Just Two Good Old Boys
We never mean any harm!
Just Two Good Old Boys
085 Just Two Good Old Boys
Struggling with rising costs and feeling the financial squeeze? You're not alone. Join us as we dissect the economic pressures of today's world by comparing historical and current utility bills, exploring factors like increased fees, market distortions, and the impact of population growth in Austin, Texas. We'll also delve into the role of smart thermostats in energy management and the sometimes surprising loss of control over household temperatures. This candid conversation brings to light the financial struggles that many are facing, providing practical insights into managing escalating living expenses.
Prepare to challenge your perceptions as we tackle topics ranging from the unsettling anomalies of the 9/11 attacks to the cutting-edge world of cryptocurrency. We scrutinize the official narratives of 9/11, emphasizing the need for critical thinking and skepticism. Our discussion then shifts to the technical limitations of modern warfare, including the practicality of drones and body armor. We wrap up with some light-hearted banter about clothing sizes and a humorous exchange that underscores the importance of perspective and humor in our daily lives. This episode is a rollercoaster of thought-provoking discussion and engaging storytelling that you won't want to miss.
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Howdy Ben. How are you today? I'm doing well, Gene, how about you?
Speaker 2:Pretty good, all said and done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm tired. It's been a long week.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I know Same here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was in DFW this week for the majority of it. Anyway, it's been well over a 60-hour week for me and I'm still working this weekend, so yeah, yeah, I know how that goes, man.
Speaker 2:Satisfactory came out the release version, man, I have to grind it out for about 20 hours a day for the last five days.
Speaker 1:Yeah, our European listeners will not understand the working the way Americans do. No, no. It's something that they just do not get.
Speaker 2:They do not. That is true, and I think there's two sides of the coin for that, because, on the one hand, when I was leading an international team, I actually did that a few times in projects where I had guys from Australia, germany, uk. It was very frustrating because I would, in my head, make plans based on people being available and working and then run into things like people being off for weeks at a time, there being holidays every other week. It's like what the hell people? And then, of course, australia we all know about.
Speaker 2:They have a four-day work week for any projects that have to do with the rest of the world well, because somewhat rightfully so though, yeah I don't know about that man it's, uh, it's like mondays are basically a day off in australia because the rest of the world is still on the weekend.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Well, I haven't had a team in all. Well, I kind of do now, but I've got a peer team in Australia right now and but you know, last gig I was, I had a. I had a team in Singapore and, dude the Singapore time zone difference, there is no good time to have a meeting with the us. There's just not someone staying up late or getting up early that's just the way it is yeah, anyway, we've got a uh.
Speaker 1:part of the extra work this week is we've got a huge rfp that just dropped and, for those who don't know, it's a request for proposal and uh, it's a five-year deal probably worth around 15 plus mil. So a lot of work to go into it and it's due in less than two weeks. So yeah it's a mad dash to get a five-year proposal together in that amount of time. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that seems like a very short duration to put something together that covers five years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know what's likely going to end up happening is enough of the potential contractors who are bidding on this will bitch and they'll do an extension. But you can't ever count on that. Yeah, and as a result it's just mad dash, mad dash, mad dash. Oh, we've got a little more time. Good, and then it's mad dash, mad dash, mad dash.
Speaker 2:oh, we've got a little more time good, and then it's mad dash, mad dash, red dash done, yeah, yeah. And if you get it, then great, if you don't, it's a lot of wasted effort and how long do you have to put in questions to them?
Speaker 1:uh, till part of next week, which?
Speaker 2:we've already submitted some.
Speaker 1:You know we did the pre-bid meeting and all that which is that this is another inside baseball thing you've. You've got questions that you can issue to the rfp. You can go. Usually there's a hosted pre-bid meeting, like there was, where you can talk to the uh buyer and be very specific about things. But it's a public forum, so you're as right any questions you submit.
Speaker 2:Right, you're asking all your competitors to hear the answer.
Speaker 1:And hear what you're asking, which can be kind of telling. So it's a chess game, it's strategery, right? It's kind of fun in that aspect yeah, it is fun that you're going. Okay, what are our competitors likely to do?
Speaker 1:here based off of what we know of their past performance. Competitors likely to do here based off of what we know of their past performance. And the funny thing is the the out of the four major competitors for this group. I work for one, my former boss works for another, really good friends work for another and I used to work at the other one so it sounds like a cartel to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah it's called a small community, but uh, anyway, the the the funny part is, um, I actually reached out to some of my old colleagues and uh said hey, uh, why don't we do a joint venture on this? And you know, just dominate the competition by you know, just dominate the competition by you know, pairing up and having two really strong voices in the industry. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Let me guess you sent out three of those letters. That's what I would have done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did not because it would have gotten back to people. I chose the one I thought would most probably help me the most. Thank you back to people I chose the one I thought would most probably help me the most. Thank you, yeah, yeah, I, I'm not that uh I'm not that duplicitous did you watch the debate?
Speaker 2:I did not. I watched clips from debate.
Speaker 1:Oh man, you gotta watch the debate yeah, the whole thing.
Speaker 2:Really, you don't think watching clips is enough?
Speaker 1:nope, because the clips are out of context. Either one way or the other um well, I was somewhat surprised at how well camilla did but see, and that's why I'm saying it's out of context one way or the other, yeah, I mean, it looked like she was way more articulate than uh, getting questions done in in succinctly than Trump was okay, so Kamala's demeanor and speech patterns are fine and that was her strength, but if you really go back and listen to her answers which I listened to it the night- I watched it with the mute on okay.
Speaker 1:Well, I listened to it the night of, and then I've gone back and re-listened to the vast vast majority of it okay both through clips and re-watching.
Speaker 1:She doesn't answer a single question. It's always word salad. I mean, all of her questions are vapid and meaningless. You know she had some good moments there, but man Trump had the zingers. I mean, he really did. It was a la Hillary Clinton again 2016. Really Okay, I didn't see any of those. Oh yeah, he nailed her to the wall. First of all, she interrupted him with her okay, I didn't see that, I did excuse me, I'm he did. He pulled her move that she did against mike pitts, which was fucking hilarious.
Speaker 2:So, and then the, the pets I thought they were supposed to mute them when it's not their turn, but apparently she was unmuted the entire time most Most of the time.
Speaker 1:There were a couple times where she was clearly muted Really.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but she was unmuted far more than he was and Trump was really debating. You know three people.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:And it was funny because when he brought up the pets things, they're eating the dogs, right, mm-hmm, which this is a very Alex Jones thing to say. That's something that you either hate about Trump and Alex or you love about them. You know it's very a la. They're turning the freaking frogs gay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, gay frogs Right which sounds absolutely ridiculous, but when you actually look into it and understand what they're saying and you, if Alex were to come out and had said atrazine is causing spontaneous gender changes in amphibians, he would have been absolutely 100 percent unfact-checkably correct. Right, because it is. And, just like Trump, they're eating the dogs.
Speaker 1:Well they're eating lots of animals. They're doing lots of things. Uh, I haven't seen any evidence of dogs. I have seen cats. Uh, you know, there's there in stray animals is part of the haitian diet oh yeah, it is for a lot of the world yeah, yeah, but. But. But he wasn't wrong, it's just the way he said, it gets him fact-checked and you know, oh, we talked to the city manager and there's no evidence of that. Yeah, but it makes for great memes though. Oh it does, but I think that's what wins.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:Because I think a lot of people are the people who are on the internet have seen a lot of the shit that's going on in Ohio and other places and when they sit there and say, well, the city manager said there's no evidence of this, people are going dude. I've seen the videos. I've seen this happening Now could that be one big psyop where nothing's really happening? Sure, I guess, but man, I don't think so. There's too many boots.
Speaker 2:No, it's literally impossible, because it would be more accurate to say people are eating animals in the entire country, because that shit's happening in every state. We're talking about Ohio, but it's happening in every state. It's generally not really reported because it's edge cases.
Speaker 1:But are there?
Speaker 2:pets being eaten. I guarantee you there's at least one pet eaten in every state yeah, the no one's complaining about people eating animals.
Speaker 1:Let's be clear we're talking about ducks at a public pond. That's not really, uh, a place that we typically hunt or capture ducks. Like I, eat duck and I like duck hunting. There's no problem with that yeah you know it's the uh, a stray cat's walking down the road and they grab it and kill it. Need it which?
Speaker 2:yeah, which again, instead of sending it to china, which is what most other places do yeah, or it going to a kill shelter or whatever. I well, that's what I mean.
Speaker 1:I don't necessarily have a problem with it, but it is the disgust mechanism at play, right?
Speaker 2:I think it's even more than that. I think it's the fact that here's something that's a little weird and 50% of the country is refusing to admit that it's even there. That, to me, is the bigger issue. It's not like oh my God, the Haitians are eating stray animals. Yeah, I would expect them. I mean, that sounds like a joke somebody would make in an improv is about the Haitians is like, you know, don't just hold on to your wife and kids, hold on to your pets too. But the fact that half the country is saying, well, no, no, that's not happening. That's completely made up. Nope, trump's lying. That's the part that is crazy to me, because all they have to do is say yeah, isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2:I mean, that's it. They don't have to take responsibility, they don't have to do diddly squat, they just have to say, yeah, that is some weird shit, and it would have been happening, you know, even if they were legal Haitians instead of illegal Haitians right, but the the point I'm making is the reason why they're fighting it so hard isn't because Trump's wrong, isn't because it's so ridiculous, it's because it does trigger the disgust mechanism in most Americans, right? Yeah, if people are eating fluffy.
Speaker 1:The disgust mechanism is really the most powerful psychological driver outside of sex. It's the othering right, it's the outsider, and it's a very dangerous thing to do in a lot of ways. But if we're thinking about this just objectively and out, you know, taking trump and kamala out of it, and looking at the impact on the American psyche, it it's likely to cause a backlash and the way they're combating it, I think is going to cause people to double down on that backlash. But that's me. So yeah, yeah, no, and kamala's a gun owner. Did you know that?
Speaker 2:oh, she mentioned that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I saw that I want to know what kind of gun, because it's probably illegal in california.
Speaker 2:So um yeah, I'm sure it's a. Uh it it's a gun shaped something else.
Speaker 1:But you know vibrator. What are you thinking, gene? I'm thinking vibrator yeah yeah, I was thinking dildo or something.
Speaker 2:But I don't know. I mean, why does that even matter? Does it matter if you say, well, I'm not a vegan, but I think everybody should have no animals in their diet, uh okay, that's a stupid idea, regardless of whether you're a vegan or not yeah you know, same thing here. It's like, well, I'm a gun owner, but I want to ban all guns. Uh, okay, so why does it make any difference whether you're going to? It's just a bad idea regardless.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, she has said loudly and proudly that, if she is elected, that a mandatory gun buyback program will be executed. And if Congress will not pass it, she will do it somehow through executive order.
Speaker 2:Well, we've seen that happening quite a bit. Executive power has grown to a ridiculous level. Frankly, the president should have very, but it's done by executive order. That is bullshit.
Speaker 1:Or policy directive from you know XYZ department, like the ATF has done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And, to be fair, we don't know if what the ETF has lately been focusing on is just initiative from inside the ETF or if it's directly controlled by the people actually running the government, which you know, is not Biden, obviously, but whoever it is well, regardless, it is.
Speaker 1:Uh, it's an interesting time. I I do want to make a uh, tell you a little funny story while we're semi on the topic of dildos. Okay, it just came to my mind when you, when we brought that up, so when I was a teenager, there was was a musician out there called Dido. Do you remember her?
Speaker 2:I remember the name. I can't picture even what she looks like.
Speaker 1:Very poppy or whatever, okay, and one of my female cousins that I don't listen to this kind of music. But she gave me the CD and said, here, listen to this, I really like this. I was like, okay, whatever. And I took it home and I left it on the counter or something. My mom misread it and she was like dildo, what no?
Speaker 2:no, this is not a word I want to hear out of your mouth right, yeah, yeah, oh, jesus christ, you know, yeah, talk about cringe, yeah, the word nobody wants to hear out of their mom's mouth.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly. But looking back, you can't help but laugh, you know.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:Sure, I mean laugh, cry something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, speaking of one of those two. So I was looking at my electrical bill. Actually it's kind of combined.
Speaker 2:It's like water utilities, garbage electrical Mine is too Grouped up together and I noticed that it kind of has been going up, but I really hadn't compared months, I'm just going off memory. Well, I logged into the site and their history goes back two years, so not very far. And their history goes back two years, so not very far. But two years ago I was paying an average of $295 a month, which frankly seems a little excessive, but it is what it is. Right now I'm paying $470 a month. Yeah, I'm over 500. Yeah, and uh, you know, I got a house of one. I don't generate that much trash, I don't use that much water. I probably do use a little more electricity than the average house, just because I have a lot of monitors plugged into my computer, but, uh, I also don't have tv sets. I'm not playing music all day long. I mean, it's like this is getting to a point where I think it's gonna be a struggle for a lot of people well, and you know what's really sad is I'm I'm looking so well when, when you were talking, I brought up the ercot uh web page and I'm looking at wholesale generation prices right now
Speaker 1:still same as they ever been. Uh, right now, at a power plant that's closest to me, they are getting 15 dollars and seven cents a megawatt. Their cost in fuel is around and because I I know this plant used to work for a company that owns it, um, they, their cost for fuel is around seven and a half dollars a megawatt. Their, um, now, their maintenance and operations, that facility between the mine and the coal plant that I'm talking about, employ right at a thousand people. So right now they are losing money. Yep, generating, and here's the thing generation, wholesale generation, prices have not gone up it is the fees.
Speaker 1:it is the fees, it is the really post-URI recovery, because the URI market distortion caused a lot of these munis and co-ops to basically lose their ass and they're having to dig out of a hole. Power there is a municipality driven power you know, and uh yeah it in here you know I'm on college station utilities municipality power. So they don't have the market drivers to keep them in line and they don't have the resources to take the right down.
Speaker 2:They've got bullshit fees on there, like $9 a month for trash cleanup. What the fuck am I paying for that for? Yeah, it's just a bullshit arbitrary fee. It's a racket. Yeah, so they're like well, we're not charging more for the same thing, we're just you know, there's other fees now. Well, they're charging more as well, actually. But that's I mean that's a lot of money every month.
Speaker 2:You consider that you add that to the average price of rent in Austin. Here is $3,700 a month, here is three thousand seven hundred dollars a month. Um, you figure you know at least 500, somewhere between 500. A thousand bucks on food. Uh, like your bare low poverty borderline case, living in austin is about 55 to 6000 a month. Like you know that that is, if you don't have five thousand dollars a month to spend, you can't live in austin. That's another way of putting it. And, um, this city is not like there. There's nothing that Austin has or does today that is any better than what it did a decade ago, where it was about half that price. Like you could live in Austin for under $3,000 a month.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but what's the population growth been?
Speaker 2:Oh, it's a lot yeah, it's not the fastest, but it's one of the fastest cities in texas yeah, so that that that would be.
Speaker 1:The point, though, is that because the population has grown and outpaced um development and everything else and everybody's trying to be in certain parts of austin, it becomes far more expensive yeah and uh.
Speaker 2:If you have a smart thermostat then, uh, they get to control what your temperature in the house is uh, yeah, to an extent, which is why I will not have one yeah theoretically only if you sign up for it and you know things like that theoretically exactly.
Speaker 1:Well, uh, I mean if it's connected and they have, you know if you have a nest, or things like that, theoretically exactly. Well, uh, I mean, if it's connected and they have, you know if you have a nest, or something like that. Um, it's connected to google's cloud, yep, so the only thing that prevents them from connecting to it is arbitrary agreements, nothing physical, yeah exactly, and they will.
Speaker 2:They will offer you like oh, sign up to connect for better savings, you'll save more money. Yeah, you're gonna sit in 80 degree weather, um, but they also have a little asterisk there that, uh, you know, during climate extremes, we reserve the right to control your thermostat, even if you don't sign up yeah, again, don't have quote-unquote.
Speaker 2:Smart thermostats, exactly yeah yep, so it is um. It is pretty crazy, um, but that's, I think, just indicative of trends across the country. I don't think austin's at all unique in this regard. It is a city that has a lot of population growth, but I think even cities without a lot of population growth are seeing fairly substantial cost increases. So you combine that with the roughly 200% increase in food prices over the last four years, at least from my looking at my heb prices although there were a few things that went down when I went through it with darren uh, it looked like there's two or three items that were actually cheaper today, but the vast majority of items um were substantially more expensive you know, and it's just getting it.
Speaker 2:Well, let me just finish the thought out and then we'll jump. It's getting more expensive to live, but another way of saying that is. The value of the dollar keeps plummeting and it takes more of those now worth less than they used to be dollars to be able to sustain the same level.
Speaker 1:I'm done. Well, you know, what I was going to say is I earn a decent amount of money. You know I typically don't have budget problems, problems, um, but over the last year, you know, I've looked at the available income. That is just normally, you know, uh, either thrown into savings stocks, stuff like that doing. You know that's the way I measure. It is okay. After we pay all the bills, pay for everything that we're doing and everything else, what's left over, and watching that shrink substantially, which I'm glad to have. That buffer, don't get me wrong. A lot of people don't have that buffer, um, and that's I, I. If you're making under 100 grand in the us right now, I I don't know how you're making it.
Speaker 2:I really don't. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely the case, and I remember doing the math and looking at the cost basis from the mid-'80s for a bunch of items.
Speaker 1:Well, that's the thing is when I think about. You know, I like my, my parents, you know they think I make a lot of money, yeah, and compared to what they have ever made, I do right. But if you go in in absolute terms, but if you go in relative terms to what my dad was making in the late 80s, early 90s. I'm making less than he was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's insane. Definitely the case, cause I was going to say the uh a million. What used to be called the millionaire in the eighties, is more like a 250,000 air today. Like the term has lost the majority of its significance because, uh, while they weren't a huge number of people that had $250,000, it was still a decent number back in the eighties a lot fewer than had a million. But today, even though the buying power of that million is about four times less, the number of people that have the million has grown, but not as much as the Not proportional. Not proportional to the decline in the worth of that yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's the thing. That's the thing. It's like uh, the uh. The first year that let's see that would have been 95. I think 95 was the first year that I made over a hundred thousand dollars, and uh, in $95, that is over $200,000 today.
Speaker 1:so it's over what?
Speaker 2:over two hundred thousand dollars today.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, easily, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So it's what I was getting at it's asus and and probably more like 280, frankly, but it's just the v? It. It all comes down to just a devaluation of the dollar because really, for most things their cost to produce has stayed about the same in terms of effort. That what's changed is how much that effort is worth in dollars. So we're just and I think it's just, really we're still at the early stage, unless something drastic changes of a much greater inflationary rate.
Speaker 1:And they're lying about it.
Speaker 2:I mean they're not reporting the real rate the way that they used to.
Speaker 1:And you know, you've got to wonder this has got to give at some point, right, like people's acceptance of this has to give. People's acceptance of this has to give, like, I think, the last few years, while it hasn't been hyper inflation, it's um, it's definitely probably the highest inflationary rate we've seen since the Carter years.
Speaker 2:I think it's higher than Carter, cause I remember when it first spiked I went back and looked on um, what's that website? Uh, shadow stats, yeah, shadow stats, and where you can overlay the the charts using the original formulas from the carter years. And we we hit during Biden a higher rate of inflation than Carter had in his entire administration. Now it went slightly below that after that, but it peaked at a higher inflationary rate than what Carter had, and Carter was by far acknowledged as the worst president in U S history for his domestic fiscal policies.
Speaker 1:Come on Lincoln.
Speaker 2:You can yeah, yeah, yeah, but I'm okay In modern history. My point is that he was an abysmal failure at being president, and what we've just lived through is someone who's a bigger failure and just not on tv as often. Yeah which I I think is carter was on tv quite a bit, quite a bit which I think is part of why I would say, trump won.
Speaker 1:The debate is kamala, kamala, kamala. Whatever um spoke, you know about what she's going to do when she's elected and you know he? He offered at one point to uh, stop the debate, go to washington, wake up joe, get him to sign something and I'll drop out of the race. Essentially is what he said and uh, yeah, so I I think that hits home. I really do I love the the video of joe putting the uh trumpete now, or is it a big fu to kamala?
Speaker 2:we'll never know because, uh, because he can get away with it if he just wanted to do a fu to kamala and blame it on the senility, but it nonetheless was not even shocking at this point, but still clearly ridiculous to have the uh, the guy that was running against trump wearing a trump hat.
Speaker 1:Uh, that somebody was for unity for 9-11 dude. Yeah, yeah, exactly which by the way, to all the twitter people reposting the old videos of wtc7 and the pentagon. Thank you, because it really I mean, this is yeah, because your parents didn't notice any of this shit back when it happened.
Speaker 2:So good thing that you guys are not posting it. No, no, no, my like my parents did, some people did, yes, but you know what I'm saying okay, but the opinion at the time of the typical american was those fucking middle eastern bastards look what they've done to us yeah, dirka, dirka and literally.
Speaker 1:By the way, that was from team america. Yeah, so it was dirka dirka.
Speaker 2:So it that is. That was, uh, I think, very much the feeling back then. There were a few of us, myself included, that were looking at this, shaking their heads, going, yeah, this doesn't make sense, what the hell. And then you got guys like Ben that were, you know, talking to people they shouldn't have been talking to and asking questions they shouldn't have been asking.
Speaker 1:So there's a new generation of people that I I want you to explain that one to me, since you're saying I was talking to people who I should.
Speaker 2:Well, you've told the story on the podcast about how you you talk to a structural engineer or somebody and you say one of my professors? Yeah, yeah yeah, can you explain how this makes sense? Because? Because it's not. It's contrary to what we're being taught.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And what was the answer?
Speaker 1:He couldn't, mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he stopped trying.
Speaker 1:Well, he immediately shut down the meeting. So the story is just to clarify and clean this up a little bit is just to clarify and clean this up a little bit. Um, I was in college, uh, when the the nist report came out on 9-11 and I started reading through it because I I was, I won't say a 9-11 denier, but I was one of those people who my parents were very much Alex Jones listeners and everything else. But I didn't want to accept that. It was an inside job and I just didn't like I did not want to believe that. And the NIST report came out and you know, I I had had theories about okay, I can, maybe this could have happened, maybe that could have happened.
Speaker 1:And the official report on what they said happened and why the towers collapsed was just such bullshit. I'm sitting there as a sophomore or junior physics student going. This doesn't work. There's not enough heat here this could not have happened the way they're saying. It doesn't work, there's not enough heat here. This could not have happened the way they're saying. Yep, like. One of my theories was that when the tower, when the plane hit the tower, the fuel was aerosolized enough and, uh, you know, an explosion happened.
Speaker 2:That um oh, there was that right yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but that.
Speaker 1:But that's not what the NIST report said. The NIST report said the jet fuel burned caused weakening of the structural steel, da-da-da-da-da. Well, the jet fuel doesn't burn hot enough to do that. And the NIST report is assuming that all the asbestos insulation was knocked off the beams and so on and so forth, which, okay, may be possible, but still you don't have enough heat there and without something causing a concussive force to really damage and weaken those beams above and beyond what the plane did, it just doesn't work. And taking that, I took a redacted portion of that and where NIST was talking about the temperatures and causing the softening of the steel and ultimate structural collapse, about the temperatures and causing the softening of the steel and ultimate structural collapse, I took that to one of the professors at A&M and said, okay, I'm just a sophomore junior.
Speaker 2:whatever I was at the time, Please help me understand this.
Speaker 1:No, not that young. But anyway please help me understand this. And he well, that's wrong, that's not how it is. And then I showed him what it was from and he kicked me out of his office.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. That's what you get for questioning the narrative, yeah it's absolutely the case.
Speaker 2:That's what people get for feeding me bollocks Watching the video of this live and I remember, I remember where I was. I was in my parents living room with my then recent wife and we were watching it on tv and, uh, we were just in new york, just a like a few months before then. Uh, it was a a shocking event to have happened. But even watching it back then, shit wasn't adding up.
Speaker 2:Man, first of all, the plane, the second plane crashing into the tower because there was already cameras looking at the first tower. So there was a lot more different perspectives of the second plane than the first plane, which I think there's some Japanese tourists that, than the first plane, which I think there's some japanese tourists that filmed the first plane and maybe one other group, but there's a whole bunch of cameras filming it for the second plane. You saw the angles and the um, the location for that crash, and you saw a big fireball, as you would expect, because the fuel that would theoretically catch on fire from that plane hitting the building was moving at about 350 knots. So the fireball shouldn't be spherical in that location. It should actually be moving in the direction the fuel was moving as well.
Speaker 1:And uh well, the blowing backwards and back out is part of the problem, because the the momentum would carry it forward.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, the momentum would carry it forward. And then, as the fire broke out in the second building, which also collapsed faster in the first building, you saw, well, I saw I don't know how many people bothered really watching that, but I saw explosions or what looked like explosions in like 10 stories below that. Well, I know fire can travel, but in a very short amount of time to have enough explosive material travel 10 floors in a steel building, steel and concrete to then combust 10 floors lower enough to blow out the plate glass windows. That didn't blow out, incidentally, during the initial crash, when the whole building was shaking. So that was very suspicious.
Speaker 2:And then the cherry on top for me, for both buildings, frankly, was the fact that they started collapsing many floors below the point of impact of the plane, and this is true of videos of both buildings. They they collapsed the same way that controlled demolition buildings collapse, and I know that because I went to. A few of them live in minneapolis where I was living, because it's actually kind of cool to watch, if you ever get a chance to watch a controlled demolition of a building. Um, you know, you're not like super up close, obviously, but you're close enough to really feel it, not just hear it. Um, it is pretty cool, but you can see that there is very much a pattern to the way that the charges go off in order to have the building fall into itself and not fall sideways. And there was there's some videos on the internet of like chinese, not very well done controlled demolition, where you have, like, a 30-story building that starts falling down and then leans over and falls sideways and on to something else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well they're.
Speaker 2:You know, it's china. Different laws, but yeah, you know you know, you know, in china like rocket parts routinely kill people because they they launch their rockets over highly populated areas and then they jettison the fuel tanks the first stage over land. So it's a thing up there. It's a different mentality for sure. Um, go ahead, you're gonna make a side remark no, no, okay I thought I heard one coming out, so it seemed very strange.
Speaker 2:And I'm not even talking about uh, wtc7, which just seemed like was barely damaged and then just immediately disappeared. That completely looked like a controlled demolition. I don't know how anyone with any brain cells can see that as something otherwise. And why would that building collapse? And the buildings to the left and right of it not collapse also made no sense. This was not like the next obvious building to catch fire, so a lot very wrong with it. And then the final straw, of course, was that all this type of talk that we're having right now about like things that just didn't seem quite right, or like it sure seemed like the uh, the airplane in quotes that struck the Pentagon seemed to be missing both wings. That was very strange as well.
Speaker 1:Um well, yeah, let's be clear Two things. One, it was not a plane that struck the pentagon period in the story full stop. Two it was uh, the plane that went down over pennsylvania did not go down based off of the heroes saying let's roll, yeah, I'm taking the plane back over and crashing it. No, that's those two things are just nonsense.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, we shut it down.
Speaker 1:Easily.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, as, frankly, was the correct move if we were actually getting attacked.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm sure some flyboy fucked up and you know did that yeah.
Speaker 2:It happens, it happens with some regularity. We just, you know, usually don't have people, they the difference there was. This was the first time where we had a plane that was clearly in great trouble, where people had cell phones, because in previous plane fatalities and uh, like I knew some people that were on the uh, the uh eastern flight from ireland that, uh, the hijackers took out, um, I can't remember lazenby, langerby, I can't remember what it was called, but that flight. But uh, generally prior to 2000 very few people had cell phones, or if they did, the airplanes were nazis about them and you couldn't have damn thing on at all. And by 2000 it was sort of ubiquitous that everybody has a cell phone, not a smartphone, but a cell phone. And clearly, when the situation started getting more dangerous and risky, people just pulled out their cell phones and started calling their relatives.
Speaker 1:And so we had a lot of people 30 000 feet, but it wasn't 30 000 feet no, that's true, but it wasn't at 30 000 feet by the time people started calling.
Speaker 2:It was under 10 000 feet.
Speaker 1:It was significantly lower yeah, and you also had the phones on the plane that you could swipe your credit card and make a call with back then you did, yeah, but those like you could pull the plug on all of those from the cockpit you couldn't do that with cell phones yeah, yeah and dude.
Speaker 2:I remember using a freaking modem on an airplane back in. It would have been 99. Seems expensive, I think, so I don't remember what the client paid for that, but it was definitely a neat experience to be able to do that. It was definitely a neat experience to be able to do that. And then I had a, um, a wireless modem like the pre-cellular kind, so it was a metricom product. I don't know if you remember metricom at all.
Speaker 2:That might have been before your time but they they had provided basically a radio network similar to cell phone, but focused on data with much higher data rates than what you could get with a cell phone at the time. And um, uh, and so I had one of those cards and I was able to, uh, use a pretty, pretty decent amount of time in the airplane before the finally the signal ended up dying out. There's a lot of tech that kind of came and went after all the years and of course, when I say faster, that is relatively faster.
Speaker 1:Back back then, faster would have been probably like 56 half a meg, yeah, oh no, you weren't getting half a meg in early 2000s over cell network no, it wasn't over some network.
Speaker 2:That's my whole point is, it was a radio network, not a cell network. Well, I.
Speaker 1:I remember in 2003 using tethering over a cellular network for the first time and that was slow oh 256k at best and which was a huge upgrade for me coming from dial-up. Hey, speaking of bandwidth, there's some rural internet projects that are actually getting kicked off and going.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:My parents who live in rural East Texas are now getting fiber to the house that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I. I told you that I think about a year ago, when I drove down to pick up the rabbits from the rabbit guy that you know it's literally halfway between houston and college station a little further east, so so definitely towards east Texas.
Speaker 1:I think you mean vertically, not actually halfway in between, but yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know. But it's the middle of nowhere, is my point, and it's nothing but farm roads all around, no major single-family dwellings or apartments or anything, it's just farmland. And I get there and and, uh I somehow the topic came up and I asked him about the internet and he said, oh, yeah, we got fiber. I'm like what? And well, how fast is your connection? He's like, oh, we got uh three gigs. It's like you gotta be shitting me uh in in the middle of nowhere in a farm. You got three gigs. I don't know what he pays, but um, that seemed very good, given that I've got less than that in austin.
Speaker 1:Well, my parents are gonna get, uh well, either 500 megabits or a gig, whatever the cheapest they could get was but, that's more bandwidth than they're getting over starlink right now for less well, and I'm sure they could get something faster if they wanted to. Oh, yeah, yeah yeah, they could, but they're going for the cheapest one, right, because they don't need it.
Speaker 2:But even cheapest on fiber is usually plenty fast, like I think I'm on cheapest here right now and I've got one gig.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've got a gig here, but I'm on cable.
Speaker 2:I don't have fiber, so it's not, which is actually pretty impressive for cable.
Speaker 1:Uh well, it's pushing the limits of doxus 3, that's for sure yeah, yeah like that is in doxus. Uh, the doxus protocols is um how it's a multi-spectrum protocol, that's how cable internet actually works.
Speaker 2:Uh, a lot of now, don't even. I think the reason we're able to even get to those speeds is because no one actually uses cable anymore.
Speaker 1:For cable like it's just data now nope, not true um because the frequencies that the cable modem is using have basically nothing to do with the what is used, the spectrum that is used for cable internet. Those are separate items. Fcc regs.
Speaker 2:They haven't taken over the frequencies they used to use for channels yet.
Speaker 1:Nope.
Speaker 2:They will, I'm sure.
Speaker 1:No, they won't, and the reason why is because that spectrum that they use for channels, is dedicated for that. They would have to go to the FCC petition to change the license, Like there's a whole bunch of stuff there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it doesn't mean it's not going to happen.
Speaker 1:So here's the thing Streaming TV, cable and broadcast television are far more, from an information standpoint, efficient, because even multicast networks which are flaky as hell and have never really worked. So sue me, but that's not what we're doing. So we're doing just normal TCP IP, normal network, you know packetization.
Speaker 2:Yep know packetization Yep.
Speaker 1:So that means, instead of one copy being sent out and picked up by a bunch of people.
Speaker 2:It's, you know, thousands of copies being sent out and picked up, right yeah.
Speaker 1:Now the advantage is you're not using the bandwidth when you're not watching it, but you know the broadcast bandwidth if it's allocated and it's just used and you're just picking it up as a receive-only. That's far more efficient at scale, and that's I just. I don't understand why we are moving towards the streaming networks Like it would make more sense to. It's better. It would make more sense. To me it's basically access on demand.
Speaker 2:It's, it's, I think but yeah.
Speaker 1:What I'm saying, though, is it would be better to have a hybrid system where you have a interface, that you have a box in your house somewhere it could be your cable modem, or whatever that has the incoming reception for your live TV. What is currently live?
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And then you can pick it up from an app on whatever TV, the same way you do streaming, but that way the live broadcasts are just done over the traditional networks, and then anything you want on demand is done on IP.
Speaker 2:I think that that model breaks, given the amount of choice that we have, because the the reason that it was efficient to do like real multicasting, not the pseudo multicasting we have an ip, is because there was a very limited amount of choices.
Speaker 2:That you had, so you could have 15 channels or 20 channels or however many channels but like it's still a small number that were always continuously streaming, even if they were streaming infomercials in the middle of the night. Uh, where? Right now, if I have hbo, I have like six live streams but I would never watch those. And I don't ever, because I can also select any of their shows from the last 40 years and pick up where you know I left off watching one of those. So it's not a question of how many people are watching a network, it's how many people are watching the exact same thing at the same time, and I think that number is getting smaller and smaller because of the choice.
Speaker 1:Maybe I? I think for football games, I think for certain live events. Uh, it still has its place, or tim cast?
Speaker 2:yeah sure, please. What? What do you mean please? Timcast has a live audience that's bigger than all three of the major networks at that time.
Speaker 1:He literally, if he was on television he would be the number one rated guy. I don't believe that.
Speaker 2:You don't believe the network view counts?
Speaker 1:I'm assuming you're saying I don't believe the YouTube view counts. I believe the YouTube ones a lot more than the network ones, because'm assuming you're saying I don't believe the youtube boot counts.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I believe the youtube one's a lot more than network ones, because network ones are sampled because they don't know. They're just based on statistical sampling whereas the youtube. They know how much they're paying for bandwidth dude. They know exactly how many people are watching. Now what you can ask you can legitimately is is there a human being there?
Speaker 2:But, the fact that they're paying for that data. I don't think they're lying. I think that many streams of data are being sent at the same time. Okay, Well, tell me if you think there's a flaw here.
Speaker 1:I need to update my raspberry pies. I look, man, I I just. I think Tim has an overinflated ego about how popular he is, but that's neither here nor there.
Speaker 2:But he is popular, I will give him that he is the number one live streaming YouTuber in the world right now. Yep, now on Twitch you have gamers that have more viewers than he does, but on YouTube there are no other shows that are live that have more viewers than Timcast, which is you know. I mean, it is what it is. So and that's why I think timcast gets a little more, you know, a little more love from youtube, because I think he would have been canceled a long time ago if his viewership was 3 000 instead of like 30 or 50 000 yeah, I, I still think he's.
Speaker 1:He is a milk toast and I think he would say this himself fence that are in a lot of ways yeah I think he's come a long way in a lot of you know a lot of ways, but you're talking about the content.
Speaker 2:I'm talking about just technologically speaking. Okay, when I say he's got that many viewers, I'm not saying that there's that many like conservatives are watching him, or whatever. I'm just saying that many streams are going from YouTube and like YouTube's making money off of them, because most of those people, unlike me, don't pay for ad-free experience, and so there's ads being run all the time. Okay, and that's money Okay. So I mean, let's put it this way, there are YouTubers who would be happy to have 30,000 views on a single video. That's not live. Timcast gets that live every day and then it's in rotation after that for on-demand, so that number goes up way higher than that, obviously, but that many live views is, um, it's really high yeah, well, regardless, I I haven't gotten to watch tim in a while.
Speaker 1:I've been a little busy yeah, I haven't either.
Speaker 2:I I've maybe. I I've generally just catched clips. I don't really try to think. I think the last long thing I watched was trump's interview with um uh, the local guy here, uh, with his face, um lex yeah, do you?
Speaker 1:do you think, speaking of, did you watch the lex interview with trump? Yeah, like its entirety. Yeah, over about three days. Okay, so I do not get the 20 minute rant. Lex went on at the end, but do you think lex is going to make the bridge to rogan?
Speaker 2:um well, what do you mean? The bridge?
Speaker 1:uh well, lex flat out asked trump if he'd go on rogan yeah, yeah trump said, if I was invited, well, trump that.
Speaker 2:One thing you can always say about trump is he's always willing to make a deal right. So, uh, yeah, I think trump would go on rogan. I don't know that rogan wants to look like a me too.
Speaker 1:You know, after trump's done like five other guys I don't know man, I think that, I think that he, but he.
Speaker 2:I also think Trump's people probably would want Rogan to admit he was wrong. Uh-huh, I mean, I can't imagine that there's no pressure from the Trump side, because Trump himself may be fine going after Rogan, but as far as the trump machine, I think a lot of people were irked by rogan once again showing that he's a democrat, which he's always been. He's like he's never hidden this fact. He's voted democrat his whole life.
Speaker 1:He's just a rich Democrat.
Speaker 2:Right, so it is what it is, but for some reason the majority of Rogan's audience are not Democrats, and so that's where the disconnect is. But I don't know. I remember having this conversation years ago about Rogan and they're like talking him up Like he's seeing the light. I'm like, dude, no, he's just seeing the money. He's not seeing the light. He's just richer now, but he doesn't mean that he's going to change his core belief system, which he's had forever. His dad was a cop. That should tell you everything you need to know.
Speaker 1:Was his dad a cop? Yeah, his dad was a cop His dad or his stepdad, I don't know.
Speaker 2:He referred to him as my dad, so I guess it could have been either one. Okay, whatever Cop in Boston. Austin Boston, what Boston, not Austin Boston. Whatever cop in boston austin, what boston, not austin, boston boston. You can't totally skip the b.
Speaker 2:But it's um, it's a, it's a fucked up accent is what it is totally it'sually true, um, but you know, he's uh, I think he's gotten a lot more, uh, conservative over the years, but he clearly still has that aspirational kind of like. No, I just kind of believe in the Bernie Sanders thing, that's all right.
Speaker 1:I don't mind.
Speaker 2:But a lot of people got really pissed off and you know it got Trump to actually say well, next time Rogan goes to UFC he's going to hear people booing and I don't think that that's inaccurate. He probably will.
Speaker 1:I think he will too uh you know, but I don't think that it will be um how do I put this? I don't think it'll be a substantial amount, I think it will be the diehard trumpers um you know, if I were at a ufc event.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't do that, but I would just for fun not that I give a shit, but I would for fun. But I think that there is a maga contingent there who are absolutely you're either with us or you're the enemy. Yeah, I don't know that that's a bad thing either. I'm just not one of them. That's all like when, when kyle rittenhouse said he was not voting for trump, I was like okay, sure, I mean, he's gonna vote for a guy who isn't running. That's fine, it's a uh, it's something that I think he has full rights to do. And just say in my first election after I turned 18, I voted for the guy that I considered to be representing my beliefs the most.
Speaker 1:Well, and I mean, that's what I did, you know.
Speaker 2:I didn't.
Speaker 1:I have never voted for someone I did not believe in. Yeah, and that's the reason why I voted for one Republican my entire life.
Speaker 2:So, when you think of my post so who did you vote in your first election? I'm sorry. Who did you vote for in the first election?
Speaker 1:After you turned 18. Do you remember which would have been when? I think I guess it would have been 2000.
Speaker 2:It wouldn't have well, you just said I voted for that same kind of guy. So I'm just wondering who it was. I'm trying to remember who the, the libertarian candidate, was at the time yeah, and in my first election I voted for Ross Perot, so same kind of deal.
Speaker 1:I was like I, I don't need to vote for a party guy gary johnson, okay well, I, I know I've I've voted for gary johnson, uh, but I'm wondering who the 2004 Libertarian Presidential Party was. How many you know? It was Gary Nolan. It's the candidate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the trouble with the Libertarian Party.
Speaker 1:It was a different, gary. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:I made the wrong, gary, gary.
Speaker 1:Kasparov, yeah, and then I Gary Nolan. Gary Kasparov, yeah, and then I Gary Nolan, Anyway, and then I voted for Gary Johnson in 2008. Yeah, I couldn't vote for McCain, dude.
Speaker 2:Nobody could vote for McCain and then Romney no chance, no way. So I didn't want it. Nobody, yeah, nobody could vote for McCain and then Romney no chance, yeah, no, no way. So you know I didn't want to vote for Bush, didn't want to vote for there are plenty of Mormons. I would vote for Romney's, not one of them.
Speaker 1:Agreed, but again you put candidates up. So here are the presidential candidates from the Republican Party I had a choice to vote for. So in 2004, it would have been Bush Kerry versus Bush. I'm not voting for either one of them. In 2008, it would have been Obama McCain. In 2012, it would have been Obama or Romney, which is just not going to fucking happen. And then 2016,. You had Trump and Clinton, and I actually believed in a lot of what Trump had to say and liked a lot of what he had to say the first time around, so I voted for Trump.
Speaker 1:And then, in 2020, I voted for Trump. And here in 2024, I'll be voting for Trump, especially with Chase Oliver.
Speaker 2:Being the libertarian candidate is just insane man yeah, the libertarian I I think we talked about this when it first happened. It's like I can no longer call myself at all affiliated with liberian party, like that's the. They've lost me. Yeah, and, and I ran as a libertarian in the early 90s. Like I was one of the group of people that that got the party on the ballot, that took the effort to go from a party that was all right ends to actually having a party be on the ballot because we all needed to raise a certain number of votes. Uh and in in. You know, when I ran, I got, uh, I think I got 42 of the vote, something like that.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's a substantial number of the vote, um, good for you yeah, and that's what I mean, like genuinely, historically, it was guys like me that got the libertarian party on the ballot. And, yeah, now it's like well, why bother, it's a wasted effort.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I don't know, man, I think had the libertarians done the brave thing and actually endorsed Trump at their convention or nominated him as?
Speaker 2:the Libertarian Party of.
Speaker 1:Canada. It would have been huge for the Libertarian Party. What ends up happening? Because trump, I think, is likely to win. I, I don't see it. I I do not. If kamala is elected, I do not see good outcomes for this country. Even if trump is elected, I do not necessarily see good outcomes for this country, but it's a little. Not as bad, right, uh, but yeah yeah, I, I was sort of talked about ukraine in a while. Yeah right, and there's been some stuff going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we could jump on that. Let's wrap up trump real quick. So my thoughts on that last one was I'm a little more black pill than you are, because I I think that even though I assume you and so both of us are going to be voting Trump, as is most of the people we know, I still think the Democrats are not going to let them win. I think they will pull a midnight surprise and one way or another, there'll be enough states in question that they'll be able to manufacture more votes in. That will flip it to Kamala so I think she's. If I was betting in Vegas right now, I would bet on Kamala, not on Trump. Having said that, I also agree with you that I think there's going to be problems no matter what, but at least with Trump, the international problems go away.
Speaker 2:Uh, I don't know well, I think they do in a lot of ways. I think they the de-escalation is it de-escalation or descalation? It's de-escalation yeah that seems like a double negative, doesn't it? No, because escalation is like your S-decalation.
Speaker 1:No, your escalation means to escalate, means to increase. So, de-escalation means to remove.
Speaker 2:To decrease the increase, but it should be yeah.
Speaker 1:I guess it's not a double negative.
Speaker 2:It feels like a double negative. I kind of feel like it should be de descalation, not de-escalation.
Speaker 1:Well, I can't help your feelings, Gene.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just. I think that's one where they got it wrong Anyway.
Speaker 1:Oh, Jesus Christ. I'm glad I entertain you Ben oh you do, you do, I'm your, I entertain you Ben. Oh, you do, you do.
Speaker 2:I'm your weekly laughter session.
Speaker 1:It is a stress relief, that is for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Better than the rage sessions that they have, or what do they call them? The hate sessions? Hate sessions or whatever in china? Uh-huh yeah, but I I think they're gonna somehow manage to figure out a way to keep him from legitimately winning. That may be that they go for the congressional option. I don't know if that works out in their favor at all or not, because it's the incoming class that votes right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's a little bit of a question mark, but the other thing that I've heard is people saying that, well, they're not at all like. She's the sacrificial lamb. They're not focusing on actually winning the presidency, because all the money they're spending right now is in battlegrounds for the Senate and the House, and that could be the case as well. Maybe they will let the presidency go and then take over both the House and the Senate, which would still not be bad, because in that situation, trump just doesn't sign the damn thing, and I don't think they're going to have a super majority in either house.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think if Kamala is elected, you may see Texas, uh, and I think you will definitely see civil strife, if not out, full out civil war, if she tries to take the guns the way she was talking about, especially through an executive order where there is no even air of legitimacy, right right.
Speaker 2:But also just remember nobody ever keeps their campaign promises, or they keep a very tiny fraction. So her taking the guns away is kind of like Trump's build a wall and we're going to have Mexico pay for it. Like it sounds good to the base. They're like rah rah, but realistically, how are you going to actually do that? Well, you're not going to get mexico to pay for a fucking wall and you're not going to get you know guns done through an executive order. It's just a base rally tactic okay.
Speaker 1:Well, why don't we talk about ukraine? Sure, and tell me what's going to stop russia, you know, wiping Kiev off the map here shortly.
Speaker 2:Well, hopefully nothing.
Speaker 1:Why hopefully nothing?
Speaker 2:Well, I think that would be the fastest end to the whole situation.
Speaker 1:Before we go too far, I do want to make sure, and we mentioned that. And since I don't get the boostograms, uh, but you know, csb reached out. Yeah, yeah, csb did reach out yeah, yeah he he sent us one, and he wanted us to say corva.
Speaker 2:So there you go, csb which, what does that?
Speaker 1:mean I, I, I hear that it's all right. There you go cool. You know what I'm gonna have to remember that?
Speaker 2:remember that. But it's not a literal translation of fuck, but it is the equivalent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's used in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 1:Which we do need to fix the podcast index split. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So you can't do the split.
Speaker 1:So I think I told you this directly, but I'm going to tell CSV you can't do the podcast, so I I think I told you this directly, but I I'm gonna tell csb multiple splits it's not in the podcast index.
Speaker 2:It's right in. No, it's not. Uh, because I set it up. Remember it is in. It is a setting in buzzsprout and when I put in two numbers in there initially, it breaks both of them because somebody tried to donate and nothing comes across at all. It's made literally for a single. See if it's fixed I don't care if you put yours in there, dude, I I really don't, because, like literally, that amounts to about, I know, 20 bucks a year but I'm not worried about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, the actual donation. But I'm just trying to explain to csb.
Speaker 2:Why that's the case? Because if, if the hosting company had it where you could just put in multiple people in there and they would, uh, create the string that gets parsed, that that's what would be in there, and maybe something changed in the year that we've been doing this, but when I originally set it up, that was the issue is, you could only have a single address in there for it to work and, like I said, feel free to go in and edit that address and put yours in. I really don't care, but since CSB was pestering you about it, I'm answering the question, which is it is not because I'm trying to steal all of Ben's money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so much money.
Speaker 2:I know. So much money it's because of technical limitation. So much money, it's because of technical limitation.
Speaker 1:You know what it comes down to is there has not been enough money for us to ever fight over in any of this at all.
Speaker 2:I'm just happy that we're getting money that covers the costs. Man.
Speaker 1:More or less?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, more or less Not always.
Speaker 1:But yes, we cover hosting fees, we cover software, we cover quite a few things with it. And it's no longer a drain on us, which is nice, and we definitely appreciate it. So to our seven subscribers on Buzzsprout. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2:I think this answers the question in the manner that I predicted back when I had these conversations with Adam originally years ago about Bitcoin versus US dollars. I said that the problem is with using something other than US dollars as a currency is the loss of convenience factor is going to greatly affect the number of people using it. So even if you remove the fees that you paid to PayPal or whoever right Because that was kind of one of the goals for using Sats was well, you're not paying fees to banks, basically for making the transaction happen paying fees when you purchase bitcoin.
Speaker 1:You're paying fees when you sell bitcoin, you're paying fees paying fees, paying fees the fees don't go away no, no, uh, which is which is capitalism, and it's okay yeah, yeah and, and because it's the podcast index gets a piece of every single transaction. Yeah, which I'm fine with.
Speaker 2:Which I'm fine with too. But again, the issue here is not like one system is better. It's that the mechanisms don't currently exist for a seamless and convenient way to utilize Satoshis for a seamless and convenient way to utilize satoshis.
Speaker 1:I do like the and we got to get back to the other thing. I didn't mean to derail this as much yeah yeah, but uh, I do like the wallet that proton has come up with, like it's actually very nice and usable and okay, uh, I like I've totally shut down coinbase yeah, okay, well cool, because I was waiting to hear your review before I start using it yeah, I've moved literally all my bitcoin to that wallet and shut down coinbase cool and you can purchase through it.
Speaker 1:You do if they use a third-party service to link and well like that.
Speaker 2:Well, they are a Swiss company, so they know a thing or two about purchasing money.
Speaker 1:Right, but what I like is you can spin out as many wallets as you want very easily in there, for free, and it's very easy.
Speaker 2:Why don't you create a wallet for this podcast and then put? That wallet's address into the Buzzsprout.
Speaker 1:If I could find where to do it on Buzzsprout, I would.
Speaker 2:It's in the advanced options for the podcast.
Speaker 1:Pretty sure that's where it was. I think that's where it is yeah, okay, well, I'll look, but I couldn't find it. The other, day Okay. But regardless, it's not that big of a deal, but I can definitely set up an Albie account, which I think versus Toshies is what is required, which is what you have currently on there. But we can set up an account that's dedicated to that and once a year split it or something.
Speaker 1:It's not that big of a deal, but I'm not worried about it. I thought it was. It's very. Yeah, let me. Let me put it this way it's very nice of csb to be worried about making sure I get my cut, and I appreciate it I?
Speaker 2:I think it has more to do with ocd than any real love for you.
Speaker 1:It's annoying to him. Don't take that away from me. Okay, don't take that away from me. I want to be loved by CSP. Yeah so love for me, hate for you, you know yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, there's a lot less hate than there than there was when the Ukraine specialist special military operation first kicked off, that's for sure speaking of which yeah, let's talk about ukraine and the authorization of uh, you know weapons usage yeah, I, I think everybody knew that was coming. It's just a question of when it was going to happen, because it's that that slope is very slippery, as they say.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, there's already talk about should ukraine hit moscow?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah yeah, well, there's more than that. There's talk of do we need to transfer nuclear missiles to ukraine immediately? Well, because that there are people that argue that is the only thing that will stop russia from taking over all of europe is putting nuclear missiles under control of uh zelinski, uh just to instill the fear.
Speaker 1:God and putin I think if, if it was ever announced that that's what we were doing, kiev would be nuked before the missiles ever got there, like yeah, well, that's why they're not gonna announce it.
Speaker 2:It it's just gonna happen. It'll just be in retrospect, not in post spec yeah, well, we'll see.
Speaker 1:I, I just don't, I don't see uh, this ending well for anyone is what I'm getting at.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and Europe has been paying a financial price so far, uh-huh. But you know there are a lot of people that would like to get European countries' militaries officially involved and start having their army start dying off as well. Oof.
Speaker 1:Man that just you know. On Thursday, did you listen to Thursday's no Agenda?
Speaker 2:I listened to the first part. I didn't listen to the whole show.
Speaker 1:Alright. Well, it was interesting because you know John made a joke about if they really want to have fun, they'll nuke Paris. Well, yes, I heard that part I don't know how much of a joke about. If they really want to have fun, they'll nuke Paris. Well, yes, I heard that part.
Speaker 2:I don't know how much of a joke that actually is. That's the scary part.
Speaker 1:Right, there's way too many Russians that go to Paris on vacation, yeah, but you know the French are being a little bellicose in their rhetoric.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but this is what the French do. The French literally tell Hitler to go fuck himself and have no actual defenses in place.
Speaker 1:Well, they had the Maginot Line man. They had what they thought they needed.
Speaker 2:Yes, and they always have what they think they need, which is literally nothing. But the French know that their, their unique special ability, if you ever played risk, was to turn coat and run, so they have that going for them we should totally find an online risk server oh yeah, start playing against each other. Oh, I would love that. No, I really enjoyed. You know what?
Speaker 1:you know what? We could get a few people together.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, totally From like the show. Yeah, yeah, Stream it on Twitch.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, not even that, but do a, you know a Risk Night, or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we could even you know, take our time with it.
Speaker 1:So it's, you know, done over time.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:We could even play like Ax.
Speaker 2:So it's you know, done over time, mm-hmm, I like access and allies. You know, if we really wanted to get crazy, yeah, yeah it's. I haven't played actual brand-name risk in many, many decades, but I've certainly played plenty of games that I think were inspired by where's yeah? Yeah, speaking of which, the latest one is um age of mythology, which is the, the mythological version of age of empires. Uh, so they're they redid that the age of mythology came out, I think, probably 20 years ago yeah, are you a civilization fan?
Speaker 2:yeah, I've played all of them through six. I don't know what version they're on currently, but I've played them all through six still, really okay, I I tried to get into it during covid and it's just such a fucking boring game to me really it takes a while it it's.
Speaker 2:It's one of those games that, um like, everything you do in the first hour has tremendous impact on the next 10 hours. Yeah, but nothing that you do in the first hour does anything to really look like it's progressing a game in the first hour? It's all about building up. I get it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I get it. Mm-hmm, you know, it's just about building up. I get it. I get it.
Speaker 2:You know, it's just me, I don't know yeah, yeah, well, and that's where I think the rts, the real-time strategies, instead of the turn based strategy games, they kind of fulfill that desire for immediate, um, enjoyment from gameplay, because you're even though you are building up as well, but you're also doing stuff while you're building up, not just, you know, rolling the dice. Yeah, I don't know, man, the rhetoric from Ukraine is it's like it's always been, which is that Russia has invaded Ukraine and we want crimea back, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like it's all that shit's been the same. Obviously they've. They've been attacking russia with some regularity now like inside russia, but again like that was. I don't think anybody really thought that that would not happen. The fact that they're now shooting down drones around St Petersburg is surprising to me. I didn't think that Ukraine would have the hotspot to launch out of Finland, but apparently they are to launch out of Finland, but apparently they are. So, yeah, it's a thing, it's happening. What's?
Speaker 1:your take. It's a very dangerous game that we are really funding. At some point, russia will have their red line in the sand. Yeah, they will say this far, no farther.
Speaker 2:And if you but that's what many people in that now obviously not my opinion, but this is my understanding of what they're thinking is that's literally what they're trying to do is they want to have putin cross the red line and then say well, it's now a moral imperative to stop the. The president hitler look what he just did, even though the reason that russia did this is because they've been poked and egged on to do it for the last three years yeah that's their goal, like they want to have russia do a large offensive because that allows them to do a large offensive.
Speaker 2:I think they'll literally just nuke kiev and be done yeah, but well, first of all, when I say you can't, let me rephrase I don't mean dropping a thermonuclear device.
Speaker 2:I mean. Takeover Bombing Like all they have to do is bomb the shit out of there. The problem with Kiev is Russia can't for the same reason that really nobody can bomb Jerusalem, because Kiev is where russia started. It is the original russian city and so it's because the southwest borderlands of Russia. It's not, and has never been an independent state. This is not like some little country that was taken over by a bigger country and then had to put up with it.
Speaker 1:I get that.
Speaker 2:But I also get you know, they are a separate country and have been for the last few years. So bombing Kiev is sort of like bombing. I mean, pick a place other than Washington DC, let's. It's kind of like it'd be like bombing Boston. Washington DC, let's. It's kind of like it'd be like bombing Boston. Can we bomb?
Speaker 1:Boston, if, if Boston, if we were, you know, fighting.
Speaker 2:Boston. Yes, well, I mean we could, but that's where the Boston Tea Party was, that's where the, the, the, the impetus for the American Revolution, was so destroying that physically Kind of fucks with the psyche of a country. I guess it's, and it's the closest analogy I can come to is, like you know, boston's a city like any other. Key is a city like any other. However, it's historically where what became the United States had its rallying call.
Speaker 2:Same thing with Russia. Like that was the place that the Vikings settled long enough to actually start a country. So, and and you know that's I don't know how many people here know that and you know that's I don't know how many people here know that but Russia, ukraine, all of those countries, belarus, they were all started as a result of Viking invasions, because prior to that none of them were countries, they were just. It was kind of like America pre-Western discovery, like none of the Indian groups that were living had a level of government that you could call a country. Same thing in Russia None of the local tribes had enough sway and enough government to call themselves a country. It wasn't until the vikings started unifying these various tribes uh, these slavic tribes under their banner, which, incidentally, slavic comes from the word slave, because they were slaves no, the other way around, other way around what slave comes from the well, they can't be the other way around, because it was a Danish word, so it's the same word.
Speaker 2:You can say that it came one from the other, but it's literally the root word is the same for both Agreed. So you know, that really was the genesis of the unification of the various Slavic tribes in that country. So this is what I've always said, from pretty much day one of the special military operation. In fact, the reason it's called the special military operation and not a war and people think it's just, you know, a doublespeak or whatever. No, it's called that because it is treated very differently than a war against a genuine enemy, because it's brother fighting brother. Most people, myself included, have relatives on both sides. So there there has to be a certain amount of like. You can't paint the other side as being subhuman, like you could with most other wars, because they're literally the same people as you okay, hey, so you do not think there is a way for them to take extreme military action against Ukraine?
Speaker 2:Unfortunately, I think the only way Russia can really win is by grinding it out. I don't think they can win through a single big action, the um, uh. They're going to have to put up with just more, you know more people dying in Russia.
Speaker 2:I don't again, I just I don't see a way for them to uh, to do anything to shift the war, like if you were genuinely fighting against another country. That's an enemy. Um, blowing up their capital would have a pretty devastating effect on the population as a whole. Probably enough to make an impact, to set up a terms for surrender. But that's not what we have here. What what we have here is more akin to Civil War, where one of the sides is being funded by the West. So if the West wasn't funding Ukraine, this would have been over in six months.
Speaker 1:Well, to be clear, we're funding them to the point of more than the entire defense budget of Russia.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we're also paying for the entirety of government services in Ukraine, everybody that gets a salary from the government.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course, everybody that gets any kind of money from the Ukraine government, which is bankrupt, is getting it from the West, mostly from the United States, a little tiny bit from UK and Europe. And yeah, you're right. But it's also a slightly deceptive number, because while we can say we're funding them to a higher degree than the entire military budget of Russia, you have to keep in mind how expensive American weapons are, and so, in raw numbers, you're actually getting way fewer weapons coming in than what Russia produces.
Speaker 1:You also have a lot of graft and you theft right theft in ukraine.
Speaker 2:Well, money that's going, yeah, and that's literally been the uh sort of the, the running joke or the standard description. It's no different than going to a bazaar in morocco like expect to get you know somebody to steal shit from you. Ukraine was always that region, was always known for like that's where the uh stolen cars show up, that's where you can buy all the fake gucci shit. It's, it's an. It's the part of russia where uh, which is the yeah, which is it has a very much that sort of a gypsy-esque or a middle east-esque mentality. Yeah, and again, this has like been the case for hundreds of years. It's not a recent phenomenon at all. This is just historically, uh has been recognized as, as the that part of the country being that way.
Speaker 2:So I think that this was a horrible move for ukraine as an independent country. A great move for the united states to uh spend money on the military and get to test out military weapons without actually being in a conflict directly themselves. Um, and a pretty crappy scenario for russia. No matter what, like russia is, you know, maybe it seems like well, look at all that territory they got. They didn't really get territory, they. They basically got sick of watching uh people that speak russian getting brutalized yeah, they fell for hitler poland yeah, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2:So I don't know, man, it's, it's tough to say, but I do know that, um, at some point, ukraine will just be out of men altogether, at which point the only thing that can happen is europe is going to start having to supply the, the men that go into fight in ukraine I don't think it'll be the us, but europe probably will.
Speaker 1:I think that uh, the ukrainians have lost uh more than a generation worth of men already.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I mean they literally may be an extinct species before too long because they're the meat grinder that is. The Zelensky war machine is constricting people regardless of age at this point. So you got 50, 60 year old guys going off to die, um, and you're you're having everybody 16 and up also going off.
Speaker 1:So, oh, but it's more than one generation but they're, you know they're, they're just uh, how do I put this? They're killing all the russians. The drones are, yeah, great the drones are actually working pretty well.
Speaker 2:I have to say, the drones are working much better than the people, the commercial consumer off-the-shelf drones with a payload yes, Yep, yeah. Which should teach our military industrial complex something it should, and I think that this is the thing that hopefully somebody in the US military is learning that the next country that the US is actually fighting directly, whoever that is, just plan on them having multiple drones per soldier out in the infantry, Like it's definitely going to be predominantly drone warfare with a little bit of sniping.
Speaker 1:Well, this is why we've seen the return to trench warfare Yep, literally. We thought we would never go back to trench warfare, yet here we are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And the drones are definitely there. I mean, I don't know. I guess we should have all expected them, and not the big giant ones that cost millions of dollars, but the cheapy ones, because they make logical sense. Because if you can fly somewhere with a payload that weighs roughly what a grenade weighs, a payload that weighs roughly what a grenade weighs, then you've got a much cheaper deadly weapon than you do from anything that's actually coming out of the military industrial complex.
Speaker 1:Yep, which is very useful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so should we be telling people to load up on drones? You've got your ammo in your house. Now it's time for you to buy a whole bunch of drones.
Speaker 1:Yeah, except now you know it's required for the FAA licensing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's required, but I don't think it's required when you buy it. I think it's required when you fly it. Yeah, yeah, and we all know what you say about fcc licensing. What do I?
Speaker 1:say I don't say anything about fcc uh-huh, uh-huh.
Speaker 2:No, you wait. It's like if I ever need to use this radio, the license won't matter, correct, if you ever need to use literally I have if I'm in any emergency whatsoever, even today my car breaks down.
Speaker 1:I am perfectly legal in using the uh, the uh the ham radio in any way I see fit well, not any way you see fit.
Speaker 2:you only only for emergency purposes, um and? And you're gonna be squawked down pretty damn quick by all the ham radio guys that love to enforce the rules, the edgars, there's a lot of them there, dude. Yeah, they live to tell people what they're doing wrong on the radio. Now me, I just do that on the internet, I don't do that on the radio. But yeah, there's a lot of guys out there, grumpy old men.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, as just two good old boys. So hey, I do have one little last bit thing to wrap us up. I got the body armor in while I was gone.
Speaker 2:Oh, nice yeah, and.
Speaker 1:So plates are heavy.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And you think when you're holding it, because it's so dense.
Speaker 2:Jesus.
Speaker 1:Christ, this is really heavy. Then you put it in the plate carrier and you put it on and then it's like, oh, this is less than my backpack.
Speaker 2:This is not at all.
Speaker 1:So literally the plate carrier, and I had to weigh this out. So I normally carry two laptops in my backpack a tablet, batteries, a whole bunch of stuff right. My normal backpack that I go around the world with Weighs more than the plate carrier with plates and ammo.
Speaker 2:Nice yeah.
Speaker 1:So now and to be honest though there is, there is a level three plate in my backpack too. So there's that, but you know, it's something. You think it's going to be really heavy because it's dense, but when you put it on to me, it was like, oh, this isn't that bad. And I got kind of curious and I, you know, put my laptops in my bag and everything and weighed it out and my backpack weighs more than the body armor with ammo yeah, I guess I'm not super surprised about that.
Speaker 2:Um, not that the plates are late, but but that your backpack or that your laptop.
Speaker 1:The plates aren't light, but my backpack is ridiculous.
Speaker 2:I would still be very curious to actually shoot the plates or one of them, because there's been a slew of non-hardened type materials being sold as body armor.
Speaker 1:Like, a lot of this stuff was questionable. Well, buy one and look and shoot it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's what I'm kind of waiting for you to do.
Speaker 1:Well, I already bought mine Exactly, but I'm not shooting mine.
Speaker 2:Well you should. Would you really trust your life to something you haven't tested?
Speaker 1:Well, so here's the thing you can't test each individual plate, because then you've ruined the plate. No, no, no.
Speaker 2:But if you get several plates, you've got to imagine they're from the same series. You're more likely than not, so testing one of them would ensure that the rest of them are fine. But if you wait, a year and then test it, then you know yeah, I'm just not that worried about it okay, all right, so you're a larper after all okay.
Speaker 1:No, it's just oh okay, I'm purchasing.
Speaker 2:why bother certification and why bother going out and shooting a gun when you know you've got one? You one, you bought it, that's good enough.
Speaker 1:Well, no, I'm not ruining the gun by shooting it.
Speaker 2:Well, you're not ruining the gun, you're certainly. You're putting you know by putting rounds through it. You're certainly using it. I guess what's the phrase I'm looking for?
Speaker 1:You're right using it, I guess what's the phrase I'm looking for Right, but if you shoot a plate, especially a ceramic plate, which is what these are it's useless after that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, not useless because they are multi-hit rated, but still, you wouldn't want to trust your life to it at that point?
Speaker 2:No, but you'd probably do a raffle or something and then have it turn into a souvenir.
Speaker 1:I don't think anyone would be buying tickets to try and win the body armor that I showed.
Speaker 2:I don't know what do you all think? If I shoot Ben wearing a plate, what would?
Speaker 1:you buy a ticket for no, no, no, no, I am not wearing the plate.
Speaker 2:Oh, come on, Ben, you've got to be realistic about this.
Speaker 1:You can wear the plate.
Speaker 2:No, they don't fit me. Unfortunately, you bought the wrong size.
Speaker 1:That's not true. I bought the biggest size. I know, I know.
Speaker 2:But I needed the extra bigger size. I would if you would have bought the bigger size, but you didn't, so we got to use you you know what something that people were complaining about on this was.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, this is such a big plate and everything. It's just huge and everything, and I'm pretty broad shouldered but when I put it on and where it's supposed to fit, it's like this fits me. Great. What are you? Talking about like how petite have men become?
Speaker 2:I'm not that big of a guy. Huh, that's what she said. Yeah, I said lack of testosterone. Fuck you, fuck you, god damn it. You set yourself up for that one buddy.
Speaker 1:Hey, I got you last time, you got me this time. It's okay, it's okay Anyway, gene, I've got to get back to the work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I hear you. Well, it sounds good. Ben, we'll wrap things up, we'll catch up next time.
Speaker 1:All right, we'll see you, gene.
