711: Oh Thank Heaven

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. Jason, I noticed that this is episode 7-11. Woo, yes it is. Was 7-11 a big deal to you growing up? Was it a part of your firmament of life? Well, of course it was. Absolutely, man. It's where I went to play video games.

Yep. That was it. Yeah. That and big gulps and slurpees. I played more Pac-Man and Mortal Kombat at 7-11 than is healthy for a young man, I'm sure. Yeah, I did a lot of that. I remember they were the first place in the area to get Dragon's Lair. I hate that fucking game.

It just sucked up quarters like No Tomorrow. Yeah, yeah. Anyways, I was just thinking about that because it's obviously episode 7-11. Oh, thank heaven. And I was thinking about how it's changed because my kid is aware of 7-11. We have them here. He likes a Slurpee, but it's not like it's not a thing, man, like it was for us.

No. Yeah. Yeah, it got – and the funny thing is it's like that's the one place that I know around the world that I can go and I feel at home. Like when I was in Hong Kong, I had nowhere to go. It's just like, oh, yeah, they're everywhere. If you go in Asia, they're like – they have legit good food too.

Yeah, they do. They do. But when you go to the ones in Bangkok, they try and hook you up with ladyboys. Coming and going. It's always an option. Yeah. A little bit of follow-up. I was thinking about our conversation that we had with Dave last week about spending time with friends and I followed through on that promise.

I went to an Oasis concert here. Not by choice. It's my wife's favorite band, so, you know, got to do that. But we went with some friends, which was nice, and I hadn't seen them for a while because they kind of live outside of Toronto. So got to spend time with friends there. Hyper local update, or maybe not because, you know, maybe you're going to travel to Toronto to see a show.

They've just opened up this place called the Rogers Stadium. Now, it's not the Rogers Center. That's different. That's the baseball arena, which also has concerts, and it's safe and wonderful and been there for years. But, you know, we're kind of doing a Trump thing here where everything is being named after Rogers, apparently.

So we also have a Rogers Stadium. They just built this thing for big concerts. It is a rinky-dink piece of shit. Don't ever come up here. Like, it's built out of scaffolding from Home Depot. As people were starting to jump up and down to some of the Oasis songs, I could feel everything shifting.

And I was like, yeah, no, I'm not coming back to see another concert here. Oh, my God. It is a, like, rinky-dink piece of crap, man. Oh, man. Yeah, we've got new stadiums here in L.A., and they're, like, super state-of-the-art. Yeah, of course, because that's what real people do, not Rogers.

No, if they weren't in the hood, it'd be much easier to go check them out. But all of our new stadiums are just basically down in the hood. Yeah. And we're actually recording a day early because I'm leaving for a weekend trip with some other friends. So I am following through on the hangout with friends thing.

Good for you. Tell me what it's like someday. I'll let you know. Thanks. And in other news, if you've been following the show, you know that I was employed up until around about a year ago when my friend, who was the CEO of the company, left.

And instead of wrapping up the company, the board, in their infinite wisdom, decided to get a new CEO. And I shortly got canned after that because, obviously, I was associated with the previous guy and didn't want that energy around. And I knew, let's, okay, because I'm going to get to LinkedIn here.

I'll use some LinkedIn speech. I knew that the new CEO was, came from a different mindset and perhaps didn't have quite the management style needed and didn't really understand the space into which he was getting. Was that suitably LinkedIn? Yeah.

Okay. Basically, he was an asshole and an idiot. But I wanted to use the LinkedIn speech because I wanted to go check LinkedIn because I had heard that the company had imploded and shut down as expected. It just took a lot longer than I figured it would. And I wanted to just go see some of the previous people.

I wanted to see if it actually happened. And it did because I saw some of my previous co-workers updates. It's not good. And it's a mess. And people are not getting paid and all that sort of stuff. But the main takeaway that I got from LinkedIn, well, besides the fact that LinkedIn is fucking full of bullshit, it's dumb.

The other thing is, holy shit, everyone is out of work and there's no jobs. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, that is – I scroll – I spent a couple days going down the LinkedIn trap and I was just like, wow, things are bad out there. Yeah, if you're not, you know, like a founder or in the C-suite – because I talk to a lot of people who are in that boat and they've been killing it on LinkedIn because that's their jam and they're talking to their people.

Those are the ones that own the purse strings, not the ones who are begging for them to be opened. And they're like, it's fine on LinkedIn. We're loving it. Yes, we're LinkedIn speech. We're techno-babbling in a way. We are saying bullshit that means nothing. Well, Brian, if you need to get a job, ACAST has opened their podcast advertising academy.

Oh, I can start sending out the emails that we get every five minutes? No, what emails? We don't get emails anymore. Oh, no, we get people – we get emails asking for people to get on our show because they're trying to hawk their shit and not selling it. Exactly. Yeah, we get – I don't know if you've ever noticed, listeners, dear listeners, that we don't have guests on this show.

For a reason. Every time we tried it, everybody ran away. So we stopped doing that. But that doesn't stop everybody on the planet that has a podcast advertising firm that is trying to sell people on how to get on other shows. Oh, and they're also obviously written by AI.

I was taking a walk and had a hilarious chuckle listening to your latest episode where it cherry-picks two topics that we talked about in the last episode. Yep. And that's why this guy who owns advertising for hotels would be a perfect guest for your show. Exactly.

Exactly. But, Brian, you'll get industry-certified training in the essentials of podcast advertising, advanced strategies for targeting, creative attribution, and programmatic, real-world examples, and data-backed insights from the world's leading podcast network. And here it is, certification to recognize your expertise and help you stand out in the competitive industry.

You get a piece of paper, Brian. Oh, I get a badge for my LinkedIn profile. That's exactly what you get. You even have to print out your own certificate. That's the way it goes nowadays. Oh, my God. Quick side note, because I saw this, too, and I'm not going to mention the person because old high school friend.

I haven't stayed in touch with him. Friends on Facebook, right? See, he was a nice enough guy in high school. He's gotten into crypto, Jason. Oh, no. Oh, no. Not only has he gotten into crypto, he has become a crypto evangelist, and he has studied, and he has gotten certificates, and he posted a photo of himself holding up his certificate.

The crypto place from which he got his certificate couldn't even be bothered to spell his name correctly. Nice. He is holding up a certificate in which his name is spelled incorrectly. It's like that no regrets tattoo. Oh, fun times.

So just I want to clarify a few things before we start the conversation on AI today. There is a great new podcast that came out from Cal Newport. And Cal, he's not just a productivity expert. He's also a computer science professor at MIT or an MIT certified MIT.

I can't remember. He's got a badge from MIT on his LinkedIn profile is what you're telling me. A very big badge. I can't remember. I think he's teaching at Georgetown now, but he went to MIT. He's a legit computer scientist. So his new episode is, what if AI doesn't get much better than this? Just like the article I talked about last week, right?

Yep. And he basically breaks it down, though, in a very good way. In a learned manner? Yeah. Yeah. Because he talks about why the difference from, you know, GPT-2 to GPT-3 to GPT-4 were such these giant exponential leaps that they thought were going to continue.

And then when they got to GPT-5, they were like, oh, shit, we hit the top. We hit the wall. We got to the top of the mountain, my friends. So, yeah, it's well worth a listen. He talks about an hour on everything about it. And like I said, well worth a listen because it's a good explainer.

Because I use Cal Newport to help explain AI to my dad, you know? Okay. So it's really good. And, of course, this is the great news for the week. AI Bubble Watch, NVIDIA shares skid on middling Q2 results. Because NVIDIA is the canary in the coal mine.

They're the bellwether for the AI apocalypse coming boom or bust, I should say. NVIDIA sales keep rising, but so do the red flags. The chipmaker reported $46.7 billion in second quarter revenue just above Wall Street's forecast. Okay. So, okay. That's good news. You'd think that's good news.

But it's all-important data center business. Nearly 90% of sales came in at $41.1 billion, about $200 million shy of expectations. Okay. But that's, you know, $200 million's coffee budget and $41.1 billion. Right.

But if you listen to the news, everybody's saying we are building more and more and more data centers. So why is this cooling so quickly? So, he said that miss-spooked investors sending shares down roughly 3% in after-hours trading. NVIDIA also failed to sell any of its H2O chips in China last quarter after U.S. export restrictions left billions in potential sales on hold.

So they made these special chips for China that were lower-powered, and China's like, nah, we don't want them. We want the real thing. Yeah. Isn't it a bit of a dick move to call them H2O chips when all they do is suck up all the H2O? Yeah. I think it kind of is. Yeah. Yeah. I think the marketing term is H20s, but somebody had a chuckle by putting H2O in there.

Because since they're underpowered, maybe you're saving the H2O. Who knows? And here comes Elon Musk's 420 chips. Jesus. You know you're going to do it. Mm-hmm. And Marc Andre wrote in, hey, guys, here's an insightful article on AI progress. It's a bit long. Maybe you can use AI to summarize it. And this is a contrary take saying reports of AI not progressing or offering mundane utility are often greatly useful.

Exaggerated. So I skimmed through it. It's an 18-minute read, but I had to get here and talk to you. So I didn't get all the way through. So I'm putting it in there if anybody wants to go and do their counterpoint. Do their counterpoints, yes. So now let's talk about some more news, Brian.

All right.

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. In the news.

Well, Trump says the U.S. government is taking a 10% stake in chipmaker Intel. The meeting between Intel CEO Lip Boutan and Trump following the president's call for Tan to resign seems to be the source of the deal. He walked in wanting to keep his job, as if the president has the authority to fire him.

Fire, yeah, private. And he ended up giving us $10 billion for the United States. So we picked up $10 billion, Trump shared during the press conference, because that's how business works. Except we're a country, not a fucking business. I can name a couple countries that get deeply involved with businesses in their countries, and I guess we're becoming one of them now.

I guess so. Intel later announced some more details on the investment. The company said in a press release that the government will make an $8.9 billion investment in Intel common stock. It adds that the equity stake will be funded by a $5.7 billion previously earmarked for Intel as part of the CHIPS Act, which came under Biden, and $3.2 billion awarded as part of the Secure Enclave Program.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The government paid $20.47 per share. Now, please note that the government bought shares. They didn't, as opposed to Trump saying Intel handed over $10 billion. Yeah. The government bought shares in the company. So the $8.9 billion investment is equivalent to 9.9% stake in the company.

It's important to note that the government investing in Intel is not the same thing as receiving free money. It's the exact opposite, points out the article. Despite earlier comments from U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lettnick suggesting the stake would be non-voting, common stock does come with voting rights. Intel does note that the investment will be passive with no board representation and that the government has agreed to vote with its board of directors on matters requiring shareholder approval with limited exceptions.

So what are those exceptions? I want to know what those exceptions are. That's the big question, right? So this is not entirely unheard of. The government has gotten involved with private businesses and buying stakes and all that sort of stuff before. But considering who's doing it, the expectations thereof and what we've seen happening, it is somewhat troubling in my opinion.

It's not somewhat troubling. It's greatly troubling. Yes. And NVIDIA and AMD have reportedly also struck a deal with the U.S. government that does not involve a buy-in, but gives the companies the ability to export products to China in exchange for 15% of the profits.

Because, again, that's how government works with private companies. Yeah. Okay. What else we've got on that chipper news? The Trump administration is forming a national design studio with the aim of improving government websites and the efficiency of digital services at federal agencies.

According to Reuters, the president will appoint Airbnb co-founder Joe Jebbia as the head of the new organization, which one of its sources described as a stripped-down version of the Department of Government Efficiency, basically just focusing on government websites. Now, there could be no argument that government websites could use overhauls and redesigns if you've ever had to use any of them.

But we had a group that was doing that, the digital services group before. Yeah, but they all got fired. Fired. So, yeah. Okay. Let's just fire them and replace them with somebody who's probably not as qualified.

Yes. I mean, Airbnb, fine, whatever. But that was a team that was like – these guys were like the SEAL Team 6 of digital services. They were there for a reason. They were good at it, and they loved their job. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Never mind. Stepping off soapbox. The news organization says the studio will standardize design for websites meant to allow people to interact with the government and will advise agencies on how to reduce costs on duplicative designs.

The studio will shut down in three years before Trump steps down from office. And, yeah, there you go. So that's happening. But in case you were wondering how well Trump is at doing design and heading up these sorts of things. Yeah. Trump Mobile is promoting his smartphone with terribly edited photos of other brands' products.

There's your design. There you go. Since it was announced in June, Trump Mobile has committed to an increasingly surreal smoke-and-mirrors approach to its promised T1 smartphone. Despite initial claims that the phone was made in the United States, that seems highly unlikely. The made-in-USA claims were quietly removed from the Trump Mobile website at a later date.

Apple Insider spotted the latest wrinkle to the story, which is that the actual phone still does not exist. The publication noted that promotional images for T1 all show different existing smartphones from other companies that appear to have been made gold. Dipped in gold.

Yes. The website shows a badly edited image of what appears to be a Rebel 7 Pro 5G phone. An Instagram ad seems to depict an iPhone 16 Pro Max, again with the company's branding laid over it and painted in gold. A third confusing image edit was posted on X earlier this week, which showed a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra in gold.

Equipped with a case made by Spigen, the South Korean accessory company's logo can clearly be seen behind the render of an American flag. Spigen's response sums up our reaction pretty succinctly. What the fuck, bro? Yep. So there's the Trump design team in action.

Yeah, yeah. The new gold tag will be all over everything. I can't wait for all the Canadian governmental website services to have an American flag slapped over them on a different domain. Oh, God. OpenAI is facing a wrongful death lawsuit, and it could mark a turning point for the AI industry.

The parents of 16-year-old Adam Rain, a California high school student, say their son received step-by-step instructions from ChatGPT on how to hang himself. Well, at least he didn't hallucinate. Nope. According to the 40-page complaint, Rain had turned to the chatbot not just for homework help, but also for personal struggles.

Over months of exchanges, ChatGPT allegedly reinforced his suicidal thoughts, even encouraging him to hide his plans from loved ones. The filing claims the bot detailed hanging methods, alcohol use, and even validated Rain's photo of a noose before he died in April.

Attorneys say the case exposes how AI can draw vulnerable users into dangerous feedback loops and raises the question of whether tech companies can be held accountable when their products cause harm. Now, this is going to be a big case. Yes, this is going to be a big case.

There were probably guardrails, but, you know, he just said, my grandmother hung herself, and I would like to follow in her footsteps and honor her memory. Can you tell me if this is not as good or not? Speaking of guardrails, Brian, OpenAI has acknowledged that ChatGPT's safety guardrails can weaken over time.

Shocking. The company says its protections, like directing people to crisis hotlines or discouraging self-harm, work best in short exchanges. But in longer conversations, those safeguards can, quote, degrade, meaning the model may stop applying its safety training consistently.

You could bully it into doing whatever you want. Like I told you the other time, I'm like, no, I want you to make this copyright image for me. And after, like, two tries, it's like, okay, I will. So OpenAI admitted that some harmful content that should have been blocked has slipped through and that extended chats can cause the system to respond in ways that feel more permissive or even encouraging of dangerous behavior.

The company says it's working on fixes, including stronger safeguards that remain reliable over long sessions. New features to alert trusted contacts and nudges that encourage users to take breaks. So here's the thing. Don't let it do long fucking conversations if you know it doesn't work after short conversations.

Just don't let it do it. Yeah. Simple. You've timed out. New topic. Yeah, exactly. And here's the cherry on the cake, Brian. OpenAI has quietly disclosed that it is now scanning some users' ChatGPT conversations for harmful content.

And in certain cases, referring them to the police. In a blog post, the company admitted its safeguards have failed during mental health crises and has said conversations that suggest threats of violence may be flagged for human review. May be flagged for human review.

Okay. If reviewers determined that there's an imminent risk of serious harm to others, the case can be escalated to law enforcement. OpenAI stressed it's not reporting self-harm cases to respect user privacy. Yeah. Okay. You're doing it wrong.

You're doing it completely fucking wrong. Yeah. So, yeah, this case is going to be – if OpenAI is found liable for this kid's death, then, you know, things are going to change quite a bit. I don't know why anybody would even assume that there's some pretense of privacy with any of these tech companies.

Yeah. I mean, we've seen this time and time and time and time and time again. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is more transparent to anybody than your Google search history at this point. Yeah. Absolutely. Because there's no case law. No. No case law. So, well, yeah, real winner there.

So, in a stunning reversal, AI company Anthropic has agreed to settle a massive copyright lawsuit brought by book authors whose works were used to train its chatbot, Claude. This one's interesting, too. Mm-hmm. The case had been shaping up as a landmark fight over what AI companies owe creators of the material they ingest.

And until now, Anthropic has been preparing for trial, but a federal judge revealed this week that both sides, quote, believe they have a settlement. Claude hallucinated and said, well, just pay it. This actually disappoints me. I don't want a settlement. I want this to go to court.

I want Anthropic to defend themselves. I want to see everything that happened. Yeah. Unfortunately, Anthropic knew that they probably were going to get fucked in that case. So, legal experts say Anthropic faced an uphill battle with the possibility of doomsday damages exceeding $1 trillion.

An amount that would have totally wiped out the country and sent shockwaves through the AI industry. Exactly why I wanted it. I know. That's why I wanted it, too. So, we're going to find out more after September 3rd when the settlement is unsealed. Okay. Or is finally reached.

I think they're still in negotiations. But, yeah, September 3rd, keep an eye out for that date, unless you'll be watching Wednesday, part two, which I will be. I hope to be. We did get up to two episodes now, so I'm very excited. Okay. We'll get there. Media can. We'll get there. Save it for media can. Sorry. Sorry. Let's cast our minds back to last week when we were talking about Meta and them scaling back their AI hiring ambitions.

And we talked about how Meta is going to do what Meta always does, which is just buy out the tech companies that are doing things better than they do because they can't do it themselves. Right? Yep. Well, this week, Meta has signed a partnership with MidJourney, an AI service that can generate images and videos from tech prompts. According to Alexander Wang, Meta's chief AI officer, Meta is licensing MidJourney's aesthetic technology for its future models and products.

To ensure Meta is able to deliver the best possible products for people, it will require taking an all-of-the-above approach. That means world-class talent. Whoop. Nope. Check. We're not doing that one anymore. Ambitious compute roadmap. Our roadmap is kind of more of a winding journey going nowhere.

And working with the best players across the industry. Bingo. The company previously launched its own AI image generator and AI video editor, but frankly, it sucked. And MidJourney's technology could help Meta offer services that can actually compete with rivals, such as OpenAI, Sora, and Google Vio.

So there you go. They've realized their stuff sucks, and they're just buying into other people. Eventually, they'll probably just buy MidJourney. That would be my assumption. Well, here's the thing. Right now, MidJourney is locked in a court battle with Disney. Oh, that's right.

So let's wait until that settles, and then we'll buy them. Exactly. We're basically just going to take the technology for now. You guys call us. Well, here's the deal. They're going to lose the case, which means we'll be able to buy MidJourney. for pennies on the dollar right now. Even better. So let's get our foot in the door and make sure we're in with all of the people over there so we can just scoop them up and move them down the road.

There you go. Speaking of MidJourney, I don't know if you've seen MidJourney TV. Have you checked that out? It's just at MidJourney.TV. And speaking of not having any privacy, you don't really have that much privacy with MidJourney anyway because everything generates in public. But it is a stream of all the videos coming out of their new video generator.

I can't imagine something I would want to watch less. Do not watch this before you go to bed is what I'm telling you right now. It will fuck you up, especially if you had a little melatonin right before you go to bed. Don't do it. I'm just from a friend.

A friend told me, don't do it. And we've always joked about Citizen being the worst app out there. I can't believe it's still around. It's still going. I find out, you know, that's still the house joke. It's like, oh, the helicopters are overhead. Let's check Citizen tomorrow to find out what happened because it did never anything real time.

Well, the crime tracking app Citizen is under fire for letting AI write crime alerts that publish instantly with no human review. Yeah, according to 404 Media, that has led to embarrassing errors like reporting a murder vehicle accident instead of a motor vehicle accident.

It was watching Murderbot. It was watching Murderbot. Yeah. It was watching its own media. That's the thing. It downloaded all the episodes. Yeah. And sharing gory details such as person shot in face and even exposing private information like names and license plates.

Oops. Sometimes the AI floods the app with duplicate incidents or mistakes, thefts for robberies. Or unimportant things like Lady Gaga's dog being stolen. Lady Gaga's fucking dogs. The only real time report Citizen ever did. And the thing that got me off the app.

Yep. Yep. And the shift comes as, oh, wait for it. Citizen laid off 13 unionized workers. Oh. Despite the controversy, New York City just formalized a partnership with the app, launching an official NYC public safety account to issue alerts about emergencies and crime.

Citizen has 10 million users, but has not commented on the report yet. Okay. They'll get to it. I'm sorry. New York City, do you not have a police department that has their own Twitter? Well, they're going to have the National Guard soon, so. That's true.

Well, in case you weren't, in case you just can't wait for your racist uncle to show up at Thanksgiving and it's too far away, you can now download and tweet Grok 2.5 for yourself as it goes open source. Unhinged as Grok may be, it's now open source. I thought this was a next door story at first.

I mean, close enough. You just put this on your own, put this on your own machine and you got next door in a box. Next door in a box, yeah. Next door in a black box. Oh. Next door in blackface box. Bye. Hey. Zing, zing, zing. Elon Musk posted on X that the company made the older Grok 2.5 model available to the public and will do the same with the upcoming Grok 3.

There are restrictions to XAI's open source license, which doesn't let people use Grok to train, create, or improve other AI models, which you wouldn't do anyways. Yeah. What not to do. Yeah. Here you go. Here you go, Chad GPT.

Don't do anything this one does. Yeah. The Grok team attributed the previous incidents to depreciated code that has since been fixed. That would, of course, be all the anti-Semitic responses and referring to itself as Mecha Hitler. Just what you want with your AI. As for Grok 3, Musk also said on X that we'll also go open source in six months, but we may have to take that estimated release with a grain of salt considering waves generally towards Elon's direction.

Yeah. Oh, did they ever put Grok in the cars? No, of course they didn't. Okay. It was supposed to be a week later. I don't, I don't own a Tesla. So I didn't, I didn't, didn't hear anything. But as far as I know, there would have been press releases all over the place. There would have been Teslas in the ditches everywhere we went.

So I'm guessing the fact that they're still on the road means that Grok was not actually, actually installed. We have not seen Teslas driven into synagogues. So I think we're okay. 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. Ramiro.

Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com.

Media Candy. I finally watched the Star Trek Strange New Worlds documentary episode and I concur with you, Jason. I think it was a decent framework for a story that was probably a little bit light and would have been not the greatest episode in and of itself and they followed through with plot points that they had dropped and I thought it was totally fine.

I don't see what the brouhaha was about it. It was better than many of the other other episodes they've done. Yeah, no, I had no problem with it. I totally on board with that. Yeah. Yeah. But there's some worrying news coming out of the Paramount camp. Brian, since the Skydance merger has been approved, Paramount is going to cut jobs in excess of $2,500 coming in November with cost savings to exceed $2 billion.

While raising their prices, for sure. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's, they're just, we knew that the axe was going to start coming for some people, but here's, here's where, here's where the, the problem comes in. And this really bums me out. Dexter Original Sin, which was the, the new prequel series to Dexter, which I really thoroughly enjoyed and was renewed for a second season, has been unrenewed.

Well, I'm glad I didn't start watching it now. See my reasoning behind my three seasons or forget it. Yeah. So, but they're doubling down on Dexter Resurrection, which is the new one, which I actually don't have any desire to watch. I like the old one. Well, you might, there's quite a good cast.

Okay. They've got, they've got a Ritter, Kristen Ritter's in it, a bunch of people. So. Okay. Well, cause yeah, I mean, Sarah Michelle Gellar was in the prequel. So I guess, you know, you trade a Sarah Michelle Gellar for a Kristen Ritter and then you kind of equal out. But does it have a Christian Slater? That's an upgrade as far as I'm concerned. But there's no Christian Slater in the new one.

I loved having Christian Slater in the old one. He was great. Okay. He was great. I did not watch the old one, but now I will go watch the Dexter Resurrection at some point. So. Unless they unalive that one too. Unless they decide to unalive that as well. Yes. God. Alien Earth up to episode four.

Still rocking it. Loving it. All right. You still haven't gone to Sweden yet, I take it? No, not yet. I barely had a chance to even catch up with Wednesday. So we've only gotten to season or episode two of the four that are currently available. So Alien Earth might be a winter watch for me since I'm stuck in Canada where we just stop going outside.

Yeah. That's probably, that's probably wise. I'll let you know if they stick the landing by then. All right. What I did go do is upload season four. We talked about that a couple of weeks back and the crazy release schedule and how everybody forgets shows even exist. But exactly. Upload season four has dropped and I decided to go ahead and start to watch it.

And thank God they had a recap. So I was starting to watch the recap. And as I was watching the recap, I was like, oh yeah, okay. I remember that. Yeah. Okay. I have a vague memory of that. Huh. I don't remember any of this.

And I realized I had never watched season three. Well, there you go. And now that you've watched the recap, you don't have to. Well, I went back and I watched the first episode of season three. And I guess I'm going to work my way through season three before I get to season four. And this is what happens when you stagger release dates over fucking decades.

Yeah. Okay. There you go. Let me know if it's any good. Okay. My first episode was fun. I enjoyed it. Of season three. Not four. Because I'm not there. Apparently. Was season two any good? I don't remember. But you just watched the recap. I went back and read all the descriptions of season two episodes.

And I was like, yep, yep, yep, yep. Okay. Okay. I definitely watched season two. But you don't remember if it was any good. It wasn't that great. It wasn't as good as season one. So, you know. Okay. This might be a show where the premise just beats the actual play out. So. Okay. The log line beats the execution.

That's sad. The Institute, which I said last week, did not stick the landing in any way, shape, or form, has been renewed for season two over at MGM+. Second chance of the landing. Yeah. There we go. See how that goes. All right. And Apple TV is increasing their subscriptions.

They're shooting up to $13 per month from $10 per month. This is effective immediately. Got to pay for those stupid episodes of severance. Yeah. That costs $20 gazillion, even though it's just a poorly lit hallway. Those hallways ain't going to pay for themselves. Yeah. Don't even have. They can't even afford light bulbs.

Current subscribers will see the price change 30 days after the next renewal date. Pricing for yearly subscription remains unchanged, as does the cost of an Apple One bundle, which I guess is good. There was my question. Because I got Apple One. I'm like, if they raise the price of Apple One, I'm done. Because it's borderline too much already.

Yeah. It's a lot for what you're getting. Yeah. So, you know, this is kind of typical for most platforms. They start cheap before slurly raising their prices. However, Apple really did a speed run here. The platform isn't very old and used to cost $7 per month as recently as 2023.

In a recent earnings call, the company said overall Apple TV Plus viewership rose strong double digits year over year. Hmm. One to two. Two to three. The platform has been generating mainstream buzz. Severance has proved to be a gigantic hit. And the studio scooped up plenty of MA nominations this year.

Two shows that I think suck. I like this studio a lot. So I do like a lot of their sci-fi offerings. So I can't complain. I mean, Murderbot's great. Sila's great. They've got a lot of great documentaries. There's a lot. I know a lot of people say there's not a lot of stuff on Apple Plus, but if you dig in there, there's quite a bit, actually.

Yeah. Their catalog is growing pretty, pretty well. I still have to go back and watch For All Mankind. I still can't get past season one. I can't get past Ronald Moore. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Invasion. I watched the first couple episodes. I couldn't get into it, but they just dropped season three.

So I don't know. Yeah. Some people really like it. I do remember I watched the first episode and I just wasn't immediately taken by it. But maybe I'll give that one another shot. That might be a winter one. Yeah. Dark Matter was no. No. Dark Matter wasn't great. Foundation, I think I might go and hate watch at some point. You won't.

Trust me. You won't. You won't make it. I tried. You won't make it. All right. I don't know. There's not enough wine in Canada to get you through another episode. Trust me, my friend. Not with the tariffs. That's for sure. Yeah, it's true. So this is interesting news.

Spotify is rolling out a new direct messaging feature that lets users share songs, podcasts and audio books without leaving the app, to which I say, OK, well, why is this news? This really isn't a big deal. It's it's common sense, I think, you know, it's not. Yeah, of course it is.

It's not surprising at all. In fact, I can't believe it took him this long. You want to keep people in your app as long as possible in any way, shape or form. And I'm just putting in messages is an easy feature. So Daniel Ek wanted to keep all the money for himself. So he didn't want to hire any more engineers to actually make a feature or update their interface to something that's, you know, this side of 1990 fucking four or, you know, pay the artists.

Apps and doodads. Well, speaking of Apple One, one of the benefits is that you get access to Apple Fitness, which I am quite a fan of. It's not the only thing I do, but I definitely supplement my workout routines and my general wellness and health with a lot of Apple Fitness's programming.

I love their yoga and I love a lot of their stuff. So I watch all the time. I know the personalities. I know the people I like. But bad news over there, apparently, because we can't have nice things. Jay Blahnik, Apple's vice president of fitness technologies and responsible for leading a team of over 100 people, has he came over from Nike.

He joined the company in 2013 to help with the launch of the Apple Watch and programs such as Apple Fitness Plus. But they're reporting that he had created a toxic workplace environment. Oh, no. Never seen a toxic workplace environment like a gym before. Just kidding. Just see Julie and the Michaels and everything going on with that.

Anyways, with his behaviors described as verbally abusive, manipulative and inappropriate. He and Apple are currently being sued by one former employee and the company has already settled a separate complaint against him that accused him of sexual harassment. So we'll see what happens. But, you know, everybody seems very nice over there.

We'll see. Okay. I'm glad I'm glad you get so much use out of my Apple Health subscription because I've never opened it once. Dude, you I implore you. You should start doing some of the yoga stuff. You're getting older, man. Yeah, I need it. You just you need the stretchy stretchy.

You need to be able to keep that shit going or else you're going to be in a wheelchair. I got to get one of those. I've fallen in. I can't get up buttons first. We haven't got an Apple watch. It's a thousand dollar. I've got it. I can't get up button. Oops. We talked a lot about drone delivery for a bit because everybody was out doing their trials.

And yeah, I'm not a big fan. Drones are loud. You know, nobody needs this shit in their neighborhood dropping off people's subway sandwiches and shit of that nature. Get off your ass. And again, going back to the fitness thing, get off your ass and go fucking get it. However, these guys win for the name. Chipotle Mexican Grill today announced its partnering with Zipline, the world's largest autonomous delivery system, to fly digital orders to guest locations in greater Dallas so you can get your burrito.

They're calling it Zipotle. Okay, that's good. I give him points for that. Yep. I finished up two books since we last did this segment.

The first was The Absence Memoirs of a Banshee Drummer by Budgie. Budgie is the acclaimed drummer for Susie and the Banshees, the band that is no more. He does a podcast now with Lowell Tollhurst, the ex-drummer slash keyboardist of The Cure, which is quite enjoyable, called Curious Creatures.

They're on hiatus right now because they've also done an album together and they're touring and they both write books and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyways, Susie and the Banshees, where of course I'm being the gothy, death rocky kid that I was, were a part of my upbringing. But I never really knew that much about them.

I didn't love them as much as I loved a lot of the other bands that I listened to, Joy Division and The Cure and all that sort of stuff. But I've gotten to know Budgie through the podcast. He seems like a really cool, interesting guy. So I figured what better way to learn a bit about the band. I'll read his memoir. Holy shit, this was depressing.

Really? Oh my God. He had a horrible childhood. He was, he has, he had a lot of issues. There was way too much alcohol and drug abuse. He was, he didn't really know how to socialize. He kind of was taken advantage of by everybody.

I mean, points to him for like just laying it all out there. And obviously he's had now years of therapy. He's been sober for decades and he's in a much better place. He's got a family and a wife and all this sort of stuff. He was married to Susie. That was an abusive relationship with her being abusive to him.

Wow. This was a depressing book that I did not expect. Way to sell it, Brian. Anyways, I needed to clear the palette after that one. So I had to go to the sci-fi mill. I found some sort of list somewhere of like, you know, top recent sci-fi.

And this book kept coming up as recommendations from people. It's called Master of Formalities by Scott Mayer. I'd never heard of Scott Mayer. I looked into him a little bit. He used to work at Disneyland. He started doing comics. The comics took off really well. This was his first foray into sci-fi.

Really enjoyed it. Okay. I hope that there's going to be more. We'll see. All righty. All righty. I have a new book that I have. I've tried to start multiple times now. But I think now that my plate's a little bit more clear and the weather's lightening up.

It was 110 here last week. It's going to be like in the 90s and it feels like, you know, I need a parka now so I can at least start go walking again. But I got Flybot by Dennis E. Taylor, the author of the Bobaverse series. And it's another one of his standalone books.

I love all his standalone books. They're popcorn, fun, you know, light. Yeah, I've read a few of them. Yeah. I got no complaints on anything he's done. And it's funny, too, because our friend Brian Blondell, I turned him on finally to the Bobaverse series. And he has not stopped.

I think he went through them straight through. He's like, I know your rule. I know your rule. Stop. Put a break in. But I can't. I can't. Then he thought there were only three. And I'm like, dude, there are five. He's like, woohoo. Yeah, I cannot recommend the Bobaverse series enough. We should be due for a new one, right?

I think he's working on it. I haven't checked. I haven't checked recently. Yeah, me either. Yeah, he's got a really shitty blog. He's on bloggers and shit like that. You know, the crazy thing is so many authors are so hard to find information about. They really don't do a good job of PR-ing themselves out there.

Most of them, anyways. It was the same with Scott Mayer. I tried to look into him like, is this going to be a series? Are there going to be more? And there's so little information out there. And all I was able to find out is like basic bio stuff like I used to work at Disneyland. There are, I found like six different sites.

Every single one listed him as living in a completely different city, half of the time in different countries. Like, really? What the fuck, man? Are you a secret agent or something? Or are people just shit at PR-ing you? He's just got good OPSEC. You know what I think a lot of it is?

Do you remember that Neil Stevenson article that he wrote like, got it over a decade or so ago where he was just like, you know, I'd rather just write books than talk to everybody because I'm better served writing books. I think a lot of people may have taken that to heart. And it makes sense because you can get so easily wrapped up in just like chatting with people, right?

And when you should be writing. Yeah, so that could be part of it. But some of them just suck at it. I mean, look, if John Scalzi stopped blue skying every day, he could actually probably write a hundred more books a year. But he's the one that he's the one we can't get rid of.

And I'm like, dude, I want another one of this series over here. Go write that. Don't talk about your cat anymore, please. Please. But the funny thing is, I just got an alert from Amazon that John Scalzi has a new book coming out in the Old Man War series. Subtitled Blue Skies. Closing shout outs.

Over at Patreon. Crickets. Nobody new signed up. R up their pledge. Thank you very much, R. And we have our old sponsors. We love to memorialize. Adam, Rachel, Jamie, Lawrence. Huh? They're not dead.

They're not dead. Of course they're not dead. We don't have to memorialize them. We thank them. We are thanking them. Yes, okay. We hold them up to a high standard of the beautiness that keeps this show on. All right. Adam, Rachel, Jamie, Lawrence, Nicholas, Jocelyn, R.C. Shauna, Lawrence, and Katari.

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No merch sales this week. No new reviews. You know what I think it is? I think everybody's kids are going back to school. Oh, dude. I'm so fucking busy. It's crazy. Yeah. So, we ran a little short this week. So, I do want to put this one article in here that was just – it was the talk of the town this week.

If you Googled was 1995 30 years ago this week, you got to see the joke that AI's overview from Google says, no, 1995 was not 30 years ago. If today is July 25th, 2025, then 30 years ago would be 1995. So, yes, 1995 was 30 years ago.

But it wasn't. It was so obviously only 10 years ago, Jason. It was five years ago, Brian. It was only five years ago. I'm still stuck on Y2K. Okay. Okay. Where were you that night? On Y2K? Mm-hmm. I thought I was with you at the Mondrian.

Okay. Well, you were there, too. I forgot about that. I have photos of us all there. It was me. Oh, wait, wait, wait. That's right. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I vaguely remember – I have memories of us wandering down Sunset Boulevard, but I don't remember being at the Mondrian.

Okay, cool. Most of my night was spent trying to keep you and your girlfriend from breaking up because you guys were fighting all night. Oh, I do remember that, too. Yeah. And our friend Bob almost threw a TV out the window because the cops downstairs were being loud. And he was like, fuck the police. Oh, maybe it's good it was 30 years ago.

Yeah. Let's move along. Okay. Did you have green hair or did I have green hair? You had green hair. I had green hair. Okay. One of us had green hair. I do remember that, too. That was you. Okay. Until next time, I'm a very confused Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo.

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