015 Just Two Good Old Boys

We try something different in this one. The was recorded while being streamed live on youtube. If you would like to listen in live on the next Sunday recording, go to youtube.com/@griftcast at 10AM central on Sunday  (subject to last-minute change)

Transcript

Sir Gene: 0:23

Hey, Ben, how are you?

Ben: 0:25

Good, Gene. Good. You know an interesting thing here happened, you decided to do something new on your end and independently I decided to do something new on my end,

Sir Gene: 0:35

Oh, that's usually how it works.

Ben: 0:37

So I figured since I've got a trip coming up and I may end up having to record on the road, I would try out the portable rig.

Sir Gene: 0:44

Oh, okay.

Ben: 0:45

I'm using the portable audio, so if I sound a little different, that's why.

Sir Gene: 0:48

Yeah. Well, you, you are definitely a little bit quieter, which is not a huge thing. They can boost it up and post as well.

Ben: 0:56

Okay. And I'm, yeah, I can also try boosting some of the gains on my end at some point. But

Sir Gene: 1:02

all right, well if you're gonna do it, do it right now so that the whole thing

Ben: 1:06

Now we'll just leave it for now, but I'll play around with it later with you.

Sir Gene: 1:09

Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine. One other thing, the new thing on my end on this is we are actually streaming live on YouTube right now.

Ben: 1:20

So what do you have up for me?

Sir Gene: 1:22

Well both of us only have audio, so the only thing that's happening on the stream is our audio is getting passed through.

Ben: 1:31

So what are people looking at though?

Sir Gene: 1:33

So what they're looking at is a screen that says Grift cast i r l with chats taking up most of the screen when people chat. Chat. Hello? I think Why am I not in here? I should have a little,

Ben: 1:45

So you're looping me into your whole Griff cast

Sir Gene: 1:48

yeah. Griff cast baby. I think this is a great way to do it. Is I, you know, we gotta record these podcasts anyway, or I do multiple ones. This is one of'em. Might as well do it live and get some Griff going.

Ben: 2:01

Yeah. So everything's going going to the live streaming for you

Sir Gene: 2:04

Yeah. Yeah. So obviously we're recording. As usual, we'll have this episode posted. If you're listening to this on a podcast. Everything worked well,

Ben: 2:16

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 2:17

took a little longer then maybe things didn't work out quite as well, but yeah, everything should work. I mean, it looks like everything's running in the stream. And I'm gonna actually to talk a little bit about how the sausage is made here. I'm gonna post a link to the stream, on the social as well, to see if anyone wants to jump in on that.

Ben: 2:37

Okay, cool.

Sir Gene: 2:38

Yeah. So I know that there was a topic that that I already mentioned we're gonna cover. It doesn't have to be the first one we talk about, but certainly we will talk about Ruby Rich today.

Ben: 2:52

Yeah. And you know, I funny thing is my parents were in town this weekend and I kind of brought up the set, the whole Joe Rogan segment that kicked this conversation between us off and had them watch it and get, I I, I kind of got their take on it too. You know, we've, we've got some interesting perspectives there. And again, growing up I, I had a lot of involvement with several people who were involved with Ruby Ridge directly. In fact, my first employer was one of them. So yeah. Anyway it was a good conversation and I, you know, we can kick off right into it.

Sir Gene: 3:26

Let's do it.

Ben: 3:26

so Joe Rogan had a guest on recently about eight days ago now, and he went through and talked about Ruby Ridge and he ignored some key things that really kind of stuck out and bugged the crap out of me because if I were to describe Ruby Ridge, I wouldn't have done it the way he did. So literally in three minutes, 30 seconds, he talks about an event that ended multiple, multiple lives and, you know, ended up with a lawsuit where the F b I was found liable for wrongful death of two people.

Sir Gene: 4:03

right?

Ben: 4:04

One of the things he first ignores is, you know, he says the ATF decided they had a problem with Randy Weaver, and they went up there, well, they had a problem with Randy Weaver because they had an undercover informant. Have him saw off a shotgun for him to try and turn Randy Weaver into an undercover informant. And when Randy Weaver said, no, I want nothing to do with the white supremacist. I'm not going up there. I don't wanna be involved with them, and I don't want be an undercover agent for you. That's when they decided to do a sting on Randy Weaver. Furthermore, the guy goes through and says that the son shot at the a the at f agents or the f FBI agents in this case. That's true, after they shot and killed his dog and did not announce themselves as federal agents. I'm sorry, I'm walking out in the woods on my property and someone shoots at me and kills my dog. Yeah, I'm probably shooting back too.

Sir Gene: 4:57

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 4:58

And by the way, he fired a shot at them, turned around and was running away when they gunned him down in the back.

Sir Gene: 5:06

Well as the B usually does. Yeah.

Ben: 5:07

Okay. So my, my point in this is in the first 30 seconds of setting up Ruby Ridge, he glosses over some things that make it sound not as bad. Right? He's going through and he's telling the story, but he's doing it in a way that doesn't really, as someone who. You know, I knew a lot about this through direct family involvement and,

Sir Gene: 5:31

right.

Ben: 5:32

you know, so knowing the story the way I know it, it, it just seems like doesn't, not doing it justice, you know? Furthermore, you know, he said that the snipers thought Randy was charging him. Randy was running away when he got shot, he got shot through the shoulder and it went through and hit his friend. And then they shoot Randy's wife Vicky, while she's holding baby Alicia right between the eyes.

Sir Gene: 5:57

Wait, what was

Ben: 5:58

I'm sorry, that wasn't the ne Alicia, that that is not the way, you know, he portrays it as, oh, they just dumped the next person that they saw. No, Lon Ucci was involved in Ruby Witch. He was involved in Waco, and, you

Sir Gene: 6:14

And that's the FBI agent?

Ben: 6:15

that's the FBI sniper that was involved in

Sir Gene: 6:17

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 6:17

Yes. And he's just, you know, there's, there's some visceral details that are just bs. Oh, and the other thing he said

Sir Gene: 6:27

at the beginning though. You're, you're covering things that the guy didn't talk about. Somebody had never heard of Ruby Ridge, which is probably a chunk of the people listening.

Ben: 6:34

mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 6:35

What is Ruby Ridge?

Ben: 6:37

So Ruby Ridge was in the early nineties and Randy and Vicki Weaver after having had successful careers and really, you know, Building a life for themselves. Said, you know what? We don't like the way the world's going. We wanna live off the grid, raise our kids the way we wanna raise'em, and, you know, really not be in the city life. So they bought property in north, north, northern Idaho, in Ruby Ridge. And unfortunately, there's some other separatists in that area as well in the early nineties that the federal government wanted to investigate. So Randy Weaver goes up there and,

Sir Gene: 7:16

Oh, Ben,

Ben: 7:17

yeah, sorry. Nope. It, yeah, my that muted for some reason for a second. Anyway, they go to some church potlucks, they get invited to some other things. They realize this group of people that they're being invited to hang out with are white s suprema supremacists and separatists. So the weavers said, yeah, no, don't want anything to do with that. They back off and, you know, have nothing to do with that group anymore. Well, one of Randy's neighbors who he thought and trusted came up to him, and by the way, you have to realize, Randy Weaver is a former Green Beret Vietnam

Sir Gene: 7:53

old is Randy? What's the kid's situation? What's the wife's situation? Give a little more details.

Ben: 7:57

I don't remember how old Randy was at this point in time in his life, but they had several kids. They had The eldest daughter, the son, and the youngest daughter at this point in time married to his wife Vicky. They had a friend living with them whose name escapes me right now. But regardless, you know, they, they, they, they were trying to be left alone and homeschooling their kids, raising their kids the way they wanted. And this neighbor who Randy trusted came over to him and said, Hey, Randy you know, I want a saw off a shotgun to keep in my truck. And you know, I, I know you know how to do it. Can you can you help me do it? And Randy, not knowing that this guy was a under a covering informant, she said, sure. And saw it off the shotgun for him, so therefore, creating a crime manufacturing and, you know, a, a an n an NFA item illegally. So as a result, they had dirt on Randy and

Sir Gene: 8:52

me backtrack a little here too.

Ben: 8:53

mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 8:54

I come to you. Hey, Ben. I don't have a saw. Can you like, go and become a felon for me? Is that, is that something most people would just say? Yeah, sure.

Ben: 9:05

Oh no, it is not. But

Sir Gene: 9:07

Was this the first gun that Randy ever owned?

Ben: 9:11

no, by no means,

Sir Gene: 9:12

All right. So Randy, Knows guns, at least somewhat. He owns guns, but yet he doesn't know that this is a felony.

Ben: 9:20

I'm sure he did. I'm sure he just didn't think about it or care.

Sir Gene: 9:24

Okay.

Ben: 9:25

So Randy's attitude was very much, this is my country, but not my government.

Sir Gene: 9:30

Ah, okay, good. So make sure you cover that. Yep.

Ben: 9:32

right. To be fair, he didn't give a fuck whether or not he was committing a felony or not.

Sir Gene: 9:37

Okay.

Ben: 9:37

You know, people are like, well, why would he do that? Because he didn't care and he, he was helping his neighbor is what he thought. I mean, that's how they interacted. They tried to say, Hey, Randy you know, we'll, we'll forget about this. If you and your family will, you know, go back and attend those events and keep an eye on those people for us and tell us all about it, you know, we'll, we'll just let this go away. And Randy being the, yeah, this is not my effing government type said, yeah, no, not only do I not wanna be involved with those people, I'm not gonna fucking help you. No. You know, his trial date they set up an initial date and he didn't show up. And that's kind of what the excuse was to kick all this off.

Sir Gene: 10:19

Okay.

Ben: 10:20

And one of the things that the, the guest on j r E did cover. Was that which Mike Glover, by the way, was the guest, was that, you know, when the FBI was thinking about this, they're like, holy shit. This is a Vietnam vet and a Green Beret Vietnam vet that had served multiple tours. This is not a guy you go up against lightly, especially when the way the Weaver's house was set up was on the top of the hill, basically from the house, you could see and look at all approaches. It was actually geographically from a land stance, a very defensible position. And what what ended up happening was the A T F and the f b I started staking the weavers out, observing, setting up, and they started moving in closer and closer to observe. And that's when, you know, these guys in Gilly suits were trying to sneak closer to due forward observation. They were not planning on kicking this off right then. And Sammy decided to go for a walk in the woods with his dog.

Sir Gene: 11:19

were F B I or what branch were

Ben: 11:22

it was a mil. The people who were responding was a mix of FBI and ATF agents that were investigating. What ended up happening as soon as the stuff with Sammy happened was the f fbi hostage rescue team was there and engaged. And which it's ironic because why was the Hostage rescue team even.

Sir Gene: 11:44

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 11:45

You, you gotta ask yourself. Okay, so you're planning on this, you're planning on serving a, an arrest warrant on this guy. Why do you go with snipers?

Sir Gene: 11:54

Right.

Ben: 11:56

You know, a anyway, what it comes down

Sir Gene: 11:59

there ever a did that ever come out in court that you're aware of, of why they went with snipers?

Ben: 12:04

Yeah, it was part of the wrongful death suit. The judge in the case basically said that the F B I and a T F went in there looking for a fight when they had no reason to expect one and because of their, over the overaggressive nature of the way they set everything up they caused the event and they were responsible for the wrongful death.

Sir Gene: 12:24

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 12:25

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 12:25

So I guess we can probably assume that given the, the fact that they knew the other groups that were in that area, which was the allegedly and I don't know, maybe actual white supremacist group was living in that area.

Ben: 12:41

Yeah, absolutely.

Sir Gene: 12:42

That they probably had everything cranked up to 11 going in, assuming that those guys would want to, that he was part of that group and that there would be a big fight happening.

Ben: 12:52

You know, there, there is a possibility of that. But the, the, the compound that the b I and ATF were interested in was not exactly proximate to the weaver's residence. I mean, you're talking, you know, a, a good jog. It's not like it's right next door.

Sir Gene: 13:09

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 13:10

So the odds of that response and, and that didn't unfold. So after, you know, Sammy was shot and the things went down the way they did Randy and Alicia and his eldest daughter and his friend, which I'm still blinking on, the name, are held up. You know, Vicky's body's just laying there. They can't do anything to move her, get her, cuz they're pinned down and they hold up for several days. By this time there was a protest down the hill at the main access road that the F B I and at t f had blocked off. There were people from around the area protesting what the f fbi, I and ATF were doing because, you know, people, the f, FBI and ATF had this blocked off and they said that they were, there was a hostage situation at the weavers and people knowing them said bullshit. And, you know, started really kind of engaging. The sheriff tried to get engaged. They basically told him to go home and sit down. There was a lot of issues there. Anyway another point that really got me that I thought that, you know, hey, that that's not right is Mike Glover on Jerry said that his former commander talked him off the, off the off the mountain. And that's not true. Bo Reitz, who was involved, who was a you know, green Beret and a colonel in the US Army, one of the most re decorated Green Berets to come out of Vietnam was one of the guys who talked him down off the hill. The other guy was Jack McClum. I know them both personally. Jack Mc Clam was my first employer. I, I, I lived not too far from Beau knew him very well. They went up to talk him down. Beau was not Randy's commanding officer. Now to say that in that he was a commander in the region and maybe Randy fell under his command at some point in time, in a general sense, maybe. But they didn't know each other directly and personally, they knew of each other because Beau in the early nineties was very much in the general Patriot movement out there. He had run for president, he had written the book, he'd done, you know, lots of kind of kooky things. And by the. When I say I know the guy I do not endorse bores in any way, shape or form. I've got a lot of issues with Beau, but I do know the man very well. Now, Jack McClum, on the other hand, Jack mcm was nothing but a patriot and a saint as far as I'm concerned.

Sir Gene: 15:33

You got super quiet, dude.

Ben: 15:35

Nothing has changed on my end

Sir Gene: 15:37

That's weird. Okay,

Ben: 15:39

anyway.

Sir Gene: 15:40

Talk louder then.

Ben: 15:41

okay. All right. We'll talk louder. The point is that, you know, there was just several points that just very much stuck out to me of a, okay, we're gonna tell this story, but I, I'm not gonna tell all the grizzly details. I'm gonna not make it sound as egregious and bad as it was. Even though Mike Glover in this is telling a story and making the A U T F and the F b I look really bad and saying, Hey, you know, if that happened today, hopefully there'd be protests over, well, there were protests then. Hopefully they would be nationwide today. But, you know, he,

Sir Gene: 16:15

there be any, that's a good question. Let's take a quick pause and just think about that. Do you think that a couple of white people getting shot by the FBI today would be a protest?

Ben: 16:26

Yeah. I, I, I would hope so. I mean, under the egregious nature of this, and you gotta remember this was a several day standoff, so yeah, I think it would grab media attention. I don't know that there would be protests as far as immediately, because the narrative's gonna be controlled. It depends on what gets out there, you know, if Sammy was recording as he walked around his woods with his dog doing a Twitch stream or something like kids do today, you know, or constantly doing something and the it would went down. Went down. Yeah. I think that would, you know, be all over the place if you had body cam footage involved or something like that. Yeah, it'd be all over the place.

Sir Gene: 17:04

Now, was there any body cam footage from anybody? Cops, police, anybody? Or is that not a thing back then?

Ben: 17:09

That was not a thing back then at all.

Sir Gene: 17:12

so all we have is just individual testimony.

Ben: 17:16

correct.

Sir Gene: 17:17

And the FBI didn't shoot their own surveillance videos that were released during trials.

Ben: 17:22

They had some surveillance information that was released. But the f b I also kept a lot of things very, very quiet in the original trial. I don't know about any of the subsequent stuff that came out cuz I know Randy was pushing years and years after for FOIA for full records release, but they kept saying sources, sources and methods. Sources and methods not wanting to give up, who all they had is confidential informants in the area and so on. And the judge allowed them to protect a lot of information.

Sir Gene: 17:50

Yeah. So the other thing I just noticed, I pulled up a map that Ruby Ridge is like, a skip and a jump from Canada.

Ben: 17:57

Yep.

Sir Gene: 17:59

It's, it's about as far in the US as you can get away without leaving the country.

Ben: 18:05

Yeah. Like I said, Vicki and Randy wanted to live a life off the grid.

Sir Gene: 18:10

Mm-hmm. And were they, was it actually an off the grid house? Did they have

Ben: 18:15

Yes. Yeah. Mainly,

Sir Gene: 18:17

or anything?

Ben: 18:18

I, I don't know if they were hooked up to electricity. I know they had a phone. But they were, if they weren't fully off the grid, that's the direction they were going.

Sir Gene: 18:26

Mm-hmm. Okay. Got it. And then did do we know anything more about I know Randy didn't give a shit if he, you said if he did something illegal with the shotgun, but did he actually at least get the, the court date appearance thing and just ignore it? Or did he never even see that?

Ben: 18:46

No, he, he, he ignored it. He did ignore it.

Sir Gene: 18:49

Okay.

Ben: 18:50

Yep. He, he, that, that is a hundred percent. You know, again, to, but again, okay. You have a criminal who has violated the N F A and you know, he's ignored his court date.

Sir Gene: 19:02

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 19:03

You're still not gonna go in with snipers. If you're gonna show up with an arrest warrant, you're gonna arrest him, and then you're gonna go from there.

Sir Gene: 19:11

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Cuz it, it, I think that the method here seemed to be disproportionate to the crime.

Ben: 19:22

Absolutely. That's the entire problem.

Sir Gene: 19:25

Yeah. Because, I mean, I think that it's, I I, I have to look it up to be sure, but I think that's one of the lowest felonies you can get. It's not a, it's not a high level felony.

Ben: 19:36

You mean violating the N F A?

Sir Gene: 19:38

Yeah. It's$10,000. That's not a high felony.

Ben: 19:43

Yeah. It's, it's

Sir Gene: 19:44

I mean, that's, that's like I don't want to trivialize it.$10,000 is still$10,000. But know, in a lot of states you'd, you'd have more for smoking pot than that, or distributing pot. Let me, not for smoking, but for distributing pot, which is simply possessing a higher amount of.

Ben: 20:03

Yep. And you know, one of the things that also Mike Glover's account of this made it sound like, you know, this happened very quickly and was over with. First of all, you know, I wanna point out that a Sammy was like 13 to 14 at the time. You know, this happened over an 11 day period. He was hole up, up there for 11 days. Yeah, it's, it's ins it's just insane to me, the way to me, this was presented and glossed over. Yeah.

Sir Gene: 20:40

What when they shot him, what happened? Let, let's gonna go back to that point. So when they originally shot Sammy, so they shot the dog. First

Ben: 20:49

yes. They shot the

Sir Gene: 20:50

one hit dog's dead.

Ben: 20:52

Yes.

Sir Gene: 20:53

How many times did they shoot the kid?

Ben: 20:54

I don't remember how many times he was actually struck, but both officers fired and he was shot in the back. Waffley.

Sir Gene: 21:01

Okay. And then so he fell down.

Ben: 21:04

Correct.

Sir Gene: 21:05

And how far away was that from the house?

Ben: 21:09

I think he was a few hundred yards away at that time. And Randy and the guy who was involved with him, which I'm trying to remember his name right now,

Sir Gene: 21:18

Yeah, I don't remember his name either. It's his friend, right?

Ben: 21:21

Yeah, it was, anyway they tried to see what was going on, but at this point, you know, the FBI is, you know, running up the hill. These guys in Gilli suits are running up the hill. Everybody from the team is collapsing on the house. They're, they are raiding the house. At this point, was the decision that the F b I made not pull back and let's try and talk and see what's going on? No. No. They went full on. We gotta go get him now. Staff decision, we gotta go get this guy. We've made contact, we gotta go. So at that point, they're trying to figure out what's going on. Ran Randy and his friend are and they grab guns cuz they heard gunshots, right? They grabbed guns and you know, they had heard Sammy yell, you killed my fucking dog or you killed my dog. And they started running to go see what was going on. Well, they immediately start taking fire from F B I agents. So guess what they do? Again? The government, by their own, by their own admission in court had not announced themselves yet. They had not announced federal agents' warrant, so they shot back. So at that, they realize that people are coming up the hill, they're getting surrounded. You know, again, he's Green Beret. So he retreats to the house, and as he's retreating to the house, Vicky is standing there holding the door open while she's holding Alicia, while his friend runs in first, Randy's right behind him. Randy takes around in the shoulder, bone fragments and bullet fragments hit his friend. They're both wounded. And then they did they in Mike Glover's words dropped the next person who was Vicki Weaver while she was holding her infant daughter?

Sir Gene: 23:02

Which was his wife. He got quiet again.

Ben: 23:04

Yes, his wife.

Sir Gene: 23:07

Yeah. That's so did, how far, I don't remember this and I don't know if you know, but how far towards Sam did they get?

Ben: 23:15

They, they didn't get very far before they were engaged

Sir Gene: 23:18

Okay.

Ben: 23:19

just enough to see him dead.

Sir Gene: 23:21

did the f

Ben: 23:22

Well see him

Sir Gene: 23:23

body then?

Ben: 23:24

See him down. In fact, one of the questions during the negotiations was, is my boy alive? And they had to tell him, no he wasn't.

Sir Gene: 23:32

So f FBI recovered his body.

Ben: 23:34

correct.

Sir Gene: 23:35

Got it.

Ben: 23:37

Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. F b I didn't recover his body. But Randy went out there and was allowed to get his body and Vicky's at one point in time during the siege

Sir Gene: 23:47

what, what point is there in doing that?

Ben: 23:50

because he wanted to recover his.

Sir Gene: 23:53

No, I get it, but I mean, from the f FBI standpoint,

Ben: 23:58

Allowing him to maneuver and go get his son without the fear of getting shot.

Sir Gene: 24:03

Right. But they should take his son to a morgue so that he's not gonna decompose in the house.

Ben: 24:09

Right. Well, but from, you gotta remember from the FBI standpoint at this point, their, their narrative was that they're, they're in hostage rescue and that the two daughters are hostages. That was their narrative at this point.

Sir Gene: 24:24

That's so fucked up. So they killed the son and the mother, and then they're saying, well, we need to rescue the daughters from the father

Ben: 24:31

Correct.

Sir Gene: 24:32

by probably trying to kill him as well, I would assume.

Ben: 24:36

So

Sir Gene: 24:37

to be their modus operandi at that time.

Ben: 24:39

the, the whole point in this, and I, you know, I, I think we're good on the details and I'll just wrap with glossing over an event like Ruby Ridge or Waco, you know, a lot of people that really does a disservice because there's a lot of people in my generation, I think there's a lot of people in your generation that have no clue about what really happened. And at this point, we know the details, we know that, you know, the F B I was absolutely. Found in the wrong that the, that his three daughters that survived were awarded over a million dollars each. He got a big settlement for the death of his wife and son. You know, there, there, there was a lot there. You know, regardless of what you think of the Weaver's politics, which I'm not a separatist. I live in a town, I, I try to resolve things, but if that's the way they want to go, they want to go live their life, let'em do it, you know?

Sir Gene: 25:40

And just to wrap this thing up, it ended with Randy surrendering.

Ben: 25:45

Correct. Randy after 11 days Bo and Jack talked him down you know, Bo said, Hey man, you're gonna have to go to jail for some of this, but we'll get justice for Vicki and, you know, let the process work. And, you know, Bo and Jack walked up to the house and walked down with him you know, putting their bodies between them and the F B I and atf As far as Randy was concerned.

Sir Gene: 26:12

Yeah. And he did surf type.

Ben: 26:15

Yes. Well, I mean, he committed a.

Sir Gene: 26:18

Yeah. But I'm sure they piled on a bunch of more crimes beyond just the initial charge.

Ben: 26:23

No, not that I know of. In fact his conviction I believe was actually a shortened thing because of some of the circumstances.

Sir Gene: 26:33

Hmm.

Ben: 26:33

fine.$10,000 in 18 months in prison. That's it.

Sir Gene: 26:36

Yep. That's, that's the maximum for that particular infraction. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's,

Ben: 26:43

Yeah. And Kevin Harris, that was the name

Sir Gene: 26:45

That's right. Kevin Harris.

Ben: 26:46

and he was acquitted of all criminal charges. So even though they fired at FBI agents and did everything else, no charges were even broughted

Sir Gene: 26:54

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then the the fbi from that incident learned their lesson and realized they had to kill everybody next time.

Ben: 27:05

which is what they did in Waco.

Sir Gene: 27:07

Yeah, exactly. That's why I brought it up. Yeah. It's like, dead lips don't talk

Ben: 27:13

Yeah. Loose lips don't sink, you know, dead lips don't sh sink ships. Okay.

Sir Gene: 27:18

think ships. Yeah. So it's, it's. it's a gruesome story, and it was a very dark chapter in American history. Right now you know, world's going to hell in the hand basket. We talked about this numerous times in this particular podcast, but that was also a very dark time. That was a time when it really started to feel, and I remember this very vividly, firsthand, when it started to feel like the government was truly against the people, that the that there was a complete disregard for any kinda individual rights. The Clinton administration's first

Ben: 27:52

does. Doesn't it feel like that now given, given that the FBI headquarters is gonna be larger than the

Sir Gene: 27:57

I know. Oh my God, yeah, you saw that.

Ben: 28:00

talk about that for a

Sir Gene: 28:01

they're building the largest military building in the world. There's nothing in China that's bigger than what we're building, and that's gonna be the new headquarters of the fbi. It really kind of illustrates, I think the, the, the fact that they consider the population of the United States prisoners and they need to ramp up the security detail. The FBI is the federal police which should have never been created. We talk about that as well.

Ben: 28:31

Which there is no federal

Sir Gene: 28:32

purview of the federal government, but now they're gonna double down. It is crazy. So yeah. Did you did you have any more info on that or just the stuff I sent you?

Ben: 28:43

No, just what a revolver news and some of the others have had. And, you know, just the fact that they're, you know, they're going to be expanding the headquarters footprint to be that, that, you know, the federal policing power is ex ever expanding is, is just a testament to how far we've drifted from the Constitution. And this is one of the things that I think a lot of people need to realize is the constitution is really not enforced in this country anymore and hasn't been for a long time, but now it's just becoming more and more blatant and, you know, we have to realize that.

Sir Gene: 29:18

Yeah. It, it's you know, without getting overly conspiratorial, I think there's always some element of conspiracy here. It does seem like, like the default position of federal agencies like the F B I, and there's a few others as well, like the atf, which is pushing like plainly unconstitutional changes down their throats right now. That the default state of these agencies. To treat Americans as, as criminals. Yeah. As prisoners in, in, in a jail. It's like you, you give'em as few rights as possible and then you fuck with them to make sure that they don't push back. It's an, and this is maybe a good good time to cross over into the conversation about the ATF

Ben: 30:10

do you wanna do the ATF or another evidence of fucking with people?

Sir Gene: 30:14

Well, let's do the ATF and we'll do the other one. The, the a TF thing is, I think, hidden even mainstream news at this point to where this is, I think this is the first time they've done it, although maybe not, where they have literally gone and Dunna 180 without any single law changes. They've, they've taken the position contrary to the one that they were

Ben: 30:40

to their previous opinion. Yes.

Sir Gene: 30:42

Like they literally had been formally, officially through letters to manufacturers telling'em that. And what we're talking about here, of course, is pistol braces pistol braces, which somewhat visibly look like stocks, but are extremely uncomfortable to use the stocks. It's really more of a visual distinction. And the intended purpose is to strap have another point of contact by strapping a gun to your forearm, and it's meant for heavier pistols. Now, the heavier pistols, very often in rifle calibers that that would make sense. Those would be the heavier pistols. So if you have a pistol that is in the rifle caliber, quite often it looks like the front end of a rifle. Of course, the barrel is much shorter because there's no point in having a pistol with a 16 inch barrel, the, the length of a minimum barrel of a rifle, because at that point you might as well have a fricking rifle. But if, if you have something that has a shorter barrel in a rifle caliber, well it, it's nice to have an additional point of contact there. If, if you're not gonna be using it as a rifle, you're gonna use it as a pistol. And incidentally not that this matters at all, but just for point of reference, a lot of states have different hunting seasons for pistols and rifles. So if you're, if you're taking game down by pistol, you might have two weeks or maybe even a few days ahead of everybody else to go hunting because they recognize that there's a difference in how many how many of the game animals are gonna get taken down by people shooting pistols versus rifles. Same thing with archery. Quite often that season precedes the rifle season. You know, this argument for pistol braces has nothing to do with hunting. It's just a general a general addition to a pistol that the ATF has for shit probably a decade at this point, but certainly long enough had considered to be perfectly legal items and have sent out letters to, cuz manufacturers, you're gonna spend a lot of money

Ben: 32:50

be clear, non NFA items.

Sir Gene: 32:52

Yeah. To, to make these there. There's, you're not gonna manufacture something that's essentially not gonna be purchasable by anyone. You're only gonna manufacture it if people can buy it. And so most manufacturers have letters from the atf after they've sent in the sample advising them that yes, this is a perfectly legal item and it is not an me means restricted. And so what happens? Well, no laws change. No laws are, are signed in place and a, a TF based on our current commander and idiot's position decide that they're going to administratively change the definition to make the pistol brace illegal.

Ben: 33:39

And by the way, this did happen one other time.

Sir Gene: 33:42

Oh, really? Okay. You'll have to talk about that cuz I'm not aware of that. Well, let me just finish the thought. They're gonna make them illegal by, by essentially saying that a pistol with a pistol brace shall now be defined as a short barreled rifle. And short barrelled rifles are controlled with a, through the National Firearms Act, the fe. And you are allowed to have one, but only after filling out appropriate pay paperwork, paying a$200 stamp fee and passing a full background check with fingerprints. And then the control of that item is very limited, meaning you can't take your gun outta state. If you go somewhere you can't bring it with you. And now there, there's some questions about whether you can even let anybody touch the damn thing and have your friends shoot it, which used to be perfectly fine too. Now there there've been reports that contradict each other and whether or not they're allowing people to share their guns or to have a buddy use a gun at the range even. Anyway, what was the item

Ben: 34:49

way around that is, you know, a trust and having

Sir Gene: 34:53

Yeah,

Ben: 34:53

people on the trust.

Sir Gene: 34:55

but we shouldn't have to do that.

Ben: 34:57

A hundred percent.

Sir Gene: 34:58

So what was the other thing you brought up?

Ben: 35:00

Oh, just bump stocks, you know, bump stocks were recategorized the same way. And you know, there were some bump stocks that used springs that the a t f, you know, said, Hey, ear early on that, that that's a machine gun because you have a mechanism that is aiding in the reset of the trigger.

Sir Gene: 35:18

You're super quiet again.

Ben: 35:20

I don't, let me check levels. But anyway, bump stocks was a thing,

Sir Gene: 35:24

Yep. They were a thing. And the, the, there was a court ruling literally within the last couple of weeks that fully reversed the BU stock policy of the ATF

Ben: 35:37

right? Because it was just rewriting an opinion. Same, same way this short barrel rifle opinion is going to be. And to, to me, as soon as you get to a level where where this can be challenged in court, I think it'll be overturned based off of what we saw with the bomb stock ruling. But I'm just saying this is the same playbook.

Sir Gene: 35:56

And, and I'm, I'm kind of thinking, well, there has to be a fucking penalty for them doing this, knowing it's going to get overturned because the, the amount of man hours spent on the ATF side to put this together, added to the number of people affected and the amount of man hours. All of us now have to put in to challenge this ruling or comply with it. Even if you want to comply with it, you're happy to do that. It's still a whole process. You gotta go get fingerprinted, you have to get photos of your gun, you have to file a bunch of paperwork form one, you get us sent it into'em. And their current delay before this event even happened was six months. And there's an estimated between 10 and 40 million pistol braces out there, which means if everybody, and certainly not everyone's gonna do this, but if everybody actually decided to register their guns, then, you know, six months at a slow trickle that they were getting them, somebody did the math and calculated based on the, the speed that's currently handling the form one s at the, at tf, it would take somewhere around 168 years years to process every application. And when asked the at TF was asked in in their FAQ on this topic what is the process for people that have applied but don't get a response within six months? Because the way the rules read right now at the A T F is if you get a response within six months, then follow what the response says. If you don't get a response within six months, it's an automatic no. So that's the default process that they have. Again, this is, these are not laws, these are rules. The ATF makes up for themselves.

Ben: 37:49

Well

Sir Gene: 37:50

If you have 20 million people, which is the average of, of what that range is that, that have these pistol

Ben: 37:59

Al already in their possession

Sir Gene: 38:00

in their positions. They've been using'em. I've got a bunch. Right? It's, it's like everyone's that's bought a pistol of a rifle caliber probably has one of these or several for that matter. And if you, if you now have all these people follow, not the law, follow the ATFs instructions, which are not the law, but nonetheless, the ATF can put you in prison if you don't follow'em. And their process is six months without an answer is an automatic no. You're gonna have 20 million felons that the, that the F B I in their huge building can now go after and start shooting down like a bunch of rabid dogs. Cause that's their process.

Ben: 38:43

and let's be clear. Let's say you go, okay, I'm going to comply and I'm gonna take my pistol brace off of the gun. and I'm gonna hold onto it till I see where this comes out. But it, but it's not on the gun. So the gun is just a pistol at this point. If you have that in the same building and the at TF knocks on your door, what they're gonna do is say you have intent to manufacture because you have the parts there.

Sir Gene: 39:11

Mm-hmm. Yeah, which is another bullshit thing. This whole intent, there's intent is used in way too many legal presences. Like you can't, you can't get the intent of somebody that, that that shouldn't be the an actual charge. It's the same thing for the, the marijuana based on the amount they find right, is if it's a, I don't know what the amount is, but if it's some amount, then all of a sudden it's, oh, intent to distribute.

Ben: 39:40

At the same time, a dealer could be going to someone's house with the exact amount and ordered, and they have the intent to distribute, but not hit with that charge.

Sir Gene: 39:46

Yep. Yeah. Now it, it's, it's just law and amuck. And I think part of it is because the average person is so disinterested in politics that they, they would rather just outsource that to the people that have an interest in it. But unfortunately, most of the people that have an interest in politics have that interest because they wanna make new laws. They like forcing others to do things.

Ben: 40:13

Yeah. And you know, quite frankly, I, I really want the ATF to formally define a what makes up a pistol at this point. Because, you know, some of

Sir Gene: 40:24

I don't want the ATF doing jack shit. I want

Ben: 40:26

I, I, I do, because you know what? I, I want them screwed out of this and I want the n f A to go away. But w what I, what I mean by that is, right now some of the definitions say a weapon that you shoot two-handed is is a rifle. You know, if it has, you know, well, I don't know about you, but I shoot my pistol two-handed. Well, what, well, it's not designed to be shot, it's not designed to be shot two-handed. You know, you're using one grip. Okay. That's not, you know, they, they use a lot of effed up language and offer these interpretations to their effed up language that then they are, you know, being wishy-washy on and cause major problems for people.

Sir Gene: 41:07

Yeah. The, the US military teaches you to use two hands when shooting a pistol. How, how can you define a pistol as something that's meant to be shot with one hand? It's not meant to be shot with one hand.

Ben: 41:19

Well, cuz it only has one grip.

Sir Gene: 41:20

It hasn't been meant to be shot with, sold the most rifles. It hasn't been meant to be shot with one hand. Ever since single action revolvers,

Ben: 41:30

Yep.

Sir Gene: 41:32

that's the only pistol that you would shoot with one hand, cuz you need the other hand. Well, I guess you'd technically, if you have a thumb that's long enough, you may not need the other hand, but generally you'd use the other hand to actually racket, to cock it rather.

Ben: 41:48

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 41:50

So it, that, that's just asinine. It's it is literally people that know that what they're doing. Is incorrect, just trying to bludgeon a square peg into a round hole and then go after anyone that, that dares to point out that there's something wrong here. Now, I would also say if somebody asks you to cut off the barrel of a shotgun, just lend them your, your, you know,

Ben: 42:19

Yeah. And tell them, cut right here. You know?

Sir Gene: 42:23

Yeah. It's like, dude, you know, that's, even if you don't feel like telling'em, Hey, that would be illegal, but you, you, you're all for them doing it. Just stay here. You can borrow my tools.

Ben: 42:34

Right. Well, but then you could be a conspiracist, you know, someone who aided them in doing it

Sir Gene: 42:42

Oh yeah. Yeah. Which again, shouldn't be a thing cuz you know what the hell,

Ben: 42:46

Right.

Sir Gene: 42:47

But but don't do it yourself. Cause that seems to be a popular technique. And what, what is the hard on that they have for short barreled weapons to begin with?

Ben: 42:55

You know this, I don't understand. And, and you know, he, the reason why a short barrelled shotgun gun is actually considered an N f A item is that there was a trial where this was challenged and there was no testimony saying that there was any military use for the firearm yet during World War I, the trench was a shot off shotgun.

Sir Gene: 43:17

Yep. Well, and there is a I think a limited benefit to having a shorter weapon when you're in confined spaces. Right.

Ben: 43:31

Right.

Sir Gene: 43:31

that. But why would that be banned is my point. I was like that there should be zero difference on whether something is a pistol or rifle in between. If, if there's a second Amendment in place here, then any firearm is a firearm that the barrel should not affect it.

Ben: 43:53

you know, for me, I actually like a longer barrel personally. Now I'm not planning on doing any C Q B actions and personally I don't really want a fully automatic, cuz I don't wanna spend the money on the ammo.

Sir Gene: 44:06

Yeah.

Ben: 44:07

I can lay down pretty much as effective suppressing fire with a semi-automatic and a quick trigger finger. So I, I, you know, it's a kind of a, so what sort of thing, but, you know, to say these are more dangerous or anything else? No, they're not the, you know, the tool is

Sir Gene: 44:22

you remember the history of the N F A? Right. How we ended up with the restrictions or the short barrels being part of the nfa?

Ben: 44:29

No, I don't know why short barrels were included

Sir Gene: 44:31

I can tell you that. I'll do a refresher here. So originally when the NFA was being introduced it was in a large part, not fully, but it was motivated by the. The Chicago and other location mob crimes that were happening to where the the mob having gotten rich off of running alcohol illegally had the money to

Ben: 44:56

now, gene, gene, why were they running alcohol illegally? Surely they knew prohibition was a thing and they shouldn't have been doing that.

Sir Gene: 45:04

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But, but my point is, they, they were able to spend more money than police departments to outfit themselves and their, their, I don't know what you, what do you call'em? Their armies, their lieutenants, their whatever.

Ben: 45:19

Well,

Sir Gene: 45:19

they had better weapons.

Ben: 45:20

yeah, in, it wasn't just the mob, even the moonshiners, you know, had better vehicles than, than the revenues and everything else. That's the origins of NASCAR for Christ's sake.

Sir Gene: 45:30

It's yeah, that's exactly right. So when that amendment was debated, the original draft prohibited all pistols, and it included rifles, which were shortened to pistol length. And that is the reason that we have this weird in between category, which is now prohibited because in the final passage, that particular language was removed because they couldn't get Congressman to vote for it. So pistols were put back in. Originally all pistols would've been prohibited. The only thing that Americans would've had had that passed in their initial draft would be rifles. We would be essentially Canada. And all other weapons beyond rifles were prohibited. So because enough Congress critters realized their jobs were at stake here, they couldn't vote for that version. So the pistol was taken out of the N F A, but what wasn't taken out was the language for short barreled rifles and short barreled shotguns. And so now we have this weird, weird cutout in the middle pistol. Okay. Pistol ca, that's caliber in rifle. Okay. Pistol. That shoots shotgun shells. Okay. Full length rifle. Okay. Full length shotgun. Okay. Middle size shotgun. Oh, prohibited.

Ben: 46:58

Which by the way, how is the judge not considered a short barreled shotgun? Oh, because it doesn't have a stock yet. From a defensive weapon standpoint, it's the exact same thing, except less manageable and less safe because you can't aim and manage recoil as well.

Sir Gene: 47:12

exactly. Exactly right. Yeah. A shotgun caliber without a stock. Is just literally disintegrating your wrist bones. It is stupid. I would never shoot, I've shot it a few times, but I would never shoot it. And I don't mean to judge. I mean a 12 gauge. I shot a 12 gauge just with a pistol grip. Man, it is not pleasant. It's bad enough with a shooting a 12 gauge with a stock, it's way worse without a stock and,

Ben: 47:39

and you know, the shotgun pistol has gone back in time for a, a long time. You know, but again, as a defensive weapon, and here's what you gotta ask yourself when they wanna remove pistols, originally, the primary use of a pistol, in fact, the only use of a pistol from a military standpoint is as a defensive weapon.

Sir Gene: 48:01

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Ben: 48:03

Now most crimes are committed with pistols. Okay? That doesn't really matter. It's a defensive weapon.

Sir Gene: 48:10

Yeah.

Ben: 48:11

And you know, reality, when you look at the N F A, when you look at the assault weapons ban, when you look at what Congress has tried to do over the last, over a hundred years now, is to remove the American people, whether that be the mob or citizens in their ability to overpower the government. That is their fear. They don't want people, whatever that group is, whether it's a group of revolutionaries or a group of mobsters, to be able to overpower the government,

Sir Gene: 48:40

Yeah. And let me ask you, what was the whole intent of the Second Amendment to begin?

Ben: 48:45

to allow the people to be able to overpower the go.

Sir Gene: 48:49

Thank you. Exactly. So it's, it shouldn't be a surprise that, that the default position, and the reason I keep saying default is because depending on the administration, depending on the prevailing political wins, the position does change over time, back and forth. It swings back and forth. But, but the default when there's not a strong push for a minimalist view of the Second Amendment or a, of the minimalist view of government. So a strong view of the Second Amendment, when that position is in place, the default is always how do we treat these criminals? A k a American citizens in a way that minimizes their rights? Like that is always where agencies like the F B I and certainly the a TF are trying to move towards. It's a I don't know. It, it's, we've had these conversations so many times, but if the average IQ of this country just moved up by like five points, I feel like you wouldn't need a revolution because everybody would actually not vote for the idiots in charge right now. But given where we are, and given that we can't control the stupidity of the population, It seems like there's a small number of people that are seeing what's actually happening and it, and they're the only ones that are trying to prevent the you know, the, the, the country being turned into a prison.

Ben: 50:21

and that we are losing that every day to a very large extent.

Sir Gene: 50:28

exactly. And it, it's, I mean, at this point, I really don't give a shit if California is a prison. Like, fuck those people. I don't care. Whatever. I'm not even trying to save the whole country. I'm more worried about Texas.

Ben: 50:41

Well, and you know, we, we should talk about this, but, and we really should title this podcast, you know, you know, the, the Revolution or something. I don't know, man,

Sir Gene: 50:55

Oh, so everybody takes a drink? You mean

Ben: 50:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Civil, you know, civil civil something. And since we're on YouTube, I guess I've, I actually should watch what I say so we don't get our guys channel Let's strike

Sir Gene: 51:08

yeah. Well, I, I think we're talking about all, YouTube doesn't care about any of these topics.

Ben: 51:13

Well, one, one of the

Sir Gene: 51:14

can't mention the the companies that have prov provided quote unquote medicines that quote unquote may or may not work.

Ben: 51:24

So one, talk about rubbing in our faces a little more. What do you think of this whole Chinese balloon thing?

Sir Gene: 51:31

Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's probably a good, good time to pivot to that. So what I wasn't aware of, first of all, it didn't look like one to me. I mean, it didn't, didn't have any Chinese characters on it. So I'm like, how's this Chinese? Apparently China has claimed that it was theirs. Okay. Fair enough.

Ben: 51:47

they say

Sir Gene: 51:48

did a little,

Ben: 51:48

civilian research balloon.

Sir Gene: 51:50

right Then I did a little more research, and apparently there are military contractors for the US that, for the last decade have been manufacturing and selling these things.

Ben: 51:56

Yep,

Sir Gene: 51:58

like, hold up, What? How did I miss this whole segment of military tech that I, I just, I, I'm usually a fan of that stuff. I, I do a lot of, like, I check out all the new equipment that comes out at all the military shows, and somehow I had missed this whole segment of the, the balloon tech. It's very fascinating. It's interesting, you know, these things can stay up in the sky for weeks.

Ben: 52:23

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know what's also interesting is when you look at its course and everything, it went right over a lot interesting air force base. You know, maybe this one's performing surveillance, but we have let more than one of these apparently go over our country.

Sir Gene: 52:38

Yeah,

Ben: 52:40

here's the thing, we didn't shoot it down until it was in the Atlantic.

Sir Gene: 52:43

I know. which to me the

Ben: 52:45

the liberals. Ha. Have you seen the liberals all saying, oh, look at Biden, look how strong he is

Sir Gene: 52:50

Yeah. I see. Shot it down. The, the best response to that I think was from the the Balon Bee of course, which once this thing had left the East coast and was over US waters, and then finally got nailed. They put out a, a article saying how in a very decisive move, president Biden took swift action to prevent a Chinese surveillance balloon from getting near Ukraine.

Ben: 53:19

yeah. Y y the be the two best memes that I've seen of this for the Chinese spy balloon, the first has Hunter Biden hanging by a bunch of balloons going across, you know, a Chinese spy balloon. And then the other one was have you ever seen the old cartoon of Winnie the Poo flying on a balloon? Well, Winnie the poo with G's face

Sir Gene: 53:39

xna. And the wi the p That's an illegal topic

Ben: 53:42

Why

Sir Gene: 53:43

cuz China will put you on a list.

Ben: 53:45

Dude, if, if you and I are on our list, you know,

Sir Gene: 53:49

we're only on us list. LA Dude, I have no interest in being on Chinese lists.

Ben: 53:53

Hey, all I can say is if you're not on the lists, you're not doing it right.

Sir Gene: 53:58

Yeah, well that's true. Yeah. It's it is interesting. But

Ben: 54:03

The other thing that I thought was interesting is that since we're allowing these to fly over our country at around 80,000 feet,

Sir Gene: 54:09

Yeah.

Ben: 54:10

80 to a hundred thousand feet, which is prime area for an E M P. Talk about what? Talk about a delivery method. Okay. We've sent it. We've sent it. We've sent it. They haven't shut it down. We've said these are research balloons and so on. Put an EMP on it. Get it over the center of the country,

Sir Gene: 54:27

Well, the thing is, it's not really our air. I mean, it, it depends, it depends on who you are and when you say it, whether it's our air at the 80,000 feet. Right. Because we flew our chip, I'm blanking out name the plane.

Ben: 54:39

SR 71.

Sir Gene: 54:40

Yeah. SR 71 at about 70,000 feet over Russia and China nonstop for decades.

Ben: 54:47

Yes. And they tried to shoot us down for decades because we were in violation of their

Sir Gene: 54:52

that we're not actually flying over their airspace. We're flying above their airspace, is what we've always said.

Ben: 54:59

Yeah. Well that's, that's horseshit.

Sir Gene: 55:02

Yeah. Well, it'll be interesting too because now that more countries, including Russia and China, have the capability to shoot down satellites, if they're gonna start saying, Hey, you fly over our airspace in the satellite, too bad. It's getting shut down.

Ben: 55:18

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 55:19

And I think that's inevitable. I, I mean, I'm just gonna make a prediction because. I think for too long there's been an assumption that the space treaty is gonna be held up by everybody, but I, that only works in the absence of a world war.

Ben: 55:33

Well, and that that also, you know, not to weaponize space.

Sir Gene: 55:39

Yeah, that's the

Ben: 55:40

Star Wars program was intended to weaponize space while we were a signatory to that

Sir Gene: 55:46

Yeah. That's, that's totally true. Yeah. Yeah. And, and the the, the big mistake one of that Russia made in that instance was actually believing the propaganda of where the US was with all this. And instead of and, and really trying to develop their own countermeasures to that and bankrupting the country.

Ben: 56:09

yeah. Which is why Russia today supplies the majority of the world's neon.

Sir Gene: 56:14

Yeah, exactly. N not only also, not only just that but I, I don't know, man. I think that the, the fact that everybody, well, anybody who's paying attention anyway knows that in Ukraine right now, the only communication network that is active is sterling. It's, it's the only way that Americans can send targets to Ukrainians to be able to shoot. If it wasn't for starlink right now, the, this war would've been over probably six months ago.

Ben: 56:47

Well, I don't think it was just starlink. I think it's a lot of things. And, you know, the US if we're gonna go to the Ukraine thing, I don't know if you wanna say any more about the balloon.

Sir Gene: 56:57

Why do you have more to say about the balloon? We can talk about the balloon.

Ben: 57:00

No, I, I I just wanna make sure you didn't. So with the Ukraine thing, now that we've said we're going to send a version of the M one Abrams, but it's gonna be over a year because we have to do a couple things. A, we have to build some with non-classified technology in it, and B we have to develop the logistics bases in Europe for the support of the vehicle.

Sir Gene: 57:22

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 57:22

So I don't think those will ever see the Ukrainian battlefield. I don't think the Ukrainians are gonna be able to outlast that. The item that is scary and is interesting that we have agreed to give them is f sixteens.

Sir Gene: 57:36

Yeah. I, I don't think that'll make any difference,

Ben: 57:38

I don't think it'll make any difference at all, because I think the Russians have a lot of shit that, I mean, even, even the equivalent migs are a very even match for the F 16. The Russians are not flying anything that the F 16 is an overwhelming match for. you know, so you're gonna put a bunch of pilots who are flying a new aircraft that, you know, the F 16 does have some interesting thrust vectoring stuff and everything else, but that's more complicated for the pilot to fly. So the pilots are not going to be well enough trained to be able to take full advantage of the aircraft. So they're inherently gonna be at a disadvantage. So why are we doing this?

Sir Gene: 58:19

Yeah, yeah. That's a good point. Again, I think a lot of it is just virtue signaling. I think sending, sending a limited number of planes like this is a stupid decision because the only thing it's gonna do is create more opportunity for Russian propaganda to demonstrate the ease with which these planes were shut down,

Ben: 58:44

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 58:44

if it wasn't easy. But the propaganda will say that it was super easy.

Ben: 58:48

yeah, why wouldn't they? You know,

Sir Gene: 58:50

They would, that's my point. It's like, that makes no sense. This is why you don't wanna send your, your latest, greatest stuff in. And it same goes for Russia. Like, this is why they're not using calibers, because you don't want to have evidence that your latest, greatest weapons don't work.

Ben: 59:08

you know, there, there are several things here that you had to take into context, and one of the things that you had to look at is the Germans sending some of their tanks and okaying that now n. That is a pretty good piece of machinery that they're sending by all accounts. And it's gonna be interesting to see what impact they have. So they use a conventional diesel engine. There's a lot less maintenance required. You know, they're not as fast as Abrams. There's

Sir Gene: 59:37

I I'm just wondering how long it's gonna be, how long their lifetime is gonna be once they cross over the border. I think it's gonna be in hours.

Ben: 59:44

Well, yeah, if I'm Russia, I'm gonna launch cruise missiles and take'em out as fast as possible.

Sir Gene: 59:49

$80,000 for the first one to blow one up.

Ben: 59:54

Yep.

Sir Gene: 59:56

A lot of people are interested in$80,000

Ben: 59:58

Yeah,

Sir Gene: 1:00:00

I think. And then the joke was, one of the things that somebody else posted, I, I retweeted on, on, on social was a video of a Russian guy laughing his ass off about how at at$80,000, the Ukrainians are gonna blow the damn thing up themselves cuz they want the reward.

Ben: 1:00:18

wouldn't surprise me.

Sir Gene: 1:00:19

It's like it's not gonna last an hour.

Ben: 1:00:22

You know, one of the things about the Ukrainian conflict that I find really interesting, and one of the things that I, I wanted to bring up now that I've learned a little bit more to you is why China and Russia trading is not as dangerous as it seems.

Sir Gene: 1:00:39

Dangerous for who?

Ben: 1:00:41

Listen to me. So right now, Russian oil, because of the Ukrainian sanctions, is being exported. So the Russians don't have a deep enough water port outside of the conflict zone to send oil to take a supertanker, right? So they can't get supertanker into their main two terminals to export oil. So as a result, China has rented several super tankers that they have put together in a flotilla off of Portugal, and they're using shuttle tankers to supply those super tankers. And then super tankers come and they're doing c c transfer, which is extremely dangerous, under the best of conditions and extremely potentially hazardous. There's a high risk of environmental stuff, everything else, but it's happening in international water. So no one

Sir Gene: 1:01:27

So who cares?

Ben: 1:01:28

well, what happens as soon as one of those shuttle tankers is captured,

Sir Gene: 1:01:33

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:01:33

or Portugal says, Hey, this is off our coast. We wanna go take this flotilla.

Sir Gene: 1:01:37

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:01:38

That supply line is then cut. So right now to get oil

Sir Gene: 1:01:41

a declaration of war?

Ben: 1:01:43

right, but right now to get that oil to China,

Sir Gene: 1:01:45

that's a declaration of war. That means that there will be instant response.

Ben: 1:01:49

I understand that, but it you, right now, the oil exports from China are, from Russia to China, is literally going via shuttle tanker to this supply depot, supply depot, to a supertanker that's Z sailing around the horn of Africa, coming back up to China in one of the world's longest supply chains. They do not have the ability to build a pipeline short of several years to a decade directly to China. And the environment to which they have to go through to build that pipeline is extremely hostile environments, you know, the deserts and the mountains and everything else between Russia and China. So that is a whole

Sir Gene: 1:02:31

have, they have pipelines. They're just not high enough capacity.

Ben: 1:02:35

They, they do not have pipelines directly to China.

Sir Gene: 1:02:37

There is, yeah, there are,

Ben: 1:02:39

If they are, they are teeny.

Sir Gene: 1:02:41

It's going through Mongolia.

Ben: 1:02:44

Well, regardless, they can't supply a meaningful amount of oil to China except by sea. That's why they're doing this very expensive route to do it.

Sir Gene: 1:02:50

I, yeah, I think currently today, if they lost the ability to supply China through the sea, that would be an issue. But there are, there are three pipelines going into China and one more being built, and I think we're gonna see a lot more

Ben: 1:03:08

Well, but that takes a long time to build a pipeline.

Sir Gene: 1:03:12

Well, we're a year into the war already. I mean, there's a year of progress that's been made since the war started,

Ben: 1:03:17

Okay, fair enough. But again, China and Russia do not have the blue water navies to protect that shipping is the entire

Sir Gene: 1:03:25

again, it does, it's irrelevant. Navies are irrelevant. The, the more I've read on this topic, the more I, I tend to agree with it because what you're doing is let's, okay, here's the example. Let's say that you and I are in a conflict and you escalate by pulling out a knife. And then my response to that, I don't have a knife, I don't have a navy, but I have this stick of dynamite and we're five feet apart, but down your knife, or I'm gonna like this,

Ben: 1:04:02

Yeah. But if you do that, you're taking yourself out too.

Sir Gene: 1:04:06

but I, I can do that. You can't,

Ben: 1:04:10

Except I have a stick of dynamite in my back pocket

Sir Gene: 1:04:12

but you don't.

Ben: 1:04:13

I do.

Sir Gene: 1:04:15

Well, I mean, you have a stick of that. No, you're right. You have it in your back pocket. Yes, you do. But you're not willing to light it.

Ben: 1:04:22

Okay. So

Sir Gene: 1:04:24

I mean, this is the thing that, that Americans always trump about is like danger of dealing with somebody who is a Not a, not a democracy, right? So the president of China, president for life, Putin, you know, he's, it's, he's, he's a what do you call it?

Ben: 1:04:38

Despot

Sir Gene: 1:04:39

He's a dictator. Right? What's the difference between dictators and then, and

Ben: 1:04:43

I, I would say, I would say that he is a very popular dictator who by all intents and purposes has been elected, but go

Sir Gene: 1:04:51

Sure, sure. But I mean, I'm not saying he's a dictator. I'm saying this is what typically is said.

Ben: 1:04:56

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 1:04:57

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So by the way, I got a message from from the stream for you that you, you need to keep your, your mouth right next to Mike, cuz you keep drifting away.

Ben: 1:05:06

no. Okay. Well, I, I, yeah. I don't think it's that. I think it's the compressor limiter settings on the mic is

Sir Gene: 1:05:12

you'll have to fiddle with that or, or just yeah, I mean, I think there's two issues honestly,

Ben: 1:05:16

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:05:17

to take a break from the Putin conversation. One is that, yeah, we probably need to bump up your compressor limited. The other one is the gate might be set a little bit too high so that when you do take a breath or lean back,

Ben: 1:05:29

Yeah. That, that's quite a possibility. Well, that or the attack isn't quick enough, but We'll, we'll deal with

Sir Gene: 1:05:35

yeah, I always put those on one millisecond for both

Ben: 1:05:37

yeah, and we we're going to play with settings. This is a, a new mic for me, so I apologize guys. But we're doing this test so that we, you know, when, when I'm

Sir Gene: 1:05:48

doing the show when you're traveling. Exactly.

Ben: 1:05:50

And if it absolutely wasn't working today, I could always fall back to the other rig.

Sir Gene: 1:05:54

Yeah. No, I, I I mean it's okay. It's definitely quieter and I, I will fix it in post for the podcast. So it's just really just for the live listeners. So this is more annoying cuz I'm obviously louder than you are.

Ben: 1:06:07

yeah. So it's affecting 34 people right now.

Sir Gene: 1:06:10

Yes. The eight, that's 34 people that probably wouldn't have been listening

Ben: 1:06:13

Dude. That's great. Hey, I, I hope y'all like the conversation enough to subscribe.

Sir Gene: 1:06:19

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. All right, so now somebody, somebody just posted No. Fix it now. Uhhuh

Ben: 1:06:26

Yeah. You don't f with audio settings midstream because you, you, you risk making it much, much worse.

Sir Gene: 1:06:33

Yeah, yeah. Or, or spending the next hour dinky around with it and then resuming and forgetting what the hell you're talking about. I, I know. It's, it's certainly good enough that in post this will be completely not an issue. So people that are listening to the podcast and our conversation about this topic are going, what the hell are they talking about? They both sound exactly the same.

Ben: 1:06:54

Yeah. Anyway, guys, I, I, again apologize, but gene sprung the live streaming on me and I sprung the mic on him.

Sir Gene: 1:07:01

Yeah, exactly. That's how we, that's how we work. We just try and screw with each other. So yeah, the, I, it totally the case that right now there's not enough pipelines between China and Russia to transport the oil and natural gas that Russia would like to sell to China, and China would like to buy from Russia because historically they have not been particularly good friends. And this is something I think the US doesn't understand where a lot of Americans don't, is that China and Russia have had a fairly frey relationships. It's been somewhat adversarial. They share a common border, but and, and used to share a common political system,

Ben: 1:07:42

well kind

Sir Gene: 1:07:43

moved on

Ben: 1:07:44

kind of, the, the U S S R didn't trust MA's version of communism at all. In fact, they. Quite quietly, rightly horrified by his staunch cultural revolution. Now, something similar played out over a longer period of time in the U S S R because of the nature of to totalitarian politics. Right. That's ingrained, but mal went so hard so quick that it

Sir Gene: 1:08:11

Well, it, it, it didn't really in the U S S R what was seen as negative as the products of Western Westernism. If you will, but there was always, during the Soviet era, there was always a very strong pride in the history of accomplishments of Russia way before it ever became socialist or, or

Ben: 1:08:33

right. But what I'm referring to is the, the purges that went through every time the U S S R changed leadership. But what you have to understand is that MAL did much, much more in one go. I mean, MA's order of magnitude is

Sir Gene: 1:08:50

yeah. Mao

Ben: 1:08:51

literally in order of magnitude over anyone

Sir Gene: 1:08:53

It was a cultural revolution because he erased 3000 years of Chinese culture. What we have now are just what was basically smuggled out.

Ben: 1:09:02

Yeah. And, and not only that, he killed a hundred million people while doing.

Sir Gene: 1:09:08

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's crazy numbers. It's numbers that are hard to envision.

Ben: 1:09:15

In fact, you know, when you look at the demographics and you look at what China is going to between Mao's cultural revolution and the one child policy, it very may well have doomed China

Sir Gene: 1:09:29

Yeah. I know that there is a,

Ben: 1:09:32

just from a demographic standpoint.

Sir Gene: 1:09:34

yeah, one, one of the talking points of. but I don't think it'll have as much impact. I think China is adaptable. They've demonstrated that certainly over the last 20 years, and I think that they're going to be just fine. I think Japan got hit a lot harder with that than China did

Ben: 1:09:53

But Japan did adapt and they had a long time of peace to adapt. The Chinese are looking at having to adapt in a much shorter period of time under potential conflict. And you have to combine that with the fact that G has now through his cult of personality, taken on more power than really anyone else in human history.

Sir Gene: 1:10:15

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:10:15

More power is consolidated. Jeezy Ping than anyone else in human history.

Sir Gene: 1:10:20

Yeah. That's why we don't talk about winning the poo.

Ben: 1:10:23

Oh th those memes are so funny. It's just. Oh, I love it. In fact, it, it makes me want to order a shit ton of Winnie the poo dolls to be manufactured in China. And then, you know what? I don't want delivery of that. You know? Y'all sell'em locally.

Sir Gene: 1:10:40

Well, they don't care. You paid for Murray. No, it, it's it is kind of funny and obviously there is some resemblance there, but also I don't know that if pick a cartoon character to make fun of somebody. Like Winnie the Poo is a pretty cool dude. That's not really an insult.

Ben: 1:10:58

Okay. What oh, I, how

Sir Gene: 1:11:01

somebody made a cartoon character, oh Gene, you look like Winnie the Poo. I'm like, fuck yeah,

Ben: 1:11:07

But if you have the personality of

Sir Gene: 1:11:09

I like Honey I have friends that are ja assholes jackasses,

Ben: 1:11:12

jackass,

Sir Gene: 1:11:13

so I mean, yeah. Okay, fine. I'll take it. We need to poop.

Ben: 1:11:17

I wonder who you're thinking is a You are,

Sir Gene: 1:11:18

I don't know. Ben

Ben: 1:11:21

Well, I certainly fit the jackass description. I'll give you that.

Sir Gene: 1:11:24

Yeah, no, it's what, what the hell did we leave things off? I don't remember what before we got interrupted by people saying that our, their audio ain't great.

Ben: 1:11:34

Oh, sorry guys.

Sir Gene: 1:11:35

It'll be better. We'll get better next time we record on stream. And again, part of it is just cuz this would not be an issue at all for the podcast itself. This is just purely a stream related issue,

Ben: 1:11:46

Yep. And we're starting at a different time than we normally would just because I had you know, family here. So we had less time to do our normal checks and everything else. Again, apologies. But inside baseball there.

Sir Gene: 1:11:58

We all good? What else we got? We talked about balloon, we talked about the Ruby Ridge stuff. Talked about the, the pistol brace bullshit that's happening.

Ben: 1:12:09

Yeah. So one of the other topics I wanna bring up in the civil War narrative

Sir Gene: 1:12:15

all right. Talk loud.

Ben: 1:12:16

is a guest that Tim had on on Friday, which you said, Hey, you gotta watch this one. It's a great episode. And indeed it was.

Sir Gene: 1:12:24

To get him for the podcast. I'm trying to review him.

Ben: 1:12:27

that'd be great. I'd love to hear you interview him.

Sir Gene: 1:12:29

yeah, yeah.

Ben: 1:12:30

So why don't you tell everybody about who was on Tim?

Sir Gene: 1:12:33

Well, I can't remember his name cuz I suck at names. But it was the guy that was on Tim Cast I probably look him up. I just don't, I don't wanna do it real time. So if you wanna do that, go for it. But basically this is a guy that's I guess got notoriety fame for being the

Ben: 1:12:49

By the way, the guy's name is Jeff Younger

Sir Gene: 1:12:52

That's right. Yeah. Jeff. That he got notoriety for being the father of a of a kid whose mom is insane.

Ben: 1:13:01

of two fraternal twin little boys.

Sir Gene: 1:13:04

I thought you, he just had one. What?

Ben: 1:13:07

No, he, he, they're, he. There's two twins, two little boys. They're not identical. They're fraternal,

Sir Gene: 1:13:13

Oh, fraternal. Okay.

Ben: 1:13:16

meaning they're twins, but they're not identical.

Sir Gene: 1:13:19

What.

Ben: 1:13:19

Yep.

Sir Gene: 1:13:21

How did I just think it was one kid?

Ben: 1:13:23

Because it's only ever talked about the one kid

Sir Gene: 1:13:26

Oh,

Ben: 1:13:27

and the mom's only trying to transition one of them

Sir Gene: 1:13:30

Really? Okay. I thought I was, they only had the one kid. I didn't realize there's two. Well, does the other kid make any, I mean, is there a point to knowing about the other kid or not?

Ben: 1:13:38

that the mom is only transitioning the one.

Sir Gene: 1:13:42

That was the interesting thing for you. Okay. I didn't realize. But to me, the fact that a mom wants a transition, a kid at two years old shows her certifiable insanity. That is just completely insane. And the, I don't remember who said this. The best comment that I heard about the whole transitioning thing is, is that all children that are prepubescent have a fuzzy understanding of what their sexes gender actually is. They're supposed to. And the thing that fixes that is called puberty because puberty releases the chemicals for the first time into the body that create that distinction, not just physically, but also mentally.

Ben: 1:14:31

well, and it's not just that, you know, like my, my son one of his cousins had a Barbie rv that she's letting him play with because he sees it as this big bus is what he calls it. And he puts his tanks and his airplanes and stuff in the back and kind of rides around on it. He doesn't have any idea that it's a Barbie dollhouse thing. Right. That's not him wanting to play with Barbies. That's not him wanting to be a girl. That's, Hey, it's a cool bus. It can haul my stuff. Great.

Sir Gene: 1:15:03

Yeah.

Ben: 1:15:04

But this, this woman would've said, oh, clearly he's wanting

Sir Gene: 1:15:08

I mean, honestly, the, what the hell's the difference between Barbie and, and action figures?

Ben: 1:15:12

g i Joe. Yeah, exactly.

Sir Gene: 1:15:13

Yeah. And it's, they're serving the same purpose. It's basically taking the kids' imagination, giving'em some tools to play with and usually inspired by cartoons, which is why I'm so anti-d Disney is that those, those kids, those that company has an in, into your kids' underdeveloped brain in a way that it shouldn't. And then playing with whatever's at hand

Ben: 1:15:39

and to be clear, it's not just Disney. It's, it's any cartoon that you let your kids watch, you better pay attention to it.

Sir Gene: 1:15:46

Well, the 1970s Hbar cartoons were pretty fucking good.

Ben: 1:15:50

well, well, okay, but I'm talking about now, so whether that's YouTube even something like Miss Rachel, which have you ever seen anything

Sir Gene: 1:15:58

I don't know what that is.

Ben: 1:15:59

Miss Rachel is a very popular YouTube channel that is geared towards babies and toddlers and preschoolers and, you know, it's songs for littles and it, and you know, they do some basic animation. They sing kids' songs. It's very innocuous until you're sitting there watching the third or fourth episode with your kid in this androgynous they, them person comes on and they. Do anything overt, but I immediately cut that crap out. Okay. Cannot watch this anymore. And the reason why is because it's normalization. It is, it is a biological female that looks like a boy that uses they then pronouns. And there's no to-do made out of it. It's just pure normalization. And that's fine. If you want your kid to watch that, that's fine. I choose to not allow my child to watch it. But the fact is, there is no rating that's going on and there is no disclaimer that's going on. And it is insidious. And parents need to be very careful about handing their kids a tablet, handing their kids a TV and just letting it play and leaving the room. You should never do that. You should know what your kids are watching.

Sir Gene: 1:17:12

Because if you don't, what's the saying? That something will come host roost. What? What the hell's that saying?

Ben: 1:17:20

The chickens will come home to

Sir Gene: 1:17:21

Chickens come home through egg. Exactly. It's like you, you get what you create,

Ben: 1:17:27

yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:17:27

Deserve, but definitely what you create, which is you ignore your kid's education thinking that the Internet's gonna do it for you,

Ben: 1:17:35

are the state.

Sir Gene: 1:17:36

and then you have to live with the consequences.

Ben: 1:17:38

Yes. So good. Taking this back to Jeff Younger. So his wife very early on started basically wanting to transition one of his sons to be a girl. Made him wear girl's clothing, made him, grew his hair out, doing

Sir Gene: 1:17:52

years old, which is fucking insane.

Ben: 1:17:53

And he took objection to that. This led to their divorce, which originally he ended up with 50 50 custody and then she's found some activist law firms and so on to try and push this. And they've pushed it to an extreme point where literally they have removed his children from him. He has supervised visitation only, and she's moved to California, which is a sanctuary state for these sorts of things. And by the way, a state that says that they legally have to provide affirming care,

Sir Gene: 1:18:24

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:18:26

which is just an athema. And, you know, he's really put in a position that I think is horrible. And I was talking this weekend with some people about it, and, you know, I just put myself in his shoes. Now, luckily, my wife would never do anything like this, but if I was in a different relationship and someone did this to me,

Sir Gene: 1:18:43

Yeah.

Ben: 1:18:45

you could not stop me. Hell, or high water would not stop me from going and getting my kid. I, and I would be fleeing to a country without extradition and heaven helped the

Sir Gene: 1:18:55

there, is there any of those

Ben: 1:18:56

my way. I'm.

Sir Gene: 1:18:58

with Assange we realized they don't exist anymore.

Ben: 1:19:00

You know, you wouldn't be so high of a political target to, to do that. But to your point, yeah, you would be risking something, but at the same time, if you're not

Sir Gene: 1:19:10

I don't know,

Ben: 1:19:11

your life for your children, what are you willing to risk it for?

Sir Gene: 1:19:14

I think that, I honestly think that there's only two choices there. One is to do nothing and just let it go. And the other one is to have those kids not have a mother.

Ben: 1:19:28

Well, I wouldn't say that, but, you know,

Sir Gene: 1:19:30

see any other choices. I mean, everything else in between is kinda is what he's done essentially, which is you still end up losing your kids.

Ben: 1:19:38

yeah, and you know, it, I'm not promoting violence here, but what I'd say is,

Sir Gene: 1:19:44

there's no violence here at all.

Ben: 1:19:45

you know, it, it is not, you cannot put a man or anyone, a parent, you cannot take their children away from them in such an egregious manner that is so counter to their beliefs. And he's an orthodox Christian, so he probably goes further in this feeling than I do. And I mean, the fact that this, this sort of thing, I think will lead to states potentially breaking apart because if. A citizen can kidnap someone and go to California and perform medical procedures against their will and the other parents will, which the in court testimony, one of the psychologists court appointing psychologist, said that the son had said, you know, mommy only loves me when I'm a girl.

Sir Gene: 1:20:40

Yeah. I'll repeat that cuz you cut out. Mummy only loves me when I'm a girl.

Ben: 1:20:45

How sick is that?

Sir Gene: 1:20:47

No, she's insane. She's certifiable. Yeah. There's no two

Ben: 1:20:51

fact that that came out in court and she was still allowed to take the kids.

Sir Gene: 1:20:56

Yeah,

Ben: 1:20:57

Mm.

Sir Gene: 1:20:59

I, I, and I've, I've talked about this before. I think what we have is a a system in court that is still based on assumptions that came out of the 1950s and it hasn't been updated to match the current reality, which is that back in the fifties when the mother was the 100% caregiver and the dad was expected to be the one going off to work, my mom stays at home. The kids saw the. You know, at dinnertime, and he'd kiss'em before bed. But for the most part, men were not particularly involved in their kids' lives unless they wanted to be. And that was the cultural norm.

Ben: 1:21:44

Well, and really up until the kids got old enough to maybe go hunting or fishing

Sir Gene: 1:21:48

Yeah. E e

Ben: 1:21:50

with dad on his leisure time.

Sir Gene: 1:21:52

Yeah, exactly. So in that scenario, it would be logical to maintain that the kids stay with the mom 99% of the time with the rare exception, and that the dad just has, you know, partial access to those kids, if any. But what we have today is completely different from that. We have the kids seeing mom just as little as they see dad. There, there's

Ben: 1:22:22

to a daycare somewhere.

Sir Gene: 1:22:24

there. Yeah. There, there is in most families, in including like perfectly healthy, normal families. I'm not talking about people that are kind of fucking the head. I mean like friends of mine, people that have kids. If you ask that kid, do you, do you spend more time with your mom or with your dad? It's gonna be 50 50. It's, it's, and then the answer is generally gonna be with my phone, It's not gonna be with either parent. It's gonna be predominantly with an inanimate device. That has become a surrogate parent to the kids. And we all know the problems that that can cause as well. But, but still then during divorce, looking at through the court system through this lens of 1950s, family, of course you can't tear the kids away from the mom. And if the mom wants to dress the kid up as a girl, it's probably because the mom knows better what the kid wants than the dad. So the dad shouldn't matter in this situation that it's a disconnect. It's a disconnect between the court rulings, the way that they're used to perceiving this, like the courts for this, for parental rights issues. It's one of the last bastions where the courts are extremely sexist across the board. Like sex plays the biggest part in determining parental access to children

Ben: 1:23:43

Well, and something that, something that came out on the i r L podcast that I, Tim cast, i r l, that I didn't realize is that there's very little room for appeal in family court, which is just insane to me.

Sir Gene: 1:23:55

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it is, it is absolutely bad. And I think genuinely, this is not even an issue of like, the dad wants to take the kids away from the mother. It's like the dad wants to prevent the kids from being fucked up for the rest of their lives, which the mom is going to achieve.

Ben: 1:24:14

Well, and you know, he, what? He, he

Sir Gene: 1:24:17

wouldn't be surprised if that kid commits suicide, frankly.

Ben: 1:24:20

well, what, what it comes down to is he has even said that, you know, hey, it. I just don't want this to happen to my son at an early age. If he really is something and wants to do that as an adult, then that's on him. He's still my, he's still my kid. But to do something, and I think this is the entire argument that you and I have had and brought up, is that we aren't, I for one, believe as a free person, you own your body and you should be able to ingest anything and do anything you want to your own body, but you should do it as an adult.

Sir Gene: 1:24:54

yeah, yeah. And I've also said that you know, I won't, don't believe kids are sentient until somewhere in the six to eight years old. So yeah, I, I just think it's a, it's, it's a despicable, disgraceful thing that has happened here. It is a clearly crazy mother and some of the other stuff that he brought up about her past kinda lends credence to that,

Ben: 1:25:18

Mm-hmm.

Sir Gene: 1:25:19

The the drug addiction and everything else that she is literally just, you know, creating a condition where he's forced to see his son. His son's life be turned to total shit and potentially suicide. I think there's, the odds of that kid having suicide are, are tremendously higher than the average American

Ben: 1:25:44

well, the, so the kid's Gen Z, so he is gonna have that anyway. But, you know, hey most medicated generation ever

Sir Gene: 1:25:52

is. It's amazing. The the biggest drug user generation.

Ben: 1:25:55

yeah, I mean, insanity makes the sixties look like nothing. It's just prescriptions, unfortunately.

Sir Gene: 1:26:00

Yeah. Yeah. And it, we've just turned prescriptions into, well, you know what it really, I think is similar to the turn of the 20th century to where opium was not a prescription substance to where there was a lot of kooky doctors out there, let's put it that way.

Ben: 1:26:18

yeah. A lot of elixirs and things like that. Yep.

Sir Gene: 1:26:22

Yep.

Ben: 1:26:23

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:26:23

was a, it was a lot more of a free for all. And also that that precipitated the the, the fact that we ended up with prohibition is because there was so much partaking of the alcohol,

Ben: 1:26:37

well, two

Sir Gene: 1:26:37

lot of people were self-medicating.

Ben: 1:26:39

yes, and the whole Temperance Movement was born out of, you know, the very aggressive over indulgence of the time.

Sir Gene: 1:26:48

Mm-hmm.

Ben: 1:26:49

I mean it in the twenties and, you know, or, or turn in the last century or previous century. You know, it was not uncommon for people. Drink literally all day,

Sir Gene: 1:27:02

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ben: 1:27:04

you know, today you'd be seen as an alcoholic.

Sir Gene: 1:27:07

Well, yeah. That's why they called soda Soft Drinks because that make fun of people that would drink something that isn't hard.

Ben: 1:27:14

Well, and it's funny because some of those soft drinks, you know, Coca-Cola in particular had cocaine in

Sir Gene: 1:27:20

I know, right? It was much more healthy and it probably is more healthy in the dosage of cocaine than it used to have. It, it probably was a much more healthy drink than whiskey.

Ben: 1:27:30

probably. Probably.

Sir Gene: 1:27:32

Yeah. still gave you a little bit of zing. It's crazy stuff. But one other thing in that particular podcast that really jumped out at me is the first time I saw Libby Emon say something stupid.

Ben: 1:27:44

Well then you haven't been paying attention very much.

Sir Gene: 1:27:47

I've generally liked her articles. I think she's one of the main writers for post-millennial.

Ben: 1:27:52

she's the editor-in-chief.

Sir Gene: 1:27:54

Yeah, there you go. And you know, I I, I haven't heard anything that she said that seems to strike me as, what the fuck until when Jeff mentioned that something I've said before as well, that the only way for a man to ensure that, that he. Full control of his kid is to get that kid through a surrogate. And oh my God, that just set off a bomb reaction from her mouth.

Ben: 1:28:21

Well,

Sir Gene: 1:28:22

that's an abomination. That should be illegal. No woman should be made to go through doing something for a man. I was like, whoa. Third wave feminist. All of a sudden, holy shit.

Ben: 1:28:34

Yeah. Beware sheep beware, woo and sheep's clothing, my friend. And what I would say is his response there is absolutely, you know, the mig towel response. And I, personally, I understand where it's coming from as a reaction to that third wave feminism, but I think it's the, it is, it is the wrong answer to the problem.

Sir Gene: 1:28:57

I don't I don't agree with that. I'm, I'm closer to his age and I, I would say that a man who has established a financial how do I phrase this, who's financially set is much more than capable of having a child with a surrogate than giving away half or more of his money and potentially all of his kids' future control to some randoph slut,

Ben: 1:29:23

Yeah. Well, what I would say is that the nuclear fam, the nuclear fam, the family nucleus Yes. Is very important. right? Kids need a mother and a father. They need a mother who is nurturing. They need a mother who is always kind and they need a somewhat of a hard ass father who says, yeah, no, you need to actually do something. You need a balance there. And one person cannot do both sides of that coin, at least not very

Sir Gene: 1:29:52

I said a man who's financially set, and the way that this used to work for families with money in the past is the kids were never brought up by the mothers. They were brought up by the the A pairs. They were brought up by people that are working, essentially. They're, you know, they're paid to be there for the kids with the kids to ensure that they're not misbehaving, but also that their education is going through. And then they're sent off to boarding school after that. So

Ben: 1:30:23

yeah, I, I don't think the aristocrats did a very good job of raising their kids.

Sir Gene: 1:30:29

about that. I think they managed their hand on to power pretty well. The, the this idea that, that just because somebody is of the female sex, that somehow the kids are better off with that person and when she's struggling to make ends meet is I think again, it's, it's looking at the world through 1950s glasses when the current world is not the case.

Ben: 1:30:54

Yeah. And, and to be clear, his wife is not struggling. She is a, you know, a doctor and wealthy

Sir Gene: 1:31:01

no, no. She absolutely in this situation, both of'em have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyers. There. There's no two ways about this particular situation. But I think in general, the, the idea that well, that lib Libby was again, so that's, that was my pain point, is that I think surrogacy is great. It is a time honored profession, if you will. It goes back literally thousands of years. The idea that if, if somebody is capable of conceiving and a child for somebody who's not, and then providing that child to them is very old. And surrogacy in this case is the same thing. It's just that it's not a lack of sperm count that is the problem. It's the fact that the, in this example that he brought up is that the guy doesn't want to risk the future of the kid.

Ben: 1:31:58

Or his

Sir Gene: 1:31:59

wrong with that, and I don't think that somebody, let's put it this way. Somebody that can afford to pay a surrogate$40,000 is likely capable of providing for the child.

Ben: 1:32:13

Yeah. And you know, here, here's the thing though, and the chat pointed this out. The mother is a pediatrician. So what other kids is she doing this to behind parents' Max.

Sir Gene: 1:32:23

Yeah. I mean, this is, it, it's, it is a, it's definitely seems more like a fetish than rational thought to me that the mother is fetishizing having girls over boys.

Ben: 1:32:40

Well, and maybe she really wanted a girl and, or, you know, it could be that she wants to virtue signal and say, oh, look at me. I have the, you know, I, I'm dealing with

Sir Gene: 1:32:50

it's good for her career.

Ben: 1:32:52

e Exactly. Especially now that she's moved to California.

Sir Gene: 1:32:55

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, the other lesson learned here, talking about MTA topic here is that if, if the nature of men's and women's relationships has changed the way that it has, meaning you're not marrying a virgin and you're not staying married forever because divorce is super easy. It's no fault. You could trigger it at any point in time for any reason.

Ben: 1:33:24

Thank you, Reagan.

Sir Gene: 1:33:26

yeah. Because that's the case. And, and by the way, I, I think that it should be no fault. I, I don't think that that's a problem. I don't think that marriage is the purview of the government. I don't think the government ought to be the ones that are officiating marriages, that marriage is a spiritual connection, not a governmental one,

Ben: 1:33:47

Well, the government has no business in marriage. And you know, my views on that and for, for the people in the audience that haven't heard my views on this beforehand I'll, I'll just say I, I take my views on the government having no business in marriage and say you know, when I got married my wife and I had a religious ceremony and then we went to the state and filed a declaration of marriage cuz I would be damned if I was going to ask the state for permission to marry. It's none of their business.

Sir Gene: 1:34:15

Yeah. And I got married at Renaissance Fair by a rooted Pres priest or something, I don't know, whatever middle middle Ages priest. So I, in the end, I think the, the problem lies in that that marriage isn't what it used to be. It's just not the same thing anymore. It still has the name marriage, but it's a different thing these days. And so if we're gonna have marriage be different than. Why should the, the other related things, like who has the kid or, or even just the ability to have, to pay a surrogate to have your kid, why should those things be not reconsidered as well? Why should they be regarded in the same light that they would've been in the fifties? In the fifties? I think the majority opinion was that Libby, what Libby expressed is kind of the 1950s opinion. That it's, it's horrible to imagine that a woman, a woman is carrying somebody else's child because the children are something that's a product of marriage.

Ben: 1:35:19

Yeah. What, what I'd say is that we are really in third wave feminism especially is straining the benefits. Of marriage to men. And that's why you have groups like mgtow and you know, even Eugene forming some of the opinions you have. My thought and my answer to that is, Hey, you know, we, we have to say that this is a mutually beneficial relationship and define those terms and, and what it means and agree upon it. And right now, as a society, we don't. And that is a huge problem.

Sir Gene: 1:35:54

yeah, yeah. It's, it's, you know, for most animals, the father is not involved in the raising of the child. Now, some, some animals,

Ben: 1:36:06

father is also not involved in providing for the mother in the same way,

Sir Gene: 1:36:11

At all. Yeah. I mean, they're, they're, but for some animals they are. I mean, it really kind of depends, right? There's, there's some animals that completely share those tasks. Other animals are like, bang'em and leave them as it were.

Ben: 1:36:25

right.

Sir Gene: 1:36:27

so it, it's like there's arguments for both, but what you can't have is the female acting like it's the banham and leave him situation, but then expecting that the father be providing, and the father if he's interested in having kids, shouldn't be placing his trust in a female that just doesn't want to be with them forever. I mean, that's the trade off in my opinion, right, is, is that if you want to be if you want to have somebody take care and support you, then you need to be there for the duration, for the long haul. Well, you

Ben: 1:37:09

On both sides.

Sir Gene: 1:37:11

well. Yeah. But I mean, the, that providing is usually coming from the one side, not the other side. I'm not wor, I'm a lot less concerned about men getting the minority position here. It's kinda like the, their arguments. Just to shift gears a little bit here, the, the whole argument about That lately has been, we've talked about on the YouTube channel of trafficking and what does it mean and, you know, these creepy guys in their thirties getting to relationships with somebody who's 17 or 18 or 19 years old and it's like, is that trafficking automatically or is it just probably trafficking? It's like you take that situation and you reverse it. Like, when I was 19, I was dating a 28 year old. I was the happiest guy ever. Cuz guys are not like girls. For a guy, it is not trafficking to be dating somebody who's 10 years older than you, who's one and a half times older than you. Like for a guy that it's not a bad thing.

Ben: 1:38:12

Yeah, so I I, when you finish your thought, I have a story on.

Sir Gene: 1:38:16

yeah. Well I was just gonna say back in the, again, going back to the fifties, a lot of fathers brought their boys to whore houses to learn how to have sex so that when they finally get married, they know what they're doing with the girl who's doing it for the first time. Because nothing's worse than two kids that both are having sex for the first time.

Ben: 1:38:39

So when I was in college, I graduated high school at a very young age. I

Sir Gene: 1:38:44

Yeah. You were what, 12

Ben: 1:38:45

16.

Sir Gene: 1:38:46

Uhhuh

Ben: 1:38:47

And I you know, started dating this girl and we drove up on a hill that overlooked the town. Kind of cliche. We were just sitting there talking. We weren't actually even doing anything. But a cop came up and, you know, knocked on the window and, you know, Hey, what's going on here? And asked for our IDs, which, you know, we gave'em at the time, I probably wouldn't of today. But anyway, we gave him the IDs and he said, son, can you step out of the car please? Okay, officer, what's the problem? And he got me away from the vehicle and he said, well, you know, since she's 19 and you're, you're 16, I, I have to ask, are you here of your own free will and volition, And I looked at the officer and I said, sir, did you see the girl in the car? And he said, yes. I, he, I said, well, there's your answer,

Sir Gene: 1:39:35

Exactly. And, and I think for guys that is generally, like, there's not a downside of being with an older woman to a guy that I can think of anyway. When you're that age, I mean, there is, once you start getting older, then there is a downside. But when you're in your teens or early twenties, being with a woman who's a decade older than you is like, this is great. This is, this is actually a benefit. So I don't know. I I, and, but if you flip it, it's like 30 year old guy with. Or even in your scenario, right? So 19 year old guy with a 16 year old girl, it's kinda like, what the fuck's wrong with this guy? What is he like lacking 18 and 19 year old girls that he has to get, go get with someone who's 16?

Ben: 1:40:20

in today's society, he's going to jail.

Sir Gene: 1:40:22

Yeah, most likely. Although I think some states still have some laws that wouldn't make that illegal, but yeah, it is, it is a bit nuts. But a again, my point is first starting with the libertarian premise, that if you own your body, you oughta have the ability to get paid for having a kid for somebody else. So saying women shouldn't be ever,

Ben: 1:40:48

Well, that it should be illegal is just, yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:40:51

which is what she said, she said it should be illegal to be a surrogate. So she's taking all agency away from the woman and putting it in the control of the state. Wow. That is so post-millennial, that's insane

Ben: 1:41:06

Literally

Sir Gene: 1:41:07

that, right? I mean it's, it's like that, that position just seems contrary to what that whole publication is putting out. And it's an irrational position and clearly triggered giving her response by some past incident. And I don't know if she knew somebody or there, somebody in her family, or maybe it was her, but something happened

Ben: 1:41:28

Yeah, it, it was an emotional reaction.

Sir Gene: 1:41:30

Yes, it was a very emotional reaction, and it was a, it was a vial reaction. She, she was visibly just demonstrated a hatred of the concept of having a child for somebody else. Which is, which is very interesting because you're not sup well, you, I, I shouldn't say you're not supposed to, but in my mind, in my rational thinking, you don't have a child out of selfishness. You don't have a child because you want a play thing. You have a child for their benefit. You are sacrificing the rest of your life to be able to provide to that child. You're not having a child. So you have something that you can have in your Instagram photos.

Ben: 1:42:20

Well, and I mean, I, I'll, I'll say this. I think having a child is one of the most arrogant things you can ever do because ultimately if you're a good parent, you want your kids to grow up and be like you, but better than you and that they are your legacy and you want them to go out into the world and be strong and you know how arrogant of you to think that you're going to succeed at that, it's what you do.

Sir Gene: 1:42:49

Well, yeah. I mean arrogant, but again, to me, this was just like a, a, a big a big disappointment in, in Libby, a surprising disappointment in Libby. And I had to compliment Jeff and say, dude, I, you handled that really well. You didn't, you didn't take her bait and jump in and confront her, which is what I would've probably done. Started putting out the hypocrisy in her position, but instead he just let it go and said, well, you know, the problem is that the way laws are right now, this is literally like the only way for a man to ensure that nobody fucks with his kids. That he is the sole caregiver legally to the children.

Ben: 1:43:26

Well, and let's be clear, surrogacy laws vary by state and there is a lot of ambiguity to a lot of them. So it's not a guaranteed thing.

Sir Gene: 1:43:35

Yeah. Yeah. And, and somebody in chat said, my mother always told me never to depend on a man, and I never have. So I, I totally agree with that. I think that every woman needs to have that capability. I think it is important to be able to be self-sufficient for both men and women. And we've seen this, I mean, the best example of this is Rosie the river during World War ii, right? Is that the men go off to fight the war. The women just don't kick back and lounge and watch tv.

Ben: 1:44:09

and say Oho is me. You know what I would say? N everyone should not be dependent upon anyone else. You should want to be an independent individual. But when you get married and you come together, you are becoming dependent upon each other. You're dependent upon as a man, your wife, to help raise the kids, help run the house if you're the one providing, or vice versa. I don't really care what the roles are, but ideally, someone is providing care for the kids while the other is providing care for the family, and

Sir Gene: 1:44:42

You're interdependent. I mean, this is, the bit that that seems to be missing here is that you have financial dependence on one side and you have plenty of other dependents on the other side, even without kids. Let's say, let's even look at a marriage without kids. While you're married as a man you are absolutely,

Ben: 1:45:01

even

Sir Gene: 1:45:01

you're depending on your wife. Well, but okay. That, that's physical stuff. But even beyond that, I'll tell you just from personal experience, what did I depend on My wife for tremendously. I had a, an extremely stressful job. I was mostly dealing with getting lawsuits settled and ensuring that there was contractual obligations were being met. I was constantly dealing with parties that were disagreeing with each other. So one of the things I depend on is fucking insanity. When I go home, I want to have an experience that is. Going to make me feel better, not worse. Right. And, and this is something that that having a spouse versus just being single was absolutely the case. Because if I was not married and I was going through that kinda experience, what am I gonna do when I get home? Well, I'm either going gold at least back then, right? I'm old. So I would go to a bar or I would go, you know, someplace, maybe hang out with some friends I knew, but it was essentially to just burn off some energy, maybe meet at some new girls, something like that. But it wasn't a, it wasn't going to fulfill the same role that coming home to your wife fulfills, like that comfort feeling, like that comfortable conversation that that kind of decompression. And conversely, you know, it's, doesn't have to be in that direction. You could have a, a wife who's a lawyer and a husband who's an artist, and then she's coming home to her husband and she's getting the same kind of relief. There's a benefit even before the kids happen in a marriage, in a, you know, solid

Ben: 1:46:42

in a healthy relationship.

Sir Gene: 1:46:44

Yeah. Healthy relationship.

Ben: 1:46:45

and even if like both p parties are working, if you have a healthy relationship and you come home and you're able to set aside work and focus on your life together, like you said, there's just a comfort in that that isn't met by a girlfriend, isn't met by someone you're not sharing your life fully with. Now, if you have a living girlfriend of five years and you're virtually married, I mean, I would say you're performing the functions of a marriage without putting the title on it. You know, whatever I won't get drawn into that particular semantic game. But yeah. Anyway, man. Anything else you wanna cover today?

Sir Gene: 1:47:25

No, it sounds like you gotta get going here and you wanna wrap up? I'm good.

Ben: 1:47:29

no. I'm just wondering, I think we've beat this topic to death.

Sir Gene: 1:47:32

Yeah,

Ben: 1:47:32

do you wanna talk about chat, G P T.

Sir Gene: 1:47:34

Sure. What do you wanna say, That it's, that it's liberalist.

Ben: 1:47:39

Well, I mean, there's lots of things, but what it comes down to is all we're talking about here is a lot of fancy curve fitting algorithms. We're not talking about creative thought, and people really need to understand, you know, a, and I'm sure comic strip blogger is going to try and roast me on this one, but essentially you have a bunch of Bayesian derivations, and sometimes you'll have multiple derivations layered on top, but all you have is the ability to analyze data in a logical manner. There is no room for creativity. So like the idea that chat g p t is gonna replace a bunch of people's jobs or something like that.

Sir Gene: 1:48:20

totally gonna do that.

Ben: 1:48:22

If your job is pure analysis, then yeah, and it probably should be. But if you, if you're not enough of a creative at work, then yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:48:31

Yeah, I, I, I disagree. I think it's gonna replace a whole bunch of jobs. I think artists as well as writers and, and thankfully it's gonna replace a whole bunch of marketing jobs because the thing that I think a lot of people don't understand, I understand this cuz I've taken years and years of marketing courses, but the thing that most people don't understand is that marketing is not about creativity, which is what the marketing people would like you to think. Marketing is about rules and it is building ads that follow the rules that lead to an action that you're trying to achieve. And the better you are at being able to stay within those rules, the better success you're gonna have at getting people to do what you want. Whether it's asking people for donation on YouTube or whether it's trying to sell a car, it is about following the rules that will guide that person to make the decision you want them to make. And this is a perfect example where chat, G p t or really G P T four is going to be really, I think taking over a lot of jobs.

Ben: 1:49:43

So what I would say is that if your job is derivative at best, then sure your job might be in danger. But if your job is innovative and you are. Doing something different than what has been done before. Current artificial intelligence is not capable of original.

Sir Gene: 1:50:05

It doesn't have to be, it's like Photoshop. It's like saying Photoshop is not capable of original thought. Doesn't matter. The, the amount of marketing that a person can do with Photoshop versus without Photoshop is a huge difference. And that's what chant G P T is. It's a way or any, any really AI tech, whether it's images or text or or music or anything else. Right now, there, there are sources of new music that doesn't have copyrights coming out of ai, which is great cuz you know, for how long have we been bitching about, oh you can't use that, that's, that's a copyright. You have to pay that licensing fee. Well, because some human had to do it. But as soon as we take the humans outta the equation, we have free music and that's awesome. I think a lot of things that people are assuming are creative endeavors really are gonna get replaced by G P T and I, I know some, I'm sure there are people disagree. Maybe you're one of'em. But I just look at all of these things as tools. You know, before we had computers, we had Abacus, well, at least in Asia, we did We didn't have'em in Europe, but we had other means to help us do math faster. And then it's, it's true of everything. Like before we had industrial robots, we had just man operated pneumatic tools. And before that we had just metal wrenches and things. And before that you know, we just had pieces of sticks or sticks that we could use as levers. Like we've always been trying to improve the capabilities of people, and AI is doing exactly that.

Ben: 1:51:43

Yeah, sure. And you know, what I'm saying is it would be very difficult for an AI to even do something, what I would consider as fairly simple as a layered security architecture that had any innovation to it. So could it take a standard and say, okay, I'm gonna apply the standard and replicate it? Sure. Is it going to come up with a new and inventive way of meeting or writing the standard? No.

Sir Gene: 1:52:12

It might, it might, and I'll tell you why, is because in, in optimizing and putting together a variety of previous attempts to do it may. Come up with a, a way of doing it that hadn't been done by humans, but could be. It's not to say that it's doing something that humans couldn't do, but it can do these, these analysis a lot faster internally. And it can come up with some, in fact, you could probably force it to do this by saying put together a standard that isn't any of the previously defined standards, but that achieves this particular purpose.

Ben: 1:52:52

Well, we'll see. I I, I, I think it's a, a lot less impressive than apparently the rest of the world finds it so

Sir Gene: 1:53:01

I don't think it's impressive. I agree with you. I don't think it's impressive. I, I, I, I see it as a tool. Most people don't. Most people see it as fucking magic. It's not magic. I mean, I, I've

Ben: 1:53:12

well. That, that, well, you know what that tells me? Anyone who thinks chat, G p t is magic, has an insufficient understanding of technology.

Sir Gene: 1:53:20

that that's a very good way of phrasing it. Gee, I wonder if anyone's ever said that before. And this is one of the advantages, right? So you read books, voraciously, you're a big reader. I, not so much on my side, I probably, I'm still on the same audio book that I was on six months ago. Cuz I, I typically do other things, but if you look at all the books you've read Putting all of those books into the AI database of reference material, could take a second or two, and then all the other books you haven't read, literally all of them could be added in the next few hours.

Ben: 1:54:00

Yeah.

Sir Gene: 1:54:00

So clearly as a tool, there's a huge advantage here.

Ben: 1:54:04

yeah. But how do you have AI understand, so let, let's take a very simple book, Ayn Rand's Anthem Short 120 page book. How is AI going to interpret that book

Sir Gene: 1:54:18

Well, the AI isn't going to interpret it. The AI will have the synthesis

Ben: 1:54:22

it's, it's going to miss the entire point of the book because the AI does not have a co the decan, because the entire point of that book is the forbidden word. Spoiler alert. For people who haven't read it is I, I individual agency.

Sir Gene: 1:54:39

Yeah. I mean, it's a pretty obvious point. I think you could pick it up in the first three pages, I think But I think that I'm try, I'm trying to pull up the open AI right now, so I can literally type in what you just said. Okay. Summarize the book Anthem by Anne Rand. Let's see what it gives us. This is, that's, you know, dead air is always fun.

Ben: 1:55:09

Yeah, by the

Sir Gene: 1:55:10

Anthem by Anne Rand is a dystopian novel set in the future society where individualism and personal freedoms are suppressed. The story follows the journey, a man named Equality 7 25 21, as he discovers the truth about his society and rebels against the oppressive rule. Through his experiences, ran presents a philosophy of objectivism, which advocates for self-interest, individual rights, and the pursuit of happiness. The Navajo explores themes of freedom, independence, and importance of the individual versus the collective. So that is the summary of Anthem by Rand from ai.

Ben: 1:55:45

which was pulled by from human sources,

Sir Gene: 1:55:49

Of course, all of it is, it has to be, it can't think, it can only read what's been done beforehand,

Ben: 1:55:55

Exactly.

Sir Gene: 1:55:56

but it's not meant to.

Ben: 1:55:58

So my point is I will, I will take, I will, I will take notice of AI when it can read a book and come up with a synopsis That makes sense to me as a human reader without reading other human synopsis.

Sir Gene: 1:56:14

Okay. And I will, I will say that that is, Equivalent to taking a child that lived on the desert island with no other human companionship and doesn't speak a word of any language, and presenting them with the same book and seeing what they come up with. AI is the,

Ben: 1:56:37

Yes, I agree. After you teach them to read.

Sir Gene: 1:56:40

well, that's what you're doing with ai. You're giving him access to the entirety of human thought,

Ben: 1:56:46

Okay. I, I, I think we're playing a semantic game and disagreeing, but that's fine.

Sir Gene: 1:56:50

I don't know, man. I mean, I'm like, the, the definition of what AI is, is simply combining the past output of humans and then synthesizing it into something that is relevant to the question being presented. It's not magic. It's something that any human that is, you know, given enough time, could be able to do as well. It's like what I meant, what I just asked, chat, g p t here to summarize that book is what every 11th grader used to be. I don't know if that's the case anymore. We typically read that book in 11th grade

Ben: 1:57:28

See, and I was gonna totally say it sounded like an eighth grade book report to me,

Sir Gene: 1:57:32

it is, that's exactly right. That's exactly what it is. Yeah.

Ben: 1:57:37

by the way. I have a t-shirt that has equality seven, whatever the number is

Sir Gene: 1:57:42

7, 2, 5, 2, 1. Yep.

Ben: 1:57:44

yeah. It's an OD green T-shirt and then that's printed and letters on it. I love that T-shirt.

Sir Gene: 1:57:49

Nice,

Ben: 1:57:49

Yeah. Very few people get it. I also have a Howard Rourke architect T-shirt. Very few

Sir Gene: 1:57:54

I I bet you do. Well that's good. Start coming up with t-shirt ideas, cuz we're gonna be cranking out more different t-shirt designs here. So

Ben: 1:58:03

you know, man, I gotta say you kinda sprung this on me and I was a little apprehensive of doing the podcast live like this, but at the same time, you know, the little bit of chat interaction we had and everything else I think is a good thing. I, I, it, it, I really do.

Sir Gene: 1:58:17

I started doing this on unrelenting when we first started unrelenting, like a year ago. And the, the only problem

Ben: 1:58:23

yesterday's episode?

Sir Gene: 1:58:25

What? Oh yeah. Yeah. So there, there wasn't one yesterday. Yeah, Darren had some AFib stuff.

Ben: 1:58:30

Ooh. Not good. Hope he's okay.

Sir Gene: 1:58:33

been having some issues. I've been providing my non-medical advice to him, so hopefully he'll be better. I sent him a whole slew of non-prescription things to take.

Ben: 1:58:43

Yeah, yeah. That, that, that. I worry about him, man.

Sir Gene: 1:58:49

Yeah. Well, you know, I worry about everybody,

Ben: 1:58:55

All right, gene.

Sir Gene: 1:58:56

humans are very fragile.

Ben: 1:58:58

Yes. We are

Sir Gene: 1:58:59

We've done this for

Ben: 1:59:00

multitude of ways.

Sir Gene: 1:59:02

Mm-hmm. So yeah, I think I think this is a good place to wrap it up unless you got anything else.

Ben: 1:59:08

No, we're at our two hour mark, so it works.

Sir Gene: 1:59:11

Awesome. All right. Obviously as we've mentioned during the episode to anybody that's listening this on the podcast, this has been slightly different in terms of the conversation cuz you've gotten some behind the scenes how the sausage and made stuff, partly because we're changing things and partly because this is also what's streamed live on YouTube. If you wanna listen to this next episode being streamed live as it's being recorded on YouTube, hopefully with fewer problems. Then simply look at the link in this episode, which will have a link to where to go to watch it on YouTube and where it's being streamed is the Grift Cast I r l YouTube channel. And again, the link will be in the show notes for the podcast. Thanks for listening.

Ben: 1:59:54

Thank y'all.