Tomorrow - 200: Trash Panda

Episode Date: August 1, 2020

It's the 200th episode of Tomorrow and we've all just barely survived to see it. This week, Josh and Ryan are joined by a new little friend who brought them a big, steaming gift! There's also some discussion of the congressional hearings on Big Tech, Facebook's new E.gg app and why they'll never use it, and Taylor Swift's Folklore. Thank you so much for sticking with us for 200 episodes! Hopefully we'll all be in a better place whenever we have the next 100 under our belt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey and welcome to Tomorrow. I'm your host Josh Wittewolsky. Today on the podcast, we discuss diapers, raccoons, and robot man. I don't always one minute. Let's get right into it. Alright, Ryan, we're back. We're back. I'd love to say we're better than ever, but we have a little visitor. A little visitor.

Well, it's a 200th episode first off. Let's say that we've done 200 great, all perfect, highly entertaining, very focused episodes of the tomorrow podcast. All flawless, not a bum one in the bunch. Tony has heard them all. We've received his feedback and he wants lets us say the man is pleased. And anyhow, so now on the on the 200th episode, it's I think it's a fitting moment for all of us that a raccoon went on a rampage of my garage last night

and is now sleeping on a shelf in my garage. So I guess what happened is we had the garage door open and the little rascal got in. Then we, I guess we closed the garage door and he stayed in. That's our bad. And now, and then he rampaged, he had some bird seed in the garage that's been eaten. He took a dump on a shelf, opposite of the one he's sleeping on actually so on the other side of the garage

This is very smart. Well, yeah, I mean, you know, don't shit where you sleep, you know basically And then now he's asleep on a shelf. I thought he was dead, but apparently Raccoons will just like completely pass out so very upsetting Entrance to this 200th episode, but I think it really embodies the chaos of the tomorrow podcast. And a trash panda could bust in at any time and just eat our birds eat any moment there's gonna be a whole family of raccoons nesting on my shoulder. And anyway, then okay, right. So then also, you know, I have very bad back problems. This is just tomorrow podcast at 200 is just like a 200 year old man. We're just limping along. Just yeah, I've got a pinched nerve in my back. I'm trying to like sit in

a position. I'm actually resting the microphone on my chest. So trying to sit. You've had a rough couple weeks. You know what? look, if this is the worst thing that happens to me, that's great. That's anything to do. That's anything to do, but if it were. Yeah, you know, it's anyhow, but there's a lot going on out there. There's a lot going on in the world. We had a huge day yesterday.

Oh my God. In the news. And I think we should just, we gotta talk about this stuff. We have to get it all out there. We have to let Tony and everybody else know how we feel about a variety of topics. Well, we had the big tech congressional hearings yesterday that went on for, first of they were delayed an hour and everybody on our team was at like

battle stations and we just got to set there for an hour. Then they started and they went an hour long. So that was, that was fun. But we had the chance to watch our representatives interrogate to, you know, some, some to better affect some to worse, the CEOs of the four companies that control one fifth of the American economy. Yeah. So, right. So we had Apple, Amazon, Amazon Facebook and Google I was wondering though Do you think Microsoft was like sad it got left out because if this was the 90s They would have been the big dog, you know well well

But they were they had their own little party. They had their party and and they actually had antitrust legislation brought You know antitrust kid an antitrust case brought, you know, an antitrust case, brought it against them. And there was some, you know, some decisions made, they were broken up in some various ways. But, you know, I think Microsoft, I mean, the other thing that's interesting is that the Microsoft is,

they're not, their internet services are not that prevalent. I mean, yes, they have servers, obviously, they have a huge cloud infrastructure system. And obviously, a lot of people use their apps, right, the office apps, but they're not really like, it's not the same thing that we were discussing yesterday where you've got, you know, Apple with its app store that controls a massive amount of commerce. And it has a very walled garden in terms of who can and can't be participating in their ecosystem. You've got Google who controls search, right, and YouTube, which are too massive,

massive centers of exploration on the internet. You've got Facebook sort of same thing, right? Like it's literally like you have to use it to do so many things, right? It's WhatsApp, it's Instagram. Like in that way, like Microsoft is interesting. I mean, it, of course, there reaches huge and of course, they have a huge infrastructure and all these apps that people use, but they're not really like gatekeeping much these days, you know? Well, what's interesting is that I don't think people understand, like the point of the game monopoly was to teach people what a monopoly was because

I don't think they understand it or they didn't people didn't understand it. And I still don't think that people do, right? Because a monopoly isn't just you own the entire market because yes, that is what it means like you can have a monopoly on something and own all of it, but it isn't just that. That's not just the only bar for having regulation come in and break you up. It's that you need to be using your undue influence, right? Like you can be successful, but you can't be successful

and then use your success in one market to choke out another market so that your inferior service wins despite the fact that it's inferior. Well, I mean, there's a fine, I think what a lot of these conversations illustrate is the fine line between being competitive and being anti-competitive, you know. And that line, I think, Elizabeth Warren explains this really well, is that Amazon owns the platform and sells products on the platform and competes with the other people on the platform. So it can tilt the platform in its own favor whenever it wants.

And that is where you run into some anti-competitive behavior rather than what Microsoft does, which is Microsoft is like, our office apps are really good. And Apple is like, actually, we made office apps. And then Microsoft is like, yeah, but ours are way better. And then Google comes in and is like, but ours are free. That's competition. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a really,

it was a really interesting conversation, I mean, because I think more than anything, I hope at least that, you know, there was a lot of craziness talk about these hearings. I mean, really some truly outrageous moments, but Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz just doing a double act like Velmikelli and Roxy Art of the crazy bullshit. Well, there's a whole, yeah, and there's a whole narrative to discuss about the way the Republicans approach this conversation versus

the way the Democrats approach it. I mean, and to be clear, the Democrats approach this as an anti-trust conversation about monopolies, about business monopolies, and information monopolies. And the Republicans really took it as an opportunity. They thought this was their opportunity to go, hey, you won't let our Republican talking points be spread widely on these services. Why are you destroying our free speech, which is really like, is one, it's not in any way provable or based in facts and two,

it is a sort of Trumpian talking point that they're trying to echo, where they basically, just like everything Trump does, he wants to, they wanna call like, they wanna call the material that you're presented with into question. Like they don't have an actual like real story. They just want you to worry that the story that you're getting.

I mean, today's a good example of this. Trump tweeted about how, you know, maybe they'll delay the election because there's going to be, you know, voter fraud. And, you know, more than anything, he really would love to get people thinking, oh, maybe there is voter fraud, you know, and how can we use that to steal the election or to postpone the election or whatever it is they want to do to stay in power. Because the, you know, the Republicans goal here in, as always, is not to serve the people. It's to stay in power and make them and their friends rich.

And I will tell you this, you give me an example of when Republicans have been on the right side of history, at least in the last 50 to 100 years. I'd like to hear about it where there's been a consensus amongst Republicans where they've been on the right side of any issue, to be honest. And but anyhow, sorry, getting back to the actual, um, yeah, I mean, I'm gonna say to what you're saying, the Republicans came to this by saying, okay, you own Facebook has 95% of social media traffic on the internet. Yeah, what their Republicans are saying is you, I feel like you're not doing enough for me. So I'm gonna break you up and then make whoever I break you up

into compete for my approval. As opposed to what the Democrats are saying, which was like, your choking out small businesses, our economy is suffering, and eventually you'll be so powerful that the US government will have to bow to you. And since the US government represents the people, that's probably not great. So we want to step in and make sure

that your information technology can't be used to manipulate the levers of government. And that is like a cogent, normal argument, and not like, I don't care if you're a monopoly, I care if you're arriving me to be a monopoly. Yeah, yeah. It's oligarchy versus democracy again from the two parties. And it was, it was interesting because they opened the day by being like, this was a bipartisan

effort. And I'm sure dragging in powerful CEOs is a bipartisan effort. But what your goals are there couldn't have been like, they couldn't have been more different and it couldn't have been better illustrated by like the days of events.es. Yeah, it's it's it's pretty incredible. Um, but the one thing I thought and obviously I think that I do believe that if you were a sane person watching the proceedings, you'd be like, you know, I mean literally it was like the Democrats would would be like, oh, in a in a, you know, 2014 study, it was shown that they like pulled these big data points. They'd be like, there was a report in the New York Times or in the Wall Street Journal that stated that you had these weird contracts and so on and so and that you pressured.

They're like, we talked to these people and they said, X, Y and Z. And then they flip over to the republic and it was like, literally, literally, and I'm not exaggerating. Like, I went to Google and I typed in a gateway pundit and I didn't see the top of the results. And then recently I typed itit and I didn't see the top of the results. And then recently I typed it in again and I did see the top of the results.

Care to explain that soon, Darpichai, CEO of Google, definitely not the guy who's involved in the search algorithm. And it's like, anyhow, but it's like the night in Daenis of it was striking. Striking. I think when the Democrats were most effective was when they understood why Republicans are effective and combined it with why Democrats are effective, right? Because so for example, there's this doctor on YouTube

called Dr. Mike who always talks about how debunking conspiracy theories and bad medical information, like anti-anti-backstors or anti you know, anti-maskers isn't about showing them like stats and figures because if they were interested in those things, they would look them up and then make a decision. It's about like creating a personal connection between those stats and figures, telling a personal anecdote that illustrates what the stats and figures illustrate and then using the stats and figures to back up your personal eye on anecdotes versus a completely baseless personal anecdote,

right? Like you need to fuse those two approaches together. And I think some of the Democrats did a better job with that than others by saying like, I spoke to someone who creates a link. They said that you swooped in, took over the market, and choked them out, but now they have no choice but to use your platform because you're the most popular place

to get that product after you choked them out. Or someone who said like, hey, I heard about counterfeit products, and this is a person who I spoke to, who it's hurt. This is a quote from them. One of the anonymous sources that work with Amazon said that they basically feel like they're an Amazon heroine because at first it feels good, but then you need it and it just slowly tears your business apart. Right. Amazon's benefit. Right. And that kind of stuff, I think, brought

home why this is important. And then the stats and figures were like a great way to illustrate that. But meanwhile, the Republicans like, you know, Matt Gates, I can't like, he, first of all, just the racism, but also just this sheer like, hey, will you tell me that you're not trying to kill Americans? You're not like helping China to kill our troops. Right. And like that stuff, it's like, it's something you just can't even respond to because it's so baseless and it's so emotionally charged. Right. And it's such a sensitive area that if you or the whole cancel culture thing, like will you take a pledge that you think

cancel culture is bad? And so the CEOs would be like, what are you defining cancel culture? And they were, the representatives would be like, oh, well, we think cancel culture is when someone has an idea and they're silenced like 1984 George Orwell style and the CEOs are like, yeah, I guess that's bad. Like it doesn't, but it doesn't line up

but it resonates with people at home who don't understand the issues. Yeah, and I think that, so I think that that was, obviously really interesting to watch play out. The Matt Gaetz thing, just to put a little context on it. I mean, he, you know, in the, I got to know, maybe two hours into the hearing, you know, he's like, he's like, you know, he basically kind of like swift flip the whole conversation. He was like, just, you know, do all of you CEOs like, you

know, respect and uphold American values. And then like, he has like this like fake pause where they all like presumably were like, yeah, we do. He's like, okay, good. I'm glad to see you're all true Americans or whatever. And then he's like, and they turns, it's like he turns like he's like, oh, so soon to our pitch, I the only brown person on, on the panel, the only person not, you know not natively from America and born in America. And it starts asking these questions that were like McCarthy era, like, you know, will you say you support America, but yet you broke your contract off of the military and you, your employees are pressuring you to break your contracts off with the police.

And you know, it's, it was a. And I thought of extremely racist moment. I thought it was clearly designed to make people question, Sundar Pachai's loyalty to America, and question Google's loyalty as an American company. It was pretty ugly, like a pretty ugly thing. And clearly, is a reflection of the politics that we're living in in this moment.

And especially because all of these companies are what they the Republicans constantly talk about as American successors, American innovation, bootstrap stuff, tech is the future of our economy, like learn to code, all of that stuff, the only way that then you can spin it is being like, but the globalist CEOs are coming in and ruining it. Right. And, and, you know, it was, it was, but it's, again, it goes to that point that we were talking about, which is like the Republicans didn't really want to talk about antitrust.

They wanted to talk about their weird political positions and they wanted to get people experienced. Conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories and fearing, these fearing big tech, not because big tech actually is bad for human beings because of the way that many of the ways they function, they've kind of like perverted the flow of information and done all sorts of things that we really should be

concerned about and do have like business monopolies. But they really want to say, you know, their point is be scared of big tech because they're going to suppress your right-wing opinions and that's going to ultimately harm, you know, American democracy. When, you know, of course, ironically, when you look at Kevin Rousse, a reporter at the New York Times every day or every so, you know, every so often, we'll post. Here's the top 10 most circulated posts on Facebook today. And there are almost always, almost uniformly, hardcore Republican propaganda. And so anyhow, so the long and short of it is like there were no solutions arrived at.

There were no, I wouldn't say there was anything that was a revelation. I mean, I think there was a moment where, I mean, listen, some of these Congress people actually did a really good job of bringing up reported pieces and bringing up, you know, studies and bringing up like, you know, quotes from the past that these people have made and saying, hey, this stuff really does look like a clear case of a violation of our antitrust laws in this country. You know, this really does look like- For example, Facebook, purchasing Instagram, and Mark Zuckerberg saying, in explicit terms, we will purchase all of our competition until we are able to purchase Google.

Yeah. And the merch had a great scoop. They got the emails that were discussed. I mean, they were like essentially brought in as evidence. So they got them early somehow, but the, but the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, you know very clearly Zuckerberg saying well we these guys could be you know real competition so if we buy them we can neutralize the potential for competition which is like this is a gray area I think like in this country you're expected to be super competitive and it is very normal to buy people that you are in competition it's not it's not normal to purchase a competitive service it's just like It's not abnormal to purchase a competitive service. It's just like the way they've done it,

the way they've discussed it, and the reality of the situation definitely raises like huge questions. I mean, saying to Evan Spiegel, we were developing an exact clone of your service, and if you don't sell to us at this bargain basement price, we'll choke you out. Yeah.

It's anti-competitive behavior. Yeah. I think it's also, yeah, I mean, there definitely was some revealing stuff in there. I think that we also just are, you know, I think we all assume that. And so I was sort of like, yeah, okay, I totally, I totally believe this is all makes sense to me. This completely checks out, but also nothing about this is surprising. Yes, but I didn't know the diapers.com case.

And I knew that Jeff Bezos and Amazon actively harmed the sellers that are on their platform. I knew that that was obviously going on. I mean, they have policies where they say they don't look at seller data when making their own product decisions, but it's like in name only, like it's an honor code. Anyone has access to the data and probably uses it constantly. I mean, why wouldn't you? But the diapers.com case was interesting because they were talking about how when they wanted to buy diapers.com in the lead up to making an offer, they sold diapers at a loss in order to like slowdipredage.com's momentum until they then purchased their competitor and jacked the prices up higher than either of them had had them before. And that is the kind of harm that happens to consumers,

especially new mothers is a particularly like a gregious group of people to like jack the rates up on. And I didn't know that that case happened. And it was just that is the perfect example of mixing like actual evidence and data and then a really illustrative, emotionally resonant example of that that I think had there been more of that we would have had more outrage right like Tim Cook got off pretty easy I think that if anything comes down hammer comes down on anybody I think Tim Cook is the person who had the most to lose with the app store situation because it's a pretty clear fix to implement. And I think he managed to get Apple into a position where they won't have to do that, at least in the US.

Yeah, I mean, I actually think that it, I mean, for a while it seemed like Bezos was going to get off really easy. I mean, it was just like, he was not getting any questions or any tough questions. And Tim Cook really, I don't think he was particularly, you know, battered by the proceedings. I thought he probably got off with the least pressure. Well, he kept his cool the best, which is obviously a talent of his, but his ability to speak like a college professor explaining something that you should really feel just calm about it.

It's not a big deal. And to stop and be very polite and to allow the theatrics to go forward, let people get it out. And then very calmly and reassuringly say the opposite, whether or not it's true, was, I mean, it was masterful as opposed to Zuckerberg who looked like a robot and Bezos who kept talking over people and ranting and raving. I mean, well, Sundar Pachai was like fine, but I think Zuckerberg and Bezos looked like they looked like what they are, which is like egotistical narcissists with like way too much power in their personal and professional lives.

Yeah, and so I think, you know, and so at the end of it, it wasn't like we arrived at like what I would consider to be, you know, the smoking gun or whatever. You know, there was no, there was no thing where it's like, okay, now like we know what we're going to do, we know what we have to do. I do think, however, if there's any like take away that I have from that conversation yesterday, it's I think hopefully that more people start to think about and see and worry about. I mean, your diapers.com, I mean, I knew about the diapers.com thing. I remember reading about it and obviously like, you know,

because Laura has written a lot about babies and kids and motherhood and all that stuff like I think I've been a little bit more aware of some of those those stories because it really is like if you weren't really paying attention that's an easy one to miss. Perfect illustration of the monopoly. I mean they also talked about you know this crazy stuff they do with the pop sockets guy you know where they're like where they're like oh oh you the pop sockets guy, you know, where they're like, where they're like, oh, oh, oh, the pop sockets people are like, well, we have a bunch of, you guys have a bunch of counterfeit pop sockets on Amazon, you take them down and Amazon is basically, yeah, we'll take them down if you do like a marketing deal with us and put pop sockets like exclusively on Amazon or whatever. And, you know, no matter how exclusively, but some weird terms where they get leverage over pop sockets. That kind of stuff is really crazy.

Meanwhile, Amazon is actually rampant with counterfeit goods. I mean, I have purchased many counterfeit phone cases from Amazon. Louis Vuitton, I tweeted about it yesterday. Anyhow, the point is, so my hope is that not that we're going to suddenly have legislation, not that we're suddenly going to have cases brought against these companies, although I do think every one of them, there is a, absolutely, there is grounds for antitrust cases to go forward against each of those companies. I think it's worth taking a moment and saying what we think is a good idea because I, I

haven't seen it clearly outlined anywhere. And in fact, you know, we should say that I think the iOS needs to have some competition with its app store. It needs to allow people to run unsigned code or some kind of solution that allows for the opening up that platform. Yeah. I mean, even the default apps conversation, I know they're doing some default apps stuff, but not giving consumers a choice on what browser you can set as the, I mean, this is

Microsoft antitrust like all of one. Yeah, it's literally the same thing, you know, it's like they create a situation where you're pushed into their goods and their services and their stores. And like that's that is a perfect example of the root of antitrust. And now Cook will go, he did say, we face fierce competition. Android, and if you look at the market share, it's true that actually Android has a larger piece of the market share, but what is also true is that if you've got 49% market share and you're not offering your consumers options. That's still a pretty massive amount

of people who are not getting, I think, a fair shake from the platform. It's not nothing. It's not like there's six other brands ahead of them. It is Android and then, and Android has essentially an open platform. I was going to say, I'm sorry. You're not talking about just Android. You're talking about every Android manufacturer and you're talking about an open standard and competing with an open standard. If you think about it as the iPhone as a all-in-one product from one manufacturer, it is far and away the biggest share of American mobile phones. Yeah.

And it's the incredible, I mean, that is the point. It's like, this is literally a rehash, except it's in reverse. I mean, this is a rehash. I mean, Apple made these same claims. They basically made these claims about Microsoft in Windows back in the day. And Microsoft pointed to Linux and Mac. And frankly, that's not enough of a reason because consumers end up getting locked into Internet Explorer and they end up getting locked into Microsoft's Internet services.

And I think we can anyone at home can appreciate the fact that Chrome and Firefox and Safari should all be able to exist and have and be an option on your computer. Well, it was really, it was pretty obvious. I mean, what's really crazy too about, I believe, about those versions of those browsers on iOS still use the underlying Safari framework for the browser. So it's like they added stuff on top of it, but they're not even the code bases aren't, I think dramatically different in terms of the web browsing.

So it's like they lock people into much, much stricter standards. I mean, then obviously then Android does. So I mean, they did the example of pulling those parent, like parental control apps from the store on, you know, happened to be the exact same time when they dropped screen time and and all of their proprietary rental control features. And that's a perfect example of all well, all those parental control apps,

whether or not they weren't safe or whatever, they're not being forced to create competition. They just don't exist anymore. And the only person in that market is Apple. And that's a really precarious place to be, especially when you give Apple 30% of your revenue. And when the government is also taking, that was another great line,

the government's taking 25% and Apple's taking 30%. So where does that leave software developers? Because Apple can turn around and make the exact same app and they can cut that 30% price off the top because they're already getting all the profit. Right, and I should say, by the way, I'm actually looking at a chart. I don't know how accurate this is from StackCounter

that says that the US market chiffry OS is 58%. So if that's true, and I mean, I've been, I thought it was a little bit closer to 50-50. If they've got 60, roughly almost 60% of the market share, then there's no question that this needs to change. You know, but like, there's also like, I think there's a tremendous argument about Google and its services, right? You know, it is pretty crazy that when you search Google, they're able to serve up content that they are promoting or creating, like their airline ticket app or their shopping portal or whatever,

and be that they're pulling content from other providers that would, you know, more reasonably could be more reasonably expected to give you that information. You know, and on the one hand, it's like, I totally understand the ease of use factor and I do believe that Google has made it easier to get the information that you're looking for and to get the right information. But it does raise like huge questions. I mean, just the fact that they own YouTube is to me is like one of the big ones, right?

If YouTube is the biggest social network, or one of the biggest social networks in the world, and certainly the biggest video platform for user-generated video, it's sort of insane that Google owns it. It sort of doesn't, it actually doesn't fit with a lot of Google's other products when you think about it.

And I think you can make, this is the same with about it, and I think you can make this the same with Instagram and Facebook. I think you can make a pretty good case that if you have Facebook, you don't need Instagram too. And if you have Google, you don't really need YouTube. Well, Google has Google. It also has Gmail. And as much as email is an open standard and there are so many email services, Gmail is such an outsized portion of the market that if Google changes its algorithm to decide everything from your

email service provider is spam That's it you proton mails doesn't exist anymore Yeah, it doesn't proton mails gone. No, no I'm saying if they decided that proton proton proton male looked a little too much like spam They could just throw it all in the spam folder and then nobody can use proton mail to talk to Gmail users Which is such a large portion of internet users. Yeah. Yeah.

And so I feel like the solution for Google and Facebook would be you need to spin these businesses off. Like we need to split these up. Instagram needs to be a separate company. Messenger needs to be a separate company. What's that needs to be a separate company? Whereas I think the fix for Amazon is very different. I think the fix for Amazon is very different. I think the fix for

Amazon is to just flat out tell them you can't sell your own products and run the platform. You can split them into two or you can stop doing one of those, but you can't do both. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty crazy. The Amazon stuff is wild. I mean, they're there. And I've definitely, I mean, you can definitely see this. You know, if you're a adavit Amazon user, which we all are, you can definitely see like, you know, Amazon is like eating these into these weird spaces, like they make their own cake cups. They make their own paper towels.

They make their own. I bought component cables the other day, and the cheapest brand available, and the highest rated were Amazon's. And I was like, I didn't want to buy from them, so I bought another random third party one. And when it came, it was like, I didn't want to buy from them, so I bought another random third party one. And when it came, it was like, the one that I got, it was clearly like a counterfeit product.

It was clearly not like a real component cable that was done by a real provider. And I was like, all right, well, I tossed that out and I had to go buy the Amazon one because electronics stores aren't open right now in Manhattan. So I was like, I'm really left with no option, especially during a pandemic. I really have no option other than to purchase this specific component cable or spend too much money.

Right. And I think, I mean, it's very often that you're looking for something on Amazon and you see, you know, it's like, Amazon's choice and it's like Amazon basics or whatever. Or it's like, you know, they have a really good deal on food. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's you know, they have a really good deal on food. Yeah. Yeah I mean, there's a clear there's a clear problem there I do think for all of the convenience and excellence that Amazon can provide There's also a huge part of it that's like it is really hurting a lot of businesses and a lot of you know

ultimately consumers and I do think like you know if we're only concerned with getting like the cheapest price on something, which like totally is totally understandable. But if that's the only concern, and that's all we think, well, Amazon's job is to make sure we get the cheapest price and the thing you're looking for, then it's gonna be easy to ignore where there are obvious, you know, antitrust issues. And so, so look, anyhow, so to my point

and then we should, you know, there's other stuff to talk about, but like what I hope happens now is that people hopefully are a little bit more aware that it's not just like tech reporters and, you know, nerds going like, hey, if you notice, this is like a serious issue. And that that starts a little bit of, you know, obviously we can't trust the companies to self-regulate 100%, but they could start to make changes before this goes to antitrust case. Maybe that can start to help a little bit.

I mean, perfect example when Microsoft invested into Apple and kept their competitor alive. Listen, everybody won. Everybody won from that. That wasn't the cure all for that problem, but it certainly was a way to help out with the issue and to admit that like, it's not good for Microsoft or consumers or Apple if we don't have like two options. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's,

so hopefully, we'll see some material change start to happen. At least people will start asking questions more, which I think is very important. It's very important, though. I mean, look, on a daily basis, it's very important now to be thinking about the way these systems work and what you're taking from them, what you're getting out of them, what they're taking from you.

And look, I get it. There are a lot of consumers who will say, what is, you know, what cares as long as I get the thing that I need at the lowest price, you know, isn't that a, isn't that a positive, you know, doesn't that, doesn't that solve the problem for the consumer? But I think it's like when you think about the entire ecosystem, when you think about, It's like when you think about the entire ecosystem, when you think about, you know, when you think about small businesses and entrepreneurial sort of the entrepreneurial spirit of the American business, you know, just like, you want to like create a market for them. You want to have a market exist. And if a monopoly is eating that market every time they get off the ground, that's a real

fucking problem. And so, you know, I think, you so, I think something does have to change. And I hope it changes soon. And I hope it doesn't wreck my great prime delivery time that I've been getting lately. Anyhow, Herman Cain is dead. Rest in peace. Herman Cain was a man who ran for the Republican nomination in 2000 and...

He's a pizza guy. 12, I wanna say. He was like the CEO of a pizza place called like, what's the name of the pizza place? It's not Papa John's. Apparently all the pizza guys are Republicans. Hermen Cain is called called like Godfather's Pizza. Godfather's Pizza, which is a pretty big chain, right?

Godfather's Pizza, anyhow, Hermencane was 74. He had, I think recovered from cancer, but he had cancer, so he had some, but he died from COVID-19, sorry, we should say. He didn't believe it. He didn't believe it and he went to this Tulsa rally that Trump had his hilarious and embarrassing rally where he was, they were like, we have 800,000 people signed up and it was like there were like 6,000 people there, 6,000 fucking dumbasses. And people weren't wearing masks. And Herman Cain was like, he was like tweeting about it. He was like, no one's wearing masks. We're fed up with this BS.

And it's like, okay, nine days later, he was diagnosed with COVID-19. And a month after that, the guy's dead. And all I can say is, you know, if you still think that wearing a mask is some like violation or that it doesn't matter or whatever, like you're fucking stupid. I mean, I just don't know what else to say. Like, you have a brain, you have like, you have peanut butter in your brain or something like. I mean, I'm at the point where like, if you, if you don't believe in it, fine, like go, like, I'm not, I'm clearly not

going to stop you and I don't want to fight about this And I don't want you spreading your information by yelling at it So go do it. You don't want to wear a mask breathe deep and let's see how it goes and if you end up getting in and maybe your Relatives will learn a lesson from that and I'm the same as the hydro hydroxychloroquine You want to take a fucking drug that doesn't work and will probably kill you have had it I like I at this point you're gonna have to learn the hard way. Well, yeah, I mean, the only issue with that is that, you know, that drug is actually used to treat real things and people were like, when it's with all the stuff started,

they're like, oh, there's shortages. Like, we don't have enough of it for people like, malaria. Yeah, obviously, those people who need it first, I mean, we have someone on our staff who uses it, like, they should have an ample supply before anybody else gets it. But from that point on, like, you want to take a thing that doesn't do anything

and walk around without a mask. Good luck. Yeah. You can be just like your hero, Herman Cain. Herman Cain, you can go to the great, the big godfather's pizza in the sky like he did. You know, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to joke about the guy's death,

but I will say, I'm more no-re-publican. I mean, you read what you sow. Let's just put it that way. You read what you sow. And people who are out here trying to make sure they don't get this and they don't spread it are wearing masks.

And they're not acting like it's a controversial topic. They're following the advice of doctors and experts and epidemiologists. And you either do that and you care about the people around you and yourself or you don't for some reason that nobody fucking understands or cares about and you're gonna get yourself killed and you're gonna get other people killed. And it's a very irresponsible and ugly way to move through the world and I and I it's hard for me to feel sad about a person dying who basically didn't have to if they had just listen to what experts said. And there's a lot of, by the way, there are a lot of stories that you can read now where people are like, they thought it was a joke.

Then they got COVID-19, now they're on a respirator. It's like, well, that's exactly what fucking, it's like, you know, you're driving and you don't wear your seatbelt and you go through your windshield. It's like, well, they thought wearing their seatbelt was a violation of their personal rights. It's like, yeah, well, that's why you're fucking dead now.

You know, you value your personal ability to disregard things that will keep you safe higher than your own existence. Like, I don't know what to tell you about that. It's sad. Listen, if you wanna die for a fantasy, go right ahead. It doesn't, you know what I mean? But don't take other people with you. That's the problem with this disease.

That is the problem, but it is also a thing of like, you know what? And maybe, you know, if you if you truly deeply believe in this like complete nonsense thing, that's fine. What I have an issue with is like spreading it to people who don't have the capacity or the information to understand. And that is where I'm just like, I'm sick of hearing these people yell the loudest. Like I'm just, I would prefer Joe Rogan not talk about COVID if he's gonna continue having this platform either way. Like I just don't need your,

just don't bring up stuff you don't know about. That's fine, it's fine. Yeah, I mean they are, yeah, it's a crazy situation, man, I don, they are, yeah, it's a crazy situation, man, I don't fully understand it. When I hear experts speak on matters of science that I have no understanding or knowledge of, I'm like, tell me what to do. Just like, give me the, I don't think I'm gonna be able

to figure this out by reading for chance. So tell me what you know right now and I'll probably. And it's crazy because the same people who in my family who are, believe complete nonsense are the people who are the first to call me up and tell me ask me how to fix their Wi-Fi router. And it's like, so you clearly understand that there are people who are experts

on things that you don't know. So what is it about medicine that you think like it's about your, like I found the angry enough, it's like that's not how what are you talking about? Like we live in a physical world. Like I don't know what to tell you. Do you want a microscope? Do I even need to teach you?

Do we have to do 15 years of medical science for you so that like because you can't trust anybody? Yeah. And that's the problem with conspiracy theories. I mean, that's the problem with conspiracy theories. I mean, that's the problem with this whole culture of like Trump's whole culture of conspiracy theories and his whole culture of basically trying to do the secret

for history or science or politics or the economy is if you just boldly do stuff like a con man does, you just confidently do something. It will eventually through just sheer force of you refusing for it not to, do what you want it to do. And that works when it comes to ripping people off, and it works when it comes to tricking the court system, and it works when it comes to elections, and it works when it comes to lying about your personal life, but it doesn't work when it comes to viruses, and it

doesn't work when it comes to the global economy, and it doesn't, when it comes to like law enforcement, like you can't tell cops to or not to do X, Y, and Z, like this issue is gonna rage whether or not you like repeat the phrase law and order over and over and over again. Yeah, well, at that point we should talk about Portland. Oh, yeah, I mean, Portland. And New York at this point. And New York, yeah, I mean, we've got, I mean, wow, this is real happy topics we've got here.

You know, hey, 200, this is where we're at, okay? Yeah, you want to dig us, you want to dig us out to a better place by 250 or 300? You know what you need to do. Yeah, vote for my man, Biden. Join the Biden brigade. The Biden brothers, as we're all called. The blue boys and the blue boys. The blue.

No, wait. No, fuck. The other, the people in it, the people in it, in a, in blue, the boys and the blue. No, wait, no fuck. The other, the people in a range of color. So yeah, support land. I mean, people were like, look, people were like, first off, the protests have been going on and on and on. You know, they don't get media coverage like they did before, but people are out protesting in support of racial equality

and justice and Black Lives Matter and still protesting for Breonna Taylor and for George Floyd and for everybody, every person of color, every Black person who's been killed for no fucking reason by the police, which, and there is a lot of them, you know, and not a lot of them, you know, and not a lot of justice being dulled out on the flip side of it. And so, you know, these

participants going on, you know, Portland has gotten into a place where, you know, they Trump sent in federal agents, Department of Homeland Security forces whatever those are To protect quote-unquote protect federal buildings is just like this big ruse like so people are like spray painting Federal buildings are like starting fires outside of them or whatever not burning them down Okay, none of the hurt burned down and then they've been blown up nobody's been shot nobody's been killed to be clear Protesters amount of things that amount of people they've shot zero, amount of people they've run over their car zero, amount of buildings they've burned down.

I mean, maybe there's a few across the country, but like, it's not like all of Portland has been charred, you know, it's now ash, right? It's like, they lit a fire on the steps of a federal building. Anyhow, I'm not saying people should be lighting things on fire. I don't think that, and I don't think they should be looting either. And I think that the people who are lighting things on fire and looting are doing a disservice to the vast majority of people who are actually out there

protesting for the right reasons and trying to get their voices heard and trying to make it clear that people aren't going to take this shit. But the problem that that is is that no form of protest should be convenient. Looting and stuff is a last resort for people who feel that the social contract has broken down and that they don't even when they do sit-ins and even when they do hunger strikes, nobody gives a shit about their lives or what happens to them. Nobody should be looting in an ideal world, but I do understand why it's happening.

And I think, as with most things, we would do better to look at the underlying societal causes than find individual people and put, like, disappear them in a van. Yeah, so, right. So, you know, let's just say there's a small handful of people who are doing things that would be misdemeanors for the most part, okay? Right? Like spray painting on a building, which is like not

anything. You know what I mean? Like ripping down a security camera or knocking over a statue, or like things that are definitely inconvenient and definitely like crimes or whatever under you know an ethical law system would still be crimes and totally like yes fine it's a crime to burn down a building of course that's beside the point because this is like this is not that is not the widespread point of these protests nor is it the widespread result or what happens in these protests so to to make my point, so Trump sends in these federal agents ostensibly to, presumably to protect these federal pieces of property, which is the only justification

they can find. The governors, I get them the fuck out of here, the mayors I get them the fuck out of here, but they're there right and And they start pulling people off of the streets randomly and throwing them into these vans like fucking mini vans and You know people have it on video and it's terrifying It's terrifying because when people get it typically when you get arrested in this country, a person in a uniform with a badge,

like who identifies themselves, like goes through a procedure, like there are things, like even look, we can agree that often people are arrested for the wrong reasons or for no reason at all, you know, or for reasons that are nefarious, like the color of their skin. But it is the meme of Republicans want unmarked vans and Democrats are like, mark the vans.

And I get that like, that is a meme for a reason. And but there is a threshold that we cross, a different thing that we cross when we have a secret police. That is a different than an unjust police. And it's I think we're our it's I think we should just agree on a few basic things here. Okay, I understand Republicans again are always on the wrong side of history on almost every topic related to governance in America and around the world. But you know, Republicans will you'll meet no group of people who are more loudly invoking

on a regular basis the need for their free speech should be honored and the need for law and order and the need for states' rights. And all of those things are being absolutely deleted from this process, you know, and when you have like unmarked cars and unnamed unmarked officers whoever they are, wherever they're from, taking people without Miranda rights to undisclosed locations, I mean, American citizens, right? I'm not trying to be dramatic. That's fucked. That's really fucked.

Like there's something really, really wrong with that. That's relatively unprecedented in this country. We see it in other countries. We see it in nations that are in the midst of civil wars. We see it in countries that are run by authoritarian leaders like Putin. And it's like, you know, people get disappeared. And we're dangerously close to that happening.

Of course, now look, we've got Guantanamo. We're not, our hands are not clean in this country. But when it comes to like, you do cross a threshold when you have, you know, our public, the police, not the military, not, there's a lot of people who can do things wrong. But when you have a secret police operating against

the American people throughout the United States, major cities, especially the disadvantage. That's a different way worse than already bad. I mean, you know, Trump and his and his crew call these people terrorists and rioters and all this shit. And it's like, that's not actually reality. There's no terrorists. The terrorists are the white supremacists. The terrorists are the people who back Trump. The terrorists are the people who've been responsible for hundreds actually been responsible for hundreds of murders over the last 20 years.

Those are right wing white supremacists. Those are the people who are the actual terrorists in this country, they really are. And Trump wants to label these, this other group of people because he needs a villain. Just like he needed a villain before the midterms, we had a caravan of immigrants who also, by the way, the caravan coming from the South, from South America was, and from Mexico was also carrying terrorists who were hiding out who wanted to blow things up in bomb America.

And it's like, that shit isn't, that's like not real. It's a fantasy created by the right wing to hold power. And this is like what he's doing, what they're doing in Portland, which now apparently they say they're pulling out of Portland is a kind of like, is a move in the direction of a kind of authoritarian leadership that everybody and Republicans included should be rejecting as loudly and strongly as possible. It's just that Republicans can't see the end game of this, right, which is like a person like Donald Trump

once he gets rid of the people that are like, clearly the enemies of his group, then the next thing he'll do is turn his set his sights on the enemies within his group, right? And it's not long before a person who's a true authoritarian says, well, what do I need the Senate for? What do I need Congress for at all? Like they just get in the way of me making decisions, you know, because that is how these things go.

That is the direction they move in. It's not like, I'm, I'm, it's good enough with having this much power, but it'll be checked by my own party. You know, that's not how Hitler played it. You know, and I hate to make the Hitler comparisons, but it's really the only thing that we, the closest thing we have to compare it to at this point. Um, this apparently is happening as well. There's video of this, this, uh, protestor, trans protester who's get, gets pulled into this minivan again. It looks like you're your mom and dad's minivan with these cops that are playing close officers, I guess.

I mean, there's some debate about whether they were, whether there's any actual markings that they're police officers. And then they're kind of like, they're backed up by a bunch of bike cops. By cops, you're my favorite, my favorite like lame whack-ass cops who use their bikes as like a way to like keep people away from them which I think is a

hilarious and and very just funny looking thing to do. But like but like it's scary it's really fucked up you know and like I don't think I think if we're gonna arrest somebody there has to be some it cannot be you grab somebody and throw them in a van. It just, that can't be the way it is in this country. If that's the way it is, then it raises all kinds of questions about like what's really going on with the way that we're policing these streets.

And by the way, this is exactly why people want to fucking defund the police. This is exactly why people think the police have too much power and too much money, and too much say in how we live day to day. You know? It's well summed up by the quote from Battle Sarkoal Act ago, that where they said, there's a reason

why you separate the military and the police, because one fights the enemies of the state, and the other one serves and protects the people. And when the military is both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people. And when you combine that with the no true Scotsmanism of Trump, where they just keep changing who, you know, suddenly Jeff Sessions is a traitor. And then, you know, suddenly every single person is a traitor. And they can keep moving the goalposts over who's a good person who isn't because truly all it comes

down to is loyalty to Trump and usefulness to Trump. You have a scenario where, I mean, it's just fascism. I mean, at that point, you have a just an insane dictator. And I know that it sounds, I mean, it sounds so outrageous and so extreme. But I don't know what else you need to see at this point that that's like where we're heading towards. Right. Right. Yeah, I mean, let's just really, I'm just really frustrated because I, like, I, at this

point, I don't know how to do, you know, except leave. Yeah, exactly. I mean, well, the funny thing is you can't leave. I mean, Americans aren't even really able to travel anywhere right now. Like, you couldn't go, you couldn't go to Canada if you wanted to. They won't let you in. You know? My big hope is that they eventually decided to let New York in. If New York does a good job of keeping our specific numbers down. I mean, maybe, maybe. But the point, I mean, I or any of it all is like,

we're like trapped inside this now. You know, we're like, there is, I like, literally, literally, not like you can't get out like, oh, like that's a pipe really. No, we're trapped in this in the sense of like a horror movie, the serial killer is in the house. Yeah, yeah And that and the doors have been like bolted from the outside and like you are, no, I mean like you know That's the funny thing. I said to Laura. I was like, yeah, we should just move and just like we can't I'm like, oh, yeah we can't you I'm like, oh yeah, we can't. You know, yeah. And so, you know, it's it's it's crazy time that we live in. It's a wonderful time. I'm just wondering, I've

been thinking this whole time, Meg is the raccoon still sleeping in the garage. It's a great metaphor for America, you know, when will the raccoon, sleeping raccoon, when will the when will the fat When will the when will the fat violent Very sleepy raccoon who do who shit took a shit on in my garage and ate all the birdseed when will that Creature leave, you know will it be in November? I'm sorry. I guess January of 2021 Will we be able to get to vote out that creature in in November or not? I think how nice Christmas will be the whole like Hanukkah New Year's season.

Except for your family. Except for your family. Except for your family. Except for your family. Except for your family. Except for your family. Except for your family. Except for your family.

Except for your family. Except for your family. Except for your family. Except for your family. Except for your family. Except for your family. Except for your family. Except for your family. Except for your family. Except for your family. Except for your family. Except for your family. Listen, I'm not gonna get ahead of myself. I try not to fantasize about. Oh, it's all I do, I torture myself.

I know, I know. I just, we just have to, we just gotta get people voting. We just gotta get, you know what we need is we need the teens. You get, come on, Jen, Gen Z, I mean, you gotta do it for K-pop, you can do it for us. I mean, just show up. Just be like, just be as good on TikTok as you, you know, be as good at the polls as you are on TikTok.

That's all we're asking for. Is that too much to ask? Sometimes I just sit around and I fantasize about like when I would listen to political podcasts and get like my hackles up about the filibuster or like have some strong opinions about like you know, yeah. Fucking housing reform. Now I'm just like, oh,, yeah, fucking housing reform. Now I'm just like, I torture myself thinking about it, but don't do it. I can't, I can't do it.

I can't do it. You know what, we just have to get the vote out. All right, any other important topics that we need to tackle? I feel like we've been through a lot, but not that many. I feel like there are other things happening this week. What have we missed? There are other stuff we can talk about either the Facebook Egg thing or we can talk about my Xbox event.

We talked about it with Craig a little bit last week. Yeah, honestly, Egg is like, I'm, you know, Egg is like, I have not that much interest in it, although just, you know, is to say that, you know, anything that Facebook makes, so Facebook made a new app, which is like crazy, like shit posting app, like you can post crazy, weird, ugly, like it's kind of like the way the internet used to be, like back in the Geo City days or whatever.

Yeah, it's like blingy, but like I just the second it's like, oh, brought to you by Facebook. I'm like, yeah, I'm not really interested. I mean, even was the coolest app in the world. Like I the only the only like, like what's app? world. The only, the only, like, like WhatsApp and Instagram are like, they still feel like, first off, they were started as non-Facebook products, right? And secondly, they still feel like they have not been integrated into, I mean, Instagram more so, but for the most part, I feel like, I don't, I mean, they don't feel really integrated into the Facebook ecosystem, which is fine and great. I just don't want to engage with any further. Those were historic programs that I was using and continue to use. I don't even want to engage with new apps that they're

creating. I was saying in Slack the other day that I have this Oculus and I love using it. I think it is a really good product, but I don't really use it because every time I buy an app for it or like put more personal information into it, I know that I'm helping Facebook and I'm not being dramatic when I say that like I hate that company, I hate them. Like I hate them like I hate poison. Like I do not want to help them. I want nothing to do with them.

I have an Instagram specifically for work. I have a Facebook account specifically for work. If it were up to me, I would completely divest from that company. And so, you know, every time they come out with something new, and I feel bad because there are people, I have friends who work at Instagram, friends who work at Facebook. I feel bad because I know there are people there

who are trying to make good products. But, you know, I'm sure there are some really nice stormtroopers, but like I can't do it anymore. And I don't think Mark Zuckerberg understands, I mean, he said earlier this year, we don't care about being liked anymore, we just want to be understood without understanding that, like we do understand you, and that's why we don't like you. I don't like you. I don't think he knows the kind of damage he's done to his brand because there was a time when I was like excited about Facebook and excited about what they were going to do and

connecting the world. I mean, think how short a time ago, Cheryl Sandberg did an entire media victory lap about leaning in. And now she's enemy number one for a lot of people. And so I don't know, like I look at this egg thing and even if they hadn't had some huge ethical oversights, like they were stealing artists' work, the entire product itself seems to be heavily inspired

by other services. I just, even if it was cool, like I, and it's, they also dropped that like real thing that's a competitor to TikTok. And it's like, as much as I think a cool new TikTok competitor would be great. I'm not using Facebook. Yeah, yeah, I, I, I, I feel I've never been,

I feel like I've never been a fan of Facebook from day one. See, I like that they cleaned things up a bit. I was a Myspace kid, I was a blog spot kid, and things were ugly and messy, and there's a lot to be said for ugly and messy, and Lord knows I am now on the other side of that opinion. But there was a time when it was really refreshing that Facebook was clean and put together, you could enter information and it would put it in an easily readable, standardized way. And I could do posts that were clean and professional looking but had my opinion in them and my friends would respond like I liked that it was good for college. But, you know, obviously that was a world ago. You know, they haven't, there was a time when I thought that was cool. And there was a time when I thought Instagram was like, fun to use.

Like do you remember like liking Instagram? I mean, not, I'm not, you know, it's, I think I use these things differently than a lot of people. You know, it's like I, I, when I first got Instagram, I mean, I think I was using Android at the time. And so I think it was one of those things where I didn't even have it for the first, you know, couple of years because I was like on Android most of the time. And, um, and then I got it. And, uh, I was like, okay, cool. Like, and I'm like,

I'll mess around with this and just put pictures on here like any normal user. I don't need to share a lot. I'm sharing a lot all over the place and I don't feel it intense need. If I really want to share something important, I'll write about it. I don't like to share my personal life that much. There are people who are like their whole, their whole, and this is fine if you're like this, like that you put your whole life on there that you're happy to like talk about, things you're doing, like that has never been that appealing to me or felt that comfortable to me.

And I think with that, I feel like the only way at reason I like Twitter is that I do like writing, you know, and that is a way of writing. Yeah, I mean, I just think even Twitter to me is like very much now, it's a work thing. I like to bullshit on it sometimes, I mean, I just think even Twitter to me is very much now. It's a work thing. I like to bullshit on it sometimes, but Trump has really ruined the internet. It's hard to remember.

Remember, Trump's been campaigning for a long time. We had to go through the whole 2016 election cycle with Trump in the mix and the ugliness of all of this. It's been so ugly for so long now that I don't really enjoy like the social spaces on the internet that much. Like, I don't, they're just not a place where I feel inspired or excited about spending time for the most part. I mean, it used to be fun and now it's serious business all the time. Yeah, and so, so I guess like, yeah, I mean, I, I, I use everything a little bit begrudgingly at this point.

I'm kinda like, I'll use WhatsApp because it's the easiest to do x, y, and z, but like I'm not, you know, I'm not like, oh man, this app fills me with pleasure. Like Twitter is occasionally entertaining, often really hard. Instagram is nice, but I've become bored with Instagram, especially during quarantine. I feel like there's something about it now that feels, like there are people I fall on Instagram

who used to post things that they're doing and now they just post memes and stuff. And I'm kinda like, well, if I wanna see memes, like I can go look at the elsewhere on the internet. My favorite social network on the internet, and I don't even really use it in a social way, is Pinterest. Like I get more joy out of Pinterest than I do out of any other.

Because it is pretty private. I mean, it's private. It's private and all my boards are for the most part are private. And it's like an exploration of things that I'm really like sort of passionate about and interested in that have nothing to do with news or voicing my opinion or, you know,

it's like very personal stuff that I'm often like collecting on there. And so, you know, it's like, I'll go down a rabbit hole on like weird German radios. We talked about this on one of the podcasts or I'll get really into a certain type of like, you know, mid-century bench, then like go down a weird rabbit hole on that or whatever.

And it's a really pleasurable experience. I wish more, that's how Tumblr used to be. I wish more, I used to post on Tumblr all the time before they did all the censorship shit, not because I was posting porn or whatever, but I just think they made the wrong decision and they put their efforts in the wrong place. They should have been enforcing bad actors instead of worrying about women's breasts. But Tumblr was like that for a while, where it was just about an exchange of art and

ideas and weird memes and stuff that I actually found really enjoyable that wasn't about like the thing like this like of this moment right this second, you know, like in the news or in you know even in my personal life. And so I think slower. Yeah a thing where I was like, you know, I was coming off of my space in Friendster and another social network where you were like expected to like list your interests and, you know, figure out who your real friends were and like share things. I was like, well, there's already a lot of ways that I do that, you know, and so I was obviously late to Facebook because I didn't start using it when I was in college. So I think it might be a different experience for me. I, you me. And then the bigger it got, the less attractive it's been. And the only time I've ever really used Facebook is for business reasons. I don't connect with people there.

There are some friends on there that I occasionally will talk to. But for the most part, it's like, well, I want to post a link, or I need to connect it. My account to one of our business accounts because I need to be an admin for a page or something like that. I just, it just isn't, you know, this is maybe a downer, but I just don't, I just don't get that much out of it, you know.

And it's also different, I think, when you're, when you have like a lot of followers, I'm saying I have a lot of followers, but like on Twitter, I've got like a pretty good amount of followers on Instagram. I've got like 19, 20,000 followers or something. And like, you know, it's a, it's different when you post something, when you've got that many people following you. Like I don't post a lot of pictures of Zelda on Instagram because I feel like it's kind of uncomfortable and weird.

And like I don't want a bunch of strangers looking at it, but I also don't feel the need to like make my account private because I also don't want to like manage that, you know, it just, I just don't post that much. So, yes, my weird rambulant about my association with apps. And yeah, I don't know, now I'm done, now I'm finished. How do we get on this topic? How do we even know?

I don't know. Egg, we can move on. Yeah, egg, right. Yeah, let's do nice things. Let's do it out. Out, sorry, I just moved my back in a weird way and I have to go. I'm getting an MRI in like a half an hour.

So we're going to get to the bottom of this back issue that I'm having. But what a way to celebrate 200. What a way. What a way. Yeah, let's do nice things. You go first. This week is a nice thing for someone else.

I really, I like Taylor Swift. It goes one way or the other with me. Like it's like, it's fine. Or this is great. Or it's fine. Or it's great. I don't, you know, the worship of Taylor Swift is kind of beyond me. And, um, you know, I'm obviously a go-go person. But my husband loves Taylor Swift and to have like a surprised album drop that is perfectly in his genre. He loves like really emotional reflective slow music. He loves like, you know, his ideal evening is listening to just like women with a guitar like whale. And so a guitar. I'm not that bad, but it's just I like that's like a wailing woman is the ideal. Oh yeah, he loves a broken bird a wailing woman a sad dad

and this is the nexus of all of those things and he loves Taylor Swift so this was like a good thing and he's had a really hard week at work and Every time he pulls out an earbud I he I ask him are you listening to folklore and he says yes And so he's really enjoying it. I think a lot of people are really enjoying it. And I think in the music scene, we tend to make women way more polarizing than we make the work of men. But Antelor Swift certainly has had polarizing moments

deserved and undeserved. But I think everybody's come around to say that this is a nice, good album that means a lot to a lot of people. And they think it's generally really well written. And I think that's nice. It was nice to have something this week that even if I wasn't interested in it, that everybody came together over. Like, I didn't see anybody being like, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to this community. Or like, you know, this thing is fighting my free speech. It was just everyone's like, that's a nice album, and I like it. And even if it's not for me, I like seeing that, especially I like seeing my husband just

have one nice good thing. I love seeing him just be happy with one thing. Well, it's hard these days. Yeah. It's hard to find anything that's good. I haven't listened to it yet, actually. I know that Taylor fans are very excited. We have a new staff member,

our social editor Alexis, and they're a major Taylor Swift fan. And apparently, very excited about this, from what I can tell. Yeah, I have to listen to it. I haven't had a lot of time to listen to music. It's good. This isn't a knock.

All the songs sound very similar because it is a concept album of one piece and it's very autumnal. So it is sad and slow and it's patient and it is very similar. So you'll know within a few songs if this album is for you or not. But I don't think that's bad.

It isn't for me, but it doesn't mean it's a bad album certainly., right, so there was that this week and then also there are two n64 games Which I will have dropped a review of by the time this show is up on Input mag calm. There are two new n64 games created by fans full games One of which is called the legend of Zelda, the Missing Link, which takes place between Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask and fills in some story gaps. And the other one is Banjo Kazooie, the jiggies of Time, which is a Banjo Kazooie game completely set in the world of Hyrule, and it's very long, and it is very involved, but it certainly

feels like a real game, and it's very surreal to be living in a world where like a couple people in their basement can make an N64 game like that. That's always blow my mind. That's very cool. Um, I have one, I think I really have one nice thing this week, which is, uh, I started, you know, I've HBO max now because I'm like, grandfathered into it. I started watching the show Doom Patrol, which is something that I was vaguely aware of as a show that existed. It was part of the DC universe,

like streaming service, which was like, nobody subscribed to for what I could tell. I mean, it was like just DC content. I thought we maybe talked about it one time on the show. Yeah, we talked about the Harley Quinn show that has since moved to HBO Max because there was a Harley Quinn show. Yeah, it's a Harley the show. Yeah, we talked about the Harley Quinn show that has since moved to HBO Max because they was a Harley Quinn show. Yeah, the cartoon.

It's an adult cartoon. So it's very exciting. Oh, right, right. It's like, yeah, it's like a R-rated cartoon. Yeah. Doom Patrol is a show about a group of misfit superheroes. And it is one of these shows. There's like, there's a show called The Umbrella Academy

and then there's The X-Men and they're all the same concept. It's like some old guy brings together a group of mutant misfits to like, save the world or whatever, but Doom Patrol apparently was predated The X-Men. It was created like six months before the X-Men. That's the only way I know them is that I remember

the X-Men are a copy, right? Thing. Yeah, I was not really aware of this at all. And the creator of Doom Patrol, I was just reading out and this was like, yeah, I think Stanley might have ripped me off the more that I think about it. He's like, there are a lot of writers and editors going and artists going back and forth between Marvel and DC, Dream Patrol's DC, and X-Men is obviously Marvel.

So I thought that was really interesting, but it's, so at first I was like, oh, it's like another shit. I started watching, I'm like, how is it possible that they were like, we're going to do a thing where it's like this professor basically and his like team of ragdag, mess fits or whatever. But it actually is very weird and very good and surprisingly funny and surprisingly like heartfelt. I mean, it has some episodes where I'm like,

all right, that was a bit much, but it also is like, it's very much like a comic, it's comic books from like the 50s and 60s. Like that's the vibe of it, but it's like, it's got a really interesting storyline. It has really well-developed characters. It has amazing acting, and I mean, everybody's great,

and Brennan Frazier is in it, though he largely plays the voice of a character named Robot Man. And there's this actress Diane Guerrero who plays a character named Jane with multiple personalities. She's just an amazing actress. I mean, everybody's excellent in it. Matt Bomers in it who plays, I think ironically a guy who always wears bandages over his face. Because I think Matt Bomers thing is he's like really handsome. But you know, you basically hardly ever see him in the show.

But that's also just his thing. Right, right. Well, him and Brandon Frazier are basically always unseen. And it's just very good. It's just a really entertaining show. I've watched all of season one, and started on season two last night. There's two seasons.

I think season two got cut short because of COVID-19, but it's just like, it's like much, much, much better than I expected it to be, and much better than most comic book TV shows that I've seen. It like, it is both serious and thoughtful in a way that many of those shows are not, and it is funny and fun in a way

that many of those shows are not and it is funny and fun in a way that many of those shows are not. And so, like, you know, I've been kind of desperate to, like, get into something recently, like, to watch at night when I'm just too exhausted to do anything else. You know, like, at the end of the day, I'm, like, too tired to play video games. Like, that's how exhausted I feel. Oh, 100%. I've been falling asleep at 9 o'clock at the latest.

Yeah, it doesn't help that I have prescription muscle relaxers now that they're like take after dinner and it's like two hours later, I'm like snoring. But, uh, but yeah, like, it's just a super fun show. Really good. I really, I've enjoyed it. I recommend it. I hope that it is a breakout success from HBO Max because like, I think it deserves to be. I think it like deserves a third season. I hope it gets more. I like, and I'm very interested in seeing like more of the stories from the show. So, you know, like it, it just is, I just think it's like, it's a weird gem.

Just was, you know, a diamond in the rough. There's a lot of stuff on HBO Max that I'm not interested in. And this is one that I have gotten really interested in. And I recommend it. And that is my nice thing. Great, well, the end. Everybody go watch TV shows.

Thank you for tuning in for 200 episodes of this insanity, and we're gonna have at least 200 more, so just buckle up. Bye, bye. Well, that is our show for this week. We'll be back next week with more tomorrow, and as always, I wish you and your family the very best, though I have just been informed that your family is also asleep in my garage. you