TRASHFUTURE - Do Not Think This At Home

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

We round out the year by looking at a conspiracy at the BBC (?), some A.I. usage statistics, and then look at another of Britain’s great national shames. Get more TF episodes each week by subscribing to our Patreon here!   TF Merch is still available here!   *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s tour dates here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/liveshows Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

So I think we're ending the year this year. Thank fucking God. You know, I know it was in doubt, but Jesus Christ. We got there. Yeah. But, you know, we didn't get there without a lot of scandal. And I think the most recent... Doing a segment on TF where it's like the In Memoriam thing,

but it's like who got cancelled this year. It'd be really good. Do some like slowed down footage of Kevin Spacey tap dancing in Tel Aviv. It's been a long day. Yeah. I just want to say that while many people, while the ordinary liberals are like looking forward to the end of the year, I, the alpha chat,

I'm actually, you know, I'm using this period of time between the 22nd to the 31st to really grind. So 2025, it's still going to be my year. I can feel it in my bones. Yeah, we're going to start a business. We're going to start a rock band. It's going to be crazy.

The most inconvenient possible time starting a rock band as a New Year's resolution. I'm the sort of designated representative for that segment of the TF listener base that gets suicidally depressed around Christmas. So, you know, obviously that's going to be taking up most of my time. And the one thing that's kind of clawing me through is thinking about that, you know, in-cancellation segment this year.

That's lying. I was going to say, can we get a slowed down see you again? It's been a long, babe. No, I think what you do is you slow down That's Life by Frank Sinatra because that was the thing that Kevin Spacey was tap dancing too. And in the course of this, I learned that that song, towards the end of it, contains what is that. now a really funny bit where Frank Sinatra is like, well, if I can't get everything I want, I'll die. So it seems apt, you know?

I was going to say, actually, you know, there is this scandalous revelations now come in some new information that has been revealed, of course, about a... It turns out Jeffrey Epstein had been a paedophile the whole time. Yeah, and he was only the intervention of White Hat Chomo Donald Trump. He probably stopped him from going further. He was going undercover trying to save him from. himself. Yeah. I also appreciate the sort of last minute entrance from David Williams in the this year in cancellation segment. You know, it's like really good timing just in right under the

wire. Well, I was going to say, you know, the other thing is, and I think this is not getting enough attention, is of course, it looks as though Tom Skinner, who you may recall, is one of the two men in Britain that eats a big meal and then says, Bosch. Yeah. The right wing one. The evil one. Yeah, the bad one. It turns out he is continuing his, I would say, long and storied career as someone who is like one of the best right-wing whiners on social media by suggesting that in fact his, his... He was hashtag fired for truth from Strictly Come Dancing to BBC's celebrity dancing show. Correct. Okay, so I've been like really just plugged out of everything, partly out of choice and partly just because of like having a kid sort of means.

that you're sort of, you know, you don't really pay attention to much else, especially around about this time. I, so he didn't, so he didn't just get knocked out. He got, like, he got eradicated for, like, for social reason, like, for political reasons. Yeah, like that one, like, Woodwork Show Channel 4 had, but they had to remove the guy who won because of his tattoos. Oh, yeah. But, like, we never really heard from him again.

That was, like, so interesting because, like, I'm really fascinated by the kind of cancel culture, like, the people who, like, are trying to sort of do the cancel culture stuff as they're as like a kind of like springboard to kind of get some sort of semblance of a career back and are either like too early for it or who decide not to. So like a guy who was too early for it was that fired for truth guy I think. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. You got to pick your moment, you know? He overplayed his hand. If Charlie Kirk taught us anything, you know? That's right. You got to choose your moment. I would say if Charlie Kirk taught us anything, it's that if you're willing to sacrifice everything, you can give your wife an amazing career.

You can make your wife Much happier at the hands of another man Vice President of the United States JD Vance Here's the thing He asks everyone How much do you really love your wife? Do you have any idea of the fire

That you could light within this wife Counting or not counting years of engagement I mean I guess the thing is I think about Charlie Kirk When he was alive Like talking to his wife Hanging out to his wife Do you think she was doing the eyes thing

To him then too Which is like oh what do you want to get for dinner tonight and she just kind of like stares through his fucking soul. I think the problem is they, um, they didn't upgrade the, uh, the large language model that runs her. No, in the, in the case of, uh, of Tom Skinner, though, what happened is he was fired for political reasons by the extremely, uh, left way and politicized, strictly come dancing viewership, who apparently gave him one of the lowest vote totals in the history of the show. Yeah, well, it turns out people don't like it when you say your pronouns are Bosch slash

Bosch. Yeah. But like, what I've always loved about this guy is that he's been desperate to be famous for his entire life. Yeah, he was on the apprentice. Much like Donald Trump in that way. Yeah, exactly.

And he's desperate to be famous. But anytime he gets anything other than adoration, his like almost a reflex is that he's been hitting the knee with a small hammer is just to do like a 10,000 words, a large language model generated whiny post about how the unfair the world is to him.

I have an audio clip of him. I don't get nervous, but I'm starting to get a bit shaky, you know? I mean, I'm a little bit weird. I feel like that's kind of where he's been at for the last three months or so. Of course. He said, I'll give you the background. I'll give you the background here. So he got voted off with, and again, because he went public with this, of course,

everyone else had to go public with all their information, which is the BBC was like, no, we don't release vote totals, but you did get 1.4% of the vote, which is definitely the lowest. but he said, oh, he got an anonymous email claiming to be from a BBC executive with stats that showed he actually referred far more votes than it appeared. And he says he asked to see the official voting tallies, but there were other things that added to the feeling that I was being discriminated against. I demand, I demand a recount, you know, on the basis of anti-wide boy discrimination.

Yeah. He's going to try to do January 6th outside of like new broadcasting house. Yeah, a bunch of people occupying the strictly set with a, with a, but like Papio Masha guillotine chanting hang Claudia Winkleman. Is that Claudia Winkleman? I don't, I don't watch TV. No, it's test.

I think it's test daily. Fine, sure. Fuck. Test daily. Okay. I mean, to be honest, the level of political confusion, it amounts to the same sort of thing in these people, right?

Like, is Claudia Winkleman part of the blob? Did the traces discriminate against Thomas Skinner? We may never know, but the only option is to conclude that they must have done. To be honest, It does feel a little bit like it's the kind of political valence swapped version of that liberal question of, you know, is Chase Bank an ally thing? Is Alan coming off the celebrity traitors my enemy?

Yeah. Is this brand my enemy, basically? Yeah, that's a good point. That is actually genuinely a good point. It's sort of, it's just our luck, right, that the one time in our lifetimes, we get like a properly adversarial relationship to the capital, to the media, all of that. and it's because they think they're too woke. God. Like, you actually have the brands running scared.

The BBC is sort of bending over backwards. Like, nobody's doing the fucking, like, Deloitte Pride Flows anymore. And it's like, well, of course we know that these things can only sort of bend in favor of the right. But Jesus Christ, it's weird to see them bending, you know? So, he says, there were other smaller things that added to the feeling. Everyone received a welcome gift in the show, skin care, face mask, that sort of thing. Apparently mine got stolen. Applying skincare to Tom Skinner's face is a little bit like

you might as well throw that little test tube of Lungom or whatever into the fucking ocean dude I mean also bearing in mind not to sort of dig too far into his past but like didn't he also kind of get into trouble for selling stolen thing. He didn't get convicted for handling stolen goods yeah so. So maybe like instead of it being stolen it was just sort of taken by one of his

disciples who were just like yeah I want to be I want to be like the new Tom's going to do that. It's calmer, you know. BBC then said, we have never given welcome gifts to anyone who comes on strictly come dancing. Just this guy seeing someone else using moisturizer for the first time ever

and it's like someone must have given you that for not being white, I guess. Oh, well, I guess I'm an asshole then. Of course he says, I'm not kicking off for attention. I'm not saying I should have won. I was rubbish of dancing. A man kicking off for attention.

Man whose entire career, life, I would say at this point, has been kicking off for attention. I do wonder, right, because I was thinking about this, I was thinking about Erica Kirk. I was thinking, to what extent and how quickly does this just become its own punishment, right? Like, you've got to, you've got to sort of like be this guy forever now. And it's like some people can kind of like inhabit that better than others. But at a certain point, you've got to have some sort of contempt for the situation in which you find yourself, right? Like this grift, it's got to be unsustainable eventually. It's like, it's terrifying.

Yeah, and it's like, he is, is Tom Skinner going to be, what, six? Because he's like, roughly our age. Jesus fucking Christ. Yeah, I know. I know. I sort of get a jump scare at that myself. Should have used that moisturizer, man.

I'm sorry they stole it. Okay, it's bad that someone stole that from you. I agree. He's now stuck sort of having to pretend to be mad for the rest of his life, as is Eric Kirk. You're only, like, this is. the sort of trap, right, is you're allowed to feel good, but only still

performatively, like, where you've got the like grilling or whatever, or you know, you're hanging out with Tommy Robinson or something like that. Either way, it's got to be fucking exhausting. There is a connection as well because Tom Skinner hung out of J.D. Vance when J.D. came

to Cotsworts, right? Yeah. He did. So, there is a non-zero chance at some point in the future when Erica Kirk becomes, I don't know, like and ends up sort of getting married to J.D. which, you know, could happen. Oh, yeah. Probably will happen.

Yeah. Yeah, but she will have to meet Tom Skinner. And I am very excited for that to have. J.D. Vans texting Tom Skinner on advice on how to date Erica Kirk. You just got to give her a special cuddle. Bosh. Wait, that's the wrong Bosch. That's the good Bosch.

I'm sorry. I can't wait for them to make challengers too about J.D. Vance, Erica Kirk and Tom Skinner. You know, I keep going about to back to the lack of moisturization, right? Like, it's just two deserts rubbing together. It's going to look like the, like, mask for mask, uh, fucking cat person. So it's going to, it's rough. Yeah, it's pretty bad. It's pretty bad.

Well, you know what? When all content in the world, when Warner Brothers and Netflix all come together, we'll be able to use the inbuilt Netflix AI customization tools to use SORA to create a trailer for Challengers 2. Sorry, that sounds like a worthwhile use of electricity. Yeah, yeah. I know I don't, I should be doing this. Type it in, hit enter and then just like a home near Phoenix, Arizona. Patrick Wyman's home just goes without, just the power shuts off. It's like, well, I hope it was useful. The fuck's off that Patrick Wyman and and Graham Linnon live probably in like driving distance for each other. Something is up in Arizona. Yeah, I wonder if they've ever walked by each other at the top. Seeing each other at the like supermarket and doing the meme from the umbrella academy. Man with massive biceps. Man with massive biceps. Man with massive. massive head. Seeing each other at the diner and then just do recreating the conversation from heat.

But Graham Lannes just talking about Patrick Wyman is kind of like Graham Lennon's nightmare in that he's like a normal guy who is woke and is also like extremely sort of physically like large. So yeah, maybe. I guess the answer is keep watching the substack and we'll find out whether he's going to be like, I saw in sort of like in the woke Arizona supermarket, I encountered some kind of. of like pro-trans monster. I encountered the space marine that the trans people have invented the primark that they created. I sort of support conscripting Patrick Wyman to be our ultramarine. I think he could do it.

All right. Wyman, you're on notice. But before we do sort of jarring shifts in tone, I wanted to read one more article. It's a little more of the AI news thing before we talk a little bit about the ongoing hunger strikes in UK prisons and some of the new fronts that are. have been opened up in the sort of homophobic campaigns. Yeah, of course. All the bad stuff.

Yeah, the bad things. But I wanted to read another article. This is a combination of a few places, but you know I keep my ear to the ground on stuff on really important questions to me. Like, for example, we know AI is going to be a sort of trillion zillion quintillion dollar opportunity and it's going to, you know, all that stuff. Any day now. And that depends on not it being like a thing that, you know, you can use to make challengers

to starring J.D. Vance. That's a grambling ahead. Anyone might say that by sort of doing that or by entering into a sort of manic episode where you like AI generate a bunch of like sort of Folgers Coffee branded incest bombs or something, that you're

wasting their computers and their electricity, their electrons, excuse me. Yeah. So basically, the question as always is, oh God, I just thought of a horrible take. I just thought of a really heterodox take. The take is you have to use AI image generation and text

generation as much as possible because you are you are sort of like you are the hole in the bucket that they're trying to fill to create God and so you're siphoning off their God they're not going to be able to do it and and like therefore sort of rule over all of us for as long as you are using AI to do the stupidest most insulting bullshit possible that's a defensible take and I hate that it is it's like AI's unprofitable for the like entheer running I'm doing my part says person who is like plugging in the dumbest. prompt you've ever heard in your life. Now render Patrick Wyman as another

prime mark. Make him perterabo now. It's like, please, my $2 trillion company is helpless against your nonsense. Yeah, it's like with the force of our slop and our stupidity, we can beat these companies into submission

and bankrupt. All you need to do is harness ADHD more than you've ever before. Oh, God. This isn't what I actually believe, but the fact that I've I've sort of been able to comprehend it, has really wounded me. Yeah, you open the arc a little bit on that one.

A little bit. Bits of you have melted off, but not much. The disclaimer that they use on like some video games now, where it's like, yes, we use AI, but we only use it for like prototyping or like concept art or whatever, whatever kind of weasel word shit you want to do for that. But instead of that, it's we use AI,

but only for the express purpose of harming Sam Orton and his finances. Look, we made Pac-Man. We made a Pac-Man where he's packing, right? And now, you can't see it, but we have generated one million images of Pac-Man who's packing heat. And we thought that would inspire us to make a better game. Really?

It's not in the final product. The Open AI sort of token medal thing that they gave, what was it, Ernst & Young or KPN? No, it was McKinsey, which is the funniest possible person to take it. That means that McKinsey really deserves the medal as a kind of hero of the Soviet Union in making AI unprofessable. I love that the Bob Sternfuls,

McKenzie CEO, most confused order of Lenin recipient ever. Like, what? Do you mean to send me? I mean, to be fair, to be fair, what has Bob Sternfuls done? He has overseen the, like, his industry has overseen the collapse

of the entire American industrial base. It has completely scuppered the sort of main American ally in the region that is in Israel, by, like, pouring all of its money into fucking neon and changing the color of the sun. Sort of directing all-American sort of, like, foreign policy into its most unpopular colonial outpost and ally, Israel. This is, yeah, I, I, I, if you're doing, like, the purpose of a system is what it does, then the purpose of McKinsey is to usher in the Chinese century and defeat the great Satan. Thank you, Comrade McKinsey.

The purpose of 1920s robber barons was to crash the stock market. Yeah. If you could say that they created the conditions for the New Deal. No, I mean, you could really make a plausible case that the CEO of General Electric throughout the 1990s actually does deserve the Order of Lenin. Well, this is just, we've reasoned our way back to, like, historically progressive forces, right, at this point. So then you get the horrible Marxist argument that using AI is historically progressive

because it's going to destroy AI. don't worry we are professional idea havers do not attempt to have this idea at home no no this idea has been having a sort of safe secure contained environment of this podcast episode and can never be transported outside of it this is the firewall it's so not contained in many ways it's go to the opposite yeah it's sort of disseminate it's it's the opposite of a firewall it's a fire gate so the fire Get out. Look, all I'm saying is November may have looked like she had that idea very easily and safely, but she was wearing protective gear. I was. She's wearing a lot of fireproof.

She's wearing a lot of fireproof, like, robes. So much harm in the course of having this idea that it would kill an ordinary non-podcaster human being. We have built up immunity to such things. Yeah, it's only us and Patrick Wyman that are like physiologically adapted to be able to hold these kinds of ideas in our minds. Yeah, that's just because Patrick Wyman has like a second heart in a Laramon's organ and stuff. It sucks that they gave him the Primera surgery before they gave everyone in the UK gender surgery. This is so specific.

This is some fucking Christmas vacation content. Yeah, this is it. It's the last lesson of the year. And what I've done is I've identified the teacher's special interests and gone, hey, can we talk about that instead of the segment you prepared? Look, I do want to talk about a little bit about the segment I prepared, though, because you've now reminded me that that's what you've done. This is from Reuters, and it is a review of who is actually using generative AI at a corporate level.

Not a ton of people still. McKinsey, Storworts. They are the sort of like guards divisions at Stalingrad. They will not break. They will not fault it. Not one step backward, waving the blue flag. So, that Reuters says, since Chapet, GPT exploded three years ago, companies big and small have leapted at chance to a job Gen A.I. And stuff into as many products as possible. But so far, the vast

majority of businesses are struggling to realize a meaningful return on any AI investment, according to company executives, advisors, and the result of seven independent recent executive and workers' surveys. Yeah, I mean, just anecdotally, you talk to anyone with a corporate job and you'll hear that there has been sort of like at some point a push to use AI more. And then everyone tries it and everyone's like kind of slowly figures out that it takes longer to fix its output than it does to just do your own job yourself. I spoke to someone the other day

who works at a consulting firm and they're like trying to get people to use some type of AI software that like big kind of the company bought for quite a lot of money or like they really want people to use it. And they were like, yeah, we spent like a week. They emailed us basically saying this is like so funny. I don't like I don't know much about the consulting world.

But whenever I see those like day in the life videos of consultants, like my question is always just like, when do you actually do work? Because, like, half of the video is about you grabbing, like, marcher, right? And then when you come back to the office, like, you're sort of just drinking the marcher, not doing much else. The purpose of a consultant is to turn marcher into piss and shit. That's for being, that's right.

That's right. Yeah, my buddy was saying that, like, they told, like, people on his desk that, okay, you basically don't have to do any work for a week. Because what we want you to do is we want you to go into these workshops to, like, learn how to use VAI, right? With the idea being, like, once you learn how to use it, you'll really enjoy it. you'll find it really useful for your work. And they were just like, and like his summary was sort of like,

you didn't need a week to learn it. It only took a doubt maybe a couple of hours at most to actually learn how to use it. But like the actual remainder of the week was them sort of kind of these constant reminders of like, you need to use this. You need to use this. Hey, here's like this kind of thing that you can use the AI for. It can manage your emails. And look how it can basically write half of your email for you.

But like it kept getting like, as with lots of these types of LLMs, like it kept getting like really key information wrong. right or like it used to write um it would say it would like give out these very generic um sentences but you know was which is like fine on a certain level but if you're working with a client and they need more specific things and like obviously this is not going to be effective the point being that like it feels like a lot of time is invested into trying to convince them that like this is something that will help their workflow yeah but rather than actually teaching them how to use it like the actual learning how to use the AI software is like so so minor but you can basically

learn it in your own time, but actually, like, the investment is more into do with, like, trying to get employees or, like, their employees to be like, here is why you need to use as well. It's ideological. It's like you have the McKinsey sort of political officer lecturing you on the sort of benefits of it. I mean, a friend of mine in a corporate job, again, very similar thing, something that kind of required a lot of accountability.

And I don't know whether it was chat, TBC or, like, co-pilot or whatever it was, hallucinated something and then attributed it to two employees who did not exist which is just a beautiful thing that's a really hysterical thing and something that's like high consequence and did that mean that the sort of

the company stopped pushing using this thing? Of course not. Absolutely not. It just means you have more arguments over it. Well I can give you some of the results here. By the way, I like the idea of a McKinsey consultant having to do a battlefield execution on someone who's unwilling to open up

Yeah, welcome to McKinsey. Congratulations on sort of passing the graduate scheme. Here is your revolver. I know we didn't sort of mention that you were going to need one of those, but it does tend to alienate people and they tend to go to like KPMG or something. Yeah, I mean, most consultants don't get to do battlefield executions. This is why we have such a difficult grad scheme. Follow me on my workday thing.

And it's like I get the matcher, I shoot a guy on the back of the head. Then maybe I think about where I want to go for lunch, you know. Hey, do you want, do anyone want to go? get a bull. Should we go for bowls? I, so my partner told me a story about getting the train from London up to Glasgow and sitting opposite a guy who locked in for that

journey with an Itsu, Poca Bowl and season one of SAS Rogue Heroes. And I'm just like, for the whole journey. And I'm like, that's the guy. That's the protagonist of Britain. That's who it's all for. You know? It's all for you. So the surveys say. So one survey of just over 1.5,000 executives conducted

this year by Forrester. It was like a very reputable research and advisory firm, show that 15% of respondents attributed profit margin rises due to AI over the last year. BCG, another battlefield execution type, type consulting firm. That's what the, it's kind of is a battlefield capital gunnishment. Bcg, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, capital gun, that's wonderful. Yeah, thank you. Again, do not have that idea yourself. Consulting firm BCG found that only 5% of just over 1,250 executive surveyed, saw any value from AI at all. Executive States say they still believe AI will transform businesses, but Forrester says that companies are now planning

to delay 25% of their planned AI spending by a year, which is the thing, right? A lot of this stuff is, well, yeah, because as we know, AI is financed on and sort of the GPUs have lifespans of like measurable in short numbers of years, right? So like this is all sort of like an industry that's lurching from one year to the next. And so this is hugely consequential. But also there's this thing with AI where it's always much easier to convince yourself that it's useful to someone else. it is to you. It's just, I don't know, it's a cognitive bias thing. It's the same thing as like, well, it's weird. Whenever I ask it about something I don't know about, it seems extremely knowledgeable, but whenever I ask it about something I know about, it just makes shit up and

lies. I have the perfect stat for that. 87% of executives use it on the job compared to 27% of frontline employees. Yeah. Exactly like, you have to be using this. When my job isn't to know about specific things, but when my job is management, then it all seems plausible to me. Yeah, because we get more time to dick around than the computer. So obviously you're going to be like, you know, you're obviously going to be like, the first thing you're going to put in is like, what if I was with Erica Kuck? I want to see what that looks like, right?

Well, what if she was staring at me so intensely with her glass eyes? This is such a perfect like mind virus, right? Not to sort of adopt that terminology, but it's something that's like so sort of targeted at managers, you know, at sort of people who don't need to know things to people who are sort of like extraneous beyond the requirements for sort of like planning and administration and it's just, I don't know, again, the

purpose of the system is apparently what it does because a guy with a beard said that one time. And so the purpose of AI maybe is just to like, I don't know, destroy civilization. My theory about also why executives love it so much is because like, because like when the way that these AI tools

are sold, they're often just like, oh, it will make your job a lot easier to do. Always like tedious emails and stuff. You know, you can just get the AI to do it. But like, if you step back a little bit, you can just ask the question, why do we need to send emails in the first place? Right? This email could have been nothing. Why do we need to do any of this? What is like, and you know, we've talked about this so many times different ways, which is like the way in which these sort of corporate environments and industries like sort of set, like create work in which, you know, to create people to actually

like do the work that they themselves have created. Like none of this is like necessary. None of it kind of, you know, and especially like as of late, like most of this tends to sort of hinder any sort of productive work that's done, right? That's very basic knowledge. But my thinking is like, well, the executives know this as well. And they fucking hate their jobs, right? So like going to them being like, hey, here is something where like all the annoying parts of your job, a machine can do it.

And you just get to have like the title, right? You get to like have your swivel chair. And you can swivel on your chair even more because the AI is going to do all those things that prevented you from spending an hour swiveling on your chair. Well, you know why that is, right? It's because the thing we keep coming back to of elite overproduction, right? like all of the stuff about like all of those those tic talks about like you know have a day at the office with me where I do kind of appreciably nothing all of the jokes about like adult daycare because we kind of like as a kind of doomed liberal attempt at social mobility we promised a bunch of people that sort of like executive standard of living and all of those people are already kind of definitionally like kind of surplus to requirements right but like even more so now until just stacks up and stacks up and stacks up until you have a bunch of people where you know, a lot of sort of managerial experience or a lot of like advanced degrees who end up

having to become podcasters. And another thing to add to this fire here as well is that like Microsoft, even though it got an early lead selling AI to businesses because just bundled it in, it bundled co-piloting with other stuff, which is what they love to do. They're concerned that the company's AI is not delivering on its promise to meaningfully automate anything with most large customers report that they just don't use it at all. Even if they're paying for it, They don't use it. It's just every important person agrees that it's necessary, but anyone doing anything agrees that it's completely useless. I have a train example here as well.

And I mean, all of this, just take that together with one other fact, right? Which is Oracle's leasing arrangements with the data centers that it works with, which sounds quite dry. But when we put, I'm going to put it this way. Oh, is this one of the other sort of bombs under the industry then? Yeah, 100%. This is because it's just like built on like Jenga blocks made of Sueet. Orps of C4, I would say. If I just put this kind of structural steel beam under this nice rigid souffle.

Perfect. Look, look, look, the souffle hasn't collapsed yet, and it's delicious. Everyone loves it, so it should be a great building material. That's not just insightful. That's also thoughtful. So the thing is, right, is that Oracle's relationships with its data centers are that they don't own data centers. What they do, a lot of the cases, they've built up capacity, or they own some, but not tons, and they've built up their capacity by getting long leases and then subletting those, those long leases.

They're weworking it. They have a we work relationship. Oh, okay. It's financialized all the way down. Yeah. So what I'm looking at here, when I'm looking at the kind of AI bubble, such as it is, is it's a million sort of short cons, built on top of each other, built on top of a souffleck. Because this is from the Wall Street Journal. Customers renting AI chips from Oracle's generally sign up for shorter-term contracts than the leases that it has with data centers.

75% of its $523 billion of contracted revenue backlog is expected to be booked in the next 60 months. With Oracle effectively being paid for taking on leases on behalf of shorter-term clients, which is exactly what we worked here. That was its whole thing. Is it just wholesale leases and then retailed them out? And that works when everything's growing. If the infinite growth ever starts, if the infinite growth ever started, Op's Oracle, big company, important company, is left holding the bag for a lot of data centers

full of useless GPUs. And this is what I wanted to do is I wanted to basically take this segment and connect a bunch of this stuff together, because the Reuters article doesn't connect these things together. Just like the article about Oracle and its relationships with the data centers doesn't connect it back. Yeah, it's crazy how these things don't get connected together. Almost as if you did connect these things together too loudly,

someone might notice, and then Wiley Coyote looks down and sees he's already gone over the cliff. Yeah, if you, so for example, right, if Oracle has half a trillion dollars of revenue that's supposed to come in in the next 60 or so months from data centers that it has taken on expensive leases of in anticipation of that revenue happening, but companies are delaying 25% of their planned AI spending, right, by another year. It's really funny to happen to a company named Oracle as well. Didn't see that one coming, did you? Yeah, again, this is one survey, that's one company.

It's not saying that these things match up perfectly. We're not necessarily saying that, you know, AI is washed. It is, though. And whenever that sort of gets noticed enough, that's, that's, oh, that's going to be really bad. I mean, it may not be washed. It may be chopped and maybe unk. Who knows? We finally automated being an unk.

I was, I was prepping. sprouts for an early Christmas dinner the other day and I was unable to get the thought out of my head that things are often chopped and washed before they're serving and so the internet has ruined my brain I look forward to death yeah when you go to a supermarket my god it's really hard really hard it's really hard to look at like labels without laughing so um here's an example by the way tesco finest chopped unks yeah here's an example god damn it I laughed at a fucking six, seven thing the other day. It's over for me. Like, yeah, we're done.

We're done. Yeah. I always liked you as the teacher, be like, hey, kids, six, seven, let's talk about the World War II. What the thing is, our role in this ecosystem of absolute garbage and nonsense it seems is to poison our brains so that you,

the listener, with your It'su Pokemon and your sort of SAS Roque Heroes that you're looking forward to, we suffer it for you and then you pay us to experience that brain Ross on your behalf. You know, and you go, oh, that's kind of funny because we transform it into, we refine the sort of memes into, into sort of bits that are comprehensible for people in their 30s.

Rory Stewart and Alice is Campbell are not going to do that for you. That's true. That is true. Roy Stewart has never said 6'7 unless he's looking at something being weighed on a scale during his walk across Afghanistan. I have a question for you. If you said to Rory Stewart, there is a meme called 6'7 that has an associated like hand movement with it.

And I'd like you to do the hand movement that you think is associated with that meme. What do you think he would come out with? Do you think he's hitting like a fortnight like dance? Or do you think he's got something else in that? I think he's going to do, I think he's doing gun fingers. Oh, yeah. I don't know why, but I think he's doing gun fingers. No, that's solid.

Big thumbs up. Oh, no, I think he's doing the special secret handshake that he developed with Abdul Dostom. I think he's like, oh yeah, we, yeah, Dostom. I used to do that all the time when I was visiting him as a friend, not professionally. So I wanted to talk about this, though. It's a train example, right? We like a train example. We do.

We do. This is from Reuters again. So I'm done connecting all that other stuff together. This is back to Reuters. Jeremy Nielsen, general manager at North American Railroad Service provider Kando Rail and Terminals, said the company recently tested an AI chat bot for employees to study internal safety reports and training materials, but Kando ran into a surprising stumbling block. No model could consistently and correctly summarize.

the Canadian rail operating rules, a roughly 100-page document that laid out safety standards for the industry. Sometimes the models forgot or misinterpreted the rules. Other times they invented new ones. AI researchers say that models often struggle to recall what happens in the middle of a long document and it's like, okay, same, but I'm not being

paid a trillion dollars. Well, the other thing is we can prescribe you ADHD medications, right? Whereas the sort of AI solution is we have to make RAM impossibly expensive to consumers because we're buying all of it to just sort of throw loose at those data centers owned by Oracle in the hope that eventually with

enough of it, AI will be able to read a hundred page document. Yeah. Yeah. We're trying to get AI on chapter books soon. Yeah. Well, also, it's because the AI's like sort of window of attention is quite small. But it's also, it's not like persistent in that way because of the same thing. So you can't go back in the same way that you can.

If I forget what happens in the middle of the Canadian rail operating rules, I can pull a copy of them out and go back to page 55 and look up what I want to look up and still be on the same train of thought, so to speak, that I was on to start with. Whereas, you know, with AI, it can't do that. It can't hold all of that at once.

And the other thing is, you'll know if you've forgotten. Yes. You will know. Instinctively lie to be like, you should never touch the fifth rail. And just say that very confidently and confident. Yeah. Rails 1 through 4, touch away.

fucking DJ on him. It doesn't matter. Yeah. If you feel tired, have a nap. Just lie down, cross the rails, you know? Make sure you get your neck on one of them, so you get the neck support. You know what? Trains have brakes for a reason, and people aren't really in a rush.

So just feel free to lie down. Hey, you know what? A mustachioed man might practice some shabari with you while you're lying down on the rails. Yeah, that's what they called Old Western shivari. Anyway, so Nielsen, the general manager, said, we thought it would be this easy button, but that's not just not what happened. Dutch Technology Investment Group Processes as one of its in-house agents is meant to answer questions about its portfolio, similar to the group's data analysts on staff already do. Theoretically, an employee could ask how often a process-backed food delivery firm was late to deliver sushi orders in Berlin last week.

But the tool doesn't understand what neighborhoods are part of Berlin, or what last week means, or what's necessarily sushi, said, and this is the best name award of the year, Euro Baynett. I just called Euro. Is it a head of AI in a Dutch? Eurobeinat sounds like the name of a kind of like lib inflected combat formation in the early stages of the Ukraine war. It was like 100% software developers and it got wiped out by the Russians at Bachmode. Yeah, yeah.

So, Euro, Mr. European, head of AI for Persons. I mean, this is the same. It makes me nostalgic for like an actual European employee because, okay, they might not understand what last week means or what neighborhoods are part of Berlin because they're from a different part of Europe and also they're out of the office for three months. But that's, again, way preferable to something just being like Barcelona.

Oh, that's part of Berlin. It's part of Berlin, famously so. Huh, this AI sure does think a lot of stuff is part of Berlin. Oh, it's grok. I see. I get that. Last week will last for a thousand years. So, Eurobeinat said, people thought the AI was magic, but it's not magic.

Oh, we really wanted it to be magic. I am a serious business one and I wanted the magic you know. I was hoping. Anyway, I wanted to talk now about a jarring change in tone. Okay, let's talk about bad stuff. I'll crack on my knuckles here.

Yeah, yeah, which is of course It's something that we haven't we haven't spoken about that much I think it's definitely worth talking about which is of course, at the moment in the UK there is a hunger strike going on in British prisons. These are people who have been arrested

for either association with Palestine action or actions Palestine action took with either Elbit systems or RAF Brise Norton. And I would say, you know, that one of our, this is definitely certainly the way we're treating the Palestinian Palestinians and the Palestinian cause generally is a matter of ongoing national shame. Yeah, but in particular, this is how we are treating the bravest people to attempt to sort of do anything about it extra legally, let's say, is to not just criminalize them, which is sort of expected and sort of, you know, I don't want to say fair game because nothing about

this is fair, but it's, you know, sort of part of the understood repercussions of doing that, but specifically tracing them as terrorists, which they aren't. And in this case, there are now a number of, for example, Kesar Zura is a Palestinian action activist on hunger strike who's been hospitalized due to seriously deteriorating health. Toh, Tehosha has been on remand for over a year. Her trial's not in April next year and her bail keeps getting denied. And the families of people like Zura and Hoja are warning that these young British citizens, again, it shouldn't matter

if they're British citizens or not, but from the legal perspective of who the liberal state considers to have rights, right, that does matter. Oh, not these people. Yeah. Oh, certainly not. Well, essentially, die in prison on the basis that James Timson, who was, I thought was supposed to be

like the woke prison leader. What happened to that promise that this guy was going to be like, oh, that sort of crazy? Weird. Does that say something about like the prison system maybe? Hard to say. Nah, I couldn't possibly. It's basically saying no,

negotiating with any kind of hunger strike is, of course, going to be giving in to demands of terrorists or is going to be negotiating with prisoners or will be tantamount to special treatment. The thing that sort of gets me about this isn't the, I mean, we'll talk about the kind

of press reaction to this, but the one that really sort of like gets under my skin is the kind of performative bemusement which is something that the British press has a great line in I mean it's it's something that it did to IRA hunger strikers back in the day

but like very much of like oh these these sort of like privileged kids who are like sort of you know attaching themselves to something that seemed trendy and I you know conflict thousands of thousands of miles away and I don't see why anyone could possibly feel strongly about it

and it's like either you are sort of like so cosseted that you haven't seen or have chosen not to see sort of like all of the sort of horrifying crimes that all of us have seen or you know about those and you're just kind of lying

you know? Yeah, of course and you know it's that the that's consistently they'll say that I started doing this because I kept on seeing images of you know children being brutally murdered or I have family there

or you know similar feelings and again it's again it's like oh why not start a petition or whatever right? It's something that I think More broadly than this, I think, is something that indicts our entire society. I mean, the whole genocide has done. But this is sort of like a sort of an acute example of it in that not only do we sort of really try to punish empathy, but we really make a fetish of cruelty as well, right?

And there's really, there's no daylight between, you know, James Timson sort of woke prisons minister and sort of like, I don't know, Stephen Miller. So in the sense that they're all on that same continuum of, well, this kind of empathy is something that's kind of impermissible all the way through to, well, the cruelty is good, actually. And it feels to me like the kind of defining sort of moral question of our times is, are you allowed to have empathy? Are you allowed to sort of not just sort of feel badly that the cruelty is happening, but actually attempt to like end it or at least fight it with whatever means you have available? And how this is, of course, being reported on, right, is either, you know, like, as you say, you know, of a bemusement, or, you know, the Times is running with a lot of the, a lot of the same stuff they do when they talk about, you know, the extinction rebellion campaigners, right? Which is, oh, hunger strikers demand access to touch screen phones. Let me just, let me just one second. So, I mean, if you want to get radicalized on that instantly, you just, like, literally, you don't even have to go off of the Times website or sort of put down the copy of it you're holding.

to have to flip through to life and style and see any of the kind of like, I have a billion pounds a second to spend, what do I get all of my horrible family who I hate articles, you know? Or anything that tells you like, oh, you know, here's a winter edit of like phones you can buy or whatever

to be like, I suspect that maybe the Times' critique of these sort of prisoners being like overprivileged and oblivious is not coming from a wholly sincere place. I literally just was like, Hey, I wonder if there's something on the Le Times Life and Style section we can use to illustrate this point. Want to customize your Lamborghini with diamond dust?

Here's how to do it. Wow. I mean, yeah. Why not? But it's something I do want to do. That's true. So thank you for asking the question. As opposed to what was it, Hungerstrikers demand access to touchscreen phones, which is basically just like the kind of phone that you can use now.

It is basically the phone because it is the only phone you can. use. I would sort of believe that the prison service and sort of like the government in a sort of fit of performativity would be like you're in prison for sort of terrorist defences, therefore all you get is

this like old rotary phone from the 1960s. Good luck texting your WhatsApp groups on that. Yeah. And then when they do end up doing it it's like prisoners demand like tactile phone or something. Like it's a real it's one of those things where it's very really really hard not

to kind of lose your mind at what is like a very obvious and very transparent way of like what's I mean what's very obvious is like the concerted effort because this is to me like this isn't just about ignorance it's not just about like pretending that it doesn't exist it's also about using like the apparatus of the state and the media to like further break these people right to like you know there's this whole like the campaigns of kind of going around and if something doesn't happen soon like you know the hunger's like some of the hunger strikers like may die and you know the UK government is ignoring it and my thinking is well no actions, but not ignoring it, they would very much like this to happen because we are aware of, like, their appetite for like punitive punishment, particularly punitive punishment for any sort of perceived, you know, dissent. Especially for young people, right? And especially for young people, especially for young white people, especially for young leftists. Like, this is very much like, you know, I would not be surprised if there were sort of hushed conversations about how this would kind of show that there are like a tough government that are willing to crack on crack down both on criminals.

and on anti-Semitism, like it feels like it's one of those things where the ignorance kind of really, at least in their kind of version of things, I don't know whether it will happen in real life. I do think there is this part of me that does wonder like, are they going to sort of, if one of them does, if one of them like dies, and I hope none of them do, I hope like, you know, full solidarity of them and everything. But if one of them dies, I do wonder whether any sort of sense of like, oh, this will play well with like this imaginary base that hate us and actually will kind of, you know, I wonder if we kind of like, you know, implicitly kill someone. whether like this will sort of show

that like our kind of crackdowns on whatever sort of crime that we're kind of presenting will work. Actually I don't think that's true. I do, I do think that's never enough. Nothing is ever enough. Well it will be this mixture of like it was never enough but also just like you know I imagine some voters who are kind of like some of their very

lukewarm supporters might just draw a line on like killing someone. You'd like they might just be like look I can like yeah and then this is it it's sort of a little broadly speculation but like even if you think about it logically it's like, whatever happens, like, you are fucked, right? You are completely fucked.

And so, like, on a political level, this doesn't really make much sense. And so my conclusion, Ben, is, I can only draw to as like, no, they just want this to happen because they would want, they want these people to die. And, you know, I think it's kind of, I think the other aspect of, like, what seems to be very interesting as, like, a broader kind of cultural moment is also, like, the place that hunger has, like, politics and culture generally. Like, so you have, like, hunger strikers who are putting them, you know, who are sort of like on the brink of death, like having not eaten for like it's such a historic

long amount of time. And a government that is either, it's like pretending to either like just not see it or to kind of be like, well, actually like, you know, our responsibility is just to sort of give them food. We don't have to engage with them. If they don't want to eat the food, then like, you know, it's their responsibility to kind of like manage their bodies. But also a government that is very much like is pushing, you know, weight loss medication, possibly on the basis of like, oh, like, you know, people who are like above a certain BMI or, but. to the state, and therefore, like, their choices even to, like, take this drug with side effects that, like, we don't, we're not quite sure of just yet. Or, like, you know, to die, right? But it does

kind of feel as if it's like, we had this line where it's like, you know, there were certain kind of points where it was like, well, once you sort of let this happen, like, you open the gates of hell. And there's not really any kind of turning back from that. And like, hunger, like, death from starvation and hunger was like one of them. And now it does definitely does feel like, okay, well, not only is like a permanent sense of hunger, like very much embedded into the political culture of this country, but it's something that actually like the state will either like encourage people to do or will kind of admonish responsibility from. And I mean, going on, I mean, there's obviously been a great deal of writing about this.

I mean, the, um, the telegraph and the Times sort of lead and, and GB News and all the rest are leading the, um, the David Lammy position, which is, this is from Nicole Lampert in the Telegraph, which is if Mariela Frostop and Greta Thunberg truly cared about the hunger strikers, they would do them the courtesy of simply telling the truth. You should just eat. Nothing you do will make a difference. It feels similar to those pro-Palestan advocates who keep pushing for more resistance. That's so self-incriminating, right? And like, you must share my nihilism, right? Because I experience your, your outrage, your sense that this is intolerable as a personal insult to me who is tolerating it, you know? Like, if you can,

if you can do something, then that means that I'm choosing not to do something. And that really kind of assaults my feeling that nothing can be done by anyone, which is the point of doing this, right? Like, you can say that this is like emotional blackmail, right? Because it is. And the reason why it works, the reason why it's worth doing is because something shameful is being done. Like, it is meant to shame people.

And I think there's a recurring pattern in this country. of the media and politicians in particular, but a whole lot of people otherwise. And to an extent this indicts all of us, really never feeling like we should ever be allowed to feel shamed for anything that we do. And responding to that with this kind of, again, very performative, cruelty and nihilism of like,

well, it doesn't matter what I think. You know, would that we lived in a perfect world, but ultimately there's kind of, there's nothing we can do. I can't stop the thing from happening. It's like, well, maybe not, but your sort of choice of response is still a moral one, right? And the response that you're choosing is to go, ah, it's tough, I guess.

Yeah. Or in this case, Lampert's view is like, oh, it's regrettable that there's so much violence, but, you know, it's Israel obviously must defend itself, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You shouldn't have, and even if you do have empathy, it have some kind of empathy, or even if you do want to force someone like David Lammy to try to feel shame, which is very hard. Or if you want to force the sort of commentariat, the politicians who push this agenda to feel shame, right? This is, as you say, Nova, this is what hunger strikes are for, then you who does have this kind of empathy, which we want to make into a sin, we should feel shame for having the empathy.

Don't even bother. Don't even bother. I mean, listen, listen, what is, I ask you this, what does offering yourself as a kind of, you know, sacrifice to suffer immensely to kind of take on and reflect the injustice of the world have to do. do with the spirit of Christmas. Well, you know, I certainly, I certainly couldn't think of it. No, no. I think it's, I think it's more to do with the kind of diamond Lamborghini thing, right? Yeah, well, it's the, it's the, it's the Coca-Cola advertisement, you know, with the Santa. Lampert goes on to write, the outlandish demands these hunger strikers, which include

being given bail, which again, that's not outlandish. No. It's a pretty, it's a pretty normal demand, like. The deep prescription of Palestine action, that also is like, that's currently working its way through the courts. I wouldn't think that's outlandish. Now, she's of course saying, right, well, if the British government would have given to this sort of blackmail every time they had someone in prison, there would be

even more dangerous people walking our streets, which basically sort of also says, well, everyone who breaks the law is a criminal, which is a type of person who is the same. So, of course, like, I don't know, anyone in jail could in theory go on hunger strike to, like, decriminalize fucking robbing a bank,

I guess. Yeah. That's right. We might have to empathize with, like, other criminals. Hmm, wait for talk. Jesus, can you imagine that? Oh, no, and I, you might have to empathize with people who, you know, aren't actually right about the political cause and instead might have done bad things. And God only knows where that would lead us. You're only supposed to empathize with people doing bad things when they're wearing IDF uniforms.

These are the heartstrings, these hunger strikers are attempting to yank on. But the British public doesn't have much empathy for a group such as Palestine action. You could have just stopped that sentence at empathy, I think. Yeah. But even still, it's like the prescription remains relatively unpopular, as I'm given to understand it. Yeah, and it is obviously farcical, right? And this thing is also in the courts. So, you know, it kind of limits what we can say about it.

But for a long time, we had ministers being like, oh, once you find out what they did, once you find out what they did, you're going to be thinking very differently about prescribing Palestine action. And then what they are alleged to have done, and this is, you know, still. you know, the trial is still ongoing for this, is one of them hit a cop in the back with a hammer. That's terrible. Big frowny face, obviously. That's bad, right? I sort of, I disavow, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I think I've seen worse things than that about five times a day every day for months, just like on social media. Like, so that's my kind of perspective on it as a kind of moral question. So that didn't change how I felt about the prescription And it still doesn't even had they convicted anyone for that Which they haven't yet You know so this this this idea that you could I guess you can I don't know how to what to make of this whether this is you know This the like political immediate class trying to put some toothpaste back into a tube

Or whether this is just you know the the sort of almost reflexive derision For displays of the latter I think this is all a kind of subconscious sort of impulse because the point of of the hunger strikers to kind of like prick the conscience. And I think if there is a conscience in there, then you have this kind of autonomics of jerkback reflex of like phones, touch screen phones. Yeah. Well, it's a little bit, I'll take it all the way back to Tom Skinner. It's a little, it's a little bit like, you know, everyone didn't vote for me because they're all just because the British public is discriminatory against a political conservatives. You know, you can't be a white man anymore. And it's like, surely, surely there's a way to triangulate and be a moderate centrist on this, which is that we offer the Palestine action. hunger strikers, the welcome pack that Tom's going to would have got on Strictly Come Dancing. To conclude Lampert's article, she says,

instead of egging on this dangerous martyrdom, the most empathetic of their supporters, the ones who think they're good people, should now be demanding that they stop putting themselves in danger and just eat. Again, what does this have to do with the Spiris of Christmas? Yeah.

I don't know. Stockings, maybe? Yeah. Yeah. There is also like this kind of very, like one thing that's very evident. From what it sounds like, also, it's like, if one of them were to die, if something really bad were to happen, and again, like, you know, I hope not. I really, really hope not. But if something were to happen, they'd have to reckon with, like, kind of being participant, like being a participant in someone's death, right? I think it, like, the whole point about, like, the discouragement of empathy is such an important one because it, you know, I guess like what I'm trying to say is that, like, it does kind of feel like, again, where like political culture is currently at is one that sort of discourages. empathy because it then does require you to sort of ask deeper questions and follow-up questions

to like what is happening. And for these guys, it's like their job is not to do that. Their job is to sort of like tell you either the status quo is fine or that like in order for the Sascoa to be fine, things need to be cruel. And well like, and this is it. Because like, well, you know, you've imprisoned these activists. You've imprisoned Palestine action. Like, you know, the envisioning that you have is that like they're going to have such a horrible time in prison. But like, you know, you can get some satisfaction from like their misery. But what they've done, what the Palestine action guys have done is like put themselves through something so much. worse. And, you know, it's not to sort of say that this is like a political action or one that

is strategic. I can't really speak to that. And nor do I want to. But what is very interesting is like, oh, this is what happens when like the cruelty that is being administered. Like when they don't administer the cruelty, there is a sort of sense of like, oh, like we don't want them to starve to death. Not because they don't want them to starve to stuff, but it's because I imagine their thing is like, no, we would, we do want you to starve to step, but we want to be the one that enforces of the starvation. And the fact that you're doing this by your own sort of will, by your own sense of agency is a real disruption to like the moral calculations that I have made in my head to say that like you should die of starvation but you shouldn't die of starvation in this way in in in a way

where you get the agency yeah I think the point you made about about sort of being responsible for their deaths is a is a really important one because I think part of the shaming function of the hunger strike right is to it's also not so yeah sorry I was just going to say it's also something they're not going to accept because again it's very much just like you know the fact for like media still referring to like the breaking of breaking in of like elbit systems is like attacks on Jewish businesses and stuff, right? Um, like this real like, you know, this real sort of like steeply, deeply insulting stuff that is also factually incorrect. And, you know, but also like, the point being made is also to say, well, once you start to ask the follow up question,

i.e. Hey, what business was sabotage and how was it sabotage? And why did they target that place? And like, what is their sort of thinking behind this? They hope, you know, you end up having to sort of reach the conclusion that they've already read and we've already reached as well, which is like, yes, the British state is involved in, like, facilitating war crimes and in some times, and in some cases directly kind of administering them, concealing it and punishing people who are, you know, make that point or try to stop it, right? And then by extension, if you are supporting this government, then you are also like a participant in that. But I mean, so just to come back to to what I was saying, I think the sort of shaming function of a hunger strike, right, is partially to sort of indict, like, as in. put on trial the whole system for, okay, well, you kind of clearly are comfortable with the ideas that Palestinians being killed in Palestine don't matter and aren't sort of like, you know, anything for you to feel sort of concerned about. What about like the death of a British person

in Britain on the basis of the same kind of cause, right? Is that something that you, is that a responsibility that you're sort of as eager to deny? To which I don't know the answer, you know, the point of doing this is to find out, I suppose. Yeah, and I mean, you know, this is obviously something that is going to be going on for a while. Yeah. Because, you know, clearly there's a, there's no one in government is willing to, willing to sort of see what's going on, is willing to sort of, I have to give her her roses. As much as the sort of your party stuff has been a disaster. This is something that Zara Sultan has been very good on is the kind of on the ground organizing about this.

Yeah. Well, and again, just trying to say, hey, this, trying to make that prick of shame unavoidable. you know right there is I suppose it's a bit of a down message to leave the year on that that's all that there really is right is can you make David Lammy ashamed enough that he will say no we

won't participate you know and I'm not counting the sort of fake statements if we won't participate that's like oh we've suspended like some percent of the arms import license and so on you want to kind of button to end the year on right is that we are looking at a sort of world of injustice and

horror everywhere all over stuff we didn't get the time to talk about, I mean, like, you name it, whether it's, whether it's Palestine, whether it's any of the turf shit, whether it's any of the migration shit, whether it's Ukraine, whatever it is, right? I think, you know, there's a lot to be depressed about, but if you're going to try and find meaning in it, then it's going to have to be in your own kind of, like, moral and practical response to these things, right? Like, and I sort of am hopeful in the sort of idea that, you know, courage calls to courage or whatever, right? Like, there are people who organize against these things, and there always will be.

And it's just, I don't know, it sort of, it requires your involvement, if nothing else, it requires you to feel empathy. And that is something I think you have to absolutely treasure, because right now there are a lot of people in power who really want to take that away from you. Well, I think that's probably the note I think I'm going to suggest we end the year on. So a little bit of housekeeping before we go. The next couple of weeks we're going to be doing is we're going to be unlocking stuff from the $10 to the $5 tier, from the $5 tier to the free tier.

And then we're going to publish a new left on red, which Nova and I have recorded. It is actually recorded. We did it. We read a book. We read a book, I promise. We finally read a goddamn book. Okay, it did have pictures, but the pictures are really good. Yeah, the pictures are good.

We did interview the author, who is our good friend, Maddie Lipschanski. So, look, but we did it. And so that's going to be going up. So basically, that's what it's going to be the next little while. And then normal service will resume, I want to say, on probably January 5th. Yeah, that sounds about right. So you're going to get sort of Christmas and New Year covered. Yeah, exactly.

But also, I want to say, not just to my co-host, but to our listeners out there, our producer, everybody, thank you very much for another year of certainly having its ups and down. Absolutely. It makes the horror's bearable. Sometimes I worry that all it does is make the horrors bearable, but it does make the horrors bearable. So thank you. Obviously, it's a privilege to get to do this as a job for all of you. immensely. So thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for a wonderful, terrible. God knows how, but being a little less wonderful, terrible, a little less good bad and more just good, good. Hey, listen, the only way else is through, you know. It's like the Brecht poem, all of us all of us all. none. Yeah. So with that in mind, thank you very much for this year. And we will see you. And we will see you again in a couple of weeks, but you're going to have different versions of us unlocked all kinds of things. So you're going to have more of us. Don't worry about it. All right. All right.

So happy holidays. Happy New Year. And we'll see you soon. Bye, bye, bye. That's life. That's life. That's what all the people say. You're riding high in April Shot down in May But I know I'm gonna change that tune When I'm back on top Back on top of June