The 404 Media Podcast (Premium Feed)

Joseph: 00:08

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the four zero four media paid subscribers comment show. Let's call it that. Why not? We haven't done one of these in a little while. We've been super, super busy, but definitely wants to get one out before the end of the year.

Joseph: 00:25

This is where, of course, as we say in every podcast episode, we respond to your best comments, and now we're actually doing that. Sam very kindly pulled a bunch of comments from the articles because, of course, she does the weekly newsletter, so gets to see them as well through that. There's there's a lot to go through, so maybe let's start first. Maybe Jason for this first one because it's about the zine. What do we think?

Jason: 00:53

Yeah. This is from Eddie Torres. They say, hell, yeah. I've been waiting for print zines from four zero four Media. I'm proud to preorder physical media from independent journalists that I can hold in my hand.

Jason: 01:04

Feels so much more meaningfully human. I'll be eager to buy it from here or any worker owned independent journalism outlet. Well, Juan, thank you. We're recording this two days after this zine was announced, and I don't know. It was very hard to know how many zines to print in the first place because anytime you do something new, it's, like, very hard to know if anyone is going to want it and how many people are gonna want it.

Jason: 01:33

And you don't wanna print, like, way too many and then just have, like, tons of extra copies of a zine laying around. We did them back at motherboard. We did three zines. And I think we printed, like, a thousand copies of each one. And there was something like 800 people who got them and that we sent the zines out to.

Jason: 01:59

And then I have carried those zines around for, like, several years in my car, and then I mailed them all to Emmanuel. Do you still have them?

Emanuel: 02:10

I have. While you're talking, I'm gonna see if I can I can find them? They might be in this room.

Jason: 02:15

Yeah. I mean, I have I have I saved, like, a couple copies of each of them, but, like, it is annoying to have, like, a whole bunch left over. And so it was hard to know. I mean, this is very exciting. I I don't wanna speak for everyone, but, like, I think that the response has been such that, hopefully, we'll try to do it again at some point.

Jason: 02:38

I actually called a newspaper printing press yesterday to ask how much it would cost to print a newspaper. Just very curious. Very curious. Haven't got back to me yet. But oh, wow.

Jason: 02:49

Look at that. If you're on YouTube, Emmanuel's holding up, like, hundreds of well, that's probably not even that many. It's probably, like, 50, but they're, like, Pokemon card packs. You're muted though, Emmanuel.

Joseph: 03:02

They look good. Yeah.

Emanuel: 03:03

I was just saying they're probably 50 each. Yeah. The lack of each issue, we did three.

Jason: 03:07

Yeah. But, yeah, I don't know. It's it's I thought I think it's fun. I hope people like it. I think that one one thing I don't like about it is I usually write really long.

Jason: 03:18

Like, I write too too many words often. And in a zine, you really have to especially the the size that we're doing them, it's like there's not that many words per page. And that was I found that to be very difficult, but I don't know what

Emanuel: 03:32

to do. Yeah.

Jason: 03:33

We had

Joseph: 03:34

we had to turn had to, like, trim a lot of the articles which were on the website, and then we adapted them to literally fit Office hit onto a page. And then I thought an interesting thing, which I like, is that you edited one of my cutdowns, Jason, and, of course, my habit, which is fine for the website, is you have immigration and customs enforcement, bracket, ICE, close bracket. And I'm doing that, all of these acronyms for all these different agencies. And we're like, we can just have it more casual for the zine. And I think that's right.

Joseph: 04:06

Like, the reporting is still exactly the same, but just the tone is more friendly, free flowing.

Jason: 04:13

That's can't have links. That's

Joseph: 04:15

Right.

Jason: 04:16

That's critical thing you can't do. But, yeah, I'm I'm glad that people like it or at least are excited about it.

Emanuel: 04:25

For sure.

Jason: 04:26

I'm actually immediately after we record this, I'm gonna go to the Zine printer. So

Joseph: 04:31

Oh, yeah. Excited. Talking about people being excited for stuff, we recently did our survey, which we've put off for a long, long, long, long, long time because well, there's a couple of reasons. We wanna do it in a way that's respectful to the readers, asking them questions that value their time, where they're filling stuff out that's important and valuable to us. And as we said in the article, of course, you can go read it if you missed it, but the two main reasons are we don't really have any insight to our readers because we use ghosts, this doesn't really collect any data.

Joseph: 05:10

And also just frankly for the advertising side of the business, which again is a relatively tiny part of the business, but to improve it, we wanna know a little bit more about our readers, you know, like the the industries they're in, the sectors or whatever. And, of course, also, just want to have a better idea of what coverage people like and that sort of thing. But I don't want to obviously talk about the results or anything because we're still going through them, and we have somebody who's helping us with that, but I would say that the response was overwhelming. I think it was insane that so many people took the one to three minutes to fill that out, and it was a lot of people, and it was a lot more than I expected. I'm really, really grateful for that.

Joseph: 05:57

Sam, since you put this in, I think there was maybe something specific you wanted to talk about. Like or there there's some Really?

Emanuel: 06:05

Answer. Right?

Sam: 06:05

Yeah. I mean, I think just in general, I'm not a survey taker. I don't know. It's like, I don't, like, voluntarily, unless there's some kind of, like, deal or giveaway attached. Even then, it's like, don't really take other people's or other outlets' surveys or other company surveys.

Sam: 06:25

So I was kind of like, maybe we'll get, like, a little bit of response to this from our, like, diehards, and that'll be it, and that'll be fine. And so many of you took it that we were like, holy shit. Like, people really want to help us just, like, truly just, like, with no other strings attached or no other motivation other than just, like, helping us make this little website and podcast better, which is really nice. And, yeah, I mean, we got a lot of, like, feedback because one of the questions was, why do you subscribe? Like, what are your reasons for subscribing?

Sam: 07:01

I think it's one of the questions. But the the responses to that were really nice because most people kinda listed out what they what they like about us, which is always nice to hear. But Chloe Wright wrote a really nice comment on the post about the survey. And some people agreed with Chloe, but they just said that they liked the chill vibes on the pod and in the newsletters, and they were fans of nerdy behind the scenes stuff, slap graded digressions, and complaints about the meta PR department, which is a whole genre unto itself at this point with our reporting. But, yeah, I don't know.

Sam: 07:49

It's it's just nice to kinda see that people wanna support us even when there's not, like, any other, like, ex like, extrinsic motivation to do so is really, really chill other than, like, continuing to support a cool website that they enjoy.

Emanuel: 08:06

So Just because you mentioned PR, can, like, we briefly digress on Andy Stone? Cause that came up yesterday.

Sam: 08:13

Yeah. Please. This is that's one of reasons people subscribe. Let's talk about that.

Emanuel: 08:17

Yeah. I wrote this story about how Instagram is, now we know, using AI to generate SEO headlines for people's individual posts on Instagram, and in some cases, people were really upset because they kind of misrepresented their brand or their content or their individual posts. And it was very obvious that it was happening and something that would have made it really easy to report the story and I think would have made it really a better experience for Instagram's billions of users is if Meta just like answered a simple question, like, which is what is happening here?

Joseph: 08:58

Because they didn't give you a statement.

Emanuel: 08:59

Yeah. Initially, didn't. So it's like, sent them an email, no response. I sent them another email, no response. I called someone on the PR team who has always been very nice, you know what I mean?

Emanuel: 09:12

Like, sometimes we're in conflict because that's the nature of the job, but he gave me his number, he was like, hey, if you're ever having trouble, like, call me. So I took him up on it, called him, he was like, I'm on it. But at that point, I've waited like a couple of days, so I just published a story and I believe the order of events was, like, I published a story and then Andy Stone, who before he was Metacombs, he was what, Obama admin? What was he? He he was some

Joseph: 09:40

sort from Mesa.

Emanuel: 09:41

Yeah. He was some sort of big fish, I think.

Jason: 09:43

I thought he was born inside Meta HQ, but it looks like he was the house majority leader, I believe probably for the Democrats.

Emanuel: 09:54

Right. What? Yeah. He he comes from politics. Like, I remember him going there was sort of like a like a get for for Meta.

Emanuel: 10:03

He I'm gonna interrupt.

Jason: 10:05

I'm sorry. This headline, he is he's been sentenced to six years of prison in Russia. Yeah. Oh, yeah. For his crimes against Russia for, like, for, quote, publicly defending terrorism.

Jason: 10:19

So he's been subject to, like, a kangaroo court in Oh, in that Russia, in absence. Yeah. Yeah.

Emanuel: 10:25

Lock him up, I say. Don't don't don't arrest But Andy it's, like, he's head of comms or something. He's, like, pretty high up, like, the Comms infrastructure at Meta, which is obviously one of the biggest, most influential companies in the world, and his MO is like, we reach out for Comet, this is other publications as well, like, people reach out for Comet, we get no Comet, we publish the story, and then he goes on social media and complains about it like a baby. And that used to happen on Twitter, and obviously, I haven't been on Twitter, but he popped up because he's on Blue Sky now. And I was like, oh, yeah, I remember this guy, I remember this dynamic, and he was whining about the story.

Emanuel: 11:02

And then after we published, Meta sent an actual on background statement, they were like, yeah, you're right. We're using AI to do this. Our bad. But we'll come clean about that now. Anyway the interesting thing

Jason: 11:16

is, Young has 200 followers on Blue Sky, and so it's like no one interacted with it, like, at all, which is kind of interesting.

Emanuel: 11:23

I think we all had the same reaction. We were like, I'm gonna beef, and then you look at what's going on. Like, you know what? But

Sam: 11:28

I think he just started the account, like, maybe twenty four hours ago to beef with a different story. He's gone on to,

Emanuel: 11:35

like,

Sam: 11:36

keep being bitchy to, like, several other people on Blue Sky, like, other journalists. Like, he's trying to beef with, like, Jep Horowitz right now. It's just like Stupid. What are you doing? What are you doing?

Emanuel: 11:50

I'm sure it comes all the way from the top, right, and I think there's been some reporting on it that it's like, at some point, Zuckerberg was like, fuck it. We have to change our PR strategy and we're going after people, But to see that, like, Andy Stone, like, this is how he operates and he's like the boss of all these people in PR that we're interacting with, I just like feel bad for them. I feel sorry that they have to report to this guy. It's like, it's got to be very unpleasant. Anyway.

Jason: 12:16

So on the survey though, we we need to spend some time going through it. You know, we got so many, answers, which again is really awesome. But one thing that I think is really good to see is that, like, the the results were kind of all over the place. Like, they were kind of split in terms of, like, some of the questions said, how do you read four zero four media? Do you read it on the website?

Jason: 12:38

Do you read it on on the newsletter? Like, do you listen to the podcast? Do you follow us on socials? And, of course, we, like, sent this out via our newsletter, so that's kind of the the people who probably saw it. But a lot of people were

Joseph: 12:54

like the site. We did both.

Jason: 12:55

Yeah. I see what you mean.

Joseph: 12:58

This skewed slightly.

Jason: 12:59

Yeah. It skewed slightly, but some people were like, yeah. I, like, really like the daily email format that you're doing where it's just one article. Whereas other people were like, no. Please make it a roundup of other things.

Jason: 13:11

And then some people were like, I always listen to the podcast or I only listen to podcast. And then a lot of people are like, I never listen to podcast. And so that is good for us because it's like it means that people are consuming our work in different ways. But it also is it's good to know this, but but a lot of people like, some of the feedback that we've gotten for our interview podcast, at least judging on YouTube and things like that, some people are like, it's too meandering. Like, the I don't really understand what's going on here.

Joseph: 13:47

I read the YouTube comments.

Jason: 13:48

Well, I know, but it's just like the thing that you what I'm saying is the thing that you might hate, other people like. And so therefore, I guess that's good for us. But, also, it's like, if you think that we're super annoying on the podcast, other people like it. And if you really like it, like We provide other people are, like, you're super annoying. So, yeah, find us on the platform where you find us the least annoying and consume it there.

Jason: 14:16

That's what I'm saying.

Joseph: 14:18

Yeah. There there was I I I don't usually do this, but it's only because you brought it up. I'm gonna do it, and I'm gonna move on to the next one. But we got, like, I think, a one star podcast review because it was like, they need an editor. Like, they need to, like they they need they put so much effort into the article, so why don't they put the same effort into the podcast?

Joseph: 14:37

It's like, you fundamentally misunderstand the format. The format is a chatty full length podcast. It is not a brain rot TikTok ultra edited flashing strobe light of content, and some people just digest it in other ways. Yeah. I think when you get that survey, it's like, oh my god.

Joseph: 14:57

So people do it in all these different ways. Is that particularly helpful? It definitely, definitely is, and it's not like they're all equal, but I agree with you, Jason, that, oh, it shows we actually are being effective with the podcast. We actually are being effective with the articles and the newsletter, and people are commune and and socials, and people are getting this everywhere. You know?

Joseph: 15:16

And I really appreciate that.

Jason: 15:17

It's just like we can't make everyone happy, but we're trying.

Sam: 15:23

Yep. I'm not trying to make everyone happy.

Joseph: 15:28

Let's go. There's this, like, correction that I was gonna do a couple of episodes ago then honestly forgot. Emmanuel, do you have the the document in front of you?

Jason: 15:42

Why don't I read it? Because I've I'm the one who fucked up, and then Emmanuel can comment on it. Because Emmanuel wasn't on that one.

Joseph: 15:49

Alright. And and it was a podcast about the Epstein emails, and yeah.

Jason: 15:53

So it's from RK. They say, I was confused by the focus on the word suris, t s u r I s, in one of the Epstein emails when you were talking about how bad the emails were. Totally agree that the emails were generally badly written and that they were talking openly about crimes, but it seemed like there was a suggestion that the word was a type or a badly spelled attempt to say something else. Boomers who don't know how to type. Cirrus is a Yiddish word, and it was appropriately used in the context.

Jason: 16:21

This is something that you could have easily looked up if you weren't familiar with the word. Love your work generally, but this was a bit lazy.

Joseph: 16:28

Emmanuel was not on that podcast, and he would have immediately corrected us.

Sam: 16:33

I think he did the next day. He was like, you guys are dumb.

Emanuel: 16:39

Not dumb.

Sam: 16:40

He didn't say that.

Emanuel: 16:41

He's a nice I was listening to it on the I was listening to it in the car because I'm a I'm a loyal listener to the podcast. And, yeah, I just thought it was funny. But, yeah, I would have caught it if I was on the pod because I I know that word.

Sam: 16:54

What does it mean?

Emanuel: 16:55

Trouble. Think I they were talking about, like, stuff that Trump was going through, and he was like, I thought I had serious. It's like, I thought I had trouble. Right. And they were talking about Trump's trouble.

Emanuel: 17:07

Sure.

Jason: 17:08

Yeah. I I mean, I guess it's like my bad. I'm sorry. Although the these people are criminals. But I think it's a good opportunity to talk a little bit about the podcast because this does happen from time to time where either we misspeak or the conversation goes somewhere that maybe we weren't fully intending on it.

Jason: 17:37

Like, I believe that was something that we brought in at the very last minute, or I I brought up because it was about, I believe it was about Donald Trump, blowing Jeffrey Epstein or, like, it it was, like, I'll blow something else. We hadn't written about it, so I hadn't done a lot of research on it, but I saw people were talking about it. And there are various types of podcasts. There are podcasts that are produced and edited after the fact where, you know, there is, like, a script and maybe there is an interview, but there's, like, a big editing process after the interview where there's, like, narration put in between and things like that. And that is a cool type of podcast.

Jason: 18:19

If I'm being real, I don't like listening to those, like, personally. Personally, I like to listen to feel like I'm, like, hanging out with people. And that's, like, not the type of podcast that we do. And to to the point that, like, we're sort of just talking about, that's a type of podcast that does require, like, more resources and more time. It's like you listen to The Daily, there's, like, 20 people working on it at the end.

Jason: 18:46

We have one editor. She's very good. She doesn't usually do content edits unless we notice that there that there's something wrong. And I think also, it's like, I think she could do content edits, but we've asked her just to, like, do light touch. Like, if we really, like, mess something up and we, like, recognize it either in the time or after.

Jason: 19:09

And the other thing I would say is that podcasting is pretty hard. Not to be not to not to be super forgiving to myself, but I've definitely been on, like, live TV before, live radio before, and you get asked a question that you're not exactly expecting. And you either need to pivot to something that you know really well or you need to, like, say something. And for example, like, an example of this might be someone asking how many flock cameras there are in The United States or something. And it's like, generally know the answer, but I don't know the exact number.

Jason: 19:50

And so when you're talking, it's like, oh, there's eight 80,133. You can say there's like around 80,000. Right. Or I believe I've probably misspoken at some point. Be like, I don't know.

Jason: 20:01

There's like more than 50,000 or something. Like, that's imprecise and that's not great, but I find it hard to memorize every little thing that we're talking about. And so I don't know. I'd never seen the word service before. It was in a typo ridded riddled email, and I assumed that it was a typo.

Jason: 20:20

And, like, that's my bad, but I think that is sort of, like, the types of mistakes that we do make sometimes. We try not to, but that's that's, like, my excuse. That's my cope.

Joseph: 20:31

Yeah. No. I think that's all very, very fair points. It ties back into the format stuff as well. Sam, here is a comment that on one of your articles.

Joseph: 20:42

The headline was half of The US now requires you to upload your ID or scan your face to watch porn, if you wanna read the quote.

Sam: 20:53

The story is the headline, so I'm not gonna sum it up. But someone there was a whole debate going on. Not a debate, but, like, there was a conversation going on in the comments, which sometimes happens, and I love when that happens because Like

Joseph: 21:05

a fight?

Sam: 21:05

No. It wasn't a fight. It was like people just talking back and forth about, like, VPN specifically and how some countries do ban VPNs, and there are ways to get around even that kind of ban. And then, like, just the way that a lot of companies rely on VPNs. It's not just, like, perverts who wanna get around the porn ban.

Sam: 21:23

It's like, you know, it's it's a useful tech tool for a lot of people and a lot of companies. So I just like this comment. It made me laugh. TT writes who t TT, who is a prolific commenter. I'm not going to pretend like I was good enough at IT to say definitively that it would be impossible to ban and block VPNs in America without breaking the tech stack of literally every business, but I think any law that they would pass could only have as much teeth as a legal ban on farting.

Sam: 21:53

I just like that. I love a good metaphor.

Joseph: 21:57

And then the next one, the headline was chat GPT told a violent stalker to embrace the haters indictment says. That was fucking crazy.

Sam: 22:06

Yeah. This guy was, like, indicted for basically, he was he was running a pod like, not a popular podcast, obviously, but, like, he's running a podcast and, like, posting on social media and using it to, like, harass women and was, like, going in real life to meet these women allegedly to, like, try to find a wife, but then also, like, was going to, like, gyms specifically to stalk women and their workplaces. Anyway, real real loser hours. So he was indicted, and that was what the story was about. So, anyway, someone said if I find a lamp Johnny Appleseed said, if I find a lamp with a genius in it, one of my three wishes would be to eliminate all sycophantic AIs.

Sam: 22:48

And then TT once again left a long comment, so you should go read it, but I'll just read part of it because I agree. And I was thinking about this the other day. They said, I think that it's more than sycophantic AI that's the issue. We should not make computer programs that make definitive statements about the human condition to individuals. The problem with people are literally organizing around your name, good or bad, which is the definition of relevance, which is something that tried told this guy isn't that it's sycophantic.

Sam: 23:14

The issue is that it's making statements that take lived experience to make. And then he ends this he says more or TT says more, but then he ends this with or they, I guess. I don't know, TT's gender. I wouldn't take the hardline stance that ATMs shouldn't display a thank you message because one should assume that they are being thanked by the people that maintain and operate the ATM. I was talking about this the other day, and I was like, I don't because I've been thinking a lot lately about, like, what happened and, like, and this is also related to the interview episode I did this week with Dwell at Purdue, and we talked extensively about this.

Sam: 23:44

But just, like, what happened with AI where, like, it seems like conversational AI is causing a shitload of harms and is just, like, out of control and, like, OpenAI doesn't want to control it or doesn't know how to, and then it's the same with a lot of these others. And then there are, like, uses for AI that aren't, like, that harmful comparatively. And I was like, well, I do like, I have for a long time been really irritated with, like, the friendliness of error messages, and I was thinking about when that started. And I guess it started with, like, the personal computer literally, but just, like, anthropomorphizing technology and making everything say, please, thank you. Like, it's just like, that drives me nuts, and I feel like a real curmudgeon about it because it's like it's not there's not actually anything wrong with that specifically, but, like, conversational AI was, like, very clearly a huge mistake and is, like, way out of control at this point as far as, like, the harms that it's doing to people.

Sam: 24:49

So, anyway, I just thought that was interesting to think about just kind of how fast like, where we've come from, you know, like, making cute computers that make kind of, like, adorable beep boop sounds so you don't get mad at them to, like, convince this guy to go stalk woman at the gym.

Joseph: 25:12

Yeah. It's a fair point. Like, you don't need the computer to respond in that way.

Sam: 25:17

Do you speak when spoken to a computer science?

Joseph: 25:20

Right. Right. You don't need it to be all conversational. It's like, please make the spreadsheet with this amount of data

Sam: 25:25

or whatever. I know everything. Like, I opened Adobe, it's Yeah. Just That also

Jason: 25:30

How about they just stop fucking up? No more error messages because they all work perfectly.

Joseph: 25:35

Right. Right. Right. Because Just a weird situation. Finds the problem.

Joseph: 25:38

Yeah.

Sam: 25:39

Yeah. Yeah. It's like I don't expect my computer to thank me. It's because it's not sentient. Right.

Sam: 25:46

So hush.

Joseph: 25:47

Not yet. Anyway, couple of quick ones just on my section. Headline was airlines will shut down program that sold your flight records to the government. An ex wrote, good work. My subscription just renewed.

Joseph: 26:01

It's already paid for itself. Surprising that ARC capitulated. I do have to wonder if they have some super secret alternative in mind. Yeah. I was honestly surprised that the airlines shut down this data broker or rather yeah.

Joseph: 26:16

I think they are shutting down the entire thing, but they're absolutely shutting down the bit that's selling to the government. I was pretty surprised by that. You know, for decades and decades, obviously, we've had the airline industry, TSA, DHS do various pieces of security theater. Now I'm sure this program did provide some sort of benefit. I mean, agencies were giving tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to access it, and having warrantless access to a bunch of airline data is probably gonna be pretty useful.

Joseph: 26:47

But, obviously, yes, they made a decision. They didn't wanna do this anymore, and, yeah, I kinda surprised about it. I've said this before, but you never really know when you can generate impact. You never really know the timeline, like, way back when when when we were at motherboard and we collaborated with a PC focused outlet and we wrote about how a antivirus piece of antivirus software was secretly harvesting browsing data and selling that. They shut down that company the following day, and that's, like, the quickest impact I've ever seen.

Joseph: 27:19

Well, sometimes it takes months and months and months. And related to that, just the other one from me, The headline was, cops used flock to monitor no king's protests around the country. That was information given to us by the Electrolux Lake Frontier Foundation, then I quickly wrote it up. And Abram Jack Sparrow wrote, I'm really glad four zero four has covered flock safety so much. Disappointing lack of coverage from most mainstream news.

Joseph: 27:46

I mean, this always happens. We will bang the drum on something forever, and then I mean, I'm just this isn't them specifically, but the New York Times or someone like that will then come out with, here's the piece. And maybe we get credited, maybe we don't. I feel like people have been okay with that recently. Sometimes you do have to beef.

Joseph: 28:05

I know there there was a good one in NBC, which was from the, I think, Institute of Justice and sort of their lawsuit they have going on. It's for a lot of these mainstream outlets, and I get this because they're they're bigger and they wanna just kinda do one single piece, they almost need, like, a much more narrative hook, which is, hey. Here's this guy, and flock was used to track him specifically, and then they can use that to broaden out. And I get that and feel like we've had a little bit of that, but there's definitely room for it to be covered. And I would also say the same thing about the Mobile Fortify ICE facial recognition app.

Joseph: 28:45

Like, I'm waiting for Washington Post or Wall Street Journal or somebody to do a big piece on that, but that's a pretty common theme.

Jason: 28:54

Yeah. I mean, we've mentioned before, but there's been really good local coverage of flock. Really, really good local media coverage of flock around the country. And not just like, oh, we did the same thing that everyone else did. Like, we did you know, we got the audit reports and we wrote about or the network audit and wrote about our town, although there's been a lot of that.

Jason: 29:16

But there's been a lot of, like, digging a little bit deeper, like, digging into the audit report and then figuring out, like, what happened with a specific case. Like, there was a really good one out of Colorado where a woman was tracked using flock and, like, wrongfully arrested. That that was, like, really, really great reporting. So, I mean, I agree with the commenter and I agree with what you said, Joseph. Like, the national media is pretty far behind on this, but there's been, like, really good local reporting on this.

Joseph: 29:47

Which is probably more important, ultimately, at the at the end of the day. Right? Yep. Emmanuel, you have one here. The headline was OpenAI can't fix Sora's copyright infringement problem because it was built with stolen content.

Joseph: 30:01

Yeah.

Emanuel: 30:03

Sorry. Almost choked on my own spit.

Joseph: 30:06

That's all good. Subscribe subscribers only.

Emanuel: 30:09

Happens often. So Sarah Duda writes, I can't imagine the great slop engine will be able to continue much longer. Even if even if they could survive numerous copyright infringement lawsuits for Sora, I don't see how they can even profit from this video generation. It takes enormous amounts of compute to generate a ten second video, and they're basically lighting money on fire for every video generated. What a miserable waste of resources this all is.

Emanuel: 30:35

I definitely agree that it's hard to comprehend the amount of compute, as they say, that it takes to generate all the slop that we see, all the AI generated porn that we see. I don't know if the argument that the computer is too expensive, therefore, it will eventually lead to the collapse of the entire AI industry really works. I definitely agree that it's astonishing and arguably wasteful. I think that there is a lot of holes to poke in the entire business model and and and sort of like, I don't know, in in the way that the Edsitrons of the world are doing. I also think that and I wonder what you guys think, but it's like any sort of austerity argument for computing, in my opinion, doesn't work.

Emanuel: 31:42

Like, people have tried this with crypto. This is something that Waypoint used to talk about with, like, online games and the compute that that requires. Obviously, people are now doing it with AI, and it's just like all fair arguments, the the cost of the environment is enormous, but it's like people are just like going to do what they want with computers and not think about the server farms that are spinning up in order to make it happen. And I think it's sort of like, if not unfair, then unrealistic to demand that people have that in mind when they're gaming, when they're streaming from Netflix, right? That's another like huge compute cost.

Emanuel: 32:24

I just I just don't I don't think it works, and I would actually rather, like, if there's something good to come out of this AI boom, in my opinion, it's that all the tech companies are starting to actually invest in energy, nuclear, fusion, and so on. Like, I would love it if the AI AI bubble burst, but in the end of it, there's like a bunch of

Jason: 32:49

Fusion is the next bubble, baby. It's five years away. Just

Joseph: 32:52

five years away.

Emanuel: 32:54

Maybe not few I mean, I don't know, whatever

Jason: 32:55

you No. I know. I know. I know.

Emanuel: 32:57

But, like, nuclear or something, you know what I mean? Like, anything but, like, continuing to burn fossil fuels. Right? And it's, like, the AI companies, the Sam Altmans of the world say that they do need renewable energy and alternative energy sources in order to make this work. So it's like, for our collective sake, I hope that

Joseph: 33:14

If we get there,

Emanuel: 33:16

why Yeah. Hope that I hope that happens and I and I just don't think that it's like, wow, this is really wasteful that I'm generating, like, AI porn and and it's costing all this energy. It's like people just, like, don't think about it. They just don't they don't really care about it. And and the AI companies, they'll make it work.

Emanuel: 33:35

Right? It's like, the the the the whatever reason that there is for, like, expanding the infrastructure for AI, they'll make it work and figure out how to monetize it monetize it later. Like, I'm I'm fairly confident in that.

Joseph: 33:52

Yeah.

Jason: 33:52

Yeah. I mean, I I think this is something that I wish we wrote more about and covered more often and understood more about. But I've like I brought it up before, and one of the tricky things is that in order to write about the environmental impacts of AI, you need to understand climate change. You need to understand energy generation, like the energy industry, and you need to understand AI and, like, economics. And there's very few people who are what I would consider to be experts in all of those things.

Jason: 34:25

And I guess I I'll say this, like, gently, but, like, a lot of the people who are experts in some of those things have, like, extremely strong opinions. Either they're, like, AI maximalists or they're, like, extremely anti AI, like like, you know, degrowth, you know, like, no more energy type people. And so figuring out how to, like, explain these figuring out how to, like, holistically cover this is, like, kind of difficult in my opinion. But I think it is pretty undeniable that the current batch of data center center build out that we're seeing right now is, like, a lot of them are powered by fossil fuels. It's like some of them are powered by worse than, like, not just, like, natural gas and even, like, coal.

Jason: 35:20

Some of them are powered by, like, methane, which is, like and, like, generators and stuff, which is really wild and very bad. But I guess, like, if there and I think also that there's, like, a ton of negative externalities that have nothing to do with the environment, but have to do with, like, increasing the energy bills of people who live in, like, poor neighborhoods and things like this because of all the demand, which is something that we saw with crypto and specifically with Bitcoin mining. Like, there were specific Bitcoin mines that were being built in, like, places that had cheap energy, and those places suddenly didn't have cheap energy anymore because the Bitcoin mines were just, like, using tons and tons and tons of it. We did a video about it back at motherboard in this town up in, like, Upstate New York, which is very wild. I went to, like, one

Sam: 36:11

of the

Jason: 36:12

craziest city council meetings I can ever remember. And also the Bitcoin mine there was in a, like, a dollar store that had went out of business. It was really bleak. But, yeah, I think it's like a I think that you are right, Emmanuel, in that that they're not gonna, like, stop building data centers. And so we need to, like, figure out how to build them more, like, in a way that's more equitable, first of all, but also so that they're powered more by renewable energy.

Jason: 36:45

And then that renewable energy needs to be used for, like, other stuff besides just the data centers. It needs to be used to, like, power our homes and, like, charge electric cars or, god forbid, a train. And then I guess the last thing I know I talked for a while, but even if, like, OpenAI goes down, which I don't think that it will, it's just, like, the people who are making a lot of the slop are using random shit. Like, they are jumping from generator to generator to generator, and a lot of them are using, like, an OpenAI API or a mid journey API or something like that. But a lot of people are now running these on their own computers and things like that.

Jason: 37:28

So I don't think it's as simple as if the AI bubble burst, there will be less slop. I think that the situation is such that, like, as long as there's a startup that has some sort of funding and as long as people can run these, like, offline models and things like that, like, we're gonna continue to see this shit because the people making it are making money, whereas the AI companies might be losing money on the generation of it, but they're just hopping from service to service to service.

Joseph: 37:59

Yeah. Speaking of building stuff, Emmanuel, you did a behind the blog about your recent PC woes, and there were a lot of comments. I'm not gonna bring up anyone particular, but, like, what is your general response?

Sam: 38:15

There were a lot of comments that said, this doesn't happen, and it's never happened to anybody in the history of personal computing.

Joseph: 38:22

But what happened exactly? But what do you think happened

Sam: 38:25

to so rude. It's so rude invalidating.

Emanuel: 38:27

The faulty CPU community and, like, denying our lived experience of our

Joseph: 38:31

faulty chemtrails community of the PC world or something?

Emanuel: 38:34

Dude, Google it. There are there are more than dozens of us. There are thousands of us. It's a very known problem. I'm surprised that people are like, it doesn't happen.

Emanuel: 38:43

Somebody said, and I understand why, but they were like, sorry, I'll back up. My CPU is being a very bad boy. It's not working well. I've had it since, like, 2021, I think. It has been a champ that entire time until, like, a couple of months ago, at which point it started to crash randomly.

Emanuel: 39:11

Weirdly, it mostly crashed when I was like away from the computer. It mostly crashes when the computer is idle, which is perhaps a clue for what is happening. But, yeah, this is something that I've I've dealt with before. I had welcome to the rest of the podcast, by the way, like, this is what we're going to talk about. But I've had, like, an Intel I nine before this, and it ran very well for a few years, and then they become basically unstable.

Emanuel: 39:36

It has to do with the amount of voltage that the CPU is drawing, and Intel chips specifically are known to be unstable in this way, and that's why I switched to AMD when I upgraded. And I upgraded because my CPU was like unworkable after like kind of limping along with it for a while. And now the same thing is happening to me with this AMD chip. And again, it's the same problem. There's something about the way that it's drawing energy that is causing it to crash.

Emanuel: 40:09

These AMD chips, basically, the way they're designed to work is they are fluid in the amount of energy that they draw, like you could draw one volt if you're not doing something very intensive and then it will jump up to 1.5 if you're like playing a video game and you're doing something very intensive. And something about the way it's varying on on the voltage when I'm using the computer is causing it to crash, especially when I'm drawing less power, when it's going into like idle mode, which maybe means like that one of the cores is faulty now. And I can make it work mostly like the computer is pretty stable if I go into BIOS and I change it so the amount of energy that it's drawing is frozen. Like I just set it to like, you only draw 1.45 volts, and then I can pretty much use a computer, but that's not good for gaming. Like, I lose all that performance when I'm I'm using that mode.

Emanuel: 41:07

And somebody said that CPUs either work or they don't. There is no, like, slow erosion of of stability, which I think is just, like, not true. And you can Google, like, I don't know, AMD or Intel CPU crashes and you'll see tons of people pulling their hair as I am, which is both like the the joy and the frustration of PC use and PC gaming specifically. You learn a lot about how technology works by trying to solve these problems, but also it's very frustrating even figuring out what the problem is and then fixing it. Enough people have raised the possibility that I need to, like, reapply the thermal paste to my CPU, which maybe convinced me to try it.

Emanuel: 42:03

It seems unlikely because I've been monitoring the temperatures of the CPU and they seem normal. But I don't know. Maybe I'll try it because enough people said it's it's the problem. I tried it last time with the Intel, and it didn't work. Last thing, I talked to

Jason: 42:19

Can someone wake me up in forty

Emanuel: 42:21

five minutes?

Jason: 42:22

No. No.

Emanuel: 42:22

One more thing. One more thing. Vishnu, who is a big fan of 4.4 and was a fan of motherboard as well and works in the CPU space, top secret job, he won't say what it is, but he recommended I buy two. He said

Joseph: 42:44

Two CPUs?

Emanuel: 42:45

Yeah. Like, get a new one but get two, and when one dies, just put the other one in. Because now I'm at the point where it's like, I want to upgrade my CPU, I can't find like, they don't really make the thing that I have, and if I want to get a new one, the technology changed where I need a new motherboard. If you get a new motherboard Right. I might as well get a new whatever.

Emanuel: 43:07

Speaking of, like, the the side effects of AI, like, I should probably get new RAM at this point, because I've had it since '20 Are

Joseph: 43:14

you gonna write about the RAM, or do you think it's been covered enough?

Emanuel: 43:17

I think it's covered enough. I've been looking for an angle, like, maybe, like, some sort of scalping angle, but the RAM situation is so, so wild. The prices have, like, more than tripled now in the past couple of weeks. So that that is not helping me with my my current PC situation. But

Joseph: 43:35

Yeah. They're expensive. Like, $700 for a stick of RAM or a bunch of RAM or whatever.

Emanuel: 43:40

I do appreciate people's comments, and please continue to email me, and we can argue about CPUs and the art of PC maintenance. Oh, they haven't useful.

Sam: 43:48

Gonna be about this particular problem. Every single comment is gonna be this.

Emanuel: 43:52

That's good. That's good.

Joseph: 43:54

That's we want. Engagement.

Sam: 43:55

We should just become PC Magazine?

Emanuel: 44:00

They got it covered. But

Joseph: 44:02

They got it covered. Yeah. They're they're doing alright.

Emanuel: 44:06

They're doing great. Yeah. Yeah. Don't you guys wish you could deal with this? Don't you guys wanna do this kind of stuff?

Sam: 44:11

I'm dreading the day because it is like a domino situation when one thing goes or when you feel the need to upgrade one thing. Right. It's like it all because I did mine in 2021 also. All

Emanuel: 44:23

things considered, it's been like what? It's been like three, four years for the CPU. That's not terrible. Right? It's not that

Sam: 44:31

long, though.

Emanuel: 44:31

I'm sure, like new. Jason bought 14 Macs in that in that time span.

Jason: 44:36

That's not true. No.

Emanuel: 44:37

No? Okay. Should talk about

Jason: 44:39

our Macs, though. We should talk about our laptops, Sam.

Sam: 44:42

Dude, let's talk about it. Let's discuss the Apple MacBook Pro '20 24 edition

Joseph: 44:50

So piece of

Emanuel: 44:54

I bought

Sam: 44:55

Mine was just, like, laughing his ass off, literally.

Jason: 44:58

I think that you bought one first, didn't you? Or did I?

Sam: 45:02

I did because I was using it outside, and you were like, I gotta I gotta get on that because it has the nano texture display.

Jason: 45:08

Which I didn't know because you didn't you didn't mention the nano texture display. So I got one without nano texture display. So, like, I can't I can use it outside, but just, like

Sam: 45:18

I can't use mine outside at all because it gets too hot. It's a black brick. You know? I also have a

Jason: 45:23

black brick. But so I guess I bought mine in January. I bought a MacBook Pro four, m four, and I was like, you know what? I'm gonna buy this. I'm gonna get it.

Jason: 45:37

And I used it for three months, and it it was under ninety days, which is very important because that's how long the warranty was, I believe. And or maybe the war yeah. I think it was under ninety days, but it stopped charging. It just stopped charging. You'd plug it in and nothing would happen.

Jason: 45:55

And so I took it to the Apple Store because I knew it was still under warranty. And they were like, oh, yeah. Like, you sure you're not a fucking idiot? Like, did you try different chargers? Did you try USB C charger?

Jason: 46:07

Did you try MagSafe charger? Like, all this. And I was like, yes. I tried all this stuff. Like, I know that it's not charging.

Jason: 46:14

I know I tried different cables. I tried different outlets. Blah blah blah. And they're like, okay. We'll have it back to you in, like, a few minutes because, like, surely, you're an idiot, and we'll just put another charge on it.

Jason: 46:23

It wasn't charging. Then they were like, okay. We're gonna fix this. And turns out that the whole fucking logic board was fried somehow within three months. So I lost everything on it.

Jason: 46:38

And then I got it back. They would not replace it even though it was new. They would not replace it.

Joseph: 46:44

That's crazy.

Jason: 46:46

They just fixed it. And then I got it back and I was like, okay. Well, they fixed it. And a month later, the same fucking thing happened. Same thing.

Jason: 46:56

And I lost everything again because I was like, surely this won't happen twice. And they had to replace the logic board again. So I'm on my third logic board for a computer that is less than a year old. And the same thing happened to you.

Sam: 47:11

Yeah. That's it was under, I think, also three months of using it. It was starting to say, like, your battery is degraded. It was, like, only charging to, like, 75% or something. And I was like, well, that's fucking annoying.

Sam: 47:25

Like, this is a new computer. What's happening? And then eventually, it just wouldn't turn on one day, which is a really fun problem because, like you said, you bring it in. I brought mine into Micro Center, which is a very upstanding establishment. And they it's the same thing happened where, like, they were like, we can't turn it on.

Sam: 47:42

We can't figure it out, so we're gonna send it away. And I was like, good. Maybe they'll just replace the battery. And then I get an email or a text, and they're like, we have in order to fix this, we have to replace the logic board, and that means we have we have to, like, completely factory reset it. And I was like, I didn't have a chance to say goodbye, so proceed.

Sam: 48:04

Like, is the option to just throw it away? Like, I get well, all my stuff is in there. It's it was gone. And I don't really back up. This is my own bad, but I don't back up things to the cloud that often with Apple because I don't I just don't use, like, the cloud.

Sam: 48:16

I don't use iCloud that much because I'm mainly using my PC, which is a perfect angel. I would not let it hear me say anything bad, but I do use my MacBook for, like, trouble. So, anyway, yeah, it's something very fucked is happening with this particular model where, like, the logic board or the battery or something is, like, really defective. And I'm sure in two years when it does not matter to us at all, they'll say, oh, we're recalling this entire model or something.

Jason: 48:41

Well, if you're a repair person listening to this or if you are, you have one and this happens to you, let us know because this happens with Apple computers sometimes. Like, Apple devices where there's like an engineering flaw in them somehow and it doesn't people don't start learning about them until they're out of warranty because Apple starts handling them, like, the first little bit.

Sam: 49:03

Yeah. Other thing I'll action, say

Jason: 49:05

I think. Is going to the Apple Store is fucking terrible. And you I had to, like just to to even talk to them, you have to make an appointment, and then you have the the appointment is never, like, at the one that you wanna go to or at the time that you wanna go to. And then you show up there and they're like, oh, we're running behind. And then they're like, oh, go sit down.

Jason: 49:28

Wait a long time. They're trying they're they're hoping that you'll, like, buy more stuff while you're just sitting in their store. It's extremely annoying. Then you have to make, like, an appoint it's so stupid. It's stupid.

Sam: 49:39

You gotta go to Micro Center.

Jason: 49:40

Well, they got mad. They the reason they wouldn't replace it was because I bought mine at Best Buy, and they're like, you shouldn't have bought it at Best Buy. And I was like

Joseph: 49:48

oh, yeah. Because that definitely impacts the quality. It's the same fucking machine.

Sam: 49:52

It's bullshit, but I don't shop at Best Buy for that reason. I've had that happen before where they just it's something about it's like shopping at hotels.com or something. It's like the Yeah. They they the same We

Jason: 50:00

can't we we didn't sell you the computer. It's like, okay.

Sam: 50:03

Yeah. Well, it's got your

Joseph: 50:06

Yeah.

Sam: 50:06

Fucking logo on it. You made it in Cupertino.

Joseph: 50:11

Jason, while you're angry, just keep it going. And the headline is Not angry. Oh, okay.

Sam: 50:16

He's laughing, actually.

Joseph: 50:19

Yeah. Okay. AI generated sort of videos of ice raids are wildly viral on Facebook, and you have a comment from JA.

Jason: 50:27

JA writes. Since I was born, the world population has nearly doubled and billions of people were introduced to the Internet. More people use the Internet today than the total population when I was born. That's a cool fact. In a revenue model that rewards money by the click, scraping the bottom of the barrel and slop baiting is becoming a lucrative system.

Jason: 50:46

It also requires minimal effort to get started. There is no greater reward for high brow content and no penalty that makes sense for low brow content. Banovation is child's play if it ever come to that. YouTube shorts are taking this place of long form content, and I fear that seeing what sticks with AI is going to take over all feed based apps before long. I put the blame in the owners of the systems.

Jason: 51:09

Social platforms could better police this, but they don't properly invest in improving a swap stopping system. I agree with that. You're correct. I think I'll take this, like, slightly different way, which is this, like, Netflix buying WB situation slash Paramount buying WB, like, the the whole, like, drama around that, which is something that I would like to write about. Probably won't get around to it.

Jason: 51:39

But the Netflixification of streaming and right now, like, Netflix is gonna make some sort of argument in an antitrust court that or, like, in in its antitrust efforts to get this deal approved that it's not a streaming monopoly because YouTube exists, and it's, like, competing with YouTube And to

Joseph: 52:04

talk and that sort of thing.

Jason: 52:05

Exactly. And that's the same argument that Facebook made in its antitrust case saying, like, oh, well, we're competing with TikTok. And we have seen like like, YouTube is used by more people than Netflix is used by. And YouTube is used by more people than Netflix and HBO combined. I think I heard on the town, our favorite podcast, Joseph.

Emanuel: 52:32

Hell, yeah.

Jason: 52:33

But I think that it's like the everyone's competing for the same attention and same eyeballs and same everything. And it's like we've seen the algorithmification of everything. And, of course, there's still really high quality things being made and they're you know, the like, that is hopefully gonna continue to be the case. But I think that if you're just, like, turning on the TV or just, like, wandering into a random media consumption situation, you you are soon gonna be more likely to encounter, like, shitty slop than the best stuff. And it's gonna we're gonna need, like, human curation again, hopefully.

Jason: 53:15

I don't know. I agree with the comment. Good comment. Very bleak.

Joseph: 53:20

Here's a here's another one for you. The headline was Elon Musk could, quote, drink piss better than any human in history, end quote. Grock says, this article did pretty well. A lot of people read, and I think a lot of people subscribed because of it. What's the comment?

Jason: 53:39

T t wrote, I've been toying with some writing about how all the AI stuff reminds me of this episode of Rocco's Modern Life where Rocco's neighbor, mister Big Head, keeps getting promoted up the corporate ladder by relying on a magic meatball, like a magic eight ball, but a good cartoon gag. Mister Big Head becomes totally reliant on the magic meatball, becomes mentally unhinged, begins to anthropomorphize it, and ultimately ask it to marry him. A very similar story to many AI adopters. What happened here? The weird kid in school figured out how to crack open the magic eight ball and scribble facts about their dick on the dice and put the thing back together and then pedal it as epistemological epistemological.

Joseph: 54:17

Hell yeah. Epistemologically mentioned.

Jason: 54:20

That's all this is, and I can't believe that it still merits discussion. Shout out Rocco's Modern Life. The favorite Rocco. TV show of our former boss, Derek Mead, back at Vice. Big Rocco fan.

Joseph: 54:36

Oh, yeah.

Jason: 54:37

I like Rocco's Modern Life as well, and I do remember this episode, and it's really funny. Good comment as well. I do I do think it's funny. It's just like we're throwing shit at the wall and we're failing up. This also reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where George Costanza does the opposite of his intuition at every point, and his life gets a lot better.

Joseph: 55:03

I always get Rocco's Modern Life and Red and Stimpy mixed up.

Jason: 55:09

Rocko's Modern Life is better in my opinion.

Emanuel: 55:12

Best Nick Toons. Let's go. Best Nick Toons.

Jason: 55:14

Yeah. So, I mean, I think I was too young for Ren and Stimpy.

Joseph: 55:18

Same. Like Yeah.

Jason: 55:19

Ren and Stimpy was, like, too gross for me Exactly. As, like, a six year old. Whereas Scary. Scary. And Rocco, I think I was, like I think it, like, catered it was very adult humor still, but it wasn't as gross.

Jason: 55:34

Mhmm.

Joseph: 55:35

Right. Like the gross. Hated the gross as a kid. Yeah.

Sam: 55:38

It was the thinking man's Nick tune.

Emanuel: 55:41

Completely agree.

Sam: 55:42

Also, cat dog.

Emanuel: 55:43

Mean, cat dog was after my time.

Sam: 55:46

Damn. I love cat dog.

Jason: 55:47

I my

Joseph: 55:47

time never ended. So I just I

Sam: 55:50

was allowed to watch Barnaby Sampi until my parents watched it with me one day, and they were like, no more of this. What do you watch? This is demonic. Was like, yes. It's probably gonna be me night nightmares later.

Emanuel: 56:02

Shout out to that one character from Real Monsters who holds his eyeballs.

Jason: 56:06

Oh, Ah Monsters. Yeah. Yeah. They should sue Disney for or Monsters Inc. Versus Ah Real Monsters.

Jason: 56:13

No?

Emanuel: 56:14

Similar concept.

Jason: 56:15

Yeah. Similar concept. So I watched tons and tons of Rugrats and Doug. Yep. How long do you think Doug was on the air?

Emanuel: 56:24

Oh god. Probably not that long. Probably, like, a year or two.

Jason: 56:30

Five. It it was, like, one year. In my mind, I was like What did it came back on ABC, but, I believe it was on ABC. But Doug, in my mind, I was like, wow. There was, like, tons of seasons of Doug, but it was on for, like, one year, I believe, on Nickelodeon, which is like the canonical Doug, I think.

Jason: 56:49

I don't think that the

Sam: 56:52

The ABC Doug doesn't count.

Jason: 56:54

Yeah. Let's see. Was it like a gritty Oh, it was it was four seasons, but, like, they did their seasons very quickly then. Yeah. They did an ABC reboot.

Jason: 57:06

Nice. And they I believe there was a different Doug voice. Anyways, I watched a lot of Doug and Rugrats, and then I remember when SpongeBob and CatDog were announced. Like, as a child, I recall this. And I remember thinking, like, he's a sponge and it's square and no one's gonna watch this fucking show.

Joseph: 57:26

It's so stupid.

Jason: 57:28

But I did but I it's I'm like, this is for babies. But then I watched it, and I I did like it. And, of course, like, SpongeBob is

Sam: 57:35

Is it so going?

Jason: 57:37

Dude, the movie a new movie is Yeah. Coming out very

Sam: 57:40

And that's on Broadway or whatever.

Jason: 57:43

There I think the new movie is coming out, like, this week. This is SpawnCon from the

Joseph: 57:49

This podcast is brought to you by the SpongeBob.

Jason: 57:51

Yeah. It's coming out oh, it already came out October 26.

Sam: 57:57

Wow.

Joseph: 57:59

This this podcast is brought to you by a two months old movie.

Jason: 58:02

Yeah. Please go see. Actually did oh, wait. No. It comes out on Christmas.

Joseph: 58:06

Hell, you

Sam: 58:07

know what?

Joseph: 58:07

We know what we're doing.

Jason: 58:08

On Christmas. Yeah. I don't know.

Joseph: 58:14

Good comment.

Jason: 58:14

Shout out, Nickelodeon.

Joseph: 58:17

Just just do good comment.

Sam: 58:19

We have one more. We're so close. We're so close.

Joseph: 58:21

We do. The headline of this one well, yeah, the headline is one of the greatest Wall Street investors of all time announces retirement. And then you got a comment here from Brad Frank, Jason.

Jason: 58:36

Yes. So this one was from Brad Frank. This reads like satire. It's not four zero four's usual style, so I'm a bit confused. But the entire time, I'm screaming internally that this only seems possible with the kind of insider knowledge you get working in high levels of government.

Jason: 58:51

This was, like, a really mean article that I wrote about Nancy Pelosi and her her stock trading.

Sam: 58:58

It's not satire.

Jason: 58:59

It's not satire. We don't do satire to my knowledge. I can't think of any instance in which we've done satire. It was, like, very tongue in cheek and rude, and I wrote it as though it were like a sports figure retiring.

Joseph: 59:14

Which people picked up on as well.

Jason: 59:17

Yeah.

Joseph: 59:17

Yeah.

Jason: 59:18

I mean, I think that Nancy Pelosi is fair game. She definitely did a lot of good stuff that I did not mention in the article because that wasn't the point of the article, but she also became wildly wealthy through her stock trading. And so I think it's fair.

Joseph: 59:35

Which people why widely believe that she had access to some sort of inside information or the people investing on her behalf did. Right?

Jason: 59:44

I mean, she did she did have access to like, as in she had that's it's I'm not saying that she made trades on this. I'm not saying that. But it's like She said be careful. She had she had access to, you know, like, confidential meetings. They call in tech, like, leaders all the time to grill them and stuff.

Jason: 01:00:01

And so I I can't point to anything because I this is not, like, what I didn't this wasn't the point of the article. But, like, you can call in as a as, like, the senate or the house majority leader, you can call in, you know, Mark Zuckerberg to testify and you can grill him and, like, that is gonna impact the stock in some way, shape, or form. And so and you also have a sense of, like, what led like, what regulations are gonna be passed and all that. And so I don't know. This is, one of the things that is, like, one of the most bipartisan agreements of in our country is that lawmakers should not be allowed to trade individual stocks.

Joseph: 01:00:42

Right.

Jason: 01:00:42

And they all talk about how they wanna stop it, but then no one ever does because they're all getting wildly wealthy. It's like Marjorie Taylor Greene who just retired and, you know, she she made herself really, really rich through stock trades over the last few years, like millions and millions of dollars. And so and there's many of them like this. You know?

Joseph: 01:01:05

It was a fun article. I liked it.

Sam: 01:01:06

Yeah. I liked it.

Joseph: 01:01:08

Yeah. If we had

Sam: 01:01:09

done the if we made the pics that Nancy had over the years, we would be very wealthy right now. But

Jason: 01:01:13

Yeah. Well, that was also part of that's what that was the tech angle because there was there's apps where it's like invest like Nancy, like, follow her portfolio or whatever. I did this is one of the very few articles that I was like, I didn't think it was too mean, but maybe I thought I was, like, misreading the moment or something. And, Sam, you were not here that day. I don't think you were you were somewhere.

Jason: 01:01:37

But I was just like, normally, I, like, ask multiple people to read it, but it was only me and Emmanuel on. You guys were, like, away from keyboard. So I sent it to my wife, and I was like, am I gonna get in trouble for this? And she was like, no. Fuck Nancy.

Jason: 01:01:51

All of my shit.

Joseph: 01:01:53

That's true. Yeah. No. I don't think it was mean at all. It's just another way of doing it, and it brings a high and I think the vast majority of the people who read it got I mean, I'll just read another one of the comments, the top one.

Joseph: 01:02:06

LOL, what a great way to put it from Brian. So you know? Alright. We'll leave that there. Thank you again so much for being a four zero four paid subscriber, which means you get to listen to this.

Joseph: 01:02:19

We'll get this out to you very, very soon. In the new year, there'll be more comment shows. There'll be more bonus content every single week on the weekly podcast. You'll get early access to the interview episodes as well, and we'll also have our FOIA forums as well. I realized we probably should have done something in the survey about that, but no biggie.

Joseph: 01:02:38

More and more people coming to those. So thank you all so much, and I'll play us out with these

Jason: 01:02:44

Happy holidays.

Joseph: 01:02:45

Happy holidays. Yes. Alright. Bye, everybody.