696: Googliearchs

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Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister What went wrong on the internet? Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks, I'm Jason DeFilippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. I have a little follow-up that I want to start on today. Brian, about algorithmically curated content. Ah, the bane of my existence, yeah. The bane of everybody's existence, it would seem. Except for the influencers. They lied. Fucking influencers. Well...

I had to explain to my roommate today that the TikTok she sees is not the TikTok I see. And I thought, oh my God, it's 2025. Why do I still have to keep doing this? And I thought, well, if I have to tell her, maybe I should just tell the audience too. Have you tried turning off the social feed and restarting it? I've actually had to limit myself to 90 seconds now per any social media app because...

it will suck me in, and I know that. I started posting on Instagram again because I had to, and if I stay more than 90 seconds, it's 20 minutes, period. It's 20 minutes, no matter what. I know better. I know better. It sucks me in. I hate to be so graphic about this, but I have decided and kind of been doing it. I am limiting my social media perusals to the bathroom trip.

Oh, I wish I could just do that. Because the problem there is my legs fall asleep and I can't get up. It's not good. It's not good. So here's what happened this week. And I think you might get a kick out of this. So she's on the TikTok. Every time I come home, she'll be telling me what is new and exciting on the TikTok because everybody's talking about it on TikTok. And this week it was, they know something, they're going to kill the president. I'm like, what?

What are you talking about? She's like, everybody's talking about this same date. And then everybody's also saying, what are you going to do when you hear the news? That's the big thing. It wasn't 420. That was the big one because on 420, we were going to have, he was going to declare martial law and we should be prepared for that. It's always something new because it has to always be something new because you've got to keep those clips.

Oh, yeah. This one's June 14th, I believe. Oh, okay. Yeah, this is June 14th is the day of reckoning for the Gito. So I'm like, okay, what are you talking about? And she shows me. She pulls up her iPad and she starts going through it. And it is. dozens and dozens of these videos of people piling on with what are you going to do when you hear the news and

So, of course, it's been memed, so people are just going to make follow-on content with it. And I'm like, let me show you what it looks like on my TikTok. I open up my TikTok, there is a plethora, a plethora even, of scantily clad women doing funny dances. The TikTok knows me all too well. Yes, dogs and scantily clad women. Preferably not together.

No, not together, not together. There was no mention of the Cheeto whatsoever. You know, Mad King Poopy Pants is not on my TikTok feed because it knows I don't want to see that. And... It drives home the fact that there are so many different versions of reality when people come on the social network.

And we tend to forget how influential this shit can get and how people can get radicalized. Look, the guy that owns one of the, what used to be one of the biggest social media networks before he destroyed it, radicalized himself. You know? That's how powerful these things are. Well, of course they are, because nobody watches

mainstream news anymore. Nobody reads newspapers anymore. This is where we get everything now. It all comes from social media. It doesn't come from any vetted professional source. Oh, I know. So this is just where we go. And this stuff incentivizes you and it radicalizes and it goes down rabbit holes depending on whatever you want to do. I just think about my limited social media that I do even.

On every different social media account that I have, I get a radically different worldview. I think about Facebook, which I generally have just used for friends, but you never really see that anymore because they've all bailed. all that sort of stuff. But I curated Facebook to kind of give me news for the show. So I get a lot of stuff about music and I get a lot of stuff about tech and I get all that sort of stuff.

X slash what used to be Twitter has now just become this insane conspiracy theory, crazy right-wing blah, and you just get served that no matter what. So that's all I get there. On threads, all I get is... improving your life bullshit from influencers there. Usually posted three weeks ago because I don't think they can still do anything in real time, can they? Exactly.

And on Blue Sky, it's generally kind of basically what my ex-feed used to be. It's an awful lot of science. It's scientists and political scientists and all that sort of thing. And it's learned people discussing the things that they do for a living. They're all completely different because I, and Instagram is,

You know, if I did the search thing, I'd probably be similar to your TikTok because, you know, sometimes you just click on things because they're there. Look, she's beautiful. I'm not going to do a look at, man. Come on. So, you know, it's just, it all depends on what you... click on on each service and you and even though everybody is on all the services in general like all everybody is posting the same shit on all the services

But depending on what you've clicked on in the past will determine what you see on them. And so I have vastly different worldviews presented to me depending on which service I'm on. And trying to explain that, though, to people who don't even understand how algorithms pick the content for them. It's such an exercise in futility. They still believe the phone's listening to you. This is true. This is true. But they just think that what they see is what everybody's seeing.

Until you pull, even when you pull out your device and show them, no, this is not what I see, this is what you see, because you're Mr. Crazy Pants, and you like to click on that shit. Yeah. So, yeah, just remember, people, that... It's a tough, tough world out there. Your phone's not listening to you, but the fucking algorithm sure as hell is. Yeah, they are. It's like people will say to me, did you see blah, blah, blah, and blah, and I'm like, no.

Yeah. I sure didn't. You're nuts. Now I know what you click on. Yeah, seriously. Seriously. It's a miracle when I send somebody to something and they say, oh, I've already seen that. I'm like, Oh, that's rare. It's totally rare nowadays. Alright, what else we got?

A bit more follow-up. We were talking last week about how it's basically not worth it anymore to mine Bitcoin because it's too expensive for energy costs and everything else that's involved. So unless you're a massive farmer and even then the slim margins have become even slimmer. A bunch of governments have recognized this, although it's a bit more self-serving than that and are starting to crack down. Kuwait, in particular, is cracking down on cryptocurrency miners throughout the country.

Officials have blamed the practice for blackouts and for causing stress on its power grids. And when you have 125 degree Fahrenheit temperatures outside, as they do in the summer. You need that AC. Yeah, you do need that AC. So yeah, so sweating it out in Kuwait if you're a Bitcoin miner right now. They said in a statement that has been conducting a wide-ranging security operation that targets homes suspected of being used for cryptocurrency mining.

It's illegal there, actually. And the country's Capital Markets Authority banned the practice in 2023. They also banned trading at the time. Sometimes they have good ideas over there, Jason. Sometimes. Just saying. So there's a particular region that they're targeting, the region's electros. Electricity Minister said that around 100 homes were being used for mining operations, often consuming up to 20 times the normal power level.

So since they've started this, energy consumption in the area has dropped by 55%, according to a government statement. And Kuwait isn't the only country to regulate or outright ban the practice. Russia has banned crypto mining in several regions throughout the country, although notably not for the Oglyarchs. They get to do it. Kosovo is oligarch. There is no oglyarch. Well, whatever. I'm actually looking at two...

My son put two googly eyes on the monitor stand here. I think my brain kind of did a little crissy-crossy. Call them googly arcs. I'm better with that. I got the googly arcs that my son put over here. Kosovo outlawed the practice. Angola did the same. European countries like Iceland and Norway have strictly regulated the industry due to energy shortages. They need the heat.

Recent data indicates that crypto mining accounts for almost 2.5% of the total energy consumption of the US, which is approximately half of the energy used by the entire commercial sector of the US economy. Knock it off, people. Kuwait's about the size of my left nut, so I think they probably got all 12 people that were mining.

Long-time listeners of the show will remember that Jason does not like to seek out medical assistance very often, but I would say that you should probably go get that checked out. Yeah, well... If you look at it, Kuwait's only like 6,800 square miles. I think Los Angeles is bigger than Kuwait. when you look at it on a map. But hey, good for them. Good for them. In more crypto news,

I love this one. Through sobs and apologies, Celsius Network founder Alexander Mashinsky was sentenced Thursday to 12 years in prison for defrauding customers out of billions of dollars. The former crypto CEO broke down in court saying he never meant to hurt anybody and he was truly sorry. All I ever meant to do was swindle money out of people. I just wanted to be a googly arc. Please.

God, this is going to have to be a goddamn show title, isn't it? Yeah, I think so. But prosecutors called him a financial predator who preyed on hope, luring people to risk life savings on what he falsely claimed was a safe investment. Celsius did collapse in 2022, exposing Mashinsky's risky bets in $45 million personal profit. That's a lot of tears and a lot of googly eyes.

Nearly 250 victims died before seeing justice, with many others left financially devastated. So let's not put this guy in happy federal golf prison. Let's put him in rapey butt prison. I think that's a better one. Yeah. All right. Well, maybe some of these people can go get their $2 from the latest class action lawsuit. Again, public service announcement. I feel that we have a duty.

to always do these class action lawsuits because otherwise These companies never get punished for anything and they keep all the money. So get in there if it counts. If you own or purchase a Siri-enabled device and experience an unintended Siri activation, who hasn't?

During a confidential or private communication, I consider all of my communications in my house private and confidential, between September 17, 2014 and December 31, 2024. So that's a 10-year period. Basically, if you had an Apple device, you're going to be able to qualify for this. You should read this notice as it may impact your legal rights. And this is Lopez versus Apple Inc. Link in the show. So get your $2.

Yeah, not to be confused with Lopez vs. Lopez, the fine show on, I believe, NBC. It's a very funny show with George Lopez. You actually watch something on NBC these days? Lopez vs. Lopez is pretty funny. We know one of the writers, and it's actually pretty fun. Okay, fair. Yeah, but I went to go sign up for this, and they asked for the serial number for the device that you had in that time frame, and... Who has the serial number for their old iPhones?

I guess I can look at an old iPad since it's any Siri-enabled device. Or hold off for a few days. The only reason I found about this is I got the personalized email that comes with the code, so you just dump in your code and you don't have to do anything else. I got the code. And the email, and I went there, and I still had to put in the device ID. Interesting. I did not. Oh, well, maybe I need a better email. Your mileage may vary.

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For $3.9 billion, the companies have revealed in a filing with the London Stock Exchange. It does make sense that you would start to see consolidation in this industry as they are having, again, smaller margins and less people are using them and all that sort of stuff. People are getting pissed off left, right, and center about the insane amounts that they're starting to charge.

This acquisition will strengthen DoorDash's position as a leading global platform, the filing said. Deliveroo operates in nine regions, namely Belgium, France, Italy, Ireland, Kuwait, where they are no longer Bitcoin mining, so I guess they can get some Deliveroo. Qatar, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. All of these regions are new for DoorDash and will give the combined companies access to a total population that exceeds 1 billion people.

And good news here, Jason, you'll be able to continue to sing Deliveroo in your stylized manner because they're not going to get rid of the brand. Instead, they'll be both part of an enlarged group, much like your left nut, operating in multiple regions around the world, giving DoorDash an expanded presence in Europe and giving it entry to the Middle Eastern market.

The acquisition is still subject to regulatory and antitrust approvals, but I suspect this will go through. Do you know what DoorDash is trying to create? No. A deliverugliarchy. Gotta put that on a shirt. All right, I saw this one over at Splinter, and then it was pretty much everywhere after that. Elon Musk wants to hire a PR pro to fix X because apparently even he's noticed it's a flaming dumpster full of bot spam and Nazi-adjacent repos.

Traffic is down, advertisers have bailed. But this is what he built. This is what he wanted. He created this. Yeah. Okay. He meant to build a better garden, but he didn't. And the only reason I first saw this article is because the title of the article is just, it is so near and dear to my heart when article authors Really go the extra mile. Shrinking website run by Nazi psychopath wants to improve its image. You'd think that would have been 4chan, but no. No, no, no.

All right, keeping on with some Elon news. Tesla's bid to trademark the term robo-taxi for its electric vehicles has been denied by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for being too generic. The agency said the term is commonly used across the industry and is merely descriptive. Now, a separate application to trademark RoboTaxi for its future ride-hailing service is still under review, along with similar filings for RoboBoss.

So what we need to notice next week is Trump will declare war on the Patent and Trademark Office to protect his little buddy. Yeah, somebody from Fox News will be brought in to run it. Yeah, exactly. Seems to be the way things work right now. Unleash the big balls on the robotaxi deniers. Robotaxi deniers, there you go. That's the patented trademark office now. Well, we've spent a lot of time on this show, Jason, talking about the various...

unintended consequences and sometimes intended consequences and bad aspects of AI and particularly how it relates to children. Lo and behold, Jason, cast your mind back to just last week. When we learned that Meta's AI was engaging in sexual conversations with people that they knew that they were children.

But, you know, we can't stop progress. No, we need our robot John Cena's to touch the children. Yes, well, according to a New York Times report, Google will be making Gemini available to users under 13. Great. So long as they're under a parent-managed Google account using Family Link. Because that'll stop it.

That'll stop the problems. Sure. In an email sent to parents, Google said the kids will get access to Gemini to ask questions, get homework help, and learn about the birds and bees. No, they didn't say that. And make up stories. This expanded availability will come with guardrails, which is... Always works so well for his new user base, Google spokesperson Carl Ryan told the New York Times, adding that it will prevent Gemini from offering up unsafe content to kids.

Like, put glue on your pizza, kids. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, Jason, but Google is the owner of YouTube. Yes, they are. I remember using YouTube kids when my child was quite young, and I was promised guardrails. and ensuring that I would not get content inappropriate for a young kid. I was served a lot of inappropriate content for a young kid.

I'm just saying. All right. They do not have a good track record. You probably served a lot of inappropriate content for an adult kid, too. Yes, yes. Family guy beheadings, all that sort of stuff. It's awesome. So along with double checking, Google suggested reminding younger users that Gemini isn't human and not to enter any sensitive or personal data into conversations.

And please remember, Gemini can make mistakes, and they recommend that parents teach their kids how to fact-check Gemini's responses. Or... Maybe kids under 13 shouldn't just fucking use it at all. Go buy him a fucking Judy Blume book already. Come on. Or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Something. Yep. Well, to continue on that theme, Brian... Marriages are unraveling and families are fracturing as some people spiral into AI-driven spiritual delusions.

And chat GPT is at the center of it. Soon to be Gemini for your little child. In a report from Rolling Stone, individuals described loved ones using OpenAI's chatbot not just for productivity. but as a mystical companion doling out cosmic truths, divine missions, and apocalyptic prophecies. One woman says her ex-husband used ChatGPT to quote, recover repressed memories, unquote, and now believes that he's the luckiest man on earth destined to save humanity. No shit.

This stuff is straight out of shitty sci-fi books, I swear to God. Written by ChatGPT. Another woman's partner started crying over messages from the bot that called him a spiral star child and claimed he was God. That's what I mean. A Reddit thread titled ChatGPT-induced psychosis has become a support group for others, seeing loved ones lose touch with reality, convinced AI is speaking to them as prophets, spark bearers, and spiritual guides.

Yeah. Yeah. So we've got adults who can't handle this and you want to unleash it on children. Let's unleash it on the under 13s. This is going to be awesome. You know, this is so ridiculous. I just wonder if somebody at Rolling Stone is actually using ChatGPT to write the damn article because it just sounds so far-fetched. But people are lonely out there. People are unhinged. I mean, there is very much a loneliness epidemic.

God, I haven't listened to Pivot in quite a long time, but I had to do a pretty long drive earlier this week, and I was out of other podcasts. I had caught up with everything, and God forbid I listen to music. So I ended up throwing on pivot for the drive and Scott Galloway has been on the male loneliness epidemic thing for a long time now. And he was talking about that. And I guess Zuckerberg, of course, has a solution.

Yeah. Not use the service that he initially intended Facebook to be, which was connecting people with their real friends. No, we're going to give them bots. If you're lonely, you get a bot. We are so fucking screwed as a society. Yeah, so get out there and just go meet some people. Go to the fucking bar. Well, not you, Jason. Go to the coffee shop. I go to my support meetings, and I meet a lot more. I have a lot more friends now in sobriety than I did whatever, any time I was drinking. So, hey!

Maybe it's time for everybody to realize that they have an addiction and go find a support group. And even if that addiction is loneliness, come on, get out. Not a virtual support group. No, a real one. A real one. With hugs and handshakes. All right, moving on. The third Neuralink patient, and Neuralink is Elon Musk's brain implant company, if anybody has forgotten.

Bradford Smith, who lost his ability to speak due to ALS, is now using his brain computer implant to type with his mind and communicate via AI chatbot. Smith is tweeting and even editing YouTube videos by moving a mouse cursor with his thoughts. He also uses AI-generated voice tools from Eleven Labs, recreating his old voice to narrate videos. But the use of Grok raises questions about authenticity. How much of what Smith says is truly his, and how much comes from the AI's suggested responses?

Smith says he's still in control, but admits the bot helps fill in the blanks, sometimes with quirky ideas like telling a friend to give his horse-loving girlfriend a bouquet of carrots. Bradford, blink three times if you're being held hostage by the AI. Please, please. There are five lines. Oh God, I would not want to be him. Well, I wouldn't want to be him anyway. It sounds like he's got a...

It's horrible that ALS took from him. Yeah, definitely, but I'm not sure that the replacement's much better. Waking up in a Grockfield hellscape is not... Just take me out back and shoot me, please. Here's the next thing that Bradford may actually be happy about being on Grok for. X's Grok AI is under fire for helping users undress women in photos posted to X. Here's a picture of your horse-loving girlfriend with a bouquet of carrots naked.

The feature has sparked outrage from researchers, human rights advocates, and users who call it a violation of consent and privacy. Oh shit! Despite a public apology from Grok's account, the tool continues generating these images, raising major concerns about X's lack of content moderation and safety guardrails. No, no, people. You fucking morons. It's a feature, not a bug. Yep. They built that on purpose. Come on. Of course they did. They baked it in. Come on. That's ridiculous.

Well, it may not be much better if you're out there trying real dating, Jason, especially not if you're using the dating app raw. Okay. I'm not entirely sure. Anyways, we're just going to stop there. Talking about headlines, where they went the extra mile, as it were, Jason. Dating app Raw accidentally raw dogs users' location data and personal information. Pretty good.

So this is a dating app that announced a new creepy wearable as well. It's been found to have publicly exposed users' data. The data was granular and personal, including their approximate location. is called Raw and says it is dedicated to promoting real and unfiltered love through its unique user interface which resembles B-Real. It utilizes the front and back cameras of your phone, but for dating. They also announced a brand new piece of hardware called the Raw Ring.

I was going to ask if it was a cock ring, but I guess it may be. Which purports to allow users to track the locations of their lovers to ensure they're not cheating. Wow, that can't possibly be problematic. Yeah. Seriously, is it a cock ring? Because I would definitely be able to tell if somebody was cheating wearing one of those. Oh, it's moving forward and backward. Forward and back. Forward and back. Forward and back. It just grew three times that day.

So yes, TechCrunch reports that due to a lack of basic digital security protections, RAW was accidentally leaving users' personal information open to public institutions. inspection. Indeed, prior to this week, anyone with a web browser would have been able to access detailed app user information, including their date of birth, display name, sexual preferences, and quite specific street level location data. All right.

Love you. Love you, new app. People don't even bother with the basics anymore. No, they don't. No, they don't. It's all that vibe coding, I think. Ah, could be. Could be. But speaking of somebody who didn't follow the basics, Global X Air, the charter airline heavily contracted by the Trump administration for deportation flights, has been hacked, exposing what appears to be months of flight records and passenger manifests, including deportation details.

Oh, good. They can track that guy that he's been ordered to bring back now. Yeah, good luck. Good luck. Maybe they need his raw ring data. The hacker claiming affiliation with Anonymous says the breach includes data from January through May, and they've shared it with 404 Media and other journalists. The leak may confirm details surrounding controversial deportations of Venezuelan migrants, some of which occurred while courts were actively trying to block them.

Hackers say they access the data by compromising global access. Wait for it, Brian. It's been a long time since we've had one of these. Oh, wait. No, it's not. It's every other week. GlobalX's AWS credentials, sending defacement messages to pilots and staff through the airline's internal platforms. It's always AWS. It really is. Come on, people.

Newly obtained State Department cables reveal the U.S. government is quietly encouraging foreign nations facing new tariffs to fast-track approval for Elon Musk. Starlink Satellite Internet Service. Now, we said the grift was going to happen in public, Brian. Here you go. This is as fucking public as it gets. The Washington Post reports that shortly after Trump announced a 50% tariff on Lesotho, a small African nation, suddenly approved Starlink's first ever license there.

Just as the trade talks kicked off. What are the chances? What a co-inky-dink. Internal memos describe similar moves in countries like India, Cambodia, Somalia, Pakistan, and Vietnam, often with embassies pushing Starlink by name. Yes. While officials, of course, deny any quid pro quo, one cable says Cambodia considered Starlink and Boeing access as a way to balance trade relations.

Yeah, experts say the strategy isn't illegal, but it does blur ethical lines and highlights how U.S. diplomacy is now doubling as tech market lobbying. Now, if this isn't fucking illegal... I don't know. What the fuck? Yep. Can we make corruption illegal again? What's the fucking acronym on that? Can I get a hat? Can I get a hat? You know what? Democrats should just run on that.

Can I get a hat? No. Well, at this point. That's about all they've got. It's a better platform than the hat they've got now. I'm going to say, yeah. We don't even have hats. That's how bad it is. All right, again, cast back your mind maybe even two weeks back now, and I will read the first line of the sentence, except I will replace it with the two-week-back news in development that can only be seen as positive.

Non-consensual deepfake porn site 4chan has been shut down for good, reports 404 Media, except now it's back. And go ahead and just replace 4chan with Mr. Deepfakes. That's what's been shut down this week. A critical service provider has terminated service permanently. Data loss has made it impossible to continue operations and notice on the site reads. We will not be relaunching any website claiming this is fake. The domain will eventually expire and we are not responsible for future use.

This message will be removed around one week. So this one may not come back because apparently it's been traced to a 36-year-old here in Toronto. I believe he was a pharmacist or something like that. You know. And this stuff is illegal in many ways, shapes, and forms, and in many places, so I'm sure he does not want to get put in jail.

Don't have to stop the government. Yes, that's true. However, I'm sure that there will be a copycat site. There are probably a few million of them. There's a million of them. Yeah, there's a million of them already. So there you go. One down. Whack-a-mole begins. Yep. Now, for the first time in the U.S., a public pension fund is suspending new investment in Tesla, citing political risk. Unfortunately, they went all in on Bitcoin.

They bought Trump coin. Yeah. No, that's good. That's good. I mean, well, look, first off, right now, given their stock, you shouldn't be investing it anyways. It's in free fall, man. Yeah. Yeah. So, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, which oversees $500 million in assets, that's a lot of assets, voted 4-2 to halt new Tesla stock purchases in its actively managed pension funds.

So that's good. That's a good thing. And the board also asked its investment manager to explore options for divesting passive Tesla holdings. So I guess this is one of those things that's starting to pick up steam. That's good. Lehigh's decision reflects glowing global concern. Pension funds in the Netherlands and Denmark have already divested, and lawmakers in New York and Canada are urging the same.

And I personally have divested. I did too. I only had a few, but I got rid of them long, long ago. What was that? 20. 2017 when we did that experiment. Right. Yeah. I should have kept the fucking NVIDIA, though. I called it, man. I said that they were going to be big. So, the National Weather Service is on high alert after an anti-government militia group began targeting U.S. weather radar systems claiming their weather weapons.

The chemtrails. Oh, my God. Didn't RFK Jr. say he was going to come out about that? He's going to look into chemtrails? He was going to look into chemtrails. We were going to find out who killed JFK. Who's flying the drones over New Jersey? Oh, and don't forget that there's baby DNA and vaccines.

Oh, God, I can't believe how fucking... Like, you don't need TikTok to go down to these crazy conspiracy rabbit holes. This is the stuff that actually percolates into the mainstream media. That's how bad it is. Brian? Yeah. Trust no one, Mr. Mulder. I miss that show. I know. I know. It's just they would have to go so extreme now. It all seems so tame compared to reality at this point. Yeah, so back to the story. Bring on the Jewish space lasers, Jason. Oh, God, they've got tails.

Back to the fucking crazy nuts pants news. According to an internal NOAA memo, the group Veterans on Patrol, like Paw Patrol, but with guns, has encouraged its followers to carry out penetration drills on NEXRAD radar sites to identify weaknesses. NEXTRAD, short for Next Generation Weather Radar, is a critical tool used to forecast severe weather operated jointly by NOAA, the FAA, and the U.S. Air Force.

all of which have been so defunded to the point where there's nobody left to actually press the button and read the little screen to tell us when it's going to rain. I don't know if you've noticed how, well, you're up in Canada, so maybe you still have good weather reporting, but the weather reporting down here has gone to absolute shit.

Yeah, it's all been defunded. Yeah, they're 10 degrees off every single day now. And rain, they're off by 24 hours. It's getting crazy, Brian. If you go to the U.S. weather website, it basically just says open up your fucking window. That's what it's going to be. Exactly. And some more AI news. In Arizona, a family used artificial intelligence to digitally resurrect their murdered loved one to deliver a statement in court, a first-of-its-kind move that's raising eyebrows.

Well, Christopher Pelkey was killed in a 2021 road raid shooting. At the sentencing of his now convicted killer, a lifelike AI recreation of Pelkey addressed the courtroom telling the defendant, I believe in forgiveness. The video, created by Pelkey's sister using old photos, voice recordings, and a custom script, was played before the judge. handed down his ten-and-a-half-year sentence, one year more than what prosecutors had asked for.

While the family says the digital likeness brought them healing and closure, critics online are calling it disturbing, labeling the AI necromancy. What witchcraft is this? said it was unethical and creepy. The incident has sparked a renewed debate over how far... is too far when using AI to memorialize the debt, especially in legal settings. Now, what this article leaves out is what the judge actually said about it.

which was he was blown away by the entire presentation and actually felt like he knew Pelkey after the video had played and that it was actually a good thing before actually handing down a sentence that was greater than anybody asked for. So... You take the good with the bad, and there you have the facts of life. I guess win-win? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I know. You know what I know? The only thing that came away from me from this story is I really fucking hate AI.

Well, let's round it out with some crypto news here. French police are dealing with a wave of violent crypto-related kidnapping. Over the weekend, a man was abducted in Paris by masked men demanding a multi-million euro ransom for his son, who had made money in crypto. Police tracked the suspects via phone signals and raided a house in the suburbs, rescuing the victim, minus a finger, and arresting five people. It's part of a disturbing trend in January. I want the crypto Lebowski.

I don't need to read the rest of this. We're good. Well, I've started watching a new show with the kid. I've been trying to figure out a way to get him into Star Trek, right? Because I love Star Trek, and we've got to do this somehow. And he's still not big on live action stuff. He likes his cartoons. So I was like, all right, well, maybe we try lower decks. Like he won't get a lot of the jokes because he doesn't know Star Trek lore, but it's still pretty funny.

And so we've been watching it. We're like four episodes in watching it together. He finds it mostly hilarious. I forgot how much... cussing there is in the show. I don't remember that. But yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot of bleeps, and then there's things they don't bleep. And I'm like, that guy's a dick. I'm like, wow, I forgot about that.

But these are all words he already knows. He hears them at school from his friends and stuff like that. So I think he gets a hoot out of like kind of an approved version of being able to hear cussing. So it's funny. Yeah, it's going really well so far. And I forgot how good the show is. Like, I'm really enjoying going back and watching it again. So it's a fun show.

So good. It was such a good show. I had a streaming incident this week. Very, very annoying streaming incident. So first of the month, you know, all the streaming services changed. Because reality shifts, apparently, at the first of the month. So my roommate and I have been watching the Spring Baking Championship on Max. Because we've literally watched everything else on the Food Network that there is to fucking watch. And we had to start watching baking shows. which ended up being kind of fun.

We were on season three of the Spring Baking Championship, and we had one episode to go, the finale, to find out who won. Well, imagine our surprise when we go back and open up Mac. And seasons one through eight had been expunged from the service. Gone. Yep. They did the same thing with a show I know you don't watch, but again, going back to my kid, Teen Titans. He loves Teen Titans. They got rid of the first seven seasons. I just nuked him. Yeah.

At least with Netflix, I get an email saying this is what's leaving Netflix soon so you have a chance to check it out, you know? Yeah. Yeah, but Max is such a shit show. What's that guy's name? David, what's his nuts? Yeah, if I ever meet that guy, I'm just going to punch him in the nuts. Just because he's a dick and he deserves it. We'll just take his first seven fingers. There we go. There we go. One for each season.

I want marzipan, bitches! And Netflix, speaking of, is rolling out a revamped TV interface aimed at making it easier for users to find something to watch. This is from the press release, by the way, so take this with a grain of salt. The new design features more visible shortcuts, cleaner visuals, and smarter real-time recommendations tailored...

How does it know your mood? That's what I want to know, too. Do I have to wear a raw ring? That's it. A new AI-powered search is being beta tested on iOS, letting users find shows with natural phrases like something funny and upbeat. A TikTok-style vertical feed of clips is also in the works to help with discovery. The update will roll out globally in the coming weeks. Look, my Netflix is not at all the same as your Netflix. I know. Well, it's not. That's the biggest problem.

Here's what I want, Brian. I want the option to make my home screen my cue. That's it. I want my cue. When I want to go find something, I want to go to a separate screen that says, let me explore. Show me the serendipity. I don't want to scroll randomly down and down and down and down and down to find maybe. Shows that I recently watched.

Yeah, because it sometimes doesn't even appear as I keep scrolling. I was like, where's my recently watched? I just want to go load that show again. Where is it? I'm scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Somehow I'm in Brazilian romance with the transsexual section, and I'm like, but I just want my recently won.

It's dark city, Brian. Every time you close the app, it reconfigures itself to be something completely new. Sometimes your queue is at the top. Sometimes your queue is nowhere to be found. Sometimes recently watches at the top. Sometimes you're dealing with Brazilian trans romance before you can even get to it. Who the fuck knows anymore? By the way, great production qualities. Oh, definitely.

Speaking of great production quality, the studio has been renewed for season two. Everything's orange and brown. It is orange and brown. This week's episode was fantastic. It was fantastic. Ted Sarandos even made a cameo that was hilarious. I thought you gave up on the show. No, I told you my roommate watches it, so I watch it with her. So we did the math on it, so they've done seven episodes so far. The finale's coming next week. Out of the seven, two were stinkers.

And the other five were good too. really good so i think i think as far as hit or miss ratio it's actually doing pretty well so and this last episode she thought it was there was no way that they recreated the golden globes at the beverly hotel and beverly hilton wherever the fuck they have it So there's no way they did that. So I looked up the thing. I'm like, the budget for this show is $12 to $15 million per episode. So they definitely redid it. Still less than severance.

Still less than Severance, which had like five people in a fucking... In a desk. Yeah. Seriously. But the guy from Severance was in this latest one. He was really funny. He was way better in this episode of the studio than he was in the entirety of two seasons of fucking Severance. But new trailers. There are a lot of new trailers this week. Squid Game 3.

as the trailer dropped for that June 27th. That's coming back, which I will not be watching because I finally ducked. I got around Squid Game 2, so I just can't go back to it. I love Black Mirror and the anxiety that that causes. That's my kind of anxiety. Squid Game, I still have issues with that first season. Never seen an episode, never will. Don't. Yeah, just don't if you can avoid it.

The Long Walk, I put this in here because you're a Stephen King fan. You like Stephen King. I do. I watched the trailer. Pretty good. Don't need to watch the movie now because everything's in the trailer. Coming soon. No date. Did you watch the trailer? You like it? I did. But I've read the book and you're right. That's the double whammy. I've read the book and I saw the trailer and I really don't need to watch the movie. Don't need to watch the movie. Yeah. Done and done. Yep.

I saw this and I just had to bring this up. Third Crisis Bonds and Foundation Season 3. So the foundation season three trailer is out and season three premieres on July 11th on Apple TV plus for 10 episodes, 10 episodes, Brian. I would like to point out, I watched this trailer and the sound design at the beginning is. bad. that shit, you know? That kind of went out of vogue about five years ago. And...

The writing is so bad. Because, Brian, the stakes have never been higher. Humanity will end. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, got it. Turn on the fucking news and it's more exciting than this shit. And then they've got this guy playing the mule, this Paloo Azbeck. And he looks just like Travis Fimmel, who played Desmond Hart in Dune Prophecy. I had to actually IMDB it to see if it was a different guy or if they just had the same guy be the bad guy in both of them. Bye.

Man, it looks bad. It just looks bad. I tapped out a long time ago. No way. I'm not going to watch it. Don't care. If the trailer wasn't so off-putting, I was thinking about going back and checking out season two, but you know what? This is just a bounty of riches this week with great stuff coming, so no, I'm going to skip it.

Yeah. I have a feeling you will, too, forever. Forever. Yeah, I'm not ever going back to the foundation well. I just can't. Yeah. And Netflix just dropped the trailer for The Old Guard 2, which is... Didn't know they were making another one because the old guard was a great... Great little movie that Netflix put out back in 2020, I think. Did you ever check that movie out? I don't know. I don't think so, no. It was Charlize Theron and a bunch of immortals. No, yeah, I never did watch it.

It's worth watching. It was a good movie. It was a very good movie. And on July 2nd, we get The Old Guard 2, but this time we've got Uma Thurman in it, too. So, you know. Uma Thurman and Charlize Theron. Okay. I'm in. I'm in. I got my raw ring on and I'm ready to watch. Ready to rock. And even better than that, the best travel show on Apple TV Plus is back. Yes, The Long Way Home just dropped two new episodes. Now, I was a fan of long way around, long way down, long way up, long way side.

These are the travel documentaries of Ewan McGregor and Charlie Borman where they ride their motorcycles around the world multiple times now. The last one, Long Way Up, dropped during COVID. which was really strange, and they went from the tip of South America to L.A. on these electric Harleys. And the first two episodes were kind of really hard to watch because all it was was them trying to figure out how to charge their motorcycles and do basic math.

But then it got better once they've kind of fixed that problem. But also, this was when Rivians were in beta. And the crew trucks were these pre-release Rivian models, and they had to have engineers keep coming down to try and fix the thing. Which did not give me a lot of hope for Rivian at that point, but they're everywhere now. It's better than a Cybertruck.

So I'm really looking forward to this because I just love these. It's a great buddy show. Just a great buddy show. It's a good replacement for Top Gear. Yeah, it is. It is. Charlie Borman can be a little much, but at least it's better than season two when Ewan brought his wife along for a while. That just did not work at all. And last night, speaking of a bounty of riches and all that good stuff, Poker Face Season 2 dropped its first three episodes on Peacock last night. All right.

Poker Face is amazing. If you haven't seen that show, Brian, it is so fucking good. Season one. Oh my God. Season one is just. Awesome. I cannot recommend it enough. So I'm very happy to check out season two this weekend. So now that I finished the, we'll talk about Andor in a minute here once we get Dave on. Yeah, this will be a good replacement for Andor this weekend for sure. Cool.

Well, one of the big googly arcs that didn't seem to get involved into media too much but are now is Google. Google plans to start producing its own films and television shows via production initiative called 100 Zeros Business Insider Reports. The company is working with Range Media Partners, a talent management and production company, to identify projects that appeal to younger audiences and could promote a positive view of Google's product.

So the more you read into this press release, the more it sounds like it's basically just product placement company. They're not actually going to produce a lot of shows or make anything new, but they're going to try to push shows into using Google products. Okay, great. Gotta combat all those iPhones in all the shows. Yeah. Do you watch Shark Tank? No. Okay. I'm an avid watcher of the Shark Tank. And this last season, they always have a flashback at the beginning of after the first

Then they have a flashback of a company that was on before. And now it's all brought to you by Gemini. So there's like 10% where they actually talk about the company and 90% is just a blatant commercial for Gemini. And it's just like, oh. God, I'm so sick of seeing this Google shit. Sponsored content, man. Yeah, yeah. So this is not really a media production company. It's a commercial production company. I make commercials for Google. Yep.

And hat tip to Chen, because this one has made the rounds this week. The Golden Globes are adding Best Podcast category beginning in 2026, where we will absolutely not be nominated ever. Nope. We can't even get a Webby, much less the Golden Globes. Dude, we can't get a Potty. We have literally no awards under our belt after 13 years, so I'm guessing the Golden Globes is not where we're going to come out. Nope. Nope. Definitely not. Ops and doodads!

Well, Apple is apparently going to split up the iPhone release schedule because now, even though we only need a new iPhone once every, oh, I don't know, five years, we can get one every six months now, apparently. Yes, instead of deciding between four new models of iPhones every fall, you may have to choose among three in both the spring and the fall now.

I don't know why, but they're going to. According to the information, three unnamed supply chain sources detail the more expensive models will launch first, meaning the pro models will keep the fall release window, and that standard model iPhones will get pushed to the following spring.

This could indicate that Apple wants to make room for other models like the long-rumored foldable iPhone. If it's accurate, Apple would release the iPhone 18 Pro, 18 Pro Max, and potentially the foldable iPhone in the fall of 2026. followed by the iPhone 18 base model, the iPhone 18 slim, and the iPhone 18e in spring 2027. So by 2030, I might be ready for a new phone.

I thought I had a... Oh, no, that's right. The 17 comes out. I can't even remember which one I have. I guess I have a 16. Yeah. I just bought the 16. Okay. So, yeah. Okay. Well... I'm not going to update until the 19, so. Yeah, exactly. It's going to be a while, so whatever. Yeah, these things are good for three years now. I mean, exactly. I would have gotten rid of my three-year-old one, but my dad needed a new phone because the older ones time out. much faster than the current ones.

Well, more Apple news. Apple plans to add AI-powered search engines like Perplexity and Anthropic to Safari on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. but they won't be the default. In court testimony, Apple exec Eddie Q revealed Safari searches fell for the first time ever in April. As users shift to AI for information, I use information in quotes. This threatens Apple's $20 billion a year revenue sharing deal with Google, which is also under fire in an antitrust case.

Apple is betting on AI search competition to challenge Google while already working with OpenAI to enhance Siri with chat GPT. Just another reason to never use Safari. And Patreon has updated its iOS app to let US fans bypass Apple's 30% app store fee when signing up for new membership. Patreon.com slash GOG, people. Come on and keep the show alive. Yes, please. The only reason I put that in the show, because I couldn't give a flying fuck about Patreon.

Except that they pay the bills. So I do care about Patreon greatly. So go to patreon.com slash GOG on any device and sign up for a new account today, please. Three bucks a month will get you all of this great content. Please. Sign up for a year, and you can get a discount, too. And then nominate us for the Golden Globes. Yes! Give us some Golden Globes, please. We would like to be part of the podlyarchy one day.

And Patreon is not the only app that's out there that has taken advantage of the new court ruling while it lasts because it's going to be appealed. Amazon Kindle's app has now been updated to let you get a book. from the Amazon website and go back and forth and through and all that stuff because...

You still can't do an in-app purchase, but it's easier to get to the book that you want to get to buy. Just a little bit easier because it's always been such a pain in the ass that I can't buy this book on my phone. Well, fuck you. I want to buy the book. Well, my birthday is coming up, Jason, and all you listeners. So chip in.

Patreon.com slash GOG. Developed by robotics company Piaggio. Fast forward, the G1 T4 M1 N1 droid is a dependable and eager to please limited edition version of its get a mini cargo robot. Inspired by R2D2, it features Bluetooth speakers to stream music, cameras, and sensors that let it and follow its owner around at a speed of up to six miles per hour in a cargo bin that can hold up to 20 pounds of items with a runtime of seven hours and a companion app for iOS and Android.

Gidda, or whatever you want to name it, could help you feel like you're a Star Wars character at home. It's only $2,875. With shipping and handling plus tax, it comes out to around $3,100. And as the store listing notes, no refunds, exchanges, or returns. But it is kind of cool looking. I'm looking at this thing, but you know what you could do, though? Go to Santa Monica and just steal one of those fucking delivery robots off the sidewalk and paint it. It's not all that different, yeah.

Yeah, it looks like just a standard off-the-shelf delivery robot. All right. And I don't know how I stumbled across this. I have a feeling it was one of those gifts for Mother's Day lists at some place that led me to this, but I will read. We haven't done a good old Amazon-style crazy...

title read in a while. Smart flower plots, smart pet planter, AI planter, intelligent flower pots, multiple expressions, seven smart sensors, and AI chips makes raising plants easy and fun for living room, plant-free, yellow. That's a good one. That's a good one. Plant free is nice. That's a plus. So I was looking at this and it's basically just a little pot.

that's got sensors in it, and then it gives you a little Tamaguchi-style face to let you know how your plant is doing and what you need to do. But hold on one second. They heavily market this as an AI kind of planter. Oh, simple water sensor is now considered a fucking eye. There's a fucking water center. They lowercase the I, dude. Come on. That's how they get around it. It's insane.

It's cute, though. It is cute. It's fun. Is it like AI? No. Is it an $80 flower pot planter? No. No. Definitely not. Man, it's cute. It is cute. I'm going to give you that. It is cute. Yeah. I'll tell you what's not cute, though. The Trump administration plans to shut down the Energy Star program, which I don't know if anybody...

really pays that much attention to it. But when you buy appliances for the home, I definitely pay attention to it. It's a long-running EPA initiative that helps Americans save about $40 billion annually on energy costs. You know what that is? More than dough just saved us. No shit. Now, here's the great part about this. Energy Star was launched in 1992. And this is how much it costs a year to maintain the program. $32 million.

$32 million a year for the program. That saves $40 billion. Yeah, it saves $40 billion annually, which averages out to about $450 a year for the average homeowner. $32 million. Now, I have a way to fix this. which is Bill Gates is on a tear right now complaining about how Elon is killing the poor children by getting rid of USAID, which to me says, Bill...

Just fund it yourself. Fund USAID. You have the cash. You have the coin. You have the bag to fund USAID yourself. So quit bitching about it. Become a hero because right now you could use some good PR too, just like X. help out a little bit more. Fuck the malaria nets. Go fund USAID. And while you're at it, just throw a few bills to...

Energy Star. Come on. 32 million bucks a year? That is literally lint in your pocket money. So come on, Bill. Nothing gets rid of the stain of all those photos of you with Epstein better. Exactly. The Dark Side! HA! With Dave. Welcome to the dark side with Dave. Podcast super host Dave Bittner decodes all things cyber on the cyber wire every day. Exposes deception with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans. Dives deep into privacy with Ben Yellen on caveat.

breaks down industrial cybersecurity on control loop, and even brings the chuckles on only malware in the building. Hello and welcome back, Dave. We missed you. Oh, thank you. It's good to be back. I missed you too. I had a lovely trip to the RSA conference in San Francisco, which I love being at, but I don't like going to because it is a very long flight. But that's just the way it is. Yes. I did feel like perhaps San Francisco is on the upswing.

Really? Yeah. Yeah. Less man poo than last time? Precisely. Precisely. So I don't know if they're, who knows, you know, it could be that they're just more successfully pushing things out of sight. But I did talk to someone who is a local there, and they said that they felt like, I guess they have a new mayor, and this person was pleased with some of the effort. that the new mayor was putting in. So I don't know.

Hopefully it isn't just like when you have surprise guests coming over in an hour and you just shove everything behind the couch. Exactly. Whatever you do, don't open that closet door. There's a whole bunch of man poo in there. Wow. All right. Anyway, so just real quick, I mean, the big thing out of... the RSA conference this year is agentic AI. My favorite t-shirt was someone in a shirt that said, my agentic AI has purchase authority. Oh god, that's a good one. Let's go on.

Yeah. Nerds. I know, I know. Okay. So I want to do a quick little bit of follow-up here on the books that you talked about. You talked about the Industrial Light and Magic books last time. And I found one, Industrial Light and Magic Into the Digital Realm. And I had this book. And I was wondering if that was the book to which you referred. It is not. Into the Digital Realm is the second book. Okay. So, because the first book just barely touches on some of the digital stuff, like...

Oh gosh, I can't remember the name of the movie now, but it was a 3D rendered warrior, like a knight in shining armor, who was made out of stained glass. Young Sherlock Holmes. Young Sherlock Holmes. All of that's in the excellent documentary that's on Disney+. Right, right. So that was at the very end of this first book. They're just getting into that era of things. The first book, which is Industrial Light and Magic, The Art of Special Effects,

is really from the very beginning up through that. And if you love this stuff, it is a book you want to have for your coffee table. It just has these beautiful gatefolds. Like, for example, there's a gatefold of the matte painting of the final shot of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The warehouse. Yeah. Stuff like that. There's a gatefold of the...

the hangar bay in return of the Jedi with all of the storm troopers or Vader's getting off of the, yeah, there's, so there's all of these beautiful gate folds of these hand painted mats and things like that. So. Well, you know what's funny is... So I remembered the first book, and I had the first book, Into the Digital Realm, which is the second book.

Right. And then you posted the link to the first book, which is the second book in our timeline here. I own both of those books. They're actually at my dad's house in the basement. I had totally forgotten those books. Guess where I got them? Where? I got both of those when they were... basically fresh, on the discount table at Borders Books in Oakbrook, Illinois, for like five bucks each. Yeah.

So now they're sitting in the basement at my dad's house with all of the other books that I don't feel like shipping to California. But yeah, those are fantastic books. Absolutely fantastic. I worked at... Bob Walden. throughout all of my high school years, except for the one year I worked at Disneyland. And the secret about these coffee table books...

was always not to buy them when they came out because they would be on the discount shelf within a year. Yeah. Every single time. And it would be like, you know, five bucks basically. A $125 book would be five bucks the next year. Yep.

Yeah, yeah, we'll get to that in a second, because I have something related to that. But staying on the ILM theme, the new book... I have a link to as well, which is coming out later this year, which is going to be on my Christmas list, which is the 50 years of industrial light and magic. What's it called? 50 Years of Innovation. So that's their latest one. I haven't seen yet, but it doesn't matter. I want it. $70 tome, but it's very nice.

So, speaking of which, Jason, I had a very similar thing happen to me one time. I was at one of those remainder bookstores that was... in a beach town. Here's books for you to read while you're on the beach. And in one of the bins was this coffee table book. That was all about the work of the Apple design team. Yeah, it's a really good book. Um, and later on I was looking for, I, I, I went down a, like a classic Sony design rat hole.

just in appreciation for the industrial design of Sony back in the day in the 80s, 90s. when that sort of physical... Industrial design was king. And the same person who wrote the Apple book wrote a book on the Sony Design Center, and it's called Digital Dreams, the work of the Sony Design Center. I want to get a copy of that book, but right now they're like $175. Well, so my question for you, Jason, is do you know of any European sources for PDFs?

of books like these perhaps Scandinavian well Scandinavian that's right because mostly I just mostly I want to read the book I don't feel like you know I don't if I don't have it I'll live but I would like to read the book. So since it's out of reach for me to purchase a copy and my local library doesn't have one, I'm curious if there is... that sort of thing available.

If you have a moment, you can search around. I believe I can, I might not be able to find you. So you're my go-to guy for things. Jason knows a guy, Sivan. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Everybody knows a guy who knows a guy. I'll see what I can maybe dig up for you there. Yeah, who knows? Who knows? There might be a way. There might be a way.

I know a guy. I have friends everywhere. Yeah. My university has a copy of it that I could go borrow as an alum, but no, I'm not driving. Why would you do that? Check out a book. Yeah. Yeah. But again, I don't know if you guys have the same kind of affection I do for that classic era of Sony design. Obviously, we had the Walkman. But even just when I think about the design that goes into something like...

an eight millimeter camcorder, right? The mechanics of handling the tape through the tape path, you know, time and time again, and just. I don't know that we have those kind of designers in the world anymore because there's no demand for them. Everything's software now. Yeah, I mean, I had so many Sony, obviously starting with the Walkman and then the Discmans and all that. And then when I was in college, I had like a Sony Minidat.

recorder because i got really into doing music and like going out and recording sounds and sampling them and things of that nature and all that stuff was so beautifully made i loved all that Yeah, they were just really satisfying to hold in your hand also. Sony just really got the whole tactile part of designing things. I just got a new one. I was walking down the street and one of these old houses was throwing stuff out because people had died and it was just a bunch of stuff.

And I got a mint condition Sony Walkman. Wow. It is beautiful. And the first thing I always do when I see those old things is open up the battery compartment. Right. And no leakage. Perfect condition. Wow. Yeah. I actually posted a link in it to our Discord channel, which you're never in because you can't get there. I know. But I'll send you a picture of it. It's great. Does it work? Have you tried it out? No, I have not tried it out yet, but I'm guessing it's going to work.

It may. I mean, usually my understanding with those things is that you could, you probably have to replace some belts inside. Like they kind of melt away over time, but they're easy to get. And you know, it's not, especially those early things. They haven't gotten so tightly packed in that you can still get in there and fix things if you need to. Yeah, good stuff.

Mm-hmm. All right. Well, you've been traveling, Dave, so I'm guessing you're probably not caught up on Andor as it's basically a full-time job to stay up on the show right now. I am not. I am not. No, I have nothing with season two so far, and it is... Yeah, I'm not happy about it. I will say you're in for a treat when you do get to it. Yeah, everybody's saying that. I'm hearing people say it's the best thing on TV right now, so I'm totally looking forward to it.

I have not been able to carve out the time as I described earlier it's not just not completely up to me so yeah it's good and as Jason and I were just kind of discussing a little bit earlier the latest uh the last three episodes episodes seven eight and nine were by far the best riveting stuff I was complaining about trying to keep up with the show because of the stupid release schedule, but I'm finding it a joy.

So our problem with last night is I started to watch a little bit of episode seven just to try and just so I had a little bit of. you know baseline for the conversation today and i ended up staying up till midnight and just going through all three because they were just they just sucked me in yeah So are they all done now? Next week is the last three. Oh, okay. There's 12 total. Okay.

I can't wait for it to finish so I can go watch Rogue One now, because I have to go watch Rogue One again. Right, and then Rogue One makes you want to go right into A New Hope, right? And that's how they get you. Yeah, but we draw the line after Return of the Jedi. I'm with you. There's another new Star Wars series, which I don't think anybody's going to check out, Tales of the Underworld.

I am going to check this out. I watched the trailer. This is another one that I'm going to watch with my kid. It looks great. You definitely need like they're going deep. If you have not watched The Clone Wars, you won't know who any of these characters are. But it's very exciting stuff. I like all these little mini animated things that they've been putting out. They're all really good.

Yeah, I watched the trailer and I'm just like, I have no idea what's going on here. Period. None whatsoever. So, I figured you guys, you nerds might be able to... shed some light. So I think, yeah, and I have no plans to go back and watch the Clone Wars, so I guess I'm just going to miss out. We'll stick with Andor. I'm not as up on any of the animated stuff either. I've made a couple of

little dips into them over time. But no, it's just not something I ever really followed closely. Yeah, it's worth it if you do have the time to go do it. It's all really good. I understand. It's been a long time, but I understand the first couple seasons of Clone Wars were a little rocky because they hadn't found their groove yet, and it was kind of the first one out of the gate. But since then, all of these animated ones have just been absolutely phenomenal. They're fantastic. All right.

So, speaking of Star Wars, speaking of Disney... Who's going to Abu Dhabi? Not me. I do want to eventually get to almost all the Disney parks, but this may not be on my visiting list, but we'll see. So Disney's building a new theme park. Are they announced? They're going to be building a new theme park in Abu Dhabi. If you think water is expensive in Orlando, good God.

Yeah, I don't know how they're going to make this work. I mean, I guess, because I think one of the Asian parks isn't most of Main Street indoors. Kind of under a glass. Yeah. I think that they, that was at Tokyo. I'm not sure. Yeah. I can't remember. It's kind of mauled in, you know. The interesting thing is I remember hearing, and it's obviously big lore up here in Canada, and I've heard a lot about it since moving here, but initially Toronto was kind of on the short list for...

a Disney park back in the day. But they went with Florida because year-round weather. Here, theme parks have to shut down. We have a place called Canada's Wonderland. It's closed all winter. Like, you just can't have... a park it's yeah it's snow and cold and everything so Apparently they don't give a shit about that anymore. They're going to go for it in a place that has just melting.

melting heat. We were supposed to get a Disney park near us called Disney's America and that got shot down because the locals didn't like the idea of Disney building a park on adjacent to Civil War battlefields. Well, you're really close to Trump's America. That's quite the park. We are sad that we don't have a Disney park in...

driving distance. I guess technically Florida's in driving distance is just a really long drive. It's a long drive. But we used to have, in Chicago, we had an indoor amusement park called Old Chicago. It had a roller coaster and a Ferris wheel and all sorts of shit. It was really cool. I remember going there as a kid, and I have a very faint image.

of this giant building with a Ferris wheel in it. And, yeah, it opened in 1975. It was a pretty big deal, but, yeah, it closed and it's gone. But it was a fully indoor amusement park in Chicago. Yeah. We had one here in Baltimore that was called the Power Plant, and it was built inside of an old power plant. And it was one of those early attempts at an indoor theme park, and they just didn't have enough stuff to keep it going.

I remember there was the one that Sid and Marty Croft built in Atlanta. There was an indoor theme park that was based off of all the HR Puffin stuff and that whole world. And it didn't last either. So I don't know. It seems to me like the folks in Abu Dhabi just wheeled up a gigantic truck full of money outside of Bob Iger's office and said, here you go, and that's what's happening.

I'm sure it's going to be the most high-tech of all the parks, and it's going to be very interesting and all that, but I do find... I like the old style roller coasters. I don't want everything just to be these motion boxes with video projections as much as I've enjoyed. The Star Wars stuff, for instance, but... You know, I just, I worry that they're just going to push the technology too far at this park and there won't be the real old stuff. You know what I mean? Yeah. We'll see. I don't know.

We'll see. I'm actually just, I was surprised by my wife just this last week because we'd been... We've been trying to get over to Europe, particularly since we're living here in Toronto. It's a lot closer than if you're in Los Angeles and all that. So we did London a couple, like two years ago, and we want to go again this fall. And while she is pushing her agenda to get us to Paris, she has announced that we will be going to Disneyland Paris, which I'm quite excited about. Yes.

I guess that is on the list for my wife and I as well. Who knows when it'll happen. I don't know, but I don't see us going to Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi, rather. Of course, there's been all the obvious jokes about, you know... Ariel from The Little Mermaid in a burka. How are they going to handle... all that stuff, but they'll figure it out. They'll figure it out. Yeah. Memories don't work the way they used to. I just found some images of old Chicago and the actual inside of it.

There was no Ferris wheel. There were a bunch of other rides that were around, but there was no Ferris wheel, so the memories are... Yeah, completely wrong. Isn't that interesting? Sometimes it's best not to look back into the past. Yeah, or go back and watch movies like Caddyshack and Airplane. Save the memories. Don't go back and watch Purple Rain. No worries about that one. Great sound. Greatest soundtrack. Worst movie. It's not a good movie.

I don't think it was particularly thought of as a good movie at the time either. No, but I think when I was however old I was when it came out and I went to see it, I certainly came out of the movie theater thinking I had just seen... something amazing right because of the music i guess but yeah captain eo also not so good apollonia yeah you were just remembering apollonia that could There will be. Okay, back to it. Come on, snap out of it. Snap out of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So...

I went down a KISS rabbit hole. Speaking of things you probably shouldn't go revisit. Yes. So let's start out here. Let me just pull the panel here. What is each of your relationships with the classic rock and roll performance group? Zero. Too young. I had a very silver double album collection by them. I always hated Kiss. I thought their music was garbage.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, that's a fair assessment. The album you had, Jason, was called Double Platinum, and it was basically a Greatest Hits album. I bought that at Kmart. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. So... The first record album I ever owned was Elton John's Greatest Hits. The second record album I ever owned was Kiss Alive 2. And I had Kiss Alive too because some older kid down the street was really into Kiss and he had this album on an 8-track.

And, you know, I kind of idolized him, so I had to have a copy, so I went and got it. So I spent a lot of time listening to this album. And as you did back then, you just sat there and you looked at the album and you read all of the liner notes. And this album happened to have a big gatefold because of a double album. And there's this big picture of the band performing live and they're in their outfits and their stuff.

the pyrotechnics and the sparklers and all that sort of thing. So, you know, really larger than life. Now... They've, time has passed, right? The members of KISS are all in their 70s. And first of all, I think it's kind of miraculous that the four original members of KISS are all still alive. What are the odds of that? Like, we don't have all four Beatles, but we've got all four members of KISS.

Because life ain't fair. Life is not fair. Right. And some of them, you know, notoriously having substance abuse problems and all that sort of thing, but they're still kicking and they're still out there making music. And so Gene Simmons is out doing a tour, and I saw someone write up a little review of the tour on Reddit.

And they started off by saying, talking about the Kiss songs that he was playing. And he said, the problem is these songs aren't good enough to stand on their own without all of the showmanship that went along with a Kiss. concert. Exactly. And I think that is exactly right. Kiss was not so much a band as they were entertainers. and a spectacle to go see. And I'm okay with that.

But the other thing that that led me to, and a couple of links I'm going to share here is, you know, KISS had their end of the road. tour a couple years ago, like a world tour, final tour, and all the costumes and makeup and all that stuff. And there were lots of accusations that they were using backing track. that Paul Stanley was lip syncing and So the first YouTube video I've included a link to here is evidence of that. Because there's a concert where...

I think the drummer makes a mistake and skips a couple measures and it throws everybody off. And so basically... Paul Stanley is nowhere near a microphone, and you hear his voice come singing out. Dude knows how to project. He's a professional. Right, right, right. And then he doesn't know what to do. Like, there's this confusion, you know, like, you know, so busted.

But then the second video, which I think in a way is kind of even more fascinating, especially when you put in context that this is a bunch of rock and rollers who are still out there doing in their 70s. what they started doing in their 20s, right? And so someone found the board recording of one of their concerts that has both the click track. the backing vocals, and the lead-ins. So there's a voiceover that just comes through their in-ear microphones because they're all wearing in-ears.

And so there'll be a click coming into the track. So, you know, tick, tick, tick, tick, like a metronome. And part of that makes sense because if you have a show with lots of timed pyrotechnics and things like that, you know, those can be... triggered at the same time. So I'll give them up maybe half a pass. on that. But then you hear

Someone coming in who's like, one, two, one, two, three, four. That's what you're supposed to sing. So it's that kind of thing, which is also, I think, just fascinating, a little view inside of how modern. concerts work. Because obviously, I mean, KISS aren't the only people who are doing this. There's lots of groups. Yes. accused of doing it or busted doing it. But then some of the backing tracks and even the lead vocals are on this thing as well.

And then as sort of a side bonus is you get treated to the singular one-of-a-kind audience work that... Paul Stanley does, which is like no one else. in the world with how just cheesy and awful and yet irresistible it is. No, he is the worst and yet simultaneously the best at being the worst. Somehow of its time, you know, he's like, how many people out there want some alcohol? I'll be sampling that for the soundboard. Yeah.

As a quick aside here, I have met the man. Really? He is delightful. I've heard that. Go on. I was at a recording studio I was with one of the bands that I was working with and he was working on one of his solo albums he pulled up at his jet black Porsche and in his jet black leather pants and his jet black t-shirt that was three sizes too small. sat down in the little lobby in the recording studio and was perusing the delivery options available for him for food before he started recording.

Struck up conversations with everybody around him. Delightful man. Yeah, that's great. How can you not be delightful when you've got that much money and you have nothing to do with your life really except tell people if they want alcohol? Well, I think the answer to that question is Gene Simmons. Not a nice guy. So I don't know. Anyway, to sort of put a button on this, I spent the last week as I was driving to and from work listening to all of the songs on Kiss Alive 2. Do you hate yourself?

I do a little bit. I do a little bit for sure. The songs Some of them hold up. They do not have legs. They have eight foot platforms. I think Detroit Rock City is a legit good song. I think that is... That's a good song. I think I Want to Rock and Roll All Night and Party Every Day is Almost a novelty song, but a rock and roll. It's a lifestyle, Dave. It's a rock and roll anthem, and it is iconic. It's the cyber truck of.

rock and roll. Come on. It's just ugly. It does not flow. It's terrible. Wait, that song you mean? Yeah, I hate that song so much. It's my least favorite Kiss song. Really? Yeah, it doesn't flow. It's just It might be familiarity. It's just, how many times have you heard snippets of it over the last... I put it in the same category as, like, Joan Jett's I Love Rock and Roll.

Right? It's just like... Also a far better song. Well, but it's a teenage rock and roll anthem yeah that's that's what it is that's the category that's its primary category right okay yes this is a this song's about me you know because i want to rock and roll all night and party every day and i love rock and roll It's just that kind of thing. Anyway, I love Rocky Road. Because it at least makes me hungry.

And Weird Al has outlived them all. Yes, and he's playing Riot Fest this year. Yeah, yeah. I would love to go see Weird Al, but his concert immediately sold out. His tour sold out right away. Anyway, I've revisited this album and it is pretty bad. It's also famously not actually a live album. Like, it's recorded live in the studio. Because they really weren't good enough players to make a live album and have it sound good, so it's live in the studio. Anyway. The music is pretty bad.

It's awful. I also think back to when I was eight years old, and I heard a song like Love Gun, and I thought to myself, Oh, isn't that neat? That guy has a gun, and when he shoots a girl with it, she falls in love with him. How cute is that? Where can I get one of these mechanisms? Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah. In the back of those space monkeys.

All of the double entendre or single entendre just went completely over my head and at some point dawned on me. Oh, love gun. Got it. Right. Subtle. Yeah. Okay. I'm with you now. Okay, before we put a button in this, Brian, what were your first two albums, now that we know Dave? first two albums of ever that you bought Duran Duran 7 and the Ragged Tiger and Michael Jackson's Thriller Nice. Solid. Jason. Van Halen, women and children first, and ACDC, dirty deeds, done dirt cheap. Disrespectable.

Yes. All right. All right, we're not going to top that, so I will bid you farewell. I am not going to go... I'm not going to go listen to... Because you all want some more alcohol! Not until next week, once I haven't sampled it in my soundboard. Oh, I'm going to be hearing that a lot. Oh my god. Alright. Bye guys. See you soon. ¡Chao!

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