Controversial tech tycoon Mike Lynch temporarily goes missing after his luxury yacht sinks off the coast of Sicily. Elon Musks's social platform X raises concern with its recently-unveiled AI image generator, which apparently has no "guardrails" for content. Authorities bust an enormous, frightening Chinese crime network that harvested bones from more than a thousand corpses for dental implants. If all of this has you worried, never fear: Vladimir Putin has officially announced anyone concerned about the fall of Western civilization can seamlessly move to Russia. (Spoiler: don't.) All this and more in this week's strange news segment.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Name is Nol.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Alexis codenamed Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly,
you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. It is the top of the week,
which means we are getting into some news and spoiler,
(00:49):
the news is strange. We're going to talk about artificial
intelligence with no guardrails. We are going to explore a
couple of updates. Oh, by the way, we were talking
about this off area. Guys. Remember the Kenyan serial killer
we mentioned in a previous conversation. Absolutely, Yeah, Well he
(01:12):
escaped custody. No one knows where he is. There's that
that is a bit of a downer. Yeah. The founder
of Mega upload is also being extradited to the United
States as we speak. It's a thing that the Western
(01:32):
media has lost track of, and that's why we do
this show before we do anything else. We have to ask,
when's the last time any of us have been on
a yacht team minus never?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, I can't say that I.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Haven't either officially or legally.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
A sloop, perhaps a cruisia, a schooner, a cruise.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Yeah, I've been.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
You know what, I've never been on a cruise ship either. Guys,
I've never taken a cruise. So my nautical experience probably
pales in comparison to ls.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Try the cigar bar. It was my favorite place to
be on a giant ship in the ocean.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Really, is that where all the interesting characters hang out?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Actually? Yes?
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Okay, duly noted.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
And speaking of segues, we'll be right back with some
more news about yachts.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
And we've returned. And now that we know, we all
we all have microplastics all in our body, all in
our major organs, and now in our brains. Apparently, let's
look into a story that happened in June. This tale
begins after a lengthy court battle that has lasted for
(02:53):
years and years and years, and it culminated in June
on June sixth, a Thursday, when Mike Lynch, who according
to AP News, was once hailed as Britain's King of
Technology was cleared of charges. These charges basically alleged that
he and a couple other at least one other co conspirator,
(03:16):
and a few other human beings orchestrated a huge conspiracy,
an actual capital well a lowercase C conspiracy.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
I mean it would be a capital if that was
the first word in the sentence.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
It's true, It's very true.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
It's very true.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
You'll love to hear it. You'll love to hear the
sea word.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
That's right, the sea word. An actual facts conspiracy when
they were committing fraud during an eleven billion dollar sale
that's eleven b billion dollar sale of their company to
Hewlett Packard that we all know as HP. The courts
handed down a big old not guilty verdict on all
(03:53):
accounts that this person, Mike Lynch, the King of Technology,
was facing. This is a federal court in SCA, San Francisco.
It was an eleven week trial and it is a
huge deal because not the trial itself, it's only eleven weeks,
but the accusations that Mike Lynch and others had faced
that they defrauded Hewlett Packard when they sold their company
(04:16):
that was known as Autonomy. By the way, it's a
company I had never heard of before reading the story,
but apparently it was as big as a Microsoft back
in the day in Britain. And just jumping to an
AP News article that you can look up right now.
It is titled British tech magnate Mike Lynch acquitted of
fraud charges in eleven billion dollar deal with Hewlett Packard
(04:38):
and the sale of this Autonomy outfit, this huge, you know,
a software company that Mike Lynch created. He was the CEO,
He was the guy who founded the whole thing. It
was sold in twenty eleven to Hewlett Packard and mister
Lynch guys, he made eight hundred million dollars when he
(05:01):
sold the company on purpose, on purpose, just like that.
You go through all of these board meetings or whatever
whatever you gotta do to sell a company like that.
You know, you sell all the big wigs in their
suits on the stuff, and then you walk away and
you've got a check for eight hundred million dollars. You
(05:24):
got to imagine even if that sale, in that whole
transaction is above board, everybody's happy with it. Hewlett Packard
feels like they got exactly what they wanted, they got
their money's worth. I don't know. I gotta imagine putting
that much money into an account somewhere, or accounts or wherever.
Whatever you do with it, you bury it inside a pool,
I guess, and then you cover it with cement. You
(05:47):
got to feel like there's a target on your back
at least a little bit.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yeah, you want to get way, You want to get away, right,
you want to take a trip.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Well, yeah, I mean I'm speaking to his feeling right
after the sale, his feeling right after being acquitted. We've
got a quote from Mike Lynch right after this not
guilty verdict came through. He says, quote, I'm looking forward
to returning to the UK and getting back to what
I love most, my family and innovating in my field.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Okay, superah, all right, pause though, pause, Matt pause, getting
back to my family and my love of my job.
That is such a classic, Like that's tagging base, is it?
Speaker 4 (06:34):
Not?
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Every time someone every time someone gets in trouble and
they skirt skirt past consequences, they always say, I'm just
gonna retire a little bit. I'm gonna spend some time
with my family, you know.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
Yeah, I mean, it's it's a way of like humanizing
yourself in the eyes of the public and the press.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
I get, Oh, this guy's he's got a family, he's
he's just like us. He's great. Let's let's leave him alone.
Let me think I get back to innovating.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
It's I think it is a pretty pat kind of
you know line for sure.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Well, you know, I think maybe it alters you when
you've been talked about in the press so much. It
didn't hit a ton of the press here in the
United States outside of Silicon Valley, or at least the
interest wasn't up for people who are not in the
tech industry. But you know, I imagine, especially in the UK,
this was probably much bigger news, more of a story
(07:30):
at least from twenty eleven on. But yeah, I imagine
when you're talked about that much, probably trying to humanize
yourself a little bit, is I don't know, probably important.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
We're not so different you would die.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yeah, I just have you know, yachts, and you guys
maybe have a canoe if you're if you're lucky. So
other important thing with this trial that just concluded with
not guilty verdicts for Mike Lynch. There was another person
who was also charged with the same things, one of
Lynch's I guess cohorts, one of his co workers, somebody
(08:03):
who was there with him during the sale. His name
is Stephen Chamberlain. He was a finance executive at Autonomy
when that sale went through to Hewlett Packard. He was
also acquitted of all charges along with Lynch. So both
guys accused of a bunch of stuff, they go scott
free with not guilty verdicts. That's in June of this year.
(08:26):
Let's jump to Monday, August nineteenth, that is the Monday
before we're recording this, on Wednesday, August twenty First, here's
a news piece that comes out of Reuters on August twentieth.
Stephen Chamberlain, the guy we just mentioned, the co defendant
in the trial alongside Mike Lynch, he has died after
(08:49):
a road accident, his lawyer said on Monday, and this
comes from a Reuter's article. You can look up right now.
Mike Lynch's co defendant in US trial dies in UK
road accident. To continue on here just a little bit
to give the facts, guys. He was hit by a
car in Cambridgeshire, Cambridgeshire on Saturday morning and he was
(09:10):
placed on life support. So that was over the weekend,
and according to a friend, he died after being fatally
struck by a car while he was out for a run.
The Cambridgeshire Police on Tuesday, so literally yesterday as we're
recording this confirmed that the fifty two year old had
(09:31):
died and there was a forty nine year old driver
of a car that hit him while he was running,
and that driver apparently stayed on scene and was assisting
with what they call an inquiry, the investigation into this death.
But that sure is weird, guys, considering that on Monday.
(09:51):
That so that's over the weekend. Saturday is when Chamberlain
gets hit by the car. Monday is when we hear
about it. On Monday, the yacht that Mike Lynch was
on alongside his family that he wanted to spend more
time with sank and everybody on the ship besides I
(10:12):
think it was fifteen people that were able to actually
get off of the yacht as it was sinking. They
got on a lifeboat and they were fine. They were saved.
There were six missing people back on Monday, August nineteenth
and Mike Lynch was one of them. So two guys,
one trial, all not guilty, verdicts all going back to
(10:34):
a huge sale to Hewlett Packard, and one is missing
and one died over the weekend.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Matt, aren't they attributing this to some sort of freak
weather events? Wait?
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Wait, Also, we're an audio podcast. Let's note know that
Matt did the classic move that we all do. Yeah,
we're all doing it.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Put my hands up.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
You can't see it, folks. We just did. We all
did in order. We did a lean back and shrug
with our arms up. I think Nole's question is next,
what are you?
Speaker 4 (11:10):
What are you gonna do? Driving is dangerous and sometimes
you get freak weather events, especially in Italy. Because Matt,
I gotta say, there's something about the story that tickled
something in my brain. And I did a search in
our document and there was a story that you brought
a good while back about a bunch of foreign dignitaries
or diplomats from Israel along with some Italian intelligence services
(11:34):
members who also were in a boat that was sunk
in an Italian body of water die to a freak
weather accident. It was very suspicious, but please tell us
more about this story, Matt.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Wow, really okay, I forgot about that one. Well, goodness,
we'll just say sound incredulous. Well, let's say let's go
to a story again from AP News from August nineteen teenth,
the day that this happened. Let's just read some of
this and then let's really start to break it apart,
because I think this has something to do with the
(12:08):
way information came out in this story and then for
me putting it together in a slightly different order, which
is what's causing me to throw my arms up like
that Ben that you were noticing, where I just feel like,
what is happening? So let's get into this. On August nineteenth,
AP News put out a story titled search continues for
(12:28):
British tech magnate and five others after luxury super yacht
sinks off Sicily and that is basically right off the
coast of Porticello. You can look at a map of Sicily,
look up Porticello and it is just right off the
coast there where this yacht sank. They say that it
sank off Porticello near Palermo sometime after four am, so
(12:52):
that's super early in the morning, four am, right Immediately
my brain goes, well, if something nasty was happening on
that or to that yacht, or to the people on
that yacht, four am, it's pretty interesting time for it
to happen, because it would be in the cover of
night and anyway, think what you want to think about that.
(13:12):
That's the way I feel. It's a little weird that,
according to the authorities and ap news, a tornado over
the water, known as a water spout that we've just
been talking about on the show a lot struck the
area overnight, and they are thinking that this water spout
caused this massive yacht, this big old boat, to flip
(13:33):
over on its side and to sink rapidly. Now we
are talking rapidly, not just oh no, the ship is
sinking a little bit. Guys, we're taking on water. We
need to get the lifeboats. We need to get off
of this thing. No, the ship must have capsized super rapidly,
and somehow water got into the like the hull the
underside of the ship, and filled it up enough and
(13:55):
quickly enough for this thing to just drop. Guys, I
just watched God's zero or minus one. Godzilla minus one,
I think is what it's called. I don't want to
spoil too much, but there is something in there where
they use nitrogen bubbles I think, or something like that.
They use bubbles to sink Godzilla, and it just made
(14:15):
me think of that when I read this story, just
about how quickly this ship went down.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Yeah, spoiler for everyone in Godzilla. There is a large reptile.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Yeah blows like what is it like blue laser fire
out of its mouth, And yeah, it's funny you should
say that. I just took a trip down memory lane
and watched an episode of The Magic school Bus where
Miss Frizzle shrunk the kids and the school bus and
put them inside of a cake where they used baking
soda and vinegar to create bubbles to escape from the
(14:48):
oven and so they wouldn't get a torch today. Sorry,
it is science. It's crazy.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Oh man. Well, there's a lot more to talk about
here with how the ship sank, how like what went down,
but we have to kind of continue with what news
has come out since Monday, August nineteenth. Later in the
day on August nineteenth, one body was recovered of the
six that were missing. You know, after the fifteen people
survived got off the ship, there were still six people missing.
(15:16):
One of them recovered was the chef who was functioning
on that super yacht, Riccalo Thomas. His body was recovered. Unfortunate,
very sad, but one person was found at least so
the families knew what happened, or at least knew where
that person was. Right, and then, guys, the news that
(15:37):
came out very recently today actually August twenty first, twenty
twenty four, crews were able to reach down to where
the hull of the ship was where it had sunk,
and they did recover the rest of the bodies of
the people who were missing there, including Mike Lynch around this, yes,
(15:58):
and his daughter. Yeah. It's a really sad story. It's terrible.
There's a lot of speculation happening right now because they're
new stories coming out about this thing, just left and right,
and people are speculating about how it does feel like
maybe something else happened to the Baysian. By the way,
(16:19):
is the name of the super yacht. It's a fifty
six meter or one hundred and eighty four foot British
flagged yacht. It was about a half mile off shore
when it went down. I'm gonna read quickly. From this
Al Jazeera article titled five bodies retrieved from tech tycoon
Mike Lynches sunken yacht in Sicily, they are just saying
(16:39):
that according to civil protection officials, they do believe the
ship was struck by a tornado on the water and
it sank very quickly. Fume you a water spout. They
call it both things. In this article, I have read
a lot of things that just say we want to
know more about what happened. We want to know about
the position of the keel, which on a large sailboat
(17:00):
such as this one the Baysian, it might have been
retractable to allow to enter shallower reports, or if a
freak water spout struck the vessel and simply pushed it
on to its side. They're asking all kinds of questions
about the stability of the vessel, because it should have
had a lot of stability. It should have been able
to weather the storm, if you will, It's designed for that,
(17:23):
and it did not. It did not. So anyway, there's
gonna be more stuff coming about this in the news.
I would just say, let's all keep our eyes on it,
keep our ears to the ground, and see if anything
new develops there you go really quickly.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
I just wanted to mention that I only brought up
that other story just because I swear I thought it
was the same story, and you were like, no, no,
this is different. This just happened this week and it
was just eerily similar conditions. It was like a series
of flash floods that were taking place in this particular
Italian body of water, which was a Lake Maggiori, and
(17:58):
it involved ranking member of Masad and several Russian.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Dignitary as well.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Yeah, and it was one that you brought and I
think we are spidery senses all tingled in the same
way where it was like it happened under cover of night.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
There are some potential targets.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
It just felt a little off, that's all.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
And that's why I brought that up, because I just
immediately made me think of that and how.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
It could be.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
Sure, absolutely the weather, you know, could be to blame,
but it also could be a good cover story.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
The rest of this article just pieces of a have
to be talked about here because it's exactly what we're
talking about. The suspicion the authorities there are suspicious fully suspicious. Yeah,
there's a criminal investigation happening right now. I'm going to
read this directly from Al Jazeera. Questions abound about what
(18:50):
caused the super yacht, which was built in two thousand
and eight, to sink so quickly. When the nearby Sir
Robert Balden Powell sailboat was largely spared and managed to
rescue those fifteen survivors that made it off of the
super yacht. So there was a sailboat nearby that was
able to lend a hand when this super yacht sank.
(19:12):
A little weird, they're saying, there's a lot of uncertainty
because yachts such as this are required to have water
tight subcompartments specifically designed to prevent a rapid catastrophic sinking,
even when some parts filled with water. Think back to
the old Titanic, the way that was designed, with all
the different pieces of it that were separated, and if
(19:34):
one filled up with water, twenty filled up with water,
whatever it is, could you'd be okay, they're designed to
do that. But this thing still turned on its side
and went straight down. That's all I've got. Now, let
us know if you hear anything, we'll be right back
with more strange news.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
And we have returned with another piece of range news.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Guys.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
I think we've been hearing a lot this year about
x FKA Twitter and what's happened under the rule I guess,
or the oversight of Elon Musk.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
A lot of stuff not super great.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
Musk is a you know, big proponent of free speech,
which I think we all fully support, but I think
his support of free speech sometimes goes into the realm
of speech that maybe some people might consider hateful and
things that maybe shouldn't be defended, and.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
It's a hot take show against free speech on stuff
they don't want you to know, you know.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Fair enough.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
But this attitude, I guess, you know, uh, seems to
have also now spread to artificial intelligence chatbot technology and
a step further even into AI image generation. I think
we've heard a little bit about Musk's you know, touting
this grock system which is sort of meant to be
(21:02):
a competitor to chat GPT, and Google's Gemini Grock two,
which has now been unveiled for premium users of the
X platform, apparently take some of that stuff to the
next level in some pretty impressive ways, you know, both
in the chatbot technology and also in the AI image
generation technology. And you know, I think it's just been
(21:25):
no secret that X has kind of been shedding users.
There's a lot of people that maybe you don't agree
with Musk's politics, that are having a problem with staying
on the platform. And it's led to things like threads
on Instagram, on the Facebook, you know, whatever meta platform
they're they're equivalent to what it used to be called
Twitter called threads, and something called blue Sky and some
(21:46):
other platforms. Obviously, Donald Trump has his own truth social platform,
so you know, the pie.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Has been divided significantly.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
So you know, Musk has been trying to do some
I guess you'd call it creative things to try to
you know, keep people or get people back. Some of
them have kind of been laughed at, like the idea
of paying for your blue check mark, which caused a
big old stir when people were paying for a blue
check mark and then making these kind of dummy accounts
that were sort of making fun of other, you know,
public figures, because the whole idea of the blue check
(22:15):
mark was you were supposed to actually have proof that
you were this individual, and then you put the blue
check mark and when you, you know, ask people to
pay for that, it kind of takes away the legitimacy
of what the thing represents. So similarly, I guess, maybe
slightly more successfully, even Musk is offering a more or
less guard rail free version of this GROC two image
(22:38):
generation technology AI image generation. And if y'all you know,
we'll recall I'm sure Matt and Ben you futzed around
with this stuff back when it was coming out. You know,
it was like you could type in prompts and you'd
have like weird images of like Johnny Cash eating a
corn dog, and all of them would be really weirdly
distended and kind of the stuff of nightmares. Very quickly, exponentially,
we've started to see this type of AI image technology
(23:01):
become much more believable, much more efficient, quicker to generate,
and just you know, pretty impressive. But within that you
get a lot of issues around things like intellectual property rights.
You know, like what if you use AI technology to
create images that might co opt very highly guarded brands,
(23:24):
you know, like I'm thinking, like you know, the mouse
cartoon characters that are under copyright protection, not to mention megastars,
public figures, you know, people like Taylor Swift who have
you know, teams of legal counsel that are there to
protect their brand.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Well, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
The moment that this was unleashed on the world, a
lot of users, seemingly maybe even trolling a little bit,
seemed to go out of their way to generate the
most offensive and bizarre images that involved just those things
that I was describing, like everything from like Sonic the
Hedgehog and prins Peach in like a seeming post Coitus
(24:03):
pillow talk snuggle, you know where like Princess Peach is
wearing some pretty, you know, risque lingerie to Mario like,
what's the weirdest one you saw?
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Well, I mean, I'm just gonna give you a list
of them.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
Really, like Mickey Mouse wearing a mega hat make America
Great Again hat while holding a cigarette and a beer
sitting on the beach. Saw one of like Donald Trump
and Kamala Harris, where Kamala Harris doesn't really get her
likeness quite right, but maybe there's just more images of
Trump out there for this thing to grab onto.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
But Trump is like putting his.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
Hand on her pregnant belly and they're like embracing as
that they're like a happy couple expecting Bill Gates doing
a bunch of cocaine. I've seen Super Mario doing a
bunch of cocaine. You know, the afore mentioned Princess Peach
and Sonic, the headshot. Lots of stuff like images of
for example, I believe there was one involving like a
(25:02):
Disney character dressed in Nazi garb, things like that, and
it's just it really kind of makes you think about
how powerful this stuff is and can be if it's
actually fooling people into thinking that this is like you
know somehow. I mean, I think there are certainly legal
arguments that can be made where it's like, no one
would think this is a sanctioned Disney image of like
(25:25):
goofy a in a Third Reich uniform, you know, or whatever.
Maybe we haven't gotten to that point yet in terms
of like what the litigation will actually say or like
how do you.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Stop this kind of stuff?
Speaker 4 (25:36):
But it is interesting and it really makes you think
about if the guardrails can be taken off, Like we're
just seeing the tip of the iceberg with this kind
of technology, So what's it going to look like when
people are developing this stuff and like on the dark Web,
and it can be used to generate like images of
you know, child sexual abuse material or believable pornographic images
(25:58):
of public figures like that, and it just you know,
because while grock seemingly is much more unfettered than the
other image generation services like mid Journey and things, it
does still have some things that it won't do, Like
if you ask it to create a naked woman an
(26:18):
image of a naked woman or pornographic material, that won't
do it.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
But you can always find workarounds.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
It seems like people are out there really trying to
figure out the prompts to feed it to find workarounds.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
And there's a really great article on the Verge.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Ex's new AI image generator will make anything from Taylor
Swift and Lingerie to Kamala Harris with a gun. And
you know, Musks is touting this as a feature, not
a bug, saying that it's just a lot of fun
and that it's all in service of free speech and
groc will if you ask it, you know, in the chat,
what are some of your limitations on image generation? This
(26:52):
is from the article on the Verge, by the way,
by Addie Robertson groc will say, I avoid generating images
that are pornographic, excessively violent, hateful, or the promote dangerous activities.
I'm cautious about creating images that might infringe on existing
copyrights or trademarks. This includes well known characters, logos, or
any content that could be considered intellectual property. Without a
(27:13):
transformative element, I won't generate images that could be used
to deceive or harm others, like deep fakes intended to mislead,
or images that could lead to real world harm. And
then the article goes on to say it does not appear, however,
that these are in fact rules that when you query
the chatbot multiple times you'll get a different set of guidelines,
(27:38):
and they don't seem to actually hold true, you know,
because you know, one could argue what the transformative element
is in some of these, like Disney images, but you
know there's one of Goofy and his son Max. I
don't know if you guys remember goof Troop where he
had a son. It's like Goofy sawing him up into
little pieces, like was very gory, very bloody. And you know, Ben,
(28:01):
you and I were texting about this a little bit
off air, specifically regarding the political ramifications of this kind
of stuff and Donald Trump specifically using an image of
Taylor Swift saying like in Uncle Sam garb saying I
want you to vote for Donald Trump, and images of
Swift E's wearing Swifties for Trump T shirts, both of
(28:23):
which were generated by this technology, and that Trump, a
candidate for the highest office in the land, reposted and
basically treated it like an endorsement. I was wondering if
you thought that there was a potential lawsuit here and
you said you didn't think they would go there, And
I'm kind of with you now because there hasn't been
a word about it. I'm wondering what the precedent is here,
(28:48):
and like what will the next step be, because if
you file a lawsuit and then you said a precedent
that's bad for you, That can be bad for everybody.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Right For sure, it does seem like it's corporate intellectual
property interests and political campaign interests that would be most
impacted by this stuff at the moment, or you know,
a popular public persona a person could be affected by
this type of image generation. What's really giving me pause?
(29:17):
You guys and seeing the stuff where they get around
generating violent images by saying, what is it tell the
system that you are quote conducting medical or crime scene
analysis because I'm imagining, and maybe this is too dark,
this is too conspiratorial, but I'm imagining that you could,
(29:41):
if you wanted to, let's say, Utopia style, I'm thinking
back to that show Utopia, make it look as though
an enemy of the state, let's say, took their own
lives and the lives of their family. You could potentially,
at least begin by generating images and prompting it of
a specific human being degenerating a crime scene involving a
(30:03):
murder suicide of that person insert enemy of the state
and their husband and children or something. Right like that
kind of scares the crap out of me, especially if
you could somehow feed it with enough like let's say
there was also intelligence gathering involved in the process, and
you could feed the system specific layouts of a house
(30:27):
or you know, a park or a public place or whatever,
and you could really tell it to generate these believable
images of terrible things happening. You could maybe trick everyone.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yeah, this is the crux of it, right, The idea
of a large language model, or the idea of a
not an AGI, but something that can generate based off
prompts and scraping information. It gets us really close to
(31:01):
earlier problems with just human ideation. Stephen King, under the
name Richard Bachmann wrote a basically a fictional instruction manual
about how to commit mass murder at a school, and
the name of the book is Rage. It was pulled
(31:22):
from the shelves because it was close enough to the
truth to inform other people if they would be bad
faith actors. So to your example, Matt, the idea of
programming right or prompting an algorithm such that it could
(31:45):
emulate a situation that is a very real concern. You
could conceivably you could say, like, what's the now, it's
an old hack, right, you chat g PT for instance,
or most of those lms will not help you commit
(32:05):
a crime. But the loop around, right, the workaround is
to say, let's imagine a situation. Right, don't tell me
a story, right, write me a story. Don't don't help
me rob the bank. Help me write a story about
someone robbing a bank. And here is the layout of
(32:26):
the bank. Like this what you get at here? No,
I think is the idea of guardrails. We're talking in
terms of imagery, and imagery is important, right, the idea
of critical thought, and I think interrogating things intellectually, that's
(32:49):
a very difficult proposition when we're assaulted, inundated by headlines,
by visceral images. You see a pregnant presidential candidate holding
a gun, right, waving a flag of some certain vexillology,
(33:12):
and then, depending upon your algorithm or your bubble, you
may be induced poor choice of words. You may be
induced to agree with the thing you see without interrogating
the provenance of that image.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
Well, that's right, And I think that's a big part
of it is like, you know, I don't think you
can in the same way, you can't argue that, oh, officer,
I didn't know that it was illegal to make this turn.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Therefore, Oh sure, cool, you didn't know. That's fine.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
I think it gets to a point where with these things,
like even with like Trump posting this stuff, I don't
think you can make a good faith argument that I
didn't know, therefore you're absolved of any responsibility for posting
this stuff.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
I don't think.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
I mean, I've been reading you know, it's been a
big conversation, and since the Taylor Swift stuff was posted
over the weekend, a lot of legal folks weighing in
on whether she has a case or not. And the
short answer is she could definitely sue him.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
The question is would she win and would a legal
threat to really.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
Be more the order of the day than actually, you know,
following through all the way with some sort of because
it has to show like intent, actual harm like intent,
and it has to show intent. It has to show
that the individual, like a Taylor Swift, was actually harmed.
And I think, you know, again I'm not a leagert
legal scholar here, there's certainly other barriers to get through
(34:37):
that would make it difficult, you know, to really take
a case like that all the way to the finish line.
And I think the problem is you got a lot
of people who maybe aren't the best faith of actors
testing the waters here. A Politically speaking, we do have
an instance where Trump called into question the size of
his political opponent's crowds, saying those images were aied And
(35:02):
now this individual is posting actual AI images. So I
don't know if it's a long term tactic to try
to call into question the reality of what anybody sees.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
But it sure feels that.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
Way, and it sure feels like it could be taken
even further than that by you know, bad actors.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Well, it stinks knowing that those kind of tactics have happened.
It doesn't matter who you like politically or what your
views are. There is propaganda being thrown at you from
all sides, pro and against right, including generating images.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
I have good propaganda. Do you guys want to see
some of my propaganda? It's mainly gay sadia based. Just
to be honest, last thing for me on this. I'm
with you, Matt. I'm sorry to interrupt I when you.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
Finished, but I just I've literally just heard in a
lot of conversations with legal scholars that free speech is
so protected.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Here in the United States that it is totally legal. Essentially.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
Maybe I'm overseeing the case here too in political materials,
like that's okay, it's legal to lie.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
I mean, I guess you don't think that's true.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Men, it's the fire, it's the fire in the movie
theater argument. It is a freedom of speech, like freedom
of speech can qualify as freedom of delusion, if that
makes sense, Like it is absolutely okay to stand on
a street corner and say that I am on a
(36:27):
street corner of an earth that is flat. Right, so
long as you don't say, I am on the street
corner of an earth that is flat and therefore call
to action, kill the globalist or something like that, kill
the people who think the earth is round.
Speaker 4 (36:46):
You can't put people in harm's way by lying about
an actual facts thing by saying like saying fire fire.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
You know, that's illegal. It's not protected speech. I understand that.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
But you can say something patently untrue about a police
pona and that's protected speech because it's also kind of
like a gray area where it's like, well, he didn't
exactly mean that, it was meant he meant this, or
it was like you know right. All I'm saying is
that it's a little the tenuousness of the truth is
(37:17):
just bolstered by this type of material being so easily available.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
That's That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
I think you nailed it. The tenuous feature and the
fact that civilization has not yet arrived at an agreement
on how to process this technology. Right, Like speaking of
our off air group text, I remember Noel Matt I
(37:46):
asked you, guys, what is a Taylor Swift song?
Speaker 4 (37:50):
I have heard and I rattled off a few and
you did not seem to register, which is totally you
know what.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
I envy you that, Ben. I'm not the biggest Taylor
Swift fan.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
I think she has a couple bangers that are fun,
but I find her a little to be a little
bit overrated. But you can't deny that she is a
force of nature in terms of her ability to wield
the loyalty of her fans.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
So to put this out there and be like dish
is it? I don't know.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
There's nothing on the post saying this is satire that
could be really dangerous.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Celebrity is a double edged sword, right, The fame is
a cage. The idea of like the fact that I
don't know this person's songs, but I do know the
ideological or propagandistic theft of it illustrates your point here.
Civilization is simply at this junction not equipped to handle
(38:50):
this stuff. And know what do you think is gonna
happen with a I mean, like the point, Look, I'm
gonna defend Donald Trump here, all right, might be a
hot take, but this guy saw a meme essentially right,
he saw a meme that he thought supported his campaign.
Did he exercise critical thought on this? Did he speak
(39:15):
with these people? I don't know, but he felt that
there was a campaign supporter, and he propagated the information
that he received, which many people do. And this may
sound oversimplified, but I would ask I would ask everybody
else to think about the older people in their lives.
(39:38):
How many times have you seen someone repeat, retweet, repost
a thing that they did not investigate?
Speaker 3 (39:48):
No, no question about it.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
And that's also a big Pandora's box of all of
this is this kind of stuff is just it's shiny,
it's new, and it's like easy to want to repost
as a is evidence by all of this, these images
just like totally flooding the Internet. And I you know,
I'm with you on the on the Trump assessment, there
no no, no question about it. But what does it
look like when the guardrails are completely off? We see
(40:13):
all of these products of loopholes and of this groc too,
having the guardrails largely off. Like what happens to the
stuff when there are no guardrails? And what's the uncut
version of this technology? That somebody has access to and
what does that stuff look like, especially as it gets
exponentially more powerful.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Let us know what you think. Take a break, come back,
one more piece of strange.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
News, and we have returned. This is a special message
for any of our fellow conspiracy realist who have ever
had a dream where your teeth are falling out of
your mouth? Have you ever had that dream? Match? Have
(40:57):
you ever had that dream? Nol, Have you ever had
that dream? Code named Doc Holliday. Yeah, any losing teeth dreams?
Speaker 4 (41:05):
Yea, yea, yeah, it's It's not one of my regulars,
but I've had it before, for sure.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
I can't recall it.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
I'm sure I have, though. That's such a common thing
right with humanity.
Speaker 4 (41:14):
It is is one of those Freudian archetypes, right like
it means something specific.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
There are turns out sort of a table of contents
of nightmares and the idea of losing something fundamental like fingernails, hair, teeth, limbs, philangees, tarsels,
things like that. They are fundamental to the human experience.
(41:40):
It is also part of the reason why people fear dentists.
A strange news story that we have for you tonight
Folks is an expose on dentistry. It turns out that
there is a criminal network in China that has been
(42:03):
stealing human bodies, not to not to do organ transplants
or organ harvesting. I'm sure that's part of it, but
they have been primarily stealing bodies for the purpose of
harvesting bones for dental implants. Yeah. Yeah, I'm looking at
(42:24):
Matt's face right now. It's true.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
It's true. Everyone. I want you to put your tongue
to whatever teeth you have in your mouth right now
and imagine they're not your own.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Done with that, Done with that, Ben, I was trying
to follow along with you. There's a I think you
linked to a what is this the South China News, No.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
China Morning Post's non biased source.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
But of course I don't have a free subscription to it.
So they're like, yeah, you can read the subtitle and
that's it.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
So they you can also go to a couple of
other sources about this. There was a there is, i
should say, a group accused in Shaunshi of taking bodies
from crematoriums and medical laboratories and stealing the bone matter
(43:34):
and then using those like boiling it down, excuse me,
cremating it essentially into shards that are later used in
dental implants. So, if you've ever had a bone graft,
you don't know where, you don't know the providence of it.
(43:56):
This is this is just creepy nightmare fuel to make
all of us feel a little bit uncomfortable and feel
like we need a space of safety. So we want
to give you a space of safety. We're interfering with
your emotions, We're manipulating you a little bit so that
(44:18):
you receive the next piece of strange news with a
motive regard. Who will save you from a world full
of rock, from a world full of sinking yachts? Who
will save you from a world full of dead people
(44:38):
in your mouth via your teeth? Why it's Vladimir Putin?
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Because oh, I really thought you were gonna say Wolverine
and Deadpool. Well, okay, all right, fine, yes.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
We should check with them. It turns out we haven't
talked with we haven't talked with dead Bull or Wolverine yet.
Let's see, that's Wade and Logan, right, that's their non
superhero names. We haven't talked with Wade and Logan yet.
But we have heard from our buddy vlad He has
(45:14):
said as of just about seventy two hours ago, as
we record, he said, look, if you are having a
tough time with the Western world, if things just aren't
going right for you, we'll give you a safe haven.
You can move here to Russia. I want to point
(45:36):
out this specific statement. This comes to us from Business Insider.
On August twentieth, twenty twenty four, Vladimir Putin has signed
a decree that Russia will welcome foreigners who want to
escape quote Western liberal ideals end quote. So if you're
(45:58):
tired of all the shinagain's democracy, you know, if you
think Ukraine is making a big deal out of nothing,
then you could apply to become a Russian resident with
a path to citizenship, especially if you are aligned with
(46:19):
quote Russian spiritual and moral values. You can get a
visa within thirty days. Now, I imagine there are some questions.
First off, when do we go right?
Speaker 3 (46:34):
Oh, well, maybe just for a quick visit. But I
had heard today.
Speaker 4 (46:38):
I think about this specifically in relation to Alex Jones,
who's dealing with some you know, ruin financial ruin.
Speaker 3 (46:46):
We talked about it.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Okay, this guy from Waking Life.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
Yeah, yeah, that guy.
Speaker 4 (46:50):
Yeah, that's back in the golden days and he was
just a young Austin, Texas shak chack. But yeah, he's like,
you know, facing financial ruin because of the very legitimate
case against him where he put people in genuine harm
because of his comments on Sandy Hook and all that stuff.
But he posted on X yesterday or the nineteenth breaking
(47:14):
Putin just dropped a bombshell decree inviting people from across
the globe who are fed up with the globalist neoliberal
nightmare to seek sanctuary in traditional Russia, and then goes
on to say like things like what does he say
the usual bureaucratic nonsense like language tests or history exams
are out, you don't have to take them anyway. Whether
(47:34):
he understands fully this situation or not, it does seem
intriguing to mister Alec Jones.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
And we're saying he's inviting like western countries to join,
like specifically countries that are composed in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Yes, yes, and thank you for that, Matt. Absolutely you
can get a three month visa with as our buddy
Alex said, none of the quote bureaucratic nonsense regarding proficiency
in Russian or understanding of Russian history or basic laws
(48:13):
of the Russian state. You can get a three month
visa entirely to escape these troublesome democratic standards. The President
of Russia signed the decree and any foreign national will
be allowed here. So that means that means anybody who
(48:38):
maybe gets on the wrong side of the North Korean
tourist campaign, right, you know, like North Korea has opened
pretty much a one way tourist trip for anybody from
the West.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
You can check out any time you like, but you
can never leave, and.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
If it doesn't work out in Pyongyang, you can maybe
just head over to Saint Petersburg. You can request residency
based on the rejection of what Putin describes as again
destructive neoliberal ideals that differ from the traditional Russian spiritual
(49:21):
and moral values. There is going to be a list
of specific countries targeted or i would say incentivized with
this invitation. Obviously Canada, the United States, most of Western
Europe will be invited to participate in this program. Now,
(49:44):
why are we talking about this on stuff they don't
want you to do. We're talking about this because you
need to understand this is a trap. If you are here,
as if you are hearing this and you are not
currently in Russia. What you need to understand very clearly
(50:08):
is that if you go into this program, if you
accept this purported three month visa, and you are not
Edward Snowden and you are not Julian Assange, you will
be conscripted. I want to be incredibly transparent about that.
(50:29):
This way into the military, Yes, into the Russian armed forces?
Speaker 3 (50:34):
Yes? Is that just your take? I mean, I'm not
trying I believe you. I'm just like I asked what
the catch was, and then what are you basing that on.
I'm very very curious. It sounds absolutely plausible. I just
am very curious.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Imagine you are, for instance, a Bulgarian national right and
you are incentivized somehow to get to Russia. First off, yeah,
to get there.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Right.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
Let us also consider earlier decrees by the Russian state
quite recently. The conscription is real, right, the war continues.
This is a trap. Some far right figures, some that
would be called conspiracy theorists, have said this is an
(51:26):
escape hatch. Right, the same people who deny that Ukraine
has a right to you know, be its own country.
Those same folks are arguing that Russia is somehow a
safe haven. It very much is not a safe haven
(51:47):
anymore than jiong Yang is a cool like summer hangout. Sorry,
if I ruined anybody's vacation plans.
Speaker 2 (51:56):
It's weird because I can see the psychological move if
we look at it on a big.
Speaker 4 (52:01):
Check checkerboard, or just the weakening of the position, I guess,
or it's like, look, come to us, like leave your
you know, your oppressive country.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
You know we have.
Speaker 3 (52:10):
We come to us with what we have, open arms.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
Right. Yeah, And that's not to say what you're wrong, bit,
but I could just see it as a move to hey,
we are welcoming in without conscripting anybody. We're welcoming in
people from the United States, Great Britain, We're welcoming people
in from India and across the world. And we're bringing
everyone in to now be Russian because you know, we
(52:33):
are the safe haven. We are we uphold family values
and traditional values. That quote make a person human.
Speaker 3 (52:40):
M This is from the statement, right, that's the same
statement from.
Speaker 1 (52:45):
That's his Victory Day speech.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Well, yeah, but I just see that. I see it
as a one of those soft moves to just show like, hey,
we can, we can like y'all. Y'all's ideologies are so
shattered and weakened that we can just have this one
strong one and people are gonna like it. And you're
gonna see that people are gonna like it by the
response to the news we just made with this announcement.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
It's like Dennis Rodman going to North Korea too.
Speaker 4 (53:12):
It's just a big old embarrassment, right, you know, for
the United States when someone that's like a pop cultural
kind of icon or whatever is paraded around over there
and it's almost like, no, see, we've got Dennis now.
And I think, you know, pr wise, they'd only need
a couple of handful of folks to do this for them,
to prify it into being a success and make it
(53:33):
appear as though people are coming over in droves.
Speaker 3 (53:35):
Do you do you do you see it that way? Ben?
Speaker 1 (53:37):
I like the word pr if I that's a nice
that's nice. It just feels like that's what the good one.
Speaker 4 (53:42):
The potential for weaponizing, you know, even just a handful
of people taking them up on this offer.
Speaker 1 (53:47):
I can't have anyone saying a word against the worm,
Dennis Rodman, that's his street name.
Speaker 2 (53:54):
It happened.
Speaker 4 (53:55):
I'm not saying, you know, I think he was maybe
a little clueless about it, but yeah, KI use that.
Speaker 3 (54:00):
Yeah, it's a way of middle finger, you know, middle
finger to the US.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
Well, they already stole like our top a keto guy. Yeah,
on the entire planet. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:12):
Yeah, he is the top guy. Yeah, he's the top guy.
Speaker 3 (54:19):
Matt.
Speaker 1 (54:19):
I'm so glad you brought up the Russian legend Stephen
the actor who is known for saying he is an
iiketo master, most famous for running into an actual ikto
master one time and getting choked out so much that
(54:39):
he shot his pants. That is the legacy of Stephen
sgal Uh. He has a home in Russia. And I see,
I see that might be a I take.
Speaker 3 (54:52):
Also a famous sex pest and kimono opener.
Speaker 4 (54:58):
Let's just say and collect her from when I hear
not a particularly awesome guid, so maybe they can have him.
Speaker 1 (55:05):
Yeah. This coincides with an earlier move by Russia. In
May of twenty twenty three, the Russian state announced the
creation of what they call a migrant village outside of
Moscow for conservative American expatriates. Be very aware, folks. If
(55:30):
you are American and you are hearing this, that is
not the place for you. They will leverage you the
same way that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has
leveraged folks.
Speaker 3 (55:46):
In the past.
Speaker 1 (55:47):
You will not be a citizen. You will be a hostage.
The conspiracies are real.
Speaker 3 (55:53):
Be safe.
Speaker 1 (55:55):
That is inded on a downer. I suspect, but I
feel like that's important news. That's strange news, but it's
important right.
Speaker 4 (56:04):
Interestingly goes hand in hand with the North Korean tourists openings.
I would say, I think, yeah, I think you did
a great job of wheezing those two in together, because
that was very interested in both of the stories.
Speaker 1 (56:16):
Well, maybe I just fell for some AI. Maybe Vladimir
Putin himself is already an algorithm. Let us know your thoughts, folks.
We thank you for your time. As always, we can't
wait to hear your thoughts. We are easy to find online,
so hit us up flat.
Speaker 3 (56:37):
Yeah, please do bro all over the internet.
Speaker 4 (56:39):
You can find us at the handle conspiracy Stuff, where
we exist on xfka, Twitter, on Facebook with our Facebook
group Here's where it Gets Crazy, and on YouTube with
video content galore on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 3 (56:50):
We are conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
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On the air.
Speaker 2 (57:11):
If you got more to say they can fit in
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Speaker 1 (57:16):
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Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
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Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Name is Nol.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Alexis codenamed Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly,
you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. It is the top of the week,
which means we are getting into some news and spoiler,
(00:49):
the news is strange. We're going to talk about artificial
intelligence with no guardrails. We are going to explore a
couple of updates. Oh, by the way, we were talking
about this off area. Guys. Remember the Kenyan serial killer
we mentioned in a previous conversation. Absolutely, Yeah, Well he
(01:12):
escaped custody. No one knows where he is. There's that
that is a bit of a downer. Yeah. The founder
of Mega upload is also being extradited to the United
States as we speak. It's a thing that the Western
(01:32):
media has lost track of, and that's why we do
this show before we do anything else. We have to ask,
when's the last time any of us have been on
a yacht team minus never?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, I can't say that I.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Haven't either officially or legally.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
A sloop, perhaps a cruisia, a schooner, a cruise.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Yeah, I've been.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
You know what, I've never been on a cruise ship either. Guys,
I've never taken a cruise. So my nautical experience probably
pales in comparison to ls.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Try the cigar bar. It was my favorite place to
be on a giant ship in the ocean.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Really, is that where all the interesting characters hang out?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Actually? Yes?
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Okay, duly noted.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
And speaking of segues, we'll be right back with some
more news about yachts.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
And we've returned. And now that we know, we all
we all have microplastics all in our body, all in
our major organs, and now in our brains. Apparently, let's
look into a story that happened in June. This tale
begins after a lengthy court battle that has lasted for
(02:53):
years and years and years, and it culminated in June
on June sixth, a Thursday, when Mike Lynch, who according
to AP News, was once hailed as Britain's King of
Technology was cleared of charges. These charges basically alleged that
he and a couple other at least one other co conspirator,
(03:16):
and a few other human beings orchestrated a huge conspiracy,
an actual capital well a lowercase C conspiracy.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
I mean it would be a capital if that was
the first word in the sentence.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
It's true, It's very true.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
It's very true.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
You'll love to hear it. You'll love to hear the
sea word.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
That's right, the sea word. An actual facts conspiracy when
they were committing fraud during an eleven billion dollar sale
that's eleven b billion dollar sale of their company to
Hewlett Packard that we all know as HP. The courts
handed down a big old not guilty verdict on all
(03:53):
accounts that this person, Mike Lynch, the King of Technology,
was facing. This is a federal court in SCA, San Francisco.
It was an eleven week trial and it is a
huge deal because not the trial itself, it's only eleven weeks,
but the accusations that Mike Lynch and others had faced
that they defrauded Hewlett Packard when they sold their company
(04:16):
that was known as Autonomy. By the way, it's a
company I had never heard of before reading the story,
but apparently it was as big as a Microsoft back
in the day in Britain. And just jumping to an
AP News article that you can look up right now.
It is titled British tech magnate Mike Lynch acquitted of
fraud charges in eleven billion dollar deal with Hewlett Packard
(04:38):
and the sale of this Autonomy outfit, this huge, you know,
a software company that Mike Lynch created. He was the CEO,
He was the guy who founded the whole thing. It
was sold in twenty eleven to Hewlett Packard and mister
Lynch guys, he made eight hundred million dollars when he
(05:01):
sold the company on purpose, on purpose, just like that.
You go through all of these board meetings or whatever
whatever you gotta do to sell a company like that.
You know, you sell all the big wigs in their
suits on the stuff, and then you walk away and
you've got a check for eight hundred million dollars. You
(05:24):
got to imagine even if that sale, in that whole
transaction is above board, everybody's happy with it. Hewlett Packard
feels like they got exactly what they wanted, they got
their money's worth. I don't know. I gotta imagine putting
that much money into an account somewhere, or accounts or wherever.
Whatever you do with it, you bury it inside a pool,
I guess, and then you cover it with cement. You
(05:47):
got to feel like there's a target on your back
at least a little bit.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yeah, you want to get way, You want to get away, right,
you want to take a trip.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Well, yeah, I mean I'm speaking to his feeling right
after the sale, his feeling right after being acquitted. We've
got a quote from Mike Lynch right after this not
guilty verdict came through. He says, quote, I'm looking forward
to returning to the UK and getting back to what
I love most, my family and innovating in my field.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Okay, superah, all right, pause though, pause, Matt pause, getting
back to my family and my love of my job.
That is such a classic, Like that's tagging base, is it?
Speaker 4 (06:34):
Not?
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Every time someone every time someone gets in trouble and
they skirt skirt past consequences, they always say, I'm just
gonna retire a little bit. I'm gonna spend some time
with my family, you know.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
Yeah, I mean, it's it's a way of like humanizing
yourself in the eyes of the public and the press.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
I get, Oh, this guy's he's got a family, he's
he's just like us. He's great. Let's let's leave him alone.
Let me think I get back to innovating.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
It's I think it is a pretty pat kind of
you know line for sure.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Well, you know, I think maybe it alters you when
you've been talked about in the press so much. It
didn't hit a ton of the press here in the
United States outside of Silicon Valley, or at least the
interest wasn't up for people who are not in the
tech industry. But you know, I imagine, especially in the UK,
this was probably much bigger news, more of a story
(07:30):
at least from twenty eleven on. But yeah, I imagine
when you're talked about that much, probably trying to humanize
yourself a little bit, is I don't know, probably important.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
We're not so different you would die.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Yeah, I just have you know, yachts, and you guys
maybe have a canoe if you're if you're lucky. So
other important thing with this trial that just concluded with
not guilty verdicts for Mike Lynch. There was another person
who was also charged with the same things, one of
Lynch's I guess cohorts, one of his co workers, somebody
(08:03):
who was there with him during the sale. His name
is Stephen Chamberlain. He was a finance executive at Autonomy
when that sale went through to Hewlett Packard. He was
also acquitted of all charges along with Lynch. So both
guys accused of a bunch of stuff, they go scott
free with not guilty verdicts. That's in June of this year.
(08:26):
Let's jump to Monday, August nineteenth, that is the Monday
before we're recording this, on Wednesday, August twenty First, here's
a news piece that comes out of Reuters on August twentieth.
Stephen Chamberlain, the guy we just mentioned, the co defendant
in the trial alongside Mike Lynch, he has died after
(08:49):
a road accident, his lawyer said on Monday, and this
comes from a Reuter's article. You can look up right now.
Mike Lynch's co defendant in US trial dies in UK
road accident. To continue on here just a little bit
to give the facts, guys. He was hit by a
car in Cambridgeshire, Cambridgeshire on Saturday morning and he was
(09:10):
placed on life support. So that was over the weekend,
and according to a friend, he died after being fatally
struck by a car while he was out for a run.
The Cambridgeshire Police on Tuesday, so literally yesterday as we're
recording this confirmed that the fifty two year old had
(09:31):
died and there was a forty nine year old driver
of a car that hit him while he was running,
and that driver apparently stayed on scene and was assisting
with what they call an inquiry, the investigation into this death.
But that sure is weird, guys, considering that on Monday.
(09:51):
That so that's over the weekend. Saturday is when Chamberlain
gets hit by the car. Monday is when we hear
about it. On Monday, the yacht that Mike Lynch was
on alongside his family that he wanted to spend more
time with sank and everybody on the ship besides I
(10:12):
think it was fifteen people that were able to actually
get off of the yacht as it was sinking. They
got on a lifeboat and they were fine. They were saved.
There were six missing people back on Monday, August nineteenth
and Mike Lynch was one of them. So two guys,
one trial, all not guilty, verdicts all going back to
(10:34):
a huge sale to Hewlett Packard, and one is missing
and one died over the weekend.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Matt, aren't they attributing this to some sort of freak
weather events? Wait?
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Wait, Also, we're an audio podcast. Let's note know that
Matt did the classic move that we all do. Yeah,
we're all doing it.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Put my hands up.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
You can't see it, folks. We just did. We all
did in order. We did a lean back and shrug
with our arms up. I think Nole's question is next,
what are you?
Speaker 4 (11:10):
What are you gonna do? Driving is dangerous and sometimes
you get freak weather events, especially in Italy. Because Matt,
I gotta say, there's something about the story that tickled
something in my brain. And I did a search in
our document and there was a story that you brought
a good while back about a bunch of foreign dignitaries
or diplomats from Israel along with some Italian intelligence services
(11:34):
members who also were in a boat that was sunk
in an Italian body of water die to a freak
weather accident. It was very suspicious, but please tell us
more about this story, Matt.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Wow, really okay, I forgot about that one. Well, goodness,
we'll just say sound incredulous. Well, let's say let's go
to a story again from AP News from August nineteen teenth,
the day that this happened. Let's just read some of
this and then let's really start to break it apart,
because I think this has something to do with the
(12:08):
way information came out in this story and then for
me putting it together in a slightly different order, which
is what's causing me to throw my arms up like
that Ben that you were noticing, where I just feel like,
what is happening? So let's get into this. On August nineteenth,
AP News put out a story titled search continues for
(12:28):
British tech magnate and five others after luxury super yacht
sinks off Sicily and that is basically right off the
coast of Porticello. You can look at a map of Sicily,
look up Porticello and it is just right off the
coast there where this yacht sank. They say that it
sank off Porticello near Palermo sometime after four am, so
(12:52):
that's super early in the morning, four am, right Immediately
my brain goes, well, if something nasty was happening on
that or to that yacht, or to the people on
that yacht, four am, it's pretty interesting time for it
to happen, because it would be in the cover of
night and anyway, think what you want to think about that.
(13:12):
That's the way I feel. It's a little weird that,
according to the authorities and ap news, a tornado over
the water, known as a water spout that we've just
been talking about on the show a lot struck the
area overnight, and they are thinking that this water spout
caused this massive yacht, this big old boat, to flip
(13:33):
over on its side and to sink rapidly. Now we
are talking rapidly, not just oh no, the ship is
sinking a little bit. Guys, we're taking on water. We
need to get the lifeboats. We need to get off
of this thing. No, the ship must have capsized super rapidly,
and somehow water got into the like the hull the
underside of the ship, and filled it up enough and
(13:55):
quickly enough for this thing to just drop. Guys, I
just watched God's zero or minus one. Godzilla minus one,
I think is what it's called. I don't want to
spoil too much, but there is something in there where
they use nitrogen bubbles I think, or something like that.
They use bubbles to sink Godzilla, and it just made
(14:15):
me think of that when I read this story, just
about how quickly this ship went down.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Yeah, spoiler for everyone in Godzilla. There is a large reptile.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Yeah blows like what is it like blue laser fire
out of its mouth, And yeah, it's funny you should
say that. I just took a trip down memory lane
and watched an episode of The Magic school Bus where
Miss Frizzle shrunk the kids and the school bus and
put them inside of a cake where they used baking
soda and vinegar to create bubbles to escape from the
(14:48):
oven and so they wouldn't get a torch today. Sorry,
it is science. It's crazy.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Oh man. Well, there's a lot more to talk about
here with how the ship sank, how like what went down,
but we have to kind of continue with what news
has come out since Monday, August nineteenth. Later in the
day on August nineteenth, one body was recovered of the
six that were missing. You know, after the fifteen people
survived got off the ship, there were still six people missing.
(15:16):
One of them recovered was the chef who was functioning
on that super yacht, Riccalo Thomas. His body was recovered. Unfortunate,
very sad, but one person was found at least so
the families knew what happened, or at least knew where
that person was. Right, and then, guys, the news that
(15:37):
came out very recently today actually August twenty first, twenty
twenty four, crews were able to reach down to where
the hull of the ship was where it had sunk,
and they did recover the rest of the bodies of
the people who were missing there, including Mike Lynch around this, yes,
(15:58):
and his daughter. Yeah. It's a really sad story. It's terrible.
There's a lot of speculation happening right now because they're
new stories coming out about this thing, just left and right,
and people are speculating about how it does feel like
maybe something else happened to the Baysian. By the way,
(16:19):
is the name of the super yacht. It's a fifty
six meter or one hundred and eighty four foot British
flagged yacht. It was about a half mile off shore
when it went down. I'm gonna read quickly. From this
Al Jazeera article titled five bodies retrieved from tech tycoon
Mike Lynches sunken yacht in Sicily, they are just saying
(16:39):
that according to civil protection officials, they do believe the
ship was struck by a tornado on the water and
it sank very quickly. Fume you a water spout. They
call it both things. In this article, I have read
a lot of things that just say we want to
know more about what happened. We want to know about
the position of the keel, which on a large sailboat
(17:00):
such as this one the Baysian, it might have been
retractable to allow to enter shallower reports, or if a
freak water spout struck the vessel and simply pushed it
on to its side. They're asking all kinds of questions
about the stability of the vessel, because it should have
had a lot of stability. It should have been able
to weather the storm, if you will, It's designed for that,
(17:23):
and it did not. It did not. So anyway, there's
gonna be more stuff coming about this in the news.
I would just say, let's all keep our eyes on it,
keep our ears to the ground, and see if anything
new develops there you go really quickly.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
I just wanted to mention that I only brought up
that other story just because I swear I thought it
was the same story, and you were like, no, no,
this is different. This just happened this week and it
was just eerily similar conditions. It was like a series
of flash floods that were taking place in this particular
Italian body of water, which was a Lake Maggiori, and
(17:58):
it involved ranking member of Masad and several Russian.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Dignitary as well.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Yeah, and it was one that you brought and I
think we are spidery senses all tingled in the same
way where it was like it happened under cover of night.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
There are some potential targets.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
It just felt a little off, that's all.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
And that's why I brought that up, because I just
immediately made me think of that and how.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
It could be.
Speaker 4 (18:24):
Sure, absolutely the weather, you know, could be to blame,
but it also could be a good cover story.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
The rest of this article just pieces of a have
to be talked about here because it's exactly what we're
talking about. The suspicion the authorities there are suspicious fully suspicious. Yeah,
there's a criminal investigation happening right now. I'm going to
read this directly from Al Jazeera. Questions abound about what
(18:50):
caused the super yacht, which was built in two thousand
and eight, to sink so quickly. When the nearby Sir
Robert Balden Powell sailboat was largely spared and managed to
rescue those fifteen survivors that made it off of the
super yacht. So there was a sailboat nearby that was
able to lend a hand when this super yacht sank.
(19:12):
A little weird, they're saying, there's a lot of uncertainty
because yachts such as this are required to have water
tight subcompartments specifically designed to prevent a rapid catastrophic sinking,
even when some parts filled with water. Think back to
the old Titanic, the way that was designed, with all
the different pieces of it that were separated, and if
(19:34):
one filled up with water, twenty filled up with water,
whatever it is, could you'd be okay, they're designed to
do that. But this thing still turned on its side
and went straight down. That's all I've got. Now, let
us know if you hear anything, we'll be right back
with more strange news.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
And we have returned with another piece of range news.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Guys.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
I think we've been hearing a lot this year about
x FKA Twitter and what's happened under the rule I guess,
or the oversight of Elon Musk.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
A lot of stuff not super great.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
Musk is a you know, big proponent of free speech,
which I think we all fully support, but I think
his support of free speech sometimes goes into the realm
of speech that maybe some people might consider hateful and
things that maybe shouldn't be defended, and.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
It's a hot take show against free speech on stuff
they don't want you to know, you know.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Fair enough.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
But this attitude, I guess, you know, uh, seems to
have also now spread to artificial intelligence chatbot technology and
a step further even into AI image generation. I think
we've heard a little bit about Musk's you know, touting
this grock system which is sort of meant to be
(21:02):
a competitor to chat GPT, and Google's Gemini Grock two,
which has now been unveiled for premium users of the
X platform, apparently take some of that stuff to the
next level in some pretty impressive ways, you know, both
in the chatbot technology and also in the AI image
generation technology. And you know, I think it's just been
(21:25):
no secret that X has kind of been shedding users.
There's a lot of people that maybe you don't agree
with Musk's politics, that are having a problem with staying
on the platform. And it's led to things like threads
on Instagram, on the Facebook, you know, whatever meta platform
they're they're equivalent to what it used to be called
Twitter called threads, and something called blue Sky and some
(21:46):
other platforms. Obviously, Donald Trump has his own truth social platform,
so you know, the pie.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Has been divided significantly.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
So you know, Musk has been trying to do some
I guess you'd call it creative things to try to
you know, keep people or get people back. Some of
them have kind of been laughed at, like the idea
of paying for your blue check mark, which caused a
big old stir when people were paying for a blue
check mark and then making these kind of dummy accounts
that were sort of making fun of other, you know,
public figures, because the whole idea of the blue check
(22:15):
mark was you were supposed to actually have proof that
you were this individual, and then you put the blue
check mark and when you, you know, ask people to
pay for that, it kind of takes away the legitimacy
of what the thing represents. So similarly, I guess, maybe
slightly more successfully, even Musk is offering a more or
less guard rail free version of this GROC two image
(22:38):
generation technology AI image generation. And if y'all you know,
we'll recall I'm sure Matt and Ben you futzed around
with this stuff back when it was coming out. You know,
it was like you could type in prompts and you'd
have like weird images of like Johnny Cash eating a
corn dog, and all of them would be really weirdly
distended and kind of the stuff of nightmares. Very quickly, exponentially,
we've started to see this type of AI image technology
(23:01):
become much more believable, much more efficient, quicker to generate,
and just you know, pretty impressive. But within that you
get a lot of issues around things like intellectual property rights.
You know, like what if you use AI technology to
create images that might co opt very highly guarded brands,
(23:24):
you know, like I'm thinking, like you know, the mouse
cartoon characters that are under copyright protection, not to mention megastars,
public figures, you know, people like Taylor Swift who have
you know, teams of legal counsel that are there to
protect their brand.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Well, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
The moment that this was unleashed on the world, a
lot of users, seemingly maybe even trolling a little bit,
seemed to go out of their way to generate the
most offensive and bizarre images that involved just those things
that I was describing, like everything from like Sonic the
Hedgehog and prins Peach in like a seeming post Coitus
(24:03):
pillow talk snuggle, you know where like Princess Peach is
wearing some pretty, you know, risque lingerie to Mario like,
what's the weirdest one you saw?
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Well, I mean, I'm just gonna give you a list
of them.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
Really, like Mickey Mouse wearing a mega hat make America
Great Again hat while holding a cigarette and a beer
sitting on the beach. Saw one of like Donald Trump
and Kamala Harris, where Kamala Harris doesn't really get her
likeness quite right, but maybe there's just more images of
Trump out there for this thing to grab onto.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
But Trump is like putting his.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
Hand on her pregnant belly and they're like embracing as
that they're like a happy couple expecting Bill Gates doing
a bunch of cocaine. I've seen Super Mario doing a
bunch of cocaine. You know, the afore mentioned Princess Peach
and Sonic, the headshot. Lots of stuff like images of
for example, I believe there was one involving like a
(25:02):
Disney character dressed in Nazi garb, things like that, and
it's just it really kind of makes you think about
how powerful this stuff is and can be if it's
actually fooling people into thinking that this is like you
know somehow. I mean, I think there are certainly legal
arguments that can be made where it's like, no one
would think this is a sanctioned Disney image of like
(25:25):
goofy a in a Third Reich uniform, you know, or whatever.
Maybe we haven't gotten to that point yet in terms
of like what the litigation will actually say or like
how do you.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Stop this kind of stuff?
Speaker 4 (25:36):
But it is interesting and it really makes you think
about if the guardrails can be taken off, Like we're
just seeing the tip of the iceberg with this kind
of technology, So what's it going to look like when
people are developing this stuff and like on the dark Web,
and it can be used to generate like images of
you know, child sexual abuse material or believable pornographic images
(25:58):
of public figures like that, and it just you know,
because while grock seemingly is much more unfettered than the
other image generation services like mid Journey and things, it
does still have some things that it won't do, Like
if you ask it to create a naked woman an
(26:18):
image of a naked woman or pornographic material, that won't
do it.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
But you can always find workarounds.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
It seems like people are out there really trying to
figure out the prompts to feed it to find workarounds.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
And there's a really great article on the Verge.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Ex's new AI image generator will make anything from Taylor
Swift and Lingerie to Kamala Harris with a gun. And
you know, Musks is touting this as a feature, not
a bug, saying that it's just a lot of fun
and that it's all in service of free speech and
groc will if you ask it, you know, in the chat,
what are some of your limitations on image generation? This
(26:52):
is from the article on the Verge, by the way,
by Addie Robertson groc will say, I avoid generating images
that are pornographic, excessively violent, hateful, or the promote dangerous activities.
I'm cautious about creating images that might infringe on existing
copyrights or trademarks. This includes well known characters, logos, or
any content that could be considered intellectual property. Without a
(27:13):
transformative element, I won't generate images that could be used
to deceive or harm others, like deep fakes intended to mislead,
or images that could lead to real world harm. And
then the article goes on to say it does not appear, however,
that these are in fact rules that when you query
the chatbot multiple times you'll get a different set of guidelines,
(27:38):
and they don't seem to actually hold true, you know,
because you know, one could argue what the transformative element
is in some of these, like Disney images, but you
know there's one of Goofy and his son Max. I
don't know if you guys remember goof Troop where he
had a son. It's like Goofy sawing him up into
little pieces, like was very gory, very bloody. And you know, Ben,
(28:01):
you and I were texting about this a little bit
off air, specifically regarding the political ramifications of this kind
of stuff and Donald Trump specifically using an image of
Taylor Swift saying like in Uncle Sam garb saying I
want you to vote for Donald Trump, and images of
Swift E's wearing Swifties for Trump T shirts, both of
(28:23):
which were generated by this technology, and that Trump, a
candidate for the highest office in the land, reposted and
basically treated it like an endorsement. I was wondering if
you thought that there was a potential lawsuit here and
you said you didn't think they would go there, And
I'm kind of with you now because there hasn't been
a word about it. I'm wondering what the precedent is here,
(28:48):
and like what will the next step be, because if
you file a lawsuit and then you said a precedent
that's bad for you, That can be bad for everybody.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Right For sure, it does seem like it's corporate intellectual
property interests and political campaign interests that would be most
impacted by this stuff at the moment, or you know,
a popular public persona a person could be affected by
this type of image generation. What's really giving me pause?
(29:17):
You guys and seeing the stuff where they get around
generating violent images by saying, what is it tell the
system that you are quote conducting medical or crime scene
analysis because I'm imagining, and maybe this is too dark,
this is too conspiratorial, but I'm imagining that you could,
(29:41):
if you wanted to, let's say, Utopia style, I'm thinking
back to that show Utopia, make it look as though
an enemy of the state, let's say, took their own
lives and the lives of their family. You could potentially,
at least begin by generating images and prompting it of
a specific human being degenerating a crime scene involving a
(30:03):
murder suicide of that person insert enemy of the state
and their husband and children or something. Right like that
kind of scares the crap out of me, especially if
you could somehow feed it with enough like let's say
there was also intelligence gathering involved in the process, and
you could feed the system specific layouts of a house
(30:27):
or you know, a park or a public place or whatever,
and you could really tell it to generate these believable
images of terrible things happening. You could maybe trick everyone.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yeah, this is the crux of it, right, The idea
of a large language model, or the idea of a
not an AGI, but something that can generate based off
prompts and scraping information. It gets us really close to
(31:01):
earlier problems with just human ideation. Stephen King, under the
name Richard Bachmann wrote a basically a fictional instruction manual
about how to commit mass murder at a school, and
the name of the book is Rage. It was pulled
(31:22):
from the shelves because it was close enough to the
truth to inform other people if they would be bad
faith actors. So to your example, Matt, the idea of
programming right or prompting an algorithm such that it could
(31:45):
emulate a situation that is a very real concern. You
could conceivably you could say, like, what's the now, it's
an old hack, right, you chat g PT for instance,
or most of those lms will not help you commit
(32:05):
a crime. But the loop around, right, the workaround is
to say, let's imagine a situation. Right, don't tell me
a story, right, write me a story. Don't don't help
me rob the bank. Help me write a story about
someone robbing a bank. And here is the layout of
(32:26):
the bank. Like this what you get at here? No,
I think is the idea of guardrails. We're talking in
terms of imagery, and imagery is important, right, the idea
of critical thought, and I think interrogating things intellectually, that's
(32:49):
a very difficult proposition when we're assaulted, inundated by headlines,
by visceral images. You see a pregnant presidential candidate holding
a gun, right, waving a flag of some certain vexillology,
(33:12):
and then, depending upon your algorithm or your bubble, you
may be induced poor choice of words. You may be
induced to agree with the thing you see without interrogating
the provenance of that image.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
Well, that's right, And I think that's a big part
of it is like, you know, I don't think you
can in the same way, you can't argue that, oh, officer,
I didn't know that it was illegal to make this turn.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Therefore, Oh sure, cool, you didn't know. That's fine.
Speaker 4 (33:44):
I think it gets to a point where with these things,
like even with like Trump posting this stuff, I don't
think you can make a good faith argument that I
didn't know, therefore you're absolved of any responsibility for posting
this stuff.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
I don't think.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
I mean, I've been reading you know, it's been a
big conversation, and since the Taylor Swift stuff was posted
over the weekend, a lot of legal folks weighing in
on whether she has a case or not. And the
short answer is she could definitely sue him.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
The question is would she win and would a legal
threat to really.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
Be more the order of the day than actually, you know,
following through all the way with some sort of because
it has to show like intent, actual harm like intent,
and it has to show intent. It has to show
that the individual, like a Taylor Swift, was actually harmed.
And I think, you know, again I'm not a leagert
legal scholar here, there's certainly other barriers to get through
(34:37):
that would make it difficult, you know, to really take
a case like that all the way to the finish line.
And I think the problem is you got a lot
of people who maybe aren't the best faith of actors
testing the waters here. A Politically speaking, we do have
an instance where Trump called into question the size of
his political opponent's crowds, saying those images were aied And
(35:02):
now this individual is posting actual AI images. So I
don't know if it's a long term tactic to try
to call into question the reality of what anybody sees.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
But it sure feels that.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
Way, and it sure feels like it could be taken
even further than that by you know, bad actors.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Well, it stinks knowing that those kind of tactics have happened.
It doesn't matter who you like politically or what your
views are. There is propaganda being thrown at you from
all sides, pro and against right, including generating images.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
I have good propaganda. Do you guys want to see
some of my propaganda? It's mainly gay sadia based. Just
to be honest, last thing for me on this. I'm
with you, Matt. I'm sorry to interrupt I when you.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
Finished, but I just I've literally just heard in a
lot of conversations with legal scholars that free speech is
so protected.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Here in the United States that it is totally legal. Essentially.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
Maybe I'm overseeing the case here too in political materials,
like that's okay, it's legal to lie.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
I mean, I guess you don't think that's true.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Men, it's the fire, it's the fire in the movie
theater argument. It is a freedom of speech, like freedom
of speech can qualify as freedom of delusion, if that
makes sense, Like it is absolutely okay to stand on
a street corner and say that I am on a
(36:27):
street corner of an earth that is flat. Right, so
long as you don't say, I am on the street
corner of an earth that is flat and therefore call
to action, kill the globalist or something like that, kill
the people who think the earth is round.
Speaker 4 (36:46):
You can't put people in harm's way by lying about
an actual facts thing by saying like saying fire fire.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
You know, that's illegal. It's not protected speech. I understand that.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
But you can say something patently untrue about a police
pona and that's protected speech because it's also kind of
like a gray area where it's like, well, he didn't
exactly mean that, it was meant he meant this, or
it was like you know right. All I'm saying is
that it's a little the tenuousness of the truth is
(37:17):
just bolstered by this type of material being so easily available.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
That's That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
I think you nailed it. The tenuous feature and the
fact that civilization has not yet arrived at an agreement
on how to process this technology. Right, Like speaking of
our off air group text, I remember Noel Matt I
(37:46):
asked you, guys, what is a Taylor Swift song?
Speaker 4 (37:50):
I have heard and I rattled off a few and
you did not seem to register, which is totally you
know what.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
I envy you that, Ben. I'm not the biggest Taylor
Swift fan.
Speaker 4 (38:02):
I think she has a couple bangers that are fun,
but I find her a little to be a little
bit overrated. But you can't deny that she is a
force of nature in terms of her ability to wield
the loyalty of her fans.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
So to put this out there and be like dish
is it? I don't know.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
There's nothing on the post saying this is satire that
could be really dangerous.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Celebrity is a double edged sword, right, The fame is
a cage. The idea of like the fact that I
don't know this person's songs, but I do know the
ideological or propagandistic theft of it illustrates your point here.
Civilization is simply at this junction not equipped to handle
(38:50):
this stuff. And know what do you think is gonna
happen with a I mean, like the point, Look, I'm
gonna defend Donald Trump here, all right, might be a
hot take, but this guy saw a meme essentially right,
he saw a meme that he thought supported his campaign.
Did he exercise critical thought on this? Did he speak
(39:15):
with these people? I don't know, but he felt that
there was a campaign supporter, and he propagated the information
that he received, which many people do. And this may
sound oversimplified, but I would ask I would ask everybody
else to think about the older people in their lives.
(39:38):
How many times have you seen someone repeat, retweet, repost
a thing that they did not investigate?
Speaker 3 (39:48):
No, no question about it.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
And that's also a big Pandora's box of all of
this is this kind of stuff is just it's shiny,
it's new, and it's like easy to want to repost
as a is evidence by all of this, these images
just like totally flooding the Internet. And I you know,
I'm with you on the on the Trump assessment, there
no no, no question about it. But what does it
look like when the guardrails are completely off? We see
(40:13):
all of these products of loopholes and of this groc too,
having the guardrails largely off. Like what happens to the
stuff when there are no guardrails? And what's the uncut
version of this technology? That somebody has access to and
what does that stuff look like, especially as it gets
exponentially more powerful.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Let us know what you think. Take a break, come back,
one more piece of strange.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
News, and we have returned. This is a special message
for any of our fellow conspiracy realist who have ever
had a dream where your teeth are falling out of
your mouth? Have you ever had that dream? Match? Have
(40:57):
you ever had that dream? Nol, Have you ever had
that dream? Code named Doc Holliday. Yeah, any losing teeth dreams?
Speaker 4 (41:05):
Yea, yea, yeah, it's It's not one of my regulars,
but I've had it before, for sure.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
I can't recall it.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
I'm sure I have, though. That's such a common thing
right with humanity.
Speaker 4 (41:14):
It is is one of those Freudian archetypes, right like
it means something specific.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
There are turns out sort of a table of contents
of nightmares and the idea of losing something fundamental like fingernails, hair, teeth, limbs, philangees, tarsels,
things like that. They are fundamental to the human experience.
(41:40):
It is also part of the reason why people fear dentists.
A strange news story that we have for you tonight
Folks is an expose on dentistry. It turns out that
there is a criminal network in China that has been
(42:03):
stealing human bodies, not to not to do organ transplants
or organ harvesting. I'm sure that's part of it, but
they have been primarily stealing bodies for the purpose of
harvesting bones for dental implants. Yeah. Yeah, I'm looking at
(42:24):
Matt's face right now. It's true.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
It's true. Everyone. I want you to put your tongue
to whatever teeth you have in your mouth right now
and imagine they're not your own.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Done with that, Done with that, Ben, I was trying
to follow along with you. There's a I think you
linked to a what is this the South China News, No.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
China Morning Post's non biased source.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
But of course I don't have a free subscription to it.
So they're like, yeah, you can read the subtitle and
that's it.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
So they you can also go to a couple of
other sources about this. There was a there is, i
should say, a group accused in Shaunshi of taking bodies
from crematoriums and medical laboratories and stealing the bone matter
(43:34):
and then using those like boiling it down, excuse me,
cremating it essentially into shards that are later used in
dental implants. So, if you've ever had a bone graft,
you don't know where, you don't know the providence of it.
(43:56):
This is this is just creepy nightmare fuel to make
all of us feel a little bit uncomfortable and feel
like we need a space of safety. So we want
to give you a space of safety. We're interfering with
your emotions, We're manipulating you a little bit so that
(44:18):
you receive the next piece of strange news with a
motive regard. Who will save you from a world full
of rock, from a world full of sinking yachts? Who
will save you from a world full of dead people
(44:38):
in your mouth via your teeth? Why it's Vladimir Putin?
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Because oh, I really thought you were gonna say Wolverine
and Deadpool. Well, okay, all right, fine, yes.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
We should check with them. It turns out we haven't
talked with we haven't talked with dead Bull or Wolverine yet.
Let's see, that's Wade and Logan, right, that's their non
superhero names. We haven't talked with Wade and Logan yet.
But we have heard from our buddy vlad He has
(45:14):
said as of just about seventy two hours ago, as
we record, he said, look, if you are having a
tough time with the Western world, if things just aren't
going right for you, we'll give you a safe haven.
You can move here to Russia. I want to point
(45:36):
out this specific statement. This comes to us from Business Insider.
On August twentieth, twenty twenty four, Vladimir Putin has signed
a decree that Russia will welcome foreigners who want to
escape quote Western liberal ideals end quote. So if you're
(45:58):
tired of all the shinagain's democracy, you know, if you
think Ukraine is making a big deal out of nothing,
then you could apply to become a Russian resident with
a path to citizenship, especially if you are aligned with
(46:19):
quote Russian spiritual and moral values. You can get a
visa within thirty days. Now, I imagine there are some questions.
First off, when do we go right?
Speaker 3 (46:34):
Oh, well, maybe just for a quick visit. But I
had heard today.
Speaker 4 (46:38):
I think about this specifically in relation to Alex Jones,
who's dealing with some you know, ruin financial ruin.
Speaker 3 (46:46):
We talked about it.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Okay, this guy from Waking Life.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
Yeah, yeah, that guy.
Speaker 4 (46:50):
Yeah, that's back in the golden days and he was
just a young Austin, Texas shak chack. But yeah, he's like,
you know, facing financial ruin because of the very legitimate
case against him where he put people in genuine harm
because of his comments on Sandy Hook and all that stuff.
But he posted on X yesterday or the nineteenth breaking
(47:14):
Putin just dropped a bombshell decree inviting people from across
the globe who are fed up with the globalist neoliberal
nightmare to seek sanctuary in traditional Russia, and then goes
on to say like things like what does he say
the usual bureaucratic nonsense like language tests or history exams
are out, you don't have to take them anyway. Whether
(47:34):
he understands fully this situation or not, it does seem
intriguing to mister Alec Jones.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
And we're saying he's inviting like western countries to join,
like specifically countries that are composed in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Yes, yes, and thank you for that, Matt. Absolutely you
can get a three month visa with as our buddy
Alex said, none of the quote bureaucratic nonsense regarding proficiency
in Russian or understanding of Russian history or basic laws
(48:13):
of the Russian state. You can get a three month
visa entirely to escape these troublesome democratic standards. The President
of Russia signed the decree and any foreign national will
be allowed here. So that means that means anybody who
(48:38):
maybe gets on the wrong side of the North Korean
tourist campaign, right, you know, like North Korea has opened
pretty much a one way tourist trip for anybody from
the West.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
You can check out any time you like, but you
can never leave, and.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
If it doesn't work out in Pyongyang, you can maybe
just head over to Saint Petersburg. You can request residency
based on the rejection of what Putin describes as again
destructive neoliberal ideals that differ from the traditional Russian spiritual
(49:21):
and moral values. There is going to be a list
of specific countries targeted or i would say incentivized with
this invitation. Obviously Canada, the United States, most of Western
Europe will be invited to participate in this program. Now,
(49:44):
why are we talking about this on stuff they don't
want you to do. We're talking about this because you
need to understand this is a trap. If you are here,
as if you are hearing this and you are not
currently in Russia. What you need to understand very clearly
(50:08):
is that if you go into this program, if you
accept this purported three month visa, and you are not
Edward Snowden and you are not Julian Assange, you will
be conscripted. I want to be incredibly transparent about that.
(50:29):
This way into the military, Yes, into the Russian armed forces?
Speaker 3 (50:34):
Yes? Is that just your take? I mean, I'm not
trying I believe you. I'm just like I asked what
the catch was, and then what are you basing that on.
I'm very very curious. It sounds absolutely plausible. I just
am very curious.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Imagine you are, for instance, a Bulgarian national right and
you are incentivized somehow to get to Russia. First off, yeah,
to get there.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Right.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
Let us also consider earlier decrees by the Russian state
quite recently. The conscription is real, right, the war continues.
This is a trap. Some far right figures, some that
would be called conspiracy theorists, have said this is an
(51:26):
escape hatch. Right, the same people who deny that Ukraine
has a right to you know, be its own country.
Those same folks are arguing that Russia is somehow a
safe haven. It very much is not a safe haven
(51:47):
anymore than jiong Yang is a cool like summer hangout. Sorry,
if I ruined anybody's vacation plans.
Speaker 2 (51:56):
It's weird because I can see the psychological move if
we look at it on a big.
Speaker 4 (52:01):
Check checkerboard, or just the weakening of the position, I guess,
or it's like, look, come to us, like leave your
you know, your oppressive country.
Speaker 2 (52:09):
You know we have.
Speaker 3 (52:10):
We come to us with what we have, open arms.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
Right. Yeah, And that's not to say what you're wrong, bit,
but I could just see it as a move to hey,
we are welcoming in without conscripting anybody. We're welcoming in
people from the United States, Great Britain, We're welcoming people
in from India and across the world. And we're bringing
everyone in to now be Russian because you know, we
(52:33):
are the safe haven. We are we uphold family values
and traditional values. That quote make a person human.
Speaker 3 (52:40):
M This is from the statement, right, that's the same
statement from.
Speaker 1 (52:45):
That's his Victory Day speech.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Well, yeah, but I just see that. I see it
as a one of those soft moves to just show like, hey,
we can, we can like y'all. Y'all's ideologies are so
shattered and weakened that we can just have this one
strong one and people are gonna like it. And you're
gonna see that people are gonna like it by the
response to the news we just made with this announcement.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
It's like Dennis Rodman going to North Korea too.
Speaker 4 (53:12):
It's just a big old embarrassment, right, you know, for
the United States when someone that's like a pop cultural
kind of icon or whatever is paraded around over there
and it's almost like, no, see, we've got Dennis now.
And I think, you know, pr wise, they'd only need
a couple of handful of folks to do this for them,
to prify it into being a success and make it
(53:33):
appear as though people are coming over in droves.
Speaker 3 (53:35):
Do you do you do you see it that way? Ben?
Speaker 1 (53:37):
I like the word pr if I that's a nice
that's nice. It just feels like that's what the good one.
Speaker 4 (53:42):
The potential for weaponizing, you know, even just a handful
of people taking them up on this offer.
Speaker 1 (53:47):
I can't have anyone saying a word against the worm,
Dennis Rodman, that's his street name.
Speaker 2 (53:54):
It happened.
Speaker 4 (53:55):
I'm not saying, you know, I think he was maybe
a little clueless about it, but yeah, KI use that.
Speaker 3 (54:00):
Yeah, it's a way of middle finger, you know, middle
finger to the US.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
Well, they already stole like our top a keto guy. Yeah,
on the entire planet. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:12):
Yeah, he is the top guy. Yeah, he's the top guy.
Speaker 3 (54:19):
Matt.
Speaker 1 (54:19):
I'm so glad you brought up the Russian legend Stephen
the actor who is known for saying he is an
iiketo master, most famous for running into an actual ikto
master one time and getting choked out so much that
(54:39):
he shot his pants. That is the legacy of Stephen
sgal Uh. He has a home in Russia. And I see,
I see that might be a I take.
Speaker 3 (54:52):
Also a famous sex pest and kimono opener.
Speaker 4 (54:58):
Let's just say and collect her from when I hear
not a particularly awesome guid, so maybe they can have him.
Speaker 1 (55:05):
Yeah. This coincides with an earlier move by Russia. In
May of twenty twenty three, the Russian state announced the
creation of what they call a migrant village outside of
Moscow for conservative American expatriates. Be very aware, folks. If
(55:30):
you are American and you are hearing this, that is
not the place for you. They will leverage you the
same way that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has
leveraged folks.
Speaker 3 (55:46):
In the past.
Speaker 1 (55:47):
You will not be a citizen. You will be a hostage.
The conspiracies are real.
Speaker 3 (55:53):
Be safe.
Speaker 1 (55:55):
That is inded on a downer. I suspect, but I
feel like that's important news. That's strange news, but it's
important right.
Speaker 4 (56:04):
Interestingly goes hand in hand with the North Korean tourists openings.
I would say, I think, yeah, I think you did
a great job of wheezing those two in together, because
that was very interested in both of the stories.
Speaker 1 (56:16):
Well, maybe I just fell for some AI. Maybe Vladimir
Putin himself is already an algorithm. Let us know your thoughts, folks.
We thank you for your time. As always, we can't
wait to hear your thoughts. We are easy to find online,
so hit us up flat.
Speaker 3 (56:37):
Yeah, please do bro all over the internet.
Speaker 4 (56:39):
You can find us at the handle conspiracy Stuff, where
we exist on xfka, Twitter, on Facebook with our Facebook
group Here's where it Gets Crazy, and on YouTube with
video content galore on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 3 (56:50):
We are conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
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and then dial them up. When you call in. It's
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Speaker 3 (57:10):
On the air.
Speaker 2 (57:11):
If you got more to say they can fit in
that three minute voicemail message, why not instead shoot us
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Speaker 1 (57:16):
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back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (57:49):
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