Artwork for 634: How the Sausage is Sequenced

634: How the Sausage is Sequenced

Episode 634 1 h 3 min

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Summary

This episode covers technology news, lawsuits, entertainment, and books. The hosts discuss AI-related claims, social media and music licensing, consumer services, streaming, and listener questions.

  • A George Carlin comedy special described as AI-generated was written by a human.
  • A German survey examines how electric cargo bikes affect decisions about car ownership.
  • News topics include FTX, Neuralink’s first human implant, and a Senate hearing on online child exploitation.
  • The hosts discuss Universal Music Group’s removal of music from TikTok and a rise in music piracy.
  • Consumer and legal stories include Comcast’s 10G Network claim, 23andMe’s data breach, AI-generated robocalls, and lawsuits involving Tesla and SpaceX.
  • The media segment covers television, films, podcast licensing, Hulu’s password-sharing rules, and Richard Prince’s copyright settlement.
  • Later discussions cover Apple Vision Pro, Snap’s Pixy drone battery warning, AI and blockchain claims, books, and a listener’s chair question.

Key moments

  1. Carlin special and cargo bikes

    The hosts revisit the authorship of a George Carlin comedy special and discuss a German survey about electric cargo bikes.

  2. Technology and platform news

    The hosts cover FTX, Neuralink, social media, music licensing, piracy, consumer services, and lawsuits.

  3. Media Candy

    The hosts discuss entertainment news, streaming services, television shows, films, and a podcast licensing deal.

  4. Richard Prince copyright settlement

    The hosts discuss Prince’s use of Instagram images and his settlement with two photographers.

  5. Apple Vision Pro and App Store

    The hosts discuss Vision Pro sales and preorders, followed by Apple’s response to European Union App Store rules.

  6. AI and blockchain claims

    The hosts discuss Sam Altman’s comments, articles about AI, and claims about blockchain applications.

  7. Books and listener updates

    The hosts discuss books, answer a listener’s chair question, and give the show’s contact and support addresses.

Full transcript

213 lines · machine transcribed
  1. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love.

  2. From beauty and fashion to home, culinary and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com. Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFillippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

  3. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. A heavily congested Brian Schulmeister. Oh, Canada get the better of you? Kids. I think it's more kids. Oh, that's right. The disease factories. Yes, yes. The little disease carrier bringing things home every single day.

  4. So, good times. Look, it's making you stronger. That's right. I think I'm strong enough at this point. I'm good. Okay. I've got a follow-up here. That AI-generated George Carlin comedy special that everybody hated and is being sued. Not done by AI. Written by humans.

  5. Really? Yeah. Initial reports from NPR said the AI was trained on thousands of hours of Carlin routines to create the material. But DudeZ, the channel that created and posted the video, was later approached by the New York Times and their spokesperson said the video was completely written by Chad Colton, one of the channel's hosts.

  6. Both host comedian Will Sasso and writer Colton are named in the suit. So, well... Not AI. I sense publicity play. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Slap on AI on that thing and everybody's going to pay attention right now. Now, they should have just made it funny. That would have helped.

  7. That really would have helped. Yeah. That would have been... You know, you can get publicity, but quality, not so much. Yeah. Yeah. This is not good for them. No, it's not. This is what you get when you mess with George Carlin. Even from the grave, he'll come back at you. That's right. I saw this one. This was pretty cool.

  8. This is another little bit of follow-up because we've been talking about the AI car... Not the AI car. Trying to get publicity. I got universe creep. EVs. We've been talking about EVs and how they seem to be on the wane in popularity. And, you know, e-bikes were really big during COVID and they seem to, you know, kind of started waning a bit since I think everybody on the planet owns like two or three at this point.

  9. Well, this is a new study out of Germany that suggests that people that get cargo bikes, electric cargo bikes versus regular e-bikes, are much more likely to get rid of their cars. Well, you can do your shopping with us. Yeah. That's the upside, you know. It turns into an actual useful vehicle, not just something out for a daily meander down the bike path.

  10. Well, you know, as with most things, California and Santa Monica in particular seems to be way ahead of the curve on this because I remember back in the day going to the farmer's market every Sunday in Santa Monica. And, of course, there were a bunch of people that pulled up in these. The thing is infrastructure. Where's the parking?

  11. Where's all the bike locks? Where's the roads that I would feel safe riding this bike down? Yeah. I mean, well, it's the same as any bike, really. But it's a bit wider. Not really, though. Well, when you slap the things on the side, Jason. Yeah, they're just about as wide as your ass.

  12. I had one of the electric cargo e-bikes for a little bit. Maybe your ass. Yeah, well, you know, even my svelte little tiny butt. It wasn't that much bigger when you had it all put together. I mean, not by – it didn't get wider than the handlebars, let's just say that.

  13. So that part wasn't really a thing. They are heavier for sure, so you can't put them in your car. So they're definitely made for going from home to the place and back. Yeah. And God forbid you have stairs. I think the one that I had weighed about 90 pounds. Yeah, that's hefty.

  14. Yeah, so that's, you know, garage to farmer's market and back. Yeah. You know, if I were still living in Santa Monica, I would totally get one of these. Yeah. I could do everything. I wouldn't even need a car. Nope, you wouldn't. Except to get to my mom's and, you know, anywhere that wasn't Santa Monica. But other than that, yeah.

  15. Oh, you could take public transfer. Oh, wait. Oh, yeah. You can't do that. So this was, like I said, it was a German program. So they actually surveyed about 2,386. So that's actually, that's not about, that's, they surveyed 2,386.

  16. Well, it's a German survey, Jason. They're going to give you the exact number of people that they surveyed. And they also probably went in and built all the infrastructure for this so it would actually work because they're German. Yes, I like this. A bit more than 18% of survey respondents said they either got rid of their car or decided buying against a car.

  17. And 80% of those people said they did so for environmental reasons. Nearly 49% said they ditched a car for financial reasons. 42% because they had no interest in driving a car. And about 10% due to the safety risks of driving a car. And this was the real shocker.

  18. The average age of the study's participants was 41.6 years old. Right. Well, I think the shocker there is 80% of the people said they did so for environmental reasons. But I have heard that the environmental movement is very big in Germany. They want to make sure that the planet's nice so they can take it over again.

  19. Take it over again. Nobody wants to take over a shithole. In the news. Now, Brian, we have talked a couple times about how Gizmodo is basically run by an alternate universe, us.

  20. Yes. And I love this latest article. Thank God FTX won't be coming back. So it is official that FTX is dead, dead, dead. I'm convinced that Gizmodo has run a headline writing AI on our shows. I swear. They have to have.

  21. But the real kicker was this one paragraph. FTX was a walking disaster of a company, and any attempt to rehabilitate its image would be the equivalent of trying to turn a flaming dumpster into a functional commuter vehicle. Best to let it die a natural death and have it serve as a warning to would-be crypto criminals to never try anything remotely resembling this scheme again.

  22. Bravo. Sadly, nobody's going to listen, and we will have more of them. Yes. Yes. Oh, of course. Of course. Crypto ain't dead, brother. Crypto ain't dead. This guy might be dead soon, though. Elon Musk has actually got his Neuralink company to insert a chip into a human.

  23. How is that even possible? It was approved by the FDA. So they said, sure. The FDA can't approve anything, but they approve this. Well, no, as we just found out that, you know, all the cough medicine that we've been taking our entire lives has turned out to be absolutely useless in snake oil.

  24. So now they're just letting him shove chips into people's heads. Yeah, this guy's going to die. Yeah. Yeah, he's definitely. He's fucked. He's fucked. And we're fucked if we let Elon start putting chips in people's heads. Because, you know, he can't get a self-driving car to work. How's he going to get a robot human?

  25. Did the lawsuit about all the monkeys that they killed and then lied about how many of them died, has that even been resolved? Not yet? I just don't understand how this happens. I know. It's a strange time to be alive. I mean, I'm sure the person was like, last resort, like, life was crap.

  26. There was no quality of life. Things were totally screwed for this guy. Okay, sure. Let's do this. But, you know, back in the day, you would have to go off to some private island and do this. Or Mexico. Yeah, or Mexico. Or Thailand. But, I guess, now we do it here. Okay. Yeah. Hey, man.

  27. We've been saying since this show started, we live in a third world country. So, bring it on. Yeah. And, yeah, there were some Senate hearings this week. And, Linda Iaccarino made the news because she threw out some interesting statistics. This is very interesting statistics.

  28. They said, she said that less than 1% of X's users were teens ages 13 to 17. Bullshit. Yeah, absolute bullshit. But, here's the real twist to it. She is calling X a 14-month-old company, completely forgetting the fact – not forgetting.

  29. This is a – I don't even know which – Revisionist history. It is a revisionist history, but I think it even goes – it's like revisionist history plus plus. Yeah, saying that X is only 14 months old and Twitter never existed. So, they're all new now, even though they live on the carcass of the dead underneath.

  30. She is aware that companies exist before you start working there, right? No, I don't think so. No, I don't think so. Look at this brand-new place I've walked into. So, yeah, that was just the funny bit for me. That she's just – she's actually toeing the line with a straight face to fucking Senate. The X is only 14 months old.

  31. Yes. Well, okay, sure. I don't know if you watched any of the proceedings. I did watch a little bit of it. It was – it's better than it has been. I'll put it that way. Like, most of the senators actually know what this stuff is now. And most of the senators kind of stayed to the point and asked good questions.

  32. Of course, there were idiots like Tom Cotton and some of the other senators that just asked really stupid things bordering on racist. And definitely a lot of people trying to score political points instead of staying to the task at hand. But overall, a lot better than it ever used to be.

  33. It was – we had the CEOs of Meta, Snap, Discord, X, and TikTok. Somebody badgered Mark Zuckerberg into turning around and facing a bunch of people. The room was filled with parents of children who had been victims of online exploitation. And he apologized to them. I didn't realize – With a canned apology that was released 10 seconds later.

  34. Yes. And nothing will fucking change, of course. Yeah. I didn't realize that Discord was considered such a big thing at this point, but it is now. It's up there with everybody else. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, the senators really just kind of pointed out every single one of your platforms has been used.

  35. And you have no moderation. You don't bother with moderation. You pay lip service to moderation. Fix it. And they won't, so. No, of course not. No, it's not in anybody's best interest to have this fixed. It's not – Just the people. Yeah, well. But fuck the people.

  36. You got to turn the whole system off. You just – you really do have to turn the whole system off. I've done that now. It's pretty nice. Yeah. Yeah, no more social on the phone. I just have it on one iPad. So, it is for that time of day when I kick back at night and just, you know, want to scramble my brain before I go to bed.

  37. It's perfect. Now, actually, a platformer that just came out, Casey Newton's newsletter, has a really good take on this and talks about some possible solutions to it that they'll never do. And I would like to say that the questioning of the TikTok CEO is not borderline racist.

  38. That was 100 fucking percent racist. Okay. It actually really fucking was. It was. He's like, I'm from Singapore, China. Yeah. You're from China? He remarkably kept his shit together pretty well. Not that I want to give TikTok any points, particularly given the next story.

  39. Okay. And here we go. This was the big news inside my household. Of course. The commercial music group warns it will pull songs from TikTok after deal expiration. And it didn't just warn. They did it. So, they started pulling the catalogs of the performers they represent, including Taylor Swift, Drake, and Billie Eilish, The Weeknd, and others.

  40. They are no longer available on TikTok. And any videos featuring the music will be muted going forward, forcing creators to replace the tracks with options from other music labels or amateurs or whatever the fuck they want that isn't UMG. Yeah. I mean, you know, basically just talks melted down.

  41. TikTok basically said, we don't need you. And Universal said, well, you're using us, so you need to pay us for it. And TikTok said, nah. And then UMG said, okay, I'm taking my toys and going home. Okay. And that's kind of how it played out. All right. I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall in your house for that.

  42. Oh, boy. It's been a stressful week. Oh, man. Can you get your wife pointed at Spotify next? Can you just have her go fix that one? Spotify pays. Not much. No, not much, but they pay. That's the argument. It's like we are just trying to get anything we can from these people because they don't want to pay us anything.

  43. Yeah. There's a good article over at Bloomberg called TikTok is thrown into disarray. It's music from Taylor Swift, Aria Grande disappeared, blah, blah, blah. Yes, we know that. This column is usually about podcasting and things of the like. So, but sometimes they throw in the audio side of social media, which they did today.

  44. And I really like this because they actually highlight some of the artists that are stuck in the middle of the fight. Yeah, it sucks for the artists. It really does. Yeah. This one artist, Cody Fry, he has a really good quote. I feel like I'm a person standing between two colliding planets.

  45. It's just hard as a hardworking artist to see a budding viral trend with one of your songs that's really awesome in its infancy. Just like that, get crushed by multi-billion dollar corporations. Yeah. And then, you know, TikTok's argument is that that's the point. That's why you should have your music up here and we should pay you nothing for it because you're breaking artists.

  46. It's promotion. How many times have we heard that argument, Jason? Yeah. It's promotion. We shouldn't get paid because you're promoting yourself and you're gaining more fans. Universal's point is, no, you're making billions of dollars. You're using our content. You need to pay us.

  47. Not a lot, but you need to pay us. And Universal's argument really is just, we got to hold the line here because we need to get paid for this stuff. So, sorry. Sorry, people that had viral things breaking right now. Promotion isn't going to be enough. You need to get paid. Anyways, whatever.

  48. It's two big conglomerates fighting each other. It's hard to feel sympathetic either way. Yeah, yeah. I don't feel sympathy. I feel sympathy to the artist is the only place I feel the sympathy. I'm sympathy to my mortgage payments. So, go UMG. Of course. Of course. At the end, though, Noah Kahan, I've never heard of him, but apparently he's a Grammy nominee for Best New Artist.

  49. And this is interesting. He said to know when his new song is going to be available since it won't be on TikTok anymore. He explained people should pre-save it on their preferred streaming app. How do you pre-save it? Pre-save is the new pre-order. Okay.

  50. So, you can go into Spotify and people track these things. It's like it's almost like the new charts. That's all it really does is if you're following an artist and you go to Spotify or Apple Music or whatever, you can basically, as an artist, you can put in, you know, I'm going to release this track on next Tuesday.

  51. And people go in, click on pre-save, and when it comes out on Tuesday, you get notified, and there you go. Okay. That's it. That's all it is. It's dumb. Shows you how much I know about streaming apps. You know, this is one of those things where we've lost the gatekeepers, the traditional gatekeepers like radio and music and things like that.

  52. So, like, how do you know when stuff is out anymore? You don't. So, people are trying to find ways to do that. Yeah. I mean, look, we even talk about that on Amazon. We follow authors on Amazon, and, you know, we can miss two books because they never notify us. Yeah, nine times out of ten, they never even send the damn mailing.

  53. I know. Even though we have the little checkbox marked, notify me of upcoming releases. Nothing. Well, you know, it's not Amazon. Amazon probably says, well, that's up to the, you know, it's up to the publisher to use a tool that we have to send out a notification. Or something, I'm sure. Yeah.

  54. Yeah, and as we know, publishers don't do shit. Yes, exactly. Sucks to be a creator. It does. Although, I love this. Music piracy is back in a big way, especially from YouTube. Of course. Visits to music piracy websites went up more than 13% last year, says a new report.

  55. The majority of those visits were to sites that allow users to download the audio from YouTube URLs. So, this is just people who don't know how to go get set up, like we say very often. And get the Downey app and just download it straight to your computer. You don't need a website to do it.

  56. Or view source and find the source URL and just go load that and save it. Because people are lazy and dumb. But anyway, so people are downloading music again, which is interesting since all these platforms make it extraordinarily hard to put downloaded music on your device.

  57. Yes, it does. I mean, I've got, I've been trying to do this with my library, with my iPhone, with Apple and Apple Music. You know, even though I saved it and I have all the files locally and transferring them to my phone is just, it is, it works like a third of the time.

  58. Sinking is impossible. It is painful. It is absolutely painful. For a device that started off as basically just a music player. Exactly. You cannot do it now. I mean, the thing was a fucking iPod. That was the point of the thing. They have stripped it down so much that everything is reliant on streaming because it behooves them.

  59. A music player. A phone. A music player. A phone. Well, not anymore, man. And an internet communicator. Don't forget the internet communicator. Oh, yeah, sorry. Internet communicator. Yeah, yeah, not anymore. All gone now. I wonder if we're going to see an uptick in, as the kids kind of start to blow back a bit on streaming and get nostalgia.

  60. I mean, we've seen the rise in vinyl sales, obviously. I wonder if we're going to see a rise in MP3 players and digital device players. I was tempted to get one a while back just for my car to make it easier because they're cheap now. You can get it. And the real nice thing is you can throw in a micro SD card for like, you know, like two terabytes now.

  61. I think the micro SD cards have finally gotten up to. Yeah, for like five cents. It's ridiculous. They're cheap. Yeah, and just throw that thing in and keep your playlist like you used to do. That would be nice. I've been tempted. Been tempted. Comcast finally got smacked down for its claims that it has a 10G network.

  62. Grumpy Old Geeks, the first 100G podcast. Exactly. So, yeah, they finally have to stop saying that their network is 10G. I hope they fired whoever came up with that idea in the marketing department. Nobody gets fired, Brian. I know, no, promoted. Nobody gets, yep, that's it.

  63. Exactly. They're now CEO. CEO plus plus. Oh, this one's interesting. 23andMe has lost billions almost worthless now. Good. Yeah, since all of our data has been hacked and sent out to the wild.

  64. So, yeah. And it's funny. This is Ann Wojcicki's company. You know, her sister used to be head of YouTube. Her mom is a superstar. But this one, yeah, this is, you know, I'd be really interested to be around the Thanksgiving table on this one.

  65. You know, Susan, how you doing? I run YouTube. We make $10 gazillion a month. Ann, how you doing? Well, I suck people's DNA and I lost all the money. Shit. Yeah. I mean, you know, great idea for a company. Shame they didn't pay any attention to security.

  66. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And apparently, too, I guess the raw data was stolen, too. Oh, yeah. Not just the basics. Yep. That was my biggest nightmare, was that that would happen. And that's why I would never do one of these things. Yeah.

  67. Just wouldn't, because who the fuck knows? Yeah. Who knows? I mean, they've got the building blocks of people. It doesn't, it doesn't, I don't lose any sleep over it. No, I mean, you know, there's nothing you can do about it, but yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

  68. Just seemed like a bad idea to me. I don't trust these internet companies. Even though we worked for them and we made a bunch of them. That's exactly why I don't trust them. That's why we know not to trust them. Exactly. We know how the sausage is made and sequenced.

  69. How the sausage is sequenced. The FCC is moving to outlaw AI-generated robocalls. I find this hilarious. Why don't we start with any robocalls? Yeah. They can't outlaw any robocalls, let alone AI-generated robocalls.

  70. So this is just like, FCC moves to outlaw space alien robocalls from the planet Zeist. We're going to outlaw robocalls from companies that start with the letter C on this very special episode of Sesame Street. Good luck with that.

  71. Good luck. How are you going to tell? You can't do any of them. I've signed up for all the lists. I get calls three times a day. I don't even know why I have a phone on my music and internet connected device. I know. I wish I didn't have a phone on mine, honestly.

  72. There's no point to it. No. I think the one company that I can at least say is doing the most for me when it comes to spam calls is AT&T. Yeah. Verizon's own blocking system is pretty decent, too. Obviously not good enough, but yeah. Yeah.

  73. There's one switch that needs to be set. If call comes from spam caller, don't fucking ring. Yes. That's it. Agreed. I don't understand why that's not built in or an option. If it's spam likely, then I don't want to hear it ring. Yeah.

  74. I mean, because it's either it's one or the other. It's either accept calls from only numbers, you know, or the wide open world. And you know why you can't do just only numbers, you know, especially as you get a little bit older or you have a kid? Doctors offices don't use a single number. No, they don't.

  75. They come from all over the fucking place. Like there is there is no one number for your doctor anymore. I got stung by that big time. Yeah. And I, yeah, I missed a neurologist apartment, apartment, appointment. See, see, that's what happens when you miss your neurologist apartment. You missed the appointment, Jason.

  76. Uh-huh. And that took me two weeks to reschedule. I was miserable for two weeks. This is right after I had the stroke. And it was just like, just because I had that turned on and I didn't realize it. I had Kaiser in my phone list. I had 17 numbers from Kaiser. My doctor's at Kaiser. Yep. Every call comes from a completely new number.

  77. Yep. Yeah. Uh, so iRobot and Amazon are going to, uh, not actually have their, uh, acquisition. Okay. Hasn't this been going on for like 20 years? It feels like it. It feels like it. It's a good thing for iRobot though, because they get a $94 million termination fee.

  78. Nice. That's how you get paid. Yep. That's how you get paid. Yep. Pretty cool. Well, good for them. Uh, Tesla is being sued by 25 California counties for allegedly mishandling hazardous waste. Oh. The lawsuit which seeks civil penalties and injunction forcing Tesla to correctly handle waste was filed after months of negotiations reportedly broke down.

  79. Civil penalties could amount to as much as 70,000 per violation per day. Now keep that number in mind. Okay. Okay. So, uh, waste materials have included lubricating oils, brake fluids, lead acid batteries, aerosols, antifoxic fluids. Model S's. Propane, paint, acetone, liquefied petroleum gas adhesives, and diesel fuel.

  80. And it continues to do so from and at its facilities. Now, they've been here before, of course, and they reached a settlement with the EPA over federal hazardous materielations violations before. As part of that, they agreed to properly manage waste at its Fremont plant and pay a $31,000 fee.

  81. $31,000. Yeah. Not $70,000 per violation per day, which is what they're trying for this time, but they will not get. They will probably get something like a $31,000 fine because that's what we do when we don't take things seriously. I don't know. I don't know. I think they're definitely not going to get $70,000 per violation per day, but they're going to get more than $31,000 because that, what they're going for now is because they broke the deal.

  82. Yeah. As, as the, as the, they broke the 2019 deal. So, I think they're going to come back. But that deal was only for one plant, the Fremont plant. So, and this is just a, this is, they're alleging basically everywhere, everywhere Tesla has a plant, they're doing this. Got it. Of course they are.

  83. Fun times, fun times. Well, I think everybody's seen this at this point, but. Speaking of Tesla's heavy metals. Yes, exactly. Heavy metal drummer cost Elon Musk $55.8 billion. Richard Tornetta, one-time thrash band drummer.

  84. I love this guy so much. I love this guy so much. Me too. Nine shares. He has nine shares of Tesla. Nine fucking shares of Tesla. And he cost Elon $55.8 billion. Oh, I love this.

  85. I love this so much. And here's the funny part now. So, now that Elon's paycheck has been slashed, as it were, he's, he's going, he's trying to have a shareholder vote now to, to reincorporate the company in Texas from Delaware.

  86. Right. Which is actually going to cause more lawsuits because it, it's just, oh, I mean, this guy. Listen, kids, ketamine is bad for you, okay? This is what I'm saying. Yeah. Oh, man.

  87. Yeah. And it's just going to get shot down because they're seeing it as obviously a petty move and not fiduciary responsible. So. So glad I sold so much of my Tesla stock. Yeah. And it was, it got to be so bad.

  88. Former Tesla counsel, Todd Maron, broke down in tears in court. So that's, that's the level of adulthood that we have going on over there. Zero. Zero. I mean, I'm sorry. Nine shares.

  89. That's all it took. Nine shares and tenacity. That guy's my hero. He is my hero. I'm sure his music sucks, but he's still my hero. Exactly. That's why he could only afford nine shares. Oh, man. He definitely isn't crying about getting kicked off of TikTok, let's say that.

  90. No, no. And, and because the hits just keep on coming for old Musky, he was voted for a second year in a row, most overrated CEO. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And I love this part at the end here.

  91. Even Musk tends to agree. After an ex-user asked Musk's company's grok, the chatbot that's built into X slash Twitter now, roast Elon Musk with one word. And the bot replied, overrated. And at least, at least Elon replied, accurate.

  92. So, yeah, at least he knows he's overrated. But now everybody knows two years in a row. He had two years to fix this. I don't think he cares. No, I don't think he does. Again, it kind of means bad for you kids. I think he might start caring since he lost $55 billion. So that, that might tip the scales.

  93. Now, and I was thinking about this this morning. You know, everybody has ditched X because of, you know, we liked, we liked Twitter. We don't like X. We don't like Elon. I don't like that brand new company, X. No, that brand new 14 month old company. It's young whippersnappers.

  94. Yeah. Those guys don't know what they're doing over there. So I'm thinking, I'm like, hmm, how much longer is it going to actually exist as, as an Elon joint? Because, I mean, they're, they're hemorrhaging people. They're hemorrhaging money.

  95. And I think that somebody is going to have to swoop in at some point and buy it. You know, I think, I think that it's, it's inevitable. And how long is that going to take? Two more years, maybe three more years. And then the pendulum might swing the other way again, depending on who buys it.

  96. But I don't see, I don't see old Captain Elon at the helm of that ship for a hell of a lot longer. No, but if it doesn't happen sooner rather than later, it's not going to make a fucking bit of difference. Because you've got threads, you've got blue sky. Threads seems to really be picking up steam. 130 million users now.

  97. Yep. I mean, that's, you know, I bet, I bet more than, less than 1% are ages 13 to 17. Yeah. How long have they been around now? The threads? 14 months or so? Something like that, something like that.

  98. And just one more, one more nail in the Elon coffin. SpaceX is being sued for negligence in an accident that led to a worker's coma. This guy, Francisco Cabada, has been in a coma for two years now because one of the Raptor engines that they were testing, a big chunk of it flew off and hit him in the head.

  99. But hey, you know what? Free Neuralink implant to see if we can fix this guy. Oh, shit. I didn't even cross-reference to see if that was the guy. Oh, man. Actually, we're going to charge you a cost because, you know, I need the money. Exactly.

  100. We can't afford, you know, we'll get you labor only. It's okay. So his wife is finally suing him, is finally suing SpaceX for her husband being in the coma. And nobody would comment on this, so that's all we have at this point.

  101. Yeah. But, yeah, and apparently there are a lot of injuries going on over at SpaceX that have not been reported. Something along the lines of crushed limbs, amputations, electrocutions, head and eye injuries, and one death. Well, rocket science is actually a big deal.

  102. Yeah.

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

  105. Media Candy. Jason, big announcement this week. Oh, what is it? What is it? Seen on that new company, X, that's been around for 14 months. We are ineffably elated to confirm that Good Omens will return for a third season. This calls for a round of hot chocolate and sweet treats.

  106. You know, the funny thing is, though, I thought I said that about three weeks ago because I saw it on Blue Sky. When Neil announced it over on Blue Sky because he had left X and announced it over there. Well, it finally made the PR rounds to Amazon, apparently.

  107. It finally made it around. Yeah. All right. No, that's great. Yeah, I'm excited. Because they left it on a bit of a cliffhanger, as it were. You think? Yeah. Looking forward to it. I'm hoping and assuming that Neil Gaiman is heavily involved in the writing. Oh, of course. Yeah.

  108. Okay. I did want to touch on Monarch Legacy of Monsters because I had forgotten I'd finished it last week and just kind of mentioned it in passing. I actually really did enjoy it. It was good. I didn't need all the monsters. Of course, they're going to come back for a second season because they left it again.

  109. You know, Kong shows up out of nowhere. Yeah, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a good show. So, I'm happy. Yeah, I'm looking forward to it, too. I think it'll be decent, especially since, you know, we know what's going to happen with the reunion of the old guys and all that.

  110. So, that's going to be interesting. I started watching a new show on Apple Plus, The Reluctant Traveler with Eugene Levy. If you know Eugene Levy, you know exactly what this show is going to be like. Okay.

  111. I liked it. It was fine. This is one of those that you should dip into once every month or so. You need to forget the formula and Eugene Levy, and then you can come back and watch another episode and enjoy it because you've forgotten all about it. If you watch it in a row, it's horrible because it's, you know, it is exactly what you would expect.

  112. Eugene Levy doesn't want to go. He's miserable the whole time he's there. They put him in the, the best part about the show is actually they find like the most insane, like $15,000 a night hotels that they put him up in, and the hotels are fucking unbelievable. So, he's happy about that part.

  113. Then he has to do something he really doesn't want to do that isn't really that big of a deal, but it's Eugene Levy. So, he, so the eyebrow goes up, and he's miserable, and he does his sides to the camera. At the end, he's learned something important, and he's really come around to this place, and his people are nice, and I feel better about the whole thing. Next episode, exactly the same thing somewhere else.

  114. But, you know, it's fun. If you like Eugene Levy, you'll get a kick out of it. Okay. I don't, which is why I think Apple is really knocking it out of the park with their recommendations on Apple TV+, because I did not know this existed, and I get almost every single Apple TV recommendation that there is.

  115. Right. So, I think that they know. They've nailed the recommendation engine over there. Okay. SmartList Podcast is moving to SiriusXM in an exclusive $100 million deal. Because they didn't learn anything from Spotify's, or Amazon's deal.

  116. This was an Amazon deal. Well, SiriusXM has got to do something, because they are, the only reason they're still in existence is because they make it so goddamn hard to fucking cancel. Yeah, which is why they're getting sued in New York. Yep. So, I just think that they need, I think that these companies have figured out how to use podcasting as a tax write-off.

  117. Yeah. Because I bet this deal is completely engineered as a tax write-off, just like WKRP in Cincinnati ended up being. Spoiler alert. Yeah. So. This is horrible news for my wife, initially, because she listens to it nonstop. She's always listening to the SmartList Podcast.

  118. She watched the show, the documentary thing on HBO. I told her about this, and she got really freaked out, but then she looked into it. Not really exclusive. What they're doing is they're keeping the back catalog exclusive, but new episodes will come out everywhere, just like normal.

  119. Yeah. And as we know, the back catalog isn't really monetizable, you know, past six months. So, it's a fucking $100 million great deal for the SmartList guys. Oh, yeah. On top of their $60 million deal they just walked out of. Yeah. There's no podcast that's worth this much money.

  120. There's just not. None. There's no way that they're going to make this money back, period. No chance in hell. No. I mean, it's a three-year deal, so that's, you know, still $33 million a year. They're not going to make $33 million back on one show. And nobody's learned that yet.

  121. It's astonishing. That's why I think that there's something else going on behind the scenes, why they need a write-off. Okay. You know? Yeah. That's my gut. My gut feeling is that we're not seeing the actual accounting that's happening here. So. Yeah. Because it may, I mean, a five-year-old could see that that's not going to work.

  122. Well, I'll ask my seven-year-old. We'll see. Yeah. See if he can figure it out. Like Netflix and Disney Plus before it, Hulu is clamping down on password sharing outside the account holder's primary personal residence per an updated subscriber agreement. That is, unless the practice is permitted by your service tier, indicating that users may be able to pay extra to share their membership outside of their household.

  123. They will need to start complying with these new rules by March 14th, as The Verge is reporting. The service has been informing subscribers in email that it's adding limitations on sharing your account outside of your household, but they have not made it clear exactly how Hulu plans to track them. Okay. So stop doing it. We're not going to tell you how or why, and you may be able to pay more.

  124. Okay. Of course. For most people in the U.S., this doesn't mean shit because Disney Plus is, Hulu's now wrapped up in Disney Plus. So you're down by those different requirements. Yeah. That's the thing. You know, at this point, I'm really on the edge of just canceling them both because there's nothing coming down the pipe on either one.

  125. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's nothing new from Disney that I want to see. And Hulu is just kind of one of those ones that I go to. I'm like, okay, is there anything? Like, I scrub all of the other services and there's nothing there. And then I'm like, okay, let's give Hulu one last try, see if there's anything there.

  126. Right. The only thing I got to say on Hulu that I am addicted to is death and other details. I've heard that show is just – Oh, God. It's so fucking good. So good. Highly recommended. Masters of the Air has been out for two weeks now.

  127. I just watched episode three last night. I'm – I'm very saddened by this show. No good. They – the thing is, this comes on – this is supposedly the Band of Brothers team. You know, Band of Brothers was one of the most phenomenal series ever made.

  128. The Pacific, meh. Masters of the Air, Band of Brothers spent the entire first episode on character development. And you knew exactly who everybody was, where they came from, what they were doing. The Pacific, they tried.

  129. It wasn't that great. Masters of the Air, they just threw this shit out the window and just jumped straight into the plane. And it just – it makes me not give a shit about these people, which is really a really sad thing. Because, you know, the – and I think a lot of the problem is most of these guys die because you look at the return rates on, you know, bomber crews in World War II.

  130. And it's just ungodly, you know, how many people were shot down and got killed or became POWs. So they have that as a problem to begin with. The flying scenes, meh. A little too over-CG.

  131. Two-CGI, yeah. Two-CG'd. And, yeah, it's just – it's not catching me. It's really not catching me. So hopefully maybe they'll catch a stride. But it's pretty, but that's about it, you know. There's just not enough character development to really make me care about these guys.

  132. I haven't really seen any positive reviews on it, and I'm kind of waiting now. Like, I'm not going to invest in it until somebody says I should. So nobody has told me to do it yet, so, yeah. Yeah. No, it's not – to me, it's just – I'm going to keep watching it because I tell you what, it is gorgeous on my 75-inch TV in 4K.

  133. But there's just no – Yeah, but so are the Apple screensavers. That's true. That is true. They are beautiful. So I do have one recommendation, though, on a fantastic show that just has the same amount of episodes out right now. Monsieur Spade. It is a new neo-noir show that stars Clive Owen.

  134. Okay. I love Clive Owen. He's Sam Spade. So this takes place after the Maltese Falcon. He's 60 years old and living in France. And it's a murder drama. And it is awesome. It is really, really, really, really good.

  135. Like I said, three episodes out. It's on AMC. And so you can get it on AMC or AMC Plus if you have that. I just went to Sweden instead. And it's so good. It's fast-paced, like the dialogue. It's, you know, it's like a Sam Spade type of thing.

  136. He's like, hey, but he's 60, he's crotchety, and he's a bad motherfucker. So – and it's just – I can't recommend this enough. My dad actually turned me on to this. Nice. So if you like the Perry Mason reboot, or not the prequel that they did on HBO, and now Max, it's very similar to that in style and tone.

  137. But it's beautifully shot and amazingly well acted. I can't recommend that one enough. Okay, cool. Yep. And it turns out 28 Days Later is going to be coming back with 28 Years Later, even though it's not been 28 years later.

  138. Yeah, that's okay. Yeah. Well, by the time it comes out, who the hell knows? Yeah, that's true. Yeah, but Danny Boyle's back, so who cares? That's all I care about. Danny's back. And Cillian Murphy might come back. So they're working that out. He's an executive producer, but I think his Oppenheimer Oscar nom will definitely help bring that up, you know?

  139. Yeah. If – that's just a – that's a win for them. But I assume he picked up the rights. Yeah. Well, I'd like the first one. I'd be more excited about 20 – 28 years later for Shaun of the Dead, but okay. I know. That's what I was thinking of too when I was watching this.

  140. I'm just like, man, why don't they do another Shaun of the Dead? That would be great. That was the single best zombie movie ever made. Of course. Fantastic. Even my wife loves it. You can't not. Yeah. You can't not love that movie. Yeah. But I think 28 days later is right up there in the – I mean, that's like I think the second best for me because it was just – it broke the mold.

  141. It gave you running zombies. It was scary as shit. Nobody had seen that before and it was just like, oh, I like this. This is actually, you know, takes it up a notch. Some people are very anti the running zombies, which would be Simon Pegg and Shaun of the Dead. He hates the running zombies.

  142. But I like them, so I hope they make this thing and get it done. Well, we've been talking a little bit earlier about Gizmodo and how much we've been enjoying them and their writing and all that sort of stuff. I didn't realize how deep they were actually getting as well. They run a series about Star Trek anniversaries.

  143. They will bring up every week, like, what are we – what happened in the past with Star Trek? And they start talking about it. And this week's – I discovered it because I guess this one was going a little bit viral. So it was pumped up their algorithm and bubbled up in my feed a bit higher. This is great.

  144. It's a banner week – in a banner week for questionable Star Trek anniversaries. But while earlier this week we found at least something to admire in Voyager's bold exploration of the Warp 10 threshold and space amphibian evolution, there's very little to admire in the other major milestone. 30 years ago today, the next generation took us to Planet Scotland in Sub Rosa where Beverly Crusher exchanged all thoughts of character agency for 40 minutes in exchange for some generational family ghost loving.

  145. Yes, my friend, it's the Ghost Candle Sex episode. But how bad can the Ghost Candle Sex episode really be? The answer is very bad. Very, very bad. No. This is one of the greatest episodes of all time. This is one of the greatest write-ups about one of the greatest episodes of all time. It is great.

  146. The link will be in the show notes. If you remember this episode and how fucking stupid it was, you're going to love this. When I first moved to Los Angeles and we were living over in Hollywood, every time we would go to the mall, we'd be going to the Beverly Center because every time, Beverly, Beverly.

  147. If you've seen the episode, you'll get it. That was a running joke, I think, for 10 years. That episode gave so much to the world. It really did. Fantastic. A little news on Daredevil, Born Again, which I didn't know that they had a title.

  148. And they're bringing the, you know, they're putting the band back together. Apparently, Bullseye will be coming back, which is cool. The other cool thing is they apparently took the writer's strike to go and fix a lot of things that were wrong with it.

  149. So they went and re-did it, reworked a bunch of the episodes. They're going to, you know, figure out how to shoot them and all that stuff. But the sad thing is they took it from 18 episodes, which might have been a little too much, actually, to a 13-episode season. Okay. Because, you know, they make these things movies nowadays.

  150. It's not like, you know, the old 22 episodes of TV. Well, no, we don't have time for the Beverly Sex in Planet Scotland with a ghost episode. Yeah. We've got to cut to the real story here. You cut to the story, but Beverly would be very sad to hear this. I'm just looking forward to it.

  151. They say it's not going to be until 2025 now, so boo. Okay. Hey, but we're going to get some more Daredevil. They're going to be, you know, Daredevil in the, you know, old folks' home. But, hey, we'll get it. Well, speaking of that, and I didn't put this in the show notes because I just saw it a little bit earlier today, we finally have a release date for the Beetlejuice sequel, which is cleverly titled Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.

  152. Yep. Yeah, it's coming in, what, I think August or September? I can't remember. Okay. Looking forward to it. Yeah, yeah. Hopefully the chemistry and the magic is still there. Yep, hope so. Yeah, the new Ghostbusters doesn't look too bad either. That one looks all right, too. Yeah. Yeah.

  153. Yeah, we'll see what they do. We'll see what they do. I'm in. I'm in. I just, right now, I just want to go get to the theater and go see Godzilla Year One. Oh, I hear that's good. I want to go see that. Yeah. I want to see it in the theater. My buddy wants to go, so I think we're going to try that this week. I haven't been to the theater in five years.

  154. So, it'll be an experience. I went for the Mario Brothers movie with the kid. Hmm. Okay. Yeah, it's a good time. All right. This is a, let's close out with this one. Richard Prince. We covered him a long time ago.

  155. Basically, what he was doing is he would do a screenshot of an Instagram post and then print it really big and sell it for a gazillion dollars, up to a hundred grand each for these things. And this is why I find the art world to be complete and utter bullshit. Oh, yeah. Oh, it is. One of many reasons.

  156. No, I used to work in the art world and everybody in the art world knows it's bullshit. Right. That's the great part about it. That's why NFTs weren't much of a stretch. Also bullshit. No, actually, they weren't. Yeah. Yeah. When I explained them to my dad at first, he was just like, that tracks. Yeah. Sucker born any minute.

  157. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So, he has agreed to pay at least $650,000 to two of the photographers in the copyright lawsuit. So, they win. He loses. But he still wins. Yeah. Because I'm sure he gets to keep a lot of that money that he made from those pieces that he just blatantly stole and printed.

  158. See, you can't even do that shit at Kinko's. Well, actually, you can't do it at Kinko's because I don't think Kinko's exists anymore. But in the old days, you had to show proof of copyright if you wanted to copy something like that. Yep. Unless you worked there overnight like I did and just would copy whatever the hell you wanted. And if anybody gave you five bucks, you'd still copy it anyway.

  159. There's always a way. Yes. That's true. Cops and doodads. Well, so far, Brian, it looks like Apple has sold about 200,000 of the Vision Pro headsets. Pretty impressive. We don't know exactly how many they have, but I'm assuming that's probably most of them.

  160. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it is. They said they were going to make up to a half million the first year. Okay. And then the interesting story, the side story is that there were so many people that were buying them to repost on eBay and completely figured out how to get around that part where you have to scan your head.

  161. It's like they were clever enough to get around Apple's head scanning issue. So apparently one hacker figured out how to take the head scanning data, put it off to the side, and then use that during the pre-order process and just kind of inject it into the pre-order process.

  162. And then we'll just tell everybody, oh, when you get there, tell them it doesn't fit or if it fits, great. But there's a program that when you come in to get it fitted for the first time, if it doesn't fit, they'll refit you with a different one. So I imagine there's going to be one size that's going to be all over the place.

  163. So yeah, good for them. I can't wait to hear some actual reviews with people that have it. There's going to be over 600 apps when it first comes out, which is pretty impressive. Pretty impressive. Yeah. I just got an email this morning that Fantastical is now optimized for Vision Pro. I'm like, okay, great.

  164. Just what I want. Spatial calendar. Yeah. I don't even want Fantastical, let alone do I want Fantastical in 3D. This is an interesting one. And this comes back to something I said a long time ago. Apple says EU accounts for just 7% of its global App Store revenue.

  165. And I said, back when the EU was getting all pissy about all of this stuff, I'm like, well, Apple could just say no and pull out because it's a smaller market and they can take the hit. Yeah. And that would teach them a lesson.

  166. Yes. And so what Tim Cook is doing is he's making these new rules for the sideloading of App Store. You know, bring your own App Store and shit. He's making the term so onerous that nobody's going to want to do it. Even Mark Zuckerberg said, yeah, nobody's going to want to do that.

  167. So I think this comes back to them just saying, yeah, fuck you. You're nothing to us. This is definitely a shot across the bow saying, OK, we don't care. Yeah. Yeah. It's very, very interesting because 7% of Apple's global App Store revenue compared to their total revenue is probably like, you know, less than half a percent of total revenue.

  168. So I don't, I don't think they would, they would, you know, I don't even think they would notice the hit if it went away. They would notice that what they would notice is the hardware hit because I think people would stop actually buying iPhones. But even that, you know, we'll see how, see how this plays out.

  169. But I think Apple's definitely pushing back and they're not, they're not happy about it. And do I think that's cool? No, I don't. But I think that we should be able to load whatever app we want on our fucking phone personally. But, you know, they're going to hang on to every last bit of that revenue as they can. Yeah.

  170. They built it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think we, I remember talking about this, this gizmo when it first came out and we just kind of laughed about it and never discussed it again. But a couple of years ago, Snap decided that the selfie production pipeline needed to be improved upon. Bathroom mirrors and selfie sticks, not cutting it.

  171. So they decided the next evolution in the art of taking pictures of yourself would involve a flying robot. So watch the pixie, the tiny yellow drone designed to follow you around and take cute cannons of you while you did stuff. Yeah, it was cute. It was a cute little thing that retailed between $185 and $250.

  172. Wasn't that cute? Not that cute. And it did not do well. So Snap halted development on the product a mere four months after it launched. However, lots of things, lots of these things are out there. During its short reign, the drone's tagline was your friendly flying camera. Except it turns out those devices aren't quite so friendly after all.

  173. In fact, Snap is urging the small number of people who did buy the pixie to immediately stop using it and remove the battery and stop charging it. If you're wondering why, it's because the damn thing could overheat and explode. Whoops. So, yes, the battery can overheat, potentially catch on fire and injure you while taking a cute selfie.

  174. They report that the drone should be returned without the batteries. You need to figure out how to get rid of those death traps. You keep the little flying bomb. We'll just take the, give us the propellers. Yes. Oh, that's funny. These guys can't catch a break.

  175. No, they really can't. But they're still there. Amazing. Amazing. Something else that's still there. Let's get into the AI news. Sam Altman is, he's a bigger flip-flopper than John Kerry. So, now he's saying GPT-5 will just be okay.

  176. It'll be okay. All right. You know, he's managing expectations on one side. On the other side, he's saying, it's going to kill us all. But, so which one is it, Sam? Which one is it today? It's going to kill us all in a very bland way.

  177. It is. It's going to kill us through boring fucking headlines. So, yeah. That's why I just, I don't even care what these guys say anymore. No, it's not worth listening to. No, because it's all self-serving bullshit. The whole thing with, you know, let's have a moratorium.

  178. It's like, because everybody that signed that moratorium was starting an AI company and wanted to catch up. But it seems like all the people with the money have caught up and are actually surpassing what GPT-4 can do, at least at this point. So, it's all, because it's all the same thing. Yeah. You know, it's all just, you know, incremental differences based on the same logical code base.

  179. You know, people are doing little tweaks to it. But the underlying theory is the same for all of them. So, and half of this shit is open source now. So, you know, it is what it is. There's a really good article that I found called How AI Works, which is a very non-technical, extremely non-technical explanation of how LLMs work and the whole thing.

  180. So, I recommend just, I think anybody can read this and get a better grasp on what AI is, because it will be better cocktail party conversation for everybody, if you guys got at least a little bit of a handle on it. So, recommend checking that out. And he does a follow-up article called How AI Doesn't Work.

  181. All the things that you hear in the articles from Sam Altman, yeah, it doesn't do that. Yeah, it doesn't do that. No, it does not have a soul. It does not reason. It doesn't understand many, many, many, many things. So, this guy near Zickerman is the guy that wrote it. He used to be the former head of audiobooks at Spotify, and he was one of the co-founders of Anchor, one of the shittiest podcast hosting platforms of all time.

  182. Didn't we talk to him at some point? Were we on them? But his writing's pretty good, so he should stick to that. Okay. We were never on Anchor. No. No, I would never, ever move to Anchor. Anchor was one of the, I could go on for an hour about the shittiness of Anchor. Nah, it's okay. Yeah.

  183. So, and if you just want to drown in another sea of bullshit, Vitalik Buterin, one of the co-founders of Ethereum, he wrote an article, The Promise and Challenges of Crypto Plus AI Applications. And it even includes a Venn diagram. Ooh.

  184. On the artificial intelligence side, he's got centralized, little transparency, energy consumptive, monetization limited, and monopolistic. On the blockchain side, we've got decentralized, transparent, energy efficient solutions. Fucking finally. User monetization and accessible.

  185. So, the synergies are data ownership, transparency, monetization, cost cutting, competition, innovation, and inclusive. Fuck you. Well, if you'd like that bullshit in a more bite-sized chunk, you can listen to the latest episode of Pivot, Deepfake Regulation, Media Layoffs, and guest Chris Dixon.

  186. Now, Chris Dixon is promoting his latest book, Read, Write, Own, Building the Next Era of the Internet by Chris Dixon. Chris Dixon is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. And here's all you need to know. He is a general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Boom.

  187. Gotcha. So, he goes on, and he talks to Scott and Kara, and he's trying to extol the virtues of the blockchain and AI and all the applications being built on the blockchain. And they did a really good job of saying, so, like, what?

  188. And he had nothing. And he kept going back to, there's just some really cool things. Like, what? Like, what? Nothing. This tells me I will never fucking read this book. He had to have been prepared for this.

  189. But he had nothing. He did not say a single thing that made me think blockchain is worth fucking shit at all. Or it's going to be the future at all. The best he could do was, like, well, there's some really interesting things out there. Like, you know, there's a platform that lets people across the internet that I've never met before write a story together so that eventually, if it gets picked up, they can share the proceeds of the IP.

  190. What? Fuck you. That's stupid. The best you've got is a way to jumpstart some creativity so then it gets sold into the normal pipelines of things? That's it? That's it? Yeah. Okay. No.

  191. Fucking. It's so stupid. And we've been screaming about this stuff for so long. And there's so much money being pumped into it. Even the people that know the most about this stuff, that live in it, that invest in it, that write books about it, when they've asked what they can actually do with it, nothing.

  192. Nope. You know why? Because they're still banking on the fucking greater fool theory. That's it. That is their business model now. They need to rope people in so they can get rid of it. That's it. Until when the next shiny thing comes along. Yep. That's it. The problem is you're still hearing about Web3 and the blockchain from these guys because they still got so much fucking money in it that they can't get rid of.

  193. That's true. That's it. So, you know, that's the entire – that is the entire house of cards right there. Yeah. So. I think it's highly worth listening to that interview because it's just great. Like he's gung-ho about everything and then as soon as he gets questioned, just literally nothing.

  194. Just falls apart. You know, I don't listen to that show anymore because I'm kind of over them. But I think I'll make an exception this time. Yeah, just forward to the interview card. I think I'll make an exception. That's good. Well, I took your suggestion, Jason, and I picked up This Book May Save Your Life, Everyday Health Hacks to Worry Less and Live Better by Karan Rajan.

  195. Highly enjoyable, fun book. Isn't it, though? Yeah. Yeah. You know, we're all going to die and our bodies are fucking useless, but hey, great. Mm-hmm. Yeah. At least you can get a chuckle on the way to the grave. Yeah. He's a very – he's a wonderful communicator.

  196. He's a great health communicator. Definitely dig him. So it's a fun book. It's a good read. You learn a few things, for sure. I like the little everyday health hacks. It's nothing we don't know. Drink a lot of water. Eat vegetables. Okay. Yeah. He's fun to watch on Instagram, too, because his videos are very entertaining.

  197. I'll have to follow him. Yeah. Yeah. He does some takedowns of viral folks when they're, like, talking about different things. He's like, well, that's kind of true, but really not. It's just – he really breaks it down. It's funny. I have been – since the beginning of the year, every morning I get up and open up my iPad and I've got two of those daily tip dealios going on.

  198. The first one I'd check out is The Daily Laws, 366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery Strategy, and Human Nature by Robert Green. Okay. Because I like Robert Green, and I got this on sale a long time ago, and it's been sitting in my Kindle for a long time. But at the beginning of the year, I'm like, maybe I should try these things because the second one I've got, my dad swears by, and I even bought him a very nice leather-bound autographed version of.

  199. It's The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman. The funny thing is, Robert Green – well, actually, Robert Green and Ryan Holiday have a – they're tied at the hip because Ryan Holiday used to be Robert Green's writing assistant.

  200. And he learned everything about writing from Robert Green, except how to write, unfortunately. My dad and I both chuckle about the fact that Ryan Holiday is one of the worst writers we've ever read. The ideas are there. The ideas are good. If you can get past the horribleness of his actual writing, then the books are enjoyable.

  201. But you can't say that Ryan Holiday is a good writer by any stretch of the imagination. Good ideas, poor execution. Robert Green, great writer. I really enjoy his stuff. It's funny that you mentioned stoicism because I stumbled across an article earlier this week, and I was going to send it to you, but then I totally forgot.

  202. I think it was over on The Guardian because it's Johnny Lydon's birthday this week. I think he turned 68 or something like that. And it was this really long, great article about how punk rock and stoicism are intricately connected and gets really deep into it.

  203. I was like, Jason would like this, but then I totally forgot. Oh, well. It's on The Guardian. Search for Johnny Lydon. Okay. Oh, well. Okay. That's homework. So we'll see. You know we don't do homework on this show. No, we don't. I do want to throw out a pitch for my friend Teresa McNulty's new book, Itchy.

  204. It's a really cute little kid's book, age for age four to five. Nice. That little range. So she just put it out. It's paperback. Go check it out. Link is in the show notes. So good luck, Teresa. Kill it. Over at Patreon, we've got Mirjana.

  205. Mirjana, just for you. Deliveroo. Miss BKG18 wrote us a beautiful review. Thank you very much. It's very long. So we will read that. We won't read that to you listeners right now. But I do. She does have a personal request.

  206. At the beginning of 2023, you both mentioned a great $1,000 chair, but I can't find the name. That would be the Herman Miller Mira 2. Sitting on it right now. I'm standing because I need to stand. But as soon as I go back, I will edit this show sitting on that chair, too, because it is the best Herman Miller chair that they make, in my opinion.

  207. Agreed. Yep. All right. Thanks so much. Over at PayPal, we've got Charlie, Richard, Simon, Judge, Hawaii, Thomas, Nikolai, Levy, and Nicolay. It's tongue-twisting time. It is. It is. Over at the tip chair, we've got Adam, Nick, Matthew, and Sarah. And again, no reviews.

  208. What happened? What happened? I think every single one of our listeners has already given us a review, Jason. I think that. And then some. And then some. So get well soon, Dave. Dave is out this week with an ailment. So tune back in next week for Shit Shower and Shave with Dave.

  209. That's right. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Show notes and links to everything we talked about today are at GOG.show slash 634. GOG.show slash donate is the place to drop us a few bills so we can keep bringing you this top-notch entertainment.

  210. And don't forget to share the show with your friends and enemies. It's just a little button in your player. Click it. Share it. Boom. Bob's your uncle. And at GOG.show, you can find a link to our Discord channel if you want to chat with us and other show fans. Head over to GOG.show slash contact to send us your feedback, comments, or links to cool shit you think we should talk about on the air.

  211. And since apparently nobody gets to this part, I just want to reiterate. GOG.show slash review is where you can toss us a review and preferably five stars that we can read on the air. Stay grumpy. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out.

  212. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love. From beauty and fashion to home, culinary, and outdoor living.

  213. Shop now at QVC.com.

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