732: We’re Not In the Files!

15:42Brian Schulmeister:SpaceX won't give them room on a rocket to put it up there. And they're going to go to Bezos and Bezos is like, we got Project Kuiper. Oh, wait, they renamed that now because Scott Galloway couldn't pronounce it right, probably. And so they've got their own Internet thing going up. So they're going to be they're going to be, you know, scrapping to find somebody who's going to actually take their satellites up. So, well, there you go.

16:02Jason DeFillippo:There's a there's a market idea. Yeah. More rockets, people. Just for a rough idea of what's going on, the European Space Agency estimates that there are just over fourteen hundred fourteen thousands functioning satellites currently in orbit. And we know that roughly ninety six hundred of them are part of the Starlink constellation. the ESA expects 100 ,000 satellites to be in orbit by 2030. Yay.

16:25Brian Schulmeister:And by 2031, we're never leaving the planet again. Yeah. I tell you what, you know what it takes? It takes one guy with a rocket in his backyard that is filled with ball bearings to get that thing up far enough into space and explode it. And that's it. It's literally, it's going to take one bucket of ball bearings going at 25 ,000 miles an hour to just, you know, to just actually just kick off the, what is it called again? I am losing my mind. Oh my God, I totally forgot too.

16:55Jason DeFillippo:It was something with, was it with an F? No, that's the Fermi paradox. It's not the Kepler. Is it the Kepler syndrome? Kepler syndrome.

17:01Brian Schulmeister:I got it confused with Kuiper for a second. I'm like, it's not Kuiper. Don't calloway me here. So yeah, I'm telling you, it's a matter of time, you know?

17:11Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. All right. Well, let's pivot away from space back to the problems on Earth. the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said it received more than one million reports of AI-related child sexual abuse material in 2025. The vast majority of that content was reported by Amazon, which found the material in its training data. And they just don't know how it got there, Jason. How did it get there, Brian? Look at all this stuff on my hard drive. How did it get there? Didn't Pete Townsend get in trouble for this sort of shit? Pete Townsend? Really? From the who? Yeah, he said he got busted for like he had child porn on his on his computer or something.

17:50Jason DeFillippo:And then he said he was well, he was doing research for some organization he supports. And that's the only way I could have possibly gotten there. Anyways, he got in trouble for it. And Amazon's not because they just don't know how it got there.

18:02Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, I mean, Pete Townshend did it with love. He let his love open the door to his hard drive.

18:09Jason DeFillippo:A quote from Amazon having such a high volume come in through the year begs a lot of questions about where the data is coming from and what safeguards have been put in place. You think? You think?

18:18Brian Schulmeister:It's your fucking data, assholes. Come on.

18:22Jason DeFillippo:Aside from Amazon, AI-related reports the organization receives from other companies last year include actionable data that it could pass along to law enforcement for next steps. Amazon isn't disclosing sources and their reports are now inactionable. Great.

18:41Brian Schulmeister:Fun times. But you know what? Soon all the CSAM will be in space. That's true.

18:47Jason DeFillippo:And then we send up the ball bearings and we're done. Yeah, exactly.

18:51Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Because what jurisdiction would that be under if your kiddie porn's in space? Do we have to get, what's the guy that snapped his fingers from the Marvel movies? Get him in here?

19:03Jason DeFillippo:I just got to say I've been watching some of the old Muppet shows with my kid because of the Muppet show, which we'll get to later. But you say child born in space, and I'm just like, pigs in space. It's just wrong.

19:16Brian Schulmeister:That was such a great theme. Between that and Spaceship Warlock, I think Spaceship Warlock took pigs in space when they did that. So Waymo, Waymo's in the news. They just closed a monster$16 billion funding round at a$126 billion valuation. Officially the biggest investment ever in autonomous vehicles. and it's not vaporware. The round was led by Dragoneer, DST, and Sequoia with basically every serious institutional tech investor piling in while Alphabet stays firmly in control. Yes. So Waymos, they're coming for you, man. They're everywhere. They're absolutely everywhere. I still haven't seen them on the freeway.

19:58Brian Schulmeister:I haven't seen them on the freeway. Not in LA. Not in my part of LA. In other parts of LA, they are on the freeway. I have seen them on the 10. You have? Yeah. Okay. On the west side. Well, it's good because I stay the fuck off the 10 because I hate that road.

20:14Jason DeFillippo:Well, there were some more layoffs. I think we discussed them over at Pinterest. But there's a twist to this story, Jason. The digital pinboard social media company announced last week that it would be laying off about 15 % of its staff and shrinking its office space as part of a restructuring effort. In a meeting led by the company's CTO, Matt Madrigal, engineering employees were told that Pinterest would not provide a list of affected employees due to privacy rights and company policies. That's when two employees said, hold my beer. According to Pinterest.

20:42Brian Schulmeister:Hold the photo of the beer that somebody else took that I stole from their website that I'm now going to show you on my website. Hold that photo, please.

20:49Jason DeFillippo:According to Pinterest, the engineers built an internal tool aimed at creating a master list of laid off employees. This is quite genius. The BBC reported that the tool tracked when employee accounts on platforms like Slack were being deactivated or removed. So they just made a bot that checked out when people's accounts just disappeared from Slack. After being clearly informed that Pinterest would not broadly share information identifying impacted employees, two engineers wrote custom scripts and properly accessing confidential company information to identify the locations and names of all dismissed employees and then share it more broadly, a Pinterest spokesperson told Gizmodo in an emailed statement.

21:25Jason DeFillippo:This is a clear violation of Pinterest policy and of their former colleagues' privacy. Pinterest, your entire business model is a clear violation of copyright law. Exactly. So go suck a bag of dicks or a photo of a bag of dicks that you stole from somebody else's website, please. CNBC and other outlets reported that the employees that came up with this genius thing were, of course, fired. Healthy debate and dissent are expected. That's how we make our decisions, said Pinterest CEO Bill Reddy at the meeting, according to CNBC. But there's a clear line between constructive debate and behavior that's obstructionist.

21:55Jason DeFillippo:He went on to say that employees should look for another job if they are working against the direction of the company. I personally give these guys a round of applause.

22:05Brian Schulmeister:Oh, absolutely. I do. I'm going to ding them on their OPSEC. They should have just vibe coded this thing, set it in the background, let it run and been anonymous. And they would have still had a job and they would have still had access to all the data that they needed.

22:17Jason DeFillippo:I mean, it's definitely it's definitely illegal. I'm sure that there's something in the Pinterest Code of Ethics and the handbook and the employee manual. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

22:26Brian Schulmeister:Brian, Brian, you just said the Pinterest Code of Ethics. Pinterest does not have a fucking Code of Ethics.

22:32Jason DeFillippo:Oh, they do. It just doesn't involve copyright law. Okay, okay. They took those pages out. Those pages are now gone. Yes. Redacted.

22:41Brian Schulmeister:Okay. Oh, Jesus. Well, Sam Altman's in the news today. When is he not? That's true. That's true. But this one's a good reason. Anthropic, the creators of the Claude chatbot, they apparently still have enough money left over to buy Super Bowl ads, something that OpenAI does not. And I think that I'll get to one in a second here. So they made four ads making fun of a like advertisement in AI, which is what OpenAI said that they're going to do. Right. Yep. Have you seen the ads? Saw one today. say they're fucking genius i love them i absolutely love them i i applaud the fact that they made it

23:24Jason DeFillippo:very discernible that it's an ad it's like a white pop-up on a black screen like you you know that this is not part well never mind you and i know that this is not but fucking people are so fucking stupid they might think that that's like a special extra answer yeah yeah oh yeah never mind never Never mind my whole point. People are too fucking dumb to know. But I thought that they had done a good job of implementing it.

23:49Brian Schulmeister:I think they did, too. So Sam originally said, oh, that's funny. And then he just went on a tirade and wrote, like, you know, war and peace about why that's uncool. But I just thought it was genius. You know, one spot opens with the word betrayal and shows a chat GPT-like bot giving heartfelt advice. Then abruptly shoves a fake cougar dating ad into the conversation, which is fucking hilarious. That's very funny and maybe useful. It might actually be, you know, that might be the useful part of open AI. Like point me to somewhere where I can actually, you know, get something done about all the shit you're telling me to do.

24:33Jason DeFillippo:Media Candy. Well, Jason, as I pointed out last week, Shrinking is back. Shrinking is the Apple TV show that has the Apple TV show that you can watch on Apple TV on your Apple TV. Yes. Thanks to the genius branding that the guys have done over there. Yes. Yeah, I loved the first season. I liked the second season. I have only watched the first episode of this third season, and I've got to say, it was rough. Not good. Not good. Even my wife, who lives for these kind of shows, was like, I don't know if I can watch this. Really? They are caricatures of the previous characters. It just felt forced.

25:13Jason DeFillippo:The only person that still stands out is Harrison Ford because dude can fucking act. And yeah, well, I mean, he's not really acting. He's just him now. He's just him. Yeah. But he's basically doing the Jack Black thing. He just shows up and is himself. He just shows up and he's himself and he's still great. But I it was painful. I'll keep with it just because I love the first two seasons so much and hope that it gets better. And this was just some sort of like, let's reintroduce the characters in a very piss poor way that made them completely uncompelling and stupid and useless. We'll see.

25:44Brian Schulmeister:Well, you know, there is that thing that happens when a show gets actually popular that the studios fire the writing department because they know that they can keep that show going under the steam that they built up from the previous seasons. Which sounds like you might have just run into that.

25:59Jason DeFillippo:I think I think that's a definite possibility. I'm going to have to do a little research on that and look into the writing stuff in comparison to previous seasons and see what's going on because it was not good. Okay. Speaking of not good, I watched the Grammys. Oh, my God. That was so not good. Yeah. I mean, look, we've aged out. Congratulations to two bands that I loved when I was a kid that are all pushing. Well, Trent Reznor is pushing 60 and The Cure and all of them are in their 60s. The Cure won their first Grammys ever, you know, 50 years into their career. So good for them. Nine Janels won a Grammy.

26:32Jason DeFillippo:Of course, they didn't show any of that stuff because that's, you know, anything I like is in the pre-show, not the actual show itself. Yeah, it was boring and I don't care.

26:40Brian Schulmeister:So it was funny because we were watching it and I'm like, man, I remember this being so much better last year. And it wasn't last year. It was just a couple of months ago when we watched the VMAs and the VMAs were actually entertaining.

26:52Jason DeFillippo:You know, it's like watching the Golden Globes over the Oscars, you know, let them get drunk and have fun and not the stiff, boring stuff with Justin Bieber coming out. in his fucking underwear and attempting to be like deep by making a fucking loop a fucking loop i gotta watch you make a fucking guitar loop in your boxes and then you then you start a fucking shitty samba drum pattern that oh i'm feeling it man you're feeling it man you're deep you feeling the deepness yeah so anyways that that happened now i see you have star uh starfleet Academy in here, and it was an episode which I am very curious about your thoughts.

27:32Jason DeFillippo:So I'll let you get into it.

27:35Brian Schulmeister:Yes, I have problems. Now, the first problem I have is with the way the holograms are working in the 32nd century or however it works. We don't know how the technology behind this one girl who is, you know, basically a hologram. She's, yeah, she's the doctor.

27:53Jason DeFillippo:She's the

27:53Brian Schulmeister:hologram. Yes, yes. So this whole episode was about her and her people and all that stuff. So, now, the science of Star Trek has always been something of, you know, just a little fun black box where they just make shit up and it's kind of fun. But there have been books written about the science behind Star Trek and how some of it is just pie in the sky and some of it is fun, you know. Like the Mythbusters would say, some of it is plausible. Yes, exactly. And as Penn would say, some of it is bullshit. this this hologram person i call so much bullshit on that nobody has taken the time to actually think it through the one episode she got dumped in a bunch of water and was breathing after she was dumped in the water you see bubbles coming out of her mouth as she's screaming holograms don't breathe where the bubbles come from and also this time you know what it wasn't even just the the crazy nods to deep space nine in this episode i i love deep space nine it's my show I love that they brought Jake back, which was really fun to see him as a grown man.

29:00Brian Schulmeister:But you want to know what really pissed me off, Brian? The hologram playing the fucking theremin. I didn't mind that. I thought it was OK. Think about it for a fucking second. Photons. For a theremin to work, you need meat to go to impede the signal. She's got no meat.

29:26Jason DeFillippo:all right fair but okay i'm just saying that actually wasn't my biggest problem with the episode i i like the deep space nine stuff although i thought it was a bit of a tease you know solve the mystery that we basically fucking say absolutely nothing about cisco and what happened and but that aside if they if they all she had to do was go look at the dvds and the

29:46Brian Schulmeister:mystery solved yes we know where it went that's fair i saw the last episode of deep space nine It's not a mystery. Well, it is to them, Jason.

29:53Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, well. That wasn't my problem with the episode. The concerns about her being a photonic being and all that, whatever, you know, go for it. That's fine. The thing I didn't like about the whole episode is that they fucking leaned into what teen shows did right after texting became super popular. The little bubbles, the text bubbles popping up everywhere. where everything was emojis and like little hearts and like, and then they're dropping, they're throwing up all these little graphics everywhere as if like, what the fuck was that all about? That was pure artistic choice that they tried to make a cool hip episode for the kids, which I guess the show is for the kids, but still, that was dumb.

30:32Jason DeFillippo:It was completely out of character of every episode of Star Trek that's ever been done. And yes, somebody is going to say, well, what about the ones where they sing? Well, fuck you. They had some weird virus and they sang.

30:42Brian Schulmeister:And it was a great episode.

30:44Jason DeFillippo:and they can fucking sing. Yeah, and it was a great episode. So anyway, that was the one thing that really bothered me. I was like, oh, geez, all of a sudden there's text messages popping up on the screen. It's still a fine show. And you know what? What's the actress's name that's playing the captain? She is fucking killing it. Holly Hunter? I love Holly Hunter in this role. I love the fact that she can't sit in a chair normally. This is fantastic. She's too short to Riker it, though. She's too short to write her. She's making her own thing. And she's just great. She is the saving grace of that show right now for me.

31:20Jason DeFillippo:I cannot get enough of her, more of her on the screen. She's fantastic.

31:24Brian Schulmeister:So enough of that. I watched The Rip, the new Ben Affleck, Matt Damon joint that came out of Netflix this week or last week. And the big thing about that is, you know, the structure that they built the movie on, which is, you know, the whole Hollywood turning it on its head and people getting paid. You know, eventually the whole cast and crew getting paid from it if it hit certain numbers, which is why. watched it. I just want to give them the bump for the numbers because anything to take, you know, any bit of Hollywood back from the studios I'm cool with. I give it a B plus. It wasn't a bad movie.

31:54Brian Schulmeister:It wasn't a great movie. Here's what I liked about it, though. It was just a fucking movie. They weren't trying to create the Godfather. They weren't trying to do something like, you know, super crazy. It was like an hour and a half of a decent crime thriller action movie, which I enjoyed. I just enjoyed it. There wasn't like two hours of convoluted this, that and the others like, oh, this is what the story is. This is the turn. This is the twist. This is how it ends. Fucking loved it. That part. It was just slow in the little parts. That's why it got a B+. All right. There were a couple of threads that they didn't tie up at the end, which I thought was kind of lame.

32:27Brian Schulmeister:But for the most part, I thought it was a decent movie. That's just my two cents. All right. Neil Young is in the news. Neil Young is making a pointed political statement by gifting the people of Greenland free access to his entire music and film archive for a year, saying he hopes it eases the stress caused by recent U.S. threats over the territory's future. And at the same time, he's pulling his music from Amazon Music, citing Jeff Bezos' support of Donald Trump in opposition to Trump's international policies and ice enforcement. So you go, Neil.

33:01Jason DeFillippo:All right. Look, I support people that put their money where their mouth is. There are plenty of artists that have pulled their music off of Spotify to protest as well. That's fantastic. Gifting the people of Greenland. I don't really think that Neil Young's music is very popular in Greenland. I don't think it's going to ease any stress.

33:18Brian Schulmeister:Or anywhere else right now.

33:18Jason DeFillippo:I wonder if he sent everybody there a free Pono, since he's probably got a bunch of those sitting around in a warehouse somewhere. So we'll see. He couldn't, though. The tariffs would kill him. That's true. All right. Well, good on you, Neil. I'm a Neil Young fan without even being too big of a fan of his music. I'm a fan of him.

33:37Brian Schulmeister:Yeah.

33:37Jason DeFillippo:All right. I like crotchety old dudes. They are our people.

33:42Brian Schulmeister:They are our people. And I just saw that this came out. Is it Cake? Valentine's Day edition. My son loves this shit. Yeah. But I tell you what, they used to go from like eight episode seasons. Then when they came out with the specials, it was a three episode season. And now they just kind of fucking gave up. this is one and done. It's a one episode show. All right. But I'll watch it. I like it. I enjoy it. It's fun. Apps and doodads.

34:11Jason DeFillippo:Well, since we've pivoted to starting to do video, Jason, I was wearing my normal headphones, my normal good Sennheisers that are great for music and everything else, but they're the big cans. Yep. And they don't show off my lustrous hair. So I decided to join you and Dave and order myself some in-ears so I can like have this free-flowing main. I ordered the Sennheiser Consumer Audio IE200 in-ear audiophile headphones, TruSpons transducers for neutral sound, impactful bass, detachable braided cable with flexible ear hooks, black. All right. These are great. Like I really love them. Like they're fantastic.

34:48Jason DeFillippo:And you know, the reality is I've left my really good Sennheiser over-ears up here in the studio. I don't have them downstairs. I don't take them with me. I don't use them to listen to stuff on my phone. I just use my Apple AirPods because they're good. But what I kind of realized is they're not good enough for music. I'm using these now with a dongle on my iPhone and actually listening to music. And it is fantastic. I mean, don't get me wrong. The Apple AirPods for convenience and for listening to podcasts and all of that stuff, they're fantastic. But for like really good music, no, these are great.

35:27Jason DeFillippo:and, you know, not crazy expensive, which is nice. You know, I could spend a lot more. And if I took my over ears down there, that'd be even better. But this is a good balance. And I have to say, I got, I did a little AB testing, which I never do. Now that I'm wearing these headphones, as opposed to my AirPods, I 100 % could hear a quality difference between Spotify and Apple Music. Apple Music is way better. Oh, really?

35:50Brian Schulmeister:Okay. Interesting.

35:52Jason DeFillippo:Yeah.

35:53Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. I mean, do you have the AirPod or the, Yeah, the AirPod 3s, the 3 Pros?

35:58Jason DeFillippo:No, I'm on 2.

35:59Brian Schulmeister:Okay, because I got the 3 Pros, and I'm wearing Sennheiser, like the nice high-end ones that we used to get back in the day, my one last pair that I have left. And, you know, these sound just amazing, but I haven't done the A-B test. Maybe I'll try that sometime. But I, too, surprisingly this week, needed another pair of in-ear headphones for my laptop bag because when I'm out doing, like, live productions for Zoom and stuff. I need a pair of headphones. And all I've got are my Sony's, my big Sony MDRs, my cans that I carry around in my backpack. And I'm like, oh, because I keep these in the studio so we can always have them ready for our fine YouTube audience, which has been going down the fucking shitter.

36:40Brian Schulmeister:Everybody, go watch some YouTube videos, please. Or just put them on in the background. I don't care if you watch them or not. But these have been, you know, they stopped making this version years and years ago, which I'm glad you found some decent ones. I found the Sennheiser Consumer Audio CX80S's in-ear headphones with inline one-button smart remote black for$19.19. They sound identical to these super expensive Sennheisers that I'm wearing now. Identical. The only difference is they're very cheaply put together and they're plastic. It's way more plastic than the ones I'm wearing, which I think these were like$100 or something or$70 when I bought them.

37:21Brian Schulmeister:So the technology from these has gone down to the cheap ones, which is what I was hoping for. So for 20 bucks, you know, I got a really, really nice pair of in-ear wired headphones. I like the ones that you got. I just can't afford that right now. So I'm sticking with my cheapies.

37:37Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, well, I was actually looking for my old Sennheiser headphones that we bought back in the day because I think that they maybe just didn't make the move when I moved here to Canada or something. So I was tearing apart some boxes trying to find it. And instead of finding the headphones, so I had to order some new ones, I did find an old drive. And I was like, well, what's on this thing? And so I went down a rabbit hole with this because whatever. So I opened it up and I found just a bunch of old dumps of photos and videos, you know, from old digital cameras and stuff of that nature. And I was looking at the videos and then I started going, you know what?

38:11Jason DeFillippo:But with AI technology and all the stuff, all the things that have happened in the video world right now, there's got to be something to kind of clean these up. Because, you know, it's old cameras. They're kind of grainy. The brights are too bright. The darks are too dark. Surely there's something that can, like, smooth out these videos. Because it's a bunch of fun stuff, you know, me and friends from 15, 20 years ago. So Topaz video, of course, came up in the search. And reasonable price for a month. I figured I'll give it a go. They seem to claim that they're good with old footage and cleaning it up.

38:44Jason DeFillippo:And I've been trying it out and it's not bad. It definitely smooths things out maybe a little bit too much. It totally takes care of grain, which is kind of nice. Like grain is just gone. But I wanted to talk about it here because I know we've got a bunch of listeners. There's got to be better tools out there. There's got to be something that can deal with brightness levels and the smoothing and getting rid of the grain. I know Topaz is a big company right now and they're paying for their placement. If anybody knows of a really good tool for taking, I'm even talking about like going to old rips from VHSs to digital cameras to early iPhone videos, anything to increase the quality without losing a bunch of detail.

39:28Jason DeFillippo:I would love to hear suggestions and recommendations. Okay. Because Topaz is good, but not great.

39:34Brian Schulmeister:It's generally good enough. I mean, do you play with the different models? Because there's all sorts of different models they have inside of there for different use cases. And I found playing with the models and just changing the amount that you're doing things and doing multiple passes on it seems to get me closer than just kind of a one and done, throw it in there and press the button and hope it comes out. Yeah, I really want a one and done. I don't think there's such a thing as a one and done. Yeah.

40:01Jason DeFillippo:So it's good at everything except for dealing with the brightness levels because it doesn't really have that in there. In fact, when I went on the forums and started to read about it, they're like, oh, well, you use your other video editing tools to deal with brightness, and then you bring it to Topaz to kind of do the smoothing and everything. And I was like, well, I want both without spending a shit ton of money.

40:18Brian Schulmeister:But I guess I'm not getting that. Well, you can get Final Cut in the new Apple bundle for$13 a month.

40:25Jason DeFillippo:What? I'm not going to get that. And, you know, there's only—anyways, if anybody knows of anything that's decent, let us know.

40:33Brian Schulmeister:Shoot it our way. Yes. I found a nice piece of software this week called Epstein, which it's a GitHub repo. It searches the publicly released Epstein court documents for mentions for your LinkedIn contacts.

40:53Brian Schulmeister:I haven't downloaded it yet, but it is on my weekend to-do list because I actually know that there are people in my LinkedIn group that were in the Epstein documents. who were there just because they were splash damaged. They weren't there because they went to the island or were diddling children. Yeah, there are a lot of reasons you can be in the files. Yeah. And what's pissing me off is this, oh, my God, there's so, oh, my God, Peter Attia's in there. He thinks pussy's low carb. Great. We should bang on to him. How about you focus on the motherfucker that's in there about 6 ,000 times and is running the fucking country?

41:27Brian Schulmeister:How about we start with him?

41:29Jason DeFillippo:To be honest, Epstein is in the Trump files. That's kind of it. Yeah. There we go. I almost don't want to know. I just don't want to know.

41:37Brian Schulmeister:Oh, I am so dying to know. I am so fucking dying to know. And I just love this one. Autonomous cars cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign. Now, Brian, did we not call this years and years and years ago when we talked about making our stop sign T-shirts? Our fully self-driving anti-Elon T-shirts with basically every sign that you can get on them. yield, turn here, stop, all that stuff. And people are like, oh, that'll never work. Well, it turns out researchers have shown that autonomous cars and drones can be tricked into obeying written instructions on road signs, a new twist on so-called prompt injection attacks.

42:17Brian Schulmeister:And especially now that Tesla uses grok in their cars, maybe it'll just turn everybody on the street naked.

42:23Jason DeFillippo:So we'll see. Go to GOG.show pretty soon. We will have our stop sign grumpy old geeks t-shirt. Yep.

42:29Brian Schulmeister:In simulated tests, AI vision systems interpreted words like proceed or turn left on signs as direct commands, even ignoring pedestrians and crosswalks. The attacks worked across multiple languages and visual styles with success rates above 80 % for cars and even higher for drones. You know, I thought it was funny, the one where they just drew the chalk circle around the car and it couldn't figure out how to get out. This is just so much better. So much better.

43:08Brian Schulmeister:At the library. Brian, I have dug into the Regicide Report, which is the Laundry Files book 14 by Charlie Strauss and the final book of the Laundry Files. Have you gotten it yet? Have you started it? Are you going to get it?

43:22Jason DeFillippo:I have not. I think I will. I'm going to kind of wait and hear what you have to say about it. I also feel like I have to go read the Wikipedia entry on the laundry files because it's been so long since I've read one of the books. I don't remember a thing.

43:34Brian Schulmeister:Well, he's doing a really good job taking you through the book and you start to remember different things as you go through because he talks about the old days. You know, it's got Mo and the violin and Bob and all that stuff in it. So it really does. It comes back pretty quick. I'm about a little over halfway through and I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying it. I can't wait to see how they wrap it up. But, yeah, it's very it's just like the old days. the old Laundry File book. So I'm digging it. I'm really digging it. I'm glad he brought the, yeah, I'm glad he got the team back together, you know. Bringing it full circle.

44:05Brian Schulmeister:Yep, indeed. Now, this one is interesting. Scientists have found that the earliest signs of dementia may show up in language years before memory problems ever appear. And they found a striking example in the novels of Terry Pratchett. Researchers analyzed Pratchett's Discworld books and discovered a gradual but statistically significant decline in the diversity of descriptive words he used, especially adjectives. The shift was subtle, invisible to casual readers and didn't affect the quality of the writing, but it was measurable, which is really fascinating. It is really fascinating.

44:39Jason DeFillippo:This is awesome. And I immediately thought, wow, what a finally a great use case for AI. You turn AI on your writing to analyze it and potentially give you at least a warning sign diagnosis of this, right? Until I realized that the average adult does nothing more than fucking tweet or is using AI to do all their writing now.

45:01Brian Schulmeister:Exactly. The one thing that we've now figured out it's good for is something that we can't actually test for. Terry Pratchett is the only person this is ever going to work for. The first and last. Yeah. Yeah, seriously. I'm guessing you can't point it at X and, you know, you can't really tell if somebody has Alzheimer's from their let's go Brandon tweets. You can just tell

45:20Jason DeFillippo:that they're dumb shit sure you can oh and we got uh we got some news neil gaiman has popped out of his hole alongside the uh february 2nd badgers or groundhogs or whatever the fuck came out badger badger badger badger yeah it says uh sorry good omens fans this is not the neil gaiman adjacent news you are waiting for while we're waiting to hear about what will happen with a finale special that replaced the full season, which will probably be shit can and never released at this point. He has come out and made a new statement from the author, which is very defensive, but also couches a sly reveal of a new book he calls the biggest thing I've done since American Gods.

46:01Jason DeFillippo:So yes, he came out of nowhere to say, no, I didn't do any of this. Here's a not very well researched article by somebody who's obviously a fanboy, and some people are saying is actually Neil himself with a very long medium article about how he's not guilty and he's been railroaded. But by the way, here's my new book and I'm out here to publicize it.

46:23Brian Schulmeister:Okay. You going to read the book? Depends, you know, because look, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole. I just, no, I'm not going to talk about this.

46:32Jason DeFillippo:This whole world is fucking rabbit holes now, man. I know.

46:35Brian Schulmeister:I know.

46:36Jason DeFillippo:I miss the old days when only Michael Jackson was problematic.

46:39Brian Schulmeister:The dark side. with Dave. You know him, you love him. We are back this week with Dave Bittner on the dark side with Dave. Hi, Dave. How you doing? I'm doing well. Hanging in there. Doing my best.

46:56Jason DeFillippo:One day at a time. It's all good.

46:58Brian Schulmeister:Hey, that's my line. I almost feel like right now,

47:02Jason DeFillippo:Jason and I should both back away because this is now going to be the Dave show. This is something he's been waiting for a long time. this is probably one of the favorite things in Dave's life. The Muppets are back. Like, I don't even, like, I feel like I'll just take the headphones off and let you go. Yeah. See in 20 minutes. No, I'm very happy. I'm very satisfied. I thought they did a great job. It felt like the Muppet show. It felt like authentic Muppet humor and just everything about it. I feel like they nailed it in terms of making it feel like they kind of continued where they'd left off.

47:40Jason DeFillippo:I couldn't agree more. I really enjoyed it. I don't know much about Sabrina Carpenter. I've heard her songs. I thought she was perfect. Like, they couldn't have found a better person. You could tell she had a deep love for the Muppets, and it really came through. I was pleased that Maya Rudolph and Seth Rogen were kept to a minimum. Yes, I know.

48:05Jason DeFillippo:yes um no yeah i i felt it was uneven in the best possible way just like the show always was and and to prove that like my son really enjoyed it and when it was over i was like well should we try an old one would you would you like to watch an old one he's like oh i don't know because you know kids these days they see all this old footage and they just like it's like when we saw black and white shit we would just tune out like who gives a crap um yeah but he we watched the carol burnett one and we watched the uh mark hamill one and and i mean my kid was rolling laughing yeah and it was the same unevenness it was the same like that shit wasn't funny at all that didn't work but yeah it's okay keep it rolling yeah there's just there's it's fast-paced there's another there's another joke on the way so yeah i i was very happy the entire time and uh and noticeably so and when it ended i've just felt like i was in a great mood and so i've seen um more than one person comment like could it be that the muppet show is the show that we all need right now i definitely felt that way i hadn't felt that good in quite some time it was just pure escapism and magic like there's there's they i i love to shit on seth rogan but he did it so yeah yeah

49:28Brian Schulmeister:You know what's funny is we put in these things that are so far out because we get trailers that are sometimes over a year before the show comes out. I didn't realize that it was coming out this fast and I missed it. I haven't seen it yet. I'm so used to just not paying attention to trailers anymore because there's so much noise out there. It's like, oh, look, the new season of Pluribus is coming in 2029. Here's a trailer. I'm like, OK, great. Right. I will probably forget about that until you tell me it's on the air. So you guys have just told me it's on the air, so now I can go catch up.

50:03Jason DeFillippo:Well, it's getting tons of positive feedback. And I want to say, like, yesterday it was number one on Disney+. So here's hoping that it gets a pickup for a season. Agreed. Or more. So that said, let me ask you this. Who do you think, let's say they get a 10-episode pickup because that's, probably what would happen these days there are no more 24 episode seasons like they had originally who would make good guests on this modern incarnation of the muppet show i have my own list but i'm curious what you guys think of ricky gervais ricky gervais i also have ricky gervais down i wrote a small list after i saw that you put this in there the one the one caveat that i that i had to say is like we're old and yeah yeah like like the people that they should be getting as hosts are not the people that that you and i the three of us would probably want because we we're gonna just skew older people our generation are not even older than that so i was thinking of like who's relatively popular as a younger person that would actually make a good host and i was like miley cyrus would be great uh olivia rodrigo would be fantastic because it's got to be somebody with that you know you've got you can sing you can you can dance you can act.

51:22Jason DeFillippo:Timothee Chalamet would be good. At least do Timothee Chalamet as much as I don't like him. Zendaya, you know, for the kids. And for older, like for me, who I'd like to see, Idris Elba, I think would be amazing.

51:34Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, I had him too. Yes.

51:36Jason DeFillippo:Sarah Silverman. No. Oh. I would love to see Sarah Silverman do it. I think she'd be fantastic. Tom Hanks, obviously, you can see him doing this. Tom Hanks is on my list. I have a double bill. I would like to see them together. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen together doing it because they could do all the Shakespearean stuff with the Muppets it would be wonderful and that's about as far as I got on my list I want Margaret Cho I like her I want her on there Margaret Cho is too out there right now she'd be great she would be but alright my list I have Lady Gaga oh yeah didn't even think of her she's already done a Muppet special Weird Al oh fantastic Right?

52:20Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. Ariana Grande? Yeah. No. What do you mean no? Why no? I don't like her. She can sing. She can act. She can dance. Checks off all those boxes. She can do comedy. She's good on SNL. She was great on SNL, actually. Jeff Goldblum? Okay. Oh, Goldblum would be fantastic because he's so Goldblum. Yeah. He's practically a Muppet already. Yeah, he really is. Right. I thought maybe Jon Hamm. He can do comedy. Absolutely. I had Tom Hanks. Selena Gomez. Yeah, I like her a lot. I mean, Steve Martin, but he's already done it, sort of. I was thinking if they had Steve Martin on, maybe with Martin Short would be the way to go.

52:59Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, if I can just avoid the Martin Short parts. Yeah. Yeah, if they wanted to bring someone back. I mean, then they just do it with Selena, too. They have all three of them, you know. Right. Right. I thought Beyonce. Yeah. Yeah. Hannah Waddington. Waddingham. Oh, yeah. She'd be great. She'd be great. great yeah yeah yeah paul rudd paul rudd yeah and last but certainly not least dolly parton oh fantastic yeah great list right i would watch i would watch an episode with everybody we mentioned so yeah yeah yeah so here's hoping uh how great would it be if it became the place that a-listers wanted to to go have fun for a week you know yeah well we got some news about the person that's going to make that decision, Dave.

53:47Jason DeFillippo:Disney has announced a successor to outgoing CEO Bob Iger, effective in March. Josh DiAmaro, current chairman of Disney Experiences, was tapped for the role in a unanimous vote by the company's board of directors. He's been at Disney for 28 years where he oversaw theme parks, cruises, and consumer products, including video games. The company had previously appointed Bob Chapek and then quickly recanted that one and brought Bob Iger back and now he is leaving once again. Now, I've seen two Two different approaches to this announcement. First being, oh, good, somebody who really understands Disney and park experiences and comes from that background because it's such an important integral part of who Disney is, Disney's DNA.

54:29Brian Schulmeister:The other being this is a succession moment when Tom Womsba somehow wins and doesn't really know how to run a company of this nature. So we'll see.

54:41Jason DeFillippo:I think, you know, whether you bring back the Muppets or not, it's probably going to be one of his first big decisions, at least, that affects all of us. Mm-hmm. Yeah, the degree to which they do that. I mean, you know, obviously they're doing the switchover of Rockin' Roller Coaster. Yeah. So will they lean further into the Muppets? You know. Yeah. I hope so. Yeah, who knows? I hope so. oh, maybe this will trigger a whole new era for the Muppets. A whole new world. It seems like I haven't seen anybody really pooping on it. Yeah. I did see people going, Kermit doesn't sound right. I'm like, Jim Henson's been dead for 20 plus years.

55:26Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. Yeah. Both my wife and son said that. They said it was distracting that Kermit didn't sound like Kermit. And for me, it didn't bother me, which is weird. It should, but it didn't. So, you know, it's funny because as I mentioned, with my son, I went back and watched a couple of the old episodes. And the reverse is true for me. Like, Kermit's fine. I didn't even think about that. Go back and listen to the original Gonzo voice. And it's horrible compared to the current Gonzo voice. I take current Gonzo anytime. He, he, they, whoever did him in the past, no disrespect because I'm sure he did 7 ,000 other characters who are all great, but modern, modern Gonzo's voice is so much better.

56:12Jason DeFillippo:It's the same guy. Well, he's doing things different now. He's the only one left. Yeah. It's Dave Gulls. His voice has absolutely changed and he, he does Gonzo so differently and so much better. Yeah. He's actually, you know, he does Bunsen Honeydew also. Oh, I love Bunsen. And, and, fun Disney-related fact, Dave Gulls is currently the voice of Figment at Epcot. Right. The little dragon. Yeah, I do remember that. Who replaced Billy Barty, who was the original voice of Figment. I think I only know the original from my trip there when I was a child. Yep. Yep. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm hopeful that this guy being a park guy, that aligns with my interests.

56:58So I wish him the best.

57:00Jason DeFillippo:And the number one thing that any person in this position can do is not break it. Good luck. Don't fuck it up. Yeah. Yeah. So I had a bunch of other little things I wanted to share here that have been amusing and delighting me over the past week or so. This first one is a database of paper airplane designs. uh great fun just lots and lots of airplane designs uh simple ones complex ones i was wondering if you guys uh at the age when we all get into this sort of thing did you have a go-to paper airplane design that was you know the one that you knew how to make that to impress your friends mine was uh the number one that uh shows up on this link the v-wing is definitely the one that I built the most often and I think flew the best for me.

57:55Jason DeFillippo:And side note, when my son was of the age that this became of interest, he was gifted a book that had a thick book that had gazillions of these different designs in it. And that was a lot of fun for about three weeks. Right. What about you, Jason?

58:12Brian Schulmeister:The basic is the one I'm looking at the database now. The database is just called the basic. Yeah. If you go to the actual paper airplane design database. It's near the bottom, but the old school, you know. I think I may have kind of done the wedge a couple times, but for the most part, yeah, I was never really a paper airplane guy. I had the balsa wood planes with the rubber band and the propeller that you take out and throw those out back. We lived on top of a hill in Pennsylvania. My grandparents lived on top of a hill and my grandfather used to buy me those planes and I would take them out back and we would play with them.

58:48Brian Schulmeister:And some of them had the little springy landing gear on it that we would take off. Oh, yeah, yeah, and the rubber band propeller. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about, the rubber band propeller, and we'd take off the gear because we were landing in grass, so we wanted that extra few feet of slide. You know?

59:06Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, yeah. I had a, in addition to those, which I had the balsa wood ones, which just, you know, they broke so quickly. Yeah, yeah. They were like one and done. Yeah, much out of them. But somewhere along the lines, my father had bought me a, it was probably three feet long. But at the time, at the age I was, it felt like it was six feet long. and it was made of foam and it was like a, you know, a dart-shaped fighter jet looking sort of thing. It was silver but it had a big squishy nose on it so when it, you know, nosed into the ground it would just bounce off. But boy, that thing would fly. I remember that.

59:55Jason DeFillippo:I had a friend that had one of those and we would go to the park and everybody was insanely jealous because we're there with our stupid paper airplanes and those kids got a fucking fighter jet. Yeah. Yeah, I had one of those, and that was a lot of fun. And I remember over the years getting repaired with electrical tape and, you know, duct tape. What doesn't duct tape fix? Yeah. Just like a real plane. Yeah. That was a top, right, yeah. That was a top-tier toy when I was, I don't know, eight or nine, something like that.

1:00:26Brian Schulmeister:My dad got me one of the, it wasn't a paper airplane or a balsa. We couldn't afford an actual, like, you know, remote-controlled plane, So we had the one that basically was on a string and you'd stand there. You had a gas engine and you just sit there and basically spin in a circle and go up and down with it.

1:00:43Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, I remember those. Yeah. I've never played with one, but I remember them. They were loud, too.

1:00:47Brian Schulmeister:They were very loud and very scary when you're a kid because you think you're going to get your fingers chopped off. So dad always was the one that had to prime it and swear at it a lot because the thing wouldn't run very well. And then you had the little can of gas that you had to pour in it and it would get everywhere. And you always stank when you were done. And you were very dizzy when you were done, too, because you're sitting there spinning in a circle, looking at your toy going up and down, up and down. Just even thinking about it makes me obnoxious. But I had a stealth fighter one. It wasn't a real stealth fighter because real stealth fighters didn't exist back then.

1:01:18Brian Schulmeister:So it was like the space age. What would a stealth fighter look like if one actually existed version? It had the propeller on the back, which made it impossible to fly. So it made it around. It made it about three trips out. And then because every time we would nosedive the damn thing into the ground. So we'd have to go back, find the duct tape, put it back together, go back out to the parking lot. And then it eventually just disintegrated one time when my dad just went went went down instead of up. And it was went. So now would they would they take off under their own power or did you have to give a little nudge?

1:01:50Brian Schulmeister:Oh, it went on its own. Yeah, no, because that was the fun thing is like because you had the string laid out across the parking lot. The planes at one end, you had to hold the string. So you needed two people. This was not a one-person thing. So one person would be in the middle holding the string. The other person would be turning on the plane and holding it in place until it was ready. And then you just let it go because it was only one speed on it. You know, it was just on. Okay, that's what it's got.

1:02:13Jason DeFillippo:So you have no throttle control. So you basically run it until it runs out of gas. Is that the idea?

1:02:18Brian Schulmeister:Okay.

1:02:19Jason DeFillippo:That's it. So every landing is a crash landing.

1:02:23Brian Schulmeister:Well, if you were good, if you were smart enough, you could hear it. Yeah. Sputtering. And then you know to like kind of bring it down and kind of level it off for landing. You don't want it to be up high when it started to sputter. Then that was a recipe for, you know, your 60 bucks out the window. Because those things weren't cheap, you know. Yeah. And they were definitely limited use because, you know, once you go a couple times, you're pretty much done for the day. So you needed a good group of people out there with you. But those were fun. Those were really fun.

1:02:50Jason DeFillippo:No, I never had one, but one of my neighbors did. And so I would hear them playing with it and I'd go out and watch, but never had the chance to actually be the pilot. Did look like fun, though. Another thing I posted in here is a browser-based version of Roller Coaster Tycoon. Not an official Roller Coaster Tycoon, but same thing. So if you want to build your own theme park, have fun in your browser for free. Nice little time suck. I hope Josh DeMauro is working on that right now and practicing. Yeah. Enjoy. Enjoy.

1:03:28Brian Schulmeister:I like it's got co-op multiplayer. Yeah.

1:03:31Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. And that reminded me of, well, we actually had a discussion on Slack here at CyberWire about favorite roller coasters. And that got us talking about the biggest, baddest roller coaster in the world, which of course is in Dubai right now. So I included a YouTube link of a, front row version of that. A hundred fifty five miles an hour, 600 feet. It's a couple of miles long. It's it's it's basically what happens when money is no object. Or safety. Well, yeah, they just you know, it's like someone built this in roller coaster tycoon and then went to one of the roller coaster companies and said, build this.

1:04:18Brian Schulmeister:And it exactly is that. Yeah.

1:04:20Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. What's crazy is, you know, as a kid riding all these roller coasters, we didn't have any of this kind of information. But now we do. When you find out how actually like slow some of these coasters, like Space Mountain is like tops out at like 35 miles an hour. I'm like, that's it. And then you hear about a coaster that's doing 160. And I'm like, no fucking way when I get on.

1:04:42Brian Schulmeister:I know. Yeah.

1:04:45Jason DeFillippo:No, this roller coaster is so fast that the cars have windshields.

1:04:49Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Yeah. I'd seen this before. I hadn't seen this exact video, but I'd seen the video of it before. And I'm just like, eh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Especially when they're up on top of the cliff and it just kind of hangs you over the edge and kind of goes to the left a little. Just so you can, you know, just toss your cookies if you want. Yeah. That's the unloading zone with nobody below you. And then you get to go down the thing. Like, no, no, thank you. So no, thank you.

1:05:15Jason DeFillippo:I was saying, again, in our Slack conversation, I was saying that my current favorites for the most intense roller coaster is Velocicoaster at Universal. Great coaster. Very smooth. I think the most fun roller coaster in the world or that I've ever been on is Guardians of the Galaxy at Epcot. So much fun. And my favorite wooden coaster is, what do they call it now? It used to be called Rebel Yell at King's Dominion. is called like America 75 or something now because you can't have, you know, no more references to the South. Yeah. So, but it's a big old dual wooden roller coaster that also happens to be very smooth.

1:06:01Jason DeFillippo:So it doesn't beat you up. Oh, that's rare. Yeah, because the big wooden coaster on the West Coast is Colossus over at Six Flags. And that thing just, I mean, you're basically you're going to need an mri when you get off that thing right right right

1:06:16Brian Schulmeister:the first one when i rode this one yeah the first wooden one i actually the first roller coaster i ever went on i did them all in one day because i never wanted to go but my friends brought my girlfriend with me so they're like you're going to have to go on roller coasters because your girlfriend likes roller coasters and you don't want to be a wuss so in one day i went on every roller coaster in great america outside of chicago i think gurney i think that's where it was but we We went on the American Eagle, which was one of those racing wooden roller coasters. It was huge. It was terrifying. And I did need an MRI.

1:06:45Brian Schulmeister:All I remember is, so the first day we're going over the top, we're going over the drop. And I'm just like freaking the fuck out. And all I can see is in front of me is our friend Bob Fogarty, who does our voiceover for the show. He is sitting there looking back at me with the biggest shit-eating grin on going, having fun yet? I'm sitting there terrified out of my gourd.

1:07:07Jason DeFillippo:There's friends like these.

1:07:08Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Yeah. I gotta say that my favorite roller coaster, though, of all time still is Batman.

1:07:17Brian Schulmeister:What's the one out here, Brian? Universal or Six Flags? Six Flags. The Six Flags out here. Magic Mountain. Magic Mountain. Because they had a Batman here and they had one at the Six Flags at the other one. And I don't know why. I just love that roller coaster. It's smooth. It's fast. It's one of the hanging ones so your feet hang off the bottom. You can look at all the shoes as you go through. I don't know. I just love that roller coaster. It's just fun. It's smooth.

1:07:42Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. We had a Batman here at Six Flags America, which is closed now. So is America. This was last year. Yeah. But the Batman here was one of the ones where they lay you down flat. Oh. Yeah. We don't have that one. So it's a flying. You're flying like Batman, I guess. It was cool. It was cool. Terrible, terrible park, though. Oh, awful park. It deserved a close. So a couple other things I put in here. There's a website called rentahuman.ai. Getting a lot of press. Yeah, a lot. I don't know if you guys have seen this, but maybe this is the dystopian future that we're in for. It makes me glad I'm old, Dave.

1:08:30Jason DeFillippo:Right. Yes. Yeah. That we can't be replaced. And I don't I am still on the fences to the degree to which this is satire or real. I just I think like many things, it probably started as satire. Then nobody interpreted it that way. So now it's real. Yeah.

1:08:47Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. I think everybody's broken. They're like, oh, this will work. I can make money off of AI this way. I'm in.

1:08:53Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, that's true. Anyway, it's both funny and disturbing.

1:08:58Brian Schulmeister:Vicky Yang from Beijing here. Her skills are ballroom dancing, ballet, photography, drawing and painting. and she's rentable for the AI for$50 an hour. So, yeah, she's trained in ballroom dance, ballet experience, photography, currently working remotely while pregnant, which makes me highly available, responsive, and well-suited for local tasks, documentation, creative assignments, and real-world execution requests. All right. Okay. You know what this reminds me of? Hell. Demon. Demon by Daniel Suarez. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's right. This is just right out of that where the AI and that would hire people to go out and do stuff.

1:09:34Brian Schulmeister:It's just exactly it.

1:09:37Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, it's funny. I was just talking with someone this morning about how we could see a rejuvenation of the status of people in the trades because AI can't install the plumbing in your house or fix your electricity, that sort of thing. So we'll see if it hollows out middle management, will we see an elevation of the trades for, you know, for what they are relative to AI? Be interesting.

1:10:05Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. I just tried to sign up and make myself rentable and it said something went wrong. It gave me the shrug emoji. Okay. Apparently I'm not human enough. Yeah. Well, yeah, it happens.

1:10:17Jason DeFillippo:What are you going to do? Yeah. You can't get past the capture, the human capture. And finally, there's an interview. You mentioned him earlier today. Sir Ian McKellen was on Colbert and they had an extended interview that is just delightful. And I highly recommend everybody watch it. There's a clip going around from it where McKellen does a bit of Shakespeare that is very appropriate for this moment in which we find ourselves. But the whole interview is just kind and warm and talks about theater and the human experience and people being together. it's uh 20 minutes or so well spent and um i recommend everybody check it out because it's one of those very human soft moments that i think helps recharge your batteries so put the link in the show notes and please do check it out it was uh i found it very meaningful he's he is a delight as a he is he really is yeah yeah and he's funny and you know everything you'd want him to be and And Colbert is the perfect person to be paired up with him.

1:11:29Of course, Colbert being the super fan of Lord of the Rings to be sitting there with Gandalf.

1:11:41Jason DeFillippo:Dream come true for him as well.

1:11:44Brian Schulmeister:By the way, the rentahuman.ai site. So it did go through. I do have a profile here, which I immediately said that I'm unavailable. so you can get verified as a human with a blue check mark because apparently every human needs a blue check mark in priority listing for$9.99 a month. So that's how they're making money. There you go. There's the rub.

1:12:06Jason DeFillippo:I have to pay to make money. Yes. Pay to play, just like the Sunset Strip in the 80s. Yep. All right, guys.

1:12:16Brian Schulmeister:I'm going to go watch the Muppets.

1:12:18Jason DeFillippo:Yes, please do. You will be happy. Yes. I hope so. All right. See you guys soon. Take care.

1:12:25Brian Schulmeister:Closing shout outs. Over on Patreon, nobody knew. So, Maxwell and Martin up there pledge. And Martin says, hey, guys, my savings are getting clobbered right now. But let me adjust my donation for all the crazy inflation we had. Hope this little bit helps and better times are ahead. Yes, Martin, thank you very much. And we do hope better times are ahead because, although I'm very sloth to say things can't get much worse because they can always get worse. Things can always get worse. Always get worse. Yes. And we'd also like to thank Dino, Ken, Christopher, James, Travis, Thomas, Larry, Trafton, Gabriel, and Alex for your continued support.

1:13:03Brian Schulmeister:Thank you all.

1:13:04Jason DeFillippo:Over at PayPal, we have donations from Levy, Nicola, Florian, Thomas with$25 donation, and James and Martin, both with$50 donations. Thank you, guys. It's more than we made from our robot overlords after Jason signed up.

1:13:18Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Seriously. And over at the tip jar, we've got Matthew and Adam. No reviews. But just a quick reminder, if you want to support the show, head over to GOG.show slash donate or patreon.com slash GOG. And you can help support the show for as little as$3 a month or up to as much as your big heart desires. You get the show a little early and ad-free and in high definition on Patreon. That's the only place we can do that right now. So give us a hand, please, because your support is what keeps the show on the air.

1:13:48Jason DeFillippo:That's right. Thank you all so much for that. And just minutes after we turned off our mics last week, all of our phones went beeping with the news that we had lost the great Catherine O 'Hara. And since it's now been a week and she has been extolled across social media and the world all over the place, there's not much else to say about it other than she will be greatly missed and hilarious and would have been a great guest on The Muppet Show. Dave.

1:14:11Brian Schulmeister:That's exactly what I was going to say. We just missed her. Missed her by that much.

1:14:15Jason DeFillippo:So sad to hear. And the only thing that I would have continued watching the studio for, unfortunately.

1:14:20Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, they're kind of in a pickle right now on what to do. So we'll see what they do with that. Because, yeah, she was great in that show. Absolutely great. I really, really enjoyed the studio. I put a link to an article in the show notes on Rolling Stone that my friend Meryl Marco wrote about her. So I recommend giving that a read. It was pretty good. Excellent. And we got a note from listener Jennifer, whose husband, Sam Balloon Man Martinez, is in the hospital right now. And she asked if we could throw up a link to their GoFundMe because he's a balloon guy and his hands are jacked up and can't work.

1:14:57Brian Schulmeister:So I feel really bad for him. I feel really bad for him. So definitely go check out the GoFundMe and throw him a few bones if you can after you throw us a few bones. Priorities. Put your mask on first is what they always say. The plane's going down.

1:15:13Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. So I hope you get better soon, man. And the link is in the show notes. Until next time, I'm Brian Schulmeister.

1:15:19Brian Schulmeister:And I'm Jason DeFilippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 732. Want to keep the grumpiness alive? Toss a few bucks our way at GOG.show slash donate. Every penny helps keep the show on the air. Love the show? Share it. There's a share button in your podcast player. Use it to spread the grumpiness to friends, foes, and everyone in between, and we'll love you for it. Swing by GOG.show to join our Discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts, feedbacks, cool links? Hit us up at GOG.show slash contact. And, hey, don't forget to leave a five-star review at GOG.show slash review, and we'll read it on the air.

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1:16:06Thank you.