070 Just Two Good Old Boys

Transcript

Ben: 0:22

Hey Ben, how you doing today?

Gene: 0:25

Gene, about as good as I deserve.

Ben: 0:28

Really? That good, huh?

Gene: 0:29

Uh, sure.

Ben: 0:31

Well, I mean, I just assumed you, you think you deserve it all.

Gene: 0:37

Yeah, I'm not, uh, I'm not an entitled millennial.

Ben: 0:40

Mm, okay.

Gene: 0:43

Uh, no, we've, uh So I finally got to the point with Mo2 that they want me to send it in. But they're not gonna do it under warranty. So, I've gotta send it in to see how much it's gonna cost to fix it. Which I need to do just to get it fixed so I can resell it, if nothing else.

Ben: 1:01

That's true.

Gene: 1:02

And then, uh, the Yeti this morning, I went to use it and I tried it first on my main laptop, which is Linux and the speakers didn't work on Linux, but the mic was working. So I was like, okay, the, you know, whatever. Um, I'll just go back. I'll just go back to Windows. Except. This morning when we were just trying to set up, The headset wasn't working on the Yeti on Windows either, so obviously something's wrong there.

Ben: 1:33

got audio gremlins living in your house or

Gene: 1:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then yesterday I went to cook a steak and my fucking grill, man. My fucking grill. The auger's stuck in my grill. So I gotta take that apart and see what's going on there. So it's just been a comedy of errors

Ben: 1:51

that part of the blower?

Gene: 1:53

No, it's a, it's a pellet grill that I use all the

Ben: 1:56

Oh, so it's an actual auger. So it pushes the pellets.

Gene: 1:59

Correct. Yeah. And, uh, I, I tell you what.

Ben: 2:02

what a pellet grill? Not everybody in Europe's gonna know what the hell that is.

Gene: 2:06

Well, you know, I've got a offset smoker, I've got a charcoal barbecue, I've got a griddle, and I've got this pellet grill. And I kind of bought it on a lark, but it uses usually hardwood pellets, so I use a mesquite and pecan blend of hardwood

Ben: 2:23

smells great.

Gene: 2:24

that are just basically compressed sawdust that get fed in, so it's got electronics on it, and like, I can use my phone to control it if I want. Of course, you know me, I don't typically do that. But what's cool about it is as much as I love building an actual fire in my charcoal grill or my offset smoker, this is just way the fuck easier. it's not 100 percent of the taste, but it's a good 80 90 percent of the taste. And so it's a lot of the taste of cooking over wood. with the convenience of gas most times. So I love it. I, I, I will, after having this for a couple of years, I will probably always have a pellet grill. I think they're great for what they are.

Ben: 3:16

I don't have one, but, uh, most people I know that have one have said the same thing.

Gene: 3:21

Yeah, it's just so convenient and the control that you have over the temperature. So, for instance, when you're using an offset smoker, fire management is a art form, right? It's a skill, and it takes a lot to keep a consistent temperature, and it's a lot of work to do that. Um, the pellet grill eliminates that work, and I mean, you can bake in this thing, dude. It is very precise control. You can do whatever you want. And it's, it's fantastic. I love it. It doesn't produce as much smoke as I would like for, you know, versus a barbecue or, uh, a grill. But, you know, that, that's why I throw a smoke tube in there and add some to it.

Ben: 4:09

I was gonna say, that should depend on the moisture content of the pellets.

Gene: 4:14

Well, the pellets have to have a very low moisture content or they swell and you can have problems. So you, you don't. There's no messing with that moisture content. The pellets are going to produce the smoke they're going to produce. Um, and they burn really efficiently, uh, which can be, you know, part of that problem. So, I just throw a smoke tube with some wood chips in there, low dirty fire, and I'm good.

Ben: 4:42

hmm.

Gene: 4:44

Anyway, I had to do my steak in a pan yesterday. It

Ben: 4:48

no! Not a pan steak!

Gene: 4:50

Yeah, you, you'd have liked it though, because it was basically blued.

Ben: 4:54

Yep, that's what I like, Van, and I, I say that in jest, obviously, because I do cook my steaks on a pan, and, uh That is, uh, it's perfect for the way that I like steaks, which is, um, you know, cold on the inside and nice and, uh, brown on the outside.

Gene: 5:15

Yeah, I um,

Ben: 5:17

Just like the women I date. No, I'm just kidding.

Gene: 5:20

Jesus Christ. Oh man, I, anyway, so. cooking yesterday. I made squash and onions, which is, you know, one of my favorite summertime meals and, uh, uh, then a steak and it came out good. Yeah.

Ben: 5:40

Right, Gid? So, what else is happening in the world?

Gene: 5:45

Oh, ma'am. We've had some interesting politics over the last 24 hours. I don't know if you've been paying attention.

Ben: 5:52

Not really.

Gene: 5:53

So, not only did TimCast, Tim Poole, get to interview RFK and put that out

Ben: 6:01

I saw the ad for it, I didn't watch the episode though.

Gene: 6:04

dude, you need to watch it. It's, uh, RFK comported himself very well. He answered questions about Epstein, CIA, gun control, abortion, everything. I mean, he, they hit the hard topics in a lot of really good ways. It was a very good interview.

Ben: 6:23

Okay.

Gene: 6:24

RFK came off sounding a lot more sane than most people would probably think. And, uh, then we get the announcement today that Monday's episode that's going to be prerecorded is an interview with Trump.

Ben: 6:38

No way.

Gene: 6:39

From the same event. Yep. Tim got

Ben: 6:41

Jesus Christ, man, I've been watching this guy for a decade and I always thought of him as the voice of the millennials, not a dude that's gonna be interviewing the president.

Gene: 6:53

Yup. Yup. Yup. So there you go. I mean, uh, also, I don't know. Did you watch Trump's speech at the Libertarian convention? Oh my goodness. So first of all, it was a good speech. Second of all, the room was split 50 50 between people booing and cheering him.

Ben: 7:11

No way.

Gene: 7:11

Yes. And he even floated the idea of being the Libertarian nominee as well. And if not, that's okay. Just vote for me. like, he made some jokes, like when they were booing him, it was obviously not what he's used to.

Ben: 7:26

Yeah, yeah.

Gene: 7:27

Uh, but, uh, he, he, he got some serious, unanimous applause at times too.

Ben: 7:34

you know, I, I can see that because, uh, as you know, when I ran for, uh, Minnesota House of Representatives, I had the endorsement of both the Libertarian Party and the Republican Party.

Gene: 7:49

well, I mean, he,

Ben: 7:51

it happens.

Gene: 7:53

and you know what, um, what a way for the transition away from the Republican party to

Ben: 8:01

Mm hmm. Mm

Gene: 8:02

if the Libertarians were smart. And we wanted to consolidate and get rid of the Republican Party, which I think most of quote unquote MAGA

Ben: 8:11

Most Republicans want to get rid of the Republican Party, absolutely.

Gene: 8:15

well, except the neocons, if you're a

Ben: 8:17

They're not the most. They're, they're a minority.

Gene: 8:20

but my point is, if Trump has the Republican nomination, which he will, and Trump has Libertarian nomination. Holy crap, would that make that trans I mean, it would legitimize voting Libertarian overnight.

Ben: 8:38

Yeah. Exactly. I agree. Although you do definitely get a lot of pushback is the, there, there is a, a portion of the libertarian party that is very anti populist.

Gene: 8:54

Well, okay, here's the thing with the Libertarian Party. Um, A, there is no Libertarian Party, okay? Um, Libertarians are individualists by nature, and the people who are the party functionaries are those who are willing to do it, and therefore, Not the most libertarian people to begin with, right? So it's this weird confluence of We all think we ought to get together, but none of us really want to do it because we're not collectivists, so it's a problem.

Ben: 9:35

The other problem with libertarian party at probably less zone nowadays than it used to be. But back when I was heavily involved in the nineties, it's just got too many pot smokers. It's got like people that, in my opinion, should have been in the Green Party, not the libertarian party. They're not heavy thinkers. They're not, you know, uh, they're not deep and, uh, and because the libertarian party is live and let live and, uh, get rid of. All laws that have to do with victimless crimes, which certainly drug use falls into that generally. Um, it attracted a lot of people for whom that was the main thing that they really liked about the libertarian party. And, and those guys. are not individualists. And so they were the ones that were more likely to be involved in the actual party activities and planning and everything else. and I think in a lot of ways, and I saw this transition happening from the eighties libertarian party to the nineties libertarian party is, uh, it started becoming more of a joke. Yeah. In the eighties libertarian party. There was still this idea that, that libertarians are the, the politically minded objectivists. They're not just pure philosophers. They're, they want to go in the direction that, uh, objectivism, um,

Gene: 11:18

And you should explain objectivism.

Ben: 11:22

Ah, that's about a three hour conversation.

Gene: 11:25

Alright, well, I'll give the short of it then. Objectivism is basically the philosophy outlined in books and novels, and the basic principle really comes down to the You know, who is John Galt type philosophy, um, you know, that you owe nothing to no one, that everything should be of pure, Pure agreement, so nothing happens without consent, uh, whether economically or governmentally.

Ben: 12:01

Yeah. And, and the, And do you want to explain now how that differs from libertarianism?

Gene: 12:07

Um, they are very similar philosophies in one form or another. I would say that the Objectivists are just way more hardcore purists than the Libertarians.

Ben: 12:20

Yeah, and, and Rand was, did not like the Libertarian Party.

Gene: 12:24

no, because she thought they made too many compromises and basically thought of them as cucks. You know, um, and, and I don't necessarily disagree. I'm more on the objectivist side of things. I, I have always had a philosophy of, you know, uh, I actually think the Fountainhead's a better book personally than, uh, Atlas Shrugged. But I, I've always, you know, more identified with Rourke than anyone else of the, uh, it's not a question of who will let me, it's who will stop me. Right.

Ben: 12:58

Yep. No, that's true. Uh, and then, the one thing I noticed, uh, in college is that the Objectivist group had much hotter looking chicks than that. Then the Libertarian group.

Gene: 13:13

Well, and you know, if a chick's reading her and she's, uh, she's got a kinky

Ben: 13:18

Oh, she's into it. Yeah, for sure.

Gene: 13:20

I mean, you know, I wonder where certain things came from. And then I go back and read, uh, the fountainhead and Atlas shrugged and. Heinlein and all these things again as adult as an adult and the things I didn't realize were influencing me as a child

Ben: 13:38

Uh huh. Yeah. Heinlein additionally has got some of that going on as

Gene: 13:44

For those who don't know in pretty much every one of Rand's writings there's some sort of forceful sex scene that has to take place that by today's standards would 100 percent be considered rape.

Ben: 14:00

Yeah, it's also the number one fantasy of women's romance novels.

Gene: 14:04

Yeah, I gotcha. I gotcha. But we don't think of Ayn Rand as a woman's, uh, erotica, but in some ways it is.

Ben: 14:15

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, yeah, if, if Rand was born, uh, 40 years later, he should be writing scripts for the, uh, uh, you know, the Fifty Shades of Grey.

Gene: 14:30

Yeah, yeah, indeed.

Ben: 14:33

Uh huh. Uh, alright, so Now that we've defined terms, one thing we started last episode was going through and creating the Constitution of the Republic of Texas.

Gene: 14:47

Yeah, we've gotta have some writing to go with this though.

Ben: 14:50

I thought you were gonna put something up on the website.

Gene: 14:53

Yeah, I've gotta have time. But, I, I will, I will endeavor. So, I, I think what we need to do is talk through founding principles, and then discuss best ways to do something about that.

Ben: 15:09

I mean we kind of got into the more practical things like how many Chambers there are and level of representation are in those chambers

Gene: 15:19

Sure, and we can continue down that road, but I think without backing up and saying, okay, what are the defining characteristics, what are the underlying principles that we want to do, Um, you know, that, that may or may not be the best thing. You know, always have that guidestone, touch grass sort of thing.

Ben: 15:38

Sure, sure. Um, so is that a way of saying let's table this until next show?

Gene: 15:49

It wasn't,

Ben: 15:50

That's kind of the impression I'm getting, so I wanted to clarify.

Gene: 15:54

Uh,

Ben: 15:56

And, you know, I was talking to my dad the other day and we were talking about how Part of the decline of this country is, uh, in the vote not being tied to land ownership. And, while I, I generally, uh, think that there's a lot to be said for that, right now, there's a growing percentage of American land that is owned by corporations, and a smaller and smaller percentage of land is owned by individuals.

Gene: 16:29

absolutely.

Ben: 16:30

And I think we're going more toward, and this is actually what I said. It's like, uh, I asked my dad, it's like, did you ever consider over the course of your life that you would see the United States becoming more like the Soviet Union, they're more like China, uh, every year, or like the, there's nothing holding back this country from, um, from reverting back to American principles because the push towards socialism is so great. And he certainly agreed. He said, yeah, I never could have imagined that would be happening. Uh, but he also said, but I also already started seeing signs of this in the eighties, to which point, of course, I had to say, well, it all really started going downhill when the women got the vote, but. Um, you know, we're continuing to live through that now.

Gene: 17:23

Well, there's a great book by, um, shit, who's it by? Michael Hudson. Uh, the New Road to Serfdom. Have you read it?

Ben: 17:32

I've heard of it, I've not read it though.

Gene: 17:33

Uh, yeah. So it's a play on ax, right? The Road to Serfdom, and it, it's very much the corporatist oligarchs taking over and taking everything from us in this vein. So, Mm-Hmm,

Ben: 17:47

There's also a book, a science fiction book on that exact topic called Venus Incorporated,

Gene: 17:53

Mm-Hmm.

Ben: 17:54

which is a fun read if, uh, a long time ago I read that book, but it has a future dystopian Earth as a setting. In which the, um, effectively the corporations were elevated to the point of being the, uh, replacing individuals as the controlling entities. So, you know, you didn't vote. Um, and so there's a kind of a spy thriller aspect to the deals with Mars or sorry with Venus as well. But the, um, the idea of, of, uh, an oligopoly Uh, I think it's been popping up in, in science fiction writing and probably just fiction writing in general since the, the 1940s. But uh, like I feel like we're actually living it. Like a lot of the fiction is feeling less like fiction, more like just slightly off reality.

Gene: 19:10

Well, you know, there's been that meme for a long time of, uh, you know, 1984 was meant to be a warning, not a handbook,

Ben: 19:17

Right. Right.

Gene: 19:18

and, uh, I, I think we've been slipping into that. For a while now.

Ben: 19:28

Well, and it used to be, it's sort of like the clearly defined. These are bad actors like the tobacco lobby, you know, clearly has too much influence over the government. Now it's companies that are very intimately tied with people's daily lives that you can't just, I mean, I guess you could call them evil. I certainly would, but it's not a, it's not as clear cut as like the tobacco lobby, you know, when companies like Apple and Google and, um, Amazon and, uh, I don't know. I mean, any, any company that's worth hundreds of billions or, uh, approaching a trillion, any of these companies exert a tremendous amount of control. Over government

Gene: 20:21

Mm hmm.

Ben: 20:22

to the point where, you know, they can effectively make government, make their competition illegal. And, um, these are not good things. This is not capitalism. This is a very perverse corrupt form of capitalism. Uh,

Gene: 20:43

It's crony capitalism.

Ben: 20:44

it's crony capitalism, but it's really, it's, it's what happens when capitalism is used successfully. To then pull the lap or the ladder up behind you and prevent anybody else from being able to achieve the same thing that you achieved. It's that type of capitalism.

Gene: 21:05

Yeah, and that's, you know, that's a human nature in a way, right? This is why our laws have to protect against it. This is where anti monopoly laws come into play, but I would argue that you can't really have a monopoly without government having interceded already. In a truly free economy, it is not the natural state of a system to devolve into oligopoly or monopoly.

Ben: 21:40

Well, because that there are certain benefits that also come with a certain pressure to, um, well, the innovation comes from below. It, yeah. So if somebody is too successful. Allowing them to get much, much bigger. If part of getting much, much bigger, you lose things like ability to innovate, but also ability to change course and adjust quickly. And so there's always an opportunity for somebody that is smaller than you, uh, to do the things that you're not good at doing. Like you may have. As a huge company, an advantage in, um, you know, the cost of raw resources. Uh, you can have a lot of advantages that come with size, but you, you also start losing advantages that you had when you were smaller, like your ability to, you know, change course and adapt and adjust. Uh, And, uh, so that leaves room. It's like trees, right? A small tree, the taller it gets, the further away from the ground, it starts to leave room underneath its branches for other plants to grow. Where when it was small, it was directly competing with all those plants. And ideally that's the way capitalism works as well. But when you start leveraging the rule of government, when you get big, because you're buying the representatives, um, well now you're artificially preventing capitalism from working by preventing other companies from being able to fill the niches that you used to be in, but no longer can compete effectively with.

Gene: 23:36

Agreed.

Ben: 23:37

So, but it's a hard question because you're it's, it's a process. It's not an event. It's constantly happening. It's just happening to different degrees and it's really easy to move from much like Google used to have the, uh, the motto of do no evil to effectively become one of the most evil companies in the world. Like it didn't happen overnight. It was a slow, gradual transition and growth, and you could argue monopoly status in a lot of things. Um,

Gene: 24:14

That or they were always evil, but

Ben: 24:16

well, I don't, I mean, I don't know. I think it's hard to say that when you have a company that is just built a new faster algorithm for searching the web. Like, how was that evil?

Gene: 24:32

okay. They weren't really a company then. That was a research project. And then it

Ben: 24:38

Mm hmm.

Gene: 24:39

and as it became the company, and they added things in, like, You know, Gmail started off as an internal use project. Um, I was very early on on the Gmail bandwagon

Ben: 24:51

Mm hmm.

Gene: 24:52

you know, the limitations of different things back in the day.

Ben: 24:55

Yeah, because Microsoft Mail sucked.

Gene: 24:57

Well, I mean, my ISP limited me greatly. I think I had, you know, 20 megs and it was a CamusNet IP address, uh, email address that I couldn't take with me. Couldn't do this, couldn't do that. So, you know, Gmail early on had some nifty things that were

Ben: 25:15

Mm hmm.

Gene: 25:16

Um, that said, uh, they pretty immediately started doing things that made me want to move away from it.

Ben: 25:25

Mm hmm.

Gene: 25:26

you know, uh, once you have a, it's like my cell phone number, my cell phone number hasn't changed since 2003. So I still have a Gmail address that I use for a lot of junk and everything else. Everybody's got, you know, my real email address too, so yeah.

Ben: 25:43

I don't.

Gene: 25:45

What do you mean?

Ben: 25:47

Uh, I only have your, uh, Bennett, or doodit named Ben.

Gene: 25:51

Yeah, that forwards to my real email

Ben: 25:53

Oh, okay. All right. Um, yeah. So, there's a, I, I don't think Gmail came out all that early in the grand scheme of things. Cause I. I remember using, starting to use Google in the late nineties. Um, and I don't think Gmail popped up until the mid 2000s.

Gene: 26:13

Early two thousands, but yeah.

Ben: 26:14

Was it early? Okay. Um, but either way, I think a lot of these companies start off innocently enough. And then when they, as part of their innovation, they started discovering things that, uh,

Gene: 26:31

by the way,

Ben: 26:32

2004, okay. Oh, there you go. So, Yeah, I mean, we're both right. That is the mid 2000s, but it's also the early 2000s, technically, and leave it to you to go check. All

Gene: 26:43

Yeah. And it was also in beta before that. That was general availability, so, and I was a beta customer at the

Ben: 26:50

we're, yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, I was probably, I don't remember when I switched, but I had a Yahoo email account before that, which I still have. I think technically I never lost it. I just never log in there, maybe once every couple of years just to maintain it. Uh, and I'm trying to think what I had before that. But yeah, the ISP email was definitely problematic because you constantly ran into bounce messages from friends that you were emailing and hadn't talked to for a while that had changed their ISP. I was like, there's gotta be a better way to just have a fricking email. That's not tied to who is providing your connection.

Gene: 27:37

Well, I mean, people have to realize that this is back in the day where your options were to either, uh, run your own email server or use your ISP and no one was running their own server at home. It was

Ben: 27:51

I was writing mounts or at home.

Gene: 27:53

it, most people were not running their own server at home.

Ben: 27:57

Uh, yeah, that's, think I still thought that the Yahoo mail was a better than. Using my box, but, uh, I started running my own server in 2000, sorry, 1990. I think it was five, 1995. Um, because

Gene: 28:19

OS were you using?

Ben: 28:21

uh, exchange because I,

Gene: 28:23

exchange is a Microsoft product

Ben: 28:26

yeah. And I just passed my exchange certification from Microsoft. And so like, it was, you know, I set up the server to learn about it so I could take the test. And then I kept it, because I already had it set up on the computer. And I, I think I ran that probably up until Gmail. Cause I, I still had it the whole time when I was using Yahoo! Mail as well. Um,

Gene: 28:56

Mm-Hmm.

Ben: 28:56

but yeah, it was, um, I was, I, and I was actually programming out back then. Like I was using the, uh, Exchange server and doing custom.

Gene: 29:05

the first version of Exchange,'cause I had to look this up, which came after Microsoft Mail before that,

Ben: 29:13

Yeah mail sucked.

Gene: 29:14

was version 4.0 in 1996.

Ben: 29:17

That sounds right.

Gene: 29:20

Yeah.

Ben: 29:21

Mm hmm.

Gene: 29:22

Yeah. I, I used to be, uh, I ran exchange servers like crazy back in the day. Um. It, but you know what? It's one of those things that email makes sense to be in the cloud.

Ben: 29:34

Mm hmm. It really

Gene: 29:35

really does. You know, a, it's a postcard anyway, so you don't have the arguments around search and seizure.

Ben: 29:42

all right.

Gene: 29:43

second of all, even with that, you know, you can control the internal encryption keys. You can do lots of things and just maintaining the hardware and the local database and everything else just doesn't make sense anymore, ever.

Ben: 29:56

Yeah, but the the one The thing that was convenient is back when I used to be an MCSE is just getting free access to all the Microsoft server software.

Gene: 30:12

Mm hmm. Yeah,

Ben: 30:13

all those

Gene: 30:13

I I had the developer kit

Ben: 30:15

Yeah. Like legitimately without needing to pirate anything. You just have all the CDs once a year. I get them M M M DSN, MSDN pack. And have all the CDs for everything with like 10 keys for every product.

Gene: 30:31

Yeah, I still have a big binder of that from back in the day. Yeah, it was great. And you, you know, full Visual Studio and everything else.

Ben: 30:43

Yeah. So it was, um, not a, not a hard stretch to run exchange server basically for just me. Um, but, um, yeah, the thing that Gmail did much better was searching and sorting and having that ability to just grow your product. Inbox to infinite size. The idea of you never have to delete anything was very appealing to me.

Gene: 31:15

Yeah, and now I have to pay Google

Ben: 31:18

Uh, same here. I know exactly. I, one time I actually did a mail dump. So I, you were, I don't know if you could still do this, but you were able to have it forward every message that it already had to a different, uh, Email account, like you were moving, basically you were transitioning. And so I just set up another Gmail dumped up to the limit of the free account from the current one, all the oldest messages I had to the other one. And, um, and that freed up a lot of space and then it lasted probably two or three more years. But eventually I got to that point where it was like, Oh yeah, there's no way around this, I got to pay.

Gene: 32:08

Yeah, I mean, I'm at the two terabyte of storage level

Ben: 32:13

Mm hmm.

Gene: 32:13

them. And then I have several terabytes with proton and then

Ben: 32:18

Mm hmm.

Gene: 32:19

you know, I've I'm, I'm locked in on proton. I can't change my plan because I'm on, uh,

Ben: 32:25

Your grandfather didn't.

Gene: 32:26

I'm grandfathered in and, uh, I don't want to lose storage and then, I mean, it's just kind of gets crazy when you start paying all these providers for different things. Yeah,

Ben: 32:36

mean, there's some guys like, uh, I and I internet hosting that I've been paying for for probably about 25 years

Gene: 32:44

yeah, yeah.

Ben: 32:45

and I don't use it like I, I have still, I think a couple of websites that sit there and a couple of domains, uh, but nothing is in use, but. I just, I don't know. Um, I did try a few other domain companies. Like I moved some domains, like my main one to Amazon, but that's fucking expensive.

Gene: 33:11

uh, I use Hover and

Ben: 33:14

I wanted, I wanted to use a big domain, like a big company for domain. Cause I want it to be able to make sure that that domain never expires. Uh, so I could prepay for a hundred years and then just have it sit there. The problem is that I didn't realize with Amazon, at least, is, It's, it's roughly the same price for yearly domain registration, but they charge you for lookups.

Gene: 33:40

Oof.

Ben: 33:41

So I'm paying probably a hundred bucks a year for a domain with Amazon per per domain.

Gene: 33:46

Why?

Ben: 33:47

Well, that's what I mean. It's like, uh, you know, I told you why I put it on there. It's because I want it to be with a big company. Um, that isn't going to go under or get bought by somebody else. But, uh, there's a, a hefty price to pay for doing it that way.

Gene: 34:04

Yeah, I, there's no way I'd pay that. I, I use Hover

Ben: 34:08

I just use it for one domain. For all the other domains, I, I use name. com.

Gene: 34:12

Alright, now, which domain?

Ben: 34:15

Uh, my last name one. Cause it, it's, uh, like, that's where all the official shit goes. So I wanna make sure that that's

Gene: 34:27

Yeah.

Ben: 34:28

up forever.

Gene: 34:29

Well, I, you know, I moved off of other domain registrars a while back to Hover. I mean, this is Shit, five years ago now. And they've been fantastic.

Ben: 34:41

Mm hmm.

Gene: 34:42

They've been great.

Ben: 34:43

So, good rates, I assume? Yeah.

Gene: 34:47

not the most expensive either. Uh, they have the privacy stuff built in, they've got decent DNS settings, I mean, it's, it's a basic, I mean, it's from the two cows guys.

Ben: 35:00

Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. They used to have the two cows domain registration under two cows in the past.

Gene: 35:06

Yeah, 2Cals, you know, used to be the software stuff, and then they started this.

Ben: 35:11

Yeah. Um,

Gene: 35:12

day!

Ben: 35:13

yeah, back in the olden days,

Gene: 35:17

Now, I Squirrel!

Ben: 35:18

all right. I feel like we keep shifting our focus here. Yeah. Pretty much. Oh, the good old days of email before Gmail. Um,

Gene: 35:34

Yeah, I used to run a Zimbra server at home. That was the last email server I ran at home. After that, I was running some other stuff, but yeah. Uh, I I've I never ran Exchange at home. It just was never worth it for me.

Ben: 35:53

well, originally I found the exchange had the best rich web interface for, uh, any of the email packages. So

Gene: 36:03

Oh yeah,

Ben: 36:04

on it.

Gene: 36:05

and that's the other thing, is Gmail was one of the first webmail clients out there. Everything else, you had to have an actual installed piece of software on your computer to use either IMAP or SMTP to download and send messages.

Ben: 36:21

Which the, I still have technically on my Mac, I still connect to Gmail that way. Yeah.

Gene: 36:30

Using IMAP.

Ben: 36:32

yeah, but you know, I don't really use the mail app even though it's on the computer. So I guess I have a backup of all my mail locally. But, uh, yeah, like you're, you're, you're totally right. Back in the day, it was the exception to use a web interface, not the rule. The rule is you use your mail software

Gene: 36:55

Mm hmm.

Ben: 36:57

and, uh, like squirrel mail.

Gene: 36:59

Okay, JCD.

Ben: 37:03

I just say that to make fun of it. I've never, I've never actually run squirrel mail. So I

Gene: 37:08

Uh, I, I, I have an eye for their eye. I vote, I think, I still think Outlook is the best actual email client. Out there. I mean, Outlook is just fantastic, but Outlook and Gmail don't play very well together because it's folders versus tabs. Um, I, I've never been a big fan of Thunderbird since that's rolled out.

Ben: 37:31

yeah, me neither. I've, I've played with it a few times, but I could never really use it. I'm, I'm comfortable with the Apple mail, but that's mostly because that product hadn't been updated really, or changed in about 20 years. Um, You know, it was a very good mail client back when it came out and you know, nothing's changed. It's just now sort of a mediocre mail client, but I'm used to it.

Gene: 37:57

back in my day,

Ben: 37:59

I just, uh, 99 percent of the time I will just use the Gmail or ProtonMail website. ProtonMail, I think they just released their own mail apps now as well.

Gene: 38:12

uh, they've had them for a while for Android and stuff like

Ben: 38:15

No, I know, but for PC. For Windows.

Gene: 38:18

Yeah. And they've got some, they've got their, they're working, I really wish they'd focus on some Linux stuff, but they haven't done that yet.

Ben: 38:26

Mm hmm. You and, uh, one other guy. Heh

Gene: 38:30

yeah, yeah, yeah, well,

Ben: 38:31

heh heh. Hey, you know, it's the year of Linux, this is the official year of Linux.

Gene: 38:38

they did just buy the whole, um, uh, note taking app as well.

Ben: 38:44

Mm. Yeah, I think you mentioned that once. I'm not a big note taker, I just have the AI transcribed conversations, that's easier.

Gene: 38:56

Okay.

Ben: 38:58

But, uh, I get it, some people like to write notes.

Gene: 39:01

And hey, they have actually released the official Linux client now.

Ben: 39:05

Oh, there you go. See, what are you complaining about?

Gene: 39:08

Because it was the last one to get released. I don't know,

Ben: 39:11

Makes sense.

Gene: 39:14

Oh. Uh, did you read the story about ProtonMail and the activists?

Ben: 39:20

Uh, no.

Gene: 39:22

So, some activists were using ProtonMail, and the authorities were able to use the password reset function,

Ben: 39:33

Mm. Mm hmm.

Gene: 39:34

uh, to gain access to the, uh, the account, and everyone was freaking out. Oh, is it time to ditch Proton because of this, that, and the other? And when you actually delved into the story and looked at what happened, it's like, Well, idiot, if you set up an account recovery and you make it really frickin easy to do and you associate it with certain things, then

Ben: 40:00

Technically speaking. Any account recovery that uses an email address is a vector for compromise because the, the federal government or even the state governments in some cases, but certainly the federal government can legally take over domains. So if they grab your domain and then do a email reset, because. That's the domain you use to create the recovery email address. They can do that for pretty much any account. So the only way to be sure is to use A, um, a token based system, something that doesn't allow simply a static address to be your path for recovery.

Gene: 40:48

well, and they also, so I'm looking at the settings, um, the settings now for my account recovery. And you can recover from an email address or a phone number.

Ben: 40:58

Yeah. And can you disable those?

Gene: 41:00

yes you can. And you can do data recovery through a phrase, if you want to do a phrase, or you can do a cryptographic file recovery and things like that. You can even block password resets where password resets cannot be sent to anything. So, you know, this was a, this was a case of people misusing technology, thinking that they were safe while not going through and making sure and securing thing. Yes. Yeah.

Ben: 41:32

bunch of Hollywood movie stars had their, uh, their, their Uh,

Gene: 41:37

I cloud accounts.

Ben: 41:38

yeah, private, like that was not a problem with iCloud. That was a problem with dumb people using easy to guess passwords. And, and then iCloud simply allowed you to pull all that shit up because you were backing your phone up onto iCloud. And, and they had a feature that allows you to not just do a full restore, but you can look at the files that are backed up. So, yeah, if you combine that type of feature with the password 123. Um, it's not going to be hard and, and you look at the, the people, and obviously they were mostly targeting hot looking women, but you look at the people that had stuff leaked, I would not expect any of them to have used complex passwords.

Gene: 42:28

Well, and that that's the thing is if you're using complex passwords, any sort of multi factor and you disable recovery or enable it in such a way, for instance, I, I will flat out say I do not use email or phone recovery. I

Ben: 42:45

Mm hmm.

Gene: 42:46

methods. Uh, I won't say which one, you know, but, um, as long as you have a decent way of doing.

Ben: 42:55

It's a post it note, guys. It's a post it note.

Gene: 42:58

Yeah, yeah, under my keyboard.

Ben: 43:01

huh. That's Ben's recovery method.

Gene: 43:02

Yep. Yep. Exactly, you know, but as long as you're doing some basic hygiene things It's way way harder to get into your accounts

Ben: 43:12

Yeah.

Gene: 43:13

The problem comes in, you can't patch stupid, and you've got a lot of low hanging fruit of people who don't.

Ben: 43:22

Well, and

Gene: 43:23

Did I tell you about the family friend that I was helping with their Yeah, I did, because we were talking about the MX records, remember?

Ben: 43:31

I mean, I've been listening.

Gene: 43:32

Uh, okay. So, a family friend of mine, uh, calls me up freaked out. Someone has gotten into her LinkedIn account and is posting a fake job posting and everything else. And she's not seeing the email to email notifications in her email and all this. And we come to find out someone had redirected the MX record. They gotten into her DNS redirected the MX record so that they were getting the mail first and then they were forwarding it to her

Ben: 44:00

To her, right? You did tell me, yeah. That's

Gene: 44:02

Yeah. Yeah. And anyway, I got her to turn on multi factor and a few other things and we're good now, but it was just one of those things that. The person setting up her domain and website used a crappy password. There wasn't multi factor, they were able to get in, they were able to then intercept her email, do a password reset on, um, LinkedIn that she never saw, and, you know,

Ben: 44:28

That would do it.

Gene: 44:29

yeah, crazy stuff. But actually pretty trivial to do.

Ben: 44:34

Yeah. Yeah, it, it's, um, I, I think that the security of things you don't touch often, like, Domain records, uh, often is going to be a, a weaker path because you're touching it so infrequently, so you may not notice things. And a lot of people I think are using the same password for a decade on those systems.

Gene: 45:04

Well, there's nothing wrong with using the same password for a decade, as long as it's a good password.

Ben: 45:10

Yeah, that's true.

Gene: 45:11

And what I mean by that, and this is going to kind of get in the weeds, but we're already kind of being a little

Ben: 45:16

Yeah, we're definitely in the weeds

Gene: 45:18

but you know, what I'd say is ever since Rainbow Tables came out in the mid

Ben: 45:25

hmm. Mm hmm.

Gene: 45:27

you have this concept of a time memory trade off, okay? So pre computing hashes and storing them to then do a database lookup instead of actually just cracking the password the way we used to. So what this means is breaking a, let's say eight, 10, 12 character password is now fairly trivial. It just takes a lot of storage to store all the possible values, index them, and then for you to go through and do it.

Ben: 45:58

Rainbow tables.

Gene: 45:59

Yes. Rainbow takes, um, now that said the time memory trade off. As long as you're using a, you, you know, I heard, uh, one security expert, I was at a thing at A& M talking to grad students and I actually ended up correcting him because he's like,

Ben: 46:19

Shocker.

Gene: 46:21

don't need any entropy. You just need a long sentence. Okay, true. But doesn't hurt to throw in some entropy in there too, right? So, the longer the password the better because it increases exponentially the number of combinations and the amount of storage required and da da da da da. But, if you limit your character set,

Ben: 46:41

so I, I gotta interrupt for a sec though, but you remember the problem that we had with Microsoft passwords.

Gene: 46:50

Oh yeah, the uh, landman

Ben: 46:52

Uh huh, the

Gene: 46:52

were splitting it,

Ben: 46:53

Yeah, yeah, you create a long ass password, uh, to do that. But they're storing it as seven character increments.

Gene: 47:03

Back in the

Ben: 47:04

Without salting. It's like, oh my god. Yeah,

Gene: 47:12

a single character up to seven, and then after seven it changed it, but yeah. Yeah, the, the Landman stuff, it was just facepalm of stupid implementation, right? But anyway, the, the point is, um, You know, and NIST will back me up on this finally, uh, after lots and lots of lobbying and many years of work, they finally recognize that a, you don't need to change your passwords very often. You just need good passwords and B that you should not impose minimum standards for the passwords because that actually limits the character set. So if I know it has to be a minimum of this, well, anything that's not. That I don't have to do, right? It has to have one number. It has to have this. It has to have that. Okay, well, I can eliminate a lot of possibilities there by you setting your password standards. Um, so yeah.

Ben: 48:10

I think something that would be more beneficial than showing a user, here's the characters you have to use, is to do a, an analysis on whatever password they're typing in, and just display underneath how many hours is it to crack this.

Gene: 48:29

Yeah,

Ben: 48:29

Because people will be way more motivated to come up with randomly garbage than they will using their wife's name. If you show them, this is, oh, this is, this is about, uh, 16 hours to crack.

Gene: 48:41

yeah, but here's the thing, though. If you're talking about time memory trade off, um, already done. So it's not, Yeah,

Ben: 48:52

tool for enforcing better passwords, rather than mandates, it's better just to make the person make a A decision based on risk factor, like you're, if you can show a person here's the current risk that you're accepting and they're okay with it, then it's none of your fucking business on the, well, it kind of is for corporate passwords, obviously, but for private passwords, it's really not right. If, if Jennifer Lawrence wants to put a password, that's her dog's name in her apple. Account then pictures of her using a but plug will end up on the internet.

Gene: 49:32

but you know, a good password could be, I met Gene at a No Agenda meetup in 2018. Whatever it was.

Ben: 49:42

No one's gonna guess that'cause no one remembers that.

Gene: 49:45

Well, hold on, and then, you know, six to eight characters that are random interspersed in there. That's a really strong password, because it's long, it's complex, it's easy to remember. And you add in a little bit of entropy and you're pretty

Ben: 50:01

And a lot of systems have a maximum password length

Gene: 50:05

Yes, I

Ben: 50:06

they're not meant to handle 256 character passwords.

Gene: 50:09

Yeah, I mean, you can keep it down to 30, 40 and your

Ben: 50:14

Mm-Hmm. uh, and most web

Gene: 50:18

always really good.

Ben: 50:20

Most web browsers these days, I think all of them actually, have built in password, uh, leak checkers.

Gene: 50:30

Mm

Ben: 50:30

they'll tell you, hey, your password has been popping up in dark web searches this many times. Um, I, I know the, uh, Edge has that, Chrome has that, the, whatever the fuck I use on my Mac has that. That's about it. Where they, they show you all the passwords that you are using that are part of the, you know, the list sold on dark web effectively. And it is, um, both, uh, irrelevant and shocking at the same time. Because I probably have about 150 accounts that have compromised passwords.

Gene: 51:16

Yeah.

Ben: 51:17

But when I started going through those accounts, these are accounts that I haven't logged into for many, many years and have zero interest in ever logging into again. They're like Bolton board accounts from the 1999

Gene: 51:34

Yeah,

Ben: 51:34

some video

Gene: 51:35

reuse those passwords, you're right.

Ben: 51:38

Right. Right. But I mean, it's like, I don't care if it's compromised because I don't use that account. But to actually log in and change and update all that shit, that would be a pain in the ass.

Gene: 51:52

Well, you know, again, uh, I am a fan of using a decent password manager chain. Again, you, just like Proton, you have to go through and the settings are

Ben: 52:03

Proton's got a password manager they released now. I'm testing it on my phone.

Gene: 52:08

I've been testing it as well. Um, I'm currently a pretty big LastPass user and have been for, uh, for

Ben: 52:16

about LastPass I've just never trusted.

Gene: 52:18

So I used to trust it and then LogMeIn bought it and it's just, eh, at this point. Um, what I've been doing is going in and changing the defaults. So one of the things that I like about LastPass, so for instance, the number of hashes, iterations of hashes, is customizable for your account. So you can go in and set a custom number of hashes, which immediately removes you from any rainbow table. Then you use a good strong password where you cannot reset it. LastPass can't reset it. So if you lose that password, dude, you're screwed. That's what I want. Uh, the only way to recover is to revert to an older database version with an old password, and you can limit the number that they keep, tie it to multi factor. There's a lot of good things there. I'm

Ben: 53:03

hmm.

Gene: 53:04

Now, is there a backdoor in it? It's closed source code, maybe. Um, but again, I'm not trying to protect against nation states here. I'm trying to protect against the average hacker. If a nation state wants me, they got me.

Ben: 53:19

Yeah.

Gene: 53:20

So, anyway, as I'm going to be watching Proton Pass as it comes along, and I'm, like I said, I'm beta testing it and involved in that just because I want to know. Um, yeah, we'll see.

Ben: 53:33

Yeah, and I mean, I think I'm mostly it's psychological But I kind of like the idea of proton being in Switzerland.

Gene: 53:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Switzerland's losing their neutrality.

Ben: 53:46

They kind of have yeah, let's see. That's very true There's really no countries left that are truly Neutral.

Gene: 53:57

Unfortunately. Yeah.

Ben: 54:00

And frankly, most countries ought to be neutral.

Gene: 54:04

Agreed.

Ben: 54:05

So it's a, it's the temptation of the almighty dollar. You, you sell your neutrality. You don't lose neutrality. You sell neutrality. Yeah,

Gene: 54:22

It's a form of international prostitution, that's for sure. So you sent me a link to some spaceships.

Ben: 54:31

yeah, yeah, cause I know everyone gives me shit for space games and uh, this is,

Gene: 54:38

Cheap! They're cheap!

Ben: 54:40

right? Exactly. Super cheap.

Gene: 54:44

Oh my god. Gene, this is just not where I would spend my money.

Ben: 54:49

Mhmm.

Gene: 54:51

You know,

Ben: 54:51

But, but don't you realize these are investments?

Gene: 54:54

uh, There's some of them like 60 bucks, cool. And then, then there's some that are like 800, 900 dollars. Dude, that's a gun. What the hell are you doing?

Ben: 55:04

uh, yeah. Are they not showing you the big ones? They probably aren't.

Gene: 55:08

Uh, I'm just, I clicked the link that you sent me,

Ben: 55:12

Right, right, right. Yeah, it's, uh, I didn't think about that, but yeah, they're, uh,

Gene: 55:17

Sort by, I don't want to sort by relevance, I want to sort by price.

Ben: 55:22

mm-Hmm,

Gene: 55:23

Hey, there's a PTV buggy for 15.

Ben: 55:27

yeah. You can do the buggy.

Gene: 55:29

Yeah, the most expensive ship that they're showing me is 750 bucks.

Ben: 55:32

Okay. All right. So they're not really, uh, showing

Gene: 55:38

They're not serious about it.

Ben: 55:40

Well there, they're, uh, yeah. So I'm gonna send you a screenshot here instead.'cause this is what I see.

Gene: 55:51

Jesus Christ, dude.

Ben: 55:52

Right?

Gene: 55:54

I mean, that's a car

Ben: 55:57

Uh huh. Yeah.

Gene: 55:59

and you play this game, why?

Ben: 56:02

Uh, I get a lot of friends that play it, that I've gotten into the game.

Gene: 56:07

Alright, I hate to sound like your mom, but if all your friends were to jump off a cliff, would you?

Ben: 56:14

I mean, if I was the one who picked the cliff, maybe.

Gene: 56:17

Oh, God damn it, dude.

Ben: 56:19

Uh huh. It's um,

Gene: 56:22

So, for the listeners, some of these ships are like three grand.

Ben: 56:26

yeah, well the most expensive one's 3, 000, yeah. Yeah, there's, there's uh, some expensive ships there. So, yesterday, uh, I finally went and got a tour of the Idris Pea. Uh, or the Idris, which is one of the ships in Star Citizen. And, uh, by the way, there's a Star Citizen code that you can use if you want to get into this game and see what I'm talking about. Um, but, uh, and it's part of the Shonant, but this ship was fricking amazing. It was basically like a, it was right out of Battlestar Galactica. That's the best way of putting it. And. These things are large, man. When you start walking around these ships, you start realizing just how huge they are.

Gene: 57:17

They're virtually large, meaning they're large in gameplay. You know, that's

Ben: 57:21

Yeah, yeah, I mean it's, it's all about a video game, obviously. But the size of these ships, some of them, are pretty damn insane. They're, uh, as big as some old video game maps used to be, like the whole map. Uh, like, uh,

Gene: 57:41

that's just, there needs to be some constraints to make the game fun. It being totally unconstrained doesn't necessarily appeal to me, you know?

Ben: 57:51

yeah, I, I, there's plenty of constraints, believe me. Uh, there's also landing on the planet's surface to go pick up, uh, a motorcycle, and then having your ship be blown up by an NPC, that sucks as well. Um,

Gene: 58:07

Yeah, but you can always get it back though, right?

Ben: 58:11

uh, you can, the bigger the ship, the longer the time it is to get it back.

Gene: 58:19

Why is that?

Ben: 58:20

that's just the way it's programmed. So the, the delay in getting a bigger or delay in getting a ship after it's been blown up is directly related to the size of the ship or the cost of the ship, whichever.

Gene: 58:36

Okay.

Ben: 58:37

It's a game mechanic. Uh,

Gene: 58:40

it. Seems, uh, like an interesting waste of time, I guess.

Ben: 58:47

well, yeah, I mean, you could say that about most entertainment. Um, some people watch movies all day long, and other people play video games, and other people play golf. It's all entertainment.

Gene: 59:01

Some people read, some people do lots of things,

Ben: 59:03

Well, and you can read for entertainment purpose, or you can read for Education

Gene: 59:08

never bought a 3, 000 book, though.

Ben: 59:12

Well, maybe someday you will, Ben.

Gene: 59:15

No, if I do, it'll probably be a first edition signed copy of something that I'll put on a shelf.

Ben: 59:20

Exactly. I think the most expensive book I've bought is a thousand bucks.

Gene: 59:24

Uh, okay.

Ben: 59:27

And it was a gift I bought for somebody. Because I don't do books. But it was a, uh, an autographed copy of a, uh, Teddy Roosevelt book.

Gene: 59:41

Cool.

Ben: 59:43

I guess. Um, but yeah, so I wanted to just share this because right now, this big sale that's happening is connected to a big virtual spaceship show, which is kind of like a car show. If you ever got into one of those in real life,

Gene: 1:00:00

Well, and it happens to be on Memorial Day. It's literally their Memorial Day sale.

Ben: 1:00:04

yeah, good point. And it's the show is a military show. So I'm sure there's some

Gene: 1:00:11

Again.

Ben: 1:00:12

there. Get your spaceship. Uh, it's on sale now during more, uh, I mean, during, uh, Space show of day. Um, so yeah. Uh, but either way, I, since most people make fun of it, they're kind of tease this game and I mean, including plenty of gamers, right? Cause this game's reputation. Is it is known for the fact that unlike most other video games where you pay for the game and then you have all the different assets in the game that in this game you can actually pay real money for individual vehicles.

Gene: 1:00:53

Which is just, uh, you know, and a lot of mobile gaming has gone to this idea as well. That's just

Ben: 1:01:00

absolutely. This company, this, this whole idea of them selling vehicles really came out of their Kickstarter 12 years ago because when they started the company with a Kickstarter. The, the different levels of Kickstarter donations, uh, corresponded to different vehicles that you would get as your starter vehicle in the game. So if you want to give them 50 bucks, you get, you know, some kind of basic vehicle. You want to give them a hundred bucks. You get a bigger vehicle, right, right away as you start the game. So that's where this is an outgrowth of. Is, um, the compensation model, uh, for the vehicles.

Gene: 1:01:49

Okay,

Ben: 1:01:51

And that was very successful and they've never stopped doing it. Now, um, now that we've made fun of this game, do you want to know how much money they've made using this model?

Gene: 1:02:03

uh, hundreds of millions to a billion.

Ben: 1:02:06

Very good. Yeah. It's, uh, I think right now it's at about 800 million.

Gene: 1:02:12

Yeah, there you go.

Ben: 1:02:13

Mm hmm.

Gene: 1:02:14

Well, I mean, hey, if it's a fun game, people enjoy it, and that's what they want to spend their money on, cool. I just. I, I, there, I already have an ex, a couple of expensive hobbies. I don't need another one.

Ben: 1:02:29

Oh, absolutely. No, I agree. I, and I, I've never spent money, well, I, that's, that'd be a lie. I was going to say, I've never spent money on a video game until I started playing this game aside from just buying the game. But technically speaking, there's a few other games that I've spent money on as well.

Gene: 1:02:49

Yeah, what was that laugh for Gene?

Ben: 1:02:51

Well, it was, I'm laughing because I, there's another game called World of Warships, which I've been playing for like 10 years.

Gene: 1:02:58

yeah.

Ben: 1:02:59

And, uh, in that game you can also buy, uh, not spaceships, you could buy World War II military ships.

Gene: 1:03:08

Yeah, yeah, have you tried World of Tanks and all that

Ben: 1:03:12

It's from the same company as World of Tanks.

Gene: 1:03:14

Yeah.

Ben: 1:03:15

It's just, I tried tanks when tanks came out like 15 years ago, and I didn't like it. And then when they came out with the warship game, I like the pace of that a lot more.

Gene: 1:03:28

Okay, cool. Never played either.

Ben: 1:03:31

You ever played World of Tanks? That's kind of surprising.

Gene: 1:03:33

or World of Warships,

Ben: 1:03:35

Yeah. Well, warships I think is a different crowd.

Gene: 1:03:39

did I tell you about the Gaelic kick I've been on? Hmm.

Ben: 1:03:43

No.

Gene: 1:03:44

Uh, so I started doing some Scottish Gaelic lessons.

Ben: 1:03:49

Oh, nice.

Gene: 1:03:50

Yeah, I, uh, I, I'm using Duolingo and then a, a book and

Ben: 1:03:56

Mm hmm.

Gene: 1:03:57

as well.

Ben: 1:03:58

So you're learning how to mispronounce letters. Got it.

Gene: 1:04:01

Oh my goodness, dude! I, that's one thing, that is my biggest complaint on Duolingo is it doesn't walk you through the phonetics. And the phonetics in, um, Scottish Gaelic is interesting, to say the

Ben: 1:04:17

Mm hmm.

Gene: 1:04:18

So, yeah.

Ben: 1:04:20

Yeah. Yeah. Like, spellings of words have nothing to do with the pronunciations.

Gene: 1:04:24

Uh, well, I mean, they have their phonetics, so I don't know that. Uh, it definitely does not match to English phonetics, that is for

Ben: 1:04:33

No, no. If you read, like, the names of streets that are clearly Gaelic streets, the way it's pronounced is not the way you'd read it.

Gene: 1:04:44

Yeah, I mean, I mean, lots of things. I mean, then, you know, you've got some words that are absolutely crossover

Ben: 1:04:51

Mm hmm.

Gene: 1:04:52

Um, like, pepper. Is, you know, really spelled P O B E R.

Ben: 1:04:59

Mm

Gene: 1:04:59

And, uh, you know, it's, there's just some weird things there, but it's, it's an interesting language also. The order of the words depends on some interesting things. Like I haven't learned enough about the Gaelic to, I enjoy languages. I enjoy learning about the grammatical structure. Um, part of the reason why I learn, love Latin as much as I do is because it's a purely conjugative language. So the order doesn't matter as long as you're, you know, there's a preferred order, but as long as you're using the correct words, the sentence structure comes through.

Ben: 1:05:37

Yeah. Russian's the same way.

Gene: 1:05:39

Gaelic, though, what I'm learning so far is, you know, for instance, the word is, um, either may not appear in a sentence or may appear in multiple places depending on the gender and the tone of the sentence. And it may be different words. Like, there's some interesting conjunction stuff going on in Gaelic that I'm finding interesting. So, yeah. Anyway, it's fun. I like languages. And I was on a music kick the other day, and Uh, decided, why do I not, why, why have I never done this? So I'm doing it. There you go.

Ben: 1:06:21

So you're listening to Gaelic music?

Gene: 1:06:24

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Ben: 1:06:26

Mm hmm. Yeah.

Gene: 1:06:28

Scottish and, uh, Irish, you know, which Scotch and Irish Gaelic are different than me being Scottish. I'm learning Scottish.

Ben: 1:06:36

hmm.

Gene: 1:06:38

It's just, you know, one of those things. It's, I, I, I have learned a lot of languages over my life, and I don't know why I never bothered to pick up this one, so now I'm doing it.

Ben: 1:06:48

Well probably cuz it's not useful.

Gene: 1:06:51

I don't know, I think it could be very useful.

Ben: 1:06:54

It might be interesting but I don't think it's useful.

Gene: 1:06:57

Oh, I think it could totally be useful, especially if I can get you and a couple other people to learn it, and no one else fucking speaks it, really.

Ben: 1:07:05

Yeah, so we're gonna be like the the Native American dudes during World War Two?

Gene: 1:07:10

Windtalkers. Yeah.

Ben: 1:07:15

Yeah, when you know, when you know a language that you know for a fact nobody in Germany speaks, that's, that's useful.

Gene: 1:07:22

Well, so, you know, most people don't even know the story, but the Navajo have no written language. Uh, now after World War II, they kind of did a little bit, but the idea was, uh, Germany had the Enigma, uh, code system, which we ended up breaking, but the allies were at a disadvantage because they did not have a code that the Germans couldn't break. So what they did was they took these native Navajo speakers and they basically made them comms officers and gave them some standard translations to use. And the Germans were never able to break that, uh, that, and they were just using language. Now, you know, they would use the word for turtle, for tank, for example, and things like, it's a fascinating story. Um, there's a Nicolas Cage, uh, movie, Windtalkers, or something like that. Uh, you know, it wasn't bad, but it's, it's a fascinating, fascinating story.

Ben: 1:08:23

Yeah, it, it is, uh, I, I thought that was a brilliant idea, whoever came up with it. And specifically using a language that doesn't historically have a written means of communication means that you're not going to find any books relating to

Gene: 1:08:38

Right, you don't have references, so unless you find someone who speaks it It's a problem.

Ben: 1:08:45

exactly. So it's a, it's a good idea. And, uh, that really does go to the heart of having an encryption system that doesn't rely on translation. Cause the problem with Enigma is even if you're using encryption, You're still using German.

Gene: 1:09:08

Yeah.

Ben: 1:09:10

So once the, the, the encryption itself is broken, you, then it's just a matter of translating the German and you're good to go.

Gene: 1:09:18

Yeah, well, I mean, if anyone wants to really speak securely and send messages, use one time

Ben: 1:09:26

time pads.

Gene: 1:09:27

and then the internal language doesn't matter.

Ben: 1:09:31

Yeah. Or just create a new language. And only two people in the world speak it,

Gene: 1:09:35

yeah, but again, that's not Not necessarily perfect,

Ben: 1:09:39

like Gaelic,

Gene: 1:09:40

Okay,

Ben: 1:09:41

because there's about that many people who speak that.

Gene: 1:09:44

mm hmm.

Ben: 1:09:47

So, let's see what else is going on. You know, I, I

Gene: 1:09:54

Have you watched There are two cartoons out that you need to have

Ben: 1:09:59

that's gonna be one of them you're

Gene: 1:10:02

my god, I sent you a reaction of Lizzo reacting to one of the jokes in there. It is so fucking good. There's a body positivity drug, spoiler alert, called Lizzo. No!

Ben: 1:10:20

Uh, oh, did you watch the, uh, Jeremy, Jeremy's Razor commercial?

Gene: 1:10:25

Yeah, the woke one,

Ben: 1:10:26

The woke one? That was pretty good.

Gene: 1:10:28

Have you watched Mr. Bertram yet? I haven't.

Ben: 1:10:30

No.

Gene: 1:10:32

So that's their new cartoon. That's, uh,

Ben: 1:10:35

Yeah, ironically, I subscribe to the channel, but I have not watched the cartoon.

Gene: 1:10:40

it's okay. It it, you know, again, if you don't

Ben: 1:10:43

who's the main dude doing that?

Gene: 1:10:45

Oh my god, what's his name?

Ben: 1:10:47

It's an actor.

Gene: 1:10:48

Yeah, big podcaster. Um,

Ben: 1:10:52

Oh, Adam Carolla.

Gene: 1:10:53

yeah, Adam Carolla. I was about to say, um, The Man Show.

Ben: 1:10:56

Mm hmm.

Gene: 1:10:57

Which, by the way, I miss that.

Ben: 1:11:00

Do you think you would see it in the same light? Because I think watching the man show as a college student is very different.

Gene: 1:11:06

Um, I, I, I just miss living in a society where that could be put on mainstream television and be

Ben: 1:11:13

Well, you probably didn't see the clip I forwarded, or I, I posted on X of, um, Saturday Night Live. The famous clip of Dan Aykroyd in his playing a reporter and I can't remember the, the actress's name that was the other reporter, but she's kind of playing a feminist type character and Dan Aykroyd starts to reply back to her, Jane, you ignorant slut. And it's a fairly famous clip. Um, but it's, you know, it came out in probably. 81 maybe? And yeah, I can't say that these days.

Gene: 1:11:59

Uh, you can, you're just gonna get canceled. But, you know, the man show ended with women jumping on trampolines.

Ben: 1:12:07

right. Unlike Carolla, who I think, uh, I mean, he's still a liberal. He's just a more, more middle of the road liberal. I kind of like Joe Rogan, but the other guy just went hyper, uh, woke,

Gene: 1:12:26

Yeah. Do you know what

Ben: 1:12:27

was on the Man Show.

Gene: 1:12:28

do you know what trampolines used to be called?

Ben: 1:12:30

What's up?

Gene: 1:12:31

Well before your mom jumped on'em? They were called trampolines.

Ben: 1:12:36

Heh, heh, heh. That's good.

Gene: 1:12:38

Sorry.

Ben: 1:12:39

Man, you're full of dad jokes here, yeah.

Gene: 1:12:41

Hey, you know what, uh, I also, you know, Mo.

Ben: 1:12:44

sent me with the, the, uh, little conversation there, daughter. Uh huh.

Gene: 1:12:53

It's all good, man. I'm getting older. What can I say? Uh

Ben: 1:12:57

Um, yeah, yeah. So you also sent a little meme thing of Willy Wonka.

Gene: 1:13:05

huh.

Ben: 1:13:06

And

Gene: 1:13:07

Talking about democracy.

Ben: 1:13:08

right, but I think the best one is that literally is that sentiment is, uh, from, uh, the Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh, where you know, talks about what democracy is, but the people are retarded.

Gene: 1:13:26

Yes.

Ben: 1:13:29

I love that clip, man. Say what you will about a cult leader, but he had a good sense of humor. He actually was a smart dude. He, he had a.

Gene: 1:13:41

Well, you kind of have to be to get that kind of

Ben: 1:13:44

to be a

Gene: 1:13:44

there has to be some level of intelligence there, right?

Ben: 1:13:48

yeah. Um, like he was a very, very strong anti communist. And he had to leave India because of it.

Gene: 1:13:57

Was he? Maybe. Counter revolutionary, are we? Is, is Phil going down the same road?

Ben: 1:14:02

Uh, Phil.

Gene: 1:14:06

Avanti, lead singer of All That

Ben: 1:14:08

Oh, Phil

Gene: 1:14:09

Cass all the time.

Ben: 1:14:10

Phil blocked me, man. I don't know what the fuck I said, but, but Phil blocked me.

Gene: 1:14:16

That's hilarious.

Ben: 1:14:17

Uh huh. Yeah, I mean, it, like, it's the opposite of what I like to do is get people with big followings to actually, like, retweet something I, I put on X. But, fuckin Phil blocks me. What the fuck, man? He must not be a very good musician. That's, that's what I conclude. I don't know! I have no idea!

Gene: 1:14:40

Dude, he's in a heavy metal band. I, like, I, I like Phil's politics, but it, I cannot

Ben: 1:14:47

Stand the music. Yeah.

Gene: 1:14:48

it's like the screamo stuff.

Ben: 1:14:51

I'm right there with you. That's not fuckin music.

Gene: 1:14:54

Well, I Lyrics matter to me and when I can't understand or hear any melody in the lyrics. I don't get it

Ben: 1:15:01

Yeah. You know what else matters? Melody,

Gene: 1:15:04

well, I mean, yeah, but some of the,

Ben: 1:15:07

and, and I'm sorry, when you have three chords for the entire song, that that's just not enough.

Gene: 1:15:13

I, I tend to agree, you know. Ha

Ben: 1:15:17

Mm-Hmm. yes. But then we'll just, we'll just wander off on our own and, and you can play your violin and I'll play my accordion.

Gene: 1:15:26

ha ha

Ben: 1:15:27

Nerd Alert.

Gene: 1:15:28

Yeah, and everyone will be like, what the fuck is that? Uh huh,

Ben: 1:15:34

Uh, hey, that could be a good, uh, Gaelic, uh, band combo right there.

Gene: 1:15:39

huh. We'll, we'll call it, what the fuck is that?

Ben: 1:15:44

Yeah, and then you can sing in Gaelic, so it'd be

Gene: 1:15:46

Oh no, I'm not singing

Ben: 1:15:48

Oh yeah, yeah, there you go. Sing in Gaelic.

Gene: 1:15:51

I used to be in choir till my balls dropped and then, you know, the baritone voice came out and no one wants to hear that.

Ben: 1:15:59

Um, really? I don't know, man. Hear the baritone voice? Or the balls dropping? Uh,

Gene: 1:16:07

baritone voice, so, first of all, what ended that was just, you know, when your voice starts breaking and you lose control. So I was just done with that. But then afterwards, singing in a baritone, baritones cannot do solos. You, you need to be in a chorus of some kind.

Ben: 1:16:24

I see. Mm.

Gene: 1:16:26

you

Ben: 1:16:26

We could sing a falsetto.

Gene: 1:16:28

hmm.

Ben: 1:16:30

heh. Uh, yeah. It's um, I've always liked the, the deeper voices, like Leonard Cohen's voice, especially like, later in life, after all those cigarettes. I

Gene: 1:16:46

Sounded like he gargled motor oil most of his life.

Ben: 1:16:49

exactly. I, I kind of like that. That's um, It just has kind of a dark shadow, you know. Mm hmm. Regardless of what the actual words are, the lyrics are, the, uh, the overtones just are dark.

Gene: 1:17:07

So I know you didn't listen to Trump's speech, but let's talk about it for a couple seconds and then we can do the, uh, constitution stuff to wrap up if you want.

Ben: 1:17:17

Sure.

Gene: 1:17:18

Um, so the funny thing is that Trump went through and he, A, it was a pretty decent speech and he really talked about a lot of policy stuff that he plans on doing. Um,

Ben: 1:17:35

Now, was this a speech at the

Gene: 1:17:38

libertarian, yes, yes, yes. And so it was about an hour speech and it was way less shaggy dog story. It was really more of an appeal to the libertarians. Um, which is not his typical thing. And you've got to remember, he's used to being at a rally of supporters where he can just say anything and he's going to get applause, cheers, and everything else.

Ben: 1:17:59

hmm.

Gene: 1:18:00

Right, and here he is making an appeal, a fairly well reasoned logical appeal, and doing it to booze and everything, and he doesn't miss a beat. Like, it was fairly impressive. He misspoke a couple of times, but like a tenth on a word and then corrected himself. Um, and it was interesting to see that he was thrown off maybe that little bit, you know, or maybe he's getting older, who knows. But regardless, he made a fairly well reasoned appeal. And, you know, he, he talked about pardons and who, who needs to be pardoned, including Ross and everything else. Um, there, there, there were just several

Ben: 1:18:44

that's one of the things that I think a lot of people, including me, were very irked by, is he didn't pardon Assange.

Gene: 1:18:51

and he addressed some of that. Um, and, and talked, I think, pretty freely about it. The other thing is he made a promise and we'll see if he keeps it. Uh, but about where libertarians will sit in his cabinet and government positions. And I think, again, I think it would be a really smart move for the Libertarian Party to nominate Trump,

Ben: 1:19:16

hmm.

Gene: 1:19:17

because no one else's, uh, their options are going to win anything. In fact, he even called them out and made a joke when they booed him after he said that. He said, that's fine. Go on winning 3 percent every four years.

Ben: 1:19:30

a dick!

Gene: 1:19:32

I mean, The guy, the guy has some balls.

Ben: 1:19:35

what a dick.

Gene: 1:19:36

The guy, I mean, the fact that he was just wha boom. There you go. You know, I'm going to smack you over the head with it, you know? I thought it was brilliant. I thought it was very much worth watching.

Ben: 1:19:49

I'll definitely check

Gene: 1:19:50

I mean, can you imagine standing up at the Libertarian National Convention saying, hey, you know, it'd be great if y'all would nominate me. I think this would be good for you and me and everybody. Well, okay, fine. Go do this for every three years, you know, four years. Oh my god.

Ben: 1:20:06

No, that's a good comeback. Obviously not scripted. Mm hmm.

Gene: 1:20:09

Oh, yeah. And his, but that's, that's the distinction between him and Biden and him and Kennedy

Ben: 1:20:17

Mm hmm.

Gene: 1:20:18

that he, he's quick. There, there's no, there's no debating that Trump has a quick wit.

Ben: 1:20:25

he does. Yeah

Gene: 1:20:30

pretty good, but it was. It was a prompter speech, right? And which, okay, fine. But it was a prompter speech. So, yeah,

Ben: 1:20:38

That's what his family is famous for

Gene: 1:20:41

yes. In many ways, you know, that and getting offed by the CIA.

Ben: 1:20:47

That well, you know, he's still got a little bit of time for that

Gene: 1:20:51

you know, the, the conflicting theories about, was it the CIA or the mob

Ben: 1:20:56

Hmm

Gene: 1:20:57

on who killed

Ben: 1:20:58

any difference?

Gene: 1:21:00

hold on, you know, the, you know, the differing theories, right?

Ben: 1:21:03

Sure. Yeah

Gene: 1:21:05

Some people say, Oh, no, it was the Chicago mob. Some people say, no, it was the CIA. Well, he flat out said that it was the CIA working with the Chicago Mob and named names.

Ben: 1:21:16

mm hmm

Gene: 1:21:18

So I don't know, right?

Ben: 1:21:20

I mean, that's probably true.

Gene: 1:21:23

I think it is, and I think that, uh, you know, the fact that he doesn't have Secret Service protection is a farce.

Ben: 1:21:30

It is insane. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure he can afford his own protection, but still that is crazy. Like all the third world country shit, the banana Republic shit that we've made fun of for as long as I've been alive in this country, we are doing right now. And by we, I mean, Biden trying to put one of his competitors in prison And hoping the other competitor of his gets killed. I mean, what the fuck, man?

Gene: 1:22:01

Speaking of, the Bongino, Poole, Glenn Beck, a lot of people have really gone off on this Mar a Lago thing. Have you been paying attention to that?

Ben: 1:22:13

I mean, you're talking about the land value or something new?

Gene: 1:22:17

No, uh, so it came out MTG said Biden wanted Trump killed because it came out that when they did the FBI raid they had, uh, authorization for lethal force and so on. People are missing the fucking point here. This is standard procedure. If, and you know what, the, the, the former president, if they're actually going to serve a search warrant, shouldn't be treated any different than anyone else. But I agree. Hey, maybe cops, when they're giving a search warrant, shouldn't be authorized to use lethal force. Maybe it should only be in response to lethal force being used against them.

Ben: 1:22:53

Absolutely.

Gene: 1:22:54

You know, that Air Force officer we saw shot in Florida, where he opens the door holding a gun and the cop just kills him. It's not okay. It isn't.

Ben: 1:23:05

Cops

Gene: 1:23:06

People should be outraged at this from this being SOP, not that it was used against Trump.

Ben: 1:23:12

Yeah. Yep. I agree. Mm hmm. But cops go very quickly from, Hey, we have the hardest job of defending the public to, uh, anything that makes them scared, they're going to use a gun on.

Gene: 1:23:28

Yep.

Ben: 1:23:29

I mean, it's, it's that flip of a switch happens in a nanosecond and it's a, there is no restraint whatsoever with the police. Um, Not that you have a whole lot of restraint with the FBI or the ATF either. But, uh, but yeah, it's, and I get it. It's hard, but we have, we have more rules about engagement with our troops overseas. than we do with our police departments in the country. Our, if, if our troops do what cops routinely do in this country, they get court martialed and dishonorably discharged.

Gene: 1:24:15

Agreed.

Ben: 1:24:16

That's just a fact. But we let police get away with it every fucking day.

Gene: 1:24:24

Well, you know, we have to remove We have to remove, remove immunity and we have to, um, really hold people accountable. Uh, RFK came up with a pretty decent idea. Um, and I, I, my first response to his idea that he proposed the other day at the Libertarian Convention, I wanted to reject it because sounded like, okay, we're going to give people, More inherent power. But what he said was enable police chiefs, give them the power, but also hold them accountable. And I liked what he said. Basically, if there's, you know, questionable circumstances, shit happens, you know, make it a three strike rule. And as soon as three incidents happen under your watch, you're out. You can never be in law enforcement again in your life.

Ben: 1:25:21

So Chicago will just never have a police chief. Okay.

Gene: 1:25:24

Okay. That's okay. I, when I started thinking through the actual consequences of this, That might not be a bad answer

Ben: 1:25:33

Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Gene: 1:25:35

because if you actually tie the consequences to an individual and say, hey, you know, you're, you're taking over this department. If there are three incidents that we find, you know, uh, that happen here, you're out. You can never be in law enforcement again.

Ben: 1:25:51

Mm hmm.

Gene: 1:25:52

Okay. Cool. Now give them the ability to go in and clean it up and knock some heads around inside their department and say, Hey, no, knock this out.

Ben: 1:26:01

Mm hmm.

Gene: 1:26:02

That's fine. Um, the other thing he brought up that I thought was kind of interesting was, uh, the misrepresentation. So have you heard about, oh, RFK Jr. wants to give reparations to black

Ben: 1:26:16

Yeah.

Gene: 1:26:17

That's not what he said, and he clarified this, and said it fairly well. Uh, there was a program where black farmers were not being given, uh, the same monies that the white farmers were being given. They won in court, and Congress, to this day, has still never appropriated the money to pay them back what they won in court.

Ben: 1:26:39

How long ago is this?

Gene: 1:26:41

Uh, I think he said the 60s. So what he's saying is, we just need to close that out and actually pay them back.

Ben: 1:26:50

That opens up a big can of worms though, because

Gene: 1:26:54

It

Ben: 1:26:54

all the Native American tribes that were never actually fulfilled on their bargains would have a, a case to point to.

Gene: 1:27:01

Mm hmm. You know what? Uh, again, I'm in the mood of just burn this motherfucker all the way down, so I'm okay with that.

Ben: 1:27:09

Uh huh. Uh, yeah, no, that, that makes sense. Um, I think I, I have an opinion, which is somewhat, I think, controversial. It's historically accurate, which is, I think that the people that can hold the land, Are the ones that get to have it. And what I mean is, uh, if you're a country, you better be prepared to fight for your land

Gene: 1:27:45

hmm.

Ben: 1:27:45

or you're going to lose it and that's okay. And, um, and I think that's true in a smaller context as well. And, and this is my, my sort of argument with the whole, well, America was stolen land from native Americans. It wasn't stolen. It was a victory prize. There were wars against Native American tribes, and the Native Americans lost. And hence, the land was taken by the people that won. This is not stealing. You didn't come in and just change the names and the deed. In order to steal something. No, when you fight for something and you risk death and the blood of your population, um, you can win or you could lose, but the outcome is going to determine what happens. Who the, the, the victor gets the spoils. This has been the case in all of human history. And in as much as the completely useless organizations like the United nations might pretend otherwise, it's still the case.

Gene: 1:28:57

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:28:59

And so, yeah, I think, um, uh, you said let it burn. I think that there's very much a good chance that we're going to watch it burn because the number of people willing to hold onto it or fight for it is not sufficient.

Gene: 1:29:18

Well, I, you know, I, I love My country, but I'm not willing to defend this government,

Ben: 1:29:25

Mm hmm,

Gene: 1:29:27

and I, I, I want to defend my family

Ben: 1:29:31

and I don't think this government is willing to defend you either. So it's mutual.

Gene: 1:29:35

Yeah, exactly. They'd rather persecute and, you know, come against me.

Ben: 1:29:41

Yeah,

Gene: 1:29:42

Um, uh, last thing, and then we really do need to do the Constitution stuff if we're gonna do it, but, uh, the Tavor upgrade on

Ben: 1:29:50

you were raving about it. You actually called me in the middle of the day. You're like, hey This thing's great.

Gene: 1:29:55

Yeah, I never thought putting a butt pad on a gun would make such a big fucking difference, but it did. Um, and the main complaint I have on the Tavor, at least the Tavor 7, uh, butt pad, is it's very slick, right? It's a piece of checkered metal, but it, if you're wearing any sort of clothing, it's, it's gonna slide up. Eh, whatever. it's, it's not a, it's not something that it can slide around on you,

Ben: 1:30:27

right? It's not rubberized. Mm-Hmm.

Gene: 1:30:30

you know, it's got a curve to it. I wish it didn't have a curve, but it fits well enough on my shoulder and where I need it to be that it's not, it's, it's, it's a good upgrade. Um, it does add some length of pull to the gun. So that may or may not be a problem for you. It's not for me. Um, I actually like a longer length of pull, so that makes, You know, it's, it's not a bad thing for me. And the other really cool thing is since it's a made in the USA part versus a imported part.

Ben: 1:30:59

saying you're removing a part

Gene: 1:31:02

Yes,

Ben: 1:31:02

therefore you can use a magazine. Is that what you're getting at

Gene: 1:31:05

Exactly.

Ben: 1:31:09

Oh,

Gene: 1:31:09

no longer on the import limit.

Ben: 1:31:12

Yeah.

Gene: 1:31:13

Fuck you. Fuck you and your rules. There are ways around this,

Ben: 1:31:18

That is too funny. Uh, yeah. Yeah. It's, uh. Yeah, so you're, by, you're disassembling the foreign imported parts and replacing with American made parts allows you more freedom of using non American made parts

Gene: 1:31:35

Elsewhere on the gun,

Ben: 1:31:36

in the gun. Yeah, that's

Gene: 1:31:38

And for those who don't know, the Tavor comes with a warning saying, Hey, use US only made magazines

Ben: 1:31:44

they're literally maxed out the number of non US parts in

Gene: 1:31:47

Correct. For an imported firearm to be legal in the

Ben: 1:31:50

Which is so stupid. Why does that, I mean, that's a blatant protectionism rule that has nothing to do with anything other than protectionism,

Gene: 1:31:59

Hello, have you not paid attention to, like, the Jones Act?

Ben: 1:32:03

Uhhuh, Uhhuh,

Gene: 1:32:04

US is very protectionistic.

Ben: 1:32:06

and Trump is on that bandwagon as well. It's one of the things they don't like about him. Mm-Hmm.

Gene: 1:32:10

Uhhh. Okay, so I am all for free trade.

Ben: 1:32:20

Okay.

Gene: 1:32:21

I am NOT for multilateral trade agreements. I think the trade agreements should be Bilateral only, uh, and there is a maybe trilateral like the new NAFTA stuff, um, you know, where U. S., Mexico, and Canada come together, and we all agree. But these big

Ben: 1:32:42

staff, though.

Gene: 1:32:44

And Nafta 2's not that bad.

Ben: 1:32:46

Oh,

Gene: 1:32:48

It's not as bad as Nafta was. But my point is, we come together with some trade agreements that are very small parties and making sure that everybody is agreeing to it, that's fine. But when you look at like the Schengen zone, In Europe are these big multinational agreements like the Asia Pacific group stuff that, uh, Obama was pushing. That can have some really bad unintended consequences really quick, or maybe they were intended. And, you know, free trade needs to be somewhat fair trade. And, uh, the problem with the way our trade agreements have been structured long term has been that they are not really reciprocal and the US worker gets screwed, and I don't think that's good either. I'm not saying you have to be protectionist, but don't engage in trade agreements that preference the other nation over your own. Okay,

Ben: 1:33:49

Yeah. I mean, the whole concept of trade agreements. is very anti libertarian to begin with. Um, Trump was, uh, very much in support of tariffs and I'm not a fan of tariffs. I understand how they work. Um, yeah, I was an econ major originally, but the idea that the government is going to add. A cost to a good, uh, in order to, I guess, make that good be more competitive with the higher price with what could be done in this country is mostly limiting the ability of people in this country to make other goods using what they could be receiving for less money. So it actually constrains the growth. Um, it, I mean, protectionism generally constrains growth. That's part of the intent, but, uh, tariffs in particular, uh, have a way of constraining the, the business development and growth that we could see in this country. Because they, they cut off access to cheap raw materials. Mm hmm.

Gene: 1:35:02

so what I would say to that is, I agree that pure free trade, China, you can sell us anything, we can sell you anything, no tariffs, no nothing, just send us whatever the market will bear, we'll do the same to you. Fine. If a country would do that, that would be great. The problem comes in, in reality, and this is where I think the libertarian side of me and you get it wrong a little bit. Yes, that is the ideal, but if the other country is not willing to practice that ideal, and you are, you are at a disadvantage. You have to play the game that

Ben: 1:35:41

think you are.

Gene: 1:35:42

not the game that

Ben: 1:35:42

I think that's a fallacy. Let's say the other country doesn't buy anything at all from you. Let's say we're in this, you know, different reality version of China. China has a complete import ban on all U. S. products.

Gene: 1:35:56

hmm.

Ben: 1:35:56

But they're perfectly willing to export a bunch of stuff. Uh, components, raw materials, et cetera. Um, how is cutting off all trade with China benefit the American business? You're, you're cutting them off from their ability to utilize cheap materials to manufacture goods. Just because China won't import those goods doesn't somehow magically mean that. It's not profitable for American businesses to utilize the materials that they could be getting from China and then selling to the rest of the world. It's a silly argument. It's protectionism is a protecting a minority at the detriment of the majority.

Gene: 1:36:47

Again, what it comes down to is we have to manufacture and export goods to somewhere. It has so I don't care if China buys from us. That's fine. I get it. But someone has to buy if we're just buying from somewhere else and not selling to anywhere else. That's where a problem comes in. The U. S. is what some economists would call a post manufacturing post modern. Economy where we're based off of services, this, that, and the other. And our primary export is the U S military. I don't want to live in that world. So how do we get back to building things and selling them to someone with some value add that, you know, for gives our,

Ben: 1:37:28

There's nothing wrong with doing it the other way. Okay. So instead of, instead of

Gene: 1:37:33

World police.

Ben: 1:37:35

no, listen, listen to what I'm saying here. Goddammit. Listen to me instead of putting a tariff on incoming goods, why don't you use. Uh, some of that tax money to lower the cost of goods that can't be produced for cheap in this country in order to sell them in other countries to booster demand, to bolster rather demand.

Gene: 1:37:59

Mm hmm.

Ben: 1:38:00

So let's say we manufacture movies. Because we're good at Hollywood shit, or used to be before the woke wires took over Hollywood. Um, you know, 15 bucks to go see a movie may not seem like that big a deal to somebody in this country. In Mexico, right across the border, like, that's dinner for four. So how about American movies cost less in Mexico so that we could still export them and still make money off of them like that type of government involvement, I'm a lot more in support of than simply charging Americans more money for what otherwise would be cheap goods simply because they crossed over the border.

Gene: 1:38:45

Yeah. And I I'm fine with that. Uh, you know, I actually had this conversation with a friend of mine the other day that You know, it's not exploitive to go into, let's say, Vietnam, Indonesia, and pay what would be a slave wage here, uh, that's actually above the median wage there, and a good job. You can't pay them more, because if you do, you wreck the local economy. I'm all fine with that. I think it

Ben: 1:39:12

I have a first hand experience with that, where the company that I was running, uh, before I came in, they'd hired these three developers that were, um, When they were hired, they had just finished wrapped up college in Australia. They were actually from, uh, I think Malaysia, Malaysian students, and they went to Australia for education. And so, uh, the CEO was able to hire them fairly cheap. I think, um, he was paying them equivalent of like 000 a year, us dollars, which, you know, way less than developer in this country would make. But, uh, they were brand new and they were, uh, in Australia and then they moved back to Malaysia. So it seemed like that's pretty good cost of living, but however, over the course of the next six, seven years. Uh, their wages had increased to the point where they're now making like 65, 000 a year

Gene: 1:40:22

hmm.

Ben: 1:40:23

and the quality of the work and most importantly, what I was concerned with, the ability for us to get a hold of the guys had gotten a lot worse. Um, and so I started digging into this a little bit and I found out that, okay, we're paying him like 65, 000 a year. The average salary in Malaysia is like 8, 000 a year. So we're paying him about 12 X over the average for the country.

Gene: 1:40:55

that's a problem.

Ben: 1:40:56

Right. And you can say, well, they're doing a job, uh, you know, uh, the commensurate to what somebody in the U. S. would be doing fine. Uh, maybe they are, but you're paying them that much. Here's the, the kicker that proved that this was completely ridiculous is, um, I was trying to get a hold of one of the guys and I, I called, I finally just called him instead of emailing him. And, uh, somebody picked up and I said, yeah, I'm, you know, trying to get a hold of, uh, John or whatever his name was. Oh, he is, uh, he's currently at his polo lesson. Um, who should I tell him to return the call to now?

Gene: 1:41:37

boss!

Ben: 1:41:38

yeah, when, when I am, yeah, his boss's boss, when I am, uh, Employing somebody that can take polo lessons in the middle of the day. There's something wrong here that that is, this is not some eccentricity. These are guys that basically just imagine, imagine like the average age wage in the U S I think right now is like 63, 64, 000 a year. Somebody making, I don't think it is. Well, let's say fine. Let's say it's 50. Okay. Somebody making 12 times that. So we're making 600, 000 a year. And they are working as a developer for 600, 000 a year in the U. S.

Gene: 1:42:24

Yeah, the average income in the United States as of 2022 is 37, 580 a

Ben: 1:42:32

What's the median income?

Gene: 1:42:35

a different question.

Ben: 1:42:37

But let's see if we get a higher number.

Gene: 1:42:41

Uh, median, the median income is showing that when I searched average, it gave me the wrong thing. So the median is 37.

Ben: 1:42:52

Okay.

Gene: 1:42:54

I don't know why it's not telling me the average. 59. So the average is 59.

Ben: 1:43:02

So the average is 59, 000. What did I say the average was?

Gene: 1:43:06

Uh, 60 something. So you're right.

Ben: 1:43:08

hmm. Uh huh. Okay.

Gene: 1:43:09

I, okay. Median.

Ben: 1:43:11

Anyway.

Gene: 1:43:13

Jesus Christ.

Ben: 1:43:15

Well, somebody has to point out.

Gene: 1:43:17

Uh huh. Well, okay. Well,

Ben: 1:43:18

point being,

Gene: 1:43:19

We'll play the game.

Ben: 1:43:20

yeah, oh, oh, we'll play the game. You've been playing this game for years, my friend. On this very recording, you've looked things up three times already. We'll play the game. Come on. Anyway, point is, somebody making 600 grand a year, who's in their 20s, Working as a developer. One of the first things they're going to do, which is exactly what these guys did is say, you know, I can hire somebody for like 150 grand a year to do my job for me. And then I literally don't have to work at all. And I still make most of the money. And that's what these guys did. They effectively outsourced their work that they were getting paid 12 times the national average of money for, uh, to others that they paid very little to. And so they were just, you know, they were the middleman that were taking 80 percent of the money coming through at that point.

Gene: 1:44:19

Living it up.

Ben: 1:44:20

Yeah, so it took, and when I, when I told them, okay, well, we're done then we're wrapping things up, they, they threatened to hold the source code. It's like, you motherfuckers, you know, somebody gave you a fucking job that you were begging for out of college. And this is how you repay that. Okay. All right. So the lesson learned here

Gene: 1:44:42

Use a repository that you control.

Ben: 1:44:45

exactly, that is exactly the lesson. Uh, and more, and along with that, use employees that you can control. Don't, don't hire people in other countries with other country laws that you can't. Put any pressure on, you can't leverage if you need to, um, just trying to make a quick buck and save, save some money because it will bite you in the ass. There is no magic free ride. Uh, if you want to get good development, make sure that beyond just simply checking somebody's capabilities, that you have a good system in place. To actually interact with that employee and to test progress and be able to put a halt. into payment if there's anything that is out of, uh, expectations that's happening. And every time I, I mean, I've got so many stories, both direct, uh, stories of companies I've worked with, and then plenty of stories that are just sort of hearsay from other people talking to me about them. Of, uh, of how they got burned by using and generally developers, but not limited to developers, but using people in other countries. Now you want to have tech support or you want to have just a support department in general. Which a lot of companies use Philippines for these days. That's fine. That's less of an issue. The job they're performing has less to do with the, um, critical path within their business. I mean, it certainly would suck if they don't do their job, but it's the, they're, they're more replaceable.

Gene: 1:46:29

Yeah, having dealt with some people in the Philippines recently for different work things, it's, it's interesting when you look at the time zone difference. The best workers are on the night shift.

Ben: 1:46:43

Absolutely. Uh, and I want the, in fact, the largest single. Uh, termination that I've ever done personally was, uh, terminating over a hundred Filipino employees in one day. Uh, and it wasn't, it wasn't due to any kind of performance issue. Yeah. But I mean, that's what I've done most of my life, but it's, um, it wasn't directly related to any kind of performance training. It was just that. The, the, the guy that was in charge of that department knew how to hire. He didn't know how to fire. And so he literally never fired anybody ever. And you had a department that grew to a point where it was a hundred people too big, uh, for the amount of work that Should be and obviously even though they're cheap labor. There's still a hundred times cheap labor is no longer cheap. So That was the single biggest Termination the event I ever did.

Gene: 1:47:47

Well, uh, good for you.

Ben: 1:47:49

Yeah, it's kind of fun

Gene: 1:47:52

I don't know how you can possibly say that that would be fun.

Ben: 1:47:55

Well, which side of that do you want to be on

Gene: 1:47:58

Uh, neither.

Ben: 1:48:01

the one that's that's getting paid or the ones being terminated?

Gene: 1:48:06

I would be on the one that would be getting paid, but I still don't want to fire a hundred people. That's rough, dude. Having to fire one person is

Ben: 1:48:14

really not now you get used to it. I've fired over a thousand people.

Gene: 1:48:19

Cold, heartless bastard.

Ben: 1:48:22

Yeah, but hey at least I had a movie where Clooney played me

Gene: 1:48:27

Okay, what's that? I want to hear this one. Hmm.

Ben: 1:48:30

Oh, you've, you've seen that movie. I'm sure. I'm sure.

Gene: 1:48:33

What's the name of the

Ben: 1:48:33

Uh, it's, uh, up, up in the sky. I think. Is that the name? Uh, it's, uh, let me look it up. Uh, up in the air, not in the sky, up in the air.

Gene: 1:48:53

Okay, I have not seen this

Ben: 1:48:55

You haven't seen it? Oh, you should check it out.

Gene: 1:48:57

don't know why you think it's about you,

Ben: 1:48:59

Uh,

Gene: 1:49:01

Would you get paid for the rights to your story?

Ben: 1:49:04

I can't talk about it when there's a pending lawsuit, but, uh,

Gene: 1:49:09

Oh, Gene, I need my waiters, man. It's getting high and deep in here.

Ben: 1:49:14

it's about a guy that lives in Dallas. Uh, and, uh, He is a big frequent flyer and points guy for, and his points are on American Airlines and Myriad. Uh, and when that movie came out, I was living in Dallas and then I was doing all those things. Now, Clooney does have a little more travel experience in that movie. I think he's, he's done 10 million miles in American, which is pretty good. I have not reached that mark. But it probably never will at this point because nobody fucking wants me to fly out. Everything's remote now.

Gene: 1:49:50

Yeah, that, it, even my stuff has slowed way down on travel this year, like. Last year I was at 115 nights in hotels. This year, we're halfway through the year and I'm at 27. is just like, holy shit, what a s And, you know, I was complaining about the travel last year and now I'm like, I need to go

Ben: 1:50:14

I Know

Gene: 1:50:15

weird!

Ben: 1:50:16

Yeah, exactly Yeah, and I used to be I would easily do over a hundred nights for like over a decade I had over a

Gene: 1:50:25

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ben: 1:50:29

It's yeah, it's been hardly any trial now. I'll be flying next week, but that's personal trip Um, but yeah, it's, uh, there's very little travel happening these days for me and it's weird because I've always been a supporter of remote work because you get more bang for the buck that way from people. Um, but also, you know, I was still being flown around when I talked about how good remote work was. So now it kind of feels like it's the other way around. Like I'm not doing any, any traveling.

Gene: 1:51:03

just shocking to me that people And I think this is an artifact of COVID, uh, that has really taken hold in some companies that no one wants people anywhere.

Ben: 1:51:19

No, they don't. They really don't.

Gene: 1:51:21

and it's just shocking to me. So I don't know. Um,

Ben: 1:51:27

uh Well, and one thing, actually, let me ask you about this before we move off the business topic. Um, a lot of people have told me that the, the job market is very much in the employer's side right now. That there's a lot of people looking for work right now. Um, I haven't gotten that impression personally, but I've heard that an awful lot over the last six months or so that it's like a lot of people are out of work and looking for work right now that I think it's mostly from large companies because I know Facebook fired a whole bunch of people, Tesla fired a whole bunch of people, Facebook's fired a bunch of people. So I think there are probably a lot of larger companies, uh, that have Trim the fat as it were, but are you seeing that at all in in your work or not really?

Gene: 1:52:25

my work's pretty specialized. So there's that. Um, and you know, what I would say is,

Ben: 1:52:33

Nietzsche,

Gene: 1:52:36

I can't talk about something right yet, which I think is part of why you're asking me this, but, you know, hopefully by the next time I do the podcast, I'll be able to talk about something, but what I would say is if you are a generic coder, if you're a generic sysadmin, if you are. You know, someone with that low to mid level capabilities right now? Yeah, it sucks, because there's a shit ton of people on the market right now. If you are on the higher end of things, uh, you know, Um, yeah, then you're still, I mean, it's

Ben: 1:53:18

but but you think there is a disproportionately large number of people that are just sort of In the I. T. that are out on the market right now.

Gene: 1:53:27

Yeah. And, you know, uh, I would say that there, I've seen a lot of layoffs recently, even in the ICS world of, you know, uh, last year, Nozomi, which is a big, uh, ICS cybersecurity company. Uh, it's a startup. They laid off 50%, 50 percent of their

Ben: 1:53:50

Damn, wow.

Gene: 1:53:52

uh, in one cut. Drago's who I used to work for has done multiple cuts. Uh, now I was never caught up in those cuts, but they've done multiple cuts. And, you know, they've fired a lot of people, uh, clarity, they've done some cuts, but then they've also rehired. Um, but these are companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in investment in

Ben: 1:54:16

Well, and I, I have a friend here in Austin that, um, got an Amazon job, uh, about a, probably about a year and a half ago. he got laid off about a month ago. And, you know, it's hard to say because Amazon's got so many employees, but I don't know if he was part of a big push or it was just his department that that was doing cost cutting measures or whatever, but I do know that even before that happened, they had a hiring freeze because I have another friend that works at Amazon that was kind of bitching that he has eight openings, um, for his team

Gene: 1:54:55

that he can't,

Ben: 1:54:56

he can't fill them because of the hiring freeze. Yeah. Yeah. Like the only way you can film is by stealing people from other departments. That's it.

Gene: 1:55:04

And that's unfortunate, but reality and lots of cases, um, what I would say again, the general it world, I think you have a lot of people on the job market and looking so that that's problematic. In the ICS cybersecurity world, I, we see more and more players coming into it. Uh, fucking CDW is trying to do managed services in industrial now. Yeah, yeah, they're, they're spinning up a practice. Who the fuck buys managed services from CDW?

Ben: 1:55:37

Well, you know who doesn't buy something from them. They're probably companies already have an account with them.

Gene: 1:55:43

Yeah, that, I, I get it. I get the economics of what they're doing and why they're wanting to do that. Uh, I'm just saying that this is not the company I think of when I think of cybersecurity.

Ben: 1:55:56

of course

Gene: 1:55:57

So I don't know man, I think like my area is expanding and there is not enough talent to begin with so It's nothing but good for me. Um, but I, I will say that there's definitely some challenges when it comes to general it and the, the people, the dearth of people who have been fired. I mean, between Amazon, uh, Facebook, Google, and, and the rest of them, I think there's something like over 40, 000 people. In the market right now.

Ben: 1:56:31

that doesn't still doesn't seem like it's that much.

Gene: 1:56:35

Okay. Uh, when you're going after 20,000 jobs, it is, you know,

Ben: 1:56:41

I guess. Yeah, that's a good point And well the the bigger issue I think is just we're talking about these 40, 000 people that were all six figure jobs

Gene: 1:56:51

and all at the same time. Yes.

Ben: 1:56:53

yeah. Yeah, that's a good point because it's like it's not just You know, firing, uh, people that are restocking, uh, stuff at Walmart,

Gene: 1:57:04

No. And you know, the average salary of some of these people was in the high one to low two

Ben: 1:57:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gene: 1:57:12

and there just aren't, I mean, there aren't that many jobs that pay that to begin with. There just aren't.

Ben: 1:57:20

didn't used to be. I think there are a lot more these days.

Gene: 1:57:24

And that, that's the other thing is we're seeing a lot of salary pressure. Right now because of inflation and everything else and that that's a significant shift for

Ben: 1:57:33

Mm hmm.

Gene: 1:57:34

You know, and I don't think they're used to paying A low to mid level manager what they were paying a director a decade ago.

Ben: 1:57:41

Well, and I, I remember even a couple of years ago when I kind of came in to, uh, clean up a company that was a, uh, it was a supplement company, and I've talked to them about them before. Uh, they make good stuff. I've, I've used their supplements, but they, that like the CEO had a lot of sticker shock as I told them about how much we'd need to bring people in for, for various positions, um, which were all six figures, pretty much everybody that I had to hire was going to be a six figure position. And he was like, well, shit, I had a person doing that. That was making like 65, 000. Why, what, what's going on? Like, well, A, you have the wrong person, but aside from that, yeah, I probably could have filled this for 25, 000 less, like, during Trump, but now it's, you're paying a Biden tax.

Gene: 1:58:39

and and that's a real thing Um, you know, it's not just the inflationary Pressure on the salaries. It's the taxes. It's it's it's it's everything You know In conjunction, uh, you know, let's look at it this way. My McDonald's is making a big deal about a 5 value menu.

Ben: 1:59:02

Right?

Gene: 1:59:03

That used to be a dollar, not that long ago. Okay. So you want to talk about inflation and what's killing the job market, both at the low end and the high end. It's inflation.

Ben: 1:59:15

it is absolutely. And, and it's, and there's a lie about inflation because as I think most people listening to this know about shadow, uh, stats, which is the site you can go to, to look up things like inflation amongst a variety of different things, but using the old formulas, like you can see the inflation using the 19, I think 85 formula. Um, which. If you're going to have a graph that goes back to 85, you probably ought to use the same formula for every, uh, you know, every dot on that graph, which they do on that side. You could see where it is, but certainly the U S government doesn't. They, they maintain the name of the consumer product index. They absolutely lie about inflation because what they've done now for over 20 years. It's simply remove products from the index that have risen in price significantly.

Gene: 2:00:21

Yeah.

Ben: 2:00:22

Oh, eggs, eggs went up 260%. Yeah. Those are no longer part of the index.

Gene: 2:00:28

Yeah. They're, they're no longer an essential bat, uh, part of the basket of goods.

Ben: 2:00:32

So doing that, changing the formula for calculation of the calculating the, the unemployment rate, changing the formula for calculating the, uh, consumer price index, the just inflation in general, change the form of the formula for How you calculate money supply, like all these changes to the definition, uh, they should invalidate all the fucking charts, but they maintain the chart going back a decade or more when it was using a different formula. And then not mentioning it unless you dig into it yourself that, Oh yeah, by the way, the formula changed. So they can show a graph that looks pretty

Gene: 2:01:16

That is in their favor,

Ben: 2:01:19

exactly like see Biden didn't have any inflation Pressure at all here. No inflation was in fact, look at this chart inflation was bigger under Trump.

Gene: 2:01:30

which is, you know, Hey, Trump did some stupid stuff. As far as I'm concerned, that helped cause a lot of this inflation. Agreed. But,

Ben: 2:01:40

Yeah, like stopping wars what the hell's up with that America needs wars to make money. Does he know that?

Gene: 2:01:46

I actually think the, if it wasn't for the COVID stuff, the economic situation right now in the U. S. would be just unfathomably good. Um, but, you know, they had to stop it somehow, so.

Ben: 2:02:01

so here's an interesting stat that a friend of mine sent me yesterday. He says apparently Uh, this weekend is the highest travel date on record for American airline companies. Like more people are flying this weekend than ever flown during a, uh, uh, weekend period

Gene: 2:02:24

Interesting.

Ben: 2:02:25

which is interesting to me because I'm like, well, wait a minute, I'm seeing a lot less need for people flying. People have less money, so they're going to fly less for pleasure. And then it hit me. Oh, except that Biden's importing 11 million illegals on airplanes.

Gene: 2:02:41

I, I don't think it's quite that correlation, but sure.

Ben: 2:02:45

But you get my point though.

Gene: 2:02:47

I do.

Ben: 2:02:48

Like we're seeing now we're at the point now where even that is artificially inflated because the U S government is buying a lot of flights. It may not be 11 million. Sure. I'll give you that. But these are not flights that were being purchased by the U S government. A decade ago, or even five years ago.

Gene: 2:03:09

There, there is definitely, uh, A, you know, I hate to say it, but an information war for your mind, right? It, Alex Jones was brilliant when he got that day, the damn domain name info wars. Right? Because that's what this is, is it's, it's constant manipulation. It's constant gaslighting on what reality really is. And the fact of the matter is, how do you, how do you know what is reality? You know, I, this was another conversation I was in was, you know, science is not. taking the exact same steps someone else took and replicating the exact same result. It's trying to replicate the same result with slight variation in technique so that you can validate the result.

Ben: 2:03:56

Mm hmm.

Gene: 2:03:57

And without,

Ben: 2:04:00

Although, replicating and using the exact same methods also validates the result, because if you start not getting the same result, then obviously there's a problem.

Gene: 2:04:10

yes, I understand the scientific method. I'm, I'm, I'm pointing out though that, Okay, so variations, it depends on what you're measuring. Right?

Ben: 2:04:23

we're not going to get to doing our, our Constitution stuff. We'll save that for next show.

Gene: 2:04:29

my point is, if we want to know what the acceleration rate is for a projectile based off of this new gunpowder we've

Ben: 2:04:39

Mm hmm. Mm

Gene: 2:04:40

Okay, well if we do it this way, we have this curve. Okay, well if we do it this way, we have this curve. And if we can then extrapolate between the two results and say, okay, here is the primary curve for grain weight of gunpowder to weight of projectile equals this,

Ben: 2:04:58

Mm hmm.

Gene: 2:04:59

then we're good. Um, but if you just did one test with one projectile and one grain weight, you're never gonna get there is my point.

Ben: 2:05:07

Absolutely. It, there, you need a lot of tests. Um, it, but I just remembered something. Did you watch yet the Jordan Peterson interview that he did with, um, I forget the guy's name, but he's, uh, Uh, Big YouTuber,

Gene: 2:05:25

Yeah, I'll, I'll. Yeah, yeah, I, the one you sent me the other day, I, I have not gotten to it, uh, I started it, but I have not finished it, uh,

Ben: 2:05:38

thought it was very good.

Gene: 2:05:39

I, I was paying attention to other things,

Ben: 2:05:41

I sent it to you and, and, uh, sent it to Adam. Uh, I was curious what his thoughts now that he's religious. Um, but it's, um, I thought it was a very good interview because it was less of a debate about religion and more of a digging into Jordan Peterson's personal views on religion, which I think a lot of people assume are Christian, but that's

Gene: 2:06:12

Orthodox Christian.

Ben: 2:06:13

Uh, as this guy points out, um, a lot of them, uh, his views are actually more Gnostic than Christian,

Gene: 2:06:20

fair

Ben: 2:06:21

but they're, but he uses the terminology of Christianity, you know, words like heaven and hell, in describing things, but he means something different when he says it. To what the average Christian would think and this is what this guy was focusing on, which I thought was a very good approach because it's true like, um, they talked about hell and how Jordan Peterson sells, you know, that, that hell absolutely exists. All you have to do is look at the human history. Well, metaphorically, I understand what he's saying. Somebody that is seeing everything through a religious lens. It's gonna say, yeah, Jordan Peterson affirms my belief in the physical hell, where people that are evil will go.

Gene: 2:07:15

Okay, well, I mean, if that's your level of analysis of Jordan Peterson, A, you're an idiot, and B, you're missing the point.

Ben: 2:07:22

You would be surprised how many people that are religious, Christians, um, think that Jordan Peterson's views are very traditional Christian. But if you start actually digging through his philosophy and his, you know, being able to not just. Just look at the words he's using, but extrapolate what he's referring to. I think a lot of Christians would consider him to not be Christian.

Gene: 2:07:55

Yeah, and I think if you read his book, Maps of Meaning, that's very clear.

Ben: 2:08:00

Yeah. Yeah. No, one's read that book. Uh,

Gene: 2:08:04

book multiple

Ben: 2:08:05

read that book as well, but we don't count them. That's my point. Right? We're, we're the, the, the extremes, those, those points you can disregard because they're too far away from the median.

Gene: 2:08:18

Uh huh. Uh huh. Mm hmm.

Ben: 2:08:20

The, the normal average person that has not read that book. It's not an easy read to begin with.

Gene: 2:08:26

No, it is very dense.

Ben: 2:08:29

And, uh, and so anyway, I think you'll enjoy it. See what you think after you watch it. I've watched the other guy's channel, uh, on and off a little bit. He has some decent guests on, um, And he's a very, very well spoken British accent dude. So you just,

Gene: 2:08:51

Ah, so he has credibility

Ben: 2:08:53

so he has total credibility. Like, honor and credibility up the wazoo, just purely from his accent. Uh, but no, he's, uh, he started off as a video gamer on YouTube. And has kind of moved into, um, being a philosophy and atheism channel. Um, but he's not, and this is something I also really like that he said, is he is not part of the New Atheist Movement. Which is, uh, a, which I'm not either. Um, the New Atheist Movement was a very militantly anti religious and really anti Christian movement, uh, that is predominantly made up of people that are younger than you. So there's a lot of 20 somethings in it. There's some 30 somethings in it, but it's a, uh, I, I feel almost like If you deny Christianity too hard, you almost have to, uh, or at least you present as though you actually believe that it's real. You know what I mean? Like if you

Gene: 2:10:04

Me thinks they'll do

Ben: 2:10:05

Yeah, yeah. Like the, the opposite of love isn't hate. The opposite of love is indifference, and I kind of feel like that it's a similar thing for atheism versus religion. It, it, it shouldn't bother an atheist. That religion exists or that some people are religious. Like it doesn't matter because what people think that's incorrect, but doesn't harm me, doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. Um, now if they start putting me in chains and, and then dunking me in the water because I'm a witch, okay, now it matters, but, uh, for just personal shit that they believe, who cares? I don't care. Okay. So yeah, good interview. So I just want to plug that for you to remind you to watch it if you haven't, and then encourage other people. It just came out on Jordan Peterson's channel last week. Uh, and then there's also a bit of it that is behind the paywall on a daily wire as well.

Gene: 2:11:13

Yeah. And you know, the Daily Wire got me to pay for shit basically because of Peterson. So there's that.

Ben: 2:11:23

Yeah, and I I like the fact that Peterson is still doing his outrageous clothes thing.

Gene: 2:11:29

Uh, why

Ben: 2:11:30

I don't know There's just something I've always liked about that. Maybe it's because I used to wear like Dracula ties and

Gene: 2:11:36

or, or it's why you wear tracksuits today.

Ben: 2:11:39

maybe but He is he went from being very traditional just suit You know, as a college professor, if you look at his old videos, gray suit to when he started making money. And I think when he got to talk to some people that said, Hey, you should work on your image or, or don't be afraid to wear stuff you like because it just enhances your image. Um, he's started wearing traditional cut, but outrageous fabric clothes. I approve.

Gene: 2:12:16

well on that note, gene,

Ben: 2:12:19

Should we wrap up?

Gene: 2:12:20

I think we should

Ben: 2:12:22

All right. We will see y'all in about a week.