Just Two Good Old Boys
We never mean any harm!
Just Two Good Old Boys
078 Just Two Good Old Boys
But the humor doesn't stop there. Our discussion takes a turn into the thorny realm of deer farming in Texas, touching on high fences and high-stakes legal battles. Hear about Jeremy Clarkson's victory dubbed "Jeremy’s law," and how it mirrors the struggles with local governance akin to overzealous HOA boards in the U.S. We shed light on the financial and operational hurdles that modern family farms face, debunking the myth of farming as an easy job and revealing the intense knowledge and effort required, much like what’s depicted in "Clarkson's Farm."
In the latter half of the episode, we switch gears to the evolving landscape of cryptocurrency with Proton Wallet’s latest updates, then delve into political and religious interpretations, including the intriguing remarks by Donald Trump about his faith. We cap off with thought-provoking discussions on addiction, historical drinking habits, and the timeless joy of cigar appreciation. This episode is a rollercoaster of laughs, insights, and personal stories that promise to leave you both entertained and enlightened. Don't miss out!
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Hey.
Speaker 2:Ben, how are you today?
Speaker 1:Gene, I am doing well. I made it out of the swamp, so that's good. You were out in DC, I was. I was out in DC and had some interesting companions sitting next to me on the way back, but we'll talk about that in a little bit.
Speaker 2:Okay cool, that's always fun about that in a little bit okay cool, that's always fun. I've, uh, I've had my share of interesting, and that covers a lot of territories and people. I've said next as well. Um, it's always, it's always interesting to see, um, what people, uh sitting next to you, are going out to where they're going for, because, it's never what I think it is.
Speaker 1:Well, you know. What's really funny, though, is I don't care what status you have when you're flying out of DC on a Friday afternoon, you're not getting a good seat, yeah.
Speaker 2:Because there are people with a lot more than you. Well, yeah. And then there's the ultimate status, which is I just buy first class tickets yeah, well I don't do that, especially on a company dime.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah well, you know you, you, you're a little skinnier and it's a little easier to sit in the back. Fair enough, fair enough. So at least that's the uh. That's why I keep telling my relatives that I always get made fun of for falling first ah well, you know, it comes with being an appropriately sized human that's what I said exactly it's like look there's seats made for you and there's seats made for me, and it's not my fault.
Speaker 2:My seats are up front, plus somebody has to pay for their line this week I uh, I was traveling a lot and I've done some catching up over the last you know, friday evening, saturday, but uh, but not maybe as much as I should have.
Speaker 2:Well, I've actually. I mean, there's plenty we can talk about with the camel and everything, but I finally finished Clarkson's Farm, the current season, when I only really started watching it last week. I forgot there was a new whole season out, so I had to binge watch it, my preferred style of consumption of that type of series.
Speaker 1:It's a good show. It's a great show man If anyone hasn't watched it.
Speaker 2:It is definitely worth watching, as somebody who's always enjoyed Top Gear and somebody who's always enjoyed top gear and somebody who's always enjoyed farm simulator uh, it's like damn, this doesn't get any better.
Speaker 1:Well, it okay. Uh, what I would say is that if you are um, if you like the top gear sense of humor, if like jeremy clarkston's uh sense of humor on top gear, you will like clarkson's farm yeah, and it's.
Speaker 2:It's also the same guys working out that used to do the old top gear uh, as far as what? Producers um a number of people in the back, yeah, uh, not the, uh the front guys, germy um doesn't have richard hammond or um james bay with them, but as far as the guys working on the show actively, it is very much the same crowd that you've worked on the old top gear yeah, and you have his girlfriend slash common law wife Lisa. Don't be putting the horse in front of the cart. He has not proposed.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, you are aware of how common law works, right?
Speaker 2:It doesn't really matter, I'm pretty sure she has her own floor of the house. So technically speaking, I think he's got that covered If his lawyers did any good house. So technically speaking, I think he's got that covered if his lawyers did any good. But it is funny how they in this season she actually jokes about him not asking her to marry him. Yeah, yeah, which was I was like oh yeah, yeah, you know, and he is very quiet.
Speaker 1:No comments at all, no smart ass remarks and that's the. That's the side of jeremy.
Speaker 2:We really haven't gotten to see through top gear or anything else, and it's uh, it adds a good bit of humor, to say the least it, it does, it does and obviously you know they're in it for the long run because she freaking works there as much, if not more, than he does. It's as much her farm as anything else. But uh, it it is. I I like the themes that have been going because, starting with the first season, you saw how lisa finds some little tchotchkes she likes and then she wants to sell them in the store and then they're completely fucked up. Insane local councils got this whole thing about. You know you can only sell farm products on a farm. It has to be made within five square miles of the farm, of the store. I mean, it's just it. It's asinine regulations to start with, but then an extra level of craziness in terms of the people who want to enforce it.
Speaker 1:Well, and it it's a very libertarian show in that sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in a very non-libertarian town that he lives in, that's for sure.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean he lives in the UK.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's like you kind of hear about what's the UK's greatest accomplishment in the thousand years Bureaucracy.
Speaker 1:That's their gift to the world I mean we can argue about a lot of that, but sure yeah, well, look, many have tried.
Speaker 2:The uk has been doing it for a very long time. Uh, and some would say that that was also a key to the British conquest of the world back in the colony days is that they brought a certain level of bureaucracy that everyone just gave up and just said, okay, fine, you guys run things. Just, you know, don't get in our way.
Speaker 1:And the UK conquered a lot of territory with minimal amount of gunshots fired yeah, well, I mean, okay, a lot of the uh, the natives of certain areas might dispute the minimal nature of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and well, and a lot of them have pushed back, but it's a? Uh, it's very easy to see in that show the extreme side effects of letting a group of people who are hell-bent on bureaucracy being good um, be in charge, and I'll give examples if people haven't watched the show. Uh, jeremy opens up a little farm store. Well, you gotta have a parking lot for a farm store. So he wants to put in. Uh, in fact, I think he started working on a parking lot on his own territory next to the store. He, he owns the land, right, the local council, which is what they're called of this village, denies him permission to put in a parking lot on his own property. Yeah, and then they complain about the number of cars that go to his store that are parked on the side of the road, like pick one. But you can't do both. It's just there's a lot of obnoxious things like that.
Speaker 1:Well, um, obnoxious, but you know, uh, hilarity ensues. To borrow a tucker mac phrase absolutely.
Speaker 2:If, if they max um, if they had a very cooperative council, half the episodes would have no plot agree because probably half of the over the course of all the seasons, half of the episodes deal with frustration arising out of this, although that's not the only source of frustration. I will say the UK, whatever. Their equivalent of the farming control board, whatever they're called Department of Agriculture.
Speaker 2:Yeah, basically their version of Department of Agriculture right is not a whole lot better than the local council. The regulations on everything are maybe they're not arbitrary. I don't want to say things that I'm not fully keyed in on here. You know, fully clued, keyed in on here, but it nonetheless seems to be extremely intrusive into the farming uh lifestyle, not even lifestyle into the farming business yeah, did you?
Speaker 1:uh, did you see the episode where caleb got to talk to the prime minister?
Speaker 2:the president of the uk. I love caleb.
Speaker 1:Caleb is the man so, uh, I mean, he really represents the everyman right oh my god he. He clearly has no clue.
Speaker 2:You've seen the bumper stickers like caleb for pm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah but so caleb he clearly has no clue how his own government functions he has no interest in it, as he'd say well, I don't need to do, I, I live here. Uh, caleb is a gem that this. The luck that they had with getting him was amazing. So Caleb was a farmhand when Jeremy had a professional farmer managing his 1,000 acres Although, as we find out later, it's not really a 1,000-acre farm, it's a 1,000-acre property with about 550 acres of farmable land. The rest of it is not really farmable, it's it's woods, um, little fields for the sheep or goats or something else, but not really something that they've got farming equipment, uh.
Speaker 2:But uh, caleb was like the, the contract farmer's helper dude, the, the contract farmer's helper dude, and the contract farmer retired, which led to jeremy deciding well, it's covet, I've got nothing better to do. Why don't we just get a film crew in here and I'll just show how ridiculous it is if I try farming myself? I think that was the thought. It's like this will be funny, let's see if we can sell this as a show and um, and it was pretty damn funny. But caleb the helper dude and there's early episodes before they really, you know, he and james really knew each other a whole lot. Yeah, he's like, like you can see, this is a equivalent to like tv doctors walking into an actual hospital and then a maybe a younger doctor, but clearly someone that went through medical school and has experience someone who knows what they're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what they're doing is basically their chaperone, and the ineptitude of these tv doctors follows. Well, that was kind of deal here, because the first thing of course that happens is uh is, jeremy needs a tractor? Right, because the, the old guy that used to run the place from had his own tractor or tractors, and so jeremy needs the tractor. Kib kind of tells him here's what you need. Jeremy goes out and buys the biggest lamborghini brand tractor with the most horsepower he can get. Everybody is either shocked by or laughs at, because even though a thousand acres sounds big, it's actually a pretty small farm by u standards uh, I mean, I wouldn't call it a small farm, but yeah, it's not.
Speaker 1:It's not a big commercial operation, that's uh a, you know, a corporate farm is running yeah, yeah and it's.
Speaker 2:It is about the size of, like you know, individual farms. Back from the day, like I went hunting on my buddy's grandma's farm and uh uh in minnesota and I think their farm was like 800 acres and then, like her house was basically on a four acre plot of that, so the non-farmable sort of a you know grass field with a barn and stuff was ended up being about 40 and um. So the other thing to consider is in the uk they do this thing which makes no sense to me, even in the video games of putting stone walls around every field.
Speaker 1:You want to know what the history of that is? Sure, so the way those stone walls started was as a farmer was plowing his field with a horse and just regular plow stones would work their way to the top of the soil. Because you're turning over the soil. Well, you've got to do something with the stone. So you go, take it to the edge of the property and start stacking it up and before you know it, you've got a wall yeah, that totally makes sense.
Speaker 2:I would have just had a stone pile rather than the stone wall, but whatever, it is what it is. But the downside of that is it means that, um, as has been my experience in the video game and is evident in watching this show over all the seasons, is there's quite often problems with trying to get farming equipment into places because the clearances are either too small or, if they're okay, they're super tight because of these stone walls it's a?
Speaker 2:I don't know again. Maybe I just grew up with different types of farms, farms that were flat and big and uh uh, and if you're gonna have a wall, it's, it's basically going to be, uh, something that is destructible and you can take it apart if you need to, around the outer edges, not on each individual field well, I'm sure you grew up around farms that if they had a fence, it was most likely at least the majority of it was barbed wire right, yeah, it's to keep the the deer from eating your crops, basically no, it's not even that.
Speaker 1:It's to keep cows and cattle right deer are going to jump unless you have a high fence yeah, I'm talking about, like, corn and wheat farms, not cow farms.
Speaker 1:So right, but corn and wheat farms, the barbed wire fence around it unless you have a high fence aren't going to keep out deer. You have to have a 8 to 12 foot tall fence to keep a deer from jumping in, and even then they're going to what barbed wire isn't going to keep a deer in. No, not like a 5 foot fence. No, all right. Not like a five-foot fence, no, all right. I'm just telling you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Look at all the ranches and exotic ranches and everything down in Texas here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those all have huge fences. Everything is high fence and it's like a prison fence. It's like 10 feet tall with a barbed wire on top.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 8 to 12 feet tall. And some places even do a double fence, because uh, deer will I mean deer can jump dude yeah and they will event they're like goats as soon as they figure out a way to do something.
Speaker 2:Heaven help you. Yeah, um, yeah, that's true, although they're more skittish than goats.
Speaker 1:Oh, you know what you say, that. But I had. Growing up I had some friends that had a deer farm. Literally that's what they did, was they farmed white tail and shipped them off to for food or well, they show yes, and they shipped them off to ranches in Texas and other places to kind of stock up and breeding for the best antlers. They would do antler collection and sell antlers. And then actually one of their most. It was just absolutely horrendous to collect but doe urine.
Speaker 1:Oh, sure, absolutely horrendous to collect, but doe urine, oh sure. Yeah, they're in estrus, you know doe urine in estrus because hunters use that to mask their scent and to attract bucks and so on, and it's a renewable product and it is, uh, a bitch to collect. But, uh, I mean, essentially they put the does on what is a concrete paddock, uh, and have a drain that collects it is that how?
Speaker 1:oh my god, that's horrible well, it's not easy on the does and it's not easy on the people collecting it no, no, wow, okay, yeah, uh, yeah it it's, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Anyway, uh, just to wrap up the whole germany's farm. Now you're you've seen them all, or you're watching, or uh, I've got a few episodes left.
Speaker 1:They split the last season up, so I watched all of the first half of the last season but I have not finished. Uh, the last, the wrap-up of the thing.
Speaker 2:Did you get to the point where they win the lawsuit?
Speaker 1:yes okay.
Speaker 2:So that was pretty awesome too, because I I was frankly surprised, given british law. But uh, there is now, uh, a lawsuit that they won and I the way they talk about it is is it's a British law named for Jeremy Clarkson. But I don't see how a fricking lawsuit results in laws unless their parliament passed something, which I don't think they did. But they're calling it the Jeremy's law, which basically says farmers have a right to use their land for any legal purposes and the only thing that the local council gets involved in is new construction yeah, and part of that, though, is you have to remember the intricacies and piccadillos of british.
Speaker 1:The british system national laws are passed by the. Of the British system, national laws are passed by the parliament. There is no state legislature, as there were right. So you have the councils and everything. There's actually a lot more local governance in the UK than in the US, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm not sure that it's an unfortunate thing. I mean, I get where you're coming from and I would generally say yes. However, I've started on a whole bunch of boards non-profit boards and I know the type of people that are attracted to small government, and these are busybodies that want to force others to do things their way, and I suspect their consoles are no different.
Speaker 1:Well, and I mean, anyone who's ever had an HOA knows exactly what you're talking about Exactly, you know, and it's unfortunate and not what we want in government or governance. And uh, you know, I I just go back to the old adage that government that governs least governs best.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, the the HOA is a perfect example. Imagine if the HOA wasn't even a private organization that you had to be in if you bought property within a particular area, but if that was the government organization for your locality, because every village has its own government. It's crazy man. I would not trust these people to follow laws, much less make laws. And they definitely have it in for Jeremy. I mean, he is, as good as it may be for the series in creating drama and tension, it may be for the series in creating drama and tension.
Speaker 1:I can't imagine an actual farmer not throwing their hands up in the air and giving up, given the treatment that jeremy said well, I mean, that has happened uh you know, when you look at the usK, you have an exodus from the farming community, you know, and it is becoming a big corporate operation only, and the family farm is largely going away. Yep, which is one of the things I would like to do is get to now. I would probably do ranching, not necessarily farming.
Speaker 1:But, you know I would like to get to a place financially and where I can do it for myself and my kids is set up that family property that is at least a tax shelter, if not income itself, and go from there and I think it'd be great if more people had little gardens and maybe even some animals.
Speaker 2:But doing it on a commercial scale, but not as a corporation, as an individual, I think has gotten prohibitively expensive. There's a number of farming YouTubers that I've watched over the years and here's the sad truth of it is in the way that farms operate today, like a what I would describe as a typical, maybe even smallish farm of a thousand acres in Minnesota or Iowa, growing corn predominantly, because that's the one you're going to get the most bang for the buck in. That farm will close out the year with somewhere around $200,000, maybe even less, let's say $150,000 to $200,000 worth of profit and you're like well, that's not too bad, yeah, but that's a lot more than one person working, and it's not working nine to five, it's working 12 hour days for a good chunk of the year. But here's the part that's the real fuck you in here is, in order to achieve that 150 to 200 000 profit, the farm will actually have expenses of several million dollars a year.
Speaker 1:oh, yeah, and most of the farmers, family farmers and everybody that I knew growing up, uh, they were millionaires on paper, exactly on paper, yes, but the fact of the matter was they were living fairly. But the fact of the matter was they were living fairly poorly and it is not a sustainable thing today and I think that's really kind of hurt our economy.
Speaker 2:And a lot of the stuff is not like it seems. Like you said, on paper they look like they're millionaires, but in reality, uh, the costs associated with the whole farming process are really high, so they're yeah, most farmers will use factoring.
Speaker 2:So it's not like they have two million dollars at the beginning of the year to invest into everything and then sell the product for $2 million, pay off their debts to themselves, basically return their investment and then make a little bit of profit on top of it. They're borrowing money to spend in the planting season in hopes that the weather and everything else cooperates and then allows them to repay all of that of course, interest involved and still make a little bit of a profit. So all the farm equipment, all the seeds, the fuel, everything else generally these are not investments that are made, and this is what constitutes the multimillion dollars of spend every year is either equipment is leased or, if it's not leased, if it's theirs, they're usually making payments on it and people don't have a million plus sitting in the bank to invest into a one year farming cycle. So it's there's a whole industry of basically you know banks that have gotten rich off of being in farmland territories. Uh, because they're just continuously making 10 plus percent a year off of these farmers, just regular farming work, not any expansion or anything that you know normally you would see alone.
Speaker 2:Like most companies, most businesses try and operate within the budget to where their expenses are at least covered by their income and then that there's profit left afterwards. Most family farmers can't afford to make the investment for one year's worth of farming, and that's unfortunately. It's just reality today because the prices have gotten. I think there were probably years in the past where they could, maybe 100 years ago, but not today have you ever heard the song amarillo sky by j Aldean?
Speaker 2:It sounds like the title sounds familiar, but I couldn't sing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know diesel's worth the price of gold. You know the farmers have lived and died off of diesel prices. You have also the whole aspect that. How do I put this whole aspect that? Um, how do I put this? Farmers have a lot of assets and they're asset, rich like the truck that they drive is owned by the farm, not by them.
Speaker 1:You know they get to run off-road diesel in a lot of instances now, if you're caught on the streets with off-road diesel, that can be a problem you know, in some states, and there's a whole litany of legalities and gotchas you have to understand and navigate, which anyone who thinks that, oh, you're just a dumb farmer, fuck that. And I think that's one of the things that Clarkson's farm really shows is that there's a lot of thought and work and talent required to successfully operate a farm and it's a one of the highest risk businesses.
Speaker 1:You can be on top of everything else oh yeah, I mean, if something fails, if you have a crop failure, if you things don't, you you lose, yeah, yeah and it just makes you again I'm.
Speaker 2:My takeaways from watching that show is like who in their right mind would want to become a farmer and which farmer would not want to retire as soon as they're capable, given all the bullshit that they're putting up with and, as is evident in that show, on top of all the actual natural risks that you have to do with the weather and the crops, um, and mistakes that people make everyone makes those you you have to deal with a council that hates you.
Speaker 2:I mean like, oh my god, why and the germy said this in an interview is that at the end of the last season he had to sit down and think about do I just keep doing this or they just cash out because? Or do I keep the land and then literally just do nothing with it because, frankly, the profit that the land is generating is not making a substantial debt in his wallet. He'll make as much money shooting one episode of a TV show Actually more, because I think their profit was, I don't know, a hundred-something thousand at the end of the year. And for doing the what's the Amazon show that he does with the guys, uh, grand tour, grand tour. For doing grand tour, uh, jeremy got paid like 1.8 million per episode or something. I mean it's just like it's him spending time on the farm literally costs him money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's not necessarily, but that's again.
Speaker 2:You don't do things like this because you intend to become rich doing it at this point, yeah, yeah, and it's dangerous because nobody can do anything else without food in the grocery stores.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And and do you want the evil corporations that you know I think I would dare say most of the uh listeners to this show just abhor Um. Do you want that to be the only source of food that you have?
Speaker 1:Or Bill Gates, who owns, like 10 of all farmland in the us yes, who has, you know, talked about population reduction? Yeah, yeah, exactly let's think about this for just a second. Uh, you know, I, I, I really prefer the distributed intelligence of the commons over a handful of oligarchs yep, except for elon, musk. Yeah, uh no, I, I, I am very wary of musk, not because I mean I I did you watch the Peterson interview?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was good. I think there's a lot of stuff that Musk is doing and has talked about and everything else that I think is a good thing. But you know, concentration of power to me is always dangerous.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm. Yep is dangerous. Mm-hmm Yep? Well, I definitely am. I mean, I've always kind of been on the side of the farmers, but after watching this show I don't see how anybody can be on any other side, because you look at what it takes to be marginally successful and how important farmers are for all of our survival, and it's crazy like if there's one industry that ought to be much made much easier and and collectively propped up by the rest of us, it ought to be farming collectively propped up by the rest of us.
Speaker 1:It ought to be farming, yeah. I think you get rid of the Department of Agriculture and you allow farming to be free. Yeah, if you have a free market, a true free market, then it will work better. Speaking of free markets and we can even talk about some of the Trump stuff in relation to this yeah, bitcoin.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I just sent you an invite to Proton Wallet.
Speaker 2:What I haven't seen this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Proton Mail, which you and I both use for various things and we both have a tier.
Speaker 2:it is included and free with your visionary subscription jesus, they're really pushing forward on this stuff, because they just came out what was the last thing they introduced? The uh, no, no, no. The. The bookmark, uh, not bookmark the password manager thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, they have a password manager that. I would like to transition to, but it's not there yet, okay. But you know they're working on it and when they get a few more bugs worked out I'll move, but I'm playing with it actively. They also introduced Scribe, which is an AI that is locked to your instance, so all the data stays in your instance. It's actually encrypted with your instance and all that.
Speaker 2:I haven't played with it at all.
Speaker 1:I am wary of it, but yeah. But now they've come out with the Proton Wallet, which they're starting with Bitcoin, but they're going to add other things. So, and I think this is a move we're seeing in a lot of the tech world, you know, like John and Adam have talked about Musk wanting X to be your bank.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think this is the same sort of thing. You know, x was my bank.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, when it was PayPal yeah.
Speaker 2:I know when it was x I I. I'm sure I threw it away, but I had a uh cash card from x I was I was one of the elon's original customers for x okay back in shit.
Speaker 2:This would have been mid 90s, maybe late 90s, but but it was the first. Hey, a bank doesn't need to have real estate and so we can operate much cheaper and every service is free and there's no late what do you call them? No fees of any kind. I was very happy about it, and then it never took off, just saying that Axe will return to being a bank at some point. They already were one originally. Alright, so I create a new wallet, or I can import a wallet. So let's create a new wallet, or I can import a wallet. Interesting Yep, so let's create a new one. So theoretically, then I can suck out stuff out of my Albie in here.
Speaker 1:Yep, and that's what I'm going to be doing. I'll be transitioning to this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's cool, I just started playing with it yeah, yeah, I'll definitely play around with it, see what I can do. I. You know, I where I'm at with the whole the uh voltage or volt, I guess not voltage volt. I will be closing that account because I'm tired of paying for it and it's $25 a month and they don't have any suggestions for me to pull out my money out of there. Like it's in limbo land, it's just inaccessible.
Speaker 1:Well, you might try opening this up and see what you can do on moving that over no, I mean I can't access the funds. There's nothing to right, but if you get to close your account, it should close channels and, uh, free that up if I close the account, well, the channels aren't closing. That's the problem right, but if you're going to close the account, the channels have to close. No one's going to leave those channels open, so well, they're not open.
Speaker 2:That's the problem is they're only open from me and they were never confirmed open from the other side. That's, that's the bug again.
Speaker 2:I think I I I would talk to them, but I think if you close the account, you should be able to get your money out, but okay, so maybe the the terms are a little different. So it's not an account, it's a software tool. It you're what I'm paying for isn't a wallet, it's a node on the network I yes, I understand. Okay, so closing the account is really shutting down the software, and the moment it's shut down, the funds are irrecoverable.
Speaker 1:So everything should be tied to your wallet that is running on that node. You should have your recovery phrases and if they're using, if they're following the standard, you should be able to go to any other wallet, put in your recovery phrases and recover it, and if this was Bitcoin, I would agree with you.
Speaker 2:However, it's Sats.
Speaker 1:It's Lightning Network, not Bitcoin. Well, everything should reconcile, so Sats reconcile to the ledger, the, the bitcoin ledger eventually.
Speaker 2:Well, they don't so much reconcile as you use what you have on the ledger to be able to send sats. So there's a reconciliation that happens between the accounts eventually, but not until you close the channel. And my channels ain't closing is the problem, but they're also not open, they're initiated, they're pending, all the channels. And, incidentally, I've bitched about this enough. I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on it, but somehow they're blaming me. I'm blaming them, they.
Speaker 2:They had a flag on my account that auto opened channels, right, which is made for convenience. And I get it because most people are like what do you mean? I have to open the channel, what? What's that mean? I don't even know what to do. So out of convenience, they will open channels. I didn't want that. I was just trying to get the funds to be to close all the channels, have the funds in there, make a withdrawal of all the funds and then shut down the service. Uh, I close one channel, two channels pop open. But these channels never had their handshake, so they're stuck in a. We're waiting for a handshake that's supposed to time out within a few days. The first time it was six months.
Speaker 2:I upgraded the software. Those channels got closed so I was able to take a little bit of money out of there. But as I was taking money through Bitcoin out of there, after closing channels manually, it started auto-opening new channels because it realized oh my God, you have no channels open and those channels are now stuck. They have, like, I've worked with their support for two months now. They have no way for. And again, all this shit makes sense because they shouldn't have access to your stuff because it's not a bank, it's a software company, and so they can tell you what to try. But when it doesn't work, they're like hmm, we'll take a look, see if there's a bug. That's all they can do. And so at this point I've got, I think, $800 or $900 in there and it's inaccessible and frankly, I'm tired of paying three hundred dollars a year for this thing.
Speaker 1:So I'm gonna cut my losses, that's fine, but one of the things I would also I I think there's some ways around it that you should look at, but regardless well, I'm happy to give you the same offer I gave to darren if you want to fuck around with it.
Speaker 2:If you got the time, the time you can keep half the money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the other thing I would suggest is that you can have multiple wallets and this is something I would suggest to Darren, if I were you and you can have multiple accounts under each wallet.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Which means you can have multiple addresses, which means he can have his show separation very easily with the way they have this set up right now oh, the way the proton's doing it, or you mean in general the way the proton's doing it, because he can add sub accounts or under the same wallet, so it all goes into one wallet, but you can see, because you have separate accounts under each wallet, you can see where that's coming from. Or you can set up separate wallets and it's included and they don't charge, so who cares?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Darren might be too much of a cheapskate to pay for Proton in general.
Speaker 1:Well, you know. What I would say, though, is you could I'm sure you have, you have a visionary account, right?
Speaker 2:I have a business account.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you can add him a username under there. Yeah but I have to charge him a lot of money to do it. Jesus.
Speaker 2:Christ. Okay, keep your anti-Semitism down.
Speaker 1:Come on now. What did I?
Speaker 2:say that was anti-Semitism, I mentally started thinking what you're probably thinking, so you know.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh, uh-huh. This is like the people who see racism that you know. Whatever Racist.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I'll certainly not that he listens to this show, but I will pass it on to him next time I chat with him. But yeah. I mean I'm very happy they're doing this. I do have different wallets and different accounts. I've got I finally. I mean I've had a Coinbase account forever and that's where I had my automatic purchases of Bitcoin every two weeks for quite a while.
Speaker 1:I have a Coinbase account too, every two weeks. Yeah, I, I have a Coinbase account too, but I, if this is going to work the way. I'm hopeful it will. I mean they can allow you to buy Bitcoin through here. Um so if that is the case, uh, I will be moving my Coinbase stuff away and coming over here.
Speaker 2:Do keep in mind this is still a managed account. I also have a hardware key, so I have well yes and no.
Speaker 1:Um, yes, you are paying someone to host and run this, but it is non-custodial. My understanding of just reading through it's non-custodial in that or it's yeah, it's non-custodial because, it, you have your keys, you have your stuff. If you lose it, you're fucked yeah, well, that's good, and it's you know, I mean the software is running on their server.
Speaker 2:But anyway, it neither here nor there yeah, the question is, do they also have your keys and can the government get your keys from them?
Speaker 1:and what we've learned about proton is very much, um, that depends on your security settings and your knowledge. If you have a recovery setup that can be spoofed, then you're fucked. If you don't have recovery that can be spoofed ie like my proton account, if you know, I have strong multi-factor on there I've got a lot of stuff going on. I have recovery keys that are printed out and saved, but absent those recovery keys, there is no alternative email. There is no password reset.
Speaker 1:There's none of that enabled yeah, and if you google proton mail and um police, you'll see a number of articles talking about mail and I have looked at those and almost all of them have the email password reset or phone password reset enabled, like I have yet to see a uh one that doesn't, so uh proton mail, how proton led fbi to a suspect search who was threatening a 2020 election official.
Speaker 2:Um, I mean it's I like proton ion. I think it's good for anti-casual hacker type stuff. They are absolutely going to cooperate with any kind of government FBI.
Speaker 1:CIA, you name it when they can. I mean, it's like LastPass. Lastpass, if you enable password recovery and stuff like that, you're essentially breaking it. If you don't have password recovery and you don't have these things, you're removing some of their ability to be able to do that. Now could they go in and change the platform and put in a keylogger and capture stuff and then disable your multi-factor?
Speaker 2:well, I'm just saying that they're not very different. They're not love of a bit.
Speaker 2:Let's just keep going, god lava bit, that's uh okay snowden well, I no, I actually know the guy that started that company. I for a while there we're talking about doing something together, that company For a while there we were talking about doing something together Back in the day, back in Snowden days. But that guy and people, if people don't know when he got a request to provide logs about his users after the Snowden thing because Snowden used it, he made the choice to shut down the company and the servers, uh, over providing the logs and other computer data to the fbi. Yeah, and he got a lot of flack for it from some people and he got a lot of attaboys from other people, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's Well. While we're on the Bitcoin thing, did you see the Trump speech to the Bitcoin group?
Speaker 2:No, actually I did not. I saw Vivex. I didn't see Trump's.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, trump came out and talked about firing the SEC chair and letting Bitcoin run wild and everything else.
Speaker 2:And man his mouth is writing a lot of checks these days.
Speaker 1:He's a dude. I think he's going to go. You know, I hope so. But I highly doubt it, it given his first term I think that, given the assassination tempt, he's ready to just burn the fucker down I hope so, man.
Speaker 2:That would be like nothing more. I would like them to be proven wrong in my uh thoughts about him, but you know, history has a way of repeating itself yeah, well, did you see the stuff about?
Speaker 1:uh trump talking to some of the evangelicals saying I am a christian and the media is spinning it as I am not a christian?
Speaker 2:so I've heard I I I've heard, I've seen quite a few uh on X I keep wanting to say tweets of people that are on the Christian side now bashing Trump. I'm not sure I didn't see anything that would indicate why that's happening, but I've seen the bashing going on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if you look at what he said and you watch the video, what he? Said and you watch the video um, I think it's very straightforward on what he was saying. A lot of people are, you know this is um red dress, or gold dress, blue dress, sort of thing. Right in that, you know, people see and or hear what they're suggested to see or hear, so yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, so is there any more detail to that? Have you followed it at all? Yeah, I've watched the video, I've seen the commentary and I so what are people misinterpreting? What do you say?
Speaker 1:He said I am a Christian. And he's pointing to himself when he says it. And I think if you're watching his body language and you're watching what he's saying, that's clearly what he's saying. But the left, because it's a little muddled the way he is speaking. When he says this, some people are running with oh well, he's not a Christian. He just said he wasn't a Christian. Well, you know, I don't know. I think it's pretty damn clear.
Speaker 2:Let me ask you this what is a Christian?
Speaker 1:Someone who believes Christ is their Lord and Savior.
Speaker 2:Okay, and is it for them to determine whether or not they believe it, or for other Christians?
Speaker 1:For them.
Speaker 2:So can they? Somebody who is in the Church of Latter-day Christ or Latter-day Saints or whatever they're called, the Mormons? Yep, a lot of them would call themselves Christians, but I've also heard plenty of Christians saying they're not Christian.
Speaker 1:I believe there are a lot of Mormons that are fundamentally Christian and it's, you know, not necessarily for this is something that Okay, we went with a heavy topic last week, we'll go with another heavy topic this week. Hey, who cares? Oh, we had a fun topic last week, oh yeah, and I've gotten some interesting comments on that episode, by the way.
Speaker 2:Oh, I have as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure Gene Camp Ben who's in what? But what it comes down to is and this goes back through history, I mean, there's so much to unpack here we can start with Well, and I don't have a dog in this race, right, Right, right, right, I understand.
Speaker 2:So for me it's just more of a how does this work?
Speaker 1:Okay, so from an academic standpoint, at the time of Christ there was no church, there was no establishment, there was no bureaucracy, there was no dogmatic law, there was no bullshit, it was just Christ and the people who followed his teachings. Then, by really second century, you've got essentially the proto-Catholic church established and running and this is it, essentially, the proto-Catholic church established and running. And this is it. And if you did not follow their interpretation, their dictates, you were quote-unquote, not a Christian Right, excuse me.
Speaker 2:But what we learned, you know, with Martin Luther….
Speaker 1:A heretic? Yes, yeah, and the Protestant Reformation is, and I tend to agree. But I'm a Protestant in that I do not believe there needs to be any intercessor between me and God, Not a priest, not a pastor, not the Mother Mary or any saint or anyone else. I need no one to intercede on my behalf with.
Speaker 1:God, and that's the big difference between Catholicism in reality. But to me, one of the tenets of what I personally believe is that I do not need an intercessor between God and I, that my relationship with God is mine and mine alone. That's why you won't hear me praying in public very often, if at all you know, for the family and things like that I I will say grace occasionally, um, but that's, you know more for the kids than me um, that's me trying to show the kids something not that's my understanding.
Speaker 2:That is the sort of standard definition of the protestant separation is that the relationship is direct rather than through a representative on earth uh say that again that uh, this is my understanding of what the difference between Protestant and Catholic is is that in Protestantism the relationship with God is a direct relationship, not through a earthly representative, like the Pope represents.
Speaker 1:He is supposed to be sitting on the throne of Christ in his absence, which is that dude talk about presumptuous and not something I would want to be doing if Christ ever comes back.
Speaker 2:So yeah, but according to Paul that's the way that Christ intended it to be. Because Paul dreamed it? No, totally disagree.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm not, I mean it. No, totally disagree.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm not. I mean, you don't have to disagree. I'm not uh making the uh an argument for it.
Speaker 1:Well, and that's that's the thing is, if you really want to look at Christianity, you, it should be called Paulism in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2:Um which are solism.
Speaker 1:If we're sure, go fair. But you know what I would say is you know, to me the core books of the new Testament are Matthew, mark, luke and John.
Speaker 2:And one of the things I don't like, and now it's for clarity is that like a typical standard viewpoint of uh, of protestants, or just for you personally?
Speaker 1:you're saying that I'm saying it for me personally, but I would say that most protestants, if you really get them to talking and agreeing um, you know, the core tenets of christianity are the words of Christ, and it's actually something that bugs the shit out of me in a lot of new Bibles. So, growing up, you know, first of all, king James is getting hard to find in a lot of ways, which I think is interesting.
Speaker 2:What are the other more popular interpretations?
Speaker 1:New King James, new Living NIV, stuff like that. Niv has kind of become the standard and I'll explain why I have a problem with NIV in a lot of the new translations. And I'm not saying King James is the right one, it's just what I grew up with and I think it has sufficient language differentiation that makes it important. But finding a King James and finding one with the words of Christ in red, which is every Bible I grew up with the words of Christ were always in red, right, easy for you to distinguish between.
Speaker 2:Oh, I didn't even know that. That's interesting.
Speaker 1:Narration and what Christ was actually saying. So when Christ is identified as the speaker, those words are in red. That is becoming harder and harder, which I think is actually really important, and that's something that has been a tradition for a very, very long time that the words of Christ were differentiated in how they were written, either font in some cases or color in others, and so on, but there was a differentiation saying this is not necessarily a quote, but this is the words of God.
Speaker 1:And I think that's a big differentiation, but as far as the translations, for instance, we all know it gets quoted at weddings far too often. Love is patient, love is kind, right.
Speaker 2:That's such bullshit.
Speaker 1:Well, no, actually Hold on. Love is naggy. Love wants all your money, Sorry my computer was wanting to install an update and I'm telling it now.
Speaker 2:I already better reboot today, thank you, Fuck you, Windows.
Speaker 1:I've really got to figure out a way to do it.
Speaker 2:You've got to figure out a way to do it, or just move, or a Mac you know I'm not.
Speaker 1:no, I don't like that Candy Pop OS Switching between applications and Windows for mac yeah, sucks, what are you talking?
Speaker 2:about. It's the same as windows no, it is not.
Speaker 1:If I click on like, I have two windows of firefox open. If I hover over the icon on the start menu, I get both windows up. I can choose which window to go to. On the mac I have to right click and remember the name of the last window that was open and hope I got the right one. And it really sucks for Outlook if you open up multiple emails and keep stuff open and follow the workflow. I do.
Speaker 2:But anyway, I like using the virtual desktop feature in there, where you're using command arrows to move between apps.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah yeah, anyway, going back to what I was saying, so love is patient, love is kind, yeah, well, first of all, that passage was written in greek. Greek has four words for love storge, philia, eros and agape.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, what's Storge? That's the only one I don't know. What do you mean?
Speaker 1:Well, what's the variant of love, for that word mean Storge would be professional friendship, that sort of thing. Familia is family, family love. Eros is obviously sexual and then agape is God's love, which is encompassing and total. And so in the NIV all the four words are translated as love.
Speaker 1:Well, that loses a lot of meaning. In the KJV King James Version, that same passage is charity is patient, charity is kind, and I think charity is, while not a perfect word for a, you know, a unbounded love, is a better distinction in using different words for the different types of love in the English language. While not perfect, translation gives the reader a better idea than just saying love any time any of the four words are used. Yeah, yeah, but you're talking to someone who grew up when we were doing Bible studies when I was a kid, with a Strong's Concordance and going back to the Greek, going back to the original language and looking that up and parsing the meaning verse by verse. Like that's how I grew up studying the Bible.
Speaker 2:So yeah, in the King James.
Speaker 1:Well, the Strong's Concordance is specifically for our King James translation. Yes, Mm-hmm. But you know, I grew up with friends that used NIV and everything else and you know we would debate things so shocker what.
Speaker 2:Debate no, you're kidding, you didn't stay away from debates.
Speaker 1:I have never stayed away from debates, unfortunately, uh-huh To my chagrin at times.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I never really quite understood how the hell Paul managed to insert himself into the apostles, because it always seemed like there should have been a lot more pushback. Why seemed like there should have been a lot more pushback? Why? Because he was a traveling salesman that was not actually anywhere near where jesus was during jesus lifetime uh, okay, so we there.
Speaker 1:I I wouldn't call him a traveling salesman, but okay.
Speaker 2:What was his job? No, it wasn't.
Speaker 1:He was a Pharisee that was actually going around and killing Christians at the time.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, he was a traveling sales guy, dude Paul from Tarsus. We're talking about the same guy, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So what was he doing when he was on the road to damascus? Killing christians what was paul doing on the road to damascus?
Speaker 2:um traveling there uh-huh, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, let's define the word apostle. What does the word apostle mean?
Speaker 2:I don't know, but paul said that he was an apostle in corinthians. I remember that. Yep, so self-definition highly sus right off the get-go. Okay, I call myself an apostle, it's, it's. You know.
Speaker 1:Somebody else should call him that, not himself yeah, and he was known as a pharisee of pharisees, by the way, who persecuted the followers of christ yeah, well, that's fine dude.
Speaker 2:You know he can be called a lot of things, but the guy was a roman citizen, he was a jew yes, well, he was a traveling.
Speaker 1:Yes, well, he was a traveling salesman.
Speaker 2:That's what most of his life, that's how he earned a living.
Speaker 1:Okay Well anyway, regardless of that, we have different understandings of things. I mean the definition of the word apostle is one who is sent on a mission, so don't don't confuse disciple with apostle.
Speaker 2:Okay. Okay, that's a good point, because I was kind of using apostle as disciple.
Speaker 1:Correct and that is a distinction. So he never called himself a disciple. Then he's an apostle Right, and it depends on the definition of the word disciple, because there are a couple. This is where English gets funny. This goes back to the four loves conversation. Yeah, and this is where, if I say I am a disciple of Christ, I don't mean I was there with the twelve disciples and Christ in that group. What I mean is I'm a student of Christ who follows and, you know, tries to go down that road.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, that actually makes some sense, because I think the leaders of the Mormon church also are called apostles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, apostles is an apostle is one who's sent on a mission. Yeah, an apostle is one who's sent on a mission. Yeah, so Paul is saying he's on a mission from God by calling himself an apostle.
Speaker 2:So he's a blues brother, sure Okay.
Speaker 1:You know he was on the road to Damascus to persecute some more Christians and ended up, you know, basically struck down by God and changed his life. You know kind of like what happened to Trump.
Speaker 2:I don't think Trump was on the mission to kill Christians.
Speaker 1:No, but I think that seems to be what everyone's thinking these days. I think he was on a separate mission and I think you know, man, man, the more I look at the assassination attempt and everything else, I just sit there and look and say at a for no, if nothing else but for the grace of god, go we, because I man, it had trump been shot and killed, cities would, I think, would be burning right now.
Speaker 2:So I'd like to think that, but honestly, statistically, I think nothing would happen. I don't know. No, because the people that support Trump don't act like Antifa, and Antifa would be dancing in the street, not burning buildings down.
Speaker 1:And Antifa would be dancing in the street, not burning buildings down.
Speaker 2:I think we are getting to a point where the sands are shifting below us. Yeah, I can't wait. So maybe it would have been better if he was killed then. I don't know if it would have been better, but you know, I mean not for him, but maybe better for the US.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it would have been better, but you know I mean not for him, but maybe better for the us uh, I don't know, man I, I still hold out and don't take that out of context people yeah, yeah, none of us. First of all, gene, and I do not espouse for violence in any way. Uh, we see violence as a politics by other means, but uh, we also in the natural I would.
Speaker 2:I would rephrase that as saying we don't initiate violence exactly there you I've seen plenty of violence. That is justified. Let's just put it that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there you go well regardless. Uh, I think it would have been very interesting to see what would have happened. I think that, uh, there are plenty of uh chances still around the corner oh yeah, he's not free and clear.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, no. If there isn't more assassination attempts, I will be shocked.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Now the people that are orchestrating those attempts may change. If you take the opinion that this was a deep state orchestrated attempt, there are plenty of other actors beyond deep state to get in line to try and assassinate him. If you think that this was the lone gunman theory and that the guy that had no casings whatsoever around his body was the one that took seven shots at Trump, they.
Speaker 1:According to the FBI, they found eight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but in every photograph of the dead body there are no casings and where people that do this for a living have said in any similar instance, you would have either little flags if they were removed or you have little circles around where the casings were found because you want to preserve the scene of the crime in order to analyze it. What happened? There was literally a resurfacing of the roof within 48 hours yeah, and all the photos from immediately after the event show.
Speaker 1:No, yeah I just it was whitewashed dude I, I don't want to say it, but sandy hook all over again in so many ways well, they're playing the left saying that this was a totally fake attempt.
Speaker 2:No one actually shouted them. It was all stage. There was just a fake blood splatter I'm not saying that.
Speaker 1:I'm just saying there's a cover-up that's happening in some form or fashion.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and the the thing that gets me is how the government regardless of who did shooting or whatnot how they keep acting in the way that points to them participating in a cover-up. Like I'll even assume that there is no cover-up Like what happened is what happened. Why would you go then to try and paint the scene as though the government is trying to cover something up?
Speaker 1:Like that seems stupid.
Speaker 2:That seems contrary to the intent. If you have something that happened, you need to document it and you need to study it and then provide a report that details exactly how the thing happened. But what we're seeing instead is a bunch of denials saying, oh, it didn't happen. Oh, it happened, but not the way that you think. While those denials are happening happening, you've got a scrubbing of the entire thing. It is, in the sense, uh, similar to sandy hook, in that the sandy hook school was, uh blown up. It was literally destroyed so that no one else can look into it at any future time within what like a month it was a very short period of time and they did it under the guise of public safety.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's always safety.
Speaker 2:It's always safe. Safety is a word that should be banned in the English language, as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 1:It should certainly be changed in its current vernacular.
Speaker 2:Yes, let's use Greek for safety and stop using the English word, because clearly it's abused, and don't we have a great quote from somebody about safety and liberty?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Benjamin Franklin.
Speaker 2:And you want one, you ain't going to have the other.
Speaker 1:Well, those who are willing to trade essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but what if you trade temporary liberty for permanent safety? Is that okay then?
Speaker 1:You can't. That's the entire point of the sentiment.
Speaker 2:That's a different argument.
Speaker 1:It's really not.
Speaker 2:I mean, one of them seems like a bad deal, the other one maybe not as bad. Well, I mean, one of them seems like a bad deal, the other one maybe not as bad.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, if we're going down, the quote route that you abhor so much. You know you could immediately say I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like that one.
Speaker 1:Me too, that's a good one. Old TJ man Thomas Jefferson, one of my favorites is there I?
Speaker 2:I would actually be curious to try and find the quote of jefferson's that I didn't agree with, because, honestly, everything I've ever read and seen, uh, other people quoting of him are things that I nod my head and go, yep, how fun would it be to get him on a podcast.
Speaker 1:Oh God, I would love to have him and Madison and be able to debate the two, because that way we could gang up on Madison. You know, there are some things about Madison that I like, but Jesus Christ, talk about an authoritarian.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:And that's anyway yeah. My favorites from the revolution was Henry and Jefferson. Mm-hmm, jefferson and I agree with. If you go back to read the Virginia ratification debates on the Constitution, henry's speech on not ratifying the Constitution has rung so true in my mind, so true. We would be so much better off had we not ever ratified the Constitution and stayed under the Articles of Confederation. Yep, but that's me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not just you. There are plenty of people that think that way.
Speaker 1:So do you want to do a tech discussion? Or my seatmate, seatmate. What the hell is that? That the guy sitting next to me on the plane?
Speaker 2:oh you sure, let's cover that seat, mate. Yeah, okay, would you sit next to?
Speaker 1:her. So I was sitting next to the current uh director, uh of cbp, uh customs and border patrol right. Right, our protection. So you were flying first class Of CBP, customs and Border Patrol, right right, our protection.
Speaker 2:So you were flying first class then I was not Hold up. The director of CBP was flying coach.
Speaker 1:He got stuck in the back.
Speaker 2:Oh, poor guy.
Speaker 1:Yep. Now we were in, you know the front, the front of the back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, row six, guys Row six but he was wearing a hat and some other stuff and it kind of came into an interesting point because when we got off the plane he was met by two officers and. Oh, I see you wearing a hat and tried to fly incognito. It was literally a comment that was made and I just laughed and he kind of looked crossways at me.
Speaker 2:Part of the reason why I talked to it was literally a comment that was made and I just laughed and he kind of looked crossways at me. Did you talk to him? Oh, I did, oh, I did. Okay, let's hear it.
Speaker 1:So we had a very interesting conversation and we started off and I thought he was who I thought he was when he said, yeah, I work for CBP. And I'm like, yeah, you look familiar. And we started talking about traveling and everything else. He had just gotten back from greece and everything.
Speaker 2:We started talking and I'm sitting there on my uh device on the wi-fi and verifying.
Speaker 1:This is who I think it is. Uh, which? This is troy a miller, by the way, anyone who wants to look him up? And uh, we started talking about the border Now was he appointed by Biden? Yes, he was.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:All right. So we started talking Anyway, he was appointed in 2021. And we started talking about the Texas issues and what he thought about that. And you know he was giving very political answers and everything else and I'm trying to corner him but not really successfully on the Texas and Eagle Pass issue. But at that point I started talking about the bureaucracy and Chevron deference and how the bureaucracy needs to die I prefer to kill it fast, but you know, you know, I'll take a slow death, which got me some looks, to say the least.
Speaker 1:But we continued the conversation and I'm pretty sure he didn't realize that I realized who he is okay so we continue the conversation and, um, you know, I I you know said you know I'm all for texas and everything else, and part of the reason why is our immigration is just out of control. And we started talking about incentives and he's like, yeah, we have to come up with incentives to keep people from crossing the border, but when you have 400 people crossing a border and five agents, you're only going to catch a couple and then you know we can't even.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, hold on, hold on hold on. This needs more ammo. Hold on, hold on hold on.
Speaker 1:This needs more ammo. Hold on, I'm getting there, gene.
Speaker 2:All right, all right, I'm getting there.
Speaker 1:Let me tell my story. So we talk about deportation. I said yes, you should instantly deport them. He said well, there's some problems with that. They won't tell us who they are, they don't have ID. Even if we get it out of them, some of the countries won't accept them and say, nope, we don't have a record of that person. So what do you?
Speaker 1:do and I said well, at that point you go with the redneck method. And he looks at me and, uh, before I explain the redneck method on here, I'll tell a joke that my dad has often told that to solve the border crisis, what you need to do is carve a swath, a line in sand and put up deer stands every 300, 400 yards and make rednecks pay to sit in those deer stands and anyone who makes it across the line can become a citizen. Yes, yes, and he kind of looks at me blankly and I said live fire exercise.
Speaker 1:And he went off. Oh, you can't do that Human rights, this, that, and he went off. Oh, you can't do that. Human rights, this, that and the other. And I said well, either you believe we're being invaded, and I would consider the 15 plus million people who have crossed under your watch and the million biden administration which when I said your watch, I think he knew that.
Speaker 1:I knew who he was and the biden administration, I don't know how else you would classify it. Uh, I think the use of lethal force would be a hell of a deterrent and would stop this instantly, and you wouldn't have to kill all of them, you would just kill a couple and it would.
Speaker 2:It would stop yeah, it's like a few well-placed nukes on the border would take care of the whole situation yeah, no, not nukes, but fuck you see.
Speaker 1:Uh, you see a coyote leading a group across the river shoot the coyote yeah, yeah, done human trafficker. Yeah, yeah, and that's a good point.
Speaker 2:The rest of the group would just panic and run back. Exactly, yeah, that's a very point, probably a cartel member. The rest of the group would just panic and run back. Exactly, yeah, that's a very good point. But see, they have professional courtesy. They don't shoot the coyotes.
Speaker 1:Right, right, right. You know two arms of the intelligence agencies. I got you.
Speaker 2:Yep, unfortunately, anyway, so that was my interesting story. That's fascinating. No, I like that story a lot more than when I flew next to a reality star, to Mexico.
Speaker 1:Well, the person sitting on the other side of me was a young woman from Belarus.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, so she was your handler, got it.
Speaker 1:I got stuck with a middle seat. I hate the middle seat oh my God. Well, here's why I was originally scheduled to fly out at like 6 pm friday and I didn't want to wait till 6 pm. We were finishing up our meetings early enough and everything else. And you know it would have been the last direct flight to houston which, if you miss that, you're fucked yeah exactly.
Speaker 1:So I'm like okay, I'm changing my flight. So I changed my flight to a 1 pm flight, but I had to sacrifice my you know front of the secondary cabin aisle row seat for a few rows back and middle, but okay, I'll live, it's only a three-hour flight, yeah, yeah. And.
Speaker 2:I'm kind of glad I did. No, that was fascinating.
Speaker 1:It made for an interesting event, you know For sure. It uh, no, that was interesting. Interesting event, you know for sure, because how many people are gonna get to sit next to the head of customs and border protection? And sit there and tell him you're doing a shitty job and, by the way, you know, yeah I hope your job is gone soon.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm definitely jealous of you in that one, because that would be a fun person to sit next to yeah, it was interesting, but uh, anyway, after the live fire exercise, comments and that, that that really did the conversation this was about an hour-long conversation of a three-hour flight I can imagine the conversation he had and when he got back oh yeah, oh my god, I sit next to one of these sovereign citizen kooks oh
Speaker 1:we really, we really need to get the atf working texas better I I cannot wait to see him relay the story on the news like I can see it coming, yeah yeah, confirmation there are plots against the government forces in texas uh-huh, uh-huh oh man, that's, that's wild.
Speaker 1:I I'm still surprised he flew in coach, though um, well, I, so I talked to him about it, you know, and um, about upgrades and everything. So the government only pays for coach tickets, but they fly, enough that allegedly yeah, well, anyway they fly enough that they get up, yeah Well, anyway, they fly enough that they usually get upgraded.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I was asking well, you know why didn't you get upgraded this time? And it was a last minute trip that he had to make. Same sort of story with me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I can't remember if you sent me this.
Speaker 1:Do you want to know where he was going? No, yeah, yeah when. Brownsville of course he was. Yeah, so CBP director is currently in Brownsville and, by the way, before anyone takes that bit of knowledge out of context, one we don't release this day of recording and be. This is several days past and you know I'm not calling for.
Speaker 2:I'm sure the guys traveled elsewhere by now exactly yeah, otherwise I wouldn't be doxing his location well, this whole concept of doxing is insane. I keep going back to that. It back before social media. It was really easy to find out where anybody lives. You could do one, two things.
Speaker 2:You can either, for free, look at this thing called the white pages, which literally listed every person by name, their house and their phone number, like you had everybody's addresses, like you had everybody's addresses if you knew their name and phone number, or two if you were lazy or were trying to do it for a different region. You pick up the phone and you call directory assistance is what it used to be called, 4-1-1. And then you can ask them hey, I'm trying to get ahold of this person, and they would do the search on their AT&T computer system in a different state if needed, and then tell you okay, here's their phone number, here's their address. Would you like any more information on anybody else? So this whole doxing thing that everyone's frankly, it's the millennials that are all like oh my God, I've been doxed. It's such bullshit.
Speaker 1:Anybody can look up anybody else's info today, just as much as before. Again, what I would say is the travel information where you currently physically are is different, and that's what I'm getting at.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but paparazzi literally make a living off of finding out where people go and taking pictures of them yeah, well, I mean it's like it's not fucking illegal is my point, and the millennials brought this in as though it's this horrible crime that somebody commits when they're doxing somebody else. No, there's no crime here.
Speaker 1:Somebody else no, there's no crime here. Well, tell us how you really feel, Gene.
Speaker 2:Well, it's just one of those pet peeve things that just is ridiculous, because I grew up in a time when something was perfectly normal that became somehow this bad thing that you shouldn't be allowed to do, kind of like, uh you know, calling a man a woman or a woman a man, like that didn't exist. That was, that's a new thing. Nobody ever would have said, oh you, you can't call a transvestite anything other than a woman yeah, well, we, we've come a long way.
Speaker 1:What can I say?
Speaker 2:yes, that's, that's what did you see the uh olympics opening ceremony. Oh boy yeah, that was going to be one of the topics I brought up towards the end. Um, so my thought is everyone's completely shocked at the satanic displays of, uh, depravity at the olympics. Uh, yeah, you sort of, but also they're in france. I expect this shit when they're in france. Yeah, um, you know french revolution 2.0 coming.
Speaker 1:What do you think of the power outages afterwards? No coming. What do you think of the power outages afterwards?
Speaker 2:I didn't hear about that.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Large, large swaths of Paris ended up in the dark.
Speaker 2:Hmm, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So the prayers to the dark one actually worked. Interesting Okay.
Speaker 1:I guess.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, what else is causing the power outages? They have nuclear power. Nothing should be causing power outages. Well, I mean, what else is causing the power outages? They have nuclear power. Nothing should be causing power outages.
Speaker 1:Well, something happened.
Speaker 2:Or do you think it was the government shutting off power?
Speaker 1:I don't know, there hasn't been enough coverage of it. Yeah, you know the videos coming out of Paris, where some of the churches are still lit up, but large swaths of Paris, including some of the Olympic Village, are literally in the dark. I don't know. A lot of people are sitting there saying God will not be mocked. I'm sitting there going. You know, who knows what's going on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is strange. Maybe somebody went on strike, who knows? Yeah, but at least as far as I know, france is still the recreation of the Last Supper.
Speaker 1:You know that they did was just grotesque.
Speaker 2:I mean, was it really a recreation of the Last Supper?
Speaker 1:That's what it was intended to be.
Speaker 2:Was it intended to be? Do we have confirmation that somebody said we were trying to recreate the last supper?
Speaker 1:I mean they literally it's the same, it's an, it's a mirror image of the poses. So, yes, is it? Yes, okay, and with the rather more bondly obese woman sitting in the the center right with literally a halo around her head.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And what I would say there is shit that wasn't our last supper that day.
Speaker 2:That was second supper.
Speaker 1:It may have been her first supper of the evening, but you know.
Speaker 2:But also you do know that Da Vinci's Last Supper was the first time in the history since Christ that the Last Supper was portrayed that way.
Speaker 1:And now of course everything is portrayed that way.
Speaker 2:Before that it was a regular table, Not everybody sitting on one side.
Speaker 1:And that is not a historical photo. It's a painting made several over a thousand years later. Yeah, yeah, yeah, if, if it were accurate, they'd probably all be just sitting on cushions and passing around uh trays exactly, and drinking coffee and eating dates or wine.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, plenty of wine to go around, that's for sure, because you know all you need is water for that well um that's a religious joke, by the way yeah, yeah, yeah, but there's also the whole uh, you know beer and wine being safer to drink than the water of the day.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, totally. I mean, that's yeah, whether it's fermented or, even better, if you have a higher alcohol content, it kills the little bugs.
Speaker 1:Well, in beer you know you're boiling water as part of the manufacturing process. I don't know about wine, but regardless the yeast produces enough alcohol to kill itself and most bacteria Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, although you can still get skunked beer.
Speaker 1:Yeah you can especially at the lower alcohol by volumes. But if you're producing a natural yeast-based beer and you're letting it run to the point of fermentation where the yeast is dyed out, which is what older beers and wines and everybody did. Then you're closer, you know you're closer to that 10% plus mark, you're getting there.
Speaker 2:You're getting there for sure, because I've done kombucha, which you can also turn alcoholic. It doesn't taste very good, but you can get there.
Speaker 1:I just don't get the kombucha thing, but okay.
Speaker 2:Do you dislike the acidity of it? Or?
Speaker 1:no, I love acidic stuff, I like vinegars, I like a lot of things, but it just fermented stuff is not my thing, but what do you think vinegar is? Fermented, but in a different it's different. I mean it's it's not the same thing because, again, you're not taking kombucha to the point of acidity that vinegar is. You're not taking it to alcohol content that wine or beer or anything else is. So it's kind of that weird it's pretty.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I get, maybe it's an acquired taste, but kombucha in a lot of uh ways like kvass, which I know I've talked about before and kvass is a very popular East European drink, not just Russia but all the surrounding places as well and it's basically what I kind of described to Americans as pre-beer.
Speaker 2:It's what will become beer if you let it continue fermenting become beer, if you let it continue fermenting and where it's cross is at the stage where the yeast is eating the sugar and it's starting to bubble, but the alcohol content level is under half percent, so there's still quite a ways to go. So there's quite a bit of sugar in it still, but it's already bubbly, but very little alcohol and uh, you know, I mean I grew up drinking that shit. In russia everybody's drinking that it's it's.
Speaker 2:It's basically the standard soft drink before coke and pepsi arrived. And um, kombucha is kind of the same thing. It's. It's made from a different material but, um, you know, tea based, but it's a very similar concept in that there's still a lot of sugar in there. It is already getting carbonated from the uh, the yeast. Um, it's really a scoby. It's not just yeast in there, and yet it still hasn't gone to the point of either super high acidity or super high alcohol.
Speaker 2:It's just early stages okay so maybe it's an acquired taste, but I don't know. I've always liked both of them. I don't drink either one very often, but, but I do like the flavor and I don't drink either one mainly because they. But I do like the flavor and I don't drink either one mainly because they have sugar and I'm diabetic.
Speaker 1:Well, just stick to straight alcohol then.
Speaker 2:Well, that's not really good for diabetics either. Well, yeah, actually not good for anybody. I mean, let's face it. Yeah, that's Maybe enjoyable. Not good for anybody. I mean, let's face it, yeah, that's maybe enjoyable. Not good for health agreed yeah um, all right, so we covered that time with uh tech so I I sent you a nas to look at earlier saw that six drive. Yeah, what did you think I mean? Okay, I haven't heard of that company, so I sent you a NAS to look at earlier Saw that Six drive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what did you think I mean? Okay, I haven't heard of that company before, but okay.
Speaker 1:What.
Speaker 2:I don't think I did what was the?
Speaker 1:brand. Hold on, I'm going back. Terramaster yeah, I've never heard of them. Oh, they've been around a while, okay, yeah, anyway, I don't know. I'm looking at doing a new. Nas, my NAS. When did my NAS come out? I am running a very old NAS.
Speaker 2:Yeah, same here. Mine's over. Well, maybe not over, but it's about a decade.
Speaker 1:Oh, mine's over a decade. Okay, mine's over it's well, maybe not over, but it's about a decade. Oh, mine's over a decade. Okay, mine is probably 2000, 2011, okay, maybe 2010 I think mine is 13 or 14, but yeah yeah, yeah, it's still being supported. Qnap is still issuing updates for software and stuff.
Speaker 2:Because it was a business class NAS Right instead of a QNAP or a Synology or something.
Speaker 1:Well, no, it is a QNAP, but it is a business class QNAP, no, no why are you looking at something other than that now? Just looking at the options.
Speaker 2:Because I told you what I and we've talked about it before I still haven't bought one, but I think anything I'd buy moving forward is going to be SSD-based.
Speaker 1:Well, this can support SSDs.
Speaker 2:Right, but I'd like the form factor to be just for SSD M2s, Like if it has room for 9 M2s. Yeah, but I want cheap bulk storage.
Speaker 1:I'm not looking for super fast.
Speaker 2:Fair enough, yeah, yeah, but I want cheap bulk storage.
Speaker 1:I'm not looking for super fast, fair enough, yeah. Yeah, it was scheduled to go end of life in 2020, and they're still supporting it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think mine's probably around the same thing and, by the way, it was released in October of 2011. Okay, 11.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I think mine's just a few years younger than that, but it's got two 1 gig ports on it that can be teamed so you can get a 2 gig throughput and everything else. It's an Atom-based processor, which isn't the greatest, but it's not the worst. It's got 4 gigs. Well, 3, because it can only do 3. You know that I've upgraded. It's been rock solid, but it's just a little slow and it's you know, it's old. I need to get something to move off of.
Speaker 2:You need something of 10 gig.
Speaker 1:I don't need 10 gig, 5 gig I don't. The one I sent you has two 2 a half gig ports that support teaming, so that's plenty. My switching infrastructure and I'm pretty much an all wireless network here will not support that, so whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just don't use my NAS. Honestly, I feel bad about it, but I just don't use it because after it died.
Speaker 1:Do you not back up anything?
Speaker 2:No. So, you're just all cloud, I mean I mostly all no backup oh that, just that, just grates on me, man yeah, I just don't, um, I just don't think the data I have is that valuable anymore. Huh, okay, I don't know, I don't know. It's hard to say. I used to be really good about that stuff Because my NAS is 14 disks. Jesus, yeah, it's a fucking serious NAS man.
Speaker 1:Well, which NAS do you have?
Speaker 2:Synology.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but which one? I don't remember the model. Send me the model, Because if it uses a micro ATX motherboard and I could upgrade it.
Speaker 2:I might be the. I don't think so. I don't think it does.
Speaker 1:You want to bet? There's a lot of those early Synologies. That's all they did.
Speaker 2:Really yes, yes.
Speaker 1:So what I would, especially on a bigger boy like that, if you can get, if it will fit a micro ITX motherboard on there. In fact I was just watching a project that did it with an Acer one from similar era. But there there's a whole group of people who are taking these old nasas, pulling the motherboards out, putting a new motherboard in and then why reverse engineering and wiring up the back planes that the drives plug into, because essentially they're doing seda, pass through and power distributions all the back planes doing yeah and they're getting these working and doing massive upgrades to these nasas for cheap but to what end?
Speaker 1:because you're essentially just using the enclosure and creating your own nas. What do you?
Speaker 2:mean yeah, so you're just looking for an enclosure at that point, yeah, yeah yeah, because the which you could buy an but, this saves you several hundred dollars in enclosure costs. If you get it free, I suppose yeah. So this thing, I don't know that it needs anything faster because it only has one gig ports. It's got four one gig ports on the back.
Speaker 2:Right, and if you upgrade the motherboard, then that would be faster, like you could put I guess I don't know, but my, my, my thought on it was just like, given that it's it's only got the gig ports like having either. Even moving from hard drives to ssds is going to have zero speed increase on the user side, because the drives are already faster than the network speed. So I don't know. It's still sitting here about three feet away from me right now and sucking up electricity and it's been running forever, but I just do not freaking use it like I used to. I used to have a lot of stuff on there, but I also kind of didn't really utilize it Like. That's why it died is because I didn't notice that more than one disk died.
Speaker 2:So, if I don't notice, that probably tells you something.
Speaker 1:So A a. I have alerts from my nas and then b? Um. Every sunday when we're doing the podcast, one of the things I do is I log into the nas and look things over, make sure everything's okay, and then you know when we're getting started.
Speaker 2:That's one of the things I guess the podcast is good for something yeah, it also reminds me to refill the water in my humidor and you know there, there are some things that I do that are associated with this. So yeah, that is funny.
Speaker 1:Refill the water well, I mean you gotta have your humidifier.
Speaker 2:No, I should dry out and get rid of it and I'm sure mine are at this point dry because I haven't opened it for a damn long time oh, I, I mean, I've got a lot of cigars, dude like I have a night sand plus size humidor sitting next to my desk over here and I started collecting cigars. I haven't had a cigar I don't remember you smoking a cigar.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't remember you smoked anything recently yeah, but I mean I have cigars going back to 2006 in there. Um, I've got several probably close, probably over a thousand dollars worth of cigars in there easily, actually, um, that's not that hard these days, yeah, I mean, if you looked at modern prices it'd be way more I've.
Speaker 1:So I number the number of cigars that is currently in there is around 600 ish I haven't had a cigar in probably three or four years, probably since before covid yeah, I've got, uh, some of kinky friedman cigars in there, yep that I got from kinky friedman, yep, and a signed box, and I've got a picture of me, kinky and jew boy same here, literally identical, yep, yep.
Speaker 1:And then I've got uh old padillas, which padilla is not no longer doing the same thing, but uh, I've got the cigar when they won the cigar of the year in 2008. I, I've got some first run Liga Privada dirty rats in there. I've got a bunch of Liga Privatas and I've got some pretty collectible cigars actually in there.
Speaker 2:I wonder I haven't looked for like I should really do an inventory and look at modern prices. Oh, yeah, yeah, but if you're, if, if I remember and you remember, next time we get together, because we still need to get together, because I got that book gift for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's going to have to wait until I get your gift in the mail.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, you didn't have to get me a gift, no, but I wanted to.
Speaker 1:And when you see it, I think you will be pleasantly surprised.
Speaker 2:I'm always pleasantly surprised with gifts, no worries there. But I'll take a look to see if I still have any of my really good vintage cigars. I think I still have a couple, and if I do then I'll give you one. Best cigars ever made were 87 Dunhills and, um, I might still have a couple yeah, we, we can debate that. That's undebatable. That is as rated by cigar fish, and I don't yeah, yeah, yeah they got a hundred perfect score.
Speaker 2:Okay, you know the 80s, the late 80s, were the best time for high quality cigars because cigars were their least popularity ever.
Speaker 2:So you had all these large tobacco fields uh, from the earlier 20th century when cigars were more popular.
Speaker 2:They really started losing a lot of popularity in the 70s and throughout the 80s. Cigar smoking was considered old generation, fuddy-duddy shit that nobody young would smoke a cigar, and so what you had is only the most premium fields were actually utilized, and a lot of those fields were, you know, like they didn't have the volume, they didn't need to make a whole lot of cigars, and so what you ended up, especially for the higher end brands, what you ended up having is really just the best of the best of the tobaccos being created in cigars, especially with the very limited number of fields of Connecticut tobacco grown for the rappers. When cigar popularity started going up in the early 90s I think in a lot of ways due to cigar aficionado, um, about 93 94, it was pretty obvious that there was a growing young generation of people smoking and the boom was really starting and prices literally doubled from 93 to 94 and then doubled again from 94 to 95 and the quality started going way worse.
Speaker 2:Because now everybody yeah, more people smoking demands there and tobacco producers were being told we don't give a shit what it is, we just need something in a box with your label on it. And a lot of companies, quality went way down the toilet, at least to those of us that were smoking cigars before the boom and knew what cigars used to be like. And uh, back then in the early 90s, I started picking up uh, 1980s cigars because they, they were just fabulous and um, you know, I was resident of the fact they'll never be made again. This is a one-time thing, so you really need to cherish these things and only smoke them or give them to people that are going to appreciate them, because that literally is never going to be anything like it unless people stop smoking cigars and they're once again seen as a fuddy-duddy old person thing, uh, and in which case the same sort of events will probably transpire and cigar quality will get much better.
Speaker 2:But a lot of stuff that that and I will say the cigar quality did improve in the 2000s, for sure, like the 90s, was probably the worst quality because it was the recovery period from the very small quantities made in the 2000s, for sure, like the 90s, was probably the worst quality because it was the recovery period from the very small quantities made in the 80s. Um, but like a lot of people are like oh yeah, rocky patel, and they talk about all these brands that they really consider good and they're winning awards. You compare, I've compared personally so I can't speak on anybody else to be at, but I compared those directly in the same day as smoking something that was manufactured in the 80s. It's night and day. It's just like the best brands of 2000s did not compare to.
Speaker 1:It also depends on what you like in a cigar.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:For instance, I really like a lot of the higher end Liga Pervados, like the Dirty Rat or the Flying Pig or any of those, and what type of wrapper do you like? A dark wrapper.
Speaker 2:Do you like Maduros?
Speaker 1:I do, and I prefer Robustos or Lanceros, and the reason why is wrapper to cigar volume. So I always thought Lanceros looked Ridiculous, effeminate, because it's this long, skinny cigar right but the thing about a Lancero like that is you get so much. The dominant flavor you get in a cigar is from the wrapper.
Speaker 1:Yep, the dominant flavor, you get in a cigar is from the wrapper, the fill tobacco, and the best tobacco is always reserved to be the wrapper and the fill tobacco. It gives you the subtler flavors. So by the shape of the cigar you can have two cigars that are the exact same but they're a different shape and cut, making a difference in flavor. And that was an awakening to me early on. And I like Robustos just because I'm not going to, you know, like a big Churchill or something like that just has never, you know whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my standard smoke was either a Churchill or a Double Chateau.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fine.
Speaker 2:Nice 56, 58 ring gauge Yep Takes about two hours.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like the Robustos and I like strong cigars. I like strong coffee and I've burned out my palate over the years, so I like strong flavors in general.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I always liked Claros or double Claros Jades. I like more of the green tea type cigars versus the black tea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I've got some that you would probably enjoy then. Oh yeah, I've got some that you would probably enjoy then.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and I don't not enjoy Maduro's, but given the preference or a pick if there's availability, I've generally liked the more subtle flavors.
Speaker 1:So, and you know I mean again, it's a flavor. So whatever people like, uh, the padrones or the mac and noodles, then yeah, yeah, I smoked a shit ton of mac and noodles.
Speaker 2:That's what the the mac and noodle double chateaus uh in uh jade. I've used to order those 10 boxes at a time. I mean, I used to like back throughout most of the 90s and I I'm you know I still smoked occasionally, but not a whole lot in 2000s because I was married in 2000s, but all through the 90s I'd probably smoke two or three cigars a day okay a lot of cigar consumption going on, man I have.
Speaker 1:I have never been that much of a cigar smoker Like I will do, like at my height in college and actually right after college when. I started making my own money and had a little bit more cash to spend. I would do a few cigars a week and that would be the height. I would do a few cigars a week and that would be the height.
Speaker 1:And then since then, you know I've trailed off quite a bit to now especially my favorite, favorite, favorite thing to do is to go sit on the beach with an ice cold beverage and a good cigar and just have the sun. A little bit of breeze oh my God, I love that.
Speaker 2:So you just described what I like doing in mexico yeah, exactly sitting on the beach with a book or a kindle, yeah, and a cold drink preferably with a attractive woman in a bikini well that that's why you're on the beach. Yes speech yes, um yeah, yeah, it's uh, I and I do like smoking cigars in warm climates. Some people don't like to do it if it's too warm out.
Speaker 1:They're like I don't want to smoke something hot, like drinking coffee when it's hot outside.
Speaker 2:Come on, grow a pair yeah uh, but I will say I also smoked pipe, and pipe is much better in cold climates.
Speaker 1:I, I think I tend to agree, and I have my pipes and my pipe tobacco and everything else too. You know, I've got quite the little pipe collection. Yeah, oh, that's cool, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my prized possession pipe for sentimental reasons is my grandfather's um, which, uh, my dad smoked for a while as well and then it got kind of passed on to me when my dad quit smoking um, and it's like the most you know, not at all fancy pipe, what's, as you you can, it's a pipe manufactured in the soviet union in the 1930s, so you can well imagine what it looks like very basic wood pipe it's just, yeah, very super straight, basic wood, uh, cheap bakelite plastic tip.
Speaker 2:You know it's like the the most. But the sentimental, the sentimental value is there because according to all my relatives, I look the most like him. So I look like my dad's dad. But I also picked up quite a few other interesting pipes. I used to back when I smoked regularly in the 90s. I used to peruse cigar shops and pipe shops and stuff. Uh, although I only have uh one, um, what the hell is the material? That turkish stuff? Mirsham, I only have one mission.
Speaker 1:I've got several that uh, my friend who is turkish brought back for me, friend who is turkish brought back for me. Um, and some of them are pretty cool and one of them's of this, you know, uh, turk from the, it's a carved face of turk from the ottoman empire.
Speaker 1:Ask and I, I've got that one. It's set aside, that's cool. Um my my every day. You know, I would just take like a uh, briar type pipe is generally what I would fairly short and small, but I do have a calabash with a meerschaum insert it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:So very sherlock holmes yeah, yeah, I was gonna say my parents picked me up a sherlock holmes pipe when they were in london, yeah and uh, I always felt it was a little too front heavy it.
Speaker 1:It's not comfortable to hold.
Speaker 2:No, it's not. You have to hold it. You can't put it in your mouth and hold it.
Speaker 2:Exactly, you have to hold it, that's why I like the smaller, little briar pipes that are lighter and that you can hold in your mouth while you're doing something you needed curved one instead of the straight tip, because by lowering the uh, the, you know gravity midpoint, I guess it just seemed like it was easier just to hold with my mouth longer yeah, you don't have the leverage right, right, uh, but yeah, it's been. Man, I haven't had a cigar in probably four and a half years, having that smoked a pipe and probably six well, you know what we should do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we should have a meetup at the cigar store oh, yeah, totally that would be a good one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that would be a fun thing to do. Um, yeah, and I've always loved the smell of unburned pipe tobacco oh man, especially some of the blends that people do with the different oils and everything cherry oh no, no too fruity really, what do you like?
Speaker 1:um, there's a couple different. All the pipe tobacco I got was, uh, local. I'd find a tobacco shop that did their own blends and all that. But the ones that I always liked the most had more like dark tea, flavors like a bergamot oil that sort of thing with it, like even when I smoke hookah, I do rose mint, I don't do fruity flavors. Right, I do those darker, stronger flavors. So like opium I've never had opium that's so good, uh, okay, uh, sure I've smoked.
Speaker 2:I've smoked opium, uh, from pipe and it is so fucking good. I mean like the flavor is good not just the effect I.
Speaker 2:I knew that I can't do this ever with any regularity because it is too good yeah, I mean, I was at a, hence what happened with the opium dens right yeah, no, I, I totally get the whole opium den thing because you just you'd want to go back there because it it is a very relaxing. I don't understand people that do heroin, honestly, because like there, if you're. If you're just food as an analogy no, I haven't either. But if you look at food as an analogy, it's like imagine something that you enjoy eating. You enjoy eating like I don't know, do you like ice cream or chocolate or what do?
Speaker 2:you like chocolate ice cream okay no so you like ice cream. So like you like a cone of ice cream now imagine eating like a half gallon a day of that yeah, no you would hate ice cream, right and you wouldn't.
Speaker 2:you'd have fond memories of your childhood when you used to enjoy ice cream, when your parents didn't give it to you right. And now you can never recapture that, even if you eat a whole damn gallon of it like it just doesn't get you to that same satisfaction level. I think that's what heroin is and frankly that's why I think just smoking opium would be much healthier for people than doing heroin. But of course it's a band and instead of having like controlled places, like bars where you can go drink, we don't have opium dens and instead we have an epidemic of opiates which are way stronger, that are still clearly available. So I'm not a fan of drug control in general, but I'm also not a fan of alcoholics and drug addicts.
Speaker 1:Well, here's the thing, though. I think Joe Rogan kind of put it best when he was talking about weed as a gateway drug and things. Oh, you think that this thing made your insert family relation here silly?
Speaker 1:No, they were the problem to begin with and the drug has nothing to do with it and I think that's the case and we see it in our society today and the drug has nothing to do with it and I think that's the case and we see it in our society today. If drugs were differently available, you would see fewer alcoholics and you'd see more people dependent on other things. It is the personality type that drives the dependency, not the drug.
Speaker 2:Totally agree, and I think it's unfortunate that some people have more addictive personalities to that kind of stuff. That's obviously the case, but I just feel like we went to the extreme where the people that would have been addicted to something like pot or opium end up being addicted to shit that destroys their life within a month and probably their life ends within half a year.
Speaker 1:But I mean there's a lot of the other parts of society that are just addicted to sugar and caffeine and everything else, and it's those are sanctioned businesses, man right, but it's the same addictive personality of the person that has to have their starbucks every fucking day. Oh god this exact same.
Speaker 2:yeah, this exact same thing. And if I don't, I'm just a raving lunatic Because I'm drinking a Starbucks right now.
Speaker 1:Okay, Well, but no, no, no. I mean, I enjoy coffee, but if I don't have my coffee, it's not a big deal A. I don't get caffeine. Withdrawal headaches. And then B, I just don't. I may be a little more sluggish, but I may be a little more sluggish, but it doesn't affect my mood the way it does some people.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I mean just watch the people in your life.
Speaker 2:And you don't drink sweet coffee, right.
Speaker 1:No, I don't. Yeah. The people who miss their coffee and have an attitude problem because of it, those people, if they ever tried drugs, would probably be addicts.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, that's probably true.
Speaker 1:And same thing with cigarettes. Yes, yeah, yeah, like I, you know, I'll smoke hookah.
Speaker 1:I'll do this and I can go on a trip and not do anything for a week or better, and yeah I'm fine exactly, but I I you know, like we talked about on the uh last episode, you know, I, I haven't had a drink in over a year and it was just one day. I decided, well, I'm not drinking, yeah, and you know, cool, yeah, it's not a problem here and I, I, you know there are people who become chemically dependent to stuff and so on I get that.
Speaker 1:But if you look at the science of it, which you know, we can trust and not, and we can extrapolate and not. But most of the dependency that we see on insert chemical substance here is really personality driven, not chemical driven.
Speaker 2:Yeah, boy, we sound like Scientologists right now.
Speaker 1:How so.
Speaker 2:That's their stance on it.
Speaker 1:Well, okay, well, you know, even a blind squirrel occasionally finds an acorn.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, I don't know. I've found that I have no addiction, personality traits and some people. But how can you be fat and not be addicted to food? It's like it's not an addiction thing to food. I'm just lazy man. I mean, I, I will do physical activity and I and frankly, pre COVID, you know, I used to do a lot more back when I was jet skiing and boating and doing all these activities. But, um, but I don't really like I've never been somebody that goes jogging every day. You know, for me activity isn't the interesting bit, it's what do I accomplish with it, like what's it get me to? Or what do I see?
Speaker 2:if I'm going somewhere, if I'm riding a bike, it's, it's a destination I'm going to, it's not the bike ride yeah and so if I don't have that destination or like lately, you know, I haven't been doing a whole lot of activity stuff I can eat what less than what a normal person average person, let let's say not normal, but average person would eat and then not lose any weight simply because I'm mostly sitting on my ass in front of the computer. And um, when I did my annual fast in January, um, I absolutely lost weight because then there was zero calories coming in. But you know I'm not going to do zero calories for very long. It's worth doing occasionally. In fact I definitely should do it again, because I was thinking I'll do it quarterly. Now it's been half a year, so I probably should do another fast in the next few weeks, but you know it's not like I'm gonna do it every week well, you know, I I'm not into fasting, but I also don't.
Speaker 1:I eat really one meal a day.
Speaker 2:You know, that's about it yeah, and I've seen photos of your meals and they're very good meals. I mean, I would happily eat the exact same a lot of times. I do eat the same stuff just on different days of the week, and mine are usually cooked by a middle eastern restaurant rather than me yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, like last night I had some fresh corn, some ears of sweet corn and a steak and I grilled the corn and the steak and that's what I had and it was great.
Speaker 2:Oh, it was, and you know.
Speaker 1:I didn't even put butter or anything else on the corn, because it's just too good.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I really like butter on sweet corn, though Something about it.
Speaker 1:What I did was just a little sprinkling of some Tonys on there and it was great.
Speaker 2:And I like cream corn too.
Speaker 1:I like good jalapeno cream corn, if you come up to College Station we need to go to J Cody's and then you can try their cream corn.
Speaker 2:If you like cream corn.
Speaker 1:You'll try their cream corn.
Speaker 2:If you like cream corn, you'll like their cream. I do I. It's one of those things that a lot of people seem to dislike, but I've always liked cream corn I.
Speaker 1:It can be delicious as far as I'm concerned yeah, and I'll, occasionally I'll buy uh mexican street corn yeah, and that's kind of the style that I did this in, right, so I left it in the husk. I soaked the husks and everything in water for quite a while beforehand, and then I put it out on the grill and let it basically steam in the husk well, and that's the real secret that if people don't know is, you have to let the husk absorb a bunch of water. Yes, absolutely, Otherwise you'll just burn it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you'll be burning the outside raw on the inside.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but anyway, and then after that I just take it inside, take the husk and all that off, rinse it off to get the silk off and then I just sprinkle some Tonys on it and it's a la street corn-esque.
Speaker 2:Now, do you put it into tinfoil at all, or do you just put it flat on the grid, on the top flat on the grill up top what do you mean? Up top, but you don't put it in the first layer of the grill, do you?
Speaker 1:yeah, off to the side, really, yep okay, and because I I I don't put it on direct flame, but the outside. That's why I said off to the side and I rotate it and everything else, and then, right when I'm finishing it up, I will put it right over the hot, hot, hot, hot, and you will hear it. Sizzling and everything else and when? You know it's done, take it off and you're good.
Speaker 2:I need to go get my grill gas tank replaced. I haven't grilled at all this year and I I turned it on about a month ago and I was like, okay, so it looks like my tank's gone bad. I need to go get a new one. Just do the swap. Yeah, that's what I'm gonna do. I used to buy tanks at costco because it was the cheapest place to buy them. Um, because I I didn't want to else's dirty, rusty tank and eventually, yeah, that's why I said it's like, eh, I don't care anymore, I'll take the much cheaper dirty, rusty tank than buying it and trying to find it and then find a good place to have it refilled.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what I used to have is a place that wasn't too far so having my own tank actually worked. But here there is no place close to where I left the refills um check, because I bet there is I looked for it when I moved here look for a welding supply place oh, really, okay, I didn't look for that so welding supplies, uh will have propane they'll have CO2, all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 1:So like when I was doing paintball a lot or had a beer keg and I needed CO2, welding supply store way cheaper.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because that was not cheap at the rental places or the paintball places. No, it was not.
Speaker 1:But anyway, basically I just have a series of tanks and I swap if the one's starting to go bad or regulators going bad or anything like that as soon as I it's empty, I'll go swap it out you know, but the problem with the exchanges and stuff is you're only really getting about four gallons because they do not fill those things up oh really yeah, and that's kind of the problem that's bullshit. Yeah, it's way more expensive to just swap the tank. Now you are getting an inspected and repainted and da da, da da tank.
Speaker 2:Fine, but and I will do that when a tank goes bad on me, but that's about it, yeah, so there's your tip of the day yeah, exactly well, and I do have two tanks, but I think both of them are are empty at this point because one of them I just haven't hooked up in years and, uh, you know, it's slowly like that yeah, I use propane a lot.
Speaker 1:Uh, I've got a patio heater that in the winter I use it. I've got a little fire pit that I use, and then I've got my griddle, which I love, my griddle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's a good stuff, for sure. What else, anything else I'm trying to think we need to cover?
Speaker 1:No, I at this point it's a bathroom break sort of time, so I think we're good.
Speaker 2:So, uh, just a quick question for you, Ben. Did you want to tell the folks you were wrong on the last episode?
Speaker 1:Okay, I don't know, gene, did you want to admit some of your wrongs on the?
Speaker 2:last episode. I'll happily bring up yours though.
Speaker 1:You know, one of the things I noticed was you changed subjects on me a couple times and I've got to thinking the only people who normally do that to me are women, when they're losing the argument.
Speaker 2:So that's funny, because I always think the only people that can't keep more than one subject in their heads tend to, uh, not be people I want to associate with so so, um, I went back and looked, if you said something and for instance, on the scarlet letter, there is a strong inference that the pastor is the father dude.
Speaker 2:It says that literally in every cliff's note sites at once yes, but it is not in the text it was the impression that I obviously got from reading the book is like the priest of the father, this woman deserved everything she got fine, and you know what?
Speaker 1:all I can say is I was a kid when I read it, so maybe I didn't pick up on that.
Speaker 2:And then, second of all, it's been since I was a kid, since I read it I know, and I don't care about that, the part that that I was, you know, perturbed about. Was you telling me that? Oh, you're wrong, you clearly didn't remember.
Speaker 1:So like well, fine, you can say I remember this way. But then you're pointing you clearly didn't remember.
Speaker 2:So like well, fine, you can say I remember this way, but then you're pointing out how I'm wrong about well, we were.
Speaker 1:You know there were. There's a lot of stuff going on there but, uh, regardless, um I again. The book does not flat out say who the father was and her husband, like there's a. It's a weird book and it's a very long book and it's not a very good book which is why I went to the cliff's notes instead of rereading the goddamn thing, there's no way I was going to do that by the way, last episode was painful to listen to I rather enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:It was annoying and I got frustrated all over again interesting and I. You know one of the things that I came to, though the reason why I feel the way I feel, and I think you feel the way you feel comes to one major difference between us. What's that?
Speaker 2:I have kids uh, yeah, that's a major difference absolutely I'm looking at the longer arc of the spectrum, you're looking at your life's arc and that's all that you care about I I'm looking at the longer arc.
Speaker 2:Yes, but also things that we talked about, like, for example, I think whether a law could potentially be used against me shouldn't impact whether something is a good law or a bad law. Like, laws should be objective and I may be more susceptible to a law that's a good law that would affect me negatively, but I'm still going to be for that law. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:And that's one thing I was getting to is, just like I believe in justice, being blind, in the sense that we should be able to decide whether something is a good law independently of whether that affects us today or tomorrow.
Speaker 1:personally, Like if it's a good law, it shouldn't matter Blind, and the scales always tilted towards leniency.
Speaker 2:But that should be codified.
Speaker 1:It is codified and it is the. You know, that's Blackstone's formulation, that's Benjamin Franklin, that's our entire jury nullification system. Everything was set up to say the leniency, and if a law is valid or not should be finally left up to the jury not anyone else. The jury always has the ability to nullify a law. They do, they do, but they don't usually yes, because we're surrounded in a we, because we are living through idiocracy.
Speaker 1:My friend, absolutely I I I tweeted about that just recently misha, or, I'm sorry, uh, hulk hogan, and then uh, the guy from idiocracy and talking about michelle obama going to the dnc yeah, okay, it it's, did you see the movie coming out about michelle and the cook no oh my god, there's a whole. You have to go watch this like a comedy or uh, no like a conservative spiff where really? Michelle is bodybuilding and lifting and clearly a man and the chef ends up dead, like it is the obama story.
Speaker 2:Wow, it is, and I think the title of the movie is michelle and you really should go see it so let's say for the sake of argument, just because it is funny, but let's say for the sake of my argument that Michelle is transsexual right.
Speaker 1:I mean Joan Rivers proved it, but go on.
Speaker 2:What would be the downside to them coming out and saying that?
Speaker 1:Backlash. From who the majority of society?
Speaker 2:Majority of society has allowed the Olympics to be what it is right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, society doesn't care you know, I think society does and I think we see a major backlash and I think you have a very vocal minority that is running the show right now right and I. The pendulum is swinging right when I look at when I see this. We and I had this discussion while I was in dc, ironically enough, um, it was funny because one of the individuals I was talking to was talking from. His interpretation was we were at peak individualism and I said what the do you mean we're this person?
Speaker 2:what?
Speaker 1:20 years old no, he's older than me he's a moron then, because he was around. No, no, no, no no, no, no it, we figured it out, it came down to our definition of what we were talking about.
Speaker 1:So when he was saying we're at peak individualism, he's me basically meaning we're a very selfish society and, yes, agreed, right, it's all about me, me, me, me. But that's not what I mean by individualism and what I? What I mean by individualism is the rugged individual being willing to go off in his own and not interact with society. What I see as collectivism is, while it's a bunch of selfish individuals, it is very collective in its nature, and he ended up agreeing with that definition.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's the differentiation there.
Speaker 2:But we it was a yeah, selfishness, a very deep conversation with a fairly new boss that I normally would not have had, but it was a good interaction well, and this is an area that I think needs more reminding always, which is that 99% of disagreements and arguments really have to do with definitions. People use the same words and two different people mean different things with the same words, and then they start arguing as though the other meant the same thing that you mean, but unless you define your terms whether you do it ahead of time or during the middle of the conversation, but at some point if you don't define your terms, you have no way of knowing whether you're agreeing or disagreeing in actuality, or whether you're simply disagreeing based around definitions well, and this is why semantics cannot be a priority assumption.
Speaker 2:Why isn't semantics a class taught to everybody?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:It should be. It shouldn't just be a minor little footnote. I agree. Yeah, so I don't know. Unfortunately, I think that the liberal education that I would want myself and others to have just isn't what's actually being taught.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And that's unfortunate, because what are people paying $300,000 for?
Speaker 1:Indoctrination that they shouldn't be.
Speaker 2:Indoctrination on a piece of paper. Yeah yeah, exactly, all right. Well, we were wrapping this up 10 minutes ago, so let's go ahead and do that alright, gene, we'll talk to you next week alright, sounds good. See you next week, ben.
