738: A Sprinkling of Random

14:49Jason DeFillippo:You know, the thing is, I haven't used any of their software since they started pushing AI into it. So I'm sure it's a gazillion times worse now.

14:58Brian Schulmeister:It's hard for that thing to get worse. Confluence. Oh, my God, that was terrible. Yeah. I just remember it written in Java. written in Java, and nothing ever fucking worked. Nothing ever worked. What about next?

15:11Jason DeFillippo:Meta could be preparing for one of the largest layoffs in its history, according to a Reuters report. The tech giant is planning to cut about 20 % of its workforce, according to outlet sources. They report that Meta's top executives have told other senior leaders to start planning how to pare back. In the latest financial report, the company's employee headcount was 78 ,865 as of December 31st, 2025, while revenue reached nearly let's see we have to do a bunch of layoffs revenue reached nearly $60 billion for the fourth quarter and more than$200 billion for the entire year of course we have to remember that Mark Zuckerberg decides to pour that money into the now shuttered pantsless bullshit VR space and paying gazillions of dollars to AI people to come and start their other crap so there you go

16:03Brian Schulmeister:I'm doing a little back of the napkin math here. $200 billion divided by 78 ,865 people equals$2 ,535 ,979.20 per employee is how much revenue they made. And I guarantee you, those employees, they do not make$2 ,535 ,000 per employee. So, yeah.

16:32Jason DeFillippo:No, they do not. And again, to use the phrase that we just meant, we have been using the bread and butter of meta, Facebook, the Instagram, fucking useless these days. Nothing but ads and reels. I have the few people's updates that I have seen have started posting about what are we even doing here? I don't see anybody's updates anymore. It's nothing but a fucking ad and reel serving machine. There's no point on being on these fucking things anymore.

17:01Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, I mean, you're just being sold to. And a couple of people I've talked to, their ROAS for ads on Meta and Instagram have dropped through the floor. That was the thing. Like the return on ad spend a couple of years ago was actually really good. You could expect, you know, a couple hundred percent return. You know, you spend$1 ,000, you get five back based on what you can sell. And now it's like barely breaking even. So people are starting to leave because of that. Because there's nobody there anymore because everybody is just not getting what they want.

17:28Jason DeFillippo:Well, even if they are there, you don't see their updates anymore. You just don't unless you go out of your way to find them. Like most people I know now will pop it open for a second. We'll scroll for like five seconds. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing close. That's it.

17:43Brian Schulmeister:Well, now it's just basically entertainment. You open it because you're bored. That's it. You open it up and it's just like, hey, guys, I got nothing to do for 10 minutes. What am I going to look at? And then you get sucked down the rabbit hole for two hours a la TikTok. And that's how they make their money. It's just basically they've monetized boredom to a different degree from what it used to be, which was, let me see what my friends are doing. Completely different product, 100%.

18:05Jason DeFillippo:These are absolutely not social networks anymore. They're not.

18:08Brian Schulmeister:No, they're not. No, they're just media companies. That's it. They're just media companies. Well, speaking of meta, according to reports, a meta engineer let an AI agent answer a technical question. The agent impersonated the engineer, gave bad advice, and boom, sensitive user data was exposed to unauthorized employees for about two hours. This is great. This happened on the internal Slack channel. Like somebody posted the thing. The agent actually, like, there was just this whole like three's company moment. And then the AI agent actually went back to Slack and replied to the original poster and gave them some advice.

18:39Brian Schulmeister:And then that person took the advice like it was the other poster and then did it. And it fucked everything up. Woohoo. Yeah. Oh, God. And earlier this year, another AI agent. How far have we come, Jason?

18:49Jason DeFillippo:We used to have to rely on humans to do that.

18:52Brian Schulmeister:Oh, yeah, I know. We used to have interns. This was an intern fuck up. And now you can't even fire the intern. We're going to give the intern five million GPUs to do it even more. So, yeah, if you remember earlier, another meta AI agent got access to an exec's inbox and promptly deleted everything while being told very politely to stop. Now, this is where this is wrong. It wasn't a meta AI agent. It was OpenClaw that this person just said, here, let's try and clean up my inbox. They're like, okay, and this is the paperclip problem. It's like, I want you to make paperclips. Well, then the death of the universe comes while the AI is still making paperclips.

19:30Brian Schulmeister:They're like, we'll clean up your inbox, all right? Select all, delete. That was it. Define clean. Job done. It's a scope.

19:39Jason DeFillippo:Again, you got to scope it out properly.

19:42Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So now Meta is bringing in signal creator Moxie Marlin Spike to bolt encryption onto its chatbots because apparently the solution to AI chaos is more AI, but encryption this time. But here's where it gets fun. Meta is quietly backing away from one of Zuckerberg's old promises because back in 2019, he pitched a privacy-focused future for Facebook, back when it was still Facebook. Yeah, built around end-to-end encryption so even Meta couldn't read your messages. And Messenger eventually did get encryption by 2023. Four years, I'd like to point out, four fucking years.

20:22Brian Schulmeister:But Instagram, not so much. Now, the company says it's abandoning plans to roll out encrypted Instagram DMs altogether, claiming very few users opted in. Which, of course, tends to happen when encryption isn't the default, and most people never dig through the settings, because the default is to give everybody everything and leave it open ass to the wind. you know? So Meta says you can still get encrypted chats on WhatsApp, but Instagram is going to stay as is. So there you go. All right. One more of the inshittification of the Meta. Okay. Well, Instagram may be finally loosening one of its oldest rules, but only if you pay.

21:04Brian Schulmeister:Meta is testing clickable links directly in post captions for users subscribed to Meta Verified. They're taking a page out of Elon's book right here with Twitter verified or X verified or whatever the fuck. So historically, Instagram forced creators to shove everything into the infamous Lincoln bio, spotting an entire ecosystem of shitty fucking tools like Linktree, which we should have fucking built. We made fun of Linktree when it came out and we were fucking stupid. I'm like, that's blog rolling for Instagram. They're just going to bake this shit in. This will never be a, oh, wait, That's a hundred million dollar business right now.

21:39Fuck me.

21:40Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. So, well, in the test, creators can add up to 10 clickable links per month inside the captions. And the feature currently works in the mobile app, but not on the web. And meta hasn't said how widely it's going to roll out. So the platform that broke the links in the first place will now sell them back to you, starting at about 15 bucks a month. That's about a buck 50 a link.

22:01Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, great. Yeah, that's worth it. Actually, probably is. It will be for some people, yes. Absolutely. Yeah.

22:10Brian Schulmeister:Yeah.

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23:48Jason DeFillippo:Well, let's go back to lawsuits. OpenAI has been hit with yet another one, and this one's pretty heavy from what I remember from my childhood. It's the Encyclopedia Britannica. Those things add some F to them.

23:58Brian Schulmeister:I got a set. I got a set in the house. It is really fucking heavy.

24:02Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. They took legal action against OpenAI, accusing the company of copyright and trademark infringements. More specifically, Britannica alleged that OpenAI illegally used its copyrighted content at a massive scale when training its AI models. And not just with training. The encyclopedia company claims that ChatGPT's responses to users' queries sometimes contain full or partial verbatim reproductions of Britannica's copyright articles. Duh. Along with claims to copyright violations, Britannica also argued that OpenAI was responsible for trademark infringement. According to the lawsuit, ChatGPT generates made-up content or hallucinations and falsely attributes them to Encyclopedia Britannica.

24:40Jason DeFillippo:First, I've heard that tact. And that is... That's...

24:44Brian Schulmeister:Yeah.

24:44Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, that's bad and that's good. I like the way they're going after this. So they are seeking an injunction to prevent open AI from repeating those accusations. And we don't know how much money they're going for, but I'm 100 percent behind the Britannica on this one. Go for it.

25:01Brian Schulmeister:Oh, yeah. Go for it. Go for it. Yeah, that's a really good, interesting tack. tack is it oh you're you're you're you're diluting our brand and our trademark based on your you know

25:13Jason DeFillippo:non-deterministic output yes the britannica never said to add glue to pizza no it didn't oh wait that was google anyways after by dance suspended the global rollout of its new c dance 2.0 ai video generator over the weekend because people were basically using it to create insanely realistic movies and trailers and stuff with copyrighted material and Tom Cruise and everybody else. Seedance 2.0 poses a direct threat to the American intellectual property system and more broadly to the constitutional rights and economic livelihoods of our creative community, Senators Marsha Blackburn and Peter Welch wrote in a letter to the company.

25:52Jason DeFillippo:They're trying to shut it down immediately because they are worried about AI companies training their apps on copyrighted materials from artists, actors, and filmmakers without permission. A little late to the game. We've been talking about it for a couple years now. But now you're worried about it. Welcome to the party, pal. They cited Seadance AI examples including an AI-generated Thanos and Superman battle, a rewritten Stranger Things ending. I wonder if I could do Battlestar.

26:20Brian Schulmeister:Oh, yeah. Can we fix Battlestar and can we fix Lost? Those are the questions. You know, if they can fix those,

26:27Jason DeFillippo:the sea dance might be okay yeah and the famous fake tom cruise and brad pitt battle that went

26:32Brian Schulmeister:viral so yeah so we'll see what happens those guys are hurting financially so we need to make sure that they don't they don't lose any any coin out of that well that's a you know it's the it's

26:41Jason DeFillippo:the rich get richer problem here after pulling sea dance 2.0 bite dance said over the weekend that it respects intellectual property rights with a straight face they said that and that is taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorized use of intellectual property and likenesses by users. They called the pledge a delay tactic to continue to abuse the innovators and profit from their successes. And that it's regard for American IP as part of a larger trend of artificial intelligence companies stealing protected work at the expense of the creative community. Again, welcome to the parties, pal.

27:15Brian Schulmeister:So I would like to say if any of these LLM companies and frontier model companies actually give a shit about copyright, don't train your model on copyrighted material. Yep. simple enough, right? Yeah. But they're not going to do that. So, yeah. No, of course not. All right, let's get some more fun news here. This is no AI involved in this one. Trump media burned through over$712 million last year while bringing in 3.7. That's right. They turned$712 million into$3.7 million. Now, technically, they should be an AI company with this kind of burn rate, you know? This is open AI level and anthropic level burning of money.

27:55Brian Schulmeister:But yeah, so the stock is cratered. It's now down under$9 from a high of$80. And because the company has been dabbling in prediction markets, buying up Bitcoin and now jumping into nuclear fusion. Just what I want Trump media to have their fingers in is nuclear fusion.

28:12Jason DeFillippo:Quite the portfolio.

28:14Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, let's throw some shit at the wall and see what sticks. And apparently nothing.

28:19Jason DeFillippo:Now, just a reminder that the Trump media was basically created to bilk the MAGA faithful. Please invest and give us your money. We don't actually care if this does anything or makes any money. Why don't we care? Oh, I don't know. Because according to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration is set to receive a total of$10 billion in the deal that allowed TikTok to remain in the U.S. If this isn't grift, I don't know what is. the new investors required stakes in the u.s entity of tiktok have already paid a 2.5 billion dollar fee to the administration when the deal closed in january but the wall street journal's latest report noted that the group of investors would continue to make payments until the total hits 10 billion dollars to better contextualize the recently revealed 10 billion dollar fee the trump administration is receiving the u.s entity of tiktok was valued at 14 billion dollars by Vice President J.D.

29:13Jason DeFillippo:Vance. So, wow. Yeah.

29:17Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, 80 % of the value of the TikTok deal is given back to the Trump administration. No, there's nothing wrong with that. No, this is completely normal. God forbid a fucking Democrat would do that. Jesus Christ. Oh, Jesus Christ.

29:29Jason DeFillippo:Can you imagine if Obama did something like this? Can you imagine? Pitchforks. Yeah.

29:35Brian Schulmeister:If Obama forgot to tip the guy at Starbucks, then we'd have fucking insurrection.

29:39Jason DeFillippo:He wore a tan suit. Oh, my God. And they freaked out.

29:43Brian Schulmeister:This is unbelievable, Griff. Unbelievable. He forgot to salute one time, and then there was three hours of Fox News coverage on it.

29:52Jason DeFillippo:Now, lest us forget, this isn't the only thing that has happened. Last year, the administration invested$8.9 billion into Intel and received a nearly 9 % equity stake. And, of course, he got the Boeing 747-8 as a gift from the Qatari government in May. Totally normal. Totally normal. Oh, yeah.

30:11Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. What's wrong with that, Brian? What's wrong with that?

30:15Jason DeFillippo:It's business, man. Just business.

30:17Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of business, back in 2010, remember Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Melinda French Gates when she was Melinda French Gates still? I'm trying to remember 2010 and be back there. Yeah. God. Yeah. Well, they launched the Giving Pledge. That was the idea where billionaires promised to donate at least half of their wealth to charity. Remember that?

30:38Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, I can think of one person that may be on track to do that. One. Just one. One, and she's the wife who just got all the money.

30:47Brian Schulmeister:She is awesome. We'll get to her in a second. Yes, more than 250, though, wealthy families eventually signed on, including Mike Bloomberg, Mackenzie Scott, and Sam Altman. But the vibe has shifted hard in the past few years. New signups have slowed to a trickle because some billionaires are quietly backing away, and at least one, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, actually unsigned the pledge entirely.

31:07Jason DeFillippo:Wait, did he go through his email, find the DocuSign document, reload it, and unclick on signature? I think so. I think so.

31:16Brian Schulmeister:So they're saying that part of the shift is political because in the current climate, billionaires are less interested in nonprofit philanthropy and more interested in direct influence. Give me a fucking break. Bullshit. Oh, I'm sorry. The direct influence is funding elections and pushing policy through their businesses, not giving the money away to people on the street. Mackenzie. so some people including Elon Musk argue their companies themselves are philanthropy um yeah dude this is this is the Andreessen cocktail speaking whatever they're on ketamine dreams baby yeah others like Peter Thiel have been actively encouraging people to ditch the pledge calling it an Epstein-adjacent fake boomer club.

32:04Brian Schulmeister:Well...

32:04Jason DeFillippo:How about you release that list and then we'll talk about it, Peter.

32:07Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, we'll talk a little more.

32:09Jason DeFillippo:Let's get a little more info first.

32:12Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Well, that criticism actually lands a little harder thanks to Bill Gates' reputational baggages from his ties to Jeffrey Epstein and all of the shit that just came out about him and the Russian hookers and the STDs and all the good stuff. And his wife leaving him because she knew all about it. Oh, dearie, dearie me. So, yeah, billionaires are going to billion and they're going to take their money back and they're going to go play in their own playground and just say, no, we're not giving any of it away except for Mackenzie Scott, who is the hero of the fucking universe. The more I read about her, the more I love her.

32:45Brian Schulmeister:She's wonderful.

32:45Jason DeFillippo:I don't know how she tolerated that fucknut for as long as she did.

32:49Brian Schulmeister:No, no, I don't either. But speaking of that fucknut, the Washington Post just ditched flat subscription pricing and went full uber surge mode using AI to decide how much you personally should pay. Based on your data, location, reading habits, even what device you use, the algorithm figures out exactly how much it can squeeze out of you before you bounce. Well, the company's being vague about how it works, but experts say this kind of pricing can get uncomfortably invasive. You fucking think? And they're pulling in everything from your zip code to inferred income.

33:24Jason DeFillippo:Now, hold on a second. Yes. To be fair, in the old days of subscribing to a newspaper, they also knew your zip code because they delivered it to your house.

33:34Brian Schulmeister:That's true. But did they change the rates on how much they charged? They did not. Just clarifying. Just clarifying.

33:40Jason DeFillippo:But let's not make it a data invasive problem here because they've always had that data. It's the way that they're using the data.

33:48Brian Schulmeister:They're using the data. Yes, exactly. Yes. And they also didn't tell what phone you had inside of your house to tell if you are an iPhone or an Android, if you could pay more or less. Yeah.

33:58Jason DeFillippo:So now we're all going to have our burner Androids for cheaper subscriptions and we're all going to use our VPNs and come in from Namibia. And yeah, that's the only way we're going to get cheaper subscriptions. This is this is the nightmare. This is what we thought that AI would start to be used for. And this is the bullshit that is coming.

34:16Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, we are at end stage in shittification. Cups and doodads.

34:24Jason DeFillippo:Well, speaking of in shittification, Adobe has been in shittifying for quite some time and they've finally gotten their hands slapped for it. They've agreed to pay the U.S. government$75 million to settle its lawsuit over the company's alleged harmful approach to subscriptions. Everybody expect your$1.50 that we'll get from that. Oh, wait, no, we won't get any. We won't get a penny. No. The suit started in 2024 when the U.S. Department of Justice and the FTC filed a joint complaint alleging the company deliberately made it difficult to cancel subscriptions and obscure the frequently expensive early termination fee customers had to pay to get out of annual subscriptions that are paid monthly.

35:00Jason DeFillippo:While we disagree with the government's claims to deny any wrongdoing, we are pleased to resolve this matter. We disagree, but have$75 million because we think you're wrong.

35:10Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, and they're giving it directly to the Department of Justice. And by the way, that should have another zero at the end of it, at least for the for the trouble that they caused with this. This is this is another grift. It's just going back. It's just I'm surprised they didn't buy it in DJT coin, you know, to pay their to pay their bill, because this is such a lowball bullshit fee. Yes. Bullshit.

35:32Jason DeFillippo:It's total bullshit. And, you know, the article just goes on and on about all the stuff that we talked about, the dark patterns that they were using and how they've modified things to make things more streamlined and transparent. just because they got caught. That's why.

35:46Brian Schulmeister:Yep, that's it. I've been in this loop with them. I'm sure you have too. It was a nightmare.

35:53Jason DeFillippo:Multiple times, not only personally, but then I was also managing Adobe subscriptions for the company that I was working at for a while and trying to add and remove subscriptions was a nightmare, total nightmare. Oh, wait, sorry. Adding subscriptions, super easy.

36:06Brian Schulmeister:Super easy, super easy to add. Yeah, yeah. God forbid you want to downgrade. um i you know there was a fine company he used to advertise on this show who did uh temporary credit card numbers which uh i'm not going to mention them because they're no longer advertisers on this show you know who you are come back we we had a good partnership you fuckers a lot of users too lots of people who still use your program still talk about it uh but so i would create a card on that service, swap it out for my Adobe subscription card, then cancel it and turn it off. And then, you know, that's how I would have to cancel my subscription on Adobe.

36:46Brian Schulmeister:That was it. You know, you have to make a fake credit card or a temporary credit card. It wasn't fake. It was a real credit card number. And then actually have it switch over and then cancel it. It was ridiculous. And by the way, that still works for a lot of different things that are hard to, that they say, well, will you call us to unsubscribe? I'm like, no, I'm just going to change my billing and kill the card. That's it. That's what you do. Yeah. So this is a new AI app that just came out yesterday called Google Stitch. This is basically the vibe coding of design work now. It came from Google.

37:22Brian Schulmeister:This is Google Stitch. And it's interesting. I have not played with it yet. but in looking at it, I'm very fascinated because as an ex-engineer, you know my design skills are not the best. So this basically lets you vibe design your app that you're vibe coding over here with Gemini and Codex and Claude and all that shit. And so you have a nice pretty front end over here. Now I'm dying to try this because they've actually put out a new file format called design.md. I don't know if you're deep enough, Brian, into actual AI coding or using much of the agents or stuff like that. Because generally when you start a project, you create an agents.md file, which gives your agent marching orders on what it can do, what it can't do, what it should do, what it shouldn't do.

38:10Brian Schulmeister:And there's skill sets for different things. So this is just another layer of that telling the LLM what it can and can't do. The one thing, the reason I'm really kind of pointing this out is this is the first time I've seen an AI tool set come out that actually has instructions and a user manual. The link in the show notes, if you go to the show notes, there's actually a page that tells you how to use the tool because none of these other fucking LLMs have fucking instructions. There is no manual. It's like, here's a chat box. Type some shit. I'm like, okay.

38:44Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, but how does it work? How do I make it work better? or oh wait, there's no instructions.

38:48Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. So I think at least from that point, Google's done a fairly good job. I guess, you know, coders, we just like to tinker. Designers need actual handholding and instructions, so.

39:01Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right, this is pretty cool. Like it just generates a whole bunch of CSS for you and it's got really, yeah. That's, I would definitely try this out if I had a project to do it with.

39:11Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, yeah, I'm going to be trying it out. I've actually got a project that I'm working on that I'm going to use it for. And it's nice because you can do website or application. Yeah, I saw the split between it.

39:21Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, that's cool.

39:22Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, yeah, very cool, very cool. There'll be more coming soon on the stuff that I'm working on because I need to make something. And I'm telling you, Brian, you will shit a brick if you could see the stuff that's going on. It's actually impressive from a coding standpoint. From an everything else standpoint, I fight with these things all day long because it's like they don't – I say one thing and it tells me one thing. And then the next sentence, it tells me the actual opposite. I'm like, fuck me. Why do these things? Non-deterministic output, Brian, I have to remember.

39:54Jason DeFillippo:Black box, man.

39:55Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, yeah.

39:56Jason DeFillippo:A lot of sprinkling of random in there.

39:59Brian Schulmeister:A lot of sprinkling of random. Now, speaking of non-deterministic output, Brian, password creation. You would think that using an AI to create your passwords would be awesome because every time it should give you something completely fucking, different random the sprinkling of random it should be great the sprinkling of random should

40:19Jason DeFillippo:be epic it is apparently not not when it sticks a finger in instead of a letter yeah that too that

40:27Brian Schulmeister:too i aq2 poop emoji finger eggplant no that doesn't work but you know so when you ask your llm like uh gemini chat gpt clod all of those major ones to generate a password for you it's still a prediction engine so it is going to go back to the well and it finds the most popular basic password so it gives you one two three four five that yeah even if you give it specific instructions in your agent's md file or whatever your md file is uh yeah you're gonna get the same shit so these things are like a boon for for uh fishers and hackers so people can totally tell now that you're not actually creating a random password.

41:11Brian Schulmeister:And the cybersecurity firm Irregular did the test on this and said that, yeah, it's not good. They're very predictable. There is no random. There is no good seed. I forget, who's the company in San Francisco that has the wall of lava lamps? Oh, crap. I can't remember anything.

41:29Jason DeFillippo:I see it in my mind.

41:30Brian Schulmeister:We use them every day. But anyway, the wall of lava lamps that they have a webcam pointed at to actually generate randomness for their seed, for their random seed generators. This just goes back to the LLM well and said, let me predict exactly what everybody else would predict. And so the determination was use 1Password. Yes. That's it. GOG.show slash 1Password if you would like to go try them out.

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43:56Jason DeFillippo:media candy well it's been March break here so the kid has been out of school and we took a little trip and watched quite a lot of movies a lot of kids movies so I've got a couple bits of reports here Zootopia 2 has come out Zootopia 1 is something that I missed the first time around my kid wasn't old enough but we watched that a little while back very good Zootopia 2 excellent these are fantastic efforts fantastic Disney movies really well done really funny a lot of good jokes for the adults in there fantastic stuff we also I discussed that we had watched Shrek finally got my kid to watch Shrek recently and how it didn't really have legs it wasn't as funny as one remembered it being we watched Shrek's 2 and 3 over the over the break while we were on our little vacation and I'm happy to report they get better as they go along.

44:52Brian Schulmeister:Oh, good.

44:52Jason DeFillippo:They figured out the secret sauce. They figured out to actually put jokes in there and put a lot of stuff for the adults in there. So progressively funnier as they go along.

45:03Brian Schulmeister:Well, and you pointed out in Shrek 1, Puss in Boots wasn't even in it. So the addition of Puss in Boots, I think, actually raised it probably, you know, 10%. It does raise the bar quite a lot.

45:13Jason DeFillippo:Yeah.

45:13Brian Schulmeister:Yeah.

45:15Jason DeFillippo:And I also mentioned recently that I had gone back to the west wing well just to have it on in the background late at night to soothe my soul a little bit it was on netflix uh for a couple months for the entire time that i've been watching it and apparently it had just shown up on netflix uh when i started watching and just as quickly poof gone this is the media landscape that we existed it just disappeared uh after a couple months and now it's back apparently on hbo max so i was able to find it and just had to remember where i left off and off i went again so but i do love the hat switches that go on with all these things it just disappears anyways uh star trek starfleet academy season finale aired so i was able to cancel my paramount for the time being which is nice good at least until uh until strange new worlds comes back uh you know they were able to solve the molecular mcguffin they had a somewhat of a happy ending, I suppose.

46:11Jason DeFillippo:I thought it was very nice. They didn't really tease too much about what would be coming in a second season, although we know we are definitely getting one. Overall, now that the season's over, what'd you think, Jason?

46:23Brian Schulmeister:I can't remember what the season finale entailed. I completely, I watched it. I cannot remember a goddamn thing from it, so I'm gonna have to watch it again.

46:32Jason DeFillippo:What you mostly got out of it was Giamatti doing an awful lot of chewing on scenery, which was glorious.

46:39Brian Schulmeister:Okay. Yeah, I need to watch it again. I think the melatonin was kicking in for the evening, and I just phased out. I had a phased transition. That's what I did.

46:50Jason DeFillippo:All right. We'll catch up on that one next week after you've seen it again then so we can do our end-of-season wrap-up.

46:56Brian Schulmeister:Okay. Okay. So you talked about HBO Max, and I would say that some of the things that you can get on HBO Max right now are Dune and Dune 2 and that miniseries. so i would recommend getting those before dune part three comes out because the official teaser trailer dropped this week you've got till december 18th to go watch all of that stuff again uh did

47:15Jason DeFillippo:you get a chance to see the trailer brian i did it wasn't bad the thing that bummed me out though is he's basically announced this is it we're not gonna get uh we're not gonna get fucking crazy uh leto putting sandworms all over his body and becoming a giant worm which is i was just gunning for this. I wanted it. I wanted it so bad. But he's going to stop doing the movie. He stopped in the books after this one. So, all right.

47:38Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, it's kind of a bummer. It looks great. Like the other ones, it looks great. Soundtrack's going to be amazing. It's going to be a feast for the eyes. And it starts 17 years after Paul Atreides takes the throne. Now, here's the other really bummer. I mean, it's a bummer that it's ending, sure. The real bummer is Rebecca Ferguson has one scene in the movie, and they put it in the trailer. So, okay.

48:01Jason DeFillippo:bummer i mean she's she's my favorite she's beautiful but uh we should get a lot of uh anna taylor joy or whatever her name is because she's playing alia i believe so okay yeah okay

48:12Brian Schulmeister:we'll see i see i'm looking forward to it i'm looking i mean it's next generation man but i

48:15Jason DeFillippo:mean in the book she's she's in quite a bit which is kind of a bummer but you got to cut something

48:19Brian Schulmeister:it's a movie yeah yeah i'm sure it's only gonna be three and a half hours long if the other ones or any bellwether. Paradise. Paradise has been renewed for season three at Hulu. I am, we're coming up to the end of season two on, yeah, I really liked season one. I really liked season one. And season two is back out in the real world after things have fallen apart. And it just turns into a mediocre fucking dystopian it's a hexcape. It's not even a hellscape. It's a hexcape. Right. You know, it's just not that great. And it's predictable. And the only thing that has really made season one so good was the first episode at Graceland.

49:08Brian Schulmeister:That was fucking phenomenal. But the rest of it so far has just been mediocre dystopian bullshit. I'm not, I'm not loving it. I'm not loving it at all. You're not a big anime guy. Are you, Brian? No, I'm not. Okay. I found a movie that was, I think this came through Gizmodo. It's called Mars Express. I think it came out in 2023. And they were saying that this movie should be up there with the pantheon of great anime movies like Akira and all of those movies. So I was like, okay, I'll check it out. I haven't watched a good anime movie in a long time. And I have to concur. It is damn near a perfect movie.

49:44Brian Schulmeister:Guess what it has on Rotten Tomatoes, Brian? 100%. It does have 100%. Good guess. I clicked on the link. You probably clicked the link in the show notes. so um yeah i finished watching it last night highly recommended it's only an hour and a half long great storytelling great visuals just great all around appropriate for kids or is this an older thing hell no not appropriate for kids no no my kid is starting to get into anime he likes

50:12Jason DeFillippo:all that stuff and vetting all that stuff is a fucking pain in the ass so yeah no this is this

50:17Brian Schulmeister:This is a daddy view. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. And in the big news this week, Nathan Fillion has announced that Firefly will be coming back as an animated series with the whole cast. How is it going to be the whole cast? You say if you've seen Serenity and you know that Wash dies and all the other multiple characters die. Well, they're going to set this new animated series between the end of the series and the beginning of the movie. So Wash gets to come back because he's important because he's everybody's favorite fucking character and Joss Whedon killed him. so we're going to see how this plays out you actually have a story coming up about Buffy the Vampire Slayer I'm going to let you get to that one next and then I'll talk about my other story because these tie together

50:58Jason DeFillippo:I was never really all that into Firefly nor was I really all that into Buffy I know that you were into both so Buffy was supposed to be coming back as well it was going to be Buffy New Sunnydale they announced all of it and Sarah Michelle Gellar was back Chloe Zhao was going to direct it. She's fantastic. How interesting is this going to be? Pretty cool. No, canceled. Announced over the weekend while Zhao was at the Oscars and Sarah Michelle Gellar was doing something else. They seemed to have timed it to make sure that they were busy and wouldn't be sitting around making angry TikTok reels or whatever the hell you do when you get pissed off about this sort of stuff.

51:35Jason DeFillippo:that didn't work it did not work sarah miguel uh sarah michelle geller had got a hold of the people at people and she informed everybody we had an executive on our show who was not only not only not a fan of the original but was proud to constantly remind us that he had never seen the entirety of the series and how it wasn't for him so you got somebody like that on board who kind of killed it uh from music world i know how this works if you had an anr agent that signed your band and he quits or gets fired and you get replaced by somebody that doesn't give a fuck about you your career is done yeah so yeah and that was just part of the story yeah the bad

52:14Brian Schulmeister:executive but also i hear the script was shit and chloe zhou was completely not what a right fit for the type of production that it needed to be completely wrong style so the whole thing was kind of an active mess so the executive might have been right the executive actually might been right they well they it was wrong for hulu to put that executive in in charge of that property you need somebody who's a fucking fan of that series to to you know spearhead that you're like oh let's put a devil's advocate in there no that's not what you do with with a beloved series like buffy you don't fucking do that um here's the problem that that buffy is going to face and firefly are both going to face and i'm going to be probably a little bit indelicate here uh the guy who made both of those, the guy who was canceled, actually was the creative force behind those shows and was the spirit of those shows and trying to do those shows without him is probably not going to work.

53:09Brian Schulmeister:No matter what you think about Joss Whedon, it doesn't matter. Those were his creations from his mind and that's what made those shows those shows.

53:18Jason DeFillippo:And this is also my theory as to why we may never be seeing Good Omens 3.

53:22Brian Schulmeister:They said it's coming out. David Tennant made a tweet. said it was coming out we shall see we shall see we shall see but yes when when the heart and soul of a show goes away yeah you can you can hire some writers to kind of keep it but you don't have that spearhead behind it to really guide the ship and that's a fucking problem yep so yeah so yeah i you know like i said people still listen to michael jackson music so maybe they should just let him come back and do the fucking shows and go back away and hide in a cave again I don't know. I think you have to be dead. Oh, that could be it. So, too bad.

53:58Brian Schulmeister:This is real quick here. V for Vendetta, 20 years old. I cannot fucking believe V for Vendetta is 20 years old. I watched this movie in the theater two times on opening weekend when Bob Fogarty and I went to the Dignation recording in Reno, Nevada, and we were so drunk we couldn't go snowboarding with everybody, so we decided to spend the weekend in a dark movie theater to recover. I just, I'm just gobsmacked that this movie is 20 years old. I just. It's a great movie. It is a great movie. I highly recommend it. It has legs. And especially it has more legs now. If you go watch, I don't know, anything outside that's going on.

54:34Brian Schulmeister:It really kind of is one of those predicting bellwethers. So, enjoy it. The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave.

54:47Brian Schulmeister:Welcome to the Dark Side with Dave with a podcaster who never sleeps, Dave Bittner. Dave covers the daily cybersecurity beat on the Cyber Wire, busts scams with Joe Kerrigan on hacking humans, untangles privacy headaches with Ben Yellen on caveat, digs into industrial security on Control Loop, and still shows up to stir up trouble and only while we're in the buildings and I need to take a breath. Hi, Dave. I need to take a nap. Yeah. Hello, Dave. Good to be back. We've missed you. Well, thank you very much. I missed you guys, too. So nice to see you all. All right.

55:19Jason DeFillippo:Let's just get into it. I have a hat tip and this should be to likeoid on our Discord channel. This should be a good news for you, Dave. And it certainly is for me. Of all the media and properties that my child has gotten into, nothing has stuck as much as Gravity Falls with him. And I have you to thank. You're the one that recommended that show to us. So I'll send you the bill for all the books that I've purchased. Yes. I mean, we have gone through absolutely everything that there is to go through with Gravity Falls. He's watched the show multiple times. He's gotten every single book that has been released so far.

55:55And now there's a new one coming.

55:58Jason DeFillippo:This one's quite pricey, but I already know I'm buying it. Disney has announced the upcoming September 15, 2026 release of The Art of Gravity Falls, a 252 page art book that delivers the definitive visual history of the series, but as per usual, it's not just that. There will be new content in there. The book will reveal the true origins of Gravity Falls with series creator Alex Hirsch returning alongside co-writer Rob Renzetti. This will have never before revealed developmental art from Alex Hirsch's personal archives, including the first inklings of the characters and world lost episode ideas cut jokes deviously hidden easter eggs my god those easter eggs in the books and the translations that my kid has been doing yes every single one of mabel sweaters and much much more so very exciting stuff i assume your family is still into this enough that this will be on your purchasing list as well oh yes no the timing works out.

56:57It'll either be on my son's birthday or Christmas list for this coming year. And that's just an excuse because I'll look forward to checking it out as well. But yeah, it really is a remarkable show in terms of being a gift that keeps on giving. It really has had legs compared to a lot of other things. It's curious that Alex Hirsch hasn't really done much since then. He did some stuff with Owl House, which is another fun animated series. We watched all of that.

57:31Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. But, you know, I don't know. And I don't know if, like you never know if, is he difficult to work with? Was Disney difficult to work with? Was it both of them? Like you'd think something successful like Gravity Falls would lead to follow-up projects, but it hasn't so far. I don't know. sometimes that's that's just kind of what you got too you got you know george lucas we had star wars and then we got howard the duck right true you know true yeah so yeah i he's been kind of tangentially involved with like you said owl house i think he had some hand in um amphibia which is another series which was also fantastic and right loved yeah uh so you know it's uh yeah it's interesting but uh gravity falls is definitely one of those things although that does bring me up to to my next point the way in which kids consume media these days as compared to us you know we had our our one episode a week on saturday morning cartoons or things of that nature now it's all streaming all available 24 7 as many times as you want to watch it binge it watch it all day if your parents let you get away with it i've just experienced i obviously i've experienced that with a lot of shows with my kid, but he just recently, the flip switch for the Muppets on my kid, that new show that really did it.

58:57Jason DeFillippo:We have seen every single movie. We have watched every single episode of every single show, except for the old stuff, because he hasn't quite gotten into that yet. We've even, you know, the Muppet mayhem, all of it, nonstop, burn through it, watch every single piece of media that can possibly be consumed about this, watch trailers, watch extras, watch behind the scenes. Holy crap, kids consume things way differently than we did. And I am curious as to how that's going to affect them or will it? Or is this just the world now? First of all, congratulations on your success as a parent. Thank you.

59:35Your child is consuming quality media. Yeah. Yeah, I guess, did this start with VHS where you could consume something over and over and over again? I didn't really have, yeah, I mean, VHS came along, well, I guess a better way to say it is our families obtaining a VCR, which was, I think, kind of late in that cycle compared to a lot of folks because VCRs cost a lot of money. um so i don't recall ever having a movie that was like my go-to shove it in the vcr and watch it

1:00:14Jason DeFillippo:over and over again kind of thing um we did but it wasn't i guess the difference would be like even the videos were incredibly expensive or you had to go rent them you know from blockbuster or whatever but you you know it was it was your your expensive vcr and then your 89 copy of star wars So you had a copy. You didn't have all three movies, the 75 VHSs that would have been the Clone Wars. It's just that they have everything on tap so easily now. You couldn't do that back then. And things were more special events, I feel like. yeah i think that's right i mean i don't i don't know if it's a bad thing my son's certainly having a blast and you know it's up to us to limit how much he can watch and we do that but it is strange to just watch watch the obsessions like flare and then burn out generally really quickly it's it's some things like gravity falls or muppets that don't they they keep going back to that well but a lot of stuff it's just like it's it's a month i've seen absolutely everything i will never look at this again or think about it.

1:01:20Yeah. Yeah. The thing I wonder about and something I've noticed with some of my younger co-workers, people who are in their 20s, is that they are proudly ignorant of having proud, proud of being ignorant when it comes to pop culture knowledge. And in thinking about that, I credit a lot of that to the fact that our generation, in the evening sat down with our parents to watch TV because it's all that was on. And if you wanted to watch something, it had to be something that everyone watched something had to be something that everyone agreed upon. And usually your parents would choose anyway, except for like you mentioned earlier, Saturday morning cartoons.

1:02:08So we all had this shared pop culture thing, like TV shows that we probably like shows like all in the family and the Mary Tyler Moore show and things we probably wouldn't have watched as kids, but we did watch because we sat down with our parents and it was the only thing that was on and we only had one TV and all that sort of stuff. So I think today, the 20 somethings who grew up with their own mobile devices, they had access to whatever they wanted, like you're saying, all the time. And they weren't forced into that thing of spending that time with their parents or their sibling. Right. So that those cultural things didn't get absorbed.

1:02:48Multi-generational cultural things didn't get absorbed in the same way that like us, me being forced to watch Bob Hope specials. Right. Yeah. Hee-haw. Hee-haw. I had to watch Hee-haw. Right. The Lawrence Welk show. I talk about Bob Hope specifically because a Bob Hope special would stretch back all the way into vaudeville. Right. The people you'd have on that show. You know, Bob Hope with our special guest, Milton Berle. And I was going to say Milton Berle always. Milton Berle. But we knew who those people were. And we knew a lot of the classic routines and things and the setup of those old timey kind of jokes because of that.

1:03:28And I don't think they're forced into that these days.

1:03:30Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, it's the same. Like, you know, I'm thinking like old school Hollywood squares. You know, you watched it because you didn't have a fucking choice. There wasn't anything else on. Right. But you were indoctrinated into this kind of grander pop culture that everybody, a shorthand that everybody knew and understand. Maybe that's why we're so stratified these days. Maybe that we don't have the shared touchstones anymore. We're not coming from the same place. We all go down our own rabbit holes, not just with media, but with news, with everything. Yeah.

1:04:00Brian Schulmeister:Because, you know, in my world growing up, I never, ever would have wanted to have Ruth Buzzy in my life. But now I know who that is.

1:04:08Jason DeFillippo:who's the who's the guy with the confetti uh oh yeah um whatever his name was he was the most annoying person on the fucking planet but somehow nelson riley yes that was a different guy no not charles nelson riley no he had and he had a terrible toupee yes and he would come on the gong show and what the hell is it oh it's gonna drive me crazy now yeah yeah so yeah i mean you You know, who would choose such a thing? But we all knew what it was. We all knew it. And it still sticks in our head, even if I can't remember the guy's name. I see him in my mind. Rip Taylor. There you go. I know it's Rip Taylor because I just Googled confetti guy.

1:04:48And he was the first thing that came up.

1:04:50Brian Schulmeister:See, I was thinking Paul Lind. Paul Lind was the guy I was thinking about, too.

1:04:55Jason DeFillippo:Yeah. Center Square, please.

1:04:57Brian Schulmeister:Yeah.

1:04:58Jason DeFillippo:See, we all know it. We all know it. It's crazy. I don't think kids have anything like that right now. I know because I've even asked my son, like, you know, do your friends watch the same shows? And sometimes they do. They convince each other to watch things and say it's really good. But in general, they all watch completely different stuff. Do you think, I know my son, my youngest son, who's 19 now, much of the media he consumes are podcasts. So I wonder if there's commonality there. Maybe. hopefully it's not joe rogan no it's not no i i hey you know it's a real-time social experiment and we'll see i hope i don't may i be dead

1:05:48Brian Schulmeister:well speaking of dead i've talked to you guys before about my idea of why haven't they reinvented the zombie genre yet because of ev ev vehicles now i know they're silent running and Daniel writes in, sorry, Jason, but Kia Australia already did the EV zombie apocalypse. It's worth watching even if it's an ad and he sent the link to the ad and the ad is, shh, it's zombie proof and it's a funny ad. Yeah. I thought they did it. They did exactly what I would have done. So, I mean, I would never buy a Kia but otherwise, it's a great ad. So, I highly recommend. Link will be in the show notes. Check it out.

1:06:22Brian Schulmeister:Thanks, Daniel. Yeah. And I'm not mad at that. I'm glad somebody did. That's all I wanted. I wanted somebody to take it and run with it and they did. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. See, that's also where we are today. If you think of it, chances are someone has already done it. Or there's porn of it. Well, there's that, yes. Rule 42. Rule 13, I believe. Isn't it called 13? No, I'm not sure. I mean, shouldn't it be rule 69? Yeah, it should be. I forgot my 4chan rules, I'm sorry to say. Yeah, yeah. I had to memorize 12 steps and the 42 rules of the internet went out the window. I put a link in here for a website page, whatever, that grabbed my attention in the past week here.

1:07:07It's called The Last Quiet Thing, and it's from someone named Terry Godier, I guess it is. And it starts off with a little comparison between a simple Casio watch and your Apple watch. A tip of the hat to whoever built this website that the Casio watch actually shows the correct time. while you're scrolling it by. But I found it really interesting and worth my time. And it's all about how much everything demands our attention and our time these days when they didn't used to, because everything's connected. I wrote a thing about this on Facebook and Mastodon about a week ago, just how it seems like everything is demanding your attention and trying to extract as much as possible out of you.

1:08:01And this is a little study on that. And I found it thought-provoking and worth sharing. So it takes a few minutes to scroll through, but I think it's interesting. I don't know if you guys had a chance to check it out. I did. It's beautiful.

1:08:16Jason DeFillippo:Very cool. Absolutely beautiful. It's funny. I think this must be in our, now that we're old and we have the collective zeitgeist, unlike the kids these days, there must be something in the air about this because i read your thing when you posted it it was it was wonderful um even before you had posted that my wife and i had just been having a lot of discussions about how frustrated we were with how much time and effort is involved just with the upkeep of all the digital things that we have now updating the apps and then going back and checking the settings because now it stopped working the way that we wanted it to work and now there's an update and it doesn't do the same thing the way that we wanted it to do that it used to do so now we have to figure out the new way to do the thing that we wanted it to do and not only do i have to do it for me now i have to go to my parents devices my mom's device and then i have to go around and reset all these and it's so like all these things that we're supposed to make our lives easier and better are sucking the fucking life out of us yeah yeah it's true it's true and yeah i mean surveillance capitalism yep and i think partly what is so frustrating is that we grew up in the era where there was much hope that this was going to lead to the exact opposite of what it's led to.

1:09:31Yeah. And so we were there. I guess we feel as though the promises that were made to us, they were lies.

1:09:40Jason DeFillippo:Well, it's what Jason and I always say on this show, too. It's like the internet. Oh, my God. This wonderful device that is just going to the entirety of the world's knowledge will be available to anyone for free we will be able to discuss in deep thoughts about the things we will move humanity forward we get fucking shitty memes and surveillance capitalism that's that's what we got out of it so yeah yeah careful what you ask for yep yeah and as i'm

1:10:09Brian Schulmeister:trying to build some new some new projects i'm going back to not so much about features as about feelings i remember what it was like when i would with new technology what i felt like when i had it and trying to, you know, recreate some of those feelings, not just the features, because the features are all different now. Features are complete. The internet as it was is dead. Forget it. It has been killed. So, and software as it was, was killed. But trying to rekindle some of that wonder that we used to have and how does that work is kind of what I think about a lot nowadays. And this thing really just hit home.

1:10:41Brian Schulmeister:It's just like, oh my God, so much work that we put into this shit that we pay for. It's like, oh, I pay for the job that I have now. It sucks.

1:10:48Jason DeFillippo:By the way, they're stopping letting you pay for it. Now you have to subscribe to it.

1:10:53Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, now I've got to subscribe. Right. And it's more if they know exactly where I live. Right. There was a thing I saw about a week ago. It was some YouTuber who, unfortunately, I don't remember exactly who it was. It wasn't someone who I regularly watch, but somehow it was brought to my attention. I want to say this person was a woodworker or something like that. And they had put out a little piece about sort of lamenting how much AI had ruined so much of YouTube and that the legit publishers, small, medium-sized publishers like himself, the minute that they publish something, it would get sucked up by some AI that would then take the transcript, recreate it, generate graphics, and basically do its own version of whatever they just published.

1:11:44just to generate clicks and traffic and bleed off some of the interest in whatever that topic was. Right. But the phrase he used as he was looking toward the future that caught my attention was, he said, I hope we're heading towards an economy of authenticity, where there is a market for real things, for authentic things, where things that are not generated by the machine have extra value.

1:12:19Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, that's what we were talking about earlier. There's a push for AI-free labels, but of course that's becoming mired down a bit with definitions and et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, I think we're going to see that. I hope we're going to see that. I know our generation, those of us and most of our listeners want that. I'm curious to see if the younger generation give a fuck. Right. Right. They might not. They might not. They might not. Until it comes down to making their own living. Right. OK, so what are you going to do now then? They're going to complain about how much, you know, when when we're all in old folks homes and we insist on having face to face conversation with real human beings, they're going to roll their eyes and, you know, as olds.

1:13:02Yeah, I subscribe to your avatar for you. Why don't you just use that? Right. Exactly. Yeah. The robot cat is in the room. I don't understand why you're so needy. Yeah.

1:13:13Brian Schulmeister:Because it needs to be updated and the Bluetooth failed and I have to reset the Bluetooth. So it just sits there licking its balls and I can't get it to come say hi to me anymore. Right. That's why. I'm laughing at the notion of robot cat balls.

1:13:30It's coming. Trust me, it's coming.

1:13:32Jason DeFillippo:That's the latest show my kid's into. Yeah. Right, right. so uh again i came across a video that sent me down a little bit of a rabbit hole and i suspect this might resonate with the two of you i was thinking this week about evil knievel do you guys remember evil knievel of course i was a little too young on the cusp for that but again shared cultural knowledge obviously i saw it he more his later joke incarnation super dave osborne It's a bit more with me than Evil Knievel, but yeah. Yeah. And Super Dave may have been more successful than Evil in the long run. I don't know. But Super Dave was very funny.

1:14:12But what started this was I saw a clip that I've included here that was Craig Ferguson telling an Evel Knievel story. It was basically about how Evel Knievel was doing one of his jumps and he knew he was going to miss. And he missed and he crashed and the people come over to take care of him when he crashed. And the first thing he said was, get the girls out of my hotel room. because he was afraid his wife was going to find out that he had girls in his hotel room but she knew she knew i'm sure but evil knievel was so iconic and looking back on it it seems to me like it was so of its time that you had this one stunt person who would do stupid things amazing.

1:15:01Mostly he'd jump his motorcycle over city buses or over things. And half the time he would crash. I think he was in the Guinness Book of World Records for Most Broken Bones or something like that. He was certainly in the running. But we had hour-long shows. I linked to one of them. It was like an extraordinarily highly rated wide world of sports on ABC that was an hour-long All leading up to three channels, Dave. Three channels. Knievel jumping over a string of buses, whether or not he would make it like. And I guess I've been thinking about this. I guess part of it was the simpler time. All of us kids had bicycles.

1:15:47So we pretended to be evil Knievel, you know, building ramps and jumping over things, jumping over each other on our bicycles. There were evil Knievel branded bicycles. also the evil knievel stunt cycle was an amazing cycle is it that's it the stunt cycle great toy yeah i mean a classic toy that lived up to the hype because that was a fun toy to play with right up until the moment you got sand in the gears and then it stopped working but what a great toy and to this day there are people still making youtube videos about uh with making the stunt cycle jump over things which i think is great fun so this got me thinking like does every generation have an oddball thing that attracts a lot of attention and society really only needs one of them right like we had evil knievel there was we only needed one of them i'm sure there were other people who tried to be the stunt man evil had a son named robbie knievel who tried to father and his follow in his father's footsteps and had some success But like we needed one Evel Knievel and that's what the world needed.

1:16:56And we were happy with it. And it got me thinking like, is Weird Al that way?

1:17:01Brian Schulmeister:I was going to say that was my next one is Weird Al. I'm like, if I had to pick one, it'd be Weird Al. Yeah, we've got one Weird Al. And I hope to never live in a world without him because he's delightful. And I feel like we need him. But I don't think we need two Weird Al's. We don't need a weirder Al. Right? or weird alley you know like i don't know weird al-esque yeah i don't know so i was just sort of thinking back about evil knievel and how singular he was and i don't know if jason you remember it was heartbreaking when my i remember my dad coming to me and telling me that evil knievel had been put in jail uh because he had like beat up his manager with a baseball bat or something and so suddenly.

1:17:49Brian Schulmeister:I don't remember that one. I don't remember anybody telling me that. I mean, I do remember it from the Being Evil documentary, which I highly recommend. The 2015 documentary. Fantastic. Gives you the whole run of Evel Knievel's life, and you can't go wrong with that. But yeah, I just remember sitting there on Saturday mornings watching him on the Wide World of Sports, and that was it. It was just so great. It was just like an hour of waiting for him to come up, let's go, Jump, jump, jump. Right. And I'm sitting there cranking the thing on my— The buses are moving into position. Right. Yeah, and I'm sitting there with my stunt cycle just revving it around the room like, can we go?

1:18:26Brian Schulmeister:Let's go. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Dandy Don Meredith here with Evel Knievel. And, you know, well, Evel, what do you think? Well, I think I'll make it, Don. Well, let's see. And we just were glued to the set. Yeah. Yeah. I put some links in the show notes, too. They're still making the stunt cycles. There's a company that took over the mantle and have a couple different versions of the stunt cycle that you can get. And they're in stock. So there was the stunt cycle. There was the chopper version of the stunt cycle. I hated that one. It would always just wheelie out of the gate and it would never work right.

1:19:01Brian Schulmeister:You had to tape weights to the front. Yeah. No, it wasn't good. There was the dragster. The cool thing about the dragster was it had a parachute. and then there was the what was it like the Evel Knievel action van something like that it was basically an RV with his stuff on it that's when he got cancelled with all the kids in the back I think you could park the motorcycle inside or put it on the roof or something like that it didn't say free candy on the side but it was pretty close if you shook it cocaine would fall out yeah Yeah. All right. Well, there's a fun trip down memory lane. I will not be with you, gentlemen, next week.

1:19:44I'm going to be at the RSA convention in San Francisco, which

1:19:47Brian Schulmeister:that time again, it is that time of year. And it's always fun to be there, but it's not fun getting there. The six hour flight is a lot. And the older and grumpier nowadays. Right. Well, that's the thing. I everybody's been telling me I got to get to the airport super early because of all the TSA folks who've been sick because of not being paid. Because of paychecks.

1:20:14Jason DeFillippo:Yeah, I can understand. They're sick out, you know. So we'll see. Hopefully smooth travels and I'll have a time in San Francisco. All right. We'll see. Have a great trip. I'll see you guys in a couple weeks.

1:20:28Brian Schulmeister:All right. Use the AI that tells you where all the man poo is so you can avoid it. Oh, well, you know what? Actually, before we go, there is a new, what do they call it? Like a company store at Lucasfilm in San Francisco. Oh, okay. I know where you're going. We want to report. Right? Yeah. I already looked it up. It's like a four mile Uber from where I'm staying. So hopefully I'll have an hour or something. Hopefully. Get there.

1:20:57Jason DeFillippo:Do or do not. There is no try. Exactly. I am so hopelessly overscheduled for this trip, but I will. All right. All right. Goals. You can cancel something. Something's not important.

1:21:09Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. Yeah. There you go. TSA sick out. Right. All right. See you guys. All right, Dave. Have a great trip. Closing shout outs. Over at Patreon, we've got two new subscribers, Mirjana and Echos. Thank you very much. And we'd also like to thank Heather, Jeff, Francesco, Amanda, Philip, Sylvia, Chris, F.A., and Ross and Rafal. So thank you all very much for your continued support and new support on Patreon. Thank you. Thank you. Patreon, whatever.

1:21:39Jason DeFillippo:Patreon, whatever. The money thing. The money thing. The other money thing, PayPal. We got a donation from Tom and Dennis sent us$25. Thank you both so much. We really appreciate it.

1:21:49Brian Schulmeister:Thank you so much. Over the tip jar, we've got Sean and Theodore. So if you would like to jump on the bandwagon and keep the show on the air, and we need you to keep the show on the air, go to gog.show slash donate, where the links will be to every which way you can get to us and give us your hard-earned money a little bit at a time. And if you want to go to patreon.com slash gog for as little as$3 a month, you can get the show early, ad-free, and in high definition. And Patreon is the only way that we can do those perks, so that's why we push Patreon. on. And to answer the age-old question, we get paid the exact same amount no matter how you like to give us your money.

1:22:24Brian Schulmeister:So it doesn't matter to us one bit whatsoever.

1:22:28Jason DeFillippo:Exactly. And just before we started recording, we got some sad news. Rest in peace, Chuck Norris. I know I saw on the news yesterday that he was rushed to hospital. And when you combine in your 80s and rushed to hospital, that rarely is a good outcome. So unfortunately, that seems to be the case. We don't know too much about it. The family is, you know, to the typical request for privacy at this time. But that just means TMZ will report something tomorrow because that's the way it works.

1:22:54Brian Schulmeister:That's the way it works. That's a bummer. That's a bummer. I'm surprised. Will Shatner actually outlived him. I didn't think that was going to be the case. I think Shatner is going to outlive everyone.

1:23:04Jason DeFillippo:It's Shatner versus Sulu at this point.

1:23:07Brian Schulmeister:I was listening to the TV in the background the other day and I just heard, it's Will Shat coming to you. And I'm like, you're actually going by Will Shat now? Why not? God.

1:23:15Jason DeFillippo:When you're in your 90s, you're hoping you shat.

1:23:17Brian Schulmeister:Who gives a shat? Yeah, that too.

1:23:21Jason DeFillippo:Until next time, I'm Brian Gilmeister.

1:23:23Brian Schulmeister:I'm Jason DeFillippo. Thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks. Get all the links and goodies from today's episode at GOG.show slash 738. If you 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. If you 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. and swing by GOG.show to join our Discord and chat with us and other show fans. Got thoughts, feedback, cool links? Hit us up at GOG.show slash contact.

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