July 1, 2025 • 24 mins
(July 01,2025)
The Vatican launches American-style campaign to help erase a $58MIL deficit. Dying honeybees are threatening California’s economy… can Central Valley lawmakers save them? Amazon is on the cusp of using more robots than humans in its warehouses. Business is booming for Brazil’s four-legged pet detectives.
The Vatican launches American-style campaign to help erase a $58MIL deficit. Dying honeybees are threatening California’s economy… can Central Valley lawmakers save them? Amazon is on the cusp of using more robots than humans in its warehouses. Business is booming for Brazil’s four-legged pet detectives.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listenings.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I am six forty the bill handles show on demand
on the iHeartRadio f movens. I am six forty bill
handle Here. It is a Taco Tuesday, July one. For
those of you that are Catholic specifically and a lot
of Christian denominations. You go to church, the plate is
(00:24):
passed for donation and you put into the plate. Now,
thank Goodness said, I don't go to church because I
would take the money out of the plate, or I
would make change. I'd throw in five bucks and take
out four dollars and fifty cents. Come on, I'm gonna
give all full five dollars.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Give me a break.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Also, when I have gone to synagogue on high Holydays,
I have many times there is no plate in synagogue.
The synagogue is not interested in cash or coins. It's
all about checks. That's the kind of paper money. Different story.
(01:04):
We'll talk about that later. But let me tell you
who is passing the plate now. In the Catholic Church.
It is Pope Leo because he celebrates. Matter of fact,
all pope celebrate a special feast day to drum up
(01:24):
donations from the faithful, and this first American pope boy,
he has gone to another I won't say extreme extreme,
but he has taken technology and used this to gather money.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
This Vatican is broke, it has no money.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
So Leo celebrated Mass in Saint Peter's Basilica, marking the
feast of Saints Peter and Paul, and he named fifty
four new archbishops and he thanked donors who have contributed
to the church and around the world. Asses on It
was June twenty nine. Feast day includes a special collection
for Peters Pence. It's the fund that underwrites the operations
(02:09):
of the Central Government of the Catholic Church and pays
for the pope's personal acts of charity. So the Pope
has a discretionary fund of which he uses for charitable
causes and this money goes in there. So what is
he doing, What is the church doing to raise money? Well,
(02:35):
there's a promotional video that is out, There is a
poster that is out including QR codes and websites soliciting
donations and you can do it by credit card, PayPal,
bank transfer, post office transfer. And what's happening this year
And this is under Pope Leo, who is pretty sophisticated
(02:57):
when it comes to technology obviously, and he is using
an American style fundraising pitch heat to keep the Holy
See bureaucracy afloat and right now it has a deficit
this year of between fifty eight million and seventy million dollars.
(03:20):
And if you look at the video, it features Leo's
emotional first moments as pope. There's a video that is
asking for money, but it's a promotional video, all right.
This is You see him step out on the balcony
of Saint Peter's and choking up. Later on as he
receives the fisherman's ring of the Pepasy papacy. There's a
(03:42):
soundtrack in the background. There is a superimposition of a
message available in several languages urging donations. My favorite one
is in Latin, where the pope asks for nations in
Latin and you can hear him ask.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Why is the week calesia da.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Please quaeso eclesia da give us money?
Speaker 1 (04:18):
By the way, is that being sacrilegious? Am I getting?
Am I in trouble with the Catholic listeners? Okay?
Speaker 2 (04:27):
And at the end of his Noon blessing Sunday, he
was the same language saying that Saint Peter's Penn's Fund
is a sign of communion with the Pope.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
So it's uh, this is a little bit for me.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Okay, I'm not mister religious, but when you start going
about the more money you give somehow, the more blessings
and the closer you are to God, that gets a
little tough for me.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
It's uh.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
The Catholic Church has a history of selling indulgences. Now,
of course he's not doing that. I mean, he's doing
it on a much, much lower level. I don't think he's
making that connection. He says from the heart, I thank
those with their gifts supporting my first step as the
successor of Saint Peter. And every religious organization asks for
(05:24):
money because without donations they simply can't function. I mean,
there are certain country in which their religious organizations are
subsidized by the state, and of course, constitutionally, it can't
happen here because separation of church and state.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Now, there are certain aspects.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
For example, there's no property tax on church property, so
there is some sort of subsidy, but for the most
part it can't do it. So they ask for donations
and there's no I guess there's no other way of
doing it. And the church has had some really some
(06:07):
big problems, a lot of scandals in recent years. The
Secretariat of State mismanaged its holding. Secretary of State is
not a financial guy. You would think that something on
the order of hundreds of millions dollar a year would
be controlled by a financial person who has experienced no
Secretary of State in competent management.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Total waste.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
And there was a London property that was sold and
the majority of that property did not go into the
charitable account of the Church of the Pope where.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
It was supposed to.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
It was used simply to underwrite the operation of the church.
And that is a no no. Also, the church is
short in its pension fund and there are people that
work for the church and have for decades and they
get a pension.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Well, that's short too.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
So on behalf of the Pope, and I think it's
fair for me to say that.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
I don't think he would be upset. Kuezo Eclesia dah Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Moving over to bees. Now bees you would think are
no big deal. Well, let me tell you something. They
are dying honey bees, and they are dying are threatening
the entire agricultural industry in the Central Valley, and lawmakers
(07:48):
are trying.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
To do anything to save the bees.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
They're a critical component of our agricultural system because they're
the ones that buzz around. Bees do fly around, although
no one knows how because they're aerodynam dynamically impossible. And
what they do is the pollen goes from one plant
to another plant, and all of a sudden you have
(08:15):
fertilization take place. And in many cases, without bees, there
is no fertilization. If I'm not mistaken, there would be
no almond trees producing almonds, but four bees.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
And it is a whole industry onto itself.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
There are people that manage that have honeybee farms businesses,
and the agriculture industry rents them, will actually rent combs
of bees, and they fly around and do the fertilization.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
They do what they do well. There's a couple of
diseases out there.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
There's one mite that's eating them and it's come up
from I think it started in Asia, and it is
not doing well. I mean, the bees are getting nailed.
It's killing the honey bees. And if you kill the
honey bees, then you kill the agricultural industry. For example,
(09:17):
just the honey business. Thirteen point three million pounds of honey,
that's ten percent of the entire country supply.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Is produced in California.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
One hundred percent of the almonds, which supply a huge
percentage of almonds across the country. Without bees. Nope, absolutely not.
So here's what happened. Beginning in the late nineteen eighties,
Varroa mites, a native to Asia, started infiltrating bee colonies,
and by the early two thousands they were in everyone's hives,
(09:51):
according to the president of the California State Beekeepers Association.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Now, pesticides, we're doing something. But what's happening. These mites
developed the ability to.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
What's the what I'm looking for on that one, fight
off immunity immunity, and they are The bees are just
in huge trouble. This is not good news, and they're
trying to figure out a way how.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Is this going to be successfully attacked.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
We have a few other things too, like the elm
bark you know, the beatles, the elm beetles that are
wiping out entire forests. I mean, there are just crazy
certain immigration and of immigration of these pests that come
in or diseases that attack the tree. Do you know
(10:49):
that we don't buy papayas from Hawaii? Have you noticed
that we get them from I think Mexico. There are
certain fruit we cannot bring in from Hawaii because of fruitflies.
And how careful California is, it's been able to successfully
(11:12):
keep fruit flies off pineapples, no problem. Fruitflies don't fly
around in pineapples. The acid kills them. But there are
agricultural products that come into this country or people attempt
to bring them in where it gets really serious stuff,
which is why at the airport they have the dogs
(11:33):
going around and sniffing to see if you're bringing in
agricultural products, I mean, far more than explosives, which is why,
by the way, I take some agricultural products and put
them down my pants because I just like the you
know what, I'm not going to go there, because, as
(11:54):
I was saying, off the air, I am far more
depraved than on the air. A right.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Fair enough.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
My daughter Pamela, who is a computer nerd of the
first water. Matter of fact, she's starting her master's program
in computers and computer sciences, and I mean it's no joke,
it's pretty serious.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
And her roommate also is.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
A computer nerd of the first water and it's really
wild to see them talk to each other, and they
talk in computer languages that I don't even begin to
understand as they're dealing with each other. Anyway, her roommate, Harper,
who is a computer nerd, got a job with Amazon
(12:46):
and it was a good job in coding, I think
it was. And broke into Amazon in the fulfillment center
in one of the warehouses, and she said it was
absolutely brutal in terms of the number of boxes that
had to be moved, had to be moved, and the
(13:08):
number of boxes had to be filled with product, and
it was repetitive, and it is boring work. And this
is not the work that anybody particularly likes. And the
pay is not wonderful either. It's not like there's a
huge premium. So what Amazon is doing and not because
they like people particularly. They have spent years automating tasks
(13:30):
and they are getting closer and closer to basically having
no humans.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Do you know?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Amazon has more than a million robots in its various centers,
metallic arms they pluck items from shelves, and there's droids
that motor around faring goods in corners. Automated systems help
sort items, Robots assistant packaging for shipment. One of the
(14:00):
newer robots called Vulcan okay, why not, actually has a
sense of touch that enables it to pick items from
numerous shelves.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
It's pretty sophisticated.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
And what Amazon has done is taking steps to connect
its robots to the order f fillment process. So the
machines work in tandem with each other and with humans.
So humans and the machines are part of this cog
and it's all working together to the point where it's
(14:35):
going to be all robotics. And there's one gal who
was interviewed for this article in the Wall Street Journal,
and she was there picking up boxes, filling boxes with products,
and it again repetitive and hard work. And what ended
up happening is she still stayed on and they went
(14:55):
to robotics.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
She just sits in front of a computer screen.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Now and she manages a bunch of robots and she
gets a whole lot more money. Amazon employees about a
million and a half people, the majority of them working
in warehouses. Now, what has happened is how many people
(15:20):
are not working at Amazon that used to. Last year,
the average number of employees per facility was six hundred
and seventy, the lowest that it has ever been, and
the number of packages has been increasing steadily since twenty fifteen.
(15:43):
I mean it is off the charts now, it is
so high. I mean, this is computerization. This is computerization
at its best. And when ludites and luddites are the
people that don't believe in technology and want to keep
people working pro union people, you can't fire unionists. I mean,
(16:04):
there are all kinds of stories out there against technology
because it takes away work, But look at the work
it takes away. I mean, what kind of quality work
is sitting in a warehouse and on your feet and
you talk to Harper and man. She describes a normal
(16:26):
day at one of these fulfillment centers as just brutal,
coming home exhausted, I mean, lifting boxes all day, doing
the same thing over and over again. Your mind just
that literally melds into nothingness and the time goes so slowly.
(16:49):
I remember when I was a kid and I worked
as in those days we call them box boys but
box people, and I worked at a supermarket. I was
a teenager, maybe fourteen fifteen years old, and I.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Was loading you know, groceries and two bags.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
For people standing at the other end of the counter.
And it was the most horrific job. And what I
would do is I would load, and I would then
not look at the clock purposely and try to guess
how much time had passed. And I would try as
hard and as long as I could not to look
(17:28):
at the clock. So finally I break down and I go,
all right, how much time? Three minutes have passed. And
that went on for my entire shift. And they still
have people doing that. You know. It's we need robotics
and lots of them. Matter of fact, when a robot
(17:50):
is gonna change I be on this show. It would
be a better show, wouldn't it, Neil.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
In get would My name is Bill.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
We've talked about the gig economy matter of fact here
on the show, as virtually every place that people work
at you have to have a second job. How many
people do you know have second jobs? I mean that
is the new world, and the same thing is all
(18:23):
over the world. So there is a story out of
Brazil and it's a story of a bloodhound, Moana, and
Moana is trained to track missing people, helping brazil Brazilian's
police selve homicide cases. That's the main job of Moana
(18:45):
and Moana's owner. But there's a side gig that Moana
and the owner have. Brazil is pet mad and search
dogs moonlight on as private detectives not only their regular job,
but they're extra gig, and they hunt down everything from
(19:09):
lost cats to stray hamsters for.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Owners that are willing to pay up to two hundred
bucks an hour.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Because these dogs looking for escape prisoners, homicide cases, they
deal with it with their noses. They scent, you know,
they grab the scent and they go, well, it doesn't
matter what scent you have, let's go find a pet
animal that an owner is desperate to find. And business
(19:36):
is booming. More Brazilians are living alone than ever before.
Animals are there instead of offspring. See, they're smart, don't
have kids, have dogs, have pets. They are cheaper, they
don't talk back, they don't spend money on your credit card.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Pets are the.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Answer, and so a lot of people don't have kids
and they decide they're going.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
To have pets.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
So the pet population in Brazil is over one hundred
and sixty million just about the human population, and it
has more small dogs per capita than any other nation
on the planet. No one has children in some Apollo anymore.
They have dogs. According to a dog walker, which makes
a lot of sense. It just and a different various
(20:36):
ethnic groups. I mean, Brazil has just dog loving, dog
loving population. It's just that simple. Now, hunting down these
pets is not easy. Molana for example, hunting down pets
sometimes have to go into a favella. Favellas in Brazil
(20:57):
are the inner city. They are the slums, and they
are dangerous as hell. And there's Moana looking for an
animal that has sauntered in and they have to ask
the local drug lord for permission to get in. But
everybody loves dogs. One hunt for a missing pet. A
(21:20):
farmer fired his gun is revolver at the owner and
the dog. Moana and Google, the other dog she works with,
are hunting for missing people as the regular jobs I
told you. And here's what people do. They don't call
the police anymore to find their pets. What they do
is they go to the local television station that announce
(21:43):
a pet is missing. And that's far quicker than calling
the cops or calling any organization because the police, they
really don't care about your pets.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
And even the ones that do police are very well
is the word corrupt work.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Dogs young ones are harder to track because they can
go so far in so little time. But the difference
with dogs is they want to be found. Cats don't
want to be found, as they have discovered. Last year,
Mohana spent a bunch of hours following a runaway chinchilla
(22:23):
who had squeezed into a sewer, gone never to be
seen again.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
We even get calls about lost birds. That's a problem
because birds, well, they tend to fly.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
And one of the more fun stories is the Moana's
owner was once called to find a lost pet kuwaate. Now,
if you look at what a koate is, it's a
relative of the raccoon. And Mohana got a scent of
(22:58):
the kate and she followed it to the owner's neighbor
who had killed it and buried it, and there was
the sniffing.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
It's a great story. I love it.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Because I have two little ones and would I pay
two hundred dollars an hour to find my little ones?
Speaker 1 (23:20):
That I just absolutely love? Not a chance.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I wouldn't pay two hundred dollars an hour to find
my children, much less a pet.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
I think we're done. That's it until tomorrow. Oh am,
I taking phone calls.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Where's an Okay, I am taking phone calls for Handle
on the Law, and I'll be doing that in just
a moment as I end the show before Gary and
Shannon show up. The phone number is eight hundred or
eight seven seven five two zero eleven fifty. Handle on
the Law, Marginal legal advice off the air. So I
go through them very quickly. No breaks, no news, no weather,
(23:58):
no commercials. It's just me and you. Oh and no
patience on my part. Eight seven seven five two zero
eleven fifty. Starting in just a moment eight seven seven
five to zero eleven fifty. Marginal legal Advice off the air.
Tomorrow morning, wake up call, Will and Amy, Neil and
(24:22):
I jump aboard from six to nine. And then well,
Gary and Shannon are here, and then of course we've
got I know, Cono, you're pointing to yourself.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
I got it.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
I didn't forget, Actually I did. Cono and Ann are
always here. Eight seven seven five two zero eleven fifty.
This is KFI, am six forty. You've been listening to
the Bill Handle Show, Catch My Show Monday through Friday
six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on
(24:54):
the iHeartRadio app
You're listenings.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I am six forty the bill handles show on demand
on the iHeartRadio f movens. I am six forty bill
handle Here. It is a Taco Tuesday, July one. For
those of you that are Catholic specifically and a lot
of Christian denominations. You go to church, the plate is
(00:24):
passed for donation and you put into the plate. Now,
thank Goodness said, I don't go to church because I
would take the money out of the plate, or I
would make change. I'd throw in five bucks and take
out four dollars and fifty cents. Come on, I'm gonna
give all full five dollars.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Give me a break.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Also, when I have gone to synagogue on high Holydays,
I have many times there is no plate in synagogue.
The synagogue is not interested in cash or coins. It's
all about checks. That's the kind of paper money. Different story.
(01:04):
We'll talk about that later. But let me tell you
who is passing the plate now. In the Catholic Church.
It is Pope Leo because he celebrates. Matter of fact,
all pope celebrate a special feast day to drum up
(01:24):
donations from the faithful, and this first American pope boy,
he has gone to another I won't say extreme extreme,
but he has taken technology and used this to gather money.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
This Vatican is broke, it has no money.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
So Leo celebrated Mass in Saint Peter's Basilica, marking the
feast of Saints Peter and Paul, and he named fifty
four new archbishops and he thanked donors who have contributed
to the church and around the world. Asses on It
was June twenty nine. Feast day includes a special collection
for Peters Pence. It's the fund that underwrites the operations
(02:09):
of the Central Government of the Catholic Church and pays
for the pope's personal acts of charity. So the Pope
has a discretionary fund of which he uses for charitable
causes and this money goes in there. So what is
he doing, What is the church doing to raise money? Well,
(02:35):
there's a promotional video that is out, There is a
poster that is out including QR codes and websites soliciting
donations and you can do it by credit card, PayPal,
bank transfer, post office transfer. And what's happening this year
And this is under Pope Leo, who is pretty sophisticated
(02:57):
when it comes to technology obviously, and he is using
an American style fundraising pitch heat to keep the Holy
See bureaucracy afloat and right now it has a deficit
this year of between fifty eight million and seventy million dollars.
(03:20):
And if you look at the video, it features Leo's
emotional first moments as pope. There's a video that is
asking for money, but it's a promotional video, all right.
This is You see him step out on the balcony
of Saint Peter's and choking up. Later on as he
receives the fisherman's ring of the Pepasy papacy. There's a
(03:42):
soundtrack in the background. There is a superimposition of a
message available in several languages urging donations. My favorite one
is in Latin, where the pope asks for nations in
Latin and you can hear him ask.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Why is the week calesia da.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Please quaeso eclesia da give us money?
Speaker 1 (04:18):
By the way, is that being sacrilegious? Am I getting?
Am I in trouble with the Catholic listeners? Okay?
Speaker 2 (04:27):
And at the end of his Noon blessing Sunday, he
was the same language saying that Saint Peter's Penn's Fund
is a sign of communion with the Pope.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
So it's uh, this is a little bit for me.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Okay, I'm not mister religious, but when you start going
about the more money you give somehow, the more blessings
and the closer you are to God, that gets a
little tough for me.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
It's uh.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
The Catholic Church has a history of selling indulgences. Now,
of course he's not doing that. I mean, he's doing
it on a much, much lower level. I don't think he's
making that connection. He says from the heart, I thank
those with their gifts supporting my first step as the
successor of Saint Peter. And every religious organization asks for
(05:24):
money because without donations they simply can't function. I mean,
there are certain country in which their religious organizations are
subsidized by the state, and of course, constitutionally, it can't
happen here because separation of church and state.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Now, there are certain aspects.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
For example, there's no property tax on church property, so
there is some sort of subsidy, but for the most
part it can't do it. So they ask for donations
and there's no I guess there's no other way of
doing it. And the church has had some really some
(06:07):
big problems, a lot of scandals in recent years. The
Secretariat of State mismanaged its holding. Secretary of State is
not a financial guy. You would think that something on
the order of hundreds of millions dollar a year would
be controlled by a financial person who has experienced no
Secretary of State in competent management.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Total waste.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
And there was a London property that was sold and
the majority of that property did not go into the
charitable account of the Church of the Pope where.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
It was supposed to.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
It was used simply to underwrite the operation of the church.
And that is a no no. Also, the church is
short in its pension fund and there are people that
work for the church and have for decades and they
get a pension.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Well, that's short too.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
So on behalf of the Pope, and I think it's
fair for me to say that.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
I don't think he would be upset. Kuezo Eclesia dah Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Moving over to bees. Now bees you would think are
no big deal. Well, let me tell you something. They
are dying honey bees, and they are dying are threatening
the entire agricultural industry in the Central Valley, and lawmakers
(07:48):
are trying.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
To do anything to save the bees.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
They're a critical component of our agricultural system because they're
the ones that buzz around. Bees do fly around, although
no one knows how because they're aerodynam dynamically impossible. And
what they do is the pollen goes from one plant
to another plant, and all of a sudden you have
(08:15):
fertilization take place. And in many cases, without bees, there
is no fertilization. If I'm not mistaken, there would be
no almond trees producing almonds, but four bees.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
And it is a whole industry onto itself.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
There are people that manage that have honeybee farms businesses,
and the agriculture industry rents them, will actually rent combs
of bees, and they fly around and do the fertilization.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
They do what they do well. There's a couple of
diseases out there.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
There's one mite that's eating them and it's come up
from I think it started in Asia, and it is
not doing well. I mean, the bees are getting nailed.
It's killing the honey bees. And if you kill the
honey bees, then you kill the agricultural industry. For example,
(09:17):
just the honey business. Thirteen point three million pounds of honey,
that's ten percent of the entire country supply.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Is produced in California.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
One hundred percent of the almonds, which supply a huge
percentage of almonds across the country. Without bees. Nope, absolutely not.
So here's what happened. Beginning in the late nineteen eighties,
Varroa mites, a native to Asia, started infiltrating bee colonies,
and by the early two thousands they were in everyone's hives,
(09:51):
according to the president of the California State Beekeepers Association.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Now, pesticides, we're doing something. But what's happening. These mites
developed the ability to.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
What's the what I'm looking for on that one, fight
off immunity immunity, and they are The bees are just
in huge trouble. This is not good news, and they're
trying to figure out a way how.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Is this going to be successfully attacked.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
We have a few other things too, like the elm
bark you know, the beatles, the elm beetles that are
wiping out entire forests. I mean, there are just crazy
certain immigration and of immigration of these pests that come
in or diseases that attack the tree. Do you know
(10:49):
that we don't buy papayas from Hawaii? Have you noticed
that we get them from I think Mexico. There are
certain fruit we cannot bring in from Hawaii because of fruitflies.
And how careful California is, it's been able to successfully
(11:12):
keep fruit flies off pineapples, no problem. Fruitflies don't fly
around in pineapples. The acid kills them. But there are
agricultural products that come into this country or people attempt
to bring them in where it gets really serious stuff,
which is why at the airport they have the dogs
(11:33):
going around and sniffing to see if you're bringing in
agricultural products, I mean, far more than explosives, which is why,
by the way, I take some agricultural products and put
them down my pants because I just like the you
know what, I'm not going to go there, because, as
(11:54):
I was saying, off the air, I am far more
depraved than on the air. A right.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
Fair enough.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
My daughter Pamela, who is a computer nerd of the
first water. Matter of fact, she's starting her master's program
in computers and computer sciences, and I mean it's no joke,
it's pretty serious.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
And her roommate also is.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
A computer nerd of the first water and it's really
wild to see them talk to each other, and they
talk in computer languages that I don't even begin to
understand as they're dealing with each other. Anyway, her roommate, Harper,
who is a computer nerd, got a job with Amazon
(12:46):
and it was a good job in coding, I think
it was. And broke into Amazon in the fulfillment center
in one of the warehouses, and she said it was
absolutely brutal in terms of the number of boxes that
had to be moved, had to be moved, and the
(13:08):
number of boxes had to be filled with product, and
it was repetitive, and it is boring work. And this
is not the work that anybody particularly likes. And the
pay is not wonderful either. It's not like there's a
huge premium. So what Amazon is doing and not because
they like people particularly. They have spent years automating tasks
(13:30):
and they are getting closer and closer to basically having
no humans.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Do you know?
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Amazon has more than a million robots in its various centers,
metallic arms they pluck items from shelves, and there's droids
that motor around faring goods in corners. Automated systems help
sort items, Robots assistant packaging for shipment. One of the
(14:00):
newer robots called Vulcan okay, why not, actually has a
sense of touch that enables it to pick items from
numerous shelves.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
It's pretty sophisticated.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
And what Amazon has done is taking steps to connect
its robots to the order f fillment process. So the
machines work in tandem with each other and with humans.
So humans and the machines are part of this cog
and it's all working together to the point where it's
(14:35):
going to be all robotics. And there's one gal who
was interviewed for this article in the Wall Street Journal,
and she was there picking up boxes, filling boxes with products,
and it again repetitive and hard work. And what ended
up happening is she still stayed on and they went
(14:55):
to robotics.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
She just sits in front of a computer screen.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Now and she manages a bunch of robots and she
gets a whole lot more money. Amazon employees about a
million and a half people, the majority of them working
in warehouses. Now, what has happened is how many people
(15:20):
are not working at Amazon that used to. Last year,
the average number of employees per facility was six hundred
and seventy, the lowest that it has ever been, and
the number of packages has been increasing steadily since twenty fifteen.
(15:43):
I mean it is off the charts now, it is
so high. I mean, this is computerization. This is computerization
at its best. And when ludites and luddites are the
people that don't believe in technology and want to keep
people working pro union people, you can't fire unionists. I mean,
(16:04):
there are all kinds of stories out there against technology
because it takes away work, But look at the work
it takes away. I mean, what kind of quality work
is sitting in a warehouse and on your feet and
you talk to Harper and man. She describes a normal
(16:26):
day at one of these fulfillment centers as just brutal,
coming home exhausted, I mean, lifting boxes all day, doing
the same thing over and over again. Your mind just
that literally melds into nothingness and the time goes so slowly.
(16:49):
I remember when I was a kid and I worked
as in those days we call them box boys but
box people, and I worked at a supermarket. I was
a teenager, maybe fourteen fifteen years old, and I.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Was loading you know, groceries and two bags.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
For people standing at the other end of the counter.
And it was the most horrific job. And what I
would do is I would load, and I would then
not look at the clock purposely and try to guess
how much time had passed. And I would try as
hard and as long as I could not to look
(17:28):
at the clock. So finally I break down and I go,
all right, how much time? Three minutes have passed. And
that went on for my entire shift. And they still
have people doing that. You know. It's we need robotics
and lots of them. Matter of fact, when a robot
(17:50):
is gonna change I be on this show. It would
be a better show, wouldn't it, Neil.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
In get would My name is Bill.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
We've talked about the gig economy matter of fact here
on the show, as virtually every place that people work
at you have to have a second job. How many
people do you know have second jobs? I mean that
is the new world, and the same thing is all
(18:23):
over the world. So there is a story out of
Brazil and it's a story of a bloodhound, Moana, and
Moana is trained to track missing people, helping brazil Brazilian's
police selve homicide cases. That's the main job of Moana
(18:45):
and Moana's owner. But there's a side gig that Moana
and the owner have. Brazil is pet mad and search
dogs moonlight on as private detectives not only their regular job,
but they're extra gig, and they hunt down everything from
(19:09):
lost cats to stray hamsters for.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Owners that are willing to pay up to two hundred
bucks an hour.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Because these dogs looking for escape prisoners, homicide cases, they
deal with it with their noses. They scent, you know,
they grab the scent and they go, well, it doesn't
matter what scent you have, let's go find a pet
animal that an owner is desperate to find. And business
(19:36):
is booming. More Brazilians are living alone than ever before.
Animals are there instead of offspring. See, they're smart, don't
have kids, have dogs, have pets. They are cheaper, they
don't talk back, they don't spend money on your credit card.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Pets are the.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Answer, and so a lot of people don't have kids
and they decide they're going.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
To have pets.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
So the pet population in Brazil is over one hundred
and sixty million just about the human population, and it
has more small dogs per capita than any other nation
on the planet. No one has children in some Apollo anymore.
They have dogs. According to a dog walker, which makes
a lot of sense. It just and a different various
(20:36):
ethnic groups. I mean, Brazil has just dog loving, dog
loving population. It's just that simple. Now, hunting down these
pets is not easy. Molana for example, hunting down pets
sometimes have to go into a favella. Favellas in Brazil
(20:57):
are the inner city. They are the slums, and they
are dangerous as hell. And there's Moana looking for an
animal that has sauntered in and they have to ask
the local drug lord for permission to get in. But
everybody loves dogs. One hunt for a missing pet. A
(21:20):
farmer fired his gun is revolver at the owner and
the dog. Moana and Google, the other dog she works with,
are hunting for missing people as the regular jobs I
told you. And here's what people do. They don't call
the police anymore to find their pets. What they do
is they go to the local television station that announce
(21:43):
a pet is missing. And that's far quicker than calling
the cops or calling any organization because the police, they
really don't care about your pets.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
And even the ones that do police are very well
is the word corrupt work.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Dogs young ones are harder to track because they can
go so far in so little time. But the difference
with dogs is they want to be found. Cats don't
want to be found, as they have discovered. Last year,
Mohana spent a bunch of hours following a runaway chinchilla
(22:23):
who had squeezed into a sewer, gone never to be
seen again.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
We even get calls about lost birds. That's a problem
because birds, well, they tend to fly.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
And one of the more fun stories is the Moana's
owner was once called to find a lost pet kuwaate. Now,
if you look at what a koate is, it's a
relative of the raccoon. And Mohana got a scent of
(22:58):
the kate and she followed it to the owner's neighbor
who had killed it and buried it, and there was
the sniffing.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
It's a great story. I love it.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Because I have two little ones and would I pay
two hundred dollars an hour to find my little ones?
Speaker 1 (23:20):
That I just absolutely love? Not a chance.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I wouldn't pay two hundred dollars an hour to find
my children, much less a pet.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
I think we're done. That's it until tomorrow. Oh am,
I taking phone calls.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Where's an Okay, I am taking phone calls for Handle
on the Law, and I'll be doing that in just
a moment as I end the show before Gary and
Shannon show up. The phone number is eight hundred or
eight seven seven five two zero eleven fifty. Handle on
the Law, Marginal legal advice off the air. So I
go through them very quickly. No breaks, no news, no weather,
(23:58):
no commercials. It's just me and you. Oh and no
patience on my part. Eight seven seven five two zero
eleven fifty. Starting in just a moment eight seven seven
five to zero eleven fifty. Marginal legal Advice off the air.
Tomorrow morning, wake up call, Will and Amy, Neil and
(24:22):
I jump aboard from six to nine. And then well,
Gary and Shannon are here, and then of course we've
got I know, Cono, you're pointing to yourself.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
I got it.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
I didn't forget, Actually I did. Cono and Ann are
always here. Eight seven seven five two zero eleven fifty.
This is KFI, am six forty. You've been listening to
the Bill Handle Show, Catch My Show Monday through Friday
six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on
(24:54):
the iHeartRadio app
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