else, yeah you can stop third-party stuff from doing just about anything you hold up.

Speaker 2 25:21

I thought I'm running android 16 on my device. Are you on 15 still you're? Not running 16 let me log in here.

Speaker 1 25:28

I'm pretty sure it's 16 uh, you may be running a lenovo version of something, but it is not android.

Speaker 2 25:36

16 what, what? How do I find out? Uh settings system bout okay, all right, keep talking, I'll do that.

Speaker 1 25:48

Anyway, with the current iteration of the Android OS, you can block third-party apps and be very granular about when and where and what they can do. The problem comes in on the Google services. You can say yes or no. You do not have the same level of granularity, and that's it. You can say yes or no.

Speaker 3 26:09

You do not have the same level of granularity, and that's it.

Speaker 1 26:11

So that is a limitation compared to something like Graphene OS. But Graphene OS you're not going to have those Google services, so it's not really an apples-to-apples comparison.

Speaker 2 26:21

All right, you're right, it is 15, but Lenovo version 16. That's what it was. I remember seeing 16. So it's their software add-on is version 16.

Speaker 1 26:33

Yeah, Anyway, the point is for most people, if you're bought into an Apple or Google ecosystem, Apple and Google are going to know everything you do with the device and they're going to be pretty entrenched. Yeah. That said, a lot of the third-party data brokers that for a long time on Android, were a major reason to run an alternate OS on your phone. Right, I think that's gone. Yeah, I think you're right, it's.

Speaker 1 27:02

Do you want to de-Google-fy your phone? If you don't want Google on your phone at all, go graphene. If you use Google on your phone at all, go graphene. If you use Google on your phone at all, how much do you really care at this point?

Speaker 2 27:17

Yeah, yeah, Like if you have Gmail as your primary email source, so Google's effectively reading all your email. Do you really need to de-Google-ify your phone?

Speaker 1 27:28

Well, so I have a Gmail account that I've had for a long, long time and basically it is my spam and dealing with bills and customers and stuff like that. It has customer service. It has nothing to do with personal correspondence.

Speaker 1 27:46

Personal correspondence is a different email account to do with personal correspondence. Personal correspondence is a different email account. But you know, it really comes down to how far do you want to go. Do you use Google Maps? So, for instance, on my last phone, anytime I wanted to use Google Maps I would literally have to, and I had some quick toggles set to do this, but I would literally have to turn on location services for Google maps, yep, when I wanted to use it. Yeah, you know, it's not something I would just leave on. I can do that pretty much the same way here on android 15 and restrict apps to only when I'm using them, which is not a new feature, that's been around. But you get a little bit more granularity and really being able to ensure services are not running in the background, things like that. There's even a dashboard on here that shows you what used, what permission, when.

Speaker 2 28:44

Yeah, it's amazing how, finally, Android's caught up to what iOS already had for the last four versions, ever since 13.

Speaker 1 28:53

Okay, I don't think it's quite the same implementation.

Speaker 2 28:57

No, it looks uglier, that's true, but point taken.

Speaker 1 29:01

It has more information in detail.

Speaker 2 29:03

Yes, I'm glad that Android is finally getting more serious about security, the way Apple's been so good. These are all good things. And, incidentally, you know I met you. Well, you mentioned that I have Lenovo, but yeah, I've got two Lenovo tablets that are on my desk pretty much permanently now that I've integrated in here. One of them's replaced a iPad and I've had no issues. I'm I'm having, uh, I'm running in a very mixed environment mac ios, android and windows yeah, the only ios I have is cisco uh, sure that I'm pump well.

Speaker 1 29:51

So cisco's switching environment and routing environment used to be called uh, you know, used to be ios. And then there's the ios model and there's a whole bunch of stuff networking that a lot of people will geek out on here. But when ios for ip iPhone OS came out and stole that acronym, a lot of us were like how are they not getting sued?

Speaker 2 30:19

I'm sure that there was a deal done, something yeah, because it had to have been traded, oh yeah, yeah. Well, and yeah, I mean, and it's not so different that it would just simply be covered under, and before we get too far.

Speaker 1 30:34

I realized I just misspoke a little bit ios versus osi but oh, oh, you mentioned.

Speaker 2 30:40

Okay, I thought. I thought there was an ios there before there is an ios.

Speaker 1 30:44

Yes, yeah and this, but I'm talking about the model that the OSI model.

Speaker 2 30:47

Yeah, yeah, I missed both With the layers. Yep, yep, yeah, because you know somebody would point that out. If you didn't correct yourself, yes, I don't know if CSB does know about the OSI model. I'm not sure about that. He's more of a software guy.

Speaker 1 31:05

OSI model versus TCP model. The mappings, okay. Osi model versus tcp model, the mappings all of it's gotten really fucking fuzzy over the years, to be honest with you.

Speaker 2 31:17

Uh, well, you do. When you start doing encapsulation and transports across different layers, it does get fuzzy that's my point.

Speaker 1 31:25

When, when we have tls, uh, at this point, when you look at, uh, even some of the control system protocols going down a level uh layer, you know two, and using actual ethernet encapsulation at that point for primary control, I mean there there are lots of things that break the rules that we set up a long time ago. The boundaries have fuzzed, is my point yeah, yeah, bring back the days of token link so, uh, you laugh, but I work on networks regularly that still use a token-based system for communication.

Speaker 2 32:08

I believe it. I do laugh because I haven't touched one of those in many decades. But I believe that you have.

Speaker 1 32:14

Yeah. So, for instance, a ABB 800XA DCS oh yeah, of course, yeah, one of those, yeah, which runs power plants, refineries, water purification systems, all sorts of stuff. The master bus protocol on there, that protocol that is used to kind of maintain the system and really communicate between control processors and everything else, was a serial token ring originally that they pointed over to ethernet, and to this day a modern implementation of an abb 800 xa will still use a token master to hand out and drive communications, uh, in a quote-unquote, deterministic way, unauthenticated of course. So it you can have anyone be the token master.

Speaker 2 33:10

Is the point there yeah, wow, yeah, I guess it's always a a competition between supporting legacy and advancing uh, yeah, in the control system world it's really the engineers.

Speaker 1 33:25

find something that works and until there's a damn good reason to move, yeah, they don't fuck with it?

Speaker 2 33:31

Yeah, it's because you still have a lot of what embedded? Windows 7? Or what was the embedded version?

Speaker 1 33:38

Oh, no, you have Windows Compact embedded still running in control systems Oxborough DCS, for example, on the FBM, so the field bus module, which is how it communicates to the endpoint devices. If you have an Ethernet FBM, those are literally running Windows Compact embedded on that FBM and they are updated through an XML or xml document for setting the ip address and things like that but there are ways to get into it and once you do you, you have system level access and you can do anything you want, so yeah yeah, that's, that's nuts and a lot of people are going.

Speaker 1 34:28

Why the fuck are they talking about this right?

Speaker 2 34:30

now yeah, I was going to mention that as well, as, like you know, we kind of maneuvered from our usual politics and guns conversation to geeking out about not just technology but technology niche. That there's, it runs our lives, but sure it's niche it may run our lives, but it is absolutely niche and, uh, you probably know everybody in that niche on a first name basis, given that you go to all these events not everybody, but uh, everybody that matters yeah yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 35:05

So there you go. It's um, yeah, so let's get off that topic, because we've probably lost about two-thirds of the people listening by this point.

Speaker 1 35:19

Okay, if, if not more there may be literally nobody listening at this point if you're listening, let us know is there anybody listening ever send us, send us something on x to I mean, we get tom and csb for sure well, yeah, tom and csb will reply to him pretty much anything, uh, but yeah, we're.

Speaker 2 35:41

We definitely are curious to see how many people made it past this point in the episode. So what else you've been up to other than thanksgiving week?

Gun Enthusiasts Discuss New Firearms

Speaker 1 35:49

obviously it's a big deal yeah, uh really thanksgiving week and uh just dealing with the fun of family and everything else. So you've been sending me.

Speaker 2 36:04

You've been. No, let me correct that. You've been spanning spamming me with advertisements for sick firearms I have not been.

Speaker 1 36:12

I don't know what you mean uh-huh, uh-huh, every other whatever you mean every other email I get.

Speaker 2 36:18

Is you forwarding something to me?

Speaker 1 36:21

there have been some good deals, dude, uh-huh uh-huh, yeah, black friday.

Speaker 2 36:25

There there has actually been some decent black right. So I I've got two things. I'll mention One of them. I actually got like a month ago, but just picked up recently, and that was what I sent you a picture of.

Speaker 1 36:37

Until it's in your possession, it doesn't count.

Speaker 2 36:39

Exactly. And so yeah, because legally, until you go and you fill out the form, it's not really yours yet. So I did finally pick up my IWI Carmel, which is, I think, going to become my favorite. I mean, I can't really call it an AR-15. I guess I'd call it a no. It's a very odd hybrid.

Speaker 1 37:08

Yeah, it's a very odd hybrid between an AR platform and an AK and a Galil. Yeah, I think it is literally a child of that, which is Like if all three of them got together and somehow the DNA mixed entirely.

Speaker 2 37:25

Well, the Galil to begin with was already kind of a mix of an AK and an.

Speaker 1 37:29

AR. Exactly, it's the hybrid vessel that allows this to actually happen.

Speaker 2 37:33

But this is like the next generation hybridization of the AK and the AR, so this gun checked off all the boxes that I had and, ben, you can attest to this I was literally looking for for about a year and a half long period of time I thought you knew about this, otherwise I would have told you you're a big iwi fan.

Speaker 2 37:54

So I'm like, of course he knows right well, I you know, when I bought my last iwi, this gun was did not exist, so I I guess I didn't know about it. But anyway, as soon as I knew, as soon as I found out, I bought the damn thing. And I have not shot it yet. I need to go back to the range. But from just dry firing it and plinking around with it, it's um, it totally checks all the boxes.

Speaker 2 38:18

It has a a very comfortable um ar grip on it. It has it's actually a good weight balance. I like that. It's not as front heavy as the galil. Um, it is a unlike actually a lot of the other pistol uh pistols that I bought that are rifle caliber. This thing is a rifle, full-on rifle. It is 16 inch barrel but it's got a folding stock, which you can't really do on the ar platform, not easily anyway. Um, and it has a left side uh charging handle, which is something I was looking for specifically because, if I have a gun with the right side charging handle, it instantly gives away that.

Speaker 2 39:08

you know I'm clearly an AK shooter because I'm going to use my left hand, so this way no one's going to notice that.

Speaker 1 39:16

Yeah, have you seen the CMMG Descent?

Speaker 2 39:21

Yeah, I think you've sent it to me.

Speaker 1 39:23

I mean that right there. I would think would check a lot of your boxes too.

Speaker 2 39:27

It does. It does. Yeah, absolutely I agree. But you know you got to limit your gun purchases to a reasonable number.

Speaker 1 39:37

Yes, per month, once a month Per month Per month.

Speaker 2 39:41

Put that caveat there.

Speaker 1 39:43

Yeah, the IWI is cheaper, so there's that too.

Speaker 2 39:45

Yeah, not by much, though, though I don't think uh, the descent msrp is like 2400 bucks oh, yeah, yeah, so it's definitely cheap.

Speaker 1 39:55

This was but the descent also can come in different calibers, though that's the advantage of it is you can get it in 762, by 39, if you want, or 308 and I do like cmng.

Speaker 2 40:07

I have, uh, have well, in fact, tucker Tucker's got a number of their guns. He's a big fan, okay, and so I played with a bunch of his guns and it's a good gun. I like it. He's got everything in 7.62x39, though.

Speaker 1 40:34

Tucker Carlson does.

Speaker 2 40:36

No, not Tucker Carlson. Tucker Max, oh, tucker Max. How would I play with Tucker Carlson's guns? I don't know.

Speaker 1 40:43

You know people, I know Tucker Max. You shock me every now and then.

Speaker 2 40:49

Oh, please. You're not shockable, don't? Know. Um, yeah, so I do like cmmg. I would not at all be opposed to picking one or several of them up. Uh, the other benefit of cmmg is if you get them from the factory you can do very fun colors. They have a fairly large Cerakote palette that they're able to do.

Speaker 1 41:17

Yeah, from the factory, from the factory, yeah.

Speaker 2 41:21

So I can get my white guns, or I can get red guns, or, you know, green guns or blue guns.

Speaker 1 41:27

Yes, you choose your gun colors. That will stick out like a sore thumb during the hullabaloo that's coming.

Speaker 2 41:33

You mean the nuclear winter that's coming, and me with my white guns? Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 41:38

I'll stick out all right, yeah, yeah, if that happens, sure, which, by the way, since we talked last, russia used a MIRV, which everybody keeps calling this an ICBM. It wasn't an ICBM, but the scary part that we do need to look at and think about was that it was a MIRV.

Speaker 2 41:58

Hey, I just got a booster gram, ooh, even though we're not streaming live, which is funny.

Speaker 1 42:04

Someone's figured out, when we're recording Gene Apparently.

Speaker 2 42:07

Apparently, someone's got the camera running right now. Someone's figured out when we're recording Gene Apparently. Apparently, someone's got the camera running right now. This is a bonus boost, just so I could say my last boostogram was supposed to say print server not front server Condolences on the Mac.

Speaker 1 42:23

What the hell is this for?

Speaker 2 42:26

Is it? From CSB, or is this for?

Speaker 1 42:27

Unrelenting.

Speaker 2 42:28

No, it's for Speedy Bubble. I bet it was for unrelenting. It could be, I have no idea though.

Speaker 1 42:33

Um, yeah, probably was for darren or for unrelenting oh man, he's the one in charge of those damn you for getting me looking the descent in 308 with a 20 inch barrel three grand no 22.99 oh, that's actually not a bad price from the factory yeah, they're, they're.

Speaker 2 43:02

If you're gonna order their stuff, it's better to go direct.

Speaker 2 43:05

Yeah, I and I, I, just I, I don't need, I don't need it, I don't need it you do need it, you totally want it, you know, you do anyway, one of the video guys one of the video guys I watch has does ads for them all the time yeah well, uh, grantham or somebody recently did a review of the uh the cmng descent in 762 by 39 okay, and that everybody's, everybody's, had great things to say about it they do make a lot of some 60 by 39 guns, probably second only to uh palmetto. I think those guys probably make the most in that caliber.

Speaker 1 43:52

But Well, Palmetto, you know, has their AK clones. They've got a bunch of different stuff that they're doing. They've got their versions of what is the Jackal or whatever. Mm, hmm. That I got one of those. Okay, the Jackal's pretty cool in 762x39. And of course they even make their ARs in 762x39. They've got their. Akbs Lots and lots of stuff. They've got the Krink clones that they've done. Palmetto State has come so far, dude.

Speaker 2 44:34

Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, they're not the little, like you know, backwards operation that makes shoddy weapons anymore.

Speaker 1 44:43

Well, again, I don't know that I would ever say they've made shoddy weapons.

Speaker 2 44:49

I think when they started the, there was videos they were making some pretty interesting uh videos in demolition range, testing their guns and making fun of them yeah, five, six years ago.

Speaker 1 45:01

All right, I don't know, man, I think that there's a lot of good stuff out there and, uh, I for one am all for more manufacturers making more stuff, and we can argue about the efficacy and different utilities and things later.

Speaker 2 45:23

Yeah, I'm all for it. But yeah, I'm trying to remember. I think I paid $1,400 for 1400 for the caramel. I think it was a.

Speaker 1 45:31

It was a very reasonably priced gun yeah it, but it's only available on 506 only 556 right now. Yeah the other good thing is the descent is would be really a competitor for my AR 10. Cause the, you know the divorce, just such a special category. But you know this could be another AR 10 competitor. But the great thing is they all use the same magazines.

Speaker 2 45:59

Yeah, that is a, that is a plus, yeah.

Speaker 1 46:02

The only, the only three oh eights other than bolt guns. Bolt guns don't count because they're always going to have their own magazines, but, uh, the only three oh eight that I have that it has its own magazines is my M1A, which I still fucking. Just love that gun. Now the can we talk about Russia and the Merv now?

Speaker 2 46:21

Okay, yeah, almost. Are there now? Okay, yeah, almost, are there uh any uh bolt guns that use the semi-automatic magazines?

Speaker 1 46:32

oh yeah, there's plenty of chassis that can take different things and you know a lot of people have the ac, is mag or whatever that's not quite an ar mag but it's pretty close.

Speaker 1 46:44

Basically a single stack ar mag, uh, the mag puller someone came out with a while back. A lot of guns have standardized on that. They're standardizing on you know. They're moving to more and more standards, yeah, but you still have, like, I've got a savage, uh, I've got a savage access to that I picked up and that'll eventually be my son's. First, you know, deer rifle and it, the savage 2, uses a different mag from the savage 1 and they're all proprietary and they're a pain in the ass to find yeah, I hate that.

Speaker 2 47:19

I yeah, I think things are definitely getting better, with more companies standardizing on either Glock mags or, you know, usually Glock mags because they're out of.

Speaker 1 47:30

For pistols? Sure yeah.

Speaker 2 47:32

So anyway, yes, let's go ahead and switch topics.

Speaker 1 47:35

I will say that. One quick thing about that though. Glock mags might become unseated here pretty quick for the standard double stack mag.

Speaker 2 47:50

Okay.

Speaker 1 47:52

When you look at SIGs, uh, three, six, five mags and what they're doing, size wise, and the engineering they've pulled off in that and what uh that allows them to do from a small package with the 365, uh, I don't know, man, and get, give it.

Speaker 2 48:10

Give it a few decades and they might catch up a few decades all right, well, I mean, glock is just so entrenched yeah, yeah, glock is very entrenched and the smart thing they did was making the guns in the US and Georgia and having super low pricing for the police departments, so it became kind of a no-brainer. It's like well, would you like to get a gun for everybody in your police department, or half the people in your police department for the same amount of money?

Speaker 1 48:42

Yeah, and look, glocks are not bad guns. I hate them, but they are not bad guns. I hate them, but they're not bad guns like I just don't like shooting them. Part of the reason why I have a dagger from psa is they changed a little bit of the ergonomics, enough for it to not just feel like shit in my hand.

Speaker 2 49:02

Yeah well and, and as somebody who likes glocks, I switched from glocks. Like I only have one glock left, I sold all the rest of them because, because, why? Because of ergonomics. That's the only reason. That's why I went to the xd series and then the xdm series is because they had a lot of similar features, but they they had improvements on their economics front and I will say that the, the XDs, have performed really well for me as well. Um, I've enjoyed many, many thousands of rounds going through all of my XDs, but I still always will have a soft spot for Glock, because that was the original plastic guns. That was the original gun that I had to argue about all the time with 9-11 guys and explain to them why it's better.

Speaker 2 49:55

What.

Speaker 1 49:56

You mean a 1911?

Speaker 2 49:57

Yeah, yeah. What did it say? 9-11? Yeah, 1911. These days, 2011. But back when I was, young.

Speaker 1 50:04

We used to have 1911s. I would love to have a 2011.

Speaker 2 50:08

Yeah, they're priced like they're 2011s too, aren't they?

Speaker 1 50:10

Yeah, yeah, but they have come a long way. It started out as building a double stack 1911, 9mm, and it's really morphed into okay. Now this is a serious design and they've made a ton of improvements over the original design.

Speaker 2 50:29

Yeah, and there's some manufacturers making very pretty versions of them right now. Yes, yes, anyway, all right. So what else do you want to talk about?

Speaker 1 50:38

Merv. All right. Let's do it. I hope people realize a couple things here. One, it wasn't an icbm, but it was a weapon that is, in russia's arsenal, basically been assumed to be a nuke. Uh, now we've seen it with conventional warheads, but this was the first use of a MIRV in warfare mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 51:07

I think that's significant yeah, yeah, I mean it's cool and for those who don't know, mirv is a multiple, a multiple reentry, independently targeted, you know. Basically you shoot a ballistic missile up, yeah, the warhead breaks apart and you have up to like 20 of these independently targeted little warheads coming down.

Speaker 2 51:29

It's like a smart shotgun shell with flechettes, or fleches, flechettes. I don't know how to say it, where each one has their own little guidance system and rocket. So yeah, it's, they've been around forever, but I think you're right, it's the first time they've actually been used. But I remember reading about these things in the 80s oh yeah, the us.

Speaker 1 51:51

We were the first ones to develop it, uh, but what it comes down to is they used it first, so yeah, and I I've seen a couple of different videos.

Speaker 2 52:04

I'm not sure of the authenticity of any of these videos, but, uh, it does look cool when they land, because it looks like it's just hailing explosives well, and they come in at different intervals.

Speaker 1 52:19

It's impressive, there is no doubt yeah, which probably also means expensive oh very, but at the same time, you know that basically all the interceptors, everything we've given, yeah, ukraine is not set up to defend against this type of weapon well, okay, so you say that, but here's the official statement I read from yeah, yeah, the official bullshit.

Strategic Escalation and Political Spending

Speaker 2 52:46

Yeah, it's like on the one hand, they're begging for money because they're now getting attacked by these super modern weapons and they really need a good anti-rocket defense system. On the other hand, in they also have claimed from the official spokesman to have shut down 69 out of 70 of those missiles that were fired. Okay Well, it sounds to me like they're doing pretty good.

Speaker 1 53:14

They don't need jack shit then right, yeah, we've both seen the footage.

Speaker 2 53:18

Yeah, We've seen footage of like at least four different locations of these things coming down, but apparently they've shot down all but one.

Speaker 1 53:28

So there you go yeah, I, I don't know, man, I, I think it is very obvious that. So here's the thing unless you get the I, not icbm, but the intermediate ballistic missile unless you get it before that warhead detaches, you're not going to get all those small reentry vehicles. You're just not. And not only that, because most of them are on glide paths. Yes, they're targeted and yes, they have some control. Tracking them is not as easy, right, it's not a powered thing. Going over, it's not the same as easy, right, it's not a powered thing going over.

Speaker 2 54:06

It's not the same. Well, and for my, what I remember about the U S ones is, uh, that can't remember the model, but I think it had 16 independent warheads. But we're not talking about like something that splits into five or six, it's, it's going well above that. So, getting getting a thousand I forget thousand, even, let's say a hundred of those, it means that you're gonna have well over a thousand independent warheads. Rating down, yeah, we'll see how many they can actually fire.

Speaker 1 54:39

But yes, yeah, uh, well, I mean the, uh, the big subs have 16 of those a piece. Yeah, but how many operational subs are there in?

Speaker 2 54:53

russia's name? No, no, I'm talking about the us ones okay, yeah yeah and you know.

Speaker 1 55:01

By the way, the other thing we need to talk about is China's aircraft carrier fail at some point.

Speaker 2 55:06

Oh, I didn't hear about that. You'll have to tell me, okay.

Speaker 1 55:10

But anyway, the point is, this is an interesting escalation and this comes right after Russia's red line was crossed, and they escalated as you would expect, Mm-hmm as you would expect.

Speaker 2 55:24

I will say I do agree that it's an escalation, but I will say that I think it's a tempered escalation, because what it's doing is saying we are prepared to use more modern, more deadly weapons. But honestly, could they have achieved the exact same end result without switching to a MIRV system? Probably yes, but the targets they attacked could have been attacked with the single.

Speaker 1 55:56

Here's the thing.

Speaker 1 55:58

So if let's say they're targeting Kiev and we think they're targeting Kiev with this and they decide one of those MIRVs is actually a nuke and they want to hit Poland, we would be sitting there going okay, we think this is hitting Kiev or Lviv or whatever, something closer to Poland, and it's well within the weapons capability of one of those warheads going and striking wherever it needs to. And if I mean we're not going to respond because we think it's just this like the here, here's the thing. It begs for further escalation, which is problematic.

Speaker 2 56:42

Yeah, yeah, that is true, um, but I think also, it's exactly what the warhawks wanted, right, they want to escalate this. The warhawk strategy has always been to push russia to the point where they have to do something, which then can be pointed at and say this is why we have to stop russia and get rid of putin, and we can't stop fighting them until putin's dead. It's like they they've, they're trying to just throw little little rocks at the bear until the bear goes and, you know, eat somebody and they're like see, it's a dangerous animal.

Speaker 2 57:30

Now we gotta shoot it. You like my analogy?

Speaker 1 57:35

would they be wrong?

Speaker 2 57:38

would they be wrong uh?

Speaker 1 57:40

I mean is is a bear a dangerous animal?

Speaker 2 57:44

I mean women prefer bears to American men. That's pretty obvious.

Speaker 1 57:53

Yeah, they wonder why the election went the way it did.

Speaker 2 57:58

Yeah, yeah, exactly, that's a good point. Are we off this topic? Are we done?

Speaker 1 58:06

No, whatever you want to do, I think it's a significant enough thing in the Ukrainian war. I figured we would talk about it. Obviously, you're like eh, whatever, it's not that big of a deal, I mean.

Speaker 2 58:19

I'm still waiting for the first nuke to go off, then it'll be interesting. Yeah, okay, the first nuke to go off, then it'll be interesting. Yeah, okay. Um, anyway, what I was gonna say is switching topics slightly to the whole uh, kamala campaign, who has blown through double the money that trump did, and over that and over is it more than double yeah and seems to be um like out of money to the, to the fact that they owe a bunch of money to different vendors yeah, but did you hear what carville was saying?

Speaker 2 58:58

no, what do you?

Speaker 1 58:58

think so. Carville went off and he's calling for an audit because he's calling.

Speaker 2 59:04

Well, you can't have that Whoa. What's he got? A?

Speaker 1 59:06

death wish. He's even talked about running for DNC chair. Oh, he's definitely got a death wish. Well, and he's old enough that it wouldn't take much. No but the funny thing is, so he said the campaign spent right at a billion and a half dollars, and then the main super PAC spent, uh, 900 million dollars plus a couple other, so they spent over two and a half billion dollars. And the question is, where did it go and how is this your result?

Accents, Video Games, AI Music

Speaker 1 59:36

like you outspend the republicans and the republican super packs three to one and you lost everything. Yeah, yeah. So Carville is coming out and for those who don't know, james Carville was Clinton's campaign manager. You know, it's the economy. Stupid like big big Democrat of the nineties. Think of him as the Carl Rove to build Clinton's George W Bush.

Speaker 2 1:00:04

Yeah, it's a good way of putting it. He was also I don't know if he still is, but he was married to a uh, republican strategist, uh, mary, something or other, I can't remember her name, which is hilarious because like how does that marriage work?

Speaker 1 1:00:21

and carville is a coon ass from louisiana, so you may have a hard time understanding him he, he is fun to listen to.

Speaker 2 1:00:28

Every time I hear carville I just keep thinking okay, now what recipe is going to tell me how to make next? Yeah, I mean, he just sounds like a cajun chef I guess, I. I guess I've seen too many of those on TV. That's my first impression. When I hear that K-June sound is okay, what are we cooking?

Speaker 1 1:00:50

Yeah, having grown up around it, I don't have a problem with it, but yeah, Did I say you have a problem.

Speaker 2 1:00:57

I'm asking what?

Speaker 1 1:00:58

kind of food you're going to have.

Speaker 2 1:00:59

I have a problem understanding him, but sure no, no, I think he's fine, he's fine there's, but sure no, no, I think he's fine, he's fine there, there's. Uh, you know what I? I this is tangent, obviously, but it's related I am still, to this day, in my wise old age, surprised by the number of people that are racist towards accents oh, but do people hear my accent?

Speaker 2 1:01:24

they automatically deduct at least, at least 20 iq points well, it's a good thing, you have enough to go around which I use to my advantage and I'm okay with it but it is annoying sometimes right, right, um, yeah, I could see that.

Speaker 2 1:01:42

Uh, I do the same thing for New Jersey accents. I have to admit that that is my one area of like. I intellectually know that the accent should not be connected to intelligence, but when I hear somebody with a like a New Jersey accent, I can't help it. Like they lose 20 IQ points. Right, right there just for that accent.

Speaker 2 1:02:08

Uh jersey women get a different treatment, for me but sure okay, well, I don't, I don't know that they have different accents from men no, it just I put women from new jersey, a slightly different category than other women, I see okay, I don't you. Women from New Jersey. Yes, who's from New Jersey? I don't know anybody from New Jersey, oh okay, I dated one.

Speaker 2 1:02:37

I will say I went on a date with one when I was working in New York. I was very single at that point in my life and a lot slimmer, and I went on a bunch of dates around New York and one of them was a date with a chick from Jersey City and it was probably one of the worst dates I've ever been on. So I mean, but I don't know, I was just like I felt like I was getting catfished because it like nothing that she had in her profile was actually her okay, what site were you on that you were at this point in time at this point in time.

Speaker 2 1:03:44

I think it was probably like yahoo. Oh God, it was a long time ago, it was back in the 90s. My friend, oh Jesus yeah, you were right A wee kid of 10 years old.

Speaker 1 1:03:58

back then, you know, I had some teachers in high school that got my brief two-year stint in public school. They got married. They had met playing mech warrior yeah, yeah, yeah. I always hear stories like that and then in college I had some friends. They got married and now they're divorced but playing oh shit, what was the game with the?

Speaker 2 1:04:25

chainsaw gun oh chainsaw gun.

Speaker 1 1:04:29

Oh, chainsaw gun oh Jesus.

Speaker 2 1:04:32

Like Duke Nukem.

Speaker 1 1:04:39

Keep talking for a second Gears of War, gears of War.

Speaker 3 1:04:41

There we go. Gears of War, yeah, yeah, yeah, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 1:04:53

Yeah, it's, people do get married from playing video games. But I don't know, man, I think about 90 of the video game, uh, players with female names are actually dudes. Oh, I'm sure, because it and it, it makes no sense. Like I, I play a female character in games, like I'm sure you do, uh-huh, I do in games like, um, uh, cyberpunk, because they have a third person view camera and whose ass would you rather be looking at the whole time you're playing the game?

Speaker 1 1:05:27

I don't like. I hate third person games.

Speaker 2 1:05:29

The game I hate third-person games. Well, fair enough.

Speaker 1 1:05:30

I hate third-person perspective games.

Speaker 2 1:05:32

But if you had to play a third-person game would you rather be looking at a dude's? Ass or a chick's ass. I'm not looking at their ass.

Speaker 1 1:05:42

I'm paying attention to the surroundings.

Speaker 2 1:05:44

Well, you say that, but come on, when you can pick the outfits that this character wears really how many hours do you spend actually going through and setting up your character? Uh, at this point I have them all preset so I don't have to spend any time.

Speaker 1 1:06:00

But right, but you don't just take a stock character and just go play the effing game but that character is like a black lesbian so well, I don't know about you, dude, I don't. That's not the character I'm going to be playing okay, I, I I'm just not into the role-playing portion of it. So, yeah, my character shouldn't matter to the overall game story or play I am playing it.

Speaker 2 1:06:28

Cyberpunk has a lesbian relationship in it.

Speaker 1 1:06:31

Yeah, if you go that way and everything else. Yes, I understand that, oh you sure as hell go that way when you create a female character. Oh jeez Rails. This episode is all for Rails. This is what we get for skipping last week, because you're too tired I was tired Playing around with week because you're too tired. I was playing around with songs I was too tired.

Speaker 2 1:06:50

I was screwing around with making songs.

Speaker 1 1:06:53

That's true I need to make you gotta publish the texas independence one. I will.

Speaker 2 1:06:57

I will do that one, I I'll, and I'll do more of them. I mean, I've been talking to more and more people that have been doing this. I got my dad interested in doing this now, so he's in there playing around. Uh, there's a lot of video game songs that are getting made right now.

Speaker 1 1:07:12

There's a lot of music being generated by these services like, okay, if you're a lyricist and you put it in there and you just want the ai to sing it for you, fine and it's a, it's a decent performance, it's an okay performance, but it is not. It's not ever going to be. You know, joe Cocker at Woodstock singing with a little help from my friends, right it. You can't do that, can never give you that kind of performance.

Speaker 2 1:07:46

I will bet you it's just a matter of a couple more versions and then you'll be able to dial that stuff in okay, so as soon as you can intoxicate your ai and do these different things, okay, we'll see man human communications is one of the least complicated things that a computer can do. It it's kind of trivial, so it's just literally a matter of time. It's not a question of can it, it's a question of when can it?

Speaker 1 1:08:15

Uh, okay, we, we will. We will disagree on that.

Speaker 2 1:08:20

No, we won't. You're going to agree with me. Once you hear it, you won't have a choice. The other thing I would say is is this really all that different than the professional music production that goes into the top 10 pop hits, like how much of what you hear on the pop radio stations is what was recorded in the microphone and how much of it has been completely processed and synthesized and tweaked and changed and added to and subtracted from.

Speaker 1 1:09:00

Hey, you're not getting any disagreement with me on this.

Speaker 2 1:09:05

Right now, I think the AI. We're on version 4 of Sonuu. That's what we're talking about. Um, I think it's very good at simulating popular music sounds, but I think as time goes on, it's going to get better at simulating more esoteric sounds the problem comes into the cost.

Speaker 1 1:09:28

The cost of all this is right now being subsidized. All these AI companies are losing money like crazy, including Google, including Microsoft, that have the compute power at their disposal to use whenever they want. It still costs them a shit ton of money to run this, and the question is is it worth that money?

Speaker 2 1:09:51

Well, I think from a big picture perspective, this is worth that money a lot more than sitting and mining fucking Bitcoin. That's just generating heat.

Speaker 2 1:10:03

All that's doing is warming up your room or data center. Yeah, I don't mind that coin so yeah, I know, but my point is there's going to be a ton of data centers running computers doing stupid shit. This is a lesser stupid shit activity than a lot of other activities yeah, I okay, and if I okay, and if we can get rid of Hollywood by having completely AI created movies with scripts put together by people paying $20 a month to be able to make their own movies, that would be a great thing. Okay. So, I guess we'll see I'm just saying it's um.

Speaker 2 1:10:52

Did you hear uh aoc is uh got an explorational committee for running for president yeah, and did you see the meme I just sent you? I did I did yeah, but I mean, I'm not really surprised by that meme. That sounds about right yeah. That's a meme of. Aoc smiling for a photograph and the caption says great news my IQ test results came back and it came back negative.

Speaker 1 1:11:20

Yep. The fact is, look, she will likely run in 2028. Will she win the democratic nomination? Doubtful? Oh, I hope so. I I hope so too, because she's just so fucking stupid she is completely stupid, but she looks cute being stupid oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, in the words of Thomas Sowell, don't be distracted by them, big old socialist titties.

Speaker 2 1:11:53

Mm-hmm, and she got some. Oh yes, and so far at least, she's not putting on a bunch of weight.

Speaker 1 1:12:00

No, and she's cute in her own way. She looks like a donkey at times and everything else. But she's attractive. But to say aoc is not attractive is just disingenuous well she's.

Speaker 2 1:12:13

I. I'd say she's attractive, but she's not beautiful like she's one of those chicks that you know that you you'd meet at a bar in college and and try and go back to your place with Not the kind of chick you'd meet and go. Holy shit, I need to get married.

Speaker 1 1:12:31

Right Now her body is. Her face is just weird. Anyway, we're speaking as producers here, okay.

Speaker 2 1:12:38

Yeah, speak for yourself. I'm speaking as a man.

Speaker 1 1:12:42

Anyway, it will be very entertaining to watch her debate, because she is a gaffe machine.

Speaker 2 1:12:51

She is dumber than Kamala. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Kamala just spits out nonsense. Aoc will start making the argument for the other side.

Speaker 1 1:13:05

Yes, other side yes, and and it like someone asked her to spell orange at one point and she said, like the fruit of the color.

Speaker 2 1:13:17

Yeah, exactly, there's not a difference. I, I love that, that clip where she is asking our who's going to be our future border czar. Uh, saying you know none of these or no? She literally said illegal immigrants are not criminals, sir, yeah, to which he immediately has to point out uh, based on usc code section 18, bloody, bloody blah, they literally are criminals. Yeah, like how can you use the word illegal and then say not criminal?

Speaker 1 1:13:57

I. The stupidity reigns supreme there, but it will be interesting. But here's the thing.

Speaker 1 1:14:04

So, with kamala imploding, which you saw, that video that she posted recently where she's clearly fucking drunk, oh, totally drunk but I people say she's always been an alcoholic, so right, but I think she's lost it and I think she's gone off the deep end with this loss and I I think they that was an assassination attempt in some ways, at least character assassination, where they just said here, just speak your heart. And she goes on this drunken rant. You know, I think Kamala's out, but I think you have Gavin Newsom, Gretchen, Whitmer, AOC and who else in the field for the democrats in 2028. I definitely think newsom and whitmer and aoc appears to be in. Who else? Yeah?

Speaker 2 1:14:58

I don't know, man, that's a good question. Um, so aoc is going to be trying to get the burning bros she'll get them she'll get them for sure. Uh, who else has really kind of come out on the well chank uger?

Speaker 1 1:15:15

probably will again yeah, well, he can't, but that's fine. What? Why you say that he's not eligible to run for president? Well, he ran last time yes, and got nothing and had still hasn't sued about it and didn't get on.

Speaker 2 1:15:32

He didn't get a bunch of ballot access or anything no and the fact is, but he probably did increase his audience on the show, and that's what which I think was the main reason for doing it. Yeah, and then, speaking of the young turks, have you, have you been watching the journey of his co-host?

Speaker 1 1:15:52

anna casperian yeah uh, from a distance, like I, I don't watch the young turks.

Speaker 2 1:16:00

I used to a long time ago yeah before they went off the fucking deep end I used to back when when all the guys that are currently conservative show hosts used to be on there well, not just that, but who who's.

Speaker 1 1:16:17

Who is the MSNBC host that went off the deep end who isn't there?

Speaker 2 1:16:26

which one are you thinking of? Um the chick or the? Guy, no guy oh, with the glasses, yes, uh, fuck, what is his name? Uh, why I'm picturing him? I can't remember his name not chris hayes um, what is his name anyway?

Speaker 1 1:16:50

yeah, it doesn't matter, but uh, keith olbermann like I used to watch keith olbermann during the bush administration because he was actually calling out the bush administration for some of the shit they were doing, and in a reasonable way. And then, when obama got elected, he went sycophant that way and it's like no and anyway. Being a principled person means that as people shift their opinions for their audience, as they many meander through you, you watch them for some things and then throw them away on others well, anyway, anna kasparian was a cheerleader for the young turks since she was like 20, yeah, and um, uh, who's the?

Political Evolution of Young Turks Host

Speaker 2 1:17:40

uh, the kind of comedian older dude that used to be on the young turks and left there and kind of started his own show uh, I'm not, darren, I can't, you can't your mind, you can't read my head the way he can.

Speaker 2 1:17:55

No, uh, it's. Uh, it's like a irish type comedian dude. I can't remember his name, but he's got the glasses. Um, jimmy jimmy something. Maybe you mean door jimmy door. Yeah, there you go. So you read my Jimmy Jimmy something. Maybe you mean Door Jimmy Door. Yeah, there you go. So you read my mind.

Speaker 1 1:18:11

I have to give you more clues, though I didn't know he was only on Church, yeah yeah, he was a regular there.

Speaker 2 1:18:20

You know, dave was on there as well. Dave who Dave Rubin? Okay. Yeah, dave Rubin. Okay, dave Rubin was a regular there as well. So, anyway, jimmy was talking about when Anna first started there because he was already there and how she used to dress like a complete slut. They'd have to tell her to dress less provocatively or they couldn't have her be on the episodes Like she'd show up in a miniskirt with no panties on and then you know the crew's laughing the whole time they're filming.

Speaker 1 1:19:12

I mean, why would anyone complain about this?

Speaker 2 1:19:17

Well, it's not good for a business to have that type of environment. I don't care what you do at home, dude, but that's not a conducive thing for a business environment. Uh, unless you're in the hooker business, of course, then it is conducive I mean, are the news model business, everything else the news?

Speaker 1 1:19:41

I mean, fox has the info, babes, and always has.

Speaker 2 1:19:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't see wearing underwear.

Speaker 1 1:19:49

We don't know I'm yeah, he's not like.

Speaker 2 1:19:50

The camera guy is giving us upskirt shots used to back back when fox was run by men uh not women like it is these days. Okay, anyway, my point is that if you watch Anna early on, she was 100%, all in total, socialist, liberal brainwashed type chick which again one of those not bad looking, but not yeah, yeah not.

Speaker 2 1:20:21

Well, she's. You know she's Middle Eastern. The nose is the big problem with her. Yeah, she's. Oh, what the hell is the country she's from? They're the ones that the turks, jealous, cited armenia, she's armenian, then how the hell is she on the show?

Speaker 2 1:20:36

I know, right, isn't that funny? I thought it was hilarious when that like. It's like yeah, you, as an armenian daughter of immigrants, you got a job working for a show that calls itself the young turks, which was literally a group that was genociding armenians. That's, that's awesome. So either way, um, I don't know if she ever fucked shank or not, but, um, certainly there's been plenty of rumors which, by the way, over the years he's gained a lot of weight oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:21:09

Well, I think he's about my age. I think he's in his 50s right now.

Speaker 1 1:21:12

No, yeah no, no, no, no, no, he's not that old um you.

Speaker 2 1:21:21

How old do you think he is? He's 54. You are so wrong, jesus, yeah he's literally my. I did not realize he was that old yeah, yeah he seems younger than that to me no, no, he sounds younger because he still thinks like a college student yeah, I mean, if you're still an idiot liberal, then you're still an idiot exactly he matured. How old do you think she is? I don't know. What does she look like?

Speaker 1 1:21:56

I'd have to see a recent picture of her.

Speaker 2 1:21:59

So you're just going to not say anything, you're going to chicken out.

Speaker 1 1:22:02

She's got to be in her 30s 38.

Speaker 2 1:22:07

Again, a little late for gaining a little perspective, but better late than never and she's been on that show for literally half her. Over half her life she's been doing that show um anyway, you're making a point about have I been?

Speaker 2 1:22:24

watching this transformation, and so what's been happening is there are two things. One is it kind of started during the Me Too movement and then it kind of progressed on through the whole. Trans men using or I guess they're trans women men using women's bathrooms by calling themselves women. They're trans women men using women's bathrooms by calling themselves women. And, uh, she started pushing back on that and being more along the lines of uh, what's the chick that wrote harry potter? Uh, katie lang, something like that. I jd JK Rawlings. Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 2 1:23:13

Who, incidentally, is a total libtard.

Speaker 1 1:23:20

But she's found herself in the company of conservatives on this one single issue of men using women's bathrooms. Yeah, I don't know if I would call her a total libtard, because she it depends on your definition she's obviously a capital capitalist. She believes in the money she's made there. She's economically and on it on a lot of social issues. Yes, I would agree with you, but I think there's some more nuance there that she's always made fun of conservatives in britain.

Speaker 2 1:23:42

She's always been on the left side, doesn't? The british conservative might as well be a democrat right, but she's making fun of them from the further to the left side. Well, who doesn't?

Speaker 1 1:23:52

The British conservative might as well be a Democrat Right, but she's making fun of him from the further to the left. Perspective is my point.

Speaker 2 1:23:56

Yeah, and I'm, I understand, I'm still just pointing it out. No, Sargon of Asada is a liberal. He just again happens to be perceived as being conservative, yeah, yeah. So anyway, my point was that she's had several things that have kind of she's stood up and said wait a minute, hold up. Why are we supporting this side? And and then you know, living in California she was, she was, um, attacked by a homeless man physically attacked yeah, yeah, physically attacked.

Speaker 2 1:24:40

I don't think she was raped, I didn't think it went that far, but she basically was no, she was able to avoid that?

Speaker 1 1:24:46

yeah, she did, but she could have been raped.

Speaker 2 1:24:48

She could have been raped quite easily and I think she recognizes this.

SpaceX Funding and AI Music

Speaker 2 1:24:52

Yes, yeah and and that was another big push for her to kind of stand up and go hold up liberals are pushing us the wrong way. As a liberal, I don't like the way the liberals are pushing things to the point where she was literally defending some of donald trump's positions. And she was literally defending some of Donald Trump's positions and she was definitely saying you can't look at half the this is pre-election saying you can't look at half the population and then just call them, you know, crazy Nazis. That's just wrong. And she predicted days before the elections that it's extremely likely that Trump's going to win. So I think we've seen a move. She's not quite at the place that Dave Rubin and Jimmy Dore are at, but I think there's a very good chance that she will be wrapping up her stint on the Young Turks and then going off much as the other past folks from that show have gone to actually be from. I'm sure she would call it a centrist position, but she would be called a Nazi conservative by the left. Okay.

Speaker 2 1:26:07

So it's been interesting to watch that. I don't know, like I said, it doesn't sound like you care, but okay.

Speaker 1 1:26:13

I just okay. I don't think a lot of her politics is that great and we'll see what she does. I'm glad some people are waking up, but I think a lot of people are waking up across the US.

Speaker 2 1:26:26

I think it took the opportunity, literally the day after the election, to tweet Musk and say hey, you, you wanna, you want more help cutting the budget. I'm right here, ready and willing, and we'll help you get get budgets cut from the department of defense well, you know, good for him yeah, I. I mean he's got a lot of crazy ideas but, I think his defense cutting budgetary maneuver would be fairly straightforward and easy.

Speaker 1 1:26:57

Yeah, in SpaceX funding.

Speaker 2 1:26:59

No, no, no For Cenk.

Speaker 1 1:27:02

Yes for Cenk.

Speaker 2 1:27:03

Cenk's biggest funding cut would be. You're missing the joke. Gene, I got the joke. I got the joke, but no, I'm going for an actual thing. You do. No, it would simply be leave everything exactly as is, but switch eight to israel to instead to eight to turkey. That would be the one move he would do okay, because you know he's from turkey, he's from. Turkey.

Speaker 1 1:27:29

He's from Turkey, so how about end all foreign aid?

Speaker 2 1:27:35

Oh yeah, I'm all for that. I've been saying that for a long time, like I think I wrote a paper on that in college.

Speaker 1 1:27:50

Like that, the answer to most of Americans' troubles both from ending the cause of troubles and ending the payments for them is to end foreign aid. Yeah, your song, you know goldwater's musings oh yeah, which you didn't like but I thought it was quite good. I didn't say I didn't like it. Okay, it's not true. That's slanderous okay, I just said, you hated it I said the texas independent song was better, all right.

Speaker 2 1:28:11

Fair enough, fair enough. I like the Goldwater one, which is why I made a YouTube video out of it and I posted a few times now on X. So I don't want to post it anymore. But you're free to post it. But it's got a like. I think the AI did a very good job with the female voice in that song. It doesn't sound fake Okay.

Speaker 2 1:28:38

Because I think male voices are a little easier for AI so they tend to sound a little more natural, but female voices historically have been more fake sounding. But this one, I think, turned out pretty good and I will be making more of these songs. My goal is I've got inspired by a guy who actually did this for video game music, but he had made like 10 of these songs and then went and uh, made an album of it, meaning compilation, and then put it up on itunes and amazon and spot, spotify and all the other places. Is actually making money off this stuff now?

Speaker 1 1:29:17

Okay, we'll see. We'll see what it ends up being when the copyright comes to.

Speaker 2 1:29:25

Well, that's the thing is, by being a paid user of that system, they're granting you the copyright ownership. Okay, paid a user of that system, they're granting you the copyright ownership. Okay. So now there is a larger question of will they, as a company, get sued for copyright infringement from people that sound vaguely like what? What's the music that's being generated? But, um, I think it'd be pretty hard for somebody to sue you for using AI software, and so I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think there's an awful lot of sort of arguments to get out of that.

Speaker 1 1:30:10

Okay, it'll be interesting to see when you and and darren are uh sharing a jail cell oh yeah, yeah, I'm sure that'll happen.

Speaker 2 1:30:19

You know, out of the three of us there's one person more likely to end up in prison than the other two okay, who and he's younger than both of us.

Speaker 1 1:30:31

Oh bullshit, why would you say that? Uh-huh. I'm just saying I'm not likely at all.

Speaker 2 1:30:37

Thank, you Okay.

Speaker 1 1:30:39

All right, oh no, I, my nose is very clean and it has been for a long time. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 1:30:50

Yeah, you keep it that way.

Speaker 1 1:31:01

I, I, I try to yes, yeah, now that that said, I also am the most likely to go off the deep end but well you're.

Chinese Aircraft Carrier Challenges

Speaker 2 1:31:03

I think you're probably slightly more likely than me to get into a revolution. Yeah, it's say stuff that'll do that, not a whole lot more, but definitely a little more than me.

Speaker 1 1:31:18

Yeah, yeah yeah, well, but that's just the character I play on the show you know right, that's what I mean.

Speaker 2 1:31:26

I mean, I'm talking with the alex jones defense here, by the way if you didn't notice yeah, yes, and that's a good way of putting it, because obviously, you know, in real life we're a lot more boring than we appear oh yeah, and I mean, you know, like gene makes comments, like I'm a spook on other shows and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 1:31:45

Clearly not true, clearly fantasy only say that.

Speaker 2 1:31:49

But okay, fair enough, it's all good. It's all good, ben. So have you been looking at any other Black Friday deals? Oh, I forgot to tell you about the other thing I bought. So one was the Carmel, which I bought a while ago. The second thing, which I actually just bought, because it was a Black Friday sale event, is I picked up a Steam Deck. Okay, and it hasn't shown up yet, so I can't stream deck. Not, not a stream deck.

Speaker 2 1:32:18

I already have a stream deck, a steam deck steam deck is the little portable video gaming device oh, yeah, yeah, yes, yes, yes, yes yeah by the way should I get a stream? Deck. I mean, I like them. I got two of them, but they're not something that I touch on a daily basis though, so it's kind of like do you have a good use for it?

Speaker 1 1:32:46

Well, the show, having a mute button, having a standardized mute button across a bunch of different things that you know when I'm in meetings or anything, else would be nice, I mean, there are things, there are things yeah, I mean stream deck will definitely do that. That's got that, that function I can probably get the smallest, cheapest one and be very happy with there's.

Speaker 2 1:33:07

There's a, I think, of four button or eight button version, I can't remember. That's super cheap. The uh, the one that I was recommending to darren I don't know if he even got it or not is the one with the knobs, because obviously having knobs gives you more flexibility and a variety of things right, it's not a binary setting, it's an analog setting but I also have the, the big, huge one that's got like was it 32? I think?

Speaker 1 1:33:36

uh, yeah, 32 buttons why do you need that many buttons?

Speaker 2 1:33:40

uh, I use some of the buttons for just a miniature display, so I don't necessarily even press the button gotcha. So I've got a button that's just set up for current bitcoin price. I've got another button that's always showing me utc when do you think bitcoin is going to break?

Speaker 2 1:34:00

100k. I mean, it could be any time. It probably this year, yeah, probably this year is my guess. But then again, you know, a year ago, this time, literally this time a year a year ago, I remember csb was lamenting that he didn't buy bitcoin as it was crossing over 50k and I was saying I don't worry about it, dude, it'll be back down to 40, probably in january. And it never did so I don't know, I'm not a good prognosticator of bitcoin. Um, I I kind of figured it would go up with trump.

Speaker 1 1:34:37

I didn't think it would get to 100, so oh well, all I know is it's I mean the little bit of bitcoin I have I could go buy a pretty decent gun with right now.

Speaker 2 1:34:52

Yeah, and Darren just bought that Mac with his Bitcoin. Yeah, I wouldn't do that. So, you know why not.

Speaker 1 1:35:01

Why wouldn't I buy a Mac? Yeah Well, I would never buy a Mac with my own money anyway. Mm-hmm. Yes, like you slander me on unrelenting saying I use Mac OS.

Speaker 2 1:35:14

It's because, it's a work computer. Yeah, yeah, that's, and you're starting to realize how much better it is.

Speaker 1 1:35:24

The hardware is fantastic. The OS sucks dick because it cannot switch between apps or screens or windows effectively oh bullshit.

Speaker 2 1:35:34

You could totally switch between apps and windows and things, not effectively. You're just not doing it, right then how am I doing it? Wrong. You should run everything in full screen mode oh god no no, and then you use the arrow keys to switch between apps. It's way better. In fact, it's what we used to do on Windows years ago, back when we had the virtualized desktops. Now I just have that many. I have six monitors plugged into the PC, so I don't do that anymore.

Speaker 1 1:36:05

Okay. Anyway, use case is very different for me and you so. Do you want to talk about china's aircraft carrier? I didn't know anything about it, so you fill me in so literally, the aircraft carrier has launched and they're going out for their sea trials and they're running into, uh, some issues not as bad as the UK did with theirs. But one of the interesting things that's come out is China has the People's Liberation Army Navy, which is interesting, but that's what it's called has such a shortage of pilots that can qualify for aircraft carrier operations that they are literally changing the rules.

Speaker 1 1:36:59

So if you've had vision correction surgery, now you can qualify to be a pilot and so on, and they're literally getting down to we may conscript people to be aircraft carrier pilots at this point, wow, and let's just point out where they have three. What's that?

Speaker 2 1:37:21

is that because the odds of death are high or?

Speaker 1 1:37:23

what? I have no idea what the underlying issue is, but they are having problems fielding qualified pilots. The vessel itself is having some shakedown cruise issues, but the Ford did as well. Like modern aircraft, carriers are incredibly complex. They're going to have issues, but this is China's first home built aircraft carrier.

Speaker 2 1:37:46

No, I thought they had two others.

Speaker 1 1:37:48

Yes, one of them was a former Soviet aircraft carrier that was a casino in Ukraine that they bought and retrofitted, and then they copied that one, so they made a clone of it.

Speaker 2 1:38:00

So, this is not the nuclear one.

Speaker 1 1:38:03

This is their first design.

Speaker 2 1:38:04

Okay, but this is not the nuclear one, then it is a nuke.

Speaker 1 1:38:07

Oh, it is the new one. Yes, yeah, the brand new one. It it is a nuke. It is the new one, yes, yeah the brand new one.

Speaker 2 1:38:11

It is a nuke.

Speaker 1 1:38:16

Okay, only the UK was dumb enough to do a non-nuke aircraft carrier Okay.

Speaker 2 1:38:21

Huh, well, you know, I mean China's, I think they're just historically, their whole model is set up on cloning other things.

Speaker 1 1:38:36

Yeah, and this is the thing is. China is not good at innovation. They're great at copying. Yeah. So this is their first, their design aircraft carrier. So we're going to have to see.

Speaker 2 1:38:49

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:38:49

Okay, did they learn enough? Did they do a good job? What it the clone? Sure, but it has. China just does not have a blue water navy. Now we can argue whether or not that's relevant or not. Yeah, yeah, you know one of the things that I think, for instance, people like peter zahan totally miss not Peter.

Speaker 1 1:39:09

Zahan, not my boy. Anyway, one of the things I think that he misses quite often is the Belt and Road Initiative. China is trying to get away from, you know, water transport of its goods. They want a belt and road, rail and road uh connection to europe and africa. That is what they've been working on for a long time to be able to transport goods over land and not be dependent upon the oceans yeah, I.

Speaker 2 1:39:44

I think there's a cultural and a political problem with China being innovative, and it has to do with two similar reasons.

Speaker 1 1:39:56

You mean they killed all the free thinkers during?

Speaker 2 1:39:59

the revolution?

Speaker 1 1:40:01

No, that's not it In their struggle sessions no.

Speaker 2 1:40:04

But I guess somewhat related, but not totally. No, it's because when you have a culture politically that is raised on the idea that your leaders know better, it prevents people who actually know better, like engineers, scientists, designers, architects. It prevents them from bringing things up to change projects to be better and prevent problems. Because if you bring up something and you say, hey, this isn't working right, this needs to get fixed, you're going to basically be pointing your finger at somebody else who will probably lose their job and maybe their life, and you're going to be held responsible yourself for the delay of the project and probably lose your job and lose your life. So that type of negative reinforcement works against innovation.

Speaker 2 1:41:04

The other factor is, culturally speaking, the idea of lying is a lot more common in China, and lying to save face, to prevent your family or yourself or your you know, whoever you're working for from looking bad, is actually considered the norm rather than you shouldn't do that. So people will lie to save their own face, to save their company's face, to save their city's face, to whatever and bad products will go through, and between those two kind of similar but slightly different forces, it prevents China from being able to compete with countries that don't have that, because those countries can be innovating and improving continuously and it's not a bad thing for Elon's engineers to say, hey, this isn't working right, it needs to be redesigned. But that same attitude in China wouldn't work. Have you seen the Chinese knockoffs of the Starship, the big rocket? No, I haven't. Yeah, they did a test recently and it blew up very quickly?

Speaker 1 1:42:32

Yeah, they did a test recently and it blew up very quickly, and that's another thing. Is China, when you look at, okay, the US clearly has enough naval power that, if we're talking about a World War II style naval engagement, which is the last major naval engagement, since that's why I'm using it, the the U?

Speaker 1 1:42:50

S could literally dominate every other country on the world combined. Now war changes and we're always fighting the last war. And when war changes, what happens to that advantage that you seemingly have? We'll see. Um, you know, the U? S has, uh, a ton of aircraft carriers. We have 10 Nimitz class plus the Ford class. Coming on that we're going to have four, so we're going to have 14 super carriers plus the Marine Expeditionary Forces which most other countries would consider aircraft carriers. We have a massive Navy and power projection. But when you look at China, I don't think china's trying to catch up to us navy wise. I think they're fielding an aircraft carrier because I think they see a role for it. Now, what that role is going to be in the next war is going to be very dependent where I think that they are taking advantages that may take away some of ours. When you look at the hypersonics, and if they can get that to work and manufacture it at scale enough, that could be interesting you know, assuming we don't have a defense against it.

Border Disputes and British Influence

Speaker 1 1:44:00

the other thing that I think is very interesting, that I think is way underreported here in the us, that I don't understand why is the chinese space program the chinese space program the Chinese space program? They have their own space station. They have a lot going on. That I just you know. I just don't understand why we don't talk about it.

Speaker 2 1:44:26

Well, people that are into space do talk about it pretty regularly. I get pop-ups on my calendar notifying me every time there's a Chinese launch.

Speaker 1 1:44:37

Okay, well, I'm pretty into space, but I don't watch it that close yeah.

Speaker 2 1:44:45

They are definitely making very good progress on space, and that, frankly, has India a lot more scared than it has the US scared as it should yeah, yeah, india is a very interesting place.

Speaker 1 1:45:05

And here's the thing India has border disputes with China People don't realize that. Like hot border disputes, yeah, going on for a long time.

Speaker 2 1:45:17

Yeah, china understandably has border disputes with all the countries around it, including russia. But I would if I was china. I would try and avoid border disputes with India because they're like the argument that China always has 200, is going to matter with a population density of one person versus China with their population density. It may not be a valid argument, but it's a reasonable argument. But with India you can't have that argument. They have just as much population density. In fact I think they might have more. And what it all comes down to is I watched a video on this recently is the fucking british, as always? Is the british changed the maps?

Speaker 2 1:46:23

all those fuckers and the maps that how many, how many?

Speaker 1 1:46:27

how many disputes do we have to? We need, we need a tracker yeah, british we need a. We need a. The british fucked it up.

Speaker 2 1:46:34

Tracker I think the british fucked up ukrainian maps too, I think I'm gonna blame that on them as well.

Speaker 1 1:46:39

How are you gonna do that one?

Speaker 2 1:46:41

I'll come up with a way to do it, I'm sure there was something during world war ii, you know, negotiations that fucked up. The well, we know for a fact that, uh, that really the very west, or no, yeah, western part of ukraine has historically been poland, like that's just. You look at historical maps you see that there's a chunk of poland that got scooped in by the soviet union and became, uh, part of that region. Um, but I I'm sure there's there's some kind of british involvement there.

Speaker 2 1:47:13

The british usually have you usually a drunkard yes, yeah, but between the kush areas in india and china. Uh, it was very much the maps drawn by the Brits for their empire that one country decides to use and the other country's like no, no, no, no, let's look at historical maps. This is, you know, we have people that speak Chinese that are living on the wrong side of the border. Clearly, that's meant to be China.

Speaker 1 1:47:50

I mean this is like people who speak Russian and living on the wrong side of the border.

Speaker 2 1:47:55

Exactly, that's exactly right. So yeah, if push comes to shove, always blame the Brits. They're usually the ones at fault.

Speaker 1 1:48:08

You were going somewhere with that that you didn't finish.

Speaker 2 1:48:12

Where was I going? I think, I was just making the point about china and the problems they culturally okay well, regardless, the chinese aircraft carrier has had some major issues.

Speaker 1 1:48:24

They've had to resurface the deck a few times, and it's funny because satellite photos showed cracks on the deck, oh my God. And then China's news agency comes out and debunks it. It's a lie, those aren't cracks.

Speaker 2 1:48:41

That's just the paint we use for making it be more camouflaged. Uh-huh. Those are camo patterns. You're seeing.

Speaker 1 1:48:50

Yeah, well. I don't know, man. I think it will be very interesting to see if the US, if there is ever an Anglo-Sino war, what happens, especially on the Navy front. Yeah, well, all.

Speaker 2 1:49:08

China's got to do is just launch like 10 times more missiles than they plan on hitting something with, and then we're screwed.

Speaker 1 1:49:15

Maybe, or you know.

Speaker 2 1:49:20

Something that a lot of Americans don't realize is China is the same size as the US. In what way? In actual land mass it's bigger. Well, we got Alaska, though. Okay, so it's slightly bigger than the continental U? S. It's 2% bigger.

Speaker 1 1:49:44

No, overall, including Alaska, including Alaska Okay.

Speaker 2 1:49:49

That's surprising. I thought it was like 10% bigger than the, just the um, the continental US. But I think a lot of people think of China, kind of like they think of Japan.

Debating the Limits of Rights

Speaker 1 1:50:00

That's like that little country off in the woods there okay, yeah, well, but you know, most of China is not populated, though. I mean, you could argue that most of the us isn't either, though, yeah, you could.

Speaker 2 1:50:14

Uh, it's. If you look at the population density maps that that's actually what most of the world would argue is that the us is empty. So why are you guys all bitching about new people coming in?

Speaker 1 1:50:28

you got all that land no one lives on well, partially, because most of that land that nobody lives on is federally controlled, and that's a part of the problem. Or farmland, no, or federally controlled, um, you know. Anyway, I I think if one of the ways out of our current debt crisis that I would love to see a trump administration explore yes, um no, make it us. Citizens have to own it.

Speaker 1 1:51:01

Go witha mexican style rule where the uh foreign investors can invest but, um, you know, the owner has to be 51, has to be owned by a us citizen to for the sale, for the purpose of the sale. After that sale, what happens?

Speaker 2 1:51:19

totally a different thing oh, I actually have no problem just making it a federal law that that only us citizens and us registered companies can own land in America. I don't see a reason for foreigners to own land here. Okay. And then, once we kick out Bill Gates and strip him of his citizenship, then we can take over all his land, which is most of Texas Okay.

Speaker 1 1:51:54

Yeah, Stripping people of their citizenship, I think is a very dangerous thing.

Speaker 2 1:51:58

Oh, come on, Just eat the billionaires.

Speaker 1 1:52:02

But the problem, here's the thing you and I disagree on this fundamentally when you hand your, when you use a power, you shouldn't you hand your weapon to your enemy not if you kill him first okay, well, I eventually you're handing it over and that that is the reality it's.

Speaker 2 1:52:24

I think it's a naive notion, but sure I.

Speaker 1 1:52:28

I don't know how, it's naive, but okay it's.

Speaker 2 1:52:30

it's naive to think that your enemy is somehow going to play by your rules, and that's my major problem with people.

Speaker 1 1:52:37

No, what I'm saying is that your enemy will use whatever tactic you use against you.

Speaker 2 1:52:42

Your enemies will use tactics against you regardless. Not wanting to use the tactics that are in your possession against your enemy is the problem. Not wanting to use the tactics that are in your position against your enemy is the problem, not the fear that your enemy is going to use the thing that you they're already using. More than that, your enemy's already printing ballots and then arguing those are legitimate. Okay, so yeah, my point is that I think and this goes back to a conversation we already had, so we don't need to rehash it but it's the idea from the founding fathers that the country that they created is one that only works if people live by the same rules that they created and are educated. Reason to then not give them the same opportunities and rights as people that are willing to abide by the rights that, uh, that are currently they're living under. I I'm I'm stumbling over saying it, but I think you know what I mean.

The Pendulum of Civilization

Speaker 2 1:54:07

It's the idea that if somebody's goal is to remove the rights you have and you wanting to ensure that the person that wants to remove your rights has all the rights that you want, what you end up is the UK where the Muslim population of the UK, the displacement of the UK is in full swing and people that say anything bad about Mohammed end up getting a year in prison. And this is in a country which you know, supposedly, is responsible for being the grandparent of all the free countries of the world, like common law came from there. Well, guess what? Now you have Sharia law, and you allowed it to happen. You didn't fight back, you didn't prevent it from happening.

Speaker 4 1:55:07

So when you don't prevent that from happening, so when you don't prevent that from happening when you are more concerned about having enemies have the exact same rights as you.

Speaker 1 1:55:28

What you end up with is the enemies win and then they get to limit your rights.

Speaker 2 1:55:37

I will maintain my position that being principled matters, and that's why I call it naive, is I. I don't disagree with it, but I think there are bounds to it in that being principled with barbarians doesn't work yes, and I think foregoing your principles makes you the barbarian just as well. Well, and that's poetic and all, but this is also how civilizations die off. Okay, this is literally.

Speaker 2 1:56:04

You know, every conquest of civilized countries by lesser civilized countries, like Genghis Khan and his hordes, happens because the civilized people assume that they're going to be playing by the civilized rules. This is, incidentally, why the British stood in lines during the American Revolution, because war was supposed to be a civilized uh maneuver at that point and you know, you're gonna fight fair, you're gonna stand in lines with your muskets pointed at each other and then you're gonna see who's left standing on the battlefield. But the other side isn't standing with their muskets pointing at you. They're actually sitting in the woods and then plinking people off before they're even ready.

Speaker 1 1:56:54

Guerrilla warfare yeah, I mean this is also, if you look at the us civil war, part of the reason why the north won. Is they fought with dirty tactics, whether it was, you know, sherman's march to the sea and the scorched earth mentality that they took, or even down to canister and double shot and everything else, things that lee wouldn't do and exactly this is why lee is still a hero to me and grant and sherman are villains, but okay well, that's fine, but I would have preferred that lee won I agree with you that's, that's the difference and at the first battle of appomattox, what we should have done was just march on dc and take it instead of going.

Speaker 1 1:57:38

We won, leave us alone, but we didn't yeah yeah, so that that's my point.

Speaker 2 1:57:46

I think we do have a slight disagreement on that count and we we bring it up occasionally on on the episodes, but I just think that you can't allow a malevolent force to fester. You have to flush it out like you have to snub it out, and if you don't, you give it time, it'll grow, it'll develop and it'll act like a cancer and corrupt the whole society. And I think we've seen that with uh, with communism, socialism, whatever you want to call it happening in the united states. Like there shouldn't be a reason why, why it should have taken this much hard work to get trump to win. He, he should have won his second term. When he did win his second term, during the second term or immediately after the first term, I should say uh, because this is a better story.

Speaker 1 1:58:43

This is a better thing. It's it's. It's a good thing that it happened the way it did, because when you when you see that there are millions of missing votes and there are a few explanations of this, none of which are in the Democrats' favor. Either okay, you didn't cheat as hard this time, or maybe the clutch shot took a bunch of people out. We can go down the scenarios, but all of this says something right here yep yep no, it's uh no.

Speaker 2 1:59:19

I I agree, but also, americans shouldn't have this many people that voted for kamala like that's the disgrace in my eyes that, with the obvious, absolutely ginormous flaws that that campaign had, that that position politically has, there were still half the country, or a little less than half the country, but still way too many people that voted for her, that thought that was the right path for America. Those people didn't go anywhere. They're not all fake votes either. There's a genuine problem that we have in the country today with the millions so over 100 million in fact people who think that socialism is the right way to go.

Speaker 1 2:00:14

Well, the problem is, and one of the reasons why I think we may be heading towards civil war, is because you cannot have a multi-culti democracy and a constitutional Republic in the same space. They are mutually exclusive ideas. The idea is that we're going to go to socialism. I, I have kids. No, no, we are not. And you know, uh, this is a subject I. I am very hopeful that the trump administration will make some significant enough gains to stave this off, that we will get a Vivek JD Vance presidency, or presidency vice presidency, you know, next time around.

Speaker 1 2:01:04

I'm hopeful that the pendulum is starting to swing back and we will see a retreat of this. Having having never crossed that line, I pray that is the case yep well I don't know that it is right now.

Speaker 2 2:01:19

It sounds great hearing the vivek and and musk are gonna head up this committee. Practically speaking, I can tell you right now there's probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people lining up to figure out ways to make sure neither one of those guys has any position in the Trump cabinet.

Speaker 1 2:01:39

Well, but part of what they're doing is they're basically functioning as a commission at the pleasure of the president, so they're not officially in the US government.

Speaker 2 2:01:50

I know, but I'm saying right now so there's, nothing that someone can do about it and they can just go. Well, this is what we want to put out to you.

Speaker 2 2:02:05

They can start saying well, look, if Musk is doing this, then SpaceX has to shut down or divest himself of SpaceX. He has to divest himself of all these companies that he owns owns because clearly he's profiting from his decisions in the government. They're going to come up with shit. I'm not saying it's legitimate shit, but there are a lot of people that are right now trying to come up with ways to stymie Trump, and a lot of those people have R's behind their names.

Speaker 1 2:02:27

Oh yeah, and Musk has already said that his pack will primary them and I think, especially if they go after him, that will be the case. I, I think he has enough money to basically getting musk as an ally. Yeah, is one of the biggest effing wins, oh yeah, trump has had.

Speaker 2 2:02:50

Yet or alex jones what do you?

Speaker 2 2:02:54

know, going from musk saying that I've got kids, I will never have alex on my platform after what he said, to then, a year later, two years, whatever, it is musk filing a lawsuit in, joining with alex saying, uh no, you can't be confiscating his either personal or business twitter accounts because they don't belong to him, they belong to us and we're gonna let whoever we want run them, meaning alex like that's a huge win for a Yep. So, yeah, your mom's been sending me uh uh links to Musk and Vivek stuff.

Speaker 1 2:03:36

Uh, she, she, she likes AJ. What can I say? Yep, well, we'll, we'll see what ends up happening. Uh, it's not over. Uh, I think you and I are both of the opinion that we are on a pendulum swing that's starting to turn around. Yeah, the question is, how fast? And do we turn it around, ultimately without any violence and if that's the case fantastic, We'll see.

Speaker 2 2:04:06

Yeah, and if we do have it without violence, it'll be probably for the first time in history, because, not to say that, this is 100% predictable, but I have to plug the book because a friend of mine wrote it called Pendulum, back about 15 years ago, 18 years ago now, and in that book the very point of inflection where the pendulum stops and then starts going the other direction was 2023. And that's not just a random number. That was based on a 40-year or 80-year cycle. So point to point, or extreme to extreme, of 40 years, round-trip 80 years, and they go through in that book and point out all the points in history where that's been observed.

Speaker 1 2:05:01

And the other book would be the Four Turnings that also predicts something very similar with a slightly more nuanced version of the cycle.

Speaker 2 2:05:09

And also other books by those two guys. The Four Turnings was just one of their books. Yeah, indeed, yeah. So should we wrap it up?

Speaker 1 2:05:19

we have gone for a couple hours. Sorry we missed last week.

Speaker 2 2:05:22

Guys appreciate uh, all the donors and everybody chipping in there was not a uh, you know, it was was holiday week, so we couldn't Well, and I had to skip Saturday morning last weekend because of kids.

Speaker 1 2:05:37

And then Sunday evening, when we were planning on recording, you were asleep.

Speaker 2 2:05:40

Yeah, I was totally slid out, yep, yep.

Speaker 1 2:05:43

So we missed it. We try not to do that and we will continue to go through the holidays have we looked at the calendar.

Speaker 2 2:05:50

Let's do a quick look-see here on what December looks like for holidays.

Speaker 1 2:05:58

So we've got December, I mean Christmas, is during the middle of the week.

Speaker 2 2:06:04

Middle of the week, yep yep, and same thing with New Year's.

Speaker 1 2:06:07

That's middle of the week as well, so we shouldn't be affected by agreed holidays at least never know about cold flus and other things, but certainly not by holidays well, and if you can't tell, my voice is a little raspy right now because, uh, you sounded better kids are, uh, petri dishes. Yes, that's what they're for. Yeah, um, I will say travel, uh there, there's a couple things uh on the horizon, but you know, I'll take mobile rig or something like that, if nothing else okay, that sounds like a plan.

Speaker 2 2:06:41

All right, ben, we will catch you on the next one. Thanks to everybody that's uh still supporting us in whatever way you are, uh most people through a monthly donation. We appreciate that.

Speaker 1 2:06:54

Which, by the way, we will need to petition Buzzsprout pretty quick to change that to a monthly tip.

Speaker 2 2:07:03

Okay, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right, because tips are not taxable. Good point, not taxable. Good point yeah, because, uh, I just read that for this year, uh, so on next april, um taxes, the government has lowered the paypal threshold threshold to six hundred dollars, which is ridiculous. I mean, like, what about people that are like just sending each other money for buying lunch? Like, oh you, oh, you bought lunch here. Let me just send you some PayPal money. Oh, that's income. Better pay taxes on it.

Speaker 1 2:07:41

It's ridiculous. Yeah, or like you sell a gun or something, although you can't do that on PayPal technically, but whatever I will say this Abolish the ATF.

Speaker 2 2:07:55

Yeah, then abolish the atf. Yeah, then abolish the irs. Yeah, yeah, oh. And then there's one other thing that, um, we didn't't been passed to essentially create a texas coin yes, a currency currency for texas.

Speaker 1 2:08:23

So let's talk about the next time yeah, yeah, I, I did see that and I think it's just another step towards independence. Yeah, you know the Texas. We have our own gold and silver precious metals repository.

Speaker 2 2:08:36

We're setting up our own stock exchange. Huh, isn't that where they shot JFK from?

Speaker 1 2:08:42

No, that's the book repository. Oh okay, different building Same building. Different building Okay, different building.

Speaker 2 2:08:47

Anyway, yeah, same building, different building.

Speaker 1 2:08:49

Okay, anyway, yeah, I think the Texas march towards independence is there in the background. I really do. We'll see. We'll talk about more next week.