Weekly Skews - FREE BONUS Skews - 1/06/24 – Cybertrucked Up

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

In celebration of the New Year, we are posting a FREE bonus episode from the Weekly Skews Patreon.We talk about Elon’s beloved Cybertruck, which very well may be both the ugliest AND most deadly consumer vehicle on the road. Fun! Along the way we touch on the Epstein list and cover some other dumbassery.If you would like more of this type of subscriber-only content, you can sign up for our Patreon by clicking this link: https://www.patreon.com/TraeCrowderSupport the show

what's up patrons all across the skewn universe welcome back we got another bonus edition of weekly skews for you i'm tray that's mark the first time i think that we've been together since like pre holidays i believe because we took a week off and then you had moving kerfuffles on tuesday so yeah it's been a minute we did we did the we did a patron episode last week to make up for christmas and christmas oh yeah you're right i'm an idiot all right well Well, this is the first time anybody's seeing your new wallpaper. I told them on Tuesday that the patrons, that's another bonus they get, is they get, you know, the exclusive first look at the new wallpaper, you know,

because everybody, everybody on the main show waiting with bated breath to see what you're working with there. We got some, you know, I always said you're a fun guy, Mark, so it's a good choice, you know. My wife is making a simply, we also, we've, this is our office slash guest bedroom. We're calling it the mushroom. That's a good, it's our bit right here. So it's working out pretty great. moving sucks by the way don't ever do it I know you're about to do it

our movers were quite clearly not professionals and they fucked everything up they took way too long as why I missed Tuesday's show and they took apart shit that didn't need to take it apart because they got paid by the hour we didn't notice they were doing it and they broke a bunch of shit but like halfway through

and so you can't believe when you ever halfway through getting scammed and you're like this is fucking hilarious this is like they got me I'm sure that has happened and then I probably just continued on through with it and just finished it out and just, you know, let them wrap up the scamming of me because that's sort of how I roll. But just so you all know, it's Saturday, January 6th, happy January 6th, all of y'all out there, by the way, it's the big anniversary. 24, 105 p.m. on the left coast as we sit down to do this.

Yeah, a couple of things I wanted to mention before we get to the show. So the Church of Latter-day Saints got caught funding Hamas. But they were invested It's like some hedge funds and private equity shit They didn't know was funding money The Amos But like the thing here is like American intelligence and Israeli intelligence

Both knew this years ago And never told anybody that these companies were funding Amas And this is another huge intelligence failure And I kind of don't understand why heads don't roll over this shit Like because of course the bad actors The main parties to blame But also the people you pay to protect you when they fail should fucking suffer some consequences, right?

Do they have some kind of like rationale for it where it's like, well, we didn't say anything because we wanted to like keep it a secret and continue tracking the, you know, if we blew it all up, then, you know, this would go away and we'd have to find the next shadow company they were using, but we know where this one's at, you know, the devil you know type of thing. I'm not saying that's legitimate. I'm just wondering if that's there. Right.

We've got to protect our sources and methods and keep them in place so we can do stuff like prevent October 7? Right. Yeah, which they also didn't do. Yeah. Right. Exactly. So like, but like, like, like, you used to have accountability for this shit. Like Lincoln fired a bunch of generals for not being aggressive enough for losing battles in Civil War. Stalin, you know, would have general shot for fucking up, like, I told him to kill themselves just for not winning a battle decisive enough.

And then here we are. We have a bunch of people fucking up. And it's just like, well, I guess we've got to leave in charge because accountability is bad. The, another, this story is incredibly madding. middle school teacher in Georgia was arrested for terrorist threats because he had an Israeli flag hanging in his classroom, right? And a student says she was offended by it because Israelis are killing Palestinians, which is whether or not you think it's justified is just an objectively true fact that Israel is killing Palestinians.

And the teacher told her that her observation was anti-Semitic and threatened to drag her to the parking lot and cut her fucking head off. Yeah. A middle schooler. Right. A seventh grader. The story is like kind of funny right up until you get to the actual quote where, you know, he literally literally was talking about decapitating and slitting the throat

of one of his seventh grade students. You're like, well, I mean, you know, that's obviously not cool. You can't have that. But Warner Robbins, Georgia is like a military town. There's a huge DOD presence in Warner Robbins. I can't remember which branch it is. But it's like a because, you know, I worked in contracting with the DOE. A lot of people came up there from Warner Robbins.

We did business with them and shit. So that's why I'm aware of that. But I'm not totally surprised that there's like some hardcore Israel support in Warner Robbins. But taking the form of a seventh grade teacher, you know, threatening to kill one of his students because, you know, because she, it's also, this is obvious. But like, she was like, why have a problem with that? Because Israelis are like killing people. And he's like, you shut up, you little bitch, I'll fucking kill you. You know, don't you imply that Israelis are killing people?

I'm Israeli. You keep saying that. I'm going to take you out of the parking lot and fucking kill you right now. Yeah. Yeah. Where you get off implying that we kill people, you know, you had relatives in Israel. Not that were victims on October 7th or anything, but just they had relatives living in Israel. And I get why.

I mean, look, seventh graders are allowed to be stupid, even if you think she's stupid. Like, that's part of the deal with being a seventh grader. And, like, even if, like, you disagree with her, this is a teachable moment about how, like, Times of world strife. It drives us apart, but, you know, we're all Americans. And, like, it's like, I don't, no one is, no one's giving each other grace right now at all, not, like, not, like, you don't have kids. You're a neutral observer. When do you think kids should be, like, somewhat engaged or informed?

Because this might, you know, I've got a sixth grader. He's halfway through sixth grade, not quite a seventh grader. And then a fifth grader, his brother, and they don't, like, they don't know shit about politics or what's going on in the world. And that's by design on my part. I know they're getting older now, but I was always like, you know, whenever younger, I was like,

I'm not, this shit don't hit. I don't like being consumed by this stuff all the time. You know what I mean? Like they're kids. They don't need to, what's it, you know, what are they going to do about it anyway?

I'm just not going to worry them with it. But at what point do you reach a place where it's like, well, now they should be somewhat aware of, you know, the world they live in and stuff. Like, you know,

what do you think about that? Like, when do you cross that line? The thing with the kids here, it's like they get a big they absorb the world through TikTok right right and you this is inescapable on TikTok but because like there's a bunch of viral videos about like like calling what his girls doing Gaza genocide and there's also like the Israeli soldiers are making gleeful TikToks about fucked up shit they're doing right so they're seeing like if I was the idea of

I would first of all ban all my soldiers from social media just for like security reasons for no other you know what I mean like you think Like, it's just, it seems like that would be a problem with security protocols and stuff. But it's like, it's weird that both sides are trying to radicalize kids against Israel. It's like a very, it's a very weird phenomenon happening right now. And so if you're getting that information, if like, you're saying like, okay, well, the news is CNN's telling you Israel's the good guys. But you're seeing like people sell, do, they're doing gender reveals by blowing up Palestinian houses. Like civilian house.

It's like, what? You know, it's like, it's very. are you're disconcerting, and I don't understand anything that's happening right now, and I don't know if anyone else does either. Well, the other thing, just since I brought it in the context, I brought it up, just so everybody knows my sons do not yet have cell phones or any kind of social media apps on the, you know, tablets that they do have. So they're not yet.

They love YouTube, but they love watching, like, German guys play Minecraft and talk silly and shit on YouTube. That's all. They haven't found. I live in fear of them finding, like, Andrew Tate's and all that shit one day. But obviously, I'm not going to just, like, let that slide. I'm going to engage with that when it happens. But we're still not there yet in my house so far.

Yeah. I mean, you're still smart. A fun data point here is, like, wealthy tech executives who have nannies and shit, don't let their kids have screen time. So people that work at YouTube don't let their kids look at YouTube. Right. Tells you something. But anyway, all right, we're going to get into this little bonus episode here.

Producer Matt is with us behind the same. pulling the strings, doing the things. I'm not going to worry y'all with the items of business. That's part of what you give from being patrons. You know what I have to say anyway. Come see me do stand up all that shit. But today we're going to be our main story today is Elon's new latest passion project. The cyber truck, which I guess it's got some cyber qualities.

It doesn't seem to be much of a truck. That was my original takeaway from it. I was like, that's not a truck, I don't think. Anyway, they're out now. The reviews are in. A lot of people are talking about it. We're going to talk about it too. and spoiler alert, it largely don't hit,

but we'll get to that a little later first. It should not be allowed on the road as the main takeaway, but yeah, go ahead. But first we begin with our daily dumbass, Matt, graphic, please. Today's DD, Christo-Fascist for not realizing they could just skip ahead

and declare themselves demigods. Watch this newest Trump video posted by him on True Social. And on June 14th, 1946, God looked down on his plan paradise and said, I need a caretaker, so God gave us Trump. God said, I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, fix this country, work all day, fight the Marxist, eat supper, then go to the Oval Office and stay past midnight at a meeting of the heads of state. So God made Trump.

I need somebody with arms, strong enough to rustle the deep state, and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild, somebody to ruffle the feathers. Okay, you want to add, Mark, do you recognize this? No. Okay, so the comic in me is like making me feel obligated to also point out, as insane and everything as this is, and we can talk more about that. This also is stolen, or it's a direct rip-off or whatever.

Like, this isn't original. This is absolutely, you can look it up, you'll see immediately. there was a it was like i don't know what paul harvey made this thing i don't know the context in which he made it it got turned into an ag campaign but it's called god made a farmer it's like a it's like a pro farm psa campaign or something like protect america's farms but like and it's it's literally exactly this like even most some of the words are exactly like get up before dawn and all that like they just changed it from farm it's like get up for dawn feed 800 head of cat instead of that it's go to this meeting you know what i mean like they literally just changed

things from farmer stuff to president stuff and changed it from God made a farmer to God made Trump. So I just also wanted to point that out. They're not even original in their, you know, terrifying ideal logging or whatever they're doing. I don't understand like we talk about this being a cult of personality a lot, but some of the things in there are objectively untrue that we all know. Like he did not work like these people followed his tweets close than anybody. He was live tweeting TV shows all day. Like the idea he worked all day and night. is ridiculous. And I don't know where they got the thing he birthed his own grandchild. He famously bragged about never having changed a diaper and shit. So I don't fucking know where that comes

from. But like, for those of you who didn't grow up evangelical and the, you know, the dominionist sort of environment like I did. A lot of the language in this is just straightly comparing Trump to Jesus. Not just saying he was chosen by God. But like he, it contains many messianic descriptions of Trump as like a man who cares for the flock, a shepherd to mankind, and won't leave or forsake them. That's like how the Bible talked about Jesus. In Psalms, David describes God as a shepherd he provides for the flock. The video also flashed images of himself next to Lena Hava in New York Civil Court while describing Trump is facing a den of vipers. Jesus described those who questions his teaching as a brood of

vipers. Like, he's just straight up calling himself Jesus. Right. And I, like, there's something, there's a, somebody coined this term as Ariana Grande theory, but, It's like the elections are decided by people who are as familiar with Trump and Biden as I am with Ariana Grande. Oh, God. And it's like, that's like, so it's like, holy shit, the people need to undersee this shit, but I don't know if they're going to see it and understand and get a whole view of his creepiness. But I did, what's wild about that to me, like that as soon as you said that, that was impactful for, because I get exactly what that means immediately. And I was like, oh, shit, that ain't good. but like I don't I don't engage with Ariana Grande stuff do you know what I mean like I don't like those people that are the equivalent but for politics like you know why are they voting and having political opinions and shit if they're not you know what I mean if that's as little as they know about it but I guess I don't know they don't know how little they actually know and what they do know they feel strongly about even though it's just a tiny little fraction of I mean Trump's one of them know yeah right Trump is a low information voter that's I can get away with.

with all this shit. But anyway if God did choose Trump also like he lost how can God let his guy look? Anyway, whatever. Right. My point is I just want to say that God chose poorly. I want to hear his Trump yesterday talking about Nikki Haley. All right.

Come on, Matt. You can do it. He's got it. We believe in him. Here it comes. Been in the pocket of the open. Nikki Haley has been in the pocket of the open. open borders, establishment donors, our entire career. And she's a globalist, you know, she likes the globe. I like America first.

The people in the shoe life. She's a globalist. She likes the globe. Nikki Haley has been. You know, like, how colonialists like colons. Right. So she, uh, Nikki Haley was the governor of South Carolina. To the extent she's interacted on the international stage at all, it's because

Trump appointed her ambassador to the United Nations. Right. Like, it's like, what the fuck? It's like, how is Nikki Haley a globalist? But like, you might as well double down and call her a Jew, I guess. But she's not Jewish. She's a Christian, South Asian. It doesn't matter.

So, like, Nikki, Nikki, I wanted to talk about Nikki Haley for a second. She really went through it last week. She had a town hall where she was asked what the cause of the Civil War was. And she did a rambling, like, answer that didn't mention slavery. Yeah. And then the guy at the fucking town hall is like, you didn't say slavery. And then they just accused that guy of being a Democrat plant. but a Democrat plant doesn't make you fucking answers stupidly.

So she's been trying to explain her way out of this hole for like... I kind of can't... I'm kind of surprised this is a hole that she's in. Do you know what I mean? Like, I couldn't be less surprised that when asked that question, she, you know, skirted mentioning slavery because, you know, I'm from the fucking south. There's plenty of people, you know, I thought that maybe we're getting better about that, but it's been a thing for a very long time.

It's kind of chapter one shit acting like it wasn't about slavery. So, and she's a governor of South Carolina and all that. I just, that don't surprise me. The only thing that kind of does surprise me is that this did turn into like a scandal for her that she had to respond to because I just didn't think that anybody over there cared. And I know that like Fox News picked it up and they went after her for it. And it's like, well, you know, maybe they just don't like Nikki Haley because, you know, whatever, going after her, held Trump or whatever it is. I don't know. I just found it odd that she like caught heat for doing it.

Of course, I think it's an asinine thing to do. I'm just saying, I didn't think it mattered on her side of the fence at all. So that kind of surprised me. Yeah. It happened in New Hampshire. And her, New Hampshire's her one shot. New Hampshire Republicans are known to be of the sainer variety. Right.

Like whenever there's an insurgent sane candidate, like say McCain versus Bush in 2001, I think of McCain won New Hampshire. So it's like, Nikki Haley has a shot to grabbing some momentum towards the beginning of the primary calendar. It's New Hampshire. So, like, it's just like, yeah, so she had a town that at CNN Town Hall last night where she got offered a chance to redeem herself. And she said, I basically, I didn't say slavery because it's so obvious. I grew up in South Carolina where we're steeped in this stuff. And of course, I knew it was slavery.

I was trying to give a deeper answer, which she, her answer was kind of the opposite of that. It was like, it was about federal government saving people's freedom. That sounds like a lost cause analogy bullshit. Right. state's rights. But she also said she's growing up, I had black friends. Oh, there is. It's like, not now. Yeah.

40 years ago, I had black friends. So therefore, I can't be racist. That is funny. That part of the implication there, it's like, don't worry. They're not around anymore. So you can feel safe voting for me. But I also can't be racist because I did used to have some. So, yeah, just, yeah, trying to play all the hits there.

Oh, another fun story about her. She said this in an interview. Her husband's name is like William Michael Haley. I guess. And when she met him, he went by Bill. But after they'd be dated for a little bit, she goes,

you don't look like a bill to me. What's your middle name? He goes, Michael. He goes, Michael. And she basically changed his name to Michael. I was like,

Jesus Christ, what fucking lunatics these people are, man. Yeah, that's pretty wild. Our first honorable mention for Daily Dumbass is Hamas for not simply catching a ride

on Epstein's plane instead. This is Alan Dershowitzuant saying some wild shit here in a minute whenever Matt gets it pulled up. Here we go. What I do want to make is that I understand all the feminist groups and the radicals and think this is the worst thing in the world that anybody ever had any contact with Jeffrey Epstein. Where are all those radical feminists when it comes to the Hamas rapes of young Jewish girls,

sexual abuse, beheadings? They are quiet. They are silent. The incredible hypocrisy of the Me Too movement. Me too, except if you're a Jew. Okay. So how dare you care about mileage rapes when you haven't said anything about Hamas' elish rapes? Yeah.

It's one of the wilder cases of, you know, what aboutism that I've heard in a minute, this one here. Right. It's just like, you know, like the obvious answer for anybody isn't like, well, you know, I don't like those rapes either. you know, just generally take an anti-rape stance as it, you know, as it pertains to the entire world. Both your rapes and Hamasas rapes and all those, you know, people can think that they're, that they're all bad. And also, it's like if you, who, when press, well, I don't know, we ain't got to get into all that. But yeah, it's just a wild ass thing to say. Yeah.

And so what he's responding to here, it's a lot of the Epstein documents that started rolling out related to Virginia Jeffreys, I think he's a guy's your last name, a lawsuit. against, I think, the Epstein estate in Ghislane Maxwell. So in the documents, it's not as revelatory as people, like, expected, but, like, Donald Trump's from the flight logs. Among the people accused of actual sex crimes is Alan Dershowitz. This woman named Jane Doe No, 3, said Epstein forced her to have sex with Dershowitz in numerous occasions. That's home in Florida on private planes.

I also said that Dershowitz was an eyewitness to sex abuse of all. loving other young girls. I just want to say, like, Virginia Jufre, like, this poor fucking woman, man, like, she had already been sex trafficked once before, before she met Jeffrey Epstein. She was a kid who was hired as an underage model, but this guy who used this, basically he was running an escort service with underage girls. He got raided and arrested, and she was getting her life back together. She got a job working as a, like, a spa girl at Mar-a-Lago.

And that's where she was recruited by Gleine M. Maxwell and to Jeffrey Epstein's network, allegedly I'll say it. Okay. So, but how the fuck is, like, why are the pro-Trump people making the most noise about this? That's what I was about to ask you, even before you got to her being at Mara Lago when she was recruited or whatever. Like, I was going to ask you if I had been missing something because, like you said, the people that are making the most noise about this that I've seen on Twitter and stuff. And of course, Twitter has become, you know, it's shifted, you know, in a macro sense to the right also. But most of the people I've seen on Twitter talking about this Epstein shit is like MAGA people.

pro-Trump people talking about Bill Clinton all this stuff as though anybody's really going to bad hardcore for Bill Clinton on the left anyway that's not really happening but it's mostly them and I'm and I'm over here like well Trump's on it too right and they either don't mention it or I've seen people outright say Trump had nothing to do with it or I've seen a lot of them say like Trump was cleared see Trump was clear Bill Clinton wasn't clear and so like is there any do you know what that's about when they say are they just like making a thing up and just ignoring the fact, you know, just like rationalizing why his name is on there

just to say what they want to say? Or is there actually something they're referencing about Trump in this list that they've come out or whatever? The hardcore Q-in-on people think that Trump was going under cover to tick down. There you go. Right. But like, as far as the majority of Republicans,

there was somewhat reality-based, like, I don't know. Right. It doesn't be getting sort of fucking sense, but like, like, so Trump was Epstein's friend. He was recorded in interviews saying that Epstein's, Epstein likes girls, especially on the young side. He said that out loud in an interview.

It was Bill Barr, who worked for Epstein's law firm. His dad introduced Epstein to high society was Trump's attorney general. Alex Acosta was a U.S. attorney who let fucking Epstein escape, pretty much get off Scott Free or a slap on the wrist for sex trafficking, like having sexual underage girls in Florida. And he got appointed to Trump's late. labor secretary. And it's like, I haven't like, we were texting about this other day. I'm having

trouble processing what people, like the news, I understand why, because they can't say hypotheticals, right? But all we have are hypotheticals here. There's so much smoke. And people seem to think the sex was the point. And I just can't wrap my head around that. Because if you think the sex was the point, you was just like, I'm going to let, I'm going to have all these girls for people to have sex with. You just see him as sort of like a benevolent pimp. Right. Like, right. Right.

Are there benevolent free pimps? I'm not aware of. Right. You're saying that like he did all that to like peddle influence and shit, right? And manipulate these people or get things that he wanted or influence the type of change that he want, that type of thing. He was like, it's like like a, like a, you know, like an oil company or Coke brothers or something, like line in the pockets of someone that they want to use as a puppet. He was doing that with like young girl's sex parties and shit for the. perverts of the elite or right something like that but let's let's remove the names and talk

hypothetically here for a second okay let's say there's a guy he exists he has a paper trail but he's like a blue collar guy with no college degree all right somebody gets him a job teaching in a private school where bill bar's father worked okay all of a sudden he has access to billions of dollars that really can't explain how he got governments look the other way while he's sex trafficking women, UK, here, wherever he went. He's introduced to high society. He's mimicking all these A-Less connections, inviting people to places that can't be surveilled to talk and make plans. And then when he does get caught, like a sheriff in Palm Beach goes off script and arrests him.

The federal government in the form of U.S. attorney, Alex Acosta, swoops in, steals the case, and gives him a light sentence. you'd be like well this is obviously also by the way his business partner life partner or whatever whatever you want to call Galane her dad was a double agent for Mossad and MI5 who mysteriously ended up dead drowned off the side of his boat buck naked and you look at all this

you'd be like this is quite obviously some sort of spy shit right like it's like well the okay he's like shady origins because that was when he first became a public figure and all this came out and no regular person had heard of him before that.

You're like, who is this guy? You look at him. It's like, well, how did he get all this money to do all this shit in the first place anyway? And it being kind of nebulous and weird.

That's like, that's the why. That part, yes, all the, the second parts, though, of that,

like could also track if he just, like somebody swooping in and getting him off with a lighter sentence for people coming up for him or covering up for him or like letting him, you know, if he's like, if he's the guy that gets the young girls for the other powerful people that like young girls and he's been that guy, then it's like,

you know, it's like a black male type of situation or whatever, right? Like you would, that's what a lot of people have been saying this whole time, right? Is it like Clinton and the rest of those that they want, they wanted him protected because it would,

you know, negatively affect them. So that's why I got to like just, you know, uh, fly under the radar, keep doing this shit without facing any repercussions for a long time. I'm not saying that's the reality.

I'm saying that's what people say, but you're saying it was like he was, that is all the case. but he was some kind of operative too, like it was more directed or pointed than that or something? The people he know he was helping, what he would do was try to connect rich philanthropists with like charities and universities and stuff, right?

So like you look at what the Clinton Foundation does, like say like supply like malaria nets to Haiti or whatever, pick a country. If you want to destabilize the government, what you want is a malaria outbreak. So if you're like an intelligence service who wants to like invade Haiti, you would convince you would like lobby bill gates and the clinton foundations of send their money elsewhere right and like if you say if you were foreign uh so he donated he ranged for a bunch of

donations to mit and harvard all right if you want if you're foreign intelligence service who wants to get somebody high up at the state department it takes decades right so what you do is try to get them a job in harvard's kennedy school of government to start with i mean i get them get them admit it that's like step one of this shit like people think This is a bugaboo amount I mentioned before, but people think, like, spy shit is Jason Bourne. When spy shit is this. Right.

This is what it looks like. Right. And I, people think it's just blackmail. That's how it got his money. But I'm sure, like, you could have blackmailed your, to some money. But how does blackmail scale as a business? Like, I'm blackmailing you with his sex tape now. I guess you can blackmail you to loop your friends into, but you're going to call up Oprah.

Like, what is it? How is Oprah involved? Right. It's like, yeah, it's all very weird. And I think everyone's being pretty naive. about it. And I know, like, I'm not sure what kind of source we'd need to be a whistleblower to tell us what was actually happening here, but I know it's not just what we're seeing.

And even then, I made, like, I made a joke about how the, why he was breaking all these, like, he had crimes against humanity, all these laws, but he kept meticulous flight records. Like, he was following FAA regulations, which to me is a sign, he never thought he'd be a busted. He thought he had to, you know, get out of jail free card. But somebody, I said that, and somebody was like, well, it's like a dead man switch. Yeah, right. but this is only coming out because of Virginia Dufreys lawsuit,

and it's like three years after he died. Yeah. So, this is a very ineffective dead man. It's also just a card to play, though, isn't it? If you're him. I mean, I get the idea.

It's like, it's obviously it's bad. It's like the line from the wire. You're taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy, right? And he did that meticulously the whole time. Sure. But it also, I can see how,

again, it would be like a card he has in his back pocket. If any of these other people, I don't know. If the heat does get turned up or anybody turns on. or whatever it is. It's like a thing he can threaten to do to get people in line and shit. I don't know.

I mean, I can't have to think about this whole thing in like movie terms. I don't know how any of this shit actually works. You know what I mean? But, um, right. Yeah, I don't know,

man. We'll probably never know. Um, and it's also like the, all the going back to the Trump stuff, people think that Epstein was murdered, but ignore the fact that Trump was president when he was murdered in federal custody,

if that's the case. Like, people kill themselves in federal prison all the time. It's miserable. Right. Well, that, and also my hot take on that from the very beginning was always that everybody was freaking out. It became a meme on the internet, but, you know, at the end of a totally unrelated post or whatever, somebody would be like, oh, also, Epstein didn't kill himself. Hashtack Epstein didn't kill. Everybody was just prepared at Epstein didn't kill himself.

And from the very beginning, I was like, well, to me, it's kind of irrelevant, really. And it might sound crazy, but I don't think it. Like, the fact that it happened at all, like even if he did do it, he shouldn't have been able to do it. Do you know what I mean? Like, he should have in the position. he was in. He should have been under suicide watch and whatnot. So even if it really doesn't matter whether he did it or someone else did it to him, it shouldn't have happened, period, you know. Yeah. People got too hung up on the, oh, he didn't really kill the thing when that wasn't

really the point of it to me. But the cameras were broken. The guards only said they made the rounds and didn't actually check on him. It's like, oh, you're telling me that something government run is underfunded and that also the fellow employees goofed off and took a napist that doing their jobs yeah okay that's not that's not evidence of a conspiracy but what do I know all right open to be proven wrong well let's switch gears no pun intended can you switch gears in a cyber truck is it all just computer shit they even have I don't know how these

things work but anyway let's talk about the cyber truck you control it you you need to use an iPad to unlock the glove box yeah I don't get that hits for anybody that type of thing also like I know that a lot of these new cars and stuff they got the I've been in a Tesla, now they've got a big ass screen and other cars or companies are copying that. They don't have knobs for anything anymore. Like, that seems like explicit, overtly more dangerous to me. You know what I'm going to be? Oh, we'll get to that.

We'll get to that. I've always thought that was kind of weird. Anyway, go ahead. So I've been thinking a lot about regulations. My wife's opening that, you know, or fitness studio. That's one of the reasons we moved. And to be closer to it. And getting permits is a fucking nightmare.

All right. it's kind of ridiculous. Like our contractor recommended she hire something called a permit expediter which is not something I was ever familiar with. Of course,

inserting middleman is something it doesn't need it as a classic American scam. It's pretty much what health insurance is. But like she's just a fitness studio. It's a square room for people to move around in.

She's not opening up a nuclear power plant or something. But apparently if you get the permits in the wrong order, it'll completely fuck your shit up. And the, so you need a permit expediter to make sure.

But like there should already a permanent expediter who works for the city because the city should want businesses open in it. Right. You'd think so. You know, what you're talking about right now, I heard Arnold Schwarzenegger on WTF recently go on a massive tirade about this exact thing you're talking about. Now, he was saying, like, you know, because he was like, he's a Republican, but not like a crazy ass one or whatever.

And he was going on. And he was talking about how that's the real problem with infrastructure. I don't remember exact context of it, but he was like, Mark Merrin was making some kind of like, you know, more liberal argument for, you know, we can't get funding for the things we need and wasted on other things instead. And Arnold went into this whole thing about like, he just starts talking about permits. And at first it's like, what the fuck? And then he like goes into it further and elaborates on how in California, how the permit system works and how difficult it is.

And it's an impediment to growth and all this stuff. It happens. And I was like, well, shit, I have a goddamn. I don't know any of that. But that's like, you know, it's like big government. Mark, fucking everything up for everybody, bureaucracy, red tape. Right. This is what I was thinking about is like the level of, this is the level of government most Americans interact with. And you can forgive them for thinking that we live in some big government health. We sort of do for regular people who doesn't have any sort of rules or rich people. They live in a libertarian, like a libertarian, like free market, whatever. And I was thinking about all this. Like, here's a quote I found in one of the stories about the cyber truck. Things are legal by default in America and illegal by default in Europe. That's a quote from Elon.

That is true for Elon. It's not true for my wife. Right. Right. And to Schwarzenegger's point, like, it costs like 50 times as much to build a mile of subway here. Because, like, I told me inserting middlemen, you've got to hire McKinsey to do a thousand page environmental impact report. They get paid millions of dollars to come back and tell you can't do it. Right.

And it's like, what's the environmental impact of not building a subway? Because we're all drowning in fucking carbon. Right. So like, anyway. So, um, I was thinking about like, like some things just shouldn't be allowed that are and like there should be regulation in places. The study came out and said that hospitals owned by private equity

have 25% increased in post-surgery infections. Like private equity should not be allowed to own hospitals. Somebody's going to do something about it. Right. But nobody's going to do anything. Right. No, they want it to go the other way, you know, the right now.

They want private equity to own everything. All the hospitals, all the schools, all the prisons, all these things that they have no business operating. You know, police forces eventually, I'm sure, just, you know, turn those into. Right. Merck groups instead. That'd be fun for everybody with, you know, kill bots and shit, I'm sure.

Yeah. You got to subscribe to the fire department. Right. Exactly. But this may be thinking like the panic over the Panera lemonade. I'll make this make sense in a second. Yeah. I read a piece that made an interesting point that the panic around the Panera lemonade,

which if you guys am going to cut up, Panera rolled out a caffeinated lemonade. They put the caffeine amounts in two small print under us. People were drinking essentially four monster energy drinks a day and didn't know they were getting any caffeine. Absolutely insane to me. Like a lemonade from a white bread ass place like Panera like gives you five. Well, people get free refra. Well, the amount of caffeine in one large less than a venti, less than a venti star. But they put it on the fountain by the other drinks and so you could just get as many. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So people that go to go to Panera to work for the free Wi-Fi are getting refills or getting. Well, okay. I didn't realize I had forgotten that.

Now I'm kind of back on this. I mean, I get why maybe they ought not do that. But, like, you know it has caffeine in it at all. It's any kind of energy drink adjacent type of thing. If you're getting three refills and then having a heart attack and complaining about it, I don't know. It's kind of on you to me. Well, so when I was home in October, my mom was taking us the airport. We stopped at Panera and she got a lemonade. And I had read the label was like, my mom's 70.

She isn't the best I say, right? And the words, the caffeinated was like in like size seven. Oh, it's not like, it's not like large lemonade. It's not like marketed that way. Oh, well, now and back. on the other side. What the fuck are they doing? See, this, this confusion is part of the problem. Right. Like, yes, if you

drink one, it's like not that bad for you. But, like, they've already had two lawsuits filed and probably people got to lose the lawsuits because but all Panera had to do is make the label bigger. I'm not sure where they were trying to smuggle it into people, but I took it away from my mom because I was like, this is caffeinated. She goes, oh, I didn't see that. I'm like, okay, but like, you can't.

Fuck. But, like, I read a piece making the point that the panic is really about, like, having an effectual government is, is regulating this shit because we just know, we can't trust the government to not let a company poisonous, so we get mad at Panera. But Panera is not the bad guy here. It's a regulatory state that allows gas station dick pills and supercharged lemonade that aren't clearly labeled at Panera, right?

There's tons of this shit that like nobody's watching. Like I read recently that like Uber's pricing algorithm doesn't just like the search pricing isn't just for high volume areas. Like it knows your battery usage and your battery's low ejects up the price because you getting home with more. Yeah, exactly. that's that is that's devious right there i didn't know that either right yeah i mean smart shitty but smart like it's like you said if your battery's about to die and you're out somewhere you need to

get home you're gonna like i don't care i don't care what i don't care what the fucking price is come now i need this now yeah and maybe that's fair but nobody knows it's happening it's not transparent because nobody makes them reveal how they set their fucking prices right right so another example of this i saw is pretty hilarious this headline let me read amazon has a donkey meat problem. So this woman bought herbal supplements, it was labeled 100% pure natural earth, but she read the label and had something called gelatina negra. She Googled it and she found out it was made from like donkey skin, like melted down

donkey skin to make this kind of gelatin. And there's nothing, there's no regulation that says you cancel herbal supplements that actually have donkey meat in them. There's no rule. Okay. Right. Right. Okay.

If you're like a vegan or something, you don't want. any kind of animal products and what you just said is definitely fucked up. You can be like, you know, tricked into eating donkey pills without knowing it. That is, then that's fucked up. So, yeah, it should be on there. Because I was going to say, like, if it was me, I wouldn't, I was just thinking about this and talking about with Corey too recently about how like, it's kind of arbitrary. Maybe me and you talked about before, too. It's really kind of arbitrary about the animals that people, we did talk about this.

It's arbitrary about that the people freak out about eating certain animals and not other ones. And it's all really kind of arbitrary and shit when you look at it. So it's like, and also gelatin, all of it is, it's fucking animal bones and hooves and shit anyway. So like a donkey version of that, I wouldn't, I wouldn't blink an eye at it. But I do, it isn't, it isn't cool to sneak it into somebody's like multivitamin without, without telling them, you know, because other people might care. Again, it's like, I don't have any problem eating donkey me, pardon me personally, but this lady didn't want any donkey. Right. Labels that 100% pure natural herbs.

Yes. That's very different. It's straight up fraud. You're being lied to you. It's not even about the thing and the thing. It's about like, can you trust labels or not? And so I was thinking about the contrast between my wife has to get approval from like 40 people to move a toilet four feet from the city of Woodland Hills, California. But all these companies can just put whatever they want, whatever labels and roll it out.

And then I was reading up on the Cyber Truck and thinking about all this about how for Elon, everything's technically by default. legal in America. But let's start by looking at it. Look at this fucking shit. I don't know who would want this anyway. It looks like a early gen like polygonal PlayStation render or something. Like PS1 games and stuff where everything was like like Laura Kraft and Tomb Raider, her boobs were triangles, like pointed triangles because they didn't, you know,

the technology wasn't like advanced enough to make rounded, you know, things. It looks like it's from that era, but it's supposed to be like state of the art. find that to be an odd choice personally also and i really cannot stress this enough i do not understand how that is supposed to be a goddamn truck that is not how because that back part it's not open right or maybe it can open or something but it's not like yeah not looking at like an el camino type situation here that's enclosed it has a it has a i think it can i think it can't open and look more like a truck but like it doesn't fucking matter it's stupid it looks like what it reminded me of is like rosy from the jetson's feet now she was the robot made she got a

around on wheels. But apparently Tesla's whole design team tried to propose a bunch of alternate designs. Elon was the one guy who's assisted doing it looking like this. And Tesla's a public company. They should have fired them a long fucking time ago. This is a disaster. Nobody's going to want this motherfucker outside of these calls. I'm sure. I mean, yeah, the way

his paper, I'm sure they're lining up around the block to get it. If there's enough of them. But like, oh, they're super exciting. I don't know if you've seen the videos of people shooting the truck with machine guns. The panels are bulletproof, I guess, which is a problem for impact. Pashing pack. We'll get to that in a minute. But like, uh, I don't understand the point of having

bulletproof panels when you have windows, but whatever. Wait, the windows are not bulletproof. Only the panels are. I, how bulletproof glass would not be economical. I know, but this thing, this thing isn't meant to be economical. Is it? I'm not saying they are, I'm just saying I thought this was some exercise. I don't know. I'm talking out my ass. Well, I am too. But in a video as I've seen a people shooting it, they all they don't shoot the windows. Okay. Well, then, which is my, imply that they're not bullet version, which yes, that is stupid. But they're, they're super excited.

He's Chud fanboys. Check out them. Here's them kicking the truck to show indestructible it is. Come on joining, guys. Like, they're so excited about it. They got gas lit. But Ezla's promise, Elon's promise, called him Ezla because of Tesla, Elon's promise that this thing will have a boat modifications package.

And someone made a digital rendering of what that would look like. And it went viral. So it made it with AI. It went viral because people thought it was real. But I want you to see what this thing would, when this thing is a boat, the one out of ten times it doesn't sink. This is what it's going to look like if you got this boat mods video. It's funny because I used to, I don't even remember the context of it. I used to have a line that was something about while Matt's pulling this.

up. I was acting out like a dumbass redneck who just says random. It made sense in the context of the bit. This was years ago. I can't remember it. But like the punchline, the stupid rednecky thing I used to yell was drive that truck like it's a boat, boy. And that's what this made me think of. I hadn't thought that in yours. Yeah, we're actually there, Mark. Welcome to the future. You can do that now. Yeah, it's apparently designed as arrived disaster scenarios, but you got to plug it into charge. So I'm not sure. So you got a truck for the Apocalypse, you just need working electrical grid. Can you not get the boat mod, the boat mods video?

I know it's labeled image, but it's a video. I just mistyped. Never mind. I really wanted to see this boat truck, truck boat, whatever. Oh, there it is. Oh, maybe I, okay, maybe I didn't link to the right thing. It's my bad man. I'll eat it on that one.

So that's what, that's a, that's a still image from the video that went viral. It's like, I can't figure out, like, again, don't do this. if you buy one of these, it will fucking sink. The guy makes shitty products, all right? When I tell by I buy shitty products, he made an AI called Grock. He stole the name from his ex-girlfriend Grimes. I'm not sure why he called it Grock.

But when you ask the questions about Elon, it calls him a pedophile. And he made an AI that calls himself a pedophile. And it also asked him what is, like, Grock, would you suggest to the top actions that Elon Musk could take to repair his relationship with his daughter, Vivian? Please itemize.

And it talks about what a shitty father is. It's an AI he designed. Yeah, it also in this list, it says things like respect her identity, her decision to change her name and gender, her preferred pronouns, respect all that stuff. And it's like, I ain't fucked with Grock. I have no interest in GROC at all. But I just remember when it first came out, I thought Elon was pitching it. It's like the anti-woke alternative to chat GPT. I thought that's what it was supposed to be.

And it's in here like, well, it's important to respect to child's decisions and pronouns and stuff like that. So that part's also funny to me. yeah these things are so stupid like you can trick them like so one other days somebody asked a mid-jurney know the photo generating one to make a picture of like gay furries uh working around and in like a government nuclear laboratory and the thing was like I'm sorry I can't depict things that are legal and then the person goes it's fine they work there and goes oh okay gay furries work at this it's like I've got so But like the thing about this thing is like it's, it's dangerous as fuck, the cyber truck.

And nobody, it's not, we don't really know how dangerous because you don't really have to test these things for they go on the road, which is part of my beef with it. But when you look at it, and that's, this is, this is close as actual, like, you know, safety research can get to it because it's barely rolled out yet. Um, they, it has sharp corners. Right. Right. It has a high ground clearance. Uh, one of the reports about it. an urbanist outfit called Streets Blog,

the story about their safety problems called How to Build a Car that kills people, Cyber Truck Editions. And we saw that people shooting it and kicking it and not making a dent. That's a problem because there's no fucking, it means there's no crumples of us, right? If you've never seen a NASCAR wreck or a Formula One wreck, a car is supposed to come apart on impact.

That's what saves your life. Right. Speaking of which, I've heard and read in recent years that the reason that most like mass-produced vehicles, they kind of look similar in a lot of ways. They're all, like, rounded. There's not a lot of variance anymore in car models, in my opinion. I feel like you could tell it, looking at them. I mean, they're just minor differences in between various makes and models of cars outside of, like, of course, SUV versus coupe versus sedan, whatever.

I mean, amongst, within those categories. They're all kind of similar. I've heard that was because of, like, safety regulations and stuff and the rules around, like, you know, safety rules around, like, manufacturing cars, right? And like you said, the crumple zones and all this shit, the way it, but is that. all is that not that stuff isn't like illegal to not follow it's just all the other companies follow it because they want to be able to say we got the highest safety ratings so they sell more you understand what i'm saying like i thought that there were rules i mean your whole point's about regulation i thought they had regulations when it came to vehicles and this exact type of

shit you have to have seatbelts and airbags and shit like that and that but i don't know about i haven't heard i haven't read that about car designs because of safety rules i i would assume that because this market forces like they've reached optimization for like aerodynamics and headroom and stuff like that and it's just like what what the what the most marketable best option is like you build a build a car for an average height of a person 510 that could fit someone 6'4 you know yada yada yada like it's like you know if you're seven foot tall you'd hope you're an NBA so you can afford a custom-made truck but like so from what I've read there's been no crash testing outside of Tesla unless they did it themselves and the researchers I read interview

said, like, they wouldn't judge it based upon the videos. It's not a fair way to judge it, but it doesn't look great, the crash test ratings. But we know it's dangerous to pedestrians because what you got to do is look at it. The sharp edges was a bulletproofed kickproof exterior due to a kid's head. The insurance institute insurance is due for highway safety, release new research. Written by the way it says the vehicles will hire and more vertical front ends are significantly more likely to kill pedestrians. But he went, a vertical front end is like a Ford F350. Right.

This is like a blade. right so you have a car that has 18 inches of ground clearance it still can't climb up a hill by the way

you're talking about not being a truck it gets stuck on hills so it's also silence you run silent because it's

electric and Elon's pushed back the government's tried to make it so electric vehicles have to make some sort of

sounds you can hear coming because he's pushed back inside he wants it perfectly

silent and also soundproof so with 18 inches ground clearance is going to run over

a kid who won't hear you coming who you can hear screaming under the car right um it's also 6800 pounds which is pretty dangerously heavy but not the heaviest

like a homer electrical vehicles heavier uh but the 6800 pounds is the weight of two honda accords um it goes super fast to like the high in cyberbee's version will go from zero to 16 2.6 seconds that's pickup comparable to formula one race car nothing needs to go that fast i i know it's cool I like going fast too I'm not going to lie but like it's like if the government would only make a car to go to zero to 60 and five seconds that's fine with me right

but the antisocial part of this is part of the selling point which is not weird SUVs do this shit all the time too this way they make them look meaner meter meter but Elon's openly promising this as if you ever have an argument with another car you will win right right you're saying like if you get in a wreck you'll live and the other person will die

right yes which I can see how that's an effective marketing tactic with his demographic. You know what I mean? There seem to be, you know, pretty selfish and lacking in empathy as a general rule. Right. And I'm just like we're like this weird place where like we're in like a arms race with other drivers. It's like somebody's got to step in and do something. But again, we don't have a government. But by the way, sitting in traffic sort of radicalize me on this shit. It's something I didn't know to like cover car accidents when I was a reporter

is fatality accidents take way longer for the cops to clean up because you have to do a bunch investigating for a fatal accident or potential fatality. So, like, when you don't wear your seatbelt or your airbag doesn't go off or you drive recklessly and you die, it doesn't just affect you. It makes 100,000 other people late for wherever they're fucking going. And if you want to kill yourself, I don't want you to do it, but it doesn't really impact me. But if you do it on public highway by being an asshole and an idiot.

Well, that's true of any kind of asshole-y driving. Do you know what I mean? Like, that's the whole problem with that type of thing. It's like, I don't, whatever, you got places to go on people to see or whatever else, but, like, you're endangering, you know, my children who are in the car with me and all these other people and their families and shit, too, by driving like an asshole. So, yeah, but, you know, people don't, most people don't give a fuck. And unless you're on, like, a 10 hour drive, going 10 miles an hour doesn't save it in this time anyway. I know.

But people do. People, like, you know, they'll, like, swerve around you to cut in front of you, even though you're both, like, sitting in traffic or whatever. And it's like, oh, thank God, you made up that 15 feet. or whatever, while we're now both still sitting here for the next hour or so. Like that type of shit, dude, yeah, I mean, traffic is enraging. I feel like, I feel like we need to do a day of math class before kids turn 16. We calculate the difference in time between doing 70 for 10 miles and 55 for 10 miles and show them that you're not actually getting there any faster.

You're just not. So, like, you don't need to do it unless you're going to do it anyway because it's fun. But, but so like, I talked before about. You got to use a touchscreen to open the glove box. The signal lights are also touchscreen. So this is what that looks like in practice. Here's a video of someone trying to swirl away across a four-lane highway to the left with the right turn signal on because they press the wrong button.

Yeah. Like, that's so fucking stupid. First of many, I'm sure, videos like that, buddy. We've solved the turn signal button. I push it up to the left where I want to see the left. I'll push it down to the right one. It's like you don't need to be meddling with this. But like, but here's how you can just put them on the road.

These cars are self-certified. This is the one coming back to, all right? Even if federal regulators wanted to slow down the rollout or to stop it, there's nothing they can do legally. The way it's tested is you put it on the road and after it kills people, then you figure out why, then you can recall it for those reasons. Right. it's like it's like so we're all in this beta test that I didn't sign up for I don't have a cyber truck I don't want one but if one hits me and kills me I'll become a federal data point and it's safety rate you know and this such drives me saying they're like okay let me read here automakers are free to design and sell whatever they like as long as they certify with label each card here is to the encyclopedia federal motor vehicle safety standards but like again they're testing themselves and nothing in this code like I mentioned before references pedestrian safety safety or maximum

acceleration. You can't a car that goes as fast as a rocket ship that we know we'll kill kids and there's nothing in the law they can do to stop it. Elon said on a podcast that the cyber truck had passed all the regulatory tests, which is a straight-up lie because there are no fucking tests. Yeah, in Europe, by the way, you pre-certify before you roll it out. So that's what's Elon complaining about. Things are by default legal in America and by default illegal in Europe. Because in Europe, you have to test your death machine before you put it on a fucking highway. I don't know what pedestrians

never factored in this shit. We'll skip this section of magazine. We're running behind. By the way, pedestrian fatalities are surging in America. 7,500 people were killed last year from being hit by cars the most since 1981.

The only thing is strange about cars since then is they've gotten bigger. So making cars safer for people inside, more dangerous to people outside. And the people that won't let their kids go out at night or whatever, it's not pedophiles need to worry about.

It's cars. Right. I just want to say that. That's what you should be afraid of. Parents should be radicalized to get this ship, but they're not. And if you want to know who the main bad guy is here, because there are only like four or five bad guy families in America when you get to the bottom of it.

The light truck safety standard was invented when AMC wanted to start selling Jeeps. And the head of American Motors Company at AMC at that point was George Romney, Mitt Romney's dad. So there you go. Always. It's all connected. George Carlin says just one big club and you ain't in it. Always goes that way.

the thing that truly frightes me about this is not just that we can't recall until after it kills people but that Tesla's gotten so good at escaping accountability even after it kills people we might not know. There was this devastating report

from borders last year where Tesla's gotten good at blaming its drivers for shit involved in its poor design. Like there were a bunch of anecdotes in here from people. This guy had driven his Tesla

115 miles and he tried to turn into his neighborhood left and his fucking wheel fell off. and the guys like if we're doing 70 miles an hour me and my whole family would be dead and Tesla told him it was because he'd abused the car he'd got 115 miles

he's like a family man he doesn't fucking ruin in the car anyway they made him pay to fix it it cost him $14,000 Jesus Christ they suppressed a bunch of customer service complaints about bad design they did stuff that nobody going back to the Uber thing with price surging

they rigged an algorithm to inflate its cars It's in dash range estimate. So it just adds 40% to how far you can go. So you run out of fucking electricity where the thing you'll tell us your batteries that's plenty in it. Another guy at front wheel fall off at 60 miles an hour.

Here's a fun customer complaint. It's just a, just filed with the Federal Trade Commission. It tried to kill me. This woman named Jamie Mitchell describing a sudden power steering outage in his Tesla Model Y. This last guy, he was driving his wife's 2018 Model 3 in August.

when he rolled over his speed bump and lost power sneering. The Tesla service manager told him that a power steering connector had corroded. The manager said the likely he could cause was a car wash, which he described as a known problem. He had to pay $4,400 to replace the steering rack and wiring harness. Quote, this is the only car I've ever heard of where a car wash can damage the wiring. Cars generally should be made to withstand the rigors of a car wash, you would think.

If a car wash can take out your car, you're in a pretty shitty situation, vehicle-wise. What the manager told him, this is all-time infuriating, right? This is like tech-brough mentality to the fucking nth degree. All I can tell you,

the Tesla manager says, we're not a hundred-year-old company like GM and Ford. We haven't worked out all the bugs yet. Okay, going back to the signal line, this turn signals, power steering is a problem we have solved a long time ago.

Just hire some car engineers, away from Ford and General Motors instead of hiring tech like computer science dropouts from Stanford to work for your fucking car making company. This is not shit that need to be reinvented. We have SUVs. We have trucks.

You don't need a square one with sharp edges that kills kids where you need like the nuclear launch codes to get the tailgate down. It's also fucking stupid. And I wish we had a government that would regulate Elon and not my wife. Yep. But you know, by just saying how it works, you know, that's sort of the whole thing in this country is it's the people who need the policing the most

get at the least at all levels of society. I don't know if I need wealth for the money, but it'd be nice to be above the law. It really would be pretty sweet. All right, well, thank you all for supporting the show and checking out this here bonus episode. We appreciate it. We'll be back on Skew's Day, and we'll see you then.

Love you, bye.