727: Merry Slopmas

Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly talk show hosted by Brian Schulmeister and Jason DeFilippo discussing the finer points of what went wrong on the internet and who's to blame.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks. I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. The final show of the year, Jason. Oh, thank Jesus. I know. Tell me about it. So it's the last week of school for the kid here. So it's been, you know, it's... We're all tired. It's been a long time. We need the break. I'm ready for warm weather. But of course, last week of school, wear funny sock day.

Oh, parents, I know you're burnt out. Build an entire lifestyle, life-size sleigh for your kid to bring into school on Friday. And it's all that sort of stuff. But today, luckily, he has a Christmas party and it's wear your Christmas pajamas. And I got a little jealous of that. So here I am. Also in my Christmas pajamas because we're not a normal family. We don't do Santa. We do Nightmare Before Christmas Christmas pajamas.

Now, I have a question for you because some neighbors of mine, for Halloween, they put up their Nightmare Before Christmas decor, and then they just roll into Christmas and just put some lights on it and just leave it up. I would argue that's fair.

No, we don't do that. Totally fair. It's totally fair, but no, we don't. The Nightmare Before Christmas stuff goes away. We have a blow-up Santa that comes out of a chimney and Christmas lights and that sort of stuff. We don't go as crazy as we do for Halloween because...

They don't shut down the street like they do for Halloween here, but we want to enjoy. All right, so we've got some follow-up here. There's some fallout from Fallout, Jason. We talked about the bad AI video recaps that Amazon had rolled out. They announced their new video recaps feature in November as a way to make it easier to jump into a new season of a show.

But the feature had issues, as you discovered. A recap, actually, is a recap. Created for Fallout included factual errors about the plot and setting of the show. Amazon has responded to viewers catching errors in the AI generated session recaps by apparently pulling them from Prime Video. If you head to the Fallout Season 2 page now, the erroneous recap has been removed.

In fact, at least on the web, there are currently no video recaps available on the shows Amazon was testing the feature on, which include Bosch Upload. It's not that hard to keep track of that plot. The rig and Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan. So this is how one of the ways that they're trying to integrate AI into their products and services, which just like everybody else, they're jamming this shit in. It doesn't work and nobody wants it.

Yeah, and there was a, you know, previously on for the first episode, which I watched. And then it dawned on me, I don't remember anything from the last four episodes, so I'm going to have to go back and watch them anyway. So that kind of sucked. But yeah, there was one there. It just wasn't, yeah. It seemed to cover all the bases. So I think they just hired somebody and fixed it. I'm sure they did. Take this and make it actually make sense.

The way it should be. Thank you for the last paycheck I will ever get, said Mr. Video Editor. Well, we got a little bit of feedback from Ariel, and I wanted to highlight this today. Dear Grumps, your skepticism of penis enlargement pills on episode 726 struck me. ironic considering the cover art appears to celebrate a lineup of unusually large dicks. Crump on. I think I need an AI recap of our shows. I don't remember discussing penis enlargement pills.

It was the it was the breach where people were putting PDFs on the government websites, the zebra, you know, the zebra vaginas. And the Dr. Oz penis enlargement, yes. Yeah, somehow I got stuck on zebra vagina and didn't even think about the penis enlargement pills aspect. Okay, well, you know, that's where you failed. That's where you failed.

Now, if it was zebra vagina enlargement, you'd have been right along for the ride. Well, I like them tight, Jason. There you go. There you go. That's going to get us an explicit on YouTube. Probably, probably. Well, I just wanted to do another little bit of follow-up here. Today, today alone is my fourth stroke-aversary. So, four years ago today, my brain exploded. So, and I'm still standing. Congratulations, Elton.

Thanks. Thanks. I just got that song stuck in my head this morning for some reason. But yeah, yeah. I had the stroke. What did I call it? I had the stroke sampler pack. I got a little bit of everything. And it's still here. It is what it is. You know, you just get used to it. It is the hedonic treadmill of suckery. Gotta be honest, Jason. Don't even notice anymore. You're back to your normal asshole self.

And I stopped drinking two, three years ago, so maybe, I don't know. So now I've got, you know, no caffeine, no alcohol, no sex, no money, no... Empathy for my fellow man. I should just be a Mormon. I think that's what I'm just going to go Mormon. Or a tech bro. They got money. So that's the part of the Venn diagram that doesn't overlap. Do they, though? Because it's mostly on paper.

In the news. Vindication, Jason. Finally. Finally. Little sliver of vindication. I have been screaming that words matter on this show, and they make a difference, and it matters since day one. And in particular, my ire was about Tesla and their...

Full self-driving, which is not full self-driving, but they marketed it as full self-driving. And finally, somebody is paying attention. Tesla sales in California should be... that would be the key part of the statement in this article, should be suspended for 30 days because of its marketing around autopilot and full self-driving misled consumers, a California administrative law judge has ruled. Back in 2022, the California DMV and myself.

And you and our show multiple times accused the automaker of using deceptive language to advertise those products and making it seem like its vehicles are capable of level five autonomous driving, which they are not. Tesla has since added the word supervised to the name of its full self-driving assist technology.

And it's kind of like one of those commercials that you get on 60 Minutes when they talk about a drug and then they spout off something for 95 seconds. This may kill you multiple times. You're going to shit your eyeballs up. And all that sort of stuff. The DMV asked the administrative law judge if a suspension is warranted based on the evidence it presented. Even though the judge has agreed that it is, the agency is giving Tesla 90 days to explain its side and remove any untrue.

or misleading language in the marketing materials for the products. That would be all of it. No immediate response except for a poop emoji. So they've got 70 more days to do something other than a poop emoji. All right. We'll see how that goes. I'm sure they'll get around it somehow. They always seem to do it. And this is a bit important because you're not wrong, Jason. You are the person that says that you always see new Teslas around. Reuters says California accounts for nearly a third.

of the company's sales in the USA. So it's all California, baby. Yep. California. Just go to Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. That's where they all hang out. They're like flocks of them. All right. Well, we've got some news here on the TikTok. ByteDance is officially. Yeah, it's a big news. ByteDance is officially handing the keys to its U.S. kingdom over to a new joint venture dubbed TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC. Rolls off the tongue. Geniuses over there at the branding department.

Because nothing says national security like a convoluted corporate restructure. The new landlord is a consortium, including Silver Lake, MGX, and of course, Oracle, acting as the, quote, trusted security partner. Under the deal, this investor group takes a 45% stake while ByteDance retreats to a 20% minority share. The affiliates of existing investors round out the remaining percentage.

Oracle will now be babysitting the algorithm, data protection and content moderation to satisfy the federal government's long running concerns about Beijing's influence. So now we can just be concerned about Oracle's influence. Exactly. Yes, we go from Beijing to Ellison. Thank you very much. Who we also know is a fan of the Panopticon security state. He sure is. Tomato, tomato, tomato, tomato. So, yeah, they survived.

somewhat. We'll see how it goes. Yep. We'll see what happens. It's just, uh, who knows? Whatever. I don't care. I don't use TikTok. I know everybody else in the world does, but I don't care. Yeah, this is supposed to take effect January 22nd. So we'll see if there's any major hiccups on that date or running up to it as they try and do any kind of switch over. But we'll see.

Well, Australia put into effect their ban on social media for underage users under 16. Social media ban is in effect. And of course, tech ain't so happy about it. And shockingly, first out of the gate with the lawsuit, Reddit. Reddit has filed a lawsuit in Australia's high court aiming to overturn the country's under-16 social media ban. The platform called law contrary to Australia's constitution as it intrudes on free political discourse. If only...

There are other ways to have free political discourse. What did we what did the founding fathers do without Reddit, Jason? I don't know what they did, Brian. I'm not sure of the Internet. Come on. It also argued that Reddit shouldn't have been included in the ban since they're not a social media site based on the law's definition. So we shall see about that.

Basically, the ban came in. They must bar underage users or face a fine of up to 33 million U.S. dollars. Platforms are using a variety of means to determine age, including age inference based on activities and selfies. Gee, that must not be too hard to get around. Seriously. So, yeah, Reddit is basically saying that's not fair. We can't. How are those? How is there going to be free and open discussion if we don't allow?

under 16 year olds who can't vote to engage with us. Yeah. And their excuses are pretty paper thin. They're saying that, oh, well, they're coming up on the age of consent, which is 18 to vote. And so if they don't have read it, that there's those two years in between 16 and 18. That's not enough time to prepare themselves for the, you know, for the responsibility.

of voting in Australia. With the complete lack of any other avenue. Exactly. Yeah. And Louisiana said, hold my... what's that big zombie no not hurricane hurricane hurricane it's been a long time since i've had a hurricane on on new orleans even if i did i didn't remember yeah i don't really recall that day very much so it was good but uh There is a Louisiana law that would have required social media platforms to verify ages of their users, and that's been blocked by a judge, of course.

That law known as the Secure Online Child Interaction and Age Limitation. It was passed in 2023 and required meta Reddit. not a social media platform, according to them, Snap, YouTube, Discord, and others to implement age verification and parental control features. This ruling came just days before the law, which technically took effect over the summer, would have started to be enforced.

In his ruling, Judge John W. de Gravelis wrote that the law's age verification and parental consent requirements are both over and under inclusive. Okay. Okay, and that its definition of social media platform was nebulous, which probably gave Reddit their talking points for Australia.

The ruling was a victory for NetChoice, a lobbying group that represents the tech industry and has challenged the growing number of age verification laws around the world. In a statement following the ruling, the group pointed to the massive privacy risk posed by the Louisiana law and others like it.

Louisiana's law would have done more than just chill speech. The co-director of NetChoice's litigation center said it would have created a massive piracy risk for Louisianans like those playing out in real time in countries without a First Amendment like the UK. Ooh, threw them under the bus.

Yeah. And just to clarify, privacy, not piracy. No, privacy. Privacy. Sorry. Piracy is the other show. The thing is, on these guys, they at least took the time. Secure online child interaction and age limitation. Social. Get it? I can't believe the article didn't point that out. And I was dumb enough not to care. I got nothing to do while you're reading. So I just got to.

Fair enough. My prediction for next year, I know we never really do predictions or anything like that, but my prediction for next year is we will see these things roll out everywhere. This is not going to stop. There will be age verifications and age limits put on all social media.

It's going to happen. It's coming. It's coming down the line. And hopefully we can get device makers to take the charge on the age verification. 100%. Because that's the way to do it. Yeah, but what happens when you... you know, you put together your own PC and then access it that way. Oh, kids don't know how to put together a PC anymore. Never mind. That's true. That's true.

Well, OpenAI is in trouble yet again, this time for allegedly hiding ChatGPT logs in a gruesome murder-suicide case. The family of an 83-year-old woman who was killed by her 56-year-old son claims the son's mental state spiraled after he started confiding in ChatGPT. The chatbot apparently told him he was a warrior with a divine purpose, validated his paranoid delusions that his mom was a spy trying to poison him, and even hinted they'd be, quote, together in another life.

The family only knows this from videos The Sun posted online because OpenAI is refusing to hand over the complete chat history from the days leading up to the tragedy. which is a complete 180 from another case where OpenAI insisted the full chat history was necessary to exonerate their chatbot. That's because this one doesn't work out well for them. Yeah. What are you hiding, Sam?

So, yeah, the family is suing, demanding safeguards to stop ChatGPT from becoming a sycophantic enabler for dangerous paranoia. OpenAI's official response is that it's an incredibly heartbreaking situation. No shit, what else you got? Come on. This episode is brought to you by Masterclass.

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Well, we've been arguing for a long time that what we actually need is regulation. on open ai and chat gpt and all this gen ai in general which would be nice and it would be even better if we had it on a federal level but i don't know if anybody if you've looked at the federal level things these days that's not going to happen So some states have taken the charge and said that we're not going to wait for this. It's too dangerous. We need to put some regulations on these things at a state level.

And, of course, we can't have nice things, Jason. On Thursday evening, President Donald Trump signed an executive order because, again, we can't go the normal route and do things normally. Everything has to be in executive order. calling for a single nationwide regulatory framework governing artificial intelligence at the expense of the ability of different states to regulate the nascent technology. Okay, fine. Give us one then, but you're not going to.

That's the problem. The centerpiece of the document is an AI litigation task force whose sole responsibility shall be to challenge state AI laws inconsistent with the president's policy vision. If there's one thing I've learned about president's policy visions, they don't exist. So what are we going to do here? Basically, all you've done is create a task force to kick down all the state regulations, but you're not going to replace it with anything.

Now, apparently we have some sort of czar about this. That's going to do something. But nobody has liked what they put in the one big, beautiful bill. Nobody liked the 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulations. Nobody liked what they were trying to decide to do. In fact, it was removed in a 99-to-1 vote by the Senate. David Sachs, Mr. AI and cryptozar, come up with something. How about you lay out a plan before you knock down everybody else's plan?

It's David Sachs. He's not going to. He's in bed with all of the AI companies. So why would he want to actually do anything that would regulate his bros? He won't. So they're going to run out the clock on this and just, you know, tie it up as long as they can to keep doing what they're going to keep going. That's it. That's what they're going to do. They've got they've got their man in the White House. Now, David Sachs is their puppet. So. There's nothing's going to happen.

Yep, nothing's going to happen. And if you want to know just how bad this year was, I mean, obviously just listen to all of our shows. We could not get away from AI. AI was everywhere. And Merriam-Webster has noticed this as well, and they have selected Slop. for the dictionary company's 2025 word of the year. Well played. Yes, they're defining slop as digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.

And obviously we can't get away from this. It's all we talk about. Not even food delivery services like Uber Eats could escape the onslaught of AI-generated garbage that nobody has asked for. And there's just slop in all of our feeds. Miriam Webster rightly points out that the somewhat mocking nature of calling it slop, like slime, sludge, and muck, slop has the wet sound of something you don't want to touch. Slop oozes into everything. The original sense of the word in the 1700s was soft mud.

In the 1800s, it came to mean food waste, as in pig slop, and then more generally rubbish or a product of little or no value. I love learning things. Isn't that great? Isn't that great? Now we need to have a word about this next one, Brian. Okay. Anthropics chief scientist Jared Kaplan is back with another end of times memo warning that humanity is barreling towards a make or break AI decision sometime between 2027 and 2030.

The choice, according to Kaplan, is whether to let advanced AI systems train themselves kicking off an intelligence explosion that could produce artificial general intelligence. Could. Produce artificial general intelligence. Could, I say, could. Yeah, just let me emphasize, could. Best case, we get miracle science and medicine. Worst case, we hand the keys to something we no longer understand and hope it doesn't decide that we're optional.

Now, Kaplan says this kind of recursive self-improvement where AI improves AI without humans in the loop is the single scariest decision on the table. Lose oversight, lose control, and possibly lose any idea what the machines are actually doing. He also predicts AI will handle most white-collar work within two to three years, echoing other tech leaders openly forecasting mass job disruptions. Kaplan concedes AI progress could stall.

but says he wouldn't bet on it, which is very comforting. Now, a few things I want to point out here. Get your mind back, let's say, six months ago. We were talking about something called model collapse, which is when... All of the LLMs and the AIs start to basically become inbred and start learning from each other because since they don't have accurate outputs, they're going to be training themselves on incorrect data.

recursively, I might add, if you start to put agents on it. So where he's talking about, oh, the end of times is coming if we let these guys learn from each other. Well, we know that that's bullshit already, right? Unless there's been some breakthrough, Brian, that I'm not aware of. Not only do we know that's bullshit because of the reasons that you just pointed out, I would also argue that due to the complete lack of regulation, there is zero chance this has not happened already.

They have already tried this. All of them. And they've gotten shit out of it. Yeah. If it worked, we'd know about it. Exactly. It doesn't work. They would be screaming it from the fucking rooftops if it worked. Yeah. So. This is just another one of those keep our name in the news types of articles. This guy and all these other guys, it's just like, you know, most of them have taken a step back from the doom and gloom.

type of scenario where it's, you know, Terminator, Terminator times and have just gone with, oh, they're looking for a bright unicorn future. So where everybody gets something except for a job. And by the way, AI doesn't take jobs. People give their jobs to AI. So if you want to blame somebody, don't blame the AI. Blame your shitty boss who gave your job away. As we've discussed in story after story after story this year.

Sure. Some people are actively losing their jobs to AI, but the vast majority of people that have lost their jobs have lost their jobs for shareholder value. And AI was the excuse to fire people. Correct. Correct.

Yeah, it's all smoke and mirrors at this point. All smoke and mirrors, Brian. Well, OpenAI is heading into the new year warning that it has hit a hard limit on computing power and that constant is now shaping its priorities. I can't speak today. Constraint.

I know, constraint is now shaping its priorities. In a video posted to X, OpenAI president Greg Brockman said demand for its products like image generation has surged so quickly that the company has been forced to divert compute away from research. just to keep existing services running. Now, here's the thing. Just stop doing the fucking Studio Ghibli shit and maybe respect copyright and people wouldn't jump on it so fucking fast. Ever thought about that, Greg?

Maybe the problem was you shouldn't have marketed this stuff as a cool way to make stupid fucking slop images that you can post everywhere and force everybody and beg people to use it. And now they're using it. Now you're going, oh, no, you're using it. We don't want that. No, you're using it. Oh, and you're not paying us for it. Oh, fuck.

Oops. Brockman said OpenAI did not originally believe scaling compute was the main driver of progress, but concluded it was the only approach that consistently worked. That reliance has left the company making difficult trade-offs, including pausing or slowing research in favor of deployment.

The issue comes as OpenAI faces growing competition, particularly following the release of Google's Gemini 3. OpenAI says expanding compute capacity is now essential to delivering future improvements. This is what I'm going to predict here, Brian. OpenAI is fucked. Because Google's caught up. And the one thing that they relied on was Google dropping the ball on AI, period. They needed Google to drop the ball because once Google got ramped up.

Google has capacity. They've got their own chip, so they're not beholden to NVIDIA, so they don't have to go beg Jensen Wang for a handout every two minutes. And they've also got income. They basically have unlimited income with their other products. There is no way in hell open AI is going to survive. I'm telling you. I agree. I think that they're in definite trouble. They just don't have the resources. And we've talked about the amount of money that they would have to make to even be.

baseline, not in the black, and it's just never going to happen. They spend too much, they don't make any money, and they don't have the resources to do this unless somebody comes in. Here's the thing that really scares me about this story. It's the fact that Now they've come to the conclusion that the only way we're going to make all this better is we have to throw more and more and more compute at it. We are already stretching power grids. The energy usage by these companies is already.

through the fucking roof way above and beyond what we can actually possibly sustain so we can have studio ghibli slop everywhere and that's all that's really coming out of this And I don't want to I've obviously read way too many science fiction books, Jason. But I think what I've discovered is another prediction here. Bold prediction, because this one we can't we probably won't be able to prove for another like 7000 years. But we're going to discover.

eventually when we send our babaverse people out into the universe again sci-fi is that All those Dyson fears that we've theoretically thought were around all the suns from these alien civilizations were purely put there to make AI generated slop because they ran out of fucking power. And we're going to discover that these societies are dead and they're just fucking.

sitting there eating their soylent green and looking at stupid fucking images that their gen ai is creating through the dyson sphere that's 100 possible brian i love your theory i'm gonna go with that too okay totally gonna go with that

In a non-sci-fi way, though, they've also not thought about China. Have you seen how much grid capacity China is doing every, like, six months? Yeah, because you know what they do? They say, oh, you got a town here that needs power? Not anymore. So if we can just move Salt Lake City, no problem. Well, a new not yet peer reviewed study. OK, just run it through some AI. That's what everybody else does.

introduces the crash clock, a metric that estimates how long it would take for a catastrophic satellite collision if operators suddenly lost the ability to dodge each other. Right now, the clock is set to a deeply comforting 2.8 days. The warning comes after a Chinese spacecraft passed within about 655 feet of a Starlink satellite, a near miss that's no longer rare.

The study says satellites now pass within a kilometer of each other every 22 seconds. When you're going 10,000 miles an hour, that's pretty fucking hairy. That's not good. So if collision avoidance or situational awareness failed, one crash could trigger a debris cascade and kick off the early stages of Kessler syndrome, where space junk breeds more space junk and turns useful orbits into orbital landfill. And we're just locked in forever.

No Mars for you, Elon. So better go fix that. Full collapse would take decades, but the first shove could happen fast. Back in 2018, the crash clock sat at a 121-day mark, and that were 2.8 days. What's changed since then? Huh. Starlink? Starlink. Starlink. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And now we're going to have the Kuiper Project throwing up there and every other asshole with a rocket is going to be throwing shit up there to try and get internet access.

maybe throw some solar panels up there to power the fucking ai that you're already making too come on throw some of those up there maybe i know from the matrix it was it was us who scorched the sun so maybe we'll get on that too yeah but we scorched the sun trying to kill the machines remember

That's true. So we'll get there eventually. Yeah. I figured we could block out the sun with the solar panels that we'd then have to scorch after because the solar panels worked too good and the machines came alive. I don't fucking know anymore, Brian. I hate 2025.

Yeah, I'm not really thrilled with the timeline that we're in. So let's go a bit retro with the next news story, Jason. Let's cast our minds back before everything that we discussed actually almost meant the end of the human race as we know it. Back to a more quaint time. when all we were concerned about was getting our clicks and our views and how we always screamed, you should never, ever, ever build your house in somebody else's backyard. Facebook is finally taking the last leap.

to destroy any chance of you as a business ever making money on facebook they are testing the ability to put link sharing behind a paywall for creators on facebook you want to link out you got to pay for it End stage and shitification. End stage and shitification. Exactly. Under the test, a meta-verified subscription will determine how many links a creator can share on another profile per month, according to a screenshot shared by social media.

media consultant matt navarra traders in the test recently received a notification from meta informing them that certain facebook profiles without meta verified including yours will be limited to sharing links in two organic posts per month per month Two links a month? You know, people, the web used to be free, and you could put as many links as you wanted to out there. Yep.

Maybe we'll see a resurgence in blogging again. Hey, wouldn't that be great? Maybe, but nobody will go look at it. So nobody goes to the web anymore. I talked last week about that Instacart study, which was using basically generated pricing and all that sort of dynamic pricing on products. So if I bought some eggs.

at Whole Foods and you bought some eggs at Whole Foods and I was in a somewhat tonier area than you were, I'd be paying more for said eggs than you were paying for eggs. It turns out Amazon's doing the same bullshit. Link in the show notes about this, but a study has linked Amazon's algorithmic pricing with erratic inflated costs for school districts.

This is coming out to an awful lot of money for school districts that are using their special programs to order things. Of course, the algorithms are basically pumping up prices for certain people, pumping them down for... other people, and it's an awful lot of money for school districts that can barely afford shit to begin with. Again, at one point in time, Jason, the price was what the price was, and that price was the price for everybody. Not anymore.

No. I mean, there's got to be some laws about this. Oh, wait, there's nobody to enforce them anymore. If only there are some regulations.

I finished watching A Man on the Inside Season 2. How was that? It was delightful. It's a fun little, you don't have to think about it very much. kind of wash the pain away show okay there's no other way to describe it you know it's it's charming um nothing too deep but all the actors are great the characters are great it's it's fun

That's about it. You know what wasn't fun? Oh, what fun. You can guess who in my household wanted to watch this one, I think. I didn't recognize the title and I clicked on it. I'm like, oh, dear. I suppose it's a step better than watching a Hallmark Christmas movie. This is a Amazon Prime Christmas movie that they have somehow...

I don't know how Michelle or why Michelle Pfeiffer decided to do this because she is amazing. She is, I think, in her late 60s or early 70s. She looks amazing. Dennis Leary has not aged as well. He looks like he's about to die. But yeah, it's supposed to be charming. My wife was watching it. Even she was kind of like, this would be great if they actually wrote a story.

that yeah nobody does that anymore there's no story this was i'm sure somebody actually wrote this like a real person but it feels like ai slop christmas movie so don't watch it yeah remember that that uh directive that was going around from Netflix, it probably trickled down to Amazon too. You need to make everything super dumb now because everybody's on their phone the whole time. So you just have to kind of talk like you're talking to like, you know, a doorstop.

That's about it. You need to be able to look up every 10 minutes and still know what's going on. Yeah, yeah. Makes shows great, I tell you. I tell you, it sure does. The other thing that, well, let's just, let's just. call a spade a spade, what my wife decided to watch that I got to watch was a bit of the end of an era, which is the Taylor Swift documentary. I like how you say, I got to watch, not had to watch. It was a privilege, Jason.

Yeah. I have to be honest. I think I've maybe heard one Taylor Swift song my entire life. Did not care for it. Don't. I'm not a Swifty. I don't want to anger the Swifties. I think everybody gets to- Don't anger the Swifties. What's your saying, Jason? I don't want to yuck on somebody's yum. Yeah, exactly. So I get it. I get why she's popular. I get why she's as big as she is. And I actually-

I enjoyed some of the documentary, but that comes from being in the music industry and seeing a show at that scale and the technical aspects. And they show a lot of that, which was great. That's the stuff I'm interested in. So it was kind of the first two episodes were kind of worth it for that because a lot of it was the rehearsals and how she puts on the show and the stage and how they build it and the band and everything like that. So that was actually really interesting.

Actually, hearing Taylor Swift songs, less so for me. Yeah. And you said episodes. It wasn't just a movie. There's multiple hours of this. Not only are there episodes, they dropped the first two. There's six total and they're coming out over time. So my pain shall continue. Oh, Brian, I'm so sorry. You must have killed a puppy in a former life because, man. I'm sure. I'm sure I did.

And then the other thing that just started happening organically around here is, I don't know why, but we ended up putting on the West Wing one night. And that show is so comforting. Oh, don't do it, Brian. Don't do it. Because it just means getting up in the morning and looking at the news so much more heartbreaking. It does. You trade the joy and warm, fuzzy feelings at night for the cold. harsh reality of the morning it's like alcohol another thing i really enjoy

Anyways, it has been comforting. So if you are in particular, I would say if you're talking to chat GPT about committing suicide, you should put on the West Wing. There you go. There's your medicine. There's your elixir. Yeah. So I finally caved because Apple has just inundated me wherever I go with ads for F1 the fucking movie. No, I can't do it, man. Oh, it's F1 registered trademark the movie. I would rather watch Oh What Fun again.

It was really good. I enjoyed it. I actually enjoyed the movie quite a lot. So I'm not a car racing guy by any stretch, but it was, you know, it was a fun movie. I had no problems with it. It was even better because I watched it with my AirPods in through my Apple TV on a 75-inch TV. It's about three feet from my face. So it was just like being in the car half the time when they're cooking through. But the cinematography was great. The story was fine.

Brad Pitt is Brad Pitt. I like him. I think he's a great actor. So it's fun to watch. Yeah, I thought it was I thought it was fine. Now, what pisses me off about it and the point I put it in here now that I've watched it, do they slow down with their marketing? No, Brian, they've doubled down with watch it again. Wow. I get watch it again ads now. I'm like, no. Look, man, you got me once, okay? You got my two hours. Cut and run. Leave me alone.

Yeah. Speaking of running, I did see The Running Man this week. Okay. I loved it. I thought it was great. I think people thought it was going to be something else. It's an Edgar Wright movie. to start with. So you got, you go in with a certain level of expectations because it's an Edgar Wright movie. You know, he's not, he's not out there doing, you know, fine art cinema. It's Edgar fucking Wright.

And I think for what the story is and what he was supposed to deliver, I thought it delivered. I enjoyed it all the way through. Yeah, there was some slow spots and some weak spots, but the thing was funny. It was really funny. All right. I had no problems with it whatsoever. And it's funny, too, because there's one part where he actually goes through the town of Derry, which then brings me to my next show. Welcome to Derry. Both Stephen King joint.

That finished its run. Dude, you got to watch it. It's so good. I know. It stuck to landing. I know. The thing is, I'm so far behind on this universe, on this Stephen King DCU or MCU or whatever we're calling it right now. SKU. SKU. I haven't watched the hit remakes. I've got to go watch those. Don't watch those first. You don't have to. Yeah, I know you don't have to. I know the stories.

Well, this is all the backstory of Pennywise in this, so it's much better. I want to go back and now watch the other movies because now with the backstory in my pocket, it'll actually probably be more fun. But yeah, it was... It gets a little slow in the middle. Like episode three was like a room and then it goes crawls back up and it goes, whoa, to the moon.

Yeah. Okay. I definitely do want to watch it. I think it's going to have to be one of those things where I have to wait until my wife has gone to bed, my kid has gone to bed, I put a blanket over my head, I've got headphones on, nobody can see what's happening. Maybe I'll watch it on my tablet over the Christmas break. Dude, yeah, watch it on your iPad with your AirPods and it'll be just as good. Just hold it really close to your face. Wake Up Dead Man dropped this week. The Knives Out Mystery.

I thought it was a great follow-up to the series. Loved it. It's two and a half hours, so it's a bit of a commitment. But it went by fast. It went by fast. I love the first one. I got to catch up. I haven't watched the Glass Onion one yet. So got to get on that. Yeah. Glass Onion was fantastic. So was this one. And if what's his name? Who's the Daniel Craig? Yeah.

Daniel Craig. Well, if Daniel Craig ever dies, they can just replace him with Don Johnson because he looked just like Don Johnson in this. Looked like him, sounded like him. It was very Don Johnson-y. So we have a backup. We have a backup Darren just in case. And after all of that mayhem mystery and horror and all that crap, we go to bed at night with one episode of Is It Cake on Netflix. I don't know if you've watched the show, Brian. It's the Realistic Cake Competition.

Yeah, my kid was into it for like a week. So, yeah. Oh, we've watched. So they've only got three seasons on Netflix, which is interesting because I think they're like eight seasons. Netflix made it. So there's not like a licensing deal they have to deal with. but I don't know what the deal is, but they've got holiday specials. The holiday special just dropped for season two on the holiday ones. It was really good. And there's three episodes. Like they really don't go deep.

on the holiday ones. The regular seasons are eight episodes, but it's a nice way to shut the day out with something that is completely and utterly mindless. You know what we need? We need some crossover events. I want Is It Cake? Welcome to Dairy Edition, where it's Pennywise, except you cut in. and it's actually fucking Pennywise and he kills you. There's that. That'd be a good crossover. I'm in for that.

Oh, and some good news, though. Pluribus, which you haven't really gotten into yet. I love it. I love it. I watched episode eight last night. It's still going strong. There are worse things you can do with your evening than watch Rhea Sehorne. So it's great. True. And Apple TV is dropping the Pluribus season one finale early. So that is going to be coming out next week. If you're in Christmas here.

Perfect. That's what I love. You can actually watch it on Tuesday night at 9 p.m. Eastern or 6 p.m. Pacific for me. And I will. So it's 57 minutes, which is good. It's even longer. But the story is progressing well. I love it. I love the show. And Brian, it's got three seasons already built out. No, I'm in. I'm in. It's just this is one that my wife has also said she's in on, so we have to find a joint time to watch it.

Okay, well, maybe you can, like, a little less Taylor Swift, a little more Rhea Seahorn, you know. That is going to definitely be my push tonight. I was going to say, do one-to-one. You know, if you've got to watch a bunch of those, just say, look, you get a Taylor, I get a Rhea. That's all you've got to do. Fair enough. Yeah. Traders Canada finished yesterday or the day before yesterday. Everybody shook hands and parted politely.

No, it was great. It was a great finale. There were tears. There were hugs. It was great. One of the better endings in a while. So I was very happy with that. And Traders US is casting. So guess who's going to sign up? Do a video. Send yourself in. I'm going to do a video. The thing is, you have to send in all of your social media handles. So over the next two weeks, I will be sanitizing.

sanitizing my social media, which I don't really use that much anymore, but there might be something from the archives that might need to be whitewashed. You might want to go through all 727 episodes on YouTube, too. Nah, not gonna do that. Not gonna do that.

Funny. Warner Brothers Discoveries board has formally rejected the $108 billion takeover bid from Paramount Skydance, the company announced. They said they remain committed to an $82.7 billion deal with Netflix. which would close sometime next year pending regulatory approval. And this is how business works in this modern day and age. $108 billion, $82.7 billion. Generally, to increase shareholder value, you would take the larger offer, but that's not how business works anymore.

Well, there's a reason for that. It's because most of the money that David Ellison was putting up is from the Ellison Family Trust, which means that he could be siphoning that off while, you know. they're just, well, Warner Brothers is going down, there wouldn't be that money left. So what they said was, I think this came out, I saw this this morning, that Warner Brothers will consider it again if...

Larry puts in his money and will backstop the trust. Yes, there's no backstop and it's Saudi money and it's a bunch of other stuff. All I want is a strong paramount for the next point that you're going to bring up. I need a strong paramount. I don't care how we get there. Fine by me. Fine by me. 2025 quietly became a pivotal transition year for Star Trek, setting the stage for a major 2026 as the franchise approaches its 60th anniversary and prepares to launch Starfleet Academy.

Cautiously, not optimistic, but going to give it a shot. Okay. While expectations are focused on what comes next, the real shifts began a year earlier. On screen, 2025 was a relatively light year. Section 31, it was a steaming movie. No, steaming is correct. Yeah, a steaming movie, which was an unmitigated disaster. Well, Strange New Worlds delivered a more uneven third season, and the surprising news that the series would end earlier than expected.

Together, these releases suggested a franchise reassessing its creative direction. So we're going to see what happens next year because, yeah, with the Skydance thing happening right now... I don't know if they're going to have anybody at the helm over there that is going to take these things home. You know, Starfleet Academy, not really excited about. Picard's done. Everything else is shutting down. I don't see any hope on the horizon, Brian. Do you? The whole reboot.

That's gone. Swiped away. They can't seem to decide if they want to do TV or movies or both. They can't seem to decide if they have money to do any of these things.

I just keep hearing budgets. The reason this show didn't happen was the budget wasn't there. The reason that show didn't happen, the budget wasn't there. This movie didn't happen because it would have cost too much money. Say what you will about... the guys running star wars at least it's a strong creative direction that they're heading on towards now we don't have anybody like that running star trek we need to we need a czar over there yeah yeah or an admiral

How about an Admiral? An Admiral. That would make a lot more sense. It would. It would. Because, you know, and I'm still scratching my head. Why did they cancel Lower Decks? That couldn't have cost that much to make, and it was so good. It was so good. They could have kept that going for a long time. Well, and then there was going to be basically a spinoff from one of the characters on that that, again, that was going to be a TV show.

So it was announced at Comic-Con and then we've heard nothing about it since then because everything's up in the air right now. Yeah, too bad. Too bad. I hope they get it together over there. So we'll see. Well, the interesting news that dropped yesterday, the Academy Motion Pictures of Arts and Sciences. Signed a multi-year deal with YouTube, granting the platform exclusive global rights to the Oscars starting in 2029. This is after ABC will air the 100th anniversary episode of the Oscars.

Makes sense to me, you know? Yeah, totally makes sense. Most of the shit that they're going to be talking about is going to be streaming and online only, so why not make the Oscars online? Their numbers are so down, it's ridiculous. I mean, so many people... Cut the cord now. It's like, well, how do I, I couldn't even get ABC if I wanted to, unless I subscribe to the streaming service that is, that actually owns NBC. So, or ABC or any of these things. So yeah, this makes total sense.

Yeah, the numbers popped a little last year because they put it on Hulu because it's owned by Disney. You know, that raised it up a little bit. But you look at like back when Titanic came out, they were getting 59 million. people watching the show. And last year was like 18 or something. And Disney was paying like $100 million a year, some ridiculous amount of money for the rights to it.

Less than they're paying for their AI slop shows that are coming. Oh, don't fucking remind me. Don't remind me.

ios 26.2 came out with another liquid glass tweak because everybody hates liquid glass that's about the whole story All right. Well, the guy that created Liquid Glass is on his way out the door, so we'll see what comes next. Yep. Well, I love this headline. It's great. Oh, the irony. Microsoft.

push for Copilot Plus PCs could stall laptop sales. Microsoft spent the last year hyping Copilot Plus PCs as the dawn of an AI-powered future and somehow managed to kneecap the laptop market in the process. What this boils down to is to have Copilot on your PC, you need a minimum of 16 gigabytes of RAM, which will now cost you a kidney. So laptop makers are saying, why can't we make 8 gigabyte RAM machines anymore? And Microsoft is like, well...

Because AI. So there's going to be some kind of coming to Jesus moment here very soon over these. So keep your eye out. And hang on to your laptops if you've got more than 18 gig of RAM. There's 16, sorry. Absolutely. iRobot, which brought robotic vacuum cleaners to the masses with its iconic Roomba models, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The Massachusetts space company plans to sell all assets to its primary supplier, a Chinese company known as Pekia Robots.

Robotics. If approved by a bankruptcy court, the move would allow iRobot to continue operating in the ordinary course, pursue its product development roadmap, and maintain its global footprint, they wrote in their press release. That basically means your Roomba should continue to clean normally and you'll be able to get consumables and replacement parts if this goes through.

Bankruptcy seemed a likely outcome for iRobot after Amazon dropped its $1.7 billion acquisition of the company last year following a veto threat by European regulators. Don't let them have the robot vacuums. No. No. This is a sad turn of events for the company that invented the robotic vacuum niche and launched its first product back in 2002.

It dominated the space for more than a decade, but market size has steadily shrunk more recently, particularly since COVID, due to competition from rivals like Roborock and Dreamy. Also, the fact that I basically probably still have a Roomba from 2002 that still works as long as I clean it and replace the parts every now and then. So, you know, not buying any more of them. And of course.

buried in the news about why this may be happening. Trump's tariffs. 46% tariff in Vietnam where it manufactures products for the U.S. market. Ouch. That hurts. That definitely hurts. I'm surprised that regulators won't dive in on this one because Roombas nowadays, don't they map your home? So a Chinese company mapping people's homes. Yeah. Granted, it's not like a huge thing, but it's a thing. So we'll see.

Yeah. The last thing I have today, Brian, I don't know. I'm sure that you don't get this, but I get this. I have been getting bombarded by dog training app ads and. These are the kind of ads that drive me crazy. And people just, I'm sure, fall for this hand over fist. What they do is they say every little thing.

Does your dog like sleeping with you? That's because he's terrified. Does your dog look at you and wag its tail? Oh, he must have been abused. Oh, does everything that you think that your dog loves you for, they say your dog hates you for, and you need to buy that app now so you can learn. the right way to train your dog. Drives me crazy. Drives me absolutely crazy.

It's Friday, December 19th, which means New Year's is coming soon. So you're about to get a bunch of chair yoga and over 50 ads, and that's all you're going to get. Get fit in two weeks through chair yoga over 50 fucks. That's the only ad you're going to get moving forward.

I'm so sick of those chair yoga ads. Oh, I blocked so many of them. But now it's like the, you know what the new one is, the Chinese people doing, if you do this 100 times a day, you would have no chin. If you do this 100 times a day, your arms will be beautiful. If you do this 100 times, it's like, okay. Tai Chi for 60-year-olds. You're going to live forever. At the library.

Jason, as per your recommendation and your notification to me, Flybot by Dennis C. Taylor, author of the Bobaverse series, came out for real reading as opposed to Audible because he's got that Audible first deal. So I got it and I read it and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's not as wonderful to me as the Babaverse series. And in fact, in some weird way, it could be almost an alternate origin story for the Babaverse.

as uh no well not so i'm not going to spoil it but yeah yeah it absolutely could be an origin story for bob or it could be an origin story for maybe a nemesis in the future too oh he might combine the yeah there you go there you go so yeah it was a fun read It's a fun read, definitely. And, you know, this is very topical for everything that we talked about. This is the rogue AI that gets out. We did not contain it.

Yeah, good twists and turns. And all in all, I thought it was a joyous romp through the world of science fiction. It was fun. I've got two other reedy, reedy ones that I've been making my way through. Part of the Time Traveler's Passport series. Making Space by R.F. Kwong, a childless couple taking a mysterious boy in this ominous short story about parenthood's sacrifice and our response.

to the future. Great story. And the next one was For a Limited Time Only by Peng Shepard. A time-traveling salesman searches for the moments that truly matter in this poignant short story from nationally best-selling author Peng Shepard. Both of those were great. I was expecting, you know, on those omnibus editions where they have like, you know, multiple stories that they kind of...

They peak early and they trickle down over time. Not so much in this. They're all at the same level and they're all phenomenal. So for time traveler books, there's some really original. shit going on in these that I highly recommend. And if you have Amazon Kindle Unlimited, you can just go get them. They're on Kindle Unlimited. Fantastic. Yeah, I have these bookmarks, so maybe I'll work through some of these over the break. That would be nice.

And just to prove that we cannot avoid AI anywhere, here we are. Everybody knows that AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Grok, and Gemini can often hallucinate sources. But for the folks tasked with helping the public find books and journal articles, the fake AI bullshit is really taking its toll.

Librarians sound absolutely exhausted by their requests for titles that don't exist, according to a new post from Scientific American. The magazine spoke with Sarah Falls, the chief of research engagement at the Library of Virginia. who estimates that about 15% of all emailed reference questions that they receive now are generated by AI chatbots like ChatGPT, and the requests often include questions about fake citations that the librarians are...

expected to chase down. What's more, fall suggests that people don't seem to believe librarians when they're explaining that a given record doesn't exist, a trend that's been repeated elsewhere. like 404 Media. And many people believe they're stupid chatbots over humans who specialize in finding reliable information day in and day out. And if I can't say that that line isn't 2025 in a nutshell, I don't know what is. No shit, poor librarians.

Poor librarian. People that believe they're chatbot over librarians. The funny part about that is that they actually know what a library is because you would assume that there's a self-selecting sample who doesn't know that there is actually a thing called a library. Yeah.

The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to the Dark Side with Dave, with the podcaster who never sleeps, Dave Bittner, probably because he's drinking that giant can of Monster Energy drink he just shook at us. Dan covers the daily cybersecurity beat on the cyber wire. Bus scams with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans. Untangles privacy headaches with Ben Yellen on caveat. Digs in industrial security on control loop and still shows up to stir trouble on only malware in the building.

Hi, Dave. How you doing? Hi, Dave. I'm doing well. I am looking forward to winding down this year. Aren't we all? Aren't we? We certainly are. We certainly are. Oh, I did want to point out, Dave, just because I think you're the person that will appreciate the news the most. We had put our foot down about going to Disneyland one more time this year. We said that's absolutely not going to happen. We will go walk downtown.

Disney and that will be fine until my wife heard from her work and they said, oh, well, we happen to have passes for Disneyland if anybody would like them. And she raised her hand very quickly. So we are going to Disneyland December 30th. Okay. Good for you. I'm very excited. All right. I hope that works out for you.

I don't expect to get on any rides. It will be incredibly busy, but I will just walk around, enjoy the decorations and all the festive foods that they roll out every year. No, that sounds like a good plan. I don't know that I've ever been there. that close to the holidays. I have seen... No, I was at Disneyland when they had the Nightmare Before Christmas overlay on Haunted Mansion, so it must have been close enough to...

to the holidays, but yeah, I hear that's a busy time between Christmas and New Year's. Sure is. Good luck.

All right. Well, in sad news this week, I think it's only fitting that we say our farewells to Rob Reiner here since we talked about the Princess Bride and Spinal Septum, Spinal Tap so much in the segment. Spinal Septum. Spinal, yeah. Man, I don't know about you guys, but the feeling here in town is just burn the motherfucker. That's about it. Yeah. I mean, tragic. Unbelievably tragic. Yeah. It is. Unnecessary. It is. I have a close friend who was murdered by his child. And so I know, you know.

this is closer to me or i guess it brings back the the horrible memories of that and the feeling of waste like why you know if to the kids who do this sort of thing just run away run away you know don't don't why do this so um yeah it's tragic um you know he certainly leaves behind a legacy from all in the family through a lot of our favorite and lots of people's favorite movies. Very few stinkers in there, but just seemed like a genuinely good guy. Everyone who worked with him.

They had good things to say about him. And when you saw him out and about in appearances, it just seemed like the kind of guy you wanted to spend time with. I don't know if any of you, if either of you ever crossed paths with him. I never did. I did once. He was very wonderful. He was everything you would think he would be. He's kind of a big oaf.

that comes into the room and is smiling and has nothing bad to say to anybody and doesn't care if you're catering or if you're just hanging out. He will shake your hand. He will introduce himself. He'll ask your name. How are you doing? He was a force of nature walking in the one time I met him. So very nice guy. Yeah. You know, it also reminded me that some of these journeys that we're on with our kids, with our friends, with our loved ones are lifetime journeys.

of dealing with things like addiction and mental health, mental illness, mental health issues, all those kinds of things. They're not episodic. It's a marathon, not a sprint. And sometimes they end tragically. So it's really been heartbreaking. And I guess I try to take comfort in the movies that will be around, the TV shows that will be around. But it's really been a hard one to take.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I could go off for about 45 minutes. It was much harder to take thanks to the condolences of our commander in chief. Ah, yes, there's that. The ghoul. We'll just call him the ghoul. I lost my fucking mind about, so. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I got to say, hero of the week then is Mick Foley, who quit the WWE for that, so.

Good on him. He was tired of being associated with that and said, enough's enough. This guy just can't do it. When you lose Rob Schneider, you've really lost everything as MAGA. Even Rob Schneider was like, no, no, no, no. Oh, my God. I missed that one. Deuce Bigelow has had enough. Deuce Bigelow has put his dick down. There is no bottom, as was demonstrated. Yeah, it was pathetic. Pathetic.

Well, I wanted to do a little follow-up from episode 723, Dave, where you put in the video of why movies just don't feel real anymore. And the thing about it is what got me, the thing that you said about it was the sweat. Now I can't unsee it because I can't see it. That's the thing. Nobody sweats anymore. I can't see what you. Right. Yeah. Right. And then I went back and I watched the video that you posted and it's a phenomenal video.

I really enjoyed it. And the tricks with depth of field that they pull nowadays that just take you out of the movie. And anybody who is interested in any movies or any kind of movie fan should definitely go check out the video, Why Movies Just Don't Feel Real Anymore. And link will be in the show notes. It was really, really...

I want to say enlightening, but it really ruins a lot of new movies for me now because that's all I can see. Yeah, I think for me, part of it was that it was affirming that... I'm not the only one who's feeling this way. And it's a hard thing to put your finger on. Why exactly are you feeling this way? Because it's a lot of different things combined.

Just this past week, I had an exchange with someone on Mastodon who was complaining about this sort of thing with color correction. I think there was a new version of, like a 4K version of... vacation, or Christmas vacation, the Chevy Chase movie. Is it all turquoise and orange? Exactly. That was, yeah, so someone was doing a before and after. They were basically saying, you know, you've done this movie wrong.

And my response was, I keep waiting for Hollywood colorists to break through this fever dream that they're in where they think that every single shadow has to be teal. Yeah. It's like the 80s in music where all the sound engineers were so fucking coked out of their mind. All the high end is super high because they can't hear it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's a good video. I appreciate you bringing it up again. And it's worth a look for sure.

Yeah, and I saw another video that I thought was really well-timed because Avatar 3, whatever the name of it is called, releases today. And it's called The Avatar Paradox, Why Nobody Talks About These Movies. And it is a nine-minute breakdown, a serious breakdown by the drunken movie reviewer who I always love. But he actually drops the act for a little bit and is very serious about why Avatar movies suck.

And I think he breaks it down really well, and it just comes down to there's no soul in them. They're beautiful, but there's literally no soul in the story and no soul in the performances. Because I've always been thinking about that. Everybody's watching these movies make billions of dollars, but you forget about them instantly. I couldn't remember a single character name. The only thing that I remember from the Avatar movies is the poorly named Unobtainium.

That's all I can remember. And that's it. I watched the first one in a theater. I walked out and I said, I don't know what just happened and I don't care. And since then I have lived. As much as I have removed the red hot chili peppers from my life, Avatar has been completely removed from my life. I know that there's a new one coming out because you can't not know. I could care less. Yeah. To me, the first Avatar movie was really the demo reel for when they brought 3D back into theaters.

Yeah. And it was really it was great for that. It was super effective. And it was the movie you had to see if you wanted to see what 3D was all about back in the theaters. And in my mind, that's how I. justified the amount of money it made in that initial run. I scratched my head over the amount of money that the most recent sequel made because, again, I can't name a single character from an Avatar movie.

I did not see the sequel. I saw the original. I've enjoyed walking around the Avatar land at Disney World at Animal Kingdom. It's cool. It's a cool ride that you're on, which flies you through the avatar. It's like you're riding on the back of one of those big winged lizards. And it's fun. It's cool. But you finish and you kind of shrug. You go, huh. Utterly forgettable. But I think so in thinking more about why the sequel might have made money is.

I think it's a very easy, lowest common denominator franchise when it comes to films because, you know, it'll be good. It's not going to be bad. It's going to look amazing. You will be entertained for a couple of hours. Everyone will probably enjoy it, so it's an easy one to say to your friends, what do you want to see tonight? That new Avatar movie's out. Okay. And you'll walk away probably feeling like you got your money's worth, but that's about it.

Well, that led me to another video that I think that everybody should watch called Don't Fuck with James Cameron. And it talks about, and it's funny, my dad and I were talking about this the other day before I saw this, that. James Cameron is the kind of guy that knows what everybody should be doing on a movie, knows everybody's role, and knows how to do it better than everybody else on the movie. He's just that kind of guy.

I can only imagine how obnoxious he is on set, but also how hard it is for him because everybody is an idiot compared to him, you know? He's like, you're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong. You're doing it wrong, you know?

I had a friend that worked with him on Terminator 2, and he was doing this. My friend was doing a sketch and James, he'd been working on the sketch for like eight hours. And James Cameron walks by, looks over his shoulders and goes, well, that doesn't really work now, does it? Just walks away. It's like, oh, that kind of guy. But, you know, his old stuff, it still stands up, you know? I mean.

I still like Titanic and that just might be, you know, Stockholm syndrome because I worked on it for a year and a half and I couldn't get out of it. But yeah, I'm still a fan. I don't think there's any doubt that he's a talented filmmaker and has made some great, truly great. films uh i included a link here to something i saw just last week which is a vanity fair piece uh i guess in anticipation of this movie dropping uh and it's james cameron talking about

many of his past movies. And it's really interesting. He talks a lot about how much the success of them comes from them being character driven. which is interesting compared to what we just talked about with Avatar. But I think it's true in some of his earlier movies that we cared about the characters a lot more than we do in the Avatar movies.

Your thing about him knowing, being the smartest person on every set reminds me of one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies, which is Broadcast News. There's a scene where they're at this holiday party and the head of the network says to the Holly Hunter character, it must be nice every time you walk in a room to assume that you're the smartest person. And she replies and she says, no, it's terrible. Amen. Yeah.

Well, a little bit of good news here. The Muppet Show will be returning, unfortunately, for one night only right now. Right. Once more, it will be time to meet the Muppets on The Muppet Show tonight. Disney has revealed the first teaser for the one-off return of the legendary variety show in celebration of its... upcoming 50th anniversary. The Muppet Show Return will stream on Disney Plus and broadcast on ABC on February 4th, 2026, so coming very soon.

It's very exciting. And of course, as we all know, this is basically a teaser balloon for a return for the show to come back. If the ratings are there, then perhaps we'll get it. So we'll see. But of course, for the ratings to come back, it'll have to be good. And we put Seth Rogen in charge. So I'm a bit worried. I am too. I'd like to be optimistic about these sorts of things. I can't wait for Fozzie's weed jokes.

Well, I'm just thinking if they turn the Muppets into the boys, then we'll really get something. But you say Fozzie's weed jokes. To me, that was the moment where I disconnected from the last Muppet movie, which was Muppets Most Wanted, I think. It might have even been the movie before that. Anyway, Fozzie tells a fart joke. Right. He talks about like he has fart shoes or something. And when I was watching that, I...

I had a jolt because I said, that's not a Fozzie joke. Jim Henson would never have allowed that to show up in anything. Yeah, it's just not their style of humor. My hope is that whoever is involved in this and isn't the guy who did the Goldbergs is involved with this as well. Yeah. And I think he has a great, sincere affection for the Muppets. So my hope is that they.

figure out what that old sense of humor was. And that's what they go with. And, you know, you got to bring it up to date a little bit, but that's my hope. But we'll see. We'll see. I'd love for them to get some traction. Yeah, it would be great if 2026 was the year of the Muppets. Man, it's all good and they get going again. Be wonderful. Yeah, absolutely.

I put a couple of other things in here that caught my eye this past week. Because I'm a glutton for punishment and cannot get away from it, I'm still pursuing solar power. Remember, there's the whole story about trying to power my camera. Well, yeah. So that's done. He's thinking bigger. Yes. OK. Well, I'm thinking bigger, but not too big because.

There are small solar systems that are, it's called plug-in solar, where you set up a handful of solar panels, you plug them directly into your existing... electrical system basically through an electrical outlet and you have some devices along the way that help make it safe for you and for the electrical system. That would be good. Make sure those parts don't come from China. Right. Right.

And then you can cut down on your electric bills, theoretically. For me, it would also partly just be kind of a fun project, maybe hedging bets against the power going out or... just broad societal collapse to have a few good sized solar panels around and maybe a battery backup. And I don't know. I don't know why that's been on my mind lately. But it reminds me, I got to make sure my generators.

tanked up right right exactly so uh there's a little story here from i think it was from npr or pbs i can't remember but about this movement towards small-scale solar, which evidently is already a big thing in Europe and is now just starting to come to the U.S. So I'm dipping my toes in it and stay tuned. Maybe it'll be something that I... pursue

When the weather warms up here and the sun comes out. It's definitely an interesting thing to me as well. So I am looking forward to you being my personal guinea pig, Dave. So I will follow your progress. And as things work, I will adopt them myself. Yes, I am lucky. My top most deck is perfectly positioned, southern facing and nothing in the way that it would be ideal to put a handful of solar panels up there.

I just have to figure out how I would mount them and all that kind of thing. But hey, it's a project and every project is an opportunity to buy a new tool. So that's true. Yeah. And since I'm in Southern California where it's always sunny and my electric bill, my latest electric bill was $1,900. I am very much excited about these. Holy crap. Your electric bill was $1,900. Jason is still Bitcoin farming.

Wow. That's even being very careful about it. We turn off all the lights, don't have anything running. That's just how much it costs nowadays here. I mean, it's for two months, so you can split it across that. But still, it's like a two-month electrical bill for $1,900. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Almost costs as much as health care. Almost. Yeah, I'd say that is more than double.

It's about double what I pay. And I've been to your house. You know it's not big. It's not big, no. And our winters, of course, are much colder. Well, we have winter here. I guess it's a better way to say it. Is there ever a time of the year when you're not using air conditioning, Jason?

Yeah, it's coming up on it. It was 87 degrees yesterday, so it wasn't yesterday. But we will switch over, and then our gas bill will be just as much as our electricity bill. So it just flip-flops back and forth. They get you here. You need some solar panels for all the sheer amount of inflatables that you have for the holidays on your front lawn, Jason. I think that could be part of the problem. There's only six of them and they only run in daylight hours. They're massive.

You see them from space. The fans are this big. That's it. They're efficient. Okay. Yeah. I can tell you they're efficient because we see no noticeable difference in our electric bill from, you know. October to... Well, October's probably bad because we have... That's Halloween. Yeah, that's the Halloween inflatables. Okay, let's say May to December. There's no discernible difference. It's about the same. My electric bill went up about 50...

50 bucks a month and i'd say my electric builds probably around 300 a month um but it went up about 50 a month so significant uh after we fired up our hot tub that did it yeah That's an expensive device, those hot dogs. Yes. So if we could offset that with some solar panels or something, you know, again, it's mostly just a fun project for me to frustrate myself with.

And which makes for great radio for us. We're really happy. We're really happy you have a new project. I cannot wait. I think it's going to be awesome. Yeah. Okay. Thanks, guys. 2026 is finally giving. Yeah. I really appreciate your support. Thanks so much. Can you hook it up to your ham radio so we can chat with that? Yes, I could. I can power my ham radio.

And then last but not least, not to bring things down, but... That's what we do. It's our brand. Hey, again, tis the season. There is a video that I'm sharing here that I found quite moving and quite interesting and quite helpful. And it's an interview with... who's the guy from CNN, Anderson Cooper, and the Sedaris siblings, David Sedaris and Amy Sedaris, who...

I previously mentioned on this show that I would love to go antiquing with. Yes. But it is about grief, sharing parents, sharing sibling or losing parents, losing siblings. Uh, and what that journey is like. And as everybody knows, well, obviously I lost my father this year, but I think my 2025 body count is at like nine. Oh my God. I'm sorry. Yeah, thanks. I mean, this has been the worst year of my life when it comes to losing friends and family. And so...

What I learned, this just sort of popped up on my YouTube feed, but what I learned is that Anderson Cooper has an entire podcast that's just about grief, where he talks to people about grief. This one is great. I watched the one with Stephen Colbert, which is amazing. So if you find yourself in a situation of dealing with grief, I highly recommend this. I found it.

very meaningful, very helpful, really put me in a good mindset to consider some things I hadn't considered in my own journey of grief, of losing. you know, both of my parents in the past few years and then lots of friends and family. So Stephen Colbert talks about grief being ultimately being a gift because. Having been through grief, you can then offer your support to others who are going through grief. And I found that to be very helpful and uplifting and encouraging.

Check it out. It's definitely worth your time and see if it has any meaning for you. Yeah, I remember listening to Stephen Colbert after my father had passed away and it was actually quite helpful just to bring a somewhat. lighter note to this. When did David Sedaris start to look like Fred Schneider from the B-52s? When did that happen? I don't know.

But it's funny you bring him up because I was just the other day randomly on one of my, you know, algorithmically generated playlists. Love Shack came on when I was driving home from work. And of course I turned it up, but I just started thinking about the unlikeliness of that man's success, you know, like it was a different time. Yeah. Yeah. And we all love him. And when Love Shack comes on, everybody, you want to get a party started?

for people our age, play Love Shack. People love it. And then pass out the aspirin. Right. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, it's true. It's true. All right, Dave, have a good holiday, man. We'll see you in 2026. The year of solar. That's right. When our solar dreams all come true, what could go wrong? Renewable Dave. Yep. See you then. Hope springs eternal.

Over at Patreon, we've got no new subscribers for the end of the year. Boo-hoo-hoo. But Paolo and Craig did up their pledges. Thank you very much. And we've also got, from the archives, Bob, Benjamin, Ian, Kevin, David, Philip, Caitlin, Marie, Holly, and Michael, who's still...

continue to support us and we love you all very, very much. Thank you for your support. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And over at PayPal, we've got Arcadio, Nathaniel, Brett, Andrew, Sloan, and Linda with a big old $25 donation. Thank you. Thank you very much. Over at the tip jar, we've got Val Sunnily.

Theodore and Sean. So thank you all very much. And just to drive the point home this holiday season, if you are in the mood for giving, go to GOG.show slash donate because your donations keep us on the air. I don't know if you've noticed the ad revenue out there. for podcasters is not that great anymore. Oh, but we did make 43 cents off YouTube. You did see it. I was going to say 43 cents so far for five weeks worth of work.

We've made 43 cents. We are in the money. We're in the money. But you can go sign up for Patreon there once you get the show a little bit early, ad-free and in high definition. And at some point, we're going to have YouTube memberships, so we'll...

See what the hell we can do there too. But yeah, yeah. Go to GOG.show slash donate if you want to help keep the show on the air. And nobody bought any new merch. Support my Grumpy Old Geek shirt here. Yeah, yeah. You can get that. Shop.GOG.show. Sadly, no reviews.

Love my views. No, but Len wrote in, also known as Funny Name. Hey, Jason and Brian. Long time listener and supporter here. I wrote a song called And Shittification. And honestly, it exists because of years of listening to your podcast. The whole theme, AI in your toaster, it's a feature, not a bug, etc. Directly inspired by the show. Where's my songwriting credit? Yeah, mine too.

I think we get a songwriting credit on this one, to be fair. So I put the links in the show notes. It's on YouTube, Spotify, and SoundCloud with a direct download. Awesome. Thanks for years of great grumpiness. Say hi to Dave. Len, aka FunnyName, funny.name is his... url so i i did listen to it uh i hope to god you didn't use ai for that but uh fun stuff good awesome i'll check it out after the show yeah uh and brian the fucking curse lives you know

We thought, okay, we killed Prince and David Bowie. Fine, fine. That's enough. That's on us. And we said no one died last week, and then, well, shit, everybody did. So that's our bad. Our bad. Our bad, yeah. Yeah. Happy belated birthday to Wendy Marvel, friend of the show, design of our fine logo over here. My ex-business partner. I hope you had a great birthday. Hope somebody made you a bunny cake since I'm not making those anymore for you.

Okay. I'm sure there's a story there. And we'll be off the air, and I don't even know if he listens to this show, but happy birthday to Doug Sarine, a.k.a. The Ninja from Ask a Ninja, a friend of mine who I thoroughly miss hanging out with. Because we used to hang out at South by Southwest and get blindingly drunk back in the day. And yeah, so we are going to be off for two weeks. You know, one week this year, one week next year. We're bookending it because we need a break.

And during that time, though, I will be producing some YouTube shorts. So to keep the keep the, you know, the show alive and just make sure I can't just relax. Yeah. Well, you can relax. You're going to be at Disney doing your thing. I'm just going to make some shit and put it on YouTube. You don't have to do nothing. I'll put them out on the socials. No, you don't have to. The socials don't count. We don't get our 43 cents off the socials.

But I'm just going to be playing with stuff and it gives me something to do because I hate time off because I'm a workaholic. That's just the way it goes. Until next year, I'm Jason DeFillippo. And I'm Brian Schulmeister. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 727. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at GOG.show slash donate. Let's face it, we're broke.

Every penny helps keep the show on the air. Love the show? Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness of friends, foes and everyone in between. We'll love you for it. Swing by GOG.show to join our Discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts, feedback, cool links. Hit us up at GOG.show slash contact. And don't forget to leave a five-star review at GOG.show slash review, and we'll read it on the show. And we've got merch.

shop uh for grumpy gear now at shop.gog.show what better way to say to your friends and family that you love them than to put gog stuff us in your stockings stay grumpy have a good year everybody See you in 2026. Have a great year, everybody. I'll see you next time, Brian.