Evil Genius Chronicles Podcast for January 17 2025 - Whatever This Is, I Am Not A Part Of It

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Hello and welcome to the Evil Genius Chronicles. I am your little podcast buddy, Dave Slusher.
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Welcome to the show. This show is being recorded for January 17th, 2025.
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Oh, I can't hardly wait.
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But first, the business. The show is grabbing the sheet of paper.
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Not kids safe, not work safe, not 2025 safe.
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Creative Commons license, non-commercial attribution 4.0.
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Unported i don't know what unported means general readers do the theme song generalreaders.com,
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bandwidth is via cashfly under the kind
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umbrella of backbeat media i don't speak for my day job i don't
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have a day job that's it end of story i'm going to play a song question mark
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let's say it's an audio curiosity from man or astro man um i don't know the
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year but i think this was mid to late nineties.
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And this is from their album, A Spectrum of Infinite Scale.
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And this is a thing that is exactly what it sounds like. It is a song.
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It is a piece of audio called A Simple Text File.
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Music.
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There you go. That was Man or Astro Man with a simple text file.
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And I will tell you, I have seen that performed in concert.
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I'll tell you a whole Man or Astro Man story because they were local to the
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Georgia music scene. I believe they lived in Atlanta.
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I believe some of the cats now have a studio, or at least at one point they
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did have a studio in Atlanta. I think maybe in Cabbage Townie.
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I don't remember exactly where,
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but they were from Auburn, which is where they met and formed the band.
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And then they moved to, they were all students at Auburn.
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I believe they were all engineering students at Auburn, which is story checks out territory.
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Then they moved to the Atlanta area or maybe the Athens area,
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somewhere in there. But they were around town frequently.
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And a friend of the show, friend of mine, patron of the show,
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Rob Gibson and I, I remember seeing Manor Astro Man with him at the point in
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Little Five Points of Atlanta.
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And this would have had to have been probably, I don't remember if it was when
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we were still students, so late 80s.
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It was probably more likely when I was back in town.
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So like 92-ish or 93-ish. And it's hard to remember what the tech was like 30 years ago.
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But it was not a time when it was, you know, easy to do samples and stuff like that.
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And on the record, a lot of these Man or Astro Man songs had intros and or outros
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that were quotes from movies. They had a lot of stuff like that.
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And so when you saw them in person, they had some sort of rig,
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which was something that if you stuck a floppy disk in, it would automatically play the sample.
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And I remember this thing where, and it would do that, it would play the sample,
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it would do something, and then it would automatically eject the disk.
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So that was like somehow or another they had rigged this thing up because it
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was not a time where you could, I mean, you probably could have had some sort
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of giant sampling keyboard, but it was expensive.
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And it really, truly looked like this was probably something they had built
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themselves out of dumpster dove equipment, you know, like some sort of, uh, you know,
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old, uh, you know, Mac, maybe they had gone up to Roswell, Georgia to the same
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salvage computer place that I talk about, uh, going to with, uh, my friend Gareth.
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So we were seeing them and they did a song that ended with one of these quotes. So.
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There was some sort of non-zero time where the quote would finish,
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you know, and then it would do some stuff and then it would eject the disc automatically.
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And they finished one song and there were way, the dude who was working the
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sampler was waiting for that one to, uh, eject.
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And it was taking a long time and he had the next sample ready to go.
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So he had this other floppy disc in his hand waiting for the one.
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And you all know the situation, you know, you know,
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like your family's leaving and you're trying to, you know, you're going on Christmas,
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but you've got the CD you're burning to, you know, something where you're waiting
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for a thing to finish and it's taking longer and people are waiting on you and they get impatient.
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Well, imagine you're on stage and this is happening to a crowd of people who
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are at some point, you know, after a few seconds, that's one thing,
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but when it's like 30 seconds, they begin to get restless.
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And so he walks up to the mic and he's still waiting for the thing and he's
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got the floppy disk in his hand.
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And he says, this is what happens when you prepare your
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set list without a gantt chart and rob gibson and i start laughing at this joke
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in the point in atlanta with hundreds of people we're the only two people in
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this entire crowd who find that hilarious so i will always remember that this
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uh gantt chart uh joke really landed with me and rob gibson all right.
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So, it's the beginning of the year.
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This is the first show I'm recording because of the funky way that the holidays fell.
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I just, I am not alone in this. I noticed in podcast outputs,
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a lot of them just published nothing for a couple of weeks.
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And boy, do I not feel as big guilty about that.
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Years ago, maybe decades ago, stopped doing a thing you call New Year's resolutions,
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where the output of that thing is a new habit.
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Because as we all know, that is downright a cliche at this point,
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that if your new habit is tied to a New Year's resolution, it will do nothing.
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It's not going to go anywhere. It's not going to land. It's not going to be
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permanent. It's just going to be bullshit.
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So instead, what I do is things that are transactional, like a one-time thing that I try to do.
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And I was doing one of those things that at my age, at my stage of life,
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is a thing you end up doing early in the new year, which is I was going through my contacts,
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which is, you know, my Google contacts, which is my phone and,
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you know, all the stuff that goes through.
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There was a point in time where we drove the Christmas list off of that,
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or at least we drove it off of the Apple address book, which also synced to
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my contacts, my Google contacts.
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So there was a time we have a lot of weird contacts where the first name is the,
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and the middle name may be a surname
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and then the last name is the family or some variation it
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might be the smith is the first name and family is
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just a mess we no
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longer do that this is one of those things where technology keeps
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getting worse and worse because in 1995 i could take the mac address book and
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put our christmas card list in it and print with that address book and tell
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it that the output is as a mailing labels and which kind of like whatever it was,
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whether, you know, Avery 8160, and it would know what size that was and it would
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print it correctly. This was 30 years ago.
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Nowadays, try to fucking do that.
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Like find a thing that will do that. It is challenging. And it used to just
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be, uh, free with the stuff that came out of the box on that.
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But because of an offshoot of all that now, obviously I can't,
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I actually kept a MacBook Pro alive and two years ago it stopped booting up
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or three years ago it stopped booting up.
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And that was a scandal in this household because now we couldn't print a Christmas
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card list and it was a clusterfuck.
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And then eventually I found a hard drive that had a time machine backup from
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that MacBook and I was able to get the SQLite file that the address book used
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and do an export and And then put that into a Google spreadsheet.
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This is nerd life, man. And then now that Google spreadsheet is what does our thing.
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And also I got accused of not properly, not accused. It was true.
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I was fussed at for not properly updating the thing from year to year.
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Like, you know, you have access to this. I've shared this with you so many times.
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That is all to say that I have a bunch of weirdness in my Google contacts.
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And also, when I fart around with, say, the Audi, and if I try to use the built-in
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navigation, one of the things it does is pull up those contacts.
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And there's so much bullshit in there that it's just useless.
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Like, if there are addresses in the contacts, it will actually use those as navigation targets.
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Which says, okay, first thing, let's clean up all the the whatever families.
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In some cases, I just change them to the name. In most cases,
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I just deleted them. But then as I'm in there cleaning up data,
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I realize, well, shit, you know what I should do?
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I should clean the dead people out of this contact list.
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So I don't need the phone numbers and addresses of dead people, but no longer.
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And I go through, and I, here's the sad part is...
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There were so many people, there were people that I had forgotten that I had
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in there that were now dead. And it's like, oh boy.
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You know, to the point, you know, I have this problem on Facebook where I've
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never had a huge number of Facebook friends because part of the deal is I only
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friend people I know in person.
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That was not always a rule, but so there are a few, like fewer than 10, I think,
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people that, you know, there were listeners to the show and people that I accepted
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early on in Facebook and then changed it to, it had to be somebody,
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I think maybe even the rule was a meal or I had to have at least been face-to-face
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with them at some point in my life.
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On Facebook of my 250 or 300 friends, I think we have approached a point where 10% of them are dead.
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You know, it's just gotten to that point.
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And in my contacts, there was a significant number of dead people.
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And so I'm taking them out. It's like, why do I, I don't need to have this in
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here. This phone number, I'm sure doesn't work. And you know,
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like there's zero value in having it in there.
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And it got to the point of deleting my friend, Andre Pope.
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And I'm realizing I'm having a hard time remembering when he died.
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I think it probably was 2018 if I think about it, but it could have been plus or minus a year.
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So this is not a cat who just died. He's been dead for at least five years,
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between five and seven years.
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And I just couldn't, it just made me so sad to delete his name out of my list.
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There's no reason for this. There's no utility in having his name in my list.
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By the way, I deleted my mother out of there. It was not a problem for me.
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It was not hard. It's like, my mom's dead. I know this. My mom's dead.
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Her cell phone is no longer active.
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But for some reason, and I cannot identify why, perhaps because he was one of
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the youngest people in this whole thing.
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Because he died of cancer in his early 40s.
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And it just,
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It's still there. I haven't deleted it yet. I think maybe after having talked
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it out on this thing, maybe I'll be able to delete it.
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I honestly don't know why I couldn't hit that button and just delete it.
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Having him in there provides no upside in life because nothing about his contact does anything.
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It's the equivalent of the weird things that I keep around. and I have been
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able to throw the things away lately.
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For 30 some years, I couldn't. But the idea that keep the memory, get rid of the thing.
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Well, I have every memory of Andre I ever had. That contact is not the key to
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the memories. It's not holding anything.
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So I don't know. I don't know why this was so was and is so troublesome to me.
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But that was the sticking point. Every other person, my Uncle Pat,
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my mom, like all these other people, Thomas Peake. I deleted all these people.
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Thomas was younger. Thomas died younger than Andre did. And I didn't have a
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problem with Thomas. And I don't know why Andre is different.
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I, to this day, we'll be riding around it.
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Like, anytime I have a Myrtle Beach food story, almost always,
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maybe always, it's an Andre Pope story.
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Yeah, I went and ate this weird thing. Yeah, Andre was there.
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Or, you know, it was always, like, that was one of our big things,
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was having lunch together.
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Andre had so many friends. I was probably 72nd on his list.
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He was high on my list. I was probably low on his list.
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And even so, I just miss that cat. I just miss being able to call him up and
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say, hey, there's this thing happening.
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Hey, you want to go try out? I saw this Jamaican restaurant opened in Saucosti.
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Would you like to go? Hell yeah.
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Anyway, it's just one of those things. I don't know. I don't know why.
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But the other thing is, at my age, there will be more dead people in the condom.
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Probably next year, there will be more new dead people to remove.
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That's just the way it goes.
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I was listening to the Sounds Profitable podcast, which Paul Merriman does,
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and he had an interesting episode. It was a refutation episode.
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And this guy, he ran a money management firm, one of those places where they
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will manage your accounts for you. He ran that for years. He sold it.
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He retired. And then one of the things he did is he started the Merriman Foundation
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and his podcast and all the stuff at the Merriman Foundation website.
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It is a nonprofit devoted to the single mission of educating investors on how to do it better.
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So his hustle is really like giving shit away.
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They write these books, but I think all, most or all of these books,
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even though they sell them on Amazon and you can buy them, they also give the
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PDF away for free because it's not a profit motive. it's a education motive.
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Okay. So there's this guy, Karsten something, he goes by Big Earn.
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And I remember, I'm sure that they talked to this guy and they talked about
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this guy back when I listened to Choose FI before I burned out on those knuckleheads.
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But this guy, Big Earn, wrote a blog post really kind of castigating Paul Merriman
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for talking about and recommending small cap value funds because one of their, their, uh,
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things that they do is they have, um.
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Uh, recommended portfolios that are, that will meet, you know,
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they, they don't recommend, um, individual things.
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They just do statistics and say, if you do this thing, this is the kind of risk
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and reward you could expect in the worst years.
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It does this. And they just do, they just really flood you with statistics.
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Like if you listen to the sounds profitable.
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There's a lot of numbers and probably like a lot of things that refer to tables
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that would make more sense if you were watching the video of it,
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because there's a lot of graphs and tables being referenced.
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So one of the things they talk about is there's a four fund thing that is,
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I don't remember what it is, but one of the things is small cap value.
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And they, they, they put the small cap value in there as kind of a hedge because.
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It sort of goes counter to some of the big indices.
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And many years, it does much worse than those other things.
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But in those years when the big things are down, you know, like a 2008 or a
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2020, those tend to do well.
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And they also do so well that a lot of times they make up for the years that
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they don't do that great.
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So essentially, it's a diversification that kind of keeps your,
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it brings up your ceiling but it also brings up your floor.
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So you lose less and you have basically less risk for the same level of return.
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And this guy, uh, Carson wrote this blog post talking about this as a vow,
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you know, talking about how wrong it was that they recommend it.
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Um, what this fad that they're following. And it was, um, so Paul went through
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and kind of, I think we call it fisking when you kind of go through line by
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line and point things out. He did something kind of like that.
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Um, just pointing out, and he was actually very, the original blog post is pretty
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unnecessarily combative.
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Like I have no idea what crawled up this guy's ass and died because this
00:19:42.663 --> 00:19:45.543
is some pretty dry shit right it's like i believe
00:19:45.543 --> 00:19:48.463
you should have you know a 20 percent alification of small cap
00:19:48.463 --> 00:19:53.543
value will seems like this guy's a fucking moron it wasn't you know it wasn't
00:19:53.543 --> 00:19:57.543
that bad but it was loaded and you know talking about fads and you know hey
00:19:57.543 --> 00:20:02.443
he used to do this uh 10 fund uh recommendation now he does this for fund and
00:20:02.443 --> 00:20:07.703
why is he changing his mind and all this and if you paid half a if you made a good faith effort.
00:20:07.843 --> 00:20:10.443
You'd understand all this, that they have, they also have a two fund,
00:20:10.623 --> 00:20:15.023
which is the 10 fund they say probably is, you know, will be better for most
00:20:15.023 --> 00:20:17.083
people, unless it's too complicated for you.
00:20:17.203 --> 00:20:20.823
And then do the four fund or the two fund, all of which have their place.
00:20:20.983 --> 00:20:24.423
And so this guy is like taking him to task for having multiple recommendations
00:20:24.423 --> 00:20:29.143
and like effectively calling him a flip-flopper as if it was some kind of political
00:20:29.143 --> 00:20:34.043
campaign, all of which just seems just completely unnecessary.
00:20:34.083 --> 00:20:38.663
And so Merriman kind of I calmly kind of refuted the stuff.
00:20:38.843 --> 00:20:42.703
I'll have a link in the show notes at evilgeniuschronicles.org to this podcast
00:20:42.703 --> 00:20:44.863
and also, I guess, the original blog post.
00:20:46.283 --> 00:20:49.863
But, you know, less about the specifics of that interaction.
00:20:49.863 --> 00:20:54.603
It really kind of puts in mind, this is, you know, a thing I have been thinking
00:20:54.603 --> 00:20:57.743
about a lot is the, like, just what people know.
00:20:57.923 --> 00:21:04.183
It's like, or what they think they know, what they're sure they know versus, you know, reality.
00:21:04.183 --> 00:21:10.763
You know, just like, I keep talking about this periodically,
00:21:10.763 --> 00:21:12.423
but the whole bean dad thing,
00:21:12.803 --> 00:21:17.743
like as somebody who's now listened to, I think between five and 700 episodes
00:21:17.743 --> 00:21:21.143
of Roderick on the line, I feel like I understand John Roderick pretty well.
00:21:21.143 --> 00:21:24.363
And the people who literally only know him from a couple of tweets,
00:21:24.563 --> 00:21:27.723
uh, have a lot of opinions about the dude.
00:21:27.823 --> 00:21:35.263
I was like, I think I, I feel confident that I know, um, more about the situation than you do.
00:21:35.443 --> 00:21:37.503
And the thing that you're saying is counterfactual.
00:21:38.543 --> 00:21:44.083
Um, as an aside, um, this might be the year I need to do the evil genius shirts,
00:21:44.083 --> 00:21:48.443
uh, you know, in the worst way with my, uh, shirt making stuff.
00:21:48.443 --> 00:21:52.083
But also, it occurred to me that there's some bootleg things I want to do,
00:21:52.143 --> 00:21:56.283
and one of them I want to do, I have a Will Anderson bootleg shirt I want to
00:21:56.283 --> 00:21:59.603
make, but I also want to make bootleg Father Lagoon shirts.
00:22:00.840 --> 00:22:05.580
I want to make a make room for father legume t-shirt.
00:22:06.540 --> 00:22:11.020
I think because one of the things he was talking, well, once they had a little,
00:22:11.020 --> 00:22:14.300
um, uh, little distance, they talked about being dad, uh, you know,
00:22:14.460 --> 00:22:18.900
a year, a year or three later, bear in mind, being dad was like January, 2020.
00:22:19.680 --> 00:22:26.720
So much like nine 11 did for, uh, Gary Condit had pretty much solved the being head dilemma.
00:22:27.320 --> 00:22:30.200
They talked about it. And one of his friends was like, how are you going to
00:22:30.200 --> 00:22:32.800
monetize this bean dad thing? He's like, monetize it.
00:22:33.200 --> 00:22:37.360
But I think if you rebranded as Father Legume, you could monetize it.
00:22:37.940 --> 00:22:41.280
But you could monetize it and also make fun of the original thing without,
00:22:41.280 --> 00:22:46.620
you know, orthogonally glancingly make fun of the original thing.
00:22:46.900 --> 00:22:50.340
But anyway, all this stuff, like people who are sure about things.
00:22:50.340 --> 00:22:54.940
When I listen to the more to come podcast where they talk about comics,
00:22:55.140 --> 00:22:59.560
you know, it's a kind of a it's a product of Publishers Weekly.
00:23:00.100 --> 00:23:03.800
But Heidi McDonald, the beat is, you know, is one of the main co-hosts.
00:23:03.860 --> 00:23:09.300
And they but when they talk about AI and or crypto, they think they know what they're talking about.
00:23:09.440 --> 00:23:11.780
They do not know what they're talking about.
00:23:12.060 --> 00:23:17.940
They know they know the bullet points or maybe the headlines of stories about these things.
00:23:18.040 --> 00:23:21.920
They do not know what they're talking about. And I guarantee on this program,
00:23:22.080 --> 00:23:26.060
I talk about things that I know the bullet points and or the headlines,
00:23:26.080 --> 00:23:27.520
and I don't know anything deeper.
00:23:27.640 --> 00:23:32.860
And yet I still have an opinion. So I'm not putting myself as a paragon of virtue in this.
00:23:33.240 --> 00:23:41.700
Pretty much everybody does this. But boy, is it one of these things where I
00:23:41.700 --> 00:23:46.620
expect it to be much worse starting effectively now for the next four years.
00:23:46.620 --> 00:23:49.300
And there are just so many axes on which it's getting worse.
00:23:50.640 --> 00:23:57.280
Of course, climate change is not related to the fires in Los Angeles, all this kind of stuff.
00:23:59.040 --> 00:24:02.920
I'm going to step back and tell a little side story. We had to speak with a
00:24:02.920 --> 00:24:11.140
teacher at our kid's school in about the mildest situation in which you really
00:24:11.140 --> 00:24:13.220
kind of need to have a conversation with the teacher.
00:24:13.300 --> 00:24:16.580
It wasn't one of the bad ones, but it was a thing that needed to be done.
00:24:17.120 --> 00:24:20.160
So we go through this awkward conversation and we're mostly,
00:24:20.360 --> 00:24:23.020
most of which is everybody telling everybody else, everything's okay.
00:24:23.780 --> 00:24:28.440
But later that day, um, my wife reads me some stuff.
00:24:28.560 --> 00:24:33.500
She reads me a quote and it's about, uh, climate change and how,
00:24:33.500 --> 00:24:38.060
um, abhorrent it is that everybody is acting as if this is real and,
00:24:38.220 --> 00:24:42.380
and you know, how much damage is causing. She said, who do you think said that?
00:24:43.177 --> 00:24:48.177
And I said, well, it sounds Trumpian in sentiment, but I cannot imagine him
00:24:48.177 --> 00:24:52.037
either written or verbally putting words together that well.
00:24:52.177 --> 00:24:55.517
So it's someone Trumpian, but not Trump.
00:24:56.077 --> 00:24:59.957
And she said, it's the husband of that teacher we just talked to.
00:25:00.037 --> 00:25:01.337
I was like, oh, my fucking God.
00:25:02.557 --> 00:25:09.257
I was like, oh, my fucking God. And so then later, yesterday,
00:25:09.837 --> 00:25:14.117
this was not me, this was my wife, but had at the dentist's office,
00:25:14.117 --> 00:25:20.297
had a couple situations where somebody was on and on about how awful Biden was
00:25:20.297 --> 00:25:22.557
and how he's the most hateful president we've ever had.
00:25:23.157 --> 00:25:28.517
And it's one of these things where I don't doubt that this cat believes what he's saying.
00:25:29.217 --> 00:25:33.817
That's, I think, the root of the problem. A lot of people do believe these things
00:25:33.817 --> 00:25:37.997
that they're saying, which, from my mind, from my perspective,
00:25:38.257 --> 00:25:42.757
takes practically no effort to completely refute and debunk.
00:25:43.217 --> 00:25:50.577
And, like, not only is this not true, this is aggressively, thoroughly anti-true.
00:25:53.537 --> 00:26:00.037
But, as we know, people like this do not respond to facts, to refutation.
00:26:00.037 --> 00:26:05.677
And so, and also on the fly, on the spot, when you're confronted with these
00:26:05.677 --> 00:26:08.517
things, it's really hard to figure out what to do. It's like, what do you do?
00:26:08.677 --> 00:26:12.917
Just look at them awkwardly. So I have actually tried to, I'm trying to prepare
00:26:12.917 --> 00:26:17.617
myself for when these situations arise, because they shall arise.
00:26:17.737 --> 00:26:18.877
There's no avoiding them.
00:26:19.577 --> 00:26:22.997
So in that situation where somebody is carrying on like this,
00:26:23.197 --> 00:26:28.477
you're next to them in line at a Dollar General, you know, or whatever.
00:26:29.097 --> 00:26:32.357
Something's going on. and somebody's carrying on like this, I believe,
00:26:32.377 --> 00:26:36.897
I have not worked this into the final form.
00:26:37.037 --> 00:26:41.377
I haven't workshopped this or wordsmith this, but it's going to be something
00:26:41.377 --> 00:26:44.357
like when they're carrying on their monologue about whatever,
00:26:44.557 --> 00:26:47.257
how bad something is or how good something is, and it's all fucked.
00:26:48.257 --> 00:26:53.497
I believe what I'm going to say is, I'm not sure why you're doing your one-man
00:26:53.497 --> 00:26:55.517
show in this line, but keep me out of it.
00:26:56.057 --> 00:26:59.357
Something like that. I don't know what performance art this is,
00:26:59.477 --> 00:27:01.237
but I'm not a part of your one-man show.
00:27:01.457 --> 00:27:08.217
You know, something to those words, because what I want to do is point out and
00:27:08.217 --> 00:27:10.217
make fun of the performative nature of this.
00:27:10.317 --> 00:27:14.637
It's not about the thing they're saying. It's about the audience.
00:27:14.877 --> 00:27:16.817
It's about the captive audience they can do this for.
00:27:17.097 --> 00:27:20.917
The lobby of a tennis office, it's a nice captive audience.
00:27:21.137 --> 00:27:25.957
The people who are in line around you somewhere, those are a nice captive audience.
00:27:26.537 --> 00:27:32.037
That's where This sort of thing really comes to life when you have people in
00:27:32.037 --> 00:27:36.697
a waiting room at the car dealership or whatever. It's like, I am not.
00:27:37.637 --> 00:27:40.577
Whatever this is, I'm not a part of it.
00:27:41.485 --> 00:27:46.285
I am not your co-conspirator. Whatever. Leave me alone.
00:27:46.745 --> 00:27:52.685
Something like that. So I'm trying to get towards this sort of thing.
00:27:53.805 --> 00:27:57.865
To not be blindsided by what's obviously coming down the tracks.
00:28:01.025 --> 00:28:04.065
This is just a time of ugh.
00:28:05.985 --> 00:28:13.605
I believe that's a perspective title. if I can figure out how to spell it. A time of bleh.
00:28:15.725 --> 00:28:19.525
I'm trying to work up something a little spellable. Blech.
00:28:20.305 --> 00:28:24.805
Not brand ech. All right. I'm going to pause right there for a little bit of this. Mm.
00:28:25.545 --> 00:28:31.665
So warm. And now I have an upstairs electronic coffee cup and a downstairs electronic coffee cup.
00:28:32.205 --> 00:28:34.625
Holy shit, am I living the life? I'll tell you about that in a second.
00:28:37.985 --> 00:28:43.925
Because of the holidays, I did get, I had actually said at one point,
00:28:44.125 --> 00:28:49.085
maybe around Black Friday, it was pointed out that these Nespresso Virtuo machines,
00:28:49.605 --> 00:28:54.105
that line of coffees, that is, it's better than a Keurig.
00:28:54.205 --> 00:28:57.165
It's higher end than a Keurig. The machines are more expensive.
00:28:57.305 --> 00:28:58.145
The pods are more expensive.
00:28:59.345 --> 00:29:06.785
When we did that weird thing in Las Vegas, our booth was, I think I'm not telling tales out of school.
00:29:06.865 --> 00:29:11.485
And I say, our booth was half-assed and I made an attempt to make it not half-assed,
00:29:11.605 --> 00:29:14.165
which was vetoed, at which point I just gave up.
00:29:14.325 --> 00:29:18.425
And then one of the things we did is early on in the show, one of the guys decided
00:29:18.425 --> 00:29:23.065
he wanted to, uh, that the coffee in this, uh, exhibit hall sucked.
00:29:23.365 --> 00:29:26.965
So he went to target and got one of those machines and we just spent the rest
00:29:26.965 --> 00:29:32.385
of the time, you know, the day and a half of the show making Nespresso cups
00:29:32.385 --> 00:29:35.425
of coffee for people, which were superior to the, you know, what was available.
00:29:36.505 --> 00:29:39.525
And so I looked around and I was like, that would be better than the thing.
00:29:39.645 --> 00:29:43.625
But it's like, you know, all told, I told my wife, I don't need this thing.
00:29:45.025 --> 00:29:50.585
Come Christmas morning and I unwrap a box up, kind of a sizable box,
00:29:51.005 --> 00:29:53.845
you know, that rattles a little when you shake it. And it's one of those machines.
00:29:53.985 --> 00:29:57.025
This thing I said, I don't need it, but I'll take it.
00:29:57.205 --> 00:30:02.125
So since then, since Christmas morning, I've been, you know, in the Nespresso world.
00:30:02.125 --> 00:30:06.805
And, you know, it is, I've come to believe that this is absolutely the Betamax
00:30:06.805 --> 00:30:12.765
to the VHS of Keurig machines, right? It's technically and technologically superior.
00:30:12.945 --> 00:30:18.305
The coffee it makes tastes better. And if you go to any store, you will see...
00:30:20.729 --> 00:30:24.469
700 Kurg options and five Nespresso options. You know, that's just the way it works.
00:30:24.609 --> 00:30:29.249
I also learned the hard way. There are two different kinds of incompatible Nespresso
00:30:29.249 --> 00:30:32.209
capsules, and I bought the wrong kind.
00:30:32.609 --> 00:30:36.969
I bought a $30 box of them. I was like, fuck, now I got to see,
00:30:37.109 --> 00:30:39.249
does anybody have this thing to just give them?
00:30:39.429 --> 00:30:42.969
I don't know what to do. I guess maybe I'll put it in a community fridge,
00:30:43.129 --> 00:30:46.889
but then even that, because the odds of any one person that's there,
00:30:47.289 --> 00:30:51.749
you know, I got one of these, uh, food giveaway places, actually having a machine
00:30:51.749 --> 00:30:52.929
that can use it seems unlikely.
00:30:53.149 --> 00:30:55.269
I might end up just having to throw away these fucking things,
00:30:55.429 --> 00:30:57.489
even though I'd want to rehome them.
00:30:57.669 --> 00:31:03.209
I also don't want to admit publicly that I bought the wrong thing,
00:31:03.209 --> 00:31:05.509
uh, to a certain audience, let's say.
00:31:06.169 --> 00:31:11.749
So anyway, um, but also I got this thing called Steve Holden pointed it out
00:31:11.749 --> 00:31:15.849
in the evil genius discord, this thing called an Oh home coffee warmer.
00:31:16.449 --> 00:31:19.749
And it is honestly, what this thing is, is a wireless sheet charger,
00:31:20.089 --> 00:31:25.669
like everything you set your phone on, you know, or your Apple watch or your
00:31:25.669 --> 00:31:27.269
Samsung watch, right? The wireless charger.
00:31:27.689 --> 00:31:31.189
But it comes with a mug that just has some metal in it that when you set it
00:31:31.189 --> 00:31:34.609
on this wireless charger, the specific wireless charger, not any wireless charger,
00:31:34.749 --> 00:31:38.669
but this one, it will warm the cup because it's pumping energy and that metal
00:31:38.669 --> 00:31:40.129
will catch it and turn it into heat.
00:31:40.609 --> 00:31:43.329
And so it's much dumber than the ember it
00:31:43.329 --> 00:31:46.609
doesn't go to a specific temperature it's uh it's
00:31:46.609 --> 00:31:49.589
just going to heat up uh until the charger says oh
00:31:49.589 --> 00:31:52.589
that's enough and that thing is sitting downstairs
00:31:52.589 --> 00:31:57.209
it's a ceramic mug with some metal in the bottom it's got a nice ceramic lid
00:31:57.209 --> 00:32:01.069
on it so just the lid by itself does a good job of holding the heat in and i
00:32:01.069 --> 00:32:06.149
drink i make my nespresso coffee into that cup and then uh i drink the thing
00:32:06.149 --> 00:32:10.389
and if it gets cold before i finish the cup i just set it on the warmer for, you know, a while.
00:32:10.629 --> 00:32:13.149
When I remember to go get it, I go get it and then I drink it.
00:32:13.229 --> 00:32:14.789
And then when it gets cold again, I set it back on it.
00:32:14.969 --> 00:32:18.829
And so my coffee game has gotten quite a bit better.
00:32:19.489 --> 00:32:22.929
And those Nespresso capsules cost more.
00:32:23.049 --> 00:32:26.989
They're like maybe between a dollar and a dollar 50 each. And they cost way
00:32:26.989 --> 00:32:30.789
more than the Keurigs, which, you know, you can get for like 30 or 40 cents a piece.
00:32:31.849 --> 00:32:36.069
But they make a much better tasting cup of coffee. And also I said They're more
00:32:36.069 --> 00:32:37.869
than the Keurig, but they're cheaper than Starbucks.
00:32:38.469 --> 00:32:43.589
So the idea of making a Starbucks, like leaving the house to go get a Starbucks,
00:32:43.809 --> 00:32:47.569
when that's the only thing I'm leaving the house for, that no longer happens.
00:32:47.729 --> 00:32:51.589
I only go to Starbucks if I happen to want coffee and be out anyway.
00:32:51.769 --> 00:32:56.369
I don't leave the house specifically for that anymore, which bearing in mind,
00:32:56.429 --> 00:32:57.509
it's like four miles away.
00:32:57.769 --> 00:33:02.469
You know, it's actually streamlined my life a little bit in a way I was not
00:33:02.469 --> 00:33:06.709
expecting. So that's helped my coffee life a little bit.
00:33:07.547 --> 00:33:10.507
So I said, I didn't need that thing, but ultimately it turns out,
00:33:10.507 --> 00:33:16.107
um, good that I was not listened to, um, the podcast backlog.
00:33:16.307 --> 00:33:22.147
It's, I'm at an interesting point because at this point I cleared a show not long ago.
00:33:22.407 --> 00:33:24.687
I mean, like I cleared a raceable a couple of months ago.
00:33:26.067 --> 00:33:32.087
I have now 14 shows in my backlog that I am listening to episodes from six of
00:33:32.087 --> 00:33:36.607
those are in the three figures. So a hundred episodes or more like the most,
00:33:36.747 --> 00:33:38.527
the one with the most episodes is like 330.
00:33:40.187 --> 00:33:47.747
And so I have six podcasts between 102 and 330. I have six podcasts in the double digits.
00:33:48.487 --> 00:33:55.027
And these six, interestingly band together and they go from 58 to like 75.
00:33:55.447 --> 00:33:58.967
And then I have two in the single digits. One of them has two episodes.
00:33:59.107 --> 00:34:02.307
And so depending on how things go, I might clear that fucker today.
00:34:02.307 --> 00:34:05.187
Today or this week for sure that one will be gone
00:34:05.187 --> 00:34:07.847
and much like um like the
00:34:07.847 --> 00:34:11.107
dave ramsey snowball thing you know where you stop adding
00:34:11.107 --> 00:34:13.787
to your credit card debt but you pay him down and he always believes he should
00:34:13.787 --> 00:34:17.587
pay down the lowest one i believe you should pay the highest interest one down
00:34:17.587 --> 00:34:21.047
because you're making more money you're losing less money but he believes he
00:34:21.047 --> 00:34:24.347
should pay the lowest one because you want to see progress and watching a credit
00:34:24.347 --> 00:34:29.227
card disappear off that list uh improves your progress and it's like there is
00:34:29.227 --> 00:34:32.667
a case to be made for that Well, I feel kind of the same way about the backlog.
00:34:32.847 --> 00:34:36.947
Like when a show disappears off the backlog, I just get so happy.
00:34:38.427 --> 00:34:41.427
Now, bearing in mind that I've dropped a couple of shows off the backlog and
00:34:41.427 --> 00:34:43.027
then immediately subscribed to two more.
00:34:43.387 --> 00:34:47.487
So the number of shows in the backlog kind of tends to stay similar.
00:34:47.987 --> 00:34:52.327
But I get so excited when a show gets low. And then so Skull Funk Radio,
00:34:52.567 --> 00:34:54.707
I have two episodes left to listen to.
00:34:55.907 --> 00:34:59.267
I talked to Jim Mod twice, you know, at Heroes Con and at Dragon Con.
00:34:59.267 --> 00:35:04.047
And I think there are no more, uh, coming, but he said, don't unsubscribe,
00:35:04.547 --> 00:35:08.627
say subscribed, but I don't anticipate more, but never say never.
00:35:09.187 --> 00:35:12.207
The other one is, uh, Benjamin Walker's theory of everything.
00:35:12.347 --> 00:35:16.207
I have nine episodes of that. And that one is a kind of a short show.
00:35:16.987 --> 00:35:21.087
And so, um, I might be done with that one like next week.
00:35:21.327 --> 00:35:26.507
And so then the funny thing is, I'm not sure I've ever had it like this lumpily
00:35:26.507 --> 00:35:34.867
distributed where I will clear my nine-episode show, and then the next lowest one is 58.
00:35:35.127 --> 00:35:40.087
There's a pretty big gap between the two of them. So I don't anticipate clearing another one for...
00:35:41.270 --> 00:35:44.750
Like six months or more. Although when I dropped these other ones,
00:35:44.830 --> 00:35:49.810
so what that means is I will listen to that next one more frequently.
00:35:49.930 --> 00:35:53.490
It'll be a commonly listened to thing. So maybe it will accelerate.
00:35:53.790 --> 00:35:57.150
I mean, when I have 12 shows instead of 14 that I'm listening to,
00:35:57.250 --> 00:35:58.410
it will go a little faster.
00:35:58.590 --> 00:36:02.110
I mean, that's just the listening time will distribute across fewer things,
00:36:02.110 --> 00:36:05.830
but there's something just, I don't know why I nerd out on that.
00:36:06.510 --> 00:36:10.470
Clearly, if you look at the amount of time I spend dealing with my backlog and
00:36:10.470 --> 00:36:13.770
data entering and looking at the data and figuring out the next show to listen
00:36:13.770 --> 00:36:15.470
to. Clearly, I love the backlog.
00:36:16.130 --> 00:36:19.890
I don't know why I love the backlog, but I love the process of grooming the
00:36:19.890 --> 00:36:23.470
backlog and dealing with it and thinking, oh, hey, I might drop a show.
00:36:23.570 --> 00:36:25.190
I love the Michigan show.
00:36:26.570 --> 00:36:30.470
And I don't know why that's such a fun thing to me.
00:36:30.610 --> 00:36:35.990
It's just fantasy. It's like fantasy football for podcasts.
00:36:36.510 --> 00:36:38.350
That's what it is for me. I don't know why.
00:36:39.430 --> 00:36:44.710
Speaking of podcasts, I did listen to one of the new ones in this backlog is
00:36:44.710 --> 00:36:47.030
a show called Hollywood Gold. And this is Lady.
00:36:47.710 --> 00:36:51.130
Where did I hear her? Oh, I heard her on TV Guidance Counselor.
00:36:51.210 --> 00:36:54.510
She was a guest on there. She sounded really interesting and she's a Hollywood producer.
00:36:54.690 --> 00:36:58.230
And she has a podcast where she talks to mostly other Hollywood producers.
00:36:58.510 --> 00:37:03.210
And her dad is the guy who produced The Last Waltz, Jonathan Taplin.
00:37:03.650 --> 00:37:09.450
He worked for the band. He worked for Albert Grossman, who was Bob Dylan and
00:37:09.450 --> 00:37:10.830
the band's manager at one point.
00:37:11.110 --> 00:37:16.190
He was a music promoter when he was a young man and then became a movie producer.
00:37:16.510 --> 00:37:22.790
And so she talked to him and I think he also ended up producing some Scorsese stuff.
00:37:23.190 --> 00:37:27.390
I think his first movie that he produced was The Mean Streets.
00:37:28.970 --> 00:37:35.670
I think the first, not the first Scorsese movie, but like the first commercial Scorsese movie.
00:37:36.634 --> 00:37:40.734
So I listened to the show and it's quite interesting. In a recent show,
00:37:40.834 --> 00:37:44.694
she talked to the guy who was, he was not a producer, but he was an editor on
00:37:44.694 --> 00:37:48.374
the Dune movies and will be an editor on the Dune Messiah movie.
00:37:48.894 --> 00:37:53.154
And they were talking about a lot of stuff and they got to the topic of AI and
00:37:53.154 --> 00:37:57.754
what, you know, the physical capabilities of AI.
00:37:57.974 --> 00:38:00.954
And they were making some interesting points. Like he said, they said,
00:38:01.114 --> 00:38:07.054
AI won't take any editor's job, but an editor that's good at AI will take your job. eventually.
00:38:07.334 --> 00:38:11.194
He said, every 30 years, there's a technical revolution.
00:38:11.594 --> 00:38:15.634
And this is, it's that time because in the early nineties, the people who were
00:38:15.634 --> 00:38:18.334
editing on film had to give away to the people who were editing digitally.
00:38:18.814 --> 00:38:21.474
And some of them made the transition and some of them said, fuck it.
00:38:21.534 --> 00:38:24.674
I'm not learning a new thing. So I'm just done. I'm retiring.
00:38:26.034 --> 00:38:31.074
And, you know, the, and it was conceptually the same thing, but like the,
00:38:31.154 --> 00:38:36.194
the skillset of editing on an Avid versus slicing film is just different.
00:38:36.714 --> 00:38:40.934
There are some transferable skills and a lot of non-transferable skills.
00:38:41.074 --> 00:38:45.554
But he said, the thing about AI, he's like, and they were specifically talking
00:38:45.554 --> 00:38:50.174
about the character of Stilgar in the Dune movies played by Javier Bardem.
00:38:50.314 --> 00:38:56.074
He said, we can get an AI model that will replicate Javier Bardem's voice,
00:38:56.074 --> 00:39:00.914
but what it cannot do and will never, ever be able to do is make the choices
00:39:00.914 --> 00:39:05.014
that Javier Bardem, the experienced actor will make.
00:39:05.154 --> 00:39:09.434
And this is a point that I think, um, is really important.
00:39:09.574 --> 00:39:13.354
And I really have never heard anyone make it at this point is that you can do
00:39:13.354 --> 00:39:16.934
the, you can replicate the real course level, like that, um.
00:39:17.854 --> 00:39:19.954
Dudezy thing where they did the George Carlin routine.
00:39:19.994 --> 00:39:24.774
You can replicate the superficiality of George Carlin's voice,
00:39:25.114 --> 00:39:29.914
but not, um, you know, you have a voice that sounds like him,
00:39:30.054 --> 00:39:33.534
but it's not doing the things he would say. It's not emoting the way he emotes.
00:39:33.674 --> 00:39:37.574
And he has very, you know, you make very specific choices about his delivery
00:39:37.574 --> 00:39:38.734
and it's not making those choices.
00:39:38.834 --> 00:39:43.894
And it's not saying like the writing was not George Carlin writing for sure.
00:39:44.414 --> 00:39:49.334
Um, that's a thing I think to really think about is creatives are worried about
00:39:49.334 --> 00:39:52.254
AI, but AI cannot make the choices.
00:39:52.514 --> 00:39:58.074
So that's the thing to double down on is it can't make the creative choices
00:39:58.074 --> 00:40:03.734
in your art or your music or your writing or your acting or your voice.
00:40:03.994 --> 00:40:08.314
So, uh, take a little, take a little solace in that. All right.
00:40:09.194 --> 00:40:13.834
The boys on the self-hosted podcast spend a lot of time talking about Jellyfin.
00:40:13.934 --> 00:40:19.014
And I think January last year was their jellyfin challenge where they said just
00:40:19.014 --> 00:40:22.654
for the month of January, we're not using Plex at all. We're just going to use jellyfin.
00:40:23.694 --> 00:40:27.614
And I used jellyfin for a little bit and it was okay. And then at some point,
00:40:27.634 --> 00:40:30.054
this is me not loving Docker.
00:40:30.274 --> 00:40:33.274
At some point, my jellyfin Docker image stopped.
00:40:34.375 --> 00:40:38.695
Booting up. And this thing that worked stopped, no longer worked.
00:40:38.795 --> 00:40:43.835
I think what it is, is, um, how, and it sat there like that for at least a year,
00:40:44.015 --> 00:40:48.955
more than a year before I finally even felt like I gave enough of a shit to tackle it.
00:40:49.035 --> 00:40:51.535
And actually over the holidays, I said, fuck it, I'm going to try to figure
00:40:51.535 --> 00:40:53.575
out why this jellyfin is not working.
00:40:54.115 --> 00:40:58.675
Not a thing I had any, um, enthusiasm for. I had no particular taste to spend
00:40:58.675 --> 00:41:03.815
time troubleshooting, uh, a jellyfin image that didn't boot for the last year.
00:41:04.915 --> 00:41:12.115
Turns out that when I first set it up, I had a mapping to a folder that had spaces in it.
00:41:13.695 --> 00:41:17.015
And Jellyfin of two and a half years ago accepted that.
00:41:17.155 --> 00:41:21.915
And then at some point, one of the updates to it, it no longer accepted that.
00:41:22.055 --> 00:41:24.275
And that killed it and it wouldn't start anymore. I was like, oh, fuck.
00:41:24.575 --> 00:41:28.215
So I had to remap everything, you know, ultimately solved it by the simple experience
00:41:28.215 --> 00:41:32.435
of changing the folder names to not have spaces in them. okay, fine, done.
00:41:32.715 --> 00:41:35.355
Reset up the jellyfin image and it worked. It worked just fine.
00:41:35.755 --> 00:41:41.635
So then the thing that now I'm doing is because it does not share a watch history with Plex.
00:41:41.915 --> 00:41:48.315
And over the years, we have got family approval. Like everybody now uses the Plex.
00:41:48.655 --> 00:41:51.595
It's no longer a nerd thing. It's just kind of TV.
00:41:53.155 --> 00:41:58.135
My kid watches things in the Plex. My wife watches things in the Plex and the
00:41:58.135 --> 00:41:59.835
family as a whole watches things in the Plex.
00:41:59.935 --> 00:42:02.575
And so it's kind of become, um, central.
00:42:03.055 --> 00:42:07.775
But, um, then what I have started to do is the shows are just my shows.
00:42:07.855 --> 00:42:11.615
No one else in this house gives one shit about letter Kenny or Columbo or the
00:42:11.615 --> 00:42:16.315
Rockford files or Barney Miller or what's some of the others. Um.
00:42:18.409 --> 00:42:24.649
Doom Patrol. Everyone else has dropped Doom Patrol, but I'm kind of semi-reluctantly
00:42:24.649 --> 00:42:27.949
as a completist just trying to watch the last four episodes and be done with
00:42:27.949 --> 00:42:28.789
it and delete the whole thing.
00:42:29.889 --> 00:42:34.829
But I realized if I watch these things in Jellyfin, which is perfectly watchable
00:42:34.829 --> 00:42:37.709
now that we have both running simultaneously on the same library,
00:42:37.749 --> 00:42:43.769
then I can just watch my stuff and it doesn't show up in the history of Plex.
00:42:44.009 --> 00:42:46.949
It's like, oh, this is actually, this is fine.
00:42:47.129 --> 00:42:52.929
Now I can like segment stuff. And the stuff that I don't watch and I don't care
00:42:52.929 --> 00:42:56.729
about that gets watched on Plex is not in my Jellyfin history.
00:42:57.109 --> 00:43:02.209
So this is like not, this is an off-label use, right?
00:43:02.229 --> 00:43:05.489
This is not when anybody talks about using Jellyfin, right?
00:43:05.609 --> 00:43:07.929
The self-hosted guys are talking about not using Plex Because,
00:43:08.169 --> 00:43:12.149
frankly, Plex has been inshittifying for years.
00:43:12.329 --> 00:43:16.689
And the more of a business it becomes, the worse it becomes for what it originally
00:43:16.689 --> 00:43:18.169
was, which was for self-hosters.
00:43:18.649 --> 00:43:23.889
And now it's kind of becoming a semi-streamer itself.
00:43:24.229 --> 00:43:32.369
And God knows, at some point, who knows, Plex is inching towards becoming unusable.
00:43:34.649 --> 00:43:38.489
So we may go full jellyfin but for now i'm really kind of enjoying the split,
00:43:39.489 --> 00:43:44.269
where jellyfin is mine and plex is everybody else's and the twain shall not
00:43:44.269 --> 00:43:47.629
meet one of the things we did watch recently i'm going to talk a little about
00:43:47.629 --> 00:43:51.249
some of the tv we have been watching by these various methods we watched the
00:43:51.249 --> 00:43:56.729
new year's treat episode of taskmaster and it had this one of the contestants was this woman,
00:43:57.089 --> 00:44:02.689
Melanie Blatt, who for a time period, I thought was one of, at first I thought,
00:44:02.909 --> 00:44:05.229
is that Mel B from the Spice Girls? But it is not.
00:44:05.489 --> 00:44:09.669
She is from a girl group called, it's not take that.
00:44:10.269 --> 00:44:15.509
I don't remember the girl group she's from. So she is in this realm of people.
00:44:16.049 --> 00:44:19.009
I used to see these people in the Dragon Con in the nineties.
00:44:19.189 --> 00:44:21.889
I ran across so many of these people that are clearly famous,
00:44:21.929 --> 00:44:25.389
but I don't have the slightest idea who the fuck they are. And I truly don't care.
00:44:25.589 --> 00:44:30.169
So she's this woman who's probably in her mid to late 40s. She used to be a
00:44:30.169 --> 00:44:31.989
pop idol, a pop sensation.
00:44:32.329 --> 00:44:39.969
She used to be in a big popular UK girl group, famous, pretty, and now she's older.
00:44:40.209 --> 00:44:45.029
And the things that happen to pretty when you get older are happening to her.
00:44:45.109 --> 00:44:49.349
And she's in the stage of life, whatever. But she clearly.
00:44:51.869 --> 00:44:56.029
Approaches life from the frame of all the other stuff. Very much like,
00:44:56.109 --> 00:44:58.809
you'll see these women, they might be 62,
00:44:59.169 --> 00:45:07.449
and they're a pretty 62, but they were the homecoming queen 45 years ago.
00:45:08.049 --> 00:45:11.789
And in their head, they're still the homecoming queen. And they act like,
00:45:12.518 --> 00:45:16.278
And expect to be treated like the homecoming queen. I don't know.
00:45:16.378 --> 00:45:18.278
I see a lot of realtors who are like this.
00:45:18.718 --> 00:45:23.678
You know, like the aging ingenue that is no longer the ingenue,
00:45:23.778 --> 00:45:25.718
but kind of wants to be the ingenue.
00:45:26.438 --> 00:45:32.598
You know, the old football star who wants to be treated like the football hero who's just an old man.
00:45:32.898 --> 00:45:36.858
You know, this happens. This is not gendered. This is just the thing.
00:45:38.638 --> 00:45:41.758
And watching her on the show, it's like, clearly, look at me.
00:45:41.758 --> 00:45:45.178
I'm pretty and popular. And I was like, I don't know who you are.
00:45:45.258 --> 00:45:46.498
I think you're a dumb shit.
00:45:47.278 --> 00:45:54.198
I think you're not interesting. There's nothing about you that you seem to think that I agree.
00:45:54.498 --> 00:46:00.538
You know, all these virtues that you have in your mind do not exist in my mind.
00:46:01.038 --> 00:46:07.638
It's like she was just like such a clear typification of a type that I see.
00:46:08.058 --> 00:46:12.018
You know, the, like I say, walks of fame tend to have these people,
00:46:12.278 --> 00:46:18.918
you know, the, they were on the 1978 Battlestar Galactica and they were clearly
00:46:18.918 --> 00:46:22.438
famous at a point, but, and those people always make me sad.
00:46:22.438 --> 00:46:28.418
I don't participate in the joy, in the former joy.
00:46:29.498 --> 00:46:34.198
I'll watch the show Lioness, which Zoe Saldana stars in.
00:46:34.318 --> 00:46:39.538
It's about this special ops unit where they train women to kind of infiltrate
00:46:39.538 --> 00:46:45.698
places where they have targets, typically terrorists, money launderers, things like that.
00:46:45.778 --> 00:46:49.358
But they come in through the wives and girlfriends and daughters,
00:46:49.438 --> 00:46:53.918
and they come in through the family. And so it's a very, it's very much the
00:46:53.918 --> 00:46:55.278
entire mission is betrayal.
00:46:55.558 --> 00:46:59.798
It's like getting close personally and then betray everybody who was nice to you.
00:47:00.278 --> 00:47:02.478
And they, we watched two seasons of this.
00:47:03.264 --> 00:47:07.824
And the first season I would say was great. And this is a Taylor Sheridan production.
00:47:08.024 --> 00:47:11.524
I think he also does, um, Yellowstone. He's one of the actors in,
00:47:11.604 --> 00:47:15.224
in this, like in season two, he's one of these kind of grizzled,
00:47:15.224 --> 00:47:19.104
uh, uh, army guys, the kind of semi expendable army guys.
00:47:19.224 --> 00:47:23.744
He, so he's in it. He's the writer and a showrunner type guy.
00:47:23.764 --> 00:47:25.504
And also is an actor in the show.
00:47:25.664 --> 00:47:29.684
And season two, I must say started out blah.
00:47:30.224 --> 00:47:34.104
And then by the end of season two, it was straight up bad to the point where
00:47:34.104 --> 00:47:36.904
if there's a season three, I don't know that I'm in.
00:47:37.504 --> 00:47:40.084
And what's funny is right before we started watching season two.
00:47:40.304 --> 00:47:42.544
So we watched the season one that we liked.
00:47:42.844 --> 00:47:46.624
And then I listened to the ice cream social boys talking about Taylor Sheridan.
00:47:46.704 --> 00:47:48.204
I think they were talking about Yellowstone.
00:47:48.624 --> 00:47:54.084
And they were talking about how every Taylor Sheridan show has all these speeches about how life is.
00:47:55.224 --> 00:47:58.384
And once they said that, I was like, fuck, they're right. There were a lot of
00:47:58.384 --> 00:48:00.844
them in season one. Season two has so many more.
00:48:01.124 --> 00:48:04.324
Is there, particularly in this lioness show, there are a lot of,
00:48:04.544 --> 00:48:07.544
they're basically the speech from a few good men.
00:48:08.084 --> 00:48:12.984
You need me on that wall protecting you. You need a tough guy making tough choices,
00:48:13.524 --> 00:48:14.564
doing the things you can't do.
00:48:14.984 --> 00:48:20.984
And clearly like the decision makers in the situation room, one of whom is the
00:48:20.984 --> 00:48:25.184
chief of staff, the president's chief of staff is like this hand wringing person
00:48:25.184 --> 00:48:26.904
who, oh, we can't do this.
00:48:27.004 --> 00:48:30.864
We can't violate the sovereign stuff. we have to do the thing because we're
00:48:30.864 --> 00:48:32.324
tough guys that have to do the thing.
00:48:33.664 --> 00:48:38.604
And, uh, it was like, wow, there really are, uh, lots of speeches,
00:48:39.004 --> 00:48:43.464
lots of lectures of one character to another character about how things should be.
00:48:43.644 --> 00:48:48.824
I was like, see my real thing about the, I didn't, these lectures are not that
00:48:48.824 --> 00:48:51.144
dissimilar from what these assholes in line are saying.
00:48:51.564 --> 00:48:57.824
So I don't know. Uh, I don't know that I'm, uh, I don't know that I'm that in for the future.
00:48:58.664 --> 00:49:03.844
I would have told you after season one, I was way in. And after season two, maybe back out.
00:49:04.144 --> 00:49:09.724
So the, we watched one episode of this show, Missing You, who the,
00:49:09.724 --> 00:49:13.364
the actress who plays Louisa Guy in Slow Horses is the lead of this thing.
00:49:13.584 --> 00:49:18.724
And it's some sort of cop thing that I couldn't even figure out what kind of cop she is.
00:49:20.324 --> 00:49:25.504
And this is one of those things where there's this whole plot where the boyfriend
00:49:25.504 --> 00:49:32.304
who ghosted her, uh, her fiance who was going to marry her ghosted her, uh, like 11 years ago.
00:49:33.444 --> 00:49:38.444
And she matched with him on a dating app. And so this guy is back at the same
00:49:38.444 --> 00:49:42.364
time, her father who was married, who was murdered 11 years ago.
00:49:42.864 --> 00:49:49.344
Um, the guy who, uh, murdered him and is in jail is dying of cancer.
00:49:49.344 --> 00:49:51.144
And she wants to go talk to him. And he's,
00:49:51.877 --> 00:49:55.677
I don't know if I'm the person to coin this term. We'll throw it out there.
00:49:55.857 --> 00:49:58.717
Of course, show title, candidate to come.
00:49:59.257 --> 00:50:03.697
But this is, as I was watching this thing, and so I can see all these bits and pieces.
00:50:03.937 --> 00:50:07.797
Every single one of these bits and pieces locks into something else.
00:50:08.217 --> 00:50:11.077
And she goes and visits her mom, and that locks into this other thing.
00:50:11.197 --> 00:50:13.917
And she goes, you know, like, and I realized this is fucking plot.
00:50:14.017 --> 00:50:15.337
We're playing plot Sudoku.
00:50:15.817 --> 00:50:19.377
That's what we're doing. Because every one of these things locks in with something else.
00:50:19.377 --> 00:50:22.297
There's like no there's no messiness of
00:50:22.297 --> 00:50:25.277
life literally everything we're looking at is advancing this weird
00:50:25.277 --> 00:50:28.237
complicated uh thing where of
00:50:28.237 --> 00:50:31.637
course this guy was involved in this and this guy paid for this guy to have
00:50:31.637 --> 00:50:35.297
the father killed and this is happening you know it's like oh there's like no
00:50:35.297 --> 00:50:39.977
there's like nothing just happens it's like it's like take all the complication
00:50:39.977 --> 00:50:44.697
of slow horses and then take all the fun out of it and just leave behind um
00:50:44.697 --> 00:50:47.017
the chess pieces it's like,
00:50:47.957 --> 00:50:51.697
So we watched one episode and we were way out, like immediately out.
00:50:52.677 --> 00:50:55.837
And this is the thing. This is one of these things happen in Linus,
00:50:55.917 --> 00:51:00.737
but I have now noticed that these happen in basically all shows across the board
00:51:00.737 --> 00:51:04.137
where I can anticipate the shot.
00:51:04.897 --> 00:51:06.837
You're watching something on the TV.
00:51:07.917 --> 00:51:13.057
And for example, anytime characters are driving and they're distracted and they
00:51:13.057 --> 00:51:15.717
look down and you see them distracted, they will have a car wreck.
00:51:15.737 --> 00:51:18.237
That's going to happen. That's the next thing that happens.
00:51:18.757 --> 00:51:22.897
This happened in Linus. The teenagers are in a thing and they're goofing around.
00:51:23.237 --> 00:51:26.717
And one of the characters turned. The driver turns her head for a split second.
00:51:26.737 --> 00:51:28.897
And I know that a car wreck is the next thing is going to happen.
00:51:29.803 --> 00:51:35.123
And they're just, some of these things are just so cliche at this point in the modern era.
00:51:36.543 --> 00:51:39.103
Something's going to happen and you know the phone's about to ring or something's
00:51:39.103 --> 00:51:41.663
going to happen and you just know the next thing is going to happen.
00:51:42.143 --> 00:51:48.783
But the car wreck thing, I do remember the one that jumps out at me as being
00:51:48.783 --> 00:51:51.043
the first occurrence of this cliche.
00:51:51.223 --> 00:51:54.803
This might be the thing that set the pattern. So I remember watching the movie Singles.
00:51:54.983 --> 00:51:58.823
You remember that one? Like the post-grunge movie from the very early 90s.
00:51:59.003 --> 00:52:05.503
It's not that dissimilar from Reality Bites, but it's set in Seattle,
00:52:05.703 --> 00:52:08.163
and it had a lot. Chris Cornell's in this movie.
00:52:08.323 --> 00:52:11.643
A lot of your Seattle 90s players are in this movie.
00:52:12.823 --> 00:52:15.583
But what's his face? Colin, what's his face?
00:52:17.143 --> 00:52:21.783
Kira Sedgwick was the romantic lead, and the dude, oh, he was in Dying Young
00:52:21.783 --> 00:52:25.343
with Julia Roberts. I blank on this cat's name, but this, that,
00:52:25.343 --> 00:52:28.303
that guy is the hero. And he's, his whole thing is he's a city planner.
00:52:28.463 --> 00:52:32.123
Who's trying to get like some sort of like mass transit train thing together.
00:52:32.563 --> 00:52:35.463
But at one point they're driving in a car and he's looking at the light.
00:52:35.563 --> 00:52:38.683
He's like, something's wrong with that light. It's been green way too bang.
00:52:38.903 --> 00:52:40.023
And then the car gets T-blown.
00:52:40.603 --> 00:52:46.243
And that was like the original in 1992 or 1993, whenever that came out,
00:52:46.363 --> 00:52:49.743
that was not such a cliche. But now it is straight up a cliche.
00:52:50.123 --> 00:52:52.803
If you say something about something's wrong with that light,
00:52:52.983 --> 00:52:55.903
boom, the next thing that happens is your car is going to be impacted.
00:52:56.983 --> 00:53:00.943
If you look down, if you're driving and there's a shot of you looking away from
00:53:00.943 --> 00:53:04.903
the road, your car will be impacted with something. That will be the next thing that happens.
00:53:07.663 --> 00:53:10.243
I guess very last thing. I will just touch on this briefly.
00:53:10.970 --> 00:53:15.670
I'm now way into the Homicide Rewatch. I'm listening to two different homicide podcasts.
00:53:16.290 --> 00:53:21.390
On the Rewatch podcast that Kyle Secord is, he just made a reference to convictions
00:53:21.390 --> 00:53:23.850
being overturned. I had no idea what he was talking about.
00:53:24.830 --> 00:53:34.390
Turns out that of the detectives that were in the Homicide book that David Simon wrote in 1988 or 89.
00:53:35.630 --> 00:53:42.570
One of the guys, the guy who became the model for Bayless, the guy who was a
00:53:42.570 --> 00:53:46.110
political appointee, but turned out to be a surprisingly good homicide detective.
00:53:46.690 --> 00:53:51.150
He has had something like eight or nine of those convictions,
00:53:51.370 --> 00:53:53.870
some of which were the ones from the book overturned.
00:53:53.990 --> 00:53:58.590
Like they go back and they find that either procedural things were done wrong.
00:53:58.750 --> 00:54:01.490
In some cases, I think evidence was planted. I mean, it's just bad.
00:54:01.790 --> 00:54:07.550
And this, um, uh, the innocence project or something like that has gone back through.
00:54:07.690 --> 00:54:10.210
And that apparently that like that Baltimore, like the eighties,
00:54:10.310 --> 00:54:14.210
nineties, Baltimore, um, homicide unit, they found a lot of,
00:54:14.210 --> 00:54:17.830
they've overturned a lot of those ones. Apparently it's pretty, uh, corrupt.
00:54:18.150 --> 00:54:21.230
So, and Kyle Secor said something about that.
00:54:21.330 --> 00:54:24.870
And he just made a reference to, you know, we're, we're making art here.
00:54:24.970 --> 00:54:30.330
And it turns out that, um, you know, the reality under it wasn't necessarily as, um,
00:54:30.965 --> 00:54:33.885
And I don't remember the words he used, but it wasn't as virtuous,
00:54:34.065 --> 00:54:38.905
wasn't as wonderful as we thought, but regardless, our stories still stand.
00:54:39.185 --> 00:54:45.325
And so basically kind of trying to say some of these guys may have been kind
00:54:45.325 --> 00:54:47.465
of scumbags, but we're doing what we can with them.
00:54:49.145 --> 00:54:52.105
So anyway, that's a little bit distressing.
00:54:52.105 --> 00:54:56.165
Having just talked about having read both parts of the graphic novel adaptation,
00:54:56.545 --> 00:55:03.485
that some of that stuff, the coercion of confessions and some of the ways that
00:55:03.485 --> 00:55:11.345
those convictions were obtained turned out to be a little shady or a lot shady or straight up lies.
00:55:12.185 --> 00:55:17.725
So be careful who you put on the hero pedestal because.
00:55:18.885 --> 00:55:24.005
So anyway, let us stop there. Thank you for listening to this here program.
00:55:24.245 --> 00:55:30.265
Let us get on to the 2025 schedule, which hopefully, you know, we'll see.
00:55:30.565 --> 00:55:34.325
You would think a man with no job would have zero problems hitting the schedule,
00:55:34.325 --> 00:55:37.805
but that's not my reality. That's not my truth, man.
00:55:38.265 --> 00:55:46.625
Don't try to put me in your box, man. Don't try to make me conform to your bourgeois standards, man.
00:55:46.625 --> 00:55:54.465
And don't put me in your new media douchebag tote bag. I don't know what that is.
00:55:55.545 --> 00:56:00.405
Thank you for listening. Show notes will be up at evilgeniuschronicles.org.
00:56:01.985 --> 00:56:06.925
If you look hard enough, far enough, fast enough, you can find all this shit on Mastodon.
00:56:07.745 --> 00:56:10.585
I've barely been using Mastodon. Maybe that will be what the next show is about.
00:56:11.385 --> 00:56:16.145
But you can still find stuff if you try. There are links to things. You can find things.
00:56:16.625 --> 00:56:23.805
Go to EvilGeniusChronicles.org. That will be the first step in the Easter egg hunt of this podcast.
00:56:26.325 --> 00:56:31.405
Thank you for listening. I appreciate your time. Let us go out and prosecute
00:56:31.405 --> 00:56:33.225
2025 to the best of our abilities.
00:56:33.645 --> 00:56:39.545
Stay safe, stay alive, and stay sane. And do what you can. I love you. Goodbye.
00:56:44.685 --> 00:56:47.585
Where I can anticipate the shot.
00:56:47.785 --> 00:56:56.445
You're in a situation in this show or this TV show or this movie or something. I'm watching cinema.
00:56:56.685 --> 00:56:58.225
I'm watching filmed.
00:57:00.725 --> 00:57:02.285
What am I saying?
00:57:05.145 --> 00:57:06.365
I don't know.