Jitters, Medicine, And Small Talk

SPEAKER_02 0:25

Howdy, Ben. How are you today? I'm doing all right, Gene. It's been a busy week, man. When hasn't it? Yeah, well, that and I had to take some medication this morning that still got me all jittery and screwed up.

SPEAKER_03 0:40

Mm-hmm. You started on the pot therapy, gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Yeah. No. No.

SPEAKER_03 0:49

Yeah, I know. Some people just don't agree with the pot therapy.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

No, I had to take one and a half pills of tributylene and it clamps down on your blood vessels, which just makes your, you know, blood pressure's pressure medicine. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's part of the case.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

I take lowering blood pressure medicine.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Not hiring. Well, you know. Sometimes you don't have a choice.

SPEAKER_03 1:17

So we got, yep. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

It's either that or go to the ER and get a shot.

Iran War Talk And Saudi Limits

SPEAKER_03 1:21

Yeah. Um no good going to the ER. Place I would like to avoid for the rest of my life. A place I do not want to get a shot into. Mm-hmm. Anyway. I watch plenty of ER TV shows, so that's that's my quotum. Like I met the quota by doing that. So you want to kick off with politics first?

SPEAKER_02 1:44

We can, sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:46

Alright, what do you got? I'm just kidding. I got a story.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

War in Iran is over. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:52

Um sorta. So Saudi Arabia apparently has once again said they're gonna block access to U.S. military bases and strict use of its airspace. And the this was in response to the new, what is it called? Operation Super Freedom. Yeah, Project Freedom. Project Freedom. Because, well, I mean, let's read between the lines just first, shall we? Saudi Arabia likes having higher oil prices.

SPEAKER_02 2:23

Yeah, and they have a pipeline that they can actually.

SPEAKER_03 2:25

And they have a pipeline, exactly. They're not the ones that are getting fucked right now by not being able to get oil or ship oil. So I think they're good, and they're certainly willing to flex their muscles enough in dealing with the US to say no. Now, I do think that every time that one of these countries, whether it's Saudi Arabia or any of the other countries in Europe, for that matter, start telling the tenant, which is the United States, what they can and can't do and when on the property that they lease, the worse it's going to be for them when the terms of the lease are up for renewal.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Or we may just break the lease.

SPEAKER_03 3:15

Well, I don't think that'll happen. I don't I don't think the US likes to get involved in decade-long lawsuits like that. But there's no reason to. I mean, let's face it, unless we want to leave someplace the way that Joe Biden left Afghanistan, which is by leaving a billion plus worth of American weaponry, unless we want to do that, it's not a question of breaking at least anyway. Because it'll take us five years to get our shit together and leave. So, but I do think that those conversations need to start in this administration.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

Did you see that uh Z was putting pressure on Iran to reopen the strait? Yeah. And guess what Iran did?

SPEAKER_03 4:00

They they sent the nuke to them? I don't know. What do they do?

SPEAKER_02 4:02

No. Uh Iran uh struck a Chinese flag vessel that was transiting the strait.

SPEAKER_03 4:07

Okay, well, that's that's right along with what the joke in my head was is that their response to anything is to get hostile. Yes, so that totally makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

But it you know, China's one of your allies here, dude.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

Uh not for long.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Well, and I mean Asia is hurting for gas right now, man.

SPEAKER_03 4:30

Dude, the the prices of caviar have gone up so much. This war is really fucking things up right now.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Why are why do we know the price of caviar, Gene?

SPEAKER_03 4:40

Because some of us eat it.

SPEAKER_02 4:42

How often are you eating caviar?

SPEAKER_03 4:44

Doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

I'm just curious.

SPEAKER_03 4:47

That's now and then so every other night, every night seafood, man. It's seafood. Yeah. It's expensive seafood for good caviar. Yeah, more expensive, goddamn. First, we we boycott the Russian stuff, so I can't get it from Russia. I have to get it from Iran. And now, with the war with Iran, the the Iranian supplies cut off. I have to go through Lebanon, out through Syria, to Iran, just to get the good stuff. It's just I don't know, man. I I just I hope this war gets wound down pretty quick. I'll tell you that.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Eh. It's a good idea.

SPEAKER_03 5:26

Okay, Mr. Uh Mr. Uh Military Industrial Complex.

SPEAKER_02 5:32

Hey, when it's can't beat him, join them. Is that the deal? When it's all coming back to the US, and the U.S. gets to still be the hegemon of the world instead of lightly declining. You know, it isn't bad.

SPEAKER_03 5:47

Yeah, you know, the morons out there are saying, Oh, look, nobody respects the US and the world anymore. The people that are a little smarter than the morons but still don't like Trump are saying, nobody in the world knows what Trump's gonna do. He's got everybody thoroughly confused, and everyone's really bracing for impact. Which is the way we like it.

SPEAKER_02 6:09

Well, and you know, people think he's just stumbling into this and he's stupidly stumbling into it, but it's 20 year strategy. I don't I don't I don't see a I don't see a guy land a triple backflip and go, oh man, he he got lucky.

SPEAKER_03 6:26

He got damn lucky on that one, I'll tell you what.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

Like, yes, we were paying slightly higher gas prices, but the reality is it's nothing like it is in Europe, it's nothing like it is in Southeast Asia.

SPEAKER_03 6:39

But we don't even need to compare it to other countries, dude. The current gas prices are still cheaper than they were under Biden, first of all, except for in California, of course, where they jacked the taxes up. The the second thing is that given the inflation in this country, even though it now it's actually pretty low again, the relative price of gas is still way below the mean average. Yes. So I talked about this for a long time that for a good chunk of my life, for most of my 20s, gas was pretty much pegged at one dollar per gallon. Yeah. Which means that with inflation.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

When I was in high school, you know, and everything is around 120.

SPEAKER_03 7:28

Yeah, yeah. But that that means that over that decade, given that there was still some inflation, the gas price actually went down for the entire 10 years. It just stayed the same dollar amount, but with inflation, that dollar was worth less, so the gas price actually went down. And then I think at some point we figured out that compared to like mid-1980s, the dollar today is worth about one-third, so somewhere between 25 and 33 percent of what it was worth back then. Yeah, another way of saying it is what used to cost you a dollar will now cost you 330. And with that in mind, one dollar gasoline in the mid-80s, which was never considered expensive, and then and uh during the late 70s, the price of gas was actually above a dollar because of the uh OPEC situation, which we will talk about as well. But you know that that dollar a gallon price back then is roughly equivalent to 330 right now, or 333, let's say. And and so if the price is less than 333, then the price of gas today is even cheaper than it was back in the 80s. And if it's a little higher, it's not much higher than 333. Uh again, now when I was in in Washington State last month, I saw gas prices in the$6 range. Well, like$550 to$6. It's a communist state. That's what it's a communist state, exactly. Incidentally, if you go to an Indian reservation, you can get cheaper gas.

SPEAKER_02 9:11

Uh you could also no taxes.

SPEAKER_03 9:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they kind of create their own mess out there. And certainly filling up a rental car full of gasoline with six dollar gas is not fun. You know, before returning it with a full tank. But it still beats paying the crazy outrageous fee that they would charge you at the rental place. Yeah. But anyway, so Saudi Arabia's reaction, I think, is rational, although it seems to be contrary to what America wants. The net result of that is that Trump's Project Freedom Plan has been put on hold. On the other hand, we have United Arab Emirates, which is initiated an increase in its bombing attacks on Iran.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

Well, and they've also initiated the construction of one hell of a pipeline.

SPEAKER_03 10:12

Right. So that's long-term plan, but short-term plan. They're they're not just supporting the U.S. and Israel in its efforts, they are jumping in with both feet and saying, fuck you, Iran. So I think UAE is getting a lot of a lot of kudos for doing this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

From from the US, which by the way may have a project in Abu Dhabi.

SPEAKER_03 10:37

No, good.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

I don't know. I I'm writing in the risk register of you know, risk of war. Hazard pay, man. Hazard pay.

SPEAKER_03 10:48

There you go. Hazard pay, double, double pay. That's not what's wrong with that. Well, if they do that, then I'd do it. No shit, you'd do it. So yeah, UAE is definitely gonna come out of this as a bigger friend of the US than they were previously. But the other thing that they did, of course, is OPEC.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

And giving the middle finger to OPEC as well. Yeah. Well, but the that's just hey, we can produce, we're gonna produce, yeah, no one's gonna tell us what to produce.

SPEAKER_03 11:29

Yeah, which is something that they've not done for the last 50 years plus. I can't remember when the OPEC started. I want to say it was the early 70s. I could be wrong in that. But it was somewhere around 50, maybe 60 years ago. It was before the the original oil crisis or oil embargo or whatever the hell it was.

SPEAKER_02 11:54

Uh yeah, and looks like the whole oil crisis may have been just bullshit.

OPEC Leverage And Gas Price Reality

SPEAKER_03 12:04

Yeah, I mean that like artificially created. Artificially created. I would I would tend to side on that line by default. For sure. I had a nice little quote of Dwight Eisenhower, I sent you and your mom. I I it's good to be reminded of actual history sometimes. And I'm not a big fan of Dwight Eisenhower, however, this is I think he was the last good president before Trump. Uh okay, but I don't know, man. I like Nixon.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

So here's the quote: the problem I have with Nixon is he opened up China.

SPEAKER_03 12:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, they made a mistake on China. Everybody sees that now. They went the wrong direction, they should have gone the direction they went with the Soviet Union instead they went a different way with China. But I also fully say that, you know, hindsight's 2020, and it would have been impossible for them to predict that's how things would turn out. I don't think that this was a a bad choice that everybody was saying don't do this, and he made. I think this was a, you know, we've got two strategies. We can use one on Russia, one on China, see which one works. Anyway, the quote I was getting to from Eisenhower, it relates to NATO. And incidentally, he was, after World War II, the he was the original, the first supreme allied commander of NATO, which is the the main general dude that that controls the entire operation. So his quote is if in ten years all American troops stationed in Europe have not been returned to the US, then this whole project of NATO will have failed. We must get these people to stand on their own feet militarily. He said that in 1951. So in his mind, if NATO was still a thing by 1961, then we have failed the project of NATO.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Well, the project of rebuilding Europe, right? Well, the idea was Europe should be able to defend themselves.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

That is, yeah, Europe should have been able to, but NATO was created to bridge the gap and ensure that Europe, in its rebuilding phase, he also had full protection of America.

SPEAKER_02 14:30

He also would have thought that if the Soviet Union collapsed like it did, NATO would have been.

SPEAKER_03 14:35

There was no reason for NATO. Absolutely. Absolutely. So it's again, this is like most people never look backwards, they only look forwards. Yeah.

NATO’s Purpose And Troops Leaving Europe

SPEAKER_02 14:57

That's about it. All I can say is we've pulled 5,000 troops out of Germany and it's a good start, right? Planning on pulling out up to 100,000 from the rest of Europe.

SPEAKER_03 15:07

Right. Yeah, and we're gonna need them for Cuba. So I think Cuba will become a huge new resort and the new military station ground staging ground for the American continent operations.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

Latin America, yeah, to an extent. I mean, we've got Puerto Rico though. So Cuba's a lot bigger, man. Yeah, but Puerto Rico's further south.

SPEAKER_03 15:32

We also have Cuba, dude. We've had Guantanamo Bay for like 75 years.

SPEAKER_02 15:36

Yeah, but we don't do any major base operations.

SPEAKER_03 15:39

Uh, but we could make Guantanamo much bigger than it currently is. We could we could literally take a thousand square miles of Cuba. Just to make a big base.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

I think we're taking the the whole thing the whole thing.

SPEAKER_03 15:51

Yes, yes, yes. I know, I get it. But you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_02 15:55

So Cuba, I think by the way, we had a politician committing treason regarding Cuba.

SPEAKER_03 16:00

Oh, which one?

SPEAKER_02 16:02

Oh, one of the black Congress ladies, she was in talks with Russia and China to try and get Cuba oil. Oh, yeah, that's that's so it's a definitely a violation of the Logan Act. Absolutely. We have we have them listed as an enemy. We are in a period of tensions. You could argue that it maybe doesn't really rise to the formal definition of treason, but it's pretty fucking treacherous.

SPEAKER_03 16:31

Yeah. Well, I I agree, man.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

I I think the Iranians hitting the Chinese flag vessel is gonna be a big damn deal. Like we could see China really start putting the screws to the Iranians, especially considering you know Trump's going to meet with Xi like next week. Right.

SPEAKER_03 16:53

I think it'll be an interesting meeting. I think China's biggest interest right now, and I don't know, I'm just guessing, right? But I suspect their biggest interest right now of all worlds not losing oil coming up collapse. I think they're they'll probably sign like a 30-year non-aggression against Taiwan agreement if they can get oil. Which wouldn't that be amazing? I mean, look, China's always played the long game, so for them, 30 years would still be like, paha, idiots, we're still gonna get it. You know, just like they waited a hundred years to get to Hong Kong. But but I think right now every every other issue takes a back seat to oil access. Because they are screwed. And with our new deals in the Straits of Malacca, which again, what about the gays of Malacca, man?

SPEAKER_02 17:54

Right.

SPEAKER_03 17:55

All the Malaccan gays.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

Actually, I think there are probably quite a few in the right. The Malaccan gays. Well, I guess they wouldn't consider themselves gay because they're lady boy.

SPEAKER_03 18:09

They're they're ladies, that's right.

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Anyway, our guy goes around Thailand where he walks up to him and asks, lady or lady boy? On Twitter. And some of them you're just like, What? Really?

SPEAKER_03 18:23

Uh-huh. Jesus. Thai men don't really look very man-ish. They're about uh all about 110 pounds.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

No, and they you know, their families set them up at a very early age on all this stuff, basically to be sold into sex slavery. Like, how sick is that?

SPEAKER_03 18:43

But also have a much better life for the whole family.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

Okay. So you want your balls cut off as as a child?

SPEAKER_03 18:51

No, but I mean, look, this has been a cultural practice for a long time. And I think that we can comment about it, but the way they do their thing is none of our business ultimately.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

I agree.

Martial Arts, Injuries, And Aging

SPEAKER_03 19:09

So but it's funny too, because you know, I did Muay Thai for a while. I did Thai kickboxing in my younger days back when I ate less food. And dude, those the guys that do Muay Thai are like frickin' bricks. I mean, they are solid as a rock, they're the same size body, except that they weigh like 150, 160 pounds. You know, solid muscle.

SPEAKER_02 19:38

I never did Mua Thai, but I did I have my black belt in Taekwondo, and I've done judo and jujitsu and all that. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:48

Well, Muay Thai is where you actually get hit.

SPEAKER_02 19:50

Ah, you get hit in Taekwondo. What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_03 19:53

No, I think you just throw things.

SPEAKER_02 19:56

No, Taekwondo is very kick-heavy. That's why it's actually a very good street fighting tool because you end up, you know, in any actual fist fight, you end up on the ground. And that's what jiu jitsu.

SPEAKER_03 20:07

Yeah, I think you have jujitsu.

unknown 20:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

Judo and jujitsu are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Taekwondo is very strike uh kick stand-up fight type stuff. And man, I remember one of the first tournaments I was in. I this guy I was fighting, and I don't even remember how I missed, but I hit low. I was going for a gut shot, and I hit low and I nailed him in his nuts. And I, you know, break your fingers? No, I almost got disqualified, but I ended up taking third place in that. How did you not break your fingers? What do you mean? Did you not hit his cup? First of all, it was a kick. And did you not kick his cup? I did kick his cup, but the heel of your foot hitting the cup isn't a the it just hurts the shit out of him.

SPEAKER_03 20:56

Oh, you healed him. Okay, I thought you liked it. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_02 21:02

Like he stepped away, he stepped back, and that made me hit low. And anyway, it was uh I felt really bad for the kid because I got him.

SPEAKER_03 21:13

Yeah, I broke four fingers when I was doing my tie.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

Oh, I've broken fingers, I tore my Achilles, doing all sorts of stuff, man.

SPEAKER_03 21:24

Yeah. No, that's it's a lot easier to do that shit when you're young because your healing rate is so good.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Yeah, I actually want to get back into it because I want to get my son into it. I think it'd be easy for helmet.

SPEAKER_03 21:37

That's a good idea, but keep in mind you don't heal like you used to.

SPEAKER_02 21:41

Yeah, well, I'm I'm not gonna be sparring really anymore.

SPEAKER_03 21:44

I'm just I remember, dude, when I were I was a kid, like you get a scratch on a rusty nail, you wouldn't think twice about anything because no one's sort of tetanus back then.

SPEAKER_02 21:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:57

And it it it would hurt for like three minutes, you'd forget about it that same day, it'd be totally scabbed over the next day, and you'd be itching and wanting to peel the scab off like two days later.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Yeah.

Ukraine Headlines And Military Optics

SPEAKER_03 22:12

Right now, I get a I don't know, something stupid. I I have a stub your toe. Yeah, that's not even stub my toe. I'm thinking something was. Oh yeah yeah. So I I end up walking upstairs without turning the lights on, not paying attention, and I end up like hitting a chair with my shin. Now again, you know, when I was doing Muay Thai, we did a lot of shin on wood practice. But I do it right now. Not only do I break skin from hitting a fucking chair, but it will take like two weeks to fully heal. I mean, it it is sucks being old, man, compared to being young. That ability to just kind of shrug off any kind of injuries that you get, it's way worse right now. Getting old is not all it's cracked up to be, I'll tell you that.

SPEAKER_02 23:40

I don't know, man. It's it all it all goes downhill, you know. I'm not even 40 yet, and I I you're mentally 40. Mentally older than that. But yeah. But anyway, back to politics and stuff, and we need to get domestic stuff going too at some point. But the moves that are happening, have you looked at what's happening in Ukraine?

SPEAKER_03 24:09

No, not for a while now. Is there? Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

I haven't read the story yet today, apparently.

SPEAKER_03 24:20

But I all the only thing I've heard relevant to Ukraine is apparently there are Ukrainian soldiers, I guess, Ukrainians that have been shipped over to Iran to start training the opposition. Now, I'm not sure I understand how there are people in Ukraine that have the time to do that, given that they're at war themselves. But okay, sure. Let's I mean, they certainly have plenty of war experience that they would be good teachers.

SPEAKER_02 24:58

Well, and the BBC's making a big deal that the Russians uh victory day parade went off with no tanks, and they're saying, Oh, it's because they're all destroyed in Ukraine.

SPEAKER_03 25:11

Well, I don't think they're all destroyed in the U.S. There is a grain of truth there. There's a grain of truth there.

SPEAKER_02 25:17

Right. Because the Russia has a shit ton of tanks. The USSR built up a ton of tanks.

SPEAKER_03 25:22

Well, yes. However, two things. One is the tanks that you normally have in parades are not the tanks that are geared up to be battle ready. These are you're gonna be tanks, a handful of new ones, but predominantly older tanks that have been converted over for this type of activity for demonstrations, for trainers, for parades, for activities that are not actual war activities. They're not part of the tank fleet of tanks that would be taking part in the war. However, also Russia did something interesting when they started this whole thing. They took their entire old inventory and rolled it into Ukraine. So I think somebody did the math and said, you know, our cost to get rid of this shit is actually cheaper, and we might actually win this thing in a matter of days if they get scared and we show a lot of aggression. Now that part of it didn't work, but they certainly got rid of a lot of their old equipment. A lot of their Soviet-era stuff was brought to and then left in Ukraine. So I I will definitely say that that part of it is there. Also, you know, Russia will still historically like there's there is a a propensity, would be the right word, to not tell the truth. So it's maybe it well, but it may be something that the US needs to do more of as well, though the US does some of that as well. But when it comes to military shit, I don't think it's anybody's business what you have, you don't have until you're ready to use it. So a military parade should look nice, but it doesn't by any means need to be a demonstrator of all the latest cool shit you got. Like you save that until you need to use it.

SPEAKER_02 27:21

What typically people do try and put their good stuff out.

SPEAKER_03 27:25

Well, uh China certainly does. I mean, we've we've caught them putting like basically commercial vehicles that have had some sheet aluminum welded to them to make them look like military vehicles before.

Why US Healthcare Costs Explode

SPEAKER_02 27:40

Well, and that's why I think China is actually such a paper tiger, is a lot of their military spend is caught up in waste. Like it's you know, there's so much corruption over there.

SPEAKER_03 27:55

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's one of the downsides to not having full-on capitalism is there's nothing to police the corruption. This is the it's the same problem we have anytime the government gets involved in something. When the government gets involved, competition goes away, and you effectively have a socialist-like entity. So if the government ran healthcare, healthcare would be cheaper, but it would also run kind of like British healthcare, which is some of the worst on the planet. So it's a it's two sides of the coin because I I will bitch about our current system a lot because it sucks. It it literally is built to maximize profitability for insurance companies and medical institutions and not give a shit about you whatsoever.

SPEAKER_02 28:46

Yeah, and on that, I think what we need to do, what should have been done, is and I would even say the catastrophic policies could be single payer if you wanted. But a catastrophic policy and any other insurance is illegal and everything else is self-pay and unlimited HSA.

SPEAKER_03 29:07

Yeah, HSA has always been a good idea. I think health savings accounts. It's basically pre-tax money you can use towards medical.

SPEAKER_02 29:15

And as long as you're using it for medical, it's not taxed. Yeah. And you know, before the Affordable Health Care Act, all I had as a young guy was a catastrophic policy. And then I did self-pay, and it was cheap. Way cheap. Yeah. But the Affordable Health Care Act made it illegal for doctors to accept lower payment from anyone other than Medicaid, Medicare.

SPEAKER_03 29:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:41

Yeah, it it was so when I got my it doesn't lower the cost for Medicaid Medicare, it just raises it for everybody else.

SPEAKER_03 29:48

Everybody else, yeah. When I first got it in the mid-90s, I think I was paying 50 bucks a month for insurance. And that was it wasn't as extreme as what you would have today for a uh policy that only covers, you know, really expensive shit. So I think that policy that was 65 bucks a month, it had a$2,000 deductible. So they just didn't cover anything until two grand. And that that as a young man, that's all you need. Because there's nothing that you're gonna do that'll be more than that unless it's major. I like I went to the doctor once every three or four years. That was about it.

SPEAKER_02 30:39

Yeah, agreed. I didn't even go get physicals or anything like that.

SPEAKER_03 30:42

Don't need it. No. The only the first time I really got into this, like you have to come in every year bullshit, is when I first got on insulin.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

Well, when what I what got me to start going every year was a company I was working for at the time had an incentive payment that they would get that they would do into your HSA if you went and did the stuff.

SPEAKER_03 31:06

Yeah, and I like I joined a health club for that same reason because there was we were paid to go to a health club, so I started doing that, but didn't have one for the doctors, so I never did it. But it's it's one of those things where right now I still have a over$2,000 deductible every year. Yep, but I'm paying over a thousand bucks a month for one person for insurance. So it's it's about probably fifteen thousand dollars a year.

SPEAKER_02 31:35

Have you looked at any of the like Christian cost-sharing things and stuff? I mean, I've heard of them, I haven't really looked at them. Because they're apparently way, way cheaper.

SPEAKER_03 31:49

Yeah, yeah, it it probably would be. I mean, that's the thing. It's like the reason I kept insurance is because uh it the the balancing out at least what used to be the case when it was cheaper. Like when it was 500 bucks a month, I would generally save a few hundred bucks a month in drug cost. Because drugs through an insurance policy, even if it's during your deductible period, are still cheaper because of the deals they have with drug companies. So if I want to, you know, get well, insulin was a good example. Now it's gone down because of Trump, which is great. But previously, insulin was like a hundred bucks a month, and then it crept up every every year or so, going up in price, to almost a thousand dollars a month just for insulin, and that's insane because it's not a drug you take to get rid of something, it's a drug you take for the rest of your life. So it it is crazy that the price went up so much, and this is as it basically went from being a fairly new thing at a hundred bucks per month to now being an old and soon to be out of patent thing, and it was still almost a thousand a month at that point. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

Well, there's there's some stuff where Trump RX is really kind of making some oh yeah, yeah, yeah. If you go to Trump RX, did you see that Medicare Medicaid is gonna get Ozimpic at like 50 bucks a month?

SPEAKER_03 33:26

Oh wow, that's awesome. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's awesome because I've my fucking insurance company just won't cover it anymore.

SPEAKER_02 33:33

How how far are you? How long are you how long until you get Medicaid?

SPEAKER_03 33:38

I don't know. I'm not there yet. I'm sure I'd start getting messages if I was getting close. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:45

It's when you're 60, I believe.

SPEAKER_03 33:47

60 is that what it is, yeah. So I've still got a few years to go. But it's one of those things where, like now, after Trump's whole Trump RX thing, the cost of insulin has gone down to about 75 bucks a month, even if you don't have insurance. And with insurance, it's about 25 bucks a month. But again, but the cost of insurance is keeps going up every year, so it's like uh it won't be long until it's two grand a month that I'm paying for it. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 34:20

So well, we we just have very perverse incentive structures for the way insurance companies work, and it screws patients and doctors.

SPEAKER_03 34:29

It does, and it kind of what happens is, and there's a doctor I watched recently that kind of talked about it. I think he did a good job of explaining it compared to like what medicine used to be like in the 70s and 80s, right now there have been a lot of consolidation to where there's a lot fewer insurance companies, so they wield a lot more power, and there's been a lot more consolidations in hospitals and clinics, which all used to be independent.

SPEAKER_02 35:02

And the hospitals used to be charity-owned, yeah. They were religious charities, and yeah, exactly. That's why they always had names there, you know, St. Margaret's or something like that even Saint St. Joe's here in Bryan College Station. Now it's a corporate hospital, Shriners or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 35:20

It's all all these hospitals started getting acquired by you know, holdings boards basically. And then most more recently, within the last five years, the insurance companies started doing deals with the hospital ownership companies to create joint venture entities to basically control everything from scans that you get for your you know CAT scan or x-ray to the pharmacy, to every aspect of it basically being owned by this joint entity. And then the doctors are just contractors that you can see at the hospital, like they're paid a certain amount for their services by the hospital, but you're not considered their patient as far as the hospital is concerned, or the clinic, because that's the thing that happened too. It used to be a bunch of independent clinics, and now they're all these clinics are owned by these massive, you know, entities, corporate entities. And so you might you might get an invoice if you go to a clinic here in Texas that comes from the exact same place if you go to a clinic in Nebraska, because they're both owned by the same company, which incidentally has also got a partnership deal, not just an agreement, but an actual ownership deal with an insurance company. So, like they're really trying to do a vertical integration on this so that you can't get away from them making money off you no matter what you do with medicine. So it's it's not a good thing for anybody, and I think we're gonna we haven't seen the worst of it yet. I think we're gonna see the worst of it when doctors start to basically protest, and being a doctor is no longer considered a an aspirational vocation when there's gonna be Yeah, because for a long time the American Medical Association has actually artificially been keeping the total number of doctors controlled from going too high in order to maintain higher salaries for uh medical professionals. Like they've limited the number of doctors that get certified every year. I think they're gonna have the opposite problem soon, where there'll be so few people going into the field that every doctor you get is gonna be a doctor from a foreign country. It's all gonna be guys that studied in Mumbai Medical. And there's a lot of them there, but you can still kind of find some guys that learned medicine here. But I think the day is coming when that when that's gonna go away. And you know, insurance may say, look, telemedicine is just as good. Just it's it's easier for you, you don't have to drive anywhere. Just get on your computer, we'll ship you the uh prick yourself to get blood kit in the mail, yeah. And uh you can see the doctor, and the doctor is sitting in Bombay, he's not even an American at this point. It's coming. Hopefully, we don't get there. Oh, we will, guarantee. I guarantee you we will. The only question is can you make enough money to be in the concept of the other group of people? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 38:46

Because I I have quite a few friends that are part of that, and you know it's what we do for the kids is we pay out of pocket for a doctor, but it's a concierge doctor that literally comes to the house, yeah, you know, and does the pediatrician stuff with the kids right here.

SPEAKER_03 39:05

Literally how things used to be in the 60s.

SPEAKER_02 39:07

Yeah, and you don't have to go to the doctor's office and wait or whatever. You're just in your house, they show up on time, you know, you're not they're not behind on patients or whatever because someone or I, you know, it it just is so much smoother, and they can even do you know injections or whatever. And they've got a flip, they've got a phlebotomist that'll come if they need to draw blood, yeah, absolutely, all that. So, you know, it's it's it's fantastic, and it's it's not cheap, but like, you know, the couple times a year you need to use it, it's not bad.

SPEAKER_03 39:41

I think it's yeah, it's very good. And it's I mean, there's a lot of these guys in LA, there's a lot of them in uh Las Vegas. There's a lot of like areas where there are a lot of people with money, you can find a whole bunch of concierge doctors around as well. So I don't think but that's certainly not for everybody. That's that's for a certain segment of the population is gonna be able to afford that, where everybody else is just kind of left to what's there, and unfortunately, we're we're gonna keep seeing a decrease in the quality of American healthcare while seeing also an increase in the cost of that healthcare. And you know, the typical really Republican argument to anyone saying what I just said is, oh yeah, well, how come every time that somebody uh from Saudi Arabia or any of these countries in the Middle East gets sick, they always end up coming to doctors in America. Clearly, we have the best doctors. Well, that statement is true, but it's not contradictory to what I said. Because if you want to pay cash in America, you absolutely have the best doctors in the world. Yeah. If you can't pay cash, then you do not have the best doctors in the world. And that's the bottom line. It's it just that's just reality. And it's the same way in the UK, incidentally, which has a national health system that is freed for everybody, but they also have private medicine where all the you know, movie stars, rock stars, people in finance, etc., none of them use the free system in the UK, they all use the the private one, obviously. They want higher quality medicine, they want it on their schedule, so that's what you end up with. You have a two-tiered system, no matter how you slice it. The original insurance company, the way that I remember medicine from the 70s and 80s here, it it definitely seemed like it was a lot more you know ubiquitous. Like if you had medical insurance, which was super cheap back in the day, they would cover any of the expensive costs. But like, you know, your doctor visit, the actual cost of your appointment was fifteen dollars, like with no insurance.

SPEAKER_01 42:09

Yeah.

Redistricting Updates And ATF Rule Changes

SPEAKER_03 42:10

And if you had insurance, it would either be free or five bucks copay. And now I I you know went to my cardiologist uh last month. You know what the copay on that was?$75. Okay.$75 copay for going to see a doctor. Now I like the doctor, he's a he's a gun nut, he's a good guy. But it's kind of ridiculous that that's really that's the copay? Because I guarantee you the doctor didn't make more than$75 off that visit, but the facilities did, obviously. The companies that are you know doing the testing equipment did, everybody else did. So it's a fucked up system, and it's gonna crash at some point. I just don't know when. Because at every step you've got somebody that's gonna be a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 43:38

Well, again, I think we need to go back to charity-owned hospitals.

SPEAKER_03 43:42

Yeah, yeah. Or anyway, I don't know. There we could spend a day talking about different ideas on how to do that. Should we talk about video games for a bit?

SPEAKER_02 43:54

Well, I was gonna I was gonna suggest do you want to talk about some of the ATF stuff or do you want to talk about redistricting?

SPEAKER_03 44:01

I thought we talked about redistricting last time, unless we got something new.

SPEAKER_02 44:04

Well, no, this just happened. What we talked about last time was the judge had blocked the Virginia redistrict. Right, right. But what has happened now is the Supreme Court is having Louisiana remove its race-based jurisdiction. We talked about that. We talked about that last episode. Okay. Well, it's not just Louisiana, Alabama has done it, Louisiana has done it, it looks like Indiana is going to do it. Yes, there's gonna be quite a bit of redistricting going on. And it's a good thing.

SPEAKER_03 44:38

Yeah, yeah. It basically stretches along 35W. That's a very weird voting district.

SPEAKER_02 44:45

Yeah.

unknown 44:46

Well

Cyberpunk, Bioshock, And What To Play

SPEAKER_02 44:47

Anyway, it's good stuff there. And then the ATF stuff is awesome. Although some people are totally misinterpreting it. How are they misinterpreting it? Well, like they're one of the nopers that they're putting out, noticed on proposed rulemaking, is about allowing guns to be shipped through the mail. That doesn't mean it can be delivered to your house. It will still need to go to an FFL, but now instead of having to use FedEx or UPS, they can use the US Postal Service. But there's a lot of good stuff coming out. I mean, yeah, it's almost like inconsequential because the NFA item rules, like allowing an NFA item to be registered to more than one person. So now you no longer need a trust to do it, right? Oh, that's very cool. Yeah, yeah. So there's stuff like that. Yeah. And then, you know, the the other thing is unenforcement of you know dropping the whole you have to notify us with if an NFA item is crossing state lines. You only have to notify them if it's crossing state lines for 160 days.

SPEAKER_03 45:53

Which is great. But we again we talked about this last show. We didn't talk about all the details that have come out since we talked about them. I had that slide up on the screen.

SPEAKER_02 46:04

Okay. We went through all the changes. Then video games, Gene.

SPEAKER_03 46:07

What do you want to find? Okay. Video games. So you're finally done with Cyberpunk. Yes. I played through two endings. Okay. Oh, you did two endings? I was going to discourage you from doing that. Okay. Well, congratulations on that. What did you think of the game? It was a great game. Would you recommend it? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And and how was the performance?

SPEAKER_02 46:29

As far as graphics or what? Yeah, I mean, was able to turn everything to the highest except for ray tracing. I had to back off a little bit there, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:40

And that's on the 9070 card. So that's not even running on the NVIDIA top of the line. Right. This is this is on the latest generation Radeon, which is technically not the top of the line card. We're still waiting for this generation's top of the line card to come out. Hopefully it'll be out by Christmas. But they haven't. I mean, do you think there's going to be that big of a difference? Usually about 25%. It would it would allow you to have everything on ultra and still have the same frame rates. Well, it might also have everything on ultra extensive. It might also have 32 gigs of memory.

SPEAKER_02 47:20

Yeah, versus 16.

SPEAKER_03 47:22

Yeah. But that's what I mean. Like ray tracing would be. And I I went I went back.

SPEAKER_02 47:27

Ray tracing does look really nice. I went back and tried to play a game you had recommended. Apparently I'd gotten the wrong one. Oh yeah. So tried to play Kingdom Come, and it was like the first stupid game.

SPEAKER_03 47:42

Yeah, it it's I couldn't do it either. I I bought it, tried it, made no sense to me. I'm like, nope, nope, not gonna do it. This is a shitty game. Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, which came out I think seven or eight years later. And or like two years ago. Or maybe a year and a half ago, whatever it is. That game, they learned a tremendous amount from the first game. So that game, the second one, is set, I think four years, four or five years in the future from the first game. But the UI is more optimized, it's easier to use. The storyline, I think, is a lot better. The uh I got something in my throat here. The controls are a little bit easier. Just I I think the the way that you start the game gets you into the action very quickly, but also kind of teaches you some of the things that you're gonna be doing in the game. Because the first one just kind of threw you in with nothing, you'd literally you'd have to resort to looking at websites or videos to learn what to do. It's not at all obvious. The second one, more intuitive, more obvious. Still, there's a little bit of a learning curve for sure, but it's not anywhere near like the first game. So, you know, this is the same thing I told you with uh Red Dead Redemption as well. Red Dead Redemption 2 is the one you want to play, and if you like that enough, you can get the first one and then do the first one after the second one, and the same thing with this one. Do do the Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 as the first game, and then if you really get into the story, pick up the first one and then play through it now, kind of knowing everything that happened after that. So but you sounds like you were able to do a refund on that, so that's good.

SPEAKER_02 49:53

Yeah, I got a refund, and I uh anyway, I'm playing Bioshock Infinite right now.

SPEAKER_03 49:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're into the whole little girl games.

SPEAKER_02 50:02

Not a little girl on this one. She's in her 20s, it's in the it's infinite, not bioshock.

SPEAKER_03 50:09

Okay, okay, so it's not the original Bioshock. This is the second Bioshock 2. Okay, no, this is infinite. Sure, but that well, it's not three, it's two, right? Yes, it's three. It's three, yes.

SPEAKER_02 50:21

I thought what was a two then. I'm confused. So you have Bioshock, you have Bioshock 2, then you have Bioshock Infinite. Okay, so I'm in the sky. Yeah, that's why I thought two was. What was two then? Two is still underwater. Oh, really? Okay, yeah. Bioshock ones, the one where you got Big Daddy and all that.

SPEAKER_03 50:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the little the little girl stuff, yeah. So Bioshock, I think I liked Infinite more than Bioshock as far as the storyline. It was a very good storyline.

SPEAKER_02 50:58

Yeah, this is the prophet, it's the religious community, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The racist religious community. That's not racist.

SPEAKER_03 51:04

Yeah, it is a little bit, not much. Anyway, they just know that not everyone's created equal, that's all. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:12

Well, anyway, it's it's good. I forgot about the sky hook portion, and man, the first time I did that, it definitely made my rear end fucker.

SPEAKER_03 51:20

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You you get really used to using that skyhook.

SPEAKER_02 51:23

I also found a fairly interesting game that got recommended to me in my work Discord because I one of the games I listed was one of my favorites growing up when we were sharing all that, is Overload because it's made by the people who made Descent.

unknown 51:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 51:40

So it's basically an updated version of Descent.

SPEAKER_03 51:42

Yep. Which I never played Overload. I I played Descent, though.

SPEAKER_02 51:46

Yeah, it's a total rewrite of basically the Descent style gameplay from the makers of Descent.

SPEAKER_03 51:52

Yep. Okay, cool.

SPEAKER_02 51:55

Space games. Yeah. You were getting a space game that I was kind of interested in.

SPEAKER_03 52:02

Yeah, so you sent me a link to a game called Black Something. Can't remember what it was called. Black well, open up your Steam library. I guess it's in here. The In the Black. It's called In the Black. So it's a it's a space game where you fly a spaceship. I, you know, I mean, like, it didn't take much for me to decide to buy it because it's got space in it. And they the little video talked about it having Newtonian physics, which I'm like, yep, that's the best kind of space game. Something where you're not flying an airplane in space, but where you're actually flying a spaceship in space. So, which means you don't have to have constant thrust, you're gonna drift a lot. I think it's just it's more fun to have more realism, I believe. I I've always liked simulations a lot more than games. And the you can greatly overlap the two, where some like some people call it a some other people call it a game. Like Kerbal, which is a game I've got over 6,000 hours in, which is you know, it's a it's a game, but the game was originally designed as a physics teaching thing for kids for junior high school. And what they found was that it was a tremendous success commercially for 50 and 60-year-old men who really are wanted to do with rockets, yeah, who've always liked playing with rockets since they were kids.

SPEAKER_02 53:37

Did you have model rockets as a kid?

SPEAKER_03 53:40

Hell yeah. Yeah, me too. Absolutely. I loved rockets, man. We dude, we had Rocket Club in our elementary school. Like, parents didn't care about explosives back then. We could never do that today. Playing gun clubs and have kids that are like under 13 years old have access to explosives. Are you kidding? That was it was great fun. So, you know, with games like Kerbal, it it's realistic to begin with. And then because there's a lot of old guys like me playing it and writing mods for it, and I wrote a mod for it as well, there's like complete realism mods, which is what I have that I'm running, which crank everything up to 11 so that you've got exactly the same physics that you do in real space games. And I think I've told you this, I didn't mention it on podcasts, is I finally was able to consistently send missions to the moon, and I got my first lander on the moon unmanned, just a lander, but something that could send back scientific data, something that had enough propellant to get to the moon and then land on the moon, because landing is takes a hell of a lot of propellant as well, because you have to slow down. But that took me about two months, not two months of continuous gameplaying, but like two months of time where it probably was maybe 30 or 40 hours of gameplay. And and that's from somebody that's already had thousands of hours in this game that understands both how the game works and how orbital mechanics work. So it's not easy when you crank every all the everything, all the realism all the way up to reality. Space is hard. And Elon makes it look easy, but it is not. There are there's so many variables, there's so many, so many things that have to go right for you to be successful, and only one thing has to go wrong for you to fail. So, game is at this point is like 10 or 11 years old. I don't even know if it's sold anymore, it probably still is, but not really supported. The company that was making it sold it to somebody else. The company that bought it went out of business, but the community of players and modders and the just totally keeping it alive because such a great game. There's nothing else quite like it, although there's a new game soon to be out. They're I think in either beta or still in alpha right now, called Kitten Space Agency, which is gonna be very similar.

SPEAKER_02 56:51

So since you mentioned SpaceX out in Grimes County, out at Gibbons Creek Reservoir, which used to be a power plant that they took down a few years ago, but the switch yard's still there, the reservoir is still there. SpaceX is proposing building a large semiconductor factory.

SPEAKER_03 57:13

Yeah, that would be cool.

SPEAKER_02 57:16

Which is right here, they'd have access to AM students, it'd be a huge boon to the local economy. It's a$120 billion project.

SPEAKER_03 57:24

No, it's not down, it's north of Houston.

SPEAKER_02 57:27

Yeah, yes, just north of Houston. It's close to college station, too, I guess. Yeah, it's 20 miles from here.

SPEAKER_03 57:32

Yeah, I was just looking at it because I'm like, oh, I I I recognize Lake Conroe. I've I've driven around there, and it's like, this is just west of there. I didn't notice that you were even closer to it than that. Yep. Yeah, that'd be cool. So that used to be a power plant.

SPEAKER_02 57:48

Yeah, it was a coal fire 550 megawatt power plant. And this was the lake. Yeah, I used to go fishing out there all the time. You go right at by the outlet and the water's warm, warm, warm, no matter the time of year.

SPEAKER_03 58:02

Yeah, it's the weirdest thing, man. Fishing in those places is always kind of weird like that.

SPEAKER_02 58:09

I remember when I but the point is a lot of the infrastructure that they would need for the facility is there. You know, a lot of stuff is built out already. It's actually a really cool site for it. So yeah, kind of cool. There's uh a leak, but they're asking the county to abandon the taxes on the investment.

SPEAKER_03 58:29

Oh well, of course. Yeah, that's how it gets you done for cheap.

SPEAKER_02 58:33

Well, but I think Grimes County would be stupid not to take it. They have no industry in Grimes County.

Space Sims, Hardware, And Gear Spending

SPEAKER_03 58:39

Well, that'd be good for them too, then win-win. Yeah. There's the lake that's very close to me, like that, is Walter E. Long Lake, which is a cooling lake for a power plant here, just northeast of Austin. And I'm on kind of the northeast side, so it's I've gone fishing there before. I've gone jet skiing there. The water is like even in the fall or spring, it's just really warm. Yep. Fish like it. Good good stuff. Yeah, anyway, to finish up the in the black thing. I played it a little bit. It's very, very early access. So I'm I'll finish all the the modules over the weekend, probably.

SPEAKER_02 59:26

I I thought it was released.

SPEAKER_03 59:27

No, no, it's early access. It's it is very early access.

SPEAKER_02 59:33

Early access game. Okay, so lots of crashes then.

SPEAKER_03 59:35

No, it just came out into early access on May 5th. Five days ago. Okay. So they're they're now in early access. Before that, they just had a demo it.

SPEAKER_02 59:51

Yeah, I have the demo downloaded. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:55

And I I mean, I don't mind stuff like this. I'll probably spend some time on it over the weekend, get as much out of what they have currently available. Get I I like everything, it looks super cheesy right now, and nothing's polished.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:08

They compare it to Gray Zone.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:10

Yeah, yeah. Gray Zone is a lot more polished, I think. But the the thing I like is it did have support right away from my sticks for my VKB joysticks that I have for flight. So it was very easy to put all my stick stuff in there and then be able to fly just like I fly in every other game.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:37

Which is by the way, why the f did you spend like$215 on a joystick?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:48

$215. That's a lot more than that.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:51

VKB Simulator, Gladiator, Evo standard is coming up as yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:56

I have two of those, first of all. Okay, and I have the the right-angled one, so that each stick is actually at 45 degree angle.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:06

Okay, so you spent 600 plus dollars on joysticks.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:11

Dude, you could buy a joystick for a thousand dollars per stick right now. Why? Like V these VKBs.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:17

I just remember playing flight sim and stuff with the old Logitech suction cup on the table one.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:23

Oh, I had the full setup, dude. I had the the full flight setup with the the yoke and everything.

unknown 1:01:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:30

I have a I have a trucking simulator with a big wheel and a 18 speed transmission.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:39

Of course you do.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:41

And it's it's like the the tranny is right out of a real truck, like you move it just as much. The exact same movements.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:49

Yeah, so I I had a Thrustmaster back in the day, and you can get the current Thrustmaster T-Flight Stick X for$58.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:59

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:00

Yep. You can even get the Logitech one with the throttle and the yoke and all that for$187.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean there if you want a toy, you can get a toy. If you want a simulator controller, you're gonna pay that kind of money. I've got thousands of hours in my sticks. Thousands. I've I've replaced them twice.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:28

Seems expensive.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:29

Well, not really. If you want to see expensive, go type in verple. V-I-R-P-E-L.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:40

Say that again. V-I-R-E-L.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:42

Yeah. V-I-R-P-E either E-L or L E. Verple.

unknown 1:02:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:51

They make V-I-R-P-I-L. That's what I said. Yeah. Definitely not what I said. That's what I meant. They make metal versions of these types of sticks, and you're gonna pay appropriately. Okay. Yeah. These are I don't get it. These these are like six hundred to a thousand per stick. Pedals are extra, obviously. Everything's extra. The the high quality racing simulators wheel. Like you're literally a you know wheel for your now I I've got uh for just regular car racing, I've got the the Logitech one, which was what, 200 bucks or something? I don't know. It was it was cheap. It's got feedback on it. But guys that I know that are serious race simmers, I'm trying to remember the name of the company. It's like on the tip of my tongue, but I'm not I can't remember off the top of my head. It's a British company, I believe. But they have simulator gear that goes up to about$2,500. Like a stick, or sorry, a stick, a a steering wheel, they have models anywhere ranging from$350 to like$900 just for the wheel.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:33

Okay. I I don't get spending that much money on gaming.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:37

I don't it's it's well, this is again, this is the difference between simulator and game, okay? But you know, you've got a reasonably decent keyboard for gaming. It's a gaming keyboard. Right? I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:56

You have a reasonably decent gaming keyboard. I have a decent keyboard, but it was a hundred bucks, and it's just a decent keyboard. But a keyboard is a gaming keyboard. Doesn't matter though. It's not just used for gaming, it's also for work and everything else. Sure. It's a but it is a gaming keyboard. That is a primary input, like having a decent mouse and having a decent keyboard are very important for overall computing. So I sit in front of a computer all day every day. So absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:25

I agree. But if you add gaming to just clicking on websites and porn sites, then you need something that has functionality that a regular keyboard, regular mouse doesn't have. So, like my my keyboard that I'm sitting behind right now, gaming keyboard is a Steel Series something. It's their magnetic key one. And let's take a look here. What is it called? It is the Steel Series. It is the Apex Pro. Ape Gen 3, I guess? Yeah, Apex Pro Gen 3. So it's hyper magnetic switches. So there's no springs, there's no mechanical switches. It's all magnetic. So this keyboard's on sale right now for 234. Too much. Or a wireless version for 270.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:31

By the way, Tennessee also redistricted and got rid of their one Democratic district. Nice.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:39

Yeah, good for Tennessee.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:41

I I think we may have a what some people are calling a procedural win for.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:48

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's a good name for it, too. I like that. I've got the Swift Point Z2 mouse right now. I'm on my third one of those, and I've got the Z3 on order. That's a$240 mouse.

unknown 1:07:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:04

I'm not buying it because it's$240. I'm buying it because it's the only mouse that does what it does. The keyboard I have is the only keyboard that does what it does. Joysticks that I have are the only joysticks that do what they do. So I could go more expensive, but I can't go less expensive. Okay. So it's all a matter of having the tools for the job. And back in my day, now I don't think that's the case anymore because Sears doesn't exist, but back in my day, you had different levels of tools. Most people just bought shit at Target or Walmart. Sears was a step up from that. They had the Craftsman line of tools, which had a lifetime warranty, so you could bring it back anytime it breaks and get a new one. And they broke a lot less. And then, of course, if you were a pro, you'd get snap-on. But very few people would get snap-ons for their homes. The only people I knew that had snap-on tools were people that were total car nerds. Yeah. Like that was it didn't matter what they worked, but when they got home from work, they worked on their cars. They would actually go to the snap-ons. But people that just liked higher quality stuff, they generally had craftsmen. And then everybody else used, you know, the Stanley and all the other brands that were available at normal stores.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:28

Yeah, I've got a hodgepodge of tools.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:30

So for my mouse keyboard and joysticks, I have snap-on. I don't have craftsmen. But I wouldn't like I didn't have that in my 20s. Even my 30s, I really didn't. Like I've got some nice tools.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:47

Like I've got some Klein tools and stuff like that, you know, which is the electrician version of Snap-on, right? But I've also got some Harbor Freight tools, just because it depends on how often I'm going to use that tool.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:00

And I've got some Amazon tools that I've got. Like a torque wrench.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:05

Like a torque wrench that I've got for literally I got it for torquing on barrel nuts for AR-15s. Um, you know, that I don't use very often. That's Harbor Freight. Now, my torque screwdriver that I use anytime I move a scope or do anything else that is used way more, right? And needs to be way finer precision on the spec, that's a real high-end tool. Like it's probably a my torque screwdriver is probably a hundred dollar screwdriver.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:40

Yeah. Is it digital or mechanical? It's mechanical. Okay. Yeah, we had those back in the day, but I guess there's digital ones you can get now.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:49

Yeah, but the mechanical ones are the like a nice mechanical one like this is but you know, you're you're talking inch pounds, right? So you've you're a much finer measurement than yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, one of the coolest tools and you don't want your scope moving. No, no, no, you don't. But you also that's why you use a little bit of lactate in there. Oh yeah. I was gonna say one of the things that I don't know what that's even called that my dad had, and I don't know why he got it, other than the coolness factor is why I would I would have gotten it for, is basically like a pry bar, would be, I think, the right name for it. Okay, essentially a solid steel bar that was about maybe two-thirds of an inch thick, maybe three-quarters of an inch thick. Hexagonal. So it wasn't round, it was hexagonal. And one end of it was sharpened into a point, like a spear.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:58

And the back end is round club sort of thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:00

No, it was flat for like putting into a you know to jam the door open or jam something open that you had to a little bit of room, you jam it in there as much as you could, and then you crank on the other side. But this thing, you like it, it would maybe ever so slightly bend at a full man's weight, but it was solid, it weighed a lot, it probably weighed 30 pounds. One of the things I grabbed. Let me finish the story. So I remember as like a teenager, this was my spear man. I could throw this fucker and it would go into the dirt by by about six inches, and this was this was a a fun, nasty tool. But from a practical standpoint, I think it was meant to like you know break through doors or something.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:53

So I was tearing down an old deck at one of my wife's apartments because it was just rotten. And I went and got a couple of things, you know, some crowbars, stuff like that. But one of the things that I got that I still have that I think is such a useful tool, it's technically a post hole digger. Okay, like it's about four or five feet long. One end has that pry bar style edge that you can use to break up and dig with, and the other has a tamper on the end, and use that to tear that deck up, but it it weighs probably a good 20 pounds, right? It's it's hefty and it's an inch thick, it's just just steel, and you know, it's heavy, and you can use the hell out of that. Like, talk about a melee weapon if you ever needed it.

Gray Zone Warfare And Realistic Gun Details

Star Citizen Hype And Newtonian Flying

SPEAKER_03 1:12:47

Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of cool weapon or tools that could be turned into melee weapons, that's for sure. Just this this is part of the the fun creative process of being a man. Like, what things in this room could I use to kill somebody with? Yeah, well, tell me that thought doesn't occur to you on a regular basis. Yeah, especially in other people's houses. Or businesses or whatever. It's like, okay, all right, what do we got? What are we working with here? Uh-huh. That's a good time. But yeah, I it's see, I think there was something else with video games related. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I well, you mentioned Gray Zone. Let me cover that first, real quick. So Gray Zone has been updated a few times in the last three months, and they it is in very good shape right now. I I haven't had any issues technically with it, and I think they and they've kind of fixed the problem with running out of things to do because now they have a whole bunch of missions that are quasi-repetitive, meaning you get a similar mission in a different area from a different guy, but it's kind of the same mission, but it gives you a lot more variety that way, and you can play it with other people. So Gray Zone is still my favorite FPS shooter out there. It's hyper-realistic graphics. If you crank everything to ultra, it just looks like it's a photograph or a movie. The weapons are awesome, they're awesome because they're realistic. And you can build weapons from parts or take out parts that are used, like if you burn through a barrel by shooting a lot, you can take that barrel off, or if you get scratches on your night vision or something, you know, you keep the mount, but replace the actual TVS 14, or yeah, get a different tube put in. So it's it's a game that has that aspect in it of gaming as well, which I really enjoy. And somebody had recently, I saw this on Reddit in the in the group for the game, that or in the subreddit, I should say, technically, for the game, that they noticed that one of the pistols in there had a magazine that was obviously a longer magazine that was pinned to 10 rounds. And it actually said in the description of it that it's a magazine made for states with restrictions on magazine capacity. That's in the game, so's the full version of the magazine, and then they've got you know 30 round mags for your Glocks, 33 rounders, and the 60 rounders for your AKs. But depending on where you get this gun, it may come with a California magazine. There you go. So but if you look at that in the game, it literally looks like a 17-round magazine that's been pin welded to only allow 10 rounds.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:00

Well, okay. Anything else on that?

SPEAKER_03 1:16:03

On that, no, but I got another game I want to talk about. But go ahead. Go ahead, because I'm gonna move off games. I won't talk about arrests. Okay, so uh the other game, which one I emailed you earlier today about, is we're getting to the Sammy Sammy to the semi-annual starship show for Star Citizen. So twice a year.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:26

Gene's gonna buy a starship.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:27

No, you are. This is this is gonna be your first starship.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:30

Oh, I'm not paying money for a starship.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:33

No, you are so this game is it's a it's a love and hate game. It's it's hate because it's still not finished, still not released, and I've I've had it now for six years, I think. It it's been 13 years in development, and it's still not done. That's the hating part of this. It's like one of the worst run gaming companies from a delivery standpoint. Now, from a finance standpoint, it's one of the best run gaming companies because in that 13-year time span, they've sold. Guess how much they've sold? Take, take, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:17

I don't know how much.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:18

A billion dollars worth of this game. A billion has been spent by people on this game so far. That's retarded. Well, it is what it is. And twice a year they do a virtual in-game event, which is essentially the best way I describe it. It's like a car show. If you ever go to a car show in a large city in a convention center where every manufacturer has their cars sitting there, you can come and you know look at it, open it up, sit in it, see what you like, see what you dislike. That's what they have for spaceships twice a year. We're coming up to that in about two-week period. That show is going to be running less than that, about a week and a half. That show is officially going to be running, and that is going to be when I bring you into that game. Because I I've you've asked before about this anyway, but I've told you at some point we'll go in and walk around and I can show you what it is, but you know, don't think of it as like a full-functioning game you can just get into and start playing right now. It's there's a lot you can do in the game, but not everything. So it's it's somewhat disjointed, and I think you if you set your mindset expectations really, if you set your expectations correctly, which is this is what you're getting access to, but it's not done yet, and you walk into that way, then it's really fun. You could do a lot of cool stuff, and it the amazing thing about it is much like Grey Zone is photography photorealistic when it comes to first-person shooters, Star Citizen is photorealistic for space games because it literally looks like like the level of detail and everything is hyper, hyper good. One of the things that you can notice when we go in there, as you you can like zoom in on things using your your helmet magnification. When we're walking around the convention floor, I'll I gotta remember to do this. I'll tell you look down at the carpet. And if you look down at the carpet under your feet, you can see the individual weave in the carpet.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:41

Okay, cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:43

Bam! I mean, that's that's that kind of level of realism. It's it's amazingly realistic. So it looks beautiful, does require some serious hardware to run, although because the game's been developing for so long, I think people's hardware is mostly caught up to where more and more people are running hardware that can run it. Because, like when I started playing it six years ago, there's a lot fewer people that were running the level of hardware that could play the game well. Now I think most people are. It's a much higher percentage, anyway. But that's another game with mostly Newtonian physics. There is not, they're not perfectly Newtonian. There's a little bit of flying aircraft in space in the game because they've had different modes of flight that they've introduced. But as long as you're like not hyper fast flying, as if you're like coming in for landing or whatever, it is definitely Newtonian flight. So it is it is fun in that regard. And when you get good at flying a spaceship and not an aircraft that requires constant lift, there's some really fun stuff you can do. Like basically flying a spaceship in a game or in real life, you're basically doing drifting all the time.

unknown 1:21:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:10

Or you're or you're hardly moving. Like if you use you know your RCS thrusters just to make adjustments and you move a little bit here and there, the way that we do in real life right now, because we don't we don't have the fuel to burn in space, that's the way you would do it. In a in the way that the Rasdanti does it in the expanse, is still Newtonian, but you have essentially unlimited fuel, and so you tend to fly a lot more with drift to where you're using your your main engine on the back and then just pointing it at different directions to control high levels of acceleration in the opposite direction.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:52

Right, but you don't arc in Newtonian physics, right? You don't arc? What do you mean? I mean, like if you're using thrusters, you're still gonna you if you like if you want to make a you can't just make an easy right-hand turn, right?

Political Investigations And High-Level Accountability

SPEAKER_03 1:22:07

Yeah, so you you have to I guess that's your point about drifting. Yeah, yeah. So if you're barely moving, if you're moving, you know, a few meters per second, like you're approaching a station, you could totally make thrusters just to move laterally or to just change your angle, and then it's a very quick change in in your direction. But if you're flying faster, and sometimes you might be coming in for a landing into a station faster as well, then yeah, you you have to do the drift maneuver. Your 90% or more of your thrust comes only out of one engine, and that's the one behind you. So if you want to come down fast and then stop abruptly, you have to do a flip maneuver, burn, just like the the real SpaceX boosterners do in real life, coming down engine first, burn to slow yourself down, and then land. Or if you're doing, you know, if you're actual doing actual space combat in the same way and not like flying an aircraft in space, then it's the same kind of deal where you can literally hit your thruster to really go fast in one direction, uh your your main engine, and then while you're flying in that direction, use your thrusters just to change the angle of the ship. So you could be actually going in one direction, but facing the opposite direction, shooting back at the guys that are behind you, because your engine is now turned off and you're just drifting in space into that direction into as fast as you were able to accelerate, and now you you're drifting, and you're free to maneuver the nose of your ship and your guns to whatever you want. But of course, if you want to then quickly change direction, then you have to make sure that your main engine is at a uh a parallel uh perpendicular of you know where you're flying or exactly 180 degrees from where you want to go, wherever that direction is, because you're gonna need to use that to accelerate in a new direction, anyway. It's a lot more fun to do than it is to explain it.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:24

Well, you know what's a lot more fun for me? What's that? Watching a Democrat in Virginia who was part of the redistricting push get raided by the FBI.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:34

Oh, what what was uh the charge?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:36

Well, it's an investigation that was actually started under the uh Biden administration for corruption related to her cannabis dispensary right across from her office.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:48

Oh boy. Now, if you're a politician, does it make sense to roam on those at all?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:53

No, I don't think so. Like that that seems like a really dumb idea to me.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:57

Yeah. Yeah, you know, or or either that or like a winery. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:04

The you know, valuation suddenly fluctuates.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:06

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah, that's uh it's like Trump's the only politician that's actually lost money by becoming president. Everybody else seems to magically make a lot more money. I wonder how that goes.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:27

Yeah. That and then the Comey indictment is just fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:36

Yeah, I hope he's alive long enough to actually be in prison. I know he's getting up there in years. He's not that old. He's getting there. He's in the 70s, I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:48

No.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:49

No. How old is he? How old is he? Oh, by the way, I'm supposed to tell you from CSB who texted me that tell your co-host, dude named Ben, that my pod mic USB broke. USB C socket is dead, so he should be very careful with USB-C cables in this microphone. There you go. Yep, there's a notification.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:16

Cool. Yeah. All right, let's see. How old is James Comey? Yeah. Oh, just tell me his damn age. I don't care when he was in office. He is 65. That's almost 70.

unknown 1:26:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:33

I guess if you round up enough.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:35

I don't know, man. I look, my point, my point still stands. I hope he's alive long enough to be in jail. Because this is probably gonna drag another three to four years before he's actually guilty. So he'll be in his almost 70 by that point. I mean, honestly, where's the indictment for Obama? We we know that's coming.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:00

Well, I I really from your from your mouth to God's ears.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:08

That guy was involved in so much crooked shit. Indeed. Yep. Not not only that, but you know. His husband killed the uh cook.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:26

Well, and Obama has admitted that there's been strife in their marriage since he has been vocal against Trump and gone back into the political foray.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:38

Yeah.

Aliens, Octopuses, And Animal Intelligence

SPEAKER_03 1:27:41

I don't know, man. I I you know. I think that I like seeing progress, but I keep walking, looking at my my wrist at my watch, think, guys, you you've only got two and a half years left. You gotta speed the shit up. Yeah, but they they've made good progress, and that's what people need to realize. Yes, they have.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:08

I agree.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:09

A lot of shit has gotten done, but they also need to hurry up.

unknown 1:28:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:15

And what do you think? Just throw it in there. What do you think of all the alien shit?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:20

I think it's a bunch of bullshit.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:22

A lot of people talking about how the aliens are about to be released. Yeah, well, we'll see.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:29

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:32

So, I don't know. It's hard to say. There's uh definitely a split right now in the space enthusiast community between the people that are all rah rah for the alien release, and people are like, come on, guys, this is all bullshit. Did you know that octopus have DNA that no other animal has?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:54

Yeah. And they did they the octopus, if there's any sign of alien life on the earth, it would be the octopus.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:02

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Or like clearly something that was crossbred. They took a simple little mollusk and then injected a bunch of new DNA into it.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:15

Well, and octop octopi are very intelligent. They have more than one brain. Octopuses. No, it's octopi.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:24

No, it's not. It is octopuses. Because it's a group it is. It's a Greek word, not a Latin word. And so it is not getting a Latin ending on a Greek word. So is it a hippopotamuses? Yeah. Yeah, because that that means water horse.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:43

It's hippopotami.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:45

No, it's hippopotamuses.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:48

Okay. Yeah. I'm pretty sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:52

I know, I know. A lot of people are wrong about this, but I don't blame you for being wrong. Just nothing. Dude, I I literally watched a video on it three hours ago. Okay. Where they pointed out the mistake that people make. Either way, they are super cool animals. They're one of the animals I will not eat. I know that they're a food in a lot of countries. But I will not eat them. Well, I have eaten them before I knew they were intelligent. But I will not eat them.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:30

The little ones you eat in sushi are fine.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:34

What you think the babies are just because they're not old enough to think properly, then they're okay to eat?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:40

I think body mass is a direct correlation to brain size. Really? At a certain point. Yeah. Like a field mouse is, you know, dumb. A larger mouse is smart. A larger smart. Like a r so I like I'm thinking of like a shrew. A shrew is not an intelligent animal. However, not too farly distantly related, a rat is a fairly intelligent animal. Fairly intelligent, yeah. Yeah. I think a monkey like a little teeny monkey is not as intelligent as a chim. Like there's a thing there.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:16

I mean, like, what kind of monkey? I think orangutans are more intelligent than chimps.

unknown 1:31:24

Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:25

I've never seen a chimp driving a car. I've seen orangutans driving cars all day long. Oh my goodness. My Uber driver that delivers food half the time was an orangutan.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:36

Did I ever tell you the story of when our octopus octopi uh escaped? Your octopus, yeah. Yeah. Did I ever tell you?

SPEAKER_03 1:31:43

Yeah, no, you did. You did. You actually, I think you told it on the like on the show. Yeah, on the show a few months back, yeah. Okay. Well, I won't worry about it. Yeah, yeah. I you know, it's it is so crazy that's a good idea.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:54

I grew up with the best aquarium.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:56

Yeah, you did you really did. You lucked out on that, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:59

Having a dad that was in the sea trade really made you that was dredging up shit and went, oh, this would be cool in the aquarium, threw it in the ice in the narrator. Exactly. Yeah. Having seahorse, having a seahorse give birth and watching a shrimp eat all the babies. Oh my god, that's hilarious.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:20

Yeah. That's crazy stuff. I have like petted, or I guess technically he would have petted me, one of the uh the giant Pacific octopuses out in uh Washington State in one of the aquariums. They had a a uh a thing where you could pay to go into the back where they're he's getting fed and stuff, and so he sticks his arms out. These are the ones that are like, you know, three feet long. Maybe more, I don't know. It's hard to tell because they're they're moving their arms all the time, they don't like just stick them out straight. Yeah, but we uh it's a weird feeling when something is touching you, but like it's moving every sucker individually.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:10

So one of the kind of coolest things I ever got to see as a kid, I was on the boat with my dad, and he wakes me up in the middle of the night and says, Bam, come here, you gotta see this. So I go up to the wheelhouse and then he turns on the floodlights, and we're I'm watching, and all of a sudden, this octopus goes flying by. And I'm like, the hell was that? And then you see all these dolphins running to it, and the first one to get there and get it and pick it up and throw it, and they were yeah, yeah. They're they're playing with it, and the octopus would spread out and fly like a frisbee, man. It's hilarious.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:49

Yeah, dolphins are assholes, that's for sure. But you know, they're they're more they are more intelligent than people are, so I guess they would have to be assholes. That's usually how that works.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:03

Yeah. Well, and you know, dolphins are very they're perverts. Yes, to say the least.

Social Media Time Sink And Short-Form Limits

SPEAKER_03 1:34:13

They're definitely perverts. Yeah. They they're interesting critters, too. I mean, they're definitely a not anywhere near as alien as an octopus, but they they just they're weird. Like they, you know, their ancestors were walking around on land and then they climbed back into the water. That's a a much more modern water-living critter than just about all the fish that are out there. Evolutionarily speaking. Yeah, I don't know, man. It's I'm still on kind of a half my half my brain is turned off of politics right now. I'm getting a little bit of it just from you and a few other folks, but I'm trying to actively stay off X because I've just over the last nine months, man, I don't know how many hundreds of hours I've wasted on X trying to, you know, write things. And then you're like, hey, check it out. 100,000 people saw my post. So what? It doesn't matter, no one gives a shit. It's all irrelevant. I didn't, I'm I'm sure I didn't change anybody's mind. I had a few people, I think the most I had was I had like 500 people do a like on one of my posts, which is like nothing compared to you know bigger people, but uh it's that was about the most that I've ever seen on one of my posts. But it is such a fucking waste of time. Video games are less of a waste of time than being on X.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:05

X can be a time suck, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:07

Yeah, you it's hard to get off once you get on there. One of the features that YouTube has, I don't know if you need this. This Darren, listen up as well. Did you know that on the YouTube app on your phone, at least if you're a paid person, which I am for YouTube, assume you are as well. If you go into the settings, you can put in a limit my scrolling of shorts to X number of minutes.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:36

They just added that.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:37

That is the best fucking feature. For guys like me, a lot of here's how it happens. You're watching an actual you know movie about dolphins and octopuses on YouTube as one might. And then you're like, uh, I gotta go take a shit. So you go to the bathroom, you got your phone with you. Well, you're not gonna keep watching on a little tiny screen a move, you know, a video that you were watching on the big screen. So you start scrolling, and it's like, oh, I see what this person wants. Oh, well, what that person says. Next thing you know, you're sitting on the toilet for half an hour. Not because you have a long shit that you're taking, but because I just don't do that.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:22

I just have a podcast going on in my ear, and I'm not even looking at my phone.

US Manufacturing Expansion And Europe’s Squeeze

SPEAKER_03 1:37:26

Well, that's I that's better. I will say that's that's a better thing. I used to do that. I used to have a podcast. I'm old enough to have magazines in the bathroom, but you know, and I don't mean those magazines get your mind out of the gutter. But I always had my gun magazines in the bathroom. But lately, with all the promotions of shorts they're doing, and almost everyone who has normal channels is also making shorts, because the best way to get your channel recognized.

unknown 1:38:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:01

It's hard not to click on shit.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:03

I guess. I I just it's not a thing for me. Well, that's good. Um by the way, one last thing to discuss. Yeah. Mercedes-Benz just announced that they're gonna do a four billion dollar investment into a manufacturing facility in Alabama.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:19

That's good. I think they already have one there or Georgia. Yeah, well, they're gonna be building out more. Uh well, it's probably way cheaper. Yeah, it's way cheaper to do that in the U.S. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. I mean, they were building, I think I thought it was in Georgia that they used to build all their like the M-Series and a bunch of other cars that were mostly sold to Americans. They they did their vans in South Carolina, and I guess Alabama is where they've always had their plant for the U.S. sport utilities. GLE, GLS, and the yeah, the MyBook. Because that's mostly U.S. market vehicles. So, yeah, apparently that's they're gonna expand that plant greatly. It first opened it up in 95. Well, it's a good expansion. More economy. Until Europe fully fails and they're they're essentially bankrupt, and we can start hiring Europeans for pennies on the dollar. I think this is what's gonna end up happening is that there will be less and less manufacturing and there will be a lot less consuming of goods in Europe, other than you know, local goods like vegetables, I guess, and things. But because like Europe has gotten very fat and socialist by not having to provide for its own military.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:55

Yes, and that's going on.

Wrap-Up And Next Week

SPEAKER_03 1:39:57

And they've been buying things that the only reason they can buy them is because they're not spending money on the military, but they're also way overspending money on socialist programs beyond their means. And the only reason they were able to do that is because of the very cheap price of fuel. Cheap from Russia and you know, cheap from the Middle East. Well, that rides over. So Europe's gonna be hit from both sides, their cost of living is gonna go up, and their money-making ability is actually gonna keep decreasing. We'll see more European firms opening up plants in other countries, especially if Germany keeps, you know, pushing back against Russia because the German economy does not run without Russian gas. Yeah. Yeah. Or somebody's. I mean, it doesn't have to be Russian, but it's it's gotta be cheap gas. It doesn't run without cheap gas.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:02

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:03

So all right, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:05

Well, that's all I got.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:06

All right. Well, I yeah, I we're almost two hours close enough. Sounds good, Ben? Sounds like you still got a little bit of the residual cough going on.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:14

Oh, yeah. But at least I'm not running a fever, man. That was rough last week.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:19

Yeah, yeah. It sounds like you're past you didn't die to COVID-26. That's good. Whatever the hell you had.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:27

Yeah. I don't know, probably flu or something, but I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:31

There's this thing called the flu that disappeared during COVID, if you noticed completely. 100% gone. I think it's probably back now. All right, guys. We'll see you all in next week.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:43

Later.