715: Our Wizard Lies

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Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. It's Friday. That's the only good thing I have to say about today, is it's Friday. Yeah, it's Friday. Well, the U.S. and China have agreed to agree on a TikTok deal.

What does that mean, Jason? You tell me, Brian. Well, nobody really knows. White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt, who has been a bastion of truth and honesty, and we can trust everything, she says— She oozes truth. Said a TikTok deal is expected to be signed in the coming days after President Donald Trump posted an update on Friday that did absolutely nothing to clarify where the deal currently stands following a call with the Chinese president.

In a post on True Social, Trump said both of the two had made progress on approval of a TikTok deal and that he appreciates the TikTok approval. He also told reporters in the Oval Office that he approved a TikTok deal, according to Reuters. But Chinese state-run media reported the call a little bit differently, according to the New York Times, stating that the Chinese president had conveyed the government respects the wishes of the company in question and is glad to see business negotiations in line with market rules and a solution that conforms to Chinese laws and regulations

and takes into account the interests of both sides, thus clarifying everything. Oh, yeah. TikTok owner ByteDance did little to clear things up when it issued another statement. We thank President Xi and President Donald Trump for their efforts to preserve TikTok in the United States.

ByteDance will work in accordance with applicable laws to ensure TikTok remains available to Americans through TikTok US, whatever that might be. Okay, so there's been a flurry of activity since you published this article to our show notes. So I just want to bring you up to speed on the latest and greatest.

This comes from Business Insider. Are you ready for it? TikTok finally cut a deal, but there's still plenty of uncertainty about what comes next. So we're still in the dark. That's right. They're saying it's a $14 billion deal, but that's kind of all we know.

You know, we got the names thrown out that it was going to be Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, the Fox people. Right. Like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Yeah. Pretty much. Pretty much. You know, and I honestly, me personally, I'd rather have the Chinese own it than Larry Ellison.

But I don't know if you've seen, if you followed Larry Ellison over time, he has become kind of a fan of the Panopticon. He's like, that's just like his goal. He's on his Lex Luthor path. Yeah. I mean, he owns a fucking island.

OK, what else do you need? So, yeah, you know, it's it seems my decision to never have anything to do with TikTok has just been better and better over time. It's aged very well. Oh, it's panned out. It's panned out. My roommate was adamant that she couldn't take her 97 year old grandmother to the emergency room for a procedure that she needed because there's so much flu in the emergency rooms that everybody's getting sick.

And it's just a it's basically a death sentence if you walk in. So yesterday she had to do it. She asked the ER people like, hey, have you seen much flu yet? And they're like, nope, not a case. We're getting ready, but not a single case. And she's like, well, maybe it was just Midwest TikTok.

Like, stop getting your fucking news from TikTok. Yeah, that would be a good idea. Let's not. Yeah. And I did see this in the news and I'm going to put it in follow up because we've gotten a considerable amount of crap over the last 12 years now because we're too political.

Yeah, I know. We're too political because, you know, we're just too political, even though we're talking about politics as it relates to technology. Well, Wired has finally decided to jump on the bandwagon 12 years later. Welcome to the party, pal.

For the first time in its history, Wired is dedicating an issue to politics, citing concerns about the tech industry's alignments with President Trump. So they've had to issue a statement because they're actually going to talk about politics while the rest of us in tech have just been doing it because there's no choice and getting shit for it.

So, yeah. But, you know, Brian, we've always said that we were not. That's why we started this show, because every other tech show in the world was so fucking boring. It's just like, oh, I don't care about what features are on the new Galaxy smartphone. I really don't. Let's talk about the policies that will actually affect our lives for the next year.

Yeah. Tell me which megalomaniacal motherfucker is going to ruin my day today. That's what I want to know. All of them. Yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of one of them, good old Elon, we're getting stories of Doge now, the fallout from Doge. I can't wait for the book deals.

Yeah. It's pretty much just as bad as we thought. It was pretty fucked up by big balls. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. So, yeah, projected 300,000 fewer federal employees by next year was one of the projections. That's one in eight workers, thanks to Doge, because of the incentives to resign.

Well, apparently they thought the government would just run itself. So hundreds of those very same pushed out employees are being offered their jobs back across the board. Thank God. Predictably, all that modernizing achieved no meaningful cost savings or operational efficiencies.

No shit. The federal workers who remained described a hellscape of purgatory and leadership by utter neglect. Forced back to hostile offices, they encountered armed tactical guards patrolling, telling the staff that they were there to desensitize you to my presence.

That's what you want to hear. Working in the United States government. Yeah. Yep. And get this. A $1 spending limit per day meant some offices literally ran out of toilet paper for five months. What a shitty place to work, Brian. Meanwhile, mass layoffs dubbed the Valentine's Day massacre coincided with tone deaf emails about mental health awareness.

Yeah. Well, you know, those signs around the office saying, bring your own toilet paper. B-Y-O-T-P didn't help much. Yep. Yep. So the Doge saga has left many workers traumatized. And as one CDC employee put it, this was the trauma that they wanted. They planned that they promised us.

And for once, they did a great job of delivering. Others are just plain mad vowing to stay and make things difficult for these, quote unquote, fuckheads. The quest for functional government, or at least a functioning bathroom, continues. So, yeah, that went well.

And now, this is a technological tie-in, so don't cancel us here. But there was a big, beautiful funeral on TV last week, Brian. It was the biggest, the biggest, most beautifulest funeral. And when I die, I hope there's a merch table, because nothing says funeral like capitalism.

GOG.show. Shop.GOG.show. Oh, sorry. My bad. I would be horrible. I'm glad they didn't pick me to run the merch table there. Yeah. Just imagine, though, Brian, a few years ago, you could have gotten a commemorative death NFT. A death FT, as it were.

I'm sure Melania is going to run one out. She's always a little bit late. Yeah. Well, since we can't get the death FTs, we're just going to have to make do with meme coins or a few. So, within minutes of Charlie Kirk's shooting, dozens of meme coins appeared on Pump.Fun, a site where anyone can- That site used to be completely different.

It's totally different. Where anyone can instantly create and trade tokens. Names like Pray for KirkCoin and DeadKirk flooded the Solana blockchain, and at least one token hit a $16 million market cap in the first hour. Well, Bloomberg reports more than 10,000 Kirk-related tokens have been launched since the shooting, with creators pocketing hundreds of thousands in transaction fees.

One investor sank tens of thousands of dollars into RIP Charlie KirkCoin, lost big, then helped lead a community takeover of the project. His team pledged to donate fees to Kirk's nonprofit, Turning Point USA, even posting receipts online to build legitimacy.

You know, if you really gave that much of a fuck, why didn't you sink the tens of thousands of dollars straight into the charity that you wanted to give the money to? Because then that wouldn't be a grift. I know, I know. Because he hoped to make a lot of money and pocket it for himself. That's why.

Yeah, I was checking these out. I was looking for the Pray for James T. Kirk coins. Couldn't find them. In the news. Well, Amazon is going to pay $2.5 billion in fines and reimbursements to Prime subscribers to settle the Federal Trade Commission's allegations that it deceived its customers to generate subscriptions, according to the FTC, on Thursday.

Now, we had talked about this in the past when this started. It was basically, you know, it was dark patterns to get people to sign up for and keep Prime subscriptions rather than being able to cancel them. That entire first sentence from this Reuters article is not entirely true.

Okay. They will pay $2.5 billion in fines and reimbursements, but not entirely to Prime subscribers. Oh, really? No. No. Okay. See, this is why I don't like journalism anymore.

$1 billion in fines is going to the FTC. Oh. The other $1.5 billion will be going to the Prime customers that are eligible for the payout. Because the FTC, they incurred $1 billion worth of pain and suffering over this debacle, I guess.

Yes. So the grift continues in this new administration. I guarantee that that would not have been the case in previous administrations, that the $2.5 billion would have, or at least, you know, $2 billion of it would have gone to the actual people that were affected, not the $1 billion handling fee.

Yeah, seriously. Maybe it's a tariff. Maybe it's the new tariff on. Of course, Amazon does not have to admit any wrongdoing because it's a settlement. And now, before everybody started to go, oh, good. I can't wait to get my $1.50 in Audible credits or whatever they're going to actually do instead of actually giving you cash.

No, no, no. Hold your horses. Only customers who signed up for Prime between June 23, 2019 and June 23, 2025 through certain offers and who used few Prime benefits afterwards will automatically receive the $51, according to court documents.

So we are not all getting a little buck or two. It's a very specific subset of Amazon customers, and I guarantee that most of us listening to this show have been a member since long before 2019. Yeah, I've been a member since it was in beta. Yeah, but Amazon did say in a statement that the deal allows it to move forward and focus on customers.

Oh, that's so great. Yes. As part of the settlement deal, Amazon has agreed to create a clear and conspicuous button to allow customers to decline a Prime subscription and to make it easier to cancel. They've also agreed to more clearly disclose the terms of a subscription during enrollment and pay an independent supervisor to monitor compliance.

Now, please look at that we're playing for video thing, but you're still pumping us ads bullshit. Fucking assholes. So here's the deal. Prime has been around for 20 years. Next year, my Amazon Prime account will be able to drink. That's fucked up. Yep. We old.

Yeah, we old. We damn old. I remember where I was. I was at Technorati, and we were all talking about it because back then you could put everybody's address on there. And I think Niall Kennedy was the first one to get the account and spread it with people around the office. And then there wasn't enough in his account.

So I went and got one and spread it around, too, to other people in the office. So I couldn't tell you when I signed up for Amazon, but I can tell you it was literally just a bookstore when I did. Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. When you signed up. But I'm talking about for Prime, Prime in general. Oh, yeah. No.

I mean, I think I signed up for Amazon on Mosaic. Well, Microsoft says it has cut off certain cloud services to Israel's defense ministry after reports that its Unit 8200 stored Palestinians' phone calls on Microsoft's Azure system.

President Brad Smith confirmed the company found evidence supporting those claims, including AI services being used in Europe. The move follows weeks of employee protests over Israel's use of Microsoft software during its Gaza invasion, protests that led to several firings. Microsoft told Israeli officials that it had disabled the cloud storage and AI subscriptions.

Reports say the unit is now looking to move its operations to Amazon Web Services. Now, I like this. They're getting booted because of phone calls. Someone at Microsoft had to read their own TOS and decide that genocide is fine, but we've really got to draw the line at phone calls.

Well, look, in Microsoft's defense, who thinks to put genocide in their TOS? Well, nowadays, everybody should. Sorry. Certainly so, particularly the next company you're going to talk about. Palantir Technologies, the defense software giant known for working with U.S. immigration authorities, the military and major corporations, is trying to reinvent itself as a lifestyle brand.

Brian, the Denver-based company has relaunched its online store selling pricey made-in-the-USA merch like $119 tote bags and $55 baseball caps and T-shirts featuring globe-like graphics suggesting Palantir controls the world. That's not a suggestion, my friend.

That's the fucking shirt. Shop.palantir.com. Yeah. Unlike traditional defense contractors that sell novelty items to employees and veterans, Palantir is openly marketing its brand identity. Pro-Western, military-friendly, and winning-obsessed. Charlie Sheen should get some shirts with them.

To a growing fan base, company executives call it the lifestyle brand, encouraging supporters to wear the gear that signals allegiance to Palantir's mission. Yep. My God, what is wrong with people? The merch push comes as Palantir deepens its work with immigration and customs enforcement, including a new $30 million contract to build Immigration OS.

Oh, God. For Palantir, selling clothes isn't about revenue, but about cultivating a more acceptable public identity. Mm-hmm. And now, Brian, nothing says more acceptable public identity like having your co-founder out there thumping this bullshit. Billionaire investor Peter Thiel is warning that regulating artificial intelligence could literally be the work of the Antichrist.

Yes. Speaking in a series of religious lectures in San Francisco, the Palantir co-founder claimed government controls over science and technology might fulfill biblical prophecy about the end times. That's fucking crazy. Thiel, who has recently become fascinated with eschatology or the study of the apocalypse.

You know when I became fascinated with that, Jason? I was 11. Okay. I was 11 and I went to the library because I was raised Roman Catholic and then I started reading all the books about the end times because I was 11 and I did not have a fully formed frontal cortex.

I just watched The Omen when I was like five and that was when I got into it. Well, he says his speculative thesis is that a one-world government promising peace and safety while restricting technology could be the Antichrist in disguise. Oh, go fuck yourself.

He pointed to scripture in 1 Thessalonians to support his view, suggesting that while peace and safety sound good in an age of AI and global weapon systems, they could be tools of destruction. I would like to point Peter Thiel through some of the other passages in that book he picked up.

So, like all of the other ones. There's a lot of other scripture that maybe he should be taking a look at. The 57-year-old billionaire even floated the idea that the United States itself, given its global dominance, not anymore, buddy, could play the role of Antichrist.

The comments come as lawmakers push for stronger rules on artificial intelligence. Rules Thiel has a direct financial interest in avoiding. There's this whole bit about chasing the money lenders out of the temple. Just saying. Just saying.

Just saying. Just saying. And much like the top of the show when we talked about the TikTok deal, they've agreed to agree on something. Well, AI experts are urgently calling on governments to think about maybe doing something sometime, somewhere about AI.

Okay. Everybody seems to recognize the fact that artificial intelligence is a rapidly developing and emerging technology has the potential for immense harm if operated without safeguards, or apparently could be the Antichrist. But basically, no one except for the European Union kind of can sort of agree on how to regulate it.

So instead of trying to set up a clear and narrow path for regulations, experts in the field have opted for a new approach. How about we just figure out what extreme examples we all think are bad and just agree to that, please, for the love of God. AI, bad.

A group of politicians, scientists, and academics took to the United Nations General Assembly to announce the global call for AI red lines, a plea for the governments of the world to come together and agree on the broadest of guardrails to prevent universally acceptable risks that could result from the deployment of AI.

This might have actually made news, except for the fact that our dear leader decided to get up and word salad some shit about every country going to hell. Oh, God. That was fucking embarrassing. You think? Hero of the week is the cameraman who tripped the escalator, though.

Good for him. The only thing the group offers concretely is that any global agreement should be built on three pillars, a clear list of prohibitions, robust, auditable verification mechanisms, and the appointment of an independent body established by the party. Everything else is for the governments to agree to, which is kind of the hard part, because it hasn't happened yet.

So fucking stupid. So nothing's going to happen from that. Nothing. Nothing at all. Thank you so much. Forget it. Yeah. Waste of time.

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. And we got a new term that's been going around this week, Jason.

Work slop. Yeah, I can see that. That's a good one. Good one. It is a good one. AI-generated work content is slowing everything down. So we've been talking a lot about how we're not seeing any of the pluses of this AI revolution that's being shoved down people's throats, particularly at work, where, you know, there are mandates that everybody has to work AI into their workflows at this point.

But, you know, nothing's really coming of it. And now an MIT Media Lab study found that fewer than one in, well, we talked about this last week, fewer than one in 10 AI pilot projects deliver any real revenue gains and warned that 95% of organizations are getting zero return on their AI bets. But new research from Harvard Business Reviews Better Up Labs, working with the Stanford Social Media Lab, paint an even worse picture.

Not only are we not getting any results, we're actually slowing shit down. It's getting worse. The insidious effects of work slop is that it shifts the burden of the work downstream, requiring the receiver to interpret, correct, or redo the work. In other words, it transfers the effort from creator to receiver, the report's authors wrote.

They have defined work slop as AI-generated work content that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task. So you used to have to do that by hand. Yeah. So you used to really have to gum up the works by hand and pretend that you were working. Now you just press a button.

These people dropped the ball. They so dropped the ball. And I'm going to coin something new right now, Brian. Okay. When you get that work slop from your co-worker that he's been handed down, it's work sloppy seconds. Yep. You can get that at pump.fun.

You can get that at pump.fun. Surveyed workers reported spending an average of one hour and 56 minutes per incident dealing with low quality AI outputs. Researchers calculated that based on respondent salaries, work slop carries an invisible cost of around $186 per month per employee for companies with thousands of employees that can translate into millions of dollars in lost productivity each year from this revolutionary technology that was going to make everything better.

And they don't even count on the actual cost that they're spending on the AI itself, the per seat license. And it also takes a social and emotional toll on the office. When asked, 53% of participants said receiving work slop made them feel annoyed, 38% confused, and 22%, where we would solidly fall, offended.

And then they took the time to actually send the AI their emotions to create a gift that they could send back to the person, thus killing several watersheds in the process. Well, Deutsche Bank is warning the U.S. economy may be riding a shaky AI wave.

Well, no shit. Welcome. Welcome, Deutsche Bank. In a new report, analysts say tech spending has been the main force keeping the economy out of recession this year. George Ceravellos, the bank's head of FX Research, wrote that AI machines, in quite a literal sense, appear to be saving the U.S. economy right now.

That growth isn't coming from AI itself, but from the massive infrastructure buildouts, data centers, chips, and talent needed to support it. Now, Deutsche Bank argues that kind of parabolic spending can't last. I've been saying that for several months now.

If it slows before AI delivers on its big promises, the U.S. could face higher unemployment, falling incomes, and hidden weaknesses in consumer demand. Could face. I would argue we're already facing that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's seeping through right now. Bain & Company estimates the AI sector would need $2 trillion in annual revenue by 2030 just to fund its computing needs.

Now, there's also news this week about how NVIDIA is investing $100 billion into OpenAI, or getting part of OpenAI for the $100 billion, which OpenAI is then going to spend on NVIDIA chips, thus creating the ultimate AI Ouroboros.

But, you know, you run the numbers on this, it's not going to work. None of this is going to work. And the other thing that I read this week that was- Yeah, and Mark Zuckerberg is saying that this is what, this is really, he kind of, he kind of lifted the kimono a little bit on this one. He's like, yeah, it would be unfortunate if we misspent like hundreds of billions of dollars.

But if you don't, and the thing actually comes to pass, and they can get something out of it, you know, some kind of super intelligence, or figure out how to make it actually work, you know? If you're not investing now, you're going to be out of position when it actually happens, and you'll be playing catch up.

So they're just staying and trying to stay ahead of it. It's the world's dumbest, biggest bet that we've ever seen. They're just betting on the fact that this is going to happen. Yeah. Now, none of these guys need to work ever again. They're just doing this for shits and giggles. So what, you know, all of this stuff, every single one of these guys is doing this for fun.

No, they're doing it to win. It's just an ego thing. That's, but that's the same thing. You know, there's no real need. But I doubt they're having fun. That's, that's, I don't think that they're having fun. I don't think that they're enjoying their lives. God, I hope not. I seriously hope not.

Yeah. Well, in the latest example of big, big tech kissing the fucking ring and blowing dear leader's ass, channels once banned by YouTube for spreading false information regarding the COVID-19 pandemic or the 2020 election may soon have the opportunity to get their channels back in a decision transparently courting conservative voices.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, has sent a letter via counsel to the House Judiciary Committee in which it alleges the company was pressured by the Biden administration to take down misinformation on YouTube related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate the company's existing policies at the time because you're allowed to lie.

It now describes the Biden administration's actions as unacceptable and wrong. It also informed the committee that YouTube would be offering a path to reinstatement for creators whose channels were banned for repeatedly violating community guidelines, violating community guidelines, on election integrity related content, as well as for COVID-19 related content.

The guidelines under which those bans were carried out were removed by the company in 2023 and 2024 because God knows we don't need anything about election integrity related content anymore. Details on exactly what the path for reinstatement looks like were not shared. So basically, they're just rolling that back and saying, oh, all these people like Steve Bannon's war room, co-deputy director of the FBI Dan Bongino's channel and the channel for children's health defense, which was previously linked with Secretary of Human and Health Services RFK Jr.

You guys can have those back now since you're in power. Oh, great. Lovely. YouTube values conservative voices on its platform and recognizes these creators of extensive reach and play an important role in civic discourse, the company wrote. The letter was sent in response to subpoenas as part of the House Judiciary Committee's ongoing investigations into alleged government-directed content moderation.

You know the fucking thing you guys tried to do to Jimmy Kimmel? Yeah. Yeah. You fucking hypocrites. Fucking cowards. Fucking cowards. Well, so it's good. You know, we can't be banned, but you guys can. Yeah. In more fun news.

Federal authorities are warning of a severe threat to critical infrastructure following the dismantling of a massive cybercrime facility near New York City. The U.S. Secret Service has busted what they call a SIM farm operation in the tri-state area. It's right next to where they make the salsa.

New York City. New York City. Get a rope. The scale of the discovery is staggering. Agents seized a network of some 300 servers holding over 100,000 SIM cards. Experts say that these farms are typically used by cybercriminals to flood phones with spam and carry out fraud.

Or ask for money from your representative. It's the only text I'm getting from Democrats 19 times a day asking for money. And I just continue to respond with, tell me what you're going to do and I'll give you money. Yeah. However, the sheer size of this particular operation prompted a serious warning from the government.

Officials say the network was so vast, it could have overwhelmed cell towers, capable of essentially disabling the entire cell phone network in New York City. The Secret Service estimates the farm could have sent about 30 million text messages per minute. The investigation was escalated.

Sounds like my wife. Seriously. Or that girl I never called back. The investigation was escalated after the farm was linked to swatting attacks targeting U.S. members of Congress around Christmas last year. The Secret Service has seized all the equipment, which they say was used by organized crime and other threat actors.

But the investigation is ongoing and no arrests have been made. So apparently you can buy 100,000 SIM cards and 300 SIMs or cell servers and just be, can get away. Must have used Bitcoin to buy those, I bet. I wonder.

Yeah. Well, speaking of, a multi-billion dollar fraud industry has taken root across Southeast Asia, fueled by human trafficking victims. People flying to Thailand for jobs or vacation are being snatched and forced to work as cyber scam slaves in lawless regions of Myanmar. We've covered this a little bit because guess who they're using for their internet service provider now?

Elon? Yep. You got it. Shocking. An investigation reveals Thailand is a key transit hub with alleged involvement from purported immigration officials at Thai airports. Victims are met at Bangkok's airport and driven across the border to notorious scam centers in Myanmar, such as the sprawling KK Park.

I've seen pictures of that, like satellite pictures of that place. It's fucking massive. Inside, run by Chinese criminal gangs and militias, thousands work up to 20 hours daily running online scams. Failure to meet financial targets result in brutal punishment, including electric shocks and beatings with bamboo rods.

The UN estimates hundreds of thousands have been trafficked across Southeast Asia. While a recent multinational crackdown freed some victims, thousands remain in these fraud centers. The crisis persists, with Thai authorities denying allegations of official involvement in the trafficking pipeline. Yeesh.

So that's why they can't catch most of these scammers, is because they're sitting in Myanmar on their, you know, SpaceX terminals. What's the damn name? Starlink. Starlink terminals. Starlink. Yeah.

I've been consuming an awful lot of media recently, Jason, probably just to try to escape the hellscape that is normal life. So we watched Elio, which is the latest Pixar thing that's come out on Disney Plus. Now that I can, you know, continue to subscribe to that since they reinstated Jimmy Kimmel.

So I don't feel so bad. It was fine. This is one of those Pixar movies. Normally, I would say Pixar movies are for the whole family, and they throw in a lot of an adult humor, and they make the story complex enough that you can really enjoy it as an adult. In fact, I would say 99% of the Pixar movies I've been able to watch, and I would even recommend you, without a child, to watch, because they're really good movies.

This one, not so much. This is for kids. I feel like they really dropped the ball on making it a multi-level movie this time around. So my kid enjoyed it. This is their biggest flop in, like, decades? Yeah, and I think it's entirely because of that. Like, it just, it had nothing for adults at all.

My wife and I were just zoning out while it was on. It was very well done for a kid, but they didn't have the multi-level enjoyment that most of their movies do. Got it. All right. I finally was able to watch Superman once I was able to start to use your Max account again, because they're cracking down on shared households.

So thank you for that. Highly enjoyable movie. Nice message. I think that they tried to cram a lot in, and I think it would have been a better intro to the new DC universe if they just would have focused on Superman and not had Mr. Terrific and fucking the best Green Lantern I've ever seen in my life.

Obviously, that guy was hilarious. I love Nathan Fillion. So, but overall, heartwarming. Exactly what you want a Superman to be. You know, you get a bit of hope and faith in humanity, which immediately gets crushed as soon as the movie's over. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was, it was fine.

That's how I put it. It was fine. Yeah, it was fine. You know, I liked it. I liked it. And then finally, I will not finally, but there's a new series. It's been out on the BBC for a little bit. It is now airing for free on PBS and Nova. You can watch it on YouTube or through the PBS app.

This is Ella Alshamira, who I've talked about before because she's been a guest on the No Such Thing as a Fish podcast. And she's an anthropologist. And she's very clever. And she's had her own podcast that I've talked about on the show as well. She is hosting a series about human origins, humanity.

And the first two of five have now dropped on PBS and Nova. And I watched both of them. Human origins is the first one. And human journeys is the second one. This is fantastic. This is wonderful stuff that traces humanity's origins and talks about the different subspecies that were around back in the day, which is phenomenal.

I mean, you learn about the hobbits. I didn't even know that these existed. It was amazing. It's well worth it. It's incredibly well produced, as you would expect from the BBC or anything that PBS is throwing money behind as well. She's fantastic in it. Explains things wonderfully well.

Beautifully shot. I mean, all the things that you would want out of a high-quality science broadcast. Sounds good. Yeah, definitely worth watching. I like the free part. I'm down with free. And free. Absolutely free. No need for me to go, Jason, can you send me that code?

Exactly. Something that wasn't free definitely was Alien Earth on Hulu. It finally finished up. And fucking 10 points for the landing. That is all I've seen online is people are saying that they nailed it, so I'm going to have to watch this.

It's so fucking good. I can't wait five more years until the next episode comes out. It's going to be great. But, oh, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, my biggest issue with all of the alien movies is you just never really get to see the alien that much. Yeah. Oh, you do here. Oh, you do. Good.

And they did a great job with it. I mean, Stan Winston would be proud. It's so good. It's so good. The Traders' Ireland finished up this week, so thanks again, Vinny. All 12 episodes have aired. I'm so glad I didn't look at the actual article that Vinny sent because it was full of spoilers and would have ruined half the show for me.

So, thanks. But, yeah, no, it was a good one. I'm highly happy that I watched it, keeping my streak of watching every episode of every Traders' English language that you can possibly find. Now I'm on a desperate hunt. If somebody can send me a torrent where I can find Traders Mumbai, it's apparently a barn burner, but I can't.

Nobody's posting it anywhere. It's driving me crazy. All right. I tried VPNing to Amazon Prime India, and they're saying, no, you cannot watch it here. Go back home. So I'm going to get canceled for that. Fuck! Anyway, yeah, I love the Traders.

I still love the Traders. What can I say? All right. Speaking of going back to Hulu and Disney+, yes, just because they didn't step on their dick enough times last week, they figured, oh, oh, God, we just lost $3.8 billion in market cap because we said something stupid and did something stupid.

Let's raise the price. Idiots. Stupid motherfuckers. Like, wait, wait, wait until January, February. What the hell, man? Yeah, but it was already in buffer, so it was going out. Yeah, nobody wanted to go in and, like, remove it from the queue for posting.

The interns were going to a music fest, and they couldn't be bothered to take it out. So, yeah, effective October 21st. There's a range. It's going anywhere up from $1 or $2 to $3, depending on which package you have. Like, it's not a huge increase, but it is a monumentally bad timing.

Oh, monumentally bad. The funny thing is, the only one that I get, mine doesn't go up, I think, because I've got the... I'm grandfathered into some weird old package that isn't going up either, but on the negative side of that is I don't even know how I could upgrade to get Hulu if I wanted to.

Like, I press the button to try to find out, and it just shits out on me. Yeah, it says, you're in Canada, go fuck yourself. No, I'm using the VPN. It says I'm on the US. Oh, that's weird, then. Yeah. I've got Hulu and Disney Plus with no ads, and it says Hulu with no ads is staying the same, but I've got to go look.

I mean, because I'm probably going to end up keeping... I canceled it, but then I redid it after they brought it back, and now I'm just all confused, because now I'm just, like, mad, and I should cancel anyway. Because Alien Earth was honestly the only thing left that I watched on Hulu, so... It's so difficult, Brian. It's so difficult.

I miss cable! I know. I miss cable, too. It was cheaper. It was cheaper. Less headache. Yeah, less headache. Cheaper. Unbelievable. I probably should have saved this one for our Dave segment, but I'm going to put it in here now. Anyways, the Wicked for Good final trailer has dropped.

Now, you and Dave are the musical guys. I was never a really big musical guy. I know my music nerds from high school and beyond, so... Everybody was wearing the Les Mis shirts, and then everybody was wearing the Phantom of the Opera shirts, and then everybody was wearing the Cats shirts, and then everybody was wearing all that stuff.

And then Wicked came along, and it was a really big musical, and everybody loved it. No, you know, I watched Wizard of Oz, the original. I watched The Wiz, so I was familiar enough with the story. My wife finally wanted to watch the first installment of Wicked with a kid a couple weeks back.

I found myself really enjoying it. I watched this trailer. I'm really definitely looking forward to seeing the rest of the story. And, you know, I just think that that shot of our wizard lies is so telling for this current time. Yep, that kind of is.

But unfortunately, we know how the story ends, and the wizard wins, and everybody gets crushed. Well, you haven't seen Wicked before, so... No, I have not. Again, for me, this is all new, so I'm very excited to see the rest of it. And I watched the trailer to see if they did a decent job. They completely protected all of the ending stuff in the trailer, so if you've never seen it, it's still safe to go watch the movie.

Because it's a three-minute trailer, and I'm like, oh my god, they're going to blow everything. They blew nothing, so it's great. They just pimped all the songs, and yeah, no, I mean, I've seen Wicked on stage a couple times, and I'm looking forward to this. Because I thought the first part of the series was good.

I thought it was really good. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Yeah, me too. I mean, I am primed to dislike Ariana Grande with every fiber of my being, but she was phenomenal. Oh, but she was great. Yeah. No, she was great. Yeah. And I did watch Lilith Fair Building a Mystery, because right after talking about it, it basically dropped on Disney+.

And it is a great music documentary. It is fantastic. I loved seeing all the backstories. I liked seeing how much fun that they had doing it. I liked seeing the blowback that they had to put up with, and I liked seeing how they handled it. Highly recommend it if you like your music documentaries, and if also you're of a certain vintage, like us, all this footage from the 90s, phenomenal.

Okay, cool. I've been meaning to get to the Devo documentary as well, but... Yeah, I keep meaning to get to that one, too, and I haven't yet, so maybe this week. Mm-hmm. The Tron Aries soundtrack from Nine Inch Nails has dropped. It dropped right before we went and recorded last week, but I hadn't listened to it yet.

I went and listened to it now. It's curious that they decided to go with the branding of Nine Inch Nails. I mean, I think, you know, the filmmakers wanted it. It fits with Tron, and I guess he sings for the first time on a soundtrack, which Trent Reznor has never done before, so I guess that's why they decided to brand it as Nine Inch Nails.

They gave him a bucket of money. Is it a Nine Inch Nails album? Absolutely not. Not even close. Is it okay? It's fine. It's okay. It's not great. No, it's not great. But then again, I haven't really thought his Nine Inch Nails albums have been that great for the past decade. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I was going to make a mention a couple weeks ago, because the new administration, there's a beautiful Nine Inch Nails song with the refrain, broken, bruised, forgotten, sore, too fucked up to care anymore. Too fucked up to care anymore. That's how I wake up in the morning when I read the news. Boy, when we felt that so strongly back in the 90s, we had no idea what was coming later in our lives.

No. No. God. That was just like a general hangover day. Yeah. Now it's just like, oh, this is existential dread involved. Shit. Exactly. Then I saw this bit of news, and it kind of made me go, oh, boy, here we go. Human lyricist Talisha Jones and her AI artist Zania Monet have together signed a multimillion-dollar record deal, according to Billboard.

Jones released the Zania Monet album Unfolded on August 8th, and since then, the TikTok earnest power ballad How Was I Supposed to Know has racked up 5 million streams across YouTube and Spotify. Jones claims to have written all the lyrics. I'm sure ChatGPT helped. She used the AI platform Suno to transform the words into full songs.

The deal is reportedly worth 3 million and comes from Howlwood Media, best known for representing chart-topping producers like Myrta Beats and Soundwave. So, yeah. Apparently, the AI voice sounds an awful lot like Beyonce, so opening up themselves to a bit of a lawsuit there.

Beyonce-ish. YouTube comments suggest that many fans didn't realize Zania Monet is an AI creation, which could lead to backlash as news trickles out. Obviously, there's a lot of litigation going on right now. Platformers from ChatGPT to Suno were trained on copyrighted materials such as Beyonce.

Beyonce. In a way that some have argued is illegal. Just yesterday, record labels escalated a lawsuit against Suno, claiming that the platform was trained on songs ripped from YouTube. Even if Suno doesn't get sued into oblivion, copyright law could prevent Howlwood from monetizing Xavier Monet.

The U.S. Copyright Office sanctions humans using AI as an assistive tool, but has said that they would not grant copyrights where expressive elements are determined by a machine. If you cannot get a copyright on your product, you cannot monetize it and get paid for it.

While Talisha Jones providing the lyrics, but AI handling the composition and vocal performance, the Copyright Office has its work cut out for it, trying to figure out what to do here. AI songs have had success with playlist placement and TikTok, but so far there's little evidence that generated music could capitalize on viral moments.

If you remember back in June, the AI band, The Velvet Sundown, which we talked about, made waves for getting over 500,000 monthly Spotify listens. But just a few months later, they've basically forgotten about and nobody gives a shit. It seems difficult to maintain an audience, let alone grow it, when the artists in the pictures can't interact with fans.

Of course, that's just being lazy. We all know you can use AI to interact. Somebody just has to get on it and actually do the work, which nobody seems to be doing yet. Yep. So, I should go use Suno while I still can. Yeah, it's not going to be around much longer.

No, it's not. Well, didn't Universal Music make a deal with them? I can't talk about that yet. I thought they talked about that. I thought you talked about that on the show already. I thought that was an old deal. Things have changed. Oh, okay. Well, yes. Zip it. Mum's a word. Well, I do want to follow up with a little bit of Lionsgate news.

Lionsgate thought it had cracked the future of filmmaking with artificial intelligence, but reality's a bit less Hollywood, more blooper real. So, what it turns out is that they were going to train their AI from runway with all of the movies from Lionsgate's back catalog.

And, well, turns out that there's not enough data. So, that whole thing has kind of fallen apart. So, there you go. Okay. Finally, the last thing I got is there's an article by my friend's wife, Meryl Marco, that hit Rolling Stone this week called Jimmy Kimmel may be back.

Trump's attacks on the First Amendment aren't over by Meryl Marco. It's about how the movie network is kind of paralleling what's going on in reality right now. It's a great read. She's awesome. Go have a look. The link is in the show notes. I also put the link in the show notes for the 30-minute-plus monologue that Jimmy Kimmel did his first show back.

The first time I've watched Jimmy Kimmel in decades, unless one of the bands I was working on. Since the man show. Unless one of the bands I was working on was performing there, and I was actually there. He did a very good job. It was excellent. He nailed it, I thought. I agree.

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. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave.

Hello, Dave. Hi. You never know what we're going to get. Long intro or short? It keeps it interesting, right? Variety is the spice of life. Yeah, we've got more room for goodness today. All right. So, you and I both talked about how our AirPod 3s were in the post and coming on the same day.

I got mine, like, right after we hung up last time. Yes. And did you get yours? I did. What do you think? I am impressed. I'm blown away. I guess I'm ordering today. So, you know, I got them.

I unboxed them. I put one of them in my ear. I put the other one in my ear. I'm glad you chose that orifice. Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, there's still time. But, and the room fell silent.

It went away. The world went away. And that was actually a little disconcerting, right? Yeah. I was like, whoa, wait a minute. This is really quiet. And, you know, they said in the promotions for these things that they had twice the noise canceling of the previous generation.

And I figured that's marketing fluff. But, no, it's real. Yeah. They're amazing. They are really amazing. No, I was expecting, like, you know, a small incremental jump from the twos to the threes. But, it's a big jump. I mean, I had to find, I had to go down a size on the nubs, the little foam nubs.

Yeah. Because the ones that came, I put them in and they just fell right out. So, I had to go down a size. I must have bigger ear holes than you. Yeah, must be. And, yeah, it just went right away. I haven't, here's the irony behind this whole thing. I really want to try out the translation.

But, since ICE has taken over Los Angeles, I can't find any Spanish speakers to talk to me anymore. So, I don't know. You can pull up a foreign language channel on YouTube and let us know that. That is fun.

I'm waiting for them to do Farsi because I do live in, like, Little Persia. And there's a lot of Farsi speakers around here, but they haven't released that language yet. There must be some French Canadians up Brian's way, right? No, I actually do have my friend, my friend, Jean-Vivre. She speaks French Canadian. I could, she calls it, like, the Newarkese of French.

Well, that's the thing, though. They have French in there. They don't have French Canadian. And so, insanely different. Like, French, actual French speakers just really go, what the fuck are you saying? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that the AirPods still may be Apple's best product in terms of just a...

You're on the Galloway train. He thinks that, too, yeah. Well, I think it's just, it's everything that Apple excels at. It's a design, it's impossible design. It does what it says it's going to do. It's aesthetically pleasing.

Frictionless. Yeah, frictionless, expensive. So, but I, you know, I love them. It is among my favorite devices, gadgets that I own.

And it's nice that I just don't have to think about them. They just work. So, yeah. Except for when they don't. That is so incredibly rare. I guess. Out of all the tools that I've had, the AirPods are the ones that don't work the least.

Yeah, I agree with that. But when I'm, like, out walking and I haven't put them in my ear yet, then I throw them in and I want to start my podcast. And all of a sudden, I have to, like, turn off Bluetooth and turn it back on again. It's really annoying. But, again, it's really annoying because they always just work. Yeah. Yeah, that's the edge case, you know.

Yeah. Yeah, I'd say I've rarely had that happen. And I'm sure it's happened, but not enough that I remember it being a thing. But, yeah, just a big fan. And these are also waterproof compared to the last ones.

So, this is the other thing. So, you can throw them in the laundry by accident and not have to buy a new pair like I did with my, like, first gen. Yeah. Well, I was wearing them in my hot tub. I was wearing them in my hot tub. With a bunch of French-Canadian chicks. Yeah, that's right. Basically, it looked like an episode of the Benny Hill show.

And, again, the sound of the jets and the bubbling water and everything just went away. That's amazing. I got to try that because when I get in my hot tub, my Apple Watch Ultra 2 tells me that the noise level is too high and that I should run for the hills because it's over the decibel range.

And if I'm there for more than half an hour, I could incur hearing loss. Yes. I get that every time I take a shower. My watch tells me it's too loud. Yes. Yeah. Somehow, water pressure and air pressure are not the same thing, I guess. Yeah. But I got to say, yeah, between the AirPods and my Apple Watch, those are my two favorite Apple devices.

I care less about the rest. But those two, I can't live without. Unfortunately, that means I have to have a phone, too. But I could honestly do without the phone anymore. They could just make it a computing puck that sticks in my pocket because I do everything else from all the other devices.

I don't have any social media on my phone anymore. I guess the camera I use, but, you know, still, it's like the rest of it's like it's kind of overkill. I'm just happy that there was a piece of consumer electronics that delighted me. Yeah. I still had the capability to delight, unexpectedly.

Like, I'll take it. Well, if you want some undelightful consumer tech, Meta's Ray-Ban glasses have come out. And, of course, we had to tie it in with Disney. Disney is testing out a futuristic way to guide visitors around its theme parks, smart glasses. The company's Imagineering team has built a prototype app for Meta's Ray-Ban glasses that acts as a personal AI tour guide.

In a demo, the glasses answered questions about rides, food, and merchandise, and even alerted a guest about short wait times or nearby characters like Winnie the Pooh. The technology relies on Meta's new wearables device access toolkit announced at its developer conference. Disney calls it an experiment with no word yet on whether it will actually roll out in the parks.

Now, this is actually good use technology. But this will not roll out in the parks purely because of cost. It's going to be too expensive to either – if they're going to pass out the glasses, it's only going to be like one of those private, super expensive – you get the personal tour guide experience for super rich people.

And super rich people are going to want the actual person who can get them on the rides without waiting in line, not glasses that just tell them where to get a good cheeseburger. And if it's going to be one of those things where you have to have your own Meta Ray-Ban glasses and we'll just provide you with an app, it's going to cost too much for them to develop the interface and the app for the limited number of people that are actually going to use it.

So it's not going to happen. I get experimenting with it. Of course they're going to experiment with it because maybe someday down the road this technology will be cheap enough that they could implement it in the park. But it's not going to come anytime soon. But what about this, Brian? What if Facebook actually subsidizes it and pays for it?

Or I'm sorry, Meta pays for it because it would be a loss leader for them to actually get their technology out there. Like I'm sure Apple pays, you know, Disney extra perks for them to make their movies compatible with their Vision Pros. Well, I mean, maybe Disney has a long history of doing that at the parks.

You don't see a lot of corporate sponsorship anymore. But if you go back into the day in like the 50s, 60s, 70s, even some of the 80s, a lot of the rides were sponsored by various, you know, Goodyear sponsored stuff and all kinds of stuff. So maybe, although at this point in time, Disney is doing a delicate dance of trying to retain their reputation along with, you know, Walt Disney's values and making a partnership with Meta would not be a step in the right direction.

Yeah, but they also just raised the price of Disney Plus by three fucking bucks at the same time where they just cost $3.8 billion in market share. So that's true. Who knows if anybody's actually thinking over there right now? They are making some strange decisions. But yeah, I just don't see it happening anytime soon.

The other thing I'll add that contrary to what you're proposing here, Brian, is that years ago, I don't know if you're familiar with the, they had like a Perry the Platypus, like Phineas and Ferb thing at Epcot, where you went around to the different countries and special things, secret things would happen.

No, I mean, because I haven't been to Disney World since I was a business. I was like in my 20s. So it's been a long time. Okay, so at Epcot, they had a thing, and it was originally, I think it was Kim Possible, where it originally started, and then they converted it to a Phineas and Ferb thing.

And they handed out little Android devices, like little phone size, basically like iPod, what's the iPod that looks like the phone, that sort of thing.

In other words, a phone without a phone. But it was really fun. And you would go around from place to place, and it would give you clues, and you'd have to do things, you'd have to ask certain people for things, and do certain things, and put in code words.

And things would happen behind the scenes that you, if you weren't playing this game, you'd have no idea that there was anything there to happen. And it was really, really fun. Like Pokemon Go. Yeah, but then, eventually, they just rolled it into an app that you can now use on your mobile device.

Yeah, shifting it to your own stuff so they don't have to pay for the tech. Yeah. Exactly. But it still works. In fact, we did it last time we were there. My youngest son was playing with it. And so, the things are still in there. They still work. So, what struck me about that the first time we did it, when they handed out the Android devices, was they just had a little cart set up.

And it said, you know, hey, play the Phineas and Ferb thing. And it was like, oh, why don't you just take this device? And they were like, yep. And it was like, do I have to sign anything? Nope. Well, but to my point, those Android devices were basically throwaway technology and incredibly cheap, unlike Meta's Ray-Ban glasses.

True. Yeah. There was no motivation to try to sneak it out of the park. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. That's a good point. And just a tangent really quickly. Phineas and Ferb, my son has just discovered that. Delightful show. Yeah. It's a lot of fun.

It really is. Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Doofenshmirtz is just… Oh, I love Dr. Doofenshmirtz. He's so funny. He's so good. So funny. Yeah. Really good. And related to what we were just talking about, a new documentary has dropped on Disney+. I guess this was an ABC special, The Happiest Story on Earth, 70 Years of Disneyland.

Dave, you are probably, I've seen almost all of this footage before, as have I. There's some new stuff in it, which makes it interesting. And it was put together really, really well. And you can see some of the sponsored stuff from back in the day in this documentary as well. But, you know, it's a Disney documentary. Why wouldn't you watch it?

Yeah. I'll check it out. Yep. And the Mandalorian and Grogu official trailer has dropped almost a year away from when we're actually going to get the movie. So thanks for that. Right. Right. Yeah. But it looks nice. It looks fun. I'm looking forward to it.

It's great to see Sigourney Weaver. That was pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I saw you guys, I was looking at the rundown for the show. I saw you guys also mention that they dropped the Wicked trailer this week as well. So I'm looking forward to that. Yeah. And it was good to see a buff hut.

A buff hut. A buff hut. A strange turn of phrase. A buff hut. Buff hut. Hey. It sounds like a diagnosis. You know. Oh, the test results came back. And unfortunately, I have to break the news to you that you have a buff hut.

I'm going to have to go watch this now. Don't take Tylenol for that. No. No. No. I saw somebody posted it and I saw it and I looked at the screenshot. I'm like, well, that helmet's wrong. So maybe this is just some AI slop that somebody threw out there.

And then Brian put it in and it was too late for me to go watch. So I got to go watch it later today. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm looking forward to it and we'll go see it. It'll be interesting. My son pointed out, like, how are they going to differentiate this as a movie versus the TV show?

How do they up their game cinematically when so much of the TV show looks so good? I just feel like it's going to feel like a long episode. That's about it. Yeah. I suspect that's, yeah. Maybe higher stakes.

We'll see. Yeah. But that's assuming you're going to see this movie, Dave, because I'm not sure you're going to have any money left after the next thing that Jason's going to tell you about. You mean the auction? Oh, yeah. That one. Yeah. I actually put this in here. Oh, you put it in. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, Jim Henson company is having a 70th anniversary auction.

Uh, it's looks to me like they, like, I don't know, Brian Henson said, why are we paying all this money for storage? Yeah. Yeah. That's by the way, how he, that's, that's why all the Farscape masters got burned because he's like, I don't feel like paying for storage for this. Let's burn them instead. So, yeah, yeah.

My, I think we lost decades of, uh, Johnny Carson's tonight shows because of that sort of thing. They didn't, nobody wanted to store the quad reels that they were all on. Uh, but this auction, uh, is details are sparse so far. They have not published the catalog.

There's going to be a coffee table version of the catalog, which I will be buying, uh, to go into my collection. But, uh, I don't know. We'll see. I mean, the thing is the Muppets themselves that are going to be selling are going to be five figures at least probably.

Oh yeah. At least. Um, so to, you know, too rich for my blood for something like that, but maybe I can get something. I don't know. We'll see. Yeah. Looks cool. I will definitely check it out. Yeah. And there is a, there, there are Farscape props there as well.

So, you know, well, wait, what am I talking about? I can't afford anything. I'm buying anything from this fucking thing, but it'll be fun to look at. We'll see what's in there. Yeah. Uh, bad news for one of your other favorite things, uh, Dave, um, the security and exchange commission alleged this, this week that retail e-commerce ventures, the company that bought radio shack out of bankruptcy in 2020 has been basically just been running a Ponzi scheme and defrauded investors out of $112 million.

Didn't we say that they were going to do that when they bought the damn thing? Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it wasn't the radio shack battery of the month club, basically a Ponzi scheme. So no, uh, yeah, this is sad. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Yeah. I mean, it's sad. It's a zombie brand. And it was weird to see all the other big stores that were kind of wrapped up in there, like linen and things and peer one imports, which I, peer one imports was, peer one imports was like my entire design scheme in college and post-college.

So those fucking rattan chairs. Yeah. And the lamp, the lamp that everybody had. I think our flatware, like our plates and bowls are all from peer one. Pretty sure.

Yeah. Uh, so I saw again earlier in the show that you all were talking about Amazon settlement with the FTC. Yes. There are $2.5 billion, uh, a billion of which is a fine and 1.5 billion is refunds to Amazon boats.

Uh, I just wanted to add a little, a few details about this that are relevant to past conversations we've had because we all, we often complain about how no one ever goes to jail and evidently that was one of the things that led Amazon to settle quickly. There were only a few days into their trial that they decided to settle that a couple of their executives were in peril of a personal liability for this.

So the scuttlebutt is that, uh, that could be why they settled so quickly. Yeah. Unfortunately, I would have preferred jail time, but I, I understand not wanting to pass up a billion dollar fine, especially with this administration. Right. Right.

And the other, someone else I saw did the math and $2.5 billion, uh, is, uh, less than a single month's worth of Amazon prime subscription revenue. So yeah, it's couch cushion money. Yep.

Pretty much. It's, it's, uh, like we say, it's coffee budget tops. Yes. So yeah. What does it say here? It says, uh, Amazon, the company takes in around $2.5 billion in sales every 33 hours. There you go. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Bring back consequences, bring back real consequences. This is what happens. These companies get beyond human scale and there's not a whole lot we can do. There's nothing you can do to them. They are legitimately too big to fail. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, finally, uh, this, uh, story that came by, uh, I saw on Reddit or did I, uh, it is

a Reddit thread about furries riding the DC Metro. This is a, an event, uh, is there second or third time, third time that they did a furry ride on the DC Metro. There are pictures and sure enough, there are.

There you are. How do you know? That's just it. We bought the mask. That's true. Damn. I do love receipts. I do love thinking about the absolute delight such a small segment of our listening audience has every time we bring up furries.

I'm thinking about people who are just minding their own business on the Metro, right? I think you see weirder things on the Metro in DC. I think you see weirder things on the Metro in DC. You do. That's true. More disturbing too. That's true. Yes. Yes, that's true. Uh, but I don't know.

I thought this was great fun. And, uh, you know, you never know. Maybe I was there. Maybe I was. You never know where Dave might pop up. You never know where I might be hiding inside of a furry suit. You just never know. I'd be anywhere. All right.

Well, that's what I've got. Hang in there, gentlemen. We'll try. I hope next week we're just going to be dissecting the entire Jim Henson auction. That's, that's just my hope. That's fine with me. Yeah. I, I don't know. Did you guys mention, uh, next week's, uh, big, uh, uh, uh, secretary of defense.

Oh, I'm sorry. Secretary of war, uh, calling everyone home for the big military meeting next week. Yeah. We'll see if there's a show next week. We didn't mention it, but, uh, could be the start of who knows. It's a bit weird. Uh, it is very weird. Uh, what's the mood like there after that got announced?

It's well, it's just so weird. Like, why would you be calling all of your top military people from their very important jobs all over the world and insist that they be there in person? Allegiances.

Push up contest. Ice cream social. Right. And obviously, you know, the, there are many, many conspiracy theories for what this could be about, but the, the thing I'm having trouble imagining is what the non-conspiratorial reason for a gathering like this would be.

And I, that I do not have an answer yet. I don't think it's just them getting together to, you know, Hey, everybody, we bought pizza and, uh, it's a Bob's birthday. We all got to sign the card. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, um, why would you make it public? Uh, well.

Why would you let anybody know? I have so many questions about so many things that are done on a daily basis, Jason. I would want to be as far away from that meeting as possible, preferably under about 800 feet of concrete. Yeah. I mean, and, and to, to your point, I mean, it's a security risk.

Yeah, absolutely. But we've had so many of those. We, we just at the, what was it at the Charlie Kirk thing? It was the president, the vice president, and like three levels down the chain of command all in the same place. That's not supposed to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Well, at least it was a dignified affair.

Oh yes, of course. Merch, baby. Spark machines and so on and so forth. Yeah. You know, it would, it was going to be private, but he just posted it to telegram and that just everybody found out. Well, it's a big enough meeting that there's no way it's not going to leak whatever is going on in there, but, um, I don't know.

I'm, I have to admit, I'm a bit anxious about what it could possibly be. And, uh, hopefully I'm overthinking it and it turns out to be nothing, but, um, it's just so weird. That's the thing. It's just so weird. So welcome to 2025.

It's just so weird. That's right. That's right. All right. Well, thanks gents. I will see you next time. Hopefully. Yeah. Over at Patreon, we've got new patron, Christina.

Thank you very much. And count squeakula up their, uh, pledge. Appreciate that. And also we'd like to thank Ashley, Matthew, Edgar, Hillary, Mattintosh, Ray, Matt, Mark, Jess, and Lon. Thank you all so much. Thank you. Thank you.

Over at PayPal, we've got Tom, Joseph, Jen's, Dennis with a $25 contribution and Juergen throwing us the big 50 bucks. Thank you all so much. Over at the tip jar, we've got Ross and Jennifer. And as our standard begging you, pleading you for anything that you could empty your pockets with, please go to GOG.show slash donate to send us whatever you can.

And if you go to patreon.com slash GOG, you can sign up to help the show out for as little as $3 a month to get the show early, ad free, and in high definition. And if you sign up for the whole year, you get a discount. And somebody asked us on email this week, who, uh, whose money that comes out of if you pay for the whole year?

Well, ours. Patreon just said, yeah, we're going to give you a discount, but it's coming out of your cut. So yeah, Patreon doesn't, uh, doesn't take the shave. We do. No, no, no, we do. But you know what? We take it. I don't care. It doesn't matter. Yeah. I don't care if it's easier for you. We appreciate it.

And you can even go up to gold monkey level and beyond. That is to get the show early, ad free, and like I said, high definition. So no merch sales this week. We're still kind of hammering out that problem with, oh, pesky tariffs and international shipping and stuff like that. So that'll be, that should be fixed by the time this air.

So go buy a t-shirt or a mug. I'm pretty sure, uh, Palantir sorted that problem out. Although I doubt anybody out of the U.S. is buying their gear. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Uh, and we did get a lovely note from Gerald that I'm not going to read, but thank you so much for writing in.

Appreciate it. I'm glad you enjoyed the show. I'm very glad you enjoyed the show. Thank you much, Gerald. And that's all I got. That's really it. So until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 715.

Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at GOG.show slash donate. Every penny helps keep the show on the air. And we mean that from the bottom of our hearts. Love the show? Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends and foes and everyone in between, and we'll love you for it.

Swing by GOG.show to join our Discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts, feedback, and cool links? Hit us up at GOG.show slash contact. And hey, don't forget to leave a five-star review at GOG.show slash review, and we'll read it on the air. Oh, and guess what? We've got that aforementioned merch.

Stag your grumpy gear now at shop.GOG.show. Stay grumpy. 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.