747: Why We Sigh

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. Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show where we discuss the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Brian, we're just laughing because I had to do, I had to sigh before we start the show because I'm like, here we go again. My kid has picked up on the fact that I sigh a lot and he's actually started calling me out on it.

And I was just like, he's like, Dad, why? You're always sighing. Why are you always sighing? And I kind of just go, look around. The desperation of the universe. Have you heard the news? Oh, wait. No, I hide you. I hide the news from you. Yeah. You are protected, my son, my little Padawan.

You do not get to see the shit that we have to do so you can have food on the table. Well, at least that your mom has to do to get food on the table. Brian, just not so much. I just do this podcast and sigh a lot because I read all this awful news. Yeah, I know. I know. It's kind of it.

It's a, it is a strange thing. I enjoy my time sitting here and talking with you, Jason. I absolutely loathe prep and I feel dirty. Everything except what we do right now for the next 90 minutes sucks. Yeah.

Prep for the show, post-processing the show, posting the show, making the shorts, talking on socials, all that stuff. I do like my time on Discord, though, because I like all our Discord fans. I have fun there. I actually do have that. Don't forget living in the universe in which we discuss. That's the other problem.

Yeah, we have to live in the world on all the stories that we talk about. And I was thinking about this this morning, like we're on episode 747 and things have changed so much since episode one. It was such a more innocent time when tech bros were just kind of quirky nerds who just had too much money.

Now they're masters of the fucking universe trying to literally be in some, some aspects of it. It's just like, oh, I'm so tired. I'm so tired. It's exhausting. On that note, we've got two new shirts coming this week. The first one I sent you a copy of yesterday, the Destroy the Broligarchy shirt.

What did you think of that one? It was very interesting. I'm sure it'll do well. Yes, it's very punk rock. I wanted it to be, I wanted it to be kind of like an exploited album cover, but with the most vile people that we have to talk about every week on the show. My shirt was the subtle version.

You went, you went, you know, full on. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's the difference between us. That's why I'm like, you go do the heady version and I'm going to do the punch you in the fucking face version. That's the difference between us, you know? And you outsell me about 10 to 1. So that's cool. Oh, hey, you know, whatever, whatever gets, whatever keeps the, the, the spice flowing as they say.

Keep on buying it. It doesn't matter. Yeah. So, yeah, it's, I've got, yeah, that shirt and we've got another 50s kind of, or 40s, 30s, I don't know, noir type of shirt with rockets taking off and us looking very, hmm. I hope Elon's on that rocket looking at it, you know?

I think they're cool. I think they're cool. So that's coming this week. Now, Brian, I, this came across my, my desk and I was like, hmm, this is interesting. Because I follow the EFF in my, my news reader and the article was titled, The Science is Not Settled, How Weak Evidence is Fueling a National Push to Ban Social Media for Youth.

Now, this has been a topic for us for, I don't know, the past two, three years, obviously. And basically what they're saying is that the science doesn't really line up with the science that everybody is being fed, mostly because of Jonathan Haidt's book and the Anxious Generation that we both read and we both enjoyed, I believe.

But it's being touted as, you know, that's the de facto scientific standard for all of these hearings across the globe now. It's not just here in the U.S., you know, it's Australia. It's very little in the U.S. It's everywhere else except for the U.S. That's the problem, yes. But apparently a lot of his studies in that book have kind of been debunked, which is interesting.

Not, not, not, not maybe even so much debunked, but there has not been a lot of peer reviewed cases that have backed up some of the studies in the book. But that book is being shown as the, you know, de facto standard about why kids are sucking so much these days. Now, as we're getting older, Brian, I think kids are going to suck more as we get older.

That's just the that's the way life works. You know, get off my fucking lawn, kids. But they have a very interesting point. They say the bigger risk is that blanket blanket bans threaten young people's. Me talk pretty one day. It is early that they threaten young people's speech, privacy and access to community, especially LGBTQ plus and marginalized youth.

And they say a better path is digital wellness education. Teach algorithms, cyberbullying, privacy, self-regulation and prepare kids for the Internet instead of pretending we can unplug 2026. See, there's it's a 50 50 argument there because the science might not be right.

But anecdotally, I just watched two fucking stupid kids shoot up San Diego this week. Well, who comes straight from that side of things. It's like, I don't care what you're going to teach them. There's still, as Chris Rock would say, whatever happened to crazy.

So we need to kind of cut the wheat from the chaff type of thing. But I think it deserves further study. What do you think, Brian? I'm going to put on my care swisher, even though you have the hair. Yeah. Crisis of manhood. The dog.

Don't talk about your dick, Brian. I've totally stopped listening to them. So I don't even have any up to date references on them. I'm sure they're doing the same shtick. Let's let's I still listen. I listen to them every way. I listen to them this morning. I still listen to it just because I need to know. I have I have a need to know. It is exactly the fucking same.

You're right. I mean, I do have a lot of thoughts about that. And as somebody who is raising a kid in this environment and as as an adult that grew up on the onset of technology, the very beginnings of this, you know, BBSs and dial up modems and all that sort of stuff.

You know, the very beginning of this kind of mass connection to people that that's what I grew up with. And and now I have a child and I'm trying to try to raise a child in this world where everything that we kind of grew up with is just, I mean, a thousandfold, a millionfold stronger, crazier, more in your face, more.

Well, then they figured out they figured out the algorithms and the addictive aspects of it and and they're playing on it and they're they're doing it on purpose. Now, I 100 percent agree that we should have digital wellness education. We should be teaching algorithms, cyberbullying, privacy, self-regulation, media studies, all of those sorts of things that should, you know, we've gotten rid of so many things in school.

But the fact that we haven't put that in is ridiculous. It's my kid had a media studies class. Thank God for that. I want them to do more of that sort of stuff. He's a little bit young in terms of like they're obviously talking more about teenagers and things of that nature here.

My kid's a bit young for that and we wouldn't give him access to any of this stuff anyways. But anecdotally, you don't get more anecdotal than my own house. I know when my kid has had too much screen time and that's just like games and things of that nature.

And we let him text with his friends and stuff like that. So he's doing that with his iPad and they have iPads. There's no doubt when he's had too much time on the screen. He becomes an asshole. He reverts. He becomes really insular. He stops listening and he stops answering questions that we're asking him.

And it takes there's almost like a cool off period that he needs after he's gotten off the devices and spent too much time on them before he becomes a normal human being again. So there's zero doubt in my mind that this stuff affects people. This stuff affects adults.

Oh, yeah. Of course it's affecting kids and whose synapses and neurons are just starting to make all the connections that will carry them into being hopefully well-adjusted members of society. So I don't care if the math's not mathing. There's no doubt that this stuff needs to be regulated.

There is no place to have phones in schools. There is no place to have kids on Instagram 24-7 a day. I don't care what Lefcist, I still read Lefcist all the time. I don't care that Lefcist says, oh, you should get everybody should be on TikTok because if you're not on TikTok, you don't have your finger on the pulse of the world.

That's where everything's happening now. No, fuck you. Yeah, fuck you, Bob. Fuck you. Fuck you, Bob. Fuck you, Bob. My kid does not need to be on TikTok. I do not need to be on TikTok. And I was going to lead into this after I did my next story, but I'm just going to do it now.

This morning, I left the house, Jason, like it was 1990. I had to go to the U.S. consulate here to renew my kid's passport because you have to do it every five years if they're under 18. You have to do it in person because they're worried about trafficking and fraud and all that sort of stuff.

So whatever. I had to go to the consulate. No digital devices. So no watch. No phone. No AirPods. No nothing. No e-readers. No Kindles. No nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I left the house with my wallet and keys like I was heading off to my fucking college course.

Walking in just your drawers. That's it. I'm here. I didn't have my Tumblr full of white Russian like I usually do. My go-to was a large Slurpee, like the big gulp cups. Yeah. But it was half Mad Dog 2020 lemon lime and half lemon lime Slurpee.

That's how I went to college every day. Yeah. So it was strange to be cut off for like the first time in many, many years. Did you get the twitches? Did you get like shaky? No. It was actually good. I mean, I guess it was helpful that I was with my wife and kid and like arguably I spent enough time around them fucking already.

But it was, you know, we talked and we looked around and we joked and just had some downtime. And it was strange looking around because it was early in the morning. So there were kids on public transport going to school.

There were adults going to work. All zombies. All zombies looking at their phone. And my God, if you wanted to get into a career right now, I would look into massage and any kind of chiropractic because everybody is hunched. Everybody is hunched over like this on their phone, on transit, everywhere.

And being disconnected from that and away from it was so almost liberating. I think I'm not going to say I'm going to leave my house with my phone because that's never going to fucking happen unless I absolutely have to. But I'm more cognizant of it. And I'm going to continue to be that perhaps the phone stays in the pocket.

And I just look at my watch if I get a ting. And if I don't need to get my phone out when I'm out and about in public, I will not get my phone out. Good luck. Good luck, Brian. We know how that ends. We know how that ends. I know. But every now and then you need the reminder and you try to do well for a little bit, I guess.

And that's what I'm going to shoot for again right now, because it was alarming to see that everybody is just staring at their phone all the time now. Yeah. And I think, you know, when we did grow up, we did not have the connection that the internet gives us today.

You know, it wasn't until I was like 16 or something that Prodigy even showed up. So and maybe a little later than that. But I was trying to think on the on the I was asking my wife, too. I was like, when did you what what year did we actually get cell phones? Because I remember I had a pager and that was after college.

I don't think I got a cell phone until I was mid to late, probably maybe late 20s. OK. I don't even know. I had cell phones around 23, but I'm older than you.

So, yeah. Yeah. I know. I know I had a cell phone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And because I although I drove across the country in my Ford Escort out in the middle of nowhere and there was no back then there was no like, you know, inner like, you know, interstate cell system.

So in the middle of Nebraska at three in the morning, if I if I ran off the road into a ditch, I was dead. That's it. Yeah. You know, that was the Wild West for me. It's just like everything I owned was in the car. I'm driving. It's the middle of the night. The road is so empty. I got out, took a leak and looked up at the Milky Way and I'm like, this is cool.

Can't do that anymore. But but I think that I think that our lack of connection in the old days when we were growing up gave us a respect for the Internet that said, hey, when we get to talk to everybody like this, when we connect the world, that gave us that glowy eyed pink cloud.

Oh, my God. This is going to open up so much communication for the world and the Internet's going to be the greatest thing ever. And it's going to usher in this new era of global communication. All of human knowledge at our fingertips. Yeah. And then we took it away and replaced it with you should put glue on your pizza and boner pills.

Yes. Lots of. I don't know if you've noticed, Brian, the new thing is not boner pills on Instagram. I am inundated now with these videos of guys saying you've masturbated yourself into a limp dick. Here are the exercises that you must do now in your 50s to get a boner again.

I'm like, well, well, I like the pill version better because I didn't have to actually sweat then. What the fuck's up with that? I don't know if you've seen those yet, but I am just slammed with those now. Now it's boner exercises is the new the new you know what boner exercises and the new chair yoga. That's it.

I guess we should probably get on to some news. We've been rambling on for 15 minutes. That's true. OK, just really quickly on the same sort of subject. Snap and YouTube have reportedly reached a settlement in a major lawsuit with the Kentucky school district just weeks ahead of a trial. Bloomberg reports the case is one of several around the country that have alleged that social media companies have harmed students through addictive apps, though the Kentucky case is one of several both companies are facing, has been closely watched as it was the first scheduled for trial.

Meta and TikTok are also defendants in the lawsuit. YouTube said the case had been amicably resolved and the company would continue working on an age appropriate products. Snap also described the settlement as amicable. In other words, we know it's true. That's why we're paying you money. Right.

Snap gets ahead of it. They're smart. They get ahead of it and usually pay. That's why they're not, you know, generally defendants. But I don't know how much money they have left because who the fuck uses Snap anymore? I don't know. But they also opted to settle another high profile social media addiction lawsuit in Los Angeles shortly thereafter.

Meta, which continues to argue that social media addiction is not real, was also recently ordered to pay a three hundred and seventy five million dollar fine after losing a major civil trial in New Mexico over its safety practices. So maybe the math isn't there or maybe the science isn't there, but the lawsuits are certainly seeming to go the way of, yes, these things are addictive on purpose and not good for us.

Yep. Yep. OK, so this is a follow up to last week's episode where we talked about the woman getting booed in her in her address, her commencement speech address when she mentioned A.I. There seems to be a trend, Brian.

The kids are not liking the A.I. No. Former Google Air CEO Eric Schmidt was booed during a University of Arizona commencement speech after praising the promise of A.I. in encouraging graduates to embrace it, highlighting growing public black backlash against the technology.

Yes. Nobody wants to hear billionaires talk about how awesome A.I. is anymore or anybody talk about how awesome A.I. is anymore, especially in a commencement speech when you just got out of college and you have decades of student debt to pay and they're saying, well, A.I.

is going to take your job. They're like, well, I haven't even gotten a job yet that it can take. Fuck you. So read the room, people. Read the room. By the room, we're starting to mean the entire planet. The planet. Yes.

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One more time, that's joindeliteme.com slash GOG, code GOG. Saturday, September 26th, two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide, Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero.

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

Sign up now at DAZN.com. In the news. Well, the Elon Musk Open AI trial is over. Brian, it was basically dismissed.

The twat waffle lost to the bag of deplorables. So, big shocker there. Moving on is pretty much it. Elon screwed up and he didn't check the statute of limitations for what he was trying to do. So, it's like you wasted everybody's time.

Everybody's time. Everybody's news cycle. Very good at that. All the coverage that I've read about this is nobody look good. They're all jerks. Well, yeah. We knew that. We do this show every week. We knew that. Yes. But now they have proof.

It is in the court record and the public record that they are twat waffles and deplorables. But their bums are cushy. Yes, they are. They do have comfy bums, as we learned. Thanks, Wired. God damn. The SpaceX IPO is everywhere right now.

So, I don't want to go through all of it because it's being covered everywhere. It is a bad investment if you have not read the news, but you'll find out that it's a bad investment. Here's the thing. I would have invested immediately in SpaceX if SpaceX would have went public as just SpaceX.

Right. As soon as he rolled it into all of his other bullshit, no thank you. Yep. That's pretty much what everybody's saying. So, SpaceX has finally filed for its IPO and buried in the paperwork was a fun little detail. The company plans to spend nearly $3 billion on those lovely mobile gas turbines to keep its AI data centers running.

Those are the ones that they're being sued for by the NAACP down in Memphis. Yeah. So, they're just saying, fuck you guys. We're going to keep doing it. Fuck the planet. Fuck everything. Yep. Also, you know, since they have all of – this is the funny part.

They're buying billions of dollars worth of, you know, turbines to run the data centers for Grok, which nobody wants. Nobody wants Grok. So, it says in the SpaceX IPO filing that Grok might be a giant legal and PR dumpster fire.

The company warned investors that Grok's spicy image mode and unhinged voice personality could generate deepfakes, explicit content, misinformation, harassment, copyright violations, and other delightful side effects. And regulators are already investigating allegations tied to non-consensual deepfakes involving minors in the same chatbot that famously went full MechaHitler.

We all remember MechaHitler. And this is the fucked up part, Brian. This is the really fucked up part when you read the numbers. SpaceX claims a completely normal and definitely not delusional $28.5 trillion market opportunity, even though the company lost nearly $5 billion last year.

I mean, that's straight up AI company math. It is. They're all basically claiming – well, I mean, this one's a little bit more ridiculous, but it's only a matter of scale. Yeah, that's it, you know. Yeah. Their IPO claim only has a couple of those gas turbines hooked up to it compared to the other ones.

Yep. And so they did get the government contract for $200 million, $200 million, which $200 million is like pocket change nowadays for all of these guys. But the way that they're making money now, as we discussed last week, is Anthropic is actually going to start paying SpaceX to lease out the Colossus data centers because nobody fucking wants Grok, which SpaceX now owns.

I would like to point out to everybody that is still thinking that Anthropic is the good company. Let me remind you that that $15 billion a year for data center access, those data centers are being run by the gas turbines that are destroying the planet. Yes, and the entire black population outside of Memphis.

So, yeah, there's that. There's that, Brian. And I don't know if you saw the AOC congressional hearing the other day with the EPA, and she was showing the drinking water after Meta moved in and built a data center. It was basically just sludge. Yeah.

Oh, there's so much going on with these things, and it's just not good. It's not good. And, yeah, Anthropic is just as evil as open AI. They just – they have better PR at this point. I made one or two good decisions. Yeah, that's it. And they got them a lot of PR. And they're still running by – none of these people are going to make money.

There's going to be a reckoning real soon, real fucking soon. And we've seen it. I even got an email this week from Google saying that they're going to start using token-based pricing for Gemini. And I'm like, okay, well, out of all the companies that can afford to not do that, they're like, well, why would we not do it if everybody else is doing it and we can make some money back?

Because we're still losing gajillions of dollars, but we make katrillions of dollars, so I guess it doesn't matter. It's a wash. Anyway, it's a fucking mess. Don't buy SpaceX. No. This is not financial advice. This is common sense. That's all it is. Anecdotally, we would say.

Anecdotally, we should not do that. You should not do that. The only profitable part of SpaceX is Starlink. And Starlink is wrapped in Elon drawers. Dirty Elon drawers. So Trump Mobile, amazingly back in the news this week because they have cleared the incredibly high bar, Brian, of, wait for it, existing.

They shipped a phone. They actually shipped a phone to some people. Yes. After promising a made-in-America gold smartphone back in 2025, Don Jr. and Eric Trump finally shipped the T1 nearly nine months late. And experts say it's basically a repackaged Taiwanese HTC phone with a gold paint job and specs closer to a bargain bin Walmart Android.

Wait, so it's not made in America? No, Brian, it's not. Oh, imagine that. No. It is conceived of by the brilliant minds of Americans, but it is not made in America, which we all knew was the case because you can't make a cell phone in America.

That's right. So highlights include a headphone jack straight out of 2012 and an American flag logo with the wrong number of stripes, which feels pretty on brand. So the phone apparently works, which shocked a lot of people.

It does come with TrueSocial pre-installed. Go figure that one out. But, unfortunately, the celebration lasted about five minutes before reports surfaced that Trump Mobile may have exposed customer data online, including addresses and phone numbers. So apparently the phone exists, but their OPSEC does not.

Well, that's also pretty on brand. Yeah. I think, you know what, it's the cyber truck of cell phones. It is. It is. And speaking of cyber trucks, let's talk about Tesla's robo-taxis for a second. Newly unredacted data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration suggests that at least two Tesla robo-taxi crashes that have happened since July 2025 occurred while vehicles were being remotely driven by teleoperators.

You know, the people that are supposed to be there to make sure the crashes don't happen. Right. They're your safety net. So apparently they're really bad at GTA 6. Oh, wait. GTA 6 isn't out yet. Oh, never mind. All self-driving car companies are supposed to report crashes to the NHTSA, but up until this point, Tesla has asked the regulators to redact portions of its data to protect confidential business information.

Yeah, right. Both crashes occurred in Austin, Texas, where Tesla first started offering robo-taxi rides in June 2025, and both happened while a safety monitor was behind the wheel and no passengers were on board. So, safety monitor behind wheel, teleoperators leaping in, still crashing the cars.

Wow. That's pretty, pretty bad. In one of the July 2025 crashes, TechCrunch writes, after a safety monitor requested assistance, a remote operator took over, increased the speed of the robo-taxi, and then drove it up the curb and made contact with a metal fence. In another from January 2026, a remote operator assumed control and made contact with a temporary barricade for a construction site.

At approximately 10 miles an hour. Okay. I mean, we're not, we're not talking like, you know, Blues Brothers, you know, end of the movie crashes or anything like that, but it's still. But still. The point of, yeah. I, you know why, because they have no LiDAR.

You know, you can't, you can't tell distance when you're a tele, you know, teleoperator looking at it on a screen. There's no depth perception. Maybe they should get them those metaglasses, the, the oculuses, maybe. Oh. But, nah. And not all of the crashes have involved teleoperators.

There are at least two crashes where Tesla robo-taxis accidentally clipped mirrors on other vehicles. In another instance, a robo-taxi ran over a dog. Thankfully, the dog survived. They're also struggling to overcome other operational issues. A reporter using the service in Dallas on a recent Monday afternoon spent nearly two hours to take what typically would be a 20-minute drive from the campus of South Methodist University to Dallas City Hall, about five miles on a major freeway.

They've also noted multiple instances where robo-taxis would drop off riders 15 minutes away from their destination, despite their desired drop-off point being in Tesla's cover area, coverage area. So, yeah, sure, self-driving cars, yeah, just around the corner.

No problems. Yep. No problems here. And Waymo will still drive you into the ocean if you let it. All right, let's change, let's change tax a little bit here. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, says it's coming after insider trading on prediction markets like Polymarket, where traders have been making suspiciously well-timed bets on wars, coups, and geopolitical events.

Let's not forget the temperature in Paris. That's right. That's right. Everybody get the hairdryer. Yeah, I saw a thing this week, Brian, where, like, they were talking about how, like, hairstyles have not changed much in quite some time. Everybody's wearing the same hairstyles.

I believe that you will appreciate this one. It is because we banned Aquanet. I think that's the problem. Aquanet was awesome. I don't care if it was... I couldn't do my Robert Smith hairdo if I wanted to. I know, I know. Bring back the dippity-doo. I used to wear that shit.

God. So CFTC Chairman Michael Selig told Wired the agency is using AI tools to analyze massive amounts of trading data and identify suspicious activity, even on offshore platforms, access through VPNs and crypto wallets. The crackdown follows several high-profile cases, including a trader who reportedly made more than $400,000 betting on the capture of former Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, shortly before U.S. forces intervened.

Another wave of suspicious bets appeared ahead of a U.S.-Iran ceasefire announcement. Despite the Trump administration easing pressure on prediction markets and investors tied to Donald Trump Jr. backing Polymarket, regulators say they are now aggressively monitoring global betting activity for market abuse.

Sure. Sure you are. Well, I think that they are probably starting to attempt to, at least a little bit, because the pushback has been so great. They're not doing it out of the goodness of their heart. They're doing it because they realize they're going to get sued out of existence if they don't. Because you know what?

They didn't... The check's not big enough. They didn't write their payoff check yet. Yeah. That's why Sam Bankman-Fried's still in jail. Polymarket cut the right-sized check. Nobody would bother them. Well, they are starting to get a little bit bothered. Minnesota is the latest state to try and curtail the activities of prediction markets like Calci and Polymarket.

Governor Tim Waltz signed a bill that included a number of public safety provisions, including a ban on those markets operating within the state. These are slated to take effect on August 1st, but they are, unfortunately, already facing challenges. That's what happens when the entire government is in bed with these businesses.

Three of the states that have embarked on legal cases against these businesses were sued by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which claims that it only has the power to oversee prediction markets. So you see, on one hand, they say they're doing something about it, but on the other hand, they're stopping people from doing anything about it.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. The federal regulator has also hopped onto the Minnesota law, but rather than making the same case, its argument is that the law would prevent weather-related predictions made by farmers to hedge against crop losses. That's why we can let people bet on the end of the world crop markets.

Oh, God. NBR has reported that an updated version of the bill, with an exception for the agricultural application, is likely to be approved. What fucking timeline do we live in, Brian? I don't know. I don't know. See, the farmers can't make money off of their crops, so they're going to bet on their crops failing.

So maybe they just won't water their crops because they're going to make more money on the polymarket bet than they would have if they had actually finished making their crops and selling them at market. That makes a whole lot of sense. This is the world. This is why we sigh, Jason.

This is why we sigh. This is why we sigh. Why we sigh. Speaking of sighing, I sigh any time I go on LinkedIn. As we've all known, LinkedIn has been a fucking veritable shithole for ages, full of fucking new age hucksters and bullshit fucking business MBA asshole shit wipes.

Gary VD, the most common sexually transmitted disease on LinkedIn. But they've also been on the front lines of the AI slopademic recently. Now the company is taking new steps to reduce the reach of posts that bear the hallmarks of AI-generated drivel. In a blog post, the company's VP of product, Laura Lorenzetti, said the changes will target everything from outright engagement bait to recycled thought leadership and other generic content that lacks the authenticity and originality.

Basically, the way LinkedIn's always been, except now written by bots instead. This is a particularly interesting approach for them to take, considering they've been pushing their own AI writing platforms on LinkedIn that will write your posts for you.

You're shitting me, right? No, of course not. The platform offers a bunch of its own generative AI tools, including a big rewrite with AI button and its post composer. So we're going to crack down on the AI slop that we've forced you to start using anyways to get any engagement.

Great. Again, why we sigh. Why we sigh. Jesus Christ. And speaking of attempting to avoid AI slop, Spotify is launching verification badges for podcasts to help authenticate creator identity and likeness.

Now, do you think we need one? Fuck no. Wouldn't AI do fucking shit like this? No, it fucking wouldn't. That's way too many fucks. Yep. M-M-Fuck. Most obvious use case for this is to help listeners find real podcasts amid a sea of AI slop.

And if you remember a couple of weeks ago, we talked about the fact that I, what was it, like almost a third of all new podcasts are now, no, two thirds? One third, two thirds? It's thousands and thousands a day. Yeah. It's ridiculous. Yes, there's a bunch of AI slop podcasts out there. So we can go on now, Jason, and get it verified by Spotify badge, which is accompanied by a light green checkmark icon, making our real deal podcast much easier to spot while perusing.

Great. Except nobody listens to us on Spotify. So I don't give a shit. This is also, of course, what they've already done with music. So they're just pushing that onto their podcasts as well now. Great. That's just what I wanted. Mm-hmm. I don't even know if I have a Spotify account anymore.

I may have an account, but I haven't had it installed on anything in so long. But yeah. The disco ball thing was what was making the rounds this week, which is why I thought you had this story in here. Because everybody was like, is that really the thing that you're going with, the Spotify disco ball? They're like, man. I didn't even know it was a disco ball.

I thought it was like model lizard skin or something. It's so stupid looking. It's so bad. It's so ugly. Because it was made by AI. I'm sure it was not made by a human. I'm looking at it right now. It is just, what the, okay, I guess. It's fucking atrocious. If you're going for a disco ball, don't make it green.

It's horrible. Yeah. Anyways. All right. Meta just axed 8,000 employees, about 10% of the company. While reassigning another 7,000 people to AI projects. And Mark Zuckerberg says, not to worry. Be happy. Because there probably won't be another mass firing for at least seven whole months.

So reassuring. Goody, goody. Goody, goody. Meanwhile, Meta is reportedly tracking employee clicks, keystrokes, and mouse movements to train AI agents designed to do those same jobs. So he's apparently thinking that it's going to take seven months to train that new LLM.

And then he's going to start kicking people out. So workers are essentially being forced to train their own replacements while management hangs motivational posters about the future. I think that they should go back to, I have seen some propaganda posters, some old Nazi propaganda posters about Jews digging their graves while the Nazis are sitting over them with their guns pointed at them.

So when they're done digging their graves, they're going to shoot them and put them in their graves. This is basically the same kind of thing. So, you know, Meta employees, feel free to take that, run it through LLM, make your posters and hang those up around the campus instead of whatever pussy shit you're doing now.

I definitely would be doing that if I were working there. Oh, absolutely. I never would have taken a job there. We've been offered one, to be fair. Yeah. We aged out. We aged. We turned 40, or at least I turned 40 right when they were on a big hiring binge. And they're like, yeah, we don't want you. I'm like, I would have probably taken the job if they offered back then.

Because back then, remember, it was a kinder, gentler Zuck. That's true. So much a robot. But more than 1,500 employees have already signed petitions against the surveillance program. And I have an idea, Brian. I have an idea. So, you know, they're tracking mouse movements and everything you're doing.

Get a hand massager. One of those, you know, things that vibrate your hands. Use that when you're moving your mouse around your screen. So you're just introducing massive amounts of noise to the mouse movement. Single-to-noise ratio, people. Flood the zone with shit, as Steve Bannon would say.

So, come on, guys. I'm giving you options here. I'm giving you options to our friends at Meta. I don't even know if anybody that works at Meta has ever listened to this show. I don't know. But as Gandalf says, I'm trying to help you. We are. Well, OpenAI has signed deals with fintech startups, tech giants, and even Disney.

But it's breaking new ground by announcing the world's first partnership with the country of Malta. Right. In a post on its website, OpenAI said that it would provide chat GPT Plus for one year to every Maltese resident or citizen. Malta is the first country to launch a partnership of this scale because we refuse to let our citizens stay behind in the digital age.

Silvio Schembri, Malta's Minister for Economy, Enterprise, and Strategic Projects, said in the statement, We are putting our people at the very forefront of global change by letting them rewrite emails. For the approximately... Summarizing meeting notes. Yes. For the approximately 574,250 residents living in Malta, they'll have to complete a course...

That's not approximately. That is specific. That's pretty specific. That's really fucking specific. Look, we don't know how many people were born or died since this was written. Oh, this is true. This is true. Yes. Yes. Okay. They'll have to complete a course developed by the University of Malta before launching the ChatGPT Plus subscription, which costs $20 a month in the U.S.

Now, that idea I like. However, I do not know what the syllabus is for this course, and I would like to see that before I fully sign off on this. But I think, again, education is a massive part of all of this. And rather than just giving your entire country carte blanche access to a goddamn ChatGPT, teach them what it is.

Teach them to be... Yeah. Teach them about hallucinations. Teach them that they need to check the work. Teach them all of that stuff. Yeah, instead of giving your children loaded handguns, at least teach them where the safety is. Exactly. So we have an inn in Malta, so we're going to find out.

We have a spy in Malta, so we will hear how this goes, hopefully. Now, Brian, it was crypto week in my newsreader, so I'm going to run through these real quick. We're bringing back Crypto Corner. I don't know if that was ever, ever a segment that we had.

It was more like criminal money corner or something like that. But do you remember when we did the fireside convention in our conference up in Canada to a room full of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young people who were so happy about crypto?

And the first thing out of our mouth was, crypto is shit. And I always wonder how many of those people lost their shirts since then and whatever. But that was such a fun... They didn't like that. They did not like that. That kind of... We didn't read the room on that one.

But we were right. We were right and we were ripped, by the way. God, we were drunk. It was so much fun. I had so much fun at that conference. Anyway, Bitcoin Depot, one of the largest crypto ATM operators in North America, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and shut down its entire network of more than 9,000 kiosks across the U.S., Canada, and Australia.

The company says increasing state regulations and legal pressure made its business model unsustainable. Hold on a second. You're telling me... You're telling me your business model collapsed because it was illegal?

Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Oh, fuck you. I'm so fucking sick of these assholes. The collapse comes as multiple states crack down on crypto ATMs over fraud concerns.

Attorneys general in Massachusetts and Iowa have sued Bitcoin Depot, alleging the company knowingly facilitated scams, removed fraud protections, and overcharged customers. Those are features, not bugs. Features. Exactly. Massachusetts officials claim residents lost more than $10 million through scams tied to the machines because ransomware is the only reason that these things existed.

These are part of our portfolio of services. Yep. Evil as a service. Remember that episode? Go back and look it up. This is so grandmas could go and so they could unfreeze pictures of their grandchildren that had been frozen by these fucking ransomware assholes.

And then wouldn't even unlock the computer for them. So, but they would take their money and then what did they use? Bitcoin ATMs. So, yeah. Fuck these guys. Bye-bye. Moving on, Brian. You got another one. This just brought me back to the days of NFTs because it's so fucking stupid.

A blockchain hardware company called PuffPaw is promoting a cannabis vape pen called Good Trip, spelled G-U-D-T-R-I-P, that offers users small amounts of Bitcoin as part of a loyalty program, raising concerns about the growing overlap between crypto gamification and addictive products.

The vape pen currently sold only in California includes roughly $2 to $3 in Bitcoin that users unlock through an app using QR codes or NFC. The company says the reward is issued up front and not tied to how much someone vapes, despite earlier marketing that claimed every hit earns crypto.

Wow. There's no gray area there. There's no gray area at all. You suck our pen, you get some crypto. That's what they said. And they're saying, no, that was misconstrued. It's like the world's oldest profession. You suck this, you get this. Good point.

Good point. The app also tracks puff seconds and daily streaks, which critics argue still encourages habit formation. Addiction researchers warned the system could normalize or incentivize excessive cannabis use. The controversy comes amid broader criticism of crypto-based apps and prediction markets that increasingly blur the line between entertainment, finance, gambling, and behavioral manipulation, a.k.a. why we sigh.

And in case you think it's just that, let me quickly launch my ESPN app. ESPN, sports provider, provides news and information about games that are coming up. Oh, look, the betting odds for today's game. You've got to be kidding me.

I thought Disney owned ESPN. No, right here in the ESPN app, right next to the Dodgers. Here we go. Oh, yes. Look, I can click on a link that'll give me the betting odds for the game. Wow.

Okay. Great. ThorChain, a decentralized crypto exchange protocol that enables cross-chain token swaps, halted trading after a suspected exploit drained roughly $11 million in crypto assets. Accessed across at least nine blockchains.

Security researchers trace the attack to a compromised Asgard vault tied to ThorChain threshold signature system, which manages cross-chain liquidity. Stolen assets included Bitcoin, Ethereum-based tokens, Dogecoin, Litecoin, XRP, and others. Where's Mjolnir coin?

If we're going to go with the- Strange thing is somebody returned all the Dogecoin because I was like, what the fuck am I supposed to do with this crap? Exactly. Dogecoin. Yeah, no shit. So, yep, more, more. At least people still feel that crypto is worth stealing is, you know, kind of the point there.

And now let's get to the point of why we talk about crypto for criminals. Iran is reportedly launching a Bitcoin-based insurance program for ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, expanding on earlier plans to charge Bitcoin tolls for safe passage through one of the world's most critical shipping lanes.

According to Iranian state-linked reports, the new platform called HormuzSafe would let cargo operators pay premiums in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies and receive blockchain-based insurance payouts for events like inspections, detonations, oh, detentions. I thought I said detonations.

Detentions. No, that's only on Polymarket. That's where you get the money for that. That's exactly it. You got to go to Polymarket for detonations. Detentions or you go to- The move comes after U.S. authorities seized $344 million in USDT tied to Iran, highlighting the risks of centralized stablecoins that can be frozen by governments.

Analysts say Iran appears to be shifting towards Bitcoin because it can't easily be seized or censored. Because it's for criminals. Yes. Now, finally, AI Financial, a publicly traded company deeply tied to Trump-backed crypto venture World Liberty Financial, warned in a recent SEC filing that it may not survive the next 12 months.

The company reported a quarterly net loss of more than $271 million, driven largely by a massive, unrealized loss on its holdings of WLFI tokens. AI Financial generated just $4.7 million in revenue during the quarter while ending with only $10.5 million in cash and a working capital deficit.

The company's strategy centers on holding roughly $7.3 billion WLFI tokens, currently locked until August 2026, with hopes of eventually selling portions to stay afloat. Now, World Liberty Financial itself is heavily tied to the Trump family, with Donald Trump listed as a co-founder emeritus and his sons actively involved.

Meanwhile, both WLFI and the Trump meme coin have seen steep declines over the past year among growing regulatory and ethics scrutiny. I don't know where they're getting regulatory scrutiny from because... Not from that administration. Not, not, yeah, seriously.

Oh. So, that's your week in crypto-criminal currency.

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Backblaze. Brian, I finally signed up for a Backblaze account. This is not a paid endorsement or anything like that, but I don't know if you've seen the news about what's going on here in SoCal. It's fire season again, big fires. I'm covered in smoke half the time because there's a big one in Simi Valley. And I'm like, look, last time this happened, I've got, I still got PTSD.

Everybody in SoCal has PTSD after the Palisades fires and the Eaton fires and all the other fucking fires. I thought you were, I thought you were covered in smoke because you're trying to make some Bitcoin. Yeah, my puff-o-meter was down because I have no job, so I need to make some money somehow.

So there's smoking, puffing up. So I finally put it up because I'm like, in the old days, Backblaze would like, you know, I'm like, oh, I don't have the bandwidth. I've got 24 terabytes of data that I need to back up. And I'm like, oh, my old things. And I realized, wait, wait, I have gigabit synchronous Ethernet.

I have massive bandwidth, so let me sign up for Backblaze. Because last time I had bags of computers and hard drives and everything sit next to my bed, sleeping with my clothes on, my shoes next to my bed, my wallet in my pocket, ready to go. And I'm like, you know what? Let it fucking burn. Just put it on the cloud.

I give up. I absolutely give up. And it's been great so far. It's backing up all my externals. And I just don't care anymore. I'm like, let it burn. Next. YouTube's AI deepfake detection tool is now being released to all creators 18 and older.

This will be able to detect whether their likeness has been copied and used in AI videos uploaded to the website. It's technically only been available to creators, but now anybody can use it. It's getting harder and harder to differentiate between real and AI videos these days. And the tool's wider availability could end up helping even ordinary people suddenly find their faces used in potentially malicious or misleading AI videos.

For creators, this could help them catch brands and companies using their likenesses without permission to promote products and services. So I guess we can attach that to our YouTube account now, Jason. And if anybody is using AI to replicate these beautiful mugs, we'll catch that.

Yeah, I don't think we have to worry about that, Brian. Doesn't really do much about the AI slop taking over YouTube, but it's something. It's something. It's something. Now, this one I thought was interesting. X has introduced more incentive to get users to pay for verification on its platform. That incentive being basically taking away things that they had for free.

Which is the way the internet works. As seen on X and Reddit. Users are reporting that X has quietly restricted the amount of posts allowed for those without the blue checkmark. Now, the X Help Center page on limits reads that posts are limited to 50 original posts and 200 replies per day for unverified accounts.

So if you really want to, you know, suck up to Elon's fucking cock, you're going to have to pay him to be able to post a bunch of times about how much you like him. Because really, that's about all that happens over there anymore, I think. Oh, no. It's just, it's all AI. It's all AI. It's all the bit bros just turn to AI.

That's all it is. It's ridiculous. But 50 original posts and 200 replies a day? That's a lot. If you're making more than that, you need to get a fucking life. That's what I'm saying. Jesus Christ. That is true. That is true. So you got to pay up now if you want to post more often than that. Christ.

This next one, I got a hat tip to Gabriel Pagan over on Discord for this. This is a fun site called Retro Codex. It's got nuggets of wisdom that we were all taught when we were young that has been disproven. And it's very fun. There's not a lot up there now because it's in beta, but go check it out.

It's like most of the stuff I knew, I don't think there's anything that I didn't know. I'm smarter than most of the people I hang out with, so I'm going to give it to them. We read books. Yeah. Not trying to be an arrogant asshole, but it's just the truth. Like, come on.

This is a great idea. I love this idea. Yeah, absolutely. So you can submit. You can submit your own bits of wisdom. So have at it. That's where the idea falls down. Rod Stewart did not actually have his stomach pumped.

I hope somebody's verifying this shit.

Media candy. Brian, I just want to start off by saying, fuck Fire TV. Never, ever buy an Amazon Fire TV. Not like I had to tell you that already because people that listen to the show know that smart TVs suck. And Amazon Fire TV is the worst of the worst of the worst.

But I watched a bunch of TV this week and four times it crashed in the middle of my shows. Three times it updated the software when I turned it on. And it is just it takes forever to boot because it's just a lazy, shitty computer that has to download all of the ads from Amazon before I can get to the thing that I want to watch, which is on my Apple TV.

So I don't even want to watch anything on the fucking Fire TV because it's so goddamn slow. Anyway, that said, Good Omens 3 came out on Amazon Prime Video this week. It did. I started to watch it. I got about 10 minutes into it. Then I saw that you posted that you finished it.

So then I went back and finished it. What are your thoughts, Brian? I posted I finish it so you don't have to. I know, but that's a challenge to me. Remember, Brian, I'm weird. I didn't like it. It was horrible. I really if I go back and I think about it, I didn't really like season two.

I didn't like anything that left behind the actual, you know, book itself, which was basically the first half of season one. And then they kind of veered off because they knew they wanted to keep it going. If they just would have done the book as a limited miniseries, I would have really enjoyed it. Having said all that, it is a true fucking delight watching David Tennant and Michael Sheen play off each other.

That's great. I would watch them do anything. And it's the only much like What's-Her-Face from Downton Abbey, Maggie Smith. It's the only reason I watched Downton Abbey. The only reason I watched any of these Good Omen stuff was David Tennant and Michael Sheen playing off each other, which was fantastic.

It was trite. It wasn't interesting. I saw the ending from 7,000 miles away. You could tell that it was going to be a much longer series because there were so many storylines that they started and stopped and did not have any, you know, any follow through on.

The whole Jesus thing was a waste of fucking time. I mean, period, waste of time. The only thing that made me smile was when they're in the pub having dinner and then they go to the poster or the painting on the wall and it's Terry Pratchett in like a wizard outfit.

Yeah. That made me laugh. I was like, okay, nice little nod to Terry Pratchett, who would be very pissed off that this actually exists. Or it actually would have been good because he would have helped write it. He would have helped write it. Yes. But yeah, it was, I was okay with it because of the same thing, Tennant and Sheen doing their shtick.

By the way, Michael Sheen is going to be on the next season of the Celebrity Traders in the UK filming this summer. So go check that out. Yeah, I was let down the exact amount that I thought I was going to be let down. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes sense. The other thing is like most of the acting was spectacularly bad. Like, yeah, it really was. And I know a lot of people have a soft spot in their hearts for BBC sci-fi special effects, Red Dwarf style. I can't stand it.

And this is all BBC Red Dwarf special effects. And oh, yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah. So I watched two other movies this week. I saw Mortal Kombat 2, fine movie if you like Mortal Kombat 1, the new reboot.

If you didn't, then you probably won't watch it anyway. But I thought it was a fine, you know, continuation. Makes no sense if you're not a Mortal Kombat fan. There's so many inside jokes with it that it doesn't really make any difference to anybody if you're not into that world. But for what it was, I thought it was good.

I thought it was actually really good. And the Johnny Cage stuff was really good. Liked it. Liked it a lot. And I had to suffer through The Devil Wears Prada 2 this week. The Devil Wears Prada 1 was actually a good movie. There was a lot of good character development in it.

It had a good story. The Devil Wears Prada 2 is just so people can make cameos and say that they were in The Devil Wears Prada 2. There's no character development. The story is thin as shit. Fucking Kara Swisher shows up in the middle of it, which is like Adam Savage showing up in The Expanse.

It's just like, oh, God, now I hate this thing. But everything was just for cameos. It was just for cameos. I thought it was a pale comparison to the first movie, which I still say, The Devil Wears Prada is a good movie. I love it. It's a very good movie.

Yeah. This is just a shit money grab, I thought. But that's my opinion. Well, I listened to two new podcast episodes this week. One, a completely new podcast, at least to me. The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan.

Now, of course, Billy Corgan has a podcast. There is no way his raging ego would not allow him to not have a podcast. And by the way, I say raging ego as if it's a bad thing. He is the lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins. Lead singers need to have raging egos. So I accept it and moved on from there.

The problem I have with it is, as far as I can tell, an absolutely fucking horrible interviewer. And all he does is interview people. But having said that, I did watch the episode of David Jay of Bauhausen Love and Rockets fame. I worked with Love and Rockets. I've gotten to know some of those guys pretty well.

But they've always been, they are enigmas. For a band as popular as they were and as influential as they are, there's not much known about them. So it's really interesting to have the conversation and have him talk about how Bauhaus formed and the dynamics in the group and all of that sort of stuff.

So if you are a fan of the goth rock, as I am, and like Bauhausen Love and Rockets, you will survive Billy Corgan interviewing him. And it's quite interesting. Okay. Yeah. I've worked with Billy Corgan and he is an egomaniacal douchebag. I fucking hate that guy. But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Moving on. What do we got? And Dan Carlin has put out a new Common Sense, The Water in Which We Swim. And if you are a fan of Dan Carlin and Common Sense episodes, it is exactly what you would expect it to be. And as the limited releases he's done since Trump came into power, which is basically, how the fuck is this happening?

Summed it up in one. Got in one. I listened to it twice and I keep falling asleep, so I haven't even gotten through it, the whole thing yet. But it was good? Yeah, I think it's good. Of course it's good. It's the same shit, but it's good. It's good shit. It's my kind of shit.

The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave, with the multi-talented Dave Bittner. He sings, he dances, he podcasts. Welcome back, Dave. Hello, good to be back. How are you this fine day?

Not bad. Are you ready for the SpaceX launch? Maybe, if it goes up. I see you're wearing your NASA shirt, so. I am, yes. I know you're a space guy, so. Today's the day. I hope, you know, I know this is probably terrible of me, but I hope that thing fucking blows up so hard. Well, I was just thinking, Elon Musk has so destroyed his own public reputation to the point where I think all, many of us used to be super excited about the SpaceX launches and be like, oh my God, this is so cool.

And now it's just so tainted by Elon that I'm torn, like, much like Jason, it's like, oh, it'd be great if it exploded. I mean. I mean, I hope nobody gets hurt. It'd only be better if Jeff Bezos happened to be on it. Yeah, even better. Especially after that interview this week.

Jesus Christ. Right. Right. No. Yeah. No, doing well. Hanging in there. Yeah. All right. Let's cover a few things here real quick. The boys finale was this week. Did you catch it? I did. What'd you think? I'm glad it's over.

Me too. Man, talk about a squandered last season. Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. Petered out. Yeah. And, like, just reeked of budget cuts and uninterested writers. And they just, yeah, they just kind of pissed away all the goodwill they'd built up over the first few seasons.

Much like Elon. Yeah. Sad to see it go, but, yeah. There's an Elon character in there that actually is pretty funny. That was a pretty funny joke. That was a funny joke. Yeah. Yeah. That was a funny joke. That was a very funny joke. If only.

Yeah, seriously. I finished Maul's Shadow Lord this week. My God, is that one of the best things I've seen this year? It's really good, right? It's so good. Yeah. So good. I'm two episodes in, and we're very much enjoying it.

So, thank you for the recommendation. Looking forward to checking out the rest of it. I agree. It's, so far, strong. Very much looking forward to season two. Yeah. And what Brian said is, it gets better. It totally gets better with every single episode. Wow.

And I was talking to my friend, John Sylvain, the other day. He hadn't watched it yet, but he was telling me about The Clone Wars. He'd watched the animated version of The Clone Wars. And he has the same problem that I have. It's just the animation when they walk is so weird that it's kind of unnerving.

I agree. That walk style is just not cool. I agree. But everything else is great. Yeah. Yeah. If I could just add to that, there's something I noticed in the last week or so that bothered me. And I think it was in The Mall Show, where it seems like in anything animated, when someone jumps from a high perch down to something on the ground that is longer than a human can normally do, it just never looks right.

And it goes back to Phantom Menace. The very beginning of Phantom Menace, there's a thing where Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon jump off of this platform down into the hangar. And it just never looks right. I'm not sure why we haven't figured out the real physics of that.

But time and time again, because the real physics means they die. Yeah. Well, I think I think what they're doing is they're using they're using force brakes. They're like, oh, you know, right. It slows them down. But sure. I don't think they visually they I don't think they visually portray it very well at all.

I think you're totally right. No. And but and yet Spider-Man can land on the ground with his, you know, they do the little tripod landing. And we've got that hero land. Yeah. The hero land. Yeah, that's a good name for it. Yeah. So I don't know. Maybe just laziness. So the other week I had watched a solo with the kid because he had not seen that one yet.

And I remarked about what an actually quite good movie it was and a lot of fun. We watched the last remaining full Star Wars movie, at least until, well, I guess today, because there's a new one in theaters today that he hadn't seen. We watched Rogue One, a Star Wars story. And as much as I said that Solo was a pretty good movie, wow, Rogue One is a really, really good movie.

Yeah. It is up there. Like if you take away the childhood feels from Star Wars Empire and Return of the Jedi, this might be the best Star Wars movie ever made. And I know it's so because my kid is like, if there's no Sith and no lightsabers and no Jedi, he got no time for it.

And he loved this. And there's no Sith and no lightsabers and no Jedi. Okay. Yeah. See, and then I told you, I finished Andor and the instant Andor was over, I went right into Rogue One. Same. And it was so good. It was so good to have that flow.

Such a good movie. Such a good movie. Yeah. Yeah. And so just fun. Like the last act with the space battle and everything is just, it's the type of Star Wars fun that we all love. You weren't worried about showing your kid a movie where the heroes die at the end in a very big fireball?

I mean, he'd be more, you know, he gets sad when the bad guys die. This is the thing. Like, you know, he actively roots for the Empire. Like, oh, you've trained him well. You've trained him well. Yeah, I've trained him well and I've started the therapy fun. So, you know.

Right. Yeah. There you go. That's good.

Well, news is coming out about the Mandalorian Grogu. And I saw one review that says, not even Baby Yoda can save Star Wars. It says, the Mandalorian and Grogu seems unlikely to truly offend anyone. It's neither a confusing mess nor so offbeat as to divide the fan base.

Instead, it's content to be a nothing burger. Two dutiful hours of laser blasts and flat dialogue that will do just enough to keep toys stacked on the shelves. Now, this is the thing. I would normally I'd be like, oh, that sucks. But I have read so many reviews of things that I've watched this week that have been so fucking wrong that I think that maybe this is going to be an awesome movie now because reviewers have been so bad at it.

I saw it last night. Oh, my goodness. Yes. Yes. Took the whole family to opening night at our local IMAX theater. It was a packed theater sold out on the opening night of a new Star Wars movie.

We all had a great time. Excellent. We enjoyed it. I don't think this review is wrong. They're not breaking any new ground. There's no growth in any character. A couple episodes of The Mandalorian rolled into a movie for me.

Yeah, that's it. They took whatever plans they had for the fourth season and they distilled it down to a movie. And it's fun. It's just fun. I compare it to a theme park ride. You just strap yourself in. You have a good time. You enjoy it.

The other noteworthy thing is that, not surprisingly, there is a ton of fan service in this movie. But none of it is cloying. Okay. It's like, if you know, you know, kind of fan service, which I think is the best.

They're not hanging a lantern on anything. But there were multiple times throughout when I just leaned back on my chair and went, oh, thank you. That was such a good callback to whatever. I'm not going to ruin any of them for you. I mean, Usher came over and said, excuse me, sir.

You can't do that here. You're not people. You're going to have to leave the theater. Yeah. Sir, where are your pants? So, yeah. It's not a great movie. It's not an important movie. But I hazard to say that everyone in that theater last night had a great time together watching this fun Star Wars, authentic Star Wars experience.

And so I think it's worth checking out. I enjoyed it. I'm definitely going to see it. But, yeah, my expectations are sufficiently low now that I expect to enjoy it. So, yeah, I'm not going in thinking, oh, it's the Empire Strikes Back or this is the movie that's going to reignite the Star Wars flame in theaters.

I just want to have a good time. Yeah. And parts of it are downright delightful. There are things throughout that are just fun. And there's enough of that that it also for me. Sigourney Weaver. Sigourney Weaver. Yes. Yes. I'll get your feedback on her after you've seen it.

Yeah. But great to see Sigourney Weaver behind the wheel of an X-Wing. Cool. Right. It could only be better if she were fighting the alien queen from behind the wheel of an X-Wing.

But, yeah, I think they achieved what they set out to do. And thumbs up from me and my whole family. Excellent. Good to know. So, a couple other Star Wars things to touch on here. I found this YouTube clip of a Colorado man who creates a replica Millennium Falcon.

And when we say creates a replica Millennium Falcon, the degree of meticulous attention to detail that this man put into building his Millennium Falcon. He went back to the original model kits piece by piece.

Wow. And rebuilt a precisely accurate Millennium Falcon. Now, of course, there are many different versions of the Millennium Falcon. So, which one did he build and blah, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. Doesn't matter. It's an amazing Millennium Falcon.

This guy, my favorite part of this story, it's like one of those local news stories. But my favorite part of this story is they go down into his man cave, his, you know, his Rancor cave, if you will. And it's full of Star Wars stuff and it, you know, goals.

And the person narrating it says, with his wife's permission, he built out the basement. I was like, boy, that sentence is doing some heavy lifting. It really is. It really is. But he sold this Millennium Falcon for $350,000 at auction.

So, it took him like six years to build it. So, good for him. Good for him. Good for him. Yeah. He makes more than we do doing this podcast. I was going to say, we should get into the Millennium Falcon business. That's right. That's right. So, it's a fun little clip to watch if you're into that sort of thing. And then just another quick Star Wars thing.

Someone made a fan film based around Star Tours. And it's pretty good. All right. Let's watch this one. It could be tightened up a little bit. It's a little loose. But I think one of the remarkable things is that we are now at this point where anybody who has the desire and the time on their hands can make a film like this.

And it's good quality. The difference between making something at home and the studios making something, like this has been so narrowed compared to how it used to be when you'd be out there with your VHS camcorder trying to make a Star Wars movie. As someone who comes from the world of music, where this happened many, many years ago, be careful what you wish for.

Right. Right. Yeah. There was something good about there being gatekeeping involved and needing to spend an awful lot of money and have a lot behind you to be able to create something great. Yeah. Yeah. This is why 100,000 songs a day are submitted to Spotify. But also, it's keeping the mouse's lawyers very busy, I'm sure.

Yeah. Oh, by the way, just real quick, going back to Mando, I will give one mini spoiler. That's not really a spoiler, but more a reinforcement, which is that in this film, there is yet another suggestion, reinforcement, nod to the fact that the Captain EO universe may be the same universe as Star Wars.

Great. And I love that. I'm all, I'm, I'm 100% for that. I, I think it's, why not? Sure. Why not? Yeah. So see, when you go and you watch it, see if you spot it. It's, if you're looking for it, it's not hard to spot. But again, they don't, they don't rub your face in it, rub your nose in it.

All right. All right. Well, speaking of the, uh, the, the house of mouse, the original house of mouse, Disneyland has a brand new Lego set. Uh, this is Main Street USA, the original one that, uh, planned by Walt Disney himself, uh, from Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

It's a $400 set, which costs more than a ticket to Disneyland, but as they point out, will last you longer. This week. Yeah. For now. Yeah. For now. It is, um, I, I looked at it. I am very tempted, but I, I do not believe I will get my wife's permission to purchase this one.

Yeah. It is beautiful. But, uh, yeah, this is, uh, I'm, I'm content to look at the box and I will, uh, next time I go to a Lego store with my kid, I will, ooh and ah over it much like I did over the $1,000 Death Star set, but it will not be entering my home. We will probably be purchasing this one.

In fact, I will probably use the excuse of buying it for my wife to purchase it. So I'll buy it for, buy it for my wife for Christmas and then our son will put it together. Uh, and it'll go, it'll sit next to the, uh, big castle that we have already built.

So we have, we have Disney Lego. Um, I have to say my favorite thing about that. Well, I have two favorite things about this set. First is the minifigs of the barbershop quartet. Yes. I, I would pay $400 just for them. Um, and, uh, also there's a guy, they, God damn it.

They made it happen. There's a guy holding a Lego churro. I was going to say, yes, I mean, come on tip of the hat to the Lego people for knowing what matters. No, it's, it is beautiful.

It's got the popcorn stand, uh, uh, cart, which is, you know, such a mainstay of main street. Now I, I have a quibble and I understand that they probably went with the initial design from Walt Disney himself. So mostly appropriate, except, except churros didn't come until the late eighties.

So not, not appropriate. So the thing that since they brought a churro in the thing that is missing from main street, USA, Disneyland, Anaheim, California, that my son and I personally run to first thing, where is the goddamn corn dog vendor? Oh, I wanted my corn dog.

Okay. Okay. I got that. Well, if you get, if you get, if you get this set, nothing's stopping you from making your own little corn dog vendor. Or converting one of the popcorn vendors into a corn dog vendor. Yeah, just take the popcorn one and turn it into.

Well, you know, I got, I got a project with my kid's 3d printer. I will make the corn dog vendor. I'm just, I'm Googling right now. Is there a Lego corn dog? There is. There is a Lego corn dog corner. Hmm. Hmm. With a functional dipping corn dog.

All right. So see, someone's at, someone's a step ahead of you. All right. No worries. Oh dear. Well, let's get out. Let's get out of there for a little bit. Main street was never my thing. So I'm, I'm always about the other, I want an Epcot. I want a giant Epcot set.

That's like $10,000. Takes up my whole garage. That would be fun. So we've talked many, many times about people and swearing that their phones are listening to them, even though we've told you they're not. And then there was that stupid ass company, Cox Media Group and MindSift and 1010 Digital Works.

All those companies were saying, Hey, we've got the software that you can put on your phone and you can get the marketing info and they're going to hear what people say. And we're like, that's bullshit. And well, turns out it was bullshit. And the Federal Trade Commission has fined them a million dollars, nearly a million dollars for basically lying to everybody saying that that was a thing.

So I think that it should have been a lot more just for all the gruff that we've had to take over the years, telling people that your phone's not listening to you. We should be able to file a class action. That's what I'm thinking. We should. I don't think they had the million dollars to begin with, but we can try and get a few cents out of them, I guess.

That's true. All the people who said, see, see, they've admitted it. No, they were lying. Yeah, I wanted to smack every single one of them. But I mean, this company, their slogan was creepy. Sure. Great for marketing. Definitely. I want to smack them too.

Yeah. Smack them all. Yeah. That's who I want to partner with. Yeah. So. Yeah. That was some good news this week. Well, finally, the last thing I put in here is we were talking about mechanical keyboards a couple of weeks ago and our appreciation for them and whether or not they are appropriate for podcasters to have.

And it came to my attention that someone has an app on the macOS app store that simulates the sound of a mechanical keyboard, even if you don't have one. So you can have all the clickiness of a mechanical keyboard without actually having a mechanical keyboard.

So you could turn it on and off depending on whether you're in front of a hot mic or not. Someone pointed out you can turn it on and off depending on how much you want to annoy your co-workers around you. Turning it up or down. What do you make of this, Jason?

I think this is some vibe-coded AI bullshittery is what I think this is. Fair enough. Fair enough. Now, excuse me if I'm wrong, but isn't most of the enjoyment of the mechanical keyboard not so much the clicky-click as the feel? Yeah. So you're kind of only getting, you're getting the sizzle, but not the steak.

Right. Yeah. That's a good way to put it. I like that. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, I would not, I would definitely not pay $5 for this for sure, but. I'll just sit here and go clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack.

Right. Yeah. Also, can you replace the sounds? Can I, can I get like horse clomping down Main Street instead of clacks? I was thinking fart sounds. Oh God, if I got that, my kid would never stop using it. The pre-OS 10 days when there were little control panels that would do that, you could, you could assign a sound to anything that your Mac did.

Oh dude, ResEdit. Yeah. ResEdit was the shit back in the day. Right, right. But there was also a control panel that would do it more, you know, not have to dig in so deeply. And I remember I got in big trouble with the family across the street from where I lived because they had a Mac and I was just playing with the sound effect thing one day and I was playing with their computer and I didn't turn it back.

And so like everything that, every key and the, the woman who lived, the mom who lived across the street, she ran an interior design firm off of this Mac. And so like every time she pressed a key and like went, so I got to, Dave, come over here now.

You know what I want to do? I want to make an app that randomly every now and again, you can just, you can surreptitiously put it on anybody's Mac, but every now and again, it'll randomly pick a key and then just do the Willem scream. Every now and again, it'll just scream at you and just scare the shit out of people.

I think that would be a fun one. My favorite subversive control panel was, there was one called Speed Chopper. And I remember the icon was a little helicopter. And the idea behind it was that you installed it on your boss's computer and every time they restarted the computer, it would slow the computer down by 1%.

So over time, your boss would feel like their computer was getting slower and slower. They would upgrade and you'd get their hand-me-down faster than you would have otherwise. Thanks to Speed Chopper. That is genius.

That is the best use of gaslighting I've ever heard in my life. Right, right. You say, Bob, this just feels like my computer's getting slow. I don't know. Well, boss, I guess it's time to upgrade. Yeah. Good stuff. It's awesome. I miss the old Mac days when you just customize everything.

It was so much fun. Yeah, it was. And everybody's Mac was personalized. I mean, it was gaudy as hell. It was like the MySpace days. But it was fun. It was fun. Everything now is just so homogenous and boring. We got dark mode now. Yay. They know best. That's right.

That's right. All right, gents. Well, thank you very much. Good to see you again. Good to see you. Good to see you next time. Let me know when you get that Lego set. You can tell us. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got one new patron, Temario.

I thought Temario was here before. Maybe Temario left and came back. Welcome back, Temario. I remember saying that, and it felt fun. That's true. And we'd also like to thank C, Dave, Jason, MultiSweetness, Bonut Zero Followers, Ryan, Syntaxes, Nick, Travis, and Taylor.

Thank you all so much for your continued support on Patreon. Thank you. And we got one donation over at PayPal, Chris, who gave us 50 bucks. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chris. Over at the tip jar, we've got Sean, Dahl, Brandon, and Kathleen. And merch this week. We got Tim from Australia, Bruce from North Carolina, Paul from Texas, John from Oslo, Robert from Brooklyn, Artem from Redmond, Alana from Portland.

Thank you all so much for picking up your merch at shop.gog.show. And just a reminder, this is a fan-supported show. Advertising sucks. So if you would like to get the show early, ad-free, and in high definition, go to patreon.com slash gog. And for as little as $3 a month, you can get the show early, ad-free, and in high definition.

If you want to give us more, you can. But that's the only place that we can give you the special bonus stuff. But there are other ways to give, too. Just go to gog.show slash donate. And we thank you from the bottom of our black little hearts. We do. We do. And I just want to point out, I think it's really interesting. I know sometimes we were getting these stats from other places like Patreon and whatnot.

But particularly with the merch purchases recently, we have got listeners all over the fucking place. And that's pretty cool. If we could figure out how to do a tour where we only had to play for one person, we could go all around the damn world. We really could. It'd be very expensive tickets.

You know, but we'd come to your house and play a show. We'll do a show, damn it. Anyways, thank you all. And until next time, I'm Brian Shulmeister. And 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 747.

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