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Read Ben's blog and see product links at namedben.com
Check out Gene's other podcasts -
podcast.sirgene.com and unrelenting.show
If you have comments drop at
Email: gene@sirgene.com Or dude@namedben.com
or on
X.com: @sirgeneTX @dudenamedbenTX
Can't donate? sub to Gene's GAMING youtube channel (even if you never watch!) Sub Here
Weekend Gaming Livestream atlasrandgaming onTwitch
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Get EMP protection for your car using our code sirgene
Hey Ben, how are you doing today?
Ben:Dude, I am doing all right. I I finally updated the blog and posted something, and for the first time in a while. Namedben. com.
Gene:com
Ben:That's correct. And I'll apologize now for my audio. We're apparently still having some issues. I'm sending the Motu in to see what it's gonna cost me to fix, so
Gene:you haven't sent it in from last time yet?
Ben:No, I haven't. It's, it's been a busy week. And I'm, my happy ass is getting on a plane to go to to the D. C. area Sunday.
Gene:God damn, everybody I know is flying out there now. All you agency people must have a big meetup.
Ben:Who else do you know that's going?
Gene:few other people?
Ben:Yeah, no, I'm going up there for a cyber security conference.
Gene:Huh. story.
Ben:yes, actually, it is.
Gene:That sounds like a fun boondoggle trip. What when, when are you back?
Ben:Theoretically, I will be flying back Wednesday evening, but given what's been going out of DCA, who knows?
Gene:Yeah, that's a good point, that's a good point. And I'm gonna be traveling the one week from now. So, we probably won't have a show at that point.
Ben:Yep if we can sneak another one in after some time has
Gene:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ben:yeah.
Gene:Exactly. So, yeah, what's been happening, Ben? I got a few things I can bring up, but I haven't talked to you in a while. See what you got going on.
Ben:I'd like to save the big story from yesterday for a while, but, And we're recording this on Friday the 31st, by the way. So, everybody knows what
Gene:Mm hmm.
Ben:about. But you know, I, I Listened to part of you and Darren talking this morning, man. Yeah.
Gene:What were we talking about? I forgot.
Ben:Apparently you're going bankrupt over spaceships.
Gene:Oh, yeah, spaceships. Don't, let's not talk about spaceships.
Ben:No? Fuck. Oh.
Gene:Nope. Sales over. Over done with. Don't need to think about it anymore.
Ben:Huh.
Gene:That's the game company is now raised 700 million. No,
Ben:Off this one sale.
Gene:no, no, no. Total.
Ben:Ah, gotcha.
Gene:that would be a hell of a thing off of one sale, man. But given that the game hasn't been released yet. That's pretty good.
Ben:You know, I mean, Trump based off of since you don't wanna talk about that, we can go into this, but Trump raised$800 million in one go on
Gene:hmm.
Ben:on the news of his conviction.
Gene:Yeah. Yeah, it's I think a lot of people are seeing this conviction as a good thing. I'm kind of there with Alec Jones. I don't think this is actually a good thing. Because people somehow think that This A is gonna get people that wouldn't have voted for him to vote for him, It's not gonna do that. And that be that this, this is like the end. This is all Democrats had. And now they've shot their what, and neither of those is true. This is the continuation. If not the beginning the next year to fall will be that he will go to prison. He's not going to get any kind of. leniency or bypass the New York Supreme Court will end up reaffirming the sentencing and say there was nothing wrong with the proceedings. So there's no reason for a mistrial on that. So I think realistically how long he ends up in prison is a question, but they're, they're pushing for four years
Ben:And that would be the maximum because this would run. Concurrently, not consecutively. So
Gene:unless they quickly up and pass a new law in New York to change that.
Ben:expos, facto, but
Gene:Not, no, New York doesn't have an ex wife fax to the law.
Ben:Yeah. They
Gene:how they get the mob. See, New York has a lot of laws that other states don't because they were specifically tailored around the mob and the mob was very good at hiring Jewish lawyers. And so in New York, they've actually passed laws to circumvent a lot of process that would be normal in other states.
Ben:Mm-Hmm.
Gene:So, I mean, honestly, I don't understand why Rush Limbaugh lived in New York. I don't understand why Trump lived in New York. I would never want to live in New York. It seems like one of the worst places on earth. And somehow yet people like pay tremendous amounts of money to be there. How much would you have to get paid to live in New York?
Ben:I would have to be, I, you couldn't pay me enough,
Gene:Exactly. That's my point. It's, it's just not worth it. It's like, Hey, how much would you like, how much would be enough money for you to be willing to go to hell? Give me a number. Give me, give me a number.
Ben:Let me be, you know, tormented for the rest of my life. No, thank you.
Gene:yeah, yeah,
Ben:from New York is you know, astonishing. Yeah,
Gene:idiots for having lived there in the first place. Unless you were born there and then you did your darndest to escape. I just don't understand the mentality. It's a place that takes way more of your income than most other places. You'd have to go to San Francisco to find a place worse. It's a place that has horrible gun regulations. It's a place that has a lot of crime and violence on the streets. Not to mention a lot of race relation issues. And on top of just paying high prices from a high cost of living all the services and all the federal related things are of a worse quality for more money. The view isn't great either. You know, the view is much better if you go North or South. view in New York is not a great view.
Ben:New York and L. A., you know, are just these sprawling metropolitan areas that have no beneficial
Gene:LA is a lot more sprawling than New York, but
Ben:I mean, New York and, you know, Newark and all that is one metroplex, to be honest with
Gene:And, and they're all always pointing or mentioning Central Park and how great Central Park is, you know, in the rest of the country, the country is Central Park and the cities are the little diamonds in the middle.
Ben:Mm-Hmm.
Gene:It's just hilarious how they, they look at this little artificial square of greenery surrounded by concrete and steel. And then point to this idea that, Oh yeah, it's a great city. We got everything. You don't have shit, man. You don't realize it. Then maybe you deserve to live in New York.
Ben:Yeah. I would not want to live there. But, you know, it, it's interesting'cause one of the things I talk
Gene:don't mind visiting though.
Ben:I do, I just like dc I don't really wanna go to DC this weekend because of everything that's going on. I, I think it's likely to be a,
Gene:the only thing I would say is if you go to DC this week, just leave your credit cards at home and leave your cell phone at home.
Ben:Why?
Gene:The last thing you need is to have a record of you being in DC during protests.
Ben:I'm gonna be in, I, I have a work reason and I'll be
Gene:Huh. Yeah. And I'm sure they'd love to hear that on your trial. Mm
Ben:Yeah I, like I said, I don't, I don't disagree with you in that I think it will be a, there will be issues, manufactured or otherwise, and yeah, I don't think it's gonna be A good thing, that all. I, you know, what they're, what they're doing to Trump, the fact that this guilty verdict came out the way it came out I think it was a foregone conclusion. I think we all know that. But at the same time, it's still just so in your fucking face, especially after the testimony and everything that was seen. It's like, how, how can any reasonable person Yeah,
Gene:this is a normal occurrence in a lot of countries, like North Korea, for example, where they routinely sentence people that are politically misaligned with the man in charge. With some Latin American countries that every decade or so seem to have a revolution and with a good chunk of African countries in Central Africa, Somalia and Sudan and other surrounding countries. I mean, it's like what the United States is moving towards has existed for many years. It's just seems to be the wrong direction if you're trying to improve, but we're clearly going to become the largest banana Republic in the world if we're already not there. And frankly, I think we kind of are.
Ben:I, I, I think we are. You know, one of the things that I wrote was my justification of why I believe that the system is broken and broken irrevocably. And, you know, one of the things I would say is the system has been broken my entire life. The jury instructions that the right is making a huge deal of are standard jury instructions. It happens in Texas every day where you do not have to agree. This isn't a thing about Trump. This is a thing. This is an indictment of our judicial system, not just the judge in this case. This is a problem for the entire judiciary and the way our judges are running running these trials. It's a problem.
Gene:Yeah, it's, it's based. The instructions are basically if there wasn't overwhelming evidence of innocence, then you must convict.
Ben:Which is contrary to what we've all been taught and know to be the right and moral
Gene:Yes. But Ben, those are just fairy tales. That's not how this country operates.
Ben:Okay. I would like to go back to how the country
Gene:Yeah. So you, you meant, you replied to one of my tweets that basically said, you know, next time the the South decides to take up arms, it, it shouldn't just be in, leaving, it should be in taking over the North. Because if North, the North is left alone, they end up doing what they're doing right now.
Ben:Yeah I,
Gene:I correct me if I'm wrong, but I, I think that there was an awful lot of like, we can do this peacefully kind of, thought in the South that they just wanted to leave and be left alone because the North was fucking them. And I think the lesson learned there should be that. No, the South should have gone on an offensive immediately.
Ben:Had the South marched on D. C. after the first battle of Appomattox, They would have won. There,
Gene:that march up through Maryland and New Jersey and into New York.
Ben:there would have been no need to. The, the, the North,
Gene:York should have been burned, just like Atlanta.
Ben:eh let's not go down the road of following Sherman. You know, Sherman was a bastard. There's no need to follow
Gene:No, we should have done it beforehand, should have predicted, predated that. My point is that the, the, the people that seem to think that the other side. It has has intelligence, has decency, has morality generally end up getting their ass kicked because the barbarians have something that the civilization doesn't, which is. This, this ability to not perceive your enemy as being equal to you. And this is a common problem when you have civilizations and that encourage or encounter rather than encourage that encounter barbarian is it started, you know, probably before Rome, but it's certainly notable with Rome, but a lot of the European countries during the Mongol invasions during the Ottoman attacks, there was this attitude that you, you fight them just like we fight each other as civilized nations. And you cannot have that attitude. You can't line up in lines with weapons drawn and then wait for somebody to give the order to shoot because you will be mowed down if you do that, because the other side's not doing that. They're riding horses and shooting arrows.
Ben:What I would say is, and, you know, the title of my post that I put out today was The Men Who Just Want To Be Left Alone. And I think there are a lot of us in this country that still feel that way. And, you know, I, I'm, after watching what's been, and I, I've been thinking about how to phrase this and write this post for a couple weeks now. Maybe it's just stuff going on in my personal life. Maybe it's just something in the ether, the way I put it there. And what I'll say is. This is my attempt at a Thomas Paine moment, not that I'm any sort of Thomas Paine, right? But, you know, Thomas Paine wrote over and over again, essay after essay about, if not now, when?
Gene:hmm.
Ben:And that is, that is, we're far past the point, and you know, people can talk about the founders would have done this, the founders would have done that. But the reality is they suffered a long time while they could before they got to the point of this is no longer a tolerable situation. And part of the point I want to make on this judicial system portion of this is that this is each and every one of us. If the government wants you, they will get you. It is show me the man, I will show you the crime time
Gene:Absolutely.
Ben:We are at a point where if the government wants to make your life hell, not only can they but will they, you are facing a state that has virtually unlimited resources and they will own you. You know, people give a lot of the Trump former associates a lot of grief for taking plea deals and everything. But when you really stop to think and look at what has happened to Donald Trump in this case, How could they not?
Gene:Oh, if they had balls, they wouldn't.
Ben:Okay, they may not have the money to. And that,
Gene:What does that mean? What do you mean they may not have
Ben:so they're gonna say, no, I'm not taking your plea deal and I'm going to not only entrust a retarded jury, but a retarded public defender
Gene:Yes.
Ben:and then just fall on their sword. I, I, I hate to say it, but I don't think most people have those moral convictions,
Gene:They don't. I agree with you. And this is the problem with the people that Trump surrounded himself with.
Ben:I, I don't think, I don't think you or I would have the testicular fortitude to do that, facing what some of these people are facing.
Gene:I think that if I was working in politics, which clearly I'm not, and I had a job that was a Based on the conviction first and finances secondary, meaning it's not a punch in punch out kind of environment, but I'm there to actually impact the American country. Then I would absolutely have that conversation. And look, if, if literal criminals can do this, why the hell can't people that are getting half a million dollar a year salaries and more, if I'm running an organized drug organization. A distribution network. I absolutely expect not all the guys, but a very large percentage of the guys to fall on the sword if the time comes, that's part of the deal. If you want to surround yourself with a bunch of guys that are going to flip and turn at the first opportunity that a black car pulls up behind them, then you're not going to last very long. In the drug distribution business.
Ben:All right. I'm, I'm not suggesting that. What I am suggesting, however, is that we are at a point where people have to realize that it is time to stand up. It is time to say, you know, this far, no farther. This has to stop. and realize what that means. But what I'm suggesting is that it is not a straightforward or easy task to suggest, okay, you just lost the election through whatever circumstances you want to say. And as a result, you're being prosecuted, persecuted, whichever
Gene:not being prosecuted or persecuted because you lost the election. That's happening because you have an interest in the next election.
Ben:Okay, I think that's more or less the same statement. But regardless
Gene:no, if Trump would have lost the election and said, yeah, I'm done with politics. I'm just going to focus on golf from moving forward. You know, whatever I did, I did whatever I could. And I've, I've served my time for the country and good luck to y'all. If he would have done that. Yeah. I don't think most of these lawsuits and accusations would have been flying. They would have still made fun of him with the orange man and the, the hair and everything. They would have talked about how horrible a president he is. But I don't think that he would currently be looking at four years in prison. Yeah. This is, this is a, this is not a punishment. This is a warning.
Ben:to others,
Gene:Oh yeah. And that's a big part of it is it's not just Trump. It's anybody that thinks like Trump, Hey Vivek, how'd you like to go and be in prison? You're a little Brown man. How long do you think you're going to last?
Ben:There's
Gene:sure you want to get into politics? Yeah, that's, this is, we are dealing with a mob mentality on the left militarized and funded. And if the right or any other group doesn't start acting like that's who they're dealing with you know, then just get comfortable bending over cause that's all it's going to be for the next 60 years.
Ben:We, we aren't there yet. I think that,
Gene:Everybody says that,
Ben:okay.
Gene:that the people whose neighbors are getting rounded up still say we're not there yet.
Ben:No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're, you're misunderstanding me. I'm saying that we're not at the place where we can, Just bend over and take it. We're at a place where we still have a chance to avoid that.
Gene:Yeah. I mean, I think that the way that, that the authoritarians win is by segmenting the population into small minority groups. Not necessarily ethnic, but just small slices, slivers of society.
Ben:Us versus them
Gene:And then it's pointing at one of those slivers at a time and slowly progressing through each of those slivers or layers to a point where over half the population is either in prison or working for the authoritarian. Regime.
Ben:didn't read my post, did you? Yeah, I'll quote from it here.
Gene:Go ahead. Quote yourself. I know you enjoy that.
Ben:Gee, thanks man. I understand that most of you are not ready for this. You're scared, as am I. I implore you to understand you're a slave, a slave to a fickle master whom you're enough to, whom you're nothing. You're beholden to their will, and when they decide to come for you, you'll have no recourse to, but to submit as many others have. I, I would like to avoid that future please.
Gene:Okay. I mean, that sounds good.
Ben:Yeah, so I think I think where we're at and you know what I talk about is we're at the breakup of the United States That's the only peaceful path that's left to us is We have to dissolve
Gene:going to be a peaceful path, but yeah,
Ben:I it's the only possible peaceful path left.
Gene:the amazing
Ben:guaranteed violence
Gene:the amazing part is in, in less than a year time, since I read going home, it feels like we're infinitely closer to the society described in that book.
Ben:Yeah, yeah great series by the way
Gene:When's this next one coming out this fall?
Ben:Yeah. And for those who are fairly new to the podcast or didn't know, we we, I got Jean to read 17 books in the Going Home and Associated
Gene:would take me about five years.
Ben:Right. But this is damn good series. And it's like, you can't put it down, dude. It's crack.
Gene:yeah.
Ben:But the Going Home series by A American links are on the reading list on the website and they're good books.
Gene:yeah. Thankfully they're not super long either. They're normal length, but they're not like crazy long like Tom Clancy books or anything. Makes it a little easier to digest. But yeah. It's a I think that the real solution will come from people, people, not states or even cities succeeding, but it will essentially come from people. And I, I'm going to use the word because I think it's both funny and accurate. We're going to start kibbutzes popping up. We're going to have people that end up moving in close physical proximity and having a distribution of labor. Where different people do different tasks and jobs with the exclusion of use of us dollars inside the the kibbutz and with a effectively a private little city slash enterprise still exists within the confines of the United States or a state. They don't send their kids to public school. They don't use public services. I mean, it's kind of like what the Amish are doing, except with technology rather than without technology.
Ben:Yeah. You know, we'll see.
Gene:And, and if a bunch of those form, then they can start organizing amongst themselves. And now you're talking about a possibility of a true secession because you know, as much as it's fun to say, yeah, Texas should secede. The reality is that 46 percent of Texas is against that
Ben:okay.
Gene:and they're not going to just say, oh, okay, I guess we don't live in America anymore.
Ben:percent is for it.
Gene:Yeah, exactly. 54 percent is for it, but of the 54%, how many are willing to kill the 46?
Ben:Oh man.
Gene:Very few.
Ben:you know, I, I think when you look at what happened in the Dave Phelan race and the Brandon Herrera race here in our runoffs, it, it's, It's a scary thing. I had relatives that are very much diehard Democrats. They, they don't have a great thought process here, but they went and voted for Dave Phelan who, for those who don't know, Dave Phelan is the Speaker of the Texas House and an absolute rhino would be the best way to describe him because he, he has done more for the Democrats in Texas State Legislature than anyone else. There was a very concerted effort to primary him and get him out of there. And unfortunately he survived his primary by a couple hundred votes. and then Brandon Herrera lost his by, I think like 400 and something
Gene:it was a very small number. I am seriously considering just renting an apartment down there. In September. And then voting Democrat. Just to take that Gonzales motherfucker off of the ability
Ben:Democrats not going to be any better.
Gene:Doesn't matter. The not better you know is better than the lying piece of shit. I, I will put a Democrat above a rhino any day.
Ben:Okay I, I, I would rather just see, you know, Abbott call a special session of the Texas state legislature and say we're leaving.
Gene:And that will do nothing.
Ben:I think it would do a lot. If there was actually a vote or a law passed that called for that to be on the ballot this fall, I think that
Gene:Oh, I think it could be on the ballots. He can definitely do that. I don't think he's going to run again. So he doesn't really have a big reason to, but he could, he could do that, put it on the ballot, but from a practical situation, there's no way in hell, any state, including Texas is going to secede without massive bloodshed.
Ben:I don't know. The Soviet Union broke up relatively
Gene:they're a little ahead of the curve then, aren't they?
Ben:I, I think we're not far behind where the Soviet Union was in 1990, dude.
Gene:think we're right about where the Soviet union was in 1914. Yeah,
Ben:We're way further down the dissolution path than they were.
Gene:I don't know, man. It's I, I, I just don't see it. I think way too many people care more about where their next paycheck is going to come from than what state they live in or what country they live in. That they, if their paycheck is threatened and it will immediately become at least portrayed as, even if not. Based on facts threatened, but certainly a lot of people realistically, their paychecks will be threatened if Texas decides to secede there's a lot of companies here that, that are here for one reason only good tax conditions. That's it.
Ben:And when you say here, you
Gene:in Texas, they have no great love of Texas for any other way. Samsung's, I think their third largest campus in the world is being built in Texas right now. Apple
Ben:outside of Austin, yeah.
Gene:yep, yep, Apple has the second largest Apple presence in the world here in Texas, after California. California is their
Ben:wouldn't change with Texas.
Gene:It would absolutely change
Ben:Why?
Gene:because the U S government would say anybody doing business in Texas will pay a tax. And all these companies like, all right, that was good to be there. But we're out of here. Same thing with Oracle. Same thing with. All these towns basically anybody who has an office in Austin is gonna leave. Austin will be a ghost
Ben:wrong. And here's why. Because if, as soon as one state leaves, it will be the dominoes falling just like the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It will not just be Texas. It will be a breakup of the country. It will not just be Texas leaving. It will be Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, the entirety of the South, the most
Gene:And how did I go last
Ben:their way. I, I, I think we are looking at something very different this time because it is not a group seceding over one political issue. It is a full division of the nation. It is the North wanting to leave just as bad as the South.
Gene:I think the, no, I don't, I don't think that's true. I think it's the North wanting to run things. Which they are absolutely running things.
Ben:Just to wrap up this bit on Trump, I think the only way to see a I mean, I don't think that's the best way to backpedal of this. The only way the Democrats can back off of this, which I think this is martyring. Even if you believe Trump is Hitler, let's, let's just think through this for a second. If Trump is Hitler, why are you giving him a similar storyline? Why are you making him a martyr? Right? the
Gene:wait till he writes a book.
Ben:he already has, but he'll write another one, but no, this, this is Hitler after the bear haul push in prison, if, if, if you think, if like, that's the parallel in the story. So why would you give him that? Why would Kathy Hochul not come out and say, you know, I can't do anything yet because his sentence hasn't been, Handed down, but as soon as it's handed down, I'm going to commute Donald Trump's sentence, commute, not pardon, because that, a commutation does not wipe away the felony, but it basically says you're not going to do any jail time. You're not going to do the, the punishment
Gene:and something
Ben:And that's their only way out of this. Otherwise I think Trump's
Gene:Darren brought up, which I also thought of before he brought it up, but I didn't mention it, so he gets credit is they could use this as a huge PR publicity thing by having Biden Pardon Trump.
Ben:Biden can't pardon Trump because this is a state charge. He has no jurisdiction.
Gene:They could federalize. I'm sure they could federalize it somehow.
Ben:they cannot. And that's why I said Kathy Hochul. So Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York would have to either
Gene:so, hold up. So, so the president can only pardon federal criminals.
Ben:correct.
Gene:I wasn't aware of that, but I thought that was just first of all, we're in the constitution to say the president can pardon nowhere. So I thought this was just one of those made up things that people all went along with is that you're the president. You get to pardon people.
Ben:It's because he's the head of the executive branch
Gene:So all the people Obama pardoned, like the, the 1800 people, he pardoned
Ben:All federal criminals.
Gene:federal criminals. Jesus Christ. That's crazy. Yeah, in that case, yeah, she could, but she doesn't have a neat, like if Biden did it, it would be a very interesting political act saying, look, I'm being accused of all these things, but I'm even letting the guy out who's running against me. I'm the good guy here.
Ben:Mm hmm.
Gene:So that there's some spin possibility, but if you can't do it, then it doesn't work that way. Yeah, it's, it's a idea that the state of New York can go after somebody for things that they didn't do in the state of New York. Is it also ridiculous?
Ben:That, that's the entire right wing argument against these charges for Trump in the first place is it's a novel legal theory that this is a felony to begin with and not just a misdemeanor. And it's a, because basically they're saying he did this in furtherance, furtherance of another crime, yet he's not being charged with another crime. And we don't know what that other crime is. And that, that, that's semi problematic, right? It's, it's an add on charge and an enhancement that typically can't be done
Gene:It's like finding pot in the vehicle. That you had no reason to stop in the first place.
Ben:Exactly. Yeah. And you, you know, one of the things I'll say is I think that Trump is likely to win on appeal. It may have to go all the way to the Supreme Court before he does. But.
Gene:nine months to a year for that to happen. You'd be in prison already.
Ben:we will see. I think that Trump's legal team has a hell of an argument to actually skip a few things because the, the Supreme court can basically take up any case that they want.
Gene:Mm hmm.
Ben:And, you know, basically I, did you read shit, not Dan Patrick. Who's the Paxton, Ken Paxton's letter on this. So Ken Paxton's already put out a statement basically saying that this is interference in the federal elections by New York
Gene:Mm hmm.
Ben:and that this is problematic.
Gene:And what are they gonna do about it? Nothing.
Ben:he, he may sue the state of New York for this.
Gene:And how'd that go last time?
Ben:If he's doing it beforehand instead of ex post facto and pulls up the original
Gene:standing. They're saying there's no standing. You, no state has standing in the matters of another state's election. A
Ben:not true. And that's the problem
Gene:no it is because that's what the Supreme Court said.
Ben:that they did not take up that case. And if you read the dissents by Thomas, the
Gene:Dissents don't matter.
Ben:it does. So I, I
Gene:You don't use dissenting opinions when forming lower court opinions. You, you,
Ben:you, you absolutely can. And one of the things I would say is that just because they. Found against the standing for Texas V Pennsylvania after the election. I think had they sued before the election there would be likely a different outcome. And I, if I were the, the lawyer making the argument, I would say, look, we know you found against this on standing here, but this is beforehand. We see this as tortious interference. You know, we're going to go down that road now. They could still kick it out, but make them do it.
Gene:Mm hmm.
Ben:Look, remember, there's only a handful of ways out of this, and we've already
Gene:No, I think there's only one. I just, I don't think there are other few ways. I think there's only one.
Ben:The ways to keep yourself out of this are the, you know, the soap box, the jury box I forget the fourth one, the church, and then the cartridge box, right?
Gene:Mm hmm.
Ben:So we're, we're quickly running out of options,
Gene:I think we have one option.
Ben:and that is
Gene:You can guess what that is and I'm not gonna say it because I don't want to be in prison. But I, I can predict the future without calling for it to happen.
Ben:it'd be a, it'd be a good weight loss regime for you,
Gene:You think? You think it'd be like a, like a fat camp thing?
Ben:Yeah, yeah. Speaking of, I saw the South Park documentary
Gene:Yeah, yeah, I, that was a pretty good deck, man.
Ben:Yeah, yeah. The Cartman playing you was great.
Gene:Cartman's been playing me for many years.
Ben:For those who don't know, South Park just came out with a new episode and it's all about Ozempic and Cartman's trying to get the drugs to lose weight. And it's hilarious. I loved Lizzo's reaction to them using Lizzo as the body positivity
Gene:what, what was the reaction?
Ben:Oh my God. I sent it to you a long time ago. I'll have to find it again, but basically she's appalled that they're using her name like that. And I thought it was fucking hilarious.
Gene:not a great name to begin with. Yeah, it's, it was I mean, I call it a documentary because honestly
Ben:because it's about your life. I understand.
Gene:It's mostly true. There's not, there's not a whole lot there that they've embellished like they typically would. The reality is that there are a ton of rich white women that consume this product Ozempic and other products the semaglutides that are like it. And these products definitely work. The, they, I mean, this was found as a side effect as the whole weight loss thing, but they're also not new. Like I remember the first time that I ran across this was about seven years ago and it was at a plastic surgeons clinic and they have this, this novel weight loss program thing.
Ben:they're, they're wanting to get the utility out of it before the patent runs out is the problem here.
Gene:There there's really no patent man. And the patents are purely for the delivery mechanism. Because you, you can't patent something that is a naturally occurring substance.
Ben:But it's not. It's the artificial version of
Gene:and it's, it really isn't.
Ben:Dude, look at Monsanto's patents. Yes, they can and yes, they have.
Gene:of it.
Ben:That's what I'm
Gene:The patents are never for the actual substance. The patents are either for delivery mechanism or production. Yeah,
Ben:Regardless, the point is they're making a big push. I had dinner with a buddy of mine recently. I, you and I talked on the phone about this a little bit, but we
Gene:you lost a bunch of weight.
Ben:Dude, so this guy is, he's gotta be like 6'5 Like he's up there with Darren,
Gene:a couple inches taller than me.
Ben:More like a foot taller than you, Jimmy.
Gene:Oh, whatever.
Ben:Anyway Oh, the jokes I want to make right now. Anyway, but he's lost well over a hundred pounds coming up on like almost 200 pounds.
Gene:Jesus.
Ben:the guy is 6'5 and was pushing 400 and something pounds and he's in the 100s now.
Gene:Wow. And what, what, and he's taken that the Ozempic.
Ben:he's taking the Monjaro and, but he, he, he is, he is diabetic. And he's very pro all of this because he's now off of insulin,
Gene:Right. Which is great. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And,
Ben:I don't know that I'd want to do it, given having to be on any drug for the rest of my
Gene:oh, it's not the rest of your life. It, you, you don't need to be on for the rest of your life.
Ben:Actually, what they say is, through this, it stops your natural production. Much like being on insulin, once you're on insulin, you're pretty much on it for the rest of your
Gene:yeah, but you don't have to be it, all of these things are exaggerated, which is very typical. There's a ton of drugs that they want you to be on. I want you to be on for the rest of your life. Like there, there are people that have taken anti what do you call them? No, no, no. The crap that clogs up your blood and stuff.
Ben:Oh yeah. Blood thinners, yes.
Gene:No, not blood thinners. The,
Ben:Cholesterol
Gene:yeah, that there, there are people that have been on cholesterol medication now for 50 years and they still have high cholesterol.
Ben:No?
Gene:It's, it's, it's a marketing thing. It has nothing to do with reality. Okay.
Ben:there's very little evidence of Dietary ingestion of cholesterols to, to the
Gene:Yeah, like none, literally the production of cholesterol is happening for a reason. So the real question is, why is your body
Ben:brain food.
Gene:Yeah it's, it's brain food also. All the hormones, including testosterone are made out of it. So, gee, I wonder why American bodies are producing excess cholesterol because maybe your hormones are out of whack because of all the plastic and shit you eat and your body's trying to fix that and compensate
Ben:Mm-Hmm.
Gene:and it can't. So yeah it's, it's funny even I was talking to my dad the other day, it was in his eighties He, you know, he's always been very much a science kind of guy. We actually taught physics for a while, but he, he said that he never really took homeopathy seriously, but there might be something to it. That's as far as he was willing to go. But it's like Jesus, you know, it's a guy that for basically over 80 years would have laughed at anything homeopathic. So yeah, there's an awful lot that the modern drug industrial complex would like people to believe they figured out the reality is the, what they're best at. Is
Ben:And you know, just the way you know what they say about their own. Drugs is, I, I think a perfect example of this where, you know, Hey, this is, it's believed to do this. What do you mean? It's believed. Don't you know? No, they don't. And that, that's part of that problem is that there is a lot of drugs, you know, just like the semaglutides are a perfect example. They believe that it's working this way, but they don't really know. And the fact is, when you get to a point. Where you're making assumptions, the unintended consequence risk factor goes way up, right? If you look at game theory, when you don't fully understand things, that's where things get really dangerous.
Gene:That's not, it's absolutely true. And then there should be informed consent. And that's one of the other things that we're not very good at is making sure people understand the risks involved. They understand that anything that's. Being relatively new has a much higher percentage of risk. Just think of what if all the DNA versions of vaccines that came out would have come with a large warning that says this is a brand new, you know, unexperimented on. Vaccine. So there will very highly chance be side effects that we've not run into during the limited testing we've done.
Ben:Yeah,
Gene:Instead, they covered that shit up and they pushed it as this is the safest possible thing that you could be doing.
Ben:I mean, you saw where which one was it? The AstraZeneca vaccine got pulled from the market.
Gene:hmm. Exactly. So, yeah, it's it's interesting. I will say though that from personal experience, the Mount Jaro totally works. It it pretty much makes you forget about eating.
Ben:And it slows down everything. One of the things that my friend was saying, you know, because we went to the Brazilian steakhouse. He was being very picky
Gene:yeah, I bet he was. Yeah, exactly.
Ben:he was doing because he's like, this is going to be with me for a while. It's like, okay, that does not sound good. That's not sound pleasant.
Gene:But I mean, it's just, I don't know that it's bad either. It all depends on what else you're eating. you know, you, you digest a lot more of meat than you would of any plant manner,
Ben:Yeah,
Gene:there's a lot less leftover to poop out when you're eating meat. And so there's a, the speed with which it's not like the length of your gut changes if you go to a carnivore diet. It still has to travel the same distance. It's just going to take longer. It's going to take several days for it instead of one day. So yeah, I mean, there's I would, I would definitely say that I would be on Munger right now as the fucking insurance covered it.
Ben:Which, given your, you know, medical conditions, I'm surprised they don't.
Gene:Yeah exactly. It's like, diabetes, hello.
Ben:again, this is why the entire episode was a documentary on your life.
Gene:Mm hmm.
Ben:Cartman tried to, you know, get the whole
Gene:Stealing my damn drugs. Yeah, all these rich white women stealing this, this drug. You know, what's funny too is I, you know, when I went to Mexico, I picked some of that stuff up. So when that chick pulled out the injectors out of her handbag when she came back from Mexico, I thought, oh, this is hilarious. You know, they, and they,
Ben:some, I got a pass customs.
Gene:they sell that at the airport in Mexico. Yeah,
Ben:at the airport in Mexico, anything you want to get.
Gene:absolutely. And somebody was saying, oh yeah, you gotta be careful. You know, you can't be traveling with drugs from Mexico or, or no, they were saying, yeah, you still need a prescription if you want to get. Legitimate legal drugs in Mexico. No, you don't.
Ben:Most of the pharmacies will refer you to a doctor who will sell you a prescription.
Gene:Yeah, there you go. I didn't even have to do that. I just showed them a list on my iPhone and said I'm looking for this.
Ben:No, no, no. The pharmacies don't require the prescription. It's if you get caught with them in
Gene:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I suppose.
Ben:So you can get a prescription in Mexico for Yeah.
Gene:of things.
Ben:Exactly.
Gene:Yeah, so it is ridiculous the, the fact that The price is so high in the U. S. The price in the U. S. Is roughly 10 times higher than across the border in Mexico for the same drug. Not just that one, but most drugs in Mexico are about a 10th of the price that they are in the United States.
Ben:Part of the
Gene:the way they justify it is that they have a cost of living adjustment that they do for different countries.
Ben:Yeah. Part of, part of that though also is the lack of ability of you know, Medicare, Medicaid to negotiate and Trump was working on fixing that. And that was one of the things Biden undid once he got in office,
Gene:I honestly, you know, it's very un libertarian, but fuck those guys at this point. But I think it's a very easy problem to solve if somebody truly wanted to solve it for the benefit of Americans. And that is simply that Any company that prices its drugs at a ridiculous price, and we can define what that means, obviously will pay a an additional excise tax on the sales per each drug sold in the United States.
Ben:I, you know, what I would say is screw the drug companies and where they're at and what they're doing, so not opposed to it.
Gene:It, yeah, it's, it's I think the drug companies in a lot of ways are very, they're carnivorous. They're carnivorous, or not, not carnivorous, they're
Ben:Cannibalistic.
Gene:Yeah, cannibalistic is the word I was thinking of. You're exactly right. They're cannibalistic because what they're doing is they're essentially saying we have a pretty good high quality of living in the expensive lifestyles in the United States. So let's charge more for drugs here because Really, the only true cost of a drug isn't manufacturing, it's the research, it's the R& D. You're, you're just recouping the R& D and after that you're making pure profit. The oh this is too funny, I'm seeing an ad for tree grubs and the ad is of a grub held in CHOP6. That's too funny. I guess they must be good for you or something.
Ben:Huh.
Gene:Anyway the, the idea that they're essentially doing the same thing as insurance companies analyzing what the market will bear and where's the maximum profitability point. And then pricing it that way, that's fine, but I think that there ought to be a disincentive to doing that, right? The, the, in a completely free economy, which would be without medical insurance at all, what regulates that is the complete lack of use of their drugs by the people. So it's a,
Ben:afforded. So
Gene:can't be afforded. And again,
Ben:free market pressure to adjust the price, but in
Gene:create something that works, but you But you price it out of the market to where nobody could afford it. Then guess what your profits are? Nothing because you didn't sell any. And, but instead what we have is this kind of half ass convoluted system where it's third party payer. So somebody else is paying, but also they get to decide what you're going to take because they're footing the pill. In a lot of ways, the insurance companies act like parents. They're like you can have this, but we don't think you really need this. So let's hold off and see if you die or not. Then if you die, maybe you need it after all. And if you don't die I guess you didn't need it. That's kind of their attitude. they don't want you to die too early because then you're not going to be paying premiums. But, they also don't necessarily want to keep you alive and healthy. Because they're actually making money off of you being unhealthy. And everybody is in that. The doctors are making money off being unhealthy. The insurance companies are. Drug companies are. Everyone's making money off of Americans being unhealthy. Not just Americans. Everybody. For this context, Americans and, and incidentally the things that make you unhealthy are also things that Americans are really good at, which is making cereal. I'm kidding. Obviously it's not just cereal. It's most processed foods. It's like, Hey, make shit that tastes really good. But it's really bad for you.
Ben:Speaking of
Gene:watch that South Park documentary.
Ben:Yeah, speaking of though, what do you think of the Libertarian Party committing suicide?
Gene:I kind of talked a little bit about that on the, my show with Aaron. It's
Ben:I didn't listen to
Gene:Yeah, you should, everybody should,
Ben:What was this morning? I haven't
Gene:it was this morning. I know, but yeah, I mean, they can go fuck themselves. First of all there is no libertarian party as far as I'm concerned at this point, because a libertarian party. Which I was not only a member of, but was a you know, I ran as a libertarian multiple times. I was in the state level, libertarian party governance. I was very involved during the time period when the libertarian party worked really hard to get itself from that, like, you know, miscellaneous party status to an actual. a legitimate party status to be on the ballots. Like we spent a lot of time trying to do that.
Ben:yeah, you were literally a big L Libertarian.
Gene:I was a big L libertarian. Yeah. And so in the late eighties, early nineties, and it was a, it felt like we actually accomplished, like we moved the needle, like there's progress being made to move the libertarian party forward and the idea. Of liberty combined with accountability is something that is gaining traction and popularity and that people are going to start to realize that this is a much better alternative to the other political parties out there. That was the delusion we were under apparently because the Libertarian Party a few days ago picked an Antifa gay Socialist to represented instead of Trump, but they didn't have to pick Trump if they had somebody that
Ben:could have picked RFK.
Gene:I don't want to call him libertarian really either
Ben:but he would have been a better choice. They, if they would have, if they would have picked Trump, they would have potentially won the presidency. If they'd have picked RFK, they would have had a percentage of the votes in all 50 states, a substantial percentage. Instead of getting 3%, they would have gotten 20%.
Gene:So there, there's no, and, and when I said on that show, I'll repeat it here again, is I, I will never again call myself a libertarian, either small L or big L or any kind of L. The, the term libertarian at this point means the same thing as terms like Nazi or you know, take your pick. It's like words that have lost their meaning completely and mean nothing. Something completely different now. So if you call yourself a libertarian now, you're basically saying you're pro Antifa, pro communism, and pro pedophilia. And I'm none of those things.
Ben:I don't know. I, as a libertarian, I don't know that little L libertarian, just like little L Republican.
Gene:Yeah, and I, no, fuck that. I'm done with all that shit though. And I think you were moving in the right direction by calling yourself an anarchist, frankly.
Ben:Oh, you know, I'm working on it.
Gene:Huh, just, you know, don't be half assed about it. Go full in.
Ben:Oh, go read my blog post.
Gene:Do I have to?
Ben:Yes.
Gene:Okay. I'll, I'll retweet it too. So get, get those couple of people that follow me, but not you
Ben:Oh, I don't have shit for followers on Twitter, dude.
Gene:No,
Ben:No.
Gene:probably cause you refer to it as Twitter,
Ben:I don't have shit for followers on X,
Gene:but I'm pumped. Yeah, either way, I mean, it was, it was embarrassing is what it
Ben:you, did you see Chase Oliver's ad that came out?
Gene:No.
Ben:It's, it's all been all over Twitter. He literally has him holding a rainbow don't tread on me flag. And this is, was posted by the Libertarian party that said, you ain't gay if you don't vote for me. Like,
Gene:I mean, it's creative. I think it's funny.
Ben:right. But it's, it's, it's mocking Biden,
Gene:It is mocking Biden, but you know, it's kind of mocking itself more than making Biden. Yeah.
Ben:Yeah. And I mean, when you've got Filavante, when you've got a lot of
Gene:I didn't know Phil was gay.
Ben:I didn't say that,
Gene:Oh, I thought you were talking about gay people.
Ben:then I'm different sentence, different paragraph moving on, you know, No, when, when, when you've got Filavante and others coming out and just trashing the Libertarian Party, people who are pretty prominent Libertarians, and when you have Chase Oliver himself coming out and saying this is the end of the Ron Paul Libertarian Party, holy shit, you
Gene:bet it is.
Ben:you, I mean, you're not even shooting yourself in the foot, you're shooting yourself in the head.
Gene:Yeah, totally. Absolutely. No, the part that they're done there.
Ben:the Mises Caucus, the Mises Caucus is going to vote for Trump. You know, there's that meme of the porn star getting railed and everybody changed it to Libertarians saying, you're gonna make me make America great again so hard, you know.
Gene:Mm hmm.
Ben:The entire Mises caucus is going to
Gene:this is what happens. I mean, I think this is a somewhat natural progression that happens to where any good idea giving a sufficiently long enough Amount of time will get bastardized and that's what's happening with the Libertarian Party And I think it it certainly what happened with the Republican Party It's frankly what happened with the Democrat Party too because they didn't used to be socialists.
Ben:let's be clear. The Republican party has never been good.
Gene:Okay fair enough
Ben:The, the, the, the last Republican president, the last president that was really a good president outside of Trump, which Trump has his problems,
Gene:Mm hmm.
Ben:was Eisenhower.
Gene:I don't know that he was a good president either
Ben:Okay. We can go back to Buchanan if you want.
Gene:Yeah, I mean, I kind of like Teddy Roosevelt.
Ben:The National Parks were such a socialist movement, it's not even funny.
Gene:Yeah, I know I know but I still like him. Yeah. That the reality is most politicians suck. It's just a question of do they suck more from you or from somebody else? And yeah, and it's yeah, the, the, the, the, as far as the libertarians just to wrap that whole thing up, I just, they're dead to me, man. There, there is no libertarian party. There is no such thing as libertarianism. All of it is dead. I I've spent way too much effort and energy making that party be something to see it turned into this. I'd rather kill it myself and bury it. It
Ben:I don't
Gene:has nothing to do with the guy being gay. It's the complete package. That is the problem.
Ben:Yeah, it's, it's the socialism. It's every bit about it. I, I, I agree. I don't have a problem with someone who's gay being running for office. But it's one of those things that I
Gene:I don't have a problem with a socialist running for office either. They would just should never get voted in. They can run. But I certainly don't want to associate myself with them running for office. But yeah, so at this point, if somebody asks me which, what's my political affiliation, it's objectivist. That's it. And if you don't know what that is, then fuck you, go figure it out.
Ben:yeah, or you could use the Mises caucus
Gene:Nah, I don't like those guys either.
Ben:Why?
Gene:Because most of those people are spineless weasels. Mm
Ben:Tell us how you really think
Gene:hmm. Yeah, I'm, I'm not happy with seeing things that actually meant something being chucked in the garbage. Mm hmm.
Ben:and how do you think the Mises caucus is doing that? I,
Gene:you know what? They didn't really overhaul the libertarian party today.
Ben:I don't know, you know, I think that
Gene:They're either
Ben:hold on, no, no, no, hold on, because the, the, the, the Libertarian Party, the problem with the Libertarian Party is the real Libertarians, the people who are true, die hard, Libertarians, the way you and I have meant the word for a long time, are not joiners, they don't want to be involved in the party, they're not going to be involved in the party, and as a result, this Homosexual, trans, gender affirming socialist sneaks in and is able to win, but he was able to win because of some moves that happened. But here's the thing, I think the Mises caucus halfway through the the balloting realized they were not going to get the candidates they wanted. When Dave Smith bowed out, that was kind of the end of
Gene:like Dave Smith either.
Ben:Yeah I like him a hell of a lot more than Chase Oliver.
Gene:Fair enough.
Ben:Anyway, I think that they realized they weren't going to get who they want. So who can we put up that's going to be the absolute worst candidate possible for Joe Biden? And they did that.
Gene:I, I think you're over reading what happened there. I think that the people that are currently running that group just simply got kicked out of the Democrat party. Like they're too, they're, their values aren't perfectly matched with the current socialists. They're socialist lite. And therefore now they're part of the libertarian party. It's the whole over from the window moving. And it's been talked about by a lot of people, but it's very true. I think that the, a lot of the people are exactly of the same beliefs that they've always been, but how they're perceived and how they're described is what's changed. And this guy would have never been described or perceived as a libertarian 20 years ago. Yeah. But he is today.
Ben:And for those who don't know, the Overton window is a marketing term that's been used. It's basically the window of things that the public will accept. And the way you move the Overton window is by pushing on one side or the other to move the window either to the right or to the left of the social acceptable norms.
Gene:Thank you. So, it's Yeah, I, I,
Ben:Where were you introduced to that term first?
Gene:Words in the window? Let me think. I think it was probably I don't think it was something I read. I think it was something I saw. But I want to say it was about 20 years ago.
Ben:Yeah, literally, my introduction to The Overton Window was from the Glenn Beck book, The Overton Window. Which actually, you know, Glenn Beck has a couple of novels out there that are really pretty good. And that would be one of them.
Gene:Yeah. Yeah apparently The term came about In the early 90s. I don't know. Yeah Joseph Overton. Yeah, I don't know, I don't think I heard it in the 90s. I think it was probably in the early 2000s that I first
Ben:Which would have been about the time I heard it from,
Gene:yeah, and, and certainly it, it was utilized a lot on No Agenda for a while as well.
Ben:Okay. So we got a request from the audience.
Gene:We did, yeah. I'm glad you remembered because I almost forgot.
Ben:Yeah. So when you going to give us a review of your thermal,
Gene:Yeah, so,
Ben:I, you, I don't have any more night vision to review right now, but you have something new that you really haven't told us about. So,
Gene:I thought I did. I so I didn't really do a proper review. Yeah. I fucked around with it. And so what I got is one of the cheapest current high generation thermals out there. So it's a it's a model that just came out in February. And cheap is a relative term because I think I paid about 4, 000 for it, but it is pretty good, pretty high quality. It's a 640 sensor. Anything bigger sensor than that, you're talking over 10, 000.
Ben:Even some of the six forties get up into the seven, 8, 000. Yeah. Pretty easy.
Gene:So this was a, a cheaper one. The, the size is great. It's roughly the same size. As a NVG 14 it's, it's helmet mountable, or you can use it. You can get an adapter and use it on this as a scope as well, but it's basically a one X, so it's really best for a helmet mount. I finally got a helmet, thanks to Ben finding one and then saying it's pretty good, so I didn't have to shell out all the money for a Team Wendy one, which is originally what I was going to do.
Ben:Yeah. The, the hardhead veterans helmets. Pretty nice. Isn't it?
Gene:I don't, I don't know that I can rate it, because it's not like I have a bunch of experience with different brands of helmets and how good they are. They are or not like, I mean, it looks fine. It fits fine. I don't know what more to say.
Ben:My, my point is if you're after nothing but a bump helmet, all that matters is, is it comfortable and does it have what you want it to
Gene:right. And I will say though, like even a bump helmet is not cheap. It
Ben:a good one.
Gene:yeah, it was a few hundred bucks, which is about what I paid for a, an Arai motorcycle helmet back in the day, which was a much better helmet. In terms of, you know, comfort. So, I don't know, it's, but it's way cheaper than the Team Wendy, which is a 800 bump helmet or a 800 ballistics helmet.
Ben:Yeah. One of my one of my friends that I have kind of hung around a little bit he, he rides a bike all day, every day, right? And he, I, he saw my bump helmet cause I was playing around with it at the kebab shop. And anyway, he, he ended up ordering one to use as a bike helmet, just to be able to mount lights on, to
Gene:I thought they had actual bike helmets that they sold, too.
Ben:Yeah he wanted the accessory rails and a couple other things. But, anyway he is, you know, the price compared to, like, some of these quote unquote nicer bike helmets is very comparable, apparently, and much better.
Gene:I remember I had a bike helmet poo, what would have been this, probably 2, 000.
Ben:and I mean like a pedal bike, not a motorcycle,
Gene:I know. Yeah, same here. I had a pedal bike helmet as well. And
Ben:not for a pedal bike. You had something else.
Gene:Fuck you. I totally had a pedal bike. I I, I had a, I had a pedal
Ben:kind of, yeah, there you go. There you go. It was not a bike.
Gene:yeah, and it was a it's five grand when I bought it. Dude, this is a serious piece of bike. I had a shipped from, had a shipped from Australia. then I
Ben:had it shipped from Australia?
Gene:sold it for 1, 500 bucks.
Ben:It cost you five grand. You're going the wrong way, Gene. Gene.
Gene:I mean, you know, it was five years old at that point. Before that, I, I used to ride on a bike a lot. I had a couple of different Cannondales over the years. And I used to do a lot of mountain biking. And that's all before I got married, which, That all went downhill. But yeah, bike helmets were generally back then. So 20 to 30 years ago, bike helmets were in the a hundred dollar range. So I could see how they'd be over 200 now,
Ben:Yeah.
Gene:but a motorcycle helmet. Yeah. You could get a cheap one for 80 bucks, but like, if you want to get a nice one, like the ride I had, that was started about three 50 and go up to 500 bucks.
Ben:Regardless, the, the point is there's a couple of things that you can get. The thermal that Gene got, you know, good luck. You can't see see through a windshield at night,
Gene:Oh, for fuck's sake. No one needs to see through a windshield at night.
Ben:Huh.
Gene:The point of it isn't to be sleeping on your neighbor sitting in a car. The point is to see something that is alive and a meeting a meeting. God damn it. I can't say the word
Ben:Immediately.
Gene:Yeah, I'm getting heat at night in an area where they shouldn't be, meaning in your backyard or in the woods or in the forest, not sitting in a car. What you're going to see with this thing is you're going to see a very hot object from very far away. That's a car
Ben:Regardless, I
Gene:and a car with its lights off. Incidentally, you will see from very far away. Unlike with night vision.
Ben:yeah, I, I think that there is utility in both. If I were going
Gene:that was the setup that we, that was a setup. We kept talking about is like the ideal thing costs way too much, which is a single unified combo unit. Those are like 20 grand.
Ben:The, you know, infra a has some that are kind of interesting. Some of the clip longs are kind of interesting, but I, I, it's not quite there yet. One, one thing I did get recently that I'll give a little bit of a plug to make no money off of it, but I'll still say we all have, you know,
Gene:How Christian of you.
Ben:UV five Rs sitting around right.
Gene:No, I have actual Yesus sitting around, but go ahead. Mm hmm.
Ben:Okay most people have some cheap 25 little radios sitting around. Same price point, but has waterproof, dustproof, and, you know, they don't have some of the accessories available, but it's a pretty decent upgrade from a form factor
Gene:hmm.
Ben:Durability is the UV9R Pro. So, it's
Gene:Who makes that?
Ben:dustproof bow thing.
Gene:Oh, it is. Okay. And it's so it's like a new model they have or what?
Ben:It's been around for a while, but I finally got one and picked it up, and you know,
Gene:Your interest in ham radio for a guy that refuses to get his license is very interesting.
Ben:Huh, says you you, you know, whatever.
Gene:What, says, what, am I wrong about you getting your license? Did you get it and just didn't tell me?
Ben:Maybe, who knows? Eh,
Gene:I think you'd be talking about it.
Ben:I don't know that I would.
Gene:I'm pretty sure you would.
Ben:Cause if I give out a call sign, that's easily looked up and identifying, you know, me pretty directly, so,
Gene:Yeah, that's true. That is a good point. Mm hmm.
Ben:you know, Yeasus have some of the same problem on accessories as far as like finding good push talks that'll work with military based headset, things like that. The, if you are, because it doesn't use like the Kenwood style adapter on the 9R that the UV5R and even some of the Yeasus quite frankly use because it's using its own kind of proprietary adapter plan on if you're using a non civilian headset. So if you're using something that requires NATO wiring and either amplified or not, depending you're going to be going to eBay to get a push to talk, by the way, or you're going to Comgear Supply because Comgear Supply does have a push to talk with a pigtail for 30, the pigtail's 30, but the push to talk is like 200.
Gene:Mm.
Ben:Just Be ready for shit like that. But if you want a waterproof, dustproof radio to knock around that's cheap, it's,
Gene:Yeah, it's, it's interesting. It's
Ben:I offered to make you an antenna the other day and
Gene:yeah, you did. Yeah, don't, don't need one. It's interesting that I don't know. I, I think, That there's some utility to having a radio that can be, that can transmit on a bunch of different frequencies for sure. But also being a ham I will say that unless you're really into just talking with random strangers what's much more convenient is a cell phone. And a cell phone works. Damn near 99. 9999 percent of the time. It's very rare. The cell phone doesn't work. And if you're in situations where you run into a cell phone not working, there are satellites based alternatives that work damn near 99. 99999 percent of the time. And that are also, I think, better. For better for actual communication than a ham radio, a ham radio is, it's, it's a way to take what is essentially a backup function and turn it into a role play game
Ben:That, or you can use,
Gene:insulted all the hams,
Ben:yeah, you can use FRS and you know, the, the bow fangs I'm talking about have FRS frequencies that do not require a license. And you know, if you're out walking about or hunting or something, you
Gene:Yeah. Like they're, they're use cases for this. If you're riding a motorcycle in the group, if you're going hunting, there are definitely use cases for this stuff.
Ben:but more than that, the other thing is that if you get into an emergency situation, the FCC allows for you to use any frequency in the event of an emergency. So it doesn't matter what
Gene:Yeah, but not to lallygag, just to very specifically notify the people that, that are gonna need that information.
Ben:That's fine.
Gene:It, it's, but I don't know, man, I just, I like a satellite phone. It's better.
Ben:Okay.
Gene:And you can reach anybody else on it, like not just other people that have ham radios. But if you're talking about FRS, I actually was very impressed with that Motorola set that I use with your parents.
Ben:Yeah. FRS, if it's in the right circumstances is you know, it's kind of the way CBs used to be in a lot of ways, but it's on a better frequency range. So you're going to get more oomph out of it
Gene:Yeah. And,
Ben:on a handy talkie at least. And
Gene:totally bullshit you on the range numbers cause they're in perfect ideal scenarios from peak to peak with a valley in between. But yeah, it was, and no, and no weather.
Ben:Yes.
Gene:And so ideally you might get 20 miles, but realistically it's probably more like three or four. But the quality of the sound was perfectly clear as we were just driving down the highway with two different cars. And then even the walking around that little festival event thing. Where, you know, I was probably a mile or more away from your folks. I could talk to them and they would hear me and I could hear them very, very high quality. And there's quite a bit of encryption shit built in. So you're, you're, it's possible, but you're not horribly likely to cross over somebody else trying to communicate with the exact same settings. It was basically over 10, 000 combinations, which is, I know, not a whole lot for encryption, but it is for just a product that's really meant to live on a public frequency.
Ben:right. It's something that's not going to. Casually be listened to,
Gene:Yeah. Not unless somebody is intentionally wanting to do that. Exactly. So it does work pretty cool. And it actually even ties into your cell phone over Bluetooth. Two things. One is you could use a Bluetooth headset with it, so then you don't need any kind of pigtail bullshit thing. You just have a basically. A wireless solution for having a headset. And the other thing is it'll wirelessly through our Bluetooth talk to your phone so that you can send map coordinates through the walkie talkie, which is kind of a neat function. I thought it was one of the reasons I bought this particular model. Is its ability, you know, if you're on a hunting trip or something to be able to do what we had to in the past by a rhino for, which is like five, 600 bucks to communicate our positions out in the field with another unit. But now you can just do it with a 100 Motorola walkie talkie.
Ben:It's a hundred dollars per radio,
Gene:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is way cheaper than the 600 to 800 you'd pay for a commercial one.
Ben:sure.
Gene:It's the same Motorola commercial radio with a slightly more power, slightly bigger Battery and a a black case cost like five to eight times more.
Ben:And on that note, This Week in Ham was brought to you by
Gene:Yeah, exactly. I wish, I wish I was getting something
Ben:Why?
Gene:No, I mean, I wish I was getting sponsored by somebody. I don't know, even if it's Ham Radio.
Ben:I mean, reach out to Mike Liddell, you know, he threw out a MyPillow
Gene:you should do that. You're good at reaching out to companies.
Ben:No, negative.
Gene:really? I, I, I could reach out. Sure. They're like, yeah. And how many listeners do y'all have? Probably like 10.
Ben:Yeah, which we need to
Gene:They all want pillows though.
Ben:Yeah, we need to talk about that. If you're listening to the sound of my voice right now,
Gene:Hmm.
Ben:please share. We realize you may not want to admit to listening to this show, but do it for the good of your friends. Ben and gene.
Gene:Two things. One is we would like to thank the people that are monthly donors, first of all,
Ben:Yes, absolutely.
Gene:those guys are fully covering any portion that Ben would be providing. That only leaves the portion that I'm paying, which no one's covering. But we appreciate the fact that those guys are contributing on a monthly basis because it means that, you know, less cost means less objection to doing the show. Ben's more likely to do a show if he doesn't have to pay for it.
Ben:well, and you know, you are getting that podcasting 2. 0 money. So
Gene:What podcasting 2. 0 money?
Ben:You're the one who has the index listed and going to your lightning node.
Gene:Oh yeah. You, you, you think people are donating? You kidding me? Nobody donates in lightning.
Ben:We've gotten a couple on Fountain, but not many. But right now we've got the five subscribers, and I'm just gonna kinda anonymize this, but David B Gentee Keith B, William S, and Tim H.
Gene:Yeah. Thanks
Ben:appreciate that.
Gene:So that's, that's item one. Item two is we did seem to have a dip in listenership that has. I've just checked, so it could have happened earlier, but it looks like certainly compared to six months ago, we have fewer downloads. So though that could be a number of things could be people not liking what we're talking about. Could be people that tried us and then lost interest. Could be people that I don't know, aren't using podcast apps to download or you change your app and you never re got it. But for, if you are listening to the podcast and you're at this point, which is toward the end of the recording. Please do us a favor. And one, the best thing you can possibly do is send us money. But if you don't want to do that, leave a review on Apple podcasts for this podcast, that seems to have a pretty big effect as to what randomly gets recommended. In a lot of different programs. So give it, getting a review on Apple podcast for the podcast is awesome. If you don't want to do that, then yeah, just tell somebody else about us. I routinely do that. I tell people I have a podcast and they should check it out and see
Ben:they look at you and go, of course you do.
Gene:Yeah, exactly. They're like, yeah, you look like a podcaster. Oh, thank you.
Ben:I'm, I'm looking at you, Tom. I expect some reviews. So.
Gene:There you go. So do what you can to help propagate. Cause obviously we're not, you know, we forget to ask for money most of the time. And,
Ben:I, I'm less worried about the money that I am getting the word out,
Gene:yeah, exactly
Ben:why I put the post up there today, the reason why Gene and I do this is because we have opinions that we're not so conceited or selfish to think that are necessarily worth hearing, but we think need to be heard and need to be said by somebody. We say some unpopular
Gene:bottom line is we're going to say him anyway. Right. So you might as well have more people hearing them
Ben:Yeah, it, it, it at least makes makes us feel a
Gene:because if we're talking to ourselves, that kind of makes it like. We, we, we should be in a padded room.
Ben:Speaking of,
Gene:Mm.
Ben:Hell of a segue here, but what the fuck is Biden smoking?
Gene:Oh, I don't know.
Ben:Did you see, you saw
Gene:not, no.
Ben:you didn't see the press release that came out right after Trump's,
Gene:the the plans to bomb Russia?
Ben:that you can now, you know, hit Russia with US weapons?
Gene:Right, right, right. Yeah, I,
Ben:It's totally fine. Go ahead.
Gene:Okay.
Ben:Good, good job.
Gene:I mean, But the British have said that a long time ago. They, they don't care if their British weapons are used to hit Russia. So all we're doing is just joining the rest of NATO.
Ben:Yeah.
Gene:Yeah.
Ben:I, I, I still think
Gene:There's nothing like a nuclear war to separate the chaff from the wheat. Mm hmm.
Ben:And unfortunately, I think that's, I mean, I won't say that's where it's headed, but it is like, just fucking with, it's just, it's the wrong thing to do. Like, Russia hasn't come out and said, hey, we're at war with the U. S. and we're formally declaring war on
Gene:That's why they're doing it. Cause it's a God damn it. Russia still hasn't come out and said that.
Ben:But I, my point is, if, if you keep fucking around, at some point you find out.
Gene:Yep. I agree. But it sounds like they have formally now as I don't know if it's done through a executive order or how it's done, but it does seem like we are now officially including women in the reserves in the what was that thing called the program? The
Ben:The draft.
Gene:No all the, all the men over 18 had to fill out their selective service. That's what the word I was looking for. So they have, they have now officially expanded it to women
Ben:Where did you see that? Because I haven't
Gene:on Alex Jones.
Ben:Eh, I don't, okay.
Gene:What? You don't believe Alex Jones, Olson?
Ben:Dude, the dude has
Gene:right
Ben:right, and he's been right way too much, and he has been way forward thinking, and, you know, like my dad said, he's had the balls to say shit, but I have not seen that
Gene:We can, we can Google that, but it sounds like they're, they're, they're Which is a good move. I'm all in favor of that, frankly. I think that There are too way too many people that think they're immune from reality. That need a little bit of a taste of reality.
Ben:As of January 2016, which is the Selective Service website's last update, there has been no decision to require females to register with the Selective Service.
Gene:It's not what Alex Jones said.
Ben:That or you're misinterpreting what he said, or paraphrasing something, or you're getting it wrong.
Gene:alright. Whatever. Anyway.
Ben:Yes.
Gene:I was so I was gonna mention Alex Jones here, too.
Ben:Sounds like they're gonna shut him down, man.
Gene:yeah, it sounds like it.
Ben:So what, what we're referring to there is the bankruptcy court has basically said that He is not going to be operating any longer there, even though he's solvent and making payments and things like that, they, they want him shut down, or he can pay 85 billion to the Sandy Hook families and take a couple of them on a board of directors for his company,
Gene:Yeah, exactly. It's
Ben:which, I mean, first of all, for him to have to pay those fuckers, anything is just insanity.
Gene:insanity.
Ben:But to sit there and say, oh, and we're going to force them on the board of directors to make this deal, it's just, wow.
Gene:Yep. It is crazy. Either way, I saw, I was watching him earlier today. And unfortunately, this is part of his live stream, so I'm sure there will be this segment cut out and post it at some point in time, but I've never seen anything more hilarious than a couple of flat earthers on Alex Jones show telling him that the earth is flat. There's no such thing as nuclear bombs. And see what was a few of the other ones. No,
Ben:Alex Jones's opinion. This was the
Gene:no, no, no. Yeah. Yeah. It was the guests. It was the guests opinion, right? Is that two guys who are dead serious about this? Like they weren't smiling and kidding. And so Alex Jones was in the position of having to be the same man in the room defending and say, you're crazy. What do you, what do you, what do you mean? How, how can they're, they're showing him, you know, the typical flat earth pictures, like Yeah. You know how in the further north you go in the summer, in the the, you can see the sun 24 hours a day. There's no such thing like that in the southern hemisphere, right? I mean, they're, they're literally insane. And and Alex is like, no. And, and their other thing was that there was a great civilization that existed and that all the large, huge structures that we see. We're built by that civilization and we're just are being told that they were built by the humans and
Ben:pyramids or
Gene:what you would think you would think like pyramids, no skyscrapers like they're literally talking about things that were made in the last 100 years as Oh, it's just a cover up. They weren't actually made a hundred years ago. They've been here for thousands of years. They were made by these advanced
Ben:Have they never been to a city that had a large construction project going on? Yeah.
Gene:They, the, one of the guys said that he's from Connecticut and he hasn't seen 90, 90 percent of the state of Connecticut. Which, to me, is like, you're disqualified as a, a person.
Ben:if you, if you have not, if you live in
Gene:It's one of the smallest states in the
Ben:exactly, exactly, like, and you've never left your state, or haven't seen the majority of your state,
Gene:Yeah.
Ben:the fuck.
Gene:Yeah. The fuck. Exactly. And
Ben:know, the same thing could be said about me, because I have, I haven't seen the majority of Texas.
Gene:Right. What? Haven't you?
Ben:I mean, depends, West Texas is really fucking big, dude.
Gene:It is, but you've been to West Texas places, like you know what West Texas looks like, right?
Ben:Yes, unfortunately.
Gene:Have you seen the, the huge cities in West Texas that we inherited from our prior civilizations? Yeah. Yeah. And Alex Jones like, I, I, I have what do you say? Oh, I have diaries from my grandfather that, that talk about moving here to Mexico and the land grants. Yeah. Like he, I can't do his voice.
Ben:Not without blowing No.
Gene:yeah, not without blowing something exactly.
Ben:To do a CSB, but worse.
Gene:oh god, oh yes, please get us banned with CSB like my other show is banned
Ben:You know what? Hey, he made fun of my audio. I'm, you know, I'm doing
Gene:make fun of it, he pointed out the fact that you suck.
Ben:Ah, fuck you.
Gene:That's not making fun, man, that's just an observation.
Ben:I am, I am doing the best I can with a full time job and a lot of other
Gene:Oh,
Ben:so.
Gene:that's the sound of the smallest violin in the world crying for Ben. How about this, Ben? Get good.
Ben:Heh,
Gene:That's what I hear in video games all the time, man.
Ben:huh, yeah, cause you suck as a noob.
Gene:not necessarily.
Ben:uh huh, huh, the truth comes out.
Gene:Good, good.
Ben:Yeah, this is why Gene is buying all those spaceships, he's trying to compensate.
Gene:This is Spaceships that have nothing to do with the quality of my gameplay. I just like to, you know, be comfortable. Kick my feet up when I fly. Be on the chase lounge when I fly. But yeah, it's Alex was very entertaining. He was doing his darnedest. To try and just not laugh continuously at these people, but actually try and bring up facts to them like he would say, but, but you can see the big dipper up in the sky and you can see as the earth is moving that it's moving as well. And they're like, yeah, but if the planet was truly moving, like they say it is. We would see totally different stars all the time, or we'd see like stripes instead of dots.
Ben:Oh, Jesus Christ. You
Gene:It was hilarious. I really hope somebody clipped it or they officially put it up as the Alex Jones flat earther segment, because this was like live maybe six hours ago.
Ben:yeah, on X, I, I,
Gene:was hilarious.
Ben:You know, one of the things I'll say is that, Here's the thing. There's an old saying in cybersecurity, you can't patch stupid.
Gene:Mm hmm.
Ben:This is right there, man. You just can't do it.
Gene:I mean, there's a lot of wise old sayings like the the what was the, how'd it go? The error is between,
Ben:PIBCAC,
Gene:which stands for
Ben:problem between keyboard and chair.
Gene:That's right. Yep. That's what it is.
Ben:Yeah. Trust me. I have worked in the IT and tech area long enough that I know all of them.
Gene:Yeah. And they're true, generally.
Ben:Yeah. And
Gene:Which
Ben:the old ID10T errors.
Gene:you tried, yeah, have you tried turning it off and on again? It sounds ridiculous, but it's also totally true. Because most people have not tried turning it off and on, and turning it off and on fixes an amazing amount of problems.
Ben:Windows, man, has gone downhill tremendously.
Gene:You say that as though it was at any point up the hill.
Ben:Yeah, there were some good Windows operating systems that were well beyond what anyone else was doing for a long time.
Gene:What, NT4O?
Ben:NT4O, Windows 2000, Windows XP, even into that era, like OS X couldn't
Gene:XP had an awful lot of DOS code in the band.
Ben:Yes, but by the time Service Pack 2 rolled around, it was a damn good operating system. And what I would say Yes. And what I would say is that OS 10 didn't come out till after service pack one, I believe. And, you know, OS 10 really didn't get really any useful utility till after they got away from the power PC
Gene:Mm hmm.
Ben:they,
Gene:Yeah I mean, OS X is basically
Ben:it's free BSD is
Gene:it's FreeBSD, exactly. It all came from the acquisition of Jobs old company,
Ben:No, no, no, no, no, no, no, not true. Not true. Not true. So free BSD and the kernel that it's, or OS 10 is based off the free BSD kernel. So yeah, it's, it's, it's a Unix variant, but, and some of what they used in the UI came from Next, but the core of the operating system is open source.
Gene:I don't think that's true, dude. I don't have the infos in front of me here, but NeXT was based on FreeBSD. Mm hmm. And next was what was the core. Of Apple's next generation operating system, which became OS 10.
Ben:Mm hmm.
Gene:It was next step. So it's true to say that OS 10 is based on FreeBSD, but it came through next.
Ben:Okay. I won't argue argue. I, I think they stole a lot from BSD, but
Gene:I, I, jobs stole everything from everybody. The whole Mac interface came from Xerox.
Ben:Yeah. The, the mouse came from Next. Xerox.
Gene:No, the whole Mac interface came from Xerox. The windows, the icons, the idea of a desktop, all that came from the Xerox park research. Where Steve jobs had a tour
Ben:Yes.
Gene:several years beforehand. Yeah, it was a research
Ben:And you, you know, people don't realize Xerox's role in modern computing, like we think of'em as a copier company, but ethernet, you know, the first bus Ethernets with like, you know, thick net, thin net was really developed around Xerox and their networking. Like there's a
Gene:There were, there were a lot of companies in the Palo Alto area at the time like, Becker and Bell, Bell and Howell Xerox that had a, I don't know where it came from, but they had a very standardized research department budget allocation. Like it was assumed that if you were a successful company. That you had a research arm had a budget of anywhere between five and 10%. Of the revenues coming into the company because innovation is one of the things that distinguishes a successful company from a, you know, fly by night company.
Ben:Yeah. Do you remember IPX
Gene:Yeah. Oh yeah. IPX,
Ben:on the CCNA the first time I took it and then you had Novell netware instead of Active Directory back in the day and, oh, yeah, I'm, I'm getting old. The fact that
Gene:you are getting old. I am old.
Ben:millennials were, were aging out. So
Gene:Yeah. You know, the alphas are coming in.
Ben:yeah, my, my kids are alphas. My kids are gen alphas.
Gene:It's going to be interesting to see what happens. But one thing we know for sure is both the boys and girls will be in selective service. And on that note, Ben. We'll go ahead and wrap it up.
Ben:Alright, let's end early then, Gene. See
Gene:Wait, what do you mean end early? We were ending on time.
Ben:Alright, Gene. We'll catch you in a little bit.