444: Hello Dystopia!

Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

I've no more fucks to give. My fucks have all been spent. They fucked off from the building and I don't know where they went. I've no more fucks to give. I've no more fucks to give. I've no more fucks. I've no more fucks. I've no more fucks to give.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. So the little song you just heard is kind of what Brian and I were feeling yesterday when we were talking about should we do this show or not? Well, I mean, it's been going on for a while, but yes. So but against all odds, we're here again.

Yeah, I'm not entirely sure why. I'm very finding it very difficult to get motivated. I have officially joined Dave Bittner's 502nd who gives a shit Legion.

Yeah. So this is a this is going to be a I don't know, man. Like I know on one part, I just want to say to hell with the little bit of tech news that we have and just talk. And I know that a good portion of our audience would really enjoy that. But then we'd also get flooded with stay in your lane emails. So, you know, screw you guys.

Look, you can you can go back to COVID Corner on Saturday's show if we want to listen to that stuff. If you care about my political leanings, I just look at my Twitter. That's all you need to do. But for this show today, I'm going to do my best and my damnedest to stay in my lane.

OK, but I'll try. I'll try and be the voice of reason today, Brian, because the people need us. No, not really. What the people need is a goddamn functioning government. Well, oops. Sorry. Remember, not not everybody here is from the United States of what the fuck is going on a stand?

Yeah, that's right. Well, anyways. All right. So on the one bit of good news that we had that immediately got wiped out within two hours, the SpaceX launch was successful. Yes, it was. I sat and watched it with my kid. The funny thing about watching it with a three and a half year old who was really into space was, boy, that was a lot of waiting for some fire, which was cool.

But then immediately he's like, so when do we get to see the solar system? I want to see Saturn. So while I was very excited about all of it, I think my son was a tad disappointed because unlike all the cartoons that he watches, you don't immediately take off into solar systems and skirt black holes and land on Venus.

Well, let this be his first lesson in disappointment. Welcome. Welcome to reality, kid. Yeah, but all of that was really cool. Very exciting stuff. And Vox has an article saying, all right, well, we did that. What happens next? And, you know, I like this particular thing.

What's next? What will the future of commercialized space travel look like? Will Mars be covered with Tesla ads? Will Earth stores sell real moon rocks? Will Jupiter be populated with Amazon warehouses? Should we book moon hotel reservations now to beat the rush? Obviously not. This is all still incredibly expensive.

There's currently would be a $55 million price tag for a seat on one of SpaceX rockets. Not that, you know, incredibly rich people aren't booking space tourism already because they are. NASA is going to be continued involvement just because governments have the deeper pockets or hopefully we'll still have a government with a pocket.

So NASA will still obviously be involved with this, but there's no, I don't think there's ever going to be any separation of government and privatized space travel again. So, yeah, we'll see. I mean, it's good. It's great. I'm glad it happened. Yay. I was sitting there on the couch, like literally on the edge of my seat watching it going, come on, guys, come on, come on, guys, come on, guys.

And did you see how bad CNN fucked up the launch? I wasn't watching. I was actually watching the Discovery Channel's coverage, which is quite good. Oh, pro tip. If you've got a Roku, you can actually install the NASA TV channel. So I got to watch it live straight on NASA TV. But, yeah, they totally botched the liftoff.

It's like the countdown was going and it was out of sync. And then, boom, they show it and they're like way off the pad already. They didn't even show liftoff. Whoops. It's like, yeah, I was going to say somebody got fired for that, but no, nobody gets fired anymore. Probably not, no. Promotion. No. And in funny news, after the riot started, Elon Musk says, off Twitter for a while.

Like, well, somebody finally got through to him. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you shouldn't give us your opinions on this for a little bit. Yeah. Shut up, Elon. And that said, Brian, what's your opinion? Oh, you know, I think everybody that listens to the show knows exactly where I'm at.

And I'm with the I'm with the peaceful protesters. I 100 percent agree with their cause. Yeah. But your town got destroyed. Yeah. Well, I said I'm with the peaceful protesters. I think, you know, everybody that's screaming about how this is. Look, you can see what's happening.

It's happening everywhere. It's happening in every city. Peaceful protest. People show up in cars. Glom on to it. And those are the rioters and looters and people that just want to cause chaos. It isn't the peaceful protesters that are doing this. You see it. We're seeing it on.

We have the technology. We are seeing it on cameras happening in real time. And that's exactly what happened here. The peaceful protest of which I knew many people that went to it. I was actually down at my mom's house in Orange County and drove back into basically a war zone. Was a couple, I don't know, maybe a half a mile away down at Third Street Promenade.

And, you know, when the curfew hit and they shut everything down, peaceful protesters, for the most part, went away. Some of them kept marching. And that's when the other elements showed up. And, yeah, they kind of they went down Main Street, which is four blocks away from me.

And it sounded really bad. The coverage on that I was seeing was really bad. You texted me and said you just saw my house. Well, I texted you that morning and I'm like, good luck today, because I saw that there was going to be a protest in Santa Monica.

And you're like, oh, it's going to be fine. Rich, rich, white kids aren't going to burn their town down. And I'm like, no, it's the tourists that are going to burn your town down. You were optimistic for a while. And I'm like, no, dude, I saw the writing on the wall. I'm like, come on, man. So I'm like, either stay in Orange County or get the hell home so you can hunker down.

Yeah. And yeah, so they went down and did Main Street and it was organized and they knew exactly where they wanted to hit. And then they went off immediately to Abikini and hit a few shops there because they know where the money was. And that's what they did. So I need to explain something before you keep going, because I've been talking to people around the country who don't understand what's been happening here.

Since we see it on TV, they're just like, oh, there's looting going on there. No, what we've got here are organized gangs that are basically riding around in cars, dropping people off. The people break into the stores, they fill up the cars, they drive to the next spot. And in a bunch of different cases, on their way out, they set fire to the place they just looted.

So fire and EMTs and everybody has to go to that spot. So they're clear to go to the next spot. It is full on organized crime here. And it happened yesterday again in Van Nuys and in Hollywood. And it's not just here. And today it's going to be there. Everything on Ventura Boulevard outside my house for a mile is boarded up.

Everybody's preparing for it to come here because we've got malls, we've got big box stores. And basically they're saying we're next on the hit list. And it isn't just a Los Angeles phenomenon. This is happening in New York City. This is happening anywhere because, you know, it's an easy target for these criminals to do.

There's protesting. The police are monitoring that and they can get away with it. And they are getting away with it, at least until, you know, until we've imposed these curfews and the National Guard rolled into Santa Monica. And, you know, we had another protest yesterday and, you know, they shut it down.

They just, you know, a curfew hit. If you're out, you're getting arrested. End of story. Which is not exactly the world we want to be living in, but it seems to be what we are at now. Well, it's the one that we need to live in right now until the looting's done and they catch these guys. Because what they're, you know, a lot of the stuff that they're going to let a lot of these looters go and not, you know, charge them after the fact.

If they, you know, because we have the technology to go find them. All these people are on cell phones. It's easy enough to track them down. You know, that's the technology side of this. We've got their license plate numbers for the idiots who leave their license plates on. But the thing is, if there's, they get rid of the goods as soon as they, you know, are done and swap them out.

So they're not going to prosecute those guys. I think the people that they're going to prosecute are like anybody that left a store that was on fire. They're going to go after them with the, you know, the hammer of God. Yeah. And the fire was my real worry, too. I wasn't terribly worried about rioters and looters coming up into my residential neighborhood because there's nothing to loot.

But I was worried that, you know, they would set a few stores on fire and, you know, emergency services are obviously stretched thin. And if the fire spreads, then that would be a problem. So we had our go bags here ready to head right back to Orange County if need be. And I have to say something you don't see too often in the news, especially something you don't see too often on social media.

The next morning I went down to Main Street to walk around. I thought it was relatively early since the curfew only lifted at 530 in the morning. I went down at like seven and I walked the whole street. I walked over to Third Street Promenade where the majority of the looting was taking place.

You know, there was a bit of graffiti, some smashed windows. Overall, not too bad. And the most heartening thing of all was that there was an army of locals that had been out probably since the curfew lifted at 530 in the morning with brooms, with sponges, walking around, cleaning things up.

Not the store owners, the locals. And that was heartwarming, to be honest. You know, by the time I got down there, who knows how much they had already cleaned up. Maybe it was a lot worse, but it was, you know, everybody was cleaning and taking care of their neighborhoods as they should be doing.

Yeah, see, that's why I think this thing, it'll eventually peter out because the citizenry will finally start to stand up to everybody and say, hey, enough is enough. You know, enough is going to be enough. So we're bracing here today for our turn. So it should be fun. We've had police helicopters have been over our neighborhood, like nonstop since about 530 this morning.

So, yeah. And, you know, again, I'd like to remind everybody we are in the middle of a pandemic. And what's that? What may not be. That went away real quick. What may not be petering out is the coronavirus, as people are already concerned that these events, all these both the nonviolent protests, of course, as well, because there's just so many people packed together could become super spreader events.

I know people like Bill Maher running around saying, hey, you're out. You're outdoors in the sunshine. That's going to solve all the problems. No, no, it's not. People are amped up. People are spitting as they talk. Spitting and screaming. People are screaming. You know, antiseptic.

The idea that sunlight is an antiseptic and being outdoors is safer is true until you get saliva in your eyeball. And that is what's happening out there. So, I don't have two to three weeks from now. We'll see what happens.

We'll see what happens. We'll see if it's actually a thing or nothing burger. But time will tell on that one because it's science, man. We just got to wait and see. Count the numbers.

I am biting my tongue to not talk about something that occurred yesterday that may or may not involved flashbanging jackbooted thugs, moving people out of a park before the curfew had hit for a photo op.

But I am not going to say anything about that. Instead, the only Trump news that I'm going to talk about today is that Facebook employees are standing up and finally protesting Mark Zuckerberg's cowardice in the face of Trump, demanding that he actually take some action. The limited amount of action that is at least being taken on Twitter in terms of fact checking and labeling posts.

And, of course, being the time that we're in, Facebook employees staged a virtual walkout because they're all working from home. So, I don't know exactly what that meant. They didn't turn on Slack that day. They didn't turn on Slack or Zoom. Oh, they wouldn't use Slack. They would use – what's Facebook's one called?

Work? I don't know. Workplace? Dumpster fire. Dumpster fire. So, yes, there was a virtual walkout with participating employees requesting time off to support protesters and express their dissent with Facebook, leaving up Trump's inflammatory posts. According to the New York Times, some Facebook employees have threatened to resign, which, Jason, you and I have always said, this is the way that you actually protest a company that you don't believe in and don't want to work for.

You don't work for them. Now, again, times that we're in right now, I don't blame people for not leaving their jobs because there's not a lot of jobs about. Not a lot to go around, yeah. Yeah. Take what you can get. Yes. So, yeah, company insiders are saying that this resistance presents the most serious threat to Zuckerberg's leadership of the company since it was founded.

So, and lest you think it's just low-level employees, Andrew Crowe, the head of design at Facebook, I guess he came up with that color blue since that's about the only design there is. I was going to say, there ain't a whole hell of a lot of design on Facebook. He used Twitter to announce that censoring information that might help people see the complete picture is wrong, but giving a platform to incite violence and spread disinformation is unacceptable.

Regardless of who you are or if it's newsworthy, I disagree with Mark's position and will work to make change happen. And I love the fact that all of these people took to Twitter to bitch about Facebook just as an F you to Mark. And there is a little bit of Facebook tech news, something that I suppose we've all been asking for for quite some time.

Facebook's new feature will help you erase your weird teenage years. We'll see if this actually rolls out, but we'll see what happens here. So, if you were a tech-savvy teen and an early Facebook adopter, you're now in your early 30s with half of your life documented on the social media giant.

How crazy is that? That's insane. Yes. So, I mean, I just think about the fact that I've been on Facebook for at least 13 years now, which is crazy. So, there you go. Well, what is that? Oh, was it Social Post Manager?

Was that the Chrome bookmark that lets you just go back and delete it? Yeah, I think it was Social Post Manager. Yeah, I use that thing, you know, very, very judiciously. Well, let's get rid of these, that, that, that. Yeah, I've always kept mine private, so I have a little bit less of a worry about that.

But if you are concerned about this. You just said keeping things private on Facebook keeps you, keeps you protected? Well. How many times have they changed the privacy policies and let everybody in? That's true. But they haven't done that recently, to be fair to them. But, you know, at the end of the day, Jason, by the time I'm done with this article, let's also keep in mind that there is no delete.

So, what difference does it actually fucking make ever? But there is a new Manage Activity feature, which will be rolling out over the next few weeks, which will allow you to curate your Facebook presence to more accurately reflect who you are today, the company said in an announcement. You'll be able to find and manage posts in bulk with filters that let them find posts from certain date ranges or that mention certain people.

So, you can erase that embarrassing relationship that you had for three years in the middle of your Facebook stuff or whatever. Who knows? So, that's great that they're finally rolling this out. It's relatively easy from a programming perspective for them to do this. So, why it took so long, who knows?

I think it's just because people have finally said, for Christ's sake. Yeah. Yeah. We know exactly why they won't do it, because they want the posts. They want to say, we're number one. We've got, you know, bazillions of photos. Blah, blah, blah. So, theoretically, you'll be able to either archive your embarrassing old posts for your eyes only or to delete them entirely, which means for Zuckerberg's eyes only.

Exactly. Or whoever gets a court order. Yes. Well, Twitter is still rolling out some of their – they're doing their magic on people inciting violence, although I've only seen – I've seen very few of these around, and I've been on Twitter a lot the past couple days.

Yeah, I've noticed. Yeah. Yes. Representative Matt Goetz, who's a Republican from Florida, he wrote, now that we clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East? And, of course, Twitter said, hey, dude, no, knock it off.

Knock it off. So, this is the glorification of violence policy. And he got Twitter slapped. But, yeah, after – and, of course, this was after the post was retweeted 12,000 times. So, yeah, I've been looking around, and I have seen very few, and there are a lot of people inciting violence right now.

Yep. Some of which could be that speech that you were talking about yesterday. Could be – that could directly be under that violence policy. I'm just saying that, you know, one of the priests for the church got – anyways.

Yeah, I know. I know. Okay, all right. Anyways. We might have a new – eggs are good, eggs are bad here, Jason Brewing. Yes, we do. The new coronavirus is losing potency, a top Italian doctor says. Now, I'd take anything like that with a grain of salt or half an egg, as it were.

Yeah. But this was reported by Reuters itself, so that's giving it a little stamp of authenticity. In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy, said Alberto Zangrillo, the head of the San Rafael Hospital in Milan in the northernmost region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy's coronavirus contagion.

He's been doing swabs, and he says the swabs that were performed over the last 10 days showed a viral load in quantitative terms that were absolutely infinitesimal compared to the ones carried out a month or two ago, he told RIA Television. A second doctor in northern Italy also confirmed this to the ANSA news agency, saying that the strength of the virus – that the strength that the virus had two months ago is not the same strength as today, so this was a bit of potential good news that the virus is mutating and becoming less effective.

However – Yeah, Brian, hold my egg. The World Health Organization says, no, there is no data to show the new coronavirus is changing significantly, either in its form of transmission or in the severity of the disease it causes. So, we have doctors coming on saying, yeah, with the data from more than 35,000 whole virus genomes, there is currently no evidence that there is any significant difference relating to severity.

So, coronavirus good, coronavirus bad. You be the judge. Well, I think we could just say it's bad, but – Well, yes. So, I'm going to go – for now, I'm going to go with the WHO. Yeah, well, you know, except we defunded them.

Interesting. Oh, but we're not going to talk about that sort of thing. No, no, no, no. Brian, move on. I'll move on here. Okay, Microsoft has laid off journalists and replaced them with, wait for it, AI. Well, I suppose it's better than shooting them, which – oh, no, we're not going to talk about that. Okay, many of the affected workers are part of Microsoft's sane division.

That would be search, ads, news, and edge. So, they were human editors that were picking the stories for MSN.com. Does anybody really read MSN.com? Nope. Okay. Nope. Nope. All right. So, but there were about 50 people there that were doing it.

27 are being let go in the UK. And, yeah, they're just going – they're going whole hog on the AI. I don't know why. It's not like they can't afford 50 people to actually pick the news stories. Yeah, but, again, how many people are going to MSN for their news?

So, if you're not getting the hits and the ads to support or, you know, or you just throw your hands up in the air going, nobody's reading us anyways, why are we doing this? Might as well just scrape the Huff phone and put that up on our pages. Yeah. I don't know.

So, you don't want to see that happening, especially right now when we need as many journalists as we can get. But I don't really know what MSN journalists were actually doing. Yeah. These weren't journalists, really, I think. These were people that were picking stories. It's basically, you know, curators. Yep. What we do.

Basically, they fired us to make, you know, to make MSN. So, there you go. Can't fire us. We can only fire ourselves. So, Uber's made the news, of course. The Uber's getting rid of tens of thousands of bikes and scooters, sparking a backlash.

Video and photos are surfacing. Thousands of Uber's jump bikes and scooters, stripped of parts, and crammed into trucks to be scrapped. Because, obviously, the business model is kind of failing, especially in these times. They sold some of their bike and scooter business. Well, they sold the whole business to Lime earlier this month.

But, thousands of vehicles didn't transition to Lime, which acquired only bicycles that hadn't been made available for consumer use in cities. They said, don't give us your coronavirus-infested bikes. We only want the new ones. So, roughly 20,000 to 30,000 vehicles have now disappeared from streets nationwide in recent weeks, according to estimates from four former Jump employees.

And, Uber's confirmed that tens of thousands of its bikes and scooters are being recycled, which, of course, has got activists saying, couldn't we have donated them? Me too. I was pissed off. Just trashing them? Yeah. Yeah. I was watching the – I saw some, you know, the photos of them and putting them into the, you know, the big munching machines.

And, I'm like, what a waste. Why don't you donate these to people? Like, you know, they're bikes. They're bikes. They work. Yes. You know, buy some Lysol and hand them on. Yeah. And, bikes – bike popularity has shot up since the pandemic started. It's a great way to get exercise and get around to local places to take care of what you need.

And spread the roadmap. So much so that, you know, I've seen people on Twitter posting that, you know, they cannot get a bike. They cannot get a bike or the bike that they want or their bike shop is sold out or the bike shop is back ordered and all that sort of thing. And, here are a bunch of bikes that we could have just figured out some way to donate to those in need and those that wanted one.

And, instead, we're just destroying them because capitalism. Yeah. Or, just sell them at cost, you know? Yep. It's ridiculous. It didn't make any sense. It pisses me off. It makes no sense. Nope. Something that pisses me off also is Instacart's tip-baiting system is short-changing shoppers, senators say.

So, yeah, we got things going on right now. But, let's talk about how a private company does tipping. I mean, the process here pisses me off because what we talked about before is people are baiting shoppers for Instacart with big tips to get their stuff.

And, then, Instacart is letting them turn that tip to zero after the delivery is made. We've solved this problem for them. You don't allow a change in tip after you've set the tip amount unless you have to go through customer service to do it and you have to explain why with photos. Exactly.

It's like, okay, was your stuff broken? You know, I mean, yeah, exactly. So, it's ridiculous that Congress is dealing with this right now. It's like, Instacart can fix this on their own and they should and it's just the right thing to do.

It is. There's a big lack of doing the right thing right now, but Instacart should step up and take care of this. It's bullshit. Yep. Easily solvable. And, I just like this story. I don't know if they're doing it here. I know there are Aldi's here right now, quite a few of them around. In fact, there's actually one down by my mom, so maybe I'll swing by and check it out this coming weekend.

If it hasn't been looted. If it hasn't been looted. Oh, boy. But, this is a cool new way to deal with the current situation with coronavirus and trying to enforce social distancing and all of that sort of stuff. And, maybe an idea of our not-too-distant future.

They've put in, basically, automated traffic light systems at store entrances to control the number of customers going in and out. It's smart. It's simple. We all understand this technology. Green means go. Red means stop. Put up the lights. So, the lights will signal when customers can enter stores based on individual store customer limits that are in line with the two-meter social distancing rules.

UK, obviously. And, we'll run alongside the other measures already in place at all Aldi stores to ensure social distancing, including protective screens at checkouts, distancing markers on shop floors, sanitation stations for customers, as well as signage to offer clear guidance on how to shop safely.

So, very cool. Good idea. I have to say, I went to my first Trader Joe's, my first store, in almost just about three months over the weekend. And, it was a total shit show. It was? Yes. I mean, they were managing the number of people going inside, but this was not my normal Trader Joe's that I would go to as the newest one, which is actually quite large.

It has long, big aisles. This is an older Trader Joe's, and if you know, most Trader Joe's have about exactly three feet in between the aisles. They are crammed together. And, some people were doing their best. There was a lot of, you know, most people were wearing masks, certainly all the employees.

Most people were doing their best. There was a lot of me, like, kind of nodding, going, okay, you go to the cheese first, and then I'll go get the cheese that I want. But, a lot of people weren't. They were just grabbing whatever they wanted and not paying attention to any kind of distancing whatsoever. So, we'll see. Yeah.

Yeah, that's the way it kind of worked here, too. Yep. A lot of the stores that I go to around here have one-way aisles now. They've put those in. So, you can only go, like, at Ralph's, you can only go one way. So, if you missed something and have to go back, you've got to make a loop and go back around, which is a good way to do it.

So, in addition to traffic lights, we need one-way street signs. Yeah. I mean, a lot of stores have done that. So, I'm surprised they haven't rolled that out because I was reading up on one of the companies that does this people counting thing. And, you know, before it was used for, of course, marketing to find out how long the lines are at your, you know, all that stuff.

You determine how much staff you have to do at certain – you figure out when your peak hours are, all that sort of stuff. Right. And those companies, like, their business has gone up, you know, thousands of percents. And they're just like, hey, we're rocking, guys. Come on over. We have pivoted. And so, it's interesting to see how the tech is going to keep rolling out with this.

And who knows if after all of this crap happens and the Rona is actually losing potency. And who knows? Maybe we don't need them. And they can go back to watching kiosks and hot dog stands. Now, I saw this one.

This is my last link for the news for the day. Google searches for insomnia and can't sleep hit all-time highs during the lockdown. And this is in April, according to Google Trends. And I don't know about you, Brian. I was the complete opposite of this. I didn't want to get out of bed.

Yeah. I couldn't stay awake. I have not had a problem sleeping. And I don't know if that is a certain amount of alcohol that puts me to blackout points when I go to bed. Oh, that's right. We pass out at night. It's not sleep. It's a chemically induced coma.

Damn. In all seriousness, though, I have not had a problem sleeping. I do have – I don't want to get out of bed. And I'm happy to climb into my bed as soon as possible. I would like to go to bed at 8 p.m. at this point if I could. But, you know, I have stuff to do and things of that nature.

And got to watch some dumb shows so I can talk about stuff in media candy. But, yeah, I would like to just basically sleep. If I could hibernate for the next, oh, I don't know, 12 years, I would. Exactly. Wait till your kids wake up. Your kids are getting out of high school and you can say – Doesn't have a job.

Get out of the house. There's no government to pursue. Well, all I'm saying is I just didn't have this problem. And I was – that's why I wanted to ask you because you didn't seem to have it either. And I don't know anybody that had insomnia during this whole thing.

Oh, Dave did. Yes, yes. He's talked about it quite a bit. So, yeah, he's one of those people. And I do – I know a couple people that are definitely having issues with it. There's a lot of people that have moved on from – what's that supplement that you and I both take for sleep, which is highly effective, actually?

Magnesium. Magnesium, yes. Magnesium at night. Yeah, I usually take magnesium at night. I know quite a few people that have moved on to prescription strength stuff to get to bed. Yeah. What's really sucky is I've only got – I've got half a night left and my magnesium was supposed to arrive yesterday.

But thanks to, you know, everything else, my delivery has been delayed. So maybe I'll find out if this is a thing tonight because I'm out of my juice. Sorry to hear it, man. I'll drop a few in a white envelope and mail it to you. We'll see if the post office is still searching for drugs.

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Media Candy. Brian, I finished the series Into the Night that you told us about here on the show. And it is definitely the Langoliers and Lost. And I found even an article over at Flix.com.au that says basically the same thing.

But having said that, it's not bad. It was not bad. It was not great. Well, I didn't say it was great. Yeah, exactly. It was fairly enjoyable. It had a nice, satisfying ending. And I don't think they need to do another one.

But if they made another one, I'd watch it. Yeah. I'd watch it if they do it. Yep. You know, it can't cost that much to make because there were like four sets in the whole thing. But no, I actually enjoyed it. So that's one of my recommended ones. And it's funny because we're talking about, you know, the end of the world here.

And we're like, generally, don't gravitate towards end of the world scenarios when the end of the world is actually happening outside. But this one was actually okay. I didn't mind it. Yeah, it was fine. I really enjoyed watching it. So I'm glad you enjoyed it as well. Yes. And we also talked about Fraggle Rock recently.

And Apple TV Plus has acquired all of the past seasons of Fraggle Rock as well before the reboot. So you can get caught up. Yeah. I watched one. Does not have legs. Does not have legs. Damn. Okay. Good. I'll have to watch it then.

I mean, I'll watch the new one because obviously they'll be more modern and, you know, relate to modern sensibilities. And all that. But I threw on one of the old ones for the kid to see if he would dig it at all. Not into it. Not at all. And the first episode, even I was like, I'm sure I like this as a kid.

But. See, this is the lesson that Brian or David. I'll get the guy's name right here. Eventually, Mike and I learned on Does It Have Legs is there are some things that you don't want to revisit because you don't want your memories of those times ruined because you were a different person back then.

Well, yeah. I was a kid. Yeah. Well, yeah, exactly. With Fraggle Rock, the same thing. But like Airplane. Airplane. Loved that movie. It was one of the greatest movies of all time until we watched it again. And then it's like, whoa. The thing with a lot of these old shows, and I found this to be mostly the same with Fraggle Rock as well, is the pacing is so slow.

We have moved ahead in terms of pacing of shows so much that watching anything like pre-1980s can just be brutal. Thanks. Thank you, Michael Bay. Appreciate it. Yeah. And Killing Eve wrapped up season three this weekend. I have to say best season yet.

And the way they there's always a crazy cliffhanger at the end of the seasons. And this one was the most satisfying of all of them. So highly recommend if you haven't been watching Killing Eve, go back and watch all three seasons because they're fantastic. And they're only eight episodes per season, so you can get through it pretty quick.

But man, is that a good show? Excellent. And speaking of shows that we do like to watch when the shiznit hits the fan, somebody feed Phil, which is guaranteed to bring a smile to your face no matter what's going on. I was going to hold off to watch this quite some time. But Saturday night, as things turned particularly bleak for not the first night, but Saturday night was definitely like a turning point and it was bad.

I was like, finally, I got to turn off news and somebody feed Phil was there. And sadly, they're short seasons anyways. The two previous seasons have been six episodes, I think. For some reason, we even lost one more episode this season. It's only five episodes long. But I watched two of them.

Great, of course. Yeah. Look, I'll take five over zero. Yeah, exactly. So I'm not going to complain. I've loved the show since it started. I loved it since it had a previous title and was on a different network. Which also is on Netflix. Yes, Netflix bought that. Yeah.

And in an effort to try to save it and savor it for longer. One of the recommended shows that popped up after I finished watching an episode was Street Food Asia, which I don't remember if you watched all of this or not before. But yes, it's amazing.

It's amazing. My favorite episode is, unfortunately, the first one in Bangkok with Chef Jay Fai, the woman with the crazy goggles making those omelets. Yeah. I want to go to Bangkok just for her omelets. I mean, they look incredible. But yeah, I really enjoy Street Food Asia.

I haven't seen all of them yet. It's very well done. Very well done. I've watched them all now. They're all fantastic. Okay, good. Yeah. Do they do the same thing like they do in the – because I think I'm halfway through, but they – like, you know, they kind of cover the broad area, but they also – like, you know, specifically dive into one chef.

Yes, and one of the ones I can recommend the most is the Osaka Japan one because the chef that they follow on there, I mean, that is an inspirational story. What an amazing guy that guy is. Yeah. Yeah, that's one of those ones, too, that – Tear to the eye.

Right at the top. Fantastic show. Definitely if you're looking for something to perk you up. But Brian, what do we have next? I watched two episodes of Space Force. See, when you went to Somebody Feed Phil on Saturday night, I went to Space Force.

I lasted three minutes. I watched two episodes. I got longer than you. I will say I think that this show is a victim of extreme bad timing. Okay, because, I mean, the reason I turned it off was I'm like, I know what type of show this is going to be, and I know that I have to be in a certain mood to watch this type of show, and I don't want to waste it because I was not in the mood.

To see that type of show right then. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to exercise some restraint right now, and I'll come back to it later. Because I know people that do like it. I know people that like it as well. I'm going to tell you I'm not sure when that time is going to be for you. Because, like I said, I really do think this is a victim of extreme bad timing.

If this would have come out a year ago, you know, maybe it would have sat better. I'm not so sure either. I don't know how overly critical I'm being. A lot of the jokes felt really flat to me. The structure and the plot is kind of what you'd expect, boilerplate.

There's nothing terribly innovative there. And the lighthearted jabs at the unnamed president who communicates through tweets and nonsensical stuff don't... Yeah, bad timing. Bad timing. Because it feels almost like...

It's just bad timing all around. It feels like it's normalizing it when we definitely don't need that right now. Yeah, yeah. Things got a little warmer, let's say, in the climate since that started. Yes. So I found myself not enjoying it, and I'm not going to go back anytime soon.

Yeah, I'm going to let it sit. I'll let it sit for a bit and then come back to it when things have cooled off, shall we say. Maybe November 8th, I'll go back. Either I'll go back on November 8th, or I will never watch TV again. That's kind of how it's going to go.

All right. And we talked a little bit about how HBO Max rolled out, and it turns out you might already have an HBO Max subscription, as in everything in these days. This is insanely complicated. Oh, my God. So rather than run through the various steps and possibilities and the jigsaw puzzle and tic-tac-toe game of who has what deal with who, we'll just have the link in the show notes.

But if you have AT&T of any kind and Stripe, there are about 7,000 different possible combinations, ditto with most major TV providers, Spectrum, Charter, Cox, Verizon, et cetera. But it is a real whack-a-mole of a process to see what you get.

And if you just get a one-month trial or if you get a full year or whatever, link in the show notes if you're thinking about purchasing HBO Max. Get your lawyer out to go through this document and figure out if you should be getting it for free or not first. Or have your children do it because this is very complicated.

Yeah. I think you have to use that new math. Yeah, new math. But I also found out now I know why Roku doesn't have an HBO Max channel because they still haven't inked a deal. Same with Amazon. With this. Yeah, same with Amazon. And that's annoying. It's annoying as fuck because I just really want the Roku channel because I can only watch it on my iPad or my computer.

And I don't have one of those funky sticks or an Apple TV in my living room. So, boo. There you go. And as I mentioned previously, my kid is incredibly into space and the solar system and the planets and all of that right now. And as I was Googling around for things that I could show him or, you know, educational tools or YouTube videos and all of that stuff, I came across this.

It's an incredible animation by a planetary scientist. His name is James O'Donohue. And it shows how fast each planet spins by putting them into one giant globe. Very, very cool. You can see, like, you know, Jupiter going around 2.4 times faster than Earth.

Venus spins so slowly you can't even really tell it's moving. And it moves backwards. This is all stuff you probably learned in school but forgot about and seeing it in the – this is just a great visualization. And he's done a ton of great solar system and scientific visualization. So, I highly recommend checking it out and finding the rest of the ones that he's done.

They're very cool. Cool. I'll check them out. Sounds fun. Moron of the week. This moron is not Kanye, but Kanye adjacent, I guess. Kanye adjacent? Yes. Kylie Jenner, who was basically lauded as one of the youngest self-made billionaire back in 2019 by Forbes, has put an asterisk, much like the Houston Astros, next to her name and saying, No, no, we don't think so.

It appears that her and her family were inflating the size and success of her cosmetic business, saying, you know, they had claimed over $307 million in sales and things of that nature. But Forbes has looked into the documents and says, more like $125 million, which, again, is nothing to sneeze at, but basically saying, nope, she is not a billionaire.

Yeah. Well, they also are the idiots that said she was self-made. Yes. Also not self-made. Just because you're born on third base does not mean you hit a triple. Oh, God. That's right. Yeah. And I've got one here. The Dallas police asked public for videos of protesters, and it didn't go well.

Well, I would say, what would you expect would happen? But they also did the same thing here in Santa Monica, and apparently it was very helpful. So. Okay. Yes. Well, the Dallas police department on Sunday asked the public to submit videos of illegal activity from the protests through their smartphone app.

It didn't go well, as the app was reportedly inundated with unrelated content, such as K-pop videos, and within less than a day, the app had stopped working due to technical difficulties. How many people do you think Rick rolled or sent in the black porn star? Quite a few. Quite a few, I'm guessing.

So they pulled it. And I was expecting them to post illegal, you know, activity of the cops banging up the protesters, but they just went with K-pop, which I thought was great. But yeah, I mean, this is what happens when you ask the public, when the police ask the public for help while people are protesting the police.

The police. Yeah. Yeah. Feedback loop. Over at Patreon, we've got Russell, Mish, and Seductiveverse, who says, I've enjoyed your show for free for far too long. Take my money and pimp my website, herspilleddesires.com, where I post erotic poems and short stories.

Well, thank you, Seductiveverse. And Joe writes in, I love Wallace and Gromit. You might want to check out a series on CBS All Access called Evil. It was pretty good. Well, thank you guys for your donations. Thank you. And over at PayPal, we have Doug, Peter, Thomas, Stephen, Michael, Simon, John, and Judge.

No ladies this time. Interesting. Well, we'll see. Sausage party. Hey, man, they got money. We'll take it. Over at Twitter, Alexander writes in, too politically enthusiastic to have my support. Sorry. I'll keep listening for the science-able topics, though.

Well. I hate to break it to you, Alexander, but just by listening to us, you are supporting us. So thank you. Yes. Appreciate it. And Happy Hama writes us, professional non-scammers will be calling you shortly. And this is a link over at the Standard UK. Jenny Harries says it will be obvious test and trace callers aren't scammers because they'll sound professional.

Professional. I read this. I was just like, oh, my God. Yes. This is England's deputy chief medical officer who raised eyebrows while attempting to promote the government's new test and trace program. Yes. She basically said, I think it will be very obvious in the conversation you have with them that they're genuine in this regard.

Obviously, she has never had a scam phone call before. So there you go. Yeah. And Jackal writes in, guys, if you haven't started watching it, I highly recommend on Amazon Prime Vast of Night. It's very much a Twilight Zone type movie.

Watch it nonstop. It is wonderfully done. I'll check that out. All right. And another recommendation from Stephen. Here's a Netflix pick, Border Town, three seasons. It's finished with English audio. Well written, acted and produced. What I love about it is that most storylines are done in two episodes. So well executed, not a rush to the finish like some dramas.

Sidebar here. And this is a bit of a tangent. And I ran into this problem with, I noticed it specifically with Into the Night because that was also had English overdubbing. I always, I tend to, because of my kid and we don't want things loud, super loud at night.

I tend to turn on closed captioning a lot now because, you know, just have a little bit of sound, but you're not able to pick out all the dialogue all the time because the volume levels are low. So you can keep it so you can read it while you're watching. Unbelievable how different the closed captioning is to the overdubs.

They should be working off the same script, but they're not. You watched Into the Night with dubbing? You didn't watch it in French? No, it just came dubbed from whatever I picked. Oh, I watched it in French. Oh, interesting. Yeah, it was great. I mean, I didn't have a problem with it either, but the closed captioning and the overdubbed dialogues do not match up at all.

And I've noticed that on a couple of shows now. Oh, yeah, it never does. It never does. Two different departments and all that. No, I'll check out Border Town, but I will watch it in its original finish. I mean, that's the way to do it. I mean, I come from a long, long history of watching Kung Fu movies from China that never were dubbed.

So always watching with subtitles. I just prefer it. It's the way to do it. But yeah, man, I can't believe you watched Into the Night in English. Well, it's got to be so weird. I just pressed plays, man. And that's what came up. There's another show. I think it's called Dark.

It's a German show. Yeah, I think it's Dark on Netflix that everybody's been raving about. And I tried to watch that with English dubbing. And it was just terrible because I had like a migraine that day and I couldn't read the subtitles. I want to go back and watch it again because everybody's raved about it.

But that's another one that I think we should both check out because it looked pretty good. It looked really good. Yep. And X writes in, honestly, this and Reply All, a show called shit we already know, are the only two shows I'm able to pay attention to and listen all the way through.

Once things settle down, I hope I can jump on the Patreon bandwagon. Well, at least you have 50% good taste, my man. I fucking hate Reply All. And Tyler writes in, I don't care what the critics say. I'm enjoying Space Force. Clever, funny, the right show in a lockdown. Plenty of references to our absurd reality.

Hey, they each his own. That's what I mean. I'd say some people are in the mood. I'm saving it for later. Yep. Yep. And Slander writes in, hello, grumps. This is Slander from the Clash Royale clan. I thought about writing this in some kind of fantasy genre like old timey English, but I'll spare you the nonsense.

Well, thank you very much. Mark Rober is a mechanical engineer who worked at NASA's JPL and worked for Apple's Secret Projects Group. Now he makes YouTube videos. Talk about how the mighty have fallen. Jesus. He decided he wanted a better squirrel-proof bird feeder than what was on the market, so he created a Squirrel Ninja Warrior obstacle course.

This will probably fill you with some much-needed joy. Stay safe and grump on. I will say this was doing the rounds a couple weeks ago, at least on my social media, and I went to go try to watch it. It is 21 minutes long. Ain't nobody got that kind of time. Oh, dude. It's worth it.

It is so worth the 21 minutes. Trust me. Just go back and watch it, man. If anybody has a five-minute MasterCut mashup, I will watch that. No, you got to watch the whole 21 minutes because you get to meet the squirrels. He does profiles on the squirrels. Oh, dude. Okay.

Well, trust me, man. Like, right before you go to bed and you've had some wine, watch it because it's funny. It is really funny. All right. I mean, it's like watching an episode of Mythbusters. Honestly, this guy's really good. And what he does with the course is just phenomenal. Highly recommend it.

All right. Mike writes in, Yeah, I mean, we seem to have sorted out supply lines pretty well.

Now you just got to make sure that there's not a line of National Guard between you and the Trader Joe's so you can get to it. Yeah. I went to my local Ralph's the other day and it was like everything was back to normal. I bought teepee and it was full. It was like the rows were full. You still couldn't buy Lysol. That was...

Oh, and I was going to mention this last time and it really pissed me off. What do you think a can of Lysol costs? Like a spray can of Lysol normally? I don't know. Like $2.99? Is this one of these milk moments where I'm going to be so clueless like George Bush? I can't remember the last time I bought Lysol, so I don't know. Yeah, it was like $2.99 or $3.99.

And now when they come in, $8. Oh. $8 for a can of Lysol. See, that's price gouging. That's total price gouging. It is. It is ridiculous. Wipes were $8 and a can of Lysol was $8 and you could only buy two, but we bought two. It's like, hey man, any port in a storm.

But I was really pissed off at Ralph's for that. That's total profiteering. Although, to be honest, it probably cost them that to get it since that stuff is so hard to get right now. Right. Although, since, you know, hey, maybe it's a nothing burger.

We can go back to normal prices soon. Maybe. Greg writes in, hi, Grumps. There's not a lot of amusement around at the moment, so I hope you'll forgive me for dredging up something ancient on episode 442, which was two weeks ago. Or last week. Last week. You mentioned of the dire possibility of a brown claw wall, and it reminded me of this inspired Amazon review.

I imagine it read in the dim-witted and cheerful voice of the Major from Fawlty Towers. Hoping that's not too obscure. Obscure? Of course not. It's Fawlty Towers. No. For context, in the UK, a garden water storage barrel is called a water butt. Still loving the show? Every episode's a gem.

Stay grumpy. And this is for the HoseLock 3-in-1 Water Butt High Pressure Pump 1.1 Bar Max Pressure with Tap Connector Included. Ryan, would you like to read the review? I didn't even know there was such a thing as a butt pump until I overheard a colleague talking about it in the canteen. I had been having particular problems in this area, and this seemed to baffle medical science.

After unpacking a very simple assembly using HoseLock's patent connectors, I had the pump assembled and ready to go. It worked very well, although I must say it made more of a mess than I expected. In the future, I'll cover the carpets in polyethylene. I have been clean as a whistle following only one use and thoroughly recommend this to anyone.

I think the people using it in their gardens are much braver than me. Next time, I'll try to submit a video review. There you go. Ye oldie butt pump. Yes. And fiend of the show Barrett writes in, saw the handheld bidet sprayers, and I can say there is something far better and with zero mess and better accuracy.

We've got one of these on every toilet in our house. And this is, of course, Amazon, as I will read this. The Luxe Bidet Neo 120 self-cleaning nozzle, freshwater, non-electric, mechanical bidet, toilet attachment, white and white, at least at the beginning. Yes. These things have been out of stock forever.

I've got – what do I have on order? What's the big one that everybody had? Like the super expensive – there's a $700 one that you can get. And I can't remember. Why can't I – Omigo. Omigo. They've got like a $700 one that requires electricity and all that, but they have another cheaper one that's just water-powered only.

I've got one of those on back order to try that. I am very curious to see what happens now that basically the toilet paper supply lines are back in place with the stats on these orders. I don't really see people ordering too many more. These Americans just don't like water shut up their butt. They prefer getting their water from water cannons from jackbooted thugs.

That's true. Sorry. Did it again. I know. Stop it, Brian. Bad Brian. Bad Brian. Yeah. I'm looking forward to it. Everybody I know that has one of the high-end Omigos loves it, but I'm going the low-cost route. I just don't have any way to plug it into my bathroom, believe it or not.

Jonathan writes in, Hey, Brian and Jason, just wanted to say I really enjoy your show. I'm a web designer and really enjoy listening to Geeky Grumps. A few weeks ago, I ordered a couple of your masks. They've finally come in, and I absolutely love them. Keep up the good work. Stay grumpy and deliver. Jonathan sent us a picture, but I've got to dig it up and figure out where we're going to post it.

Speaking of that, somebody I remember wrote on Facebook on one of the pimping ads for the masks that they ordered like three weeks ago and hadn't gotten it yet. I'm also in the same boat. I ordered mine two to three weeks ago, and I still have not received my masks, so I think they're having some shipping issues over there.

Just be patient. Yeah, it's basically production issues because everybody that has a Threadless store basically started selling masks. I've gotten a bunch of pictures from people who have gotten them so far, and I've gotten masks from Threadless from different vets. Vendors, but that was in the beginning, and that took three weeks.

So, yeah, I'm in the same boat, too. I've got an order in, and I'm waiting on it as well. But hopefully they'll get here soon. Trust me. You're going to need them going forward for quite some time, so when they get there, just keep them around. There you go. And Andrew writes in, finally found a use for those bird scooters.

Protesters are using them to cordon off parts of a road in downtown L.A. And there's a link to a Twitter image of that being done. Well done. Yep. And J.I.M. says, TV suggestions. The Get Shorty series is very strong. Also, the Fargo series is amazing.

Absolutely on Fargo. That's fantastic. And it's coming back because they've got another one in the can. I haven't seen Get Shorty. Have you? No, I haven't, but I heard it was very good. Okay, cool. Yeah, I want to check it out. And Nosec sent us a link over from the BBC. These scammers have basically taken every bullshit hype word they managed to come up with and crammed them together.

128 megabyte USB sticks for over 300 euros. Pretty good profit margin. And yes, there are people, of course, the 5G craziness has hit the UK pretty hard. People are pretty freaked out about it, and there's a lot of misinformation, of course, going around about that. So the 339-pound 5G BioShield appears to be no more than a basic USB drive, but in the description, it basically – people are so stupid.

We use this device and find it helpful. And they provide a link to the website, which describes it as a USB key that provides protection for your home and family thanks to the wearable holographic nanolayer catalyzer, which can be worn or placed near to a smartphone or any other electrical, radiation, or EMF-emitting device through a process of quantum oscillation.

The 5G BioShield USB key balances and reharmonizes the distributing frequencies arising from the electric fog induced by devices such as laptops, cordless phones, Wi-Fi, tablets, etc., it adds. And, of course, they've opened this up, and it's just a goddamn USB. So, there you go.

Oh, God. Good money if you can get it, I guess. Yep. And Joe writes in, fuck you, DoorDash, and sends us about three paragraphs worth of why DoorDash sucks. And I'm with you. Trust me. I'm with you. I'm with you. We're all with you. We get it. Yep. And over at iTunes, we have a five-star rating from Mikey McDangerFace.

Long live Chillmeister. For the longest time, I thought his name was Brian Chillmeister. That's my DJ name, man. So, awesome. My mind will never stop hearing it that way. I started listening a few years ago when Jason low-key plugged it on... Jason doesn't do anything low-key. Plugged it on another podcast.

Been hooked ever since. I'm class of 2000, too young for Web 1.0, too old for Web 2.0, and I'm super grumpy about that. I miss the boat on both. This podcast keeps me chuckling about that fact. Listening from an undisclosed location in the outer rim of Silicon Valley. Thank you, and long live Chillmeister.

The Chillmeister. And CharlieX5 from the U.S. writes in with a five-star. Oh, I guess it isn't CharlieX5. It's just Charlie. The five is the five-star. Tech never felt so grumpy? I look forward to every episode.

Jason, ever tried a Florida woman? Define tried. Define tried. Exactly. I used to live in Florida, so I have tried and failed many times. I'll just say that. If you want your question or comment right on the show, head over to gog.show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions that we can read on the air.

And if you're so inclined, please head over to gog.show slash iTunes and toss us a five-star and snarky review. And if you didn't like my snarky comments politically, I'll just shut up. But also, if you're listening to us on the Overcast player, please click those little stars next to the episode. We actually started to beat Tim Ferriss.

We are up against Rogan now. It is us and Rogan. So hopefully he'll get over to Spotify soon so we can get that spot. We're number one. We're number one. Closing shout outs. A hearty thank you to Thomas Benjamin Wilde Esquire for allowing us to use his song at the beginning of the show.

Links for his work will be in the show notes at gog.show slash 444. Or you can find him at tombwild.com. So thank you very much, Tom, for letting us use that. And I definitely have – I think nobody's got any fucks to give right now.

So I think this is the theme song for the day. I want to give a shout out to the folks that work at my local. Yes, it's change ownership. It's not what it used to be. And hell, I haven't been there for three months because, you know, I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, which is staying at home. They've opened up again a little bit.

They were doing to-go orders, and I think they went along with the policy of allowing people to come in and socially distance and sit. And they were open and, you know, started to shut down when things went crazy in Santa Monica. And they knew that the protesters – well, the civilized protesters had stopped and the looters and criminals were heading their direction.

But it does take time to shut down a location. So they were still there when the protesters showed up. I was speaking to the woman that was actually a working bar at that point in time. And well done. Stayed calm. The looters politely waited for them to leave the building before running in and looting the place.

So stay safe. Oh, yeah. I didn't know that. Damn. Yep. That sucks. Mm-hmm. That sucks. Well, my shout-out is to all the good cops out there right now doing their jobs. I appreciate you, and you're doing what you can in an impossible situation.

So – because there are good cops out there, people. There are a lot of them. So don't let all the bad ones get you down. But, yeah, thanks is all I got to say because this would be a hell of a lot worse without you. So until next time, I'm Jason DeFillipo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister.

Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. To support the show and keep us on the air, go to GOG.show slash donate. Toss us a few bucks and we'll love you forever. Your support really keeps us going and we really appreciate it. Show notes for this episode are GOG.show slash 444. From there, you can find links to old episodes, leave feedback, ask questions, donate to the show, and get links to stuff we like.

Stay grumpy. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value.

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