TRASHFUTURE - Collateralized Wing Obligations feat. Josh Boerman

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

We’ve brought on friend of the show Josh Boerman from The Worst of All Possible Worlds to discuss recent drone/UFO “sightings” in the US, the AI filmmaking industry (which sucks), the AI games industry (even worse), and recent revelations that a certain Royal has been getting in trouble yet again—but not for the reasons you’d think! Check out the Worst of All Possible Worlds here!   Get access to more Trashfuture episodes each week on our Patreon!   *POPES/LAGOON SHIRTS STILL AVAILABLE!* We've got some extras of our recent shirts that can be purchased online and will ship immediately! Get them here: https://trashfuture.co.uk/collections/all *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s UK Tour here: https://miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

So yeah, I did a job Riley in Prince Edward Island, which makes it sound like I'm a hitman or something. I don't know why I phrased it that way. Yeah, yeah, a friend of ours from the other side. I worked for a company doing training, software training, and the company had a client, actually two clients on Prince Edward Island, and so I went there in the middle of fucking winter,

like the dead of winter in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. That was the same trip that I ended up taking a connecting flight through fucking Halifax, and I just got waylaid in the middle of a freezing rain-type blizzard. This is very, um, like, Animal Crossing coded. I had to go to Charlottetown, Edward Island. Like, what is going on?

Number one, it's Prince Edward Island. Yeah, Milo. If you get it wrong again, we're gonna hang you like that Vatican banker off of the Confederation Bridge. You... Wait, what? Was that off Black Rose Bridge? Well yeah, this is the Canadian version. If you're getting the Anne of Green Gables extradition, that's right.

That's where you get kidnapped, you get blackbagged in Montreal, taken to Prince Edward Island. They pack you into a suitcase alive. The black site is actually in the basement of the Confederation Center. Hello everybody. If you heard that voice, you know it is Josh Borman from the Worst of All Possible Worlds who is once again back in London. So of course

we are here in the studio with him. It's also Milo November and Riley. And we are here talking about Prince Andrew again. Yeah, Prince Andrew Island. Prince Andrew Island. Yeah, thank you. Okay, alright. We will dive to that one, you know. They should exile him there like Napoleon.

They should build him an island. Prince Andrew, he's back in the news. I don't know if you saw this. He's back in the news. Is it illegal to have friends, or to make friends, or to simply try and hang out with someone who you think understands you? Well, apparently... And the answer is yes, actually.

Very much so, in fact. No, Prince Andrew, back in the news, because apparently someone who befriended him in 2020 is suspected of being a spy for the Chinese state, which I think is very amusing, decided they were like, all right, we're gonna target Andrew. I mean, you want to grab someone when they're down, obviously that makes sense, but like, the thing that's really funny to me is, um, they arrested this guy at Heathrow and they seized all of his, like, devices, which is... And then let him go, having, you know, and are now banning him from the country. And on those devices, one of the things that they found was a report presumably going back

to his boss in China, saying, oh yeah, this guy's completely desperate and he'll agree to anything. And I just, I don't feel bad for Andrew, but I think it is funny to be like, yeah, you know, obviously things are bad, but I'm getting out there and putting myself out there, I'm making friends. And then you find out from MI5 that your new best friend is chatting that kind of shit about you in a private group chat with Chinese intelligence.

Yeah, just like, Andrew, if they only after you for your connections, they're not your friends. It's like, but it was such a nice dinner. Like it was so nice. He got me. He wanted to know, like, he wanted to know so much. He wanted to know about my businesses, he wanted to know about who I know in the civil service. And it's like, he's interested in you, and you're so petty, that you just hate me having a friend. I hate getting cooked in the Chinese intelligence group chat. Prince Andrew uses chopsticks like a Mongol.

That's fucking rude, first of all. I don't feel bad for Andrew. I do feel a little bit bad for the alleged Chinese spy, because when, like, I guess becoming a spy must be a pretty exciting time in your life, you're like, where am I gonna get sent in my life, am I gonna be, like, shooting CIA guys with the Havana Syndrome gun, what am I gonna be doing? It's like the number in the Book of Mormon where they're figuring out where their mission is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so they put this guy on befriending an elderly British pedophile.

Absolutely. And at that moment, when you get that briefing, when you get that briefing and Chinese M is like, Bond, this is Prince Andrew, we need you to pal up with him. That's gonna be a rough morning for you, you have to imagine. So, okay, Chinese Netflix, if you are listening, I have your number one movie for next year. Yeah. Yeah, Chinese James Bond with Ma and He. Not with a... God damn it, simplified Chinese M. I hate the way you're making me. Now listen here, 008. That's the better number.

It's one more than seven, isn't it? You should see what happened to 004. Nothing good. Oh, God. Terrible luck. This is a phone. It's just a phone. This is a phone. It's very useful. It's economically made. Now listen up, 008. This is a gun. Squeeze the trigger here. Yes, yes. We've not been captured by like 10, come on. Now listen, I'm 008, this is a gun. Squeeze the trigger here.

Yes, yes, we've not been captured by like tech companies like MI6 has. We're just going to give you stuff. Or just like it's a Huawei smartphone, you know, like all of the brands are just well-known Chinese brands now. We're not giving you a Huawei, the Chinese government listens to that shit. I'm just talking about the idea of like, ordinary Chinese spy being drawn into like, Infernal Affairs slash the departed undercover pedophilia thing, where he's like, I'm not sure who I am anymore.

Am I a Chinese spy or am I a British royal nont? I mean, they could do the other guys too on this premise alone. Yeah. Anyway, anyway, welcome, of course, to the show. We are having a bit of a fun one today because I've got just a roundup of stories. In addition, of course, to okay, no, last thing, last thing. I would love to see a new Emily Maitlis Prince Andrew interview movie has to be about this. It's gotta. It's gotta.

The Chinese spy and Prince Andrew. So the alleged Chinese spy and Prince Andrew, like working through how they're going to deal with the Maitlis interview. And then it needs to be adapted into a stage play that goes up on the West End. So the Guardian can give it like two stars and be like, it was thought provoking. I've got a photograph here of you eating prawn toast. How do you respond to that? ALICE I've one more thought about this, which is, this is making me doubt that Prince Philip

actually had Diana killed, right? Because Andrew's a real problem for the royal family, stories like this are gonna keep happening because he's gonna keep being around and doing more things, and like, surely at some point the white Theotuno beckons, but it hasn't yet. Maybe it's just- With Whiskers, Phillips, Death, no one's taking it over. With no, like, guiding hand to, like, organize the assassinations, you know? I don't think Charles gets down like that, I don't think he does.

You need someone who's genetically Byzantine to have that level of court intrigue. Yeah, yeah. And that's what we've lost. Here's the other thing though. I know I keep saying I'm gonna move on, but I just can't. Genetically Byzantine is the type of shit Ben Judah was calling like bus drivers. Prince William is like, it's time. And he mournfully goes down and crowbars open the door to his grandfather's Greek cave. He's like, pulling white dust

sheets off stuff and there's like, there's like a gyros machine that's steam powered somehow. And then eventually he gets to the white Fiat Uno with the Athens plates and he's like, it's time. My old friend. I see you. I'm sorry, Andrew. Cause a scrape of black paint down the side of it. Discard your German-ness. Really bad at driving. The most Greek thing you can see. You have to be trying not to kill him and then you run him over by accident. What if, here's the thing. I'm going to take what November is saying, I'm going to synthesize it. I'm going to do a synthesis. They've been trying to kill him. he's just Mr. Magoo. Uh huh. Like, he is bending over to tie his shoe every time they get...

Like he wonders why so many like, vases and stuff shatter whenever he bends over to tie his shoe. No no no, what it is, what it is, it's an even better premise for the buddy cop movie, which is the undercover Chinese pedophile is saving him from every attempt. This like, regular type spy is having to like, shut glasses full of poison brandy out of windows every day. Oh my god, we're so good at coming up with movies. Only the Chinese government has the juice to train someone from a young age to be a pedophile in order to send them undercover with Prince Andrew to save

him from the royal family's attempts to murder him. Pedophile guardian angel is just such a specific thing. Let no harm come to an adult. That's my last word. It's a fucking like, did any of you watch Touched by an Angel back in the day? Did that make it to my role? I did not. I can sense a very nasty sequel coming in.

That's what I'm just gonna say. Look, here's the capstone, right? Which is this guy, just to go back to the beginning of what November was saying, this guy was, if he is a Chinese spy, was trained in what spies tend to be trained in now, which is like... Making friends. Admin and friend making. And then just goes and pulls the perfect friend op on Prince Andrew leading only to have him embarrassed to get it could be that the embarrassment of Prince Andrew was the end of this operation because I couldn't

imagine what could he have done yeah we were calling it operation kicking them while they're down the perfect friend is such a good title I just wanted to throw that out there yeah episode title the perfect friend. This is the plot of the movie. The Chinese spy is such a good title. I just wanted to throw that out there. Yeah, episode title, The Perfect Friend. This is the full of the movie. The Chinese spy is sent to get information out of Andrew, but what he does is in the process he undercovers that Prince Andrew is innocent and it's all a conspiracy because he really can't sweat. It's like he's protecting him from one of these assassination attempts. He's like, he's not even broken a sweat. My god. And he's like, that's why they want him dead. He knows the truth. The universal perfect friend. Is this anything?

Yeah. All right. All right. It's about last thing. It's like, why would you try to develop the most useless man in Britain? Necessars. I can't imagine. I mean, I can, I can, I can, I can think of a number of reasons, but due to British label laws, I'm probably not allowed to say. Yeah, you're making friends with him and you're like, hey, who else was at those parties? Do you have any photos on your phone? Can I see?

Or you can do the shit that he used to do back in the day and be like, hey, do you wanna go to Kazakhstan or something and hang out with those guys? Can you imagine how boring the photos on Prince Andrew's phone would be from those parties? Just like him having a selfie with some guy who's already known to be a paedophile, but it's kind of grimacing uncomfortably because he doesn't want to be in the picture. Nothing fun happening. Andrew being like a paedophile who's also a bad hang is like in itself really fucking yeah the other paedophile is just being like oh it's just I don't know he's just got weird

vibes. This fucking just got weird vibes. This fucking guy again? Jesus. He had to do like the six weeks on, two weeks off working pattern because of exposure to how rancid vibes Prince Andrew is. Like if you're working in a conflict zone. All right. I want to move on. We have an American with us, a dyed in the wool American. I am one of those. I wanted to ask, Josh. Yes.

How have you protected yourself from the drones? Oh, um Personally, I mean what I've done is I've put up a shield, but it's a mental shield That's a mind barrier as far as I'm concerned as long as I'm projecting my thoughts outward with enough aggression They can't find me. That's true Eric Adams is doing something I think quite similar because if you haven't been following this, there seems to be a kind of mass hysteria on the eastern seaboard centered largely on North Jersey. A dancing plague has occurred in the state of New Jersey. Well, they're under attack by Captain Tom and his swarm of drones. The ghost of Captain Tom, that's right.

And so unlike previous like dancing plagues that have like emerged in recent American history, there are a lot like more and more sort of high level politicians and former politicians including like the former governor of Maryland are being like, I demand answers as to why there are drones flying over my house. Like they live under like five active flight paths. Right. No, this is what's interesting, right? Because I live in Brooklyn and I am directly under a flight path. And so many times I can just go out, look up and see planes.

And the thing about an oncoming plane at night is that all you see is the light. And the light seems to be still right up until it isn't because of the way that, you know, the fucking physics around the way that light bends. Because of the way that, you know, the fucking physics around the way that light bends works. Because of the way that the stuff is, yeah. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I'm not a fucking physicist. I'm a liberal arts student.

You're a person who has seen a plane before. That's right. No, that's what I'm saying. Like, I've seen a plane before and it sort of recalls how, because I grew up, of course, in the great state of Michigan. And I remember in the 90s, there were a series of like UFO incidents. But the thing is, there are U.S. Air Force bases on Lake Michigan. And so what would happen is you would get these very credulous reports

and you can actually go and listen to the old 911 recordings of these people being like, it was just all of a sudden it just appeared and it was over the lake and what was it? And it was like, meanwhile, I have seen fighter jets fly over the lake time and time again during the daytime. It's just that for some reason people forget that airplanes exist. Yeah. Airplanes aren't supposed to be out at night. It's unwholesome. That's right. That's right. I'm going to read a little bit of the facts here. Kathy Hockel, governor of New York, said Congress must pass a law that will give us the power to deal directly with the drones.

At least she's not going to impose congestion pricing on them. Yeah. Well, like negotiate with them. We do not negotiate with drones in the great state of New York. We know what happened last time. That's right. We long argued that we need anti-aircraft emplacements so we can shoot down any of suspected drone coming into New York. The idea of like trying to shoot down a drone and accidentally doing KAL007 again is wild to me. Having the NYPD surface to MSO batteries. Can you imagine?

KAL008 and there's one Chinese intelligence guy who has to stop it. He's on the plane pretending to be Korean. The Pentagon has denied the suggestion of one New Jersey state representative that the possible drones were coming from the Iranian mothership. Come on man. I love ace combat. I love those games so much. Sorry, the Iranian mothership.

Do they think this is fucking Independence Day? What are they talking about? Yes, they do. Yes, that, do they think this is fucking Independence Day? What are they talking about? Yes, yes they do. Yes, that's what they think it is. Okay. They're trying to prevent the fucking White House from being destroyed. Will Smith punching a perfectly normal Iranian guy in the face and being like, welcome to Earth.

Yeah, a New Jersey state representative is an amazing job, though. So you're basically like the representative for salami. It's like an incredible job. I'm still stuck on NYPD surface to air missile operator. You've got the phone with candy crush in one hand. The other one, you're like fat fingering a control panel that's about to destroy a 777. Yeah, that's it is.

We've created a special interface system for NYPD officers to keep New York safe from drones. It will of course be a Candy Crush system. You just walk over to the like jet crash site through the like mangled bodies and solemnly plant a gun on one of them. You get the 3X combo in Candy Crush and then you actually get to knock out three planes at the same time. Sorry drones. I feared for my life and the life of my fellow officers

from this drone. Also I believe it was a smoking crack cocaine. They end up using surface-to-air missiles like the NYPD uses regular bullets and one plane is hit by like 27 of them. One plane is hit by 27 of them along with every other airliner near New York and posting a no fly zone on yourself because like the peasant mindset is alive and well in New Jersey that has caused the dancing plague. I believe that New York City by virtue of New Jersey can be the first city in the world to close its airspace due to dancing plague. Oh, that would be so nice just to have an actual quiet day. But the thing is, there is this sort of collective, it's hard to describe specifically in New York City, the sort of collective hysteria

that is developing. Josh, would you say that New York is more of a character in this crazy story than the setting? I would say so. I mean, you know what I would also say? I would say that London is the New York of the United Kingdom. Well, thank you for being here, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, you're welcome. That's very exciting. You know the first stop is Istanbul. Yeah, right. That's why you were here so late.

That's right. It was because the layover in the premium lounge at Istanbul Airport, yeah. We've actually opened up a franchise trash-trash studio in the premium lounge at Istanbul Airport for Yeah, we've actually opened up a franchise trash future studio in the premium lounge It helps. Oh by the way Riley am I entitled now to join the like trash future premium lounge at this point I was told that my fifth appearance might come with some perks. It's that Istanbul Airport We have moved it there, but we were not given any incentives to do so You can have as much sexo conyoga as you want. You were saying.

Oh, just that like there is this collective hysteria that's developing. And I attribute a lot of it to the mayor himself and his unique brain, which, of course, there's a great podcast you can listen to all about this. I'm the daily New York Times with Michael Barber. That's right. Because he has such a special mind. And in general, the way that the city works is that we all hate the mayor, no matter who he is. Mm-hmm. Of course. But we also develop whatever brain worms the mayor has within ourselves.

I don't know if it's the same way here or not. I don't know if like Sadiq Khan has unique brain worms or... It's so easy to forget that London has a mayor. Right, okay. Then it's very, very different in New York, right? And there is this thing that seems to be the case, whether you're talking about the mayor himself or his allies, all of whom of course we know

dine at the table of success. No, fewer of them now. Not as many, yeah. They're dropping dimes. That's true. They're standing up from their seating at the table of success, putting towels over their arms, and becoming hater-waiters. You only hear of the London mayor when he's announcing the most unimportant policy. It's like, it's now illegal to eat fish on the bus.

And it's like, okay, fuck off, whatever. Who cares? But the fact that, I thought it was so funny, that Nicole Mallietaq specifically has been vouching for this in Congress because she's one of our, I would say, more-pilled Congresswomen She was interviewed in the Washington Times about it Hell yes! The Moonies? You're telling me the Moonies are getting involved with this shit too? Let's see, because the Washington Times will pick up anything and then if it runs, they will run with it Yeah, yeah, yeah

I'm interested to see if it gets in the epoch time. Oh Once it's in the epoch times, you know, you know, you're cooking but there is this I'm really trying to describe what the thing is. New York is a very low information city I'll just put it that way There are a lot of news outlets including the epic times including the New York Post that are Intentionally set up to confuse the information environment. Oh yeah, they're like the British press. No, they are though! That's the thing.

The New York Post is the closest thing you have to a British tabloid newspaper. That's absolutely true. And so everybody sort of lives in this state of perpetual paranoia, because the mayor has no real interest in helping people understand what's going on, because a confused populace obviously benefits him. And so we cultivate this perpetual low information environment. And then New Jersey is sort of like its own weird world where their politicians have an interest

in advancing federal policy that fucks the city over because there's this grudge match. The one thing that everybody is always able to agree on, though, is increasing the level of paranoia. And so this drone story, I feel, is a great example of all of those different sort of moving pieces fitting together, where everybody has their own different reason to want people to be freaked out

about the drones, but ultimately it benefits each of them because it allows them to advance their own projects. Yeah, if it benefits you to be freaked out about the drones You're gonna be freaked out about the drones like you have seen some fucking insane reactions to this Trump Cancelling a golf trip in New Jersey. That's so funny Serious thing he can do It was it was another situation where again this I checked the epoch times Yeah, someone proposing Iron Dome for America.

Yes! Yes, dude! That's good. That's the, with all of the money that has been, Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk have fired every single civil servant. In exchange, America can launch one full salvo of a NORAD Iron Dome at just normal civilian aircraft. I'll tell you what, I can't believe it.

I'm out of office 20 years and suddenly they're announcing some Iron Dome. For the whole country. Maliatakis, in fact, they're talking about Eric Adams before we move on. Maliatakis has called out Eric Adams for not taking steps to investigate the drones hovering above her Staten Island district.

All the things to call Eric Adams out for. But it's weird too because Maliotakis and Adams are, I would say, politically aligned with each other for the most part. Like, Eric Adams is a Democrat only insofar as you need to be a Democrat to become the mayor of New York City. Most of the interests of her district are well aligned

with what it is that Eric Adams is trying to do insofar as he is in favor of more cops everywhere all of the time. And you know what? All the fucking cops live on Staten Island. It's basically what you're saying is the dream of a candy crush interface surface to air missile launcher program called American Iron Dome and staffed by volunteer NYPD guys off duty is actually pretty close to being reality It's an Iron Dome, but it's just like a cop firing his service weapon in the air

Actually, this is perfect because Staten Island is kind of the Israel of New York. It's an ethno state for cops So it should have its own iron dome Maliotakis would be the lead sponsor on that bill. She'd be number one with a bullet. And by bullet, I mean, surface to air missile. This is all very amusing, though. I you know me, I always like to bring things together. Right. There is such a such a such a sense of omnidirectional paranoia, whether that's about like who's secretly a spy developing the sort of lamest royal in all of Europe or like or like that the planes are watching

people. It didn't used to be, right? It didn't used to be that UFO sightings happened in urban areas. They tended to be more of a rural phenomenon. They were over Lake Michigan, exactly. Because as we know, people who live in cities are smarter, as opposed to rural rubes and oafs. Mm-hmm.

I think it's an alienation atomization thing. You know, it's the... The aliens are the ones flying the drones. Yeah, that's right. I'm not actually suggesting that. Aliens know that hicks won't be believed if they end up... Aliens are engaging in a kind of like, intergalactic program of like, hick-basing, essentially. I mean, like, ooh, ooh, that one, get that one, he's got a pickup truck.

We've abducted a man who only ever speaks about NASCAR, no one will ever believe him. This is actually why they keep making the pickup trucks bigger and bigger, like the reason the Ford F-150 gets bigger every year, the bigger it gets, the harder it is for it to get beamed up. This is the problem, right? It's not that we believe these things, it's that the aliens do, they're chauvinists, right? The aliens are all up there reading the New York Review of Books and being like, yeah, listen, all of these guys, and like, they're posting the Jesus Land map of the US, you

know? Somebody needs to fucking call them out, and we're doing it, we're actually really brave. If you're like a red state voter, if you're like a Trump person, you are materially in more danger of getting abducted, but it's because of shitlib aliens. What I'd give for a redneck who drives a Kia Picanto. A nightmare getting these Ford F350s off the ground. There's a fucking little, like, I fucking love science bumper sticker on the back of the UFO. Yeah, well you would have to to get there, right?

Like, they have a co-exist bumper sticker as well. Hey, hey, hey, Glorp, check out this article from the Palmer Report. It's 25 reasons that Kamala Harris can still win. They're listening to Mueller, she wrote in the yellow phone. They fucking love it. The Daily Beans, more like the Daily Beams that you use to beam up the Ford F-150. Yeah, yeah, very good. We're using to beam up the Ford F-150. Yeah, very good. We're doing demographic shift.

I support whatever intergalactic organization is finally doing like, uh, kind of terrorism against MAGA Republicans by abducting and probing them. Wait, wait, wait. Bumper sticker that says, Can, Kodos and Kamala. Don't, don't make it into an acronym. We're very clear on that. Extra terrestrial gas slicing operation. Anyway, it is something I think we're going to see nothing but more. We've seen that this, these kinds of phenomena just accelerate as people are more and more

willing to get freaked out and it's been a benefits and to get more freaked out about whatever and that it's incredibly beneficial to latch on to whatever most people are freaking out about. And then, but I guess I've just not seen it go this high before. I also feel like though, and this is just the one piece that I wanted to put out, not saying that they are definitely onto something here and we need to shoot down the drones. But what I will say is that generally speaking, whenever there is sort of a collective mass hysteria about something, it is because people are genuinely worried about a bigger picture problem and they're pointing in the wrong direction. And I think that what this moment

speaks to is the general collective paranoia that we are all feeling going into next year, knowing what a Trump presidency is going to bring about, knowing the way that the national security state is about to be leveraged in a way that it certainly was under the Biden administration, but now is going to be leveraged a little bit differently. All of these are real impulses that I think are grounded in very real material conditions,

but again, are being pointed in the wrong direction, because it benefits the ruling class to have everybody really fucking confused. I think that's about right. I think it's something that we're going to keep talking about as we move on. But I want to bring us on to another of my sort of fun little diversions I've got for us today. One more fun little diversion.

And now I've got like some articles we can choose from, depending on how far it gets us, which is in the midst of what it sounds like the first couple lines of We Didn't Start the Fire. Wingstop has announced today its intention to complete a securitized financing transaction, which will include a new series of securitized debt. This will issue $500 million of new securitized notes, which it is borrowing against the sale of future wings. ALICE and MARK, in unison, sigh.

ALICE, in unison, sigh. ALICE, in unison, sigh. ALICE, in unison, sigh. ALICE, in unison, sigh. ALICE, in unison, sigh. ALICE, in unison, sigh. ALICE, in unison, sigh. ALICE, in unison, sigh. ALICE, have been reading some sub-stacks, and they know that it's about institution building. And once the Wingstop central bank is really instituted, we can start seeing some, like, fiscal policy interventions.

You know, and given that China's gonna, like, apart from befriending and then betraying Prince Andrew, is also, like, breaking the monopoly on the US dollar, maybe it's all gonna be like, we're gonna be trading Wingstop bucks in Riyadh. Wing futures, we're gonna get Nugleason. There's gonna be one guy at Wingstop who's like, so far in the hole, he's gonna have to flee the Singapore jurisdiction. That's right. The securitize everything movement is back.

That's right. Interest rates went down by a quarter of a percent, and now Wingstub is like, alright, fuck it, Wing Futures, let's go. I'm putting everything into, like, Papa John's guilt, you know, I don't... I mean, listen, I anticipate that this will be a thing that more and more first-trade chains get into, and I for one cannot wait. So help me understand exactly why... Looking at the big spirally coin thing that you put McDonald's like

charity money into and being like, what's the return on this? It now accepts Bitcoin. Yeah, no, it's that you put the big sort of McDonald's spirally coin thing and then you follow the pipe and it just goes to the Barclays Esoteric Structured Finance Office and it just drops into a little jar there. So what is the difference between Wingstop doing this through some sort of securitization? I'm seeing $500 million of, I guess, Wing notes. How is this different from a more traditional way? We're here for the Wingstop's money, not your money. Your money's insured by Rick Ross, you're not gonna lose a dime.

Don't risk your life. What makes this different from a more traditional way, I guess, of financing debt against a failing fast food chain? Because you are borrowing against a specific future earnings. Okay. I'm like, basically, I'm creating a structured product that allows you to buy like future sales. And so this is, it's just...

You can lock in wings that you might want in six months at today's price. Okay, sure. So it's more like it is a bond that is tied to the income of something specific. It's like supply chain financing, basically. A little bit, yeah. It's just that that was like a specific subcategory of what this is, which is more general. Okay, fine, fine. Yeah, so that was a specific subcategory of this more general, like asset-backed security. That was a specific subcategory that had weird characteristics that made it very useful for

making companies look more profitable than they were. Okay, so if I'm buying... I don't know if this has that. Okay. I don't know. If I'm buying a million dollars in, again, we'll call them wing notes for the sake of... Wing nuts. Wing nuts, there we go. I am basically betting that Wingstop is going to be able to.

I'm seeing up upsize the capacity of the very old. Like to what extent am I just like buying debt against more debt versus betting on the future of the company? Let me put it that way. It's both. OK. You're doing both. I just think it's always a good sign. Yeah. Yeah. It's we've talked about different versions of Which is always a good sign. Yeah. We've talked about different versions of this in the past. One of them, Harmonix, right?

They will buy, what they will do is they will buy song catalogs and then they will borrow against the future revenues of those song catalogs. This is like that, but with wings. People are always gonna need hits of Peter Andre. Okay, so obvious question here. What happens then if they fail to sell the wings? Oh, well then the product would go bust.

And that's where I want to get to, right? Which is, I'll keep, I'll read from this press release. What happens when the wing stops? Yeah, the wing stops here. Yeah, that's right. So they're basically saying, look, we're, the other funny thing is they're like, oh, why are you doing this?

Yeah, we're doing this to repurchase shares of common stocks. They're basically taking on a bunch of debt from this exotic finance product to boost their stock price. That's basically like the most common thing that happened or one of the most common things that happened between 2008 and 2020, which was a great time for most people. I have another very like explain like I'm five question about this. How legal is this?

Completely legal. 100 Completely legal. Okay. 100% legal. Cool. That seems good. But it's also key to the business success that they derive from the Wingstop way, which includes a core value system of being authentic, entrepreneurial, service minded, and fun.

Wingstop is a brand with like a creed, you know? It's got an ethos. I also, do you, do any of you actually have familiarity with like, have you ever, have any of you ever eaten wings? We have wing stop we wing stop. Oh, you there is a wing stop They've suddenly opened like a hundred of them all over the UK in like the last six months It's probably to cover the fucking wing notes. I would imagine The craziest thing is their mascot the wing stop wings top

Just it's just doming you calling you a slut You like those wings, do you? So this is from the FT. Investors relentless appetite for returns has triggered, and this is a phrase I love to say, the biggest boom on Wall Street and complex financial products since the immediate lead up to the global financial crisis in 2007. Okay, that sounds good. That was a good thing, right?

Yeah. Again, I never like to overstate the risks of these things. The market is not big enough that if it fails, then like a bunch of terrible things will happen. It's just not big enough. Bunch of like line cooks jumping out of windows. When it just like landing on because it's a ground floor just being fine. A line cooks like Volkswagen Jetta being repossessed.

The problem comes when the other places also start to issue their own notes. Like once you get the Kentucky Fried Chicken Bucks and the Buffalo Wild Wing notes, that's when you're going to run into trouble. Then Adam McKay is going to recreate an early 2000s Carl's Jr. commercial and have a beautiful woman explain it to you. Can you imagine, again, it's not going to happen, but then again, right? I imagine a world in which the next big financial crash is because the American economy is over leveraged on chicken wings. That's so fucking funny to me. I'm highly invested in a very complex wimpy burger instrument.

If the price of wheat moves even slightly, I could be ruined. If the price of wheat moves slightly, I'll be ruined. However, if the average price of a wimpy burger sold at just three locations remains within a certain parameter Then I will be fucking rich for some reason as soon as it gets up like 25 pence above then you're fucked Yeah, oh you're fucked Oh, so this is they say the volume of structured finance transactions is at 380 billion this year Jesus the figure is up by more than a fifth in the same period a year ago. And the boom is in complex and riskier deals often highlights how buoyant markets and persistent US economic strengths are allowing bankers to sell more esoteric products

to investors keen to lock in high fixed returns. And this is again, like that's what happened. That's what led to mortgage backed securities. It was because people wanted high returns. Yeah, collateralized wing obligation. Yeah. Again, this is not big enough. This is not that big, but it's still very amusing. Some wings are really good and some wings are kind of bad, but if you group all of the wings together and you average them out. Yeah, exactly. So demand among, this is the FT again, demand among investors and insurers for these products is so strong, the extra returns they require to engage in the riskiest portions of these deals, rather than buying ultra low

risk debt like treasury bills, have tumbled. Which means again, all that's going to mean is that in two years comparatively, the wing note is going to be a relatively safe investment compared to whatever they come up with next. I'm taking all of my own personal investments out of US treasury notes and putting them into wing notes. Yeah. Yeah. Is this investment advice?

Yes. Yes, but I'm not going to tell you how to act on it. If there's one trade you can do to act on the investment advice that I'm giving, but I won't say what it is. It's a secret trade. You got to get into Nando's coin. I heard there was a secret trade that proved to be investment grade, but Riley wouldn't tell you about it, would he?

No, he wouldn't. No. This is also fun. By the way, you know why some of these risks- Jeff Cluckley's fucking Wingstop trade. Yeah. You know why some of these risk premia are lowering on some of these bonds? Because the auto and credit card default rate is up.

Big thumbs up to that. No one's defaulted on wings though. We've never seen, yeah, this is what Americans gonna do, stop buying their buckets. This is the head of Esoteric Structured Finance at Barclays, Benjamin Fernandez, worked on the Wingstop and Oilwell deal, which closed on the same day, saying, well, this isn't the first time we've wrapped up two deals

in one day, I expect this to become more frequent as the Esoteric universe expands. Listen, boy, we we got a bucket based infrastructure. Ain't never gonna kill us. The only thing that's gonna kill us is we run out of buckets before we come up with an alternative. Do you want to talk about UK politics or do you want to read an Andreessen Horowitz view on how gaming is going to be the new cinema? Oh, I've been prepping for the A16Z bit. Let's go there. All right, let's do it. We'll do the British we'll do British on Thursday. Yes I have read the article that's like by the people who wrote the what the Kamala campaign can learn from the Starmer campaign and then three

months later wrote a what Kamala's failure shows Starmer must do and it's obviously all the things that these people wanted to do. We'll get to that on Thursday. Climb down on drones. Yeah that's right. That would be such a good way to get elected, to be honest. It's just, find out what the dancing plague is, and then just... We're gonna stop it. In Britain, it's trans people, so it makes perfect sense. You just pick a, like, phantasm, pick a window to tilt at.

Yeah. Starmer should do Trump stuff. He should post an AI-generated image of Nigel Farage eating like 52 Big Macs being delivered to him by drones. Yeah. That would work. Now that's a guy who's leveraged in Wingstop. Yeah.

Nigel Farage loves drones. Nigel Farage told me, he said in the lift that he actually loves drones and he wants them flying over British neighborhoods. Good hardworking British neighborhood. He's having pints delivered to him by drones, but not pints of like you would drink, like bloke pints. No, pints of girly drinks, like a pina colada, or a gin and tonic with slim lime tonic. Nigel Farage had a pint of Belgian fruilli delivered to him. So, all right. So this is a Jonathan Lye partner at A16Z.

Stories, he says, are at the core of the human experience. Oh, that's so true. It's so true. We make sense of the... So this guy was just teleported here from the Homeric era. We make sense of the world, find meaning and connect with others through stories. Over the last century, many of our most beloved stories were enabled by technological shifts. Yeah, sing Muse of the Drone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, like writing stuff down. That was a big technological shift at the time. Yeah, we just had to remember it. Yeah, that's archaic Greek, Andre Horowitz like inventing writing stuff down in the future The written word may be used to log stories that are multiple minutes long. Yeah, and Ray Horowitz American Creek and then of course several I think we would all have been barbarians Yeah, are of all gathered together to transmit an oral tradition criticism. That's right.

Anyway, so Marvel and DC Comics rose to prominence in the 40s, dubbed the Golden Age of Comics, enabled by the mass availability of the four-color rotary letterpress. Similarly, Pixar was uniquely positioned in the 80s to leverage a new technology platform, computers and 3D graphics. Thanks, John. The early prototypes that started off as novelties became new formats for deep storytelling, and today we're believable right around the corner for the next generation of Pixar. Generative AI, of course, is enabling a foundational shift in creative storytelling,

empowering a new class of human creators. I love that they have to say human. A new class of human creators to tell stories in novel, but novel ways not feasible before. I like the idea that human creators doesn't mean human creators it's actually just a new term to refer to parents. Yes. Human creators. These are human creators. Yeah, they're true, they're human creators. They're making guys in there. So, specifically their thesis is we believe the Pixar of the next century won't emerge through film or animation but rather through an interactive video and gaming. Yes. Now, we've uh Josh, I know you've been reading this. What was your first view of Mr. Lai's wild world?

Yeah, so after reading this article, I had to go back and read his other shit. Cause I was like, I need to know what his track record is. Have you read anything from him on the show before? He has appeared on the show before, but what struck your interest? Well, what really piqued my interest was going back and reading his history of predictions, pretty much all of which have proven to be incorrect. That's how you know that you're

dealing with a real smart guy, is when he goes out there and prognosticates all the time and somehow always manages to miss. Because he was like, he did some metaverse writing, which this is just that, by the way. This is just that. You know what they say, you miss 100% of the shots you do take. That's right. And that's the real quote. That's right. Homer said that.

I'll keep going. It says, well, TV, film and books still host compelling stories. For the time being, yeah. The most, many of the most innovative and successful new stories are being told in games today. For example, open world RPG Hogwarts Legacy. Absolutely.

Oh yeah, great. For fuck's sake, okay. Read a different video game. Let players step into the cloak of a new student at Hogwarts with a depth of immersion never seen before. A key reason why interactive media is so powerful. Why is this perfectly rendered 3D Alan Rickman calling me a man?

That's the women's toilet potter. The game was the best selling title of 2023 grossing over a billion at launch and beating the box office of every Harry Potter movie. A key reason why it's so- Okay, but sorry, just a thing I wanted to point out. Video games outgrossing movies is not a rare phenomenon at all. There's so much more expensive. There's so much more- right! They're expensive on both sides. Like, you will invest far more in a triple-A game, and it'll also get you bigger returns. But the fact that the money was bigger does not mean anything in and of itself, right?

Yeah, of course. It it's also it's like again saying you're not comparing like for like right at all I know that I'm like doing debate guy on this but this is just so fucking innate sustained engagement with IP across multiple modalities viewing playing creating and sharing enables a story to become more than just entertainment but becomes part of a person's identity so true the magic moment is when a person transitions from I watch But a person transitions from I watch Harry Potter to I am a Potter head shut the fuck up so I this this just reminds me of

Every time I see there. There's a Wizarding World store now in Manhattan and whenever I am getting off at my homestop in Brooklyn and I see people walking around with the fucking bags from that store it's everything that I can do to keep myself from committing aggravated assault and frankly if it weren't for all the cops crushing candy around there I just might do it. This is what they say given the cultural dominance of games the argument this of course is being set out by the fact that the Harry Potter game beat the Harry Potter movies in terms of total gross. And I'll suggest that they are a growing medium, not identifying that a lot of the games that

people are talking about are either series or even the one he picked as his example is based on IP that someone came up with for books and movies first. Nevertheless, we believe that Pixar will arise to a media format that blends storytelling with play. They talk about interactive video and then they say, actually already you're able to create worlds in real time entirely from neural networks. No assets need to be uploaded or created other than a set of prompts, which could be text or a representative image. So a real time AI image model receives the player input, for example, the jump button and then probabilistically infers the next generated gameplay frame, having them jump.

Now again, this has been done, I've seen demos of this. Yeah, they look like they fucking suck. Like, it has no responsiveness because it's always a best guess. It's kind of like, much like all of this stuff, it's an approximation of what playing a video game feels like. Nova, did you play any of the Oasis, the like Minecraft, the one that they train on a whole bunch of Minecraft footage on YouTube? I have seen other people play it, but I haven't played it myself.

I mean, you can play it and it's not fun because it's just, there's a couple things about it that are weird. Thing number one, it's trained exclusively on YouTube footage of Minecraft, and most of the footage of Minecraft on YouTube has a lot of artifacting. It's very low resolution. Those artifacts end up getting pulled into the model. But the second thing is that it doesn't have object permanence, and so it's like playing Dementia Minecraft, which means that you can't actually do anything.

None of your choices have lasting effects, which of course is just a limitation of this shit more broadly. It can't actually remember anything because it's just guessing. It's like, what do I think that you want to see next based on all of this data that I have accumulated? Yeah, computers, like the way that video games work is the computers are very good at tracking and keeping hold of a number of different variables that like extends out for a long time, right? So like fucking Professor Snape remembers your gender identity, even though you told it to him like, you know, 14 hours of gameplay ago. Whereas what this is, is just one long prompt spooling out more and more, and like drying up more and more lakes as it uses water to try and keep up with you jumping around like a dipshit in dementia Minecraft.

I mean on the bright side, if Lake Michigan is fully dried up, then that means we won't get any more drones over it. Finally, I think the drone people would love to get into an AI generated world like heaven in blindsight. That's what we actually need to do for them. So we're going to need to become crap. Jesus. So I've got three eyes!

So, today an aspiring filmmaker can quickly generate several minutes of 720p HD video from a text prompt or reference image. What happens after those several minutes? That's also not an aspiring filmmaker! No! That is not an aspiring filmmaker! That is not someone who wants to, at best, create a collage. No, you know what an aspiring filmmaker does?

They get a fucking camera. Like, you know what I mean? This is what drives me up the fucking wall about this shit. And sorry, Riley, I know you said at the beginning that we're gonna keep this light and keep it fun, but I find this to be an affront to everything that I believe in and stand for. Oh no, 100%.

The fact that they say an aspiring filmmaker basically no longer needs to make film. I've talked about this in a couple of ways recently. The ones that leap to mind are most recently, the British political classes' obsession with management and that everything is management of management of management is management all the way down. And also that the AI and creative industries to me always has represented a kind of attempted management coup where as a network executive, you want your notes to translate directly into outcomes without having to be interpreted by anybody. In fact, you don't want anybody at all. You'd rather do away with the camera entirely.

Yeah. It's the same thing as we talk about with the Unis, right? Where it's like the most efficient neoliberal university is one with no teaching and no students because it's the same thing as we talk about with uni's, right, where it's like the most efficient neoliberal university is one with no teaching and no students, because it's just a bunch of managers managing an empty campus. By the same token, the most efficient way of running a movie studio for these people is all executives, no actors, no directors, no screenwriters. Which explains the interest in this idea, which I know they're just a little bit further down in this article, I'm trying to see you know, they're just a little bit further down in this article. I'm trying to think of see if there's a place where they talk about what they want it to look like specifically, right?

But it's all, yeah, we can put in a prompt and then it'll give us what we want because, like you said Riley, for them the platonic ideal of a movie is one where they call every single shot. But that's not what people actually want to see But that's also not what an aspiring filmmaker wants to do An aspiring filmmaker wants to make a film they don't want to fit if you want to make a case Oh, the example that they use is Nexus 1945 yes, yes, which is a sort of alternate history World War one I mean that is that is a video generous way of putting it. Did you watch it? Of course? Yeah

I mean that is that is a video generous way of putting it. Did you watch it? Of course, yeah But what they what what this does? I mean what they this thing that they cite as an example of AI created video that if you Extrapolate this a few orders of magnitude more sort of computational power But and also let's say extrapolate this a few orders of magnitude more Computational power is a pretty fucking like tall order. Yeah, or a world that doesn't want to be all data center well and And to the point of Nexus 1945 Jonathan Lai points to this as an example of something that is quote stunning and It's I can I can just sort of show you right there, but Milo Did you see the did you see this at all? I didn't watch the video. I saw a still yeah, so

Here's a couple stills of this stunning thing. Here we've got... Oh yeah, great, the World War I AT-AT from Star Wars. No, it's just an AT-ST, yeah. And then here we've got the World War II Dalek. Oh, okay, yeah, great. Also the trash can droid from Star Wars. I think the idea of making the Daleks more right wing.

That's pretty fun. Yeah, right, the Nazi Dalek, rare. And then here we of course have the T-800 Terminator, fighting alongside some Nazis. And he's got a cross on him, but like a Christian cross. It's not the Iron Cross. But all of this is just so stupid. The born again Christian Terminator,

come with me if you want to be saved. Someone had to come up with the Terminator. Right, right, right. Jim Cameron had to like, you know, Jim Cameron had to eat that bad meal that gave him food poisoning so he could come up with the Terminator. Right. I'm the Toilinator.

And this is the whole- Come with me if you need to shi- Just like, shissing horribly, being like, damn, I wish someone would terminate the guy who made this. Yeah. Got him. Just a weird bit in Terminator 1 where, like, Schwarzenegger just, like, dunks an entire fry cook's hand into

the fryer. He lost a lot of money in wing features. We talked about this, Riley, with the fuckin' Showrunner app, which actually gets name-checked in this article. Yeah. Why do you think I picked this one to read with you? It was just... all that was was South Park. They trained the model on South Park and it ended up making more South Park.

With this, they clearly trained the model on Star Wars, Terminator, and maybe also Doctor Who, and you end up getting those things, but now with Nazis, who it looks like were probably pulled in from Wolfenstein, I think. Okay, what this says really is an aspiring filmmaker shouldn't want to make any new films. He should content himself or she should content herself

with the films that have been made and then just kind of grab whatever elements of them that you want to make something that's good enough for someone to spend some money on. Yeah, make the Christian Terminator. Right. So they say, resemblance AI created Nexus 1945, a stunning three minute alternate history of World War II, told by Luma, Mid Journey, and Eleven Labs.

Creators have also made music videos, show trailers, travel vlogs, and even a fast food burger commercial. But again, that requires the grammar of what a fast food burger commercial is to be assembled by someone else. Well, and to that point as well about the assembly, right? If you watch Nexus 1945, which you shouldn't by the way, it is very clear that what this is is a series of brief prompt generated animations. These are all five to ten seconds long, and then you have to fucking stitch them together in Final Cut or whatever it is that you're using.

Well, they talk a little bit about general approaches to editing, but I'll carry on. Yet to acknowledge a few of the current limitations, there's still a big gap in narrative quality between a two minute clip generated by a prompt and a two hour feature film crafted by a team of professionals. He's so smart. This is so, that's so insightful. I like the working in venture capital. You just have to make yourself really stupid.

Like you can't, like you have to stop like believing the information of your eyes and ears. It's like being in the court of like a chubby medieval despotic boy king. Like you've become like the vizier to the to the little boy king who's like, I demand a palace made of ice cream. And you're like, yes, my lord, it shall be show. It but it's that not only is it that every single one of these Viziers also has ten gazillion dollars and is throwing it at the products that will make the boy king happy You know hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah wing features. Yeah

It says I mean we go back to something we highlighted at the beginning right which is I don't think they're exactly Stupid so much as they have understood that it is profitable to genuinely believe these things. You are going to make a huge amount of money if you can make yourself believe that a two-hour feature film crafted by a team of professionals can on some level be replaced by a sufficient number of prompts. So you think he genuinely believes what he's saying? I think it doesn't matter.

Honestly, it doesn't matter if he genuinely believes what he's saying. doesn't matter I get honestly it doesn't matter if he genuinely believe what he's saying so rather than Jonathan lie They should be calling him Jonathan truth is that we're telling me one Jonathan always lies one Jonathan always tells the truth No, but you're I think you're right it probably doesn't matter as long as it's profitable Yeah so it can be hard to generate exactly what a creator wants from a prompt or image and even Experienced prompt engineers usually discard the majority of their generation. But in the near term, one of the largest opportunities lies in advancing new media formats like interactive video. Wait, hang on, hang on, hang on. So they're saying that the guy who made Nexus 1945 discarded most of the things he generated,

but he was like, Nazi Dalek, yeah, sick, stick that in. Christian Terminator, yeah, stick that in. Yes! That's the best one we could get. Oh my god, in the comments on that thing too. Somebody call it sublime. I think I say one of these, Riley, but this is from somebody whose handle on YouTube is at personality malfunction, who says, and I quote, This is frighteningly good.

It is far, far ahead of what professional studios hampered as they are by incompetent management, focus groups and cancel culture. And managing that as a Pornhub comment. Yeah. It has achieved in the last five to 10 years. The best result of this AI revolution would be if the shackles on real human imagination storytelling was removed to stay relevant. Well done.

12 likes hearted by the uploader. They think that what like that studio executives doing like anti bullying training is what's causing a kind of broad based cultural production malaise. Well, they don't know what they believe. That's the thing. It's all received wisdom because they have heard that, you know, the studio heads are making things become woke or whatever. Like you may have seen, it's like fucking Grums and guys like that, right? Who are all talking about how because the hot lady does not have big booba anymore, it means that our entire society is going into cultural relapse. Yeah, we're going to give Grock a pair of plus fours in a riding crop and make it a director. So while regenerative video quality can be inconsistent today, the popularity

of shorts such as RealShort and DramaBox have already proven there's audience demand for low production value episodic short TV, with thousands of quick bite sized mini series such as Forbidden Desires Alpha Love. Did you watch this? I have not watched Forbidden Desire Alpha Love. This is bizarre. Please tell me about Forbidden Desire Alpha.

My impression, the impression that I get already is that it's like, you know iPad slot for babies. It's just gonna be that for adults. It is that but what's interesting about Forbidden Desires Alpha's love Is that it is actually shot and performed by real people. They're taking these incredibly bizarre Generated scripts, but then they are performing them completely straight And so I think the reason that this has found an audience is because of the uncanny nature of it. The fact that they are committing to these very, very bad scripts and this makes them somehow remarkably watchable.

Oh, so you can actually AI generate a movie, but it's the room. That's what it is, Milo. I shit you not. Like, you should watch this because, I mean, again, nobody should watch this, but that's the appeal of it, is that it's like, what the fuck is actually going on right? Well, I think the other thing to remember is that- I'm trying to make AI quibi. Yeah, indeed.

That's great. When we did a quibi episode like four years ago, we were like, it can't get dumber than this. There can't be a dumber entertainment venture than eight minute murder house flip show on your phone. Somewhere lurking in an AI's training data is the phrase, bury me with my golden arm, is waiting. It is waiting to be spit out and given to an actor to read again.

Look, I said this the last time around, I'm gonna say it again, at least Quibi got some of my friends' jobs. That's true. A lot of my friends are liquidators you go to the IMDB page for forbidden desires alphas love the number one question is what is the Canadian French language plot outline for forbidden desires? interestingly Riley was the one asking that question. Where is it? Where is it? What are the summer of the plant?

The desert is forbidden. The death of Alpha. Basically, they're saying, look, but number one, that mode of producing, right, which is an AI generates the idea and then that gets made by people who are doing what the AI says. That's how a lot of the kids YouTube, like Spider-Man beheads Elsa from Frozen to the Finger Family song. That's how a lot of that got made, because that's animated by people.

It's just the trends would be just spat out for them to animate and they would kind of do their best guess of translating what like that very archaic version of God told them to animate. I mean sure, in a universe where Isis was run by Spider-Man, he probably would behead Elsa from Frozen. That would be consistent with his ideology. Absolutely. He'd see her as an apostate. But the thing is, that kind of slop is the thing that could very easily be generated by these models

once they reach the technological advancement that is necessary to generate something that's more than 60 seconds long, you know? And that's the thing that I think kind of gets me about all of this. You've got these very high-minded proclamations about advancing the art form or whatever, right? Using these tools to create new narratives.

That's not what this is for. And I think they're kind of hiding the ball on this one. The reality is that what this is for is creating more and more and more slop that requires basically no sense of creative vision or anything, but can very easily be marketed to people who just want to have something on in the best case scenario or who in the worst case scenario are fucking iPad kids who are going to take whatever is thrown at them regardless of what it is. And the thing is, right, this is what I tend to go back to

is certainly not all art is good, but a lot of good art gets to be made in the cracks. It gets to be made where there's just some money to give to someone to make a thing for some reason. The example I always go back to is the career of David Cronenberg is like the reason that the movie Scanners exists is a, it's a Quebecois tax loophole. And so it was found,

it was funded by a bunch of French Canadian dentists who wanted to reduce their tax bill. That's why the movie Scanners exists. That's why a lot of like Canadian cinema of that era exists. When we, before we reinvented Canadian cinema with Bon Cop, Bad Cop. And- Thank God for that. Yeah, the best movie we've ever made.

And Irving Body Horror, and then Dave and Cronenberg's movie Scanner. Thank you, that was well. That is a very like interesting, original, worthwhile piece of filmmaking that stands up to the test of time that gets made for an even more abstract reason than we want there to be. We want to create some easy watching

for someone. Right. And so the more of this that exists, there is like, there hasn't been a lot of room to make scanners for a very, very, very long time. But to me, this represents the last closing of some of these cracks where it's possible to do something creative, original and interesting in the crack, where capital is almost not looking. Right. And that's because of course, people were making it, you know, and I know that's a very inane point to make on some level,

but I think that I've spent so much time now looking at where a lot of these things seem to be going. And yes, the idea is always to remove the human element from the production because the human element is economically inefficient in the eyes of these producers. It reminds me always of one of the arguments for using generative AI to do all of the world's writing is that if you compare the carbon footprint of generative AI versus all of the world's writing is that if you compare the carbon footprint of generative AI Versus all of the world's writers. Yeah Writers if they just fighting constantly while they ride. That's the thing that if they all died it would be better for the environment

Right. Yeah, it's like well, yeah, that is kind of the thinking here The last point that I really wanted to make I guess is that I this is the other big picture thing I've been thinking about a lot is that I truly do believe that large language models and this whole generative AI thing is leading us into an era of total epistemic collapse. You've seen, you can watch the way that people criticize media now, and it's gone from being something where you are able to understand broader themes, connect them together, whatever, to being like, you know, plot hole, ding, plot hole, ding. But I truly do believe that that level of criticism is going to be high art compared to what is coming next. Because again, if you feed a generation of kids on this slop, they are not going to

be able to even understand what the purpose of a narrative is, let alone critique it. And I believe that that is by design. I believe, to put my tinfoil hat on here for a second, that the desire of- Obviously careful with the drone. That's right. Oh, they can't see me anymore. I believe that the purpose of all of this is that the capital class wants everybody

to be as uncritical as possible. And so one of the best ways to do that is to destroy any attempt at a narrative that would criticize, critique, or otherwise deign to take down authority. Well, and again, even if it's not intentional, it almost doesn't matter. Well, the purpose of a system is its function, right? The purpose of a system is what it does, and the purpose of the system is to generate dementia minecraft apparently. No, exactly. Yeah and you know, one of the things that's happened over the last like, you know, 15 years is a lot of students are leaving high school like functionally illiterate. Right. Right? What- Oh,

it created Japan. What happens when you leave high school basically without a theory of mind? Right. What happens when you're not just functionally illiterate? What happens when you are not able to like conceive of communication with another person that is dependably another person? Right. So we have gone long. So I'm not gonna read all of what's in the end,

but they say in this article, this post, we believe NextPixar will be a world-class interactive storytelling studio, as well as a top technology company. This is not just limited by technology. say in this article, this post, we believe NextPixar will be a world-class interactive storytelling studio as well as a top technology company. This is not just limited by technology. They'll need to find new ways for human storytellers to work alongside AI tools in a way that empowers versus detracts their imagination. That's not what they're interested in. They're hiding the ball. There are also many legal and ethical hurdles that need to be solved. And compensation for

the original artists, writers, artists and producers behind the training data still needs to be resolved. I don't care about that either. Nope, not at all. The long term, they could create not just interactive stories, but entire virtual worlds. That's really what the advertisement is, right? It's like, if you pull the mask on, it's like, hey, this was just the metaverse. You did this already and it didn't have legs, literally.

Yeah. Yeah. They're coming soon though. Yeah. They're just like, hey, you know what? That's why it's got a doll-leck in it. No leg. Yeah.

We can, we've tried the whole thing in cinematic universes and eventually people stop going to see the Star Wars movies and eventually people stop going to see all of the sequels and we can't do another Avengers. So what we need to do is finally, instead of just letting people hyper identify with fandoms or whatever, that model of cultural production is sort of, again, losing steam. Our last gasp of what we're going to be trying to do, or at least in the conception of Jonathan Lai, the last gasp of what we're going to try to do, beyond the threshold of credibility, is we are going to say, hey, why don't you just go hang out in Star Wars?

You can go hang out in a Star Destroyer. This doesn't make sense on its own merits, because earlier in the article, he talks about how, again, the point of, like, what makes Harry Potter such a sticky property is that at some point people start to call themselves Potterheads. That is because they are engaging with the narratives that were created by Joe Rowling and the various people who make the Wizarding World tick, right? If it's just a constant slop factory where you're getting fed generatively created assets essentially that are not really telling a cohesive story

and are just more fan service, that's not going to engage you with the property. Well, I'll end on this, which is that in my favorite book of all time, Blindsight, which everyone should read, which I made November read. You did. I did. And I do it again.

If you let your guard down, which is that in, in blind sight, most people have kind of checked out of the post-scarcity economy that basically doesn't need them and by uploading their brains into a simulated world called heaven. That makes it, that makes it sound more like, um, people be on their damn phones more than it is, but yeah. Yeah. Did they at least have likes there? Sort of.

It's a horror story about people not having a theory of mind, or most people not having a theory of mind, and one of the big twists of Blindsight, pause, go and read Blindsight, come back, is that this is in large part a malicious act done to humanity by, functionally, the shitlib aliens. You know? The entire planet is then at the whims of, you know, aliens who are still with her. Yep, that's right. And that, and then the blindsight version of the sociopathic sort of capital class,

which are portrayed as vampires. Anyway, go read it, but it's the whole thing. The whole article reminded me of a very early stab at the ambitions of just check into Star Wars world, upload your brain to Star Wars world, be fanserved for millennia. Now, I want to shut it down there because we've been going long. I want to, number one, thank Josh for once again coming onto the show and give him his platinum TF lounge pass. Yes. A platinum baklava waits you in a stumble level. Unlimited ice cream if you can get it.

My god, it's so shiny. And the lenticular hologram is so fucking cool. Thank you for this. Yeah, no, we's... Look, people ask what the... We've had a lot of trouble with people faking these. People trying to get in. People ask what the Patreon money goes on.

It's these little cards. It's this. It's nothing but this. Yeah, which I'm holding in my hand right now, by the way, just to be very clear. That's right. Yes. So, of course, you can, you would now, of course, also get one glass of premium spirits and then unlimited well. Wow. Yeah, that's right. Free non-alcoholic beer as well. We have a promotion with Peroni Zero. Nice, nice. Sorry, FS Zero. Excuse me. So once again, Josh, thank you very much for coming on. Check out the worst of all possible worlds. Yeah, brilliant.

Yes, that's right. I think and also we're gonna do our Q&A soon. So if you have any Qs, A them quickly and then we will... A them back. We will A them back to you. If you have any Qs... Yeah, yeah, that's right. A your Qs and then we'll A them and to you. If you have any queues, queue. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

And then we'll lay them and they'll be double. Then we'll lay the queues and then all the queues will be aid from both sides and then the queues will be retired. Yeah. Also, are you in Brussels or Rotterdam or maybe by the time this comes out Amsterdam, that show is going to be on sale. The Brussels and Rotterdam are on sale right now on my website. There's also a whip in London in January and a whip in Bristol in January.

Glasgow in March. Look, there's dates. If you live in the UK and Australia, that's on sale now too. Or if you live in the UK or Rotterdam or Belgium or whatever. Anyway, all right. This is all going for too long. I'm hungry. November needs to be released from Brain Prison.

So we'll see you in a few days on The Bonus. Bye everyone. Bye. November needs to be released from brain prison. So we'll see you in a few days on the bonus. Bye everyone