754: Frankly Asinine Questions

Saturday, September 26th. Two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero. Plus the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line when the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meat Cleaver Colon.

BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. Grumpy Old Geeks. A weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. I was looking at our numbers, Brian, because I was redoing some of our marketing materials to try and get us some listeners because we have been losing them at a staggering pace, much like my hair, which is why I'm wearing a hat.

And it dawned on me when we first started this show, we had 40 years of combined internet experience. And now we've got over 60 years of combined internet experience. That is fucking terrifying. Never mention that again. Do not make that part of the materials.

And we shall not state that ever. We have almost three years of combined internet experience. We've been vibe coding for six months, and that's why we're doing this show. I'm a script kiddie. Yay! I mean, time is a strange thing. It's been brought to mind more than a few times this week.

Like, all of a sudden, I was like, I've known you 15 years. How is that possible? Not you. There's somebody else, like, here in Toronto. I'm like, how? How was it? How? What? And then, oh, yeah. Well, yeah. Time keeps on marching. It does. Into the future.

It's a good song, man. No, I'm coming up probably five years this Christmas for my stroke, even. That's how long that's been. Yeah, and how long has it been since you broke your leg and then refused to go to the doctor about it? Fifteen? I was talking to MXV the other day. He's like, I haven't seen you in a decade.

And I'm like, it's been a decade? Jesus Christ. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, you've been in that life for quite some time now. So, the funny thing is, it's like this past week, I've been taking all the old websites, like for the movies that I did, you know, that I keep having the posters on the wall for. I found the old demos for them, and I've been putting them through AI to have them rebuilt for modern browsers.

Because when these things were built, they were built for $640, $480, or $1028 on a CRT. Yeah. And they look like shit on modern displays. You know, I mean, they're tiny. They are tiny. The Titanic, like, trailer that we had was like $240 by $120 in vivo or VO or whatever the fuck that was.

They're a real video. Yeah, well, we actually never used real video on any of the movie websites. I did do a real video demo for Meatloaf, which was a four-frame experience, and you had a control frame, and real audio could then control what you loaded in the frames.

So I took the video for one of Meatloaf's videos and put it into a slideshow so it could do it. I don't have a copy of that anymore. I mean, obviously, because I was doing music stuff, we established relationships with real because we, you know, we stream clips of songs in real audio.

And I can't even remember what band it was anymore, but we very early on tried to do a live stream from the Whiskey-A-Go-Go in Los Angeles on real video. And that's when we discovered that you have to pay for streaming rights if you want to record it. No, well, they didn't even have streaming rights then.

Yeah, come on. Just if you wanted to record anything on video in a venue, you got to pony up some serious cash. So we just did it on the sly, stuck a camera on the, like, bass rig. That's how we did it. Yeah, when I worked at Rocktropolis, one of the guys who was one of the co-founders that they brought in was one of the execs from real.

So we were trying to do all sorts of stuff with them. And that was just, oh, God, it was so long ago. But it's been fun digging into, like, the different AI models, trying to get it to build this stuff. And it is just like that sandwich video that I posted last week on Discord.

It is like talking to a very stupid intern over and over again. And, you know, it's still easier than trying to do it myself because I just don't give a crap anymore. It's not worth it. No. I think the thing that I discovered that I love the most is, it's like telling it to do things that I know how to do that I'm just too lazy to do.

Like, I spun up a new VPS for my website for Jason.FYI this week because the old one was just dogging. So I went to Vulture and spun up a VPS. I'm like, hey, Claude, can you, if I just give you the root or my SSH key and I set everything up in shell, can you just go set this up for me?

And it's like, sure. I'm like, go. And it came back and it's like, it did everything. I'm like, is it secure? He's like, oh, yeah, I'm running fail to ban and all this other stuff. And I'm like, well, what's the stack on it? It's like, well, we're running this. I'm like, no, I want an old school LAMP stack. I want Apache, it's now MariaDB, and, you know, PHP, the latest version, the whole nine yards.

Wait, MySQL is no more? MySQL hasn't been anymore forever. Oracle bought MySQL like 15 years ago or something. This saddens me. Yeah, there's an open source port of MySQL called MariaDB. But most of the kids nowadays use Postgres.

But I don't feel like, like some of the code that I want to port over for all these old websites is just straight MySQL. So I don't want to have to do the. I was a MySQL. What am I talking about? I'm not doing anything. I just have to tell it what to do. I'm like, here, go fucking do it. I was a MySQL query master, man.

I had that down. Yeah. So it was, it's been fun this week. It's definitely been fun. So I'll post some of the links to the old sites in the show notes. I think that one of the interesting things, too, is that these things are actually able to do is take old DCR files, Shockwave files, compiled Shockwave files, and actually pull out the lingo and recreate it in JavaScript.

It was just insane. It's like some of the assets are very useful back in the day. Yeah, it would have just for stealing other people's ideas. So, but I did find some of the director's files. So I'm going to try and shove some director files at it. But it actually even recreated the VRML inside of the Starship Enterprise for the Star Trek First Contact website, if you can believe it.

It like took the wormhole file and made it work. I was like, holy shit. Okay. I'm a script kitty now. Yay. I wanted to tell everybody, everybody's been asking, where's Dave? Where's Dave?

We miss Dave. I'm sorry. We're just not enough for you. But Dave's been traveling. We've been changing the time that we record the show, and Dave hasn't been able to do it. But on Friday, we're going to be recording a special Dark Side with Dave that will come out as a bonus episode. So we'll figure out how that's going to get released on Saturday at some point.

But Dave's coming back, and when you come back from L.A., Brian, we're going to try and figure out how we can get it back to a regular cadence with good old Dave. Because we miss Dave. Yes. Yes, we do. We do. We do. Well, Brian, I saw this article this morning, and I just had to put it in here.

We spent decades being told Gen X didn't matter. Turns out we're the country's fucking operating system. New census data shows Americans aged 45 to 64 shrank by 2.68 million between 2020 and 2025, even as the 65-plus population jumped more than 16%.

We're a smaller generation to begin with, and now we're aging into retirement while there's nobody waiting in the wings to replace decades of institutional knowledge. That means fewer veteran engineers, managers, teachers, caregivers, and the people who still remember why that one production server can never, ever be rebooted.

Meanwhile, the Northeast and Midwest are losing Gen X the fastest as people chase cheaper housing in the South. I've had a bunch of friends move to North Carolina, of all places. They'll figure. But so after spending our entire lives being overlooked between the boomers and the fucking millennials, America has finally realized who was holding everything together.

You're welcome. Welcome. And now we know why our audience is shrinking, because there are less and less of us. I don't know if you've noticed, Brian, but people our age seem to be dying at a shocking rate. Well, yes, colon cancer in particular is on the rise in our generation, as I well know myself, having dealt with that.

We were the first generation that was raised on microwave meals and insane amounts of incredibly processed foods that were done to make, you know, our mom's lives easier. Well, the chickens, the biogenetically modified chickens have come back to roost.

The Swanson meal of doom is what we've got. Yeah, I had a question about this article because I did say and obviously I must I didn't go and read the whole thing. So there must be some key bit of information missing here because it did say, even as the 65 plus population jumped more than 16 percent, the only way a 65 plus population can jump is if a bunch of Benjamin fucking buttons are being born.

Well, no, they they went from being 64 year old to a 65 year old. Oh, got you. So, yeah, time moves. Yes. Yes. It's a it's a moving window of age because soon we will be in the 65 age plus. How's your mouth?

Ten years for me. Jesus Christ. Shoot me now. Once more into the breach, my friend, you shall go first. I will. Trust me, I'm unmarried. I have no kids. I have no life. I have a stroke that I've already had and an unhealthy lifestyle for the past 54 and a half years.

I think I'm definitely up first. So, well, Meta is facing penalties of up to a massive one point four trillion dollars. We're finally moving beyond just the coffee budget money from four U.S. states that sued the company over the addictive designs of Facebook and Instagram, according to Reuters.

Those states, California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, also accused the company of misleading the public about the safety of those apps. We know that's true. We have reported on them saying they have reported on it. The figure not previously disclosed is close to Meta's one point five trillion market capitalization.

So, yes, we are we are finally getting to real money that actually means something to these companies. At a court hearing last month, the state said they calculated the penalties by estimating the number of young users affected by Meta's platforms and multiplying that by fines set by state law. Meta revealed the figure in response to a request from the state's attorneys general on how penalties should be calculated, but said that the amount was unjustified.

A distinction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement, Meta's lawyers wrote in the court filing. Yes, but there's also no analog to what you are fucking doing to people in the history of this fucking in the history of humanity.

You're not wrong. I know. Mark Zuckerberg's company is also facing additional lawsuits from 29 other states, not part of that one point four trillion dollar suit. Most of the alleged most of them alleged that the company violated the COPPA Act by collecting data from kids without the required parental consent.

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will address those claims. Another 14 states have brought claims based on local laws that will be heard in a separate trial in February 2027.

They have denied the allegations on the basis that social media addiction is not an established psychiatric condition. The company's Instagram head, Adam Massari, previously compared it to being addicted to a Netflix show. In response, and this is where I know a little bit of some of this stuff, having a degree in psychology and being well aware of the DSM, the American Psychiatric Association said that social media addiction is not currently listed as a diagnosis in the DSM-5 diagnostic module.

That does not mean it doesn't exist. To provide personal context, way back when, since we just finished talking about how old we are, when I was studying psychology in college, we were on the DSM-4. The DSM-5 came out before I graduated.

They're still on the DSM-5. They have not updated anything yet. So screw you, Meta. Can we get an update over here, please? They move as fast as our congressman. Oh, man. Weekend at McConnell's.

Isn't that fun to watch? Oh, my God. I just had a 20-minute call with McConnell. Yeah. We talked about the DSM-5, actually. Holy shit. That's something to watch. Oh, man. That guy's so fucking dead. Yeah. Oh. We're literally watching Weekend at Bernie's in Congress.

They're not going to admit he's dead as long as humanly possible so nobody can take the seat. Yeah, they got, like, two and a half weeks or whatever to run out that clock? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, there should be hearings, I'm telling you, but there's not. There should be common decency, sir.

I have no decency. Well, speaking of having no decency, Meta has launched Muse Image, a free AI image jader from its super intelligence labs, available in the Meta AI app, Instagram stories, and WhatsApp. The tool can create images from prompts, apply presets, edit existing photos, build ad concepts, mock-up home decorating ideas, and eventually tie into Facebook Marketplace, because that's what I want to sell.

Fake shit that you just made up for me. Why would you want it to tie into Facebook Marketplace, which is supposed to be a localized version of Craigslist in which you sell real items that you own that presumably you could just take a picture? Oh, you want people to just start scamming other people, because why not?

Yeah, you know, eyeballs. Got it, got it. I'm on site. Yes. Meta is also adding Muse-powered effects for Instagram stories, with Muse video already in development. The controversy is around a feature that lets users tag people with public Instagram profiles and generate AI images using their photos without notifying them.

Meta says users can disable this in settings, but the default is, fucking of course, opt out. Given Meta's history with Cambridge Analytica, facial recognition, biometric data, and surprise privacy fistfucks, users are understandably not thrilled about their latest overreach.

And later in the show, I'll tell you how you can opt out of this Zuckerbergian hellscape if you just can't quit the gram, because you're on DSM-6 and you know that social media addiction is a thing. Oh, such bullshit, my friend, bullshit. I went through all my friends today.

I'm like, let me see your phone. Let me see your phone. Let me see your phone. On for everybody. Turned it off for everybody. Well, mine's not public, so fuck that. I've never made my Instagram public, but I'm not an influencer. And just, again, again, thank you to all of our listeners that keep requesting me on Instagram.

I get a couple a week. Sorry. It's private, family-owned, family-friends-only, people I know in real life. You got my Blue Sky or my Twitter or my threads, which I don't update any of them anyways, because I don't care. Yeah. You should still go in and turn that off because you know that someday they're going to change the wording and it's going to be all of your private ones, too.

If it's on the platform, it's fair game. Illinois just passed one of the toughest AI laws in the country with Governor J.B. Pritzker signing the Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act. Thank you for not trying to make that say something. The Aizma. That sounds like a Schwarzenegger.

Aizma. Aizma back. The law requires major AI developers like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google to publicly disclose their safety practices, report serious AI-related incidents, and establish protections for whistleblowers inside AI labs.

The headline feature is a first-in-the-nation requirement for independent third-party safety audits of AI companies generating more than $500 million in annual revenue beginning in 2028. So, that's a ways out. We'll see. But interestingly, both AI and Anthropic backed the bill even after previously battling over competing AI legislation in the state.

While Congress still is sitting on its hands, states are building a patchwork of AI rules that companies increasingly seem willing to accept. Apparently, the fastest way to regulate Silicon Valley is to let Silicon Valley help write the regulations. And you have to ask, why, Brian? I wonder.

I wonder. And I wonder. What a shit show. But, hey, you know, Illinois has always been at the forefront of this stuff. I mean, I still get checks from Facebook and their biometric shit for overreaches when I lived there. So, you know, go Pritzker.

Look, man, I hope he runs for president and he gets my vote. He's a badass. There you go. OpenAI's Sam Altman has reportedly been in talks with the U.S. government to ensure his company's path towards achieving its goals remains free of political hurdles. According to Financial Time, Altman has suggested giving the government a 5% stake in the company in order to share the spoils of the AI boom with the public.

Anybody look at those stock prices recently on AI companies? Oh, well, he doesn't have any yet. He's not sure what the spoils are. But his idea doesn't only involve open AI. Under his proposal, other top AI companies like Google, Anthropic, XAI, and Meta would have to agree to give the government a similar stake in their businesses.

What a guy. Hey, I'm going to give the government a bunch of my, my, a little percentage of my company because that's the way this government works. And you are too, other companies that are competing against me. It's like, it's like going to the king and saying, you can have my daughter as long as all of the other kingdoms agree to give them their daughters too.

But I feel like I'm a good guy because I am offering my daughter. If they don't want to give you their daughters, then they're the bad guys. That's right. As the Times notes, given the government part ownership has worked for another firm before, President Trump used to call for Intel CEO Lip Bhutan to resign until his administration took a 10% stake in the chip maker.

And then he turned around and said, and what about you, Dell? Yeah. Nope. And Dell said, fuck off. Wait, but how much did Dell give to the, uh, the savings account shit? Like 40 some million dollars? Yeah, quite a bit. Quite a bit. Yeah. So.

Talks between Open A and the government are in very early stages, though. And the Times says any deal would still require Congress approval. And I basically think Sime Altman is waiting until this nightmarish hellscape ends and some other party is in power so he doesn't have to do this stupid shit. Yeah, this is all a play just so he can get, uh, uh, was it, uh, GPT 5.6 out the door.

Yep. So that's all this is, you know, never believe the shit. Don't believe the shit. Oh, this one I love. This is a growing law. So I don't love it. I actually find it fairly disturbing and disgusting, but, you know, it's a weird place around here. I'm Gen X.

What are you going to do? A growing lawsuit against X and XAI, sorry, SpaceX AI, alleges Grock has been used to create AI-generated child sexual abuse material from ordinary photos of minors, with plaintiffs claiming the company failed to adequately safeguard the technology or assist law enforcement.

What are you talking about, Jason? They have told us time and time again that they have shut down all the loopholes involved with this. That you could no longer generate any explicit sexual imagery using their AI. AI that is run by methane power.

And ketamine. And ketamine. They've told us this, Jason. They've sworn on a ketamine Bible. An ketamine Bible. That's right. Ketamine Bible. Show title. The amended complaint adds new victims and describes one case in which a man generated more than 7,000 explicit images depicting incest and rape of his stepdaughter from a single childhood photo from when she was born.

He was 11 before he was arrested. Now, in this particular case, I don't blame Grock. This guy's a motherfucker. Well, you should blame Grock because Grock let him make 7,000 images before he was busted. Yes. Agreed.

Not good. I would say not good. Yeah. Still, this guy's a problem. Well, he's not a problem anymore because he shot himself in the head while he was out on bail. So, we cleared the gene pool. Ah, cleared the problem. A problem solver. He is a problem solver, Jason.

That's right. That's right. He's a mover. He's a hustler. He's a hustler. The lawsuit also accuses XAI of withholding critical user information, including IP addresses that investigators say was needed to identify suspects after illegal content was detected and reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Attorneys representing the victims argued this was part of a broader pattern that hindered investigations. Now, going back to that other guy, he was allowed to make thousands of images on the platform, and it wasn't until he used the term gang rape that he was flagged and reported.

Which would have been fine had it not been a minor. I don't even know about that. I think if he used gang bang, he probably would have got through. I bet he would have got through. And, Brian, just for context here, this is the company that strong-armed its way into the NASDAQ 100.

So now, if you have retirement savings, you probably own some SpaceX AI stock. So chew on that for a bit. And if you've been following the stock price at all today, we told you. We told you not to invest.

Told you. At the end of the show, we will have the reveal for what it's at right now because it's to the... Not moon. To the center of the earth. Well, speaking of an AI company that we haven't talked about in a little while, Midjourney wants to see how Warner Brothers Discovery, Disney, and Universal Studios use artificial intelligence technologies in their shows and movies.

And according to Variety, it wants the companies to submit that information to court. Last year, the studios filed a lawsuit against the AI image generator, accusing it of copyright infringement for being able to generate images of Superman, Batman, and other copyrighted characters from the studios. Midjourney argued that training AI with publicly available images is fair use and that the studio themselves use the same training practices for their own AI models.

Specifically, Midjourney is asking for studios, AIs, business plans, research reports, training data sets, model weights, and even the presentations about the AI the companies use for their board meetings. Presumably so they could do the exact same thing and try to make their company better because nobody talks about Midjourney anymore.

So, this is kind of crazy. It's like, yeah, it was all free use and we used all your stuff, but now that you're suing us, well, how are you using it? Are you doing the same thing? What if they're only training it with their own IP? Which I bet that these companies are doing because they're not fucking stupid.

Because there are more lawyers that work at Warner Brothers, Discovery, Disney, and Universal Studios than there are AI gurus. Way more lawyers. There's no fucking way they're training their own internal AI systems on data that they don't own. But Midjourney wants to find that out.

Yeah, but I would never say never on that one. I would never say never on that. Never say never. No, because you never know what those little nerds are up to in the back room. As we know with our 60 plus years of experience. Oh, do we remember what the IT departments were up to?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, so, you know. Human's good at human. Yeah, glass houses, stones, AI, all the same shit. We'll see. So, and here we fucking go again. Anthropic has published a new research paper proposing that Claude contains an internal J-space, a kind of shared workspace where information is integrated before generating responses.

The company compares the idea to global workspace theory, a prominent model of human consciousness, while stopping well short of claiming Claude is actually conscious. Critics argue the research is scientifically interesting, but wrapped in language that leans heavily into anthropomorphism, while references to Claude holding concepts in mind, performing mental calculations, and even thinking about its own thinking.

It's pattern recognition, motherfuckers. The underlying research may improve our understanding of how large language models process information because we still have no fucking idea, but it's a long leap from interpreting internal activations to claiming anything resembling subjective experience.

Now, Brian, we know that this is all because they're planning their IPO. That's all this is about. They're trying to stay in the news. It is a game of one-upsmanship from press releases. You know, Sam Altman, here, take 5% of my company. Dario's like, whatever.

Hey, ours is thinking. It's going to be conscious soon. Remember that AGI thing? Don't forget about that. It might be around the corner. But the thing is, every fucking AI sycophant busted a nut over themselves when this thing came out. You know, they read this and they were just like, oh, my God.

And then I'm like, oh, wait, they didn't read this. They probably had it summarized for them using Claude because they're pretty sure none of these guys can remember how to read anymore. But the buzz on AI Twitter was just fucking ridiculous. They're like, told you so, told you so. And I'm just like. And here I am thinking JSpace was just a dating app for our Jewish friends.

Exactly. Exactly. A friend of mine got married on there. I think it was J-Date. It was. I got dumped because I was German and had tattoos. She decided it was fun for a while, but that was as far as she could take it with me. She had to get it back on J-Date. JSpace was the MySpace Jewish equivalent back in the day.

Oh, God. Blinking and rotating yarmulkes.

Anyways, moving on. Cloudflare has announced plans to automatically block mixed-use web crawlers that index websites for search engines and act as AI agents and trainers at the same time. The company previously offered its customers the optional ability to prevent crawlers from scraping their sites for AI chatbots. But now Cloudflare's stance is becoming more defensive by default.

Web traffic used to indicate that people were reviewing a website's ads or paying for its subscriptions way back in the day. But the popularity of AI models that can visit sites on a user's behalf to pull up-to-date information has upended that system. Cloudflare's new approach is an attempt to rebalance the relationship in a way that's fair for both AI companies and anyone running a website.

Beginning on September 15th, new customers and new websites from existing Cloudflare subscribers will default to allow for search but block training and agent use for pages with ads. Mixed-use crawlers that don't give site owners the option to choose whether their site is used for AI will also be blocked on pages with ads by default.

Users with free accounts will also switch to these defaults unless they opt out ahead of the September 15th deadline, according to the company. This is good use of opt-in. Yay, Cloudflare. You're doing it right. As part of these changes, Cloudflare is also releasing a new version of the pay-per-crawl feature it introduced in 2025 that allowed websites to block AI web crawlers by default unless companies paid to scrape their content.

I'm surprised this still exists because who's doing that? Yeah, I haven't seen any money. Nope, I haven't seen a dime. So the announcement only mentions partnerships with Ceramic.ai and u.com, but Cloudflare likely hopes other AI companies will join in as its customers opt-in.

No, they won't. But Cloudflare's fighting the fight. Yeah, that's what they're going to do. That's what they always do. It's their job. That's why people use them. Yeah, yeah. For free. I don't think I've ever paid them a penny. So thanks for all the free tiers.

That just shows that I run websites now that have no traffic at all. Agentic AI isn't just the next evolution of AI, Brian. It's the next evolution of your electric bill. Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology found that AI agents can use up to 136 times more energy than a normal chatbot query because they don't simply answer a question.

They endlessly call themselves, check their work, rethink it, and then check it again. So it's like a neurotic human. It is. It's actually like an intern who you want to have because it checks its work. It doesn't mean it's right. It can recheck it and still get it wrong, but it can just recheck it 10 times.

It's like Rain Man. Mocha Latte. Mocha Latte. Mocha Latte. Yes. That's it. So the average agent requests burned about 348 watt hours and takes more than 150 times longer to complete with GPUs sitting idle over half the time waiting for the next step.

If this scales to Google search volumes, researchers estimate it would require nearly 199 gigawatts of power or roughly half the current electrical consumption of the United States of America. But don't worry, Brian, I'm sure someone in Silicon Valley has already solved this by announcing an even smarter AI agent whose job it is to figure out why the first AI agent is wasting so much goddamn electricity.

Or, and hear me out here, Jason, this is a crazy idea, you hire somebody fresh out of college as a research assistant, and then you train them up so that they can take the reins over and the institutional knowledge isn't lost and everything moves along to the next generation without all these problems.

Nah, ain't gonna happen. Yeah, fuck that. Yeah, fuck that. I have to pay them. I don't really have to pay these people, except for my token maxing. I was gonna say, your token maxing. And my electrical bill, and everything else that I'm paying, which ends up being more than an intern. But, you know, they have this thing in their head that they just don't want to pay people.

It's stuck in their head. They'd rather pay their buddy who runs the AI company and say, here, you make it work, so I don't have these pesky people in HR and lawsuits and poop. You know, these people come to my building every day and they poop, but your AI doesn't poop.

So you can come and do the work for me. I think that that's what they're trying to say. Right, Brian? It seems to be. I'd rather not pay for plumbing. I'd rather not pay for poop. Coming in, they'll poop on you. This January, Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship takes over the ocean.

The inaugural Brews Cruise sails from Miami to the Bahamas aboard the Norwegian Jewel. Three straight days with pool deck bare knuckle fights in the Caribbean. Massive parties, beach events, DJs, cigars, tequila tastings, and nonstop action. The lineup reveals coming soon.

Cabins are disappearing fast, and the prices won't stay this low. Reserve your spot with just $200 down at BKFSEA.com. Well, Amazon's Mechanical Turk is quietly shuffling towards this retirement, Brian.

Can you believe it? The service launched in 2005 and named after the famous fake chess-playing automaton paid people pennies to do the kinds of digital tasks computers couldn't handle. Transcribing audio, identifying images, verifying data, and other so-called human intelligence tasks. Ah, but computers can now handle them at 10 to 100 to 1,000 times the price.

That's right. Jeff Bezos famously called it artificial artificial intelligence because the AI was really just humans behind the curtain, which we might stay, they should probably stay in business and maybe just rebrand because there are companies out there making bank doing exactly what they're doing here.

I don't, you know, I just, I think Jeff just has enough money where it's like, I'm not going to deal with pennies anymore. So, yeah. Well, Amazon has stopped accepting new customers after July 30th and says it has no plans for new features. Well, researchers have already drifted away thanks to AI bots contaminating their surveys.

Existing users can keep working for now, but the writing's on the wall. So it turns out the humans pretending to be AI have finally been replaced by AI pretending to be humans. Progress, Brian. But somehow still everybody gets paid less. True. So, you haven't really spent that much time in San Francisco, have you?

No, no. I was in LA, New York, Nashville, London kind of guy. I went up to San Francisco a handful of times, but generally not for work. And I was more apt to be going into, what the hell's the name of that town where Apple is? I was there a couple times. Cupertino.

Cupertino. I was in Cupertino more than a few times. Yeah. Oh, lucky you. I've never been to Cupertino and I lived in San Francisco for years. Never invited. I went to the flagship. Ooh. But did you go to the spaceship? No. That was before your time. I didn't have it back then. Yeah. That was way before your time. You were doing iBooks and shit like that.

Yeah. Stone tablets. Hyper card. Things for people who read. Yeah. Well, I used to live in San Francisco and it was a shit show to drive in and I always hated it, which is why I never drove. I always took public transportation. And here's another reason why I wouldn't want to do it right now.

San Francisco's 4th of July traffic managed to find a new level of gridlock after multiple Waymo robo taxis ran out of juice installed in the middle of busy holiday traffic, forcing tow trucks to clear them while frustrated drivers sat for hours. See, in L.A., we would have just picked the cars up and thrown them onto the sidewalk.

It's all those tech bros. They don't have the muscles. They don't have the muscles. Like everybody in L.A. is like training to be in the next fucking Conan movie. That's right. Yeah. It's like all the fucking you can't throw a rock without hitting 20 American ninja warrior wannabes. So nobody's working. They're all at the gym waiting for a roll.

Yeah, that's it. So the city was already dealing with heavy holiday congestion, dense fog and transit delays, but the stranded autonomous vehicles added a fresh new hell by blocking intersections and streets. In another incident, a Waymo reportedly drove over fireworks being launched in a crosswalk, highlighting the challenge of preparing self-driving systems for the uniquely American tradition of turning public roads into amateur war zones.

I actually think that I've solved this. I think I know what they need to do. I think all these self-driving cars need to only train their cars in Detroit on Devil's Night. Okay. Once you solve that, then we're ready for prime time.

Then you can come to our cities during normal days. Can we do Devil's Night in the rain so they can figure out the puddle problem? Fireworks, gunfire, and moisture. Well, Europe's highest court of appeal has upheld a record setting, 4.1 billion pound, or roughly 4.67 billion dollar, fine imposed on Google back in 2018 for antitrust violations around its Android operating system.

In 2016, the EU Commission charged Google with forcing mobile network operators to install Chrome, Search, and other Google apps as a default or exclusive search service on most devices sold in Europe. What kills me about this, and I'm not even going to read any more of this because who gives a fuck, 4.1 billion pounds for a search service that doesn't even exist anymore.

Because now we just get AI search. True. Yeah. So. Yeah. So be it. But hey, that it's. It's a lot of money. It was a lot of money until AI came into play. And that's just like, you know, that's like four tokens now.

This one pisses me off. The FCC is preparing to make broadband price labels a lot less useful. A vote later this month would let internet providers bundle so-called pass-through fees into a single vague up-to charge instead of itemizing them while also allowing ISPs to hide pricing labels behind hyperlinks instead of displaying them prominently.

The proposal would also end requirements for machine-readable pricing data, relax phone disclosure rules, and eliminate archival requirements for old plans. Consumer advocates argue the changes will make comparison shopping harder and encourage junk fees, while telecom lobbyists say maintaining hundreds of location-specific labels is an unnecessary burden.

I'm telling you, Brian, every time these assholes get in power, it's like taking three steps back to the fucking dark ages. It is. It is. The economy tanks and we lose all the gains that we make on any level, be it technological, be it regulations, be it safety, be it health, be it education, be it anything.

We just lose it all. And then we have to start all over again. God damn it. Good job, America. Getty Images has determined a $3.7 billion merger with rival Shutterstock due to restrictions imposed by UK regulators, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

I love the story. The canceled agreement between the two stock photo giants shows that U.S. approval isn't necessarily all that's needed to get the job done. They announced the planned merger back in January 2025 with the aim of creating a stock photo giant that could handle expected AI image competition.

And the U.S. Department of Justice had granted unconditional antitrust clearance for the deal earlier this year because that's our government right now. However, the U.K. stepped in and said, hang on a second. No. Hold my bangers and mash. And basically because they said, no, it's not going to go through anymore.

The Getty's board has decided unanimously to not proceed with the process to sell Shutterstock's editorial business and to terminate the merger agreement, according to its SEC filings. The U.K.'s restrictions also show the dangers that Paramount faces from the U.K. and other territories with its blockbuster Warner Brothers Discovery merger, despite our crooked government's DOJ approval.

Here's my question, Brian. Do they have to give Trump or does Trump have to give the money back that they gave them? Of course not. So they don't get it. They don't get a merger and they don't get their bribe back. That's right. You know what they do get, though? A whole shitload of Trump coin.

I'm going to remind everybody right now. Bribes are not conditional. Ah, OK. There's no smart contract? Shit. If only I kept the NFT with Melania, but I deleted it. I had my receipt. Fuck. It was on the USB drive.

It was hosted on Amazon and I don't know. It's gone now. I try to load the NFT and it's just gone. And my contract was in there. I washed it. I added my pocket and I washed it. Now I've got no smart contract. Oh, God.

Here's a shitty one. It is a world. It is a world. Let's keep it going. Florida Keys Sheriff Deputy Lamar Roman met a woman while working security on the set of Apple TV plus his bad monkey repeatedly harassed her for her name and Instagram that illegally queried multiple law enforcement databases to pull up her personal information.

Human's going to human. He escalated things by placing her license plate on an AI powered automated license plate reader hot list, hot list or not, designed to track stolen cars and criminal suspects. So he'd receive real time alerts whenever her vehicle appeared on surveillance cameras. When the system finally pinged her location, Roman allegedly blasted down a two lane highway at over 70 miles an hour, passed multiple vehicles illegally, nearly caused a head-on collision and pulled her over despite having no legal basis whatsoever.

Investigators say he later admitted the entire thing was illegal and that she wasn't suspected of any crime. So the next time someone says, don't worry, the surveillance system only catches bad guys. Remember, sometimes the system works exactly as it's designed, but just with a plot twist. But I'm glad they're making a new season of Bad Monkey.

It was a fun show. Yeah. I hope this guy is out of a job. Oh, yeah. This guy should be behind bars. It's stalking and using. But it's Florida, too. Stick to generating AI images, you fuck. Grock. It's there for a reason. Well, the launch of Meta's latest set of AI glasses not only reignited, but also intensified intensified public anger surrounding the devices.

Critics have raised concerns about how the glasses are being used to creep on women and about privacy in general, especially since modders had already found a way to disable the LED lights, indicating that the user is recording. Some modders have even turned removing the LED lights into a business.

Now, Meta is attempting to assuage people's worries with an FAQ. That'll do the trick. Oh, that'll do it. I got to stop you, Brian. The one thing that I still remember from the Slender Fungus website was your FAQ was frankly asinine questions. And I still love that to this day.

That was awesome. Thank you. Thank you very much. Rare praise from the DeFillibro. Hey. Yeah, you knocked it out of the park on that one. I still remember it to this day. That was great. Well, the company has addressed the backlash against the devices in the FAQ. Meta explained that its glasses come with a white light called the Capture LED, which blinks briefly when the user takes a photo and continues blinking as long as they're recording.

Capture LED, it wrote, has no off switch. And it's there so everybody knows the user knows that they're recording, except for the fact that there's obviously a way to turn them fucking off. Otherwise, you wouldn't be writing this. Its device's camera will automatically be disabled now if it detects the Capture LED has been blocked, Meta said.

And that safeguard has been in place since the second generation of its glasses, except obviously it hasn't been because since the second generation of its glasses, this shit has continued to happen. Yeah, I've seen videos. I've seen YouTube videos of the guys who do that for a living. They know how to dremel the thing out perfectly and with precision so it doesn't trip up that sensor and it still goes.

But the FAQ says the device won't be able to take more photos and videos until its system detects that the Capture LED has been uncovered or is in place and operating. Jason? Well, that's... What say you? I say that's not true. The FAQ tells us that this is safe.

But the FAQ says it so it must be. Meta has admitted in its post that it has seen some people go beyond using tape to sophisticated efforts to modify or destroy the Capture LED and is now going to update its devices to disable the camera if its system detects the Capture LED has been physically tampered with or destroyed.

How's it going to tell that, Jason? Apparently a software update. How's that going to work, Jason? Probably not very fucking well. I love that I buy a pair of glasses from you, they're my glasses, and I'm not allowed to do what I want to do with my glasses.

Somebody get Cory Doctorow on the line. He's only been bitching about this for 20 fucking years. This is actually... This is a valid point. I agree with you, Jason. First off, I think all these devices should be shot into the seventh layer of hell. Fuck this crap. We don't need it. But if I do buy the damn thing, are you telling me that your software update is going to tell me if I'm in the dark trying to record something, you're going to decide my camera is now disabled and you're going to fucking brick my fucking $10,000 glasses?

Fuck you. Well, yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what they're saying. So, yeah. So, I'm never going to buy any of this anyways. Stupid. Well, you're not. You're not. I saw a thing on Instagram today because I'm addicted to the gram. Somebody get me the DSM-6. Somebody was going around London putting up bus advertisements, like fake meta advertisements, and it said, the biggest advance in pervert technology since the trench coat.

I love that. Nice. Very good. And just because fucking, because, because, because these fucking fucks, meta is testing. Because of the wonderful things they do. Meta, meta, the ones we just talked about with the lights and the glasses and the pudding and the things.

Special technology in our FAQ that will stop this from happening. Yes. Yes. Special FAQ technology. Yeah. We could be asinine technology. Bat. Meta is testing a prototype of AI-powered super sensing glasses that would continuously listen and observe the wearer's surroundings, snapping images every few seconds and analyzing audio so the users can ask what they saw, heard, or forgot during the day.

The company reportedly wants the feature to run without illuminating the recording LED, making it far less obvious to everyone else the data is being collected. Ah, but Jason, we're going to run the camera 24-7 without the LED on to detect if you're running the camera without the LED.

So if you're wearing, if you're wearing two pair of glasses, there you go. We have got you. We've got you. Oh. Meta says the goal is personal AI assistant that eventually replaces your smartphone. Well, claiming privacy is built into the design by extracting metadata instead of storing raw recordings.

By extracting metadata, you mean sending it off to a third world country where a bunch of people are watching it and then we're sending it back? Gotcha. Yep. Where a bunch of Africans are spanking it to your porn. Thanks. Understood. Understood. Yep. Yep. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Yep. Got it.

Does no one at this company read the fucking news or the room? They don't even read their own FAQs, Jason. Well, this is a different FAQ. This is a separate branch of the FAQ. They didn't read the other FAQ. They needed the glasses to remind them they forgot that they read the FAQ from earlier.

What the fuck with the freaking FAQ? Well, a new survey of nearly 6,000 tech workers finds the industry splitting into two camps. People who feel AI makes them more capable and people who feel it makes them less valuable. About half say AI has amplified their work, while others say it has destabilized or diminished their sense of professional identity.

But burnout is also climbing. Nearly 56% report significant burnout, up 11 points from last year, and fewer than half are optimistic about their careers. Most workers are not primarily afraid of being replaced by AI. They are afraid AI will raise the productivity bar, lower quality, and force them to do more work for the same pay.

Bingo. That is something I've been hearing a lot from, particularly from very highly skilled fields like lawyers. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're just giving us these tools and you're mandating we use this so we can work even harder, more, all the time.

Designers and researchers are the most anxious and founders are still the happiest because of fucking course they are. And good managers remain the biggest buffer against burnout. Saturday, September 26th, two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle.

Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero. Plus the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line when the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meek Cleaver Cullen.

BKFC 94, Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN. Sign up now at DAZN.com. Now, Brian, I want to talk about this 50-50 line because this comes back to exactly what we talked about when AI started to hit.

All of the LLMs and all of the AI shenaniganery, you have shenaned before and you will shenanigan. All of the shenaniganery behind it is taking all of the human knowledge, compressing it into one giant bubble, and then you get an amalgamation of everything, basically flatlining knowledge, right?

We are basically, you're getting the average of human knowledge that's going to come out of this thing. So we've always said the smart people are fine. It's bringing up the dumb people. Now what we're seeing is the smart people are pissed off because they're being brought down to the level of the dumb people because they're forced to use this thing that is dumber than they are generally.

The dumb people are very happy because they're being brought up to the level of the smart people. And the other thing is happening that has happened to you in your career that's happened to me in my career that's happened to my wife in her career that's happened to almost all the smart people I know, which is all of a sudden you're punished for being good at your job because now you have to do more and more and more work because you're good at it and you get it done and you actually have a sense of responsibility as opposed to all the dumb fucks

you work with that are now just using AI for about three minutes a day and figure that's the full day's worth of work. I'm logging out. I'm done. It also reminds me of the Jim Jeffries bit where he talks about the dumb kid who got drunk and then hit a school bus full of kids and now we all have to drive 35 miles an hour because one dumb fuck screwed it up for everybody.

One bad apple fucked it up for everybody. Yeah. Thanks, Sam Altman. Fuckhead. Anyway, let's move on to something more palate cleansing. But I just thought that was fascinating that that 50-50 line is actually, they've quantified it now. It's a 6,000 person study from Larry Wachowski.

I can't remember. I can't pronounce it. But his business newsletter. Not the Wachowskis. No, no, no. But his newsletter is like the number one business newsletter on Substack. He's got a really like baller audience and this is like a couple of years in a row he's done this. So I trust the numbers.

I trust his statistical analysis of the situation. So there you go. All right. Well, I don't know what you were doing last Friday night, but after the World Cup game that I was watching ended, I tuned in over on Apple TV, on Apple TV, on my Apple TV to watch Silo.

But what about the Plus? Where's the Plus? Oh, I'm sorry. My Apple TV Plus on my Apple TV app on my Apple TV device. There you go. Yes. There we go. So I tuned in to watch the first episode of season three of Silo.

Now, I'd imagine this would have been quite shocking to anybody that has not read the books and did not know this was coming. But it was great. So for me, it was a little bit boring because I was like, yeah, yeah, you're establishing the lay of the land as we move forward. I know the lay of the land. Let's get cooking. So I'm old and I have a terrible memory.

So it was fucking awesome because I didn't remember anything. You should have read the FAQ. No, I thought it was great. I can't wait. I'm very happy. And it's just it's one of those ones where I just want more. I want to binge. It's great.

It's back. I love the entire cast. And I just I can't express how in love I am with Rebecca Ferguson. I think you don't have to gift to humanity right now. Like every time I see her, I think I am but a mere mortal and I exist in your orbit.

So there's something about her, particularly with the show. She never really caught my eye before with Silo. She's just so good and just amazing. So that's why when you asked me what I was doing Friday night, that's a loaded question. Let's move it along.

Sugar. King the monkey. Sugar with Colin Farrell is back. There's three episodes out right now. I love this show. It's really good. It's good to see him in something that's not the penguin because I actually forgot he was the penguin because he was so fucking good in the penguin that I'm like, wow, it's unbelievable how different it is.

But if you haven't watched season one of the show, it's a great detective show with a lot of twists. And the twists keep coming at the beginning of this one. They've toned it down enough where it is mostly a really cool detective show.

And he's just great. I really, really enjoy it. Really, really enjoy it. Nice. I just, again, pissed off that it's once a week. I want to binge. All right. Well, speaking of Rebecca Ferguson, although I have heard that she is barely in this movie at all, the official trailer for Dune Part 3 has dropped, which is technically book two because Dune Part 1 and Part 2 are just the first Dune book.

And then they're promoting this as this is the end of the story, except it's only the second book. And then there's the third book. And then there's a fourth book. But weren't the other third and the fourth and the 17th book, weren't those shit, what you said? No. No. When did they become shit?

After the original author Frank Herbert died and his son started to co-create books that continued the story with other sci-fi authors. And those are fucking horrible. But Frank Herbert wrote... How many Dune books were there that are good? Okay. There's Dune. There's Children of Dune.

Oh, Dune Messiah. Children of Dune. God Emperor of Dune. Chapter House Dune. I think that was it. There's five or six. It's on Wikipedia, for Christ's sake. Where's Dune House Rules? There's a fact, Jason. There's a fact. Okay.

Anyways, all the original Frank Herbert ones are good. They do get fucking weird, but weird in a really good way. And I love them. So anyways, the story's not over, but I would probably say the film part of the story is over. Okay. It looks amazing. I watched the trailer and I'm just like, so fucking good.

I went back and I watched both of them back to back not too long ago. They're solid. And I really want to go back and watch the Bene Gesserit series again, because that was really good too. Oh, that should be coming back. It's supposed to be coming back in the winter.

God, this is the problem with streamers now, right? Yeah. And just the whole way that all this stuff is done. I almost forgot that that even existed. It feels like it was out five years ago. It came out when Dune 2 came out. So it wasn't five years ago. Listen, people, we have to get back to, you have 32 episodes in a season, plus a fucking very special Christmas episode, and you're back the goddamn next year.

What is wrong with you people? Put these people back to work. And I don't know if you saw the news that came out, that Netflix is saying that, you know, like 70% of people don't stick around for season two. I wonder why. Because it's been 18 fucking years and the kids are grown up and, you know, you've had four strokes and you can't remember who the fuck the characters are.

Even if you haven't had a stroke, Jason, I literally have to have a note in my notes app about the shows that I watch and I have to Google them every now and then to see if we're ever getting any more or what the fuck is happening. Well, see, if you had Amazon Prime, then they've got these new AI recaps that'll tell you everything that you needed to know but wrong about the season that you just missed four years ago.

Ah, but like when I sign up for one of the authors I really like on Amazon so I'm supposed to get a notification if a book actually comes out by that author, I will never get a notification. I know. I get the notification and then I have to text you and say, hey, did you hear this guy's got a new book coming out?

At which point I say, fucking no. I signed up for a goddamn motherfucking notification. I think Christopher Moore has probably had seven books out since the last one because none of us have gotten any fucking notifications. Yes. Well, we have a solution to the problem or at least Hollywood does or at least some company that is trying to get into Hollywood has a solution for this problem, Jason.

If we want 26 episodes plus a very special Christmas episode and we want it done every single year, we'll just use AI. Tilly Norwood is an AI actor that pops up every now and again in various marketing stunts. She's now supposedly going to star in her own movie according to a report by Variety.

It's called Misaligned and it's being made by Particle 6 Productions, the same company behind the uncanny valley adjacent Norwood. It is being described as a coming, oh, who gives a shit? This is never going to happen. This is just a goddamn press release to try to pump up their numbers. We all know that. No movie is coming.

They've barely been able to make anything that's longer than two and a half minute music video that is nightmare fuel if you actually have to watch it. Okay, well, what you can watch because you skipped my story.

I had to move it down here in the notes. Lucky is coming out July 15th with Anya Taylor-Joy. So that will bring joy to the world, Brian. Very much so. Yes, it's Anya Taylor-Joy. She's cute. Yeah, I like her. So it looks pretty good too. It's a series or, you know, what do they call it?

Limited edition series. So it's five episodes and then maybe we'll get more in about 17 years. Gotcha. Yeah. I think it's eight. I think it's eight. Don't quote me on that. Eight seems to be the number that people have settled on. If we're lucky, if you're lucky swine, you get 10.

Yeah, yeah. I think we get, no, yeah. I don't fucking know anymore. Make more shows! Remember, there was a show that had Felicity in it and it had, the last season, 17 years ago, had a reunion of some of the West Wing members.

I can't even remember the name of the show. It's been so long. The Diplomat. It's coming back. Oh, when? I don't fucking know. 2030. That's right. When we're in the home, we can watch it on, we can ask our nurse to turn it on for us when we're in the fucking home. These actors are going to die before the next season hits.

Because we don't care, Brian, because they've got AI. They don't care. All right. I did watch another movie this week. I watched Normal with Bob Odenkirk. It's another one of his Bob Odenkirk. Saul Goodman becomes action star movies. Because Nobody was great.

I never watched Nobody 2. I didn't hear any great things about it, so I wasn't too inclined to watch it. But Normal is actually really fucking good. It really, it reminds me of an Edgar Wright movie. It reminds me of, it's got the silliness of a Shaun of the Dead with like, just, it's good.

I highly recommend it. It's a popcorn movie. Brian, get a bottle of wine or watch it drunk on a plane. Actually, you probably can't watch it on a plate. It's pretty fucking gory, but it's funny. So, I recommend it. I'd be surprised at what they show on planes these days. That's true. That's true. Full frontal nudity.

That's unbelievable. Tally Whackers 2 in first class. Anyways. WhatsApp. Meta has announced this popular messaging platform. WhatsApp would introduce usernames. These handles can replace people's phone numbers, allowing them to keep that personal contact info more private if they wish.

It is not active yet and it will see a global rollout over the coming months. However, reservations for usernames are now open and there's a scramble for people to steer how they want to be known to their friends and family as well as to the app's broader community. It's a gold rush. I tell you, if you want three initials, good luck. If you want to have the same tag in all your platforms, get in quickly.

Link in the show notes tells you how to do it because who cares? Who gives a shit? I mean, I did it just to have my name. Why not? Oh, I use WhatsApp almost never. I actually use it a lot. Okay. Because you're an expat and you're hiding out in the great white north.

That's right. I'm hiding on a meta platform. How's that going for me? Yeah, really? So just real quick, and this is how you get rid of the AI in your Instagram if you want to do it. Open the Instagram app and switch to your profile.

Then tap the menu, which is the three little rhymes in the top right, and open Settings and Activity. Scroll down to the Sharing and Reuse section, and don't sneeze into the microphone because that would be bad. Deactivate the individual switches depending on your version, and you will find separate options for post, reels, and original audio recordings.

So get rid of that shit. Please. Do it for the kids. Do it for the children's. Your children's that you don't want in fucked up AI videos that nobody's telling you about. And I do want to say thank you to, let's see here, Brian Blondell, John Sylvain, ES on Patreon, on Discord, EX617B, Mike, Acid Poet, Triforce Hunter, DJ, Pseudo Veggies, Killer Mike, and anyone else I missed because of their recommendation for the Libby app, which people have been telling us about forever.

And I see you raising your hand, Brian. I'm sure you told me as well, too. I told you on the last show, which is why everybody then came and told you that. I was the OG. Actually, some of these are from about two years ago on Discord. But I don't remember.

I told you last week. Brian, you should remember that when this show is done recording, I don't remember a fucking thing that we talked about even after I edited the entire thing and exported it. I told you seven times apparently because if you had to edit it. Thanks, Brian.

I appreciate it. It's great. So I got my L.A. County Library e-card and didn't even have to go into a branch, set it up in seconds. Now I got it. Actually, because you put it in the show notes, it got me off my ass to finally download the app and install it.

And I've done it as well now. Although I do feel guilty because there are so few readers and I have knock on wood and all that and thank you. I have the wherewithal to actually buy books and I feel like I need to because authors barely make a living anyways.

But screw that. Like, you know, especially if I'm trying out a new author, I'm definitely going to go to Libby first and read a book and then if I really like the author, then I'll go buy some. Yep, there you go. And speaking of authors that I would definitely be purchasing books from, I finally did finish another book somehow with all the World Cup games I've been watching.

I found time to squeeze in another one of them. The First Contact series by Peter Cowdron and this one was called Gold Rush. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Fantastic book. All right. Had a good time. Excellent, excellent. I was sick for so long that I had to stop taking my walk so I'm behind on my books and now it is like, you know, the devil's taint outside so I can't walk because it's so fucking hot so I don't know when I'll get back to it but I can now because I got Libby!

Yay! Well, let's move into the people that make this show possible besides us because we're awesome. Over at Patreon, we've got no new subscribers so nobody's keeping the show alive over there except for Ben, Brendan, Jennifer, Justin Justin, Annie Gabriel, August, Patty B, Morbid Butterfly, and Russ Fuss who continue their support over at Patreon.

We love you to death. All right. Thank you so much. Over at PayPal, we've got Joseph who sent us his cut of the winnings from his Polly market bet on Norway versus Brazil. Love it. I do not condone this behavior but I do condone all the money coming in. Appreciate it. Appreciate it.

Michelle Flammen who sent us $75 says with love from the Netherlands, go Norway. All right. I was happy to see you knock out Brazil. Keep going. Knock out England. I'll be thrilled. And Tim who sent us a hundred bucks. Fantastic. Thank you, Tim. Over at the tip jar, we've got Patrick.

Thanks, Patrick. And over on the merch table, Glenn from Australia and Alistair from Pennsylvania, my home state. And over at YouTube, J.W. J.W. Hart. At J.W. Hart. Just signed up for a membership. So everybody knows how to keep this show going.

You can go to patreon.com slash GOG and sign up for as little as $3 a month. And if you pay for the whole year, you get a discount and you can give us more than $3 if you like. We like that you do. So please consider doing that. You can go to PayPal. You can go to our tip jar. You can go to YouTube now. You can sign up for a membership at YouTube.

Everything is listed at GOG.show slash donate. Brain fart. Brain fart. Speaking of brain farts, do not write in. I am aware of the fact that Norway and Netherlands are different countries. Netherlands is out of the World Cup. Norway is the one that is continuing on. So thank you, Michael, from the Netherlands.

Sorry you got knocked out the same round that Germany did. And go Norway. I like that. I like this. We're doing fat checking on the fly. It's great. You know, I didn't need AI for that. I just needed, like, to rub two brain sticks together. There we go. Brain sticks.

So, and a shout out, finally, to SpaceX stock, which closed the day at $145.29, which is below the strike price. It's not going to stick the landing. Until next time, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks.

Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at gog.show slash 754. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at gog.show slash donate. Every penny or farthing helps keep the show on the air. Love the show? Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player and spread the grumpiness to friends, foes, and everyone in between.

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In fact, we're taking special requests for merch on our discord these days. Snag your grumpy gear now at shop.god.show and stay grumpy. Saturday, September 26th, two of combat sports most dangerous strikers collide.

Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero. Plus the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line when the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meat Pleaver Cullen.

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