The Daily Zeitgeist - The Trendy Complexifier 10/29: Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump,  The Dress, The Vatican, Subway

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

In this edition of The Trendy Complexifier, Jack and Miles discuss Jeff Bezos' "complexified" explanation for killing the Washington Post's Harris endorsement, Trump already falsely claiming election fraud (meanwhile, Trump supporters are setting fire to ballot boxes), the return of the viral dress whose color no one can agree on, the Vatican's new anime inspired mascot, Subway getting sued for skimping on meat and much more!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello the Internet and welcome to this episode of the trendy complexifier which is complexify the term that Jeff Bezos came up with because he Telling the truth you can tell he's telling the truth because you're making up smart sounding words that Don't actually mean anything. Yeah, my name is Jack O'Brien that don't actually mean anything. Yeah. My name's Jack O'Brien.

Have we met? And that over there, that is Myles Gray. Oh, you're Jack. I'm Jack O'Brien. This makes a lot of sense, man. I'm Jack O'Brien? Yeah. How you doing, Myles?

Good to be on top. Timely Anchorman reference. Yeah, always. Do you say, good to be on top? Yeah, good to be on top man, LA. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought you're referencing the zoom window, the stacked video.

I am not on top actually, you're always on top of me. Wow, well good. But yeah, Dodgers baby, look, it could be a wonderful night except for the local dogs of Los Angeles when there would inevitably be a homebrew pyrotechnic shows going off if the Dodgers end up winning tonight. Homebrew. Yeah. It is fun. It's a good time. Little pops. We needed it. We needed it. We needed it in LA.

We needed this. If we win. If we win. We haven't had anything to celebrate in a long time. I do just want to give the context of Jeff Bezos. So Jeff Bezos told the Washington Post, we're not endorsing a candidate. You guys are going to fucking burn me, is what I suspect it went like when he told them the decision. This is also being linked to the LA Times decision to not endorse a candidate, but that one is actually at least the daughter of one of the owners is saying that that one is in relation to the Democratic Party's complicity and the genocide in Gaza. So that feels a little different. That's what wait, that's the explanation for why times that's the explanation for the LA Times given by the daughter of the owner.

Yeah, it's kind of a weird. So then oh, so he was saying, I can't stand idly by while you endorse this candidate. That's what I mean. Alec Eric, it's anus was like that. Don't treat these two things as the same thing. Former guest Alec Eric, it's anis was like the LA Times making that stance versus Jeff Bezos making this stance with the Washington Post. He was saying he believes those to be two different things.

I haven't dug into the reality behind the LA Times one. Right. Interesting. We didn't really need to dig too deep for the reality behind the Washington Post one because Jeff Bezos came out and was like, guys, let me explain what's going on here. And the part that contains the word, uh, complexifier is I once wrote that the post is a quote complexifier for me. It is, but it turns out I'm also a complexifier for the post. That is two sentences that are in his op-ed explaining why they didn't do an

endorsement. He says they didn't do an endorsement because the media is very unpopular and he just thinks that it's time. The reason they're unpopular is because they're so partisan and they just need to be more both sides about the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Great, great. The entire op-ed written by Jeff Bezos stinks like shit. I would say it stinks like both shit and bullshit.

All the types of shit. It's a, it's an amazing potpourri of all the shit. So he like, it's definitely because he wants to kiss the ass of the eventual emperor God in case he wins. And his assumption that he's saying is they don't trust the media because they endorse presidential candidates. And definitely can't be that people don't trust the media because they're owned by the richest man in the world and have been shown to be biased by his whims or because they will, you know, refuse to honestly report on a genocide as it's happening. And definitely not because

there's a fascist who is out there. Yeah, I don't know. So he's claiming it's because they picked a side in the presidential election, and only presidential elections, by the way, because the post has endorsed other candidates in other races this year. Right. So it's only the presidential election, which that's the detail that kind of puts the lie to the whole thing because obviously small local races don't matter to him as the second richest person on the planet. That's not going to affect what he's able to do. The one that's going to affect him is being on the bad side of Trump when Trump becomes

America's first dictator, like first full blown open dictator. But I just, this also reminded me of one of the anecdotes from the Susan B. Glasser article about Trump's billionaire donors. And it's about how like this person basically got access to Trump and lied to him about how Amazon operates with the US Postal Service and was able to use Trump's hatred of Bezos because Bezos owns the Washington Post to set worse terms, trick Trump into thinking that they were giving too sweet a deal to Trump. Like the article says, "'Trump's staff tried to figure out

"'what Pelts's interest was in the matter,' "'Pelts is the billionaire. "'Turned out that Tryon Fund management, "'Pelts's asset management firm, "'had recently taken a $3.5 billion stake "'in Procter & Gamble, the consumer products giant. "'Pelts, an activist investor who buys his way "'into corporate leadership roles,

"'often by prompting proxy fights, "'consider considered Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods a threat to his business. On December 29th, 2017, as a result of him telling Trump all these untrue things about how good Amazon had it with regards to how the post office treats him, Trump tweeted, why is the United States post office, which is losing many billions of dollars a year while charging Amazon and others so little to deliver their packages, making Amazon richer and the post office dumber and poorer should be charging much more. So it's just like these billionaires can just lie to Trump, get a better deal from him. And so this is what they're all going to do. They're all going to kiss his ass like billionaires are going to line up and kiss the ass of Donald Trump We're not going to have the same thing where like corporations are like now more than ever

We're gonna stand with the American people now more than ever you can get fucked because you can get we're protecting we are on his side Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, we're already a corporatocracy and all of the corporations are going to fall into line with Trump once he starts ruling any publicly traded company. That's for sure. I could see maybe private companies having a bit more of a spine, but anything that's traded on Wall Street, there's no that's just going to be to like, you're going to make the line go down.

So look for us on patreon in the future uh trump is already claiming fraud in the election it's not like we had any question whether he was going to pull this shit it was obviously just a matter of when and the answer is exactly a week before the election. Yeah, good timing. These are timed truths that he truthed on his social, I believe, probably, but I wrote them weeks ago. He truthed that they received thousands of potentially fraudulent voter registration forms and mail-in ballot applications from a third party group.

And this is on top of Lancaster County being caught with 2,600 fake ballots and forms. Look, fuck all this noise because there's real news about actual ballot boxes being destroyed by arsonists. Yeah, being lit on fire. And it's happening in places where they're like, there's a bunch of Harris votes in there, fucking light it up. That's maybe, well, I mean, obviously he's not going to pay attention to that because he's, you know, been for the last four years slowly motivating people to

do more and more extreme shit like this. So, yeah. Yeah. But he's got to start the argument early that like they're the ones getting fucked over because it does feel like increasingly a part of their strategy is like violent intervention on behalf of him with regards to like either how voting takes place, like voter intimidation or how votes are counted and collected and, you know, poll worker intimidation. So it's just, I don't, it truly feels like there is a real possibility where something horrible happens. Like you mentioned, there's already like attacks on like people putting incendiary devices

in what person, I guess it's one person who did it in Portland and Vancouver, Washington. So it's going to be a real fucking mess out there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But in better news, the viral dress is bad. Oh, thank God. Thank God. This is Mark pivot. We had, this is just a, yeah, I just love that the dress has re-emerged on social media. Just when we needed it, miles again, is it black and blue or is it white and gold?

I never saw a white and gold dress I'm not saying I just and it always looked black I was able to eventually see a white and gold dress after like working really hard, but I don't with your therapist Yeah, it's been it's years You know what doc it is white and gold also So that was 2015 when our biggest concern was whether or not some strangers dress was black and blue or white and gold. And it's gone viral again because a woman found quote the dress at a yard sale

and shared her experience on Tik TOK. So, uh, she was interviewed by Newsweek and said, the dress was one of the first items I saw when I walked up to the yard sale. I immediately screamed, oh my goodness, you have the dress. The owners and the other neighbors had a nice laugh at my expressive reaction upon seeing it. I don't know why she speaks like a seventh graders book report,

but that's my expressive reaction upon seeing. After being inundated with comments, Rubenstein decided to settle the nearly decade old debate once and for all and showed people that the dress is actually black and blue, which we fucking knew. Oh my goodness, you have the dress? It's her reaction seems to assume that there first of all, that there is only one of the dresses and second of all that it has magical properties. Which I, right. It's like, sorry, I hate to do this to y'all, but here we, this is unadulterated.

There it is. Black and blue. Sorry. So anyway, shout out to her. I want to live inside her brain for the next three weeks. Maybe. It feels like a nice place. Now enjoy it now. Enjoy it now. Enjoy it now.

Because if you fast forward, there's reality on that side. Right now, this is that liminal space where we just are like, yeah, never be like this again. This is the last Tuesday before whatever happens. You just give me the lecture from the end of click. No, is that what happens in it? Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.

And you're back. Oh, you do a click. Would you have, we talked about this. Would you fast forward to the next? I think I mentioned it a couple of weeks ago and you said, oh, you want to do a click. And I was like, yeah, I haven't seen those lesser Sandler films. I haven't seen it, but I'm aware of the premise. Oh, it's like a time traveling remote.

It's a remote control for you can fast forward, slow mo. What if it's stop? So if you stop, everybody does. No, I don't know. Fuck you. But no, that't know. Oh, fuck yeah. I mean, no, that's bad. But he keeps fast-forwarding too much. Oh, and he must stop.

Then he's like misses his old life. And it's really a commentary on how we use our phones many years before. Just don't, yeah, don't abuse benzodiazepines. And you will also cease time traveling. Got to wake up to take more Benzo. You got to wake up from my Benzo haze to take more Benzo. That way I can fast forward another week. But yes, miles big news out of the Vatican. Thank you. The first White House, the president of the world, the pope.

So this is kind of the theological equivalent of the meme of Steve Buscemi holding a skateboard. Is that also a Sandler movie? No, that's 30 Rock. That's right. No. Yeah. The Vatican has announced a new anime inspired mascot named Luce L.U.C.E., which will which feels like they're halfway to Lucifer, but it will help them, them quote engage with the pop culture so beloved by our young people

and so What now they? Rather than being more open-minded. Um, there's been like what if we had a doll that's homophobic If we had a doll that's homophobic, and that'll bring the kids in. They're just like little anime characters with crucifixes. This looks like some chat GPT bullshit. Like this is so uninteresting looking.

Yeah, it sucks. But cool. And they have a like little flying angel baby thing, but the little flying angel baby thing has a baseball hat. Do they have, do they have names like, or what are the other ones called? There's like loose and then like if for, and yeah, the morning star. This is not the first time the Catholic church has awkwardly tried to appeal to nerds, um, lest we forget the time they worked with Marvel to create a comic about

Pope John Paul II. I don't know if we all remember that, but that was big news in my Catholic household. Oh, I have the life of Pope John Paul I, issue one. Oh, that's huge. It's going for under retail right now. It was just about his life, but like the cover really makes him look, they make him look very handsome. It looks like George W. Bush playing the pope for Halloween, but that's what I hate.

That's right. Yeah. He's kind of giving too much sexual charisma for a pope, I think, in this, the way they've drawn him. Well, for how sexually repressed the people and the people of cloth are, I can imagine it just, it just like, It's just vibrating. Freaky energy around them. Yeah. Yeah. Brian, the editor points out, Lucifer means light bringer.

So probably named after Lucifer and the Catholic church, you know, they probably get that kids like to be a little edgy, you know? Oh, Lucifer, Her neck feels broken. Oh God. All right. Terrible Sopranos reference. Um, yes.

And then this is big news for our podcast. Uh, so we talk about subway every once in a while. Um, but this is serious. Subway is being sued for skipping on the meats. Skipping on the meats. Mm-mm. Da da da da da da da da. Skipping on the meats. Class auction lawsuit for quote grossly misleading customers with ads that depict far more meat

in their sandwiches than what you actually get. And that's true because I mean, they also looked better when the you gouge, but that's a whole that's a whole old-school subway head take but yeah it's the last time I went out you gouge yeah I remember the you guys that was when they really slopped it on there man oh yeah they really slopped that turtle meat or tuna or whatever it is who cares yeah people online keep posting videos and they are talking about subway sandwich shrinkage. Wow. It's not shrinkage because the sandwich isn't a shrinkage.

It could be like shrinkflation, but shrinkage is meant to refer to George Costanza's dick. Yeah, yeah, obviously. That's just a big misstep. Big misstep. But it's, yeah, I mean, it's pretty hard to argue against this. Like when you see that, like the Today show covered it and it just went from commercial to like somebody showing what they were just given. Yeah, here, it is a good clip because I mean, I think it's just a like a trope in our culture

is like what I ordered versus what I got kind of shit. But like, my wife is always doing Instagram posts about that with regards to me. Me. I don't know. Is that I think it's cute, but I haven't watched them all the way through. Oh, my God. You are not working that jacket like the guy in the ad was. Jack, just give it back. But yeah, here's here's a here's a bit of sandwich skimping audio. I did what?

And the suit says other subway customers have noticed. Oh, yo! Okay, I thought the shit was bad at my local. People are just showing pictures of their sandwich and it is just, it looks. Sliced red. It looks like the subway bread, like the subway roll that has been stepped on.

Yeah. Yeah. Like fully, like to the point where I don't even know if this is just a loose roll that they didn't even put Anything into because I don't even see any gaps for toppings or fillings in there. So yeah, okay Yeah, dark day. Damn subway a to subway That's fucked up sides of November dude. Yeah, it's it's yeah again like they First they do the turtle meat and I am on board But then they do some shit like this, you know, yeah, it's all fucked up now to quote a great philosopher Yeah, I hope it's sorted out. Yeah anyways That is going to do it

for this Tuesday, October 29th. We are back tomorrow with a whole last episode of the show until then be kind to each other. Be kind to yourselves. Yes. Get the vaccine, get your flu shot. Don't do nothing about white supremacy and we will talk to y'all tomorrow. Bye. Bye. Go Dodgers. I'm Julian Edelman. I'm Rob Gronkowski. And we are super excited to tell you about our new show, Dudes on Dudes. We're spilling all the behind-the-scenes stories,

crazy details, and honestly, just having a blast talking football. Every week, we're discussing our favorite players of all times, from legends to our buddies to current stars. We're finally answering the age-old question, what kind of dudes are these dudes? We're gonna find out, Jules! New episodes drop every Thursday during the NFL season listen to dudes on dudes on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast