Pirate Wires - Trump War Plans Leaked From Signal, Snow White Disaster, Ghibli Takes Over X

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

EPISODE #92: This Atlantic’s bombshell report exposes the clownish nature of Trump admin. Snow White bombs at the box office after woke controversy from it’s star, Rachel Zegler. Tech Hating NPR CEO, Katherine Maher, testified before Congress and denied her previous tweets. Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett calls Governor Abbott "Hot Wheels." And everything is Ghibli, X feed gets taken over by Ghibli art, depicting some of the most famous moments in meme history.**Also.. a note to Pirate Nation. We're taking a brief hiatus for the podcast. We're retooling and reimagining the show. We'll be back in a few weeks. Subscribe to PW on our site for regular pieces and The Daily. Follow us on X and check the YT community tab for pod updates. Thanks for your support!Featuring Mike Solana, Brandon Gorrell, Riley Nork, Molly O'SheaWe have partnered with AdQuick! They gave us a 'Moon Should Be A State' billboard in Times Square!https://www.adquick.com/Sign Up For The Pirate Wires Daily! 3 Takes Delivered To Your Inbox Every Morning:https://get.piratewires.com/pw/dailyTopics Discussed: - https://www.piratewires.com/p/bluesky-blues-a-new-investigatory-series- https://www.piratewires.com/p/slop-world?f=home- https://www.piratewires.com/p/katherine-maher-statements-on-tech?f=home- https://www.piratewires.com/p/demonic?f=homePirate Wires Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateWiresMike Twitter: https://twitter.com/micsolanaBrandon Twitter: https://twitter.com/brandongorrellRiley Twitter: https://x.com/rylzdigitalMolly Twitter: https://x.com/MollySOSheaTIMESTAMPS:0:00 - Welcome Back To The Pod!1:00 - Announcement - The Pod Is Taking A Hiatus 2:00 - The Atlantic's Bombshell Report On Trump Admin's Signal Chat - Exposing A Deeper Rot? Or Just A F*ck Up?16:45 - Woke Snow White Fail - only $40M on opening weekend with a $270M budget36:05 - AdQuick! Thank You For Sponsoring The Podcast!38:45 - Tech Hating NPR CEO, Katherine Maher, testified before Congress54:15 - Hot Wheels -  Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett calls Governor Abbott "Hot Wheels"1:02:30 - Ghibli Takeover Of X - A Rare Moment Of Singularity On Social Media? Or Just More Internet Slop?1:22:00 - Thanks For Watching! Like And Subscribe - See You Soon..#podcast #technology #politics #culture

I mean, it's just embarrassing. No one leaked anything. You invited the journalist into your house and he wrote about it. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. He's the one that somehow gets on somebody's contact and then gets sucked into the spook. I just think it was like a really stupid f*** up. It's not some deeper rot that's being exposed here in my opinion. It's just like, wow, they were being stupid. She's not gonna be dreaming about true love. She's dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be. Last week, everything was computer. This week, everything is Ghibli. You know, it was like the celebration and going back through our past.

We've been through a lot and we've gotten through all this. And like now we're looking at like the picture book memories. What's up, guys? Welcome back to the podcast. We've got a packed show for you today, but first, before we get to it, we are going to take a brief hiatus after this episode. So don't be constantly DMing me and like adding me and asking where the podcast, it's we're going to be gone for a second, like three weeks or so about I want to get back to the drawing board and assemble some really great interviews for you guys.

I want to come back with like really, maybe I shouldn't tell you much more about it actually, but I've got a good idea and I want to flesh it out and I want to come back with some like really great, great stuff for you. So just give me a minute, give us a minute while we put it together. And that's pretty much what I've got to tie for the ad quick read in a bit the highlight of the show. I know that you all sorry, my shirt's like, wildly provocative, right? Are you putting it up?

Because it was just like, too. Brandon's always on the way to sexual a second ago. Sorry about that. Yikes. That's the new podcast format, right? Yeah, it's just, we're actually just doing a ****. Oh, can I say that, Matt? Probably not. I'm almost certain YouTube, which is already throttling us, is going to throttle the shit out of me if I talk about

the **** fans. I'm not dropping them. Relax. Everybody relax. Let's talk about the signal drama. Riley. Yeah. So the Linux Jeffrey Goldberg and noted pirate wires reader, right? He reads our stuff. about the signal drama, Riley. Yeah, so the Linux Jeffrey Goldberg, a noted pirate wires reader, right? He reads our stuff, there we go.

He accidentally- You gotta play the clip, Matt, sorry. You gotta play the clip, yeah, he did shout us out. And there's this very interesting newsletter I read, Pirate Wires, by this guy, Mike Solana. Gives you really good insight into MAGA thinking in the Silicon Valley, people who are supporting Donald Trump. And he wrote, Trump nominated RFK Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services,

rounding out a string of appointments that each have some part of Washington in, quote, disbelief. Others include Tom, quote, they can be deported together, Homan as borders are, Pete Hegseth as sec-deaf, and then in parentheses, this is the part that's really interesting to me, a Fox News star according to Libs, liberals, a decorated combat vet, according to MAGA. And he also accidentally found his way into the middle of a White House discussion about bombing the Houthis.

So just like your casual Tuesday, he was added to a Signal chat called Houthi PC Small Group with among others, JD Vance, DOD Secretary Pete Hegseth, and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who started the group chat and evidently was the one who mistakenly added Goldberg. As for the contents of the chat, they quite literally lay out their plan to bomb Yemen. Pete Hegseth is describing in detail what time F-18s are going to take off and when like drone strikes are going to happen.

Meanwhile, JD Vance appears to be the one sort of voice of descent here. As he apparently said in the chat of these attacks, which were like in an area that Europe relies on as a shipping route. I just hate bailing out Europe again, to which he said, Seth responds, I fully share your loathing of European free loading, which is just a great quote. I think we should start casually dropping that in conversation. Two more gems that Goldberg discovers as a stowaway in the Signal Chat. One saying that they were quote, clear on OpSec right before the attack.

Spoiler alert, they were not. And also Mike Waltz after the attacks giving the now infamous fist flag fire emojis. Solana, you wrote a great take on all this, so I will go ahead and let you cook on Signal Gate here. I mean, it's just embarrassing. And I think that that's, for me, the story begins with just the obvious nature of, I didn't believe it. I saw the headlines,

and I thought, there's absolutely no way that this happened the way that it's being framed. I think I even said that in our Slack. Like, there's everyone relax. I'm gonna have to go read this story and then figure out what's really happening. But there's no way the story is what's being framed. And I mean, the second I dipped in, I was like,

oh, shit, it's definitely for real. In the piece, obviously, the White House confirms that it's real. They, Atlantic reached out, they're like, hey, is it true that, I mean, Jeffrey seems to think that he's in this group chat, he's gonna write about it. And they're like, yep, that was us. And then JD Vance's team was only,

they were a little bit upset with maybe, um, the way he seemed not supportive of the administration. They were quick to be like, we support the administration. To accidentally invite the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic into your Aminah Bam Yemen group chat on Signal is, I think it's unambiguously just, yeah, it's like mortifying. It's like you're too dumb to understand the technology. You brought the journalist in

who obviously leaked all about it. Leak is maybe the wrong word here. I've seen that word flying around. No one leaked anything. You invited the journalist into your house and he wrote about it. And he did so, I thought, it has to be said because we hit the media all the time. He did so as tactfully as one could possibly do it. He waited until the attack was over so he didn't put anybody at danger and then was just like, hey, I was in this chat. He didn't reveal any secrets.

There was nothing, maybe there were no secrets to reveal, but that's not what happened here. It was just like, this is sloppy. And that's where it was for me, and I was happy to sort of be on the side of like, this is sloppy. But then the Republicans obviously were like, this is fake news.

This is a lying journalist doing lying journalist things. None of that's true. The Democrats couldn't just take the win, though. They have to be like, actually, Hexeth belongs in prison. And it's like, man, it's just clownery in both directions at this point. But yeah, I think that you have to just acknowledge that this was bad.

And it frustrates me that I think most when people won't just acknowledge that. Brandon, you're one of these people. No, you're misinterpreting me. So my take is like, yeah, I agree. It's a mortifying, dumb mistake. But I don't think it's like you said that that it's an, and a lot of people were implying, especially over on blue sky, which is like, if you want, if you want to like really see

the, you want to see people reacting very badly to this thing, just go over to blue sky there on like five over there. Um, they're like calling for them to be burned at the stake of Hasgath. And I think it was Waltz anyways. Yes, it was Waltz's problem. Yeah. And it's all going on. Obviously, Hasgath is the scapegoat here because of his history and like how controversial of a figure he is. I think it's also because he's attractive. I know that sounds crazy. I think it's like he's just, he's super, he's like an attractive guy, big family. That's a, he's a he's super he's like an attractive guy big family

That's a he's a hero in the making and they have to just stop that but it gets too big. Sorry, Brian cut you off But you said you know, I like that indicates that he doesn't understand technology and that's like just not cut for me That's like not necessarily true. It could be true You know, but like I their take on on blue sky cut you off You were getting to the blue sky thing just that he should be arrested and and it's just it's just like full-on like you know like You know 12 out of 10 anger rage and you know like hatred over there for has got that They don't have anything to talk about. I also looked we'll talk about this later, but I looked yesterday

I was like, I was wonder if they're doing the Ghibli memes, you know, and they were not doing the good things Yeah, no, it's not a ghibli meme on blue sky. Yeah, I could if they're doing the Ghibli memes, you know, and they were not doing the Ghibli memes. Yeah, not on threads either. There's not one Ghibli meme on Blue Sky that I could find. I checked threads for this. Yeah, I was like, man, like X is like way better vibes right now, you know, because they were just like flipping out about Hezgeth still. But like, I don't think it means he doesn't understand technology. Like I've accidentally CC'd the wrong person on an email.

I've accidentally, it doesn't mean that you don't understand the technology. I think the mortifying thing is that actually the OPSSEC is quite bad. If they're just, if you can just, if government protocol, communication protocols about like this type of thing are so insecure that you can accidentally add anybody or somebody in your contacts list, that indicates to me that like OpSec is not actually very good and then you clean that up. And so it's really, really embarrassing. It's a really big mistake.

And it's embarrassing how HasGeth now is, I think he put a statement out today. Nobody's texting war plans. Well, I noticed this morning, out came something that doesn't look like war plans. And as a matter of fact, they even changed the title to attack plans because they know it's not war plans. There's no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information.

They're needling Goldberg on like the words war plans and battle plans. And has got that this long screen on Twitter. And he said, like, we didn't reveal any classified information. We didn't reveal X, Y and Z. And I was like, bro, like you reveals your battle plans. You know, like there's no like like there's no ambiguity there. So I just think it was like a really stupid fuck-up but that like it's

Solvable and it doesn't like It doesn't it's not like I don't know. It's not some some deeper rot that's being exposed here in my opinion It's just like wow, they were being stupid, you know, I'm glad they talk on signal. I think talking on signal is cool It's it's a secure way to communicate and like I'd rather be them talking on signal than like having to sit down with their laptops and open some secure email server. You know, like that's antiquated like or get into a room. Yeah, but what they might be a different like different physical locations, right? Like, I don't know. I just I don't find it problematic that they are talking on signal at all. Like that part of it seems fine to me. They're demanding. I think it's yeah, I agree. That's cool. I it's all it says to me. It proves that signal is actually secure.

You know, it's like the government's using the same app that I use with my friends to share, like extremely inappropriate means. I feel I feel confident now about that. I feel great. I feel like the world feels like a safer place because of that. I feel great. I feel like the world feels like a safer place because of that. I can trust Signal.

Me too. I'm sorry, there was one take too where I saw in the very beginning where I think somebody, maybe this was in the Atlantic article or another news publication wrote about the Atlantic article and they were making the point that like, now that Silicon Valley is like more integrated with Washington, D.C., there's this little known

app that people are just starting to use called Signal. And like that, it's like, okay, if that's true, then what were the Democrats communicating with? They either were text messaging, which is definitely not secure or they weren't. Which is like stupid, right? Like, like, and so it's that that framing was definitely not true. We've actually been we've we've talked in the to people in DC swamp creatures in DC when Biden was president over signal like you and I have, you know, and so it's like that's not true either, you know? So, I don't know.

Everyone was on Signal. That's what all the DC insiders, but you even had like DC swamp creatures on Twitter making fun of this. So like, what are you, we're all on Signal. That's how this works now. They're calling for accountability. That's the word they keep using.

My sense of this is like, the public laughter at them for being so stupid is the accountability. Like, it's like, you gotta laughter at them for being so stupid is the accountability. Like, it's like, you gotta clean your act up. This is mortifying and like, you're being told that you're bad. I don't know what more, well, I do know what they want. I know, and we say they, what we mean is like,

crazy people on blue sky. I haven't seen if anyone in like the Times or something said that, you know, something should be done more seriously than that. Buddha Judge called for a very extreme something very, like, Matt, you can, something should be done more seriously than that. But a judge called for a very extreme, something very, like, Matt, you can, I can't remember totally what it was. Elizabeth Warren also asked, or like,

called for someone to be fired. Either Hegseth or Waltz, yeah. I mean, Waltz, I could see maybe Waltz stepping down. I don't, but like, Hegseth is crazy to say that. Like, why him and not the vice president who was also on it. It's just because they know that that's laughable and you would be laughed out of the room. It's not gonna happen.

He was invited to a chat that he didn't belong on. Again, once again, it's like these people are not like, you know who I, I wonder, I'm gonna say this and then I'm gonna be, what did Bernie and AOC, do they have anything to say about it? No idea. Cause my sense is they're pretty focused on the future of the democratic party. They're really trying to make a case for what they believe in and who they should

be. And it's, uh, horrifying, but smart. Um, I would be surprised if they were admired in this, but maybe it's hard to get out of it because it's so like, it's such a funny weird... It's like an elementary mistake. It was interesting seeing like Trump have a press conference about it and it seemed like when you do something bad and you're a kid and you get pulled into your parents' room

and they're like, don't do this again, you're an embarrassment to the family kind of a thing. Yeah. That was... It's true. You're an embarrassment to the family kind of a thing. Yeah. That was. It's true. He was an embarrassment to the family. He was certainly that. He's really embarrassing.

And they're like, I'm not going to do it again next time. I swear. Another Blue Sky take that I saw going around. And by the way, that place is like, I just had to spend some time there for a column in. Oh my god. It's miserable. You guys should check out Riley's column by the way.

It drops today. What are we calling it? Is it Blue Cry with Riley Norrick or? Blue Sky Blues, I think we said it. Anyway, it's a nightmare of a place. Riley's doing a weekly column sort of reviewing what's going on over there, which is important I think,

because we are this super fragmented media ecosystem now. And I think if you're not actually looking at what's going on at Blue Sky, you don't really know what the left is thinking. Important, sure, but also a form of torture. And another take that they're giving there is the very fact that they were using Signal is like bad in itself because they were saying

they were using that to get around like any potential FOIA requests. They were like, they're using this secret. Yeah, it was the worst take I've ever seen. Like they should be arrested just for using signal to begin with, which that's a galaxy brain take. Would be crazy if we arrested every single politician who has ever used signal because there'd be none of them left and we could just start fresh.

It feels kind of nice. I think the transparency thing is a valid. I don't think you should be arrested or they should. But yeah, I mean, I don't know what what what is the what what are we entitled to as citizens? You know, are we entitled to 100% of of our of our administration's communications? I guess presumably we are right? Yeah, I think so. So this is a problem. Yeah, it is an interesting... I think it's an interesting question to ask. It's not a question that just applies to this one group chat, obviously.

It's like this endemic... I don't want to call it a problem, but an endemic aspect of DC now, as we've been discussing. But I agree, it's interesting that, you know, the conception of Signal ten years ago, or I think it was about ten years ago, a little more than ten years ago, was I think it was about 10 years ago,

a little more than 10 years ago, was like Moxie's thing. It was like, how do you protect yourself from the government? It was very much in the realm of like, it was like Bitcoin stuff and Signal, and it's like these anti-authoritarian technologies, let's call them.

But actually, I mean, it's being used for those reasons, but also it's being used by the government to evade the people, which is interesting. Or just for secure, like... removed from accidentally adding the energy for the Atlantic for OPSEC reasons too. Yeah, certainly both. Yeah, it's like super secure.

And so you're not gonna be spied on by whatever. Which is also why it's funny that he's saying it wasn't warplanes. It's like super secure. And so you're not gonna be spied on by whatever, which is also why it's funny that he's saying it wasn't war plans. It's like, then why did you need, why did you need to have a secure group chat? Like, why wasn't it just a fucking text chain? It's because it's important.

Like, that's why. Whatever. You know what's more important than that? Snow White. Riley. Tell us about it. Tell us about, let's take a than that? Snow White, Riley. Tell us about it. Tell us about it. Let's take a bite of the poison apple, shall we? Let's consult our magic mirror on the wall.

Yeah, in somewhat of a shocker, it turns out audiences are not on board for a Latina feminist Snow White in her CGI dwarves. Shocker. Disney's new live action movie, it officially bombed at the box office, brought in just around $40 million domestically, which ranks almost dead last among Disney's recent

live action movies, far short of expectations. Why did it completely bombed? A number of reasons to point to. Number one, Peter Dinklage, a dwarf actor who has done very well for himself, objected to using dwarf actors in this movie. He said on the Mark Maron podcast, it wouldn't be progressive.

Also, their lead actress in the middle of promo for this thing, which was delayed a number of times, by the way, for a lot of different reasons, the SAG strike, she decided to go full blown, deranged, like libtard, not even like your casual Hollywood feminism, which, as Kat Rosenfield noted in a piece for us, there was also that. But we're also talking like posting on Instagram, may Trump supporters never know peace, which this movie's favor. And now I just hope, uh, Disney has learned from this experience before we get Trans-Azov Battalion Cinderella. Let's see if they have.

What did you guys think about the Snow White, uh, rollout? She was a meme for sure. So, and this is, we've been following, we've been following this story. Um, I've been gripped by this story. It's like the classic sort of clown world thing for literally years at this point. I think it's been at least two years of drama. Uh, to the point, I really thought they were gonna cancel it,

put it away, start over. They did not. They just plowed ahead. And at every step of the way, Rachel's, uh... Rachel Zeigler? Yeah. Made it worse. Um, you know, like, it wasn't just one comment, it was the Palestinian comment, it was the fact that she said that she didn't like Snow White.

It was the fact that she went on and on about how the Snow White wasn't going to be saved. It was the fact that she, uh, then had that long Trump post. And it all, I mean, it all started with a sort of race swapping conversation because before even we got to the dwarves, just the idea that it would be a Latina who is like darker, not dark skinned, but like, you are not snow white. Like, you are not skin as white as snow.

Uh, it felt sort of like, um, one of these Western, like, European erasure type narratives. But it quickly evolved because of her response to all of that. And it just got worse and worse and worse. And, um, and to this, to this point, I would say it's interesting in that no one is actually, for the most part, talking about that other than the Chinese, where I've been reading stories about how they're furious about the race swapping. Like this show, it's not it's also not popular over there.

But for this specific reason, for like the racial reason here, it's mostly like this girl hates us. Why would we go and see her movie? There was also that battle between her and her costar, um, what's her name? The queen? Uh, Gal Gadot. Who, uh, the sleuth said was pro-Israel, because I think she was maybe served in the Israel military.

Gal is definitely like hardcore Israel, I think. Yeah, so Gal then had to, they had to hire security for her, because she was getting death threats. It was just like a huge, huge, I think. Yeah, so Gal then had to, they had to hire security for her because she was getting death threats. It was just like a huge, huge, huge mess. Bridget, who has a Phetasy, who has been on our pod just last week and often in front of the pod. She had an interesting comment though, that gave me pause where she said, you know, I'm not gonna attack this idiot

because I've lived through so many of these before. And the only commonality between these things is that they're young, pretty women who get brutalized by the public and witch-burned. And I've just been struggling with that since I read that this morning. I'm like, is that true? Is it not true?

Is it, it's certainly true that she's being witch-burned right now. It's certainly true that the studio is blaming her Completely for the failure of this movie And it's certainly true that we've seen this kind of stuff before I don't know that it only hits young beautiful women But I don't know is there something to that that point Bridget. I read that too, and I was gonna bring that one up And I I feel like I agree with her on a very on a very high level basis.

So her anecdotes were Lohan and Brittany. And those specific anecdotes were actually a lot different than what's happening now. I don't think Brittany invited the controversy like what's her Zegler has, right? Like Brittany like was, got really famous really fast. And she, she kind of freaked out because she couldn't handle it. And everybody just enjoyed seeing the crash out. And it was, it was like, it was morbidly glorious, right?

It was, she shaved her head, she freaked out in front of the paparazzi. And then she got put under conservatorship, I guess. And she had all these boyfriends that, you know, who talk shit on there after they broke up. Zegler, I think has been misguidedly like sort of outspoken on every leftist political issue that the vibe shift went against in 2024 or 2025. So I don't know what to make of the but I think broadly Bridget is right. Like, would this be happening if she was a Ziegler was a man? I don't I don't actually think so. For some reason. I like my feeling is like no, but I don't know.

Why is the star of the show is the star of the show. She's a protagonist. It's Yeah, it's anchored on her. She all it reminds me maybe more of the show. She's a star of the show. She's a protagonist. It's, yeah, it's anchored on her. She all, it reminds me maybe more of the Gina Carano stuff, where, um, Judah Carano was on that show, The Mandalorian. Uh, now she's some, I think she's like a conservative talking head at this point. Maybe not. I don't know, she shows up in those, she did movies for The Daily Caller, I think,

or at least one movie with The Daily Caller. She doesn't have much of a career. She got fired from Mandalorian for comparing what was happening to conservatives. What was one pose? Well, she had posted a lot of stuff that was like edgy, like close to the, like winking it at the MAGA stuff. But she said, you know, what's happening to conservatives today

on free speech stuff is like what happened to the Jews. And she lost her job immediately for that. That was it. Gone. Um, and at the time, a lot of sort of like the free speech people defended her. I did not. I said, of course people are going to have an opinion about this. I don't agree with what she said entirely. I agree. There's a problem with censorship back then. I did not agree that it was as bad as what happened to the Jews before the Holocaust. Um, but it also didn't really matter.

Like, even though I sort of probably, like, was down for the overall vibe of Gina Carano, I think it's naive to think that an actor who is saying a bunch of shit publicly is not going to color the movie. Like, these are actors who are, you go to the show and you want to kind of get lost in the story. If I know Gina Carano is this person who,

you know, I'm this super left-wing person and I think that she's super anti-Semitic. Remember, this is back in the day, but when the left was like still really animated about anti-Semitism now because of the Hamas stuff, it's, they don't give a shit anymore. But then, they really cared. And if that was something that they couldn't get over,

and they were not gonna be able to enjoy the movie, and they weren't gonna go see the movie, I kind of get that. It's like, she can't be in the, or be able to enjoy the movie and they weren't gonna go see the movie, I kind of get that. It's like she can't be in the show or whatever. Like she can't be in it then. And with Zegler, I sort of feel that way. Like I see where Bridge is coming from.

I think that I net out like, you should have been fired out of the gate. Like you and not even just the anti, like whatever her politics were, but she's trashing Snow White, which is like a beloved movie. We're talking about Disney people who are obsessed with this property that really created animation as we know it in the world. It's this very important historical movie.

It's completely cherished, obviously, at the company because it created Walt Disney World, or Walt Disney Corporation. It was the first feature length film. It's a hugely important story and she just gets up there and like flippantly pisses all over it. And it's like, that would have been it for me personally. And I don't know, I think like moving forward,

I guess maybe the last thread there is just the dwarves, which... That was its own media cycle for a minute. And it was a couple of years because it started with, it started with Dinklage saying it. And he said, you know, this is offensive to have dwarves only for roles like that. They're either the munchkins or they are a Snow White and the seven dwarves. It's offensive. I've thought a lot about that. I was thinking about it today, because I watched The Wiz over the weekend.

Um, or not The Wiz, I'm sorry. Uh, Wicked over the weekend. I've seen the Broadway show. I liked it a lot. I saw the movie and I really hated it. It was a very different thing, different podcast that we can talk about some other time. They, the Munchkins weren't little. And I thought, that's...

So then what are they? They're like, they're just regular people. Why are they called Munchkins weren't little. And I thought, that's... So then what are they? They're just regular people. Why are they called Munchkins though? And it felt like, okay... What is inherently bad about being a race of small people? Like, what is actually even the difference between that and saying, like, I don't see a problem watching The Wizard of Oz with the munchkins being small. And I also don't see a problem with someone being small.

Like a little person, okay, they exist. If you have a bunch of little people doing this, it's like, it's not like we're using artificial intelligence to distort the way they look or whatever. Like, these are actual people who exist in our world, who are just populating this world. Is it the idea that, like, that they're... Like, what even is it? Can you make the Steel...

Can someone make the Steel Man case against casting dwarves in the role of little people? Wasn't the critique this specific role? Because the dwarves, there's nothing... They're like subservient dummies, kind of. I don't remember the story of Snow White. I mean, even just calling them dwarves, I think, but it's like, but you are,

but now you call yourselves dwarves. I think that they've confused their victim narratives here. And now it's like, I don't think they realize why they were, I don't think that there was actually a cogent reason. And I think it was just one of these things where like, this feels off, you know, this feels a little problematic without thinking it through.

They were not that... They lived together. They were like, like, what if the dwarves did live together? Okay, so I've seen television shows where dwarves families are together. Like, some dwarves live together. Maybe some dwarves live in the fucking outside, like in the countryside or something. Is that inherently problematic that there are some dwarves in the countryside?

What about like a dwarvish Wakanda? Would that be problematic if it was like a nation of dwarves? Like I guess we had that in Lord of the Rings. Yeah. The dwarves of Milidor or whatever the fuck. Like they're out there, you know, digging up for gems. Maybe that's a little problematic because they were greedy little. The hobbits were short or small too.

But they were not dwarves. The dwarves were like straight up, they're dwarves. Like we have those in our world, they have them in the book. I guess they're hairier in the books. Yeah, they have more exaggerated features. Bigger noses, seems like. Well, that was the first drama, but then it quickly was followed by the dwarves' backlash against Dinklage,

who they were like, bro, we don't even have, we do not have the career that you have, we cannot be picking and choosing between scripts. This is a show with seven, straight up seven roles for dwarves actors. And you just said... And then you get the role for dwarves, yeah.

And you just said no. You and you just said, no. You said, fuck them kids is what you said after he got opportunities himself, too. So it's like, yeah, taking away from those who came after you. Yeah. He climbed his way out and then he shut the door behind them. He shut that. What is the word for the Dwarvish ceiling? It's not the glass ceiling.

It could be like, I don't know, the little ceiling. The four foot ceiling. The four foot ceiling. You shut it, man. Closed it, it's closed. Yeah, I think that it's like dwarves are, we know that dwarves exist. We, as long as you're not making like dwarvish jokes,

there was that, what was that famous Audrey Hepburn movie, Breakfast at Tiffany's, where they have like the guy doing Asia, like Asian face, yellow face, that Mickey, is that Mickey Rooney or something? What does his name? I don't, not Mickey Rooney. What does that actor, anyway, famous actor who did yellow face.

And it was like this caricature of Asians. And it was, I understood on watching it, why people found that offensive. I disagree that this movie should be erased from history because it was a long time ago and it was a different world and we should all mature, but I get it. Like, reading it now, like if someone did that now, I'd be like, okay, I can see where they're coming from.

It's just like actual classic blackface as well, where it's like what you're doing is making fun of these people. If this role was making fun of the dwarves and it was just like nonstop little person jokes and they were like, look at this fucking dumb little bitch or something. Like, that's one, but it's not, it's like Snow White being cute with them. And it's like they're little miners and I don't know why we can't have nice things. That's like my overall feeling. We still feel like Snow White in general as well. Like why does she have to, why does she

have to be, one of the things that Rachel got in trouble with early on was criticizing Snow White in general as well. Why does she have to be, one of the things that Rachel got in trouble with early on was criticizing Snow White and saying, you know, we're not going to have her be saved by the prince. She's not going to be saved by the prince. She's not going to be saved by the prince and she's not going to be dreaming about true love. She's dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be and the leader that her late father told her that she could be if she was fearless, fair, brave and true.

Why not? Why can't she be saved by the prince? Why are you signing up for a movie you don't, like, support? I don't get that. I don't get that. Well, the fame. I mean, the girl wants to be famous. Yeah, but she ruined it.

She's not going to be cast in anything serious going forward because everyone's going to be scared of her out, like, her outlash. But she was cast. Wasn't she in stuff? Has she been cast in stuff? I feel like she was in a bunch of stuff while this controversy was going on.

She was the one that she was in West Side Story. She was in Scream, I'm pretty sure. Scream? Yeah, one of the new Scream. I'm almost, almost. Oh, a new Scream. Yeah, one of the new Screams. Rachel Zegler.

I think, I mean, how old is she? Like she's young. Scream seven. She's probably gonna look back on all this when she's like 32 and be like, fuck, like I was crazy back then. And like a lot of adults around me, like, weren't reigning me in.

And like, it has fucked up my life, like, permanently, you know? She cannot be, I mean, this, she's probably in a pretty painful spot right now, psychologically, because just everybody hates her. Well, did you see the producer of the movie go off about her? We should probably read that. I think another producer's son, but yeah, he...

Yeah, the producer's son went off. I'm not calling three million views. Who cares about the son? The son is like, not connected. Well, because of what he said. So, basically, this is blowing up right now. Someone went after him on Instagram and they said, your dad flew to New York City to reprimand a young actress. Any words on this?

Because that's creepy as hell and uncalled for. People have the right to free speech. No shame on your father. Free speech? The kid at the producer has a podcast. And I say kid, he looks like he's late 30s. He looks like he's 37, maybe. Early 40s maybe.

He's definitely up there. But he's got a podcast of some kind. Never heard of it, don't care about it. Do like this response though. He responds, you really want to do this? Yeah, my dad, the producer of enormous piece of Disney IP with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line, had to leave his family to fly across the country

to reprimand his 20-year-old employee for dragging her personal politics into the middle of promoting the movie for which she signed a multi million dollar contract to get paid and do publicity for. This is called adult responsibility and accountability and her actions clearly hurt the film's box office. Free speech does not mean you're allowed to say whatever you want in your private employment without repercussions.

Tens of thousands of people worked on that film and she hijacked the conversation for her own immature desires at the risk of people worked on that film and she hijacked the conversation for her own immature desires at the risk of all the colleagues and crew and blue collar workers, ding ding ding, who depend on that movie to be successful. Narcissism is not something to be coddled or encouraged. Okay, that's pretty good. That's a perfect response.

Really good. The thousands of employees thing is the one that I never even thought of and people never do. How many people are involved in this thing and like you really have the power to just do massive damage to it. And the narcissism thing is also true. Like, why do you think that this is for you to do?

That you are to, you know, fuck the platform that Disney gave me to promote Snow White. Like I'm going to use this attention to talk about Palestine at the expense of the people who gave me this work and I understand with the workers. Yeah, I mean, I get it. I get like as soon as like as soon as this movie was announced and people saw that there was a Latina Snow White, I get that she was probably like getting roasted. And there was probably a super high temptation to respond back to these people.

But like to do so, to his point, is putting the livelihoods of so many other people in jeopardy. So, yeah, that's the perfect response right there. I mean, I will say it was all... Yes, she does not deserve any of that. Um, but... And there's always that backlash. And I think the backlash is... I mean, she's like, it's a...

It's maybe there's some warrant to it. These are like, I don't know. But regardless, you see, like, the Little Mermaid story where there was also a backlash and she handled it totally gracefully and that movie did very well. And it was like, she didn't start ranting about other shit. very well. And it was like, she didn't start ranting about other shit. Well, that's Snow White. She's gone now.

The movie sucked. Did you see the movie? Guys, I didn't even know about this. I had no idea. I had no idea this happened. Any of it. Well, it's the final plot to a story we've followed for a while. It's kind of anticlimactic, it feels. I guess because we all knew the movie was doomed, there was no way that it was gonna do well.

I guess there's another thing, maybe people just don't like Snow White. It would be really crazy if the real reason it did poorly was like, Snow White's kind of... Snow White's a great story. It's a little boring. I think it's a little boring. I like all the controversial takes online. You know that one Instagram creator

who, like, tries to see through every Disney story and see, like, who is who and how they're connected and Snow White had an affair with one of the dwarves and then that became, like, Ariel and, like, the Little Mermaid. It's like crazy stuff like that. I think they missed the boat on it. You're not saying an influencer actually made the case

that Snow White fucked a dwarf. Yeah, yeah, they did. Because I've seen these connecting charts before where it's like this one, this princess was on this boat that crashed and that crashed boat is the boat that Ariel explored at the opening of the movie. And like, blah, blah, blah, but I've never heard someone say that Snow White fucked a dwarf.

Like Snow White and what is it? Grumpy upstairs and I don't know. That's too much for me for a Disney movie. I think it was grumpy. Was it grumpy? Why was he grumpy? No reason to be grumpy. This is what I don't like about kids today, man. He had no reason to be great.

Everything that he could possibly have wanted. And he still found a reason to be mad. Well, AdQuick, thanks for your support. You guys might have seen our Moonshield be a state billboard on Nasdaq and thought, how'd you pull that off? The simple answer, we have no idea. We still don't. We're writers and content creators, not billboard pros.

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That was cool, man. That moon thing was epic. We should do another billboard with them. I don't know what, we have a few ideas cooking. I don't know what would be a cool one. I would like to see just more- The sphere. Well, the sphere, I asked that, that's a lot of money. The sphere. We don't have

a spiral. I just didn't have that kind of dough. But there are some other things we could do. And I just think in general, I love to see more beautiful things. I would love to see more beautiful billboards out there. Just like, it would be nice if people were doing stuff with their space that was under Is there a law against advertising just straight propaganda? I don't think so. Every advertisement is propaganda, isn't it? No, like Moon should be a state as actual propaganda. It's like a social movement.

But like by my boner pill is not propaganda. Propaganda for boner pills. That's so interesting that we would have laws that are like, you can't try and spread ideas, but you can try and spread drugs. I don't think there, I don't think there are laws against it. I mean, you go down or go like up the five to San Francisco and you'll see like religious boards that'll say like, you know, Jesus loves you. In Times Square, they would not,

my original one was Dear Mr. President. It was like a little message to him. I was trying to get the president's attention was the concept for the billboard. And the Times Square would not, the person who owned it would not, yeah, Nasdaq would not allow political things on there. And I guess they just didn't consider

Moon should be a state to be political because it was, in their opinion, so crazy. But the joke's gonna be on them. Because I think this is gonna become a... This is gonna become a live meme again over the next couple of years. I think we should wrap a plane with it. I mean, the world is our oyster.

Or a rocket. SpaceX. I'm sure Elon will be super down. Well, food for thought for another day. Fortunately, we can all discuss it online, because Catherine Mayer is not in charge of Twitter. Riley, tell us about her recent appearance before Congress. That would be a nightmare if she was ever in charge. Yes, PBS's Paula Kurter and NPR's Catherine Maher

testified before Congress's Doge subcommittee in a hearing called Anti-American Airwaves. They were grilled like on a number of questionable pieces of content that their respective organizations had aired while using our tax dollars to do so. But a real notable moment came when Congressman Brandon Gill was asking Maher about her past tweets, which include calling Trump a racist and also likening Founders Fund and Hereticon to the KKK, as Sanjee noted in a piece for us last year. And Maher really tried to distance herself from those past statements, which was very interesting. She was saying she doesn't believe that stuff anymore. Do you believe that America is addicted to white supremacy?

I believe that I tweeted that and as I've said earlier, I believe much of my thinking has evolved over the last half decade. It has evolved. Why did you tweet that? I don't recall the exact context, sir, so I wouldn't be able to say. Okay. Do you believe that America believes in black plunder and white democracy? I Don't believe that sir You don't need a dad in reference to a book you were reading at the time apparently the case for reparations I don't think I've ever read that book sir

Tweeted about it very convenient that she doesn't now while she's testifying in front of the Republican Congress that she doesn't now while she's testifying in front of the Republican Congress. Whether or not it's true though, the most important thing is, we will still all be required to ritually give our hard-earned tax dollars to these organizations for some strange unknown reason that I have no clue of. What did you guys make of her testimony and her past tweets?

So, it was a bunch of people obviously, but she was definitely the star. There was a few people there. There was the PBS woman, I'm blanking on her name, and then there were two other people. One was from, I think, the Heritage Foundation. I think they were up there to, I guess, just be on the side of the right or something.

I... The thing that was the most interesting to me was the degree to which she just retracted everything that she had ever said. Like straight up, it wasn't one or two tweets, right? It was like there were an endless number. You could go online and find just Google Katherine Mayer or check her out on Twitter, keyword search her name, and they're all popping up. It's everything talking about, you know, black pillaging and inherent white supremacy

and how she feels whatever way because she's white, like gleefully making fun of stuff. Again, she did insinuate that Hereticon was a conference for the KKK by MyRead, you know, maybe there's some ambiguity there. And certainly now she would disagree with that. But when you place it in the context of what was happening five years ago,

or even before that, when she was writing a lot of these tweets, it's like that was the price that you had to pay to be in elite circles, to be in elite circles, especially in media, especially if you want to sit on the board of Wikipedia or eventually get a job at NPR, you had to be drinking the Kool-Aid on race stuff. And that meant that white people were inherently racist.

They were inherently white, not only racist, white supremacist. I remember when white supremacist became suddenly a common thing that people said when I was growing up, that was a crazy to be a white supremacist was like, you were in the KKK. Like that was like this extreme thing. Late teens and certainly by 2020, that totally changes. And now it's like, you're supposed to accept that you yourself are white supremacist, that you are just like, you have this inherent white supremacist sentiment that you cannot escape

and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so she sort of just, you know, she's parroting that at that time. She doesn't believe these things. She's just saying what she thinks she has to say. And now to see her just denying all of those things, what's very obvious is one, she never believed them in the first place. She says her opinion has evolved over the last five years, but what has actually happened is the culture has evolved over the last five years.

And she is really an interesting barometer of where the culture is. And right now, the culture is not into this bullshit, and it also, I think, sort of wants to punish people who propagated it. And that was just a very interesting, clear example of the quote, you know, vibe shift outside of tech. Like, this is a woman who maybe shouldn't give a shit what tech people have to say.

Um, and she's very much, you know, not trying to say these kinds of things publicly anymore. How do you think people should reposition their, I guess, their image after something like this? Like, where did she get wrong and where could she have done better? Well, I mean, it's like, does she believe anything she ever... I don't know how I can even advise her,

because I don't think she believes any of this stuff, but I would say that she did as best as she could. Like, she was like, hey, I don't agree with that. Yes, I wrote that. There was one point I saw that I really liked, where she was like, I do not deny at all. I'm not denying that I don't remember that. I'm not denying that I said it. Like, I'm sure that I said it.

Uh, I don't believe that anymore. I think that what she should do, if she really believes in that, oh, wow, I really got something totally wrong in like the George Floyd era, man, how crazy was I? Like, how does she not just look at all, it was like 20, 30 tweets,

like over the course of years saying really deranged shit. Like that to me would warrant some kind of serious, like an essay or something, being like, wow, did I get a lot wrong? I read a lot of stuff that was wrong. I was really scared. I had to say this. I'm never going to do that again, whatever. I mean, she is running NPR. So, you know, as a person who I'm being forced to pay,

as an American taxpayer, and your job is disseminating information of this kind. Maybe it does warrant, I think, a little bit more serious of a kind of, I got this wrong statement, a willingness to get out there and talk about that. For example, Jack Dorsey has in his way, in bits and pieces, but he's been very like, yeah, that was wrong. Twitter was wrong. That shouldn't have happened. He even has explained how it happened. I think that if she wants that job,

that's maybe what she should do. But again, I don't really believe that she's had a change of heart. I think that just she's this kind of creature of the elite. And she is reflecting back to us what the new orthodoxy is. Yeah, I think she might get pushback if she did do that full on backtrack. And speaking of like crazy takes on blue sky, they are when she did give that statement in Congress saying like, Oh,

I don't believe this stuff anymore. She was getting pushback on blue sky for being like, Oh, you're backtracking now. So that's yet another thing that they're like grilling her for, for like saying she doesn't believe this stuff. Like they're mad at her that she is backtracking on the white supremacy stuff, which is insane. Well, it's like she has to write because what's really under threat is NPR's money. It's for years they try and say, well, we don't get most of our money from

from the government. And it's like, OK, well, then it't get most of our money from the government. And it's like, okay, well then it shouldn't matter at all if we get rid of it. And it's like, no, no, no, you can't do that, we'll die. I think there's just very convoluted funding set up in an NPR that has to do with all of their affiliates where they're getting a lot of money from the government. And some of it's the federal government and some of it's state government.

And it's like, there's like this huge spider web of shit. But if you just turn that off completely and said, the government is no longer allowed to pay NPR, they would go out. They would just go under is what my feeling about this is watching them. They are terrified. She is the leader and she's doing maybe, you know,

the read is that maybe it's not even wrong that she's lying about this now. She's just doing what she has to do to keep her company alive. And that's something that people at Blue Sky would never care about because they don't have real jobs is my read of it. And they don't have people who care or whose lives will be destroyed if they fail at something and, you know, don't run their mouths off publicly. Interesting, I guess it's like it's sort of like a Rachel Zegler situation.

It's like similar where it's like this one person's views have this huge impact on many, many, many, many other people. Well, that's a responsibility of running a company. Yeah. I never think about it. I just run my mouth off. Another proposal I've seen, and I've touched on this before is like, if they're getting so much money from the federal government, like,

does Trump have say in like their personnel decisions? Like, if they're using our taxpayer money, like, they're under this administration, like, can PirateWires be the new NPR? Like, why not? They're taking taxpayer funding. It is crazy and it should not exist. And they know that. On some level, we all know that. It does not make any kind of sense with our first amendment.

We have, if you have a right to free speech, you, but there's also, there's also a firm separation between, uh, or what is it? The anti-establishment clause, maybe I would go there. Um, where, no, how would I do this? How, what is my aversion to this? Really? I think it's maybe just the idea that I am being compelled to share in speech that I don't agree with, which is how I feel about NPR. When they report on things that I find abhorrent, or they twist the truth in a way that they do or keep the truth away from things that I think are important.

Like, it bothers me that I'm forced to pay for someone else's speech that I disagree with. And maybe that's the place where I find it kind of messed up. BOWEN I'm skeptical that she didn't... that she was just sort of signaling... to the In Group in the Floyd era to make sure that she could keep her job at Wikimedia or get set up for the NPR job.

I mean, our piece about Mar, when she began to be canceled by the right was about an Oxford union speech that she gave in 2018 about like connecting white supremacy to Silicon Valley and essentially characterizing tech as a fundamental danger to civilized society. And I don't know, I think there's a difference between tweeting the right things, making sure that, again, your values seem aligned with the current thing, and going to the Oxford Union and giving like a 30-minute, 45-minute speech and then debating with students

afterwards. So, I think this sort of like ideology is kind of baked in for her sort of running through her veins. I don't, I'm, I'm skeptical. I think she's just doing, she's just keeping her company alive right now. And just straight up, I just, I find it so hard to believe that people, but why would she, why would she go to the Oxford? You like, again, it's one thing to tweet. There's a whole circuit. There's like a,

there's like a speaking circuit. You want to go to Ted, you want to go to like the whatever WEF summit you want to go to Europe on someone else's dime like some bank's dime to give a speech about whatever and you have this Fake career where you've just ascended this corporate ladder forever by saying Bullshit platitudes and kind of just being in a boardroom and like negotiating well And she's a part of that, whatever that machine is. Like she doesn't actually do anything. She's not really an expert in anything. She just kind of constantly fails upward is my assumption of her and who she is. And it's like, well, what are you going to talk about if you don't do anything? And you talk about what's in

the culture and you take like a sort of do-gooder position that works within the context of who we are and what we're talking about online. Like you have to remember, this was supported systemically at Twitter. So she would had a baked in platform, willing to sort of amplify these views. You have all these people who would have amplified it. I think that's why you do it is you're just kind of like this cipher of culture and you're spitting stuff out that doesn't matter at all. These are not, and that's by the way, not a thing that's unique to the left

or to the pro-censorship people. That's like most adult human beings in America right now in the corporate world are these people who just don't know shit about anything and don't have opinions and don't really care about anything other than their paycheck and status to a certain extent is what she seems to me to be a person who really cared about status and probably still does.

Like, I bet she was probably excited about this hearing on some level. It's like she gets to go speak before Congress and seem important. Maybe not. I don't know. It was a brutal hearing. It was a hard day for Catherine there. It is also just funny that anyone in Congress can just be like, you have to come answer questions for me. That just funny that anyone in Congress can just be like, you have to come answer questions for me. That's so funny. And you can just be like, I summon you and you have to answer every single question about your organization.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is the one who summoned her and then just berated this woman. I think it's definitely crazy and messed up. I've said that every time one of these, my first opinion always on these hearings is like, why does this even exist? This is fucking crazy. Like, how can you do, like you said, how can you just summon someone to this, across the country, and then force them to sit there while you yell at them? They're always polite, which leads me to believe that they have to be.

I think that they have to be. Because why else would someone, I would not be polite. Someone was attacking me and being obtuse and not under, I'd be like, what the fuck do you know? Like maybe you can't curse or something. Do we know that? Are there rules there? Or is it just like people are just scared of congressmen?

Maybe they don't wanna get called back. They're like, shit, like, please don't call me back. I'll be nice, just don't drag me back here. Yeah, it's wild. I thought Marjorie, maybe my other read here was that like, her aggressiveness made me feel bad for Catherine Mayer. And I thought, OK, if you make me, if you're making, I know a lot, I have a lot of context on Catherine.

I hate the work that she's done. I consider her to have been over the last 10 years, like an agent of darkness. If you have me feeling bad for her, you're losing. Like this is really, you're not succeeding at anything right now. You're doing damage to the overall cause of what I would assume to be here, like free speech and keeping our platforms relatively open.

And yeah, I don't like that. I thought who was really effective was that dude, Congressman, was it Brendan Gill, who just read her tweets and was like, do you believe this? No. Why did you say it? Okay.

What about this? Never heard of it? Well, it was in this book. Oh, you never read it. Then why did you say you read it? Why did you say you took off a whole day to read it in fact and like poured over it and okay, got it. Next question.

Do you believe this? And it was just, yeah, it was really bad. And that's Catherine. Last thoughts on Ms. Mayer. I want to know what's going on internally at NPR right now, if there's some sort of like hyper woke backlash against the testimony. Well, she's got to be getting it both ways. There's like a hyper woke backlash

from the probably the writers. And then in the boardroom, it's like, you have to go because we're going to lose funding over this. I think that she might lose her job. We'll see. But the Marjorie Taylor Greene thing brings me to our next topic, which I caught one, Riley. I want to talk about Hot Wheels.

Tell us about Hot Wheels. Hot Wheels, the nickname, the nickname making waves right now. Yeah, so Texas rep Jasmine Crockett, she caused something of a stir last weekend when she appeared to refer to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who is wheelchair bound as Hot Wheels. Because we in these hot ass Texas streets, honey. Y'all know we got Governor Hot Wheels down there. Come on now. And the only thing hot about him is that he is a hot ass mess, honey. So, so yes. After some initial pushback, she tried to backtrack

saying she wasn't referring to the governor's condition, but to quote, the planes, trains and automobiles he used to transfer migrants into communities led by black mayors, sure Jan. Now some on the right are pushing back, as you mentioned even further. They're even going through like rockets, like social media history,

trying to find like any post or like making fun of Greg Abbott's condition. And yeah, and so that sort of feels hall monitor to me. I wrote a take about that. What did you guys think? Are you pro Hot Wheels or are you anti Hot Wheels? I think the first thing we have to acknowledge is just like, it's objectively funny that she called him Hot Wheels. I think there's no getting around that. You can be mad about it. You can think it's rude, but like you cannot deny that that's really funny. And that like, when she's, if she said that in privacy of, you know, or whatever, like that's authentically a funny thing

that this woman said. And so automatically, as you said, like the hall monitor thing, if all of the right wing people clutching their pearls over this, it's like, you got to keep in mind that that energy of, that's not funny, that's terrible, is how Donald Trump clobbered you in 2016. It was like you were not prepared

for an authentically funny person who you just didn't like. If someone is authentically funny and attacking you, you cannot tell them to stop talking or say that their jokes are off limits or out of bounds. You have to just be funny. You have to say something back. It's the only thing that you can do or ignore them. Try to, but I don't believe that you can ignore anybody. I've never been a big like,

ignore the bully and he'll go away kind of never once. I was never that. I just couldn't keep my mouth shut. I was gonna say something. You have to say something and you have to be better, is my read of Jasmine Crockett in All Hot Wheels. Crockett's someone who I haven't really paid attention to, but it seems like she's really animating the kid. They're mad. They're mad, they're excited. They have a lot of energy. Crockett's someone who I haven't really paid attention to, but it seems like she's really animating the kid. They're mad.

They're mad, they're excited. They have a lot of energy about Crockett. She's seemed to be like one of their fighters right now. You mentioned like AOC and Bernie are like trying to be like the fighting part of their party. Jasmine Crockett, I would put in that wing as well. Who is she? What does she do?

She's like a- Texas representative. No nonsense black woman who's like- Okay, so she's in the house. She's a congresswoman. Oh, you're asking her job. I'm like, tell you about some other things about her. Cool. I mean, she's definitely got like, there's like a vibe about her that drives people crazy,

which is very powerful in politics. We find if you have lovers and haters, that's like, that's something. And she's got both. Yeah, I don't know. It reminds me of Marjorie Taylor Greene, sort of the reaction to her where it's like, the right is really owning itself right now. You have these really easy layups, and one of them is like, don't be a tedious school marm. And one of them is like, just list off the tweets, right?

Like, just hold the people accountable without being completely insufferable. And I feel like they're really failing it here. No one has anything else on Hot Wheels. Come on. I think it's like I agree with you, and it's especially ironic because it's a nickname related thing. That was Trump's thing is the funny nicknames. Pocahontas, he gave us Pocahontas.

You can't say nicknames are off limits now. This was one of his best weapons. Like you got to let them. If there was like a lib in a wheelchair. Oh, yes. Hot Wheels would have rolled right off of his tongue and we would have fucking loved it. Ever. The right would have been like, Oh my God, it's he's just so funny. Oh, they're trying to stop him. They're trying to stop him from saying hot. We they have no

sense of humor. The left the left can't meme. They would have gone on and on and on and on and on. And now here we are like, that's off limits. You better stop. That's mean. Okay. Well, you're going to lose the election and we're going to become a communist country because you couldn't take a joke. No, I don't know about that. I can't stand for that. So what was his response to it? I don't know what his response was. Who even cared? The poor guy got lost in the news. Does anyone know? I don't know what his response was. Who even cared? The poor guy got lost in the news.

Does anyone know? I don't know. I didn't know. Yeah, it was in a wheelchair. Was he only in a wheelchair for it? Was that a temporary thing? I know. I think he's it's Greg Abbott. I think he's a wheelchair guy. A wheelchair guy. Yeah. Oh, Hot Wheels.

I didn't know that. Governor Hot Wheels. He's all about that. That's a that's a cool name. If I was in a wheelchair, I wouldn't I would. Governor Howe, is it Governor Wheels? He's all about that. That's a cool name. If I was in a wheelchair, I would be down. Yeah, you ought to own it, I think. You should lean into it, yeah. That's how you win.

That's how you win in culture wars. You just have to lean into it. Let me see. It doesn't seem like GPT has anything here. He said, it's another day and another disaster by the Democrats. The reality is they have no vision, no policy. They have nothing to sell but hate and Americans are not buying it. I think it was better than like, yeah, at least that was better than like the Democrats are being offensive to the handicap community

or something, but it's still not amazing. Handicap. Yeah, handicap. I mean, it's fine. Which is great. Was that Brandon? I was just saying handicap is antiquated, Riley. So... Oh, yes. How dare I use that phrase?

Yeah. Okay, so he was paralyzed after law school. A large oak tree along his running path cracked and fell on his back, leaving him forever paralyzed from the waist down. It's crazy that he just recalls, like he just does... To be, it is hard. I mean, that's like a life-shattering moment and then you become the governor. I have a lot of respect for that.

He's 67. The dude who, um... Who is that? Madison Cawthorn? Who is like, who was like, they're like crazy drug and sex parties here. And they were like, you're done. The Republicans were like, you're out of here kid. Trying to expose our like filthy secret orgies. No.

What does that have to do with the story? He was also in a wheelchair. Oh, he's in a wheelchair. Yeah, he was wheelchair. He was, he was like the most prominent wheelchair guy we had for a while. I thought he had an eye patch. No, no, no. That's another guy. That's Dan Crenshaw. No, no, no. Madison Cawthorn was, I mean, I'm going to get in trouble for saying this, he was hot.

He was like, technically speaking, extremely hot. And that was an important part of his overall thing because it was like, we had AOC before that. And then he was like, definitely the most attractive person in Congress while he was there, but he was just plagued by controversy the whole time. And it was never really clear to him because it wasn't that bad what he was saying.

I think maybe the bigger problem was that he was in a more moderate district. And so he had to be less of like a full on MAGA guy, but he was a full on MAGA guy. I don't know what he's up to now. Let's see. I think he, I don't think he got kicked out. I think he lost his election.

But the best part of that was like, people are inviting a guy in a wheelchair to an orgy. Well, if that happened or not, I'm saying he didn't get kicked out. He, when I say he got kicked out, what I mean is the Republicans pulled their support from him. Yes. I think they turned on him and that's why he lost, he lost, I say he got kicked out, what I mean is the Republicans pulled their support from him. Yes. I think they turned on him and that's why he lost, he lost, I think access to funds

and money. Oh, that's what ultimately did him down was that weird. There was a video of him and like his cousin and it looked like it looked weird. It looked strange, but I think it was kind of weird. Like white lotus weird, like white lotus weird. It was like a white lotus moment. But I think it was clearly... What kind of weird? Like, White Lotus weird. Like, White Lotus weird? It was like a White Lotus moment. But I think that... it was an op. It was clearly cut in such a way as to make it look weird.

And you clearly had a machine working against him. He's only 29 now, which means, yeah, he was very young when all this happened. I don't... That's Madison Cawthorn. Madison, if you want to come to the pod, hit us up. Tell us what happened. Tell us about the secret drug and sex orgies all throughout Washington, DC.

But now before we talk about Ghibli, Riley, last topic of the day. Yes, everything, last week everything was computer, this week everything is Ghibli. So after OpenAI, they released their new GPT-4 image generator. And now people are quickly using it to reconstruct every single meme that's ever been created

into the style of Studio Ghibli. Brandon had a great one with the new White Lotus meme, but it's just been never ending on the timeline. Just a rare sort of like wholesome moment. However, it was a little bit slop like. If only someone had just written a banger piece describing this present era of slop. Shout out to Solana for that very oppression analysis there. But yes, the Studio Ghibli memes have been flooding the timeline.

Just about every single meme that's ever been made has now been recreated into Studio Ghibli style. What did you guys make of this phenomenon? And how many images of yourself did you make in Studio Ghibli style? Hmm. I think the ground floor, what we gotta say is just that it's like, technologically, it is a marvel, right? It's like this sort of magic that you're playing with. And you can suddenly create images of yourself

in a style of animation that you love, and your brain just starts to be like, wow, what are all the things that I can do with this? I can create movies, animated features, I can voice them myself. Like, there are unlimited things that I can think of right now as a person who came up doing more fiction. I'm like, whoa, I could really do a lot.

But there are, but could really do a lot. But everyone can do a lot. And that is what introduces the question of slop, where suddenly everyone is doing the same thing. And yesterday was definitely, well, I guess, I mean, that's the first question. Maybe it's not definitely. The question is, is it slop or not? Sam Altman responded possibly to me with his tweet,

you know, one man's slop is another man's treasure. I tweeted earlier. Is it slop or not? Sam Altman responded possibly to me with his tweet, one man's slop is another man's treasure. I tweeted earlier. We stared into the slop and the slop stared back. It definitely felt like this weird tipping point for AI yesterday. But yeah, is it slop or not? What is the definition of slop? What are we doing here? Well, how did it start?

What do you mean? How did the whole craze start? I think they're gonna start posting, right? Like, so they have the technology is released and someone, I don't even know who started the meme, but it just, yeah, it blew out of the gates yesterday. It was, it's moments like this where I sometimes regret having pirate wire social media access because I, immediate was like, we got to get on this trend. And so I, of course, you know, sent out our

Studio Ghibli edit. But then as soon as I did that, like, it just became clear that the timeline was getting flooded with the Ghibli. And we, I think you brought it up, Slana, in our slack of like, is this the singularity now? Because it just became like, like, it was a constant never ending, like surge of Studio Ghibli. And yeah, it was just a really interesting moment. I think it was, it did border on slop like, because it was every single person was doing it.

And like you mentioned, everybody can do it. So I don't know, it was a weird sort of moment where I was like, and this feels very much slop-like. You know, it's like, is slop even... It's not always bad. Maybe a little slop's good every now and then. Sometimes people want a little slop in their life. Like, whatever, you want to play with the image generator. It definitely, Liv Borey made it smart when I thought...

It was, uh, the success of this was that it was appealing to our narcissism. And that's probably the success of any kind of image generator or like filter thing. We've the success of this was that it was appealing to our narcissism. And that's probably the success of any kind of image generator or like filter thing. We've seen versions of this on different platforms before. Maybe the, what complicated this one in a lot of ways was that it was like a very beautiful art form that's beloved that is also owned by someone.

I don't know how they're navigating that by the way. Like this is the, all these movies, clearly the GPT has been trained on, maybe they have a business deal with them that I don't, the studio that I don't, I'm not aware of. That could be the case. I shouldn't talk too much on this, I don't know. But I mean, it's very obvious that

the model was trained on that art and people are asking for it in that specific style and they're now creating it. That seems legally complex. Sam didn't seem to care or think that because he shared the picture himself and put it on his profile picture. So there might be a deal there that I'm not aware of.

It's fun. I don't want to rain on the parade, but obviously if you're mass producing something, it sort of innately reduces the value of that thing. Anyone can do it. Everyone is doing it. They're doing it almost mindlessly. They're sort of like, everyone felt sort of hacked

at that point by the mass social consensus and excitement over it, which feels very much like what I was writing about in my piece, where I'm like, you know, the problem is not even the slop that we share over the internet. The problem is the algorithms, the algorithms prize, they prize slop, they source for slop. So you yourself just intuitively picked up on that rule

and start to produce it, that you start to try and grab that attention, you start to become it. This is what happened in new media companies in the age of social media, is they all became the same thing because they were reaching for the same algorithmic bounty at the other end of that, I don't know,

toxic rainbow from hell. This was not like hellish, it was just a piece of content. Many of them were beautiful. You know, I made some, some friends of mine made some, people made some of me. Like I can't deny that that was fun. But it felt like that is the beginning of a, that is the, it's just the beginning of a slop trend

that we kind of can't go back in. And I have a lot more ideas, but Bren I do want to hear what you think about this. You were playing with them. I know you like this stuff a lot. You've been experimenting with it for a long time and you've written about it. I think it was just a fun day on the internet yesterday. I don't feel like it's as deep as you put it.

I was kind of thinking of it. It's hard to articulate because it feels like it feels um, I don't feel emotional about it, but the whole thing was very like Dopa Mergenic. If that's the I don't know if that's the word. through our past and rethinking and like putting our memories in a more positive light. And it felt like, you know, sort of like we're going to make it, you know, like you would look at and I don't the Liz Bowrie thing. I remember I don't have any problem with her, but I remember seeing what she posted or one of the things and it was a picture of her and I thought Immediately like oh, I'm not interested in other people's pictures. I like the the memes like I like I saw Tiffany

What's her name? The plain lady? Yeah, that's me. And I was like, yes like more of that, you know, and Of course there was a ton of that and so I didn't connect it to narcissism at all. I was enjoying Of course, there was a ton of that. And so I didn't connect it to narcissism at all. I was enjoying like this. We were like rosifying the past. We were sort of like, we've been through a lot and we've gotten through all this. And like now we're looking at like the picture book memories. And so I just felt like it was like a pretty positive fun experience yesterday. I did see a few people who were annoying about it. Somebody said, I grew up watching Studio Ghibli with my mom

and it was sacred to me and now that's been destroyed. And my reaction was like, dude, fuck off. What are you talking about? This is not your thing, you know, sorry. But like lots of Japanese children grew up watching it, you know, and there was another one who said, another gatekeeper who said like, this is evidence that, and also by the way, this Twitter account,

I really, really like otherwise, but I just didn't like this take. He said something like, this is evidence that our culture now is only capable of sequels and remakes. And again, I was like, that is not landing for me, dude. Like you don't even understand that you clearly like aren't having any feeling or you don't understand why people are enjoying this.

I just thought it was like a wholesome fun thing. And I don't know how to contextualize it in the terms of, in the context of slop and stuff. I'm not, I don't have a take in that. I enjoyed it, but I also grew up wanting to be an illustrator. I wanted to do, I tried all sorts of illustration, but comic book art specifically was something

that I was really, really into and I would trace them and try and draw them and I got like how to draw a superhero kind of things. And what I was thinking about yesterday was just that's an ambition that kids are never going to have again, because there's not a reason to ever have that ambition again. If I could just talk to a computer and say, give me X, Y and Z. And it got very, very good at it. That's just what I would do.

Now you could say, well, that's a kind of light concern and think of all the amazing things we'll be able to create. And that's true. But there are just these... externalities that I don't want to call them negative. They're just, it's just reality. Like, people are not going to learn that skill anymore. And if people are not going to learn that skill anymore,

then you're not ever going to create another Studio Ghibli. Why would you? Why would you sit down and try and develop an entirely new aesthetic that is just going to be gobbled up by an AI engine and used by other people to create stories that you wouldn't even want to see your work inside of? Like, it's almost like taking someone's voice. I might even say, I don't even want to have a,

you know what, I don't want to have a moral argument about whether or not it's right to even do that. It's just like, what does that mean for the artist? I think the practical thing that it means is they will not... They will not... They will not become artists. Like, that is a skill that will just drop off.

It relates me... I don't think so. Okay. I'm gonna counter-argument that, because I went to art school. Like, I went... My degree is in studio art. Artists are hardcore. You learn the fundamentals of drawing, charcoal,

everything, painting, and that's like, that is baked into the culture. That's baked into the appreciation. That's baked into how you view previous artists and looking back in time at like Michelangelo and all of that sort of thing. I understand the concerns of like taking these shortcuts now in time because this is the end result

and we're gonna get to the end result much, much faster. But the true ethos of creating art, I think will always be there and what is valued most about it. Like when I saw this, I immediately like, I went to my friends who are obsessed with Studio Ghibli and I was asking them, what do they think about it? And they're like, I wanna see your pictures like this.

And they were sharing and they were all excited and happy and I was really curious about the creative process for it. And that's when I learned that everything that they've done was hand-drawn and like truly hours and years and just tremendous amounts of traditional artwork that goes into it. I don't think this is going to ruin that because no matter what the practice of fine arts goes back to like

BC, like it is baked into the culture. I do think that this kind of will devalue some to some degree, but I don't think it's... It's not even about devaluing it though, it's about just... So, art has changed dramatically over the last 2,000 years. No one produces classical sculpture anymore. No one produces classical architecture anymore. No one produces paintings of the kind that we saw in, like, the Romantic era or before that,

the age of photography, completely obliterated, an entire school of painting, right? Like, animation exists as it does, and it's changed with tools that we have. This is a very new tool that means, it's like you could not even find right now a person to go and do sculpture like Michelangelo did, or any of his compag...

Like, let's go before him, let's go to the Classical era. There are... Because it seemed like it was more commodified back then. Like, it was more of a... It seemed like it was more of a trade, like lots of sculpture of a certain kind. It just doesn't exist anymore. Those people we cannot find, it's not that we're... Humans are not capable genetically or something

of doing it. It's not like these people were... Michelangelo was a genius, but many of his contemporaries were not. They were very good, but they were not like these geniuses. There's just not an incentive to pursue that form of art anymore. And so it goes away. And this, I just would be very, very surprised

if 20 years from now, I mean, let's like, our kids grow up, like, I don't see them becoming artists. It reminded me of this clip that I saw about a teacher was interrogating or being interviewed by someone on like a daytime talk show about school. They were like, you know, what's going on with students in AI? She's like, oh, they're all cheating. So that seems like a big problem, the host said.

It's like, yeah, but the teacher's position was we have to just change the way that like we have to only keep have them be doing human tasks. So we don't try and stop them from cheating. We know they're going to use AI to create an essay. So here's an idea. Just tell them to go home and have an AI generate them an essay. And then what we'll do is we'll come in the next day and we'll discuss that AI generated essay as a class and interrogate it and critique it and blah, blah, blah. And I thought I'm learning two things, right? One, you don't know what a human task is versus what an AI task.

An AI can do all of those things and probably certainly much better to you're not, we're not going to have kids who know how to write essays. You could say maybe they should, we kids who know how to write essays. Um, you could say maybe they should, we don't need them to write essays. I could make a whole very long argument about why I think that they should, but my point is just that's certainly going to happen. Like, there are gonna be fewer and fewer and fewer people

who are capable of doing that skill. So, regardless of whether or not you think it's valuable, um, I just think it's certainly a change that's coming. And then it's like, well, what are the negative externalities or whatever because of that? When was the last time you guys went to a museum or an art exhibition? I went, I guess, two weeks, three weeks ago.

I went, I was in London. What did you see? I saw ancient art. It was at the British Museum. Who was there? Like, a sculpture and broken, a couple of my friends were with me. No, like in the crowd. I guess probably, I don't know, why, what do you mean? Do you think most of this is gonna result

to tourist culture? Like, where do you think art will go? Who's gonna continue to go to museums? Is it only gonna be the super wealthy who are collecting things? Is anyone still gonna be educated in it? Exactly. Museums are ghettos for art. Like, that's not... This is...

Animation was living art. It was art. There were like artists who were producing art that people consumed that mattered. Um, and so there was much more of it. Once it's this niche thing, like, you're right, like, probably there'll be some people who do it, but it will be a niche that nobody cares about. Is my opinion.

But you're right though, it is mostly tourists. Now I see what you're asking. Yes, it was mostly tourists at the museum. And if there's demand for animation, then there will be animation. It'll just be easier to create. Like I think there's this fundamental mistake people make where it's like they assume because AI

technology will allow everyone to create, you know, special effects that two years ago would have caught would have taken a whole studio in Hollywood to make that suddenly we're going to have a ton of new movies that that have all these special effects and they're all going to be really, really good. The mistake there is it's not the tool that makes a good movie. It's the person who knows how and what a good movie is. That's how you make a good movie.

Taste is rare, generally, across human species, I think. And that's always going to be a constant. So for me, it's about how you use the tool. If somebody can make, I mean, there will be another really interesting new style that captivates the imagination of young children, and it'll probably be used, probably be made with AI, but I don't think that is a big deal. Like we don't know how to write in cursive anymore

for the most part, right? But like, I don't know. I mean, Solana, you're right. Like there are certain art forms that go in and out of style and that nobody knows how to do anymore or very few people know how to do anymore. But that doesn't mean it's the end of culture

or the end of art in general. Like, I know an AI artist who's my favorite. Actually, it's the painting back here. Or it's not a painting, but he uses a, like he does amaze, like I personally experience the feeling you're supposed to have when I look at his art. And he's created a completely new style, in my opinion. And so I just don't think we were locking the door on or closing the door and locking it on like kids in the future being interested in being creative and creating art.

You know, like I just don't see. I don't see these tools as stopping that. Yeah, I don't want to be like a no, you know, but I felt sad yesterday. At the end of the night, I felt like actually pretty sad. And it's hard to even put it in words. It was like very clearly exciting. It was clearly fun. It was clearly magical. I definitely participated. And at the end of the magical. I definitely participated. And at the end of the night, I felt like, what does this mean? What happens now?

There are ways to, I mean, like, I used to trace, like, I was, it's funny you mentioned that because I used to do the same thing as a kid and I used to try to draw, I had baseball magazines and I would try to draw all the pictures and stuff. And I was very interested in that. And my point is to say, of course I don't do that and nobody is going to do that anymore. Right. I mean, that's like going extinct, something like that. But, you know, like I make a lot of the art for PirateWires and I spend so much time

doing an analog of that in Photoshop and the different image tools that I use that like it's the same... I'm flex an analog of that in Photoshop and the different image tools that I use, that like it's the same, I'm flexing the same muscle and I'm like figuring out the same thing. And again, I just don't think the artistic instinct in our culture is gonna go away. I just think it's gonna change and our tools are changing as well.

Well, the next move for me is definitely not running away from it. I'm gonna have to re-release some of my old science fiction as a movie. And we'll do it for PyreWire. There we go. Maybe when we come back. Guys, last thoughts on Ghibli and Mare and the news of the day. What was the... Where did we start? Signal? I mean, add quick. You wanna give them a shout-out? Hot Wheels?

I will just say this wasn't the first time one of these AI generated art things went viral. The first one was in 2023, or at least the first one that I remember. And that was with the spiral art. Do you guys remember that? Yeah. That was, I think that was more slop like than this.

I wrote about all this early on in my PirateWire's journey in a piece called Demonic. When the first image generator went online and they accidentally found a demonic entity and then searched for her entire universe and it like opened a gateway to hell. And I got a lot of pushback from the techno optimists. They were like, this is terrible techno-optimistic propaganda. And I was like, well folks, I am not a techno-optimist propagandist.

I am just Mike Solana and I have a fear of demons. And with that, I did not like to see. No, but it's honestly a pretty good piece. You should go check it out. It's been real guys. I want to remind you that we have a little hiatus coming up. We're going to think about new elements of the show. In fact, some of the people who worked on these tools, I have lined up to come in and guest and speak.

It's going to be fun. We'll talk all about all of these themes and more. I know they have very different views than any of us even on them. Yeah, hit us up in the comments. Tell us how you felt about Ghibli and more. I know they have very different views than any of us even on them. And yeah, hit us up in the comments. Tell us how you felt about Ghibli and more and spread the word. Rate, review, subscribe or die. It's been real. Have a good weekend.