Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / #137: Minnesota, 1st & 2nd Amendments / Create Your Own Algorithm/ Corporate Airbnbs

Transcript

#137: Minnesota, 1st & 2nd Amendments / Create Your Own Algorithm/ Corporate Airbnbs · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

0:01
Welcome to another episode of Come Together.
0:15
We are live. This is another solo episode.
0:18
I am going to do my best to keep this a quality.
0:23
We'll see how it goes. So I'm just adjusting my screen.
0:27
I'm not comfortable in front of the camera yet.
0:29
I have so many thoughts. It's been a little while since
0:32
I've done a solo episode and it's really been a while since
0:34
I've done a coherent, I feel like solo episode where I feel
0:36
like I actually have something to talk about or some thoughts
0:39
to get out there. So here we go.
0:43
It's been a lot of fun. One, I literally have just been
0:46
thinking I was just sitting by myself in the in by my by my
0:50
desk, catching up. I took a week off last week with
0:53
my family to go to Orlando, still did a couple of recordings
0:56
and released a podcast episode with William Mann, who is a
1:00
awesome historian of Hollywood and college professor and New
1:05
York Times bestselling writer. He's the man.
1:07
We did a really, really cool episode talking about Marlon
1:11
Brando, old School Hollywood. His new book that's actually
1:14
available is it today is today the 27th tomorrow, tomorrow the
1:18
27th. So if you're listening today,
1:21
you can check out the book tomorrow.
1:23
It is called because I don't want to butcher it.
1:30
Let's see. I'm sorry.
1:32
Here we go. His new book is called Black
1:34
Dahlia Murder, Monsters in madness in Midwest Hollywood in
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mid century Hollywood, and it's and William Mann ventured into
1:44
the world of unsolved true crime, Hollywood murders, not
1:49
necessarily just to kind of jump into the into the into the
1:54
bandwagon of true crime, but he really observes it in the
2:02
context of its impact on society.
2:04
So for example, I know that, and this is some really interesting
2:07
stats that you could look up relative to, for example, the
2:11
the Charles Manson infamous murder was the fact how many
2:16
people bought guns after that in Hollywood or how many people
2:19
bought enhanced door locks or security in Hollywood after the
2:25
Manson murders. And it's really, really
2:26
interesting because it these these events do have societal
2:31
ripples and impacts. And I mean, obviously we see it
2:34
right now how we see with a lot that's going on in the world
2:38
today. And the events are the events
2:43
and we might not ever know the real story behind them.
2:46
This, you know, I mean, you have 10 different accounts, 10
2:50
witnesses, you have 10 different accounts of what's going on.
2:53
And you also have unfortunately, interpretation, which is, which
2:57
is when people, when people witness something and because,
3:03
you know, we're only experiencing, I would say we,
3:06
we're, we're getting a particular type of input we're
3:09
getting, we're viewing something and our brain is making sense of
3:13
it in the context of what we already know.
3:15
So when we've witnessed events like things that obviously most
3:19
hot topic these days are going on in Minnesota, when we
3:24
witnessed these events, three people, five people, 1000 people
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could look at the pictures and the videos that are going on
3:32
that are making the way through online and through corporate or
3:36
formal media. And we all interpret it in the
3:41
context of the way of the picture that's already in our
3:43
mind of what we presume is the case.
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And then there are the ripples that actually flow out of into
3:52
society about what happens as a consequence of it.
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And you know, we obviously know, for example, that some of the
3:59
most consequential, you know, you have small scale events.
4:02
Like I said, Charlie Manson was horrifying, but relatively small
4:05
scale relative to something like 911.
4:07
And the scale obviously impacts the scale of the ripple effect
4:11
in the reaction. So I think that William Mann did
4:14
a really, really amazing job expressing his points.
4:18
It's worth checking out his episode.
4:19
It's worth checking out his writing, his books.
4:21
He's written on a bunch of different really cool Hollywood
4:23
characters and families and even political families like the
4:26
Roosevelts. And I think it was the
4:29
Roosevelts I'm going to get, I'm going to feel bad if I got that
4:31
wrong. Yeah, the Roosevelt, I was
4:35
right, and it's worth checking it out.
4:40
I was trying to think about what to talk about and I didn't want
4:51
to kind of, I didn't want to dwell too much on the Minnesota
4:54
situation. I kind of have to talk.
4:56
I feel like I have to talk about it because A, it's relevant and
5:00
B, it does have real life, again, implications and
5:06
consequences. And it's really, really
5:08
interesting just to sit on the side and observe the voices and
5:12
the reactions that's going on. And I'm not, What's funny is I'm
5:17
not really tuned into what the most prominent voices are saying
5:21
because I don't really listen to the most prominent voices.
5:25
I just they're not, I'm not in that.
5:27
They're not in my algorithm. I'm not exposed to their
5:28
information on my feed. But this is kind of funny.
5:36
I mean, not nothing about the nothing about the conflict in
5:39
particular is funny. But what's funny is how just a
5:43
couple of years ago the right was complaining about freedom of
5:46
speech and right to bear arms. And now the left has been making
5:54
that very, very same argument. And the right is, or at least
5:59
not all the right, but at least the government representation of
6:02
the right has been pretty dramatically pushing back,
6:06
almost in the same sense that you're really seeing the
6:08
pendulum swinging. It's so funny because people
6:11
would say a couple of years ago, yeah, well, in the 60s, you
6:14
know, I really had more in common with the liberal if
6:17
someone was Republican, rather if someone was to the right and
6:19
they say, yeah, in the 60s or 70s, I really probably would
6:21
have had much more in common with the modern Democrats, with
6:26
Democrats then then modern Democrats.
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And, you know, it's really, really, it just shows how
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extreme everyone's become because we're pro free speech
6:36
and we do want limited war. We don't want a lot of war.
6:39
And we do want to control enormous organizations, whether
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it's corporations or government. And you're like, wow, that
6:47
sounds, you know, really similar.
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But but then you have like literally just in a span of like
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a year and a half, like you have, you have people
6:56
complaining about the fact that one of Biden's the first thing
6:58
Biden did when he got into office was go to the social
7:01
media companies and start to and start to silence people that
7:04
would, for example, push back on COVID, on the COVID vaccine or
7:09
on January 6th or really on any kind of political issue that
7:12
became a matter of politics and policy.
7:17
And it takes a year. That's all it took.
7:19
Took a year and a half for everyone that was just screaming
7:22
on the right to that we need free speech and the right to
7:25
bear arms. And then you have Cash Patel
7:27
walking around now. I saw a video of him saying,
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well, you can't walk around with a gun and come to a protest.
7:34
Imagine three years ago, imagine 2020, imagine if someone that
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was on the right went to a Black Lives Matter riot or not riot, I
7:44
apologize. Let's say protest.
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Let's say it is now a protest. It is peaceful.
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I've actually seen a bunch of actually when I was, I was
7:51
living in Seattle in 2020 and listen, it was fascinating to
7:58
experience all the protests and Chaz and you know, all the I
8:05
didn't really see, I never personally saw any violence.
8:08
I never heard any. I never experienced any
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violence. I never heard anyone escalating
8:12
anything beyond. So you know, social justice
8:15
chance, which everyone's entitled to do.
8:17
But just imagine for a minute that you have a story of a Black
8:21
Lives Matter protest and there's someone in the crowd that is
8:28
protest protesting, you know, anti protesting.
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And he's standing on the other side and he has a weapon in his
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pocket. He doesn't take it out, he
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doesn't use it. He just has a weapon and he's
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legally loud. He is a carrying permit or
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whatever it is. And, and for whatever reason,
8:44
someone, you know, he gets, he gets detained or shot or hurt or
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killed because he had a weapon, the right would flip out.
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We have, you know, we, we have, we need rights.
8:56
We had it's a Second Amendment we have to overthrow.
8:58
If you're able to overthrow a government that's going to
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become a dictatorship or, or communist or fascist or, you
9:04
know, filling the filling the hot topic word that anyone is
9:06
throwing out. But it really just took a year
9:08
and a half for all the tables to just flip.
9:11
And it's incredible how quickly it went.
9:14
And it's incredible how quickly people, when you point out the
9:21
inconsistency to them, as I've tried to do with some people
9:25
that I know where the answer becomes, yeah, but.
9:29
And that, yeah, but is the exact same answer and the exact same
9:32
perspective that the left had for the woke years and for
9:36
20/20/2024. And it we, it's not great.
9:42
It's not a great look and it's not a great look because I think
9:47
that people today are more done with partisan politics than
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ever. And I think that people today
9:57
are really seeing that they're seeing everyone's
10:03
inconsistencies. I, I, I saw actually today on,
10:06
on on X and I had a whole response ran out that I didn't
10:09
write yet because I think I might just send it personally to
10:13
try to reach out personally. I saw that Ro Kahana, who's a
10:16
California governor that's been working with, I think he's a
10:18
governor working with Thomas Massie and he's, and I heard him
10:22
on Sean Ryan show. I heard him on Theo Von.
10:26
And I have to say I was overall extremely, extremely impressed
10:31
with a couple of things about him.
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Obviously he's very eloquent. Obviously he's a politician.
10:36
He's supposed to be eloquent. One thing that he did say, and
10:40
it's so upsetting because it's hard to believe, especially
10:44
after all the excitement that I had a year and a half ago with,
10:48
with all the, with the, with the huge MAGA wave with Trump and
10:53
Elon and RFK and Tulsi and you know, and all the people that
10:57
everyone is really excited about people haven't heard from them
10:59
in a long time. You know, Elon, Elon's fallout
11:01
with Musk, which I'm sorry, Elon's fallout with Trump, which
11:05
looks like it's kind of being rectified a little bit.
11:07
RFKI heard the best call. I think it was Tim Dylan was so
11:10
funny. He's the least controversial
11:12
member of the cabinet at this point, which, you know, go
11:15
figure. You know, everyone was pushing
11:17
back the hardest against him and and he just kind of quietly
11:21
minding his own business and occasionally confessing to
11:23
extremely bizarre things on social media.
11:26
And yeah. And then and Tulsi, I mean, no
11:31
one really heard from her. And the truth was that that she
11:33
was supposed to be the representation of the anti
11:36
imperial America, the the empire perspective.
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And it looks like she kind of got shunned aside a little bit.
11:43
But so I think that a lot of people include my myself
11:48
included, we're really, really hopeful.
11:49
And now we're not. And then and, and so Rocahana
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said something really interesting, which kind of
11:55
piqued my interest, even though I'm skeptical just because and
11:59
you know, I, I, I know that this is potentially A fallacy, but I
12:03
think that it's also, I, I think that enough history has proven
12:06
that it could be an issue is a, the guys from California, which,
12:12
you know, which is the governor of California, which makes me
12:15
think that he and I know that he has a much more grounded story
12:21
that he failed, I think, two or three times to get elected.
12:24
And I think, I think on his third or fourth try he got, he
12:26
got, he, he was successful, but I don't know, seems just a
12:33
little too. He's really smart.
12:36
He's saying really, really smart things.
12:39
He's talking about, for example, Epstein, which is a uni party
12:42
issue. And he's talking about ICE and
12:47
immigration, which people on the right and the left are really
12:49
not very happy about. And again, you know, the
12:53
question isn't whether or not there should be immigration
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enforce. The question isn't whether or
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not ICE should be active. The question just is to what
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degree the behaviour is what to what degree is the behaviour
13:06
justified, acceptable? And it's really, really hard.
13:10
And I've heard, I've heard both cases that, you know, for
13:12
example, cops have to wear badge identification badges and ICE
13:16
agents don't. So if I mean really there's no
13:23
way to identify if a cop's misbehaving, you could get their
13:27
badge number, you could get their name and look them up.
13:30
If an ICE agent who is wearing a mask and has no recognizable
13:35
signs for you to be able to report any kind of abuse of
13:37
behavior. If the ICE agent doesn't have
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any of that, it becomes a lot more difficult to kind of
13:42
control and hold them accountable for potentially bad
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behaviour or even behaviour that is justified.
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But that you might want to take some some look into the context
13:55
of the, of the person and the story and the character in the
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history. And it's really, really, it's
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really, really hard to do. So anyway, so Rocahana was
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talking about how the elite just seemed to be getting away with
14:08
everything. And this, that's the problem
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with this, with this administration.
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And I wanted to comment. And I want, and again, I'm going
14:14
to, I'm going to reach out. And obviously, I mean,
14:17
overwhelming odds are that it's not going to get anywhere.
14:21
I'll attach a couple of the episodes that feature the
14:23
relatively prominent and recognizable names of people
14:27
that I've spoken with to try to add some credentials to who I
14:30
am. But I want to reach out and say,
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hey, if this is really uni party issue like Epstein is where
14:37
everyone on almost everyone on the Senate floor and everyone in
14:40
Congress was going to be able to was happy to pass along this
14:44
this bill to force that force the files and information out.
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I think that I think that the elite behavior is a uni party
14:53
issue. And by you phrasing it
14:55
unfortunately as the problem with this administration is that
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we take advantage from an executive level.
15:00
Well, guess what, pal? Unfortunately, you kind of lost
15:02
playing that card if you didn't if you didn't fight back against
15:06
a lot of what went on in 2020 to 2024 or again, you know,
15:11
20/16/2020. I think we just came.
15:13
We, you know, since 9:11, I mean, since 9:11, we've really
15:16
become very, very authoritarian, a more authoritarian, a lot more
15:22
government control over the people, a lot less freedom.
15:25
And that actually is going to lead me to my next point, which
15:30
I was so excited. This actually got me talking.
15:33
This got me excited to record. And I'm 15 minutes in.
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I didn't get started yet, I'm sorry.
15:37
But the point that one of the points that I really was
15:40
thinking about was, OK, so there's awesome, awesome,
15:47
awesome scientist named Eric Weinstein.
15:49
And he one of the things, and I've talked about him before.
15:53
I'm a huge, huge fan of his. Every time I hear him or every
15:56
time I see that he's done some kind of podcast or conversation,
15:59
I try, I try and listen and participate to the best that I
16:04
can. He's really, really smart and I
16:06
can't keep up with everything he says all the time.
16:09
But one thing that he did say that was really interesting to
16:13
me was that human beings also essentially kind of work like
16:17
LLMS, like large language models.
16:19
And I'm shifting gears right now from politics more to technology
16:24
and more to the way that we get our information and more to the
16:30
ever present issue of the algorithm.
16:34
And I put these kind of thoughts together as I was trying to
16:39
think about what to talk about. Human beings work very, very
16:42
much like LLMS. And I'll explain, for example,
16:47
in a way that hopefully makes sense.
16:51
We, our brains are lazy. Our brains want to be efficient,
16:55
efficient and effective, and our brains also want to use the
17:03
least amount of effort or energy in order to be able to
17:06
accomplish a mission or a task. We just, we've evolved to try to
17:11
be efficient. Sometimes we cut too many
17:14
shortcuts. So for example, and this is a
17:17
very, very common experience that I have, it's my life.
17:19
I work with my father and we're very close.
17:23
We speak on the phone 10/15/20 times a day for a couple minutes
17:27
at a time just dealing with whatever work issue we're
17:28
dealing with or talking about life or sales or the business or
17:33
family or whatever. And a lot of times we'll, if we
17:37
have a disagreement, which we often do, and I've been trying
17:41
to work on this and sometimes I can't help it and sometimes I'm
17:44
better about it. But if we have an, an issue or a
17:46
disagreement and I think I know he's going to say he's going to
17:49
start by making a point and I cut him off midpoint.
17:51
I'm like, yeah, but and then he goes, you didn't even hear what
17:54
I finished saying. And my brain, my LLM Green
17:58
finished his thought for him in a similar way to and it's funny
18:02
because it's just a matter of degrees of how much better it's
18:05
getting right. If you if you remember a couple
18:08
of years ago when Apple was first rolling out or iMessage
18:11
was first rolling out there, I guess dipping the toe in the
18:16
water of LLMS large language models.
18:18
And one of the things that one of the ways that LLMS work is by
18:22
predicting what the next, what the best potential choice of the
18:26
next word or feature is going to be.
18:29
So for example, if I was sending a text sounds the answer that
18:34
you know, the recommended word choice, the potential words to
18:37
follow the to the net potential word to follow the word sounds
18:41
would most likely be good like sounds good with a thumbs up or
18:45
be sounds awful or sounds interesting, right?
18:48
And so the LLM would predict would give you 3 predictions of
18:52
words that you're most likely to use with that that follow the
18:55
word sounds. When I cut off my dad and I'm
18:58
having the argument with him, I am essentially guessing what
19:01
he's going to say based on my experience of having dealt with
19:04
him before. I'm not letting him finish his
19:06
thought out. I'm not letting him expresses
19:09
his point. I am predicting what he's going
19:12
to say and am choosing to respond in real time before I
19:15
even have all the context. I'm choosing to respond in real
19:19
time without having all the information.
19:22
And it's a stupid fucking way to communicate with people.
19:26
And I do apologise because I do it a lot and it makes me a
19:30
really, really bad listener, unfortunately.
19:33
If we are Ella, you know, if we do think like LLMS and you know,
19:37
I think and also, you know, there's only so many words and
19:41
conversations and predictive ways that you can have a
19:43
conversation, right? So you start off with someone,
19:45
you say, hey, how you doing? There's only a limited number of
19:49
potential responses. And then we kind of get thrown
19:51
off if there's anything else, right?
19:52
So the answer is usually pretty good.
19:54
You all right, or another day in paradise or whatever it is.
19:57
And then sometimes if someone throws something like I'll
20:01
usually tell people, oh, I'm just peachy man.
20:04
Sounds gay, but. Sorry if I, you know, in the in
20:10
the old school way, I asked someone what's going on.
20:15
There's only a certain amount of expected potential responses and
20:19
any other potential response, any other response throws you
20:23
through a loop a little bit. So you notice when someone says,
20:26
hey, how you doing? Pretty bad actually.
20:28
You're like, whoa. And that person will actually
20:30
leave a mark on you because that was a new implementation of a
20:34
potential response into your LLM diary or LLM tool book.
20:39
And you kind of keep an eye out for it.
20:40
And if you go, if, if it's an anomaly, then it's an anomaly
20:44
and you end up being surprised or sometimes you notice it more.
20:46
And that's kind of what happens. For example, if you, and I've
20:49
had this experience myself, I forgot what it's called, but
20:51
when you buy, for example, a car or you lease a car.
20:54
So when I got my Kia K5, I never heard of the model my entire
20:58
life. And the second I got the car, I
21:02
started seeing them everywhere on the road.
21:04
And I'm like, that is wild. Like I had like my, the, my
21:08
brain was not looking for that detail.
21:10
And now that it exists in my library, I can keep an eye out
21:13
for it. Really, really interesting.
21:15
So that on a very, very surface level in very, very, I'm sure
21:22
there's a ton more of more depth.
21:23
I'm sure there's a ton that I'm missing.
21:25
I'm not claiming to have everything covered over there,
21:27
but I think that there's a general gist that we tend to,
21:31
people tend to work that way. Our algorithms, we, our
21:37
algorithms are shaping us more and more everyday because it's
21:47
constantly reinforcing a perspective without giving you a
21:52
chance to explore other avenues, overwrite your associations or
21:56
be exposed to new perspectives and new thoughts.
21:58
And So what we determine and deem to be truth or reality is
22:03
really just a whole bunch of reinforced information.
22:09
And I've heard people complain about that quite a bit and I've
22:12
heard people talk about how that's a massive problem and it
22:15
is. But I really haven't heard of
22:17
many people offering very many solutions other than don't do
22:21
social media, which I'm an advocate for.
22:26
And just because I advocate for not doing social media doesn't
22:30
mean I'm not addicted to it. You know, it doesn't mean that I
22:32
don't spend a ton of a ton more time on it doesn't mean that my
22:35
opinions and my perspectives are not shaped by it.
22:38
And in fact, every single time I try to find myself, I say, oh,
22:42
I'm just, you know, I'm just being blasted with, with, with,
22:44
with content that is meant to, you know, put me into a, a
22:50
particular frame of mind or enforce a particular
22:54
perspective. I look for other content to
22:58
balance that out and the, you know, and, and, and then, and
23:01
then you have to catch yourself. OK, well, at a certain point,
23:04
everything becomes anti authoritarian.
23:06
At a certain point, everything is a problem.
23:08
What are the good things? What are the potential good
23:09
things? How am I looking at this in a
23:11
way that is both kind of picking it apart and also potentially
23:15
positive? But it's really hard to do.
23:19
And So what I was thinking of actually, and what I hope to
23:22
encourage now is the value of creating our own algorithms.
23:27
And I think that that means that there's a lot of really cool
23:31
ways to create our own algorithms.
23:34
Choosing content, particularly long form historical, scientific
23:44
or narrative based content, I think is in long form content
23:52
like a book or like a long podcast or an audio book or a
23:56
movie or ATV series or whatever it is.
24:00
I think that the long form contents and allow us to create
24:05
our own algorithms and instead of us being shaped by what is
24:14
being fed to us or presented to us, we can get up, go to the do
24:19
the equivalent of going to the supermarket and picking out a
24:21
healthy meal for ourselves. So if you're sitting at home and
24:25
you get up and you look and you say, hey, I'm hungry, can you
24:28
get me a, you know, and you ask your sibling, you ask your
24:31
parent, you ask your spouse, you ask your friend, Hey, can you
24:34
grab me a snack? They're pretty much subject to
24:37
what they bring you. You know, you get up and do it
24:40
yourself. Then you can pick what is
24:43
actually going to be healthy. You could pick something that
24:45
might, you're in the mood for, it could be something that
24:47
you're potentially interested in.
24:49
You want to see how it goes with other flavors.
24:51
And I think the same thing applies to knowledge and our
24:53
understanding of the world and information that we choose to
24:55
consume. I think that if the more that we
24:57
use social media, the more the information is being imposed on
25:01
to us and the more that we choose the information to
25:04
consume is the more that we're getting up and choosing what
25:08
kind of snacks to have, whether they're healthy or not, whether
25:11
they're good for you, what kind of mood you're in.
25:12
Again, do you need something that's a little bit salty,
25:15
sweet, high, high calorie, low calorie doesn't matter.
25:19
There's a context for everything.
25:20
There's a time and place for everything.
25:21
And So what is best for us to do is to decide that for ourselves.
25:27
I think that we think that because our algorithm will
25:31
respond to, you know, obviously our algorithm is responsive to
25:36
what catches our eye, but it doesn't necessarily mean that
25:38
it's what we want. If I walk into a pizza shop and
25:44
I that sounds incredible, doesn't mean that someone should
25:48
shove a pizza in my face. It doesn't, it doesn't mean that
25:51
someone should shove a pizza down my throat.
25:52
It just means, whoa, that's interesting.
25:55
I like that. I don't know if I want it right
25:57
now, but I like it, you know, and I think that, you know, I
26:04
myself have been going on this really, really interesting
26:06
journey where I've kind of been learning about, I haven't been
26:10
following broad news, but I've been taking particular news
26:13
stories that I've been hearing and I've been diving into
26:16
understanding what they're about.
26:18
Because it turns out that there's a Hebrew expression.
26:21
I love the expression in Kaddash Takasashemesh.
26:24
There's no, there's nothing new under the sun.
26:26
Everything that we think we've seen already has already had
26:28
everything that we thought that we think is new has already
26:30
happened already. And everything that we thought,
26:33
you know, if we haven't seen something doesn't mean that it
26:35
hasn't existed in a particular way.
26:37
And that's, I mean, that's my personal push and plea for
26:42
learning about history and learning about humanity, but I
26:46
think that that's important for everything.
26:47
So for example, let's say again, just to stick with an example
26:52
that we started talking about earlier with the ice stories and
26:56
does you know, you can find out there's so many worlds to learn
27:00
about what the context of what's going on over here is.
27:03
What's the relationship between Minnesota and Somalia?
27:06
What's the relationship between ice and the citizens?
27:10
Where was the right always embracing ice and what was ice
27:16
created for? Was it created to catch
27:19
Venezuelan cartel members that are running around the country?
27:22
Was it designed to enforce all immigration law?
27:26
What's the point of that right. So you do, I mean, and then that
27:28
that so those two topics, Somalia and Minnesota ICE and
27:35
and and and its purpose are enormous deep dives that require
27:39
a lot of learning. And you can pick what you want
27:42
to learn about it without having it fed to you.
27:44
You can find the books that look interesting to you.
27:46
You can find the articles that speak to you or the podcast with
27:49
the podcast ghost guest or host that will go into an
27:53
understanding of what the context is.
27:57
So that while these events are unfolding, regardless of what
28:01
your opinion is, at least you're not as as short as short
28:05
sighted, short memoried as so many people are.
28:09
Where a year and a half ago we're talking about defending
28:12
gun rights and the rights to protest and to end for free
28:16
speech, and now are shutting down the exact same thing.
28:19
And the more that people start to continue, hopefully to take
28:28
their information and the learning into their own hands
28:30
instead of depending on it being fed to you.
28:33
Like me sitting on the couch waiting for my friend or my kid
28:36
or my wife or someone to bring me a snack and getting up and
28:41
doing it myself. There's enormous, enormous
28:43
value. And every now and then, yeah,
28:46
it's good to have someone bring you a cheap snack.
28:47
If you're feeling lazy, if you feel like you don't want to get
28:49
up and you don't really care what you're in the mood for,
28:50
you're just hungry, then go ahead and go check out social
28:53
media for a little bit. But I think it's much, much,
28:55
much more productive and much more valuable to to really do
29:00
the work yourself and create our own algorithms.
29:02
And then, and then everything snowballs and, and, and, and
29:05
it's incredible to see how entangled all of society and all
29:11
of culture and all of economy and all of music and, and all of
29:17
film are just so deeply and tightly correlated.
29:20
And, and I mean, and so, so if there's a particular aspect of,
29:26
let's say, the news that is interesting to you, do deep
29:32
dive, because along that deep dive, you're going to find other
29:34
rabbit holes and you're going to learn more and you're going to
29:36
understand more. And you're going to see really
29:40
how much things are really entangled and how events that
29:45
are being that that, that that feel like they are isolated
29:48
really are all just circular. And it's really, really
29:52
interesting. It's really, really cool and I
29:54
really, really encourage people to do to to, to learn about this
29:57
and to dive into and this is the value of democratized education
30:01
and this is the value of democratized information is that
30:05
this allows us to fight propaganda by.
30:10
But propaganda is always going to be put out there for better
30:13
or for worse. Sometimes it's good propaganda,
30:14
sometimes it's bad propaganda. But in order for us to maintain
30:19
our own perspective, and this is how we still know that we live
30:23
in a free country. And, you know, even though
30:24
people will say, yeah, it's not free, there are definitely
30:28
aspects of society that really, really aren't.
30:30
But you know what, the fact that there are podcasts with hundreds
30:34
of thousands or millions of listeners that are saying things
30:37
that are very, very clearly against the establishment or the
30:40
elite class or whatever it is. And the fact that they have the
30:42
right to do it. And the fact that that that
30:44
millions of people have access to it.
30:45
And the fact that people are listening to it and whether
30:47
they're doing anything about it or not is another conversation.
30:51
But the fact that it's out there means that it's inherently free
30:54
and we do not want to destroy that.
30:58
We do not want to trample that. It's a really, really potential
31:01
scary road to go down. The other topic that other
31:05
topics that were just came to mind because I came back from
31:08
again, another trip to Orlando and it was really, really a lot
31:14
of fun. I have, excuse me, I what, what,
31:22
what, what we usually do nowadays is we get a Airbnb in
31:26
Orlando. And I don't know if you've ever
31:28
been to Orlando, but they have this enormous.
31:32
I mean, it's obviously one of the tops hubs for vacations,
31:37
conferences, tourism in the world other than rather in
31:41
America, other than potentially Las Vegas, a couple other
31:45
places, but Orlando's really up there.
31:47
And what was really cool, So Airbnb, it started off a couple
31:51
of years even as even as recently as like 5 or 6 years
31:54
ago, Airbnb was something that was essentially a kind of form
32:01
of second income for, for everyday people that own their
32:05
houses. And that if you lived in a house
32:07
that was a little too big, or you had a back house, or you had
32:10
a garage that you can convert into a private low suite, then
32:12
you'd rent it out. Sometimes if you had a vacation
32:15
home, you made an investment, then you would, you know, then
32:17
you'd buy a house and you'd rent it out when you didn't want to
32:19
go on vacation. And then while you're on
32:21
vacation, you would you'd be able to stay there.
32:24
And Airbnb was awesome is awesome.
32:28
I love Airbnb. And then corporations started
32:32
realizing that this is a phenomenal business model.
32:34
And So what Airbnb is in particular started to do is what
32:40
corporations rather started to do was to buy and develop huge
32:44
communities. And this is happening all over
32:46
Orlando. And instead of people renting
32:50
out their summer house or instead of people renting out a
32:53
house, you know, the second-half of their house or whatever it
32:56
is, the garage back house. And I've stayed in some really,
32:59
really wonderful Airbnb's in Austin, TX, for example, I, I
33:02
stayed in someone's back house and it was really, really,
33:05
really an awesome experience. It was cheap, it was spacious.
33:08
There's a separate walking path for us to get into and the host
33:12
and the host, even though we'd interact with them, had had
33:14
thought of everything and were really, really great.
33:17
And then there's another time where I went to with a couple of
33:19
buddies of mine, Sam and Heim to oh, gosh, Newport, RI I love
33:25
Newport. I've been there a couple of
33:26
times and it's such a cool place, such an, it's so much
33:30
beautiful nature. I, there was the bridge that you
33:33
drive over to go to Newport and I don't even remember what was
33:35
going on in my life in particular at that point.
33:37
But I remember driving over that bridge and thinking about how
33:39
beautiful it was and seeing all the sailboats and the literally
33:44
just like sapphire water below me.
33:46
And I just, I, I got emotional. I was tearing or crying or
33:52
whatever, but it was really a Newport's a really, really
33:55
beautiful. That part of Rhode Island in the
33:57
country is really, really remarkable.
33:59
But we stayed at Airbnb there and it was in someone's back
34:06
house, right? So you would you can go through
34:08
the front or you can go in on the back and you climb up the
34:11
the back stairs up to the deck on the second story of the
34:15
house. And there you had a big, it was
34:18
a big loft area that they converted into a bedroom with a
34:21
couple of beds and shower in the bathroom and is closed off from
34:24
the rest of the house. But the owners that were living
34:25
there were very, very warm and very sweet and very nice.
34:28
And they had a little garden. And during the morning, they
34:31
just knocked on the door and said, hey, we have some, you
34:33
know, some tomatoes and cucumbers.
34:36
And if there's anything you need, just let me know.
34:37
We'll help take care of you. And then, and then Fast forward
34:42
five years from now, you go to Orlando and you go to Airbnb and
34:48
you go to a house that's owned by a corporation that make you
34:51
sign this form, this liability, not liability form, but like
34:55
rules form of, of, of procedures that you have to follow.
34:59
And the bathrooms have these little like mini shampoos from
35:04
the hotels and stuff like that. And they give you the little
35:05
hotel towels and thin sheets. And, and I'm not complaining
35:10
because the houses are remarkable.
35:12
The only thing I'm complaining about is the fact that this is a
35:17
common thread that's been going on for as America's evolved and
35:22
as the country has become a little bit a lot more geared
35:26
towards corporate takeover. Where is where and you have an
35:31
idea and you have a concept or a business that starts off really,
35:35
really fun, individualized, personalized and for the
35:39
everyday person. And once it scales into a
35:42
business model, then, and I don't even blame the people for
35:48
trying to make money then in corporations, hedge funds,
35:51
investment banks, they see the opportunity for revenue and
35:54
they'll take it. And I don't, and I, I, I
35:57
genuinely do not blame them for it.
35:59
I just wish that it kept a little bit more of the homey
36:03
feel and a little bit more authentic and customer based.
36:06
And but it doesn't surprise me because I think that it feels to
36:10
me that a lot is corporatized, including people's personalities
36:15
these days. It's so funny.
36:16
And I didn't get LinkedIn used to get a lot of I've seen that
36:20
LinkedIn got a lot gets a lot of hate, even though I think it's a
36:23
really nice platform. But one of the reasons why is
36:27
because it kind of corporatized all humanity and it turned
36:32
everyone into these very polite robots that write the same way.
36:39
I was down to my luck and, you know, several paragraphs below
36:44
it where you have to click see more.
36:46
And then I didn't. And then I didn't give up.
36:49
And then my luck changed. Keep hustling, you know, And
36:53
that's every LinkedIn post, just in another variation one way or
36:55
the other. I got fired from the job.
36:59
But I know that tomorrow's going to be a brighter day.
37:01
And yeah, I mean, that's cool, but it also kind of feels
37:05
robotic and not real And film, I've complained and I've I've
37:10
complained. I've talked to people, I've
37:11
observed and talked to a bunch of guests recently, especially
37:14
in entertainment world about how the film industry.
37:20
And this is again, I'm not, this isn't a, this isn't a blame
37:24
game. I'm not trying to blame people
37:26
or say this is all a problem or I understand where this is
37:29
coming from. Film studios, streaming studios
37:33
and services, they have to make money.
37:35
I get that they have to make money.
37:36
The question just is what are you?
37:39
Where are you going to trim the fat from in order to produce
37:46
profits? And if that fat trimming is
37:49
customer based, then you're going to have a push back from
37:53
the customer base if the trimming.
37:55
And that's why actually. So it's what I think is
37:58
interesting. And what I've heard from
37:59
anecdotally from several Amazon employees that I know personally
38:03
have spoken to throughout the years is that Amazon is known to
38:05
be a very difficult place to work, even though they obviously
38:08
care tremendously about the customer.
38:10
And so where they'll say they'll, they'll trim the their
38:12
quote UN quote fat for to make profits might be on their
38:20
employee end as opposed to the customer's end.
38:23
And so for all the customers that are happy that Amazon has
38:26
no questions asked returns, that might just mean that their
38:28
employees are getting their employees are getting paid less
38:31
because they have to figure out where to cut those where to make
38:33
that difference. And by the way, I don't even
38:35
know if this is the case. I'm literally just speculating,
38:37
making this up. But the point and and the point
38:39
is not in the example that I'm giving, but in the in the
38:42
general gist of the idea that I'm portraying.
38:46
And that is that I don't fault you for having to be responsible
38:52
financially and to make money. I fault two things #1 having it
38:59
come out, coming out of the customer experience, and then #2
39:02
expecting to be bailed out on a massive level.
39:05
Like with government, When big airlines or big banks, Oregon,
39:10
big entertainment companies start falling apart and the
39:13
government saves them if they're falling apart, there's a reason
39:15
for that. That's capitalism and to save
39:19
them is such an issue because it ignores the rules of what
39:24
people, of what people want. And I mean, that is that's
39:27
something that's also really, really interesting as far as
39:30
democracy goes. If you're going to be a
39:32
capitalist, most, you know, mostly capitalistic democracy.
39:36
Companies shouldn't get bailed out by the government if they go
39:39
out of business or if they fail because they're failing for a
39:41
reason. And that's because they're not
39:43
doing a good job. So by keeping them afloat, you
39:47
get, you're incentivizing them to continue mistreating
39:49
customers. And that to me is much more of
39:52
an issue than anything else. So these, you know, and I'm in
39:57
these Airbnb communities and I've spent, I mean, I've spent a
40:01
lot of time with them and I go to them quite a bit because at
40:03
the end of the day, they're convenient.
40:05
They're huge houses for really cheap and they're really good
40:07
for my family and for my good, my kids to run around and, and
40:10
it really does feel like a good getaway.
40:12
And so I am happy to go and I am happy to pay up for it.
40:16
But when you walk down the block, are you go, are you going
40:19
for a drive? And you see for miles and miles
40:22
on end the exact same houses that are all sitting empty, that
40:25
are all built the same way, the same style, cut and paste, copy,
40:29
paste, copy, paste, copy, paste. You feel like you're missing a
40:32
little something. You feel like you're missing a
40:34
little bit of soul. Till next time guys, We got a
40:36
bunch of episodes coming up this week.
40:38
Bye.