579: Something Elon This Way Comes

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. And I've got the fever for the flavor of an incredibly corrupt and disturbing World Cup built on the backs of slave labor that starts on Sunday. Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Oh, there's so many disturbing things about this, but it's still, it's the World Cup. It's once every four years. It's my favorite sporting event. And speaking of which, Eric, over on our Discord, set up a GOG pool for the World Cup.

So head on over there if you want to join up. Okay. It's free for a limited number of users, so I'm not going to put the link in the show notes. You've got to work for it. Go sign up. Yeah. And we have breaking Twitter news, I think. Now, here's the thing.

You were a little bit busy, so we're a little bit late starting, and I found myself just kind of sitting around and loaded up the Twitter bot, as it were. Yeah. According to reports on Twitter, and this is what Twitter is good for, breaking news, so one would assume, none of this has made the mainstream media yet as it is.

But all over Twitter, RIP Twitter is trending. Apparently, they have shut down all the, you cannot get into any Twitter location. Your key cards will no longer work. They've all been turned off. What?

75% of the 3,700 employees left have basically decided to, did not respond to the, are you hardcore or not, are you in or not emails. So, one assumes they are quitting. There are rampant reports of entire teams, engineering teams basically resigning en masse right now.

This is all happening on Twitter. Again, there's no. Twitter down. There is yet, there is no real report on anywhere. This is happening in real time. I've been on Twitter, watching Twitter theoretically implode. There may not be a Twitter tomorrow morning at this point.

Oh, my God. Okay. The best deep fake I've ever seen, I'm going to put in our show notes right now. So, I don't know if you remember Fire Girl, who was popularized on the magazine that I worked on called JPEG Magazine, and then she ended up selling it as an NFT.

I'm going to put this in the show notes right now because this is the best image I've ever seen of Twitter breaking down, even though I think, oh, my God. Come on. There we go.

There we go. Best deep fake ever. There we go. Still unloading for me. There it is. There it is. That seems to be the case at the moment. Again, you know, it's only, it's breaking on Twitter, but again, that's what Twitter is good for, breaking news. Twitter is breaking, is the breaking news on Twitter.

Yeah, I mean, I've been through this cycle so many times, but now it can kind of be real, I guess. This is feeling real, and all the Twitter news that we have in our show notes so far are probably vastly out of date at this point. So, it does not look good. We'll see.

I love that apparently Twitter is one of the big ones. That actually has more tweets than RIP Twitter. So, oh, wait, Twitter HQ has more. Oh, man. Because everybody's locked out, right? Like, nobody can get into their offices now. Everybody's locked out.

Only the sync is left. Oh, my God. This is, this is, this is another one. So, we'll see. I mean, it's, I mean, we've seen the slow death of social media before. We have yet to see a complete crash and burn, and I think we're watching that now.

I mean, even Elo is still around. Oh, my God. And you know what? I can't buy a Twitter t-shirt, but I can buy an Elo t-shirt. Yes. So, they actually have a viable business model. Twitter.com might point to a spread shirt tomorrow. We'll see. Oh, Jesus.

I mean, I'm sure it's not going to be gone tomorrow, but this is, this is all the hallmarks of a site. Shitting out. Like, it's done. Right? Like, it's done. I don't know. I don't know, Brian. I don't want to prematurely call the election. You know?

I don't want to prematurely call the election, but I kind of do. I know. I kind of do. I was a little, like, I was a little, like, hoping that you were going to say, ah, you're having too much fun with your buddy. Let's, let's just record tomorrow because I was just watching the train wreck and enjoying it in real time. But here we are.

So, as of right now, it's not looking good for Twitter. By the time this episode comes out, we will see if I'll be scheduling any tweets to promote it or not. Well, you know what? We're going to save 150 bucks a year on Buffer, except it just fucking renewed. So, God damn it.

I know. Well, we still need to post on Instagram and Facebook. Although, why we post on Facebook is beyond me. Do we? Yeah. Fuck Facebook. And honestly, you can't post links on Instagram. Yeah. It's all useless. It's all useless. I'm just, I spin my wheels. Anyways, let's move on.

Let's move on. Black Friday spam. We've covered this for 10 years now. And you're the first one to bring it up. And I started to take notice. And this year, I have definitely started to take notice because I have about 250 emails a day from every email list that I've ever signed up for.

And removed yourself from. Yes. It's like, hey, it's Black Friday, baby. You want a discount? And I'm just like, no! No! No! I guarantee you, all these companies, when you unsubscribe from your list, you're removed from their day-to-day mailings, but they have a black box, Black Friday email list, which is every person that's ever, ever signed up for their stuff, plus all the emails they've ever bought, ever.

And they just, pfft, to everyone. I know. I was going to save this for later in the show, but for people who have companies who want to understand why you should never, ever give a Black Friday discount, my first audio book that I narrated is now on Audible, and it's called Rethinking Black Friday, where the category pirates literally break down why you should not ever have a sale on Black Friday, because

it was designed for people who have too much fucking stock that they need to get rid of, like TVs or whatever. It's $3.99, I read it, so you know it has a dulcet tone of me, but I'm just excited that Black Friday's coming, and I got my first book on Audible, Brian!

Congratulations, actually. That's a big milestone. I'm very proud of you. I'm so excited. I'm so excited. I listen to it, and I sound like shit. I hate it. I fucking hate it. Everybody hates their own voice, Jason. Oh, God, I have to listen to it all day, and I have to edit it every day.

In my own dark black box of a room. I do think maybe I died when I had the stroke, and this is fucking hell. This is what this is. But the content in this audiobook is awesome. If you have any kind of business that wants to do a Black Friday sale, you're a fucking idiot.

You're a fucking idiot. But if you are going to have one, I will take note. I went to go get my B12 shot today at my cryo clinic, and they're like, we're having a Black Friday, so you can get 20% off your shots. I'm like, well, okay. Can I have that today?

Because I just got a shot, and there's no reason that you should give me 20% off when I come in a week and one day from now. But no. No. Okay. Well, speaking of shots, I had my flu shot today, so let's run through this quickly because I can tell I'm fading. Oh, shit. You got a countdown.

You got a countdown over your head. I'm on a countdown here, Jason. Let's go. Let's go. So a lot of people were asking and somewhat surprised why we didn't cover the big crypto meltdown with the latest exchange, FTX. Because everybody did. Well, also, everybody did, and also, I feel like we've covered it for nine years.

We've told you enough. We've told you. From day one. From day one, we said this is a fucking scam. These exchanges are unregulated. How many times have we already seen people just disappear and go off to Brazil or South America anywhere with all the money?

Yep. It's all a fucking joke, and oh, gee, gee, shocking. The biggest one collapsed. The second biggest one collapsed, too. If you still have money in Coinbase, I do. Again, get rid of it now. Get rid of it now while you still can. If you have crypto anywhere in any exchange, take it out now.

Yeah. But let's talk about the unforeseen consequences. Oh, do we get to talk about the Winklevai in this one? No, no. This is just Coachella. Oh, fucking hippies with cultural appropriation. Okay, next. Let's go. What do you got? I went to Coachella the first 10 years.

It was absolutely awesome. Well, that was pre-cultural appropriation. Yes, it was. Yes, it was. Because I know you. I know that you would never do that. Yes. I would not, except for the time I had dreads. You did have dreads. I forgot about that. So did Trent Reznor.

Anyways. It was a different time. It was a different time. Anyways. So I just thought this was funny. And this is our little bit of touching on the FTX crypto collapse and how it reaches out into people that didn't necessarily want to buy crypto. They just wanted lifetime passes to Coachella.

In February, Coachella announced an auction of 10 lifetime passes and accompanying luxury packages in the form of NFTs. Instead of just purchasing one and getting a card, of course, it was an NFT. Unfortunately, they chose to hold them in FTX.

Now those Coachella keys are in limbo amid the ongoing destabilization of the crypto market. The fallout is part of the collapse of the FT, and let me finish the story, FTX Cryptocurrency Exchange, which filed for bankruptcy on Friday.

Those who had stored their NFTs within the FTX exchange no longer have access to them as a result of the platform shuttering. One Coachella keyholder told Billboard they had successfully withdrawn their NFT from the FTX exchange before its bankruptcy, but it did not appear to be functional in their personal wallet because it was still tied to the NFT or FTX account.

In addition to the 10 lifetime passes, which, by the way, amounted to nearly $1.5 million in sales for those 10 passes, the festival had partnered with FTX for a free NFT promotion that granted on-site perks to any attendee with the exchange's app.

Will the app be available on your phone the next Coachella? No! You will not! No! The festival sold other NFTs at significantly lower prices, which attendees could redeem for photo books and individual photo prints. Yep. Questions, Jason?

Brian, I have a very specific, simple question. About NFTs. Yes. Aren't they supposed to be immutable and on the blockchain where everybody can see them? Is that not the point of the NFT?

Tell me if I'm wrong. Tell me if I'm wrong. That would be in the press releases. So. Mm-hmm. What the fuck? Well, Jason, you see, it's what we all call bullshit. It is bullshit.

It is bullshit. We have said from day fucking one that this is bullshit. And now, I know, every time I feel like John Oliver with the fucking button saying, we got him. We got him this time. We got him. This time we got him. No, we don't.

Because there are still stupid fucking people out there that are still going to be buying this shit and doing this shit. And it just drives me fucking crazy. And I don't remember if it's a real quote or not or if we – I can never remember. We go around and round about this all the time. We're old. We don't remember real things.

It's the PT Barnum thing. There's a fucking crypto bro born every minute. Yeah, there's a sucker born every minute. Yeah, it's a crypto bro born every minute. That was an actual PT Barnum quote, I believe. But I just had an actual conversation with my friend. We were talking about Al-Anon and Non-Anon and all that stuff.

And we were talking about the definition of insanity quote. And so we don't know where the actual – where it actually came from for that. But yeah. Well, if only there were a Twitter archive for PT Barnum's tweet about it.

But unfortunately, that's apparently gone now too. Oh my god. I can't believe this. This is just – is it really an NFT if it's just stuck in one exchange? Because the whole point of the NFT was that it was on the Ethereum blockchain with a smart contract.

Because, you know, contracts are smart. Code is law. Remember, Brian, they say code is law. But, Jason, code can disappear. Just like – Really? Just like Hulk Hogan's porn. In the news.

I'm not entirely sure what to do with all these stories I put in here now because they all seem so irrelevant at this point. Elon Musk says Twitter Blue verification is coming back November 29th. We don't know if there's going to be a Twitter tomorrow. We don't know if there's going to be a November 29th, according to Elon.

Who the fuck knows? Anyways. It's a story. Yeah. I don't know if it's relevant anymore. I did highlight one particular line, which probably tells us which direction this is going. We've reached out to Twitter for more information, but the company no longer has a communications team.

Boom. Done. Okay. By the way, what do most companies use Twitter for? Their communications team. Communications. Twitter itself no longer has a communications team. That is the point of Twitter. It is about the global whatever's town square.

The next story I had in here, which is now also useless. Twitter fired employees who publicly called out Elon Musk. Well, now all the employees are basically firing Elon Musk and saying, we're not fucking working for you anymore. So who gives a shit? That story is useless.

Next. If you could actually see me right now, I'd be throwing cards in the air like Johnny Carson back in the day. Next story I had in here, Elon Musk gave employees two days to commit to hardcore Twitter or lose their jobs. Again, didn't get fired. They quit. It's funny because I did have a story that I did put in here about SpaceX employees saying the same thing and who are suing him now for labor practices.

So I think that Elon Musk is having a Kevin Spacey moment at this point. This is not good for – yeah. It's just he like leaned hard into hustle culture and we're at a point in the world where after COVID, after everything, after recessions, after bad news, after FTX, everybody is like, fuck hustle culture.

I want to be able to afford bread and milk. I think the bullshit is coming home to roost because you look at Elon's dad. Well, he's not going to be the – Let's not start that report. No, no, no, no, no. He's – well, hey, maybe we can revive the GOG curse.

Hey. Okay. So FTX gone. Yep. Twitter functionally probably – Although FTX is not technically gone. It's got a new CEO who's been saying, I can't believe this happened and I'm – fuck you.

No, no, no. That fucking – look, I've listened to probably 20 hours of analysis on FTX this week. They're dead. They're done. There's no way to save that because it was built on a house of sand with an asset that did not exist.

It was Monopoly money, and it wasn't even Monopoly money. This is – You'd be better off with Monopoly cards from McDonald's. Let's be honest. Well, yeah, because you could at least get fries, you know? Yeah, exactly. No, this is – I think this is the end.

Well, no, I can't say that because – Crypto, we're growing every minute. I know. I can't say it's the end of bullshit. But look, the Winklevire fucked. This guy's fucked. The FTX guy's fucked. Elon is digging his own grave every second with every word that comes out of his mouth and every action that he does.

Crypto is just tanking and – oh, it is. I'm sorry. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Brian, I have one thing to say. Yeah. After nine years, nine and a half years, almost ten years of doing this show, I just want to say it's fucking glorious.

And I am warming myself by the fire of the death of the assholes. You are having your fight club moment standing in the broken down skyscraper watching the banks burn. The pixies are fucking playing right now. Oh, the pixies are fucking playing.

It's beautiful for me. The one thing I will say is Elon had to testify in a Delaware court about something or other. I can't remember. Somebody was suing him and blah, blah, blah. And he was talking about the Twitter thing, and he said he only intended to be there a short while, and he would actually hire a CEO.

The one thing that Elon can do to save himself right now, hire a fucking CEO for the rest of your companies. Let Twitter burn. I don't give a shit, but get the fuck out. Oh, he's going to take down SpaceX and Tesla with him if he doesn't.

If he doesn't. If he doesn't. Exactly. Hire competent CEOs. Sit on the board. Do whatever the fuck. Have more babies. Bring sinks into other companies. Do whatever the fuck you want to do. Stop running shit. Because you're horrible at it, and we're over your shit.

No, he needs to retire, is what he needs to do. He needs to take whatever money he has left. Be like Tom from MySpace. Yes. He's happy. Yes. Yes. Just go fuck your brains out and make weird name to babies for the rest of your life.

All right. So let's move on here. Amazon is reportedly planning sweeping layoffs that could affect thousands of employees. You skipped over my story. Oh, did I? Sorry. Shit. Sorry. Oh, I thought we talked about FTX. No, it's FTX suing Tom Brady and Steph Curry.

It's fine. It's fine. Let's move on because it's way more interesting to talk about somebody else who's going to fucking die in a fire anyway. Amazon is reportedly planning to cut approximately 10,000 corporate employees with its staff at its consumer-facing devices division, among those most likely to be affected by the move.

Conveniently, there are positions available in the warehouses for all of them. Of course. Yes. That's where they need people. We need pickers, everybody. Wait, wait, wait. Until the robots come on. So you know what you're going to be? You're going to be a robot wheel greaser because they're going to be the pickers pretty soon.

So the company has seen growth slow due to a combination of mounting costs and the return of in-person shopping. The company reportedly recently posted a $2 billion loss and froze hiring at its corporate offices. There you go. Yep. The next big article I saw, the end of Silicon Valley's 20-year boom over at Slate.

That's a great article. It's really worth a read. I'll just read a couple of bits from it. I suspect this reflects a significant change in the economics of the sector. For the last 20 years, Silicon Valley has had the wind at its back thanks to a rapid adoption of new technologies like the internet and smartphones. As a result, the industry fared better than the broader economy during and after the 2008 recession.

But the internet is maturing. And as a result, big tech companies don't have the same growth potential today. And this is what you and I always talk about, Jason. Everything in the stock market is based on growth not doing well. You can do well without growing. You can be a fantastically successful company without increasing your bottom line all the time.

But that is not the way the game is played. And that is now coming to fucking bite tech on the ass. You know, it's really annoying. These companies are fine. Yeah, it's annoying. It's like they came up with a term that they called lifestyle businesses for this.

That's what I ran for a while. Yeah. And you know what? They're fantastic. If a company is making money and everybody gets paid and everybody gets the service they want, why do you need to keep incessantly growing? You don't.

You have a thing that works. Stop this shit. You can pay all your employees. You're living a good life. Yeah. Everything is working just fine. You should be rewarded for that. I know. That's the shit that drives me crazy. I'm trying to build a lifestyle business here.

I don't want to take over the world. I don't want to have podcast studios in every fucking mall in the country. I want to have a place where I can work. And you pay all your bills and live a nice life. And pays the bills for my employees. Yep, exactly. Because unfortunately, they're the only people that are getting paid nowadays besides me because I'm not getting paid.

So I want that kind of business. That's what I'm looking for. And I don't think that that should be demonized at all. But it is. That's not the way that works. And we've talked about all this as well. It also means the phenomenal deals that tech companies like Uber and DoorDash have offered to consumers are unlikely to come back.

Again, as we've been talking about for the entirety of this podcast, is that these companies were offering unsustainable rates below market values to drive everybody else out of business so they could keep growing. They were unsustainable.

And now all of that shit is coming crashing down. And guess what? All those companies that we could have used as a backup, they're out of fucking business. You know, it's like nobody fucking paid attention to Home Grocer and Webvan and Pets.com and all that stupid shit that we all went through.

Except this time, things got even more consolidated than last time around, Jason. That's the real problem. Yeah, they did. The real problem is these companies got so fucking big, they drove everyone else out of business. Everything. It's all gone.

Here's the great part about this, though. With the implosion of all that shit and, you know, a looming recession and all of this shit, it is the best time to start a business. Yes. Start a business. 100%. So, if you need a podcast, come to my place because I got a business and I need customers.

Yeah. You won't find them on Twitter, though. No, I won't because, yep. Fuckin' Elon. Fuckin' Elon.

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I was a big fan of the mole. I remember. And I talked about it on the show. The Anderson Cooper mole, the first two seasons, they were fantastic. Then the Gulf War hit and then he went off to be, you know, a war correspondent. CNN star. Yeah, because his brother died and he needed to go do the combat shit and all that.

Whatever. Hey, I like Anderson Cooper a lot. I love Anderson Cooper. Jesus, if I was gay, he would be my crush. Hands down. He is a handsome man. But, and he was the best, I thought he was the best host that could ever be of the mole. Until now.

We now have the mole 2022. We could not stop watching this. The woman that they got to be the host is A, adorable, B, snarky, C, incredibly smart, and D, just fucking fun.

By the way, thanks for not making that a clickable link. So now I'm having to type it. Oh, well, yeah. See who this woman is. I'll get, I'll get to that. I'll fix that before the show notes go. Well, thanks. That's really, that helps, helps me out a lot right now. I don't care about you. I don't know if you've noticed that.

You don't care about me. I don't care about you. Yeah, we just get, we get through this. Oh, she is cute. I told you. Yeah. Asian, got the little bunny teeth, you know. So my type. Yeah. She's got no ass, though. She needs to work on that. But little squats will fix that.

This is coming from a guy who has worked on his ass so he can have one for four months. So I know where from I speak. Anyway, this version of the mole is so well produced and well edited that you have no idea what's going on until the, eh.

I figured it out about three episodes before the end. But the winner was a total shocker. I loved it. I loved every second of it. We watched it in three days because we were just hooked. And, yeah, you could do worse than watching the new mole.

Okay. I am watching with my wife The Crown Season 5 because we've watched all of The Crown so far. Season 5 is. Oh, damning with faint praise. No praise, actually.

No praise, really. It's weird. It feels different. It's the cinematography is different. I mean, obviously, they're moving through time. I get that. But they've – I don't know how to explain it.

I guess the best way to explain it is what they've done with Prince Charles. Now, Prince Charles has – at the beginning, they – Did they whitewash him? James Bonded him. They sexy – they glowed him up, Jason. It's Prince Charles. There's no way to glow him up. He's a fucking brick.

The Crown Season 5 is fucking James Bond Prince Charles. They cast this handsome man like with charisma and personality and I can't explain it. And the other thing that they did is they've – we all know that the Queen's husband – I can't even remember his name right now because I'm not an Anglophile in that sense.

I only like music. And he's dead. Who cares? And he's dead. But he was a dick. He was a fucking asshole. They've made him a nice doddering old man. It's like they're whitewashing these characters and making the males that are – we know are actually like fucking kind of dicks.

I don't know if we can say whitewashing though because I was thinking about that. I'm like – We can't say that. That's like hyperwashing them or something. I don't know what they're doing. It just feels weird. Yeah. I don't – it doesn't feel – it doesn't feel true to the characters as they've portrayed them so far.

And then all of a sudden they're just doing this massive turnaround and like making them likable when they're not. No, they're not. It's fucking weird. So I don't know. Okay. My wife is like in a hurry for me to get down so we can watch the last episode and just be done with it. So we'll see.

Okay. Okay. I have some Netflix news here which they've – because they want to make more money, they finally got off their asses and did some engineering. So instead of being able to – instead of only having the option to log out of all devices, you can now see a list of all the devices like every other fucking media company has had forever.

And you can log them out individually so you can kick your free loafer, ex-boyfriend or girlfriend off your account. Yay. Good job. Okay. Whatever. Whatever. I still – I just pay for the people that are on my account. It's easier that way. Yeah. I am up to date with the peripheral.

Me too. I was so mad last night because I got a notification on my watch that there was a new episode of Andor. And then another – I got another alert that said that there was another episode available and I thought it said that the peripheral was out. And then I was just – I got into bed and I went to watch it and it was like, no, new episodes on Fridays.

And I'm like, fuck you. I was so mad. I love this show so much. It is so good. I do like it. And I guess we can talk a little bit about the – about Andor here too because we know Dave hasn't caught up yet. Yeah. My – I have some – I have opposite arcs with my experience with the peripheral and Andor.

Okay. Originally, did not care for Andor. As it's gone along, I like it more and more and more. Originally, the peripheral was unbelievable. As it's gone along, I'm getting less and less interested. It's not bad, mind you.

It's not bad. But I thought it was a much stronger start and it's petering out near the end. I don't know if it's petering out. It was definitely like a middling of the season episode where they don't try that hard because they know they don't have to. Probably for budgetary constraints.

But I enjoyed this episode immensely. And I thought Andor's last episode was kind of lame until the last three minutes where I was just like, holy fucking shit. Then I'm just like, you fucking go, girl.

That was 100% a setup for the finale, right? Yeah, totally. I can't – actually, I can wait because I don't want there to be a finale. They could just keep doing this every week. I love it. I love it. Hey, at least we got 12 episodes, right? Yeah. We thought we weren't, so.

Yeah. You know what? There's a case to be made for 12 episodes at least. I don't want the 23. I don't want the 23 like old school Star Trek where there's all the filler episodes. But 10 is not enough. Yeah, but 12 is good. Yeah, 10 is not enough. Yeah, yeah. No, take note, Star Trek Brave New Worlds.

12 is good. We like that. Yeah. We like that a lot. It's a good number. But yeah, no, Andor, there were a little bit of slow parts and blah, blah, blah. But yeah, that last couple minutes, fucking worth it. Totally fucking worth it.

At the library. Brian, I was listening to LeVar Burton's podcast this week. And I made a comment on his post when he talked about the episode. And I'm like, man, that was a messed up episode, especially right before I went to bed.

But I loved it. And the guy who wrote the episode actually wrote back and said, well, thank you very much. And I thought that was pretty cool. So. Did you happen to do that on Twitter? I did. Oh, yeah. Because those kind of interactions probably won't be able to have anymore.

We're gone. They're gone. They're done. They're done. I'm going to have to write him a letter now to get a stamp. Fucking stamps. So he was just like, thank you very much. And I looked at his name because I didn't know who the fuck wrote it. I'm not going to listen to the name of an author when I'm listening to a podcast.

So I picked it up and went to Audible and typed it in. And turns out the Metatropolis series is mostly this guy who wrote that story. I can't remember his name right now. And I'm too tired and had too long of a day to go look it up.

But maybe it'll be in the show notes when I get to it tomorrow. But in doing that, I found out that my Audible anniversary is 11-21-2022. I mean, sorry, 2002, which is Monday, this upcoming Monday.

It will be 20 years since I bought my first book on Audible. I'm sorry, but that is fucked up. Audible feels like it's been around for like 10 minutes. We old. I'm sorry. We old.

And of course, I looked it up. And my first two books were Snow Glass Apples from Neil Gaiman and Neil Gaiman's Murder Mysteries. That's, that's, yeah, on point, on point. Totally. But 20 years, I've been listening to Audible and I've got nine, over about 900 books in my library.

20 years, 900 books, a little less than I would have liked. It should have been a thousand because I do like to read 50 books a year, but I can't do that anymore. You've read, you've actually read, read some books. So that's probably up to a thousand. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's getting there.

And now I'm an actual Audible narrator. So before my 20th anniversary, I'm pretty happy that I'm a fucking Audible narrator. I'm just saying. It's just, it's just, it's cool. It's really cool. And I'm sure I will try and never go and read my reviews because I'm sure they're going to be terrible because I'm not very good at it.

At least nobody can come at you on Twitter. Exactly. I will not get, I will not get any spam, but I think I'm terrible, but some people like me enough to hire me to do it. Thank you, Chris. I appreciate it. In the words of our immortal friend who doesn't listen to our show anymore, you do have the dulcet tones.

Yes, the dulcet tones. Whatever happened to her? Oh, well. I saw this one and I think this was over at Futurism. I saw this too. I'm glad you put it in. NASA scientists suggest the reason we haven't found aliens is they all killed themselves.

Yeah, that's pretty much every election cycle around here. But they're saying that the great filter theory that other civilizations have basically killed themselves over time is why they have never made it that far out to the stars. I think that watching Elon and SpaceX progress, I can see why that is a viable option.

Look, I used to say, all right, I'm going to piss off a lot of people that listen to the show in Buffalo, just all three of them or something like that. I spent a lot of time in Buffalo. I worked with the Goo Goo Dolls. They're a Buffalo-based band. It's a hardscrabble town.

There's no doubt about it. And people are tough there. The people that do well there work for it. They work really hard. But I always used to say there was something ingrained in the Buffalo personality that shot themselves in the foot. As I've gotten older and wiser, I've realized that it is not a Buffalo-centric thing.

That's a human thing. We shoot ourselves in the foot. Yeah. And, yeah, I'm a big fan of this great filter theory. I'm a believer in it, unfortunately. Yeah, me too. So the reason I put it in is the next book that I'm reading, which I mentioned on the last episode, is Roadkill by Dennis E. Taylor, who does the Babaverse books, narrated by Ray Porter.

This is one of those books you can only get on Audible for now, which we'll talk about in a second for your next book. I love this because, A, they say it's number one bestseller in first contact science fiction. That's some specific shit right there.

We are the number one podcast in fucking cranky-asshole people. Yep. I think so. I think so. So, the premise of Roadkill kind of comes down to a loophole in the great filter theory.

So he mentions that in the book and how that there's these other civilizations that are taking advantage of that to take over other civilizations. It's really cool. It is a really smart premise. Fortunately, like I said, it's narrated by Ray Porter, who reads all the Babaverse books.

So I know I'm listening to a Dennis Taylor book, so I get all the beats. That's where having the same narrator for an author really comes in because he knows that author. I like how you're pushing your position as to be the continued category pirate author reader.

You fucking know it. I wasn't born yesterday. I see what you're doing. But it is really good. And he does a new voice in this one for the ship's AI, which is very – it is very much like Marvin from The Hitchhiker's Guide.

Right. But smarter and snarkier. Nice. So I love this book. I absolutely love this book. I'm only halfway through it, so I haven't seen if he stuck the landing yet. But it's Dennis Taylor. I know he stuck the landing because he always sticks a landing.

Yeah. No. One of my favorite authors ever. I love the Babaverse. I love all of his short stories. And I love the side novels, which we're going to talk about next, because you read – Well, I haven't finished it yet. You were telling me how much you were enjoying Roadkill, and I went to go look and see if it was available as an e-book yet, because I don't do the Audible thing.

I like to actually read when I listen to stuff. It's basically podcasts or music. So I went to go look, and of course, it's not available as an e-book yet. But I found Outland by Dennis E. Taylor, which is his first book, pre-Babaverse, finding his feet as an author book.

I'm about halfway through. I can tell it's him. The pieces are there, but it's not gelling quite as well yet. I'm still enjoying the story. There's no doubt about that. I really am. It doesn't have the sarcasm.

I feel like he hasn't been beaten down by life yet with this book. That's funny, because I read Outland after the Babaverse. I didn't realize that that was before Babaverse. Yes, it's his first book. Very first book. Okay, you know what? It does make sense then, because I felt the same thing when I read it, that it was kind of stilted and just kind of – he was getting his feet under him.

I thought maybe he just didn't know how to write anything outside of the Babaverse, but if he wrote that before that, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, first book. Yeah. It's enjoyable, but the snarkiness isn't there. It's a bit stilted. It's a bit like, ooh, this could have probably used an editor.

No, but it was good, though. It's good. But it is good. It's enthralling. I'm into it. I'm interested. I'm continuing to read it. But, yeah, because I know him as the author of the Babaverse, and I know the world he has created, it is a bit weird, right? Yeah. See, that's where Roadkill kind of has a little bit of an Achilles heel, is that I know the Babaverse, and I know his humor, and he brings a lot of that with him.

Right. And so it kind of feels like, oh, okay, we're doing that, but it only lasts for a second. And then he picks it back up, and it keeps going, and it's – I really do – I'm really enjoying Roadkill.

I'm actually enjoying that more than the Babaverse book four, the river one. Yeah, that was not my favorite Babaverse. It was still Babaverse, but it wasn't my favorite. It was good, but it was not great. This is good-er.

It's good-er than Babaverse four. I'm enjoying it. Like I said, I haven't got to the end, so I don't know how he sticks to the landing, but I got to say, when I compare older authors who started late, like Daniel Suarez, Daniel Suarez came out of the gate fucking hitting home runs.

Well, he had all the ideas ready to go and put them all in one book and then didn't have a lot left in the tank. Well, he did two. Well, he did two. He did Demon. Demon, then Freedom TM. Yeah. And those two – like Freedom was a little bit too Cory Doctorow for my taste.

But Demon was just like, holy shit, this is like Snow Crash level good. But Dennis Taylor at least has a really good baseline. He's not swinging for the fences, but he's also not like dipping down to the tropes.

So I'm loving Roadkill. I'm glad you're reading Outland. I'm glad it came out on e-book too because that was one of those ones that was audible only too. So eventually you'll get to read Roadkill. Yeah, can't wait. By the way, authors really love this trend. Thanks a lot. Security?

Ha! Welcome back to Shooting the Shit with Dave. Dave Bittner 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 where they discuss law and policy and surveillance and privacy.

And he's also the host of Control Loop where they discuss ICS and OT. Welcome back, Dave. Hello. Good to be back. Yes. Did you get a chance to look at the link that I put in the show notes, Dave? I did. Yes. I watched the whole thing. It was quite entertaining.

So as a fan of musical theater, here's what it is. Here's what it is. And this comes back. This is a callback to the beginning of the show because we talked about how I had a friend in the studio. And we were late recording yesterday because I hadn't seen this man in 20 years.

And we were just like having a bro out bro fest. And it was Andy Preboi who is the creator of White Trash Wins Lotto. But he was also the lead singer of Wall of Voodoo for a long time. Rock and roll guy. Big rock star. Super ding dong guy.

But on a Mexican radio. Well, that was Stan Ridgway who did that one. Oh, no. That's Stan Ridgway. Other one. Yeah, yeah. I always get them confused in my mind. Yeah, yeah. Andy came after. He had his own sets of hits. And he had a number one hit song in Australia with Tomorrow Wendy that then Concrete Blonde covered.

But anyway, I just thought it was funny that I forgot that I knew a guy who wrote a musical. And I thought that, Dave, you might like to check out a little bit of the musical because that's all that exists of the musical. And I'll put the link in the show notes. It's when Andy was on Conan O'Brien doing a bit from White Trash Wins Lotto, which was a musical about the rise and fall of Axl Rose, which, Brian, you saw with me on Sunset Boulevard.

And then we went over to the Rainbow Room, and I believe we were getting drunk with or next to Dave Foley. I can't remember which. Probably. I mean, Dave was in the show, so I think we were with. I think we were getting – Dave was in the show. He played the skeezy lawyer.

So I'm pretty sure we were getting drunk with at that point. But you know what? I don't even remember going to the Rainbow Room, so mission accomplished. Yeah, we definitely went over there after. I do remember that. Were you there the night that – I can't remember. I brought Fabrice Morvan from Milli Vanilli with one night.

Were you there that night? I was not, no. Oh, okay. Because there was like a seven-episode – or seven-episode – seven-show run at the Roxy, and I was bringing everybody that I knew. And Fabrice was a big fan, so I brought him, and that was pretty awesome.

But yeah, no, Dave was here last – or I'm not Dave. Now I got Dave Foley on the mind. But Andy came by yesterday, and we had a great time, and it was fun. And I just – it just reminded me that Dave Bittner likes musical theater, and I know a guy that wrote some musical theater, and I thought you might enjoy it.

I did enjoy it, and it reminded me of one of my high school chums named Adam Danheiser was in the original cast of Rock of Ages on Broadway. And so it's – Is Chris Hardwick also the lead in that?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah. So it's – I have to say – and Adam is also in Beetlejuice. And so I have to say it's pretty weird and kind of cool to see your high school buddies who you did shows with on the original soundtrack recordings of Broadway shows.

It's like, wow, holy smokes, there they are. Yay, good for them. Now, this is cool. You're a good for them kind of guy. Other people would be like, screw them. They don't deserve it. I should be up there. But you're a good for them kind of guy. Other people meaning Jason. No.

Hell no. No, no, no. Well, absolutely, yes. I take that back. I'm absolutely that guy. Yeah. Well, so is there – did White Trash Wins Lotto – did that come before Rock of Ages? Is there any relationship between the two?

I can't remember. I know – I mean, it's funny that I know Chris Hardwick was at a bunch of the shows that were at the Roxy and he was a fan. Yeah. But I heard him talk about it on The Nerdist back before the whole rapey allegation thing and he got canceled.

But I don't know the timeline. This was back in – I mean, God, this had to be – Early days. Wow. It was pre-2000. So this was like the late 90s. Okay. Yeah. It was post-90 – it had to be 98 or 99 because that's – I came back from London in 98 and that's when we hooked up again.

Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, that's exactly about the timeline. So perhaps Rock of Ages was unofficially inspired by White Trash Wins Lotto. Could have been. Could have been. I mean, Andy was doing this show for like two years at Largo here in L.A. just workshopping it.

I was there at the Genesis because Andy came into the – there's a song in the musical called The Meat, the Beat, the Tune, and the Hook. And he came in one morning and he had had an epiphany and way too much coffee. And he laid out on our whiteboard the structure of the song, The Meat, the Beat, the Tune, and the Hook, repeating the hook like they say in the – and he just did this whole thing.

And he was just all excited. And that – from that one song that he came up with turned into the entire musical. And I got to go to all the rehearsals, see all the iterations of the show and meet all the cast and still friends with a bunch of those guys. So it was really cool. Patton Oswalt was in it, Blaine Kapatch, Dave Foley.

And basically everybody that was a stand-up comedian back then or doing improv was in that show. Greg Barrett, who I still talk to every now and again, like all those guys. It was a who's who. And it was one of the greatest shows ever. And yeah, it went to Broadway and died.

Oh, really? So it did go to Broadway. It got to rehearsals on Broadway and then died. Andy doesn't talk about it. I'm not going to bring up the history of it. But this is going to be probably the only thing that ever survives from White Trash Winslotto is that YouTube clip that I got off Conan.

Which I got – which I knew that he was going to be on that night. And me being the juvenile delinquent I was, I stole an avid capture card from Paramount Motion Pictures and shoved it down my pants and walked out to my car with it.

And it basically was so sharp it cut a rectangle in my stomach to get it out of there because it was so huge. So I took it home. I captured the show and then brought it back. So you borrowed it. You borrowed it. I did borrow it.

Because, yeah, I was like – When a VHS tape absolutely positively won't do. Exactly. That's right. Yeah. So that was that. So it was just – That's interesting. I was not familiar with this. I never heard of this before.

So, you know, it's fun to watch. It's a shame the whole thing isn't out there somewhere. I know. It's lost in the mists of time in my brain. But I do remember it was a very, very clever and a very fun show. Oh, so many great songs in that show.

But we're going to be hanging out more, so maybe I'll be able to con him into putting some of it out. But it is definitely one of those things where it is – I'm pretty sure it's a traumatic experience that he never wants to talk about again. So we're not going to bring it up anymore. Okay. I saw someone in your YouTube comments said that the songs are on Apple Music.

Some of them are. Andy has some of the songs up there. And that was actually me, I think, that put that out there. Oh, okay. Yeah, that was one of my comments. One of the burner accounts. You know. Yeah. No, no, no. I think I actually said – because I looked at the comments. I'm like, did I say anything bad on here? I'm going to go check because – Right. Yeah. No, Andy was one of those guys that I mentioned on the show previously.

I reached out to like 50 people after my stroke and I'm just like, you know, I want to kind of clear the air. And Andy is the only one that ever wrote back. And he just came to the studio yesterday and hung out for a couple hours. So it was just fun. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. Yes. Musical theater talk with Dave Bittner.

Never – There you go. It's theater. Time for the arts. And speaking of the arts, I want to dip our toes one more time into the Michael Jackson fandom thread that we've been on here for the past couple weeks. I saw coming by on Twitter, thanks to Todd Vaziri, who's a compositing artist at ILM.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I follow him. Yeah, yeah. He posts all kinds of really interesting stuff. Thriller has been uploaded to archive.org in 4K. And it's really good. You know, the thing is, Michael Jackson shot these music videos like they were movies.

So they're shot on 35 and they look great. But there aren't good copies floating around. Most of them come off of the VHS tapes that we all collected back in the day or recorded off of MTV or something like that. There's speculation that this version comes from a project that – oh, what was the – John Landis was the director.

At some point, he had talked about doing a 3D conversion of Thriller when everything 3D was really hot. And so they think that that may have been when it got scanned. But if you like this sort of thing, I would say grab it while it's there because who knows how long it will be there on archive.org.

Much like Twitter. Basically until Brian's wife hears this episode and then goes and gets it taken down. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, pretty much. That's the way it works. Yeah, but it looks great. It's a great scan and you never – it was – I was doing the things you do when you were presented with a high-res version of something that you were very familiar with.

There's a scene in the beginning of Thriller where Michael and his girlfriend are in the movie theater and they're watching the werewolf movie and there's a crowd shot. And so I paused the crowd shot to see like, is there anybody in here I recognize? Did anybody in this crowd shot later become famous?

And I didn't see anybody I knew, but I was curious if you guys see anybody who might have later gone on to greater things than being a background person in Thriller. I'll be grabbing this and putting it on the – in the archive for sure. Yeah, yeah.

It's a good one. Yeah, I want to see it on the 75-inch TV too. Oh, yeah. Right. It's like, God, there's a fucking beast. Probably look pretty good on that. Yeah. That's true. All right. We got a bit of feedback. This takes a bit of a new light given the fact that there may or may not be Twitter in a few days.

We'll see what happens still. As of this morning, it's still up. We'll see. Jason wrote in, I just listened to episode 578 and you were talking about doom scrolling. I ditched all social media about two months ago. As we all know, it just set visibility to zero. I'm in such a better place now with no Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

It's all gone and I love it. My wife now keeps me informed on anything family related from Facebook I may need to know and everyone else just texts me now. My days are so much better and I'm a happier person to boot. I am still a grumpy old technician only because that is my job and I have to deal with customers. Have a great day and I will only be listening from now on.

Stay grumpy. Now, this reminded me when we discussed, when Dave, when you left Facebook, that this was somewhat your solution as well. You got off and reaped all the benefits while relying on your wife to still bring you all the news that came from Facebook. True. Yes.

It is good to be able to do that. Yes. It's a strategy I rely on to this day and actually with the downfall of Twitter and who knows what's going to happen there, it has crossed my mind. Should I get back on Facebook? And I'm like, hmm.

Many people are. No. I have seen that. No. But I can tell you right now, Dave, I would not. Since you have left, it has gotten so much worse. I get so little value from it. Really? In terms of personal life because the algorithm does not show you any of your friends' updates anymore.

It is all pages that you may have subscribed to or pages that you inadvertently paused on while scrolling for a little bit too long. So Facebook thinks that you obviously like that. It's all ads. I wouldn't be – I'm purely on Facebook at this point in that I get news stories for our show because I follow so many tech sources on Facebook.

I don't see friends' updates hardly ever. It's useless for that. Absolutely useless. They have destroyed it. Yeah. And I was the biggest Facebook apologist. Yeah, I can't remember if I mentioned this here, but one of the things that struck me is this kind of specter of Twitter going down was becoming a thing is that I didn't see anybody saying, well, let's all just go over to Facebook.

Like nobody was saying that. Some people have. Everybody was saying, let's go to Mastodon or other places. It's all Mastodon. Nobody's saying Ello or Facebook. I see a lot of people posting about going to Mastodon and then I see them come back to Twitter posting. It's really confusing. I don't know if I'm going to be there or not.

Right. You know what? This is a great thing because only nerds are going to be going to Mastodon. So it's going to be kind of like Twitter in the old days. So, you know, the unwashed masses won't be there because it actually takes, I don't know, effort to set up a Mastodon thing, but it is actually kind of fucking confusing.

So I also get a lot of value from following unwashed masses, believe it or not. Yeah. I don't need just more tech feed in my feed. I need real life. I like that. Yeah, I just like my RSS. I'm good. I'm sticking with that.

I haven't made any decisions yet, but I'm going to try to resist going back to Facebook and I don't know. I find the whole thing just sad. We might have to reset your Discord password for you, Dave, and you can join us. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. I want to go through that again. Sure. I have to say, though, of all the, I mean, granted, obviously, it's a, the Discord channel I am on is a fanboy Discord channel for me. But I'd say, I do enjoy the format quite a bit.

Like, it's, I like it. I enjoy Discord. I enjoy going on it. I enjoy talking to the people there, you know, again, but it's, it's, it is for us. So, yeah. Well, we'll see. This came across my, one of my threads, and I thought I'd share it with you.

And it started out, somebody sent me a thing that Adobe has a mic check utility. And I put a link in there. It seemed to me to be of limited utility. Like most Adobe's utilities is of limited utility.

But it led me to, there's some more stuff here. So, as Jason posted into our show notes here, they have, they have their own speech enhancement product, which is like a lot of the other ones out there. The one over on Descript is one I'm familiar with, which is quite good.

This seems to be on par with that. And, you know, they're all using whatever magic, magical, mystical technology to take someone in a noisy, echoey, reverby room and make it sound like they're on mic. And, dang, if it isn't amazing, you know, when it works, it works pretty well.

It's kind of miraculous. I'm going to have to check that out. I mean, because I did see it says Project Shasta is now Adobe Podcast. And as somebody who loved the soda Shasta, I was intrigued because Shasta is delicious. Okay. I'll take your word for that.

What's an East Coast thing? You've never had Shasta? Shasta's not an East Coast thing. We have Shasta in California. I've never seen a Shasta since I've been in L.A., sorry. I don't know if Shasta still exists. But when I lived in the East Coast, it was everywhere. Yeah, I think Shasta, I haven't seen Shasta in a long time.

I do remember Shasta as a kid. Wasn't Shasta one of the budget alternatives to Coca-Cola? It was R.C., Shasta. Yeah, Shasta was kind of like 7-Up, but a little more limey, you know? It had a little bit more lime in it.

It was very citrusy. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, you go, oi, mate! Nope, that was Australian. So what's interesting about this, whatever Project Shasta was, and now they're labeling it as Adobe Podcast, it seems like they might be, well, they're definitely making a run at Descript, and for folks who aren't familiar, Descript is an audio editing tool, and actually

Descript is now making a run at video, but it's an audio editing tool, and it's quite good. We use it all, we use it every day at CyberWire. Yeah, yeah, use it every day, because it's really good for cutting down interviews quickly, and it allows non-technical people, basically it takes your audio, transcribes it, and now you can edit your, like an interview, as if it were a word processing, you know, a text file, and it works pretty well, so.

Pretty well being the operative term there, because anybody that has an ear can hear how it screws up on breathing. It screws up the breaths all the time. I can tell when somebody's using Descript all the time, if they don't know how to fix it. Right, right, right.

So let me flesh out sort of what our workflow is. What we find it very useful is, let's say I do an interview with someone, and then I will cut it down in Descript, or a producer will cut it down in Descript just for content, and then that goes to the audio team.

They take those files and actually clean them up into good audio. So they're on the lookout for things like the breaths and the, yeah, so the automated version of Descript will certainly come up short for you with the removal of ahs and ums and all that kind of stuff.

But in terms of just cutting down content, it's really fast, and it works well. We've found it to be very useful in our workflow. So it seems as though Adobe is coming directly after them, and then they're also maybe coming after things like Riverside, platforms like Riverside, where we do our recording.

They're talking about having their own version of something like that. So we'll see. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. The biggest problem I had with Descript is, I don't know if you know who created Descript, but it was the founder of Groupon. He took his Groupon riches and created Descript.

Interesting. And it's just, I thought it was just way too overpriced. Like for the pro version, it's like 270 bucks a year or something. You know what you need, Jason. You need a Groupon for Descript. I need a Groupon for Descript. That's right. Can somebody get me a Groupon? Yeah.

Well, I do actually have a security story, so I thought we'd throw one in for the first time in a month or so. We'll go through this one pretty quickly because, you know, why bother? Europe's spyware scandal is a global wake-up call. So this has come out of the European governments and EU member states that have been looked at due to a new European Parliament report.

They have been using spyware on citizens for political purposes and to cover up corruption and criminal activity. Some went even further and embedded spyware in a system deliberately designed for authoritarian rule. So they launched this inquiry after we learned about the Pegasus Project last year, the 2021 publication, a spyware investigation, which was led by 16 media outlets around the world.

And they had found then that governments had targeted more than 50,000 phone numbers worldwide using that tool. Since then, they've done a deeper dive and, you know, we'll just TLDR this, but Polish officials bought Pegasus in 2017, in part using funds meant for victims of crimes before targeting numerous opposition figures.

Hungarian government bought it in 2017 as well after meeting with the Polish prime minister and former Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. They claim it was used for purely national security reasons, but they targeted over 300 people from lawyers and journalists to high-profile business owners, activists, and opposing politicians.

And the list goes on. Security personnel in Greece bought something called Predator, believed to be from a North Macedonian company called Cytox, and used it against political figures domestically. Officials in Cyprus acquired it and did the same. And on and on we go.

Spanish authorities as well have appeared to targeted people in Catalonia. The U.S. government actually got praise for its actions against spyware. Although, you know, there you go. We'll see about that if we do a deeper dive. But these tools are out there.

They are being used by governments, and we know about it. Yay. Well, there's that. Yep. I wonder if the praise that the U.S. government gets here is because we already went through our own version of this with the Snowden revelations.

Yes. And so, you know, the U.S. government already got their hands slapped for this. And so we buried it deeper. Yeah. Yeah. Was being pre-vigilant about this. So when Pegasus came along, they were – I'm guessing, this is just speculation on my part, that the U.S. government was feeling snakebit about the whole thing and was really careful about not using it.

Although, would I be shocked to find out that parts – Well, but I'm saying, would I be shocked to find out that parts of the U.S. government were using it? No, not at all. I would not. Or have built their own other one that doesn't leave as many fingerprints. We'll see. Right. That's probably the most likely.

So, yeah. Yeah. We probably bought a Pegasus unit, deconstructed it, and put it back together with our own tech. You know. Those guys are pretty good over there. Yeah. I hate to be cynical about this stuff, but, you know, it's evidence-based cynicism.

Yes. Yeah. It's 10 years of doing this show. It's not – it's – you know, this isn't coming out of – By the way, Dave, there's your new show. Yeah. That's right. I'm Dave Bittner. Welcome to Evidence-Based Cynicism. Joining us today. Right.

All right. Well, I feel like we've hit our quota for security for the next month. There you go. Dave, how are you doing on Andor? We got musicals. I figured I'd start off with the musicals since I'm sure Dave is still way behind on Andor, so. I am. Yes, I am. I keep seeing people posting about, oh, the latest episode was amazing.

Finale next week, Dave, so. Yeah, you might want to hurry it up. All right. I will do my best. But, you know, life happens. All right. I'm going to go watch Thriller. Okay. Not Andor. Thriller. Yeah. Closing shout outs.

Over at Patreon, we've got Raj. Hi, Raj. Hi, Raj. You're the only one. And actually, he came back to us after a hiatus. So we do appreciate those of you that went away and came back. Thank you so much. Over at PayPal, we've got Miles, Shari, Linda, Natalie, Robert, Edward, Dag, Andrew, Tom, Ramsey, Nathaniel, Stuart, and Stuart, who says, Hi, guys.

I love slash hate your show. Some days you put a smile on my face. Other times I want to drive my, I want to self-drive my Tesla off a cliff. Seriously love the show. You guys sent me down many internet rabbit holes. Had to send you 20 bucks on PayPal. Keep it up. Thank you. We do appreciate it.

We appreciate the love and the hate. Yes. Yes. I got a shout out to Rob Sheridan's Glitch Goods store. Rob Sheridan, ex-designer for Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails. I sent him a tweet about, because he was posting like all of his t-shirts and stuff.

Because I actually, I covered him last year at Christmas because he did one of those shirts with the VHS playlist on it. The thing about it is, it's Christmas Vacation, Die Hard, A Christmas Story, Gremlins, Home Alone, Scrooge, Trading Places, Nightmare Before Christmas, Lethal Weapon, Batman Returns, and Ernest Saves Christmas.

The only thing that I ever got pushback on that list was Die Hard. Wrong. And I want to say to everybody, fuck you, Die Hard is a Christmas movie. That's it. If it wasn't a Christmas movie, the entire internet wouldn't be pushing the Nakamone Plaza Countdown Christmas Calendar out to me.

That is the only ad I'm getting anymore. Yeah, the one with Hans falling off the Nakatomi Tower. Yeah, the advent calendar where he falls one day every day. By the way, whoever came up with that, fucking genius. It's genius. I just wish the entire internet wasn't serving it to me every five seconds.

I know. I know. Apparently, they have a really good affiliate program, is all I'm saying. Also, the ad industry is dying. Oh, that too. That too. But check out Rob's stuff. I bought a couple shirts from him this week. I bought his plain black t-shirt, t-shirt, which just literally says plain black t-shirt across the top, only because I asked him on Twitter, which I can't do anymore.

I'm going to have to call him or find his address and show up and ask him when he goes to the coffee shop, like a stalker. I'm like, do you sell these in v-neck? Because I only wear v-necks. And he's like, yes, we do. Here's a link. They're only $15 now. So they're on sale. So if you want to go get a v-neck at Rob Sheridan's store, I highly recommend it right now.

So go check it out. Be sure to tell him not to do a Black Friday sale, Mr. Category Pirate. He did a great post the other day. I don't know if you saw this. I retweeted it. Did you see the Target goth store? I'm sorry. I've been locked out of Twitter.

Okay. He posted screenshots that Target has a goth store on their website. So you can be gothy. Well, you know. I thought it was a joke, but it's fucking real. That's amazing. It's amazing. I'll check it out.

All right. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. If you enjoy the show, visit gog.show slash donate to help us keep the lights on and we'll love you forever. You can also help us out by sharing the show with your friends and enemies. It's easy and absolutely free. Show notes for this episode are at gog.show slash 579.

Holy crap, the flu shot is hitting me. 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 and chat with us and other show fans, because there ain't no Twitter anymore, you can also head over to gog.show slash contact and send us your feedback or questions we can read on the air.

And if you're so inclined, please head over to gog.show slash review and toss us a snarky review and preferably five stars. Stay tweeting.

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