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. We are thrilled to be joined by a tech journalist writer behind the newsletter Where's Your Head At. His new podcast with cool Zone Media Better Offline is a must listen.
YEA.
Also, how I found out about that New York magazine The Cut personal finance expert being scammed to the tune of fifty thousand dollars cash in a shoe box? I think how a lot of people found out about it.
It's exit dry.
Where it's from Rudy fantastic album.
Yeah, it's Rudy right with the ape like yeah, yeah, yeah, what great song?
Great?
Yeah yeah, all right, Well we're starting on a high note, ed, I mean next time, yeah, we will give you ample time to prepare an AKA that either has to do a fecal matter or circle jerking with the Beatles or something like that, or something of your own choosing.
You can start preparing now just saying that, what can I put the Bush's glycerin.
Yeah. Sometimes they just like, doesn't that song say got a Machine head? Yeah, He's just like it's a cool title, and I'm just gonna be like, got a machine It doesn't really then the rest Green to the Red right, Green to Red?
Yeah, not exactly Shakespeare, No, not quite.
They would like come up with a cool word and then just be like, I've got one of those.
They're not as good as the Hives though. The Hives are just complete nonsense that My favorite vers Got a Smoke and a Bone, Got a Gong wowed to the album recently. It was like this is awful lyrically.
Yeah.
This I'm like, I feel I can get to get concussion listening to it. We just want to get listening to it.
Yeah, that's what happens is I feel like with the bush Guy it's a little bits.
Yeah.
Gavin Rossdale is a little bit of the bubble, like the thirty Rock episode where John Hamm is a doctor who's just so good looking that people are just like, damn man, you are the best doctor ever, and he like doesn't know what, he doesn't know ship He's like, hey, here try my special recipe orange chicken, and it's just chicken cooked and orange gatorade. Like, I feel like Gavin Rossdale is just so stunningly you think he has Oh yeah, I think he's just a good looking guy.
Gavin Rossdale wasn't he? I mean, I mean people were definitely over him in the US. In the US and when First Yeah came out, for sure, I mean he.
Looks like a slightly upgraded Jeremy Clarkson.
Come on, wow, I don't know. I think I get. I gave him a lot of credit once he got with Glent Stefani.
You know, he went with Oh so he is the reason why they haven't made a good album since retired of Saturn.
That's right, yeah, exactly, exactly. Anyways, this is an album talk yeah, no, Ed, How how are you doing? Where are you coming to us from.
Las Vegas, Nevada?
Right?
Yeah, yeah, beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada.
How long have you lived in Vegas?
Three years?
Okay? Where'd you live before that?
California? It was in Oakland?
Oh okay, Wow you went from the East Base. Wow you really followed the Raiders. Oh yeah, well I didn't do it for that reason, you know, would you look at the product on the on the Field. I love it here though. Yeah, you like to go visit the Mortal Flame of Al Davis and right in front of it.
The Ratius Will to Win.
Yeah. Yeah.
When you go there and do the tour, they all say that' stuff to you. It's all a propaganda. It's just like, you can't be you can't be saying that shit anymore. When Maurice Jones Drew was like an exciting guy on your team, it means things have been bad for a while.
Yeah, yeah, man, MJD. What is it like living in Vegas? Are you hitting any of the shows? Is that what I imagined to be? Just, you know, rat pack shit every night?
You and yeah, yeah no. So I'm a huge homebody. I don't like going out, so I am at home most of the time. But when I do go out, I like to be very precise. I don't like to go out for an evening. I want to go out, have dinner, have drinks, come home. Vegas is so convenient. You can get pretty much anywhere here in twenty minutes. This is great if you're I guess I'm addicted to staying at home and drinking diet cokes, which is pretty
easy to manage. But if you have another addiction, Vegas will find a way to bring it to you.
Yeah, or bring you to it.
Yeah, And so this place drives me people insane, but it has one of the best food cultures I've ever seen.
Right, it's really cool.
If you are in control of yourself, it's amazing you to death.
Yeah. The economy is like based on so like people who are in control of themselves get to like have better times than they would otherwise, because yes, the economy is fueled by all these people with very difficult problems.
But also it's become a lot more respectable, Like it's a lot more like going out to nice restaurants and shows and music. Now it used to be when it was going out and making a mistake or five.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Now it's less that it's the strip's much nicer. Fremont Streets horrible though, people need to stop saying, God, it's horrible that it's also really expensive now, Yeah, very strange place.
So it was everywhere it turns out, yeah, but every Yeah, last time I was in Vegas, I had the thought that this would be a good place to take my kids. So yeah, which dies really been the thought I had at the Luxor and you're like, oh, yeah, you go see bodies. Yeah, yeah, exactly. This sharks like there's a whole thing that's just there's a whole like thread of culture and content that is like just all woven throughout the strip that is like aimed at five to twelve
year old boys. There are times and Michael Jackson, which they're really into.
Well, I'll be I don't want to put him in the sentences boys, That's true.
There's I remember the time when my mom would go with her friends, just like they would go gamble. She would give me twenty dollars or something and be like, I'll be back in a few hours. Yeah, And I was like, yeah, I can make this work and I combat or something.
Yeah, exactly. Zaren, Elizabeth, what is something from your search history that is revealing about who you are? Or what is one of the most recent things that you have screencapped that is revealing about who you are?
Elizabeth Ladies, First, oh, thank you, sir. I was just looking and I was doing an image search yesterday psychic Horses, and that was for social media for the episode that dropped today from US. And then you.
Know, I have.
I was looking at my search history and it's just a lot of like misspelled things or I go to hit the space bar and I hit period instead. So it's like, you know, BRIGATONI dot pasta dot recipe.
Yeah.
Yeah, So anyway, that's that's not thrilling, Yeah, not particularly thrilling. But psychic horses.
Psychic horses are a common scam right.
Oh my god, they're everywhere. I can't leave the house without, you know, every day sign front.
You know, you never hear about like a psychic beaver. You don't hear about a prognosticating owl. No, it's always horses.
Yeah, And why don't we give dogs because dogs? Also, Like, isn't the way that the scam is pulled off a lot of the time communication between like unspoken communication between owner between human and horse. Yeah, totally, So it's called the clever Hans effect. Actually yeah, And like, so why aren't dogs being used in this way? Is it because we don't like, they don't have a mystique about them, so we're just like dogs are fucking dumb. Oh you think the dogs are rejected?
I can't do this right, we're taking that lady's life savings now, I think.
Dogs are jocks. That's why they're in the AKC. They just want to compete. They don't want to like do spelling contests. They're just not not into that. Man, can I run? I want to, I can jump over.
They can't be depended on to participate.
I think also, there's probably like a power of being like, hold on, let me get next to the horse, because it's like a animal that you're like, uh huh okay, like I think visually seeing, like somebody like embrace the horse, like no, man, the horse is fucking speiting. There's something like inherently mystical about horses that I think impresses people, impresses me. I've lost a lot.
Of money to psychic coarse scams. So I'm just wondering where this is. Where this starts in me, Yeah, right on the cer.
We also we measure power by horses. I mean, clearly we understand the poll and the compulsion of a horse.
So yeah, I mean yeah, I mean they are tools of colonization too. So they've got a storied history. Is that true in the psychic community too, Are they like this psychic has like forty five horse power?
Psychic So this thing's got a fucking V twelve up there, man.
The top of their head. You knows, how about USERM what's something from your search history or okay?
So I was looking and I had a lot of stuff from work, and I'm not going to tell you my work stuff because it's all like, oh, of course you'd be looking at bb king. But the one thing that I did look up on my own was foreign accent syndrome. You're familiar with foreign accent.
Syndrome, right, my favorite syndrome.
Yeah, it strikes dozens of people every century. It's uh, it's okay. So I looked it up just because I wanted, you know, to make a joke with Elizabeth about it, because I just happened to I would I don't know the best way I put this this that would be one occurrence. I'd be like, you know what, they'd be kind of cool to get, you know, I'll be like, oh man, it'd be really funny to me. But then I realized it would only be funny that one day,
the first day it happened. After that, you're like, please, doctor, how do I get rid of this? So I was looking, how do they get rid of foreign accent syndrome. The only treatment is learned to sing. That's what they tell you because hopefully, because you know, like when you listen to someone who sings like the Beatles, it doesn't sound like an English accent as much as it sounds like singing.
Who develop an English accent when they totally yes, exactly see you.
They would be able to get rid of their you know, fake English accent by singing in American accents. They'd be like, okay, I'm back. But you know who had this apparently for a little while, George Michael, the singer. So he was a singer and he was able to get rid of it really quickly. He had West Country accent. It's the English accent. I don't know English accents well enough. I wouldn't be able to say, ok oh yeah that's not an up.
Yeah, but that's not the big like step away from most of these people.
Most of them, it's like a whole continent.
It's usually like some English lady who gets like a really offensive Chinese that's the class.
I remember that work whole well.
Yeah, they all show on her.
I was like, for real, like really it sounds mad racist.
You're like, come on, lady, like you, like you're just a bad comic, like an extended bit.
George Michael goes like fifty miles away, yes.
Exactly, okay, yeah, but also it normally happens to women at like eighty seven percent to men's thirteen percent, So it's wow. Yeah, it's it's based on the brain, the broken region of the brain. So when a person has a lesion or a stroke, all a sudden, this happens and then they can't do anything about it.
So you could hit me in a particular place on my head, and we can try and make this happen.
Much more likely for you. No matter how many hit me in the head, it's probably unlikely.
All right, Roulette, go get a golf club. The next one is it usually based on something they have experience with, Like does the person who knows developed No, it's just like an accent they saw on TV. They a Chinese accent. Not good?
Yeah, yeah, well sometimes it's it's not even that they know the accent, it sounds like the accent. Like there was this Norwegian woman she had it where her accent suddenly sounded German to everybody, so they couldn't stand it and they made her leave town. They exiled her because her accent sounded German. So it wasn't. It was like so crazy it just her accents no longer sounded Norwegian. They're like, oh, you sound like a Norwegian German speaking Norwegian.
That was just a couple of weeks ago, right, the ones that was in January. What what something you think is underrated right now?
Women's rights? I thought we had women's rights locked.
In, like when I was on the cump up in my twenties or early thirties, I was like, we are really crushing it on women's rights right now. No, I didn't know. I didn't know that this could all get taken away so fast. We got we're fighting for abortions, and we're fighting for uh we got no paid maternity leave, we have no affordable childcare. I mean we're people are saying IVF embryos are kids now.
Yeah, it's I didn't realize.
And then you've got all the microaggressions being a mom right now, traveling with my kids still, all the microroggressions like what's his mom doing with her two kids out in the airport? Get your get your trash ass back home and cook and clean and silence where we don't have to see. It's like, it's all the microaggressions, plus the expectations that you have to be like beautiful and effervescent and well dressed and you get no child care
and you get low wages. I'm just like, come on, I thought we were I thought we were past this. Now we're just heading back.
Yeah in America.
Yeah, yeah, we're just talking to about how Joe Biden also like just can't straight up be like yeah, man, like we're going to figure this out, rather than being like, you know, I'm not. We talked about this two episodes ago. He's like, I've never been supportive. You know, it's my body. I can do what I want with it.
It's like, don't say yeah, it's actually the Lord's.
It's so interesting because if we were if we were forcing Joe Biden to like donate part of his liver to save a life, which would basically be the same thing using somebody's body to keep another person alive, he would be like, oh, no, you're not coming for this liver.
Force me into a liver surgery. No no, no, no, have you seen the scar? I'm not getting a scar?
No, no, no, I'm going to the beach. I'm going to the beach this summer.
That's right.
Yeah, you also have a Sky on Paw Patrol.
Oh man, this is this is a deep cut. I don't know if you guys are with the Pop Patrol. Maybe you are because you have kids. Man, all right, Paw Patrol, you got it all right. So I don't know why I've been watching so much Pow Patrol with my stun. But Sky, I think is like one of the only the only or one of the only girl characters, but the only one there.
Maybe there's one more.
Yeah, I think it's like a smurfet type division, like it's one girl or like maybe maybe another.
One, that's right. But Chase is the main dog or whatever. He always he kind of gets all the action. But he is always like heetering out on the courage, like he's like, I'm gonna go save it. Oh no, I can't. And then Sky's like, I got it, you know, let me go up there.
And save the day.
Sky is always handling business. She has no fear, she has no excuses, and chases up there, getting all the all the action and then they gotta then they gotta make him feel better. Like, that's okay, Chase. We all get scared. It's like Sky doesn't get scared. Guy's out there in the airplane saving the day. I'm just like, man, not even Sky can get the get the you know, the accolades that she deserves. It's hard for me to watch.
I'm like, guy, it's the cop that's fuck does include Chase. But yeah, we have established in this house we do believe the cap.
Is Twitter, it's not X and a cab does include Chase. Those are the two things on our yard sign day.
Oh and also meta Facebook is we will never call meta our Facebook meta.
To be fair, nobody else will either. Yeah, yes for sure. Also just from like a strategic standpoint, like Sky is your your like problem solving group has a fucking air force, like it has a clumsy a clumsy fireman is like one of the dogs, Chase, who's just yeah, a cowardly police officer. So just a police officer, rust tool, Rubble's got tools. But then they have air force like that would be that is your best weapon. That is that is the leader of your pack, is the one who
can fly, who can control the skies. Yes, but yeah, they they underrate because of women's rights.
You know, that's what I'm saying.
Come on off this, I think, man, Yeah, get your son off that paw patrol you know what I mean. Wen't need that copaganda, you know. Put him onto something new.
Yeah, it really is.
And his and his little buddy. What's the what's the boy's name? I was like, man, you know what your little buddies. It's a it's a bad situation.
Yeah that I always yeah, I always want to call him Chase, but he's not chased. But yeah, there's like a human twelve year old boy who is the leader, and I do not trust that guy. Is that boy white? Yeah? Oh hell no, bro, Yeah.
He's he's the one pulling all the strings getting the cops to do things. Okay, well maybe that is good for a child to see it, to be like, no, this is actually this give you an idea, you know what I mean, how how shit works?
Yeah, he runs like the call center or something.
Yeah, it's like nine children. Yeah, it's like the child labor in this show. He's got a fucking job. The mayor is a woman of color and is a bumbling fool.
Oh no, but the mayor in the movie is like a white guy with the top hat who says things like an unqualified politician, what's the worse that could happen?
Oh wow, Oh really that's where they went.
Oh yeah, that's where they went. Let's getting political in the in the in the in the Mighty Pups movie.
Yeah, I see, I missed the movie. Thank god we had aged out by that time.
Catch on Prime.
What is What's something? And and that is also Yeah, you're also here to promote the Pup Patrol movie an addition to your.
All the sale.
Just go through my affiliate link and that would be great. Thanks. What is what something? You think is overrated?
High heels one hundred.
Over rated?
Don't want to wear them, don't want to think about them, don't want to see them my feet. Like one point, I had all these high heels. I just I threw them away and it was so fun. It was like it was like I was like, oh, this is the time when I actually want to, you know, burn the trash. It was. It was it really high heels. It's too much, it's too much, so overrated.
Did you snap the heel off the shoe like like a wishbone in the back of liberation.
You're like, ah, like give me enough care.
That sounds like it would be a wonderful sense of release. Yeah, maybe next time.
What are you wearing now? What's what's your what's your foot game? Like?
Like now I like fancy sneakers. Yeah, I'm into the I'm into the fancy sneakers, especially you know, on stage whatever, and then boots. That's it, some fancy sneakers.
Okay, boots. I was talking to somebody who is like a real like foot like footwear snob in a way that I hadn't encountered, where he was like, well, see, the thing is with you. With most kids' shoes, the toe is too narrow. You need to let their toes spread out, and like most of our shoes, you're like walking in a pillow. You can't like grip the ground. You need like shoes that have like barely any that make you feel like you're walking barefoot. And it all
made sense to me. Sounds like a lot of work.
Is that the kind of person who wants you to wear the toes that like the shoes that are like toe yeah?
Total, He did not, And I asked him a number of times. I was like, but you're trying to get me to wear those two toe shoes. Right, you're part of that cult that has the particulated toes at the end of the at the end of the shoe. It's but I truly, based on everything he was saying, I can't imagine a worse thing for a human foot than fucking high heels. Unbelievable. Shouldn't be allowed.
This is I don't know if you see this. This is a video my friend sent me when they went to a parent teacher conference of another parent who had other toe shoes.
Wow. That's real.
Wow those are And I was like, they look like if Darth Vader was wearing those toe shoes.
Like the of the.
Shoe, yeah, I mean it looks like a costume. It looks like a looks like it's like.
A Christian Bales batman like became like dropped LSD and like moved, yeah, became skin basically. Yeah.
Well, you know, I like being barefoot, so like I'm not like against the idea of like something that mimics that, but part of me is like I'll just be barefoot, you know, like I do a lot of barefoot, like around the house or just like if I have to go up the street or something I'm not I'll go to the mailbox and bare feet.
Really, I mean yeah, so there's there's in your neighborhood.
There's no I know how to I know how to dodge it. Okay, I'm nimble, I'm spry, you know, I can do all. I can dance around it. But like as a kid growing up, like in l A, I just was always barefoot, especially in the summer, so like the blacktop, like my feet like just became accustomed to summer asphalt barefoot. And I kind of take that now that's the point of pride. Although the bottoms of my feet look terrible. They look like flintstone ships.
But whatever flintstone ships. Yeah, well, I mean like you know the ships. Oh yeah, yeah, they're not there. But there was a part of the flintstones that my brain had blocked out. Oh no, but you're just saying they're like the skin on the bottom of your feet is like three inches oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
And anytime, like I've I've gone to like I remember I got like a pettic here once when I was working on a campaign with all the other campaign people, like it was like right after election. It was on election they were like, all right, all work's done, let's just we can that's to treat yourself.
Yeah, yeah, it was.
It was cool because I'd never done it before, and like all these people, I was.
Like, no, not go ahead, come on, come on.
They went, and the amount of time they spent on the bottom of my feet, I was like, oh, maybe.
Did they do the sanding thing, like the cheese gray on the bottom of your feet where there's just like a pile of grated parmesan.
They yeah, they put a respirator on and like like an air vent, like they were cooking at like a tep on yaki restaurant or something.
You needed one of those treatments where the fish come and eat the dead skin off your Yeah.
I see that all the time. I'm like, but then part of me is like, is that really good eating on there for you? That good eating? Okay? They just give up and they're like Jesus, yeah you're there. Yeah, like pandorizer, you get some A one on this. It's a little well done, salted a little bit before you come to the damn All right, let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about some news.
We'll be right back and we're back. And yeah, you guys this Donald, ye see star this you heard about this?
No tell me more So.
This campaign occasionally is feeling like just keeping a running tally of the deranged soundbites from each candidate. However, this weekend Trump was really like putting some numbers on the board. Yeah. He referred to the country of Argentina as a great guy called Biden. Obama likened migrants to Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs. He said, they're rough people in many cases, from jail's prisons, from mental institutions, insane asylums,
you know, insane asylums. That's Silence of the Lambs stuff, Hannibal Lecter. Anybody no handible elector, he said he had to survey the audience. Anybody heard of him. Well, he's like a fucking comic. He's just doing credible well.
And then he also had a lot of Trump I mean, he also had a lot of speaking errors too. He was running up the score on like trying to say things as well. But hey, that's he's such as part of the campaign from all.
Yeah, I think I feel like every person during the course of their life has a certain amount of drunkness to get through, and even if you don't drink, as is his case, he's just like burning out all the drunkness.
Now, well, doesn't he have that theory that everyone is born with a certain amount of energy?
Yes, yeah, you just have a certain amount of energy.
Right, So he has that with drunkness too. Yeah, he's got to burn through it.
It's also burning through just plowing lines of adderall. I think, well, yeah, that's also has something to do with him slurring and not seeming fully coherent. But sandwiched amongst this sea of bullshit was a new concerning campaign promise that probably deserves more attention than the mainstream media is giving it. He declared in Virginia that, as he's been hinting at since last year, if he has elected president, he will withhold funding for schools that have a vaccine requirement.
They were cheap hearing it was wild. People were like, and I think some people were like, wait, I think that's bad.
Wait.
Second, which to general like not just COVID, he means like everything, mmore, like anything.
Okay, But I think he's playing to a crowd that wouldn't probably not distinguish between those they would Hey, they're not saying you can't get the vaccine. They're just saying they want their freedom as Americans do not get a vaccine. Bring back to practice a vaccine. Safety is like the fucking phrasing that you hear with these people.
You know, we haven't said rubella in a long time. Maybe we should.
It's a beautiful thing in Florida, right, measles is running round?
What about mumps? Yeah, but I'm also hitting momps looking fun kind of makes me want to shake. Is even mumps now that I think about.
It, it's I don't know, I.
Don't know if the glans on each side of the face, these glands called okay ah.
That's going to be really painful.
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, god okay. Well, hey man, freedom it's all about freedom, bringing mops back.
Bringing back it's you have that that thing with the vaccines and the whole like science denial. But I also when they're putting it into the schools, they have like this larger plan to dismantle public education.
Yeah right, kids, right, Yeah, it's a two edged sword that works for them in a number of ways that they're and then like siphon it to like charter schools.
Well, those privatize everything exactly the ultimate goal.
But expert, which you know, we trust those guys as far as you can throw them, but experts have warned that this could create quote, a public health catastrophe for the nation. Yeah. Yeah, that's Peter from.
Baylor, who, like, you know, was like one of you know, really out there during COVID, like sounding the alarm and telling people about like what they're risks are. But yeah, in fact, he's like, yeah, that's uh, don't just fucking cut the brakes on this thing.
Yeah, I feel like I'd be like, well, you know what, culder herd, but it's not going to affect.
The rest of us exactly. Yeah, we can all have mumps together, right, Oh my god, it'd be so fun team building. We haven't heard from Aaron Rodgers. I'm where he's coming down on this, so we're waiting to pass judgment, but you know, yeah, the real expert. We're waiting.
Yeah, I just want to know, like, what essential oils do you use for mumps.
It's just it's that cooidal silver obviously.
Yeah.
I don't know if you've seen Mother God, but you kind of want to do something like that.
Or maybe email oil is that helpful?
You want to rub that on the.
Okay, yep, and then philippath full of eucalyptus leaves and just read that. Yeah, anyway, but these are all things that we can do to fight off the coming I don't know, retro.
Pandemic that's coming anyway.
But despite all this stuff, it looks like voters are pretty chill about Trump being not being a dictator or being one. They don't know because a lot of the Biden campaign, like their electoral messaging, is their strategy hinges on Biden reminding voters that Trump is indeed a wacky piece of shit that is bad for America, and they've been very explicit about this, and that makes the findings
of a recent poll a little unsettling. There was a poll that was asking people in swing states that was specifically designed to only include people that potentially actually vote for Biden, meaning no one who voted Trump for in twenty twenty was, you know, none of their answers were taking into the analysis, or people that believe the election was stolen. Those people's answers were also left out of the analysis. So again, these are voters in swing states
that potentially could vote for Biden. The poll asked these people about ten of Trump's quote most authoritarian statements, things like he would he would like terminate parts of the Constitution, that immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country, his vow to pardon January sixth rioters that promise to prosecute the Biden family with no evidence, his threat to quote
inflict mass persecution on the quote vermin opposition. Only thirty one percent of responded said they previously had heard about these statements by Trump. They're like, oh, that's what he said. Oh interesting, that is didn were saying he also.
Wanted to like do it? Did They include the one where he was like, yeah, I'm not going to do a dictatorship except on day one. Day one.
Yeah, that's when I was just day one, just day one enough to kick it off and then I'll let my minions do the work. But yeah, so not great if you're betting the farm on, you know, screaming about how Trump's you know what, like what his record is. And but the I guess the positive news here is that when people did hear about this, their feelings changed, so people began to see him as quote out for revenge.
That jumped up by five points after hearing this. The percentage you see him as quote dangerous rose by nine points, and the percentage you see him as a dictator went up seven points and a lot of like the accepted wisdom in DC is that like people already know that this guy's dangerous, you know, like just stop wasting your time.
But this pole is otherwise about a third if people were like, huh what, So at least there's room for people to get rightly freaked out, I guess is the silver lighting here, there's room for more freaking out.
Yeah.
Freaking out is a weird thing because you have to manage it though, because if you if you, if you get people freaked out, they don't want to stay freaked out, so then they'll stop listening to you if you freak them out for too long, So you have to freak them out in in spurts, basically, right. And then there's also the problem is essentially that we're talking about this this Trump issue. I think here's a good analogy. It's
like a crime. Right, you cannot go to the police and say, hey, I want you to investigate this crime. Until there's a crime you can tell people what Trump's going to do, but they believe you until he's done it. But we can't have him do it because then he's done it.
So it's the.
Issue of we have to think differently about it. So there was this woman who called the police and she wanted them to find her missing I think it was her sister, And instead of saying it was her missing sister, she phoned in that her sister's car was stolen. They
found the missing car, and they found the sister. They would not have looked for her sister otherwise, but they knew that the cops would go to find the missing car, the stolen car because they care about property and it's easier for them to look for blah blah blah blah blah.
Right, give us forty eight hours exactly before the cars to be gone. Forty eight hours consider it stolen, ye, with all that stuff.
So I think the Democratic you know, strategists need to think about the stolen car messaging of how they can manage this moment because they're gonna have months that they have to freak people out about Trump, and you do not want to turn them off, So pick your moments.
They got to do a little bit of freak out edging.
Exactly right, don't fucking go to harge boil slow, Yes, exactly.
But I think you just deal sort of like to your point, like this disparity between how elected officials like wonks and like Capitol Hill reporters see things and how normal everyday voters do. Again, that's why like hinging this whole thing on telling people about how Trump could be as your entire strategy.
I don't know, you.
Also kind of need to do more to help people understand also what your vision is. It's like being on the dating game, right, and like you're you're courting one of the contestants and they say, oh, suitor number one, what's your favorite romantic day? And they go, let me tell you about suitor number two. He's a dangerous piece of shit, right, fuck d dude, he's he's Wow, he's crazy. Here next to him ran as a person at the person who's like the one about to go on the date.
They're like, okay, what about you though? Do we talk about you? Well, this guy's crazy.
Yeeah. You ain't seen suitor number three yet, so.
It's like, well, okay, that's like, what are you going to do. That's another part of the ribs here that they really need to actually understand, Like that's good to sound the alarm, but you also need to give people a vision of the future they can invest in that, you know, and I know this is hard for the establishment Democratic party, but like, you know, can you can you do something a little bit more than the status quo that might also help too.
Yeah, swing with both hands, like you know, use that right for the attack and use the left for like, okay defense, Like okay, I'm gonna keep Trump off, but tell me what you're gonna do too. I think it's a really a good point, which is you hear the voters saying that, and yet Democrats tend to, at least at the national level, want to maintain a momentum machine rather than like they they talk about the threats to what you may lose from the other party, as you're saying,
but they never talk about where it's gonna go. It's just been Oh, you gonna keep going the way it's going. You love this, don't you love stuff?
All the stuff?
Yeah, it's great.
No, that's not gonna work. The stuff that they claim they're gonna.
Right exactly case, Yeah, because they've hit the sort of like end of the rope, because at this point, if they go further, they're like, I guess.
Do we defund the police?
I guess you would actually do something about the climate, like in a really aggressive way.
I guess I think that's the thing.
Yeah, right, Voters of BABA.
Brave about any kind of stance. You know, you're trying to play the middle, and I understand that, but when you look back historically at the big movements that have have helped our society, they're brave, you know, and you kind of go out on a limb. So it's like you're saying the one two punch of like, look at this really bold thing we're going to do. Ps. This guy's fucking out of his mind.
Yeah, you know.
The FDRJ like the Fight and the program.
Yeah yeah, I just want the FDR in the sense that I want Polio to come back. Yeah, we are working on that six months. Don't worry. The dating game analogy, I made reference to Rodney Alcala, the serial killer who was on the Dating Game and he won that ship. I don't know what the other. I don't know what the other or the other contestant strategy was if they I wonder if the guy was like, this guy murder. He's a murderer. I'm pretty sure this guy is wanted
for murder. And they're like, oh my god, this guy's intriguing negative, Why are you guys like so obsessed with him? Is like so intrigued? Now, Yeah, he went on the date and the date ended prematurely because the person found him creepy.
Right ah yeah.
Unfortunately, in the case of Trump, on day one, when he's like dictatorship, it will be too late for us to find him creepy. Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But also the Democrats, why can't they talk about what he did the first time he was president and they then connect that to what he's going what he says he wants to do, talk about what he actually has done, his actions, and then go and he wants to do more of that if they're going to talk about it rather than just wagging a finger and being like, you know, he's gonna do because then it sounds like he's got all this power, like this guy's just gonna get in
there and do stuff. People his voters are a lot of the moderates. Can they kind of dig the idea that this guy has some energy and plans to do something. So don't give him credit for wanting to do stuff because it backfires for lots of reasons.
Yeah, dictatorship, I think like after you know, like, like we mentioned, a lot of people's disillusionment with the Democratic Party is their propensity to be like, well, we promised this, but we've thrown up their hands, like the powers that be. It's like, you be the president.
Well, and I swear to God if any other any like top politician comes at me with you know, you got to get out and vote, I'm like, look, bitch, I voted and you haven't done anything about it. Stop telling me to vote, because I keep voting. I keep voting, and then what at some point you got to hold up your end of.
The bargain here, right, But I do wonder if, like you know that there have been a lot of interviews and polls with Trump's supporters that indicate that they're not voting for him in spite of the dictatorial vibes, but because of the dictatorial vibes and because people are like, yeah, it's time for something different, you know. Mussolini, I don't know, guy had real energy had riz So all right, let's
take a quick break. We'll come back and we'll talk about the guy who got stung on ballsacked by scorpion.
We'll be right back, and we're back. We're and you know the thing about the companies, the people making the decisions deciding what these products actually are and how they interact with the consumers, like that being completely insulated from the actual people using the products, or viewing them as piggies who we don't mind if they get sucked out of a out of a door that pops off the bone jet feels like it's of a piece with Like you'll read these articles about how economists are baffled, and
they're like the old rules of macroeconomics no longer applied. Like just look at the pandemic and the you know, there was supposed to be this massive recession because fucking everything shut down, and yet we kept these good economic metrics throughout or like the you know, the stock market never fully crashed on us, and we're baffled, and it just feels like the whole thing is part of the system where the people who are at the very top and who are like involved in the stock market are
completely insulated from everything going on below. And yes, it's all like it's that as much as it is like a problem with tech, and tech has made it has been like the thing that has allowed the disease to spread more quickly. It feels like it's good old fashioned, just like yeah, like monopoly and like all the shit there was a problem in the early twentieth century, late
nineteenth century. It's just like you just have these people who are making all the important, influential decisions who are one hundred percent just decoupled from the people who their decisions affect.
Yes, and that is the overwhelming problem and a symptom of an economy ruled by weak labor standards and weak anti trust. Right and the market, you're right, is a problem outside of tech. Boeing being a great example of a company that just flaunted basic safety. Tesla another great example. They're not they are not a tech company. They are a car company. Elon Musky's trying to claim they're an AI company because he's just a crook and a lion, that's all he's capable of doing.
Right.
Tesla is a great example as well of just like a stock completely decoupled for it. It's a meme stock at this point.
But it's such a successful mem and it's a memestock that has made is the richest person in the world, right Like that that was yeah, But can you just talk about can you talk about, like what how people perceive Elon Musk, Like my dad will say to me, like Elon Musk is like, I mean that guy must be so smart, right he Like I've even heard this from like people who pay attention, like work in finance and are like, I mean, guy disrupted like three major
markets in the course of like a couple. You know. There is the I think the public image of him is this like Tony Stark, you know, once a generation genius and like that is how he like he invented Tesla in his garage or some shit, Whereas like, you know, he how did he actually grow his fortune? What is the thing that he's good at? I think you've like compared him to the CEO of Google, Like they're good at the same thing, which is creating the illusion of growth.
That Elon is a marketer and his heart, he is an operator and a marketer. He is good at mobilizing capital and good at convincing people to put money into other things unless it's a consumer product. Right, He has never done well with any kind of consumer product. Car He has done like largely because he knows how to hire people, or at least he did before he went crazy. He has always been kind of a shithead. That's also an important thing to know. He has never been a
great guy. The myth of Elon Musk being this super genius that invented Tesla is also wrong. He did not someone I forget who there's a front for. There's a couple of people who actually designed Tesla's and found at the company. Elon came in with money. He was just he invested and you know what, he invested well, and he's been a champion for this. But he's also got lax labor standards, horrible racism problem over at Tesla.
Right.
This has been what he dogpiled a report called Aaron Bieber in like twenty seventeen. I believe he has been this guy forever. But what Elon is good at is hype. And he realized in like twenty thirteen that the press
would pretty much print anything he said forever. And hears that again and again and again in a way that should not be legal, right, Like I'm actually really like if we had a strong enough sec to actually like, surely there is a side where it's just a guy being like, yes, so we put the first neuralink chip inside a person, they can now see the future. And it was like, yeah, let me just put down on CNBC dot Com that sounds true to me. This guy is a liar, but people are printed his shit forever.
He promised Autopilot like three years before it even got close to existing. He has made up stuff about Tesla for over a decade. He is just a liar, but he's realized that this is how shit works, that people are just like people will just ball for this ship and people will buy his lies. He hasn't really corrected the record that he isn't the inventor of Tesla, despite the fact that he didn't invent Tesla. He didn't and if the SpaceX stuff right, he didn't invent the Starling thing.
He didn't invent any of this stuff. He's just the hype man and that was better before he was like, what if I wanted to just posted something Hitler Jason on Twitter, that'd be great, Like He's just I actually genuinely think as well. People turning against the tech industry, people being anger at tech, have done so because they've kind of seen what he is, what Elon is, the kind of person he really really is, and how little
value he actually has. And also they've seen how poorly he's run Twitter, right right, Yeah.
Is there like you know, like with all this like we all know basically there's just it's all this illusory shit. It's just to give the like the feeling that there's growth, but not offering a product that actually drives it and the and people are investing more and more but into
something that like doesn't exist. What does it look like when it, like the market corrects or the bubble pops or will it or they're so deep in it, like because I'm trying to like, what does that reckoning look like for people selling you on musk and things like that musk less.
So though I think Twitter at some point will have a reckoning, I think it is inevitable that this company burns more money than it makes and also with the fact that Elon now has to replace multiple members of the board of Tesla, right, But the thing that I think is going to be the reckoning is artificial intelligence, because right now they're trying to put generative AI into everything, a product that no one really knows the reason why
it exists, but they're putting it into everything. And the way that this is growing revenue is Microsoft invested in open ai and Google invested in Anthropic, the two largest model companies, So that's guaranteed revenue those companies have to use them now bookable cloud revenue. As the AI industry grows, so does their revenue. Guaranteed No antitrust law to stop them from literally just investing in a company that would then invest the money that they just invested back in
the company. It's a horrible circle. The reason that I think this might fall apart is because they're also scaling up their data centers to match this demand. Because AI is extremely compute, sent demanding. It's extremely demanding. You cannot just run it on your computer at home. You need specialized jeps, and you need a lot of them. And so as they massively scale this system that's deeply unprofitable.
Eventually people are just going to not use it if it's not useful, if it really isn't actually useful, So suddenly you're going to have companies like Microsoft and Google that invested billions and billions of dollars and hectares of real estate for data centers, and they're going to find themselves with their dicks out. They're gonna be like, oh shit, we put all this money into something that no one wants.
I think that will have a severe enough correction that things will get slightly back on track or it destroys the entire tech ecosystem for a few years and everything's kind of screwed.
There's a big.
Chance of that because this stuff doesn't make any money. None of these things are profitable, none of them, not one of them. And if users stop using it, even if they're forced to, what's left all of this real estate, all of these data centers in videos market cap? Where the hell does all this money go? It doesn't go anywhere. It will affect the tech industry and it will be bad. And I think people are laughing. People are kind of done with generative AI already. Like a regular person does
not know why they need. Chad gbt the seven million dollar Super Bowl commercial for Microsoft's co Pilot AI. They had a thing in there where it's like do me. A logo of a classic truck, Mike's truck. If you actually type that into Chat, into Microsoft Copilot and Chat GPT generative.
AI can't do letters, right.
It can't do letters, So it's like massa but it looks like Athulu. Yeah, and there's another thing and there's another thing in there where they're like, oh, do the code for my open world game. These aren't ideas. No one's doing this. These aren't normal people things that people. No one saw that and was like, wow, I can now make an open world game. No one's that fucking stupid, or at least if they are, they'll do it and then nothing won't happen.
So I remember this one story where I was like, like I talked to somebody who's familiar with Marcus was like so much of like the market growth I forget what year it was, but was like propped up by AI stuff, and so I was like looking, I was like, so what does that mean? Because nobody really knows what AI is. How is it being propped up? Like how
how is that translating to value? And like one of the metrics that they were using was like all about a user adoption of chat GPT and how it was like the fastest adoption, like faster than TikTok, faster than any social media up to this point. And it turned out to be bullshit, Like it was internal numbers that were bullshit that they were lying about. But the thing that was exciting and that got people excited enough to
like invest money was the lie. And so that's still the thing that just lasts like it really feels like in addition to you know, so the them being the input of information coming from the investors, like they're also controlling it so that no bad news gets circled into that system. And it's just this like bullshit economy that just like cycles back and forth in the top and like won't it won't allow that input of information that all of this is bullshit, and then people aren't using it.
Really, what's going to happen is this push, this big lie that you're correct about, by the way, is going to have something bad happened as a result of it. If you remember, back in twenty twelve, Night Capital, Night Capital was a hedge fund that, due to an incorrectly installed algorithm, invested billions of dollars in stocks it could not afford. It lost them about four hundred and ten million dollars they ended up having to sell for parts.
Yeah something like that. Yeah, well it wasn't even fooling the people. It was just it never stopped buying. That was It's a quite complex thing, but the algorithm was off, so it didn't have appointment. It stopped buying stocks. It just bought way too much. Haven't we all been there?
But something like yesterday, I'm feel sick.
Something like that is going to happen though. And Gemini, which is Google's generative AI, they had a big problem where you typed in what do the founding fathers look like? And it generated a black guy, a black like the concept of like a Chinese George Washington is terrifying to be these woke, like anti woke guys. But that was actually significant enough that summed up a shy The ceear
of Google had to say something about it. I think something bigger and worse happens with someone who adopts generative AI that destroys a company. I think it it does something so significant that that scares the market. Because there was a Wall Street Journal story a few weeks ago where they were saying, anthropic and open AI, we're having trouble selling their stuff because of the hallucinations, because these mistakes it was making. And in the article it's great.
You can see the journalists trying to be like, so, how are they going to fix this? And the quotes were like, well, at one point, we'll tell the model to not say anything if it doesn't know for sure. And then the next thing was someone saying yeah, but the problem is if you tell an ai that sometimes it will just stop answering at all. Go no, mate, I don't trust myself right now. It's like taking someone's keys away when they've been drinking. But that's the thing.
At some point people are going to notice this doesn't do anything. This is not they want this to be the next there's a phraser. No one ever gets fired for buying IBM, right. They want this to be that, but it isn't useful, and every person who's a big fan of it it's like, well it will be And then you ask how and they're like, I am really sorry. I got to take a phone call. I'll be back in three hours. Please don't wait here. I do not
have an answer. And it's just I also think that this is overwhelmingly this kind of stuff is becoming more and more obvious for the regular people, and they're going to get angry I'm about it.
Yeah, No, I think everybody should be angry about it. I just don't know, like it feels like they have built this system to insulate them from our anger at this point, and at a certain point, I don't know what it looks like, what the what the event is that makes it so they can no longer ignore that anger, because yeah, I'm definitely a product of having grown up in this system, and you know, my first memory is being like Clintonian, you know, bullshit, and just like not
being able to imagine something different. But something different is definitely coming.
I think that it's just you're going to start seeing the Facebook advertising model breakdown. Yeah, online advertising is becoming less profitable and less useful. As though as that starts dying, the tech industry is going to realize that they've got a big problem. When when Meta's market cap goes down and when AI stops generating revenue, when it stops being the buzzy thing that you have to install, that you have to integrate even if you don't know what it does,
what happens, then what's up? Mark Benioff every time, like I think at least once a year we'll say that Ai is now in Salesforce, and he has done so since like twenty sixteen. Every year, right, sales Sports claims that has Ai in it. It is just a giant cone. At times, it feels like that, and it feels like, I know it sounds a bit conspiratal, but it feels like they're laughing at us on some level.
Yeah, well yeah, I feel like they're also scared, right, like they need to so they need to allow Google to become a monopoly and like you know, just abuse the smaller companies to remain profitable because Google is too big to fail because all of these companies are already like that lie that you're talking about, that like that crashes the economy, like and that is the thing that everybody's on the fucking it's resident down to, you know, the top point two percent of the enemy like can't
allow to happen.
But even then, Google doesn't need to operate like this. They make like ten billion dollars of profit quarter, right, they don't need to run like this. The economy doesn't have to run like this. Tech companies were plenty profitable before, and there are ways to do that.
Uber.
The thing that really frustrates me about Uber is had Uber been done slightly differently and much slower, it could have been the single most disruptive and important tech company of all time. Had they done everything they did but made it so that this is the crazy thing. Had they done like labor rates baked into it would have made them less money, would have made them slow, Yeah, but just charge them charge people more. People would have
paid more. You would have created a new class of employee. Yeah, one covered one protected a massive change in labor. That company would have been worth several trillion dollars just to be clear. Would have taken them twenty years to get there,
but they would have been. Instead, we have this massively unprofitable, labor screwing piece of shit company that has the monopoly on cabs because cabs were built on another kind of exploitative system, the medallion system, right, right, And it's just things can change, And indeed I think they will through awareness alone, because when I did the first Rock Economy episode, I've got so many emails people being like, oh shit,
I didn't know that. I feel that more people knowing will put that pressure around there, people will stop using these products, and as users stop being interested in like these dogshit products, things will change.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's just more about creating enough of the awareness around it, because I think most people get caught up in the razzle dazzle of it all. And you see, like even the people who you know, like it's like we're a country that's ran by older people who don't understand technology, so they're not with they're not understanding.
What the borders should be or the guardrail should be.
So that creates this environment for people to just completely shift the thinking to be like, rather than you know, like making a product, what we need to do is like sell one of those companies, because that's how people talk and it's not about making the thing. It's like, yo, man, we've got to create a company we can sell and that's just it. And because of that, there's no value in it. And it merely just becomes about the act of making said company and then flogging it to something and.
I wore a ton of money.
I will wrap it up because I know I've gone on and on about this, but the actual thing that I think this comes back to is a societal problem with the concept of business itself. I think that they we have lionized big companies over good companies.
Yeah. Yeah.
I run a small PR firm and I have and people for years like you need to scale, and I'm always up why and they're like, because that's what big good company is big. Yeah, it isn't a big We lionize managers and management. But I think especially the pandemic proof there it's very obvious that the managers and the CEOs.
Don't do the work right.
Yeah, and I think there is a labor awakening. It's slow, but it's happening that will change every step of everything.
But talking about now, this whole conversation has been you know, having worked at and run Cracked back in the day and just you know, it started out as this website that had these really good articles because we had like a handful of really talented people, and we kept like bringing these talented people into focus on making the good product.
But there was also these people who were like focused on doing the ads in the sidebar and like making those ads trick you into thinking you were clicking on content, and that is what the entire Internet became. Like the people who made the content got choked out and the people who do the sidebar fake ads that trick you into thinking you were clicking on content where you're actually clicking on something that is going to fuck your computer.
And yeah, you know who got rich off of red end a community and Tiley might up have free contributions. Sam Oldman, right, he made four hundred. Yeah, like Dad is the guy, not the moderators, not the redditors who made the Internet better for their redditing. I guess you'd call that no, Sam Altman, a guy whose only role at that company was to put money in at one point.
This is something that I feel like if more people are aware of, they will turn on the tech industry and they bloody well should Yeah.
Absolutely 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 the miles he he needs your validation, folks. I hope you're having a great weekend and I will talk to you Monday. By nothing