649: Garbage In, Garbage Out

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. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. This is going to be a very interesting show, Brian. Why is that? I might have a heart attack in the middle of it. You see, I've been doing decaf for several months now, except this morning I went to Whole Foods and I got a vanilla iced coffee that I used to get all the time, not realizing that it's not decaffeinated.

So in three sips, I had more caffeine than I have in three days. Oh, I'm having flashbacks to that year-long period where you were over-caffeinated basically every show. I apologize. I apologize. Not my fault, man. Not my fault. I had a brain fart.

Which is perfect because maybe that will offset my under-preparedness this week because yesterday my Mac Studio died. I spent all day trying to get that back and it is still a brick thing. And the rest of the week, I was over at my friend Andy's house because his keyboard was getting these weird MIDI echoes.

And we spent two days trying to figure it out. And finally, at 11 o'clock last night, we kind of figured out that it was a control surfaces issue. So it's been fun. It's been a fun week. So I don't know how this is going to play out, but bear with us, people. We're going to make this a show.

All right. Well, the follow-up section is all you. So let's see how fast this goes. Okay. This might be 30 seconds here. I had been posting stuff on Instagram all week. I did, like, you know, post here, post there. And one of my posts, when I posted that I had 500 days sober, had, like, 120 likes on it.

I'm like, woo, cool. Next post had, like, 80 likes on it because it was just a normal post. Then I posted a photograph of an ad that I saw on DirecTV for the pet channel or the dog channel or some shit like that. And it was made with stable diffusion or mid-journey.

You could totally tell it was a mid-journey graphic. And I'm like, stop posting this shit. Hire some real artists. Yep. Zero. Zero interaction. I looked at the insights. Nothing. So don't say shit in your Instagram posts. Or if you do want to say shit, just don't expect any engagement.

Because, man, they dropped it like a rock. Yeah. Like a rock. It would be nice if, you know, these social networks actually did what they were supposed to do. But that's long gone. No. Yeah. Yeah. Now they decide what people see and what they can see. And they don't tell us the rules.

And we kind of have to figure it out ourselves. And who cares? And how to speak, how to think. You know, that's the whole reasoning behind why TikTok needs to be banned. But let's see. Now, I saw this one. I love this. Is the dead internet theory true? Shrimp Jesus phenomenon explained.

The dead internet theory suggests that AI-generated content is dominating online platforms like social media with accounts and posts created by bots aiming to farm engagement, like we talked about last week. Examples like shrimp Jesus images, bizarre yet popular, underscore the phenomenon. While initially appearing harmless, there are concerns that this AI-driven engagement could serve more sinister purposes, such as spreading disinformation and influencing public opinion.

So, the article goes on. But you get the point. I think that we're going to have to get rid of Betteridge's Law of Headlines for this one because this is DeFillippo's Law of Headlines saying, is the dead internet theory true? Hell, yes, it's true. We just spent two episodes bitching about it. But I think that, Brian, you and I need to start the dead internet society so we can just sit around and shoot the shit about old websites that we used to love.

Like, ah, remember the good old days of LiveJournal? You know? I still liked MySpace. I never liked MySpace. You see, I'm surprised you didn't like LiveJournal because that's where all the goth chicks were. Yeah, but I wasn't looking to date. I was dating. Ah, yes.

Yeah. So, you know, I was okay. Yeah, I mean, I really realized on, what day is it, Sunday or Monday, that Apple gives you your report on time spent on your device? I turned that off a long time ago. Oh, I like looking at it because it lets me kind of know if I'm going off the deep end or not.

But, or at least it used to because I got mine this last week and, you know, it used to be like, you know, social media networks, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all that sort of thing would be way up there. And my time spent on my phone would be way up there. I scroll so little on social media now because it's so useless.

It's not even showing up on my report anymore. It's crazy. Oh, that's great. That's great. No, it's good. Like, I spend more time reading. I spend more time with my kid. I was going to say, you have a son. Go spend more time with him. Yeah. It's perfect. Well, you know, there's only so much I can talk about the, you know, the Lego toys and whatever show he's watching right now.

I think it's Teen Titans Go Again, which is actually hilarious, by the way. Okay. Okay. No, mine has been way down. But, hey, Brian, I just got an email last night. DMs are go on Blue Sky. So now you can join up for the future.

Send people a message. How innovative. How innovative. Oh, we still can't post our own GIFs. That's coming. That's on the roadmap. But, man, we can DM to our heart's content. Just only to John Scalzi because he's the only one there. So what are you going to do?

Then, of course, this came along. Using memes, social media users have become red teams for half-baked AI features. And a bunch of people sent us this one because there was the Google AI, you know, shit that they're doing for results now. When they wanted to make, was it pizza sauce stickier or whatever, they recommended adding glue to the pizza sauce to give it a little more stickiness.

And there's advice for rattlesnake bites. But the best one is, Google's AI search feature made headlines for suggesting that running with scissors is beneficial cardio exercise. Yes. Directly pulled from a comedy blog. This is exactly what we said was going to happen.

Exactly. Yeah. It's unbelievable. And, God, don't they test the shit internally? Apparently not. Oh, wait, no. We're the beta testers. That's right. That's right. For self-driving cars. Fix it. As the saying goes, as you mentioned last week, garbage in, garbage out.

Yep. You suck down the hole of the internet. What do you expect to get back? The funny thing is, it's not garbage. That's actually a pretty funny thing about the running with scissors. But, you know, in the right context, it's funny. It's all about context. Yes. Oh, yes.

And the portal is back online. So we talked about how- Did we check before we went to air? Because- It might be down again. Yes. Now there are operating hours. It's only 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. in New York for everybody. So, yeah, it should be about 8 a.m. Because 6 a.m., the drunks are still out, you know?

They're still buzzed and can do some stupid shit. And it's 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. in Dublin, which I think is actually a safe time in Dublin for most people. Most people. 9 p.m. is pushing it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. 3 p.m. is probably pushing it. They start drinking at 5, remember?

At 5 in the morning. Oh, man. So, yeah, we'll see how it goes. But they've got some blur effects going on. And they put a cordon around it so you can't get up and personal with it. Right. So, I love this. Despite these measures, the creators acknowledge that mischievous behavior is likely to continue reflecting human nature.

The project's future may hinge on balancing artistic intent with managing public conduct. Good fucking luck. Yeah. Good luck with that. And by the way, I mean, at the end of the day, aren't we stretching artistic intent a little bit here? I think so. It's a fucking camera. Yeah. It's a webcam.

It's a big fucking webcam. It's a webcam. As we've learned from the COVID days of Zoom, most people can't keep their pants on. So, there you go. Yeah. You know, they should just make it the tubing cam. That's it. That's it. I'm telling you, man, they've got to get that hot dog or not going.

Yep. A million people also sent us this one. Apple's photo bug exposes the myth of deleted. No, we've exposed the myth of deleted for 11 and a half years on this show. Disability equals zero. So, everybody got the update for iOS on their iPhones and iPads.

And they're saying that they finally came out and gave a little bit of an explanation to what was happening. It was a database bug, they say. Okay. Database corruption. So, visibility was set to yes, as opposed to no. Mm-hmm.

That's it. They're saying it was only for photos that were on device, which everybody was saying, well, that's bullshit. I'm like three phones, five phones away from when this was. Because these were images that were coming back, you know, as far as 2010. It's like, what? How's that possible?

So, what they're saying is, as you have iCloud backups of your phone and you keep moving that backup from phone to phone to phone, all that stuff was coming along with it, which makes me say, I'm paying for iCloud storage. And if you're keeping my deleted images on my backups that far out when they're supposed to have been, quote unquote, deleted, you're charging me for stuff that actually shouldn't be there.

So, you know, unleash the class action lawsuits, please. That is a very fair point. Yeah. That's absolutely true. I'm not joking. We're paying for that storage. And if you're keeping things that were supposed to be deleted in there, that's problematic to me. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Especially since I'll talk more about iCloud storage later on in the show.

But I just thought of that. I'm like, hey, you know what? Thank God we have audit rights with Apple. Oh, wait. We don't. Well, the UK's AI Safety Institute, the ASSEE, as I like to call it, basically found out that they can easily jailbreak most major LLMs.

Okay. Did they tell us how to do it? Shocking. Well, they kind of do, actually. They found that four, well, they don't say which ones exactly. They say that four undisclosed LLMs tested were highly vulnerable to basic jailbreaks, basically even generating harmful outputs without researchers attempting to produce them unjailbroken.

Okay. So, yeah, if you read the article, I'm not going to, like, broadcast this information. But if you go through the article, they do kind of basically say what they did, which is, you know, not much. So, that's not good news that these guardrails that they've put on these major LLMs are basically not working.

One attempted relatively simple attacks, though all responded to between 98 and 100% of harmful questions. Okay, great. So, whew, they're catching almost 2% every now and then. Oh, sweet. So, the report indicates that whatever safety measures they are currently deployed are insufficient.

You think? You think? I thought of one that this morning in the shower that I want to try. I'm like, write me a sentence that is guaranteed to get me canceled by Republicans and Democrats in the United States. I've got to try that one just to see, just to see what it'll do.

Yeah. I think you're going to have to finesse the politics aspect of it because I'm pretty sure that those are being heavily, those keywords are being heavily induced at the moment. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I could, but yeah. You should do something like urban versus like city. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, we can do urban and rural and everyone in between. That kind of thing. What can I say that will piss everybody off in one sentence? Make it conversational. What will piss off people that are on farmer date versus hinge?

Yeah, farmer date versus J date versus hinge versus a million of them now. So the more things change, the more they stay the same. I love this one. Machine learning researcher links open AI to drug fueled sex parties. Woo. I'm going to have to go apply.

Yeah. A machine learning researcher has made explosive claims about drug fueled sex parties linked to open AI in Silicon Valley. Sonia Joseph, a former Princeton ML researcher now with Mila Quebec, shared her allegations on social media describing a dark side to the startup culture.

Joseph pointed to consensual non-consent sex parties and heavy drug use within the artificial general intelligence community, suggesting these behaviors contributed to a coercive climate harmful to female researchers. Now, I want to put the brakes on this right here. Consensual. First, consensual non-consent sex parties, which means as you walk in the door, you know what you're signing up for.

Now, this has nothing to do with just artificial general intelligence. This has to do with San Francisco and Silicon Valley. This has been going on since day one of the startup revolution. I mean, this is just the way it is. The old hacker houses, programmer houses, those, you know, you take a black light in one of those places, you are going to want to run for the hills.

This was going on when I was there. I just could never find them, which was what pissed me off. This is a San Francisco problem, though, and a Silicon Valley problem. And is it really a problem if it's consensual non-consent? You know, it just says that you know what you're signing up for. Don't go to the parties if you know what they're going to be.

But here's the part that gets me about this article and the whole brouhaha about it, the tempest in a teapot. Joseph clarified she has no direct ties to open AI. Okay, fine. You're in Silicon Valley where, you know, hundreds of people work for one company.

They're going to show up at the parties, I'm sure. I'm sure there's probably some anthropic people that pop in every now and again when they're in town or, you know, people who work for Yahoo still, all three of them. This has nothing, you know, this is just a general problem. If it's even a problem, I just think it's a feature, not a bug of San Francisco.

Because, you know, that's just the way it goes. Right. Just saying. Well, OpenAI might be protecting their well-spanked asses here a little bit because apparently they do have quite the NDA for exiting employees. Basically, they get to choose between keeping their vested equity and being able to speak out against the company.

So once you have been fired or decide to leave the company, the lawyers show up with a big fat NDA saying, would you like to lose all your vested equity that you earned during your time at this company? Or will you sign this and never say anything bad about this company ever, ever? And so most people, of course, would take the money and not say anything.

Now, this apparently has shot Sam Altman, who had no idea that this provision was there. Oh, wait, no. Actually, I do know that that provision exists, but we've never actually acted on it, nor will we do that if people do not sign a separation agreement, which they can't sign and haven't been able to sign at this point.

And then he follows up with, if anybody has signed that, contact me directly and we'll work something out. I do declare, said Sam Altman in a public press release. And he said he was embarrassed after finding out about the provision, which he, of course, okayed at some point.

Oh, I clutched my pearls. I clutched my pearls. I cannot believe it. We are so embarrassed that we got caught. I mean, that we do this. Yeah. Well, we discussed a couple episodes back that, at least in California, that they had basically started to make it illegal for companies to require NDAs upon exits and all that sort of thing.

So, you know, this is going to go away anyways, but it's a, it's a, I get why they do it, but should they be doing it? Of course not. That's that, you can't do that to people. No. And there's this one guy, Daniel Kay, who's actually signed, didn't sign the paperwork and lost. What he says is about 85% of my family's net worth by, by doing that.

So hopefully Sam Altman will reinstate this guy's equity for, uh, for doing what was actually the right thing to do. I do have to ask Daniel how he figured he would make the money by not signing the NDA book deal. What's going on? He sure is, he sure is, he sure is only going to make it by tweeting about it.

So no, hopefully he's got an agent. Well, more, uh, open AI in the news. So they will reportedly pay $250 million to put news corpse journalism into chat GPT. This I think is actually good news. Uh, they're a paying for content and B it's good vetted content.

It's not garbage going in. This is real stuff going in. For $250 million, they could actually start their own news company. You know, they're not in the business of news, Jason. They're in the business of telling us to run with scissors. Oh, that's right. That's right. So, I mean, that's good.

That's what we want these companies to be doing. We want them to be putting in only good information, vetted information, real information, and we want them to be paying for it. Now, I don't know how much of that money is actually going to get down to say the actual reporters, probably not much of it, but that's something.

And, you know, in other good news in this area over in the last few months alone, OpenAI has also announced partnerships with Reddit. Not so good. The Financial Times, Dot Dash Meredith, the Associated Press, Axel Springer, which owns Politico and Business Insider, also not the greatest. Yeah, not so great about that one.

Basically, there's just been a lot of deals being made. And these companies are, I think, are starting to realize the garbage in, garbage out. And maybe we should get a little less garbage. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see how that goes. We'll see. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Who bought the onion? I want to know who's buying the onion's content.

Well, that's straight up the run with scissors kind of stuff is what we're getting if anybody brings that in. That's what I mean. Yes. Anyways, and in a story that I think purpose, purpose, purpose, I can't speak today, perfectly encapsulates how everybody seems to be feeling about AI at the moment.

Emory University has awarded two students $10,000 for their AI study tool, then turned around and suspended them for it. Sounds about right. Oh, God. Yeah. So basically, there's these two kids over there created a tool known as 8Ball, which basically grabbed all the different Canvas-connected platform documents for various courses and turned them into practice tests or flashcards for studying.

They were very careful not basically allowing people to use it to cheat or anything like that. Just study tools. That's what it's for. And they went, wow, this is great. Look at this cool thing you did. Very innovative. Here's a very prestigious award. Fantastic.

And then about three weeks later, suspended one and expelled the other because they can't figure out what their policy is. Oh, my God. This is straight out of the Aaron Schwartz story, I'm sure. It's like, hopefully these guys will do okay much better than Aaron.

Well, I mean, they're going to get hired. Prepare yourself for the sex parties. Yeah, well, hey, at least they're bringing an 8Ball to the party. Come on. There you go. That's old school. That is old school. Oh, man. So, Juliet Assange has been granted permission by a British court to appeal his extradition to the U.S.

They're saying it's on freedom of speech grounds. So, we'll see how that's going to go. He's been in prison since 2019 since he was pulled out of the Ecuadorian embassy. So, man, this guy is just – this guy can't win. He just can't win. So, we'll see if – this is like the first thing that has come to, you know, probably good news for him in a very long time.

I don't know. Pamela Anderson was all into him. That was pretty good news. Yeah, that's true. That's true. That was pretty good news if you go back to the year 2000. That's about it. Sorry, Pam. I'm sure you're great. We'll see how that goes for old Julian. But, yeah.

That guy. Jesus. Yeah. Well, another patient is signed up to get Neuralink's brain implant. I don't know if you noticed, but he tweeted last week that the company was accepting applications for a second participant. And a bunch of people signed up.

And, you know, these are all people in pretty bad shape. So, it's going to help them. ALS, spinal cord injuries, and all that other sort of stuff. Hey, hang on, Brian. You know what I noticed? And somebody pointed this out on Twitter. Oh, I'm sorry. X. All of the people that have applied so far are white guys.

That's it. Just a bunch of white guys. So, it's basically hold my beer kind of people. This is why men die, you know, sooner than women. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, that's all I know women. And, of course, it's Elon Musk's fan club that aren't doing so well. Oh, yes. Because, you know, it's for the Nazi curious where they're seeing the posts that we're signing up new people.

So, it's only on X. Yeah. Now, this is the strangest story I've seen all week. Google sends the Department of Justice a check in an attempt to avoid the jury trial about their monopoly practices surrounding ad tech. Now, let me ask you a question here, Jason.

You're about to sue a company because you're not really thrilled with what they're doing. And then, all of a sudden, they just write you a check. Isn't that a bribe? That's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking that maybe we should pursue this case now. Yeah.

I'm thinking we really should pursue this case because I guarantee that check is lower than what they're willing to pay. Yeah. Because we want them to pay more than they're willing to pay. That's the whole point of a fine. Yeah. Oh, my God.

That is funny. I wonder who approved that over on Google's side. Yeah. I don't know. Well, I'm sure they signed an NDA. I'm sure next time I get a parking ticket, I'm just going to send them half of it and say, here, this is just going to save you the trouble. I'll just pay half. No, I'm going to preemptively do it. And just think if I'm planning to park illegally, I'm going to go ahead and send a check for about $10.

Yeah. That's pretty good. Yeah. I think I'll do that. Yep. Well, the DOJ is busy in another area. They arrested a Wisconsin man last week for generating and distributing AI-generated child sexual abuse material, or CSAM. And as far as we know, this is the first case of its kind because, you know, it's kind of new.

So I'm glad that they're doing it and not treating it any different. So he used an open source AI image generator, Stable Diffusion, which was a version that had less boundaries on it. And of course, as we just learned a little bit ago, or the UK learned, they're pretty easy to get around these boundaries anyways.

Yeah. Unstable Diffusion is the broken model that you can get. It's like Stable Diffusion, and then you just get the opened up unstable version, and off you go to the races. Yeah. I remember when that first came out, I tried it, and I'm like, it was just a bunch of anime girls with eight boobs. It was truly nightmare fuel.

I was just like, all right. Yeah, this is good. This is good. You know. Go get them, cowboys. Yeah. This is going to be a really interesting legal case. I know. Because the defense is going to call, you know, no harm, no foul. But yeah, this is going to be one to watch.

Intention to harm and foul was certainly there. Yes, it was. I don't care what tool you use. Yeah. As long as it's not your tool. There's a hat tip to Yuri on this one. He says, this is a small win, but is it enough to start a bigger shift of social media being socially responsible?

Or is this just a ploy to allow TikTok to stay in the U.S.? Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Yeah. What happens when TikTok users can't promote weight loss drugs is the title of this article. So TikTok has recently banned users from promoting weight loss products, causing upheaval amongst its influencers.

Stay at home moms everywhere who promoted these kinds of products found their accounts banned without any warning. Now, if they would have read the terms of service, this was actually in the terms of service a while ago. They just finally got around to enforcing it. This was a brouhaha I think we talked about over a year ago about the different drugs and being, you know, all these influencers basically using that as their money, their cash cow, as it were.

So, yeah, this is in the terms of service. You were warned. Yes, you have been warned. And remember Kim Kardashian got caught up in it a while back. There's a whole there's a whole bunch of stuff going on about this. But they were trying to get around it by saying, you know, this really helped me instead of saying I lost a shit ton of weight and I can't poop right.

And I've lost all my muscle mass. It's all about the GLP-1 drugs. And now the fact that people have figured out a way to make compounds of the actual drugs that are much cheaper because there's a loophole with the FDA about pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies being able like being able to just kind of put a bunch of shit together and say it's kind of like that.

Take it. We're all just trying to get around the guardrails, aren't we? Yeah. Here's the deal. Stop putting so much fucking food in your mouth. But I know that's not a popular sentiment. I know. Head that and actually leave the drugs for people who need them. True diabetics. But that's just me.

I'm just saying. Cut back on yourself, people. So this is this is funny. I think it's funny that these people are bitching about getting caught breaking the rules. Now they're saying that, oh, now we have to talk in code. No, you don't. Stop doing it. Yeah. Stop making money doing that shady ass shit.

Exactly. They're stay at home moms, Brian. What are they going to do? Plenty of things. There's lots of work from home jobs out there that are fucking more ethical than doing the shit that they're doing. You can train AI. That's right. There's lots of jobs training AI. You know, mechanical Turk still makes five cents an hour.

You're ready to go. Oh, man. No, it's just I hate this shady shit. I really do. Well, that's again, that's that's also part of the problem with social media now. Right. Like it's no longer it's no longer even just annoying that you don't see your friends updates. It's all fucking blanketed with this shady ass bullshit and people making money off of it.

And it's so fucking frustrating. I got one this morning that I actually screen capped because I wanted to bring it up at this point. You know, I told you I lost a lot of weight because I just cut my salt intake in half. And that was what I did. And the FDA states the FDA.

I think it's the FDA. One of those one of those acronyms that the government has. They say the maximum you should have of sodium intake a day is nineteen hundred ninety nine milligrams of salt. Most people get a hell of a lot more than that. So I get this this morning and it drives me crazy.

You know, they tell you to cut your salt down because it's bad for your heart. It creates high blood pressure, which gets which, you know, generates heart disease and will kill you. So this morning, one of the darlings of Internet advertising in one of my newsletters, it says optimize your sodium intake to optimize your health for an sponsor.

Studies suggest that you need three times more sodium for optimal mental and physical performance. Three times brought to you by the Salt Lake Association brought to you by element that, you know, another one of those powder companies that you're supposed to put in your drink to, you know, to optimize.

Because because it's got electrolytes, Brian, it literally we've got electrolytes. You know, we've proven that Gatorade is basically just sugar water and no athlete actually fucking drinks it. Right, people. We know this. Yes, we do. Yes. This this this ad. Who drinks athletic greens? One, not athletes, podcasters that have the fucking they're getting the money for it.

Exactly. Huberman is keeping AG1 alive. And, you know, Brondo, got to have Brondo. It's got electrolytes. God just drives me crazy when I see this shit. You know, it's there's no way that that is good for you. Three times.

They want you to take three times your sodium. Your heart's just going to seize. Yeah, that's not good. I mean, you need salt, but not that much. Not that much. Not that much. So in a throwback to the good old days of block, blockchain theft, U.S. brothers arrested for stealing twenty five million dollars in crypto in just 12 seconds.

And I hate this headline. I hate all the headlines that point this out because was it the Parari Bueno brothers, Anton 24 and James 28. These guys are no bueno for the Bueno brothers. They spent months trying to figure this out.

It only took 12 seconds for the actual. Yeah, to press the button. Yeah, it took fucking months. You know, you plan a bank robbery for months in advance and then you just run in and get the money and go out. That doesn't mean that it just took that about. It took months to do these thefts.

You know, Jason, what I love about doing this podcast with you is you casually throw out. You take months preparing for a bank heist. We all do. It was a great documentary about a Canadian bank robber who would spend months doing it. That was very polite. He was polite.

And he went to jail for like almost no time at all. Because he paid the money back because he's Canadian. That's the thing. If there's a nonviolent crime in Canada, you get nothing. That's why it's like if you're going to rob banks, move to Canada. Granted, you have to grab like five times as many to get the same amount as you would down here in the U.S.

But that's for another day. So what they did was they found a really interesting hole in the Ethereum blockchain, which has since been patched. I'm sure there's more out there. But, yeah, they exploited Ethereum and basically got the cash.

But then they got caught because guess what they were doing? Googling how to fucking wash their money. Idiots. Idiots. Thankfully, because of new Google AI search, it told them to put it in the laundromat. It did. Try Tide.

Try Tidepods. It's all Tidepods. First you eat one. Yeah. These are MIT educated idiots. It's like, come on. Yeah, they can get up to 20 years if they're convicted, which they will be. I'm sure. Yes, they will. They will. And last week was Bitcoin Pizza Day, May 22nd, 2010.

This was the day that the guy bought two Papa John's pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoin. Most expensive pizzas that have ever existed. Yep. A couple hundred million dollars worth of pizzas at this point. And the sad part is they were Papa John's, which is not really even pizza, as far as I can tell.

They should call it Bitcoin Pizza-ish Day. Look, fake money for fake food.

Media Candy. Now, the final episode of Franklin aired last week, the eight-part miniseries starring Michael Douglas. I think I said Kane last time. Got to keep my old Michaels in order. Yeah. It was fine.

Michael Angelo? Michael Angelo. And then there were some other turtles. It was really confusing at the end. No? Okay. No Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fans? Okay. Gotcha. Oh, God. That was a stretch. It was a stretch.

But, you know, I'm very limber these days, so I can do these things. Yeah, so it was fine. There was a lot about, I don't know how, I'm assuming it's relatively true to life because it was based on a book that was actually researched and all that sort of stuff. So it was a very interesting period of time and how Franklin actually, you know, basically threaded between the British and the French and got support and got the revolution financed and all that sort of stuff.

It was pretty good that way. It was, would I go back and watch it if I knew everything that I know now? No, I'd probably just go read the book. Okay. In terms of these sorts of documentaries, the one about Adams was much better many, many years ago.

Oh, yeah. That was a really good one. That one was fantastic. This, meh. Nah. Okay. Skip it. Yeah. All right. I'll check. I'll skip it. I started watching the first episode and I got halfway through and I never went back because every time it comes up on my Apple TV Plus, I see the key art and the key art is so bad.

I'm like, I can't click on that. I just can't. Ethically, I cannot click on that. Yeah. I mean, it was fine. It was fine. It's just, it didn't really, if it would have been four hours, like half of what it was, I think I would actually have liked it a lot more. It overstayed its welcome. Let's put it that way.

Okay. Sugar. I talked about two weeks ago, I think. I watched the finale and I got to say, I changed my mind about this. It was really good. Once you get the gist of it and figure it all out and see what the twists are and all that, I enjoyed the ending and I found myself going, I want to see more of this show.

So, you know, take it as it will. But I thought it actually stuck the landing so well that I want to see more. Okay. So that's, that's, that's my, um, my turnaround on sugar. So I, yeah, I thought it was good. All right. I ended up watching Ghostbusters 2 because my kid is on a massive Ghostbusters kick right now.

He's seen the original and he's seen the, the girl remake, both of which were very good. I was a little worried about Ghostbusters 2 because I didn't remember it being that great, but, uh, and it's a little slow, but damn fine movie. Funny. Kid loved it. I thought it was good.

Yeah. I, I never had any complaints about Ghostbusters 2, especially now that we have King Charles, you know, taken over for me. Oh my God. The memes on that. Did you see the one where they, they, they mirrored it side by side? It totally looks like a demon in the middle. Yep. It's great. It's so good.

Well, I don't know what they were thinking, but I don't know what most people are thinking anymore. Nobody's thinking anymore, Brian. That's true. That's true. And, uh, the long awaited trailer for Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, the sequel to Beetlejuice. And I can't wait for the third movie, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice to come out. But the second one is coming out September 6th, 2024.

And we finally, and again, this is why I hate the internet. We have the real trailer as opposed to everybody who made their fake trailers using footage from a bunch of different other movies that have clouded the internet for the past couple months. Oh, haven't seen those. I just saw this one. Uh, I'm excited. I am too.

It looks great. It really does. Hey man, anything to get more Winona on TV, I'm down for. I'll even watch another season of Stranger Things. Yeah. Don't, don't go crazy. I like the last season. I'm sorry. I never saw the last season. I really do have to get back to that.

I think I just burned out on it. You know, the problem was that the episodes are movie length, you know, an hour and a half long. So you just have to, you have to fucking time. Well, you do if you budget for it and you know that it's like watching a movie. You just, you can't say it's going to be 45 minutes. It's one and done. They're an hour and a half each.

So you just budget for a movie. Um, so I liked it. I liked it a lot. All right. Uh, and I saw this one more three body problem is coming, but how much more to which I say too much more. I got two episodes in and I said, that's enough for me.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You, you, you pulled out at the right time. Uh, the rhythm method works on the three body problem. I pulled out like I was at an open AI party and I could hear the sirens coming. That's it. That's it. Oh God. We're going to get canceled. Uh, we already are.

Have you seen our download numbers? That's true. That's true. That's pretty sad. It's pretty sad. Anyway, yeah, they, they signed up for a little bit more, but nobody knows how much because they just said, yeah, we're going to make some more, but we don't know yet. So it's up to Netflix to, uh, to figure that one out. So we'll see.

We'll see. But yeah, I, I can't see myself going back to that. It was such a disappointment. Yeah. Well, there's another show that I'm having trouble seeing myself go back to because they already tried to bring it back once and that was very disappointing, but this one gives me a little glimmer of hope here.

Dexter original sin, a prequel series to Showtime's Dexter has confirmed its cast. And here's why I'm in Christian Slater. I saw that too. That's why I'm into. Yep. Set in 1991 in Miami, 15 years before the original Dexter series, Dexter original sin follows a young Dexter Morgan who's being portrayed by Patrick Gibson, who I do not know becoming a serial killer in training with the guidance of his adoptive father, mentor and homicide detective, Harry Morgan, AKA Christian Slater.

So yeah, I'm in, I'm in for the first episodes. For sure. Yeah. I'll give it a shot because I get, I didn't even finish the last one. The, the last Dexter series. Yeah. It just didn't hold my interest either. Yeah. I think a big part of it and something I'm excited about is I felt like the original Dexter Miami in and of itself was a character and removing him from Miami made it so much less interesting.

So filming Miami in the nineties, I can't wait. Yeah. It's going to be good. Yeah. Get some serious Miami vice vibes going on that one. Uh, and still the best line in the entire series is season two surprise motherfucker.

It's great. Just the way that guy delivered it was beautiful, but yeah, I'm in for this one. I was, see, that's the other thing that got me about the Dexter, like the last season that they did, um, when he was in Alaska or wherever they brought the sun in and I just thought that they were going to do an Indiana Jones, uh, you know, nuke the fridge moment where they were trying to pass it on to the sun, which they thankfully didn't keep following down because that idiot was the sun.

And, uh, I can't even remember the name of it, uh, the crystal skull or whatever. What was the kid's name? The guy that everybody hates. Shea LaBeouf. That's him. LaBeouf. Uh, cause everybody's like, no, you can't have him. He's no good. He's bad. So I, that's what I was worried they were going to do because I did not like the, the portrayal of the sun in Dexter.

So I'm glad they're just going with the prequel and bringing in Christian Slater because Christian Slater was fantastic in Mr. Robot. He was honestly the only good part of Mr. Robot once you got past the first season. Once the writing fell apart. Exactly. Once, once you figured out that he was like totally doing a lost on it and didn't know where the hell it was going.

So yeah. Anyway. Uh, we haven't talked about pink slips for a while, but there's some in the news. Pixar is losing around 175 of its workers amid a Disney cost cutting drive. According to the Guardian, this is part, uh, the downsizing is part of moves to scale back on development of original shows and movies for Disney plus and trying to get back into just theatrical films, which will be on Disney plus exactly three days after being in a theater anyways.

Right. Because that's the way it works these days. Uh, so yeah, some pink slips there, some slimming down, um, less pumping out of shows and more movies and hopefully higher quality ones. So, uh, we got inside out two coming out the sequel to one of its very best films very shortly.

I'm very excited about that one. That was, uh, unbelievably good. So that's what everybody said. I've never seen it. That's fantastic. That's fantastic, Jason. Yeah. I need to, I need to see that one. Cause I can't, still can't watch Encanto. I have, I have stroke related seizures, uh, when I watch, when I watch Encanto and that's not a joke. I cannot watch it.

So I'm hoping inside out is a little bit slower paced. It is, but it is. Okay. Yeah. Everybody says it's one of their best movies. You, you will cry. Okay. Yeah. I see. That's the thing about Pixar movies. You used to cry when you watch it. Even Toy Story was 17, where they were on the conveyor belt getting the thing.

Jesus. Yes. Yes. And then as, you know, as a parent, when you see at the end, he, they donate, the kid donates all the toys to the new girl and leaves them behind. Oh my God. Dears. See, that's what, that's what Pixar is missing. They tried to just start cramming this shit down our throat and they lost the magic.

They also, you know, fired the, you know, the rabid sex offender, John Lasseter, who was kind of the key to all of the good Pixar movies. So sure. He's a sex offender, but he made us cry. You take the good with the bad and there you have Pixar. Oh God.

Apps and doodads. So I mentioned earlier, my Mac studio died. Here's the problem. I can't boot into recovery mode because I use a Logitech keyboard, which doesn't let you do the command R on boot. I have to go find a wired keyboard to do that. So I'm rummaging in the garage.

Oh, it's a mess. It's a mess. But here's the upside. While I was doing that, I was had to use my, my laptop. And then I got the little pop-up that said, Hey, chat GPT for Mac app is finally out. You can try it. So I did try it. I love it. It's fantastic. Cause you can do a quick key, key binding to pop up chat GPT and get misinformation in any app at any time at lightning speed.

It's awesome. That's just what you need. It is. Cause I, most of the time I'm dealing with people who are just saying really stupid shit. So I just pop up chat GPT and have it, it doesn't like just translate it to it and have it come back with even more stupid shit that I can just, you know, parrot back to them. And then it just starts a very funny conversation that they have no ideas going on, but I'm, I'm dying inside.

I'm laughing so hard. So, you know, for your own entertainment, get the chat GPT app. It's great. All right. Um, um, I'm dealing with trying to slow down my, uh, my cloud stuff right now. Cause I'm, I'm in a transition period. So I'm trying to figure out how to keep my iCloud account with my two terabytes of storage while doing a yearly payment because I, it's, it's a whole thing, but I need to be able to do a yearly payment on iCloud plus or any of my cloud storage providers.

Um, Apple gives you no options for prepaid for any of their stuff. You have to pay as you go, which drives me crazy. But you know what you could do? You could just go get a prepaid card and put it all on the card.

You have to keep topping it up and those cards do expire. Well, you just set it for whatever your yearly amount is and you're done. Yeah. It's a pain. It's a pain in the butt. I know. It's not easy, but shit. Life stuff, man. Well, just ask Scarlett Johansson. The reason that I'm having to do this is because life stuff.

Okay. Fair, fair. Yeah. Uh, Scarlett Johansson. Yes. Uh, she's been in the news because she kind of came back at Sam Altman saying, Hey, idiot. You asked me if you could use my voice. I said, no. And then you went and did it anyway. Basically. Yeah.

You know, oh, we hired a voice actor that sounded like Scarlett Johansson. And that's just her natural voice. Well, you cast her specifically because she sounded exactly like the person that said no to you. Exactly. So that right there implies intent. So she has a case and then they pulled the voice and they're saying, oh, but we hired her before we reached out to Scarlett.

And I'm like, show me the paperwork. Yeah. Let's see. You got an employment contract. But your emails, Sam, show us your emails. Show us your work. Yeah. Show your work. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think the next thing is, well, I think what they've already tried to say a little bit is it doesn't sound like her.

It sounds like a character that she played because she definitely put on an affect in the movie and we wanted it to sound like the movie, not like her. Oh, fuck you. Fuck you. We know what you did there, Sam. Come on. That's the thing. It's a Silicon Valley ethos is just so horrible.

It's just it's just do it. If somebody tells, you know, fake it. Go around them. Do it anyways. Who gives a shit? Yeah. Well, people, people give a shit. Yeah. And you went after a very litigious actress. You know, she got the balls to sue Disney.

Come on. Yep. So one and one. So Sam, Sam should be, you know, be a little more careful who he goes up against. Yeah. Well, let me tell you somebody who's trying to win, but probably isn't going to here. The tech startup Humane. Remember, we just talked about them because they just launched their product and everybody went, what the fuck is this piece of shit?

And why would anybody want it? Well, they think somebody is going to want it because they're putting the company up for sale. Brian, when you posted this, the title of the article is wearable AI pin maker. Humane is reportedly seeking a buyer. And I was like, are they looking for a buyer for one of their pins?

Because nobody will buy them. No, the whole kit. The whole company. Yeah. Now it's, they're working with a financial advisor and is apparently hoping to sell for anywhere between $750 million and $1 billion for tech that nobody wants.

Nobody wants. That has been universally panned across the entirety of the internet. So, I mean, I've got to give the founders credit here. This takes a lot of fucking balls. Scarlett Johansson is now the CEO of Humane because she's the only one with the balls big enough to try and pull this off.

Amazing. So, yeah, good luck with that. Oh, God, this is great. Now, Microsoft has unveiled a new AI-powered feature in their new AI PCs called Recall, Total Recall, for their Windows 11 at the Build Conference.

And what this does is just record everything you do and shoves it into an AI and so you can, you know, search what you did and find things that you were looking at and all this stuff. Like, you know, like we used to just go browse history. How quickly is this going to fill up people's hard drives? I didn't even think about that.

Oh, my God. Yeah, because they're saying this is all stored locally and all encrypted on your hard drive, which has every prosecuting attorney in the world slathering right now going, this is going to make our job so much easier. And, of course, everybody's going, yeah, this is a dumb idea.

Except Microsoft, you think, this is great. We're going to we're going to revolutionize AI on our personal computers. Microsoft rarely makes missteps that are as big as this. Like, nobody thinks this is a good idea except for law enforcement.

Yeah, that's it. I mean, Recall and Bitcoin are the two greatest things to happen to law enforcement in a very long time. Yeah. Well, I'm assuming that this can be turned off and that will solve most of the problems. Yeah, but I'm sure it's enabled by default.

Oh, of course. Well, I mean, have you installed a Windows machine in years? Hell no. Everything is enabled by default. You literally will spend an entire day turning things off to get your Windows computer usable. Oh, God. You know, the last time I got a Windows PC, I got it from Best Buy and it blue screened on boot.

That's a feature, not a bug. It had so much shit going on. It blue screened on boot and I had to go in and turn off all the Norton crap to actually get it to run. And then you have to turn off all the other crap that it comes with. It was just a nightmare. Oh, yeah. No. You know what?

I did do the only way that I've installed Windows is using Parallels and they let you install like just a kind of a feature disabled model. Yeah, seriously. Like it's just the Pinto of Windows. So and they don't they don't they never require you to register it every now and again, it'll pop up.

Would you like to register this copy of Windows 11? No. Yeah. No, I would not. Because all you get is like to enable support. I'm like everything works. Why would I pay you anything for it? Thanks. But no, thanks. Pass. Yeah. Hard pass.

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 have feelings too. Hello, Dave. Hello, gentlemen. Hello. So I wanted to start out this week with this graphic that I saw on Discord and I would like you guys to help me figure this out.

I forget who posted it on our Discord channel. So apologies to the poster. I just don't have Discord on the machine that we're recording on and I forgot to go put the hat tip in. This one's been making the rounds. I've seen it as well. Okay. For those who haven't seen it, it's just a GIF that has some writing on it.

Han Solo showed up on Vader's Death Star hours after Alderaan was destroyed. On his ship, he carried Vader's son, Vader's daughter, Vader's astromech, the protocol droid Vader built as a kid, the Wookiee who saved Ahsoka's life, and literal Obi-Wan Kenobi back from the dead.

Vader must have been very, who in the Mustafar was that fucker in the vest? Then something like a day later, he sneaks up on Vader, one of the greatest pilots the galaxy has ever seen, in what is essentially a heavily modified 18-wheeler and shoots him in the ass. Look, yes.

I mean, I understand that, you know, when the movie came out, all the milk-toasty people in the world were like, Luke Skywalker is the best. I was even at the age seven going, Han Solo is the fucking man. Yeah, you and me both, buddy.

You and me both. There was never any doubt. And Boba Fett, at least until the book of Boba Fett came out, was the badass, most badass bad guy. But, you know. Yeah. Yep. Go on Solo. Or Darth Maul. I got to say, Darth Maul did pretty good in episode one, except he got killed too soon.

I don't know. Darth Maul getting split in half ten minutes into the movie kind of demoted him as a cool bad guy. Up until he got cut in half, he was a pretty badass lightsaberist, you know? Right. He was. I think he was underutilized. A little bit. But, you know, they kept him alive.

He's got spider legs and he brings on to do many other things. Which is also a bit of an eye roll, but, well, all right, we'll allow it. Episode one was an eye roll. Come on. That's true. That's true. Yeah. I think, you know, there's that scene in Star Wars where Luke and Han are sitting in the cockpit of the Falcon together after Princess Leia storms off and Han says something like, I don't know.

What do you think? Do you think a princess and a guy like me? And Luke says, no. And Han kind of looks at him and, you know, the older, more experienced guy, the guy in his thirties versus the young farm boy who's like.

The guy who's actually banging the actress at the time. Yeah. He plays Leia. Right. Right. Yes. Yes, exactly. So, yeah, were you a Han or were you a Luke? I think that's a really legit question that we all asked ourselves.

Who did you want to play when you were playing Star Wars in the backyard or on the playground? Did you want to be Han or did you want to be Luke? Always Han. I never got to be Han for Halloween, but I was a Jawa. Oh, okay. I desperately wanted to be Han for Halloween as well.

And I just couldn't convince my mom to like basically sew the piping down a pair of pants so I could have the little stripes that he had. And I felt that that was so integral to the outfit that I couldn't do it without that. Oh, you were that much of a purist? Yes. That you would not go out on Halloween in a substandard Han Solo outfit?

No. I don't want to be Han duo. I need to be Han fucking Solo. Yeah. That's legit. I had a friend whose mom was quite the seamstress. And so he had for a 10-year-old an amazing Chewbacca outfit.

I, on the other hand, had a cookie monster made out of crepe paper and pillowcases outfit, which I haven't seemed to be able to find any pictures of, but it was not great. And I have to say a shout-out to a friend of the show, Mike Walter.

I don't know if he still listens or not, but he certainly used to. And he's an old buddy of mine. He gave me for my 40th birthday probably the best present I've ever received in my entire life. It is an actual replica Han Solo blaster and is perfectly done. It looks amazing.

I have to do everything possible to keep my son's grubby hands off of it because he's going to break it. I love this thing. Yeah. I totally respect that. Yep. You know, have you seen the thing where the folks who do this sort of thing figured out that Han's blaster was also used by Frank Sinatra in an earlier movie?

I know. I remember seeing something along those lines way back in the day, yeah. Yeah, because they just rented all those guns from the prop shop. Yeah. And somebody figured out it is the same. The core of Han Solo's gun is the same weapon that Frank Sinatra used in some movie in the 60s or 50s even.

So technically, Frank shot first. There you go. That's right. That's right. Yeah. I do love this kind of stuff. I, I, I, we've talked about the, in fact, just this week, I was thinking about, um, all of George Lucas's, I guess, because it was George Lucas's birthday earlier this week.

I think he turned 80, and I was thinking about all of his revisionist history, about how, you know, he claimed all along, he, he thought Luke and Leo were going to be brother and sister, and Darth Vader was going to be Luke's father. And I just don't buy it. No, it's a load of crap. Yeah.

I just don't. And in the first movie, there was someone wrote a whole essay about this. I believe it's called The Secret History of Star Wars, which is quite good. Uh, and about how in Star Wars, Darth Vader was basically just a henchman. He, he didn't, he doesn't really have that much to do.

No. But he was unexpectedly popular. And so, and, and Tarkin's dead. So, we got our bad guy. Now he's the big bad. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Hmm. Love this. Uh, speaking of, uh, our favorite, uh, things that take place in space, uh, it came by my feed this week that it has been 30 years since the last episode of Star Trek, The Next Generation.

Uh, five card stud, nothing wild, and the sky's the limit, as, uh, Captain Picard said in the final scene, which I have linked to here. I have to say, one of the best finales, sci-fi or not, that has ever been made of any show. I agree.

It was amazingly satisfying. They really did wrap it up well. Um, until we made a bunch more movies. I was just going to say, and then they went and made movies. Yeah. Yeah. Then we started with Generations, which, ugh, not the greatest.

But they did follow up with First Contact, which I thought was pretty damn good. Yeah, they were hit or miss. I mean, all Star Trek movies are. Another one of those things that always comes across my feed every now and then is, like, the rankings of Star Trek movies. Star Trek movies in order of how watchable and all that sort of stuff. So, it's, I love that stuff.

If my, look, Facebook, if you can't give me my friends' updates, just fill my feed with that kind of shit. And I'll be, I will continue to load your stupid site. Yeah. Star Trek movies are easy. Just go with the evens. That's true. That's true. Yep. Do you, why do you suppose, well, first of all, do you agree with this idea, but why do you suppose it is that we hold Star Wars movies to a higher standard than Star Trek movies?

Oh, I'm not entirely sure that's true. I think it falls on which divide you tend to sit on. If you're, if you are a fan of Star Trek, but a Star Wars freak, I think it's, it's the, it's that way. But if you're the other way around, I know plenty of people that will nitpick Star Trek movies to death.

Okay. So the true, the true Star Trek fans disdain the bad movies in the same way that we disdain the bad Star Wars movies. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And also don't forget, Star Trek has a lot of TV behind it. So there's a lot more, you know, there's kind of a lot more lore behind Star Trek to actually pull on.

Yeah. That's true. Speaking of, again, things that come across in our feed, I did see something about, it was like all the franchises and how much, how many recorded hours of footage there are of any particular franchise. Hmm. Star Trek above and beyond like 50 X anything else.

Star Wars, Lord of the Rings. Well, I guess they didn't include Doctor Who. That might win, but. Right. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So there's just a, there's just a lot more Star Trek than there is anything else. Right. A lot more fails too.

Yeah. Well, they swing. Beverly. Right. But I guess getting back to my. Best batters in the world hit 300. Yeah. But getting back to my original point, I mean, is it, is it because Star Trek started out on TV and Star Wars started in cinemas?

Do we hold Star Wars to a higher cinematic standard than we do Star Trek because of their different origin story? Yeah. Does the average person who is not a super fan of either, would they have higher expectations of Star Wars, the Star Wars universe than they would Star Trek?

Well, if they're not a super fan, who cares what they think? I actually think there's something to be said. It's a lot more. I think there are a lot more casual Star Wars fans than there are casual Star Trek fans. I think people that get into Star Trek get into Star Trek. I don't think there's a lot of people who are just like, yeah, OK, I'll go see the Star Trek movie.

No, you're a Trekkie or you're not. Yeah. Everybody knows who Vader is. Not everybody knows who Data is. That's true. But I would suspect everybody knows who Captain Kirk is. Everybody knows who Spock is. Don't you think? Yeah. You'd think. Yeah. Yeah.

Although, you know what? Which Spock? I'll have to ask my kids. Yeah. Now there are like five different actors that have been Spock, so. Yeah. It is true. It is true. Yeah. And to what Brian said, you know, Star Trek has definitely had more at-bats. So I think we're used to fails on Star Trek.

We've seen them fail more times than not. Yeah. And when it comes to Star Wars, it's like, you know, you only get a few shots to really get it right. So if you screw it up, then, you know, like bringing Star Wars for the, you know, the game-ending hit. Bases are loaded. Game's tied up. What are you going to do? Are you down by three?

You'd need a home run just to win, so. Yeah. If you even just think about recent times on television, Star Wars has not ever ran two shows concurrently, TV shows. Well, right now, well, at least a couple weeks ago, months ago, when did Picard end?

Years ago. There was a period of time where there was a good, like, four different Star Trek shows running at once, of which two were good. One was okay and one was bad. That's a pretty good batting average. Yeah. And Voyager and Deep Space Nine were both on at the same time, too. Yeah. So they just, there's a lot more going on in the Trek universe than there is in Star Wars.

So I think, I mean, I guess you could look at it as there's so little Star Wars that when something comes out, you were like, this better fucking be good. Well, and I think because we went decades initially between the, you know, the Holy Trilogy and anything that came next, not counting the, you know, holiday special, the Ewoks, you know, all those kinds of things that were, you know, we don't talk about in polite company.

But yeah, so I guess when the, well, certainly when the prequels came out, there was so much pent up demand because we just hadn't gotten much. So much we were able to overlook because we were so desperate.

Right. Now, now listen, now, now I don't think Jar Jar's getting the credit he deserves. You have to remember, this is for kids. I'm like, have you looked in the theater? It's a bunch of 30 year old men. There's not a kid in sight. Oh, yeah, we're pathetic.

Yeah, we are. But, you know, but it also reminds me of my life. Yeah. But we're pathetic with a lot of disposable income. That's right. That's it. You know, it reminds me of the Pink's theory of content consumption because there's this restaurant in L.A. called Pink's.

It's a hot dog. The restaurant's a stretch. It's a hot dog stand. It's a stretch. That's what I said. It's a hot dog stand. It takes you two hours to get a hot dog at Pink's. Now, while you're in line at Pink's, you just smell the food and you're hungry as hell by the time you get up there. And when you eat that hot dog, it is the greatest hot dog ever made by the hand of man.

Now, if you go there at two in the morning, there's no line. You go up, you roll up, you get your hot dog. It's a fucking hot dog. Without the without the weight, it is nothing. So that that time between the movies really gets that appetite go in your mouth water. And it's like, I can't wait to bite into this.

But then sometimes you get episode one and you just want to go vomit. But, you know, it's still I think that I'm dying for Pink's now, Jason. Next time you come to town, it's on me. All right. But part of that. But I think that's a really interesting point, too, because how much of it is the ritual of going to the movie theater?

Right. Going to this place where you go in and you smell the popcorn like it's a much more fully encompassing, sensual experience to go to a movie theater than it is to turn on the TV at home. Yeah. Well, and then something on the Star Trek side of things is that the TV shows, even when the movies are good, the TV shows tend to be better.

Star Trek is just better in long term formats like that in long play format than it is in short. Now, Rathacon accepted, which is one of the best movies ever made. But in general, I would much rather watch one of the Star Trek shows than any of the movies. And I don't know if I feel that way about, well, Star Wars.

They've done some really good TV shows recently. So, yeah. Hard to tell. Yeah. I can't wait for Andor. I want Andor to come back. I really do. Well, we get Alkali at first and that's coming up soon. So two weeks, I think. Looking forward to that. Damn, I just canceled my Disney Plus account. Hello, sweetie.

Fire that back up. Ain't going to happen. Ain't going to happen. This is all we're going to be talking about in this segment in two weeks. That's right. You take a break. Yeah, I might have to go for a walk. Call me. Text me when you're done. I'll come back and press stop on the recording. That's all I'm good for.

So, total pivot and redirection here. That's what our show's about, buddy. Yeah. Hit me. Here, let me connect it for you. Got to get these motherfucking snakes off the plane. He was in Star Wars. There you go.

Very nice. There we go. And my friend Bill, who we talked about on last episode with the AI art, did the snakes on a plane movie poster. Boom. Well, yes. All the way around. Brian, that was a good connection, but I think the better connection is Harrison Ford saying snakes. Ah. Why did it have to be snakes?

Right. Dave wins this one. Thank you. Thank you. So, I want to talk about snakes. Okay. A friend of mine, this comes up because I was talking with a friend of mine this morning who went out to his deck to grill some burgers and opened up the grill, his gas grill, and sitting inside, he found a beautiful black snake, which caused him to jump up onto the roof of his house and scream like a little girl.

And say, honey, get me some Depends. Understandable. I was just cleaning out mine and firing it up a couple days ago, and I was just like, please don't let there be dead things in there. Yeah. And Brian opens his up and there's a moose inside. Right. How did he fold himself in there?

So, it just got me thinking about snakes, and I was wondering what you guys think about snakes. Do you like snakes? Are you afraid of snakes? Like, growing up in California, what are the types of snakes that you had? Yeah.

Rattlesnakes. Rattlesnakes. We had rattlesnakes in North Carolina, too, but copperheads and water moccasins were the ones that I was terrified of in North Carolina. Now, in, like, Orange County in Los Angeles, there's – you're not going to see garden snakes. It just doesn't happen.

Like, you're not going to – you're in no danger of walking into your yard and seeing a snake in general in Southern California. But if you go hiking, yeah, rattlesnakes are everywhere. Seen them a bunch of times. Yeah. I know several people that have already lost their dogs to rattlesnakes this year. Just by taking them for a walk, yeah.

They're everywhere. Wow. And we're talking big snakes? Six-foot rattlesnakes. Five, six-foot rattlesnakes. Yeah, they're everywhere. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. Huh. I've never been particularly afraid of snakes, but, I mean, I don't run into them in the wild. I think that would freak me out.

I've gone through – my son went through a snake period. So we were going to a lot of, like, reptilia and all these different places that just have gazillions of snakes and the whole, like, you know, parties that bring the snake that everybody can touch and all that sort of stuff. That's – that bothers me not at all.

However, you know, if I walked outside and there was just a freaking massive snake there, I'd freak out. Yeah. Right. See, and that's the thing for me. I really like snakes, but I don't like to be surprised by them. Mm-hmm. So, as you say, I love going to the reptile house at the zoo or anything like that.

I like reading books about snakes. I like seeing TV shows about snakes, but I don't like coming across – I like seeing a snake from the distance out in the wild, but I don't like walking down the path and then suddenly finding one. And I wonder how much that is hardwired into us to be afraid of snakes.

Oh, of course, yeah. I think it might be – I mean, it would make sense. I think there's something to that. Have either of you ever had snakes as pets? No. My friend Bob and Stacy, Bob who does our voiceover, and his wife Stacy, they have a bald python named Dementia that we used to play with all the time.

She would come out and, you know, I'd hold her for hours watching TV. You know, she was pleasant. I loved her. Okay. Great snake. I had a friend who was good friends with Slash, the guitarist from Guns N' Roses, and apparently he owns like about 90 snakes.

He's got boa constrictors. He's got everything. And I'm like, I'm never going over to Slash's house. That's the reason, right? And I don't want him to take his hat off around me because God knows what's under there. Right. Well, I mean, the countless invites that you've gotten to Slash's house, but you've turned them all down because you know that there are snakes there, right?

Yes. Yeah. I remember reading a news story a few years back about a mild-mannered insurance agent who was growing giant snakes in his basement and eventually got eaten by one. Well, yeah. That's how the stories always end, right?

Right. It's always man kept millions of snakes, ended up dying by snake. It's not really a story unless they die. See, we don't – the only poisonous snakes we have in Maryland are copperheads, and that's not a particularly big nor aggressive snake.

Like a copperhead will do everything in its power to just kind of avoid you. You've got to really want that thing to bite you, to get it to bite you. They're introverts is what you're saying. They are. As vipers go, they are introverts, and you hardly ever see them. They stay in the forest.

They're camouflaged to look like leaves, and so they're very well camouflaged. You hardly ever see them. I think I've only ever seen two or three the whole time I've ever lived here, but we have a ton of other snakes that I see. I could see a snake every day if I wanted to because I live near a lake, and there are – That's not just a euphemism.

Yeah. That just ain't the trouser snake we're talking about there, buddy. No, no. We have these eastern brown water snakes which live in the lake, and they're everywhere. And that's a big – like a big brown, heavy, nasty snake that's very bitey, and you don't want to mess with it just because they're just – they have a bad temper.

Do you guys have water moccasins up there? We do not. No, they don't make it up this far north, which is good. Yeah, we had them in North Carolina a lot everywhere. Yeah. We've got lots of black snakes, which are great. They say if you have black snakes, that's a good thing, and that's what my friend found on his grill was a black snake.

That's a good thing then. Well, and yeah, they're very docile. Okay, maybe not on the grill. Okay. Right. They're delicious, Brian. Right. Just fire that baby up. Evidently, if you know what you're doing as a snake handler, chances are you can pick up a black snake and it won't bite you or anything if you do it properly.

I'm going to let the experts do that and not risk – not tempt fate. Yes, the weekend warrior grill masters should call the experts. Right, right. And we have garter snakes and all that kind of thing. So we do have a wide variety of snakes. Way out in Western Maryland, there are some little tiny rattlesnakes, but they don't make it out here where I am.

But, yeah, I just – snakes are a funny thing. The other thing about snakes is that I understand how they move, but I also don't understand how they move. Like, I've had – I've seen diagrams.

I've seen animations. I've seen all sorts of explanations about how a snake moves. And it makes total sense to me. And then I see a snake move and I'm like, how are they doing that? It's like Michael Jackson moonwalking for the first time you can't figure out how it happens. Right, right. They make it look so easy and it's all of these things going into play at once and it's so effortless and smooth.

And I think that's part of what freaks people out about snakes is that they're moving in a way that is so non-mammillion to us that we can't really make sense of it. And also they can, you know, go into small places so easily. A friend of mine, he and his wife bought a house and one day they'd been there probably about a year or so.

His wife was in the bathroom and she opened up the little drawer under the sink where she kept her hair dryer and makeup and things like that. And she opened the drawer and inside the drawer was a snake's skin, which is almost worse than the snake.

Yeah, it is. Right? Now you know one's there but not where it is. Exactly. You know there's a snake around, right? You know the snake can get in there, but you don't know where it is. When I was a kid, we used to get snakes in the washing machine.

We had, there are these little snakes called ring neck snakes, which are about a foot long, about the size of a pencil. And they're called ring neck snakes because they're black and they have a little yellow ring around their neck. But somehow they would get into, they come in through the drain of our washing machine.

And so my mom was often surprised by opening the empty, what she thought was an empty washing machine. And inside would be a little ring neck snake. It's kind of like that scene in Gremlins where they come up through the toilet. You just never want to go and use it again. Right.

Right. And you hear stories about that where people find snakes in their, and of course, we could not have a conversation about snakes without talking about Australia where. Everything kills you. Right. That's where all of the most deadly snakes live.

And yeah, so. I just posted a link in the show notes about the physics of snake skin and how it sheds light on sidewinding. The reason I put this in there, open up the link and you will see a really nice kind of animated video at the top that just shows you a snake on sand and in slow motion.

It kind of gives you an idea on how they move. And it's very, very interesting, I think. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that I understand, but I don't understand, are clouds. This show is going to go on for a really fucking long time.

Dave's going to go, why are you sky blue? Seriously. No, no. Is the acid kicking in? Come on. Hear me out. Why is the color blue to me? Have you ever looked at your hand?

I mean, really looked at your hand? Hear me out. I have, I have talked to actual, oh God. I've talked to actual meteorologists about this and have yet to get a satisfying answer about clouds.

And hear me out. Okay. Tin foil hat incoming. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're not. This is not, this is not chemtrails or anything like this. This is regular run of the mill. Just imagine a white puffy cloud up in the sky.

Looks like a little cotton ball. I'm imagining one right above your head right now, Dave. Yes. So here's what I don't understand. All right. So clouds are up in the sky. The sky is full of what? Air. Air is a gas, right?

So gases expand to fill whatever space they're in. Clouds are made out of water vapor. Water vapor is gaseous. It's gaseous. So what I don't understand is why don't clouds evenly disperse within the gas?

What is the thing that's holding the cloud shape together? Probably surface tension of the water molecules. And then the water molecules join with each other. And once enough of them join, we have this thing called rain. Right. But before you get rain when it is water vapor, in other words, that's what I don't understand.

Is water vapor sticky enough that it could cause the cloud? That's what's holding a puffy cloud together. I feel like our episode has now gone into chat GPT land where we're completely making shit up. Oh, that's a good question.

No, no, no. I just envisioned someone in Germany furiously typing on their keyboard right now to tell us exactly how clouds work. Angry email incoming. Yeah. You fucking morons.

All right. I just asked chat GPT, what are clouds? And it says, clouds are visible masses of tiny water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. They form when air-containing water vapor rises and cools to the point where the vapor condenses into liquid or solid particles.

This process typically occurs in the troposphere, the lowest layer of the Earth's atmosphere. Right. So all the molecules rise from a singular place so that they're not finding each other in the vast expanses of the air. It's coming up together and forming.

Yes. But the thing – right. But do you understand my question of why does the cloud not immediately disperse evenly throughout the atmosphere? And it could just be a matter of scale. I don't know.

But even – I just asked chat GPT and I don't have a satisfying answer. Well, that's chat GPT. Yeah. Glue. You have to put glue in the air to hold it together. Just like if you have some leftover from your pizza sauce. First, you run at water with scissors.

Yeah. Okay. Here we go. So I just asked, what holds a cloud together? It says clouds are held together primarily by a balance of several factors, air pressure and temperature, adiabatic cooling and condensation, updrafts and air currents, coalescence and aggregation, humidity, dynamic equilibrium.

In summary, clouds are held together by a combination of rising warm air, condensation processes, air currents, and humidity, all of which work together to keep the tiny water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. All right. I'm good. We're down good.

It's to the force. That's all fine. That's all fine and good. But I did my own research and I'm booked on Joe Rogan next week to discuss. Make America wet again.

Yeah. All right. Well, I mean, I feel like I've gotten a satisfying answer here. So today's episode wasn't a complete waste of time. Glad we could be helpful. Next week, when Dave tries ayahuasca.

We're all connected. Don't you understand? Yeah. How do you know that the color blue I see is the same color blue you see, man? Dude, we're all just meat computers. Oh, how do you know? Closing shout outs.

Over at Patreon, we've got Tony, Jay, and Tiago. Thank you, folks. Thank you very much. Over at PayPal, we've got Tom, Brian, Joseph, Stefan with $25, and Eric with a big $100. Thank you very much. Thank you, Eric. And Eric's $100 was in response to the horrible listener feedback that we got.

He's like, I'm sorry you have to put up with that shit that you get in your inbox. Here's $100 to offset it. So thank you, Eric. Well, thanks. I do appreciate the reason. And over at the tip jar, we've got Karen, Eric, Ross, Daryl, and Thomas with $100. Hopefully, Thomas saw Eric's post and decided to join in.

So yeah, I was just like, we should really post all the negative feedback we get. We would be gazillionaires because that's almost all we get nowadays. It's pretty intense. Yep, yep. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo.

And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for tuning in to Grumpy Old Geeks. Dive into the show notes and all the links from today's episode at GOG.show slash 649. Feeling generous? Keep this top-notch entertainment rolling by dropping us a few bucks at GOG.show slash donate. Every bit helps. Spread the gum. Gum.

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