Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of The Weekly Zeitgeist. These are some of our favorite segments from this week, all edited together into one NonStop infotainment laugh stravaganza. Yeah, so, without further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist. Anyways, Miles, we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by a hilarious stand up comedian, actor, musician with the seven point four rated album on Pitchfork to his name.
That's right. You can listen to his podcast called brew Got Me like anywhere fine podcasts, or give it away for free. His new book, The Advice King Anthology, available anywhere fine books are sold or given away for free. At the library, you know, the poetry window is open because it's Chris motherfucking Craft did what's up?
Good to see you guys.
What's up? Man? I noticed something about it.
You look like you have your your fist over your chest like you're doing half a Waconda salute.
But yeah, yeah, I broke my scapula Thursday. I got an email from or No. I sent an email saying, hey, I would like to go back on The Daily Zeitgeist. Didn't and I got an email back that said hey, you. We were thinking about it on Tuesday and I said, sure, Wednesday, Today's Wednesday, I guess in the podcast world, but a little podcast ruin every over, ruin everything. I've ruined everything. So anyway, when I email to start the whole show over, when when the when I sent that email, I did
not have a broken scapula. I had never even heard of a scapula. And then when I when I got when, I confirmed, yeah, sure I'll do it. Tuesday I was on like, you know, morphine. But I figured by Tuesday i'd be all right. But I broke my scapulaay afternoon, and I broke my rib and uh so Nashville has been like this ice skating rink for a week and now it just went away because it just got finally went up to like forty or fifty or whatever, right,
and so all this stuff melted. But for a week, I guess Nashville has like a couple snowblouse.
I mean, yeah, you me literally like two.
They have a few, I guess. But it was not cool.
It was like everybody was falling down. My neighborhood was like a fucking circus. Like it was like the whole the street was an ice sheet for a week, so people were trying to go to work and have to turn back. My neighbors a guy, a drunk guy, came down our street. Like, first of all, our street, it's got no sidewalks or anything. So like if you go off the street, you're in a lawn, right and so
and so this my neighbors, like I did. I was asleep because it was after I broke my scapula, So I was in bed.
But I woke up.
My roommate was like, that's right, I said, roommate, my roommate.
Your buddy, my buddy. Yeah. My wife, my mother, my beautiful wife.
Was doing animation on the new Fast and Furious movie in the living room of my well appointed Silver Lake.
Je Fast and Furious whatever.
She pays the bills.
So I was asleep.
I was asleep. She pays the bills. I live right next to the Silver Lakes.
Got this note from Vin Diesel.
I'm friends with Jimmy Kimmel. It's unbelievable. So me and Jimmy Kimmel we are taking a nap in the same bed, and my wife was animating Fast and Furious twelve or whatever it is. Yeah, and no, okay, I'm gonna go back to what's really happening. My roommate said that the next door neighbors, He's like, did you see what happened? And I was like, no, I was in there, and he said.
Oh my god, this car came down the street, lost control and went into my neighbor's yard. They it slid on the ice and landed in their yard.
Wow.
And then it was a drunk person too, even though it was the middle of the day.
And yeah, because I always think drinking is nighttime thing, right, but not for this guy. And so then while he was trying to get out of the yard, which he also couldn't get out of because it was ice too, and it's down in a gully like our streets on kind of a hill, and like it's it's just a very you know, this was not an ideal piece of land for houses when they put them in here. So the so this car, this car like smashing into the
people who lives there. He's trying to back up and stuff, and he smashed into their car.
And then they eventually had.
To go out there and take his keys away from him. And then they gave him a blanket because it was so cold, and they gave him some water and then they then the police came and I guess I didn't see the police, but they he said the police were very mean to the guy who he didn't speak English. So you know, anyway, Nashville is like needs more snowplows on the double. So if anybody out there in Delly's Guy's world has an extra snowplow, you might I call up the city city hall.
Here, how's your rib? How's your scapula? That's what I'm I mean.
The thing is, I've broken so many fucking bones that it's really just embarrassing. Like I was more embarrassed I hit the ground than anything else because I heard or I hit the ground, I hit the steps, but I heard things crack, so I knew it's something. Yeah, you know, And it's just like I haven't broken that much stuff.
I mean, yeah I have, but I haven't. I mean, I broke my hip.
In twenty eighteen, you know, roller skating, you know, and everybody thinks that's funny, but you know, it's not funny.
Only left it's funny.
It's funny. That's LA's fault. That's because people in La grown people go roller skating because they're reliving their childhood that they didn't get to have in Wisconsin because they're mean dentist.
Father never talked to them or whatever.
Right, so they moved out to La roller skating.
We're crazy clothes now, even I'm forty.
So then hell, these socks are yeah, exactly at least crazy socks.
I got them on the internet, you know, and.
Uh, the film on there.
So I broke Yeah, so I wrote, I'm doing a YETI Fuck film.
We're pitching it to Adult Swim.
It's gonna be called YETI Fuck film. But we're gonna censor put stars instead of the fuck. You know, it's gonna be f and then three stars. And yeah, I know somebody an Adult Swim. He's like a lower down guy. But I know the guy put the roof on Adult Swims. Uh, he replaced the roof and he talked to one of the guys there.
So didn't they switch buildings though? Yeah, but he still got the guy's number.
Yeah, well he also Yeah, he's just like in the loop, you know what I mean, he's got the guy's number. I don't know how it's gonna work, but it's pretty much all set. Yeah, yeah, it's all set. So I fucking I don't even know I'm talking about it anymore. But it was like the my roommates said, the day had happened. My roommate's car got stuck in the middle of the road and it was stuck, and he came running in and he said, oh my god, Oh my god, oh my god, car stuck in the middle of the road,
and somebody has come over the hills. We live over a hill, and he's like, somebody's.
Running to my car. And I was like, oh, fuck, yeah, I love jobs, you know what I mean? Yeah, And I like helping this.
I was like, shit, you was standing barefoot in the kitchen eating a cold case of DIA and I put on my sneakers and he said, the stairs are slippery. But that was the only thing I holed against them, because the stairs were not slippery. They were impassable, unusable. Each one was a solid fucking piece of ice. So I went outside and happily put my foot on the top step and immediately flew up in the air and landed in the air. I realized, oh my god, I am fifty four years old and hovering over set of
concrete fucking steps, and I am like fucked. And so one step broke my rib and the other step broke my scapula, which is the piece on the back of your shoulder, the wing. And you know, I didn't even feel the shoulder thing because the rib hurts so much. So my only thing was I actually thought I probably broke my back. So when I stood up, I was happy.
Yeah, you're like, it's a miracle. It was really lucky I hadn't. Yeah, that sounds like it could have been worse. Yeah, it's it felt like.
The mundane way.
I mean, you know, the no one plans on getting paralyzed or I mean, it's like that's what it felt like.
It felt like, oh fuck, this is really dangerous.
Like when I was when I was in the middle of slipping, I was like, oh my fucking god.
I mean, it's like, credit to you, man. I'm glad you're doing well.
And also I'm glad you know you listen to our email where you said, get the fuck over it. You said you'd wanted to were doing this show.
You want.
To be in the big time. You're gonna slip big time.
This is Hollywood.
Yeah, I thought you were a professional with the never talked.
To you again. If you don't get on this zoom, what do.
You mean something's broken? Like I get I believe you, but like, why are you telling me that? What does that have to do with me?
Anything? By tell it to your personal assistant you, oh man, So I.
Have a go fund me anyway, if anybody I already made the I made the goal though, and and people from Daily Zeitgeist and you guys whoever's in charge of your social.
Media retweeted my go fund me.
So I'm very grateful as usual to the Daily zeit Gu's community because you know, they've just been a huge.
Part of my life in the last three four years. So that gang, yeah amazing.
Canceled my health insurance because I feel like I can just like reach out to them.
Good idea. That's a good idea.
Yeah, that's probably the best idea you've ever heard.
Your wife's I'm sure your wife is an animator for one of the major movies.
Yeah, so well her work on.
Yeah, she's a stunt coordinator for the New Avengers flick.
Yeah.
Yeah, I know how Hollywood works.
Kevin what's his name fi? Yeah, yeah, he gives he gives us good health insurance. What is something from your search history that's revealing about who you are?
Oh gosh, I don't really know if I like what this reveals about me. But you know, we need to
get like really obsessed with something. And it's not even recent, it's not trending, like there's no reason why, but for all my search history for the last two days and just really wild deep dives on the twenty nineteen film Cats, you know, the awful one with all the like cgi fur and you know, all the superstars kind of crawling around at all fours And I don't know why, but for some reason, like a specter just came back and
wanted me. And I was like, today, I need to like listen to an hour and a half YouTube video on the making of Cats, the movie twenty nineteen and why it was a disaster. And so I'm not busy enough. I think it's I need more hobbies and I need more productive uses of my time. But I am now an encyclopedia on terrible cgi slash why you shouldn't try and make very weird Broadway musicals into films.
Yeah, I was immediately like trying to connect the dots. I was like, oh, well, I I think I remember that they used AI technology to remove the cat assholes from like was that one of the things where it was about to come out and they did a test screening and everyone's like, they're a pink cat assholes are in our face the entire movie? Or are we going to just do that? And I went back and digitally removed them. But now, were you into the movie when
it came out? Were you anticipating it or you just kind of have it?
So I love I'm a dancer, so like I love musicals, and like you know, I was one of the only people that was like un ironically excited and thought of the Cat's musicals. I realized that's like four people who like actually would have wanted to see this.
And then the trailer came out and it was just so frightening.
What it was a really good example of it's like in like AI and robotics, either term the uncanny valley. This might be something you've heard of, this idea of like the closest something looks like to a human or to like a living creature, but like being different enough
that you can tell, like it's not quite human. Like the creepier and so this original robotics experiment Matito Mari or the person who like writes thisay about this us the example of like a mechanical hand that moves, and it's like, that's super creepy, Like no one wants to see that. And all I could think of is this
like essay from this Jefpaness robots this. But I saw those cat humans things moving and I was like, it's going to be so bad, like no one wants to see this, whether or not the pink assholes are there or not, you know, and they just end up being all smooth doubt, which is also awful.
So yes, it was a kind of terrifying disappointment.
Because yeah, there's kind of a strisiand effect. I feel like when people are like, but where are the assholes?
You know what I mean?
And then people were like, well, we actually, like I don't know, might have been better with them.
How do you?
Speaking of cats and an interesting, uh sort of obsession with them, have you listened to your fellow compatriots podcasts, Guy Montgomery and Tim Batt's podcast called My Week with Cats, where they keep watching cats over and over and talking about it.
No, but this sounds exactly up my street. Yeah, yeah, yeah, now.
Yeah, we've had them on the show.
Guy is one of our favorite guests and fellow Kiwi And yeah, like to such an absurd podcast to just keep revisiting Cats over and over.
Yeah, I mean, have you listened to the iconic Kiwi podcast who shout on the floor at my wedding with kind of viral? I still haven't listened to it yet, but that's also on my listening list.
Yeah, that's one that I've heard many times. Be like, have you come up?
And I saw all the write ups about it too, are like, it's absolutely the most riveting thing that we've listened to this year, is what I feel like most people say about that.
That's amazing. So are you how many viewings deep are you of twenty nineteen Cats or is it just like you watched it once and then it's all YouTube like explainers?
Oh yeah, I watched it once. I don't know if I could do it again, to be honest, Like I did it once on like a trans atlantic flight and that will was, you know, myself trapped in the middle Tube had this moment with Pats when I was like, oh it is as bad as everyone said. And then now it's just extremely scathing movie reviews on YouTube.
And in print.
So I'm like single handedly keeping the movie YouTube review economy alive at this point.
What's something you think is overrated?
Authenticity?
M M, what do you mean what you're saying here? Yeah, I'm over it.
Just at first I was going to be specific and talk about like gray hairs and personal grooming, but then I realized, just in general, I'm over authenticity.
Give it.
Give us an example of how you are bucking the scourge of authenticity.
Okay, number one, please take a note of my attire today, folks at home. I am man flannel covered in eggs, banana, avocado.
And apple.
Yeah I did. I was gonna say, wait, don't forget the apple, but yeah, okay.
Yeah it from last week.
Yeah oh yeah, oh yeah, wow. That's not stains on the Swia shirt and wearing right now now.
I also have like all my grays peeking through a little bit of sunburn on one side.
One side, you don't want to know that they're breaking up the parenting by being a lung haul trucker. Is that where.
The I don't want to be fucking authentic. I don't want to be authentic. I watch you at home, just imagining that I look fucking glamorous, that my hair is like blown out, my makeup is contoured and perfect. My Snapchat filter is like, really, how I look? You know what I'm saying, that I'm like a Kim Kardashian mom that's just like together.
All the time time, even I'm always on my banana phone having long, like three hour long phone calls that like, Mommy's busy, Mommy's busy. Anyway, Rothy, get back to the team.
We all know it's not true, but isn't it better? You know, I've already been on the show talking about how important lying is, right m hm, and this is really just part two event. Just keep the lies going. You don't need to know how people are doing. Really, whenever people are like, how are you doing? Like, it doesn't matter.
Yeah, I'll tell you. Look, I'll tell you if I'm doing bad. How about that? Otherwise, let's just presume I'm balling out of control.
Okay, I'm just out here just killing it, just slaying. Yeah, you know, drinking from my hydroflask that should have been a Stanley.
Okay, yeah, I did.
We did clock that before we started rolling, and I was like, oh, you came with the Stanley and then you turned it around.
Set the record straight.
It is a hydroflask, but it looks functionally exactly the same as a quencher.
And you say you were not Stanley.
You know, I screwed up. I should have lied.
Yeah, this is the one area that we have to disagree. Authenticity isn't good damn it. If it's a Stanley quencher or a hydroflat, it needs to be a Stanley. Unfortunately for us to be okay, because we're gen Z. We're gen Z gen Z. That's why did you not know? I forgot It's very important. So fucking cringe, like you don't even know your gen Z.
S Like, I'm so sorry.
Oh my, did you try a Stanley?
Though?
Wait for real, though? Did you try a Stanley?
Said Stanley?
I didn't like it, okay, so break it down house not using it really well?
Stanley is narrower, m okay, And I was extra conscious of how it might tip over.
Oh it didn't feel stable, like.
I care about my center of gravity. I also don't have as much collagen in any of my joints anymore.
Things are wobbly y. Yeah, just thought you were a great dance that's true. I mean it's narrow. So this might answer the question that I was asking yesterday because I was like, okay, the stanley being the size of a cup holder makes sense. Why do so many of my cups not fit into a cup holder? What are you thinking? And it's for stability in non cup holder situations, it would seem girth matters right, like a good wild cup,
all the way down to the base. Right, The girth matters all the way down exactly.
This fits. This fits in everything.
It does in my car.
If it's in my vagina, I try.
To still got it every night, just making sure.
I could put the baby back in.
I probably could.
We didn't talk about this last time.
I don't think we did know I had a.
I should say vaginal birth. Yeah that took twenty minutes.
Oh that We did talk about it off mic though, but I think we weren't prepared to be like yeah, twenty yo shoutout, shout out to a quick good for you man.
My doctor asked me if I would like to do this professionally right?
And also and uh going to the bathroom with this Stanley mug really quick enough.
It was easy. Sure you haven't done this before? That was wow?
I had no issh. Also, this fits in my vagina.
Now my.
Hydroflask and Stanley.
Oh man, jacki'e gonna get a Stanley though you said you you you're hearing I'm thinking about it.
Okay, it's it's definitely U underd.
Yeah, you're just waiting for hydroflass to be more popular.
That's what our household has a Stanley in it. I am just not permitted to use it or look at it, but you know it's we have one. We've invested in a Stanley and now you know, it just takes some time. Whether we are at to Stanley household is just a thing that you you kind of have to have a conversation about with your loved ones. That's for every family. That's it for every family.
Stanley also has a rim Do you know how easy it is to wash this rimless hydroflask flat face? Oh?
Yeah? That that like that.
It's so easy to wash this. I just hold it under the sink and just easy to wash. Yeah, I have you have to like.
Yeah, yeah, a little yeah, we don't have time for that. Do detailing. Yeah, I don't want to have to do detailing.
It sounds like when I washed dishes.
Same same for me.
Yeah, that's definitely my internal monologue.
Yeah.
I open like an old bottle and I'm like, oh, I have it here, clean it quickly.
I do every household chore like Paul Rudd picking those things up in wet, hot American summer.
Yeah, putting his utensils away, exasperated, zero energy with every movement.
Right, Yeah, that's how orgasm now, Yeah, that's.
It?
Was it good for you?
Yeah?
Whatever? Give me the Stanley, just hand me the Stanley, Give me ten minutes.
And my phone, give me my banana phone.
My banana phone, and my and my hydroflask. Let me get right real quick, get right with the lord France osca. What's something you think is underrated? Though?
Okay, so I have to correct something that I said last time, which was underrated not sleeping with your cat or your husband in bed. And I realize I've you know, it caused some pangs of panic. Nobody knew how to respond. Put everyone on blasts that. Yes, sometimes you know, we have to sleep in different beds, so everyone gets a good night's sleep, even though it was terrible. Let nights
sleep last night. So underrated is my loving, wonderful husband, the father of my daughter, Matt Leeb, who is great, who even though we sleep in different beds, we have a very robust we have we have a perfect sex life. To quote Alan Dershowitz, and and that is who you want to be quoted. No, no, but but but just to say, look, it doesn't mean that you're going to get a divorced, doesn't me you don't love each other. Everyone should feel secure out there. Don't you hear the security in my voice?
Yeah? Just h yeah.
Miles Uh and Jack were very they used are both awkward when I said we were like not sleeping in the same bed, you guy like, but I'm here to say, I'm here to say that it's okay and that I love him no matter what. And one day we're gonna get one of those king beds. They're like, actually separate.
Yeah, oh Jack, this sounds like damage control to me. Man, is all the times I just kept saying mm yeah, yeah, yeah, this is no.
This is one hundred percent damage control, and it's directed at only Matt Leeb.
So yeah.
Oh man, Yeah, I need I definitely need my own blanket. Yeah, you know, I'm definitely the more I get to that, that Scandinavian style was like, bro, you need your own blanket because the fights that occur over the blanket tussling occur.
Yeah wow, especially because you're taller and so like Myhillary, the fights that you.
And Bill over the sheets.
Oh my god, I'm surprised you didn't do a tweet like that. She's like, you know, despite what is according in power, it's like, oh no, no, no, no, no Hillary.
Hillary, Hillary put the Barbie down. Yeah. I think it's great. I've definitely taken some time to sleep in separate room. I think it's wonderful for your sleep. Sometimes it just depends, you know, Yeah, it really does just depend.
I mean also, like I think for anyone who like actually reacted to that, they being like.
Oh my fucking god, they sleep like it's the fucking death. Now, that's a fucking death rattle relationship. It's like, come on, y'all, like, no, it isn't. Well, no it's not.
And that's why I think it's But it's okay to here because here's the thing. If all the audience found out after, like or if you guys found out, anyone found out after like I didn't say it, they'd be like, oh, now you're like why are you keeping it a secret kind of thing. That's why I'm like telling my friends so that when when they you know what I mean.
So it's like so so that they don't find out later and like I didn't realize you guys have been being separate, but like that, it's not about that.
It's like no, no, she's like.
Here, I'm pro I know, I'm getting very warm even just something it's like a pro sleep move, you know, it's just about sleep.
Yeah, of course, I mean that's not there's not the real for me. I get into bed like this second, I'm about to sleep. Like I'm not one of those people who hangs out in bed and does a ton of shit. So it's not like that's really not a venue where like my relationship with her Majesty is like we're making like dreams and memories and shit like that. It's more just like, yeah, here's the place I sleep exactly.
That's sleep.
The problem is that I think also it's a little bit of a flex It's like saying you have like seven kids or whatever, or like seeing in suburb beds or separate rooms. It's like you guys have two rooms, Like who has a luxury to do that?
You know, Yeah, that's called the time out bedroom.
Yeah, exactly, but you know it's it's good, Mike. My cat's still pissed. She's been peeing all over the place. Luckily Matt does not pee all over the place to protest.
So but and that is a flex also that you have a husband who doesn't pee all over the place. Yeah, yeah, congratulations, wow, because yeah, Jack and I are like looking nervously at each other right now. Yeah. Yeah, no, my wife would say the same thing, right I don't pee in the linen closet. Yeah, and she's very proud of me for that. Yeah. We're going to David Busters later to celebrate. I've been about that. Would you like to go to Dave and Busters?
She should.
I can play whatever I want. Yeah, I can play the Jurassic Way. Halo for like five hours in a row is fucking awesome. In the arcade. Yeah, dude, Halo, that's that's the big game. Yeah, you can play Halo now, and like it's they've got like this giant like wide screen experience.
Well, they do have that big shooter game, you're right, Yeah, you play that with your kids.
I don't play it, but my seven year old will play it until I like drag him away because he is suffering from malnutrition.
Like, he will just play wizering away Like, Yeah.
I just imagine a seven year old like a beer a very long beard.
Yeah, so wispy. It's good though, because I always know where he is, you know, just follow the long beard. Yeah, all right, we're going to take a quick break. We're going to come back and we're going to check in with our good friends at Exon who we can trust to solve this climate thing. NBD, we'll be right back, and we're back. We're and freedom not friendulum just for the rescreen. We knew that, and we knew that. We knew that, and we knew that, and we knew that
all along and well passed congratulations. As we all know, Elon Musk has repeatedly amplified anti Semitic conspiracy theories on Twitter, allows hate speech to proliferate all over the face of his social media platform, with some Nazi loving accounts even earning money through its ad revenue sharing program, So in order to save face, he instituted some serious new policies to kind of clamp down on No way, I'm sorry, No, that's incorrect. No, he traveled to Auschwitz for a nakedly
self serving publicity stunt. My bet I was shocked here. He didn't change anything of substance about how he operates.
You see, wouldn't it be nice if Elon wasn't so on brand.
Right, right, But then he wouldn't be Elon Musk now. So, beginning on Monday of this week, he participated in a two day conference themed around combating anti Semitism, hosted by the European Jewish Association, and predictably, it was a complete shit show. He got a private tour of Auschwitz along with Ben Shapiro, who was also at the conference, and like later interviewed him and just lobbed him a bunch of softballs that didn't raise any of his history. That's
even disrespect to a softball. Yeah, meatballs.
They were like hot and candy dreams in the shape of a sphere basically, and he had a tennis racket to just think that, I mean, beyond that quote unquote interview where they're like, because you would have thought any serious examination of anti Semitism dealing with the person who's running Twitter, you'd be like. And also in our next segment called this you here's some of the posts that you have been putting up for the last couple ye years.
Really would like to talk about that. But it was not the case. You've been putting up retweeting, liking, retweeting with comment being like this is weird about like antisemitic conspiracy theories. Yeah, he also brought his three year old, so the you know, the website for the Auschwitz Memorial says it is not recommended that children under fourteen visit the memorial, which seems like one of those things that absolutely goes without saying, but I guess needs to be said.
But you see it and you're like, yeah, no, of course, of course he brought his three year old and was like giving him shoulder rides like it was fucking the circus. Oh wow, is it the daughter? How wait? Is shen x twelve or whatever that name is. That's that's his son or daughter. That's the sun according to sources who I'm looking at, Okay, how do we desert it? We have a what are we what are we calling? How do we pronounce that jumble of no. I think you
just nailed it. She nailed it so hard that I'm not even going to attempt to reproduce Okachi. Yeah yeah, but yeah. So after the Tory sat down for an interview with Ben Shapiro, and Shapiro just didn't in no way mentioned his history of anti Semitism. The talk even opened with a video produced by the European Jewish Association that imagined what the Holocaust would have been like if social media and specifically X had existed at the time, and ended by posing the question, if we had had
X in nineteen thirty nine, could have been saved? We had X inn, I mean if they.
Were talking about like ecstasy like molly, yeah, yeah.
Maybe yeah, rather than like math yeah there mainly on myth yeeah, mainly on like very rudimentary myth.
And I feel like generally people are less likely to commit mass genocide when they're on MDMA rather than rudimentary myth.
But also like Twitter is stoking Nazism.
Now, yeah, oh you notice that? Okay, yeah, shit, I guess we didn't really think about that.
Well, but did they answer the question how many lives would have been saved for absolutely unuseful question.
Useless question they implied. They implied an answer they had in one of the videos, like fake tweets. They had an official account posting about Auschwitz's thriving inhabitants, only to have that claim debunked by excess community note. That is so fucking grim?
Are these doctored tweets from at Auschwitz Camp official? This is such a grim thought experiment. Then, I'm like, who does this fucking benefit? I mean, it's just really just like creating more cover for X, which is a legitimate I mean at this point four chan, eight chan and now X or whatever we want to call this thing. It's just like a terrible it's a sesspit. But yeah, community notes would have come through and been like, m yeah, actually this is this is actually the site.
Of untold horror. Is that what they're saying?
Because the community notes right now, I feel like half the community notes just being like this is from a drop ship company and you can get this product for much cheaper and another outlet for like this consumer good. I feel like that's the most community notes I see recently.
He literally claimed this is a quote. If there had been social media, it would have been impossible for the Nazis to hide. Elon Musk said that like tried to imagine literally any other CEO making that argument about their products, Like if the head of Pepsi Co was just like, you know, I think Hitler would have had a hard time rising to power with the refreshing taste of Mountain dews Baja blasts.
Okay, Jack, let's not let's not just saying let's that may but let's let's let's create a space where that is possible.
Though you know, maybe Baja blast in a stand bad example because that's probably tr Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a bad example. Bad example, a bad example. Yeah, just the wild ash shit.
If it would have been impossible to hide, Like well right now, they're not even hiding on your website.
They're like fucking full force.
So I don't even understand that or is he trying to say that like X Also, because of like sort of like open source intelligence, people who like kind of begin to like identify who Nazis are, are you siding with those people who actually do try and drag Nazis out into the sunlight? Like that's it's so wild. I'm like, what version of Twitter are you celebrating?
Exactly?
This is wild to me also because like, you know, everything that's going on right now in terms of just like talking about genocide in Israel is anti Semitic, right, But right Elon Musk having this conversation where you just like wax is poetic, right while he stokes anti Semitism on his platform.
It's such a weird thing because the revenue from it, right, And I know that people like at the ADL were really upset with the leadership there because on one hand they're like we they've called out Elon Musk's anti semitism, and then the other hand be like they're a great partner in the fight against anti Semitism, and it's like a very it's just like it's really really inconsistent, and yeah, it you begin to wonder, like because you know that
there's like this whole thing right where the Israeli government is like we've completely lost the digital battlefield in terms of like sentiment on social media, and like there's now like a real concerted effort to really address that because they're like, I don't know what happened like on the Internet like we so they may see like having the power of Twitter, harnessing the power of Twitter, or Elon's desire to try and like you know, whitewash his anti
Semitism away as a as like a potent tool to
begin like battling that messaging. Because you also have a lot of like these accounts that are like the apparent that are like that are They're like there's like one called at defund Israel Now or something like that that apparently Elon Musk like actually is the one who's like, Okay, I'm going to give you that like silver gold, blue like badge or whatever that apparently he has to have like a say in verifying, and that account is like basically doing all this stuff to be like Hitler's talked
about so like poorly.
But meanwhile there's a real genocide happening that Jews are doing and you're like, what is this all content? Oh my god.
So it's like he's like he's like playing every single angle. And I think cynical people are saying that accounts like that. We're not cynical, but like the cynical read on promoting account like that is to just tie any stance that is anti apartheid or genocide as being part and parcel of like full blown Nazi stuff, like.
Full blown antisemity.
Yeah, to completely tie that those two ideas together, so they're like inextricable. So then like the shorthand for people to be like, oh, you're saying that means they're like actually a Nazi.
Yeah.
See, yeah, just to I mean maybe maybe this doesn't need to be said, but X, Like even if there magically was like a social media platform at the time, Jewish citizens wouldn't just be able to leave Germany after seeing some tweets because the Nazis revoked their right to
free movement long before the death camps were built. And also much of the world did know about what the Nazis were doing but turned to blind eye, which I think is important to keep in mind at this time because that feels like what we're going through right now is a lot of the world just kind of turning a blind eye and just being like, well, that's not really my problem, is it. Yeah.
Well it's weird too because the social media has allowed more people to sort of engage with, like engage with the topic. While governments for sure, it's like that's why they feel like there's such a tension existing in many countries where people like, I'm sorry, what are we what's our part in this as a nation?
Can we do something about that? And like, oh, you saw that.
We were just hoping to like let that pass until there's some other global controversy that can kind of keep this thing moving. But yeah, like just to say like it it's just the tweets would have changed everything. It's just disingenuous and just makes like an utter mockery of like everything that's happening. Because right now I feel like like while people are like a lot of media is unable to really contend with what's happening, especially in Gaza
in the West Bank. Now it's like now it's more like everyone's being like, would you see what Hillary Clinton had to say about Greta Gerwick and Margo Robbie, you know, not getting snubbed and like that's getting to it's just we're we're in a bizarre, upside down world.
Yeah, but I mean he did make kind of an air type case that he can't be doing in anything that would be confused with anti Semitism, because he said that he has Jewish friends. Oh no, oh yeah, then that that Okay, Nope, Actually two thirds of my friends are Jewish. I'm like Jewish by association, yo, problem.
He said, I'm asked, he said, I'm asked that full quote is I'm Then he said, I'm aspirationally Jewish. Dude, you are out here like retweeting that kind of stuff where you're saying like it's that like fake ass, non not real voltaor quote about being like you should be worried of, Like it's to the effect of, like you have to think about the people you are not allowed to criticize in a society, and like that's where you know where the power lies. But that's really just comes
from an anti Semitic fucking creep. But they're like those actually a full taiar, Like you're doing that kind.
Of as Foltaire one said, and then quoting a straight up like four chance not.
Yeah, you're like that from a Reinhardt Hydrich speech that he gave to the book.
Okay, whatever, Sure, but despite his oddly specific fraction of Jewish friends and calculated photo ops, X still not solving its anti semitism problem. Several antisemitic posts on X which have been identified as anti Semitic. Moderators have refused to delete, claiming that they do not violate the platform's rules, so
they've been reviewed and not deleted. There's been a spike in anti Semitic posts in the country that must just visited in Poland because of an incident in December in which a far right MP used a fire extinguisher to snuff out a menora during Hanukkah, which was a major news story and inspired a slew of what supremacist means. And they're just like, yeah, I mean, what what are we gonna do? It's you know, so they they're just
very selective and where they care about this. That's why it's such a it's so this is so fucking dangerous to play around with what is hate or what is not hate speech? You know what I mean, Like it's completely well, it's gonna lose meaning because.
It's if it's if it's almost yeah, like to the point where like it's it's flying like I don't it really It really blows my mind because I do not see how beginning to weaponize anti semitism in like a very cynical way makes anyone safe.
And it's just used to sort.
Of like stoppo any kind of discussion or debate or dissent or whatever. But meanwhile, you have somebody who is so open about like what they're like, They're philosophic view is supposedly be like the standard bear for the fight against it.
It's just like, wo, what on earth? Yeah, it's just it just for me and just say like it.
I only see this getting worse, like to begin to just to fuck around like this constantly. But again, I think like there's clearly there's clearly been this thing of like online the sentiment, whether there's like young people or whatever it is to blame people's just general disgust for what is happening or them being completely taken aback by the violence that's happening against innocent people.
And I don't know.
I'm just like, well, this is the problem with like the FCC not being on top of this shit right right, And this is why I just want to bring us back again to the fact that authenticity sucks. We don't need to hear about these like hate filled assholes and their antisemitic bullshit, Like they don't get to have this much voice and presence and energy like we are supposed to censor shit like that, you know, or is it censure you know or both? Like it's that's not okay,
and you don't get to just like walk around. And in fact, half the reason why we're having to deal with this all again and again and again is because X isn't on top of regulating it as well as other media platforms.
Yeah, that's why I'm like, yeah, I remember in the beginning that like it felt like the EU was really being like, yo, you need to fucking answer for the kinds of garbage that's on this website, because like we see that as like a threat to our like stability here.
But I'm not sure like where that's headed. And yeah, I don't know.
Again, I mean, I understand why the US especially doesn't have a reckoning with hate speech, because it's it's so such part and parcel of the culture that they there's no way like that we could begin to do that and have people come out of the woodwork and.
Be like, it's it's all of our free speech, not just.
Saying that people possibly we can't even get gun control.
Together, yeah right exactly, They're like, man, we can't even control objects like that.
We could easily control. Yeah, like words, Nah, you gotta say, we can't even fucking fit.
There's no regulation.
Yeah, and yeah, like I don't know.
I mean, the FCC obviously is dealing with stuff that's like broadcasted, so I don't know who you know obviously, right is the real regulator there.
But I mean, it's just we thought that maybe the.
Advertiser exodus would do something, but it just seems like now we're just watching it fall apart. But it's like watching like a star collapse on itself and then it's probably gonna end in something really fucking gross.
What I'm saying, Miles is I don't know why they don't let me do it.
Let you be the charge ass kicker on Twitter.
Yeah, I would be really good at it. You don't get to play here anymore.
Yeah, and that is the banana phones final word. Click. Yeah. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. And we're back. And one of the things that your new book, doctor mcnernie, you talk about is what is good technology and is it possible? And I feel like I'm so used to this hyper capitalism paradigm that I don't think we can have technology without having
like loss of jobs and free will. But I don't know, I've seen this like recent reappraisal of like the Luddite movement, which is just a phrase that I grew up using to be like anybody who didn't want to use a computer and you know, was slightly resistant to technology technological progress. And now people are like pointing out, you know, they didn't just want to destroy all machines. They were focused on the ones that took jobs and led to wage losses.
But we turned them into like old man screaming at cloud because of our paradigm of like, yeah, but that's counterprogress, that's unrealistic. Like so what is my closed off capitalist mind missing out on when I think about like the direction that technology can take, Like what are the good things that aren't just like basically AI being McKinsey.
Yeah, no, no, I mean first, I do love this reappraisal of the Lutist movement. I know Brian Merchant has a book out called Blood in the Machine, which is like specifically try to reframe the ludes this movement. It gives what a mation in the UK as the origins of the revolution against Big pick. And I do love this because I do think the Luddites have been unfairly
maligned as these tech paters. But yeah, second, you know, so, myself and my work wife, doctor Eleanol Drage co edited this book called The Good Robot, which is the same as our podcast on this provocative question, and we mean it very much as like a suggestion and idea, not like an inevitability that technology, you know, maybe can be
good in a lot of spaces. That definitely doesn't sound like a particularly radical idea, particularly in the like tech type spaces we've discussed, but like for people like us who spend our day to day looking at these really awful effects technology like either because they have been designed to be really awful, like predictive policing tools, or because they're being exploited and used in like really harmful ways, like the way that technologies used to perpetrate gender based violence.
It can be really easy to be unable to see any kind of positive possibilities for a lot of these new technologies. But while I definitely, you know, think that there's a real place for just the total refusal of people like the Bloodites or the neo Luodite movement, which is kind of trying to bring back a lot of these ideas. We want to challenge ourselves and all the guests we have in our podcasts to say, like, you know, what does.
What would it mean for technology to be good?
And so for us that's feminist and pro justice and afformed by all these different kinds of ideas about equality and fairness and also what would that look like sort of grounded in our everyday lives. So for me, for example, a lot of thinking about good technology is trying to reclaim technologies that we might not think of as being very like high tech, often because they've been associated with women.
So like I knit, and I have a pair of knitting needles on the table next to me, and knitting is often not understood as being like a very high
tech practice. But in the nineteen eighties, when people are trying to get more girls and women back into computer science, there was this idea that if you can knit, you can code, because if you can read a knitting pattern, then you can use a coding program like and so sometimes in our computer science conferences you'll see people put a knitting pattern up on the screen and just say what coding language is this? And then usually only one
or two people. Often one of the few female attendees will say, oh, that's a knitting pattern, because they're the only ones that can unders stand that kind of code. So I think there's something really beautiful and like reclaiming those particular kinds of technologies that have been maybe excluded from the way we talk about tech on my again work wife, who co edited this book, well she edited most of it actually, so who really did the heavy
lifting on this book? Eleanor talks about the whisk as her example of a good technology, and she says she loves the way it looks, she likes how she can use it in all these different ways, and she says, you know, she's sure there's ways that you can misuse this, but you know, she's it's something that just like makes her life better and is designed well in a very
simple way. I unfortunately have already undermined this good technology for her because I then told her about when I was about fourteen, my school went to a trip at the technology museum in Auckland.
It's quod Motet.
If you're from New Zealand, everyone's in Auckland's been to this museum because it's not that much to do.
For a school trip.
And then one of the girls in my class wound the hair of another girl into like an antique egg beater.
Couldn't get her out, she got stuck.
You know, children can make full technologies bad. But apart from that, you know, I think like trying to find these like little examples of technology that aren't about the kind of like big hype of AI, but maybe bring us back into the ways that we use technology to reshape how worlds and make things a bit better. Is what I like to do with this question.
Is when you think of like you know, I think that the one version is like, well, this generative AI, like it democratizes certain things, and I think while on one hand it may allow people access to like create things that they haven't before, it also makes other Like you're saying, it's the use of it that makes things that sort of ultimately determines whether or not a technology is good or you know, used in a positive or
negative way. Is there like when you look at all like for all the people that are preaching and proclaiming about how AI is opening the door to something new, what like as it relates to sort of these large language models, what are the ways that that can't Like, is that more about a use case or we need to lean more into the regulations to make sure that AI isn't wielded by nefarious powers, Like how do you look at that specific technology and think, Okay, while there's
definitely like a lot of biased or weird uses of it, like, there's also another way to look at this and not just kind of like lean into the skynet version.
Yeah, I mean I would take this in a lot
of different ways. Like my first and sort of most important route in is I would say who makes these models and who has control over them and who can afford to because you know, one of the big changes I think that's happened in the last few years is that language models have gone from much smaller models that maybe like one researcher with a reasonable budget could train themselves a lab, to being these absolutely huge models that you need a massive amount of energy, a massive amount
of data, and a massive amount of money to create. And so what that means is that companies with a first move advantage like Google, like open ai are the ones who can afford to make these models. And I think increasingly it's going to be harder and harder as the models get bigger for small firms to enter that market.
So what we end up with them is a monopoly.
And I think we're starting to see some of the effects of that monopoly right now when you have a few big tech firms kind of having a hand on like most of the most powerful and effective models. And so I think, like, even though people say, oh, this is going to democratize AI because everyone can generate text with these models, It's like, yes, but you know, very
few people are profiting from it. And also, you know, I think very few people then have control as well over how long we're able to use those models for one day. Will they just all be turned off or will they be shifted in a way?
You know?
So I think there's still kind of a concentration of control. Yeah, And I think second, like you mentioned kind of biases and like weird stuff in the models super important, like large language models are trained on data scrape from the Internet. The Internet can be not the best place, as we all know. It can be right for like all kinds of information, but it's also full of a lot of exclusions.
So like, for example, again when I was working talking to these data scientists and engineers at this big tech firm with us things like, oh, well, where do you pull your training data from? And they'd say Wikipedia for example, and you know, would say, oh, but like Wikipedia is not a very equitable place. Like women are really really vasically underrepresented on Wikipedia pages, both in terms of who writes them and also in terms of who gets Wikipedia
pages written about them. So the physicist es Wighed here in the UK has had this long running project where she just adds a woman to Wikipedia like every day, and she's done that I think now for like years. But that it kind of just shows like how inequitable though that distribution is. If you're training a model on data from Wikipedia, implicitly, you might not be trying to do this in any way. Like you're also training that model to believe in a world where say, like women
make up the population, not fifty percent plus. So there's a lot of like Bia Saeson harms that come just
from exclusion. Another example of this is, you know, I have a good friend who is a linguist, and something she talks about is communities that don't have written languages are already automatically just not going to be able to partake in whatever benefits might come from large language models, whether that's signed languages or languages that are only oral, and so you know, I think there's just a lot of different ways that even beyond these kind of immediate
harms of like the AI has produced something that we think is really offensive or gross, that we could see the use of large language models maybe creating further inequities.
Now, a lot of the AI like promise, like the developments that are being promised. So even at Davos, like this past Davos, at this page I had to miss unfortunately, and I hate to miss Davos because I learned so much there. But you've been to four davi, havn't you? DIVI my fourth dive, I was the best man. We
all did mally and just had a cuddle puddle. But Sam Altman, I don't know if he's like consciously scaling back people's expectations, but he was like, soon you might just be able to say what are my most important emails today and have AI summarize them. I was just like, all right, Like doesn't like outlook already have an offer, like offer a shitty version of that already. So it's like it just feels like the versions of AI that I'm hearing, Like there's this older New Yorker article that
was like, I'm not that worried about AI. I think it's from like the kill us all perspective. I think it's going to be like a little McKenzie in everyone's pocket, Like it's going to be this like economic optimization tool that like everybody has access to, and that's going to
just make everything shitty and boring. So I don't know, like I'm just curious for your thoughts on that, and like if there are examples of just like functionality from AI that actually like capture your imagination where you're like, oh shit, that would be like cool. That's a cool idea of like something that would be fun and you know, improve people's lives, even if it's just like make their video games better or whatever.
Yeah.
I mean maybe the email thing appeals to some people. Personally, I want fewer emails. I don't want a summary of my emails. I just want my inbox to quietly shut down with the hours of like five pm to like in the am every day and just be like I'm email free. And then the run at em Bogast I think has this idea of hyper employment, which is like the technologies that say they're going to make our lives easier and more stress free actually make our lives much
busier and we now waste a lot more time. So he talks about emails as a way of, you know, saying like, oh, we're gonna have far fewer meetings and we're gonna like have to spend less time like sending each other letters or whatever. Sorry from the post internet generation. But then now we spend like so much time like
answering emails. And I think AI feels a bit like this, Like when people say, like AI is going to save you so much time, I'm like, you are not a teacher an educator because the amount of time we have wasted this year trying to figure out what to do with AI generated essays like absolutely not. Yeah, And so I feel like things like the AI email summarize I since could end up in a very similar pile.
But you know, kind of to come to the more positive side.
Of your question, like what makes me excited, I think a couple of things like one is like anything where like AI can genuinely scale up in a way that is not too ecologically damaging or costly a process that is already going well, where the statistics and the procedures in place are working for us. Because AI is able to scale things, you know, it's not necessarily able to
do new things always. So if we know we have a sorting or categorization process that works, that's when I think AI computer these kinds of systems can be really useful. Where it doesn't work is when you're asking AI to do something that like we don't actually have good processes in place to do so, Like when a tool says, oh, I can like power candidate's personality from their face, Like, no, you can't do that. That's just a straight up phrenology.
Please don't do that.
But also secondly, like you know, if we had easy ways of telling if someone was going to be good for a job, like humans will be able to do it already, Like this is a much much more complicated than you're making it out to be. A second kind of use I think I find really exciting or makes.
Me like you're really happy.
I think it's particularly tools around trying to kind of like support particular community there's needs in a way that
is really driven by that community. So for example, in New Zealand where I'm from, there's been a lot of effort put into different kinds of like AI powered tools and data sovereignty programs around Maudi traditions, the Maldi language or three A Maudi and like, I think, you know, this is an example of where like that's been led by Maudi people and is in a response to kind of the way that in colonial New Zealand, like Threa, Maudi was like very deliberately stamped out, and there's been
a huge movement to try and kind of protect and revive the language.
And I think it's like when your.
Projects like this, that makes me a bit more hopeful about the way that AI machine learning could be used to you know, promote these pro justice projects. But you know, I think those projects that always have to exist in
a little bit of tension with like big tech. And we've seen this like with other organizations, for example, like Masacana, which is the amazing grassroots organization which aims to bring the like four thousand different African languages into our natural language processing models or large language models.
You know.
But I know that these kinds of groups often do struggle with this idea, like do we commercialize because then will we be brought into this hyper capitalist world? Do we keep this to ourselves? But yeah, I think it's it is important sometimes to step back and be like, there are really interesting community projects which are trying to use these techniques and these kinds of knowledge in ways that push back against like the email summarizing bought right?
Is there a historical present Like I was reading some articles about the competition between the United States and China and how the US is like trying to freeze export of like certain chips to China because they think that will allow China to catch up with them. And it feels like we're there's going to be inevitably an argument where they're like we need to just go pedal to the floor on AI development because this is the new
Manhattan project. Trust us. You talk a lot about just like this, this alternate possibility of like what what if we didn't use this technology for hypercapitalism and militarism? Are there examples where like from history that you're aware of, where like technology hasn't been has successfully been like protected from those sorts of things. Are there any even a very small examples where people have been able to keep technology like fenced off from that sort of thing.
Yeah, No, I mean this is something that really preoccupies me. I spend a lot of time mapping and tracking with the AI now institute, this narrative of an AI arms race between the US and China and how that story is super damaging because it can cause us like race to the bottom and lead to US trying to develop AI faster and faster without necessarily trying to make it.
Better or safer.
And do you know, I think we've seen some positive movements when it comes to AI regulation recently, from like the US's commitment or declaration around AI through to the Bletchley Declaration in the UK and the EUAI Act. But at the same time, you know, I think that this sort of racing narrative like still looks and it's still sometimes used to try and push back against regulatory measures,
particularly by people with investments in big tech. But yeah, at the same time, I also think this question of like can we look to history to find ways to tell different stories about AI maybe bring about different futures
is something that really interests me. I think the comparison that is most often made between AI and another technology when it comes to like regulation and governance is nuclear and specifically nuclear weapons like and like you mentioned Manhattan Project, certainly kind of this sort of language of like an Oppenheimer moment when it comes to AI, and this kind of idea of being like the cusp of a new cold water will be AI driven rather than nuclear weapons
driven is a very common media narrative. But something I try to do, like with my own research, is to try and look for and support different kinds of historical analogies that maybe offer maybe less kind of less hawkish
futures when it comes to international politics. So for example, my Indian who's a fantastic researcher at the Lievi Human Center where I'm at, looks to like histories of feminists cyber governance in the early two thousands as a way of saying, like, actually, we have a lot of precedents for thinking about the ethics of the internet. Why aren't
we bringing this into thinking about AI? Or Matischmas who's a legal researchers the histories of technological restraints, so like, when did we choose not to make a technology even though we could because we thought that it actually wouldn't be good for the world? And for societies, and so I think, you know, like making sure we have examples outside of nuclear because wild nuclear can be still useful in some ways, like it's only one metaphor, and metaphors
are inherently limited. They tell us something about the world, but they can't tell us everything. And I thinks having these alternative historical examples can be really useful for thinking a bit differently.
Yeah.
So, yeah, it's just funny because in the end, it always feels like thing with potential to create like unforeseen levels of productivity or powers, and then we made it a weapon.
Then we like put it in the bomb, you know, kind.
Of like and yeah, like we really do have to sort of break out of that thinking. I mean, I wonder precisely because our brains are filled with sky Net and Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, that that's we're just we're just in this really weird pattern of always looking at something that has the potential to unlock new levels of something are inherently going to always be like, but how do how do our enemies kill us with it?
And then we begin to lose the plot there. So yeah, I'm yeah, look to these other examples to try and again open my mind to looking at it less of like and then how they make and then how they make global domination with that?
Right, Yeah, I mean I think it's either it's like how do we kill someone with it? Or as I think the history of like how tech is represented in Hollywood would show.
Us like how do we have sex with it? And this is like a very classic trip in sci fi.
Right, It's like you get like a dude in his basement who makes like a sex spot. And I remember it Jack Harbuston, who's like this very famous feminist and queer theorist with Eleanor on the podcast, and he was talking about the film x Markina. Have you seen this since from like twenty fourteen. It's like a kind of a kind of an indie film but had quite a lot of prestige I think success particularly.
Like tech circles.
Yeah for sure.
Yeah, yeah, And so I remember we were talking about x Markina and Jack Harbison was saying like it sort of shows like the limits of the imagination, like particularly like the tech bro imagination that he has like all this expertise at his fingertips, all this data and he basically just makes like sex robots and like that's really good,
really thing to do with it. And I think, you know, to some extent, like we're still a little bit trapped in that imagination, which is why I think like both like different projects to do with AI, but also different stories about AI are really crucial.
Right, Yeah, yeah, we have to get out of the fuck or fear paradigm. Right that we have the technology, it's going to do one of the two, man, So yeah, we need a new way.
I'm here to do two things. Fuck something or kill it because I'm scared of it. Yeah, all right, that's gonna do it. For this week's Weekly Zeitgeist, please like and review the show if you like, the show means the world de Miles he he needs your validation, folks. I hope you're having a great weekend and I will talk to you Monday. Byett Doctor Doctor