Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of AT and T Service Trendage Outage Trended.
They sound the same. That is courtesy of Manicheich. My name is Jack, that is Miles.
We are recording this on a wax cylinder because we've been We've been solar flared. We've been hacked back to the Stone Age.
If only, if only?
Nah, So there's been.
We woke up this morning to news of a major cellular outage that was really screwing over tens of thousands of AT and T customers. Whereas AT and T put it silver, our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. It's an experience, like you know, Jimmy Hendrix.
Just a thing.
I'm just thinking of. Have you ever been experienced that tripped me out?
When I realized that was a sample used in passing me by by the far side.
There's a lot of yeah, you know, I was looking at uh perverse guitar thing.
Do you know the song tramp by Uh? I looked at that.
Never mind, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna sidebar on this, but yeah, I don't know. Some iPhones entered SOS mode, which sounds scary, but it just means that you should be able to contact emergency services despite the network going down, Right, they got to come up with like a better title for that option, because when you look down your phones
in SOS, Yeah, what do you mean people? Yeah, people were temporarily unable to contact nine to one one Jesus And yeah, so there's immediate speculation it was a solar flare. It happened to coincide with a pretty major solar flare, but the outage mainly in the US, and the solar flare was like a yeah, the the US was on the dark side of the Earth at that point, so it wouldn't wouldn't have made sense.
Sorry, Brian the editor, no Carrington event for you, like you've been begging for not this time?
Yeah, I couldn't wait.
I was like, oh, Brian the editor is gonna tell me that this was all like explain all the solar flareage right right. Unfortunately, him knowing about solar flares makes it so he knows when it's not a solar flare, and so well.
Yeah, our confirmation was like solar flare. He's like, I hate to say it, folks, but not this time.
The Drudge Report had like is still to like at this point, has huge headlines like in all red sell outage hits AT and T nationwide, Verizon T Mobile affected. I don't think that's true, Une apparently they said it was so Verizon T Mobile were showing down like that some of their members were down because they were trying to contact AT and T is the official.
So they're like, they're calling the AT and T homie and they're like, yeah, shit's fucked up too, Yeah yeah, wow.
But the world is ending. Then solar Flare, question Mark, then map and all three of the last headlines. When you click through it, it goes to like a website that's down. So it's really makes you think, oh man, it's something leave the world behind is actually happening.
Yeah, oh well, I mean hopefully we don't have to.
Man, I'm just scared of like what would happen if shit like that truly went down? And then like the electronics are useless, like at the end of Escape from Lay Snake, Blisken turns off the world.
Yeah.
Like, the more I read into it, I was like, so, what's the There's got to be one big explanation, right, and it seems like it's just people being like, no, there's thousands of interconnected jobs and processes that need to.
Work for any of this shit to work.
And like people are speculating that it might have been Cisco, like a company that forms the backbone of the network.
So I don't know, we don't know.
Quite eever, that's below our pay grade exactly.
You know, you figure it out, you guys, I'm paying you, I'm paying us all, so tell me what the fuck is up. But yeah, that's a freaky And again that's why you just bring the payphones.
Back, bring them back.
That's right, all right, Biden impeachment. Cool, this must be trending because they finally got his ass, right, Okay.
We've been talking about I mean we talk about it every now and then because obviously we're like it's bullshit.
Because every time they mentioned something, they kicked it off being like, well, we need an impeachment inquiry to find wrongdoing.
It's like, no, you got to have evidence to then justify an impeachment inquiry. And the whole time they're like, oh, we got these star witnesses. Everybody kept fucking disappearing. They had whistleblowers whatever, bullshit. So now Jim Jordan and James Comer, who are the two main characters here who are raw rahing this whole thing, They're looking even worse than they normally do somehow now that the impeachment probe as well
and truly just collapsed. Their star witness who they're like, wait to hear what this guy has to say is, how do you say?
Fucking liar? And was working with Russian intelligence.
So basically what happened was an informant quote who claimed Biden had pocketed millions of dollars from the Ukrainian oligarch was indicted by the Department of Justice for lying to the FBI. Since then, Smirnov, who is the person in question, has reportedly admitted to law enforcement that top Russian intelligence officials were involved in the smear campaign against the sitting president. And now Comer and Jordan are like trying to do damage control. There's like Republicans even now.
We're like, these guys are fucking fuck. We knew from the a lot of Republicans saying we knew from the beginning there was issues with this, but they decided to go through with it anyway.
So one of the most buttoned up scientific process for conducting this investigation.
No, no, And now I'm sure we're going to see a series of Jim Jordan freak out videos when people ask him and he's.
Like, wait, it doesn't matter, you know that. In fact, it means he's a he's a terrible president. So yeah, you know, yeah, you missed, you missed on that one. But hey, keep trying. Something might come up.
And we missed a couple of weeks back. But I wanted to bring up that they're going to be adding a new category to the Academy Awards next year for best Casting. No, I like to talk shit about the Academy Awards, which categories they should be adding. Yeah, and like how they should be giving the award five years for the movies that came out five years ago, for instance. Best casting is something that has come up before as a thing that we thought would be interesting.
Yeah. Wow, shouts to Anajosy, a super producer, always talking about prestige.
Cast, prestige casting.
Now here we are we have a way to make a statue out of it.
That's right.
This is an interesting one because like it's kind of hard to define like that. So the BAFTAs have had it for a few years now and they've given it to joker Elvis. West Side story this year was The Holdovers, which like don't.
Seem to Elvis Elvis. I mean, I guess you.
Get a good performance by somebody who can like fit into an iconic role. Like maybe that's what they think with Elvis. But yeah, the Tom Hanks one was kind of a casting miss.
I would say, yeah, what that movie's confounding. I mean, they they love a bit of baz Larman, don't they over there?
Yeah yeah they yeah, no, it looks pretty cool. Wait so baft Oh so we're just copying the Baptist.
Yeah.
I mean this has been something that people have been trying, like casting directors, like the casting associations in Hollywood have been trying to make happen for a while. And I think one of the people in the Academy, like in a leadership position in the Academy, is a casting director. Now,
so they made that probably more likely to happen. But I don't know, like the I think I can I can think of examples of like greatest casting of all time, right, Like I feel like pulp fiction is up there with the greatest Jackie Brown is.
The Godfather, the Godfather.
Just like in retrospect, it's like, oh yeah, they just like put the most famous actors in all the all the lead roles, of course, but I mean they weren't the most famous actors at the time in every case. And yeah, but I'm trying to figure out, like how you give this award that makes me appreciate casting, Like
do you like my pitch? The dream scenario would be that you show recreations of the scenes with other actors in the roles to show like how badly they would have worked if they had cast somebody else, right, like Selick playing Indiana Jones for a scene like this is who we almost cast and that would have sucked.
So yeah, you're welcome.
Or just seeing like Will Smith in the Matrix, Yeah, yeah, I have been like I'm like, I don't yeah you kind of Keanu just yeah, you're fucking up with like the the Arc of History. I think by.
Yeah, yeah, I mean I think it would be interesting to see what that looked like, but it would just like bum you out and then you'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah, just give him the award.
I don't want to see Tom Selleck in this fucking role at all.
It's just always Tom Selick. It's like back to the Future with Tom Selleck as Doc Brown for sure.
Brian the Editor Eric Stoltzan back to the future that, Matt, Yeah, what in fucking wild.
They I mean footage they shot for days with their results in the Marty McFly roll and and yeah they they obviously couldn't do that because it would be mean to the people who who were ill cast for the role.
But right, and then what then you put fucking uh Michael J.
Fox in pulp fiction?
Yeah, and although he would as Lance, that would have been kind of fun.
No, you don't think.
I've just seen Trudy the one Ship's.
True to the one with all the ship in her face. No, that's jan that's my wife. Yeah.
Seeing Michael J. Fox do that nine would be fucking weird. Yeah, I don't know who else was that? Oh, I mean, uh, Jean Claude van Dam as the Predator near Miss. Yeah, well, I mean he was just in the suit, but still either way, but it'd be weird.
It would have.
All right, let's take a quick break. So that's coming up in twenty twenty five, not this.
Year's a hold on your butts.
Hold on you, hold on to your butts, folks, get ready to appreciate some casting.
Let's take a quick break and we will be right back.
And we're back, and just in the increasing get rid of the breaks to you know, cut down on all the weight.
You know what, we don't need.
We don't need breaks on these indie cars because they add weight and we don't care if the drivers down.
To plow the car down. Yeah, and what is the point.
Keeping with that approach to capitalism, Duncan is now selling caffeinated energy drinks like even so this suggests to me that they saw what Panera was doing.
They saw they were like.
Look at that fucking publicity that they're getting from these lemonades that make people's chest explode.
So I don't I don't know how high the caffeine content is, Okay.
Banaras were two thirty four two thirty four milligrams in the Panera Heart Exploder lemonade, and this one is now for I guess a similar serving size. Noting that they I guess the daily. They say the best safe quality quantity of caffeine for quote, healthy adults is around four hundred milligrams a day, about four or five cups of coffee a day.
Yeah, four hundred in a sitting. Not good, No, not a good idea.
No no, no, no no, But I mean yeah, I want it's like one of those things, right because all these fast food places like you got to do your R and D so like you just you're like, oh fuck, they got their thing and like so this had to have been months in the making. And they're even like, hey man, their lemonade's kind of like causing some weird headlines. They're probably like the market research shows people want they want to come in.
Some people don't want fucking coffee with their caffeine. Give them peach flavored caffeine.
Yeah, and a donut.
So yeah, it's all just it's just I mean again, like the way we use caffeine in this country is frightening just to.
Be like it's so we get through the fucking hellscape.
Man, But it's every yeah.
I mean now, like just gambling is legal, like just they're just trying to strip mine us as a consumer population for everything. And I'm not necessarily against you know, I'm not saying like we need to go back to making everything illegal like in the nineteen fifties.
But it is. It's just revealing of.
Like where where the corporation's head is at right now? Yeah?
Oh, and what's the offer for prize picks right now?
They're I mean, I like to use prize picks because they have insurance. Wet miles with prize picks, it's not even a gamble because they offer insurance.
Just ordered to point that out in case we wanted to cut that sin. We bowed a gambler. But yeah, I'm I'm, I mean, one ninety two seems manageable.
You know that doesn't I don't know. I have no idea. Again, I'm not caffeine sensitive. But oh, dude, have you had Vietnamese coffee yet?
Yeah?
Yeah, I had it a mic with you, Yeah.
Yeah, okay, cooka And.
It was a lot.
I couldn't I couldn't have too much, it was Yeah, I tried. I chose not to drink more than like a third of it at once. Yeah, because I didn't want to have my day changed, right, And.
Yeah, you want you want to see your kids graduate and all that, Yeah, exactly right, and not in the life flashing before your eyes sequence I.
Feel like the I don't know.
I actually don't know how many people on a day to day basis are served Panera versus Dunkin Donuts, But I just feel like dunk and this is gonna reach a lot more people. So it'd be interesting to see just how turned up the city of Boston can get.
I feel like.
With Duncan, like you know what you're going in there for Panera, It's like I think it's like one of those things too where I could see someone be like I'm here for like a bread bowl soup and saying go, and then you're like, whoa charge lemonade? I'll try that, not knowing what the fuck is up, and that they've been like, we're trying to kill your ass with this thing. We're like Duncan. People are like, yo, I'm here for the caffeine. I know what my fucking limits are.
Yeah, that's true.
That's more less of a change up, less of Yeah, they're not trying to trick anybody with Panera.
America runs on Duncan. You know what I mean, they know, so you know what you're doing.
America runs on Duncan, and it now sprints with a crazy look in its.
Eyes, its hands around its ankles, and hey, come back here.
Uh we we just got a note from the I R S, the the ultra rich are Oh yeah, yeah, I just got this is just in for the IRS. They just reached out to me. We're in close contact with them, all right. It was an interview with CNBC, but they revealed that US millionaires and billionaires are evading more than one hundred and fifty billion dollars a year
in taxes. So, according to IRS Commissioner Danny Wirfol, the problem here is not that America's tax laws are blatantly rigged to protect the wealthy, but that the IRS doesn't have enough funding to tackle all these complicated and sophisticated returns. I mean I think I think probably both of those things are true.
Yeah, yeah, you know, but don't make it a money bag situation too. I mean, we get it because we've seen how you know that like this is such a weird like culture warpoint with like the right and Democrats or they're like they're.
Trying to fucking get into your they want to see the money you make to cancel you or whatever, which is really just like protect our donors wealth. Yeah, yeah, just I don't know, why don't you just let like the cops handle it and then brutalized billionaires and shit who are not paying their their fucking.
Taxing scam street. Yeah, no, that would definitely happen.
It's just like the fact that like lack of fund against the i r S for years has starved the agency of staff, technology, and resources needed to fund audits. And like again like this this is I guess this is the episode where I'm just.
Like the worst.
I'm like, get rid of all this caffeine and let the i r S do more audits because I'm sure the IRS wouldn't focus on the people who donate to you know, donate massive amounts of money to.
No incentivize it, like let the IRS agents be like, yo, you get you get a cut of whatever taxes you actually bring in.
But like the USDA, FDA, all these like parts of the government, these governmental organizations that are massively underfunded so they can't get in the way of corporations like maximizing profits. Like I feel like the I r S is probablyably victim to the same shit when it comes to their ability to actually tax billionaires. And but this is like, you know, taxes are the governmental like that's how they
stay alive. So the fact that they're not even able to operate independently from the wealthiest people in the country like suggests that the system is really fucked that they're gonna let the wealthiest people in the country get away with whatever they want, because this is like what the government is supposed to be good at, is getting people to pay this.
Yeah, just like, like we've said, other countries, they know what you're making because the employers are paying their kicking the taxes up, so they have an idea of what's owed. It's just like just I don't know.
Again, simplified taxes would be great, but again, our friends at Intuit turbo tax have them, like all those those tax preparation services have massive efforts to basically be like, please keep this shit as complicated as possible as people won't fucking come to us. Yeah, that was my favorite thing about TurboTax though. It's like, you know, when you're doing your own taxes and shit, you could just like you just fuck with the numbers to kind of watch how much you get background which you owe.
And yeah, huh huh, what if I like shift this scale a little bit to the left. Oh that's a higher number.
Oh I'm gonna get more back than I made this year.
Yeah, yeah, submit, But yeah, of course, the people who do that and then can't afford a tax attorney are the ones who are getting audited and the people who are going to tie the irs up in cork for the next three generations. All right, And finally, Starbucks is releasing a pork latte in China, like literally flavored with braised pork, drizzled with pork sauce, topped with you guessed it, a piece of pork breast.
To meat and breast meat.
You don't think pork havept breast.
I know, But I mean, like, we're never, We're never Like, yo, here's pork breast, you know what I mean.
It's like a shop it's a tenderloin, it's a pork, but it's a pork shoulder, it's a pork belly.
Yeah.
And now I'm like, wait, we're are we missing out on a whole part of the pig.
For these porks. These porks don't miss chest day, you know.
Okay, yeah, good to know, good to know.
But they they noted eating meat means prosperity in the coming year, and they want to bring traditional New year customs into coffee, which I guess that's true. Yeah, that is the New Year's tradition in some parts of China. But from what I can tell, shoving hunks of salted meat into a cup of hot coffee is not.
It's tradition.
Well, we're trying to combine these cultural traditions with hyper consumer culture and being like.
How about this.
I mean it's like it would be like tell and like you know, like black people you got to eat you know, like a black black eyed peas New Year's for good luck, and they're like, oh what about Yeah, but now they're being like, oh, you missed your black eyed peas, get it in this shake. Or like in Japan you're supposed to eat soba noodles before New Year's Day for good luck. So then be like, yo, we got these blended soba noodle fucking tease that you watch.
You know, we're almost halfway there, because.
The way you think of like even when I was in Japan, I was like, shit, we gotta get soba, because like that's just what you do to make sure you get you're right for the New Year, and like in a panic sometimes you'll just be like fuck, it just gets them at the store and then we'll make it up real quick so we can just get it done because that's just part of like the superstition or tradition or whatever. So it feels like a way of
just really weaponizing that. Dude, just yeah, just get the pork, lot, get the pork. Try it. Try it. It tastes like shit, but at least you're getting your pork in.
Like I like, I guess coffee has a could have like a more savory cultural context in China, Like there were all those people like wellness, people drinking butter in their coffee will improve coffee. So I don't know, but it just seems there's something like specifically off about it that like makes it feel like the head of Starbucks China was like a robot who didn't understand why two things people like don't necessarily go together. Right, people are
eating this and drinking this, why not? You know?
Keep me saying, So.
It's a latte, so we're to presume that there's espresso in there.
I guess, oh yeah, yeah, I mean it's a coffee drink. It's a coffee bever.
Yeah, it's a dongpo braised pork flavor sauce with espresso and steamed milk. Yeah, I don't know, man, whatever, just just take that, leave me alone. Just just trying to get home, Just trying to get home, man.
And now try our new kunk f itter Pina colada. You know, it's just like not a thing that should Yeah, oh, never thought about that. Anyways, let's put that on.
Let's put that on the menu. Confritter, peenie clotter. I just had. It's weird because I just had concorters when I was in Florida.
And conforters can be like sweet, Like you might want a sweet sauce with that, So that was a terrible example.
But I don't.
I didn't have mind sweet. You can have you have comforters.
Sweet, you could have a sweet sauce or whatever, right right, right, right, right, right right right. Anyways, these are some of the things that we're trending on this There's.
The issues we grapple with on the.
Shoes are the issues we grapple with.
We do it so you don't have to exactly. We are back tomorrow with a whole ass episode of the show, and until then, be kind to each other, be kind to yourselves. Yes, get the vaccine. Yes, don't do nothing about White's print. And we will talk to you all tomorrow. And I have a board clot, I have a comett, have a cocontte, I don't know which.
Just have a cobaine.
Have a combat