619: Monkey Gone to Heaven

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With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com. 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. Well, Brian, boot up is now shut down. I was trying to work out the math. Have you started and quitted boot up more often than he moved back between L.A. and Chicago during the tenure of the show? No, because boot up was only up once and down, or it was twice.

Okay, there we go. And Chicago was at least five. Oh, at minimum. Minimum. Okay, well, I'm sorry to hear. I'm not surprised as I look. I am nowhere near as deep into looking at the podcast industry as you are. But all I see are basically just celebrities getting shows and even they can't make it anymore.

Yeah, yeah, the math doesn't work. On this one, basically, every two months I was getting... So this last test was a straight two-month test. And it went from 400 listeners a day to 700 listeners a day to 600 listeners a day.

And if you know, ads for podcasts sell in the blocks of 1,000. So I didn't even have one CPM, as it were. And for a show like that, 10-minute show, you can fit one ad in. So that would be one CPM. So even if I got up to 1,000 people, that's $20 an episode, four episodes a week.

That's 80 bucks. Yeah, and I'm spending three hours a day on the show. The math doesn't work out. So even if I spent, you know, several months building it up, uh-uh, was not worth it. Yeah, I mean, I remember when you and I first did try to do a daily show.

It was just, it was so much more work than a once-a-week show. I don't know how that worked out, but it just was. Yeah, it was definitely a lot more work. And the thing is, if we'd have kept up with that show, we'd be gazillionaires right now. Yeah, I doubt it. Yeah, well, it would have been a lot better. We'd be dealing with the same fucking issues we'd be dealing with with this one.

I don't know. But the thing is, yeah, these daily tech news shows are six years too late if you want to get traction. Because basically Spotify and everybody came in and fucked up the whole industry. There's too many shows. Even though people are saying that, you know, podcast downloads are going up from anecdotally from everybody I know, that is so not the truth unless you're paying for them.

So it's just not worth it. Same as it ever was. Yeah. Because I built that show to go up against Tech Meme Ride Home, who has a pretty good following and makes really good money. And it's a terrible fucking show. I can't stand the guy's voice. And I tried to make a show just a little bit more technically accessible so somebody like my dad could listen to it.

And it was working. You know, for what it was, it was good. But the time commitment and just the industry as it stands in shatters right now and tatters, it's not even worth it. So if you need me, if you need to hear me every day, you can hire me over at Voices.com.

There will be a link in my personal site at Jason.FYI coming soon because that's what I'm going to do for that three hours a day. Okay. Do auditions. Yay. But at least on that, there is, you know, some glimmer of maybe getting a paycheck. Hopefully.

Hopefully. Hopefully. Well, we've got some follow-up here. Unity has apologized and promised to change its controversial game install fee policy. Yeah. I've heard variations on this statement an awful lot this last couple weeks. We have heard you.

We apologize for the confusion and angst. The runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused, the company said in a post on X. They're actually calling it X over there. We are listening, talking to our team members, community customers, and partners, and we'll be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of days.

Thank you for your honest and critical feedback. Yeah. Yeah. In other words, screw you for not letting us get this through. Yeah. A big week of backtracking this week. Right? Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Hudson, The Talk, Bill Maher, et cetera.

Ashton Kutcher. Ashton Kutcher. Notably not Russell Brand, who is just going to say fuck it and go for it and take his right-wing army with him. Yeah, we'll talk about him in a little bit. Okay. Yeah. It's an interesting week. Interesting week for sure. Well, back to video games real quick.

Microsoft and Activision, that merger seems to be on track somewhat. They're going to have to get rid of the online version of the deal, which is going to end up getting sold to Ubisoft. This is just – this is to get through the U.K. regulators.

We still have to get through the damn FC – oh, Jesus. There's so many F acronyms in the U.S. nowadays. FTC, I believe. Federal. Yeah, Federal Trade Commission, not the FAA or the FDA. FTC to get authorization over here.

And, you know, I just – get it done. Get it done. You know, this – if Sony didn't exist, I would be okay with them saying, oh, let's, you know, put this under the microscope. We have plenty of legit monopolies you could be breaking up.

This one wouldn't even be a monopoly. Yeah. So, come on. You know, the big issue here is the fact that Sony exists. Right. If Sony didn't exist and wasn't the biggest game company on the planet, you need another, you know, behemoth to go up against them, then, you know, just let the damn thing through.

So, we'll see if it happens. We'll see if it happens. Yeah. And we were talking the other week about this, you know, all the water being used by computing, particularly AI computing. That's when the story came out, and we lauded that because nobody's been talking about the environmental effects of AI.

We already know it's potentially even worse than how bad crypto was and just general massive computing in general because everybody's sinking their data farms into the ocean or lakes and burning up the water because you need to cool these things down. Las Vegas, notable for not being anywhere near fucking water, is doing something pretty – I think they're notable for some other things, but not being close to fucking water is pretty good too, yeah.

Yeah, well, it's a pretty key feature of Vegas. There's not a lot of water there. They've got to bring it all in. They're actually doing something pretty smart. Las Vegas authorities want to know exactly how much water your company is going to use before you come here to not pay taxes. Yep.

They want to help the regional economy grow, but they also want to protect the scarce water resources in the region. So this will include a tool that outlines to water companies that want – or to any company that wants to move into the area, you better tell us exactly how much water you plan on using. And then we will decide if we're going to let you come here or not.

Most of the water for Vegas comes from the Colorado River, which also provides a lot of the water for Southern California and basically the entire fucking West Coast. Yeah. South. Seven states, including Nevada, as having historic low water levels from 2000 to 2021.

The Colorado River Basin lost about 10 trillion gallons of water or one question with chat GPT. Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. Three hallucinated mid-journey graphics right there. Here's the deal.

We need to start putting these server farms in space. It's cold. It's out there. It's real cold. Yeah. So just let's put them up in space where they belong. Yes. I don't know. I don't think we have an Ethernet cable that long yet, but, you know.

Well, you know. I'm sure we'll make one and it will be a lightning cable and then we'll have to switch it because of EU regulations. Damn it. What do you mean, SCSI? Oh, Jesus Christ. Well, COVID is back, as some people have noticed.

It never left. It never did leave. But it's spiking again, yes. It is spiking yet again to the point, though, where the U.S. government is going to be giving out – giving out, I mean, by giving out – using our tax dollars to pay for more COVID tests.

We will be able to get the tests that we have paid for. Yeah, that's about it. That's about it. So link in the show notes for that. They're going to start September 25th. So in a couple of days, you'll be able to do it. By all accounts, this isn't as deadly. It still messes you up a bit. Long COVID is still a main concern.

But the thing I find interesting about this is this is kind of what people were predicting way back at the early onset of COVID, that eventually it's going to become just like – it's going to become a flu season type thing. And that's what we're seeing. Yeah, it's moved into endemic and from pandemic.

And it is definitely a little bit – it's not as bad on you as it was last time around. But the thing is when you have people who are immunosuppressed and things like that, yeah, people – the people that were at risk before are still at risk.

That hasn't gone away. So we still have to be careful in my household and I'm masking up wherever I go now. And I'll be getting the new vaccine along with the flu shot as soon as it's ready. Oh, it's out. You can get the – it's out in the US.

It's not out in Canada yet. Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, after looking at the tests and talking to several doctors, I'm going to skip this round on the vaccine at least for a while. The testing that they did on this one, not what you would call really – Elon Musk-esque?

Yeah, let's just say it's Elon Musk-esque. The one that killed the monkeys? The Moderna vaccine was tested on 50 people, 50, 5-0 people, and one had severe side effects. So that's one out of 50. That's not great numbers in my book.

So I'm going to hang back for a bit. I'm going to go with natural immunity in my mask. Might explain why Canada hasn't approved it. That could be. That could be why. That could be why. Just a little bit of note here. We are going to be taking the week of October 6th off so Brian can go to London and I can go to Malibu.

Jason. Yes? You could go to Malibu in 15 minutes anytime. Yeah, but I'm slow. I was just trying to give you a little cover so it wasn't just you taking – I don't shut the cover. I don't care. I'm going to London. Fuck off.

Brian's going to London. I'll be sitting here with my thumb up my ass. In the news.

Speaking of that time of year, it's time for another class action lawsuit. Whee! Who this time, Brian? It's Tesla. And you don't even have to have had a car, but you do have to have had a stock. Hmm. Well, I did. If you own Tesla stock as of July 14th, 2023.

So you did. Yeah. Well, I had a little bit before that when we were doing our tests with that one app. What was that app? M1 or something? Yes. M1 or no. Yeah. M3. No, M1. Yeah. M1 Finance. Yeah. Which I still use. No, I think it should be good then because this is – if you had stock options from 2017 to 2020, this is all about the grossly excessive compensation that the directors were rewarding themselves.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I remember that. You're good. They paid it back, remember? And that money is supposed to go to the stockholders. So if you own Tesla stock, the link is in the show notes. Oh, 30 cents coming my way. Woo-hoo. All right. Well, when I do go to Malibu, maybe I'll be able to take a Waymo.

Drive you right into the ocean. Exactly. At least I can swim. Yeah, Waymo is – they're basically going on a PR campaign around L.A. right now trying to get people to say, yeah, we really want robo-taxis in L.A. Said no one ever. Yeah.

And it's going to be in kind of your old neck of the woods starting over in Santa Monica and Venice. Maybe they cleared out all the birds. In come the Waymos. Yeah, that's about it. Yeah, I was over that way not too long ago. And, yeah, scooters are a thing of the past, man.

There aren't that many of them anymore. You still see little pockets of them, but they are not like they were when they first started. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. You still lived here when they first started. Christ. Yeah. I remember when I first saw them starting to pile up in corners.

I'm like, well, yeah, just go back and listen to our shows from that period. That's all I did was bitch about these stupid things. So, unfortunately, I won't be there to bitch about the autonomous cars driving around my neighborhood and not stopping at the stop signs. Yeah, yeah. Priuses. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Yeah. Well, we've talked a lot about returning to work and I don't want to go on and on about that. But I think we've all agreed. Yes, because we get emails. Yes, we get email from people that never want to return to work. And then I get private grumbling from people that run companies saying, what the fuck, man?

Yeah, that's about it. There's nothing wrong with going back to work. We're paying for these offices. TikTok might have gone a smidge too far with what they want to do. They may have overcorrected just a bit. Yeah. Employees at TikTok told The Times that they received notices about a new tool called MyRTO, which reportedly monitors badge swipes into an office and may ask employees to explain absences on days when they were expected to be there.

Where's your hall pass, son? Basically, yes. They are 100% going to be tracking people. They were reportedly informed that any deliberate and consistent disregard may result in disciplinary action. Deviations could also impact the workers' performance reviews, which could impede a path to promotion.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's TikTok's own internal software system. Attendance and absence data will be compiled and made available to employees as well as human resources staff. But let's be honest, mostly the human resources staff. Yeah, they're supposed to be there three days a week with the smaller percentage expected in five days per week.

And they're going to start tracking people. And they are not backing down on this. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Version two is going to be MySIA. Seats and asses. Or asses and seats. See, that's a dyslexia coming in. Yes, AIS.

Asses and seats. Well, I mean, to some degree, I suppose this is a tax for your high salaries for working in the tech industry. Meta is going to be doing something similar. Apple is also tracking attendance. Google is as well. Although, I mean, nobody's doing it with a freaking badge that you got to swipe all the time.

It's because they know where you're at 24-7 anyway. That's true. That's the difference. Come on. TikTok are amateurs at this. Come on. No. Well, their human resources department is pretty good because I like the spin they put on it. The MyRTO tool, which was announced and rolled out this week, allows employees to view their own personal data, capture valid out-of-office business reasons, and correct inaccuracies when needed.

Yeah. Thanks. Preach. Yeah. Oh, God. And TikTok is also in the news because they are going to introduce AI-generated labels for their content. Generated by AI. Yeah. The fucked up thing about this is, you know, they're trying to be transparent, but it's a self-regulating system where people have to tag it themselves.

And if people want you to think something is real, they're not going to tag it with AI. Just, you know, making the whole thing a useless exercise in shitty PR. Bad actors do not follow by optional rules. Right. Yes. If they did, we wouldn't have those things called criminals.

Yeah. Yeah. Idiots. Idiots. Idiots. Google Bard had a big update this week, and the new big one is the double-check button, where after you can squeeze an answer out of it, which is difficult sometimes, the stuff that I get out of ChatGPT, I literally copy and paste it into Bard, and Bard's like, nope, I can't do that.

That's not what I'm built for. I'm like, that is exactly what you're fucking built for. Finally, after I massage my prompt and get it to come back, there's a little button that you can click now where it will go out on the web and fact-check itself. What I particularly love about this is, okay, here's what Google is proposing is their advanced AI system, Google Bard.

You go to Google Bard. You ask it a question. You're not so sure about the answer, so what do you do? You Google it. Google it. Which is what you could have just fucking done in the first place. And the fucked up thing is, they have the technology, why aren't they doing this by default?

Why do I have to waste my time and click another button? Why isn't it built into the actual answer that is provided? And if something comes back in peach, fix it. You know why, Jason? Why? Because Google hates water. That's right.

They want you to use their system to burn water. Oh, God. Speaking of Google, they are settling a California lawsuit over its location privacy practices in that they actually tracked you when you opt out. Oh, yeah. Which isn't exactly...

Oh, God. Yeah, well, that whole thing. So, in addition to paying $93 million, Google has agreed to deter future misconduct. Oh, okay. Like they're so well-known for doing. Yeah. Okay, well, we should ask Google Bard next time.

Well, actually, we could probably ask Google Bard where the employees are, and then it'll just tell us where your employees. It'll tell us, yeah, because even though we've set location history off, it's still tracking you and selling that data. Yeah, that's why you're going to get some money. Eventually. Maybe. Maybe.

Google has also removed written by people from suggestions for website owners. They quietly removed the suggestion that the text of a website should be written by people from its guidance for site owners who want to do better in search results, all of which never really fucking worked anyways. Yeah, so...

Because it's always been a black box of how you do SEO. I remember writing Perl scripts that were thesaurus attacks that would take somebody else's content, run it through a thesaurus, give you back other content, and pop it into a movable type website so you can get better SEO.

This has been around forever. Yep. You know, so... They're saying it's now a shift away from caring about whether content is created by AI or not in search results. Just like they had a shift from don't be evil. Which thus means that if you click on that button to check your Google BARD result, it won't care where it gets its information from, thus making it a deep clusterfuck.

Fun. Speaking of deep clusterfucks... So, this is a two-parter here. Neuralink is seeking volunteers now, human volunteers, to start testing its brain chip implants. Okay. Yeah.

So, you have to have brain damage to say yes to this. Listen, blue checks over on X, here's your chance. Yeah. You love this guy so fucking much. Yep. Yeah, that's what comes with the blue check now. You're verified, you're a verified volunteer for Neuralink.

Yeah. It's a blue chip program, Jason. That's it. So, on the heels of that, everybody's like, hey, what, you guys are going to put this in humans? You're fucking up the monkeys already. And Elon's saying, no, no monkey has died as a result of a Neuralink implant in everybody in the universe.

What? So, it's coming out now that, yes, they killed a lot of monkeys. They really – it wasn't because of – they were old monkeys or, you know, they slipped and hit their head on the coffee table while they were, you know, mumbling around in the middle of the night.

No, no, no. They actively killed the monkeys. The monkeys were healthy. They killed them. Elon is yet again lying, period. Just lying. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, who the hell is going to do this? What – well, I guess you wouldn't be a normal human if you were signing up for a brain chip implant study to begin with.

But, come on. It's like I'd rather give Elon my credit card info. My brain, geez. I think I'd trust him sending me to Mars before putting a chip in my head. You actually have a chance of getting to Mars. Yeah, exactly. Terminal monkeys.

Amazing. Long form article over at The Atlantic. I'll put the link in the show notes. It's a really good read. It's basically the long tail of these businesses. Airbnb really is different now. And it basically goes from the beginning of what Airbnb was supposed to be to it becoming a big business to screwing it all up and now it's all crashing around their heads again.

So, they were into podcasting? Basically. Okay. Just checking. Podcasting really is different now. Yes, it is.

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With brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com. Media Candy.

Ryan, we never actually got to talk about the ending of Good Omen Season 2 because you saw it and I took like two weeks and saw it and I finally got through it and I'm like, hey, we never talked about that. Okay. Wow. That was an ending? It's a cliffhanger. So, I'm assuming there'll be Season 3.

And if not, as we heard from What's-His-Face, Neil Gaiman, he'll write a book. Yeah, yeah. Hopefully, they'll just do the show. That would be nice because I don't know if I want the book without Terry Pratchett's involvement.

But I don't mind the show because it's clever and funny and the actors really fucking make it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because I don't think Season 2 would have held up as a book. No, definitely not. No. It worked as a show. It would not have been a good book. It would have been a short story perhaps.

Yeah, that's the thing. It just didn't have the meat on it. But it was good. It was a good little six-season, you know, kind of miniseries. You know, it was a McDonald's cheeseburger to the steak that was the first season. Yes, yes, yes. So hopefully, they'll do it.

But yeah, we have some more Amazon news here. But you have been watching The Wheel of Time? I have been watching The Wheel of Time. And now that I'm not also concurrently watching The Witcher and Lord of the Rings, I can actually keep track of the characters, which is kind of nice. You know it's a universe, yeah. Nice. It's pretty good.

Like, I like it a lot better than the first season. So there's a lot more going on. There's a lot of big baddies. There's a lot of running around. There's a lot of eye candy. It's nice. It's a good show. All right. Tits and swords? Lots of tits and swords? No tits. But lots of heaving cleavage and swords.

Boo. Sorry, buddy. Okay. Okay, I'm still out on The Wheel of Time then. Okay. So Amazon Prime Video, where The Wheel of Time and Good Omens are both housed. And The Lord of the Rings. And The Lord of the Rings.

Well, they've decided that they need more money over at Amazon. So they're going to start running ads in regular. You mean for the service that I'm paying over $130 per year for? Yes, that service, Brian. You're going to have to be attacking on. Well, I expect Prime Video to be free then if they're giving me ads.

Well, it is. Well, no. Yeah. Sorry. No. Okay, so I get to pay and have ads. Yes. There will be a $3 surcharge if you want all of the ads gone. That's kind of what I say, too.

Yeah. That is a load of fucking bullshit. You got to pick a model, motherfuckers. Yeah. Seriously. Seriously. Am I paying for it? Or am I paying for it with my eyeballs? Which is it? Both. They're trying to...

No. Yeah. No. Sorry. Sorry, Brian. But yes, this is one of those things where you don't have a choice in. You either... I mean, I guess it's no different than when we paid for cable and we still got ads. That's how they're going to get away with it. And they're going to get away with it because they have shows that I want to watch.

But that is... I'm paying a lot already. It's bullshit is what it is. It is flat out bullshit. Stop spending so much on Lord of the Rings. Yeah. That, too. Mm-hmm. Well, money's gone. Also, you know, have a couple of other decent shows.

Most of your stuff is trash. Oh, God. Have you tried to watch any of their comedy stand-up stuff? It's horrible. They buy, like... I forget the name of it. Comedy Impressions or something. They bought, basically, this library of really garbage comedy stand-up specials.

And I think they had to buy 500 of them because every time you go through, it's all the same stuff. And it's all terrible. So, yeah, we'll see how this goes. And Jack Reacher's... No, Jack Reacher, I think, is coming back for another season. It's Jack Ryan.

That's it. Jack Ryan is now over with. And they skimped on the finale of that one. That one was... They really phoned in the last season on that one. Yeah. They really need to up their game just a bit. Just a bit. To get another three bucks out of me.

Jesus. Yeah. I'll sit through an ad or two. Depends on how bad it is. I'm assuming it'll be like a pre-roll. Well, you can assume all you want. Yeah, we'll see what it is. I mean, if it's insane, if it's just like watching TV, sorry, Amazon, I'm out. I'll pirate your shit. Yeah, they said it was going to be...

They were going to have less than the four ads per hour that normal TV does. But the point is, it's like, there's the break. I don't want a break in my show. That's why I, you know, that's why we pay for things. It's also why I have the pause button. Yeah, exactly. I want to pause when I got to pee.

Not when you say I got to pee. Fuckers. Oh, boy. I saw this one come through, and this made me very happy. There's a new movie out. It's actually just running the award circuits right now called Lee, which is a movie starring Kate Winslet based on the life of photographer Lee Miller.

And Lee Miller is one of my favorite photographers of all time. And I studied her heavily back when I was in college in the late 80s, early 90s. And she's fantastic. Fantastic photographer. Amazing woman. I cannot wait for this. So there's a link in the show notes about some of the behind-the-scenes stuff on it.

Cool. Cool. Yeah. I love me some Kate Winslet. She just gets better as she gets older. Yes, she does. Yes, she does. And the Lee Miller story is fantastic. There's a very famous photograph of her taking a bath in Hitler's bathtub. Nice. Yeah. Should have taken a dump, but, you know.

Pretty sure at that point in the war, I think everybody wanted a bath. So, now, speaking of the war and atrocities. And taking a big dump. Yeah, taking a big dump. Russell Brand has been demonetized by YouTube for his rape allegations.

Surprising absolutely no one. Britain's known about this for years. It's been an understood thing behind the scenes. Everybody, there are people that absolutely refuse to work with him for decades now. I've always, we've talked about Russell Brand a couple times on the show.

I was always on the fence about him because occasionally he was pretty damn funny. Yeah. He had to respect his whole thing with coming out of the alcohol and the drugs and getting sober and all that. That's hard work. No shit. But I always disliked.

There was always something off about him. And, well, now we know what it is, really. Um, the only other point I have to make about this, about this is I think everybody knew this was coming as soon as he decided to become a right wing conspiracy nut. Yeah. Because all you're doing is gathering your army who don't believe anything.

You've spent your entire last couple of years of your life basically saying that you can't trust the mainstream media. Wonder why you were doing that. Oh, well, here comes the mainstream media saying you've been a very bad boy. Yes.

If he'd have stayed on the path of the good and the righteous, people might have given him a hall pass. But no, he poked the bear after poking the ladies. I was trying to think, is there anybody I could think of in the public eye that was kind of like a left wingy guy that went right wing that didn't do it for a pretty shitty reason.

And the only person I can come up with is Dennis Miller. And he's not even like he hasn't been part of the public consciousness in decades. Yeah, no. Yeah. He's been he's been out of it. Yeah. No. So, yeah, I guess I've been with you. I've been on the fence about Russell.

It's like I like some of his recovery stuff. I liked his recovery book. So I thought some of his stand up is actually really funny. But yeah, he's just gone crazy lately. And now he's just fucked. He's just fucked. He is.

So. So bye bye. See you. See you, Russell. Next. Hope you invested a lot of that money. Well, doubtful. He has a farm, though. So maybe he can grow his own vegetables as he stays off the grid. Next up on Amazon with ads. Brands Farm.

Yeah. Since Jeremy Clarkson's been canceled. They'll do it together. Oh, my God. How funny would that be? I'd actually watch that shit. Yeah. Coming next to Truth TV. That's where it'll be. Oh, my God. No, it'll be on X. Come on.

Oh, that's right. Where else is it going to stream? Right next to Tucker Carlson. Yeah, because that's the funny thing. It's like the only people that came out to defend him was Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, and that whole crew. Piers Morgan. Yeah. You know if those people are all coming out to defend you, you are screwed.

You are so screwed. You are so screwed. Yep. He did it. Yep. And that's the funny thing. It's like, you know, I kind of. I made a comment on boot up when I was talking about this story that, you know, it is just head spinning how fast the court of public opinion turns on you, even though you've never been convicted of anything.

That's just the way things are. I mean, that's the way it's always been, apparently. You know, we all kind of do. It is Russell Brand. I mean, let's just look at him. He just, you know, he just looks rapey. Yeah. But whatever. I watched a series last week called Secret Chef on Hulu.

It's a cooking competition from executive producer David Chang. Is he actually on it? He is on the last episode. Yes. Okay. I'm a fan. He's very funny in it, too. He's very funny in the last episode. It is a great little show. It is a great little show.

It is cast very well. There was only two chefs on the show that I hated, which is pretty good for a show that with that many people in it. Yeah. And it's kind of a survivor type of thing where the chefs vote each other off by just blind rating the food. Nice. Yeah.

It's fun. It's very fun. So hopefully they'll make more of them because we loved it. It was a really good show. Cool. Speaking of shows that weren't very good, though, Star Trek Discovery. I love this. This came through and I thought I had to pass this one along.

So Jonathan Frakes was doing a conversation with Star Trek Explorer. And he was saying that the fifth season of Star Trek Discovery, which, by the way, is the final season, is very much like Indiana Jones. He's saying instead of the heavy emo of season four.

So they're going to be injecting action and humor. And he said the first half of the finale of Discovery, by the way, is Indiana Jones this year instead of the heavy emo of season four. Heavy emo it was. Discovery is back on track as an action adventure show. And I guess they got their marching orders to maintain that.

Everybody has embraced it from Michael Paradise to Alex down through the cast. There's a new energy and a new mandate. Too late. Too late. Yeah, exactly. It's like, OK, at least they're going to go out with a bang, you know. Well, OK. Maybe. Here's the thing. Yeah.

I would appreciate a show that's more along those lines. You have one job with this show in this last season, and that does not fuck up the entire universe. How are you going to explain any of this? Go back in time and unfuck it?

We'll see. I mean, they made a big old mess of the timeline. They've got a lot of things to explain. They've got a lot of technology to explain. They've got a goddamn sister for Spock that's never been mentioned into any other property. How are you going to explain any of this?

That's your one job for your last season. Make it work. The mycelium networks split the realities. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's my biggest problem with the show. I don't care about the wokeness. I found parts of every season totally acceptable.

Some of it wasn't. I liked parts of the show. Some of it I didn't like. But you're in a universe. You can't just make up your own rules and call yourself foundation. Here's the problem with that. J.J. Abrams kind of left the door open with the first movie with them fucking the universe, you know?

Well, then you've got to explain a new timeline. Like, are they in a different timeline? What? Okay, that's going to be a J.R. Ewing comes out of the shower moment for the show. It is. My God, we're doing some fucking old references. Yeah. But, you know, Star Trek, that's really good.

Lower Decks. This season's killing it. Okay. Because the first one was kind of meh. It's gotten better again. Okay. Good. I'm chuckling thinking about last night's episode. Okay. Very funny. I stayed up to watch Asoka instead, which we'll cover in a minute.

And a show I really like is back, and I didn't even know it because I never opened Netflix. That's purely my kids' viewing now. Sex Education Season 4 is out. I love the first three seasons. It's a great show. So I'm quite – and it's the final season for the show as well, so I'm looking forward to it.

All right. All right. Slow Horses is coming back with Season 3 on December 1st. Cannot wait. All right. Such a good show. Season 4 is confirmed. It's been confirmed for a while. We don't know if it's in the can or not yet because of the timing of the strike and everything.

But, yeah, no, Slow Horses, so fucking good. And a documentary on John le Carré. Le Carré is coming out called The Pigeon Tunnel on Apple TV Plus on October 20th. I'm assuming there's some sort of reference to some of his books and work in the title there because otherwise it makes no sense.

Yeah, I'm guessing two. Okay. I just know his TV shows and his movies. The Baloney Massacre. I've read a couple of the novels but not that one. Yeah. Okay. No. I watched the trailer. It looks really good. Really good. This is his last interview before he died. So, should be interesting.

Cups and doodads. Speaking of being in alternative timelines, I saw this and I thought it was an April Fool's joke but then obviously it's September. Yeah. Microsoft Paint finally gets support for layers and transparency. I thought they got rid of Microsoft Paint a couple weeks ago.

38 years after its launch, you can now do layers and image transparencies. Okay. These long-awaited new features. Long-awaited by who? By who? Yeah. There are free programs that have been out for decades that can do that. Have you heard of Photoshop?

Well, not free. Well, that one's not free, obviously. No. But I mean layers and image transparency. The thing about paint was that it was paint. It's supposed to not have layers or transparency or features for that matter. It's got a brush and an eraser. Yeah.

How about it? And giant pixels. That's all it's for. That's all it's for. It's made for making NFTs. Fuck. Oh, man. So, I took the first couple weeks of the month off of playing Clash Royale.

So, I left our clanmates in charge of the place. And they seem to be doing a lot better without me. So, maybe I'll just stay gone. But I needed just a game – like, you know, just a quickie – one of those games that you just pop open for two minutes and you're done.

You don't get hooked on. Yeah. Yeah, like a Wordle type of thing. So, I got the Netflix version of Mahjong. And – because I'm a Mahjong fan. And I – like, pattern recognition games are good for my stroke recovery shit. And apparently, this one's really good because I've done 910 puzzles out of the thousand that are on there so far.

For a free little app, it's great. If you have Netflix, it's free. But yeah, as far as Mahjong goes, it's a great – it's Stranger Things themed. But you can turn that stuff off by getting different theme packs. But it's all free. It's all free to play. But it's a great little Mahjong.

I highly recommend it. And this one came through this morning. Amazon restricts authors to self-publishing three books a day. And I love this. A totally human amount. I'm telling you, man. Gizmodo is definitely killing it on the titles.

Oh, they are really good. Yes, Amazon has put in the limit over concerns that AI is going to eat Amazon. Do you think AI might be writing three books a day? At least. Yeah. At least. I mean, unless it's Scalzi publishing his Blue Skies.

Nobody writes that much. That could just be it. Nobody writes that much. So, yes, as a self-publisher, you can do three books a day now. But if you find that you need to publish more books than three a day, you can ask for an exception.

Or create a second account. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave with podcast super host Dave Bittner. Dave is the host of the Cyber Wire podcast for all your cybersecurity news.

The co-host of Hacking Humans with Joe Kerrigan discussing how humans are mean. The co-host of Caveat with Ben Yellen because people are nosy. And the host of Control Loop because industrial machines are going to rule the world. Hello, Dave. Hello. Hello, gentlemen. Nice to be back. It's nice to talk to you.

Glad you're back. I talked to this other guy for an hour already, so we need some fresh blood. Okay. A little follow-up on the Apple Watch situation. Yeah. I ordered the Ultra 2. Oh, congratulations. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks to Apple's credit cards pay over the year. It worked out to be okay. You'll have it paid off just in time for a new one. Well, see, the thing is, I looked at it and I'm like, you know, my Series 5 has lasted since the Series 5 came out, which is a pretty good run.

How long is that? Because mine is a Series 5 also. I was trying to figure that out. Probably five years. Five years or so? Four years. Four years. Something like that. Okay. Yeah, because I got mine right when it came out. Like, you know, that was one of the ones I got the day it came out. Right. So, you have a note here in the notes, which is what I was going to bring up, which is, as soon as I put the newest update for the OS on, my watch does not make it through a day anymore.

Yes. I am experiencing the same thing. I used to go to bed and it was – because I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is I put it on. During the day, I have a one-hour walking workout and then by the time I go to bed, which is at the same time every night, 15%.

Put it on now, around 7 o'clock at night, it's dead without a workout. I am – my experience tracks yours exactly. Yep. Exactly. We are on pretty much the same schedule and, yeah, around 6 o'clock, sometime between 6 and 7, it started pinging me and saying, how about low power mode?

How about you go fuck yourself? Okay. I see what's happening here. I did update yesterday. There was a software update and so I'm hoping that, as is often the case, that might help some of the power situation, but I don't know.

They say it includes bug fixes and important security updates. That's the 10.0.1 update. All right. Well, I'm looking at my watch now and it is at 60% power. It is noon here on the East Coast and I have been up since 6 a.m. So, yeah, not going to make it throughout the day.

Yeah. It's 9 o'clock in the morning here. I'm at 84%. So, yeah. I would say I've got a 8, no issues. Okay. Which configuration of the Ultra 2 did you get, Jason?

I thought there was only one configuration. Okay. Well, like what did you do for the band or – I got the blue band, whatever that is. The blue band. Yeah. All right. Which I will swap out probably as soon as I get it. So – Yeah. I mean I had planned on – if they had come out with some way to do blood pressure monitoring, I would have pulled the trigger right away on an Ultra 2 myself.

Several people I mentioned that to have questioned like how would that be possible without some – because I guess pretty much every blood pressure system I've seen has to have some kind of cuff that goes around your arm or your wrist or something.

So, I don't know how they would do it, if it's even possible. I don't know. AI. Well, as Apple will also remind you as per the lawsuit that we were talking about a couple weeks ago, these things are not actually medical grade and they are for infotainment only. Right. That's about it.

That's about it. Yeah. So, now I'm faced with a decision because this will not do and I'm okay with it being time for an upgrade. I feel like four years out of a device that's getting charged every day, you know, I guess I'm disappointed that it was the software update that kicked this in.

It sort of is forcing my hand. But overall, I feel as though I've gotten a good life out of this thing. But now I'm trying to decide, do I go for the Ultra or do I just get the larger of the regular Apple Watch? Because right now I have the smallest one that they make.

Was that like a 40 millimeter? Something like that? Yeah. I think, yeah, it's a 40 for the – because, yeah, I get the big one and it's a 44 and the Ultra is a 49. Okay. I'm assuming that the 44 would have a slightly longer battery life than the smaller one, just, you know, the same way that the larger phones have more life than the smaller ones.

So there's more room in there for a bigger battery. Well, anecdotally, it doesn't seem to be – Yeah, it doesn't seem to be the case. Yeah. So the battery might be bigger, but there's more screen to power too, so. Right, right. And so – and to close the loop on it, the Series 5 was announced on September 10th, 2019.

So it is four years old. Okay. That's it. Four years. Pretty sure my Casio calculator watch didn't last four years back in the day. Right. Right. That's true. Yeah. It also didn't cost $800. That is a good point. Yeah.

I got $90 back on my trade-in, so. Oh. That was it. Because I was like, oh, I'll gift it to my dad or something. And then I'm like, well, he's just going to say, well, it doesn't last all day. Right. So it's like might as well just trade it back in.

And I went with the Ultra because I figure with the – that has longer battery life out of the gate, so it'll last a couple – maybe I'll get another year out of it compared to the regular Series 9. Yeah. I know folks who are getting three days out of Apple Watch Ultras charging, so – three days between charging.

So it seems to run pretty long. Is that at the top of Everest or just sitting on the fucking couch? It's at the bottom of – well, it's the top of Everest and the bottom of the ocean. Right, right. You have to go from one to the other. Yeah. It's interesting. I wonder how long until someone comes up with a self-winding Apple Watch.

I don't know. Just get rid of those batteries and put some gears in there. Now we're cooking. Right. I want a watch that I can wind. Put steps – put those steps to good use. I need the Apple Pocket Watch. That would be nice.

That would actually be kind of nice. I would go for that. I would go for that. Right. What would an Apple Pocket Watch look like? Square. It would be made out of aluminum. It comes in purple and pink. Right.

And the $85 chain that goes with it. Oh, that's a USB-C cord actually. Oh, it's still Thunderbolt. A braided – it would be a braided cord. Yeah. It's a lightning. Yeah. So it's a braided lightning cable just because. So yeah.

Why not? Figured it's time. And the fact that I could do it with the payment plan worked out pretty well. So it was only like $50 a month I think. Right. Right. All right. Well, I'm looking forward to hearing your first impressions of it because I might not be that far behind you.

Okay. Well, it's going to be a couple weeks because it's getting delivered October 9th. Okay. Yeah. I tried to do the store pickup. They're like available at the store by you on today. And that checkbox was not clickable even though they kept showing it to me.

And I checked other checkboxes on the page. Those work. This one would not work. So my only option was to get it shipped to me. So it's on its way. So I want to continue our conversation of Star Wars, specifically Ahsoka. Still digging it.

Still having a good time. You guys concur? Last two episodes were the best. They've been so far for sure. It's been really good. And one thing struck me while watching this most recent episode, which spoiler alert, involves a Star Destroyer and a bunch of stormtroopers who are unlike stormtroopers we've seen before.

And when they were revealing these stormtroopers, one of the things that struck me that I think is so good about Ahsoka and the Dave Filoni era of these Star Wars stories is he doesn't feel the need to explain everything. That was a big part of my problem with the prequels and the postquels, as of her.

Right, right, right. Like midichlorians. Didn't need to know that. I was fine with the Force without it. Didn't need that explanation. The thing is, there was always an outlet for those things. There were novelizations based, you know, the expanded universe. That's what it was for.

That was for the nerds who wanted to dive into everything and understand everything. You don't need to put it in the movies or the shows. Right. You can have an outlet for that stuff. Yeah. And I imagined if we were in the prequels or the postquels and we revealed these stormtroopers, someone would have a couple of lines of dialogue explaining them.

Their gold masks came from the cyber crystals found on the XYZ planet and they signify. Right. It'd be all that sort of stuff. Part of the magic of the original Star Wars universe was that it was lived in and you didn't have everything explained to you. And you just kind of filled in the gaps with your imagination.

And so I like to see that they're embracing that kind of storytelling here. Yeah, that's good. Except for that one part where the guy did have to explain that we don't have as many stormtroopers descend. So shut up, woman. Right. I thought he was going to cut her head off.

That was a great bit. Yeah. He just said he had to take a breath. He's like, let me explain this to her without killing her. What I really want to do is kill you, but instead I will monologue. Yes. You're saving me. So you get a reprieve this time.

So speaking of Star Wars, I've been playing Star Wars Jedi Survivor. Mm-hmm. Not good. No? I'm not liking it very much. It's got bad level design. Like the first level you're supposed to do something in, if you miss one little thing that's literally hidden in a corner somewhere that takes forever to find, you can't get past the level.

I spent an hour on this thing and had to go back and YouTube it just to find the little goo-ga that would let me finish the level. And then once I finished the level and got back to it, I apparently didn't hit a save point properly. So I had to go do another hour's worth of work to get back where I was. Wow.

Yeah. Not good game design. And I've heard that from a couple other people too, so. Interesting. Yeah. I don't know if I'll be sticking with this one. I might end up going back to the upload. The main character in those games though, for the types of people that read all the books because they need to have everything explained to them, this guy, Cal Kestis or whatever, he is a fan favorite for people that are into this stuff and they're dying to see this character in the show.

So we'll see. Well, play the game. You'll see him a lot because you can't get through the story. My son plays this game. I'm pretty sure. My youngest son, Jack, I go downstairs and he's playing this. And, you know, I have trouble.

As much as I would love to play some of these games, I find that the modern games are too twitchy for me. Like things move, the panning, the cameras are too fast and I get motion sick.

So. Yeah, I tapped out a Dragon's Lair. Yeah. I hate Dragon's Lair so much. I tapped out a Dragon's Lair. Right. Right. It's different though when you're playing versus watching because you, you know, I can't watch other people play video games. Like me and Twitch don't work.

I hate watching other people play video games. I'm like, go left. Stop going right. But when you're actually in control, it changes the dynamic as far as the motion goes because you are causing the motion. So your brain acts differently. Right.

That makes sense. Because I'm not a big fan of like super twitchy whatever. This one is just so complicated because there's so many moves that you can do that you're using every single button like, you know, all the time. And it's just a lot to remember before you get muscle memory. And it's really hard to get muscle memory when you have to keep repeating the same levels over again because of fucking shitty design.

Give me my old Pac-Man where all I needed was a four-way joystick. That's what I, now that's a video game. We didn't need none of this fancy 60 frame per second high resolution things. We chased ghosts around and we liked it.

Well, I mean, even going back to X-Wing on the PC when it first came out, the graphics were terrible. But I loved the game because it was, there was, you know, you had, that's the one where that was like when joysticks were first coming out, like the fighter joysticks. Well, the original arcade Atari Star Wars with vector graphics.

Oh, yeah. That was the bomb. I loved it. It was just the best. Yeah. But, yeah, we've come a long way, baby. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I went down a, you know, speaking of Disney IP in general, I went down a bit of a Disney rabbit hole as we are planning our normal kind of Christmas trip to Southern California, which now we're going to get letters buying Disneyland.

Why? Because we're talking about Disney. Oh, I know. Whatever. No, we're not talking about Disney Plus. People get mad at us when we espouse the joys of Disney Plus because they're cranky old bastards that I've watched everything already because they don't have lives. Isn't that going to be the spinoff show from this show?

Cranky old bastards. Cranky old bastards. Volume two. Right. So I went down a rabbit hole because we're already planning our, you know, our trip to Disneyland over Christmastime, which is by far my favorite time to be there because the decorations and everything is just awesome. And my son was getting super excited.

So I found a Spotify playlist, Disneyland music around the parks, which includes soundtracks from rides that have long since gone. But I remember like was yesterday, which was amazing for me. Like I was just totally like geeking out. And it's just nice. It plays a lot of the incidental music you would hear around the park.

It's, it's a lot of fun. So, uh, but then I did some Googling and I found a site called Yesterland and I thought you might really appreciate this site as well, Dave. Um, it's basically history of Disneyland, uh, and they get into the different parks as well, including, uh, you know, Walt Disney world and Epcot and all the rides that have gone, come and gone restaurants that have come and gone.

Yeah. Um, deep histories about them, menus, pictures from the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties. It's, it's an awesome site and it's very good school site. So yeah, that's what I like about it. It looks like Yahoo back in the yellow from Yahoo and all that shit.

So yeah, it's a cool little site. I've, I've spent way too many hours clicking through this already. So yeah, I love this kind of stuff. All this. This is what the US is for. So yeah, I, I, I will, I, I have and will spend now I have seen this in the past and spent hours on it and now you've sent me down the path once again because I can't resist.

Uh, and it's just so interesting all, all the, there's so much depth to the creation of these rides, uh, and the experiences. I, I, yeah, just a lot of fun to explore. So yeah, very good. Ryan, I think you'll enjoy this. I just viewed source.

It is, it is, it is built with tables. And, and it's beautiful. And it's got a heart, hard coded. I love a nested table. Yep. And I love it. Table width equals 728. I'm like, these are my people.

These are my people. My people nested tables, baby. None of that CSS bullshit. Yeah. Are they somewhere using the blink tag? I only wish. I only wish. Oh, TD call span equals three.

BG color equals. Oh, yes. And that is the difference between the three of us. Dave and I like the content. Jason's like looking at the code. Yeah. Speaking of Disney music, uh, just, I will point out that there are some YouTube channels that feature a lot of the background music from anything you could imagine on Disney property.

And some of the fun ones are like the music they play in the background at the Polynesian resort. Uh, I have a link to one of these. It's just a six hour loop of, uh, you know, Hawaii, stereotypical Hawaii music from, I guess, the seventies when they built, when they built the Polynesian, but they have it for every hotel, every area, every park.

They're all over. And, um, I have to say they're, they're great in the background. If you, if you're a big Disney fan, like I am, and I know you are, Brian, um, having this in the background just kind of can give you a nice little warm, fuzzy feeling.

Yeah. It brightens your day. It really does. So funny. I'm looking at the restroom key for my office. Cause I have, uh, since I'm in an office building, I have to get restroom keys. And of course my, uh, my men's and ladies room are Mickey and Minnie. Uh, you can't get away from it in Southern California, man.

It's everywhere. Yep. I, I, I literally got these at the local hardware store. I'm like, I need to get some, I was going to get those big placards. So somebody couldn't lose it. And then I was looking at the key ring and the rack and I saw the Mickey and Minnie. I'm like, come on, you gotta, you gotta. That's funny.

Um, uh, popular podcast editing tool called Descript. Um, you guys are familiar with it, of course. I know Jason, you are. Yep. Has merged recently with. Squadcast. Squadcast. That's it. Squadcast. Yes. We use them for a hot second, right?

Yep. Yep. Yep. Not anymore. Yeah. We're, uh, dipping our toes back into, let's say we're once again, Squadcast curious because of the, uh, the merger. We're, we're heavy Descript users, uh, just for doing content edits of interviews and things.

And it's a good tool. Um, but they've added something here called Regenerate, which I thought might be interesting. Uh, basically it's, it's sort of an automated AI sampling and synthesis of a voice. So for example, where it really works for us is if I'm interviewing someone and in the background, they get the knock, knock sound from Slack or the chiming of their outlook telling them

they have new mail. Right. You can select that word in Descript and tell it to regenerate it and it'll sample their voice, regenerate the voice without the background noise. Okay. That's pretty fucking cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it works pretty well.

It works pretty well. So, uh, if that's your jam worth checking out. A lot easier than finding them say the same word somewhere else in the interview. Which we've all done. Which we've all done. Yes. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. I will go to the store today.

Yeah. Right. Mr. Black. Um, there's something I've linked to here, uh, that I thought was really interesting. It's called The Overton Paradox, a nice little interactive piece on brilliant.org. Um, and it's about people's perceptions of themselves, whether they are conservative or liberal and how people believe that they get more conservative as they age, uh, and they

kind of do and they kind of don't. They, in general, people do grow a little more liberal as they age, but society becomes more liberal faster than they do. So relative to society, they feel as though they've grown more conservative, which in a way they have.

Um, I'm oversimplifying it, but it's a neat little interactive thing, uh, and really made me think about this issue. So I recommend people check it out. Yeah, it was really cool. I clicked through the whole thing and then, you know, all of a sudden I was like, oh, of course. Well now, you know, Jane Fonda never in her wildest dreams when she was a crazy flaming liberal in her twenties thought about something like trans issues.

Right. Because society has moved and it's gotten more and more liberal as we go along, which should be heartening to those of us liberals that are concerned about this crazy conservative backlash we're having right now. Yeah. Because society does keep going liberal. It does trend in that direction.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And then the only people that go conservative by choice are people like Russell Brand that fucked up. Just saying. Last but not least, uh, I was, uh, looking for some comfort gaming online to clear my head and just do something that, uh, I would enjoy and would take me back.

And I found a site where you can play the original Zork online in emulation. And I don't know if, uh, if our listeners are, I'm sure much of our audience is familiar with Zork. It's probably could be the most well-known of the text adventure games. Oh, surely it's Larry.

Well, that's true. I stand, I stand, I don't stand correct for it. Hitchhiker's Guide. Hitchhiker's Guide. Hitchhiker's Guide. All three of which I purchased from Egghead Software. Hitchhiker's Guide is definitely up there. Do you remember the, the box that actually even came with pocket lint?

No, I don't. I remember that. Came with a little shrink-wrapped, uh, piece of pocket lint in the, the boxed version that I also got from Egghead. I don't think I actually purchased Hitchhiker's Guide, but I did play it, uh, early pirating. Yes.

Yes. But Zork is, is kind of the granddaddy of them all. And, uh, a lot of the stereotypes about these games come from Zork. So if this is something you're interested in, if you want to see how we used to play games back in the day when it was all in our heads and we used our imaginations.

Damn kids today. That's right. With their 3D first person shooters, we imagined that we were running around. I'm going to open up a Twitch channel and play Zork on it and see if I get any followers. That'd be awesome.

Yeah. No, don't type that. I've never actually played Zork. Is it, do you think it's worth it? For you, maybe not. Okay. I mean, I'm going to be absolutely brutally honest about all these text-based games.

I think I would play them for like a day, at which point I got so bored by it, I stopped. I never got very far in any of them, but I kept buying them. Yeah. I played the beginning of Hitchhiker's Guide so many times and I just never got past like, you know, the very basics of it.

Right. Couldn't Google cheat codes or anything back then. No. There was no way to get any information. No, they had a 900 number for cheats. Yeah. Where you could call and pay to get a hint. Or you had to get the- At that point, I was already more interested in the other 900 numbers.

That's right. God. Yeah. I mean, I think playing Zork, it's kind of like looking back on one of your favorite movies from your teen years that you want to tread lightly because there's a good chance that you're going to ruin some of those idealized memories you have in your head.

Toonies, Gremlins, all the Gs. Airplane, Caddyshack. Purple Rain. Oh, yeah, yeah. Interesting. I will just tell anybody who listened, who grew up in the 80s, don't go back and watch Purple Rain. Enjoy the soundtrack, but don't watch the movie.

It's so bad. So bad. Excellent. All right, guys. I got to go open up my Twitch channel. Yeah. There you go. Let's go play some Zork. I think you might be onto something here. A little retro on- Yeah, why not? It's worth a try. I think you'd certainly get a little bit of a promotion or some articles about it.

That would be funny. Yeah. Closing shout-outs! Over at Patreon, we've got Josh and call me Nick. Nick. Woo! Okay, Nick. Will do. Nick. Over at PayPal, we've got Ramsey, Andrew, Joseph, Mike, Mark, Brian, and Tom.

And over at the tip jar, we've got Theodore, Karen, David, Sean, Eric, and Ross. Thank you all so much. Yes, thank you. Thank you. We usually do our, like, shout-out to somebody that's passed away, and it's not a person this time, but as I'm getting ready to go to London, I saw this review, or I saw this article, and this has been going on for a long time, but apparently it's getting quite bad.

So, rest in peace, the pub. Britain is losing its precious pubs. Yes. I mean, this has been going on for a long time. I mean, certainly from when I lived there back in 97 to visiting many times since then, first the pubs all became corporate instead of individual, and then they just started to kind of disappear.

But now they're really going. You might have to start revising the mental image of Britain and its pubs because Bloomberg reports that pubs in England and Wales have been closing at an alarming rate, as many as two per day in 2023. Damn. Yep, it is going away. Many of the problems facing pubs are similar to the ones facing establishments here in the U.S., where staff shortages and rising costs have plagued businesses.

Drinking habits are also changing, which means new customers aren't necessarily flowing in. What a sad, sad state of affairs. Yeah, yeah. I mean, granted, I'm in alcohol recovery, but I still love fish and chips, damn it. Yep. Do you remember, they actually cover that in the final of the Cornetto trilogy, World's End, with Simon Pegg.

Yes, and I went to the pub. Every pub is the same. The World's End pub, yeah. Yeah. Well, sad, sad times. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schallmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Show notes and links to everything we talked about today are at gog.show slash 619. gog.show slash donate is the place to drop us a few bills so we can keep bringing you this top-notch entertainment.

Sharing the show with your friends, enemies, or anyone in between is freeing to be almost as good as cash, except not, because you can't get anything with it. At gog.show, you can find a link to our Discord channel, and if you want to chat with us and other show fans, we're always around. Head over to gog.show slash contact to send us your feedback, comments, or links to cool shit you think we should talk about.

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