TRASHFUTURE - The Land of Pure Imagination

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

We all saw the story about the weird A.I.-generated Wonka-themed event in Glasgow. But we also think it’s a harbinger of other things to come re: the only things that make it endearing at all are the difficult-despite-it-all attempts to work with terrible material—attempts that humans have to make!—when the computer says to do something stupid. We also talk about Johnny Mercer’s strange quantum state of admitting to knowledge of but also refusing to disclose information about UK military war crimes in Afghanistan. Also we talk about November’s predictions for 2024: King dead; Saudi economic collapse. If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes, early releases of free episodes, and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture *STREAM ALERT* Check out our Twitch stream, which airs 9-11 pm UK time every Monday and Thursday, at the following link: https://www.twitch.tv/trashfuturepodcast *MILO ALERT* Check out Milo’s upcoming live shows here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/live-shows *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

News of no go zones in London and Birmingham are sweeping the UK as the internet falls in love with a shotally put together scam event that is designed to swindle people from their money that was helmed by a kind of serial con artist. Jeremy Corbin has just become leader of the Labour Party and we are excited to see if socialism will come to Britain here in 2017. Oh, I love being in 2017. The last year that it's going to be, before everything gets so much better, I assume. Yeah. That's what D-Reem wrote that song about. Yeah. It's the free one.

Things can only get better in 20 years time. That's right. Yeah. No, no, no. It is 2024. Yeah. You hit your head really hard. Yeah. I'm so sorry to have to tell you this, but it turns out that Jeremy Corbyn was actually a member of kind of like Hamas, I guess. I was surprised to. Our version of the scammy event now no longer taking place in the beautiful islands of the Caribbean, but in sunny Glasgow instead.

Yeah, I mean, listen, I'm always in favour of regionalisation. The Scottish economy doesn't get nearly enough attention. And given that the British economy is mostly scams, it's nice to see that, you know, things are moving up here and we as a city are diversifying beyond burning down historic buildings to turn into student flats. Yeah, was Jiru involved in the Willy Wonka experience? Well, Jiru was banned from the UK. Like, do you see the Instagram post he posted where

he was like, yeah, I'm not allowed to come to the UK, so I can't play any of my UK shows. So bit suspicious. He would have enhanced the Willy Wonka's chocolate experience. One Jarl for him. Quite a nice guy for everyone else. I'm sure most people listening to this will have seen the fabulous willies chocolate experience in Yeah, I've been on a hand in fabulous chocolate experience that was sold Fabulous chocolate experience of a nature we're not gonna get into here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah The lint master chocolatiers of the fabulous experience.

I'm kind of like stripper lint master chocolatier. Oh, yeah. Just tearing off the chef's white. At this chocolate experience, you were going to get to enjoy enchurning and entertainment, including carchy tons, cat cacating and exorstray lollipops. Yeah, I think I saw them at the academy one time. Yeah, because AI generated advertising materials. I love how quickly that's become a case of like,

not only are we generating all of our advertising materials with AI, but we can't even be bothered to correct the text in them that makes no sense. We're just like, whatever. Yeah, this is what happens if you do the bare minimum now is everything is sort of like uncorrected AI text and weird AI images. And so this, this like chocolate event had backdrops that were just printouts of AI images looking really shit and disconcerting at the same time. My view on Willie's chocolate experience,

my... When I have decided I have looked at all the evidence, I have weighed it up in my mind, I have put it in front... Like a high court judge. I have put it in front of my mental star chamber, and I have determined that this is the single best piece of art that materially involves AI. Why is that?

Yeah. Why is that? I. Why is that? I mean, this is the thing, right? I think this existed before AI, right? This kind of scam. We've seen it happen before of like parents taking their kids to the like winter wonderland or whatever. And Santa is like a stolen H&M mannequin that's having it sort of like armed Nord off by like an Excel bully that's disguised as a reindeer, right? Like this is a it's a known fact in this country that like if you try and take your kids to an event, you will be punished for hubris, right? Because your kids, you know, fucking they're gonna get enough events as they grow up anyway. Like, yeah, climate

events. Exactly. Yeah, like once in a hundred year events will be happening to them pretty much hourly by the time they reach adulthood. So like, yeah, to take them to like a Christmas event or some kind of strange Willy Wonka themed event is courting disaster. But what's happened here is that like that sort of like baseline of this is obviously going to be a scam. It's going to be done with like the minimal effort required is now AI enabled. And while that doesn't make it much more efficient, it does make it much stranger.

Precisely correct. Yeah. The example I think of here is these very odd characters and stage directions that chat GPT essentially inserted into this performance, if you're sitting down in front of an AI and you're like, I'm going to make some good art by writing a prompt, you are hamstrung by your very efforts. It will never succeed. If you sit down in front of an AI and think, I can use this, I can put this AI, some actors and some gullible parents together to make a quick buck and I

don't care what comes out the other side of it, then you're using AI correctly because what you were then generating. You are Marina Abramovich accidentally. Yeah. I mean, this is the thing, right? The hail that I'm willing to die on, right, in order to excuse myself for occasionally using it for ship posts is that AI can never be good, but it can be funny. Right. And I don't think there are many human writers

that would have come up with the concept of introducing a villain into the Willy Wonka, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Who's not Willy Wonka? Yeah. Cannon called the unknown. Like... Yeah. Yeah. Canon called the unknown. Like. Yeah. Awesome. I mean, I'm sure again, most people will know this because it's been now endlessly covered because it's just so odd. But the inserting a cut, a first proper meme of 2024 feels good. It's very sweet. But of

inserting a kind of randomly generated villain into Willy Wonka. But then, crucially, giving that character to a local Glasgow, the Laswegian actor, to kind of just do his best at kind of improvising, I'm the unknown. You didn't even care in me. The poor fucking umpa lumpa lady. She was interviewed in Vulture. And again, you get the sense that like, this all existed before AI, you know, if you were a stand up comedian or an actor who was like

looking for work, a lot of this stuff would be coming your way anyway. But really, to just be handed like a small bag of jelly beans, a script written by chat GPT, and to have like some Glaswegian children thrown at you and be like, go on. I don't think there was even a bag of jelly beans. I think it was one jelly bean and half a cup of like cheap Tesco lemonade. Incredible. It's also like a really interesting like case study. I think of like when, when like, you know, because the whole premise of like the AI Boosters has been that this will facilitate human beings in everyday situations.

It will elevate their processes. It will streamline them. It will make everything more effective. Even if things are a bit patchy, ultimately, it'll be fine. I think this is one of the good examples of, no, this is what happens when a human is directed by AI in the way that these systems are designed. It just becomes this very weird and odd and detaching experience and a whole of the aesthetics around it. I mean, partly this isn't...

I don't want to blame the AI. I think the AI is just like one layer, like an extra layer on top of this that makes it both more funny and absurd. I think this is very much reminiscent of a British experience more broadly, like very half-assed, costs way too much. Basically, it tells you to fuck off at the same time. But the AI element of it just adds this other sense of both apathy and lack of care.

And again, it's like another layer of just telling you to go fuck yourself. It's Britain is the country that invented painting a horse like a zebra and saying, five or a look or fuck off. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a great noble national tradition. My favorite thing about it is like the image of like the one AI Wonka image that is sort of taped to a wall. It doesn't even fill the whole wall.

It's like it's really like almost like just slightly bigger than a free page. It's just taped on to a wall. And there's like a there's a what you call it. There's like a not like a barric a wall. And there's like a, there's a what do you call it? There's like a, not like a barricade, but like there's like a... Like an arch? That bit? No, like that thing that like sort of blocks, you know, ah, fuck it. I don't know.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like a crowd control barrier. Like a crowd control barrier. But like... Yeah, because they don't want the children attacking the AI Willy Wonka picture. Yeah, you wouldn't want them to think that it's actually real and they might be able to go through that tunnel, which is sellotape to a wall and not even like properly straight. I think this is a key element of it, right? Is that what's so funny about it is that they put the funniest possible level of effort in,

which was not none. Like I've seen actually worse than, I think like the Winter Wonderland one was worse. Like there were weirdly ornate bits of this this like there was like a big archway and stuff and there was like the woman like the like the woman in the embalm for costume like doing her best and then there's other things which as you say it's just like a picture of Willy Wonka taped to the wall yeah but coming back I think right the By the way, the funny thing, I think, was the unknown was attempting to steal Willy's anti-graffiti gobstopper, which, what piece of deranged fanfic did chat GPT Hoover this out of?

This is right. This is like an assembly that my senior school headmaster would have given. This is my anti-graffiti gobstopper. And if I see any of you graffitig the lockers around the school, I'm going to suck, suck, suck on my anti-graffiti gobstopper. And it's going to tell me who did it. So it sounds like a very good start. And then I shall become leader of the Labour Party.

He was very starmer. He really, I mean, he didn't sound like Starmer, but he had like a moustache and he wore those like, you know, those like thick school shoes that like the unfortunate children had to wear at primary school. Like he used to wear a pair of those with the suit and he used to give very long speeches in assembly about like incredibly boring topics about like the time he tried to build a wall and failed and what this taught him about, you know, like the spirit of perseverance or whatever. What I find compelling about this isn't any particular element of it, but rather that

everything about it was so AI generated. And AI generated scripts, or at least if you use the free version of chatGPT, which he clearly has, this is not GPTT for this is 3.5. Yeah. Has certain ways of, because I've experimented with possibly using it to run a paranoia game where you are basically troubleshooters working for a computer that is insane, which I think it kind of would work well for. But it has very sort of these strange circular ways of talking. It tends to always sort of go back to where it started. And if you and asking it to write a play where it doesn't just include stage directions, but also audience

reactions, but then glosses over details such as, well, and then Willy Wonka defeats the unknown by hoovering him up with a with a Dyson or whatever, which is what was in the script here. It just that but then to give that to people and be like, well, go on, do this, you know, it is it is it is finally taken. This is why I think it is it is ultimately good AI art because it is asking people to take seriously something very weird and perturbing. And it also gave us the picture

of that kid dresses in Oompa Loompa giving two thumbs down. Yeah. The reverse Trump equally orange but different in effect. The prestige is not doing a shitty thing and trying to make off with the money. The prestige is to do this and have everyone actually trying their best to make it happen. And being let down only by the strangeness of like the hallucinations that a poorly prompted AI is unable to stop making. Well yeah, well I thought about for a minute like what would I have done if I had been hired to work at this for the day and honestly just thinking about it like gave me a panic attack.

Like the idea of being the fucking the stand- up comedian that they hired to be Willy Wonka I was like this is hell. This is hell for stand up comedians. Hell for stand up comedians. It's not the stag party that never stops joining in. It is Willy's chocolate experience. Yeah. Let's bring the stag party to Willy's chocolate experience. Yeah. But bringing the Stag Party to Willy's chocolate experience.

Yeah. Yeah. Not the chocolate Willy experience, which the Stag Party are very much engaging in. The other fun thing before we move on about this was, of course, the guy who put it on is addicted to like scammy AI based content. As soon as chat GPT was released, he had like, you know, seven quite conspiratorial books out on Amazon that were again, clearly AI generated. It's just chanceing, right? And like the thing is, we've been proven right about a bunch of stuff again, when we said that like pretty soon your job's going to be like as shit,

except slightly more shit because it's going to be like supervised by an AI. But the other thing is that like, it was extremely unpopular for obvious reasons. And you got a lot of very funny videos of this guy standing behind a bouncer he had hired while sort of angry parents shouted at him. I think it just goes to show that like, yeah, this stuff is gonna be voice adorned,

but like everyone hates it. And it's really obvious when it's being used. People just, you know, know that they're being sold a bit of goods and know that it's shit. And it's also sort of telling that the things that people did find endearing about it, which was just like the strange movements of the unknown or like the facial expression of the woman who had to play Viumpa Lumpur at the meth lab.

And like, those are the things that like people found appealing. It's likepa at the meth lab. And those are the things that people found appealing. It's like the stuff that wasn't generated by AI, the stuff that wasn't part of the AI instruction manual, or the things that people actually find to be somewhat moving or interesting. And if there's any sort of indictment as to... Or if there's any sort of like, kind of rejection of AI as sort of like a found a like a way of sort of kind of being creative or artistic in any form, even among people who so sort of suggests that perhaps there is kind of some use for it. I think that's a good example of like, well, actually probably not. Yeah. Everyone hated it, except for the strange bits of unpredictable humaneness that the humans brought.

And it doesn't even work enough for a short con, right? You can't do this, take people's money and flee town, because people take one look at it and go, give me my money back, I'm calling the police. This is sort of the other thing too, it would be incredibly easy. It's incredibly easy, I actually don't want to say it's incredibly easy because I think event planning is quite hard, but if you're going to do like Wonka stuff, like there are like several, there are beats that you can sort of hit that will sort of make

it possible, right? And the thing about Wonka and the associations with it is like that at the very least, it's like have a bunch of sweets around like that could have probably saved this thing. But like the fact that it was so low effort to the point of just like it was worse than like the shit that you know, apprentice like you see on the apprentice. I think is as very telling as to sort of like the reliance on this as a system kind of just means that you you're almost sort of like removing or sort of ignoring all logical faculties that could be like, yeah, maybe this might just need like another bottle of lemonade. Now, you're organised a Willy Wonka experience, but yeah, you've got some geezer there called the unknown.

Well, that's not even in the book. Karen, is that in the book? That's not in the book, is it? And then you've got no sweets. You've got a woman running, looks like a meth lab. She's talking to... She's giving them one jelly bean. I mean, why would anyone play 35 pound for that? That's that on the apprentice.

We can, we can move on. We can move on. Can we? Can any of us really move on? We're going to move on to Saudi Arabia, the willies chocolate experience of countries. Yeah, we would not say that. The arm is like that plus time. Yeah, we've introduced the unknown into Vision 20 Cersei. One woman dressed as a, dressed as a nomad handing out back clover. No, no, we've given the unknown some rimless glasses.

And he is now creating a new kind of parallel line chocolate factor. I'm Torben Anon. Well, here's the thing though. The rimless glasses European Saudi Arabia working consultants, they're getting off scot-free. It's like an Anglo-Saxon Kenning, incredible sort of assemblage of words. We are looking at a possible,

let's say series of difficulties for American firms that are engaged in consulting with Saudi Arabia, including on projects like NEOM, as well as projects like... But we love those guys. They're so likable and friendly, and we definitely don't think that they, in any way, deserved this, or what's happening to that a number of a Senate subcommittee is investigating how Saudi Arabia is using soft power such as sports investments and so on to extend influence in US. And so a number of consultancies, just McKinsey, BCG and others were hauled up before a Senate

subcommittee hearing basically to testify exactly what they've done. So Richard Blumenthal, the person who had had the bee in his bonnet about this, said, we want to determine what work these companies have done and are doing that allows a foreign sovereign to use instruments and commerce of the United States to increase its influence within our shores and rebrand its tarnished image after years of horrific human rights abuses. Me too, Richard. Me too.

Sure. I think it's cool how the US foreign policy establishment kind of works like this, where you give the Saudis everything they want for years and then like one guy gets pissed off at them for kind of an obscure reason. And now the whole thing kind of pivots a little bit. And then it's a good sustainable system. Speaking from inside a suitcase, the McKinsey spokesperson had this to say. So essentially what has happened, right, is the Senate is subpoenaing a number of documents from these American companies as to their work in Saudi Arabia. What have you been doing for like MBS? How many different shapes did you propose to MBS?

Yeah, what kind of have you been optimizing his like bones or regimen? They gave him access to secret shapes developed by the Pentagon. Well, the Pentagon. No, that's the shape they want you to think they want you to think they stopped there. The Pentagon has been developing secret non-Euclidean shapes. This is something that I would fully hear like shouted into traffic by someone. And that someone is me. The PIF meanwhile, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund sued the four firms, the four, the firms

namely BCG McKinsey and a couple other smaller ones in Saudi Arabia, claiming that the documents demanded in the US were classified and could not be shared. Yeah. Some of those shapes, I mean, for instance, you know, they've got line. That's one already. Yeah. And then new Maraba is cube. So that's they're working very quickly towards a higher level of. They have a quellum, which is vertical line. Yeah. Jesus Christ. So Jesus Christ, it's Jason Bourne. My God. These two, These two guys, Bob Sternfels and Rich Lesser. I'm Rich Lesser. Rich and the Lesser and Bob the Graser.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are both saying, look, we can't because otherwise we will go to jail in Saudi Arabia. I think it's really funny for a McKinsey guy to like sail between Silla and Karebsis like this. I also think it's really funny that considering what most of these people do for Saudi Arabia, which is like go to MBS and be like you should spend 12 trillion quid on golf tours, that is something that the Saudis are like instinctively so protective of that they are willing to like threaten to jail these people. Like you are getting in trouble with

two governments at once and neither of them are the kind of government that you want to like particularly fuck with. And what you've done to earn that is you've gone to a meeting with MBS, been out of ideas, had your Don Draper moment, gone to the whiteboard and written, get Taylor Swift to start dating a golfer. And for that, Mahalad bin Salman has gone, if you tell anyone about this, I will fucking bone saw you. You want to move to a new city I'm building that's shaped exactly like a suitcase in his size, like a suitcase and also is a suitcase?

Yeah, new cabin luggage. The fucking luxury dining district in there sucks, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. The partnership with Samsung night that the Saudi Royal family are doing. It's like a sort of dual handed thing. You've got one one side is Samsung night. The other is Husqvarna. Yeah. So it's it's this is a new a new a new kind of luggage for Saudis, which has a chainsaw built in. Like you could just beat someone into it. Like a shredder.

It later turns out that much like those sort of like powered luggage things, you just can't take those on airlines. Have you ever been at the airport and found that you cannot fit all of your luggage into the suitcase? Well, this is no longer a problem because of the Samsonite Husqvarna chainsaw suitcase. For example, I cannot fit this whole journalist corpse into my suitcase, but there's no longer an issue for me. So that's the thing, right? It's those guys, the guys you're doing an impression of, Milo, they're fine

because European governments like Jesus Christ, thank God. OK, just keep being an industry. We're too desperate and we know best. It's like, Christ, thank God. Okay, just keep being an industry. We're too desperate and we know better to like fuck around with this. Whereas the US is still powerful enough that like one guy can like turn it slightly on its axis. And all of a sudden you have guys in between like the bone sore and then you know, then deeply say, if you're rich lesser or you know, Todd Brunfels or whatever the first guy's name was, I'm lesser rich than I used to be. Hey.

If you're Bob Sternfels and Rich Leesser, then you're like, well, wait a minute. No, no, no. This I was supposed to be immune from this kind of thing. This is going and doing this stuff for the Saudis. That's just like, that's just, that's just pay dirt. That's just getting a billion dollars to say, as you say, November, would have Taylor Swift dated Phil Mickelson. But what if that, first of all, age gap discourse, that's what. I mean, yeah, functionally, there is a kind of like capitalist diplomatic immunity there. You are like an ambassador from the kind of international,

non-country of wealth. And, you know, that's that's something that the Saudis have been like reluctant to fuck with. So I wonder what's there that is making them this secretive about it. What I think is very funny, this is not, this is not going to be giving any insight into what's there that's making them so secretive. I mean, generally, I think it's just what they're doing is saying, no, no, this is our stuff. You can't take our stuff that we own America. Like they're trying a bit of a kind of very stupid power play.

Oh, with the Saudis? That wild. I read a golf magazine, a golf industry magazine called Playing Through that had a really detailed article about this. A golf industry magazine called Play. It sounds like he hephemism for shitting yourself. When you said a golf industry magazine, I thought like, oh, so like Buff Rain or like Aman or Casa.

Well, the industry of being in the golf. Yeah, the being in the golf industry. Hey, that's an industry for these guys. Well, no, there's also Golf Golf, which is a golf industry magazine about golf and the golf. I like when sometimes we become have I got news for you and we have like a publication of the week. So, playing through, interviewed, you know, someone from like the director of responsibility

to protect and, you know, and bombing Institute at a university. Where's of the name to institute that? You know what I mean. I think this is a strut... Ben Freeman, the director of the democratizing foreign policy program at the Quincy Institute. There's like 500,000 of these types of guy in particular, sure. Ben Freeman, it's in the name. He loves being free. Hmm.

It sounds like Ben Bonesword man, doesn't it? I think this is a strategic blunder for the consultancies. If you comply with these inquiries, you would hear to the subpoenas, you provide the documents and everything. I don't think people would care as much, nor would they have as many questions as they do now. The fact that they obfuscate so much, it really looks like they have something to hide. And it's quite possible that not only will the principles of BCG, McKinsey, and so on

have to register as foreign agents of the Saudi government. But famous golfers working in live might too. Phil Mickelson is going to have to register as a foreign agent. It's like a word, Saudi agent. I'm very here for this, actually. The infinite gravy train of working for the Saudis might, let's say, be coming, reaching a bit of a squeaking place. I want to do one more thing, one more little thing before we move on to start up and then our sort of core topic about what's going on with all those war crimes investigations in Britain. They're very, very, very quickly.

I don't like spending too much time on the Royals, but there's a bunch of Royal stuff happening because the King... Or not happening, as the case may be. So the king is now officially dying. And is dead. 100% dead. Look, I was right about the queen. I'm going to be right about this as well. I'm getting out ahead of it already dead in the fucking ground already. Saudi economic collapse, king dead.

Saudi economic collapse King dead Saudi economic collapse King dead new shapes are being invented every day in the like Tetrahedron beneath the Pentagon. Yeah as a wise man once said the king is absent long wait the king Well the thing is like Charles Charles loves homeopathy and hates modernity and doctors and all of this. And on that basis, like, it's not looking good. Like I feel like cancer is one of those things that you really don't want to apply homeopathy and other kind of like useless treatments. I mean, there's a guy in Glasgow who's like quite good at AI and has some ideas

about how to resolve that. Yeah. And that guy is the unknown. I don't do homoepathy on street. Just like talking to your oncologist and you're like, you know, obviously it's very frightening in and of itself, but mostly what I'm afraid of is the unknown. And then the guy fucking pops out from behind the mirror. That guy in Glasgow is now starting the King Charles arsehole experience,

where it's like all themes around the inside of the King's wreck. And you still only get half a cup of lemon squash. Yeah, that's right. It's Tide Brown. Bunch of Rangers fans crawling out there. Yeah, but the sort of presumptive queen in Waiting, at least, appears to also have been now missing for like three months. Yeah. So this is an interesting internet conspiracy theory that kind of isn't a conspiracy theory, where she had this operation and then she just hasn't been photographed,

for as you say, for months and months, which is, I don't care, believe me, I care a great deal less than a lot of people. But like, it's weird. And you put these two things together, particularly this thing of like, you know, nobody's, nobody's seen the king, nobody's seen, okay, it's together. And the only possible solution in my mind is that the the Royals are doing white people get out to each other. I was actually going to say, so I was going to say that I feel like the actual answer to this is that they're doing face-off. Face-off in many ways, the white people get out anyway. Things got a bit weird, so now they both have the same face as Nicolas Cage. Or...

On the King! And you're gonna listen to me! No, I'm serious. I think they're gonna try and like put Charles's brain in Kate's body and that's the, you know, he's gonna continue himself that way. And then William will have the most normal sexual relationship anyone in that family has ever had whilst fucking his hot dad. This is all an elaborate plot to to make William's dad hot so that he can fuck him.

I think they've done reverse dye another day and they've made both King Charles and Anne's and Kate Middleton Korean. And they've just released them into the wild. I just didn't expect it to be Korean. Imagine if they did that and they just carried on as normal and didn't mention it at all. Like, because what would anyone do? Like, you couldn't, you know, even the British press would have to be like,

do we comment on this? Trying to work out whether or not they should be racist. Like, there's nothing wrong with them being Korean. It's unexpected. or not they should be racist. Like there's nothing wrong with them being Korean. It's unexpected. You just leave it to like Giles Koran to write an insanely racist column about it.

Well, he's going to have to check again. The winds will have changed direction. He's going to have to become Giles Korean. He's just comparing every restaurant to like, you know, barbecue. I'm not sharing every restaurant to like, you know, barbecue. He's like the... They're not using the fresh Goatchajang at Le Gal Brosh anymore. Well, there we go. That's why we podcast. There you go, Giles Korean. There's a thought.

Yeah, whatever was that. Just make it the fucking episode. So tight. Yeah. All done, tech. Yeah. But at the same time, right? Donald Trump has said Prince Harry is going to be on his own if I get back in.

The funniest, the possible thing for him to take a position on. It's like, bro, you are quite possibly going to be president again. There's like 50 cases against you. And what this is, this is why Trump is the way he is, because what's he commenting on? He's selling you like gold sneakers. And he's being like Prince Harry, very, very unfair to his racist family. It's not even Korean. The rest of the family, they went Korean. They did poke. They're reading, they're reading kimchi.

This is why Trump got on so well with Kim Jong-un, you know? Prince Harry says, oh, oh, I don't want to be Korean. Why are they cracking a rug into my rice? They don't like it. I don't want to be, I don't like a strict social hierarchy based on age. I don't care for that at all. No, he'd rather come over here. Prince Harry refusing to start counting his age at one.

I genuinely though, it's white people get out. I think that like Diana was the early case study for this. And I think that the Royals, as the white people of white people, are trying to do the fucking coagular procedure. And that's why we haven't seen any of them. Riley has sent me a Donald Trump quote to read out. This is what he said. This is what he said about Harry. How do we protect him? He's portrayed the queen that's unforgivable. He'd be on his own if it was down to me.

We have an important rule in this hive. You don't portray the queen. We have an important rule in this hive. You don't betray the queen. I'm a worker. I'm like everyone else. I'm a worker. We gotta protect the honey. We got lots of honey in the hive, haven't we? We love the honey, don't we folks?

But they don't wanna make it anymore because of woke. Okay. Just briefly, the reason he said he wouldn't protect him is that Harry's visa in the US, because he said he did drugs once in a book. Like, well, technically you shouldn't't have been given is the Heritage Foundation has launched a legal case to get him deported out of the fight. Fucking weird.

Like imagine caring about this, especially as an American, like not to like buy into their national bullshit too much, but they had a war not to care about this. Benedict Arnold would have been a very respectful guy in my opinion. Being like an American who cares about the monarchy, particularly an American who cares about the monarchy like positively, is some of the most cooked you can be in my opinion. It's so many of them though. It's like the Brits who are into the NFL. I have a start up and then we're going to talk a little bit about Jonathan Mercer, a man who's a man who's always drawing the Pernod Harald comments section. That's right. Johnny Mercenary.

One last chance at all. I'll give you all one last chance at honesty. Clue, QL00. Clue, Clue, Clue. Clue, Clue. Clue, Clue. Clue, Clue. Clue, Clue.

Clue, Clue. It's going to be like Leviton Arabic. It would be like Clue. Clue, Clue. Clue. Clue. Are we fucking? It's going to be like Levitine Arabic. It would be like Clue. Clue. Clue. It doesn't help me very much. It's a Swedish type of Kwey Lude. This is what we're replacing detectives with after we abolish police.

Yeah, that's right. The DCI gene hunt is going to, his consciousness will be uploaded into Clue. Fire Optiquatra? be uploaded into Clue. File up to Quattro? Clue is the leading AI platform on culture and taste. Oh, okay. Providing consumer taste data and recommendations for leading companies and the entertainment publishing, retail travel, hospitality and packaged goods sectors. So it's like a survey thing.

It's like your phone grabs you and goes, like, do you like this? Do you like this, you piece of shit? Tell us. I'm DCI Genon and I'm going to tell you if it's proper stuff or if it's for fucking pansies. The proprietary API predicts consumers' preferences and tastes across a dozen major categories, including music, film, television, podcast, dining, light, nightlife, fashion, consumer products, books and travel. Launched in 2012 as a retaste recommendation engine. So basically, it's like a Groupon add-on. Clue now claims to combine the latest in machine learning, research in neuro aesthetics, and a pipeline of detailed taste data.

You can't say neuro aesthetics because all that suggests to me is what your brain looks like. In this case, very smooth. He's got a very ugly brain. I've seen the scans, very peculiar brain. Basically, right? What it says it is. Oh my God. Have you seen the Trump tweet where like, he manually retweets, this is back in the

old days, a guy says, your dad gives good brain and he retweets it with, it's called genes. Yes, I have seen that an icon. No, this basically this thing, it's an AI black box. And what it says is it has all of these data inputs, you know, like those people age where they are, what they've bought, what they like and so on. And says it has five hundred. It can predict any, any taste ever.

And what it says it wants to do essentially is more or less take over the cultural industry to AI generate basically whatever companies will do more or less. Which is great. Now, what they say is now we're not like an open, it's not like chat GPT or not. It's not like we were just scraped like Reddit to turn, to create the unknown. Rather, they have control over their data sources, which means that they just ask people, they buy data, they ask people stuff and you ask how they got that data. It's because in 2012, when they got a whole bunch of money from Leonardo DiCaprio and Cedric the entertainer What?

So he reinvested his like fee for killers of the flower moon or whatever no no in 2012 oh It's wolf of Wall Street money. Okay. Yeah, well, I mean that explains a lot about how dumb this is then. Cedric the Entertainer, then Leonardo DiCaprio, and Elton John have all put a bunch of money and all invest in something in 2012. Yeah. Well, you've got Cedric the Entertainer, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Elton John in a boat and also a cabbage and chicken. And you have to ferry them across from one side to the other. So this is from 2013 and how it started.

Whenever you sign into Clue, we ask you for five clues about your taste in things co-founder Jay Alger told Stilecaster. Basically, we just ask you for what you love, favorite movie, fashion brand book or whatever. And we map the data together. So basically, if I say, well, I like, I don't know, I like the Trash Future podcast. I will in four years like the Trash Future podcast. This is from 2013. Stop sending me milfs. I also really like, I don't know, the TV show Burn Notice.

And then if someone else likes Trash Future, it'll say, have you considered trying Burn Notice? That's basically all it did, right? Gotcha. Have you considered trying building a more equitable society in the lagoon? So you let the app know that you're obsessed with a brand like Rag & Bone and it says, based on your taste in Rag & Bone, we think in Chicago you might like the following restaurants. More or less.

It says something like Yelp is more generic. One restaurant has five stars, one has three. I love Rag & Bone. They buy all my scrap metal. But whether you're Donald Trump or a protester, you get told the same thing. It's almost dictatorial. But we are forming a taste profile to give you recommendations specific to you. So there's quite like rudimentary recommendation engine, sort of doesn't do much from 2013

to 2019. And then people start talking about AI and, hey presto, all of a sudden they acquire another big pipeline of data, this company called Taste Dive, and then are able... Again, taking this relatively limited amount of people with these relatively limited amount of connections, they're able to then go to Coca-Cola and be like, we can tell you exactly what celebrities to put on your can if you want people who live in Chicago and drive forklifts who were born in July. Yeah, Carl Shipman.

Yeah, perfectly. Weirdly. They don't know who he is. He's just got the right face for Chicago forklift drivers. In fact, the fact they don't know who he is is a bonus. Here's what I think is actually interesting about this is, you know what? The company has just invested a huge amount of money into Clue. Hmm.

AXA, the insurers. Oh, good. Okay. You liked something that was bad for you, and your premiums are going to go up. Oh, well, like people who like trash future, they like drink driving, for example. Exactly, or like, you know, vaping or something else terrible for you.

But that's not even you liked vaping. You liked something that people who like vaping like. Every day of my fucking life, we invent the social credit system again. And it gets it gets worse and stranger and like less related to anything every time. Now, we haven't said exactly why AXA is to be clear. AXA hasn't said why they're investing in it and Clue hasn't said what they're doing with the money from AXA.

But we know what happened, what it means when an insurance company invests in a huge pipeline of data analytics. It means that they're going to use... Yeah, they're going to use it responsibly. Yeah, of course always. Yeah, like alcohol. Yeah, they're going to find a way to get more premiums out of people and pay them out less because that's the insurance industry business model.

And so I don't understand what else an insurance company would be doing investing in a thing that tells you what restaurants you would like if you like a certain clothing brand, other than just further stratification of people into good or bad risks based on whether it's like, well, someone who likes, I don't know, trailer park boys has great taste in TV. And so we're going to charge them lower premiums. Great taste in TV, but like terrible conception of risk, you know, and as such, premiums kind of balance out much the same. But so, and this is, as you say, right? Every day, we build more of the of the social credit system. But this is the social credit system that also helps Netflix make their next terrible movie. If you're wondering, what are the AI systems that are helping Netflix to generate stuff? Yeah, it's

what they bought in-house. But they claim as well, like again, always takes when startups make grandiose claims about who they work with. Always take that with a grain of salt. So for instance, you liked a Kevin Hart special and Grey Goose vodka and the concept of theft. Therefore, Netflix has now made the movie Lift. Which we will not do another call forward to an episode coming out in May. Wait, what episode are you talking about? Oh, it's the episode coming out in May

where we watched the Kevin Hart Netflix. Yeah, the movie that we haven't watched yet for the episode that we haven't yet recorded. Exactly. And genuinely, I got a message from someone who was like, thank you for doing the call forward jokes because it makes me like, so I know what's coming. I subscribe to the Patreon based off of that. So all I'm going to be talking about between now and May is the movie Lift. So, you know, thank you to that person. Let's just do a... Why don't we just do another episode about Lift? Fuck it. We're going to watch Lift again.

Watch it a second time in a way that comes out earlier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like Tenet. Yeah. The listeners who are moving backwards through the feet will understand. That's just someone I guess catching up on a podcast. That's what you're describing. Slapping my red patch to move and catch up to the thing. Yeah. But right. If let let that we don't know if they're actually working with Netflix, right? But if they are, then the same machine that's making the Kevin Hart, that's saying, you got to put Kevin Hart with Vincent D'Onofrio and have them sort of steal an NFT for the quote unquote first time ever.

And then a Chicago Polish welder will buy a Coke. Yeah, the same thing is being bought by insurers, which is great fun. Again, also just once if something is being invested in by an insurance company's great fun. Again, also, just if something is being invested in by an insurance company's venture arm, it could come to nothing, but it also shows what are they interested in? What do they think the frontiers are of what they're going to be able to do with information? Hmm. I mean, in that case, I guess quite optimistic about this in a way that is depressing. Oh, good.

That's just a quick one for Clue. I want to finish us off by asking, what the hell is going on in the did we do? Oopsy, boopsy, did we do war crimes in Afghanistan inquiry that Johnny Mercer seems to be fronting? Yes. So basically, this has been a fairly long running public inquiry, investigating allegations that as you say, particularly the SAS, during the course of the war in Afghanistan, committed a shitload of war crimes, most of them on the theme of killing unarmed civilians in houses they raided and then fitting them up to make them look like terrorists, right? Like carrying an extra, like an AK with you and like sprinkling some AK on the guy's

body who you just shot for no reason. And Johnny Mercer, Veterans Minister, ex-troupe himself, is now in this position where he's testified to the inquiry that he knows about some war crimes that they did, but he's not going to tell them about it. And I think it's so funny that what you've got here is a Tory MP who is essentially forced into a conflict of personal honor, the likes of which you don't see outside the samurai or the Gambino crime family. Because he's like genuinely, he's going, well, I have people telling me that they did war crimes or that they were ordered to commit war crimes or asked to commit war crimes. And then the, you know, the judge and charges the inquiry says, well, will you name them so that we can investigate it? And he goes, no, because as a as a former army officer, I love

the army and I don't want to like, I didn't want to believe it. and I don't want to, I didn't want to believe it and I don't want to impugn the reputation of it. And so you have this strange thing where the guy is essentially talking, he's violating O'Merter by talking about how cool he thinks the O'Merter is and how much he believes in it. And I think it's really funny that you've ended up

in this situation where like he's not he's not willing to testify in a way that sates the body that like can actually compel him to do that. But in the course of saying how he won't do that is pissed off everyone involved so badly that he may as well have done. It's like a surpo code never actually ratted on anyone. If he was just like I won't take a bribe and everyone around him was like, this motherfucker, he must be, he must be dirty.

The only way they could get Johnny Mercer to testify against these men would be if some of these, you know, former soldiers were to have insinuated that Johnny Mercer's wife was a prostitute on the Plymouth Herald comments section. Then that would free him from his Bushido code of honour. Yeah, I mean, it is genuine. Like it's serious, obviously, because like in particular, the stuff that he's describing, the place where there is no love lost is between him

and like senior army officers, like generals, right? And he describes like how he went to the then director of special forces, a guy called Roland Walker, and went, hey, is any of this true? It seems like it might be, and it probably shouldn't be, because it's bad. And the guy just shrugs his shoulders at him. And I think it's worth mentioning that,

because that guy, that general that he talked to, is going to be the next chief of the general staff. And I think a lot of the army is like in this kind of stranglehold of former special forces officers, right? Because it was something that like, sounded cool and tactical and was selective and elite. And people thought that that was all the army was going to be doing until Ukraine. And so now all of the guys who covered this shit up, and who are now getting like thoroughly embarrassed by Johnny Mercer in a way that like previously people who embarrassed people like that ended up you know inside the boots of their own cars.

Those people are now basically untouchable because they're in those positions in the hierarchy anyway. And it's just it's really grim but at the same time I have sort of like I'm trying to decide whether or not I feel bad for Johnny Mercer because by instinct, I never want to feel bad for Tori MP. And his previous kind of like cause was preventing historical prosecutions of war crimes in Northern Ireland. But when he was confronted with like the modern incarnation, he was like, Oh, this like offends my sense of honor in a way that I'm like now torn between the institution.

I almost respect him for like earnestly believing it, you know, to his real detriment. Well, it's a Johnny Mercer to me seems like someone who was always meant to be a kind of propaganda officer. Hmm. Artillery close enough. No one has ever I think believed so much in the importance of A lot of Britain abroad you might say no there is there are very few Tories who are still as Or very few front bench Tories who are still as concerned with Britain doing army stuff rather than culture war stuff Like he's on the the right side of the culture war

of the early 2000s, which basically makes him a liberal by today's standards. Yeah, he's basically like general Wesley Clark as insane as that is. To be like, no, to do these war crimes, like obviously to investigate the war crimes is very bad, but to like do them in the first place is shameful. And it's like that weird kind of

halfway house that you land in of like, well, we certainly shouldn't do anything about it because you cover the institution's nakedness first. What I sort of instinctively thinking of here as well is that American Special Forces are, well, again, American Special Forces have been allowed to, let's say, I don't run large-scale drug smuggling rings for a long time, but they seem to be able to do it now more as freelancers and for themselves, rather than, I don't know, for the institution itself.

And there's, but there is this, it seems unthinkable that there would be a, something similar happening in the states if you get my meaning. Yeah, for sure. Well, because also like when you know, like the British special forces do some war crimes, but like the American special forces do like parody war crimes. Like other than the Navy SEALs went into a village and shot everyone and then we're like, yeah, they were all terrorists by. Like, you know, it's like, that was this, that was genuinely this was it was the same thing. It's just it was done with like more Britishness about it. And I think that's the distinction, right, is that like, because we we don't have the same kind of like, even like disconnection from the troops that

Americans have, we have this like like entirely different relationship to our military. What happened is we ended up with like a pretty British cover-up, which is that like, you know, a guy with a lot of kind of insignia and just kind of like shrugs his shoulders at it. The thing that I always come back to is there was this email that the Royal Military Police, they investigated this and then their investigation got like shut down

without uncovering anything, it was part of the cover-up. But they found this email from an SAS Regimental Sergeant Major who was, and the subject line was like another massacre in all caps with five exclamation marks with the kind of like world-weary tone of like, you know, like, oh, they're fucking done again. Mason You remember, we read all those like the officers' reports as well, when they were writing up stuff that had been handed to them by like sergeants and stuff and they were just like, another grenade hidden behind a curtain. You couldn't make it up in block capitals.

Exactly. Exactly. And so now Johnny Mercer is like caught in the middle of this. And I mean, it's very, very strange, you know, because I don't think there are many politicians left who would be compromised by a sense of like personal feeling like this. He's gonna have to go on the rest of his politics now. That's the only way forward.

He's gonna be slightly tougher Rory Stewart. Yeah, I mean, basically what this is waiting for is for someone to see this happening, go, okay, we're clearly like, trying to do the like change within the system thing doesn't work, even trying to lightly criticize the system in a way that still covers for it, doesn't work. The only option is to leak a shitload of documents to journalists. And on the off chance, we have any listeners, slightly outside Hereford who are waiting to do that, please, it is the only thing that moves the needle on this.

Now, I think there are other elements of this as well, right? Which is just going back to the... Going back to the... This is larger than the management of the institution, right? The cover-up goes even wider, where the SAS was blocking UK visas for Afghan soldiers basically because they were like, well, you saw us do this. So if you come here, you may tell someone. Yeah, because there was this breakdown where these Afghan Special Forces units refused to go out with the with the SAS with

the UK special forces because of the war crimes they were committing. And now, now that these sort of like Afghan special forces guys are trying to get visas to come to the UK, that's exactly what's happening is that like the SAS have a veto and they go, well, no, because this guy like saw us commit war crimes. And it's just it's deeply, deeply cynical in a way that's, you know, familiar to anyone who knows anything about British military history. But in a way that I think Johnny Mercer particularly finds like, personally embarrassing and shameful. And so now is put into this strange kind of situation where he's like, well, I'm gonna say that I know that it happened

and that there are witnesses, but not who any of them are, you know? And I think that's a really odd hill to die on, you know? Mason We know Johnny Mercer loves an odd hill to die on. That is like one of the main things about this prick. Mason One, I mean, he was in the British army at the end of the day. But he was on a hill four miles behind the hill that the other people were dying on. So he'd have had to have been pretty unfortunate to die on it. It would have been an odd hill to die on.

Yeah, at the same time, I think we all we also know that like that Britain is especially when it comes to its military, a kind of a country struggling for relevance, eager to get involved in any war and commit any atrocity so that it can be seen as serious. Again, to see, I think, almost the venevity of someone like Mercer who was kind of, who was sort of so dismayed that the story did not line up with the reality. Such that he was willing to basically lie to the House of Commons multiple times. You know, that it would be, that it is just another, I think, lens on this particular, on this country having a kind of, what, what you call it a small dog, short leg syndrome.

Are you suggesting that we could like, meaningfully push Johnny Mercer to the left? We could make him woke on this? We could make Johnny, I think we could do more than that. Not so much that, but that it is, it is quite telling what does and doesn't get discussed as well. And it is, I think, yeah, it's unfortunate as per usual that all of the institutions around it, whether that's the MOD or the press really, are making it once again more about the question of did he lie rather than how come a bunch of, you know, Haraford guys living just outside Haraford have ear necklaces, if you know what I mean?

Yeah, for sure. Anyway, if I look at the old timer, I think that's once again, probably all we have time for today. So I want to thank once again, everyone for listening. Remind you that there is a Patreon for $5 a month. You can subscribe to it. You can get second episodes every week.

You can get Britonologies. You can get left unread. You know the deal. Yeah, you can be to it. You can get second episodes every week. You can get Britonologies, you can get left unread. You know the deal. Mason You can be Johnny Mercer if you subscribe to the $100 tier. Mason You can be Johnny Mercer if you subscribe to the 100. That's right. We will send you a birth certificate. It says Johnny Mercer. Mason You can go to the immersive Johnny Mercer experience where people on the Plymouth Herald comment section insinuate that your wife is a prostitute. The unknown keeps talking about Johnny Mercer's wife,

and so it ends with Johnny Mercer fighting the unknown. Yeah. Well, you're three miles away from the unknown, but you have a map and a radio, and people are radioing you the coordinates of the unknown, and saying things like, splash drop 20, fire for effect.

Also, please buy tickets to my Australian tour. It's soon. Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Newcastle, Canberra, Adelaide, Perth, all of those dates available tickets, buy them, thanks. Alice Springs, sorry. My website, sorry Alice Springs. There my website. Sorry Alice Springs. There is There is a show in Alice Springs, but you can't come

I'm doing my secret racist hour in Alice Springs under a pseudonym Johnny Mercer It's called the Willy Wonka experience. Yeah, that's right. We also are doing a live show live show live show live show 13th of March. Yeah, there might be a special guest who may or may not be the unknown. Yeah, that's right. What's unknown, who the guest might be. That's right, yeah.

Yes, that's right. So do come to that. Yes. Otherwise, we will see you on the bonus episode in a couple short days. Bye, everyone. Bye. Bye. Bye everyone! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye!

Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye!

Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye!

Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye!