Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of October Trent. That one courtesy of Maniche on the discord. My name is Jack, My name is Jack. That over there is Miles Gray. These are the stories trending. Oh sorry, my bad, Miles g or should I thank you? And Greg?
Thank you? Wonderful principal Skinner bit. How are you doing, Miles, I'm great. I'm great. Relatively speaking, I.
Think I could care less about the country struggling.
You know, we just had to watch RoboCop remake. Yeah, just that's a cool thing for people that know they know, but anyway, yeah, at least.
With all the dick shots just yes, yes, being shot.
But I was actually watching a lot of Hurricane Milton coverage last night because I was just very unsettled by everything happening in the building up and it sounds like like this morning, they're like, oh, like Ron DeSantis, I heard him be like, obviously we were spared some of the worst parts of the storm, but that was more just like the I think, very narrowly, the storm surge in Tampa wasn't what, you know, what had been predicted, which is a great thing. But meanwhile, there's still plenty
of just damage and chaos. Yeah, and fatality, yeah, just already. Yeah, I don't know if that you can say like, oh, it wasn't that bad.
Hey, we're good here and I did my job good. Yeah, take it for me a guy who doesn't want you to think it went badly, Take it for me performance Anyways, Myles, I've heard of Ellen Degenerous, but Elon the Generous.
Fuck, it's stupid. Wow, I didn't even know. I didn't even think you wrote that Elon the Jenitor.
I thought it was an Ellen Degenerate generous.
Oh no, that was that was him. That's his pope name, Elon No. So, you know, they're like a lot of there's been a lot of stories of like celebrities giving money to help with you know, the cleanup and supporting people in the aftermath of you know, hurricanes, Helene and Milton and and like Dolly Parton, Taylor Swift, Metallica heard of them, Tom Lady, We're coming out of their pockets.
So it makes sense that like attention thirsty, or rather popularity starved, Elon Musk would also oh yeah, yeah, y're not ready for this one would also want to get some positive publicity for his good deeds so on. Like after I think last week, in response to Hurricane Helene, the starlink account posted quote for those impacted by Hurricane Helene or looking to support response and recovery efforts and
affected areas, starlink is now free for thirty days. Then Musk shared the post and added quote, starlink terminals will now work automatically with need for payment in the areas affected by Hurricane Helene. And you're like, oh, dude, that's fantastic because you know, you consider a lack of cell service or internet connectivity can keep people from obviously being reached or reaching authorities for assistance. And you're like, oh, good job, Emerald. Fuck. But wait, then there's a little
bit of an astiss here. Quote Please wait, a Starlink kit is required to access this free service. If you do not already have a Starling kit, you will need to purchase one. Okay, So what do they cost? Like like twenty bucks or something. No, if you go to the website, like the all in cost is about four hundred dollars. But then they're like you will have to
wait weeks for delivery. That doesn't help. And then they're like, but you could also get it from like best buy if you live if you are in this terribly affected area and Best Buys are open and operating, you might be able to cop one for three fifty plus taxes. Then it goes on the fine print quote after thirty days, we will move you to a paid residentidental subscription, which costs one hundred twenty dollars a month. Ah yeah, you.
Just it's just like a thing that they would be doing anyways, like that, Like what it's like trial three first month, yeah, pre one month trial.
Exactly, a free trial under the guise of doing something just quite generous. It's an altruistic you know. But again, yeah, he's done it again. He's done it.
He's done it again. It does. It's just funny to watch him because like, you know, the other celebrities are like, all right, we'll do the normal thing and like give money and to the trust. Yeah, give money where it's needed and trust that they know what to do with the money. But Elon Musk can't. Like that is the last thing that he would ever do is like give money, like not get credit and not like get to like put his own like fake genius stank.
On it, right, Yeah, he's got to do his rob or Tony starkshit.
The cave kids. Was like that was such a because that was like when he he was people were still kind of figuring out that he was like world class, world's biggest piece of shit, right, and he came through and was like, actually, I'm gonna invent a submarine that can get us in there. And they were like, oh that that that just like wouldn't work, like having been in there and he having been in there that there's nothing there's no version of that plan that could work.
And he was like, oh, you're a pedophile.
Oh what anyway, I.
Like that's still one top five, Like wow.
Weird responses to trying just an expert telling you how your idea is bad. Well yeah, and then I mean I think it's every there's always strings attached. Like I remember even with the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, He's like, Starlink will be free unless Putin wants me to like kind of back off, and then then I'll listen to him. But anyway, I'm making it rain Internet. But no terms and conditions do apply. All strings attached.
Also, all strings attached, no further answers. Your honor. I do. Just there, there's an interesting report. So we talked about this trend back when that massive hurricane hit Puerto Rico. Yeah, I forget which Maria. That's right, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. It was during the Trump administration, and so he was doing his meatball rob thing and being like we're good. Nothing to see here, like was yeah, was shooting paper towels to people in need like they were basketball.
Sure, survivors of a terrible hur You know what you need, yea quicker pick her up er, probably to get up all the water right here? You go that sure boy Kobe for three way down to y'all hear outside because that's string music. Baby.
But anyway, people are like, you know we should first of all, that's like a little quick the storm just passed forty eight hours ago. Uh, And you know it's what it's worth being in mind that this community, this entire island is like without power, without food, without any infrastructure right now. So like even after the CNN cameras leave, like there's still going to be a need for a lot of things and people are going to be in danger.
And so people put together a analysis of like what does it look like when you actually compare the rate at which people die in the immediate like lead up to a hurricane and the immediate aftermath of a hurricane. And what they found is that so usually tropical storms result in an average of twenty four deaths per storm in the official estimates, and these are people who are dying from drowning or some other type of trauma. But in the aftermath it can be like up to thousands.
Official government statistics put the total death toll at about ten thousand people on average, which like is wild because like, yeah, infrastructure, electricity being down, you know, hospitals being overrun, hospitals, you know, not being able to take care of people as well as they otherwise it would be right, people being displaced,
people be like losing their social networks. It's just and again these are not things where they're going and being like all right, add another one to it, because like that person got murdered. It they're just comparing. Okay, here is like you can across a lot of days with
a lot of statistics. You can be like, here's how many people you would expect on average to die in this geographical location, and then here is how many people are actually dying, and it goes way up for a long time after the storm because it is incredibly difficult to build back and there's a lot of damage. It kind of reminds me of the crime statistics and a lot of the things that we saw after the pandemic.
Is like when society and like day to day like the operations that we take for granted that make it possible for this many people to live together are disrupted. And it's not the like police, you know, not being
there that is the problem. It's like the having a place to go, having people who are there to you know, just being around the people that you are friends with, right, who are there to help you, because like those are the people that we actually rely on and have to rely on in America because there's no safety net, social
safety net, it just becomes incredibly deadly. Which was I don't know, it's just really worth thinking about as we're you know, thinking about this storm and other tropical storms, and just you know, the people who are affected are not just affected when the palm trees are like bending over shit.
Over right, Yeah, exactly. And I think to also just the means you need to evacuate a lot of the time, right, Like you read anecdotally, there are people who have really large families and pets, and if they you know, they some shelters don't accept pets, so then they're like, well, then what, I don't have hotel money, I don't have
Airbnb money because they're gouging people right now. Or scarcity of gas and all these other things are just like some jobs, you know, like I was we were talking the other day about how some people were like made to stay at their job when Helene hit and then ultimately passed like succumbed to the floodwaters. That you know. Job security is another thing too, depending on where you
are and which your situation is. So it's really, yeah, there's so many other dimensions to it that probably aren't discussed as much because it's always just like, well, did the flood go up bad? What does the news footage look like? And sometimes it's the stuff that isn't the fucking footage that you know, maybe needs to be the
news story rather than the water went really high. But yeah, I mean I guess like it, like you know, most people are meteorologists saying it's like thank god the storm surge was not as high as we had forecasted in Tampa specifically, but everything else, you still have millions without power, you still have a ton of damage. Everything else, it seemed to happen, is as bad as predicted. But yeah, I just hope everybody is staying safe as much as they can.
If they were there sharked on the highway, if there were not sharked on the highway, I don't give a fuck.
But there were gators in the drive through that there's like some videos like that, Whe're like, there's gaters, there's gaters, which I get too that that could happen.
Yeah, yeah, guy opens as like there's a gator like eating his wheel or something. I mean, look, I'm not gonna sit here and say the wildlife in Florida is not wild, but yeah, it's uh yeah, it is what it is. To quote my favorite rapper. Anyways, Uh, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. And we're back. We're back, and just another you know, in the in the absence of social safety nets, what do
we have in these United States of America? Miles we have each other, and we have chain restaurants exactly the waffle House apparently has its own storm center.
Yeah. I always knew it as like there was clearly like the waffle House like index where like you could see based on how like we've always talked about that in the past, of like knowing based on how many are open, you can kind of gauge like the severity of things. I guess it makes sense that they would also have like some kind of robust like weather forecasting center also, which is wow, yeah, okay, Yeah, they basically took that shit seriously.
People were like, yeah, we as a loose way to tell how bad a storm is. We look at like how many waffle House are still open because those shits like barely close. And the waffle House basically created a situation room where they like track storms and like take in a bunch of data, they say. After Katrina, locations that were able to reopen were swarmed with people hungry for a hot meal. Waffle House took notice and decided
to beef up its crisis management processes. Senior executives developed a manual for opening after a disaster, bulked up on portable generators, bought a mobile command center, and gave employees keyfobs with emergency contacts and you know, the article points out that like sales double or triple and the aftermath of the storm, because they're the only ones who are open. But they're like, yeah, but we spend like that that stuff is so expensive.
On some real data there. Wow, I mean, yeah, great, it's an investment that does come back to help them. It's also why that, like FEMA is also just sort of like, hey man, can you share any stuff? What kind of insights do you have from the waffle House storm center. That's how like robust this operation is.
I know, it's why, Like it is kind of dystopian that it's like, and now we're checking in with a waffle House storm center to see how scared you should be for your life and the lives of your loved ones.
I think for people who don't live in like the southeast or like where the waffle houses usually are, if you just swapped waffle House with Taco Bell, that would kind of help underline how sort of odd that is, Like the Taco Bell storm center is telling us, right, yeah, whoa the Taco Bell storm centers? Yeah.
I do just wonder though, like one of the theories of like, well, just let the market decide is that companies want to be liked by consumers, and so it makes sense that you would like do nice things that aren't immediately like treating each individual as a profit extra
action device, you know. But sure, so it just feels like more shit like this should happen, Like it shouldn't be that rare for like a company to do a thing that is like, yeah, you know, it's not we're not like turning a profit off of this like this, this wouldn't be something that we would do just purely for profitability, but it's good for like long term how people think of waffle House.
Yeah, oh absolutely, But then, like you, I'm sure they'd be lying if they said obviously because business doubles and triples, like we need to capture that.
They wouldn't be doing this if they were hemorrhaging money.
But yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. But hey, look salute the salute the waffle House storm Center for providing vital data to people.
Yeah, Brian, the editor points out, it's kind of reminiscent of how like Red Bull is always putting a ton of money behind Like we're the people who will sponsor a guy, yeah, jumping out of space free falling out of space to Earth. I still I that video was like a Felix bombguard that the other guy's name, when he just went out there.
That always I always watched that. I think when that video first happened, I was.
Like, dude, this is the sikest shit. Dude, imagine just free falling back to Earth. Like I don't know why that sensation. I was like I was doing I was, I wasn't in a good place. Then I wanted to be a guy who fell out of a space blue.
But that video touched me. Yeah, touch me right in the heart.
Yeah. And me I'm a little older. And the video that did that for me was Tom Petty's free falling. Oh man, think about that free falling.
Because I'm free free falling all right.
And then I just wanted to talk about Spot. Miles. Have you met Spot?
Yeah? What wouldn't like personally?
No, Miles meet Spot, the LAPDS new crime fighting robot Dog.
This is an article that's me being Spot.
Exactly. I think this is on the hail or like Politico or yeah, the Hill, and it acknowledges there's some controversy. But I just want to read the opening graph, which is he can sit, stay, and even shake just like any well trained dog. But that's where the similarities end. The Los Angeles Police Department has deployed its newest crime
fighting tool, a robot dog named Spot. The futuristic four legged machine, which boasts the size and agility of a seventy pound Golden Retriever, has been met with both fascination and concern. Oh okay, so we're gonna allow that there's some concern. I love love that it's a Golden Retriever, which is the touch point, like just the friendliest dog possible. Hey, you just think of this as like a friendly dimp shit, like a friendly dumbass.
Like one of the first books kids read too, see Spot Run, And you're like, you're just like this, dude. It's so it's so innocent, man, remember Spots Spot Run. It's like and it's like the dog from Full House. Dude.
Look, man, a lot of us have been sitting around waiting for the mask to slip on our dystopia, you know, like we have all the surveillance and mind control of like a futuristic Dystopian nineteen eighty four, but none of the gun cotta and like weird matching wardrobes. But you know, we've got nothing to see here. Skin on everyone's robot's reality,
and so I'm glad. It's just you know, they're finally taking an interest in scaring things up a little bit, yeah, making things look In this case, the reason we were watching the we remade RoboCop video that just really goes hard on the dick shots is because this really like has RoboCop. It really is really knew what they were doing with robot because.
Like the coverage, it looks like a scene from a movie or like get spot up here. They're like, all right, deploying spots spots up. Come on, bring it into the front.
Yes, it's like.
Hopping along and like yeah, yeah, and it's got this weird zeno morph like extendo skull head hand thing. Yeah, it looks nothing like a dog except for it's a quadruped that's about it. That's where it ends.
It has like it's about the size of a dog and like kind of walks like a dog a little bit, except instead of a head, it's got a snake that has an imposable thumb that will reach up and you know open a door or you know, try and disarm you hopefully not like rip your arm off.
But you know, I think we always say we need more robots, we need more AI, more predictive policing. That's always we do say that. If anyone listens to this show, that's what we do. Baby. But this one, like when they deployed it for like the first time in la like like maybe like about a year ago, just just like news coverage of it, Like it's so plainly stated, like in a way that you're like, oh, cool, this
is this new fucking thing. When like some guy had like a like fell asleep with a gun on a bus.
Yeah, and they passed out on a bus and like his gun fell out, and I think he was like hammered because they couldn't wake him up, and so they sent in a swat team.
It sounded like a cop like cops tried to wake him up, and then they're like, all right, dude, get the most expensive fucking rat ever to come out and do our job. But this is coverage from k CAL nine News and.
Our breaking news photographer Mike McGregor got a shot of it there. It is. This is called the Spot, or more officially, the Quadruped Unmanned Ground vehicle.
It's a robot purchased for about two hundred.
And seventy eight thousand dollars this year by the LA Police found that and donated to the LAPD. It's built by a company called Boston Dynamics. It's remote controlled by a SWAP team member. It's got a camera and a robotic.
Arm on it. This is one of the very first times we've seen it.
There's so outit and dude, it's sound like he whiz.
Yeah, it sounds like a fucking QVC sales segment. Like you guys want to call in right now. We got Spot coming up from Boston Dynamics. This is got a camera, it's got it's got a fucking hand. It will freak out your neighbors. Come on, call in now. Two hundred seventy eight thousand dollars.
Yeah, and uh there there's also another video of you know, a it's like news b roll from a news helicopters from last month. Yeah, yeah, from last month showing Spot entering like a house where there was a shooting and the LAPD didn't want to go in there, so they send robot dog Spot in and uh yeah, it's the guy's like whoa look at that, Like he's so excited
to see this thing. He's like, there it is, there it is, and shit, I will say, like undercutting the you know, scariness of the idea here is that it is when it comes to door knobs, it basically has the dexterity and efficient see of a middle aged man in a blackout. Yeah, everything about it is like a guy in a blackout. Like it approaches it, like seems confused by the door knob and like just stands there.
And then as it like approaches the door knob, it like starts kind of swaying back and forth because I guess the person I got change controlling it is trying to like get it lined up.
I gotta change my approach angle here, so I gotta make sure I land this thing right. You go. My keys are upside down again. Oh I dropped them Like it's that whole like physical comedy basically yeah yeah.
And then it takes like thirty seconds. It's just like on the knob for thirty seconds, and then it stops and the guy narratings like nope, it's given up it the door is locked, can't do it shows on which I'll also me in a blackout doors locked, just give it up and giving up on this one. We're gonna move on to the next door.
There's so much. There's too much of this fucking automated policing shit. There's like those like little sentry robots that are like cruising around now in the county that are like going by like parks in the city and being like, are you guys playing basketball? I have seven thousand cameras on me. You are being watched at all times. Yeah.
So they tried this in New York with NYPD with something called Digi Dog that was deployed in public housing.
Ah.
Yes, and this led to public outcry and it's eventual removal from service. But that LAPD is like, guys, you have nothing to worry about here. We're using this to
end a situation peacefully and not harm the public. And the fact that its head is a snake that can reach up and like grab something really quickly, Like I don't know why you're taking that so weird and people seem well, well, first of all, I will say, like, so the first video of the news report being like and here he is like introducing spot as he like goes into a bus where it seems like the guy was just passed out. Yeah, like you said, that was
eleven months ago. And then there's like this New Hill article from a few days ago that is like meat spot, and so they're just persistently trying to introduce this massage it in there. I feel like this kind of reminds me of like the helicopter. Like I'm sure when they first when the LAPD was like what if helicopters? You know, there was a prolonged push in the media to be like whoa, look at that, gee whiz, this is neat
look at the big flying machines. And then cut to a few years later, and they're being used to send the message that we're watching you at all times and you know, loudly putting a police presence psychologically above you at all times of the night, like they're just the LAPD is always with you and menacing you. You know.
Oh, well, I'm glad that Police Foundation money went to such a fun thing for the commuting and no, I guess not bread for their stupid hobby toy that they can use now.
Yeah, well, anyways, sham WHI should they say it cost?
Was it fifty eight or two seventy eight.
One of the tube deal. One of these for your kids, dude.
I each each one of my boys will get one, like the goddamn like the fucking Stark family. They all got their own wolf, dude, they all got their own spot robodog.
That's right. Well, those are some of the things that are trending on this Thursday, October tenth, October trenth We are back tomorrow with a whole ass episode of the show. Until then, be kind to each other, be kind to yourself, get the vaccine, get your flu shot, don't do nothing about white supremacy, and we will talk to y'all tomorrow.
Fight bye.