Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 920: Ballmaxxing and Goats

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

Empty Waymos invade Atlanta neighborhood, circle cul-de-sac for hours with no passengers Lawsuit targets whites-only Arkansas community after applicant claims she was rejected for Jewish roots, Black husband Man charged after 3-year-old pulled loaded gun from diaper bag during traffic stop in St. Paul https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/st-paul-traffic-stop-gun-diaper-bag-kid/ Montreal warns vigilante pavers to stop patching potholes Ballmaxxing is "electrifying, addictive, euphoric and transcendental" according to those pursuing bigger balls | OutKick 14-year-old boy stole and drove a bus for the third time in six months Trump AI video - watch at your own risk http://reddit.com/r/aivideos/comments/1tk0y1f/nightmare_fuel_trump_and_the_belly_button_man/

This episode of Cognitive Dissinance 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 Glory Hole Studios in Chicago and beyond. This is Cognitive Dissanance. Every episode of we 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 at today. We're recording on Thursday, May the 26th. You're listening to this on Thursday, June the something or other. Third or fourth or something. Yeah. It doesn't really matter. You know what date is. Check your phone. We're having a good time today. Who knows what's happened between now and then. We're having a good time now. Now. Now. You know what? Like, this is like a carpe diem fucking, right? Because like if you don't carpe some deem, you're screwed.

If you don't seize them. If you have a good moment, if you're like, hey, from 12 to 130 on Thursday, things were okay. That's how granular we have to be now. Like we're not looking at like being generationally all right. It almost feels like every time we do one of these shows, we're pulling ourselves away from one of the hundred stories we could have done in the regular show. Yeah, man. Because there's so many. You don't have to do anything anymore.

You just hit the story tree one time and all of them fall out. I feel like, you know that French term, like the call of the void. Yeah. You know, where it's just like, you know, I... It sounds so quiet. I love the void. Like I'm very, look, I'm glad that I live in Illinois. It's like a snowy night.

It's cold. It's silence. Just, man, I'll tell you what. When I turned 40, eight years ago, I turned 40. Haley and I went to the Grand Canyon. I stood at the precipice of the edge of the world and I looked down and I had no urge to jump. You know what? I had no urge to jump.

And I don't know. I don't know, Cecil, that it would be wise for me to visit the Grand Canyon. Do not put me in that situation. Like if we went skydiving right now, like I think I better go tandem. Yeah, I think I used to like, I used to. Right. I used to. of surviving till tomorrow.

I used to dread flying because I'd be like, oh man, I'm going to die on the plane. Now I'm like, ooh, I might die on the plane. Oh my God. All right. So here's a dystopian weird headline. This is from some news channel. I can't read it.

It doesn't matter. CBS2 somewhere. CBS2, whatever. Empty Waymoes invade Atlanta neighborhood. Circle cul-de-sac for hours with no passengers. Cecil, like, when you see the fucking maximum overdrive-esque video of these prowling corpse robot vehicles.

I saw the video too when I looked at the story. They're just like aimlessly driving in this slow repast why do they just park? Why are they just like, hey, here's our default mode. Use random energy and gas for literally no reason. Do you think that at a certain point, the Waymo's like, I'm stuck, I can't do anything, I need a human, and then they dial up some human from across the earth. And then they sit in like a driving simulator to move it out of where it is

to get it to a place where it can take over again. It's like when your kid is fucking something up, and you know they're fucking something up, but you know it's good for them to do this thing. Right. Yeah. You're like, no, you're got to learn to do it. You're 25. You should learn how to make your own sandwich. So let me help you. And then they're like cutting the bread the wrong way. They're cutting it down the middle. And you're like, what is happening right now?

Have you eaten a sandwich? Do you know what this looks like? And then you just give me the fucking knife. But then you're like, but if I take the knife from them, they'll never learn. They'll never be self-sufficient. And I'm going to be a hundred years old. And I will be a head in a jar and I will have to talk them through a sandwich making

process. So I just don't want to do it. Yep. There's got to be a moment with these. creatures that we're making where we're like there's got to be a person who's like give me the fucking wheels i know man just stop it stop i i read this and i watched the fucking video and i thought like are even the robots we're building feeling the same sense of pointless on we of just being trapped in a vicious capitalist circle that they can't exit like there's like

fucking a i or a boris feelings right now is the call of the void reaching into the east ether at this point and just saying, use all your energy and die. Use all your energy. Here's what I think you should do if you're in this neighborhood. Get a bunch of cardboard. Yep. Stop them by standing in front. And then someone masking tapes dorsal fin, cardboard dorsal fins on all of them.

Oh my gosh. As they circle the cul-de-sac and then you get a Bluetooth speaker in the middle. I love it. Doing the da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And they just circle around and around and around. And now it's an art feature. That's fucking great. Now it's an art feature for my neighborhood.

Cecil. And it'll bring in more people that will get parked and then the Waymos can't leave. They're just stuck there forever. Like, there was in this article, in one cul-de-sac, there's like 50 of these things. Yeah. It's not like there's a Waymo. It's like a block party. Right. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Why are they con- Do you know how surreal it would be to look out and be like, first of all,

I chose to live on a cul-de-sac because it's nice, low-traffic area for me and the kids to live on? And instead, now you've got 50 fucking dead-eyed AI driverless robots. Shoot, chew, motherfucker! Right? How weird is this? It's so weird, man. If you're playing hockey out there,

every time they go around and you're like, game off, game on, game on. Remember that as a kid. Game on. Car. Everybody gets out of us. Can't play Nerf football. Yeah, Nerf football, whiffleball.

Big time. Where you like you designate like that tree is first base, that fucking. You know, car, touch that, that second base. We used to play street hockey where you'd run, you'd have the sticks, but then you would have a ball instead of a puck. Sure. And so you'd spin it around and get that, catch that fucking puck in the face.

That ball is a hard ball. Catch that fucker in the face. We played Nerf football a lot. We played whiffle ball a lot in the street. Touch football out in the street, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No crazy shit. Yeah.

We also, when I lived in shit. Although my kids, I grew up in a generation, though, would probably do that. Yeah, I mean, yeah, tackle in the street. You got a assful tackling. Nicol nicely. Yeah, right. Yeah. We'll be careful.

It's fine. Only one kid has to go to the dinosaur. When I lived in Chicago proper, we played in the alleys all the time. Sure, yeah. Because the alleys were lower traffic. Yeah, yeah. But they're also full of garbage and rats. And we played in them constantly.

It could be skins versus rats. This is just fucking delicious, man. NBC News lawsuit targets whites-only Arkansas community after applicant claims she was rejected for Jewish roots and black husband. We covered this, I think, on the main show when it first... When they first popped up. Yeah, when it first popped up. They were basically, they're like, hey, we're going to start.

And what was funny about it is there is basically nobody's signing up for it. So it was a garbage little racist, white supremacist community. Well, now they got two people, evidently. But, like, when you look at this, do you think Supreme anything? Oh, Taco Supreme? Nacho Supreme. These guys are, like, carved on a bun. butter. You look at them and you think, what are, what are, what are, what are, what are you

supreme of? Like what is happening in your life where you look at your, your fucking house made across the street and you're like, yep, we're making a better neighborhood for the Uber minchin. Are you serious right now? Look at you too. You can't even buy a pair of jeans that fit. Are you kidding me? That guy does have on a pair of jeans that I used to wear in the early 2000s. I used to wear a lot of jeans like that. Yeah, man. That was a whole thing for sure. 25 years ago.

But like these guys, it makes sense, right? They're stuck in the past anyway. Yeah. They just choose your past. There's a part of me that's like, I don't want these people to do this because they don't want them to get together. But there's another part of me that's like, can they self-segregate anyway? Like, I know.

But like I worry that like by combining they become powerful. Yeah, for sure. That's what my brain knows that. Right. But there's another part of me that's like, I don't want you anywhere. near us. But like, yeah. And like part of me is like, I'd like you to all be in one place. So when the fire starts, yeah, it just consumes you all. Check you all into the void. Right. Yeah. I'm like, okay. Awesome. I love it this.

It should be a lever that just turns, it just lifts the earth of the, flips it over. No, it just lifts it up so they slide into whatever's coming at them. So like if it's a, if we just like somehow teach the rats in Chicago to eat people and move them out, shove them down there and there's just like a horde of rats coming in there just lifts their house and then it kind of shakes them a little and they all fall out. Like the end scene of Titanic where they just are put-taking. Yeah, yeah. He's playing his fiddle, obviously.

I just feel like there should be more sandworms. Yeah, for sure. Maybe there should be parts of Arkansas, most of Arkansas, just full of sandworms. I'm sure there are a few nice, maybe three nice people in Arkansas. I'm willing to pay some prices. Yeah. You know, I'll give you a chance to leave. You know, we're going to start a countdown.

too late. Now, man, like, when I see this, though, there's, there is, I am torn because I really, I just don't want these people around normal people. I know. I'd like to separate them out. Is there a system for that? Do we have anything that we could do? Like a gulag type system?

Maybe we could deport them. I hear Sudan is taking. Or make them go, make them, like, make them make their own sea steading places. Send them out. You guys all live on oil barges or whatever. Here you go. Hey, we have this old barge. Good luck.

We're going to teach you out to do some. saturation diving. It's very safe. These are like the worst people, though. They're horrible. Just genuinely terrible people. But like, I love that this person was like, oh, look, this property is cheap. I wonder why. This property is cheap. And I think this is a sort of like legal troll, right? Good. And I'm glad. Troll these fuckers. Because it's so blatantly illegal. Troll these fuckers. You can't do this. You cannot do this. And this is, this is the disgusting shit. And the thing is, like, it's an even bet whether the Supreme Court would allow this.

Oh, I know. It's an even bet. It could make it all the way up there. I'll tell you that, like, in my line of work, in my personal line of work, I, you know, I'm in real estate. I've looked at thousands and thousands of deeds. Old deeds, historical deeds, new deeds, etc. It's just part of my line of work or was when I was doing the more ground level stuff.

Indeed. Indeed. And there's actually a lot of case law about this being illegal. But like, if you look at old deeds, there are many old deeds that will have provisions in them. I mean, they have a name for it. They have provisions in them that say, I'll sell you the house, but you can't sell it to a black guy. Or you can't sell it to a Jew. Shut the fuck up.

The reals? Yeah. Now, the case law is really, really clear that all of those provisions, and there's a name for it. I was just slipping my mind off the top of my head. But all those provisions are obviously wildly illegal. Like they are not enforceable. But it is not uncommon for an older home. if you go back far enough in the record in the deeds

to find these restrictions and they restrict the next seller from being able to sell to a person of color or a Jewish person or whatever the restriction. That's typically what the restrictions were. Those have all been thrown out. So the case law on this is not ambiguous. So I cannot, redlining is lending laws around this.

But like the case law is substantial. I can't imagine how this would survive. God, could you imagine those deeds make it a comeback, though? Yeah, where people are like, yeah, no, that passes the Supreme Court, then suddenly all these neighborhoods are like, guess what? Yep. You can't sell. We're going to keep this a white's only neighborhood.

What kind of fucking fuckface are you that you are leaving the place that you're at? Yep. And then you're like, but I'm so racist. Yeah. I don't want you who I vetted to sell to. to sell to somebody else. Yep. What kind of fucking piece of shit are you?

Yeah. There was, these were, these were structural in nature and they were extremely common because they would create enclaves, racial enclaves intentionally. And that would be selling points, right? So like, yeah, it would keep your property values up or whatever. So these were very commonly put in there, yeah. God, what a bunch of nasty fuckers. So it's, yeah.

And all. of them are garbage now. All of these have been thrown out. They're totally uninfluced. I mean, they were garbage already. Yeah, right. CBS News, only in America. Toddler pulled loaded gun from diaper bag during St. Paul traffic stop. The aristocrats. Man, dude, I got to tell you, I mentioned this on an episode of Dear Old Dads very briefly the other day, but like I got a notification that in District 202 in Plainfield, which is where my son Finnegan and Amon, they used to go. Now they're in a different district. But they were, this is still the same town, just one school district over. They caught a guy, relatives actually did it, who was on his way to go do a school shooting. He had a gun, he had knives, he had accelerants.

They did. Yeah. Yeah. The relatives like jumped him basically, held him down, called the cops. But he had all the stuff to go do a school shooting. And I thought like, How the fuck do you have access to a goddamn gun? How? How do you? Like, this is a young person still. Like, how does it thrill? Like, a million percent, if your kids can get to your guns without extraordinary

measures being taken, as the gun owner, you have got to be fucking criminally responsible. We have to just make that the thing. Whereas, like, if I have a gun and it's in my house, I'm responsible for everything that gun does. And if I don't go through like multiple steps to keep people safe, then like somebody throws handcuffs on me. Sure. That's it. Sure. A gun in a diaper bag, though? Like, like, and not only that. Now, granted, there wasn't one in the chamber, but there was one, there was six in the mag. Right. So the person has a gun that has six bullets in it. It wasn't one in the chamber. So luckily the kid pulled it out and then was like, hey, whatever. And it might be too hard for the kid to actually put.

put one in the chamber, possibly, but even still, the idea that the gun is in the back seat of this car next to the kids, one of the kids isn't even tied in. Like, I know kids are not allowed to not be tied in up until a certain age. I don't know what that age is. Dude, it's old. But it's pretty old. Yeah. It's like sandwich-making age. Yeah, oh, definitely. Yeah, they have to weigh a certain amount. I mean, like, unless you're in certain households, other households are very different. But, like, certainly, you'd be in a sandwich-making age at that point. You're 10, 12 or something like that. The kids are supposed to be in like booster seats for a while too, right? For a long time until they are, until their height and weight is such that putting on a regular seat.

Yeah, you can't get on this ride unless you're this tall. Because it's just fucking not saying, what the fuck? And one of the kids were just loose. They're just a loose kid in your best. It's just loose guns and kids what's rattling around back there. Jesus Christ. What the fuck. What the fuck, bro?

I am always blown away though. Not as bad as the people who find these guns, but I am always blown away by how easy these guns. but I am always blown away by how easy these guns are to find for these kids. I'm always, because like a gun, at least all the process that I've had around guns has been, hey man, that's a super dangerous, pointy blow things up thing. Yeah. It's not just, like, if you point it wrong, you can kill a human being with it. If you point it wrong, you can maim a human being with it.

Yep. If you point it wrong, you can damage property that, will cost thousands of dollars to fix. Right. Easily. Yep. Right. I always think to myself,

make sure there's nothing in it. Make sure you got to cover. Make sure the safety's on. Make sure you know what's in the gun at any point. All those things are pretty, it's like super common. Super common. The problem is that we treat guns in this country like,

like we treat clean water. Everybody has access to them. Unless you're in Flint, Michigan. Yeah. Yeah. Like there's like five places in Arkansas. Those people clearly don't have.

They're just drinking guns. There's just, but, But genuinely, we have fucking so many guns in this country that people just think, oh, well, it's not a big deal. And you're like, no, it's even more of a big deal. Yeah. Like, the fact that guns are as prolific as they are makes the world more dangerous, not less. 100% more dangerous.

Like, it's not even close. There's more guns in America than there are people. Every time I do a story, we talk about a story or we talk about guns, especially on No Rogan, when Marsh is just blown away. No pun intended. And he's not because he's overseas, so he's safe. Yeah. But he's just blown away by how stupid. we are around guns and the kinds of things we say around guns.

He's just constantly shaking his head. Like, what the fuck kind of country are you running over there? What is happening? Well, I was thinking about this when I read about this, this almost school shooting in my town that just got averted, you know, this last, just this last week. And I thought, like, you know, my whole life as a, as a parent and a gun owner, I have taken what I think are multiple steps for each weapon, make sure that those guns are safe. I feel very confident that my gun safety storage and steps are very good. But like now, it just occurred to me that I've got two kids in my house, one's 19, one's 20, and they could go to the store and just buy a gun, man.

That's the other thing, too, is that we just allow people to get guns. And it's a relatively fast process. It's a 48-hour waiting period if you want to buy a brand new one. But if you wanted to buy one off of like a fucking Facebook marketplace, yeah, it's not that deep. That's an instant transaction, folks. It's crazy. As quickly as the Venmo goes through,

you get your piece. And there's no, like, I thought like, I don't have a way to know if my son goes to buy a gun. There's, because he's an adult, right?

He's 19. There should be like, there's such easy fixes. You can have a household notification that's required by law. Everybody in the household is required by law to be notified. That's a great idea.

Every adult. That's a great idea. So there's no hidden guns in the house? They send a couple of letters to the house. Yeah. Hey, there's a guy. Just want to let you know

he's a gun at the house. Because you know, you know, kids are never going to bring the mail in. They'll never even notice. So they'll never know. They won't even know mail exists. They'll be like, mail, what is that?

It's from the Gazette. Montreal warns vigilante pavers to stop patching potholes. These people are like, they're so, their roads are so bad in the certain areas of this, of the city and of the area itself, that they're like getting their own blacktop.

Yeah. And then doing the work, they're like, vigilante paving big potholes so that their shit doesn't break. And the one guy that they interview is like, I actually have a great system. It's better than the city's system. I wish somebody would come talk to me because I could do like 500 of these things a day. He says, like he says he can do if he only had some resources. Like I could do like 500 to a thousand. I've got a better system for patching this.

The city's like, yeah, but like we can't let you fix the place up because it has to go through these official channels. Sure. And like I am sympathetic to that. But at the same time, it's like, okay, if I can't do it, okay. But then you have to do it. Somebody has to do it. Right.

But like the current situation is clearly, no one's doing it, man. I thought of, the first thing I thought of was our shitty structure here, because they probably go through the same thing we do, which is intense cold, intense heat. So intense cold and intense heat in the summers and winters makes it so your roads are fucking trash. Yeah. Chicago roads are a perfect example of, because we get really hot summers here sometimes, not all the time. It's been a lot more mild the last many, many years than it has been in a long time. But I remember when I was a kid, heat waves would be 100 degrees for weeks at a time.

That would happen all the time. Constantly. We have different weather patterns now because of global warming. And so we now have like a little milder summers, but we will catch patches where it's still hot for a while. That's enough. It's enough to make it so that the roads then do a thing because they're hot, and then they do a thing because they're cold. And then you have lots of hot and cold cycles during the winter that also fuck it up.

And so what we have is massive, we have massive holes, and we constantly have what we call the Orange Barrel Brigade. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're always no matter what major roads in Illinois are almost always down to one or two lanes. Yeah. Because for years. For years, because people have to pack them and redo all the, the, the, the black top on them.

So we have that constantly here. And we also don't have here what they have in other states, which I think is fucking genius, but I know we can't have it here. But whenever I go to southern states and I'm driving and I look and they have two interstates

that are going to split up, they always have a big interstate sign that's painted on the road that'll be like, you're on 65. Yes. And then it's in your lane. And you're like, that's genius. I can know where I need to be

for 65. I love this so much. we can't do that here because one year the plow will just scrape it right up. It'll be gone. It's just scraped up. But if you go south, they have them all over the place where it's like 65, you're right, 126 or whatever. It does make it right off.

It's so great because, like, yeah, my GPS is going to tell me maybe what Lane to be in. But it's nice to get a little reconfirmation of where I'm supposed to be. From the actual road. I really love that. I think it's great. But it's just not something we do a lot here. But, but man, I just thought the same thing. I'm like, man, we have a terrible system and terrible.

road and terrible infrastructure here in our state. And I recognize I'm like, kind of wish somebody was a vigilante around here. Yeah, man. But I just don't think I think everybody else in our country is like, well, I'm not spending that money for you. You know, Haley is blown away because she comes from New York. She comes from like upstate Poughkeepsie. So about 70 miles north of Manhattan. They get more snow, more weather changes. It's kind of like Chicago, but like plus 10%. But like in New York, if they haven't fixed the potholes after March and you break a tire or damage your car, the state reimburses you.

Oh, so they got to fix it. So they're incentivized to fix it. Out here, she's like, well, what happens if you, like, bust the tire on a pothole? I'm like, you get a new tire. You got a, that's on you. Sounds like you got a you problem. And she's like, what the fuck is that? And I'm like, that's why nothing gets fixed.

Yeah. Because there's no incentive to fix it. Yeah. And I'll tell you this, too, like if you drive through some of the less advantaged neighborhoods in Chicago, So I've gotten redirected by GPS a few times through neighborhoods that I otherwise would have chosen to avoid. And there are parts of the city where you can tell there's been no infrastructure repair or improvement for fucking decades. Yeah, decades. Decades.

It's almost impassable. Yeah, it's like up and down on the street. Unbelievable. Yeah. It's sinking. It's terrible. Crazy lack of infrastructure. And that's not just, what's funny is it's like, that's not just all in, in neighborhoods.

that are low income. That's in a lot of neighborhoods. It turns out that there's a lot of neighborhoods that have to suffer through that. And interestingly, I found this out because of a work project. You know how like the roads are very often particularly worse around railroad crossings? That's because oftentimes, not always, but oftentimes the land surrounding the railroad is owned and maintained by the railroad. Oh. So they own a piece of land on either side and they have a responsibility to it. And they just don't do the work of maintaining it properly. So even though your city might spend all this money maintaining this, they actually cannot maintain what they don't have access to.

So you might have like railroad crossings that are particularly, I mean, and like some of them are crazy. Some of them are so bad. So crazy. So bad. Where you could damage your car if you're going too fast. Yeah, really bad. It's not really bad, yeah.

I was just up in Quebec City. And I went on a thing. I wanted to tell this story because this is a guy that's just hilarious. So we wind up on this, this, we paid to go on a hike with goats. So funny. So there's like a dude who owns goats. He gets the goats. They're male goats that he gets from the goat where they make the goat milk, right?

Okay. So the goat farm. And the male goats, they're just going to kill them because you don't need a male goat. You just need them for a little while until the, so the mom keeps making milk. And then that's all you need. So they'll just kill them. And they mostly put them in pet food and stuff, so these goats are just going to get murdered.

So it doesn't matter. This dude is like, I'll take him. So he takes some of these goats. And then he trains them as pack animals. So he puts packs on their back. And he walks down the trail and he packs like lunches and stuff. And then he has a German Shepherd. It keeps them in line and makes them move and makes them walk.

And then they walk down the path and they'll stop to eat ferns and shit. And then they'll keep walking. And then you stop in a place. And then you have lunch with the stuff on their backs. We didn't do it that day. They didn't have the PACs or whatever. But this guy is, he sounds like George St. Pierre. Oh, really?

He has a French-Canadian accent, right? So he sounds like French is his first language. He's speaking in English. And he totally sounds like George St. Pierre. 100% is fine. So we're up there. We're walking on the path. And he seems kind of normal.

And at a certain point, he makes him a reference to how bad it was during COVID. And I was like, uh-oh. I was like, uh-oh. We're going to catch it, aren't we? Oh, no. And then we get back to where we're going to have lunch and we start to eat lunch. And this is when he starts to say that, well, you know, I got to lock my stuff up up here. Because if I don't, they'll steal it.

And, you know, in the cities now, they make you put your keys by the door so that if somebody breaks in your house, they don't have to go through you to get your stuff. You're supposed to give them your stuff. It's actually illegal not to give them their stuff. There's no way that's true. And I'm just thinking it's a way that's true. I want to tell you to shut up. Oh my God.

But I'm also in a place and you have a dog and goats. I know, right? I'm outnumbered. God. And there's also like, what was really interesting was I was having a conversation

with somebody who was there and the conversation was going back and forth and they had a really interesting insight which was basically I think that they just have a bunch of polite people who come on their trip

and never push back on their dumb crazy conspiracy, bullshit right-wing nonsense. Yeah. Because they're just, being polite, and they think everybody agrees with them. Yes, right? Because everyone's just trying to not be at awkward. Nobody wants to talk about it. Everybody, everybody at the table was just like, yep, that sounds great. And then nobody said

anything because, I mean, like, who's going to confront? Like, I'm never going to see this person again. It's not my job to try to convince every conspiracy theorist, their conspiracies are wrong. That's not my job. I'm not going to take that on. I already do that en masse every week. I don't need to do that individually on a one-to-one level. That's not my job. And I don't want it, to be honest with you. I don't want to sit and talk to somebody and try to convince them. And I might not be the best person to do it either.

I'm not the best person to have a conversation with this guy anyway, because I'm going to be probably more mad than I would need to be to diffuse the situation properly. And then I got to thinking, and I was like, and I bet you that they get reinforced by the conservatives. Because conservatives would echo that and be like, yep. Oh, and they do it in my state too. All they get is silence and confirmation. So all they get from the people who are on the left are going to be like, okay.

And what they give are the people on the right are like, yeah, man, you're 100% right. Oh, shit. All it is is a feedback loop. Right. And then I got to thinking, well, maybe I should be the wedge then. If that's the case, am I the wedge? Am I the one that stops it? I don't know.

What do you think about that? It's tough. I'll tell you a yes and story to that very briefly. also strangely in Canada. I don't think Canada is a problem, guys. It just happens to be, they have a couple people, but... 17, 18 years ago,

my dad and I went on a fishing trip in Ontario, and we hired a guide. So we were staying at this place, and every day we had the same guide for like seven days when we went out on this lake and he'd ask us like, what kind of fish you want to catch?

You'd tell him, and it was amazing. You'd be like, I want to catch walleye. You'd catch walleye. When you got bored of doing that, he'd be like, I want to catch bass,

but great. He'd motor his fucking boat and you just catch bass. It was an unbelievable thing to do. Beautiful. And the guy was the worst. And he was like very racist against the indigenous people and made several really like similar comments that you were just describing. But like with specific references to the indigenous people and the first peoples of Canada.

And it was so awkward because I'm signed up with this guy for seven days, 12 hour days for seven days on a vacation with my dad. And I'm like, what do I do? Do I ruin? He's ruining my time. Is the conflict going to ruin the time different further? It's going to be worse? Is it going to be, yeah, can I get it different? Like, it's very disconcerting.

And I was 20 years younger. Yeah. I think at this point in my life, I might push back against it. But I don't know. Yeah. Because sometimes it's just like, I'm fucking exhausted. The thing is, is like, I think a lot of. of people are like me where they're like, maybe I can just limit it to one comment and move on.

Right. Maybe I can just be like, I'm just going to limit it to one comment. I'm going to try to minimize the damage and I'm going to change the subject. Right. So like my attitude when that stuff comes up is I immediately change the subject to something else. I'm like, man, I hear the Canadians are going to maybe be in the Stanley Cup or whatever. I'll just change it to sports or something. I'll be like, let's just move on.

I don't know anything about hockey. I know that you have a, I know you have a team called the Canadians. They seem Canadian. And then even if I'm wrong, you can correct me. Right. And then we're off the subject. Yeah. You know, so I can at least maneuver around that stuff.

And that's essentially what happened was. As soon as he said that comment, the comment fizzled, and then that was the end of it. There wasn't any follow-up. There wasn't any second comment. That was literally the end of all the talking. Yeah. And then we started talking about something else. I think somebody asked them a question about his fucking goat, which are weird and have square eyes, by the way.

Goats. They have square fucking irises. They get devil eyes. Or pupils, not irises. They have weird devil eyes. They're like fucking triangles. No triangles. They're fucking rectangles.

So odd. So weird. So odd. So weird. They look crazy. I, you know, it's funny because like now I'm thinking two, two or three years ago, I was cycling. And I don't cycle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I ran into a group and I did get into it with a guy. So I did push back. He was talking a bunch of stupid right wing shit. No. Like, like it was, and it was very strange. Because like I had just met this guy. I've gotten into it. with people that are closer to me that I'm related to.

Yeah. Right. And it didn't help either. Yeah. What it does is it makes them emboldened and makes them angry. Right. So now I'm like, great, now you're mad. And now I got to sit here and have you be mad because I don't believe that like the great replacement theory.

Right. Yeah, yeah. Like I think that, like, I think if I'm answering the question abstractly, I think that the right thing to do, especially as a privileged white guy, is to push. I do think that that's probably the right thing to do. I think you're right. Because like, don't I have that obligation as somebody who can do it safely? Yeah. So maybe that's something I need to like have a conscious strategy on.

In principle, I think you're right. Yeah. I think in practice, it's hard to be the person who has to decide whether or not this conflict is going to keep the day and ruin the day or whatever. Right. And can, am I going to move this needle? And, well, it may not be moving needle. It may be stopping their needle.

right? It may be like just if you could just stop it, that's a good thing. But I also recognize too, like, am I going to just emboldened them for the next person to be like, oh, I had these dumbass liberals on my thing, and they thought that was, I was wrong. And then he cuts us a group of people that won't push back. And then I'm, it didn't do anything. So here's what you do then, maybe you leave a shit review. Maybe you fight him. Maybe you say whoever's, I didn't want to fight him, because he sounded like George St. Pierre. And I don't want to show to out. It's like, no, elbows. from the top. I'm all right. No, thank you. No thank you. But like, yeah, honestly, if it's a business

situation, because that's real fucking weird too. Yeah, yeah. Maybe you put in the review, great time, goats were, you know, interesting experience. However, please note. Yeah. This guy, you know, clearly espouses some right wing values on this trip. If that's not for you, yeah. Don't take this walk. Or just say like, like, this person has some crazy worldviews that are like really unhinged and not politicized the conversation. Not attached to reality and tried to politicize the conversation while we were there. And to be

honest, that's actually a really good review. Because if I had to saw that beforehand, I might not have picked him. Yeah. So maybe that's a good, maybe that's the solution. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know, man. We live in a weird time where that like, like that sort of thing wouldn't have been a thing we talked about before. I know. It would have been a thing

we avoided. It's from Fox News. Ball Maxing is electrified. addictive, euphoric, and transcendental, according to those pursuing bigger balls. Men's health reports on men injecting surgeal lub and saline to maximize their scrotum size.

So if ever there was an article that begged to be written verbatim, I think you need to read this out loud, so go ahead. If we're going to have looks maxing, which we shouldn't, we might as well have ball maxing too. Am I right? No. To be clear, I'm not advocating. that either should be a thing, but since nobody is putting a stop to the one, why not have the other?

Looksmaxing is a bizarre online self-improvement practice, according to Wikipedia. It's focused on the process of maximizing ones... According to Wikipedia, looksmaxers are, God, Jesus Christ, somebody needs to fire chat GPT. For real. It's focused on the process of maximizing one's physical attractiveness. Now, ball maxing is slightly different from that. ball maxing is all about going for the biggest balls possible.

Why? Who really knows? But it's here, and according to men's health, there are some who've been wrapped up in the pursuit of bigger balls for many years. A 57-year-old man by the name of Marcus told the men's lifestyle magazine. Oh, you didn't give your last name? Bro. Oh, you didn't tell everybody who you were?

Why didn't you tell everybody who you were, Marcus? Cecil, doesn't this feel like something you grow out of before you're 57? Here's what I'm curious about. I want you to continue on, but I have some questions. Okay, go ahead. A 57-year-old man by the name of Marcus told a men's lifestyle magazine that he has been obsessed with making his balls bigger for decades.

Wow, decades? So two decades since 37? At the very least. That is a weird midlife crisis. Get a sports car, man. Do a different thing with your hobbies. Your hobbies are weird. And get a mid-sized sports car,

not a maxed sports car. It's a passionate thing. grew out of the comic books he'd read as a child, Cecil. What fucking comic books as a 57-year-old man? All right. So when I was a kid, there was a toy and it was a big ball. It had a handle. He bounced on it.

So maybe his whole thing is, I want to get my balls bigger. Or I can bounce across the ground on them like I did when I was a free child. that would be almost a useful use of enormous. What else are you going to use of four times? When you say that guy's got big balls, you're usually referring to like courage, right? Yeah, sure. Not literally an enormous scrotum of sergillube. All you're doing is making a thing that can be very easily inflicted with pain,

much larger target. Can we just, I 100% agree that there's no. upside to this? I've never, look, I have, I have not, I don't have the world's largest sexual repertoire, right? I've not been with a lot of people, but at no point has anybody been put off or turned on by balls where you're just like not big enough nuts or, whoa, look at those nuts. I'm not saying that there aren't people out there. There is not, I've never heard of ladies say, I'm a testicle man. And I am saying that I've seen some people that have done some really body modification

boob jobs that are really crazy. Right. A thousand percent. Genuinely where you're just like what on earth is happening. Yes. Where you're just like that is a body.

It's like it stopped being like cosmetic surgery and literally jumps into body modifications. It's like it's like a whole different type of. Totally. Totally. Undeniable. And look, you like what you like and you make your body look however you want.

I'm not judging you. I am saying though that no one else in the world would ever look like that normally. Right. I am saying that that's a, that's a true statement that no person looks like that normally. Same thing with big, gigantic. How big are balls, Tom?

The size of mangoes, Cecil. 14 inches. That's a fucking hefty ball. That's all I'm saying. Two more questions. They're like, they're like, like, you could put one in the cheap seats. How are you not obscene all the time? Every pants you buy, you're going to look obscene.

I buy ballroom shows. We like get the ballroom shorts where like that's like a little pocket in there for the boys. It's nice. As I get older, the boys hang lower and lower. You know what I mean? So like the boys are, the boys are like, hey, man, we want our own place. I'm old enough. I'm not fucking rooming with that guy.

I need my space. And my space is halfway down your leg. I've taken the elevator. I can't get back up. I'm a ground floor kind of guy. Just a swang and. In any case, you just buy stuff that, but it. point, like, you have to get like clown pants.

All right. I'm going to tell a story here. Like, I had a vasectomy. Yeah. And what I had of asectomy, so I had, so from getting kicked in the nuts, sometimes you can get what's called a hydro seal, which is like a non-problematic, like, pouch of fluid that forms on the testicle. I had a hydra seal.

So, and like when the vasectomy, when the lady was doing it, she nicked it, and it split. And so this fluid leaked out. and I got an infection after my vasectomy. And dude, my balls swelled up like two fucking mangoes. They were fucking enormous. And I had to go to work on that Monday or Tuesday. I got done on a Friday. I had an infection.

They were swollen up like crazy, like this guy. I mean, it was fucking huge. I had to put on dress pants and go to work and get in and out of the car and go do sales calls. And I had to stand at an angle. I had to climb carefully in and out of the car because I was riding with a female sales lady. Jesus Christ. I had to put like my briefcase across my lap because it was obscene.

I had a fucking like I like it was obscene. There was no way unless I took great pains to not be noticeable to not look like I was smuggling a fucking pair of coconuts in my shorts. It's a weird look man. You go to Target and you get

petted down. Yes. It was weird. It was so weird and like your clothes don't fit. I I got to also ask, and the most important question in this whole article, what comic books was he reading that made him interested in the size of testicles? I need that answer.

That's not rhetorical. Write me an email. Okay, this guy's 57 years old. He was reading this as a child. Let's go back 50 years. It's 2026. So let's go back to mid-1970s. It's actually going to have to go back farther than 1960s.

Yeah, you're right. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, mid-1970s. What comic books are balls focused for kids? We're just like Superman looks like he's fucking sporting some huge nuts. Maybe if we go back and we look at some of these pictures and these guys are fucking like carrying around a rack with them. They got like pants on that are so tight they have ball cleavage.

Yeah, I'm really looking for more moose knuckle out of my superheroes. Okay. So let me keep measuring. By his own measurements, his scrotum is bigger than a mango at 14 and a half inches. That's so big, dude. He's managed to grow it to that size by injecting a surgical lubricant called surgical lubricant called surgical lube. Isn't this the same stuff that those people put in their muscles to make them look like they're like... No, that's something different.

A synthal? There's a name for that. Synthral. Synthral. Those people look so weird. That's so crazy, man. That's so weird. That's so crazy.

That's just, unlike some of those people like have really bad accidents with that stuff where like they can rupture. Really dangerous. really gross and just... Really dangerous. But people will put that stuff in their muscles, and then they'll have, like, a Popeye muscle, that I'll have, like, a muscle. It'll be like a bicep and then a...

I can't put it in the camera. It'll be a bicep and then a smaller bicep and the smaller... Like what Popeye used to do, like... And he pulled up a bicep, and then you just see, like, it'd be like, it'd be like an ice cream sunda or... Yeah, so like a snowman or something. Like, it's so...

Here's the other thing about, like, the fake muscle thing that always made me laugh is this like, you're not, like one of the advantages of being, you know, having actual muscle is that it comes with a capability, right? You are stronger. And like, these guys aren't any stronger. So like, it's not like somebody's like, hey man, can you help me move this couch? And you're like, actually, no. I'm weak as a fucking three-day old kitten. Sorry. Sorry. As soon as I move that, all these liquids will flush from my body. How weird. And I'll be like a used water balloon. Speaking of used water balloons.

Why? He's not sure, but he's learned a few things along the way. He said, I'm astonished at how flexible the testicles are. They just expand. Come on. This is a troll, right? This is a guy who's trolling. He didn't have to show his testicles for the article, did he?

If he didn't, lost opportunity. Lost journalistic opportunity. I feel like a real journalist would have saw his balls. Fascinating. Not only is there someone out there doing it. that but that he's not alone. Men's Health report there's a subreddit for saline inflation that has more than 8,700

members. That could be all trolls and bots. Dude, I know. I like to think that's what it is. They are, of course, sharing their own ball-maxing journeys with one another. A ball-maxing journey. A journey described by Jack 31, I am Jack's swollen testicles.

Who told men's health, nothing really matches experiencing it yourself. The blue collar worker added, he has to talk yourself into doing it. Find the time, get everything prepped, and then sit there for anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half while it takes effect. I think, I think this is probably super helpful as somebody who's a blue collar worker who doesn't have a chair with them and needs to sit. I think like that's, it's very helpful. I just squat down on my nuts. I just squat down on my balls. I was, I was really uncomfortable to be a welder until I got these big balls. What? What? Okay. So then, then they're, they're going to

describe it, and I have so many questions. There's a burning sensation that is apparently part of the experience. Oh, that's unsound-and-same. An experience that has been described as electrifying, addictive, euphoric, and transcendental. Hey, man, you know, you could just ask a girl to step on your nuts. Like, that's a thing you can do. So here's what I don't know. Are they injecting the sergillube just randomly into the scrotum to increase the scrotal size?

That sounds bad. That sounds bad. Or are they injecting the actual testicle itself? and inflating the testicle with surgical lubricant. Is it okay if I don't want to know? I don't want to know about any of this. I was inflicted with this story, so now I'm inquisitive. Now I can't not know the answer.

Is there ever an anything that has three Xs in it where you're like, looks maxing, balls maxing, come maxing. Like, can we just like, if you spell it like you're an asshole, can we just decide this is for assholes? This is probably not for everybody. Right? Yeah. It's like it's a niche group.

This is, yeah. I feel like if X taught us anything, it's that X's are for assholes. Yeah, X's are bad. That's why like, you know, that's why you dump them. X's are for assholes. One may come to the conclusion that perhaps they have too much free time on their hands, if they're pumping saline into their balls for fun. And I say, at least they're not carving people up in their basements.

And what is that the standard? Because like, I'm like, yeah, Sure, but also what? I guess we can be like, yeah, that's fine. They're not terrorists. Yeah. That story is fucked up, though. What, what?

Stop. Just if you just don't do that. I don't feel like that's to do. When I think about this, I'm like, one, it's got to be, there's got to be some sort of sexual fetishation going on, which again, sure. What you got to do. Like, I don't care. Like, be yourself, whatever. But at a certain point, I'm like, oh.

Oh, that's got to be a really painful day when you're trying to like maneuver your nuts through a smaller wedge area or something? Yeah, man. I got to squeeze. Let me squeeze through that door. Oh, sorry. Hold on.

My balls are on the outside still. I got to put one foot on there and pull on the tug on this pouch to get them through the door. Does this increase or decrease the number of times you have to adjust? Oh, definitely increases. Increases it, right?

Increases. Has to increase the likelihood of sitting on your nuts. Yeah, right? Like, I wonder if their nuts are less sensitive because you're just fucking harassing them all the time with weird shit. Maybe it's like you're always chasing that high. So now you're like looking for sensitive nuts. So you keep jamming stuff in there.

I don't know. It's a whole thing. God. Can you imagine the size of the girl's mouth to teabag? You got to get a fucking large mouth bass in there. You tee back somebody in like a video game and you knock them out. This story's from Norway or Sweden, one of those countries. They're all the same. Norway. It's from Norway.

14-year-old boy stole and drove a bus for the third time in six months. The boy drove the bus from Oslo to Christlinson. Previously, he was driven to the Stavager area and to Sweden. He drove all the way to Sweden. I read this and I'm like, hey guys, lock your buses. Here's the thing. They come from a place called Grimstad. Maybe things are a little bad there. Okay. Maybe things are, maybe things are apocalyptic and dystopian and no one has time for buses because you're in Grimstad and you're fighting

the witch whore. I don't know. That's what it sounds like some shit from like Foulders Gates. Yeah, or like Skyrim or something. You're like, yeah, no, you, I'm sorry, you can't get your balls big here. You have to go to Grimstead where they have syringes full of sin. or whatever you can. So, you know, I actually know a little bit about this.

I had, the other day, I was, I was, my balls, I know a little bit about those. I was talking to a guy who had a herd of goats and he said that in Norway, you actually have to leave the keys to your bus. You have to let them steal your bus. You have to let them steal your bus. I don't know. If you don't, you don't let them steal your bus, then they can arrest you. They can arrest you for not getting in the way of your bus.

It's like an uno reverse car. You have to keep drawing until you get a bus. Wouldn't it be great if you could carry it actually. Uno reverse cards and change the situation. Oh, if somebody comes up to you and does something, you're like, no. Uno reverse. They don't have a reverse? No.

Back? Yeah. Somebody confronts you with some sort of right-wing talking point. You can turn them into a thinking person just by holding an un-o-reverse cards. We need magic uno reverse cards. Cecil. Magic uno reverse cards. I think I'm just going to start carrying an Uno-Riverse card and just see what happens if I use it.

Hold it up. They start talking. You're like, no. Uno-reverse. No, no, no. No. No, I want you to back up. Don't ever tell me about your balls.

But can you imagine. I know, right? Never bring your balls out. But they're the size of can. I never bring your balls in the conversation again. Huge mangoes. Draw 14. Did you see the Trump, true social, where he's like talking about Iran, talking,

where he posted on truth social about Iran. And he's like, we have all the cards. And there's a picture of Trump holding a fan backwards. You can see what the cards are of four Uno Wild cards. and it's like having four cards in Uno is bad. You should have one card. Just pick a different thing than Uno. Yeah.

You should have four aces. That would be great. Right. Four aces sounds amazing. It is so ironic. Yeah. It's because it's AI generated. Like these people are idiots and they ask AI to generate it.

And then they're so stupid. They're just like, yep, looks good. Don't fit out there. And then they ask AI to do the hashtagging, whatever. Yeah, it's all just automated. Did you see the other day he posted an AI version when Colbert went off the air? He posted an AI version of him walking up to Colbert giving his last, his last monologue or whatever. And he picks him up and he throws him in the garbage.

Trump picks him up, throws him in the garbage, and then starts doing his dumb dance. Jesus Christ. No. There was another one. Jesus Christ. This is what our president posted. Here's another thing that happened. So AI is a horror.

And I'm going to admit that wholeheartedly. Yes. But the other day, Trump was giving some sort of talk in the Oval Office about something. I think it was on Memorial Day. There was a guy standing behind him. He had a giant stomach. Did you see the guy with the giant stomach? So a guy had a big beer belly.

And he had an outy. And he was poking through his shirt. Okay. And it was really, and I didn't realize this was a real thing because I only saw the fake thing. Someone had made a fake thing of Trump in the middle of his talk. the guy walks up and Trump turns to him, lifts up his shirt, and then he's got his outy, and he starts playing. And then he kisses his stomach like he's pregnant.

Oh my God, that's fucking great. It's disturbing as fuck to watch. Like you watch it, you're just like, fucking, I need a shower. It's so gross. But someone made it. Yeah. And so I saw the fake thing. Right.

I didn't see anything. I never saw the guy in the third. thing. And Sarah were in the car and she's like, did you see that guy who had like, a Audi at the thing? And I was like, I thought that was a fake. Was that a real thing? But somebody just took that picture, fed it into GPT. And Chad GPT made that. Oh my God. So if you want, you have to search for it, but it's like Trump belly. Oh my God. And then like he starts, he starts twisting the ingy back and forth. It's so grotesque, dude. It's, it takes a lot of courage to walk. I'm not doing. No. It takes a lot of courage. But if you see it,

You'll recognize the horror that I, like, sometimes you have to stare into the abyss just a little just to know what's there. I know. I'm one of those guys that never clicked on two girls one cup. You know what I'm like, no, I got the gist. You know, I'm all right. I know what's in this thing. I'm not. I know what's happening.

No. All right. That's going to wrap it up for our funny show this week. We're going to be back on Monday with a full show. And we're going to leave you like we always do with the skeptics greed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babillon, 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 infoducatainment. 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-speak stigmata, nonsense.

Expose your sides. Thrust your hands, bloody, evidential, conclusive. Clusive. Doubt even this. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash dissonance pod.

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