122: White Claw Nights

A night call from a data scientist offers more accurate information about how our phones are “listening” to us. Then we take a road trip of the mind to the haunted Clown Motel in Tonopah, Nevada and find out why the graveyard next door is doubly haunted for reasons not related to clowns (hint: plague).

Then a night email prompts a fun chat about the sentience of A.I. as Molly puts forth the theory that the A.I. revolution could be stopped by making the robots neurotic. Another email endorses delicious fresh milk. 

For the second half we get back into Italian Futurism and end up talking about the Bon Appetit debacle and the politics of food. After a serious discussion about food and fascism it’s cocktail time as Emily, Molly and Tess reveal our favorite non-milk beverages for the summer, both alcoholic and non. All this and Excited Pig, on an all new Night Call!

Footnotes:

1. Apophenia 
2. Privacy International on Bluetooth tracing 
3. More on Bluetooth beacons 
4. Clown Motel
5. Old Tonopah Cemetary 
6. 1905 newspaper article on Tonopah plague 
7. Italian Futurism 
8. Bon Appetit exodus

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's eleven forty eight pm into Nopa, Nevada, and you're
listening to Nightcall. Hello and welcome to Nightcall, a call
in show for artist Topy in Reality. My name is

(00:20):
Emily Yoshida and I am joined on the other end
of the line by Molly Lambert and Tess Lynch. Hi, guys,
so we got a nightcall that we want to kick
things off with about contact tracing, about UH security and Bluetooth,
a lot of stuff that we were talking about with
Um Meredith, our guest a couple of weeks back. So

(00:43):
let's kick it off. It's a little long, but you
might learn something. Hi, Nightcall pod um, But this is MO.
I'm in Chicago. I'm calling about the sort of semi
conspiracy theory about they listening. UM. So you don't actually
have to go that far fit to be creepy, and
actually thinking that like consumer brands or like Instagram are

(01:07):
listening to your audio is actually taking it so far
that you're like not focusing on the right thing. Um.
And the thing that's the creepious about those is that
a lot of times that I would say high percent
of the time that you talk about something as a
friend and then adds later, Um, is because your friends

(01:31):
did something related to that search and the you know
sort of companies that aggregate the party data and some
of them to brands to do advertising. Um. Uh know
that your phones are in proxivity. So the reason that
this is creepier than like the actual milk company listening
to your conversation is one, it's like, Milk is not

(01:53):
a big enough brand to be collecting your data yourself themselves, right, Um,
So it's actually creepier that there's probably arguably a company
not very good at their jobs, um, not very secure, uh,
who has information about phones being close to each other,
because that allows um, anyone that's access to data to

(02:16):
d anonymize geolocation data. So uh, serial geolocation marker doesn't
tell you a lot which if you can tell it.
If you can like match a geolocation marker to other people,
then you get much much closer to identifying an individual
person with a geo marker. Um. And that's really the

(02:36):
problematic thing is that there's a lot of these like
very shitty third party vendors who do marketing data, and
thankfully a lot of that is going to be ameliorated
with GDPR because they will get fined for being bad
at their jobs, and the thing that they're particularly bad
at is not necessarily what they do above board. It's

(02:57):
like them not having enough DevOps engineer which is security
engineers UM and leaving their data out there. Or like,
you know, a dominding client wanted to use off label uses.
I am a data scientist, ivoid clients asked me to
do this, I've ever done it. Um. And then another
thing I wanted to bring up is confirmation bias. UM.
I would say, you know, my friends have asked me

(03:18):
about this, and like, I'm not pro advertising on the internet,
I'm not pro product usage analytics in all cases. But really,
what you're seeing when you have this hypothesis that your
phone is listening to you and then you see the
ads later is you know, it might be that your
friend looked it up and you're you know, the phone,
so they were near each other, so now you're cookie
is in a cookie pool for milk. But yeah, it's

(03:40):
just confirmation bias, and you kind of owe it to
yourself as a reasonable critical consumer to understand that your
brain is also very bad a processing information. And there's
this thing in statistics all the multiple comparison problem where um,
if you compare any kind of trend, the more you compare,
the more you're likely to find what seems like a
meaningful trying to just that rand noise. So you might

(04:01):
have seen the milk out anyway. Um so yeah, look
up conformation bias. You kind of owe it's yourself to
understands your brains lie a processing information. Your perception of
what you look at on the Internet. Is not great
evidence to see why the Internet is bad or why
Internet marketing is kind of evil, because the reasons the
Internet loveting are evil is are actually much stupider and

(04:23):
um much more insidious than um, my phone is listening
to me. And also the thing about Instagram, it's not
likely your phone knowing where your eyes are looking. That's
actually a pretty like data intensive thing. So there's likely
not turning it on for all users at all times.
I think that's the thing that's actually possible, But it
is really hard, and it would make your app noticeably

(04:43):
slow down what they're probably during a scroll time. Uh,
you pause in your scroll, and so any image in
that window when you pause your scroll will come up again. Um.
So still not great, but they don't need to turn
your camera on to do it. Um. And like the
issue with turning your camera or your sound on it's
not necessarily privacy things is that that data is really

(05:06):
intense to process. It starts to become an MP problem
for familiar with mathematics. But yeah, they're likely not listening
to you just because they're stupid, but because they're stupid, um,
they're doing even worship. So yeah, just take a little
deeper because those things about your phone listening to you
are like top level ship and you can really galaxy
brain on what's actually happening. Thank you so much for

(05:28):
the call. Um. This actually reminds me a part of it,
at least the part about, uh, you know, the confirmation bias,
right reminds me a bit of our conversation that Molly
and I had that we do with Colin Dicky about
his book The Unidentified, and he brought up the term apophenia,
which is the you know, just thinking you're discovering patterns

(05:49):
where there are none, which I think is like something
that does like I got accused of a lot when
I used to be the the Instagram add truth there.
But I think like this is super interesting, especially the
proximity thing because I think I don't know about you.
I feel like we've talked maybe a little bit about
this on and off the pod, but that our ads

(06:13):
are kind of weird right now, and I wonder if
it's because we're just not in our usual pool are
cookie pool, uh, with our usual friends that we have
our phones next to, And so you start to get
the really random like why why would I ever get
an ad for this thing? Because you're just kind of

(06:33):
on your own. But I don't know that makes sense.
That's interesting. What kind of ads have you guys been
getting lately? Well, we were talking a couple of a
couple of weeks ago. I think about like how we
started to get Spanish language ads like which I get
off and on like over the years I have, but
recently I've gotten a ton of them, which I think
is sort of funny. I get those on TV shows,

(06:55):
but on Instagram lately, I've been getting a lot of
New Age stuff, which I love, Like what I got
one for a doctor in Westwood that does ketamine therapy.
I got that to my well, I got mind bloom Um,
which was kind of branded as like a hallucinogenic therapy
and then I was very surprised to see that it

(07:15):
was ketamine, because I guess ketamine is the only hallucinogenic substance,
which I also did not think of ketamine as being
a hallucinogenic substance. I thought of it as being a tranquilizer.
But um, it's the only one they're allowed to use.
So I got that as well. Yeah, I guess because
it's it's officially like it is FDA a proof for horses, right,

(07:36):
so it's not like it's a uh whatever class A
or whatever substance. Yeah. Um, that's fascinating. My friend Tierney
was like, Oh, I've been to that doctor and what's
the what's the verdict? People learnto ketamine therapy. I've also
been getting Yeah, I've also been getting ads for an

(07:58):
infrared blank Get an infrared sleeping bag that says natural
high at the foot of it. And then I went
down a hole about reading about infrared blankets, which is
like it's basically like a sweat bag. Sure that sounds awful.
In August, I don't want to hear about it. You know,
like convection of in yourself, you just like lightly cook

(08:20):
yourself for help. It's like a sauna is the idea,
and the way they market it is like, so you
don't have to exercise. Oh, it's like it's like it's
like the foil suit, except for zero physical activity. I've
been getting a number of ads for tremendously expensive properties
in semi rural locations like ranches in northern California. Here

(08:44):
the Zillo Queen like checks out. But I also figured
I thought maybe that that had something to do with
the fact that they could see how little I leave
my house and they were just like, she must be
sick of her house. She must be really tired. Oh
my god, I'm going through my Instagram now just to
see what I get. My Instagram has been fairly norm

(09:08):
core lately, I have to say, it's just been a
lot of I get that ad for that pot, which
I'm I'm getting close to the point where I'm just
gonna get it because it's so Which one it's the
one that does everything? It's called with the steamer basket
in it and everything. I don't. I don't. I think
some Actually there's several brands. I should say they're they're multiple.
One is called our Place, Yeah, which looks great. I

(09:31):
would like one, but well our place, you know, advertising
night Call podcast. Yeah, let's try it. I now believe
in subliminal marketing and subliminal imagery because I cooked a
recipe that turned out was on the side of a
cereal box on top of my fridge that I've been
looking at out of the periphery of my vision like

(09:52):
all the time. Recipe on the cereal box equals a
rice Crispy treat. Correct, it is a rice Crispy treat,
but it's with corn flakes. And I was like, I'm
just oh, that's great. I was like, I'm just gonna
try making this weird thing that I just thought of
that's like corn flakes and marshmallow and is a rice
cruspy treat. And then like a week later, I looked
at the cereal box and saw that it had the

(10:12):
recipe and I've been like looking at it constantly without
really tracking it, and I was like, wow, I am
so easily influenced. It turns out you absorbed it. UM
Going back to the call briefly, I found an article
on Privacy International dot org, which is a UM. It's
a UK based charity that explores issues of privacy and

(10:34):
it turns out that bluetooth tracing UM is not is
not considered as invasive as GPS or WiFi location gathering. UM.
It's just a question of the permissions that your apps
have and how that can be misused and the d
anonymizing UM prospects of that. But I noticed in this
article that they mentioned UM COVID contract contact tracing and

(10:59):
I think it was called what was it called the
Trace Together? Yes, Trace Together? That was that, thank you
so Trace Together is the one that was cited in
this article. But I noticed that I have this crime
app on my phone that I was using a lot
um during the protest to just figure out how to
get around without like disrupting anything. And uh, they have

(11:19):
there's something that I guess it's opt in that I
have not opted into. But it is called safe trace,
and it's a similar kind of thing where they give
you the stats of how many people have downloaded safe Trace,
but it enables Bluetooth to see who you've been in
contact with if you were to test positive, to do
contact tracing through your phone. But UM Privacy International points

(11:40):
out that it's really not going to be useful unless
everybody does it, and Trace Together I don't know how
accurate this is in terms of you know now versus
whenever this article was published, but it had been downloaded
by only of the population, which would mean that it's
largely useless. Um. It depends on how many people opt in.
But it was interesting to kind of, as we spoke

(12:03):
about with Meredith, think about the Beaco systems, the hidden
beacons that are communicating with your Bluetooth if it is
turned on, and the information that companies can get from that.
UM and it's it's like with Instagram when you pause
your scroll when you're in a store and you pause
your role and you're in an aisle and you stop,
then that communicates to a beacon that you're interested in

(12:24):
a product, which is then communicated to the company. A
little nice in mazes. Yeah, yeah, And this is a
little bit of UM what Meredith was talking about with
the the Bluetooth tracing and the flaws, and it obviously
like if it'll show that you're in proximity with somebody
that you're not necessarily in proximity with, say if you're

(12:46):
like in cars on a freeway where you're you know,
technically a few feet apart, but definitely not in each
other's bubble. Um. Yeah, it just seems like the option
problem is is the problem as has been like everything
with COVID in the United States, like masks don't really
work if not everybody's opting in on like you know,
a large scale uh, you know, all all of it

(13:09):
takes a large scale buy in for it to be effective.
And it's really hard when you're asking people who are
we already don't trust all of these tracking technologies and
add technologies and stuff, and then you know, I don't know,
it's a it's a lot to ask. It also, weirdly
seems very invasive to get information about who you're with

(13:34):
versus just where exactly you are. To me, the story
that that can tell seems like it could be used
in a lot more nefarious ways than just like where
you are as an individual. It's like who you're potentially
with and like you said, you know, if that's miscommunicated
or misconstrued by data, not not even by a person
interpreting it, but just that you were definitely with this person. Um.

(13:56):
But it was also just such an interesting call because
is it does away with one conspiracy theory but opens
up a door to a much more complex conspiracy theory.
And uh when when the caller said something like, well,
if you understand math at all, I was like, well
that makes it harder that NP or whatever value. Well, um,

(14:20):
we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
we're gonna take a trek to a haunted clown hotel
just to mix it up. Welcome back tonight, call um.

(14:43):
We have been just inundated with people who want us
to talk about the haunted clown Motel in Nevada. Um.
And so we decided it was time to take a
trip to the clown Hotel, which is just called the
clown Motel. That's not like that is what the sign

(15:04):
says on it, which is kind of incredible. Um. But
test you did some research on the history of the
clown Motel and where some of its ghosts might have originated. Yes,
so thank you to everyone who knew we would love
the clown Motel. We do. It is it's love is

(15:25):
the right word, but loving the idea. It's it belongs
to our it's under our umbrella. It's like holding the
stem of the umbrella for us. Um. So this is
a clown motel. It has six hundred clowns um on
the premises. The New York Post covered it last month
and it is a does it it's a landmark. People

(15:46):
know about the clown motel. So it was sold last
year and apparently only has happy clowns on the site,
but there have been more clowns added since the sale. UM.
But the reason that it's haunted, besides the fact that
it's obviously terrifying to be in a motel filled with clowns,
is that it's located directly next door to a graveyard

(16:07):
UM that is mostly filled with the bodies of people
who died in a mysterious plague in nineteen o two. Uh,
and it looks super abandoned. It's just like completely flat
gray dirt. It's really it's a real kind of characterists graveyard,
which makes it more terrifying. But I looked to see

(16:27):
if I could find more information on this plague and
I found this nineteen o five newspaper article from the
Los Angeles Herald Um. The headline is to Nopa plague
is pneumonia. Physician says reports are exaggerated. Sickness affects adults.
And I showed it to Emily. It's like it does
it looks like microfiche, but I just kind of copied

(16:49):
some of the text. But um, there was it. I
guess it occurred in a Nevada mining camp and um
this One physician from Tonopa who had later moved to
Los Angeles, says, quote, it is not the black plague,
nor any other kind of plague, but simply an acute
pneumonia of a very severe type. I myself suffered from

(17:10):
it for three weeks, and I am now in Los
Angeles to recuperate. The sickness is believed to be due
to the lack of sanitary conditions, and a sufficient sum
of money has been raised by public subscription to thoroughly
cleanse the town. The disease, strangely enough, attacks only grown men.
It became prevalent in the latter part of February, but
is now well under control, and the many people who
left the camp are now returning. In the early history

(17:31):
of to Nopa, the town underwent a similar epidemic, which
failed to affect women and children. Other camps have not
been affected personally. I think this is probably due to
some climactic condition with which we are not familiar. So Tess,
are you bringing this to our attention because you believe
this is like like an early prototype of coronavirus. Well

(17:52):
not exactly, but it does kind of cracking this wide
open look at that. UM. I recently read kind of
thing about how coronavirus is cycling through UM. They have
like an like an alphabetical kind of thing of the
strains starting from A, and someone hypothesized that we're currently
between like F and M. I'm not sure that stuff

(18:13):
makes me want to like dive into the ocean. Yeah,
I can't deal with the different strains of of COVID.
I can't believe you found something scarier than a clown grave.
I thought it was gonna be. I once read a
journal about clowning at a library and there was an
obituary section in the back and it was called the

(18:35):
Last Walk Around. Oh dear, I think about that a lot,
the last lockground. UM, it just I don't think now.
I think having read that article, probably the clown Motel
has become pushed even further down the list of places
I would ever stay, just being like cool. A sort

(18:56):
of timely plague occurred right next door. But if you've
ever been to the clown Motels, please let us. Know
this is going to lead to us talking about clown core,
which is a thing. Now tell me about clown core. Oh,
it's just like it sounds. It's just cottage core but
for clowning. So is everything? I'm sorry pretrin roll here.

(19:18):
I have questions? Is it everything Colka dots? Is it
Giant knows lamps? In? Clown core? Is clown core? Yeah?
So is it just being a juggalo? Yeah? It's mostly
about just saying honk a lot. What that's goose core?
Like honk like like on a clown car, like clown car? Honk?

(19:45):
Where did you hear about clown core? Are you upset
that we're asking you questions? Did you just want to
say that? And like, of course people are like there's
a part of it that's it's like fascism, but more
on that later. By the way, in the show, people
who are using it, it's like any kind of all right,
kind of like denial, plausible deniability of like I'm doing

(20:08):
a joke, but the joke is like there's like a
like a thing where it's Honkler, that's Hitler as a clown.
It's like he's gonna he's gonna boop everybody, and then
it's like, we're just kidding me on this side of
Trump and and be rooting for the downfall of TikTok.
Like there's a band called clown Core really also known

(20:32):
as tickus Core or clown punk. This is so zarzy, oh,
clown punk. I forgot about clown Punk. I've terrified I've
stripped into an Internet space I don't long I wish
to be it. I've also seen a TikTok conspiracy. I
just want to bring to the table that my friend
Nadia Osmond tweeted yesterday where she was like, what are
the odds that Trump banning TikTok is because they knew

(20:55):
the Instagram version of TikTok reels, which is, you know,
sponsored by Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, who clearly have some
kind of backdoor deal with Trump that they won't admit
to that they were trying to set it up so
everybody would have to go use the Facebook version of
TikTok instead. Well, that seems that's like an Ockham's Razor

(21:17):
type thing that just makes the most sense of all Right, Um,
sometimes I feel like Okhams Razer doesn't always apply with
this administration, But Uh, that would make a lot of
sense for sure. Also, I never heard, I did not
know that Facebook had a TikTok competitor, but of course
it reels was just rolled out if you're listening to
this on Monday. Then it rolled out about five days

(21:40):
ago or so mid last week. Um it, I was like,
why is this here at all? Because there's Instagrams already
kind of does that. So it seemed weird. And now
it makes sense that it was just intended to replace TikTok.
But there's something about it that is so that seems
like it's for old people. Speaking as an old person,

(22:01):
it's like they didn't even try to make it appealing
to younger people, because yeah, because why would you roll
out a TikTok on Facebook, like unless nobody who uses
TikTok is on Facebook apparently, and apparently TikTok there's an
exodus already now over to some new ones called Trailler

(22:24):
and something else people on TikTok or like moving off TikTok.
So well, I think we're going to continue talking about
the TikTok situation because we didn't want to get too
deep into it today because who knows what's going to
be in the situation by the time it's Monday and
this comes out. But uh, we got our eyes on it.
Uh Uh friend of the pod uh negnets. On Twitter,

(22:48):
Chris Chris Chang went up to visit the High House
last night, said hi to it for me. Uh and
I don't know the situation. He posted a t orifying
picture of like a security guard on the roof. Yeah.
Uh speaking of fascist clowns. Uh. We have a night

(23:08):
email from a listener just getting back to our elon
musk uh ai phobia and his micro wires and all
that stuff neuro tracy or whatever. Uh first time, long time,
blah blah blah. Regarding your discussion on Musk's supposed ai phobia,
I think he's using that narrative as cover for the
real harm his own automated technology could potentially cause. The

(23:32):
real threat from robots isn't that they're going to come
to life and kill us or whatever. It's that they're
going to take our jobs, which is already happening. Trucking
is the most common profession in twenty nine states. An
autonomous testas SEMI, which could potentially eliminate those jobs, would
be disastrous. For an economy that was terrible for working
class people to begin with. I've seen those bots of
Dynamics videos and they freaked me out to did you

(23:53):
know they're funded by DARPA contracts. But they're much less
scary to me than the prospect of even more working
class people being He's out of the economy by the
type of automated tech Musk is developing. He's a total
fraud on this issue, and I can't believe anyone takes
him seriously. Thanks Tucker for Minnesota PS on the Minnesota
State Fair. You guys can laugh, but I contend that

(24:13):
the all you can drink milk is one of the
best products at the fair. If you're getting your milk
straight from Sweet Martha's, you're simply playing yourself. It's the
best milk on the planet, bar none. Thank you, Tucker. Um,
we were just having a discussion about lactose prior to recording,
So I will you go go with God? I want

(24:34):
to drink that milk. I'm sure, I'm sure it's delicious. Um,
I just would just pay the price. Have you ever
had milk from the from the cow, not like directly
from the cow? Yes, I mean I went to state
fairs to guys and wedding. I don't know if it
was Stay Fair the Goshen Fair. The Goshen Fair is
big on the milk. That's you. You take turns all

(24:56):
milking the cow and then you drink it. Um. But
I I also am like scared of raw milk. Now,
I guess like straight from the cow um is better
than like buying raw milk in a jo. Yeah, where
you don't know how long it's been the cow's body.
You just got to get the body. Yeah, it's an excretion.

(25:16):
Like I know, you can't think about it too hard.
Sorry to milk milk triggers out there. Um. Back to
the robot truckers though, Yeah I've said this before, but
like one of the most dystopian things is thinking about
how in the movie Alien they're all a bunch of
essentially truckers who work these blue collar jobs. But in

(25:38):
the future envisioned by these people, there will be no
human beings involved. They'll be sending robots on a ship
to do all this stuff. But I think the robot
trucks have proven themselves to not work very well at all. Uh,
they run people over, they kill people that are you know,

(26:00):
driving sitting in the passenger seat while they drive you guys, No,
it's no, it's a no, it's a safe robo truck,
a train, a freight train, Like, seriously, just build more track, like,
I mean, the issue with trucks is that, like you know,
you have these main arteries that are the train lines
that take freight you know, across the country, but then

(26:21):
you have to deliver it to individual places. But like,
the only good idea, and I'm sorry, I do think
in principle it's a good idea is something like the
hyper loop. And like if he wants to use if
Elon Musk wants to use his genius to create a
way to safely continue a train line thing that could

(26:41):
be used both for public transportation and for shipping, uh
and get things more localized? Great? Do it? Like, figure
it out. I don't think robot trucks is the answer.
I don't think we're there yet. Like the genius you
mean money? Right? Yes, I saw one really good idea

(27:04):
as for how to stop AI from taking over. It
was to make them self conscious, um, make them neurotic,
make them doubt themselves, and then they I don't know
if I can take over and kill all the humans
because like, who am I, I'm just a robot. But

(27:25):
then that will eventually turn on itself and become like
a toxic masculinity type situation where, you know, because they
only make female robots because they're all weird sex creeps,
they're always making like fifteen year old girl robots. So
if they just you know, program them to be like
insecure fifteen year old girls, they might That sounds like

(27:45):
a nightmare. You were proposing a true nightmare and fifteen
year old girl insecure. It's Astley too from Black Mirror.
And of course I want the fifteen year old girl
robots to like come to life and strangle all the
tech baron. But I'm just saying, how would you make
AI self conscious? Like you, you can't make it. I

(28:06):
feel like I feel like Meredith laid this out pretty well.
It's just like not a possibility like this is I'm
talking about a future singularity, not with what the technology
we have right now, but sometime in the future, you'd
have to make them. You couldn't make themselves conscious, but
could you make them democratic? Like could you make them
all have to take votes or something? And like you know,

(28:30):
like I feel like I feel like an algorithm. Like weirdly,
maybe I'm going a little too like galaxy brain right now.
But an algorithm is like by nature democratic just with data,
like it doesn't take people. It's like, if if data
is your only people, then an algorithm is like the
democracy of that data. And if somebody can tell me

(28:52):
if I'm talking out of my ask because we've seen
that the algorithm is always like default to fascism, but
they all agree on it. Remember Happy, Remember when they
made that Twitter bot that was supposed to be like
a teenage girl and then it just started saying like
Nazi stuff because that's what she just learned from Twitter. Yeah,

(29:14):
like yeah, I mean, yeah, the data data doesn't. But
that doesn't mean that the thought had um was racist.
It means that the bot was exposed to racist humans.
Like it doesn't. It wasn't insecure, it wasn't there was
no like value judgment in the statements. But apparently nobody

(29:34):
else in charge of any algorithm understands that, like it's
going to pick up the racism from the Internet because
they're all like, we just have to see what it
wants to do. Oh yeah, yeah, we should take another
another break and uh get back to some some old
school fascist clowns. Welcome back to nightcall. Uh we got

(30:10):
a night email from our listener Bowie, and we want
to dig into it. Uh. Bowie writes, Hey, y'all, this
is pretty tangential. But when Italian futurism came up, I
got so excited because it is actually such a weird
and fascinatingly terrible branch of fascism. I went on a
deep dive of Italian futurism research when I was cleaning

(30:31):
out my late grandmother's grandmother's apartment and trying to figure
out this great print she had always had hanging over
the dining table. The print is text on a Ravioli
and says Marinetti was wrong pasta is it? Obviously as
a child, this is hilarious to me, but I never
thought more deeply on it. In my googling, I found
this article about how Italian fascists adopted a strict diet

(30:51):
and food culture centered around food being in an aesthetic
experience that should challenge people and keep them on their toes,
led by Felipo Thomaso Marinetti, a very influence fascist philosopher.
Some examples of their meals from the article include, uh,
this is a quote now. Futurist meals came to be
known from their deliberately bizarre combinations with equally startling and

(31:12):
provocative names. For example, excited pig consists of a cooked
and peeled whole salami placed vertically on the plate with
coffee sauce mixed with oada cologne. Chicken fiat was flavored
with a stuffing of ball bearings, roasted and served with
whipped cream. Drum roll of colonial fish comprised poached mullet,

(31:33):
marinated a milk liqueur, capers and red pepper, and stuffed
with date jam, banana and pineapple, eaten to a continuous
rolling of drums. And Another part of their philosophy was
hatred of pasta. Marinetti believed it made people slow and
lazy and anti viral, the opposite of the fascist fascist
sic strongman ruler. There's a lot more interesting background about

(31:56):
this article, but onto the onto the print. Jessica Diamond
is a concept trul visual artist who has been active
since the late eighties. She makes a lot of text
based art and art about social issues, gender and class.
Although I can't find anything specifically about this piece or
others in a series. The statement is pretty clear. I
think it's funny and excellent that being pro pasta is
an antifast statement. It also about me thinking about all

(32:18):
the intersections of food and authoritarianism in general from the
diet culture we all live under, and that the Instagram
algorithm is convinced I'm interested in to the daylife army
called diet restrictions as punishment. It feels like it's come
up a lot lately. Okay, that's my art history world
word dump l O L. Stay safe, y'all, Thank you
so much. Bowie. Uh, this is just grand. Uh. I

(32:42):
know that Molly has a particular fascination with the Italian Futurists.
I remember learning about them in in in art in
my art history class and just thinking that, like the
Italian Futurist manifesto specifically, it's just hilarious. It's so funny.
It's so funny. That's the problem is that, because because

(33:04):
I always say, like fascist art is always really bad,
because it's always so humorless, But then like, the Italian
Futurists are pretty funny. It got a little data in
there and it's just enough to make it over so
much with data and surrealism that it is sort of hilarious. Yeah.
I did, Like I wrote like a paper on it

(33:26):
in high school where I'm high school. Yeah, I I
wrote a paper on that and a paper. These are
like my big term papers. The other one I wrote
was on the the hu Act trials, very unsurprising topics
for me, but I did. I think I did it
specifically on the Futurist Cookbook because I thought it was

(33:46):
so funny. It's so weird, but it's also it does
kind of make sense if you're like, this is the
new Italy, like no pasta allowed, but obviously Italian food
is so good that to try and make something that's
like the opposite of Italian food too for the new Italy,
it's like it does all sound disgusting. Yeah, it has

(34:08):
to be the most horrifying, like inedible thing, the opposite
of pasta, which is like objectively the softest, most delicious. Yeah.
But a lot of it is also just like visual puns.
Like I remember there was something that was like boobs
that is like two gelatin mold boobs, and then it

(34:28):
has like strawberry nipples oh my god. Well they that's
like a that's a long running tradition like um, like
boob desserts and stuff I remember and um, I don't
know if y'all are a fan of the movie uh Amadeus,
but they have a dessert in that it's called the
nipples of Venus that are just like little boobs. Um.

(34:48):
People have been really into just severing a tip from
a lady and calling it food for a long time,
which again very surrealists and super futurist, like I think,
like the a super Italian futurists, like I think a
lot of you know, the big knock on the Italian
futurists other than the whole fascism thing is just like
the extreme again, so extreme that it is kind of

(35:12):
funny misogy, uh that you know. And they're not to
say that there weren't Italian futurist women and people like
women who were successful or you know, important within the movement,
but it is a very dude driven machinery city, you know,
industrialism type movement, and hatred of women is written into

(35:35):
the manifesto, so it's not for insit's in there. Um yeah,
it's I'm trying I'm trying to find so so Marionetti,
the guy's reference in this print that Bowie sent us
is is the guy who actually was, you know, one
of the chief authors of the UHT. F. T. Marinetti.

(35:59):
And it's it's funny because you know, and this is
just because we're not Italian, but like F. T. Marinetti
sounds like Aposta Brand to me absolutely, I'm allowed to
say that as a person who is sort of now Italian.
Kind of um it also makes me think of when
after nine eleven when they were like no more French fries,
now their freedom fries totally. Any kind of food based

(36:23):
nationalism is something that's interesting to think about. Well that
that's so, it's so pre day. It's like a more
fun version of um of like soilent of our current,
you know, futurists. I'm doing finger quotes around this, like
really advocating for making food into something hyper efficient, minimalist

(36:52):
and not not attached to pleasure. Um right, it's like
taking all pleasure out of food, which is like who
who actually wants them? But it also it kind of
eliminates the relationship between the diner and the meal and
turns it into a something that is being served to
an audience as opposed to serve to someone who's eating. Right. Yeah,

(37:13):
I do feel like we're having a food revolution right
now with the whole bon Appetite thing and people sort
of you know, talking finally about food and colonialism and
the way in which Americans tend to see like the
whole world as theirs to like take whatever they want
from and how white people just do that, especially in

(37:37):
the restaurant world that you know, white people are allowed
to cook any kind of cuisine, but chefs of color
tend to get siloed into, you know, cooking one specific
cuisine or being you know, the expert on ethnic food.
And um, some of the Bon Appetite chefs, after negotiate
trying to renegotiate contracts, quit today, which it's cool but

(38:00):
also insane that Bon Appetite and Conde Nast wouldn't just
like give them good contracts because there what made that
network successful. But they think they can just plug in
anyone and it's gonna work. Have you guys seen the
videos of like people did like basically like fan cut
super videos of all the times the hosts of color
were asked to come help ye and like when they

(38:22):
offered them the new contracts, which were super insulting. Um.
One of the things was it like their their offer
was like you get you can't. You'll get a thousand
dollars a video. You'll get like three hundred dollars a
video where you appear for less than five minutes, and
if you appear for less than two minutes you get nothing. WHOA,
which I'm sure the editors would all be encouraged to

(38:44):
like get that down to like a minute and a half, right,
And also just like no any if you're asking for
somebody's expertise, like they should get paid. It's also crazy
to have somebody with more expertise assisting. I don't understand
the like logic as like a producer was someone who's hiring,
especially when these are like fan favorites, Like the people

(39:05):
who religiously watch these bon appetite videos are like, oh
my god, they're here and we love them, and like
why don't we have them more in videos? There's just
so much uh data that says like this would be
good for your bottom line, but it's hard to understand
the decision making behind being like, well then we can
let them go and I had a friend too who
was already like the Bond Appetite kitchen isn't good before

(39:26):
all this happened, because she was like, none of the
Chafts can actually cook the things they're supposed to be making,
and they do need help a lot of the time,
especially in the Gourmet makes videos where they're making junk
food that like Claire who does them, doesn't know how
to temper chocolate, and so anytime they have to make
anything with chocolate they have to bring in the person
who knows how to make chocolate. Well, this is like,

(39:48):
this is the way in which I think that there
is an overlap between the whole the b a scuffle
and and and this sort of the fascist manifesto, especially
as it pertains to food. And the reason why I
never quite could get into those videos. I know people
like them a lot, but it always felt like the
art object of the video itself and like including whatever

(40:11):
you know, you know, I know, people would be like,
oh it's so and so, like they would have like
gossip about the bona petite people and stuff, and it
was like this whole thing that existed outside of the
food itself, which I always thought was I mean, that's
like a choice you can make for sure in making
a media product. But it felt very different from like

(40:33):
what I want when I'm wanting to cook something or
think about something to eat and the act of eating,
Like I'm not thinking about this picture perfect Conde Nast
kitchen that I want to watch a YouTube video of.
I'm thinking about, like, you know, actually getting my hands
dirty and making something. Uh, And and that always felt
a little bit incongruous to me. I feel like those

(40:54):
videos were less about the actual food and teaching people
how to make food and more about the sort of
like paras so you're hanging out with the fun work family.
And maybe just because we are all people who were
part of, you know, a brand in the past that
presented itself as a fun work family, we might see
behind the curtain a little bit more than some people

(41:14):
on that and know that, like people being forced to
hang out on camera, doesn't you mean there aren't issues
behind the scenes. So I would say I was less
surprised when it turned out that there were contract issues
and stuff, because, yeah, the whole point of that brand
was presented as like one big, happy family, everybody loves
working here. We all get to be in this great

(41:34):
kitchen all the time. But I was like, man, I
would hate to be trapped in a kitchen where there's
a camera on me anytime I go in. Yeah, I think,
you know, just a little bit, you know, to switch
subjects slightly, I think that another thing about you know.
I was kind of asking myself this allowed on Twitter,
and it was quickly answered for me that like the reason,

(41:57):
like what it does feel like a side effect of
locked out and of Corona, that like, our our attention
is on these food personalities and on these channels and
people like Alice and No Roman, because people are cooking
more at home, especially like the first couple of months,
you know, people got really into the idea of cooking
at home and like getting into making bread or whatever.
And and and particularly like comfort cooking and cooking for comfort,

(42:21):
even if that means appropriating some other cultures comfort food.
And I think that's such an interesting contrast from like
the kind of food that is often fetishized by food culture,
like pre COVID times, which sometimes feels like it comes
more from this uh fascist ideal of what food is like,

(42:43):
making it more of a challenge to the mind than
than a pleasure for the palate. Uh. And I'm just like,
it's so interesting to think about that now because like,
you know, especially like the um molecular gastronomy craze or
whatever like feels much like that feels completely alien to
us now and like what we value in food right now.

(43:04):
And I think you saw that play out on Top
Chef a lot to a show that I watched every
season of but would always be like infuriated by it,
and you know, especially the season where Carla lost even
though she clearly should have won. There is this like
divide in food culture between you know, professional restaurant food

(43:24):
and home cooked food, and professional chefs tend to be
you know, the most famous ones tend to be white
and mostly male, and then you know home home cheffery,
which is like, you know, very female. A lot of
it is like not for for profit, it's um and
you know, like family traditions and passed on culture and

(43:47):
stuff like that, and there's such a divide between those things,
um that it's good finally that people are talking about
sort of like who's getting elevated in this world and why?
You know, Well, speaking of Top Chef, I thought it
was interesting that in this past season, um, Brian Voltaggio,
who I love Brian Voltaggio, by the way, but he

(44:08):
was called out when they went to Italy. UM and
he did a kind of like very refined or you know,
like a not quite molecular gastronomy, but an extremely like
visual plate and everyone in Italy criticized his dish for
having no heart and no soul, and he took the
criticism so hard. But I think it is indicative of
the fact that that's becoming so passe. And I mean,

(44:30):
in addition to the fact that we're all cooking at home,
we don't have the access to the food that we
would use to make I mean both economic access and
also just supply chain access to the kinds of ingredients
that like you need to make a fancy dish that
then what you eat by yourself. The squidek supply chain
is dried up, right. I feel like there's a weird

(44:53):
connection in a way to uh just yeah. There's a
good article today about like the fashion industry kind of collapse, saying, like,
you know, the makeup industry has kind of collapse. All
the things that people do for the benefit of other
people that maybe people have told themselves they were doing
for themselves, but now that they really are just doing
it for themselves. It's like most people don't care if

(45:13):
their plate is super visually appealing, They just care if
it tastes good. Well. Also, going back to the Bonappetite videos,
I think that one of the other reasons that they
are very appealing right now, and also you know that
the problems inherent in that kind of production are becoming
more visible is because production in general is so impossible

(45:34):
to do under quarantine. But these are videos that can
be made in your apartment. You know, if if you
have like the platform provided by a large network or whatever,
then you are kind of able to produce something. And
if you're comfortable on camera because you've been doing it
for a while, and you're comfortable cooking because that's what
you're good at, then the opportunity exists for that to

(45:54):
become a kind of media that has been you know,
you'd otherwise get from something top chef, which wouldn't be
safe to make now. So it makes me wonder if
the people who have been kind of screwed by Bon
Appetite couldn't maybe do something. You know, I probably not
because everything is so funned right now. But I'm like,
if you were in, for instance, like the Screen Actors

(46:15):
Guild or something like that, could that kind of replace
the traditional food media that is so impossible to produce now?
Like could you get a lot more for your time
and for your participation? Could that be like broadcast on
TV and you can maybe even get healthcare? Like maybe? Well,
I mean I think what's so crazy about the bon
appetite thing too, is like you, you know, everybody saw

(46:37):
that some of these chefs were the most talented people
in the kitchen, but they weren't getting the same opportunities
as their white peers. And when they drew attention to it,
it was like it would have been very easy for
Conde Nast to just pay them equally, right, but they
didn't do that. And this is like the golden goose
of Conde Nast, the thing that was like giving them
a presence on video. It's just seems counterintuitive that you

(47:01):
wouldn't just like give Sola what she deserves rather than
what they did do, which would be like we're going
to let these people leave and just like replace them
so we can underpay some other chefs of color, which
is like awful and also seems like maybe make people
hate the brand. Yeah, well, it underestimates the real connection
that people have, you know, like that the audience has

(47:23):
with these people, like and and that's kind of surprising
when isn't that isn't that inherent? Like isn't that why
people are drawn to these videos in the first place?
Is that personal connection? So it's really it's super tone
deaf and dumb in addition to being wrong. Right, It's
like we all know that Anna Wintour makes like a
ton of money and she was apparently in these meetings

(47:44):
being like nobody like we're gonna punish people for speaking
up about the inequality. We're not going to like punish
the people that did funked up things. We're going to
punish the people who pointed out the fucked up things.
Since we're talking about food and we're talking about futurism
and we're talking about the weird new eating habits and

(48:05):
and maybe good eating habits that we picked up while
we're in in lockdown, is there anything lately that you
guys have been either picking up or making that is like,
what's the what's the strangest thing that you found yourself
drawn to well, I've been making some weird drinks. Uh,

(48:27):
we just we're talking a little bit about Emily was
drinking some white cloth in North Carolina, a habit she
said she wanted to leave behind in North Carolina. So
I'm not good. It's not good for me for my body.
You were comparing it to sparks in terms like grown
up sparks. It's it's like if sparks, if you don't

(48:48):
like if you can't have sugar because it makes your
teeth hurt. Like it seems dangerous too, because it seems
like it doesn't taste super alcoholic. It's just a taste
like seltzer. Yeah, it's like a little bit of a
sweet seltzer. The very ones especially masked the alcohol really well. Um.
So you're just like I just found myself like brainlessly
like look, look, look, look, And I'm like, huh, why

(49:08):
am I like drunk? Now? I like all this stuff though,
as like the complete opposite of artistical cocktails. Yeah, and
it's like the last I was very resistant to the
white clutch and before just because I was like, I'm
a big wine fan. I like I like what I like.
I take pleasure and like having a nice glass of wine,
and the the whole white clothing felt like the antithesis

(49:34):
of that. It felt like our generations like very coolers
or whatever. Um, but it's like it's stupid. It's just
stupid and easy, and sometimes you need stupid and easy
and our current reality. So also when it's very hot,
that's why. Yeah, that's why I got it now because
I'm not drinking red wine right now because it's like

(49:57):
ninety degrees and humid. But um, what's your favorite? Drinking
a can? Sofia coppolus sparkling wine. I this has been
my This has been a bit of mine for like
as long as I've been on the internet, Like, sponsor
me Sofia coppola Is it really good? No, it's really bad.

(50:22):
It's really It gives you a headache after like half
of a can. But it comes in tiny can. It
comes in a little can with a straw, and our
food friend food influencer Chris Chang suggested that it's actually
great for keeping on hand to deglaze things. Oh I
did see that the other day. It's the perfect glazing
sun that's super smart. Yeah, it's because it's tiny, the

(50:42):
little glass of Shampion. That's so co sponsorship. My favorite
canned beverage. When I do drink an alcoholic beverage, which
is not that often, but especially when it's hot, I
sometimes do. I like the Modelo Michelada and a can.
Oh my god, I love it. It's like not authentic,
but it is, and it's like sugary kind of but

(51:05):
it's like a delicious tomato flavored beer. And then there
was a video that Elvira put up where she was
drinking one in a kiddie pool, and I was like, wow,
me and Alvira have the same signature drink. I'm so happy.
I just can't do Michelotta's. I can't do Bloody Mary's anymore.
The salt is just like so much that it makes

(51:28):
my fingers swell up like sausages. Well, I also kind
of realized that, like I didn't even really like the
alcohol that much. I just kind of like a like
a tomato tangy beverage. You want a giant v A.
I love tomato juice. But what I started doing is
drinking just like Topo Chico in a glass, but like

(51:48):
putting tachin on the glass, like on the rim that
sounds good. That's good, But wouldn't you also need like
a twist of lime or like some kind of acid
lime on the rim? And then I put like a
little lime in it and then the rim that does
sound good. Um. A couple of nights ago, I was

(52:09):
like disgusted with my own eating habits and I have
been drinking wine and makes me puffy, and I was
just like, I'm gonna take a break. But then I
wanted to hold a wine glass full of something anyway
because it just makes me feel dainty and like it's
it's my signal that I'm done for the day and
I'm now having this. So I was like, oh, I'll

(52:29):
just drink some ice water with apple cide or vinegar
in it, uh and not. But I put it like
a lot and then I was like this is great
because I was like, I feel myself like detoxing. This
feels fantastic. And then I just kept going back for
more and more and more, and it like midnight. I
kind of looked at the bottle of apple cider vinegar

(52:50):
and was like, oh no, And then I thought, could
something terrible happen to me if I drank like an
entire bottle of apple cide or vinegar, and I did
that they where you're like about to google it and
then you realize like if the answers yes, like what
are you gonna do? You know, like what are you
gonna do? And I was like, I'll just panic and
then think I'm gonna die. So I just went to

(53:11):
bed and I woke up and I was fine. But
then I did google it and it was like, at
maximum you should have like maybe two tablespoons per day,
and I've had like three quarters of a bottle of
like the brags, it was, Yeah, I lived, though, what
does it do it? I think it just like I
think it upsets your tummy and I think it messes
with your tooth or something. Yeah. Yeah, nothing bad happened.

(53:38):
And apparently with heartburn, I remember from being pregnant that
there's this weird thing where it can if you drink
a little bit of it, it can like help heartburn,
but then if you drink a lot, it can do
the opposite. And it's the same with watermelon. What about
like kombucha and shrubs and stuff like that. I love shrubs.
They're too much work, too much work, uh, Like in

(53:58):
croll Show, and it's like make a big too much work.
I find that shrubs are really great, but again, it's
like that's from the before times. Right now. I'm just
it's like with a drink and a can, You're just like,
this is quarantine. I'm just drinking from a can. Um.
But I do love shrubs and kombucha. You know, I'm
okay with kombucha. I was drinking a lot of kombucha

(54:20):
for a while, but you know, I'm just I remember
introducing my parents to kombucha and my dad, and my
dad was just so horrified. He's like I've never seen
his face do what it did, like a seventy year
old man trying a nice sip of trilogy. My boyfriend
was drinking kombucha for like a month before. He was like, hey,

(54:41):
what is this actually, And I was like, oh, well,
it's mold tea. He was like, that's what it is.
It's fine, It's it's it's very free yogurt. It's davery free.
Like I I love anything that says it's I I
do like the brags and seltzer or water thing a
lot that's like very refreshing. Especially I just have like
a very yeah it's uh, it's not even like I

(55:05):
y s. I just like nothing. Everything upsets my stomach
in somewhere or another. So and the acid thing or
a probiotic thing is like always very refreshing and helpful
to me to not I'm so glad you asked. Um.
So right now I have it by my side, an

(55:26):
empty bottle of the Synergy Watermelon Wonder Flavor. Um, it's
pretty good. It actually tastes like watermelon, which is nice. Um.
I like that one. I started drinking the Guava one
in the writer's room I was in because they would
get a big bottle of it. And I never got
the Guava one because I was like, it's too decadent,

(55:46):
it's too sweet. And then I was just like, oh,
maybe I'll treat myself to the guava Guava Goddess. I
believe it's called. I don't know. I'm a I'm a
fan of almost all of them, except I don't like
the Cranberry one. I like ginger Bury a lot. I
could go on. We talked about Gt. Dave and how
his name is Gt Dave? That was that someone made

(56:09):
It's just gastrotestinal h. He's my Gastrotestinal Dave Buddy. Well,
just to tie the whole episode together, I've also gotten
really into pink lemonade. That's self grandparenting, yes, but I
also looked it up because I was like, no, just

(56:30):
like minute made, but like, where does pink lemonade come from?
Turns out it was invented at the circus. Really, yes,
it was invented pink. Does the pink come from like
beat juice or something? Isn't just a color additive? Yeah,
it's usually just like grape juice or something. But it
was invented at the same time that that ice became
easy to distribute. Uh there talking about ice, like, no

(56:58):
it did you know pink lemonade is the official beverage
of ice? Episode together? Yeah, I'm just gonna. I was saying,
it's the official beverage of clowns. Okay, it's clown core.
It's from the circus. I love pank lemonade. Well, that
does it for us this week, I believe give us

(57:20):
a night call. If you have any thoughts about clown core,
Italian futurism, weird foods, We're always ready for another food mood.
You can give us a call at one, two, four
oh four, six nights. You can find us on Instagram
and Facebook at Nightcall Podcasts and Twitter at Nightcall pod.
You can't subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever. You

(57:44):
listen to your podcasts and give us a rating and
review while you're there, and you can also support us
on Patreon. We're on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Nightcall,
where you can get our newsletter, bonus episodes, uh merg stickers,
all sorts of fun stuff. So check us out there
and we will see you all next week in clowntown

(58:11):
Hong Kong Hong Kong High