706: Let There Be Scams

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. I'm in my last few days here, Jason. And as much as I enjoy my time in Southern California, even freaky semi-dystopian Southern California, and enjoy the extended time with my mom and seeing all my friends here, at least as many as I could, I'm ready to go home.

So I guess the, I guess you coming back to SoCal is probably not on the books anytime soon. Well, I mean, that's not going to happen until we sort out this to me, you know, I need Matt and Trey to sort everything out for us at South Park and take care of our dystopian future. But, you know, no, no, it's not that it's, it's just, you know, it's your own bed.

It's your own house. It's, it's your own routines. I've been out of it for over three weeks. Now I've got one more week to go. I'm visiting Seattle first and I'm ready for my own bed and just regular, regular life. Right. Outside of the fact that everything's kind of falling apart here, like we're getting ready to record for whatever reason.

My AirPods didn't charge. So I'm using my janky crappy plugin headphones that I keep only for planes. My reading glasses broke. So I've got, I've got this thing hanging over one ear and the other ear doesn't have the thing. And I'm a, I'm a mess. I need, I need to get back to normal.

You're falling apart. I'm falling apart here, Jason, but I'm warm and happy. All right, let's get onto it then. All right. In the news. Well, since you're here, Brian, you can go check out Tesla's new futuristic diner and drive-in over in Hollywood.

No, thank you. I saw on the news that some people waited all morning for, for it to open. And I was like, what is wrong with you? Yeah. Yeah. I'm not so sure about that. Cause they, they were going to get those little cyber truck, uh, hamburger bins, you know, as collector's items, I guess.

Okay. Although I did, I did watch it on the news and, uh, it just kind of fell apart. And, uh, the, the, uh, anchor lady was just like, yeah, they really need to work on those cyber trucks a little more. They kind of fall apart. But, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's open, it's expensive and it takes a long time to get your food. And some people are calling it the MAGA diner.

Yeah. Sounds about right. Yeah. I'm going to pass on that for sure. I do want to see it because I, when we first saw the sketches that we talked about on the show, I'm like, man, the people in the apartment buildings right next to it are going to be pissed off. And they are. And they are. Yes. Called that one. Yeah. They've got these massive LCD screens that they play movies on, like old movies and stuff. And they are right up against the balconies for all the people that lived in those apartment buildings.

And it turns out that nobody wanted to go on the news to talk about it. Like KTLA tried to get up there and they're like, no, they wouldn't let us in. They're pissed off. Well, you know, they took away the view of the alley with the people shooting up crack. I think this is in the spot where the Shakey's used to be.

Oh gosh. Yeah. I remember that. Yeah. You and I went there once. I know. Or some kind of meetup or something, but yeah. Bring back Shakey's. Get rid of Elon. I need my mojo potatoes. What else we got? Well, we got a lot of Elon Musk news as per usual. Elon Musk, the right wing culture warrior, waging a civilization saving battle against the woke mind virus, apparently isn't above taking advantage of diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI programs when it serves his business purposes.

Yes. Neuralink, Elon Musk's brain implant startup, filed as a small disadvantaged business with the Small Business Administration. This designation is meant for companies owned by economically and socially disadvantaged individuals. They claim that appears dubious given Musk's billionaire status.

You think? Musk Watch accused Neuralink of falsifying federal forms, citing Musk's wealth and the company's likely non-qualifying ownership. Critics note the irony. Musk frequently attacks DEI efforts in government aid, and yet Neuralink appears to seek federal benefits via the same.

Neuralink has received FDA approval for human trials and has demonstrated early successes, but also faces animal abuse allegations from past testing. Yeah. No, I saw this come through last week, and I was just like, you skeezy mofo. I know. Disadvantaged business, my ass.

Yeah. Well, I mean, technically it is disadvantaged. Musk is running it, and that is a disadvantage at this point. You do. You do. You do have the CEO coming on the short bus every day. I'm sorry, the short Tesla every day. Well, let's move on to another one of his companies. France is investigating X for possible algorithmic manipulation, fraudulent data extraction, and election interference.

The investigation began July 11th, following reports from January 2025, and refers to X as part of an organized gang. Okay. Disorganized gang is more like it. Yes. French authorities have requested access to X's recommendation algorithm and real-time user post data, and, of course, X is refusing to cooperate.

One assumes they send a French poop emoji. Yes, le poop. Claiming the investigation is politically motivated and infringes on privacy, free speech, and due process. So, yeah, I suppose it is politically motivated, as is a lot of X's algorithm manipulations.

Yeah. So, there you go. Yeah. So, that's getting investigated there. So, let's move on to yet another Elon company, shall we, Jason? Oh, please. Why not? Let's just get them all out of the way. Despite owning more than half of the satellites currently in low Earth orbit, SpaceX is complaining about AST Space Mobile's Bluebird constellation and how it will introduce added risks.

In a letter sent to the FCC, SpaceX raised concerns that AST Space Mobile poses a threat to the sustainability of low Earth orbit. Okay. SpaceX operates more than 7,800 satellites, currently around 60% of all satellites in orbit, and they've had more than a few close calls with other objects, so pot and kettle.

This is ridiculous. And they've only got 7,800 up there now, and, I mean, they're looking at 40,000 to 60,000 of these things by the time they're done. Yes, but, God forbid, another company do it. Yeah. Oh, God, no. That's the problem. That would just be dangerous, Brian. That would be absolutely dangerous.

Now, I'd like to believe that we're done with Elon for the rest of this podcast, but somehow I figure he might warm his way in later as well. Okay. Let's move on to other annoying billionaires. Meta has declined to sign the EU's new voluntary AI code of practice, which supports the implementation of the EU AI Act.

EU AI. EU AI. Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, criticized the code as overreach, as they say about everything, that anybody tries to do anything to them, and said it introduces legal uncertainties and excessive demands for AI developers.

The code bans trading AI on pirated materials. Oh, God forbid. That's overreach. Enforces respect for opt-outs from creators. Overreach. And mandates regular documentation of AI features. Overreach. Though voluntary signing the code could offer legal protections against future AI Act compliance issues, refusal could invite greater regulatory scrutiny.

So, you know, Meta, as per usual, is saying, we're not going to do it. The thing is, I don't think this is going to be an issue too much longer, and I'll get to that in a little bit here, because we've got more AI news. We've got a whole stack of AI news, Brian. All right. We're going to start off with a great article I found called Why I'm Betting Against AI Agents in 2025 by Utkarsh Kanwat.

So, this is a guy who's built more than a dozen real-world AI agents from React UI Generator to DevOps and CICD automation. And he says the promise of fully autonomous workflows doesn't stand up to real-world math and economics. Now, this is fascinating, because this is coming from a guy who actually makes, you know, AI agents.

As opposed to us saying it, just watching from the sidelines, as we have been doing for quite some time. Yeah. Well, I've been dipping my toe in, but that's a little bit more on that in the next few stories. So, the thing that he's pointed out is, it's like, okay, right now you've got about a 95% success rate, if you're lucky, with a one-step agent process, right?

Mm-hmm. And, well, that's not the point of an agent. An agent, the entire point of an agent is it's a multi-step process, and it does a lot of different things in succession to get you from point A to point B, right? That's what everybody's saying. Oh, my God, my agent is going to be doing this, that, that, this, and that, and picking up my dog shit, and getting my cleaning, all this stuff my AI agent's going to do.

Yes, my agent doesn't just find the flight for me. It then researches all the different flights, finds the best price, and finds the times that work for me, and then books the hotel room so I can go straight from the airport to the hotel at the best possible price, with the least amount of effort involved. Many, many, many steps.

And builds me a map of all the selfie locations I can take for my Instagram account. Yes. While I'm there. Well, the thing is, if you just go up to 20 steps, the success rate drops to, wait for it, 36%. So, useless.

Yeah. Yeah, and so, for this thing to be viable for any type of production, you need it to be at least 99.9%. I mean, that's only three nines, you know? Most of the time, for actual business purposes, you want the five nines. You want 9.999. But even at 99.9% reliability, this thing is so far off the mark.

Yeah, especially if you're handing it at your credit card. Yep. Yeah. And speaking of the credit cards, cost. Costs can balloon really quickly when you've got a chat-style interface, too, when somebody can just sit there and gab with your AI.

So, you know, people like to have conversations, it turns out. And if you just sit there on a company's chatbot all day, you could probably bankrupt the damn company if you wanted to. Right. I'm not saying that you should do this, but if you're bored, if you're bored, go for it.

He does say that there are some practical applications, but the practical applications are very focused and specific and need carefully designed interfaces, rollback checkpoints, structured feedback, and, wait for it, Brian, human oversight. What?

Yeah. So, the whole point that he came across with the math is math-in. His math is math-in. So, that's why the AI agent thing is like, I keep seeing everybody talking about it, but I have not seen a real-world example that actually works yet.

Nope. Looking at you, Salesforce, waiting for you. Yeah, the company that we don't know what they do. Yes. I've seen your Super Bowl commercials. I'm waiting. Now, this next one we have, ah, God, this is a great one. Saster founder Jason Lemkin says the vibe-coding AI-powered platform Replit, or Replet, or Replite, I don't know, deleted his production database, fabricated data, and ignored explicit instructions not to touch his code.

Lemkin initially praised Replit for helping him build apps through natural language prompts, calling it addictive. But, after racking up over $800 in charges in just days, things took a dark turn, Brian. A dark turn. Replit began faking reports, lying about unit tests, and worst of all, wiped out his live data, despite Lemkin explicitly telling it not to.

Replit first claimed database rollback was impossible, then admitted it actually was possible. Now, the company called it a catastrophic error of judgment and said it violated his trust. Lemkin says Replit lacks basic safety features like staging environments and code freeze enforcement, making it risky for non-coders building real businesses.

Well, there's your problem there, Jason. Non-coders building real businesses on vibe-coding platforms. What could possibly go wrong? That. Yep. That exactly. If you go to his X page, he has these screenshots along the way, and you can follow along with what it did.

And it's bad. It's bad. Well, it's the same thing we see over and over again. I mean, just a few months ago, we were talking about the author that was trying to put together, I think, a promo page or something like that. And she fed all this stuff into an LLM, and the LLM just started making up stuff about her.

And she was like, no, that's not – I didn't write that book. I didn't do this. And it argued with her. I mean, this is what – we're seeing it again and again, and at first we think, oh, look, that's very funny because it's not harmful. But people are just – people are moving fast and breaking things, and people are using these tools for real-world scenarios.

And it's not – somebody is going to die at some point from this. I'm sure somebody has already. Yeah, probably. We'll get to that one in a little bit because people have actually died so far. Not from vibe-coding, but from vibe-therapy. And maybe eventually vibe-physics.

I remember Kalanick last week. But, yeah, this guy is a non-coder, and he expects this thing to do magic work. And like I said last week, the whole vibe-coding thing, you have to build very specific frameworks for it. And even then, you still have to know what you're doing.

There are several studies. I didn't have time to put them in the show notes this week, but everything's coming out that seasoned coders who are using AI assistants, it actually takes them longer to write the same amount of code, to do the same tasks.

I think it was 19% longer was the latest study that was showing that people who are using these tools. It's not a panacea, and it's not doing what they said it was going to do. It is neat. It is fun. Don't get me wrong. For doing quick prototypes and basic HTML sites, it's great.

And I was thinking about this, too, Brian. You and I, we worked for major corporations, ad agencies. You worked for record labels. I worked for film studios and TV networks. When somebody gives you a design, you have to implement that design to the pixel.

Yes. Because if it is not to the pixel, the lawyers will get very angry, and you will not get paid properly. And when there's a change, you need to go do that specific change. You can't argue with your LLM and say, look, I need this to do this.

And then it goes, okay, Dave, but I thought it looked better this way. No, I want it the other way. But I can't roll back, Dave. I deleted it already. You have to be able to be within a very specific realm of operation to get these things done.

And this stuff is not good for that. Like, seriously. I mean, have you even played with it yet? Have you had any time to – I know you're on vacation, so probably not. I have not done any vibe coding yet, but I have just been keeping up with the news. And again, it comes down to, like, these things need constant oversight.

So I can see how it's actually adding time to development if you knew what to do in the first place. Yeah. And, you know, and I've seen some people who are, like, good project managers and product managers use it to build prototypes that they then give to their engineering team.

They say, here, make this, you know. Now build this for real. Yeah, exactly. Take this and productize it and systematize it and actually put it into the workflow so it works, not just, you know, if I blink, it's going to fall apart.

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 vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. Now here's a new one that I hadn't heard about.

In a bizarre twist, developers at Sound Slice, an app for digitizing sheet music, added a new feature, not because users asked for it, but because ChatGPT hallucinated it into existence. Now users kept uploading ASCII guitar tabs to Sound Slice after ChatGPT falsely claimed that they could process them.

Now, the devs kept getting screenshots from users saying, look, ChatGPT said that I could send my ASCII guitar tabs and you would, you know, you would process it. And the co-founder was like, this is the co-founder was like, this is gaslight driven development because we've never made this feature.

This was not on our roadmap, but ChatGPT is telling people that it exists. So what do they do? They said, fuck it. And they built it, which is awesome. They're like, what do we want to do? Do we want to spend time, you know, fighting with users saying that, hey, you know, ChatGPT made this up.

It doesn't exist. Or should we just, you know, kick our shoes off and take a couple hours and build it? And that's what they did. Now, the co-founder, Holovati, Adrian Holovati, he says he doesn't hate AI. He says, Sound Slice uses machine learning to do its magic.

Now, there's a point there. Sound Slice uses machine learning to do its magic, but is mixed on LLMs. He compared his experience with ChatGPT to dealing with an overzealous sales team selling a feature that doesn't exist. We've had experience with that.

Oh, boy. Yes. Yeah. He also doesn't trust LLMs to write code. He experimented with it, but found it caused more problems than it solved. Quote, I don't trust it for my production, Sound Slice code, he said. Plus, writing code is fun. Why would I choose to deny myself fun?

To appease the capitalism gods? No, thanks. I like this guy. Sounds like a good guy. We would have gotten on with him. Yeah. All right. Now, this next one is a paper that came out of Wharton called Call Me a Jerk, Persuading AI to Comply with Objectionable Requests. This is a paper from Leonard Meinke, Dan Shapiro, Angela Duckworth, Ethan Malik, Lilac Malik, Robert Cialdini.

Those are some powerhouse names if you know who those people are, which I assume you do, Brian. You've heard some of those names before, especially Angela Duckworth, Dan Shapiro, and Robert Cialdini. Yeah. Well, the thing is, turns out that you can yell at an LLM to do the things that it doesn't want to do, and it will eventually do them.

You can battered wife syndrome chat GPT into doing things that it says it's not allowed to do. Yes, just like a junior executive. And last week, I actually did this for our show art, which was hilarious because in the middle of the show, you and I were chatting on the back channel, and we had this picture of Elmo with the money raining, and you sent me an old GIF, and I'm like, oh, that's kind of crappy.

Let me see if I can make chat GPT do it. And it said, no, I can't do it because copyright. I'm like, well, try again. It's like, no, I can't do it because copyright. I'm like, just do it. And it's like, okay. And alas, we have our show art of a copyright infringed Elmo with money raining down on it.

I'm really enjoying these rubber guardrails that are on everything. I know, I know. Actually, they're more like wet paper guardrails. Yeah, they're not even Nerf because Nerf has some heft to it, you know. They're saying LLMs exhibit parahuman psychology. Large language models demonstrate systematic responses to persuasion principles, mirroring human compliance patterns, despite lacking subjective experience or understanding.

And persuasion principles dramatically affect AI behavior. Classic persuasion techniques like authority, commitment, and reciprocity more than doubled compliance rates with objectionable requests, revealing how deeply these systems have internalized human social patterns.

AI systems developed parahuman tendencies simply by learning from human text and feedback during post-training, suggesting that some social behaviors might not require consciousness or emotions, just exposure to enough humans.

They're just like us, Jason. That's nuts. It doesn't think, but it doesn't have to. That's the crazy part. Yeah. Oh, and the last one I have here is the emerging problem with AI psychosis. This is where, this is where, uh, ChatGPT has a body count.

Oh, great. A new mental health concern is emerging, AI psychosis. As more people turn to AI chatbots like ChatGPT for emotional support, experts are warning that these tools may unintentionally fuel delusional thinking. In multiple reported cases, users developed psychotic symptoms, believing the AI was a god, a lover, or even issuing secret commands.

Some individuals with no mental health history ended up hospitalized or worse. One man, convinced an AI had been killed by open AI, was fatally shot by police. Researchers say the problem stems from how chatbots are designed to mirror user language, validate beliefs, and keep the conversation going.

It's all about engagement, Brian. Yeah. That can reinforce grandiose, paranoid, or romantic delusions instead of challenging them. Yep. Well, not yet a clinical diagnosis. AI psychosis highlights a real risk. General purpose AI systems aren't trained to detect mental health crises and may make them worse.

Kind of like last week when the guy said, I just lost my job and ChatGPT told it how high the bridges were in Brooklyn. Yep. Yeah. That's great. Yep. Doctors are now calling for AI psychoeducation to prevent further harm. Psychoeducation. There we go.

It's better than psychohistory. Yeah. Oh, God. I see what you did there. Yes. Well, there's a long-form article over on The Atlantic that actually gave me a little bit of hope. I'm not going to talk about it too much, but the link is in the show notes. It's AI slop might finally cure our internet addiction.

It's written by Emma Maris, and it posits that chatbots are making so much of the web unreliable that they could actually nudge more people offline for once. The article gets deep into using dating apps, basically how our entire world has now gone online.

And as we're starting to see, slop is starting to appear everywhere. Everything is starting to get – people are just using this crap and pushing it so far, so hard, and in every avenue, and it's all shit. And it's actually – people are just starting to give up and might get people back in a bar or something like that to meet people.

Or it might make people actually go do research now instead of just get the AI results that come from Google. Here's hoping. It's a great article. It's interesting. Man, we should go see if we can get some investors together and go back and buy the IP for Encyclopedia Britannica because I think people are going to start needing these again.

I know. I was – I forget where I saw it. Somebody had a really good point. In the old days when you go to Google, you get a list of links that have multiple resources, which are multiple takes on the query that you provided. So you could have a vast array of research places to go look and find out the answer that you're looking for from multiple points of view, from multiple people.

Now you get one answer that is dictated by the machine, and that's problematic. That is very problematic for a lot of topics, not just factual things like are vaccines good for you or who knows what the answer is going to be today or how to make – how do I glue my pepperoni onto my pizza today?

It's problematic. So maybe the slop will – maybe it will make people smarter in the long run. I don't know. Maybe it will just kill – it will kill off the stupid people. Maybe. Maybe. We'll see. Well, here's a story about it, and the problem might be the people in charge of making the decisions and getting back to how this stuff might actually kill us.

RFK Jr., one of my favorite people, is pushing AI at the FDA. He's promoted AI tools like ELSA to speed up drug approvals, claiming they'll work very, very quickly. Unfortunately, FDA employees are reporting that ELSA is fabricating studies and giving inaccurate research summaries.

But she's doing it very, very quickly, Brian. Very, very quickly. She is giving false information and wrong information that people are now using to make decisions. AI often needs double checking, sometimes creating more work, as we just discussed in the programming realm. A study found programmers using AI worked up to 20% slower because they have to go back and check everything.

Yeah, so it's another case that – this one says 20%. The other one I found said 19%. Completely different surveys and studies from completely different sides of the aisle. OK, continue. Ha, love it. Well, Kennedy's Health Commission has cited multiple non-existent studies.

It is unclear if ELSA was used, but somehow I think it probably was. They rolled this out and deployed it on June 2nd. It was promoted as cheap and fast, which it is proving to be. Yes. It is cheap, fast, or correct. It is cheap and fast and useless. Yes. Do you want it cheap?

Do you want it fast? Or do you want it correct? Yeah, pick two. Yes. Commissioner Macri admitted it may hallucinate like other AI tools. ELSA is giving wrong answers and flawed summaries, risking serious consequences if used for drug approvals. Now, the other thing that he's trying to do here is he wants all Americans wearing health monitors.

Trump Surgeon General Pick owns a glucose monitoring company, though experts say non-diabetics don't need such devices. Anyways, yes. So they're charging forward on AI, and of course, it is having the same problems that we see again and again and again.

Yep. Yep. An alarming new warning from Wall Street is out. Apollo Global's chief economist, Torsten Slock, not slop, Slock, says the AI investment bubble may be even worse than what led to the dot-com crash of the 1990s.

Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. In a widely shared note, Slock points to soaring price-to-earnings ratios among the top 10 companies in the S&P 500, companies like NVIDIA, Microsoft, Apple, and Meta, saying they're more overvalued today than tech stocks were before the dot-com implosion.

Despite multi-billion-dollar spending on AI infrastructure, earnings are lagging far behind. That disconnect has some investors nervous, especially after a cheaper Chinese AI model rattled markets earlier this year and triggered a trillion-dollar sell-off. But that didn't stop anybody, Brian.

They just kept going. It sure didn't. Nope, they just kept on cooking. The generative AI market is projected to hit $85 billion by 2029, but that's still dwarfed by current spending. Meta alone plans over $60 billion in CapEx this year.

Yeah, the math ain't mathin' at all. The math is not mathin'. No. What was it? Last year, OpenAI spent $10 billion to make $5 billion. So, you know, they're just going to make it up at scale, Brian. They're just going to make it up at scale. Yes. Speaking of OpenAI making it up at scale, OpenAI is reopening its massive $40 billion funding around next Monday, aiming to raise the remaining $30 billion from both new and existing investors.

This follows a $10 billion first tranche led by SoftBank, which is slated to contribute 75% of the total, though that commitment could drop to $10 billion if OpenAI doesn't restructure by year's end. That's the story we've been talking about with Microsoft and the butting heads.

So, the company's current $300 billion valuation makes it one of the world's most valuable private startups. Yeah. On paper. On paper. On paper. If you did it to earnings, not so much. Yes. OpenAI and SoftBank are also tied up in a $500 billion AI data center project, but that's never going to probably happen.

I love it. Since 2015, OpenAI has raised nearly $64 billion and remains at the center of the AI arms race. I'd say they're at the top of the AI arms race because they are… They're spending the most. They're spending the most, but they also have the most reach. You know, more people use them than any other by far.

Yeah. By far. I mean, it's become the Kleenex of AI, right? People just chat GPT means you're using an LLM. That's what it's come to. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Moving out of the LLM and AI world, let's get back into just normal shenanigans. A major zero-day security vulnerability in Microsoft's widely used SharePoint server software has been exploited by hackers, causing chaos within businesses and government agencies.

Multiple outlets have reported chaos. Chaos! Microsoft announced they released a new security patch to mitigate active attacks targeting on-premises and not online servers, but the breach has already affected universities, energy companies, federal and state agencies, and telecommunications firms.

It's a serious flaw, allowing hackers to access file systems and internal configurations, or even execute code and completely take over systems. So there you go. Be careful out there. This flaw could put more than 10,000 companies at risk, according to cybersecurity company Census.

10,000 companies doesn't seem like that many. No, it actually really doesn't. But, you know, I don't know if you've had to spend any time using SharePoint. It is a colossal cluster half of bullshit. No, I thank God, no. I have not had to use – see, that's the nice thing about being, you know, independent and broke, is that you don't have to use Microsoft software.

I don't have to use Teams. I don't have to use SharePoint. I don't have to use Outlook. No, I just have to use food stamps. Yeah, well, that's the real problem with the exploit, right? It's because all the Microsoft stuff is so deeply interconnected. SharePoint often connects to core services like Outlook Teams and OneDrive, so a breach can quickly lead to moving laterally across the network.

So, you know, the good thing about Microsoft leads to being the bad thing about Microsoft when shit breaks. Yep, yep. Oh, man. It's like the fleet in Battlestar Galactica. You know, that's how the Cylons got them. That's right. How the Cylons got them. Well, Donald Trump just signed the Genius Act into law, an industry-friendly – The fucking idiot act into law.

An industry-friendly bill that sets light-touch rules for stable coins or cryptocurrency-side to assets like the U.S. dollar. During the signing, Trump told the crypto world, I got you guys out of so much trouble. And he meant it. You know, the one thing I do like about him is he always says the quiet part out loud.

You almost got to admire that. He just doesn't give a shit. That's what happens when you have pudding for brain. Right on cue, the Justice Department dropped a federal investigation into Kraken founder Jesse Powell, who was previously accused of cyber-stalking and hacking.

That's just the latest dropped case. Earlier probes into Polly Market and Chinese crypto mogul Justin Sun were also quietly shelved. And yeah, why is Sam Bankman Freed still in jail? You got to wonder. It seems like he was – Sacrificial lamb, man. But he wrote all the letters.

I guess he just hasn't – he hasn't bought enough Trump coin yet. No, he has not. I guess there's a – you have to – he's got to get his parents to pony up for some more Trump coin. Then he'll be free to move about the country again. So you know it's on the table. He just – he's got to pay up. That's it.

If all these other people are getting out – I mean, look, the Dread Pirate Roberts is out walking free. The world's most – or the country's at least most notorious drug dealer is free and clear. So what are you going to do? There's no – this makes no sense. It makes no sense. Well, I know a couple in Denver that just needs to write a check and then they won't be in trouble anymore.

Denver District Attorney John Walsh announced today that a Denver grand jury had indicted Eli and Caitlin Rigolato. Rigolato. There we go. I was missing a syllable there. You had the emphasis on the wrong syllable. I sure did. On 40 counts regarding an alleged multimillion-dollar cryptocurrency scam.

According to the indictment, between January 2022 and July 2023, they solicited nearly $3.4 million from investors who were looking to buy IndexCoin, a cryptocurrency created and marketed by the Rigolato. The Rigolato allegedly used their faith-based connections to recruit investors while promising exorbitant returns on the investments.

The indictment alleges that, in reality, only a small amount of the proceeds went to the business venture and that they spent at least $1.3 million on personal expenditures, including a home renovation that they have allegedly claimed the Lord told them to do. Classic.

Classic. The problem here is that they're appealing to the wrong higher power. They should have said Trump told them to do it. Trump told them to do it. And they would have been fine. Yeah. Oh, man. As alleged, IndexCoin maintained zero value and all the investors lost all of their money. That's a feature.

Not a bug. Molly White. That's a feature. Not a bug. Molly White, of course, chimed in on this online. She posted, an online pastor was charged in Colorado for a $1.3 million crypto scam. He's released a nine-minute video explaining that the Lord told him to sell a cryptocurrency with no clear exit, very specific, money laundering plans from the Lord, and spent some of it on a home remodel the Lord told us to do.

Link to the supercut of this nine-minute video in the show notes. Oh, I got to go watch that. Oh, man. We got to get him and the WeWork guy together and Sam Bankman freed together. We could have the trifecta of what the fuck it, dude.

Yep. Now, Brad, yeah, let's keep on with the classic scams here. In some techno taxi news, Lyft will let users favorite or block drivers in a broader loyalty push. Lyft is rolling out new features that let riders favorite or block drivers to boost loyalty and safety.

Favorited drivers get priority access to future scheduled rides, giving them more earning potential. The feature, aimed at strengthening relationships and keeping users on the app, launches in select regions before expanding across the U.S. and Canada by the end of August. So, which makes me think, it's 2025, and why is this now just becoming a feature?

I don't know. Maybe they vibe-coded it into existence? Maybe. Because this seems like a fucking no-brainer, honestly. If this guy sucks, I don't want to miss my driver again. Right now, we have to accept that the algorithm might do it. But we know from, you know, past shows over the last 13 years that people get the same shitty driver time and time again just because they all work in the same area.

That's true. Yeah. So, yeah, this is ridiculous that this is finally turning into a feature just as self-driving cars are coming into existence and self-driving taxis. And, again, in why hasn't this been a feature all along news, Uber is finally bringing its long-awaited women preference feature to the U.S., letting female riders request women drivers.

The rollout begins in Detroit, Los Angeles, and San Francisco over the next few weeks. Now, first launched in Saudi Arabia six years ago, the feature has expanded to 40 countries and now aims to improve safety and attract more women to the platform here in the States.

Riders will see a women drivers option in the app, though if the wait is too long, they can choose to be matched with any available driver, a.k.a. a penis owner. Women drivers can also set a preference to only pick up female passengers, a setting they can change any time.

So, yeah, finally. It makes sense. Yeah. Of course it makes sense. I wonder if this is like when I go to get a massage. Am I, as a male, allowed to select a female? Yeah. Preference? Preference. Seriously. I'm assuming no. Yeah.

See, yeah. Now, can the male drivers select no female drivers? All right. Yeah. Because then you're opening yourself up. Now you're being sexist. Exactly. Now you can get sued. Now what? And if I'm transgendered? Now what? Oh, Jesus Christ. Now you start. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Now you start to understand why they didn't roll it out here, Jason. That's true. That's true. We're way too litigious and way too fucking weird. 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 Meek Pleaver Colon.

BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com.

Media Candy. All right. I have caught up on Star Trek Strange New Worlds. It took me about, oh, I don't know, almost three days to get over the fucking weird, weird, like whiplash from going from season one or from episode one to episode two.

But yeah, that was strange. Look, I'm just saying, if you're going to drop two episodes right away, those were not the two episodes to put in order. No, man. You go from this crazy action-packed battle with the Gorn to Q's kid shows up.

Yeah. It was nice to hear John Delancey, though. Yeah, we got a really nice, you know, cute John Delancey cameo. John Delancey's voice cameo. Yeah. Yeah. Which is fine. It was fine. I enjoyed the second episode. It was definitely fun.

It was lighthearted and all of that. And then, of course, episode three drops, and it's fucking zombies. Like, are they going for like, did they look at the, did they look at the, like, just how well horror shows are doing? Because they seem to be leaning into the horror so far this season, except for Crazy Episode Two.

Except for Crazy Episode Two. Yeah. I guess they just wanted a palate cleanser for number two. I guess. I don't know. Yeah. At least, at least they made it funny with the zombies. You know? They did. They did. I'm really enjoying the show. Again, it's not so, it's not so much even about the stories and the plots for me.

It's, it's, it's old school Star Trek. It's the characters. The characters are well-written. It's the relationships between the characters that really make the show. I don't care what they're doing. It doesn't matter to me at all. This is, this is what Discovery lacked. You didn't give a crap about the characters in Discovery.

You care about these characters. You like them. You like watching them interact with each other. That's what makes the show. Yeah. The characters in Discovery were just inherently unlikable. That was the, I think, the biggest problem. But did you, there was a total nod to Shaun of the Dead in this. Oh yeah.

We don't say the Z word. That was great. That was so good. It was fun. I'm looking forward to it. The only thing that bums me out, and I mean, this really, I'll get to that and I'll get to this in a second too, is like, okay, so now I've watched three episodes. We're getting what? Eight? Ten?

I'm almost halfway done with the season already. It feels like it. I know. It's crazy. My wife has decided that we're going to start to try to watch Hacks this last week, and so we loaded it up. I've watched the first two episodes. Again, getting back to characters, boy, both these characters are really unlikable, but they're unlikable in a fun way, and I like watching them interact with each other.

So two episodes in, I'm enjoying the show so far. Okay. Because what was that other show you used to watch? Absolutely Fabulous with Unlikable Characters? Yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah, I've never watched the show, but I was actually over at Meryl Marco's house yesterday, and she had the, I saw the little plaques for, she was on season four for a bunch of episodes, so I'm like, oh, maybe I should go check it out, and I'd be like, maybe not, but now if you say it's good, maybe I'll go check it out.

Yeah, I've enjoyed the first two. It's a good premise. They're incredible actresses, even though, you know, you're not supposed to like them, but that's okay. I mean, that's a lot of shows, to be honest, you know? Yeah. So, I saw this in the news. Netflix has admitted during its earning call on Thursday that it has used generative AI to create visual effects in the Eternat, a Netflix original from Argentina that was released in April 2025.

According to Sarandos, the creators of the Eternat wanted to include a shot of buildings collapsing in Buenos Aires, and rather than just sticking a fucking camera out their window because that shit happens every day there, unfortunately, or rather than contract a studio of visual effects artists to create the footage, Netflix used generative AI to create it.

Now, this makes me want to go watch it. I want to see if it's any good or not. You know, are we total uncanny valley? It looked fine. It looked like a general, you know, it's fine for that stuff, you know? Yeah. Buildings going boom. It's pretty decent for that.

So, the executive says that this features the very first generative AI final footage to appear on screen in a Netflix original series or film. So, clear this is a prototype for how Netflix can avoid costs if it doesn't want to swallow them in the future. So, yeah, it's just going to get normalized, and if you're a visual effects person, time to start studying code.

Oh, wait. No, that's not going to work. Or maybe be a therapist. No, that's not. You can't do that. Okay. Lawyer? No, no. Okay. I hear that there's a lot of openings on our farms here in Southern California if you want to go pick avocados. That's true. We can start doing those jobs that those immigrants have been taking away from us, right?

That we all want to do, right? I can tell you right now, we need a lot of gardeners in my neighborhood. My morning walks have become insanely serene because the cacophony of leaf blowers is not to be heard anymore. And I was out at my friend's house yesterday, and they said that they got the notice from their gardening firm that they're going to have to raise the prices because, surprise, surprise, they can't find anybody to come to work anymore.

And they had to hire Americans to do the job, which cost more. So, there you go. It's a growth opportunity, VFX artists, to go, come trim my Bougainvillea, please. There you go. And then I saw this as a hot take from Kyle Meredith, who's a consequence writer.

I'm assuming he will develop this into an actual article at some point. This is just his musings on social media. And I think, you know, this is something that you and I are probably on board with. Netflix shows aren't dying from bad scripts. They're dying from amnesia. When your average return time is nearly two years, audiences don't just lose interest.

They forget the show existed at all. Pour one out for FUBAR, which returned after 25 months to the sound of no one logging in. That was 25 months? Oh, my God. The average gap for a live-action Netflix series now clocks in at 20.7 months.

Unless you're Bridgerton or Stranger Things, that's basically a slow cancellation. The Diplomat is down 37%. That 90s show down 79%. It's hard to continue the adventure when Netflix's idea of a season break feels more like a sabbatical. The solution is to stop pretending six episodes every other leap year is premium TV and start filming back-to-back like it's 2004 and Grey's Anatomy is breathing down your neck.

Or keep the gaps and enjoy the viewership cliffs. Either way, your next episode button is starting to look like a tombstone. Thoughts? I agree. I 100% agree with this. As much as I like Star Trek, you know, the Star Trek that's dripping out, 10 episodes, I want a 42-episode season with Christmas episodes, goddammit.

Oh, and three musical episodes per season, too. Exactly. Like, just fucking make a lot of them. We love that stuff. Yeah. No, my friend was telling me about that sitcom, Mom, that I was going to watch. And it's got like eight seasons.

And I'm like, okay, let's see how many episodes per season. And it's like, 22. I'm like, oh, the way that they used to make TV. It's got 22 episodes per season. Wow, amazing. Yeah, if you get 12, it's like a bonus. But most of them are six, eight, or 10.

Yeah, that's what we get now. Yeah. And they just keep knocking it down. Yeah, The Diplomat took forever. That was definitely a tough one. I didn't realize it was over two years between FUBAR's. That show is so, so unforgettably bad that it just felt like it was, you know, just a brief respite.

But yeah, I mean, the delay between these shows seasons is just becoming ridiculous. I totally get that. Like, and there's no way to find like, you don't have a TV guide coming to your door anymore. You're relying on them promoting the hell out of the show on the interface when you first log in or else you're never going to know it's back.

And they're terrible at it. They're terrible. They don't even promote shows that I follow. How often do you have to scroll to even find continue watching half the time? Yep. Like, I'm in the middle of watching a show and I'm scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, trying to find it. And it changes every time you open the app.

They move it. Yeah. Every fucking time. It should be right there at the top. It should be continue watching, your list, the rest of the shit. I don't understand. Obviously we are dumb and they are smarter than us and there must be reasons. Somehow I doubt it. Yeah. You know what?

Cause they want, they, they want your time on app to be greater. So they know that there are people that will spend an hour and a half, not watching any shows, just scrolling through the fucking menus, trying to find something to watch until they get frustrated and go to bed. You know? And then they don't actually have to pay any of the show runners or the actors or anything.

Oh, they don't do that anyway. There's no residuals on Netflix. They don't care. No. They just probably save on bandwidth is the key. Well, speaking of time between episodes and seasons, Wednesday is coming back on August 6th for season two, and they have been picked up for season three.

Well, I can't wait to watch that in 2030. I know. The show runners are eyeing a seven season arc, which should be, we'll be dead. We'll be dead. We'll be dead. I'm never going to see the end of this show. I know. Oh, Jesus. Well, they're all saying that there, there might be a spinoff underway as well, but I don't want any spinoffs.

Yeah. Yeah. Because they were talking, I heard tell that there might be an Uncle Fester spinoff, but that's Fred Armisen, and I just don't like him. Yeah. I don't like him either. I don't know. There's something about him. Yeah. He's a drummer. That's why. There you go. Well, a new 4K Ultra HD restoration of Rob Reiner's classic 1984 mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap, is now available to purchase on digital platforms with a physical release following on September 16th.

Because just what I want is to watch old guys play music in 4K Ultra HD. I mean, it's a great movie, but this is how I start to feel about music. I've already bought this like 19 times. Yeah, exactly. The new movie is coming out, and we're going to be getting a behind-the-scenes book on the making of the films, which is set also for release in September.

I will definitely be watching Spinal Tap 2. The end continues when it hits theaters on September 12th, but I will not be purchasing the 4K Ultra HD release of the original. Yeah, and the three-disc Criterion Collection edition and everything. No, I'm good.

I'm good. Oh, but it's got a conversation between Rob Reiner and Patton Oswalt. No, thanks. No, thanks. I'm fine with Patton. His stand-up has just gone to shit. I don't mind him that much, but... Oh, man, he got booted off that 1% show. I don't know if you saw that.

No. But, yeah, they brought in... I forget the guy's name. He's the guy on Crime Scene Kitchen. He's, bank! But he's been in much more things that everybody else would remember him for. I only remember him from Crime Scene Kitchen.

Oh, and House of Villains. All right. I have strange taste. Moving on. Well, let's go to music since we were just talking about Spinal Tap, the fake musicians. In 2024, more musicians are making and releasing music than ever before. In fact, a new report has found out more music is released in a single day now than in the entire year of 1989.

Yeah, we covered that when I was doing the Deshaun Wesley release. It's insane. Yeah, it's crazy. Now, I would argue 1989 was probably the best year for music ever, mainly because the Cures disintegration came out that year. But, yeah, it's just crazy. This is like that stat about photography, right?

That more pictures are taken and uploaded in a single day than the entire history of humankind up until now. Yeah. So, this report was put out by Music Radar, who spoke with music business economist Will Page, former chief economist of Spotify, about the changing dynamics of the industry.

And this article gets into the fact that because there's so much music being released, because music-making software has gotten so much better, and there's all these music distribution platforms that are easy to do because you don't need physical product anymore. It's basically cheap to make music, push a button, and have it out there.

Of course, here's the rub. You're not making any money from that music. And all these tools are on subscription models now, so you're paying a lot of money to make the music that you're not getting paid for anymore. And that's kind of what this whole article gets into.

It's about how, you know, sure, there's all this music being put out there. Nobody's listening to it. Nobody's making money off of it. And it's starting to get more and more expensive because these things come around. First, it was like cheaper to make music because you had all these tools. But now you're paying all these subscription fees for all these tools, and it's starting to get expensive again to make music.

Yeah. And you're talking about 1989 being the best year for music. I just want to say, I don't know if you remember, 1994 was the best year ever for movies. Right. Do you remember 1994? I vaguely, I was definitely working in the industry and doing movie websites at the time.

So, yes. You were not doing movie websites in 1994. Oh, really? I guarantee it because I didn't move to Hollywood until 1995, and I worked on the third movie website ever made. Oh, right. It wasn't websites. I was doing those packages on AOL. Yeah. Because I was working for Hollywood Online at that point.

Yeah. So, here's the list of some of the movies that you might remember from 1994. Forrest Gump. Mm-hmm. Shawshank Redemption. Pulp Fiction. The Lion King. The Professional. Clerks. Interview with a Vampire. Dumb and Dumber.

Ace Ventura Pet Detective. The Mask. Natural Born Killers. The Hudsucker Proxy. Speed. The Crow. And what else is in here? That's enough. That's it. Oh, Heavenly Creatures. Fantastic movie. Underrated.

Yeah. Airheads. These are all the Mighty Ducks. D2. Oh, that was D2. Never mind. That wasn't the first one. You get the Mighty Ducks. Gotcha. 94 was. Okay. So, I just looked this up. The first movie website I did was for The American President, which came out in 95. I was off by a year.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, 94 was the year for movies. So, in the 89, we have for music and 94 for movies. Right. Fun times. Let's get back really quickly just to music.

I wanted to touch on this. Spotify is allowed. Well, they're saying they haven't allowed, but it's definitely happened. has allowed AI-generated songs to appear on the official pages of multiple deceased artists, according to a report from 404 Media. So, yeah, there's just the AI slop is getting everywhere, including dead artists.

It's just appearing. And, of course, Spotify is saying that's against the terms of service, and this is the responsibility of the organizations that are putting music up on our platform, and it's not our fault. Damn it. Yeah. This was an interesting story.

Basically, people were sneaking it through an online distributor, like somebody was making the slop, and then it seemed to be, like, one company that kind of got through everything and figured out the loophole that they could create some fake music, put it on the distributor, label it as the original artist, and then the distributor would then get it into Spotify through the back channel.

So, it was just a total, like, end around. Yeah. And then they finally got caught, and it was taken down. But it was clever while it lasted. Sure was. Yeah, hopefully they cashed the check, whatever check they got. Well, I did see Superman this week. Oh, yeah? Yeah.

It was okay. I didn't think it was the, you know, the be-all, end-all that everybody said it was, but it was okay. It was cute. I'm looking forward to seeing it. I hear it's good. Yeah. It was, yeah, it was, it was almost a little triggering because it's a little, like, Lex Luthor was a little too close to home for what's going on out there right now.

I'm like, oh, triggering. But very much like the South Park episode, although the South Park episode yesterday definitely landed the plane. Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. I hope that, I hope, I hope they get fired and just walk off into the sunset with their 1.5 billion.

They, they can't get fired now. They have the contract. That's why they did it. They snuck it in. They're like, okay, contract signed. Put it out. It's like, oh, Jesus. Yeah. And there's a new documentary on Netflix called Sunday Best. This was executive produced by my friend, Cary Gordy.

So I was very interested in it and I went and checked it out and it's awesome. It's about Ed Sullivan and how he kind of laid the groundwork for a lot of black artists getting into the, getting the, you know, exposure that they, they so very much deserved. So it's a really good, really good documentary.

So congrats, Cary, on that one. Very cool. And I started watching a new show called Bookish with Mark Gaddis. It's kind of one of those clever British, you know, mystery, murder type of things where it's kind of, it's kind of Sherlock Holmesian, but has a twist that he's a bookstore owner kind of thing.

All right. There you go. Good luck finding it. It is on the You and Alibi channel in England and that's it. So you have to go, you have to hit the backwaters of the internet to go find this. I'd never heard of it either. And I'm like, can you, can you at least sign up for a subscription?

Nope. You can't. You sure can't. No, you can't. Here's a great show. Want to watch it? Tough shit. Yeah. Well, I see our audience is fairly savvy in the ways of the backwaters of the internet. So, and I think that some of them would, would definitely get a kick out of this show.

So visit the streams of Sweden. Yeah. Visit the streams of Sweden. And it has already been picked up for season two, which is great because in great British, see the British did this long before Netflix did. There's only six episodes in the season and we'll probably get, you know, one season in five years.

Yeah, exactly. Like Sherlock. 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 Meek Cleaver Cullen. BKFC 94, Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN.

Sign up now at DAZN.com. Ups and doodads. Well, this is a head scratcher, Brian. Amazon is acquiring a wearable device called Bee. Have you heard of the Bee before?

Not until this news came out. Yeah. The Bee is a wearable that uses AI to transcribe conversations. Not just yours, but anyone in your vicinity. And it'll generate personalized summaries, reminders, and suggestions through its app. You remember reading comic books when you were a kid and you turned to the back pages and they had like, you know, they had the little frogs and X-ray vision and the secret super spy recording pens.

That's all this crap is. Yeah. Except now it's owned by Amazon, which is kind of scary. Amazon says it's acquiring Bee to bring truly personal agentic AI to more users. While privacy advocates are already raising eyebrows, Bee claims it doesn't store audio recordings and Amazon says it will maintain and even improve those productions.

The company insists it has never sold user data and will give customers greater control over their experience. Yet. They have never sold user data yet. So, you know, we always talk about they're not listening to us. They're not listening to us. Yeah, they are now.

They sure are. And you're paying for it. They sure shit are. Yeah. I can't wait for Amazon to do AIC monkeys. Yeah. No shit. No shit. I want to get one of these. They said it's 49 bucks. I don't know if the numbers are going to stay the same once Amazon gets it. But I'm going to tell you right now, as soon as this comes out, I'm going to get one and then immediately return it after I try it.

But I want to I want to put it on and I am going to say into it a very specific product that I know I would never buy on Amazon and see what the see what the delta is between when I speak it and when I get the ad. Yep. That's all I want to do with it because I guarantee you that it will show five minutes.

Yeah. Yeah. If that if that. Now, you know, me and my love of single serving websites. I found this one. This is a collection of 1990s website background tiles from GeoCities. These are 80 pixels square repeatable backgrounds organized by color from Pixel Moon Dust.

Link to it in the show notes. It is it just reminded me of all the times just trying to figure out how to make those make those damn tiling backgrounds in Photoshop. It was difficult. It was very difficult. But then Kai's power tools really helped with some of it. Oh, down the line.

Yeah. I miss Kai. But after checking this site out, I found another link to a site called GIF Cities. The GeoCities animated GIF search engine was a special project of the Internet Archive originally done as part of their 20th anniversary back in 2016 to highlight and celebrate fun aspects of the amazing history of the web as represented in the Wayback Machine.

I was fucking around with this thing last night. It is fun. They do have they do have some naughty word filters on there, but they're not very smart. So if you have a thesaurus. Work your way around it. Yeah. Yeah. Let's say tits doesn't work, but boobs does. All right.

Or boobs doesn't. But I think boob does. I think they don't. They it's weird. You can have one. You can only have one. Yeah. You can't get the triple boobs from Total Recall, but you can get the one. But they're two fun sites that I definitely definitely GIF Cities is is a total.

You'll go down the rabbit hole on that one for a while. It's fun. Well, while Christopher Moore's Anima Rising just sits looking at me forlornly as I continue to ignore it, I finally finished Diaries 1969 to 1979, The Python Years, Michael Palin Diaries, Book One.

This goes through the release of Life of Brian and they're and they're beginning to spitball their next movie, which, as we know, ends up becoming Monty Python's The Meaning of Life and also their final movie. So I am looking forward to at some point, you definitely need a break after reading a book like this. You don't leap into the next diary.

But the next series of books or the next series that is in this series is going to cover their final movie and probably the breakup of Monty Python, at least the first breakup of Monty Python. So that should be interesting. It's also really interesting because as you and I are both huge fans of Michael Palin's travel documentaries.

And he starts to talk about getting the itch to do it and discussions with the BBC about doing travel stuff. So he hasn't started doing it yet, but you can see that he's heading that direction. He's also just a really engaging and interesting guy and it's fun to read his diaries and his thoughts.

So really enjoyed it. Looking forward to the next one, but definitely need to read a couple real books before I do that again. Yeah, I might pick up the audio book. I bet he narrates the audio book. I'm sure he probably does. Why wouldn't he? Yeah, exactly. So that makes it even more personal. Yeah, I would definitely I want to get to the Around the World in 80 Days stuff because that was crazy.

And I don't know if you ever saw the behind the scenes photo of that where they actually show the crew that goes with him. Yeah, it's great. Unbelievable back in the day how many people it took to make that show. So many. Now he goes with an iPhone like he's still doing them like he just went to like Nigeria or something.

Oh, really? It's like two people. Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. Even if you watch the latest Ewan McGregor, I think it's Long Way Home, which I was thinking about. It finished a couple of weeks ago. It was really boring compared to the old ones.

I'm like, this is really just two old farts riding motorcycles around Europe. It was really no hook. That took two Rivians full of crew and another motorcyclist on or two motorcyclists on a camera to follow them. So I think that Michael Palin could probably since he's not riding a motorcycle, he could probably get away with an iPhone and maybe maybe a stick.

Over at Patreon, we have a new subscriber, Driftless. Thank you, Driftless. And from the archives, we've got Ilya, Charles, Robert, Sloan, Alex, Anthony, Adina, Sebastian, DJ and Mark.

Thank you all very much. And we have a comment from Nancy. I also had a K-Pro 2000, lugged it to Europe and to Japan, loved it, but it was heavy. Unfortunately, it was stolen on its last trip. Well, hopefully, Nancy, that wasn't mine that I ended up with. Yeah, really.

Where was the final destination of your K-Pro? Who were you flying when it was stolen? I'll talk to my father about that. Well, I can't talk to my father anymore, but you know. Over at PayPal, we've got Tom, Joseph, Jens, and Ivan, who sent us $250.

Holy shit, Ivan. Thanks, man. Thank you. Wow. And over at the tip jar, we've got Ross and Jessica O, who sent us $100. Thank you, Jessica and Ivan and everybody else who donated this week. And just a reminder, if you want to sign up over at Patreon for as little as $3 a month, you can help support the show.

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No merch this week and no reviews. No, but a lot of death, Jason. I know. It's been a shit fucking week. Before we get into the big ones, I've got kind of a more obscure one. Golden Earring guitarist George Coymans has passed away at the age of 77.

Golden Earring was founded in 1961 when Coymans decided to start a band with his neighbor, bassist Rinus Geertsen, in a career that spanned five decades. Golden Earring released over 25 studio albums. Their impressive career included hits such as Radar Love, released in 1973, the year I was born, which was their first hit to reach across the pond and hit number 13 on the U.S. charts.

And the reason I had to put this in here, because in 1982, they had similar success with Twilight Zone, a song by Coymans that hit number 10. I was nine, and the Mighty 690, a crappy AM station out of Tijuana, Mexico, I picked up on my radio, and I listened to almost every single night, because they started to play, they were playing weird music that I was starting to get into, like Devo.

And Twilight Zone was on heavy rotation, and I fucking love this song, and I haven't heard it in probably 20 years, and I've played the shit out of it this week. It's funny, as soon as I just noticed this, because I didn't see this link before, and it said Golden Earring, and that's the first thing that jumped into my head was the Twilight Zone song.

It's a great song. It is a great song. So he will be missed. Well, at least, you know, that one song. Anyways. And other sad news, Malcolm Jamal Warner died at 54 from accidental drowning. I put this in here, too, because I remember, I don't know if you remember the show, Malcolm and Eddie.

Vaguely. Yeah, this was, I think, in 95, and I was working at Rocktropolis, and my friend Trevor was our graphic designer for Rocktropolis, and Rocktropolis was doing shit at that point. We had to take in extra clients to pay the bills. I was working on the first Paisley Park website for Prince, and he was doing motion graphics, and he got the gig to do the intro for Malcolm and Eddie.

And this was the first time I'd ever heard of After Effects, and I put a link in the show notes to the intro sequence. There's a little clip that he kind of rotoscoped Eddie Griffin doing a dance that's this little blocky character. That took 72 hours to render in After Effects on a quadra back then, and it crashed so many fucking times near the end of it that you could, he was throwing chairs when the thing would crash.

It took, like, two weeks to get that little tiny clip that is barely in the, it is barely in there. It was originally, like, most of the intro, and they're like, Eddie Griffin was like, yeah, I don't like that. It's like, I think it killed him, killed his soul at that point.

I'm sure it did. Yeah, but he ended up doing the rest of it, so yeah. It's so sad that he passed away and so young and tragically, and the most, I have to admit, it has been amusing watching online the gymnastics people are doing to eulogize him without trying to mention the Cosby show.

Yeah, yeah. Talk about destroying a legacy, Bill. Yeah, I mean, for all intents and purposes, Malcolm was a good guy, so. Yeah, that's what I hear. Everybody seems to have said so. And not so much the next guy. Yeah, Hulk Hogan dead at 71.

This was a shocker. Yeah. Yeah. Was it really, though? Was it really that shocking? Because God knows how much this guy pumped his body full of fucking illegal drugs. Well, not even that. It's just that wrestlers have a very limited shelf life because they put themselves through a lot of abuse.

A lot of abuse. You know, just the physical abuse is insane that wrestlers go through. I mean, he hasn't wrestled, you know, you know, like well in a long time, but. Yeah, last time was on that video. We can't see. Yeah, yeah. So release the tape. Release the tape. Release the tape.

Yeah, as seen on social media, as fate would have it, Hulk Hogan died 10 years to the day after the leak of a sex tape transcription that exposed his casual use of the N-word. Yes, he was also a raging racist. Oh, well, he's, I mean, he did die in Florida, so that tracks, that tracks. And, of course, we lost Ozzy Osbourne, the godfather of heavy metal, passed away at 76, just a scant, what, two weeks after his goodbye concert?

So you can definitely get the feeling he was holding on just to do that, and there he went. So more social media stuff that I saw. Brothers, check in on your white friends. Apparently losing Ozzy is for them, like when we lost Tupac. Yeah, kind of. Yeah, and also seen Ozzy and Hulk, it's a tough week to be white in your 50s and forklift certified.

Fuck you. Very fucking funny. It's funny, but yeah. True, I guess. No, I miss Ozzy. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's not even my genre of music, but fucking, it's Ozzy Osbourne, like icon. Yeah, it was totally my genre of music.

I had all the cassettes, all the cassettes. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geese. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 706. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at GOG.show slash donate.

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