Lemonade Stand - The Tide is Turning | Ep. 067 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

On this week's show... Atrioc reads a letter, DougDoug says camera, and Aiden voted. We launched a Patreon! - https://www.patreon.com/lemonadestand for bonus episodes, discord access, a book club, and many more ways to interact with the show! Episode: 067 Recorded on: June 9th, 2026 Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCurXaZAZPKtl8EgH1ymuZgg Follow us TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thelemonadecast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thelemonadecast/ Twitter - https://x.com/LemonadeCast The C-suite Aiden - https://x.com/aidencalvin Atrioc - https://x.com/Atrioc DougDoug - https://x.com/DougDougFood Edited by Aedish - https://x.com/aedishedits Thumbnail by Cheyenne DeWolf - https://x.com/cheyedewolf Produced by Perry - https://x.com/perry_jh Segments 0:00 Intro 1:36 Russia Ukraine Updates 14:42 Surveillance Spook Russia 22:39 Gold Replaces US Treasuries 32:01 Shopify Ad 33:23 Will SBF get Pardoned? 39:51 CA Elections 52:40 Xbox Changes 1:05:37 Serval Ad 1:06:56 Claude Releases Fable 5 1:11:50 S&P 500 Holds Up Requirements 1:20:09 The Uber Lost & Found Index 1:26:16 Nordic Fun Fact of the Week 1:38:32 Meta Glasses Correction 1:39:27 Outro New takes on Business, Tech, and Politics. Squeezed fresh every Wednesday. #lemonadestand #dougdoug #atrioc #aiden Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What happens when political appointees push charges that career prosecutors don't support? There is an element to this administration that wants to simply shout down reality. And I think shouting down reality and shouting down justice, shouting down fairness, should be a deeply concerning thing to all Americans. I'm Preet Barrara. And this week, longtime GOJ reporter Devlin Barrett joins me to discuss his new book, The Department of Revenge, how Trump took control of American justice. The episode is out now.

Search and follow. Stay tuned with Preet, wherever you get your podcast. Welcome back to Lemonade. Stand everybody. Huge news this week. Wild and 64 Sherbetland world record finally broken in the no glitch category. A mind-blowing new shroom strat. Used after 18 years, Atriot. So funny that you prefaced this intro by saying, hey guys, pretend like you don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. So it's interesting. You think I'm supposed to, you think I would normally know what you're talking? Well, we said we were going to do the Mario Carweed time trials podcast this week. We was talking about Mario Card.

Hold on. I followed that. Am I? Oh, yeah. All right. Explain it. What happened? He's talking.

He switched. What level? What level did you just say? Sherbertland. Shurbert. I switched from, they switched from Toadette to Baby Daisy. It's a big deal.

It took 18 years of Toadette. Toadette to baby. No, I prepped. I prepped. So, uh, I thought we were going to talk about how Daisy personally set off a bomb in the Kremlin this week.

That was a big Nintendo direct was all it was they did do the direct it was crazy They went to the tree house after is 90 minutes of Nintendo tree house after and it was Shigeria miamoto in the Obama like control room watching the situation unfold You know that it's like baob bombs and stuff Wait have we thought about inviting Putin to super Mario land at Universal Studios as a way of like no to kill him You gave it away. And then I'm never getting my tourist visa now. Yeah, we're never getting in. Okay.

Look, look, look, look, look. We have a lot of topics to cover today. There's actually a pretty stacked week. But there's one that we've been like dancing around for a while. And we wanted to do a slightly deeper look at some of the new updates. And that's Russia, Ukraine, which is just like this. I feel like it's like the, it's like almost not appropriate. But do you remember the meme of the guy looking at the girl and he's got the girl next to him?

It's like Iran war has taken all the headlines. Oh, okay. Yeah. The Iran war is taking all the headlines, but the Ukraine war is still going on. In fact, it is longer than the eastern front of World War II, as we said, like, 50 days ago. And it's now like the longest land war than my shit. God, I didn't think about that. That's, yeah.

Yeah, it's insane. I got to be honest with you. I have four Mario Kartwee related stories. So this is a tough week for me. Just throw them in between the horror. Okay. No, actually, what's interesting about it is the reason we're bringing this back on the menu and why I was talking to get about is that all of the new recent stories are in Ukraine's favor. It turns out that it started out as a trickle and now it's kind of a flood of a lot of like, hey, they're actually really making progress.

The lines have begun to move in the opposite direction, which is kind of insane, given that rush has an overwhelming military and economic advantage and has been in the driver's seat of this slow quagmire war for a while. Ukraine has really, really leaned into not just drone, but robotic warfare. And I have a couple headlines from recent stories that I kind of want to go through with you guys. So I'll pull up this first one. So recently, Ukraine did something that has never before been done in the history of war since the dawn of man, which is they took a position. You know, you can bomb a position and you can sort of wipe it out. But they took a fortified position without a single human being there.

They captured a Russian army position for the first time using on the ground drone controlled robots that are like, they have like an iPad on there of a person like with a, and they took it. The people surrendered. Human being surrendered by just a army taking a fortified hill, which is like never happened before. This is kind of crazy.

The innovations they're doing, not just in drones, but all of this are like turning the tides. And so if you, again, it's a fog of war on this whole thing, but my understanding, and this is basically analysis is that they have like a six to eight kill ratio. Basically, Ukraine is taking out seven or eight Russian soldiers for every one that they're losing. Now, it's not good for either side. Ukraine has fewer people, but it's like the level of success they're seeing by leaning into this 100% is happening. And now, because they were sort of held back from doing this

when they were working closely with America, but America has really pulled back from its support of the Ukraine war, both financially, militarily, and intelligence-wise. And so Ukraine is now just bringing the war straight to Russia, which is causing a lot of home discontent. They've now strike Russian fuel lines, Russian major cities, deep, like hundreds of kilometers inside of Russia that was never part of the war originally, making it so that, like, they are feeling some of the effects that Ukraine is feeling at home. So this is a recent Russian economic forum, and the stark image that hit the rest of

the world from this is an explosion happening in the heart of St. Petersburg when they had other countries coming in for its economic form. It's like it's right there at home and they're feeling it. Do you know just kind of broadly? Is there a reason why Ukraine is having this kind of technological advantage over Russia? Like why are they able to have these advantages on the battlefield? Why isn't Russia doing the exact same thing? So they are doing the same thing. I include an example here of like what Russia is doing in Kiev, which is a huge drone based attack. Okay. But again, it's my understanding is that Ukraine's strategy has leaned into this 100% with all of their money, zeal, and interest

is like drone and robotic warfare, and they have become world-class at it. So there's this clip from like eight hours ago, someone being interviewed. And it's funny because the news reporter that's asking this guy questions is under the old model of thinking, which is that Ukraine is relying on American weapons.

Okay. And so she's going to ask this question. Have the initiative. But for how long can they do so? Because we have to consider what they're using as munitions. Can the U.S., for example, continue to provide these things as we've deployed so many in the Middle East? The U.S. is not providing them.

You're right, Katie. It's exactly right. These missiles that the Ukrainians are fired, they're making. These are Ukrainian drones and Ukrainian missiles that they're firing at St. Petersburg, military targets. Let's be clear, military targets, naval bases, oil export facilities. But these are Ukraine. So they don't. So, yeah, again, Ukraine has just become world-class.

It's kind of, no one expected this a few years ago for this to become one of the world leaders, probably maybe the world leader right now, at least in terms of Europe and America, in drone technology. And it is having a lot of weird outsized effects. They're just getting things done that were not possible. And again, the morale on the Russian side is not great. So they have 300,000 dead. And the bigger number really here is that 900,000, this is like a minimum could be over a million.

Young men have fled the country to avoid conscription and to, you know, they just want to be part of it. Like it's not, the risk is too high. And so if you're an economy, it's already in a shaky spot. You take out working age men to a tune of one million plus. Like every economy in the world in the world is hunting for, they want working age young men. That's exactly what you're looking for. And so they're having them flee the country. So it's having like these knock on cascading effects. There's this kind of trite quote that it's in a lot of presentations like this, but I think it's actually super relevant here. This is the Eisenhower quote about like every gun that is made, every warship is lost, every rocket fired, is a signifies a theft from those who

hunger were not fed who are cold and not cloth. This is true with the Iran War. Is this war? But having a war go for five years, there's been a lot of like masking the damage that does to the economy, but in a real sense, you cannot throw hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of hundred of lives and not have a deep cost. It's true of every war in history and it's true right now. Russia is pretty guarded on their economic numbers to try to get it out. But this is just an obvious truth that is being felt in a lot of non-obvious ways. So I guess what's just surprising is that a lot of these wins for Ukraine are hitting in a row. And Zelensky, who was previously not really open to a negotiation with Putin because he was negotiating for position of weakness.

And Putin was taking advantage of that has now sort of switched. It's now because he has some of this momentum and strength has put out an open letter. And I don't want to read the whole thing because it is pretty long. but I've got it here and I want to just read some parts of it because it's pretty powerful and he put out this open letter as he said,

this is directly to Putin. He wrote a letter directly to Putin basically saying this. Open letter to the president of the Russian Federation. When you came to power in Russia more than 26 years ago, many people in Ukraine viewed you positively.

That is how it was, but that is now in the past. Now the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians view it positively that our long range drones paid a visit to the opening of your forum in St. Petersburg covering a distance

of more than 1,000 kilometers. As you know very well, that distance is not the limit of our capabilities. For 26 years, your time and power has completely changed the agenda of a relations between Ukraine and Russia. From discussions about trade and civilian matters, our nations have moved talking almost exclusively about strikes and losses. You've spent half of your years in power waging war against Ukraine. Whatever you may say about NATO geopolitics or the Russian language, this war was your personal choice, a war without a real cause. That is how history will remember it.

These years could have been very different. The Russians are finally becoming less comfortable with this reality. the fact that the wars bring more and more negative consequences to Russia. They don't like our drones and missiles. They don't like gasoline shortages and constantly rising prices, which is true. Russia has very high inflation right now. They do not like constant restrictions. They don't like your intention to watch a second wave of mobilization in order to expand

the war in another direction in Ukraine or use it against other countries neighboring Russia. So like, you kind of threw this out there, this gauntlet out there of like, hey, it's becoming more apparent that this can't keep going for you, especially if they're not even making progress. They were making incremental progress before. and now it's turning against them slightly. Now, I want to say, that's just a caveat. I should say it early.

This is a fog of war. I'm not a military expert, and it's very likely that you could flash forward. This war drags on years more and it switches the tide again. We don't know. But the where it is currently now, Ukraine has a ton of momentum

that was completely unexpected, especially this late into a grindy war. So I guess it's like just a pretty powerful letter. I think it's like a historical moment. This just came out. Putin's response. Just real quick, does he ask for anything in particular or it's more just like he's kind of...

He basically asked him to end the war. Do not, yeah, do not be afraid to take the path out of this war. That is the main thing that is required of you now. Ukraine has preserved its independence and it will preserve it despite all predictions to the contrary. We have united many around the world to stand with Ukraine and against you. We found the weapons and the financing we needed. We receive support.

You receive sanctions. And this will continue until there is justice for Ukraine. Damn. So a big part of this that he talks about that is seemingly 100% true is that Russia, because of its economic, situation has become far more dependent on China than they ever had before. They are like extremely, extremely dependent on China. Jiji Ming has, what he says, jump, they have to say how high because it, everything

economically they're getting through China. China's buying all the oil to give them money and then selling them all the goods that they need to keep the economy going. So it's a deep reliance. Again, I don't know. I don't know where it goes from here. I do know that this is a powerful letter. I do that it's kind of cool that Ukraine has done what.

no predictor would have said at the beginning of this world. Like this is no one predicted it would last this long. No predict that at four years in, they would be turning the tide. And then what's super interesting is that every other country around the world, I don't have the clip on me unfortunately, but the head of NATO in Europe, Mark Root, was like, the strongest army in Europe right now is Ukraine. Like we need to learn from them.

We need to be talking to them more, investing in them more. Like not just like as a help. It used to be considered like we would send them money as help. It's like, no, you should be talking to them because they're going to help you modernize your military with modern tactics, understand how drones and robots are used. And so the countries that do see this are like countries in the Middle East,

which are all signing these huge long-term deals with Ukraine to give them money in exchange for training and understanding of how drones are using. So Ukraine is finding its own funding without the U.S. sending it, which is like they've made it work regardless. And it really is kind of a crazy flash forward from that meeting in the White House where he didn't wear a suit and J.D. Vance was making fun of him or whatever.

and like you don't have the cards and they found the cards. It's very impressive. I just think it's an impressive story that's happening right now. Do you know much about, I feel like I've seen headlines circulate lately about

Russia's end of things where there's an acknowledgement of troops being drawn back or some forfeiture of their advance or their willingness to concede in the war. I feel like there's things like that around, but nothing concrete. I didn't see anything on them being, like, anything other than their position of like,

we're winning, it's happening, we're grinding it out. Yeah. But what I did see is that there's some pretty good substacks that follow this war and some of them are more versed in Russian politics. And what they said was a weird thing has been happening in the past, let's say, six months, which is that more people have been willing. even on like state media news programs where they have a roundtable

of people talking like us to criticize the war in some way or like things that are happening. And there was an open letter from somebody in Russia talking about how the war needs to end. And that just the way that the substack frame was like that would not happen two years ago. You just couldn't get away with that.

Yeah. So it feels like there's a waning of, it would be very stupid to predict any waning in Putin's influence when he's lasted this long and been this dominant. But it feels in a way like he doesn't, he's losing a little bit

of the consent of the governed. People are getting a little bit more upset, especially the elite class where they feel like they're just losing money. The sanctions are affecting them. They're getting bit by that. I remember watching that video, I mentioned a while back,

where someone was doing street interviews around New Year with people in Moscow. And, you know, this is a wealthier area of Russia relative to the rest of the country, so keep that in mind. But pretty much every person showcased in those street interviews said their wish was for the war to end.

They don't want it to continue. I think that's what these were saying was like if you're not part of that upper echelaw and wealthier class, your opinion almost doesn't matter in Russia, but that group who was insulated from the war before is now feeling the effects and are kind of upset about it. And he requires that group to maintain power.

That is the important group. So I don't know. It's we don't know where it goes. I mean, every prediction has been wrong. far, so we'll see. But I thought it was worth talking about. You had a story you wanted to add to the... Yeah, the FT did an article, which is really good, which is called

New AI espionage powers trigger Putin camera scare. And the gist of it is you know how when the Iran war started, it kicked off with Israel and the U.S. bombing and killing the Ayatollah and all the leaders, right? Yeah. Well, turns out the reason they were able to do that is because Iran installed

a bunch, I mean, they already had some, but they installed a bunch of cameras to do surveillance all over Tehran in December during those protests. And then Israel hacked the cameras. And now because of AI technology, can process all of the footage in basically real time and did things like mapped Tehran's geography. And they could find the patterns of senior officials and bodyguards. They could find specific target locations. You can do things like, find me anybody.

Find me two men who've passed a briefcase to each other. And so the degree of processing. that you can do now on data is getting so crazy that they pinpointed exactly where the Ayatollah was and killed him dead with guns and rockets and bombs. And so Russia has 300,000 cameras in Moscow that is surveying citizens. That's a lot. And so because of this threat after the Israeli hacking, they had to take all of them down and only put them back up once they're disconnected from the internet, which there's not a ton of additional info about this, like the only are right now is really from the FTE, but just logically, that makes them kind of useless.

It's 300,000 cameras. You have to go physically, like, pull out the tapes and what read them. Yeah. The thing is like... Or someone has to monitor them in real time. Like, that's not very... That's the thing. You know, people think of surveillance footage as like there's like a security guy looking at cameras. But if you're talking about hundreds of thousands of cameras, that's not possible. So one of the things I saw that is, you know, hacking security cameras has been around a long time. That's not like new. The new thing is that if AI can process millions of hours of footage and you can just talk to it in English, now that's extraordinarily valuable. Have you seen the, there's like a variation on this where apparently AI can, if you're on a Discord call with someone, it can hear the keystrokes or whatever. It can like, I'm not, I wish I was an expert on this. Like it can figure, yeah, AI can hear passwords. That's the idea. Because there's a there's a like microscopic differences.

Yeah. They can, uh, in the way it, yeah, here. AI can identify passwords by the sounds of keys being pressed with 90% accuracy. Jesus Christ, man. While chatting over Zoom, isn't that crazy? Yeah. That's, I mean, one of the things AI is remarkably good at is pattern matching on giant, giant quantities of data, right?

And so this whole thing. So what's really, about this is, you know, a survey, if we talk about elites in Russia or the people starting to get upset with what's going on, part of how you clamp down on that as a dictator is through surveillance, right? But they've literally had to take their entire surveillance system in Moscow down, essentially. They can't use it. They're like, it's not valuable if it's not connected to the internet. You can't, I mean, they can't even do the same kind of AI analysis, right? And this is happening in other cities. I actually looked up, if you pull this up, Perry. This is from

Comparatech. They did this study looking at the the countries and the cities that have the most surveillance cameras because I was like, wait a minute, is 300,000 a lot? So China is not even on the map because it would blow out everything else. But this map, kind of shockingly, India has a ton of surveillance cameras all over the place. I did not. Yeah, you know, America and Europe doesn't have a lot. Like, there's a good amount in London, in Paris, in New York City, in Los Angeles, like, you know, the real big ones. But the top 10 most surveyed in the world, China just beats every. But then it's India, India, India, Pakistan, South Korea, Russia, Afghanistan, Singapore, and Russia again.

So it's top 10, yeah. Yeah. And so it's interesting. If you just look at the map, it's very kind of like, it's Southeast Asia, but also dictatorships. And suddenly, dictatorships setting up giant camera systems to track their people have become a massive liability that they probably need to shut down. That is such a weird dynamic happening.

Yeah. Yeah, that's weird. Again, I just think this is, this tick is changing things in a lot of weird ways, a lot of unexpected ways. And I think the Ukraine war is a great insight. For me, it's awesome. Like all those cameras I've been putting in your house. Like now I can just say, is he in the shower right now? I was wondering why you keep doing that.

I don't have to sit and monitor actively anymore. You know, you can just tell him no, right? You don't have to let him in. Well, he's my podcast co-host. And he's like, I have the right to install cameras for the podcast. I just tell him no. And we still do the podcast. You're actually blowing my mind right now.

This is, does this include, this is, uh, cameras that are set up by like the government or state in some capacity? Yeah, these are CCTV cameras. Oh, so this, would this exclude like flock? Say like private, like, are like ring cameras. Uh, yeah, it's cameras used by government entities such as law enforcement. Okay. So, you know, this is, this is definitely an increasing trend around the world. But this, uh, this AI, you know, look, everything is going to be hackable, basically.

and then the fact that, oh, other, like, foreign entities are just going to be able to tell where everybody is is kind of scary. I mean, it would, I think it would be kind of nice to, if it reverses this trend, I'm not a huge fan of it. You know, we were in China, and we talked about the fact that there are cameras everywhere on everything.

It is pretty kind of creepy and dystopian. And that's not something they might start to have to roll back on because someone who hacks into their stuff can use it to figure out anything. I don't, I haven't watched these yet, or like have a watch like part of one. But Ben Jordan, a big YouTuber,

did a couple videos on people's private cameras being hacked fairly easily and the access that people are finding through that. I think it's an interesting problem in general. Like the scale of this, the fact that it can affect, you know, a dictator and it's a now a security vulnerability to the people setting it up.

Yeah. But then on the other end of it too, just like the scale at which we are willingly installing cameras and them being available to people who choose to hack them in some capacity. It's a lot of middle American cities were rolling out these flock cameras on like street poles and shit and people, I mean, just covered them all up with trash bags. Like I was a photo here. I don't have you to pull up, but like. But this is, is that an SF? No, it's like Dayton, Ohio. Oh, okay, okay. Because I, so I haven't looked into this much. But I, you know, flock is being credited as one of the

things that is helping bring down crime in San Francisco. And that's something people are happy about because SF has had a real crime problem for the past six or seven years. And they're talking about that. I'll be like, oh yeah, this is allowing us to track down the people who are going smashing windows all over the place. Sure. I mean, we're talking about when we were in China. Like all the people in China were like, it's cool. There's no crime now. Yeah, everybody, everybody in China vouched for this shit for that reason. Yeah. It's obviously not this black and white, but it, but it is kind of weird to be like, hey, would you be okay with cameras, that could be used to track you if crime almost disappears. And I think a lot of people,

I mean, I would have to really think about it, man, especially if like once I have kids. Yeah, it's weird. It's just straight on. It depends on who holds the camera power, honestly. Yeah, I guess if the question is, do you want Putin to have access to cameras in your neighborhood? It's like, or trauma. I don't know. It's a different. So anyway, uh, interesting stuff. Well, the thing about Russia, Ukraine is that it's a really simple topic that doesn't have any cascading consequences. Right. Right. And I think actually the only two updates, are that one battle we talked about and cameras in Moscow.

Yeah, I think that's probably it for 2026. Yeah. Well, I lied. I lied, there's more. No! I wanted to update you guys about how gold is replacing

U.S. Treasuries as the top reserve asset in the world for basically the, I mean, basically the first time since U.S. treasuries became really prevalent. If you could pull up... I love gold.

That is true. You do love gold. I love gold. No, these are real and they're mine and you don't get to take them. You can keep them. That's fine with me. So you, uh, gold collectively as the country's reserves has hit 27% globally up from, you know, like mid-20s in the previous year. And U.S. Treasuries, uh, partly because of like the U.S. is placed in the world and like the value of the U.S. dollar, you know, the stability of, you know, the stability of the, you know, the U. of those bonds have fallen from a brown the same, like 27% down to like 24% this year.

And this is part of a huge movement, which I think we had talked about before. When Russia invaded Ukraine, one of the things that the US did was freeze the US dollar holdings that Russia had at the time. both like treasuries and then straight up like the cash in U.S. dollars that Russia had. Yeah, there's a couple hundred billion dollars. And the world sees that the U.S. does this.

And regardless of the stance on Russia choosing to invade Ukraine at the time, everybody kind of wakes up and is like, whoa, all of this money we have in U.S. dollars. They can just do that? Yeah. Like that action had never really been taken before, certainly not in that capacity. And as a reaction, the demand for gold in recent years has spiked the record levels. It's part of the gold price, like, hitting $5,500 an ounce, I think, at the beginning of this year. Yeah. And although, if you look at this, like if you look at overall reserves held by countries across the world, I think U.S. denominated assets, which includes, like, you know, stocks, other things, like, that are valued in U.S. dollars,

that countries may be holding is still like 47% in total. The share of gold is growing. And it's coming from countries like China, India, Turkey, purchasing massive amounts of gold in recent years because this fear of the U.S. holding this economic power over your country by choosing to hold those reserves has fueled it because the U.S. finally chose to take action. Can you pull this chart?

It's similar to this, but it just shows that like, there's this period, this warped period, I guess. between 1995 and now, basically, where the green bar, U.S. treasuries, was the highest thing people had in their central bank reserves. Central banks around the world held more treasuries than anything else. And gold was at its lowest. And now it has bounced back to being just edging out dollars

and is now the highest. I didn't realize that only changed in 1995. I guess in my American patriot brain, I thought we had the highest dollars that were the most reserved. Well, I just think gold was like hundreds and hundreds of years. and then the dollar grew post-World War II, and finally in the 90s, it... You know, it's also hundreds of years, America.

Yeah, true. I mean, so that's a ridiculous argument. Also, remember that De Blune I bought for $600? Has that gone up in value now? Hmm. I mean, for when did you... America has been around for hundreds of years, but it hasn't been a power until post-war II.

No, I was joking. I was like, all right. I think the big swing was when we, I mean, this trend towards the Treasury's, being the majority started after we left the gold standard, right? I think it was a further after World War II. Well, we left the gold center in 71, so you can see it right there where it actually kind of drops for a bit, people go on gold.

It's like the 80s or 90s, whenever we start switching back. But I mean, you're right there. You can see on the light that 2020 basically, Ukraine happens, we seize the reserves, and everyone's like, we got to have gold. I need to, it's the only safe thing to have potential banks, and they've been buying it like crazy. Yeah. And it's a big, a big swing.

And I think these countries starting to set the tone also caused a lot of like private, either private investors or, you know, like hedge funds to follow the trend and buy massive amounts of gold during the same period of time. And then alongside just buying gold, countries like France moving their physical gold reserves from where it was stored in the United States back home to France as in order to keep it safe. Yeah. Not have it under

American control anymore. Yeah. Okay. I have a question. Uh, okay. So if everybody else is buying gold and less America stuff and they're taking it home,

to me, somebody who, uh, it doesn't have an MBA. Why do I care? Why do I give a fuck as like an average person? Genuine question. Like do I,

do we care? Who can? Why does it affect me? Go for it. Maybe. Maybe here, you give your big A answer to this. Because I think I have a,

a longer, uh, maybe a longer one. but yeah the reason we care is that these people the central banks used to be the safest and most reliable purchaser of u.s. debt that's the u.s. treasuries they would hold yeah they would do that they would just mechanically like oh other countries all the time all the countries and now a larger percentage of their their reserves are going to gold so they're not buying as much debt now we've made up that fact because we have a much larger percent recently of hedge funds and like

blightier investors buying our debt so we haven't like like private investors. Okay. But those guys are the most likely to panic if things go wrong or whatever. Central banks were the most related. That's who you want to buy your debt because they don't care the price almost. They just buy it as a thing. They need to have a certain percent.

Okay. Now they've changed their percent. So the idea is that like if this happens, it undermines our ability, which we need to do based on our deficits, to keep issuing gargantuan amounts of debt because there's not the appetite there was. Okay. I mean, this is kind of what I was going to get at as well. I read there's a really, really good article I recommend called Trump's Empire of Debt that came out last week. And it's kind of talking about the historical context of how great empires fall as they continue to spend an extraordinary amount of money on war specifically.

and they're unable, as they continue to try to maintain the control over the world as their empire has formed it. They continue to spend more and more in order to be able to maintain that and inevitably, like, draw debt on in order to fuel that. They continue spending. And then as you get more aggressive in your approach to control, this effect basically snowballs. People are more wary of the, like, enforcement you're using or the damage you're causing, which causes them to, like, fight back more or things continue to crumble. There are people that help fund your war effort through the buying of your debt that are no longer willing to buy it anymore. And the cascading consequences of you continuing to up your aggression, the, you, you, are no longer able to fund that war effort anymore

because nobody is willing to buy the debt. It's like this chain reaction. And your empire begins to crumble because of this. We gotta fix this or we can't keep attacking Iran. And I thought it was this really interesting historical look at how the spending of this like debt-fueled money in the context of war is kind of its own undoing. As soon as you start on this train, you're heading towards something.

No, there's a million, even before treasury. Like, you go back to Rome. Yeah. They overextend on war. And then they have to, like, they start putting less gold in each coin. What are they? I don't know what it's called. It's called, uh, basically counter-stringflation.

Yeah, shrinkflation in their own coins. And that, that destroyed their economy. And then, uh, the Spanish armada, they spent too much money on war. And they had to start doing the same thing. And then, uh, Britain spent too much money on war. And they had just, I mean, there was, the, the quote, Louis, Louis, Louis, the war mongering profligate, son king of France,

apologized on his deathbed for loved war, he loved war too much and spent too much. And I think this, I mean, this ties into something I want to talk about later too. But I think this aggressive stance that the U.S. has chosen to take

in the last year specifically is causing all of these things to unfurl in a way that devalues its debt. And like will cause us to continue to have to like raise interest rates to attract the remaining portion of buyers and continue on taking on more and more. Now the trouble figure it out. Support for this show comes from Shopify.

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Okay, you actually have used it. I used it to run a store. I used it to run a store for Ludwig for ages. Yeah, I bought some things on that store. Yeah, and you'll never get your money back. But that's a, that's a problem with my fulfillment. That's a problem with your family. Not Shopify.

To be clear, Shopify did everything correctly and I chose to ignore his order. We used to sell all of Ludwig's mogul moves, like his original run, shipping out of the garage. That was, we used Shopify to build that original version of the website and sell. You know, before that, he sold them at a booth. at smash events and he left them all at my apartment. I believe that. And they took a lot of space in my tiny little apartment in San Jose.

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That's Shopify.com slash lemonade. Cheching. Support for this show comes from Serval AI. That's right. Serval AI enables IT teams to automate various processes instead of having to drag and drop stuff. You can just describe what you want.

IT processes can cause such a headache of companies. There are certain employees that cause so many problems for the IT team. So back when I was at Twitch, Twitch got hacked. And they did a new security.

system where everyone had to change their password all the time. And I always forgot it because they had very intense rules. And so I would constantly have to ask them to resell my password. And then- Those are individual tickets that like somebody out staffed. Yeah. That's what I said. Servant would have helped a lot here, both me and them to have shaved the embarrassment of me walking in with my laptop. And then one day I walk in and they open my laptop and I had put a sticky note with my password on it and they got really mad at me. That doesn't make sense. There's no security issues. Why would they be mad at that? Serval platform is designed to eliminate repetitive tickets so that IT can focus on strategic work.

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But Pikers' glow-up has angered a section of Democrats who are growing louder in voice. Hassan Piker is anti-American. He is bigoted. He's anti-Semitic. And he is deeply misogynistic. So in March, a Democratic group called Third Way published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal's opinion section saying, quote, Democrats are too cozy with Hassan Piker. is such an extremist that it will only do damage to Democrats and hurt their chances of beating right-wing populism. Now, Piker is controversial, no doubt. But is he toxic?

I don't think this helps Republicans at all. I think, as a matter of fact, third-way's brand of politics has helped Republicans. Their attitude has been to constantly concede on culture or issues to the Republican Party and never focus on economic populism. I'm a Sted Herndon, and this is America Actually. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or we're, ever you get your podcast. You know who would fix this is SBF because we could issue more crypto coins without

causing inflation on American dollars. Exactly. Much like that guy's in prison. Fuck. What are we going to do? Well, we can get them out. Pull this up, Perry. Speaking of Trump and SBF, Sam Begman-F, Sam Begman-Feed officially, as of today, submitted an

official pardon request from Trump. And I want to do a little bit of a retro, uh, retrospective here on SBF. No. We talked about this last week, how Trump has been doing. It hasn't happened. It hasn't happened. Okay. It probably won't even happen.

I'm not going to say it will, even though. Dude, he's pardoned. He's part in a lot of people, a lot of them in the criminal industry, and all of them doing the same playbook that SBF has done. However, they were less well known. So it's a little easier to get away with because there's no, there's no heat. SBF is very well known and not well liked. So it's harder to get away to the pardon.

However, he has been doing, I think we've covered this a little bit before, but he's really leaning into it lately, a lot of pro-Trump, to like build the case. This is one. I said, recently that was funny where he just talks about how the S&P

is hitting all time highs. How about during Biden? Dude, it's just so blatant. It's so unbelievable. So he's been doing that, but I was a good retrospective on SBF because I don't know if anyone

remembers why he went to jail in the first place. He was it play for being bronze in league? Yeah, he's why? He spent too many games on league and he didn't get it. He took crypto investors

money, they gave it to him to put in a vault, which he did not put in a vault. He took out of the vault and he gave it to his own hedge fund Alameda Research to gamble. That is why he went to jail. That is like the simple reason is that he speculated with investor money in a way that he did not say that he would do. And so pretty simple. That's why he got went under. However, people have taken a look back at the things he gambled on and a unique story has emerged, which is that when When he, after he went bankrupt, they were like, we have to pay these people back. So they sold everything that he gambled on immediately to try and pay back the investors. But it turns out that some of the things he gambled on were a company called cursor, a little company called Anthropic, and a little company called SpaceX.

And he put hundreds of millions of dollars, in some cases, billions of dollars of an investor money in these companies in 2022. You're telling me these prosecutors had paper hands, Etriott? They had paper hands, Aiden. So it turns out On it, a visionary. To invest in Cursor in 2022 is wild. It is a five, I'm sorry, it's like a 5,840% game. Oh my God.

But they sold it all, right? They sold it all at the lows. In the lows of 22, they sold all of these companies at the lows. Now, again, many things he gambled on were trash meme coins. But it turns out that the total amount they owed investors at Alin, when it went bankrupt, it was $11 billion. $10. The three or four billion he gambled on these companies are worth $111 billion today had he not sold. 10x the value of the entire company. I wonder how many like criminals are out there in the world where they just do horrible things,

but one out of ten times, they hit it huge and they just get to keep going. Had he somehow made it through that summer, he would not only have recovered all the losses, but he would be one of the wealthiest men in the world and like, considered the greatest investor retrieval. It's crazy how much his life diverged because he got caught basically doing this bankrupt. But yeah, it's come out that his venture bets would have made him

$100 billion richer how he stayed out of prison. It's crazy. I mean, buying Anthropic, like the valuation it was in 2022 is, I mean, it's like a 500% gain on billions of dollars. It's crazy. Yeah. A visionary.

I take it all back. I take it all back. You know what they say, Atria? The ends justify the means. They do say that. I think he belongs in jail. I just think it's very funny. You know, it's got to sting him a lot more.

He belongs in jail with a Bloomberg journal. Yes. Like we let him lead. Let him lead some rounds. It's like the end of Catch me if you can. Let's let him partner with us. There's no reason to keep him out. Tom Hanks and let him pick some startups.

I just thought that was funny. I mean, Cursors are crazy. one that was completely unknown. He put 200 million into it. Now it's worth like, it is worth saying, dude, we did a savant. We did a corruption episode last week and we didn't talk about, because there's literally too much. But one of the things is that Trump keeps pardoning people who've done, or maybe we did, like massive financial fraud. Oh yeah, like that specific category of people Trump keeps part, like pardoning. Well, he's like opened up a window, like a shop. You can just like pay to play. They show up,

they pay a fee and they get a pardoned. It's crazy. He doesn't even know who they are. People ask about in interviews. He's like, ah. I don't know who that is. It's like, it's just a couple million bucks and you get a part and it's crazy. Wait, that sounds like a good deal. But I think SBF's not going to get it. I actually don't think he's going to get it.

Why not? I literally think Trump doesn't care enough to get the heat on this one. People don't like this guy. And they know about it too. It's too blatant. Yeah. He is, the tweet is insane.

It's like if you, like if I ghost wrote it for him as a joke. But that stopped Trump? I don't know, man. I, maybe not. Trump's penis in 2026? Eight inches. Biden's last year.

A frail four. No, but I mean, I don't know if you guys remember, but SPF, I mean, I don't remember this. This is like,

this is well known, but he literally had a plan leak. This is like, like everything's starting to crumble, right? We talked about it. And he does like an internal thing where he's like,

I'm just spitballing. Here's some options for like how we could get out of this. Yeah. And right wing grift was in this. Yeah. Go on Tucker Carlson, your favorite guy.

Come out as a Republican. Hold on. Hold on. That's, and to be clear, if you were grifting, you wouldn't go on Tucker Carlson's show. It's where you do your authentic messaging. Part B, come out against the woke agenda. Part C, talking about how this cartel of lawyers

are destroying value. So that's the, that's just a funny thing. He literally, you know what he called his shot? Barry Bond style. You know what I'm saying? You pointed to the rafters. And if he gets the pardon, that's actually so.

Yeah, and we should also be clear, the steroids part. He's breaking the law. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure, for sure, for sure. Anyway, uh, yeah. You know what's going on in California? A bunch of fucking elections. I'll tell you what, Doug. Fucking fraud.

It's fraud. It's fraud. It's fraud. Fraud. Fraud alert. If I know, if I'm burying my gold and I'm hiding from this fraud. If I've learned anything from X the Everything app, it's that this election in California this year has been robbed from the people, Doug. So tell me a little more about that.

Perry, bring this up. We're going to show you two proofs that California is rigging the elections. First off, this is the result for the Los Angeles mayor. Okay, now I'm going to highlight four people here who are the most notable. You got Karen Bass. Karen Bass is the incumbent. She's been here for a while. She's sort of an establishment Democrat, let's say. You got Nithya Rahman, who's the more like far left progressive sort of side, emulating Zoron, Mamdani's sort of style. And then you got Spencer Pratt. Now, if you don't live in Los Angeles, you probably don't care too much. But the reason this is in. interesting is because Spencer Pratt

came into this race as a Republican. This is in Los Angeles. This is a deeply, deeply blue city and a deeply blue state. And this dude basically has a whole campaign which is essentially just shitting on Karen Bass and saying she caused the fires. With AI videos. That was his big, that was his big

innovation. Yeah. To his credit, he, Trump is maybe like a too strong of a comparison, but I think he's good at making like bombastic things that get attention. You know, like when they did a debate, those three. Like he just keeps doing these like attacks. No, I think

Trumpian is right. It's a very, yeah. It's like attention grabbing. Yeah. And his thing is very much like, look, it's not about being Republican. It's that they're ruining the city and we need to get it back and blah, blah, blah, blah. So Spencer Pratt was a total underdog. You wouldn't think that this, oh, by the way, his entire background is that

he's a reality TV star from the mid-2000s from the Hills. He was like a villain in the reality TV. And then he's made, I believe, a crystal shop since then. I'm not deeply researched on Spencer Pratt's history. I have a fun fact for you guys after. Do you know a guy?

I know a guy on this one. Really? Oh, wow. A crystal shop guy or a reality TV guy? I'll tell you both. Maybe a little both. So. LA deserves a reality TV crystal shop mayor. Who's our crystal guy?

Especially New York. New York deserves a Knicks fan and we deserve a guy who opened a crystal. A former reality TV grifter mayor with it. So I don't think a lot of people are super stoked about Karen Bass, respectfully. I don't think people who live in Los Angeles feel that the city's going in a great direction. Sure. It's kind of establishment. But so Spencer Pratt comes in, you wouldn't think would get any very, again, Trump kind of ask, and then just like gets all the attention. And so, uh, we started the election in California last

week and then the top two move on to the general election in November. Karen Bass is currently in the lead. But if you look at this online, currently Nithia Rahman is in second place, but wasn't. You see when the results were first coming in. And this is where you play, you know, dark conspiratorial music. The first day when there was the elections coming in, okay? Karen Bass was winning, and Spencer Pratt was in second place. Not only second place, solidly in second place. He had a dominant

lead, but then they started to find mail-in ballots, Aiden. And the mail-in ballots are overwhelmingly for Nithia Raman, the super progressive candidate. And suddenly, Spencer Pratt's lead, which he fairly earned, has been disappearing. And over the last couple days, he went from the obvious

person that's going with Karen fast to the runoffs to now almost certainly locked out of the race. Another person who got left behind, my favorite. That's right. Nelson Chang, age 23 from UC Berkeley, who is currently in last place, and I just want to highlight one of sort of his standout policies. What is your professional background? I'm a Roblox YouTuber who has been doing Roblox game with my team of friends and fans,

along with other popular Robox YouTubers, we do not agree with the new age verification requirements that Robox is imposing to limit online chat and skis. and minor spaces. A single issue voter in L.A. And it's that Roblox has age verification. And that is the answer to the question, what is your professional background? So,

what about Barack Obama Shaw? That was the guy who was, yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't look up to do. I do have your guy from last week. So, so as you could probably imagine,

this is causing, regardless of the sort of candidates, this is causing the exact same conversation as 2020, because the Republican was one of the two leaders, leaders of the race and then suddenly the mail and ballots are coming. This has happened kind of sort of not really into the same degree, but with the governor election. So here are the current results of the governor. Xavier Bercerra is currently number one in the lead. But Steve

Hilton, the Republican candidate, who again has been doing way better than you would think as the governor of California candidate, was in the lead solidly. I think he had 33% in the first 24 hours, something like that. But over the last week, awfully. Suspicious bunch of mail-in ballots are coming in. Suddenly he's not winning. So two questions, first of all. Where are we January 6th thing for Steve Hilton? Because obviously this is a diehard Steve Hilton.

To be clear. I've been saying that. Thank you. Spencer Bratt, the mayoral candidate for Los Angeles is now basically locked out and he's not to be able to run. But with the governor, it is almost certainly going to be Xavier Barsera and Steve Hilton. So he's still in the running, but Tom Steyer did not get into the top.

I'll give you it, Doug. You caught me. Because Tuesday last week, I rolled up to the mailbox that is near my home. And I dropped in about 50 ballots for Nithia. So. You did 500,000. I mean, you were out there all day. No, that was in the coordinated telegram chat.

Is it just like very obvious that older people more likely vote Republican and they also do in person voting and. Yeah. So that's what I looked at. So that's what I looked into. I was like, okay, all right. What's going on here? I'm sorry, I'm harshing the vibe. So even Trump has weighed in on the California elections.

He also votes mail-in. Trump, just to be clear. And then he was like, you know, again, he's like, voter fraud. Why does this keep happening? Republicans are winning day one. And then the mail-ins just like happen to do this. So what is actually going on in California? California is incredibly slow at counting votes.

And this is a valid criticism that kind of sucks that we have to wait weeks or like a month or whatever to know who wins an election. And California is, I believe, the slowest. by far. So why is that? 80% of ballots are mail-in for a, for a state of 40 million people. That is a shit. That's so many. 80%. And on top of that, like, California mails ballots to everybody to mail in. It is funny, though, to be like, we shouldn't count the mail-in ballots in a state where it's 80%. It's like, yeah, well, that's a thing. We should only count 20% of our votes? Well, no, I mean, they've pushed for it, right? So they're, and then the problem, in quotes, is that

they have to be, you just have to get it in the mail by election day. So it doesn't, it might not arrive for up to seven days before you can even count the ballots. And then you have to do all this extra verification because it's mailed in like signature checks. So the secretary of state has like a whole little thing talking about this. So you have to verify signature. You have to vote they didn't vote in a, you have to verify they didn't vote in other places and all this. So essentially the short version, California has decided to do a very long process here that is encourages mail voting and then is really thorough about making sure the votes are not fraudulent. So are they fraudulent? No. It's just California is really slow. And then because Republicans with, for example,

Donald Trump, have been talking about mail in voting as this fraudulent thing, they don't do it. And so what happens is they all vote day one, like you said. They go and vote in person. And then all of the Democrats or young people or whatever or old people are all mailing in. Just why say to me? Yeah, Warren. I vote mail in. Yeah. HIP. Yeah. whatever? Right. You know, if you're, you know, it's kind of a little painful to stand up and walk to the ballot. Sure. When I get my hip changed, I go. I do the mail-in voting. Right, right. So it's interesting that this is sort of causing this, you know, conversation around like fraud. It's not fraud. California has opted for this incredibly slow system. There are a lot of calls from Democrats being like, even Roecona this morning was like, guys, we need to make this faster because it just looks so bad. But it is not ultimately fraud. And I want to end with proof that it is fraud because Perry, if you pull this up,

your candidate for governor living for God and country DeMotte. Yeah. Who's currently, I believe, in second to last place. Second to last. Yeah, unfortunately second to last. He's not doing the best. Yeah, I mean, I was looking over the policies

of our top three. For example, Steve Hilton, one of the key policies is make California the crypto capital of the world, which to me is actually... Is that top of the list? Yeah, this is top of the list. The top of the policies list

is make California the crypto capital. of the world? That's actually above Keep California the AI capital of the world. It's funny going to... Even if you're a really tech intensive guy, you wouldn't want crypto to be ahead of AI.

That's crazy. Yeah. This is the guy who got second? So affordability is below cutting car registration fees. Yeah, it's got... The candidates are an interesting spread, but probably the most interesting is Living for God and Country DeMotte. First name Living for God

middle name and country, third final name, DeMotte. And I thought some of the cool, you know, policies here, if you read the full platform, is that he wants to create a,

where is it? He wants to create a militia in California and then we're going to create our own sovereign wealth fund. And then we will no longer engage with the federal government and only use our own money. Dude,

this guy's awesome. I'm glad I stuffed mail in ballots. If we go stuff some ballots right now, we get our fucking king living for God. You know why he's not dead last? Yeah. Because I was crayon balance. Ranskarts.

I want to say this. My dual Mithia DeMont ballots were going crazy. They could really get something done. And I just want to point out for audio listeners, next to his policies, he just has photos of

his passport and driver's license. Here are pictures of my passport and driver's license. And it just says, here are pictures of my passport and driver's license. Join the dumpster fire response. The DFRT, maybe. Everything is about dumpster fire. If you're sick of demo publicans and Republicans.

Then, dude, this website's money. Yeah. Living for God. So, Aidan knows a guy, a little segment

that I'm bringing back. Okay. Interesting thing. So a friend of mine, I found out, worked for Spencer Pratt. Oh, really? For this election.

Wow. I didn't know. Like at the crystal shop? Dude, not literally at the shop, but had insight into his finances. Okay, wow. And what he did.

and I was just like what was working for him like and he was like dude I I uh it sucked because he was well one he was kind of a weird like demanding guy in general he said but he said he had insane spending habits so his paychecks for the hill were very big like he was getting paid an extraordinary amount of money and he spent all of his money from that show

on things like starting the crystal store. And to the point where he ran out of a parent, this is just what my friend told. So this is all alleged from him working with it. Isn't it the American dream though to strike it rich on reality TV and then open up a crystal shop with the money and go back to. He didn't put any of the money aside

and spent so much of the money that he earned from that show on things like the crystal store that he had to move back in with his dad. Really? Yeah. That's what we need running. in California. This is just what this is what my friend worked for him

for like I think like a little over a year or something this is just like at like at the crystal shop. Not not literally at the crystal shop. He, but he was like yeah, that's why I didn't vote for him. I was like this guy's not responsible at all. Like I and he was like I kept telling other people like like I have a real

just I think this guy was shitty to work for so I just didn't vote for him. Just on a human level. Maybe some people just need more power. And then, you know, you promote, you keep promoting them until they find their groove. Yeah. If they just become the mayor, it'll be fine.

That's like, does he play Xbox? Does he? Yeah. I don't know if Spencer Pratt plays Xbox. Wait, hold on. Let me try another transition. Speaking of the new world record on Mario 64,

can I play that on my new Xbox? Mario Carre. Mario Carre. You can't fucking weed. Okay. I thought it was interesting because I've been seeing a little thing circulate

on my gaming is back timeline that the new Xbox CEO, Asha, she is apparently killing it, doing a very, very good job, at least as far as Xbox bands go.

So during this tenure, I think we talked about a while ago when Phil Spencer, the previous guy, was removed from this position or, did he resign? He resigned. I mean, he's been there a long time. I think it seemed like he was removed,

but it's obviously one of those things where it's like, I'm stepping down. Honorably discharged. Yeah, honorably discharged. Since taking over for him, they have done things like lower the price of Xbox game pass, like the multiple versions of it, which they got a lot of heap.

for and they did lose like millions of of subscribers over when they raised it last year. They're changing the logo and going back to like an old sense of the branding changing like the marketing campaigns announced that they were bringing back console exclusives which is something that fans wanted. They are announced a new console venture altogether

nicknamed Project Helix and trying to also apparently internally promoting people that have been on the Xbox team for a long time to sort of get a feel for like the old culture at Xbox to like set the tone with this fan base. And I think there is this collective reaction from gamers online that like Xbox has kind of fallen by the wayside. One of the reasons being they don't know how to name consoles. They don't know how to do it's a billion dollar company. It's insane. I couldn't tell you. I think they've made four. I'm not sure.

I think they've made four Xbox. There's four versions of the last one, bro. Okay, wait, wait. So there's the Xbox. There's the Xbox 360. Yes. I could get there. And then it was the one. Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X.

But are those different? No, those are the same. But aren't those what's the same? No, those were the same. And then there was another one, right? No. After Series X? See, that's the thing.

Nobody knows. The series Q. Xbox console launches. Can I push back on this? No, maybe. Let me. Let me do like a big, like you finish. I guess finish.

I think there seems to be a general positive reaction from Xbox fans on things like the subreddit for Xbox on Twitter that she's goaded, she's moving things in the right direction. And also, from what I can see, allegedly she gets to do a lot of these things because during Phil's time in that position, he had this mandate of a 30% profit margin. in after they had acquired massive studios like Activision Blizzard. And it's like, hey, now that we have these things, we spent a ton of money, you have to make the Xbox or like the Microsoft Gaming Division

a lot of money now. That is your goal. And then he then like failed to do that. And apparently, or the idea is they have removed that mandate internally. And that's part of the reason she can so freely make a lot of these changes or decisions. That's like a theory. going around.

I mean, yeah. I fully agree that there's clearly a tide shift in public perception. When she first got announced, people were like, gamers were like, who's this woman going to come in? And now they're like, oh, she's kind of based. But realistically, everything you listed is like, it's like deck chairs in the Titanic, bro. It's like tiny, it's like they lowered the price of game pass to still higher than it

was before they raised it. They announced exclusives, but they're just at their big conference. It was like Gears of Wars, is the one exclusive, console exclusive, and it's still on PC. Like, there's this general trend of console hardware sales are already declining outside of the switch,

like PS5 and Xbox are both. And the Xbox what? Give the full name. Xbox Series S and Series X. Okay, nice. They're both like on hard times. And they, it's going to get worse because all hardware consoles

are going through this, um, RAM price spike. Everybody has to raise prices again. So there's a big risk that everyone's gonna get super pissed really soon. Nintendo's raising prices in September. I think Xbox is doing theirs pretty soon.

PS5 is doing there's pretty soon. So everyone's gonna be mad about that. And they have no real big exclusive that's like changing the tide on it was already a losing battle. They were already losing. PS5 was already beating them, beat the brakes off, I'm really.

And now it's like, they got a new CEO's like dressing things up a little bit, but it's not, nothing has changed substantially. And she's just nicer to the community. And then the people thought. It's like, I guess cool. But the business is not any stronger than it was before.

If anything, it's weaker. More time has passed. And they keep announcing, you know, like she got a lot of pushback from fans for including the logos of PS5 when they announced new games because the games are multi-platform. They have to make money. And so she's like, you know what? You guys right? We heard you.

We're going to take those logos out. But they're not going to not release them on PS5. Nothing has changed. The games are still releasing on PS5. No, no. But the logo is not there. is not there at the bottom when they announce it in the Xbox conference.

This is, it's just minor. So I had the same general pushbacker thought specifically to the game exclusives thing as this something, as something the community was excited about. Because one, I was like, I saw two of the exclusives that got announced. One was like a new Gears of War game

and then I forget the other. It's a clockwork something. Yeah, and I was like, that's not turning the ship around. This isn't Mario. It's like, I do not think an exclusive. at this point does anything significant to save the brand. And I also don't even really understand

like why an Xbox fan would be particularly excited about that game being exclusive. What does it do to you as a fan of the brand to like have that game on other platforms to begin with? I don't even like, why would you complain about a PlayStation logo? No, console, I mean, they want it to be exclusive because if not, right now the ideal strategy for a gamer if you want to get access to everything.

If you're real hardcore into it is you buy a PS5 and you have a PC or you buy a PS5 and you have a switch. And that covers everything. It covers all the releases. Yeah. All major releases. Xbox is not included in that. But is this just like an Xbox like console wars fan that she's appealing to basically? Yeah, basically.

But that's, that's like. Someone who's wearing the Xbox jersey is like, I want you. They shouldn't care. They shouldn't care. But if you're a new consumer is like, I'm going to become a gamer now. It makes no sense to buy the Xbox. You're just not getting anything unique. So there's no reason.

but Sony has timed exclusives for big games. So what else I thought was interesting in the vein of the console stuff is that they have already kind of walked this back when I looked into it. Oh really? And because of the spiking costs of creating these things right now,

so because RAM specifically is so expensive, among other parts, Project Helix is being like totally reworked. They don't have like a timeline, they aren't sure if they're going to be able to push it out. And this being one of the, the big announcements that like the fan base of Xbox was particularly particularly excited about. This isn't even something they can commit to at the moment, even on like a two to three year timeline.

Yeah, the steam deck just went up to $1,000. And the steam machine. So I've been keeping tabs on the steam machine all year. And this is a valves big entry to the console market sort of because it's technically still a PC. And they have delayed it from when it was supposed to initially launch. May to later this year with an asterisk because they're trying to figure out how to make it even remotely price competitive with how the components are spiking. And I can't remember a time when I was a kid where I watched console prices go up significantly over the course of a generation. It's insane. They should be going down. They should be doing many versions and yeah, it's wild. I mean, I'm seeing, you know, games industry commentators say it's making games, like hardware, console gaming into like a upper middle class only activity.

Like it's literally like pricing out the broad families that used to buy, except for Nintendo, which is doing pretty well. Their console is more expensive than the last switch, but they priced it above the cost expecting tariffs to be a problem. Instead, RAM became more of the problem, but they've been able to like have very, very minor price increases. So Switch 2 is like, seemed very affordable like comparison. And it actually had the best year of any console Nintendo's ever had in the 50 years. Which Switch 2? This last year is the best launch they've ever had

of any console back to the NES. None of them. That is shocking. Look it out. I promise you. We talked about it on the show. The opening month was the best, was the best month ever.

Yeah, it's not like I don't believe you. It's just very surprising given that the Wii in particular was like just unbelief. No, it's insane. It's like switch to do we for that time frame. You know. Okay. Oh, maybe not long term.

Total sales, but yeah. Could we turn it around with this, this is what I would name the next Xbox. Xbox one five. Xbox one. Because you already have, you, there's four Xbox ones. There's the Xbox one. There's the Xbox one. There's the Xbox one S is the Xbox one S.

Yeah. So Xbox one five. I like this. I like it. It's simple. It's, and why not keep it simple, Asha? I want to keep it straightforward and understandable.

Can you put the word series in there somewhere? So I know that it's like cool. Hear me out? Yeah. X, the everything box. X, the dude, partner with Elon. And it can read the tweets while you. The weird Xbox fans will love that.

There's a Venn diagram of people for whom that. That would be the greatest moment of their life. I just don't understand why people would pay for this when you can go to Claude and say Claude, make me Xbox 5. I think, I do think, it's. kind of, do you think the era of new exclusives is sort of over? Like, you need to have- Nintendo, Nintendo's leaning in, they haven't changed a damn thing. No, but that's because it's like, you need to have like an established, recognizable game character to be able to get away with it,

I feel like. Or, you know, in Sony's case, sometimes that'll be like Spider-Man. But that's, you know, it's a recognizable character. I have a hard time imagining any time, with It's like how gaming has aged and like where the industry is at, making a new IP console exclusive that is successful and drives for the sales of a console. It's changing. I got to talk to some people through the reporter Jason Schreier at Summer Games Fest. And some of the things I heard about behind the industry is that more likely, despite all the hype about Asha Sharma, there's going to be layoffs probably, the increased cost of the

console is, like you said, making them panic. And very likely, it'll have to be a managed decline on the whole business. Based on the way they're headed. Like, the sales have not picked up. That's what she's saying. So, and, and, uh, in general, Sony's handling that better, but also like a managed decline of like this old style of console, hardware, uh, selling the mass. Like, that's all changing.

People are adapting in different ways. So, yeah, I think the industry is reacting. That's why I think, I think valves plays. smart. Like Valve, Valve has like the best position. How's that different? In what way? I think they just have like a really like trust. They've developed like a really, really trusted brand and they're just like building a skin for what is basically a PC that you can use in really any way that you want. Like I think it's more fitting of like their industry position and also the way that the broader industry works now. I think what they're doing well is having a store that

makes a zillion dollars a day. I mean, Microsoft would be doing whatever the fuck. they wanted it if they had Steam. Yeah, right. Steam is amazing. Fair enough. I think it doesn't fucking matter what the Steam machine does. Yeah, that's a good point.

Well, I think it's a smart thing I mean, I think the Ramp prices kind of fucked their plan. Yeah. But I think the idea is like, hey, our store is now significantly better and we get a ton of great new indie games which are now out competing AAAs.

Yeah. We make Steam deck for mobile to compete with Switch. We make Steam machine to compete with consoles. We get on your PC. We're going to win every market with this bigger store. It's a good strategy. But then if you take out Steam, I think suddenly the whole business is much more cheap.

Yeah. They don't have to rely on it. Yeah. Right. They don't have to do anything. They have a billion dollars. Half-life three in 20 years, maybe. Yeah, they barely make any games.

Don't get a hay yourself. God. The U.S. and Iran say they've agreed on terms to end the war and reopen the strait of Hormuz. You already see oil prices from a high of $126 a barrel down to about $80 a barrel today. That's a lot of progress. The war, of course, drove up the price of gas and other essential. and has led to some ugly polling for President Trump. 61% of adults polled by NPR, PBS, and Marist disapprove of his handling of the economy.

His handling in a certain light makes sense. His priority was preventing Iran from getting nukes. But Trump's messaging was unusual, unusual for a president. Last month, the reporter asked Trump, to what extent was he thinking about Americans' finances when he negotiated with Iran? I don't think about American financial situation. I don't think about anybody. But I think about what's he doing coming up on today,

explained from Vox. Well, speaking of games, Fable was just announced by Claude. Well, Fable 3 was announced by Microsoft, and then Claude said, we're going to one up that shit. Oh, these are different? And they said Fable 5.

We're skipping forward. Wow. No, I saw this as I was about to come to this podcast. Literally, they released today, kind of a surprise launch. I don't think it was announced. No, it was not. Yeah, it was they just dropped it today.

A brand new model from Claude called Fable 5. And I do want to show you some things from their announcement. This is basically mythos. This is the one they've been talking about. And they did a couple things. You know, they hyped this up as there's going to be a huge security vulnerability for the world. And everyone's got to be prepared.

They said, this is what they'll do. If you try to use this thing to hack anything or anything untoward, it automatically behind the scenes reroute it to a really weak model, like their old opus one or whatever. Yeah, it defaults to Claude Opus 4.8, which until yesterday was the most powerful model. It's not like comparison. Yeah, yeah. It's not like super weak sauce. Okay.

But anyway, I want to pull up the, uh, their launch page here. Where is it? Because it did something that was seemingly impossible. It beat Pokemon fire red using only vision. Can you show this parry? Interestingly, this is like a thing. This has been like a test. Yeah.

It's been like a thing. And previously, all the models required a lot of scaffolding to be able to be able to get through it and like they would break at certain points and they would have to fix it. So this one entirely through just analyzing what's on screen and then responding, it was able to, this is a speed run and we're going to show it in 50 seconds. Thank God we can finally outsource playing video games. Yes, because I, you know, humans are not automated playing Pokemon. But this is real.

It's true saying the footage looks a little crisp. Perhaps Nintendo, they may have played this on an emulator. It may not. Nintendo take down claw. May not have actually on the game. Send the SWAT team. Get in a large legal battle with clot. But pretty, you know, it's solving even the, I mean, it took me a long time to solve that

Q-bone puzzle when I was a kid. But you figured it out. I did figure it out. I did get there. I'm sort of a self-learning AI. You're sort of a recursive self-improving child. I am like a, uh, anyway, we're almost a-y-in-heas-cruz-through this. I mean, for somebody who like doesn't, the reason why this is impressive, amongst other things,

is you need a lot of context to progress through a game like this, right? for a while now you could have an AI that's like, fight in this Pokemon battle. But if the idea is, okay, you have a badge here and now you need to know to go to this area, to go back to this area that isn't making forward progress,

but eventually it's part of this longer term goal. Like, that's the challenge. I've seen there's been little channels on Twitch that are like, Claude plays Pokemon for a while. And they inevitably get stuck in like one gym that's a little more complex or a part of the game

where you have to actually like have some thought beyond just what is in front of me right now. Yeah. And so I'm excited to see, that them replace lawyer jobs with Pokemon playing AIs. Yes, that's their plan, I think, here. So anyway, I thought it was just interesting.

I thought it was an interesting release. They, the last thing that's interesting about it is that they, this is their most advanced model. It comes out and they go, hey, if you're a subscriber, use it to your heart's content. All right, enjoy this thing.

It's fucking awesome. It's the brand new latest tech until, I think it's like July 3rd or something. It's from the near future if you can find the exact date. It's like a very soon date. And they're like, after that, though, it's, it's token-based price. June 22nd.

June 22nd, token-based pricing. That's two weeks. You get paid. You have to pay us based on the usage, which is a sign, of course, that like this, you know, the subsidized Uber model is like burning through enough cash for them. They have to, they've been doing this for business clients, and now it's coming to regular users where if you want to use the latest and greatest models, you're going to have to basically pay to play for the amount you're using it for.

Right now, getting a subscription, you could just like ask you to do a lot of hard things. and you're making out on that deal. It costs them a lot more than it costs you. They're adapting that because they're burning through a lot of money. So this is like a big, after this moment, it'll be interesting to see, Claude, which is right now making the most money of any AI company, revenue, not profit, but revenue.

If people adapt, do they switch to a cheaper Chinese model? What do they do whenever it costs you a lot more to do the things you want to do? That's a big question. It is much more expensive than some of the recent open, like Deepseek, actually, the Chinese breakout one, they just came out at DeepSeek version 4. And it is very good and it is so much cheaper than these models. And so now the question is going to be like,

okay, if Anthropic or OpenAI is going to IPO and then say, hey, we are going to have so much profit, all the companies are going to use our AI for everything. But then DeepSeek just launches a new ultra cheap thing, which is maybe just as good in many different contexts. It's like, is that sustainable of a business model? Yeah, it's a big question. Surely it'll be sustainable.

understandable enough to keep paying us, but will they be able to... What's especially interesting? You guys, we talk about this in the show where it's like all the, all the IPOs, SpaceX and Anthropic and OpenAI, we're going to be included in the SB 500 early and they're going to change all the rules. A little bit, but I actually wanted to lead into that because the news just came out that OpenAI actually made its SEC filings to go public. So they're prepping, you know, this is the confirmation that they are indeed prepping. to do it as we have mentioned on the show. And I wanted to ask you guys what the update was on that

because I heard that the S&P rules held strong. So if the S&P had caved to basically SpaceX and potentially anthropic and open AI, it would allow these immediately listed the IPOs of these stocks to be picked up by everyone's 401Ks in retirement funds, which immediately provides a lot of demand and support for the price and the amount of money that they're hoping to raise through going public. But the S&P did not change their rules and are demanding a certain profitability from these companies in order to get listed. Yeah, there's like two big rules. One is the seasoning period. It's the idea is like, hey, this is a brand new company. Before we take everyone's retirement money and buy it, let's see where the price lands. Let's like give it a year and let's see where

it evens out. That's the seasoning period. And the second one is the profitability requirement where you have to have multiple quarters of being an actual profitable company so that you're not dumping some hype machine onto the public. These rules have held for a long time and they've been great for investors. And Elon got out of these rules for the NASDAQ and they thought they were going to get out of it for S&P. But they held strong because people were really mad about it, which is cool. And I think it's one of the reasons that these companies that are IPOing now are like, well, that was our big plan to like get a bunch of new money and we have to now start getting towards profitability. Because if you don't get list in the S&P, that's like trillions of dollars you're locked out of. That is like a lot of

money and a lot of passive retirement funds. Yeah, I mean, I feel like the investment advice I've gotten literally from a young age is just keep dumping money into the S&P 500 index and that is your saving. It's half the market. Half of the stock market in terms of like trades is people's passive 401k is buying the S&B loan. So yeah, you can't really afford to be locked out of it long term. Okay, I did want to ask because what was the change with the, because the NASDAQ also was going to make a change in order for SpaceX and. They did make the change. Yeah. They have a six month seasoning period. They lowered it to 15 days for SpaceX and they got rid of the profitability requirement. Yeah. So essentially they're just like, their argument is that SpaceX is too big to ignore and we would not be representative of the big tech companies if we didn't include them as fast as possible. But this isn't a rule that just applies to SpaceX.

This is a rule that now applies to any company looking to get listed on the NASDAQ in the future. No, it's an exemption for like super mega cap. You have to be like over a trillion bucks. You gotta be a fat cap. The idea is you're so fucking big that if we ignored you, we would be, we wouldn't be doing our deal. You gotta be crazy.

You gotta be big. NASDAQ, NASDAQ chairs like, you gotta be big for me. You gotta be fucking huge for me. And then I'll let you own. You gotta be swole. You gotta have an Elon Musk type body with like the cyber truck build. But to be clear, it's not, you don't have to be big in terms of profit. Just the idea of just idea of being.

You gotta be like a big, confident guy. You could be a big, huge baby with money leaking out of every orifice as long as you're big. That's the thing. They don't make as much money as most people. But will this, I assume this also will apply to anthropic and open AI. They are companies that would be big enough for the six. They're both about a trillion. It's funny because the revenue of SpaceX plus Anthropic, plus Open AI, all combined is one-tenth of Walmart.

But each one of them is valued bigger than Walmart. Yeah. Or like around Walmart. Well, okay. I don't have a Walmart app on my laptop. That's true. Well, I don't see Walmart beating Pokemon. Okay?

I don't see that. It's funny because Walmart's like shifting strategy is like they are emphasizing online sales and it's kind of catching on and they're doing a really good job like relatively. But, you know, that'll be in a different episode. Yeah. What were you thinking? No, just Anthropic, they said this in May. I forget if we mentioned it. But they said they're going to have their first profitable quarter.

So one of these companies might be making money soon. That's cool. Let's do it. Damn. That's, you know, I told you guys, AI is going to fix everything. Yeah, I think they got that quarter. Companies are going to make money now. We've invented it.

Finally. What if the business made money? Yeah, you're fucking crazy. Is it the meme where the guy gets thrown out the window? Yeah. You know, I will say, for people who are, you know, more in the AI sauce or interested in it, one of the interesting things that's going to happen with this fable model is, is it is the mythos model, which if you remember a month or two ago,

Anthropic came out and was like, this model we've come up with is so powerful. It will destroy all of the cybersecurity around the world. We cannot release it. It is dangerous. We are going to pick a few selected winners. of society who we will share it with them and they will fix everything like Firefox and banks and whatever else. And then like I think last week I was going to mention on the podcast we didn't have time. You know, they're like we're releasing it to more people and countries and whatnot and we might

even release it to the public soon. And the question, I think Prime made a video about this or talked about it. And he was like, you guys last month were saying it was too dangerous like to release into the wall. And now you're saying it's coming out in a couple of weeks. And then it was apparently in a week. And now it's out. And now it's out. I'm going to ask it to hack the government. Yes. Can you hack the government for me? I think what's interesting is the, you know, the worry or one of the big things is like, these models are getting so powerful, it's going to break everything. It switched to opus.

Yeah, that's a whole thing. And if I ask why, it says it has safety measures that flag cybersecurity or biology topics. Yeah. Wow. So guess what? I can't hack the government. In theory, part of what they're trying to pitch as their valuation is like we, Anthropic are going to fundamentally change all of software. And so this thing being out, we're going to start to see is this hype or not because we don't know. We don't know how much of

this is hype or not. So it's kind of interesting to see like, are there a bunch of companies that are like, holy shit, everything's breaking or we fixed all our bugs or blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I played around with this agency to see if it was like, oh, is this crazy. It felt like the last one. I mean, I'm not using it for a gentic song. I'm using it for asking a question. I think for like a casual AI user, even for me and the level of, I'm not doing advanced coding. It's like, these things are all plenty good. You're talking about can you give it a giant code base and find major security vulnerabilities?

I did see this. I don't know if we can check it out. It's like apparently he asked it to create a horror game and this is what it one shot. This is... Look, I know you're like hyped up on AI and I don't want to hurt your feelings. This doesn't mean anything.

No, I don't think this is like, I'm just saying, I don't think you could do that in the last Claude. So this is interesting. I don't know what the fucking means. That's in browser, right? that's something. It's weird. It doesn't look like a very good horror game, but obviously, you know, that's the thing you say about it.

It's just, it's just a weird. My estimate, if you asked me yesterday, is that this shit is bad and really far, is what I would have said. And this is like more than I would have expected. So I'm just going to update my analysis slightly and be like, okay, well, this is interesting. Yeah, that's fair. The place in a browser is kind of wild to me. It doesn't, it's not like that. That doesn't beat Resident Evil, right?

It's just like an interesting thing that they can do. Yeah. I think the big, the really big, I guess, no, that's not fair. I was going to say the big question is like, can this stuff actually help in enterprise software? But, you know, that's very, it's very perfect. I ask myself every night.

Programming coded. I'm always like, can this help an enterprise software? It's something I, my guy. Could my SaaS product? Could I give it a Jira ticket and it runs on its own and I don't have to do additional testing? I don't create shareholder value for B2B SaaS companies. Do you talk about Jira on this show.

You like Jira? I hated Jira. Yeah, nobody likes Jira. Well, everybody, Brandon left. He said, I'm done with this fucking show. I'm bored. Nothing you guys were saying is interesting.

And he just, with no context. So I guess just keep going, Aden, you and me. Okay. Doug, for audio listeners, I'm looking at a stuffed care bear and the head of a Barbie, a small toy fridge. I'm just curious why you pulled this image up.

Oh, this is it. Now that Brandon's gone, I figure this is the show. Okay, fun story, and it's a real bummer that we lost Brandon because he would really love this. He would have loved this. That's right, ladies of gentlemen. It's the most exciting time of the year. It's the annual Uber Lost and Found Index.

Woo! Lost innings! Wait, what is this? So I didn't know about this. Uber every year publishes info on how much shit people forget in Uber's and leave behind. And so this is the 10-year celebration. As part of that, they list the most unique items that were found this year, in actual ubers, including breast milk, dentures, 420 donuts, meeting like marijuana,

oxygen tanks, brand new mini fridge. I thought that was silly. And then, you know, 10 most commonly forgotten items, they list out, to be expected, phone wallet luggage. New York City is the most forgetful city of Uber. We're out of guard fucking wimby, I'll tell you that. Oh, my Miami who also forgot to, and that's why they're not in the playoffs. Lubbubu on the loose. Yeah.

I just thought this was fun. So they post this whole report of how much stuff people forget in cars. Did that say 70 tiramisu cakes have been left? Is that what that said? That was me. I'm sorry. It's,

who has been making for my weight? How do you spell tiram su? So I'm like, I just buy it, but then I leave it in the Uber so I don't eat it. What do I say, I don't know how to spell tiramisu. I'm really like,

oh, right there. Yeah, this was this year. So they list out the most notable. This is in one. Somebody left the, wedding cake in an Uber. What's funny about this as well is they said in the thing they're going to have a new like lost and found feature in Uber where you submit that you've lost an item and then you could pay for the driver to come back and deliver it to you. So I think it's a funny

little business. Maybe that's why the switch is selling so well. They keep leaving them in Uber. Didn't you have to do that in China? Didn't you pay a car? Perry forgot his phone. And we had to go get our translator to call the Uber back and we paid him to bring the phone back. Oh yeah. And then just Tip them, yeah. We, I mean, everybody knows somebody who leaves shit in Uber. Like, this is a, so it's funny that this is so common that they need to make reports about it. And this is completely unnecessary. But somebody left tickets to the Atlanta Falcons.

Brutal. Brutal. One red bottom lube-ton heel. Top five toys and novelty items left behind. Carebear is number one. That's why they have a picture of a care bear. DSIs. You are still using DSI?

Why doesn't say my green scooter? Oh, that's the way people type it into the app. You're leaving your baiblet in the Uber. Having to call the Uber, you're like a 34-year-old man. I didn't realize this is what they send it in. It's like, hello. Hello, over. I'm missing my small, hello, kitty pouch that says J.

Boogie on it. That's so specific. I'm not going to have to gold Rolex. You said this is an index. How can I invest? Yeah, interesting. So you were profiting at all this? Do they get to sell these?

I heard the SMP's compromised right now. I'm looking to put my money elsewhere. Oh, yeah. They have the most unique that have ever been lost. Divorce papers, the head of a salmon. A lobster in 2017? Dude. And that's the update on the Uber lost and found report.

Stay tuned in next year when we give you the 11th annual report. Dude, I want to, now I kind of want to compete for this. Maybe this is dangerous. You know what if we try to get the craziest thing and get on the list? Polymarket odds. What's found in the Uber? This is dangerous. This is like when the WNBA deal.

thing broke out and then people started doing it for money. It's like we could bet to get on this. Well, that was for betting. There's no money in this, right? But not until we make a home market. Well, I'm just saying it could be fun. We could be on the list. We could find the craziest thing. We leave it in Uber. Then we call and go, you lost my, uh, prosthetic aiden or whatever. Okay, hear me out. Dead body. One of us volunteers. That would top the list, dude. Sorry, I left my fucking dead body. I'm so sorry to ask this. I left my friend in the car.

My friend is dead. He's in the back of your car. This is easy. Me and Doug weekend at Bernie's atriot. In the back of an Uber. We leave you in there. No, okay. Wait, wait, hold on.

All three of us want to have kids now, I think. Whoever has to go first, we ask our lovely partner to have birth in the Uber and we forget it. We see if you can get on the list. Having birth in an Uber, I forgot something. Oh, the kid. I didn't enter with the kid, so I didn't remember it. You forgot about the kid already. No, you're doing a great job.

You're doing a great job. I'm just so funny to call the Uberjari. Is there a crying kid back there? You got my baby in the car? You got my baby in the car? I can't find him. Close the door on the umbilical cord. Yeah, I love where our heads at with this.

I think we should be into it. I would love to, um, birth is a fun fact about Norway. Well, the Nordic fun fact of the week. Sorry, that wasn't enough possessed. Can you intro Nordic Fun Factor like a lot of hype? Yeah. Me? Yeah, this is the big segment.

Everybody looks forward to. This is the segment I hate more than anything in the world. Well, and that's why we're saving the Nordic Fun Factor the week this week. You're not bringing this? I know you're drooling for the Nordic fun fact. No, I'm not. And for the Danes in the comments who have been complaining about not enough Denmark and Nordic Fun Factor the week? Yeah, that's...

It's about Denmark this week. Ladies and gentlemen, there is introducing. More than your own partner, you would listen to a Danish person in the comments. Absolutely. Nothing Aidan cares about more

than someone who's Nordic coded in the comments. My girlfriend went to the American public school. She's dumb. The Nordic Fun Fact of the Week featuring Aiden McCaig. And now kicking it off. Three, two, one.

Go. Well, I really did want to save this, though. You want to say? No. You absolutely can't. It's in our list. I wanted to say it. The New York is a main video exclusive to give.

I wanted to save it for the Patreon. We're at it. People are going to unsubscribe. It doesn't matter. The people are desperate for one thing. You would have give them some esoteric bullshit back about the Nordic. We can't promote the Patreon.

Like, hey, tune in every week for the Nordic fun fact. Being an Aiden friend in real life, this is what it's like. He just tells you random shit about fucking Nordic areas. Yeah. So it's like to inform our parents. So viewers at home or listeners, if you're listening to the audio, I'm your real friend telling you that if you pay me, I'll tell you with the Nordic fund.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, I can talk about medical asses, I guess. No, tell us the Nordic Fund. Wait, are you for real? I'm for real. This is like, this is like, this is like. I had to pee. It's not our full-timer.

I want you to tell me the Nordic Fun fact. I'm demanding it for the audience. Okay. Fine. Fine. There was an electrician in Denmark this year. They had the big election. Thank God.

Thank God. This is free. We cannot pay well this. You can't pay well this important information. Okay, what happened? What happened? No, you know, I talked about California. I want to hear about Timor.

Don't be all standoffish about it. Tell them, you guys sell it to us, okay? What excited you about this? All right, what? The fucking, they had to form a new coalition government. No, why did you make me feel that? I shouldn't feel bad. You hyped up with a fun fact and said there's an election in Denmark.

Okay, who? We can't know. We can't only talk about California elections. We got to hear about a specific Scandinavian country elections. Just hear about it. I don't even know, I guess. You're sorry. Hey, go, go.

Who were the, who were the? I'm going to, like, I feel like, it's like the parent trying to be like. So, yeah. So who is the belligerents? Who are the two competing? Who do you like? What do you like, honey? Who is the?

Well, I mean, Mede, Frederick. one. Oh, really? How? Okay. I want you to imagine. Okay. You're, you're,

Meda Fredrick. Metta, Frederiksen. Mette Fredericksson. She, and it's, it's in Danish. You guys, you guys sound like you have potatoes in your mouth. I can't do it. I can't say it right.

I like a fish. I want you to imagine you're at the end of 2025. And you, you're approval rating. You're the leader of the social Democrats in Denmark, which is like a center left party in Danish politics. All right.

And you've been the prime minister for quite some time. I think since 2019, maybe a bit earlier than that. Since 2020, when your approval rating, I believe, peaked at 79%. Your approval rating now is now in the low 30s. People are sick of you and the Social Democrats. They don't like me.

I'm in character. You said it'd be here. Yeah, yeah. No, I like that you're leading to do. I appreciate that. Uh, and right, right at the beginning of the year, something rocks Danish politics. Can you think of what that might have been? Someone tripped on a Lego, bro. They covered it for weeks, bro. Anything else? Any other ideas? I don't know. Like a bike fell into a river. Yeah. Yeah. Someone, someone, someone, got closed a bike. and the city shut down. No one could get the way to need to go. Okay, well, you're close. You're close.

Trump threatened to invade Greenland. I remember that. I remember that. That, you know what? I was kind of an American bag. Yeah. And it was my proudest moment. What is? And we did all support it 100%. We have talked a lot on the show, how Trump's aggression in the second term

has dramatically shifted elections in other countries. And this actually did the same in Denmark. So the social Democrats saw a huge uptick in support. Meda Fredericksson saw a huge uptick and support. Similar to Carney, similar to Australia. Like she saw a surge in her approval for her government's response to Trump's threats of Greenland earlier in the year. And they kind of capitalized on this surge

and gambled by calling an early election. Now they had up until November of this year to call for that election, and it just happened, I think, at the end of March. And then because they thought this is the time where we're going to be able to get enough seats. The other main player here is Lars Luka Rasmussen. I would say Rasmussen is a little eccentric. He posted this.

He's leaned into calling himself the goat. takes a lot of pictures smoking publicly. And when it posted like an Instagram photo with him like next to a goat to help insinuate it, he also upon being asked about becoming Prime Minister for a third time, which he cannot be like in this current government.

He said, rule it out entirely. That would be a strangely weak position to put yourself in when you're the goat, right? Which I thought. But the goat would say. Yeah, yeah. People have actually liked his job general response to Trump's aggression earlier in the year is seen as like the second party in the in the government prior to this election as like uh part of that uh response that people liked and also in this post election period he was seen as this kind of kingmaker because as the leader of the moderates he is able to greatly shift what the coalition government post election is going to be he could either choose to have the moderates uh lean in the direction of

of the right-wing parties in Denmark and shift and give them, like, the power in government, or he can go back to, like, the left-wing parties and the social Democrats being one of them, uh, and, and give them the power. And prior to this election, he publicly proclaimed that he would not work with the further left-wing parties in Denmark, one of them called, like, the red-green, uh, party. Okay. And he, uh, after the election is over, uh, uh, The numbers come in, and now they have to form the government based on which parties have won the seats, right? And it takes away longer than normal. It takes over 60 days to like get everything together. And Friedrichson and the social Democrats maintain power by forming a block with enough of the left wing parties and the moderates led by Rasnison, seemingly walk back their promise publicly and do form a coalition government with the other left wing parties, leaving them in the majority of.

the right way ones. Okay. And, isn't it kind of funny how, you guys ever seen Kogios? Yeah. I've seen like an episode. This is a very,

it's a spoiler, actually. So if you're, two, clever of yours, it's such an old show. The main premise of Kogios is that he makes himself into the world villain

at the end so everybody unites and he saves the world by being the bad guy. Yeah. It is kind of funny that Trump has had this effect on so many elections. What if he's secretly a deep cover?

Like, I just read, that solar panel pickup has hit all-time highs massively because of the war Iran. What if he's an eco-terrorist that is like... He's like, I'm going to make

green energy adoption and I'm going to help the center-left parties of Europe. It's funny because they... The new government, like, Friedrichson announces like her cabinet of ministers, 21 people, first time in Denmark's history where there's more women than men in that cabinet as well.

And they released this. like a paper basically of how we're going to govern and the policies that we're going to pursue during this like next term of government. And one of the things is like within the next 10 years, we're going to roll out free dental care to all dates. And within the next year to a certain people below a certain income level, they'll get free dental care within that one year. Okay. And to think that like Trump through his actions, he's like, I wanted to get all the Danish people free dental care. Yeah, that was his plan.

He doesn't get enough credit for it. But that was the, honestly, that the way this party was able to maintain power is a direct outcome of this polling burst that came from Trump's threats. And I thought that was kind of wild. It's just like another, you know, global domino of like how his actions have helped shape.

Imagine it's 2016 and Trump is like, what can I do to make the world move as left as possible and I make a fuck load of money. Holy shit, president of the United States. I think he's a super nice guy. Everyone around is like, but you're going to have to be a villain. I'll do it.

I'll shoulder that burden. I'll do what I have to do. And he starts working on the hands. He read a moral ambition. Yeah, yeah. How can I? He's actually unsure. Every country around the world shifting to the right.

Shipping a Tivist garden. Oh. Yeah, probably. I think the last interesting thing about this was they had to make... What was the first interesting thing about it? Sing, dude. I'm kidding! It was it.

Don't put on your pouty American hat. For the... I'm curious for the Danes listening what big parts you feel like I may be missing. For my understanding, you know, Fredrickson is like a pretty milk-toast candidate that is like nobody. he's like super jacked or excited for. And her party did lose seats compared to the previous election.

Like they still, like, it was just not as dramatic of a loss as it could have been. And it was the damage was mitigated. They had to end up making concessions to further left-wing parties in Denmark that actually saw seat increases. Yeah. And things like the free dental care are things that those further left parties are like drawing a line in the sand on that the social Democrats have to like compromise and say like okay well you'll give us the majority and will like back your your advocacy for like there's so many

party policy you pull us up it's just interesting it you're right i mean like literally they both need this little tove i'm making up a color what is that what is the m color no it's tove yeah the ms are the moderates yeah i know but they need they need moderates they need the moderate i don't know what color that is. I'm trying to say tope, lavender, tov. I think it's tov. Yeah. Yeah. So the Tov party is her kingmakers. Yeah, they're kingmakers. They're clearly kingmakers. I think if any Danish person listening to this has insight, one thing I didn't really understand is like why Rasamussen like walked back his his commitment to maybe working with right wing parties and saying he wouldn't work with the left wing ones this time. Yeah. Because I heard one explanation that I won't even repeat here because

it just didn't make sense to me. So if anybody, could synthesize that a bit better. Yeah. But that is the Nordic. That's the Nordic fun fact of the week. It was pulling fucking teeth. Hell yeah. Hell yeah.

Pulling teeth and they're now super clean. Dude, if I just said, you know what's annoying? I described this whole election and I said it was like, this is how Vermont does its elections. He'd be fine with it. He'd be fine with it.

But because it's Denmark, he's got attitude. You fix the problem right there. You lie, you say you're covering the like Vermont elections at the end. You're like, It was Finland the whole time. I need to start sprinkling in stories.

It might get away when his name is Ludwig Vermelssohn. And, uh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, real quick, uh, super fast story. I just need to correct it because I got this very wrong. A couple weeks ago, we talked about Google glasses and those being announced and how they're going to come out later this year. And I incorrectly said that the meta glasses currently do not have displays in them. And that is wrong. I was misunderstanding what was going on.

They actually did the meta ray band glasses. They now have a version with a display. But, and apparently it's like good and people like it. But it's been like way sold out is not available outside of the U.S. So I think I kind of conflated those things as well as the really big holy grail is glasses that are going to be able to have two displays, right, on both sides. And so that may or may not come about the end of this year. There's some good Marquez Brownlee videos about it. If you search for those with titles such as wait, smart glass.

are suddenly good. But just quick update to that, because that was just, that was so wrong. That's your... And I appreciate, that you want to correct something. Like, it could have to do with smart classes. It could have to do with Iceland.

It was, we all make mistakes. I think it's important to make corrections on this podcast when we fuck up. So if you hear anything, perhaps about the Denmark story, that you want to correct it in the next episode. You know what we should do is we should do a Nordic fun back of the week and then a Nordic correction of the last week's fun fact. If we could fill the last 45 minutes of the podcast

with like some esoteric Nordic thing. Like long apologies, a lot of bowing. We want to apologize for this. That would be my ideal. I'm done. I gotta go do my other fucking podcast. I'm gonna go do that one. Bye guys.

Thanks for joining us on this week of the news. Bye everybody. See you next time. Formula One. So hot right now. It's like if traders in succession at a baby on wheels. Teams lying. Drivers beefing.

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