Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 865: High Rise Bottle Throwing and a Cap Snatch

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

This episode of Cognitive Dissinence is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live from Glorhill Studios in Chicago and beyond. This is cognitive dissonance. Every episode would be blasts anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news

makes it big or makes us mad. It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome. Matt, today is Thursday, September the 4th. Cecil. I want to lead off with my newest wild-ass prediction. Okay.

I have a prediction. I have a Trump-related prediction. And I do, I believe this. Another birthday parade next year? Well, I have two predictions. Okay. I think that we will see before 2008 a national statue. carved into a mountain or no

I don't think it'll get it carved into a mountain and the only reason I don't think it'll be carved into a mountain is because it'll take too long Oh yeah yeah yeah And from what I read It's not really possible to add another president to Rushmore which is what he wants So there's just not it won't it won't work

What I read is like all the geologists people are like you can't do it It'll fucking bust up the mountain Like it's not don't do that But I was thinking that like Every major dictator Has somewhere in the town's square or something, you know, they've got a giant statue.

He loves strong men. He loves strong men and dictators. He does. I believe, this is my prediction. You can put fucking, I'll buy you dinner if it doesn't happen. I think we will have a national Trump statue, whether it's officially like paid for by the federal government or not, I can't say. But I think we will have a, someone will give it to him as a gift, something.

There will be a big ass fucking Trump statue. Do you think that there's not one now? I don't think there's any official Trump statue. I remember the gold one at the CPAC conference a few years ago? Sure, yeah. I'm talking though like a bigan. Like a Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong-un kind of thing.

So it won't count if it's like a bull covered in dollars. That's not going to count. It doesn't count if it's already there. If we already have a symbol of the decline of humanity. He had at Maralago.

A bull. A bull. Bull covered in dollars. Yeah. Yeah. He should have covered it in Bitcoin or whatever. His Trump coin. He should have covered

in fucking stupid-ass NFTs of him as a cowboy. There's just an NFT of him as a cowboy on the back of it. He's like, he's got his whole, he's got a whole rodeo. That's amazing.

He does. He's all the village people. And he's the clown. Yeah. Yeah, I don't disagree. Although I will, I'll take the bet. I'll take the bet just so we can go out to dinner.

There's no loser. No loser. There's no loser. There's no loser. There's no loser. There's no loser. Whether or not, but I feel like it's going to be like that dinner on Red Dawn when they're like, you can't have syrup anymore.

You get molasses on your pancakes because we don't have that here. We can't import it from Canada. So it's going to be like that, but it'll least be dinner. Yeah, actually, speaking of that, like maybe, maybe stock up on syrup. Actually, thinking of Canada and our current relations, maybe stock up on syrup, guys. Did you see the hub of about Cracker Barrel about their stupid for fucking. My favorite tweet was somebody said they removed the cracker and the barrel. I said the same thing to Alien.

That's so funny. They removed the cracker and the barrel. I love it. So good. So the problem for me is that like I listen to like now five or six news podcasts. So they all covered the fucking cracker barrel story. Every major news source that I listened to at some point covered in excruciating D.T. or minor detail, the

motherfucking Cracker Barrel story. I feel like I know way too fucking much about the goddamn Cracker Barrel story. Is it a PR stunt on their part? A Cracker Barrel stunt? To try to get people to come back to their restaurant and remember they exist. It doesn't

appear like it. What it appears like, Cecil, is they got a new CEO who was a very successful CEO of several other major brands, whose job was to refresh the brand because like there's a lot of talk about oh my god you know cracker barrel stock price cracker barrel stock price but if you go back and take a longer view like a 2020 forward

view their stock price had already declined by half before the rebranding yeah yeah because they were just this like this this this sort of like casual space that they and red lobster and many other brands are similar that space has been declining rapidly since 2020 sure yeah makes sense so their stock price was in the shitter yeah I mean would you or red lobsters than any other place? Dude, like, that's the thing is, like, I don't understand how you even exist anymore. The only way I can see how Cracker Bell could exist

is it's Oasis food. Like, that's the only thing that I could see a Cracker Barrel existing, because I'm like, if a Cracker Barrel existed in my town, why on earth would I ever eat there on purpose? You would not go to a Cracker. This exactly. I think Cracker Barrel is the place you go

because you're driving. Yeah, because you're on your way somewhere and you're like, And you need to stretch your legs and sit down someplace out of the car. This or it's Casey's. And you're like, and the Casey's is closed. And the Casey's is out of roller hot talks or whatever. We have, okay, all right, I promise we'll talk about the show.

But I also need to take a minute and share with you my Domino's Pizza moment. Yeah, I mean, we might as well get it out of the way. We just, it's got to have. Yeah, we got to get it out of way. Sure. Have you eaten Domino's pizza in the last handful of years? New York style pizza? No, I normally try to avoid it.

It is, so my kids, one of my kids in particular, will only eat Dominoes. It's the only pizza hit. Really? Yes. It makes me viscerally angry. And I'm not even kidding. It makes me viscerally angry. Yeah, that's a really bad pie. I think the last time I had Domino's was maybe 12 to 15 years ago.

And I was in like a really rural part of Colorado. Sure. It was the only option. And there wasn't anything open and it was late and I wanted food. Right. And I ordered it. and I regretted it. I, you know, I am not a picky eater.

No. If I'm hungry, I'll eat food I actively don't lie. Sure. And it doesn't bother me a bit. The other night, and I fucking hate Dominoes. I've tried a couple of times to eat it, and I can't make myself eat it. It's so bad. I have no idea how they're in business.

The other day, I ordered Domino's because the only thing one of my kids would eat of pizza, I had a rough day, I just needed to get some food in everybody. I order this fucking Dominoes. I go downstairs. Cecil, I try to take a bite of it. I'm fucking hungry. I have had a long, hard day. I am just like, I just need to put a food in.

I couldn't make myself fucking swallow it. Are you kidding? It was that bad? A horrifying grease patte. It is, it tastes like a fucking witch's curse. It is disgusting. I have no idea how they're in business. I don't understand it.

I'll eat lots of bad food, man. If I've had a bad day and I'm hungry, I'll eat food that may be questionable about whether it's expired or not. Sure, yeah. I don't really care. I spat it into my garbage and I felt like sending an apology letter to my trash. It's disgusting. I couldn't.

It was like the, it's, it's as bad. It's right up there with that fucking salt licorice. I don't know how you chew it and swallow it. It's awful. Did your kid eat it? They all ate it. Are you kidding me? They love it.

They love it. Like, my other kids will eat all of the other pizzas. So, and they, they're like, yeah, like, they're not pizzas interchangeable. Yeah. Well, I mean, they have, they have their favorites or whatever, but they're like, yeah, if it's Domino's fine. If it's Pizza Hut, fine. If it's a good place that is local that actually has tasty pizza, awesome. So when my one kid isn't home and I'm ordering pizza, I'm like, thank fucking God.

And I order something good and local. And then I get in on the action. But if he's going to eat, I'm just like, well, we've got to get fucking this trash food. I don't understand it. How that place has not shuttered long ago, I cannot fucking fathom. I left him a review.

I left Domino's the company. A review. And I was like, I don't understand how anybody has eaten here successfully. I couldn't make the calories stay in my body, Cecil. That's so, it's so disgusting. The worst pizza I ever had, there's two places that had a nomination. One of them was like a food mall in Las Vegas.

When I just turned 21, I went out there with a friend of mine. It was the two of us. We went out there and we ordered a pizza together. And the pizza came. We sit down at this table and I try to take a bite of it. I'm like, this is the worst pizza. It tasted like, you know, like when you were in high school and they had the fake cheese on the pizza? Yeah.

It was like that. It was like imitation mozzarella on it. And it was just like there wasn't. at a certain point, imitation mozzarella just becomes like plastic with grease on it. There's like nothing there. And I tried to taste.

I was like, this is awful. And I set it down. And my buddy who was like you just ate anything, he's like, no, I'm not. And he walked back over and he's like, I want my money back.

And they said no. And he's like, no, you're going to, he argued with the guy for 15 minutes. Karen his way to get his money back. I think he got half his money back. That's amazing. That's fine. And then I went to C.C.'s one time.

So a friend of mine was like, no, we're going to meet up at C. And I was like, what is that? And he's like, well, it's like $5. You get all the pizza you want. And I went up and I got the pizza, like, I took one bet. I was like, they could just have my $5.

I was like, I'll actually pay them five more dollars not to make anymore. I'll double. You could charge me twice as long as you promised to close down for the rest of the day. It's a fucking war crime. It's the worst pizza ever. What's crazy is it's not hard to make an acceptable pizza. To make a great pizza, sure, it's a fair amount of work. But to make a pizza.

Tom will eat? Yeah, right. This is not a high bar. Like, I will eat cafeteria pizza. I'll eat pizza that's like spinning on the thing at the hospital cafeteria. I'll eat it and I doesn't bother me a bit. I'm like, was it good? No, but good is not necessary for me to eat it.

Every time I've eaten New York pizza, it's sat out for like 16 hours. Sure. And it looks like, it looks like something I would throw away if I came across it in my fridge. I look at it and I'm like, that doesn't look good. And then the guy's like, oh, I'll refresh it for you. I got it for you. belt where he, let me put it in a sister. I'm going to put it on the bottom of the oven.

And then he throws it in the oven. And then he gets it off and I'm like, well, it looks marginally better. And then they put it on the thing. And then you hold it up and like, a shower of grease comes off of it. And then you choke it down. But even still, you can at least choke it down. I would eat that.

And Cecil, again, like, I'll eat pizza. And if it's like, this isn't very good, I'll dunk it in like a little bit of like blue cheese dressing. Sure. Just like, okay, I'll take the edge off it. I can't even like, I can't even make my body chew it. You couldn't even do it. How is it in business?

I don't know, man. The worst. I would not be surprised if it was a Trump favorite. I'm just saying, absolutely tasteless. It winds up on the White House walls. It's just covered with it. All right. So if you haven't seen this video, I don't know where you're hiding. Because even I've seen this video, this is Financial Express.

Polish CEO, Pioretur, Jejouac, blasted online for stealing a kid's signed cap at the U.S. Open. The video of this is fucking incredible So let me play it I'll put it on the big screen So if you can see it I'll play it I might have Sound

So here's this guy Holy shit He just snatches it So he turns This kid This kid I'm gonna play it again So we can all see it He starts out there's a there's a young kid

God that kid's got to be 10 10 years old 10 11 something like that And he's standing there He signs this cap He's clearly doing it for the kid. He signs a ball and he goes to hand it to the kid and this guy just reaches out

and snatches the cap from him. Yeah, something, by the way, that that guy could just buy. Yeah. Well, and like, you know, look, this guy, I don't understand why people, first I don't understand this obsession with like getting a ball or whatever

and all that stuff. I understand that there's like a collectible market for it or something, but it doesn't make any sense to me personally. Like personally, it doesn't make any sense. But, like, that's an important moment for that child. That's an important moment for them. I could see only letting children do this, right?

Like, there's a section of the place where only children can go and get their things signed or whatever. And I realize that there would be problems with that because then someone would be like, hey, kid, here's 50 bucks. Sure. I understand. I get that. But at the same time, like, I feel like that's a thing that you should treat children to. and you should bar crazy people like this from

that are just going to reach out and snatch the fucking cap right from. There's so many videos. If you search for this sort of thing, you can find videos of this all over where people steal balls from each other that get thrown, that get hit out of the park

and like a woman will just like, I've seen a woman like literally hand wrestle with a child to rip the ball away from them. And then she turns triumphant to the crowd and holds it up in the air. I'm going to find it. As if you would not be

pilloried in this street for this, right? I'm going to find it. Because I was like, like, when you watch it, you're like, come on, does somebody really do that? And like, what sucks, part of what sucks about this video, and there is like a post script to it, is like the tennis player guy

was clearly intending to give it to this kid. That's what he wanted to do. Like he wanted to give this, but he was distracted. He's got a lot of stuff going on. He's busy. He's doing all. He's like a million people were asking for him for an autograph. When he finds out later that this happened, He gave this kid a bunch of signed everythings.

Good. Which is great. But like this fucking Polish CEO, he should be fucking fired. Like you are a morally bankrupt piece of shit if you do this. Like you're just an evil shitty dude. Like you should be in charge of nothing. Gall in Houston. There's a foul ball for her.

Oh. Whoa. What was that adult lady doing to that little gal? She took the ball. Juan Miranda tried to give it to the little gal. It falls out of her hand. right into the kid and then she rips it from the kid

Jesus Christ. But what happened afterwards in that particular case is they found that kid and then they give that kid of like a bat or whatever. Good. I hope she got to hit that lady with it. You should get a good whack in. Sign the bat. Well, I love that shit though when they do this because

what it does is it sparks the person to be like, no, fuck you. Yeah. No fuck you. Absolutely. It's so childish. of that person. And I hear, I didn't see it, and I couldn't find it in this particular story, but this guy doubled downed on it. I read the same thing.

He's like basically was like finders keepers or whatever. Like, what the fuck? Here's the other thing that I know to be true, at least if their lives are anything like my life, right? Like, if I'm a kid, that is a treasure. It is. And that's why I said it's a treasure. But if I'm an adult, it's something I set down and I never think about it again forever.

He's going to go on his fucking, like, globe bar. Right. That's what I like I have all kinds of stuff. So like I went to a concert recently and I bought merch with my son. So like my son and I took him to his first show. We saw a system of it down. It was great. We had a great time. We stood like at the end. I bought a t-shirt for him and I bought a hoodie for myself. And I'm walking out and I'm looking at the hoodie and I'm like, I fucking never wear this. And I gave it to it. I gave it to Donna. I gave it to my kid. I was like here you go. Like you can also have the same size like you can also have the hoodie. Because I realized like, I don't actually use this shit. It's like taking pictures when you're at the zoo. You never look at that picture, man. That lives in a camera roll. You never look at.

It's a great point because the dude is just being mean. It's just being mean. He gets a hit. Even he gets nothing out of it that he cares about. Like he goes home and he tells Cinderella to mop the floor. Like I just like you're seized by this moment to like have a memory from an event that didn't matter to you. Yeah.

it didn't fucking matter man I'm glad the person was like hey here's a here's a racket or whatever that's fucking awesome all right so this story comes from NBC News two dead after getting flesh eating bacteria from eating raw oysters more than 20 Louisianaans

have contracted vibrio volnificus which is like a Harry Potter spell something I was gonna say same thing Harry Potter's felt Jesus fuck dude there's been when you get it your nose falls off There has been so many stories that I have come across lately

where people eating raw oysters have been getting norovirus like fucking crazy. Yeah. They've been getting big sick. Yeah. And I'm like, I don't know that sea boogers are worth this.

I, you know, I'm not an oyster guy. My wife is. My wife likes him quite a bit. I know you eat them. I like them too, but I think I'm like, maybe done there. I think a lot of my friends like them and we'll always order them,

the table. For me, it's a texture thing. I think the flavor of an oyster is fine. Right. There's like, especially when they have that sea sort of flavor to them that tastes like seawater and there's that really nice. I think there's a really refreshing, and especially when they do a great job of putting something in it, like a sauce or something. Really good stuff. I think, I think I appreciate the preparation. Yeah. I just don't like the final outcome. For me, the final outcome isn't good. I don't appreciate an oyster like someone else would. So I never reach for him. People will be like, hey, can I order from some of the table? I'm fucking order them. Yeah. I will even pitch in. I just won't eat them. Right. You know what I mean? Like,

I'm not interested in putting them in my mouth. I don't like a lot of shellfish generally. Most shellfish, I'm just, it's just not for me. I'm not a huge seafood. I grew up in a fucking middle of Illinois. I don't have fucking a seafood. Like, all the seafood I could have gotten as a young person was the worst seafood. I ate like like trout. Like that was like what we so like I'm not a big seafood guy anyway but like this stuff is hyper dangerous like unless you are preparing it

like my suggestion to anybody is don't eat this at like a discount place always if you're ever going to eat any kind of seafood especially away from the shore don't do it at a place that's like $5 sushi don't get grocery store sushi don't get like

gas station sushi yeah if you're going to eat if you're going to eat good food like I mean I'm not to say gas station, not grocery store. Because some grocery stores can have an excellent solution. What I'm saying is like a gas station where it's like on a roller in the front or whatever. Not interesting. But I am saying like you should, if you're going to eat raw seafood, especially raw shellfish,

you should really trust the establishment that's putting it out. So if you were to go to the public and you're a podcast listener. And this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libson ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libson ads. Email Bob at Libson.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com. You would expect that they would source these well. They would know the buyer. The buyer would

know the place where they got them from. There wouldn't be any kind of like rampant infection going on. they would be handled well the entire time from the place that they get them to your plate. You would expect that to happen. Not whatever happens in these places where they get a bad batch of oysters. Like, as I've been reading more of these stories over the last year or so,

my math, because I do like oysters, I do. Yeah. But like, and we were kind of joking about this about something different before the show, I like oysters a solid four. I like not having flesh-eating bacteria an easy 10. So my interest level in raw foods in general continues to decline.

It just does. Raw beef I have not seen very much grousing about. Like I've read very little. But like raw seafood, it's not an uncommon occurrence, man. It's just not. And I'm like, I don't know, man. I don't need flesh eating bacteria. If I come home and I'm like, honey, bad news.

I have fucking flesh eating bacteria. good news is I got an oyster so it was worth it. Yeah, that oyster cost me an arm and a leg. Let me tell you what I think is one of the funniest lines in here. The oyster related deaths were reported this week at Louisiana's Oyster Task Force. Do you think that they wear like oyster shells for knee pads and like elbow pads and they come in? Like I see Oyster Task Force as like a SWAT team. I don't know how you envision an oyster task force,

but my imagination is as they come in, they drive up in a big oyster. And then they get out and they're covered in oyster parts as armor with an oyster guy. They're like, that's how I see them. They're banging on the oyster. Open up. They put a charge in there and it opens the mouth.

And then they jump in and then they take whatever. I just like, I think an oyster task force to me, I love it. I really love it. There's a lot of, it sort of, it's, it sort of feeds my imagination. It's only marginally less silly sounding than Space Force.

Marginally. Marginally. Marginally. This, this headline, man accused of regularly throwing glass bottles from Miami high rise faces deadly missile charges. This dude has been chucking like 40 some beer bottles out like a 30-some beer bottles out like a 30 40-story window of his condo. I don't know how you do that once and think probably cash money.

Tell me that doesn't look like a guy who throws stuff out of his window, though. He 100%. 100%. Like if you were, if you were unusual suspects trying to pick the guy to the guy to win out, this is Kaiser Sosa. This is the guy. This is Kaiser Sose. You know this is Kaiser Sosz.

His limp disappears as he walks away. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. And then he throws the cup right off the fucking building and it falls. No, but seriously, you look at this guy and he's got a, a face for throwing shit on a window. Do you think he was surprised when he got arrested? Dude, what a fucking crazy thing to be throwing a bus.

I got a story, though. I don't know that I ever told you this story. Oh, but I'm going to tell it. So I used to live... This is going to be good because in 30 years, I've heard a lot of stories. And you might have told you. I'm not sure if I told you. I don't know that I shared it with a lot of people.

It was, I was living with my wife, but then girlfriend, downtown, going to college. So I was, we both lived just north of Streeterville for about two and a half years, the two of us. It was kind of the middle point between our two colleges. So she went to school in the loop and I went to school in Lincoln Park. And so it was kind of a perfect place downtown to live. It just so happened that it was in a weird confluence of neighborhoods, right? It's in a like, Streeterville was sort of the happening place and it was just on the north side of it. And then north of it was Lincoln Park, which is a more quiet neighborhood with, like, more well-to-do stuff.

But just west of it, they were just starting to gentrify Cabrini Green. So there was low-income people that lived just west of it. So it was a weird confluence of people who live there. It had all different kinds of incomes, all different kinds of ethnicities. It was a really mixed sort of neighborhood, right? At the time that we live there, it's not now. Now it's 100% gentrified. Right.

So it's like, like, you. you go to buy a townhouse down there, it's $2 million. Like, it's definitely expensive. But back then it wasn't. It was kind of a weird place. So there was a lot, but it was also next to places that were wealthy. So there was a lot of police all the time. There was police down there constantly.

I would, because that type of neighborhood calls the police. At least they would be called for the places that were just east of us and a little south of us. And so there was definitely well-to-do people that were in those areas that would call the police on people. So there was constantly a police president. all the time. It's midnight, maybe one in the morning. I'm playing games at my computer or doing homework or something, right? It's college. Right. And I hear the sirens. And then I hear some shouting on the street. So I turn around. I open the window. And we're on like the ninth floor or 11th floor or seventh floor. I don't remember. It was high. It's high up in here. And I don't

remember like one of the things that sucked is they had screens on it so you couldn't look out. Like It was like, you're stuck. So I can't see what's going on. So I lift up the thing to look out. I lift up the screen. And then I lean out. And as I lean out, I knock a vase over. Oh, no.

And the vase falls. And the police have a guy. They got a guy. And they're like, freeze, you get on the crow right now. Did you kill somebody see so? And these, they're 50 feet up the block. And they got a guy like, get on growing up. You get on a grow right now.

And the guy's like, oh, no, blah, bra right now. And I'm like, look it out the window. And I kind of didn't notice that I knocked it over. And I looked down, I'm like, oh, fuck. And the base hits and the police reel around with their gun. And they're getting into shoot shit. And I just immediately go, fuck. And then Sarah gets up the next morning.

She's like, hey, where's my face? I'm like, I have no idea. This is a Tom story, not a Cecil's story at all. I have no idea what happened to it. And a year or so later, I'm like, I kind of broke that face. also the police may have shot a man. But man, the police were like, they were, they were on edge. And they're like in the middle of like a whole thing.

Holy shit. And I see the police officer spin around with his gun and I was like, whoop. I was like, no, absolutely not. No, I'm going to get shot today. Oh my God. But like, when you live in a place with a, with a thing like that, you're like, dude, I could drop a fucking, I could drop a couple of marbles and really hurt somebody.

This guy's like fucking, he's thrown fucking box. out of here like he's bomber man like what the fuck is happening what what what world is he living in where he's like this is probably a chill thing to do this has to be like at some point two dozen bottles in are you like when is someone going to stop yeah this is going to knock on my door this from the bbc taco bell rethinks a i drive-thru after man orders 18,000 waters evidently the person ordered 18,000 water cups And then got increasingly angry as the AI repeatedly asked him to add more drinks to a tour. Another person rolls up and asks for a Mountain Dew, like, well, what would you like to drink today?

And admittedly, Mountain Dew is one of those things where you can offer someone a piece of Mountain Dew. You know, it's one of those, it's one of those things really. Just break me off a piece. I break me off a chunk of that Mountain Dew. Yeah, for sure. I think this is, I've only been to one establishment. and it was McDonald's. And in this article,

they say that they caught it all out of McDonald's. But this was, you know, maybe when they first introduced it, like a long time ago, when they first started, this was a couple years ago. Clearly before Trump was there, because I haven't been there since Trump did his thing. So that was last year. So it was clearly before then.

It was like earlier last year sometimes. So earlier in 24, I went to a McDonald's, and I ordered through AI. And it was weird. It was very strange. Yeah, I can't imagine. It's bizarre. This is already cheap fucking labor that these places are getting.

I know, right? So I do think it merits pointing out that this was already a profitable business model. That's why there's lots of Taco Bells and lots of McDonald's. That's a great point, man. Now they're investing in you losing your job. I can't get behind that. Yeah. This is not like something where we've gotten more efficient.

All we've done is pushed more. profits to the bottom line. There are ways in which you can say, all right, we're able to produce more widgets with the same number of people. That's great. But in this case, it's like, no, we're just reducing our workforce. We're just going to cut your workforce down. And there's going to be a shit ton of that.

And like, what I would recommend people do, and I really do mean this, is fuck with these systems. Make these systems not work. Because if we are compliant to these systems that are built on replacing us at the entry level. That's a real fucking problem, man. That's a real big problem. If you know some places using AI and they're replacing their staff

with it, there's no harm in fucking with AI. Just go fuck with it. Fuck with it for sport. For a couple of places around me, for all these years, they've eliminated the cashiers. They eliminate them. There's no more cashiers.

You have to walk up and get your, you have to punch your own ticket, basically. There's no more cashiers, especially hardware stores. So hardware stores by me, there's not a single person who sits behind a desk who's like ringing you up. There's like one person who kind of stands by the door to make sure you don't walk out with shit. That's it. That's like what they got. Well, they stopped doing that, mostly.

Now, there's two or three people in that cashier area where I still have to ring my own shit. Right. But they come over on occasion to be like, you need help. Help me help you ring that up. And then they help you ring it up while you're standing there. I'm like, why can't I just go back over to that other lunch? that exists right there and hand you my shit and then you just let me go on we go on our way and you get paid to do this thing and I get have the have the sort of ease of handing you

something and not looking for a fucking goddamn barcode on it where I'm spinning it around like a fucking Rubik's cube for half an hour trying to find the barcode on this fucking charcoal and then it's all crinkled and you can't fucking scan it it's like I don't want it to deal with that like that's your job so why can't I just pay you part of of what I'm paying for this charcoal to do that work. But what they're doing, what they noticed, and you know why they're there is because people have been stealing. People just

walk up and they're like, I don't blame anybody for stealing from those places. And they're like, okay, we walk in and you're like, you're like, okay, well, here's a fucking, you know, they bought like five or six things, and then they didn't fucking pay for one. And then they walked out with it because they put all those other things in the and then they walked out. And there's nobody checking on them. Yeah. And you're like,

dude, if you just paid a human being, none of this would be happening. But instead now they created a system that doesn't work. And now they've got to try to fix that band-aid that system with another system that's annoying. Yep. And you're like, you don't have to do any of that. You can just fucking, those things still are open. They're right there. All of it unnecessary. Yep. Yeah, man. Like, I, I tell my kids, like, all the time, we go grocery shopping or whatever. I'm like, they're like, well, go to self-checkout. I'll never go to self-checkout. If there's an option. If there's an option, I don't do it either.

I will never go. I don't do it either. I tell the kids, I'm like, I'm not paid to do that job. Yeah. You can't outsource that job to me. And I don't get a discount. Fuck that. Like, this is a job that a person should do. If you want me to do it, my time has value. If their time has value, my labor has value. Like, and I don't want to encourage a system that fires people. I don't like that.

I don't like that. And like, I will say, like, if you're at the grocery store and the only option is self-checkout and there's fucking nobody watching, everything's bananas, man. 69 cents a pound. Everything's bananas. I'm just saying. I would never do that. I recognize.

I would never do that. But I like watch that thing and I see this AI thing creeping in. And I'm like, when is there going to be a moment? Because didn't Amazon run a thing for a while? Like a store you could just walk into and it like Wi-Fi'd your fucking bill? Yeah, Amazon has, they still have stores where you can go in and you can choose to use the service or not. But everything that goes in your cart, basically your cart is keeping track of everything it's in there. And then it's connected to your Amazon account. So I just walk in, put stuff in my

cart, and I walk out and it charges me as I'm leaving. I see. And it just emails you a fucking receipt or whatever. So you don't have to do, you skip a check. There's no checkout process at all. You put shit in your cart and you leave. And that's that. Sounds good in theory. But like, if there's nobody watching, what if my credit card gets declined? You know? Yeah. Like, there are problems with these automated systems, but I also think that there's also a Ford Pinto solution, right? Yeah, there's going to be more shrink, and they're going to try to reduce the amount of shrink, but they've fired all these other people. So even if somebody steals sometimes, it still is probably cheaper than hiring a bunch of people. And that's the thing is

like, like it must not have been in some of these places where these people are now hovering and then trying to like check you out at a at a less convenient space that's not they're clearly asking their employees to start doing what they were doing before and i've read articles that like the amount of theft was going through the roof and there was a lot of prosecutions and stuff i'm sure it was and like i'm joking about the bananas thing but i understand and i feel like that sense of real resentment yeah like i don't like i don't want to live in a world where we just fire everybody i don't like that either. I agree. I don't want to be in a world where we just fire people either. And also, like,

the only reason you're doing that is to cut costs. Right? And that whole thing, like the whole concept of why this election went the way it was was because of these things, right? You know, like, that's, isn't that why the populist message reached

them is that we needed to bring back industry and you're like, well, you're bringing, what industry you bring back? None. And now you're just firing people. Yeah, well, and like, they're cutting costs, but they're not cutting my cost. It's not cheaper to fucking buy stuff at the grocery store. They're saying, yeah, no, you still have to pay more money and I get more money. My Oreos or whatever are fucking $5.99 right now or whatever the fucking cost of everything is a million dollars.

And like if there's no cashier or there's a cashier, it's the same price. There's eggs you can get at the store. You know, like there's four or five different kinds of eggs at the store. The eggs that I saw were like, it was a dozen and a half of eggs. right? So it's 18 eggs. But it was $14 for 18 eggs. The actual fuck out of here. And I'm like, that's like a lot of money for, for, and I'm like, I'm sure that was,

it was a very expensive brand. Sure. But it's still like, that's an intense amount of money for an egg. For eggs. And that's just not one thing. Like I've noticed my grocery bill has gone up through the roof. Like it's, it's incredible how much people have to pay for groceries. I could not imagine having a, like, like a family.

Six people to feed? I could not imagine having a. family that size. It's fucking brutal. It's got to be insane. And there's people like your family is average. Yeah. Imagine if you had a large family. Right. Seven, 10, 10 people in your family. What if you were a dougar? I don't really. I feel like those people have to like, they have to like own their own Sam's Club. The stories from NBC News, humans are being hired to make AI slop look less sloppy. In the age of automation, human workers are being brought in fix what artificial intelligence

gets wrong. There's an image here, and I'm going to put it on the screen. They basically hired someone. They hired they hired somebody to come in and put in this, like, because they ask AI to do it, and AI

spells like bric-a-brac like really crazily. So they have to like be like, okay, fine, it's bric-a-brac. But it spelled like draddle-brack or something. Brickle-Bruke. And then the top piece is all spelled wrong. They misspelled Emporium and things like that. And so they had to, like, go in and respell things.

But people, you know, like, and this may be exactly sort of where we sit, which is, and this is what they suggest in the article, is that what happens is that a lot of the gig workers that were paid to make those stuff are now going to be paid maybe to, like, fix the AI, at least until the AI gets good enough to do it, which it may never ever get good enough to do it. It may never be that point. But what bothers me is is that you're letting people go that were creating images like this cutesy little image that you needed and they were creating that stuff and now they're not,

now a computer's doing it and you let that person go, what happens when they raise the price on the thing and you're not willing to do it anymore? And now you've got to go out and reach into this pool where there's people who were creative and were creating these things

are now in a different job because they can't do that job. anymore because AI took it, but now they, and they don't want to leave their current job or go back to that gig work that they were doing, you're upsetting a balance here, I think, really badly, and you're becoming dependent on AI in the process. A thousand percent. And it's also an issue of scaling. So if AI gets, if AI generates the image, and then somebody just has to go in and clean it up,

and maybe it takes 20 percent as long to clean it up as it would have been to do the whole thing, start to finish. Well, now I need one-fifth as many people to do that work. So, yes, some of these gig workers are finding work doing this cleanup work, but less of them. Less of them. Because they're not doing the work start to finish. Also, it's less skilled labor. So if I create a product start to finish, I am going to be able to charge more because I'm saying,

hey, I'm building this whole image out. I'm a graphic designer. I'm creating an artistic vision. I got to pay more for that. If I just want somebody to go in and clean some stuff up, I can hire less skilled worker at a lower price. This is bad for us. What is making me crazy is that the value that we seem to be getting out of AI is low-quality stuff. We're getting a lot of low-quality stuff.

And the price we're paying for low-quality returns is lost jobs. Yeah, less people working on it. I think that there's something to be said for the idea that, you know, we don't have people making buggy whips anymore, right? That's that sort of like expression. Sure. But we got the automobile out of it. That was the tradeoff.

The tradeoff was a really high-quality trade-off. And then we have people then working in automobile factories. And then they're building cars. They're building trucks. And the world is moving at a different pace. And we're able to do a lot more stuff. And people might argue AI is going to do that. But it's not doing it now.

Right now, we're getting a business. bunch of low quality shit and we're paying a price of lost jobs for it. That's where we're at today. As a creator, as somebody who's going to create something, I try to stay away from AI if I can because I don't want to create something that AI did. I want to do it myself. Like I want to create something and do it myself. And I feel like there is going to be a dependency on AI that they are going to capitalize on eventually when these businesses use AI instead of other other products. And what's funny is, like, even photos nowadays, NPR posted one today that I saw, and it was a

photo of someone, they had, they were pouring a blend, a blender drink into someone else's glass. And it looked like there was three arms on the, on the thing. But it wasn't AI. It was a real photo that they used. But people now think it's AI because they're like, well, there's three arms. You're like, yeah, but somebody's off the screen and they're holding a glass into screen.

It's an awkward. And it's an awkward image, and the way it's shot, it's just a weird angle. But it's specifically made for, like, pouring a blunder drink, and they made a gattie image of it. Right. And they were going to, but people think, oh, that's AI. Oh, that's AI. Oh, that's AI. And then there's, like, like a battle back and forth about using AI and not using AI.

And I think, like, it's going to cut out jobs. And it's also going to be a point in the future where somebody's going to hold that over your hat. Yeah. You're not, we're not going to, now, now without the monthly subscription is, $75 a month for everybody. Now it's $150 a month. Now it's $200 a month because there's not going to be like don't think that all these AI companies aren't going to gobble each other off. Oh, a thousand percent. And like as soon as like you're saying, as soon as you need it to survive, it's going to be more expensive. It's way more expensive. But like the other price that we're paying

that you touched on that I want to just say out loud is like, I don't know that the distortion of our trust in reality. That's terrible. Is worth it. It's terrible. Yeah. I feel like if somebody said, hey man, you can, uh, you know, instantly colorize an old photo. And that's really fun. But also, people won't know what's real or not anymore. Yeah. And bad actors can use this to convince people of shit that's not real. Yeah. I mean, yeah, when the Trump administration recently, I know this is a funny show, but like when the Trump administration recently fired on a boat in the Caribbean, right, that they recently shot a missile at a boat full of what they said were drug dealers or We're in the people moving drugs, drug traffickers, in the Caribbean.

They use the military to shoot a missile at this boat. Like, if you were asking for evidence, and then the evidence is provided in its visual or, you know, video evidence. But we don't trust that anymore because now there's a reality distortion machine that makes you distrust. You saw that Venezuela said it was AI, right? No, I didn't actually. Yeah, so Venezuela said it was AI. So there you go.

So we don't have to, we don't even have to imagine the scenario. You don't have to imagine the scenario. It's literally playing out. said that's hilarious they said yeah that's AI that's AI you didn't it's not real so like they're saying it's not real and our government is and I and now how do you know and how do you know how do we and especially when Trump is posting to his own true social AI generated songs and videos of them taking over Gaza and turning it into a yes you know what I mean like like how do I know that they are not above that yeah can't this story is from LBC dot co. UK deputy green party leader

admits to performing hypnotherapy to enlarge women's breasts in the past. Hold on. I used to. Yeah. Well, or does he enlarge their breasts in the past?

Like, does he like, he does the hip, and then they had bigger breasts back then. Hey, your tits were bigger last week. My tits were bigger last week. Mine are getting bigger every day, to be honest. All the time, brother. All the time.

That's fine. Let me get the man bro or whatever from Seinfeld. Yeah, the bro. the Manzir I love that one of them was wearing it too in the show I think that's great I think that's really great

I think this is really funny that like there's people who do like crazy shit and then there's like oh I got into politics afterwards that's like me going to politics and they'd be like hey man you used to have a company

called Gloria Hall Studios what was that company and I'd be like it was podcasting would you like to buy a rubber dick Like, there's, like, you could go back and find all kinds of crazy shit that we've said or whatever. Like, there's no way. There's no way I could run for office.

But this guy's like, like, got a pocket watch. And he's waving in front of people and tell him their boobs were bigger back in the past. I, you know, I don't know enough to say that hypnosis is bullshit or not bullshit or always bullshit or sometimes bullshit. I honestly don't know enough about hypnosis. What I can say fairly definitively, though, is it ain't going to make a titty's bigger. But I can't say, like, maybe it'll make you think your titties are bigger. But it's lying to you either way. I could say, though, could you change my image about my micro penis?

And maybe it would. It hasn't worked for me. Maybe it has been a lot of sessions. Maybe I look in a mirror and I'm like, damn, that thing looks bigger today. Who knows? No, it doesn't. Where's my stop one? My pocket wand.

Honey, bring in the different light. I need different lighting. I'm going to underlight it and see if that helps. Okay, just again, headline. Can you just read this? A. Well, woman duped by romance scammer posing as astronaut in distress. This is a CBS News article. See, yeah.

A Japanese octogenarian was swindled out of thousands of dollars after falling in love online with a self-described astronaut who sought her help to avert a spaceship crisis. The hapless woman in Japan's northern Hokkaido island met the fraudster in July and social media who claimed to be a male astronaut. After some exchanges, a scammer one day told her he was in space on a spaceship right now, but he was under attack and in need of oxygen. The scammer then urged her to pay him online to help him buy oxygen and successfully hoodwinked around a million yen.

That's $6,700 out of her. Yikes. Okay. Terrible. Terrible. Okay, terrible. I'm going to start off there, so everybody should understand, foundationally, terrible. Pause. kudos for creativity scammer

have not heard this one before this is one it's a very strange one that I was like because we talked about scams a couple weeks ago and people get drawn into these in many different ways I still get all the time text from people hey are we going golfing tomorrow I'm just like dude I've never golfed in my life

why I've never golfed I golfed like when I was a kid and there was nothing to do during the summer and we took our dad's clubs and we went to the three, three-hole golf course in Lockport and we banged balls into fucking trees all day and then went over and came home at the end of the day. We had no idea what the fuck we were doing.

That's the only time I've ever got, never once written in one of those carts there. I never paid for money, paid cash money to go golfing. Never in my life. But I get like three a week. They're like, are we going golfing tomorrow? Oh, is this a scam? I got a minute.

I must have. I must have the same number as a famous golfer or it's because that's what they get it. So like they think that you're going to reply to that. But I think that they said that in this case, this was also one of those moments where it's like a are you up or are you home sort of scam? Well, the actual text message was this is major Tom to ground control. So it was six, five. Oh, God. I feel bad, though, for people who get caught.

Open the pod. Open the pod bay doors. Can you get my money back? I don't think I can, Hal. I feel bad for people like this. I really do. I feel really bad. I think, like, it sucks that we have created technologies

that allow this to happen more frequently. Right? Like, I think before the ease of, like, talking to someone in private as easily as we can do it now, I feel like the, the, the, level of scams and the number of scams made it much easier to do now. I don't know if that's true or not.

It just seems more true. I can tell, I can, I can say with fair certainty that from everything I've read is these are multi-billion dollar industries. There's, there's, there are cube farms. In parts of the world, there are cube farms

with some people that have been like literally enslaved to work in these farms. Like some of these places, like just across the border in Malaysia, like there are cube farms of people who have been kidnapped and human trafficked to work in these places and they are multi-billion dollar industry. I've seen, I've seen text messages, and again, I don't know how true this is because you're just seeing the text messages online, but of people who eventually talk to them in a different

language to get them to confess that they're not who they say they are and whatever and that they are actually being held against their will. I've read some very credible news from very credible news sources because I used to like, fuck with those people. And I read this story. I think it was in the Times The Journal. I read this story and I was like, oh my God, these are people being held often against their will. They're being beaten if they don't hit quotas. Like I can't waste their time and be responsible for somebody. It's a totally different thing. It's a totally different thing than just a random scammer or even a group of scammers that are trying to do something, right?

Yeah. That's a totally different thing. Like that Kit Boga guy, he's doing that to people who are in call centers in certain parts of the world where that's not happening, where people aren't being kidnapped or whatever. Those people are just doing that. There's like a nefarious business that these people have where they get the gift card scams for them. That's something that happens. But like that's a totally different thing than what you're like what you're suggesting, which is these text messages from these people. That's a totally different thing. And like this particular scam is preying on somebody's desire to help someone in trouble. I know. It's so it's so insidious. That's like the bottom line isn't. A lot of times the bottom line for these things is greed.

Yeah. Right. So it's like, hey, I'm reaching into your greed center, and that's short-circuiting your critical thinking skills, because you want the thing, right? Whatever it is. You want the easy, fast money, whatever. We talked about it on that one scam where the guy got into crypto, the fake cryptosite. He got into that fake crypto site, and he saw the dollars, and he was drawn in by that. But you're right.

It's like a lot of these people, especially Kit Bogha deals with a lot of people who do this, where it's not a greed thing. It's a sympathy thing. Yeah. Because they will say, oh, Mr. Jones, I'm so sorry, I accidentally gave you $35,000. You need to give me that money back. Or I'm in big trouble.

I'm in big trouble. Help me. I'm in big trouble. And so then they've got to go out and buy gift cards to give it back or whatever. And again, it's like, it's this, when you think about the scam itself, it's a silly scam, but it works enough for them to keep doing. It does. And like you were suggesting, the technology makes it possible to send thousands or tens of thousands of these messages to blast them across. in ways that like, you know, if like if the old scam was, I was a confidence man

and I had to meet a mark, that doesn't scale. Yeah. You can't create an industrial scale of this. Yeah, but you're right. Yeah, you're able to fucking manufacture this. It's like fucking, they Henry Ford. They Henry Forded it, man.

That's exactly right. And they actually do because they have different people at different levels who are good at different parts of the scam. Yeah. Yeah. All right. That's good.

to wrap it up for this funny-ish show. We'll be back on Monday with a full-end-adjacent. We'll be back then, and we're going to leave you like we always do with the skeptic screen. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy-issue, hypno-babelon bullshit. Couched in Scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quazi alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead,

Pan, sales pitch, late-night info docutainment. Leo Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death and towers, tarot cars, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts. Shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speaks stigmata, nonsense. Expose your signs. Thrust your hands, bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this.

Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash dissonance pod. Help us spread the word by sharing our content. Find us on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and threads, all under the handle at Disseman. This show is Can Credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm on their hotline at 617-249-4255, or on their website at creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org. You know, ...phehr...