TRASHFUTURE - Brain Day at the Gym feat. Séamus Malekafzali

Episode Date: November 2, 2020

Hmm, nothing else is happening in the world right now, we’re sure of it. This Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum) brought on friend of the show S�...�amus Malekafzali (@Seamus_Malek) to discuss the recent election in Bolivia, a terrible therapy start up, and the continued adventures of Bill Gross and his war against his neighbours. You will love it. If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture We support the London Renters Union, which helps people defeat their slumlords and avoid eviction. If you want to support them as well, you can here: https://londonrentersunion.org/donate Here's a central location to donate to bail funds across the US to help people held under America's utterly inhumane system: https://secure.givelively.org/donate/the-bail-project If you want one of our *fine* new shirts, designed by Matt Lubchansky, then e-mail trashfuturepodcast [at] gmail [dot] com. £15 for patrons, £20 for non-patrons, plus shipping. *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind GYDS dot com). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, coming at you from Mindset Central. There we go. I'm so good at this. I've only been doing this for what, three years? Awesome. It is TFf that podcast you're listening to at this very present moment uh it is an all remote episode today going back to the back to the past uh with me riley uh we also have milo in studio hello yeah it's me i'm holding things down in the tf studio which is uh rapidly falling apart uh because our landlord is going bankrupt and thereby doing praxis on themselves. The classics, a little bit of landlord self-criticism of destroying your own business.
Starting point is 00:00:55 We also have Hussein who is recording on his big reel-to-reel tape recorder at his pub. That's right. I'm recording on a giant mini disc player from the Pie and Nonts. The best pub in Britain. And we're getting a van soon, which will say Nonts in big letters.
Starting point is 00:01:13 So everyone knows. Selling hot pies in all the village parks near you. And hiding under Hussein's bed, ready to eat his bones, it's Alice. Yeah, that's right. I'm organ a mob of jungkook stands in order to smash the windows of the pye and nonce.
Starting point is 00:01:31 Yeah, jungkook was actually the third member of big cook little cook. That's right. It's actually how they rebranded little chef in Korea. Oh yeah. And smiling politely, it is three-time returning champion seamus malik of zeli seamus how's it going oh it's going wonderful over here glad to be back on the podcast indeed um so look uh there's been some news today uh on the day when there's that oh no yes it's the six-year anniversary armor is happening again it's the six-year anniversary. Someone call Francis Fukuyama, it's happening again. It's the six-year anniversary of the Tommy Needy Drinky tweet,
Starting point is 00:02:09 which I think we can all appreciate. Wait, six years? That was 2014? Yeah, apparently. When have the years gone? And today has been yet another cromulent fuck-crustable of a day. That is true. Wait, six years?
Starting point is 00:02:23 Was it six years? I know it's an anniversary. It can't be six. It can't be that long, surely. Yeah. Time is fake now. Sorry, two year anniversary. I frequently get those mixed up. Fuck me.
Starting point is 00:02:39 We're dealing with very big brain Riley this evening. So hey, also, here's some other news that's been happening. And I'm going to basically make a statement here that will be totally boxed, which is that if you wanted us to talk about the Labour Party today, you'll be disappointed because we are recommitting to our policy of not falling into the trap of discussing the British Labour Party beyond the following sentence. I don't think we have anything new to say about it, and instead of spending various amounts of money monthly on membership, you could, for example, better spend that cash subscribing to an OnlyFans, or
Starting point is 00:03:09 getting good at Clash of Clans, or buying some lunar real estate. So with all of that now done with... It sucks. It's boring. Next. Stop talking about it. With all that done with now, I'm going to lead us into our first bit of foreign policy news of the day. I'm afraid that
Starting point is 00:03:25 Thomas Friedman has been proven wrong. How will he survive this? Thomas Friedman loves to get proven wrong. Where you might know this guy because in 1999 he said, no two countries that both had McDonald's
Starting point is 00:03:41 have ever fought a war against one another since each got its McDonald's. However, many, many countries have gone to war. Once again, cucked by history. Yeah. Now, in this case, many countries that have gone to war both had McDonald's in them since now and since they got their wars. However,
Starting point is 00:03:58 that was just proving him incorrect. Proving him conceptually so conceptually off-base he could never be listened to again forever the McDonald's Azerbaijan official account is now cheerleading the military taking of the Gorno Karabakh yes
Starting point is 00:04:13 yes Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar teaming up to murder Armenian civilians grimace wearing bandoliers and a headband. This is awesome. Just imagine the view from the end of
Starting point is 00:04:30 history where you're like, no two countries that both had a McDonald's have ever fought a war. And then like a little over 20 years later, McDonald's is actively being like Nagorno-Karabakh is Azeri territory. We shall not agree. I mean, say what you will, but I feel like Wimpy burger would be a lot
Starting point is 00:04:45 more neutral uh yes fudge you like would never call you an armenian dog wimpy burger is a hardcore armenian uh stan shavis down there i'm eager to get your your point of view on this what i think is basically not just the debunking, but the like, and one streetball debunking of the democratic peace theory. I mean, to a certain degree, I mean, Friedman was debunked on this, you know, 15 years ago, when Russia went to war against Georgia, which also had McDonald's. I mean, Friedman has been faltering for, I personally think, years, and this Azaria McDonald's thing kind of just seals the deal there.
Starting point is 00:05:30 I mean, I don't even know... He said this back in, what, like 1999? Right? Yeah. He had just spoken to a Russian cab driver. It's not based on anything that would even make sense conceptually.
Starting point is 00:05:46 McDonald's are not ruled by corporate. They're ruled by franchises locally. And one of those franchises inevitably would be exceedingly anti-Romanian. Yeah. Most of them in Los Angeles. Yeah. It's just a matter of time at this point. Do you reckon we could sell Azari McDonald's t-shirts?
Starting point is 00:06:08 I think that's so many different ways of getting sued at once. Can I get the McGenocide, please? At this point, what couldn't we sell in a t-shirt? Yeah, that's right. So I think we have to ask, is this a conflict that could be ended by the bringing
Starting point is 00:06:27 back of the McRib out of season ooh I mean I have been trying to speak to Ilham Aliyev about this I think if we can broker a peace between these two nations maybe we can bring the shamrock shake back as well
Starting point is 00:06:43 I don't know might be too tall of an order the Azer the azeris are weirdly very pro-irish um big st patrick's day celebrations over in uh baku that's right um so uh yeah i just thought that was that was a very fun little development just even Friedman's so cool. All he does these days, like post-Iraq, is he goes to a country, sees a billboard, makes up a conversation with a cab driver, and comes back and writes it up. It's beautifully efficient. I respect the grift very much. I do love the Thomas Friedman. I do love the Thomas Friedman.
Starting point is 00:07:25 the grift very much i i do love the thomas friedman i do love the thomas friedman i've read most of the articles that he's published since like post iraq not not my own volition every single article that he's done is wrong it's really incredible like most writers bad writers they have like one that's like okay like i get it very small but no friedman props to him every single one catastrophically wrong he's writing it ironically. Yeah, he's a performance artist. Yeah. He wrote his articles as negatives. He was supposed to develop them into the correct opinion.
Starting point is 00:07:54 Which we're doing now. Which the Azeri McDonald's, no, just joking. It did not. Hey, I want to leave the McDonald's drive-thru and go to the startup drive-thru, though. But we have startups
Starting point is 00:08:09 at home! Exactly. We're not going to get McDonald's. We have startups at home. The startup this week is called MindLabs. Called what? MindLabs. All one word. Mind for mind. Wasn't that that thing
Starting point is 00:08:25 that you had the big yellow Game Boy looking thing? Yeah, and you plug it into your Lego set and you could code on it. I feel like there are 10 things already named Mind Labs. All of them are owned by Lego. It's good news for all of you that I happen to have
Starting point is 00:08:42 a little bit more information. It was founded by a media duo, Adnam Ebrahim and Gabor Sedlak, who previously ran the VC-backed automotive phenomenon called Car Throttle, which has apparently... Okay. the co-founder said, and quote, having run a media company in a tough market with a young millennial workforce, we witnessed firsthand how there was a complete lack of investment in helping this generation with their mental health in a way that they're used to,
Starting point is 00:09:12 a community product that is mobile first and video led. We want to make the world a happier place by making working on your mental health as normal as going to the gym. So I'm asking you, I'm asking you, based on that quote, It's Dr. Kawashima's brain training. I'm asking you,'m asking you based on kawashima's brain training i'm asking you based on that quote what do you think makes this epidemic of mental health startup worthy of inclusion because we've seen these a million times and a million of them do it normal and i would like real guesses as to what you actually think this product absolutely do not
Starting point is 00:09:40 do this normal it's gonna be like it's on your phone obviously uh-huh but there you go it's just is it just gonna like hair you with some other asshole with depression and you have to like be each other's therapist oh yeah so a universe it's basically what like mutual aid but therapy yeah exactly yes that's gonna be a thing sooner or later uh i want to see here's some more guesses chatter p wait wait what where where is this startup based can i ask that oh you can't it's based in britain oh okay okay okay okay that kind of that unlocks a whole new fucking panoply of fucked vibes okay that gives you like a um like a cameo from a celebrity to cheer up your mental health? So you log that you're depressed and then Prince Harry is like, listen, mate, we're not going to throw a napkin.
Starting point is 00:10:32 It's going to be Danny Dyer. It's going to be Danny Dyer telling you to stop being so sad all the time. Yeah, you slag. Yeah. You fucking mug, you chart. You've got to cheer up, mate. You've got to sort it out. I think it's gonna be
Starting point is 00:10:48 something completely non-functional. I think it's gonna be like the DS game, like the brain-training DS games, but it's like a game where you try to tear out something from your brain and it's sad. It's just complete nonsense. It's like a game.
Starting point is 00:11:03 So Seamus is the closest. I want to hear from Hussein and then I'm going to move on. I was actually going to say something along the lines of Seamus, but I think it has... I feel like it could be
Starting point is 00:11:20 a gym-related app, but it's one which tracks your mental health somehow. Yes, that's a big part of it. Never skip brain day. You've asked it. That's what I was thinking. It's brain day for the gym.
Starting point is 00:11:35 It's being a centrist columnist. Number one, that's a very good episode title. Number two, Hussein and Seamus are pretty close. I'm going to give you two more items that are gonna give that are gonna give you the um should give the game away here they are number one they have decided they've they've claimed they are building the world's first live mental health platform and they're branding themselves as hold on to something, the Peloton of mental health. No!
Starting point is 00:12:06 No! No, come on, man. We're all getting group therapy together. I mean, to be fair, the woman in the Peloton ad did genuinely look like she was going through some stuff, so... She inspired me. Is that genuinely what it's going to be? Is it group therapy, then? But, like, ranked group therapy.
Starting point is 00:12:25 It is group therapy. There is a tracked element that attracts your mental health and it is gamified. Awesome. Fantastic. You have almost all of it. You have almost all of it. You're missing the one crucial most hilarious part. Is it pay to win group therapy?
Starting point is 00:12:41 Can you pay extra for more gold coins? So you get better insights. Yeah, clash of clans, but it's different personality disorders. Yeah. You're so close. You're missing the one key element. ADHD crush. What could be the missing
Starting point is 00:12:58 thing? Is it on the blockchain? I just keep going back to the same thing I always say about all these startups, which is there has to be a phrenology component. Let's just say there is something similar, but not literally phrenology. I'm going to give you one more.
Starting point is 00:13:14 Hopefully this will be it. It's a really stupid gimmick. Do you have any idea how little? That is the entire point of this podcast. okay i got you i got you so two of the main ways this is from their marketing documentation two of the main ways the mind labs platform differentiates itself from other mental wellness apps is the combination
Starting point is 00:13:36 of its video classes the group therapy sessions that's right and it's eeg headband which it calls a halo no no no no how is how is that not phrenology like is this measure is this like taking measurements of your brain's activity that's what i mean that's why i think you were so close and like making it into like maps and i don't know like kind of kind of like i don't know like the fucking nike run app but for your mental health or something. What does this AEG headband look like? Is it like styled nicely? Oh, very much so.
Starting point is 00:14:14 It's a very, it's one you can wear to the boardroom or the discotheca. Great. Goes well with my shirt. Yeah, that's right. So the Halo measures signals like heart and respiration rates that can help show users how effective their sessions are. Or how horny you are. Yeah, that's right. You can link it.
Starting point is 00:14:35 You can pair it to your chastity cage, which has been locked ever since that zero day vulnerability. So do you get like a medal or a special badge if you have a panic attack during one of these sessions? And your heart starts going pumping like crazy? Well, it's funny you should say that oh no oh no can you can you hook it up to trigger pod so you can see how triggered you are at any given moment so they say mind labs uh basically so basically like peloton classes you kind of sign up it's like a live class or pre-recorded or whatever uh mind labs plans it's like choose your own adventure like if you're feeling sad turn to page 132 well they tried this they tried this very recently with gpt3 and the result was that like trying to do ai therapy results in an ai that just tells you to kill yourself.
Starting point is 00:15:26 And I mean, it's an AI that's right. But like, genuinely, they had the fake patient ask, I'm really sad. And it's like, oh, that's bad. How can I help? And the patient's like, I feel like I want to kill myself. Should I kill myself? And the AI is like, yeah.
Starting point is 00:15:42 Do whatever you feel. That's self-care, this is this is kind of the problem with mental health discourse right is that everything that people say about mental health has now become so meaningless that like an ai telling you to kill yourself is like the logical conclusion of it like hey sometimes hey run a bath light a candle slit your wrists why not sometimes people do that to cope. That's okay. Cut toxic relatives out of your life by killing yourself.
Starting point is 00:16:10 During live streams, instructors will welcome new subscribers and mention existing user achievements. After each workout, users will get results on a screen that they can share with the rest of the class. That's cool.
Starting point is 00:16:25 Getting my 4,000-day chip for not killing myself. Yeah. Well, it seems very Jonestown-y, almost like Synanon, doesn't it? Sort of like a really nice Synanon. But yeah, you kept your heart rate the lowest. Here's a badge. Everything about this is fine.
Starting point is 00:16:45 That's cool, actually. I love it. I've been saying this. All of my friends have been saying this. We've all been saying together, this is fine. This is so fine. In fact, we've all been chanting it in a way that I would describe as very normal, while holding hands and circling a big punch bowl.
Starting point is 00:17:02 That's right. So, before we pass out the flavor aid, I have a few more bits of information. Instead of categorizing videos by technique they're trying to teach, like meditation, breathing, or visualization, MindLabs decided to sort them into issues that users want to cope with, like anxiety, relationships,
Starting point is 00:17:18 motivation, or addiction. For example, overcoming COVID anxiety or coping with stress at work. I think you could probably add there, overcoming climate anxiety or coping with stress at work and i think you could probably add there overcoming climate anxiety let me just put on my little plastic hat that makes me feel better about all the things that are coming to end civilization everything is fine this is the thing right like surely these days like working on the suicide hotline must be a harder job than it presumably was previously because a lot of the people phoning in just have like very reasonable reasons and it's like difficult to be like no you
Starting point is 00:17:49 shouldn't kill yourself and they're like when they start going through like the climate catastrophe and everything you gotta be like yeah fair enough it's rational funny you should mention that they say oh no oh no no put the ladies down my way for fuck's sakes don't finish this well basically sneeing what they call alarming statistics in young adult suicide rates and depression the Mindlabs guys, who used to run Buzzfeed for Cars
Starting point is 00:18:14 decided to was it just called Buzzfeed for Cars? this was Car Throttle what does that mean? it's like Jalopnik except nobody read it. But it had a lot of venture capital money.
Starting point is 00:18:30 Unlike Jalopnik. Isn't that just kind of like when Jeremy what's his face? You've already forgotten his name, have you? I've actually forgotten the name. Jeremy Corbyn hosted Top Gear. Yeah, Jeremy Clarkson when he had his own website about cars and back,
Starting point is 00:18:48 got a ton of venture capital money in, despite the fact that it now just promotes conspiracy theory. Related stuff, last time I checked. Yeah, well, that's right. These guys turned their venture capital-backed BuzzFeed for cars into a thing that solves the problem in young adult suicide rates and depression with a little plastic hat and then a badge
Starting point is 00:19:09 that says that your heart rate is low. I cannot stress enough how fine this is. All of you are overreacting so much to this thing that is fine. That classic measure of depression, heart rate. So, for example, the number of concurrent users in a class will be displayed,
Starting point is 00:19:25 along with a live feed showing subscriber achievements, like the number of minutes spent in a, quote, calm state that other people can then react to for positive reinforcement. Can we get some calm emotes going in the chat? Hype train on the therapy stream. So, basically... Like a heated therapy moment. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:44 I think that if you walked up to these guys And sort of tugged on their faces like a Scooby Doo mask It would just be two Adam Curtis's Yeah so Don't worry it's also funded by Like four different VC funds So basically Remember how people used to say
Starting point is 00:20:02 That as a consumer you can like vote with your feet So to speak Vote with your brain with your feet, so to speak, and spend money on this stuff? Yeah, vote with your brain. Vote with your dollar, so to speak. In this case, because companies like this are so venture capital backed that they could basically go on forever, you can't do that. It's basically being imposed on you. So guess what? Cool.
Starting point is 00:20:22 The little plastic hat to fight you know I'd say multiple interlocking and overlapping crises is not going away if anything there will be more of it they just love something that like wires into your brain we've done so many startups that have like a weird like brain hat you have to wear
Starting point is 00:20:39 imagine having to like wear multiple of them at once like their old toolbars on like Netscape Navigator Your dad comes in with like three including one It's like three different hats that are each measuring his brainwaves on a lot of stone top of each other like one That's subliminally advertising to him Yeah, dad you put on the different brain hat him yeah dad you put on the ad it's advertising you a different brain hat um yeah so uh uh seamus what do you what do you think about sort of the total the total view of mind labs uh the
Starting point is 00:21:14 plastic hat that's supposed to solve all these problems i mean i'm sorry to say this because it seems very pessimistic um but i don't think that we're going to come out of this next year with a mental health solved. I think it's going to increase as the years goes on. And I don't think that a Peloton for therapy is going to alleviate it even a little bit. I think your brain hat is telling me that... I'm having something controversial.
Starting point is 00:21:45 I know people don't want me saying this. I know that they don't want me saying this, but I think people like being in the same room as other people and talking about your problems. I don't think they like doing it over a screen that much. Boo. I'm detecting a lot of very negative vibes from your brain hat.
Starting point is 00:22:03 I don't think it's like a screen thing, because obviously in the wake of the pandemic, lots of therapy has sort of gone virtual. And I think that even though the dynamic is different, like the one-to-one, like having one-to-one conversations or even just like short group conversations, but like group therapy, that's a very different dynamic to what this is,
Starting point is 00:22:20 which is effectively like recognizing that people have these sort of anxieties and the conclusion coming from that being well what we'll do is we'll try to like artificially uh reduce how your heart like reduce your like blood pressure or heartbeat and also we'll take a lot of that data and we might do some stuff with it which is like effectively what peloton does with like exercise and stuff right but with exercise it's very much like you know um it's it's not as like intimate or as uh requires uh the same level of vulnerability as this so in a lot of ways this is actually like one of the most
Starting point is 00:22:57 in my i would argue like this is probably one of the most sinister apps sinister like startups that we've reviewed for like a while what's interesting is that it's trying to inculcate the same kind of feelings that you have about sharing your data with exercise in mental health. You're going to have bragging rights that you were very calm that day. And that's very fucked. That's like only Britain could produce a startup this fucked vibes, genuinely. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:23:28 It's what I also think is the thing to remember whenever you see stuff like this, especially if a startup claims to have some kind of greater social purpose, they're trying to change the world for a better place. All of that venture capital money is sort of stored up human labor
Starting point is 00:23:44 that is directed towards doing this that could be doing something else so how many poor like you know youth suicides do you think you would prevent by just say I don't know bumping up like just giving that there's nothing else we could
Starting point is 00:24:00 have spent this money on how much money has this like raised by the way uh hang on sure it's not a huge amount. Let me look. Yeah, I mean, mental health services are kind of underfunded at the moment, so I wouldn't imagine that they've raised, like, a lot. And it's been useful, because since I've been wearing this brain hat, it's made me a lot more pro-Azari. I'm increasingly sectarian in my views, but I'm much happier. So it's still at pre-seed right now.
Starting point is 00:24:29 It's only raised a couple million, but that's a couple million through... Yeah, sure. Okay. Pocket change. Yeah. That's a couple million that's also been channeled through multiple funds,
Starting point is 00:24:39 and it's being heavily promoted by the funds. Give that money to us. So, like, I don't know. I see that. Like, all that mind labs has to do is sign one deal with one big company that they're gonna be like giving it away as a benefit or whatever and those big companies have like we have to make mental health pledges as part of our new social responsibilities or whatever and so then all of a sudden that big sale to that one company where this will probably never be used except by freaks
Starting point is 00:25:05 and weirdos, is then going to make this company more valuable. Or people who are made to by their boss. Indeed, yeah. If your workplace wellness policy offers this in a very capital O offers sort of way,
Starting point is 00:25:22 you're going to be kind of pressured to put on the brain hat. Yeah, and then show everybody how calm you are while signing the card that says you'll never join a union. It's not constructive dismissal if we use your brain hat data to show that you're not
Starting point is 00:25:38 very calm at work these days. Your brain hat is showing worrying Armenian tendencies. A chilling sign of things to come. But hey, I want to move beyond the startup a little bit. I want to go... I want to talk about how good the Monroe Doctrine is. I've just got this shirt.
Starting point is 00:25:56 It says Monroe Doctrine number one fan, and I'm wearing a big foam finger. It says Monroe Doctrine forever. Plus, I've just invested quite a bit of money in a company that makes both of those things. Seamus, how rich am I going to be? Sorry?
Starting point is 00:26:17 I'm asking you how the Monroe Doctrine is going. Seamus' brain hat switched off for a moment there. I'm asking you, how is the Monroe Doctrine going? Because we're switching gears to Bolivia and Chile. Oh, okay. Sorry. Well, I mean... Can you please make that topic switch a little bit cleaner?
Starting point is 00:26:33 I mean, I think the Monroe Doctrine is working pretty well. You know, we got a really pro-American guy that just got into Bolivia. His name is Louis Arce. And he's from the MAS Alliance. I don't know what that means, but I'm assuming it's something pretty pro-capitalist. Don't know. Movimento Americano Supremo, probably. I think it stands for Mainly Allies of Silvercorp.
Starting point is 00:27:06 Yeah. That's right. And what seems to have happened is that their degenerate liberal former Prime Minister, President rather, has been removed in an election by, finally, a government that will stand up for
Starting point is 00:27:21 America and will uphold the Monroe Doctrine. That's right. That's right. That's right. Thank you. That was a fun sketch by the Trash Future players. And seen. We are
Starting point is 00:27:37 moving on. We're discussing Bolivia, Chile, South America, places upon which... Talking to Elliot Abrams,ams like but you love blood we love a nurse sketch reference so we're speaking here to Seamus about exactly
Starting point is 00:27:56 what's going on in South America yeah Seamus what's going on in South America would you say that Che Guevara lives that the spirit of the people is eternal and will never be defeated, and that it's time for the great Satan to finally renounce its claim on Latin America? Or, like, not that? Ah, the great Satan, Armenia, yes.
Starting point is 00:28:17 I'm going to say somewhere in the middle. I'm going to say somewhere in the middle. So, recently, I think the biggest story is right now out of Bolivia. After months and months and months of delays for the election, pushing it back three times, mass protests by working class people to force, uh, Jeannie Daniels to have the election, uh, blockading cities, um, uh, really just mobilizing the population, uh, against the right-wing, uh, coup government. Um, finally, despite all of the odds being stacked against, um, Moss, uh, Louis Arce won the election, not by a little bit, but by a pretty significant amount, 55% and the next candidate with 29%. Absolute majority. Even if all the other right-wing candidates had united under one roof, Louis Arce would have still won.
Starting point is 00:29:24 And he plans to be inaugurated, I believe, 10 days from now. So it's all moving pretty quickly. However, we cannot have everything in this world. Pretty soon after...
Starting point is 00:29:40 I mean, you know, we're doing a lot of things as children. About two days after the election happened, there started to be rumblings in the right wing talking about that dreaded word that we all know and love. That's fraud in the Bolivian election. in the Bolivian election. Now, listeners might be aware that back last year, there was another accusation of fraud in the Bolivia election, one that became so widespread that it forced the police and the Bolivian army to, quote-unquote, ask very nicely Ivo Morales to leave.
Starting point is 00:30:27 And so he did. They're very passionately anti-fraud, the Bolivian police and military. I will give credit where credit is due. Back last year. I'll give the Bolivian right wing credit. During that, even though no one is requiring me to. What I'm saying is that in 2019,
Starting point is 00:30:42 even if it was completely false, completely false. But all right, the narrative is Moss is in power. There was a quick vote system that showed Carlos Mesa up and they shut it off. And that means that Carlos Mesa actually won, Eva Morales lost. All right. That narrative, even though it's completely false and it requires you not to understand the quick vote system at all, that at least made some sense, like if you had no concept of truth. But in this case, MAS is non-power. The right-wing government is in power. The leader of MAS is in exile in Argentina. Moss supporters are constantly prosecuted and persecuted by the government
Starting point is 00:31:27 and yet somehow they rig the election from somewhere, somehow and it's a masterstroke it's really, Eber Morales his greatest achievement he's the Napoleon of crime
Starting point is 00:31:44 playing 25 dimensional chess a thousand moves ahead his greatest achievement. He's the Napoleon of crime. Playing 25 dimensional chess a thousand moves ahead. Are you calling someone a Napoleon of crime? They used similar technology to the CIA's heart attack gun, which is the leftist political unfairness
Starting point is 00:32:00 ray. They've been choosing CIA officers with that. You can't combine using cia officers with that yeah yeah you can't combine the heart attack gun with the mental health helmet though they freak each other out the bolivian left is able to use the heart attack gun and the mental health helmet uh to commit fraud from uh its basis of precisely no power yeah i assume that's of course the same sort of you know coterie of of uh perverts and weirdos is taking this seriously. Actually, you would be surprised at how desperate this is, I think is the right word for it.
Starting point is 00:32:35 So back in 2019, obviously, I mean, you had you have the Bolivian right wing all united against Iguarrales as kind of one front there. oblivion right wing all united against abel morales as kind of one front there um you had the oas the incredibly powerful um you know super national organization of latin american states with the u.s government's backing um tons of nations you know demanding the morales resign and hold new elections um but now um the oas has affirmed the election is non-fraudulent. Though strangely, all of the jurisdictions that the OAS said were fraudulent, in this election, they all went more for Moss than they did in the last election. Oh, wow. Moss for Moss. I imagine Moss just probably did. They were like, well, it worked last time. We'll just do it more. Clearly, Moss is in the New England Patriots school of
Starting point is 00:33:30 cheat, even when you're winning overwhelmingly. The OAS affirmed it as non-fraudulent. The UN affirmed it. Pompeo came out and said, oh, yeah, we're looking forward to working with Louis Arce. Democracy's returned.
Starting point is 00:33:49 And Janina Añez conceded the election very early on, not even when the results were certified, but when the exit poll came out. Carlos Mesa did the same. Right now, the force that is coming behind it, for the most part, is Luis Fernando Camacho and CRIMOS, his alliance, and the Santa Cruz Civic Committee. His alliance of guys
Starting point is 00:34:14 with German names. Alliance with guys with strangely European looks good at all. We simply have to bring back classic values like D that yeah yeah right now they're in they're in a bit of a difficult position because genie anyas and the leadership um like murray murrayo for example they've all kind of i mean they're talking about how mass
Starting point is 00:34:42 and the return of ilmaras to Bolivia, that means that there's going to be corruption and economic destruction, but they've consigned themselves, at least for now, I don't want to say that for sure, because it could obviously turn against this, but for right now, they're saying that this is just kind of a
Starting point is 00:35:00 horrible loss and that there needs to be some implication, there needs to be some sort of regrouping here but camacho came out on the second night to say that while he wasn't questioning the authenticity of the results um he was strongly criticizing the quote-unquote lack of transparency from the electoral board and though he later accepted the results a couple of days later, his former group, the Santa Cruz Civic Committee, which is incredibly powerful in the Santa Cruz department,
Starting point is 00:35:31 they are still doing this. They filed a lawsuit unsuccessfully to stop the counting of the votes. They've been really pushing- Sometimes it gets too democratic and you have to stop counting the votes. The democracy thing was overloading. It was like Chernobyl.
Starting point is 00:35:47 What's really interesting is that all of them happened to win a competition in their Cheerios boxes. They've all won trips to Langley, Virginia. All expenses paid. That's cool. Just a road trip. I imagine you'd need to be pretty naive to think that there aren't several chain burger restaurants in Florida where more guys aren't getting together and thinking, you know what, we could probably take it, right? We could really impress Trump. He'd have us to the White House like the football boys. Yeah, he'd buy us a McDonald's. Less a million silver corpse bloom.
Starting point is 00:36:22 I know. In pursuit of an Azari McDonald's. So I also want to talk about what's been happening with Agnes in the wake of the election, but also in the run-up to the election. Because Seamus, you mentioned this sort of persecution of mass activists. it uh there was that persecution got extraordinarily intense at points uh up to and including like extrajudicial killings that were uh laid at the feet of the uh interim government whose job was to hold a bunch of elections but also materially changed uh foreign policy domestic policy uh started privatizations on a bunch of stuff and brought a gigantic bible into the presidential palace so uh seamus can you comment on sort of what some of that was leading up to the election which i think will give some color
Starting point is 00:37:10 uh to what we are going to say next um well um to put it very very very politely um genia anyas um has um massacres on her hands. I mean, back during the beginning and the aftermath of the coup d'etat, there were mass protests in places like Cochabamba. And in Cochabamba, the police were called in. And what they essentially did in one instance, which was caught on camera, they flooded this protest with tear gas, to which even though it was an open space, you could not escape it if you even tried.
Starting point is 00:37:49 And within that tear gas cloud, they fired live rounds onto protesters. Lots of people were injured. Tens were killed. And in the aftermath of that specific massacre, Murillo, the interior minister, came on tv and was asked about it and said oh well i guess they they shot themselves um and then i mean it just kind of it continued like this where they attempted to i mean after after those massacres they attempted a more uh i don't want to say something that's more polite, but something that was just more legal, where they tried to, Krimos, Camacho's party, filed a lawsuit to ban MAS. The government did not interfere with that lawsuit at all, though that was unsuccessful.
Starting point is 00:38:37 Añez attempted to arrest Ibarrales on a bunch of charges. The first was terrorism because of all the other protesters blocking the cities in order to force elections to happen. Oh, because when people protest, that's terrorism, but when you shoot the protesters, that's just doing government stuff. That's counter-terrorism. Here's the thing also, right? We talk about all of this
Starting point is 00:39:00 violence, instability, genuine uncertainty leading up to the election. And so, you know, I i mean anyone who's like oh this was wasn't a fascist dictatorship after all because they definitely did have elections just has is one of these people that just as a goldfish who doesn't like it was not able to synthesize they were they were forced to yeah um by the prospect of something like much more grinding and they were forced into it and they resisted that force with violence lethal violence
Starting point is 00:39:29 it strikes me as incredible that there are people who think that they somehow mass rigged the election when like they weren't in power like how the fuck would you rig an election that you weren't in charge of if you believe it I read the reason why I was supposed would you rig an election that you weren't in charge of well if you believe it if you believe
Starting point is 00:39:45 it um i read i did the reason why i was supposed to send um riley some notes about this beforehand but i kept i wanted to keep researching the articles that were published in bolivian media to find like was there something i'm missing here about the fraud like is there something deeper here that I'm missing? Maybe there's something gigantic, like a piece of evidence here, even though it's a complete lie, like they're holding on to something. And there really isn't. The one video that I got that was shown around a lot,
Starting point is 00:40:22 but one that I found was that there was a shot of someone, of a vote counter in full view of reporters showing a ballot, showing that, I think the intention was to vote for Camacho, but the X was out of bounds, so they dropped it because that would be an invalid ballot. But they used this evidence as, oh, they're throwing out Camacho votes. Like, it's chaos, but that was only one instance.
Starting point is 00:40:45 And then in the lawsuit followed by the Santa Cruz Civic Committee, there were accusations that in certain small jurisdictions, there were, but lots of them, there was turnout
Starting point is 00:40:58 of over 100%. But also, that evidence was not provided in any of the reports at all. It was kind of his claim. So what I find really fun about this, right, is they're just making the same claim they did last time and being like, well, hope it sticks. Yeah. We didn't think of anything new.
Starting point is 00:41:18 They're using even less than last time. And on top of that, it's just it doesn't it, it's, I mean, there are still like thousands of people protesting. There are people blocking streets. There are people like, I mean, a person died in these protests. The head of the Bolivian Mine Workers Union was beaten to death by right-wing protesters over this. And the fraud has, accusations have never been so flimsy. They've never been so inane. They've never been so just complete nonsense. It doesn't make any sense if you think about it for more than a second. There was a, yeah. Bolivia needs Jose Pacho Moravec.
Starting point is 00:42:01 Oh my God. Okay. okay. Just one other thing. This kind of illustrates it. There was an Eldeber, which is a tabloid, a right-wing tabloid. It's very popular with the right wing. They interviewed a protester in Sucre. And she said she wouldn't give her name
Starting point is 00:42:20 because she said she feared retaliation. And she said that um in her department uh carlos mesa had won but after but after the results came out it turned out that arce had won and the paper gave no supporting evidence nothing this woman's statement that oh yeah like just believe me source do, dude, just trust me. Believe women. Carlos Mays won the story. It's complete, I can't say it enough.
Starting point is 00:42:53 No evidence. Absolutely no evidence. So also, I want to go back to, from the fraud thing as well, just to the sort of, in the repression that led up to the election, that was quite lethal. Ginny Nanez is now, I think, quite rightly being prosecuted for her involvement in sort of this activity as the leader of the state.
Starting point is 00:43:13 And then she tweeted, Alice, please. The mask recovers its habit of prosecuting those who think differently. That is why it must be reminded that democracy is not only the rule of the majority. Furthermore, it is the government that judges the law and it's the government that respects freedom. So yeah, extrajudicial murder. These days, these days, if you merely fire into crowds,
Starting point is 00:43:43 you'll be arrested and put in jail just for saying you're Bolivian. Janine Añez was quoted as saying, and what is the charge? Enjoying an election? A succulent Bolivian election? Get your hand off my penis. You know you'll do well.
Starting point is 00:44:02 I have a series of questions here. most notably, given that it was the police and the military that ousted MAS in the first place, what are the odds that this is actually gonna end with, like, actual material charges? How do you get the, like, organs of state violence back in line, if you're Luis Arce? That's the thing. I think Mimas retained its legislative majority that it had all throughout this. And it's the party that's, obviously,
Starting point is 00:44:34 it's the party that is filing the charges in the first place to try to get this trial in place. But I think there is a significant risk. I mean, already, just today, there were mass protests by the right wing over the fact that the legislator made plans to shift. All bills needed to be passed with a two-thirds majority. Now it's for a half majority, like it is in most places in the world. But because of that, there were mass protests by the right wing, and there were newspapers like Pagina Siete talking about how Moss were authoritarian mongers. Any motion that Moss does is going to be met by intense furor, I think.
Starting point is 00:45:59 So we're not talking then about a Venezuelan-style thing where step one is purge the military officers about it to bring in more of mine with his ideology. And that obviously did not work. It did not work at all in any way, shape, or form. I asked Erdogan. I learned about him from my brain helmet. I think they're in a really delicate position here. Because even though the right wing is very fractured and doesn't have the support, at least right now, that of course could change. But they don't have the support right now of the OAS. They don't have the support of the U.S., at least publicly. And the right wing itself within Bolivia kind of hates each other at the moment. Gina Añez and Camacho are not on very good terms because of personal beefs that are incomprehensible to me. Um, the danger lies in the fact that the power within the right wing base is still very much there. They have the power to, even if they're not ultimately successful in maybe authoring Louis
Starting point is 00:46:53 Arce, if they wanted to implement a trial, um, they could, they have the capacity to convulse the country. If they want to, they have the ability to form a mob and start killing people. They have the ability to make things incredibly difficult for the Moslek government if they try to do anything. So they're between a rock and a hard place here. I mean, Gina Anya is, we're all agreed, this woman is responsible for horrible things and would need to be prosecuted. But her prosecution would bring... It might require just too much hardship. Expending
Starting point is 00:47:34 a great deal of political capital that could better be expended elsewhere, essentially. Sure. And also, there's also the risk right now, even though I believe there's a law in the books preventing former government officials from leaving the country, there is a significant risk that Murillo could leave, and he was really responsible
Starting point is 00:47:49 for the massacres in a lot of ways. He said to Albert that he would leave the country to go on vacation. Which, you know, it's a code there. It's serious. There is definitely a danger that they could leave the country and then
Starting point is 00:48:05 escape prosecution that way and then moss could have it out that way where oh i guess they're gone we can ask for a solution he's going to a private island with his inner circle to pretend that everything's normal just for a few days no what's gonna happen is he's gonna move to america and then his like kids are gonna be like uh like uh comedians on tiktok or whatever who then do a serious listen to bolivians uh series be very cool they're all going to go to the new school they're all going to become american francis foster yeah google bolivia everybody we're googling we're googling yeah yeah we're bigot uh so slap it into our Jeeves and educate yourself.
Starting point is 00:48:46 Yeah, so I think just to wrap up this segment on Bolivia before we have what I can only assure you is the dessert of this particular episode is essentially we have to ask ourselves, right?
Starting point is 00:49:01 And so this directed towards you, Seamus. And this is also true for Chileile by the way which has recently amended its pinochet era constitution that hard-coded neoliberalism and governed down the national cathedral of the police which uh yeah so uh but my question here right is these are how durable do you think these changes are? If you can sum it up. I'm sorry to say that at least right now, I don't think that they're very durable. Louis Arce is going to be... He has the majority of people behind him, obviously. That was proven at the polls.
Starting point is 00:49:46 the majority of people behind him, obviously. That was proven at the polls. But he is still very much at the mercy of right-wing forces that are waiting to pounce on him immediately, should he do anything wrong. If he walks this tightrope, then he might have the power to make a future MAS administration, or maybe another term utters administration much more durable but this first these first few months are going to be very difficult for him i think regardless of what he does or what he what he doesn't do so um well i think that that give wraps that up in a nice little bow. And we shall be looking with interest to see how things develop in that region, because right now
Starting point is 00:50:30 there aren't a lot of places to give us a lot of hope. Right now I am merely thinking of the time when Fidel Castro went to meet Salvador Allende and gave him a gold-plated Kalashnikov. We're going to wrap up here with some real dessert. This is pure dessert. Also,
Starting point is 00:50:51 for Patreon subscribers, you'll know exactly who we're talking about. If you haven't subscribed to the Patreon, I think maybe we'll subscribe to the Labour Party and sub to the Patreon. That's right. Do subscribe to the Patreon. Maybe we'll do that. Subscribe to the Labour Party and sub to the Patreon. That's right. Do subscribe to the Patreon.
Starting point is 00:51:07 Maybe we'll put this segment on YouTube or something. This is just too good not to talk about. Invest your bolivars in the Trash Future Patreon. So, we all remember Bond King and famed Sun hater Bill Gross, right?
Starting point is 00:51:23 The coolest guy we've talked about no wild bill gross exactly i i learned up on him riley messaged me in the middle of the night to tell me to listen to the bill gross episode yeah he does that it's probably a better time that's right no i mean no no he also does that but riley why have you included this picture of your dick? Yeah, Bill Gross. That's what I call it. So Bill Gross, basically bond king of the 1980s,
Starting point is 00:51:55 billionaire, basically kind of went crazy in 2015, had an acrimonious split with his firm, and then... Hates his son. Hates his son and also the rest of his family continues generously funding his son yeah he's a cool guy who does business uh so there's an article that came out in the la times recently that i thought was so delightful just that investor there's the headline investor bill gross accused of blaring the gilligan's island thief song on loop specifically
Starting point is 00:52:26 the coolest guy we know dude's rock god if we could have him on the left huh how cool would that be i know left-wing billionaire completely impossible, but just that level of just spike-driven madness. Yeah, left-wing adjacent billionaire. Yeah. I'd even take lib billionaire. If this guy, like, you know how George Soros or, like, Warren Buffett, like, kind of get touted as these, like, left-wing billionaires? like left wing billionaires if either of them did like exactly
Starting point is 00:53:06 the same kind of milquetoast lib shit but were like this had this guy's personality how much fun would that be so awesome Warren Buffett is standing outside of my house
Starting point is 00:53:21 blaring the Gilligan's Island song on loop Warren Buffett basically doing what Tony Soprano did to get a good Standing outside of my house, blaring the Gilligan's Island song on loop. Yeah, holding up a boom bar. Warren Buffett basically doing what Tony Soprano did to get a good deal on a beach house. Let's check out this article. A dispute between Bond King Bill Gross and his next door neighbor over a $1 million outdoor sculpture has developed into police calls to their respective Laguna Beach mansions. Imagine being those cops.
Starting point is 00:53:49 Just having to sort out this kind of like manager's billionaire petty Facebook bullshit. I hate it when Steven Seagal in a police tank busts through the side of my billionaire mansion and runs over my dog. Gross and his partner,
Starting point is 00:54:07 former professional tennis player Amy Schwartz, are being accused of tech entrepreneur Mark Tofik and his wife of harassment. What a name. Fucking name. An intentional infliction of emotional distress. The cause? A 22-foot-long blue glass sculpture installation.
Starting point is 00:54:24 Wait, what? What is this blue glass? What does this installation look like? I have to see. I invite you to look at this look up Bill Gross glass installation because my internet is very slow when I'm running. Bill Gross glass
Starting point is 00:54:40 installation. Is that 2 million dollars? Just the 1 million. Wow. That is the ugliest thing I've ever seen. That is fully your partner has gotten into glass blowing on a workshop. Oh, yes.
Starting point is 00:54:55 It's not good. Whenever I look at it, my third eye just starts twitching a little bit. Bill Grace looks a bit like christopher walken my wife she's been buying glass sculptures and take a look at my glass you're the guy that he's allegedly tormenting by the way is the svp of digital technology and experience at PepsiCo. Awesome.
Starting point is 00:55:26 My neighbor. He's a piece of shit. Okay. His Twitter account at Taufik says he is passionate about helping the advancement of humanity and he has locked his account, possibly because Bill Gross is fucking
Starting point is 00:55:43 cyberbullying bullying he said something about jungkook and the status bill gross is like the k-pop of the finance world absolutely flexing on this poor soda company dips yeah well it's it's he's a billionaire like to make fan cams of me on the internet. He's a billionaire who is flexing on this mere millionaire. That is a flex. At issue this time is an artwork that can be lighted at night and features cobalt-colored reeds stretching 10 feet in height, swimming marlin, and globes inspired by traditional
Starting point is 00:56:19 blown-glass Japanese fishing floats. It was created by Dale Chihuly. Whatever his name is. Dale Chih created by Dale Chihuly. Whatever his name is. Dale Chihuly? That's actually a famous artist and it looks like shit. An artist whose striking blown glass work adorns the ceiling
Starting point is 00:56:37 of the Bellagio in Vegas. So he just put some Vegas window dressing shit in his lawn. I mean, there's also a massive Del Chihuly a chandelier in the V&A in London
Starting point is 00:56:53 which is an enormous pain in the ass to the people who have to clean it because it's like balloon animals and if you fuck with it at all it's just gonna shatter. Oh it's like a real Dean Koontz Yeah yeah yeah Wait Dean Koontz. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, Dean Koontz? That's a reference to the other time we
Starting point is 00:57:09 confused. The sculptor's called something else, I know, but it's similar. Jeff Koontz. I think it's funny to say that it's Dean Koontz. Makes the big metal balloon animals. People say we don't explain our riffs enough, but if I don't get it, then I'll ask for clarification.
Starting point is 00:57:24 I don't know who Dale Chihuly but if I don't edit, then I'll ask for clarification. I can't believe you didn't know who Dale Chihuly was. Yeah, I don't like too much contemporary art. I hate it, I hate it, but I know who the dude is. So, the sculpture was installed in 2019, but the dispute only began when Gross and Schwartz installed netting all around the work to protect it after it was damaged. So here's the thing, right? You spend millions of dollars getting this artwork that belongs in a Vegas hotel,
Starting point is 00:57:51 and then you basically do the outdoor artwork equivalent of keeping plastic on the couch because it got damaged and declare war on your neighbor for your right to do so. Yeah, whereas actually you should be keeping plastic on your couch for reasons of the ritual. Gross and Schwartz say in a lawsuit that $50,000 worth of damage was
Starting point is 00:58:13 caused by a thrown rock as evidence of an escalating campaign of violence. Fuck. Absolute James Elroy shit. Laguna Beach Confidential. Was there any rope tied to fence? Tofique and his wife say it was probably damaged by something falling on it.
Starting point is 00:58:34 So this is very funny. Redacted emails released to the Times by the city of Laguna Beach indicated someone associated with Gross and Schwartz told the code enforcement officer the netting was needed to protect trees, protect the sculpture from trees, and that an errant palm frond already caused $100,000 worth of damage. What? My neighbor. My neighbor, he thinks he's a funny
Starting point is 00:58:58 guy. He's trying to turn my trees against me. He's throwing rocks at my glass sculpture, but I'm going to have the last laugh. What's that you're saying? Hottest impression of 2012? Oh, you have to leave? Ah, damn. Not good enough
Starting point is 00:59:18 to roast me, Riley. You're going to have to do better. I couldn't get his ass. So, Tophic and his wife in the lawsuit that the netting was at first removed intermittently but remained up which caused Tophic to call the city
Starting point is 00:59:32 to inspect the property which caused them to send Gross a letter telling him the netting, lighting and sculpture all lacked proper permits leading only to the quarrel to escalate awesome cool so a little i love the most powerful people in the world getting into like boundary disputes about their fucking sculptures that's my favorite yes absolutely what i love though is that there's
Starting point is 01:00:02 like bill gross probably has a neighbor on the other side who is just enduring this Gilligan Island nightmare for no reason. For no reason at all. Just innocent bystanders drawn into the billionaire crossfire. Look, all I wanted was to take a lovely vacation in a private island with a bunch of teenagers whose parents don't know that they came with me to perform a very strange ritual.
Starting point is 01:00:24 And this guy keeps playing Gilligan's Island and it's really disturbing the vibe. I should have got a Gilligan's Island drop. How does the Gilligan's Island theme go? We can make that the end credits music for sure. Me and some teenagers are going to my private island to make a fan camp. So basically at this point now,
Starting point is 01:00:43 Tofique's lawsuit accuses the Grosses of playing blaring music at all hours, including the Gilligan's Island theme song, as well as rap and pop. So, I don't know, maybe he was playing cake. I want to hear about this rap. The three genres. I mean, look, to be fair to him, the new Machine Gun Kelly album is not that bad. It's not great, but it's not that bad. He's just playing Drake's Fire in the Booth on repeat.
Starting point is 01:01:09 He's playing XXXTentacion and now I feel less alone, which makes me worse at investing. Before we go on, Seamus, I want to throw to you. How do you feel about this so far, about them using the CIA's sound weapons
Starting point is 01:01:28 against one another? I mean, it has a certain dimension to it in that I imagine... Now, I could be wrong. I imagine that Bill Gross is at this house when he's playing the Gil Gonzales theme song. Oh, you would imagine wrong. Oh, he just leaves?
Starting point is 01:01:48 Yes, king shit. Well, I mean, I thought, in my naivete, that Bill Gross was going to be in for the long haul. If he puts on the Gil Gonzales theme song for four hours, he's going to be there to control it and shut off at any time.
Starting point is 01:02:03 He's meditating. It actually helps him yeah but i imagine like this is this is just so this is just advanced pettiness on a scale that i was not able to conceive of before because that's why we're not billionaires yeah are you familiar with Gilligan's Island? Have you heard of the special song that they play? You are going to become very familiar, sir. Very familiar indeed. I can give you some more information. The Grosses
Starting point is 01:02:40 are in the house for 25 days a year. It's a vacation home! Why am I dedicating so much of this time to this? Why am I dedicating so much time to this? The blood
Starting point is 01:02:54 feud! You are literally outside. Oh my god, that's like... I'm sorry, I go way too far away from the mic. I just... Oh my god. You just probably need to far away from the mic. I just, I, I, I. Oh my God. You've blown away. You just probably need to like lean back across a room.
Starting point is 01:03:11 That is, that is. Why is, but he's only there for 25 days a year. So why does he, why does he care? Wait, does he leave on the lights for like 325 days? First of all, probably. Second of all, it's the the principle right like yeah you've fucked with his dale chihuly and for this he will drive you into ruin with the gilligan's island theme song rap and pop i'm so fucked with my dale chihuly ones it's never been the same again
Starting point is 01:03:39 so uh basically well he said that oh this is just me listening to music in a normal volume with my partner in an email that was uncovered as part of discovery in this lawsuit. He said to Tophie, peace on all fronts, or we'll just have nightly concerts, big boy. Big boy.
Starting point is 01:04:01 This is the coolest joke, big boy. This man is 76 years old jesus yeah he's 76 years cool this guy rocks yes this is yeah he is the best he's the best guy um i want him to be my grandpa so uh he also has gone on a full offensive legally as well saying that uh tophi has a particular fascination with the two of them and likes to watch them when they swim. Uh, and that's the report.
Starting point is 01:04:30 Oh, cool. Tophic. When I see Bill Gross, I'm just, I'm, I'm just taking it back. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:04:37 Let's see. When I see, when I see Bill Gross, join me in the water dojo, Mr. Tophic. When I see Bill Gross, my,
Starting point is 01:04:43 uh, my little halo thing, it records some, uh, interesting, uh, uh, heartbeat palpitations, you. Tophic. When I see Bill Gross, my little halo thing, it records some interesting heartbeat palpitations, you know? Oh, yeah. The brain helmet would be very useful here. They could have group therapy together via Zoom. However, Tophic admits he made
Starting point is 01:04:57 videos, but only to record their harassing noise violations and their intrusiveness. No. Mr. Tophffee, this video clearly zooms in on Mr. Gross's penis. And when asked why he bought the statement at all,
Starting point is 01:05:16 Schwartz then issued a statement saying that the dispute was very upsetting because the sculpture was bought for her by Gross because her mother was sick, which is amazing rich people sociopathy. Like, hey, sorry your mom's sick. I got you the thing from the Bellagio. We're going to look at it for 25 days a year.
Starting point is 01:05:34 Yeah. And when we're not here, I will just be on my phone remotely triggering the Kill the Gonzales theme song for the 26th time that day. I've always said that smart homes are stupid and useless. I now realize that was wrong. We have found levels of bullying we didn't even know were possible. This guy is living out the Vice article about playing It's Not Unusual and then what's new, Pussycat, 52 times on the bar jukebox he's in he's in his mother-in-law's hospital room but he's just like taking breaks from like hand holding and refreshing
Starting point is 01:06:12 the water jug to like connect to the sonos in his long in his long beach home and just play the fucking gilligan islands theme tune again um so uh yeah Schwartz then went on saying, since I have no children on my own, these art pieces are like my babies. My mother, who has Alzheimer's. He does have children.
Starting point is 01:06:32 Who's a model, He has a son who he hates. No, this is Schwartz. This is his third wife because all his other wives hate him. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, of course.
Starting point is 01:06:40 Sorry. Because, you know, really, are you saying the guy who declares all out sonic war to like defend the ensemble hotel lobby art he bought for a property he's almost never in is gonna be hated by his ex-wives no hard to believe so uh yeah it says that it's her favorite color
Starting point is 01:06:58 and makes her smile uh so yeah that's um cool that that's that that's what it is uh they that either the legal battle is only escalating with them trying to take out restraining orders on one another and file civil harassment orders on one another uh and um uh and meanwhile gross is trying to seek for uh further proper permitting and neither of them are willing to be interviewed. There is also, there's another bit in this article, very quickly, that's about Bill Gross's divorce, his second divorce, where his ex-wife, his second ex-wife, sued him, accusing him of turning over a second Laguna Beach home to her in utter chaos and disrepair, including infusing it with puke and fart smells dispensed from spray bottles. Gross admitted last year that he bought the spray at a drugstore, but was not sure why he did it. What kind of drugstore sells fart spray?
Starting point is 01:08:06 Like, what? He's going to the joke drugstore. He is the fucking Joker! Yeah. He has become the Joker. You know how I got this sculpture? The thing is, actually, he became the Joker in the 1980s when
Starting point is 01:08:22 he and Michael Milken more or less invented junk bond investing and sort of created let's say many elements of this or many created many of the specific elements of the financial system that brought about the 2008 crisis um and this is just a continuation of that like this man's life has to be understood as just weaponized spite and one time one expression of that happened to make him a billionaire yeah and the others it made him extremely funny um that yeah and so he um he even like when he fart smells what i like is when he left when he like acrimoniously left pimco
Starting point is 01:09:00 uh he basically made the other executives sign a sort of statement that he was very committed to charity and a good person. Wait, wait, wait. I'm finding more details about this. This was a 13,819 square foot mansion. And he placed dead fish
Starting point is 01:09:20 in the air vents. Yeah, he's a prankster. He's the prankster billionaire. An installation of cats with their facial features scratched out? Oh, cool. That's right.
Starting point is 01:09:36 Yeah, he's so cool, isn't he? Yeah. We love Bill Gross. I think he's very cool to think about. I wish him luck In his prank war First on the global financial system And basically everyone
Starting point is 01:09:51 And now on this guy That's right Our theme song is Gilligan's Island But hey I'll do a little bit by way of wrapping up Firstly, Seamus I'd like to thank you very much for calling in today and talking to us.
Starting point is 01:10:08 Oh, it was an honor. It is always a pleasure to have you on the podcast. It was an honor. We look forward to having you back on again soon. And to all our loyal listeners out there in podcast land, maybe now who have a few extra pounds a month, don't forget we've got a Patreon. You can subscribe to that. That is
Starting point is 01:10:27 linked in the description as are other different worthy things. Join us on the Patreon. We upload all kinds of episodes there and also music like the Gilligan's Island theme tune. That's right. The Gilligan's Island theme tune by Johannes
Starting point is 01:10:44 Vonk and the Clogheads. Not Island theme tune by Johannes Vonk and the clog heads Johannes Vonk got famous for writing the Gilligan's Island theme tune but I think all that all that remains to be said now is yes our theme song is the Gilligan's Island theme tune by Johannes Vonk and the clog heads and we will see you on the patreon in a couple of days for Balthazar speedboat later absolutely bye bye on the Patreon in a couple of days for Balthazar Speedboat. Later. Absolutely. Bye. Bye. The mate was a mighty sailing man, skipper, brave and
Starting point is 01:11:20 sure. High passenger set sail that day for a three hour tour.

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