Just Two Good Old Boys
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Just Two Good Old Boys
181 Travel Status Games And What They Cost
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Diesel costs more than gas in places it never used to, and that single fact ripples into shipping, groceries, and basically every price tag you touch. We dig into why the diesel versus crude oil relationship feels “off,” what global refining constraints might be doing, and how energy decisions like coal gasification and cleaner syngas concepts can look brilliant on paper and still fail in the real world.
From there we jump hard into tech and AI, because the conversation keeps pointing back to the same question: how do you run modern systems efficiently? IBM’s NorthPole processor is a perfect example, pushing AI inference with on-chip memory and architecture choices that challenge the default “just add GPUs” mindset. We also talk about the weirdly impressive reality of AI-built software, including a slick task manager style app that appears to come from a tiny prompt, plus the uncomfortable side of code provenance and trust.
The episode stays informal and wide-ranging: conference travel, vendor dinners, airport parking hacks, and why some of us don’t want vehicles that can be remotely disabled. We also hit Hollywood’s shrinking job market, the idea that managers may be uniquely good at “managing AI,” and a few practical life topics like Proton Mail, Signal, sleep studies, CPAP tradeoffs, GLP-1s, and peptides. If you like candid conversations about cybersecurity culture, AI trends, privacy tools, energy economics, and the messy reality between headlines and real life, this one’s for you.
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Chasing Airline Status
SPEAKER_02Howdy, Ben. How are you today?
SPEAKER_04I renewed platinum with United today, Gene.
SPEAKER_02How much did that cost you?
SPEAKER_04Just another bit of my time and soul.
SPEAKER_02The uh trials and tribulations of travel.
SPEAKER_04You know what's funny? Is I renewed platinum with only 14 flights.
SPEAKER_02A lot of long flights, huh?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. It's been that kind of year.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, platinum is how many miles in the United?
SPEAKER_04Oh my god.
SPEAKER_02Or is it all segments now? It's not even miles.
SPEAKER_04Well, it's segments and premium qualifying points.
SPEAKER_02Right, right.
SPEAKER_04So I did it with all premium qualifying points. So that's 18,000 premium qualifying points. Normally, like last year, I did it with over 45 flights and 15,000 premium qualifying points.
SPEAKER_05Ah, okay.
SPEAKER_04But I've only flown 14 times this year.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's I think that's 12 more than me. I've got a couple more lined up.
SPEAKER_09Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02I'm going to Nashville. I've never been to Nashville. You know, it's been years since I've been to Nashville. I hear it's very similar to Austin these days.
SPEAKER_06Ew, don't tell me that.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah. Very liberal town.
SPEAKER_06A lot of transplants.
SPEAKER_02But hey, when you're there, you should go check out Daily Wire's offices. Yeah. Because I'm gonna be allowed in the door. Well, I mean you paid, didn't you? Yeah. Well, there you go.
SPEAKER_03That's what it's I want to see my membership in person.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Didn't you buy a lifetime? Fuck no. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Well their limited time lifetimes were available for a while there.
SPEAKER_04I did have a membership to Bent Key for a while. Oh, that's right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_06That failed. Hmm. What do you mean failed?
SPEAKER_04Well, it's not really a thing. Didn't really take off.
SPEAKER_02Well no, once his face bought it back, didn't he? Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Because it didn't do anything.
SPEAKER_06Oh, is that why? Okay. At least that's my understanding.
SPEAKER_02Who else is in uh in Nashville, I'm trying to think.
SPEAKER_04No clue. But I'm going to a cybersecurity conference. Right, right. There you go. I'll be on a panel.
SPEAKER_02I'll be on a panel.
SPEAKER_04So there you go.
SPEAKER_02That's good. Get milk that whole southern accent thing.
SPEAKER_04Yes, make sure everyone thinks I'm stupid and then teach them otherwise.
SPEAKER_02Hey, you said it, man. No, I I think that is fun to do. It's it's always embarrassing to explain to somebody how they don't understand what they're talking about and then realize that they've got a PhD in the topic. Yes. I I hate people who don't put doctor in front of their name. Why? Because then, you know, then I'm liable to explain to them that they're idiots and then, you know, have them tell me they did a doctorate on this. I much prefer people's IQs to be on their foreheads. Makes things a lot easier.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Uh yes, you could easily know who to avoid, but you know, well.
SPEAKER_01We have other analogs. Sure.
SPEAKER_02Sure. That's true. I guess if you're wearing a Yarmulka,
Nashville Plans And Conference Talk
SPEAKER_02that's sorry.
SPEAKER_04I I just got back from Atlanta. So, you know, throwing
Atlanta Trip And Braves Night
SPEAKER_04a little shade.
SPEAKER_02How is Atlanta?
SPEAKER_04Uh, you know, I didn't spend hardly any time actually in the city. It was the end. I was up melting. No, actually, it finally cooled down while I was there. Oh, wow. Got down in the 60s. So it was not it was nice. I was at an Atlanta Braves game last night, dude.
SPEAKER_02I haven't seen the Braves play live in probably 30 years. This was my first time.
SPEAKER_04You know, I I like MLB, but I I don't really care about the pro sports that much. But we were one of my teammates that was with me, we were up there meeting with a control system vendor for a client. And anyway, we were he's a big Atlanta Braves fan, and he was looking at tickets, and I was looking at him with him. I'm like, man, that's cheap. And so there were three of us on the trip, and then there's one guy who's on not my direct team, but on my America's team. He has a different manager, and he lives in Atlanta. So I call him up and I'm like, hey, you want to go? Yeah, sure. So we made it a whole team outing and team event, which I'm trying to get the teams to do is go out and go to dinner, you know, once a year, get a group together and you know, go bond. So, hey, I did some lead by example stuff.
SPEAKER_02Good. Yeah, this was definitely the week of my still gainfully employed in security friends all deciding to demonstrate their free meals to me.
SPEAKER_04I did send you a picture of an amazing steak.
SPEAKER_02You you sent me a with Fargois. Yeah. A steak from Atlanta, then another buddy of mine sent me a picture of his $6 a head dinner that they were he was a c he was the client, so somebody else was buying it from. And then I had a third buddy send me his meal from Dubai. I'm like, motherfuckers, what what the hell, man? It's like everyone's rubbing in the city. Yeah, it it might be working.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, well, and for the record, I I was the wooed party here. The control system vendor bought dinner.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so so all three of you had somebody else picking up the tab. That's nice.
SPEAKER_04Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04Dude, that steak was ridiculous.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I believe it, man. I believe it. I'm not a you know, I'm not as big of a fatty meat guy. Like, this is why I don't generally order ribeye. Yeah, ribeye. I I usually get the fillet because it's it's tender but not fatty. But I appreciate, I mean, I've I've had some A4Y goo. Yes, yes, exactly.
SPEAKER_04And I I get it, but again, I and to be honest, to be honest, I was not gonna order that steak. But their main guy in charge was like, Oh, you gotta get it, you gotta get it. So yeah, okay, yeah, fine, I'll get it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, twist your arm. Yeah, well, and that's the thing, is it's it I wouldn't I will skip it if offered, but I would never pay for it myself.
SPEAKER_04Correct. Same thing. And I uh also I would never order it at a work dinner expecting someone else to pay for it if he had not said that.
SPEAKER_02It's a good way to break in a junior guy who just got a promotion. Yeah. Because it's he's gonna be the one picking it up, so yeah.
SPEAKER_04But no, I mean they spent a couple thousand dollars on that dinner, but you know, they're looking at a disaccount as tens of millions of dollars the same way we're well well worth it, easily write-offable.
SPEAKER_02That is true. Yeah, dude, I remember when I was living in in Dallas, I probably had a vendor lunch event every single week the whole year.
SPEAKER_04You were one of those guys who wanted the lunch, yeah. I I see, I don't I don't like the vendor lunch, I don't want to sit there
Vendor Meals And Sponsorship Hustle
SPEAKER_04and feel obligated to talk to you.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I'm not uh no, I wasn't because here's the thing. So when I was there, when I was in uh Dallas, I was pretty involved with ISSA. And so I was the for I think three or four years, I was on the board under sponsorships. So I was like the sponsorship guy. So my my job for the board was getting vendors to sign up to sponsor our events, so these guys would buy me lunch, and then I would spend that time getting them to then commit to be a sponsor. So it wasn't so much them telling me shit that they're peddling as me trying to get even more out of them. So it worked out very well. I I was setting records in sponsorships. It's one of those things where I think a lot of people are kind of timid about asking companies for money.
SPEAKER_06I never had a problem with that. Okay. Did you wear your yarmulca? Yeah, of course.
SPEAKER_03So they knew what to expect. Oh yes, yes, they knew what to expect, yes.
SPEAKER_02No, it was it was very good. What's I'm trying to think of the restaurant? It's an Italian restaurant home style serving. Like they bring, you know, a couple plates of something for the whole table in in Dallas. It's all I think they've got them in other places in Texas too, but can you think of the name? I just I'm totally blanking them out. No, you've got to have been there. It's it's like they're they're in all the big cities in Texas. They're they're what I would kind of describe as a well, I mean, I just did describe it. So it's like family style, sort of upscale-ish, but not super upscale. It it's usually it'd be about a uh $35 a head lunch kind of thing.
SPEAKER_04Okay, yeah, that's not terrible.
SPEAKER_02It's not terrible, but it's not cheap.
SPEAKER_04I tell you what, in that category in Dallas, my favorite restaurant is the ranch in Las Calinas. Okay, it's a farm to table restaurant. If anyone's ever in Los Calinas, go. The Elk Tacos are amazing. You're gonna have a good time. And if you get the pork chop, go hungry.
SPEAKER_02I always liked the concept of Los Calinas, but it it always felt like it wasn't executed right. The town?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Like what was the concept?
SPEAKER_02Well, just kind of a planned community. It was all, you know, like the whole there's no individual buildings there. Everything was pre-planned.
SPEAKER_04Okay. That's not how it's worked out.
SPEAKER_02Why? What's what's different about it now?
SPEAKER_04Oh, there's a ton of different construction and stuff that's happening. Really? Yeah. And buildings torn down and redone and all sorts of stuff.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm thinking back when it was first built.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, in the 80s?
unknownYeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Okay, sure. We're 50 years from then. Doesn't feel like 50. Getting close, bud. Uh huh.
SPEAKER_031990 is 10 years.
SPEAKER_072000 is like for four years old.
SPEAKER_021990 feels like yesterday. Four years, dude, from it being 50 years ago. That's insane. That's fucking insane.
Aging Time Warps And Avoidance
SPEAKER_02Uh, I'm gonna change topics.
IBM NorthPole And AI Inference
SPEAKER_02Uh, I don't like thinking about this.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Hey, did you see IBM, the documentary on IBM's new processor? Uh uh. You ought to look up at IBM North Pole. Okay. They are claiming huge gains in inference over GPUs because of the way they've done the CPU architecture, having direct access to memory on the chip. And they're doing it with like a 40 nanometer or 20 or 40 nanometer chip. It's not even a high resolution chip. They've literally said, ah, no, we'll just go bigger die and make more of it memory.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's on-chip memory is the fastest. Yes, if you can get it.
SPEAKER_01It's fucking brilliant.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. But I don't think IBM makes their own memory either. They make their own chips. They do make their own. Well, they design their own chips. I'm not sure they manufacture them.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Well, anyway, the the the this is not something to do machine learning on or generate a new model. This is to run models. And I think we're starting to see the shift with IBM doing this research from going away from GPU compute, GPU compute, GPU compute to okay, how do we efficiently run these things? Because we're kind of plateauing.
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah, and there's a few things. There's also a new I can't remember the proper term for it.
SPEAKER_04It's not a what's up with all the AI guys using BDSM terms all of a sudden? Are they? I hadn't noticed. Oh, you haven't heard about the AI harnesses? The harnesses, Gene? We need the harnesses. Next thing they're gonna talk about is the ball gag, right?
SPEAKER_02Yes, we have to ball gag the AI so it doesn't talk dirty to people. Yes. And then we have to do that.
SPEAKER_01We're gonna spend the hook, we're gonna split the panel hook so that it keeps its head in the right position. Oh, here we go.
SPEAKER_04Here we go. Hey, we missed an episode. We've got to make it spicy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's true. We, I love the we there. I what I should have done is uh gotten a guest to come in. I totally spaced it out. You should have. Should I have Brian Brushwood on or somebody? Oh man. No, I know you want to chat with him because you're all have memories of him drinking beer and stuff. Way back in the day. College days, probably, right? Yeah. But it's there's definitely a lot of progress happening with AI.
CRISPR Hype Dinosaurs And Chickens
SPEAKER_02AI also just uh found some new CRISPR stuff. So it'll it'll uh in fact, you probably heard that the uh Chat GPT boys are starting to build their own genetic research facility.
SPEAKER_04Oh god. This will end well.
SPEAKER_02They're gonna have AI be in charge of genetic engineering now. Uh because it's so much faster and better than humans of this stuff, which you can't argue with. I mean, that's true. And I I can't wait to see what it comes up with. I think I think the day of going to the zoo and seeing dinosaurs may well be coming sooner rather than later.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that'll work. Jurassic Park taught us anything. That'll work out great.
SPEAKER_02Well, yes, that Jurassic Park was too far away. What we need is something that's closer so you can get more people going there.
SPEAKER_04Okay, like what?
SPEAKER_02Well, like, you know, in the world.
SPEAKER_04You mean on the mainland? Yeah. This is fucking brilliant.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because otherwise, dude, that's been a lifelong dream for me to go pet a dinosaur. I've always wanted to go have a dinosaur pet. And then, you know, I get that they grow pretty big, so you can't really have them at the house, but how cool would it be to go play with a baby one?
SPEAKER_06It'd be awesome.
SPEAKER_03Uh-huh. Yeah. Go pet a baby velociraptor. Uh-huh. Oh, how'd you lose your finger? No, they don't do that.
SPEAKER_02They're nice. They've been highly exaggerated. You know, the velociraptors are very closely related to chickens. You don't see a whole lot of chickens killing people, do you?
SPEAKER_04I have personally been attacked by chickens. Well, I'd say then you should not go to the zoo. I'll see, I'll see you after the dude. I had this one rooster. He was meanered and shit. Big, like a big, big rooster, right? Big talons and all that. And he never messed with me. And then my stepson messed him with him once, and he chased him. And after he chased him, he figured, all right, I can chase these humans, right? Oh yeah. So I'm out working in the yard. I'm I'm making I'm out working in the yard, mowing and picking up. And here comes this rooster, and he's gonna come at me. So I kick him away and go, get out of here. He comes at me again and tried to spur me, jump up and spur me. Really? Well, I picked up this this limb that had fallen, and he came at me again, and I whacked him upside the head so hard he starts flopping on the ground. I'm like, oh my with a limb, tree limb. Oh, tree limb, okay. A stick. Anyway, he starts flopping on the ground, and I'm like, oh my god, I've killed the rooster. And after a second, he got up, rattled.
SPEAKER_02It's hard to kill something without a brain.
SPEAKER_04Couldn't quite walk straight, but he looked at me and then just decided to walk the other direction. So he obviously had a little bit of a brain. Teeny as it might be. I got my point through.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, that's probably why you ought to be careful around velociraptors, because they'll they will bite your ass off. I thought that was exaggerated. Uh, I mean, they're not very big. Here's the thing the actual velociraptors are significantly smaller, they're actually about two feet tall. So they are just big chickens. But the dinosaurs that were in Jurassic Park were not actually velociraptors. Those were I'm trying to remember what the name of that particular species was. They were it'll come to me. I can picture them, I just can't remember the the name of the species. But when Crichton was writing the book, he didn't like that name, and he thought the name Velociraptor was a lot cooler, and so he switched the name, but kept the the size of the dinosaur, which was not well because you can't you would not be particularly scared of Velociraptor. Just think of a baby ostrich.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Crichton was a brilliant author, and anyone who has not read State of Fear should do so. Oh, that's the That's his last book.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. I started reading it, I got pulled into something else. If you haven't finished it, that was years ago.
SPEAKER_04That was like six months.
SPEAKER_02That's why I got it, is because it was climate covering the climate change, but I kind of got pulled off of it.
AI Built Task Manager App Surprise
SPEAKER_02So you you talked a little bit about travel. Uh I was gonna mention just briefly, because Darren's on vacation right now, so we're not doing unrelenting. You relented. Well, he relented. I never relent. He's the one that's relenting. His freaking app still running two weeks later. Hasn't crashed. Still works fine. I so I can't run it. Well, you could on your Mac. I can't. Why? IT. Oh, they won't let you. Okay. Yeah. It's unsigned. No, it's fine. It's uh yeah. And it he should have a signed one soon. I I told him he really needs to just pay the money to Apple and get signed up with official developers so he can have signed ups and he's gonna do it. But this thing was generated through like three lines of I can't remember which one he was using, actually. Come to think of it. I don't think it was Grok. I think it was one of the other app coding ones. But literally the prompt was three lines, and this thing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it stole somebody else's code.
SPEAKER_02Completely stole somebody else's code, which is fine. But it looks like a much prettier version of Task Manager.
SPEAKER_04And I I have one of those.
SPEAKER_02I have a suspicion I know whose code it's stole. Have you looked at App Control? Yeah, I run App Control, dude. This is way prettier and gives way more details than App Control. Okay. It you would be blown away at No, tell him to make a Windows or Linux version. I told him that the first day. I'm like, dude, now make me a Windows version. It should be just as easy. And he's like, yeah, okay. And then he didn't do it before he went on vacation.
SPEAKER_04Where did he go to vac? Where did he go on vacay?
SPEAKER_02Out of Illinois somewhere. With his wife, even.
SPEAKER_04So he's coming back dead. Got it.
SPEAKER_02I don't know if he is coming back at this point. I know he's not going to be back in time for tomorrow.
SPEAKER_04It lists more details. I still got a little plastic piece to send him if he wants it.
SPEAKER_02Does he? Yeah, you should. The the the thing lists like it has more details than anything I've ever seen on the Mac. And frankly, more details than anything I've seen on the PC. And it is very, very pretty in terms of just visually. Not only does it use different colored bars moving back and forth as things change, but it actually like they have a glow effect.
SPEAKER_06So it's like it's actually done in a pretty way.
SPEAKER_02Which is something I would not you know expect from a from a three-line AI coded.
SPEAKER_04So whose do you think he stole?
SPEAKER_02I think it stole it from the guy that actually wrote the original task manager for Windows. Dave! I think that's where it stole it from.
SPEAKER_06Because that's what he told it to emulate. He said, make one that is like this.
SPEAKER_02And I even had him check to see if the app admi or if the AI admits to using any code and it says it did not use any GitHub code. I I just find that hard to believe, honestly. Because it just looks so good. You know, I guess if you've got the entirety of GitHub already stuck inside of you, then maybe you don't need to do that. So But either way, I love the concept. I just sent you a picture of what it looks like right now on my machine.
SPEAKER_06Where did you send it? To your your Whitchat, because I don't see it. Ben? The Ben chat.
SPEAKER_04I sent you a message, but I don't see anything from you.
SPEAKER_02Picture.
SPEAKER_06Interesting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it'll probably have it yet.
SPEAKER_04It'll probably read it.
SPEAKER_02Well, I don't know what to tell you, dude. It's I sent it, it's showing a scent.
SPEAKER_04Oh, oh, it just showed up. Your tubes are slow.
SPEAKER_02Oh, it's uh yes, I'm sure it's my tubes.
SPEAKER_04Hey, that is pretty.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh. Right? And look at all the crap on the left side that you can select, like to look at. Mm-hmm. Performance, processes, system info, startup apps, users, light recorders, services. Yeah. And it's showing like the current energy usage, which I didn't even know you could do with desktop. But I guess the Macs don't care if it's a desktop or not. The AMD adrenaline software does that. Does it? Yup. Underperformance. Oh yeah, I guess it does. You're right. You're right. It does. Yeah. Uh thermals, yeah. I mean, it's like this I would run on my Windows box all the time once he converts it to Windows. So it's basically just has to take the front end off of this and then tweak the back end so it talks to all the Windows crap. I gotta imagine it'd be pretty pretty straightforward to do. And here's the other part about it that and I know we're talking about an app people can't get yet. RC. It's or C well I can stick a great narrative. Yeah, I know. I it's I can stick a picture into the uh the uh MP3 file. But the other thing that's amazing about it is how big do you think it is? Like size-wise of the app.
SPEAKER_06Uh kilobytes.
SPEAKER_02It is, I'll tell you exactly. 1.3 megs.
SPEAKER_03Oh, so it's bloatware, got it.
SPEAKER_02It's it's not bloatware, Jesus Christ. It's been god only knows how many years since I've seen something smaller than a gigabyte. Like all my apps measure in gigabytes and mini of them and hundreds of gigabytes. Like this thing is genuinely tiny at 1.3 megs. Yeah, 1.3 megs is small enough that this probably could have run on a on my Mac 25 years ago. Well, hopefully, Jesus. Yeah, I mean that's tiny. So which makes sense given what it does.
SPEAKER_04I mean, it's probably just calling OS calls that already exist. Of course. Poll it, write it to a text file, graph.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, I I agree. I don't think it's doing anything crazy. It's just nice to have that summary of stuff all combined together.
SPEAKER_06That's that's the cool aspect of it.
SPEAKER_02But anyway, let me pop open our notes here, and you can start talking about something, otherwise, I'm gonna start looking stuff up.
Triggers Suppressors And ATF Guidance
SPEAKER_04Well, I got the uh Texas trigger FRT for the P320 in.
SPEAKER_02Oh, nice. That finally came in.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it came in while I was gone. So I'm gonna be putting that in probably over the weekend, and I'll take pictures and do a write-up for the blog and let everyone know how it goes.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. You're gonna go to the range, test it out. Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_04But uh, I'm I'm looking forward to this. It's gonna be an interesting interesting experience to have an FRT on basically what um then amounts to a submachine gun, right?
SPEAKER_02No, we don't use that word.
SPEAKER_04A sub-rapid fire gun.
SPEAKER_02A fast signal fire gun.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. By the way, did you see that the ATF director came out and said that they've instructed all the field offices to treat any suppressor transferred under a 4473 as not a violation?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_04Basically, the ATF's guidance is gonna be we can't tell you who's in the enjoying group or not, so we're just saying it's enjoyed.
SPEAKER_02Well, they can't presume guilt.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_02So that this is the only proper way to do it.
SPEAKER_04That's pro this is probably one of the most pro to a ATF director's. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Which which is crazy, but yeah, I think you're right. I think you're exactly right. Which, you know, I'm glad we finally got to that point to where we have a an ATF director that uh that actually is, yeah. Yeah. Because frankly, all of them should have been.
Diesel Prices Refining And Syngas
SPEAKER_04You know, one of the things I want to talk about is gas prices versus oil prices.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god. Versus diesel prices. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Are you happy with your fuel choice right now, sir?
SPEAKER_02Not at all. No, my my diesel is costing me two arms and a leg. It is crazy. Well, luckily you have three. Yeah, well, I guess. But it's it is a here in Texas, it was a two-dollar difference between gasoline prices and diesel prices.
SPEAKER_04And and let's point out that in 2008, oil prices were in the 140s and it was not this. Not anywhere near this, yeah. Like something does not add up here. Yeah, well, I and yes, I get global refining has been hit because of the actually Ukrainian war more than anything.
SPEAKER_02Uh China just did a massive order of American refined products. Yeah, yeah. So that that is, and we probably traded them for them not attacking Taiwan.
SPEAKER_04Oh, please. Or some bullshit. Please. If anything, they should be looking at Ukraine going, huh, maybe this will not be so easy.
SPEAKER_02Well, either way, I think you know, Russia's capacity to produce diesel has definitely been affected. I think they've got plenty for their military, like it hasn't affected that. But what it has affected is global prices, exactly.
SPEAKER_04Because uh, Europe gets a sh first of all, Europe far more likely to use diesel than gas, and gets their diesel largely from Russia, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Through illicit means like Turkey and and Greece and stuff like that. They're gonna be even more fucked. Like they already can't afford to fuel up their their tanks, their outties. Now they're gonna be even less so. It's it's bad. Like when diesel hits nine bucks a gallon in California, you know that in Europe it's nine bucks a liter.
SPEAKER_04Well, and but here's the thing diesel prices affect all other prices, of course, because that's delivery, yeah. Well, even rail, right? Rail is diesel electric, bud. We're gonna be going back to coal fired.
SPEAKER_02When that that could well be happening, isn't in fact, wasn't Germany doing that now? Getting coal back up and running? Well, they ought to do gasification after all those years of saying we don't we we believe in solar and wind only because we're not dirty like the rest of Europe.
SPEAKER_04You know, Southern Company was on to something a decade ago that I wish it was a project they never would have abandoned. It was the Kemper County, Mississippi combined cycle plant. It had a lignite mine locally, and their idea was we're gonna make a sin gas, we're gonna gasify coal and make a sin gas so the power plant can either run off of natural gas or the sin gas, whichever's cheaper. And they could never get the gasifier to quite work stably.
SPEAKER_02So I'll I'm gonna be ignorant here because this is out of my area of expertise. What gas is produced by gasifying coal? Hydrogen.
SPEAKER_04Just pure hydrogen, really? Not just pure high. I mean, it depends on the process. Yeah, but hydrogen. Well, it the it if you do it pure enough, it's just hydrogen coming. Really? You're breaking it down. How dare you? Um, that'd be good. But, you know, yes, you can get some other compounds in there if you're not running it as pure, but you're breaking down the hydrocarbons into their constituent pieces. But no, send gas can run very cleanly. It's a it depends on how many cracking steps you want to go through. And that's what they were trying to do. That I think they were kind of overdoing it because they were trying to go full environmentalist with it, versus making it functional. Like if they would have gone for a dirtier gas quality, it probably would have worked. And then you put some, you know, let some SO2 be in there, and then you know, put a scrubber on the exhaust, right? We we know how to deal with this with coal plants. We have modern coal plants that are extremely clean because we have SO2 scrubbers, because we have NOx control, because we have bag houses. Well, with the syngas, you don't have to worry about the bag house at all because you don't have any fly ash. So there are lots of things that they could have done with that technology to not try and push it to such a green state that would have worked better.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's just interesting to me that it's not producing some kind of aine, you know, methane, propane, butane. Well, you can along the way. Yeah, but I mean that's the the only difference there. It's a CH4 with the variable number of the hydrogen atoms. Right. So if they're getting pure hydrogen out of that, then that's awesome.
SPEAKER_04Well, they were trying to get it down to pure hydrogen because then their only emissions is water. Uh water, yeah, H2O. It'd be fucking awesome.
SPEAKER_06Then you can drink that. The most pure water you're gonna get. Yep. Better than distilled. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yes. Freshly created atomic water, never bonded with anything.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. That's the best kind of water you can have. Dude, you you watch, you could sell that shit for 10 bucks a bottle. To people like you, exactly. The most pure water in the world created out of a plant.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_04Fuck you, God. We made our own damn water.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh. Well, it it's a oh, you that reminds me. You remember that story? I don't remember the name of the story of that that about the water that instantly turned solid that uh Kurt Vonnegut wrote. What was that called? What are you talking about? It's it's it's like Water Three or something.
SPEAKER_04I I by the way, I have never been a Vonnegut fan. I've read a couple, like his short story about what you know, the equality that was fine. Slaughterhouse number five.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, good. Ice Nine. That was the book. Ice Nine.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I no, I've never read it.
SPEAKER_02Or that's not the book was Cat's Cradle. The ice, the water was called Ice Nine.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I I'm not a huge Vonnegut fan.
SPEAKER_07But yeah.
SPEAKER_04Anyway, no, uh the diesel prices are crazy. I don't know what's really I don't get what's driving it here in the U.S. We have plenty of refining capacity.
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah, because they if you look at the graphs of crude oil prices here in the US versus the price of diesel, it's it's like a big W. Like the the gas prices or the the crude price is up, but not as much as it was. But the the diesel price is way overtaken. So unfortunately, I think that'll have longer-term ramifications and prices of literally everything.
SPEAKER_04It's broken every historical norm.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember, like personally, still, diesel prices being cheaper than gasoline. That diesel was sort of the well, that's before they went to the low sulfur. Yeah, yeah. That's when I remember it. That was also when it was much more fun to have a diesel engine. Yeah, and you could roll coal. Oh my god, you could roll coal. I used to do that so much because my I had a my mom had a BNW turbo diesel. And you know, she didn't really use the gas pedal much when she drove, which means it got all just built a yeah, yeah. And then when I got to drive the car as a teenager, it was like a James Bond cloud effect. Like you you get on the on-ramp, you floor it, and you disappear into a cloud of blackness. Yeah, it was awesome. Oh man.
SPEAKER_04There was another thing that I was gonna ask about.
unknownFuck.
SPEAKER_02Was your Audi diesel or gas?
SPEAKER_04Gas. Yes, gas. It was the inline five. Inline five, dual overhead cams. Yeah, Audi 100 4 was my first real car. In what year? 89. 89. I remember my neighbors had one of those with a five-speed and a Bose sound system and a CD, a six CD changer in the trunk. Yeah. Yes. There you go. Yes. A sunroof, moonroof. Yeah. That's that's a good kid's car.
SPEAKER_02I even had a ski rack on it. Nice. Well, you could, yeah, where you used to live, you could actually go skiing.
SPEAKER_06More often than that.
SPEAKER_02What was I gonna mention about about I don't know.
SPEAKER_04But what's the story you had on Texas Uprising?
Texas Pushback And Cultural Flashpoints
SPEAKER_02Oh, it's just the the people are in Texas are finally pushing back on the Islamification that's going on here. So there was a that that video has clips from a video that was shot in Dallas in Houston, I believe. Okay. Where or maybe it was it was either Dallas or Houston. I think it was in Houston. Where the the police are basically getting rid of people that have a that are preaching Christianity near a Muslim event. They're like telling them to that they're trespassed and stuff and to move along. And you know, I don't want to quite say that the police are working for the Muslims here, but it This is this is how it started in the UK. It was this like, well, yes, you know, let them do their thing and don't don't bother them, kind of attitude. It's like if you bother them, they're gonna bite back, and we all want to avoid that. Well, you know, that that's how it starts, and where it ends is the whole damn country is now run by Islam. So people in Texas were not having any of it. Which is good. Because in other states, they're absolutely doing that. Minnesota, completely a Muslim state now. Michigan, totally a Muslim state. You know, places that used to be predominantly populated by northern Europeans, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians.
SPEAKER_04The fucking Vikings, dude. Yeah, yeah. Right? Minnesota Vikings, they were called that for a reason. No, it should be, you know, the Minnesota Goatfuckers.
SPEAKER_02It probably is gonna change. It's probably gonna end up being like the Minnesota Goatfuckers, whatever the Somali thing is that they're into. Yeah, I mean they I I already said it. I know. I can't say it in again. Yes, the goat fuckers. Yeah. Yeah, there's a pretty funny new AI animation that was out that was I think I also shared that was like 20 years from now. And Trump's kid is the new president. Which one? The young one. Barron. Barron, yeah. Barron's the new guy. So Barron's, and he's he's married to to uh who's who's the big titted chick you like? Sydney Sydney Sweeney. Yeah, he's married to Sydney Sweeney. I'm sorry, what? Huh? Yeah, you should you should watch the video. It's pretty funny. But uh like and we have Northern America and Southern America, like the entire western continents are just called America now. Gotcha. Uh so it's all part of America.
SPEAKER_04And dude, motherfucker got Greenland already. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, oh, he'll get more. He'll get more before he's done.
SPEAKER_04Oh, Alberta. Come on, don't burn.
SPEAKER_02Uh like he's got Trump's head wired up so he can still talk to his dad and you know get advice from him. So he's like a head in a jar. And the head of uh the Iranian Islamic regime is Tucker Carlson.
SPEAKER_06It was Tucker Carlson. Okay.
SPEAKER_02And he's got all his all his favorite goats around him. Oh, we're going to hell. No, well, we're not. Somebody is. It it is really funny. You definitely check out the video.
Hollywood Job Collapse And AI Video
SPEAKER_02There's another video I watched today talking about the financial crisis in Hollywood. I don't know if you're aware of this.
SPEAKER_04There's a financial crisis in Hollywood?
SPEAKER_02Apparently, for the last three years. What will Dana Brunetti do? For the last three years, Hollywood jobs have been shrinking by between 26 and 32% a year. Those jobs are not coming back. This is this is a consolidation of the movie industry. The fact that it's more expensive than anywhere else in the world, pretty much, to shoot a movie in Hollywood right now. And the studios just don't care. There's fewer studios out there, and they're less willing to spend the money to make the movies in Hollywood. They're fine going overseas, fine going to Canada, to Vancouver. They're fine going to the UK, they're fine going to many places that are cheaper to shoot movies. So it's uh it's something that Hollywood's kind of done to itself. It's priced itself out of the market because everybody's a frickin' union. You got the actors union, the writers' union, you know, scriptwriters, the there's unions for pretty much all the jobs in Hollywood. Like, guys, you're you gotta realize you're competing globally right now. You're not competing locally. And the studio is gonna just not use you anymore. And that's what's happening. So there's a serious crisis out there. Apparently, a lot of people that have had, you know, executive vice president titles in their names are now working as Uber drivers. Well, couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch. Well, and the movies that they've been putting out are not exactly the stuff that's generating eyeballs. A lot of failures. A lot of failures. Mm-hmm. And the stuff that I think is going to be indisputably taking over is AI, video, and movie production. Because it's it's not something that's going to be But the rendering cost, I don't see that as any cheaper. It's way cheaper, way cheaper. What which of course I had to leave my my comment on that that video and say perhaps all those studio lots and Burbank can become data centers. Yeah, exactly. Because you've got plenty of space and plenty of power hooked up. It would make sense. But the the thing that AI does is it doesn't eliminate the need for people. What it does is it reduces the number of people needed to create something. And and that's true of the city.
SPEAKER_04Well, it lowers the barrier of entry for creation.
SPEAKER_02Eh, I don't even think that's the case. I think it it does make it cheaper, but you still need really good skill sets if you want to have something that you're not just generating schlack, you're generating something you Want to watch with AI. I think that's still gonna be a thing. So yeah, I I just uh I think what AI I thought about it earlier today. Because you can essentially describe what you want AI to do, and you have to do a good job of prompting it into giving it enough specifics on how you'd like something to look that it's not so easy that anyone can do it. It takes somebody that has a decent vocabulary and a decent imagination and some understanding of the concepts they're describing.
SPEAKER_04So we're gonna devolve into absolutely nothing shortly because no one has a vocabulary more than a few thousand more.
SPEAKER_02I mean, basically that kind of shuts down. But no, my point where I was going with this is effectively the people that are much better at AI than doing things themselves are managers. Because if you're not good at managing people, you're not gonna be good at managing AI doing work for you. And why is that because not everyone has either the interest or the skill set to be a good manager, and the good manager isn't just somebody that gives you a raise every year, a good manager is somebody that knows how to utilize resources that they have to the most of their abilities for the least amount of money, and that's exactly the skill set you need with AI. Okay, how do you think for the budget?
SPEAKER_04Yes. Um, a lot of people would say that that person is not a good manager because they're often gonna come off as an asshole.
SPEAKER_02Well, a lot of people don't know what a manager does, so that's neither here nor there. Okay. I mean, that it management is not for everybody, first of all, and that's pretty obvious because uh there they've I've known people personally that were intelligent, extremely intelligent, and intelligent enough to, when they became managers, to after a year or two, say, Yeah, this is not for me. I like being an individual contributor. I'd rather have a higher paying individual contributor job than to manage people.
SPEAKER_04Well, I've done it more than once in my career where I've said, I don't want to do this anymore. It's too much of a hassle dealing with other people's BS. I'm gonna go back to just doing my stuff. There you go.
SPEAKER_02And and that's perfectly fine. But the skills that you have an advantage with when dealing with AI are management skills. Because it it really is resource management, not necessarily people management. Yes. Well, it's but it's not just resource management, but that's a part of it. Like that's the thing. It's like it's it's the full package. Like a manager still needs to be able to describe to both employees and upper management and potentially clients what they're doing and how they're doing it. Which again, same skill set you need to utilize AI. So I'm not saying people that aren't managers won't know how to use AI, but I'm saying that people that have management experience and actually are good at it, they're going to do much better at utilizing AI than people that were always solo contributors their entire lives. And I I think that this is I'm happy to make the prediction and I I look forward to it being proven right.
SPEAKER_06Okay. Well, we'll see.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
Airport Logistics Robotaxis And Kill Switches
SPEAKER_04So UAE Emirates just suspended all flights to Iran?
SPEAKER_02I'm surprised they had flights to Iran.
SPEAKER_04Why?
SPEAKER_02I mean, is that normal to have flights to a warring region?
SPEAKER_04They had normal commercial flights anyway. It's funny because Besson's cracking jokes about how the Iranian diplomats that are currently at the UN are gonna get home. Oh, yeah. But you know, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Did you listen to any of the US address by the Iran crowd?
SPEAKER_04No.
SPEAKER_02I have not. It is, dude. It's like we got home at 2 p.m. today. I wasn't driven back home. I drove myself. Did you really?
SPEAKER_00You don't live back?
SPEAKER_02Oh dude, do you have any idea how expensive that would be? Not your money. I mean, you know, what you get for living that far away.
SPEAKER_04So from my house, I can be walking in the terminal in an hour and 15 minutes. Yeah. There are plenty of places in Houston that I could live that would take me that long.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure that's true. You know, I lived in Frisco and I flew out of DFW, and that was usually about a half-hour ride down to the airport. Yeah. But I don't, I like, I didn't want to deal with parking and shit.
SPEAKER_04Oh, but it's if you so IAH actually has this shit down. You reserve parking so you're guaranteed a spot. Yeah. You drive up, it's got a license plate reader, which going in and out of the airport, I'm okay with this at the parking garage because it makes my life easier. It literally goes, Oh, welcome. You drive through, I park, I walk to the terminal, I get back, I get in my truck, I pull out, it goes, oh, you're you're still within your allotted time. Cool. Bye. It's fantastic. No getting a ticket, no making sure you have the ticket, no paying for anything.
SPEAKER_02I when I lived in DFW, I just had a limo driver. So they would get me to and from the airport every day. Not all of us are bougie. Well, dude, when I lived in Minnesota, I I had the same guy for like three years. It was great. He knew what I like for snacks when I was in the back of the car. He you know, he'd come a little early and make sure that uh I was ready and everything. I it I'm telling you, sitting in the backseat just beats driving every time. And thankfully now people in Austin can appreciate that with all the Tesla taxis we have. Like everyone's a rear seat driver, even if you're sitting up front.
SPEAKER_04Well, there's only two seats.
SPEAKER_02Exactly.
SPEAKER_04Dude, the the Texas the the the the cyber cab or whatever they're calling it. I would never get in one, but it's still cool.
SPEAKER_06Why would you never get in one? Because it will take me immediately to jail.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they're programmed to do that. So what? It's it's still cool. I mean, there's a video of a guy that apparently had a warrant out for his arrest. Okay. And it just locked the doors and then told him to make sure he's got a seatbelt on and drove him to a police station.
SPEAKER_04I think that was fantasy, Gene.
SPEAKER_02No, I watched the video. How's that fantasy?
SPEAKER_04Because it was fake.
SPEAKER_02Oh, it might have been a fake video, but it was hilarious though. I thought it was pretty funny. Because he was talking to it the whole time, too. Do you don't want Annie driving you around? What kind of a sick bastard are you?
SPEAKER_04I I don't want no, I want to be in control. I like I am totally going to either get an old car and fix it up, or if the or if the REO truck, the new REO truck, comes out and is any good, there we go. But not yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, every vehicle made, what is it, after 2027 or something? Has to have a remote disabled functionality. Yeah. Have you seen all the videos of the black people? I mean the criminals stealing cars and driving like crazy.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so I don't want anyone to be able to remotely kill my car.
SPEAKER_02Well, I get that, but what what if it's not you driving your car? Wouldn't you want it to be stopped? No. Well, then you take on the full liability of anything that person does. No, I have insurance for that. Well, I'm not sure insurance would cover you. Since they're gonna expect everyone to have one of those devices.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, fuck that. Uh you watch if we I do not want that to be reality.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's coming. Because it's it's obviously a benefit for insurance to limit, or at the very least, provide major differences in pricing to people either with or without the newfangled functionality to shut down the vehicle remotely. But there was another vehicle that does that. What was it? Uh I think the Cadillacs, they already have that.
SPEAKER_04Well, a lot of cars have aftermarket stuff that you can put in.
SPEAKER_02Well, no, I think they have it from the factory. I think they were just ahead of the curve on that. Or behind the curve, depending on how they look at it.
SPEAKER_04So, did you see the video of Trump showing G the portraits of the presidents? No, I did not. And
Food Poisoning Headlines And Body Limits
SPEAKER_04he gets to Biden's autopin portrait, and G visibly like belly laughs. Did he? That's hilarious.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's that's not at all surprising. I think G and Trump get along on the personal level just fine. Well, and but what do you think happened to G and India? I know exactly what happened because the Russian news reported it. Food poisoning. Apparently, 12 people got food poisoning.
SPEAKER_04Food poisoning in India? Yeah. What? I know. And and I think I mean this is a country that has more people die from diarrhea than the U.S.
SPEAKER_02has of gun deaths. It's it's insane, dude. And, you know, way more people in the UK die of rape than of gun deaths in the US. It's amazing that they agreed to have this event be in India, frankly. I don't think this will be the first and last time that it happens in India. No one's coming back there again. But yeah, J, along with like 13 other people, had food poisoning.
SPEAKER_06But why did he collapse? I wasn't feeling good. That's some pretty bad food poisoning.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know what? Have you had bad food poisoning? I think probably once in my life. Your body basically doesn't know what the hell's going on. Sweating, you're puking, coming out both ends. Well, before it comes out both ends, what it starts with is your heart starts racing like crazy. You start getting overheated and sweating like a pig. And that's before you realize that it's actually food poisoning. Because just like all of a sudden, what the hell happened? Why, you know, what's going on with my body? It is not fun. And once you realize it's food poisoning, your mentally can kind of calm down and just plant yourself on a toilet for the next 24 hours with a good bucket in front of you. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Because you're not going to be getting up to switch positions. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I I re I remember one time I way overdid it on caffeine at a land party. I I had drank way too many balls. Yeah. Energy drinks to be clear.
SPEAKER_01Spelled very differently. Sucking down all them balls. Slurp, slurp, slurp.
SPEAKER_04I got I got back to my apartment and it just hit me, and it was just this uh cold sweats, and I I ended up collapsed on the floor and just it wasn't food poisoning, but it was just so much overdone caffeine that you know, very similar effect. Yep.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's caffeine poisoning. I mean, near the end. That's when you're overdoing any of those things, you're kind of poisoning yourself. So apparently there was an empty chair that meeting. Do we know who that chair was supposed to be for? Do not. Do you? No. No, it's just I I saw a blurb about it asking the question.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04Anyway, I'm glad I thought about it before we went to the baseball game and I took my pocket knives out of my pocket and left my carry
Guns While Traveling And Carry Laws
SPEAKER_04back.
SPEAKER_02Were they checking?
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah. Three metal detectors and everything.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow. Yeah, that would have been a pain in the ass for you to have to go back to the car. No, because we ubered there. I would have had to Uber back an hour. God damn. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. It would have sucked.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04But I will say Georgia has some fantastic carry laws, and I appreciate it greatly.
SPEAKER_09Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04And Tennessee does too. So there you go. Yep. Yeah. It always takes me a long people always ask me, why are you always checking a bag? Why does it always take you so long?
SPEAKER_02Well, let me tell you. It's so retarded, dude. There's no reason we shouldn't just be able to bring those on carry-on.
SPEAKER_04I can make an argument that if it's I agree. I I think you could make an argument that if you have frangible ammunition, that you should be able to take a loaded firearm on a gun as a law-abiding citizen. On a gun, on a plane as a law-abiding citizen. But I don't want people with full metal jackets or really even holo points, you know, potentially discharging, right? We don't want to pierce that skin.
SPEAKER_02No, it should just be in the lock case or something. You know, just but it's it's retarded that you have to check it.
SPEAKER_04Well, I dude, I I want to get back to where we have metal detectors at the gate and it's the airline's responsibility. And if an airline wants you to put should you can have the airlines that want you to go through the body scanners, and then you can have the cowboy airlines that say, just come on, let's do it, and price it accordingly. I'm good with it.
SPEAKER_02I I would have no problem if anybody that has a CCW brought their gun on a plane. Well, that would exclude me, Gene. Yeah, I would have a problem with you having gun. But everybody who's actually gone and gotten certified, no problem at all. I mean, honestly, I I'm pleasantly surprised how much travel you are doing with guns, given that you you don't have a CCW.
SPEAKER_04Well, I mean, it doesn't take a lot. Like, even if I go to a state that I can't necessarily carry, I will take a firearm because if shit hits the fan, then I won't really care about their laws.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_02That's true.
SPEAKER_04But there are states, like it depends on like Virginia. Virginia's a state where I can open carry legally, but I cannot conceal carry. Yes, really changed the web there. Nope, they have not. Nope. Nothing has gone into effect yet. Okay. But if I'm in northern Virginia, let's say DC area, where you know the lines cross from Virginia to DC to Maryland, that gets a little I better not do that, right? Like cannot have it in the car, cannot like just you don't fuck with that. But if I'm in Southern Virginia, you know, it's safer.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I I remember when I drove from Minnesota down to North Carolina with guns and with guns and a Confederate flag on my rear window, and never thought that was a problem at all. Like the attitudes have changed a lot. Back in the 80s, there was plenty of even Democrats that didn't really see having guns as an issue. They just didn't like all the uh people coming back from Vietnam having access to guns because they're all crazy. Yeah. So uh speaking of guns, you sent me a picture here of a little one of the new little Caltechs.
SPEAKER_04Well, I sent you something that I think you might want to buy.
SPEAKER_02Well, the little baby Caltech? Yeah, the little snub-nosed Caltech. Yeah, it's it's big, it is pretty funny. It's I saw a video on it. I think it it's too damn close to just a pistol. I don't think you're gaining a whole lot with that three and a half inch burrow.
SPEAKER_04But you have three points of contact. And that does aid in aiming tremendously.
SPEAKER_02I don't know. I mean, it does, but I'm not gonna shoot that gun long range anyway. No, there's actually a different gun I was looking at that isn't out yet, but should be out. I'll probably end up picking up. It is a PDW that has it has all the features that I want in a AI AR-style PDW. Yeah. So it has an AR pistol grip, it has an AR trigger group, and it also has features that ARs don't have, like a right side talking lever along the barrel. More like the AK. Not AK, no, I was gonna say more like the uh the SIG uh the oh, what the hell is that model?
SPEAKER_03This day in G needs his B card. I yeah, I haven't taken any today at all.
SPEAKER_02Any anyway, so it's got a right side cocker. So it's got that, it's got a uh souncer compatible sized barrel shroud. I mean, it's a pretty good combo of all kinds of stuff. I don't remember the model number of this thing, otherwise I just point you to it. But apparently it's been in delay now for several months, but when it finally comes out, I'm gonna see Are you talking about the the Spear? No, no, no, no, it wasn't the Spear. It was a company I'd never heard of, actually, that made it.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I thought you just said SIG.
SPEAKER_02No, no, it looks like the SIG because the SIG has the the right hand or the left hand cocker. But it's charging handle. Yeah, charging handle. It's not a it's not a SIG. Anyway, I'll uh I'll send you a link to to a video of it or something. Riveting podcast. I know it's super awesome today. I'm you know, I even got an app. I don't know why I'm just not my memory is turned off right now, apparently. It's the RAM prices, that's the problem. Too many video games. No, that's not it.
SPEAKER_04Well, RAM prices are dropping, though. Storage prices are dropping.
SPEAKER_02I haven't seen any drop. What have you seen?
SPEAKER_04I've seen some like
Pandas UPS Upgrades And Odd Tech
SPEAKER_04fairly decent sales from a percentage standpoint on storage, that's for sure. But I'm not looking for RAM right now. I don't know for storage.
SPEAKER_0264 gigs is still 1100 bucks. Jesus. That should be like $300. It should be cheaper than that. And then the the prices on the M2s for four terabyte m2s are still hovering around $4.95 right around there for the cheapest ones. So there I don't.
SPEAKER_04I've got my SAM Song Drive on like 50% off the other day.
SPEAKER_02Oh, really? I've got my my X or not X, my Grokbot doing daily searches for the cheapest prices on both RAM and I need to use my Grokbot more. Well, mine finally finished copying all my music off. That took forever.
SPEAKER_04I thought that was done a long time ago.
SPEAKER_02No, no, no. No, it took literally three weeks.
SPEAKER_06Wow.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02I don't know why. But something wasn't working right.
SPEAKER_04Did you see that uh China's sending us two new pandas?
SPEAKER_02No. Oh, that's awesome. That's worth watching.
SPEAKER_04Both of them? Two of them, yeah, male and a female. That's cool.
SPEAKER_02They they are absolutely probably the best argument that God exists. Explain. That it's an animal that should not exist whatsoever evolutionarily.
SPEAKER_03Explain.
SPEAKER_02It has no defensive mechanisms. It literally is It has no predator. It's a cartoon character. They fall and trip on their own feet. They're they're like I mean, it's it's literally a cartoon animal. It it shouldn't be a real thing.
SPEAKER_04I I think the platypus is a better better example of made of leftover parts.
SPEAKER_02Everybody knows that.
SPEAKER_04It is God's sense of humor. What can we do?
SPEAKER_02But this thing, and it eats one of the least nutritionally active foods in the world bamboo. So it is fat. It's fat-ish. I mean, they're mu they they they're just kind of fat looking. They're not really that fat. They're kind of like cats, you know, like their skin is not really attached to them.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_02Because, you know, like a cat looks fatter than it actually is. So these things. So do I, in fact. But it's it's an animal that has no business having not been wiped out by some like fucking cats can take down. Speaking of cats, they can take down pandas. Well, luckily they're in the city. There's no cats in China there, I know. Because they eat them all. I know. Exactly. That's the problem. Dude, argument. Yeah. Yeah, it is. I I get it. Like the Chinese population basically doesn't eat panda, which is the only reason the panda still exists. They eat everything else. Bats, dogs, cats, you name it.
SPEAKER_04How the hell is the fuck? What was that thing? Coronavirus? South Park, yeah, had Mickey fucking the created the coronavirus. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Penguin.
SPEAKER_02Pangolin. Yeah, those are super cute animals, too. I would love a pet pangolin. They're so weird looking. They're so cute. They walk in their hind legs. They you know what they I think they were the inspiration for the aliens in The Fifth Element. You remember that movie? Yeah. Oh, God, yes. I think the penguins were the inspiration. Multipass. Mm-hmm. Mila, whatever her last name is. VLO, big long ass name, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. She would be like multipaths. Baby. Boob job. Nah, she's good. She's fine. She's like not even an A.
SPEAKER_02No, no. She's dude. She's uh very definitely a B. She's not not an A.
SPEAKER_04She is not that in fifth element, dude.
SPEAKER_02No, in fifth element, she was like 22 years old, dude. Yeah. No, but still, just like once she had a kid, she got boobs. Well, yeah. And yet you make fun of me. What? I do make fun of you. That's because we're friends. Friends make fun of people. Right. But you know, mommy milkers are a thing here, man. Well, yeah, yeah. No, I get it. It's just there, there's a practical limit to size, I think. There really isn't. And that's the difference between us. Uh oh, uh, I got some other naturally occurring. There really isn't. Uh yeah, yeah. I've got some other tech news. So I finally broke down and ordered. I've been thinking about these for a while. I it's time to get my UPSs replaced. Okay. So I ordered I ordered lithiums now. So all lithium.
SPEAKER_04All of my UPSs have been lithium for a long time.
SPEAKER_02Really? Okay. Well, mine hadn't been. I've just been using the standard lead acid ones. And I finally decided it's now worth it because if I can use these and not have to replace them every two years, two to three years, then that offsets the price difference.
SPEAKER_04It all depends on the charging mechanism and how it cycles.
SPEAKER_02What do you mean?
SPEAKER_04So, and this is where UPS is like Liebert versus you know your standard APCs and others had an advantage back in the day. They would use step-up, step-down transformers in series so that they could voltage regulate without having to hit the battery. Oh, yeah, yeah. These do that. If you're you if your UPS is voltage regulating by hitting the battery, it's that is not a good use case for a lithium ion.
SPEAKER_02So yeah. Well, these have voltage regulators in them, so I did check on that before getting them. But I'm I've been planning on doing this for a while, but they were just, you know, like twice as expensive for a long time. And now they're about one and a half times as expensive. So now they've dropped low enough that I think it makes sense. And boy, it is cool to have a lightweight, relatively speaking, UPS. I mean, they're still not what I would call light, but they're lighter than a similarly sized lead acid one, obviously.
SPEAKER_04And hey Gene. You know why breasts are measured in cups?
SPEAKER_02You're gonna tell me, I'm sure. Because they produce milk. Jesus Christ. They do produce milk, that's true. So you're saying a C cup produces how many cups of milk?
SPEAKER_06Oh. You ever have breast milk?
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yes. Ah, you're into that. Okay.
SPEAKER_04Married two kids.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, too bad the kids didn't get any.
SPEAKER_04Oh, unfortunately, they got more than their share. Don't don't get me started on that. I'm deprived.
SPEAKER_02Yes, well. Yeah, well, that maybe that's the why some of my friends had eight kids. They wanted to ensure a continuous supply. Have you ever had milk ice cream? Like from a human? Yeah. No. I had some in New York. Some rando, okay. No, it's not rando. There's a no, there's a fancy uh dessert place that that has human milk ice cream. It's way overpriced. But you know. Yeah, I just anyway. Okay. Uh-huh. And I don't know, man. I it it didn't seem particularly different from ice cream that I make at home.
SPEAKER_06Like, I don't think the fat content was appreciably different in there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm sure it it's higher normally, but they also probably skim it off.
SPEAKER_06So bastards.
SPEAKER_02You know. Because if I make ice cream at home, which I haven't done for a long time, because it is really even even a sugar-free version is still a lot of fucking calories. But you basically you use heavy cream, but you don't use half and half. You sure as fuck don't use milk. If you use heavy cream, you get an ice cream that is both cold and yet smooth, and you can stick a spoon into it without breaking the spoon. If you use lower fat content, like milk, even you know, whole milk, you end up having a very hard ice cream. And if you look at the ingredients list on most store brands of ice cream, they have an insane amount of ingredients, but one of those ingredients is usually guargum, which is the thing that creates a somewhat similar effect. Texture.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And it's not it's not necessarily bad for you, but it just doesn't compare to real ice cream. So if you can make it yourself or you can f buy a brand that doesn't contain it like Hagendas, then you have much more of a real ice cream taste to it. And it's also most ice cream that you buy in a store is also whipped. Which is a I don't think it's a recent phenomenon, but it's definitely not what it used to be when I was a kid. Like you didn't buy a pint of ice cream and it was mostly air. Bluebell isn't like that. Oh yeah, Bluebell is totally like that. I've I've had Bluebell. Okay. All these brands, dude. Even the ones that are supposed to be premium brands that charge more money, that they're whipped. The only ones that I found that aren't whipped, other than Hagenda's. Hagendu's isn't whipped. But the only other brands are like if they're selling it as a gelato rather than an ice cream, then they don't tend to be whipped full of air like that. But I remember I remember back in the 80s, you could buy a half gallon of ice cream for about three bucks.
Ice Cream Chemistry And Human Milk
SPEAKER_06And uh and then, you know. Just sit on the T, watch cartoons, and eat ice cream right out of the half gallon.
SPEAKER_02Oh the good of them. Never done that. What?
SPEAKER_06Really?
SPEAKER_04Never done that.
SPEAKER_02Well, they probably didn't have cartoons in the morning by the time you were a kid. Oh yeah, they did. They still had Saturday morning cartoons? Absolutely. Red Floodstone? Yes.
SPEAKER_04And the Jetsons and all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when I was a kid, hell, we didn't even have cable. It wasn't even an option where we lived. Like so when I was a kid growing up down at the beach, cable was not an option. Yep. Then we moved to Beaumont for a few months before we moved to Idaho. Idaho. And and had cable for a brief period of time then. And then in Idaho, for years, I relied on VHS tips, tapes sent to me by aunts and uncles. Wow. And then we finally got satellite when Dish Network came out in the late 90s. Wow. Like we didn't even have one of the big dishes. We've got one of the first little dishes. Well, that's surprising.
SPEAKER_02I figured you guys up there, you would have had a big dish.
SPEAKER_04No, no. My parents didn't want it until it became cheap enough to get the little dish and do all that. They weren't gonna do it.
SPEAKER_02The big dish you could actually do free for free after a while, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and we had neighbors with it and all that, but yeah, no, yeah. We uh I I I grew up without TV for a really long time, dude.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I I loved TV when I was a kid. I watched it all the time. Yes, the differences between you and playing video games and watching TV.
SPEAKER_04I hey, I had a Nintendo S NES back in the day. I remember the first time I beat Mario Brothers. Yeah. Uh yeah, that was that was that was a thing.
SPEAKER_06What year is that? Oh early 90s. Yep.
SPEAKER_04We were still at the beach, so before 95.
SPEAKER_02And then when I moved out of my parents' house, I never bought a TV. So I lived with no TV at all for about a decade. And then when I got married, I had to buy a TV. Because it was an educational tool for the wife. Teaching her English. It well, mostly porno, but yeah. I mean, that was uh sure, English works. And here, honey, this is research material. Exactly. And then that whole waste of time lasted until I got divorced, so about 10 years, and then I did not get a TV again after getting divorced, still don't have one. But it is a little cheaty these days because you don't really need a TV to watch all the streaming sources.
SPEAKER_04Like, yeah, yes, Mr. I have a projector in the bedroom.
SPEAKER_02I do have a projector, but not a TV. It and it's not
TV Nostalgia Landlines And Messaging Apps
SPEAKER_02plugged into anything.
SPEAKER_04Yes, but now with Google TV and you know all the Hulu and everything else, who actually has like I have TVs, but they function as monitors, to be honest with you.
SPEAKER_02But my my point was I truly didn't have a TV all through.
SPEAKER_04By the way, I would love to know what percentage of our audience has a cable box still. Probably zero.
SPEAKER_02I can't imagine anyone having cable boxes. Dude, I give shit to uh Darren for still having a landline.
SPEAKER_03I can see Darren having a cable box.
SPEAKER_02I don't think he's got a cable box. I I didn't say it was plugged in. Well, yeah, yeah. It probably does have one. But the landline it's so stupid. They have a landline because it came with the internet. It's cheaper to have it than to not have it with the internet.
SPEAKER_06So it's just lame. And it's like, why would you want the phone line that you can't receive text messages on? Kind of makes it useless. I I guess.
SPEAKER_04I I no one texts me. Like no one I give a crap texts me. Like everybody's on Signal. Yeah. Everybody's, you know, like I don't get SMSs. Really? Like at all. Hardly at all.
SPEAKER_02I still have friends that use SMS. I no one calls me anymore. Work people have SMS. That's but that's about it. Really? I don't think work people would use like Slack or something. Teams, yeah. Yeah. Or teams, yeah.
SPEAKER_04But people who are outside of the organization, you know. Okay. Stuff like that.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, it's I I kind of miss the days of just getting a phone call, you know, from a friend or something. Well, I called you earlier today. I know. Well, you could no, you do call me. You're one of the only very few people that will actually just randomly, without giving a shit, if I'm busy or not, just give me a call.
SPEAKER_04Well, that's because I grew up in the you know 80s and 90s, and you had no other way of finding out if you were busy or not.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. And then you'll notice if I call, I still start with, are you busy?
SPEAKER_04Dude, I I miss the days when you could go off into the ether and no one knew the fuck where you went or why. Or you remember the the busy tone, right? You call someone and you get the busy tone, and you call them back an hour later and you still get the busy tone, you go, oh, he's on the internet.
SPEAKER_06Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's true. But it's well, I had two lines, but yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I did eventually too, because my parents got tired of me being online so much.
SPEAKER_02That's exactly right.
SPEAKER_04I remember back in the days when you were limited to so many minutes of online activity. When did you get your first cell phone? College. So 2000. 2004.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_04Well, uh no, 2003. Because I I yeah, I'm I'm I uh I moved out I moved out after graduating, and I was living in Clarkston, Washington, and it was cheaper for me to get a cell phone than a landline. And it was a flip phone and was on sprint, and I used it, it was a 2G phone at the time, right? And I used it via USB tethering for my internet access, which was a little bit more than 56k.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it was pretty slow. It's terribly slow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I got my first one, I want to say. What was your first smartphone? Well, hold on, I'll uh we'll get to the smartphone. My first phone was, I want to say, '93. And it was when it was a company called Arrow or something like A-E-R-O, something like that. I'm probably misspelling the name, but they had come up with the first cheap cellular pricing. It was it was, I want to say it was a hundred bucks a month and you got like a hundred and fifty minutes. Which was super cheap compared to what everybody else was, which was like, you know, a hundred bucks a month and you got ten minutes, and you have to pay for every minute after that. And these guys were like all of a sudden way cheaper. So that was the I want to say it was either 93 or 94, because I know for sure that I was using that phone for work in 94. So I don't know if I got it before 94 or during 94. I never got the to use the Motorola flip phones, the old ones, the Microtech or whatever they were called. That was that that that was only on the expensive networks, and I wasn't gonna pay for that. And I, of course, I never used the brick phone. I had one friend that bought the brick phone when as soon as that came out. That was like a thousand dollar phone that was, you know, literally the size of a shoebox. Maybe a slightly smaller shoe box. What was your first smartphone? First smartphone, I guess if we're gonna call non-Apple devices smartphones, probably the BlackBerry.
SPEAKER_04I had a Blackberry global services phone, so it had the international stuff in two sims. And then I also had the one of the Palm phones.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, I had one of those too. I did have a Palm phone. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04The Palm phone was way ahead of itself that was, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I thought the Palm devices were pretty good. I I had a number of them that I went through as they were.
SPEAKER_04Dude, graffiti was brilliant.
SPEAKER_02It was faster than the alternatives, yeah, for sure. For sure. And then once you kind of start getting good at writing the graffiti, you you would generally get you know most of the words. Mm-hmm. But I had the little executive model, I had that was in the late 90s, I think that that was out. The old Palm Pro. I don't I just remember it was thin compared to the other palms.
SPEAKER_04Ah, that was the titanium one. That's I had that too. I in fact, I probably still have all my palms somewhere. Yeah. I I used to love the palm. I it was fantastic. I had email, I had a web browser, I had apps, I I could sync things. Oh my god. I yeah, the syncing was great. And I I had an old Sony little portable computer. I don't know if you remember these, but it had a pullout little 14.4 modem jack in it, and you could use it for freaking. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god. There was I had the uh oh the first generation of the Microsoft Hold on one second.
SPEAKER_04So that Sony device, I literally had loaded on it a library of long distance card numbers. Oh Jesus. So I could hook it to a phone and dial randomly, right? And see if I could make a connection back in the day.
SPEAKER_02So I think these were called what PDAs back in the day, right? Yeah, yeah. Personal digital assistant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we had the palms, but then we the I remember when Microsoft came out. And well, Apple had the Newton. Yeah, that was the first one. That was in the early 90s. I had a Newton, I had two of them. I had the 100 and the 110, I think. But I remember driving that that was my cross-country trip that I mentioned earlier with the guns that I was driving. That's the Newton had my maps loaded on it. So I was gonna be all high-tech and like who needs paper maps that's for old people.
SPEAKER_04I'm gonna say that map quest has made a comeback.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I know. And so, because I would I would have gotten the trip tick from triple A if I was doing it the old school way, but oh yeah, with the binders, yep, custom binders, binders, oh man, for your trip. They were really cool. And here's your stops you need to make, and here's the best for the they would actually sit down with you and like circle shit you need to pay attention to. It was great, but anyway, so I decided to do it all digitally, and that was great for two days, and then my battery died, and I forgot to bring a charger. Oh fuck, exactly. And I was like, well, now what am I gonna do? Because it's not like there's an Apple store in every corner back in the early 90s.
SPEAKER_04You you had to track down Apple stores, and or they didn't have storefronts, they had they had mom and pop retailers, exactly. So the original Apple store was actually a mom and pop resell slash repair shop that Apple licensed back in the day.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and the and we had like in in the apples area, we had one quote unquote big Apple store that was called Hagen Computer. I can't really believe I still remember that. But you would go, and you know, they were mostly selling Macs to businesses. So you'd go in there and you'd have every model of the Macs currently available sitting on display that you could test out and then put an order in, and then a month later you get yours. And they were like the biggest of the Apple stores, and they were about the size of the current Apple stores in malls, but that was like huge back in the day. I remember the first Mac my dad bought, the first one I ever used, was a Mac Plus, and he bought that at in Dayton's, and Dayton's is a chain of stores that ended up, I think, merging with Marshall Fields. It was basically, you know, a store that carried everything from high-end cookware to clothing to I guess some office stuff as well, but like bedding, clothing, cookware. Yeah, it's kind of like a Marshall Fields or a what are some of those other stores? Macy's. It was one of those type stores. And they had a tiny little like probably 20 foot by 20 foot computer section in there that had one Mac and a couple of PCs. And I remember that's where you bought it. And I think the original price for the Mac Plus pretty sure it was in the neighborhood, although I couldn't tell you the exact price, but it was right around $2,700.
SPEAKER_07Okay.
SPEAKER_02Which in 19 early 80s money that would be about $10,000 in today's money. Maybe nine. Probably $9,000 in today's money. So pretty comparable price-wise. But obviously their prices went way down after that and then way back up a number of times. But yeah, it was a lot of this shit was available. Like I remember in the mid-80s, some of my dad's friends had car phones. They weren't cell phones, but they were definitely car phones. You know, it was just permanently mounted in your glove box. Or not your glove box, in your uh armrest.
SPEAKER_04So I've got a personal project I'm gonna talk about.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_04So finally coming out of the closet.
Live Edge Tables CNC Mess And 3D Printing
SPEAKER_04No, I am not that podcaster that you're looking for. Just because you watch that couple, you know. No, I've been doing uh the game presenting couple. More than presenting. No, I've been watching a lot of John Maleki's videos of Sent You Few. And he does a lot of live edge tables and epoxy tables and everything.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Well, my dad's got a saw mill.
SPEAKER_02Okay. And when you say sawmill, you mean what?
SPEAKER_04I mean ability to mill lumber out of logs. Like a band saw or a big band saw sawmill. Okay.
unknownAll right.
SPEAKER_04So anyway, I've had him cut me some slabs. Okay. But I'm gonna work on it, and in my office, I'm gonna make my own live edge coffee table and side table. Nice. So new goal. New project. New project. I I like projects. I've done woodworking before. I've done a lot of woodworking before, but I've never I've never just tried to let a piece of wood be a piece of wood. Right? You you like in the whittling projects I would do, I'd make wooden chains or different arts, you know, different things like that, that you're you're forming something. This the idea of the live edge table is to let the log be the log.
SPEAKER_02I think honestly, and then I'm sure the oversimplifying it, but I think the the main point of live edge furniture is really epoxy. You you're creating that clear transparent layer.
SPEAKER_04You're making the grain pop. You're bringing you're drawing out anyway, it's in the finishing, right? You're you're not doing a whole lot of prep work, it's in the finishing. So anyway, I've got some. It's gonna be interesting to see. It might be a fun thing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that I I tried woodworking once. I didn't like all the dust. Well, you know. This is where I think 3D printing is more up my alley.
SPEAKER_04Additive manufacturing versus subtractive.
SPEAKER_02Again, my my buddy that used to uh make the wallets, the he you know, he bought a C and C machine and he was making that shit. It's a really nice like $200,000 CNC machine. And it's very cool, but man, is it dirty? It just generates so much gunk. So I get that this has been a process that has worked well for a long period of time, and American industrialization is basically built on CNC. But I like the additive processes better, and frankly, the additive one that I like the most ain't no way I'm ever gonna be able to afford, which is metal. But it's it's just so cool watching these really cool custom shapes coming out of that machine like uh like suppressors.
SPEAKER_04Well, you can do that with yes, any 3D, it doesn't have to be metal, any 3D printer can do that. And if you actually one of the cool things with the new rule, if you have a metal base that you serialize and everything else is a subsidiary component, yeah, and you're the manufacturer, you can replace those components at will. So not legal advice, but something to look into.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And you can you can also download the the uh files for them.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. Speaking of crazy shit, how the fuck did F-35 parts end up in Hong Kong? Good question.
SPEAKER_02I mean, like
F-35 Parts Abroad And Spycraft Stories
SPEAKER_02I smell a rat. I mean, there's a lot of rats walking around, right?
SPEAKER_04But I I I will not be surprised if in six months to a year we find out someone got paid off to send to redirect the logistics. I'm sure. I'm sure that's the case. And the problem is China's really good at copying shit.
SPEAKER_02They're well well versed in that particular talent, yes. But so are we. You know, we're we're pretty good at that.
SPEAKER_04There was a Who the fuck do we copy from? I'm gonna call bullshit on this.
SPEAKER_02No, no, no, no. There's a story about Alright, here comes the Soviet propaganda. Yes. There was a story about some Who had a mock space shuttle that didn't fly? Let's check. But a superior space shuttle nonetheless.
SPEAKER_00And it did it never flew.
SPEAKER_02It flew once. It flew once. No, it glided once. It glided once, that's good enough. It demonstrated that it was superior, that's all it took. No, there was a story about a superiority for something Russian was here. God, what was it? It was some kind of a Russian. I'm trying to remember. Oh, oh, I I I know it was. I think it was uh the story is back from when uh Nikita Khrushchev came to the US. And much like many presidents do these days, they shipped his car, his armored car, so that he could have his own vehicle here while he's touring the United States, right? Well, apparently this car showed up the day before he was here. And the CIA had been tracking all of this, and they realized that they had an eight-hour window when this car would essentially be sitting at the port before somebody came to pick it up and transition it to, you know, wherever they were gonna be driving him from or whatever, the airport. And so they they bribed the appropriate people and then basically went out there to take this thing apart, get as much info as possible about it, and then put it back together before the car was picked up. Uh so it was like they weren't learning some high-tech shit. They just wanted to see what what the car had. Like, in case they needed to shoot through it, what would it take? You know what I mean? And this story finally came out and became public, I think, about three or four years ago. I first time I heard it. But it was it was one of those interesting examples of like what do you do if you have an opportunity that you never thought you would have? How quickly can you take advantage of this? And they managed to do it extremely quickly and do it in a way to where nobody was the wiser for it. And the Soviets didn't know anything about it, and I think most of the American agencies didn't know anything about it. Certainly, you know, it was it was not a national incident or an international incident. It was a something that stayed in the archives until fifty years later.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but again, we ain't copying shit.
SPEAKER_02We're not copying shit, but we're you know, we're getting access to shit. But China is copying shit.
SPEAKER_04Oh, China's copying shit.
SPEAKER_02They're very good at the copying. They're not very good at making it high quality, though. No. That's the thing. If they copied shit and it was high quality, you know. You would have a problem because then we'd be buying Chinese shit all the time anyway, because you'd get memory for cheap.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, by the way, you still haven't published the mom and dad's duck and sausage gumbo recipe I posted.
Duck And Sausage Gumbo Deep Dive
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. I can I can stick that in the episode. I will put that on the current episode. Talk about the recipe real quick because it'll be uh in the description of this episode.
SPEAKER_04All right, so basically, mom and dad's gumbo recipe. This one's using duck and sausage. I recommend andouy if you're gonna do it. They wouldn't, but I like the andouille. They would do, you know, like a green sausage? Yeah, I do andouille. They do green onion, jalapeno, something like that. But goes through, talks about making the roux, all the veggies, everything. We're a okra and gumbo file family, you know, lots of seasonings in there.
SPEAKER_02It's basically jello. What do you mean? I mean, once once you put that in there, it's gonna be very gelatinous.
SPEAKER_04Gumbo fillet?
SPEAKER_02No, no, no, not the gumbo. The what'd you just say? The okra, yeah. No, wrong. What do you mean wrong? Okra makes things very jelly.
SPEAKER_04No. I mean no. So because part of what you do is you make your roux, and once you have your roux done and good and hot, the first thing you put in is the okra and you saute the okra in that roux, and that kills any slime you're gonna have out of that okra. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Uh okay.
SPEAKER_04And you're adding in the vegetables and you're getting enough liquid from that, and you're saving your stock from when you made your duck. And like, no, it's it's just it's good. And obviously served over rice, you know, heat to taste. But you you can, if you don't have duck or you don't like duck, you can do chicken and sausage, or if you want to do seafood, skip the two pro the two proteins that are listed, follow the same basic recipe and add in your seafood. If you're gonna do if you're gonna do like fish and shrimp, put your fish in early, let the fish cook to pieces and add your shrimp in the last five, ten minutes just so they cook enough, and that be it. If you're gonna do crab, do whole body crab. Don't, don't, don't be if you're putting crab in gumbo, I ought to be able to pick one out, shell the sucker, and do it. That's the way it ought to be. Right? You want all the juices from all that internal stuff leaking out in there and making flavor. It's good stuff. But yeah, it's a lot of veggies, a lot of work, and the roux is the key. You know, I always used to say I was making a six or twelve beer roux because that's how long it would take me is to drink those. You like you go low, you go slow, you want that roux as dark brown as you can get it without burning it. If you burn it, it's done, throw it away.
SPEAKER_02And other than butter and flour, what else you put in there?
SPEAKER_03Who the fuck's using butter? Yeah.
SPEAKER_06What do you use? Fucking bacon grease. Bacon grease lard. Okay.
SPEAKER_04Dude, no. Bacon grease all day long. Yeah, you take the bacon grease and make the roux. You don't use butter.
SPEAKER_02I've only used butter for roux. That's that is way. If you look up roux, that's what it tells you you should be using.
SPEAKER_04Okay, well, that is not what any kunass in his right mind would use.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Well, I would make a jar of saved bacon grease off the top of the stove and go whap. And that's what they'd use.
SPEAKER_02You know, I should get some bacon. I haven't had bacon for a while.
SPEAKER_04Bacon grease makes the best roux in my mind, personally. If you don't have save bacon grease, then lard, but lard loses some of the saltiness, doesn't have the smoke flavor to it. It's a little bit different. But anyway, this is an addictive dish. It takes a long time. It's a you make it on Sunday morning and you have it Sunday evening sort of thing, and it sits for a day or two, and it's even better then. But it's it's it is great. It's a very hearty dish. It's a great fall dish. Gumbo is my favorite food in the world.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I like a good gumbo. Don't have it very often.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. In the recipe, and this is from my parents, they say cover the pan in oil. They don't mean oil there, if they mean bacon grease.
SPEAKER_02I I actually like etuffet better.
SPEAKER_04Oh, really? I can I can send you my Aunt Frida's recipe for Etouffe. Okay, well, let's let's add that to the thing as well, then. Well, we gotta space it out, otherwise I'm gonna run out of recipes.
SPEAKER_02You got plenty of relatives. You can start picking your relatives.
SPEAKER_04Oh well, uh, we we lost one. My uh cousin Susan passed away uh over the weekend. Oh, I'm telling you. Yeah, and I I
Loss Life Expectancy And Site Plug
SPEAKER_04couldn't go to the funeral because I had to be in Georgia. But my I got my parents a hotel and they went and you know, they got to see the Mississippi cousins and everybody, and you know, it was good in a lot of ways. Got they got to see a lot of people they hadn't seen in forever. You know, she she she was only 73, man. Wow. Yeah, they I I know that sounds old, but these days it's it's young.
SPEAKER_02I wouldn't say it's young, but it's not old.
SPEAKER_06It's not my mom's eighty-one. Yeah, I know, I know. I get it. It's yeah, my dad's eighty-eight right now.
SPEAKER_04Isn't it crazy to think there's only seven years difference between our parents?
SPEAKER_02I guess. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my mom was five years younger than him, so my mom was just barely older than your mom.
SPEAKER_04My dad's ten years younger than my mom.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's the crazy part. But you know, your mom's got so much energy that I'm not surprised at all.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, I think the US right now is uh 79 years old for the uh average mortality. Mortality. Yeah. Or life expectancy. So that's not it's not quite mortality. So of somebody born today, the expectation is 79. Which means those of us that were born half a century ago, the expectation is like 74. In the US, women tend to live to 81, and men tend to live to 76. That's how you average was 79.
SPEAKER_04Well, getting off of the uh mortality stuff, there's seven recipes up on the website if anyone wants to go try any of them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and definitely check out Ben's blog website, whatever you want to call it. And the what's the the website address? Namedben.com. Yeah, namedben.com.
SPEAKER_04Um and I got that URL just so I could have the email address, dude, at nameben.com. Yeah. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so if people want to send something directly to you rather than as a feedback to this podcast, they can also send you.com. Exactly. And then if you want to send it to me, send it to asshole at nameben.com.
SPEAKER_04I am so gonna forward that to service just done. You will have that alias, sir.
SPEAKER_02I got my free alias. All right. Exactly.
SPEAKER_04No, I dude, I I had a a PayPal thing pop up on so I I use I I have Proton
Domain Email Abuse Proton And Signal
SPEAKER_04Mail and I have a bunch of domains, and it's like your PayPal account's being closed, and da-da-da-da. And I'm like, wait, what? And I'm looking, it's a legit PayPal thing and all this, and I look, and so like I I leave open any addresses for certain domains, right? Anything that gets sent because I use certain domains, right? Someone had set up a PayPal account using one of my domains. Oh, Jesus, which domain? I'm I'm not gonna say that publicly. All right, big butties, okay. No, no, no, no. No, it was uh it's a legitimate domain, completely legitimate. I'm sure. Yeah, but uh no, it was. I was like, wait, why is this attached to the this shouldn't be attached to this what? Oh, oh not yours, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that was.
SPEAKER_02You know, I luckily don't have that problem very often because no one can spell my last name. So consequently, no one's gonna abuse that domain. But that that doesn't really help you use that domain though, either. Well, no, it it does if I'm just using it for myself. You know, it's not it's not in fact, there's no website on that domain, I don't think. It's just purely what I use for email. But honestly, at this point, I'm I'm trying to shift over to using Proton as much as possible.
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah. I dude, I used to self-host email servers, I used to run Zimbra servers, I used to run back when I was a member of Microsoft Developers and stuff like that. I used to run my own exchange servers at home and everything else because I had the fucking free licensing.
SPEAKER_02Everybody had licensing.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Back in the good old days. But there's just no point into hosting your own email service anymore at all.
SPEAKER_02No, and I I don't really like that Microsoft, you know, reads my emails, but at the same time, nothing important goes to that email address anymore. Everything important got shifted over. So the only stuff I'm getting there is like usually ads for something or like confirmations of my food orders or you know, stuff I don't really care.
SPEAKER_04That's my old Gmail account for me. Yeah, yeah. Right.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. But I do still use Google Docs and stuff for Gmail quite a bit. The Proton stuff's getting better. Well, the problem with Proton stuff is good luck convincing somebody to use a different product than what they're used to, which is Google. Fair enough. So whether I'm dealing with clients or just friends, it's like the you've probably noticed this too. It doesn't matter how technical a person is, the acceptance rate of a new technology is directly tied and proportional to their age, not their technical ability.
SPEAKER_04I disagree.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's what I found. The older my friends are, the less likely they are to switch to something I'm recommending.
SPEAKER_04Well, I'm 40 and I just went on a whole new streak of rebuilding my. Home lab and changing everything that I was doing.
SPEAKER_02You're not following what I'm saying. So let's say you get a reconnected with a buddy of yours on a business trip or something, and he's like, Yeah, yeah, hit me up on Telegram. You're gonna be like, nah, you know, I kind of use Signal. Don't really use Telegram. Where like 20 years ago, you'd have been like, cool, what's your what's your account on there? What's your Twitter handle? I'll tweet you.
SPEAKER_04I I never used uh Telegram.
SPEAKER_02Okay, you're just making my point for me.
SPEAKER_04It's the Russians.
SPEAKER_02I know it's the Russians. And we preferred the Israelis. That's why we use Signal. Everybody knows this. Signal is not Israeli. Signal is 100% Israeli. Okay. You didn't know that? Seriously?
SPEAKER_04Anyway. So Moxie Marlin Spikes is an is an Israeli agent. Who? Nothing. Okay. You're missing the point. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Anyway, the the resistance to something new definitely seems to be a factor as people age, I found. Even whether it's for a good reason or not, it took me about two years to get Darren to start using Signal. He literally did not want to do it for two years. Like, dude, everybody's fucking on Signal. It's it's better than SMS. It's better than everything else. And finally he starts using it.
SPEAKER_04So but it Yeah. And by the way, the point I was trying to make there that you missed is Moxie Marlinspike is the guy who invented the signal protocol. Boxy Marlon Spike? Moxie Marlin Spike. Yeah. Okay. So he was the cryptographer that came up with it. And I've been following him since it came out back in the day. So back when it was Whisper Systems and it was called TechSecure and all that. Yeah. Like, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So Yeah, what's Moxie Marlikan's Marlick Spike's actual name? No clue. Matthew Rosenfeld.
SPEAKER_04Cool. It also came out of a DARPA project. Citizen of Israel. DARPA project.
SPEAKER_02That's DARPA paid for it. Yes, I I I realize that.
SPEAKER_06So I don't know how you call that Israeli. It's an Israeli company, dude.
SPEAKER_04Well, on that note, Gene, uh I think I gotta go use the little boys' room.
SPEAKER_00Alright. Well, that sounds good,
Sleep Study CPAP Tradeoffs And Peptides
SPEAKER_00man. You do that. I'm gonna get another nap, I think, in today.
SPEAKER_04Most people would call that going to bed at this time of night.
SPEAKER_02Well, I kind of took a short nap of about 45 minutes before the podcast, and I I felt like I wasn't really finished.
SPEAKER_04Well, I I I would suggest staying up a little longer and then just going to sleep.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, maybe. Maybe. I don't know. I I will tell you this. I had, we talked about it. I think I had my my sleep test thing, sleep lab, whatever, done to where I went to their facility to sleep, which was, you know, like you're you're trying to sleep while you have about 40 wires coming out of your body.
SPEAKER_04Yes. In a foreign environment.
SPEAKER_02In a foreign environment. With a camera on you 24-7. And the the thing I have to say, surprisingly to myself, is that even though I didn't really feel like I was getting a good night's sleep there, the next couple days after that, I felt like I was getting a worse sleep at home. And what I mean by worse sleep is just feeling less refreshed and more tired in the morning. So you know, that it's it's I really wanted that to not be true because I don't really want to be using this stupid uh what do you call those things? Sleep app name machine. Yeah, like a CPAP. But if it works, you know, it's a device that helps me sleep better, fine. I'll use it. It's I just I hate the concept of being.
SPEAKER_04Have you looked at the implantable ones?
SPEAKER_02I did, yeah. I talked to my doctor about that stuff. They're they don't do them because they're not as successful for fat people.
SPEAKER_04Well, you know, that's something you should be working on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I, you know, I am doing a Zumpic. Slowly.
SPEAKER_04By the way, a friend of mine is doing a uh instead of a GLP1, a GLP3 peptide. Totally gray market stuff.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, there's it's uh they're going through trials right now, it should become legit probably next year. Yeah, it totally works. It's way better. I'm just waiting for an insurance to pay for it.
SPEAKER_04But you can get it actually fairly cheap on gray market, apparently.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I I don't know. Last time I looked, those things were not super cheap, but um it's probably worth looking again, see what the current prices are. Yep, obviously.
SPEAKER_04But yeah, there there is No, I found out recently more of my friends than I knew were into peptides. Really? Yeah. They've been around for a long time, man.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And it's the peptides were kind of they were the the not super risky gray market stuff for probably the last 20 years. Because I've had friends that have been on a variety of them for a lot of different things. But these are also usually the same guys that do like vitamin B12 drips, they're the same guys that'll do stem cell injections in Mexico. You know, they're they're they're people that are way more into the cutting-edge biological shit. And in fact, I was trying to get, as a client, a guy that was a peptide specialist, and I it I'm really pissed that it didn't work out because I was offering to do a partial trade with him so that you know he only pays me part cash but part in uh peptides.
SPEAKER_04Well, you know my buddy that's in our group text, you ought to reach out to him because he's got some gurus and some sources. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So no, I I I've talked to him. Uh yeah. It's I mean, again, there's nothing magic about peptides. Peptides are compounds that they're isolating from our inside our bodies anyway. And then figuring out how to ramp them up.
SPEAKER_04And one of the things that I think one of the biggest things is production while maintaining purity.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and that is this is part of the problem with getting stuff gray market, is that it's not that you can't get this stuff gray market, it's just that you can't be sure that it's pure and clean. And and knowing what labs has gone through obviously is is a big thing.
SPEAKER_04Just like you can't know if this show is ever gonna be pure or clean. It's no, it's not.
SPEAKER_02We know we're pretty sure of that.
SPEAKER_04Well, I mean, you know, we we have some explicit episodes and some less explosions. Well, this one this one's in the adult tag.
SPEAKER_02Well, it didn't it didn't go too deep into the adult area, so I'll see if I can sneak it through without the adult tag.
SPEAKER_04God damn it, Gene, you're gonna get us banned.
SPEAKER_02Uh, if only.
SPEAKER_04So we'll see if we're back next week, folks. I guess, yeah, we'll be back.
SPEAKER_02All right, talk later, Gene. Yep, talk to you next week.
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