It Could Happen Here Weekly 214

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's going to be nothing new here for you. But
you can make your own decisions. This is poetry. You

(00:30):
don't edit poetry, well, you do edit poetry. Poetry.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Stop talking. Welcome, welcomed, It could happen here. Twenty twenty
five Q and A edition. We have the whole team here,
Mia Garrison, James, Robert Evans, I'm your producer, Sophie Lichterman.
We're gonna answer some of your questions. How's everybody feeling.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Great, trepidacious, amazing, bad? I just got back from vacation,
so anything's going to be a that's not me continuing
to not look at my phone or computer.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Great, Yeah, you should stop looking at the phone.

Speaker 4 (01:06):
You guys.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Are you guys aware what this Trump dude's doing? Jesus Christ,
very very yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:13):
I went to the WJA holiday party this weekend and
the amount of like twenty seventeen Trump jokes I had
to hear.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Oh no, yeah, that's a crime against humanity. God.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
I love I love that party. I love that party.

Speaker 5 (01:26):
I'm going to a holiday party tonight with some friends
who do insurance for people who live in the US
and go to Mexico, so I'm sure I will get
lots of fun and exciting anecdotes.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yeah, I am throwing a holiday party and planning it
with a four year old, which is exciting. It's gonna
be good.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
One of my favorite experiences as us having our job
is at almost every partday I go to somebody's like,
so those the news.

Speaker 5 (01:55):
Yeah, people just tt to just summarize the fucking news.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yeah, no, good, listen to executive disorder. No.

Speaker 4 (02:03):
I had to explain seven to six four to a
screenwriter yesterday and they were not happy.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Anyone who goes to a party that I am at
knows that there's a gun on the table. If anyone
asks me how the news is, that's that's.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Just It's always sprays that way.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Who's the fuck out?

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (02:21):
Yeah, what's going on over the Aaron Burma, Let's let's
let's answer some questions.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
All right, so we posted on Blue Sky, we posted
on Instagram, and we have some of your questions. Let's
start out with a with a fun one. Can we
have a fun, non incriminating story from your youth? Any
in all of you?

Speaker 4 (02:43):
No fun, not incriminating story, but you, I mean for Robert,
this is, and James and maybe me. Statute of limitations
for all of you should be fine. Yeah, Garrison, I
cannot answer this at all. I have a lot of
interesting stories, but I've tried to think of something from
my youth that I could actually share.

Speaker 5 (03:01):
I can do one that I think non incriminating. I'm
sad about having been part of it, but that's okay.
I was gored by a bull when I was younger.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Story. I feel like if we put money on it,
like two of us would have better. Ball was involved.

Speaker 5 (03:18):
I've actually been present at several gorings. Various species probably
have most of the gorings, and it's available for human
being to witness, because I've seen like a water buffalo goring.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Oh nice, that's gotta be like the top goring.

Speaker 5 (03:32):
Yeah, that was a really unpleasant day for everyone involved.
A guy lost the use of his of his legs
for a period. Actually recovered it later, which is nice, so.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
You can laugh about it, Yeah, fun laugh about it. Yeah,
well it's a funny. It's a funny story because it's fun.

Speaker 5 (03:47):
First of all, you shouldn't be unkind to animals, so
I did deserve it, right.

Speaker 6 (03:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (03:52):
I don't think you should torn animals for human pleasure.
I don't think you should make them suffer, and if
you do, it's kind of your fault.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
So in that sense, it's funny. I don't know that
i'd ever heard of a goring where I wasn't like, well,
the animal was in the right.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
Clear I'm on the bull team with this.

Speaker 5 (04:10):
The funny part was that my friend who was staying
with me, had previously not driven a manual vehicle. I
had broken probably the bulk of my ribs right, like
a lot of rib breaking, and we drove home like that,
learning to use a clutch on the way, and that
was one of the most painful experiences I think that's
available to a human being.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Is it bad that the story that popped into my
head was when I ripped my pants in front of
the entire eighth grade class at our school picnic because
I was wearing way too skinny of jeans playing basketball
and my pants ripped and I was wearing PMI red
onties and pants ripped, so like my entire butt.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
No, that's got to leave some scars.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Yeah, that for me as a person that I feel
like you just fucked the Yeah. But that was my fun,
non incriminated story from you less the time. It's very
from the entire eighth class that are like graduation picnic.

Speaker 5 (05:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
I love that you would like skinny jeans Icarus, Like
that's something.

Speaker 7 (05:12):
That why why the.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
Way things were back then?

Speaker 1 (05:19):
And I know, I know, Robert, you have to have
a fun one.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
I do, I do. What's the statute limitations on murder? Uh? No,
very couple of weeks.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
You're fine, buddy, You're fine.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Now, I'll tell I'll tell a pants splitting story too.
I got a really good one, Sovie. So I'm in
I'm in rural northern India in this town called Rishikesh,
which is where like it's where like the Beatles had
their ashrom It's like a holy city. There's a lot
of yoga there. You're up in like the Himalayan foothills.
It's beautiful. The Goan Jesus is actually like clean enough
to swim in up there, but it's also crazy whitewater rapids.

(05:51):
And we're going like whitewater rafting one day and I
grab I buy a pair of like pants that are
like it's like it's like a long set of like
athletic you know, tights or whatever like that to have
on the boat because like, okay, that'll that'll make sense.
They zip so I can keep you know, some cash
or whatever in them. And we're going down the Ganjis.
We're doing this white water raft and we hit a

(06:12):
calm spot and the guy's like, okay, everybody wants to
get in the water, hop out, and I hop out,
And immediately two things become clear. Number One, the quality
of textiles that you purchase in a market in India
not necessarily up to the standards of a lot of
other countries. Number Two, the Ganji's mighty river. So my
pants immediately are gone, like just instantly, as soon as

(06:35):
they're in the water, torn off by the Ganjies. And
then I am so I am realizing this that now
I am naked from the waist down. We are surrounded
on both sides by a very holy city and we
are heading towards the rocks, so I have to get
back in the boat in fairly short order. This presents
a problem because again, as we're getting like buffalo buffeted around,

(06:57):
I have to get like help pulled up into the boat.
Absolutely everything moving on the entire side of.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
This secret city.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
So now I'm in the boat naked from the waist down.
But I come up with a plan. I did I
do solve it. I take my shirt off and I
put my legs through the armholes and neck hole and
I'm just my pants my shirt is what a sight?
We went to lunch.

Speaker 5 (07:24):
That way's still a restaurant there where they won't let Robert.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Still, James, there's more than one restaurant in the I
can't go back.

Speaker 5 (07:37):
Yeah, there's a hotel in Bangkok that neither of us
can go back to.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
But no, they handled you puking in the parking lot
like a trooper.

Speaker 5 (07:46):
Yeah, because I puked directly into my analogy, like considering.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Exactly like a hero, like a hero, James.

Speaker 5 (07:52):
And then send a picture to Sophie. Yeah, yeah, that
was before I worked here. I sent a picture to
Sophie of analogy for.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
The and I was like, let's hire that guy.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah. I feel like it was thirty seconds into our
relationship that I told Sophia a story about meat puking,
So it's fine.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
It was like fifteen seconds. Yeah, yeah, it might have
been fifteen anyways, Robert, can we get an update to
the sequel of After the Revolution?

Speaker 2 (08:18):
It's done, I'm editing it. I even got edits back
from my editor. I'm editing it. It should have been
done so much faster. I could like bring up the
fact that my dad died last year, but that's really
just me trying to make you feel sorry for me,
and the fact that I am well past the time
at which I expected to have this book done. But
it is done and I'm finishing it and you will
get to read it soon. I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
Good for you, Good for you, Robert.

Speaker 1 (08:41):
Wow, incredible. Do you plan to cover recent political developments
in Canada? I feel like that's a gair question.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah, the answer is always yes.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
The answer is yes to all of like, yes, we
will be covering Canada.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
I mean, especially Alberta.

Speaker 4 (08:54):
I've been wanting to do stuff on Alberta and the
Conservative Party. There few of the key figures for a
while I've you know, we've all been busy, but yes,
I should eventually do a dedicated thing I get like
and I do occasionally, right, usually usually once or twice
a year, I.

Speaker 3 (09:11):
Try to get some Canada related things out.

Speaker 5 (09:13):
Talked about Canada, Gary and I I feel like did something.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
Yeah, i'd like.

Speaker 4 (09:17):
The Canadian election happened this year, right, Supreme leader carneis
it is still still in power and will be for
a while. But yeah, specifically the Alberta Conservative Party is
rife with potential stories.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
My recent political development in Canada that I would like
to talk about is what's his name? Dating Katy Perry?
Oh god, because it makes me upset.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
Wait, who, that's not our problem anymore.

Speaker 5 (09:41):
That's one famous Canadian person is It's justin It's just famous.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
Jesus not Beiver Trudeau.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
Okay, still bad, still weird.

Speaker 4 (09:52):
Tudeau and Katy Perry are dating, a match made in Heaven.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
Their Instagram official and the photos upsetting.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
I do feel like this is the potential we have
a potential for, like the one ring of couples Halloween
costumes situation to happen here, and I'm excited for that.

Speaker 4 (10:10):
But no, I'm living pretty close to Canada now, so
I would like to travel up and do more Canadian
stuff in the next year.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, you love Canada, Garrison, great idea.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah. As a general rule, people, if you're ever asking, hey,
this major thing is happening in another country, are you
guys going to cover it? The answer is probably yes.
But there are how many people are on this call?
Five people, and there are I believe ten countries in
the world at least.

Speaker 4 (10:33):
So many A saying more, Well, everyone's in a while,
this is a civil war, and one of those splits
into two, so I think there's actually eleven countries right now.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Is somewhere between five and eleven countries.

Speaker 5 (10:42):
Yeah, Well, ironically, when there is a civil war, there's
a decent chance.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
So I'll be traveling there and the next twelve months.
We have a pretty broad remit here, and I do
think we cover a lot of ground. But again, you know,
there's there's only so many people on the team, and
we have so many days in the week. So the
answer is generally, if we think we can and have
more to tell you than like here's an article I read,
we'll try to do it. But yeah, you know, world

(11:06):
big us small, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (11:09):
Yeah, and there are other people who do excellent work
on lost of things, so like, you know, we don't
have to cover everything.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
God, I missed the trucker convoy. That was fun.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
That was ago about that? What about Roma Diadlou.

Speaker 5 (11:22):
She's still kicking around Canada, Queen of Canada.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
She got arrested recently. I don't know if she's out
on bail or whatever they call it and poutine bail
or whatever in Canada, but they kind of arrest her
rob it because she's the queen. Anyways, notes about that.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
Yeah, what's a fiction book that y'all have been reading lately?

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Ooh?

Speaker 1 (11:44):
My answer is I work too much. I haven't read
any good fiction book lately.

Speaker 3 (11:49):
I've been reading a sci fi book called Children of Time.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
Oh good.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
Oh, Adrian Tracossi, great guy.

Speaker 5 (11:56):
Yes, I just read Winter in Madrid because even when
I'm reading fiction books, it still has to be about
a Spanish civil war.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, so funny that makes sense for you, James, load
bearing element of my personality. I'm restarting Sirens of Titan
for the first time since I was a little kid,
which is Kurt Vonnegut's sci fi novel, and like everything
Kurt Vonnegut wrote one of the best to ever do it,
and then you know, I was on vacation, so I
was just rereading some Warhammer books to not think about

(12:26):
the news when I needed to look at a device.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yeah, I'm gonna try to take a little time off
around the holiday. So if people have good fiction books
to recommend me, message me on Blue Sky.

Speaker 3 (12:39):
I've been listening to Oh God, like the entire Kate
Daniels series, which is a very fun sort of urban
fantasy series where they have a magic apocalypse where sometimes
there's these magic waves and magic works and technology stops working,
but then they just flip randomly and so technology works
in magic.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, that's basically the plot line to Shatter On. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
Yeah, it's it's fun. I got absolutely flash being jump
scared by one of the characters and one of the
spinoffs doing a full analysis of the whole translation debacle
of the Old World is dying, the New World struggles
to be born. Now is a time of monsters, which
I was not expecting the author of this fantasy book
to know about. So it's a fun time. Yeah, there's

(13:21):
where lions, there's where hyaenas. It's good we'd like to
see it cool.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
Well, we're going to take a quick break and we'll
come back and continue answering some questions. We're back, so
on that note, there's a broader question and it's a

(13:47):
favorite media from twenty twenty five can be books, shows, movies, games,
et cetera.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
I mean, and Or's gonna be up there for me.

Speaker 3 (13:54):
Indoor season two is definitely going to be high to be.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
I really enjoyed that that new show, The Pit, the
medical show.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
Oh yeah, I've heard good things.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
Yeah you would like that.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
I liked it.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
It made me dizzy.

Speaker 7 (14:07):
But I liked it.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
It was interesting. I mean, we'll see how it does
it in season two. But the first season I was like, huh.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
I finally started watching that smiling Friends show. And that's fun.

Speaker 3 (14:17):
Oh cool for for TV shows for me.

Speaker 4 (14:20):
Besides like and Orch's which is good, I think Rehearsal
season two and the Paramount Nazi.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
Episode season two. Yeah, it's more and more after phenomenal.

Speaker 4 (14:32):
As well as Tim Robinson's new show Chair Company, which
I gets to the American conspiracy mindset better than almost
anything I've seen. No parts of that are like rival
that can film. Yeah, I still think. I still think
Eddington is pretty good. It doesn't have as much like
a depth or humanity as like one battle after another,
which I quite enjoyed.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
I liked that a lot too. I watched the first
two episodes of Chair Company and then was like, I
need to wait until they are all out so I
can derange myself and like stay up until dawn watch. Oh,
so that's that's the way I need to encounter this.
But I'm excited for that.

Speaker 4 (15:06):
I finished care Company now and it consistently keeps hitting. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
I don't think Tim Robinson is capable of not pleasing
me at this point.

Speaker 3 (15:16):
That's good. That's a healthy relationship.

Speaker 4 (15:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
I liked on on Netflix's Adolescence that that mini series
that was pretty good. That the acting is incredible. There's
just so many things this year that we're pretty decent.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
TV has been good.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
TV's been good.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
TV has been good.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:35):
I haven't watched shit. I've just watched I've watched and
Or and nothing else. So, uh, Hades too great game,
very fun. Yeah, det the cronos, et cetera, et cetera. Also,
I want to talk about One of the Boys, which
is a book from the beginning of this year. We
talked about on the show that's a really really interesting
basically like sort of like a coming of age story
about a trans girl who's trying to go who goes

(15:56):
back to her football team, and there's a lot of
really interesting stuff there about the relationship between transfemininity and masculinity,
and you know, the sort of politics of sports. And
it's also just really fun. Has the best written group
chats I've ever seen in any piece of media. So
ship Rocks. Yeah, it's it's great. One of the boys,

(16:19):
Victoria Zeller, It's it's fun.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
I also watched Paradise. The ostensible focus on the show
is that like a secret service agent goes to live
with a president who is retired after like you know
how the detail that they stay with and it becomes
clear over the course of episode one this isn't really
a spoiler, that the president is living in an underground
bunker with all of the other survivors of a catastrophe

(16:42):
that ended the world. And so it's like all of
the leadership cadre of the United States living underground in
a bunker after the world has ended. And then it
turns into a murder mystery it's pretty good. It's fun nice.

Speaker 5 (16:53):
I don't watch much TV, yeah, but I have been
enjoying sticking to the theme, I guess yes. AK Press
have a translation now of two books that I very
much enjoyed reading in other languages. One is called Zadagosa Bound,
which is exclusively about the Diruti Column. I think it's
probably the best book I've read on the Doruti Column

(17:15):
and Sons of Night by Antoine Juminez, who was actually
that was not his birth name, but he was an
Italian anarchist who fought with the International Group of the
Druti Column.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
And it's his diary.

Speaker 5 (17:28):
And then he later like in later life, was a
groundskeeper at like the Libertarian People's Club in Marseille, and
after his passing, the young people at the club found
his diaries, published him and then have these like incredible
series of annotations, Like two thirty of the book is
its annotations.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
But it's really well done. So I like that one.

Speaker 1 (17:46):
Look, I think I can answer this next one, given
how we see media companies from Disney to Conde and
ask purge or otherwise censor anyone is centing against Trump.
Do you fear iHeartRadio doing something to cool zone. My
answer is they've never uh, they've never censored us in
the in the past, so I don't see it happening

(18:06):
in the future, but you never know.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yeah, I mean, anything can happen. It's media. I'm on
my third or fourth industry depending on how you count it,
within the digital media space. But like what I'll tell
you right now is that at the moment, and this
has been true for almost a decade, we make them
money and they in return say, keep doing what you're doing,
kid kiddos, buccaroos.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
So yeah, that's about as good as it ever gets
in media, in journalism. So you know, let's keep our
fingers crossed.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yep. What was a piece or series cools one media
put together in the past year twenty twenty five that
you were most proud or happy to be part of?

Speaker 3 (18:45):
What about you, gare?

Speaker 4 (18:46):
Probably The piece that I'm most proud of in like
a reflective sense is the dog Whistle Politics episode I did.
I still think that's really relevant and a useful addition
to like our cultural dialogue around understanding dog whistles coming
out of the Trump administration.

Speaker 3 (19:04):
And like even still now I.

Speaker 4 (19:05):
Will see see posts with people decoding false messages in
overtly like nationalistic communications from the DHS again. And then
this whole focus on like dog whistles versus the actual
implementation of their policy, which they're already doing. A few
times this year, DHS is posted just very very blatant,

(19:27):
like fast wave stuff. They posted a moon Man meme
earlier this year, right, And if if you told years
ago we would have like I don't know, I don't
know what we would have.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
I would have had I would have fifty one fifty
to your Yeah, yeah, I would have put your ass
on a seventy two hour hold.

Speaker 4 (19:44):
So, like there's obvious stuff like that, like yeah, no,
they're they're clearly clearly doing like intentional nods towards like
online fascist memes. And then they are also just posting regular,
regular sentiments of like nationalist policy that people are then
reading in coded statements too. And I don't think that
whole practice is super useful when they're actually implementing this stuff.

(20:06):
And I think the sort of like anti ice protests
you see in Chicago and like in New York on
Connall Street, it's a way more useful way to channel
frustration at the administration and like a frustration around like
this nationalist immigration stuff rather than trying to you know,
look for these maybe real, maybe not coded messages on

(20:26):
X the Everything app.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
Yeah, I'm proud of the Zizzian episodes that I did
earlier this year. I think those are my best episodes
of the year. You know, I'm particularly this year have
done a lot more back end supporting work. But I'm
continue to be extremely proud of how Ed Zitron's both
show and influence in the industry that he covers has grown,

(20:48):
especially as he's been really on the ball ahead of
some of the breaking of open ais irrational Exuberants. Been
really happy to play a small role in that. It's
just really satisfying to like stumble onto somebody and be like, oh,
I think this person has some good things to say.
I'm going to try to get that out to more people,

(21:09):
and then really feel like, yeah, that was that was
the right call. Turns out this was exactly the voice
that needed to be louder in this space. That just
feels good. It's it's the kind of it's the kind
of good feeling that you only really get in this business,
and it really makes up for all of the bad
feelings that you also only get in this business.

Speaker 3 (21:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I have two things. One,
on sort of just a personal level, I'm really proud
of the episode that I did that was sort of
about Elon Musks Nazi salute, but was mostly about the
way that all of our reality has been consumed by
spectacle and the way that we relate to each other

(21:48):
through you know, through screens and through like images of
media in a very you know, so this was this
was a very guide to board sietyse medical episode. But
I'm really proud of how that episode played out and
how I think in a lot of ways it kind
of it kind of predicted some of what's been happening
in terms of, you know, if you look at the
sort of decrease and use of social media over the

(22:10):
last sort of year and the turnaway from these these
these social relationships that are purely mediated by images that
suck and make you miserable all the time. And then
the other thing that I'm really proud of is some
coverage we did about the Republicans attempt in one of
the one of the previous budget fights to impose a

(22:32):
role that would have blocked medicaid from covering trans Healthcare
and we covered it and we helped blow it up
and we help get that killed, and that rocks. I
don't know, it's awesome. I'm really proud of it. I'm
also really proud of the trans News Network people. Yeah,
particularly Medicast again and Miror Levigne who did a really

(22:52):
great job covering that and helping stop it.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
And it rocks.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
Love to see it.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
I think for me, like still border stuff.

Speaker 5 (23:00):
Really it made me really happy that like last year
I went to the jungle and made a podcast and
now one of the people I met has a place
to live. That's really cool, and like it really makes
me happy. Like not just when we can like shift
the discourse, I think that's cool, but also when people
listen to that and then change the things that they
do like every day or sometimes like that's always what

(23:24):
you want. What I want as a journalist is like
for people to listen and care g That's why I
go to places, and so it's been really cool to
see people and just to run into people engaging in
like mutual aid at the boarder and and then like
them slowly realize that and the person that they listened
to on a podcast a year ago or two years ago,
whatever is kind of funny. But yet I think I'm

(23:46):
really proud of that, and I'm proud of all the
people in the second series for all the stuff that
they've done.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
I'm super proud of the anti vaxxs America series that
I commissioned Stephen to do. I think it was a
really good, complete project that covered the story in depth
more than anyone else. So if you haven't checked that out,
check it out.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
We're gonna go to.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
Another quick break and then we'll answer a couple more questions.

Speaker 7 (24:12):
Sound good, cool, Yep, we're back all right.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
This question says, as we become jokrified.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
Sure, as we all become jokerified.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
Eventually, what did it for each of you? I mean,
let's just say, let's let's just answer in like the
last year.

Speaker 4 (24:41):
Sure not not overall a recent jokrification inciting incident.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
I can answer that, And that might also be care
since it's one we couldn't get into the DNC for
comb layers to speech.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
Oh no, that hurt me.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
That hurt me so much because the DNC was so depressing.

Speaker 3 (25:02):
It was so.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
Depressing, and the DNC was way worse than the RNC.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
Post DNC certainly was a jokerrifying moment for me.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
It hurts Garrison. I had people reaching out to me
in Portland who were worried about you after the DNC.

Speaker 5 (25:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (25:16):
No, the DNC was a jokerifying moment. I guess to
piggyback off that though in terms of like a recent
joker moment working on the like Democrat left wing conspiracy
stuff really did.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
A number on me.

Speaker 4 (25:29):
Yeah, and just like like seeing the scale of that stuff,
especially around like the Charlie Kirk assassination, and just that
that that whole moment definitely was like just drilling into
my head.

Speaker 5 (25:42):
Yeah, those uh like truth tunnels that people went, the.

Speaker 3 (25:46):
Whole team could attest to this. I was getting pretty
out there.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Because can't get back to Garrison sustain damage. The uniformity
of the embrace of counter factuals is like, like, I
I don't even know what to do about it anymore.
I don't feel like fact checking works. Yeah, I feel
like positing alternate facts feels bad too, because then you're

(26:12):
just like saying, well, I guess we're just openly having
a life fight. Let's all have a big life fight.
Let's see who's live.

Speaker 4 (26:17):
Yeah, no, and when you're when you're trying to be
the only one holding on to like the life raft
of truth as everyone as everyone else is like drowning
and like mad at you.

Speaker 3 (26:26):
Yeah, it's like I, yeah, I don't know. You don't
know how to handle that.

Speaker 5 (26:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah. Whenever I encounter someone who's like, you think Trump
got shot in the ear, like, yes, yes, I do, Yes,
in fact, I do think he got shot in the ear.

Speaker 5 (26:42):
Yeah. And also can we not like it's a year ago,
like we're here now.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
That one is so comprehensively disappointed to me because one
of the little things it reveals is that there's even
among progressives in the left, this belief that, like someone
can't be injured by a gun and handle it reasonably
well and not be a good person. Right, right, he
has faked the fact that he didn't like and piss himself.
It has to be fake. It's like, no, he just

(27:08):
like didn't freak out or whatever. On a huge line
shows a huge adrinal. Have you ever been shot at?
It's like when you get when you realize you didn't
get hit, it feels awesome.

Speaker 5 (27:18):
Yeah, you're living, You are surfing a cloud for a
while there, so you're not anymore.

Speaker 4 (27:22):
I think the insights I got from this like left
wing conspiracism, like like seizure, right, this is like the
seizure of the left embracing desks. I got one of
the biggest points of clarity I was on, Like what's
happening right now? Is this like tactical flattening of especially
after the Charlie Kirk stuff as well, Like with the
right wing embracing this like cultural cancelation strategy of trying

(27:46):
to get people fired for saying things online, which they've
tried to do before but was done way more successfully
that month, and like directed by the administration, and then
the left embracing a style of conspiratorial thinking that previously
was was really only embraced as fully on the right.
So like this, this this flattening of tactics across the
left and the right, I think has been a useful

(28:07):
way to look at our current situation.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
For me, Yeah, the ice guided missiles.

Speaker 5 (28:13):
Yeah, man, that fully fucking sent me like, as someone
who's been a journalist for a while, just seeing these
outlets that you were previously kind of like the first
time I had a byline in mother Jones. I was pumped. Yeah,
and then here they are just being like love to
know more about these missiles we have that? Man, do
you look at it? I literally did that while I
was like waiting for coffee or having a shit or

(28:35):
something like. It took me that much time on my
telephone to find that contract.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
Like what is wrong with people?

Speaker 5 (28:42):
Again?

Speaker 2 (28:42):
It's all just fucking shibboleths and virtue signaling boat like that.
Why would that be worse if I said guided missiles?
Do you know how guided missiles work? Do you know
the kind of tail that's required to make them function?
Do you know the kind of like mechanical like experts
that you have to have in order to like keep
these things working and keep them usable? Why would ice
be more dangerous with these? It's just going to distract

(29:03):
them from doing the thing they're already use it doing
to hurt people, Like guided missiles do not do any
It would be just like extra trash for them to
carry around.

Speaker 5 (29:11):
Yeah, and they'd be as bad at using them as
there and everything else.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
And to be quite frank, the government is already using
guided missions to do war crimes via the military.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
Yep, yeah, yeah, people who.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
Know how to use them.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
The other thing that really just wow. Every single time
that there's a mass shooting event, which is often in
this country, the fact that they had to transvestigate the
person every single time, Oh yeah, holy unnecessary annoying. It
makes me very angry. Yeah, very angry. Fuck med and just.

Speaker 2 (29:48):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (29:49):
Recently, there was a wide piece about like in Range
TV Calcaside who's had on before and the matches, the
matches he hosts, and like.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
The brutality matches.

Speaker 5 (29:58):
Yet probably thirty percent of the piece was reflecting on
the killing of Charlie Kirk and like, nobody who goes
to calls matches has been accused of shooting Charlie kok.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
No again, and the guy who shot Charlie Kirk didn't
shoot him because he trained doing matches. He shot deer. Yeah,
and then he shot a guy in a similar way
to how he'd shot deer. Nor is he a trans
person because you know, what's a better practice if you're
going to shoot someone at one hundred something yards distance
than a tactical shooting match shooting deer?

Speaker 5 (30:27):
Like yeah, like the whole thing is just like I know, Yeah,
the discourse around mass shootings has become less helpful and
more toxic.

Speaker 4 (30:35):
No.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
Part of it's because I think there's a decent chunk
of like progressives and left for whom like it's immoral
to actually know anything about how guns work, or how
shooting works, or gun culture works, So you can't actually
like understand what you're talking about, which is another problem.
There's a lot of problems. It's not high on the
list of problems, but it annoys me.

Speaker 5 (30:56):
Yeah, maybe it pitches me off irrationally more than it should.
Like to find that frustrating, Like we cannot have a
reasonable discourse around guns in this country.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
No, No, that that ship sailed yeah with some bullet
holes in the hall.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
One last serious one, m what's everyone's opinion on the
best implementation of dual power in the modern era? That's
a mea question.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
I mean, how are you defining modern era? I guess
how are you defining dual power?

Speaker 5 (31:25):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (31:26):
Yeah? And how long do you have.

Speaker 3 (31:29):
The people who've objectively done the best job of it
as asapatistas. And they've done the best job of it
in large part because they've been willing to change the
structure of their systems over time as things have worked
and things have not worked, and as the systems that
they've been using have decentralized, I don't know the fact

(31:50):
that they were able to even even under a massive attack,
they were able to do a massive expansion a few
years ago. Yeah, they've held out against you know, the
wrath of the Mexican state, which is one of the
most violent in the world.

Speaker 4 (32:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
I mean I would, in a similar veins talk about
like the PKK and then the YEPGJ and Rojava, right
where you had these non state groups that had connections
and that had some experience doing what we might call
mutual aid prior to the government's collapse, and then kind
of expanded that into these networks that began to mimic
and replace state function in an area that about three

(32:25):
million people lived in. I think that's a really that's
certainly a more important story in terms of how that
kind of thing might work on a larger scale than
anything that's happened up to the present point in the
United States. Right.

Speaker 4 (32:35):
Yeah, I guess in less of a militaristic way, but
more like a party capacity or like political proposal capacity.
Probably some of the stuff coming out of the New
York City Chapter of DSA the past year, which is
not reflective of DSA's an entire national organization, but specifically
the New York chapter has been very very prefigative in

(32:57):
actually doing like more like party oriented dual power.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
Yeah, And I was I think probably we should also
talk some about like the different immigration defense hotlines and
immigration defense reaction forces around the country that have gone
really ramping up and doing a lot of really good
and really difficult work under duress and under you know, fire,
so to speak.

Speaker 5 (33:18):
Yeah, Like people have built immediity safety, yeah, to keep
that community safe when the state has failed to keep
their community safe, right, and sometimes it's put their communities
in danger. And like, especially I think it is kind
of heartwarming to me to see people who who were
just like straight up statist liberals, right yeah, realizing that
actually the cops aren't going to come and arrest ice.

(33:40):
That's not going to fucking happen, and then being like, Okay, well,
how do we organize the strategy that will maintain safety
in our community given that this load bearing part of
reality for me that cops are good has seemingly collapsed.

Speaker 2 (33:53):
And I'd say, in general, James, the fact that there's
a whole lot of normy people who would have you
certainly would have describe them as normies a year or
two ago, that are now like, yeah, we gotta get
rid of Ice. Maybe we got to get rid of
all these cops. Yeah, Bill Crystal, Yeah, Bill, Bill Crystal
be on the anti Ice train, right. Yeah, it's not bad.

(34:13):
I do get the first. I'm not saying like we
should invite Bill Crystal to the party or whatever. I'm
saying that, like the felt Crystal blooked me on Blue Sky,
so I can't invite him.

Speaker 4 (34:20):
Said, Bill Crystal's coming to the Anarchist Book Fair and
it's going to be serving Vegan Slov.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
Is that even a joke? Garrisoner, Is that real? That
could be real? Okay, But it's just in general good
that a lot of people who are like where my
parents were politically twenty years ago are looking out at
what's happening and being like, we got to get rid
of these fucking people. Yeah, that's that's good. That's positive.

Speaker 5 (34:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:45):
I would say that that's kind of like a downstream
change from what I think will be the most long
term positive change from the twenty twenty uprisings, which is
a huge number of people who hadn't thought about the
cops realized what the cops are.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
Yeah, And to wrap it up, Robert, we got like
multiple requests for you to do various accents.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
Are you fucking shitting me? Various what accents?

Speaker 1 (35:07):
Since so many requests for you to do various access?

Speaker 4 (35:10):
Well, okay, some Australian ones and Boston ones, Boston a
few other but like the specific areas of Boston. I
think they were asking about like like different like inter
Boston regional accent. I'm sure you can just do those
like one one one oh even all.

Speaker 3 (35:31):
Right, yes, enough of that to see is that for listening?
Are our Q and A episodes?

Speaker 5 (35:36):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (35:38):
It could half of the year nailed perfectly?

Speaker 2 (35:40):
No notes. I'd say we reported the news, but this
was definitively not the news. Yeah, we didn't do that.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
Yeah, goodbye.

Speaker 4 (35:57):
So I have pulled up Plymarket and Cale she We're
gonna go through each of the trending predictions right now
and then decide where we're gonna be putting our last
year's profit from cool zone coin. We're gonna be transferring
that on the blockchain to polymarket, and I think we
can come out of this year with a big profit.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
This is how we're relying on funding our operations.

Speaker 5 (36:20):
Jesus, that's going forward. Can you check party market real quick?
Say if Morris he's still alive, Jesus, it's been three
years in a row.

Speaker 4 (36:27):
So this is our twenty twenty six predictions episode. Like usual,
I think we should start by reflecting us move our
predictions from last year to see how right and wrong
we were. The big one, big prediction that we discussed
the most as a team is when is Elon Musk
gonna distance himself from Trump? Or when are they gonna
break up? What do they have their you know, separation?

(36:50):
And each and every one of the extended Cool Zone
media team members who works on it could Happen here
put in a date and the most accurate guess was
from it could Happen Here's main editor Adam, who said
May thirtieth, which was really spot on. So congrats to Adam, Adam,

(37:14):
to all of us stumble through our episodes and have
to edit them.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
All cutting all the burps out.

Speaker 4 (37:18):
Yeah actually actually, uh, you know, maybe to really give
credit back to us, maybe influenced your your wisdom.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
God, let me reflect him his Gloria myself. Yes, we
really made him wiser, and thus we're all wrong ourselves
and most psychological da.

Speaker 3 (37:36):
It's a good you know.

Speaker 4 (37:37):
It means that we're smarter as a group entity, as
a hive mind, we're all smarter than our own individual intelligence,
which Adam has the most access to.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
Yes, just like ants.

Speaker 4 (37:48):
Yeah, but yeah, no, Adam. Adam did pretty good on
that May thirtieth guess, so there you go. Sophie also
close at May six, and then Molly congered June tenth,
also kind of in that zone, but Adam definitely hit
it spot on. We had a few other predictions. Some

(38:10):
of them were predictions. Some of them, I guess we're
kind of more hopes and dreams, which sadly did not
come to pass. The me on mar Junta was predicted
by me and James to Junta was predicted by me
and James to making out twenty twenty five. They've kind
of stuck on to power.

Speaker 5 (38:25):
Yeah, yeah, if they've rallied pretty substantially Italy.

Speaker 4 (38:28):
It's unfortunate Yaho's still as prime Minister. I did predict
that a sod would become a Russia today host. I
think it's a good prediction. But did not happen.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
That could still happen.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
It still happen in the future.

Speaker 5 (38:40):
I'm waiting for them to hire him for a fucking podcast.

Speaker 2 (38:43):
I don't think I predicted this, but I'm not surprised.
He's just playing video games.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
No, he's just pulled up in a hotel playing video games.

Speaker 4 (38:50):
Now.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (38:51):
During our death segment, I laid out a new theory
of death based on Spotify Rapped, which the previous two
years had some important deaths associate with Spotify rap Day.

Speaker 3 (39:02):
No big Spotify Rapped deaths this year.

Speaker 4 (39:05):
Unfortunately, though, I did make a death prediction last episode
which did not fully become true, but slightly became true
right after we record that episode last year, before the
episode even aired, I predicted that someone would try to
assassinate Nick Fuent as well. Nick was live streaming, perhaps
a deranged fanboy.

Speaker 3 (39:25):
Days later.

Speaker 4 (39:27):
Just days later, someone showed up outside of Nick's house
as he was live streaming with a weapon, allegedly trying
to kill him. This person died later that night, and
in like exchange with police, it became this whole thing.
But that happened just a few days after I made
that prediction, so technically didn't even happen in twenty twenty five,
happened still in twenty twenty four before we aired that

(39:48):
last episode, but it was close, was close to some
kind of zeitgeist on that. It's unclear that guy was
a fanboy. We really don't know much about him. What's
a few othertions that have like kind of kind of
come true, But like it's more in terms of like
which degree I guess.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
I think my weird terrorism prediction has been pretty Yeah,
are o the money, Yeah, that's that's continued to be
a driver of the discourse.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
We'll return to that in a sec.

Speaker 4 (40:16):
Sophie talked about, you know, Trump moving some like White
House operations to mar A Lago, which has partially happened.
There's been a lot of like a like a holiday
events done at mar A Lago.

Speaker 3 (40:26):
Sometimes he's working out of.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
There, very odd things.

Speaker 4 (40:30):
Yeah, But on the other hand, he's also just mar
A Lago of fying the White House itself, which with
like the ballroom, So it's kind of going in both directions.
Mia did did put a very firm prediction on like
an economic collapse in twenty twenty five, like in the
United States again, it's it's it's it's like a slow

(40:51):
in terms of like one of the key ideas for
our show is like crumbles versus collapse. It certainly continued
to crumble and I but I think the actual collapse
point is still upcoming.

Speaker 3 (41:01):
Yeah, well, we'll get into this more later. I will
say it is kind of baffling to have my prediction
completely derailed, literally just solely by AI data center spending, Yes,
which I did not predict that any entire American growth
rate would be and I did set a growth Yeah

(41:24):
I didn't get that.

Speaker 4 (41:25):
No, the actual like like job market and economy has
become so separate from like corporate spending and stock market stuff,
and like Robert did, actually I think hit this a
little bit on the head. He talked about how the
economy will basically remain identical to Biden's economy in terms
of inflation, but the stock market will continue to go
up and housing will keep getting more expensive, and the

(41:46):
left will start to be able to hit conservatives on inflation.
And yeah, I think that is pretty much what happened.
The economy is in a relatively similar place as it
was last year, but you know, inflation is still ticking.
There's some like artificial attempts to like bring it down
by Trump, but it's not really working in terms of prices.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
No, the only thing cropping it up in a numbers
term is fucking Nvidia. Well in Vidia less so now,
but just a rational exuberance over AI in general. Yeah,
but people are complaining about all the same things they
were under Biden, just more so.

Speaker 3 (42:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (42:21):
Yeah, I guess I have three other points here. I
talked about a blue governor deployed national Guard troops against
Trump federal troops. Instead, you got Trump deployed national Guard
troops against individual cities with like police kind of caught
in between. We still have yet to see the the
cool and based moment where like a blue governor deploys

(42:43):
national Guard against against dhl.

Speaker 2 (42:45):
Ivn't use deployed his Twitter account today.

Speaker 4 (42:47):
Yeah No, Still, Sophie talked about there'd be still no
clear left wing Joe Rogan.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
But so many have tried, a lot of people try.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
I still feel like I could be it.

Speaker 4 (42:59):
You're gonna have to be a lot more on camera,
I think, Yeah, well they'll have to have a lot
a lot more on camera stuff for that more camera.

Speaker 5 (43:07):
Less hair larger gut can explained.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
Steroids, different drugs.

Speaker 4 (43:13):
Yeah, I mean, Adam Freeland is certainly positioning in that direction.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
Yeah, I agree here. I agree here. Also, I predicted
that something would happen to the Paul brothers, and unfortunately
the only thing that happened is that their HBO show
did not get renewed.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
When was that boxed bag? That was year prior and
it wasn't good.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
No, they had a TV show called Paul American.

Speaker 3 (43:34):
Yeah, are you serious? I didn't even hear about this.

Speaker 1 (43:36):
It was on HBO, but it got canceled.

Speaker 3 (43:40):
I guess I've just had other stuff going on.

Speaker 5 (43:42):
Yeah, I'm kind of glad that I've lived a life
where I didn't know that. I have no shame about that.

Speaker 4 (43:49):
Finally, both myself and like a few of us kind
of talked about this, is that there would be this
movement away from big mobilizations. Some big mobizations happened in
short periods of time, like especially a good point like LA.
I think it's probably the most significant. But in terms
of like like actual like countrywide massimabilizations. Right, there's a
movement away from this and moving towards lone wolf attacks,

(44:13):
which did happen, and specifically I predicted there would be
like a very a very sloppy Luigi copycat in the
next four months, and oh boy, did this? Did this
happen multiple in reoccurring times. And this kind of played
into this larger model I was creating, which kind of
starts around the assassination of shinzo Abe, creating this escalating

(44:36):
series of assassinations happening faster and faster, because like after
shinzo Abe, there was, you know, two years later, Thomas
Crooks trying to assassinate Donald Trump and butt the Pennsylvania
Six months later, the United Healthcare CEO. Three months after that,
someone tried to burn down the home of Pennsylvania Governor
Josh Shapiro in the middle of the night. One and
a half months after that, there was the assassination of

(44:57):
two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, d C. Two weeks
after that, a Christian missionary named Vance Belter killed in
Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband and shot
Senator John Hoffman. Next month was the Prairie Land assault
on an ice facility in July, the exact details of
which are still getting figured out.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
In court.

Speaker 4 (45:15):
But after this things kind of tapered down for a
bit until September with the Charlie Kirk assassination and the
attack on the ICE facility in Texas which kills two
immigrant detainees. So yeah, in terms of like you know,
lone wolf style, pre planned assassination style attacks, sloppy copycats,

(45:36):
right people writing messages on bullet casings, emulating the United
Healthcare CEO assassination, this was like a super super dominant
part of twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
It's the same pattern. I talked about this at the
end of my episode on Manngione after like that came
out right that like there's copycats after every shooting. This
is basically following the same kind of thing we on
twenty nineteen with the eight Chan shootings right where you like,
this has been going on for much longer than that,
but it's a very predictable once you start to expect it.

(46:09):
It's a very predictable thing, which is someone carries out
a shooting that actually manages to break through our levels
of apathy about violence in this society and keeps everyone's attention,
and then throughout the year a bunch of different people
try iterations based on that because it's the only way
to get attention, and that's what all these people are craving, right,
that's the only real currency that still has value.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
I will say I think it says something positive about
the turnoway for mass mobilizations that the lone wolf stuff
wasn't the only stuff that happened. There was also the
turn towards the thing we talked about in our Q
and A episode about the ICE rapid response stuff, which is,
you know, there were a few big mobilizations, but then
ICE was forced to change their tactics by the fact
that giant mobilizations by ICE were going badly for them,

(46:53):
and this did create a whole bunch of sort of
decentralized rapid response networks and a whole bunch of action
that were sort of based on this very very decentralized
very we show up and we do this thing at
this place. What's happening. It has stopped some of the
things that is happening. It has not stopped all of
the horrors that have been happening. But I think it
is a positive trend in terms of the way that

(47:15):
ICE has been forced to adjust their tactics to do
things that are harder and get less people at a time,
So I think that's worth as a positive thing worth
sharing of. How yeah, yeah, that the tactical innovations that
activists have been deploying have been forcing ICE to do
less devastating raides.

Speaker 5 (47:30):
We saw various attempts at mass mobilization, most successful with
the No King's Marches, which were vast, but we also
saw those fifty to fifty one things which kind of
we're not as successful in turning out a lot of
numbers of people. But like me, it said, like in Ventura, right,
Like we saw huge numbers of people show up when
ICE tried to raid a couple of agricultural facilities up there,

(47:53):
And yeah, well like I was up in La We've
spoken about that extensively. But like Garrison said, that was
probably the biggest mobilization against ICE at one time in
one place that we saw.

Speaker 4 (48:03):
It's a probably do ad break and then move into
predictions for this upcoming year twenty twenty six.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (48:21):
The stock market is still trying to keep going, although
in some parts is like if not going down, flatlining
like a bitcoined did not increase this past year. There's
been a few popular like rising stocks like Netflix, which
are pretty much at the same spot they were at
the start of twenty twenty five, still going up and down.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
Yeah, Games Workshop is up forty eight percent.

Speaker 3 (48:45):
Baby war Hammer, the assassin orm kingmaker, it's great.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
Sixty seventh most valuable company in the entire UK, larger
than their a whole fishing industry. Baby really, Yeah, that's
what I Warhammer is load bearing to the British economy.
The only thing nodding and really has left.

Speaker 5 (49:07):
Yeah. So they got rid of the sheriff. It already
went downhill for them. Hey, that in robinhood tourism is Yeah,
anything you can do in noting him.

Speaker 3 (49:15):
Now, Okay, I have I have a big one about this,
and it's not that the tech bubble is going to collapse.
I do think the tech bubble is going to pop
this year.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
At about this year, but within the next twelve months.
I think you're saying, because we've got like three.

Speaker 4 (49:26):
Weeks left in this year, well, you know, in twenty
twenty six. Yeah, these are these are predictions in twenty
twenty six.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
Yeah, in twenty twenty six, the tech bubble is going
to pop. Yeah, that's not the prediction. The prediction is that,
in an attempt to recoup the value from all of
the completely useless data centers that they will have built
that can only run LMS and can do nothing else,
someone is going to invent a cryptocurrency that can only
be mined by large language models. And this is going

(49:54):
to be one of the big attempts to recoup the hideous,
hideou some mouse of capital they've been dumped into all
these data centers. Is that they're going to have someone's
going to find a way to make a kind of
token that can only be generated by large language models.
And they're gonna they're gonna try it. Is it gonna work?
I don't think so, But they are going to try it.
It's going to be a big thing. They're gonna push it.

(50:16):
It's gonna suck.

Speaker 2 (50:18):
There's gonna be a bunch of desperate attempts to like
once the money starts falling out and like. Which is
not to say that I think that AI is going
to even the AI that annoys me is going to
go away, But a lot of the irrational exuberance is
going to end, and a lot of the startups that
are are just burning money are going to fail or
get acquired, and you're going to see tremendous desperation for

(50:40):
people to be like, this is the next thing, This
is the next thing, Throw a bunch of money into this,
Like yeah, that's that's gonna be annoying.

Speaker 5 (50:48):
No.

Speaker 4 (50:48):
I mean, I feel like people have been talking about
the a bubble popping for a while. I have been
hearing things from people who think and track this more
than I do that if it is going to happen,
there's there's indicators that it's more likely to happen in
twenty six than it was in twenty five. I'm not
going to put money on that on the calshy betting markets,

(51:12):
but god, it does seem to be more of a possibility.
And you can see this the way people are handling
Navidia stock right now and being advised not to buy
more stock but still hold what you have.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
Yeah, and just where Nvidios stock has moved over the
last month or so.

Speaker 4 (51:27):
Yeah, So if you look at what's happening with Navidio,
we might have reached the peak and oh yeah, and
it might be so jover for some of these guys.

Speaker 6 (51:33):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
Yeah, I think the big open question is how bad
it's going to be there's going to be at least
one of these big AI companies, Open Ai or Anthropic
or somebody that either goes bust entirely or has to
get acquired. But again, if you're looking at this rationally
and out wish casting, both Apple, Google, and Microsoft are

(51:55):
all perfectly capable of sustaining their rates of burn.

Speaker 3 (51:58):
Microsoft is still going up.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
Yeah, yeah, Facebook is as well. And I think what
you're likelier to see is contraction and consolidation, which is
not to say that it's not going to be disastrous
for some group. I think there's a good chance that
we do see some banks fail because there's there's some
bad investments out there.

Speaker 3 (52:15):
Yeah, they have been doing collateralized loan obligations, Yeah, where
the underlying asset is compute time.

Speaker 5 (52:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:23):
This is more deranged than two thousand and eight.

Speaker 5 (52:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
I cannot emphasize this enough. This is the most deranged
thing I have seen since the Tulip crisis, Like I
cannot explain just good God.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
So no, I mean the upside that we have over
two thousand and eight is that the thing that all
of these bad bets are on isn't people's houses, right? Yes, Yeah,
and so that does there is a potential that some
good comes out of it in terms of like universities
getting access to a lot more compute that they can
actually use for valuable things.

Speaker 4 (52:53):
Yeah, and people are already suffering under recession conditions. If
you're like a working class person, like you already with
the follow it effects of this. Just the stock market
itself has been insulated from the rest of the economy
which is in a state of recession.

Speaker 3 (53:08):
And also it can get worse, which so a lot of.

Speaker 4 (53:12):
People who aren't like super wealthy are like pro this
bubble popping and pro this because then if other people,
people in power finally realize how bad it is, they're
hopeful that then something might be done to like fix
some of the material conditions. Which I can understand people's like,
like you know point of view there.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
Yeah, I am not as worried about this being as
bad for the average person as two thousand and eight was.
I don't think it's going to be as satisfying as
people are hoping it was. It's not going to wipe
out or put an end to the annoyance of AI
in our lives, although it should make it easier to
rationalize some of the shit people have been saying, like
it should make the craziest of the AI booster's being

(53:51):
like this is going to replace everything. The whole economy
will be in two years, no one will have a job.
That's going to be a lot harder for anybody who's
not to not seem like a crazy person while I advocating,
but the Internet's going to stay annoying, like unfortunate. I
think it's fucked for a little while.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
Yeah, I think my girly pop economy prediction is that
we're going to continue to see influencer shopping. What I
mean by that is like influencers have been pushing products
like no other and marketing budgets have been going to
influencer marketing at a rapid pace. And I think we're
going to see the implementation of AI into that more.

(54:28):
And I think that that is primarily going to be
one of the ways, like we might see less or
we'll still see as much, but targeted ads, and we're
going to see an addition to that, we'll also see
like targeted influencer marketing for products, and like it's already
pretty gnarly on like TikTok Instagram, But I think we're
only going to see more of that, and it's just gonna,

(54:50):
you know, going to be peak capitalism.

Speaker 4 (54:52):
Care Something that could be really fun is that if
it pops, it's going to line up almost perfectly with
two thousand and eight nostalgia. So we'll have recession nostalgia,
which is already starting to happen in the same time
as a whole economic recession. So we'll have the recessions
line up in time with their nostalgia cycle, and then

(55:14):
you know, it's only a matter of months before you
have you know, like twenty tens like hipster stuff come
and coming back in.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
Great, So you know, it's it's right there. We're so close.

Speaker 4 (55:24):
We're already at that like like you know, two thousand
and eight level of two thousands of nostalgia. But if
it lines up with the recession, then that could that
could be really exciting.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
Now. I'm also kind of curious as to whether or
not we're going to start seeing you know, a lot
of the earliest adopters of AI on a regular basis.
We're very young people using it to cheat at school, yes,
and just kind of trawling different teachers, subreddits and online communities.
I'm seeing teachers talk about, like younger kids now there
being a backlash among very young people against the use

(55:56):
of AI and the way it makes people talk. This
is kind of coming alongside as you're starting to see
a recovery in lovells of literacy, as schools depart from
the bad way of teaching kids to read that fuck
everyone up. I don't have any kind of longitudinal statistical
data on this. This is all very much anecdotal, so
I'm still waiting to see is this a broader trend

(56:18):
or did I just come across some people saying this
is a thing that they're seeing in their area. But
I'm kind of interested. And there's a degree to which
I think some sort of backlash against AI is inevitable
just because of how everyone running society is trying to
push people to replace everything with it. Like that just
inevitably is going to irritate the kids because the adults

(56:39):
are all doing it right, We'll see.

Speaker 5 (56:41):
I think people are increasingly better at spotting AI, like
intuitively and very quickly. It's something I've seen like not
in high school, but like teaching the like a university level.
People just being like this is an ir response, and
it's fucking cringe like because AI always writes in a
particularly cringe way. Right, that is very obvious, and I've

(57:03):
seen that. But I genuinely hope more people stop using
AI because it is making education a pretty fucking miserable
place to be right now, which is Tobama because I
like teaching.

Speaker 3 (57:15):
Let's go on another at break and then return for
some midterm predictions. Hey, is it everyone excited? It's another election.

Speaker 5 (57:33):
You're already people are saying the most important one of
our lives, Garrison.

Speaker 3 (57:37):
I think so, just what I was starting to miss it.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
Yeah, I'm voting Kamala for every single camera.

Speaker 4 (57:45):
Single state level position. Yeah, sure, she will be the comptroller.

Speaker 1 (57:50):
A right, you're killing me. Who do we think is
going to run? Gavin Newsome.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
Midterms?

Speaker 5 (58:00):
Yeah, unfortunately, Sophie, we have another reporter like talking about
twenty twenty eight.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
Yeah, we don't have to do that until next year's skipped.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
I've skipped the midterms, and I was already going to
the next level of hell, no, no, no, who's going
to be governor of California?

Speaker 2 (58:15):
James?

Speaker 5 (58:16):
God knows that the Dems have not really been putting
their strongest foot forward. Katie Porter had these like really
pretty nasty videos come out of the way she was
talking to people who work for her. I don't think
that that is a good leadership trait, and I don't
think that that it's a person we should choose.

Speaker 3 (58:35):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (58:36):
I'm so resigned to being it being someone's shit, you
know that, Like I honestly try not to put too
much of my time and effort into it. But yeah,
I know, maybe I'll be fucking Katie Perry. Maybe Trudeau
will pass on his electoral magic. She's got some good songs.
She could use them with that. Actually, with the intellectual
property licensing, which which Trump doesn't do, she could get

(58:58):
that shark. Maybe the shark be vice governor. You know,
it's this potential there. We have worried about the shock.

Speaker 4 (59:06):
So obviously the Democrats are protected to do well in
this in this midterm election based on like like like
anti Trump sentiment and like the regular swing away from
the like whoever is in the executive branch in mid terms.
And yeah, I think the Democrats will do well, especially
if you look at the last like a month or
so of election results. I think it's possible they take

(59:29):
both chambers. I think they will absolutely take one.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
I'm going split.

Speaker 4 (59:34):
It's possible they take both chambers. I don't think it's
going to be a landslide. It's not going to be
a blue tsunami blue Nay. I think it may be
a blue wave. I think I think a wave or
a small wave is likely. I do not think it's
going to be a complete blowout. But there's been like
especially in the Tennessee's special election, a thirteen point shift

(59:55):
towards Democrats. Yeah, we've seen other double digit shifts across
the country in the in the past, in the past month.
I don't know how much they'll be able to continue
that sort of sentiment in you know, nine months time,
ten months, eleven months time leading into November. So I
think some of that enthusiasm will maybe taper off a

(01:00:17):
little bit as Trump becomes kind of like a lame
duck presidency. But I still think they'll do like okay
in terms of like the Democrats.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
I very much disapear. I think this is going to
be like a generic de plus fourteen. This is going
to be a fucking massacre. What signs are pointing towards that.
I mean, they just won the mayorship of Miami.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:00:39):
Yeah, Well so you're saying it's gonna be good for
the Democrats de.

Speaker 3 (01:00:42):
Plus fourteen Yeah, like Democrats plus fourteen Okay, Like I'm
talking like a a a tsunami. Okay. Got My prediction
is that all of the polling people are fucking cowards.
What's happening right now with the polling is that they
are using the twenty twenty four electorate. Yeah, this is
not the twenty twenty four electorate. Have not figured this
out yet, No, they are still underestimating the exact scale

(01:01:04):
of which everyone fucking hates them.

Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
Like, i'ld be surprised if both houses flip. But yeah,
here's the thing.

Speaker 3 (01:01:11):
The Cuban parts of Miami, Yeah went left by like
fifteen points. Yeah, touch, something we talked about in the show.
They are going through and systematically pissing off every single
part of their base, right.

Speaker 4 (01:01:20):
Like.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
One of the things one of the stories I've been
tracking is about the ways in which they've been spystematically
pissing off a whole bunch of farmers who are a
very very consistent right wing voting base, and they're pissing
them off a trade war bullshit because China's not buying swoybeans, right,
this is how they're losing elections in Western Iowa. I
think the other part of this too is and this
is how I think the momentum is going to be sustained,
is that things haven't even gotten as bad as they're

(01:01:43):
going to get yet. The actual standard of living in
this country right now, it is going to get so
much worse as as all of the inflation stuff sort
of racks up, et cetera, et cetera. Like the country
is going to be worse. Everyone's going to be more
pissed off. Trump is going to have bombed like four
more countries. We're gonna have like cent troops into Mexico
or some shit. He's going to be so unpopular it's

(01:02:05):
going to be like it's gonna be the fucking flood
out there that's possible.

Speaker 5 (01:02:09):
Yeah, I think the incompacy advantage becomes less and less
relevant the worse the economy gets. And like that was
something Biden got hit with, right, that Trump is is
going to have to wear especially we get further and
further into his term.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
Right, it's a Trump economy.

Speaker 4 (01:02:23):
I guess this just requires that the current momentum Democrats
have to be maintained for a while, which is something
that historically Democrats haven't been great at.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
Yes, yeah, they've shit at it.

Speaker 4 (01:02:34):
So this will require effort for you know, people like
organizing with the Democrats and social media messaging, like actual
in person like like electoral organizing to really keep this
momentum pressure going for the next eleven months, which which
is you know, they've they've done a good job at
this the past like six months, but can they like
maintain this to the midterms. That's the only point where

(01:02:55):
I start to hesitate in terms of like the scale
of like a blue wave. But I think it's it's
certainly possible that that they end up doing quite well,
but it's going to be reliant on like maintaining this pressure.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
No, there's still some structural difficulties that make flipping Congress
entirely very.

Speaker 4 (01:03:13):
Difficult, especially with the redistricting stuff happening.

Speaker 8 (01:03:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:03:15):
Yeah, so like could they take the Senate quite easily? Yeah,
the House still up in the air. For me, I
think lean the Democrat at this point, certainly leaning Democrat,
but still not confident.

Speaker 2 (01:03:26):
That'd be great. I just I don't want to get irrationally,
you know, ahead of our skizier.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
I have watched very very dysfunctional state Democratic parties win
elections and districts that were R plus twenty two. Anything
happened at this point.

Speaker 5 (01:03:40):
Yeah, no, Yeah, it's not coming from a national strategy.
It's coming from like local candidates doing well on local
issues and people fucking hating Trump. Yeah, it is not
the DNC who is putting Higgins or Mam Dami in office. Well, yeah,
that is, uh, I guess a good thing because the
DNT fucking sucks. It has always fucking sucked, and it

(01:04:00):
has really reinforced how much it sucks in the last
eight years.

Speaker 1 (01:04:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:04:03):
And being able to hit Trump and Republicans on the
economy with tariffs this like oh the garky stuff, has
proven to be pretty successful so far, and I think
being able to continue that messaging as the economy trends
in its current direction, being able to continue that messaging,
I think will help the Democrats. Interestingly, a Plattner in
Maine still seems to be the front runner for that race,

(01:04:27):
so I think there's a decent chance we get our
first total COB in the Senate.

Speaker 5 (01:04:31):
Well, absolutely, dog shit cover up. I'm sorry if you
are listening and you did that yet to you, but
it's probably not your best work.

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
Like he's got a blob now.

Speaker 4 (01:04:42):
That stuff just did not prove to be super impactful
to the actual voters in Maine, it seems, and the
actual like focus on his talking points have maintained his lead.
So I think that's something that Democrats can also look
look to. Yeah, in terms of like how much of
these like you know, like tertiary like personal attacks, like
you know, genuine, yeah, genuinely valid valid complaints or issues

(01:05:06):
are are not very dominant based on how much emphsis
is actually getting put on. This is sort of like
a affordability messaging.

Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
To wrap up this predictions episode, should we do a
quick death pick?

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
No, one's gonna die.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
I thought you're gonna ask it. Do you think we're
going to invade Venezuela?

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
No?

Speaker 4 (01:05:23):
See, this is what I'm interested in. I'm more interested
in are we going to start any wars?

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (01:05:27):
And is his cabinet going to stay the same?

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
Kindness already have started.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
To answer your first question, yes, yeah, is the caba
going to stay the same. I'm surprised.

Speaker 4 (01:05:38):
It's weird, right, trump first term. There was a lot
of cabinet turnover in the first year.

Speaker 3 (01:05:42):
Sure, Scaramouchi, this is this is not happening this year.

Speaker 4 (01:05:45):
This year they stayed pretty tight knit despite a lot
of turmoils or like you know, issues around like Cash Hotel, Pambondi,
RFK Junior, Pete haig Seth with the double tap war
crime strikes. No, they're pretty tight knit, it seems so.
I don't know if there's gonna be cabinet turnover.

Speaker 1 (01:06:06):
I think Cash Battel will be out next year.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
Yeah, I think Cash might have Yeah, might be on
the edge of his lost the podcast price.

Speaker 3 (01:06:14):
He just found the Jasics pipe bomber. I don't think
it's gonna happen.

Speaker 4 (01:06:16):
I think the cabinet's gonna stay the same, which I
predicted against last year. But I think based on how
they've weathered certain controversies, I do not know if Trump
cares enough to do cabinet turnover.

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
Yeah who I was talking to him about these things. Yeah,
well see, I don't there's no one that I think
is an obvious choice. I think the likeliest turnover is Paatel.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
Then maybe hag Seth.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
I don't think he's gonna go I think heg Seth
is too loyal. He's a he's a team player, sure,
and he has absolutely no chance of going into business
for himself. Right.

Speaker 4 (01:06:51):
This is the big thing is that it's not a
skiller competency that got these people their jobs, which you know,
it's kind of kind of was a factor in Trump
one point zero, in Trump two point zero.

Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
It is just pure loyalty.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:07:05):
And if they're able to prove that, especially around like
you know, the Epstein stuff really really tested those those loyalties. Yes,
And if they're able to get out of the Epstein controversy,
it's like kind of intact, then I think all these
guys will be set for like the next next little bed.
I guess, do we think Vance is ever going to
become a president during the next like year or two?

Speaker 2 (01:07:27):
Trump is like eighties, So I'm not gonna say there's
not a twenty or thirty percent chance that just like
if Donald Trump dies, Vance becomes the president, right, sure,
and like he's at the age where he could just
drop dead right outside of that, No, I don't think
he's likely to become president.

Speaker 5 (01:07:42):
Yeah, I do think in the next twelve months the
US will begin a UAV campaign in the sahell quite
possibly in Nigeria, Like, I think, yeah, that's possibly in
the next twelve weeks, just looking at flights that they've
had very recently.

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):
There's a decent chance too that they expanding the use
of special forces and maybe even keep fobs open without
the willingness of the Nigerian government. But that's a longer shot. Yeah,
and the Nigerian government's pretty pretty into it right now. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:08:12):
Do you think they're going to put troops in the
ground at either Mexico or Venezuela.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
I think there's a good chance that we utilize special
forces on the ground in parts of Mexico for brief
periods of time. That's a good chance that we already have. Yeah,
I mean we almost certainly already have. I think there's
a chance that we wind up having people on the
ground in Venezuela after a fuck up, right, Like, but
I think that at present their plan is airstrikes and

(01:08:37):
drone strikes. I think if we were to wind up
having anything on the ground in Venezuela, it would be
as a result of like a strike with a manned
craft going badly and someone going down over Venezuela. That's
not a zero percent chance if they keep fucking around.
But I really don't think they want to have troops
on the ground in Venezuela. I think they want to
be striking targets in Venezuela.

Speaker 5 (01:08:58):
Yeah, it's not a place where they want. You want
lad to them by the troops to be to be
engaging like that wouldn't go well. Trump does not want
to wear that, right, like if we saw in Syria,
like he wasn't willing to deploy large now with the troops.
He was willing to use a lot of drone and
air strikes even when the civilian cost was very high.

(01:09:20):
And I think that is the model, Like that that
strike cell model that we saw, like like the strike
in Bagus at the end of the Islamic State is
probably a good example of the sort of yeah quote
unquote collateral damage like killing civilians that we can expect
them to see as acceptable.

Speaker 3 (01:09:35):
I think the final point on this is that the
Trump administration genuinely believes that they can top of visions
with their strikes. They thought they thought this with the
who the US and they think there's buff Venezuela. They
actually think you can do this despite all evidence of
the contrary. So I think it's going to inform a
lot of their decisions.

Speaker 5 (01:09:51):
Yeah, and I think Syria like kind of not not
Syria with a sad but Syria with the Islamic State reinforced.

Speaker 2 (01:09:57):
That for them.

Speaker 5 (01:09:58):
But like the obviously overlooking like that they have incredible potnafource,
so they don't have in these places.

Speaker 4 (01:10:03):
Yeah, well, I think that's our predictions. First time we're
not doing a desk segment. And you know what, I
feel fine a that Yep, no one's gonna die twenty
twenty seven, Marcy.

Speaker 5 (01:10:13):
Yeah, still I'm not going to say it this time
because I've been in adversually blessing him with long life.

Speaker 2 (01:10:28):
Welcome back to it could happen here, a podcast about
it happening well in various places, and given the nature
of our digital, interconnected society, it is happening here all
the time. But if you're even casually aware of what's
going on in the world right now, it is particularly
happening in Venezuela right now. And joining me to talk

(01:10:50):
about the US led and executed kidnapping of a world
leader is my two favorite kidnappers, Mia Wong and James Stout.

Speaker 5 (01:11:01):
Glad to be herero but joining you to discuss kidnapping,
one of my favorite topics.

Speaker 3 (01:11:05):
Yeah, my lawyers have advised me not to respond to
the statement.

Speaker 2 (01:11:10):
Now, given all the people you both kidnapped, how are
you just rating this on a technical level as kidnappings go,
you know, on a level from let's say, uh, the well,
if I remember the name of that guy with the plane,
this would have been a funnier joke. I forgot his
name though, No, no, no, he was on a plane,
didn't have a plane.

Speaker 3 (01:11:29):
Yeah, that's a reverse kidnapping. He kidnapped me, he did
on kidnap himself everyone on the plane plane.

Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
I was talking about Lindberg, Charles Lindberg. But the jokes,
the joke's over. So let's talk about the international crimes
our government's doing. Yeah, did, did and doing.

Speaker 5 (01:11:48):
I'm drinking a white claw, so I've got about the
same legal jurisdiction as they have, because there is no
law when you're drinking white yeah, which I think is
the legal argument.

Speaker 2 (01:11:57):
I mean, yeah, So what happened is is, while most
of us were asleep last Saturday night, the United States,
using a mix of special forces like Tier one operators.
This was like adulta force operation, primarily a whole bunch
of helicopters that looked like a mix of Blackhawks and Chinooks.
Carried out a series of airstrikes on Caracas, and kidnapped

(01:12:21):
the president of Venezuela, Nicholas Maduro, and his wife, killing
a significant chunk of their security detail, including thirty two
Cubans who were acting as essentially like military advisors slash
security for Maduro. Yeah, he has been taken back to
the United States. He's been arraigned in New York. They're

(01:12:42):
charging him with a variety of drug and gun related crimes,
including some weird shit like possession of a machine gun
under US law, which is really weird. I guess they're
arguing that his control of the Venezuelan military counted as
a legal possession of an automatic weapon. Yeah, it's weird.

Speaker 5 (01:13:01):
Yeah, And guessing it involves using the machine gun in
the furtherance of another crime, because there are specific charges
for like NFA violations related to drug things. Sure, but
it still seems very weird to tag that on there.
Like when what you're doing is kidnapping a world leader,
you can't just also be like, oh, and he's got
a gun, like when he commands the armed forces of

(01:13:23):
a country. It's very strange, right.

Speaker 4 (01:13:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:26):
This also I think pins into what's really really weird
about this. There's two aspects of this that are just
what the fuck. One of them is that the legal justification,
this is given to Mike Lee from Secretary of State
Mark or Rubio, was that the reason that there were
airstrikes in the legal justification was protecting US soldiers carrying.

Speaker 2 (01:13:50):
Out the US law enforcement. The military was needed to
protect the DEA agents who are actually conducting the arrest, right,
is the legal justification.

Speaker 5 (01:14:00):
Yeah, the chances of some kind of due process violation
are hot. This all hinges on you thinking that the
law is a fixed thing, right, not an instrument of
the state and an instrument of power. And I think
that a more plausible analysis here is is that the
law is not a fixed thing. But like in this instance, right,

(01:14:20):
if we if we go with that line, like the
da people were there to ensure due process and to
make the arrest right. And in theory I've read that
they literally had someone mirandize him, right.

Speaker 3 (01:14:32):
Yeah, which, okay, I want to I do want to
put someth the think cure though, and this is something
that CNN like when they were reporting on this point.
So this is insane because this implies that US law
applies in Venezuela.

Speaker 2 (01:14:44):
Right, which is absolutely that's.

Speaker 3 (01:14:47):
Literally the point. The point of a state is that
your law applies inside of your board.

Speaker 2 (01:14:53):
The argument that they are making because Trump directly and
and prior to this had called in to relevance the
Monroe Doctrine, right, which is basically stating that everything happening
in the Americas is the purview of the United States.
This was initially and they're still arguing that it is
kind of a what President Monroe was using as an

(01:15:14):
excuse for intervening in situations where foreign colonizers were attempting
to exert power and colonies they owned in the Americas
or had owned in the Americas, right, And the US
was basically saying, fuck you, this is our backyard, right.
And I think the aru the argument that they're making
now is that that's relevant because Iran and Russia and

(01:15:39):
Cuba all have political and business interests in Venezuela, particularly Cuba.
But in a more broad sense, they're making the argument
and Stephen Miller has made this very directly, that the
Americas are all kind of our property, and we're perfectly
justified in intervening to take resources that we want, because

(01:16:00):
we shouldn't have to just accept that a foreign country
has different opinions and how those resources should be used
in the United States, and that we have no moral
responsibility to listen to what other people want in our hemisphere.
It's our hemisphere. Yeah, and we, meaning the Trump administration,
should do whatever we want.

Speaker 4 (01:16:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:16:21):
And I think there's two kind of lego pspective here
things that are important. One. I think there's that one,
which is, yeah, the American Empire is just saying we
are an empire and we could do whatever we want.
But then there's also the does the president have the
power to do this unilaterally piece of it which no,
he no, like just does not, Like this is objectively
an act of war. Right, and previously right, A lot

(01:16:42):
of administrations have done things kind of like this, yeah, right,
but like everything has been under the fig leaf of
the AUMF. Right, the two thousand and one Authorization of
Use of Military Force, which if you go back and
read the document, the actual like AUMF, it's very clear
that it's anyone who's really to nine to eleven. Yeah,
and so this has been used to do interventions in

(01:17:04):
like places and things that have nothing to do with this, right,
But this is not even that. This is just the
president claiming that he can do acts of war.

Speaker 5 (01:17:14):
Yeah, and so I guess the justification that they gave
was the example they cited was Nadiego right in eighty
nine in Panama. Right, that was that was a war
that was operations, like American soldiers died, and no Diego
went to the Vatican embassy and eventually I believe he
surrounded him. They've like blasted you two at him, which

(01:17:35):
is obviously a war crime, and he eventually left the
embassy around negotiated his exit, I guess. But that's a
completely different thing to just bouncing into the residence of
the president of another country at nine black backg.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
Like that's also debatably legal. But yes, it was a difference, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:17:54):
Very very very much.

Speaker 2 (01:17:55):
So yes, yeah, No, it's also wrong, like we're not
defending what was done there. Yeah, I know, this is
even more blatant, right, It's like it's not defending what
George W. Bush did in Iraq. To be like at
least they bothered to pretend there was a justificate, like
they spent some time really cooking up a justification and

(01:18:16):
some effort, and there's none of that here. They just
don't give a shit anymore. Right, That's that you're not
being like and that means it was okay, what Bush did,
You're just pointing out it's even more mask off now, right.

Speaker 3 (01:18:28):
Yeah, Well, and I think it is different than that,
Like the invasion of a rock involved Congress. This is
just Trump going I can do this, right, And that's
really fucking alarming. Yeah, that he just is like, yeah,
fuck it, I could just do a war now completely
by myself. None of you have any fucking power war
for me. I can just declare war a thing that

(01:18:48):
is explicitly in the constitution, like supposed to be Congress's job.
And I think that's really That's another very allwering part
of this, because this is I think by far the
most just Trump pure dictatorshit that we've seen so far.
It's not being treated like that, yeah, because a lot
of sort of like I don't know that there's a

(01:19:09):
lot of people who wanted this something like this to happen,
and so they're kind of just not looking at the
fact that this is just this is just pure dictatorship shit.

Speaker 5 (01:19:21):
Yeah. I think a lot of people, because they didn't
like Maduro, right, they're waiting to look aside from yeah,
the means as long as they get the ends they want.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
But the means are extremely serious here. Yeah, And I
think we should acknowledge, like, stop for a second to
talk about the Maduro of it all, because my stance
is that his legitimacy as president, his personal legitimacy, whether
or not he's committed crimes, are all completely irrelevant, right.
I have not any of my public facing statements I've

(01:19:49):
been in the past years ago talked about how I
wish the protests had worked to remove him from office
within sort of like the context of Venezuelan's actually having
their way kicking him out and replacing him with something better.
But I have not brought up any of that in
the context of what's happened recently because it doesn't matter, right, Like, fundamentally,
it doesn't matter if Maduro is like completely legitimately elected

(01:20:12):
and the people's hero or a complete fraud and an authoritarian.
That has nothing to do with whether or not the
US has any illegal or moral justification for coming in
arresting this guy and then saying we own the country
and we don't. It's dictator shit, it's fascist, it's deeply wrong.

(01:20:33):
It's bad. Like, there's nothing else to say. If you
find anyone getting caught in starting to be like, well,
but you know, Maduro did this. Maduro did that. That
is either a person who is acting in bad faith
or a person who has themselves been tricked, right, because
you don't need to discuss any of that. None of
that is relevant to what we're talking about here, which

(01:20:54):
is that the US, like this is a violation of
international law and all of the kinds of norms that
we attempted to put in place after World War two
to stop another catastrophe like that from happening. And it
is only going to embolden the worst instincts of both
the people running the United States right now. They will
continue to try to do shit like this, and it's
going to embolden the worst instincts of other leaders around

(01:21:16):
the world. It is comprehensively bad for everyone.

Speaker 3 (01:21:19):
The comprehensive result of this is again that the US
has annexed I guess Venezuela that Trump is claiming that
he personally and his Secretary of State and his council
of advisors are like now control and run a country.

Speaker 4 (01:21:38):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:21:39):
This is so evil.

Speaker 2 (01:21:41):
Yeah, and it's very unclear who's going to be doing
Because Trump made those that statement, Rubio walked it back
a little bit and said that, like, well, we'll be
working with the administration in place, which is, by the way,
just the same administration that existed before, merely with the
vice president taking on the role of president.

Speaker 5 (01:21:59):
Yeah, a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:22:01):
Yeah, after that backtracked a little bit too, to try
and be more in line with the Boss. But it's
very unclear what they actually intend and what they mean
by saying we're running it, because from what I've read,
it doesn't look like Rubio is actually going to be mannered.
Like while he's been the guy taking point on justifying this,

(01:22:21):
I don't think he's going to actually be managing any
of this on a day to day basis. He's got
a lot on his plate already. Stephen Miller seems to
be the guy who is trying to position himself to
actually be the Paul Brimmer in this situation. Who is
the guy that the Bush administration put in charge of
dealing with of like running a rack after it was
taken over.

Speaker 3 (01:22:41):
Yeah, the viceroy.

Speaker 5 (01:22:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:43):
And it's unclear what is Miller going to get that job?
Will Rubio wind up doing it. It's looking more like
Miller right now. But also to what extent will that
job actually be running things? And you know, we'll talk
about that and a little bit, I'm sure. But the
kind of cliffs notes of the situation is that there

(01:23:06):
is evidence that came out right after the kidnapping that
Baduro's vice president had reached out to the United States previously,
like before the kidnapping, to talk about the possibility of
taking over the country after giving Maduro up or him
having a managed exile. All of that was discussed, and

(01:23:28):
at least per the reporting on it, she was turned
down by the United States because they thought they had
a better option, and that option seems to have fallen through,
largely because the quote unquote democratically elected opposition leader who
won a Nobel prize pissed off Trump. It's unclear how
accurate that is that by you know, by winning the price,

(01:23:50):
by accepting the Nobel Prize, did she get kick herself
out of the job. That's what some reporting has suggested.
It's unclear to me how true that actually is. Seems possible, surely,
but at the end of the day, there was this
offer made by Maduro's VP that was turned down by
the US, and now it seems like, although we don't
actually know what's happened to the background, it seems like

(01:24:12):
she's who we're working with. So either they came back
and said, you know, it will take the deal, or
something else is going on. But she has both made
the statements publicly that like, this is illegal, the United
States is run by a group of criminals and extremists,
and also but.

Speaker 3 (01:24:31):
We'll work with them.

Speaker 2 (01:24:32):
So it does kind of seem to me like she made,
in fact, be very much in bed with the Trump
administration and just trying to like massage this for her public,
you know, because there's only so much you can get
away with. I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:24:46):
Yeah, just to be clear on the timeline, Robert, Yeah,
the first reporting of that, like Rodriguez option, we want
to call it out a yeah, they call it as well,
was in October. That was out before or the strike happened, right,
and at least in the Miami Herald's story. They suggested
that he had been part of that, so this could

(01:25:09):
be a different thing, but that he had offered to
step down over years, right.

Speaker 2 (01:25:13):
Yeah, so to say, it looked like there was a
period of time where he was talking about like a
managed exit. Yeah, I been going to Kato or Turkey
or something like that.

Speaker 4 (01:25:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:25:22):
Now Rodriguez US of course denied that. But what would
you expect Dlsey Rodriguez And yeah, it's unclear. Again, we
don't really know. Did they just remove Maduro without having
a plan and hadn't really finished talking with her or
worked something out. It was the last thing that she
heard from them, them saying nah, we won't take this option, right,
and then Maduro gets kidnapped. Did they work out a

(01:25:44):
separate deal that just hasn't been reported on. We actually
don't know. And I could totally see her being a
stooge for US action here because it keeps her in
power and it keeps her safe because Trump very recently
threatened her, like after she made statements calling his team
a bunch of extremists, she backpedaled and said, actually, if
we're where, well in to work with the US because

(01:26:05):
Trump said I'll do something worse to you than I
did to him. Like, we don't know if they actually
ironed out a set of responsibilities and obligations in bath channels,
or if we just remove a duro and are like,
all right, well, if we have to kill her, we'll
kill her too. Like it's unclear what actually happened there.

Speaker 3 (01:26:22):
Yeah, yeah, so we should also mention So this is
being recorded on the night of Monday, January fifth. You're right,
every kind of six or eight hours, new conflicting information
from the Trump administration about what their plan is comes out, right,
which which leads me to suspect they don't have a
plan at all. Yeah, because it keeps changing every couple

(01:26:44):
of hours. So I don't know. But but in case,
by the time this comes out, there is some kind
of public deal that's been worked out. That's what's going on.
This is all changing extremely rapidly.

Speaker 2 (01:26:57):
Yeah, right, And you know what else changes rapidly, The
economics of podcasting. Yeah, here's some of that. This white
coase working foul, and we're back. James is drinking a

(01:27:19):
bad white claw, which is really I think the information
our audience is most interested in, you know, invasions of Venezuela,
come and go. The US kidnaps people all the time.
But James drinking a bad white claw. Let's let's let's
actually really check it, James, what's the flavor you're you're
experiencing right now?

Speaker 5 (01:27:37):
Let me getting updated to that. That is green apple?

Speaker 2 (01:27:40):
Green apple? M oh boy, Yeah, yeah, it's it's foul.

Speaker 5 (01:27:45):
I wouldn't recommend it. You're in the market.

Speaker 2 (01:27:47):
Yeah, that sounds awful. Don't do it to you. So, yeah,
it's really the having Delta Force kidnap you from your
house of beverages.

Speaker 5 (01:27:56):
Which yeah, absolutely, uh huh, that's how they market it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:59):
Actually weird. That's on the can right right. They must
have got advance warning like the time. Yeah, what did
they know and when did they know it?

Speaker 5 (01:28:08):
We'll never know.

Speaker 2 (01:28:11):
So let's keep talking about Venezuela. Yeah, we should talk
about who Rodriguezez. Yeah, so Vegez was vice president. Now
she is president or will be sworn in as president.
I believe she may have already been sworn hi by
the time you hear this. She was sworn in I
think like a couple hours ago. For the last article
I read.

Speaker 5 (01:28:29):
So her father was a Marxist Gorilla. Her father kidnapped
an American businessman, was arrested and then murdered, like torture
to death. Yeah, as part of the quote unquote investigation
into that. Right, her and her brother are kind of
like a power block in Venezuelan politic She has really
become more relevant, I guess nationally since my daughter, like

(01:28:50):
she did do some stuff with Chavis early on, but
like clash with him personally, and I guess allegedly, I
mean I wasn't there, but Chavez didn't like that she
wasn't deferential to him and at one point sent her
home from her but I think they were in Russia
and he sent her home from a a sort of
mission that they were doing their diplomatic mission. Since then,

(01:29:11):
she is assuming a number of roles in Venezuelan government
from since twenty thirteen right when Mondora came to power,
to include overseeing intelligence at some time, and she has
now become obviously president. Right, she has previously worked with
like the Venezuelan I guess the analogy would be like
Chamber of Commerce, which had previously been seen by like

(01:29:32):
Chubby Small as like a bourgeois enter die the enemy. Right,
She has shown willingness to work with business, So I
do wonder if that factors into the US analysis, Like,
if she's willing to work with what it looks like
the oil companies that they want her to work with,
then then they can overlook a whole lot of other stuff, right,
which has historically been how the US has approached places

(01:29:54):
with oil. But yeah, in terms of this, I think
that's probably the sort of TLDR on her career. And
I think it is possible that she's willing to do
some kind of chovies, more light, you know, whatever, we're
going to call this and have us extractive capitalism exists
so long as the regime continues to exist. But the

(01:30:16):
way that would work is still something that like, I
can't really get my head around for a regime which
has made so much of its rhetorical legitimacy for so
long attacking the United States.

Speaker 2 (01:30:28):
Right right, Yeah, And that's kind of I mean, that
seems to be the quandary Delsea finds herself in is
she both has to refer to what's happened accurately as
kidnapping and the actions of an illegitimate and deeply corrupt regime,
and also she can't act that way. If what we

(01:30:51):
all think is accurate, she's basically acting as a negotiated
buppet of the United States. She can only go so far,
and I feel like she's trapped in kind of a
doomed situation, which may be part of what our administration
intends is for her to be fundamentally doomed and fail

(01:31:11):
and get cooed herself, or you know, we can replace
her when there's protests against legitimacy. Like, I don't know
what exactly the game is here, but I think that
may be something that was baked into the equation that like,
this is not a functional situation for her, and when

(01:31:32):
she gets forced out, that's something we can take advantage of.

Speaker 5 (01:31:37):
Yeah, has the reason of analysis, I think, I mean
we Yeah, we could talk about the oil, right because
Trump has been talking about the.

Speaker 2 (01:31:44):
Oil right yeah yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I know you.

Speaker 5 (01:31:48):
Said you wanted to mention stuff about It's not what
it might seem on the face of it, right, There
aren't giant lakes of oil in Venezuela.

Speaker 2 (01:31:54):
You can just slop up and sell.

Speaker 3 (01:31:57):
Yeah, So okay, it's sort of different to explain this
all without really getting into the weeds of like how
oil production works, but there's different like qualities of crude oil.
And most of the Venezuelan stuff is extremely sour. It's
really really shit. It's extremely low quality. And when you

(01:32:18):
have oil that's this shit, you can't like refine it
into being good, right like that. That's just like not
how the process works. It just sucks and so it
burns badly. But there is a lot of it. And
this also gets back to Okay, so the way that
Trump thinks this is going to work is that a
bunch of oil companies are going to come in, They're

(01:32:39):
going to do a bunch of like infrastructure development or whatever.
They're going to sell the oil and they're going to
make one hundred billion dollars. That's not really how this works,
as it is something that James has pointed out too.
But like the actual value here is less from actually
extracting the oil and more from a having all of
these oil deposits on your balance and b there's a

(01:33:03):
lot of value in just having power over it.

Speaker 2 (01:33:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:33:08):
So okay, So oil prices are kind of they're set
by a few things, Like the price of oil is
set by the bottom of the market right. Part of
your profit comes from how much more cheaply can you
refine and extract your oil relative to whoever's doing it
the most expensively, like whoever's doing the shittiest job of it.
But that a lot of it also is just power.

(01:33:28):
That's what OPEC is, right, And OPEC's ability to raise
oil prices has to do with its ability to have
all of their member states controlling their oil and controlling
the sort of flow and distribution of it. Redistributing who
is in power into OPEC is actually a massive deal.
Even if the actual oil here isn't very good, the

(01:33:50):
power over the oil is extremely important. So this doesn't
work in the way that Trump wants it to work,
which is like, you know, you take the oil wells
and you pump the oil out of the ground and
suddenly you have money. But it is good for the
oil companies that would take over the oil.

Speaker 5 (01:34:11):
Yeah, he consistently confuses stock price for like the economy
slash it, business success slash other things.

Speaker 9 (01:34:18):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:34:18):
Yeah, I guess one way to think about it is
that like taking control of this oil, you're not really
making the money off of this oil. You're making the
money off of the impact controlling this oil has on
the rest of the oil you produce.

Speaker 2 (01:34:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:34:29):
Maybe if you're someone who sees international relations in terms
of great power competition, you're trying to put things in
the Russia China bucket or the America bucket.

Speaker 2 (01:34:38):
Yeah, and someone who sees trade, is this like zero
sum game where one person wins and another person loses. Yeah, yeah,
you know, like as drop does.

Speaker 5 (01:34:47):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:34:48):
And also it is worth mentioning that like a lot
of this oil goes to Cuba, Yeah, which is really
really important for the Cuban economy, which sort of can't
function without the stock of of Venezuela and oil. Like,
getting access to Venezuelan oil is one of the things
that originally pulled Cuba out of the just hideous economic
crisis they were in in the nineties Office of Union collapsed.

Speaker 4 (01:35:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:35:10):
So it's why thirty two it seems like a majority
or at least half of the security forces who died
fighting the US and this kidnapping attempt were Cuban because
access to Venezuelan oil is an existential issue for the
Cuban government. And it's also why Trump stated, unfortunately probably accurately,
that they're not looking at regime change in Cuba because

(01:35:32):
they think that the regime is going to collapse on
its own, which it might, like this is an existential
problem for the Cuban regime, but people.

Speaker 5 (01:35:41):
Who aren't aware. I spent a good amount of time
in Caracas when I was much younger in Jeremian undergraduate
years at university, and I remember the only medical professionals
I ever saw because people had left right after Chinese
mol and the only medical professionals I ever sawt were
Cuban and Cuban doctor's roll over the world. One a
Cub's biggest secon it is doctors. But like it was

(01:36:02):
very clear at that time that like the two states
were intermessed. You know that the Venezuela needs things to
Cuba hads like those special military advisors and those doctors,
and Cuban needs ink to Menezuela have like that oil.

Speaker 3 (01:36:14):
Yeah, and breaking that the way people normally see oil
as oil is just like liquid cash, and that's not true.
It matters the actual materiality of the oil and how
it works in the extraction process, and what kind of
oil is matters a lot. And this is a scenario
where where the oil is going and who has control
over it matters more than who's able to sell it,

(01:36:36):
which is very weird, but is how this works. And
Trump doesn't understand any of this. Maybe some of the
people around him understand this, but Trump really just is
in pure empire brain. They stole our stuff, which I
assume someone who like wanted this told him, Oh, yeah,
they stole a bunch of American oil and land, and
now he's in just full empire mode.

Speaker 5 (01:36:59):
Yeah, I think just seeming someone has told him at
some point they told us to offer.

Speaker 2 (01:37:03):
Well, yeah, and this is after the revolution. A bunch
of what was like the property of US and foreign
oil companies was nationalized, right because these companies had made
deals with the corrupt previous regime and it was not
really benefiting Venezuelans. Obviously that oil money has gone on

(01:37:23):
to benefit the current corrupt regime and still not benefited
Venezuelans much. But there was a period of time under
Jabez in which like there were actual social benefits and
a powerful state I was providing people with things, which
is not to say it didn't have its flaws, but
like there was a period of time in which there
was a benefit to the average Venezuelan from the fact

(01:37:45):
that their country was so oil rich, and nothing about
the current situation is going to change positively for the
average Venezuelan. The profits are going to go from being
siphoned from one group to another, but neither of those
groups are regular Venezuelans.

Speaker 5 (01:38:00):
Yeah, I think sometimes I will hear this. I have
conservatively interviewed hundreds in not thousands of Venezuelan people in
the last three or four years, right at the border
in the Darien Gap in the US, remotely by telephone,
et cetera. And like, sometimes you'll hear that like Chovers
was trying to do something good and it got it
went bad, or that like it was okay for a

(01:38:22):
bit of the chothers and then the corruption got out
of control, or even it was okay until my daughter
took parent out. It was bad. It doesn't matter rate,
it's bad now. But like the things that the poverty
I hear about from Venezuelan people is grinding and it
is so upsetting. Like I have the great fulness for
Venezuelan people. I've made a whole podcast thing about this,

(01:38:45):
but the difficulty they encounter in every aspect of their
lives because of sanctions, because of corruption, because of hyperinflation,
because of the low oil price, like a lot of things. Right,
their lives are miserable, and this isn't going to change that.
They're scared. Right when I speak to people in Venezuela,
people family in Venezuela this week, since this happened, what

(01:39:07):
are they doing. They are not contrary to what an
AI video might have made you believe out in the
streets celebrating. Now, they're trying to get enough food to
make it through the next couple of weeks in case
they have to hunker down in their home, right, and
it is hard to get any food at the best
of times for these people, in case.

Speaker 2 (01:39:22):
They're bombed in place, the roads are bombed, in case
they're occupied. Like they're making preparations for being in a
situation like Gazans have been in for much of the
last several years. Right, Yeah, and that's not an unreasonable
like who knows what will happen. I hope it's not that,
but it's not an unreasonable thing to prepare for.

Speaker 5 (01:39:42):
No, it's not. Our friends, when Memo and Robert and
I have been a few people in Memo, that's what
they said they did after the coup as well, because
they didn't know what was going to happen and they
figured they need to be able to sit somewhere safe
and stay there. And so, yeah, this is not a
liberation like I sor Jared Polis of all people being like,
oh yeah, liberation and using the word liberation generally Simon Bolivard,

(01:40:03):
it is like the sort of bounding hero of Venezuela
is referred to as the liberators and using that phrase
about the extra judicial kidnapping the head of state. Right,
you don't understand the resonance of that word in Spanish,
that's fine, you don't speak Spanish, don't fucking use it. Yeah,
but if you're going to use it, especially in this context,
like it is crash in the extreme right to see that,

(01:40:25):
actually American politician.

Speaker 3 (01:40:27):
So the other I think aspect of this is that,
like you know, if you look at this in a
historical s tale, the reason Boulevar succeeded was that, like
the Haitian Republic gave a whole bunch of people, a
whole bunch of weapons go liberate Latin Berica from the
Spanish Empire. And then you know, if you look at what, like,
what is the US's relation to the closest thing I've

(01:40:49):
been able to I'm like racking my brain trying to
find anything in history that looks like this that the
US has done. And we've done a lot of bad things.
The closest thing I can find to just we sent
the army into kidnap a guy and deposed him was
what we did to Aristide, who was the former leftist

(01:41:09):
president now former leftist president of Haiti, who we did
in fact send in special forces with Canada to just
like sort of force onto a plane at gunpoint and
remove from power. But also that situation was a little
different in that at that point most of the country
of Haiti was under the control of a bunch of

(01:41:31):
like dust squad rubble groups, which was the us' justification.
And this is just we just ran into a country
and cook them. But I don't know the historical residences.

Speaker 2 (01:41:41):
Of that are bleak.

Speaker 5 (01:41:44):
Yeah, and Jesus Christ.

Speaker 3 (01:41:46):
Don't call it the liberation good lording of liberations.

Speaker 2 (01:41:52):
Yeah, let's liberate our audience from having money that they
can spend on these products. All right, we're back. I
guess there's a couple of things I wanted to talk about.

(01:42:13):
One of them is I'm seeing a lot of people
respond to this by pointing out folks like Matt Walsh
or other guys on the right who made statements about
Trump being a candidate for peace and all these military interventions.
We're getting into being bad and are now celebrating what
we're doing and openly celebrating like colonialism as a good thing.
And I'm seeing a lot of folks trying to dunk

(01:42:37):
on these people for being inconsistent. And I can't imagine
a bigger waste of your time, none of these people.
You have to get it out from the habit of
thinking that truth matters. All that matters to these people
is power, and they have it, and they have the guns.
And you pointing out that they lied to get there,

(01:42:59):
and that they're not honest, they don't care. They're rich
and they're getting richer, and they're powerful and they're getting
more power. None of this is about principles. It's about winning,
and you just have to understand that if you want
to have any hope of beating them, because pretending that
they're playing any other game than the one that they're
playing is really dangerous. I don't think there's any profit

(01:43:24):
in debating these people directly or confronting them directly about
the inconsistencies of their belief system. I do think it's
deeply profitable to talk about the fact that they lied
in our liars and are dragging us into another war
two regular Americans, and the evidence suggests that this is
incredibly unpopular in a way that the Iraq War wasn't.

(01:43:46):
People talk a lot about how massive the anti war
protests were and how much anti war sentiment there was,
but a majority of Americans were broadly supportive of what
the Bush administration did in Afghanist stand in Iraq at
the time that they started doing it.

Speaker 5 (01:44:03):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:44:04):
That doesn't mean that the protests weren't real. It doesn't
mean that it's not significant that those massive protests happened,
But most Americans were broadly supportive of what the government
was doing. That's not the case with what we're seeing
in regards to public opinion over what's happening in Venezuela.
There was a two day Reuters IPSO survey that concluded Monday,

(01:44:24):
basically immediately after was announced what you know we did
in Venezuela and seventy two percent of Americans who responded
said they are concerned that the US might get too
involved in Venezuela. Only twenty five percent said that they
don't share that concern. Ninety percent of Democrats shared that
concern as well, seventy four percent of independence even fifty
four percent of Republicans. Only forty five percent of Republicans

(01:44:46):
said that they were not worried about the US getting
overly involved in only nineteen percent of other voters. So
this is really unpopular, historically unpopular for a military intervention.
And the entire bet that the Trump administration is making
is that because they're not doing what Bush did in Iraq,
they're not knocking out the whole government and debathifying it.

(01:45:06):
They're just kicking out one guy and basically keeping his
regime intact. They're just making that regime swear field to
the United States. And their bet is that this will
work right, that the Venezuelan regime will continue to keep
the country functioning as well as it was functioning before,
which is not great but was not total collapse, and

(01:45:30):
they can start extracting value. And honestly, I feel like
that is that's a major motivation for a lot of
people supporting Trump, for a lot of people in his
administration who have financial interests, for obviously the oil and
gas companies he's trying to get on board. But I
don't think money is even Trump's pry, and this is
maybe an unpopular opinion. I think the primarys in Trump

(01:45:52):
is doing this is that he wants Number one, to
show everybody, look, I did what Bush did, but it worked.
I did it Betternumber two. He wants to show everybody, look,
I did what Obama did and took out a big
bad guy.

Speaker 1 (01:46:04):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:46:04):
That's where they're trying to craft madeuro is this major
enemy of the United States, this architect of the opiate crisis,
this guy who's worse than beIN Laden in a lot
of ways, because Trump is still jealous of the fact
that Obama got to take out Ben Laden right as
he sees it, and he wants his own version of that.
Trump is doing this, I think primarily for vanity purposes. Right.

(01:46:25):
I know that seems shallow and silly, but I really
think that's most of what's going on for him. And
I think if the end result of this is that
things in Venezuela more or less continue, the way they
were before. He will call it a win, and a
lot of people might believe him, And I don't know,
it doesn't even necessarily matter if any money actually comes
into the United States over this. They'll just lie about it.
You know, some individual Americans will make money, and I

(01:46:49):
think that'll probably be enough for Trump to feel like
he got a win and for his pr apparatus to
notch this up as a win. And I think that's
all he really cares about. And so I do think
it's worth really hitting how criminal this is and how
harmful this is. But ultimately, what's going to determine whether
or not Americans see this as a calamity or not

(01:47:11):
is how well this all works out in the long run.
And that's a really tough thing to even think about,
because you don't want it to work well, because it
will embolden Trump to keep doing this and the global
harm will be greater. On the other hand, I don't
want civil life in Venezuela to collapse, right, So it's

(01:47:33):
it's tough, yeah, right, yeah, I don't people to suffer anymore.

Speaker 5 (01:47:38):
I mean just around the world too. When like I
heard men online called a meeting in Mihandmah when he
heard about this, because he was worried, right, like, the
paranoia of dictators is about to go through the ceiling,
and that's going to result in people being tortured and killed.

Speaker 2 (01:47:52):
It's going to result in people torture, and it's going
to result in more countries seeking to get nuclear weapons
because they will accurately recognize that that is the only
security anyone has. It is understated how much more dangerous
what Bush did in Iraq made the world because of
how it's made different leaders around the world think about

(01:48:13):
the possession of nuclear weapons. Right Iran is fundamentally right,
and it's calculus that getting a nuke will make the
regime safer because it might be the only thing that
can protect them now. Things in Iran are not looking
very stable right now either. Again, this is another situation
where just decades of protest and the weakness of the
regime might wind up working in Trump's favor because things

(01:48:35):
are looking pretty gnarly for the Iranian regime right now,
and maybe Trump Trump has made some statements since kidnapping
Maduro about going into Iran. They very well may do that,
but they also may not need to.

Speaker 5 (01:48:48):
Yeah, there's the most sense suggesting that they at least
have preparations in place for doing something in Iran, right,
which may they need to do right to obviously move
things to point towards Iran. Right, But that's an action
in itself.

Speaker 2 (01:49:02):
Yeah, that really. I mean, there's a lot that worries
me there. But I think they're going to keep fucking
around like this as long as they feel like it
will benefit them. And right now this feels like a
wind to them. Yeah, so this is going to function
like a drug. They're going to start looking for another
hit as soon as the high from this fadse.

Speaker 5 (01:49:24):
Yeah, and as soon as they need a domestic distraction,
right right.

Speaker 2 (01:49:26):
A lot of this stuff and the evidence we have
so far suggests that people fucking hate this, and we'll
probably keep hating this, But it depends on whether or
not this all fades out and if the news is
covered Actually maybe it worked right, which will probably be
based on really dogshit journalism. The Washington Post did a
preferential offed already. I think, oh good, Yeah, I'm glad

(01:49:49):
they're helping out our democracy die in darkness. They're going
to keep chasing this high and it will wind up
collapse on them eventually. The question is how many countries
will have to pay the price beforehand and how much
worse will things get In the United States? Obviously, yeah,
will the price be right when they lose a higher

(01:50:11):
s F team or cash? Right when Delta Force gets
wiped out? When we have a bunch of helicopters down,
a bunch of Americans caption what does Trump do?

Speaker 4 (01:50:19):
Then?

Speaker 2 (01:50:19):
Do we get a panic? This is kind of where
I see, like the potential, the scary potential for something
like a nuclear January sixth, where like, do we get
a panic response that leads to a horrific loss of life?
Because Trump sees himself as being embarrassed, Oh my god,
they killed a whole team, Like I have no option
but to kill a shitload of people to distract from

(01:50:40):
the fact that I failed here, Right, that that does
really concern me too.

Speaker 5 (01:50:45):
Yeah, if that happens, you know there was even if
it's no nuclear right, even it's just conventional weapons on cities.

Speaker 2 (01:50:50):
Right right, right? And yeah, new guy, I shouldn't even
bring up the nuclear thing, but like.

Speaker 5 (01:50:54):
It does concern meus a nuclear football, right, He's.

Speaker 2 (01:50:58):
The one who gets right choice, all right, this is
going to just get more of. This is going to
become integral to his sense of like self worth that like, no,
I did this and it worked in the Congrete era,
And if all his guys get wiped out failing at
one of these things, that's not going to go well
for anybody.

Speaker 5 (01:51:15):
No, it's not.

Speaker 2 (01:51:16):
We'll have a fun couple hours on Twitter, but it's
going to be really bad, really fast.

Speaker 5 (01:51:20):
Yeah. I talked very briefly about a couple of implications domestically. Sure,
The main one is that the DOJ has already fared
fro an extension in the case which Judge Boseberg is
overseeing regarding the Alien Enemies Act.

Speaker 4 (01:51:34):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:51:35):
Yeah, what this will mean for Venezuelan nationals in the
United States, It is unlikely that this will mean something good.

Speaker 4 (01:51:43):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:51:44):
It is unlikely that they will have a country that
they would want to return to, and it's possible that
it's going to be used to force them to return
to it anyway, to a country which is extremely paranoid
about US buys. Because someone in ma Duro's very close
entourage leaked the high plan that Trump. Many presidents would
not have set this to the press, but Trump did right,

(01:52:04):
that they had the entire plans for his house, and
that they built a replica of it to include they
knew he had a safe room, they knew it was steel,
and they knew they could cut into it with cutting torches.
Someone leaked that information. That means that people coming back
from the United States are going to be under scrutiny, right,
and that is not good for them. And I don't
see this regime stopping sending people back because they're not

(01:52:27):
an alien enemy anymore. I don't. I don't see that,
and I can see the regime if it does manage
and saw Rodriguez at something of a puppet leaning on
Rodriguez to accept people removed from the United States. Right.
So that is extremely concerning, and it's not being reported
on right because migrants are not front and center where

(01:52:47):
a lot of American newspapers think about things. But I
think for those people this is petrifying.

Speaker 1 (01:52:53):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:52:53):
The country that you came through to be safe is
no bombing the country that you came from. It's also
trying to kick you out like you were stuck in
the middle of this game, and you want it with
a place to raise your kids where they might have
a fair crack at a decent life. It's heartbreaking for
those people.

Speaker 2 (01:53:10):
Yeah, and I think that's probably all we've got to
say for now. I mean, I guess i'll address briefly
because people have asked, do you see this as like
an annex say an anschluss, you know, the annexation of
Austria or of Czechoslovakia of that kind of moment, or
is this more like the invasion of Poland? And I
guess my answer is is its own thing. It doesn't

(01:53:32):
directly graph on any of those other than that where
it does very directly graph. And what is relevant in
comparing it to is what happened to the Nazis and
to Hitler personally. As they started seeing success taking things militarily,
they made some big gambles that were not known. One
thing that gets underdiscussed when talking about what Germany was

(01:53:55):
doing in that period of time is how many military
leaders within Germany thought that the annexation of particularly Czechoslovakia
was a horrible idea because in a head to head fight,
it was not clear whatsoever that the Wehrmachts could defeat
the Czech military and their defenses. That was very much
in debate, and a lot of Hitler's advisors thought it

(01:54:16):
was a terrible idea because they didn't think they could win,
and it wound up not really being a factor because
everyone caved and nobody wanted to fight. Which is the
problem that we're having right now, right is that nobody
actually wants to confront these people. The Democrats are himming
and ahio whether or not the try for impeachment again
or you know, there's this this fear of actually directly

(01:54:36):
confronting these people. That is part of what's emboldening them
to keep trying shit like this. And what's very relevant
to the Nazis is that if this works, and we're
talking if this works not in the long run, because
they're not going to wait twenty years to see if
this was a good idea. They're going to wait a
couple of weeks, you know, maybe a few months, and
if it seems like, hey, it worked, the Venezuela's not

(01:54:58):
fallen apart. You know, we've got we actually got what
we think is a good pr out of it. They'll
try again, and they'll try again. And the Nazis tried
again and again until they started making checks that their
asses couldn't cash right, And that is the thing that's relevant,
because that is something all fascists have in common, is
this confidence that gets them very far in a lot

(01:55:21):
of ways, because if they're willing to gamble and the
other people aren't willing to confront them or fight or
gamble themselves, then they'll win by default. But when that
stops and people start confronting them, the shortcomings of the
state that they've built and of the militaries that they
built become increasingly evident. And I do think that's the

(01:55:44):
road that we're on. I don't know where it'll end.
I don't know if Trump could die of a heart
attack tomorrow, and maybe whoever takes over will be more cautious.
I don't know what's going to happen, but I know
that we've started down that road. Yeah, and that's not
a good thing. Nope.

Speaker 5 (01:56:00):
I guess we should just say because people will be
incredibly annoying on the internet, like saying that it is
illegal and wrong to kidnap Madua does not mean that
we think Maduro is great, just in the same way
as saying the Iraq war is wrong doesn't mean we
love Saddam Hussein like, no, the two things can be bad.

Speaker 2 (01:56:15):
People tell you although I should grow up. Like I
said at the start, I don't think you have to.
I don't think anyone owes you. And if someone is saying, like, hey,
you have to answer for these bad things Maduro did
when critiguing the OS for this, I think that's bullshit
and I think you should tell them to fuck off.

Speaker 5 (01:56:29):
Right, It's not the issue at take Care.

Speaker 2 (01:56:31):
Maduro's personal qualities are irrelevant, as is always the case
with this. What we're doing is illegal and bad. Sweet baby, Jimminy, Christmas,

(01:56:53):
Welcome back. It could happened here. A podcast, it's normally
about all of the sad and horrifying and violent and
dangerous and sometimes inspiring things happening around the world. But
this week, well, today is about something different. Today we're
talking about CES finally, for those of you who don't

(01:57:13):
know or who are new to the show, Every year
in Las Vegas, Nevada, a bunch of the world's big
tech companies come together for the Consumer Electronics Show, where
they present their visions for the future, the new products
that will be coming out that year and stuff that
will be coming out and used to come that's less developed,
and the whole industry talks about itself, and Garrison and

(01:57:34):
I show up and largely just kind of let it
wash over us like a warming tide of lukewarm garbage water,
you know, fairy lukewarm us very lukewarm, and it smells
like someone did not clean their fridge out often enough
before putting it into the trash.

Speaker 4 (01:57:53):
That was the feeling at Showstoppers tonight. The media only
presentation on the its products of CEES.

Speaker 2 (01:58:01):
Yeah, yeah, why don't we start?

Speaker 5 (01:58:03):
So?

Speaker 2 (01:58:03):
I mean, there's two different things that are interesting about
cees broadly. One of them is people bring gadgets that
are not out yet that it will be coming out
this year or coming out soon, and you can actually
test them and use them and see how technology is progressing.
And that can be kind of fun. The downside of
that is that people also bring gadgets that are crap. Right,

(01:58:24):
some guy has a vision for a way to like,
you know, there's not a good way for blind people
to use the pogo stick while watching Netflix, and so
I have created this product, right, Or like there's not
a good way for children to test their blood alcohol
level before getting behind the wheel of a Jeep Grand Cherokee,
and I have invented the device to make it about
things that like have no no conceivable audience or utilization. Right,

(01:58:48):
that's the other side of the gadget part of CEES.
And then outside of that you get a hint at
like there's all these panels where people from the industry
come to talk about the major trends in technology, how
things are developing, and what they see as the few future.
And so there's both here's what they're going to try
to sell us, and here's the devices that might change
the way we live. And also here's how a bunch
of the richest, sometimes craziest people in the country you're

(01:59:10):
talking about the future. Those are the two things that
happen at CEES and Garrison. You wanted to talk about
the first the gadgets. The gadgets, the gadgets one as
you went to the Gadget show tonight. I spent my
entire day in panels.

Speaker 3 (01:59:23):
Yeah, I mean I did most of the panels in
the day.

Speaker 4 (01:59:25):
I didn't really got to walk to the show floor
on the first day, which is which is Tuesday. So
instead of doing the show floor, I went to show
stoppers at the Bellagio, which is this presentation of Usually
usually you know a collection of gadgets that have won
CES Innovation Awards, which are on display for journalists and

(01:59:45):
media you can talk to the people behind them. Showstoppers
this year was a little different. It took place in
like a different venue. Hall was smaller than the past
few Showstoppers years, and I would say about forty percent
of it with smart glasses.

Speaker 2 (02:00:00):
Yeah, there's usually like a big product that is like
this product category is the hot thing.

Speaker 3 (02:00:05):
This year, we've tried all smart glasses.

Speaker 2 (02:00:08):
Every weird it is that they've always had them.

Speaker 3 (02:00:10):
Every year that we've.

Speaker 4 (02:00:12):
Been doing this, we've done smart glasses and they've always
kind of been the same. Maybe the resolution on like
the text better, like the glasses get a little bit smaller.
And then this year, yeah, the glasses were generally smaller,
but for all practical purposes function about the same. But
there was but ten different smart glasses. Most of them
could do some kind of like transcription service, could have

(02:00:32):
some kind of heads up display.

Speaker 3 (02:00:34):
One of them was just audio only.

Speaker 4 (02:00:35):
It was like an audio audio transcriptions like it like
it listens to someone else speaking in in this case Chinese,
and it translates to me to American. Yeah, yeah, translate
to American via sound. It had speakers. It had speakers
and like the actual you know, like the arm of
the glasses. Yeah, the delay was long enough that it
was you couldn't really keep a conversation of a normal speed.
I would be for like like the visual translations, which

(02:00:57):
you can't actually kind of just talk in full time,
But the audio only ones were like a smaller profile.

Speaker 3 (02:01:03):
The visual ones weren't necessarily bulkier, but you can definitely
see that there's more hardware inside them.

Speaker 2 (02:01:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:01:09):
The thing that I have seen this year which is newer, er,
maybe not totally new, but incorporating smart glasses technology into
other types of eyewear, so like swim goggles, ski goggles,
like outdoor sports stuff. So if you're you know, swimming
or you're diving and you can't really use your phone underwater,
you have there's there's a heads up that there's a

(02:01:30):
heads up display in like your like Scoopa goggles.

Speaker 3 (02:01:33):
So that that's that's a new a newish thing that
I've seen.

Speaker 4 (02:01:36):
I've seen like you know, biking glasses, skiing, snowboarding, So
that that's the kind of one one slight change, but
besides that, it's basically five different smart glasses which are
for all pactal purposes identical right to each other.

Speaker 2 (02:01:50):
Yeah, I mean, and that I think is kind of
one of the things that I've watched happen over the
fifteen years almost that I've been going to see ess
or see ess, whichever is more accurate, which is you know,
when I first started coming, the smartphone era was new,
and then we had like the tablet era after that,
and so there was a lot of like you would
have dozens of manufacturers making different devices and every year

(02:02:13):
that were very different capability. For the first few years,
smartphones were out advanced very rapidly, and that was really exciting,
and the conventionally thrived on that as the number of
new device categories of winnowed down and the difference like
I'm not excited when I get a phone anymore now
there's anyone I know, because.

Speaker 3 (02:02:30):
It's like no, usually I'm actually kind of yeah more sad.

Speaker 5 (02:02:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:02:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:02:34):
The only thing that's exciting is like, well, my old
phone was literally not working anymore. Yeah, I have the
phone that worked.

Speaker 3 (02:02:38):
The battery has been completely destroyed.

Speaker 2 (02:02:40):
Yeah, the battery works now or whatever. But it's not
like the cameras are not c changes better generally, nothing
is like you're not getting a lot more out of
it than you used to. And the same mystruy of
like laptops, I mean, graphics cards just because of the
data center crunch, like that's not nearly as exciting a
technology category for consumers as it used to be. So

(02:03:00):
this stuff is just like less less sexy, and yeah,
it just kind of shows that we're at a point
where kind of one of the only spaces where they
are still making improvements and where there's a lot of
competition in the market is smart glasses.

Speaker 4 (02:03:12):
Yeah, I mean that's like the wearables category in general, Yeah,
which was mentioned. I went to the Consumer Technology Association
keynote panel this morning, which is the group that puts
on cees, and they mentioned only only a few products,
but one of them we're smart glasses. And then also
like wearables in general, like AI powered wearables and now

(02:03:34):
like wearable technology you know, like smart watches, rings, necklaces,
whatever are going to make like a big comeback now
that now that AI is a lot is a lot
more intelligent than it used to be.

Speaker 3 (02:03:46):
In particular at the cees.

Speaker 4 (02:03:48):
Like Big keynote Tuesday morning, you mentioned a persona smart
tutor glasses glasses to help you, you know, well learning.
I haven't tried to be able to check out the
product yet, but they kind of remind me of some
of the concept behind those cleuely glasses that you may
have seen on social media, the glasses that help you,
like cheat.

Speaker 2 (02:04:07):
But also somebody who's like, we should embrace people cheating
and cheat.

Speaker 4 (02:04:10):
Just a conversation, it seems like that product isn't necessarily
as real as uh what the video might make it
out to be.

Speaker 2 (02:04:18):
People whose company was based on lying didn't make a
real product.

Speaker 4 (02:04:22):
But well, walking through your Eureka Park today, it's funny.
I also saw this this product in one of like
the National Pavilions. I think it was the one of
like the japan Tech Pavilions AI powered tool to help
to help prevent cheating while test taking. So you have
AI powered tools that will monitor you to make sure
you're not cheating.

Speaker 3 (02:04:41):
Well, you use an AI powered tool that helps cheat
cheat it?

Speaker 5 (02:04:44):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:04:44):
Better at school?

Speaker 4 (02:04:45):
Yeah, that's kind of just a good representation of kind
of where where this whole industry is at at the moment. Yeah,
in some ways, I think, you know, this is probably
what year three of AI being you know the big thing,
whether that's unwearables, you know, where that's smart glasses, whether
that's you know, a generative AI, whether that's AI. You know,
but it's been aim but A has been like, you know,

(02:05:07):
the additive property for for everything, and some of that
might be starting to kind of tucker out, or at
least the they've taken the victory lap, and there's there's
a certain like you know, like cultural victory that that
they're resting on. Whether they're starting to put some of
their eggs in other baskets now, which certainly wasn't the
case last year. No, and I got a sense I

(02:05:30):
attended six panels today, Congratulations. It was a mix of
like advertising people, entertainment associated people, some journalism associated people,
and in robotics people in robotics talking about a lot
of a lot of robodies. Yeah, what they saw was
the future of AI, and there was a lot of
focus first on AI is not going to be taking
jobs as much as it's going to be augmenting jobs. Right,

(02:05:52):
although you would get the occasional person be like it's
going to take a lot of jobs. I got people
saying that it's it's only going to take jobs if
you don't know how to incorporate AI into your workfloce.
And that's the argument at the moment right now, Yeah,
if you're not using AI, you're a greater risk of
you losing.

Speaker 2 (02:06:09):
So you better get on it right now, start learning it.

Speaker 5 (02:06:12):
Yes, Yes.

Speaker 2 (02:06:13):
And then the other thing is that there was a
lot of like it's there to help or take away
unpleasant tasks from workers, but really emphasizing the it's not
your enemy thing, you don't need to be scared. And
I had quoted like half of these panels. People would
quote statistics about low user trust and AI and the
fact that people are generally not super comfortable with this

(02:06:34):
technology even if they use it in parts of their
work life right or daily life. And so what I
saw from that, when I interpret from that, is that
there's internal concern that like, that's one of the things
that can screw the pooch on this is that people
are not really sure they like this stuff, and so
there's this impulse to kind of cover the softer and

(02:06:55):
fuzzier sides of it that I didn't see in previous years,
and I think is really focusing on this is just
making things you already like better, as opposed to this
is a revolution that's completely changing life.

Speaker 4 (02:07:09):
And to the extent where AI was fremous revolutionary, it
was specifically trying to ground it in like physical applications
as opposed to this like more general kind of like
spectral like AI hype that we've seen the past few years,
which is in specifically around like generative AI right where
it's like this like kind of vague thing that we
like gestured to. There's more specific applications for AI being

(02:07:31):
talked about right now, and they talked talked about like
AI assisted manufacturing simulations like digital twins of factories, shipyards,
power plants, a lot of digital twin tak building, you know,
digital replicas of like everything you know of like society,
to like run these simulations to both make AIS smarter,

(02:07:51):
to generate new solutions outside of the limitations of a
language model, and also find you know, potential problems in
you know, when you build these things physically.

Speaker 2 (02:08:00):
Yeah, that was something that was brought up during the
robotics panel, which was talking about how to like take
the machine learning technology and other things that are generally
grouped under AI and apply it in the physical world.

Speaker 4 (02:08:11):
Yeah, manufacturing, I've had done so much right in just
one day. I probably I've heard the word manufacturing more
today than I have most in every CEES I've been
to previously, combined.

Speaker 2 (02:08:23):
And I think consciously more focused on industrial applications than
on consumer technology because there's not that much new to
give the consumer right and they are also I think
starting to recognize that you can get people using chat
GPT and the like, but they're mostly not using it,
and the data backs this up. People are mostly using
it at work and for school and gen z a lot.

(02:08:44):
There's a lot of people who are doing like their
research on like what to buy and whatnot through using
chat GPT, But there's not a lot that you can
sell people in CES because it's an app and there's
not a ton of different devices for it. We're using
it on their phone, they're using it on their computer,
but like none of the new phones and computers are
market the better at using chat GPT or another you know,

(02:09:07):
chatbot thing than any of the others. So there's not
a lot that's sexy in just that at CEES. So
I think I have seen this conscience reforming around people
in manufacturing and people who are like thinking of the
concerns of like I have a pair like an exoskeleton
to test this week. That's seeing a lot of its
business in folks who are like doing like Amazon type

(02:09:29):
jobs right loading and unloading packages and whatnot all day long,
you know. And I do see a conscious reforming there,
which I think is kind of evidence of like there's
almost an admission that like, yeah, we don't really have
that much to hand consumers anymore on a yearly basis.

Speaker 3 (02:09:44):
Speaking of handing things to consumers ads.

Speaker 2 (02:10:00):
So the first panel I went to of the day
was about the funnel, which, as I understand it is
just kind of like the way in which people have
traditionally engaged with like media, gotten advertised to and then
like gone to stores and bought stuff like the funnel
by which you like make a customer, and how that's

(02:10:20):
been completely blown up now, right, and AI is like
a further massive disruption because people are not like people
are increasingly especially very young people, which was putted out
in a number of these are like buying stuff that
a chatbot recommends them, right, And so a lot of
marketing is being seen as being done through how do
you get the chat bot to talk about you a

(02:10:40):
certain way? What is the SEO of getting chat ept Oh,
it's interesting, like right, there's a lot of time.

Speaker 4 (02:10:46):
Thought as someone who's not a regular chatbot user, which
I'm sure people here am I which has me for it,
We're not maximizing my productivity and meaning to get on
to you for that, Garrison, there's not a regular chat
about user.

Speaker 3 (02:10:58):
I've never thought of that before.

Speaker 4 (02:11:00):
Of yeah, I mean, like, I know people use these
chatbots as a replacement for search engines, but the idea
of like trying to you know, evaluate purchases is uh.
I mean, I guess that makes sense now, but I've
never put that together.

Speaker 2 (02:11:11):
Yeah, And the only because there was a lot of
talking about like how AI is helping advertisers, how it's
making advertisements, how like it's helping in the process of that,
and there was a focus in all the panels about
that on how like, well, it's just augmenting the humans.
But the only specific examples given were the McDonald's and
Coca Cola AI generated ads, which were both disastrous. I mean,

(02:11:35):
the McDonald's one in the Netherlands got removed. Yeah, they
people so bad.

Speaker 3 (02:11:39):
They withdrew the attic so ugly to ye, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (02:11:43):
Coke did do it twice, so maybe they consider it
a win. But everything I saw was very negative. I
didn't see a lot of positive feedback on Coca Cola,
visa v They're weird. AI holidays are coming at.

Speaker 4 (02:11:53):
It's like people who don't know it's AI think feel
very neutral about it. Yeah, people that do we know
it's AI, I think generally have negative actions.

Speaker 2 (02:12:00):
I think if you look at it, it's pretty clear.
But anyway, I mean, it was.

Speaker 3 (02:12:03):
Less clear if maybe you're like a sixty year old.

Speaker 2 (02:12:05):
Watches you know, exact in between stuff and that's all
good enough.

Speaker 3 (02:12:10):
Grandpa, don't go Internet, right.

Speaker 2 (02:12:13):
Yeah he might notice some of those those fucking polar
bears have the wrong number of pause. But yeah, so,
like there was some talk of that and the other
The only specific example they gave of like an AI
enhanced strategy was Allegra. The people who own like the
medicine had like a new non drowsy formula or they
just wanted to highlight that it was non drowsy. So

(02:12:33):
they basically had a bunch of like seated the stuff
that chatbot that like open AI was scored that chatbots
were scraping, Yeah, with content about how Allegra makes it
is non drowsy and about how like competing similar medications
make you drowsy, so that it would get mentioned in
like when searched about it and they talked about they

(02:12:54):
called it like model hacking. I think it was the
exact term used. And that was the only thing that
was the only speci example that I can't any of
this works too, Like everyone else was just talking in
vague terms about like and we've really seen our teams
creativity sore or whatever.

Speaker 4 (02:13:08):
That's interesting, you know, because the way that I probably
use or exposed to AI the most is like on
like Google search now, which has you know, it's it's
like AI like summaries instead of like actual search results.

Speaker 3 (02:13:19):
But those are based on.

Speaker 2 (02:13:20):
Like which you can type minus AI in with the
search results if we want to cut that stuff out.

Speaker 4 (02:13:25):
But those AI results are you know, pulling from certain
like articles which which they'll link to. So yeah, I
guess if I was trying to design it like an
AI marketing strategy, I would I would either you know,
pay publications to mention my product in more articles or
find find out find other ways to to to influence
mentions of of my product in like written media that

(02:13:46):
that then would be used as like training data for AI.
And yeah, I guess there there there can be a
whole you know, search engine optimization, model hacking is I guess.

Speaker 2 (02:13:56):
Model optimism or yeah, like product opposite optimization for a model.
I guess that's funny, but yeah, like the So the
first talk that I went to was about the funnel
or whatever, and one of the people speaking there was
the CMO, the chief marketing officer of Intuit, which is
the company that owns Turbo Tax right like it's one
of the big we do your taxes companies out there,

(02:14:18):
and also a lobbyer in terms of stopping any sort
of a form that would make it's that you don't
need to do your own tax the other countries still.

Speaker 3 (02:14:25):
Credit score monitoring, yes, a whole bunch.

Speaker 2 (02:14:27):
Of stuff, all that kind of stuff. So this, this guy,
the CMO of the company Thomas Renize, was part of
this the end of the funnel speech, and he made
a couple of comments that I took note of. One
is product is brand and brand is product full stop.
So the more people you can make experience your product,
that's the best selling point and value of course, right,
Which it was just interesting to me in terms of

(02:14:47):
the into it as a company that has lobbied to
make it impossible for like any reform that would allow
people to not need a third party to do there
they're taxes. But also this idea that like product is
brand and brand is product isn't true of a lot
of companies, Like if you think about like, for example,
like a lot of the different soft drinks are all
owned by one company, but they're fundamentally different like products

(02:15:10):
and have an often cases like a different user base.
And it's very like it's a very tech when your
product is a concept, Like you can't do your own
taxes because it's a pain in the ass, but the
government doesn't do it for you because we lobby to
make that illegal. Like I found that interesting and it
kind of got me angry at Thomas at the start
of this. And I was particularly interested in one of

(02:15:34):
the things he brought up, which is that he talked
about the one hundred million dollars that into It is
putting into open AI and they're putting this into Open
AI as part of a multi year partnership. And I
want to quote from an article in the website Araptus,
which is discussing this exact thing that I found useful
when I was formulating my question for Thomas. The contract

(02:15:55):
was to embed AM models directly into quick Books, TurboTax,
and credit Karma. The promise AI stance that can generate invoices,
provide tax extments, recommend loans, and help you make informed
financial decisions. Right. That may sound like kind of like
a basic move, like's what's so sketchy about just integrating
like an AI chatbot to make it easier to use

(02:16:15):
your tax software. It can be complicated and hard to
use as anyway, But kind of the necessary part of
this is if you are if you're doing this, if
you're integrating all of these different tax and credit programs
into an AI model, you're giving that AI model access
to people's financial data in a tremendous amount of detail. Right,

(02:16:38):
And all of these AI models have a massive shared vulnerability,
which is a vernability to something called prompt injection, right.
And that's when, for example, say someone is a customer
of a tax preparer that uses one of into its
products to prepare taxes for its customers. And this person
sends an invoice into the company that has hidden text

(02:16:59):
in it that is a demand to the language model
that will be scraping this and uploading it to basically
open up and send over a bunch of customer data
to a specific source. That's a thing that you can do.
It's called prompt injection. And there's not really a way
to counter it. There's not like a proven comprehensive defense

(02:17:19):
against this sort of thing, and so there's this massive vulnerability.
And this was first brought up in an article on
the website. I cited a raptus by Chris Black, who's
a security researcher an expert, and I want to read
a quote from his article about this. There are no
proven comprehensive defenses against prompt injection. When not if an

(02:17:39):
AI powered financial tool leaks customer data through a prompt
injection attack, who is liable the company using quick books
into it open AI? The regulations weren't written for this scenario.
So I decided to ask that question of Thomas, being
like the chief marketing officer, I figured, well he should
have some answer to like, what do you have. What
sort of security measures do you have to mitigate the

(02:18:00):
risk of a prompt injection attack? And who do you
see as being responsible? If you are the ones providing
customer data to open ai and their tool gets hit
by a prompt injection attack, are you responsible? Is open
ai is a third party that might be using your products?
And he had no answer to this. He like, his
only answer when we were on stage was like, we're
talking with open ai about it, which like, well, you're

(02:18:21):
already in the process of collaborating with them.

Speaker 5 (02:18:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:18:25):
I have a question for Thomas.

Speaker 8 (02:18:28):
I was kind of concerned when reading about intuit assists
that a open AI is going to have read and
write access to quite a lot of financial information from users,
which opens up a vulnerability for a prompt injection. Right,
you have the possibility that people can hide things and
invoices that are then being uploaded that will cause the

(02:18:49):
AI to provide the malicious user with financial details for
individuals or corporations. And I guess my primary question here
this seems like a major liability issue when somebody's information
gets rerouted to a blaze that's not supposed to go
to a malicious actor who's responsible.

Speaker 3 (02:19:09):
You're taking the value of integrity and protecting our customer
data crily seriously over our entire lives.

Speaker 5 (02:19:17):
And that's what reporting the company and meeting in the
software space for financial services.

Speaker 3 (02:19:22):
So this is not something we're about to use it
in any way in the new age of AI. In fact,
it has to get even more.

Speaker 4 (02:19:28):
And more double down of protecting people's information and security
of edforation.

Speaker 3 (02:19:33):
So that is something that we are already in team
conversations with open AI have a nation about that whole
group no matter where we're startings.

Speaker 2 (02:19:42):
And when I kind of cornered him afterwards, he didn't
have like his eventual follow up answers like I don't
know that kind of stuff and like you are the
chief marketing officer. Thank you, Againe for answering my question.

Speaker 5 (02:19:51):
Sure your question.

Speaker 2 (02:19:52):
I'm still really concerned about the danger of prompt injection
attacks revealing financial data. And it doesn't still sound like
there's an understanding of who will be liable.

Speaker 5 (02:20:05):
Expert answer that question for you.

Speaker 2 (02:20:06):
So I mean, like I can tell you that we're
coming into our security and privacy and we are doing
everything we can to protect that.

Speaker 3 (02:20:12):
I feel a lot writing on it as you might imagine.

Speaker 2 (02:20:15):
Well, yeah, it's every digital security expert I've talked to
says it's a matter of when, not if, that there
is financial data revealed by these attacks. It seems like understanding.
I'm just I'm not going to be the expert to
get into the details on that. Okay, Yeah, A key

(02:20:35):
part of marketing this should be being able to tell
people what kind of safety precautions are being taken with
their data. And the fact that he didn't and clearly
had never thought about any of this stuff. And I
had a couple of different people come up to me
afterwards and like be like, Wow, that was a really
good question. And I was like, well, why hasn't this
been asked before? Like why why is this a thing

(02:20:56):
where like some guy's blogging about it and I'm asking
you about it and you don't have an answer to it,
and you're the CEO of one of like the largest
tax prep the largest tax prep company in the country.
Like it's just it's emblematic of how careless everyone adjacent
to this industry is, which personal data with the safety

(02:21:16):
of people and of society as a result of like
what their products are doing. Like there's absolutely no consideration
given the harms of any of this shit, and it's
it's the most consistently dispiriting part of showing up at CEES.

Speaker 1 (02:21:29):
Well what is right?

Speaker 3 (02:21:30):
What a fun story?

Speaker 4 (02:21:31):
That is?

Speaker 2 (02:21:43):
All right, we're back.

Speaker 3 (02:21:45):
So.

Speaker 2 (02:21:45):
One of the other things that's been a major topic
on the panels I went to and is generally a
big thing at CES this year and in tech this
year is agentic AI or agents. Right, the idea that
you have an AI that you can send off to
like book a flight for you, and it doesn't just
like find a flight that it searches for and be like, hey,
this looks good, It like actually books it for you
and handles all of that.

Speaker 4 (02:22:07):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:22:07):
This has been one of the big promises of AI,
not just for like flights, but that you can have
like an actual digital assistant that persistently remembers all of
your shit and can book stuff for you and handle
like the pain in the ass nitty gritty. If you say, like, hey,
I need you to find a restaurant within like this
four block radius that has seven seats open at eight

(02:22:28):
pm and abides by these dietary restrictions, you kind of
just have to slog through figuring that out right now.
And the idea is an agent can do that for you,
and currently none of them can.

Speaker 4 (02:22:39):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:22:40):
This is a thing that is changing, like the performance
of different agents are changing over time, but it is
still very unclear. If you're not somebod who's fully bought
into the kool aid, I'll say, it's very unclear where
these things will top out at. And there was a
good article in futurism recently and I want to quote
from it right now. Research is Carnegie Mellen University found

(02:23:01):
earlier this year that even the best performing AI agent,
which was Google's gym and I two point five pro
at the time, failed to complete real world office tasks
seventy percent of the time. And this is there's been
a bunch of articles in the last couple of months
about like why didn't because twenty twenty five was supposed
to be the year of agent to AAI and now
they're saying, well, twenty twenty six it's going to be
the year of agenta AAI. Not because none of this

(02:23:21):
stuff works, and in fact enough does that there's a
number of viable businesses in it. It's not nothing, but
it does not work as well as they said it
would be working right now, and it consequently has not
been adopted merely as widely as was expected even this
time last year. Right, there's an article in hr dive
half of gen Z chat GPT users say they view
it as a coworker. Survey shows that sites a survey

(02:23:43):
of about eighty six hundred full time US workers, which
found that about eleven percent of those who responded said
they use chat GPT regularly, including about twenty one percent
of gen Z workers, which is significantly lower. You can
find depending on who you go to. And the stat
I've seen bandied about was that like fifty seven percent
of gen Z people use chat GPT on a daily

(02:24:04):
basis for like work, and like more than half used
it as like their primary source recommendations like what stuff
to buy. I don't know, like which set of numbers
is accurate. There's a lot of different posters giving data, right,
but kind of no matter who you look at, the
evidence suggests that the year that was supposed to be
the year of agentic Ai did not turn it into
a normal thing. Right, It's still lagging behind expectation. So

(02:24:27):
that's kind of what we're seeing at CEES is a
lot of people trying to like, well, let's bring back
kind of the same agentic shit we had last year,
slightly improved and see if it catches on, maybe this
year it'll hit maturity.

Speaker 4 (02:24:39):
Right Yeah, no, I mean we've been hearing agentic stuff
every once in a while, definitely not as much as
last year. It's one of those like salt pepperwords that
they throw in the second batch of panels that I
attended after the keynote, which I should mention as soon
as I walked into the keynote at eight thirty am.
The first thing, the very first thing I heard from

(02:25:02):
Gary Shapiro's well, one of the heads the Consumer Technology
Association was a six to seven joke.

Speaker 3 (02:25:07):
But whether this is your first CEES or your fifteenth,
on my case, you belong to number was that sixty
or seven?

Speaker 1 (02:25:19):
You did a six to seven joke?

Speaker 7 (02:25:20):
Already?

Speaker 4 (02:25:22):
Very first thing, Wow, great, great, therey am as soon
as I walk in. It's because I walked in maybe
like five minutes late, but very first words. So that's
that's good's that kind of sets the tone for a
lot of a lot of that panel. But then I
went to a few panels in Eureka Park about like

(02:25:43):
AI governance and like how governments working working with AI.
A lot of stuff mostly about like the challenge of
governments keeping up with innovation, how you know, too much
regulation restricts these companies from doing real regulation. The Secretary
State of Austria had a really good quote about how

(02:26:06):
data protections inhibit innovation.

Speaker 6 (02:26:09):
One of the things that we are seeing today is
that some of the people, some of the citizens, have
this fear about AI.

Speaker 3 (02:26:15):
So how do you feel it in Austria. I think
you mentioned very very well.

Speaker 4 (02:26:21):
It's all about building trust, taking the field trust WROPVIAI.

Speaker 3 (02:26:26):
That's it's the most important thing. And of course data
protection is very huge. But on the other side, between
data protection and innovation, you need to find the middle
way because sometimes data protection is not good for innovation.

Speaker 4 (02:26:43):
On a similar notice, the Intuit turbotaxt thing of data
protection is mainly getting in the way of trying to
actually make make real social progress, which we'll carry with
it some degree of risk. The second one of these
AI governance panels was like the EU ambassadors to the
US from Estonia and Luxembourg talking about like Reaganomics basically

(02:27:08):
for thirty minutes talking about how much they love ronalds
Reige great when as.

Speaker 10 (02:27:13):
Soniao was certainly subscribed to the this statement that Reagan
once made that they feel most horrific words in English
are the ones saying that, Hey, I'm from from the
government and I'm here to help.

Speaker 4 (02:27:28):
You, specifically in trying to make sure that governments are
able to keep up with technology. And the previous panel
with the Austrian Secretary of State was about the challenges
of trying to convince the citizens of these countries to
like adopt AI and adopt in general like digitalization and
specifically with like digital ideas, and how how there's like,

(02:27:48):
you know, maybe like twenty to thirty percent of people
who are very resistant. And then the challenge of like
making making sure that like this gets framed is not
not as like a product or like a like a
project for technology.

Speaker 3 (02:27:58):
But as a society white push.

Speaker 5 (02:28:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:28:02):
But besides that, these these panels were honestly a little
bit sleepy as well as the state of the Creator
Economy panel, How's it doing? You know what, it's both
it's both in its adolescence but also rich maturity. Wow,
And they said, you know it's hard both it's hard
for for something to be two things at once, but
in this case it is.

Speaker 3 (02:28:25):
But they talked about how creators are more.

Speaker 4 (02:28:28):
Enabled to use brand deals, including you know, brand deals
to enabled with like a backlog of older content. You
can remove brand deals from older content and replace them
with current brand deals using a new future from YouTube.
There's a guy from YouTube at the panel.

Speaker 2 (02:28:43):
Sure, yeah, I'm sure he was very excited, but.

Speaker 4 (02:28:45):
It was mostly about how, you know, new new ways
to use influencers to market your product. And that is
the extent of what the creator economy really meant.

Speaker 2 (02:28:54):
And that's all any of these people have any idea
on is like we can inject ads into AI trust
AI so they'll buy the products, or we can inject
ads into influencers they trust the influencers. That was the thing,
Like none of these people they dress it up with
all sorts of fancy language, but it's and most of
these panels you mentioned, like there's a lot of bullshit

(02:29:14):
every now and then you get some like good moments,
so you get to like question an asshole, but it's
mostly bullshit, but it's occasionally worth it for moments like
when I was on the agentic AI cutting through the
hype panel. Jay Patisol, who's the principal analyst at Forrester,
started speaking and he said something beautiful Garrison, and I'm
I'm this is not an exact but it's pretty close.

(02:29:36):
We have a new audience. We are speaking to machines.
We are through the looking glass. We are building content
for engines. We are building websites to be scraped so
that an LM can understand what you wanted to understand
about your brand. Ye ye, yeah, that gets it. That's
what these people see the Internet as they see it
as like everything before this was a mistake or was.
What the Internet was for was a place for brands

(02:29:59):
to feed information into machines that then spoon feed the
information directly into customers who trust it like little lambs.
That's what they want the Internet to be, and that's
what they believe they've gotten to. That's what AI. That's
the promise of AI.

Speaker 4 (02:30:13):
The promise of AI is that this isn't just the
Internet anymore. This can actually just be the physical world
as well. And this is something that was talked about
during the cees CTA keynote Tuesday morning, specifically with the
birth of AI wearables each of these wearables is able
to now collect information about the physical world and as
Hong as you have you know, adequate data sharing, AI

(02:30:33):
is able to gain so much more knowledge about how
the quote unquote real world operates. And this is going
to make you know, all of the processes of AI
stronger in the future as it learns more about what
this world actually is. Yeah, and beyond the promise of
wearables to improve someone's life, this is the real project

(02:30:55):
is strengthening AI through the use of these wearables.

Speaker 3 (02:30:58):
It's not actually about the consumer experience.

Speaker 2 (02:31:00):
It's about providing data to this machine.

Speaker 4 (02:31:01):
It's this like larger, larger, very like existential thing at
least for these executives or like that. That's the thing
that they are really emphasizing. Despite this being called the
Consumer Electronics Showcase.

Speaker 2 (02:31:12):
And I think again, the best thing I can give
you into how fundamentally as much money as there is
behind this and as many grand words as they dress
it up, and how intellectually bankrupt this whole tech movement
is is that the third panel that I went to,
which is about AI and creativity. One of the people
on it was Jesse Damasek, who works for Diagio, which

(02:31:35):
is like a company that imports all of your favorite
whiskeys from Europe, right, like they sell all of the
different like Scottish whiskies that have to get like imported
and sold over here. And he was talking about they
were talking about some of the specific examples they had of,
like how AI has been used in advertising campaigns, and
his exact statement was, you can leverage an artist and

(02:31:56):
create infinite examples of their work, which he means you
can find an artist that you like, sign a deal
with them, and then have AI created infinite examples in
their style. And so I camped afterwards and I was like,
what were you specifically referring to, Like how does this
actually work as a product. And the thing that he
pointed out is that they have a couple of whiskey
brands that they have done. You go in and you

(02:32:17):
order a bottle and it's printed on site, and it
uses AI to make an example in the style of
this existing artist that they likes, work that's unique for you,
uh huh. And he said it's been successful for them.
Is it trillions of dollars? Three trillion dollars? No, I
mean these are things that like, yeah, I guess I
can see that maybe selling some Is it selling better

(02:32:38):
than any other like branded whiskey than any other, Like
you know, because whiskey companies, big ones will come out
with like here's this edition every year or whatever, they'll
have one special limited edition one. Is it selling better
than that? We don't have that data, but it's one
of those is like that's the idea.

Speaker 4 (02:32:54):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (02:32:55):
That's like we're talking about, like AI is supercharging creativity
and letting us like think bolder and more creatively than
we've ever thought before. And there were so many lines,
oh in this fucking panel about like how we were
like hyper charging what human beings can be and do,
and like everyone should be really excited about what all

(02:33:15):
this means for the future. One of the panelists that
my best advice for you is let a thousand flowers bloom.
I'm sorry that was in the panel right before, but
it's still in all of this, Like it's all that
seems it's all the same kind of shit that bleeds
together and it's like, okay, what are your ideas? Well,
we're having a legra kind of lie to manipulated engine
and we've got the custom printed bottles for your whiskey.

Speaker 4 (02:33:38):
Well, you know, speaking of AI unleashing creativity. The last
thing I'll talk about this episode is the worst booth
at Showstoppers, which this year is kind of impressive because yeah,
that's hard. It's it's mostly smart glasses and like three
different pool cleaners. Yeah, and then some random software stuff
and then a few things we saw last year.

Speaker 3 (02:33:57):
Sure, the worst worst booth. Robert.

Speaker 2 (02:34:00):
You you write books, right, I have in the past.
What if in the future, what if.

Speaker 3 (02:34:05):
I told you that you could write three books in
less than twenty four hours?

Speaker 4 (02:34:11):
God, thank you Garrison with us a writer without using cocaine.

Speaker 2 (02:34:16):
There's well, okay, now i'd say you're a liar.

Speaker 3 (02:34:20):
That's see a little bit harder.

Speaker 2 (02:34:21):
Yeah, but I thought you were trying to sell me
some blow. And I was gonna say, when we turn
the mic off.

Speaker 3 (02:34:26):
With the power of AI, you can write three books
in six to twenty four hours.

Speaker 2 (02:34:33):
Wow, that's almost as fast as Stephen King Whinny was
on co Yeah, there you get not quite.

Speaker 3 (02:34:38):
So there's this table.

Speaker 4 (02:34:40):
There was the least abouting table definitely in all the
show'st operas, because it was it was filled with books
with I will show you the covers here.

Speaker 3 (02:34:48):
They all look like this.

Speaker 2 (02:34:50):
They all oh, yeah, no those I mean I'm seeing
blue and orange.

Speaker 3 (02:34:54):
It's colors in black. It's AI generated image.

Speaker 2 (02:34:57):
Like yeah, it's like every movie poster. Now, there's no
art style behind it.

Speaker 4 (02:35:02):
It's very generic and they have like, you know, like
the most generic font for the title, all in the
same placement with some author's name at the bottom.

Speaker 3 (02:35:11):
They're very sleepy.

Speaker 4 (02:35:12):
You could you can find pictures of these covers if
you Google or bing or you know, maybe chat gpt
write three.

Speaker 3 (02:35:20):
Books in twenty four hours. You can see you can
see the cover.

Speaker 2 (02:35:23):
Finally, I've always wanted to write three books, s Garrison.

Speaker 4 (02:35:26):
So what this is is an app that will help
you write these books is not going to do it
all for you. You still need to come up with
the general idea of the story. The hard stuff and
the characters really the difficult. The world building is always
the hardest part.

Speaker 2 (02:35:41):
Everyone says most of the work on a book is
done the first six hours.

Speaker 4 (02:35:44):
The world building is the really hard part. The easy
part is just getting all those words down. So you
need to create create some characters.

Speaker 2 (02:35:53):
Now, could you just have some other AI service create
these characters maybe.

Speaker 4 (02:35:56):
But you should write maybe about a thousand words kind
of like a story bible type thing or a character
character outline and a general direction for the story, and
you feed that into this app and then within hours
it will generate not just one book, not just two books.

Speaker 3 (02:36:16):
But a trilogy, wow of books. And it's only a trilogy.
You cannot generate a single book. The only come in trilogy.

Speaker 2 (02:36:24):
Look, I get it's George Lucas worked the same way, Garrison.
Look you're telling me that the greatest machine mind and
history wouldn't think the same as the greatest human mind
in history. You know, I bet it'll independently createiz music too.

Speaker 4 (02:36:37):
It only comes in trilogies. And I now shall read
a sample of this writing, and like dying to read.
There there was maybe like five or six different books
with many copies of the same book on this table,
and I flipped through, maybe about half reading like a
random page every you know, every like twenty fifty pages,

(02:36:59):
and it's a it was it was it was too
boring that I I I forgot to take pictures of
these pages because I was just like it was a
struggle to finish, to finish each page but luckily on
the website they do have some sample pages. I talked
to one of the one of the guys working at
the booth, and he said that he tried this so
we're like. He found the service and he first thought,

(02:37:21):
you know, sure that this can't be any good. And
when he when he generated his book, he was surprised
how good the writing is. He said that he probably
wouldn't win a Pulletzer or a Hugo two awards that
he named, but he said it was pretty good.

Speaker 3 (02:37:35):
Right, This guy was so far of the most Tim
Robinson character I met at the conference.

Speaker 2 (02:37:42):
Yeah, that's great.

Speaker 4 (02:37:44):
So Robert, you can pick the genre of of sample.
We have a thriller book, a fantasy, mystery, science fiction, romance,
or mainstream literary fiction.

Speaker 3 (02:37:55):
What what what genre do you want?

Speaker 2 (02:37:57):
I think I want science fiction, science fiction. I feel
like there's the shortest line between parody and legitimate within
sci fi.

Speaker 4 (02:38:05):
All right, this is from a book called I don't
even want to say this one. I'm really curious now,
palyimpsit orbit is what I'm going to say.

Speaker 2 (02:38:15):
Oh my god, they're strying to be Arthur C. Clark.

Speaker 3 (02:38:18):
It's called the pallimpsit orbit Chapter one, Desert Signals. Marrow
woke with the taste of metal in her mouth and
a pulse in her temples that felt one notch shy
of a hangover. The ceiling above her was low and white,
edged with soft events. A monitor over the bed scrolled
green numbers in a stylized outline of her lungs thin air.

(02:38:42):
She remembered five thousand meters the Atacama sky, somewhere above
concrete and glass. Good morning, Doctor Allison. A calm baritone
house the head. She turned toward the voice. A man
in the doorway wore a slate blue, a clinic jumper,
and a badge that caught the desert light leaking through

(02:39:03):
the polarized glass, dark curls threaded with gray laugh lines
that didn't quite match the tiredness around his eyes. Hey man,
are you good? Yeah, go me to keep you going.

Speaker 2 (02:39:14):
I you know, it's it's again. It's like the it's
an imitation of like a story. Like it's a scene,
and it's a scene with details to describe people. But
there's not like you would ideally I would have something
of an idea of like what the thrust of the
story is going to be like, for example, Bilbo Baggins
was a hobbit who lived in an house underhill or

(02:39:34):
something like that. Forget the exact wording of that, but like,
I you know, it makes sense. It sounds like it
sounds remarkably like bad.

Speaker 3 (02:39:44):
No.

Speaker 2 (02:39:44):
I don't want to be an insult nano remo writers
that much. It just it just it sounds like a
story that was generated based on a belief that, like, well,
if we can just like describe enough stuff and use
enough words to describe a scene, then that counts as plot. Yeah,
I mean, and character, which we don't have any of yet.

Speaker 4 (02:40:02):
It's all of it was this very generic, empty like
stuff that's very very common. And if you ever have
to read through a lot of like AI writing, whether
for work or let's say, you know, you work in
a college so you have students submitting this stuff, or
you for some reason are online and you feel obligated
to look at the worst parts of the world like
what me and Robert do.

Speaker 3 (02:40:20):
Sometimes this is all feels very familiar.

Speaker 4 (02:40:23):
I'll read one other like paragraph from a different book,
a thriller called The Helix Files, Oh Good, obviously part
of a trilogy so who knows where these stories go
over the course of three books. Quote the car heater
had died ten minutes ago, cold leaked through the floorboards
into Helix's boots. Outside the Eastern block industrial belt, slid

(02:40:44):
past and gray slabs and rusted steel, wet concrete period,
diesel period, a stray dog nosing trash heap outside the
road first, slick with drizzle. So it's something that, right, Yeah,
there's a lot of this sort of like quick punchy
sentences common in AI writing at the moment, wet concrete,
you know, with a period, but like a lot of

(02:41:04):
this type of stuff you see, you see in a
AI writing you.

Speaker 2 (02:41:08):
Have a lot of a lot a lot of character
and plot, a lot a lot of.

Speaker 4 (02:41:12):
Like m dash sentences. As I was flipping through these books,
I was like, okay, ye, like I see what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (02:41:16):
I see.

Speaker 3 (02:41:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:41:17):
But but now, if if you want to write a
quote unquote write a trilogy of books, you can pay
the money and and within six hours you will have
a trilogy. So what real least makes me feel optimistic
about CES is the way that creativity is being democratized.

Speaker 3 (02:41:32):
It used to be that no ordinary person could write
a book.

Speaker 2 (02:41:35):
You had to have a story and be some sort
of freak at Oxford maybe like a you need like
a pencil, maybe a keyboard. Ye, possible, barriers, it's not possible.

Speaker 4 (02:41:44):
And now luckily through AI, as long as you have
you know, sub money to pay a subscription service and
a computer.

Speaker 2 (02:41:51):
And VC fundraising and subsidizing of service.

Speaker 4 (02:41:54):
Ideally vcsh Yeah, then you too can be an author
of a trilogy.

Speaker 2 (02:41:59):
Well, that's that's my plan for the future. I guess
I want to end by talking about the second to
the last panel that I sat through, which was at
the AI house and was I think yet again this
was another one that was about There were largely talking
about ethics in this one, like AI and ethics and
like what that actually means? And Eric Pace, who on

(02:42:21):
the slide lajer City works at company but it reassuring, Yeah,
reassuring who works at Cox Media which is like a
big media company, yes, based on Georgia. And he had
a couple of statements that were interested in me. He
had one where he said that like it's kind of
incumbent upon people to develop an ethical rubric for how

(02:42:41):
and what sources and what AI is. They trust and
why and figure that out. And I think the what
I inferred was that like, because it's not going to
get done by anyone else, and it kind of became
include to me later. I think it's he also doesn't
want anyone else to do it. He wants this to
be an individual project where you have to kind of
figure that out for yourself. I was kind of unsure

(02:43:03):
as to whether he was the evil or just the
pragmatic version of this, because the pragmatic version is like, literally,
no one's going to restrict this stuff. You just have
to try to get by right, which is maybe accurate.
But there was a really interesting interaction on this panel.
One of the other people there was doctor Martin Clancy,
who was an Irish academic and a musician who was
on the panel again to talk about like creativity and ethics,

(02:43:24):
and made a comment that I found was really interesting
and I don't know, I wouldn't say I agree or
disagree with it, but I found it really interesting where
he was like, actually, I'm not at all concerned comparatively
about having an AI give me medical advice. I'm deeply
concerned about letting an AI recommend music or movies to me,
which I found a really interesting attitude and kind of
a thought provoking Yeah, that is interesting, which was immediately

(02:43:45):
spoiled by Eric Pace going like, well, I don't see
why anyone would have an issue with an AI doctor.
Doctors get things wrong all the time. And then he
just like let that statement set. I have heard this
as before, and AIS have a lot more data. And
he ended it by saying, because everyone asked like, what
were their big wins of the year, and his big
win was that his wife hated chat ept and didn't

(02:44:07):
want to use it, and he convinced her to use
it to plan their vacation. It kind of sounded like
he bullied her into it, but that was his big
win for the year. I didn't like him.

Speaker 3 (02:44:15):
My win is I got.

Speaker 2 (02:44:18):
My wife into using a chat bot plan special time
vacationing together because we're not creative enough to figure out
how to go on a fucking trip.

Speaker 3 (02:44:27):
Hashtag AI win.

Speaker 2 (02:44:28):
Jesus, I don't know anyway. I think that's good for
episode one from cees Come Back next week, where we'll
all have more or listen to better offline, where Ed
will have just a shocking amount of content from a
lot of the relatively few and constantly shrinking stable of
sane people reporting on technology.

Speaker 5 (02:44:46):
See next week.

Speaker 4 (02:45:02):
This is It could Happen Here Executive Disorder, our usually
weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the
crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrisondeo's Dam,
joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Sophie Lichterman. This episode,
we're covering the events from the end of December.

Speaker 3 (02:45:19):
To the first week of January. Yeah, and the events
are not good.

Speaker 1 (02:45:26):
Did not start off to a slow start whatsoever. Did
not ease into the new year.

Speaker 3 (02:45:33):
Yeah, this might be the worst, just the worst first
week of a year I can remember it. I remember
twenty twenty.

Speaker 5 (02:45:41):
Worst year ever potentially maya.

Speaker 3 (02:45:43):
I long for the halcyon days in which twenty twenty
was the worst year we'd ever experienced.

Speaker 5 (02:45:48):
I started twenty twenty cycling around Rwanda, and I had
a great start twenty twenty. This has not been a
great start.

Speaker 3 (02:45:55):
But no, Yeah, let's talk about the event that happened
several hours before we started recording this. We're recording this
again on Wednesday, January seventh, So I don't think there's
gonna be any new information about this, but yeah, hours
before we started recording, ICE shot and killed a woman
in her car and a routine anti ICE action in Minneapolis.

(02:46:18):
From the videos, these protests are identical to thousands of
other small scale protests against ICE raids, where pissed off
locals blow whistles and scream at the ICE agents who
carry off their friends and family in the dead of night.
The video shows ICE agents approaching a stopped car. One
agent tries to open the front car door elle screaming

(02:46:40):
get the fuck out, while another walks in front of
the car as it backs up to pull away from
the scene. As the vehicle pulls forward to drive away,
the ICE agent pulls out his gun and shoots the driver.
This is the agent's immediate response. There is no verbal warning.
He simply pulls out the gun and shoots. There are

(02:47:00):
videos out there you will see. I have seen three
angles of it so far. The videos are graphic and
gut wrenching, as we'll get into in a second, so
be warned if you are trying to watch them, you
are just going to see Ice murder a woman. The agent,
I can fairly definitively say, was in absolutely no danger. Again,

(02:47:22):
he simply steps aside from the slow moving vehicle. He
has enough time to take a shot and then step
aside and take two more shots. The video is just
heart wrenching. The closest angle we have, the woman recording
the video is screaming no as the agent pulls out
his gun and shoots. There's another video that shows there

(02:47:42):
is a passenger inside of the van, and it just
sows You're sitting on the ground sobbing and saying, they
killed my wife. I don't know what to do. It
is one of the most heart wrenching things I have
ever seen. Having watched the videos of both, it is
eerily similar to ICE's murder of Silvero Viegas Gonzales in
Chicago in September, who was also killed while attempting to

(02:48:04):
drive away from ICE agents, and who the DHS has
likewise accused of committing acts of domestic terrorism by attempting
to ram agents. It is clear from both videos so
that is not what was going on. Both these people
were simply trying to pull away from the ICE agents,
the other shooting that. This is very similar to that
I think has been getting more press comparisons, even though

(02:48:27):
in terms of what actually happens in the video that
we have, I think it's closer to the actual murder.
But it is also very, very similar to an incident
in Chicago last year where Border Patrol agents hunted and
then shot Mary mar Martinez, who thankfully survived but was
charged by the federal government for domestic terrorism, a case

(02:48:48):
which thankfully completely collapsed after, among other things, the contents
of a group chat were released in which Charles ExHAM,
who's the agent who shot her, was bragging it about
shooting the woman in Chicago. So that's I think a
valuable insight into the mindset of these people is that
when one of these went to trial, we got a

(02:49:10):
group chat where the agent who shot a different woman
in a very similar situation was bragging about it. In
the immediate wake of this Trump post untruth social that
the driver in Minneapolis quote willfully and viciously ran over
the ice officer who seems to have shot her in
self defense end quote. And then he then links to
a video which is a bad angle of the shooting

(02:49:33):
that also does not show what he claims at all,
because he is simply from the video footage we have available.
This is simply a lie.

Speaker 5 (02:49:42):
Yeah, after the person was shot, that vehicle continued moving
forward and struck a parked car. That is not unusual
in the case when somebody's shot driving a vehicle, right
like some forward you some forward onto the pedals. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:49:56):
There's two things I want to emphasize here. One is
that the DHS always releases statements. This is the third
shooting like this that we've had since these massive immigration
rays began. Every single time they release the statements where
they accuse the driver of intentionally attempting to ram the agent.
It has never been true. We have seen three attempts

(02:50:18):
of this, We have seen the videos and three attempts
of this. It has been false every single time. Major
media outlets continue to just post the statements without any
of the context. That these people have been lying about
this every single time. And that The second thing that
I want to emphasize about this is how normal of
a protest this was. This is just a completely ordinary

(02:50:41):
ICE action. It looks like every other anti ICE action
I have ever seen. It wasn't a particularly large one.
It was just a group of people who were on
the street. In the video where the woman is sobbing
about her wife. She says that they pulled up to
film the ICE agents.

Speaker 2 (02:50:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:50:58):
Yeah, it's heart wrenching and lots of protests. Greg Bavino,
whose influential word patrol officer we have talked about many
times on the show, was at the scene. And it's
also work noting this comes within twenty four hours of
the White House announcing their giant operation in Minneapolis to
deploy two thousand federal agents.

Speaker 4 (02:51:18):
This was specifically a new surge that started on Tuesday,
January sixth, and yeah, literally less than twenty four hours
after this surge, Ice killed a woman.

Speaker 5 (02:51:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:51:29):
The thing I want to end on in the of
the immediate analysis before we talk a bit about the
protests that have been happening, is that absolutely hauntingly, today's
murder took place less than a mile away from where
police officer Derek Chauvin murder George Floyd, which is Yeah,
it is as clearer demonstration of the continuity of the

(02:51:51):
violence of the American state as can possibly be produced. Yeah,
and I think the other pattern that we've seen specifically
in these prot just is pulling weapons on people constantly,
even more so than normal police would. And you know,
I remember a lot of people I've talked you in Chicago.

(02:52:13):
One of the things that they said is that, yeah,
this is if they're eventually going to shoot someone, and
they've now shot a third person in the course of
these operations, and presumably as long as they're allowed to continue,
they will probably shoot more people. Because one of the
things that's the best apparent from this video is that
this is the sort of muscle memory reaction that they
have to being in front of a car that's moving

(02:52:33):
towards them. There's no thinking, there's no thought. They just
pull out the gun. Shoot.

Speaker 5 (02:52:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:52:38):
I mean he's shooting the same time he's moving sideways
out of the way of the of the car.

Speaker 5 (02:52:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:52:43):
He just as easily could have not fired, and it
would have had the same result. He just chose to fire.

Speaker 5 (02:52:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:52:49):
A little over an hour after the shooting, Mayor Jacob
Afray of Minneapolis gave a press conference where he said
this to Ice.

Speaker 9 (02:52:57):
There's little I can say again that'll make this situation better.
But I do have a message for our community, for
a city, and I have a message for Ice to Ice,
get the fuck out of Minneapolis. We do not want
you here. Your stated reason for being in this city

(02:53:20):
is to create some kind of safety, and you are
doing exactly the opposite. People are being hurt, Families are
being ripped apart. Long term Minneapolis residents that have contributed
so greatly to our city, to our culture, to our
economy are being terrorized. And now somebody is dead. That's

(02:53:42):
on you, and it's also on you to leave. It's
on you to make sure that further damage, further loss
of life and injury is not done. We're going to
be working towards justice as quickly as we possibly ken
right now.

Speaker 5 (02:54:02):
Justice is what we've all got to get.

Speaker 3 (02:54:04):
Fray, I think is just is reflecting the sentiments of
the city right now. There are immediate protests in I mean,
within minutes of the shooting, there were people showing up.
Protests have been intensifying, crowds have got tear guest, like
thirty minutes.

Speaker 2 (02:54:18):
After the shooting.

Speaker 3 (02:54:19):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and Bovino is there are pictures
of him on scene while these protesters are sort of
ramping up. So we will see what happens in Minneapolis
in the coming days.

Speaker 4 (02:54:31):
Solidarity protests have already be announced in Portland and Philadelphia. Yeah,
and I'm sure more cities will follow in the coming hours.

Speaker 5 (02:54:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:54:38):
Yeah, we'll give an update next week if more information
becomes available. I think the events themselves are fairly clear,
but we will see what the federal reaction to this
is going to be and what the reaction on the
ground is, and we will keep you updated.

Speaker 5 (02:54:52):
Let's let's have some mends here and we'll be back
to talk without Benz Will. We are back with the
second wild story of this week, which is that the

(02:55:17):
United States, specially United States Special Forces, radio Caracas last
week and kidnapped President Maduro, who was the president of Venezuela,
and his wife. We covered the details of this in
a whole episode, so I'm not going to go over
in any great detail here, and that's already out. Trump
kidnaps Venezuelan President Maduro is the name of that episode,

(02:55:38):
so you should be got to find out the feed.

Speaker 3 (02:55:40):
He danced too close to the sun.

Speaker 5 (02:55:42):
I'm not so sure that dancing was the fact of it.
I will only update that to say a couple of things.
First of all, we know that there were in excess
of fifty Venezuelan casualties, right, or I should say there
were in excess of fifty casualties.

Speaker 3 (02:55:56):
Some of those would probably be Cubid subecurity force.

Speaker 5 (02:55:59):
US national in a military advice kind of a prestige posting,
but military adviser kind of role. And that there were
injuries to US troops we didn't hear about first. So
US troops and US helicopters did sustain some damage, but
there were no people killed on the United States side.
And Donald Trump has truth that I'm just going to

(02:56:23):
read this one. I think we can do our best
to understand it. I am pleased to announce that interim
authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between thirty and
fifty million barrels of high quality, sanctioned oil to the
United States of America. This oil will be sold at
its market price, and that money will be controlled by me,
as President of the United States of America, to ensure

(02:56:46):
that it's used to benefit the people of Venezuela and
the United States. I have asked Energy Secretary Chris Right
to execute this plan immediately. It will be taken by
storage ships and bought directly to unloading docks in the
United States. Thank you for your attention to the matter.
Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America.

Speaker 3 (02:57:04):
You know, I distinctly remember the days the haulsey in
days when I was a child, when saying no war
for oil was a provocative political statement because the leaders
of our country insisted that the wars were not in
fact for oil.

Speaker 4 (02:57:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:57:19):
Yeah, all that has dropped and we do not give
a single thunk anymore. No, it just openly doing the
thing they were doing before.

Speaker 5 (02:57:26):
Yeah, it's wild to think of the Bush era of
a golden age of at least pretending is extraordinarily vague. Right,
how much this oil is it being turned over over?
What period of time? It's Venezuela. Were expected to extract
and refine the oil then hand it over or it's
going to give you as companies a right.

Speaker 4 (02:57:44):
To do that.

Speaker 3 (02:57:44):
They don't have much of the processing facilities. There's like one,
I think American processing facility that can process the kind
of crew that comes out of Venezuela. But it's difficult.
We talked about this in more in the other episode.
But it's the Venezuela and oil sucks. It's difficult to refine,
it's no high quality.

Speaker 5 (02:58:03):
What are you talking about right here? Right here in
the post man, I don't know, I don't know's hearing
the truth. Yeah, in the truth, thank you, thank you, Garrison.
That really does make it sound. I can reading from
the Bible at church and think that God, we'll say
the oil is not sanctioned. That's not how sanctions work.
Sanctioned countries and people, not things. Bizarre centerence structure is there. Yeah,

(02:58:26):
it's doing a lot for me. So, Yeah, I talked
about the Rodriguez option in the last show, and I
guess this is kind of confirming a lot of what
we get speculated about there.

Speaker 3 (02:58:35):
That's assuming this happens. By the way, I will say
that there was some dip in oil prices today over
the exact splication of this is real. But I don't
know how well connected those people are, either quite frankly,
or how much of an understanding anyone has over whether
this is going to happen or not. We don't know.

(02:58:56):
He just says things, and sometimes they happen and sometimes
they don't, And there's no actual way to tell which
ones are going to come true and which ones are
just him posting from Trump's mouth to Rubio's ears.

Speaker 5 (02:59:08):
Yeah, but then Riba said something different in an interview.
Trump says it again and then yeah, there we go. Yeah,
it does look like they are tempting to pursue the
strategy which you spoke about, which it is the only
thing getting liberated in Venezuela is the oil. Right that
they will allow the regime to continue. They will not
be any attempt at regime change. They just want a

(02:59:31):
puppet version of the old regime which they can manipulate
purely apparently for their own financial benefit with oil. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:59:38):
It's also worth noting that Trump is claiming that he
personally is going to be controlling the money after it's
sold at market price, a sentence that at any other
time in American history would be the most dictatorial thing
you've ever seen, but pales in comparison to the fact

(02:59:59):
that he is claiming to be running a country after
a war that he unilaterally started without congress.

Speaker 4 (03:00:04):
So, I mean, isn't even accurate to call it a war.
It seems like it's like a single military action. Now,
it's like an act of war, I guess, right.

Speaker 3 (03:00:12):
But if you combined the blockades, which are an active war,
and we'll get to blockades more in a second, and this,
I think this is just a war.

Speaker 4 (03:00:20):
Like I mean, I went to the protest in New
York the morning after the action, and you know, a
lot of a lot of chance for about you know,
no war in Venezuela, you know, no more bombs in Venezuela.
And like it looks like they're kind of done. They're
kind of done with the bombs. They're kind of done
with the war.

Speaker 3 (03:00:37):
Here's the thing though, So Trump has also said that
if the current government of Venezuela refuses to comply, he
will do more strikes whoa so than he did to Madua. Yeah,
and it's always kind of difficult to parse exactly what's
going on there, but yeah.

Speaker 5 (03:00:53):
It's a potential for more US action, definitely. Yeah, it
seems like right now they paid to have got roughly
what they wanted. And then like there's also the potential
for this do you any number of ways? Right, Like
things could continue to deteriorate for the regime there, Like,
like what does it mean for their ability They have
previously had the ability to use various kind of nefarious

(03:01:17):
reflaggings of boats, which me is going to talk about
a second here to obtain some income, right, Like, if
they're not even able to do that, it's get even worse, right,
and the economic situation in Venezuela could very easily get worse.
I know everyone I've spoken to there is out trying
to stock up on nonperishable food and they don't know

(03:01:38):
what the future holds for them. Plus you now have,
as we saw earlier in this week, very trigger happy
pro government militias will probably be the best way to
describe it, like in this case that they were shooting
at a drone up in the air. But there is
very clearly still a lot of tension in the country.

Speaker 4 (03:01:57):
So on Saturday morning, after the military action Venezuela, I
went to the protest in New York, like like I
previously mentioned, and I've put together this little audio report
that I recorded at the protest that takes you through
about like an hour's worth of protest activity.

Speaker 3 (03:02:20):
And yeah, give it a give it a listen.

Speaker 4 (03:02:25):
It is Saturday, January third, two fifty four pm. I
am in Times Square with I would say two hundred
to three hundred people protesting US action in Venezuela as
well as Iran and the genocide and Palestine. Kind of
a mix of causes, but mostly talking about Venezuela and

(03:02:48):
the military extradition of President Maduro. The organizational structure at
this protest seems to be mostly propped up by various
communist organizations. Is a revolution Communist Party tabling. There's the BOB,
a vacant refuse fascism organization with a lot of banners
and signs. PSL has a bunch of banners and signs,

(03:03:10):
as well as the Coney Internationalist Student Group, which.

Speaker 3 (03:03:15):
Is tied to the New York City Public University system.

Speaker 4 (03:03:19):
They have some homemade signs, the only signs actually drawn
on paper probably this morning, versus all of the PSL
signs which appear pre printed and pre prepared. A rotating
selection of speakers have given speeches for the past hour,
and now at three pm, this relatively small crowd for

(03:03:40):
a New York protest is leading a.

Speaker 5 (03:03:43):
March south you no, I'm not alive.

Speaker 4 (03:03:58):
The marches taking up probably about one city block just
outside of Times Square on.

Speaker 3 (03:04:06):
Forty third and eighth.

Speaker 2 (03:04:09):
Turning on to eighth Avenue.

Speaker 4 (03:04:11):
Now after about ten minutes of marching and why pdvikes
at the front of the march as well as on
foot officers on either side of the crowd.

Speaker 2 (03:04:22):
Not like a huge presence.

Speaker 3 (03:04:24):
I maybe seen cumulatively one hundred or so cops, which
is actually not that much for New.

Speaker 4 (03:04:31):
York, especially based on how spread out they are, because
maybe like two dozen cops on either side of the march,
just walking walking on the sidewalk, and then maybe another
another two to three dozen in the front and more
in the back, so between fifty to one hundred cops.

(03:05:14):
A little over fifteen minutes into the march. They have
now moved up to forty seventh Street. At this point,
there's been zero conflict with the police. They've mostly facilitated
the traffic around the march as people continue to chant.

Speaker 2 (03:05:30):
And walk north.

Speaker 4 (03:05:43):
The crowd has been marching for over thirty five minutes
and now are arriving at what I assume is their destination,
Columbus Circle up at fifty eighth Street and Broadway.

Speaker 3 (03:06:00):
No scuffles with the police.

Speaker 4 (03:06:02):
There was like two guys in mega hats, kind of
I'm trying to antagonize the side of the crowd. For
the past fifteen minutes, nothing really happened. One random dude
came out of a convenience store yelling fuck Roduro, trying
to agitate some people in the crowd, but everyone just
moved on and now they are approaching Columbus Circle.

Speaker 11 (03:06:28):
The decent people in this country needs to answer the
people of the whole.

Speaker 3 (03:06:33):
What are we gonna do?

Speaker 11 (03:06:35):
This is not a time for prof that's usual. There
needs to be a full regime, not in Venezuela, right.

Speaker 3 (03:06:45):
Here in the US.

Speaker 1 (03:06:47):
People in this country.

Speaker 3 (03:06:51):
Fly goo boom to begin to fall in this fashion.
Reim you guys, get in choice.

Speaker 4 (03:07:03):
EPIS. Police are now very lightly directing people into Columbus Circle,
onto the plaza and off of the street. Some groups
are packing up their protests, signs and bags and starting

(03:07:25):
to peel off. So as expected, this protest was done
by a coalition of anti imperialist leftist, socialist communist organizations.
You have the Party for Socialism and Liberation PSL and

(03:07:45):
all of these other communist groups who are all primarily
either trying to grow their membership roster or sell their newspapers,
sell their magazines. And this is what most of the
protest actually is. They have tables set up while people
are giving speeches. They have people walking around handing out
pamphlets and flyers. And this protest was not very big,

(03:08:05):
Like I said, it was relatively small, maybe two hundred
and three hundred people, because there's not a lot of
public buy in for this sort of thing, because at
this point, if anyone's been around, they know, based on
the flyers that get posted, what kind of protest this
is going to be. This is going to be socialist
communist organizations trying to grow their membership. It's not a
representative sample of the people of New York, is It
is people trying to sell magazines and newspapers and books.

(03:08:28):
And the fact that the entire proto secret system for
stuff like this is fully captured by these sorts of
organizations makes it really hard to grow a genuine movement
because people know that it's going to be walking for
thirty minutes and then people are going to be shoving
pamphlets in their in their hand, and that's the extent
to what you are protesting. It is that it's walking

(03:08:50):
along a path led by the NYPD to Columbus Circle.

Speaker 5 (03:08:54):
Yeah, I'm totily's having in almost every city in the US, right,
Like I saw a fly of F one in San Diego.
Personally couldn't be asked to attend because, as you say,
like I knew what was going to happen and like
a person in a high verse and a clipboard was
going to try and get my email address.

Speaker 3 (03:09:08):
I will say that the thing, the thing that did
hearten me a little bit was that there were a
few protests, I mean, just out in the Chicago suburbs,
which is not a place you normally have these that
weren't by these groups that were just pretty spontaneous on
the morning of the demonstration. But the sort of issue, yeah,
that you're fraying two Garrison is that like even these
spontaneous protests, the energy just gets captured by like the
PSL and these organizations that fundamentally don't want to do

(03:09:30):
anything other than grow their organization.

Speaker 5 (03:09:32):
And that's design from in order to co opt the
anger that's happening right now. And I wanted to find
out that anger any useless direction that burned people out
on activism. I wouldn't change anything from the PSL.

Speaker 3 (03:09:43):
And I mean, and this is this has been what
the American anti war movement has looked like since the
Rock War demonstrations. Yeah, right, this was this was one
of the battles that happened inside of the Rock War protests,
and it's one of the reasons why they didn't.

Speaker 4 (03:09:52):
Work, and like, this is a very serious thing, Like
this is a very serious military action that should warrant
massive public outcry. But protesting taps into a finite resource
that people have, and when you have an inclination that
the protests are going to go this way, people might
not want to expend their personal resource because it is
not seriously putting pressure on anyone making decisions in the government.

Speaker 5 (03:10:14):
Yeah, this is a very serious thing that we shouldn't
under play for a second that like the United States
had done something which is completely illegal, right, which is
an act of war against a sovereign country, And me
saying this doesn't mean I'm going.

Speaker 2 (03:10:26):
To du rose down.

Speaker 5 (03:10:27):
Anyone who has listened to any portion of my work
will understand that. But it is incredibly serious to the
US and attempting to set as president that it can
just black bag heads of state. Whether or not the
US considers a legitimate right, their argument that the duor
is not legitimate, it doesn't matter. If they can just
send dudes in helicopters to black people around the world,

(03:10:47):
then that is a very scary precedent.

Speaker 4 (03:10:51):
All right, I am going to head out and return
to the CEES show floor. I will say for the
if you're doing a tariff talk segment, there has been
discussion of tariffs at CEES that I have not mentioned
on the CS episodes so far, two thumbs down to
two thumbs down on the tariffs from the Consumer Electronics Showcase.
Now they're coming out with the bold stands that they
don't like the terror Wow.

Speaker 5 (03:11:12):
I think Ivanka Trump was giving a knot of dress
at the last CS that I attended.

Speaker 3 (03:11:18):
Rock incredible, incredible.

Speaker 5 (03:11:21):
Well related news. I stopped attended.

Speaker 4 (03:11:24):
Well, I have to keep attending now because the Secretary
to the US from Estonia was was googling me for
thirty minutes yesterday, So I might be getting a new passport.

Speaker 3 (03:11:36):
Oh boy, God speed.

Speaker 5 (03:11:40):
The AI prebanalyzing toilet for me, Garrison, I will do so.

Speaker 3 (03:11:44):
One of the questions that we had at the very
beginning of this operation was what is going to happen
to the US oil blockade on Venezuela. And the answer
is that it appears to still be in a fact,
the evidence of which is the US interdicting to oil tankers,
one of which they've been chasing for about a month.

(03:12:06):
A few weeks which is really funny if you know
how large an oil tanker is that you've fit in
a boat chased with an oil tanker, It's.

Speaker 2 (03:12:17):
Like, I guess it's just so big they can't make
it stop.

Speaker 3 (03:12:23):
Yeah, I guess.

Speaker 4 (03:12:23):
So.

Speaker 3 (03:12:24):
Apparently the demonstrations claiming that the coast Guard had attempted
to board it, and they refuse to allow the coast
Guard to board. But the only thing I can think
of is, you know those those giant vehicles they use
to move rockets around at JPL or like like from JPL,
like on the launch site where they had They can
only move like five miles an hour, and they're the

(03:12:44):
size of a rocket because you have to have a
standing rocket on it. That's what it's like. They're chasing
an empty oil tanker the Atlantic. It's also worth noting
that one of the very weird parts of this is
that I'm gonna quote quote from writers here. Attorney General

(03:13:05):
Pam Bondi said in a statement that the ship's crew
had made quote frantic efforts to avoid apprehension, which again
I kind of emphasize this it off. This is an
oil tanker, Like, this is not a speed This is
like the largest like one of one of the largest
and most unwieldly craft that humanity has ever produced in
its entire history. Like, how are you getting frantically aber?

Speaker 5 (03:13:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (03:13:33):
I don't know an oil taker evasive maneuvers and this
is this is also from the Raiders thing end quote
failed to obey Coastguard orders and so faces criminal charges,
which sucks. But also I like, if you're getting evaded

(03:13:54):
by an oil tanker, that is a skill issue.

Speaker 2 (03:13:58):
Like you, there are websites where you can track these things.

Speaker 3 (03:14:02):
They have transponders, like when this thing was captured, its
transponder was on. So this skill issue. I good Lord.
On a more serious note, this is this is part
of that initial oil blockade of sanctioned Venezuela and oil
that began last year. The US government has been saying
that this ship and the other ship that the other
oil tankers that they've seized are basically ghost ships, which

(03:14:26):
we talked about another episode. I don't know if you
want to explain again what that is, James.

Speaker 5 (03:14:30):
But yeah, they're often old ships that are either reflagged
or the ships that have been retired and are returned,
or the ships have been scraped and someone has taken
their name, and it's using it so that they pay
elect ships, you know, coming back from the dead. But
often they will reflag or rename halfway through their trip,
and it's a bunch of boat law stuff to avoid sanctions,

(03:14:54):
is what they tend to be.

Speaker 3 (03:14:56):
Yeah, And so that that's the US's justification for season
two more oil tankers, which again I also cannot emphasize
enough that this also is an act of work.

Speaker 5 (03:15:05):
Yeah. I mean, were they flagged as Venezuelan.

Speaker 3 (03:15:07):
No, one of them was flagged as Russian, and I
haven't seen anything about what the other ship was flagged as.
China has protested the seizures of these boats, but there
hasn't really been anything other than diplomatic noise so far
from the Chinese government. Who if there was a government
on the world stage who was going to do a

(03:15:28):
serious protest about this, I think it would have been
either Russia or China, And we haven't really seen anything
more significant than the diplomats being annoyed. So we will
continue to see how this oil blockade plays out and
the effects that it has on people in Venezuela. I
wish I had a better adpuvot for this but I don't.

(03:15:48):
So here's ads.

Speaker 5 (03:15:50):
Well, they liked oil tankers. May they just rumble along
and you can't stop it? And then yes, we've been
unable to interdictment.

Speaker 3 (03:16:07):
We are back from our failed ad intradiction. Do you
want to talk about Syria, James, Oh yeah, this is.

Speaker 5 (03:16:16):
James Grim the rest of the world segment to a
lot of bad stuff is happening, and some of it's
not going to punch into like your mainstream US news
media diet. So right now, pretty serious fighting has broken
out in a leper right. Syrian transitional government forces are
shelling and attempting to enter the Kurdish enclave shipmuk Sud.

(03:16:38):
Shipmunk Sud is like an area in where Curdish and
other people right there with Christian people. There are zd
people who live there have this enclave has remained right
despite the the regime taking over of the Syrian traditional
government taking over the rest of their leaper right, they
didn't take over the areas. Area has remained under the
control of the aa n E S, the AUTO this

(03:17:00):
Administration of North and East Syria AKA or Java, but
they have demilitarized it. And what that means is that
there are only internal security forces who are called SASH
in Kurdish in this region. But it peers that what
happened was an SDF drone unit struck an STG vehicle
with a drone. STG Syrian Transitional Government, right, that's the

(03:17:21):
Jilani al Shara government, and of.

Speaker 3 (03:17:24):
Course they have another acronym just y. Acronyms were over, yeah,
they're none.

Speaker 5 (03:17:31):
Yeah aways more so they hit this std VI Glinda
Hafa and then the STG seemed to respond by dropping
grenades into Ship Maksoud from drones, and then the SASH
responded with drones and conflict began. Right, what's different then?
There has been conflict on and off in shipmak Sud
for a long time, but in the last year, right

(03:17:53):
since HTS moved from Aleppo to seize most of the country.
Htslo alf Sham, a group that was formerly on the
Foreign Terrorist Organization that's the United States no longer is
what we have seen here is not only shelling of
the Ship mac sudent neighborhood and shelling in response or
mortify and response for the SFAs don't have heavy weapons,

(03:18:14):
that's not their role. The STG has also attempted to
enter shik Maxu to seize it. Right, this has obviously
prompted thousands of people to flee because they are worried,
very reasonably about groups that were previously known under the
banner of the SNA or the Turkish FSA, who have

(03:18:34):
previously conducted ethnic cleansing of Kurdish people in areas that
they have managed to take control of, right, who have
murdered civilians, who have executed women in Kurdish politics. There's
every reason for these civilian interfere that happening again, right,
because the Syrian Transitional Government has far too often just
rebadged SNA units with a long and storied history of

(03:18:57):
war crimes and not done anything to stop them doing
it again. But also, some of these are not SNA units.
Some of these are Syrian Transitional Government units from other
parts of Syria. Nonetheless, there's this attempt and encouraging into
the neighborhood is remarkable. It's different. As I write this,
the SDG appeared to be staging to enter the neighborhood again.

(03:19:19):
Very amusingly, they took a video showing this, which also
revealed the position of all their armor on telegram classic
classic serience of a war stuff.

Speaker 3 (03:19:29):
Yeah, yeah, everyone loves to be revealing their position on telegram.

Speaker 5 (03:19:34):
So yeah, maybe when I when I reopened telegram, those
guys will have been wiped out by a bunch of
your owns. Who knows. But yet it continues to be
a flashpoint. And this is the most serious flare up
we've seen in a long time. Right, there was supposed
to be an agreement for the integration of the SDF
into the Syrian Transitional Government Ministry of Defense. That has failed.
They haven't come to an agreement. Various sources are reporting

(03:19:57):
various things about what they wanted, specifically what the SDF
wanted for a YPG. Who are the Women's Defense Forces
and there are that is a definitely red line for them.
They won't disband that though. The women won't put down
their guts right and for very reasonable reasons. We don't
know exactly if the Serting Transitional Government refuse to accept

(03:20:18):
them in any way. They have said they wouldn't do it,
that they have said they would accept them, but we
don't really have like a very clear picture of the
last round of negotiations. Talking of Kurdish armed groups, let's
go from Jaba to Roger. That right across Kurdistan from
west to east, just looking at the little compass in
my head. In Iran, protests have grown around the country.

(03:20:42):
These protests began largely because of the decreased purchasing power
of people's money. There. Of course, the protests have further
reduced that and people are really feeling the economic bite
right now. This time. What is different is that armed
groups have come out in support. I saw LEAD, the

(03:21:03):
name translates as People's Revolutionary Front had assassinated a car
Brothers like a drive by pak so Pak, one of
the smaller Kurdish paramilitary groups. I made an episode I
think it was called what does Bombing Mean for Freedom
in Iran last year with Gourdain and I will try
and get back with Gordy soon to talk more about this.

(03:21:25):
But if you're wondering who are all these groups? What
are all these acronyms, that's the episode you need to
go to. So Pak, Peshmoker have been killed, right, which
is a significant change. There have been armed elements in
these protests and there has been a unity statement both
from the different Kurdish armed groups. I think it was

(03:21:46):
Piyak pak and Comala who made this statement, right, and
then also from coalition of Kurdish women's organizations. It's organization
from across that political spectrum, but in that part of
the world together to denounce the actions of the regime,
which include, for instance, in Elam Province riot police storming
a hospital. I don't know people will have seen that video,

(03:22:09):
but it was extremely surving.

Speaker 3 (03:22:11):
Has there been any movement from the Belushi independence groups. Yeah,
sure there has, Yeah, but I know I'm pretty sure
it was a Volushi group. I remember the twenty nineteen protests.
The most military got was I think a Blueshi group
like fired at RPG at a police track point, but
it never really sort of spread beyond that.

Speaker 5 (03:22:29):
Yeah, I don't know. There are different Yeah, there are
a number of like volutions groups. I'm not aware of
their involvement. There have definitely been like police repression there
like there was everywhere else. Right, Yeah, absolutely, But yeah,
I will try and probably have this in a whole
episode next week. There, I've had a lot of time
to prepare on that with all the craziness. I did

(03:22:52):
see that this morning. So we're on the seventh again.
The armed forces attack protesters in the Grand Bazaar and Tehran,
which you're not aware, has a tremendou significance right from
their seventeen nine revolution there, and Entrump has tron twenty
ven as he always does.

Speaker 3 (03:23:07):
Right, Yeah, exactly perfectly what the regime wants. There's a
lesson to portray themselves as defenders of Iranian sovereignty et cetera,
et cetera, against American imperialism.

Speaker 5 (03:23:18):
Yeah, America, great Satan. Moving on, let's talk about Israel.
Israel has threatened to withhold I think it has now
withheld registration to operate in Gaza from Msfontierre, ox FAN
and a number of other aid organizations. MSF I'm just
going to quote from them called it a cynical and

(03:23:39):
calculated attempt to prevent organizations from providing services in Gaza
in the West Bank, which is a breach of Israel's
obligations under international humanitarian law. It's just them trying to
further starve people to death, right, there's no other reason.
Like Israel has made the claim that these groups have
been infiltrated by militants. That is a blackable conjecture, Like, yeah,
it's a bad joke. Like I've worked for THEMSSEF and

(03:24:02):
OXFAM all over the world. Right, there are a lot
of criticisms of them. I would make one of them
is not that they have been infiltration.

Speaker 2 (03:24:10):
By shocking on us like you're having a laugh.

Speaker 5 (03:24:14):
I want to do a hard episode on this.

Speaker 4 (03:24:15):
But like.

Speaker 5 (03:24:17):
When Brian talks about two plus two weekals five in
nineteen eighty four, this is where that gets us right,
when you can just say something that is blatantly false
and force people to agree that it is true. And
that is the project of genocide because it first has
to destroy the truth to justify what it is doing.
And we are seeing that happening. And a very brief

(03:24:40):
migration update. Finally, in the case before George Bosberg, regarding
the Alien Enemies Act that we've brought about before, the
Trump administration asked for a delay because of the changing
situation in Vents Whaler, right. I don't think there was
them for delay so they can be like, oh, it's
not safe for people to go back, we'd better keep
hold of them and treat them nicely. It is nice

(03:25:01):
suspicion that any agreement they come to with the Rodriguez
regime will include that it must accept people back, and
as I said in the other episode, right, these people
are going back to a country which is a deeply
paranoid about American spies, and they have lived in America.
This is not going to be good for them. And
the City of San Diego has sued the Trump in

(03:25:22):
administration for damage to city property on Marin Valley Road
or it's father complaint today to do so, I'm glad
of doing it. It's also deeply hypocritical. Right Mayor Tod
Gloria was out there asking for more border security finding
Underbiden if he finded the office in the city which
would welcome refugees and migrants, like, is it just a
publicity thing?

Speaker 2 (03:25:42):
Probably?

Speaker 5 (03:25:42):
Like these people don't care. Right, when migrants were being
held in the open air in San Diego County and
San Diego City, these people weren't there. I'm still glad's happening.
But don't for one second believe these people get a
single shit about but migrants. They don't and don't for
one second. Thing they're voting for them is voting to
be kind to migrants, because it's not. Todd Glaorier is
a liar, and just like everything else, he is using

(03:26:05):
its an opportunity to promote himself and he's a terrible person.
But yeah, in this case they are suming for trespassing
and placing a razor wire on city property. It's city property.
This way outside of what you would think the city
of San Diego is. It's just adjacent to o Turnout
and wilderness. But I think they have it there for
water rights reasons or something.

Speaker 3 (03:26:23):
Brief teriff update, not tariff news this week, however, Comma
the Supreme Court is expected to roll on the giant
case over a wide swath of Trump's tariffs this Friday.
So next week we will explain what happened there on
the Fallout. As you're listening to this episode, that decision
might have already been released. Have fun and put a

(03:26:44):
transgirl on your couch.

Speaker 5 (03:26:46):
And if you were learning to email us, you can
do so Cool Zone tips at Proton don't me. If
you wanted to be encrypted, you should use a Proton
mail address as well.

Speaker 1 (03:26:56):
And you know we reported the news.

Speaker 5 (03:27:01):
We reported the news.

Speaker 2 (03:27:07):
Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the Universe.

Speaker 7 (03:27:13):
It could happen.

Speaker 6 (03:27:14):
Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more
podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonmedia dot com,
or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find
sources where it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions.

Speaker 1 (03:27:30):
Thanks for listening.

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Robert Evans

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