501: It Forked

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.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. What a week, Brian. What a week. How's it been? Coming down off that 500 high. Woo! You know what I really wanted after that 500 episode? A vacation? Yeah, that would have been nice. I would like to. It is spring break for my kid this week, so it would have been nice to have a little spring break. We'll have to work in some vacation days again soon.

Some downtime. Downtime. Thank you to everybody that wrote us. We got a lot of congratulations. And even better, we had a lot of people return to Patreon and join Patreon, so that was very nice. We appreciate that. Very much so. Very, very much so.

So, I have a bit of follow-up. I talked last week that Krispy Kreme had announced their promotional campaign to say, basically, if you've got vaccinated, you can come in once a day, every day, for the rest of the year, show your vaccine card, and get a delicious glazed donut.

Yes. Then the lawyers got involved. Is there a participation trophy coming? Of course it is. And this is a little bit odd, but under their website, under the page about this promotion, there is a question on behalf of those who choose not to get vaccinated.

In big caps, what if I don't want to be vaccinated? Can I still get this offer? Now, I would love Krispy Kreme forever and order, I would order a dozen donuts a day and just throw them in the trash because I want to stay in shape. If they just would have put in, no, you can go die in a fire.

Or just, no. But that is unfortunately not what they put in. We understand that choosing to receive the COVID-19 vaccine is a highly personal decision. We advise all employees and guests to consult with their healthcare provider regarding whether to obtain a COVID-19 vaccination, which vaccine to receive after reviewing the available information.

If you have made the personal decision to not receive the COVID vaccine, please visit us on Mondays, 329-21 through 524-21 to receive a free original glazed donut and a medium brewed coffee to get your week off to a good start. As the article over at Slate calls it, anti-vax Mondays.

Yeah, that's the one day of the week you don't want to go to Krispy Kreme. To be fair, the Monday promotion is open to anyone, those turning down the vaccine and those desperately waiting to be eligible for their first shot as well. So they're not giving anti-vaxxers anything specific.

But the noteworthy thing here, as they point out, is that Krispy Kreme is directly addressing this group of customers. As a public relations move, it's a bit of a head-scratcher. Doesn't this messaging undercut the whole point of their promotion? Yeah, kind of. Yes, it does. Kind of, yeah.

Not to mention that unlike getting, say, a mole checked or going to the dentist, getting vaccinated isn't just a highly personal decision. It's a public health measure that will protect the more vulnerable and help put an end to the pandemic. So I'm not sure why they decided to do that, but they did.

As you were reading that, I just got an email that my second appointment is ready. So I will be getting number two soon. Woo-hoo! Excellent. Congratulations. Doing the right thing. I'll still not be going to Krispy Kreme on Mondays. Fuck that. No, no. I will go get a free donut at some point, but I'm not actually near any Krispy Kreme, so that's not easy for me.

Anyways, whatever. That's probably a good thing. Edward sent in a Twitter link, a Twitter chain, good use of NFT, and he called it on the cock chain. And this is some user, Holly8CatsBrockwell, who reposted this meme. This is an absolute game changer for both women and NFTs.

And it says, hey, ladies, if a guy sends you an unsolicited dick pic, turn it into an NFT with his name as the artist and share it with him with the link to purchase. He will have to buy it from you if he wants to burn it and get off the blockchain. Works for me. Yeah, well. But the law of unintended consequences, that works in both directions.

Yes, it does. All this stuff does is make me extremely glad that I was already well, well, well into a relationship and on the path to get married by the time all this stuff came around. No doubt. I saw that you put in the John Cleese is going to sell an NFT of the Brooklyn Bridge.

And I've been following this one for quite some time, and I find it very amusing. It is. It is very clever. Yes. So he did a digital iPad drawing, and he called it Brooklyn Bridge. It's a landscape sketch that he drew, and it's now live on the NFT Marketplace OpenSea, where a bit of $50,000 has already been made by an eager collector named Serwin.

You could buy it outright right now for the $69.3 million price. Because, yes, he matched it exactly to the price of Beeple's collection that sold at Christie's. So obviously, this is tongue-in-cheek and very funny. However, the joke seems to be going over most collectors' heads.

Of course they will. I mean, the people that are doing this NFT stuff, they have no idea who John Cleese is or Monty Python. Come on. I know. These are just kids with too much money and too much time. But hey. Would you rather have the entire Monty Python collection on DVD, or would you rather have the entire Beeple collection?

I don't know. Depends on the time frame. Because if I had it right now, I'd be pretty thrilled. Exactly, exactly. Talk to me in a year, and we'll reassess that one. And I saw this when thinking of your article on the last episode about Substack.

Well, they are raising $65 million now because – and that's an evaluation of $650 million for email. For email. For email. At least it's not $65 billion, which is kind of the amount of money that we're used to throwing around for stupid companies.

In the news. So even though we do have this tech podcast thing, I have long ago stopped watching tech people being grilled by Congress because it's boring and they never say anything.

But this one was pretty spectacular. Jack Dorsey spoke last Thursday. He was being grilled by Congress. And he showed up with his crazy beard, and he has a nose ring now, like you do. And he appeared to be in his kitchen, and he had a clock that showed various prices of cryptocurrencies running in the background.

He also randomly had like five cups all filled with spoons. It was strange. Apparently, he's never seen the Matrix. I'm not sure he's actually human. He didn't get the memo that there is no spoon. Yes, there were plenty of spoons for Jack Dorsey.

But so he was there. They were obviously talking to him about the January 6th U.S. Capitol attack, where he did say that actually, yes, Twitter did have something to do with this and some effect on it in terms of amplifying misinformation, et cetera. But from the start, members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee tried to pin him down with yes or no questions.

And of course, he never really offered a yes or no, often trying to explain at length why a particular matter was complicated until, because Twitter is so complicated, until the representatives would cut them off to ask again and again, yes or no. And this just kept on going, notably when Democratic Representative Bobby Rush of Illinois pressured Dorsey to answer whether Twitter had completed a civil rights audit of Twitter, yes or no, please.

Dorsey instead said, we've chosen a different approach. Did not really explain what that might be. And they were getting frustrated. And let me say this, and I think it's irritating all of us, and that is no one seems to know the word yes or the word no, Democratic Representative Anna Eshoo of California said.

Billy Long of Missouri then asked, do you know the difference between these two words, yes and no, to which Dorsey deadpanned, yes, I know the difference. And then, while in the middle of this very important testimony to this very august body that represents our democracy, he loaded up Twitter while he was being questioned and sent out a poll, yes or no.

And then he continued to do this, rather than pay attention to what actually was going on and is rather important. And again, this could be the real problem with Zoom. They should have brought him in and not allowed him his phone or his computer. He basically just started meandering about his own company's website, liking tweets here and there, responding to things, talking about his crypto clock, putting up a picture of the San Francisco intersection, and responding to praise for his ability to tweet while testifying.

I would argue it's easy to tweet while testifying if you're not answering a fucking question or listening. Look, I mean, he's the only one that did say yes, that they had something to do with it. So he at least gets that. Come on. I think it was a total dick move, but I expect nothing else. I love it. I love it.

If these people aren't going to do anything and they just keep calling you to the principal's office, it's like, either give them detention or let them go. Come on, do something. All right. That's all I'm saying. It's just getting to the point of absurdity because it's like they just keep having these hearings and nothing ever changes.

It's like you're just taking up everybody's time. But speaking of crazy billionaires, we've talked at length about Elon Musk and his new Starlink satellites that are basically junking up the sky. I saw this one over at Science Mag and it kind of made me sad.

It said, study finds nowhere on Earth is safe from satellite light pollution. Now, it turns out that you can't really see the satellites up there anymore. They've actually knocked down a lot of the Starlink satellites so they're not as bright.

But it's just the cumulative effect of so much crap up there bouncing back light to the Earth is actually noticeable now. I mean, you can't probably see it with the naked eye, but, you know, your instruments can see it. And if you're trying to look at, I don't know, the universe, there's a lot of crap in the way.

It's like, you know, they put the Vaseline filter on when they had women on on Star Trek. You're looking at the glamour shot of the universe now. Yeah, that's unfortunate. It's not good. And there's so much space junk up there, too. It's like we just got to start. Well, we can't clean up our planet.

We're going to clean up space. Come on. Oh, people are working on it. There's a couple of new satellites that are coming out that are going to try and use magnets to clean up a lot of the junk. So that'll be an interesting process to see if that actually works. You know, a big net.

Just get a big net and say, screw it. I hope they monitor the strength of those magnets. They put this thing up there and all the world's hard drives go out. Oh, that'd be great. The giant degaussing of the planet. The great degaussing.

Boom. Done. So we'll see how that goes. But I thought this was kind of interesting. Citi is creating Zoom-free Fridays to combat pandemic fatigue. I would like to say that maybe getting rid of the 97-hour workweek might combat fatigue as well, Citi.

But, you know, you fight the battles. Just get rid of Friday in general. That would probably be a good thing. Yeah. Yeah, I saw this and a teacher friend of mine posted on Facebook with the comment, oh, for fuck's sake, eight hours a day, Monday through Friday for almost an entire school year.

That's what I've been dealing with. Suck it up, bitches. Exactly. Come on. Yeah. And Moth6502 sent in this link. And they said, this is wild. I bet the crackdown will be brutal. Stanford scientists reverse engineer the Moderna vaccine and post the code on GitHub.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I saw this. So, yeah. So they basically, they found a couple drops that were destined for the garbage can. They took great pains to say, we did not take a vaccine out of anybody's arm. We just took a couple drops that were left in a tube. And they reversed engineered them and posted the mRNA sequence up on GitHub for all to see.

Now, you would think, oh, boy, wow. Well, yeah, you're not recreating this in your garage anytime soon. However, I would argue that it does kind of screw the company a bit because I'm sure China and Russia can do that. Well, yeah, I mean, anybody can do that. It doesn't take much to get that.

Not anybody. But still, China and Russia can do that on their own. They don't have to go to GitHub to get it. You know, I'm sure they've got it already. You're not going to be making one in your garage so you can go get your donut. Exactly. So, you know, I think it's a good thing, but it's, you know, kind of a tempest in a teapot if you think something really like insane is going to happen from this.

What's really interesting is they're considering, you know, turning off the profit motive for these vaccines in the new White House to say, hey, look, this is for the benefit of the world. Just, you know, let's give it away for a while. So. Or, you know, sell at a cost. I want them to get their R&D money back.

No doubt about that. And all their admin costs. I'm fine with that. But let's not make a profit on this one, huh, guys? And I thought this was funny because we've talked about countries trying to ban cryptocurrency. And I always joke that it ain't going to happen. Ain't going to happen. They can make it illegal, but you can't really do much about it.

And Morocco is finding that out right now because cryptocurrency is going up. The use of cryptocurrency is going through the roof over there, basically. It's up four times the – or 4x the last nine months just because people over there are very unbanked. They don't want their neighbors to know how much money they have.

So they won't get, like, savings accounts that have statements mailed to their home, which I thought is pretty crazy. You know, they're using VPNs or using cash to swap Bitcoin so they can still get their business done, you know? All right. Well, you know, if you're not going to trust a banking system, I suppose this makes sense.

But, you know, they don't want their savings account statements mailed to them. Okay. First off, can't you opt out of getting physical mailings? And even then, are your neighbors opening your – do they not have envelope technology? I think they do, but they also have logo technology so they can read the envelopes as they come by.

Okay. So now you know I have an account at Bank of America. That doesn't mean you know how much – I could have 10 cents in there. Yeah, but you don't know what it's like over there. I mean, it could be very, very cutthroat. I don't know. Yeah, very cutthroat. Obviously, it is worrisome enough where people don't want to get bank accounts and it keeps them from, you know, using the system.

So there's something to it, I guess. I see that you have Coinbase on your phone. Hmm. Yes. Yes. I thought this one was just – this is maddening. OpenAI's text-generating system, GPT-3, is now spewing out 4.5 billion words a day.

So is my room full of monkeys. I know. I'm like, okay. And who's reading these? Who's reading these? Well, it is – the idea here is it's still getting – it's training, right? It's training up. The AI is being trained.

Ah, but there are tens of thousands of developers out there that are actually using the system, probably writing, you know, press releases and stuff like that, like we've talked about, you know, for a couple years now. Like the ones coming out of Mar-a-Lago? Yeah. Because those don't fucking make any sense. Well, they're just artificial. There's no I in that.

There's no intelligence. That's true. So, yeah, it's interesting that this much is coming out of it. I'm sure most of it goes in the garbage, but it's still – like that's just a lot of output. It is. I wonder what they're running through it. I mean they must just have it running around the internet, grabbing any audio it can find, right?

Yeah, I don't know because, I mean, the thing is already trained up. So it's not like they're retraining it and retraining it. They're just actually using it now. So it's like, okay, here's some baseball scores. Spit me out an article, you know? Right. Here's some stock prices and this is, you know, the board's name.

Write me an article. Yeah, make me a sandwich, GPT-3. So I just thought it was interesting that there's that much output coming because where the hell do 4.5 billion words a day go? I don't – Twitter. It's all – Where does, you know, an hour and a half of footage every minute uploaded to YouTube get watched?

That's true too. I don't know. Yeah. You know, I guess we're going to find out that GPT-3 powers LO completely. There are no people there. It's just talking to itself all day long. Oh, my God. I haven't even looked at that site in a good four years now. I wonder what's going on. I still get notifications that somebody has friended me at least once a week.

Wow. That's crazy. Yeah. I never got rid of my account. So it's just sitting there collecting followers. It's crazy. I saw this this morning and I just – this is a head scratcher. It's called BitClout. Okay. Now, what it is is it's another, you know, another blockchain where people can trade on personalities on social media.

So I could go in and invest in Brian if I wanted to, if there was an account there. You can go in and claim your account. You have to have the BitClout token, which is BTCLT, which I immediately read as BitClit. And I can't unsee it now.

Thanks for that. Yep. To get the BitClit, you have to put in Bitcoin and you can buy your BitClit, but you can't get your BitClit out. So it's – Poor, poor people. I know. So what it kind of is is it's like, okay, you buy some BitClit, then you buy some Brian.

And if Brian goes up, you still just have a big bucket of BitClit. You can't get it out because there's no trading back and forth yet. So – but here's the interesting thing that I think – well, there's two interesting things. One, BitClout's lead creator goes by the name Diamond Hands.

Okay? Okay. And there's – Hey, look. You know, once we started to establish different names and all that, you run out pretty quickly. Thank God it isn't Diamond Hands 597243. I know. It should be – He got in quick. Yeah, at least it would be Diamond Hands 1337 if you wanted to be cool.

But you'd have to wait for, you know, 1,336 people to get it first. Anyway, so – and then I'm reading along and there's another person on here that goes by the name Lumi. And then I'm just thinking – I'm thinking back to the days of the movie Hackers.

It's like, does anybody have grown-up names anymore? No. No, it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. But Lumi made a very good point is that this will enhance, quote-unquote, cancel culture because what you can do is basically short someone's stock, find an old tweet, put it out there, and have them tank, and then profit.

Yeah. That's assuming anybody ever uses this thing. Which they aren't. Now, to begin with, a couple different things struck my mind. First off, in theory, this actually isn't all that horrible of an idea except for the ability to get to basically short people.

That's horrible. I wonder if there was – I mean, obviously, you could shut that off within your own currency. But you can't stop people from doing it because they'll use different currencies to do it, blah, blah, blah. Financial markets are horrible. That's always going to happen, and that's horrible. So that's a bad thing. The other thought that came to mind is that basically, you know, the whole idea behind this network is that you could mix speculation and content together so you could talk about the way that you're monetizing and what you're paying.

This will not fly in Morocco, apparently. They would not do this. But in general, this is kind of the idea that we always kind of sort of liked, which is like micropayments for what you're doing. I mean, if you're writing really good content, then people are going to give you micropayments of BitClits, and that's great because we've always said that that would be a wonderful thing, a way to monetize your posting out there, letting people make micropayments.

It's just a horrible way to do it. Yeah, there's another site out there that this reminds me of. I can't remember. Oh, God, it's going to drive me crazy. Every month, I get an email from them saying that, oh, my account's about to expire. I need to come in and check in to make sure that I get to keep my account.

And what it is, it is the same thing. It's basically a stock market for people. Right. Do you remember? I mean, it's kind of – remember Hollywood Online? Yeah, it rings a bell. It rings a bell, yes. Yeah, of course you remember Hollywood Online. That was a stock market for what you worked at. So it's basically Hollywood Online for people.

And so this is kind of the same thing, but using actual money. Yes, yes. Yeah. Well, actual money. That's true. The other thing that really came to mind because they were talking about – in this article, they talked about a number of other fucking coins as well.

At this point, how many cryptocurrencies are there? Oh, lots and lots and lots. I feel like there are more cryptocurrencies than actual people. Mm-hmm. Yeah. About – and yeah. I mean, God, remember the big ICO days like a couple years ago where everybody – I mean, God, Burger King had a coin.

The VAPA. The VAPA coin. Only in Russia. And yeah, there's tons and tons of coins. Just go log into Coinbase and you can scroll for quite some time to find out. I found it. Ha-ha. I knew I would find it. It used to be called Empire Avenue.

Now it's empire.cred with a K, K-R-E-D. Ah, very cool. Yes. So if you go to empire.cred, let's see here. I have been on this site since it launched. Do you have any cred? I surprisingly do because the funny thing about it is I never got rid of my account.

So I go in every month and I keep just doing the basics. I've got stockholders and I – look, yeah, well done. I've got the outstanding 32 badge. I have sold 25 million shares. I have to increase my portfolio.

But my portfolio is 106 million – I think they're called Eves. Yes, Eves. My portfolio wealth is like two – is that trillion? No, two billion Eves. Well, shit, why are you even doing this podcast? Retire. I know.

Except Eves are just about as useless as the bit clit. So can't get about – so yeah, it's kind of the same thing. I just – I couldn't – it was driving me crazy. Yeah, Empire Avenue was what it used to be called. Now it's empire.cred. And they do have – what was the – you should know this.

You were big into the social marketing. What was the system that gave you basically social points for – you plug in all of your different social media and then you got like a score, your influencer score? There were like 10 of them. I can't even remember. Yeah, but there was one big one. Yeah, there was one big one.

I couldn't tell you right now. Yeah, I always go back and I think of Woofie, but it's not that. I think Cory Doctorow missed the boat on that one. Could have – oh, yeah, Woofie coin. He can resurrect it. I can give you Woofie coin. God.

And finally in the news, Virgin Galactic has unveiled Spaceship 3. Paging Mr. Branson, what happened to Spaceship 2? We don't talk about 2 here. Oh, Spaceship 2. They tell all the new hires, never mention 2.

Why? What happened? We don't talk about that. We don't talk about that anymore. I will say it's shiny. It looks pretty. It does? Yeah, yeah. Spaceship 2 is not going to be flying again, I guess, until May because something went wrong last time. And apparently this comes back.

I think the satellite degaussed it because there was a radiation spike and the computer shut down on the last flight. So that shielding is important when you're going to space. Oh, wait. They don't go to space. This is like – this is just the tip. It's just the tip.

They're not going all the way into space.

Media Candy. Brian, I watched a movie this week. Eddie Izzard was in it, who we both like. Yes. Dame Judi Dench is in it too. So based on those two names, I went out and bought a ticket and rented it for $7 on Apple TV.

It's six minutes to midnight. Name of the movie. It had Nazis in it. So I'm like, ooh, Nazis and Eddie Izzard and Judi Dench, I'm in. And now I just want my $7 back. Oh, my God. It was terrible. This is what comes out of a pandemic when you're trying to make a movie.

Ooh, it was bad. It was bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Skip it. Okay, will do. I'm just telling you, it's bad. You know, Eddie Izzard has been in some real stingers. He's a fantastic comedian, but he doesn't always pick the right roles. Ooh, and he's looking almost post-human now. I mean, I don't know what's going on with that face of his.

He's looking rough. Really rough. Yeah, he's made some interesting choices with his life, but God bless him. He seems happy. Yeah, he did another pandemic 30 marathons in 30 days. I know. He's really destroying himself with that sort of stuff.

Yeah, I think that's where it comes. He needs a sandwich. Somebody, let's have a Kickstarter to get Eddie a sandwich. Definitely. Adam writes in and says, thanks for suggesting Kim's Convenience and Ted Lasso. Can I return the favor with Bluey? Not what you think. It's a kid's show. And Lodge 49 on Hulu.

Tried Bluey. Kid hasn't taken to it yet, but it does seem clever and good for a kid's show. And not heard of Lodge 49, so. I've heard of Lodge 49. It ran two seasons, but was canceled. So I'm not going to watch that. Thanks, though. And Vincent wrote in with a link from Sky.

COVID-19, 5,000 music fans attend a Barcelona gig after passing same-day coronavirus screening. And he said, the tests are included in the concert ticket price. I wonder how it would work for concertgoers coming from a neighboring country. I don't think anybody's allowed to move countries right now.

Most people have still got their borders shut down. So I don't know how that's going to work out. We'll see what happens with this. You know, the concert just happened on Saturday, I think. So let's give it two weeks. Yeah, let's find out. I know they're going to track everybody. And I'm very curious to see what happens with this.

So we'll see. Yeah, I'm sure you are. That's your wheelhouse right there. However, and here's the difference between this occurring in Barcelona and this occurring in the United States. I read this one line here in the article, in surreal scenes after a year of social distancing, people dance close to one another, but the sea of faces covered in masks showed that things were not quite back to normal.

Let me tell you one fucking thing. We throw a Lollapalooza or Coachella around here, even if we test everybody going in, there ain't going to be any fucking mask song because America. America. That's right. That's how that works over there. Yeah. A friend of the show, Chris Lockhead, sent this one in yesterday as concerts prepare to return from pandemic lockdown.

Roadies may have moved on. Now, Brian, you're in the music business. Would you like to take this one? Because I think you have things to say about it. Yeah. I mean, they do talk about this, that, you know, basically there's been no shows for the last year plus. And there are a lot of people that make a show.

There's a lot of roadies. There's lighting gigs. There's people setting up the stage. There's people that deal with the instruments. There's a whole army behind every band that you've ever seen. And that's just bands. You know, we can talk about theater and we can talk about all that sort of stuff as well. So, yeah, a lot of these people, I know quite a few roadies.

I know quite a few management organizations. I know quite a few bands. The better organizations, shall I say, have done something for their crew. They've tried to help keep them afloat. They've done things, you know, they've paid out of their own pocket.

They've put out, you know, limited releases on Bandcamp or they've done special shirts so fans could buy stuff and all that money went to their crew. Those are the good bands. A lot of people haven't done shit. And if you haven't done shit, I know quite a few roadies that have moved on and gotten real jobs and then went and discovered that, oh, wow.

Hold on a second. When I have a real job, I get health insurance. Yeah. You don't get that as a roadie. I get a retirement account. You don't get that as a roadie. And what I think this is going to really do is it's going to change the industry to some degree because there's always going to be some willing kid that used to work at Taco Bell that's going to push around a crate and sleep on a bus and eat nothing but pizza for six months for you.

But I think that needs to change things. I think we need to realize that roadies need to be able to make a living and have these kind of perks that everybody else – well, not everybody else because you probably didn't get it at Taco Bell either. But, you know, health insurance is something that should probably be provided to these sorts of people and all that.

So we'll see. Some organizations are going to be fine because they've done their best and I think they know it. And other organizations are going to have a really hard time getting people to come back. I agree with that. Yeah, and, you know, there's two skill sets or levels of skill, probably like 10 levels of skill when it comes to roadies.

There's – you know, you've got your guitar tuners, but you've also got the people who put up the giant, you know, multi-ton riggings that actually all the lights go on and putting up the lights. And that is a skilled labor position right there. That is not just get some kid who just made a chalupa and shove them up a, you know – Oh, yeah.

Running the lighting show and manning the sound desk and making sure all the mics are working. And the sound is great in the venue. And there's incredibly skilled labor out there. So we shall see. I found a couple things to read because that just made me think about music and then I was bouncing around a bit.

And there's a really great article over at loudersound.com if you're not aware of Suzy and the Banshees, a great band. And if you are aware of them and aren't really aware of their story, this is a really good article about them. It's called Suzy and the Banshees, the story of the band who saved punk from parody and invented goth.

Good read. Oh, check it out. I really enjoyed it. And then I listened to a one-off podcast by an artist that calls herself Pen Friend over in the UK. So she started a podcast in the interim and has been interviewing other mostly English musicians.

And I'm a huge fan of the band The Wonder Stuff. And I love Miles Hunt, the lead singer. So she did an interview with him where they talked about different things like how COVID-19 dashed his hopes of leaving the music business and becoming a truck driver. And why he wanted to quit and do that in the first place. Should we just turn the internet off?

Why do you hate the D chord? Has digital music ruined the chance for an album to change your life? It's actually a really well-thought-out and interesting interview. So I'm going to go back and she's interviewed a few other people that I'm aware of. So I'm going to go listen to those podcasts as well because she did pretty good. I really enjoyed listening to it.

Awesome. Sounds great. This next one is just that I had to put it here because we didn't have anything else under apps and doodads. So this is going here. Spotify is launching its own clubhouse competitor because, of course, they are. Why not? Of course, they are. They just bought a company that had a product called Locker Room.

And they're going to rebrand it, obviously, because, you know, I think Donald Trump pretty much ruined anything that had to deal with Locker Room talk. So look it up if you don't know what I'm talking about. Well, thank God that name is available now because he can use that for his social network.

That's right. That's right. So, yeah, I mean, I haven't heard much about Clubhouse recently. It seemed very much of a flash in the pan unless you're an influencer. But, I mean, where do you see Clubhouse mentioned any more in the news?

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At the library. I read a book called The Alchemist by Paolo Colo. This is what I read. I listened to it on Audible, and it was read by Jeremy Irons, so it was amazing to listen to. Interesting book.

It has like 50,000 five-star reviews on Amazon. Nice, fun, short little story. I can't really talk too much about it because it will ruin it, but have you read it? No, it's been recommended to me a number of times, though. It's worth reading. It's really, it's actually a really good book.

I enjoyed it. Very cool. I read a book. It's called The Immortality Code, and it's by Douglas E. Richards, and I have read a number of Douglas E. Richards' books. He is a, what I call the quintessential shitter sci-fi author. He writes really, yeah, he writes really fun, not terribly deep sci-fi books.

A lot of them are very near future. I have enjoyed all of them. This might be the worst fucking book I've ever read in my entire life. Oh, really? It was so bad, I didn't stop reading it because it was like a train wreck. I was like, what the fuck is he going to do next?

Because this is so horrible. And it did not disappoint at the end. Still horrible? I'm not just going to ruin it. Oh, God, yeah. This is, I don't know what happened. Like, quality control in this guy's life must have gone out the window. Maybe he has a new editor.

I don't know what the deal is. This was complete, unmitigated shit. I know why. It was written by GPT-3. Maybe. That's where all those words are going. That's where all those words are going. I don't know what happened. I really don't. Because like I said, like, not groundbreaking.

Not going to be my top 10 books ever, ever, of anything he's ever written. But I've really enjoyed a lot of his series that he's done so far. And this is just so bad. Anyways, and a little bit of follow-up. I kind of enjoyed this.

This is what the internet is good for sometimes. Last week, I had reviewed Jeffrey Lee Campbell's Do Stand So Close To Me book, the article about being the side guy for staying on one of his tours. And apparently he listened and he got to us on Twitter and he said, these guys took the gloves off discussing my book. I laughed out loud a couple of times.

Thanks, grumpy old geeks. Nice. And he's sending us some autographed copies. No way. Awesome. I want one. Please. I said, he's sending two, Jason. Okay. Just making sure. I get left out sometimes. You have to actually read the fucking book then.

Oh, God. Homework. Shit. We're on of the week. Barrett sent in a link and he said, yet another government official apparently doesn't know how technology works. Can someone please show him how easily shit like this is defeated? And this is over from the HuffPo.

Oh, they're still around? Yeah, they are. Utah GOP Governor Spencer Cox. Could ask for a better name. Signs controversial porn filter measure. They're still doing that thing? Yeah, they're still trying. So they've signed this now. Critics are calling it a significant intrusion to free speech.

He said that the measure would send an important message about preventing children from accessing explicit online content. The proposal is the latest move in Utah's legislative campaign to curve the ability of porn. The measure does not go into effect unless five other states enact similar laws.

A provision that was added to address concerns that it would be difficult to implement. I don't care how many states they get. It's impossible to implement. Well, that's the thing, isn't it? The thing is, kids are going to be the only ones that know how to bypass the filters. Dad will be asking his son how to access the boobies.

But I'm all for bonding moments with offspring. Oh, see? Yeah, I mean, they could start a new blockchain. Click coin. And they could be an offshoot of BitClit. There you go. It forked. It forked. Shit. That was a good one.

That was a good one. Thank you. Brick-a-brick. I found this one, and I just couldn't resist. And I know, you know, sometimes there wasn't a lot of tech news this week, let's be honest. So we had to pat out content a bit. A huge scientific study reveals the funniest joke in the world.

Now, this took place in 2001. And when we read these stories about huge scientific studies, we inevitably get disappointed and find out that there was like five people. Yeah. But not this time. 1.5 million people across the world rated five randomly selected jokes from a 40,000 joke database on a five-point scale.

And while they readily admit that there were much funnier jokes, this joke apparently worked across cultures better than anything else. So without further delay, two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing, and his eyes are glazed.

The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps. My friend is dead. What can I do? The operator says, calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead. There's silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says, okay, now what? Let's leave the space for the laughter.

I'm sure it's tailing off now from our audience. Yeah. Yeah. Skip 30 seconds. I'm searching for my cricket soundbite. That's why I can't find it. Not as good as it forked. I'll tell you that. We're joined this week by Dave Bittner.

Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast and also the co-host of the social engineering podcast, Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan, as well as the co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen, where they discuss law and policy as well as surveillance and privacy. Welcome, Dave. Welcome, Dave. Wait, wait. Thank you. I think there's one more that we forgot to re-add, correct?

I can't remember. Well, yeah. I mean, I host Recorded Future. That's it. That's it. Sometimes I stop in on a little show called Grumpy Old Geeks. Yeah. I knew the backup host for Joe Rogan. Yeah. Well, yeah.

Sometimes if Rachel Maddow's feeling a little peaked, I'll fill in for her. But, you know, just normal stuff like that. Well, listen, guys. Happy 500th. Thank you. Thank you. Amazing. Yeah. I'm sorry things didn't work out for me to be able to join you. But, I mean, that is not a milestone to just sniff at.

That's a marathon, not a sprint. Dang, that's the truth. I'm fucking tired. I need some protein packs. That's right. Your toenails have fallen off and your nipples are bleeding. My nipples are bleeding. You're ready for 500 more. Yeah.

It would have been nice. It would have been nice. But it was well past your bedtime by the time that we could even get together. Yeah, I figured. It seems like things were all aligned against you all. And I don't – there's no way for me to say this and not sound like an asshole. But I'll say it anyway. But I actually checked today and I'm at 1,300.

Yeah. For fucking – Well, yeah. There is no way for you to not say that and be an asshole. Yeah, exactly. But, well, the thing is – it's not – but it's not the same. I mean it's a daily. So, you know, mine is a sprint, you know. Yeah. You have writers and shit too.

I do. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. It's – so anyway. I mean happy 500th. That's really kind of a – Yeah, happy 13,000. We get it. We get it, Dave. Go die in a cyber fire. Yeah.

Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. It's a new podcast from a place that, like, won't, you know, burn a fuse that knocks out the entire power for the city block. We get it. We get it. Right. Professional. Modern infrastructure. Null. Yeah. Groundhogs don't take out all the infrastructure.

That's right. Cheater. I know. I know. It's quite decadent here on Planet at Cyber Wire Intergalactic Headquarters. Well, speaking of intergalactic, I put this in here for you two gents. Obi-Wan Kenobi series cast revealed, and Ewan McGregor is going to be in it.

Yay. I like Ewan McGregor. Hayden Christensen is going to be in it. Yeah. Well, why? They can't recast him. My response is no. Yeah. Of course. I do not associate Hayden Christensen in any way with Darth Vader, right?

I mean, James Earl Jones is still alive, right? Well, and theoretically, this is in the time, I mean, I guess they can do flashbacks. I assume that that would be the reasoning for the casting is flashback sequences, because otherwise it could be anyone.

And I would argue it could be anyone for flashbacks as well. Why not recast him? He was shit. True that. True that. Yeah. Well, and I also just don't think he has the body type to be in the Darth Vader suit. I mean, he's just, Darth Vader was a big, bulky guy, and that's not him.

So maybe they'll put on one of those, they'll give him one of those Gaston muscle suits, you know, like, to wear under the Vader suit. I don't know. I've been singing that song, like, my kid has just recently watched Beauty and the Beast, so Gaston is part of my daily existence right now, so I just found that hilarious.

Uh, yeah. I'll have to send you one of my Gaston pictures. I played Gaston in a production of Beauty and the Beast. Oh, okay. Please do. Of course you did, Dave. Yeah, of course you did. Yeah, you know, it was a 1,300 performance run, apparently. Right, exactly.

Yes, well, I don't mean to brag, but my understudy never went on. So, yeah, the cast looks great on this, but as we discussed earlier in Media Candy, a good cast does not necessarily mean shit, it can still be a horrible product.

Cautiously optimistic, but I have to say one of the things that made The Mandalorian so good was it was so unexpected and so out of the realm of what we knew and thought Star Wars to be, um, no Jedis, no major characters, uh, there will be a weight to this that The Mandalorian didn't have, um, there are expectations to this that The Mandalorian didn't have, so we'll see.

Mm-hmm. That's a really good point. The Mando wasn't resting on any particular character that we all already knew and love. I suppose you could, I mean, we could say that certainly at the outset, I think Mandalorian was kind of filling in for Boba Fett, who's playing off of our excitement for that type of character, but, but ultimately became its own thing.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So we'll see, but we're not going to get it for quite some time anyways. They're just starting to shoot, so, yeah. Yeah. I like Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan, though. I think that's, that's very good casting. He was the, basically, as far as I'm concerned, having gone back and, and relatively recently, like about two years ago, re-watched the prequels, the, the shining only point of those prequels.

Oh, come on, Darth Maul. Darth Maul was pretty good. Well, Darth Maul was great, but criminally underused. Yes, that's true. That's true. That's true. No, as, as a huge Ewan McGregor fan, I am very, very excited about that, that he's coming back. Good to see him working again. Yeah. Yeah.

That guy can never really just seem to get a, get a strong career going, can he? I know. He can never catch a break. So I, I saw this one and I was a little bummed about it. Hacker's backdoor PHP source code after breaching internal Git server. Now, you know, a lot of people hate on PHP, but I have a soft spot in my heart for it.

And I get upset when I see people, you know, dicking around with it. This made me kind of angry, but it was caught pretty quick. But yeah, I was, I was very surprised that people are still trying to do these supply chain hacks on, on something that is so publicly watched, like a, you know, a programming language.

There's so many people looking at that. It's like, wow. If, if you pull it off, the repercussions are huge. Lest we forget, WordPress is 90% of the internet or something ridiculous. 145% nowadays. And it runs on PHP, so. Right, right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I guess it is one of those things where somebody had to try it, you know, they had to, what if, what if, I mean, what, and, and, you know, supply chain attacks are all the rage these days. All the cool kids are doing it. All the cool nation states are doing it.

So, uh, why not? If it went undetected, then, uh, these folks would be onto something, but yeah, good thing it got detected and, uh, it looks like they're making some changes to make sure it doesn't happen again. Yeah. So now there are only 7,000 other possible attack vectors for your WordPress site.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. I just thought it was interesting that they picked this, uh, code word zerodium. It feels like unobtainium to me to sneak in. Well, obviously a play on zero day, right? So. Okay. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Well, and Microsoft also names all of their, um, their, their, their, uh, zero days. They name them after elements, which is interesting. They must have run out by now. Well, that's where I was going with this is what happens when they run out there so far they're at hafnium and I can't claim to have, have the periodic table memorized.

So I don't know where that sits. So, uh, somebody get, uh, what's his name on the line? Uh, Tom Lehrer, Tom Lehrer. Thank you. Somebody get Tom Lehrer on the line. We're nerds. Thank you, Jason. That's okay.

That's okay. Yeah. Somewhere out in our audience. There's a, yeah, there's a chemist banging their head against the desk and that's all right. I, uh, I put a story in here, uh, from Forbes, um, the, the headline's a little breathless.

It says a man says he doesn't know why he stabbed his grandma 50 times. I don't know why I swallowed the fly. Right. FBI agents hope his phone will tell them. Um, yeah. Hey Siri, what the fuck happened?

Right. Uh, this, um, in his notes, he has a grandmother really pissed me off. Pick up crystal meth, get knife. I mean, is that what they're looking for? Yeah. That's basically what they're looking for. So, um, this, a couple of interesting little tidbits on this.

I mean, this took place on, um, Native American land, um, and, but evidently the FBI does come in and investigate these things on, you know, when that happens. So there's, it's an interesting component. This gentleman was a, uh, war veteran, um, had received, um, compliments and accolades, I believe from his state senator for his bravery when he was in the military.

So it means it's really good at killing. Well, according to him, he just snapped and he says he has no remorse. Uh, they asked him what he'd been feeling during the stabbing. He said nothing.

Um, but what the FBI is doing, they're going through his device to see if there was anything that could point to this being premeditated. Um, there is something on his phone where evidently he reached out to, I can't remember if it was a daughter or a niece or someone, uh, saying that he was going to be away for a long time before the stabbing, which would point to something perhaps being premeditated.

But, um, I think the bigger picture here is, um, how much of a snapshot of our lives is contained on our devices and to what degree, if at all, is this different from, say, law enforcement going through letters that you may have written or phone calls that you may have made, you know, things not associated with your online presence.

Is this really any different from that? Um, you know, I would say for many people these days, it's, it's everything. Um, you know, if you went through my phone, you would know exactly what's going on in my life. Uh, if you had access to my texts to friends and my wife and my mom and all that, you would know how I'm feeling and what I'm up to and what I'm planning on doing, how you would know everything about me if you got access to my phone.

Right. Very little, you wouldn't know. You, you probably wouldn't know, uh, if I took fiber that day or not, but, uh, maybe you would with my Apple watch. I don't know. That's true. That's right. Yeah, that's true. I mean, I think, yeah, I, I, I, you know, I track my weight loss and my, what I eat and, uh, all that sort of thing.

Most of us, we probably have our doctor's appointments on our phone. So if you had a, uh, a therapy appointment or you picked up a prescription, like I get text messages for prescriptions and it says, okay, you know, your prescription for this is ready. So you, you know, all that stuff.

Yeah. And to, to your point, to the difference between say what we do on our, what's on our phone versus what's on our social media, especially since I've really, and I think many people have stepped back, uh, what they're posting on social media. Um, you know, you, you maybe 10 years ago, you would have known if I was having a really shitty day from my Facebook, you wouldn't anymore, but you certainly would know from going through my texts because I talked to my friends directly rather than, than posting it.

But yeah, I mean, all, all roads lead to my phone at this point. It's funny. I have a journaling app on my phone called day one and at seven o'clock every morning, the first thing it asks me is how are you feeling today? Right. So if it looks through mine and says stabby, then that's a, that's a hint.

So that's every day that ends in a walk. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It would be a stabby. Look, look, on the 4th of April, Jason said he was happy. Huh. Wow. Something's strange. Something is strange. His phone has been hacked.

Oh, right. He immediately, he immediately called his therapist because something was definitely out of whack. Uh, I, I, should this be off limits? I mean, this story doesn't, doesn't say whether or not he was the one who unlocked the phone. Um, we require a warrant, I mean, you know, isn't that always our argument in, in, in these cases as we've been talking about them over the years is our phones are an extension of our lives.

Now they are our journals. They are our main contact devices. They are our confidants. They are our diaries. Uh, they should be a hundred percent off limits all the time, unless you stab your grandmother 50 times and there's a warrant. Right.

So, right. I think that's reasonable. And I think certainly in this case, they would, they would get that warrant. There's no, I don't think there's any question, but yeah, I think that's the, that's the minimum standard for me. Jason, what do you think? No, I definitely, I, I agree with you on, on all the points. And on this one, it might be something that could actually prove him not, not exactly innocent, but not culpable.

So he gets a different sentence. He could get help instead of, you know, getting jail time. I mean, if they could see like he was texting and just going back to like my psychology background and all that and, and, and very normal affect. And then all of a sudden everything went flat, uh, that would, that would point to some severe mental illness that, that came over him.

Right. Right. And his, certainly his, uh, his experience as a combat veteran could come into play there as well. Yeah. The agent orange kicked in and he just snapped. He's a, he's the man, sure he watched the Manchurian candidate the night before they need to check his Netflix, uh, watch record to see what happened, see if he was triggered.

But yeah, I mean, it's, I think, I think that there's a chance that he might be, you know, actually proven broken, not, yeah, proven, proven broken beyond a reasonable doubt. Cause it sounds, sounds really strange that somebody would be like that. He's just like, I, I don't know.

Stabby. Well, again, I, even the 50 times points to something. I mean, if you just want to off someone, you stop after five. Right. Yeah. That's because that's, you know, you basically count up the stabbies and that's how much hate you have for the person. Those are, you know, those are anger crimes.

Uh, he got a stabby score of 53. Oh, the old stabby scale. Yeah. Yeah. Is it a linear scale or an exponential scale? Logarithmic? Yeah. I don't know. Um, well, this last story I put in here, uh, speaking of criminals, uh, this is from the BBC.

It was, uh, a mafia fugitive who was caught after posting his cooking show on YouTube. But, but the meatballs were delicious. That's actually what gave him away. It was too good. Well, now it's actually something we've, we've talked about before with some of the, um, the demonstrations last year with some of the, um, you know, there were some folks, I think it was back with some of the black lives matter protests where there were some folks who were

crossing the line and committing crimes and setting fires and so on and so forth. And they got tracked down because of their tattoos. Right. And that is what happened in this case. This gentleman knew that he was hiding from the law. He was on the run.

And thought it was a good idea to put up a show on YouTube. Well, I mean, this is definitely the criminals are stupid, uh, equation that we often talk about. Like if you were on the run, perhaps you stay the fuck off YouTube or get long sleeves, you know, that's where I was going with this.

So he, he deliberately hid his face, but the, the police tracked him down because of his tattoos. Uh, don't they make like those sort of skin colored sleeves you can put, you can get to cover your, I mean, there's makeup too. So there's also, you can get a fake sleeve.

You can get shirts that have different tattoos. Exactly. Yeah. Oh. You can camo it up, you know? Right. So what he needs to do is get some photos of whoever his worst enemy is and have that person's tattoos printed up on special sleeves that go do his, I mean, I guess the question that comes to my mind has, has, has, has Rachel Ray's existence been erased from the internet

that we need, uh, more culinary Italian cooking shows, uh, has Giotta disappeared? Uh, what? I don't know how many followers he had or, you know, who knows? But, uh, and he was hanging out in the Dominican Republic, so I can see why he wouldn't want long sleeves.

It can get a little warm down there, but still, wouldn't you rather be on a beach instead of sitting there making videos for YouTube? It's like, he must've been really bored, but. Yeah. He'd been, uh, on the run since 2014. So he probably thought that he was in the clear, but, uh.

Nope. No, his love for delicious Italian food caught up with him. And he wanted to share with the world. I mean, really, he was trying to give back people. Certainly, the judge and jury need to take that into consideration. No man who could make a meatball this good.

Your Honor, we have, we have set up a little demo station right here. Weenie as episode, exhibit A. I think, I think you will agree with us that there's something special going on here. Now, who are the cops that are.

God, I'm fucking hungry now. Yeah, I know. Me too. Who are the cops that are sitting around watching, you know, cooking shows with tattoo recognition technology trying to find this guy? Actually, that is a really good question. Where did, yeah, how did he get caught? You know? That is a good question.

Yeah, I'm like, this can't be random. They have to have some kind of thing out there that is, it couldn't have just been happenstance that somebody who was looking for this guy from 2014 recognized a partial tattoo on an obscure Italian cooking show on YouTube, you know? Obviously, the mafia beat over at the FBI or whatever is tasked with this.

This is part of your duties to check through Italian cooking videos on YouTube. You know, the newbie, the rookie gets the TikTok beat. Yeah, right. Right. Just because there's a stereotype convention in town that's what y'all have to do. But, yeah, I mean, maybe somebody, maybe somebody dropped a dime on him, you know, that someone else recognized his tattoos and dropped a line.

Or his girlfriend. Pissed and stole his grandma's bolognese recipe. Yeah. Or his girlfriend. Maybe he wasn't that good of a cook and his girlfriend was just tired of his damn meatballs. She's like, he can't cook for shit. Get him out of here so I can get some real food. God, I hope this hasn't been taken down. I have to go find this video now.

No. Hmm. Yeah, that's right. Hey, I wonder how we would find it. No? There's your homework, Brian. Yep. Okay. I'm on it. All right. By the way, just a follow-up in case anybody cares in terms of 80s albums.

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. We actually had a question in here for the 500th episode. I should. Yeah. Yeah. Did you guys cover that? I haven't had a chance to listen to that. No. Well, no. We did not do security last week. Yeah, because we were hoping to get you on here.

So let me rephrase this so everybody could, because we talked about it and I had thought about it some more. Well, much like the first time we did this, this is the thing I spent the most time thinking about. Yeah, yeah. I had two, so I'm going to put it in here.

So, I mean, you asked what the song was that most symbolized the 80s, right? Right. So, mine is, what album from the 80s had the most impact on the person that you eventually became today? So that's what I want to know. What album that you liked from the 80s?

An album, not just a single song, because albums are, you know, well, they're collections of songs, Jason, you idiot. Of course they are. But they tell a story. The kids don't know that these days. That's right. No, they don't. Consider it a playlist on plastic. So, what do you think, Dave?

Well, I put a lot of thought into this. And, of course, there are the obvious choices of popularity. You know, you have an album like Thriller, which is the most, I guess, the most popular album ever. But for me, it came down to Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits.

Interesting. Why? Yeah, big one. Let's just say that it was the background music for a very important event in my life. Very important young lady in my life.

And so it was, I have forever have that association. Not to mention, it's also just a damn good album. So I'm actually quite pleased that I didn't end up having some terrible album.

That would be the background of that important event in my life with that important young lady in my life so that I'd be stuck, you know, every time I heard safety dance feelings. That's a special way. That's a special way. Right.

Right. But, yeah. Brothers in Arms, Dire Straits, good album. All right. Ryan? What about you guys? Well, should I go next? I actually didn't have to spend much time thinking about this at all because there was one album that was absolutely so pivotal to me and so important and actually remains to this day, even though I probably don't listen to it much anymore.

I'm a bit younger than you guys. So mine came out in 89, the very cusp of the 80s. But I was, it was a perfect storm. I was 16, just learning how to drive. I had just really kind of gotten into alternative music, just started going to concerts. And I had many experiences with women that weren't that important to me with this album.

But it's The Cure's Disintegration, which has just had such massive impact on me. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Good choice. Good choice. Jason? Mine is an oddball. This album came out in 1980. It is Fresh Fruits for Rotting Vegetables by the Dead Kennedys.

It's a seminal punk album. It is. It is. I was a skateboarder in the 80s, and I was introduced to the punk rock back then. But it, I listened to that album probably more than any album I ever have in my entire life. And it taught me lots about, well, you guys know, you've met me.

Say no more. Yeah, it kind of comes out. But our listeners have not, Jason. So perhaps you want to explain. Oh, over 500 episodes. They've gotten a good idea. That's true. That's true. No. I'm not real good with authority or anybody telling me what to do ever.

Including your co-host. Exactly. If you want to get something done, probably tell me the opposite, and you're more than likely to actually get it to happen. Right. So punk music really resonated with you in this way. Yes, it did. It never stopped, unfortunately.

Do we have any leading honorable mentions of, because I can think of, like, Paul Simon's Graceland was an important album to me. Surprisingly, me too. Yeah. I listened to that album a lot when it came out. Yeah, Peter Gabriel's So was really important to me.

Well, I mean, Love and Rockets Express is what got me into listening to alternative music, getting me off of pop music. I really liked Def Leppard's Pyromania when I was in the early 80s, when I was a young kid. That was, that probably got me in, that was my bridge away from my parents' music.

Because my mom. You know, up until then, I kind of listened to what my parents were listening to, you know, Queen, The Beatles, The Stones, all that sort of stuff. So that was my first, probably the first cassette I ever bought, like my first leap into I now have my own musical taste, as questionable as it may be.

I would have to say an honorable mention for me would be Bark at the Moon by Ozzy Osbourne. That was, that was like the first kind of metal stuff that I got into, and I would go back and forth between punk rock and heavy metal forever. I think David Bowie's Let's Dance was really important to me, and not so much for the album that it was, and I do think it was, I mean, I like the singles off of that album, but more

that it was the gateway for me into Bowie's back catalog, which then became really important to me, and I don't know that I would have gotten there without sort of having that spoonful of sugar that was the Let's Dance album. And I've got to say, Depeche Mode's, gosh, what was that big album?

Songs of Music for the Masses. That was a big album that got me kind of out of guitar to what synthesizers could do, and also got me out of, you know, maybe there isn't one way to live a life, because Depeche Mode definitely, they're lyrically, was very subversive.

So that opened my eyes to the fact that, okay, so maybe you don't have to just do what people tell you to do. In my own way, it was punk rock. Right, right. Well, I want to say that we all have a tremendous amount of restraint that none of us chose K-Tel's hit express as...

Is that Freedom Rock? Turn it up, dude! Freedom Rock! There's a whole generation of kids that will never know Freedom Rock. And also, we have all grown up enough that none of us picked a Weird Al album. Which probably, if I really think about it, probably got the most play in the early 80s for me than anything else.

Yeah, but it didn't have the most impact on me. No. I love Weird Al to this day, but it didn't really impact who I became. Jello Biafra, on the other hand, did. No, Weird Al definitely crossed my mind when I was thinking about this. You're right. He was influential, no doubt about it.

And I remember reading recently, I guess it was not long after Michael Jackson passed, that someone said, you know, 20 years ago, who would have imagined that, I think, you know, at the time, Weird Al had the number one song and Michael Jackson was dead. Yeah. You know, it was one of those kinds of things.

So, he's had a lasting impact. Yes. Hats off to him. Yeah. All right, gents. Well, I'm glad we were able to include that one. That was a lot of fun. Yeah. A spoonful of security to help the human go down.

All right. I'll see you guys next time. Take care. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Mike, MultiSweetness, JSM1955, and Michael, thank you so much. And over at PayPal, we've got Thomas, Adam, Simon, Judge, Matt, John, Michael, Matthew, Jonathan, Charlie, Andrew.

And Andrew says, sent you $25 today in return for your 500 episodes of content. This amount was calculated using the Kardashian Philanthropy method. I got tongue-tied on Kardashian. Kardashian Philanthropy method. See you at 1,000. Nice.

Thanks, everyone. Sometimes when we read off our PayPal list, I'm thinking it's the gospel according to grumpy old geeks. No. Matthew, Michael, John. And over at Podcast Addict, we got a rating from Gnog73.

This is the podcast you didn't know you needed in your life. Cynical, snarky, opinionated, and unapologetic. Basically, a lot of the good stuff that is missing from mainstream media. Oh, we're one of those people now. Once you work out the main host characters, you'll get to love Jason and Brian's individual quirks. Not forgetting security expert Dave, who pops in every other episode like the pair's gently amused uncle.

Does what it says on the tin. Delivers on the grump in a constantly humorous way. Keep up the great work, chaps. Okie dokie. A little dry. And some sad news. We lost both Jessica Walter and George Seagal this week. Both were probably best known to everybody listening to this show as basically being on the latest sitcoms.

Jessica Walter was, of course, the amazing Lucille Bluth on Arrested Development. Seagal played Pop Solomon on The Goldbergs. But I did like this particular line in the article. But for filmgoers who came of age in the 1970s, Seagal, who died Tuesday at 87, and Walter, who died one day later at 80, epitomized a time when the movies grew up, when recognizably adult lives, even at their most highly pitched, could still be viable fodder for high-quality mainstream cinema.

In other words, a time when audiences hadn't yet been infantilized. I can never say this word. Infantilized. Infantilized into a steady diet of comic book escapism and supernatural fantasy. In other words, back when we actually had real movies. Real movies with real plots about real people.

Yep. And by the way, Jessica Walter, smoking hot when she was young. Okay. All righty. All right. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to GOG. If you enjoyed the show, please consider visiting GOG.show slash donate to help us keep the lights on and we'll love you forever.

And a side note, if you do subscribe to Patreon, this does come ad-free and sometimes early. So just saying. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.show slash 501. And from there, you can find links to all the things that we talked about in this episode. You can also 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 review and toss us a five-star and snarky review. And if you don't already follow us in your podcast player of choice, just go to GOG.show slash follow where you can find convenient links to every podcast player so you can get the show as soon as it drops. And also, you can go to GOG.show slash Discord if you want to chat with us every now and again, pop in there quite a bit and say hi.

So please tell a friend about the show. It's the only way we can keep the lights on. Stay grumpy.

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