Latest / Normal Men / Episode 50 - Strait Expectations

Transcript

Episode 50 - Strait Expectations · Normal Men

• 0:00
  [A] I don't know. I think once you get up to, you know, 24 by 32, you have passed shed and you are in full on outbuilding territory. But don't tell my code enforcement officers that I am not planning to ever put a car in there, though they have been very helpful. They did explain that I could get a garage by removing my current garage door, therefore no longer having a garage.
• 0:24
  [B] What's.
• 0:25
  [C] You just have like a big hole in the side of your house or would you.
• 0:27
  [A] I mean, I put a door in, George. I would replace the garage door with a door door. One with the handle.
• 0:35
  [D] Yes, but it would no longer be a carport, therefore no longer fit for purpose as a garage.
• 0:40
  [A] I mean, it also isn't now, which kind of makes it a little bit perverse.
• 0:45
  [C] Yeah, but building codes aren't about what goes in the building.
• 0:47
  [A] Yes, generally. But like the garage of this house is built into the basement and is kind of maybe fit for like a clown car.
• 0:58
  [D] It's.
• 0:58
  [A] It, it might fit a, A vehicle that was like 7ft wide and there's also a pole directly in the middle of it because somebody who put that garage in did not do the math.
• 1:10
  [C] Yeah. Speaking of clown cars, how's the buyback effort going? That good, huh?
• 1:19
  [A] George, you're a, You're a. You're a math related individual. Can you answer a very simple question for me?
• 1:26
  [C] I can sure try.
• 1:28
  [A] Is 15 more or less than 18?
• 1:32
  [B] Well, before that. So a math related individual. Is that like an officer involved shooting or.
• 1:41
  [C] So 15 is generally less than 18. But the problem is not when there's money on the line.
• 1:48
  [A] Well, that's sort of the thing, because it is the current holding of the Ford Motor Company, who assured me that I am more than allowed. Thanks for your permission. To talk about this on social media because the process, Kate, was come to in a fair and equitable arrangement. The Ford Motor company believes that 18 is in fact less than 15 because they are like. No, we're, we're uninterested in pursuing this because the Lemon law in Your state is 18 months. It has been 15 months and 18 days since I purchased the vehicle. So I, I don't know if I'm talking to just like a large language model that has been lied to about the date.
• 2:31
  [C] I very much doubt that for what
• 2:32
  [A] I do too, because they usually are more grammatically correct than the person I am communicating with.
• 2:37
  [D] Yeah, I think, I think you got a person with a bad, with a bad rubric or whatever they're using to check whether or not you're eligible.
• 2:44
  [A] Yeah, no, I'm sure it is, but this week's attorney time. So it'll be fine. It'll be fine. So I've had a week. How have you all been?
• 2:54
  [B] The fortunate thing is all things are going well in the world right now.
• 2:58
  [A] It's true.
• 2:59
  [B] And so you have plenty of good things to distract you.
• 3:02
  [A] I might have some severe aggravations with regards to the state of Michigan, but I can go turn on the TV and watch the news to feel better about things.
• 3:16
  [D] Yeah, Michigan's not happy about that either.
• 3:23
  [A] Can we trade Ford Motor Company to the state of Iran?
• 3:28
  [C] Well, it's really funny because you've already seen a spike in searches for evs. I don't know about actual sales numbers but like, you know, the leading indicators are there that a. Some portion. I, I think these things are always overstated to a degree. What you do see is like there's a really, really strong inverse correlation between gas prices and demand for smaller cars and for higher mileage cars like that. That's a thing in the sales data. So it makes perfect sense that gas, gas prices go up but like we're, we're not at gas prices. That would typically be the level that you would expect people to dive into fuel efficient vehicles. But Edmunds has come out this week and been like, oh yeah, people are really searching for EVS. Holy smokes. So it's also funny because all the OEMs, GM, Ford and Stellantis have all. And I think some of the Asian OEMs too, I'm not as sure about that. Have all come out and said oh, we're converting factories we had planned to do EVs into large format trucks and SUVs and oops.
• 4:29
  [D] What's.
• 4:29
  [A] What does gas look like in yells neck of the woods.
• 4:33
  [C] I think I just saw diesel for $5 a gallon and unleaded for 360 something. We're about national average for gas prices usually like we're not far off national average here.
• 4:47
  [A] Yeah, same.
• 4:47
  [D] That sounds about right for D.C. yeah,
• 4:49
  [A] we're at like 3569 or something like that.
• 4:53
  [B] Yeah, that sounds about right for us too.
• 4:55
  [A] As opposed to California which I mean RIP but they're different.
• 5:02
  [C] Yeah, I mean they do have much higher EB penetration so good for them for that. But still. Yeah, you. I mean I. Nope. I don't want gas from overseas. So. Yeah, not great. Thank you. Jones act and the Rocky Mountains because you can't run a pipeline over the Rockies for obvious reasons.
• 5:21
  [D] It occurred to me the other day that I don't think I've been at an actual gas station more than once in the past two years because our main vehicle is an ev and I gas the other one up at Costco, so just no longer part of my use case.
• 5:36
  [C] I do convenience store runs occasionally. Not weekly, not even monthly, but more than once or twice in two years. But yeah, it's.
• 5:46
  [A] Yeah, I have not been to a gas station in quite a while because my vehicle is a partial hybrid with a battery that has a chance of thermal venting, but I don't drive more than 10 miles each way. So if I'm willing to risk it at 80% charge, as opposed to the fine folks at Stellantis who say don't touch the battery at all and don't park it inside, I should still be okay for quite a while on, like, one tank.
• 6:16
  [D] If you're willing to risk. Again, to be clear, the thermal venting.
• 6:19
  [A] Yes, yes. I mean, if it thermally vents at 80%, I did what they told them. They're like, this is what the recall says. At that point. It's, you know, call and raise.
• 6:33
  [B] You would be technically correct.
• 6:35
  [A] You may be dead, but thermal venting does not appear to be a problem for life and limb, more a problem for car stop.
• 6:43
  [C] Yeah, you do not want to be in a thermally venting vehicle via either full EV or, I mean, really not a full ev, but you don't.
• 6:54
  [A] Yeah, it's probably fun experience, probably bad.
• 6:56
  [C] You should be able to break, get to the shoulder and jump out in time. But should. Is not generally what we want to use in that scenario to determine.
• 7:04
  [A] I. I have been assured by Ford Motor Company that it is absolutely safe to charge this battery to 80%.
• 7:14
  [C] Well, I never charge my truck over 80% anyway. So, like, I don't.
• 7:17
  [A] I mean, like, but like 80% of what you can see is not the same thing as 80% of the battery.
• 7:23
  [C] No, but like, the. The general advice with. I mean, every EV is different, but with mine is, you know, if you don't need to charge above 80% and you very rarely do, don't, because it just. All it does is add load on the cells and, you know.
• 7:38
  [A] Yeah, no, that's true.
• 7:39
  [D] Less efficient. Runs down your battery life.
• 7:42
  [C] Yeah, exactly. For, like, long road trips and stuff. I will, but I don't take those.
• 7:45
  [A] Well, I don't care about that anymore.
• 7:47
  [C] Well, oh, boy.
• 7:48
  [D] So. So do they put the battery, like, next to the fuel tank in those hybrids or how does that work?
• 7:53
  [A] You know, now that you mention it, I probably should find out.
• 7:57
  [C] Yeah, I would. It really depends on the model. Some of them are under the rear trunk. Some of them have them in the front. Some of them are. They're usually not in the middle of the platform, but sometimes I think, oh,
• 8:10
  [A] don't worry on this one it is absolutely in the middle of the platform.
• 8:15
  [B] I'm thinking of like a Hezbollah procurement guy who's listening to this really intently. Like, is the battery right next to the fuel tank?
• 8:24
  [A] Oh, yeah, it's right under the cargo spot.
• 8:26
  [C] I don't, I don't think we're going to see any lithium ion battery based attacks anytime soon. It's just not, it's, it's not easy to put out. But it's also not really kaboom the way you would want.
• 8:40
  [D] Yeah.
• 8:42
  [C] Recruitment officer.
• 8:43
  [D] But they are, but they are super heavy, so that has other advantages. So.
• 8:46
  [C] That's true. Yeah, that's true.
• 8:48
  [A] Like when I drop this car off a cliff
• 8:53
  [C] into Jim Farley's front porch.
• 8:56
  [B] Yeah, all those, all those cliffs in Dearborn, Michigan.
• 9:00
  [C] I mean, I'm sure he doesn't live there. Like, I'm sure he's, he may technically have a residence there, but come on, he's not living in Dearborn. Man.
• 9:10
  [D] I've never been to Dearborn. It's a nice name.
• 9:13
  [C] I mean, I'm sure it's a perfectly nice place, but like, let's be real here. Yeah.
• 9:17
  [D] It's not CEO.
• 9:18
  [B] I'm not sure it's a perfectly nice place.
• 9:21
  [C] I don't know.
• 9:22
  [B] It's pretty close in to Detroit, I think. Like, it's not, it's not one of those far out suburbs in Macomb or something like that.
• 9:33
  [A] That guy gets paid a lot to oversee a failing car company.
• 9:38
  [C] Failing is in the eye of the beholder.
• 9:40
  [D] Is it failing less hard than it would be?
• 9:43
  [A] That's, I mean, fair to, to, to Proctor, not to the, the treasonous statements by the lightning guy. I'm never buying a car made by an American manufacturer again. I say that, but if they let me trade straight across for a Maverick, I'd probably do it.
• 10:07
  [C] You have a deposit down on a slate that's going to be as American as anything that's ever been made.
• 10:12
  [D] It feels less American, though, let's be honest.
• 10:14
  [A] But that's not really a car.
• 10:16
  [C] Car, quote unquote, feels less American. What are we doing here?
• 10:19
  [B] It feels spiritually like a K truck.
• 10:22
  [A] Yeah, yeah, but, but also, like, that's not really a vehicle so much as A project. I didn't say anything about projects. That thing is going to be unrecognizable within six months. You know that.
• 10:33
  [D] I think that thing is the exact automotive equivalent of a mini PC like.
• 10:41
  [C] Raspberry PI ass pickup.
• 10:44
  [A] I was thinking like one of those test bench cases where you've got like all of the parts exposed and like there are cables everywhere. That's kind of more of my aesthetic. Any I. You all saw what I did to that poor Hyundai.
• 10:59
  [C] I watched a really great video on YouTube that would be up Ed's alley. Some guys tried to do the Cannonball Run in an ev. So for those that aren't familiar, the Cannonball Run is you go from New York to LA as fast as you can. It is highly illegal to do this at anything close to the record speed because I mean, obviously, right. So the record now has basically been set for all time because a bunch of guys did it during COVID and. And you're never going to get road conditions like that again. I mean like, even if you're completely disregarding speed limits, you still have to deal with other people on the road. And that was a time when there was a very, very unique window of nobody on the road, essentially the entire country all the way across. So the high water marks have been set. But for EVs it's really different because you're now talking about optimizing charge like, like what's your charge uptake and then your range and then your speed and your various break evens there. And how do you like, you know, whatever. So this guy decided to do it with a rivan pickup.
• 11:57
  [A] Oh, I know.
• 11:58
  [C] Installed a second rivan battery pack in. So he basically just doubled up the rivan battery pack and like the weight worked and you know, but they had the system, they had to basically they would pull into a charger and pop in two different high voltage chargers to it. The dcfc direct current fast charging. Because they were completely separate battery systems and there were some software issues and it involved a literal bucket of ice to cool down the battery as they were charging it. So you know, they didn't actually make it across the country, if you can believe that.
• 12:36
  [B] That, that feels like cheating though. Like installing a second pack.
• 12:41
  [A] Nothing aging wheels has ever done has worked. That guy had like a four year long school bus conversion project that barely got past the point of like taking out the windows. Nice guy, but yeah, he seems like
• 12:59
  [C] a very nice guy. Yeah, he does not seem like that screaming diesel fella who is a resident of Tennessee who had done the Montana register all your cars in an LLC to avoid paying sales tax and registration fees in your home state trick and got pulled over and you know, got in trouble for this for having a non car registered out of state when he was clearly living in state. And then he went on YouTube about it and that did not go well for him. I think he's going to jail now. And it's also really funny because in certain states there are a lot of plate readers out there. So and. And police have very easy access to those plate readers. So like essentially a local PD can just go into flock and just pull everything in the state for whatever license plate. So it's incredibly easy to prove that he was actually. Yes. Residing in the state, driving his car around for well over a month and therefore in violation of Tennessee statutes. And in California that wouldn't work. Right. Because you can't just do that. They have actual privacy laws out there.
• 14:00
  [A] Yeah. I'm just over here. Like on one hand this is a reasonable use of. Of of Flock. On the other, Woke to just got another entry in the to do list. Oh.
• 14:09
  [C] Flock should be absolutely top of the list for Woke to. To completely go after. It's. It's ext. Deeply bad.
• 14:17
  [B] Bad company isn't screaming diesel. The guy who put the.
• 14:22
  [D] The.
• 14:23
  [B] The cyber truck through the punishment tests and tore it all to.
• 14:28
  [C] Yeah.
• 14:28
  [B] Doing like what would. What was trivially easy for the silverado and the F150.
• 14:33
  [C] I wouldn't go that far to say trivially easy. But he found some pretty significant flaws. Include. I think. I think that might have been the genesis of the fact that the cyber truck panels are just glued on.
• 14:44
  [D] Yep.
• 14:45
  [B] Yes.
• 14:46
  [C] Yeah. So among other issues.
• 14:48
  [B] So what I'm saying is we should pardon him.
• 14:53
  [C] I mean I'm like two weeks instead of a month in state law in prison.
• 14:57
  [D] Like. Yeah, you know, I know.
• 14:59
  [C] But it's Tennessee state law, buddy.
• 15:02
  [D] Not. Not in Tennessee, man.
• 15:04
  [B] Under. Under Woke too. We are not recognizing the state of Tennessee anymore.
• 15:09
  [C] Correct.
• 15:09
  [A] At this point, Woke too might just be like federalism. Nah.
• 15:13
  [D] Right.
• 15:14
  [A] Like we're getting to some pretty extreme places here.
• 15:17
  [C] I mean you don't have to take many pages out of the trou administration bag of tricks to. To get there. So of course it's completely failed for them because they're all idiots. But you know, there's some ideas there.
• 15:27
  [A] Imagine if you could read that's all.
• 15:29
  [B] It's still going to be federalism. It's just going to be. You see what California does. You're doing that except for housing, I think.
• 15:37
  [D] I think we call that market capitalism.
• 15:40
  [A] Yeah. I'm pretty sure at some point like you would just see like all of low taxes Florida, man. Neighbors like line up on the nearest small upraised lump of ground and try to lemming their way off of it.
• 15:54
  [C] Federalism with Clean Air act enforcement characteristics.
• 15:57
  [B] Yeah. And that would be. That would be the landfill in Port St. Lucie. Yes, all. All jumping off of that.
• 16:04
  [A] Then they would have already self deposited.
• 16:07
  [C] I can't wait for the California Air Resources Board to set the minimum wage nationally.
• 16:10
  [D] That's going to rule.
• 16:11
  [B] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. All of California's social and economic policies but Atlanta's housing policies where it's just like you can do whatever the fuck you want. We don't care.
• 16:22
  [C] We can do a bit better than Atlanta's housing policies. They got some issues down there.
• 16:27
  [D] You can.
• 16:27
  [C] You can use Mecklenburg County. Just use Mecklenburg County. You'll be better off.
• 16:30
  [D] Trust me.
• 16:31
  [B] No one knows where that is.
• 16:32
  [C] George, you know exactly where I live.
• 16:38
  [A] That sounds like a weird inverse threat.
• 16:41
  [B] I didn't say we were going to let Atlanta run the transportation system. Just. Just the zoning policy.
• 16:50
  [A] I'll honest. MARTA ain't bad, especially compared to what the rest of you have.
• 16:55
  [B] It is the fastest train ever built to go to and only to an airport. That is.
• 17:01
  [A] Right. Yeah, exactly. And when I go to Atlanta, I basically go from the airport to downtown for. Because that's where Dragon Con is. And then I get on and go back to the airport. It's perfect. They made it just for me. This is great.
• 17:14
  [C] Marta and the D.C. metro are spiritually both terrible and pretty good in exactly the same ways.
• 17:21
  [D] Yeah.
• 17:22
  [C] And for exactly the same reasons.
• 17:24
  [A] In fact, they're utilitarian. No one involved with MARTA had the whole like, did you. Did you make the subway station? Yeah. Really hauntingly pretty, just like you asked type of thing going on. Instead it's just. It's just in whatever closet they could stick it.
• 17:42
  [B] We will give DC props if they ever finally build that Purple Line thing.
• 17:48
  [C] Where's that?
• 17:48
  [B] That is supposed to go a ring around the city so that you don't have to go like all the way in and all the way out.
• 17:55
  [D] It's not going to do that.
• 17:56
  [B] No, we need to do that.
• 17:58
  [D] We might. We might get like an ARC connector on the Maryland side, but basically.
• 18:02
  [B] Well, yeah, I mean I saw they were doing light rail and a rapid bus or something on the Maryland side, but no, we need to do trains. We're going to put Hunter Biden in Charge of that in 2020.
• 18:12
  [D] You know, it might, it might go better under Governor Spanberger. We'll see. But like previous, previous Virginia administrations had basically said, we are absolutely not doing this thing. It makes no sense for us. Which is completely true. None of it makes any sense for, for Virginia, but it makes a lot of sense for Maryland.
• 18:30
  [B] It would have made a lot of sense for me when I was a Virginian because I had to go from Eisenhower Avenue to Suitland.
• 18:37
  [D] Oh, okay.
• 18:39
  [B] Which could have been like, you know, a five minute trip. And when I drove it was a five minute trip. But instead you had to go all the way in to l' Enfant and then all the way out to Suitland. So it would take like an hour.
• 18:52
  [C] God damn.
• 18:53
  [D] Yeah, I did the, I did the Columbia Heights to down to Gallery Place and then back up to Dupont for many years. So I feel you.
• 19:02
  [A] That's just gross.
• 19:05
  [D] It's the best way to get there.
• 19:06
  [A] I have to do something similar on Monday because I have to go do a thing that is directly between train lines. Right. Like there is, there is no way to get there unless you're going to do a bus. And for those of you who have never been in, in contact with the mbta, the bus is what you do after you break both legs. Right. Buses here show up when they want to. Sometimes, you know, sometimes they run even, you know, but instead I think I have to walk two miles in the middle of the workday just to get to this, this appointment. And you know, fine, I'm it. It's only going to be pouring. It's fine.
• 19:47
  [D] So I got another flock story for you guys that.
• 19:51
  [A] Oh no.
• 19:51
  [D] That you may not have seen that. That I'm curious your thoughts on because I think it's actually kind of a. I'm a little ambivalent about the case myself. This is a case in, in a Chicago suburb. I forget which one. One of the nice ones where they are attempting to kick a student out of school for not living in the district despite the fact that her parent has. I think it's an apartment in the district that they are definitely. Or that they claim that they're living in on the basis that there is a car registered to the parent that has been in central Chicago for like the last four months and has been bean driven. So the argument here is that they don't actually live in, in, in boundary for the school and therefore she's not eligible to go to the school on the basis of the car activity. Obviously there's the ameliorating factor of, you know, actual residents and they're, they're paying property taxes in the district. That's a significant point of evidence to the other side. But you know, you guys, you guys all live in cities. Like is this kind of jurisdiction shopping an issue for you guys or is this something that doesn't come up?
• 20:54
  [B] Well, I don't live in a city.
• 20:55
  [C] So CMS is, I mean, look, Charlotte is the opposite of Atlanta for exactly this reason. Right. Like instead of really balkanized like jillion counties and every manner of different city and all that stuff and people are trying to secede and whatever. It's the complete opposite. We're like, it's all Mecklenburg County. It's all Charlotte. I mean, I'm not like literally there's I think six or seven little cities inside of Mecklenburg county that are their own and then there's unincorporated Mecklenburg County. But it's, it's all pretty much the same thing. So you don't. And Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools is. Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools. It's the whole county. So you have people that want to live in places that are zoned for better schools. But that's particularly insane for us too because there are so many streamed programs that you can get your kid into to be on a really high achieving academic path, assuming you don't do charter or private. That like there is like being zoned for a good school is like a complete waste of your time essentially because it's just, it's, it's. There's so many other ways to, to square the circle. And you know, CMS has not very good reputation because it's an urban school system. Duh. But yeah, it, that's sort of like you have to be in. On this side of the street to get into this school is just much. I mean it's nowhere near as big of a deal here as. As it is in other places.
• 22:27
  [B] I don't know if it's still a thing here in Florida. When I was growing up, I had a friend who did a similar thing because everything was very much based on where you lived unless you were going to a private school. Now this is all sort of before the rise of charter schools too, but. So I have no idea what it is these days. Although where I live. Yeah, it's.
• 22:51
  [D] You.
• 22:51
  [B] You go to the school that you live closest to. Basically.
• 22:55
  [D] It's. It's a big issue in D.C. it was actually a fairly major scandal a couple years ago because a bunch of people who were fairly high up in the DC administration in the DCPS administrative structure were sending their kids to DC schools despite not living in the right places to send their kids to those schools. Some of whom I believe still lived in D.C. but in the wrong place, and some of whom didn't, didn't live in D.C. at all. And you know, like just from a straight. What license plates are you seeing on the cars that pickup look like? I would say that there's not zero fraud happening there, but, but, but it's
• 23:32
  [A] hard to be sure, but like most systems you want a little fraud, right? Like if you, if you have no fraud then then like are you, are you over enforcing you can have a
• 23:42
  [B] little fraud as a treat.
• 23:44
  [D] Yeah. I mean it's contentious, right? Like there are definitely situations where the part of me that wants to do right by people in terms of equity thinks that it's the right thing. Like, like, you know, if you used to live in D.C. and you move out to Virginia, but your kid is still in the D.C. school for the rest of the year, that seems like justice for them to stay in the D.C. school for the rest of the year. Yeah, but you know, if you've Never lived in D.C. but you want to send your kid to a D.C. school for, for whatever reason, particularly if you want to send your kids to one of the, the D.C. schools that are in the nicer parts of D.C. that are better schools, then that kind of seems like maybe you should be paying taxes in D.C. yeah, probably.
• 24:22
  [C] Well, don't we have a solution for this? Like out of state tuition is a thing for universities, so why shouldn't it be for D.C. schools? Like just charge them?
• 24:30
  [D] Yeah, no, I mean that seems like
• 24:33
  [C] a charge an amount that not that many people will take you up on and solves all the problems. I do think back to the original story. If they're maintaining a residence and paying property taxes in the District, then what's the issue? I don't understand like, like the primary, you know, how much, what percentage your time are you spending in XY place? Like are they paying property taxes year round? Yes. Do they have a kid? Yes. Okay, great. Their kid gets to go to the schools. That's it. I don't, I don't see what the, you know. Now, you know, if they're, if, if they're renting an apartment in the district and you know, you can't necessarily like, like there's effectively like they're arbitraging it that way, maybe it's a little different but like you're still paying, you're still paying money to be to have a residence in the district.
• 25:16
  [D] So, like, I mean, that moves the is it fraud question to kind of a different level. Is. Is like, are you fraudulently claiming that this is your address when it's not really your address? I think. I think that what happened here is basically that they found what they thought was a good screen for people, and for whatever reason, in this case, it's a bad screen. I. I guess they said that they lent the car to a relative and that's why it's in Chicago. But it's getting litigated, so presumably the truth will out.
• 25:43
  [B] Oh, we could start. We could start a discourse on this about the great con on Blue sky. I bet we could get so many people mad at him about this. Just completely unhinged.
• 25:56
  [C] I do think the thing with the Flock stuff and license plate readers in general, because they're. I mean, my. My neighborhood has a license plate reader. It's not a Flock license plate reader. We own the server. Like, our HOA owns the server. So it's not going to get a random cop logging in to ping it. And that's the problem with flock. Right. It's. It's. It's access control. It's not if. If a court comes to you, it comes to flock with a subpoena. That's a very different thing, I think, for society as a whole than literally, you know, Officer Prosciutto can log in and start looking for what his neighbors are going to do.
• 26:28
  [D] Yeah.
• 26:28
  [C] Which, like, we know for a fact is happening, let alone like DHS, etc. So really, like, again, like, the issue is unfettered access of law enforcement, which is, you know, that's the same thing with cell phones or with, you know, other data. You know, the Claude, Department of Defense, stuff like that. That's all in the same valence. It's, It's.
• 26:50
  [B] It would be. It would be Officer Pierogi, not Prosciutto in Chicago.
• 26:55
  [A] I was gonna say, how much overtime
• 26:57
  [C] do you have to get to get Italians in Chicago? What are you talking about?
• 27:00
  [A] But consider the amount of. Of overtime necessary to get to Officer Prosciutto.
• 27:05
  [C] Well, actually, I'm ripping that bit off of the bodega boys, to be clear. That's a. That's an old bodega boys bit.
• 27:11
  [A] So I have no idea who that is.
• 27:14
  [C] You don't know who the bodega boys are?
• 27:15
  [A] Not a clue, George. You know, I'm not the normal one here.
• 27:21
  [D] All right, we got bodega boys book club material for next time, or you Know, whatever.
• 27:25
  [B] I was, like, 12 when the bodega Boys went off the air.
• 27:29
  [C] No, the Bodega Boys went off the air, like, five years ago.
• 27:32
  [B] Has it only been five? Time doesn't matter anymore.
• 27:35
  [C] You've never heard of Desus and Miro? Like, really?
• 27:37
  [A] Oh, I. I know who they are. When I. I know who Desus and Miro are. I just didn't know.
• 27:42
  [D] Yeah.
• 27:42
  [C] So their podcast is called the Bodega Boys. That's how they got famous is this podcast called the Boys, which was by far and away the funniest podcast I've ever listened to regularly, and the only comedy podcast I would even consider listening to regularly. And they. Their. Their bit for, like, the cop was Officer Prosciutto.
• 28:00
  [A] So I only know who they are because, like, Bill Simmons yelled at them once or something like that. It's a very.
• 28:08
  [C] Yeah, because they have good takes and Bill Simmons doesn't.
• 28:10
  [A] Yeah, that's true. He does not. No. Like, no. No one, under any circumstances hands it to Bill Simmons. But, yeah, that's just. That's just a side of the Internet I've never been on.
• 28:21
  [B] I have always avoided Bill Simmons. The only thing I really know about him, other than just vaguely that he has terrible takes, is that drew McGarry's old character Tommy from Quincy is based on Bill Simmons, apparently.
• 28:39
  [C] I mean, I don't know what any of that means.
• 28:41
  [A] So.
• 28:42
  [B] So you were, like, 12 when kissing Susie Colbert went away, George.
• 28:48
  [C] Oh, I actually do know what that's referencing, though, Kissing Susie Colbert.
• 28:54
  [A] So Bill Simmons, way back in the midst of Internet time, used to be on the primary Red Sox message board, and everyone was like, oh, cool, he's a celebrity. And then they chased him off because he, he could not hand. One, he could not handle the slightest bit of criticism, but two, he could not stop saying the dumbest stuff alive.
• 29:15
  [C] Sounds like a story about blue sky.
• 29:17
  [A] I mean, I'm not, I'm not a
• 29:20
  [D] Red Sox fan, but I know the Sons of Sam Horn. So, like, like, this is a member. This is a, this is. This is a message board that has a reputation.
• 29:29
  [A] Yeah, it does. I, I, I am firmly in the bottom quartile. But, yeah, the. Bill Simmons did not do well there after he left, like, the, the wonderful confines of Digital City, and then now, somehow, he has more money than God.
• 29:47
  [C] Thank you, espn.
• 29:48
  [A] This is second only to the guy who invented, like, invented who created Glee being on there. It's. It's a real thing.
• 29:58
  [D] Yeah, Yeah, I like Glee. I think Bill Simmons is all right, too. I Mean, I. I enjoy the enthusiasm. He's wrong about everything. But, you know, it's like, he's.
• 30:09
  [B] He's probably not as bad as, like, Skip Bayless and Stephen A. I assume for sure.
• 30:14
  [A] I mean, no one can be.
• 30:15
  [D] No, he's.
• 30:15
  [A] Yeah, he's.
• 30:16
  [D] He's. He's enthusiastic, you know, like, to say
• 30:20
  [B] nothing of Pat McAfee.
• 30:21
  [A] I'm trying to think of how you would, like, be worse than Stephen A. Smith. Like, what would you have to create in a lab to make this happen? Right?
• 30:30
  [B] Like.
• 30:31
  [A] Yeah, no. Like, no one is. No one comes close to Stephen A. Smith because Stephen A. Smith is bad in multiple sports. He's bad in every sport. Like, some people just, like, tune out when. When, like, Estonian rules curling is happening. No, Steve A. Smith will find a reason to yell about this stuff, right? Like, he's just. He's like, he's the unit vector of stupid for everything in. In existence.
• 30:58
  [B] And then, like, Skip Bayless is going to do the same thing, but he's somehow going to bring it back to LeBron, not being the goat every time.
• 31:07
  [C] I will say Skip Bayless also is not going to have a very short and very, very annoying run in the 2028 Democratic primary. And I think Stephen A. Smith has an outside shot of achieving that.
• 31:18
  [A] So I assumed he was going to run as a rep. Republican.
• 31:21
  [C] No, no, no, no, no, no. He will not do that.
• 31:24
  [D] His. His job. His job is. His job is to fill the previously Kanye west, then Cornell west roll.
• 31:31
  [C] Correct.
• 31:32
  [D] Yeah.
• 31:34
  [A] I mean, you know where that goes, right?
• 31:36
  [C] Nowhere good.
• 31:37
  [A] I mean, Alex Jones line, too.
• 31:41
  [D] Yeah. To be fair, Kanye and Cornell are in very different places right now.
• 31:45
  [B] But what is going on with Cornell west right now?
• 31:49
  [A] I don't want to know.
• 31:50
  [B] I haven't heard from him in a long time.
• 31:52
  [C] I think he had some quotes in 2024, and that's the last I heard of him.
• 31:56
  [B] So Kanye's trying to do his redemption art thing arc thing, isn't he?
• 32:01
  [D] Once again, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 32:06
  [C] Once in future, redemption arc of Kanye
• 32:08
  [B] west until next week, when he'll get the. The Charles Manson swastika tattoo above his eyes.
• 32:18
  [D] College Dropout was a great album, and it's a shame that he died in a car accident immediately after that. So.
• 32:28
  [C] Through the wire.
• 32:29
  [A] I have to go now. My planet needs me.
• 32:39
  [C] This is Normal Men, a podcast from four men who. Who are clinging desperately to normalcy in an era when that's asking a bit too much.
• 32:45
  [D] I'm George In Charlotte, in D.C. i'm
• 32:47
  [B] Proctor Malone in Outer Florida. I'm Lotac Speedrun enjoyer and I'm Ed in Boston. Is there anything to talk about Iran? Like I thought we had 100% blown up all their stuff and everything was great. That's why we need Keir Starmer to bring all his boats to the Strait of Formuz.
• 33:07
  [A] I heard they sent us thank you notes.
• 33:09
  [B] Yeah, yeah.
• 33:12
  [C] Oh, jolly good. Off to the Persian Gulf, lads.
• 33:15
  [D] I'm a little lost on whether or not we want the British boats or we don't want the British boats because I like, I've seen direct quotes from Trump in the past two days, both directions.
• 33:23
  [A] So like I feel kind of bad
• 33:26
  [B] for Keir Starbuck is like this poor fucker can't win for Triad, right? I mean I don't feel he's kept
• 33:31
  [C] him out of this.
• 33:32
  [A] Yeah, you do. You do not have to feel bad for Keir Starmer.
• 33:35
  [B] No, I know he's a piece of but, but like he's kept them out of this stupid and everybody's still mad at him.
• 33:42
  [D] It feels like I've underrated how difficult it is to be a successful Trump lick spittle that like if you're trying, if you're trying to keep up with his demands as a foreign leader that seems like more than a full time job that he's going to, he's going to move the goalposts on you. He's going to ask you to do one thing one day, a different thing the next day. If you ever displease him, you're going to be hearing about it for months and months and months. And also maybe he's going to assassinate you. I guess that's in the, I guess that's on, on the menu too.
• 34:11
  [A] Mr. Speaker, I do not know what he wants.
• 34:15
  [D] Probably not Keir Starmer. Probably.
• 34:17
  [A] Yeah. Check back in like 2028.
• 34:20
  [C] London has fallen.
• 34:22
  [A] What I, I, I heard the, the back half of the we are asking the British for boats question but like what boats are we asking for?
• 34:32
  [D] They've got a carrier.
• 34:33
  [A] They have two.
• 34:34
  [C] Yeah, yeah but a carrier doesn't really help you in the Strait of Hormuz. Like that's the thing. Like you need to, you need destroyers, right? You need some air cover probably, but you need destroyers. Like that's what you need maybe, I mean even Corvettes, honestly, because the thing you're protecting against is small craft and relatively slow moving drones, maybe some ballistic missiles but you know, and you just need a lot of them. You need like a lot of these things and there just aren't that many of them. And the thing about when we, we talked about hormos and the, the volumes involved here last time, but you're talking in a normal week, something like 350 to 400 different tankers transiting back and forth through the strait. No, these boats are extremely large and you can't sail these things like you run train cars, right? Because they take, I don't know, like 10 miles to slow to a stop, something like that. I don't know what the stopping time for for fully loaded BLCC is, but it's like miles. It's not, it's not like you can't just turn on a dime because you're carrying literally an ocean of crude oil and that has a lot of momentum. And Proctor is going to Claude now to figure out how long it takes to stop a blcc. But the point is when you're talking about very long boats that have to sail very far apart through a very narrow waterway that is constantly under threat from various, I mean small craft, I think their main, their, their blue water navy is essentially toast at this point. I'm willing to believe that amount of Department of Defense claims around what we've been able to bomb because that's, it
• 36:11
  [A] would be hard for it not to be right.
• 36:13
  [C] But then you've got your heads and then you've probably got various formats of missiles, right.
• 36:18
  [B] For a trillion dollars a year it better be.
• 36:24
  [C] So you've got like, you can't. But this is not running stuff through, you know the, the, when the Somali pirates were a big thing back in the day, right. Like, you know, you can stop that with a couple of light naval assets because they're in outboard motor boats, right. Like, like it's not that. Right. You need basically one ship per carrier for, for, per tanker and there's a lot of tankers and there's just not that many ships. On top of the risk of like if you're cure Starmer and again like UK public opinion on this is, is very clear that like they're not, they're not getting involved. But like imagine being the Prime Minister that lost a destroyer or a cruiser to Shaheds and various other asymmetric strat tactics from the Iranians to fix Donald Trump's war. I mean I, I, they might bring back capital punishment. I mean you, it like you would definitely get the whole like treatment that the, it wasn't the mayor of London. There was some UK town back in the day where if you gained too much weight when you were in Office, you would. You got weighed when you came in and weighed when you came out. And if you got weighed when you came out and you weighed out too high, you got subjected to a round of booing. And, and yeah, I see.
• 37:46
  [B] Although losing a destroyer like that has by a UK Prime Minister has such loser energy that I'm half expecting Starmer to do it now.
• 37:57
  [A] I mean they, apparently they found a poll he can read. Yeah, right. Like now we're staying out of this one.
• 38:04
  [D] Right.
• 38:05
  [A] And I, this is the dumbest freaking thing in my life.
• 38:10
  [C] You're asking Korea to send ships.
• 38:16
  [A] Don't, don't, don't sleep on the South Korean military.
• 38:21
  [C] I, I, I'm not. Are they, are they naval military so much as sleeping on South Korea's ability to project naval power multiple thousands of miles to their west?
• 38:29
  [A] Like, I mean, you know, fair, but
• 38:32
  [C] you know, there's, it's not only their ability, their willingness.
• 38:36
  [A] The willingness is a much different thing.
• 38:38
  [C] Yeah.
• 38:38
  [B] Are you guys sure he's not asking North Korea?
• 38:46
  [D] So, so the thing I was pulling up a minute ago, I was not, I was not asking Claude for the record, the thing I was pulling up a minute ago was, was, ah, chat. GPT was a good skeet from friend of the pod Shiv Ram Dass that I thought encapsulated one of the problems with escorts in the Strait of Hormuz. Here's what he said. If you ask a random person how high the tallest building is, they inevitably say a number way bigger than reality. Ask how fast the fastest car or plane is and they come up with a number much bigger than reality. And this holds true for all hypothetical questions until for reason you ask how big a cargo ship is. These things are enormous. These things are mind bogglingly large. Your brain smoothly slides off how large a modern cargo ship or a modern tanker is.
• 39:34
  [A] I only know because I had to look up how big a Panamax is at one point and there are bigger
• 39:40
  [C] now a vlcc, which is sort of like the standard large tanker at this point. It's not the largest size, but it's, it's large. Right. 330 for a second.
• 39:52
  [D] Does VLCC stand for Very Large Cargo Carrier?
• 39:56
  [C] Very Large Crude Carrier. Okay. Very close. Yeah. Thank you. ACRO acronym man.
• 40:00
  [D] All right.
• 40:00
  [C] I was hoping 330 meters. So imagine like, like a standard track in like an Olympic stadium. Peel that out into a line and about 80% of that is the length of one of these ships. Right. Like if you ran the length of this thing back and forth I think, what, 10 times you, or, yeah, like 10 times you're, or sorry, nine times you're doing a 5K. Like, that's crazy. And they weigh, they fully loaded our 300,000 tons, carrying 2 million barrels of crude. 2 million a barrel is 45 gallons.
• 40:39
  [B] So.
• 40:41
  [A] And they get bigger than that now too, Right?
• 40:43
  [C] Like, they do. This is like ULCS is 400.
• 40:47
  [A] Yeah, yeah. I think they're 400 meters now.
• 40:49
  [C] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 40:50
  [A] It's stupid. We, we, we. The bigger the boat, the harder it is when boat gets stuck.
• 40:57
  [D] Yeah.
• 40:58
  [A] Like we are not considering this problem.
• 41:00
  [D] This is, this is extremely important. These are not designed to get shot at. So, like,
• 41:07
  [C] I don't care how many times you've seen Water world, it is not like that in reality. No, no.
• 41:14
  [B] I mean, maybe y' all are not thinking about boat get stuck, Ed, but Nuke Gingrich is thinking about it.
• 41:21
  [A] No, he's thinking about very grateful for nuke of friggin canal.
• 41:25
  [D] Yep.
• 41:26
  [A] He is also underestimating substantially how many nuclear weapons he would need.
• 41:32
  [C] I think the number was 12. Right. He thought he could, you could run ye string of 12.
• 41:36
  [B] He thought it would take 12.
• 41:37
  [C] Yeah, yeah. So the idea here, just for listeners who are not as online as we are, Newt Gingrich, presidential candidate, among other things, he, his big thing in 2012 was the moon base for those real heads out there. He wants to run a string of nuclear weapons from the Persian Gulf southeast and carve a channel that avoids Hormuz. Okay. I don't even know where to begin with this.
• 42:07
  [B] Well, we should also note he apparently got this from a satirical article on subs.
• 42:12
  [C] Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. Yes, yes, yes. I, I, yeah, I mean, I, I, that would not work. Let's go. Let's just say that, I mean that that's the first thing. But even then, you're still not out of the range of shaheds. And if you create an alternative path, well, they're just gonna attack that alternative path because they're, it's so well within their range, which is a canal, that
• 42:38
  [D] you can stop up by sinking something anywhere in the canal.
• 42:41
  [A] Correct.
• 42:42
  [C] Well, I mean, if you're building with nukes, maybe it's big enough that you could sail around one of these things, but probably not. Right? Navigable depth. I don't know. Like, it's just, I'm treating this far too seriously because I've, I had a couple glasses of wine with dinner, but like
• 43:00
  [D] normal men, does not endorse nuking your way across the Arabian peninsula in an effort to create a second canal. Is our, is our stance at this time, you know, Are you sure Oman
• 43:10
  [A] kind of concurs with this?
• 43:12
  [C] I, I think basically everyone, except maybe the Saudis is not going to be involved in that. The Saudis will be like, well, it's not, it's not us. So yeah, go nuts. It's fine.
• 43:25
  [A] We can't have big line city, but we can have big nuclei.
• 43:32
  [C] Yeah, that. So I, I like. There is no sign in terms of what other countries are saying, what the U. S. Military is saying, what Trump administration officials are saying, that we're going to be able to provide any sort of COVID for tankers leaving the Persian Gulf through Hormuz while hostilities are underway. They are also giving strong indications that there is no path to an end for hostilities.
• 44:01
  [A] So great.
• 44:05
  [C] 20% of global petroleum supply. Actually, a little bit more than that when you talk about in a fuel like products basis as opposed to crude basis, but 20% of global petroleum supply. Awesome.
• 44:15
  [B] I just love that they, I just love that they apparently didn't even think about this, that we, we didn't think Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz if we attacked them and assassinated all of their leaders.
• 44:32
  [A] I have been hearing people say, but what about the Strait of Hormuz for my entire adult life.
• 44:39
  [C] Yes, not an exaggeration.
• 44:41
  [D] There is a far side cartoon about the Strait of Hormuz.
• 44:50
  [C] I am now looking this up because I got to see it.
• 44:53
  [B] But, like, that's got to be one of the, the first questions you ask, right? You're, you're in the situation Room going over plans or whatever. Like, surely one of the first questions you ask is, okay, well, what happens if Iran closes the straight of Hormuz?
• 45:11
  [A] That cartoon that proor is referencing was published two weeks before I was bor.
• 45:19
  [C] It's a good one too. So there's a, there's a white boat with a red stripe along the gunnel and people partying with balloons and drinks on the bow. There's a, some sort of quirky battleship in the background. There are some mines in the water. And there's a couple of guys with that, that, I mean, they're, they're caricatures of Iranians with mines in the back of what looks like a rowboat that has a machine gun mounted on the front. And the caption is, through a gross navigational error, the love boat steams into the Strait of Hormuz. And if you don't know what the love boat was, I this. I'm not gonna explain.
• 45:58
  [B] Just Google it.
• 45:59
  [A] We're not telling you try Google.
• 46:02
  [D] Anyway, that should be a very dated cartoon but unfortunately we're back there except for the Love Boat. So
• 46:10
  [C] here's a Love Boat. It's like some crypto cruise.
• 46:13
  [D] Yeah, I mean like
• 46:15
  [B] fire.
• 46:17
  [D] Is that. Is that a reality show with like.
• 46:18
  [A] Yeah, yeah.
• 46:19
  [B] Below Dex?
• 46:20
  [C] Yeah, yeah, that works.
• 46:22
  [D] So we don't. We don't have an obvious path towards getting the straight of Hormuz any opener than it is right now. George. It's probably faster to think about what industries this is not going to torpedo because like this is going to hit ag in a big way. Right. Like this is. This is fertilizer that is going to screw up crops. I thought I read something about how there is a secondary product that comes out. Like well, there's. There's sulfuric acid which they use in freaking everything.
• 46:48
  [C] Yep.
• 46:49
  [D] That, you know, that's kind of. That's kind of your go to for industrial processes that. Let's throw some sulfuric acid in there.
• 46:56
  [A] Yeah, it's kind of a big one.
• 46:57
  [C] Yeah.
• 46:58
  [D] And those gulf refineries are where essentially it all comes out of the.
• 47:03
  [C] So all of it, but a very significant portion of global supply. Helium is another good. Helium is something that's very useful in a bunch of industrial applications and it's not as easy to find as you might think. Synthesizing it, I think is also not impossible, but a real pain and really expensive. So like yeah, helium is really important. That's where a lot of the world's helium supply comes from.
• 47:27
  [A] We.
• 47:28
  [C] You mentioned aluminum urea. But even if you. It was just like forget all that. Like yeah, like totally. That's a huge issue. Like petroleum alone, man. I just like, I don't understand why more people aren't panicking yet. And I think the logic is that oh well, you know, like the, the strategic reserves will cover everyone that until the war winds down and then it'll be fine.
• 47:57
  [A] And like 2029.
• 47:58
  [C] Oh right. Like so. So from the way I think about this is there's two things that you have to model. The first thing you have to model is how long does the war end or last. Right. And I have no idea. I. I'm sorry. I like anybody that is like yeah, it's going to last X amount of time they're stop. Like just. It's not worth talking about. We can talk about a range of scenarios and how you might get to each scenario and what you should look for to be indicative to. To moving to that scenario. Fine. But like having a strong, confident belief about how long it lasts, given how the Trump administration is handling it, is just. And the complexities of Iran's internal politics. I just like. No, I. You're not credible. I'm sorry. No, no interest. Leaving that aside, you can't. Like the petroleum reserves that the IEA or orchestrated release of last week. Let's take the US Example, which the US is the big one, right? We said we're going to release 182 million barrels. They can't pump more than 3 million barrel barrels a day out, right? We've lost 20 million barrels a day of crude and more on top of that of products. So that's not making up the shortfall, guys. And that's the biggest one that can move the fastest, right? We are weeks away from catastrophic shortages of stuff. And I think I made this point last week, but like price will equilibriate those markets. Markets like the amount of diesel fuel that's out there when, when diesel fuel drops from 100 of supply to 80, like whatever the, you know, people will stop using diesel fuel one by hook or by crook and diesel fuel will flow to whoever will pay the most for it. Like that will happen. The issue is like that 20% is a huge chunk of the global economy and we have never absorbed a crash deceleration like that. My friend Matt Klein, who runs newsletter called the Overshoot really, really good on big macroeconomic stuff, did some calculations and the 70s oil shock was substantially smaller than this, like by a lot, right? Oil prices quadrupled. Like, so that gets you north of 200 a barrel right there. Okay. Like, so what is, what is.
• 50:22
  [D] What does 200 a barrel look like? What stays, what stays online, what goes offline at that point?
• 50:27
  [C] In developed economies, a lot of stuff stays online. In developed economies, it's probably like a 5 to 10% reduction in demand. In emerging economies, it's like everything shuts down. Like, it's like we're having trouble moving food around. It's like, I don't think mass famine is necessarily the way to think about it, but it's like you are eating a lot of dried rice and like, we'll try and get through this as best we can. And in economic output terms, that might as well be a famine, right? Like, you know, the human cost will be lower than an actual famine, but it's the equivalent thing in terms of GDP in the U.S. i mean, airlines are completely screwed. Like they're toast. That's it. Anything involving moving stuff over long Distances becomes instantly unprofitable unless you really ratchet the price up a lot. And so that has downstream effects, you know. And the way, you know, the US Economy is very, very adaptable. So the way it looks is like a lot of stuff becomes unprofitable, so people stop doing it and other stuff becomes more profitable, profitable. So people start doing that. Lots of labor demand short or lots of cut cuts to labor. So basically lots of layoffs near term.
• 51:34
  [D] Right. I mean, I mean, construction, Construction screwed, right, because they can't move materials.
• 51:39
  [C] A lot of them sort of.
• 51:41
  [D] I mean, like, you think they're okay.
• 51:42
  [C] Okay, Well, I mean, it, I, they wouldn't be high on my list of like the first to go because like, so for instance, lumber supply, right? That's mostly by rail. You absolutely have last mile stuff in trucks. But like last mile is, I mean, that's not as fuel intensive as for instance, flying things around. Right? Moving stuff by the ocean is like incredibly fuel efficient, which is why we move so much crude via oceans. Moving stuff by rail is less fuel efficient, but, but it's pretty fuel efficient. The really high energy intensity stuff is moving stuff by truck for long distances and moving stuff by plane. And yeah, I mean there, there will be. But like again, if you think about it in terms of price goes up by a factor of four. Let's just use as a number, right? Like, like diesel goes up by a factor of four. That does not mean demand for diesel in the US Drops by that much. Right. But it does not drop like 100. It means it drops maybe 10 or something like that. And there's a lot of stuff you cannot do for a while that you don't have to. So developed economies with high incomes, it mostly works out through a real income shock as opposed to like a huge drop in output because you just can't get the supplies you need. But if you're like India, for instance, there's a great Bloomberg story this afternoon talking about these banquets that were being thrown in this town in India and the caterer had to call the, the people that were paying them to throw these banquets and say, hey, like, we can't get our hands on cooking fuel. So here's your menu choices because of that. And the people are freaking out like, what, what are you talking about? Just go get some fuel. And no, it doesn't exist. Right? That's, that's going to be happening everywhere. And I mean, it's already happening and it's going to get a lot worse. And the unfortunate and really scary thing is that like there is a U. S. Political feedback to all this. Right. Like if gas goes to $8 a gallon, like that, like, stuff happens.
• 53:43
  [B] Right.
• 53:45
  [C] If you can't get.
• 53:46
  [A] Yeah, I walk.
• 53:47
  [C] Yeah, if you can't.
• 53:48
  [B] So Trump, Trump turns us into Norway and you guys get mad at him with a dollar a gallon gas.
• 53:54
  [C] If you can't get cooking fuel in India, there's no feedback to the US from that. He doesn't care. Right, yeah. So, you know, as usual, like the, the people that are least able to bear the costs of big problems are the ones that are going to be hit the hardest. You know, in this instance it's on a global scale as opposed to a national one. But you know, yeah, it's grim. And there is no domestic energy policy that can do anything to ameliorate this substantially. There's, there's nothing.
• 54:22
  [A] But I've heard so much about clean coal.
• 54:27
  [C] I mean.
• 54:28
  [A] Yeah, I just wanted to see George's face.
• 54:31
  [B] The good news is that something like not having cooking fuel in a place like India should have no geopolitical ramifications, Especially not if, you know, the same is happening with their, their beloved and very stable next door neighbor who they get along swimmingly with.
• 54:52
  [C] Yeah, I mean if you're a developing country at this point, I think you have to be genuinely insane to look at the mess the US has dragged you into and look at how China behaves on the world stage and say, yes, sign me up for LNG from U. S Terminals. Like that's a reliable energy strategy. Like, no, that you are desperate to get your hands on as many solar panels and batteries as you possibly can.
• 55:20
  [D] So yeah, so I've got to, to go back to how we, to how we open, talking about asking allies for help. I've got kind of an ongoing conversation with a mercifully offline buddy and he thinks that because the harms from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz are going to primarily accrue to people, not the U.S. it's likely that we, the United States are going to be able to lever other people into solving this problem for us because, because we're not so hurt. I, I'm on the other side of this. I think that, I think that basically we're gonna, we're gonna wind up doing what is going to be a tall lift on this to try to get it back open and other people.
• 56:01
  [C] But what, what lever, what are they going to do?
• 56:06
  [D] What's so, so his argument, which I want to be fair to, is Is, is that actors like, like are going to suffer from this more than we will. And therefore, you know, the Trump madman strategy of just saying, yeah, well, you know, guess this is I'm out is going to be effective in getting somebody else to solve the problem that if he walks away, someone else will solve the problem. Like I said, I'm not, I'm not convinced. But I want to throw that out there for discussion. That, that, that if, if the United States cuts and runs at this point point, what does that look like? What happens?
• 56:42
  [C] Well, hold on, because it's not just first off, there is no indication the US Is set up to cut and run. Right. So let's just say that second, it's not just the United States. Is China going to, is Beijing going to bomb Tel Aviv? Like what, like they're as much of a problem right now in terms of Iran keeping the straits closed as anybody else in this equation.
• 57:04
  [D] Right. Well, I mean Israel's, Israel's in the process of buying themselves a second fairly large problem which is, which is full on conflict with, with Lebanon and probably with whatever is left of Syria.
• 57:17
  [C] Yeah.
• 57:18
  [D] And if they're lucky, not Turkey. We'll see how that plays out. I have grave misgivings about, about what's happening there. I think, I think that, yeah.
• 57:29
  [B] Did you, not to get us off track, but did you see enough Naftali Bennett's comments on that? He seemed to be like setting up Turkey as Israel's new Iran.
• 57:38
  [D] Yeah, I mean I think that's, I think that's kind of an accurate gauge of, of Israeli sentiment. Yeah, it's not great.
• 57:46
  [C] Just to be clear. NATO member Turkey.
• 57:48
  [A] Right.
• 57:50
  [C] NATO member who hosts US Nukes. Turkey.
• 57:53
  [D] Yeah. Also also NATO member who has the second largest military in NATO. Turkey
• 58:00
  [C] also NATO member who also happens to sit on I guess probably the, no, third most important straight in the world for commerce.
• 58:10
  [A] Yeah. But we don't like Russia anyway. It's fine.
• 58:12
  [D] Israel's, Israel's just going through straits, man. I mean we're going, we're going Suez.
• 58:17
  [B] We're doing tremendously with our straits. We got Hormuz, we got, we got Suez, we got phosphorus Dio.
• 58:25
  [A] I'm just, just, I'm just waiting for them to get to Dover.
• 58:29
  [C] Hey, maybe we'll get really lucky and Bibi will try and reenact Dardanelles. That's. I, I had not followed the Turkey escalation, but that's, that's nuts.
• 58:47
  [B] Insane.
• 58:48
  [D] I mean Israel's I think is in the, I don't think they Finished it yet. But, but, but they're currently in the process of passing a law that raises their remaining. Their army reserves cap from high 200 thousands to 500,000, I think, is the number. So, like, they're, they're gearing up for a ground war and that's going to come with gigantic human costs. And It's.
• 59:12
  [B] That's what, 8% of the population?
• 59:14
  [D] Yeah.
• 59:17
  [C] Where don't they already have issues filling their reserves? Like, how are they going to increase that by 150%?
• 59:24
  [D] I mean, they're, they're going to call out people who are, who are aged out.
• 59:28
  [C] But do they think they'll get compliance? Like, is that not going to create domestic stress?
• 59:33
  [D] No, they think they're going to get compliance. I mean, like.
• 59:36
  [B] So are they going to make the ultra orthodox go this time?
• 59:39
  [D] Maybe?
• 59:40
  [C] No, no, Come on.
• 59:42
  [D] I mean, you know, if it depends on whether or not Bibi thinks he can keep his coalition that way. Like, like the background, the background on this, on, on, on the most recent Lebanon spat, because I think this has not achieved penetration for whatever reason, is that after the Iran stuff started, Lebanon started shooting at Israel again. They didn't shoot very much and they didn't hit anything, but, you know, they started shooting rockets and Israel went. Oh, hell no. And massively over Lebanon.
• 1:00:09
  [C] You mean Hezbollah, right? Hezbollah, yes, Lebanon, yeah. So, because just, just for listeners that didn't cat. Yeah.
• 1:00:16
  [D] So, like, that's an important distinction in terms of. In, in terms of who the opposing actors are, or at least it was at one point an important distinction in terms of who the opposing actors are. It's not an important distinction in terms of whose territory Israel is invading.
• 1:00:32
  [C] Yes, agreed. Yes, yes, yes.
• 1:00:34
  [D] And, you know, like, previous, previous to that, there was a ceasefire that was holding pretty well with, with, with Hezbollah, with Lebanon, with munitions crossing that border. And anyway, so Israel massively overreacted to what was legitimately an attack. I mean, like, there is, there is a new Casas Belli here, but it doesn't justify anything like the amount of mobilization that you're seeing out of Israel right now. And it's going to cause a massive refugee crisis. And it's, it's, it's, it's going to be terrible. It's terrible all around. So, so there we are in a
• 1:01:15
  [B] country that is, that is already dealing with 15 years of a refugee crisis pouring into their border from Syria.
• 1:01:24
  [D] Correct.
• 1:01:24
  [A] Yeah.
• 1:01:25
  [D] Which is also getting a big chunk of territory bitten off by Israel. So. And I mean, like, I think it's at Least it seems clear to me. To me at this point that the territorial expansion is. Is a significant part of what Israel is trying to do here. Whether they want larger buffer zones or whether they want just more lands, I don't know. But they're trying to bite a big piece off of both Lebanon and Syria, so. So not great. Not great.
• 1:01:57
  [B] Yeah. Although would. Turkey is few orders of magnitude. Turkey would be much worse than.
• 1:02:06
  [A] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And capable. Let's just put it that way.
• 1:02:14
  [C] And also a NATO member.
• 1:02:18
  [A] Yeah. Trust me, I have not forgotten that there are in fact at least five articles involved, probably more.
• 1:02:26
  [C] But who reads past number five?
• 1:02:29
  [A] Look, five is. Five is the one.
• 1:02:30
  [B] We pay Dutch people to read the rest of them. It's fine.
• 1:02:36
  [A] Ah, like those fine. Those fine Stellantis gentlemen.
• 1:02:42
  [B] No, those are the. Those are the French, not the Dutch.
• 1:02:44
  [C] No, the Stellantis people are.
• 1:02:46
  [A] No, they're headquartered in like, Hoopstad or something.
• 1:02:48
  [B] Oh, they're headquartered, yeah. Because. Because of all the stupid European tax law. But. But I think the leadership is all French though, aren't they?
• 1:02:59
  [A] I think the CEO is an American. Poor bastard.
• 1:03:04
  [C] Oh, they are headquartered in Hoof Thorp.
• 1:03:06
  [A] Wow, good pull. I looked it up the other day because I had to make fun of.
• 1:03:10
  [B] I've never even heard of Hoop Dorf.
• 1:03:13
  [C] It's spelled H, O, O, F, D, D O R, P. So if you want to make fun of a name that's easy pickings.
• 1:03:20
  [A] Apparently it's like an old.
• 1:03:22
  [B] It.
• 1:03:23
  [A] It's a evacuated, you know, chunk of former ocean, you know, like half the country.
• 1:03:32
  [D] Some good will, some good windmill work there over past centuries.
• 1:03:39
  [A] All right, well, now I'm depressed.
• 1:03:41
  [D] Thanks, guys.
• 1:03:44
  [B] I mean, like, he launched this war and then Iran went, we're going to close the Strait of Hormuz. And now he's like, wait, no, not like that.
• 1:03:54
  [A] You can't do that.
• 1:03:55
  [B] That's not fair.
• 1:03:56
  [C] I mean, like, Iran.
• 1:03:58
  [D] Iran literally had one move, right? Like,
• 1:04:03
  [B] well, I mean, I guess they could have, like, started firing a bunch of stuff at Abkai and places like that too.
• 1:04:10
  [A] So, like. Yeah, I mean, I understand that they're stupid intellectually, but it's times like this that really drive home that, like, I have overestimated these people. Yeah, everyone didn't think I could.
• 1:04:33
  [B] Yeah, I. I don't think there are. I don't think there are many people who have a lower opinion of these people's intellect than the four of us. And I think even the four of us are probably sitting here like, wow, we weren't close. They're they're much dumber than we thought.
• 1:04:50
  [D] I want to be extremely clear. I want to say these people were talking about the American, the American administration. I, I don't, I don't have opinions about, about the quality of Iranian leadership right now.
• 1:05:02
  [A] I would amend that to include Israel. Thank you.
• 1:05:05
  [D] Also Israeli leadership. Fine. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:07
  [C] Job. Yeah. And like, like, let's keep in mind that he's doing this from approval ratings. They're about as low as he ever hit in his first term. Like, it's not like he had, like, plus 30 approval ratings and is, like, made a mistake and nuked. Like, he was wildly unpopular before anything involved.
• 1:05:25
  [A] Maybe don't use the word nuke here, George. Can we not give them more ideas than Newt Gingrich already has?
• 1:05:34
  [C] Yeah. I mean, honestly, though, like, the US Using a nuclear weapon against Iran to get themselves out of this quagmire they've created is not outside the possibility at this point. And, like, I. That sucks. It's really bad. It's really, really bad.
• 1:05:52
  [B] Yeah. I said the other day, I. If it were anybody else who was not Lindsey Graham, the chances of a nuke being used here would be zero. With Trump, I still think it's pretty close to zero. Just because I think he's afraid of nukes, and he thinks nukes are the bigliest thing that there can be. But the chance is not zero, and that's way too high, no matter what that chance is.
• 1:06:28
  [C] I. Yeah, I don't think it's a high chance either, but it's getting more likely every day.
• 1:06:34
  [D] I mean, and, you know, there's also a real question as to whether or not nukes have any chance of solving the problem. Right. Like.
• 1:06:40
  [C] Oh, they don't.
• 1:06:41
  [D] Just to be.
• 1:06:41
  [A] I don't think that's a related question at all. It's not.
• 1:06:44
  [B] Yeah, no, no, no. It will absolutely not solve the problem. Well, the other thing is, if he actually started making moves about using nukes, obviously that's going to leak long before he tries it, because everything leaks from the Trump White House. Do you think Mr. Xi might have some opinions on that?
• 1:07:05
  [C] I mean, not just him. Right. Like, there are other nuclear powers in the general vicinity who might have some stuff to say about that.
• 1:07:13
  [B] Yeah, I don't. I don't imagine Maori or, or whoever the hell is running Pakistan now is, Is going to be terribly pleased about that idea. I also don't think the Gulf Arabs are going to be terribly pleased about, you know, like, irradiating all of their territory and stuff, you know, if there's
• 1:07:31
  [D] anything you want from a fuel that burns into airborne particulates, it's for it to be radioactive.
• 1:07:37
  [C] Jesus Christ.
• 1:07:43
  [A] Ah, so you're saying it's the green option.
• 1:07:47
  [B] Watch him cut and run, just declare victory and, and start getting the hell out. And then Iran's like, no, we're not done here.
• 1:07:58
  [A] You get back here.
• 1:07:59
  [D] Like, I, I think that's a significant risk. I mean, like Iran, Iran, Iran is stepping on the artery of, Iran is stepping on the neck artery of the world right now. And they are in a position to where they're, they have every incentive to try to extract some kind of concessions, whether it's from the United States or somebody else to help them rebuild because they've just gotten hit by a kind of a lot of bombs and are continuing to be hit by kind of a lot of bombs.
• 1:08:25
  [A] Oh, kind of a lot. Is that a scientific term?
• 1:08:28
  [C] Let's remember how we got into this situation, right? Like the US Peace negotiations as a pretext to prepare for the strikes.
• 1:08:36
  [A] Right?
• 1:08:36
  [C] Like as come and prepare for the strikes. Right. So saying, oh well, we're not going to do this anymore ain't gonna cut it with these people. Like, I, I, especially if they, Israel isn't part of the deal. And Israel is not going to be part of that deal.
• 1:08:51
  [D] Particularly since we also successfully killed the parents, wife and child of the Weider. So.
• 1:08:56
  [C] And disfigured, apparently, is what they're claiming.
• 1:08:58
  [D] That's what they're claiming.
• 1:08:59
  [B] They're claiming. There's no.
• 1:09:01
  [A] But they're claiming that for some, like, weird, like, turbo psychosexual fascist. Yeah, turbo fascist boner reasons.
• 1:09:09
  [D] Yeah, yeah, that might be like Book of Revelation stuff. I don't know.
• 1:09:17
  [C] The look on Proctor's face when he just very, very deadpanned, oh, yeah, Book of Revelations. As if like book of Revelations motivating the people running the U. S. Defense strategy is like, yeah, just that's how it is.
• 1:09:28
  [B] Duh.
• 1:09:30
  [D] I mean, that is how it is. That is how it is.
• 1:09:35
  [C] But that's why your facial reaction just like, yeah, no big deal. Like that. That's what killed me, man. You're exactly right.
• 1:09:42
  [A] To make the point, George, you are the, you are the person on this podcast most likely to use the phrase priced in.
• 1:09:48
  [C] Yeah, it. Not in this case, buddy. Not in this. So that's another interesting thing, right? So like, we, we're talking fairly apocalyptically here. And you know, I'd like to think the four of us have a couple brain cells to rub together and if anything Close to what we're talking about is the truth. Oil still only $100 a barrel. Just remember that financial markets can have weird psychology. And the other thing to remember is that positioning is really important. So when the last sun a week ago we recorded an oil traded briefly to around $120 a barrel. It then sold off down into the 80s throughout last week and is now back over 100. When you have a sort of a huge volume event like a, a big spike in price or a big decline in price or whatever, what that tends to do is clear out positioning. So people that were really long, you know, take profits and people that were really short take profits and what's called like gross exposure comes down. Like there's less leverage because volatility has gone up. So you want to be less leveraged to price because it's riskier.
• 1:10:54
  [A] Right.
• 1:10:55
  [C] That is very clearly to me what happened in crude this past week. I don't think the US government is selling crude futures, which is something that has been speculated about. I think there's actually quite good evidence that they are explicitly not doing that. And I think that you just got to remember that markets are really bad at going from point A to point B when point B is something that was unthinkable a week ago or two weeks ago or now in week three of this thing. So you know, three weeks ago we use whatever saw the exact same behavior. Global financial crisis. Covid, I mean people forget, right? Covid was a real like everyone knows we are having a global pandemic in February of 2020 and markets made their highs in the middle of the month. Right. Like we didn't see real mass selling until March. So just keep in mind that like, just be like first off guessing where markets are going to go next in the short term, day to day is really hard and you have to have a lot of experience managing risk to take advantage of that. So saying oh well, you should just be buying crude futures right now because you know it's going to go to 200, well it might go back to 81st along the way. Way right. Can you hold that position down 20% when it looks like for whatever reason you're wrong, even though you think you're not, it's really hard to do. Right. So just don't be too self assured about this stuff unless you're actually managing the risk around it. Because I promise you it's much harder to do than it looks like. It's way harder to do that. That's. I just wanted to like add that in. Because I've seen a lot of people talking about how stupid markets are being, and markets are a lot of things. Stupid is not one of them.
• 1:12:31
  [A] Them.
• 1:12:31
  [C] Right. They behave in ways that are dictated by stuff that you can't always see. And it's really, really hard to take advantage of that unless you really know what you're doing and have a lot of information about those markets.
• 1:12:44
  [A] So just see. Yeah, see, George is giving you advice, but consider this is your opportunity to take possession of 200,000 barrels of crude or die drying.
• 1:12:59
  [C] Not financial advice.
• 1:13:24
  [D] So, anyway, we were trying to schedule a lighter podcast for this week. Obviously, we've been successful at that.
• 1:13:30
  [A] But, hey, I'm laughing.
• 1:13:34
  [B] I mean, Gallo's humor counts as light.
• 1:13:38
  [A] I haven't laughed this much all week. Thank you.
• 1:13:41
  [D] I thought there was a really interesting discussion that Ed and Lotax were having on bluesky this last week that I wanted to tease out a little bit. They were talking about parasociality in the modern era. Ed, can you walk us. Can you walk us through your take here?
• 1:13:58
  [A] Yeah, it's bad. Don't do it. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. So, like, one of the things that keeps coming up that I run into a lot, and as some folks know, in my misbegotten past, I was a Twitch streamer. I was okay at it. Not amazing, but not amazing for reasons we might get into. But, like, I had an offer for Twitch partner during the pandemic and decided against it because I didn't like what it was turning me into. And what it was turning me into is directly a result of, like, the parasocial stuff that Lotax and I were talking about. Right, right. And that was from the. The creator side. I. I have no real understanding of. Of it from the consumption side. But, like, as a person creating stuff, people get really weirdly familiar. And that's the thing that makes them want to give you money. Right? That's the thing that makes them want to pay attention to you. And you see that a of lot, lot today, I think. Not just in terms of, like, YouTube or whatever, but also things like Patreon. Right. Like, there's a lot of people out there who are. Who are paying their rent off of Patreon. And there's two ways to do that. One is people like what you do, and they want what you do to keep happening. The other one is people like you or the projection of you that you put off into the Internet, and they want to be your friend. And that's the one that I See a lot, especially on blue sky. And it's not good. Like it's not good for anyone. Right? It's not good for, for the people who are, who are on either side of that transaction. Because that's what it is. Right? Like parasociality is a transaction. And I think Lotax might want to jump in here because like, I think this is one of the, the interesting slash terrible parts of the Internet these days is that in order to pay your rent, like this is a very common problem like for, for like creative types. And we all see it every friggin day.
• 1:16:18
  [B] Yeah, it's bad.
• 1:16:21
  [A] Like you're not, we're, we're all in agreement.
• 1:16:23
  [B] You're not friends with people on the computer box. It's, it's just some schmuck on YouTube in you know, Brooklyn or wherever.
• 1:16:35
  [A] They're all from Brooklyn.
• 1:16:36
  [B] Yeah, well, everyone is from Brooklyn, Ed. I mean as we all know, if you work in any kind of media, you are from Brooklyn. Unless you are from Times Square. Yeah, yeah. People get invested in these personalities. You see it with, with celebrities, you see it in sports where people want to. People have projected this idea of the person onto them that may be entirely different from how they are. It's like, it's like how you find out, you know, oh, your neighbor was a serial killer or something and you're just like, wow, no, that could never have happened or something because they were, were, you know, nice to me. When I was mowing the lawn the
• 1:17:20
  [A] other day, crawl space was so clean.
• 1:17:23
  [B] Yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:26
  [D] Now Latex lives in Florida so I assume he's had that experience and it's, you know, two or three times.
• 1:17:33
  [B] That is actually. Yeah, that is actually a thing that my wife and I laugh about because my wife, as folks know from Proctor and my wives doing the show a couple months back. My wife is really big into murder shows as, as is her obligation as a middle aged white girl. And we always laugh about these shows because it seems like all of them happen within like five miles of where we grew up. Like it's always Lake Worth or Jupiter or West Palm or something. But anyway, getting back to my point, like you don't know these people don't project things onto them. Them, they're, they're not your friends and you, you may wake up tomorrow and discover that they've committed some horrific crime or they've, or that they're just a shitty person to people. You know, you think of like I don't know, Ellen DeGeneres or something, you know, and how she treated her staff or you think of, if you're someone more my age, you'd think of like Axl Rose and how he treated his wives and stuff, which was pretty horrific if you go back and read it.
• 1:18:45
  [A] Well, I was going to make a Hassan piker joke, but you just kind of ruined the mood.
• 1:18:51
  [C] No, please, Ed, make your Hassan.
• 1:18:52
  [A] Yes, make your Hasan joke after you dropped Axl Rose. Like even that piece of. Isn't in the, in the same, in the same category.
• 1:19:03
  [C] The parasociality thing is, is fascinating to experience too. Like, I, I had a post on Blue sky get some negative pushback. I don't know, a couple weeks ago,
• 1:19:14
  [A] week or two ago. Oh, I remember this one.
• 1:19:16
  [C] And doesn't really matter what the post was or why I got negative push back. People are entitled to their opinion. No worries, no harm, no foul. Unlike certain church related names from the pundit sphere, I am capable of seeing people disagree with me and not completely losing my mind. But in the process of that experience, I had somebody who does not follow me on the platform, who I've never interacted with before, as far as I can describe, Quote one of my posts and say, love you, man, but back to me.
• 1:19:52
  [A] And, and that's a very, like, call into a radio show type of thing.
• 1:19:57
  [C] Yeah. And like, look, to be clear, I'm not, I'm not saying, like, that was the weirdest thing that's ever. That was a travesty. That was awful. Like, like, no, I, I responded to the person. I'm like, look, like you need to understand. Yes, this is deeply offputting. And like, we can talk about your objection here. And I'm happy to have that conversation. But first we're going to address, like, who are you and why are you telling me that you love me? Because I have no idea who you are and this is really weird. Right? Like, don't do that. Right.
• 1:20:27
  [B] Again, first time, long time. George, you guys need Judah on the podcast.
• 1:20:32
  [C] Hey, if he had opened it up with first time, long time, that's a, that's a clear joke. Like, whatever, no worries. But like, man. And again, I don't want to make it seem like, oh, like this is like some massive social problem for everyone to deal with because I experienced it. Like, no, I, this was like a mildly offputting thing that I quickly corrected and this person was like, totally. I mean, in their, in their, to their credit, they were like, ah, yeah, okay, I can see how that might come off weird. Like, yeah, my bad. Which, look, we all make mistakes no worries, man. But, yeah, like, don't do that. You know, don't. Don't you. I like the people you follow on social media. I mean, there are relationships on social media that progress into genuine friendships, right? Like, I've been married for a while now, but if I was having a wedding, you know, now if I was. If I, Me and my wife were just getting married now, like, the three guys in this podcast would be invited to that wedding thing, right? We are friends, you know, like. But I don't host a podcast with the 70, 000 people that fall blue sky. Like, yeah, you know, like, you need to have a. A sense of, like, where those sort of boundaries are in these relationships and where intimacy actually begins, because I promise you. So nothing I post publicly to tens of thousands of people is an. A reflection of intimacy with me, right?
• 1:22:01
  [A] And I. Like such a terrible sentence.
• 1:22:04
  [C] I mean, emotional intimacy, not. Not sexual intimacy, you degenerate. Ginger.
• 1:22:12
  [A] I don't think that's better.
• 1:22:13
  [C] No, it is. No, it. Listen, it is like in our group chat when someone's pet dies and. And we're sharing that we're having a bad day because of that, right? Like, we're doing that because we need the intimate support of our friends, right? Right. And that is like the most natural, healthy thing in the world. That's great. But, like, doing that in public is not. Like, that's not a public process, right? Like, grief can be public, but seeking support from people who you share close details of your life with with, that's a separate thing. And I mean, this is just one example of how the public percept the public stuff that everyone. I mean, we all post a lot, right? Like, you know, detail. If you follow this podcast and you follow four of us on social media, you know, stuff about us that, you know, might not may seem pretty intimate, but it. Trust me, it's not. Trust me
• 1:23:10
  [B] to be clear, so the person whose pet died this past week was mine. I was not looking for emotional support. I just wanted to let you guys know that I wasn't going to do the edit that day.
• 1:23:24
  [C] The most Gen X thing this emotionally stunted man has ever shared with us,
• 1:23:31
  [A] the obviously, like, blue sky is a little different for good reasons, at least for the way that we use it. Right. One of the things that you see a lot of in things like Twitch especially, are because that's like a live platform, right? And they also have wired up things like the financial side directly to it, right? Like there's subscriptions, there's donations, there's all that stuff. And one of the things that I did because, I mean, yeah, sure, Covid's going on, but I have a startup job. I am very well compensated. I'm doing streaming stuff for fun. I'm doing it because it's kind of a community thing more than anything, right? I was running tournaments for fighting games, and the point was not to make it about me. It was that, like, we were doing it, we were running tournaments, we were having competitions, but there was still a lot of people who insisted on, like, subscribing. And I never touched any of the money, right? Like, I threw it into, like, whatever pot was going on because I was already seating them. So, yeah, I guess it sort of blunted what I was paying, but not really because, like, whatever, like, 20 bucks a week, 50 bucks a week to. To do something fun. Because the part of it that was fun for me is I was having my friends on to color commentate, right? Like, I was shooting the shit for four hours with my friends, kind of like a podcast. And we would also be able to make fun of really bad video gameplay at the same time. But then, like, people started to get really weird about it in terms of, like, oh, yeah, I subscribe to it, so I should be able to be a tool in the chat. And then they act shocked when you're like, no, get out. And that has, like, a chilling effect on the other parts of the thing, right? Like, I was not interested in follower counts and stuff like that for Twitch because I cared about, like, making money, right? I kind of accidentally got to partner because, like, a hundred people would show up every Friday night. And technically that means you. You kind of get there, but. But, like, it would. It was a damper on the parts of the thing that I wanted, which was a. People are having, you know, good games. They are doing interesting stuff. More people should watch this. But because I didn't want to take the money, I explicitly was like, do not donate to me. Throw money into the pot if you want. That had, like. That had, like, downward impacts on all of the metrics around. Would. Would they show it to more people? Because it's kind of like how on YouTube, right? Like, any interaction is good, but on Twitch, specific interactions are weighted much higher. And, you know, like, I pretty early on was like, no, I don't. I will take that trade. But it became really, really kind of. You know, there was a ceiling that. That happened just because I wasn't interested in making money, which parentheses meant Twitch wasn't making money. And that is the sort of thing that I then watched a lot of people get really twisted up about. Right. Like a lot of people I know who did not need the money either started really chasing it because that's the, that's the signal for the thing they actually did want. And you see that a lot. You know, Blue sky doesn't really have a profit motive unless you are verified by a particular American in German. Germany. Well, we'll leave that one for, for future detectives. But like, no, they do.
• 1:27:09
  [B] But we added that in just for you. Theo.
• 1:27:17
  [A] One, one theophyte joke in every podcast.
• 1:27:19
  [D] That's right.
• 1:27:21
  [A] But like, I don't know, I do actually kind of worry about Blue sky going that way because they all come out of. Not the, what I would say are the, the worst parts of the cryptocurrency universe, but they all very clearly want like money on the platform and that they kind of have to figure out a way to pay for the thing anyway, anyway. And I do kind of wonder if a lot of the things that have made Blue Sky a refreshing. Okay, refreshing is too strong or different experience than the rest of social media has been around. The, the, that like you can't make a buck off it very easily. I am certain that no one on this podcast would have a large account if it was about making a buck because it's not going to be a lot. And there are other avenues to several dollars as opposed to $1. And I think Blue sky is interesting because it has such a much wider array of viewpoints at like that medium to large scale than you saw on Twitter, partly because of the lack of an algorithm, but also just like you can do that because there's no incentive to like milk anyone. Sorry for putting that, that vision into your heads, but I don't know. This is the Internet today. I know that, but it's weird.
• 1:28:44
  [D] See, I mean, I think that I'm of two minds about parasociality. Right. Number one A, I think everything you guys have said is correct. That it is in some ways inherently a false set of transactions. It's a self falsifying set of transactions. Right. That neither party is getting what they think they're getting out of the relationship. Exactly. Because it's necessarily asymmetrical and it's necessarily many to one. And from the producer side, you're not able to give everybody who is consuming your content in the best sense what you intend to give them or in the worst sense what you intend not to give them. If that makes sense. That, that, that you can't you can't separate these things as cleanly as you want to. And from, from the subscriber side, you're not, not going to get the relationship that you want or the relationship that, that you know, that you think you have with somebody. I think you get a little bit more of it on something, on something like Bluesky that's more of a symmetrical mode of communication than you do on a streamer platform. But it's still not a position where you're, you're talking one to one in the way that you would like to talk one to one.
• 1:30:17
  [C] One.
• 1:30:19
  [D] But at the same time we're about to steer the ship right into this absolute tidal wave of AI generated stuff.
• 1:30:29
  [A] Oh, it's already here.
• 1:30:30
  [D] I think parasociality is one of the best bulwarks we have against machine content. That you know what, what people are getting out of parasociality is you're getting a person in all their, in all their intricate weirdness. You're getting somebody who has whatever quirks they have. Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes that's a bad thing. But that's the personality part of parasociality. And I think that maybe at some point AI content will fully crack that nut. But at least right now it's not difficult to tell when you're dealing with a person and when you're dealing with AI in that sense.
• 1:31:16
  [B] Tell that to all the MAGA chuds who got conned by that AI soldier girl who was in the.
• 1:31:22
  [A] I don't think they got conned, dude. I think they wanted to get conned maybe. Yeah. The thing about what you said, Proctor and I agree with it for what it's worth, is that that's exactly the currency that is being used by every in order to sell things. Right. Like if you look at all of the influencer platforms, like native advertising is everywhere now. But it's all for trash, right? It's all for betting markets, it's for crypto, it's for like fly by night mattress companies that may or may not have their product light on fire in your house.
• 1:31:59
  [D] As opposed to, you know, delicious canned cheeses for instance.
• 1:32:02
  [A] But yeah, like we.
• 1:32:04
  [C] Or plug in hybrid vehicles.
• 1:32:08
  [A] I think that's an anti advertising.
• 1:32:10
  [B] Yeah, but that one will, that one will catch fire in your house though. Like the mattress.
• 1:32:16
  [A] But, but like one of the things. So like that youtuber that George was describing earlier, I know who he is. Like I said, seems, seems like a nice guy. I've talked to him a couple times, but not like we are not friends, but. So I actually stopped watching that guy's stuff because one of the things that he did was he took sponsorships from BetterHelp. BetterHelp are slime. Let's go with that. What they have sold, they have sold like information about their customers as marketing data.
• 1:32:50
  [D] What is BetterHelp?
• 1:32:52
  [A] Oh, sorry. BetterHelp is like a online therapy type of thing. They assert that everyone is trained. I am not going to question that at this time.
• 1:33:02
  [D] Better as in better or worse? Not better as in gambling?
• 1:33:06
  [B] Yes. Correct.
• 1:33:07
  [D] Okay.
• 1:33:08
  [B] Better. Better help. Sorry, more good or help?
• 1:33:11
  [D] I'm trying, I'm trying to figure out. I'm trying to figure out.
• 1:33:13
  [C] Not B E T T O R.
• 1:33:15
  [D] I'm trying to figure out how. How predatory this is.
• 1:33:18
  [A] I thought you were online enough for this.
• 1:33:21
  [C] How have you not heard of these people before? Proctor? They have advertised on every podcast in the past five years. That takes advertising dollars.
• 1:33:29
  [D] I, I don't listen to any podcasts that take advertising dollars. That's also fair.
• 1:33:35
  [A] But like, so that's not true.
• 1:33:37
  [D] I, I listen to the podcast my kids listen to, but Better Help doesn't advertise on those. So.
• 1:33:41
  [A] Okay, I would hope not. Not yet anyway. But, but yeah, so like they, they were like selling marketing data about their customers and some of that was like very, very closely related. Might have. Have. You know, I cannot say that it was therapeutically related, but there are questions. And so one of the, the side effects of that was that there was like really bad snapback in terms of like any, any creative type who is doing an advertisement for better help. And one of the things is that guy in particular had used it as a customer, was like, no, this is a. I think this is a good service. And you know, know that is his right. That's a charming kind of parasociality. It's also why I don't watch stuff anymore because. No, sorry. And like those kinds of companies are using that exact weirdness because that guy in particular, I say, this positively weird dude, he bought a place with like a garage, like a shed big enough to. To tear apart a school bus in it. That's where we're at. But like. Yeah. And that is directly a pipe for, for whatever mid range crap sponsorship type stuff. And that's exactly what you're describing when you say like people's weird stuff is, is going to be AI resistant. Yeah. And that means it's going to be the pipe for the ads. And I don't know how you square that. So circle. I mean I kind of do. But like, it sucks. Right? Like, because the way you square that circle is you avoid, you avoid content creators and I hate that phrase but it kind of applies here who need advertising. Which basically means that you're, you are talking to well off dilettantes like the four of us who don't need the money. Right.
• 1:35:39
  [C] Description of this podcast.
• 1:35:41
  [D] Yeah, that's fair. Yeah.
• 1:35:44
  [B] When he's right, he's right.
• 1:35:46
  [A] I have three 3D printers going to go print lamps right now. Okay. I am the most dilettante here.
• 1:35:52
  [B] Your shed is larger than my first apartment in D.C. was
• 1:36:00
  [A] probably better ventilated too.
• 1:36:01
  [B] Yeah, almost certainly better ventilated.
• 1:36:07
  [A] But like, like, yeah, and, and like that's not a great single point of view to be getting out of these things. But also at the same time I'm going to skip every one of the ads and, and like I'm the, I have given the sponsor block guys for YouTube money because it's like I don't want any of that stuff in, in my life. And eventually that's going to catch up to, to that advertising too. Right. Because ad blocking cannot be stopped. And at that point like you're really getting down to the what are you willing to pay for? Yeah, because I said this on Blue sky earlier this week. I spend $55 a month on Patreon and I don't even look at any of the bonus content for really any of it or any of the early access or any of that stuff. I'm just like, I like what you do. I want you to continue doing it. Here is a couple of dollars. And that's a reasonable point of view for me to have. But like the rest of the Internet sure doesn't have it. Just ask anyone who posts an archive is link to a Paywall article on Blue sky because they all do. No one wants to pay for anything. And at some point that music stops. I think we are closer to the end than the beginning there.
• 1:37:18
  [D] Yeah. I mean I think it's going to be interesting to see how some of these financial models realign during AI age. Right, Right. Like if content generation gets as cheap as I think it's going to for swap content. And there's not significant differentiation between AI produced content that and, and, and, and when I say swap content, I mean cheaply produced AI content. Not I think you can do elevated things with AI. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the volume play ads on those on a viewer basis are probably going to be a Better bet than ads on other things because the cost of the content is going to be low. You don't need to worry about your creator dynamics because you've got a ghost in a jar that is making the program for you. That's kind of a bleak future.
• 1:38:22
  [A] Yeah.
• 1:38:22
  [D] But at, you know, and George, your kid is getting to the age that you're gonna, you're gonna swam into this pretty soon if you haven't already. But like swap's already there for, for like kids YouTube and has been for a while.
• 1:38:36
  [A] Been there for a decade.
• 1:38:37
  [C] My three year old is getting unrestricted access to YouTube without a panic present watching whatever she's watching. Oh, okay, okay.
• 1:38:44
  [D] I mean, get ready for Coco Melon, buddy.
• 1:38:48
  [C] No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let me be very clear here. Obama voice. Let me be clear. There is no chance Coco Melon is being played in our house under any circumstances. It is absolutely banned. That is very, very bad media for small brains. You just. And there's so many.
• 1:39:07
  [D] And
• 1:39:09
  [C] I proportionally, I think probably fewer large brains watching. But you know, whatever I Coco Melon for.
• 1:39:16
  [A] You're on Blue sky, sir.
• 1:39:17
  [C] Okay. Coco Melon, if you're not familiar, is a. Is kids video content on YouTube. And I. There's been some really interesting breakdowns of it. I've seen that. Compare and contrast it with something like Bluey. Right. Bluey, if you're not familiar, is a TV show for kids about dogs. Traditional animation. It's quiet. Right. And visually quiet. I mean like there's rarely more than two, maybe three things moving on the screen at the same time and lots of static backgrounds. Right. So when you're watching it, yeah, it's stimulating. It's a cartoon. But there are limits, right? Like you're not getting bombarded with motion and color and music all at the same time. Frying. Like literally frying. If you, if you look at like the Cocomelon Wheels on the bus video, like there's. Everything is moving and it, it literally locks kids into a degree that I, I don't even. But the nice thing about living in the age we live in, the media age we live in, is that a Disney plus subscription gets you access to a very large catalog of stuff that is not like that that she can watch basically unsupervised and it's no big deal. Not that my kid watches that much TV to begin with, but you know, still. So yet it will be a problem one day. You are right, sir. One day. But at the age of three, not so much.
• 1:40:36
  [B] So Coco Melon is sort of like, like you know how on cable news, CNN or Fox or msnbc, there's like all kinds of going on all the time. Like there's, it's that for, there's the stock ticker, the weather thing there, there's a, a rabbit blowing itself off in the corner and all kinds of. So Coco Melon is like that for kids.
• 1:40:56
  [C] Yeah, yeah.
• 1:40:57
  [D] So, and, and, and to be clear, I'm going to count up from the fifth most watched video on YouTube to the number one most watched video on YouTube right now. The fifth most watched video on YouTube.
• 1:41:07
  [A] I'm going to go buy a gun.
• 1:41:09
  [D] Johnny. Johnny. Yes, Papa by lulu kids with 7.16 billion views. Number four is the bath song, Coco Melon. That's 7.39 billion. Number three is Wheels on the Bus. Cocoa Melon, 8.59 billion. Number two is Despacita. That's one for the, for Team Human. Clocking in it at just under 9 billion. And the number one video of all time on YouTube is the Baby Shark Dance by Pink Fong at 16.7 billion views.
• 1:41:44
  [B] So I was so waiting for number one to be like, not like us or something.
• 1:41:50
  [C] My daughter does love Baby Shark, but she hears the music for Baby Shark. She's never seen the video. Yeah. So we're, we're a Disney movie household which made the whole Jimmy Fallon situation last fall incredibly painful. Thankfully resolved in a way that worked out.
• 1:42:08
  [D] Yeah, that would have been a hard embargo to keep.
• 1:42:12
  [C] Yeah.
• 1:42:12
  [A] One of the things that, one of the things that's interesting going back to what you were saying, Proctor, and sorry, I'm the one who thinks about the money because like half of my friends do this stuff or have. So the thing is that the click through rates and the ad revenue for all of that stuff is terrible. Right. Like, because there's no one want, there's no one watching who cares enough to click on the ad, which is like, that is potentially a positive for humans if you can isolate it. But YouTube doesn't because YouTube's entire idea of like ad slicing is, is like topical and kind of done with a dartboard. One of, one of the things that's always been funny is, is that like I have occasionally, you know, thought about doing the YouTube thing, had people be like, you should do that because like the stuff that I am into is, is, you know, know 3D printing, photography, videography, computer type stuff. All of that is the highest click through, you know, per Mil on YouTube. Right. Like woodworking, they sell so Many shitty tools. And like the, the channels that test tools have astonishing per mills on, on their ads, right? It's just disgusting. Whereas like video game content, nothing. Zero. Well, slightly more than zero within epsilon of zero, right? Like the money is just not there. Which is why they all do like the random fucking FTX ads, right? All of that stuff came from, from the gamers and other similar low margin shit. Like one of the really funny things is that all of that men's rights content and all that shit, none of that stuff has any pay. Any pay either, right? Like for the stock ads, that's why they all go get like gold subscriptions and shit is because none of the regular ads that kind of maybe come close to a real company will touch them. And so like to some extent the perceived value of that content maybe goes up with, with more human stuff though also at the same time the slop stuff is actually getting better. And that's a little weird. I ran into a channel about some engineering stuff when I was looking up some comparative stuff about composite plastics today to tell you how my day went. And like I watched half of a 10 minute video and I was genuinely not sure if it was an AI video or not because like it was all true. Like it was all like reasonable stuff. And yeah, at some point that stuff's going to get really weird and that's probably an extinction level event for a lot of the stuff stuff. But in the interim, you know, you're really dealing with the tension between native advertisements being incredibly predatory and seeking out exactly the parasocial audience that does that. Right? And there are ways to not do that, but no one wants to do it, right? Like, because most of these are people who have never had real jobs, right? Like most of, most of the people doing the kind of content that attracts this stuff are not thinking about the impacts of the ads that are, that they're having. They have no idea about like journalistic ethics. One of the touchstones I always go to is Giant Bomb, who are like video game journalists historically. And their podcast was for a long time one of the most popular ones on Apple. And all of their ads were basically radio spots. Yes, it was the hosts, but you knew they were ads, right? Like they were not talking about how much they liked, you know, Blue Chew or whatever, you know, Dick Cream or whatever. They were like 1, 800 flowers right, right.
• 1:46:02
  [B] Or stamps. That was always.
• 1:46:05
  [A] Oh God, there was so the small businessman ads. Like that's the thing, they were actually good ads. I. Some of those ads you can go find on YouTube because people thought they were fun, but no one thought that, like, Jeff Gerstman was. Was really in the bag for stamps.
• 1:46:20
  [B] Right.
• 1:46:21
  [A] And so you can, like, do that, but, like, that also requires talent and imagination. And I don't know. Have you seen the. Have you seen Mr. Beast? Like, the old. The only imagination that guy has is, like, what torture can I do to this person whose day job is at 7:11, right? Like, it's grip and it's going. I. I appreciate the optimism, Prompter, because that's your job, but I think it's going to get a lot worse before it gets a lot worse.
• 1:46:55
  [D] Sorry.
• 1:46:55
  [A] We were supposed to have some sort of an uplifting segment.
• 1:46:59
  [B] Maybe we should do so maybe we should do, like, we'll resurrect Ed's streaming career and we'll do a normal man gaming stream. We'll have. We'll have, like, me try to stream Crimson desert on my MacBook Air and see if. See if we can get my house burned down.
• 1:47:22
  [C] Do I get to go play soccer while this is happening or something? Like, what's my role?
• 1:47:25
  [D] We'll do some animal videos, too. You can hang out for that.
• 1:47:32
  [A] We'll put a stock ticker on the bottom. It'll be fun.
• 1:47:35
  [D] All right.
• 1:47:36
  [C] We're only doing this if Vix is over 40. With that, I think that's fair. Yeah, I think we're done for the night, so.
• 1:47:44
  [A] Actually, there is one. There is one outstanding question we did not answer. Gentlemen.
• 1:47:48
  [C] Oh, Lord.
• 1:47:50
  [A] Do I have to bleep Australian?
• 1:47:51
  [B] No, no, no.
• 1:47:53
  [C] It's fine.
• 1:47:55
  [A] All right, all right. Very good.
• 1:47:57
  [C] Yeah. Okay. This has been Normal Men, if you enjoyed getting parasocial with us and learning that the world is about to end and follow up question, why? Yeah. And hearing about Ed's really, really regrettable interactions with the Ford Motor Company, you can write a review wherever you listen to this podcast. Or you could subscribe to it, or you could share with your friends, or you could do none of that and just listen to us again next week.
• 1:48:26
  [D] Whatever.
• 1:48:27
  [C] Whatever you feel like.
• 1:48:27
  [A] Like, if you do have a similarly bad experience with the Ford Motor Company, please leave a review with the Ford Motor Company.
• 1:48:35
  [C] That's not us.
• 1:48:37
  [A] No, like, leave a review for us. But do tell us about your experience.
• 1:48:40
  [D] Can you not recruit a class action through our podcast reviews?
• 1:48:45
  [C] Yeah.
• 1:48:46
  [D] Yeah.
• 1:48:48
  [C] For Normal man in Charlotte, I'm George.
• 1:48:51
  [D] In dc, I'm Proctor.
• 1:48:54
  [B] In outer Florida, I'm Low Tech Speed Run a dryer.
• 1:48:57
  [A] In Boston, I'm Ed.
• 1:48:58
  [C] Stay normal, y'.
• 1:48:59
  [D] All.