578: The Psychosis of Billionaires

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. Twitter's been fun. Oh my god. We'll get to that in a bit. Yeah. It's going as well as we could have hoped. You know, I think Web3 is going great, could have a run for the money, with Twitter's going great.

Yeah. Yeah, Molly. Well, we're going to talk about Molly in a little bit, too. Okay. All right. Yeah. Well, first, Mark asks us, are you guys on Mastodon yet? Yeah, he's over on Overheard Social. Yeah. Me? No. I'm not.

Yeah, I've been on Mastodon for years. I'm at jpdef at Mastodon.social. So if you want to follow me, go ahead. I don't post anything. I find it incomprehensible how it works. There are issues to the idea that Mastodon is going to take over. I don't see it getting critical mass.

A couple of people asked on Discord, too. And then kind of my comment was like, why? For me personally, like, I don't care. Like, less social media is fine with me. And for us doing it for grumpy old geeks, unless it gets critical mass, I mean, we're better off with Discord.

Discord works fine. Discord's fine. We have our own Twitter over at Discord. Come join us. Yeah. Come join us there if you want to talk to us. It's good. I did put a link in here in the show notes for a how-to guide for joining Mastodon called Come Join Me on Mastodon, folks, by Clive Thompson.

If you're interested in checking it out, I mean, here's the deal. Just stay off social media for a while. I'll tell you about that in a second. But, yeah, we've got a couple more bits of feedback here. Yep. Dan wrote in and said, Jason, try clipboard sharing from iOS to your Mac.

Having only five seconds to enter a 2FA code. Stop sucking when I got to start work from home on my Apple devices, thanks to that feature. When it works, that's always the key. Tap to copy on the phone. Keyboard shortcut on the Mac to paste. Woo! Yeah, I never had much luck with that.

Yeah. Never had much luck. It works sometimes. The problem also is I've got so many of my Macs in such close proximity that when I have that, you know, all of that universal crap turned on and passed through with the phones and all that, it gets to be too much.

Like here in the studio, I have three computers running at any given time and they're close enough that, like, I can't even wear my AirPods in here because they keep jumping machines. It's just like, yeah. It's just like, everything beeps, everything boops. But then Thomas has the answer. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, he says, why don't you use one password? Yeah, which I should. Yeah, me too. Yeah, one password has the two-factor stuff built into it. I just never read the manual on it. So I don't know how to use it. And I'm like, now that two-factor has become more of a nuisance in my daily life, maybe I'll look into that.

Yeah, I've got to do it too because it's just a pain in the butt getting my phone out all the time. I just need it. I need it to be where I need it to be, not on my phone if I need it on my computer. Yeah. And I have three different authenticator apps and I can't remember which app or which website I'm using on which app.

It's like, come on. Yeah, it's good times. Good times. So I had a power outage here because you always like to joke that, you know, L.A. is a third-world country. Yes. Well, it got windy for five minutes and a tree came down and I lost power for 14 hours.

Oh, wow, 14 hours. It was glorious. Isn't it, though? It was just glorious. Yeah. We lit a fire, you know, because we've got a big fireplace, had the fire going, had some candles going, and we had a conversation and we played with the dogs and it was awesome. Then I went to bed and since we went to bed at 5.30 because that's when the sun went down, what am I going to do?

I'm just going to open up Instagram and I'm going to doom scroll. I'm going to tell you right now, the nightmares I had, the anxiety that I had after was just like, it was disgusting. And I'm just like, Instagram did this because there's no other reason why this should be happening because I was just fine.

I was happy. We had a great night. And then I get on Instagram for an hour and then I can't sleep. And I wake up in the morning going, what am I doing with my life? Everybody's busy. I need to be busier. Or, you know, Twitter doom scrolling with the elections or. Oh, that was the best part.

It was election night. And yeah. No, our power went out on election nights and we're like, this is perfect. Yeah. We can't watch anything. We don't want to watch anything. I will throw my deep thoughts by Jack Grumpy in here because it kind of fits with the doom scrolling thing.

And I've also noticed like it's my anxiety levels have been going through the roof for multiple reasons recently. But so I did have a deep thought about this. I feel like COVID put us both collectively as a society and our family slash friends slash work units and us individually through a massive stress test.

Right. Like there's no doubt about it. Like we're trying to pretend like it was just this blip and no big deal. And, you know, we made it through and not all of us, mind you, a lot of people died from COVID. But we're kind of just now dealing with the ramifications of being put under all that stress.

And what we're seeing is we're not we're not coal that got turned into diamonds here. People we're fucked up. Not at all. We're all pretty fucked up. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, it's the end of empathy. There's there's none left. There's no empathy left in the world.

Yeah. We all kind of pulled into ourselves and we're not coming out of it very well. It's no. It's it's noticeable that people. Yeah. Yeah. You think those social skills would be coming back around now and it's gone the exact opposite way.

Exactly the opposite. So I agree. Yeah. It's kind of a bummer. On that cheery note, let's let's talk about your pot, your other podcast. Yeah. John Payne writes in. Hey, just signed up for this podcast and notice. Notice it seems to be stuck on November 3rd.

I thought it was daily Monday through Friday. What's up? Well, right after. Well, I mentioned this like two shows ago that I was going to be the voice of category pirates when we were talking about the shit that I was doing. Yeah. My roommate had a really good bit of advice.

She says, you're working yourself to death. Stop it and follow the money. Yeah. She's like the paid gigs. Only do the only do the gigs you're getting paid for because. All right. So let's wrap up this show. Nope.

Because this is my rent in my car payment. So. Oh, yeah. We do get paid a little bit for this. That's true. Yeah, I get we get paid enough to make it fun. So, yeah, I'm trying to figure out if it's a possible thing, because what I may end up doing since I have paid gigs now, which actually just I have enough paid gigs to keep the lights on in the studio in my house.

That's it right now. When the power works. When the power works. I fortunately didn't lose it at the office, which unfortunately is where all the UPSs are because I took them from the home to the office because I figured I'd need them here. Nope. Power was fine here. The house is where I needed the UPSs.

But I think it might be one of those things where somebody made it very clear to me that it's really hard to do a daily on a staff of one if it's not your full time gig. Well, Jesus, you don't remember that when we tried to do it. No, I totally remembered it. But it was.

Yeah, I mean, it's it can be done. It can be done if that was the only thing that I had to do. But then, you know, buckets of things came in and I'm like, I'm just going to go with that. So, yeah, right now, boot up is on hold. I still think it's a great show. Everybody thought it was a great show. The numbers were going up. Just not very fast.

So to the the massive 300 people that listen to that show, because that was it. Hang tight. We'll see if something happens in the future. But right now, don't hold your breath, because I'm a category pirate, motherfucker. That's the way it goes.

Arr. Arr. In the news. I don't know really where to start because it's coming so fast and furious, because even right before we went to air, I saw a thing come through that said, Elon said that bankruptcy is not off the table for Twitter.

And I'm like, well, that escalated quickly. Well, nothing's going very well. Let's start with let's place a bet. Do you think Twitter will make it at all? Or do you think this is going to be a flaming pile and Twitter will be gone with by 2023?

2024. It'll limp through one more year? I think it's got enough juice in it. It's got enough, you know, inertia to keep rolling through the piles of steaming shit that is Elon Musk right now and his team.

Yeah, I don't I don't think it's going to make it. I don't think it is either. I actually don't like people are leaving in droves. Even, you know, it's such a shit show. I've never seen anything play like play out like this in real time so badly.

It's one of those things where it's almost just fun to watch because it doesn't seem like it's real. It's the ultimate train wreck. Yeah. It doesn't seem like it's real. I can't believe it's happening. Yeah. You know? Yeah. We've joked about it so long that it's and now that it's here, it's just like, oh, well, yeah, that's that's not good.

It's just the way he's going about things, which is just unilaterally making a decision. And then walking it back and then pivoting and doing it differently and then realizing that's not working. What? That's not how you run a company.

He's the decider, Brian. He's the decider. I'm just, oh, boy. Okay. Let's just get into the stories that we have. Okay. Right? Yeah. No. This first one I found was over at The Information because I'm loving the information.

It's called It's Difficult to Resist. Twitter Surviving or Surviving Twitter Employees Weigh a Float of Offers from Rivals. So it turns out that having Twitter on your resume and getting fired by Elon is actually a boon to these people. And a lot of tech companies are slurping these people up hand over fist, which is good.

Good for them. Yeah. I'm happy that they'll remain employed. Yeah. Yeah. And the ones that don't get a job are pretty much the ones that probably should have been fired in the first place. So we'll see what that what that ratio is. You know, so the grassroots effects are going right now.

Everybody's making their Google Sheets with all the people on like, you know, I forget which company it was the last time that happened. And everybody had like there was this massive public spreadsheet. It's like, if you want to hire us, please, we're over here. I'm like, okay, whatever. But this article is is just picture perfect for this one paragraph.

Many employees are torn. This person said they're being offered ample opportunities to leave, but they feel a duty to stay. We've got a lot of users who rely on us for a lot of things. Plus, there's another factor at play. The longer I draw a salary, the more money Elon Musk loses.

I guess there's a little bit of spite there. Yeah. That was my Twitter employee of the day. It's a healthy work environment. Exactly. Yeah. The fact that the only reason that your employees are there is because they want to bleed you dry is not a good way to start your, you know, second or third week on the job.

Dumb shit. Oh, boy. Now, after the big layoffs, Twitter realized that it had stepped on its own dick and they are bringing some of the people back and all that good stuff. So we know about that. The funny part about this one, though, is the people that were laid off are getting the shaft because apparently, according to their employment contract, they're supposed to get two months worth of severance.

But Elon is only offering a month. So all of the lawsuits that have gone against them at this point so far have now been amended to say not only did you not hit the federal requirements for the warning, you know, the warning period that this was coming.

But you're also trying to shaft us on the backside. So, yeah, these lawsuits are just if if the inside leeches aren't going to bleed him dry, the outside pissed off employees are going to bleed him dry. And if not that, the interest on the loans are going to bleed him dry.

It's just like, oh, my God. And yeah, yeah. The fact that he did fire all these people and now they're saying, oh, shit, we didn't mean to fire Joe. Shit, we need Joe. We needed Joe. Yeah. Can we get Joe back? We got a little extra cash because that we got, you know, thirty six hundred ninety nine other employees that we're not paying.

So come on, Joe, you want to come back? And I think Joe might have been the guy goes, yeah, I just want to bleed him dry. I still think one of the funniest tweets I've seen today was now imagine this on Mars with limited oxygen. You know what's funny? There was another quote that Elon put out. He's like, can can we get 80 percent of the pop the planet's population on the platform and make it the global town square?

And then I was thinking, I'm like, OK, 80 percent of the global population, that's seven, you know, seven billion, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then you have to factor in how many people don't actually even have Internet access, let alone running water or electricity. So that takes that number down, all this stuff.

And then I was thinking Mars, Elon really fucking wants to go to Mars, right? Yeah. I think at this point, every rover, every lander in every piece of junk we've thrown on Mars has a Twitter account.

I literally think that we have 100 percent Twitter adoption on Mars. So that's where he needs to focus his energy. Yeah. So you were speaking just a few seconds ago about lawsuits being amended. The amount of articles that are being published and then having to be amended is amazing just because it's funny.

First, I'll read an article from a headline that was published about an hour before the article that I'm actually going to read from because that's an amendment to that article. But this article already starts with an update, an amendment in and of itself. Twitter starts rolling out its official check marks to celebrities and publishers.

Updated because they had to update the article immediately after publishing it because he had changed his mind already. The good quote from that article is it's the solution to the problem that Twitter created. Immediately to be followed up by an article one hour later, Musk killed Twitter's official check marks after only a few hours.

Oh, yeah. So he rolled out gray check marks that were supposed to be for the real verified, verified people, not the paid, verified people. But then he killed the gray check marks immediately after. But still, there's the blue check marks, which is the great leveler, whatever the fuck that means.

And yeah, I just the poor Twitter VP, Esther Crawford, who has been the person that has had to clarify all these statements, pulling shit out of her handbag is just it's amazing. So she stressed there would be no more sacred cows and that Musk was willing to try things that might fail.

And he's doing an awful lot of that right now. Yeah, he's knocking that one out of the park. Yeah. So, yeah, there was gray check marks and then they were taken away and then the blue check marks. And I mean, I don't know if you've seen all the fiascos with the people that are buying the accounts.

All day long. Today, Eli Lilly, a fake Eli Lilly account announced that insulin would be free. And boy, is there going to be lawsuits about that. And all day long. Boy, all day long. OK, so you've got more. See, here's the fun part about this.

You know, when Donald Trump became president, we thought, oh, my God, late night comedians are going to have a field day with this. This is going to be great. But everybody was just too sad. This, on the other hand, is something that the entire planet can get behind. Yes, this is hilarious and not life threatening.

It's Twitter. Yeah, because no, I mean, there's like seven, seven of us who really enjoy Twitter. So, like for everybody else, it's just like, yeah, let it die. Fuck those guys. Yeah. Oh, well, Eli also has problems with international relations right now.

So, he's got a problem with Tesla and China because he's real buddy-buddy with China right now. He's got problems with the Saudi Arabia, you know, connection to the Twitter buyout. Things are going to be very interesting.

He's going to have a lot. I think that we're going to be watching his jet fly to Washington, D.C. quite a bit soon. So, hang on to that. Honestly, the best thing that could really happen for Elon Musk right now is for Twitter to die. He would take the bath. That's a big right down.

He would take a big bath, but it would solve a lot of his other problems. Well, Tesla is up today because Twitter – thanks to Twitter, Elon has sold another $3.95 billion worth of Tesla shares, which he said that he wasn't going to do, but now he has.

So, he's down to 14% of Tesla that he owns, which is honestly enough. A good thing. That's enough to get him through. I think he's going to make rent next month. Yeah. Now, after – Right now, he's a poison pill. Like, the less he has in the company, the better it's going to do.

He's a poison pill right now, so. Oh. Well, I'm glad Tesla went up because I still have a little bit in my M1 account, so. Yeah. I do, too. I still have Tesla stock. I do believe in the company. I just wish he would stop running it himself, which mostly he's going to have to now.

He's going to be in Washington and bogged down with lawsuits constantly. So, appoint a CEO, let the company run itself, and let me keep all my stock. They do have some other problems, though, because they've recalled over 40,000 cars to address power steering flaw. These are Model S and Model X vehicles.

It's a software defect that can reduce or cut power steering assistance when a car mistakenly treats potholes and other bumps in the road as steering assist torque. How's that self-driving coming along? Yeah. Now, it's unclear. They say that it's a recall, but really, it's just a download of a firmware update, right?

Like, you can just do that from home. You don't actually have to take your car anywhere, I think. I think, based on the old world rules, when there's something wrong with your car, they have to call it a recall just because of, you know, old-ass laws and, you know, stupid old white people. So, I think that's pretty much it.

But, yeah, if they can fix it over the air, which is different than the Rivian recall, which – Yeah, they had a – No, they need to come in and tighten a bolt. That's it. So, I don't know which I feel better about. Can I tighten a bolt over the air? Software patches for my cars or just an actual physical bolt? By the way, this is the 17th recall Tesla has issued in 2022 alone.

It's not as far-reaching. It's a temporary recall over faulty power window functionality, which affected almost 1.1 million cars. And the combined – combined, the glitches have affected about 3.4 million EVs across the company's lineup. So, this is all just software fuck-ups. Well, I love the power window one because when you bring it in to the dealer to fix that one, they just hand you a brick.

If it doesn't go down – They give you the gun. That he was shot into his power truck or whatever. Into the cyber truck. Yeah. Yeah, they just give you cyber truck windows. Great. Here you go. Oh, boy. Yeah. Oh, and I actually – I've been – thanks to Boot Up, I have access to a lot of new news sources that I spent way too much money on.

Right. So, now I am subscribed to the MIT Technology Review, which actually is a really good publication. And we cut a bunch of stories because we couldn't actually get to them for a long time. So, now I have that. But I love this headline. Here's how a Twitter engineer says it will break in the coming weeks.

And I read through this and I'm like, yeah, that's exactly it. That's exactly how this thing is going to fail. It's basically small things. It's what we – you know, a lot of people that don't work in the industry and, you know, you and I aren't programmers anymore, but we were long enough that we understood.

When you build something, it doesn't just run forever. No, especially something that complex. Things break constantly. You are always fixing things. You are always replacing bits of code. You are always changing things. You are always, always constantly fixing these things.

They don't just run once you're done with them. And they've gotten rid of so many people. Like, these things are just – and there's also – you're getting rid of people and there's institutional knowledge. I don't care what company you work for. Nothing is 100% documented.

Nothing. Almost nothing is documented, dude. Nothing. Nobody has time to document because, remember, we've been pushed into a whole situation where we're supposed to move fast and break things. And if we don't, we get fired. You know what takes time? Documentation.

You know what's going to happen if you take the time to document things? You're going to get fired. I'm going to tell you, like, from my work at Technorati back in the day, most of our code comments were jokes. It was literally, like, we would make a joke about whatever happened to, you know, somebody's lunch that day or some shit like that.

I'm like, oh, shit, Niall Kennedy had another fucking cheese sandwich. Guess he's going to be on Valleywag today. You know, shit like that. Right. There was almost nothing about how the actual software worked. And we had, you know, probably two million lines of code in that fucking thing.

It was crazy. No, I mean, I read through this article as well. And this is exactly how I can see. It's just small things are going to start to break left, right, and center. And then it cascades. So then you have cascading system failures. Yep. And here's the thing.

Most of those things that are going to break are kludges that the programmers put in to fix a very specific problem that only they knew about at three in the morning after working on it for 14 hours and finally had the aha moment and put a Band-Aid on it and then never documented it and never told anybody.

So they're going to have to re-engineer all that shit. I'm sorry, but this is how big software works. That's why you and I know that, you know, the world is built on just a fountain of matchsticks. It's just blown down in any second. This can all fall apart in any second, any site.

You know what they should really do? They should use some of the Mastodon code and just read it from there. Yeah. Yeah. Just get the licenses. You know, Trump learned that one the hard way. Yeah. And I love this one. Stephen Fry joins celebrity Twitter exodus, says goodbye with Scrabble message.

Now, if I had a nickel every time Stephen Fry fucking quit Twitter, I could buy one of his books because, Jesus, this guy quits at the drop of a hat. Come on. He does. He's been on and off Twitter quite a bit. I do remember that. Yeah. He just gets butthurt way too easy.

Way too easy. All right. Now, we joked about the 3,700 people coming out of Twitter getting fired because, you know, Elon's just a moron. Well, Mark Zuckerberg says, hold my beer, motherfucker. 11,000 people are getting the axe for a meta.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Probably good. Except I was listening to Scott Galloway, who did have a really good breakdown and said, this is actually probably going to cost him more money in the long term, which is funny. Probably, yeah.

What they need to do is they need to stop with this metaverse shit. Well, no shit. Really, Brian? You think so? But they're not doing that. Those aren't the people that are being laid off. The leg division is keeping strong, Jason. They've hired in toes.

They're not getting rid of those people. I don't understand it. But, you know, I'm not. Fuck, whatever. I just don't give a shit anymore. They've ruined their own products. It's the psychosis of billionaires. Yeah, it is. That's all this is. It's the psychosis of billionaires.

You want me to? I can fix Facebook and Instagram right now. All you have to do is reintroduce a timeline and show our friends updates again. You do that, we all come back in droves. We start using it again.

It's fixed. But you're not going to do that. I don't know why. I don't know why either. I do. Everybody knows. We all know that this is what will bring us back to these things. The reason we're all being driven away is we don't see our friends updates anymore.

That's why. That's why we're leaving. What's so hard about that? I talked to my 63-year-old roommate today, and she's just like, I don't even go on Facebook anymore because I don't know what I'm seeing because it's all just random stuff. And the only people that are left there are old people.

She's 63, and she's saying the people that are on there are old. So I think they definitely have a generational problem, which is why I can see he is so focused on trying to do something for the next generation with this stupid headset shit.

Brian Blondell, our friend, he actually gave me back my first Oculus headset today. He came by the house and said, here, I ain't going to use this shit. I ain't got time or room for it. Whatever. Here, take it back. It's like you cannot literally give away an Oculus. You can't. So I don't know how they think that that's going to be the future of the company, but whatever.

Whatever. Well, at least Google's doing some stuff. I'm sorry, Alphabet. Alphabet. Their wing drones are now going to be doing DoorDash deliveries in Australia, which guarantees. You can get wings from wings. Yeah, that guarantees that it will be delivered completely upside down and cold.

Yes. I mean, period. Yeah. Good luck with that. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day.

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Media candy. I have started watching Welcome to Wrexham, which is a reality show about Ryan Reynolds and some dude from some other show that I've never watched.

I've never heard of this guy, Rob McKelleny, but obviously he's made enough money because they decided to buy a third level soccer team in England that will actually in Wales, technically Wrexham. It's actually cute. It's like a real life Ted Lasso.

Ted Lasso. So Ryan Reynolds is now trying to take over, steal the thunder from Ted Lasso. Well, luckily, the worst part of the show is the parts that Ryan Reynolds and Rob McKelleny are in. If you actually just watch the bits about the soccer team itself and the players and all that sort of stuff, it's great.

I'm thoroughly enjoying it. So, you know, it's a cute show. It's filling a Ted Lasso hole in my heart. Okay. I just don't feel like giving Ryan Reynolds any of my view time. I understand. I understand. I do. I'm not a fan either.

But soccer. Soccer wins for me. Star Trek Lower Decks finished their season. It was hit or miss this season. And the show is best when they're not trying to do a narrative and they definitely try to do more narratives this season, which kind of sucked. Okay.

Yeah. I got to like episode seven and then I'm like, I'm not going to pay for another month of Paramount Plus just for this because it ain't that good. So you can catch up on it when you do pay for it when they have better stuff up. Yeah. With Picard or because I'm look, I'm going to have to watch the last season of Picard.

We all have to because it's going to have the whole cast back. Exactly. And it's going to be terrible. And yeah, I'm still mad about the fucking Wil Wheaton drop. But yeah, whatever. What are you going to do? Oh, you're going to cancel it until something else better comes along.

Okay. Yeah. Strange new worlds, man. Best show that's been out in years. Years. Years. Disney is now matching Netflix subscriber numbers across its combined services, which is, you know, come on. When you throw ESPN in there. Well, yeah, I mean, people like sports.

Who didn't know that was coming? Come on. There was no doubt that that was going to happen. I mean, I guess, I mean, okay, yes, I have a kid. So Disney Plus is going to trump everything else anyways. But has there been that much on Netflix recently?

I watched Netflix four times a week at least. We just finished Killer Sally, which was a documentary about some bodybuilder who killed her husband. Wasn't that great? That kind of stuff doesn't appeal to me. Yeah. I mean, it was okay.

But I mean, I mainly watch it for all of the stand-up comedy. I mean, because they have a new stand-up comedy special every week, which is fantastic. They do roll those out like no tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. And just for like tons of stuff, you know, somebody feed Phil, like some of the food shows are good.

There's always something. You can always find something on Netflix. And for the price, it's like it's a stupid value. As long as I get to keep sharing my account. Yeah. I mean, I watch way more on Netflix than I watch on Disney.

Granted, I don't have a kid. And since Andor, as soon as I get home, I'm going to finish watching Andor and then I'm going to cancel Disney Plus. I don't think that was the last episode. I think there's like two more or something like that. Well, no. Tonight's episode 10, isn't it?

Oh, okay. I guess that's it. Yeah, I think maybe it's because I saw a bunch of stuff on the Twitter webs. So, look, I hope it goes to 12 or 14. They could just keep going as far as I'm concerned until we get to Rogue One. Good for me. I don't care.

That would be fine by me. Yeah. I like this show. Not surprised by this. It was only a matter of time. It's crazy to think that it's still losing money, but you got to put a lot of money into this to build it. So, they expect it might be profitable by next year. And we'll see. Okay. Okay.

Well, now that they got rid of, what's her name, Black Widow or whatnot, Scarlett Johansson. So, she's not sucking the juice out of the platform. It should be good. And a hat tip to Barrett for this one. And he says, just imagine the opportunity to sit through yet another boring Zoom meeting plus pay $10 for popcorn at the same time.

No, thank you. This is another attempt by theaters to pivot a little bit late. AMC Entertainment to open Zoom room auditoriums at theaters in 17 markets. So, you can, uh, it's serving businesses with in-person events and meetings. If you need somewhere for everybody to get in to sit and stare at their screens and talk to other people and have some crappy popcorn, you can now rent the theater space to do so.

Nobody wants to do a Zoom meeting in pants, much like the metaverse. So, why would you go someplace where you have to put on pants and pay money for popcorn? Be at home doing your Zoom meeting instead of going to a theater. Doing it for free. And paying for it. Yes. Yeah. It's a little bit of a stupid move, but there you go.

I don't quite get it. It'll probably make them a gazillion dollars and we're idiots. I'm sure it won't. But it's the new WeWork, I guess. Go to AMC. Apps and doodads. So, Brian, I've been on Brave for about a year now.

Mm-hmm. It's okay. I got, once you turn off all the crypto stuff, it works. It doesn't have those quirks that Vivaldi always had for me with the, you know, the location bar crap and the tab stuff. It was always crazy because I didn't know which update was going to break it or not, much like you and Bluetooth and iOS.

Yes. Long, long ago. I didn't know which update was going to break Vivaldi. So, I stuck with Brave, turned all that stuff off. Now, it's gotten even better. Or has it? They have a blog post called Blocking Annoying and Privacy Harming Cookie Content Consent Banners.

Mm-hmm. Okay? So, if you have the latest version of Brave, it will pop up a little thing. I said, would you like us to get rid of those? I'm like, okay, well, I've got a plug-in to do that, but I'll let you do it naturally and I can get rid of a plug-in. It's a resource, you know, hog. Well, I enabled it. Mm-hmm. Not once has it turned off any fucking cookie banner that I've ever fucking gotten.

Okay. Every site that I go to still has a fucking cookie banner. So, Brave, I think you may have been premature with your release is all I'm saying. That's all. Okay. Spotify has redesigned their Apple Watch app, so it feels less like an afterthought, they say.

Spotify is giving its Apple Watch users some love, adding UI and playback upgrades that more closely align with the familiar experience from larger screens. It's rolling out this week. It's got a beefed-up your library view with more in-depth music controls and the ability to download playlists without going back to your iPhone.

Now, I never use this on my phone. I have tried removing it from my phone because I actively find it annoying that the Spotify, like if I'm playing music on my Amazon Alexa's in the house through Spotify, it will, the controls will pop up on my watch.

I will not realize that. I will accidentally, because I wear it, I wear it, I guess, goofy style, where the, you know, the, the, the, the scroller is in on my wrist as opposed to out. So sometimes... Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Is it closer to your hand or closer to your elbow? Closer to my elbow.

Okay. No, that's proper style. That's not goofy style. That is proper style. Okay. Well, that's the way I wear it. I'm just saying. Sometimes when I bend my wrist back, it moves it and the volume goes up to 7 million without me realizing it. And that's very frustrating.

I've repeatedly tried to remove Spotify from my watch and it always comes back. That's what I want from your rollout, Spotify. I could care less about more features. Well, that's an Apple problem if you can't get it off your watch, because you should be able to go to your watch app on your phone and just remove it. That's what I did.

Yes, you should. But it does not, it does not... No, it does not. It does not acquiesce to your request? It does not. It keeps coming back like a wart. Oh, great. Great. Spotify, the STD of our age. Yes. And in a news article I should have been reading from the year 2000, Instagram on the web has been redesigned for larger screens.

Do they have an iPad version yet? Still no. That was my main point here. Earlier this year, they said that the iPad was not big enough to make a dedicated Instagram app a priority. Fuck you! Fuck you and your fucking face! How hard could this be?

I don't understand it. Well, because everybody's trying to build the metaverse. That's why. Oh, well. At least if you look at it on your desktop now, you can see nicer pictures and a different layout. Yay. We've been bumping the at the library section for like three weeks now.

I actually finished this book over a month ago and we were almost going to bump it again because Jason hasn't finished what he wanted to talk about. But at this point, I should probably just talk about it because I barely remember it anymore. I finished Eyes of the Void, the final architecture book number two by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

I had a very similar experience that I had to the first book, which was like, they're very long books. It took a really long time for me to get into it. But once I finally did, I really enjoyed the ride. There's a third book. I'm sure the experience will be exactly the same and it'll take me over a year to fucking read that book too.

I like the series. It's just they're really, they're really slow at the start. They're really slow at the start. I don't know why I just can't get into them. I keep trying and then finally something clicks and I really enjoy it. So I'm, I like the series. I really like the world he's built.

It's, it's great. So I'm looking forward to the third one and being done with it. And I really need some quick shitter sci-fi. All right. Well, sadly, you don't listen to books because Dennis Taylor of Bobiverse fame has a new audible original out called Roadkill, which I just started last night.

I got about, uh, like an hour into it and it's fucking awesome. It's awesome. So hopefully they'll put that out in, in a word form. So you can, he does have a non Bob Bobiverse book that is available in word form, uh, that I don't think I've read.

So I might check that out next. Yeah. His, his stuff is just so fun. I mean, he's, he's definitely the Christopher Moore of sci-fi. I think he's fun. Security. Welcome back to security hot with Dave Bittner.

Dave is the host of the cyber wire podcast. Co-host of the social engineering podcast, hacking humans with Joe Kerrigan. Dave is also the co-host of caveat with Ben Yellen. Get Ben Yellen on the horn where they discuss law and policy and surveillance and privacy and the, the new ish control loop where they discuss ICS and OT.

Hello, Dave. Hello. Hi there. So we made it through the election, right? Nothing and nothing happened. I mean, people got elected, but there was no cyber issues with the election. So yay for us. Very good. No cyber issues. And I think, uh, something worthy of note is that, uh, the people that lost the elections have gracefully conceded and not said that they've won and kept things going.

And I think that is a notable change from the last two elections. So yay. Overall, yeah, we'll see. I mean, I guess there's one or two that are still out there. Uh, but, uh, yeah, I mean, it, overall, it, it all seems to have gone pretty smoothly.

I haven't seen very many, uh, conspiracy theories making the round. Of course, who knows? Because I used to rely on Twitter for that information. And, uh, yeah, we, that was basically our entire news segment is, uh, how Twitter has turned into a flaming ball of fire.

Yeah. It's so funny too, cause I was listening to, uh, Jonathan Haidt on the pivot podcast this morning. And he's basically saying exactly what I was saying at the beginning of the show about how Instagram just made me feel like shit. And he's just like, yeah, it does that.

That's kind of what it's designed to do. And, you know, drop some facts and things like that. So, um, it, that, that segment on pivot is well worth the listen. I got to say, because Jonathan Haidt is pretty fucking smart. He's a smart dude. Yeah.

I've not listened to that yet. I'm a little behind on my pivot listening, so I will make it a, make a note of that. Yeah. I mean, that's why I had to get off of Facebook is that I just found it to, uh, to be an anxiety engine for me. And I just, especially with COVID and all that, I just didn't need that.

Ooh, anxiety engine. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think all of the socials really are right now. I don't find, uh, I no longer find the joy, uh, of any of it. And it is just, uh, it's, it's all doom scrolling. It doesn't matter which particular platform it is at the moment anymore.

So I'm making a note of anxiety engine. I should have bought the domain already for that show. Yes. Anxiety engine with Dave. Coming up next. Anxiety engine. Yeah. Leaf flowers. Yeah. Tanksaws.

So in positive, not anxiety inducing news, I did hear from my old friend in real life and my old Disney local, one of the guys that I used to run around the park with, uh, in my early teens and, uh, up until college time, Ross, who listens to the show. So thank you so much, Ross.

Uh, he got back to me and said, finally wrapped up last week's show. Magic Journeys was the 3d film that preceded Captain EO and he provided a link to the full film, which is, uh, has not aged well. I think it's safe to say. Does not have legs.

Magic Journeys. Yeah. Magic Journeys. The other thing I remember about Magic Journeys was when you were waiting to go into the theater, which was sponsored by Kodak. And I'm thinking about at Epcot, which is where I saw Magic Journeys. Um, they, there was a film, uh, about taking pictures because it was sponsored by Kodak.

Uh, and it went making memories, making memories, taking photos is making memories, capture little pieces of time, making them yours and making them mine. That's what I remember. So instead of making memories, Brian was kind of making mammaries, I'm guessing, back in the day.

Oh, God. I had a lot of fun at the park. Yeah. Okay. Could have been. I know you did. That's all you talk about. It's like banging tourists was, that's why Disney was the happiest place on earth for you. I get it now, now, it never, never got second base.

What is the number one? What is, what is the number? Yeah. What is the number one make out spot at Disneyland in your estimation? Uh, there were two very popular destinations. Uh, the haunted mansion ride was excellent. And then the people mover, which was a very slow carriage that went through and around the park and you were above everybody and nobody could see anything.

Oh, yes. The Wedway people mover, as, as, as you like to call it, the people maker. We called it the people maker. Yes. Okay. Mm-hmm. Huh. All right. I mean, haunted mansion I get. I would, I would, don't think I would have thought of the people mover. I guess at night is when you want to ride on that?

Well, during the day it was fine. You were up above everybody and then it went through the dark Tron tunnel. That was, that was the prime, uh, make a move spot. Oh, I see. Yeah. Because there is a spot. I, I, um, I will say that I did, I did have a little fun on the, uh, the haunted mansion tour one time and, uh, there was a, a very, um, quick pulling up of the pants when we got

to the part with the mirror and the ghosts and you could see the other people's carts. Yes. It was, uh, not only will that ghost follow you home, Jason, uh, they will all see you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. Yes. The ghost will follow you home and so will chlamydia. Yeah. Yeah. Let's just say the wind was a blowing. If you know what I'm saying. That was, uh, you know, let's just say we, we learned those rides and all the beats. That was a good day. Very quickly. Yes. I'll bet.

I'll bet. Yes. I was just an amateur. So based on our conversation last week, I went down a little bit of a Captain EO rabbit hole, uh, as I do. So I have a few bits to share. Uh, remember I said that it looked like some of the costumes were right out of Starlight Express.

Yes. Yes. Turns out same costume designer. Okay. So the costumes were right out of Starlight Express. He probably took them off. Yeah. He probably took them off the shelf. Um, so the other thing I did was I, there was a fascinating, uh, window into how Disney used to promote things because I'm guessing this is all back when they had the wonderful world of Disney on Sunday nights, there are two TV shows, two hour long TV shows promoting

this 17 minute long movie. One of them was the making of Captain EO, um, hosted by Whoopi Goldberg. Right. And which was fun to watch. Uh, but it also was a reminder that, cause you think about Whoopi Goldberg today on The View and she's kind of a, uh, uh, elder states person and, uh, a bit of a, you know, matronly presence.

But there was a time when, well, yeah, but, but she was very cool and, and that's what we're seeing in this making of thing. We're seeing the cool version of Whoopi Goldberg, which is a fun reminder that that was a big part of her persona back in the day.

Um, and then the other show is, um, they did a hour long special on the opening day of, of Captain EO where they had parades. They had all kinds of musical groups like Robert Palmer was playing there and, uh, Jefferson Starship.

But of course, who was not there? Who did not show up for either of these? Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson. So George Lucas is there. Angelica Houston is there. Francis Coppola is there. Michael Jackson is not there. And they said a few times throughout that, uh, Michael Jackson couldn't be here because he's busy making his album bad.

Yeah. Michael just didn't want to be seen in public. Yeah. It's like they didn't pay. Yeah. The check didn't clear. Let's just call it what it is. Another interesting tidbit I picked up when I was watching this making of thing is that there is actually a deleted scene in Captain EO in the making of, there's a scene where Angelica Houston, when she becomes the beautiful queen, she actually knights him.

She has like a crystal sword and he kneels down and she does the shoulder, shoulder thing with the sword. And that's not in the final movie. He kneels down, but then they cut that out and he's just walking away and singing and all that kind of stuff.

So interesting to see a little thing that ended up on the cutting room floor that's still in the making of video. Yeah. Well, that's, that is pretty interesting. I had, uh, I probably saw these back in the midst of time. I don't really recall either of them. It's interesting that Whoopi Goldberg was hosting stuff for Disney even back then.

I don't know if you've watched, uh, as I have basically every single thing on Disney plus that's a behind the scenes for Disney stuff. She's still hosting things. Uh, she does the, she did a whole like, uh, you know, Disneyland and Disney world at Christmas thing where she hosts and goes through and shows all the amazing Christmas decorations and foods that they do and all that sort of stuff.

So she is a long time tight with Disney type person. So, yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's a really good gig. I'm sure it is. You go probably go. It's Disney. Of course it's a great gig. Right. But I'm sure. Yes, exactly. I mean, you get to stay at the Grand Floridian.

You get the premium suite. They treat you very well. Oh, the Grand Floridian. I stayed there when I was a kid. Is that right? I stayed at the Grand Floridian for sure. I've got pictures of it. It was awesome. It was fantastic. We did the, uh, we did the camping one with, uh, with Chip and Dale. At the other end of the spectrum.

Yes. At the other end of the spectrum. You were fancy pants back then. We were like, we were. We were in glorified RVs, but at least Chip and Dale came around to do s'mores, s'mores every night. So, you know. Yeah. Did you guys ever do the, the speed boats? I guess at the Grand Floridian behind it, there was a lake and you could do this.

No, that was too rich for our blood. I kept getting, I kept getting, yeah, I kept getting yelled at by the, the, the lifeguard, the boat guy saying, you're getting too close. You got to stay a hundred feet away. And I'm like, I'm 11. I don't know what a hundred feet is. But yeah, those little speed boats.

And he's just like, just make sure you don't flip it because there's gators in here. He pointed at one. And I think that's why there's no more speed boats. Probably. Probably. You certainly can't go swimming in that, in that lagoon anymore. I think when the park originally opened, you could, but too many gators.

I remember from our very first family trip to Disney World when I was, I think, I think I was a freshman in high school and, or no, it might've been before that. Anyway, it was, it was the year for, it was within the first year of Epcot opening.

Right. And we were staying at what was then called the Hotel Royal Vista. But what I remember about it was they had a Michael Jackson suite. Oh, no way. The jokes write themselves. I know. Right. And evidently this is where Michael stayed when he was down there visiting the parks and it was a big palatial suite.

I didn't get to see it, but the hotel made great mention of it that, you know, congratulations on your choice of this great hotel, which is the place where Michael Jackson stays when he's here in Florida. So I just have that recollection. Your room is nothing like his. No, not even close.

Speaking of Michael Jackson, as I was going down this Captain EO thing, one of the things I did was I was listening to the album Bad because another part of me, which is in Captain EO, is also on the Bad album. And the week before that, I'd been listening to Thriller.

And I was thinking about those two albums. I want to run it by you guys. When you think about Bad versus Thriller, which do you think is the better album? For me. Which one had Billie Jean? Thriller. That's Thriller.

That's Thriller. Okay. I'm trying to place him. Go ahead, Brian. For me, it's Thriller hands down because by the time Bad had come out, I had discovered Heavy Metal and was no longer into Michael Jackson. Heavy Metal was quickly supplanted by Alternative Rock, but it was a very brief period.

But that marked my transition from I really like Michael Jackson and pop music is great and I listen to the radio and whatever's on Top 40 to, ooh, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard. And Michael Jackson was no longer cool. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. I get that. What about you, Jason? I don't know. Michael Jackson really kind of, I guess, I mean, I was a big fan of Thriller, learned to dance, wore parachute pants, but at the same time, I was wearing parachute pants and watching Michael Jackson at night, but my shirts and my hats were Ozzy, so I was in the transition

period because I'm a little older than Brian, like by a couple years, but I was definitely moving into Ozzy Osbourne after Michael Jackson at that point, because that was all about, you know, Bark at the Moon and Crazy Train and all that stuff. There's a great picture of me wearing parachute pants with an Ozzy hat and I think an Ozzy sweatshirt that I'll dig up for the show now.

Nice. Yeah. I mean, I also still have the picture. I have the picture of me and my parents the first time I went to Disney when I was like five. That's cool. Oh, wow. So I'll dig that one up too. So yeah, I definitely think, I mean, I remember Thriller very fondly, but by the time that Bad had come out, I think I was more into the Weird Al parodies of Michael Jackson than actually Michael Jackson himself.

Yes. Yes. Right. Right. Yeah. As I was listening to both of them now with the, you know, the whatever sensibilities I have these days, it struck me that I think Bad is probably objectively a better album in terms of just being more musically interesting.

You can tell that Michael Jackson is farther along on his own journey. I think it's a bolder album. Right. It's, it's epic. It's, it's practically cinematic. And you look at the music videos he made, you know, stuff like Smooth Criminal and, but I think it's similar to how I feel about Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back, which is that Star Wars is my favorite movie.

I think Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie. And I'm okay having those two be different things. And I think it's the same way for me with Bad and Thriller, where Thriller is my favorite Michael Jackson album. But I think Bad is actually the better album, the much more interesting album music.

Again, I will posit again my theory about all these sorts of things. And I've heard this theory espoused by many people. You have to be of a certain age to think that Goonies is a great movie. If you're not in that particular age range, Goonies is a flaming pile of shit.

I think it all comes down to exactly how old you were and what point you were at in your life when these things come out. And like I'm a bit younger, I don't think I did not see Star Wars in a theater ever. The first movie I saw in a theater, I remember seeing Star Wars somehow before Empire Strikes Back came out.

But Empire was the first Star Wars film I saw in a theater. So for me, I watched Star Wars. I understand it's part of the trilogy. Empire was the first I ever saw. And Return of the Jedi was like perfectly timed. I think I was like 14, maybe about to turn 15.

It came out near my birthday. My mom took me and like three of my friends out of school to go see it opening day at like the noon showing. And for me, like I will always go, Return of the Jedi, knowing all of its faults. And there are many in Return of the Jedi. It's that movie for me, right?

So I think it really is the timing and the experience that you had that makes that difference between being able to go, this is my favorite. I understand this is objectively better, but this is the one, right? Yeah. Okay. Well, your timing's off there because Return of the Jedi came out in 1983.

So I was 12, which means you were- Oh, I was only 10. Okay. Nine? 10. Yeah, nine or 10. Nine or 10. Okay. See, I remember myself being a little bit older, which is weird, right? Yeah, I was 13. Okay. Yeah, I was 10. So I was taken out of school as a 10-year-old with a couple friends to go see the movie.

How cool is that, right? Yeah, that's the best. Yeah, I was too. Yeah. I was totally- We shut everything down for Return. Yeah. No, I mean, I saw Star Wars in the back of my dad's 1971 Cadillac Eldorado, white Eldorado with red leather interior with the top down at a drive-in in Des Plaines, Illinois with my stepsister and his wife at the time, Rhonda.

I remember it like it was yesterday. Because I'm like, what are we doing out here? It's cold. Because the first movie came on and we were so bored. I don't even remember what the first movie was. But then Star Wars came on and it was just like, oh, shit. I mean, obviously, security is out the window.

So I have a very similar story to that. It wasn't quite as cold because I grew up in Southern California. But I remember my parents had a van and we'd gone to a drive-through and you opened up the back of the van and there was like shag carpeting that we laid on in the back of the van on this pedestal that you would never be able to get away with any of that.

There was no seatbelts. There was no nothing. Different time. And I remember laying there and we were there to see Raiders of the Lost Ark. And I was young. I was very young. And the movie before that was Time Bandits, which I now objectively realize, you know, Monty Python connection, all that sort of stuff.

Very cool. Time Bandits. Hated that because I was too young, didn't care, and like just had to sit through it and like, when is Raiders of the Lost Ark coming? And then, whoa, got to see that. Yeah. It's funny. I'm 50 years old and I still think everybody tells me that Time Bandits is a great movie and I still fucking hate it.

I do not like Time Bandits. I'm sorry. My Star Wars story was I was over my friend Jason Mitchell's house who lived up the street from me and he was a regular, you know, just buddies. We'd get together and, you know, go play at each other's houses. So, I was seven at the time, I believe, seven or eight.

And his mom said, oh, we're going to see this movie Star Wars today. Would you like to come with us? And I was like, eh. Because I did not like Star Trek. So, you know, Star Trek was on TV at the time and I was too young to really appreciate.

I think for a seven-year-old, Star Trek was a little chatty. Yeah. Yeah. And I did not appreciate it. So, I was like, eh, okay. Oh, my. Yeah. All right. I'll go see Star Wars. And the thing I remember is Jason's mom had to call my mom on the phone and make sure it was okay because it was my first PG-rated movie.

Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah. And we went to see it at Westview Cinemas, which if you see the movie Tin Men, Westview Cinemas is in that movie. And... That was a great movie, Tin Men. Yeah. That was a fantastic movie. Yeah. So, we saw it at Westview Cinemas in 70 millimeter and it just, well, here I am today.

Obviously, it had an impact. Yeah. Do you think? We don't even talk about security anymore when this stuff is around. Yeah. Just a little bit. No, that's it. Just a little bit. This literally is shooting the shit with Dave. We're just going to change the name of the segment. Forget it. That's fine.

I'm okay with that. Yeah. I'm all right. I think we all are. There's enough bad news. We don't need to do security. There you go. Yeah. No. Too funny. Well, thanks for all these Captain EO links. I'm going to... I looked at some of the dance rehearsals and they were very fun. They are fun.

Yeah. Check out the rest of them for sure. It is. It's very interesting to watch and there are things where you can see kind of what a weirdo Michael Michael Jackson was. The audition process they went through was odd and they probably couldn't do today, but I don't know.

Who knows? But, you know, it's a strange thing. And I'll just mention this because they really have gone out of their way to trawl the archives and put just about everything that's ever been made up on Disney Plus, but this stuff, not up there.

And is it because of the weirdness Michael Jackson aspect? Not just, you know, obviously the allegations that came later, but just that even he was very strange at the time. Do they... Are they trying to... I hate to use this phrase, whitewash that out of their history?

Because this is... Of all the things, like this stuff you'd think would be up there too, but it's not. Yeah, that's interesting. Are they... Yeah. I wonder, are they saving Captain EO to just to bring it back every now and then because of how much people love it?

Reboot. I don't know. It is of its time. You know, it is of its time. Yeah. It's a nice little time capsule. Yeah. No, I mean, look, I don't have the hatred for MJ that a lot of people do because I still blame the parents.

But, and I mean, Michael's parents and the kid's parents, go watch those. Look at it through the lens of, oh, the parents were to blame and you might have come out with a different reality. But I think he was still talented, so I can still watch him and still separate the artist from the man.

Yeah. And I still enjoy Michael Jackson's music. I still enjoy the performances that he made. Yeah. The other stuff, he's dead. He can't defend himself. So I'm not even going to go down that road. Right. Fair enough. But no, this stuff is just fun to get caught up on for sure.

Yeah. I do have one bit of security thing that I wanted to just run past you guys. Okay. They're firing everybody at Twitter. All the security people are leaving, all of this other stuff. And everybody's like, oh, delete your tweets, cancel your account, blah, blah, blah. Tweet delete is great.

We use it all the time. I use it all the time. Gets rid of the cruft, you know, your back tweets. It does not delete your DMs. So if there is a security breach and people's DMs are exposed, just be prepared for that.

And maybe go back through and prune manually some of your DMs that might be problematic in the future is all I'm saying, because this entire site might be asked to the wind for hackers any second. Well, look. Because there's nobody home. Nobody's driving the ship anymore.

I think that's a good idea across all social media. I actually, I use tweet delete as well. I think it just keeps the hundred latest tweets I've ever done and everything else has been nuked. I've never really done much discussion. Like I don't do a lot of DMing on any platform, but there has been some and there's no point in it being there.

There's nothing I was worried about if it went out to the wind, but I went in and cleaned it all out anyways. I did that with Facebook Messenger. I did that with Twitter DMs. I did that with Instagram DMs. I didn't have a ton, so it was really easy for me, but there was nothing like worth keeping there anyways.

And I was like, I don't trust any of these companies. So I just went through and nuked them all. Do you think it makes a difference? Yeah, I mean, look, John McAfee would still be alive if he didn't, if he cleaned his DMs. Do you think it makes a difference? In other words, deleting your DMs, are they really gone?

Probably not, but I think it's out. Like if Mark Zuckerberg wanted to target me personally, I'm sure he could get to all my deleted messages that I've deleted. But in terms of like somebody just getting in on a hack based level, I think they would see the visibility set to zero as well, right?

Right, right. Right, because they're coming in from the street, you know, if you're coming in from the back end, that shit's still going to be there forever. So, you know, you can't, you can't engineer around that. I'm just talking about people that are able to either social engineer or just password guess or whatever to get into your account, you know, just, just standard regular hackers.

But also on the back end, you never know, but you shouldn't, you shouldn't be doing nefarious shit on DMs anyway. You didn't even need to add on DMs. You could have just said you shouldn't be doing nefarious shit, but you know. Well, what the fucking fun is that?

It's the old thing. Don't put anything in an email that you wouldn't put on a postcard. And the same thing goes for DMs. Yeah. It's the world we live in now. Well, on that bombshell. Yeah. I'm going to moonwalk my way out of here. There you go. Absolutely. All right, guys.

Good catching up. I'll talk to you next time. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got Eric with a K. Nice to meet you, Eric. Thanks for joining up. Yes. Thank you. And over at PayPal, we've got David, Benjamin, Ralph, Mark, and Jason, who sent us 300 bucks.

What? Yep. And a little note that came with that. My people, I'm old, grumpy, and a geek, too. Hoping this keeps the lights on for a while longer. To Brian, every time you pronounce Osaka, you say it like the Japanese city Osaka. It should be Asuka. But I still love the show.

All right. Well, you know, I've only really read it except for the brief Rosanna, Rosario, Dawson character. I tried to, I started to watch, I started to watch that series on Disney Plus since I'm a subscriber. I got about six minutes in and I'm just like, no, I couldn't do it.

It's too, too, no, no. The animated stuff? Yeah. The new one? The Tales of the Jedi? I liked it. It was fine. Okay. Yeah. He said, let's see, where was I? Oh, yeah. Any chance. Any chance you can tell? Yeah. Have you guys hooked up with Dave or why Jason left the Jordan Harbinger show after helping build the show up?

Either way, I'm enjoying the show and bought my Facebook stock on this downslide. Morals be damned. You guys rock. Jason. Well, thank you for the $300, Jason. We got hooked up with Dave because he wrote us and said, hey, do you guys want to do a co-promotion? That was it.

That's right. Yeah. That was from the old days. He's stuck with us ever since. Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. He's stuck with us. Yeah. They just started the Cyber Wire and we liked what they were doing. And Dave is just a cool guy. He loves musical theater, as we know. So, this is before he became a furry.

That was partially our fault. Definitely. It might have been 100% our fault. I left the Jordan Harbinger show because I got fired. So, that'll clear that up. Yeah. Next up. That does solve it. Yep. Over at Stripe, we've got Anne, Ashley, Linda, Jeff, and Andrew.

Oh, thank you all so much. Yes. Thank everybody for giving us money because we need it. And I would like to give a huge shout out to our clan over at Clash Royale because this morning I got up, of course, went to the shitter, which one does, and popped open the app so I could get my matches in for the day.

And I got the six years on Clash badge. And then I think Slander from the clan was just like, how long have you been playing? I came in late. And I'm like, the clan was started the day that I joined Clash Royale.

So, today is the six-year anniversary of GOG.showClan on Clash Royale. And we just kicked Trump's ass last week. So, fuck yeah. It's fun. Congratulations. I was happy to be a part of it for a week.

Yeah. I would also like to point out that the reason I started this was because Max Temkin from Cards Against Humanity was playing Clash Royale. And I heard him on that podcast he was doing with Merlin Mann. About, I don't know, it might have been six to eight months later, he got canceled for being very rapey.

And nobody's seen him since. So, who knows whatever happened to Max. But we still live on on Clash Royale without rape. It's great. It is great. So, that's a good way to go. Good way to live. I agree. Yep. And just anybody who's been following me on socials, my podcast with Deshaun Wesley from the hit show Legendary on HBO Max.

We just put out the first episode yesterday. So, you can go to deshaun.show. That's D-A-S-H-A-U-N dot show. Check out the first episode. Subscribe. Like. All that stuff. And if anybody ever gives me any fucking shit about pronouns or trans rights or homosexual rights or any of that shit ever again, go fuck yourself because these are some of my best friends.

So, kiss my ass. That's all I got to say. Sold in typical Jason style. Fuck yeah. Do you know how much shit I took at the beginning of this show for that shit? Now I'm hanging out with these people that are some of my best friends. So, fuck off. That just shows that you can learn and grow, Jason.

You can. Absolutely. I agree. I didn't understand pronouns until I had to actually be around people that needed me to respect their pronouns. And now I do. Well, now you understand. You learn by experience. That's right. You shouldn't necessarily tell people to go fuck themselves when you were wrong, but that's okay.

Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. Well, no. Fuck him anyway. I don't care. I'm Jason DeFillippo. Fuck you. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoyed the show, visit GOG.showslashdonate to help kids keep the lights on. Jason DeFillippo and fuck you. Well, I do have fucko.com still, so I can do that.

You can also help us out by sharing the show with your friends and enemies. It's easy and absolutely free. More enemies for me probably than you. Show notes for this episode are at GOG.showslash578. From there, you can find links to everything we talked about in this episode, as well as links to our swag and Discord channel if you want to buy some stuff or chat with us and other show fans.

You can also head over to GOG.showslashcontact 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.showslashreview and toss us a snarky review and preferably five stars. Stay grumpy.

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