764: Super Duper Intelligence

21:48Brian Schulmeister:Dark patterns. Dark patterns. Those are the dark patterns. Yeah. Yeah, I obviously won't be doing this. There was a zero day that was found in it. There's all sorts of security implications because this is basically based on OpenClaw. They're like, we didn't use OpenClaw software to train our, you know, our vibe coding on it. But they did. They did. I mean, they're saying that they didn't, but they did. And OpenClaw is just a giant fucking kludge to begin with. So look, I always said I would never, ever give Zuckerberg my credit card. The only way they ever would have gotten my credit card information would have been if they would have given me an ad-free experience on Facebook for like two bucks a month.

22:26Then I would have paid for it. That's it. Exactly. No way I'm letting Muse go shopping for me.

22:32Brian Schulmeister:But yeah, that's the thing. You're not giving them your credit card. You're giving them access to the site that has your credit card. Right. That's even worse. That's the thing. It's like, see, I see where people could be complaining about, hey, this is my agent and my agent's going to your site to buy some shit for me. so why are you stopping my agent from coming there? As the shopping site, I can see the case to be made that your agent is going to buy some shit on my platform that you didn't want, and I'm going to be the one that sucks up all the fucking costs for support and returns to deal with this shit.

23:07Brian Schulmeister:So I can see why Amazon is nipping this in the bud right away. Also, I'm sure they're going to have their own shopping agent coming, but it's bullshit to think that, that Amazon doesn't have the authority to do that because people are saying, well, Amazon shouldn't have the authority to do that because it's coming from my account. Well, it's not, actually. It's coming from your psychotic, super dumb fucking intelligent piece of software. It's not real. Agreed. Absolutely agreed. Well, Joby Aviation has claimed the first ever autonomous flight across the United States after it outfitted an aircraft with this autonomous flight system to complete the journey without human input.

23:47The trip started in California, finished in North Carolina, and totaled 3 ,199 miles. He said they had integrated its autonomy tech into a converted Cessna caravan, which was able to do everything from taxiing, takeoff, cruising, and landing on its own without any control inputs from an onboard safety pilot. Besides a human monitor on the aircraft, white-knuckling all the way, Joby remotely supervised the aircraft at its headquarters in California and at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina. So, kind of cool.

24:16Brian Schulmeister:I think in my opinion air easier than car oh absolutely yeah you got nothing but open air around you in general as long as as long as you're you know plugged into the air traffic control system so yeah this is this is pretty cool would I want to be in one fuck no here's the thing Brian when I the first time I flew to London in 1992 when we landed at Heathrow the pilot came on and said, ladies and gentlemen, you have just experienced a completely autonomous landing. We had tech for fucking, you know, landing a jumbo jet back then. And now it's like, okay, well, we can make a Cessna go putt-putt across the country.

24:58Brian Schulmeister:This is not something that is actually that new. We've had autopilots, you know, you're up in the sky. We see that there's a lot of planes in the sky at the same time. Yes, we know that. But this is definitely not like rush hour in New York City that you're trying to deal with. Absolutely. So, yeah. A lot easier. I think it's a fine application. What really frightens me is that the FAA is talking about using AI in the new, what was it? Air traffic control systems. Yeah, I saw that news as well. But then they kind of caveated it and it made a lot more sense. it's only a couple places and it's only tying into weather systems and giving actual air traffic controllers some idea of the volume of flights coming in and the upcoming weather.

25:43So if they keep it there and it's just some warnings and some like, you know, some additional data that's popping up, great. I'm all for that. Will it stay that way? No, of course it won't. Are they already claiming it can probably do everything? Of course they are.

25:58Brian Schulmeister:But as long as it's not using an LLM to do it and it's using actual machine learning technology that we know is like you know safe and pretty solid you know as long as it's yeah as long as they're not running it through chat gpt you know as long as it's not super intelligence yes or super duper intelligence exactly uh well everybody get on this one because if you have an iphone this one's for you apple users can now submit claims in a proposed 250 million dollar class action settlement involving siri and delays tied to Apple intelligence. The lawsuit alleges Apple's marketing and performance claims caused harm, while Apple has not admitted wrongdoing.

26:36Brian Schulmeister:Eligible class members may receive a share of the settlement, although individual payments will depend on the number of approved claims and other court-appointed factors like how much do the scumbag lawyers get. The claims process is now open with deadlines, eligibility, and rules, requirements, and documentation available through the official settlement website. The agreement still requires final court approval, so payments are not guaranteed immediately. Consumers should verify the administrator's website and avoid unofficial claim links or requests for unnecessary personal information, which is why I put a link to the smartphone AI settlement in our show notes.

27:10Brian Schulmeister:So go to gog.show slash 764 to get a link to that. And it is your God-given duty, unless you own an Android phone, and why the fuck would you do that, to go get your monies. Go get your monies. Well, before everybody rushes to that, it's not just Android. You almost have to be, you have to be pretty bleeding edge. It's got its iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, or any iPhone 16 model. So those of us that didn't pony up for the 15 Pros or don't have a 16 yet, you get bupkis. Oh, well, I've got a 16 Pro Max. Well, there you go. You're good. I think I bought it after this all happened, though, so maybe I'm screwed, too.

27:46Brian Schulmeister:Because I got it after the 17 came out because I wanted a discount because I can't pay full freight. Well, some more Apple news, Brian, And I put this in here because of your discussion on our Discord channel, which I highly recommend everybody go check out our Discord channel. It's fun. It is the only social media that Brian and I both pretty much use on a regular basis. Apple is reportedly reassessing the future of Apple Fitness Plus, with Bloomberg reporting that the company has laid off a handful of employees working on the subscription workout service. The cuts are said to be an early step with more significant changes potentially coming.

28:20Brian Schulmeister:The report does not specify whether Apple plans to restructure the service, reduce its content ambitions, or change how it fits into the broader subscription portfolio. I am Portfolio. Apple has not publicly detailed any planned changes to Fitness Plus or commented on the reported layoffs. So what say you, Brian? This would bum me out considerably. I really do enjoy Apple Fitness. I'm ponying up extra for it. I'm on the Apple One plan. If they get rid of Apple Fitness, my Apple One also goes out the window. It's the only reason I'm paying for the full all-in thing because you can only get fitness if you pay for it.

28:56That's basically the only way into it. It's a solid, solid bit of a – it's really good. Like I've been losing weight. I've been – I love the yoga program. I love all the programs. I love the trainers. Now, one thing I could say though is it's been pretty much on autopilot recently. It's once they dialed in what they do, I'm sure they don't need the same amount of staff that they had when they were getting it up and running. Like you basically you've got the same trainers. They're coming up with their own programs. They're recording them once a week and you publish them. How many people do you actually fucking need for that?

29:35Well, probably not that many. It does tell me that they probably don't don't intend to expand it, which is a bit of a bummer. It would be nice if they made it more of a thing. You know, Apple, maybe you're looking at your bottom line and going, there aren't that many Fitness Plus users. Well, why don't you offer Fitness Plus as a standalone that isn't an exorbitant price? I bet you'd get a lot of fucking people using it. Everybody that's locked into the ecosystem. If you've got an Apple TV and you've got an Apple Watch, Apple Fitness is a no-brainer. It's just prohibitively expensive unless you want to go all in on Apple One and you use all the rest of the services.

30:10Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, I think there was a marketing thing that's trying to get Apple One to be a big seller. So it may have backfired a bit. It may have backfired a little bit. Yeah, I think so. So I personally am holding out hope for Apple Fitness. I think it's great. So I hope they don't fuck with it and especially hope they don't kill it. Yep. So anybody listening at Apple, you heard it from the horse's mouth. Well, a new study finds smartwatches can be especially unreliable when estimating calories burned during exercise with accuracy worsening as users' body fat percentages increase. Researchers had 58 Hispanic adults cycle while wearing Apple, Garmin, Samsung, and Fitbit devices, then compared their readings with a metabolic analyzer, which is the lab standard.

30:53Brian Schulmeister:Across devices, errors typically ranged from 15 to 25 percent, while some participants with higher body fat saw errors of 50 to 100 percent or more. I would be in the or more category. Fitbit also produced several extreme outliers. Skin tone had no significant effect on this test, which is great. The researchers say smartwatches remain useful for tracking heart rate, duration, pace, and trends, but calorie estimates should be treated cautiously. Of course. 100%. Of course. Why were you expecting it to be spot on like that? If you're number crunching like that, you're probably also just using one of those apps where you take a picture of your food and it tells you how many calories you're consuming.

31:32Those are also fucking wrong. They have no idea how much butter is in that chicken. Fatty.

31:39Brian Schulmeister:True that. True that. Can you tell how many salt grains are on my oatmeal? No. So, you know, these are things that you should be using as kind of general estimates of how much you're burning and how much you're consuming. If you think it's going to be spot on, you're a fucking idiot. Like, of course it's not. They don't have super duper intelligence. I track my heart rate through my watch, but I also track it with an actual cuff that I have. And there's a difference. That difference is there's a standard of difference between the two, but it is a consistent standard of difference. So when I get my heart rate on my watch, I know basically what it actually is based on the difference that I get from my cuff.

32:21Brian Schulmeister:So I can follow that, you know, and your blood oxygen level from the watch. So fucking wrong. So wrong. I've got, you know, a blood oximeter that I test with as well. Thank you, COVID. I've got all this shit laying around. So always got to keep testing that stuff. But it's off, too. It's consistently off by like three percentage points lower than what it is from an actual blood pulse oximeter, you know, device that you can get for$14 from Amazon. There you go.

33:00Well, Apple may be gutting Fitness Plus, but I can tell you what they're using that money on now. They've just opened a new live venue at the UK Battersea Power Station headquarters in London that seems tailor-made for Apple Music live concerts and recordings. The Apple Music Hall is designed as an intimate concert hall with a space for up to 600 people in standing and seating configurations. It's also one of the most state-of-the-art in the world, with 48 speakers, 16 camera locations, and a spatial audio live recording facility. The venue's interior design will take cues from the Battersea Power Station with heritage brickwork, fluted arches, and bronze balconies.

33:35Okay, trumps. How about you just keep fitness going instead of putting in gold fucking shitters at your music venue?

33:44Brian Schulmeister:But it looks nice. It does. It looks gorgeous. It's fucking cool. Come on. I would like to go there. Great. I've been there. I've seen concerts there. Not at the Apple venue. That wasn't open yet, but there was a previous venue there. So anyways, this whole thing looks really cool. It's equipped with two dedicated recording in Mix Studios and like they're obviously setting this up for broadcast as well as, you know, infrastructure to support iPhone video capture, of course, and presumably better quality cameras. Yeah. So nice. Like, great. It's great that you guys are doing that. I wish you would also just spend money on the stuff that we're already paying for.

34:21That'd be cool. That would be cool, too. It would be. Make iCloud not lag so fucking much, please. That would make me happy. And just one quick note, as we're talking about apps and various doodads and whatnot, Jason finally shamed me enough to get rid of Opera, and I finally switched to Brave. After spending the first hour turning off every fucking stupid thing that they baked into there, every crypto, every super-duper intelligence bit, I turned it all off. And it's a nice browser, although I hate the icon.

34:54Brian Schulmeister:Okay, well, you can't change that, you know? I know, but I'm lazy. Select the app. Hit Command-I. Paste in another fucking picture. Close the window. But I have to pick an icon, then. I got to pick one. Oh, Jesus Christ. My icon is currently an old ZipDisk icon that I found for a ZipDisk 100 back in my old folder of... Remember Icon Factory? Go to Icon Factory. You can get some of the old shit back there. They've got some really nice Battlestar Galactica icons that still work. I should go look at that. My main desktop icon is the HAL 9000 eyeball. I love it. Yeah, that's so 1994. So am I, Jason.

35:32Brian Schulmeister:So am I. That's true. So true. So true. Well, Sony Music Entertainment and the Universal Music Group are both suing AI music generator Suno again for allegedly infringing on the copyright with its newest V6 models. Claim challenges the story Suno has generally told about its latest AI models, which are the first it's released since signing licensing deals with Warner Music Group and BMG. While Suno used licensed material to create the V6 lineup in their lawsuit, Sony Music and UMG specifically take issue with the company's public acknowledgement that the models were also trained on users' interactions with Suno's service, which they take to mean the outputs of and preference signals derived from prior models that Suno built by copying plaintiff's recordings without authorization.

36:15So yes, they're basically saying, oh look, look at our new model, we've made deals. yeah but your new model is based on the old model that stole all our shit whoops yeah both companies claim suno could be responsible for infringing on the copyright of at least 60 202 sound recordings that leaves it liable for up to nine billion dollars in damages under u.s copyright law plus up to 2 500 for each time suno suno circumvented youtube's anti-downloading tech to scrape songs, which they admitted they did. But of course, they disagree with Sony Music and UMG. These claims remain fundamentally flawed on both the facts and the law, the company said in a statement, while reaffirming that Suno exists so that more people can make new music by stealing it from the people that made it in the first place.

37:04Brian Schulmeister:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Suno, Udeo, well, Udeo has made the deals as well too, right? Yeah. Yeah, everybody's making the deals now, but they're all going to get the deals. They're all going to get sued again. It's just everybody's going to get sued again. Anyway, something that brings me joy. I have really, really enjoyed all the kunk shows. You know which ones I'm talking about, kunk on Earth. It's Philomena Kunk, the fake documentarian that goes around and talks to experts, academics, and historians. It's like a smart version of Ali G, you know. Okay. Ali G's pretty smart. Come on. Well, this is even smarter.

37:49Anyways, trust me. If you haven't watched any of these, you really got to watch them. But she's doing a new one, and this one's going to be about the movies. Coming soon to BBC2 and to Netflix later this year, Kunk on Cinema is a three-part series that reunites Morgan, the comedian, with longtime collaborator Charlie Brooker of Black Mirror fame that will allow Morgan as Kunk to explore film from its nascent black and white days through the French New Wave cinema up to our current moment. She'll be sitting down with movie makers such as director Michael Bay and Benedict Cumberbatch, as well as movie critics.

38:20And I cannot wait for this because generally they are not in on the joke. And I hope that continues. OK, OK.

38:28Brian Schulmeister:And Benedict Cumberbatch, of course, you know, his antics in the streets of London are why we have Deliveroo! That's true. Yep. Oh, Strange New Worlds, Brian, Star Trek Strange New Worlds. Yes. Oh, my God. What the holy hell is happening over there? Look, I don't doubt that as actors, they are having the fucking time of their lives making this show. I just wish that they also had to be Star Trek fans and were forced to sit down and watch it. I know, I know. Two things here. First, let's just talk about the episode, Once on a Time. That was somewhat funny in part. I actually laughed out loud a few times.

39:16Brian Schulmeister:It wasn't horrible. It did remind me of some old Trek. It really did remind me of some old Trek. But I looked at on Plex where I watched it. I looked at some of the reviews. Dumbest show ever. Un-Star Trek is unserious. Please stop this now. Then one person says, lovely Star Trek with deep lore connections. But it's all one stars except for somebody who really, really liked it and gave it four and a half. But the thing that got me going was, I'm like, was this show always this bad and we just didn't get it because it was new? No, not at all. I went back and I looked at the IMDB episode list. And you can tell from the ratings, which they have per episodes, that besides season two, which got a lot, a lot of like, you know, recommended episodes.

40:11Brian Schulmeister:it's kind of been pretty dismal just from the ratings, especially, you know, three and four. But even season one only had like one highly rated episode, but I thought season one was pretty solid personally. But season two was the best and it has just been on a downward slope since then. Yeah, I've liked a lot of it. Some of it has just been painful this season in particular. It's not like I've disliked any of the episodes. uh it's just i want some normal episodes we've talked about this a gazillion times if if you had 32 episodes in the season i wouldn't mind this many weirdo ass episodes episode of du jour and all that sort of stuff like let's make it black and white this time let's do blah blah fine if you if i'm getting 32 episodes great throw in a few of those when we're only getting 10 and half of them are this stuff no thank you do you know what the uh the the theory running around the internet about this whole show is right now, Jason, the big one.

41:09What is it?

41:09Brian Schulmeister:What is it, Brian? The big one is Pike is already dead, and these are all fever, or not dead. He's already had his accident. He's on the planet. He's zombified, and these are all the things running around in his brain. They're all, basically, it's Dallas. These are all dreams. I was going to say, they're J.R. You and Ingrid? Yeah, last episode, he's going to step out of the turbo shower, and it'll all have been dreams. That's it. Okay. Well, that would at least explain some of it, you know? Yeah. And I would like to say that Once Upon a La 'an was season four, episode nine, just to make sure that we have that in there.

41:42Thank you, Patrick.

41:45Brian Schulmeister:Patrick did have a little comeback here. I have to scroll down to find. There's a little feud going on here between James and Philip, which we have to. Philip writes in, James was wrong. South Park episode two, season one was April 1998. We didn't meet and become friends until April 1999, which was South Park season three, episode nine. Thank you and good night. I'm glad that we can facilitate. Good day, sir. I'm going to go order some Deliveroo.

42:13Brian Schulmeister:Oh, my God. Well, I would like to talk about, there's some good shows. I watched Neely Season 1, which is a spinoff from the Reacher universe. Fantastic little season. I give it a B. I give it a B. Mainly, I give Reacher a B, too, because they're good action shows, but they're action shows. you know but they're good action shows it's not like network you know network is like d plus at the best this is a solid bb plus i like reacher more than neely so far but neely was good season one was good because this is based on new ip they didn't come from the books reacher comes from the books so this was just a whole new like whole cloth story um but it's good i mean we were we watched it in three days it was pretty fun uh the traders ireland season two just wrapped yesterday Fucking phenomenal season.

43:03Brian Schulmeister:Fucking phenomenal. We loved it. I mean, it was a great season. It's just what you want from the Traders. And the host is great. I love her. Siobhan is awesome. Traders U.S. Season 5 is back. First two episodes are out already. Yes, this is the Traders part of the show, Brian. Shut up. I was actually laughing because you said Siobhan, and I didn't even talk about the Ted Lasso episode where he has some issues with Irish names and spellings, and it was pretty goddamn funny. Okay, I haven't gotten to that one yet. Shouldn't there be a V in there? I just finished the New Year's Eve episode. So Traders U.S.

43:40Brian Schulmeister:Season 5 is back. First two are out. Awesome. The production quality of the U.S. version is so much above everybody else. Everybody else just feels like they're doing Wayne's World, and, you know, we're doing the good stuff. But it's going to be a good season, I think, on the U.S. And Traders Canada Season 4 started yesterday, which I watched. Speaking of Wayne's World. Yep. Actually, it's pretty good. It's actually pretty good, though. The host is our third favorite host because we have to rank the hosts. The new hosts from New Zealand and Australia, bottom of the barrel. They fucking sucked.

44:11Brian Schulmeister:But Traders Canada, pretty nice hot host. And the girl that does the woman that does the UK version, second favorite because she's OG. You got to love her. And you're going to be checking that out soon because the Traders UK Celebrity Edition Season 2 starts on October 1st. And you said that your wife was into it. So I expect to be being able to shoot the shit about the traitors with you while you shit all over it. I'm sure I won't watch it in real time like you do. Well, you got to because there's spoilers everywhere, man. Well, not in my world. But maybe in your wife's world. That's true. That's true.

44:49Brian Schulmeister:This is not up to you. This is up to your wife. Well, there's an unexpected end coming for yet another Marvel series on Disney +, but at least in this case, Daredevil Born Again made it to three seasons. That means Born Again gets just as many seasons as Daredevil did back when Netflix was in the Marvel business, but it's still disappointing news for fans of the Charlie Cox series, such as Us. Adding intrigue, a new report says showrunner Dario Scartipane has departed the series amid post-production on what's now its final season. According to the Hollywood Reporter, it's because he's no longer in collaboration with the studio.

45:24Marvel has quietly parted ways with him His contract was up, but he was not renewed The parting of ways is eyebrow-raising And it means that Scar to Payne is exiting the show In the middle of post-production It's unclear who will see the show through completion One source said post-production is in the final stages So, Born Again out And that leaves the Paul Bettany starring Vision Quest As the only other upcoming Marvel live-action series on Disney +, Which I could care less about We should get Born Again Season 3 in 2027 So just to recap, we will be getting no new Star Trek as far as we know on Paramount.

45:59Live-action Marvel and Star Wars shows are basically stopping. What the fuck are we paying all these increasingly high subscription streaming fees for exactly? You're canceling everything we like. You're not making any new shows.

46:15Brian Schulmeister:No, they're not. And by the way, Disney just raised prices again for Disney Plus and Hulu. So ad-free plans cost$21.49 a month, up$2.50. That's the plan that I'm on or was on, I should say, until I just canceled it this morning because there's nothing on Hulu or Disney Plus that I watch. I know you're stuck because, kid, but, you know, for me, I'm just like, there's nothing there. I don't pay for Paramount Plus because, you know, fuck the Ellisons. Fuck them in their eye holes, especially now that they strong-armed their way through to this Warner Brothers deal going through. You should see the TV reporting here, Brian, from Los Angeles.

46:50Brian Schulmeister:Holy shit, are people pissed off. I'm sure. The people on the street are fucking pissed. So, you know, and this is all just politics. This is all politics. It's Newsom not wanting to lose them because he's coming up for his run in a couple years. The new governor that's going to be coming in, he's up for running. And that election's coming up. nobody wants to see Paramount leave town because it's Paramount. They're fucking there. 5555 Melrose is where Paramount is. It's got to stay there. And they know that. And I think that they were playing chicken and they flinched, you know? Yep. It's bad.

47:29Brian Schulmeister:It's fucking bad. It's not what you hope for.

47:42i got some new music you can listen to jason uh both of these are pretty much throwbacks speaking of 1994 and even earlier uh jesus jones has unbelievably put out a new album and

47:54Brian Schulmeister:unbelievably i actually like it oh good good i love jesus jones i love jesus jones too they They were way ahead of their time with Doubt and Perverse, and then they kind of got dropped from the labels after that because Perverse was way too ahead of its time. It was definitely like it was the early electronica rock crossover, and they nailed it. It's an amazing album, but it got them dropped by their label, and then they kind of went off into the wilderness for quite some time, released a few albums that weren't that great. This is called Twilight. It just came out last week, I believe, and I actually have listened straight through it a couple times and really enjoy it.

48:28So, yay, good for Jesus Jones. and they did make a big announcement that it's actually the 35th anniversary of their second album the breakthrough one doubt that had right here right now on it uh so they're going to be doing something special for that and i love that album too so kind of excited yeah yeah i there's

48:45Brian Schulmeister:jesus jones is just one of those bands i put on that makes me happy you know they're fun like just from the yeah i put them on and uh the other one's not as much fun but i just i just love putting them on in the background the pixies you know jesus jones and the pixies are just my happy go-to places you know yeah i mean who doesn't love the pixies pixies are great uh one of my other all-time favorite bands is the church and they actually have a new single out now it's coming from their new album lacuna which will be released october 30th these singles called western got the link for that in the show notes two tracks uh i don't know if the second track is is what what us olds used to call a b-side or if it'll be on the album or not who the fuck knows uh but i like both songs I love this band they're another one of those bands that the last couple releases that they put out were not my thing, a little too off in the wilderness but you go back to their early albums and even their albums up until 2010s, they were all fantastic Steve Kilby is one of my favorite lyricists and singer-songwriters and I like both these tracks, really looking forward to this album and I hope this one's got actual tunes on it because it kind of went radio ahead the last few albums and stopped writing songs So.

49:55Brian Schulmeister:Nothing good about that. No, nothing good about that. Going Radiohead. Some book news. D, Heavy Water, a gripping historical espionage thriller set on the eve of World War II, Bomb Light Book II by Neil Stevenson. Hold on a second. When did they start putting descriptive sentences into the title set on Amazon? Shouldn't this be D, Heavy Water? wow yeah i mean i'm used to this on products jason we've been making fun of the product names on amazon for years now but this is the first time i've seen it in a book it is pretty unless that is the actual title of the book if that was the actual title of the book fucking props to neil stevenson yeah but i'm guessing it's not uh this comes out october 13th 2026 i have to admit i have fallen hard off the neil stevenson uh train uh i've Definitely, in my opinion, recently, the number of pages is inversely proportional to how good his books are.

51:02I've liked the short books that have come out recently, but I have not liked any of the longer books. My understanding that is Bomb Light Book 1 in this series was quite a long one. I didn't read it. I don't think you read it. I don't know anybody that read it. So I don't know if it's good or not.

51:19Brian Schulmeister:Well, let's just go look and see what Bomb Light Book 1 was. because for some reason, I wanted to think that you did read it. Oh, no, it's not. That was Polo Stan, was book one. Because I thought he did one on heavy weather. Wasn't it called heavy weather or something like that? I don't recall. Because the last one, you and I did not see eye to eye on. So that was the last one that he did. And, I mean, we both liked Seven Eves. Seven Eves was good. Yes. I wish he would have just stuck with that because that would have been great if he'd have just stuck with 70s. Because he set up an entire world.

51:55Yes.

51:57Brian Schulmeister:And it was ready to go. Yeah. No. And Remdi, that was one of his shorter ones. That was, yeah, that was decent. Which I liked that one. That was good. Yeah. And neither of us really care about the Baroque cycle, even though I read them all. I bought them all and then never read them. And I never will. I think Termination Shock was the one, the last one that we disagreed on. You liked that one and I didn't care for it that much. Yeah, I thought it was all right. I mean, not his best, but it was fine. So, anyways. Yeah, I mean, but still going back to, for me, Neal Stephenson, I mean, everybody talks about Snow Crash because that was where the metaverse came into play.

52:39Brian Schulmeister:But my favorite book is Diamond Age, hands down. My favorite book of his is Diamond Age. Mine is Seven Eves. It really is. I love that book. It was good. I should go back and read it again. Yeah. Or listen to it again because I don't read, as you like to point out. So I briefly got into Andrew Huberman's podcast for a little bit because I thought it was well-learned and interesting. And I'm all about like, what can we do to make our bodies bigger, better, stronger, all that sort of stuff. I quickly realized. Protocols. Protocols. Protocols, Brian. Yeah. And then I quickly realized he's a fucking charlatan.

53:17But some people out there still don't know that. So there's a review of his new book. He's got, yes, he has a book coming out, of course. And he basically reads, and apparently it reads exactly like a podcast. He even talks about basically sponsored ads in his book. So the link is in the show notes.

53:38Brian Schulmeister:Page 34 is brought to you by AG1. the tldr is there's very little actual science behind his protocols even if there are studies they're small sample groups sometimes a sample group of one huberman himself basically he's saying trust me no no i'm not going to spend thousands of dollars to trust you he's a fucking optometrist he's a glorified optometrist i'm sorry go back and look at what he does he's a skater turned optometrist. He's entertaining. He's very entertaining. And he's on the same level of Rogan. He's like Rogan plus one as far as the bullshit factor goes. Because I've heard some of his episodes that he has whack jobs on there just straight out of fucking Rogan.

54:27Yeah, I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan of his at all.

54:30Brian Schulmeister:I know the crowd that he runs in because I know the people in the crowd that he runs in. They're not savory people. so some of them showed up very famously in the epstein files so i would i would definitely be passing on this and i wish you were telling me you were getting into huberman because huberman is on that list of you know you know i like to debunk you know quack scientist bullshittery and he's always been at the top of my list so i'm to be fair to me jason my getting into huberman was i listened to three of his podcasts the first two i was like huh this is some interesting stuff and And by episode three, I was like, fuck this shit.

55:08Okay.

55:08Brian Schulmeister:We're not talking three months. We're talking three episodes. Okay. Okay. You get a pass. You get a pass. Okay. Just making sure. Just making sure. I could have saved you some time. Yeah. That's all good. You know, sometimes you got an hour to kill. That's true. And some brain cells. Yeah. I have found this one. And this is a fun one for at the library. Scientists have found evidence of an ancient sheep disease by analyzing DNA preserved in medieval parchment. Researchers examined sheepskin documents, extracting genetic material not only from the parchment itself, but from historical pathogens embedded in it.

55:44Brian Schulmeister:The analysis revealed traces of sheeppox virus, suggesting the disease has circulated among sheep for at least 3 ,500 years. Because parchment was made from animal hides and retains biological material, it can serve as an unexpected archive for tracking past infections. The finding could help scientists understand how sheeppox evolved, spread, and affected livestock over time, while demonstrating how historical documents can contribute to modern disease research, unless Amazon takes them all and shreds them and scans them for their AI bullshit. I was going to say, thank God that book wasn't made out of recycled sheepskin condoms.

56:24Brian Schulmeister:Well, maybe it was. Who knows? Maybe that was sailor pox. There's all kinds of DNA in here. now is the time where we thank everybody who keeps the show on the air over at patreon we've got some new subscribers james dan joe and scroty ballsack and scroty ballsack writes hello my fellow scrote sacks from new zealand just got a new credit card so i'm going all in love the show i've been freeloading for a while so it's time you had some of my bank's cash not yours your banks i love it if you ever make it over here the first round of beer is on me well sorry just one beer, the bank will probably have taken their card back off me by then.

57:03Brian Schulmeister:And remember, arguing with stupid people is like fighting with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it. What's your go-to quotes, peoples? I don't have any quotes today. I'm out. It's fucking early, man. We've been working our ass off here. Oh, man. We would like to thank some other people who, maybe next week, Scrody Ballsack, I'll have a quote for you. And we'd like to thank all the other people who keep the show on the air from Patreon. jc an angels fan good news okay that's a long name but we'll take it no i added the angels fan good news because uh he had a he had the angels logo as his icon and the angels have famously had a shitty owner forever now they had mike trout and shohei otani and couldn't manage to fucking win anything so uh he finally sold the goddamn team so good news jc hopefully all right Well, we've also got Luke, Anonymous, Adam, Member, Frank, Josh, Michael, Michael, and Rastokin.

58:00Brian Schulmeister:Not Rasputin, Rastokin. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Yes, thank you so much. Over at PayPal, Nicholas gave us 50 bucks and said, hey, you've guilt tripped me enough to finally donate. Guilt, guilt, guilt. I'm always grumpy about tech these days, and you guys make me feel like I'm not alone. And Kendall, one would assume Kendall Roy, because he gave us$200. Thanks, Kendall. Succession in the house. Yeah. Over the tip jar, we've got Robert, Kathleen and Andrew with the big 30 bucks. Thank you all so much. Thank you. Thank you. And we've sold some more merch. Paul from Florida, Smiley from Washington, Thomas from Virginia, Joel from Texas and Lee from Australia.

58:40If you live in any of those places, go look for them. They're wearing cool shirts.

58:44Brian Schulmeister:Exactly. Tell them how cool they are when you see them on the street. And like I said, we do have some new merch coming, so make sure you check out the store. And I would like to say that everybody who wants to help donate to the show, go to patreon.com slash GOG. You can sign up for as little as$3 a month. You can give us more if you want. If you pay for the whole year, you get it early and ad-free. You can go to GOG.show slash donate to find other ways to help pay for the show. And we love you very, very much, because that is literally the only way that we can keep the show on the air. The ads that you hear are basically going to infrastructure.

59:15Brian Schulmeister:that's what those ads pay for they pay for the bandwidth and the software it takes to run this show so that said thank you everybody much told you it was early so scrotie ball sack I don't have a quote that's why so we do have some reviews though a review this is from Apple Podcasts I love to listen to you guys when I go for my walks in the woods whenever I see a new episode uploaded I get off my butt and head out Thanks for the entertainment and covering the news, doing reviews, and leaving us with anecdotes from your day-to-day lives. Love the weekly drop-in with Dave, too. Stay grumpy. We shall.

59:53Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. And some sad news for me this week. In another lifetime, many, many years ago, there was a great talk radio station in Los Angeles that I listened to religiously. They had Howard Stern on syndication before he went to SiriusXM and then went into Frosty, Heidi, and Frank, which was my favorite show of all time. and a couple other great luminaries of LA radio and talk radio were on that station. Once Howard Stern switched over to Sirius XM, they replaced him with Adam Carolla and the Adam Carolla show. Now, before you huff and puff about Adam Carolla being a MAGA idiot, yeah, he is now, but he wasn't always.

1:00:31He wasn't always that way. He had a really funny and really good talk show for many, many years. And one of the people that was on the talk show was a guy named Brian Bishop. He started as a call screener and quickly got a chance and found his calling doing drops on the show. So he became a permanent member of the cast on the show, doing drops and chatting and pushing back on Corolla quite a bit when Corolla did start to slide to MAGA and occasionally did even back in the day, but got a lot of pushback. So he was a ball. Brian was fantastic. He was the master of the drop. I still remember some segments where he just played drops against each other or he played drops against a guest that didn't even know drops were being played.

1:01:13That were some of the funniest fucking things that I've ever heard in my goddamn life. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with cancer way back in, I believe, 2009. He was given six months to live. 17 years later, this last week, he finally passed away. So sad to hear it. Love that guy. He lived a life well done for lasting as long as you did. And I will always fondly remember some of the comedy bits that you did. So thank you, Bald Brian.

1:01:42Brian Schulmeister:Yeah. When you put this in here, it really bummed me out. I was just like, I really liked Bald Brian. He was great. I mean, he was definitely a staple of the show and was super funny. Very funny. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's one of those ones where it's just like I forgot about him because Adam Carolla turned into a shit weasel. so and he left the show lately you know yeah yeah yeah because he was dying so that's why you leave the show I guess yeah anyway anyways until next time I'm Brian Schoelmeister and I'm Jason DeFillippo thanks for listening to Grumpy Old Geeks to get all the links and goodies from today's episode go to gog.show slash 764 want to keep the grumpiness alive and I know you do toss a few bucks our way at gog.show slash donate every dollar helps keep the show on the air no more of this penny shit Love the show?

1:02:32Brian Schulmeister: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. Oh, and guess what? We've got GOG merch. Yes, we do. Stag your grumpy gear now at shop.GOG.show and go check out those two new shirts that we're dropping before this episode airs. Stay grumpy and super duper intelligent.