The Ben Mulroney Show - A FIFA racist incident -- it was inevitable/Sick Days Notes?/Carmi Levy

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

 GUEST:  Carmi  Levy/Tech Journalist If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. Welcome, welcome, welcome. And I've said before, when you live in a big city like Toronto,

there is ample reason to get upset and get frustrated. Big cities have big city problems, but there are also big city opportunities. And yesterday, last night, after our show here, I walked along the waterfront until I could hit some construction, but I eventually made my way into the portlands for an incredible concert. It was an incredible concert at this temporary facility that's been built on what will eventually be this new neighborhood that they're building in the city of Toronto.

But for now, it's just an empty parking lot. And they built out an open-air concert area. I think there's five or six different evening. evenings that they have planned there. They had somewhere between 9,500 and 10,000 people in attendance. It was that the backdrop was spectacular. You had the cityscape behind us. And you could see the little mini drones that were going everywhere because they were

recording this. The money shot was constantly changing. And Black Coffee, one of the biggest DJs in the world, was spinning and hit one of his biggest celebrity fans, showed up. Drake showed up. I was there. Thanks to one of my best friends in the world, Glenn and his wife Kelly set us up in an incredible location. They've called the place is called Future.

And our friend Sean Kane was part of it as well organizing it. It was amazing. Done at 11 o'clock. And this, I'll tell you what I liked. And Amy, nice to see you. Nice to see you. It was this was the city not getting in its own way. This is like a mini Rogers Stadium.

They could. This is the, this is the, this. city has enough people there. Someone would have found a reason to say no to something like this. But instead, they took something that wasn't doing anything and they took this dirt, dirt plot of land and turned it into this magical place. It was incredible. And typically, not typically, I don't know if the numbers are, but the city does that stuff every now and then. And it's nice to see they didn't do it this time. And also, no neighbors around. So there's nobody who can complain that their sleep was altered because of it.

Was your sleep altered because of it? I think so. Oh, yeah. The music was great. My ears were ringing a little bit. Did you feel old is my question? Because now when I go to concerts, no? If you looked at the cross section of the people there, this cross demographics, ages, religions.

I mean, I saw every ethnicity, every age group. I saw, you know, I was not the oldest person there by a country mile. Wow. And there were young people there. You could tell there were people who were very well to do and people who weren't. I saw someone who was on Dragon. Den who was there. And I saw people who were not. This was a, this was, this was the Canadian mosaic. It really was. Sounds magical. It was great. No, and so nice that they did this. Like,

this didn't exist 10 days ago. And it's, in a city like Toronto, you could do something like that. So I'm glad they did. Did you rock out? Did you get that big bobblehead weaving back and and forth? My brother had shot a video of me dancing. Nobody should see that. Wow. No, no, we need to see that. No. Absolutely. I actually don't want to see it. No, nobody needs to see that. No, me. But every now and then you got to highlight the good stuff in the city, even if you complain about it. Do you ever do the robot?

Oh, yeah. I do that. My daughter gets so embarrassed. Well, I'm embarrassed for her. Yeah, me too. Don't do that. Some solid stuff. Like what I say, you got to know how the world sees you.

You got to know when to fold them. Yeah. You got to know your strengths, man. So don't do that. Those are strengths, man. Huge strengths. Amy, don't look at me like that. You know what's true.

Oh, yeah. but like and all of a sudden when the lights, at one point all the- Did they drop the beat? Oh my God. If you do stuff like that, a concert, then yes, that you're going to be. Did you drop the beach? Yeah, it's, okay, don't do that either. My God, who am I working with here?

Who am I working with? I got sold. Yeah, you lead into that. And you did this. Well, I mean, I would love to see that. You in that moment where they dropped the... Yeah, but that would include seeing him dancing. I know, that's what I want.

But it's very cool to see Drake show up. He was very... Because these two have known each other for a very long time. Black coffee's from South Africa. Oh. And he was in a car accident, I believe, when he was a kid, and he lost the use of one of his arms. And despite that, he's one of the best DJs in the world.

Wow. Yeah, and I think... I was going to ask if you liked coffee, black coffee, if he liked it half and half. And now that you say he lost one of his arms, that would be really inappropriate. Well, it's inappropriate because it's a terrible joke. I didn't know that.

Yeah, but that was awful. Awful. My God, I have to start vetting your jokes before that. I don't think our audience deserves a higher caliber from you. That's true. Yeah, I'm going to start vetting this thing. I'm just warming up this week. You're just warming up.

Listen, it was, like I said, it was fantastic. But before, we want to talk about what's going on with the FIFA. Happy FIFA, everybody, by the way. Happy FIFA. Happy FIFA. Happy FIFA. Happy FIFA. It's over, isn't it?

Oh, no. No, it's not. It's over for Toronto. Yeah. But there's some good, listen, there's some great stuff, and we'll always talk about the great stuff. But sometimes the people come in and ruin good stuff, right? Like this is why we can't have good things.

So Mbapé, Killing Mbapay was, they were playing Paraguay. And I guess things got heated. Paraguay, from what I understand, from Droulet over here, they cannot match France toe to toe. They cannot match them for talent. So they decided to thug out, right? And they decided they were going to make this a messy, messy match. It was a great football.

They were hoping to draw fouls and all that stuff. And at the end of the match, the goalie for Paraguay, who had the ball, was trying to shake hands with Killing Mbapé, who had just been mauled over the course of the match. And Killing was not going to suffer that guy and didn't want to shake his hand. And so the guy threw the ball into his back. Because, you know, Kiliun. Mbapé didn't even flee.

Yeah, so thugs got a thug. But a Paraguayan senator named Celeste Amaria called Killing Mbapé. And these are not my words. Oh my. I couldn't believe this. Called to me, colonized Cameroonian desperately trying to pass himself off as French. What?

That kind of reminds me of the French, the French racism back in the Yanuk Noah days. Yeah, with Temislair. When he would lose, they'd call him Algerian. And when he'd win, they'd call him French. Okay, so she described him as a, quote, Brute, who had not learned to write, adding that, quote, instead of his mother's milk, he suckled coconuts.

And the most educated beings he'd ever heard were chimpanzees. Like, who is this woman? I'm going to go on a limb and say that's a little racist. A little. A little. It's like, it's like, I don't know that I could get AI to write something. more racist. I don't think AI would. It would say, uh-uh, not doing that.

And we've called the FBI. Here was Mbapi's response, by the way. He said she was a, quote, despicable woman who was, quote, unworthy of serving in Paraguay's Congress. And he said it a little bit longer, but that's the key element to it. So her response, because she's got to go back.

Oh, my God. Quote, my post were written in the heat of the moment. Oh, well, that explains the deep, deep rooted racism. My mixed race blood, the beautiful blend of indigenous and Spanish heritage that runs through my veins was boiling. I realized I was repeating the very bad behavior that I despise. So I deleted the post. I understand that it upset you because it was humiliating. And now so that's her. This is the turn. That's her apology. But here's the mic drop. Here's the beat drop. Yeah. Now I expect you to do the. the same, speaking to Mbapé. Withdraw your remarks and apologize to me. I will not tolerate your aggression. You have no idea

who I am and you have no right to say that I am a despicable woman unworthy of the office I hold. This is gender-based violence, plain and simple. It is political violence against a woman who reached her positions with the votes of her people. Retract your comments, retract your remarks,

honor your French citizenship, and apologize to me. Otherwise, I may begin legal proceedings on the of gender-based violence. And then she doubled down this morning. She said, I come from a generation where calling someone a, quote, Little Black shiz, was the most usual thing. This woman, wow.

No, but there's, I mean, she's unhinged. She's a racist. She's a gaslighter. She's, I don't know whether she's far right or far left. I think she's so far, it doesn't matter. She's meeting right in that, in that, that nexus. crazy. Wow.

But you know what? That crazy? You almost have to respect that. She doubled down on just the worst things you could say, the craziest things. And she just went, you know what? I'm going to go even crazier. And, you know. She deleted her first post.

Well, let me just say, like, I don't know what generation she comes from. But if she comes from my generation, I didn't know anybody who called anybody a little black shiz. And if they did, it was not a usual thing. It was the worst words. Wow. Anyway, but I love that. You know, he kept his cool.

And Boppe kept his cool. And you called her a despicable woman unworthy office she holds. Lady, you're proving them right with every word that you post. Like when you're in a hole, stop digging. All right, we're going to take a break. And when we come back, Germany is looking to ban something that I do, you do, we all do. And is this the right move for corporate Canada? That's coming up next.

Well, as we are all trying to get used to a post-pandemic world and try to get back to some sense of what normal looks like, there's been a push to get people back in the offices. You know, there's been a lot of push back here in Canada from the three-day work week or the two-day work week or bringing everyone back five days a week. There's a lot of reasons why that's a good idea. And it will come with some tradeoffs for sure. Germany had their own particular protocol during the pandemic and in an effort to get people to recognize that in their mind the good work happens at the office. Workers can call in sick by telephone but would require medical certificates proving that they're sick from day one. And you see that working? Well, I don't know that that could work in Canada.

that. Simply because we've got over a million Canadians don't have a family doctor. So can't get a doctor's note. So you'd have to go to a merge. And the people who do have doctors, it's very hard to get a same-day appointment. Yep. Very hard. So I just don't know how that would work here. But I do appreciate the pressure being put on people to recognize that, you know, productivity matters. And being at the office, matters. And, you know, we've seen Canadian productivity fall off the shelf since something happened in 2015. I can't put my finger on it, despite my best efforts. I just, I do not know

how to explain how in 2015 Canada just started becoming far less productive. I'm just really bad with recent history. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, it's a hard thing to figure out. If you have any ideas as to what happened in 2015 that led Canada to, yeah, like it's like it's like we lost a decade. I don't know. So anyway, we want to hear from you and let us know. Do you think a harder line when people call in sick? Do you think that would work here? And if so, how would we make it work? Or do you think this is a solution in search of a problem?

416-8-60-6400 or 1-3-8-225 talk. Look, you know that for me, I can't really take a sick day. I mean, I can't work from home on a sick day. Maybe I could if I didn't, if I sounded okay. But if I was, I think you've, I mean, you've taken, you took a sick day when I think your voice was gone. That's, yeah, that's, but again, I can't, I can't do that. Then I don't need a doctor's note for that.

You just hear me on the phone. And, um, because you could hear it going for the days prior. And then the next day I woke up and I couldn't speak at all. Yeah, but remember when I was super sick and I was working from home and I lost my voice, how much fun you made, how much you were just like rib. It was terrible and painful. But that's because you got shingles. That wasn't that time.

It was the other time. But I was sick. I'm sure it was shingles related. And so, yeah, I can't put myself in those shoes because for me it's a very, it's binary. I can either work or I can't. And most, I would say, I think I've probably taken two days off for, to not work. I've taken days off to do other work for hosting gigs and Q&As and that sort of thing. But by and large, if I can work, I work.

There is, you know, these people who feel entitled to their sick days. That's the thing that gets me, that there are sick days built into collective bargaining agreements. And people are going to take them whether they were sick or not. In my humble opinion, that's not why you have them. That's not why you have them. saying you're entitled to them, and you're going to take them or you get paid for them. I disagree with that as a concept. Those are not vacation days.

You negotiated those. And anything else, it feels to me taking advantage of the system. Let's welcome Frank to the conversation. Frank, you're the first call on a Tuesday. Hey, hey, Ben, how are you? Good, thanks. So, I have two stories. I used to work in the private sector.

And when I worked in the private sector, if I called in legitimately sick, I would still get calls from my bosses. asking questions about projects that I was working on, even though I have no access to to the computers. They could still ask. That was their way to verify whether or not I was in the office or I was really sick or not. Yeah.

Right? Well, now, now I work, I work a public sector. Yeah. And how does that work? So the way we work in the public sector, if I call it, if I'm thick more than three days, on that third day, I am required to bring a note from my doctor. Okay. As to why I was sick.

So if I've gone longer than that, say, I had surgery. Yeah. You know, then I'm on short-term disability while, you know, while I'm recovering. Yeah. That's for a lot of me, a lot of government offices, at least the one that I'm in. Yeah. And I heard from others. That's the day.

And that, listen, on a third day, yeah, you're sick on one day and you're like, oh, God, it's going into a second day. If by the end of the second day, you're not feeling well, then you should be planning to, I don't know, figure out how to get to a walking clinic or something and have a doctor sign a note for you so that by the midday on the third day, you can let them know. Yeah, no, I'm sick. I'm really sick here. That works for me recognizing sort of the pain points in our health care system, Frank.

I agree. And going to a walking clinic, he doesn't know your history. And, you know, they're just there arbitrarily signing a prescription notes. But the worst part is they're charging you for these letters. So if you're legitimately sick, you're going to your doctor. your doctor's still going to charge you for the letter itself. Yeah. You know, you can't take, you can't, you can't.

You can't, you won't, your company won't take your word for it. You know, you're out of pocket, whatever the doctor charges, 75 bucks. Mm-hmm. It's a letter. But, yeah, walking clinics, same thing. Yeah, a lot of people go to that. Walk in clinic, I've got to get a doctor's note. You don't know your history and, you know, they're happy.

So, yeah, I see, it could work, but sometimes I think it's taken too far. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Hey, thank you very much, Frank. I appreciate it. We got time for Ryan. Ryan, thanks so much for calling. Ben Mulroney show.

Hey, man, that was one of my biggest complaint there was like, just the exorbitment costs, you know, to get a sick note. Now, if that gets fronted to the patient, then, yeah, it might do justice to help to keep those who are being dishonest from actually going

and try and get away with getting a fake sick note. Yeah, and you know, I think you make a good point. I think you make a good point that, you know, again, if you make it If the system, it's not necessarily about this. It's about creating a system of responsibility where if you are going to be somebody who takes a day off because you've got a little tickle in your throat. Well, you might think twice if all of a sudden you're going to be out of pocket or if you're going to have to jump through some hoops. That could be why they want to be this onerous.

I mean, maybe the idea that the Germans are putting forth is the beginning of the conversation, not where it's ultimately going to end up. but if they establish a, this is where we're willing to go, banning it completely. Well, then anything is better than the system that you have. So starting with a strong position like that could be the reason. Hey, thank you for the call. We've got time for John in Calgary. John, welcome. Hey, Ben.

I love listening to your show. Thank you. I just wanted to point out there. I don't take many sick days for myself, but I take a fair amount of sick days for both my kids. Yeah. as I'm the one that works in the city and my wife works a little bit out of the city so it's just easier

you know for me to have to take those days if the kids can't stay in school one of us has got to go home and then of course I get sick afterwards and I got to work through it yeah yeah that's our lot in life as parents huh? Yeah you bet I mean good thing I work in a car

so I'm not getting anyone else sick yeah yeah and do you have to prove that you're sick or like how does it work if you take a sick day for your kids My boss is fairly understanding, which is great. I think if I pushed it to three days, they're going to want some kind of notification. But, you know, I usually get a day or two grace period kind of deal. And most of the people in our company are parents.

So there's kind of a trend, you know, fall and spring. A lot of us are taking a day or two. I feel you, John. How's everybody in your family right now? Everybody healthy? Oh, everyone's perfect. It's summer vacation. Now, you can't get sick now.

No, cars, no idea. It's only when you got stuff to do. Hey, John, thanks so much for the call. I appreciate it. You bad, boss. All right. Thanks to everybody for calling in. Yeah, something tells me this is the beginning of the...

This is the posturing in Germany first. They'll probably end up putting some water in their wine. When we come back, we're joined by Carmi Levy. I had a great conversation yesterday with a professor about PlayStation going exclusively digital. We're continuing that conversation with Carmi Levy. talking about that and a raft of other tech stories next on the Ben Mulroney show. Well, there are fans of the PlayStation that are up in arms they feel betrayed by Sony because Sony announced that PlayStation games on disk in 2028 will, that'll be it.

They're killing them. They're going to offer digital downloads only. That's how you are going to buy games. You're going to go to their store or you're going to have a QR code. It's going to take you to a place where you can download the game and that's how you play it. No more waiting in line at stores, no more holding onto games, trading them with your friends, trading them in when you're done with them. None of that. You no longer own these.

You are a licensee. And to talk about that as well as some bad news coming out of Microsoft as well. And so many other stories were joined by our good friend tech journalist Carmi Levy. Carmi, welcome. Happy Tuesday. Happy Tuesday, then so good to be with you. Yeah. So I had a long conversation about the PlayStation Pivot yesterday.

and it's a far cry from the way you and I enjoyed games. But it's, it's look, everything's going digital. And the investment that these people place in these games, it's no small sum. And so they want to make sure that they can squeeze every dollar out of it. So I understand the business case,

but the nostalgia is the thing that makes me sad. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're this notion of buying game, you're saving up for them, buying them, shelf, taking them out, deliberately putting them in the machine, loading them up.

I mean, that is increasingly a thing of the past when Sony introduced the PlayStation 5 a few years ago. A lot of people raised their eyebrows because one of the options, the hardware options, was a disc-list version. And we should have known then, and that was a bit of a foreshadowing, that eventually disks wouldn't even be an option. And that's kind of what we're at now. Look, it happened to movies.

It's happened to music, and now it's happening to video games as well. And I think that the thing that bothers me the most is that loss of control for consumers is that you used to be able to buy again. You pay for it once and then you owned it in perpetuity. You could play it for as long as you had a machine that worked. Whereas today, you're not buying the game. You're buying, as you said in the intro, you're buying the license. But that is not perpetual. And the company can change the rules of engagement at any given point in time and make your game go dark.

Or if you want to play it, you got to play it on their latest PlayStation 25. That's right. And so you're stuck, you're stuck paying subscription fees. So you've got to keep paying it. And if you stop paying it, it goes dark. Or you have to keep migrating to newer hardware as they deprecate or sunset or essentially kill older hardware because they don't want to support it anymore. So this notion of you owning anything, it is no more.

So gaming is a lot more expensive. It's a lot less of an experience. And if you want to save a few bucks, because you want to go buy some youth games summer, which, let's face it, I did as a kid. My kids did it as kids. That's no longer going to be an option after January 2028 as well. So we're slowly losing that battle. And companies like Sony, they're getting a lot more power in the process. But, you know, like there's a big part of me that remembers that I had an entire collection of music on tapes.

And then the tapes gave way to CDs. and then the CDs gave way to MP3s, and then the MP3s gave way to streaming. So I had to, the amount of times I had to watch the technology that I was told was the only one I could use become obsolete in my lifetime for my music. I mean, about the same music five different times on five different formats. So I'm, there's a part of me that doesn't, it's like, hey, this is just, this is just how it works. But what, what's something like this going to do to a game, a company like,

like GameStop that has a big chunk of their business is reselling old games or just holding games by being the middleman. Yeah, they either find another business to do business in or they're done because the very raison d'être of a GameStop is increasingly not selling new games because that's an ever smaller component to the business. But it is buying and selling old equipment and games. it's providing support to gamers. It's creating that sense of community. And unfortunately, if physical games are no longer a thing, that's one last reason for that dwindling population of gamers who still care about physicality to actually go to the store.

I don't remember the last time I went into the game stop near my house. And increasingly, I think most gamers, they're saying the same thing, just pay their monthly fees or their network access and be done with it. And to me, that's just kind of sad. But, Carmi, what, could this open up the possibility of, of a new entrant into the console wars who, I don't know, leverages,

leverages AI to build out a game at a lower cost that would have otherwise, 10 years ago cost 10 times as much? Yeah. And they could be that, we're going to give you the world's best games, like we're in our little ecosystem, they're going to be niche games,

but they're going to be our games. And sure, will allow you to play against your friends. We'll have a network sort of situation. But everything, you are going to be able to play these games forever. They will be physical games. And yeah, like it seems to me like with AI,

because one of the issues is the cost of production of these games. They take 10 years sometimes to develop them. I mean, we've been waiting for the next Grand Theft Auto for years. And they've been working on it with massive teams forever. You could leverage AI and turn those teams into a small group. and cut down the cost and cut down the time of production. And you could actually make a pretty good business at it if there was interest in it. Sure.

I mean, there's a company called Valve that released something called the Steam Deck. And so the Steam platform was sort of an online platform that was supposed to be an alternative to Sony and Microsoft. And it was supposed to be lower cost, better games, more sort of digital, more online, not so much the big franchises, but a greater diversity of offerings. because they weren't taking 10 years to develop and budgets approaching that of a feature film. But what ended up happening when they finally got their console to market, because of the chip wars, because the chip shortages, it was so expensive that it's no longer the cheaper alternative. In fact, it's a lot more expensive than a PS5 or an Xbox.

So we're still waiting for that option. The worry about what Sony is doing here is that they're going to focus increasingly on big franchise titles. So smaller titles from independent studios that are fresh new ideas and games, those are no longer going to have as much oxygen. It'll be harder for them to find an audience, which means innovation is not such a thing, but keeping, you know, having sort of safe options. You know, version six of the game that you've been playing for God knows how many years. That's where gaming is going. And that's another area where I think we're all going to lose if we're interested in having the most interesting and fun games to play. not fun but certainly popular.

And then you've got like this should be an opportunity for Microsoft. If Sony is going to be the bad guy this week, that Microsoft could be the hero. But sadly, we find out Microsoft is cutting 4,800 jobs and shrinking Xbox, this Xbox team, they're calling it the most significant restructure in the history of Xbox. What's going on there? Yeah, so 4,800 jobs gone from Microsoft,

which compared to, you know, their overall workforce, It's only 2.1% of its workforce, but it is also the third major layoff in the last three years that the company has reported. But that company is massively profitable. They are, but in tech, as we know, it doesn't matter that you're profitable if you're not making enough to satisfy your investors. If you're not growing fast enough, if you're not keeping up in emerging areas like AI, which Microsoft is fighting to do, then you will be punished. And so Microsoft is getting ahead of the game. And the truth of the matter is, is of all of Microsoft's different, very diverse business units, the Xbox unit has been the biggest drag for the last two, three years.

It simply has not kept pace. And so 1,600 jobs gone now, another 1,600 gone in that unit by this time next year, 4,800 total. And they're basically saying that they're trying to build a bigger future for Xbox, not a smaller one by getting rid of all these people. I don't quite see how that happens. but Microsoft has essentially said the way we ran Xbox up until now

we were buying up smaller studios incorporating them into our business putting more offerings online that didn't work and our revenues certainly show that Xbox is barely growing compared to the rest of the company that is and something had to give

so on the one hand you have Sony's PS5 now going disc list no physical media and a very uncertain future for Microsoft suddenly it isn't clear what sort of future of the gaming industry it looks like because the two biggest players are in significant trouble and it looks like the kind of games that we used to play on these platforms over the next few years we're not going to be playing them at all i miss the days of nintendo and saga

and the game boy and turbographic anyway when we come back we're going to talk about we're going to be talking about this a story you knew it was going to happen an ai actor in a movie it's coming but it's how that what this is movie is about that makes me think these guys could be on to something. That's coming up next. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show and welcome back to Carmi Levy.

Some people have heard of Tilly Norwood and some have not. And for those who don't know, Tilly Norwood was revealed, discovered, if you will, a few months ago, maybe about a year ago, as an ingenue AI actor. And

she presents is a very, very pretty young actor. The headshots and the photographs present very well. And there was this narrative that the group that kind of owned Tilly Norwood was going to start putting her into projects. And so the axe was hanging, but it was not falling. Well, it has fallen. And they've announced that Tilly Norwood is going to lead a new movie called Misaligned. And it's a comedy drama.

Now, a lot of people immediately, Karmie, get their backup and they think, well, this is the end of, this is the end of filmmaking. But to me, it's what the movie is about that makes this so interesting. It's, I mean, yeah, go ahead. The fact that she is an AI creation, they're building the story around that. Yeah. The character that she plays lives in what's called the Tillyverse. It's a surreal digital world somewhere up in the cloud. And Tilly is, she's an AI being.

She doesn't really have a body. She has no experience. She has no childhood. And so, you know, that's sort of the basis of it. And the entire story revolves around the fact that she's trying to become more real, more connected, more human. And so, and again, like, you know, it's still early. We haven't seen anything.

They're just starting to pull the production together. But, you know, at the very least, they're not pretending to be something else. This is not, they're not trying to pass off an AI avatar as a human actor. They're also using actual, they say, AI is not creating this film. They're not typing a prompt and creating footage. They have directors and producers and other actors and their sets and they're going to be shooting it using cameras and writers who are writing scripts and all that. They're just, the main character is an AI creation.

And it's sort of one of those things where, you know what, AI is new. Everyone's throwing all these things at the wall. maybe it'll be great, maybe it won't be, maybe it'll be the most terrible movie on the planet Earth. However, it's just like when Toys came out, Toy Story, first came out in 1995. No one really knew what to make of all this computer-generated imagery stuff, and that turned out pretty okay because they were up front about it. Well, maybe we should at least sort of pause our rage before, you know, actually seeing this movie when it eventually comes out, and then we can make the decision.

That's kind of where I'm at now. I'm looking forward to seeing it's just of curiosity. And I'll reserve judgment until that. And we'll see. Maybe it won't be all that great. But you know what? We'll never know unless someone takes that first step. See, I agree with everything that you've said, except the point of contention is when you said,

they're not trying to pass her off as a real actor. I agree with you. They're not trying to pass her off as a real actor. And that's why what they've done is so genius that because they've created this, this pretense. this hillyverse and that she's an AI who wants to be human. They can use the narrative of sort of progressives who say, only gay people should be playing gay roles, only trans actors should be playing trans characters.

There should be no race switching. You know, if the character is written Asian, it should be played by an Asian, right? This plays into that story. And the question is, I don't think that their goal is to ever have an AI actor pass as a human actor because that's taking a job away from a human actor. I think what they're trying to do is open up sort of this intellectual and emotional space for people who don't ever want to see an AI actor, but they've created some, they're allowing for the creation of space where people say, you know what?

That's all right. They've, they've, they got me here. she's got the quote unquote lived experience to play an AI, I'll go see it. And once they see it, I think the hope is for them to say, oh, you know, I went on an emotional journey in this film and there's not that much to be afraid of here. Yes, it was an AI actor, but I didn't necessarily feel that with every passing second. And I think that's what their goal is. I think their goal is to disarm people so that when they go see it, they'll have a good time

and come out and say, oh, it's okay, there's nothing to be afraid of here. And I do believe that their intention is to have a new industry where these films can be populated by AI actors. Right on. I completely agree. And also, like, you know,

as we're sort of talking about this, I realize this is art. And whether we agree or not, it doesn't matter, but it falls within the context of art. And isn't that what art is supposed to do? It's supposed to push our buttons. It's supposed to incite debate over what is and is not appropriate,

what is inside the lines versus outside the lines. You know, we stand in front of paintings and museums and debate for hours about how we feel. Well, that's what this is doing here. It's polarizing. It's getting people on either side of the issue to argue with each other. But I think that's mission accomplished, as far as an artist is concerned.

You've got this new tool available to you, and you're going to use it in ways that have never been leveraged before, and you're going to see what happens, and, you know, it might succeed it, might not, but that's kind of what art does. We've been putting new tools in the hands of artists for centuries as technology has evolved, and I don't think AI is any different. And the fact that it's only one component of an overall production that still uses conventional methods of production, I think that gives us hope for the future that, yeah, actors and directors and writers and

producers aren't going to be kicked out of jobs in the entertainment industry, but they are going to have cool new ways to tell stories, and maybe that's something that we should all be rallying around. All right. We're going to end this conversation talking about data centers, the sexy conversation of data centers. And I don't know why this surprised me, Karmie. The fact that there's in Wyoming, the board of public utilities in the city of Cheyenne has halted all industrial wastewater from a meta data center, their cooling centers, systems rather, after discovering a rare metal resistant bacterium in the city's reclaimed water. So meta has a massive data center there and I guess the water that was being pumped in that got pumped out wasn't

purified. Here's my question. Why is anybody building a data center inside the city limits of a city? These things should be out in remote areas. Yeah, they should be. And ideally, they would be very far away from where people live and work. But unfortunately, you know, there's no, you know, this is new technology. And in many cases, the zoning laws that would apply don't recognize the fact that this is a data center.

And so a lot of cities are kind of looking at the tax revenue, looking at the dollar figures that companies like META and Google and OpenAI and Microsoft are kind of waving around. And they're saying, ooh, this will add to our tax base. Let's say yes to it. And so there are no rules. It is the wild west. And so in many cases, they are being built uncomfortably close to residential areas. And as we know, data centers don't make for great neighbors. They consume huge amounts of power.

So, you know, there's a much greater potential for brownouts and blackouts and electricity price hikes that, you know, residents sort of, you know, all of a sudden their electric bills are going up because there's a shortage. It's high demand. It's not their fault, but they're paying the price. Same thing with water. These places consume so much water to cool the computers that are running hot inside of them that that often leaves less water available first.

surrounding communities or in cases like this, it actually pollutes the water when it's when it's released back into the environment. And so they're awful, awful neighbors. And unfortunately, you know, place like Cheyenne, Wyoming, they decided, sure, we're going to have one in, but we're not really going to do our homework to understand what that really means and how that's going to inconvenience everyone who lives here. We're seeing that happen in cities across Canada, the community after community, including Hamilton, that are standing up and saying, you know what, No, we don't want them here for exactly these reasons. All the more reason, though, for more remote communities to step up and say,

hey, we'll take your data center. We've got tons of ghost towns in sort of northern Ontario, northern Manitoba, northern Saskatchew, northern British Columbia, northern Alberta that are on the grid. And they have infrastructure that definitely needs updating, but they've got roads that lead in. They've got stores. They've got schools. They've got everything that you need.

And you can plug into the electrical grid. You have all the water. you need. And if there's any contamination, it's going to have minimal impact on the people. And you could clean it up before it gets to a populated area. So this could be a really good advertisement for those rural communities. My friend, a great conversation. Thank you very much.