TRASHFUTURE - Robot Chores feat. James Vincent

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, my good bitches. So I just got back from a tour of the Balkans where I overall made a net profit of minus 10 euros But I so I flew into I flew into Ljubljana, which is in Slovenia But most of the dates I had to do were actually in Croatia So I hired a car and at the airport the guy was like are you planning to drive this car out of Slovenia? And I was like obviously I'm planning to drive the car out of Slovenia I'm hiring a car in Slovenia if I was going somewhere in Slovenia. I'd fucking walk like if you looked at this country recently So he charges me extra because I want to drive the car of Slovenia and I'm like fucking fine But then I've regretted driving the car out of Slovenia because I had to drive along the Croatian highways

Starting point is 00:00:37 Which were all built by like Tito himself And I'm passing I'm like really hungry and I keep passing all these motorway service stations I'm like I need to make some phone calls and I really want to eat something and it but every time I pass one I'm like well, I can't pull over at this place This looks like a place that didn't know that Yugoslavia ended And I'm like, okay, so I'm gonna get to one with like a McDonald's or something at some point the very least And after like two hours of this, I'm like, oh, no, they're all the same I'm like that every single one is like just has a place called restaurant

Starting point is 00:01:04 I'm like, okay. Fuck it. So I pull over at one I go in there and there's like a girl behind the bar I'm trying to get some food and then she like hands me an alcohol menu and I'm like no I've driven here. I want food and then she's like points at this like cat rotating cabinet of delights, right? And there's this thing that's like a big like pasty, but it's made out of bread and she's like it's a pizza And I'm like, that's not what a pizza is And she's like pizza inside and I'm like, okay fine So it's like this kind of cursed Balkan calzone and I'm like, can you heat it up for me? And she's like, yeah

Starting point is 00:01:38 And then I pay for it and she just hands it to me and I'm like, no, can you heat it up? And she's like looks at me like I've grown a second head and I'm like, no, like heat it like warm And I start saying like Russian words for hot and she's still like getting it and I just point at a microwave And I'm like microwave and she's like, oh, okay, and she puts it in there for like seven minutes It comes out like fucking nuclear And as I'm waiting for her to do this all these like huge middle-aged Croatian dudes come in and they start talking to her And she's like, oh, yes. Yes, of course one second and she turns them And then she just there's like three dudes and she racks them up like eight shots of rackier on the fucking bar

Starting point is 00:02:08 They do them then each take a like half a liter bottle of beer go outside quickly smash them in like five minutes and then get back in their car Oh, welcome to fucking Croatia, my friend Hello and welcome back to TF. How's everybody doing out there in podcast land? Uh, right in Right in and tell us not to the DMs figure out our address send us a postcard We have uh, Milo Edwards Hey, sweet boy Balkans reclining on the couch like one of the french girls from titanic Hussain back from america and trying to figure out a bluetooth keyboard. It's not working. I'd like I feel I spent so DM me if you know how if you know how like the bluetooth keyboard works

Starting point is 00:03:07 That's the thing. We need someone we we've actually gotten and hired our web designer for gettingyourdicksuck.com Um, we now need someone to advise hussain on bluetooth. Also, we need content for gettingyourdicksuck.com. So It's all connected because I can't write the content for gettingyourdicksuck.com a very serious news journalism website Unless my keyboard works So it's actually a serious news journalism website. Yeah. Oh, you don't know. I don't I'm not I'm really I can't tell whether that's serious or A fun fun satire. Um, it's both. It's a good question. It's both. It's both. Yeah, it's it's yeah kind of The only joke is that it's called gettingyourdicksuck.com But everything else about it is incredibly straight faced and that's what makes it so funny that it's called gettingyourdicksuck.com

Starting point is 00:03:55 It's gonna be slow news. Yeah, well funded by like the Barkley brothers No, we kind of we kind of saw what like tortoise media we're doing and we were like Yeah, I mean you can get your you can get your news as slow as a tortoise or you can get your news As slow as gettingyourdicksuck.com And incredulous at our incredible new slow news proposal is of course, uh, verges james vincent james. How are you doing? I'm doing very well. I'm so happy to be here in your lovely basement. Um, I'm not sure how or what the right word to describe this place is there's just a lot of like Feel sort of accidentally steampunk just because of the amount of exposed wiring and pipes on the wall

Starting point is 00:04:40 When we first got the studio and we had it we were in a different room and you said no, we want more wiring We know they're the room they're because of the faulty plumbing that caused a a shit smell to come out from the sewers They gave us a bigger room but in that room originally before they had an electrician give us just like a regular power point It had what looked like The tail of a stegosaurus and then like a plug for clearly like a commercial range or some kind of like heavy-duty cooking appliance And there's just like, oh, yeah, it works. You can plug your phone into this thing But it's just hanging out of the wall. It's just like this place is normal and i'm gonna die here I charge my phone with bioplatonium

Starting point is 00:05:14 Every we we often do have to discuss the previous office And what I like is that every time a new thing about it that was completely awful comes out So well, you may not know all the reasons the listeners now know one more reason Oh man, uh, so look a lot a lot has happened since we last um put on our podcasting spurs Oh, and of course napathay on the boards per usual. Yeah, i'm here. Thanks for not introducing me rally But it's okay. I'm gonna be this this episode. This is the closest to a Produced live show that's not actually live that you're gonna get because we're recording at almost 6 30 p.m And this is going to be out at midnight. So yeah, if I don't talk it's because i'm furiously doing the level

Starting point is 00:05:52 So i'm not here till midnight And I get yelled at by big wife when I get home. He's just gonna he's just gonna replace riley's voice with like walooigi Wow I sound like um I think in 1930s gangster. It's very cool. We all love it. I see why Exactly him and and wario. It's like laurel and hardy or jacob wall and um jack berkman or um doing that press coverage I was attracted by the bin man mark françois and um jacob reese mug Yeah, it's all françois a man who went paintballing once and it changed his life

Starting point is 00:06:27 I've said it once and i'll say it again all like every every reactionary nationalist movement needs a laurel and hardy and Those are ours just the differences ours are elected officials as opposed to just people who have said they're in that Hedge fund and spy industry long enough that enough enough morons believe them. However We're talking we're gonna start off today talking about some other elected officials Because the conservative party beauty contest of new leaders from the sag To matt hancock mp Uh to now lizz trust continues a pace as I think there are like

Starting point is 00:07:03 21 who want to replace teresa mayer's leader something like this, but only one will leave alive Guys the toy party leadership. It's like the met gala, but more fabulous and the theme is fascism So um, look, we all know that matt matt hancock matt hancock is trying to He's trying to be the nation's dad But he's trying to win the kids affection back after a messy divorce. He's trying to be the nation's cool uncle Yes, he's like the uncle that like gives you snaps at christmas dinner when you're 15 and he's like, I won't tell you mom if you Oh, yeah, so he recently your uncle was jason statham Listen if I don't drink this polish naps in the next 15 minutes

Starting point is 00:07:43 Uh, then boy is jason statham an alcoholic then i'm gonna get the dts I mean that is a problem that has a time constraint when you get down to it crank for getting turned So it'll be crank for of course. Yes, of course So matt matt hancock uh recently appeared at a charity event Wearing a tight tucked in t-shirt to some jeans a blazer and a pin that says i heart art um

Starting point is 00:08:11 And it's not entirely clear what he was saying. I think he was talking about apps. We need more apps We have my precious problems that can be solved if only we could use apps So what what do we what what do we all make of that? So pin says I love art. I heart. It's a black. It's a black heart because he's got whoa um It's really something isn't it and also just like the photo that came out of him like in his in his stance Like he's kind of like it reminded me of when I was in school in ken and um, they did like a charity fashion show where Like some of the teachers had to like fashion clothes and like asda george

Starting point is 00:08:51 And it was like clearly like the first time that they had been like Allowed to be in this kind of situation. So they really kind of like indulged in it um, and really kind of like overtly, you know Did the struts and all you know all that kind of stuff and it sort of just felt like it was very kind of suburban Substitute teacher vibes. Oh, yeah, he looks like a really sort of like downmarket will self in a way I'm just sort of looking at him now. Like it is something really disappointed about yeah his entire look Well, the thing I think the thing about mad hankok is that He is essentially a he is I think an an

Starting point is 00:09:29 he has The energy of a relentlessly optimistic alan partridge that he's always in that unlike unlike partridge who is relentlessly cynical He is extremely he's almost psychotically happy. He's the love child of alan partridge in a golden retriever He is he seems psychotically happy, but also that he doesn't really Know what he's happy about it's just at some point someone someone told him that if he ever drops If he ever sort of stops having a rictus grin um, just generally then like I don't know like the country's gonna sink or something else terrible will happen. You know how I got these scars believing in myself

Starting point is 00:10:09 I'm also like very like you talking about goth mad hankok has like really sent me down a rabbit hole of imagining like mad hankok is a version of marily manson who got two ribs removed in order to be better at parkour So But look the real star of the tori of the of the tori leadership contest this week because like this ad has been quiet Amber rudd is no longer in a safe seat owned um, it's been liz truss um, liz truss recently did a baffling interview with the daily mail that was surprisingly quite

Starting point is 00:10:40 It's like they tried to softball the interview, but she's so dumb. She still came off sounding very strange But that's her speciality. Let's we forget the albion beijing opening up new pork markets incident It's it's she talks as though all of her lines have come to her through a game of telephone And she can't quite believe what it is that she's saying um So here is she says the tories need to be radical need to be radical in order to tackle the problems of a new generation Uh, she says we need to build a million homes in the london greenbelt near wet railway stations around other growing cities Specifically to allow under 40s to be able to own their homes

Starting point is 00:11:16 We shouldn't allow villages to we should rather allow villages to expand by four or five houses a year Without having to go through the planning system so people can afford to live locally It sounds Not bad until you think about it for more than a minute I mean, I feel like we just went through an episode in which we discussed how the last great tori idea for expanding Access to people being on a purchase homes in london has led to a ton of shitty housing stock That's all worth 500 000 pounds per unit that and now the interest-free loans are converting to interest loans and

Starting point is 00:11:49 People are like, oh shit. This is not this is not What's the right word? It's not stable It's not going to last and so one imagines that if if a home building plan in greater london Was left in the hands of the tories It's going to make the same guy insanely rich or yeah and give him another 150 million pound bonus that he just earned because he earns things by being good at his job And and yet we will not be able like we'll still be renting in shitty jordan and fucking terrorist homes It's just that some people will have 500 000 loans are paying back. Yes

Starting point is 00:12:20 It's just every every tory plan. It's just the same shit every five years, but every time you say the free market gets faster like It just gets dumber and faster every time so now like Liz trust is like, I don't know What if we let the guy from the grenfell tower effigy incident like, you know Just build a load of houses out of like spit come and water them door on the green belt And you know sell them to first-time buyers for 800 000 pounds each even though they only have half a bedroom And the government will lend them the money And somehow this is better than the government just building houses

Starting point is 00:12:49 I was going to make the joke that the tory housing plan is basically b-movie But then that sounds more like the wicker man. So we'll just go with that I want to make spit come and water them door but the new blood sweat and tears Well, it's it's that's just what she's going to do. She's like, yes, we're going to in every village We're also going to just relax all the planning laws so that, you know, jeff fairburn can build like Um, an entertaining slide for you to live on if that's what it's going to be It's going to be the bulb in every in every town the tulip. Hello. I'm liz trust and I Passionately believe about reducing overcrowding in britain's villages

Starting point is 00:13:27 What I suggest is that we learn from this one particular village of mid-summer where every year at least 100 of the residents are murdered I propose we bring this in by enabling a sort of hunger games Where residents of villages murder each other in order to reduce demand on the housing stock. Thank you Home counties purge would be very good. It's like if they're doing they continue to do spin-offs I would love to see one set in Essex or somewhere like that. So I'm adding up for you mate What one of like the key one of the key things here is also that like the problem that she pinpoints is that Like the issue that people have is the planning system So the reason why people can't get homes isn't because they don't have enough money

Starting point is 00:14:06 Or like there isn't like a mechanism to like save it's like save for money It's about like, oh, it's bureaucracy bureaucracy is the problem so therefore like What we need to do is just get rid of like more local counsellors and get rid of like safety regulations Hate safety regulations. Yeah, I hate like I I I hate like having a having to have a fire door Um, you know, it sucks like if you know, if I want my kid to like burn, then I should be allowed to Have you ever read iron rand before? That's freedom, baby. Yeah, if the baby really wants to survive develop get out themselves

Starting point is 00:14:42 But yeah, I was pull up their socks and climb out of that burning building themselves This is the thing with like arbitrary candidates, which is that like their ideas It's not like they're you know, it's their ideas like innovative by Like the standard of being inside a party in which every answer is largely bin It's not our problem and someone else is so now when they're having to like put these proposals together like You know, it took them a while to sort of realize that like oh housing is this big problem because remember like Liz trust I think it was Liz trust Liz trust like a you know Was one of these kind of allied to the Adam Smith Institute people who were like actually renting is like super cool

Starting point is 00:15:18 And like so cool people, you know, millennials really love not owning stuff. That's why they use Spotify all the time Um, so if they you know, so if they stream their music, maybe they should be able to stream their houses as well But so now so now Wi-Fi has gone out and my house is disintegrated Riley literally told me on the way in here that if the Wi-Fi goes down you guys can't get into this house. So that does feel like It literally happened to my My numbers to eat from the other day. Follow me um So you they've now reached this stage where it's like they recognize that

Starting point is 00:15:53 People want houses people do like living in places Apparently in this society that we live in but they haven't quite reached that stage where it's like well, maybe we should provide A system in which they can actually afford to buy somewhere Hang on a second. It's Margaret Thatcher. There's no such thing as a society David Cameron the big society list trust we live in She's the first justice secretary who is actually I think walking phoenix's joker. Listen to me. I am an agent of radical change I am going to solve the housing crisis by giving all of the young people houses on two boats

Starting point is 00:16:39 But on each boat is a detonator fixed to a bomb on the other boat And if they want to continue living there rent-free all they have to do is not blow up the other boat I cannot I can't wait for the joker to come out this year I actually literally cannot wait for it to come out. Yeah, it's it's my favorite Steve Miliband song no relation of Ed Miliband Okay, so that that's basically her plan um is she's she's seen no looked at the problem of housing Decided that housing is just like

Starting point is 00:17:16 It's like playing the game of life where you draw a car and you have a house now It doesn't matter what's in the house or what the house is like If you want a one meter square bedroom where you hang and he's sleeping bag on the wall He's sleeping like an astronaut Then yeah, that still counts as a house We have to relax planning regulations so that we can get japanese capsule hotels put in like Various villages in the home counties so that people can get to their graphic design jobs. Thank you. Liz trust. This is a brilliant idea I can't wait for you to be Tory Tory leader

Starting point is 00:17:43 So before we move on from Liz because there are just a couple of quick heads from this article that I really liked Liz trust cannot remember a time when she did not have sharply formed opinions about the world When I asked her to tell me in three words what her vision is for britain. She barely has time to draw breath Aspirational she says eating a ham crquette But what's that mean loves ham what what honestly, what does that mean? I see my vision for britain is aspirational as far as they can tell that just means Building that capsule hotel we were just talking about and then making us into an entire nation of app developers I hate to say it riley, but it's instagram tories

Starting point is 00:18:20 It's it's such a it's just like it's just like hashtag fit aspiration We're going to house the younger generation by putting them We're not going to be like the labor party who take us back to bad 1970s socialism where it'd be like the soviet union No, we're going to do modern stuff by doing things like making everyone live in these huge Shared buildings like a commune alka, which is saying they did in the soviet union wait. No cut that Yeah, it's it. Look. Liz trust is patient zero of instagram tories. Yeah, it's like her dominant grab the sag I just feel like you know We take the example of harlow where they're making people milos hometown where they're making people live in a huge house

Starting point is 00:18:53 One huge repurposed office park that they've decided they make into where I took my driving theory test into into housing And it's like just throw people into these cubicles that aren't meant to be lived in and it's like Basically, you can have the worst kind of soviet style housing policy as long as business was involved at some point It's like that's an office park. Therefore. It's not it's not social housing. It's just business business is done there And like living in harlow is tragic enough without having to live in an office block Like having having spent some sort of 18 years of my life in harlow It is a living hellhole and within rights. It should be demolished Well, it's the same thing as like when when they say that that what they want is all of this private industry

Starting point is 00:19:26 Or to take over things to innovate it better or whatever like you can always just tell them that, you know Well, are actually most of our railways are are nationally owned just by different countries It's like it is like the France britain i think france um and germany and I think spain that that's the most amazing part of the like privatization hell of britain me as a newcomer to this country Is the idea that like we sold off the railroad the railways are run by private air prices that are the state funds of other countries And that's cool. So good. We're really into that like please. It's like, oh god Dad, please charge me more charge me 70 pounds to go from here to cambridge

Starting point is 00:20:02 Like I just need more of it in my life even though choked by the german government Like the equivalent germany equivalent trip in germany would probably cost you like 15 to 20 euros Yeah, and so when she's when she's talking about how he's A ham is falling out of her mouth as she's trying to talk about how aspirational britain is Um, that's really what she means is that yes We want to get the government out of people's way so that we can free, you know Private home developers to like make you live in a grave that you can then die in and to you know Save transport time and then we're going to sell off all of our public services to other countries because

Starting point is 00:20:36 They have different incentives than us somehow as nations. Yeah brilliant Who this is a dumb question Who are these people who are they trying to appeal to at the moment like who is going to vote them in or vote them out? Is it like the 1922 committee or is it like Tory members in general? Yerda, I think What's very much not yeah, I mean no one really knows what's going to happen because therisa may Because basically the the erg tried to oust therisa may Um a few months ago as we know it didn't work and now she's safe for a year unless the 1922 committee changes its rules

Starting point is 00:21:09 Imagine imagine failing to oust therisa may like possibly like the worst prime minister we've ever had And like you like has like the weakest grip on both power and reality And yeah, you're such a bunch of like gout ridden fucking idiots that you can't even as like Like you spent so much time looking like a cross between a ventriloquist's dummy in a sort of like Kind of a ham that's wearing two monocles that like you can't even get rid of therisa may The problem is all of these guys have actually injured themselves in hunting accidents Where the rabbit they were looking for actually came and twisted their gun back pointing at them Oh, yeah

Starting point is 00:21:46 I think she's like but she's like She's a trutorian that she has just that instinctive Desire to hold power in any sense and like, you know, it's like a baby in that they don't have much upper body strength But like you can hang them onto a branch or whatever and they will cling on Because they just have that instinct. Have you not seen the documentary boss, baby? That baby is thick as fuck so therisa may has like a sloth She like every story I think just has that instinct and knows how to Play whatever

Starting point is 00:22:15 Horrible inner games they have within the party. That means that she yeah, she's a will hammer original player Well, so what's happened is that basically all of the all of the Mediatories have smelled blood in the water that as soon as the conservative party is essentially wiped out of the european parliament later this month That she's going to have to give a date for her resignation Which means that the campaigning will begin and they're just trying to steal a march on one another I believe rory stewart when he was made a frontbencher in his speech accepting a frontbench position said that he was going to make a great conservative leader Also, let's pause for a moment and talk about rory stewart if we have time because what we've seen rory stewart

Starting point is 00:22:58 Former british army officer was like a sort of sub governor of a province of iraq during the war Then decided i'm just going to walk across afghanistan and now he's like i need to go to another place that's similarly full of hills The north country so he now is an mp from what i wouldn't think of what is it cumbria the border of somewhere in the scottish border Yeah, yeah, yeah, and uh, and and he's just He's like a man out of time in the sense that like he has all of the attitudes of someone who would be an mp from Uh, I don't know 1922 Oh, we've got a picture of him up. He's just such a good can we do a pennant pixel of rory stewart, please? He looks like a

Starting point is 00:23:36 Like I mean to be fair mp's official portraits are weird It's like they are all hustling through the same shitty photo studio in west minster And they just get them in like the most awkward like non expressions We don't have a budget for this all right, but he does look like Willem Dafoe except cursed by an ancient witch. I mean he he follows like this trend of like english eaten educated Men who look really scruffy and like get away with it in the same way that like You know, I don't really pay a lot of attention to Roger Scruton, but like when the whole debacle happened

Starting point is 00:24:11 um The thing that I did notice is that this man does not know how to like do it like Put his color in his jacket. Do you know what I mean? It's just kind of just like it puts pops out and like his hair is like super messy And he does look like something out of the mummy like Like he should be like a rising It's like this particular scruffy look of like the english gentry like gentry class. Yeah

Starting point is 00:24:34 Um, which rooster is very much part of right? It's part of the the it's the tradition started by birdie wooster of not knowing how to dress yourself unless you have a Valet Yeah, because british army officers is all people who either like went to like winchester or eaten an oxbridge or like People who went to like exeter and got a two two and were like, well, I guess it's this now Uh, but also like didn't rooster it also he very deliberately like fray, um Framed himself Next to t laurence. Yes. His life his life is almost like he's kind of set himself as parallel

Starting point is 00:25:09 to laurence of arabia Um with his idea that he wanted to kind of create this like sense of mystery around himself Oh, I know what he's done. He's the saint. He's the um, he's the just just like a lot of Dumb public school boys like watch american psycho and are like that's a good film about a cool guy He's watched laurence of arabia That's a good film, but a cool guy So i'm gonna be like that that's a tf take laurence of arabia is basically like what americans is like another version of american psycho They're definitely a person in the same universe in the same time

Starting point is 00:25:41 There's a kind of person who looks at laurence arabian is like, yeah, exactly. Yeah, and he's roy steward And they maybe don't read the actual laurence of arabia memoirs or books in which he describes like his weird sex fixations And how he enjoys punishment so on and so forth. Yeah, just like a true tory Anyway, in many ways it's like really fascinating actually watching this current tory government because they're not really like They're not really doing anything But that's sort of the problem because like everything is like such crashing and burning so hard It's like being on a plane and like the air hostess has just come out and gone like so the plane is in a nosedive Now don't panic

Starting point is 00:26:13 There are a number of things we can do and then the and then you just hear from the like the cockpit Just one of the pilots going together. I don't know jeff. Maybe we can talk about that after you tell me why you fucked my wife And you're like those guys okay, and they're like, yeah, it's fine We can't change the pilot for another year They're having a small disagreement, but i'm sure it'll be fine by the time we get near the ground British airways 1984 can be so Send the distance between us and the ground So, uh, she finally she says this back to truss

Starting point is 00:26:43 So aspirational was the first word the second words were free That means doing what you want having control over your life not being told what to do And it's got to be just people have got to feel that barriers aren't being put in their way because they are a woman Or because they're from a low income background. It's got to be just good enough to prevent a full bloody revolution Yeah Doing what you want having control over your life and not being told what to do Unless it's by a slumlord that's redeveloped the office cubicle into a into a um into a bedroom You have to do what your landlord tells you to do

Starting point is 00:27:14 Hell yeah, I I live in what used to be a Woolworth's You also have to do what the german french and spanish governments tell you to do but with regards to train travel So you have to do what those governments tell you you don't want we don't listen to the europeans unless it's their sovereign wealth funds Yeah, it's not a it's not really so much an order as an entente cordial You know, so it's um, that's that again that that seems to be what what she's just restated This is what her vision is Which her vision of britain is one where all kinds of every every single protection you have from the ravages of the free market Are stripped back so that you can be more free to be more ravaged by the free market

Starting point is 00:27:54 And the word free occurs a lot in those sentences. So i'm pretty sure that means it's better That is also a very like sort of american business kind of thing that like that that exposure to the whims of the market And lack of protection is framed as freedom. It's like i'm so free in the way that you're extremely free when you're on a mountain Top getting struck by lightning. Yeah, you're you're very you're liberated from an airplane when you are pushed out of the airplane You're no longer confined by the seats and the rules and the no smoking sign You can smoke while you're plummeting to your death most people go down But you could go up you could choose to go up if you really want hard to higher heights exactly

Starting point is 00:28:30 I mean like i feel like every political like era of a few years has like its own like kind of theme that all the All the politicians are going for so like the pre we've just come out of the previous like the trump brexit era Where like it was all just like Fombastic like nonsense just being like we are going to take back control like we're going to make america great again And now it's like miss world. It's like the miss world era where everyone's just saying like I just want everyone to be friends and i think that if we all believe in ourselves like it's going to be great Like fucking scott morrison the australian incumbent prime minister is running who literally the other dad said something like I believe that australia is a promise to every australian and that every australian has the right to be australian

Starting point is 00:29:09 I've heard this today, but there were incredible. There was a news clip about tom cotton. Who's the senator from From arkansas republican army veteran Guy who went to harvard and then decided to join the army and then immediately turned around to be a politician He's dark peat buddha judge Yes, um, and he got on tv today and made this whole story about uh that tariffs in america Are bad, you know, that's that they're charging tariffs on tiniest goods and yeah, it's going to harm some people But the the suffering that those people face is nothing compared to what our troops face downrange when they give their lives for america Well, I don't know what the fuck has to do with soybean farmers, but that's the level of discourse that we're at

Starting point is 00:29:45 You know where they don't have birthday cake Fucking iraq all right when I was slinging lad down range no one was putting fancy candles in my birthday cake like I do every day For some reason I take my own candles My commanding officer said what are you doing with those candles tom as they eat my ass Well, it's a new the thing is we have we are witnessing the birth pangs of of the kind of The birthday pangs if you we are missing the birthday pangs of a new kind well a new image for conservatism We're intending the birthday party and eating the birthday cake of a new conservatism

Starting point is 00:30:18 Yeah, well in and this new the new conservatism is the one that is just all about just being relentlessly optimistic because I think they're they're seeing that like the electoral trick that the um At like Nigel Farage and Donald Trump and all these guys that they pulled in 2016 Of going back to blood and soil nationalism I think they they think it can only work once and it's already and it's sort of been done blood sweat spit common wall and dope nationalism And so now they're trying to position themselves as the parties of the future But because they're all in they all are incredibly stupid

Starting point is 00:30:54 The best thing they can do is like a miss world speech and they're all doing the same thing now And it's very very cool to see I love to listen to it. I can't wait for the swimsuit round Look, I want to see mad hancock in that speedo. Oh, absolutely. That's the real same in a bikini or one piece Look a victorian like knee-length bathing seat Getting changed in like a in like a wooden carriage On the beach mad hancock doing late 19th century umbrella based martial arts in a victorian bathing costume Yes, please Um, so that's the

Starting point is 00:31:33 That's the the updated torii beauty pageant that is literally playing out like the essay section of a beauty pageant Um, they're on the right jack baby. They have a bull in this way, but let's uh, let's let's shift our focus a little bit To something a little more in our wheelhouse. That's right. We're talking robot butlers folks Hell yeah, james. You recently put out an article About this japanese startup that is trying to solve the problem Of making a home robot that doesn't suck or kill you Yeah, so I mean robots are just home robots obviously been like a thing that people have wanted for decades and decades and You know as we were talking about earlier the main problem is that robots essentially suck

Starting point is 00:32:12 I mean they are fantastic at like, you know welding cars or doing very precise machinery But like when it comes to navigating a home environment or like just picking something up off the table They can't do it. So this japanese startup and they haven't yet released it as a product It should be coming out in 2020 Their solution is to have home robots that are remote controlled by like people in call centers basically Um, yeah, and to amazing so they're like deautomizing it. Yeah. Yeah, it's like you're stealing a robot's job Wait, no, it's it's like home cleaning drones No, I mean they're literal they so they have like a little wheel base and they have like a little torso and two arms on it

Starting point is 00:32:52 With pin pincers. Yeah, the torso kind of telescopes up and down like that And they are controlled by someone with like a htc vibe style VR motion controller And they navigate the arms and make it pick up stuff So this was so this is just having a man servant like you can just This was the plot of the power rangers alien force, right? So like Let me drop some knowledge on you right now. So there was like an offshoot. It's ramadan There was an option. There was an offshoot. There's gonna be more of this for the next month There was an offshoot of the mighty morphin power rangers called the mighty morphin alien rangers

Starting point is 00:33:25 And this was a time when the mighty morphin power rangers like lost their powers and everything So the aliens had to like come and you know sort shit out Um, and part of their thing was that like with, you know, the big zords that like they had Um, the so the the normal power rangers would jump in the zords and control them manually But the aliens would just be able to do it via like their brains and shit So they were like doing all this like martial arts stuff just on their own on the ground and like the machines were like just So they were completely disassociated from it And this sort of like this is like the closest that I can find in terms of familiarity like there is some guy

Starting point is 00:34:03 In a call center doing like brain martial arts to control this robot But rather than like but rather than kicking but it's kind of like can you like jerk off my wife's boyfriend? Yeah, because I don't want to do it today Finally, this podcast is the Joe Rogan experience Explaining the pot of power rangers Really like really enthusiastically Except instead of being to like a DMT doubt jiu-jitsu instructor. It's all of us here Now I just need to be like, um, I don't know like yeah, Jaya Bolsonaro

Starting point is 00:34:36 So from your from your article you say manual labor is difficult to hide because workers need to be physically present A rich person living in london, for example, can't hire someone who lives in manila where wages and cost of living are cheaper to do their housework But with telepresence that distance would disappear and rich citizens would be able to take advantage of cheap labor anywhere in the world So what do you mean when you say it's difficult to hide? So, um, I think what is yeah fascinating about this is it's the digitization of something that is physical that if you have you know, um cleaners in london, for example, um earning a terribly low wage and Not having a lot of control over it. They are at least

Starting point is 00:35:14 Present they are here. They you know, um, they are visible in a way Although obviously companies do what they can to make them invisible So they can sort of organize and they can agitate for their rights and etc But if you manage to abstract labor away from the body that performs it and turn it into a digital good It becomes fungible. It becomes something that begin to be um teleported across distances that can be exchanged And it's about it's just atomization basically, um And so although this company isn't like You know, they're not ready to roll out these robots and I think this probably particularly instance will fail

Starting point is 00:35:49 Um, this is a trend that is happening across big tech. I mean you look at it in stuff like, you know Those last mile delivery robots that everyone's building at the moment. Yeah, like so that looks like a little like coolers Yeah, they're little little cool as on wheels. They go up up on down the pass and the pavements That's something like these companies are saying. Oh, yeah, it's completely automated But in all the trials, they always have someone a human on the other end who is usually looking out for them And if something goes wrong, they'll step in so that's like an example of like I mean astra taylor calls it photomation where you have a facade of ai and then you have a human Performing the labor behind it. It's neoyokio. It's the robot in neoyokio. Do you know neoyokio?

Starting point is 00:36:28 Can you reference it in this article? I was like, I am afraid I don't but okay It's the robot in neoyokio. Oh my god. This is like my favorite episode. I got to talk about power rangers And now I get to talk about neoyokio. Yeah, people assume that matt hancock is an ai bat. He's being controlled by He's being controlled by a labrador that's doing its best It's like that movie dave Maybe maybe all that's made a little man. Maybe all the Tory candidates that are running for like the leadership right now Is are actually just machines being controlled by one person and that one person just happens to be um michael gove

Starting point is 00:37:05 Yeah, I haven't seen him in a while actually He's in a room somewhere just sweating and like he's totally doing a virus Have you ever seen michael gove and matt hancock in the same room? Maybe you have but if you have it's probably a lie Well, it's this is like a lot of this what what this is to me is that represents the say a lot of the same trends that like um Like uber did for example Yeah, where the the reaction especially from instagram tories especially from liz truss in fact Which she was saying that our general our generation or the younger generation or whatever wants freedom They want to be deliveru eating uber riding arabian being

Starting point is 00:37:41 Fucking freedom feces freedom fighters and all but what she and so what she's saying is oh, this is great I can order a cab with my phone, which is a relatively simple technology Just like this. It's the same technology that's controlling a drone or like a, you know, honka truck or whatever Yeah, um and all it's and what it's doing is it's it's taking these people away from employment It's taking them away from their actual control of their work It's maybe they don't ever clean the same home twice so you can never you get that kind of predictability You can never work with in and against your own job. Yeah. Yeah what you're really doing is you are you're basically being reduced To your ability to move your thumbs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and it's it's just um

Starting point is 00:38:23 It's such a bizarre thing to be pushing forward. I feel and yeah, as you say it like it brings together all these trends and it's like uh, what's that thing? Um that Might have to cut this bit out because I've completely forgotten what it is the thing the french uh, um taxi drivers do Uh, where they follow the rules minutely in order to work to rule work to rule. Thank you very much Yeah, so like um, you know, it's the idea that if you are in that situation, for example The way you know your job And the intimacy with which you can perform it and the million ways in which you bend the rules in order to make it fucking work

Starting point is 00:38:57 Um, like that represents your closeness to the labor and how that is in your favor and technology like this It is about separating people from their labor to make it into this. Yeah, this exchangeable unit. I don't know But yeah, would you have one of these in your home? I mean If you look cool like a gundam, it looks quite it looks quite cool actually If it looked like a gundam, then I would consider it. Yeah, you can get like skin spray Like fucking awesome. They just had a tiny person inside it If I could make it floss dance, then maybe so what you're basically saying is this is like the darkest form of gaming

Starting point is 00:39:31 I mean it's in the grand scheme of things. You know, we were like, god I wish I could earn a living by playing video games and it's like well You can control a robot and play a game where you clean a house in another country. Yeah Is gerald butler in the film gamer So where he gets controlled by a gamer and he's like the gladiator in there. Yeah, or it's like that other fucking film by watch from the plane Uh, fuck that like really bad gamer movie already player one. Yes. Oh, that's I also saw that on a plane. It's so bad Yeah, it's a great. I think it's a great. I think it's a great plane movie, but it just sucks in like other situations

Starting point is 00:40:06 Also, like it was really it was really unrealistic that like they they met each other Like and they had this like romance in like the virtual world through avatars And then they weren't really ugly when they met each other in real life. Oh, no, wait No, you're forgetting. She had a birthmark on her face There was redemption when she re-dealed her personality or whatever. So I actually I I found the one of the like a 45 year old man So I got one of the quotes from from astra taylor, uh, that I that I like that I'm just gonna pull out here And she's discussing about um About ordering food at a restaurant. Yeah

Starting point is 00:40:38 This is one recent afternoon I stood waiting at a restaurant for a to-go meal that I'd ordered the old-fashioned way by talking to a woman behind a counter Giving her money as I waited for my lunch to be prepared the man in front of me appeared astonished to receive his food How did the app know my order would be ready 20 minutes early? He marvel clutching his phone because that was actually me the server said I just sent you a message and it was done Here was a small parable of labor and it's a razor in the digital age The app and its eagerness to appear streamlined in just in time had simply excised the relevant human party in this exchange Hence the satisfied customer could fantasize that his food had materialized thanks to the digital interface

Starting point is 00:41:12 As though some all-seeing robot was supervising the human workers as they put together his organic rice bowl And it's our general lack of curiosity about how platforms and services we use every day really means the work We often believe we really means that we often believe the hype that automation is doing this rather than just Masking concealing or further exploiting labor. Yeah. Yeah So I write about AI and it's something that comes up on the beat all the time now There's a story every other week basically Revealing how something that was thought to be a completely automated process actually has humans right at the heart of it So you got like there's a story in Bloomberg the other day about you know

Starting point is 00:41:48 All the people who listen into your Alexa calls and there was one before that I think Bloomberg again actually about you know, the ring. I've noticed you got one on here actually the ring Alarm bells with the video camera built in and how like, you know, they're supposed to be automated tagging But actually there's a lot of people doing that content moderation Facebook as well. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Um, By the way, your readers your listeners. Sorry. You should definitely read this essay by Astro Taylor, which is the automation charade We'll post it on the It's just a piece fantastic and this is a great essay Yeah, and

Starting point is 00:42:19 And people say that those Chinese dick sucking robots are automated, but really I'm being paid That's the gig economy baby Right and and one of the main functions that the automation illusion has and this is also this is something I've been thinking and this a point astro Taylor also makes is that it makes the work seem less valuable so we once So we're willing to pay sort of you know, five pounds to be taken from point a to point b by a driver Or we're willing to pay some poultry amount uh to like a You know an agency in the Philippines that has someone remote control or laundry folding or whatever

Starting point is 00:43:02 Because it feels like oh, it's just automated and there might be a human looking in on it Really paying for the service of using this automatic thing. Yeah, but all we're really doing is finding ways To press down wages more of people who can least afford to have their wages pressed down Because they're about to be swallowed by a boiling sea. Yeah, and it's like extreme capitalism in that like so capitalism, you know It's already um Manipulating how you view or worth by tying it to a specific job or a function you perform And then this is doing a step further than that by saying you don't even actually have a specific job Or a profession or a craft you just have this abstract sense of work that we can extract from you in these various ways

Starting point is 00:43:40 Whether that is like I remember I spoke to this company Chinese AI AI company who do one of these um That they have people performing these automated tasks for them, which in their case is labeling swap swaths of uh lifting like fabrics to automate sewing machines basically But they told me that they recruit a lot of people in old persons homes to do the automated labeling for them And that they they had they have a little app on their phone And when they have a spare five minutes, they'll just sort of tag what's in it

Starting point is 00:44:10 And just this idea that like where can we look to find like a spare bit of human brain power? I know these people who you know don't have much Had much to do and who we can offer very little money to but they still function just enough that we can extract that Limited of cognitive intelligence and put it into an app and send it elsewhere I just I mean like I feel really depressed to me about AI is what is going to do to people and society I mean that kind of reminds me of amazon mechanical turk. Isn't that kind of the same thing? I'd absolutely because I remember thinking seeing that and being like oh this seems interesting And I was in a period where I was waiting to start school and I had a little time

Starting point is 00:44:44 And and I remember just being assigned trying it out And it was just assigned like here a bunch of expense receipts from like some some tech companies business party or whatever Where they have thousands of dollars they spent on wine We need you to go through these photos of receipts and make them into You know like basically itemized lists that could then be like put into a spreadsheet We're going to pay you 10 cents for the whole thing. Yeah, and I was like, yeah The the the functional equivalent of quitting on your first day. I was like, yeah But I mean that that you think about that that to some to some people who are in that kind of a captive environment

Starting point is 00:45:15 That's all there is. Yeah, and like amazon is the king of doing that in that like you So, you know in their warehouses, they have a lot of automation and they have little robots that move around the shelves And because of that they usually in some of them anyway The humans actually can't wonder about they just have to stick in one place And then the robots bring stuff to them and they just pick it and put it into another thing So you just get you literally putting the human in a cage So it can do the the hard robot task of picking stuff and putting it in another place Well, also the thing I always think of is that a lot of this work what it does

Starting point is 00:45:47 Is in addition to funding, you know stock buybacks and like a and a new sword for bio Jeff Bezos's Gundam or whatever Other thing that it does is it funds slow advances in the ability to automate So as people's labor is getting more and more abstract and as they are being pushed into more and more humiliating conditions They're funding that process continuing. So yes, yes Yeah, we've made so much profit because we've been able to cut everyone's salaries and deliver even more packages or Folding even more shirts or whatever that we've been able to actually fire another 25 percent of you and have the remaining 75 percent Just like, you know flick a little lever for eight hours a day. Yeah. Yeah, and I was reading a paper the other day by I'm not gonna remember the names but a pair of economists who do a lot of work a lot of studies on sort of automation

Starting point is 00:46:33 And they were worried about what they called the threat of so-so automation Which is the idea that it is so enmeshed enmeshed embedded in a society that you know to automate something is a form of progress And it's making it better and more efficient But actually there is a sort of baseline level where you just automate it and you just replace the person and you don't do anything else And that you know, that is so bad. It's doing this sort of thing And then it's just it's just taking the human out of society Replacing it with a robot and then you have someone who doesn't have a job anymore and like they can't do anything

Starting point is 00:47:00 And this is basically the main policy platform of the instagram tori Which is that all look at all of this automation that's happened that's made like access to consumer goods basically Slightly easier and you know, you know, who their constituency is that guy from the astra taylor article who was like, wow How did the app know my food was ready cool? That guy is my ankle Name redacted, but that was my It's like wow ordering delivery was a great way to learn about your body It's a it's basically when you don't think about it. It's just like magic and so I was like, well, I guess I guess dinners are made of magic

Starting point is 00:47:39 Now and that we don't need set We don't we don't need to think about the fact that we're workers and we're our jobs are probably going to get automated And that are our our friends and and family whatever they might be at risk of getting these kinds of jobs So really what we have to do Is to get our organic rice bowls a little bit faster We have to make sure that we unleash business's ability to innovate by making sure that no pesky unions get in their way You know, it makes you it's this whole thing. It's part of this other huge trend As as we have all seen ourselves in society as consumers and identifying with one another through how much we all love the same

Starting point is 00:48:17 Retail products and Avengers movies. We forget that in order to afford all those gougas We actually have to work and that mostly We have better and fuller lives if our rights are more protected than if we have access to like, you know, uh A coffee machine that sucks your dick. Never mind. I take it back immediately That'd be great. And it's just me desperately trying to make a cappuccino while sucking your dick But you know what I mean, right? This is challenging. You know, you know, I mean stop pressing the touch my balls, but I'm trying to But you know, but you you ultimately you know what I mean, right where it's like it's we've come to identify with one another's desires for An extra consumer product more than we've come to identify with one another as workers

Starting point is 00:49:02 We've bought into the the worst excesses of the system and the only way we can imagine solving them is by You know deepening those problems deepening that forward on rush of development and progress in business That also taps into this whole like Tory instagram thing, which is that the problem isn't like the weird dystopia that we're creating the problem isn't Um, you know the the actual problem that we need to solve is that these things need to be faster So like the way that we make a bed of societies if your Amazon package If amazon your amazon prime comes like within five hours rather than 10 hours Yeah, um, all that like yeah, you're like, you know, you're fucking like milkshake from mcdonald's comes in like 10 seconds rather than You know a minute

Starting point is 00:49:42 like Yes, it's unruly this that they have to like actually look at it rationally because like they get to this point where like Their ideal society is one in which like no one has a job because they've automated everything in some kind of like shitty way But all say that there's no redistribution of wealth whatsoever So actually there's no one to buy any of the shitty products that they make and make them rich because everyone's just dead But then when you say that to them, they're like, oh, stop being such a fucking downer lefty May or just because you're not successful in business and it's like in the country down It's like no if everyone dies because they've starved to death or because you've accelerated climate change so much

Starting point is 00:50:16 So everyone is boiled to death apart from like you and jeff bezos because you live in a compound in new zealand with your gundams Like there won't like you won't there won't be any people left to buy your fucking shit Or you're like fucking frappuccinos or wherever the fucking is you're trying to sell like the dick sucking frappuccino Like regardless of like the rights and wrongs of it like literally Capitalism will not survive the end of the world But whenever you say that people are like, ah, stop being such a big loser Isn't that also like their conception of freedom is the idea that like you don't have a job you have every job Uh, so like you can be anything you want because you have to be survive because you don't have a job you have a career

Starting point is 00:50:55 When Gotham is ashes then you have my permission to retire I also think that there's this idea that everyone's going to be the person with Alexa Everyone's going to be the person who's got the prime subscription or ordering things and no one's going to be the worker and I think that like We've talked about some of the benefits the ideas of in some ways amazon is kind of like a command economy And that that could be that could be hardest for for for social good But it's not like a Walmart baby because it's it's going to be it's because jeff bezos is the emperor from warhammer 40k But the thing that I I keep thinking about is you know, if you look at things like this in the u.s. Where

Starting point is 00:51:27 They could install air conditioning in the amazon fulfillment centers, but instead they're like no fuck fuck workers We're just going to put an ambulance outside in case they pass out when it's 90 plus It's 35 plus degrees celsius inside inside the warehouse, which happens. I mean my home state this happened and thinking about things like that where There's this divorce of The service from the worker becomes so much more extreme to the point where People are looking at this and all they're seeing is progress and they're not seeing uber destroying people's livelihoods They're not seeing amazon the conditions that people are being put through to the point where like people are like

Starting point is 00:51:58 Having to wear diapers or getting urinary tract infections when they're on you know on the on the shop floor And it's like they can't seem to see the worker can identify themselves in any way We're like the condition of the worker they can only see the convenient benefit and not it's not even like A class interesting it becomes the point where it's like they just don't even know it exists And that's the thing that freaks me out about it is that that's going to continue until The system breaks down. There's not gonna be it's like we joke about this with British people sometimes But I mean I think it's americans have this too that it's like Oh, well the fire is only burning in the other room in my house not in this room

Starting point is 00:52:30 I'm just gonna put the kettle on it's this but that's like the capitalist mindset across the world It seems and if you have a robot in your house instead of a human Uh, then you literally won't see whatever pain that the labor causes them or whatever discomfort You will only see like a robot that doesn't temporarily work. You're like, oh, no robot stop working stupid robot Give me a robot damn my robot driver quit because Bangladesh disappeared off the map. Fuck It's like when it's like with uber right like the idea that if you have a if you like book an uber driver Who suddenly can't make it or you know something happens that you can just switch like automatically And like for the user end like that's supposed to be like the seamless notion of freedom

Starting point is 00:53:09 I remember like speaking to someone someone a guy who runs like a pr company who Like pitched his business to me in this way, which was like, you know My you know the conception of freedom in 2019 is the idea that like you can look on your phone And you know exactly where your car is, you know exactly where everything is You know how fast they're going because it's all happening in real time. But also like you have a boyfriend Yeah, I know where my wife's boyfriend is coming. So I don't want to move out of but what I need to get out of my house You know and this is kind of like really prime for that right like if this is like a robot That's really just designed to like clean your house

Starting point is 00:53:45 But it's one that doesn't even need like it's not even like a person-to-person relationship Where you know because as you said before like cleaners are already in like a really shit situation to begin with And so much of it is very much like, you know cash under the table But at least like at the very least like you have that sort of human relationship where in theory the cleaner can kind of barter The the the cleaner can like negotiate and they could just stop going to work Right and in theory they can stop if like, you know the condition, you know in reality doesn't work out like that But in theory that can but if you have like a fucking cleaning Gundam like We ran this company for them by the way

Starting point is 00:54:22 Which only like really needs like someone to kind of control it with the most basic functions as well because like All the all the human is there for is to make sure that the robot completes its tasks Yeah, it doesn't even do the task for it It's not even like power rangers alien force where they actually had to like do the punch and do the kick No, they will do that. They will do that. They use VR motion controllers So they will map their movement sort of pacific rim style from the human Look the entire world with pacific rim No, I need to like make a very important point here with pacific rim, right?

Starting point is 00:54:59 Know what? You couldn't just jump into the fucking robot and do it like I'm jumping you fucking drift You had to like pair with someone it was like tinder but with robots, right? Yeah, I also love how they were like these robots have to be controlled by two people because it's like too much strain on one person But it's like but they only have four limbs. So it's like, but how does that work? It's like you have to be perfectly in sync No, it's rule of cool. It's rule of cool. In Evangelion like this, you know, it was connected to the soul So like you couldn't just be like someone who just jumped into the robot and like Had to be a moody teenager from japan and then you could jump in the robot This is like really even more like dystopic than like neon genesis Evangelion

Starting point is 00:55:39 Because anyone can jump into these fucking robots The new the new version of Evangelion is going to be Shinji is being trained to clean Jeff Bezos's house That's the ultimate job for a pilot Honestly, then I would understand his is his inane whininess at that point because I don't want to pile with it Because piloting it sucks On the so on the subject of like people not realizing like the people behind their like app based like services or whatever I actually have a fucked up story about this Which is that a while ago my ex-girlfriend and I ordered some delivery

Starting point is 00:56:08 And it was really late and then we got a phone call from like the delivery call center and they said, oh, sorry Your food we haven't been able to deliver your food because the guy like the rider was hit by a car And we went like, oh, like is he okay? And she went like I don't have that information And we were like, well, can you find out and she's like, no, I have no way of finding that out and we're like Why like why would you have no way of finding that out? And she's like it's fine Like the restaurants prepared you a new order and like it's going to be delivered to you in like 30 minutes

Starting point is 00:56:35 And we're like, yeah, but like is the guy dead and like Like I mean, I mean, we don't really know who it is But we still feel like you should say like what happened and then they're just like, yeah I don't know. He's he's disappeared into the system. Maybe he's alive. Maybe he's dead. We don't know. He has only a number He hasn't respawned yet So some way there's like a guy in a motorcycle still carrying like a bunch of Chinese food Oh, forever through like his back business through his backest on so, um, I'd like to like to move on to one more thing before we close out today Which is Nick Clegg has written us a year five style essay about how much he loves facebook

Starting point is 00:57:11 Yes Like come on nick you just connect with your friends see pictures Like Yeah, so as we all catch up on your memories as we know, um, Nick Clegg has been hired for his um, his wit his charm his His intellectual ability and his just definitely not just his rolodex Um, Nick Clegg just like sits in the facebook office in california inside his Gundam. Yeah No, he is definitely like nick Clegg is sitting there in the facebook office like playing with one of those, um

Starting point is 00:57:45 ball clack desk toys until mark zuckerberg needs him to call someone in europe basically Nick like he's like nick like we need you to call someone in europe and he's like, oh, I'll call vince kable Well, it's always vince kable. Can it is no one else you can call it? Not really So, uh, or occasionally pen a very childish new york times opinion piece This one is incredible. It is a response to the idea that facebook is ought to be broken up When does a company become too big or too successful to exist? Clegg opens the article with Amazing so arguably skynet Collect an o'neill here the energy

Starting point is 00:58:22 Essentially, yeah, what about the rights of the companies? No, you joke, but kind of that's more or less where this is going and the energy of this is um, you're all just jealous of facebook All might is right if you're big enough then no one should be able to stop you chris hugh is a co-founder of facebook argues that facebook should be dismantled because quote-unquote big poses a risk to society itself In my view, I loved the film big What matters is not size, but rather the rights and interests of consumers and our accountability to the governments and legislatures I'm always saying to my girlfriend Commerce and communications. What's the thing size impacts those things directly because it's how much power you have over consumers

Starting point is 00:59:07 And how much power you've got over like the governments and legislators who oversee commerce and communications So unless you're if you're really big then they're relying on you to be nice Facebook is just like america's huge adult son. Yeah, like look at the size of that boy. That is a prime boy It's just wandering around the entire world Like we're all just like jealous of facebook because of like how great the facebook wall is and how you can like put loads of cool Graphics while asking the questions like hey, can anyone like lend me their lawnmower today? Or like when you're like having beef with your wife's boyfriend in like the suburban In your in your suburban villages facebook page, which is something you can't really do anywhere else

Starting point is 00:59:48 You know what you know what's really interesting is that you just referred to it as a facebook wall And it hasn't been called a facebook wall for like five or six years But we're we're now of a generation where like this we're gonna be like our parents saying like oh levels Like we're gonna be like saying facebook wall now kids. Yeah, what's a facebook wall? It's called like it's called like a racism line It's called they call it timeline now, don't they I think since like 2012 Yeah, but also like no one except our generation uses facebook. No, we don't use facebook I mean Yeah, that's true

Starting point is 01:00:16 Like it's all old people who'd like to talk about the great replacement and that their kids don't write to them anymore My grandmothers on facebook and that's what facebook is useful for it's gotten really big because like late career early retiree boomers like to use it to post about how you know, um number one Anti-semitism in the democratic party represented by ilan omar leveling a mild criticism of israel is a cancer But also that george soros is trying to replace us all with mexicans. Yeah, that's what facebook is doing and it's providing a valuable service So nick clade goes on Mr. Hughes is right that companies should be held accountable for their actions if people are writing the rules for the internet from scratch today

Starting point is 01:00:56 They wouldn't want so many important social political and ethical questions left in the hands of private companies Yes, the rules of the internet hadn't been written by a bunch of slave owners in 1776 We're being a much different internet today And this is this is what's great. This is why I like this article. It's a lot like megan mccardle I think who's just like yes, there are problems, but the solutions are complex so we can't do anything about it He says but the challenges he alludes to including enter election interference and privacy safeguards won't evaporate by breaking up facebook Or any other big tech company. No, it would just be a big part of the solution Yeah, yeah, and it's something you hear over and over again that like all what is breaking up facebook going to solve and it's like

Starting point is 01:01:32 I just a lot of problems just a huge number of problems It would just I I've just skimming this article now I just noticed like he manages to not even mention whatsapp Like he talks about the power of facebook has and you guys like a single mention instagram And he can't like even find space to mention like a platform that has 1.5 billion users That's how big facebook is that something as huge as that can just doesn't even merit a note merit a mention It's crazy. No, but but the poke that let people talk to one another without needing to do a full sentence So farmville. Do you remember farmville? Exactly. Are we willing to give all that up? That's true

Starting point is 01:02:07 Just to you know regain control over our communication interfaces That's gonna be like matt hancock's solution to climate change like destroying Destroying all of the farmland is gonna be but we can farm online This great facebook thing i've discovered called farmville facebook is this is this a cool platform Where you can stalk, you know pictures of like, you know the neighbor that you fancy Like her like spain 08 pictures So dark i know right but like, you know, that's what your dad's doing online. I'm sorry to sorry to say that That and great replacement stuff. Yeah sharing great replacement stuff fighting with your fighting with your neighbor

Starting point is 01:02:46 Um No more wants to take away spain 08. We cannot allow this to happen. That's really what nick claggers doing He's defending the right to look at pictures of spain 08 So I was I was trying to find this album that has disappeared off spotify a bunch of streaming sites And I couldn't find it because it just was a small label that folded and so I was like Fuck I'm going to go on like the old mp3s forum that I was a member of in like 2005 And see if it's still around and it's still around and I logged in and I happened to notice a thread that had been bombed from like 2007 and so I was like, hey anybody. Have you guys tried out twitter and people are like, I don't know

Starting point is 01:03:20 Sharing stuff like this about every detail in your life. This just seems like too much. It's just over sharing I don't like the way this is going. This is from 2007. I'm like, buddy You should you should post in that fred and just be like yo is anyone on twitter I actually have looked in some of them and they're super normie accounts. No surprise So back to clag we employ 38,000 people globally and every day more than two billion people use facebook instagram or one of our other products More than 90 million small businesses thrive with the help of our platforms because they can reach a global audience for the first time And nonprofits of every size raise money and promote their causes across 200 countries and in every time zone We're very proud of that and also apparently we need to stay as one privately held entity

Starting point is 01:04:10 To continue doing that because never sets on the facebook empire because unless like five people own 100% of it Then none of those good things will happen Obviously yeah So in this competitive environment, it's hard to sustain the claim that facebook is a monopoly Almost all of our revenue comes from digital advertising and most estimates say facebook's share is only about 20% of the united states online ad market Which means actually 80 of ads happen off of our platforms I'm not quite sure if I I mean i'm sure that's right

Starting point is 01:04:42 But otherwise he would he would have been called out for a bit. I can't quite believe that there's such a small share I'm sure there's some fudging of the numbers there But also like the other thing is like okay fine facebook is about 20% of online advertising in the united states But I don't know google is most is probably most of the rest of say a google youtube I guess youtube falls under google and then like banner ad relets or some shit I don't know that's like five percent chatto bank.com is the other 20 percent Okay, so yeah, so nick nick claggier is like look the technical definition of a monopoly is when one company controls everything

Starting point is 01:05:14 But in this case, it's like two we've got a duopoly. It's fine. That's right It's twice the number we've doubled it for you. It's not a monarchy. It's an oligarchy. That's fine I this is basically like bootlicker tammy winnet isn't it? It's like sometimes it's hard to be a monopoly Giving all your love to just a few shareholders Um, he says and any and laws designed to break up facebook developed as they were in the 1800s Are not meant to punish a company because people disagree with its management This is basically the this is the the new york times op-ed version of that delta airlines thing But you can be playing video games instead of joining a union. You don't need unions. You need to buy a playstation. It's like

Starting point is 01:05:59 We don't need those old laws written by men with monocles and top hats. They don't apply anymore We have apps what seems to be weird as well as that like it seems to be like this revival of that mit romney Thing that mit romney gaff at the time of like, you know corporations are people and It's just kind of bizarre how that's come back and not only how how that's come back But also like the guy who's kind of pushing that happens to be like the former liberal democrat leader um I'm really that surprised. I'm not really that surprised. I guess I guess like maybe

Starting point is 01:06:32 2010 me would have been wow you portrayed us nick I'll say that's another thing where you you have to go back to the old forum and be like buddy. I've got some really bad news Right and it's it's it's your name nick clag Fuck you Yeah, that's the other thing right it's like nick clag basically seems to be positioning facebook Not just as like a part like a per illegal person, but like as a person with feelings like hey Don't punish facebook just because you're jealous It's like, you know when I feel this way I turn to facebook and facebook provided me with this great meme

Starting point is 01:07:07 That said gel see you does this a disease bitch get well soon It says their main purpose should be to protect consumers by ensuring they have access to low-cost high quality products and services As opposed to you know, like protecting them from say being spied on Protecting them from a company that provides artificially low-cost services like say for free funded by advertisers And that is able to build a wall around those users So it's like nick clag appears to have given himself a head injury and then read about antitrust laws And concluded that they're all about how actually america was jealous of the railway barons And we're all jealous of mark zuckerberg now and like this company has to do some self-care

Starting point is 01:07:51 So can we all please just leave facebook alone nick clag writes his articles in the same office as brendan o'neill And there's like a huge newtons cradle of like wrecking balls between them That can currently strikes brendan o'neill in the head and then strikes nick clag in the head as they both smash away like monkeys at typewriters Yeah, it's it's legal reasoning if you have a head injury So the article concludes big in itself isn't bad and success shouldn't be penalized Our success has given billions of people around the world access to new ways of communicating with one another Earning money from ads means we can provide those tools to people for free

Starting point is 01:08:26 Facebook shouldn't be broken up But it does need to be held to account but not in any meaningful way In a way that mark zuckerberg strongly shapes and he's he's already in the process of capturing that regulation In a sitcom way that's kind of like oh, facebook. What have you done this time? Facebook's crazy Instead of boys will be boys. It's platform monopolist will be platform monopolist Um Anyone worried about the challenges we face in an online world should look at getting the rules of the internet right

Starting point is 01:08:54 Not dismantling successful american companies. So nat that meme you were talking about earlier. Jealousy disease. Here's the cure whatever That's this is what nick clag has written. He's a he's become a facebook guy from working at facebook I mean we said this was going to happen We said that nick clag was going to go to facebook and instead of being like the celebrity hire that they just hired for Those rolodex. He was gonna be like no, I really want to like embrace the facebook ethos. Yeah, he's done it He's got his first byline of the facebook guy Nick clag is definitely like one of those guys who still walks around the facebook HQ and like flip-flops, but in like a full suit Oh

Starting point is 01:09:28 He's like the type of guy who still gets excited by the idea that you can get like seven different types of juices The facebook can team. He's still excited about the climbing wall. Uh, it's like you they give me lunch here for free Whoa I can't believe other people are trying to hurt you facebook You've always done right by me nick clag. He gets like really excited at the end of the month when all the new merch comes out He's still like really fascinated with the idea that you can like buy a keyboard from a vending machine It's like, whoa, it's crazy, dude He's the only person still posting like still posting like

Starting point is 01:10:03 Oh, I just got back from a trip to spain with my family gonna share some inspiring photos with you my Like he does like a photo dump of like 60 photos He actually still makes galleries on facebook now. We can all name them and everything now We can all look at nick at nick clag in spain. Oh wait back when he was hot All right, I think that's all we have time for today. So uh follow us on facebook Someone please break nick clag out of the clearly like prison cell who's being held in at facebook where they're forcing him to write these things Oh, it's james. Thank you very much for coming out. No problem. Thank you so much for having me Thank you

Starting point is 01:10:41 And uh, also as ever we've got a live show happening on the 30th of may the star of kings in london The ticket link will be in the description and we're going to cambridge on the 15th of june the 15th Wait, which one? 15th of june 15th of june. We both said 15th of june You just were dreaming 14th of june because you always get the date wrong. I was thinking 14th of june But it is 15th of june. We can't stress that enough and it's at wolfson college And there will also be a ticket link in the description Similarly tomorrow today. This is coming out midnight on Tuesday morning, isn't it? Yeah, this will be early Tuesday night if you are in the cambridge area, uh, there will be i'm doing uh

Starting point is 01:11:18 My tour show pindos about how i got famous in russia at the adc theater And it's it's a lot of seats and i've not sold enough of them lads So if you live if you live a drivable distance to cambridge, I will sign your tits if you come to my show You will post on your facebook wall. Yeah, it's 11 p.m. I'll post on your wall. I'll play farmville with you Whatever just come to my show 11 p.m. adc theater I'll create your house in the gondom seat Nick clagg you can probably you can get someone else on farmville go see mylo in game bridge also one other thing Uh, the 15th of may is the last date to vote for the british podcast awards for

Starting point is 01:11:54 I forgot about this. I totally forgot about the british podcast Because we're not serious. We're not actual serious podcasters We're not the romaniacs who are good at their jobs. No no god. No So we'll have the vote link in the description for that and um, I think that's More or less it. Yeah send pitches to um follow gettingyourdicksuck.com. It's at g y d s d o t c o m on twitter It is dm pitches for articles to that. Remember our style guide. It must be completely serious No joke articles or you'll be blacklisted or you can write articles that are like funny, but not sad eyes So they have to be like it would have to be like an opinion piece. That's funny

Starting point is 01:12:32 But like yeah, but it has to be the if if it wouldn't be if it wouldn't like show up and like jackabin or current affairs or whatever If it's like got dick jokes in it. It's not going in the only joke is in the url Um, otherwise subscribe to our patreon. You know the drill and we'll talk to you soon later later You

TRASHFUTURE - Robot Chores feat. James Vincent

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