Just Two Good Old Boys
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Just Two Good Old Boys
121 Bunker Busters and Peacocking Submarines
America just flexed its military muscle in a way that hasn't been seen in decades. The coordinated strike against Iran's nuclear facilities involved six B-2 stealth bombers carrying twelve bunker-busters, over 120 support aircraft, and submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles. But this wasn't just about Iran – the simultaneous deployment of additional B-2s to Guam sent an unmistakable message to China that the US can project overwhelming power across multiple theaters.
The operation's timing and execution reveal a multilayered strategy that goes beyond immediate tactical objectives. While satellite imagery confirms significant surface destruction at Iranian facilities, questions remain about the actual effectiveness of these weapons against deeply buried nuclear infrastructure. As Iranian officials downplay the damage and American sources claim success, we're witnessing an information war running parallel to the physical conflict.
What makes this strike particularly fascinating is its global context. The discussion explores how this fits into Wesley Clark's infamous "seven countries in five years" revelation, examines how Iran's threat to close the Strait of Hormuz could impact global shipping, and considers Saudi Arabia's position as a beneficiary of their regional rival's setback. We also touch on how our perception of global power dynamics is literally shaped by distorted world maps that make countries like Russia appear more imposing than they actually are.
Beyond geopolitics, we dive into promising developments for gun rights advocates as legislation moves forward that could remove suppressors and short-barreled rifles from NFA regulation, examine why Linux is surprisingly outperforming Windows for gaming despite running emulation, and explore emerging USB4 technology that enables blazing-fast 40Gbps computer-to-computer connections.
Have thoughts on America's strike against Iran or any of our other topics? We'd love to hear your perspective. Share your take in the comments or join the conversation on social media.
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Howdy Ben, how are you?
Speaker 2:today, gene, I'm doing well. I am happy to be out of Mexico before the shit hit the fan, that's for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm glad you're back. Before then as well. I was hoping you wouldn't get stuck there.
Speaker 2:Well, you know. So the way I said it to Lindsay is hey, I'm glad we made it back. I'm glad we made it back to the U? S before this happened. And her response was why? Why would that matter? It's like Jesus Christ, um, because who knows how the rest of the world is going to react to this. You know, we'll see today. Uh, by the way, we're we are recording this on a rare Sunday because I got back and we were going to do the podcast yesterday and I was sicker than a dog man. I was running 103 fever, it was not good.
Speaker 1:I thought it was 101.
Speaker 2:No, I got up to 103.4. That's dangerous territory, dude, yeah it was not fun.
Speaker 1:No, I got up to 103.4. That's dangerous territory, dude. Yeah, it was not fun starts to sweat.
Speaker 2:Yesterday was not fun yeah, you don't want. It was not a fun day but it broke overnight. I'm good, we're good, we dropped where do you want to start?
Speaker 1:do you want to start with iran? You want to start. You want to start with?
Speaker 2:Iran. Do you want to start with the education? Fuck, yes, I want to start with Iran Do you want to start with. Dns. No, no, iran, iran, okay, dude. Six B-2 bombers, 12 bunker busters Holy fuck. This is the way I imagine the meeting, mr President. Four to six will do it Fucking. Double it Right, like holy shit. The amount of firepower we just dropped on Fort Ho is like Cheyenne Mountain would not stand up to this.
Speaker 1:I don't know about that. It's made to stand up to nukes. Yes, but not 12 fucking bunker busters in a row, just yeah, I I'm a little more apprehensive of the marketing videos for those bunker busters.
Speaker 2:I don't think they're all that um, okay, well, 12 of them apparently got the job done. We don't know that, we don't know, but the satellite evidence is pretty fucking damn satellite evidence is that we have lots of destruction on the surface.
Speaker 1:Yes, here's the problem with all that stuff, military puts out a bid to create something bigger and better than what we have.
Speaker 1:There's a limited number of companies that bid on this stuff, as you're well aware, and they're going to promise things in their sales and marketing departments that meet the government requirements and they have no clue as to how to actually build it. And so then, after they win the bid or they get a joint bid, they start working on trying to figure out how to do it. That's why so many companies that have military government contracts do a cost plus, because essentially what we're saying is well, we know it's going to take at least this much, but it'll probably take more and we'll bill you the full amount, and the government's like, oh, okay.
Speaker 2:You realize, I work for one of these companies right, and that makes a difference how.
Speaker 1:I'm just saying I know what you're talking about, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you might, but people listening may not. Okay, I'm trying to explain. Do you want to explain? Go ahead, you tell the process, continue, okay.
Speaker 1:So once that happens, they start working on it and, yeah, there's a certain amount of success. And then there's, there's certain amount of success and and then there's testing. That happens, but ultimately, when it comes to real usage of this stuff, you just don't know. Like they're not going to test the bomb on an actual copy of the sites that the government wants to drop them on. So, according to the iranians, nothing could and nothing has penetrated. Now. Would those people lie? Yes, will the us government lie? Yes, we'll see them lie, yes. So that's why I'm saying we just don't know. We know that we uh, we made them look like, know, we gave them a slap. We're definitely looking like a very strong country right now thanks to this, but do we know that that actually resulted in a catastrophic destruction that has prevented them from continuing with their nuclear program? No, we don't. But a second question I'd like to ask you is how is it our business whether they develop nukes? I?
Speaker 2:don't think it is. Quite frankly, this will either be Trump's folly, or a moment folly or a moment um, so much like the tomahawks he launched against syria in his first term. Um. To me, that was a hey, you shouldn't have done that but, a moment. Uh, this is that way. So if this is it, if this is the strike, that's it. That's all we're doing. Cool, I'm good with that. If we go beyond this, really any further than airstrikes, I'm not okay with that.
Speaker 1:Well, last show you suggested that we just nuke them.
Speaker 2:Well, I suggested that we nuke Tehran and Tel Aviv is what I suggested. I said just end it. Yeah, which was a joke, by the way, but yes.
Speaker 1:Oh, really, because I talked for another hour after that about that topic.
Speaker 2:Okay okay, okay, yeah, I fell asleep. You know what? I've been dealing with some medical issues and I haven't slept. Dude, I seriously in the last month, have gotten like 20 hours of REM sleep, maybe, like not an exaggeration.
Speaker 1:Yeah, REM sleeps are rated.
Speaker 2:Okay Well, drive a person insane sort of level of sleep deprivation. So I apologize. We were doing it late at night and I was sitting here in my office chair and I fell asleep.
Speaker 1:It's your melodious tones, dude dude, I know that's exactly what it is people yeah I.
Speaker 2:I heard your little edit there at the end. Yeah, and I have been multiple people that have said that that they turn the podcast on and fall asleep anyway, the the fact that we launched three there were 120something aircraft involved in this two submarines that launched 30 Tomahawks against the other two sites. The fact that we did this with no American casualties and I don't think the Iranians detected this at all.
Speaker 1:Well, they certainly I don't think suspected this, because they, you know they're used to putting in a lot of um, uh, what's the phrase you know? Like, uh, when, when competitive birds or animals strut in front of each other and they're trying to intimidate each other and like nothing actually happens for a long time, there's a lot of just bullshit, intimidation stuff happening I think that's what they were expecting.
Speaker 2:I was in mexico recently, so there you go, there you go, so use your mexican and uh, so they?
Speaker 1:I think they were expecting for a lot of words to be thrown back and forth about just how bad it's going to be if they attack and how bad it's going to be if the US attacks, and back and forth, and back and forth. What they didn't expect was a strike by the US literally the same week as the strikes by Israel. The us literally the same week as as the strikes by israel. So I think there might be a little bit of uh like this is not good kind of feeling going on there right now.
Speaker 1:Now I've also seen more videos popping up of people like iranian people saying it's time for change. We need to take the government back, which I think everyone's fully supportive of.
Speaker 2:Uh, if that were to happen, yeah, not another color revolution at all no, no, it's not.
Speaker 1:No, hillary's will be in charge. So well, did you see the tweet from trump? He says if you guys don't stop your nuclear program, we're're going to send our deadliest assassin, hillary Clinton. No, I didn't, oh yeah. People were saying, oh, he can't be saying stuff like that. Yeah, absolutely Everybody knows the Clinton kill list is unmatched. Clinton kill list is unmatched. They've managed to take out more people than the best of the elite spies. I wouldn't be surprised if Hillary snuck into the prison and killed Epstein.
Speaker 2:What makes you think she didn't.
Speaker 1:No, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't be surprised if she did.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying personally, but well, personally, I think she paid for, certainly could have. Um, well, either way, I think that the yeah, maybe epstein was just a setup by clinton in the first place as a uss to get dirt and everybody else, you never know. So, yeah, I think the way I look at it is, we have no business being involved in middle eastern politics oh and at the same time I said, said fuck yeah, when I saw what was happening.
Speaker 2:I am similarly minded in that I don't think we should be involved, I don't think that we should be worried about what I mean. Like I said last time, fuck Israel, fuck Iran, who the fuck cares?
Speaker 1:Let them kill each other, let them do whatever they want to do, the big beneficiary from all of this is Saudi Arabia, which is why they've been funneling money to the US oh absolutely wanted Iraq taken out for a long time. Iran yeah yeah, iran yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, and a friend of mine was watching Al Jazeera as this unfolded and I'm like, why are you watching Al Jazeera? Well, I want to hear the Arab perspective and I'm like Al Jazeera is Qatari run and they don't like, they do not give a shit about Iran, like that is not going to be an empathetic position at all. And Arabs don't like Persians. No, they don't never have, never will. Anyway, did you see, like I sent you yesterday, I was watching as this unfolded, I was watching the news of course.
Speaker 2:And I turned on CNN, of all things, and Wesley Clark was on CNN talking about the bombing of Iran.
Speaker 1:I didn't catch it, but that was interesting.
Speaker 2:Dude the irony of Wesley Clark, of the Wesley Clark 7, sitting there talking about bombing Iran Like I about fell out of my chair.
Speaker 1:What else would he be talking about? But?
Speaker 2:dude come on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you remember the whole list? Do you remember the seven countries?
Speaker 2:I have to go back. Yeah, I don't Iran Iraq.
Speaker 1:Syria.
Speaker 2:Syria, syria, syria, um syria, uh jesus all right, well, let's go.
Speaker 1:Obviously you don't, so we'll have to look it up. But all right, I'm looking it up, right now you are okay good uh.
Speaker 2:Take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing with Iran.
Speaker 1:So not quite five years, not quite the right order.
Speaker 2:But finishing with Iran, yeah.
Speaker 1:Hopefully that'll be the finish where we don't go back to Libya or something. What so? Hopefully that'll be the last where we don't go back to Libya, or something.
Speaker 2:What so hopefully that'll be the last one. It should be. We've intervened in every other country so far, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what did he have to say other than just mentioning Iran? He was giving analysis, it wasn't anything profound or anything like going back to that list or anything no, no, no, no and again it.
Speaker 2:For me, it was just schadenfreude to see him sitting there talking about, you know, us carrying out this attack on iran and him being more or less okay with it, given his position a few years ago.
Speaker 1:So yeah, well, I think iran having a nuke for israel definitely is an existential threat, because that would be the first place they would use it. For the us not so much dude, I don't okay.
Speaker 2:Pakistan has nuke. Have they nuked anyone?
Speaker 1:pakistan is not run by the type of uh government that iran has. I, it's a theocracy. Pakistan does not have a theocracy, okay, I would also question the quality of Pakistani nukes versus Iranian nukes. Iranian nukes would be just fine. Have good high-tech field.
Speaker 2:You're telling me that the Persians are better than the Arabs.
Speaker 1:Are the Pakistanis Arabs the pakistani's arabs? Oh, that's a good question actually no, they're indian don't say that around them. Yeah, they're aryans actually.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, I just uh, hitler would disagree, but that's okay, hit no, no, no hitler knew that the aryans came from india.
Speaker 1:He knew that he just realized that they all left india. None of them stayed, uh, hence the blonde hair this is such dangerous territory, I'm just gonna well, I'm just saying, I mean I'm gonna just go, okay, gene much like you know, god made the uh uh, the bad jewish tribes black and send them over to america. In that same vein is that how that goes. Yeah, no comment okay, so you're not going to talk about the book of mormon, or uh?
Speaker 2:no, no, I'm not no, because all I will say is dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb all right, fine, let's go back to Scientology. Jesus Christ. Wrong direction. Wrong direction, wrong direction Craig podcast.
Speaker 1:Craig podcast. Okay, darren, no, that's funny, like that was always a super funny line. I love that. I've used that so many times. All right, so we done with it around. What else we got to talk about?
Speaker 2:well, I mean beyond the overkill. Uh, let's point out something we also sent three b2 bombers to guam so I thought these were the same ones no, no, no, no, no separate.
Speaker 2:Oh, so we sent. We sent the six to iran and we sent three to guam. And here's the point. I think everyone's missing because hegseth and others have said oh, that was just a distraction, bullshit, it was. That was a message to china. Yeah. So if you look at china's um new quote-unquote pentagon right, their underground military base that they're building out as their command center, this is very us sending those B-2 bombers to Guam is we can take it out. Don't make us do it Like. This is multi-level, this is Iran, this is China. This is a big deal, dude, and I say this as someone who's likely to go to Guam in the next few months. This is not fun, but seriously, us sending those three B-2 bombers with unknown ordinance on uh inside is definitely a threat to china. Like that.
Speaker 1:That is a well, I think what you mean to say is it's meant to be a threat to china it's a statement.
Speaker 2:We'll put it that way yeah, yeah yeah, uh, yeah, it's uh.
Speaker 1:it's interesting because the report that I was watching said that the bombers that went to Iran flew across the Pacific, which I thought was like why are they taking the long way?
Speaker 2:What do you mean?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean it's versus flying, you know, over North Africa.
Speaker 2:Well, from my understanding is, we had, uh, a couple of B twos. Okay, so we have.
Speaker 1:B twos Do we have in general? Do know, jesus christ, I don't know. I'm gonna ask ai see if it knows at all. I'm with my air force base in missouri. I'm asking for Whitman Air Force Base in Missouri 19. We have 19 total. Yep, okay.
Speaker 2:Shit, that's so few. Well, I mean actually it's kind of a lot.
Speaker 1:It's a lot given how much they cost, but it's so few that if we lose a couple it'll be noticeable.
Speaker 2:Right, but we didn't. And I think that's actually pretty telling that Israel has been able to take out Iran's air defense which is Russian-made, yeah well, yeah sort of what do you mean? Yeah sort of it is.
Speaker 1:Well, no, it is Russian-made, but it's not the air defense that Russia uses. It's like saying that, uh, you know costa rica has american, uh, military weapons. Like yeah, just because somebody bought shit from there doesn't mean it's the same as that country's military dude, I, I don't want to go to war with russia.
Speaker 2:I I think russia should be our ally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but china copies everything that everybody else makes, including russia and the us. So whatever china has for air defense is going to be noticeably better than iran.
Speaker 2:So that's, that's all I'm trying to say okay, well, anyway, the, the point being um a fair, the most modern air defense that russia offers to the international market was easily defeated a marketing person would say yes uh, we've just flew 120 something aircraft into their airspace unimpeded, dropped a shit ton of munitions. We don't know what they had, we don't know what the capabilities were.
Speaker 1:We don't know what working order it was in. We don't know any of these things. We do know they spent some money with Russia. That's about as far as it makes sense of it. Okay, I mean, I'm just saying, here's the thing US is very good at going after countries that can't actually fight back like Iraq and Iran. We'll see I actually expect Iran to attack some of our military bases.
Speaker 1:Well, they may do that, but I don't think it'll be much different than what we saw with the Russian-made Scuds, which, again, russia wasn't using scuds, iraq was using scuds. That's shitty technology that missed most of the time. So I think I'm just saying don't assume that China is going to be this easy. Oh, I don't. And by don don't assume. I don't mean you personally, I mean like the average person.
Speaker 2:Shouldn't assume that yeah, I, I don't assume that china will be easy at all. Yeah, but what I'm, what I'm saying is that I think we are, by sending the B-2s to Guam, by doing what we've positioning, the things we've positioned and if you look, I sent you. It appeared we had six of them- went to Guam, not three. Okay, well, whatever, but I sent you the Pacific Command's strategy on the agile defense perspective and how they're. I mean, my company that I work for is currently laying tarmac on old.
Speaker 2:World War II bases in the Indo-Pacific. We are doing that right. We are setting up a lot of these air bases. We are doing these things. Yeah, let's not say too much. Yeah, I'm not saying anything that isn't public. Uh, thank you, I'm practice at this, but anyway. Um, what it comes down to is they, we, we are setting up the same strategy for World War II that we used to defeat Japan or China. In a lot of ways, we're distributing assets, we're making things scarce, we're going to keep our aircraft carriers back. We're going to keep our aircraft carriers back, and unless they balloon over some drones or something that just swarm an aircraft carrier, and even then I think the sea whiz and everything else is going to take care of it. So I don't know, man, I'm not saying China's going to be easy, but I think we have way more advantage than they do. Like it is very lopsided here.
Speaker 2:Well, and I'm not pro-war, I do not want to go to war with china no no, nobody does um, and china doesn't want to go to war with us.
Speaker 1:They just want to have more advantages against us sure, but we're not going to allow that, and they're.
Speaker 2:They've been pretty good at setting up uh congress critters to blackmail I don't know, man are the new trade deal that trump just passed with them, uh, is pretty fucking in our favor.
Speaker 1:So I don't know yeah, yeah, it's in our favor, definitely, but it's also something they can totally afford, if you look at it sure they can afford it, because they're raking us over the coals. I agree with you.
Speaker 2:You know absolutely. But the fact of the matter is it is very much in our favor. It is a move in the right direction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean, the Trade Federation has always been hard to kind of.
Speaker 2:Okay, Star Wars reference.
Speaker 1:Well, come on, that's not a Star Wars, that's a Star Wars Wars reference. Well, come on, that's not a Star Wars, that's a Star Wars China reference. Like, it's pretty obvious who the trade federation is. They have accents in Star Wars. Do you not think that was suspicious? All the other aliens speaking? The trade federation has a Chinese accent.
Speaker 2:I don't really. I've never really Okay, other than the original trilogy. Yeah, I've paid very little attention to Star Wars. Oh, yes, yes, you're a Star Trek, I am a Star Trek guy and when I was fucking 10 years old and watched Star Wars for the first time and Han Solo goes, yeah, the Millennium Falcon did the Kessel run and X amount of parsecs. It's like that's a measurement of distance. Yeah, that's not speed Dumbass. Yeah, and like, like my. My young mind went okay, this is bullshit. Versus Star Trek and Ben was a young nerd.
Speaker 2:I was very much a nerd. I still am. I know Seven of Nine is hot. Jerry Ryan is totally my type.
Speaker 1:Jerry Ryan's always been hot, doesn't matter what clothing she's wearing or not, and she was a spicy girl. So, oh dude, there's multiple videos of her and her husband at the time at uh swingers clubs and really going to strip clubs and she gets on stage.
Speaker 2:How have I never seen this? I don't know.
Speaker 1:They watched the wrong porn, apparently, apparently you have to have been, uh, trying to look for porn in the late 90s I don't know, I, I, I was a kid, yeah there you go, I mean in 96 I was 10 years old dude, yeah so why weren't you looking for all the jerry ryan porn when you were 10 years old, dude, yeah. So why weren't you looking for all the Jerry Ryan porn when you were 10 years old, like?
Speaker 2:a normal person by 12, I probably was.
Speaker 1:Probably were yeah, exactly, Well, yeah, so because she had some nasty shit to talk about how her husband was the one that got her into all that stuff and she's actually a good girl, and blah, blah, blah, blah blah. You know, post-divorce women tend to rewrite history. Yeah. But she didn't age too poorly. I will say that.
Speaker 2:No, I mean even now in Picard and everything. She still looked good. By the way, my trip to Mexicoxico, yes, that was fun, yeah, yeah, I, I'm, I will definitely go back well, no shit, you will, you bought the damn thing hook line sinker.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah uh well, it's not a proud owner of a uh a. What's a nice way of putting it?
Speaker 2:a scam, uh-huh, uh-huh no, I I have uh decided I've made a irresponsible financial decision to make sure I take vacations for the rest of my life that's the way they sell it.
Speaker 1:All right of my life, that's the way they sell it all right, you bought a time show. You bought how many weeks? One week, so 150 tooth. 150 tooth, so basically two percent of a property which. Of course, at the price you paid values the property at many millions of dollars for one freaking room uh, so.
Speaker 2:So first of all one I uh, I bought into the marriott vacation club, which I already have a shit ton of status with marriott and I can move stuff back and forth and they gave me a bunch of status with marriott, they gave me a bunch of points with Marriott, they gave me three times what I purchased for the first two years in allotment and da-da-da-da whatever. Anyway, if I use it for 10 years, it's a good deal. If I do not use it for 10 years, it's a bad deal. So I have to make sure. I use it.
Speaker 2:But anyway, I enjoyed Mexico, seeing some of the Mayan ruins. I've never been to Mexico before. This is a country that I had never been to. Pop the family's passport, cherry and Elizabeth and William were very, very much like I want to hold my passport, I want to have my passport I want to do it, I want to do it and you know, uh, they enjoyed it. It was beautiful.
Speaker 1:I went to isla mujeres um did they tell you why it's called that, what isla?
Speaker 2:mujeres, uh, the island of the mothers. Why?
Speaker 1:yeah, so that's. That was a? Um, a female centric. Uh, I don't know, you want to call it religion cult, whatever. Um, that was the mayans. Well, no, it was not just the mayans, but that particular island was apparently forbidden to men. It was a females-only religious retreat thing. Okay, I'm sure they didn't call it a retreat back then, but you know what I? Mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I got to cuss in Spanish a little spanish a little bit and berate people. Almost got into a fight what you didn't tell me you got into a fight, I said I almost got. Well, what does that mean? So you know the mall that's right across from the hotel, the one I was talking about. Yeah, yeah yeah, so the where the kids can, everybody can swim with the dolphins which they did uh, I, for whatever reason, lindsay didn't want to walk, which I wanted to walk, but whatever.
Speaker 2:So we drove and I pull up and I valet, because I'm not dealing with parking, I'm just gonna do this I it's literally across the street. Yeah, we should have just effing walked, yeah, and played frogger. But whatever, yeah, I'm, I'm not going there. So, anyway, we're leaving and the rental car has a ding on it, whoops, and I'm like, dude, you did this in space. Where's, where's your boss, you know? And no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Old no, no no.
Speaker 1:And I'm so scared. So how do you say where is your boss in Spanish?
Speaker 2:Dónde está tu jefe Nice. Mm-hmm ¿Tu jefe habla inglés? You know, anyway, I'm going off on him and I'm calling him sad. Tú estás triste, tú mentiroso. Oh, and I'm calling him sad. To us, the three state to mint the rosa. You know just jesus christ, and he's bearing up on me and getting in my face and everything and I'm just sitting there going dude. I have pictures and I'm showing him the pictures from monday. This is on wednesday, from the rental car company showing no ding you did this ding and you know it.
Speaker 2:You took my ticket and you put it in a different color ink and he's like no, it's on the ticket, it's here, it's here, and I'm like it's a different color ink. You know, like you obviously just did that, like it was just so fucking frustrating the, the latino, lying machismo cheesemode bullshit of no, I didn't do it, no, no, fuck you dude anyway, welcome to the rest of the world, ben, where that's normal I've been around the world, dude, but you've been in very nice portions of the rest of the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah anyway, it was just frustrating. But it was fun because of the guy in spanish and berate him in spanish.
Speaker 1:That was all him a little. That makes your whole year of learning spanish worthwhile uh, tomorrow, today, today, today will be 365 days.
Speaker 2:Nice, so you're done. Uh, yeah, I'll always learn, like dude. My Spanish is pretty good. I got to tell my charqueta joke about four times on the trip. Have I told you that one? I don't know, no. So I was working for an oil company at the time and I was out on site at just a trailer building that we were setting up for a pipeline.
Speaker 2:And I walked outside and it was a cold, rainy day and there were a lot of Hispanics there from Latin America working on the pipeline, and my Spanish that I have learned is mostly Spain Spanish, right so on. So the Latin American accent is actually really like I can I do better in Barcelona than I do Cabo or Cancun.
Speaker 2:Wherever I was there, Cancun. Wherever I was there, Cancun, Like the accents and the verbiage is different. It's just what I've learned, but anyway. So I'm at this job site and I walk out and I go ah que frio necesito un jaqueta. So in Spain that would mean ah, it's cold, I need a jacket. In latin america, oh, it's cold.
Speaker 2:I need to jack off nice I'd like to look at me like what, and I had no clue. So I I literally told this joke in Mexico a couple times. It's not a joke, it really happened to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, a story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I was like yeah, you know, because people would say oh, your Spanish is pretty good, or whatever. You know, yeah, yeah, da-da-da-da, you know, jerk me off some more. Whatever?
Speaker 2:But you know what it came down to is. You know I'm like well, but there are differences, there's things. You know it's, it's not that easy and you know, thank you for uh, basically I was, whenever I told this story, I was saying thank you for, you know, being kind to me as an American who's stumbling through Spanish, and I, I, I, you know, um this one, uh, uh, shit, what is it Not? Porter concierge?
Speaker 2:at the hotel I was talking with about something and I was telling her this and we were translating back and forth I was trying to get pizza or something from Domino's for the kids on my birthday, because you know the kids on my birthday, because you know the kids dinner needs yeah happy birthday again. Well, thank you, I am old you are old, anyway, I'm not quite 40 yet.
Speaker 2:I have one more year. I have 360, you know, three days, yeah, um, but I was talking to her, and 63 days. But I was talking to her and she was translating between me and the driver because again, someone in Mexico City who is well-educated I can probably talk to fairly easily, who is well-educated I can probably talk to fairly easily, driver in Cancun that you know slurs and everything else like rough Anyway, and I was, you know she was kind of applauding me for doing as well as I was.
Speaker 2:Yeah most people don't try right, right, I like I was, I was trying and trying to figure out where he was supposed to meet me and everything else and I'm like I don't understand this, can you please translate? And she did and everything else, and I told her that story and she laughed so hard. It wasn't even funny, it was great, but yeah, anyway, it was a good trip. I got a new chess set, by the way you did. That's awesome. That was my birthday present to myself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a replacement chess set for the one that got destroyed in the last move. So my uncle had gone to Mexico in the 50s, 60s for the US Army and he brought back this chess set, which was a big, very big Mayan chess set, and I had lost a piece at one point in time. I tried to find a piece. I could never find a replacement piece, but the board got just destroyed in the last move yeah, that's what happened to mine as well, I believe, when I moved to austin yeah, so I I finally gave up on it, but I 12 by 12.
Speaker 2:But it's onyx and red coral carved and pretty nice little piece and I got it for a few hundred bucks less than I would have in the US.
Speaker 1:Whoa, how much did you pay?
Speaker 2:$150.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I got, because I commented to you when I saw it that, like I've got one almost identical, or I used to have one almost identical that I bought. It was over 20 years ago, it was probably like 26, 27 years ago in Mexico, and I think I paid 75 bucks for it back then.
Speaker 2:Well, inflation. But, beyond that, looking on Etsy and everywhere else. Like I saw it, I liked it, I went away from the reseller, I got online and I started looking at prices in the US and there were more, yeah, way more, yeah, and I haggled him down a bit so it worked in spanish. Yeah, yeah and uh, the the funny part was, uh, lindsay and the kids got some t-shirts and stuff from that same little bizarre thing and um, the fucking t-shirt vendor wanted like 40 bucks a t-shirt and I'm like yeah, no, no.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, in the united states I might pay 20 bucks a t-shirt, and that's in the us. I'm not paying that here, no, and you know, anyway, long short we got all three t-shirts for like 30 bucks. But it's funny how in some cultures you just fucking it Mexico, apparently, and Arabs especially. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to say.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Middle East, you have to haggle like they're asking price is outrageous. It's stupid.
Speaker 1:It's not what they're gonna actually settle on actually I think you have to in india as well and china as well. So I'd say most of the world you have to haggle, uh. Countries where you don't, I think are mostly northern countries, because russia you don't. I mean you can, but it's usually your. Your starting price isn't going to be that much different, but, um yeah, in north european countries you tend not to haggle at all but the further south you go. The further south you go, the more haggling you gotta do south and east.
Speaker 2:What south and east?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, yeah anyway, I remember the united states is quite a bit further south than europe uh, yes, we are.
Speaker 2:We would be in the middle of africa actually like that. That's something that people don't realize is the maps are so skewed. They are, yep, like africa should be double the size on the map, like europe is way outsized on anyway, yeah, yeah, I forget the name of it, but the square stretch projection of the maps are really bad.
Speaker 1:That. My preferred map type to use is the, the one which, which is a top down and the bottom up view, split into two portions and that gives you a much closer size perspective on the countries. But it? But then you have two pictures. Basically you have the, you know the bottom and the top of the world. Um, the one, the flat rectangular projection, is bullshit. That there's one, and I can't remember any of the names of these things, but there's another one where the sides are curved. So basically it's the square projection, but with the top and bottom edges pinched in to make it look more like a globe. Or, conversely, if you take a square and you stretch out the two middle portions, the left middle and the right middle, so that they are further out, and then round that back. But the standard sort of square map is bullshit.
Speaker 2:It makes greenland look huge, it makes alaska look huge, it makes russia look huge yeah, and it makes the united states and canada and greenland and all that look huge.
Speaker 1:Well, but yeah, not as much southern us but it, but certainly it.
Speaker 2:It minimizes the uh, the size of all the countries around the equator, like they're actually way bigger than that yeah well, I just sent you a map that's pretty interesting because it's all the land masses drawn inside the normal map to their actual scale oh, interesting, that is kind of cool.
Speaker 1:I like that. Yeah, mm-hmm yeah, it makes russia look a lot less, uh imposing, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:yeah, it does, and it makes europe you know europe, united states and canada look way the fuck smaller yeah, in africa and greenland.
Speaker 1:What about greenland?
Speaker 2:retardedly small inside of itself.
Speaker 1:It's hilarious yeah, yeah no, that's exactly right and and it's. It's sort of uh, I think china looks either bigger or the same size, depending on how you look at it. Um, I know it's a little smaller than in there, but it's like china versus russia. Looking at this map, you you understand why russia had most of its missiles pointed to china oh, absolutely they're.
Speaker 1:They're very similar, analogous countries yeah, that's cool man, I like it and I like alaska, like that's a proportion of alaska right there exactly which it's not half the size of the united fucking states, right right like yeah, alaska's big cool got it dude madagascar is way bigger than you would think it is on a normal map. It's small in relation to other countries. On this map, madagascar is actually pretty big yeah anyway, just something food for thought.
Speaker 2:So, what else we got? What else do we want to talk about, man? Let's see, we got Iran out of the way, we got my trip out of the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you had your DNS issue. You want to talk about that at all.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, so I get home. So first sign of trouble was some of my cameras went offline, uh, while I was gone.
Speaker 2:And I was like yeah, yeah, and I was like the fuck, uh didn't look into it, didn't worry about it. I get home and I've got to do timesheets, I've got to do work stuff. I've got to do stuff immediately when I get home Friday to make sure everything's taken care of right, because people depend on me and, uh, my internet's down and I'm like the fuck and I'm having trouble signing into accounts because I've been out of the country. So everything's like. I have a lot of geo locking stuff, stuff and anyway, fought through all that finally got into my firewall and my unbound. My dns server on my firewall won't start. That service is just dead. It will not start.
Speaker 2:Well, digging into it because I run PFSense and Unix. Digging into it. I also run a couple of other things like NTO, png, some traffic monitors. I run Zeek. I run various things. I clear all the logs. Zeek. I run various things. I clear all logs. Turns out um in top was um taking up a shit ton of disk space and that was preventing the dns server from restarting the way it should so you're like logs were taking up space, or what.
Speaker 2:Well, so so the traffic monitor does packet capture, it does deep packet analysis. It does a lot of things and it was taking up a shit ton of space.
Speaker 1:It was taking up about 40% of my disk space on my firewall, right. But why was it taking up that much space? Because usually it's logs. If you don't put a limit on your logs, they can grow into the point where they'll literally take over your drive.
Speaker 2:Everything has a limit. It was an error. It was an issue with the version of the software that I was running that it was not respecting the settings that I had set, I got you Okay, and there you go, did you? See that Star Trek New Worlds is ending.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, theoretically yes, I mean you're changing topics here, but that's fine. Well, I thought we were done with this firewall topic, okay.
Speaker 2:I won't go into any more detail. Anyway, yeah, so Star Trek New Worlds is renewed for a fifth season, but only six episodes We'll see. So we're getting season three, we've got season four coming, and then we've got season five, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and why do they take such a long break too?
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't. I don't like it when they do that. It's right, but it so I, I. I don't know if it's actually ending or what the deal is. We will see. People are assuming, because it's only renewed for a fifth season already and it's only for six episodes. But you know what TBD. But I'm looking forward to getting season three and then four and we'll go from there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that show, but at this point I kind of assume it was cancelled because it hadn't been out for so long and we'll go from there. Yeah, yeah, I like that show, but at this point I kind of assume it was canceled because it hadn't been out for so long.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, season three should be released pretty soon, right?
Speaker 1:I don't know, should it? I mean, you'd think so, but who the hell knows? They already did a big preview of what next season's supposed to be.
Speaker 2:they just haven't released it yeah, it's uh coming out in july, july, okay, well, july 17th and uh.
Speaker 1:Is it going to be weekly or can we binge it?
Speaker 2:uh, it will be weekly.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's why did everybody go back to weekly? I liked it when companies release shit all at once yeah, well that's better. Fuck you, gene. What do you mean? Fuck me, no, it's a better way of consuming it, but at my I agree with you.
Speaker 2:I agree with you. I'm just saying it's a fuck you gene oh, it's a fuck you gene.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, exactly that's why it's the only reason, because they want to me. So I sent you a thing since we were on tech before. Uh, it's interesting, I haven't bought one, but um, because I can't use it. But apparently, finally, usb4. One of the things you can do with it is just plug one computer into another computer and they will talk to each other. It'll create a on windows 40 gigabit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah it'll create a 40 gig uh connection using ip over usb4, which is something that you know well, ben, that I've been asking you about a solution like that for probably three years now a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know about that long well, it's been a while and there have been solutions?
Speaker 1:there have, but not good ones not just plug in a cable and you're done.
Speaker 2:Solutions yeah sure, exactly exactly dude, 48 bits, jesus, we're getting there, we're getting there.
Speaker 1:I mean, at least it gets to 80.
Speaker 2:Usb 4 can do 240 watts of power. Yep, that's insane.
Speaker 1:You know, 240 watts going over one of the lines in that cable. That's a fucking dryer yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't understand how they can do that, just purely from a cable standpoint, because the diameter of the line that that wattage goes through is very thin. How's it not heat up? Agreed, it should heat up. Your cables are going to be hot to the touch. So I don't know. I mean, just because they can doesn't mean they should.
Speaker 2:Anyway, yeah, so USB 4.0 will be interesting. Yeah, it'll be a while before we see it, but you know it's out in Macs. Right now, okay, I'm talking about normal consumer products on your phones, on your everyday computers.
Speaker 1:Darren's itching to buy a new Mac. I don't know if you heard the last show, I didn't buy a new.
Speaker 2:Mac, I did, and I heard your disparaging comments about me. It's fine what?
Speaker 1:I didn't disparage you one bit Uh-huh, not disparaging comments about me. It's fine what. I didn't disparage you one bit uh-huh, not at all. But darren, definitely uh is trying to come up with an excuse to buy a mac studio. He doesn't need a mac studio, he wants all the ai crap. Why? I don't know he's into it, so he he wants the ai stuff. I don't know he's into it, so he wants the AI stuff.
Speaker 2:Okay, and if that's the circle jerk thing he wants to do, then cool, go do it yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, his rationale is that he can do it without spending any money. How? Because he gets donations on his podcast. Okay, so what I mean is by spending money that people gave you instead of money that came out of your account, kind of thing.
Speaker 2:So I don't know. Okay, I don't understand.
Speaker 1:I don't have any desire to run any alarms at home. I'm happy to use tools that do AI shit that are web-based and not need to run anything at home. So I'm not worried about any of that. Don't need to have a computer just for that.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you know I'm a Minecraft kind of guy where I don't want Siri or Google Assistant or anything like that reaching out to the web. I get the desire to run stuff at home. I run a lot of stuff at home, but I the desire to run stuff at home. I run a lot of stuff at home, but I, I just I don't understand.
Speaker 1:Well, something that needs 128 gigs of RAM and either a high-end Mac CPU or a top-of-the-line three thousand dollar plus video card is not something I need at all. It's just not in my ballpark. Here it's it's. It's such a fringe use case that using somebody else's through a web browser and paying for it is a much cheaper way to go agreed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know why he's wanting a mac studio though, because, like, look, dude, it's a powerful machine, it's a lot of stuff, I get it, I, I. I enjoy the mac hardware a lot. The mac os is crap it's not crap, dude, it's.
Speaker 1:It doesn't reboot like your windows box every time we do a podcast uh, hey, I am no fan of windows.
Speaker 2:Uh, that's fine. Uh, literally I'm sitting on the only windows machine in my house you recognize.
Speaker 1:recognize that right, I know the rest are my Macs.
Speaker 2:Or Linux, or Linux yeah. I get it, I get it.
Speaker 1:So one thing that I was.
Speaker 2:Which y'all are making fun of me about Linux.
Speaker 1:Yeah, linux is good. You know Linux. I think I mentioned this, maybe even two weeks ago, but I'll'll mention again because it's cool is that in a recent test done by one of the gaming publications out there?
Speaker 1:websites they used the same hardware and they ran windows on it windows 11 and they ran linux on I don't remember which distro, but one of the distros and then they ran the same games on it windows 11 and they ran linux on I don't remember which distro, but one of the distros and then they ran the same games on it, because you can run a lot of games now on linux thanks to steam and what they found was that many like about two-thirds, if not higher, I think.
Speaker 1:Actually it was somewhere between two thirds and three quarters of the game's frame rates were higher on Linux than on windows 11.
Speaker 2:I'm not surprised even running an emulation Um you know, the fact of the matter is it's uh, you, you have so much cruft in Windows that doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 1:It's not saying Linux is good, it's saying that Windows is that bad yeah.
Speaker 3:I totally agree, because Linux is running emulation mode and it's still faster. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So that's the issue and Microsoft needs to pay attention to this. To pay attention to this and something a lot of people have been asking for is to put out basically a xbox pc version of windows with all the crap stripped out of it, because you look at it like xbox basically was running in the same code base. It's just a stripped out version of it because it has very poor hardware in comparison and it still needs to do games in 4k. So all they need to do is take that code base, add a few things that PCs need to it. You know like it already has Bluetooth, keyboard support and all that crap, but just make it a little more standardized and then release it as a gaming version of the software that anybody can install on their pc, and then you've got the best of both worlds. You've got something that is minimalist and stripped so that it doesn't slow down the games, but you're not limited to the crappy xbox. You can actually run it on high-end hardware.
Speaker 2:So when the Xbox 365 came out after the original Xbox, you mean the 360, yeah, Sure.
Speaker 1:So the original Xbox which I still have one in the closet somewhere. I've got both of them, the 360 here, and then neither has been turned down for many years.
Speaker 2:Like I hacked the Xbox very early, but that's neither here nor there. It was a great platform for streaming from my illicit downloads and everything else. But anyway, when they came out with the 360, what they did was they used an early version of hyper v to emulate and run the original xbox games. So if you're trying to play an original xbox game on the xbox 360, yeah that was actually running in a virtual machine.
Speaker 2:Um, they, they did a lot of stuff there. They did a lot of stuff with prioritizing. The are really customizing the os to the processor. They, they did a lot of things there that were really cool, that they should have ported and used in windows.
Speaker 1:That they never have nope, and this is why 85 of people that play video games stay on windows 10, even though it's been out for 10 years now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, because windows 11 is bloatware as I sit here on windows 11, well, and I've got a laptop with windows 11 that I was playing games on while I was traveling, yes, but I I recognize the fact that were it not bloatware, the game would probably be about 30 to 40 faster. It's just taking a massive frame rate hit in dealing with all the windows crap, even though windows has a gaming mode. But I think all that does is visual stuff. It doesn't actually change the uh anything beyond visually what the computer does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I. I. So realistically there should be windows. So there there should be at least four different versions of Windows. There should be server, there should be desktop, obviously for work, and there should be a home version. That is, I hate the home versions, but from a consumer standpoint there's a reason for it. I get it, but there should be a gaming version that is very stripped down. You know bare bones. Here's your kernel. Here's what you got. Here's how you load games Go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Well, that's what I'm talking about is just have either one version of windows but that has a checkbox, or you know something. You hit to go into gaming mode and it reboots in a stripped down, very minimalist install, sure, or just sell for the same price a stripped down version of windows and I think what they'd find is they they sell more of those. Well, maybe not to corporate, but to non-corporate users. They would absolutely sell more of the gaming version than they would of the uh, full bloatware version agreed so yes and no, they should do it.
Speaker 1:They're idiots for not fucking doing.
Speaker 2:It is my point so apparently here in the last hour, iran's parliament has voted to close the street of hormuz uh, okay, they can't do that uh well, they can try yeah, but it's like they don't own both banks, right they can close their half.
Speaker 1:I guess technically they can, you know, build shit out and dump rocks into half of it to close their half. But that's about it, okay, okay. Anyway, um legally speaking, practically they have no means to close it.
Speaker 2:It will be interesting to see what they do, and I would just remind you of the 1980s, when we took out, uh, almost all of Iran's Navy.
Speaker 1:Mm. Hmm, I remember that story, that was uh, we almost accidentally took out all of their navy?
Speaker 2:yeah, because it was supposed to be a proportional response and it just kept escalating. I don't know. I I dude. If they try to close the straits of hormos, um, the navy's gonna have a field day like the nimitz. The nimitz is over there, yeah, and it's uh.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm sure they're hoping that they try oh, yeah, and I don't think trump would hesitate to re, to overreact, meaning we wouldn't just bomb the ships that are trying to do that. We would bomb the ports that those ships return to, to the point where they're. They're no longer ports, they're just beach. They would, they would effectively have not just zero navy but zero capabilities of a Navy.
Speaker 2:Well, they don't have much of a Navy to begin with. Like we can argue about China, we can argue about lots of things, but no Iran has never had.
Speaker 1:They're not, they are not. They have a decent size fishing fleet but not a Navy.
Speaker 2:Yeah uh, yeah, anyway it's. Uh, it's interesting to see what's going to happen because if you've ever read or watched even like the fat electricians telling of the story about the naval incident in the 80s, it's really interesting.
Speaker 1:So um, what are you sending me here?
Speaker 2:my phone's going crazy well, you, I, I I sent you a few things. I sent you the map, then I sent you a 20 year old latina versus a 41 year old latina yeah, which?
Speaker 1:why are you sending me that in the middle of recording a podcast?
Speaker 2:first of all, because I'm on x and we're talking, jesus, what do you mean? So then, I pictures a woman wearing some sweatpants that say used on the back, and the meme is well, it's nice to see honesty and advertising, yeah, and then you're like no, that's, uh, that's a mexican. This is a 49 year old spanish woman which you know reasonably attractive a little too baggy for me too baggy.
Speaker 1:Penelope cruz is too baggy for you yes, oh my god her eyes. Dude that 49, dude yeah okay you don't? The alternative is to have a cat face, which I prefer much less than a more natural face. The plastic surgery stuff just looks god awful.
Speaker 2:Okay, I have seen some older women in my life and there are some attractive older women. I don't think Penelope cruz looks like great in that, wow holy shit, ben's blind folks.
Speaker 1:Ben's lost his ability to there's there's. I'm looking at her right now. I mean neck down, sure, but you know, neck up she looks like she's in her mid-30s. She looks younger than you. Frankly, dude bullshit.
Speaker 2:She totally does let me shave my beard and I'll look like I'm 12 again I don't think so.
Speaker 1:I think that that's non-gun buddy.
Speaker 2:You're never looking that young, and then would you send me a pixelated airplane no, no, so I sent the, not the b, uh, the uh. Activate the sleeper cells from the itola and, oh yeah, americans going, oh yeah, let's go, and then everybody's a gangsta until the sky starts missing its pixels.
Speaker 1:It's a silhouette of b12 a reference to the square yeah, square lines on it. I've always been a fan of angular style. I mean, I can appreciate the roundy designs, for sure, but there's just something about angular things that, just like there's no doubt that they're human created.
Speaker 1:There's nothing in nature that looks like that it's. It's not pretending to be a butterfly or something. You know it's. Yes, it's a tool. It looks manly, it's a tool, whereas you get into some of these design styles that are all curry and wavy and organic looking and it's like, okay, well, they're trying to emulate a more organic, natural look here. The b, the b2, does not have that problem uh no, but it's definitely not the and the f117 was even better yeah, that's what I was about to say.
Speaker 2:It's definitely not the f-117, no, the f-117 was so fucking cool man.
Speaker 1:I love that plane why, because it's cool, it's. It looks like it shouldn't be able to fly uh, it barely was.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter, it flew.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it literally was a flying brick half a brick, but it was very cool looking and I, uh, it looked like a batman. You know that's what it looked like. It looked like a plane out of a batman movie, sure like old school batman of the the 80s and 90s, not the modern Batman. I agree. Yeah, and I don't know. I think they all retired a long time ago now.
Speaker 2:No CIA and a couple in the Air Force F-117s.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Really. Yep, wow, that's surprising. The other thing that I liked about them was they were single-seater planes.
Speaker 2:So why do you like a single-seater plane?
Speaker 1:Because the plane becomes an extension of the body. At that point there's no two souls or more inside of it. It's a single plane, single pilot, and the plane just is an extension of the body. It's something that you develop after spending thousands of hours flying, whether it's in space or in airplane simulators. You wouldn't know about it, but you feel like the?
Speaker 2:plane is part of you, Dude. I have flown in the simulator and it is surreal. Come on.
Speaker 1:It's not real, it's surreal. So no, I've always been a big fan of the F-117s. The closest that I saw one was about 80 feet away, which is not close enough. I'd love to at some point go to a museum where you can actually touch the damn thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh, man, I like I the coolest planes I have seen in person. I've seen, uh, Blackhawk.
Speaker 1:Not a plane, but okay.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, well, whatever. Sr-71. Yeah, those are awesome World War II stuff, of course, yep, which the lightning is my favorite favorite, but neither here nor there. And uh, like the lightning, like the p-51 gets a lot of love, but the lightning was the coolest plane of world war ii is that the british one fuck you. No, it was in the pacific, it was the interceptor, it was the twin fuselage. Oh, okay, okay, the lightning that had more fucking firepower.
Speaker 1:What am I thinking? There's a British one that sounded similar to lightning. I'll look it up.
Speaker 2:Anyway, no, Anyway, the other cool plane that I've seen in person and gotten to be actually aboard was a what's the big cargo plane, main cargo plane for the US Army, the Not the big big one the C-130.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the AC-130s. Yeah, I've been on a C-130 gunship, the C-130. Yeah, c-130. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The AC-130s yeah, I've been on a C-130 gunship, which was pretty cool. Well, that's cool.
Speaker 1:I've only flown in a simulator. I've never been inside a real one.
Speaker 2:Airshows need to be a thing again.
Speaker 1:Well, they are a thing. One of my buddies that actually semi-list this podcast. He's a big airplane guy. He's got a couple airplanes and, um, uh, he was up here in texas and we went to the gun range. I I sent you photos.
Speaker 1:But he, he goes up to wisconsin every year, um, for oshkosh, which is the biggest air show in the country. Apparently now I I haven't been to oshkosh since I was a kid. When I was a kid, I went to oshkosh either two or three times, I can't remember. I got a helicopter ride out there one year, um, and it was just really fun to see all the the cool world war ii stuff. But you know, when you live a driving distance away it's different than when you live like half a country away. But for him it's an excuse to go fly up there. So every year he just flies up there, okay, so so my point is air shows do exist, but not near us which is weird because when I was growing up, like I remember going to air shows, quite frankly, across the country thunderbolt, that's the british one.
Speaker 1:I was thinking of the thunder Thunderbolt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, not the same thing. No, apparently this is an interesting breaking story on X Several submarines US submarines have surfaced around Jesus Christ, what are you sending me flying brick? No, you, you sent me a text from wikipedia. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's the thing that. Was that supposed to be a link? Yeah that's a link it's not a link. You're right, it's not a link anyway, um, but anyway, several us subs. Uh, anyway, I googled what you sent, yeah, yeah, but anyway. So every carrier group, strike group, has a submarine escort.
Speaker 2:We know that, but it's very classified as to what, and so on, da-da-da-da-da. Apparently they just surfaced around the Nimitz and others like hey, here we are, which is interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's clearly a display.
Speaker 2:Oh, very much so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's questionable. So you kind of wonder which tactic is better. Is it better to just be unseen and then strike, or is it better to do some peacocking and hope you don't have to strike?
Speaker 2:I think the peacocking is okay here and there. I sent you the lucky.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have seen it. Yeah, so it's P38 versus P40 zone.
Speaker 2:Yeah Twin engine, yeah Twin fuselage.
Speaker 1:Didn't one of those crash recently in Texas?
Speaker 2:I don't know, I, I, if I. If there was ever a plane, if I was ever going to say what would my dream plane that I could own would be it would be that plane, the amount of firepower that that plane had versus, like, literally, they didn't even call it a fighter because they created the designation interceptor for this plane. Dude, it was fast, it was maneuverable, it had a shit ton of firepower. I have always been in love with this plane since I was a kid.
Speaker 1:I guess it was 2013 that it crashed. Sorry, I thought it was more recent. It was at an air show. Yeah yeah, that happens occasionally. Unfortunately is some of these, you know, old dudes flying old planes will occasionally crash.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that plane left last service in 1965 from the honduran air force.
Speaker 1:wow, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I. I, to be honest, I just don't really like any old planes or old guns. I'm I'm more of a modern person. Okay, it's well, and modern, I guess, is relative. So modern meaning from the 80s onwards, since you were an adult yeah, not even since I was a kid. But it's like if I look at stuff like that, I get it for its time. It's very cool, but I just like jets more. Okay, I don't know, I'm trying to think of what my favorite plane would be. I just always keep going back to a 747.
Speaker 2:You've seen the movie Down Periscope right yeah yeah. Think of what my favorite plane would be. I just always keep going back to a 747. You've seen the movie Down Periscope right yeah yeah, where a diesel sub beats the modern Navy and a woman is almost out of uniform.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, yeah it, that's. Uh, I think that there was um. Who's the woman in that movie? I'm sure that was kelsey. Grammar was the main dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I look, I wouldn't mind having a diesel sub. That would be awesome. I wouldn't yes having your own submarine. That would be super cool. I've I've spent so many hours in submarine simulators.
Speaker 2:You wouldn't believe it I, I promise you, I promise you, I promise you, I believe it believe it well, especially german ones, that tends to be the more popular one. Yeah, type 7s, I fully Dude. I believe that, yeah, anyway, anything you tell me about simulators, I am very much believing and thinking you have done because yeah, Yep, now one that I haven't played but I own is an Apollo simulator.
Speaker 1:Why haven't you played it? Because I have too much other stuff, but it looks very, very tricky, because this is what I referred to as old school, uh, rocketry, um, so pre-computers really, and uh, I mean, they do have rudimentary computing, but the bottom line is everything is a switch, yes, and and so you're not typing anything in, you're not clicking virtual on-screen button correspondences, everything is a physical switch, and so there's a billion things you have to memorize for what to do, in what type of situation, and they're all manual clicks. Yeah, yeah, so it's. I mean, that's more difficult, I think well, I mean, this was yes, yeah like, if you see, you've seen the inside of the dragon, right?
Speaker 1:yeah, it's, it's touch screens.
Speaker 2:It's basically you're sitting in front of an ipad yeah, yeah, which is, and it's all automated and everything there's nothing that you're doing manually.
Speaker 1:Everything is done through touchscreen controls yep, in fact disappointing they re. They released when they first, uh, when the first dragon went up, uh, musk's company, spacex, released a game that was a the ui of their actual dragon ui, uh, for the controls. But they released a game where you would have to guide the dragon, uh, using thrusters to dock with the iss, okay, and um, and I remember thinking that, man, they really could use better graphics, but that's their actual user interface on the actual controls for the actual Dragon, okay, which is funny.
Speaker 2:All right, but if you look at like the Apollo missions or anything, like that these big, broad control panels. To your point, they were literally this switch. I mean, behind me I'm looking at my PDP-8 and my PDP-11, and you've got the DIP switches for programming the memory and everything else that times 100, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah and yeah, and what? Well, my point is that it's a different type of gameplay. It's not reactions quickly. This gameplay it's like do I remember the procedure that I read for dealing with this scenario and which switches do I toggle? In what order?
Speaker 2:well, but that's part of the reason why the nasa you know the astronauts on apollo and everywhere, uh, all the other missions for that matter trained the way they did. Yeah, yes.
Speaker 1:It was harder being an asteroid back then than it is today. I suspect, based on what I've seen, we have way too many women astronauts these days. Okay, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yes, and.
Speaker 1:Well, my point is you didn't have that back in the 60s?
Speaker 2:Okay, gene, what are you trying to say here?
Speaker 1:You know how bad the women are at clicking buttons.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh, like I. It's just I don't even know what to say to this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know I get such a non-sequitur I got you stumped, all right, uh, what else we got. We got anything else. I'm trying to think of, uh, what else we've talked about offline, or if there's anything else major happening in the world. I mean Ukraine, no one gives a shit about anymore.
Speaker 2:It's not even covered at all. The short bill and the silencer stuff is in the big beautiful bill at this point.
Speaker 1:Yes, that is true.
Speaker 2:That is a very good thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so far it hadn't been stripped out of there, so this whole thing passes no, no, no.
Speaker 2:No, the short bill got added into it. It did not. It was not in the house version. It is in the senate version, but that's that's all right, that's what I mean.
Speaker 1:So if the house doesn't strip it out from their joint bill, like people in the house basically have to agree to the Senate, version it has to go to reconciliation, reconciliation is different than the full If it doesn't get stripped out in the reconciliation, then we're good to go Agreed. Yeah, but it's everything. It's silencers, it's short barrels and it's full auto. No, it's not full auto. I thought it was full auto as well. No, no.
Speaker 2:I thought there was three things.
Speaker 1:So silencers, short barrels. There was something else then.
Speaker 2:No, full auto hasn't been on the table so far, but one of the interesting things is that the ATF and the reorganization of the ATF- Hold on one second.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, oh, it was, you're right, you're right. So here's what it was.
Speaker 2:It was suppressors, short barrels, rifles and shotguns, and also any other weapons were also on it, that's what it was which you know uh, the you know uh, if you have a pistol with a brace and then a vertical grip that would be in any other weapon, yeah, so yeah, so that would no longer require a text stamp now, should have never but anyway, the the remember, they're not changing the law, they're just modifying the way it's applied, and so you still have to fill out the forms.
Speaker 2:It's just no no, no, no, no, no, no. That is it, it is. It goes. The short barrel rifles and the suppressors and the any other weapons goes to just a normal gun purchase so you don't have to form, you don't have to do a form for or what was it?
Speaker 1:it's the normal background check okay well, that's even better purchase because I thought you still had to do the form. You just didn't need to pay the money not the way the law is written.
Speaker 2:They actually stripped it. No fingerprinting.
Speaker 1:No, nothing interesting, wow, okay, well, that's even better. Yeah, I thought it was just getting rid of the 200 no, it's not.
Speaker 2:It's not getting rid of the tax stamp, it's actually removing them from the nfa, so they just become a normal arm how do they manage to sneak that in them, because the reconciliation bill isn't supposed to have new laws. Because it has to deal with the tax. So by removing them, though I guess they're removing them from the NFA, which is a tax, and that's how they're doing it.
Speaker 1:So they're just changing what's taxable effectively. I could see that. Well, that's great. That's better news than I was expecting, because I I thought they were just going to make it cheaper, aka free, but to remove them completely from the mfa.
Speaker 2:You're right, it means you don't have any other forms to fill out, and no yeah, and, and if you don't get approved, it goes through the Brady process and you wait your few days and you're done.
Speaker 1:I think two weeks, no, it's five days. Five days, that's all. It is Five days yeah.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, the point is suppressors are about to become dirt for energy. Mass market. Yeah, yes. I would love to still pick up. I am glad I didn't buy one last year.
Speaker 1:I know right. Well, and you saw, Suppressor Central is once again doing the. Get it now, don't wait, and we'll pay for the tax stamp. Yeah, yeah, don't doing that whole thing. I still want to get that one that I've liked for the last three years, but I can't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the flow through one, the flow through. Yeah, the free flow suppressor, that's titanium and it's like 1300 but, and I thought I was the expensive guy wanting the uh, wanting the surefire suppressor, yeah, yeah yeah, surefire is like the bmw of the suppressors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is very much so but you know it's. I mean it's also the bmw of flashlights but they work, they work very well, they're very reliable I remember paying like 185 dollars for the first generation led surefire and and it was like my gun cost 250. It was a black police gun and the flashlight was almost as much. Yeah, crazy, but I I don't know it's. I've had good luck with sureFires. Everything they've made has been really good. It's just all been way overpriced.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I've had good luck with a lot of different flashlights. My everyday carry flashlight is actually an Olight and I carry They've gotten much better. I carried the same Olight Baton little flashlight for four years before it died and when it died I sent a message to Olight. They sent me a message back and they shipped me a new one. That's awesome. I like that, like very good customer service.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, I've got decent chargers. I've got a bunch of stuff. I've also got o lights that have just died. Um, I don't trust weapon lights to o light. But you know, what I carry around in my pocket is, you know, a utility thing. So that's fine.
Speaker 1:Well, I have the story with the ship. The return is literally what impressed me so much about the mouse that I have, which is I originally did on the Kickstarters. It was a brand new company at the time, swiftpoint, and it was the ultimate gaming mouse because it had everything in it. Basically, it has a gyroscope in it so you can lift the mouse off the table. It has touch sensitive, has, uh touch sensitive, four different touch sensitive buttons which you can set the the desired pressure that you want. Depending on the pressure, they'll do different functions. Uh, it's got a total of, I think, 12 buttons on it. I mean, it's everything, but it's not wireless, it's wired.
Speaker 2:And it was 240, which some people might think is a lot of money for a mouse it is a lot of money, but after which, by the way, you still have to bring me my keyboard. I know I still have your keyboard still sitting here in the back.
Speaker 1:I know uh and um. So after three years of using the mouse, one of the buttons started misbehaving, like it wasn't consistently clicking, and so I wrote tech support. I'm like so I know, this is obviously out of warranty. It's been three years since I got it. This is one of the original Kickstarter ones, anyway and this button's starting to fail. It, this one of the original kickstarter ones anyway. Um, and this button's starting to fail.
Speaker 1:So I was wondering to find out if, if I could get a like a discount on buying a replacement mouse. And the guy replies back with what's your address? I'm like well, I don't know why that would matter. I guess they they're looking it up to see if it's covered by warranty or something. So I sent them the address and then he replies back all right, it's on its way. They just sent me a brand new one for free.
Speaker 1:Like holy shit, this is the best customer service I've ever had. I wasn't even expecting it, I wasn't asking for it and it was a one button on a mouse and they just did it. They just sent me a brand new one. So from that point on, I have now bought two more of those mice like the, the same one again and then a slightly updated version of it. They're both still in boxes. I'm still using my original mouse replacement that they sent me, because the thing just works that well and there's no point in pulling out a new one that's identical to the one that I'm using because you know. I mean, it still works, all the functionality is still there so why?
Speaker 1:did you buy more? Well, I, I told the guy. It's like I I'm very appreciative of the support, this is great, and you know I'm not going to expect you to do it twice, so I'm just going to order one right now so I have a spare one sitting in the box and it's still sitting in the box years later. And then they had a new version, an update to that mouse that they did about a year and a half ago and so when that was a Kickstarter, so I obviously did that Kickstarter with as well, because I had such good quality. But both of those are still sitting in boxes because I'm still waiting for my technically my second one, but it's the replacement for the original, waiting for that today and it still is alive, and that the original Kickstarter was seven years ago cool, so I just really like companies that support and the prices have come down quite a bit, like this, the one that I originally had in the kickstarter, I think. Now you can buy for about 130 bucks, so it's way cheaper still the best.
Speaker 2:A lot of money for a mouse yeah, yeah, some people would say that uh, not some people me well you?
Speaker 1:you know you've been cheap in the past. I think you're finally getting over that hump and starting to spend some money. How so well? You bought a timeshare okay you know, um, but yeah, you've always been cheap dude. You can't argue with that I can.
Speaker 2:I don't think I'm cheap. I think I'm frugal.
Speaker 1:There's a difference, yeah yeah, frugal is the word that cheap people use to describe being cheap.
Speaker 2:Am I wrong A little bit, but it's okay. When did you buy a new car again? Oh shit, the last time I bought a new car was 2018. Yeah Well, a new brand new car.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've bought several cars since then, other people's cars. Yeah, you've bought other people's cars.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean the 2017 is Lindsey's Explorer. My truck is a 2013. Yeah, that I've had, since it was new, which you know.
Speaker 1:I used to be the new car every two years guy, which you know. I used to be the new car every two years guy but my current, only car that I have right now is 12 years old, no, 11 years old. There's nothing wrong with that Gene.
Speaker 2:No, it's only got 40,000 miles on it, so it's perfectly good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my, my truck is. Uh, the 2013 has 218 000 miles on it and has had very little issues. Well, I've got 175 000 less miles on mine than yours, but that's just a year younger, okay, now, the one thing I do have to replace that I noticed is my windshield wipers a year younger, okay, now, the one thing I do have to replace that I noticed is my windshield wipers are starting to disintegrate.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, that's consumable. That's something you should be replacing pretty much regularly.
Speaker 1:I just need to put them on.
Speaker 2:I just sent you a picture of John McCain's grave after hearing that trump bombed iran oh, that is so bad.
Speaker 1:That is bad man. That's even a shitty Photoshop job, but yeah.
Speaker 2:But it's hilarious, it is funny. It's a gravestone marker that says John McCain, and then there's an obvious erection coming up from the grave.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:I mean dude, but true right, totally, totally.
Speaker 1:Hey, I need to order some 123 batteries. Can you remind me to do that?
Speaker 2:Gene order some CR123s.
Speaker 1:Jesus Christ, You're more useless than Siri. I mean go to Sam's.
Speaker 2:Get the Energizers from Sam's.
Speaker 1:I was going to just Amazon them.
Speaker 2:Alright. Well, Sam's is cheaper, but okay, Is it? In my experience, yes.
Speaker 1:I don't use the batteries all that often anymore. We were talking about flashlights and I checked mine and, sure enough, the batteries are dead. So I need to get some ordered.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I keep CR-123s around and I.
Speaker 1:I think I actually have some rechargeable ones, but I don't know where they are.
Speaker 2:CR123As yeah. Now, so I actually have a charger. There's a company offline. I'll send it to you, but there's a company that I've ordered batteries from. Let me find it real quick because this is tip of the day. This, this is the tip of the day. This is ben's tip of the day. Fuck john's tip of the day, it's ben's tip of the day amazon sells uh cr123s for uh so go to all right.
Speaker 2:here it is uh 18 18 650 battery storecom. I'll drop a link. This place is fucking awesome. Yeah. Um, like I, I have bought batteries from here for lots of different things.
Speaker 1:Oh sure, fire has their own batteries. I'll order those. No, don't do that, don't do that. Don't do that. Why they should?
Speaker 2:be pretty good, right? They're really not Trust me on this. Go to 18650. Yeah, 18650batterystorecom. Okay, are you going there? Yeah, I'm typing it.
Speaker 1:You could have sent me a link, but I had to type it. Okay, I'm typing it. You could have sent me a link, but I had to type it. Okay, I'm there, copy and paste. Huh, and then what?
Speaker 2:What do you mean and what?
Speaker 1:Well, I went there, and now what?
Speaker 2:So Select.
Speaker 1:CR123s. They've got energizers for they're sold out of all their CR123s. Good job, Ben.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, anyway.
Speaker 3:They can't be sold out, they can't be sold out of all their CR123s.
Speaker 2:They are Okay, weird. Anyway, but anytime you need Random lithium batteries or anything else.
Speaker 1:That's a good price if they weren't sold out.
Speaker 2:Sure, they have great prices, they have good batteries, they've got Samsungs, they've got all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 1:I mean I could get two Energizer batteries For ten bucks.
Speaker 2:What size?
Speaker 1:1-2-3's. They've got what I can get two Energizers on Amazon for $10 yeah, and they're $1.50 I know that's my point, but they're sold out, so it doesn't do me any good well, but how soon do you actually need them? Never know when the power goes out. I might need a flashlight.
Speaker 2:Okay, anyway, point is batteries, battery chargers, stuff like that. This is a very cool website with a lot of really good stuff. Like I have one of the Nikkor chargers from here, I've bought a bunch of really good stuff. Like I have one of the NICOR chargers from here, I've bought a bunch of batteries from here. They've got a lot of good stuff at a very reasonable price. There you go, ben's tip of the day.
Speaker 1:All right, cool. Well, we'll definitely check them out if they have anything in stock at some point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they have a lot of stuff in stock, but I have all those other batteries already.
Speaker 1:I just need these you get some knockoff Chinese brands for really cheap.
Speaker 2:Yeah, don't do that.
Speaker 1:Do you think they explode?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, do you think they explode? Yes, yes, I do you know. So anyway, yeah, no, like if you were building a solar array or anything else like they have the big batteries, you know, like the ev batteries, yeah, stuff like that that you can buy. They're like 400 bucks, but you know, jesus christ, I mean they're like 314 amp hours yeah, milliamp amp hours.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cool, yeah, okay, well, all right, good enough, ben, I think we're running out of topics, since we're surfing the web and nothing. Nothing says we have to have exactly two hours, so let's go ahead and wrap it here and then, um, you know, hopefully you're done with your cold flu, whatever the hell you got by next show uh, I hope so, man.
Speaker 2:I feel good now, so hopefully, but yesterday was just like I said, absolute. Just kick in the pants, dog shit. All right, man. Well, we'll talk to you next week. Gene Sounds good. See you then.
