699: TACO 2025

Saturday, September 26th. Two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero. Plus the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line when the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meat Cleaver Colon.

BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. What a fucking week, Brian. They all are these days. I just wanted to say thank you for doing the heavy lifting this week. It has been one of them. One of them. No worries. If I haven't seen a lot of stories from you by like Tuesday or Wednesday, I know they're not going to come.

Or if they do, it'll be very last minute. So I try to fill things out for you, Jason. I appreciate it. Yeah, here's a quick rundown of the week. Lost my biggest client. Moving out of my old office, which means they want all the monies.

Oh, and get this spectrum. I canceled my spectrum internet yesterday. And this is how great of a company they are. They're like, oh, well, you're halfway through your billing cycle. And since California is not a pro-rated state, we're going to have to charge you the whole amount. I'm like, well, no, technically, you don't have to. You could be a good company and just charge me what I actually use. But no, since they're not legally obligated to, they're going to fuck you.

Yeah, and they kind of have a basic monopoly. So, you know. And so we got the business side of things. Yeah, just in the shitter. That's lovely. Oh, and yeah, some of our advertisers dried up for the show. So, yep, got that too. Then 96-year-old mother of my best friend, breast cancer. Two people I know in recovery, brain cancer. One other person I know in recovery, died of an overdose. And my other best friend is getting a stent in his heart today. So that sums up this week. What do you got, Brian?

The weather's been kind of bad. Sorry, man. GOG.show slash donate. It's just been a fun one. So, again, thank you for doing the heavy lifting this week. I did put in the news of the week that everybody can't stop talking about.

AI taking over the world and everybody Googling, is it 2025? And it's saying, no, it's not. Because we're stuck in a horrible, horrible time loop of whenever the fuck this is. I just I can't with the AI stuff anymore. It's been shoved shoveled into everything. It's being shoveled down our throats. You can't even be like, say, my mom and in her early 80s and fire up the old computer to look something up without getting AI responses.

Now, there's AI buttons on everything and it's still returning false information. Yeah, that's the fun part that that's we've killed the entire Internet. We might as well not have it at this point because the Internet is as reliable as my drunk uncle was when I was 12.

I and here's the here's another funny one. I went when I asked my roommate this morning, hey, do you find any good tech news? She's like, well, just that AI is going to destroy the world. I'm like, no, it ain't. I mean, one can argue it kind of has. Yeah, well, yeah. And in what more than in so many different ways.

Yes. Yeah. But hey, it's Taco Tuesday, right? It is Taco 2025, Brian. Yes, exactly what it is. It's everywhere. You can't go anywhere without the whole taco meme. And it's so true. Yes. Trump chickens out for everything. Yeah.

And I don't I mean, even was it Russia state media was trolling him this week? They're like, oh, Trump is raising tariffs again until he changes his mind tomorrow. The only problem with with all this trolling and I did kind of post something along the lines of there's been a lot of bad news for the MAGA folk this week.

You know, Elon has left and all kinds of people are getting into all kinds of scandals, none of which will really matter or affect them because MAGA. But still, it's it's they're definitely entering their fuck around and find out phase. So hopefully we'll find out something. The problem with in my mind with the whole taco thing is this one is obviously really getting under his skin.

And I'm worried because there's no adults in the room now. There's nobody to stop him if he just goes on a fucking rampage and decides, you know what, I'm going to fucking burn it all down. What do you mean? He's already done that now. He's already done that. He can do worse. Yeah. Yeah.

But who I want to know who the puppet master is over there pulling the strings and keeping him so uninformed about what's going on. There's somebody over. I mean, it could be the doesn't read. Yeah, but somebody refuses briefings. Yeah, true. He's doing it to himself.

The man, the call is coming from inside the house. Inside the house. Yeah, it is. Anyways, should we get down to the normal tech shit instead of the destroy our lives political shit? In the news.

I think I need to start. You know how we had a moron of the week, which just became Kanye forever. And so we had to kind of kill it. Yeah, Kanye forever is definitely worse than Wakanda forever. Yeah, Wakanda forever. Kanye forever. Oh, too bad we already have show titles.

Anyways, and we talk an awful lot about unintended consequences on this show. But I think we need a new segment called Completely Fucking Intended Consequences. Okay. And that's our first story, Jason. Facebook sees rise in violent content and harassment after policy changes.

Shockingly, if you decide to get rid of moderation and remove any policies about not harassing people or engaging in violent content, guess what they do? They engage in violent content and harass people more. You sure are correct. So that's exactly what's happened.

Meta has published the first of its quarterly integrity reports. What a fucking oxymoronic name to report. Yeah. Since Mark Zuckerberg walked back the company's hate speech policies and changed its approach to content moderation earlier this year. According to the reports, unsurprisingly, Facebook saw an uptick in violent content, bullying, and harassment despite an overall decrease in the amount of content taken down by Meta.

Yeah, they take down less stuff. Now they're basically doing a victory lap saying, we've reduced the number of mistakes we made. Let me tell you something. Let's talk baseball here for a second. Okay. Okay. If you never fucking swing, you're never going to get a hit. Yeah.

So if you never take down any content, you're not going to make any mistakes. True that. True that. Okay. So victory lap? Fuck you. It's a feature, not a bug. I know. I know. So they're saying that they've reduced their mistakes in half while the overall prevalence of content breaking its rules largely remained unchanged for most problem areas.

Well, let's get into those problem areas then, shall we? There are two notable exceptions to that. Violent and graphic content increased from 0.06 to 0.07% at the end of 2024 to 0.09% in 2025. They also noted an increase in the prevalence of bullying and harassment on Facebook, which increased from 0.06 to 0.07 at the end of 2024 to 0.07 to 0.08 at the start of 2025.

Now you might go, my God, that's just a 0.001% of an uptick. We're talking billions of people. Billions. Yeah. Billions of people and posts made every day. So it ends up being quite a lot. Yeah. Quite a bit. And this is a completely separate category from companies' hate speech policies, which were rewritten to allow posts targeting immigrants and LGBTQ people.

I know there's supposed to be more letters on that right now, but honestly, I'm old and I can't keep up. We're on the letters. I think they just put a plus on it nowadays. Yeah. It's LGBTQ plus. And they're also, of course, using large language models now to aid in their content moderation efforts.

But as we understand from this report, there are no fucking efforts. That's what they wanted. That's what they wanted. That's what they wanted and that's what they got. Myanmar 2.0 is what we're going to call that. So it's just a matter of time. Just a matter of time. Although it might be USA 2.0 for this one.

Yep. Looking that way. Now, Brian, a shocking crypto crime in New York City has happened. Two men, John Waltz and William Duplisi, are accused of kidnapping and torturing a 28-year-old Italian man for nearly three weeks in a luxury Soho townhouse, all to force him to reveal his Bitcoin password.

New York talked to Paris and said, hold my beer, please. Because what have we had in Paris? We just had a couple lost fingers. This guy didn't lose any fingers, but he was fairly well tortured, forced to smoke crack. He had a gun to his head. Yeah. Just kidding.

Air quotes. It is New York. It's New York. The mayor fucking smokes crack there. Well, the mayor does play into this one, though. Police say the victim was lured from Italy under threats to his family, then beaten, shocked with electricity, forced to take narcotics, and even dangled from a staircase and during relentless abuse for 17 days.

What I used to call Saturday in my youth. I know. Seriously. This is a night after the club. The ordeal ended when the victim escaped, bloodied and barefoot after finally agreeing to hand over his password. Both suspects now face charges of kidnapping, assault, and unlawful imprisonment, and a judge has denied bail.

Authorities are also investigating possible ties between the suspects and NYPD detectives who may have provided off-duty security at the townhouse. That's right. Was this in New York or was this Border Patrol? No, this was New York, baby. Yeah. Eric. Was it Eric Adams, the New York mayor?

One of his personal cops was the guy that picked the guy up from the airport. It's like Deadpool come to life. Oh, it's so bad. It's so bad. Oh, in more Bitcoin news, though. Mm-hmm. If you thought crypto was just for shadowy hackers and offshore scammers, Trump Media is here to prove you right.

On Tuesday, Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, announced it's raising a whopping $2.5 billion from about 50 institutional investors, all to buy Bitcoin and stash it on its balance sheet. That's right. That's right. The same digital currency beloved by ransomware gangs and tax evaders everywhere is now being hailed by Trump's team as an apex instrument of financial freedom and a crown jewel asset.

God. So, as you would expect, the company shares plunged 10% after the news broke because apparently some people who hold Trump Media and Technology Group stock have a brain. So, suggesting investors might be a little bit skeptical. Now, Trump Media's CEO says this is all about defending the company from harassment and discrimination by financial institutions.

So, if you can't beat the banks, just use the fakie crime money. But the thing here is it's like, yeah, we've said it from the get-go. There's one use for Bitcoin, crime. And now the president, his company, is just diving all in on it. Look, we've got the strategic Bitcoin reserve coming.

And yeah, in the Trump coin, you know, we couldn't have planned this out any better if we'd have been talking about it for 10 years. You know? Exactly. Yep. It's like all it takes is no shame. It's like we saw this coming. Yeah, I know.

It's amazing. No shame in an executive order. Yep. Yep. Well, nobody is more surprised than me to say this, but I think Texas might actually be getting something right. What? Well, what? And I don't say this because I necessarily hate Texas. I say this because Texas is very much the get-your-hands-and-filthy-laws-off-me state where we can just do whatever the fuck we want.

Yes. Well, not right now. A Texas bill that would ban social media use for anyone under 18 recently moved past the Senate committee and is due for a vote in front of the Texas State Senate. Now, why is this a good thing? Well, listen to any of our shows about how bad social media is for kids.

Yeah, exactly. It's horrible. It's destroying them. So, this bill has until the state's legislative session comes to an end on June 2nd, leaving roughly a week for it to be approved by both the Senate and the governor. So, I'm all for this. If made into law, the bill will force social media platforms to verify the age of anyone setting up such an account, much like how Texas passed legislation requiring websites hosting porn to implement an age verification system.

Now, do those actually work? That's a whole different story. Yeah, we've got a whole other section on age verification systems. Yes. On top of that, the social media ban proposes to let parents delete their child's social media account, allowing the platform 10 days to comply with request or face a fine from the state's attorney general.

Last year, Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, somebody else I don't particularly care for, signed into law a bill that outright bans anyone under 14 from using social media and requires 14 and 15-year-olds to get parental consent to make an account or use an existing account. I guess the moral of the story is here is even a broken clock is right twice a day.

So, we'll see what happens there. Another thing that Texas is doing, they're trying to adopt an age verification law for app stores. Despite lobbying for big tech, reportedly including a personal call from Apple CEO Tim Cook, Governor Greg Abbott has signed a bill that requires app stores to verify users' ages and obtain parental approval for a minor to download software or make in-app purchases.

Again, I agree with this. But we'll see. Okay. Yeah. This whole age verification thing. I know. I know. I know. Why don't we tie it to voter registration? Because you do have to be 18 on election day to vote.

So, maybe when you cast your first vote, you can actually make your first tweet or, like, download your first app or check out your first bukkake, you know? It all comes to pass at the same day. It is like just this cornucopia of goodness when you turn 18.

Beer, bukkake, and a vote. Exactly. Well, no beer. Oh, yeah. That's true. So, maybe. Well, yeah. Depends on the state. Depends on the state. I don't think there's any. I don't think anybody's 18 anymore. Yeah, I don't think it's 18 anywhere anymore, except everywhere else in the world. I mean, I always thought, you know, why don't we tie it to driver's licenses and do a blanket 16-year-old thing, even though I still think that's too young.

But then the privacy advocates come out, and rightfully so, because nobody fucking maintains their databases anymore. Worries about, you know, the implications of all these companies having your driver's license on file. Yeah. There are technological, technological ways about that. Yeah.

So, well, you know, but I don't know. There's so many different ways to get around it, and they're going to do it wrong is the problem. Well, that's kind of a given. We seem to be experimenting some technological differences.

So, they'll figure it out. They'll figure it out. Production elements, people. GOG.show.com slash donate. Seriously. Help a brother out.

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Let's move from Texas. I like money. Let's move from Texas and Florida and hop the pond over to Europe. Okay. Under new Chancellor Friedrich Mertz, Germany could impose a new 10% tax on major online platforms such as Google and Facebook. Reuters reported that political factions in the country stuck her deal earlier this year to pursue these fees for digital service companies.

These corporations do billions in business in Germany with extremely high profit margins and benefit enormously from the country's media and cultural output as well as its infrastructure, but they hardly pay any taxes, invest too little, and give far too little back to society. Germany's culture minister Wolfram Weimer said of the draft rule during an interview with the magazine Stern.

I remember Stern magazine when I was a kid. It had boobies in it. Ooh. Were you 18? No. I needed to have my license. Show my license. Yeah. Other nations around the world have also explored and enacted taxes on online revenue generated by the largest internet tech companies, Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, India, Austria, and Canada have similar legislation to the draft rule Germany's culture minister is proposing.

If the tax is passed, Germany could, of course, see retaliation from President Donald Trump's administration. Trump said- This week, but then he'll chicken back out. Yeah, that's true. Then he'll taco it. Yeah. He'll schnitzel it, as they say in a stern. Exactly. And on Monday, the European Commission accused the platform Pornhub of not doing enough to block underage access.

Duh. Also included in the investigation are strip chat, XN, XX, and X videos. The EC suspects the porn sites have breached the Digital Services Act, which includes child safety measures, specifically accused platforms of lacking age restriction tools.

But there's a button, Brian, that says, are you over 18, all four sites let EU users watch content after clicking a single button to confirm they're over 18. What more do you want from us? I know. I mean, it says it right there on the tin. Are you over? We cannot help if they're liars.

We're not the net police. Yeah. If your population is not honorable and truthful, then that's on you. That is on you. Yes. So Pornhub added that they believe device level verification rather than on the website is the real solution. All right.

So somebody should probably implement that maybe then. I don't know. Who? Who's going to implement that? Well, not Pornhub. They don't want to do it. So we'll see what happens. Are they going to pull out of Europe now? They pulled out of all the states that required age verification here in the U.S.?

Well, Pornhub has a lot of pulling out. That's true. That's true. All right. Let's go over to AI now. Anthropic brings web search to free Claude users. See previous rant at the beginning of show. Once again, another way to not get correct information from the internet, which used to at least provide somewhat correct information now and then if you knew how to Google search.

Thanks. Thanks, Anthropic. Yeah. Search is dead. Search is dead. Answer is dead. It's all dead. I'm going to bring back Ask Jeeves. I wonder how much that IP is going for. We should bring it back. Probably not a lot. Here's the thing.

We could just sit there in a room and just answer people's questions in real time and not look anything up and we'll probably be more successful and accurate than most of these companies are now. Yeah. And we wouldn't cost billions of dollars. We'll do it for a cool $3 million. That's all we need.

$3 million. Now, this one is just another head scratcher. Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, has just joined the board of Anthropic. Sure. Why not? Why not? If you can't beat them, destroy them. So, you know, this is the guy that took down Blockbuster.

So, who knows? Who knows? Well, actually, I know. It doesn't fucking matter. He's just getting a paycheck. He's just going to get a paycheck. It's another paycheck. This is like Johnny Ive. You know, Reed Hastings had a hit. He had one hit. And he's done. He's good. Let's let him go. It's the old boys club.

You're seeing it with the billionaires, with the tech pros now. And it's just like, all right, well, we got so much money. Let's give this guy a couple, Bill, now. Why not? Come on board, and we'll give you some money for no reason whatsoever. Yeah. Again, getting back to AI. And we've discussed at great length.

We've talked about almost every story that's come across the wires about people submitting AI-based stuff in courts and how they all had errors and referenced lawsuits that didn't exist in previous cases. We've talked about students putting in papers in colleges that had, you know, completely made up information and referenced studies that didn't exist.

We know. We all know. It is in the news all the time. You don't have to be us reading tech news all day, every day. Everybody fucking knows this now. Everybody, except for RFK Jr. Okay. Did this news not pierce the tinfoil hat?

Well, President Donald Trump held an event at the White House last week to announce the release of something called the Maha Report. God, these guys with their fucking branding. Make America horny again. Sponsored by Pornhub. Yeah. Make America pull out again. Anyways, a product.

I wish something. Never mind. I'm not even going to go there. A product of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s new commission that's supposed to make America healthy again. But if you weren't already skeptical of the report's findings, an article from the nonprofit news outlet, Notice, should give you pause. Several of the studies.

Why do you guess what happened if they potentially, maybe they're not admitting to it, but probably used AI to put together this report? Well, the same thing that has happened every other time on every story we've talked about on this podcast. Several of the studies cited in the report don't even exist.

The Notice reporters spent five days combing through the 522 citations in the report. They found dozens of broken links and studies with missing or incorrect authors. But the most damning instances were at least seven studies that simply didn't exist. Even the real studies cited have issues.

The report references a paper published in the journal Pediatrics that referred to how screen time impacted sleep in children. The report paper was real, but it wasn't in Pediatrics and it didn't actually study children. It looked at adults. And there are errors like this all through this fucking thing.

The White House responded to questions about the fake studies when asked about what Notice had found during a regular press briefing on Thursday. And Press Secretary Carolyn Leavitt referred to any errors as formatting issues, as if they just put it in Microsoft Word, added an image, and it fucked the whole thing up.

Like it does for all of us. I hated that so much. Can you just move that image over? No! Yes, and said that those formatting issues were being addressed and the report would be updated. It was asked whether reporters like this are created using artificial intelligence tools.

And the press secretary told the journalist she can't speak to that and would defer you to the Department of Health and Human Services. So, as we know, they used it. There's no doubt they used it. We've seen this time and time again. Yep. Well, you want to know one instance where AI was right this week?

Hmm. Well, this is, we're talking about ex-AI bot Grok this time. Oh, it's right any time you ask it about Elon. Oh, yes. Man, Grok hates Elon. It does. It really does. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene picked a fight with Grok this week after it questioned whether her actions truly align with Christian values.

Grok flagged her support of conspiracy theories and Christian nationalism and prompting Greene to accuse the AI of spreading fake news and being left-leaning. Grok clapped back saying it doesn't judge. It just analyzes facts. When asked if Greene's record reflects the teachings of Jesus, the AI simply replied, no.

We don't talk about her much because she doesn't really get involved with tech too often, but she might be absolutely the dumbest person I've ever known of in my entire life. Oh, one of the worst people. One of the worst people. Worst and dumbest. Yes. And there's a ton of Grok news this week.

Telegram has announced a $300 million partnership with XAI and Grok. So if you are still a Telegram user, I don't know why you would be because of all the troubles that's been going on with Telegram. Well, I guess it's, I mean, Telegram, Signal, Tomato, Tomato, you know.

Yep. Yeah. So you'll be able to, you'll be able to ask Grok questions directly from Telegram. Just what I've always wanted. I know. They say that they're not going to be sharing your information unless you want them to, but of course, who knows about that. Yeah.

Yeah. And there's, it's a, it's a rev share deal too. So Telegram will earn 50% of the revenue from XAI subscriptions that are sold on the platform. So there's a little bit of, a little bit of, you rub my back, I rub yours kind of thing. So yeah, Grok is paying Telegram $300 million to be the, the, the sole AI of the platform.

Okay. Having said all that, GOG.show slash VPN. Seriously. Seriously. You can share some revenue too. Mm-hmm. Please do. Please do. And I was thinking this week, you know, I, I, I really don't like giving Elon Musk any money at all.

Yeah. But now, now when you, when you, when you look at the economics of all the AI stuff that's going on here, every time you use AI, even if you pay for it, the companies lose money because it costs so much for them to actually, you know, respond to the prompt that you give them.

And when it comes to X, they're actually using your prompts to train the AI. So here's what I'm thinking. If we all signed up for an exit, if we all signed up for an exit, X AI account and gave, gave the old tweet, the tweeters like eight bucks a month or whatever it costs, then we could actually sit there and flood it all day long.

We could just write a bot that just puts in gibberish all day long. Well, you don't have to pay. You don't have to pay to use Grokman. Oh, I thought you did to get the unlimited version. Oh, yeah. You don't get unlimited. But if we all just go in and use our freebies. Oh, definitely. If you've got freebies, use those up.

Absolutely. Go in there every single day and just ask it what it thinks of Elon about 19 times. Yeah. And thank it. Thank it profusely because we know that that really pisses it off. You know, if you say it, I think I still have that, my tech snippet for when I thank OpenAI every time for a wonderful job because we know that, you know, kills a couple of wetlands every time you do it.

Yeah, we could bankrupt these guys faster than anticipated, but we could also train Grok on what we wanted to train it on. I mean, it's already been trained on the fact that Elon's a piece of shit. So mission accomplished, everybody. And Marjorie Taylor Greene is stupid. And not a Christian. So I'm coming around to Grok.

I think it actually might be the best one out there. It might actually be the most accurate and woke. I don't know what year it is. We'll have to test that. I'll go in and burn a few megawatts. Media Candy.

Well, I am caught up for me on Murderbot since the episodes come out at midnight last night, and I don't want to stay up until midnight to watch the show because I'm old. But I've watched the first three now, and I am enjoying it. I've watched the first four now, and you don't have to stay up that late because these things go by, like, so fast.

They're like, they're like, it's like a web series back in the Yahoo days. I'm old. I have a kid, and I'm up at six in the morning. Perfect. By 6.15, when you're done with your dump, you could be caught up to Murderbot. It took no time. I mean, episode four went by, like, that. But it was good.

It was very good. I still like it. I'm along with it. Yeah, I'm not. I'm enjoying it. So it's, as I just said, it's completely, tonally not what I thought it would be, but I'm okay with that. Yeah, it's a different beast altogether, but it's enjoyable. It's an enjoyable beast. Long Way Home is the same beast as all the other shows.

It's a little bit slower this time. It's a little bit prettier because they're taking their time going to places that they don't normally go with a much better camera crew and camera system. So they were in Norway this week out in the middle of nowhere up on a glacier, and I got to say, it looks pretty on the big old TV.

I needed that to just take me away from everything that was going on this week. So it was really, really nice, relaxing watch last night. So they just finished episode five. I don't know how many episodes are this season, but it's good. It's good. I'm thoroughly enjoying it. All right. Well, Disney appears to have broken their live action curse.

None of those movies have been doing particularly well, but Lilo and Stitch opened last weekend, and I went with the kid to go see it. It's done quite well for itself. It was the number one movie in America, I believe, and made the most money out of any movies, even beating Mission Impossible 7,000 or whatever number they're on now.

So it's done well. I really enjoyed this movie. Kid obviously loved it. He thought it was great. But I, as an adult, thought, yeah, this is quite nice and clever and had some funny bits and definitely was engaging. It's not one of those kids' movies that I'm sitting in the back after I had my popcorn going.

No, I stayed awake the whole movie and enjoyed it. So it was a lot of fun. I highly recommend it. All right. Yep. Not my cup of tea, but I'm glad it's fine. I don't recommend reading online because, of course, you know, everybody out there is pissed off. It's too woke. There was nothing fucking woke about it. Shut the fuck up.

It's a fucking movie. Get over it. Go ask Grok about it. Anyways, I also watched Martha on Netflix about Martha Stewart. Now you would guess if you had to guess who in my house hold put this on, that wasn't me. That would be the wife. Yes.

But it was actually quite good. I wouldn't say I came away from it liking Martha Stewart. She's a bitch. She's a hoe. But from what I recalled, I bought the mainstream narrative back when this actually happened in real time. I mean, I was like, oh, yeah, she did insider training and all that sort of shit.

What a bitch. Turns out, nah, she really fucking didn't. She didn't do shit other than just be a bitch. And that's what kind of screwed her. So, yeah, I mean, she did cheat on her husband. On their honeymoon, basically. Well, not illegal.

Not illegal. Not illegal. And, you know, probably happens more often than not from guys doing it than women. Yeah, a big part of this documentary kind of pushed the whole, like, if, you know, if she were a male CEO doing what she did, nobody would bat an eye and think that she would be great or he would be great.

But because she's a woman, she's a total bitch. And I would argue that, actually, we probably shouldn't encourage the behavior in men or women. Yeah, that's the thing. That's the thing. That's what it comes around to. It's just like, you know, neither gender should act like that. Neither gender. You know what happens when men act like that?

See our show. Yeah. Maybe they shouldn't be dicks either. You know, that's that's all I'm saying. So I am watching her new show on NBC. Yes, chef. It's not that very not that good of a show. OK. Well, watch the documentary.

It was quite good. And it really did. I saw it when it came out. Yeah. Yeah. And it really did make me like go, oh, my God, I totally had all of this wrong because I didn't really care at the time. And I just saw the headlines. And it's funny. She was pissed off when this first came out. And then she doubled down on it.

And she's like, you know what? I'm getting good press off of this. You want to do a part two? No, I don't need a part two. That was fine. That was fine. Part one's good enough. Part one's good enough. But I do miss her show with Snoop, though. What a genius pairing. Talk about revitalizing your brand. Yeah, it was so good.

I mean, they were just the perfect match together. And the show was actually pretty funny. I got to admit it. It got canceled way too soon. Yeah. And speaking of canceled way too soon, news came out this week that the Wheel of Time has been canceled by Prime Video after three seasons. I really enjoyed the show.

And it got off to a strong start in 2021 as Prime Video's most watched series premiere of the year, one of the platform's top five series launches of all time. Three seasons in, the series has remained a solid performer, but its viewership slipped with the fantasy drama dropping out of Nielsen's top 10 originals chart after the first week of season three while staying on the list for the entire run the previous two seasons.

So they basically just said it's not doing well enough around the world and it doesn't justify the enormous paycheck that we're paying, which is much, much less than the rings of the rings of rings of power. And it was a much better show. Well, I guess I'll have to go read the books now.

And a lot of people were saying it wasn't really following the books and driving them nuts anyways, to which I say, foundation bad? Yeah. I read somewhere this week that Amazon is looking to sell the rights to Lord of the Rings. So I'm sure they want that off their pay docket.

Yeah. They want to try to make as much money as they can off of it because it costs them so much. I mean, don't get me wrong. I like that show too, but I like the time a lot more. Yeah, I finally got into it, but I think it's, yeah, it's, uh, it was definitely a little lot. They spent, they, they, they, they spent a little too much on that, but hopefully, hopefully they'll finish it out before they, they sell.

So. Well, I, uh, had three big concerts. I was going to go to this year still, uh, Oasis because wife's favorite band. Yeah. Uh, Mickey Bereni from lush is touring her new band, the, uh, Mickey Bereni three MB three or whatever they're calling it.

So I'm looking forward to that. Uh, and I was going to go see Billy Joel because I've never seen Billy Joel. And that was definitely like a bucket list for me. But unfortunately, Billy Joel has canceled concerts scheduled throughout the next year, following a recent diagnosis of the brain disorder, normal pressure hydrocephalus, the condition that occurs when brain fluid builds up inside or around the brain, causing it to malfunction.

This condition has been exasperated by recent concert performances, leading to problems with hearing vision and balance. A May 23rd statement shared to Instagram reads. So I'm thinking I'm never going to see Billy Joel now. That's too bad. In his seventies, I think he's just going to call it after this.

Yeah. I saw him 10 years ago at Wrigley field. We took my dad for, cause my dad, it was, you know, one of his bucket list items was to see Billy Joel too. So we got, we got my brother's praying for the good seats on the, we actually got to sit on the field on Wrigley field and watch, watch Billy Joel play.

And it, you know, there are, there are shows that I've seen not to rub salt in your wound here, but there are, there are shows that I've seen that will stick with me forever. One is the cure because that was one of the greatest concerts I've ever seen. Second was Billy Joel. God damn. What a show. I mean, I've watched the, uh, I think it's on, is it Netflix?

I'm not sure. They, they recorded one of his Madison square garden concerts. Oh, that's right. Yeah. And it is phenomenal. So at least I've got that. I've been able to watch that. That's good. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, I really did want to see him live at some point. And obviously, you know, in my twenties and thirties, I didn't give a shit about Billy Joel. Uh, but you know, you get older and you start to listen to the music and you go, God damn, he was good.

Oh man. I grew up with Billy Joel. He was one of my dad's favorites. So I think my, like my third or fourth album was glass houses. So I've had him, had Billy Joel around forever, but I, yeah, it was just a great show. Wish him and his family the best. I would love it if he recovered and decided to finish off this tour just because then I'd get to see him, but I totally get it if he does not.

Yeah. Yeah. Take care of yourself, Billy. You earned it. Yep. You sure did. Mm hmm. Uh, so I went back and I needed something slow this week to just shut my brain off at night and, uh, this, this did the trick. It's a 1981 film called my dinner with Andre.

Where's Andre? That's all. The name has been ruined for me by project runway. That's right. Andre on talent. Um, and it stars Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn as fictionalized versions of themselves sharing a conversation at cafe des artistes in Manhattan.

Uh, it's basically, uh, just, uh, two guys having a dinner chat and one guy is like, you know, an artsy bat shit, crazy dude. And the other guy's just sitting there going, this guy's artsy and bat shit. Crazy. Um, I, I enjoyed it just because I needed to listen to other people to turn off my head.

Uh, and this is one of those movies that can go either way. Either you love it or you hate it. I think. I watched it in college and I remember I really did enjoy it. And then it's not a movie you want to watch twice. Let's just put it that way. There's no reason to watch it a second time. And I tried.

Yeah. I think this kind of is in the same thing. It's like, you know, you read, you, you watch this movie around the same time you're reading Atlas Shrugged. College. Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, it's like, Oh, mind blown. Then you're like, Oh, I just have to go get a job and have my daily slog like everybody else.

Yeah. Forget all this shit. Oh, and Ayn Rand, uh, maybe, maybe not again, reference all episodes of this podcast. Yeah. Just saying. Um, so I, I, I mean, I'm glad. I'm glad I finally watched it. I'm glad. If you've never seen it, it's well worth watching.

Oh yeah. Everybody should see it once. Yeah, definitely. So yeah, I, I, I check off the list. Now we got some news in this week. Jason, according to this link, GOG is a $3 million a year business.

What do you think gave them such an idea? And this is a link, this is a link over to grumpy old geeks information on rocket reach. Right. So yeah, I was like a slight, I might be rounding a little bit here, Jason, but I'd say that's about $3 million off.

It's $3 million off. Yes. It says with over 500 episodes, grumpy old geek is one grumpy old geeks is one of the longest running tech podcasts. We cover tech news, media, book security, and more. It's almost like I wrote that Brian. Oh shit. I did. Nevermind. So it says it gives us the website, the revenue, $3 million employees, two, and one is on rocket reach.

Who's that? Is that you or is that me? Well, it's me apparently, but I don't know why. Okay. I never signed up for rocket reach. And here we go. Address, Woodland Hills, California, Maryland, 91364 U.S.

Okay. I didn't know California, Maryland was a new state. So, uh, yeah. I got to check and see if a rocket reaches on delete me because if so, they're not doing their job right now. Yeah. Cause I'm on here with my, I'm in Toronto, the places I've worked, my college, everything.

What is the annual revenue of grumpy old geeks? The grumpy old geeks annual revenue was $3 million in 2025. No, it wasn't. No, it fucking wasn't. No. How many, how many people are employed at grumpy old geeks? One people are employed at grumpy old geeks.

And over at the top, it says employees, two. And this is, this comes back to, this must've been vibe coded because one people are employed at grumpy old geeks. Now, even back in the day, in the nineties, I would have programmed that to be grammatically correct.

Well, did you look under where is grumpy old geeks based? That was the next one. Grumpy old geeks is based in California, Maryland. Oh, the old city, the famous city of California and Maryland. Yes. I don't know what an NAICS code is. Well, we've got one. I'm sure that's wrong too.

One, two, three, four, five, six, you got seven of those codes and we have sick codes. We have, we got four of those. I don't know what those are either. And I'm not about to give a fuck. Um, so yeah. Yeah. This is all just bullshit. Yeah. I'm just going to tell you, Hey, your phone number is up here too.

I just noticed that. Yes, it is. Wow. So maybe let's go sign in. Uh, yeah, we did not make $3 million, uh, this year or last year or any years or cumulatively over the past 13 years. We've not made, we've not made $2 million.

We've not made $1 million. If in the, in the course of 13 years, we may have brought in a hundred thousand dollars. Maybe that's over 13 years. Yes. So yeah. You know why? Cause we suck at business. I think we have a great show, but damn, if we don't suck at business, I believe we make less than minimum wage.

Oh, absolutely. I did the math on that. Totally make, totally make less than minimum wage, especially after it got boosted. We made less than minimum wage before the boost. So yeah. We can't get UBI soon enough. Yeah.

Well, speaking of another show that doesn't make me any money, I just wanted to tell everybody Schmackters with James Marsters, Mark Devine and me is, uh, is still going strong for season two. So go check it out. Link will be in the show notes. And so I can go make less money on more work, please. I'm like AI.

The more I work, the less money I make. Croc Jason. I'm doing it wrong. So are they. So you're in good company. Saturday, September 26th.

Two of combat sports, most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero. Plus the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line. When the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the meat cleaver colon BKFC 94.

Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. Ups and doodads. In today's episode of Tech Companies Solve Problems No One Had, Opera resurrects its 2017 browser flop Neon, now rebranded as an agentic AI marvel.

This browser doesn't just browse, Brian. It chats, does, and makes for you. That's right. Want a website, a game, or perhaps a sock order? Just whisper your wish, and Neon conjures it up, even while you're offline. Because who needs human interaction or skills when your browser can be your overachieving intern?

But remember, this digital genie does come with a subscription fee. So if you've ever dreamed of outsourcing your entire digital life to a browser, Opera's got you covered at a price. Okay, so I watched the video. Yes. First off, the video's fucking stupid.

It's like ridiculously bad. It's terrible. It's terrible. It's absolutely terrible. Second, just on agentic AI for a second, have you not listened to the show, people? AI gets everything wrong. Why do you think an agentic AI is going to do something right for you?

They're going to order the most expensive socks. You said you wanted black socks. You're going to get paisley socks. This is just what AI does right now. So why do you want agentic AI? I'm sorry. You just don't. It's not ready for prime time. And finally, to the video itself, as an example for chat, because they run through chat, does and makes, they say, think more.

It's more like R2-D2 under chat. R2-D2. A Star Wars droid most notably famous for not being able to chat with anyone except for Luke and C-3PO. Have you not even seen the fucking movie? I think they got a summary from Grok.

The AI must have written it because R2-D2 does not chat. It's the one thing he doesn't fucking do. C-3PO never stops talking. Maybe that's the one you wanted to use, you fucking idiots. Seriously. Good point, Brian.

Good point. I'm just saying. Yep. He doesn't chat. Nobody understands him. Anyways. Okay. God damn. These people. Somebody got paid a lot of money to make that video, Jason.

Brian's going to have an aneurysm. I shouldn't have put this one in here. Shit. A lot of money to make that fucking video. And somebody got paid to write that fucking video. Yeah. Yeah. No, that wasn't a cheap video by any stretch. Oh, man. That's why they have to charge a subscription price.

I suppose so. I suppose so. Speaking of companies that piss me off, I no longer have access through my old company to Adobe anymore. So I'm officially an Affinity Photo user now. Screw Adobe. Welcome to the club. It's got a learning curve.

I'll tell you that. Yeah, but you can do it in a weekend. Yeah. I just haven't sat down to do it yet, but I'm going to. It's funny. I actually, I look at my doc bar. I've got Photoshop, Illustrator. Illustrator needs a new icon because it says AI. I'm like, it's not AI.

No. Well, they're trying, I'm sure. Yeah. I got, well, you can use AI in Illustrator, unfortunately. They're probably thrilled that they have that stupid icon. Yeah. What is it? What do they call that? Firefly. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Firefly. And I got Premiere. Then I got After Effects and Media Encoder all lined up.

And then right next to that, I've got Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer because for a lot of work, I still actually use Affinity Photo. Yeah. So it's good. Yeah. Yeah. No. Once you get, once you get everything set up and you kind of get the workflow going, there's some things that it actually does really nicely. And now that it has, you know, select subject, boom, that was the big thing that made me go back to Photoshop.

It was like, I select subject was really so nice. I mean, as someone who has spent, I don't know, probably five years of his very short life with a path tool and Photoshop trying to outline the thing and cut it out. That was such a nightmare. Zoom, zoom, zoom.

Click, click, click, click, click, click. Zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom. Click, click, click, click. That was no fun. Yeah. All right. And I remember Photoshop before he even had layers. Did you work in Photoshop before there were layers? Yep. Yep.

Yep. Remember channel ops? It was like one step above MS Paint. Yeah. Yeah. We could do, you could do things with channels that, that was the only thing they called it chops, channel ops. And then layers came out and it was just like, oh my God, this is science fiction. And it was back then for sure.

Sure was. Get you, fire up your copy of Kai's power tools. Oh, I loved Kai. I know. I know. Okay. What else we got? Well, Apple reportedly has said, screw it. And it's jumping from iOS 19 to iOS 26. This is a fantastic move. I'm so glad they're doing this.

I am too. The expected iOS 19 will instead be called iOS 26 to line up with the year following now. So it's going on the car model. Unless you ask Google. Unless you ask. It's called iOS taco. I don't know what the fuck this thing is saying. I don't get it.

Anyways, all the products from your iPad to your Mac to your Apple watch will support the new nomenclature and a blanket redesign. So we'll see. Their big plan is to try and unify user interface across all platforms. So we should hear Apple try to explain its reasoning at the Worldwide Developer Conference 2025.

They should rebrand that. It should be the WWDC 2026, right? Set for June 9th. So apparently the UI will support more circular bubble icons for various apps and desktops across Apple's phones, Macs, and more. Bring back skeuomorphic. I want some wood panels back on my sliders.

That'd be awesome. Yeah. So it's a smart move. It just makes sense. Now I don't have to remember whatever number we're on right now, but I can't wait for year 26.25. Yeah. What gets me is the Mac OS.

I don't, I mean, I just had to look it up. We're on Sequoia right now. I'm like, that was the worst naming decision that they ever made. Okay. We're going to name it after places in California. It's like, I live in California. I don't fucking know where half this shit is. And I don't know what order they're supposed to go in. Are we going north to south, east to west, left to right?

Oh, you know what would have been a really good Easter egg for a lower decks? Cause all the ships, there was the California class and they were all named like the Cerritos, the cities after California. They should have named them the same as the, uh, as the OS operating systems. Oh, that would have been funny. That would have been great. I think they should have named them after, uh, the freeways, the USS 405, the USS 101.

It never goes anywhere. Yeah. It's just stuck in four. Cause the warp drive is constantly broken. Oh, okay. Uh, we had a couple of people write in Phil from London said, same home networking issue as you with a nest about to try and buy this, the Starling home hub.

Uh, Robert wrote in, Brian, don't even try Apple's home ecosystem too late. I tried it. It didn't work. Try out home, try out home assistant.io. It works with almost everything. Now, thanks everybody that's written in about this and all that. But my issue isn't so much with the controllers. There's plenty of options out there.

My issue is, you know, Johnny Ive has been wild away for $6.5 billion to build AI tools that nobody gives a fuck about while nobody is designing good home stuff. Like all the stuff that you can get out there is butt ass ugly. That's the only thing that nested well. All their stuff looked good, functioned great.

What I need is manufacturers to make cool, cool looking stuff, not the controlling parts. That's the real problem. I would like to point out that the nest design was done before they were acquired by Google. Yes. Which is why they're good. Because, yeah, Google is where good design goes to die. Google's where everything goes to die.

Google sucks. This is true. They don't make a single fucking good thing anymore. It used to just be search, but they've destroyed that too. Well, they got Waymo. Sort of. And then I saw this.

There is an official WhatsApp release for Apple iPads. It only took 16 years as WhatsApp first entered the scene all the way back in 2009. As a matter of fact, the messaging platform predates the iPad itself, which launched in 2010. The app takes advantage of the tablet's multitasking features like split view and slide over, so users can view multiple apps at once.

This lets folks, for instance, browse the web as they chat with a friend. And now we're looking at you, Instagram. I was going to say it. It still came out sooner than Instagram. And by the way, this multiple apps at once, it lets you slide over so you can look at your script while you're actually trying to scam the person on WhatsApp out of their Bitcoin.

So you can look at your script at the same time. Much more convenient. Much more. At the library. Dan wrote in, not much to do with tech, but it's a New York Times article about Terry Pratchett.

I know you both like him, so here you go. And it's the New York Times, the essential Terry Pratchett. I scanned through this a little bit. Jason, I see you made some notes. Yes, there was a final note at this. I looked at the list. I'm like, I've read every Terry Pratchett book that I care to read. And most of them twice. So, yeah.

And I kind of disagree with the list anyway. Me too. Okay. There was a final note. It said, time was I would have included good omens from 1990 on this list. It's an excellent first approach to Pratchett's work and a personal favorite. But considering the sexual assault allegations against Pratchett's co-author, Neil Gaiman, I'm not interested in sending new fans down that road.

Which you just did by saying it's an excellent first approach to Pratchett's work and a personal favorite. It's one of my personal favorites, too. And yes, I understand the world that we live in now. And I have issues with Orson Scott Card. But you know what? Ender's game is still really fucking good.

So it's good omens. Good omens is really fucking good. Yes. It was so good that I bought The Good Omens TV Companion from Amazon back in the day, which is a very nice coffee table book. Now, I thought that it was a joke that when I opened up the cover, the book was upside down.

Now, turns out, I don't think so. I think I got a misprint of the book. Oh, yours is worth extra. Yeah. I have a book that's worth more from a, you know, probably soon to be convicted. Whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Since Neil has been thoroughly canceled, I think this book is probably just going to sit on my shelf forever.

But I posted a video of it in the it'll be in the show notes. Go check it out. And I can't find anybody else who has this book. So, A, it's rare because nobody bought the fucking thing. You might have the only copy. I have the only copy. And it was done by hand.

And the guy was drunk. He's like, you want me to make one of these things? And he just put it in upside down. So, yeah, I think I have a misprint, but because I can't find anybody else with anything about it being upside down on the inside. The thing is, the confusion comes when the cover is Azrafel on the top and Crowley on the bottom.

But when you go to the back cover, they're reversed. So, I'm like, oh, maybe they just did a funny switcheroo. Right. But it turns out, maybe not. Maybe not. And I did, I finished the AI Con, How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want by Emily Bender.

And Alex Hanna. Everybody should go read this book. It is so good. They are funny. They take the piss out of AI like we would. Just, you know, no punches pulled. It is a, it's not like an academic book by any stretch.

And it's pretty up to date. So, I mean, it's a brand new book. I highly recommend checking out this book. If you want ammo to tell your friends why AI is, you know, full of shit, this is the book to get. So, highly, highly, highly recommend it. The AI Con. Go get it. All right.

Well, it looks like we're both doing everything possible to not read Christopher Moore's latest Anima Rising. Because I didn't get around. I started it again last night. I got it. I got another two chapters in last night. I didn't get around to it either. Which, by the way, if I had to pick three books, three books to be stranded on a desert island with, it would be probably Christopher Moore's Lamb, which is one of the best books ever written.

Good Omens. Yes. And Orson Scott Card, also a dick. Ender's Game. Oh, now if you just throw in a CD of Michael Jackson, you're set, man. Now that's where I draw the line. I'm not down with the Michael Jackson anymore. Anyways, instead of reading Anima Rising, I had started before I bought Anima Rising and before I got the gift of the Curepedia book, which I also tore through.

I finished reading Love, Sex, and the Alien Apocalypse from the First Contact series by Peter Cowderon. It's the latest release he's made, and it was fun. It wasn't one of my favorites, but it got cooking a little bit, and it has had some really interesting ideas, like all of his books do. So now I no longer have any excuse not to start reading Christopher Moore.

Okay, get on it. I'll probably have it finished by next week, too. Says me every week. We're not going to have an at-the-library section next week. You know it. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave.

Podcast superhost Dave Bittner decodes all things cyber on the Cyber Wire every day. Exposes deception with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans. Dives deep into privacy with Ben Yellen on Caveat. Breaks down industrial cybersecurity on Control Loop. And even brings the chuckle-wuckles on only malware in the building.

Hello, Dave Bittner. Hello. So I just, I mean, found out coming into this segment that Jason spits and doesn't swallow. Hey, hey, hey. Yes. You know. They won't know in Texas because Pornhub's been banned.

So, you know. It was a cough drop. Come on. That's what they all say. That's what you call them these days? I don't have anyone here to give me the Heimlich in case I... Oh, Heimlich, okay. Hey. Lozenge. Yes. Okay. You filthy animals, you.

We all have our preferences. Oh, but... Fuck you! So, I ran across this in this... Since we don't have any new Star Wars news this week, the CIA secretly ran a Star Wars fan site from over at 404 Media.

Have you guys got a chance to get caught up on this one? Is this... Yeah. Were you caught up in the dragnet? Well, I assume that I was. We talked about this earlier this week over on Cyber Wire. And, yeah, I mean, I think it's safe to say that I probably participated in this CIA fan site.

Why wouldn't I have at the time when fan sites were what you did? This story made me think about how I don't really go to these sites anymore. Everything's, of course, you know, been platformed and all that kind of stuff.

So... That's true. I actually have, like... I do have one folder of bookmarks that are small little sites like that, like Yesterland, which is about Disneyland history and stuff like that. But, in general, there's very few sites like this that I wouldn't visit anymore at all. Yeah. It used to be a regular thing to make the rounds.

You know, oh, what are people saying over on the Star Wars site or the Disney site or the... Yeah. Whatever your favorite band was. But, I guess it's all... Yeah, websites mean nothing anymore. It's just social media updates. Yeah. Dead internet theory, man. It's coming true.

So, my understanding with this story is that the CIA was indeed running the Star Wars site, among many other sites that they ran, which were similar sort of fan sites. And they used them as ways to communicate with agents in the field.

Allegedly, on this one, if you put some particular term into the search dialogue on the website, that would give you access to something that... Is it Friday? There you go. Taco. Try again.

And they used it... Well, I'm going to say successfully. The dark part of this story is that evidently the Iranians caught on to the use of this site. And that ended with, I want to say like a dozen folks in China who were CIA contacts ended up dead.

Well, now our government just outs them outright. Yeah. Yeah. So, I guess it worked great right up until the moment that it didn't. Until it didn't. Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. Jesus. Yeah. But other folks have commented that this is all, you know, run-of-the-mill sort of stuff that the CIA does and has always done and probably is still doing and makes sense.

But was it a good fan site? As long as it was a good one. Yeah. Exactly. Who cares? Who cares who doesn't? But the other thing, too, is they're saying that the CIA had bad OPSEC. Like, if you went in and reverse-engineered this site, they were kind of sloppy about leaving breadcrumbs back to themselves.

They left a little comment like, programmed by CIA? Yeah. That sort of thing. Probably not advised. CIA rules. You know, FBI sucks. This site developed by. Yeah. Vibe-coded by Eric Snowden.

Yeah. But this was a while ago. So, you know. Yeah. But, yeah, it's fun. It's interesting to think about. And, of course, it feeds everyone's paranoia as to what degree are things being monitored and all that good stuff. But it turns out it was.

A lot of the good old days before we thought our phones were listening to us. And it was just our favorite fan sites. Yes. Merely websites. That's true. That's true. That's a really good point. Yeah. Well, a couple weeks back, we talked about the fact that Kermit the Frog was going to be giving the commencement speech at your alma mater, the University of Maryland.

I have included a YouTube link to the full commencement speech. Did you happen to make it down there, Dave? I did not make it down there. And, honestly, I've been avoiding watching this. You posting this in the show notes as I was doing my prep for today's segment.

I gave in and I watched it. Delightful. It's delightful, but I'm, I'm, I don't like it. Like, that's not entirely true. I love the idea of it.

I love, I love Kermit the Frog. I love the idea of Kermit doing the commencement. As I mentioned to you all before, it's not the first time he's done it. I saw him do it with, along with Elmo, probably 20 years ago. A really neat experience for me.

I got to meet Kevin Clash. But I watched this and it just leaves me cold. Like I've said many times before, it's like if I was a huge Beatles fan and all that was available was a Beatles tribute band.

Right. That's how I feel when I watch this Kermit. It's, it's not Kermit. It's just, it doesn't move like him. It doesn't talk like him. It doesn't ad lib like him. It, it looks like, I mean, it's, it's the shell of him.

Right. I mean, it is the puppet and I love to see the puppet and the, and Kermit makes me happy. Like few other things in this world do. But, uh, watching this is, I guess it's the definition of mixed feelings because, again, I love the idea of it, but it just leaves me feeling kind of sad.

I think the video greatly suffers from not having any, any of the crowd noise. Yeah. At all. Like you get no reactions, you get no cheers, you get nothing, nothing. It's just the speech. And that makes it really dry. And he does a sing-along of Rainbow Connection, which is, sort of feels flat.

Because nobody else is singing. You can't hear them. You can't hear them. But I noticed also in the crowd shots, you don't really see many people singing. Right. Which makes me wonder, like, to what degree do these graduates even know that song? Right. That's true. That is a long time ago now.

So, I mean, it certainly got a lot of attention, um, whereas we, my, my, uh, I guess we can transition into our next topic here. My youngest son, Jack, graduated from high school yesterday. Congratulations. Congratulations. Thank you very much.

It was a delightful day, a wonderful event. Um, our graduations here locally take place at, uh, Meriwether Post Pavilion, which is a storied, uh. Many a band that I've worked with has played there. Yep. Yep. Yep. So it's really neat for the kids to be able to be on that stage and all of us to be there.

Um, but, uh, my son's principal actually did a Kermit the Frog bit where he started off by saying that he was able to pull some strings and have Kermit the Frog speak at the graduation. And everybody leaned forward in their chairs like, really?

But it was just a bit. There was no Kermit. There was, you know, what I really wanted was one of the assistant principals to run out like in a Kermit the Frog full body costume. Right. Just disgusted that he'd been made to do this by the principal.

But, um, you know, nobody asked me to help contribute to the writing of the bit. So kind of fell flat. Right. But it was really nice. I have to say there were a couple times during the ceremony that I actually got chills of sort of parental pride and also just one of those life moments, um, where you're thinking to yourself, yeah, this is happening.

And I'm happy to be here. Yeah, it really is. So it's our youngest son. So we are officially through with, um, the public school system, which, uh, we've had very good experience with where you're lucky enough to live in a place that has a very good public school system.

You got out before it goes away. Well, my wife and I are like, okay, you want to redistrict? Go for it. We don't care anymore. Uh, but, uh, no, it was, it was, we had lovely weather and, uh, just nice seeing friends and family and all that sort of thing.

I'm curious, uh, for you all, of course, this got me thinking about my own high school graduation. And I'm curious, uh, how much do you remember your own high school graduation? None, nothing, not, not a single thing. I barely remember my college graduation.

I remember my college graduation. I was pissed because the keynote speaker was just a previous president of the fucking college. They couldn't even get any interesting, uh, high school graduation. I don't remember at all. The most memorable part of that entire process was we had what we call grad night and it wouldn't be the segment.

If we didn't tie it back to Disneyland and grad night was when they shut the Disneyland park at 6 PM for normal people. And local students would be bused in for, uh, the nighttime there. So I, I really remember grad night at Disneyland. I don't remember anything about my high school graduation.

It was also boring cause it was just on our field, on the, on the school field. We didn't go anywhere. They just brought a bunch of chairs up into the fucking baseball diamond, uh, football field or whatever. And that was that. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How about you, Jason? Well, my Russian studies teacher gave me a 64 instead of a 65, which meant I failed Russian studies, which was the last course that I needed to take before graduation.

So they didn't let me graduate and I had to go to summer school and I had to take typing in summer school and they wouldn't even let me walk down the, uh, do the procession. And they wouldn't let me walk with a blank, uh, a blank, uh, diploma. So they were, uh, they were just total assholes about it.

So my graduation was me in the principal's office with my dad after I had finished my class in summer school with my dad, with the, the principal handing my dad, the diploma and trying to shake his hand. And my dad saying, fuck you, grabbing the diploma and walking out of there saying, fuck this place.

That was my graduation. Yep. I mean, you did create a memory. Yeah, I do have a memory. That principal did die of a heart attack in his driveway. So karma's a bitch. All right. Well, yeah, you asked.

I don't remember mine at all. So I'm not sure who got off better there. My memories are mostly from photos of the event. Yeah, I do have photos. I've seen them. I know I was standing with my friends at the time.

I'm not friends with anymore, but, you know, it's, yeah. So I have like, yeah, I guess my memory really is a photo. That's about it. Yeah. I do have a photo of me in my cap and gown and my grandmother there. Cause she was all excited to be able to see, see me, you know, walk and get my diploma, which then she didn't get to because the principal said, no, he can't, he can't go.

And she had to go home without seeing it. So me holding a cake and a sad grandparents. And this is right after my grandfather died a few months prior. So, yeah, yeah. So it had gotten that far that it was, that it was touch and go. Yeah. No, I had the cap and gown and the whole nine yards and ready to go.

And they said, no. Because for one point you spend, you spend 13 years in the public school system in one point by one asshole because the guy just didn't like you. And he wasn't even there for three quarters of the semester because he was out sick and it was a substitute teacher the whole time.

And he just, he just rolls back in and says, no, I think you're going to have to, you can't take it. I'm like, you know what this means, right? That I'm not going to be able to graduate on time. He's like, yeah. Oh, well. Wow. Jason, you know what your anger has done? It has actually jogged a memory of my high school graduation now. All right. Your anger has ignited my anger that I've forgotten about for however many years it's now been since I've been outside of high school.

I had the highest GPA in my graduating class and I should have been the valedictorian. Well, la-di-da. They did not let me be the valedictorian because I had dyed my hair purple. I had pierced ears. I was goth, punk rock, industrial kid.

They didn't like the way I looked, so they gave the valedictorian to my friend, Angel Pai, who had the second highest GPA, and she gave me a shout out during her speech. And her name was Angel Pai? Yeah. That's a great name. Mm-hmm.

Our graduation stories pretty much sum up everything that is this show. Brian, who's the almost-ran valedictorian who grew up in the happiest place on earth and the guy who couldn't even walk down the aisle and had to graduate from typing out of a summer school.

Yeah. Wow. Oh, the typing served you well. I mean, I did split the middle. I didn't learn a damn thing about typing. I rode my skateboard the whole time. Yeah. Because even they know, it's like, the people that were in typing in summer school were the people that you would expect to be typing in summer school.

So it was just kind of like, just show up, sign the book, and do whatever you want, and don't tell on us. I feel like we've definitely established that Dave is the normal one here. Well, I was going to say more average. I'm way more down the middle.

I was a solid B student, and that's all. I did not care about getting great grades. I cared about getting good enough grades. And for my parents, that was, if I got A's and B's and an occasional C, fine.

But the reason I went to school was for all of the performance stuff, for the theater stuff and the musical stuff. And that's what kept me going to school. So everything else was just like- It was the girls for me. Well, that's true, too. Yeah, that's true, too. Well, back to pictures of the graduation, several of the pictures that I have are of me and my girlfriend at the time, who, boy, I wish I could have been a better boyfriend for her than I was at the time.

Are you saying you were batting out of your league at that time? I was saying I was a teenage boy who thought he had it all figured out and only later in life realized how little he knew and knows and wishes that he had treated her with more respect and less smug superiority.

Ah, fair. That's my assessment. I feel that way about quite a few people in my past. Yeah, yeah. So that's the one that stings the most in terms of, boy, what a jerk was I. But, you know, time goes on and you learn and you grow and hopefully you become a better person.

So here we are. But the other specific memory I have is that I did sing at our graduation and I put a link to the song that I sang, which is the Billy Joel song called I've Loved These Days, which is, you know, perfect, perfect graduation song.

And I was that guy who, when there was something to be sung at a high school event, they would wheel me out and I would sing the song. And that would be it. Dave, you and I would have kind of gotten along, but I would have distanced myself from you in those days.

Yeah, I can see that. Oh, God, here he comes again. We're going to get another fucking song. Yeah, exactly. You would have shunned me for how clean cut and by the rules I was. But, you know, we probably... I would have been there like, just try the Bailey's Irish cream.

You'll like it. It's super sweet. That's right. It's a good entry drug. We would have secretly been crushing hard on each other, but never been able to admit it. It's like Ladyhawk. Yeah. I saw him across the quad wearing a Stormtrooper t-shirt and I knew.

I knew. We knew. I saw his purple hair and I knew it could never be. It could never be. I can't let them know I like Star Wars, but the attraction is real. It's like a tractor beam. That's right. It's pulling me in. Speaking of Star Wars, I can't believe it's taken this long for me to have this realization about what my true fursona could be.

I'm dragging this into the show notes. The perfect fursona for me. There's two real Star Wars options that leap to mind. All right. Let me see if I can get this to work. I think we've established Jason would be the rancor, though. Hey. Oh, yeah.

Oh, not what I was expecting, but yeah. Not what I was expecting either, but. Right? Right? Okay. I mean, come on. I mean, you're a bit more cuddly than that, though, Dave. I am, but I could be a cuddly. This is for our listeners who can't see the photo. Please explain. So this is a full body wampa costume.

So this is someone where it looks like he's got, like, maybe drywall, you know, stilts to make him taller than he otherwise would be, which I would totally need because I'm not that tall. But yeah, I mean, this just combines. I was looking for a fursona.

Wampa, how did we not think about this? It's perfect. Well, we did not think about it because we generally don't sit around going, I wonder what Dave is wearing right now. Wow. I mean, I did it in high school. Don't get me wrong. Speak for yourselves.

That's right. And I would think to myself, God, could I get over the smell of cigarettes? They were cloves back then. Oh, is it worse? Of course they were. Of course they were. Oh, because you're so mature. I knew. I had it all figured out just like you, Dave.

Yeah. See, I just assumed you'd be wearing your fox head or your stormtrooper helmet we bought you. Well, that's the thing, right? Stormtroopers are not furry. I know, but that's why I'm saying it's 50-50. What's Dave wearing today? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, this isn't that far off from the fox head, really. True. It's not blue, though. I got to say, though, I had you more pegged as an Ewok. Well, you know, I think that's offensive, Brian. I do think that's offensive.

Well, he's going to be a Wookiee, but, you know, Dave doesn't rip people's arms off. No. No, but I was thinking more Tauntaun, but. Oh, you know what? I would love to have. Do you want to slice him open? Is that what you're saying? I love. I love those costumes of the Tauntauns where the person's legs go through the Tauntaun, so it looks like they're riding around on the Tauntaun like that.

I love those. Those, I think, are just adorable and fun. Oh, wait. We're missing something obvious. What's that? The singer from Jabba's band. Oh. Doing Billy Joel. The skinny mouth. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it was kind of furry. I mean, I could be Cy Snoodles, the guy playing the piano, but no. Sing me a song, Mr. Piano Man. Right. I could be a very tall Ewok. You know, the thing is, some of the Jawas were quite tall.

They're taller than you think. Unclear if they were furry. We don't really know what's under there. No. And I don't think anybody really wants to know. No. My son asked me the other day. I'm like, I don't know and I don't want to. No. I think they've made it pretty clear along the lines that whatever's under those cloaks, you don't want to see.

There was some sort of, I think, early conceptual drawings and they were frightening. Like, I seem to remember that. I'll see if I can dig it up for the next show. Oh, there you go. Look at that. I just threw an image in the group chat there with the Tauntaun sleeping bag, which I always thought was cute.

Yeah. The best part of it is that on the inside, it has the intestines. Exactly. You can see the guts. That is, I mean, that's attention to detail. It is. I hope it smells. Yeah. Well, if you Dutch oven yourself in the middle of the night, it possibly could.

Yeah. Give the kids some beans. Absolutely. All right. Well, I'm going to run along and I don't know what, grab somebody and stuff them in an ice cave. All right. We'll try to spend some time with your son because he just graduated high school and you may not be seeing him for a while, at least until he needs laundry done.

That's true. Or food. Yes. Yeah. All right, guys. Talk to you soon. Bye. Talk to you soon. Bye. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, to continue with this week's, you know, death spiral into nothingness.

No new Patreon subscribers. Boo. Boo. Boo. Boo. But from the old days, we have Jason, Carl, Brian, Charles, Lisa, Greg, William, Patrick, Smith, and David. So thank you all for your continued support of Grumpy Old Geeks. We thank you so much.

You have no idea. Well, a trickle is still coming in. So over at PayPal, thank you to David, Judge, Charlie, and Jonathan. We really appreciate it. Really appreciate it. And over at the tip jar, we've got Jennifer, Tony, Adam, and Michael. Thank you all so much. Now, just to reiterate here, if you go to patreon.com slash GOG, you can help support the show for as little teeny tiny bit as $3 a month.

And if you sign up for the whole year, you can even get a discount. But you can give more if you want. Please, please, please, please, please, with the sugar on top. Or you can go to shop.gog.show and pick up some merch, which nobody bought this week. So, wah, wah. You're having a week, Jason. I know.

No reviews either. So, yeah, fuck me. I want to wish a happy birthday to a friend of the show, Mike. And until next time, maybe, this could be it. I'm Brian Schulmeister. I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks.

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Snag your grumpy gear now at shop.GOG.show. Stay grumpy. And I just want to point out really quickly, our Discord has pointed out that if you go to search at Google right now and ask if it's Friday, which it is, it says, no, today is not Friday.

Today is Saturday, May 30th. And this is what we're trusting everything in now these days, people. Saturday, September 26th, two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero.

Plus, the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line when the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meat Cleaver Cullen. BKFC 94. Till versus Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN.

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