This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. A couple stories that we are following today. We'll get into Swamp watching all the DC stuff coming up in a bit. But Amazon long ago past Walmart in terms of market capitalization. But the but it looks like Amazon is finally going to leap frog
Walmart by another key metric, just straight out revenue. Walmart for the last twelve years or so has held the distinction of being the top revenue generator in each quarter. In fact, in twenty twelve, it overtook Exxon Mobile in terms of generation of revenue. Its earnings release after the close of trading today, Amazon has expected to report revenue of one hundred and eighty seven billion, with a b
one hundred and eighty seven billion in revenue. Walmart reports in a couple of weeks they are expecting about one hundred and eighty billions. It would be the first time that Amazon surpasses Walmart in terms of just straight revenue. For those of you you've been counting cows, The USDA's January cattle inventory report showed a slight decline in the cattle herd nationwide. As of January, the total number of cattle and calves was about eighty six point seven million.
That's down about a percent from last year. Beef in the United States, the beef herd has gone down forty percent since nineteen seventy five. It's now at the smallest size since nineteen sixty one. Beef cows that have calved hit a record low at twenty seven point nine million. They said that replacement heifer's has also decreased, indicating continued contraction in what they referred to as the cattle cycle, and as Paul Harvey used to say, we killed a killer.
A Texas man convicted of murdering a pastor was put to death yesterday. Stephen Lwaine Nelson was convicted in the killing of twenty eleven of the Reverend Clint Dobson, beaten, choked, suffocated with the plastic bag inside a church in Arlington, Texas. So the murderer spent his final moment speaking to his wife, Helena, wife of about two weeks, by the way, telling her
to live a full life. She held up her white service dog to the window that was separating them, and then the last thing he said to the warden, I'm not scared. I'm at peace. Let's ride warden. That's what he said. It's time for swamp watch.
I'm a politician, which means I'm a cheat and a liar. And when I'm not kissing babies, I'm stealing that lollipop. Here we got.
The real problem is that our leaders are done.
The other side never quits, so.
What I'm not going anywhere?
So that is how you train the squat.
I can imagine what can be and be unburdened by what has been, you know, have always.
Been gone at present, they're not stupid.
A political flunder is when a politician actually tells the truth.
Have people voted for you with not swamp watch? They're all counteroed.
All right, let's start with the Department of Government Efficiency. It's the one that's creating the most consistent headlines over these last couple of days. What would you say you do here? There was a late night demonstration. I suppose members of Congress upset about Elon Musk in the Department of Government Efficiency and what they are doing in terms of going after and trimming parts of the federal budget. That are unnecessary, or workers that are outdated or don't
do enough. These are four different members of Congress with very different ideas about what Elon Musk is doing. Real innovation is not clean and tidy. It's necessarily disruptive and messy. But that's exactly what Washington needs.
Right now.
Our federal government is being fleeced by handful of billionaires at the expense of every day people.
They're what we call unelected billionaire Oligarden.
At this very moment, an unelected, unaccountable billionaire is rating our government.
I am sickened by the way that the left is categorizing and lying about what Elon Musk is doing in the federal government.
Brandon Gill is a Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and was on CNN this morning and said this, you know, this anger from Democrats about Elon Musk and this Department of Government efficiency is pretty manufactured, considering this is something that Trump campaigned on for months now.
I think my colleagues on the other side of the aisle like to act as if this is something novel, is that this is something that's unexpected. This is part of the Trump mandate. Getting rid of wasteful spending. I think that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle seem not to be upset about our tax dollars going to idiotic projects, particularly within USAID, but the fact that all of this waste is finally being exposed and Elon Musk is playing a key role in that.
Now, along those lines, the Trump administration did agree in a court filing not to expand access to sensitive Treasury Department payment system for special government employees, the DOGE people.
This filing follow a series of hearings for the lawsuit yesterday in the District Court for the DC area brought by current and retired federal employees unions that were trying to block what they said were unlawful was sorry, unlawful access to government employee data and to try to protect any data that DOGE workers had accessed up to that point. Several lawsuits have criticized that there's been too much access given to Elon Musk and to those that are working
for DOGE. A Justice Department Department attorney said the call set on this these calls that two special two special government employees at Treasury had been given the read only access to that system in order to work with Doge said that these employees are helped meant to carry out
policy set by DOGE. But in the filing, the government agreed they would not be expanding any access for those two guys to the system or to share any information that they have access to outside of the Treasury Department.
Another big in that same line, another big court decision. Today, a federal federal judge not his name is George, a federal judge named George has temporarily blocked the administration and DOGE from implementing the Fork in the Road federal employee buyout offer until at least Monday, when they could do a hearing. The fork in the road, by the way, was this eight month buyout. You get eight months of pay and benefits now if you want to retire early.
According to a couple of different to a few different federal unions. They argued that this deferred resignation was unlawful, it was arbitrary, and would result in a dangerous one to two punch to the federal government. Yesterday, President Trump also signed an executive order banning trans women from women in girls sports.
Marco is going to make clear too.
Oh and well, this was what he said. I got those mixed up. This is what he said at the signing of the executive order.
Well, sign a historic executive order to bend men from competing in women's sports. About under the Trump administration, we will defend the proud tradition of female athletes.
He was surrounded by women and girls, invited a bunch of little girls around him at the desk when he was signing, and was making fun of the fact that he was trying to sign his signature perfectly.
Oh, I think we have a ten.
We have a ten. He also suggested that he's somehow going to exert control over the International Olympic Committee and prevent trans women from taking part in women's sports in the Olympics.
Marco is going to make clear to the International Olympic committees there, and he's going to make it as clear as anybody can make it that America categorically rejects transgender lunacy. We want them to change everything having to do with the Olympics and having to do with this absolutely ridiculous subject that we even have to talk about this subject.
I don't know how that's going to go, but we'll see. Now he put it on Mi Marco Rubio's shoulders to go before the International Olympic Committee. Okay, you ready for your jeopardy question. I am alliteration on the map for four hundred on the map.
Yes.
When this span over New York City's East River opened in eighteen eighty three, it cost one penny to cross on foot and five cents for a horse and rider.
Which river? The East River is the only.
The only bridge that has alliteration? What is the Brooklyn Bridge?
You are correct?
Congratulation, Thank you. How much money did I win on that one?
That's four hundred? It's not bad.
Yeah, I'm problem.
With that, Hey, Gary, of course I won.
I deleted the wrong one.
Somebody else had a question about about Statn's Oh yeah, Chrissy had a question about whatever happened with the story of Statins.
Hey. I was just now able to tune in, and so did I already miss Shannon number one weighing in on Shannon number two's cholesterol levels. Yes, I do think Shannon. I'd start with giving up bacon. No, I have pie triglycerides, and I am supposed to stop eating pork and beef and cheese. But I don't mind eating poultry and fish and ve cheese, so try it.
Well.
No, she did give advice. It's medical stuff. I'm not going to get into it. But I'm bringing food this weekend. Maybe you don't have to bring all the food. When you break food. You always bring like seven flatters of food, like I know, and it's always good. Never had bad food from Michelle. If I did, I certainly wouldn't say
it out loud. You've never had bad food. The White House has confirmed that Gavin Newsom met with President Trump yesterday, and then while in DC, he sat down for an interview with CNN and described what is referred to as a weird relationship between the two of us.
We had this relationship, I will say, one of the more I'll lead it to more objective minds, was one of the more interesting relationships in politics because we had this relationship going back during COVID. I mean, we were involved in one hundred lawsuits going back and forth. I mean you can look at the tweets back then calling me a clown, you know, I mean, the worst coverany and yet we were still working together and all that
was a little bit of noise. So it just feels so familiar, and in that respect, I want to continue to respect the office of the Presidency, to respect his authority, and to also engage in a constructive dialogue when it comes to issues of emergencies.
And listen, I'll give Gavin news some credit. He's smart enough to know that he's got to be quiet. These last couple of weeks, with the executive orders that have come out of the White House have infuriated Democrats, and Gavin Newsom is usually at the forefront of some of that and sometimes the loudest voice pushing back against Donald Trump.
It's been pretty quiet last couple of weeks because he knows that the federal government, the federal money that comes in, is going to have to be used to help rebuild after our fires. In terms of that meeting that they had. If you remember when President Trump flew out here to California to get a view of the wildfires and Gavin Newsom met him on the tarmac, he was asked what was what was said between the two of you when
he came down the stairs of Air Force one. He came there to California to tour the wildfire damage.
Bring us into that, I know a lot of us were wondering what was happening in that moment.
I just again back to open hand on a close fist welcoming back to the state of California, and I don't want, you know, people start relipping lips here.
I want to go straight to the source talking about water.
I mean, we were in middle again, in the middle of a conversation that we ended.
At the end of right into the water.
In that conversation, he's very focused on water, and I appreciate that. I'm focused on water. It's one of the most I mean, I mean California, you know, it's so this is this is a top issue for us.
By the way, adding to the uncomfortability, the state of California finalized the approval of twenty five million dollars in legal funding to challenge the Trump administration to two bills at twenty five million dollars apiece to challenge whatever's going on with the Trump administration. I don't know if that came up in conversation. It's time for tech talk.
The machines are getting smarter. This is tech Talk, brought to you by Skynette.
Mark Saltzman is our tech guru who translates a lot of this stuff into understandable, understandable words for us.
Okay, or as I like to say, breakdown geek speak into street speaking.
Oh that's do you have that on a T shirt somewhere?
That is my cheesy cat catchphrase, my tagline on my podcast. But yeah, we talked.
We talked last week about deep seek and what it means and how it works. And I had said, you know, I was unaware of how many people use AI on a regular basis for job stuff, responding to emails, helping schedule their days, all that sort of stuff. I asked AI in this case chat GPT to come up with a radio play that we were going to do for our Christmas presentation last the end of last year.
It was.
It was awful. It was really really cheesy and bad, which you know, just goes to show it's not perfect and obviously can't replicate humanity. But you have an article about using some specific prompts to help figure out exactly what you're looking for and how to get what you're looking for.
Yeah, just a point of clarification, it's my colleague Kim Commando at USA Today who wrote this piece. But it's funny after we chatted last week on tech Talk Thursdays, I did get email and messages rather on social media from KFI listeners asking for examples of using deep seek and chat gept, so it actually fed nicely. So yeah, I thought i'd share a couple of things that you can try, whether you like chat, GPT, deep seek, or Google, Gemini or copilot, those are sort of the more popular ones.
The first thing is to ask the it's called a prompt what you type in. You would type in, how do I make this better? And then you add in anything you've already written, like a speech, a radio play, a school essay, an email, and then it will actually it'll look at what you did and give you a better version of it. And you can say, by the way, Gary, I want this radio play. It was too cheesy. I
don't want it as cheesy. You can actually tweak what it delivers for you and it'll it'll customize it even further. So that's a good one. Another one is to say to type this in, explain this like I'm ten, and then and then write what you want explain to you. I don't know climate change, nuclear fusion, how the stock
market works. I don't know, and then it will like you could say, or tell me like I'm fifteen, or it'll actually write it in a language based on the age that you ask it to give it to you. And so if you really need a primer in plain English, that's a great way to do it, and it really works. You could also, by the way, say explain this to me in one hundred words. In five hundred words, you
can specify all of that. On a related note, you can say, explain both sides of the argument, and then you type in what the argument is about, you know, whatever, politics, whatever, any personal dilemmas. Tell me the pros and cons or tell me both sides of this argument, and you'd be
surprised how good it is. And then the last one would be to tell the AI, the gener of AI platform to remember blank, remember that I'm a tea drinker, not a coffee drinker, or remember that you know I work in sales, or something like that, and you'd be surprised going forward. It's really good. It's very accurate. It'll remember things that you've once told it, so long as you're still signed in, of course. And then speaking of which, a friend of mine, he's got a good sense of humor.
He didn't have the best year last year. He's in the promotional products industry, and he wrote to in Chachipt roast me, and so it said, so let me get this straight, Mike. You're in the promotional products business, but twenty twenty four promoted nothing but losses and it says your business took such a nose dive. Even Gravity was impressed. NASA called they want to study your trajectory. Like it gave him. It was like, really funny. You know, your
stress levels have been so high. Your fitbit filed for workers comp and then it turned it into something more positive and you know, motivating for twenty twenty five. But like, it's really funny. So you can even ask chachipt to roast you. It may ask for a bit more if you didn't ask it to remember anything about it. But yeah, I could say I'm a tech reviewer roast me, you know. So yeah, so that's a couple of things to keep
in mind. Soft. I do get that question I've been hearing about AI, but what do I really do with it? Or or type in your packing list for an upcoming vacation and ask your AI what am I missing, and it'll look at what you wrote and give you some suggestions. Yeah. So Kim Commando wrote a good piece in USA today on that.
I'll give her. You know, I gave you the credit, but I'll get credit for that. But I have a question about chat GPT. I know has a paid tier as opposed to the free tier which most people are familiar with. Do other ones also have that paid tier? And if so, what do I get for the money?
Yeah, that's a great question. So they most of them do. Google Gemini. It's called Google Gemini for Advanced, and that is a subscription model. So it gives you more results, more up to date results. Same with chatchipt like it'll give you more current information. It like it'll give you more coding abilities for those in business who want something coded for their website, so it unlocks more features, more
up to date features. It may give you the opportunity, depending on the platform, to verbally ask your prompt instead of typing it in like more conversational. So yeah, there's a few different things you would get depending on which one you use, and some include image creation that may not be free, like you know, when you want it
to generate a photo for your website. Let's say, okay, I want a black couple between thirty and forty sipping a Pina colod on a beach, you know, for it to create that image for you that you can use royalty free. You may have to use one of those paid versions. Yeah, but instead of having to hire, you know, actors on a beach and a photographer and get the sunset just right, it's all AI, you know, for better
or for worse. I don't want to take anybody's job away, but if budgets are tight and you need a royalty free image, it's a pretty wild tool.
There is something that Kim Commando says at the end of the article, which is that you should think of AI as your first step and not your last. And I think a lot of people have done that where they say I don't even know where to begin writing.
A earlier this week, we talked about using AI to start writing things like a best man speech or maybe a eulogy that you're giving it a funeral or something like that, and not that you would just take whatever the computer spits out and read that, but that you would use that as something that you could then embellish you could you know, add specific more specifics to and things like that.
It's a great tip. Yeah, I mean we all get lazy where you know, the path the least resistance. But yeah, you don't want to read a eulogy for Kevin's sakes about you know, something that AI wrote and you didn't even vet it, Like that's not good? Uh So no, of course, yeah, you've got to even if it's not something like that you're going to do in public, you have to vet the data because it could be wrong.
You know. As a journalist, I'm tempted, but I'm still holding off from using AI in my research when I'm writing an article because one time I dabbled and I'm like, hey, how many users does WhatsApp have worldwide? And the answer was three billion, and it was very sure, and it gave me all these you know, citations, and then it found out then I found out it was actually two billion users worldwide, and I'm glad I didn't go with the three because that's a very big difference in number.
So you have to do you have to cross reference for sure.
There was an article I read this morning, and I'm going to talk about Super Bowl commercials coming up in the next segment, and there was an article about a Google specific commercial that they used AI to develop. One guy was using AI to develop an advertisement for his cheese company, and AI got the statistics wrong about what kind of cheese is most popular, and that caused a
lot of Uh. Google now has to go back and change their ad because they just assumed that their own AI was going to get it right and it got it wrong.
Yep, Well you know what happens when you assume cheese. Yeah, exactly, there's holes in your logic. A sorry, cheesy joke.
That's awful. You did also write an article, I mean, the best way to sell your unwonted stuff online. And what we'll do is we'll throw a link up so people can check that out as see.
Yeah, turn year old your stash into cash and take off those post holiday credit card.
Builds full of T shirt slogans.
I know, right, and I didn't ask chat gipt to write those for me.
Dear chat Ept, how can Mark turn his great slogans into money back?
Thanks?
Garrett, all right, have a great weekend. The economic losses from the Eton fire Palisades fire could range anywhere from ninety five billion to one hundred and sixty four billion dollars. This is a new report that came out this week from a couple of economists at UCLA. That would mean that the fires are the second costliest natural disaster in the history of the country. Twenty nine people died, thirty seven thousand acres burned, sixteen thousand structures destroyed, and that
includes more than eleven thousand single family homes. The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel. That is according to a truth Social post from President Trump this morning. This is his explanation as to how this was going to take place. Of course, he made headlines when he was meeting with Benjamin Nett and Yahoo the other night about how the United States was going to take over Gaza, empty it out, bulldoze it, and
start over. Basically, he said, the US, working with great developmental development teams from around the world, would slowly and carefully begin the construction of what would become one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on Earth. Of all the court action today the speed bumps in
President Trump's agenda. A federal judge in Seattle has issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against the executive Order on birthright citizenship follows a judge in Maryland who yesterday issued a temporary block on the order. This judge in Seattle, by the way, Judge John Kunauer, is a Reagan appointee. A newer strain of H five and one bird flu has spread to dairy herds in Nevada.
Of them.
As a matter of fact, the Nevada State Department of Agriculture says this new strain has been connected to serious infections in humans, but it's different from the strain that was detected in other dairy herds around the country. So this newer strain D one dot one was first detected in birds and people who came in contact with infected birds.
That's all going on. Actually, next hour, we're going to talk a little bit more about how we dodged a bird flu pandemic in the past here in the United States. It's been in sixties. I think it was hyary.
Now where is she? I thought one football season ended for the Chargers. She would be there on a rig.
If you already mentioned it and I missed it, I'm sorry.
Not sorry.
Right, No one can plan a root canal. And sometimes when your dentist only does some root canals at certain times of day on certain days, you're stuck with what the dentist offers you. You're gonna come over, right, I mean you've said you are.
Yes, because I guilted you.
No, that's not why. No, because I still invited you. You could have guilted me and I could have ignored you.
Yeah, that's that's true.
Hey, Gary, Hey, the other day I heard Conway. Let's just say, he sounded less than interested to going to your super Bowl party. In fact, I think you might have been clowning on you a little bit. Uh oh, But hey, buddy, if you need someone else to take his spot, I'm more than happy.
So we have options.
Wow, how many people are going to be at your super Bowl party?
I do not know the final count. We had one dropout yesterday, we had one potential, we had one possible confirm today, So I don't know. How many do you want there? How many is too many?
I don't know. I don't know. I mean that's a question for you. It's your house.
How many, Well, I'm trying to because I'm trying to gauge between the number of people who are adamant, like there to watch football period. That's not me, or people who are there to socialize and just for the experience and maybe the halftime show. Yeah, that's you, that's me.
Okay.
So on the one end, I have I have Shannon right, yes, and she's gonna if she'll throw a flag if you talk during the game. My husband's the same, okay, good, I have huge I have a penalty flag for him then as well.
Okay.
And then you've got people on the lower end who are like, we're just gonna have fun. We're just gonna have fun, and there's a game in the background, and we'll have fun. Is that what you So you'd be down at that end.
That's the end I'm going to be out, okay.
So I'd say we're about half and half, and I would say I'm going to put the number at about in terms of who will who will show up officially, I'm going to guess eighteen, oh, that's a good number. Maybe twenty okay, because you never know, you never know, and twenty one if that guy comes. I emailed him my address.
You did. Oh wow, you're brave.
The commercial?
Are you a big deal?
Do you like the commercials love the commercial.
So the commercials. My wife loves the commercials as well, more so than the game. Obviously, the rates this year somewhere about what is it, eight million, I think for a thirty second spot for Fox. And what's interesting about these is that previously we would get a lineup of here's here's the advertisers we know who are going to be. Obviously, you've got your Budweisers and your Cores, and you've got your computer companies, and you've got your blockbuster movies that
are going to advertise stuff like that. And that was it. We just knew which advertisers were that we didn't know anything about what the commercial was going to be. Now now we're getting some of these previews for ads as early as November, and according to the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business professor Gerald Tellis, companies tease their ads to try to get a greater awareness with
the eventual ad once it comes out on during game day. Said, the more you tease, the greater the audience on the day itself, and the greater chance of virality. One of the earliest examples of pregame exposure was the twenty eleven I can't believe it was that long ago. But the twenty eleven Volkswagen ad. Do you remember that where the little kid was dressed up as Darth Vader and he walks out and he uses the force to start the car.
I don't remember that one.
It's a great commercial, and I have to look at it. It was one of the greats. It was released a few days before the Super Bowl. It'll earned eleven million views before anyone even saw it on the game on that Sunday, and they said that that was kind of a paradigm shift from being super secret about your ad campaign to the early trailer to just kind of chum the waters for the excitement when it comes to people
who wanted to watch that. I didn't realize that twenty eleven Volkswagen spot was really the first one that was released before it showed up in the Super Bowl commercials. In the lineup for Super Bowl commercials, you got everybody, by the way this year, Adrian Brody, You've got Adam Brody, you got Karen Colkin. How about Eugene Levy, Shanaiah Twain, Jeremy Strong, Billy Crystal, all of the muppets are coming back, David Beckham with clothes on, which is weird?
Do we have puppies?
I'm sure you've got puppies. There cannot be there cannot be something without puppies. But there is a Budweiser commercial with horses.
We know.
It follows a young Clydesdale who wants to deliver beer with.
His with his family.
I'm not sure there's a puppy in that one, but I guarantee there will be a puppy at some point. Bring money too, because we're gonna gamble. Oh yes, okay, but since I'm not taking a cut, it's completely legal. Okay, all right, we'll do all of our trending stories coming up. We'll talk about bird flu, how we dodged a bird flu pandemic in the past, back in nineteen fifty seven. And then there's a strange science slash Donald Trump White House story before we get into the real strange science.
That's all coming up on Gary and Shannon. You've been listening to The Gary and Shannon Show. You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand. On the iHeartRadio app,