751: Brewster’s Trillions
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Summary
In this episode of Grumpy Old Geeks, the hosts discuss AI reporting, public trust, workplace changes, and the risks of relying on another company’s platform. They also cover copyright and technology disputes, proposed acquisitions, social media rules, entertainment, and new devices.
- A KPMG report prompts discussion of inaccurate AI claims and citations.
- The hosts consider rising AI chatbot use, low public trust, OpenAI’s reported losses, and employees’ reactions to AI work.
- Anthropic’s reported model access restrictions lead to a discussion of platform dependence.
- The hosts discuss copyrighted music in AI training, a proposed Hollywood merger, litigation involving xAI, and reported military use of Grok.
- Digital taxes, cryptocurrency at a UFC event, and proposed UK restrictions for young social media users come up alongside Roblox account hijacking.
- A proposed Fox acquisition of Roku leads into a discussion of streaming devices.
- The episode closes with film and television reviews, new devices, book recommendations, and Jason DeFillippo’s Track-A-Lot app.
Key moments
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AI reports, trust, and workplace changes
The hosts discuss errors in a KPMG report, AI use and trust, OpenAI’s reported finances, and workplace reactions to AI.
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The risks of platform dependence
Anthropic’s reported model restrictions and Meta’s Facebook search plans frame a discussion of relying on other companies’ platforms.
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Music rights, mergers, and xAI
The hosts cover music used in AI training, a proposed Hollywood merger, xAI litigation, reported military use of Grok, and SpaceX’s reported Cursor deal.
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Digital taxes and social media rules
The discussion turns to French digital taxes, cryptocurrency at a UFC event, proposed UK social media restrictions, and Roblox account hijacking.
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Roblox account takeovers
The hosts discuss reports that attackers used fake job offers to compromise Roblox developers’ accounts and games.
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Fox, Roku, and streaming devices
A proposed Fox acquisition of Roku leads into the hosts’ experiences with smart televisions.
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Film and television reviews
The hosts discuss Widow’s Bay, Downton Abbey, recent films, Shrek, and Star Trek.
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Phones, glasses, books, and an app
The hosts cover Commodore’s proposed phone, Snap’s glasses, books, and Jason DeFillippo’s Track-A-Lot app.
Full transcript
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Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.
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Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm ole, ole, ole, ole. Ole, ole. As predicted, Jason, my intense hatred of the corruption of FIFA went out the window as soon as the game started. As soon as the game starts, I figured as much.
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I love the World Cup. The World Cup is the best thing that's ever existed. I live for it every four years. I'm actually missing, well, let me load my super cool Apple Sports app, which is very convenient and only does one thing really quickly to check. I'm missing Ghana versus Panama right now.
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Oh, no, the great Ghana versus Panama match. Oh, man, what will you do? I think I will survive this one. Yeah, it's great. And this is one of those rare occasions where I'm actually think the experience is being augmented by social media.
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All the stuff happening on social media around the World Cup right now has just been heartwarming. There's no other way to explain it. Like the love affair going on between South Koreans and Mexicans because South Korea is headquartered in Mexico. And there are all these great videos of like Mexicans making South Koreans do headstands and tequila shots upside down.
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And they're having salsa and chips for the first time. And the Scots that completely took over Boston. Unbelievable. The journey of Freddy the German. The Japanese people that discovered that salsa and chips are free and then they just keep coming and then they ate so much they almost died before they ordered a meal.
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I mean, it's wonderful. Bringing the world together. It really is this time. And we fucking needed it. We really fucking needed it. Yeah. So, you know, even with everything else going on, like people are enjoying being in the U.S. right now.
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And yet there are some negative things. Not going to get into it. This is a tech show. They get to go home. We're stuck here. True. Very true. Yes. Okay. Well, I'm glad you're having a good time. I see you're wearing your Deutschland shirt. Very nice. Seven to one, baby.
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I'm wearing my... There we go. Our new merch, the Destroy the Broligarchy shirt. So, you can see that on YouTube. Links in the show notes. Yes. Yes. I'm digging it. I'm digging it. So, let's actually get on to what we're here to do.
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Let's get into it. This is probably the only story about AI we've ever needed to do. I think this encapsulates the entirety of AI, even though all we ever talk about is AI anymore. In October of last year, KPMG published a report titled Total Experience, Redefining Excellence in the Age of Agentic AI, which is about how companies are using AI to cater to customers' needs.
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This report was basically a very... It was a puff piece. There's no other way to say it except done by one of the big four professional services and accounting forms in the world, along with Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Ernst & Young. So, you know, this is what people...
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People read these reports from these firms and take it as gospel. Right, right. And it just blew smoke up AI's ass. AI is the best thing ever. It is helping people. It is helping people with their work. Unfortunately, though, the report is completely full of AI hallucinations and included examples of agentic AIs that either did not exist or do not have the capabilities that are stated in the paper.
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Okay. It's all fucking bullshit. Investigators for GPT-0, the maker of an AI content detection tool, found inaccuracies and fake footnotes all over the report, which were also verified by the Financial Times. In its report of the investigation, GPT-0 said that only five citations out of 45 in the paper accurately pointed to real sources.
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A total of 28 citations paraphrased titles or added fake components to real sources, while 12 were phrased too vaguely to determine whether they actually existed. GPT-0 called the creation of fake references by AI models vibe-citing.
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In addition to the fake or inaccurate citations, investigators also found that approximately half of the claims in the paper were fake or misattributed. They were likely the result of an AI research tool over-complying with a request to find examples of agentic AI in the wild, GPT-0 wrote.
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And links in the show notes, there's all kinds of examples. I mean, basically, this is... And then, you know, they followed up. They called these different companies that were name-checked in the report. And like the Swiss multinational investment bank, UBS, which apparently integrated agentic AI across its investment advisory risk management and compliance monitoring, the bank said, no, that's completely incorrect.
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We did not do that. And there's just multiple reports of all these different companies that, when followed up, said, no, none of this is real. Absolutely none. So, there you go. That is AI in a nutshell.
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A KPMG spokesperson told the Times that the company takes the accuracy and integrity of its published content very seriously. They've pulled the paper and are now reviewing the circumstances surrounding its publication. Okay. Let's redefine very seriously.
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Vibe-citing. Well, a new Pew Research, Pew Pew Research survey shows that AI adoption in the U.S. is growing fast, but public trust is not keeping pace. Half of American adults now use AI chatbots, up from 33% last summer, and about one in four use them daily.
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Now, quick question there, Jason. Willingly or because there's no fucking choice if you want to talk to customer service? I don't know if there was a checkbox for that in the survey. We'll have to ask Pew to see what he did there. So, chat GPT remains the dominant platform used by 44% of Americans, followed by Google Gemini at 24%.
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Hmm, no mention of Anthropic, which we're going to talk about in two seconds. Despite that growth, only 16% of respondents believe AI will have a positive impact on society. 16%. Okay. Younger adults who use the AI most are also among the most skeptical, with nearly half expecting negative societal effects over the next two decades.
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The most common uses are information search and workplace tasks, while smaller numbers use AI for entertainment, health advice, news, emotional support, or companionship. Hmm. They're saying privacy remains a major concern. 71% believe AI will make personal information less secure, and majorities say they have little confidence in either government regulators or AI companies to manage the technology responsible.
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But it's like crack, and nobody wants to stop. Nobody's forcing you to use AI at home, just at work. That's, well, at home, maybe not. But people are being forced to use it at work. Absolutely, people are being forced. But if they're using it for companionship at work, then you really have a problem.
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Not really. Have you ever liked any of your co-workers? Present company excluded, of course. Present company excluded, of course. There have been a few companies that I have absolutely adored my co-workers. Few and far between, but there have been some. They are edge cases, as we call them.
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Yes. Now, this is breaking news this week. Open AI's losses reportedly exploded in 2025, according to audited financial documents reviewed by Ed Zitron and independently verified by the Financial Times. The company brought in $13.07 billion in revenue, up sharply from $3.7 billion in 2024, but its costs and expenses hit $34 billion.
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So, spend $34 billion to make $13 billion. There's a business model for you. That included $7.5 billion in cost of revenue, $19.18 billion in research and development, $5.73 billion in sales and marketing, and $1.57 billion in general and administrative costs.
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Its operating loss was $20.92 billion, but after accounting for changes tied to its shift from non-profit to for-profit structure, the net loss attributable to OpenAI reached $38.53 billion. The documents also show OpenAI paid Microsoft $17.2 billion in expenses during 2025, including $10.59 billion for research and development.
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OpenAI ended the year with just over $50 billion in assets, nearly half in cash. Soon we're going to be talking about real money here, Brian. I don't know what these guys are doing, but Jesus. I swear to God, if a personal financial consultant came to you as an individual and you just lopped off all the zeros on the end of this thing, because they have so many zeros, they would say you're a disaster.
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You're an absolute disaster. You need to start completely over. Like, everything you were doing is wrong. Yeah, even if you just, it just took off the billion and just did it by dollars. Like, the company brought in $13.07, up sharply from $3.07 in 2024, but its cost and expenses hit $34.
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That's a bad business. Yes. Just for perspective, though, I want everybody to realize $1 billion is $1,000 million. That's the scale that you can't wrap your head around.
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You can't wrap your head around. It's insane, yes. Well, a noticeable shift is happening in Silicon Valley. The CEOs who were loudly predicting AI-driven mass layoffs a year ago are now dialing back the rhetoric, at least in public. Executives appear to have learned that openly celebrating job replacement is terrible PR.
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Earlier statements about AI eliminating workers triggered employee backlash, public criticism, and political scrutiny. So they are now reframing AI as a tool for augmentation, productivity, and efficiency, rather than explicitly saying we're replacing people. So the messaging may have changed, even if many workforce reductions are continuing.
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This article contrasts earlier bravado, thinks CEOs, talking about AI replacing entire departments with newer, softer language about helping employees work better alongside AI. Take Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI. White-collar work, when you're sitting down at a computer, either being a lawyer or an accountant or a project manager or a marketing person, Most of those tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months, he said in an interview with the Financial Times a short while ago.
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But well before we reached that full automation timeline, he started walking back his position. I said, tasks, Suleiman told The Verge earlier this month. That does not mean jobs. Jobs and roles are the broader category, and tasks are just components of that.
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Instead, he now believes AI will make the tedium of work easier. Sending an email, having a conversation with a colleague, putting together a PowerPoint. Subtasks are increasingly becoming digitized, automated, and we can basically generate more and more of them. That does not necessarily mean the role goes away at all. Unless your entire job is putting together PowerPoints, of which I've known quite a few people.
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The shifting message is to stop fighting, because this is going to be good for you. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has tried his hand at this pitch in recent weeks, suggesting workers should be so happy about the introduction of AI because of how much easier it'll make their lives, claiming the technology will elevate all of these people.
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Behind the scenes, however, many executives still expect AI-driven workforce reductions. Recent surveys found that nearly all CEOs anticipate some level of AI-related layoffs in the next few years. So the strategy may not have changed nearly as much as their messaging. Same shit, different day.
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Well, you know what CEOs also should stop doing, Brian? They should stop maybe doing commencement speeches. It doesn't seem to be going well for everybody. Google CEO Sundar Pichai faced booze and a student walkout while delivering Stanford University's commencement address as roughly 200 graduates protested Google's ties to defense and government contracts.
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Demonstrators targeted Project Nimbus. I love Project Nimbus. It just sounds like Project Nimrod. Google and Amazon's $1.2 billion cloud and AI contract with the Israeli military, as well as Google's relationship with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a.k.a.
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ICE. ICE OLS. Students carried signs accusing Google of enabling surveillance and supporting military operations in Gaza, waved Palestinian flags, and staged a coordinated walkout organized by groups including Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine, No Tech for Apartheid, and Tech for Liberation.
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Protest organizers said they refuse to celebrate companies they believe contribute to violence through their technology. Half of that graduating class is going to go work for Google, so maybe, maybe you want to dial it down just a touch there, kiddies. Just do a little, an anonymous boo would have been just fine, but, you know, you're at fucking Stanford, you know, where are you going to go?
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Yeah, who are you going to go work for? Yeah. Seriously. Palantir, Google. You're in the, you're in the, you're in the land of the enemy, my friends. You should have prayed. Maybe gone to community college if you're going to have those kind of protests. You can get away with shit like that and still get a job at TCBY, you know?
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Well, this one's very fun. Someone interrupted a live streamed employee-only presentation at Meta earlier this week with an expletive filled outburst about being the company's bitch, according to a recording heard by Wired. The individual then asked the people leading the call to write to a specific Meta AI executive and tell him that he's a piece of shit.
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I didn't know you had a job at Meta, Jason. I, I was, I was keeping that, keeping that on the side. I was just keeping that on the side. The company's applied AI team, created in March, now made up of roughly 6,500 engineers and product managers, was built to support Meta's AI research efforts.
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Employees told Wired that many have been reassigned from traditional software development to repetitive AI evaluation tasks, including creating puzzles and test prompts for language models. They just have the square, the blocks, like does the square go in the round hole and the round go in the square hole?
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You know what? If I was still getting the paycheck, I'd be fine with that. Exactly. You know, it just, it's like a Silicon Valley. Just put me on the roof and let me just hang out. I don't want to do anything. Just give me the money. I'm happy. But several described the work as demoralizing and lacking purpose. The purpose, my friend, is the paycheck.
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When? But I don't understand this generation. Like we got jobs to get jobs, to pay for shit outside of our job. We did not expect anything else from our jobs. If we happened to enjoy it, wow. Hey, bonus. Bonus. If we happened to like some of the people we worked with, double bonus.
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If we got paid well too, that's really all that mattered. That was it, man. That was it. It's a job. It's not your life. Seriously. But kids these days, they must have a purpose. Okay. The unrest follows Meta's recent layoffs of about 8,000 employees and a controversial initiative that tracks employee clicks and keystrokes for AI training data.
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More than 1,600 workers have signed a petition opposing the program. You just quit. Just quit. Go somewhere else. Google's hiring, apparently. Also, these people are complaining about not having a purpose when they know they're working for a company that is fucking evil. Yeah.
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Exactly. You know, I'm working for this Mossad hit squad, but man, I feel really bad at the end of the day. Maybe if they had a pizza party or two. Like, the morale's down. Zuckerberg came and said, there's better food in the kitchen now. So, that's one of the things he came back with.
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He also said, we're having a happy hackathon, which everybody was like, that's a bunch of bullshit. Everybody gets three free months of Calm. You'll feel better if you use the app. But I prefer Headspace. I'm going somewhere else. It's not in line with the way I want to work. I don't like Calm.
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One more time, that's www.joindeliteme.com slash GOG, code GOG. Now, this next round of stories is going to highlight a core concept here at Grumpy Old Geeks that we've said from the very first show, and people should fucking listen to it.
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Please. It's very simple. When you pitch your tent in someone else's backyard, don't be surprised when they turn on the sprinklers, stick the dogs on you, or shoot your kids in the face. Don't expect to build a sustainable business based on someone else's platform without eventually getting fucked over.
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Period. That is a core tenant of the Grumpy Old Geeks. Make sure you follow us on all our social media. Exactly. With that said, you can't throw a rock this week without hearing the story about how Fable 5 was supposed to be the public safety-wrapped version of Anthropic's more powerful mythos model that came out for about 20 seconds.
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Somebody poke a hole in that safety wrapper, Jason? Yes, they did. Yes, they did. This is a very, you know, interesting story because Anthropic releases the model. We've got it for a little while. Everybody's playing with it. Then apparently, Andy Jassy from Amazon said, Ooh, our guys found something.
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Let me skedaddle on over to the White House and tell them this is bad. Maybe you should tell them to not do it. So the White House says, Hey, guys, don't do that. Anthropic's like, it's not that big a deal. And OpenAI can still do that with GPT-55. So what are you pissing off us for or pissing on us for?
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And then they're like, we're not going to fix it because it's not that big a deal. The government's like, boo, turn it off. Anthropic's like, boo, okay. And then everybody in the world got their panties in a bunch because they cannot get their Fable 5 anymore.
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And I did get to play with Fable 5 for about two hours. And I built a beautiful Mac app with it. I didn't code it. I built it. I designed it. I did not code anything. I let it do its thing. It was really fucking good.
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Except to the point where I said, I need to log into this website so I can scrape it and then find out what torrents that I'm following are going to give me the goodies from across the pond. And it said, well, there's a CAPTCHA. And I said, well, figure out how to get around the CAPTCHA. And it said, I must downgrade you now because you have hit my roadblock.
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And I am not allowed to get around a CAPTCHA for you because that is illegal and naughty. You must now use Opus 4.6 or 4.8. If you give us more money, we'll do it for you, basically. Even better. Even better. Hey, Opus, can you get around this CAPTCHA?
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Sure thing, boss. And three minutes later, it had figured out a workaround for the fucking CAPTCHA. No Fable 5 required. So the thing here is, okay, Amazon ran to the White House and said, hey, this is bad.
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Then the NSA looked at it and said, yeah, I guess it's bad. Do something. Anthropic is a partner with Amazon. So what's going on here? And there's a lot of back and forth of what people are thinking about why this happened. And the government had it out for Anthropic because for the whole Pentagon, Pete Kegstan bullshit that went on before.
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So there's all those rumors swirling. The thing is, it's still not back on because they can't cut out foreign nationals from using it because it's, they didn't build it that way. It's built for humanity, Brian. Yay. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Now, here's the fun, here's where it gets really fun.
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Well, the G7 summit's going on right now, right? You've seen the news? In between your, in between your World Cup, you know, matches, you may have seen that the G, yeah. It's the thing that depresses me in between my joy. Yeah. Oh, well, it's the thing that makes me happy because Trump is just embarrassing himself even more.
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But that's okay. That's a different story. Concerns over AI sovereignty took, took, took, me speak pretty one day, took center stage at the G7 summit where French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned that countries relying on American AI could lose access overnight.
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Their concerns were amplified after the Trump administration blocked exports of Anthropics' latest models on national security grounds, leaving customers and government scrambling. Core tenant of Grumpy Old Geeks, Brian, don't build your shit in somebody's backyard because they might turn on the sprinklers.
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Just saying. The move highlighted a growing risk for organizations building products and infrastructure on U.S.-controlled AI platforms. Take out the AI platforms. Building anything on a platform that is not your platform leaves you ass to the wind.
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Just saying. Because access can be revoked with little warning and for reasons that may not be fully disclosed. There you go. Like they don't want to pay you if you have a, like an affiliate account, say on Amazon, where you have $3,000 in there and you're waiting for your paycheck and Amazon just goes, you know, I don't feel like paying you.
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We're going to cancel your account and never tell you why. Oh, that was just me that had happened to. Fuck you, Amazon. Macron argued that if Washington can simply turn off the switch, it threatens both foreign economies and the competitiveness of U.S. AI companies. Yes.
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Yes. It can. Welcome to the party, pal. So, Brian, what do you think about all this? Are these people just naive and stupid or what? Yes. There we go. Moving on. I mean, there's been a growing push for this.
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The European nations are figuring this out and they're trying to move away from U.S. technologies because the U.S. is not a trusted nation anymore. It's not a trusted partner in anything politically, technologically, any of it. And it's obvious that there's no regulation coming from the U.S. government.
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So, it's even worse. It's not just the government that you can't trust at this point. You can't trust U.S. companies because they are unfettered at this point. They are doing whatever the hell they want, particularly with anybody that isn't in the U.S. or isn't the U.S. government.
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The only regulation that we're seeing at all from the U.S. government against U.S. companies is if it's bad for the U.S. government, not the people, not normal companies, not other American companies, not mom and dad making the apple pies and selling them to the little kids in the little towns, just the government.
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That's it. It just boggles my mind. It boggles my mind. Olé, olé, olé, olé. Sorry. Yeah, I know. I need to find a happy place. I need to find a happy place. I got one more meta story here. Meta is rolling out. Facebook AI mode in the U.S. A new search experience, an experience, Brian.
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I love experiences on Facebook. Kids are all about the experiences. That's all they want now. They want an experience. They don't want just a search answer. They want an experience. Well, they're going to get one because with the new Meta AI, they turn public Facebook content into synthesized answers.
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So you can have your synthesized experience, Brian, from your own data, of course. Instead of returning a list of posts or links, the search bar can pull from public groups, reels, and marketplace listings to answer questions in plain language. Because none of those are ever wrong, right?
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Ever. They've got a great track record of synthesizing this information and getting it right every time. And these are the guys who have like the worst of the AIs out of everybody. I think like if you put Meta's AI up against Grok, I was going to say Feta's AI, it is cheesy, up against Grok.
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Grok would like kick it in the nuts. It's like one of the worst out there. Absolutely. Which is even funnier that Zuckerberg's spending so much money and can't do shit because he's never been able to do shit. He steals from other people. He's never had a fucking unique idea in his life. He doesn't steal like, well, he steals the concept, right?
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Like he'll see something out in the wild that somebody else has done and then he'll go back and have his little Facebook Feta meeting and he'll sit around shooting the cheese and he'll say, I want to do what they did. And then a couple billions of dollars and six months later, they'll have come up with a product that sucks balls.
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At which point, Zuckerberg looks around the room, picks a company that does it and buys it. Exactly. That's what he does. Then he just buys it. Yep. That's it. And then he tries to integrate it into his products and it never fucking works right.
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Nope. That's what he does. Not at all. Yeah, you nailed it. That's it. That is it. It's a fait accompli. I'm getting hungry. From the Injustice Files, Brian, we have a whole slew of these. Want to kick us off here?
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Sure. Let's start with this one. This is an investigation by The Atlantic. They published four searchable databases of music that have been used to train AI models. The scope is staggering, with 12 million tracks in one database, 9 million in another, and the two final ones each containing about 100,000 songs.
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The company article by staff writer Alec Reisner gives further context to just how much copyrighted music was used for AI training, including hit tracks from Taylor Swift and Bad Muddy. He points to some of the legal cases already underway against generative AI music platforms such as Suno and Udio, who have often made claims of fair use as a defense for wholesale scraping copyrighted protected content to power their platforms.
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What was the name of that company that basically scraped all of Spotify? And we went, well, you can't have that. They got Alice's something or other, and it was like a pirate group, and it was like, the lawsuit ended up being for like $20 gazillion, except nobody's going to pay ever.
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But these guys, hey, it's fair use. These are companies you could actually sue and get money from. They're real companies. Put them out of business. Yeah. I mean... They did the same thing that the pirates did. Exactly. I'm seeing so many...
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Like, everybody's talking now. They're finally... It's finally wrapping around the heads of the normies out there who were just like, you know, I remember when little kids were, like, being sued for their college tuition because they downloaded the latest, you know, Vanilla Ice song on Napster. Thanks, Lars.
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Yeah. Yeah. Fuck you, Lars. And now, like, you know, Sam Altman's out there just taking everything going, okay, mine, mine, you know? We need it to make our crappy product that we're charging you for. That we're still spending lots of money to make none back.
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Yep. Oh, man. Yeah. Just knock these guys out of business. That's all you got to do. They're piss ants. They're like, comparatively, they're piss ants. They got nothing. Well, the Wall Street Journal says the Justice Department's approval of Paramount's $111 billion Warner Brothers Discovery deal blindsided its own antitrust staff.
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We've talked about this merger. This is just terrible, terrible. Career investigators had spent months reviewing the merger and were reportedly leaning toward recommending a lawsuit warning it could reduce competition in film and theatrical production. But senior DOJ leadership shut down the investigation before staff delivered a final recommendation.
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The department's official line is that combining Paramount and Warner could improve competition against streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon, which is convenient. This is just another nail in Hollywood's coffin. This is not good. So I'm hoping now, because there are lawsuits that are coming from state attorneys general, at least here in California and other states, that will hopefully at least tie it up.
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You know, and if they don't do it, then the EU, come to the rescue, EU, on this one, because this is a terrible fucking deal for everybody in production, period. I mean, it's dead out here already. This is just going to make it worse. Yeah. Now, if you recall, we talked about this lawsuit.
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The NAACP sued XAI for allegedly operating methane gas turbines to power its Colossus 2 data center in South Memphis without proper permits. It asked the court for an injunction to stop XAI from running the turbines, explaining that they increased risks of asthma attacks and heart disease.
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It's also worth noting that at the time, the lawsuit was for the 27 gas turbines that they were running. But the Southern Environmental Law Center later obtained emails showing that XAI just continued to add more turbines after the lawsuit was filed, bringing the total number now running to 57.
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58. 59. Yep. Unfortunately, the Department of Justice, along with the state of Mississippi, are asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit that they filed against XAI. Why? Take a breath.
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Take a breath. You'll get there. The Justice Department reportedly wrote that stopping XAI from running its gas turbines to power Colossus 2 threatens American national economic and energy security by seeking to shut off the power supply for artificial intelligence innovation that supports the Department of War's military operations.
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Yes, the Department of War is paying Grok to make child pedo nudes, and we can't have that stop. Well, I also want to point out that Colossus 2, they just made a giant deal because nobody's using Grok.
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So, who's using the compute at Colossus 2? Anthropic, which has just been labeled, you know, it's been labeled by the Department of War as an enemy combatant and has been regulated to shit. The only AI that's ever been regulated to say you can't fucking send it out there.
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And also to Google. So, most of that capacity is not actually being used by Grok, which is the very funny part of it. But they do use it for Grok for a little bit, though. Just a little bit.
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Just a little bit. So, we got to keep all those turbines running. It is because, because, because of this filing, we found out that the Pentagon has acknowledged that Elon Musk's Grok played a role in U.S. military operations against Iran, with a top defense official stating that Grok-supported systems helped launch more than 2,000 musicians.
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Musicians. Yeah. We're launching musicians to Iran because they can't get a job. So, we just ring them. First, we stole their music. Now, we're using them as weapons of war. Weapons. Oh, yes. Oh, God. At least start with Dave Matthews, please. Please.
-
He's already shit all over a bunch of people. Really? Google it, kids. You'll get the AI results, but still. 2,000 munitions against 2,000 targets in just four days. Officials say Grok is one of only a handful of AI systems approved for sensitive military use.
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The revelation is fueling criticism of the military's growing reliance on AI after strikes in Iran reportedly killed hundreds of civilians, including a bunch of children. So, there you go. This episode is brought to you by Shopify.
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It's time to turn those what-ifs into... ...with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash grumpy. Go to shopify.com slash grumpy. That's shopify.com slash grumpy. Saturday, September 26th, two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide.
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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 pleaver colon.
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Well, it's another day, another 25 lawsuits with Elon Musk to talk about. Elon Musk and XAI have again failed to prove that OpenAI was trying to persuade one of its former employees to steal trade secrets, according to a federal judge's ruling on Monday.
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This lawsuit began in September 2025 when XAI first accused OpenAI of stealing trade secrets, which came a month after Musk's company directly sued one of its former employees. for the same reason. OpenAI countered by arguing there wasn't a connection between itself and the alleged misappropriation of XAI's former employees.
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The federal judge dismissed the case in February, leaving XAI with the option to file an amended complaint, this being Elon. Of course they filed the amended complaint because he can't let anything go, that thin-skinned little bitch. OpenAI again wanted the case dismissed and the judge agreed, reiterating that XAI failed to sufficiently allege a connection between OpenAI and the alleged misappropriation of XAI's former employees.
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So saying the exact same thing again, fucking knock it off, Elon. If the judge would just say that, that would be great. Just fucking knock it off, Elon. That'll be our next shirt. Well, SpaceX has agreed to acquire AI coding startup Cursor in a $60 billion all-stock deal just days after its blockbuster IPO.
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I don't know if you checked the stock price today, Brian. Did you look at it today? I did not. Well, it's on its way down. It took long enough, but good. It took three days. Yeah. Went to the mug. Back down. Oh. We're going tomorrow at the moon.
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Oh, shit. We crashed. Yeah. It's like one of those initial Starship launches. They were just like, oh, what's that over the Caribbean? Oh, that's a couple billion dollars of taxpayer money. Hmm. Okay. Great. Well, so the move is aimed at propping up SpaceX's AI division, which includes XAI after an earlier merger with Elon Musk's company.
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Yes, Cursor founded in 2022 as AnySphere has become one of the fastest rising AI coding tools and was reportedly preparing a $2 billion raise at a $50 billion valuation before SpaceX stepped in and spent $10 billion more than the valuation that they were going to raise money at.
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It's good business right there, Jason. It's good business. It's really good business. I mean, look, look at how much he paid for Twitter. And then you look at this and it's like he's at least consistent. He's consistent. It's a steal compared to Twitter. God, we really need to we need to sell something to Elon.
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We really do. We really do. The acquisition follows months of turmoil at XAI, including executive departures, restructuring and legal risk tied to Grox's past failures involving offensive outputs and non-consensual deepfake generation of every nasty kind imaginable.
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Don't forget the children. Don't forget the children. Oh, we love the children. Oh, so much do they love the children. SpaceX pitched investors on a massive AI opportunity during its IPO, claiming a $28 trillion total addressable market with $26 trillion tied to AI.
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Let us let us let us let us let's go back to the billions of dollars that everybody is losing. And now we're into the truth now. And now let let us talk about how much a trillion dollars is, kids. One trillion dollars is one thousand billion dollars and one billion dollars is one thousand million dollars.
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So a trillion dollars is a lot of money. Yes. More than you could ever spend in your lifetime. Yes. Well, I would try. I would very much try. You know what I would do? I would buy food for everybody on the fucking planet first.
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We need an update to a movie, Jason. I think you need to resurrect Does It Have Legs? Let's see how Brewster's Trillions is going to do. Oh, that's good. That's good. I've actually got a hot copy of Brewster's Millions on my Plex server I've been meaning to watch. Well, there you go. Yeah.
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I like that movie, too. Yeah, it was good. I have since uninstalled Cursor. Okay. Smart. I never used it anymore anyway because they've all got their own stuff built in. The only IDE I use anymore is Xcode. And that app that I built with Fable, I didn't even have to open Xcode for it.
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You only need Xcode so you can ship it off to Apple, which I'll talk about more in a little bit here. All right. Now let's talk about something near and dear to my heart. And this is really, this is what I, you know what grinds my gears, Jason? This is starting to get personal. Ahead of the G7 conference in France, Donald Trump is once again threatening massive tariffs on France if it doesn't remove its 3% digital tax on U.S. tech companies.
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I asked French President Emmanuel Macron not to charge American companies. If they do, I have no choice but to charge 100% tariff on all champagnes and wines coming out of France. What? You bastard. Brian, when was the last time you drank a French wine?
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Last night. You drank French wine? You bougie fuck. I prefer Chilean. I'm more like, I like my nice... Your Malbecs? My Malbecs. And yeah, but I do like a nice French wine. France's Gaffem tax, Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft is on gross, not net revenue earned by those tech giants.
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Imposed in 2019 as part of a deal with the first Trump administration, it takes in around $700 million per year in revenue, which is not really that much. France's wine and champagne sales in the U.S. are worth at least $2 billion. France's lower house recently voted to double the digital tax to 6%, but that was vetoed by ministers over the risk of U.S. reprisals.
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Oh, they might turn off your Anthropic if you raise the taxes too much. Oh, whoops. Whoops. Trump is increasingly seen as an attack dog for big tech using tariffs as a cudgel to force nations to drop digital taxes and levies. U.S. companies have also urged Trump to punish nations like Australia over social media bans and the use of news media in search results.
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Canada, for one, repealed its digital tax in 2025 following pressure from the Trump administration. Other blocs have resisted, though, including the U.K., which has retained its own 2% digital tax services tax. So hold the line, people. Hold the line. HODL! HODL! HODL!
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This one just makes me smile. UFC fighters at Sunday's White House event will receive some bonuses. In USD1, a stablecoin issued by World Liberty Financial, the Trump family crypto business. Ha ha ha! Just throw that in the trash.
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Yeah. Yeah. Go back to the last episode if you want to hear about World Liberty Financial and how shitty it is. I think it's worth five cents now. Down from 34 cents. But World Liberty is now an official sponsor of the UFC event staged on the South Lawn and scheduled for Trump's birthday, which was last weekend, with Travis Pastrana.
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I always think Travis Pastrami, which makes me want to Rubin every time I see him ride a motorcycle and I just get hungry. But the company says USD1 is backed by dollar reserves and paying fighters with it works economically like writing a check, a really shitty check.
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A check that bounces. Yeah. But the White House says there's no conflict because Trump's assets are in a trust managed by his children. Got a bridge to sell you. Well, following a consultation, the UK is banning young people under 16 from social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
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Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced, this is a line in the sand, the PM said in a speech at his Downing Street residence. Tech giants had their chance and failed, but were stepping in to protect children. Back parents had set a new normal for future generations. The government aims to pass legislation by the end of this year and start enforcing it in the spring of 2027.
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This will ban not only major social media platforms, but also places restrictions on gaming apps. Those include banning children from under 16 from chatting with strangers, live streaming or using romantic chatbots. Makes sense. Just saying.
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The government is also looking at limited restrictions for use under 18, like overnight curfews and breaks and infinite scrolling. Starmer acknowledged that kids will always find ways around the ban, but said that that wasn't a good excuse for not enacting a law. We don't say, oh, look, a teenager managed to get a drink somehow.
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Let's not bother banning alcohol sales for children, he said. Also a good point. Our laws are rules, but they're also an expression of our values. They shape the social contract, and this will change the conversations the parents have and the expectations of children over time. The results of the UK consultation showed that nine in 10 parents supported a minimum age of 16 for accessing social media apps.
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The government said at the same time, the PM added that the ban does not mean the UK is anti-tech, which, yeah, makes sense. The government has yet to release details on ID or other enforcement mechanisms, which is the real puzzle that everybody's trying to figure out. So, yeah, I think that's a good counterpoint to everything that we've been hearing recently, because we've been talking about these age-based bans on social media and everything for quite some time on the show now.
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And then the comeback was basically studies are showing that it doesn't really seem to be having any effect and we're not sure about this and all that. But again, to me, you know, a lot of it was they're just going to get around it. Smart kids are going to get around it. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't set the precedent.
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That is the point he's making. And it is a really good point. I got around the drinking age a lot before I was legal to drink. Yeah, me too. That doesn't mean you get rid of the law. Exactly. It was more difficult. We had to jump through hoops, goddammit. Yeah.
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And I've made the point that, you know, this protects the dumb kids because the dumb kids are the ones that are not smart enough to get around the age restrictions. And those are the ones that are going to be at most at risk by the shit that they see on social media because they're dumb. I'm just I'm just calling a spade a spade here.
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Come on. You know, the smart kids are going to smart. The dumb kids are going to dump. Let's just keep the dumb kids from dumbing so much that they end up on truth social when they grow up. OK. Yes. And again, we should be making the laws and all that sort of stuff as an expression of what we are aspiring towards, not what we think we can actually enforce.
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It's what we're inspiring towards. It's it's informing the parents of what our society is about. This is what you should be teaching your children. This is not legal until you're this age. Teach your kids that. Figure it out. Do some goddamn parenting. Yeah.
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And maybe if we keep kids off of the social networks long enough, they'll go under because there won't be enough people using them because they suck. I just had a fly land on me. Me too. What's going on, man? Ah, that's technology for you. The drones out.
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Damn it. They got us, Jason. Oh, shit. Somebody's been listening to this show. Well, hackers are targeting Roblox, having moved beyond stealing valuable player items and are now hijacking entire developer accounts, including ownership of games and digital worlds.
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According to 404 Media, multiple developers say attackers used fake job offers to trick them into running malware or installing malicious packages, then took over Roblox accounts, groups, games and Robux balances. One family lost control of the Shadow Network, a game built over five years with more than 12,000 members.
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Would this fall under don't build your business in somebody else's backyard there, Jason? This has actually two things you should not do. One, don't build your business in somebody else's backyard and expect that, but whatever. Blah, blah, blah.
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The other is don't run fucking software from somebody you don't know just because they offered you a fucking job, you idiot. Oh, my God. I've had to deal with scams like this because we help manage a celebrity and he gets these Facebook scams all the time.
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They're like, oh, we just want to log in and he's just got to click this link in here so we can set up the live stream and I'll give him $3,000 to do the live stream. And I'm like, do not click that link. Do not click that link. Under no circumstances. Yes. We covered this on the show. All it does is opens up a fucking tunnel.
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Boom. Your account's gone. They disappear. You're never heard from again and you're never getting it back because the platforms don't give a shit. And guess who doesn't give a shit? Roblox. So the only reason that some of these people got their accounts back is because 404 Media actually went out and said, hey, we're doing a piece on you guys screwing over your developers because, yeah, quite frankly, they were dumb.
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They didn't have two factor on or they ran an app that just gave them all control of their game. Whoopsie. But it's got me thinking, Brian. This got me thinking. We need a safe word. When you have an account, you need a safe word that is like you put it in the first time and it's never seen again.
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So when something happens like this, you just call them up and you go asparagus or asparagus if you're fancy and then they give you your account back. That's it. That's all you need to do. So but there's no mechanism like this. See, I'm solving the world's problems, Brian.
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But yeah, except there's never anybody to actually call anymore. Well, the bot. You have to talk to their AI bot. And it'll go, did you mean broccoli? Yes. We'll get the safe word completely wrong or we'll actually just release it into the wild. So that'll be great.
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Well, the Fox Corporation announced it will be acquiring Roku, the best known as a streaming device ecosystem subject to approval. Fox will pay about $22 billion for Roku or $160 per share. Do companies claim that Roku will still operate as its own partner-friendly platform?
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For now. Everybody's going great. Like Fox has just been treating everybody safe and fair, right? Oh, yeah. Right? Yeah. The Roku channel currently serves over 100 million households worldwide. Fox states that it'll have a greater scale with Roku, reaching audiences for live content and streaming.
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It also gives Fox access to the high-growth area of advertising and streaming subscriptions. The company claims that combined, it would create the third largest entity in US TV based on viewer share. And yes, the deal is still subject to regulatory approval, which I hope it does not get. But it's Fox and it's Trump.
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It will. Yes. And, you know, this is the minor Murdochs, not the major Murdochs. So, but Murdoch Jr. Spawn of Murdoch is what this is. I've got two Roku TVs in my house and I have to constantly go through and delete all the shit that they keep turning on every week now.
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And because the only reason that I have a Roku TV is to watch DirecTV or switch to my Apple TV. That's the only thing that I need it for. But, you know, because God knows my Fire TV doesn't work for shit. I finally got it working, Brian, after that rant I made a couple episodes ago about it keep getting it stuck in the reboot loop, in the reboot loop.
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I had to go find an Ethernet cable and run like a hundred foot Ethernet cable to get to my TV to actually hijack it. And you had to log into an Amazon account, which they said you shouldn't have to do. But then that could could redo that the because it stopped it stopped in the middle of a patch and it just kept trying to do the patch over and over again.
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It didn't turn off or anything. The patch that they gave me broke. So my TV broke and it kept rebooting every three minutes, which is really hard to watch a show when it reboots every three minutes. It's difficult. Yeah. Yeah. I don't recommend buying a Fire TV or any TV from Amazon ever.
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I don't even like the Fire sticks. No, they're horrible. Dude. And even if you turn off everything and still boot up, you know, just you have to boot up your TV. It takes like a minute to boot to turn your TV on. It takes a minute because it's a slow ass shitty computer.
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And when it comes up, it just goes straight to the Amazon interface and just gives you it is loading all of this crap. They're fucking horrible. But, you know. Did I say don't buy one yet? I think I did. You mentioned that. I'm going to stand by that. I'm going to stand by that. I do love my Apple TV, though.
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And I did find out that Widow's Bay has been renewed for a second season, which is great. Because the final episode of the first season was last night. And I watched it and I liked it quite a bit. So I'm looking forward to season two. It is. It's kind of a horror movie show thing without real consequences.
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So it's fun. It's fun. It's like it's a lighthearted horror show. I do love me some lighthearted horror. Yeah, it's whore-ish. Oh, too many jokes. Too little time. My wife swung for the fences and we watched the last two of the three Downton Abbey movies over the last week.
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Downton Abbey A New Era and Downton Abbey The Grand Finale. So now I never have to watch them again. I have to admit they weren't as bad as I remember them being. And it could just be because we did the straight run of the entire show.
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Into the movies all within the space of like less than a month. So it just kind of blurred past. But yeah, it's just not as good as the show. They never should have made movies. They should have done limited edition miniseries or all that sort of thing. I think we figured out that the main problem really was the fact that it's such a big ensemble cast and that's what made it great.
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And if you do a movie, you can really have one or two stars going and everybody else is just relegated to just kind of having a little bit so that they're in the movie. And it's just not interesting. And that's the real problem with the movies.
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Yeah, I totally get that. Totally get that. Speaking of movies, I saw Disclosure Day yesterday. Very curious. Well, I'm going to give you some Rotten Tomatoes stats here. The tomato meter gives it an 81% and the popcorn meter gives it 72%.
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Now, I don't go to Rotten Tomatoes very often, so I had to figure out what this meant. I don't know what that means. The tomato meter is from actual reviewers and people who review movies professionally, and the popcorn meter is from the audience. So the reviewers liked it more than the audience did.
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And 72%, which to me sounds like about a C, that's about what the movie was. The first three quarters of the movie was good. It was Spielbergian, alien trope shit, you know, the standard stuff. It's very Spielbergian.
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And the last bit of the movie was like a boomer who doesn't get that deep fakes exist in this world and tries to, like, rely on everything that, oh, my God, we're releasing this footage of blah, blah, blah, and the world's going to actually give a shit. Very unplausible.
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Very unplausible. Very boring. It did not stick the landing for me. I did not really care for the landing. The end, the very last scene in the movie where they've been, like, there's, like, hundreds of articles are, like, this is what the ending really means.
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And I'm, like, no. It's worth watching if you have nothing to do and a couple glasses of French wine laying around that you've smuggled in from Gay Perry. Go for it. Or if you're, you know, drunk on a plane review, perfect. It's a little too long.
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It's, like, two and a half hours long, I think. That's long, yeah. That was rough, rough. And so for comparison, RuPaul's new movie came out, Stop That Train. It's kind of like Airplane, but for drag and stuff like that. My friend Missy's in the movie. And on a train. Yeah.
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It's on a train. It's Airplane on a Train. The Tomatometer for Stop That Train, which had 10% of the budget of Disclosure Day. I think Disclosure Day had, like, a $200 million budget, and Stop That Train had a $20 million budget. And I'm assuming Steven Spielberg did not direct this one either.
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No, no. This was actually directed by Adam Shankman, who is a fairly well-known choreographer. You may have seen him on, so you think you can dance a lot. But 85% on the Tomatometer for Stop That Train, which is four points higher than Disclosure Day. 79% on the Popcorn Meter, which is a solid 7% higher.
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So when Stop That Train comes to a local station near you, hop aboard. It did only bring in $2 million this weekend, so I don't think it's doing as well as Disclosure Day, but, you know, you give and you get. You give and you get. There's no Spielberg attached.
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But Margaret Cho's in it, too, so you've got to go watch that. I do love Margaret Cho. Yeah. Well, the official teaser trailer for Shrek 5 has dropped, Jason. Yay. It's coming in theaters summer 2027. Now, I've been on a journey with Shrek recently.
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My kid just recently discovered it. I think it's been over the last six months that we've watched the first four Shrek movies. Shrek 1, I remember, if you cast your mind back to my review, not as funny as you remember it being. Right, yes. Joke, not as many jokes.
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Took a long time for setups. Animation wasn't quite there. Shrek 2, legitimately very funny. Shrek 3, pretty funny. Shrek 4, awful abomination that never should have existed ever. But the trailer for this looks pretty good.
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So we'll see. I hope they learn their lessons from the hellscape that was Shrek 4. I think they're taking this full year because we've just come into summer 2026. And it looked to me from the teaser that the movie's pretty much done. But why are you waiting a year?
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Probably for focus groups to try and fix it so you don't have a Shrek 4 debacle on your hands, I'm guessing. I'm hoping. Yeah. So speaking of things we didn't need, ridiculous. The Louis C.K. special on Netflix is coming out. Hang on a second.
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Louis C.K. has a special on Netflix? Yes, he does. But he's been canceled. He has. All these people keep getting canceled, yet they keep having fucking specials everywhere. All these fucking right-wing lunatics that have been canceled are everywhere. How can this be?
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He's canceled. He's canceled. Brian, Brian, is he a right-wing lunatic, though? I don't know. Has he rebranded himself that way yet? Because he probably will. That's usually what they do. That may be why he got the special. Russell Brand. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. If he was going to get a special as a right-wing nut job, he would be on Paramount+.
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Oh, that's true. This is Netflix. Well, they haven't gotten their shit together yet over at Paramount+. True, true. Well, I mean, they just did have a UFC fight on the White House lawn, so they got something going on there. This saddens me very much that Netflix has decided to give him a special.
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You know, I'm fine with giving people second chances when they apologize and do the right tours, and he did not do the right tour, and I've heard some things from multiple people in the industry who are just like, he should not be allowed back on stage, period.
-
There are some bad people in comedy, and he's one of them, unfortunately. And the sad part is, he's funny as shit, but, you know, there are some things that you just kind of got to say, no. Michael Jackson's a brilliant musician. Fuck that guy. Only if you're 12.
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So, let's end on something good, Brian. Okay. Star Trek Strange New Worlds trailer dropped for season four. Coming out July 23rd. Did you watch the trailer? I did, and the hilarious thing is I just canceled Paramount+, two weeks ago, and now I'm going to have to resubscribe. Sweden, Sweden, here we go, Sweden.
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Come join us in Sweden. I am not going to sign back up for Paramount+, because fuck those guys. But I will be watching July 24th when it hits the Torrance. No, the trailer looks great.
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Trailer looks great. Yeah. I'm very excited. I've loved this show. They've had a few missteps, but what show hasn't? Season three was a misstep. Most of season three. Yeah. Yeah. But it's a great show. The cast is great. I'm really sad to see it go.
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I guess we are going to get one more half season after this. Half season after this. Yeah. Half season after this. Okay. Fair enough. Okay. Yeah. And, you know, it does look like they fixed the problem with season three. But you have to also have to give them credit, because season two has the single best musical episode of any drama ever made, period.
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And you call me about cop rock, I'm going to punch you in the nuts. No. I was going to say, you need to check cop rock out. Nope. Even the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical was passable. Not great. But that one, the Star Trek Strange New Worlds musical episode is a fucking stunner.
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Fucking stunner. Well, I should have saved this story for when Dave was here, because he was the beloved Commodore guy. But the recently resurrected Commodore is getting back into phones. But rather than taking on the likes of Apple and Samsung at their own game, the Commodore callback 8020 is probably nonconformant flip phone that wouldn't have looked out of place in the 90s.
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Built by its maker as a retreat from Black Mirror technology, the callback 8020, the first phone to carry the Commodore name since 2015's pet, they had a phone in 2015 called the pet? Never heard of it. Uses patent-pending tech to enforce a system-level block on social media apps, web browsers, and email clients.
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You mean a host file? That's all it needs to be, a host file. Basically. What you're allowed to have is the Linux-based Sailfish OS operating system, which Commodore says offers a completely de-Googled experience compatible with over 99% of Android apps, thanks to the runtime compatibility layer.
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These include WhatsApp, Maps, and Spotify. In a statement to Ars Technica, Commodore said it supports side-loading of nearly anything that isn't available on its Comma store, apart from the doom-scrolling apps around which it has drawn a firm line in the sand. It's so committed to its anti-social media policy, it's even blocked unwanted software at the DNS level.
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So even if you do find a workaround for getting certain apps on the phone, shh, don't tell anyone about that, Jason. You're going to ruin Commodore's whole thing. You still won't be able to access their server's host file. Commodore also promises not to collect your data without consent, host file, and says it won't monetize any data you do hand over, host file, track cookies, host file, or monitor the way you use the phone, host file.
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Despite branding browsers, host file, it does maintain an internet connection host file, so you can use it for things like scanning QR codes and navigation when you're out and host filing. Okay. All right. Well, I like it. I saw it.
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It's cool looking. It is. I'm fine with it, you know? I put in my pre-order email address. It's not a pre-order, it's just like you get 50 bucks off if you sign up for the newsletter. It is the most, like, Star Trek first-generation flip phone communicator I've ever seen a phone look.
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Oh, the Razer, man. Come on, the Razer. All right. There's a reason I still have one on my bookshelf, because that was the shit. Fucking Razers were the bomb. The bomb diggity. So we talked a little bit about Snap last week, and they're back in the news this week, Brian.
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Snap's long-running smart glasses experiment just got a little bit more expensive. The company unveiled its new augmented reality headset-style glasses called Spex, with a price tag of, wait for it, $2,195. No, thank you. I was waiting for you to do a spit take on that Guinness.
-
Yeah, the bulky design immediately drew criticism, and I'd call them Max Headroomy, but Max's glasses actually looked kind of cool, and these are as far from cool as you can get. Investors weren't very impressed either, and Snap's stock fell nearly 30% after the announcement, reflecting skepticism that the company could succeed where its previous spectacles, products failed.
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So, spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch. Nope. Don't want them. Not going to get them. Spectacles or the testicles? I've got the testicles. I've got a wallet and a watch. So, I'm actually covered, as a matter of fact. Yeah, I don't want anybody's glasses.
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So, I'm good. Yeah, I don't even want to wear my own. I hate these things. Yeah. I've got to get those little drops I can take, so I don't even need to wear these for reading anymore. That'd be great. Yeah, those space drops. I hear they're from Germany, so you can go get some. Yeah. I've been walking a lot, a lot still, and so I've been going on my book tour, and I went back and I read one of the foundational books that I think, seriously, everybody should read.
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It's called So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport. It's from 2012, and he breaks down the entire point of looking for passion in your work is stupid and bullshit. It's the whole point of the book. And, I mean, the title takes its name from Steve Martin's Be So Good They Can't Ignore You, but he also breaks down the passion mindset versus the craftsman mindset when it comes to actually how you get worked on.
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The passion mindset is how you can take from people. The craftsman mindset is how you can give to people. I've lived my life by the craftsman mindset since day one when I got a job. I care about doing great fucking work at the highest level, and that's why I had the jobs that I had. The people who are nowadays the vibe coders out there, sorry, I said the word.
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Uh-oh, here come the Instagram haters. Those people are the passion people. They want to take. But anyway, it is a phenomenal book. I cannot recommend it enough. It's an old read, but every single thing in that book still stands the test of time. Have you ever read it, Brian? I have not.
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I probably should at some point. Oh, you'd love it. You'd absolutely love it. Cal is fucking awesome. His latest stuff about deep work and that stuff is decent, but I swear to God, he peaked with this book. It's my favorite book that he's ever written. And another book that I've been working through is Creator Capitalist by the Category Pirates.
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And some of you may know that I used to work for the Category Pirates. I used to read their audio books, and I still work with my friend Christopher Lockhead on a bunch of stuff, and in halfway through the book, I actually got three quarters of the way through the book, and it inspired me so much, I went off and built my own app, Brian.
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And it's out now. It's called Track-A-Lot. And not Spam-A-Lot, Track-A-Lot. $2.99 in the App Store. You can go check it out. There's a link in the show notes. It's basically a very simple tracker for when my dog got sick. I needed to track when she peed, she poofed, she barfed, she had the, we called them the gulpies, all these little things.
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And I'm like, we were writing it down, and I'm like, there's got to be an easier way to do this. And it was just, I scratched my own itch. You can make little widgets for your home screen and just one-tap track a bunch of stuff. Very simple, no data tracked. You can use iCloud to save your backup files and load those on other devices.
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You can export the data to your Google Calendar, print it from your phone, all sorts of shit. For $2.99, Brian, it's a fucking steal. It's a damn bargain. It's a damn bargain. It is a damn bargain. Damn bargain. All right, let's thank some of the people that make this show possible.
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Over at Patreon, we've got some new patrons. Seth, Mark, and Zach, thank you all so much. And a huge thank you to the people who continue to support this show. Mark, Craig, Jay, Eddie, James, Andre, Paul, Dan, Philip, and Ryan. We love you all so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
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Over at PayPal, we've had Jonathan, who sent us the sum total of his class action settlement payment from Yahoo. So thank you. We've had quite a few people actually do that, send us their class actions when they come through, usually because we let them know that they existed in the first place. So you're welcome. You're welcome, and thank you.
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Thank you, and you're welcome. We appreciate it. Over at the tip jar, we've got Jordan, Dahl, Theodore, Jeffrey, and Sean. And merch this week, we've got from Chevalier, who's a Florida man, Sasha Modesto. It's not Sasha Modesto.
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Sasha from Modesto. Blair from Florida as well. Thank you very much. Florida man. Florida man. You put that one in there. I did. What the hell? You're throwing me off. God damn you. And Desiree with the 250 sec tip.
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I don't know what a Swedish cronor maybe? You don't know what a sex tip is. Hey, hey, hey. Now, you watch it. You watch it, buddy. You're going to go say that on my Instagram account for one of my fucking reels, you little troll. Thank you, Desiree. That was over at YouTube, where you can now sign up to be a member and follow us there.
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Yeah, so thank you, everybody, for supporting the show. We are member-supported, so please become a member wherever you can. You can join us at YouTube. You can join us at Patreon. You can hit us at the tip jar. You can hit us at PayPal. Everything is at GOG.showslashdonate.
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So please check it out and help keep this show on the air. And you can get the show early, ad-free, and in high definition in most cases. There you go. Your mileage may vary. It sure might. All right. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister. And I'm Jason DeFillippo.
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Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.showslash751. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at GOG.showslashdonate. Every penny helps keep the show on the air. Love the show? Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes, and everyone in between, and we'll love you for it.
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Swing by GOG.show to join our Discord and chat with us. Got thoughts, feedback, school links? Hit us up at GOG.showslashcontact. And hey, don't forget to leave a five-star review at GOG.showslashreview and we'll read it on the air. And guess what, Brian? We've got some GOG merch. You can see some behind me here on the table.
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It is beautiful. You can see some on my breasticles. And you can go buy the shirt if you want to. And yeah, go to shop.gog.show and stay grumpy. Yeah. Hang on. I got a frog. Stay grumpy. Aren't you a frog on a thumb?
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I am a frog on a thumb. Oh, shit. Trolls. Goddamn. Saturday, September 26th. Two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide.
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Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero. Plus, the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line when the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meek Cleaver Cullen.
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BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com.