TRASHFUTURE - ShrinerCo Construction LLC feat. Mattie Lubchansky

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

Mattie from No Gods No Mayors subs in for Nova, and we talk about what it’s like when politicians lead from the left versus right… and we discuss Eric Adams, the bag of chips, and the city’s partnership with the Citizen App. Finally, we look at the updated prospects for Trojena to host the 2029 Asian winter games and come up with some creative engineering solutions. Buy Mattie's book here! Get more TF episodes each week by subscribing to our Patreon here! Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

you're talking about rebinding the entirety of berserk into one volume that you can carry around in your arm at all times you're going to handcuff to yourself but what you have to do is because it's for your your kid you're going to have to hand bind every volume of berserk but with the thick cardboard page that baby books have so it's going to need to be like 30 feet thick okay so here's the thing here's what you do is you get a if it's going to be big enough you get a motor on there you get some wheels on it just kind of drive it around hold up hold up hold up I think we're going to have to compromise on materials right as much as it's good for baby books to be made out of cardboard I think if we're going to have this thing being driven around it's going to have to

have enough like tensile strength and its various materials to like with Dan being turned. There's going to have to be some metal and probably an engine. It's mostly metal. Okay, I have a better idea. What if we just got like a Jeep and then we put all of Berserk on an iPad in the Jeep? That's going to be so good. Listener, just for context, this is our workaround to Hussein trying to figure out how he can justify buying the entire set of Berserk. And we've worked our way back to buy a Jeep and an iPad. That's right. That's correct. I mean, all I was, all I was going to say was I would rebind it myself. like all of berserk, but not for my kid, but to sort of, for my own purposes, which is that I'm going to

take it on the tube and I'm going to have like a, like, a big matcher in one of those, like, big gulp things. And I'm going to like hang a couple of looboos on, uh, on the book itself. And I'm going to be like the ultimate performative male, but in a really confusing way. Like, people will take pictures of me, but, and it'll be like, oh, look at this guy pretending to read a book, you know, with his matcher and his looboos, but more people will just be like, well, okay, but why does he happen to be at the specific pages where the fucking like Godhand shows up And why is he, like, smiling and laughing and, like, saying, shouting more, more, more at it? What people don't understand is, like, the very subway they're writing is actually the

edition of Berserk that you've made. Yeah. You know, I really want to go on that show, the one that they do on the New York subway, the bad takes one. Oh, the subway takes? Yeah. And I do want to, like, explain to that guy. Yeah, my take being about, like, you know, Griffith was right and, like, it was completely

fine in the context. And in many ways, berserk is sort of like the contemporary or Lisa. Totally agree, is what he'll say into the thing. If you're a New Yorker and you see subway takes being filmed, you should be allowed to like intervene as a citizen and then get a job at, like, Andresen Horowitz. Yeah, the 21st century Bernie Gets will be a guy who sees the subway takes guy and just slaps the phone out of his hand and walks out the subway.

It just rips up that metro card and just said, it finally says no more. No more. And then, okay, if Andreessen Horowitz won't hire that person than we will. just rip up the metro card that's all we're saying just the metro card yeah just the metro card enough enough pleasant chit chat we've got business to attend to god damn it oh yeah so we're sitting on business yeah that's no hey you know what i know all about being on business from what i learned in a little podcast called no gods no mayors that i co-host with our wonderful guest mattie lipschansky also the author of simplicity a book that you should buy that's true both those things are true

uh sitting on business is of course the name of the show that i will start filming one subway takes us Yeah. Wait, okay. Okay, if subway takes is just like that annoying guy like sits down with someone and is like, hey, if it's the third date, should a girl like, you know, wear a bra or whatever. I don't know what they talk about at subway takes. I assume it's that nonsense. The guy himself is not annoying because he just has annoying people on. He's fine. Right. He's just sitting there and he says, what's your take? And then some person will be like, I don't think that chairs should be blue or whatever. And then he goes, I agree. And then they talk about it. That's all it is. But sitting on business will be more interesting. I haven't thought through the entire concept yet, but I think I'm going to be making people read me their favorite passage from Berserk. I think we could, we could probably like work out sitting on business right now. I think like, oh, how about this? How about this? Okay.

It's, you know, like people would walk around and be like, oh, I hope the cash cab gets me today. You know, like just walking around hoping to be gotten by the cash cab. I have a story about that. You do have a story of the cash cab. You did have the cash cab get you? No, the cash cab is about half of it was faked. Oh. You know, like you'd watch it.

And sometimes it. be like a tourist that was like so dumb and like didn't even know like the name of the second president of America or was or whatever. Those people were real people that they pick up. But every time you saw somebody on cash cab like doing well, it's because they got recruited from local pub trivia nights. And then they, someone I know from college did it. And like he'd like go out on the street and like pretend to hail the cab. You ever wonder why there's footage of people hailing the cab? Because it's not real. House hunters also fake. They've already bought the house. I just think it'd be very funny. If you're like a ringer for cash cab and you actually

generally hale a normal cab and just wait for like the guy to start asking you questions. No, I think sitting on business is everyone gets on the famous New York City subway and then they're like, oh, I hope I, you know, I meet Maddie from sitting on business. And then you go up, plop down on their lap and then you say, all right. I'm on their lap. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, because you're sitting on business and you're like, hey, what's the business we're starting?

And they pitch you and it's like Shark Tank. Yeah, Riley, we've known each other a long time. We've ever actually, you still never met in person because you learn in. the other side of the planet for me. I'm not small, I'm not a small person. I'm quite tall. I think if I just started sitting on people's laps, it would cause problems. We better come up with a business thing. Yeah, that's your business problems to solve. The timer is how long can you stand this giant woman on you? All right, all right. Welcome to T.F. everybody. It's Riley and Hussein and it's Maddie is joining us, subbing in because we are short-handed because it is vacation season

here in the UK. And we've all been going on holiday quite a bit. We've got a lot to talk about today. Some stuff we are not going to get to that you might say, hey, that seems pertinent to the TF people to talk about, quite simply because there is not enough hour in the hour. And we had to, look, that cash cab

material is not getting cut. All right? We're not going to do, look, no matter what you think we should be making room for, the cash cab stays. No, so Maddie is joining us, of course, from the podcast, No Gods, no Mayors, to talk about what is quickly becoming one of the most

mayoral weeks in possibly American or global history. It is, things are getting extraordinarily municipal in the New York City mayoral election that we are watching, of course, between a socialist who knows how to speak to people and discuss their actual needs, an aged alien who seems to be terrified of setting foot in the city and has never spoken to a person who he cannot fire.

And then Eric Adams, a man who, in your immortal words, has acts like he's been struck by lightning twice. Uh-huh. And also, you're forgetting a vigilante wearing the same uniform for 40 years. Yes, of course. Who's obsessed with cats. How could I forget Curtis, Lewa?

And before we get into the mayoral business, before we start sitting on mayoral business, doing our best Dalton, Illinois impression, I wanted to also just mention that over, here over in the UK, and we might sort of go into more detail on this on the bonus episode, Nigel Farage has announced his plans to essentially build the camps and the response from the Keir-Starmer sort of government. Putting government in government's care quotes. The Keir-Stramer, quote-unquote, from the delivery organization for reform policies. Essentially is we agree.

We think that it's fine to send everyone to, you know, Rwanda was too nice. We all agree Rwanda was too nice. Maybe Afghanistan should be where we send people. And we then said, we don't think that, you know, this is going to be cost effective. On the returns deal with Afghanistan, Yvette Cooper said, reforms Taliban tribute plan would send British taxpayers cash to fund the regime, fueling the persecution of Afghan women and children, and betraying our brave armed forces who sacrificed so much fighting them. So that's right. You will betray. Hey, if you think you're a real patriot and you love the troops, which is what, again, we're just deluding ourselves into thinking that that's what like patriotism, as it's commonly felt by most quote unquote, patriotic people actually is, then yeah, that's going to be a fantastic attack line. But yeah, Kirstarmer basically just coming up there and basically making Mr. Me Too by

Clips, the theme song of this government. Just taking it as like received wisdom that what they're doing is the thing that has to be done. Like, oh, we have to send people away to country we've all agreed is bad, you know, to punish people for trying to move to the country. They've just been like, oh, well, that is what we have to do. and they're not doing it correctly, it'll cost too much money the way they're doing it.

And it's not, you know, yeah. The things I want to say about them, I probably should not on air with a British podcast. Yeah, because it's basically like a sort of gleeful campaign that's being indulged by everybody who matters in Britain. You know, reform with its four MPs

gets what, like, two hours of uninterrupted time to just broadcast on the BBC, their plan to terrorize the non-white people, to continue rolling back civil liberty. by ripping up every treaty that we're signed up to that would prevent us from just like kind of doing anything we want

to get someone out of the country that the government decides it doesn't like and then you know Kirstarmer is just like that cost too much you know oh what are you what are you going to betray the army by giving money to the Taliban it's yeah it's very

frustrating and I think also like looking at it in the context of like what's happening domestically which is also like not good surprisingly I'm not sure if any of you any of you have experienced it, but, like, you know, the high street, you know, near my house, like, there was, there were, like, a lot of England flags up on a lampposts over the, over the weekend. And this was, like, part of a pattern.

There's, like, you know, I don't know if it's like a group in and of themselves, but, like, you know, there's sort of supporters of, you know, like, far right groups and just, like, you know, broader far right movement have been erecting, like, lots of box fresh flags around the country's many beautiful motorways. I had to do a trip on one of these motorways over the weekend. and I think I counted 35 on an hour and a half trip. So, like, all of which is saying that, like, it has gained some traction. It's not, it's not difficult to sort of know, like, how widespread it is.

We don't know, like, you know, who's sort of doing it or what. But, like, we are seeing kind of, like, politicians, like, in the Tory party, like, either very ardently supporting what's going on and, like, putting up flags themselves. But also, like, the government kind of just being like, well, yeah, these are just, like, ordinary patriots who are really afraid of, like, you know, the people living in their sort of like lackluster hotels that they've sort of just discovered kind of exists in their town now, which is very true. Like, you know, I was watching some of the interviews with like far right demonstrators outside of like hotels where, you know, migrants are sort of put up. And

it's not like, it's being portrayed as like, oh, they're being put up in these luxury hotels to which I would say, number one, go visit a hotel in England outside of London and then tell me whether you think, tell me whether you think that's a luxury hotel or not. This is also very indicative of like anti-migrant sentiment pre all these marches, right? Because like, the unwillingness to kind of like provide a passage for applying for asylum and also sort of being like, okay, well, in order to sort of meet our sort of obligations on a very minimal way, we have to kind of like house people while they apply. We're not going to let them work. We're not going to let them sort of participate in like local communities or local societies.

So the expectation is that like they should just sort of stay in these like very tiny non-air conditioned rooms where you can barely open the window. And they should just sort of like be quiet and not do anything at all. But also, we're going to get really mad at them if they do that as well, because like, they don't work and, like, they don't contribute or anything and, you know, all that type of stuff. Like, so this is already, like, an existing hostile environment that this country, like, and successive governments have sort of put, like, people applying for asylum and for residency, like, in anyway. Now, you know, as far right sentiment kind of continues to grow in this country and continues to be both not even unchecked, but to be, like, supported across the parties, it has sort of given

license to groups like reform to really capitalize what they see is like the trajectory that they need to take in order to maintain their quite sizable lead in the country and so as a result we get a situation where you know Nigel Farage basically is able to sort of go on public TV with a big union flag

behind him and lit very darkly you know it's very much like I was watching this and I was just like I've really got to hand it to Russell T Davies like he he you know what I'm sorry we said anything bad about you we sorry I'm sorry about like we refused to live out like I'm living out right now. You were right.

You handed our asses to us. I'm very sorry. We made fun of you. But it is also like a very kind of like scary, you know, what we are sort of seeing is the ascendance of a very nasty version of like Fno right wing. I mean, not to say that there was ever a nice version of it, but what we were seeing is a very nasty.

Powerful version. And a very powerful version of ethno nationalist further that I think political parties both labor and the Tories like are both unable but also on willing to kind of counter it, right? Because they've spent so long capitulating to these political reactionaries and basically so long kind of saying, but yeah, like all these guys, you know, yeah, there might be some things we disagree with in terms of like how they behave towards other people, but we don't disagree with their sentiment, right? And, you know, we should also like sort of see this in the wake of like, you know, last year in the summer we had like, we know,

we had actual race riots where these groups like try to burn down hotels and they are like continuing to do so or they are continuing to at least like try and like, you know, do that. They are targeting mostly like brown Muslim people and I think it's really good that basically like we've had radio silence from government opposition and really just more appeasement right and so this is going to end really really well I think it's going to like end very peacefully I think here Stama is going to like come up of a solution that pleases everyone rather than makes everyone because this is the other thing too like I think Stama's stuff is so funny in one way because like clearly what he's doing is very ghoulish and he does sort of like you know he you know his sense he is not like

pro-refugee or pro-asylum seeker in any measure at all, right? In any, like, he is very much a political opportunist who has kind of decided to just, like, play to whatever field he believes kind of benefits him. But as a result, because he's never going to be able to sort of like match the reform rhetoric, right, without sort of going full, like, we'll shoot down every boat and every dingy in the channel. Like, he's not going to do that. And so he's desperately trying to come up with, like, a sensible solution.

But he's trying to placate a crowd that, like, don't, they want to see the ding. They want to see, like, helicopters, like, draw. dropping bombs on these people. They want to see asylum like hotels being burnt down. They want to see like punishment and pain. And reform have basically kind of like stepped up to that demand and presented like the first iteration of a mass deportation strategy, which will continue to sort of get worse and worse and worse. And Labor is already saying, okay, we'll change the ECHR. We'll change the human rights act. We'll change all that stuff. Yeah. I was watching a very good YouTube essay by Tom Nicholas, who listeners might know about. And he's done.

this very interesting essay looking at like the past 10 to 15 years of British politics and like looking at Kirstama and Nigel Farage and like how their sort of political ascendancy came out of like post-austerity environment or like the austerity environments and I think one of the things that he did really well was sort of to look at the Brexit years and the one thing that Tom sort of points out is that like Nigel Farge was never able to sort of like achieve any sort of parliamentary political success at least until recently anyway and he was written off for a very long time but what he was aware of and what you know and something I think about a lot is like To be successful in British politics anyway, the best thing you can do is basically be annoying, right? You can be an annoying person who's on TV and radio all the fucking time.

And Farage, like, really, really knew how to do that very well. And then he was also able to figure out that like, oh, he can achieve his political ambitions without really having to play the game. Whereas Kirstarmer, like, felt like he had to sort of play the game, become part of the establishment in order to sort of achieve his political ambitions. And as a result, you know, what we are basically seeing is sort of some of the Brexit playbook being played all over again with Farage. realizing that, like, it doesn't really matter. You don't need to sort of, like, become an MP, you don't need to become a lawmaker. You don't need to sort of, like, even have any sort of particular position within the establishment that, you know, they are both clearly part of.

All you need to do is sort of be annoying, be around all the time, be very present all the time, and keep on just, like, demanding more and more outrageous things until they have to be engaged with. And in the same way, but, like, his version of a Brexit basically was forced into play by, I mean, there were lots of things that kind of force that, but, like, his presence was enough to kind of force that through. The same strategy is being played again, but in a much more accelerated environment and where the audience and the crowd that are like you are trying to appease are like more radicalized whenever. That all sounds really, really awful and terrifying and bodes poorly

for the future, would have you considered that a asylum seeker might be in the hotel room from train spotting for free? That's so true. Someone was saying that like one of the, I think some sort of politician was saying, but like, oh, like my constituents are really angry about like, you know, they can't afford like a two-week hotel stay, but these asylum seekers get it for free. And my thinking was like, are any of them trying to like spend two weeks in like a fucking premiere in, in like Newcastle like in some shithole in Newcastle?

You'd be lucky to get a premiere in. Usually these are places that would have been like, these would have been hotels that were not really economically viable. These refugees are preventing me from cheating on my wife at like 2 p.m. in the afternoon in one of those hotels by what you call it, by a service station. I think that this is, this is something we've seen and we've seen that this is all really just feedback loops and no one is willing to break with the, no one can really because they're all stuck because everybody who values the rules of the game is following the one person who doesn't and then they protect that one person. These are just creating endless feedback loops that are basically can't be stopped because the demands will always be more. However, in terms of demand, Maddie, I have a demand from you, which is I would love a snack. If you could please give me. Oh, sure. I've got a bag here of delicious HERS brand sour cream and onion potato chips for you.

If you would simply look inside, you'll find chips and a little something else wrong. The best bribe ever, $160. $160. With that, you could get upwards of 30 bags of chips, I think. Wouldn't the cash notes, wouldn't they, like, be a bit greasy? No, they were in an envelope. They were in an envelope. They were in an envelope. right so the envelope was probably greasy but yeah what I love about this is that

I mean all you can introduce it first but the thing that I keep thinking about is how the New York Times saw it happening for months and did not report so basically what we're talking about is of course America's other mayor Eric Adams he should call himself um Eric uh's mayor that's what I think he should do change all of his brand and just like Eric for mayor

if you all know who he's talking about yeah so um Eric as mayor um has one of his, one of his close associates, Winnie Grieco, his head of Asian American outreach at City Hall or erstwhile now. She's been removed from a position for private reporter. This is the second position she's been removed from. I'll say like you can really, you know, if you go listen to the no gods, no mirrors episodes on Eric Adams.

We talk about the sort of we go through his like, you know, his a rogues gallery of employees and assistants and associates. And Greco was someone who worked officially on his campaigns in the previous campaign. who was investigated by the city because campaign volunteers were helping remodel her home. And then later she was raided by the FBI for allegedly running a straw donor scheme out of the New World Mall and flushing. And she was like working out of an office there doing work for the campaign officially. And then also allegedly making employees at the mall donate to the Adams campaign and then the mall would reimburse them. So then she was demoted from like official someone on the actual campaign.

and in the administration to this time around, only the special advisor to the mayor and the director of Asian affairs or whatever, like the outreach to the Asian American community of the city who apparently has been giving reporters small bribes for coming to events for months and months and tried to do it to a reporter at the city. Well, I think that she did it to a very hostile reporter

against Eric Adams, and I think she forgot who she was talking to. Like, I think, I think, what's it called? I think she might have thought that it was a reporter from the city and she thought it was someone from like the New York City government or something? Who does like,

Albany's in-house magazine for like the state house? I have no idea. Yeah. This is, it's so cool. I love her response, which is, I made a mistake. I'm so sorry. It's a culture thing. I don't know. I don't understand. I'm so sorry. I feel so bad right now. Yeah.

It's like giving small envelopes of money if it's like good luck in Chinese culture. And like a red envelope. It's a very common thing. But this is America and these are journalists and you can't do that. And crucially she tried to do it to Katie Honan who's like a real ass real fucking local reporter who is a, you know, a actual motherfucker about this. And it's so funny. By the way, just real quick, the city, a very good local resource for news here who we can thank of course Craig from Craigslist for funding. What I love about this is it's like if Spiro Agnew gave a role of

quarters to Woodward and Bernstein. Like, hey, Frank, why don't we forget about all this stuff, huh? There's another roll of quarters where that came from. Yeah, I love that she gave the envelope to Honan and then immediately like, and then Honan was like, hey, you gave me, I can't take this. And then she immediately started calling the newspaper and being like, I made a mistake. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, honey.

I just want to make one good friend. Please don't do nothing in the news, nothing about me. I just wanted to have one, I'm hoping one day that I can just give, it's like she's played like Crusader Kings 3 and she's just trying to buy like opinion, just trying to buy reputation. Yeah. And then I also love that like after this, this is someone, this person who's like been done for corruption multiple times, keeps getting referred to by like Eric Adams or Ingrid Lewis

Martin as like my sister, the person I love so much, you could not do without who I trust with everything. Yeah. Ingrid Lewis Martin, who of course was also indicted again. Angbird Lewis Martin loves getting indicted. She loves it. The table of success is people are leaving it. It is rapidly emptying.

Yeah, the hater waiters have stopped serving. They've cut everybody off. The haters are in control. So yeah, Lewis Martin just also keeps getting prosecuted. We're going to go into this on more detail on no cause, no mares, of course. But there are a few very TFE elements to the sort of ongoing Eric Adams stories. But quickly, what I love is, so she basically is accused of receiving brides. to like help businesses get permits and so on.

It's illegal to have friends, Your Honor? Well, Lewis Martin's attorney, Arthur Idala, dispairs the seriousness of the charges, calling them the lowest level of felony or justice system, barely a felony at all. Basically not a felony, only technically a felony going on. Her only so-called offense was fulfilling her duty, helping fellow citizens navigate the city's outdated and overwhelming bureaucracy.

For a small fee. At no point did she receive a single dollar or personal benefit for her assistance. Yet the district attorney seeks to portray a dedicated and honest public servant as a criminal. I guess she just won all those Lamborghinies in a card game. Of course. And of course, Eric Adams, being Eric Adams, responded in a totally unpredictable way. He hung out Greco to dry, right? He was like, I have no knowledge of Winnie Greco giving small amounts of money to reporters and chip bags.

And I would never authorize anyone to do that. But then with Ingrid Lewis Martin, he was like, yeah, Ingrid's my sister. I love her. I trust her with everything. It makes sense because like Winnie Greco seems to be the sort of just like small time nobody that he keeps around that's just like just sort of dispatched to do the sort of things that she does and like and maybe it was a genuine cultural misunderstanding without understanding what a journalist is or does but like that's not Eric Adams's style is to be giving away $160 here and there. You know his his his style is more like you know Lamborghini of mysterious origin. That's that's way more his his his vibe. What I also like is Eric Adams also obviously keeps getting asked about all of the people who work for him who keep getting done for corruption. Another staffer-turned-defendant, Jesse Hamilton, left his job handling city leases following another separate indictment.

First deputy mayor, Randy Mastrow, who was officially appointed to the administration in March after other deputies resigned in protest, said, we shouldn't be dwelling on the past, referring to the accusations as ancient history, even though the alleged criminal behavior took place last year. it's like just like showing up to a deposition being like the reason they call it the present is because it's a gift your honor nothing nothing is written uh there's water under the bridge yeah yeah he says i'm not going to remain silent when the ancient conduct of people who are no longer in government is being used to smear the government and city hall in an administration which is producing every day for new yorkers the ancient conduct yeah the ancient who can remember who can remember the hallowed antiquity of 2024 I remember 2024. I believe I was sitting with my friend at the Zigarot playing the Royal Game of Er.

Oh, God. I really, I was really, didn't really expect it in 2024 when they changed the basket that the temple uses to collect grain tithes. They made it slightly bigger. And, you know, I thought, look, it's the thing is, you know, Nebuchadnezzar said, he said he was not going to raise taxes. And he didn't raise taxes, but he did make the basket to collect. them bigger. Yeah, where was I on this day in 2024? I think I was out of the store buying a new read to press into the clay tablets to write in linear B, I think. To total up what I would, to total up the sort of how much barley I had harvested that year. I was buying a new read to write into clay

tablets that I write, I co-write with my friends about the, the various sort of devices that the temple has cooked up in order to, they think they say it makes farming more efficient. But actually, you know, if you look at it, it's not even like a golem. There's just a guy in there. Or than my other show that I write on clay tablets with reads about various sort of local satrips. Yeah, about like what's going on inside the temple of anana. It's a little more sinister than you'd think.

And if you would just read the tablets that I've been writing, that'd be great. But the very T-F-E thing about it, actually, I wanted to go into. And this is actually a recent update from 404 Media. so thank you to them, which is that Citizen, the app that you use to be a vigilante, are you all familiar with Citizen app? Yeah, the app that drives you crazy. Yeah, uh-huh. The app that

basically turns you into the protagonist from the movie falling down, but like a version of that where you don't leave your house, you just sort of call the police every 10 minutes. It's like the, it's the you've seen the Batman forever. It's like the Ridler device, but it's pumping Fox News in your brand essentially. Yes. Oh, sick, okay. And so Citizen, it used to be called vigilante

and then they changed the name. Did it really? Really did used to be called Vigilante. Then they changed the name because they were like, oh, that's super illegal. It would be like calling a gun. Riley's gun, subtitle for murdering people. For murdering people with malice of forethought. Get it today.

Anyway, so Citizen has this new formal partnership with New York City that was announced by Eric Adams in the most Eric Adams way possible. Maddie, I really hope that you actually don't know how this was announced because I really want to tell you. and have it be fresh in your mind. I actually did not see this. Okay. So the head of citizen, like citizens head of community, a man named Prince Map.

Uh-huh. Thank you. That's not his name. Prince Map announced that they were going to create, that Eric Adams was allowing citizen to create a city run account called New York City Public Safety. This was announced in an Instagram post by Eric Adams that simply opens with him doing pull-ups on a street sign.

Oh. that's awesome Eric Adams whose big new thing in the campaign is to show off how strong he is he was like

Ben he was like doing Ben presses the other day and so I guess Zoran was like doing them at a park at like some event and like didn't lift as much as Eric Adams

and Eric Adams is like he can't handle lifting how's he supposed to handle the city that's the thing it's like look if we wanted to like take the first two things

we talked about today and kind of slam them together we can see in both cases what it looks like in Apoliti where a politician is writing the narrative from the right and one where one is writing the narrative from the left. When one is writing the narrative from the left,

and guys like Adams and Cuomo, essentially, and Sliwa, I suppose, just acting like the three stooges cannot stop tripping over one another, trying to say whatever normal thing Mamdani does is embarrassing, and then just doing increasingly bizarre and outlandish stunts. Like Eric Adams, who's been accused of, like, you know, sexual assault, I believe by multiple women, leaving rape whistles out on all the, email reporters chairs at an Andrew Cuomo press event, you know, like, yeah.

I, no, no, nothing was just more of a little, like, of a synachia of this, of this, this weirdness than the other day during like the scavenger hunt that Zorond did. If you saw it, it was like, just a big campaign event, right? The end with like a meeting greet where it's like, like, you had to go to a couple of like New York history places and you got like a punch card, whatever. And yeah, you successfully got everyone to Pokemon go, go, go. Yeah, like, like basically, yeah, everyone did Pokemon go to the polls. And watching all day, it was like all everybody was like posting about online.

And all day, the Cuomo and Adams campaigns were just like, this shows you why he can't be the mayor. He's going to, and Adams, like, posted a photo of like the squid game robot, squid game robot, rather, in Times Square. He's like, he's going to turn New York City into squid games. That's true. It's because if you did Soron scavenger hunt and you didn't finish it in time, he had you killed. He did kill you. And then it was like, just like people trying to take this thing that's like quite wholesome and like, you know, I didn't do it because it's not for me. Like, you know, this thing that is like kind of just like wholesome and just a regular

ass campaign event to like show the how many people are like behind the campaign, right? Like a show of force to take that and be like, this is dangerous or this is like shows you he's bad or something. And it's just sort of like you have no control over the narrative. And these people are just flailing insanely and doing pull-ups, I guess, instead about it. These guys have utterly lost control of the narrative as is Keir Starrmer, right? And it's just like the difference is, is like there's someone desperately trying to react to and follow a revolutionary fascist who wants to build the camps versus trying to react to and

follow while being two of the most off-putting and strange people in all of politics, a normal, pleasant guy, essentially. And it results in you, you know, the whistle stunt and doing pull-ups to announce that you're partnering with the vigilante app for New Yorkers. I mean, one of the most obvious things that sort of seems to be like, you know, you actually have to sort of like stand for something and you actually have to believe in something yourself, right? And, when I think about like stuff in the UK, it's like, okay, well, like, Farage, like, genuinely, I'm not saying that he's sort of like a genuine and authentic guy because, like, he's very much like a political, you know, he, he is like an opportunist.

And, you know, he, he sort of has understood where a certain political tendency of a direction is going. But he can at least, like, sort of perform like a genuine belief in a desire to, like, inflict pain and punishment and, you know, deportations and all that stuff. And, like, Zeran, like, his campaign, as far as I'm aware is just like, oh, we can make things slightly better and, like, you know, we should do that. And that might be, that might be good. actually. But my impression with like Cuomo and like Adams is like, well, even if you want to say that actually this is bad and things should be worse or things should be bad, like you're not really

directly saying that. And in that way, it's also like Kirstama, who's just, again, like very much like the guy who like tries to sort of portray himself as like a sensible moderate centrist and the result is everyone that gets mad at him. There is a sort of this sense of like, well, you actually do have to figure out what you want. Yeah, like, I think it's interesting to watch like, you know, the government in the U.K. and the Democrats writ large in America, this sort of thing where it's like the, you know, the answers are obviously bad, but the right wing is providing answers to the problems, right? They are, they are putting forth solutions and they are evil and they are fascist and they are like the absolute worst case scenario for like the future of the planet

and all ways. But they are providing like something. And I think it's interesting to watch in the New York City mayoral race. I think why it's captured a lot of attention and imagination is that like you have people who are not providing. answers like Adams like Cuomo and who are, you know, ostensibly Democrats. And they don't have anything to say. They don't have any answers. They don't have a vision. And just how how easily that falls apart into nothing into like a landslide lost when it's faced with someone with a vision from the, you know, from the left in this instance. Like it just, it's almost like people can tell when you don't stand for anything, you know? And also, right, like just moving back on to like the things that

Adams still does stand for. I mean, like, if you look at the citizen, this thing he's partnering with, right? This is, um, there's now reports that citizen is using a generative AI to generate crime alerts with no human review. Good. And it's making a lot. So this is what, where, what New York is, uh, partnering with. Uh, the news came has citizen recently laid off more than a dozen and this is the article in 404

media, unionized employees don't really know how much we care about the, um, earthwhile cops, but there we go. With sources, believing the firings are related to citizens, increased. use of AI and shifting tasks to overseas workers, which, as we sort of have seen with a lot of AI transformations, a lot of it is just shifting tasks to overseas workers. You know, the first stop is always mechanical Istanbul, baby. Yeah. So the AI basically captures packages and ships out an initial notification without input. It's then the job of human reviewers to go in and add context from subsequent clips or edit information out, which means that this only happens

after the alert is pushed to all of citizens' users in that area. So, for example, sources, said the AI made mistakes and included information it shouldn't have. The AI, for example, translated motor vehicle accident to murder vehicle accident. And then I guess whatever group chat the AI was in had its name changed to murder vehicle

accident. This motherfucker just wrote murder vehicle accident. It would add gory or sensitive details that were not always true, like saying person shot in face or including a person's license plate details and unconfirmed report. And again, it's not like people don't, it's not like people haven't you citizen for that before. Prince Map once, like, revealed someone's fucking license plate during

an L.A. manhunt that was just like, here's the guy, let's get him. And then it wasn't the guy, right? And that's what Eric Adams stands for, which is like, you know, more fear of crime, more sensationalist violence that sort of begets more state violence, more like just, you know, local authoritarianism, right? That's what he stands for. Yeah, he sends for more cops and like letting, you know, like capital and specifically tech capital do whatever they want within the bounds of the city like the other big thing that he announced is like a waymo pilot program they're driving around manhattan now which is um just the traffic patterns of new york city are not for they're not it's not going to work it's going to result in dead people probably or uh hopefully dead cars

murdered vehicles yeah yeah and and that's like but if you are going to be eric adams and you're going to stand for nothing then what you're or you're going to stand just for like authority in general then what you're going to need to, you are going to need things like citizen, just like, you know, authoritarians of the past have used, like, they're mass media to their advantage. But if you're Eric Adams and you're a fundamentally weird guy, then you need this sort of distributed mass stochastic media to get people, like, freaked out enough that they're going to sign up to whatever baffling nonsense that you, that you end up supporting, right? So it's like, this is, in so many ways, right, again, on both sides of the Atlantic, we are seeing

something come up against nothing. And we're seeing nothing just get totally trounced by something, you know, thus far. You know, anything can change. Yeah. You know, the other explanation for how he's acting is probably like, you know, he, I don't know if he knows he's going to lose or not legitimately because he's have definitely being protected from that information. Yeah.

Like he's just, like every time a poll comes out, it's like Zoron landslide, no matter what scenario of who pulls out of the race or not. and like he's winning in almost every scenario and that's you know and the polls were like I don't know if people remember but like during the primaries he was Zoran like massively overperformed what the polls were saying because of because of who was voting for him and who who gets collected in a poll right and so I just I just there's like no god I'm like I'm knocking on wood here because if Eric Adams wins again I'm going to do something inadvisable but like you know he's going to lose again badly and he's going to lose badly rather Adams and you know I don't know if he

if he knows that or not like he might be operating like he thinks he's going to win but like once he's out he's going to go on like he's going to go get a job with one of the cop tech companies right like he has like that's that's the only place for him to go he's going to go work for citizen yeah i was going to say he's going to work for citizen he's going to go work for the company that makes the drones that smashes your windows or whatever like that's that's where he will go i don't know i think there's a part of me that's like convinced that he's going to like try to like a really weird career change yeah i may like i don't know what quomo do but i do think that eric adams might there is something in him that's going to be like, yeah, I'm going to like go to like clown school or something. I'm going to go like, I'm going to go get really jacked. That's going to be like the starting point. I'm going to go get really jacked.

I'm going to get like a nine pack or something. And we'll sort of figure it out from there. Um, he might like sort of do the podcast circuit for a little bit. And then he might, you know, get like some sort of like nominal job at like a cop tech company. But one where like his main job is just to sort of like do his posts.

Oh, he'd be like the brand ambassador for like axon tasers basically. Yeah. Yeah. And he tase himself. and he'd be like, yeah, it was a great time. I tased myself instead of having a coffee every morning. That's why I'm like this.

I think there's like a part of me that reminds me, but a part of me whenever I see like Eric Adams stuff, which is just like, this feels spiritually very Matt Hancock. Oh, 100%. Yeah, I was going to say, I think in terms of synthesis, I think he's going to invent the first new comedian del Arte character in like 300 years. And it's going to be like a jacked clown who's also a cop.

He's going to be on the subway. He's going to be on the subway reading Bazao. and hoping that, like, the guy who does subway takes is going to, like, come and ask him a question. You know what? Here's the thing is I would love to see it, a post-Meralty Eric Adams do subway takes. I would actually think, I think that would be good. I think what's going to happen is that we're going to see a January 6th of the most bribed city officials

in all of history occupying City Hall and preventing a peaceful transfer of power. Yeah, I'm a guard. I'm a guard at a city hall. and I hear the jangling as hundreds of people with their socks full of change come running down the fucking street at me. As like I see like 14 Lamborghinis all double parked in the middle of the street as different like mid-level city planning employees get out of them and occupy the building until Eric Adams is allowed to stay in power. No, also I forgot to say earlier, a popular bag of chips with many locations. Something as simple as $160, et cetera, et cetera. Go back and pretend I said that earlier.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Yeah. Oh, thank you. Anyway, look, I just, I'm so fascinated by everything that it's, I guess I'm fascinated by seeing what it looks like for someone to be leading from the left in this way in the States or in any English-speaking country where his opponents and party insiders and the press have not yet been able to conspire to. rat fuck him. They've been trying to fuck him so bad and every single, and maybe it is because it is probably something so simple as he smiles a lot and is handsome and is kind of bubbly and interpersonally.

But like every single attack on him comes off as that one our chrome cartoon where it's like a normal guy, this guy is getting, I hate that motherfucker and it's just like a gross smelly man. And his response to everything is like, I'm just hanging out, right? Like it's just like every attack just like slips right off of him. And I think it's because, I mean, I think it is, it is the first campaign for anything that I can remember in my life where someone is running from the left, which, you know, narrows it down to like all of, you know, four campaigns I've actually watched closely where there's an actual leftist candidate, but so much of it boils down to is that he doesn't engage with the rat fuck. They try to, they try to hit him with something silly and he doesn't even like deny it. He doesn't even respond to it. He just says like, that's crazy. You know your apartment's really expensive, right? I think that's a really good model moving forward for like when we enter the fucking silly season every time.

You know, like the answer to will you nationalize sausages isn't like talking about it. It's like it's a serious question. It's like, well, yeah, well, this is actually like one of it's a really good point because it's just like even all the sort of attacks that have been placed on him like and where I would sort of expect like his campaign is going to, they've got to say something right. It doesn't necessarily have to be a defense. It can be like this is just a ridiculous statement. And actually, like, the fact that they haven't engaged with it at all, and by extension, like, they haven't engaged with like the kind of, I don't know what it's like in terms of like New York media and politics and how like intertwined they both are. But my impression is that like the candidates who sort of like do play within that system kind of like are more prone to being rat fuck because like they have a perception of the game that is very much like, oh, you do need to like appease the media and you do need to sort of appease this ecosystem that like you don't really have to. And I think when I think back in like, and it's not to sort of say that like it's like, it's like, for like because we have a different sort of ecosystem and like in the UK like media has a lot of like some media has like a lot of power a lot of outsized power that is like can be very difficult to

like shake off or it can be very difficult to thwart and I think you know I don't I imagine my like one of the sort of critiques that many people have about like the Corbin years was very much like oh okay you indulged in you know playing the sort of you know playing with like the media and like their game thinking that like either you could get them on side or at least you could best them And the reality is like you weren't really able to. And you can see that like with people like Zara Sultanah who have kind of are starting to kind of like basically be like, no, you guys are fucking idiots. And I don't need to sort of like engage with you in any sort of, especially not on the terms that you set. And so it would be interesting to sort of see whether like the sort of lessons from that campaign, especially if it's successful, how whether that might be a source of inspiration for left wing movements like in the UK and in Europe.

And I'm not entirely convinced. I mean, I'm sure they'll try and I'm not entirely convinced how successful. will it will be. But I do think that like at least in like what we've seen in New York, various sort of something to be said about like this millennial candidate who like also has operated within like different media ecosystems and is being and is able to sort of take part and participate in a media ecosystem that like the sort of standard press like the New York Times and the New York Post and stuff like aren't really able to engage with. Yeah. Or it's not like necessarily, there's not like necessarily like a dependent relationship. Like Zoran's kind of like

media like his sort of like the decisions that he's made to making in terms of like where he goes and what interviews he does can sort of exist independently of like what the establishment media kind of like think he ought to do or who ought to be engaged with. Yeah. And I think it's also a matter of like so much of the campaign so far has been trying to activate people who haven't voted in the past, right? And which is most people, especially in these local elections. And you know, like you think about the actual vote totals, but like made Eric Adams the mayor. It's crazy small compared to the population of the city. And I think it's just a matter of like those, the people they trying to activate to vote, get involved, don't give a shit what the New York Post says

that much, right? Like, it is not important and can, and can, like, just tell when, when someone's being rat fucked. Like, it's just, it's, you see a New York Post headline that, you know, I'm not even going to attempt to do one because there's so much better at it than I am. But, like, you know, you see a New York Times headline that's like, oh, is college application, is the wrong race or whatever. And then you watch, like, a single video where he's talking, you're like, who fucking cares what they say, this guy's nice. You know, I think it might be as simple as that. I guess the, uh, the, the lesson of course is be normal and be contemptuous of people who

are trying to be weird at you, basically, uh, you know, do something normal. And then when they're weird, be like, that's weird. And that's how you can lead from the left. Look, look, there's a lot we still have to cover that we're going to cover on the bonus episode. Like, for example, some recent open AI and Intel stories, both about the company itself, how people have been using it to help them end their own lives. like this sort of about the teenage boy. However, I have decided I've made an executive decision.

Oh. I've watched the movie executive decision and I have used that to inspire an executive decision. I want to talk about Neum with you, my dear friends. I would love to talk about Neum. It's the New York City of Sedi, really? Everybody knows Trojan is the first stop. Now, I always want to remind not just my co-host, but most of the people listening. Neum is the name of a province.

The line is just one of the many. cities of the province of Neum, right? There are lots of places. Hey, Riley, not me because I can't draw like that, but I need you to commission like a fantasy style map of Neum. Oh, that would be a great t-shirt. Okay, I'm going to remember that. Just remember that. Leave this in. There was, the, the Saudis did commission an optimistic sci-fi book set in Neum. Yeah, I just, I need to see like the, you know, like the first, like the instead of like the opening of a fantasy novel, like a Tolkien style drawing of Neum. of everything they're like with all the stuff built.

Yeah, because there's the line. There's the, of course, Sindala Island, the most normal thing that they also weren't able to build. Yeah, there's like the, isn't there like the resort? There's like the mountain one. Well, that happens to be our subject today. That's my favorite one. So, Maddie, what do you like about Trojina, the famous ski resort and vertical village

that's in the desert? It just is the one that looks the most fake when you look at the renderings. Like the line is so obviously stupid, but you, know they could build like 10 buildings across from each other and be like, there it is, everybody, the line. Like the, what's it called the mountain one? Trojina. It's called Trojina.

Trojina looks like, it just looks, it looks like a rendering from a movie that will never get made. Like, it looks like one of the drawings you see that like John Trumbull made for fucking, um, the Yodorovsky Dune. Like, it just, it looks totally fucking made up in a way that I just love so much. But it looks so made up and kind of like dark and splunk. in the way that like you know Captain America 4 would be shooting laser beams

like flying around it it feels like a marvel setting it doesn't look cool yeah uh it looks like someone you gave someone like blender and then you hit them in the head with a hammer and you're like make Hobbiton in there please can you have a

gigantic lake but crucially can the lake come to a perfect right angle and have a lake amount of water in it uh huh there's the the rendering that is on the Neum website that I'm looking at. That is that that is the right angle. That lake would explode

immediately. There's no way it would hold together. All of the pressure would come to that one point. Neo-Turgenia is what to X-P-L-O-D-E. No, but like the right angle lake drawing this is like 1400 kilometer mountain mountain region, 2600 maximum elevation, one lifestyle

management resort. It looks like it looks like the opening to like a Tony Hawk level like they're zooming in. It's really good. Yeah, only in Neon can you manual for 14 hours and get a score of over, you know, 20 million. Yeah, oh, I'm watching the video now. This fucking rips. I fucking love Trojina. So we all know, we've talked a great deal about Neum.

We know how they're going to be the best place the men's world football World Cup was ever hosted. And by 2034, they're basically the best city in the entire world. But we've neglected to talk about how in 2029, in four short years, a three and a half, really short years, they're going to have to host the Asian Winter Games at Trojina, which they, Can't build. They can't build it at all. Wait, Wryly,

are you telling you that they can't build in the middle of the desert a big crystal spire with a bunch of like a big flared base of a bunch of other little crystals kind of coming out of the mountain

magically? Well, they're struggling. That's not a real building that they're building? Well, yes. But up to a point,

I think is how what I would say is yes, it's all correct, up to a point. But in another one, way, they are not building it. Okay, tell me more about that. So this is in the FT.

Remember, remember, the deadline for this being open for the world's eyes on the Asian Winter Games in 2029 is 2029. So Trigina, the futuristic ski facility that forms part of Saudi Arabia's neon megaproject, is still under construction. And wouldn't you know it, faces escalating engineering and logistical hurdles. Multiple people have said the Chagina Complex would not be completed on time without substantially increasing its budget and it will include 30 kilometers of ski runs with artificial snow from December to March

because it obviously doesn't snow there even though it's in the mountains and they're like no, it's in the mountains, it gets cold but they never said how cold it gets which is not cold enough. Snowfall is rare in the area so the ski resort is intended to rely entirely on artificial snow, which be produced

from water pumped 200 kilometers away from the Gulf of Akaba to Trojina up 2.6 kilometers, which will also fill a 140 meters deep artificial lake to provide all the water for the resort. The lake, by the way, it's 140 meters deep artificial lake that comes to a right angle.

Yeah, it rocks. It's never going to, it's never going to burst. Like that weird structure that comes out of the mountain. That houses the lake. Also, I just love they're like, okay, 200 kilometers, 2,600 meters in elevation. and we're going to pump this desalinated water up up because it has to be desalinated or you can't make snow out of it. Hey, just double checking before we do this.

Everybody on Earth right now is access to clean drinking water, right? I just want to make sure we're doing that first. Oh, yeah. We have that settled. Is that settled, right? Yeah, that's good. Okay, that's fine and good. Great.

Okay, we should definitely do this then. So there are some people where it's still in train. Okay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. But it'll be fine. Okay. Uh-huh.

Great. Don't worry. Uh, we can tick that. off. Using a pipe with a diameter of one meter as planned. So that's the other thing. A one meter diameter pipe is so big. It's a big pipe.

That's one big pipe. And they intend to have a one meter diameter pipe for 200 kilometers, gaining 2,600 meters in elevation to fill a 140 meter deep gigantic artificial lake with desalinated water from the Red Sea. Sounds fine. And that was the plan for years. They were just like, yeah, it'll be fine. Yeah.

Here's the thing is you seem skeptical. but I'm watching the video and it looks pretty cool. Well, Italian construction group We Build announced last year it had signed a $4.7 billion contract to build the lake. Yeah, they were quoted to saying,

yeah, we build that. Yeah, we'll build, whatever. Yeah, did they send, like, one of those Italian guys that, like, they watch construction crews with, like, the hands behind their backs? And they're like, yeah, I could do that. And then, like, some guy in Saudi

that was, like, on holiday there was just like, well, I've got the project for you. Yeah. All right, boys. Why don't you come and, uh, to stand around the Gulf of Cava and be like, they should build a pipe there.

But basically, construction hasn't started on that desalination plant that they need to do this, you know, clown show in the desert. And so water is currently transported by truck up the mountain

from the sea. Uh-huh. From a different desalination plant. And they're still going to have the games there with the fakes now. Uh-huh. But the, there won't be like a place there yet.

Well. Right? this doesn't have super buildable well I mean like I feel like every time there's an Olympics in a city that already exists they're like we can't build it we can't do it

like it there's always stories like up to like a couple weeks before the thing starts where they're like oh this is impossible nobody could build anything so because there are no permanent running rivers in the Arabian Peninsula until the pipe is complete and the desalination plant is complete

all water needs to be trucked in and so you have an idea of the scale, it would take two straight years of the pump running at full capacity of one meter diameter, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to fill the lake to supply the water for the ski hills. Okay. What if I would have got a second pipe in there? Well, it'd only take one year. Okay. Now, check this out, three pipes. Now we're getting somewhere. Yeah. What if you just add so many pipes that it takes one day? It's just one black, one Niagara Falls of pipes filling up with this gigantic big lake.

What if we built one pipe with like a five meter diameter? Oh, okay. Here's the thing, Raleigh, is I went to engineering school. This is the sort of something they teach you there is that if it's, if it's one pipe and it'll take two years, one really big pipe will take like five, ten minutes. Yeah, of course.

All we need is a pipe with a diameter of like a kilometer or so. Or one really big truck. Hey, pretty good. What if we fill a ship up with the water and we take the ship apart and we take it up the mountain? Okay. all right, Fitzcaroldo. It's just an idea.

I saw somebody do it, I feel like. I saw that documentary, the burden of dream. Yeah, my, my friend Klaus did it, no problem. I didn't try to kill him or anything. I feel like the burden of dream stuff, what happens so often. It happens all the time. All right, so the second major part of the project, the vault, I can't, I don't know if you, if you're going to buy this as well, that big, like, reverse skyscraper that they blast into

the mountain. Uh-huh. It's also progressing. slowly. Oh. Really? That's too bad. The vault complex, which includes

the big three of building the future at Neum, hospitality, retail, and entertainment facilities, right? The only three things that humanity needs is being built into the mountainside, and according to a person familiar with the construction, requires a, quote, mind-boggling amount of

rock to be blasted out. No, Maddie. You said you went to engineering school, yes? I did. I did. Is the phrase mind-boggling often good when used in the context of an engineering problem? I think that's often, yeah, I think that sounds great because that's just, sure, it sounds like a

crisis or a problem, Riley, but that's just another word for opportunity. That's right. You know, the Chinese word for opportunity and mind-boggling is just one stroke of difference. That's right. Some 3,000 tension cables need to be driven into the remaining rock walls before construction work can even start,

but the contractors could only install one cable per day, meaning at the current rate, the basic structure could take More than eight years to complete. They tried making the cables bigger. Bigger cables. Bigger cables. Maybe more construction crews.

Get 3,000 construction crews. It'll be done in one day. Or, you know, get 30,000 construction crews. It's done a few hours. Many hands make light work. That's what I'm saying. And that's the sort of thing you should be listening to. Yeah.

The mountainous terrain has been an important factor in the pace of work on Trinna. The road to the ski resort has just one carriageway in each direction. Ah, damn it. Okay. Well, there goes my 30,000 construction cruise plan. and workers say the steep gradient and sharp turns make it difficult for construction vehicles to navigate at all and for safety reasons the road is often blocked to all vehicles including those carrying workers or construction equipment okay i got i got a solution this is why you have me on a thing to talk about this so it's bigger pipes bigger cables

more construction crews smaller vehicles oh okay you get anybody on one of those Honda modocompactos a motorcycle that folds into a suitcase i was going to say what if we what if we hired what if we hired the Shrider constructing company. You know? What have we got 90,000 Shriners a day? Each carry one bottle of, here's the thing is they carry

one bottle of water with them up the mountain in the Shrider car. They dump the water into the lake. So that's 90,000 bottles a day right there just to augment the big pipe.

They all are wearing around them a belt that is a cable every day. So that's some the cable for the cables. And then you've got 90,000 shraner of there every day. You get two crews

90,000. So you need 180,000 trainers, one of the top, one at the bottom. They alternate two days on, two days off. So I have a quick question. Not in the Cisco. Where are we going to get enough money to build the giant speaker that's going to play powerhouse 24 hours a day while this is going on? We're commissioning the engineers at JBL to make a flip speaker the size of a mountain. And we're going to fly it in via a helicopter the size of Portugal.

So, Neom, a representative for Neom said, The project's development, including Trojina, is progressing according to a phased plan that emphasizes international standards, long-term sustainability, and legacy outcomes. Work on Trojina continues and directed further questions on the status of the Asian Winter Games to the Olympic Council of Asia, which did not respond. Oh, boy. The FT was told to direct further questions, the Olympic Council, of Asia, which did not respond. That's what you do when your project is going really well.

You just say, everything's going fine. Please talk to someone else. Yeah. And the Olympic Council of Asia didn't pick up because there was very little service in the mountains where they were all walking up with a cable and a bottle of water. I don't think maybe they've thought about phone service either on Trugina. I'm just going to guess there. Have you really? This is what in the engineering trade. This is what we called back. I mean, it's been, I have not been an engineer flight 12 years now. But back in the day, this is, you're, you're, you're, uh, what we call a negative Nancy. Uh-huh. Is that an official engineering term? That's an official engineering term for someone who thinks about the problems too much and isn't

doing the imagining that is necessary. Uh-huh. To imagine your engineering in the world. Uh-huh. Someone, someone who's busying themselves with the protractor of pessimism. That's right. Instead of, instead of using your imagination to think of a place where people can live work and play. Uh-huh. It's see. It's like where people could live, work, and play, and also where you're going to have, like, top restaurants, but also entertainment and, like, global brands. Yeah. You can't do that in, like, a normal place.

It needs to be, like, a freak place. It needs to be really weird. It's a world first. It's a vertical village. No one's ever done a vertical village before, probably for no reason. So, former employees said there were contingency plans. They were holding the games at Tregina, even if the planned facilities were not ready for 2029, and that the winter games were not reliant on the ski village, since the slopes they

plan to use were elsewhere on the mountain. But how are you going to get snow on them? How are you going to get the snow there? You need that. I wasn't thinking about that. What I was thinking about instead of attending a life-affirming experience such as a mountain concert. Oh, I see. I'm just reading some of the official copy here.

You were you imagining watching an AI-generated rendering of a woman play a futuristic violin? Yeah, that's the kind of life-affirming experience that I'd love to experience. Yeah. So people familiar with Torgina insisted it remained feasible. Quote, the difficulties have been magnified by the schedules imposed on the

project, but the Saudis are really committed to building something there. Maybe not in the scale they imagine in the first place, but they are undeterred and determined to make this happen in the right way. That means at a level that will allow winter sport to grow in Saudi Arabia. Okay. Someone's getting that head cut off as ever, right? Like a pair of glasses. I have another idea, Riley. You said that the problems have been magnified? Oh, I think I might know where you're going, and I'm pretty excited by it. But if we built it very, very small, like a one to 60 model of Tregina, and we put it on the mountain, and what we did is then we built the world's biggest magnifying glass, and we

carted that up the mountain using only, I'm going to estimate 150 to 195 Shriners, thousand to get the magnifying glass up the mountain, put it over the model, and then anyone standing there will look through the world's biggest magnifying glass, and what they'll see It's a full-size Tregina. And crucially, it's going to always have to have a no vacancy sign up. So it's like, oh, maybe next time you can go. You can go. And then, yeah, perfect.

I wanted a world-class wellness. I wanted to enjoy some global brands. And I was driven by this Shriner all the way up the mountain in Tragina. And now you're telling me that I don't even get to go to the Louis Vuitton store, the one that they put in the vertical village in the ski resort in northwest Saudi Arabia. Yeah. I wanted to get killed immediately by an exploding, like, well, enjoying Christian Dior and the Marco Pierre White's off-brand restaurant. And you're telling me that I cannot die in a way of my choosing. Yeah, I'm trying to get the exclusive site-specific Breitling watch that is only sold in the vertical village under the mountain.

As worn by the AI-generated violin lady, you know. Look, I had a premonition of how I'm going to die And I knew that it was going to be a beautiful death And it involved getting crushed And I've gone to Cuomo And it involved getting crushed by the exploding lake Anyway, look, we've gone a little bit long More to cover in a few days of course

But I knew that Maddie would have wanted To hear about Neum And I could not keep it from her It made me really happy to think about Tregia To think about Trichy, to think about the AI generated violin lady, the global brands, the special watch, the impossible lake, the, the fact that they clearly, nobody involved ever asked the question of not can we hire enough people to do it, but can the people get there to build the thing? Oh my God. It's like, there's something so compelling about watching a process where every single major determination.

decision made was exactly completely wrong in a very strange way. Yeah. I'm looking at the interview with the Philip Gullet, who is the glasses man for this particular site. And one of the questions to him in the interview was just the combination of architectural excellence, natural beauty, and next level luxury at the top of Turgina is compelling. Why has nobody ever done this before? I don't know. I genuinely don't know. Like, why is nobody built a ski resort in that exact place? Why has nobody ever built the exploding lake? Why has nobody built the world's first exploding lake?

That is like, it just, it just genuinely is much better understood as like surrealist art. Like, it's like, it's like, what if you gave a Dadaist half a trillion dollars to just like do some art in the desert? Conceptually, it's much more evil than that in practice, as I always like to remind us whenever we talk about Neum. Anyway, that's all this. time I think we have for today. But like, I refuse to be cut short when Neum's on the docket. I will say everything I have to say as soon as Neum is on the subject. Yeah, it was either the Neum stuff or us pitching sitting on business and what when they both had to say. That's right. So, Maddie, I want to thank you again. Always a delight to have you on the other

show. That was my pleasure. And to remind everybody to purchase simplicity, a book I have read in one sitting and recommend all of you go out and buy it and read it also in one. sitting. Yeah, it's a really good book about how it's actually really simple to build a vertical sphere resort. There actually is a very Niam-y concept in the book. Oh, yeah. Later. I mean, here's, I want to save this for Left Unread. Was any of that at all inspired by Neum? Yeah, extremely. Yeah. Okay, good. Cool. All right. Awesome. We're going to talk about a lot more of that about a future Left Unread episode. Probably the next one or the next next next one. Anyway, by simplicity. Listen to No God's No Mairs, which is a show.

I do about mares with two of my best girlfriends, Riley and November. Hey. And it's a, it's a very fun show. And you should go to know godstemairs.com right now and subscribe to it. We're going to be talking a little bit more about the details, for example, of what Ingrid Lewis Martin was bribed with. So do check that out. Anyway, we will see you on the bonus episode in a couple short days.

Other than that, uh, thank you for listening. And, um, good mayerning to you. Good mearning to you. you say it oh do I have to say it as well good manning too you