So... Alright - Robots, Robots, Everywhere Robots

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

Geoff goes over events of the last few weeks, and discusses the sudden onslaught of robots in Austin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And chicken chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, reason. Could be a couple of the guys peeling off to go film a movie for six weeks. Could just be Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up and everybody wanting to go home and spend time with their families and have a little bit of much-deserved time off. Unfortunately, I shouldn't say unfortunately because I think it's a small price to pay for the career that I have, the career field that I have. But the thing about the kind of content that I have been professionally making this whole time is that it doesn't take vacations, it doesn't take breaks. The content comes out when it comes out,

every day or week or month that it is slotted to, hopefully on time. This is probably because I got my start as a journalist and the best job I had in the army was as a section editor of the Fort Hood Sentinel newspaper. And the thing about that newspaper, it was at the time, I guess I should say it's, I assume the Fort Cavazzo Sentinel now because they changed the name of the base but The thing about that newspaper that I was a part of at the time was it was the largest newspaper in the army

Stars and Stripes was a larger publication by far But in terms of base newspapers at the time I was there the Sentinel was the largest in the army Because Kavazos was the largest fort in the army at the time I don't know if it still is, but it's fucking big. If you've ever been to Killeen or Copper's Cove or Harker Heights or even Gatesville, you know how big that place is. But the thing about that job and becoming a section editor, previously I had worked on field newspapers.

I had worked in public affairs. I had worked as a journalist who basically was like a stringer who went out and did stories and took photos on assignment, but I had never run the machine before. And the thing about the machine is it doesn't turn off. The Fort, sorry, the Fort Cavazos Sentinel never stopped. It came out every Thursday morning come hell or high water, just like all real newspapers used

to back in the day, right? Which meant that you were probably working late Wednesday to meet deadlines and to get it off to the printer. And then you get up early Thursday morning to make sure nothing got fucked up and that you still have a job as you pour obsessively through each page of the paper to make sure there's no mistake in here that's going to completely and totally screw you. And then you have to distribute it around the base as well, which was actually something I quite enjoyed. I was one of the benefits of making the paper. It seems silly now, but it was distributed all over the base and all over Colleen as well to military families. But for some reason, the newspaper department were responsible

for going and filling the racks in the headquarters building in three core headquarters. And so I would get up early Thursday morning, like a paper route and go distribute my newspapers around the headquarters building nowhere else just the headquarters building. But I always thought that was kind of awesome. And also terrifying because like I said, you look at the paper and like just pray to God nothing got screwed up, you know, but it never stopped. If I wanted to go on vacation, somebody would have to step in and edit my section, or I would have to more realistically, since I was the entertainment editor and I ran the entertainment section, I could plan ahead well enough that what would happen is when I would want to go on the rare occasion I'd want to go on a vacation, I would do a couple

of weeks of work in advance and try to get the paper edited ahead of time. Some things you can't because some stuff is time sensitive, less so on the entertainment section, but definitely some stuff is time sensitive, but you would get it in such a shape that you would turn it over to the person who's gonna fill in for you and they would have very little to do, if anything, at all.

And the machine stays on. Fast forward like 30 years later. Shit. Not quite, but like 28 years later. Yeah. No. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Like 28 years later. Here I am in the same situation, completely and totally self-imposed. I have maintained that weekly newspaper ethic throughout my career, through Rooster Teeth and Red vs. Blue, into Achievement Hunter, into Let's Play, into Fuckface, and now Regulation. In addition to Soul Alright. The only place I really don't adhere to it is Good Morning Gustavo And that's more you know that's because of Gus otherwise otherwise that show would never take a break either

At least in its previous incarnations Exhausting at times it It's a fun way to live man. It's an exhilarating way to live. It never gets boring and you never get tired. You're always having to think an idea ahead of where you are because you're kind of constantly reinventing the wheel. The side effect of that is that vacations and time away are difficult because you create an expectation with the audience and yourself that things are going to come out and always come out.

Back in the day, the audience would not have been happy with a Minecraft episode not coming out. And honestly, we would not have been happy if a Minecraft episode didn't come out, whether we were on vacation or not. And so what you do is you try to do a little extra work ahead of time to pad for the vacation. If you know you're going to be gone and you're not going to be able to record five videos that week, you try to record those five videos a little bit earlier or try to restructure the schedule so that you spread it out over three or four weeks or that you release one less video. Who knows? You know, there's all kinds of ways to address it, but it's just

something that we deal with when we create content in this style. It's just been a thing my entire career that I haven't minded until this week. There has just been so much going on in and around content and outside of content over the last few weeks. And to get ready for this big two week trip that I'm taking with my family, as well as a short trip I'm taking to visit Millie.

I have had to record so much stuff in advance in addition to getting, you know, that stuff taken care of. And honestly, my wife has been a superstar in handling most of it and staying on top of it. And she is she's far more organized and on the ball than I am. But in terms of our like our personal life shit But in terms of content and the career I've been recording like a motherfucker to get ahead I've recorded so many so rights to get ahead and edited and

And I'm trying to get a bunch of thumbnails done ahead of time for Nick and you know We're obviously having to record extra regulations ahead of time and it's just it I feel guilty because it creates this additional workload for everybody else in the short term but It is just kind of The way it has to be by nature of the beast you do your best to try to sync these vacations up so that you know There's as much overlap on timeout as possible, but that isn't always possible Regardless I was on top of it and I was killing it and I was feeling really good until I went into today this Monday morning Which by the way, I don't typically record this on Mondays

I typically record on Tuesdays and I looked at my schedule and I realized I'm going out of town on Sunday and I have Somehow to cram a 26 hour trip in to visit my daughter as well as all the remaining Mario March recordings So we have to get a little creative on Wednesday We're gonna record a little later in the day and I just have to pray that my flight doesn't get delayed this is all happened weeks ago by now by the time you're listening to this, of course and In addition to that I Somehow have to record nine pieces of content this week between regulation good morning Gus and so alright That's not the end of the world, honestly.

It's dicey to do it in four days. Still not the end of the world, because I'm losing one day to go see Millie. It's just crazy to me that I've already done so much recording the last two weeks, and it's still somehow I have this much ahead of me. And it's just like, how was there still this much left. And don't get me wrong, I want to do all of it.

You know, I'm very excited, very excited to record each piece of content that I'm recording this week. But I swear over the last two weeks, I recorded like six good morning gusses and three or four. So all rights. So how do I still have to record some of those? That's insane. I think this is the week that might break me on it. I just, well, we'll see how I feel at the end of the week,

but man, this is me moping that I have to work. But you know, I just, it would be cool not complaining about my job or my career. I guess that seems like I am, but I feel exceptionally lucky every day of my life to do what I do. But there was a time in my life, there was a time in my life where I worked at a video store.

And when I left the video store, all the video store's problems stayed at the video store. They got locked in there when I locked the door at night. And they were still there when I opened the door in the morning, but they didn't leak out into my life. And I think about, you know, sometimes I get a little envious of the nine to five in the sense that like, or maybe not even the nine to five,

because that's not like I'm working a billion hours right now or anything. It's just that I just wish, I don't wish, just sometimes I lament a career that doesn't allow me to leave my job at the office, you know, a job where if I went away for two weeks, it doesn't require you, like, like I'll take Emily, for example, hardest working person I know, right?

Hairstylist, owns her own salon, incredible success. However, vacations are the most catastrophic thing in the world for this poor woman. She already works 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Thursday every week, right? Then, on Friday or Saturday, I find, probably every other week or so, she ends up having to go in to cut somebody's hair

who she couldn't fit in, or who had some sort of a weird cancellation, a friend who's only going to be in time for a day or whatever. There's always a reason for her to go and cut somebody's hair at a time when she's not supposed to be working after she just busted her ass 11 hours a day for the week, right? For her to get ready to go on vacation, it's the same kind of thing. People's hair doesn't stop growing. All of her clients that she's been seeing for nine, 10, 12 years, people that drive up from Houston to get their hair cut by her or come down from Dallas just to get their hair cut by her, they still all have to be seen. So for Emily to go on

a two week vacation, she loses the Friday and the Saturday. And she's already worked Sunday, by the way, because Sunday is the day that she does the podcast, Clutch My Pearls and deals with all that. So she's already working on a good week. She's working Sunday, by the way, because Sunday is the day that she does the podcast, Clutch My Pearls, and deals with all that. So she's already working on a good week. She's working Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So there's not a lot of room for her to cram additional clients in those days, but she can't not cut those clients' hair. These are people she's had relationships with forever, right? She can't give them to another stylist. That's not how it works.

And she doesn't want to lose clients that way as well. So she has to work them in and she has to do that by working on Fridays and Saturdays and It's just insane to me that for my wife to take a vacation. She has to put herself through physically a thing that Requires her to take a vacation. She has for the last three weeks. She's been working almost seven days a week She's been working all day Friday last week. She's been working all day Friday last week She worked all day Saturday to short all day yesterday Sunday this week She's working 11 hours a day Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday we pack but I think she might be fitting somebody in on Saturday and then we leave on first thing Sunday morning So it's like she's been working every day essentially or six days a week at least

For the past three weeks just to make room for her to go on a two-week vacation every day, essentially, or six days a week, at least, for the past three weeks, just to make room for her to go on a two week vacation. And I just think it's unfortunate, especially in lines of work like hers, where the work has to be done. And it's the work that has to be done by you. It's not work that you can share

or that can be distributed amongst a group. It is essentially your workload and you either. That's the other angle of it, too. Even if she was able to share the clients and say, you know what? The other stylists in the salon are going to cut all this hair for the next two weeks that I would cut. Well, Emily's not salaried. That just means Emily wouldn't get paid for those two weeks of haircuts.

She'd be giving her clients and money to other stylists. And who knows if they come back at the end of that, you know? So there's a danger there. It's just like Twitch streamers. If they go away for a week and they come back, they've lost a quarter of their subs. I hear that from every streamer and how terrified they are to leave their desk

because the second they leave, they start losing traction, you know? And it's just a bummer, it's just a bummer that you take a vacation because you need a vacation, right? Like my wife already needed a vacation. And then to take the vacation, you have to do an amount of work

that requires a vacation at the end of it. You know what I mean? So you going into the vacation at like double the deficit you maybe otherwise would have. Anyway, that's my old man whining about how I have a lot of work to do this week. And I thought I already did a lot of work the last two weeks and I did, but somehow it wasn't enough,

even though I thought it was. But as Kurt Vonnegut wisely said, so it goes. So it goes. In an effort to help my wife today, because I know how busy she is, Monday she has to go to like Sam's and get a bunch of like Cleaning supplies for the week and food and snack

You know all the stuff that the salon needs toilet paper and shit and she always has to like run around town on Mondays Just doing a bunch of tasks like that And so I decided to make her life easier by helping her out otherwise I'd have just been at home all day doing this kind of stuff I Wanted to take the break to spend a couple of moments with her, but also to make her life a little bit easier because I know how stressed out and overworked she is. And as much as I'm bitching about having to film a couple of extra videos this week, she has

so much more on her plate than I do. So the least I can do is drive around with her on a Monday morning and help lift heavy boxes. You know. Anyway, as we were leaving the neighborhood this morning, we were at a four way stop and a Waymo crossed in front of us. And Emily mentioned, oh yeah, I still I still want to try one of those Waymos. We should Uber. I don't know if they have this where you live, but the Waymo driverless car has been in Austin for a long time. Driverless cars have been in Austin for fucking ever since Google was testing them

next to the R.T. building way, way, way back in the day. But it has now morphed into Waymo operating through Uber in town. So if you wanted to take a driverless car in Austin, you could, you just have to do it through the Uber app. Anyway, I don't know if that's available where you live or not, but it has become a thing in Austin all at once,

it feels like. Anyway, I didn't think anything else of it. We kept driving and then we got to another part of town. And at the stoplight we were at, there was a gardener doing landscaping work in this business. And then to the right, there was a little white robot just robotting up the street with like tank tread tires. And I couldn't tell if it was a delivery robot or honestly a police robot,

because it looked a little scary, or some sort of a gardening landscaping robot that worked with him, but it was just tooling up the road. It was real close to him, but just kind of tooling up the sidewalk, kind of away from him. And I thought, ah, there's a little robot

going about its day, doing, I don't know what it's doing, but it's being super productive, I assume. Then a little bit further on the trip, we stopped at a stoplight, and two Waymos drove by in succession, one, two, driverless cars. I thought, wow, that's four robots I've seen operating today and I haven't even gotten to my destination yet. Then we got to Sam's Club,

and the sweeper robot was running, which is always running. I don't know if you've ever been to a Sam's Club, but there's this tall gray robot that just kind of lumbers through the aisles very slowly sweeping up trash. And I thought, shit, that's five. That's five independent robots

across three different brands that I saw with my own eyes being used in practical ways. Well, I assume practical. I don't know about the little white tread robot, but practical ways in my community today, March 24th, 2025. This is the least amount it hit me. Because it's a crazy thing to see to go out amongst the world.

And in the course of one, not even a day, just like a two hour span in the morning to run across five separate incidents in probably less than two hours on a Monday morning in Austin, Texas. Is that typical to where do you live? If you live in San Francisco, I assume you're having a robot type this for you right now. But are you guys in other communities running into robots as often as I just did today? Are Waymo cars everywhere? I assume that they're.

I assume that they exist in other places, right? I don't think Austin is special in some way. So if anything, maybe we're behind the curve. Are there, are you listening to this and going like, Jeff, you idiot. It's been like that for five years where I live. There's, I saw 12 robots today checking the mail. You know, I don't, I don't know. What is it like in your community?

Email me at Eric at JeffsBoss.com. I want to know. I really, really do. Because I was thinking about it on the drive home and I didn't see any more robots on the drive home, by the way, Because I was thinking about it on the drive home, and I didn't see any more robots on the drive home, by the way, but I was thinking about it on the drive home. This is the least amount of robot integration that I will experience for the rest of my life today. Tuesday March 25th, robots are even infinitesimally.

More integrated into my society than they were today, and it's going to build and grow every day. And then someday you're going to turn around and you're going to get passed by three driverless cars and you're going to go, oh, I guess that's just a thing that happens now. I guess we just have Johnny cabs like in Total Recall, which when I was a kid, I thought was the coolest potential future imaginable. And here we have it.

I have the app to order one right now on my phone and I haven't thought to do it. It's crazy, your idea of a future and then the reality of the future and then your level of excitement for it when it finally gets there, you know? Those swings on the pendulum can be surprisingly wide, it turns out.

But you know what I mean? Like, I don't envision that I'll see a bunch of new robots tomorrow. I may not see as many robots over the next two weeks as I saw today, but every day, AI is integrating into our society more and more. Autonomous robots are integrating into our society more and more. Things will never again be like they were before this. We are standing with one foot on one side of a reality

and one foot on the other, in a lot of different ways, by the way. A lot of different ways, socially, politically, of course, but I'm speaking just in the term of technology changing, altering, improving our lives in radical ways, in short bursts probably. Technologies come in to our society and they change everything overnight.

The railroads, the industrial revolution, the automobile, the plane, the microchip. These inventions lead to not only improving our lives, but changing our lives, changing the way we as humans live in the world, right? The way we live is drastically different than the way our great grandparents lived. And the way our great grandchildren are going to live at this age is drastically different than the way we're going to live. And we are, there's probably only going to be a few of these moments in your life.

I think, I guess the one that I really felt the strongest is the jump into the 2000s, you know? Pre-cell phone, a pre-cell phone world, a pre-connected smartphone world, pre-social media. There's all those TikToks where you can go back and watch a typical day at the mall in 1999 or a high school cafeteria in 2001, and you can instantly see how different the world was, how people interacted with each other differently, how people socialized differently. And I feel like I was saying a second

ago, we have one foot on each side of this next precipice that is AI, but autonomy in general, this idea that robots and autonomous technology are going to improve our lives. It's an idea that has existed for a long time and has been in practice for a long time. You go to the grocery store, it's you self-checkout now, right? I mean, things have changed in a myriad of ways, whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I think is a fun thing to debate. But that's not really what the point of this is. The point of this is I just realized today, a year from now, things will probably look a little different than they do today in maybe some unexpected ways. Maybe not a ton different, but a little different.

And two, two years from now, three years from now, I think things may look, they may start to look significantly different. Once these technologies take off, they are proven, they work, and then corporations figure out how to maximize profits off of them, you will see them everywhere. How long until there are Boston Dynamics robots walking the streets? I think it's going to be in our lifetimes. I think it's going to in our lifetimes. I think it's gonna be sooner than we think. But I've also recorded about 5,000 hours of content over the past three weeks,

so I might just be losing my fucking mind. I'm drawing a lot of conclusions from seeing three driverless cars in a glorified Roomba today, but you know, we will see. All right, well I guess I should probably give you guys a song of the episode. What did I pull up the other day? Oh, I was confused. I don't think I've done this song before, and if I have, I apologize.

You have to let me know and I'll owe you to next time. But I don't think I've done no side to fallen by the raincoats. Give that a shot. Pretty cool song. And I'll be back next week with honestly probably some stories from my vacation to Greece and to Turkey. I wonder how it went. I hope I have some bullshit to talk about. Alright. This is the end of the show.

Mwah!