December 29, 2025 • 35 mins
Featured in hour one of the Monday December 29, 2025 edition of The Armstrong & Getty Replay...
- Bad Ideas (Noah Rothman's Sarcastic Column on Jaws)
- AOL and Least Attractive Hobbies to Women
- Dynamic Pricing
- Japan Bears/A&G Pickleball Paddles
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the
George Washington Broadcast Center. Jack Armstrong, Joe, Gaddy.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Armstrong, and Jetty and Hee arms Long Getty Strong. We
are so lazy. We were still at home.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
We're vacationing or whatever it is we're gonna do during
this week.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
But we're not at work.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
That's right, we're relaxing so we can come back ten
rested and ready in the new year, or sat and
draggled and hung.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Over in my keys.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Anyway, enjoy the Armstrong and Giddy replay.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
You're gonna need a bigger potion.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
The movie Jaws came out fifty years ago this summer,
horrifying swimmers all around the world and hoping to God
as you bobbed around in the.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Ocean, you did not hear at cello.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
All right, bought them bottom but it Oh.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
So this is funny.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
This reminds me of our friend James Lindsay when he
and his friends did the Grievance papers. They put out
these fake studies. They're incredibly over the top and ridiculous,
but you couldn't tell them for the real thing from
the real thing, because the real thing is over the
top and ridiculous to that point, I'm gonna do a
mock one.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I could switch the mock.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
One with the Atlantic piece and you wouldn't be able
to tell the difference. But the Atlantic has a piece
out today. The film Jaws came out fifty years ago
this month. It portrays class divisions differently from the novel
that inspired it, in ways that anticipated a fight that
has arguably defined American politics twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
What Jaws got wrong is the title. I thought it
was about the fish bite and peel. It was.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
It was about a scary shark biting people, and it
made people think, oh my god, that could happen to
me in the ocean. And the end and they catch
the shark and it's a bloody finale and blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
There's nothing else to it but that. That's it. That's
the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Uh. And it's hilarious that The Atlantic is turning it
into some sort of class division and a commentary on
today's politics, or it anticipated today's politics, or whatever the crap. Anyway,
Noah Roffman of the National Review decided to write in
that style, mocking it.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Basically. Charles C. W.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Cook, who Joe and I both really like responded to
Noah's Peace by saying, I am in awe.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Let me read a little bit from it.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
The character Quint, that's the guy we just heard from,
the guy who owns the boat. It says we're in
need a bigger boat. He's the salty old dude. The
character Quint represents the suppressed male id which struggles against
structural and metasocial taboos, prescribing the full expression of the
archetypical masculine ethos.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
He is consumed by the sleek.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
White metaphor of sexual equality against which he rages until
the last minute he bids farewell and adieu, not to
those Spanish ladies, but to the shackles of conventional gender roles.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Exactly what I thought, exact That's what I took from it.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Yeah, when I watched the Shark movie, I mean, this
is no more over the top than the Atlantic piece. Really,
the drive to open the beaches by the fourth of
July is a classic expression of American jingoism, and the
blood spilled over his rote commitment to commercialism as an
unremarkable feature of the rapacious capitalist enterprise. I find that
(03:45):
sort of thing hilarious, and that it is so not
even this much different from the actual pieces.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Some of these crazy.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
People write about this stuff right right, so easy to
bamboozle them if you know the language to throw around.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Noah Rothman actually said at the end of he said,
this is really fun. No wonder so many people do
it for a living. One more Jaws a portrayal of
the monstrous menacing and potentially violet other foreign, indeed alien.
It haunts its pursuers, dominates their conscience, and is subject
to abuses and indignities until it meets out the righteous
(04:24):
vengeance of accumulated transgenerational memory. The Shark is the global South,
the black and brown diaspora of the bun Dung Revolution,
whatever the hell that means. And I'll just give you
one more that I like Martin Brody. Who is is
that the h Brody is the police chief, right Okay,
(04:44):
the weak and crumbling edifice of the post war consensus,
exhausted and plagued by indecision. He serves as our link
to the fraying social order of the past. His triumph
is pyriic. I mean, it wasn't worth it. Perched atop
a sinking ship, dealt a mortal blow by the ing
vanguard of the subjugated and militant. His reprieve from the
oppressor's fate will be short lived.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
The Atlantic pea is great.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
The Atlantic piece that I read is so not much
different than that.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah, and it's just who, dude are It gets to.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
The previous conversation of like Trump and this man, this
New York mayor dude whatever his name is being in
on the joke. Is the Atlantic in on the joke
that they know it's a joke and they're writing it
for their readers who think it's a.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Joke, or they all taking it seriously. This crap. No,
you know.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
It crystallized in my head that in the same way
that if you want to like get the tension or
sell practically anything to a twenty three year old male,
at least in the past, appeal to sexual desire and
they'll just buy anything. And and to women it's you'll
(05:56):
be beautiful and desirable and people will like you. They
will freaking buy anything. Appeal to the intellectual vanity of
a certain crowd, and it's mostly on the left. If
you make them believe believing this makes you better and smarter,
than everybody else. They will believe freaking anything, no matter
(06:18):
how laughable it is. Lendsy and pluck Rose and Bogosian
with their experiment. You mentioned the infamous the Grievance Study papers.
I mean they are the best example ever of that.
You could not make it so stupid that the intellectual
vanity of these people wouldn't make them lap it up.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
The Atlantic piece is actually about the different political orientations
of the book versus the movie, and how the movie
got it wrong in portraying class distinctions as.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Opposed to the book.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Nobody watched the movie and came away from it thinking
about class distinctions at all. It didn't get the more.
It didn't get them at all. It's a it's a
it's a horror film.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
It's just a short close the beaches, or don't we
there's tremendous money at stake. That's just a really good subplot, sure, exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
And whether it's a.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Guy in a hockey mask coming on campers with an
axe or a shark in the water, that's.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
What it is.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
It's got nothing to do with class distinctions or any
of this other crap. And it didn't foresee our politics
fifty years later.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
What is wrong with you people? If you were to
read more of the Atlantic one and then give us
all an hour to go about our lives, I think
it would be impossible for each of us to remember
which one was the parody and which one was realized.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Is your point, obviously, But yeah, what a bunch of
mumbo jumbo. There are some ideas so ridiculous only an
intellectual would believe them.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Thomas Sowell. I'm paraphrasing.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
And talking about the uh. Bro is a recent transplant
from New York City. This is from the Atlantic, the
actual piece.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
Brody the character you'ld have just read it and asked
us which one of us?
Speaker 2 (08:08):
They just guess.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Brody, the character in the movie, is a recent transplant
from New York City in the film, living a seemingly
idyllic life, and Amity went a home with a home
on the water.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Although he is not college educated, What the hell's it
got to do with me? And didn't anybody even know that?
Speaker 3 (08:24):
His primary virtue is that he defers to people who
are and it becomes a foil for Amity's working people,
who in the film are portrayed as unpleasant or obtuosed
and at best well meaning but shortsighted. What are you
talking about? That was what I said.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
I walked out of Jaws and I said, you know what, honey,
the working people are so obtuse in that movie.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
I couldn't enjoy it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
And if you ever go to Universal and we've probably
most have us done that.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
If you've ever been to Universal.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Studios in Los Angeles and the old Jaws shark comes
out of the water and you go, ah, it gets
you kind of wet, that's exactly what you think, the
obtuseness of the working class.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
That's what you're thinking about. Wow.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
Just you know what, you peep a fine, do what
you I just don't want you in charge of anything.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Well yeah, I used to think that too.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
I don't want you to exist dull, or you need
to be in a camp or okay, fine, you can
live your free life is in camp, but you don't
get to be in college teaching kids this crap and
convincing him it's true, because that is a problem for me.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
So true.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Now wow, speaking of delusion, Wow, wow.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
I mean, it just blows my mind that you watched
the Shark movie. That's what you came away with.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Well, it's a great example of if you spend your
all of your time looking for something, you will find
it well, whether authentically or not. It's like the race
of session crowd that sees everything through the lens of race.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Well, yeah, they'll cook up.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
You know, examples both real and imagined, of where people
have racial feelings that aren't very pretty. But if you
don't spend all your time looking for them, like plenty
of black and brown and pink people.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
All over the world, you're just not worried about it.
Life is fine.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
I just in my mind conflated the two I was thinking.
I was about to say in the example of the
shark as the other representing the brown and black.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
No, that was Noah's things, right, right, Yeah. Did you
ever have a college class like this?
Speaker 3 (10:29):
This was hot like for our age subliminal message in
advertising and how they're doing it all the time. And
I remember the college professor putting up a can of
coke with the water droplets on it and saying, you
see how this water droplet is clearly a woman's body,
and this one is It's no, they're just water droplet.
It's it's like staring at clouds and you can think
they are anything. There's no subliminal anything going on here.
(10:50):
It's just you're making this all up. This is crap.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Whatever.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Yeah, yeah, just sound confident and people will buy it,
particularly if you're you know, within the ivied walls of
the university, and if you're angel old youngsters they don't
know better.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Combined with I just need to remember this because you're
going to ask me about it on the test.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
So okay, Jack Armstrong and Joe The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Is the famous sound of dialing up AOL America online
from back in the day. That was most of our
entry points and do email for one thing, and then
any kind of social media.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Back in the day. You've got mail, thank you, thank
you for that.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I how exciting. I probably still have mail on my
AOL account from so after.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Thirty four years, I think I read as of.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Today they no longer have a dial up application. They
still did wow as of today.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Like two families in rural Tennessee.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
I don't know, but the most recent statistics I heard
were from twenty nineteen, where there were still a quarter
of a million people doing the dial up for AOL.
They probably also eat rope roadkill and marry their sisters.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
But wow, wait a minute, now, unfortunate cliche, but.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Hey, sorry Clym, you and your sister wife are going
to have to get Wi Fi or something because no
longer dial up for AOL.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
So that's the end of that.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
And I remember downloading stuff for the show at the
dawn of the internet, and if anybody called the house
while I was doing it, it completely ruined the whole process,
which took like fifteen minutes to download, you know, a
handful of pages worth of text.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Yeah, it certainly looked there for quite a few years
that this was never like gonna catch on and be
that big a deal.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
But little did we know, totally overrated.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
So there's that this is going to be a tease
for something we will do.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
How much time I got, Michael, I've got about five,
Maybe I'll start here.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Started on teaching my son to drive over the weekend,
specifically driving a stick shift. We've done a lot of
driving living on a farm, like we have twenty acres
and he's driven all over in various speakles since he
was I don't know, seven years old. So you can
just put him in a field with the truck and
go drive around trying not to hte something.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Then nothing happens.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
So it's not that he hadn't never driven before, but
driving a stick shift that that's brand new to him.
This's a vehicle that I bought him five speed, so.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
That was stick He did very hard to find, aren't they?
He did very very well.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
I was very excited for him, and he seemed to
really enjoy it, so that was fun.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Killed it once.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
I said, you're gonna kill it in front of your friends.
Guaranteed you're gonna kill it in front of your friends,
and it's going to be embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
It happens, You'll be all.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Right, Yeah, but they don't know how to drive a
stick probably not.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
For all they know he's a captain captaining the starship Enterprise, right,
you know, right to be mysterious and difficult, isn't there.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
This is what we're going to do in the One
More Thing podcast, And if you don't listen to that
every day after the four hours of radio that we do,
we do another podcast only thing called One More Thing,
and you can find it wherever you find Armstrong and
Getty podcasts. Wherever you're finding Armstrong and Getdy on demand well,
we'll get to this today. There was a survey done
that I found this interesting as a single guy, the
(14:21):
most attractive hobbies to women that a man can have,
and they listed him by a lot, like a whole
bunch of them. And this is legit. It's not a
dumb survey. The most attractive hobbies to women, the least
attractive hobbies to women, and we can go through them
in detail. But I was happy to see that the
most attractive hobby to women as a percentage, at ninety
(14:46):
eight point two percent favorability was reading cross dressing cross reading.
As a reader, I'm.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Happy you can swap clothes and stuff now reading, as
it turns out, okay, go on.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Sing would have an advantage, wouldn't it. If it was
your size. You'd have to date a guy your size. Yeah,
so they either have to be well, depending on your size,
a pretty small dude or well, it depends famously.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Some of the tiny little fellas in the Rolling Stones,
that's how they got their fashion senses. They swapped clothes
with their girlfriends. Wow, because dudes were so skinny and
weedy at that point.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Have I ever had a girlfriend I could swap clothes
with I'm pretty sure not because I'm a d cup.
So we'll get into the list when we do the
One More Thing podcast. But just why do you think
reading is the most attractive trait to women?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
What's your theory on that?
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Oh, I'm not sure I could come up with anything
that isn't like super obvious. I mean, it shows a
certain level of mental power, curiosity, intellect.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
So is it basically just I want a smart person.
His brain works just like shorthand for I want a
smart person.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
You know.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Interesting about this list and I haven't seen it yet,
But there's the question of universal acceptance because you said
it's ninety eight percent or so. But how much enthusiasm
does it generate? Is it great or is it just
acceptable to everyone?
Speaker 2 (16:18):
You know what I mean? Right? Yes, Michael, I.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Think you're trying to show that you're better in yourself
and so that you're looking to gain more knowledge.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
You're looking to be a better man. That could be.
That's pretty good too, That's good astute observation.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
It was do you want the least popular? I don't
exactly know what I mean. But the hobby they have
as a hobby manosphere, which is what they call people
who listen to like Joe Rogan and all those kind
of podcasts and are into that sort of thing.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
Well more like the Tait Brothers and some of the
real misogynist stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
That's the least popular.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Well, well why would that be popular people that are
intending it? No, for women, of course, it's not popular.
Only three point who are your three? You know what
I like in a guy? Guys who hate me because
I'm a woman. That's what I really like it. Again,
you're we contempt for me. It's me and all my
friends than.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Dogfighting Jack Armstrong and Joey Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
So I think we're all aware of dynamic pricing, particularly
if we use like uber Lyft or one of those
ride shares, So we understand that, you know, when the
football game's getting out, it's going to be more expensive
to get yourself ride than you know, two o'clock and
your average Tuesday afternoon. But it's much more widespread, much
more sophisticated than I think a lot of us thought.
(17:46):
We were all shocked when Wendy started doing this and
I got a like.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Well they talked about it.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
I got it like a twelve dollars Hamburger at six
o'clock one time.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Really, they denied that they ever implemented it.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
I don't think that dam is always so there's a
little editorializing in this article, but for instance, the word
shady here.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Instagram has been using a shady AI.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
Algorithm that charges different prices to I'm sorry, instacart.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Different prices do different customers.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
On the same grocery item in the same stores without
telling them, according to a new study released by Consumer
Reports and another organization earlier this week.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
At a Target store.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
In North Kanton, Ohio, for example, the popular grocery app
charged one customer two ninety nine for Skippy Creamy peanut butter.
I eat organic peanut butter because I'm better than you,
but eat your Skippy if you musks.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
No, I don't like creamy, I like the nuts. I
like lots of peanuts in my peanut butter.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
I do enjoy the crunchy myself. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
So one customer got charged two ninety nine, while other
instacrt users paid as much as three point fifty nine
for the same jar picked up from the same location.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
The same day, the study found.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
And my question, of course is how did the algorithm
decide what did it use to decide to charge more
to some people.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
We will get to that in a minute. Let me
hit you with a couple more examples. It's not just instacart.
So called dynamic pricing practices have been used by the
ride shares, Las Vegas, convenience stores, children's museums and zoos,
and even your local grocery stores. Whole foods, Amazon Fresh,
and Kroger have already rolled out electronic price tags that
(19:25):
allow workers to raise shelf prices in a matter of minutes,
and Walmart said it's planning to add the tags two
thousands of stores by twenty twenty six. So you can
change prices on a you know, a pound of flour
or whatever minute to minute if you want. Wow, And
you could factor in so many different things, including price
elasticity that you know, Thanksgiving morning, somebody getting some flour
(19:52):
off the shelf means they really made a mistake and.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Mean flower bad and you can charge more for it. Yeah,
that's a great example.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Well, businesses have always adjusted prices to find the highest
amounts of customer will fork.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Over like in a broad way.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
Now, artificial intelligence, advanced algorithms, massive troves of user data
are allowing companies to be more exacting than ever.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Quote.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
The problem isn't that companies across multiple industries are using
AI for dynamic pricing or even surging surging pricing. The
problem is more around transparency and trust. According to this
consumer advocate, Now we all have benefited from some variable pricing,
like discounts when you buy in bulk at Costco allows
(20:38):
you to compare Amazon prices to other retailers online, save
money on a plane, tickets and vacations if you book
off season, that sort of thing. But they say the
problem arises when data collection and algorithms are used without
customers knowledge.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
I feel like there needs to be a different category
for some of them.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
These things different levels of objectionable.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
Yeah say yeah, wait, here's a for example, the Justice
Department just settled the case against real estate tech firm
real Page, which I've never heard of, but which allegedly
used completely sensitive information that's a quote to jack up
rents for tenants. So they would they would dive into
all the data they could get and figure out how
(21:26):
much money you got, but why are and whether they
can jack up your rent three hundred dollars instead of
two hundred for the guy next door.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
But how is this much unless they obtained the information illegally?
How is this much different than you buy a car
and the guy sizes you up when you walk on
the lot. He looks at what you drove, he looks
at the way you're dressed. Maybe he makes some small
talk and figures out what you do for a living,
and you know, strikes a bargain based on that. What's
(21:53):
the difference? And that's what car dealers always do, by
the way.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
And the most brilliant descriptions of Freedman was to horrific
at this, Milton Freeman. The most brilliant descriptions about the
free market emphasize the fact that it's an exchange of information.
You can instantaneously know how much willing people are willing
to pay for something, how much they're willing to sell
something for, and that information moves at lightning speed through
the market. It's all about information. It's tough to fault
(22:21):
somebody for.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
And again, the surveillance state pervasiveness.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Of this is a little creepy, and the secrecy is creepy.
But if I walk into a store and my neighbor,
poor Jim, who we were joking about earlier. Walk into
a store and they scan me and say, this dude's
here for stakes. He's gonna pay whatever the stakes cost.
Poor Jim over there may not buy a steak at
(22:50):
all if it's too high. So we're gonna stick Joe
and let Jim skate a little easier.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
I don't know how you could complain about that, really,
people do jack Furious New Yorkers, for instance, have blasted
the slime balls that's a quote of Uber and Lyft
for hiking prices when subway lines are shut down during brainstorms,
reportedly charging eighty dollars for a ten minute ride to work.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
That's a little bit how so, Oh, I guess it's not.
I guess it's not.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Well, I guess really, you know, the more I think
about it, No, it's not. It's no different than the
charging more because the football game just got out.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
Yeah yeah, well here's well right, Yeah, here's a head
scratcher than a WT effort. People have been reporting being
charged higher Uber fares when using a personal credit card
instead of a corporate one.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
I don't know why that would be. I would seem
like the office.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
Yeah, I would expect scratcher here's the wtffor advocacy group.
Consumer Watchdogs suggested and report a report that Uber might
charge users more if they have low phone batteries. The
idea is seeming to be the customers are more likely
to pay higher prices when they're desperate.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Oh, the company denies this.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
I feel like this is being pitched to dumb people
that don't understand the free market in terms of being
you know, this is something you should be angry about.
What this is pretty much every interaction I've ever had
when you're trying to buy some Now, you know, it'd
be new that prices change on the store shelves on
a minute by minute basis, But for bigger items, the
(24:33):
items that cost more, that put more of a dent in,
you know, in your net worth. It's always been that way.
I mean, that's the whole selling a car, they size
you up. Or if I'm selling a car, I get
a sense from the guy, you know what he can afford,
how desperate he is, and you know how desperate am
I to make the sale? Or am I willing to
wait and see who else I can get? I mean,
all those interactions are going on all the time, right.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
I think people are a little offended by the information imbalance,
because you know, you work that out through negotiation. I'm
not going to haggle with the cashier over the price
of my grapes and my you know whatever, paper towel.
They have much more information than I do. And if
they're charging the guy next to me, literally the guy
(25:15):
next to me five dollars less for a steak than
they are me, that pisses people off. I don't know
if it should, but it does. Cash registers at convenience
stores in Las Vegas casinos have been raising the price
of bottled waters, flavored drinks, sun screen, and candy, et
cetera on a daily and even hourly basis, sometimes leaving
(25:36):
the cashiers just as surprised as the customers at the price.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
So we were at Caesar's Palace and we got there
kind of late, and we were eating, and this is
like ten o'clock at night, and we were all just
so thirsty.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
For some reason. I said, I'll get three bottled waters.
She said, that's the thirty three dollars.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
I said, thirty three dollars for three bottled waters. She said, yeah,
they're nine. I said, well, we'll drink, we'll find a
fountain somewhere we pass, and I wonder if that was
some sort of dynamic pricing. People are drinking and been
smoking cigarettes all day long. It's late at night, they're thirsty.
They'll pay anything, any dynamic pricing. There's no way at
(26:15):
ten o'clock in the morning, they're charging ten bucks for
a bottled water.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
I don't know, yeah, yeah, yeah, you wouldn't think, like
I've done this before.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
It's probably I don't know what I think of this,
but I've done it before, like dealing with a car
individual or a car lot. Hey, how you doing. You know, Okay,
it's been a rough year, but I need a car.
You know, I'm not gonna come up happy and do
it well. You know, my kid needs a liver and
all these different things.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
I got a limp. Wow. Wow.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
So more than they've got dozens of attractions, children's museums,
zoos aquariums. They use the software provider digit x to
power dynamic pricing based on everything from weather to capacity constraints,
and even Google Analytics search patterns. During the week of
June eight, for instance, the Seattle Aquarium offered out of
state adult admission prices as low as thirty seven to
(27:07):
ninety five for dates later in the month, and as
much as forty six ninety five for walking tickets that week.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
See that just sounds like flat out free market capitalism.
I got no problem with, yeah, as opposed to if
the airlines somehow are getting my information, because I don't
want any of my information out there. But you know,
like the agreements Katie was reading last hour, sometimes you
sign up for Netflix or whatever you're signed up for
and they get to snatch all your information.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
You got no choice.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
But if the airlines, you know, are getting information I
don't want them to have and charging me based on
they know how much money I make, how much I spend,
I pay off my credit card every month, blah blah
blah whatever these I don't like that.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
I don't want them to have that information to start with. Well, yeah,
but you see you clicked on. I agree, Yeah, you know,
I don't know. We got to work that out somehow.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
Because I know the airlines for their app users say,
for instance, hey Joe not real price sensitive.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
So let's show him a Let's go ahead and show
him that higher price. See if he clicks.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
If not, maybe maybe we loadered a little bit when
he comes back. And so I've heard you should not
sign in, you should clear your cookies.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
But I have so many subscriptions to so many things. Yeah,
I don't want to clear my cookies. So much of
a pain in the butt.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Definitely the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Yeah, more Jack your show, podcasts and our hot Lakes.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
Japan is grappling with a grizzly problem deadly bear attacks.
A record twelve people have been killed in more than
one hundred bar encounters since April alone, and issues so
serious the country's pacifist military has taken the extraordinary step
to deploy forces to the northern Akita Andy Watte prefectures
(28:50):
armed with shields, bear spray and traps.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Watch out, bears are going to go Pearl Harbor on you.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
What they got to National Emergency Bear attacks? Yeah, in Japan,
exactly right, there's one. Yeah, Japanese bear attack. The name
of my new band.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
We're going to tour with Toad the Wet Sprocket and
what's another good multi word panic at the disco. Yeah,
you know, in an all wordy band festival.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Japanese bear attack. What an interesting situation.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
They rarely used their military for anything. We trained for
a Chinese invasion or attack in the United States. Again,
we trained for all these things, but uh, and got
a lot of how to handle bears.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
While we're watching China, our bears rose up.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
Yeah, you know what, Donald J got very little credit
when he was in Asia a couple of weeks ago
for browbeaten a number of our allies. To spend more
on defense for God's sake, to get beefed up, gets
strong because they're gonna need it because of bear attacks. No, no,
I was thinking more in terms of China.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
But couple of things I want to get on before
we have to take a break again. I do want
to get into this person from the Heritage Foundation that
resigned yesterday, so unhappy about the leader of that conservative
organization backing Tucker and Nick Fuentes the way he did.
Now he has apologized even further. That's quite the interesting
inter intra conservative argument that's going on there.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
But and it's kind of a cool thing too, because
we police are crazies unlike the left.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
We've been talking about.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Affordability is like the word of the last forty eight
hours with the election, everything like that Trump administration just
announced there's going to be a big weight loss drug.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Price announcement coming today.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
That is classic Trump, right there, nation of fat people
who want their fat drugs cheaper, that's what Trub's thinking,
And I'm going to announce that we're going to cut
those way down and you can afford your don't be
fat drug.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
That's a nice way to step on yesterday's headlines. Yeah, yeah,
that's a good one.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Came across this who's in charge of security at the
Louver me? The Louver Museum's surveillance password was Louver. Holy crap.
They shouldn't have put me in charge because that's the
way I do things. Isn't that something.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
That's like the guest password at your dentist's office?
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Right?
Speaker 1 (31:25):
You know?
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Wow, and that's the security password. That's pretty funny. How
much time I got, Michael, depends how you keep eating? Yeah,
about one minute, though.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
I know we came up with a word for this,
when you're flummixed by some sort of technical thing and
you just and it's the feeling you get when you're
having that, it's just it's its only unique feeling.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
I think we decided on texhaustion.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
I was trying to pay a bill online yesterday and
you go. You had to go through like and you
have to pay it this way. And I had to
go through like ninety steps to get to the end.
It took probably fifteen minutes at least. Wow, you know,
press one for this, press two for that. Then they
say it and blah blah blah. And at the end
it was we'll send you a code. You have to
type in the code to show that you and you
know this is the right phone. And every time I
(32:12):
typed in the code, it would read back the wrong numbers.
I would type in six oh three nine, and it
would say five oh two six is the wrong number.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
That's not what I typed in, you bastards.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Anyway, I did it like three or four times that
I was getting so mad. I thought I was gonna
punch a hole in the wall. That feeling is my
least favorite feeling.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Yeah, the scourge of the modern man.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
There's nobody to complain to. Armstrong Engetty store is open.
So some of you buy stuff for your family or
friends for Christmas, if they're fans of this here radio program.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
It's just har I feel like it's one for me.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
I feel like it's one of those great excuse me,
easy gift, checked it off, didn't cost you much, straight
from the heart, seems like you did something nice. It
was really there will be laughter, tears, hugs. You will
be the bell of the ball. You go to the
Armstrong and Getty store, and Hanson, who runs a damn thing,
is really pushing people to do it soon to make
(33:08):
sure you get everything in time for Christmas. There was
some talk about the Armstrong and Getty pickleball paddles. I
thought it was pretty funny that we had them, and
then there were some complaints about them, and Hanson brought
one in and I don't have any idea what a
really high quality pickleball pedal is like.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
I have them.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
I bought mine at Large five, I think, But they're
just like this. There's nothing wrong with this. This is
perfectly one. Unless you like, get serious serious about pickleball,
this is gonna be absolutely fine. What is wrong with this?
This isn't doesn't feel like cheap Chinese crap. It feels
like something quality to me. I like everything about it,
and it comes with this cool carrying case. Although they're
sold out, so they're I don't know why I'm even
(33:45):
talking about it. We're sold out of the pickleball pedals Armstrong.
You get a pick a ball, but not anymore. They're
gonna be back. But anyway, I go to the store
and see what we got.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
Yeah, we put the lash to the Chinese slaves and
they made several more of them.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
What if we had adult items like the thing people
were throwing on WNBA courts at one point.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Like marital aids. We'll go on it for novelty purposes
only take a and G to bed. Yes, I love
that idea anyway, and you know, we need to branch out.
We need to have more things.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
They're probably not as popular as the hoodies, including the
New Conscience of the Nation hoodie Uh, the Star of
the Lazy Stupid should hurt stars including the f yolickin
Party which I wear proudly, or stocking stuffers, ang coasters, decals, uh,
coffee mugs, stainless steel water bottle, or the get your
(34:35):
Words Straight jack No, look that solid Armstrong and getty
dot com.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Anyway, that's enough of that.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
I'm trying to figure out what to do for my
kids this year. They're definitely the age. They're almost fourteen,
almost sixteen, they're definitely past the age of more cheap
Chinese crap. There's just no reason so either an experience
or like accumulate the money into one actually worth something gift.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
I think this year.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
God, when they're younger, it's just endless piles of cheap
Chinese crab is what they get when they're little kids,
and they're delighted, and that's fine, and it is cheap,
but it well, it was always interesting to me that
we would give our kids the same beloved toy that
we had, but you'd take it out of the package
(35:22):
and instead of feeling like it could last, you know,
one hundred years.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Yeah, it's cheap Chinese crab.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Yeah, definitely China definitely the modern version of something you
played with as a kid that is just so flimsy
and light and poorly made, exactly.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
The Armstrong and Getty show.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Morja Rgio Podcasts and our hot links.
Now broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the
George Washington Broadcast Center. Jack Armstrong, Joe, Gaddy.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Armstrong, and Jetty and Hee arms Long Getty Strong. We
are so lazy. We were still at home.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
We're vacationing or whatever it is we're gonna do during
this week.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
But we're not at work.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
That's right, we're relaxing so we can come back ten
rested and ready in the new year, or sat and
draggled and hung.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Over in my keys.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Anyway, enjoy the Armstrong and Giddy replay.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
You're gonna need a bigger potion.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
The movie Jaws came out fifty years ago this summer,
horrifying swimmers all around the world and hoping to God
as you bobbed around in the.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Ocean, you did not hear at cello.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
All right, bought them bottom but it Oh.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
So this is funny.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
This reminds me of our friend James Lindsay when he
and his friends did the Grievance papers. They put out
these fake studies. They're incredibly over the top and ridiculous,
but you couldn't tell them for the real thing from
the real thing, because the real thing is over the
top and ridiculous to that point, I'm gonna do a
mock one.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I could switch the mock.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
One with the Atlantic piece and you wouldn't be able
to tell the difference. But the Atlantic has a piece
out today. The film Jaws came out fifty years ago
this month. It portrays class divisions differently from the novel
that inspired it, in ways that anticipated a fight that
has arguably defined American politics twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
What Jaws got wrong is the title. I thought it
was about the fish bite and peel. It was.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
It was about a scary shark biting people, and it
made people think, oh my god, that could happen to
me in the ocean. And the end and they catch
the shark and it's a bloody finale and blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
There's nothing else to it but that. That's it. That's
the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Uh. And it's hilarious that The Atlantic is turning it
into some sort of class division and a commentary on
today's politics, or it anticipated today's politics, or whatever the crap. Anyway,
Noah Roffman of the National Review decided to write in
that style, mocking it.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Basically. Charles C. W.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Cook, who Joe and I both really like responded to
Noah's Peace by saying, I am in awe.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Let me read a little bit from it.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
The character Quint, that's the guy we just heard from,
the guy who owns the boat. It says we're in
need a bigger boat. He's the salty old dude. The
character Quint represents the suppressed male id which struggles against
structural and metasocial taboos, prescribing the full expression of the
archetypical masculine ethos.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
He is consumed by the sleek.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
White metaphor of sexual equality against which he rages until
the last minute he bids farewell and adieu, not to
those Spanish ladies, but to the shackles of conventional gender roles.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Exactly what I thought, exact That's what I took from it.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Yeah, when I watched the Shark movie, I mean, this
is no more over the top than the Atlantic piece. Really,
the drive to open the beaches by the fourth of
July is a classic expression of American jingoism, and the
blood spilled over his rote commitment to commercialism as an
unremarkable feature of the rapacious capitalist enterprise. I find that
(03:45):
sort of thing hilarious, and that it is so not
even this much different from the actual pieces.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Some of these crazy.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
People write about this stuff right right, so easy to
bamboozle them if you know the language to throw around.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Noah Rothman actually said at the end of he said,
this is really fun. No wonder so many people do
it for a living. One more Jaws a portrayal of
the monstrous menacing and potentially violet other foreign, indeed alien.
It haunts its pursuers, dominates their conscience, and is subject
to abuses and indignities until it meets out the righteous
(04:24):
vengeance of accumulated transgenerational memory. The Shark is the global South,
the black and brown diaspora of the bun Dung Revolution,
whatever the hell that means. And I'll just give you
one more that I like Martin Brody. Who is is
that the h Brody is the police chief, right Okay,
(04:44):
the weak and crumbling edifice of the post war consensus,
exhausted and plagued by indecision. He serves as our link
to the fraying social order of the past. His triumph
is pyriic. I mean, it wasn't worth it. Perched atop
a sinking ship, dealt a mortal blow by the ing
vanguard of the subjugated and militant. His reprieve from the
oppressor's fate will be short lived.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
The Atlantic pea is great.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
The Atlantic piece that I read is so not much
different than that.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah, and it's just who, dude are It gets to.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
The previous conversation of like Trump and this man, this
New York mayor dude whatever his name is being in
on the joke. Is the Atlantic in on the joke
that they know it's a joke and they're writing it
for their readers who think it's a.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Joke, or they all taking it seriously. This crap. No,
you know.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
It crystallized in my head that in the same way
that if you want to like get the tension or
sell practically anything to a twenty three year old male,
at least in the past, appeal to sexual desire and
they'll just buy anything. And and to women it's you'll
(05:56):
be beautiful and desirable and people will like you. They
will freaking buy anything. Appeal to the intellectual vanity of
a certain crowd, and it's mostly on the left. If
you make them believe believing this makes you better and smarter,
than everybody else. They will believe freaking anything, no matter
(06:18):
how laughable it is. Lendsy and pluck Rose and Bogosian
with their experiment. You mentioned the infamous the Grievance Study papers.
I mean they are the best example ever of that.
You could not make it so stupid that the intellectual
vanity of these people wouldn't make them lap it up.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
The Atlantic piece is actually about the different political orientations
of the book versus the movie, and how the movie
got it wrong in portraying class distinctions as.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Opposed to the book.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Nobody watched the movie and came away from it thinking
about class distinctions at all. It didn't get the more.
It didn't get them at all. It's a it's a
it's a horror film.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
It's just a short close the beaches, or don't we
there's tremendous money at stake. That's just a really good subplot, sure, exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
And whether it's a.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
Guy in a hockey mask coming on campers with an
axe or a shark in the water, that's.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
What it is.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
It's got nothing to do with class distinctions or any
of this other crap. And it didn't foresee our politics
fifty years later.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
What is wrong with you people? If you were to
read more of the Atlantic one and then give us
all an hour to go about our lives, I think
it would be impossible for each of us to remember
which one was the parody and which one was realized.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Is your point, obviously, But yeah, what a bunch of
mumbo jumbo. There are some ideas so ridiculous only an
intellectual would believe them.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Thomas Sowell. I'm paraphrasing.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
And talking about the uh. Bro is a recent transplant
from New York City. This is from the Atlantic, the
actual piece.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
Brody the character you'ld have just read it and asked
us which one of us?
Speaker 2 (08:08):
They just guess.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Brody, the character in the movie, is a recent transplant
from New York City in the film, living a seemingly
idyllic life, and Amity went a home with a home
on the water.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Although he is not college educated, What the hell's it
got to do with me? And didn't anybody even know that?
Speaker 3 (08:24):
His primary virtue is that he defers to people who
are and it becomes a foil for Amity's working people,
who in the film are portrayed as unpleasant or obtuosed
and at best well meaning but shortsighted. What are you
talking about? That was what I said.
Speaker 4 (08:38):
I walked out of Jaws and I said, you know what, honey,
the working people are so obtuse in that movie.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
I couldn't enjoy it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
And if you ever go to Universal and we've probably
most have us done that.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
If you've ever been to Universal.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Studios in Los Angeles and the old Jaws shark comes
out of the water and you go, ah, it gets
you kind of wet, that's exactly what you think, the
obtuseness of the working class.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
That's what you're thinking about. Wow.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
Just you know what, you peep a fine, do what
you I just don't want you in charge of anything.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Well yeah, I used to think that too.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
I don't want you to exist dull, or you need
to be in a camp or okay, fine, you can
live your free life is in camp, but you don't
get to be in college teaching kids this crap and
convincing him it's true, because that is a problem for me.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
So true.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
Now wow, speaking of delusion, Wow, wow.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
I mean, it just blows my mind that you watched
the Shark movie. That's what you came away with.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Well, it's a great example of if you spend your
all of your time looking for something, you will find
it well, whether authentically or not. It's like the race
of session crowd that sees everything through the lens of race.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Well, yeah, they'll cook up.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
You know, examples both real and imagined, of where people
have racial feelings that aren't very pretty. But if you
don't spend all your time looking for them, like plenty
of black and brown and pink people.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
All over the world, you're just not worried about it.
Life is fine.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
I just in my mind conflated the two I was thinking.
I was about to say in the example of the
shark as the other representing the brown and black.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
No, that was Noah's things, right, right, Yeah. Did you
ever have a college class like this?
Speaker 3 (10:29):
This was hot like for our age subliminal message in
advertising and how they're doing it all the time. And
I remember the college professor putting up a can of
coke with the water droplets on it and saying, you
see how this water droplet is clearly a woman's body,
and this one is It's no, they're just water droplet.
It's it's like staring at clouds and you can think
they are anything. There's no subliminal anything going on here.
(10:50):
It's just you're making this all up. This is crap.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Whatever.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Yeah, yeah, just sound confident and people will buy it,
particularly if you're you know, within the ivied walls of
the university, and if you're angel old youngsters they don't
know better.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Combined with I just need to remember this because you're
going to ask me about it on the test.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
So okay, Jack Armstrong and Joe The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Is the famous sound of dialing up AOL America online
from back in the day. That was most of our
entry points and do email for one thing, and then
any kind of social media.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Back in the day. You've got mail, thank you, thank
you for that.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I how exciting. I probably still have mail on my
AOL account from so after.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Thirty four years, I think I read as of.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Today they no longer have a dial up application. They
still did wow as of today.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Like two families in rural Tennessee.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
I don't know, but the most recent statistics I heard
were from twenty nineteen, where there were still a quarter
of a million people doing the dial up for AOL.
They probably also eat rope roadkill and marry their sisters.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
But wow, wait a minute, now, unfortunate cliche, but.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Hey, sorry Clym, you and your sister wife are going
to have to get Wi Fi or something because no
longer dial up for AOL.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
So that's the end of that.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
And I remember downloading stuff for the show at the
dawn of the internet, and if anybody called the house
while I was doing it, it completely ruined the whole process,
which took like fifteen minutes to download, you know, a
handful of pages worth of text.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Yeah, it certainly looked there for quite a few years
that this was never like gonna catch on and be
that big a deal.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
But little did we know, totally overrated.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
So there's that this is going to be a tease
for something we will do.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
How much time I got, Michael, I've got about five,
Maybe I'll start here.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Started on teaching my son to drive over the weekend,
specifically driving a stick shift. We've done a lot of
driving living on a farm, like we have twenty acres
and he's driven all over in various speakles since he
was I don't know, seven years old. So you can
just put him in a field with the truck and
go drive around trying not to hte something.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Then nothing happens.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
So it's not that he hadn't never driven before, but
driving a stick shift that that's brand new to him.
This's a vehicle that I bought him five speed, so.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
That was stick He did very hard to find, aren't they?
He did very very well.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
I was very excited for him, and he seemed to
really enjoy it, so that was fun.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Killed it once.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
I said, you're gonna kill it in front of your friends.
Guaranteed you're gonna kill it in front of your friends,
and it's going to be embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
It happens, You'll be all.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Right, Yeah, but they don't know how to drive a
stick probably not.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
For all they know he's a captain captaining the starship Enterprise, right,
you know, right to be mysterious and difficult, isn't there.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
This is what we're going to do in the One
More Thing podcast, And if you don't listen to that
every day after the four hours of radio that we do,
we do another podcast only thing called One More Thing,
and you can find it wherever you find Armstrong and
Getty podcasts. Wherever you're finding Armstrong and Getdy on demand well,
we'll get to this today. There was a survey done
that I found this interesting as a single guy, the
(14:21):
most attractive hobbies to women that a man can have,
and they listed him by a lot, like a whole
bunch of them. And this is legit. It's not a
dumb survey. The most attractive hobbies to women, the least
attractive hobbies to women, and we can go through them
in detail. But I was happy to see that the
most attractive hobby to women as a percentage, at ninety
(14:46):
eight point two percent favorability was reading cross dressing cross reading.
As a reader, I'm.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Happy you can swap clothes and stuff now reading, as
it turns out, okay, go on.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Sing would have an advantage, wouldn't it. If it was
your size. You'd have to date a guy your size. Yeah,
so they either have to be well, depending on your size,
a pretty small dude or well, it depends famously.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Some of the tiny little fellas in the Rolling Stones,
that's how they got their fashion senses. They swapped clothes
with their girlfriends. Wow, because dudes were so skinny and
weedy at that point.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Have I ever had a girlfriend I could swap clothes
with I'm pretty sure not because I'm a d cup.
So we'll get into the list when we do the
One More Thing podcast. But just why do you think
reading is the most attractive trait to women?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
What's your theory on that?
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Oh, I'm not sure I could come up with anything
that isn't like super obvious. I mean, it shows a
certain level of mental power, curiosity, intellect.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
So is it basically just I want a smart person.
His brain works just like shorthand for I want a
smart person.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
You know.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
Interesting about this list and I haven't seen it yet,
But there's the question of universal acceptance because you said
it's ninety eight percent or so. But how much enthusiasm
does it generate? Is it great or is it just
acceptable to everyone?
Speaker 2 (16:18):
You know what I mean? Right? Yes, Michael, I.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Think you're trying to show that you're better in yourself
and so that you're looking to gain more knowledge.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
You're looking to be a better man. That could be.
That's pretty good too, That's good astute observation.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
It was do you want the least popular? I don't
exactly know what I mean. But the hobby they have
as a hobby manosphere, which is what they call people
who listen to like Joe Rogan and all those kind
of podcasts and are into that sort of thing.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
Well more like the Tait Brothers and some of the
real misogynist stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
That's the least popular.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Well, well why would that be popular people that are
intending it? No, for women, of course, it's not popular.
Only three point who are your three? You know what
I like in a guy? Guys who hate me because
I'm a woman. That's what I really like it. Again,
you're we contempt for me. It's me and all my
friends than.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Dogfighting Jack Armstrong and Joey Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
So I think we're all aware of dynamic pricing, particularly
if we use like uber Lyft or one of those
ride shares, So we understand that, you know, when the
football game's getting out, it's going to be more expensive
to get yourself ride than you know, two o'clock and
your average Tuesday afternoon. But it's much more widespread, much
more sophisticated than I think a lot of us thought.
(17:46):
We were all shocked when Wendy started doing this and
I got a like.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Well they talked about it.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
I got it like a twelve dollars Hamburger at six
o'clock one time.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Really, they denied that they ever implemented it.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
I don't think that dam is always so there's a
little editorializing in this article, but for instance, the word
shady here.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Instagram has been using a shady AI.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
Algorithm that charges different prices to I'm sorry, instacart.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Different prices do different customers.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
On the same grocery item in the same stores without
telling them, according to a new study released by Consumer
Reports and another organization earlier this week.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
At a Target store.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
In North Kanton, Ohio, for example, the popular grocery app
charged one customer two ninety nine for Skippy Creamy peanut butter.
I eat organic peanut butter because I'm better than you,
but eat your Skippy if you musks.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
No, I don't like creamy, I like the nuts. I
like lots of peanuts in my peanut butter.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
I do enjoy the crunchy myself. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
So one customer got charged two ninety nine, while other
instacrt users paid as much as three point fifty nine
for the same jar picked up from the same location.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
The same day, the study found.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
And my question, of course is how did the algorithm
decide what did it use to decide to charge more
to some people.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
We will get to that in a minute. Let me
hit you with a couple more examples. It's not just instacart.
So called dynamic pricing practices have been used by the
ride shares, Las Vegas, convenience stores, children's museums and zoos,
and even your local grocery stores. Whole foods, Amazon Fresh,
and Kroger have already rolled out electronic price tags that
(19:25):
allow workers to raise shelf prices in a matter of minutes,
and Walmart said it's planning to add the tags two
thousands of stores by twenty twenty six. So you can
change prices on a you know, a pound of flour
or whatever minute to minute if you want. Wow, And
you could factor in so many different things, including price
elasticity that you know, Thanksgiving morning, somebody getting some flour
(19:52):
off the shelf means they really made a mistake and.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
Mean flower bad and you can charge more for it. Yeah,
that's a great example.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Well, businesses have always adjusted prices to find the highest
amounts of customer will fork.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Over like in a broad way.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
Now, artificial intelligence, advanced algorithms, massive troves of user data
are allowing companies to be more exacting than ever.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Quote.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
The problem isn't that companies across multiple industries are using
AI for dynamic pricing or even surging surging pricing. The
problem is more around transparency and trust. According to this
consumer advocate, Now we all have benefited from some variable pricing,
like discounts when you buy in bulk at Costco allows
(20:38):
you to compare Amazon prices to other retailers online, save
money on a plane, tickets and vacations if you book
off season, that sort of thing. But they say the
problem arises when data collection and algorithms are used without
customers knowledge.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
I feel like there needs to be a different category
for some of them.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
These things different levels of objectionable.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
Yeah say yeah, wait, here's a for example, the Justice
Department just settled the case against real estate tech firm
real Page, which I've never heard of, but which allegedly
used completely sensitive information that's a quote to jack up
rents for tenants. So they would they would dive into
all the data they could get and figure out how
(21:26):
much money you got, but why are and whether they
can jack up your rent three hundred dollars instead of
two hundred for the guy next door.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
But how is this much unless they obtained the information illegally?
How is this much different than you buy a car
and the guy sizes you up when you walk on
the lot. He looks at what you drove, he looks
at the way you're dressed. Maybe he makes some small
talk and figures out what you do for a living,
and you know, strikes a bargain based on that. What's
(21:53):
the difference? And that's what car dealers always do, by
the way.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
And the most brilliant descriptions of Freedman was to horrific
at this, Milton Freeman. The most brilliant descriptions about the
free market emphasize the fact that it's an exchange of information.
You can instantaneously know how much willing people are willing
to pay for something, how much they're willing to sell
something for, and that information moves at lightning speed through
the market. It's all about information. It's tough to fault
(22:21):
somebody for.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
And again, the surveillance state pervasiveness.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Of this is a little creepy, and the secrecy is creepy.
But if I walk into a store and my neighbor,
poor Jim, who we were joking about earlier. Walk into
a store and they scan me and say, this dude's
here for stakes. He's gonna pay whatever the stakes cost.
Poor Jim over there may not buy a steak at
(22:50):
all if it's too high. So we're gonna stick Joe
and let Jim skate a little easier.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
I don't know how you could complain about that, really,
people do jack Furious New Yorkers, for instance, have blasted
the slime balls that's a quote of Uber and Lyft
for hiking prices when subway lines are shut down during brainstorms,
reportedly charging eighty dollars for a ten minute ride to work.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
That's a little bit how so, Oh, I guess it's not.
I guess it's not.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Well, I guess really, you know, the more I think
about it, No, it's not. It's no different than the
charging more because the football game just got out.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
Yeah yeah, well here's well right, Yeah, here's a head
scratcher than a WT effort. People have been reporting being
charged higher Uber fares when using a personal credit card
instead of a corporate one.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
I don't know why that would be. I would seem
like the office.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
Yeah, I would expect scratcher here's the wtffor advocacy group.
Consumer Watchdogs suggested and report a report that Uber might
charge users more if they have low phone batteries. The
idea is seeming to be the customers are more likely
to pay higher prices when they're desperate.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Oh, the company denies this.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
I feel like this is being pitched to dumb people
that don't understand the free market in terms of being
you know, this is something you should be angry about.
What this is pretty much every interaction I've ever had
when you're trying to buy some Now, you know, it'd
be new that prices change on the store shelves on
a minute by minute basis, But for bigger items, the
(24:33):
items that cost more, that put more of a dent in,
you know, in your net worth. It's always been that way.
I mean, that's the whole selling a car, they size
you up. Or if I'm selling a car, I get
a sense from the guy, you know what he can afford,
how desperate he is, and you know how desperate am
I to make the sale? Or am I willing to
wait and see who else I can get? I mean,
all those interactions are going on all the time, right.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
I think people are a little offended by the information imbalance,
because you know, you work that out through negotiation. I'm
not going to haggle with the cashier over the price
of my grapes and my you know whatever, paper towel.
They have much more information than I do. And if
they're charging the guy next to me, literally the guy
(25:15):
next to me five dollars less for a steak than
they are me, that pisses people off. I don't know
if it should, but it does. Cash registers at convenience
stores in Las Vegas casinos have been raising the price
of bottled waters, flavored drinks, sun screen, and candy, et
cetera on a daily and even hourly basis, sometimes leaving
(25:36):
the cashiers just as surprised as the customers at the price.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
So we were at Caesar's Palace and we got there
kind of late, and we were eating, and this is
like ten o'clock at night, and we were all just
so thirsty.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
For some reason. I said, I'll get three bottled waters.
She said, that's the thirty three dollars.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
I said, thirty three dollars for three bottled waters. She said, yeah,
they're nine. I said, well, we'll drink, we'll find a
fountain somewhere we pass, and I wonder if that was
some sort of dynamic pricing. People are drinking and been
smoking cigarettes all day long. It's late at night, they're thirsty.
They'll pay anything, any dynamic pricing. There's no way at
(26:15):
ten o'clock in the morning, they're charging ten bucks for
a bottled water.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
I don't know, yeah, yeah, yeah, you wouldn't think, like
I've done this before.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
It's probably I don't know what I think of this,
but I've done it before, like dealing with a car
individual or a car lot. Hey, how you doing. You know, Okay,
it's been a rough year, but I need a car.
You know, I'm not gonna come up happy and do
it well. You know, my kid needs a liver and
all these different things.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
I got a limp. Wow. Wow.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
So more than they've got dozens of attractions, children's museums,
zoos aquariums. They use the software provider digit x to
power dynamic pricing based on everything from weather to capacity constraints,
and even Google Analytics search patterns. During the week of
June eight, for instance, the Seattle Aquarium offered out of
state adult admission prices as low as thirty seven to
(27:07):
ninety five for dates later in the month, and as
much as forty six ninety five for walking tickets that week.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
See that just sounds like flat out free market capitalism.
I got no problem with, yeah, as opposed to if
the airlines somehow are getting my information, because I don't
want any of my information out there. But you know,
like the agreements Katie was reading last hour, sometimes you
sign up for Netflix or whatever you're signed up for
and they get to snatch all your information.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
You got no choice.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
But if the airlines, you know, are getting information I
don't want them to have and charging me based on
they know how much money I make, how much I spend,
I pay off my credit card every month, blah blah
blah whatever these I don't like that.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
I don't want them to have that information to start with. Well, yeah,
but you see you clicked on. I agree, Yeah, you know,
I don't know. We got to work that out somehow.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
Because I know the airlines for their app users say,
for instance, hey Joe not real price sensitive.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
So let's show him a Let's go ahead and show
him that higher price. See if he clicks.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
If not, maybe maybe we loadered a little bit when
he comes back. And so I've heard you should not
sign in, you should clear your cookies.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
But I have so many subscriptions to so many things. Yeah,
I don't want to clear my cookies. So much of
a pain in the butt.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Definitely the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Yeah, more Jack your show, podcasts and our hot Lakes.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
Japan is grappling with a grizzly problem deadly bear attacks.
A record twelve people have been killed in more than
one hundred bar encounters since April alone, and issues so
serious the country's pacifist military has taken the extraordinary step
to deploy forces to the northern Akita Andy Watte prefectures
(28:50):
armed with shields, bear spray and traps.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Watch out, bears are going to go Pearl Harbor on you.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
What they got to National Emergency Bear attacks? Yeah, in Japan,
exactly right, there's one. Yeah, Japanese bear attack. The name
of my new band.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
We're going to tour with Toad the Wet Sprocket and
what's another good multi word panic at the disco. Yeah,
you know, in an all wordy band festival.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Japanese bear attack. What an interesting situation.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
They rarely used their military for anything. We trained for
a Chinese invasion or attack in the United States. Again,
we trained for all these things, but uh, and got
a lot of how to handle bears.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
While we're watching China, our bears rose up.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
Yeah, you know what, Donald J got very little credit
when he was in Asia a couple of weeks ago
for browbeaten a number of our allies. To spend more
on defense for God's sake, to get beefed up, gets
strong because they're gonna need it because of bear attacks. No, no,
I was thinking more in terms of China.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
But couple of things I want to get on before
we have to take a break again. I do want
to get into this person from the Heritage Foundation that
resigned yesterday, so unhappy about the leader of that conservative
organization backing Tucker and Nick Fuentes the way he did.
Now he has apologized even further. That's quite the interesting
inter intra conservative argument that's going on there.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
But and it's kind of a cool thing too, because
we police are crazies unlike the left.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
We've been talking about.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Affordability is like the word of the last forty eight
hours with the election, everything like that Trump administration just
announced there's going to be a big weight loss drug.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Price announcement coming today.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
That is classic Trump, right there, nation of fat people
who want their fat drugs cheaper, that's what Trub's thinking,
And I'm going to announce that we're going to cut
those way down and you can afford your don't be
fat drug.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
That's a nice way to step on yesterday's headlines. Yeah, yeah,
that's a good one.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Came across this who's in charge of security at the
Louver me? The Louver Museum's surveillance password was Louver. Holy crap.
They shouldn't have put me in charge because that's the
way I do things. Isn't that something.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
That's like the guest password at your dentist's office?
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Right?
Speaker 1 (31:25):
You know?
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Wow, and that's the security password. That's pretty funny. How
much time I got, Michael, depends how you keep eating? Yeah,
about one minute, though.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
I know we came up with a word for this,
when you're flummixed by some sort of technical thing and
you just and it's the feeling you get when you're
having that, it's just it's its only unique feeling.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
I think we decided on texhaustion.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
I was trying to pay a bill online yesterday and
you go. You had to go through like and you
have to pay it this way. And I had to
go through like ninety steps to get to the end.
It took probably fifteen minutes at least. Wow, you know,
press one for this, press two for that. Then they
say it and blah blah blah. And at the end
it was we'll send you a code. You have to
type in the code to show that you and you
know this is the right phone. And every time I
(32:12):
typed in the code, it would read back the wrong numbers.
I would type in six oh three nine, and it
would say five oh two six is the wrong number.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
That's not what I typed in, you bastards.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Anyway, I did it like three or four times that
I was getting so mad. I thought I was gonna
punch a hole in the wall. That feeling is my
least favorite feeling.
Speaker 4 (32:29):
Yeah, the scourge of the modern man.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
There's nobody to complain to. Armstrong Engetty store is open.
So some of you buy stuff for your family or
friends for Christmas, if they're fans of this here radio program.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
It's just har I feel like it's one for me.
Speaker 3 (32:47):
I feel like it's one of those great excuse me,
easy gift, checked it off, didn't cost you much, straight
from the heart, seems like you did something nice. It
was really there will be laughter, tears, hugs. You will
be the bell of the ball. You go to the
Armstrong and Getty store, and Hanson, who runs a damn thing,
is really pushing people to do it soon to make
(33:08):
sure you get everything in time for Christmas. There was
some talk about the Armstrong and Getty pickleball paddles. I
thought it was pretty funny that we had them, and
then there were some complaints about them, and Hanson brought
one in and I don't have any idea what a
really high quality pickleball pedal is like.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
I have them.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
I bought mine at Large five, I think, But they're
just like this. There's nothing wrong with this. This is
perfectly one. Unless you like, get serious serious about pickleball,
this is gonna be absolutely fine. What is wrong with this?
This isn't doesn't feel like cheap Chinese crap. It feels
like something quality to me. I like everything about it,
and it comes with this cool carrying case. Although they're
sold out, so they're I don't know why I'm even
(33:45):
talking about it. We're sold out of the pickleball pedals Armstrong.
You get a pick a ball, but not anymore. They're
gonna be back. But anyway, I go to the store
and see what we got.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
Yeah, we put the lash to the Chinese slaves and
they made several more of them.
Speaker 3 (33:57):
What if we had adult items like the thing people
were throwing on WNBA courts at one point.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Like marital aids. We'll go on it for novelty purposes
only take a and G to bed. Yes, I love
that idea anyway, and you know, we need to branch out.
We need to have more things.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
They're probably not as popular as the hoodies, including the
New Conscience of the Nation hoodie Uh, the Star of
the Lazy Stupid should hurt stars including the f yolickin
Party which I wear proudly, or stocking stuffers, ang coasters, decals, uh,
coffee mugs, stainless steel water bottle, or the get your
(34:35):
Words Straight jack No, look that solid Armstrong and getty
dot com.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Anyway, that's enough of that.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
I'm trying to figure out what to do for my
kids this year. They're definitely the age. They're almost fourteen,
almost sixteen, they're definitely past the age of more cheap
Chinese crap. There's just no reason so either an experience
or like accumulate the money into one actually worth something gift.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
I think this year.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
God, when they're younger, it's just endless piles of cheap
Chinese crab is what they get when they're little kids,
and they're delighted, and that's fine, and it is cheap,
but it well, it was always interesting to me that
we would give our kids the same beloved toy that
we had, but you'd take it out of the package
(35:22):
and instead of feeling like it could last, you know,
one hundred years.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Yeah, it's cheap Chinese crab.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Yeah, definitely China definitely the modern version of something you
played with as a kid that is just so flimsy
and light and poorly made, exactly.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
The Armstrong and Getty show.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Morja Rgio Podcasts and our hot links.
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