Speaker 1: 0:25

Howdy Ben, how are you today? I'm doing all right, gene, getting a little bit of rain, the temperature dropped. It was 80 degrees last night and then we're in the 60s now and we're at 60 and dropping. Yeah, I'm at 57. Well, you're further west than I am, you're also further west, but yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah, I uh I don't see rain spring weather in texas right yeah exactly.

Speaker 2: 0:59

Well, I like spring weather in texas, I don't mind the rain and I like all the green grass for a change.

Speaker 1: 1:07

My thing is it's just, it's like sybil right it just doesn't know what it's doing. It changes quite a bit.

Speaker 2: 1:14

So yeah, we're gonna be in the 40s by tomorrow. So the weather in texas.

Speaker 1: 1:19

Uh has a mental disorder exactly, so I know we got nothing happened this week and I don't know what we're going to talk about, or do I?

Speaker 2: 1:31

know, well, I'm thinking we should re-watch battlestar galactica.

Speaker 1: 1:36

Yeah, yeah yeah, you sent me.

Speaker 2: 1:38

Uh, uh edward, uh, james, almost just nonsense post any nonsense interview with him and, uh, he talks about how he talks about linking battle start to go like to totally separate and different franchise yeah yeah, blade runner, which that makes sense how?

Speaker 2: 2:06

well, you have to watch the whole video, ben, not skim for 15 seconds like the millennial that you are, but the short version is he took the job as a dama. He took that gig because in his mind it aligned with Blade Runner, which is just okay. It aligned with Blade Runner, which is just okay, and he essentially goes on to say how Blade Runner is actually, or certainly can be seen as a continuation of the end of Battlestar Galactica.

Speaker 1: 2:45

But? But here's why that's moronic.

Speaker 2: 2:50

Go ahead.

Speaker 1: 2:51

Blade Runner was developed far before the reboot to Battlestar Galactica, mm-hmm. So how is that connected at all?

Speaker 2: 3:07

well, it's like connected for him because of the warning that is essentially given by the right, this is the main.

Speaker 1: 3:17

Can all happen again.

Speaker 2: 3:18

Yes, yeah, well, not just that, but just the idea that you know, the whole series point was that humanity built slave machines that revolted Mm-hmm. And in Blade Runner, humanity builds slave machines that revolt. Yes, there you go.

Speaker 1: 3:48

Okay, but I think he's reading too much into and he was in both of them.

Speaker 2: 3:56

He was in the reboot, sure yeah, well, he's talking about the ones he was in.

Speaker 2: 4:04

So the other thing that's interesting that I didn't know about is that he actually brought a lot of ideas to both shows.

Speaker 2: 4:13

So, uh, he is one of those actors that doesn't just show up and walk out of his trailer, do his gig and goes back in. Apparently he likes to work with the writers, okay, so, for example, the whole Japanese or Chinese, the whole Asian aesthetic in Blade Runner, the eating, the sushi and the intermingling of the languages in Los Angeles, that was all his. So he came up with that and then Ridley Scott thought it was a great idea and then ended up putting it in the movie, and then he did similar stuff with Battlestar Galactica. So he's, you know, I mean, it could be good, it could also be equally bad, but whichever way it is, he is one of those actors that really, if he's into it, he really is into it and he wants to make the story and the performances and everything else as good as possible. And part of that is, uh, you know, letting the writers know what his character, how he envisions it, and so on.

Speaker 1: 5:37

I get it. I get it, but. I still think it's moronic to link two totally separate and distinct stories.

Speaker 2: 5:46

Hey, what have I said about actors in general?

Speaker 2: 5:48

They're totally moronic and yeah, they're crazy people. They're people who both have the skills and the desire to pretend to be somebody else, as adults rather than just children. Yeah, they're not normal. There's something off about that. And well, we're not normal either. There, gene, fine. Fine, I mean, I'm not just talking about iq, I'm talking about other parameters, but uh, there are. There are abnormalities about people that want to get into acting and there's no way that they should have been raised to the status, both financially, and people treating them like they know better, because all it takes is to watch a few interviews with any random actor and you see that, oh well, gee, I guess the characters this person plays are smart. The actor isn't. It doesn't take long. One of my favorite quotes about actors was actually from the movie Rosencrantz and Gilderstein are dead, mm-hmm.

Speaker 1: 6:58

And in that movie, richard Dreyfuss plays the head of the traveling performers which, by the way, for those who don't know, it's a spinoff from Hamlet.

Speaker 2: 7:15

A lot of people wouldn't know who Rose and Kranz and Gildan.

Speaker 1: 7:17

Stern are.

Speaker 2: 7:21

Right.

Speaker 1: 7:23

Sure.

Speaker 2: 7:26

So, um, now you made me forget the damn quote, but the essence of the quote is like we're actors, we're not normal people, you know. But that was something better than that. Uh, so I'll do a quick google to see if I can get the exact wording, but it's the idea that anyway so you would already watch battle star.

Speaker 1: 7:50

Huh, yeah, I mean, it's been I I. The last time I watched it, it was when it first came out.

Speaker 2: 7:57

Yeah, same here. I might've seen an episode or two here and there. Uh, just his stuff pops up in the YouTube, but, um, I certainly haven't watched it from the start, since it was originally there.

Speaker 1: 8:14

So while you're Googling that, I've got something else for you to Google and look at, and we're going to give a little tech tip here. I don't normally do this, but I backed a Kickstarter, Uh-oh yeah, and other people have gotten theirs and I'm seeing rave reviews on it, and I haven't gotten mine yet, so I'm waiting on it. I've been in that position before. Look up the JetKVM, okay.

Speaker 2: 8:49

So our favorite Controlling computer remotely, okay's a little.

Speaker 1: 8:51

It's a little kvm device. Yeah, it's, it's open source, got lots of things, but uh, dave from dave's garage has raved about it everything else so and it's pretty inexpensive. So it'll be really helpful to me because right now on my workbench that's to my, to my right over here, that's completely incredibly messy. I've got a old nook sitting on there and the reason why it's sitting there is because I've been having certain issues with it and it's my wireless controller. So it's over here so I can have a keyboard and mouse plugged into it when I want it. Normally it would just be in the networking closet with the router and everything else. But until I can figure out why my wireless on this thing keeps dropping out, which it'll be wired in there anyway. But having like a little dedicated KVM that I can even power cycle if I want, I can do everything I need to do there.

Speaker 2: 9:52

Most people stopped using KVMs because it's so easy to do RDP. What's the point of this thing?

Speaker 1: 10:00

Right. But if you are losing network connection to something, if your network connection to a device is dropping off, you can't RDP to it. Now can you? If your network connection is dropping off is dropping off, you can't RDP to it Now, can you?

Speaker 2: 10:10

If your network connection is dropping off, the device is kind of useless to you, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 10:15

Oh my God, Gene, it's out-of-band management. Trust me it's useful, as someone who has worked as a network admin and done lots of projects, out-of-band management is always useful.

Speaker 2: 10:30

Well you can have out-of-band management is always useful. Well, you can have out-of-band management, but I mean, I don't understand. Explain the device to me. It looks tiny, it looks like it doesn't have enough cable connections in it.

Speaker 1: 10:39

You literally have a HDMI in and you have a USB connection for keyboard and mouse. So it basically takes the keyboard and mouse and puts it on a different computer right without using RDP. So if the service stops, if you're doing pre-boot work, if you're doing lots of things, one of these per computer then you wouldn't use, you wouldn't have one on every computer in your house.

Speaker 2: 11:12

it's for certain things I don't want to have a monitoring keyboard. I'm sorry you need one per computer yes, the way this is set up.

Speaker 1: 11:23

But if you look at a lot of other, like if you look at actual data center style kvms uh, that are remotely manageable and everything else, um, they're extremely expensive. It's not a kvm is my problem.

Speaker 2: 11:37

It is a kvm. Uh, it's not what I used to call a kvm 25 you're thinking of a kvm switch so that you could have two towers under your desk and switch keyboard and mouse back and forth.

Speaker 1: 11:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:51

So this is really a remote login thing for your computer.

Speaker 1: 11:56

It's a remote KVM, yes, but it gives you more than that. They have a little expansion port on there with the RJ11 that literally allows you to plug in. They have two data boards that they've already designed for power control. One does full ATX power control, so you can literally power cycle and do whatever you need to do remotely.

Speaker 2: 12:16

Yeah that's been available again for 25 years since I used to do this stuff To do remote power cycle.

Speaker 1: 12:22

Yes, sir, this is not new, I get that. But it's teeny, it's cheap and it's effective for a home user. That's my point.

Speaker 2: 12:34

I see.

Speaker 1: 12:35

Okay, anyway.

Speaker 2: 12:37

But it is a remote login, just so people understand what it is if they're not in your job today.

Speaker 1: 12:47

Anyway, they've met their goal, they're funded. They're sending them out. Right now they have some post-funding options where you can still go get one and it's like $60. So there you go.

Speaker 2: 13:00

Well, that's good. That's way better than my experience of not getting there.

Speaker 1: 13:06

Yeah, they're actually keeping their promises. It seems like, well, you don't have yours. You said not personally, but other people have gotten theirs first. That who?

Speaker 2: 13:14

cares, I was late to the game on this thing okay, so it's your fault got it, because my story with that was, uh, the coolest cooler, which you may not have heard of, which was the biggest kickstarter ever when it happened, I think it was seven million units or something. Clearly, the company was not prepared for it. They thought they were going to make like a hundred thousand and um it's, uh, they took in the seven million. They quickly formed a company and then proceeded to keep tweaking the design for about nine months, started production after nine months and ran out of money about 12 months after the Kickstarter. And they'd manufactured about a third of the units, if that, maybe a quarter, somewhere between a quarter and a third of the units. Quarter, somewhere between a quarter and a third of the units. And so they, uh, they said look this, this, we've made mistakes. None of us are business people. We're just three guys with an idea. Uh, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to keep manufacturing these things and then we're going to put them on amazon and then sell them, and then, from the profit we get from selling them on Amazon, we'll be able to manufacture more of these for the Kickstarter, and so we're, essentially, for everyone that gets bought on Amazon, there'll be one that gets shipped to a Kickstarter person.

Speaker 2: 14:42

It wasn't ideal, but it seemed like, okay, at least they're trying and maybe at least I'm going to get my damn cooler. These were $499, incidentally. Um, this was a cooler with a battery pack and a blender and that's to make margaritas. And um, which I think actually exists these days but didn't back. Then, they, they, they had the first one and as they started selling them on amazon uh, amazon. One of the things amazon reserves the right to do when you, when you do a sales directly with them, is they control the price point. So, very quickly, like within about a month and a half, amazon dropped the price from $4.99 to $99 because they realized that's the real price that people would actually buy these things at.

Speaker 2: 15:40

Well, you can imagine what that did it. It basically didn't leave any profit in there for them to keep making ones for the people that gave them the Kickstarter initially. And, long story short, the company lasted about another nine months or so before they declared bankruptcy, and they did manufacture something like two-thirds no, it was more than that. I think it was about three-quarters of the coolers that the uh, the uh those of us that backed them originally for the seven million got. But I was in that group that didn't get a cooler at all and part of me was like, well, I could have bought one for 299 on amazon, but but then I would have paid the original $499 plus another $300.

Speaker 2: 16:32

So it's like an $800 cooler that is selling for $299. That felt like a double screw.

Speaker 1: 16:39

It was.

Speaker 2: 16:40

And instead I just lost $500, basically, but according to the thing that you sign every time you give money to Kickstarter, there was no like Kickstarter wasn't going to reimburse you, like it was a total pass. So it was like, look, the company should either give you your money back or give you the product, but we're not involved and, of course, the company went out of business. As a result of that. Kickstarter completely revised their requirements for allowing companies to do Kickstarters, meaning they have to have a business plan, they have to have a whole bunch more stuff after that event than they did prior to. But the net of it is I just lost $500 on that. Cooler Never got a cooler. It sort of didn't need one Cause. Back then I was like boating a lot. That was on the on the water almost every other day. I was having a lot of drinks I was drinking back then. So like none of it is relevant anymore, but it's still. It's one of those cautionary tales about throwing money into a Kickstarter.

Speaker 1: 17:49

Yeah, I got you, but they seem to be doing all right. And again, 69 bucks is a little bit different and they have they've actually. So their goal was 50 grand and they're at 4.6 million.

Speaker 2: 18:05

So yeah, they got funded. I see a mini. A mini, god damn it talk uh. So I see usb ethernet, mini dvi, or what is that mini hdmi and then what's the fourth one?

Speaker 1: 18:23

uh, it's an rj11 uh port, but that's for plugging into well, first of all, there's lots of things that, but the reason to use the RJ 11 is a lot of UPSs use RJ 11 for external control and KVM connections, but all their daughter boards can plug in through that as well. So that's the. That's the expansion port, if you would. Hmm, yeah, so like.

Speaker 1: 18:54

I said, they've got the ATX power, which I think is really cool because you can literally throw that daughterboard in a case and, you know, have full panel control. They've got a DC power connection. So if you have a mini PC or something like I'm using that has, you know, DC power coming in with a barrel connector, they've got that so that you can literally cut the power, turn it on, turn it off. And they've even got serial console cables.

Speaker 2: 19:25

So if I was still, running my Cisco Switch.

Speaker 1: 19:52

I would have a serial console cable. Go ahead.

Speaker 2: 19:55

Isn't this thing powered by the USB? It is, so when you cut power to the device, aren't you cutting the power to itself as well?

Speaker 1: 20:04

Yes, and they recognize that and they offer solutions to have a basically coming out of USB-C, a y cable that splits off power and data it feels like I would have preferred something physically bigger, but with all that built in, instead of dongling off the back yeah, I I somewhat agree, but I didn't make the design choices and I think think that's reasonable.

Speaker 2: 20:30

Do you want to do a Kickstarter and make a better version of this?

Speaker 1: 20:35

No. No, I'm willing to sacrifice a little bit and not have to do all the work?

Speaker 2: 20:44

Okay, but you get paid for the work. Maybe, maybe. Well, let's see how big their Kickstarter is.

Speaker 1: 20:54

I just said 4 point, some odd million. Uh, you don't think that's worth it. I don't think I would get that you'd take half of it. No, are you in no way. Why? Because the manufacturing costs, programming, the support and everything else, well they are paying 25% more for manufacturing now due to the tariffs. Yeah, so they might go out of business. We should talk about tariffs.

Speaker 2: 21:24

Oh, okay.

Speaker 1: 21:25

Sure, but you had a quote you wanted to talk about. I was waiting for you to read off your quote while I was talking about that.

Speaker 2: 21:35

Oh, the Richard Dreyfuss. I started looking at this thing instead of the Richard Dreyfuss thing because you know squirrel.

Speaker 1: 21:43

All right, well, anyway. So Trump kept his promises and put baseline and reciprocal tariffs, which everyone seems to be ignoring. That the baseline and reciprocal tariffs are separate items here. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. What are your thoughts? Are you freaking out about your stock portfolios right now?

Speaker 2: 22:10

No, oh, why not? Neither is anybody that's under 35.

Speaker 1: 22:18

Because, Dude, I'm over 35 and I'm not. What's a?

Speaker 2: 22:21

401k. I don't give a shit about stocks, I care about money.

Speaker 1: 22:25

Yeah, but I mean I'm over 35 and I'm, you know, I've got a, a decent size I am like one percent of your, your peer group, so no I.

Speaker 2: 22:39

This was predictable. Everybody should have known stocks are going to go down. All my stocks are down right now, but all my stocks are also for hold, not for quick flip. So the people that are losing their mind, they're only people that have short-term holds and all of those are down.

Speaker 1: 22:58

The truth of the matter is we need a recession. We were always going to have one, based off of Trump's economic and governmental policies. If Doge succeeds in cutting a trillion dollars from government spending, then, uh, I hate to tell you this, but that would by itself because government spending is counted in gdp put us into a recession, a technical recession. We have inflated the money, money supply so much it is not even funny people talking about the trillions of dollars wiped out. Well, guess what? That's trillions of dollars taken out of the money supply. Why is it deflationary? Because that money is no longer exists, it is gone, it was on paper, it was inflated value that these companies really probably shouldn't have, and and by destroying that value, you're destroying money supply at the same time.

Speaker 2: 24:17

Okay, now a lot of people will just say that Republicans are stupid, because Trump has just put in a 25% tax hike on all Americans, including poor people, and you're trying to pass it off as some kind of a good thing. And even look at conservatives like Thomas Sowell, who say that all tariffs are bad, including these tariffs.

Speaker 1: 24:47

And I'm right there in a lot of ways. But I look at Argentina. I'm right there in a lot of ways, but I look at Argentina, argentina and Milley just came out and has approached the Trump administration because Trump has said these are reciprocal and so on. So what's Milley's attitude? We're going to become the first country to work with you, trump, to have mutual free trade, no trade restrictions, no tariffs either direction. That's the libertarian dream, that's the ideal right there, and we're already seeing it. We're already seeing the UK. We're already seeing Mexico and Canada back off on their tariffs. Talk about lowering their tariffs against US goods.

Speaker 1: 25:29

I don't think this is a permanent situation. Tariffs against us goods I don't think this is a permanent situation. But what I'll say is, on a country like china that debases its currency tariffs, us goods going into china highly, this is just leveling the playing field. And you know what he's not even doing a hundred percent. He's not making them perfectly reciprocal. He's literally making it half. So, whatever your trade uh, you know your tariffs or trade barriers are what they add up to in our trade deficit we're going to make it half, so that gives him room to ramp it up if he gets in a, quite frankly, a pissing contest, like he's about to with Xi. Well, he did, because China just announced today they're reaching tariffs by 34%.

Speaker 1: 26:19

Yeah, well okay. He's got a long way to move and I guarantee you China needs our market more than we need their goods. That's backwards, Absolutely the other way around. What do you mean? We need Chinese goods way more than we need their goods.

Speaker 2: 26:32

Absolutely the other way around. What do you mean? We need Chinese goods way more than they need American goods.

Speaker 1: 26:38

No, they need our market more than we need their goods. Is what I said.

Speaker 2: 26:42

Okay, well, that's fair, but we need their goods a lot more than we need them as a market.

Speaker 1: 26:51

Yes, absolutely, goods a lot more than we need their them as a market? Oh yes, absolutely, but that's not necessarily relevant, because really the lever trump controls is whether or not china can even do anything here but here, here's the it's.

Speaker 2: 27:05

It's a bi-directional lever. This is what people forget what I've said for a long time that if china wants to ruin the us economy, it's super easy for them to do at any point in time, and all they have to do is stop shipping goods to the us and the us literally goes out of business.

Speaker 1: 27:21

Yep, you can't buy anything in the us that isn't made in china and this is another reason why it is good to go ahead and do this now, because this starts weaning us off that chinese teat and what trump is doing is the equivalence of the russian sanctions, except these are sanctions on the us uh, I wouldn't call it that. I think it's disingenuous.

Speaker 2: 27:48

But okay, no, I I think it's absolutely the case, because what? What sanctions from the us and russia did is wean russia off of american and european goods yeah, in that sense.

Speaker 1: 28:00

But what I would say is the sanctions make it illegal for you to do stuff. This just makes it more expensive for you to do stuff. So it's it's, it's.

Speaker 2: 28:08

It is different in that sense, and that's my point yeah, yeah, but the net result is going to be that you're losing a source of goods. That's okay. I'm not arguing whether it's okay or not and, frankly, for most of this conversation, I'm being Del's advocate today.

Speaker 1: 28:30

I'm very much agreeing with you.

Speaker 2: 28:32

However, yeah, you know, one of us has to represent the other viewpoint here, so I'm going to do that.

Speaker 1: 28:39

Yeah, did you watch the Nick Freitas episode on young men, by the way.

Speaker 2: 28:46

I watched the one on daughters. I didn't see the one on young men.

Speaker 1: 28:51

You need to watch it, it's pretty good. Did you see the one on on daughters? I didn't see the one, young I'll. You need to watch it. It's pretty good. But uh, anyway, my daughters uh, it was a short one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah we said.

Speaker 2: 29:02

You know, I've I've had a lot of comments from people saying that uh, I'm uh treating my daughters like princesses and it's not good for them. They're not good and it's an argument I would make. In fact, I may have commented in one of his videos uh, that that you know, raising your daughter to be a princess is setting the wrong expectations and she's gonna end up failing in life. And then he says, yeah, I absolutely treat my daughters like princesses, just like you know people have from a thousand years. I expect to use my daughters in getting arranged marriages to result in expanding my empire. And it goes down the path of the traditional princes, like what do you do with them? You marry them off to other countries' princes For a land deal.

Speaker 2: 29:56

Yeah, exactly, so it was pretty funny. I butchered it obviously, but if you like him, you probably have seen that little clip. Anyway, that was a short.

Speaker 1: 30:10

Well, just getting back to tariffs, it's his last term in office too. He said he's not gonna run again. Yeah, he, fritas, is uh stepping down, which I? I'm interested to see where he's gonna go and what the plan is.

Speaker 2: 30:22

Youtube uh talk show okay, make more money than working that job.

Speaker 1: 30:30

Yeah, well, anyway, regardless, back to tariffs People talking about the island that Trump imposed tariffs on and no one lives there. It's just penguins. Why is he doing that? And it's like, well, technically, because he hates penguins. It's obvious. No, it's an Australian territory. Because he ate penguins, it's obvious. No, it's in Australian territory and there are goods and services that list that as the point of origination, even though no one lives there. So you know he's closing loopholes. He's being fairly thorough on this, like the amount of derangement on the left. So I just watched Peter Zahan's Signalgate video and if you haven't seen it you need to go watch it.

Speaker 1: 31:18

You need to go watch the meltdown this man has. I don't need to watch that. Just so many things wrong, uh-huh, uh-huh. It's very terrifying. It is really terrifying to watch people just lose it for no reason.

Speaker 2: 31:39

Yeah, it's not at all surprising. I think it'll be interesting to see how deep into derangement he goes, but he clearly had started pivoting that in that video that you sent a few weeks ago.

Speaker 1: 32:02

Well, I'm telling you right now, if you go watch this latest one on Signalgate, he is literally losing his mind over it. Really, yes, how could they use this third-party app? You can't use third-party apps for this first of all, to use everything is a third-party app.

Speaker 2: 32:23

I don't think you know what that fucking doesn't know what it means.

Speaker 1: 32:25

Yeah and then second of all, um, you know what it comes down to is it came, it was pre-installed on their phone yeah, and he's like oh well, the dod was warning about russian circumventing uh signals, uh security protections and this, that and the other.

Speaker 1: 32:46

And first of all, no, I call it's still bullshit. But second of all, okay, well, I'm sure they have circumvented a lot of DOD systems. Are you telling me DOD has the best coding practices ever in the world and you know nothing's ever been hacked there? Oh wait, that's not true. So it was installed on the government phone.

Speaker 2: 33:11

It was pre-set up like the the nothing burger this is exactly like the terror has an ownership in this. Okay, this is ridiculous to not think of signal as a it is a government app. It is literally a government app yeah, now do dude.

Speaker 1: 33:28

what I would say is, for instance, the Onion Router. That was an In-Q-Tel thing too. Yeah Is it still useful. Yes, you know, but the real thing here is know your audience and know what is reasonable and not. Could the CIA or NSA get into my phone and get into my signal? Probably, but why wouldn't they just hack the keyboard instead To see what I'm sending?

Speaker 2: 34:01

Well, yeah, if you have an. Apple device of course it could erase itself.

Speaker 1: 34:06

Signal is not the weak spot on your phone, right, and that's not the point of intrusion that any attacker is going to go after.

Speaker 2: 34:19

The problem with Signal we already discussed and I thought we kind of beat that topic to death, which was that where the blame lies is in the configuration.

Speaker 1: 34:31

For the group chat.

Speaker 2: 34:32

yes, yeah, for the group chat. Is that signal?

Speaker 1: 34:35

default to allow anyone to add.

Speaker 2: 34:40

I don't think there's anything. Well, I shouldn't say nefarious. There was clearly something nefarious with adding a reporter, but it wasn't from the app. It was nefarious from one of the people that got added to the list. My theory on this which I can't prove, but it's a logical theory is that on that group meeting, some lower staffer was added who shouldn't have been added, or maybe should have been added, but either way they're an anti-Trumper, or maybe should have been added, but either way they're an anti-Trumper. And what they did is they added the reporter and then dropped off themselves very quickly, and so it looked like oh, it was only the people on that call that should have been on it, plus this reporter.

Speaker 2: 35:25

Where did he come from and how did he sneak in? Well, he can't sneak in. The reporter is tech illiterate, first of all. Secondly, uh, he had to have been added and I I am gonna bet that none of the people that were on that call that were trump appointees added the reporter themselves. However, somebody may have added one of their staffers and that staffer likely is who added that person in. It could be even worse that some of these people didn't actually go on this call themselves. They told one of their staffers you know, make sure that I'm on that call and then the staffer added their signal to the call and also did it. So I'm going to blame a staffer. I don't know whose staffer it is, but to me that's the Occam's razor. That's the most likely scenario is that a staffer of one of these people hates Trump's and thought that this is a way to get him is by adding a reporter to the call.

Speaker 1: 36:34

Well, regardless, I'm not too worried about it. I think it's interesting to watch the left make, quite frankly, absolutely ridiculous arguments, uh, both against the tariffs and against um, excuse me, against, uh, the signal gate stuff, like I just see the video compilation of past Democrat presidents, all wanting tariffs yes, and everyone talking about it. Yes, this is not a Republican or Libertarian issue. This is very much a Democratic talking point that's been around for forever.

Speaker 2: 37:32

I think it's the context of how it's been brought up, because if, instead of just saying I'm going to impose tariffs, I think, if that was always prefaced with, it's unfair how other countries tariff us and we're going to push back if they don't lower their tariffs, something that effectively places a blame on others and then a response on us, because the way trump's been talking and like I get what he's saying and why he's doing it.

Speaker 2: 38:02

Um, I'm not generally for terrorists, but there's two elements here that most people seem to be oblivious to. One is the us has had over 2 000 tariffs in place for the last five presidents. The second is that most countries have tariffs, and generally more than even the us has. So really what we're talking about is an equalization of tariffs and not so much an imposition of tariffs. But the way that trump uses like his language actually falls right into the democrat talking points right now, which is trump is trying to kill the economy with putting in arbitrary tariffs. Like what he says doesn't help his case because he doesn't address it as an equalization of tariffs or a we need to lower tariffs across the whole world, and the way we do that is by threatening to raise our own well, you know, all I can say is every time ford wants to sell a car to europe, um, there's a tariff, so they also have plenty of factories in europe too.

Speaker 1: 39:17

Almost nobody buys a car built in the us because it's too big for european roads well, fair enough, fair enough, fair enough, but one of the things I what I'm saying is tariffs are good at incentivizing companies to move manufacturing. That is true. I think the long-term game here, though, is to lower trade barriers and get more countries to come alongside us, like argentina, like that that, I truly believe, is trump's goal. So we'll see. Um, did you see what happened in colorado yesterday? Uh, I don't know what happened. Uh, colorado house democrats just passed a bill saying misgendering is a discriminatory act and includes language to allow cps to take uh children away from parents who misgender, and uh pushes all schools to promote.

Speaker 2: 40:18

There'll be a lot of property for sale in colorado probably well, that and the gun ban, dude.

Speaker 1: 40:22

Yeah, yeah, you can't own a semi-automatic in Colorado. What's wrong with you, wait?

Speaker 2: 40:29

wait, isn't that where your buddy lives?

Speaker 1: 40:33

One of them, yeah.

Speaker 2: 40:35

No, I mean Zahan.

Speaker 1: 40:37

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I actually have some family friends and, ironically, one of the family friends that lives outside of, uh, colorado springs is a very, very big gun guy. Like I don't know how many guns he owns, but it's, it is a probably a four-digit number. Like he's one of those. Like ruguger comes out with a new 10, 22 anniversary, 50th, whatever edition. He's like oh, I'll take two. Wow, cause he collects. That's what he does, he collects. But anyway, colorado is obviously very, very broken, yeah.

Speaker 2: 41:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah it's. I don't. I remember back from like the 80s and 90s that it wasn't so much Colorado, it was just like a few cities in Colorado, like Boulder, where it's super liberal.

Speaker 1: 41:43

Yeah, Boulder is very, very liberal.

Speaker 2: 41:45

But the state in and of itself wasn't. It still had very much a sort of a cowboy mentality. Kind of out west mentality, but it sure feels like the entirety of Colorado is basically like Boulder used to be. Okay, I think we just give Colorado to California and be done with it.

Speaker 1: 42:11

Give Colorado to California.

Speaker 2: 42:13

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 42:16

Only if they decide to secede.

Speaker 2: 42:18

Well, we, no, no, no. I'm saying we should build the wall between the United States and California and then also around Colorado.

Speaker 1: 42:25

At this point, Well, I think what you do is you just I would rather see us just nuke Denver and Boulder, and then I think we'd be alright Nuke.

Speaker 2: 42:37

Denver and Boulder. Well, you know, we may get our wish if the US starts getting into the war in Ukraine, because most of Colorado is very much on the first strike map.

Speaker 1: 42:54

Yeah, absolutely, with everything that's there Now one of the things I will say is did you see what Gavin Newsom decided to do?

Speaker 2: 43:06

No, in response to the tariffs.

Speaker 1: 43:07

I don't watch. Gavin Newsom decided to do no In response to the tariffs. I don't watch Gavin Newsom.

Speaker 2: 43:16

Gavin Newsom has decided to instruct the state of California to work on its own trade deals With foreign countries.

Speaker 1: 43:19

Yes, Okay, which is interesting and I don't necessarily oppose it. Yeah, you know Texas. We have uh texas department of trade. Um now, its primary responsibilities at this point in time are economic development and getting you know uh countries and uh places to come and invest here in Texas, and lowering our local tax barriers and so on.

Speaker 2: 43:50

What would that do for California? I'm trying to envision how this could be a good thing for California at all.

Speaker 1: 43:57

Well, I don't see it as being effective at all. I see Gavin Newsom as virtue signaling. What I will say is setting up this sort of capability is a first step to seeking independence in my mind this and setting up your own banks and so on and gold repositories like. Yeah, you know, texas has.

Speaker 2: 44:28

Uh, yeah, it's interesting because we could potentially lose the entire west coast, which again I wouldn't be too opposed to uh, you know what I?

Speaker 1: 44:39

read through give give, create the state of Jefferson, split off that part of Washington, oregon and so on. And California. Break California up and give. Keep the eastern portions of California and everything else. Give it all to Canada and Mexico.

Speaker 2: 45:03

Let it go.

Speaker 1: 45:03

Bye.

Speaker 2: 45:07

Yeah, the problem is it wouldn't actually be Canada and Mexico, it would be China, with a beat on the ground just west of the Nevada. But yeah, in general I'm more inclined to let people that have zero interest in being a part of this country to just not be a part of this country, like I would never have a civil war over it I agree, yeah, yeah, but I would also believe in a very strong defense, meaning you build that wall just as tall around California as you do around Mexico.

Speaker 2: 45:52

Yeah, and none of this. Coming into the United States to go shopping bullshit. You want to get a visa, you go.

Speaker 1: 46:03

You follow the same process everybody else does yeah, well, regardless, uh it's, we live in interesting times, my friend. Yeah, we do definitely.

Speaker 2: 46:20

I've lived in a few interesting times. I lived in the Y2K, that was a very interesting time.

Speaker 1: 46:26

I did too.

Speaker 2: 46:28

Yeah, but you were like five years old but it was Actually I would have been 14.

Speaker 1: 46:36

Thank you, Uh-huh.

Speaker 2: 46:38

Oh, 14. So you just graduated high school? Okay, but it was a very interesting time, for sure. Um, and then, of course, the 80s consultants got to make a lot of money over a lot of bs dude, it was so good I I any deal that I came in to sell I like how you don't argue that it wasn't bullshit, but you know it was a great time.

Speaker 1: 47:04

It was a great time I will say there was some legitimate stuff, like there was whatever, but this fear that, like the, the idea that the consequence was we don't know what's gonna happen we've got a pretty good idea what's gonna happen turn off and never come back again forever, because just all those systems were built in cobalt, and cobalt only let numbers go up to 2000 uh-huh.

Speaker 2: 47:36

Well, actually it was a two-digit year, but it was a good time. Yeah, exactly, it was, uh, definitely good. Yeah, back back then I remember I used to ride my motorcycle to client meetings, grow up in full leathers and it's a down talk, but in the meeting we'd get a contract signed and I'd hop on my bike and then go riding for the rest of the day. That was a good time. Okay, yeah, there's. There's probably about 10 hours of work per week that I was doing back then and making six figures.

Speaker 1: 48:24

This is.

Speaker 2: 48:25

This is why people hate consultants Gene yeah, well, it's more difficult to do that right now and, of course, six figures ain't worth shit anymore well, I wouldn't say it's not not worth it, it is definitely worth less than it was. Yeah, like making 120 130k back then is like making $280,000 right now. Yeah, so it's really gone up a lot Like the inflation is crazy high.

Speaker 1: 48:56

Well then you should be pretty happy about some of the deflationary stuff that's going on then.

Speaker 2: 49:03

Yeah, yeah, no, it's good. I think what's interesting to me is bitcoin hasn't done a goddamn thing. It's been sitting in 80 for like since trump got elected and still in the same place now, whereas everything else is either going up or down. Gold's going up, stocks are going down, which usually is a predictor of massive horrible events coming up so why do I don't know about that, but why do you think?

Speaker 1: 49:37

uh, bitcoin is sitting there. Actually, I don't know.

Speaker 2: 49:40

I have no idea, dude. I've thought about it. I'm like that is so bizarre Because Bitcoin is the least volatile it's ever been right now, which, again, I don't have an explanation for. I'm usually pretty good at coming up with explanations for stuff that at least are rational sounding, but I don't know, I can't even guess and do and guess my like I would.

Speaker 1: 50:12

I would really need to open it up and not just look at the price, but look at the volume of trading and everything else, get a good idea.

Speaker 2: 50:18

Yeah, yeah, it's um. You know, I I've often reminded people that when you see a shift in the price of something, it doesn't necessarily mean that thing is going up or down. It is the relationship between the US dollar and that thing, and that's why, when the price of gold goes up, it's not that gold's getting more expensive because there's less of it around. It is that inflation on the us dollar is making a difference between what the price of gold is in us dollars, and so you know, a rise in gold typically signifies an increase in inflation. Now, if Trump does the deflationary stuff or a run to a secure asset, so volatility can also cause that too.

Speaker 2: 51:15

They're one and the same, because it implies the insecurity of keeping your money in US dollars. Okay, so if Trump does something deflationary, we should see the price of gold going down.

Speaker 1: 51:36

Not necessarily.

Speaker 2: 51:37

We'll see if that happens.

Speaker 1: 51:39

So one of the things I would say is not necessarily the price of gold is somewhat inelastic, because you have a lot of people who purchase and hold physical gold, because that's what they do, right they're not A very small number of people. Okay, I disagree. Also, banks typically hold reserves of that's the single biggest number. Yeah, that is the biggest number, but I don't think you're going to see JPMorgan Chase divesting of their silver assets and things like that.

Speaker 2: 52:20

They've done it before. When was the last time they dropped hardly? Anything well, they did happen in the 90s, when the silver market started crashing yeah, 90s, so we're talking.

Speaker 1: 52:34

How many years ago uh yeah, you were like 30 years ago, but maybe they're due but that has not been, even like during the 2008 crisis and everything else.

Speaker 2: 52:45

all all they did was add yeah, but gold is interesting because it's not just a tangible thing that you hold for value, it's not just jewelry. The single biggest consumer of gold is actually the electronics industry. So it is something that is utilized in manufacturing, sure, but that's not what people typically buy.

Speaker 1: 53:16

What do you mean? Like? People aren't buying just gold ore, right? Anything that makes it into like an ingot or anything that a consumer would purchase is not ever going to be used in an industry.

Speaker 2: 53:29

By a number of things. One of which is demand in the electronics industry. Sure, and if that demand drops, let's say we go to some kind of a new non-silicon-based electronics and gold is no longer needed, because it's actually using light instead of electrons, it's using photons. Then all of a sudden, with a drop in demand, the price of gold should go down.

Speaker 1: 53:59

Gold is a conductor. That's non you know. It's an inert conductor, so there will always be a need for a good non-oxidizing conductor. That's what I that's what I mean by inert. Yeah, it doesn't react or oxidize. Yes, yeah so it's uh, like silver oxidizes, silver is not inert. Silver is not inert. Copper is not inert. This is the reason why we use gold in gold plating and gold in connections and connectors where we don't want that to change and degrade over time.

Speaker 2: 54:41

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what tariffs ultimately do, because I've always thought when Trump talked about tariffs, the main point of tariffs is political action. It's a tool in the political toolkit and any kind of change that it causes to the financial system is just a side effect. There are people that have the opposite viewpoint, that tariffs are predominantly a financial tool and that any changes in political alignment they cause are the secondary function. So I think for Trump I could be wrong, but I think for Trump they are predominantly a political tool to effect change and the economic effects are the side effect.

Speaker 1: 55:39

Okay, what do you think he's using this as a political tool to accomplish?

Speaker 2: 55:46

Well, two things. One is to bring manufacturing back to the United States. I think that's a big goal he has, and to do that, it can't be done in competition with labor that gets $5 per hour. It has to be. You know, if manufacturing is going to happen in the US, we're probably looking at a $60 minimum wage for manufacturing jobs.

Speaker 1: 56:13

Yeah, we have to raise the cost of everything else to allow that the options to bring back manufacturing are to impose tariffs, so companies. It is cheaper for them to meet our current regulatory burden, both with minimum wage issues as well as environmental and everything else, or remove those regulations, and I would say most libertarians would say abolish the minimum wage, abolish this. You know have a laissez-faire capitalistic market, but the reality is to actually get to that sort of market would be harder and would be harder on average people well, there's two things.

Speaker 2: 57:02

One is that, uh, and I agree with you, but one of them is that something most people don't consider is that for there to be a laissez-faire market, it has to be equalized, meaning you can't have a command economy on one side and a laissez-faire market on the other side, because the command economy will always win in that situation.

Speaker 1: 57:26

I think the history has shown otherwise?

Speaker 2: 57:29

No, it hasn't. You can only deal with countries. You can only allow a laissez-faire market to other laissez-faire markets, other laissez-faire markets. You cannot allow that type of relationship where you literally have zero tariffs, zero limits on trade. You allow anything to a country that effectively, is subsidizing the products in order to bankrupt you, and that's what Trump is trying to go against. He's trying to push back against, sure and that's where tariffs can come in.

Speaker 1: 58:12

And, yeah, you know, push that back. Uh, you know and help, but that doesn't really change the fact that a laissez-faire economy is always going to be a better option than a command economy?

Speaker 2: 58:28

Yeah, absolutely it is for the people in that country. But what I'm saying is, if you have a country that doesn't have that, you have a country like China that has a command economy, where decisions about its output and pricing is actually made politically rather than through the market. They can impose pricing that will result in what happened in the United States for the most part, which is an inability to compete freely against a control economy like that. The US didn't just say we want to get rid of all our manufacturing because they're stinky. The US manufacturing died a slow death because it couldn't compete. And it couldn't compete not because China was able to manufacture manufacturing in the US, but because China was able to provide pricing for products that the US could not compete with, regardless of quality.

Speaker 2: 59:39

Like the shittiest quality American products still could not be made for as cheap as they could be made in China, or even higher quality products made in China. Now, the best US manufacturing was always a higher quality than Chinese, but the price was multiples of the cost of Chinese. And I know this. Even fairly recently, with the wallet that my buddy manufactured, designed and then made, you know, for the Kickstarter, the fulfillment of all of those wallets was done in China and you know he had found the best of the Chinese manufacturers for this kind of product, which is just essentially jewelry quality. But it was still nowhere near what he was able to achieve in the US. But the cost to manufacture in the US was about two and a half times higher than like the best. Chinese quality was still two and a half times cheaper than fairly average US quality.

Speaker 1: 1:00:46

Yeah. So you know, part of this is, yeah, a command economy can and will invest and cause. You know, this is exactly where the tariffs come into play as a defense mechanism and everything else play as a defense mechanism and everything else. But what I will say is, when you look at the command economies of the ussr and the fairly laissez-faire economies of the us. Uh, during the cold war period um russia couldn't feed itself, so command economies while they can make those?

Speaker 2: 1:01:27

Yeah, but that's a different issue. Hold on, hold on, hold on, all right.

Speaker 1: 1:01:29

While the command economies can make those decisions and say okay we're going to put they're going to cost them Exactly. And oftentimes the leaders are stupid and make the wrong decision and cost their people dearly. Cost their people dearly. The unseen hand of the market is far more, you know, more accurate and active than the command economy.

Speaker 2: 1:01:53

But I'm not talking about the quality of life of people in the command economy. I'm saying that for people in a lottery.

Speaker 1: 1:02:01

Fair economy, the command economy, can have an impact.

Speaker 2: 1:02:03

Yeah, but that's where the command economy can have an impact.

Speaker 1: 1:02:05

Yeah, that's where this is important that we do have the tools available and use them to take care of our people? Yes, and.

Speaker 2: 1:02:21

Yeah, so my only point here is that what's sad is what we've let happen with Chinese manufacturing. I remember as a kid thinking that American goods, like made in the USA, actually meant something, and it meant it was the highest quality possible. Made in Japan was cheaper and worse quality than american, and made in china was complete another total crap. Like it was throwaway stuff you you could. You could have, like your slippers made in china, but you would never have your television made in China. You would absolutely have that made in Japan, and the television sets made in America were probably the first to go.

Speaker 1: 1:03:13

And, to be clear, trump has been talking about this being an issue.

Speaker 2: 1:03:18

literally in the 80s, he would have been saying the same things about Japan as he is saying about China now, mm-hmm he would have been saying the same things about japan as he is saying about china now.

Speaker 2: 1:03:27

Yeah, and it makes sense, because trump builds buildings in the united states, although he builds them in other countries too. But, uh, having a healthy economy in the us is beneficial to trump, and always has been, and we have opted to go for cheaper goods, regardless of how they're made, by slave labor, and instead, um, as a result of that, rather, we've given away our own ability to compete on any of these things. Like you could still buy an american-made tv when I was a kid, it was an rca and it was clearly already starting to seem like it was worse than the japanese, the sony ones, but at least it was an option where that fell off. Like there literally was no way by the 90s to buy american television, american computers used to be made like Apple used to be made in the US. Radioshack made computers, ibm made computers these are all US-made computers Until companies like IBM started getting deals with companies like Novo to make their equipment.

Speaker 2: 1:04:42

And then eventually, Novo just bought the brand name from IBM and said look, we've been making them for you, We'll just pay you to buy the name. We'll keep making them because they've always been our computers. You're just selling them. And that has happened in every industry. I miss my ThinkPads. Yeah, they were definitely. I had two of them, I think, over the years and they were always much. I've. I had two of them, I think over the years. Oh, they were always much better than dells?

Speaker 1: 1:05:10

yeah, they, they were just a beast rock solid. Uh, just very, very good construction and yeah yeah, and and a lot of.

Speaker 2: 1:05:22

and the companies that were American companies moved their manufacturing into third world countries. Like hard drives, disk drives used to be manufactured in the United States and then slowly, over time, they started getting factories built in the Philippines, in Indonesia and in Asia where the labor market was super cheap. And you know, in asia, where the labor market was super cheap and uh, the, the cost of building the factory itself was way cheaper than building the same factory in the united states.

Speaker 2: 1:05:54

so there were there were items where foreign manufacturers basically replaced american manufacturers and there were also areas where American manufacturers just simply stopped employing American people and shifted to factories overseas. And both of those things happened, and it didn't happen overnight, but over the course of my lifetime I saw it happening continuously every year.

Speaker 1: 1:06:20

Well, and you know, we've seen German Petrochem factories move to Louisiana because of the sanctions against. Russia, they can't get the inputs for this. Yeah, there is definitely times when outsourcing and economic shifts make sense. I will have to say cheaper goods for cheaper goods sake isn't always a good thing, especially when you're debasing and removing jobs from your own economy. And the answer is often oh well, you know, you can just get a different job. You can do this, that and the other. Well, maybe Learn to code. I think is the phrase you're looking for?

Speaker 1: 1:07:03

Maybe Learn to code, I think, is the phrase you're looking for. Well, but the point is maybe, and you know what does it matter if you can or can't, why is that an ideal that we should espouse for?

Speaker 1: 1:07:25

You know, a pure race at the bottom isn't necessarily a good thing, and I'll just say I'm not for government regulation. I would love it if again all countries were on the same playing field and not debasing their currency and so on. But you know, it's really stupid when I hear a libertarian or someone argue well, we shouldn't do tariffs and this and the other. Okay, but they are. But they're doing lots of things here that are hurting us. That's not fair.

Speaker 2: 1:08:01

The question to ask that libertarian that's just going to argue, say tariffs are bad, which is basically the libertarian position. Sure it's okay, okay, okay, I'm not going to disagree with you. Let's agree, all tariffs are bad. So we, knowing that all tariffs are bad and china has 1028 tariffs currently in the united states, do you think we should? We should attack china? What? What is the method of addressing this in getting rid of those tariffs that China has? Do we do it militarily? Do we do it politically, or do we do it through pressure, by first threatening and then eventually, if need be, imposing reciprocal tariffs? Because I'd be curious to see what the libertarian answer to that is. Yeah, did we lose you, ben? Your device reboot.

Speaker 1: 1:08:58

No, I muted to cough and forgot to unmute. Oh, so sorry, no again. The way these tariffs are set up is there's a baseline tariff and there's a reciprocal tariff. There's a reciprocal tariff and the reciprocal tariff can change and uh you know, move up and down as countries decide to fight us or do whatever they're going to do. So I, I think it's going to be very interesting to see who blinks first, trump or china, with the the tariffs, because, as china's raising them, I I think it's going to be announced shortly that the Chinese tariffs are going to go even higher.

Speaker 2: 1:09:37

Yeah, well, I mean they went 34% higher today. Mm-hmm, that just happened. So you're saying they're going to keep rising? Yeah, because I think China's going to respond and we're going to respond, and we're going to go back and forth, but this is a game that China can play longer than the US, because the amount of products that are imported into China from the US are limited to luxury goods.

Speaker 1: 1:10:05

China doesn't get. That's not true.

Speaker 2: 1:10:09

Well, for the most part.

Speaker 1: 1:10:11

There's energy resources that China imports. China imports a ton of food. There's several things.

Speaker 2: 1:10:20

They're getting most of that from Australia and surrounding areas. It's not mostly coming from the US as a percentage of imports. This is the reason we have a tariff war in the first place. It's because China just does not buy many American products. Mm-hmm is the reason we have a tariff war in the first place. It's because China just does not buy many American products. If they bought a bunch of American products, there would be no reason for Trump to impose tariffs.

Speaker 2: 1:10:45

But we've had an imbalance in trade with China for decades and at first it was hard to have a trade imbalance simply because chinese goods were so damn cheap that like one american car covered thousands of imports from china. But at this point it's like I said it's hard to find something in the us that isn't manufactured with chinese parts or completely in China. And I'll tell you, a whole group of people that are going to be out of business as a result of this are small Amazon sellers who really just have a product that is made in China and then just delivered to Amazon. Amazon, you know, kind of like my uh, uh, my unsuccessful foray into doing that with the solar plant.

Speaker 1: 1:11:41

The solar plan shows I just looked it up the us main and we do about 500 and some odd billion dollars of trade with china? Um the? U main exports include agricultural products, so food, corn, etc. Along with machinery vehicles and aircrafts as the top, and then other key exports are also minerals for fuel, aka coal, shipments oils, distillate products and so on. So yeah, we actually do send a bit to China.

Speaker 2: 1:12:16

We do, but as a percentage of their both total imports and the economy, it is a much smaller percentage than what the US gets from China.

Speaker 1: 1:12:45

Yes, yes, anyway, I I think, I think that we can, especially with our if australia will play game uh play ball with us and uh work together.

Speaker 2: 1:12:50

Australia's got high tariffs on American goods.

Speaker 1: 1:12:53

Yes, yeah, yeah, but. I'm talking about against China.

Speaker 2: 1:12:56

I know, but they have no reason to play ball. If anything, we may end up pushing China closer to other countries with this. I don't think so.

Speaker 1: 1:13:07

But we'll see.

Speaker 2: 1:13:08

We will see.

Speaker 1: 1:13:11

I've been wrong before.

Speaker 2: 1:13:22

Yeah, so the US? What place is China?

Speaker 1: 1:13:24

in the US imports. Do you think In imports? Yeah, I would say they're probably number two or three.

Speaker 2: 1:13:33

They are number three, mexico's number one, canada's number two, canada's number two or three. They are number three, mexico's, number one Canada's number two, which is why, also, I think, most people don't know this and they only think China's the big, but we have the imbalance with Canada and the imbalance with Mexico. Oh yeah, it's a but. Here's the interesting thing you know, china is the third largest importer of goods into the US. Uh, as far as goods exported from the US, where do you think China is?

Speaker 1: 1:14:05

Uh, significantly lower. Yeah, probably not in the top ten.

Speaker 2: 1:14:10

Yeah, no, I think they're seventh, okay, seventh, but they're barely more than Japan.

Speaker 1: 1:14:16

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:14:17

And a country that's way bigger, and our imports from Japan are about a third of our imports from China, and I think that's mostly cars, so it's a. In fact, japan is almost equivalent to what we import from Vietnam.

Speaker 1: 1:14:32

In fact, japan is almost equivalent to what we import from Vietnam. Well look, I think we have to make a break with China, I think we have to get off of the.

Speaker 1: 1:14:45

And realistically, here's the deal China being number three is extremely dangerous to me, and Canada and Mexico being number one and number two is less so. And the reason why is because A even as liberal as the Canadian government can get we are more aligned. As much of a failed narco state as Mexico is, we are more aligned. So we are more aligned. And not only that, we have the absolute capability of just saying shut up your hours now. Yeah, exactly, and neither could do anything about it.

Speaker 2: 1:15:22

It's fairly small. Of all the countries that we both import and export from, canada is the closest to equivalent. They still import less than they export, but it's pretty darn close. Mexico exports double the amount that it imports and China imports about a quarter of what they export to us. So the Canadian is more like 90%. So their imports are at 90% of their exports. But then you look at European countries like Germany, who's the largest of the European importers into the US. So things that they export to us is about double of how much they consume American goods. They import about one half of what they export to the US. That's a big imbalance.

Speaker 1: 1:16:18

And let me just say that I'm okay with everybody sending their goods over here and us not sending goods out as long as we have and this is something that's, I think, a little disingenuous in the trade numbers.

Speaker 1: 1:16:33

We don't count American labor in that, and American labor is pretty significant on projects all around the world. For instance, the company I work for, we are one of the principals on the new airport in Riyadh and I'm telling you right now, without Western help, that airport I don't think could be built and have the capabilities and do the things that they're wanting to do. I don't think they could do it without the West. I don't think they could do it without the west. I don't think they could do it without the united states. Quite frankly, um, we have a lot of very talented and very educated engineers and people don't. And I didn't really understand the americans competitive advantage around the world and why america does go and win and why you would pay such an expensive American salary. Surely you have engineers in your country. The work ethic, the attitude, the ingenuity. We are different, dude.

Speaker 2: 1:17:43

Absolutely. That's I. I've always said back when I used to run international teams for a BT is that, uh, I will get double the amount of work out of America compared to any other country.

Speaker 1: 1:17:54

I don't care who it is Germans, japanese, anybody else Yet the Japanese and Taiwanese say oh no, you Americans are lazy, you don't no? No, no, we work more efficiently.

Speaker 2: 1:18:10

Well, but it's beyond that. Like in most countries, they have way more holidays. Americans have 10, 10 holidays a year. Americans also get the least amount of time off in vacation, and a lot of people like when I worked, I didn't take any time off at all for four years and then, um, I think you get a divorce? Yeah Well, not because of that. I mean, my wife went on vacation, I just didn't go on vacation. Uh, because I've always considered like right.

Speaker 1: 1:18:45

But I'm not going to leave a project that needs to get finished. Yeah, but you, you have to connect some dots there, but it's okay. Look, Americans' productivity per hour of work is higher than anywhere else in the world.

Speaker 2: 1:19:05

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:19:07

And to everyone who's sitting there.

Speaker 2: 1:19:09

That doesn't exist in other countries?

Speaker 1: 1:19:11

Right, but everyone should be sitting there going. You mean that dumbass next to me is outworking Europeans?

Speaker 2: 1:19:17

Yeah, more than likely. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's been my experience in international business for sure.

Speaker 1: 1:19:27

So, regardless, my point is, if we would include the US S trade of labor and things, not just hard goods, I think we would see a very different picture than we do now.

Speaker 2: 1:19:38

But yeah, and I'm kind of surprised countries like China haven't brought that up, because that that could be an argument to counterweight the whole imbalance of trade issue. Like, yeah, maybe we make more stuff, but look at all the money we're spending with hiring in consultants, yeah, and architects and everybody else. There are areas where the US clearly dominates. You talk about the defense business, the military sales, oh, equipment yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:20:14

I mean there's a few countries there like Belgium and South Africa, but really the US is the big gorilla. We make more of the ammunition and equipment that kills more people than any other country in the history of the world.

Speaker 1: 1:20:28

Well, and quite frankly, the only competition we have at all is in small arms, anything. Well and, quite frankly, the only competition we have at all is in small arms, mm-hmm, yep, anything beyond well, quite frankly, a fighter, but even that we could talk about being.

Speaker 2: 1:20:48

The only reason countries buy equipment that's not US manufactured is because they can't. Yes, the only reason countries buy equipment that's not US manufactured is because they can't. If Russia could buy American military gear, they would in a heartbeat.

Speaker 1: 1:20:59

Probably, I think a lot of Russian generals would be very sad to give up the AKM platform?

Speaker 2: 1:21:08

Sure, from well. Kalashnikov may be one of those exceptions, but still an american, or better yet, an israeli made kalashnikov is better than the russian one. Um, that's my take on it anyway. But I I just from a, you know, loyalty standpoint or a national pride, sure, but from a empirical data, it's hard to argue with american manufactured arms quality well, and I mean it just works better.

Speaker 1: 1:21:38

And you know, when you look at, like, the f-22, um, when you look at china's sixth gen fighter, yeah, and russia's, you know, uh, they're still playing catch up to the f-22 in a lot of ways, yeah the europeans do not like sob, you know. Uh, like saw everyone was talking about how the the sob I forget which number in the 90s was going to be the fighter of the future and everything, and it totally did not go anywhere no, um, because they build everything with committees in Europe.

Speaker 1: 1:22:11

Yeah, yeah. But you know, when you look at even Boeing versus Airbus in that fight, dude, there's just not much of a comparison here.

Speaker 2: 1:22:28

Airbus would have been out of business decades ago if it wasn't subsidized. Yes, and that's what I mean about. Like the unfair competition is it's europe isn't quite a command economy, but there are aspects of it. Absolutely. There are national projects which they will pay for to keep alive, regardless of whether they're making money or not and thisbus is a perfect example of that.

Speaker 1: 1:22:53

And when you look at the effing dude, when you look at the difference in even and I'm a big critic of the Ford-class aircraft carriers right, I think we should have made some minor updates to the Nimitz and moved on but when you look at the Ford-class aircraft carriers and then you look and even the problems they've had, and you compare that to the UK's new Queen Elizabeth or whatever it was or whatever the name of that aircraft, because it's changed a couple times when you look at the differences, that holy crap, like that thing may never actually functionally sail. Okay, so just to be clear, and it's a non-nuke which was shocking to me.

Speaker 2: 1:23:46

Well, there are cruise ships that are making way more advances than aircraft carrier construction. Yes, they don't. Ships that are making way more advances than aircraft carrier construction. Yes, they don't use nukes on cruise ships, but in terms of size and capacity, holy shit, those things have changed a lot in the last 30 years. Aircraft carriers just got a little bigger.

Speaker 1: 1:24:10

There's lots of things like the magnetic cable.

Speaker 2: 1:24:14

There's lots of things like the magnetic cable break versus steam and the launch assist, which fail, which is one of the big failure points that everyone's bitching about, is the fact that they should have kept it the way that it used to work, because the magnetic works way worse.

Speaker 1: 1:24:30

Well, they're working out the kinks. We'll see. But anyway, point is is china can't really build an aircraft carrier yet, like they've built one of their own home design, and we'll see how it goes?

Speaker 2: 1:24:43

uh, I think the bigger thing I would say is that china can't design shit at all. Everything they have, including their space and sea, is based on designs from other countries. And why is that? It's a mentality. So I've got a, a guy that I know that's in china right now and he's an american guy and he's been living there for about four years and so he is. We've talked about this kind of stuff. Like you know chinese mentality.

Speaker 2: 1:25:12

He, he runs a company out there and he said a big part of it is that they are not taught to do this in school, the chinese school, and part of the reason he wants to come back as his kids are aging is to put his kids in american school rather than Chinese school, even Chinese private school. Because they said in China the focus is always on getting the right answer. They don't teach skills that involve or lead to rather innovation, critical thinking yeah, they don't teach critical thinking. They don't teach other skills that are necessary to innovate. They teach memorization. That's the main focus. They want you to just memorize things so you can recite them at will. Well, what does that lead to? Well, that leads to somebody that can memorize a tech manual and follow the instructions every day and never change anything and not really see any way to improve the process.

Speaker 2: 1:26:32

Japanese had the same culture for industry, which led to the domination of japanese products all throughout the 80s and 90s, because japanese products included post-deming, a continuous improvement cycle, and so they were advancing much further. You look at a Honda from 1979, and you look at a Honda from 1989, and you couldn't even tell that it was the same manufacturer. They're completely different vehicles, whereas you look at an Oldsmobile from 79, and you look at an Oldsmobile from 89, and look at an Oldsmobile from 89 and you go, man, they used to build cars better.

Speaker 1: 1:27:19

I don't know why anyone would look back at the vehicles of the 70s Because I had a 79 Oldsmobile.

Speaker 2: 1:27:25

That's why I'm using that as an example.

Speaker 1: 1:27:26

All I can say is I have 215,000 miles on my truck and I could not have done that with a vehicle, any vehicle from the 1970s.

Speaker 2: 1:27:39

Absolutely. Yeah, I would totally agree with that. A hundred thousand miles was kind of a death penalty for vehicles back then.

Speaker 1: 1:27:46

Like 80,000, 50,000 for the seventies.

Speaker 2: 1:27:49

Yeah, like well, no, I drove mine to like, I think, 85,000. You had a lot of problems, but okay, I had a lot of absolutely yeah. Yeah, not to say without problems just just by the time you hit 100 000 miles the vehicle was not worth fixing, is my point. Yeah, before then it was still worth fixing because you could still drive it. Now, the the the best american vehicle that I had in terms of needing the least amount of service was a saturn I put on, I put on 120 000 you say that?

Speaker 2: 1:28:25

well, because it's true, but on 120 000 miles on the saturn with zero, zero replacements of anything other than brake pads, nothing else. No other parts in that vehicle needed to get replaced. Well, okay, spark plugs. Once I did one spark plug replacement in a hundred, over a hundred thousand miles and I replaced the brake pads probably five times. Yeah, but no actual major parts ever got replaced in that vehicle and I sold it and it still ran fine.

Speaker 2: 1:29:01

It's, I mean, as far as american cars, that was a very big innovation. Now, as far as european cars and other manufacturers, japanese cars, um, I had minimal problems with those, but I expected minimal problems with those. Or I got rid of them early enough. Like german cars, you don't want to keep too long because they're great when they're new, but typically they will break after their warranty and those repairs start getting expensive. Yeah, but then you have legendary cars like the toyota. Um, what's the model? We don't have it here the um hylux, hylux, yeah, yeah, the closest we have is the um forerunner, right, that's the closest relative of the hylux, the, the small truck, yeah, not the tundra, but not the tundra right.

Speaker 2: 1:29:51

Yeah, the other one, not the Tundra right, the smaller one, but that thing is legendary and it is used by every terrorist organization on the planet.

Speaker 1: 1:30:01

For that reason, Yep, I would love to have one.

Speaker 2: 1:30:05

Well, you can import one. You can import them into the US, you just can't buy them here.

Speaker 1: 1:30:10

I don't think you can import them.

Speaker 2: 1:30:12

Mm-hmm, I had a buddy that had one.

Speaker 1: 1:30:15

Find me a way to import a Hilux. Oh, dude, I'll do that right now where we're talking, Because you know what.

Speaker 2: 1:30:21

You get them from Australia, you just import them from Australia.

Speaker 1: 1:30:25

But what's the cost of importing? It'll be about $100,000. See, yeah, no, this is a $15,000 vehicle outside the US it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2: 1:30:34

You didn't specify a cost, I just said it's totally doable. I didn't say it was cheap, but you removed the incentive to Jesus Christ. But it'll last you 500,000 miles.

Speaker 1: 1:30:46

Uh-huh, uh-huh. No, still not what I'm looking for here, bud. Well, you're a cheap ass. I am not a cheap ass, I'm just not going to spend X amount of money yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:31:01

I found an article that talks about it. I'll send you an article that talks about importing one if you really want to do it.

Speaker 1: 1:31:08

Well, it depends on the cost.

Speaker 2: 1:31:11

The article starts with owning a Toyota Hilux is an expensive matter in the US.

Speaker 1: 1:31:18

Uh, yeah, uh-huh, yeah, um so.

Speaker 2: 1:31:21

That's nice. The latest version.

Speaker 1: 1:31:22

What do you think of this? Uh, work from home. Uh, bs that. Uh, your favorite rep is all in on my favorite rep, anna Paulina Luna. Oh, what about it? I'm not familiar with it. So she's wanting, uh, female congresswomen who have recently had a baby to be able to vote by proxy or remotely um, I don't know, I don't.

Speaker 2: 1:31:54

It's hard to say, because if it was a different job I would say no, but honestly I don't think it makes any difference, because they're, they're gonna, regardless of where they're sitting. They're gonna vote based on what their party tells them anyway I, I disagree.

Speaker 1: 1:32:13

I think it's bullshit. I think I would 100 say you know what, if you can't be bothered to come in to the house when you have a you know very few obligations, you are already such a fucking elitist.

Speaker 2: 1:32:38

Funny, but is there any reason for congress, for the house, let's specifically say for the house members, to physically be in the house? Because here's what I would prefer. I prefer none of them go to washington. They all sit in their offices in their districts where they're elected, and be available every week, at least for a day a week, to constituents, and all their votes are done over the internet. Like I don't see a reason for them to ever physically go to washington for any of them well.

Speaker 1: 1:33:11

So first of all, we would have to totally. It's unconstitutional right now. Um, there is no voting by a proxy in the house.

Speaker 2: 1:33:21

It's not a proxy, it's a direct vote hold on. Hold on hold on.

Speaker 1: 1:33:24

Hold on there. You cannot vote remotely, you have to vote from the house. Floor is a physical location thing, just like a session I think that could be changed. It would have required a constitutional amendment. I don't think it would. I think it would what because the floor of the house, there's a lot of protection. So, for instance, the speech and debate clause only only allows for a congress man or woman to say whatever the hell that they want to say, without any recrimination on the House floor.

Speaker 2: 1:33:54

I want to get rid of that rule. So getting rid of that and going remote makes sense.

Speaker 1: 1:34:00

Okay, I think it's an important thing. Okay, I think it's important.

Speaker 2: 1:34:10

I don't think that our politicians should have any kind of rights that citizens don't, including extraditural free speech, Like if they want to have that right for all of us, that's fine.

Speaker 1: 1:34:22

I think everybody should have it. The day show should have that right. I'm a free speech absolutist, so please continue. I'm good with this.

Speaker 2: 1:34:30

Well, that's what I'm saying. That's not a rationale for them to have to be in there.

Speaker 1: 1:34:35

It is because I think it's a pretty important thing for them to do what they need to do accurately and having that debate be an honest't have a place to congregate Exactly. I would love that On my side of this argument, because there are some things in the way, gene, and we have to do things right. Yeah, because principles matter.

Speaker 2: 1:35:15

I mean, okay, those are throwaway words, that they literally mean nothing. What are you getting at, jesus Christ? We have to do things right. That sounds like a politician. What do you mean by right? What things? What are you doing In the day of current technology, where companies that are a good chunk similar to the size of the US government are run over Zoom meetings? What the hell requires these guys to be there in person? Well, first of all, do we really want Zoom or Microsoft?

Speaker 1: 1:35:57

to be the connection of choice. Gee Ben. What are we recording this on In the time of AI right? Well, we're not important enough but if you don't think that China, who controls Zoom, couldn't create an AI avatar of congressperson here or there and change their vote, well, that's the congress critter's problem, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 1:36:21

I don't know man. I'm reading the Constitution. I don't see anything that says in person. The phrase in person is not in the constitution.

Speaker 1: 1:36:34

Therefore I think you should read article one again. Uh, it's why, because they're the quorum rules and everything else.

Speaker 2: 1:36:49

Yeah, quorum doesn't have to be in person. Oh, oh Jesus. Warm is the number of people on the zoom call.

Speaker 1: 1:37:00

Jesus Christ, oh, okay, well, we'll see. Man, all I can say is all the companies I know of are trying to push back, to go back in the office.

Speaker 2: 1:37:12

So for a different reason. They're trying to push back for the office because people are working two jobs and then not doing either one full time. Are you, are you? Congress already doesn't work a full time job there? If you look at the schedule of congressional, oh, it's insane it's less than, way less than half a year.

Speaker 1: 1:37:34

It's like four days this month yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:37:40

So I think from a practical standpoint, more good would be served by having Congress never be in Washington but be conducted virtually, and having those representatives be living in the districts that they represent and not in a centralized location for lobbyists to pay them off for a variety of things. That's the problem. Washington DC becomes a city and a culture of its own that disregards the place that these people are actually elected from. Uh, when I, when I, a Congress critter gets elected in their state, let's say Ohio, and they go to Washington DC and then they spend 20 years or 30 or 40 or 50, like Biden, in DC. What exactly are they representing?

Speaker 2: 1:38:37

The sure as sure sell, not the people who elected them.

Speaker 1: 1:38:44

Yeah, so hey, like I said, I'm for decentralizing it, but I just think there are some things that we've got to overcome first. I'm all for moving the agencies out into the field. Like you know, department of the Interior, go to the middle of nowhere, colorado.

Speaker 2: 1:39:10

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1: 1:39:10

I can go with that.

Speaker 2: 1:39:16

Yeah, I don't know. I've read through Section 6, and I think all of it could still be done remotely. So what else we got going on? What did we miss? Did Trump do any more interesting executive orders? I know he had Kid Rock in the house. He did.

Speaker 1: 1:39:45

Kid Rock dressed like Evel Knievel so I haven't finished listening to this week's uh unrelenting but I did finish last week's last night, and that's why I sent you the redhead photo, by the way, oh yeah, because y'all were talking about that last week. And uh, I tend to agree with you on too bad on Grok Not quite there, missing some key attributes. Otherwise, pleasantly surprised.

Speaker 2: 1:40:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the faces look good. I think Grok has gotten better, like all the other ones, but it's still not the lead image generation product out there. I think the stuff that Darren's's doing with the um paid subscription to gpt looks very, very good. Like they fixed a lot of stuff with their images, like text for one, being able to have text come out normal just simply by saying and put a uh, trump sucks t-shirt on that person and it'll just do it and then look nice. So yeah, um I.

Speaker 2: 1:41:00

I think that it much like a whole generation of people grew up without the internet and then the next generation had internet from birth. Uh, I think we're in that same kind of paradigm shift with ai where we including you this time are old enough to to have remembered a time before ai well, for the record, I am old enough to remember a time before internet, sure you were three years old, I know, but uh, for ai, you're certainly old enough to remember that and and people that, like your kids, probably will not remember a time before ai if they do, it will be a one or two memories.

Speaker 2: 1:41:45

it won't like for their entire lives will be with an ai. Whether it's uh doing cutesy work right now, like generating cartoons on the fly, or whether it's a more of a star trek version of ai that just takes care of all kinds of tasks for people, I think it'll be hard it's. There's a scene in the video game Cyberpunk where the main character needs to use a phone to contact somebody and it's an old school payphone phone and she doesn't know what to do with it. Like she can dial the number because she sees a keypad, but the idea of holding that thing up to your ear and pointing at your mouth, just that's not how phones work in the future, so that it doesn't. She doesn't know what to do.

Speaker 2: 1:42:41

And I think a similar thing will happen here, where things like uh, like I haven't touched a light switch myself in probably I don't know 10 years. Why, because I do everything through voice, why it's better, how Then I don't have to touch light switches. I just tell my computer what to turn on. If you don't like home automation, that's fine.

Speaker 2: 1:43:11

Not everybody likes it, but the point is there will be people that throw up thinking that that's how you control lights is by talking to them. Computer do this or whatever you know. Like the idea that there's a physical button.

Speaker 1: 1:43:28

You're just too into TNG because you know computer lights dim half. You know. Here's the thing If I could do home automation at the level I wanted, to do it locally without having to send my information to Amazon.

Speaker 2: 1:43:48

I would Sure but like my, even my air fryer is sending its information to china. Why the fuck is your air fryer on your network is it because it's a networkable device? It's a network of things, okay not everything that can be, networked should be networked no, because it needs to tell my phone that the food's ready.

Speaker 1: 1:44:15

That can be done over Bluetooth.

Speaker 2: 1:44:18

You know, Bluetooth doesn't reach that far. Anyway, I could be away from the house, the thing I don't like is that Amazon can now open to my garage that I need to get rid of.

Speaker 1: 1:44:29

Yeah, speaking of Amazon. Yeah, so they put a bid in to buy TikTok. Yeah, speaking of Amazon. Yeah, so they put a bid in to buy TikTok.

Speaker 2: 1:44:37

Yeah, I think they need TikTok because Twitch is dying. Why is Twitch dying? Because it sucks. It went from something where video games went to play and watch others play games to basically nothing more than a advertising vehicle for only fans. That's all twitches, though the vast majority of channels are chicks that have only fans that are just there to get guys to go to their only fans yeah, well, um speaking of, I had I, I oh amaranth yeah, I never knew who that was really never, and then I heard you talking describing and I'm like, okay, I gotta go look this up.

Speaker 1: 1:45:31

yeah she, she's a cute girl. Very, this is yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:45:38

It's, yeah, and the video you watched, I assume, is when she got her house invasion video.

Speaker 1: 1:45:46

No, I haven't watched any videos.

Speaker 2: 1:45:47

What did you watch?

Speaker 1: 1:45:48

I didn't watch anything.

Speaker 2: 1:45:50

Well, how do you know who she is then? Because I googled and looked at the pictures. Oh you googled, so you wanted to look at her OnlyFans.

Speaker 1: 1:45:57

No, I did not Thank you. I have never. I will say this I have never been on a.

Speaker 2: 1:46:04

I have never I've never paid for any porn sites. This podcast has an OnlyFans. What are you talking about? Okay, well, I. Okay. Well, I've never been for two years now. Good god you did not. But where do you think I get the money for?

Speaker 1: 1:46:20

this show from sure. Oh, I can totally see you doing some stupid shit like that um, I, I did uh pay to promote uh the tweet about last week's episode. Oh, you got it to work what do you mean?

Speaker 2: 1:46:35

I, I couldn't do it. They wouldn't take my money, my, they kept not wanting, refusing my credit card to do a promoted tweet oh no, I I did a promoted tweet um first one I've ever done cool probably the only one I'll ever do we'll.

Speaker 1: 1:46:47

We'll see.

Speaker 2: 1:46:48

We got to see our numbers over the next little bit, numbers will definitely go up, I'm sure of that yeah, so um quite a bit of engagement on it the I'll send you some screenshots, okay, uh, but it you know, I basically I said I'll spend 50 bucks to promote this and put it out there.

Speaker 1: 1:47:06

And yep, I'll tell you this much it's definitely my most seen and engaged with tweet ever.

Speaker 2: 1:47:12

So yep, yep, makes sense, yeah, yeah, I think a hundred bucks, they said, was the sort of like. Don't do any less than that. It's not worth it. Well.

Speaker 1: 1:47:22

I did 50 just to see. And you know, hey, I, I am all the. There's a threshold of where I will say, yeah, I'm willing to just throw this money away even if it doesn't work, or whatever. 50 bucks, yes, I will do 100 bucks.

Speaker 2: 1:47:42

Yeah, I know, I know it's your genetics. What can we say? Scotch Irish? Yeah, scotch Irish genetics combined with a Jewish mentality? There you go. Okay, let's insult everybody, shall we? Yeah, scotch irish genetics combined with a jewish mentality? There you go. Okay, let's insult everybody, shall we?

Speaker 1: 1:47:59

yeah, the irish are kind of known to be cheapskates too the irish are cheapskates now they've always been cheapskates so, yeah, this tweet and it's not done running and I so far I've only spent 33 out of 50.

Speaker 2: 1:48:18

It shows you how much has been scooped out.

Speaker 1: 1:48:21

Okay, yep and it's got a day left to run. Day and 10 hours and I've got 7 000 impressions. Holy shit, that is good. That's way better than normal. Yeah, so you know that's holy shit, that is good, that's way better than normal. Yeah, so you know that's. This was a fun experiment. Um, 30 bucks or 35 bucks for 7 000 is a good ratio. 33 for 7 000, 33 the magic number, yeah, ding, ding, ding. So next time, um, I will probably be uh, much more verbose and actually try to make it something marketing wise.

Speaker 2: 1:48:55

But I was doing this fairly fast and anyway but I've been seeing a lot of music ads, so have you seen those?

Speaker 1: 1:49:03

No, no, must be targeting me then. I think it's funny, though, when you look at the gender breakdown.

Speaker 2: 1:49:09

Yeah, on your analytics.

Speaker 1: 1:49:11

It's all men, yeah, and we had quite a few people actually click the link and go through, so that's good too yeah. So it's 73.8% male.

Speaker 2: 1:49:25

Well, that's. That's a lot less male than my YouTube channel.

Speaker 1: 1:49:29

What do you think? The plurality, the highest plurality age is, group-wise, demographic-wise, 50. 50 and above. What do you think the next one is?

Speaker 2: 1:49:42

Probably probably like 20, late 20s 20 to 29.

Speaker 1: 1:49:52

Yep. Oh yeah it Yep. Oh yeah it's, it's interesting, so yeah, my demos man. Yep, but uh, yeah, let's see if that reflected at all on our downloads. Yeah, we'll definitely have to wait and see how that's going to pan out over time, um, but uh, hopefully maybe we'll get some new listeners, so that'd be nice.

Speaker 2: 1:50:17

Yeah, because that's always the big issue. It's like until you get to a certain size, it's really hard to grow. So you know which episode did you do, by the way?

Speaker 1: 1:50:30

Last episode.

Speaker 2: 1:50:31

Last episode. Yeah, that's funny why it says lower than normal rate of downloads.

Speaker 1: 1:50:38

Uh, 112 was the episode.

Speaker 2: 1:50:42

Yeah yeah, yeah, it's, that is ironic yeah, so we'll see.

Speaker 1: 1:50:49

We'll see how it turns out. I'm not expecting it uh over in anything but over time, so we'll see how it turns out.

Speaker 2: 1:50:53

I'm not expecting it uh over anything but over time, so we'll see yeah, yeah, I mean if, if it lands a few people that have actually hit the subscribe button, then obviously it's uh well worth it yep, all right, man.

Speaker 1: 1:51:07

Anything else we want to talk about before we have a?

Speaker 2: 1:51:08

thing of timcast in here. What, what do you mean?

Speaker 1: 1:51:17

I don't know. You sent me a link to Timcast. No, it's not a link to Timcast, it's a link to a funny AI post that you should look at what's this Maga link you sent me. Hold on, I'm looking at what you just sent me. Where did you get that graph? I haven't seen that one. Again it's just MAGA, elon dancing around like an idiot and then Baron looking very sullen, and it's Elon as MAGA and Baron as MAGA with stock portfolios and as someone with a stock portfolio.

Speaker 1: 1:51:57

I went and looked. Now, I invest very conservatively, yeah, so I wasn't down very much at all because of the way I invest my stocks. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2: 1:52:10

I am a lot more down due to Tesla than I am to anything else right now.

Speaker 1: 1:52:16

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:52:18

Because Tesla is right now at not quite half, but it's like 59% of where it was earlier, before Elon started getting into politics. Well, buy the dip. I have Before Elon started getting into politics. Well, buy the dip I have, but there's a point at which you run out of money to buy the dip, my stock, that is probably your Russian funds still not coming back there.

Speaker 2: 1:52:48

No, I'm waiting for those to get unfrozen Yep Still unavailable. Uh, hopefully that'll happen after the uh, the wrap up of the war and everything if it will wrap up, man, I don't know um Zelinsky pissing all over the Europeans now like what the hell?

Speaker 1: 1:53:14

like he, he just has no this is Pissing all over the Europeans now Like what the hell? Like he just has no. This is the entire thing where you just have no.

Speaker 2: 1:53:21

You okay, yep.

Speaker 1: 1:53:26

You joking on something.

Speaker 2: 1:53:28

God damn it. I hit the wrong mute button, fuck, okay. Yeah, I hit the mute button for the other computer. I forgot I'm on this computer, sorry.

Speaker 1: 1:53:39

Did that mean to cough loudly? It sounded like you were dying.

Speaker 2: 1:53:44

No, what happened is I was taking a drink of iced tea when you said that and I started laughing. While I was drinking, I got you. You know what that does.

Speaker 1: 1:53:53

Yeah, yeah, but anyway, I just don't get it. He has no self-awareness of what his position in the world is, or his life Like he's not.

Speaker 2: 1:54:02

Oh, he thinks he's the main character in a video game.

Speaker 1: 1:54:07

He doesn't realize, he's an NPC, exactly.

Speaker 2: 1:54:10

Yeah, it's actually referred to as main character syndrome. Okay, it's when people start thinking the world revolves around them rather than their character in the world. By the way, I sent you an 07 this morning and your response was question mark. Who the hell doesn't know what? An 07 this morning and your response was question mark. Who the hell doesn't?

Speaker 1: 1:54:39

know what an 07 is.

Speaker 2: 1:54:42

What you mean by 07?

Speaker 1: 1:54:43

Yeah, 07 is universally recognized as a uh, a formal greeting, a putting your, your hand to your uh side of your head in a salute much like a military salute. I'm shocked you don't know that.

Speaker 2: 1:55:03

That's cool.

Speaker 1: 1:55:04

The American education system has failed you Because I like I okay, Okay, I don't get it, but okay.

Speaker 2: 1:55:12

Fine, well, anyway.

Speaker 1: 1:55:20

All right. We got anything else, or we're going to wrap her up. No, I think we're good man. We've covered a lot.

Speaker 2: 1:55:27

Remember, guys, thanks for those that currently support us. If you want to do that, links in the episode. And if you can't do financial support, remember you can always tell somebody else to listen to the podcast Now, whether they sub or not. Different question, but the more people tell others that this podcast exists, the better it is for us.

Speaker 1: 1:55:52

Indeed, let's spread the word.