The Blindboy Podcast - Grundle Dunlop

Episode Date: October 2, 2019

Why artists today struggle financially. I discuss how Pokemon go is designed to topple governments Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Robert De Niro has locked himself inside the garden shed and he's not coming out. Robert De Niro has locked himself inside the garden shed. He's refusing food and water. Robert De Niro has locked himself inside the garden shed. He's rolling up his iron sweater and urinating on it, then putting it back on to keep himself warm. Robert De Niro has locked himself inside the garden shed and he's not coming out until you apologise for what you've done. Little poem there to start off this week's podcast. Hello and welcome to the blind boy podcast what's the crack

you sweaty decklings how you getting on em are you a first time listener well if you are I would suggest that you go back to the start don't have to go back to the very start just fuck around with some earlier episodes you know don't don't just decide to

listen here and continue on because there's a lot of stuff there's a lot of things to listen to a lot of things i've spoken about in previous episodes my hot takes this week's episode is going to have a little bit of a hot take what i want to do um i want to get up on on a soapbox for a little bit and just tell you about an issue that affects me and affects all musicians and artists that are operating today you know independent musicians and artists. It's something I speak about the odd time. So I just wanted to speak on it today because, yeah, so today I received a royalty check. I want to speak about this.

Now, I mentioned this particular, not this particular royalty check, but a previous royalty before now what is a royalty check a royalty check is something that a musician or an artist gets when i don't know if let's just take a musician in my case if your song is in the charts if your song is used in a TV commercial or in my case if your song is in a film and you get a royalty check every year which is money that the artist earns and just for their shit being played you know I mean now royalty checks used to be like there's artists in like okay let's just take the christmas song as a genre right i i really don't like like it's hard to find a christmas song that is aesthetically good a lot of christmas songs they tend to be cash in jobs like there's a couple that are i mean look, look, Driving Home for Christmas by Chris Rea.

Corny as fuck, it's not bad. My favourite Christmas song, although I don't think it counts, because it's an ironic Christmas song, Christmas in Cape Town by Randy Newman. But, in general, Christmas songs are... A lot of them happened in the 70s, in the glam rock era. There were songs that artists tried to write because one Christmas song could sort you for the rest of your life. Because, like there's only a handful of Christmas songs and they get played on heavy rotation at Christmas time.

So if you have a successful Christmas song, it gets played every fucking year and an artist is guaranteed a decent royalty check. But aside from Christmas songs, there's artists from like 60s, 70s, 80s who might have had just one hit song. And they're sorted for the rest of their life financially. They're wealthy, some of them actually wealthy because of one song and the royalty checks they get. some of them actually wealthy because of one song and the royalty checks they get there's artists who would have had music that are in films

and every time that film is shown on TV or whatever or every time someone buys the soundtrack they get a royalty check each year and it's put it this way, it's no longer

it's no longer a way for an artist to earn a living anymore. So, as you know, fans of the Rubber Bandits, which is my band, we had our song and video, so that's two things, featured in Trainspotting 2 in 2017 I believe. And last year I received the 2018 royalty check for our music being featured in Trainspotting. And I put it online because it was so shit. Last year it was €36. I'm not joking you because people actually didn't believe me online. 36 euros. Between us.

Is what we earned for having our song in Trainspotting 2. A multi-million euro. Box office fucking. Huge international film. 36 euro. For having our song in the soundtrack. And for our video and song being song in the soundtrack and for our video a video and song being featured in the film so today i got my 2019 statement for having our song in train spotting 2

and i'm happy to report that today 2019 we got 11 euro 11 euro lads so I'm not like I'm not complaining I am kind of complaining and I'm not no I'm not complaining it's just how things are

it's just the way things are it's as simple as that why am I not complaining I'm I'm not complaining I'm I'm not complaining because it's not like I've been shafted right

I'm sure now there's bigger artists who like we would have gotten we would have gotten a one off payment at the time when Trainspotting 2 came out again not a lot of money like it would have gotten a one-off payment at the time when Trainspotting 2 came out again not a lot of money like it would have been maybe two months rent for each of us that's like it was it really

wasn't a lot of money about a grand each two grand each something like that and we kind of did it because we're like look in fairness as well the exposure for it is very good your song and video is in train spotting too fucking class so i didn't really expect i didn't expect a lot of money from it to be honest uh so i'm not complaining because it's not like i've been shafted merely i'm kind of telling you this is how things are this is the music industry now this is what has happened to the music industry because of the internet really you know Train Spotting 1

came out in 1995 I believe one of the biggest selling soundtracks of all time like the artists featured on that like Barn Slippy by Underworld I'd be very surprised if they didn't make a couple of million from that soundtrack

right so had we had a time machine and gotten a song on that soundtrack in 1996 it'd be a very different story I'd be living off royalty checks for the rest of my life but here in 2019 the royalty

what makes it so funny because I put it up on Twitter and on Instagram and what makes it so funny is it's the full on royalty check statement and on the top left hand corner it has Universal Music you know the big Universal huge international record label on the right hand side it has Polydor

two massive huge international labels and it has a breakdown of the statement and then it says net total royalties 2019 11 euros and 13 cents and I put it up because it's so fucking hilarious right

and I'm not hard done by it, it's just this is where things are the internet has eradicated money to be earned like you can't you fucking can't you can't earn money in music you can earn money from gigs from march yes you can you like people listening to your tunes forget about it spotify forget about it Spotify forget about it that is practically free at this point and I put it up on

I put it up on Twitter and Instagram the same way I did last year to be honest I put it up as a thank you to all my Patreon subscribers. Because when that came into my inbox today, artist's statement, 11 euros, same way as last year when it was 36.

Like, I think me and Chrome will actually, well, it's 11 euros between us, but we have to give 10% to our agent. So it might be 450 each for one year of uh train spotting royalties which is gas

it's hilarious but I put it up to thank my Patreon fucking subscribers because look because of ye I'm able to

receive that in my inbox and laugh at it for it its absurdity and highlight it. Rather than, if I didn't have the Patreon, it'd actually be quite chilling and depressing to receive it. And it'd be very soul-destroying. Because, I don't know, I'd nearly be looking forward to it I'd nearly be going jeez I hope it's a little bit better this year so thank you so much

honest to God for signing up to the Patreon because it gives me a regular stable source of income that allows me to plan and take risks and to know what the fuck is happening with my finances which I never really had before.

And if you are considering, the reason I keep plugging the Patreon is because people come and go, that's fair enough. So I might, look, if you're enjoying the podcast, if you like it, if it's doing something for you, and you're just listening for free, if you can afford it,

and you'd like to give me the price of a pint, or a cup of coffee once a month, you know, if you met me, would you buy me a pint or a cup of coffee? If you would, you can do it. Patreon.com forward slash TheBlindByPodcast If you can't afford it, no hassle.

No worries. That's grand. You can listen for free. But, to the people who can't afford it, just understand, yeah, I make this for fucking free i don't really have advertisers i don't really want heavy advertising as well i'll take an

advertiser if they're sound most advertisers are like can you can you adjust and change your content to suit our adverts can you stop cursing you know i mean can you stop doing podcasts about this topic and then we'll sponsor you no thanks lads i'd much prefer this this way so that was the first reason that for it was selfish reasons i suppose uh the second reason i put it up is just to raise awareness for not not just me i'm not fucking unique in that, pretty much all musicians and artists, your favourite artists, the independent ones in particular, like, the weird thing now in 2019, and it's one of the reasons too that I've got this fucking bag in my head, there's two types of, like, famous person,ote unquote. There's rich famous people.

And not rich famous people. And most people are not rich famous people. People with loads of followers. Or views or streams. Your favourite artists. Are most likely working second jobs. And trying to do it on the sly. And it's a weird.

For musicians in particular. that's really really strange because the thing with musicians is that they're up on stage and a lot of musicians have to give the appearance of being glamorous and wealthy when in fact the you know the day after a gig they might be working in in a kitchen or something you know so just to generally raise awareness to you if you're if there's an artist you really love okay and they're not like Ariana Grande

or someone massive but someone you're listening to a lot just streaming their album on Spotify. Isn't earning them any money. So I would urge you. Find out if they're crowdfunding.

If you can buy tickets to their gigs. Do that. If they have March. Buy March. Do you know all these little things. Because. They'll just quit. I don't want to name names even though they'd probably be fine if I did

but I won't because I'd ask first but like we started gigging we started doing gigs in 2008 in Ireland you know and there was loads of other bands who would have been

started off the same time as us also doing live gigs and these would have been our creative contemporaries people who we'd have done support acts with or we'd have supported each other online our kind of creative peers and there was lots of these Irish acts and bands

who are now gone. They're not around anymore. And it's just, it's shit. It's fucking shit because there was a huge amount of creativity that never got to flourish. Now as well, you know, we started in 2008, which is boom, right into the middle of the fucking recession so that that was tough enough anyway but i'm gonna say i i'm nearly confident

it's a hundred percent of the irish acts that was started off the same time as those but i don't want to say that because i could be wrong but i'm calm i'd be more confident that it's between 80 and 90%. They quit maybe five, six years ago. They would have lasted about five years. They kind of quit around 2013, 2014. And every one of them had the exact same kind of situation. It was like they go quiet for a while and then they release this big statement

on Facebook that just says due to financial pressure we can't go on with this project and careers were cut short and it always coincided with like

you know bands when they start out like in their early 20 out, like, in their early 20s, when you're in your early 20s, it's okay to, you know, live fucking, check them out, do you know what I mean, really live with fuck all, and have the utter basics, and give your heart and soul to your art, and and you know to be eating fucking coca noodles and maybe sleeping on a friend's gaff doing you know on their couch sleeping on couches doing gigs around the country sleeping on fans couches shit like that that's all it's not grand but it's tolerable when bands are in their early 20s but something happens at about 25 that shit can't go on anymore

25 is one of those ages where you start thinking of the future and all these bands at about 25, 26 usually like someone in the band just said look I want to go to Australia and get a job on a fucking construction site or I want to go off to Canada and get a job on a fucking construction site

or I want to go off to Canada and get a job at an office and all these bands slowly put out that statement saying we can't afford to make this next album we can't afford to do this next tour and they just went on to have normal jobs and maybe one member of the band was lucky enough to go on to become a session musician

or DJing was a popular one that's one of the few avenues left for people in bands right now in Ireland is you'll get the odd band member doing DJ nights and they can get a few quid doing that but there's no one really earning money from music, not really

you know why am I still going after all those years, I'm just, I'm very very fucking lucky Not really. You know, why am I still going? After all those years? I'm just, I'm very, very fucking lucky to be able to diversify my talents. I'm handy at a couple of things and I'm very fortunate for that. I didn't have to rely 100% on the Rubber Bandits music.

I was writing for television. There was live theatre stuff. Like, I mean, my book. All this shit. So I didn't have to be like music alone. Because then it would have been no fucking way, not a chance. We'd have been gone five way, not a chance, we'd have been gone, five, six years ago too, I stuck it out in Limerick as well, which really helped,

Limerick during the recession, incredibly affordable place, didn't have to spend a huge amount on rent, like career wise, would have been much better off in Dublin, or even better in London, but fuck that, just not possible. Had I tried to pay Dublin or London rent, would have been second job territory, and as soon as it's second job territory, then it's burnout and no time for creativity. So, I made Limerick work for myself,

and I was lucky in that respect too. I mean, if I'm being honest like because I think about this like I said I kind of I kind of quit in 2015 like not really but in my heart I did because I went back to do a master's degree in college, right, obviously doing that because with the look of changing career or doing something further beyond entertainment, and I was also working a second job, so I'd kind of half quit then but hadn't said anything, but luckily I wrote the book, the first book of short stories, The Gospel According to Blind Boy,

which I didn't know, I didn't know that was going to do alright. I wrote that, it did really well, and then most importantly, this fucking podcast, which I did not expect, like you know from this, I didn't expect this to do well. Podcast changed my fucking life. This is the first time in, like I've been doing this to do well podcast changed my fucking life this is the first time in like I've been doing this since 2000 but like we were actual fucking children then but professionally been doing it since 2009

and in all that time this is the first time ever that I've got the regular income regular I have a fucking job I know how much money I'm getting each month I can plan and what that allows me to do more than anything

risks I can take fucking risks I can like I've got this podcast and now I've just finished the fucking book just finished BBC series but now I've got like four other projects on the go. And I can now afford for those to fail.

Because that's what you need to do. If you're professionally creative. You need to be really busy all the time with separate projects. Because you know some of them are going to fail. And striving for failure is. You have to strive for failure. If you want to have a chance at success. You have to strive for failure is you have to strive for failure if you want to have a chance of success you have to strive for failure and embrace failure and the possibility of it and take

risks because that's creativity um when you're like here's the thing if you're in a situation where you absolutely utterly if failure means not getting paid at all then you can't take risks and your work suffers and now all of a sudden you can't explore creativity it's like no I need to do that thing

that I think other people would like and the job becomes horrible and not fun and you quit I don't have to do that anymore now because of the patreon um but these are all crucial reasons why we should be just support the fucking artist that you like if you're listening to a band now an independent band england ireland whatever some small band in america go out and find out do they have merch and can you go to their gigs are they crowdfunding because listening to Spotify isn't going to cut it another bigger thing right and this is

really fucking worrying across the arts and it's a trend that's happened since about 2010 when you really start to see it taking hold right Britain in particular a lot of successful musicians and writers and shit and comedians in England they had really posh backgrounds like a huge amount of them went to private school now private school in England is like 30 grand a year, so can you imagine how much money your parents have if they can spend 30 grand a fucking year on school, that's serious wealth, so I don't know, fucking Coldplay, what are they called with the fucking banjos and the tweed jackets

Mumford and Sons You're One Florence and the Machine James Blunt like they're all mad wealthy rich kids

well they were and the thing is is that what's happening is that only the people whose parents have a ton of money are the ones now who are being given the space to take the risks to create the art and therefore they're succeeding and the people who came from either middle class or working class whose parents didn't have a fuckload of money they're now not getting to they're trying to make

a bit of art in their early 20s and then it's like fuck you gotta get a job and now you can't so all this all this art is not getting created

you know all this huge amount of art is not being made because these brick walls are in front of I mean think of Ireland like the amount of people people who go to private schools in Ireland

that's compared to England that's a huge minority you'll see a bit of it in Cork, there's a fair bit of it in Dublin like Limerick's got one private school that uh I think it's for Protestants so the vast majority of Irish artists um they don't have their parents bankrolling them you know to be fucking paying for their apartment in Dublin or shit like that so support those fucking Irish artists the young ones bankrolling them, you know, to be fucking paying for their apartment in Dublin,

or shit like that, so, support those fucking Irish artists, the young ones, because chances are, they're fucking skint, and I know for a fact, I know for a fact,

because I know, I personally know, the vast majority of, kind of young artists in Ireland, who are making noise, and doing good shit today. And they all have second jobs. And if they don't have second jobs.

They're. Eating fucking cocoa noodles. And sleeping on couches. Just to be able to do their tours. That's a given. And I'm saying it because. It's mortifying. I know a lot of artists.

Who would be so. They. They wouldn't feel right. Going onto their Facebook and Twitter. And saying. I'm fucking skint. Can you please come to my gig. Can you. Not just.

I'm doing a gig. Will you come to it. It not just, I'm doing a gig, will you come to it, it's like, I'm fucking skint, will you please come to my gig, I know a lot of, young artists in that position, and they just don't have,

the language, they don't have the language, or the confidence, or, the self esteem, or it's not where they're at, to come out and say that or it just contravenes their stage persona so much that they don't know how to say it so I'm just trying to bring it to

the awareness and to bridge the gap between we just all need to move towards a situation where don't believe the Instagram follows don't believe situation where don't believe the Instagram follows, don't believe the streams, don't believe the YouTube views. That is not money. Okay, that is not fucking money. And we should all kind of be aware of that. Or we'll end up in a society

where no one's creating art and it'll be a couple of artists who went to Black Rock College in Dublin and that's what'll be left and I don't think we need that do we fuck that

I don't know some of you might be thinking but lads GAA players they fucking play for their counties and they train and they do it all for free they do and fair fucking play for their counties. And they train. And they do it all for free. They do. And fair fucking play to them.

But. It is different. It's different. Being a GA player. Obviously it's fucking. You know at that level. It's obviously incredibly difficult. But. Yes there is a huge amount of focus and emotional energy and all of

this that goes into being like a ga player but mostly the job is it's physical time it's the those ga players they give away for free their physical time to play and their physical time to train. With creating art it's not just physical time but it's emotional and mental space in order to create. That's a huge part of creating the best art. An artist needs to have idle hands. An artist needs to have the space to explore what's inside them so they can express what's inside them and create something that resonates with the rest of us and that's what art fucking does that's the importance we live in a society where fucking art isn't valued for its role in our collective fucking mental health do Do you ever put on a song. And this song helps you to process.

Whatever pain or sadness that you have going on. That's cause. That's what music does. It's symmetrical vibrations of air that can. Help you process your fucking emotions. And that has value. Open a fucking book. Has a book value open a fucking book has a book ever spoken to you has a book ever not i don't mean like art doesn't make you happy what art does

is it offers an alternative language to process and understand your feelings if you're out on the fucking nightclub and there's a banging beat, you're processing and exploring feelings of joy and elation and fun. If you're sitting on your own, you have a shit day and you put on a song and the chords and the lyrics work together to allow you to explore a sense of sadness or loss or anger. You know, people who listen to fucking heavy metal, it's an anger and a rage that they get to help them process. That's the purpose of art. Music does that. A book, to live through another character, that's what that does.

You know, do you go to a comedy club and enjoy a comedian and roar your arse off laughing, or look at some of their work online? Do you follow comedians on Twitter and they make videos, or on YouTube, and you you're screaming roaring at their stuff laughing and it's giving you orgasmic little units of fucking intense

happiness that we call laughter that's the purpose and role of art, it's just one there's all other political side of what art can do sociological side it can give voices to people who are marginalized whereby their regular speech and words isn't going to work so once they communicate that true song all of a sudden it gives the rest of us empathy

i mean fucking rap music being the prime example of that you know so art is important art is hugely important to society and we kind of take it for granted but you engage it like 99 of the people listening to this fucking podcast are engaging with art on an everyday basis and it's improving your quality of life but we don't kind of name it or know it I don't know why that is so this is why it's important to support our fucking artists okay before I get into the kind of I don't know is it a hot take I don't know is it a hot take it's more something I'm processing but I do have something to speak about after the ocarina pause so we just get straight

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Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real, it's not real. What's not real? Who said that?

The first Stowman, only in theaters April 5th. That's a good ocarina there now. It has just a lot of different... Different notes. It's not like that other one. Where's that other one? This one. I don't like this one.

Hold on. I'd love to hear this played properly. Because I... It only has about four fucking notes. And they're all really low. And it's hard to bend them and go high like that other one. You know? So there you go. about four fucking notes and they're all really low and it's hard to bend them and go high like that other one you know so there you go

before I move on two live gigs that I want to just tell you about I know this sounds like a podcast where I'm just fucking promoting my shit this episode but two gigs that are just announced Dublin Vicar Street 14th

and 19th of November alright live podcast for the Dublin podcast festival really looking forward to those

I tell you what's interesting do you know when it's International Women's Day or International Women's Day

and whenever that happens you know everyone's online trying to be positive and celebrate it and then you get these lads thinking they're being mad clever going

when's international men's day when's the new international men's day and it's like there is buddy it's the 19th of November there is an international's the 19th of November there is an international fucking men's day

we don't really need it but there is so yeah that live podcast in Vicar Street is on 19th of November international men's day so I don't know I might do something fun for that I'm gonna have a think I'm gonna have a think about what I could do considering it's international men's

day interview a giant testicle I'm going to have a think about what I could do. Considering it's International Men's Day. Interview a giant testicle. And check it for lumps. You know. Check your balls lads. Check your balls every day. No harm.

Get used to it. Even though it's. Look it's no crack. It's no crack doing that. It is fucking no crack, I don't know what it is, is it, the sensation of it, it's just not great, is it, it's not great, you don't really want to be feeling your fucking nuts, you just want to acknowledge that they exist, but you don't want to be investigating them with your thumbs but look you'd be better just do it get comfortable with it every morning in the shower why not all right go for it so what i'd like to talk about this week and kind of look into um it's something that increasingly i think about more and more and i think in 20 years time when we look back at the post 9-11 era we'll say it will come to radically define

kind of what we're living through it will, it will not necessarily obviously the internet but it is the internet but data right data

and data is an amazing word because it means nothing. It's so fucking... Like even in Star Trek, right? Remember, now I don't know much about Star Trek, but what was the one

with the bald fella? Next Generation, right? And there was a character in it who was an android and his name was Data, or Data as the Americans call it. And the whole shtick around this character was that they were, you know, this green-faced android with zero emotions or capacity to relate to humans whatsoever an absolute walking machine called data because the word itself is so devoid of humanity but yet we're moving towards an age where like data is is one of the most important things in the world today. It's nearly more important than money. And since the mid-2000s,

you know, we've been giving our data away. And let's replace the word data with secrets. Because that's what it is. Like if I say to you, how do you feel about giving away your data most people go I don't give a fuck just let me click on the link let me use the app

but what if I said how do you feel about giving away your secrets about your behaviour and as technology advances it's more and more of your behaviour and as technology advances it's more and more of your behaviour like in 2005 your data was what

do you click on you know what links are you going to click on and then after that as Google got more intelligent it's not just what do you click on but what do you type And then after that, as Google got more intelligent, it's not just what do you click on, but what do you type into your search bar.

And then smartphones kick in, and your data, it's what you give away about yourself grows and grows and grows. It's not just what do you click on. So the smartphone comes in and it's... Now what do you say into your phone? As the technology starts to understand and decipher the words that you use. And then it became, sometime around 2011, not so much now what do you say into your phone, but now what do you say around your phone and around your devices because they're listening all the time.

And if you use FaceTime or one of these, you know, apps where you're doing a lot of video calls, you're giving away away your facial expressions you're giving away the shape of your face the sound of your voice do you move around a lot now you know 2015, 2016 it becomes where are your locations where are you moving

do you spend a lot of time at home do you go to the gym do you go to the park your deepest secrets? Do you go to the gym? Do you go to the park? Your deepest secrets about where you go, who you talk to, what you say to them, what you click on, what you type, everything as we live more and more through our phones. You know our phones are now a separate extension of our personality as we live increasingly as avatars in a virtual world. Every element and aspect of your entire behavior is fed into your phone as data.

And the kind of great exchange, because smartphones are incredible. I mean, what makes smartphones particularly incredible is apps like apps are unreal a new app comes out every month like the fucking shit that I have on my phone that makes my life

so fucking easy and it's so cheap like I go for a run and when I go like I think I give them a fucking 20 quid a year or something, for the premium version of this app,

but I could use it for free, like you know, I go to the fuck, I go for a fucking run, it tells me how fast I'm running, it tells me, the calories I'm burning, I type in,

literally, everything I eat, goes into this app, and it tells me, you know, what my nutrition is like, my calories, if you've got a smart watch, Goes into this app. And it tells me. You know. What my nutrition is like. My calories. If you've got a smart watch.

It's. You know. It's tracking your sleep. Basically. What's happened. Is. Your phone. Has gotten so fucking good.

At tracking your behavior and secrets. It's as if we now, all of us, are under 24 hour medical and scientific surveillance. It's like we live in a fucking lab, right? And we do so you now live 24 7 in a lab where you have a huge team of incredibly skilled scientists recording and analyzing every aspect of your fucking behavior sleep scientists moderate your sleep or sorry record and moderate your sleep, or sorry, record and analyse your sleep. Behavioural psychologists measure how often a day do you get angry? How often a day do you get anxious?

How does your phone know whether you're anxious or angry? Based on what you type? Based on how quickly you respond to words that contain anger trigger words, based on the camera pointed at your face that can read human emotions and the dilation of your pupils and whether or not you appear to be anxious, based upon your smartwatch which gives away the speed of your heartbeat when you see certain images or text on your phone. when you see certain images or text on your phone. We live in a fucking, in a world where you are non-stop, 24-7, under the type of surveillance which 50 years ago would have been considered

not only unimaginable but impossibly inhumane. You wouldn't be able to keep a human under surveillance 365 days a year 24 7 ok so the other part you're going so fucking what so fucking what who gives a shit

who cares and you know I'm not doing anything wrong so why should I give a fuck and to an extent it's true so why should I give a fuck? And to an extent, it's true, right? Why should you give a fuck? But the thing is, the trade-off, and this is a general rule, if the product is free, you are the product, okay?

So when we use apps, we are the product. When we use free apps, we are the product. And what you sign away is like every app in your phone you're signing away your data so you're signing away every single detailed secret about every single aspect of your behavior that's what these apps are interested in now for the part, it's just to service capitalism. They want to... They want to sell your data to advertisers

because the advertiser then very simply knows exactly how to sell you shit. And that's helpful. If I'm... If I'm interested in buying a kettle lads and my phone finds out I kinda like a day later when I'm getting ads

for the type of kettle I kinda wanna buy you know that's convenient it's nice but what we don't kind of you don't consent with what they do with your fucking data that's the problem you don't consent to that it's not just selling it to a company so they can better target you data is sold to law enforcement agencies data is sold to governments as a means to control you

i mean it's a whole separate podcast and it's been very well covered but you look at the cambridge analytica scandal and trump and all that shit our data was used to learn our deepest fucking fears everyone in in society in order for the for that to be co-opted by right-wingers to figure out exactly what buttons to press on certain people to divide countries to divide societies and now as a result of this data world that we live in where we allowed a giant team of scientists to have intimate access to every aspect of our behavior and psychology we now have clowns running the world, puppets,

like Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. They're fucking clowns, like. And by which I mean, they're pantomime puppets, they're exaggerated human beings. You don't meet Trumps and Johnsons they're insane they shouldn't exist as leaders but yet they do and this was all driven by data

Brexit was driven by data it's we give away our data for free apps thinking grand they'll sell me a new pair of shoes but someone else came in, and said, can we buy this data,

but we don't want to use it, for advertising, we want to use it to, assist political campaigns, and the company said, grand, I don't give a fuck what you do, work away,

so that's kind of the data, type of shit, that we know about, the standard, you know, this app is free grand I'm giving away my data fine

no hassle who cares but what about the the apps that are consciously funded by secret government organisations specifically to mine our data for insidious purposes of control

and this exists and I want to kind of dip into it in this episode specifically I want to start off with apps that are funded by the CIA and this isn't conspiracy theory this isn't conspiracy theory this is

the shit that I'm going to be talking about is it's out there in the open for you to look at it the CIA do a lot of shit in plain sight but no one really just doesn't make the news no one really knows about it mainly what they do is the CIA have a

a company called In-Q-Tel and this is a company it's aQ-Tel and this is a company it's a non-profit company that receives billions from the US government and it acts as a funding company and

In-Q-Tel invests in mainly technology and software and apps and it pumps a lot of money into these startups. So that these startups can develop the shit that they're doing. But then share all that data with the CIA. For whatever reason the CIA wants.

The most classic example being... I mean look there's a few examples. If you were using facebook in 2008 um like i remember it clearly conspiracy theories flying around and and if you shared it you were considered nuts it was the wackiest conspiracy theory right and it used to fly around facebook in 2008 and what people would say would be they they would have like they'd show facebook and then they'd show companies that invested in facebook and it would eventually lead to the cia and they'd say facebook is partly funded by the CIA because its purpose is to have everyone's details, to have as many details as many citizens on earth as possible. And if you shared that in 2008, you were a lunatic.

You had a tinfoil hat. Of course, that turned out to be completely true. Absolutely true. absolutely true if you look at how Facebook and Google shared data with the US government as leaked by Edward Snowden

so that turned out to actually be true yes Facebook was a fun social media site where we could connect with people and do all of this but it was also being exploited by the US government as a way to get to know shit about fucking everyone.

And then that data was up for grabs by the Cambridge Analytical cunts, and we can all see the results today. But other examples, like, you know know what's the point why would let's just take the CIA for example why does the CIA do this shit well a lot of it is related

to 9-11 right so after 9-11 all of America was shocked it's like oh my god we've been attacked this is the first time it's happened since Pearl Harbor. We're all fucked. They're going to crash more planes. You know, the U.S. government took it incredibly seriously.

Everyone was very afraid, and they rolled out a thing called the Patriot Act. And the Patriot Act basically, it stripped back a ton of human rights for American citizens. American citizens' rights to kind of privacy, it stripped those away in the interest of stopping terrorism. And the Patriot Act was a great kind of attack on democracy but people didn't care because they're like stop the scary terrorists so that allowed we'll say

in QTEL the CIA's company was started in the late 90s but this fucking Patriot Act really allowed in QTEL to start funding a lot of Silicon Valley businesses and a classic example is like in the 90s late 90s the CIA had its own kind of like a map

they tried to map the entire world using satellites and you can get photographs of it it was called Earth Viewer and it was a CIA only piece of software, that was developed for the CIA, and it was so they could, go onto a computer,

and then, track the movements of Iraqis, and shit like that, and look at maps, and move around, and, the company that developed Earth Viewer, who were like a private company,

In-Q-Tel, then, In-Q-Tel, then... In-Q-Tel being the CIA's capital firm, pumped a bunch of US government money into a new company called Keyhole in 2001, right after the 9-11. And pumped money into it, Keyhole started taking more high-res images using satellites of the earth and then all of a sudden keyhole gets bought up by google and it becomes google earth

so google earth google maps that we use every single day was straight up you can trace it funded by the CIA and I mean it's they kind of do it is because Google look friendly Google Earth is I remember when Google Earth came out, I remember using that

in like 2009, thinking this is fucking amazing I remember like going on to it and you know zooming in on my own gaff on my own house and

the only dodgy thing I thought of is I said to myself jeez this is going to make it really easy for people to to rob gaffs to rob houses

because you can now go on the computer and look at it but if the CIA came out and said we're mapping the entire world and said we're mapping

the entire world we're taking photographs of your back garden in Ireland there'd be uproar but when a nice friendly company like Google does it and then rolls it out as a fun app or a fun desktop

thing that I can use we don't give a fuck, we don't use we don't give a fuck we don't care we don't give a shit so that right there is a prime example but what makes the Google Earth thing so I don't know scary for the future

is like what you have there is the ultimate harvesting of information of visual information about the earth right very simple it's just high-res satellite images of every single part of the earth right and this is what you're seeing with what in qtel the cia are investing in over the past 10-15 years it's massive it's as if eventually they want to have on a computer server every single possible piece of information about every aspect of the earth and

every human living in it that's what's kind of happening right now with there's hundreds of companies that they're invested in. There's your standard shit where it's like... I mean, they tend to just find private companies where there's a lot of clever people working at it and developing interesting technology, and the CIA will say, we'll give you a few quid towards that.

Like, noise-canceling fucking microphones that go inside your mouth are... I think they have a few quid in Boston Dynamics, I could be wrong, could be wrong with that, now that's not confirmed, but like, robotics technologies, virtual reality, all this stuff, but what freaks me out is that it's the data harvesting stuff, okay, um, what comes to mind on a previous podcast i spoke about um modern dna companies right ancestry companies ancestry.com are 23andme and i spoke about these companies um it's very popular online you want to find out what your heritage is so you apply for one of these DNA tests you swab your cheek you send it off to a lab it comes back and it tells you what your ethnic heritage is or whatever but we also discussed how what you trade off with these companies is you allow them access to the data of your dna and that's why it's so cheap it's only 100 quid it could should cost cost a grand and what these companies are doing

is they now have your genetic dna data and they're selling them to the pharmaceutical industry now i have no evidence to suggest that the cia are funding these these companies right i don't know about that probably if the cia if incutel rock on up to 23andme and say like okay 23andme either 23andme or ancestry.com i'm not sure which one one of them did a 300 million deal with glatko smith. Klein, the pharmaceutical company, where Glatco came up and said, here's 300 million, give us access to everybody's DNA. And the lad said, grand, they signed it away, we own it. You can rent that data.

So there's nothing stopping the CAA company, In-Q-Tel, rocking up as a customer and saying, here's 300 million quid, can we have that data? So I'd be surprised if that isn't happening. I don't have evidence for it. What I do have evidence for is there's this really popular fucking skincare product online. Now, Oprah promotes it

and a lot of beauty bloggers promote it and all this it's a special skin product called clearista right and the thing with clearista is that it's it's not just a skin product it's it's something you can put on your skin and i think you send back a swab of the clarista or something and what the what the company can do is it can tell you like the the biomarker profile of your skin basically it's like it's it's a skin care product company that can tell you intimate scientific data about your skin. Which can... They can then provide for you the best possible skin care products based upon...

Biomarker data of your skin. I don't know what that means. I'm not a fucking scientist, but that's what it says it does on the tin. Okay, so... It's not just... You're not just going into boots looking for the oily skin moisturizer you're buying a product whereby it will tell you exactly what type of skin you have you know whether you're at risk from diseases or cancer and it does this by learning your dna

basically and people are hovering this up because people want the best possible skin product for them, and this company is selling that, but if you look at it, in 2010, like, it was 100%, if not 100%, it was a vast amount of the funding for this company,

came from In-Q-Tel, which is the CIA's company, so, this Clarista fucking moisturizer that you can buy in in brown thomas or whatever it's a cia funded fucking skincare product where i can only assume they're using it to... harvest the data of people's DNA, of whoever uses it. And their goal would be to make it so popular,

and to get so many other products that do the same thing popular, that... we are now willingly giving away our genetic data to the CIA, in order to have clearer skin. And this is how it works and this isn't conspiracy theory shit

this is fucking happening this is out in the open that's the mad thing no a whistleblower or a a leaker didn't have to let everybody know that In-Q-Tel invested in this skin care company

you can just find it out it's there it's just not being talked about. And that's troubling because you know, it's the potential for tyranny. That's the problem. Once you have someone's DNA

it's the fact that we don't know as well. You know, how much consent is there, we don't understand fully consent and data, and what it means, I mean, Europe made a good, bit of progress there with the GDPR regulations, which gives us some control over our fucking data, but,

I don't know, like, is it worth fucking getting rid of a few spots on your face to allow the CIA to know your fucking DNA if they know your DNA imagine that for tracking you it's it's potential for tyranny is shocking

and the CIA are about tyranny. They say it's for protection, but tyranny is what they're into. To maintain, to make the US the most powerful country in the world. They do it through tyranny. It's sneaky and it should be illegal. Look, if the US government said to you can we have your DNA

can we swab your skin because we just want your DNA are you going to say yes she's going no fuck off no you can't have my fucking DNA so this is how they managed to find out a way to do it and it's like what do they want with it

you know what are they managed to find out a way to do it. And it's like what do they want with it? You know what are they going to do? What weird fucked up shit is going to happen in 10 years. Where we all regret giving away our DNA data. In the way. I mean they did it on Facebook through third party apps like Farmville and shit like that I mean we all regret playing Farmville now

we all regret giving away our data to Facebook because we've seen what comes from it so what's going to happen in 10 years time with our DNA I don't fucking know and I haven't a clue what the fuck they're doing based on that Chinese

what's going on in China you know in China they're just very openly using people's data for utter control and tyranny and punishment and reward through the social credit system that's not in the west but I'd be fucking shocked if the powers that be in the West wouldn't like that.

Wouldn't love to have a population under complete and utter surveillance and control of every single aspect of... It's... What's freaky... They have our behavioural data through our smartphones and now they're moving on to our biological data. Our DNA. Here's another one that's fucking insane. data through our smartphones and now they're moving on to our biological data our dna here's another one that's fucking insane so i mentioned earlier about you know keyhole which was cia funded which eventually became google earth right um so the ceo the person who was kind of in charge of both the Keyhole thing and the Google Earth thing and also after that

Google Cars right so do you know Google Street View so first came Google Earth and Google Maps but now there's

around 2010 there was Google Street View where you can literally zoom down into the map and you can walk around the streets, like, again, handy as fuck, like, Google Street View is practically, like, it improves my life, if I'm doing a gig somewhere, if I'm going on holidays, I can walk around where my hotel is, before I'm even there, to find out where the nearest shop is, you know, to find out where the nearest shop is you know to find out where the fucking pub is

I'll do that and it's really useful and it improves my life but we've all seen the Google cars that drive around the gaff so in order to collect the data for Google Street View cars were sent out and they're sent out every four years I think literally on every single road in the entire world for Google Street View, cars were sent out, and they're sent out every four years, I think, literally on every single road in the entire world,

and they do 360-degree cameras all around, and this turns into Google Street View, and we can walk around in it. But in Germany in 2010, there was a big scandal, because these Google cars were accused of not not just so on the surface they're kind of these fun things that you look at and you go wow isn't that nuts look at that google car it's all friendly with the google logo and it's a big camera on top and it doesn't look insidious or dodgy because it's so stupid and ridiculous

looking and out in the open and has google on the side that we don't feel threatened or scared by it. It's a novelty. It's fun. But these cars were accused in Germany, but all over the world, of not just using the camera at the top to take photographs of the roads. using the camera at the top to take photographs of the roads. What they were also doing apparently was, as they're going past houses, hacking into unsecured Wi-Fi networks and using that hack to trawl through personal data and information through the Wi-Fi,

such as passwords, bank statements, financial details, all this shit that they illegally should not be taken they were also harvesting that data from unsecured wi-fi networks uh that's why a lot of people now would use vpns as a way to i'm not fully sure how it works but a lot of wi-fi is is not secure and if someone knows how to do it they can strip a lot of your personal information through an unsecured wi-fi network public wi-fi in particular is bad news if you're in a cafe or in a hotel um someone with the right right knowledge can hack your phone for very sensitive data that you wouldn't like to give away at all such as credit cards and financial information or whatever they can do that if you're on an

unsecured wi-fi public public wi-fi network so it's why it's a good idea to have a good vpn you can get a vpn app for your phone about a five or a month and it kind of it tricks the network basically and keeps you safe I have one but here's the shtick so the person who was the CEO of

fucking Keyhole Google Earth the person behind the Google cars that were doing the street view and illegally harvesting the fucking data this person went on to also run an incredibly popular app that everybody used in 2016 a very friendly fun app that took the absolute world by storm i'm talking about pokemon go do you remember that there's a few people still using it you remember when pokemon go came out like the world nearly went mad like everyone was using it

and pokemon Go was this augmented reality app like it was so much fucking fun but basically it uses the camera on your phone so Pokemon if you don't know

they're like these little mythical creature animals from the cartoon Pokemon whatever the fuck so it was this huge interaction it was an interactive video game that used the real world and thousands of players and so you'd go on you'd open up your pokemon go and you'd see a map of limerick and you'd see all the other people playing Pokemon Go and a Pokemon, a little mythical animal might appear near your house and you had to walk with your camera to this location and other people would too to capture this Pokemon which you could see through the camera on your phone

and people loved it, they went fucking nuts for it but the person running pokemon go was also the person you know who was accused of that huge data scandal where they were stealing information from wi-fi passwords the person who worked alongside the cia to develop google earth this is who's running pokemon go and a lot of people start to become suspicious of the because I don't Pokemon I think it was free if it wasn't free it was very cheap but it was asking for quite a lot of privileges on your phone access to microphone access the camera all it was looking for a lot of data, and people started to wonder, Pokemon Go is asking for a lot more data than it needs to simply operate, and we're just giving it away because it's that

much crack, it was viral, and this, what was his name, John Hank, who was the CEO of the company running Pokemon Go this guy founded Keyhole right and he was also I believe was he the he wasn't CIO of In-Q-Tel but he worked for In-Q-Tel which is the CIA's company that funds all this shit okay and that's the guy who runs

Pokemon Go or who did anyway I don't know if he left it since so then you're left thinking like what the fuck did the cia want with pokemon go i mean an intelligence agency what they want is information as data and information about as much things as possible so now imagine like pokemon go was global right it was so pokemon as well and what's worth noting like yes pokemon is hugely popular in america britain and europe very very popular we all grew up with fucking pokemon it's fucking way more popular in Asia, in Korea, in China, in Japan, way more popular. So Pokemon Go went globally viral.

So now let's imagine that, you know, the CIA have access and control over Pokemon Go. You know, what could they do with it? Think of it as mapping software. think of it think of it as mapping software like let's just say the CIA want

intimate incredibly detailed visual information like right down to the fucking concrete of certain areas and streets

in China now China is like fuck Russia Russia's got the economy of Italy. The big superpower, but they're not called a superpower, the big, the Cold War right now is between America and China and we haven't seen it yet but it's, over the next 10 years it's going to become more and more apparent and it's, the internet's going to divide between Chinese internet and American internet and at the moment they're fighting for the spaces in between that don't have either

Africa, India, Bangladesh, places like that so what Pokemon Go allows the CIA to do is it's like being able to airdrop thousands of CIA agents with fucking complex equipment into the most sensitive parts of China

to visually map every single element first of all of the physical environment, because all they have to do if Pokemon Go is popular in China right they just have to do if Pokemon Go is popular in China right they just have to make a rare Pokemon

appear near a government building and every fucking teenager in a 5 mile radius will flock to this place with their cameras on, microphones on and they're mapping every single element of that area.

That all feeds back into the servers. The CIA have access to it, and now they have a full 3D model of the most sensitive areas in China or in South Korea or in Japan or wherever the fuck. Not only that, let's just take it back to, you know, the Google cars that were driving around innocently mapping everything and taking photos but what they were also doing as they were accused of was using public wi-fi

networks in order to steal sensitive data let's just assume and i think it's been accused that pokemon go is doing that as well so now you've got all these kids looking for Pikachu in the middle of China. They're not only taking photographs of the streets, but what they're doing too is extracting tons of sensitive data from people's homes or from the government through public Wi-Fi networks or people who are being irresponsible with Wi-Fi. What does that data allow the CIA to do? What would that data? Fucking cyber attacks. Because that's going to be the wars of the future. The wars of the future are going to be cyber attacks.

Especially in a country like China where they already have 5G and 5G is going to roll out across all the world now. More and more of our important infrastructure and I'm talking fucking traffic lights to public health systems are going to be reliant on 5g internet so cyber attacks are going to be what will cripple countries so pokemon go most likely if you follow the trail is used as a massive data mining service to enable

cyber attacks on whatever fucking country the us wants to fuck up you know now i'm not one for when you see protests all right there's this party that wants to go, ah, that's the fucking CIA meddling in it. I'm cautious of that because what it does is, that's a colonial viewpoint. It removes the concept of agency from the people in that country. A more realistic approach is that when protests happen in the countries that are US rivals, yes, it is the people using their agency and their anger to form the protests. But there's often CIA cunts stuck into it enabling it and stirring shit up. Maybe.

Right. Now I have no evidence this is a fucking boiling hot take. Maybe. The protests that are happening right now in Hong Kong. Which are coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the Chinese communist state maybe those fucking protests

are being enabled by data that was mined by Pokemon Go in 2016 it's not crazy to say it, it's possible another thing the CIA are hugely interested in is there's a there's a Philip K Dick book called Johnny Mnemonic Johnny Mnemonic Johnny Mnemonic it was

made into a film now I don't know is the Dick book called Johnny Mnemonic or is that the name of the film but basically what it is is it's it's a it's a science fiction about a future society uh where crimes don't happen because a kind of spiritual technology exists whereby the police can stop a crime before it happens because they already know well the cia have been attempting to develop this since 2004 they have a In-Q-Tel funded a company called Palantir alongside the lad who founded PayPal Peter Thiel so Peter Thiel and In-Q-Tel have this thing Palantir that's been going since 2004 and it was initially used to predict

roadside bombs in Iraq before they happen so this company is firing away using like here's the thing with like

you know why does anyone want the data of your movements like advertising so you move around all day with your smartphone right your smartphone knows when you go to work it knows when you're likely to go to the shop it knows when you go to the gym we're creatures of pattern whether we know it or not so your smartphone like advertisers know when you're going to be near argos next

wednesday and they buy that data to pitch some argos shit when they they think you're going to be when you're in the city center on thursdays because that's when you fucking meet your ma or some shit like that your phone knows and it sells it to advertisers and your advertisers can predict where and when you're going to be and they sell shit to you based along that but there's nothing stopping In-Q-Tel buying that data too and using it to predict things like that

mainly for stopping terrorism and shit like that but again like I said in China they're using this to control the population so is it just the CIA that are doing this shit? No, it is not. A most obvious example.

So, in China, there's not really such a thing as a private company in China, okay? It doesn't really exist. there's not really such thing as a private company in China it doesn't really exist every company they're kind of owned by the state and if they're not let's just say by the rationale of any company operating in China the Chinese state has full access

to any data that that company mines this is why for the past year huawei phones have been so controversial this is why if you work for the u.s government you're not allowed to have a huawei phone this is why huawei was they kicked them off the google app store or something like that i believe basically to de-incentivize anyone buying a Huawei phone, because the theory goes that Huawei, it's collecting all the fucking data, if you've got a Huawei phone, they're brilliant phones, they're cheaper than iPhones, a lot of people have them if they're on a budget and they want a cheaper

phone, so they were going fuck that you're not on the Google store anymore so you can't get apps for it but yeah apparently it's collecting every single element of your data the Chinese government has access to it, how does that become convenient?

because it allows the Chinese government to perform vicious and effective cyber attacks on populations. So aside from Huawei handsets. Possibly the biggest app right now with teenagers. By fucking far. Is TikTok.

Right? TikTok is fucking huge. TikTok is like Vine. But with music, it's for teenagers, you wouldn't really find adults using it, it's mainly for teenagers, but amongst teenagers, it's the biggest fucking app, right, and people don't really know it, TikTok is Chinese, it's a Chinese company, owns TikTok like TikTok is so big that it has a huge effect on like

the music charts like so because TikTok you record a short video of yourself and there's music alongside it that you pick like do you know that song Old Town Road like the biggest song of 2019 by far.

Like, that was just a song on fucking YouTube that a lad uploaded. And because a few people started a meme on TikTok with it, it went straight to the fucking charts. Like, if you want to see the impact of TikTok, when you go on Spotify, there's two charts that you can look up on Spotify music charts. There's the official charts, which is like the billboard charts for each country. And then there's the charts that you can look up on Spotify music charts there's the official charts which is like the billboard charts for each country and then there's the viral charts and when you go to the viral charts when you go around the top you'll hear songs in the viral charts that are nowhere near the billboard it's it's a complete different charts but the billboard charts is about streams

and sales but the viral charts are about plays and often it comes from TikTok so you end up with these really obscure songs being the most popular song in the world because of TikTok so anyway yeah TikTok is owned by a Chinese company so you can then

assume that they're sharing all their data with fucking the Chinese government prior to 2019 the what TikTok asked of our data was pretty intrusive and then you go

sure what's the point I mean it's like having a network of spies in a country there's two things like I said vicious cyber attacks that the chinese can i mean the chinese aren't they're against the eu as well you know someone took down the nhs three years ago with a cyber attack could have been north korea we're not sure could have been mi5 testing their own fucking they did it through what's known as the internet of things they managed

to hack like light bulbs and fridges that are internet connected but the main fear with tiktok is like election interference you know it's harvesting all this data and behavior the average tiktok user might be 15 but in four years time they're gonna are in three years time they're going to or in 3 years time they're going to be 18 they're going to be eligible to vote and if you look at what happened with Cambridge Analytica

where Cambridge Analytica accessed hugely intimate data and used it as a way to rile people's political beliefs by feeding them you know it's all about

what turns up in your news feed they can target who needs to hear some racist shit right now who needs in their Facebook feed and their adverts or on their Google search a racist article

or an anti-immigration article or an article that's very pro-right wing do you know this is what this is what this sensitive data can do this is how you can fuck with democracies the Chinese government can fuck with western democracies

using the data that is being mined through teenagers dancing with TikTok that this is the world we're living in this isn't bullshit this isn't a that thought this is the world we're living in this isn't bullshit this isn't a conspiracy theory this is the world we're living in if the CIA are doing it openly you can bet the fucking Chinese are

doing it remember that app there last year sorry a month ago went hugely popular face app where literally everybody took a photograph of their face and then uploaded. The software took your face and showed you what you'd look like in 40 years as an old person or as a young person. Or it switched your gender.

And it became a viral meme online for everyone to take a photograph of their face and to change their age face app run by the russians the russians you trace that back to a russian company so there's no fucking hard evidence but it's highly likely that face back or face app or they've been accused of at least of sharing their data with the Russian government so now the Russian government has the facial data and analytics of a huge percentage of the population in western countries now are failing that at the very least the ability to mine sensitive information from the phones via wifi networks or from your own phone

for the purposes of either cyber attacks or just simply data gathering information so that they can swing and influence elections so that's the I know it's a lot to swallow and it doesn't sound real and it sounds tinfoil hat

but this isn't it's not, and it sounds tinfoil hat right but this isn't it's not it's not tinfoil hat it's this is what's happening we don't this is what our data is like I said you use your phone and it's like

if it was the 1950s it's like you've decided to live in an experimental house where a team of 20 scientists measure and monitor everything about you. Your physical behaviour, your psychological behaviour and now your biometric data. And they're analysing all of it and creating a complete and utter record of you to know everything about you and to predict what you may do and this is all of us that have this

living in the one society with everything mapped and these are the things that are it's a battlefield that we don't see this is the global battlefield today no one no superpowers aren't firing fucking missiles

at each other, they're gathering as much information as humanly possible on other populations in order to perform non-linear warfare, which in the event of an actual war

like again I'm just being fucking hypothetical what would a war between China and the US look like in 2025 I'm not going to say it's going to happen I'm not trying to freak anyone out I'm being purely hypothetical here I'm just trying to lay out the infrastructure

it wouldn't be I'm being purely hypothetically here. I'm just trying to lay out the infrastructure. It wouldn't be a war of guns and bombs. It would initially begin with either an aggressive attempt first to destable democracy through the exploitation of data, stable democracy through the exploitation of data, which as I've mentioned, the Hong Kong protests, maybe, you know, kind of CIA backed, possibly, I've no evidence, just seems a bit fishy, 70th anniversary, all that crack, you know, I don't want to remove agency from the people of Hong Kong the toppling of a government toppling of democracy through the exploitation of data then step two would be large scale cyber attacks which would destroy

the health system the banking system cause a financial crash create a society that is in turmoil and then only after those steps would it kind of progress to

physical warfare when the infrastructure is when the digital and commercial infrastructure has been ripped apart through the use of data. So there you go anyway lads fucking hell it's four in the morning

here when I'm recording this because that's how hot that take was started off making the case for Irish musicians and ended up in I don't know

a fucking laying out the groundwork for our current dystopia and what's going on it's harvesting listening to this podcast you're giving your dad away listen to this

sure listen about two months ago I was approached by a company based in Canada and they just said to me blind boy we would be we'd be willing to pay you money we'll pay you per podcast it was decent enough money for us to have access to for us to have the your consent to digitally analyze and collect the data of your voice on all your podcasts so a canadian company wanted to buy like a load of my podcast so they could run the podcast through analytical software

and use high-tech data gathering software to completely analyze my voice and what i'd be selling them basically for the price was for them to be able to keep that data and do with it as they please as such i'm guessing i turned it down completely turned it down because you know on the surface it's like why did they want it they probably want to sell it to you know voice activation technology is becoming a thing like my ma at the moment now she's after getting one of these google things that you shout into and it makes life easier for her so she can ask it to change the channel or put on a youtube video but i can't really understand her fucking old woman irish accent so most likely what this company would have done with the data is sell it to google or facebook

so that a piece of software could learn a regional southern irish accent in order to help us in southern ireland to use our voice activated technology better or maybe in two years time when you know everything around the house is going to be voice activated once 5g kicks in your lights your fucking fridge the whole shebang once 5g is here going to be voice activated. Once 5G kicks in, your lights, your fucking fridge, the whole shebang. Once 5G is here, everything will be voice activated. So maybe they were rolling out ahead of that and wanted to learn my accent. But I said no because, you know, what if they said, what if it's the guards by the data

and now they're identifying people over the phone via... Identifying limerick people over the phone or whatever. It's like... When you consent to giving your data away, you don't really consent to what happens with that data. And it can be used for something simple like advertising or improving our lives. Or it can be used for something simple like advertising or improving our lives or it can be used for control and tyranny so I said no to that one alright yart

I'll see you next week I may be next week's podcast might be an outdoor ASMR one and I'll have it as a surprise I'll say nothing yart Heaven is a surprise, I'll say nothing. Yacht. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. © transcript Emily Beynon rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now

to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.