The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Nothing to Fear, Except...
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Welcome back to Matter Facts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network.
We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify.
Go check out our content at MWFpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram.
You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners.
I'm your host, Phil Ravillay, Andrew, Nick, are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show.
Welcome back to Matter of Facts podcast, but I'm not in my usual spot, and Nick's not here, and Andrew stood me up.
So I went back to my OG co-host, keep me honest.
That's me.
That was a pretty good intro.
You must be like some really nice girl that made that.
It looked really good.
I've given you and Stewart full credit for that, by the way.
I know.
I've watched.
I watched you give me credit.
She likes to get credit.
Definitely.
But anyway, so welcome back to Matter of facts.
I see Jim Rawls saying, good luck staying on YouTube, and boy, do we need it.
It seems like a lot of channels that are on YouTube's naughty list have been getting canned lately.
A lot of friends of mine.
Hmm.
I haven't heard.
Well, you don't run in a lot of the same circles I do.
But pretty much anybody who's into like, you know, firearms, freedom, the Constitution,
something stuff like that.
It seems to be getting their YouTube channels nuked.
So does that mean then raising values is on the chopping block?
Could possibly be on the chopping block?
I don't know.
It depends on how meta feels about families and,
and like dealing with trauma and positivity and, you know, those sorts of things.
Which could change depending on which blue-haired idiot is watching YouTube at that moment who decides to report us,
and which way the wind's blowing.
I find it funny how you still refer to people with blue hair as, you know,
something derogatory when your child had blue hair all summer.
Yes, but she's not a blue-haired idiot. She's a genius.
She's a blue-haired genius.
She's a blue-haired genius and not an idiot.
It's not an idiot.
Anyway, but I see Jim, I see Rachel, who is apparently not gone on vacation with her husband, and based on what he's been doing for the last couple of days, I totally understand why.
I see Raggle and Rachel again saying she was excited to see Gillian.
I'm excited to see you in the comments, but I love you, Rachel.
All right, admin work real quick, and then we'll get down to topic.
And if anybody wants to clue me in on, did I get the microphones just?
properly this time because this is only the
second maiden voyage
with these mics. They would have had
to have watched raising values
to know. Yeah?
To know. If the mics are better than
last time because the first time was on raising
values. I think we have a lot of the same group
honestly. Yeah.
Let's see one
comment. Yeah, because you could
barely, aw, she loves me too.
See,
we bring the calm
and the sweetness
to this podcast
and Rachel.
And Nick and I bring
the chaotic autism.
Kill, die.
One more comment.
Yes, the microphone sounds
really good.
Thank Jesus.
Okay, good.
Because, yeah, you could barely hear Phil
unless he had turned to me
and my mic was picking him up.
So we tried to fix that.
I'm only
semi-successful
with this whole
podcast-producing
audio engineering thing.
And also, of course, we're on the couch like we were for raising values, but it's so much easier than trying to squish ourselves behind the desk in the office and try to record, too.
Yeah, that really is kind of a one person.
So while it looks like we're about to open up a therapy session, we're not, well, I don't know the topic tonight.
Phil has this talking, oh, I will, I'll stop.
Admon work first.
It says, sorry, nothing to fear.
admin work first. I'm always texting
too, do your admin, do admin.
Yes. And then Nick is trying to
get me distract from doing the admin. So you have
held down co-host duties by distracting me.
Nick will be proud.
All right, if you'd like to promote bad decisions by becoming a patron,
that link is in the show description. The patrons,
I would like to say keep us honest, but they're probably
responsible for most of my bad ideas.
And if not the bad ideas, then they're definitely
encouraging the bad ideas.
the night vision
the shotgun
a couple of firearm purchases
excuse me
I don't know if you can pick that
I just burped
I don't know if the mic
picked up my little bird
we'll see how good the burp
we'll see how good the mics are
sorry guys I just we just ate dinner
and if you'd like to buy merch
from the Southern Gals for the Vibes
that link is awesome in the show description
it keeps a small family going
and hoeing in a small business
and it throws a couple of bucks into our tip jar
if you like to buy silly, irreverent, ridiculous shirts.
And lately, Raggle has been on a marathon
sending new ideas that
I'm not sure we'll make it past the sensors.
Oh, boy.
Yeah. They're funny, but it's like type two funny.
I haven't seen them.
That's because you're not in patron chat very often.
Oh, yeah, you have to at me in the patron chat
for me to actually look sometimes.
Most of the time.
99% of the time.
99% of the time.
And last but not least,
if you'd like to prevent war crimes
with disaster coffee, use code MOP.
I have disaster coffee in this cup
right here at the very bottom of the frame.
And I might be indulging at some point.
You should.
And y'all, forgive me.
I am using my wireless mouse
and my ad hoc mouse pad
so I don't have to lean forward
every five seconds to hit a button.
And our camera is here, but the computer is there.
So, we look, Phoebe said, my sister said last week or two weeks ago, I don't know,
that we looked distracted.
We're going to work that out.
This is just because it's me tonight, so.
I mean, this is a lot better than it being right here, and they're looking into my ear
the whole time.
Wait, what?
Kyle, this looks like an after school special, and y'all are disappointed.
in us?
Oh, he means like
we're on the couch talking to our child
that we're disappointed in?
Oh, okay.
No, not disappointed in y'all.
I think it's great that you're here.
I'm tired and exhausted, and I'm sure
my friend Rachel can attest to this,
but I don't know.
There's probably not a lot of men listening
that ever thought this,
but as a child, I always want to
to be a teacher. And I always thought, I want to teach kindergarten because kindergarten is going to be so
easy. It's just letters and shapes and colors and learning how to read and those kinds of things.
And vomit and snot and feces and urine and angry little goblins hitting each other the whole time and
throwing things and saying things to you that they shouldn't say in private. No, babe, I don't know what you
were thinking thinking teach a kindergarten was ever going to be fun at all. Now, I'm not a
kindergarten teacher, but on Thursdays I have kindergarten, like my, I have a rotation of classes
throughout the week and Thursday's kindergarten. Lord have mercy. So the way Nick tells me this,
he says there's two kinds of fun and Rachel can probably attest this. There's type one fun and type two
fun.
Okay.
So type 1 fun is fun while you're having it, and type 2 fun is not fun while you're having
it, but it's fun when you think about it later.
I argue that...
Neither of...
Teaching kindergarten is neither of those.
So I argue that there's a third kind of fun.
And that's when it's not fun while it's happening, it's not fun after it's happening,
but everybody else gets to have a good laugh at your expense.
Nobody was laughing.
Not if they know it's good for them.
I sent them back to their teacher and I said, good Lord.
you are more woman than I will ever be.
Or just shared sociopathing.
Maybe.
All right.
I'm tired.
No mini topic this time, just BSing to warm up.
And the topic today is nothing to fear except.
Now, the old adage is there's nothing to fear but fear itself.
And I would argue that there are definitely some things that merit being afraid of.
And like you and I were talking earlier in the week, like,
I wanted this episode to be the two of us talking about, like, what our concerns are that are 5, 10, 20, 30 years out in the future, things that we see on the horizon that either will happen or could happen.
And how we start to prepare for those things right now.
Because the one thing about matter of facts is like, I have always tried really hard to stay away from like doom and gloom, the sky is falling, chicken little, nothing you can do about it scenarios.
because I just, I don't like the idea of talking to people for an hour about how bad everything sucks and there's nothing you can do about it.
So I come on as a co-hosts fill in and that's where you go.
What?
Doom and gloom.
Nothing you can do about it.
Worst fears ever.
No, no, no.
What I'm saying is that I think it's reasonable and even rational to have fears, but I want to cap those fears off with some kind of positive action we could take to hedge against that fear.
Like, it's one thing to say, well, prices are going, you know, like the cost of gas is crazy right now.
It's like, okay, fair, but the problem without a solution is just a problem.
I like to give solutions for like, how can we sidestep that?
I hope to God, this cat doesn't knock my, doesn't knock my camera over.
She looks like she's trying.
Okay, she's about to lay down, take a nap.
Good girl.
But anyway, that's kind of where I was going to go.
and I have a couple of banners that I'm going to skew because I only have my banners and I don't want to.
Well, okay.
Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry.
We talked about this and he didn't tell me I needed banners.
He just said to think about your worst fears.
And my worst fears are losing Phil and Piper.
That's pretty much it.
So I went.
Nothing else worried.
I went to the.
But like crazy extreme of not, you know, not having my family.
But I was just thinking of something that kind of has me going, oh, like, I'm a little worried about this.
So I don't know where you want, if you want to start with yours and then we can work mine in or how do you want to do that.
I'm pretty easy going.
Like, I've got three that are queued up.
I don't know if it makes sense for us to bat it back and forth or if you want to do all mine than yours or by it.
Versa.
Yeah, let's just bat him back and forth.
So, well, there's two actually, but mine, my other one can come with one of yours when we go into the economy and poverty and stuff like that.
But one of my fears that just started is AI taking over and that the warnings have been coming out more and more.
So I teach AI to my kids at school, my middle schoolers.
I teach them how to use digital responsibility and what is AI?
How can you use it properly?
What should you use it for?
What is plagiarism?
All that stuff.
That's what I teach my kids at school.
And that's like right last week was that lesson was digital responsibility and AI.
And then you get all these now developers and these people who have worked with AI and
tried to and have developed where we are now with it.
And they're coming out scared to death about what's happening.
And I'm listening to this going, yeah, absolutely.
That's exactly what it's going to do.
And they're giving timelines of six months, a year, five years.
But the timeline is getting shorter and shorter.
And I don't know if you heard what AI did recently.
It's done a lot of things recently.
No, like what caused these people to come out and go on the news and say, this is a problem.
This is going to take out humanity.
Like, I know that's like a big, that's going to be their big, like, draw to watch the news and all that stuff, taking out humanity.
But the potential of it happening so soon is really crazy to me.
And it's scary.
It's really scary to me.
So what happened was Open AI ran this test, and I'm probably going to get some of this wrong,
but they ran this test with their AI program.
And they basically gave it a prompt to do something, to create, let's say, a research paper.
But that's not what it was, but to create a research paper.
And what AI does is it, you talk to chat, you talk to chat, GPT, and you tell it what you want.
you give it, you know, whatever you're looking for.
And then what it does is it sends out all these like micro workers to get the job done.
Well, they told chat, you cannot cheat, you cannot do anything illegal, you cannot do this and that,
while they're monitoring all these little programs running in the background, all these little
worker bees for chat.
And what they found was that these worker bees were literally talking to each other saying,
don't basically don't let chat know that we are cheating, present this as our own evidence or our
own whatever findings and things like that, the research that we're doing, don't show that we're
plagiarizing, don't show that we're doing this. And so they're literally working now to keep
secrets from the big guy, from the like brain chat, chat GPT. And so their fear is if it's doing that,
it's trying to keep a secret from the main database, then who's to say the next step isn't
to break into security clearance or break security clearances and get into bank accounts
and the whole nine yards and then just totally shut things down. It's like, what's that
movie with Will Smith? I robot? Yeah. That is like six months.
That's what they're saying in like six months, AI is going to learn enough to know how to do this.
And it's not going to be honest, quote unquote.
See, my concern about AI is a little different, not to discount what you're saying.
But like my worry is, I know that within my own organization, there's been an absolute metric ton of pressure to utilize AI, to give it problems, to figure out, you know, how to
implement it within our processes.
And my experience so far has been that it does a pretty half-ass job in a lot of, in a lot
of respects.
Now, what we're messing with right now is not really intelligent.
It's a large language model.
But we're being sold by the company, the corporations, and this is being parroted by very
high of people in my agency that, like, this is the thing that is going to modernize and revolutionizing.
revolutionizing, I'm just not seeing it.
I'm seeing a tool that still has to be babysat,
still has to have its work double-checked.
It's not capable of doing the thing.
We're being almost pushed to make it do.
And my concern is even well before the point of AI goes road,
it's that someone is going to trust AI with a tab.
that it is wholly incapable of doing,
and the consequences for that task blowing up
are going to be catastrophic downstream.
In other words, it's like,
what happens when some smart ally gets the bright idea
that, well, we don't need all these people
to monitor this nuclear power station.
We can just get AI to do it.
And that's a very extreme example,
but like, that is my concern.
The minute we start talking about things
that traditionally have been done by humans,
power plants, nuclear power plants,
hydroelectric, large utility projects,
things that require,
they require human touch and a bit of human intuition,
and they require constant oversight.
And the thing that I always point out to people is,
I'm like, the reason why AI can never make the final decisions
because AI can't be held accountable.
Like, I've had this argument with developers recently,
where I told them, like,
hey, the optical character recognition is doing this and this and this,
but that's not really a valid character for that field.
Like, why can't we tell the OCR,
or put some constraints around the OCR to tell it,
you can't have a slash in that field that has to be numeric.
And I was told with a straight face,
well, the OCR just kind of figures it out, it's a black box.
We don't know how it's coming to that conclusion.
And I was like, now this is like, well, but this is like scraping data.
So this isn't like catastrophic.
But it's still the idea that,
it's the idea that AI is being pushed
and facets of AI are being pushed into avenues
I don't believe they're ready to do
and I can't hold the AI accountable for a mistake
and it's really difficult to hold the developers responsible
because they're just going to point their finger at the AI
and say, well, it's a black box.
We don't know how it came to that conclusion.
And that's why human beings always have to be in the driver's seat
when we're talking about life or limb
because you can hold a person accountable.
You cannot hold a person accountable.
You cannot hold a computer program accountable.
And that is, that's not even a technology discussion.
That is a philosophy discussion.
But it's, it's a discussion that I don't see enough people in our world having right now.
It's, it is the Ian Malcolm and Jurassic Park from the early 90s of.
They were, you know, scientists were so concerned with how do we do the thing that they,
they never stopped a question if they should.
Yeah, that's true.
I haven't thought about the whole Jurassic Park thing.
But, like, I use AI daily.
Like, I even subscribe to OpenAI, ChatGPT.
Because I use it to, oh, man, I use it for pretty much everything.
Not, yeah, pretty much everything.
But you still have to double check its work.
Absolutely.
So I use ChatGPT to help me develop.
That's where I'm going to, like, draw,
from to do lesson planning, you know, make sure standards are being met because I have to, you know,
look at all sorts of things because I don't just teach one subject. I teach really four,
but you could really classify that into several others after that. But so I use chat GPT to do
things like that. Sometimes chat's really good at developing like informational flyers and
things like that that I give to parents or whatever.
I use chalky AI to create presentations for class, so I don't have to sit there on PowerPoint and make presentations.
I tell it what I want.
I, you know, can upload my lesson plan, pull these vocabulary words, create a presentation.
Our own intro, outro, all AI.
Majority AI.
No.
Where do you think the AI was in that?
Oh, well, you're the song.
The song, yes.
The song was AI for sure.
I thought you meant the stuff that I did.
I was like, absolutely not.
That was not AI.
I did that.
Anyway, so I use AI for a lot of stuff in my job and in my classroom.
And what I teach my kids, what I literally taught them last week was you have to double check.
You have to, just like any research you do on the internet,
when you get something, you know, a bit of information, you have to check that against two other sources just to make sure that your information is correct.
And, you know, we go through, well, what is a source? What is of this? How do I do that?
And you have to give AI credit. And that's the thing that kids like Piper's generation are, if they're allowed to even use AI for any sort of activity or assignment that they're,
they've been given, but you have to give AI credit.
And so all of my stuff has it on there because I'm just like, can't bladjure eyes.
But anyway, I use AI.
I subscribe to it.
You know, I do such menial stuff with AI.
And what these people are talking about is large-scale data.
Sorry, my heart is.
large-scale data, large-scale, like, interfacing and stuff like that.
And that is what scares me, is that it's like a parasite that has entered the inner webs
of everything.
And we're totally owned by technology these days.
Like, you can't get away from it.
I mean, here we are.
And it's like AI is most definitely monitoring what we're saying, watching, doing.
doing and it's going to do what it does.
And it's pulling just stuff from us recording.
That's why we don't have an Alexa in this house or a Roomba or a Google, whatever she's called.
We have smartphones.
Well, I know they do listen.
Been getting a lot of chicken hats.
If you don't think your smartphone is listening to you all the time, start talking about some product.
Doesn't matter.
Just pick one.
Start talking about some product around a smartphone a bunch and watch you don't start
getting ads for it.
Yeah, so that's, excuse me, that's by fear, that AI is going to get to a point where we're
not going to be able to come back from it, but it's going to be here sooner than we think.
So what do we do about that as individuals, not as a species?
As individuals?
Yes.
Hmm.
Eat a cookie, apparently.
Eat cookie.
Stressy.
I don't know what you can do because you're not going to give up your phone.
I mean, I guess you could go back to a flip phone if you wanted to.
It would matter at this point?
No, I don't think it does matter.
I don't think that there's really much you can do as a species.
I mean, not as a species as an individual.
I think as the individual, like the only play you have in front of you is,
it depends on what your concern is.
Like, if your concern is that, like, AI will do something crazy, like, shut down the power grid,
then obviously your fear is not AI.
Your fear is downstream from AI.
Does that make sense?
Like, if your worry is the power grid, then you insulate yourself against the power grid, no doubt.
If your worry is the water quality, then you insulate yourself against that.
Like, it's like saying, I can't bite the flu, but I treat the symptoms.
Okay.
So prep for those things.
Prep for, okay, I get that.
Prep.
For the exact same reason why we talk about prepping a lot of hard goods, food and ammo and everything else,
it's about being at least temporarily disconnected from the system.
It's the ability to say that's not available on the store shelves anymore,
but that's not going to bother me for several months.
All I'm saying is that the way that the South gets about hurricanes,
is going to be worldwide if it ever happens.
Like, there's not going to be anything anywhere.
You're not going to leave your house.
It is going to be like that movie.
What is it called?
Where they have 12 hours or 24 hours to kill whoever they want to kill.
Oh, the purge?
The purge.
It's going to be that.
That's what it's going to be.
Because, now, this is, I know I'm taking this to the extreme,
but nothing is going to work.
No, I was just thinking about a conversation.
and I had about if there was a purge, there might be a list of people that's publicly available
that might be on the list.
Philip.
What?
It's a registry.
It's publicly available for a reason.
Philip.
What?
Oh, I know what you're talking about.
Yes.
Oh, that, okay.
That list.
Okay.
I didn't know.
I don't know what list she thought I was talking about, but when this camera's all,
we're going to have to have a discussion about it.
Honestly, I was like, what lists are you doing?
talking about that you're going to go do these things but now I understand it's the wood shipper list
so I have the I have the green light for the wood shipper list I will go to bed and you know I will just
I will go to just shut the door on your way out just shut the door to the bedroom on your way out
shut the door lock it don't don't plausible deniability yeah oh daggum we've gotten 10 comments when
I wasn't looking.
Oh, we're so bad.
Well, to be fair, we were talking.
Rachel said she's been a single dog mom all week and also working with children.
Jeff Jaggs saying nothing to fear but running out of beer.
I'm not a beer drinker, though.
I used to be.
Dr. Scarra Guy saying tracking toasters.
The Brave Little Toaster, hello.
You remember the movie from the movie from the movie?
the 80s.
I think he's referring to the meme about,
okay, so there's a meme about
a person who says like,
I'm not afraid of anything except decepticons,
and then another person in the room
says decepticons, and the first guy says,
yes, decepticons.
And then the second guy says, that's ridiculous.
And then the toaster agrees with him.
Okay.
Because the toaster's a decepticon.
Yeah. Anyway.
Well, the brave little toaster,
went on a journey. He could talk and walk.
And plot twist. It was because
it was AI because she's a secret
fembot. Wait.
My fear is AI because
I'm a secret fembot? Is that what he
was saying? Did I miss something? I think we might have
missed something. I'm confused,
Dr. Scary guy. I'm not a fembot.
I don't know. I would know what that is.
Austin Powers.
Okay, got it.
I'm not a fan bod.
We are very much dating ourselves tonight.
Yeah, we are.
Jurassic Park and now to Austin Powers.
So do you want me to go into my next one?
Because it kind of goes into some of yours.
Let me kick one off the list.
Okay, go for it.
So one of my big fears is the economy, retirement, and our daughter's future.
Like, anybody that
anybody that hasn't been living under a rock
has to know that right now the national debt, not just ours,
but many developed nations,
has already eclipsed the point where, like,
the GDP of every developed nation on Earth put together
cannot repay the debt that these nations have accumulated.
The interest on the debt is about to exceed the GDP of many developed nations.
Like we've borrowed money from each other in this Ponzi scheme of government so much that no nation can repay it.
Nobody really knows what happens of any nation defaults on it.
And in the process of doing this, we have like printed money to the point where we've devalued our currency into oblivion.
And there's, it's not hard to understand.
And I doubt Gilling and I disagree about this.
but like economically things have gotten very tight last several years.
Like gas is up, the buying power of the dollar is down.
We're still doing a lot of hard work, keep our head above water,
keep putting away for retirement, keep putting away for a rainy day,
like do all the things we were before,
but the extra money to just go do stuff whenever we feel like it, that's gone.
And we are substantially better off than most of our peers, I feel like.
So if we're feeling the pinch, everybody else has got to be feeling it too.
And I see, I don't think about right now, I think about this trajectory we're on and where that goes.
Like we are, I turn 44 this year, you're a year and some months behind me.
Like we are still a solid probably 20 years away from retirement age, but I worry about between now and then, is retirement even going to be a thing?
Is Social Security going to become insolvent?
Is our currency going to be going to devalue itself faster than the interest is accruing on the 401K that we're putting away for?
Like, I worry about all those things.
I worry about is our parents' generation going to be the last generation that ever retires?
And everybody else just works until noon on the day they die, because that's the world that we're heading towards.
and for myself, that's only a small concern.
I'm really worried about what happens to our child.
Yeah, it is scary.
I feel it.
I know everybody does, but I feel it in the grocery store.
So, like, Phil and I, the way that we run our household and financials is he makes more money.
He's going to pay for the bigger things, so tuition, mortgage, things like that.
and I don't make a whole lot of money.
One point I would have been so happy to be making what I make now.
But that was 20 years ago.
And now it's a whole other story.
So I pick up the smaller bills.
Well, the smaller bills, quote unquote, like groceries, is not a small bill anymore.
In fact, groceries takes up more than half of my, is it half?
of my budget. Yeah, I think groceries is half of my budget. And there's only three of us in this
house. There's, it's just... It is worth pointing out that I have said on multiple occasions,
and I will continue to stand by this, that like, I refuse to compromise on eating junk and stuff
that's not healthy in the name of saving money. Like, we will find other places to get the money from
to continue to prioritize, like, cooking at home, raw ingredients,
and try to eat as healthy as possible.
Well, and eating out, so we've been doing this for years now,
is cooking at home, I probably cook at home.
Six days a week at least.
Yeah, well, and the seventh day is just because there's leftovers.
But we'll go out to eat.
We don't go out to eat a whole lot anymore.
We've been out to eat more this month than we have in the last,
I don't know, three months.
But anyway, so we cook at home a lot, which means our grocery bill is going to be higher,
but we're getting more for the money.
And I understand that.
But groceries are still just disgustingly high.
And it freaking hurt.
I'm at the point now where I'm trying to plan a girl's trip with my cousin to Disney.
And Disney's not cheap.
in a year plus groceries plus my gas which is probably nothing compared to some of these people
that drive the bigger trucks and things like that or drive for a living but it's $70, $80 a pop
just for me to fill up and that's half a tank.
That's half a tank.
It cost me $60 to put half a tank of gas in my car last week.
And so it hurts.
And I am, yesterday I was looking for a second part-time job.
I'm picking up, trying to pick up more shifts at work because we do these after-school
specials where we get paid.
So trying to fill my week with those so that I can get a little bit extra in my check there.
I'm looking for a remote work that I can do at home after school when I get home so that
there's more money.
And I'm not, I'm literally living paycheck to paycheck.
I'm literally going where the hell did my money go.
Now, I know.
I had my finance guy sit down with me, and he worked out some of the troubles in my budget.
And also, she's not paycheck to paycheck because she's putting money away in savings.
Oh, you're right.
I'm not paycheck to paycheck.
But you taught me a long time ago.
You're putting money in two savings accounts, actually.
I know.
And one of them I forgot I had, which is a good thing because it's built up way more than I thought I had in there.
But, shoot, I forgot what I was going to say.
taught you a long time ago. Oh, finance guy taught me a long time ago. The first thing that
when your paycheck hits, the first thing to go is your savings. So you put away for your savings,
out of sight, out of mine. So that's just part of my budget. So it just, if you were to look at my
budget every two weeks, this is the amount that goes into savings. And I just, that's it. That money's
gone. It's spoken for. It's gone. Whatever. So I guess no, I'm not living paycheck to paycheck,
because I do have two savings accounts.
And one of them, it was from when I was paying for my car note,
but my car has been paid off now for two years, three, two years, three years maybe.
Anyway, car notes been paid off for a while,
but I kept that account going where my finance department at school
would just deposit the amount into it.
And so it's just been going.
And I forget that it's there.
get to check it. And so Phil and I were talking today because this was obviously, this is one of my fears.
I have been thinking about money so much since the school year started, feeling like I'm
living paycheck to paycheck, looking for new jobs, looking, not new jobs, but second jobs,
third jobs. And I had a dream this morning after Phil left that I did something in the
dream and I spent all of my money and I had no money left to pay the bills and I was crying in
my dream and I had to go then to my husband and tell him I'm out of money I don't have money to pay
the bills I don't have money to get groceries I was like done I didn't have any money so obviously
this is a fear of mine of running out of money do we tell the story it depends on the story
what story the one where this literally happened no
Okay.
20, what, year, 20 something years ago, I did that.
Yes, there's this story.
I ran, I spent all my money and I ran out of it and I had to go to my husband and
tell him I couldn't pay something.
Is it rent?
The rent.
I couldn't pay the rent.
Couldn't pay the rent for the apartment.
I was young and dumb.
And back then you made more than I did.
Did I?
Yes.
Huh.
You made more than I did and you were mad as hell when I nonchalant
said, okay, I can cover it.
Well, I wasn't...
No, you were mad because I was able to cover that plus the rest of the bill.
I was able to cover that plus the bills I was responsible for.
I don't remember being mad about that.
I remember you being very, very angry that I was just like, yes, I just nonchalantly have like
$800 or whatever line around spare cash to just pay that while I'm paying the rest of the bills.
Okay.
Anyway.
But, I mean, perfectly valid concern on your part and I think very valid concern on mine.
My biggest concern is just the fact that, like, you know, you and I had dreams and aspirations to be able to, like, leave this home behind once Piper was on our own and be able to, like, move someplace more rural.
I really wanted to finish out the last half my career as like a park range or something,
outdoors,
working with the public,
you know,
like I really enjoy the outdoors and I really enjoy our national whole parks.
And I really wanted to be able to share that with,
you know,
with other people and not be stuck in the rat race I'm in now.
But now that I look at the reality of like home mortgage rates are double what we're locked into here.
The economy is awful.
Selling a house is difficult.
I genuinely have that concern about, like,
are we going to be able to do any of the things we wanted to do?
Are we going to be able to sell this house and get the equity out
and then go get into another mortgage somewhere else for a reasonable rate that doesn't cripple us?
You know, are we going to have to down,
are we going to have to like take the equity from this and then go move into a small,
tiny little cheap house just to avoid having a 7% mortgage rate.
I've thought about that too, about this might just be our forever home.
And then the money we would have sunk into buying a new house or building a house or doing
whatever now goes into remodeling this house and getting it out of the 90s and, you know,
making the repairs that we need to make to it and all that stuff.
And then staying here.
I mean, the repairs, that's going to have to get done one way or the other.
but no, I've also had that question with myself of like,
is the thing to do to like get a home equity line of credit on the house
and then really like have a contractor come through and rebuild the house
really the way we want it?
And then this becomes our forever home.
And there are pros and cons to that.
Like we really didn't want to be here on the Gulf Coast into retirement.
And if we do decide to stay here,
it goes without saying that one of the things that's going to have to get budgeted
for is like a $12,000 home whole home generator.
But those things don't sound so scary if we're staying here.
Because the added cost of fixing this place up to sell it and then, and we know how much
that costs because we just went through that with my parents, but ours is going to be a little
bit more than that.
It's a bigger house.
It's a bigger house.
So fixing it up to sell it and then buying, getting in.
to another mortgage, a new house or land or whatever, my fear is that I, we pass away with a burden over
Piper's head that she has to then take care of because that's what we've been dealing with.
Not that my parents have passed, but that's what we've been dealing with.
And I don't, I, I, I will be damned if I leave something like that to her.
And if the decision needs to be made that we just stay here and fix this house up and get it how we want it,
because now we have shifted our mindset to this being our forever home, I mean, so be it.
We'll just make sure we put something between the neighbors.
Is there some way we can get rid of them, the neighbors?
On all sides?
I mean, there's, there's a way, but I don't think I've been giving.
Is that a list?
That might be another kind of list.
It's a different list.
Yeah.
No, it hasn't been bad.
But even us being able to plan for ourselves,
there's still Piper.
And I really, I really worry that I really,
because like we, we're working very hard and she's working very hard,
to put herself onto a track to go and do great things with her life.
And I just, I genuinely worry.
is she going to have that opportunity to do those things?
Yeah.
It's true.
I haven't really thought much about what the economy is going to be like for her.
You know, she's got three more years, three years and eight months left of high school.
Think about what it was like in 2008 when we graduated.
Well, that's what I was about to say is, you know, we weren't anticipating what we got either when we graduated from college.
But we made it.
And I know that those might be different times.
It's not like it's 50 years into the future.
You know, these years are coming quick for her.
I mean, if you think about it realistically, in seven years,
she should be graduated with a bachelor's degree.
That is not a lot of time.
And I know a lot can happen in seven years,
but I mean, that's, I know this sounds really weird,
and maybe I'm not the only person that does this,
But I put it into perspective of like, that's a presidential term and a half.
Or that is me going to get my next inspection sticker for two years.
And then, you know, by this time she'll be out of high school when I go get my next inspection sticker.
So it's like when you put it in terms like that, it's not far off.
No.
And I know a lot can happen in that time.
But I don't know.
But I get what your fear is.
definitely. I don't, I think the, I think the saying is true that, I don't know where it came from,
but basically it says something like children were born for this time or, you know, like,
she was born for such a time as this. Like, there's a reason she decided that this was the
life she wanted to choose, you know, it's not like, well, I'm not going to go into all of that,
But anyway, she's, she is smart enough that I think she can overcome anything.
But when the economy drops or the economy hits the bottom, at least hopefully will have a place for her to come to.
Yeah.
So, and it might just be the same house.
Might be.
Not on pretty land with no neighbors.
I'll be very disappointed about having to live next to neighbor.
I know.
Anyway.
It's a fear.
So do I go into my next one?
Does that dovetail into yours or?
That was my, no, those were my two things where it was the economy, money, and AI.
Well, I've got two more and they kind of play off each other.
But rising poverty, income inequality, escalating property, property crimes, and home break-ins, like all four of those things together because student of history.
those things tend to follow one another.
And like what I what I see in the world around me is, you know, I see, what I see is, is this
is twofold.
It's this huge distortion of what poverty really is because, you know, going back to when
I was in Iraq, I had many like world shifting perspective altering moments in my deployment
to the point where like the field that went to Iraq
is not the field that came home.
But one of the things that stood out to me was
one of the local Iraqis,
he was a contractor and him and his crew,
they were doing electrical wiring in our hangar.
And he made the comment to me,
you know, his goal, his dream,
like a lot of Iraqis,
was to come to immigrate to America
and bring his family and become Americans.
Not to come over and like invade,
but like he genuinely wanted,
he wanted nothing more than a cowboy had in Levi.
like he wanted to become an American because America just had to be the greatest place on earth.
And he made the comment to me.
He said, you must live in the richest country on earth because your poor people are so fat.
And I didn't really understand what he was saying at first.
Like it didn't, you know, like 21 year old me was so young and so naive.
I didn't understand it.
But it hit me.
I was like, I asked him, I'm like, what do you mean?
And he said, because here, poor people are skinny because they starve to death.
And that was that moment where it was like I felt the ground shipped underneath me.
And I was like, that is a hell of a perspective to have that like you judge how rich your country is by how overweight your poor people are.
It's true.
It is true.
But the part of it that gets to, that gets me is like we have people in this country who they themselves say they're poor, we according to numbers.
on a ledger using made-up monopoly money
say that they're poor because they live below the poverty line
but they're 100 pounds overweight and have a smartphone
and they drive around an air-conditioned car all the time.
It's like there's this weird distortion in the modern world
where people not only are told they're poor
but they believe they are poor
but they live at a at a, at a,
they have a standard of living that a hundred years ago
people couldn't have dreamed of, but they're still poor.
And the problem is, is like, there's a certain amount of perception downstream from that.
And that's why I say poverty is rising.
And yes, there are people who are slipping between the cracks and falling down on hard times every day in this country because the economy is grinding and slowing.
But also, there's a growing number of people who perceive themselves to be poor, whether or not they truly are.
and with that comes the perception of I am poor because someone else has victimized me or I have less because someone else took it from me.
Piper and I were talking today about what about Malthusian philosophy and what a zero-sum game is.
And I explained to her, Mike, there are people that believe that in order for me to have a plus one in my ledger, you have to have a minus one.
like it's zero sum.
No one gets rich
except by victimizing other people.
This feeds into that same philosophy of,
well, I'm poor because I have less than that person over there,
and it's got to be their fault because they stole from me
or they victimized us because I have less.
And downstream from that is property crimes.
Because once you jump those mental hurdles of,
I'm impoverished, I've been victimized, I've been stolen from, you're right next door to,
I'm within my rights to steal back.
And all of that to say, my worry is that as the economy continues to grind to a halt,
and as more and more people are in a position where they feel the pull, they feel the pinch,
my worry is that more and more people
will rule results of property crimes
and it will make for an altogether
less safe, less secure
culture around us.
Because a lot of people
that don't pay attention to statistics, don't realize
this, but like, you know,
for those of us that were born in like
the 1980s,
violent crime has fallen
every single year with very few
exceptions from the time we were born till now. We live in one of the safest times of our lifetime
and our parents' lifetimes and our grandparents' lifetimes. And I don't want that trend to reverse itself.
I don't want to be in the position where, like, I have to worry about you and Piper outrunning errands
without me because the crime rate doubles or triples or quadruples. So is it better than to have fat poor
people. I don't mean that derogatory. It's just from what the Iraqi said to you.
I think there's ups and downs to that. I think that so much younger, Phil, was rabidly against all
forms of social welfare. Like, rabidly, like to the point of like, take us back to 1778, full
libertarian, destroy all public assistance, get rid of welfare, get rid of snap. I don't care. People
starve. I don't care. Just turn it. Just turn it.
all off. Like, that was my perspective back then because I looked at all those things as being a
parasitic draw on the taxpayer, which they are. But on the flip side of things,
43-year-old Phil, I have a really hard time with the idea that children born into poverty
should starve because their parents can't get their lives together. But I'm also conflicted
about the fact that we as society, in order to support those children, have to support the adults
who can't get their lives together too.
I don't have a lot of good answers
for those types of situations.
I believe that, but what I can say
and what I think most people would agree with
is if we are going to have food stamps,
if we're going to have SNAP,
if we're going to have a social welfare net,
or social safety net,
it has to be a safety net,
not an air mattress.
It is not meant to be comfortable.
It is not meant to be private.
It is not meant to be fun.
It is certainly not meant to pay for
Kool-Aid and soft drinks and candy and bullcrap.
It is there to provide you with the barest essentials
so that you can go home and cook a healthy meal for your kids
and they don't starve to death.
I think we take that whole program.
We roll back to what it was 40 years ago
where you literally go into the grocery store
with your coupon book
and you buy milk and eggs and bread and cheese.
and flour and staples.
And there is no, I can spend it on whatever I want.
Well, it's not like that anymore, at least not in Louisiana.
Like what?
You can't just buy anything you want anymore.
That was the other thing I was going to say.
You're right, you can't.
But the problem is people still sell their food stamps.
Because ultimately, like, ultimately my issue is twofold.
First of all, it's I don't approve of the mischief.
I don't know it's one-to-old.
I don't like the program being misused.
Okay.
I accept a social safety net as a necessary evil.
Evil because it's taken money out of my pocket via my taxes and I can be spending on my own family.
And the government doesn't work for that money, I do.
But I'm willing to accept that in the name of children not starving, I can accept that.
I can accept that.
But I say that if I'm going to accept it, then we have to have some kind of a genuine
effort to not see the program abused, and government historically does a really crappy job of
rooting out fraud. Much more concerned with getting people on the dole than they are making sure
that the people on the dole need to be on the dole. So, but all that to say, like, my concern is
that those trends lead in a direction of more property crime, which means that we as a nation
will be less secure in our own homes and less secure in our person on the street.
And I've said for years, like, I am really emotional, I am emotionally at peace if someone wants
to use violence against me because I'm better at it than most people are.
That doesn't apply to you and Piper.
I'm not okay with a person trying to use violence against you or my daughter because I have
genuine concerns about y'all's ability to protect y'all selves as someone's trying to hurt y'all.
So the safest way for me to try to, like, hedge y'all's safety is to have a society that believes that people are entitled to have their own things, not have them stolen from them.
Anyway.
I agree.
All right.
Last on the list, and I'll throw this banner up because this is what you and I've been yelling about a lot lately.
political and social tribalism.
Can I just say, this is something I yell about with Nick, I've yelled about with Andrew, we argue about at the patron chat at least once a week.
I find it so exhaustingly annoying that we as a nation devolve into team blue and team red so freaking quickly.
Yeah.
What?
No, I'm just, I was waiting to see where you were going to go.
Oh, I have a thought, but I don't know how much to say.
I think we fell into that tribalism years ago.
Maybe not so much you, but more me, but that was really how I was raised, was you got to be red, red, red, red, red, red, red, red, red, red, red, red, red, red, red.
Vote red till you dead.
Yeah, vote red till you're dead.
Exactly.
I've never heard that one.
Vote red to you're dead.
You ever heard of Vote Blue no matter who?
Yeah, I have heard that one.
But having a daughter and or having a child and having one who is super smart, super, how do I say this,
she is a really good debater.
She researches her debates.
She researches the things that she wants.
to talk about or argue about, I say argue, she's not really arguing, but arguing her point
of view for, you know, things like that. And she is willing to listen to another person's
opinion. But what I find so great about her is that she is a truth seeker. And the truth
is it could be red, the truth could be blue, it could be green, it could be whatever. But what
she's going to hold to is not the color or the political party, she's going to hold to the truth.
Now, unfortunately for our child, at 13 and 14 years old, she's lost some friends because of it,
because they are blue no matter who and orange man bad and, you know, things like that.
And I will say this, Piper is more progressive than we were raised and more progressive than what I would say even we are at this point.
But what this child has done is she has changed our point of views.
She brought the debate to this house.
She did the research.
And what she's done is she's not been afraid to back down from the things that her truths,
not just like her truth, but the truth.
And has been able to shift the conversation in this house.
I don't think she's really changed my mind on anything.
has me. Well, but, and so this is probably worth, this is probably worth putting out there as a
counterpoint. Like, yes, you were raised in a very, very, very, like, conservative neocon household.
Like, your father is still like a box, I swear to God he gets Fox News like mainlined into
him. Like he gets a plug stuck in the back of the skull and gets a data feed or something.
But like, I've, I started off as.
kind of a conservative
and over the years like I've gone
the full spectrum of
conservative, libertarian,
I'm about this close to being an anarchist
every now and then where I'm just like
to hell with having rules, to hell with
rulers, to hell with all this, this is all
nonsense, like screw all
this, I'm tired of this nonsense.
But I've been saying for
a long time that I'm politically homeless
because there is no party for me.
There's no party that allows me.
There's no party that allows me
to feel this way about this issue
and take what,
if we pull everything down into this platform, that platform,
I take a piece of this one, a piece of that one,
and a piece of that one over there,
and some of that back there.
My opinion's all over the map
because I'm applying a principle
to all those situations.
Like the whole argument about social welfare.
Libertarian, Phil, says social welfare bad
because taking tax dollars from people
and using it to prop of other people is bad.
anarchist, Phil, says,
why am I letting the government steal like a third of my money?
This is nonsense.
Classical liberal, Phil, is like,
but we can't let the kids starve.
Like, that is one of the situations where, like,
all three of these fills get into a fistfight and no one wins
because there is no obvious argument.
There's no obvious answer.
But there are other issues where I feel the way I do,
I've applied this principle to this situation.
I've arrived at this conclusion.
And that young lady in there is welcome to like come to come to me, discuss, argue, present facts, present opinions.
But until you change something foundational that underpins this decision I made, I'm not changing my mind.
But I think it's interesting that like whether or not she and I agree or you and her agree or disagree, we always manage.
to come apart saying, we don't agree, but it's not because you're a bad person. It's because
we just don't see things the same way. And that's where her and her friends have fallen apart
a couple times is because her friends were never taught how to have a difference of opinion.
And remain friends with that person for a difference of opinion. But what I was going to say was
what I've learned in therapy this last year or so is that multiple things can be true at the same
time. So you can be all of those people. You can be a little bit of this conservative and this
liberal and a little bit of this whatever. And all of those things can exist because obviously
you exist. But the problem is in this country now, you can't exist. You have to be blue or red.
You have to pick a team. You have to pick a team. And you cannot, you cannot go against that.
You can't be like me where it was, I mean, yeah, I voted for Trump.
I voted for him twice.
Do I now regret that decision?
I can say at this point, I pick the greater, I mean, I pick the lesser of the two evils in my mind.
But the conversation that you and I have been having a lot lately is I don't even know if I'm going to vote in the next election.
One, I don't think it matters at this point.
I think my eyes have been open to the political scheme that is this country.
And I would rather just back up and just say, you know, guys, I'm out.
You know, it is what it is.
Because I exist in this world, in this family, with this child, in such a place that I never thought I could be.
you know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I am obviously an ally for LGBTQ. I do, I, I believe in fiscal responsibility and conservative, you know, fiscal, fiscal, fiscal conservative. I, I do believe that I am that person.
Um, a little more liberal leaning than I used to be, but still hold on to a lot of those
conservative
the conservative building blocks that I did grow up with.
And I think it's okay to have bits and pieces from all these things and be able to
exist, you know.
So I can say, yeah, I probably a more conservative person who has some liberal ideas or
liberal thoughts.
And Lord, I don't know what they're going to do to me.
They're going to put me on a post outside.
Excommunicates you.
But who's going to do it?
The liberals are the conservatives.
Both.
I'm going to be on both posts.
Actually, this week on the same day,
I saw a post of Mitch McConnell,
and he's not looking great.
No, he's not.
And I couldn't help myself because I'm that person.
And I said,
you all remember when everybody was freaking out about Biden's cognitive decline?
Pepperidge Farmer members.
And the video of Mitch McConnell, he's like staring off in his face,
like there's not a single thought behind his eyes.
I genuinely hope the man is okay.
I don't think he's competent to hold his seat in Congress.
No, I don't think he should be in Congress anymore.
But here's the thing.
Applying a principle to a situation, right?
About the same thing about Joe Biden a couple years ago.
I see a person who is very, and I think the same thing about Nancy Pelosi, to be perfectly honest.
I see a person who very obviously is impaired in some way, and I don't think they should be in the position of leading a country and representing their constituents.
I just don't think it makes sense.
And I was pilloried by people for a bunch of people who said, I must have been a liberal.
which was hilarious.
A bunch of people were trying to make every mental gymnastics justification they could.
And I'm just like, I am literally arguing with Team Red about why this man who is staring off in the space,
who doesn't look, who looks like he's about to friggin drool down his shirt,
is competent to be at the seat of power that is Congress.
This is freaking ridiculous.
And by the way, it's not a good look.
I understand like there's team red on one side, there's team blue on the inside,
but there's a whole bunch of people right dead slap in the middle who tend to go either direction
and they look at this situation and say that's crazy.
And by this way, it works the exact opposite direction when you've got Team Blue who's like,
you know, guilty some of the nonsense they are.
And the people in the middle say, that's crazy.
Well, both sides are kind of crazy.
But what frustrates me about the political social tribalism, it's not the crazy people.
It's not even the vote blue no matter who or the vote red to your dead.
Like that's been going on since we were children.
Well, probably even definitely longer than that.
I'm sure.
But my point is, like, within, I'm from the perspective of our lifetime.
This is not a new phenomenon.
Right.
But the part that really drives me is, is like, we started this conversation off by saying that I arrive at my,
ideals
based on a principle
based on principles, right?
One of those principles
is
I have this weird personality
where I can
look at the political landscape,
I can make a judgment based on
this is the person I feel
would best serve in this position.
I can vote for the person.
I can't, like I don't know
they go so far to say I campaign for him,
but like I will vote for him.
I will push for him.
I will push for them.
I'll do everything I can to see that person elected because I believe that that's
right person for the job.
Five seconds after that person is in office, I now think that's the biggest scumbag on
earth and I'm going to watch him like he's trying to steal from me.
Because most likely he is.
But here's the thing.
Whether or not he or she is is irrelevant.
That is the only way we ever keep these people honest is by treating them like they're out to
screw us and steal from us.
Like if we pull the lever for a person and then we spend the next two, four, six years with blinders on, they're going to steal from it because there's no oversight.
No one's trying to, no one's trying to primary them.
No one's holding them accountable.
The media is a frigging joke.
So is your fear then that this country, most majority have the blinders on?
My, I don't even know it's a fear at this point.
My frustration is the fact that a majority of the majority of the blinders on.
this country has devolved into pulling the lever, pulling the lever with not much thought given
for why they pulled the lever.
They just pull the lever because, you know, because the machine told them to.
And then they go right back to sleep to drinking beer and sitting on the couch and watching
NASCAR and football and all the stupid crap that all the bread and circus that we are fed
to keep us from paying attention to eyes behind the curtain.
in the levers.
And like, you know, someone, this is a, this is a quote that's come up on social media a few
times and I feel it in my bones.
But it's said that awareness is the greatest curse.
Because once you see something, you can't unsee it.
And my frustration is that I see, I see the tribalism.
I see the teams.
I see the people that they.
install in power, I see the self-seeking, self-gratifying behavior, I see the theft,
I see the malfeasance, and I see that the people who put them in power with their votes
are asleep at the wheel, not holding them accountable for anything they do because they were
better than the other guy or other girl. And it is, there is nothing on earth more
frustrating me than the idea that
here I am standing on the
deck of the Titanic with all the rest of
these knuckleheads and
half them are one side of the ship saying
turn left to go around the iceberg
and the other half on the other side saying turn
left to go around the iceberg and I'm
sitting in the middle saying we're going to
hit the iceberg because neither one of you idiots
is paying attention to where the freaking chunk of ice
really is but I'm going to
hit it right with the rest of them because
no one else notices.
Yeah. That was a good announcement.
Yeah, I have those every now and then.
But that's my gripe about tribalism.
And I don't think it's a new phenomena.
I don't even think it's something that's going to.
I don't think it's anything I'm going to fix, not in my lifetime.
I have done my level best because we always talk about how I don't like problems out of solutions.
I decided when we decided to have children that I was going to do my level best not to teach our children what to
think, but to teach them how to think.
And I've always encouraged our daughter to come to her own conclusions, to make our own decisions,
to like, sure, there are times where I give her boundaries, we give her boundaries and say,
that is not a 14-year-old decision.
You're not able to make, like, you're not able to make that decision yet on your own.
And I've explained it to her as, like, it's a function of consequences.
When you have all the consequences, you can make the decision.
It's your consequences if it blows up in your face, not mine.
But until you reach a certain age, I have to deal with your consequences.
Like if you get a car and you go get into a wreck, you know, yeah, your car insurance is going to have to cover the car, but whatever.
But like, I have to get involved in that some kind of way because you're under my insurance.
You're on my health insurance.
There's going to be some financial impact I'm going to feel as a result of your decision.
So I get some say in your behavior because I have to deal with your consequences.
And that's why I've always couched parental oversight as, as long as mom and I have to deal with your consequences, we get to make the decision.
What decision she, the decision about what to color her hair, that's her problem over the summer.
You know what I'm saying?
It doesn't really affect you and I.
Doesn't get her kicked out of school.
Go bananas.
Do whatever you want.
If people look at you find it crazy in public, like that's your own, that's your own consequence to bear.
She loves that.
She does love that.
But I guess that's kind of my point is like, to me, the only way I know to solve this problem is to raise her to not buy into that.
And for the two of us to like try our level best, not to fall into that.
and, you know, hope that maybe somewhere down the line,
somebody else notices the iceberg.
We're all cruising towards.
But be honest, sometimes I just kind of want to take a dingy and say,
deuses, y'all, y'all enjoy y'all's lives.
I'm getting off this boat.
I've been there.
Yeah.
Sometimes it's on a weekly basis.
Yeah.
Sometimes daily.
Driving.
Makes me want to do that.
Anything else?
No, but you brought up driving,
and it made me remember back to the moments
where dealing with road rage
was as simple as ramming somebody
and telling my machine gunner
to put a burst through their back window.
Can't do that anymore.
It's very frustrating.
Sorry, no, you can't.
Anyway, so yeah,
I thought this would be
kind of an episode a little off the beaten path,
talk about our fears for the future.
and I'm sure that these are not unique to us.
I'm sure there's other people that share a lot of these to some degree or the other.
I would be curious if, what'd you point out?
Comment.
Oh.
You would be curious if what?
I would be curious like Rachel said,
people cannot drive these days.
It's horrible.
No, Rachel, I think they probably can drive.
I just don't think they're paying much attention to it.
I'm going to tell you.
you right here and now.
And I've told Gilling this before, like,
if a genie popped out of this coffee cup and I could have three wishes,
the first two of them would be anyone who is driving
and looks at a cell phone while driving, the phone explodes in their hand.
Or any woman who is putting on her makeup and fixing her hair while driving,
that is my biggest, one of my biggest pet peeves,
right with the cell phones.
drivers. I bet the
Venn diagram has a lot of meat in the middle.
Literally saw a woman
roll down her windows
in front of me. She's driving. We're moving
down the road. Rolls down the windows
so that she can use hairspray
in her front car
of her Mercedes.
First, I mean, front seat of her Mercedes
as she's driving. I knew Gillian
was the woman I was going to marry when we were
driving one day. I was driving. She was in the
pastor seat. We passed
someone who was driving on the on the causeway speed limit 65 miles an hour and she is holding on
to the stairwell with her imagination she has both hands engaged in the act of like doing makeup
and stuff and whatever and she's got the the you know the the the ruby the what is it called
the visor the visor down and she's looking at her mirror in there and doing her makeup and everything
while she's driving 65 miles an hour down the highway.
And Gillian takes one look at that and it looks back to me and says,
I hate that because women that do that give the rest of us a bad name.
And I knew right then and there she was marriage material.
Yeah, I'm going to marry that girl.
Well, it was mostly because I saw that and I don't remember what I was thinking at that moment.
But when you said that, I was like, oh, our brains just did that thing.
like we we synced up on the same sign wave there for just a minute.
True.
I'm pretty sure whatever I was thinking of that moment was a lot more vulgar than that, though.
Probably.
Yeah.
But anyway, I don't want to belabor this.
I mean, I thought it was a fun episode and talk about the things that,
the things that concern us, the things that I see down the horizon that you see down the horizon,
and the things that I hope some of the listeners,
if they also have those concerns,
I'd love for them to, like, reach out
and approach that subject,
and I'd be curious to know if they're,
if they have any fears that, like, we're overlooking.
And I don't mean fear in, like, the way of, like, a jump scare fear.
But, I mean, like, a genuine, like, foreboding concern
for what the future holds.
Because in the short term, you know, every year,
Gilly and I get primed up for hurricane season,
every, you know, we're,
constantly like looking at retirement and looking at our budget and our savings. And like we
have those concerns, but I'm talking about big fears, things that could alter the world that
we've tried to build around us. Some things that we'll be able to sidestep and some
things, I don't know, we might just have to grit our teeth and deal with. All I'm saying is
that AI is going to happen before any of those other fears of yours.
Well, if Hollywood is any indication, I've got about three years to get in shape so I can leave the resistance.
And then your book might actually come into...
Look, I saw a meme yesterday, and we will close with this, and it's legit.
It was a picture of Luke Wilson when he was in Idiocracy, and the T-800 for Terminator.
And what was the other image?
Oh, it was a Max from Road Warrior.
And it said, somehow we were in all three of these worlds at the exact same time.
Yes, that is so true.
So true.
I'm more than a little concern.
But you know, we might have to, we might have to go ahead and fit me for the leather chaps.
No.
Pass.
Spike codpiece.
Oh, pass.
Only real matter of facts fans know about the spike copies.
Yeah, that's true.
All right.
Good night, everybody.
Have fun.
Talk to you on another week.
I'll have my usual co-host back in the seat.
And we may or may not be doing raising values in a couple of days.
We may or, yeah, I haven't quite decided if we're going to do raising values this Sunday or next weekend.
So I guess just keep an eye out.
If you subscribe to notifications on YouTube and on Rumble, I always schedule things 24 hours in advance.
Because that is the earliest Rumble will allow me to schedule anything in the future.
So, yep, raise the values next one. Coming up.
I got to get this little lady to bed.
I'm so tired.
Good night, y'all.
Bye, everybody.
