Lemonade Stand - We Solved the Strait! | Ep. 058 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Episode Date: April 15, 2026

On this week's show... DougDoug points at a map, Aiden has friend in Hungary, and Atrioc solves NFL streaming. We launched a Patreon! - https://www.patreon.com/lemonadestand for bonus episodes, dis...cord access, a book club, and many more ways to interact with the show! Episode: 058 Recorded on: April 14th, 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 2:00 Blockade of the blockade 22:56 NFL is a Monopoly? 30:55 Samsara Ad 32:21 Hungary’s historic election 48:40 So what changes? 51:51 Parallels to the US 55:11 Anthropic Ad 56:47 Truewerk Ad 58:05 California’s Governor Election 1:13:53 Rice Cracker Drama 1:18:46 AI rate limiting? 1:25:29 The Sam Altman Article 1:35:09 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

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 It's something else here now. Something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus. It's the series Stephen King calls Scarious Hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi Vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules. Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch.
Starting point is 00:00:22 Saving those children is how we all go home. From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. Oh. Sorry to amp up the energy a little bit. You were sitting, we were waiting for you. We were sitting here in silence, waiting for you to start. And then you just, and then you guys were. Don't act like you were high energy 30 seconds ago.
Starting point is 00:00:48 And I've been like getting this stomp class. We're waiting for you to start. And now we're in the show, welcome to eliminate stand, where we fill your minds with knowledge. Okay, we have a lot of talk about today. We do have. Too much knowledge. In fact, you're going to have to delete something in there. It's actually off the page.
Starting point is 00:01:02 There's too much knowledge to go over this episode. You may as well leave down. At the end of your life, you may as well close the video. You actually shouldn't have a tattoo the knowledge on those body. Like momentum. You have Aiden talking about Sweden. Yeah. You can only have so much, right?
Starting point is 00:01:15 Look, we have, of course, an update with the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah. And the consequences of that. We have an update on the Hungarian election that just happened. Big news story right now. The D.O.J... I don't know about that. Is that dramatic?
Starting point is 00:01:31 Is that spicy? Should the viewers carve out? How much of their grandmas, like, their memory with their grandma, do they need to carve out for that? After we get it with Hungary? That's going to be your last thing. Hungary's taking it. Hungary's going to be the only thing you need to remember after this episode.
Starting point is 00:01:45 You're not even going to remember the straight of Hormuz conversation. No, no, it's actually, you're going to think, wow, the whole Iran thing, not even important anymore. Because Hungary. Because Hungary is just, it's top of the new block. I think we will. Hungary has nine million people. Anyway, sorry, go ahead.
Starting point is 00:02:02 And... Sure, who's a zero, but nobody lives in the street. Just say that. A fair point. We were going to talk about the California governor race and the DOJ opening an investigation into the NFL. But I wanted to start. I feel like it's like, it's almost like the shutdown update,
Starting point is 00:02:19 except I would say way more consequential almost. Yeah, for the world. Yeah. And I wanted to just start with what you had to go over with Iran. Because I feel like every day I'm seeing changing headlines about what's going on. Yeah, we're at like day 46 of this whole damn thing. The big, big new news is the blockade of the blockade. Do you guys hear about that?
Starting point is 00:02:43 Yes. That we're blockading their blockade. And the big thing I'm trying to follow up on is, is anyone running this blockade? Because there's conflicting report. Social media is filled with what you might call fake news. A lot of fake. It's hard to, oh. And take it, take it.
Starting point is 00:02:58 Take it. Why not? We're just doing a show. Okay, I'll take it. Hello? Ask them about the straight of hor moves. So, Delta blockade. And obviously the big fucking question, sorry, for breaking the set.
Starting point is 00:03:12 This has been a disaster, guys. Okay. Is China going to try to run the U.S. blockade? That is the big question. Because they are saying the blockade is dangerous for world order and a bad idea and that U.S. will not be allowed to interfere in their affairs. and they're going to fill up oil tankers
Starting point is 00:03:30 at one of the Iranian ports and they're going to want to take it to China which is an oil deficit right now. All the Asian countries are needing it. And Trump has said that that can't happen. So this is the big question mark. So far, as far as I can tell, there hasn't been a ship
Starting point is 00:03:47 that has specifically gone to the Iranian port and run the blockadea. But we're only like 24 hours in. As far as I can tell. There are actual ships have turned around. Ships have turned around and ships have all. also passed through, but the ships that have passed through, it is being said, did not go to an
Starting point is 00:04:03 Iranian port first, which is the clarification. Okay, so the U.S. is threatening any ship that is moving Iranian oil through the strait. That is, that was the clarification. Trump's tweet was like no ships at all. And then U.S. Sentcom came out and said, just to be clear, this is only Iranian ships from Iranian ports. And so far, as far as I can tell, none has passed. But it's a clear question mark because that is a major source of Chinese oil that was still flowing during all of this war so far. This is the first time that would have been stopped. And we don't know what is going to happen.
Starting point is 00:04:36 China is, they've only put out a tacit statement so far saying this is a bad idea, no good, bad for international order, but they haven't said yet, like we're going to send ships to escort. China met with Spain and she said the world order is crumbling into disarray, like direct quote. I did want to ask you about, so I was watching this video of somebody who lives in Vietnam right now. Okay. And they've been there for 16 years.
Starting point is 00:05:07 He is an American immigrant to Vietnam. It has a family there, I lived there a long time, talking about how this is affecting Vietnam, because they didn't have a strategic oil reserve in the country or a very large one before this started. And one of the things they note in the video is the size and the preparation of China going into a crisis like this, right? Just at a base level, you could take something like the amount of electric cars that are there, right?
Starting point is 00:05:35 So way less people that need to get around or dependent on something like the price of oil going up, like the price of actual petrol going out. And also China in general has a huge stockpile for, like their reserves are much stronger than a lot of the other countries in Asia like Vietnam or the Philippines was one of the other countries that declared a state of emergency. But you, I think I heard you say something that even though China is in such a strong
Starting point is 00:06:06 strategic position, you were trying to emphasize why this is such a big problem for them still, which I didn't fully understand. Yeah, I'll bring it down. So the largest importer from the Strait of Hormuz is and was China. A 37.8% of all things that go through Hormuz go to China. And while they have this massive oil reserve, they have not yet chosen to deplete it. They have not yet chosen to drain the reserve. Drain it or use any of it? They haven't used it. The reserve is, as far as I can tell me, they keep it secret.
Starting point is 00:06:35 But they have not announced they're draining the reserve yet. And so that's a choice they're saving in their back pocket. They have stopped all diesel exports from China. So you can't send any oil out. They has to be used internally in the country. And they've made some gas rationing type choices. But my understanding, and this is a really, recent article from the FT called Fortress China showing some cracks. It's like, there are other
Starting point is 00:06:58 things than oil that are transmitted through that straight that are really like precursors to many manufacturing things. There's helium. There's obviously fertilizer for food. There's natural gas, which is used energy in factories. There's all these things and they're all showing cracks. They're all causing problems. And most of them were able to transmit because of China's relationship with Iran. But this new blockade changes that. And it's sort of set, I mean, you know, I think if there's, you know, it's a little hyperbolic, but like this is the, this is a direct economic conflict between the U.S. and China on this one. So something's going to have to give. They, it can't last that long before China is openly saying we're going to send ships and.
Starting point is 00:07:41 This is ostensibly to punish Iran, right? But yeah, yes. The beneficiary of Iran being able to use the straight would be China. Yeah. And so now they're the ones really getting fucked on top. Okay. It's a weird thing because strategically, if this wasn't going to China, it makes more sense than Donald Trump. I don't think we should begin this war, but this is more sense than other plans because it, before Iran was making more money than they're making before the war.
Starting point is 00:08:06 Like the war started and there's a price of oil spiked and they're just shipping it out at a markup. And so this blockade kind of forces them to negotiating table more and they have to. But the problem is most of it goes to China and China will not allow. their economy to be cut off by, like, it's like, you know, right before Pearl Harbor, America cut off oil to Japan. And then they, that's where they made the decision to it. You know what I'm saying? Like, these are the things that lead up to bigger conflicts.
Starting point is 00:08:33 Like, if you look at pre-World War I, it's all people cutting off supplies of each other. It's very similar to like the buildup to things like that. So I don't know what happens. I will say you mentioned other countries. I wanted to go through a list here of like, Australia has been a public announcement. If you can take the train or bus to work,
Starting point is 00:08:50 you have to do so. You have to? I guess I don't know. Or like they're strongly pushing. I think it's strongly push. I mean they're like arresting you. New Zealand has a new four level fuel alert system that is apparently going up. Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan and the Gulf states have prices up 40 to 120%.
Starting point is 00:09:06 Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria are rationing electricity. They're now cutting petroleum with ethanol, which like degrades the quality of cars. But like you need it to, you can stretch it a little farther. Pakistan is taking all government vehicles off the road. schools closed for two weeks. Egypt is closing shops, malls, and restaurants. Slovenia is rationing fuel and Luca Donchage's insureds are two bad things for Slovenia. Italy's restricting airports.
Starting point is 00:09:33 Isn't Sri Lanka has a, didn't they declare every Wednesday of public holidays? Yeah, they're doing, yeah, there's some state of emergencies. Ireland is having mass protests on fuel prices. UK's, it's hitting all over and this double blockade only amplifies. Now nothing is getting through where I was, before, was a trickle. So, you know, it's weird because one thing that's, like, confusing me is that if you were only to look at U.S. stock markets, you would not know there's a damn thing going on in this world at all. Like, they have been remarkably stable, remarkably, like things, like
Starting point is 00:10:09 Deep Seek was more damaging to the U.S. stock market than a global oil catastrophe. Like, this is just, like, trickling up and green. But everywhere else is starting to, everything else, even in the United States, at the lower end of like the K, people are really mad about fuel prices. Like, it's happening all over, but it doesn't seem to be hitting that sector of the economy. Something I'd seen at the end of last week was, uh, the disparity between the cost per barrel of oil on the futures market versus the actual cost per barrel if you needed the barrel of oil right now. And then it's never, uh, disconnected as far as it is right now. Like if you, you're, this is, keep in mind, this is something that was like around Thursday of last week,
Starting point is 00:10:52 so I don't know how this updates by this point. No, it's still true. But the future price of an barrel of oil was about like a hundred nine per barrel. And the actual price per barrel, if you needed the oil immediately, was like a hundred and forty-five. And this, it represents some sort of weird misunderstanding of what the market perceived. as the value of oil in the future, even though the crisis continues to go on versus the actual value of getting the commodity right now that I don't really understand.
Starting point is 00:11:29 Yeah, I mean, the layman guess, also not deeply understanding this would be everybody's assuming this is going to end in a week or two, right? And that just keeps happening every week. But the can keeps getting punted. So there's a big conspiracy, this is a conspiracy theory alert. I'm going to drop a conspiracy theory alert.
Starting point is 00:11:44 But there is a big and growing, and in some reputable areas, is being talked about, conspiracy theory on this. Is it my conspiracy theory that I shared earlier? You said that the straight-of-muse is not real.
Starting point is 00:11:54 I don't think they closed it in all. I think they made it all. I think it's a giant false flag. Yeah. It's not that one. Okay. That one is in certain circles. I'm going to tell you mine.
Starting point is 00:12:05 The conspiracy theory is because that disconnect happens when somebody or group people have made massive short bets on the price of oil, basically saying that this will end and it keeps the price of, the futures price of oil down.
Starting point is 00:12:19 There is a theory that this was done by like a central, like a U.S. government, like a treasury. Like that is the person that has the financial resources to make such a massive, consistent bet that pulls the futures price of oil down, to make things seem okay, keep things all under wraps, and hopefully, in their mind, it all ends.
Starting point is 00:12:42 But if it doesn't end, it's such a catastrophic loss of money, the bet you've made for taxpayers, that it would be disastrous and whatever. So... Do we make money if the thing ends? If it ends, I suppose maybe we do. Okay.
Starting point is 00:12:56 So that's how we solve the deficit. No, yeah, then we could solve the deficit. Okay, cool. Again, this is all unconfirmed. I am not ascribing to this theory. I'm just saying I've heard it from more reputable sources as the weeks go on because the bets are so large and there is such a big disconnect
Starting point is 00:13:08 between the digital price of oil and the physical price of oil. Okay, does this match up with what... when I was looking into the spike in oil prices and the purpose of futures in general is futures actually do provide a stability to these types of markets by existing and they make sure that the price spikes aren't felt
Starting point is 00:13:35 by people in these short bursts in the same way that they otherwise would like if the futures didn't exist. And that's the benefit of futures existing at all because they provide price stability and help people like weather short-term storms. Yeah. But this is turning out to be a lot longer than people initially expected.
Starting point is 00:13:54 So the financial reality of this is going to hit harder because, or am I taking two very disconnected ideas? No, I think what you're saying is correct. But think of it like a, like almost like a polymarket bet, right? Like if you were trying to make an election
Starting point is 00:14:11 seem closer than it was, And so you took a massive bet against the person winning in the bet. So it looks closer to 50-50. Do you understand? If that ends up being true, you're fine. If not, what's happening right now is people are doing that. We don't know if it's a central bank or if it's a lot of people who just simply believe that this will end. Okay.
Starting point is 00:14:30 But there is a bet being made that's putting it closer than what it is now. And either that will become true and it's fine or it will not become true. And this is a weird bet that's even more destruction and financial. Oh, my God. So that's where we find, I mean, you know, that I don't have to go incredibly deep on Iran more because it gets covered every day. I have two different things I want to propose. Well, first off is I want to clarify with you, just my understanding, because you have looked into this a lot more. So right now, the other Arab, you know, the other Gulf states like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE, they're not able to transport resources, materials out of because of the Strait of Hermuz and that is blockaded.
Starting point is 00:15:07 So they can get past the first blockade, which is Iran. Which is Iran. But U.S. will allow them in the second blockade. Okay, yeah, yeah. But they've allowed, so the U.S. is now blockading Iranians ships and saying everybody else can come in. But presumably they're not trying to get in anyways because of the Iranian blockings. Is that correct? There's basically nobody who meets both criteria.
Starting point is 00:15:25 That's what I'm saying. Right. It's like, it doesn't. Wait, am I wrong? Isn't the one way you can get through right now is if you have, if I have a ship that is picking up oil in Saudi Arabia and I want to go through the strait. And I'd say it's like a Japanese ship or something. They pay the Iranian toll in Yuan to move through the straits so that the Iranians don't, don't, uh, shoot them. Yeah. And then they don't move Iranian oil.
Starting point is 00:15:55 They're moving Saudi oil in this case. And they're fine. That's the, that's the limited case of who can go through right now. Or am I just, I'm making that up. I believe you're correct because ships have gone through along those criteria. Yeah. However, Trump's tweet did. Oh, sorry.
Starting point is 00:16:09 Trump's tweets. said anyone paying a toll to the Iranians, especially in Chinese Iran, where he got the tax loophole. So like, I mean, his tweet has been softened by U.S. military and what they're actually enforcing. But that is
Starting point is 00:16:24 the big question mark. Because if you just look at what was written from both Iran and America, there is no there's no way to get through. You can't fit both criteria. A few ships have gone through. I have a proposal for you guys. Perry, can you pull this up? Oh, hell of yeah. This is a, oh, sorry.
Starting point is 00:16:39 This is like Tokyo drifting this. This is a map of the Middle East. So the obvious problem, right? This is a giant. I actually thought your solution. It was like, what if it was the Middle East, but at a Dutch angle? Right. Guys.
Starting point is 00:16:53 Wait, hold on. What if we put the oil on the incline? What if we spilled all the ships out of the street? The Middle East, the obvious problem, Strader moves right here. However, we have a tool that we have used throughout human history to be able to get boats from one place to another, that we previously couldn't.
Starting point is 00:17:11 What is it? Water. No, it's a canal, right? If you build a canal, so if we build a canal from the Persian Gulf across Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea, and they are our ally, boats can go across, right?
Starting point is 00:17:26 This is the line that should have been. The line. We can just reconvert it. We just pour water into the line, make the line longer. They already dug most of the hole for that, right? Yes. So we could just... They're literally, yeah.
Starting point is 00:17:39 Dude, imagine the line was they faked the city, but they were really digging a canal the whole time. And they reveal it now. And they're like, this is our strategic line reserve. And we're using it. Holy moly. Okay, even if we did this, what's the obvious problem? Even if we did this? The cost, the astronomical cost.
Starting point is 00:17:58 No, no, no, no, no. Of building a canal across Saudi Arabia. Shut our allies in the desert anyways. Why are you freaking out? Shut up, dude. That doesn't mean that doesn't make any sense. We built the gold game. in three weeks. We can do it if we put our mind to it. You come in, you come with an idea,
Starting point is 00:18:14 and you say dream with me. Yeah. And you immediately drag it down. I'm like, I'm the pin, I'm the bean counter. You shouldn't have it. It'll cost too much. It's Saudi Arabia. I'm sure they can afford it. They can afford it, dude. I'm sure they can do it. They couldn't afford the lines. How are they going to afford the five times as long? To be fair, this would be cheaper than the line. It's easier to build a canal than a city. It's so much longer than the line. It's, it's not even, I mean, looks pretty small on the map. The honest problem here, if you look at this, even if you got the money, is Djibouti.
Starting point is 00:18:45 Djibouti could just do the same thing as Iran and block the Djibouti straight and then we're in the same position, right? So this doesn't make sense despite what you were saying, hey, Chuck. You're talking about Djibouti at the bottom there entering the Red Sea. Yeah, next to Eritrea in Africa. That's already happening with Yemen.
Starting point is 00:19:00 Yemen's already doing, they're already in that. Right. So this canal doesn't make sense. So I'm not worried so much about Djibouti going, breaking back. So where do we need to put the canal then. Okay. You go through Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, in Lebanon to the Mediterranean Sea, right?
Starting point is 00:19:15 Because then... Sort of the safe zone. Once the votes are there, we're scoffrey. Okay. So, also Kuwait, Iraq, we're on pretty good terms of them nowadays. Syria,
Starting point is 00:19:26 the war is? The only problem here? Well, then if things didn't do well, if, like, there was any sort of, you know, pushback from Iraq, we could simply send troops back in and send them super well.
Starting point is 00:19:39 We bring back George Bush for one last ride To get the canal built in Iraq We need the Iraq It's Kuwait Iraq Syrian Lebanon Canal Yeah And Lebanon's super You called it out That's the problem
Starting point is 00:19:54 Fine right now The problem? Lebanon Run by Hezbollah Who's an Iranian ally That actually wasn't the problem I was thinking of Gonna close the canal And they're gonna put a toll booth on the canal
Starting point is 00:20:05 I was thinking of a different problem Than Lebanon right now It is really not No place you can put a canal. Except, gentlemen, there is one obvious solution. You go north through Iran to the Caspian Sea, right? We get boots on the ground. We start digging.
Starting point is 00:20:23 We get it'll go right next to Tehran. Okay. And we get to the end. What is the single problem with that? The single problem. The single problem is that the Caspian Sea is not a sea. It's a big lake. It's a big lake.
Starting point is 00:20:35 So then our boats are stuck in the Caspian C. get there. We spend trillions, boots on the ground in Iran, building a canal. Oh, fuck, guys. The government likes to do weekly sprints. You just kind of focus on the next leg of the canal. This boat hits the show.
Starting point is 00:20:52 Oh, shit. But, okay, even if you actually did this and you got the canal, you got all our boats into the Caspian Sea, there is actually a way to get to the rest of the cities, right? If you look there on the map. Through the Caspian Sea? Once you're in the Caspian Sea, we just need one more canal.
Starting point is 00:21:07 You go east. Okay? You go across Kazakhstan, across China, across all of Mongolia, across China, again, across Russia, and then you're at the Sea of Japan. Your boats are scot-free. Right? Because straight-in-right when we're there, okay, now we can go up through the Bering Sea. We can go through the Northwest Passage, down past Greenland, and we go to New York City. But gentlemen, what's the last remaining problem? I've... Greenland could close the straight, which is why we do need to take Greenland. Donald Trump was right. I was, I'm thinking about this because at first I was like if one country could influence a straight based on their geography surely a canal through multiple countries presents the more the same problem at a larger scale. I was thinking about that but I hadn't
Starting point is 00:21:57 considered that once you go through so many countries you actually create such a confusion that they didn't know no one knows how to force it or take advantage of it. And then we'll say checkmate, Ron. So one thing here is ideally, we could actually go down to Panama and create another canal alongside the first one. Just to double it up. Yeah. It's like adding another lane to traffic.
Starting point is 00:22:20 It just makes it back. You add just one more canal. You know what the solution is? This is like if we revived Magellan and asked him what the solution was. Like, what do you think? What do you think the fastest way is to get oil out here? No, this is the type of shoe we could do as a society of every country work together. You know what I'm saying?
Starting point is 00:22:38 We can build an even bigger canals. We can build a bigger canals that go every which way. Let's do a one-time wealth tax and we'll fund it. That's a brilliant idea, Doug. I think you've really, you've bought a unique insight. He's cracked the code. He might have cracked the code. Why aren't they doing it?
Starting point is 00:22:57 Okay. Anyway, Iran. Why don't we hop on over to maybe a smaller, lighter story? I wanted to hear about this DOJ case against the NFL. Well, let's do Hungary. You want to talk about Hungary now? Are you trying to be trying to put a little light in there? I'm trying to add a little spice.
Starting point is 00:23:13 We could talk about Hungary. I'll be, I'd do it. It's pretty quick. We'll combine them both at one story. All right. You're just trying to get my stuff out of the way. Just fucking throw a truck out.
Starting point is 00:23:23 You take nothing at the end. Yeah. Yeah. Um, D. So listen, you're, you're an NFL viewer a little bit. I am a lot.
Starting point is 00:23:29 Okay. I'm not really, but the complaint from NFL viewers and senators who get complaints from their constituents about the NFL, is that it has become more and more dispersed across different streaming platforms to the point where if you wanted to watch every single game of the NFL in the last season, it would cost you $1,000, which is higher than even the cable era. So it's like astronomically expensive and people are getting upset about it. So the DOJ, despite not really doing much antitrust enforcement in this first year of Trump's term, has come out with a new lawsuit against the NFL.
Starting point is 00:24:05 or I guess it's beginning the process of investigation in the NFL. And the idea is, back in like the 70s, when the NFL was just getting off the ground, they were given an exemption to a collective bargaining thing. The idea is that every NFL team should negotiate TV rights on their own. That's the idea that they're competing against each other and keeps the prices down, yada, yada, but NFL was given an exemption.
Starting point is 00:24:27 A lot of them to all negotiate together and be a collective issue for all NFL to negotiate as one TV rights package. And that made them a lot of money and it's been quite successful. But that only applied to traditional cable TV. It does not apply to streaming. And so they've been operating like it does. But now there's this question mark of like, hey, is what you're doing really allowed?
Starting point is 00:24:46 Is it a monopoly thing? It's weird. You're gouging people. I feel like it's easy to watch, right? It's all in one place. Yeah. Well, you just go to stream east. You go to stream east and it's all there.
Starting point is 00:25:01 So I don't know what they're, what they've been talking about. You too. It's like this last season, you know, I paid for YouTube TV plus Fox, whatever it was, and it's like a cool $110 a month or something like that. It's crazy expensive. You can watch most of them, but it is wildly obscenely expensive. To get all this, if you want to get everything.
Starting point is 00:25:18 Right, right. If you want to get like your local, anything outside your local network. But the NBA has been miserable. Like when you see LeBron James on the sideline watching the game on stream east, you know that there's a problem. He's a billionaire. He's watching that happen? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:25:32 Wow. It's just convenient. right? Like I experience it more with the NBA as well, where I bought, I think, like YouTube TV and the NBA like league pass this year and I couldn't watch the Lakers game. And between these two things,
Starting point is 00:25:47 I was paying, the first time I've ever paid for sports my entire life. And I was paying $190 a month between these two platforms and I couldn't watch the fucking Lakers game. And I was like, what's happening? What is it? And I gave up, I canceled both.
Starting point is 00:26:02 And I'm like, I know what I'm doing for here, I did that same story. So why in this specific case, why, I still don't quite understand, they're breaking, it sounds like with negotiating deals with streaming platforms, they were following the decorum or precedent of the law as it applied to cable packages up until recently, but then they started breaking the law to broker more deals with more streaming platforms. If you are trying to find the exact true legalese reason for this, you're going to be lost. because the truth the matter is,
Starting point is 00:26:34 it is mostly pressure from senators who are getting a lot of anger from constituents who have just found this to be horrible. This experience is horrible. There's not, it's really kind of a gray area. Technically, you know, in my mind,
Starting point is 00:26:47 it's not that crazy for the NFL, which is kind of operates as one org to have their own negotiation for TV rights. But the way it is broken, basically what the DOJ seems to want is not to like dramatically upend the rules. They're just like, make it cheaper. Like make it find it.
Starting point is 00:27:00 They're kind of like trying to put pressure on. Yeah, I guess, because I'm not understanding, like, the NFL, it's a company, right? It's an entity. Right. So how do you tell it that it has to break up into multiple? That just seems strange. Well, the way it was prior to this ruling in the 70, was like each individual team
Starting point is 00:27:17 technically owns their own rights for their games. So you're just preventing the teams from bundling together. So they've been collectively bundling and negotiating as one entity, which technically is a monopoly and allows them to, you know, kind of gouge consumer. If they competed, they would probably drive the price of down. teams would try to have a cheaper package and the other team to get more fans or whatever.
Starting point is 00:27:35 That's the idea. But they can't, they don't have to do that and they possibly should have to do that with streaming. But really the OJs is like just, just people are mad,
Starting point is 00:27:44 figure it out. It's kind of what it seems like the vibe is, not that they're like deeply concerned about the lighter of the law and antitrust. I think it's one of those things where it determines presidential popularity
Starting point is 00:27:53 like gas. It's like if gas prices go up, the population's unhappy. If football goes up, population is unhappy. Yeah. Like you just can't do that. But you're probably right.
Starting point is 00:28:01 I think it's just like politicians be like, hey, look, football needs to be... Like, this is going to spark more change than housing, I think. I think you're right, dude. Yeah, I'm so torn because my initial reaction is, people are fucking calling in about this.
Starting point is 00:28:15 This of all the things. But I do think it does, it does matter. Like, it's a consumer thing that the bulk of people enjoy in some facet or another. It's a problem that is so common. in the American sports watching experience.
Starting point is 00:28:34 Like everybody talks about this. And how much of a pain in the ass it is. And I think it's just like one of the most common forms of entertainment. So naturally it's going to bubble up to the top and be like an issue that's pressing enough for some people to bring up. And it's like this is something that I want, I think government is,
Starting point is 00:28:54 exists to address. I don't think it's high on the priority list of all the things that we have to fix. I think this is number one. But I don't want to just like turn my cheek and be like, this is stupid because I do think it's, it, I think it's a tangible thing that makes people like happy or sad in a weird way that has real cascading consequences for people. No, I'm with you. I think people are, especially in crazy times, kind of turn towards escape as a little bit. I've turned towards basketball more than this past year as like a complete outlet away from the news and I've really enjoyed it until Luca got injured and then I was like a sad on both sides. And I really think for some people, the NFL is like that, and it sucks that it's like gotten exponentially. The prices are exponentially more expensive. Atriog the morning of, he's reading our NBA.
Starting point is 00:29:42 He's like, sees the Luca headline. He's like, fuck, God. No, I was distracting myself with Iran War updates. Now Iran War is your- I hope we, I hope we bomb the fucking straight. That's you, dude. You're getting mad. Close the fucking straight, bro.
Starting point is 00:29:56 I need something to feel. I think that's the real, the real reaction. pipeline that I kind of see. It's like when we were talking about on the last bonus episode about the layers of financial or social discomfort that kind of mount on top
Starting point is 00:30:12 of each other. And with something like this, like if you're sitting at home and like inflation is forcing the price the prices of everything in your life is going up, it's harder to meet your like mortgage payment. Maybe you just got laid off. You finally get to the weekend.
Starting point is 00:30:28 You want to watch your local teams baseball game and you open the YouTube TV app that you can like you're putting all of your free money into that costs $90 a month and you can like barely keep this on as you canceled your other subscriptions and then you can't watch the game without adding a $20 peacock add on and it did and then you phone your representative because you're fucking piss and your life sucks and you can't watch the fucking stupid game like I I see that legitimate path of this being a form of entertainment or escapism that people want their lives and it's immensely frustrated access. And it just builds off of everything else that is shitty right now.
Starting point is 00:31:06 Yeah. I do think from my reading is like they haven't really figured out what they want. The DOJ. It's more of like just the anger and it's putting the pressure on, opening the door, be like, figure it out. We'll see. I don't know what will happen from this. But, you know, yeah, interesting.
Starting point is 00:31:23 That's the update on that little thing. Support for lemonade stand comes from Samsara. I'm going to be honest. looking at this ad script and I'm realizing that every company we work with uses me as the example of to make fun of in the ad read. That's what I'm here. Here they say that I could could have made a mistake while driving, maybe, or allegedly made a mistake while driving, which I would never do. I'm a perfect driver. And everybody knows that. And I wouldn't need, but even though I'm perfect, I might want a dash cam that could protect me from, from, you know, accidents or
Starting point is 00:32:02 accusations of things I didn't do. You would want a dash cam that captures real-time video that proves that your drivers are not at fault. Because I've been hearing a lot of rumors that you keep driving your big rig truck into a Pan-Express because they're out of orange chicken. Right. And you honk the horn all time. I'm a great big-rig driver. And I, I'm so professional that I don't need to The Samsara AI dash cams capture real-time video that proves when your drivers aren't at fault, protecting them for false claims and prioritizing their safety. It's more than a dash cam's complete system. Don't wait for the next accident by Aiden to take action.
Starting point is 00:32:37 Head to Samsara.com slash lemonade to request a free demo and see how Samsara brings visibility and safety to your operations. That's samsara.com slash lemonade samsara operates smarter. Aiden. Unless you've never made a mistake like me. Support for lemonade stand comes from Anthropic. because Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop it good enough. I, look, probably if you're watching this show, you have a good sense of what Claude does, but I have a cool new use case that I was trying out this week that I actually love,
Starting point is 00:33:03 which is that you can use Claude's voice mode on your phone, you can talk directly to it, it talks back to you. So what I did is I had this idea for a project, and for like two hours, I walked around outside, enjoying nature, talking to Claude, going back and forth and making sure there was like, you know, poking holes in my ideas. Some of the time it actually had some good feedback, but it's back and forth, and at the end of the conversation summarized everything we had said
Starting point is 00:33:26 into a clear document with bullet points that I could then use to reference to the future. And it is like a measurable improvement in my life because instead of sitting at that computer for two hours doing all this, I got to walk outside with my cats. It was great. That's awesome. It's weird because you could just talk to yourself and not remember any of it.
Starting point is 00:33:43 That's what I do. That's what I do. And if we look between the two of us, between me and Doug, it's like one of us walks away with great projects. that he puts together and displays to his fans. And one of us is Ludwig's friend. So it's like who comes out on top of that interaction.
Starting point is 00:34:00 Right, yeah. But you could tell Claude to pretend to be Ludwig. Are you ready to tackle bigger problems? Get started with Claude today at clod.a.i. That's Claude.a.i and check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all of the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude.com. I'm realizing Doug is also Ludwig's friend.
Starting point is 00:34:19 He's got you beat on every. I'm really not winning on it. You should probably use Claude. any front right now. I need to revisit this. Support for this show comes from true work. Working outside means you're at the mercy of the elements. You guys aren't blue collars like me.
Starting point is 00:34:34 You're the least... You guys don't get it done outside. You just told us an anecdote about how you would book meeting time at Nvidia to play TFT. TFT at the work site. I'm sort of a physical labor type dude. I kind of get it done. I use my muscles.
Starting point is 00:34:51 I use my back. I don't have my dainty little hands like you typing on a keyboard. Okay? But if you do outwork. The percentage of our audience who's like me might enjoy True Work clothing. True work's great. If you work outdoor, if you do hard work, these pants have four-way stretch for bending, kneeling and climbing a water-resistant finish to shed rain.
Starting point is 00:35:11 Nine intelligent pockets to keep tools just where you need them. He doesn't have any tools, but I do. I got plenty of tools. So the work doesn't stop just because the weather changes. Upgrade to the T2 work pants, stay comfortable no matter what. day brings, 50% of your first order at TrueWork.com with code lemonade. That's T-R-U-E-W-E-R-K dot com. Work, can you spell it,ated? It's true work, built like it matters because it does. You brought a shovel to the ring. Use code limit. This is
Starting point is 00:35:39 embarrassing. I guess I was digging. Well, we could turn the page and go to Hungary, because they just had an election for a new prime minister, a new party into power, and I'll keep it real. Victor Orvon, the former prime minister, or the current prime minister until June. He's a chiller? He's a chiller?
Starting point is 00:36:03 He's like a chiller? I think Hungarians wouldn't call him a chiller. Oh, because it's a different word in their language. Yeah, I mean, they would call him something else in their language. I'll give you that. In Hungarian. And he's been in power for 16 years. And before I talk about this, I have researched this for about five hours.
Starting point is 00:36:24 So there were undoubtedly be things that I don't explain fully or that I don't understand. But I'll try to break down why this is a really significant election and why you may have been reading a bunch of headlines about it. So Peter Major won the election over Orban, who has been in power. for 16 years. There has been an enormous positive response, especially in a city like Budapest, finally Orban being pushed out of power. And you know, why is this such a big deal? Like, why does this election matter so much? Orban, for one, was incredibly corrupt. Like it is it is well understood that this guy put friends and family members
Starting point is 00:37:13 into huge positions of power. So he was a chiller. He helps out his homeies. Positions to make extraordinary amounts of money. Common example. Adam Sandler does it and he's the coolest actor of all time. Victor Orban does it. He's the corrupt leader ruining. Yeah, LeBron.
Starting point is 00:37:29 He's with his son. Like, come on here. Orban was doing a little more than getting his friends on grownups too. Like, for example, a famous friend of his was Lawrence Mizaros, a friend of his that after he came into power in 2010 became extraordinary wealthy in a short time after the election. In just five years, he doubled his wealth year over year, saw a, I believe, a thousand percent return on his wealth in a time period that Mark Zuckerberg and Musk's only went up by 600 percent, becoming a multi-billionaire. You should have good investors in your circle. And this is a guy who was... This was a guy who was not wealthy
Starting point is 00:38:10 prior to his friend getting into power. And then he suddenly became connected to construction, banking. Which you hate the American dream. He saw his friend succeed and had a grussel do it himself. Yeah, he was inspired.
Starting point is 00:38:23 He was inspired. If I were to give him the benefit of the doubt, we could say he was very inspired. But there's been other examples of the corruption. Other things with Orban and people connected to Orban, diverting public funds to, you know, foundations, family estates, misusing European Union
Starting point is 00:38:43 funds that have been sent to the country. Also, another huge scandal that I was reading mostly before we started the episode today was the cover-up of a sexual abuse scandal in a Hungarian public school where the director of the school had been abusing young boys for, I think, over a decade. and many, many children victims to this person, and the deputy director to the person that was committing the abuse helped cover up these crimes as well. And both of these people got sentenced to prison. The abuser incredibly only sentenced to eight years in prison,
Starting point is 00:39:20 which absolutely blows my mind with this, I mean, the scale at which this person was abusing children in this school. Basically another person in the political establishment under Orban, President Novak issues pardons to people involved in this sexual abuse scandal and in Hungary you don't have to issue pardons publicly
Starting point is 00:39:41 they don't have to be public information and then it was leaked to the press like a year later that this had happened and this case spreads like wildfire that Orban like knew about this that these pardons was issued to these people that helped cover the sexual abuse in the school and it was
Starting point is 00:39:58 a huge one of the huge things that inspired the rise of the opposition in the buildup to this election. Like one of the massive scandals that had hit Orban, among all this other corruption that has existed for years. And then the other thing he's done is just ramped up control of state media. So Orban has, and his allies in, you know, in Hungarian business or in Hungarian politics have helped acquire media outlets over his time and power so that he has more and more control over public messaging in the country. And this has been especially effective in the rural areas of the country that have
Starting point is 00:40:41 less access to like TV channels than the like more urban cities have. And I'll kind of clarify why this, why this really is important, this control over the rural areas in a little bit. And then the last big, big thing that people criticize him on, or not, you know, not, not last thing, but one more big issue is his cozying up to Russia. So he's generally pushed Hungary away from unity with the European Union and closer ties to Russia and Putin. One of the benefits to this has been cheap Russian fuel that they began heavily relying on. And the, you know, this is making a deal with Russia, buying their oil at risk. low prices and for a while the benefit or the trade-off that citizens saw, I was like, oh, we have
Starting point is 00:41:36 really cheap energy in the country. But after the Ukraine war comes into play, energy prices spike. And even though they're still, they still have a deal to get Russian energy at a lower price, they still made it more expensive and rose with like the global surge and energy costs, right? They built in a margin that they didn't need to that specifically paid off Orban's government. Like they benefited from a huge spread on the Russian gas through that period of time. You got to get your cut. You got to get your cut. While refusing to receive energy from any other parts of the world and in like any significant capacity.
Starting point is 00:42:19 And they have also connected friends and like oligarchs in Hungary to Russian related business projects. So, for example, like Russia was going to build, or a Russian contractor was going to build two nuclear power plants in Hungary. And he sets up friends or people in Hungary to specifically benefit financially from these deals with, like, Russian companies at the expense of them not being the best decisions for the average Hungarian person. The way this is playing out for like normal Hungarian people through this period of time is consequences like in the 2020s, Sky, rocketing inflation, like way more than the rest of Europe. They aren't on the euro, by the way, even though they're in the EU. They have their own currency. Wait, can I talk about that just a little bit? That's the one area I do know about. Yeah. So Victor Orban, his economic policies have been pretty widely regarded as a disaster. He came in, he took basically personal control of the
Starting point is 00:43:17 central bank and had these policies of like, some of them even sound good, like low flat income tax across everybody or pro-natalist policies where you can get money for having kids. He did, you know, he had price controls on utility so they couldn't get too expensive. He put a lot of key state industries in his friend's hands, all these things, all right? And for a while, it seemed like they were working because they had relatively low unemployment and relative stability. And so everyone was like, okay, and he won some elections off that. He kept going.
Starting point is 00:43:50 You know, he had control of the media too. And then the underpinning of that started to become obvious, which is that he had seized control the central bank and was just printing money nonstop to fund all of his ideas. And the pro-natalist policies didn't work. The birth rate kept falling. In fact, they have fewer people now than they did in 2011 when he first got in there. And the inflation rate largely comes from their central bank, just running the printer nonstop. And so now they are experiencing what?
Starting point is 00:44:21 They had 57% price rise since 2020, double the EU average. Inflation peaked above 25% in 2020, the highest in the EU. And pretty much all that comes back to the fact that there's central bank. Every time he has an idea, prints the money for it. And it just devalues their currency, which is separate from the euro. So, yeah, I would say that's a huge core of like why, regardless of his media control, he's starting to see or has now seen. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:44:45 Huge people like turning away from him. There's real economic consequences for people in the country. like the thing so I I hate to say it but I have a friend I was going to ask what's your friend in hundred you know the specific the specific complaints and this seems to line up with the data is like the skyrocketing price of like housing in Hungary that's come along with this uh the general feeling of falling behind compared to a lot of other parts of Europe and all declining funding or effective funding in areas like healthcare he said uh there's been a really dramatic shift in the quality of healthcare and hospitals in the country
Starting point is 00:45:25 because of the economic problems that there's been. And I think one thing that's the really wild thing is that during this time that Orvon's been in power, one of the things he did was change the voting structure in the country. So with a two-thirds majority that he was able to get a long time ago, you're able to make changes to the Constitution. And with the constitutional changes that he made, he kind of gerrymandered and reconstructed the value of votes in the country
Starting point is 00:45:58 so that the countryside functionally has a lot more weight in elections than the urban areas do. And that's where a lot of his support was, right? Like people in Budapest that are more liberal are very against him and kind of always have happened. But this combines with things
Starting point is 00:46:18 like his control of state media where it was more influential over these rural, more rural, more disconnected areas of the country. And as long as he could maintain influence and power over these rural areas, he could continue to have these crushing results in the following elections that happened after the first time he got elected. And that's been one of the ways he was able to maintain power this whole time. So Peter Major is kind of used this against him in this election, which is, which is wild. He heavily campaigned in these rural areas, going to over 700 cities and villages in two years, meeting people in person and running this seemingly very grassroots campaign. And this guy is from Orban's like party in orbit prior to this and kind of like
Starting point is 00:47:06 broke out of it to run this opposition campaign. And by convincing enough people in these rural areas, he secured this giant majority in parliament under this win. So he actually only won 54% of the vote, but his party or like coalition, I don't know the exact situation, but he has 69% of the seats in the Hungarian parliament now because of that win. Because the rural votes ultimately have more sway? Yeah, because of the way that those votes translate into parliamentary seats, which is because of what Orban did while he was in power to secure his position, has been, like, effectively used against him. Flip the other way. And the payoff here is now that he has this two-thirds-plus majority, people are hoping that Majar uses this power
Starting point is 00:48:02 to undo a lot of the damage that Orban has created in this 16-year period. Like, you can create the constitutional changes to counteract a lot of what has been built up in the country before. Because Orban still has like friends, like stacked courts, people in positions of power that want to act in his general interest or might impede what the opposition wants to accomplish, right? But in theory, Meijer now has the power in parliament to override a lot of what Orban has built up to like stop the opposition moving in the other direction. And from talking to my friend, specifically, one of the huge hopes of people, particularly in Budapest, it sounds like, is that Orban and the people around him will be held to account as soon as this transition
Starting point is 00:48:56 and power happens. Yeah. And we'll, you know, we'll see if that actually plays out. Yeah. Some of the feedback I saw was that, you know, I wanted to ask you about this. I don't know about this, this Peter. I don't know what I said about him, but my understanding is he's, he's not so politically dissimilar from Orban. He's not like a massive,
Starting point is 00:49:15 but I think what people are excited about is his anti-corruption effort. Like that's the main thing. So he's been pushing on that specifically. Yeah. Yes, very much. Like, their politics are,
Starting point is 00:49:25 have been described as center right, which is like where a lot of the country aligns with. And these people don't diverge a lot, like ideological, ideologically, it really comes down to this counteraction of corruption. And people are just sick of Orban specifically and kind of what he... I mean, if all the wealth of your country is being funneled to a few friends of the league...
Starting point is 00:49:49 Like, obviously, that's the number one issue almost. I feel high performers. He has a great roster of friends. He's chosen well. And I think we live in a country where I think like corruption exists in the United States. I think corruption exists in every country around the world in some facet. Right? The way Hungarians talk about- Especially sweetie.
Starting point is 00:50:09 The way- Let's get back to it. Let's see where this canal is being dug to. The way Hungarians and the talk around this election, the way they talk about corruption, is that it's like, it is insanely clear and
Starting point is 00:50:23 insanely explicit, the amount of money he is taken away from the public to benefit him and his friends around him. The last kind of layer to this, and I would say the relevance to the audience, maybe, is like, how could this affect you? Is the way Hungary fits into the EU.
Starting point is 00:50:43 So the thing that I had heard about Hungary a lot is they're kind of the black sheep that upsets a lot of the European Union votes. And that's because when it comes to issues of like foreign policy or sanctions or I think tax, taxation, there's like a few categories of things. they need unanimous support from EU member states when they vote on things,
Starting point is 00:51:09 which is crazy because there's 27 member states that take votes. You can't get 27 people to agree on anything. I know. It kind of seems insane. So everybody's voting pepperoni and Hungary's like... And Hungary's like... It's more like I don't like pepperoni
Starting point is 00:51:24 and I want Russia, what do you want? I want that. We want vodka on the pizza. That's crazy. that all 27 have to... So Hungary has like blocked and delayed aid packages to Ukraine. They have...
Starting point is 00:51:43 Recently, there's been leaked phone calls of them, their foreign minister calling the Russian foreign minister during closed EU meetings and leaking the discussions of the European Union closed meetings. This just came out like this year and then direct conversations
Starting point is 00:52:00 between Orban and Putin as well. well. So that's been another thing that like rocked things before this election is the degree to which the Orban administration is like subservient to Russia. And they've been able to hold EU funds hostage before. Like even if they misuse EU funds and the EU freezes them because they're breaking the rules, they're able to leverage the fact that they hold this veto power as a way to like unfreeze those funds and convince the EU to like still give them the money. And they've also been part of an effort to slow down or stop the European Union sanctions on Russia over time.
Starting point is 00:52:38 So I think for the broader EU populace, for anything that Hungary is holding up or the information that they are leaking to Russia, the hope is that this stops now that this new person is in charge. Yeah, the Polish PM said Russians go home right after this election was over. He was like a big, he was jumping in. Like he basically said Orban was a Russian person. puppet. Go home from Hungary. Basically. It's interesting.
Starting point is 00:53:04 We read the book Kaput, which was about German politics over the last, you know, a couple decades. And then one of the whole sections was about how Germany has for a long time been super cozy with Russia and obviously a lot of oil intermingling. And then the, you know, German politicians basically being in denial up until the Ukraine war. And then Ukraine war happens. And that's complete and utter like, we've accepted the truth.
Starting point is 00:53:25 This is not a tenable relationship. And then somebody blows up the Nord-Pythew. line and it's like, you know, even physically, there's no, there's no connection, right? And it's interesting that Hungary seems to have taken another couple of years to be like, ah, no, we are done. We're done with this country. Yeah. Maybe it's not happy. Maybe the new guy does the same thing. So that's kind of the fear is like there isn't a full understanding of what this guy will do yet. I think there's, there's one, there's a lot of the Orban or apparatus that's still in place that needs to be dismantled by the new guy and his parliamentary majority. Uh, there isn't necessarily
Starting point is 00:53:59 this, like on the issue of Ukraine, Hungary doesn't necessarily lean heavily in support of Ukraine in general, just like as a populace, so it doesn't necessarily mean that the EU votes will just 180 all of a sudden. And there's things like LGBTQ rights that have taken a, like a big backslide under Orban that politically, like from the ideology of this position that dominates the country, just because we're anti-corruption. corruption, does it mean those things are necessarily going to change? There's a bunch of scrutiny around those things. But this new guy takes power in June.
Starting point is 00:54:37 That's my little overview of what's going on and why this is important. I think much like some other things, like even the president of Venezuela changing, albeit because of outside intervention earlier in the year, I think a lot of these things need way more time to play out to see how it'll actually work. but for average Hungarians, like talking to my friend, reading interviews of Hungarian citizens in Budapest,
Starting point is 00:55:05 as soon as this person is ousted, there's a lot of hope of what the future could be. And we'll see what it's like. Yeah, I think there's two U.S. angles to this that I wanted to bring up. You know, one of them is like
Starting point is 00:55:18 there's a lot of parallels, obviously, to Trump situation right now, which is like he's like a right-wing populist, similar to Orban, who's facing pushback from even his own business. not necessarily on his politics so much, but largely on corruption, inflation,
Starting point is 00:55:34 economic stagnation, promises not being met, things like, like the promises they hate, it's like that the promises are unmet. Yeah. And so I think there is a parallel. I mean, it does, you know, it makes me want to push people even more in America to be like, look, they voted in Hungary.
Starting point is 00:55:48 They voted in Hungary and got the result they wanted. You could probably vote here and make progress in the same level. And the second thing I want to say is that, A big part of this was J.D. Vance, not a huge part of it, a minor part of this. But J.D. Vance was sent by the Trump administration to, like, help shore up Orban's support and, like, do a big speech. Why?
Starting point is 00:56:08 In B, I, he should have sent a joke another guy. Should have sent J.D. Vance to the other guy. You should have. Because apparently, you know, based on polling, that knocked four percentage points on Orban's polling. That's what C? Yeah. Which is crazy. And I do think, you said why. And I legitimately think this is my.
Starting point is 00:56:27 conspiracy theory again. Yeah. That JD Vance is being given doomed missions because they no longer see him as successor to Trump. I legitimately think he is being placed over and over again. I'm, you know, I'm no fan of J.D. Vance, but he's constantly sent on impossible losing missions where he looks like a total fool. And I think, you know, there's this theory because New York Times had this big piece come
Starting point is 00:56:50 out about the internal struggles about the Iran War of whether or not to go. And the piece really paints J.D. Vance as the lone. heroic voice being like, we should not go into this war. It's a bad idea. It's going to be a quagmire. And the theory is that J. Vance is the guy. He's the source.
Starting point is 00:57:05 And so now, like, there's like a rift in the administration where they're just sending, they're like, and if you look at the polymarket results, fucking Rubio is skyrocketing and Vance is on the down swing. I don't know if they've passed yet, but like, of who will be the next candidate in, in 28. And I think there's a real sense that J.D. Vance has lost the mandate of Trump heaven. He is no longer the successor of parents for the conservative Maga movement, whatever, whatever it's going to be in 28.
Starting point is 00:57:34 I mean, it can just be used. He has J.D. Vance go and campaign for Newsom so that Trump can win. What if he says he's the touch of death? Right. Like he'll kill the Pope's a poison pill. Yeah, they just send him in the wrong direction. You have to use this asset strategically.
Starting point is 00:57:49 I mean, they sent him to be the lead and basically only negotiator in his Llamabad to deal with Iran, like in an impossible. where they want entirely everything. Of course he comes out being like, we couldn't do anything. And then he goes to Orban. You're not going to win that election.
Starting point is 00:58:04 Everything he's being sent to do. And at the same time, they're like protecting Ruby. Ruby only shows him in public for the few small wins. He's there for Venezuela, but not for Iran. He's there. You know what I'm saying? He doesn't think about ice. It's weird.
Starting point is 00:58:15 It just feels like there's something moving behind the scenes. To put Vance is like this goofy cartoon. There's a slow conversion. I'm still looking at the polymarket presidential Republican nominee for 28 and there's a slow convergence. It looks like it's not, you know, the past month that's sort of stabilized.
Starting point is 00:58:33 Okay. Yeah. Local news is in decline across Canada. And this is bad news for all of us. With less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void. And it gets harder to separate truth from fiction. That's why CBC News is putting
Starting point is 00:58:50 more journalists in more places across Canada, reporting on the ground from where you live, telling the story that matter to all of us because local news is big news choose news not noise CBC News okay
Starting point is 00:59:06 when I sell my business I want the best tax and investment advice I want to help my kids and I want to give back to the community ooh then it's the vacation of a lifetime I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting
Starting point is 00:59:20 an IG private wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IGPrivatewealth.com. This episode is brought to you by Tell Us Online Security. Oh, tax season is the worst.
Starting point is 00:59:42 You mean hack season? Sorry, what? Yeah, cybercriminals love tax forms. But I've got Tellus Online Security. It helps protect against identity theft and financial fraud so I can stress less during tax season, or any season. Plan started just $12 a month. Learn more at talus.com slash online security.
Starting point is 01:00:01 No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft. Conditions apply. Okay, so you mentioned Polymarket. Yeah. And I know you had two, two itsy-bitsy stories about Polymarket you wanted to talk about. Two itsy-bitsy stories. All right, look, these aren't critically important, all right? One is I was sent this GitHub, and I think it's great.
Starting point is 01:00:19 If you scroll down a little bit, A-Trach, this is called Nothing Ever Happens. Do you have lots of disposable income that you don't know what to do with? Well, what this bot does is that it automatically goes to all of the non-political bets, or excuse me, non-sports bets on polymarket and just says no. This is the nothing ever happens polymarket bot. So you can just have this thing running with your money and you are betting that nothing happens. The ceasefire doesn't happen. Taylor Swift does not get married.
Starting point is 01:00:48 J.D. Vance does not win. It's just everything. You can just be a total pessimist to put all your money on it now. Actually kind of hype. And this is what Polymarko was meant for. Second one, if you go to the California governor election winner. So quick little primer on California governor election. So another politic story going on here.
Starting point is 01:01:08 But there's this huge swing all the sudden in the California governor. The styre verse. The styre verse is happening. So there is a surprising amount of drama with the California governor race. It's very strange. So I'll do the same thing that you did. And here is why you as a non-California might give a shit. about this. One, California is gigantic, right? As a reminder, it's like the size and GDP of big
Starting point is 01:01:29 European states. The fourth biggest economy. It is the fourth big, California is a behemoth. We have 40 million people. It is bigger than Canada in like basically every respect, except size. I think the population is like near the same and it has a bigger economy, doesn't it? Yeah. No, it's like, it's like U.S. China, Germany, California. I'm not kidding. It's Japan. Canada's bigger, but we're a grower. Anyways. It's cold up there. Not only is it a big
Starting point is 01:01:59 big-ass state. On top of that, a lot of the policy that comes out of California ends up actually influencing a lot of national policy and sometimes even global policy. If, for example,
Starting point is 01:02:09 California passes a strict aggressive AI regulation on all the tech companies that are creating AI in California, that is essentially going to be a nationwide regulation because the companies are all developing it here.
Starting point is 01:02:21 They're going to stick to those regulations. regulations, and they're going to have to kind of use that nationwide. So this is a pretty consequential election. California has also just broadly seen to be sort of on a downturn recently, or at least that's the perception. So what's particularly interesting about this is in 2010, in California, this is a very democratic state, right? But in 2010, we passed a bill. And that bill says that in order to reduce bipartisanship and make it so that it's not just Republicans versus Democrats every time, make the field a little more open, that what we do is we have the
Starting point is 01:02:52 primary stage. It was about to happen in June where, you know, anybody from any party can run and everybody votes on it. And then the top two candidates from the primaries move on to the general election. But only the top two, and it doesn't matter what party they're from, okay? Okay. So all of the candidates are running in the governor race. In about two months, we're going to do the vote. Top two move on and those two are who you vote on. Now, this sounds cool in paper because instead of just Democrat versus Republican, you only appeal to your base, you have to kind of appeal to everybody, right? You're trying to get to be one of those top two. But it could be two Democrats, and it could be two Republicans.
Starting point is 01:03:28 So what's the world where it's two Republicans running for governor of California in extremely blue state? Well, what would need to happen is that you have two very strong Republican candidates who are splitting the Republican vote, and you need to have a lot of Democratic candidates who are splitting the Democratic vote across many different people. And this is exactly what has been happening for months. In the election, you have two Republican candidates who are the clear frontrunners splitting the vote almost exactly evening, Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco. Chad Bianco, you can Google him. He looks like the type of guy that in a James Cameron movie would run the machines. Yeah, he said like the mech suit.
Starting point is 01:04:12 He would wear the guy in Dora. And coincidentally, he is arguing that we need to boot up fossil fuel production in California. Pull him up. Pull him up. Wait, pull him up. Another one, the other guy is Steve Hilton. This is a, uh, God, dude. I, I, you can tell this is the type of guy who, like, lips is.
Starting point is 01:04:33 You've always been a problem soldier, Jake Sully. Dude, this is, I'll keep on. You and the band. When a guy comes into the room and says, they're attacking again. He says, oh, right. It, like, puts out his cigar that he was smoking while benching, right? So Chad Bianco, you got, he is, he's a sheriff. his whole thing is anti-crime, anti-fraud,
Starting point is 01:04:53 and we're gonna restart a bunch of energy production. Meanwhile, you got Steve Hilton, former Fox News show host, very anti-crime, anti-fraud, pro-energy. Pretty much the same fucking campaign. They're not that distinct. And so that's, you know, sort of working to their advantage.
Starting point is 01:05:13 They are sniping at each other, and actually Trump endorsed Steve Hilton, but they can't, they can't get a consensus. He's never been a Fox News host, he didn't. endorse for higher office. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, he did like a weekly, like, Sunday show. He's not, like, a mainstay on Fox News.
Starting point is 01:05:30 He's no tugger. He's no tugger. He's no tugger. But these guys are actually, these two Republicans are actually so split that the California GOP is not endorsing either one of them because they can't get above 60% of the vote. So it's like exactly split. Okay. Even after Trump's thing.
Starting point is 01:05:46 So this, this perfect horrible storm is brewing perfectly. you have these two guys and then on the Democratic side you have a bunch of candidates that are all polling in like the single or double digits and no clear frontrunner. That is kind of changing just now. So you guys might have heard about Eric Swalwell. Yeah. And he did he's been accused of sexual assault by a number of women. So up until last week you had Eric Swalwell, Katie Porter's, Tom Steyer, Matt Mayhon, Xavier Bacera, Betty Yee, Tony Thurmond, Antonio, uh, via Rygosa, I'm probably saying that wrong. You had at least eight candidates who were all genuinely viable splitting it up. And this is, of course, going into this two-month thing where you might have the disaster. None of them are agreeing to drop out. All of them are like sticking in it
Starting point is 01:06:33 and fighting it out. So a couple interesting updates very recently. Eric Swalwell was arguably the lead, although polls I'll make it different. Up until a couple days ago, he's accused of sexual assault by, there's a CNN report, there's a San Francisco Chronicle report. He has since dropped out of the race. and it appears that people are now moving towards Swalwa, excuse me, towards Tom Steyer. So a couple other, you know, key players here that are probably really in the running. Katie Porter is like a long time California legislative,
Starting point is 01:07:03 but she's kind of fucked because there are these videos that came out of her screaming at staffers, like while she's making a YouTube short, talking and then saying things like, get the fuck out of my shot. She got Ellen? Get out of my shot. She actually did.
Starting point is 01:07:16 Actually did. So there's two videos that basically, are the most stereotypical Karen videos ever where she's blowing up on somebody and it's just like, what, dude, this is a horrible look. That's a bad look.
Starting point is 01:07:28 It is funny because I feel like my, my view of Katie Porter is almost entirely shaped by clips. And she was like a, she would get clipped in her like Senate hearing videos where she would like bring out a chart and like own somebody in a hearing and everybody would be electric in the comments. Oh, I've seen one of those. And then more recently, the clips have been going in the opposite direction where it's like her screaming at a staffer, her getting really upset with somebody interviewing her.
Starting point is 01:07:58 It's those two. It's those two clips came out and everybody's like, ooh, she seems like kind of a bitch. And that literally nukes her campaign. I have to watch this clip. It's kind of like those clips with clavicular right now where he keeps walking out of interviews. And it's going to be California governor if you use. Kenny Porter's kind of like clavicle. Kind of like, yeah.
Starting point is 01:08:15 Hey, drag, you can pull this up. You have to be great because I would like to watch the report. one is actually worse because she blows up at this reporter who's asking very reasonable questions. I remember watching this one and thinking it wasn't great. It was a while ago. So I'm on the oversight committee you might know. And that is where we did a study recently this fall in September. And what it showed is electrify our transportation sector that we're going to lose more
Starting point is 01:08:42 than half a million Californians dying prematurely to air pollution and other problems. and the state could lose out of my fucking shot. It's not that it's electric vehicles, it's that if we don't need the commitments of the Paris and I'm not worried. Okay, it does, okay, you also were in my shop before that.
Starting point is 01:09:06 Stay out of my shot. Okay. So that's it. It is, it's so funny because I actually think in Ellen, like an Allen accusation is, a perfect, a perfect comparison. It's like...
Starting point is 01:09:22 Yeah, it's pretty wild. It's like these two videos, and that has, that kicked her out from being like maybe the front rudder to like even with everybody else. You have Tom Stayer, who's this billionaire activist who's much more progressive
Starting point is 01:09:32 than the other folks, but he's self-funded because he's this billionaire. He's put a hundred million of his own money and kind of using the, you know, saying like, oh, I can't be corrupted because I have so much money type of thing. Didn't Trump say that? Yep.
Starting point is 01:09:45 Yep. Yep. I don't know much about this guy. I didn't look more money to Tom's Yeah, I've been looking a little more into him. Then Matt Mayhan is the mayor of San Jose. He's really coming in as like, this is the pro tech guy. Not even pro tech, but the tech people all like him and are endorsing him.
Starting point is 01:09:59 So even though he's been a very successful mayor of San Jose, but he's coming in being like, here's the like technocratic solutions I'm going to do. I've succeeded in San Jose. I'll succeed statewide. But then a lot of people, there's just so much anti-tech. Wait, how long has he been mayor of San Jose? I don't know the timeline. We can look it up right now.
Starting point is 01:10:17 Well, just because I hated living in San Jose, so I want to know, I mean, not his fault, really. Yeah, I mean, maybe it's 2023, so actually now I wouldn't know. Mayor of San Jose, hmm, mayor of mayor of hell? Mayor of hell. Am I want to elect him? Mayor of hell is running for governor of California. But they've been saying it's getting cheaper to live in hell. But this guy was mayor after I was there, so I have no idea if he's turned around.
Starting point is 01:10:41 He's doing while. He's kind of like that angle. And then there's, there's this, there's four other candidates who are, convenient, like, there's a weird thing there where they're all the non-white candidates, and then USC tried to host a debate where they used their own criteria to decide which candidates should be there at the debate. And their criteria said that based on, you know, the current polling and the fundraising and everything, that it would be the six white people and not the four, not white people, even though technically it was based on, you know, it was just their number of formula or whatever,
Starting point is 01:11:12 and that caused so much frustration that USC had to cancel the debates. So now there's also this strange thing. But in this weird fucking drama going on with the California governor race for the first time in months, there is now a clear leader who is Tom Stair. And he's a pretty interesting candidate. We, you know, we don't need to go into his policies and whatnot. Come on the damn show, bro. Yeah. So, so you could see, Pauly Market is again, this is what people are betting. But with polling sites, as of a couple days ago, he's like, he's pulling at like 13% and other people that are 11. Polling would indicate that it is still an absolute crapshoot between what is still now seven, it's down from eight, seven leading candidates. So I think what the point market is reading
Starting point is 01:11:53 into, it makes it not better, it's like, who's going to be top two? Who's the Democrat in the top two? That's the, that's who's going to win the general. As long as one of these seven Democrats can get more than the two Republicans than disaster is averted. And it's this weird thing happening, and this is all going to resolve in June in like two months. Interesting. So with Tom, he, I don't know if you guys remember this.
Starting point is 01:12:18 He ran for president, the Democratic primary. Yeah. A while back. I remember he, he, what did he say? One of our many beloved.
Starting point is 01:12:25 It was like Bernie and Elizabeth Warren were having a fight on stage. Yeah. And then Tom Starrett comes in the middle. He's like, hey, I don't mean to bother, but burn I'm a big fan.
Starting point is 01:12:34 And like, he's young. I remember. I was like, only clip I remember from Stom's time. So I think we might, We might have an in here because actually one of my closest friends worked on his presidential campaign that year
Starting point is 01:12:47 and then was his PA for years after. Let's get him on the show. So I think... You got a friend in Tom Steyer? Yeah. I mean, I'm one degree of separation away. Yeah. So maybe we...
Starting point is 01:12:58 I'd be curious to learn more about what his actual platform is. I think anecdotally, he's the only one that I've seen campaign ads of on TV. I'm not keeping a close eye on things, but, like, just, like, on, I don't know, like a Lakers game will be on, and, like, you'll see Tom Stey's ad. They're not on piracy. That's weird. You're missing out. You've got to get these Tom Ther.
Starting point is 01:13:19 Yeah, you're missing the Tom ads. No, he's got some really, so, you know, tech people have said, if Tom Stair is elected, it will ruin California. So that's the kind of, like, he's, he's pretty progressive. He has things, it's a lot of, like, energy focus. He's been doing that for a long time. Yeah. But a couple really notable ones.
Starting point is 01:13:34 One, a lot about increasing taxes. So a lot about affordability. All the. candidates are talking about affordability nonstop. And then he wants to push for single payer healthcare. Like change California, get rid of private insurance and have it be a single, which would be extraordinarily hard to do legislatively. But if he pulls it off, that's crazy. California. It's a cool model for the rest of the country. It'd be interesting to try. Yeah, absolutely. So this thing, this thing is weirdly dramatic and interesting and weird. And we're
Starting point is 01:14:01 going to see what happens. And the absence of this guy, Swalwell, who just got pulled out, who was like pulling in a lot of the traditional left Democrats is suddenly that's being dispersed and we're trying to figure out where it lands. Yeah, he resigned from the House of Representatives. He also resigned from Congress. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:14:22 There was a second person. I'm sorry I'm blanking on their name. The Texas. The Texas guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Two congressmen were accused of sexual harassment, multiple people. I'm trying to get their name.
Starting point is 01:14:34 I had it in my notes. Gonzalez. Tony Gonzalez out of Texas he had a sexual relationship with his staffer who killed themselves after the text messages
Starting point is 01:14:45 leaked or whatever. The staffer did? The staffer killed themselves. Dude, that's awful. Yeah, and then this person like, I guess ignored it. Ignored it and pretended it didn't happen and tried to downplay it
Starting point is 01:14:55 and then it kept being up and now they're resigning. Insane. So one Democrat or Republican same day, they both resigned same day, both over sexual misconduct. Yeah. Anyway.
Starting point is 01:15:06 Well, I, I appreciate you reminded me that about the importance of the primary in California specifically, because in my head, I was like, oh yeah, I'll vote in November. But the deadline is much closer. Yeah. You know what's also crazy? California, super democratic. It's not that democratic. Trump lost by 20 points to Kamala Harris.
Starting point is 01:15:27 That means 60% of people voted for Kamala and 40% of people voted for Donald Trump in California. Yeah, bro, and they're all in Huntington Beach. I think there's a perception. Yeah. California being a democratic stronghold is only relatively recent. Like it was Reagan's like base for, and then,
Starting point is 01:15:47 you know, right-wing Schwarzenegger was the fucking governor of California for a long time. I mean, it's not. Can I give two personal updates? I said these things publicly. So I mean, they have updates on it publicly.
Starting point is 01:15:58 First one, rice crackers. Gentlemen. Dude. The drama. I want to know what's going on. Even more drama. We went to China, as we talked about, and we went to a food trade show in Chengdu,
Starting point is 01:16:10 where we were pulled into a sort of business cracker dolliance with someone named Susanna, who's a very powerful person in her company. I publicly committed on the podcast that we would figure out how much actual take-home revenue I get from a Patreon episode, me personally, and I would spend all of it on rice crackers, and we would put them here in the studio and eat them. Unfortunately, I have an update from Susanna, which is that she has left the company. She told me the same day that she met us. She found a severe and irretrievable,
Starting point is 01:16:40 irreparable problem in the manufacturing. She much later told me that they are not poisoned and I am safe to have eaten them. But there's a major problem with delivery. And now I asked, wait, can I still buy them? She said, well, I work independently and I'm sourcing from many different crackers. And if you really like that flavor,
Starting point is 01:16:57 I can find another factory to create that flavor for you. So just keep working with me. And I was like, I'm a little confused by this. Can I buy from the company that you used to work for? Can you just buy through them? And she said, I do not recommend it. If you trust me, they were good, though. It's like, I kind of want those ones.
Starting point is 01:17:16 They were tasty, and you did say they were powerful and great. They were powerful. Anyway, if you trust me, follow. I texted her at what was like four in the morning in China, and she immediately sent back 40 texts. Anyway, if you trust me, follow my recommendation because I am food experts. if you insist on your love for the ricecracker,
Starting point is 01:17:33 Mehta Wongsey ahead, I respect your choice because you are my friend who I truly treat with my heart. And then she followed up with an apology two minutes later saying that she was too flustered and then reiterated everything. Look, the point is the truth is here, I no longer have a contact at Meada Wongsey,
Starting point is 01:17:48 the Rice Cracker Company. I now have a contact with a woman who is saying she is going to do research to find me similar rice crackers. I don't know what to do. Right. And it's... You got to go deeper to this. because I don't want to be, you know, I don't want to be the conspiratorial type of guy.
Starting point is 01:18:05 Okay. But it feels sudden, doesn't it? It feels sudden. And it's weird. You think it's political. It's weird. I'm saying that maybe. You think the Communist Party is cutting her out of the-
Starting point is 01:18:18 I didn't bring the party into this. Okay. You think she should pick personally. Okay, quote, the moment I found out the truth, I knew I had to be honest with you immediately, even if it was sudden and confused. using. I just, this woman is so powerful. I love it. So I'm probably going to try to buy a bunch of rice crackers from where and everything. Instead, I'm going to be buying like however many pellets of rice crackers that I haven't tried. And this is even more insane. Okay, the other update,
Starting point is 01:18:45 just on chat chit, specifically, and actually I think we have an anthropic ad. The timing is coincidental, by the way. But on a previous episode a couple ago, I said I was going to try to stop using Chachabit as much as possible. I am trying to do that. I stopped the $200 subscription, But I have found that, unfortunately, at least right now, Chachapit is the one that can actually do Japanese talking. I don't know if you guys have experienced that at all. Sure. So I am currently on the lowest paid tier that I can on Chachabit,
Starting point is 01:19:10 specifically for that, and I've been using other models for everything else. To keep the translation stuff. It's just for translation. They have, so there's like a voice-to-voice API that they have, and so it sounds relatively similar to Japanese, whereas the other LLMs currently that I'm aware of are just people saying. It's like a text-to-speech, terrible translation that sounds nothing like Japanese. Yeah, I really haven't tried the voice models on
Starting point is 01:19:32 other ones. I don't use Chachibiti more. I did quit it, but it was a good voice model. Yeah. I just switched to typing more. Which I just say, you know, I made a big point saying, hey, I'm going to not use this product. I am using it basically as little as I can except for specifically the one about Japanese or very specific stream features that I need because their models do certain creative things in certain settings. But in every other context, I am moving away from Chachbitty, and we've turned down a sponsor on this channel. I've turned down two personal sponsors now that my agent presented to me. So minor update there in case you see Chat Chb-T on my phone.
Starting point is 01:20:03 That's the thinking. Yeah. What is the, genuinely, what does the $200 subscription do with something like that? With Chachabit. Yeah, because I know most of the other LLMs have like higher paid tiers like that too.
Starting point is 01:20:16 What is that usually offering you? Because I have like the lowest level pro subscription on these. Super simple, higher usage and new features. So the reason I was paying for the $200 one is because you would get access to early features. So they would be like, we just released deep research. Go try this out here.
Starting point is 01:20:31 We just, that pulse thing that they did. You know, Open AI just like throws out a lot of different things. And so you got to have access to that. It's crazy because $200, it's like, it's giving you so much there. And $200 can't let you watch a Lakers game in Los Angeles. $200. Okay. There's a story on that.
Starting point is 01:20:48 I mean, not Lakers game on the $200 tier, which is that there's been report reporting across all the major AI that they're starting to see like, what is the word for it? Outages? Outages. Yeah, like service integrations. Like some, I forget the exact company, but they did a test,
Starting point is 01:21:09 like a real deep dive test and noticed that the AI at the same tier on the same price was thinking less than it did two months ago. Like it was the output of tokens or whatever text was less than it used to be. And it seems like a lot of the AI companies are,
Starting point is 01:21:26 running into server and constraint limits. They're trying to like give you less per dollar to try and make up the, because everything, even the $200 tier loses money. That's what they found is every single one, people are using it more than it costs them. It's just very, like,
Starting point is 01:21:44 you know, the people that buy $200 tier often use $1,000 plus worth of tokens. I was the profitable one. I was probably, you know, using $10 a month out of the $200. So that's like, I was like one of the few people giving them actual profit.
Starting point is 01:21:56 But most of the people who are buying these super high tiers are the ones who are running agents like that are five hours a day. And so those people are genuinely hitting. And that's, you know, as Claude Code and Claude Work and all these tools continue to expand, I don't know if you guys have heard this as well. This is anecdotal. But I am hearing more and more people in my life who are not like deep in the AI sauce saying things like, oh yeah, the last few months I started to incorporate Claude Code for this or this.
Starting point is 01:22:23 People who aren't doing hardcore coding, like other types of work. and are like, it is genuinely incredible. So it seems as though it is starting to hit more of like a public zeitgeist. And at the same time, Claude uses a shitload of AI processing and tokens. It's no longer this, you know, auto-complete finish a sentence for you. It's doing, it's like harnessing an absolute shit ton of things all simultaneously, which we learned about because Claude code leaked as well, which is a whole separate thing. It has craziness with AI right now.
Starting point is 01:22:52 It's real wild. They really genuinely need more data centers. Does that mean we should build more data centers? Maybe, maybe not. They need more data centers because more people are using the product than ever issuing more requests. They are genuinely hitting the limits of compute. And to be fair, that's compute that they have access to. Maybe if we repurpose compute from, you know, if we take it from Roblox, maybe we can power AI.
Starting point is 01:23:16 And that's why, you know, I think open AI shut down SOR and other things are just trying to put all their compute towards the few areas, like the business areas. But that's the point, which is like, you know, I think I should, I should give a bit of a vehicle over here or something, which is like there was a theory, maybe two years back, oh, sorry, Mike, that a lot of this data center build out was financially wasteful. And probably still is, to be honest, but the truth is the demand is certainly there for every token they can build. Like they are, they haven't built enough to be honest. In terms of user demand.
Starting point is 01:23:51 Okay. People really want every single token that the data centers can generate. And the demand for it is only seeming to ramp up. So like the companies that, you know, there's a bit of a, I told you some moment from OpenAI right now, you know, in a lot of ways they're not having that. But in this area, they're like, hey, we went all in on building as much compute as we possibly can because we knew this was coming. And Anthropic was a little slower. They were like, you know, a little more measured or we're not going to go crazy on the spending. and it's seeming like you just want as much as possible.
Starting point is 01:24:22 That's what it's seemingly. I'm just admitting it with what the finances are looking like, which is like people are using every amount that they are being given. There's not like a lot of idle GPU time. They're running into the limits of every data center they're building. No, maybe I'm sorry. My brain might just be cooked. You're saying they need to build more data centers
Starting point is 01:24:43 to fulfill the demand that exists. I believe you're saying we should, regardless of what local communities want. And I was, I assumed he meant that. I assumed he meant that no matter, no matter the externalities. And that's, whenever I talk about data centers on the show, keep in mind that I'm saying it with that, I don't care about negative externalities for local communities.
Starting point is 01:25:03 You and I wake up every morning, we pour out 10 gallons of water into the street. Whether it be the, whether I look at a list of externalities and say, those are stupid. Yeah. The passive noise that the facilities make that harm people's brains and well-being or the pollution or the, so why I don't care.
Starting point is 01:25:20 Yep. I don't care. I'm asking you, why don't you, you just said that the argument was that they don't want to fulfill the demand because it's not worth the money
Starting point is 01:25:28 but they need to fulfill the demand. I'm confused at what you're saying. What I'm saying is the argument about a year and a half to two years ago was like, hey, you are spending trillions of dollars to build all this compute data center out. Yes.
Starting point is 01:25:40 And it's like, if any of that goes idle, it is the biggest, most ruinous financial decision of all time. It's absolutely insane to do this. It costs so much money. money, but the reality, and this could still be the case because they might be able to sell it profitably. Okay, that's the case. But it's now obvious that they will have the demand. People will
Starting point is 01:25:57 want to use every ounce of compute that a data center, every day center you build is going to be used. But is the argument that even though, from what we were talking about before, even though that all of the available like computing power of what you could build would be used, that isn't necessarily profitable still. Right. Correct. This is the question mark. still that because right now everything is being, it's like early days of Uber or early days of Netflix. Everything is being sold at such a markdown that it seems awesome.
Starting point is 01:26:27 It's like movie pass. You know, movie pass is not a great business, but everyone used it. Everybody, if you use movie pass, you got 40 tickets to see it. It's awesome. So we don't know yet the economics of whether or not this, this hash is out. But at the current price, the demand is astronomical.
Starting point is 01:26:42 People all over, that's not the point of what I'm saying. Get out of my shot. Get on my fucking shot. Get out of my shot. I'm sorry. I'll acknowledge it. I apologize to you, the audience, I interrupted you to make a dumb movie past joke. No, no, no. One of you keep going to your point. I'm sorry. All right. And anyway, so I'm saying about AI data centers and get out of my
Starting point is 01:27:05 shot. Okay. Okay. You were in my shot before that. You were in my shot before that and our next guest Ellen DeGeneres is going to talk to us about her comeback to Grace and how she's one of the greatest debos of all time. Anyway, that's the AI little bit of a news story
Starting point is 01:27:28 which is one last spicy little tiny tidbit about AI real fast. It's drama time. Sam Altman, everybody hates him now. Everybody hates Sam Altman. CEO of Open AI because there was a post oh my God, I think it was New Yorker. New Yorker who made a
Starting point is 01:27:41 Ronin basically did like a year and a half long report. Okay. Yeah. Sorry, you said it was a post. I just want to say like this is a really, really well done. No, from the New York Post. Or is it New Yorker? Is the New Yorker?
Starting point is 01:27:52 So they did like this super long tweet. No, it was. He's triggering me. It's so funny to like dilute Ronan Farrow's career and like, he made a fucking, I don't know, he made a fucking tweet. I don't know. Did a really, really masterful series of long form interviews of almost everybody Stan Maltman has worked with
Starting point is 01:28:10 throughout his entire life and constructed a long form, well-crafted through line of dishonesty. Basically of like from every venture he's been on, he has left people in his wake who thinks he acts dishonestly. Like he is, he will lie, he will say one thing in public and one thing in private. He will promise that he's really focused on AI safety and on being non-profit and then slowly but surely
Starting point is 01:28:35 dismantled those productions behind the scenes to make into a for-profit venture and to care less about AI safety. And it was interesting. because this article comes out and there is a really ground swell of you know Sam Altman anger and then unfortunately someone takes it too far
Starting point is 01:28:53 and throws a Molotov cocktail or something at his house. The cocktail was that was after the article came out? Yeah it was after you. The article comes out and then I believe a couple days later Sam Altman posts a tweet saying last night I was taking care of my son and somebody threw a Molotov cocktail at our house. And so
Starting point is 01:29:12 So it's weird. I have a weird thought about it because I do think that there's a very real criticism you could levy at Sam for all these things in this article. And that in general, I think the way he's acted,
Starting point is 01:29:26 especially around the non-profit-to-profit status of open AI. This is a real thing from the article that I thought was like, it becomes very clear that he is being dishonest about his intentions.
Starting point is 01:29:38 I mean, he told me none of that's true. It's all good. But obviously, people shouldn't throw Molotov cocktails of people with family. What do you think because I watched Rutger Bregman's video
Starting point is 01:29:50 about kind of the same topic, right? I didn't see this. It's on my wash list. I haven't seen it yet. And I think the, I would say one of the major takeaways from that video and I take it this article from what you're saying as well
Starting point is 01:30:05 is during that period where the board removed him as the CEO and there was that giant pushback, which we actually talked about, I think, on this show after it happened. Maybe. I remember the time in my day. I did a big eclip. Wasn't it months after?
Starting point is 01:30:21 I remember talking about it, but it was like, it might have been long after it actually happened. My favorite part was they put the old Twitch CEO in charge for one day. So I, I, it was a while, but anyway. With, he basically says that the, the board with, in the light of all of this information, was clearly right to do that at the time. And I wanted to know if you, both of you, as having more insight into this,
Starting point is 01:30:50 because I haven't read the New Yorker article, do you agree with that sentiment? So I'll tell you, when I covered it at the time, I was more charitable towards Sam Altman's side because largely all the employees were on his side, because if he went, there was a real sense that Open AI might dissolve into everyone
Starting point is 01:31:14 leaving different chips, and then they would all lose the value of their stock. And they were all very, very scared about that. And so they all kind of rallied behind Sam. That was... I think there's also a charitable interpretation that they were proud of what they're doing. Like, at that time,
Starting point is 01:31:25 there was much less negativity around all this stuff. The chat Chb-T was considered this technological, like, incredible achievement. If you were there at that time, at the forefront of AI research, creating a product of that, however many, 10 million, 100 people, 100 million people try out in a month or whatever it is. This unbelievable groundbreaking product and you're there at the forefront of research on AI.
Starting point is 01:31:47 I feel like that's also be a reasonable incentive for somebody to say, like, I want to make sure this ship keeps going. Sure, I think that's fair. But I mean, you know, like the core engineer behind that, Ilius is the guy pushing and saying the same moment is lying and needs to be removed. So it's not like, I wouldn't say it's like. I'm sure money plays a part of it. I think there was a lot more pride about open eye at that point. I mean, this is two, three years ago, right? This is way before, I think, broadly, society started to be like, whoa, hold on, what's going on.
Starting point is 01:32:16 We, I think that was my outlook. Like, I remember being, I, I just trust the employees to like, oh, if they are all getting behind this sentiment, then they must understand something about the value of this person that I don't. So keeping this guy There is probably the right call But that was all I understood You know But after this article I mean it just makes it clear
Starting point is 01:32:44 That the people who are closest to him Which is the senior level employees Were the ones who wanted him out And the lower level employees Who basically had stock vested And thought he was a leader And things were working Broadly it was working
Starting point is 01:32:54 Like they were a successful AI leader Was like don't rock the bow Let's keep this going Yeah So it's a weird disconnect I can't say that I have a concrete answer But I do think It is
Starting point is 01:33:03 It doesn't paint a flat picture of Simmelman. And I will say, even tech side, you know, I really like Ben Thompson's Redekery has been way more critical of open AI's choices lately as they seem to be just flipping. Like they recently announced a huge pivot towards, uh, corporate, the corporate side of AI way more because they've seen anthropics succeeding in that area. And it's, it's a weird choice because they were the leader and they were like the
Starting point is 01:33:26 Google of, of, uh, of AI. Like they were like the consumer facing one that was doing really well. And they're kind of deprioritizing that, trying to go another direction. they've had all these different other pivots. They had the adult chat bot, which got canceled. They got SORA, which got canceled. They had ads, which they brought in like meta-tech people to do, and it's like been largely keyword-based and pretty bad.
Starting point is 01:33:45 Right. Like, you know, they just haven't seemed to land on a direction yet, and it's questionable. So we'll see. Did you rehearse all of this after we got the Anthropic sponsorship? You know who's done a great job? No, I genuinely believe this. I believe this all.
Starting point is 01:34:01 I think Open AI is making some missteps. business wise. Just timing wise, it seems suspicive. If I've worn it as a giant anthropic shirt or like a chain. I'm wearing increasingly gold jewelry. I don't know what you're talking.
Starting point is 01:34:15 I already mentioned since we had the fucking ad the episode I'll say people, what I see people talking about most is like Quad code is giving me rate limits. That is the thing I see a lot on social media. It's like, hey, I'm using it. And they used to give me more tokens
Starting point is 01:34:29 and now it's giving me less. So they're all running into fucking issues. I mean, It's worth saying for people who are not following the infrastructure behind this stuff, that as the tools are getting more advanced, a big reason why it seems, why the perception is that these tools are getting more advanced and people are going more and more. Wow, holy shit, this is actually really useful for this job or this job and not just coding. And then within coding, many people going, holy shit, is because there's more stuff happening. Each time you ask it a question, there is more calculation being done. So it seems that broadly we're getting to a point where it's less about jamming giant, giant, giant quantities of data into the thing on these $10 billion training runs and more about building a product scaffold on top of that.
Starting point is 01:35:14 But the product scaffold is going to be using more and more tokens to operate basic things. So I don't know for certain. I don't know why people are hitting limits. I think it's a mix. I know that Anthropic has been also changing limits and whatnot. But these things are happening simultaneously where they're making their products more expensive to use. And so that's that's simultaneously running into then consumers who want to come in and use it more, obviously.
Starting point is 01:35:36 And it's a weird challenge right now. Yeah, and one of the big fears that you're seeing is like, do we just get a taste of something that is genuinely useful on some level to consumers? Yeah. And it's going to end up being in the hands only of businesses. Thanks for that for on some level. I appreciate that.
Starting point is 01:35:52 Yeah, people, I mean, I listen, I think I have, you know, we've got greater financial resources than most. But let's say I'm at my normal job. I was back when I was at Invading that. I make a good salary. I would probably be using this the same way I am now to learn things. It's a great learning tool. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:36:06 Like if, for example, like at NVIDIA for you, you would say, Claude, write an email to my boss that everything's still looking good and then play legal legends for me for eight hours. Exactly.
Starting point is 01:36:15 Actually, the trick to that was I would book a long meeting and then I would play TFT. So you're using it for that reason. And if it was, if they charged what it cost them to use right now, a lot less people would be using. I think they can get those costs down, but like that, you know, it's a real situation where it might end up being mostly in the, like, people tried it. They're like, oh, this is kind of useful for my job. And then it finds out that it's priced out and you have to have a corporate account.
Starting point is 01:36:41 But then we can cut it with ethanol to make it cheaper. There we go. There we go. I think it's funny because we have like a, I think like vouchers to use Claude for free because of the sponsorship that we got. But I lost where the vouchers got sent to us. So I've just been paying. Yeah, I tried the voucher, but it said you're, already have the tears. I couldn't...
Starting point is 01:37:02 So you couldn't even use it? Yeah, I've just been paying out of pocket. It's a pain. Okay, well, that is the end of this week's episode of Lemonade Sand. If you want to join us for an extra hour on the Patreon, you can go to patreon.com slash Lemonade Sand. I have a juicy topic for you guys on the Patreon episode that I saved. A little juicer topic about Waymo and a video that came out and autonomous driving. Don't fall for it, guys. little debating you.
Starting point is 01:37:31 Oops. And he's gonna do it shirtless. But if you do it, don't fall for this. I'll be shirtless. Stand up to this. And if you were to subscribe on Patreon, don't do it on iOS. They charge you more.
Starting point is 01:37:45 We don't get that money. Don't do it on your fucking iOS device. You want to do it on desktop or an Android. Every Patreon episode is free in a waymo. In the backseat, you can watch it as long as you want there. Guys, thanks for watching. See you next week. Bye.
Starting point is 01:37:57 Thanks everybody. Bye.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.