3 - Who Do You Trust? - Part 1

That's not our music. There we go. Where does that come from? Welcome back, everybody. It literally says music bad. Why would you use that one? Because I pushed the wrong button. Oh my gosh. Welcome to our show. We are a show. It's our show. It is our show. And we've been gone. It's Leila. We've been gone. My name is David. Guess who got sick? Everybody. Everybody. Everybody. We know us. It's been a sick week. It's been a sick week. We're thankful for all the support. Yeah, we are a show.

We need to get to the topic of the show. Yeah. So on this episode, we are going to be talking about we've been teasing it. Who do you trust? What do you trust? It's a very debatable thing. Yeah. So let's get into it. Before we do like we are sorry about being gone for like right. Right at the beginning of our new show. I'm not touching the button. You keep doing this number. Just just a little little. OK. Yeah, we were gone. I had we all had an upper respiratory infection.

It hit us all pretty hard. And my voice the last three, three or four days because Leila got it first. My voice has still not gone back to fully normal. But I can pretend like it's normal for the show. I'm still a little stopped up, as you can probably tell. We may have to hit the mute button or mike stick off or something. Yeah. But we're back. We've been we've been chomping at the bit to talk about what I turn my down all the way. So, yeah, we wanted to talk about who do you trust?

And this is a topic that. It's been swirling around for a long time in my brain about wanting to talk about it and get my thoughts out there and get Leila's thoughts about it. And she can kind of talk as the voice of her generation. Yeah, I just talk as me. I'm going to talk as everybody else. You are. You're the representative. Everyone under 20 doesn't think what I think. No, they don't. So I'm going to talk how I want to talk.

Yeah, you're only talking for yourself, as am I. I'm going to let you finish. I'm going to let you finish. Leila's been watching. Who said it? Hitler or Kanye? It's an old garf uncle and oats stand up thing. It's 15 years old. And I watch it like at least once a year. And I'm like, that's getting more true and true. Right. It's funny stuff. But yeah, this is this topic. I've always thought about like, who do you trust?

Obviously, in your in your immediate circle, your family, your friends, is not really what we're talking about. Talking about like government or media or things like that. And I've always been like, when I see somebody in quote unquote power. Whether it be government, media, religious leaders, even anybody that has has power, you got to look at like, what are their motives? Because they're just people until the robots take over.

Humans, humans, humans, humans, humans, humans, humans, humans, humans, humans, are in all positions of power and humans have motives. So I've always been like, OK, so why is this person doing this thing? Is what I try and ask myself when I see scandals or when I see somebody doing something that seems a little out of the ordinary or even if it seems ordinary. So I think I'm going to I think I'm just going to start off by asking Leila. Mm hmm. What part of the government do you trust?

Hold on, I'm trying to avoid a paywall real quick. I don't. I feel like firefighters. Yeah, firefighters, especially for volunteer firefighters that we have around here. We live in a very rural area that doesn't have funding, a lot of funding for firefighters and whatnot. So we have a volunteer fire department in this area. So yeah, firefighters, what other governments? Like I would say I would be like, oh, you know, the parks department.

But then like, no, no, because there's just because I like that we have national parks, but at the same time. Kind of don't. Yeah, honestly, local government is more trustable than federal, in my opinion, but also because you can go to their house. Yeah, you can go to their house. You can go to where they work and complain. Yeah, like getting their face about something.

I know I've brought this up to you multiple times, but there's this image that I found and it was like going to the mayor because he has to listen to me. And it's just someone with their feet up on the mayor's desk and just talking to him. I go to the I go to talk to the mayor and complain about things for two hours a week because he has to listen to me. Exactly. It's like what the image said. And it was awesome. Well, that's most most school boards, town hall meetings, city, city hall meetings.

They always have like a public comment section and they legally have to listen to you. Yeah. Like you go up and you get three minutes, five minutes, whatever your municipalities rules are, and you can say anything you want for three to five minutes. We encourage you to. Yes. We're any gripes. Is your local government. I encourage you to bring them up. Getting more and more into that. We have a situation we won't discuss. Well, no, we have we have a situation that I'm going to discuss.

I know somebody who owns a piece of property. And they the property next to theirs. It's there's one in between. But anyway, it's it's really close. Is owned by a church and the church is selling the property to this. I don't know if it's a nonprofit or an NGO or what it is. But basically they build houses for recovering drug addicts. And people who have felony drug convictions and, you know, a place for people that can't rent because of their their criminal records and previous behavior.

And the person I know who owns this property that doesn't sit well with them, you know, so they're going to go and they're going to voice their concerns at the local because in order to rezone a land area, they have to go. There has to be a public a public comment period where the public can come in and say, look, I don't think this is a good idea or I think this is a great idea. You know, whatever you want to say.

So I'm like, yeah, go go get people to find out who are who your who your county commissioner is for that district. It's a different story than I thought you were going to tell and go talk to him. Oh, no. Yeah. Oh, come on, man. I don't care. Restart to install the latest Windows updates. You got to get off. Let me get my computer. Never get every virus. It's a virus. Catch them all. Did you get four hundred thousand viruses? Yeah, get get up with your local people. If you've got a question.

Yeah, that's what they're there for. If you've got a complaint about something going on in your neighborhood, you know, go to those people. You can go to your school board if you've got an issue with your school. Well, if you have questions. Yeah, you just have a question like, why are we doing this? And they may have an answer. They may not. They may just be like, oh, somebody just hung off on it. A more efficient way of doing it. I know you give you money and then get it.

Maybe six or seven years ago, the school board around here lost 50 million dollars. They just lost it. They're just like, whoop, where to go? Seems like so. Obviously, somebody stole it over the course of however many years, but they couldn't figure it out. Like they could. There was no paper trail and they couldn't figure it out. So somebody walked off with 50 million dollars in the taxpayer dollars. And, you know, it's just how it is. So getting into talking about government.

And statistics and things like that, and they. That doesn't really. That's not it's not a great segue. Well, that that's what I was going to I've got a quote from Thomas So about numbers. Oh, what? I like numbers. You love numbers. I love numbers. So I hate statistics. I hate I love numbers. So it says if one goes through enough numbers, one will eventually come upon some statistics that seem to fit one's vision.

These are what we might be or what might be called aha. It's a big test. Yeah. Like like the band. Other statistics which suggest opposite conclusions bring no aha, but are more likely to be glided over and forgotten. So this I know that you've always had a gripe with statistics. And I saw this quote. I was like, this is what Leila is always talking about. Not ever trusting statistics, because you can look at any numbers and you can figure out. I have a quote from Sonic Boom for this away to.

I've been really into Sonic recently. Oh, my gosh. So. So, yeah, you can massage the statistics to to work any way you want to. For example, yeah, let's say. You read, you read something in the news that says I don't know, flu cases are up 70 or 100 percent this week. Right. But only one extra person got the flu because last week only one person got the flu. Yeah. So it makes it sound like there's this huge epidemic when it's actually just two people. Yeah. In my in my expert opinion.

I don't think statistics are true most of the time because there's either a lack of evidence on a couple of parts or one part or many. Or there wasn't like enough. Research went into it, honestly. Right. And who who's getting who's gathering the statistics? Exactly, especially with what to do, especially especially. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. OK, especially with like sorry, I'm saying like a lot. That makes me sound really untrustworthy. What do you trust? Not Leila.

Apparently medical statistics from like a while ago, because you'll hear all these statistics being like, oh, this is only more prominent in this certain demographic. And you're like, yeah, but when is that from? And a long time ago, we didn't have as much knowledge about this thing. And as a self reported. Exactly. Who ran the study? How was it run? How many people were in it? What was the demographic of people in it? How long did it go for? There's there's like, when was it done?

So many things that you can fudge the numbers on. And how much radiation were they eating? You got to think how much uranium you've got to think about, like, who paid the person who went now and went out and did the study? Yeah, because whoever paid them is looking for a specific result, most likely. Even in the way that they word it when they're looking for a scientist to run the study, right? They're like, hey, we're we're just trying to prove the man made climate change is real.

So we have two hundred thousand dollars. Can you think of us, you know, something you could do for that two hundred thousand that would, you know, prove our point of view and the guy's like, yeah, I can come up with something. You know, it just comes out of capitalism, man. Money runs everything. Get it out of here. Pure capitalism is the best. We have. Yeah.

I was talking about the medical field. Oh, jumping, jumping right into the medical field. Yeah. Capitalism. Oh, man. Do you have anything else on the other? What statistics? Just the numbers. Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to take a sip of the drink. OK, I want to talk about the medical field and how it sucks and I never want to do it ever. So I've always really been interested in the medical field.

Like since I was a kid, I wanted to be a vet and then I wanted to be like a doctor, dentist, anything that I could do in the medical field. I most recently wanted to get into neuroscience or just neurology of any sort, working on the brain and how it behaves and everything like that. But I really have been looking into like the medical field and how they do stuff and like how. They function as a job. And like what they do for people. And I love everything behind neuroscience.

Neuroscience is so cool to me. And it's just like a passion of mine. But I never want to be a neuroscientist because of how they just want money. They don't want to cure someone or permanently. They don't want to. They want to have patience. And the only way that they can have patience is to have something wrong with people. OK, so there was an episode of a DC Comics cartoon. I don't know if it was Superman Batman, Lee Justice. I don't remember which was right.

And Lex Luthor, I'm not sure how up you are on Superman lore, but he's the bad guy in most of the Superman stuff. Right. He's Superman's main bad guy. And he ran a medical research company. Right. Yeah. And one of his one of his little scientist guys comes running. He's like, Mr. Luther, Mr. Luther, we figured it out. We've cured cancer. And it's a and Luther's like, OK, so what's the treatment? It's like it's a it's two two doses of this of this injection.

And he's like, OK, so take that cure and stretch it out over 25 years with a medical treatment. With a monthly treatment. And then we'll send it to market because a cured patient is a worthless patient. Yeah, if you don't have business, you don't have business, you know.

Well, that's one of the things, the way that the FDA works, if they start doing studies into certain foods or compounds for their effectiveness in healing and fighting certain diseases and things like that, they would have to classify it. So like if they did a study on, let's say, broccoli. Yeah. And there's a lot of things that say that broccoli is really good for you if you want to avoid getting cancer.

But they can't go study those claims because if they do, then they would have to classify broccoli as a drug. Yeah. And they're not going to get into the business of classifying foods as drugs because then if I'm growing broccoli in my yard, which is not fun, but I'm not going into the whole agriculture of growing broccoli. Agriculture. It's a pain. It's like a two year process to grow broccoli. I want some broccoli. I'm the number one broccoli like her. I love broccoli. OK, that's a shirt.

No, no, I'm putting that in the tax payer. Murch number one. Yeah, we'll talk about that in a minute. But I misspelled broccoli. Oh, my gosh, we've had this broccoli like her. Whatever. Brochillo. OK, so but yeah, that's and then OK, so go back to your you were talking about the medical field. Yeah, I'm just kind of riffing right here. I'm not really reading off of anything. I have some stuff in front of. Well, that's what the show is. Yeah, it's us giving our opinions on stuff.

But I did a lot of thinking on it and I was like, OK, because I really want to put some thought into what I want to do for a job. Well, you don't want to be a part of that system. Yeah, I don't want to be part of the system. And it sucks because I really do. But I don't. I'm from a moral standpoint, I can't do that. Yeah. Yeah. And that's good. I mean, it's good that you've got that moral. And this thing you can work on things.

Like there's a lot of people that do amazing things and they do them open source. Like there's that kid who printed his own braces. Like he he made his own braces, he met or invisalign type, you know, realiners and people that figure out how to do this stuff and they just make it open source. The problem is the insurance don't pay for it. The insurance companies I used to work in medical insurance and it's it's the worst. It really is the way that they do things.

There's there's a rule that if you go to the doctor and tell them that you have insurance. Yeah, they're going to say, oh, my gosh, they're going to say, OK, well, it's, you know, twelve twelve hundred dollars for this procedure. But if I'm like, OK, well, what's the cash price if I didn't have insurance? And they're like, I can't tell you that. Yeah, because I know that you have insurance.

And I'm like, so if I from now on, when we go to a new doctor, I'm going to call and say, hey, what's the cash price for an allergy test or whatever we're doing and find out what the cash price is. And they're going to be like, do you have insurance? And I'm just like, no. And then see what the cash price is. Yeah. And that's part of the thing. If you can find out the cash price or something.

After you get the whatever it is and go through your insurance and stuff, you can call them and they're like, hey, you know, you owe us this much. You can be like, OK, well, look, I know that the cash price is this much. You've already received this much from my insurance company. I'll give you the difference. You know, because the way the way it all works is extremely messed up. The way that medical insurance works.

And I'm not going to go into it very deeply, but basically it's all because the government got involved. Yep. Whenever the government gets involved, it's it messes it up. It messes it up. Yeah.

The same thing with academia, with college. Yeah. You got it. You got to tell me to mute you when you're going to come. My bad. It's not pleasant on the ears, Leila. But yeah, I apologize for your ears. I hate that you are swayed away from something that you find extremely interesting. I love I love neuroscience so much because of the the greed involved in that. Yeah. And the fact that it's just all the whole the whole system is just so messed up. But, you know, that's that's life.

That's a lie. That's what all the people say. I went to college for a year for computer networking because everybody was like because I like it. I love doing that. And I got almost a year into my college for that and went started looking for the jobs and they were all taken. And I'm like, there's literally no networking jobs anywhere. Why am I going to continue in this getting this degree? And then I started talking to people who were in networking, like actually doing it.

They're like, I don't have a degree. So I dropped out of college. I was like, this, it just made me so extremely disinterested in having an education because I found out that most of the people out there that are making the most money don't have degrees. They just are doing the thing. So having a degree in my mind tells me that you went to college and you put put yourself through all that. But it's I don't. Put the premium on it that a lot of people do.

They're like, oh, college, you know, that comes down to appeal to authority, you know. So I know some people that make well over what doctors make and they don't even have a year of college under their belt. Yeah. So, so, uh, I wanted to talk about where my voice goes completely out. Um, sorry, I'll cover you. Yeah. Academia. Academia mean meaning you don't, academia means no. Okay.

So I found this video of a lady who used to be in academia and she's talking about particle physics and now it's a scam. Yeah. Um, we're going to play a little clip from it right here. She got a letter after she published an article called science needs reason to be trusted. Um, basically she was saying in the article and I'll link to it. Um, she was saying that you people don't trust science anymore and they don't trust science because everybody doing science is like, it's a, oh my gosh.

Why is this formatting that working? Backspace. There we go. Okay. Don't worry about it. I'm trying to format it. Um, they, they get grants to do things. Like I was talking about earlier, they get grants to run studies and it doesn't even matter if the study is, is useful to humanity. They're just trying to get the next grade. Yeah. They're trying to, trying to get the next grant. And, um, thank you for meeting. And I'm so smart. Keep going. Yeah. So they, um, trying to find that. Here we go.

I'm going to play a little bit of this. So how long has it been? Oh, Some of them have families and young children. Some of them are already too old to get employment elsewhere. For some of them, academia is the only way to get us visa. If you like, yes, what we created is a bubble, but it helps thousands of those guys and their families not to die from hunger. We all do the same stuff and have some trade secrets.

For example, I'm one of the authors of the so-called model, pretty useless stuff, old refurbished with a couple of new blows and whistles. But if people buy this and it helps them to get grants, who cares for people who pay us all we do is just noise. They have zero idea that elementary particles exist.

They pay us from public funds, not from their own, and basically pay for something cool, some new crazy hype, which they need either to include into their science spending reports or include into their financial aid. So the guy was really upset with her because she was talking about. We need to stop doing these things just to do them and get the grants. We need to actually focus on things that'll actually help.

And as that guy, as it just said in the letter that she was reading, um, they get paid to come up with something cool so that their Congressperson can you know, Hey, we gave these people this money and look what they figured out. They figured out that this article does this thing and that doesn't it. And even if it does, it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't. Oh, no, I was muted. You're muted because you're, because you're coughed earlier and you're for gour.

Um, so it, it's always bothered me when I see studies come out and I look at like, okay, what's the problem with this? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. It's always bothered me when I see studies come out and I look at like, okay. Like she's like, she said, they're public funds, you know, meaning our taxes are paying for these studies and they're useless in the grand scheme of things. Um, there is somebody in Congress. I can't remember the person's name. I watch the video sometimes.

He has a yearly thing where he rounds up the stupidest thing government has spent money on the stupidest studies and whatnot. And it's stuff like do hamsters run better on a wheel when you give them crack? Um, it's mostly stuff like that. And hundreds of thousands of not millions of dollars go to these studies and, and it's sickening. And, but then like the whole letter that he sent to this, this woman who was reading it is about, Hey, shut up.

We need to eat or we need to keep our, we need some of these people need to keep their U S pieces. And if they lose their grants that are getting paid for by the tax dollars, then they're going to have to move back to their own country. Um, or, you know, I'm going to have to go get a job in the real world and not live the, and he even says it in the, in the letter, the comfortable life of academia. You know, and it's, it really bothers me because it's tax dollars.

It's money that, Oh, pay taxes, whatever, but it's being wasted. And I see things like in Western North Carolina, where I really don't mind my taxes going to help people that are hurting a natural disaster that couldn't have been prevented, you know, um, that money could have gone to them. You know, instead of some guy, so he can keep his swanky job at a university.

Where he, he literally just collects taxpayer dollars, makes up some numbers or writes an algorithm into a computer model that fudges the numbers to give him the result he wants and he gets his big fat paycheck at the end of the year. Um, and it just makes me not trust science at all. Like anything I see that's like, Oh, a new study says I'm like, Oh yeah. Okay. I could say that.

Yeah. Who, you know, um, so it really makes me, and I'm, and I'm wanting to teach you this and I ever feel like I already have go to the source of things. Yeah, absolutely. Go to the source. Um, find out who paid for this trust here. Say, so yeah, it, a study can be funded by somebody through an LLC, which is owned by another LLC, which is owned by the person who really needs that study to say what they needed to say. So take it for all for a grain of salt. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Um, and I'd love it. I love when a study is done and it actually finds something and it's repeatable. Uh, cause there's, I love the scientific method. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. No, scientific method is awesome. The thing about scientific method is and how these papers are all written is you're supposed to be able to go in and do repeat the exact experiment. Yes. The problem is nobody does. It's hypothesis versus theory versus law. There's a repeatability problem in science.

Um, basically it's not that people don't want to repeat it. It's just that these studies cost $200,000 and people go in and do what's called a peer review and they read it and they're like, yeah, that method seems solid. And then they say, yeah, I'll sign off on this as it being peer reviewed. So when you hear peer reviewed science, that just means other scientists read the study and said, that's a good way to do that experiment.

They're not saying I 100% agree with the results of this or anything like that. They're just saying the method was solid. And if they went and repeated it, they might get a totally different result. Yeah. It's tough to trust science, quote unquote science. Yeah. When it's just a method. Yeah. We were learning about hypothesis versus theory versus law in a science. A couple days ago, we, we go through topics so fast, good grief, but hypothesis is, are there are like just, I think that yeah.

And then they test it and they're like, Oh, okay. And then you test it a thousand times more. And if it all comes out the same and it's like 99% sure that that is what is happening. It becomes a scientific law. Um, I think a law has to be a hundred percent. And a theory is like 99%. Like, hold on. Keep going. I I'm trying to think of the rule that I learned because they changed these, these nomenclatures. So, um, yeah, look up theory versus law.

Cause they're like, uh, I think gravity is still a theory. Yeah. The, the law, the Newton's law of, no, it's Newton's law of universal gravitation. Right. Right. But it's still technically a theory, I think, because there's no way to disprove it. Yeah. You have to be able to disprove it to become a law. No, am I wrong? You're wrong. Okay. There has to be no way to disprove it for it to be a scientific law for it to be disproven. I'm pretty sure it's a theory.

Okay. So if it's, if there's a way to disprove it, then it's a theory. I'm pretty sure. Let me ask about it. Oh no. Cause it knows. Yeah. Um, so yeah, yeah. So then I've heard people say, Oh, it's just a theory. I was like, that just holds water pretty good. Um, I think it was Einstein wasn't a fan of gravity. I don't know until they got to them is, um, I'll have to look into that one for the next version of a, uh, who do you trust part two is coming out.

Can scientific can scientific laws be disproven? Cause I, one of them has to have, has to be able to be disproven and has to be able to something else. I can't remember. I'm so good at science. Am I right? Yeah. So my favorite high school science. Yes. Scientific laws can be disproven or revised. So what is the difference? That's what you should ask. What is the difference? Really got up on that mic. I said difference between scientific law theories. Oh, here we go.

And I bought the big old answer from the Microsoft co-pilot. Oh my gosh. It's not going to know what I meant. Oh yeah, it does. Okay. Hypothesis educated guests are proposed explanation for a phenomenon theory. Scientific theory is well substantiated explanation for some aspect of the natural world based on evidence, repeated testing and confirmed through observation and experimentation law, scientific law is a statement that describes a consistently observed phenomenon in nature.

Laws are based on repeated experimental evidence and are genuinely can generally considered to be universally true within their scope. They describe what happens, but do not necessarily explain why it happens. For example, Newton's law of universal gravitation describes how objects attract to each other, attract each other with a force proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

Gotcha. So what I was talking about earlier was the replication crisis. Yeah. So I've got a link in the show notes for that. Um, you put your links under my links. It's fine. Easier to do it that way. It's fine. So the replication crisis is an ongoing method, methodological crisis in which the results of many scientific studies are difficult to, or impossible to reproduce. Uh, skimming down a little bit.

It was coined in the early, the term was coined in the early 2010s as a growing awareness of the problem considerations of causes and remedies have given rise to new scientific discipline, metascience, which uses methods of empirical research to examine empirical research practice. Um, so I'll leave a link into the Wiki and show notes. And it just comes down to like I was saying, it's, it's too hard to repeat. Or people just don't want to repeat the, the, the, what's it called?

Experiment, I guess, to do a, to figure out whether or not it's actually repeatable. And so many people were, it's a laziness. It's a time it's a money, a problem. So it's like how much of what we know, quote unquote, is just consensus because people are like, Oh yeah, that one guy did that, did it pretty well. We'll just believe him. I don't like it. I don't like it. Oh, that's gotta clear my throat. Yeah. Yeah. That's what you get when you get podcast wall sick. Not sick.

Testable and falsifiable. Testable and falsifiable. Sorry. I was getting on my nerves. And if we're saying something wrong and you know better than us, let us know. We don't want to be wrong. This is what my ninth grade earth and environmental science teachers taught me. And what my 42 year old, I remember some stuff from high school taught me in college. But I'm a curious guy. I read a lot of articles and stuff like that. So, and I'm always looking for that, that angle.

Somebody's always got an angle, you know, and I'm always looking for that angle. Somebody's always got an angle, you know. So, uh, you're all for hearing those angles, man angles, but you follow the money a lot of times and you'll find out what somebody's true motives are. Yeah. And it's sad, but that's how it is. And it's, it's understandable. You know, like, like that letter was saying, people got to eat.

It's just wish you were, um, like you were, you don't want to be a part of something that seems scammy or wrong to you. Right. A lot of people don't have that problem. They're just like, eh, do what I got to do to get paid. And I can't do that. Give us some money. There's at least four or five times in my life where I have an opportunity to do something that, uh, more morally questionable to make a lot of money. And I didn't, um, I'm, I'm glad I didn't.

Nothing real bad, nothing like, you know, hit man stuff or anything. Just, there was some investment opportunities. Weird websites. Yes. You love some weird websites. I'm in love with them. Why don't we thank some folks? Yeah. Let's thank some folks. Wait, do you want to go into a, no, let's do that after. Yeah. Let's, let's thank some folks. So, uh, since our last episode, which is like two and a half weeks ago, um, sorry. We've been busy with being sick and other stuff.

We went to a South Carolina to see Kyle A. Barry. He's going to come on the show. We're going to talk about AI and the entertainment industry. Cause he's dealing with that whole thing. Um, and we had some boat angles. That was awesome. And he had this thing. It was like blueberry muffin. It was a bow, bow, Barry cobbler. Oh geez. It's flying above us and shaking the entire shed. I mean studio chopper or an ass osprey. And what? And, uh, osprey is exactly what I said. Nothing else. Nothing else.

Um, so yeah, let's thank some folks. We don't do ads. We don't take money from, from USA ID. We don't, we'll talk about that in the current event section here in a minute. Uh, we take money from the folks who listen you and we have a name for you. Me? Oh yes. We do. I came up with it. You know how the Taylor Swift fans are called Swifties? Why don't you tell them what we're going to call the fans of our show? We're going to call y'all the taxpayers. I'm a taxpayer.

Cause it has nothing to do with our show, but it's true about every single one of y'all. Yup. Y'all all pay taxes in one way or another. Yep. And, uh, yeah, so there's another reason you should go talk to your local officials. Like these taxes are too high and they're wasting them. We'll talk about that in the, I was, I was going at more of a, I pay you. Oh yeah. I'm your, I'm your boss.

Yeah. So I was telling Leila when it comes down to like confronting people, confronting people, especially, uh, people who are paid by the government. It's like saying that I pay your salary sounds cliche and people roll our eyes at it, but it's true. If they're a public servant, then they're a public servant. They, they get paid at the whim of the taxpayer. And if everybody just stopped paying their taxes, those paychecks would go away.

You know, um, so the public servants have gotten a little, little entitled, uh, here recently in a lot of places, but I don't know necessarily around here, but you know, in places. Yeah. So we are a value for value prop proposition.

What proposition? Yeah. Um, we're a value for value podcast. And that means that we put the show out for free. We don't charge you for the show. And, uh, we hope that you get some value from it. If you're listening 40 minutes into the episode, however far we are right now. Um, you gotta get some, getting some kind of value out of it, right? Shoot us a note. Let us know you value the show or you can send us some artwork, send us some music, uh, help us out with social media, posting and sharing.

Uh, let, let folks know about the show. Yeah. We can fix anything betwixt the two of us, the two of us. Uh, but we do have some folks that, uh, send back value in a monetary form. They, they get enough value from the show to send us cash money. Um, and we definitely appreciate that so much. We do have some costs associated with doing this, not many, but, uh, it's really great that folks value the show enough to send us money to do it.

Yeah. And one of those people is Dred Scott with his monthly page pal sustaining donation of 1912, which is an Oreo donation. Oh, you got some thin Oreos. I ate them all in one day. Oh my gosh. You didn't have to say that Leila. I know. I know I didn't. Those Oreo things are so good. They are. I didn't get a one of them. You didn't get a one of them. They were all mine. Yep. Uh, we thank you so much, Dred for that. That covers most of our server costs for at least the website and email.

Um, I can do some fried Oreos. Ooh. Next up, we have a donation via cash app. Like Kevin Hallisey runs with Allysee. $20. I enjoy the contrasts and similarities. Yeah. So yeah, we used to do a show called Fun Fact Friday with Leila and David, and it was a little different. Where? It was a little different. It was funny. Um, right after we released episode two of this show, we got listed on the top. Fun Fact Friday got listed on the top podcasts on Good Pods. It's dead show. It's a dead show.

It's not here anymore. Yeah. Um, but we thank you so much, Kevin. We definitely appreciate that. It's always awesome. Uh, cash app link, all the links to make donations to the show are on the website, argumentpod.com. Uh, there's a donations link at the top of the page. Uh, we do Venmo, cash app, PayPal, or you can boost. What's a boost Leila? Yeah. A boost is when you send in Satoshi's to us and we can from you, from you on your favorite modern pot, new podcast app.

You go to new podcast apps.com or whatever. Uh, and it sends us money because we like money, but we can also distribute that money to if like Kyle ever wanted to do another intro or outro for us. We could give him like a cut of it. Yeah. If we have a guest on that has a, uh, lightning wallet, we can put them in the split and they get a cut of the show. We use, uh, music. Yep. Come up with the theme song for us, something jazzy and, uh, we can put you in the split. So we got some boosts.

We got quite a few big boosts. Um, so starting the oldest to the newest, we got three, 3,000, three, three, three, three, three sets, uh, because 33 is the magic number. Absolutely. Uh, from chat F on curio caster and it says nothing. No, no, that's awesome. We appreciate that. Thank you. Um, and then, uh, let's see, we got from cast a manic. We got one, two, three, four, five from drab Scott. No note. Thank you. Drem. That is a account account boost. One, two, three, four, five.

Yeah. That's a lot. Dracula count. Dracula. Yeah. I understand. Okay. All right. Oh, I got to get in touch with Randy black. I completely forgot. Cause we got sick 13 21. Yeah. 1,321 sat from Randy black says on our last episode. Go ahead. Fantastic follow up to episode one. If you ever want to chat about DIY of your site slash sites and podcasts using a CDN and free web publishing and hosting tools, give me a shout. Go podcasting. Go podcasting. What a CDN, uh, content delivery network.

Ah, um, cloud players of CDN we use. That was from podcast guru. Yes. Uh, I got in touch with Randy black about doing that. Cause we're going to, I'm going to get in touch with him about working on some stuff, but then, uh, I got real sick and never responded back to them. So I'll get, I'll get in there and talk to you. You get Randy. All of the boosts we got are from different podcasts apps this week. Awesome. We get those.

Yeah. We got fountain podcast guru, cast a manic and curio caster dope, the gambit. I know. Right. And then, uh, final was from fountain from Kevin Elsie. Dang. That's a satin and a cash app. Awesome. Thank God for duct tape, zip ties, super glue twine, seam tape, and a can do attitude. Of course, stepping in and volunteering often leads to trouble, but yields a good stories, which gets funnier as times passes and wounds heal. Yes. Volunteering for anything.

Um, what's the saying where it's like doing, I don't know, keep going. So anytime I've gotten involved with a volunteer organization of any kind, it's always been like, there's let's say there's 10 people. There's nine people saying we should do this. We should do this. And one person actually has to do it all. Um, it's like, uh, Oh my gosh. What can I, Oh my gosh. I have a rant. Oh, Oh, I don't think we have. We don't have Leila rant. It's okay. It's fine. We love.

Um, I just did a, I just did a group project, right? Guess who did the work. Guess who did the work. That one weird looking kid. Yep. So you, yeah. Oh my gosh. It was a duo project, right? So it wasn't a big group. I'm not complaining that bad. It was 16 slides. It was an English class about the Holocaust. Cause of course that's what you do in English. And what you do the Holocaust in English. No, no, you do the Holocaust in German. It's so annoying.

Cause the, Oh my gosh, all of the guys in my class have had one joke for the last week and it's so dumb. I hate it. How much to the Holocaust? Oh my. No, it's a really funny joke. But I can't laugh at it because I don't like them. How much did the Holocaust? Oh, I hate it. Okay. Terrible. It is. And I hate it, but 16 slides, all information. And I made this the most easy thing for the person in my group to do. Right. I made all of the slides. I made a template for all of the slides.

I put the link in. I put the link to the information in the slide. Okay. But they literally had just, they had to, okay, they could have split their screen had the doc on one side, had the website on the other side, right? They could have just skimmed it and wrote down information. You know what they did? Played Fortnite. One slide out of the 16. We had full two weeks to work on this project. Sounds like you get scammed. I did get scammed. I got a bad partner. I'm sorry.

If you're listening to this, which I know you are because you don't know that this exists, if you ever find this, I'm sorry, but you kind of deserve it. Do better next time. Do better next time. If you have another group of projects, do some work, please. It's the normal thing. One person ends up doing all the work. I'm making him present it. I'm going to flip through the slides and I'm going to make him talk. So all that. Thank you, Kevin. Again, one, two, three, four, sats. Thank you.

You stimulated a rant. Yeah. Thank you. But yeah, I love all those things. Duct tape zip ties. Okay. Zip ties. I like zip ties for some purposes, but one of my pet peeves is when people use zip ties to do something that they should be using twist ties for or Velcro straps, because when you're networking, when you're running a bunch of network cables and somebody zip ties them together and they do it super tight.

So like you can't cut the zip tie without risking cutting one of the cap six, whatever you're using cables or you get, oh my gosh. And I know that you can get in there with a little knife or something and push the little thing and release it. But with Velcro straps and they're so cheap, you reuse them infinitely. It's zip ties. Now, for some stuff, it's great. Zip ties are like when you're doing something permanent or you're doing something with something solid.

Don't use cables and don't use zip ties on cables, please. Please. We're not going to be by big Velcro strap, by the way. No, we're not funded by Velcro brand. We could say I could say hook and loop straps because that's what it's called. I keep hearing things in the studio today. This is this is odd. Well, it's really cold outside and really warm in here. So it's probably hallucinations stuff. Well, there's a lot of plastic stuff in here.

So if it was really cold and it's getting warmer, it's going to make little noises. No, but I'm hearing like the cat, the cats inside. Exactly. So I'm hearing. All right. I was just like, oh, the cats just needs food. And I'm like, what? But I'm sorry for all the coughing with what you're doing. Yeah, I'm really sorry. You signed up for it. You heard that we were sick. Yep. All right. So current events. I don't have one.

I do. And this one leads into what we've been talking about. All right. So I'll still be here. Doge. Oh, what's that all about? The Department of Government Efficiency. So. It's a new part of the executive branch, I think. Doge.gov savings now exists. You can go to Doge.gov savings. And you can look up all of the savings that the Department of Government efficiency is estimating will be caught, deleted, fixed, all this stuff. And it's kind of gross.

Looking at how much of the taxpayers dollars are getting wasted. For things that are like literally somebody scamming the government, like most recently, they've been working with the Social Security Administration and finding all these people that. Are just cashing Social Security checks for people like the relatives that have died. And it's gross. Like nobody marked down that that person died. Like the funeral home didn't send it in or whoever is in charge of sending that in.

So the Social Security Administration never heard that that person died. And didn't mark them as dead. So they just keep sending the checks out. Yeah. And somebody's getting those checks and they're cashing those checks and the way they cash the check is like, like, let's say my mom was not able to really I would say I was in charge of her before she passed, right? I've got power of attorney and all that stuff. Well, the checks would come to me because I'm taking care of her.

And then if she passes and I don't tell anybody and nobody tells anybody, those checks still keep coming to me. So it's like. Why are we letting this go on? This should be something that people stay on top of, you know, most deaths are reported in newspapers are reported by I don't know if what, like, doctors have to report, I know that they do time of death, but like, maybe they should send it in. I don't know.

So anyway, that going back to Doge, I feel like that this is a a good thing that they're going in and auditing. Where our money is going. And me personally, I think it's a good thing. Now, are they going to make mistakes also? I think so. I think that they're they're going to go in and they're going to recognize things as broad waste and abuse when there's actually that it's not. And, you know, we'll deal with that as it comes up. But I personally have always wanted my job to be.

In efficiency, it's like every job I've ever had, I've always tried to find ways to do the job more efficiently and with one company I worked for, I saved the company like three hundred thousand dollars a year in the first four months I was there just by finding things that they were doing that were so inefficient and wasting money. And just they'd always done it that way, you know, and I don't like that attitude either. But, yeah, my voice is really going. So we're going to wrap this up soon.

Yeah, we may not do. Who do you trust part two immediately? Yeah, but there will be a part two. I wanted to go into a few more things, but not in this episode. I talk about the Grammys. I don't know. Do you want to talk about the Grammys? You are pretty upset about the Grammys.

I was pretty upset at the Grammys. So I didn't watch the Grammys when they first aired because it was like I think it was on the weekend we were on the road trip, so I was sleeping. And my friend was texting me like the entire time it was happening. So I was kind of up to what was happening. But I went to school the next day and I learned everything else that happened. And I do not agree with the album of the year choice. I'm sorry. Thank you, Beyonce. I don't think you should have won.

Well, you should have won. OK, this is. It's a really hard choice for me because I know all of these albums that are on this list, except for the Andre 3000 one and the Jacob Collier one, which I probably heard some songs from them because they're popular, but Andre 3000 still doing stuff. Yeah, I think so. Oh, look into that. So the ones that were nominated are Callaway Carter by Beyonce, New Blue Sun by Andre 3000, Short and Sweet by Sabrina Carpenter, Brat by Charlie XCX.

That's a big contender for me. I love that album. I could talk about that for days. Wait, what? Stop. Pause. OK. Do you know what this nerd does? What? No. Her and her friends are going to have a presentation party. I like making presentations. I'm really sorry. She's making a slide show in Google Docs or whatever slide show presentation software, your Google Slides, is everyone else. And they're going to they're going to have a like a party.

They're going to have two or three of the friends come over and they're going to do. It's fun. It's a fun idea. And they're going to do presentations on just fun topics. Like I'm going to convince you that Brat is the best album of not only not only this year, but the last five years. I think I'm doing one on Brat and like Sonic Lore or something. It's on Lord. And then my friends doing one on her band or one of her favorite bands. All right. Anyway, it's it's a fun, fun idea.

If you like doing presentations, if you want to do that, that's one of the fun. It's one of the fun. Then we got the big old big screen. You can you can go in there. I've got a slide clicker. Heck yeah. We're doing this right. A little slide clicker. Go ahead. Did Jesse Volume Four by Jacob Collier. I don't know what that one is. Hit Me Hard and Soft by Billie Eilish. That is another big contender for me because that is a great album and she

deserved that Grammy. I don't care if Brat was on there. I think she really deserved that because that is a I cried. I cried listening to that album. It's amazing, life changing. Her voice is beautiful. The beats are beautiful. All right. It was the Rise and Fall of the Midwest Princess by Chappel Rohn. That one is also a huge contender. That album is amazing. You dressed up as Chappel Rohn for Halloween. I did. I made that dress in one night and I'm so proud of it.

Tortured Poets Department by Taylor Swift. That one's all right. See, that right there is why we don't use automatic silence removal in our editing. We don't really edit. We edit a little bit on this episode because of the sickness and whatnot. But. Yeah, that pause right there, that's comedy. That's what's called comedy. Short and Sweet by Sabrina Carpenter isn't like one that I would listen to, but I do appreciate it. You know, it's got that got that tang of Sabrina Carpenter.

But Brat, Hit Me Hard and Soft and the Rise and Fall of the Midwest Princess are definitely my top three on the album of the year chart. And I definitely deserve or I think they definitely deserved one of those to win. Yeah, Lela's got the brat album and vinyl and a compact disc. I should get the Rise and Fall of the Midwest Princess on vinyl. So we went to Barnes and Noble a little while back and they had the brat album. But they had three different versions of it.

There was brat, but not quite brat because it has extra songs. OK, there's brat and then there's brat, but it's completely different, but it's still brat. And then there's brat. And it's the same, but there's three more songs, so it's not. That's the titles of the album. Yes. Let me make sure I'm right. But I'm pretty sure it's just instead of calling it deluxe edition or live or whatever, they just she was she was silly with it. But I have listened to brat so many times since it came out.

Brat, Verantina, what is that? Brat, but it's brat and it's completely different. But it's but also still brat is a great album. It has collaborations on almost every one of the songs. Oh, OK. Yeah. So it's completely different. I've been I've been ripping all of our CDs in flack to the network. So good. It's really cool because like on the first album, there's like songs about.

So Charlie and Lorde, I've had like Lorde, like L.O.R. D.E. the singer artist had like a little bit of a thing where Charlie. Didn't want to collaborate with her because they're completely different. But everyone was saying that they should collaborate. Right. So she made the song Girl So Confusing. And it's kind of about her and Lorde's relationship. And then. Lorde got onto the remix. Oh, my God. She got into the remix of Girl So Confusing. Goal is right now. It's life changing.

And oh, my gosh, they worked it out in the remix. So and it makes you want to work it out. Well, it's just the artificial beefs that are made up between artists. Like the whole Kanye Taylor Swift thing was all artificial. Yeah, they were represented by the same people. I don't think they can drink beef with artificial. But then there's what was the other one? And also about that. It's like Eminem.

With Marilyn Manson, like he slammed Marilyn Manson on his first album, but then Marilyn Manson was in one of his videos for the second album, so it was like, OK, that's it's all they're all just trying to make money. They use each other rage bait, you know, that sort of thing. Beefs sell records. Yeah. So and then when they squashed the beef, it they sell more records when they collab, you know, it's all a scam, but some good songs have come out of it over the years.

So all right, I think I think that's it. That's all I've got in me.

We've been here over an hour and let me know if you want me to rant about Brad because I will know all of your rants can't be negative. No, absolutely. I'm a brand. But like I don't want this show to come off as negative. No, absolutely not. And I feel like this one kind of has been. Maybe the next episode will be a solo episode. And it's just me talking about Brad for an hour.

We have actually done we've done some talking and we may have short little episodes that are just like I really want to tell you all my thoughts about this. Yeah. And let us know if that's something that I would be cool with, like instead of like a you know, one hour thing, just like randomly have a little 10 minute episode about me talking about home networking or, you know, you could skip them. That's a beauty of podcast. It's not like you're required to listen to anything.

But yeah, or if we should split that off into a separate feed, I don't know. That seems like a pain. But we want this show to be what we want it to be. And we hope you are along for the ride. We definitely appreciate you all stopping by. We will be back next week. Hopefully. Hopefully. Probably not. If we're not sick. We do have some other episode ideas coming in. And Randy, I'll get back with you. You're still listening. I got sick. I got sick. All right, everybody.

Bye. I think we're going to wrap it up there. Thanks for swinging in. Leila. Swing in. Get it. Oh, but yeah, everybody have a fantastic week. We'll catch you on the flip side.