The Daily Zeitgeist - ATT Service Trendtage 2/22: ATT, Biden Impeachment, Best Casting Oscar, Dunkin Donuts, IRS, Starbucks Pork Latte

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

In this edition of ATT Service Trendtage, Jack and Miles discuss the ATT service outage, Biden's impeachment inquiry collapsing, the new "Best Casting" category at the 2025 Oscars, Dunkin Donuts' caffeinated energy drinks, the IRS reporting that *gasp* rich people don't pay enough taxes, Starbucks' new pork flavored latte (a Chinese exclusive) and much more!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me for I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese.

Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have

changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Hey, I'm Gianna Pardenti

and I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation,

then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, the internet and welcome to this episode of AT&T Service Trendage.

Outage? Trendage? They sound the same. That is courtesy of Manish on the Discord. Manish. My name is Jack. That is courtesy of Manish. Manish. On the Discord. Manish. My name is Jack. That is Miles.

Yep. We are recording this on a wax cylinder. Yeah. Because. Consider yourself lucky. We've been solar flared. We've been hacked back to the Stone Age. If only.

If only. Nah. So, there's been. We to the stone age. Um, if only, if only, nah. So there, there has been, uh, we woke up this morning to news of a major cellular outage. Uh, that was really screwing over tens of thousands of AT&T customers.

Um, or as AT&T put it, some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. it's an experience like, you know, Jimi Hendrix, just a thing that they're going through. I'm just thinking of, have you ever been experienced? That tripped me out when I realized that was a sample used in passing me by, by the far side.

There's a lot of, yeah. You know, I was looking at a reverse guitar thing. Do you know the song Tramp by, uh, I looked's a lot of, yeah. You know, I was looking at, I'm talking about like reverse guitar thing. Do you know the song Tramp by, I looked at, ah, nevermind. I'm not gonna sidebar on this, but. Yeah, I don't know. Some iPhones entered SOS mode, which sounds scary,

but it just means that you should be able to contact emergency services despite the network going down. Right. But they gotta come up with like a better title for that option because when you look down your phones in sos um yeah i mean people people were temporarily unable to contact 9-1-1 jesus and yeah so there's immediate speculation it was a solar flare it happened to coincide uh With a pretty major solar

Flare but the outage Mainly in the US and the solar Flare was like Our asses yeah The US was on the dark Side of the earth at that point So it wouldn't wouldn't have made Sense sorry Brian the editor

No Carrington event for you Like you've been begging for, not this time. Yeah, I couldn't wait. I was like, oh, Brian, the editor is gonna tell me that this was all like explain all the solar flare-age. Right, right. Unfortunately, him knowing about solar flares makes it so he knows when it's not a solar flare.

And so. Well, yeah, our confirmation bar is like, solar flare? He's like, I hate to say it, folks, but not this time. The Drudge Report is still, at this point, has huge headlines in all red. Cell outage hits AT&T nationwide. Verizon T-Mobile affected. I don't think that's true.

9-1-1 crashes. Apparently, they said it was so verizon t-mobile were showing down like the some of their members were down because they were trying to contact at&t is the official so they're like they're calling the at&t homie and they're like my shit's fucked up too yeah yeah wow um but then next headline, world is ending. Then solar flare question mark, then map. And all three of the last headlines, when you click through it,

it goes to like a website that's down. So it's like really makes you think, oh man, it's something leave the world behind is actually happening. Yeah. Oh, well, I mean,

hopefully we don't have to man i'm just scared of like what would happen if shit like that truly went down and then like the electronics are useless like at the end of uh escape from la yeah snake bliskin turns off the world yeah like the more i read into it i was like so what's the there's got to be one big explanation right and it seems like it's just people being like no there's thousands of interconnected jobs and processes that need to work for any of this shit to work and like right uh people are speculating that like it might have been cisco uh like a company that forms the backbone of the network um so i i don't know we don't know quite whatever that's below our pay grade exactly you know you guys figure it out but you guys i'm

paying you i'm paying y'all so tell me what the fuck is up but yeah that's uh freaky and again that's why you just bring the pay phones back bring them back that's right all right biden impeachment um this must be trending because they finally got his ass right okay we've been talking about i mean we talk about it every now and then because obviously we're like it's bullshit because every time they mentioned something they kicked it off being like well we need an impeachment inquiry to find wrongdoing it's like no you got to have evidence to then justify an impeachment inquiry. And the whole time they're like, oh, we got these star witnesses.

Everybody kept fucking disappearing. That whistleblowers, whatever is all bullshit. So now Jim Jordan and James Comer, who are the two main characters here who are rah-rah-ing this whole thing, they're looking even worse than they normally do somehow. Now that the impeachment probe has well and truly just collapsed um their star witness who they're like wait to hear what this guy has to say is um how do you say fucking liar and was working with russian intelligence so basically what happened was an informant quote who claimed biden had pocketed millions of dollars from a ukrainian oligarch was indicted by the department of justice for lying to the FBI.

Since then, Smirnov, who is the person in question, has reportedly admitted to law enforcement that top Russian intelligence officials were involved in the smear campaign against the sitting president. And now Comer and Jordan are like trying to do damage control. There's like Republicans even now are like, these guys are fucking, oh, fuck. We knew from the, a lot of Republicans saying, we knew from the beginning there was issues with this but they

decided to go through with it anyway so i don't know just a normal one the most buttoned up scientific process for conducting this investigation no no and now i'm sure we're going to see a series of jim jordan freak out videos when people ask him and he's like wait it doesn't matter you know the fact remains he's a he's a terrible president so yeah uh you you know yeah you missed you missed on that one but hey keep keep trying something might come up um and we we missed this a couple weeks back, but wanted to bring up that they're going to be adding a new category to the Academy Awards next year for best casting. No. I like to talk shit about the Academy Awards, which categories they should be adding, and how they should be giving the award five years for the movies that came out five years ago, for instance.

giving the award five years for for the movies that came out five years ago for instance um best casting is something that has come up before as a thing that we thought would be interesting yeah wow shouts to anna hosnier super producer always talking about prestige cast prestige casting now here we are we have a way to make a statue out of it that's right this is an interesting one because like it's kind of hard to define. So the BAFTAs have had it for a few years now, and they've given it to Joker, Elvis, West Side Story. This year was The Holdovers, which don't seem to... Elvis? Elvis?

Did you see it, Tom Hanks? I mean, I guess if you get a good performance by somebody who can like fit into an iconic role like maybe that's what they think with Elvis but yeah the Tom Hanks one was kind of a casting miss I would say yeah

that movie's confounding I mean they love a bit of Baz Luhrmann don't they over there? yeah no it looks pretty cool wait so baft oh so we're just copying the baftas yeah i mean this has been something that people have been trying like casting directors and like the casting associations in hollywood have been trying to make happen for a while and i think one of the people in the academy like in a leadership position in the academy is a

casting director now so they made that probably more likely to happen but I don't know like the I think I can think of examples of like greatest casting of all time right like I feel like Pulp Fiction

is up there with like greatest casting of all time. Jackie Brown. These are all Tarantino movies. The Godfather. The Godfather is just like, in retrospect, it's like, oh yeah, they just like put the most famous actors in all the lead roles, of course. Right.

I mean, they weren't the most famous actors at the time in every case. Right. they weren't the most famous actors at the time in every case. And, um, yeah, but I'm trying to figure out like how you give this award that makes me appreciate casting. Like,

do you like my pitch? The dream scenario would be that you show recreations of the scenes with other actors in the roles to show like how badly they would have worked if they had cast somebody else right like um selick playing indiana jones for a scene like this is who we almost cast and that would have sucked so yeah you're welcome or just seeing like will smith in the matrix yeah what would that have been like i'm like i don yeah, you kind of, Keanu just, yeah, you're fucking up with like the, the arc of history, I think by. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think it would be interesting to see what that looked like, but it was just like bum you out. And then you'd be like, oh yeah. Yeah. Just give them the award. I don't want to see Tom Selleck in this fucking role at all. It's just always Tom Selleck. It's like back to the future with Tom Selleck as Doc Brown. Right. Brian, the editor, Eric St it's like back to the future with tom selick as doc brown

for right now brian the editor eric stolz and back to the future that matt yeah what that would have been fucking wild they i mean there is footage they shot for days with eric stolz in the marty mcfly role and yeah they obviously couldn't do that because it would be mean to the people who who were ill cast for the role but right and then what then you put fucking uh michael j fox in pulp fiction yeah and although he would have been pretty good as lance that would have been kind of fun no you don't think i've just seen trudy the one with his shit who's trudy the one with all the shit in her face no that's jen that's my wife my wife yeah seeing michael j fox do that line would be

fucking weird yeah i don't know who else was that oh i mean uh jean-claude van damme is the predator near miss yeah well i mean he was just in the suit but still either way but it'd be weird it would have um all right let's take a quick break so that's coming up in 2025 uh not this year's okay hold on to your butts hold on to your hold on to your butts folks get ready to appreciate some casting um let's take a quick break and we will be right back. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films

and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high-control groups and interview dancers, church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine. Through powerful, in-depth interviews

with former members and new, chilling firsthand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives. Forgive Me For I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these types of abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions. Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? of questions like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week we answer your unfiltered work questions.

Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Santer. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports, where we live at the intersection of sports and culture. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Every great player needs a foil. The making of a rivalry, Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Every great player needs a foil.

I ain't really near them boys. I just come here to play basketball every single day, and that's what I focus on. From college to the pros, Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Angel Reese is a joy to watch. She is unapologetically black. I love her. What exactly ignited this fire? Why has it been so good for the game?

And can the fanfare surrounding these two supernovas be sustained? This game is only going to get better because the talent is getting better. This new season will cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke. And we're back. We're back. And just in the increasing, get rid of the brakes to cut down on all the weight you know what we don't need we don't need brakes on these indie cars because they add weight and we don't care if the driver

slow the car down yeah that's and what the fuck is the point of it keeping with that approach to capitalism duncan is now selling caffeinated energy drinks like even so this suggests to me that they saw what panera was doing they saw they were like look at that fucking publicity yeah that they're getting from these lemonades that make people's chest explode um so i don't i don't know how high the caffeine content is. It's 192. Okay. The Paneras were 234 milligrams in the Panera Heart Exploder Lemonade. And this one is now 192 for, I guess, a similar serving size. Noting that, I guess, the daily, they say the best safe quantity of caffeine for, quote, healthy adults is around 400 milligrams a day about four or five cups of coffee a day yeah 400 in a sitting not good no not a good idea yeah no no no no no but i mean yeah i i want it's like one of those

things right because all these fast food places like you got to do your r&d so like you just you're like oh fuck they got their thing and like so this had to have been months in the making they're even like hey man their lemonade's kind of like causing some weird headlines they're probably like the market research shows people want they want to come in some people don't want cat fucking coffee with their caffeine give them peach flavored caffeine yeah and a donut so yeah it's. It's all just, I mean, again, the way we use caffeine in this country is just frightening. Just to be like, it's how we get through the

fucking hellscape, man. Yeah, I mean, now, like, just gambling is legal. They're just trying to strip mine us as a consumer population for everything. And'm not not necessarily against you know i'm not saying like we need to go back to making everything illegal like in the 1950s but it

is it's just revealing of like where where the corporation's head is at right now yeah uh what and what's the offer for prize picks right now they're uh i mean i like to use prize picks because they have insurance wait miles with prize picks it's not even a gamble because they offer insurance just wanted to point that out in case we wanted to cut that we bowed a gambler but yeah uh i i mean 192 seems manageable you know that doesn't i don't know i have no idea again i'm not caffeine sensitive but oh dude have you had vietnamese coffee yet yeah yeah i had it on mic with you yeah yeah oh okay okay okay okay okay it was uh it was a lot i couldn't i couldn't have too much. Yeah. I chose not to drink more than a third of it at once because I didn't want to

have my day changed. Right. You want to see your kids graduate and all that too. Yeah, exactly. And not in the life flashing before your eyes sequence. I feel like the... I don't know.

I actually don't know how many people on a day to day basis are served Panera versus Duncan donuts, but there's feel like Duncan, this is going to reach a lot more people. So it'd be interesting to see just how turned up the city of Boston can get. I feel like with Duncan, like, you know what you're going in there for panera it's like i think it's like one of those things too where i could see someone be like i'm here for like a bread bowl soup and a sang a sango yeah and then you're like whoa

charged lemonade i'll try that not knowing what the fuck is up and that they've been like we're trying to kill your ass with this thing um we're like dunking people like yo i'm here for the caffeine i know what my fucking limits are yeah that's true it's like more less of a change up less of yeah they're not trying to trick anybody yeah where's panera america runs on dunkin you know what i mean they know so you know what you're doing america runs on dunkin and it now sprints with a crazy look in its eyes. Its pants around its ankles. Hey, come back here! We just got a note from the IRS that the

ultra-rich are evading... This is just in for the IRS. They just reached out to me. We're in close contact with them. It was an interview with CNBC but they revealed that U.S. millionaires and billionaires are evading more than $150 billion a year in taxes. So according to IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel, the problem here is not that America's tax laws are blatantly rigged to protect the wealthy, but that the IRS doesn't have enough funding to tackle all these complicated and sophisticated returns i mean i think i think probably both of those things are true yeah yeah you know

but don't make it a money bag situation too i mean we get it because we've seen how you know that like this is such a weird uh like culture war point with like the right and democrats or they're like they're trying to fucking get into your they want to see the money you make to cancel you or whatever which is really just like protect our donors well yeah um yeah just i don't know why don't you just let like the cops handle it and then just brutalize billionaires and shit who are not paying their their fucking taxes scare them straight yeah no that would definitely happen um but it's just like the fact that like lack of funding at the irs for years has starved the agency of staff technology and resources needed to fund audits and like again like this this i guess is the episode where i'm just like the worst i'm like get rid of all this caffeine

and uh let the irs do more audits um because i'm sure the irs wouldn't focus on the people who donate to you know donate massive amounts of money to no politicians incentivize it like let the irs agents be like yo you get you get a cut of whatever taxes you actually bring in but like the usda fda all these parts of the government, these governmental organizations that are massively underfunded, so they can't get in the way of corporations maximizing profits. I feel like the IRS is probably victim to the same shit when it comes to their ability to actually tax billionaires. But this is... Tax taxes are the governmental like that's how they stay alive so the fact that they're not even able to operate independently from the wealthiest people

in the country like suggests that the system is really fucked that they're gonna let the wealthiest people in the country get away with whatever they want because this is like what the government is supposed to be good at is getting people to pay yeah just like like we've said other countries they know what you're making because the employers are paying they're kicking the taxes up so they have an idea of what's owed it's just like just i don't know again simplified taxes would be great but again our friends at intuit turbo tax uh have a like all those those tax preparation services have massive lobbying efforts to basically be like please keep this shit as complicated as possible or else people won't fucking come to us yeah that was my favorite thing about turbo tax though it's

like you know when you're doing your own taxes and shit, you could just like, you can just fuck with the numbers to kind of watch how much you get back or how much you owe. And you're like, huh, huh, huh. What if I like shift the scale a little bit to the left? Ooh, that's a higher number. Ooh, I'm gonna get more back than I made this year? Yeah, yeah, submit.

But yeah, of course, the people who do that and then can't afford a tax attorney are the ones who are getting audited and not the people who are going to tie the IRS up in court for the next three generations. All right. And finally, Starbucks is releasing a pork latte in China, like literally flavored with braised pork, drizzled with pork sauce, topped with, you guessed it, a piece of pork breast meat. What's pork breast meat? You don't think pork have breast? I know, but I mean, like, we're never like, yo, here's pork breast. You know what I mean? It's like a pork chop. It's a tenderloin. It's a pork butt. It's a pork shoulder.

It's a pork belly. Yeah. And now I'm like, wait, where's, are we missing out on a whole part of the pig? We're not eating. These porks, these porks don't miss chest day, you know? Okay. Yeah. Good to know.

Good to know. Um, but they, they noted eating meat means prosperity in the coming year. And they want to bring traditional New Year customs into coffee, which I guess that's true. That is a New Year's tradition in some parts of China. But from what I can tell, shoving hunks of salted meat into a cup of hot coffee is not a tradition well we're trying to combine these cultural traditions with hyper consumer culture and being like how about this i mean it's like it would be like telling like you know like black people you got to eat uh you know like a black black eyed peas new year's for good luck and they're like oh what about it yeah but now they're

being like oh you missed your black eyed peas right here get it in this shake or like in japan you're supposed to eat soba noodles before new year's day for good luck so then be like yo we got these blendest soba noodle fucking teas that you the water is hot you know we're almost halfway there well because the way you think of like even when i was in japan i was like shit we gotta get soba because like that's just what you do to make sure you you're right for the new year and like in a panic sometimes you'll just be like fuck it just get some at the store and then we'll make it up real quick so we can just get it done because that's just part of like the superstition or tradition or whatever so it feels like a way of just really weaponizing that ramming it in there

dude just yeah just get the pork latte dude get the pork yeah try it try it it tastes like shit but at least you're getting your pork in like i like i guess coffee has a could have like a more savory cultural context in china like there there were all those people those like wellness people drinking butter in their coffee bulletproof coffee so i don't know but it just seems there's something like specifically off about it that like makes it feel like the head of Starbucks. China was like a robot who didn't understand why two things people like don't necessarily go together. Right. People are eating this and drinking this.

Why not? You know, it's a latte. So we're to presume that there's espresso in there? I guess so, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's a coffee drink. It's a coffee beverage. Yeah, it says Dongpo braised pork flavor sauce with espresso and steamed milk. Yeah. I don't know, man.

Whatever. Just take that. Leave me alone. Just trying to get home. Just trying to get home, whatever. Just take that. Leave me alone. Just trying to get home. Just trying to get home, man. And now try our new conch fritter pina colada. It's just not a thing that should... Wow. Never thought about that. Anyways. Let's put that on the menu. Conch fritter pina colada. It's weird because I just had

conch fritters When I was in Florida And conch fritters can be Like sweet Like you might want A sweet sauce with that So that was a terrible example But I don't

I didn't have mine sweet You can have You have conch fritters sweet? You could have a sweet sauce Oh like to dip or whatever Yeah Right right right right right right Anyways

These are some of the things That were trending On this These are the issues We grapple with on the show These are the issues we grapple with on the show. These are the issues we grapple with. We do it so you don't have to. Exactly. We are back tomorrow with a whole ass episode of the show.

And until then, be kind to each other. Be kind to yourselves. Yes. Get the vaccine. Yes. Don't do nothing about white supremacy. No. And we will talk to you all tomorrow.

And have a pork pot. Bye-bye. Have a Coke man. Have a Coke man. I don't know what justbye. Have a coke butt. Have a coke butt. I don't know what you're saying. Have a Cobain. Have a coke butt. I'm Jess Casavetto,

executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me for I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church.

Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. have followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese,

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadson. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.

There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.