Lemonade Stand - We Solved the Strait! | Ep. 058 Lemonade Stand 🍋
Episode Date: April 15, 2026On 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
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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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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,
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?
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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,
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%.
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.
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
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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?
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,
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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,
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,
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.
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
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.
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,
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
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
That's the update on that little thing.
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That's awesome. It's weird because you could just
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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?
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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,
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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,
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...
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.
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
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.
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,
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
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...
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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,
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
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,
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Okay.
Yeah.
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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.
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.
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.
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
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
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,
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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...
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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
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.
He ran for president,
the Democratic primary.
Yeah.
A while back.
I remember he,
he,
what did he say?
One of our many beloved.
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.
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
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...
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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,
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.
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,
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,
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,
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.
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,
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,
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.
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-
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,
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,
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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,
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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?
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
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
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
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
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,
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.
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
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
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?
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,
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
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,
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
Thanks everybody.
Bye.
