The Markets Have Gone Crazy | Ep. 074 Lemonade Stand 🍋

19:30Elon Musk's other company is supposed to be the AI company. Yeah. So why is Tesla spending so much on AI is everyone's asking. And it's, yeah, I just think there's finally some punishments for these companies for being like AI, AI, AI, AI, 300 billion dollars we're spending on it. People are asking where, what's coming from that. And so there is somebody being punished for that.

19:50Aiden:You know what? This is a small tangent, but you know, another company at the top of this, like market cap rankings is always Saudi Aramco. And the eSports World Cup has been going on. And me, I think me and Slime used to joke a lot about like, we'd be working at Beyond the Summit. We'd be like, what if one of these was sponsored by Saudi Aramco one day? And then we have to do like Aramco reads during like a Super Smash Brothers tournament. During the eSports World Cup this year, the idea of the tournament is that similar to like the Constructors Championship in F1, there's like an overall team score alongside people winning in individual e-sports events at the overall event.

20:35Aiden:And every time they do an update of like the rankings or leaderboard on broadcast, they call it the Aramco power rankings. And I was like, here we are. We've come full circle. Like the joke that we used to make to each other in our office has become a reality the saudi national oil company is doing esports ad reads wait i took a transition because i think at least on my stream you know you go back two years we would make a lot of jokes about gambling and prediction markets in that and it feels like all of them have just become true and normal facts of life and it's gotten bigger than we thought and you had a story about

21:13Atrioc:prediction markets that's yes part of markets really the same subject um yeah just kind of a little interesting thing which is that you're starting to see a lot of pushback on some of these prediction markets like call she and and polymarket and robin hood so a notable interesting story i thought minnesota uh the state outright banned prediction markets in may and so they just full-on said no there's actually a bunch of states in the u.s that are trying to push back against specific aspects of the prediction markets and saying like hey you're basically sports betting here we want to stop that minnesota is the first one that just said full-on like we're done and You know what that means, though?

21:49Like, if I'm in Minnesota and it's on my phone and I'm betting on whether or not Aiden says the word Smash Bros in this episode or something, do I?

21:58Atrioc:It would be illegal for the company to operate in that state. Okay, but they don't, right? They just, like, do it. Online kind of breaks everything. Kind of, but, I mean, you can still see where people are, and then they have provisions about VPNs. So, you know, I'm sure you couldn't fully enforce it, but still, to the average person, you're saying, hey, it is a felony now to, or not felony, but, you know, it's against the law, too. to do this. And then the prediction markets and the Federal Trading Commission sued Minnesota. And this week, the federal last week, the federal judge blocked the ruling with an injunction and said, no, you have to allow gambling.

22:31Atrioc:Wait, really? Yes. So, you know, so at first I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? What? You're forcing them to gamble? What are you talking about? You have to gamble. How dare you to watch?

22:42Aiden:Have you have you ever read the Bill of Rights? People overlook one of the amendments. Oftentimes it's we have you have to rip a parlay yeah george washington was big on that the ninth amendment

22:54Atrioc:if it doesn't say that tell me what it says right now the ninth amendment there will be a man entering his 25th year of the nba the people have to gamble on they have to bet on it the world cup just happened bro you're not gonna not gamble all right so here's why the commodity futures trading commission which is a federal agency has said uh that event contracts users can trade on prediction markets fall exclusively under the agency's jurisdiction as in the cftc which is a federal agency says that they have the exclusive right to regulate swaps and these certain types of betting contracts so because of that the judge in this case as well as the federal government are saying you a united states state do not have the jurisdiction so if every single voter in minnesota said, we do not want gambling to be allowed here, they would not be able to stop it.

23:48Correct.

23:49Atrioc:Because it is a federal ruling. That's crazy. And because, according to the judge, there's several contracts on Coliseum Polymarket that fit this definition of a swap, they're not regulated by the state. And she did say, I mean, this is a Democratic judge. She was appointed by Biden, I'm pretty sure. And she said, like, maybe... Sleepy Joe? Right, who was asleep at the wheel, clearly. Sleep at the wheel on this one. Couldn't have made a good pick. Couldn't have made a good pick. And she said maybe she'll narrow it to be like, we'll ban certain parts of the markets, but not the others. But ultimately, this is going through a bunch of court cases now.

24:20Atrioc:So Kalshi said, you know, today's decision makes it clear. States cannot ban things that they don't have jurisdiction over. Meanwhile, Minnesota Attorney General said prediction markets are gambling, plain and simple. And Minnesota has every right to keep predatory gambling out of our communities. So this is wild. So there's a bunch of states that are now trying to do this and push back against that. There's 14 states, according to Reuters, which are pushing back against this. Right. And again, they're more going for specific angles. But the CFTC, the Federal Agency for Trading, is counter suing them to make sure that the gambling.

24:54Atrioc:Our government is suing state government. Our government is gambling. To make sure that the gambling. Okay. There must be a connection, right? So, you know, it is under the executive branch. I know, but just knowing with this administration, there's probably.

25:05Aiden:So it's Donald Trump. I think it's Donald Trump Jr. is on the board of Polymarket or Calci. And, uh, or he's considered, he's one of their advisors, excuse me. And, uh, this has already fallen under scrutiny. It's like, why do you need the president's son to be like one of your advisors at the company? And there's this really funny interview of the owners of, again, can't remember. It's Calci or Polymarket where they're, it's both.

25:29Atrioc:I think he's, he's a, he's an investor and one and a board member on the other.

25:32Aiden:Okay. and I can't remember which company is getting interviewed but their answer is they're there the interviewer is like so why is the president's son like one of your advisors what sort of advice is he giving you and they're like well we have a lot of advisors they give us a lot of different perspectives and she's like well this isn't any advisor this is the president's son and they're like again we have a lot of advisors and they just repeat that talking point like four times I think what is also interesting here is there's there's an effort this is kind of the the crypto era president, right?

26:04Aiden:For, for his term, there's a lot of like ties to cryptocurrency, either like Trump or his sons or people adjacent to them making money through cryptocurrency that we've talked about on the show. And there is a push right now to remove, uh, remove the responsibility of regulation of cryptocurrency by the F SEC and hand it over to the CFTC because the CFTC has basically less is expected to scrutinize crypto less than the SEC does now. I mean, clearly they're not. This kind of seems connected in that here are these massive gambling companies that the president's children have connections to. Swaps companies.

26:48Aiden:Excuse me. Swaps companies. I got a real quote from the head of the CFTC, Michael Selig, who was set up for this job by Trump in December of last year. These are not casinos. They're not sportsbooks. They're markets. And the bottom line is we're going to defend our authority in court. So, yeah, I guess that's right. Here we go. So, okay. Let's go. Great. I do see the connections that we're talking about.

27:10Atrioc:Well, before we broaden out to other prediction market news, three fun facts. One, France, they blocked Polymarket completely in July. So that's a battle going on now. Spain blocked Polymarket and Cauchy in May, and that's estimated to go for multiple months while they do an investigation. Did France block it before or after France lost the World Cup? This is July, and so you know what? I don't know. I don't know. We'd meet the date, wouldn't we? Because it would be so funny if they did it right after because a bunch of French people lost a ton of money gambling on France. I heard the World Cup was the biggest revenues those protection markets have ever had.

27:45Yeah.

27:46Atrioc:And then the third fun thing, in Wisconsin, our favorite state, there's actually a statute from 1849 that says you can't vote in any election in which a person quote has been made or become interested directly or indirectly in any bet or wager depending on the result so wisconsin has come out recently and clarified if you bet on any prediction market on the outcome of a political campaign and you then go vote that's a felony and your ballot is thrown out and it's election fraud so now there's going to be an increasing movement that if you do go gamble on political events you can't vote which is like obviously i well i don't know i was gonna say obviously i haven't thought about it for more than 10 seconds but like that's it's fucking bizarre that is bizarre because they did not intend that when they wrote the law for what we're in currently it was it was clairvoyant back then i mean it was like not good to have anybody betting on political outcomes but really it's you couldn't you can't run it should be you can't run and bet on it not you can't like if i bet on trump biden and then i vote for my local wisconsin state senator it shouldn't be like uh i don't know i don't know i'm trying to equivocate it to like sports or something i think it's one of those

29:04Aiden:things where maybe there's just no reason it needs to happen do you know what i mean it's like like maybe we could craft the scenario where it's acceptable but it's like i'd rather just be safe with this one it's like money monetary incentives should not be tied to voting and there are monetary incentives because I'm gonna do my transition. Well, I mean, that's, I guess there's broad monetary incentives tied to voting in that who, depending on who you vote for, there's financial and economic outcomes. Support for this show comes from Anthropic. Guys, I just got third place in a streamer Pokemon invitational.

29:39And I want to tell you a quick little story about something I did for that. My coach was crunching the numbers on how much damage one Pokemon does to another Pokemon when it moves. moves and uh it's a pain in the ass took a lot of time and he's a busy man with a family and a kid and he's like dude i don't have time for this yeah i want to help you for the tournament but i have stuff to do and i literally thought okay maybe i'll ask quad and i just asked i put in my six pokemon and their six pokemon and i said hey could you help me with a booklet it made me an like an 80 page booklet with every possible thing it got every number right he checked some randomly and i printed it out to the tournament and it helped me a lot i didn't know it had that capability it's getting crazy I don't know how it calculated the damage of every possible move in the EVs and the IVs but it's crazy

30:24Aiden:for problems worth solving get started with Claude at claude.ai slash lemonade that's claude.ai slash lemonade and check out Claude Pro which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode claude.ai slash lemonade support for this show comes from Odoo running a business is hard enough So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

31:09Aiden:That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

31:43revenue for the first time they are basically a prediction markets company and of the prediction markets it's pretty much all sports betting so robinut has seamlessly transitioned from being a stock uh investing app for your phone to being a sports betting company i think wisconsin should

31:58Atrioc:go further if you trade on polymarket you shouldn't be allowed to work at a company okay you know what for a lot of young men that would be a plus that's a win-win they already want to opt out of work because it's like a bad you know you buy Nvidia you're banned from a job search mom I already I gotta be a I might do my job differently for the outcome of my bet if I knew

32:25Aiden:maybe this is time to make our big announcement what's that podcast I think we've been thinking about winding it down yep and if you head on over to lemonade dot stand you can start betting on pretty much anything oh yeah yeah we're going all in on prediction markets here on the show I said we wouldn't take a prediction market sponsor I'm telling the truth. We just simply turned our brand into one. And we're going to bet on the results of other podcasters. We're going to bet on... And you've got some info on the yard, so it's going to be good. We're going to bet a lot on whether or not slime farts.

32:55But I saw this number. It kind of shocked me while I was researching about this Robin Hood thing. Actually, wait, I have one more thing. There's a quote from the information that was talking about this. This is Dan Dolev, who's an equity research analyst. He said, the people on robin hood love gambling and the prediction market is right up their alley it's the perfect replacement for crypto because it produces a faster reward system in your brain you don't have to wait so this is a guy who has no soul just commenting on the true raw reality of it which is that people play robin hood for a dopamine rush related to money and they've evolved a better one which is just gambling straight up sports gambling is better than crypto which is better than betting on GameStop, which is the evolution.

33:38It's just funny that everything can, like, it's like every social media company eventually ends up being short form video that you scroll.

33:44Atrioc:Yeah. Every single other financial company ends up being sports gambling.

33:49Aiden:What was the Chudder? The Chudder app? Like, Chudder used to be like a TV network of sorts. Oh my god, that can't be how you say it. Are you saying Chudder? You're saying Cheddar. Like the cheese. Chudder. You said Chudder, like a chud. Yeah. Cheddar sounds like Grinder, but for like conservatives. Yeah. I guess no difference, huh? Cheddar.

34:16Atrioc:You're saying chudder. Chudder. You're saying chudder. Like if a cow ate so much cheese, it came out of its udders. That's a chudder. You're borrowing so much my time right now. Cheddar. Yeah. Cheddar. Cheddar. There you go. Yeah, there you go. That was natural. That was seamless.

34:37Aiden:That TV network of sorts pivoted into some weird TikTok slash sports gambling app. Like it was supposed to be bold. Please pull this up. I actually think this is worth showing. Okay, so I think this is the same company as that TV network. The only reason they are spelt differently. This is spelt C-H-E-D-D-R no vowel at the end of it. and but it's the same logo so I always assumed it was the same brand correct me if I'm wrong on that but this got announced like last year I don't know if the platform actually launched successfully but I remember seeing the trailer and it was basically here is a short for free with cheddar coins yeah this is just cheddar coins the future of sports gaming is here and you could watch like short form video about sports while live sports betting on things and I was just like you you know that i i've seen this sketch where it was like getting caught jerking off in 2050 or something and it was like the guy like his parent like opens his door and the kid's like in a rig that takes him like fucking like two minutes to get out of like he's in a like walking machine vr headset like and and i feel like that has goody not gone too far yeah like all the whole combination of dopamine chasing has gotten absurd we're very far from did they get the ball in the hoop a human being a human being in the year 1500 went an entire lifetime without feeling the dopamine yeah you get in five minutes on cheddar uh so anyway it turns out that delivering this rush of dopamine is a good business whether or not it's good for society because polymarket and calci alone this time last year combined for about five billion dollars worth of trades this time today it's over 25 billion so it's literally just this unbroken for once this was released to the population it has just doubled every few months it's crazy people fucking love this and the the backlash obviously you talked about the state's backlash yeah people are also seeing rampant increase in gamblers anonymous from younger members rampant increase in i don't know you I don't want to get too dark with it, but suicides from financial law.

36:55All this stuff is having consequences that are like, it's happening so quick that nobody can absorb it. And certainly even states that try can't seem to actually get anything done.

37:05Atrioc:Not their jurisdiction. Yeah. Not their jurisdiction. Their citizens' lives and finances are their problem.

37:11Aiden:It feels so sad and rooted in that financial nihilism that existed right now. And I, I go back to that idea a lot of before I was doing, you know, before I started the yard and I had like my normal salary for my normal job. I think the pathway of like turning that salary into something like owning a home seemed so far fetched, even though I had a pretty good job. Like I, you know, making like$65 ,000 a year, I was pretty happy with that. And I was like in my early twenties. That's a fucking awesome job. But the amount of savings I had, it's like the idea of getting a home out of that, especially in the places I lived in, which were like Seattle and Southern California.

37:56Aiden:It's just it felt unapproachable. So in order, I feel like you need, you get the sense of needing this massive financial breakout in order to make anything significant change in your life while you're constantly scrolling through videos of people's like luxurious lifestyles and like influencers doing things that you want to be a part of, but you could, you don't have access to. Like it's this terrible environment for you as a young person searching for a job you can't get, maybe applying for sending thousands of applications in on LinkedIn, not getting anything, maybe at best having a job where you can only put a limited amount of savings away.

38:37Aiden:You can't take any of these steps you've been told about your entire life. You spend all day scrolling fucking TikTok and Reels showing people's lifestyles that are unachievable at the salary. So you fucking all in what you have and hope you get a huge payout because you saw some crazy thread on Wall Street bets or something like that. And then you get a FOMO because some people do that and it works. That's the they post it on social media and you hear all the stories of like the guy that hit crypto or. Yeah. And then it's like, oh, well, I have to chase that. I think about that trip. We went on this trip to Italy.

39:09Aiden:The yard did like shortly after COVID restrictions had started lifting. Yeah. And one of Cutie's friends came on the trip and he had just earned a bunch of money through that NFT year because he bought like a rock. And the rock, him and his friend poured their savings to split a 20K rock NFT. Like an image of a rock. And then it like, it over 10X'd. Like, and then they just sold the rock and then were millionaires. And that was the guy I was on the trip with. But like we're saying, don't listen to stories like this.

39:44Atrioc:It's not going to happen to you.

39:46Aiden:Okay, I think this is actually, this is a good example of like this. It's a good example of you trying to convince them. Wait, I just said people get fooled by those stories. You're like, yeah, I got a story about a guy who had a great trip to Italy. No, no, no, no. He 10 extra rock and made a lot of money. That was pretty cool, actually.

40:03Atrioc:Okay, so he has this dream vacation in Italy. Keep going. He's hanging out with influencers. He's hanging out with like these successful podcasters.

40:12Aiden:I see the issue. He's a one in a million guy. And, and also on top of the, he's super. Yeah, no, this is amazing. He's got a smile that knocks your socks off. And he gives you kind of an air of anybody could do it. No, what I was going to say is those people also, they only share the ups. No one is no, even the people who do win big or one big at some point, aren't itching to tell you about the, you know, the follow-up week where they lost most of it on something else. Like nobody, nobody is happily sharing that story. So you get this really distorted vision of all of the successes from a limited number of people, most of which haven't even actually found that much success.

40:57Yeah. I mean, especially on Polymark and Calci and these things, just to be real, like their record revenues are because of customer losses. Customers have net lost billions of dollars in aggregate. So on average, if you play the bullish, rich markets, but the problem is I've said this in my chat. And the first thing they say every time is I'm different. They say those guys are, I'm not like they're joking, but I think some of them are not joking. They're like, nah, I'm built different. I have an edge.

41:22Aiden:Wait, I actually think this pivots well because the guys who actually are different are the people that are getting headhunted by these like hedge funds and organizations. Like if you are built different, this is, this is what i actually think is if you are built different and capable of beating the system what's happening to you really you're getting you're a quant at like a hedge fund and you're you're crafting the algorithm that like beats the game yeah that's not most people that's who you're playing against so yeah it's actually a good transition so i saw this article the million dollar talent wars for 20 something math geniuses uh and it turns out there are a select few people who are, I'm not good at math, but there's people who are incredibly, incredibly good at math.

42:07And for the longest time, they, actually, let's see this picture. Where do you think this is? Well, he's wearing a shirt that says Harvard. Okay. So Harvard's clue. Is it Harvard? It's not Harvard. I'll be narrowing it down. Do you think this is a tech company in Silicon Valley or do you think this is a financial company in New York?

42:26Atrioc:Okay, let me look at the details. I'm going to say it's not a tech company because the type of snacks they have don't look like the type of extremely hippie, way too expensive snacks they have at tech companies. Damn, that's actually a really deep cut. You got it right. That is normal water. It's not Hint water. Hint water is tech company water. For the longest time, these extremely intelligent math graduates, of which there's a very small percent, would mostly get headhunted by financial firms in New York, like this. This is Jane Street. and they would pay them really good salaries to be quants.

43:05Like you said, that was their thing. And they would trade against retail traders and beat their ass. That's essentially what they're used for. But now, much like sticks of RAM, the price of these commodities is being bid up by Sam Altman. Okay? Sam Altman and the AI companies have realized that quants are also exactly what they want for their... Don't finish the blank. Linear algebra. For their linear algebra. Token machines. Token machines. and so what was already a pretty lucrative spot to be in wall street quant is now the spot to be in of all jobs and basically they are being bid up by both sides of the coasts of this country with absolutely astronomical salaries uh and people are saying a million dollars for someone right out of college is something people don't even bat an eye at anymore they're getting uh you know, like$1.5 million with huge signing bonuses.

44:01They're getting insane, insane amounts to either go to, again, like Jane Street or Citadel or OpenAI and Anthropic. And that's the bid up. And so people are saying the current hiring climate is like bidding wars for professional athletes. They're basically the Luka Doncic of fucking math and they're getting life-changing money. I mean, and they're getting stock packages too that could literally change their life. So it's just a weird time. and I thought you know this was interesting and they say they interview these people and a lot of them come in with ambitions to become an academic they love math for the math of it and then they do one internship where they get paid 30 racks a month and they're like I'm never once they have a taste of what it means to work for these firms they the majority of them would rather go into industry

44:45Aiden:this is like I apologize because I'm forgetting his name but he's like fabled as one of the greatest modern mathematicians right now

44:52Atrioc:Terrence Tao?

44:53Aiden:Yes, Terrence Tao. And he works at UCLA, which publicly lists the salaries they pay. And this is like he's a prodigy. And I mean, not a prodigy anymore. He's well into his career, I guess.

45:05Atrioc:He's a 40-year-old prodigy. Yeah, yeah.

45:09Aiden:You're shit-talking Terrence Tao? You think you're better than him? No, no, no, no, no. You know more math than that? He is at... You think you're wicked smart? What's your numbers, huh? He's making like$760 ,000 a year working at UCLA, which is you know, pretty insane for a professor, but considering his stature and he's working at academia, like that is the ceiling of academia for his background. Legend at the, at a great university at the top of the top. Yeah. And then these kids who are just finishing college, not to say that they're not extremely intelligent because, but they're making more than that.

45:43Aiden:Signing onto these companies out of college. Signing bonuses of his full salary. It's like, okay, ideally we'd want these people in like research and academia. yeah that's uh yeah it's just an odd and you know you don't know if this will last or whatever but right now has never been a better time to be a math nerd in college so all of you pivot your

46:00Atrioc:majors right now all right yeah i think it's kind of cool this is actually i think it's great i'm not saying this is a good or bad story good at math have more opportunities are getting more money to go do things i think that is broadly a cool thing rather than just like oh go be an iBanker and otherwise you have no options. Yeah. Well,

46:20Aiden:you know, those are financial firms and we could slide on over to more of a tech firm flock. I've heard really only positive things about them lately. I'm surprised that you're paste at the

46:34Atrioc:end. In our run of show, we had South Africa as our next story. And as you were saying that, I was like, South Africa is a tech firm now. Like, how are we getting to South Africa?

46:42Aiden:Dodging his paste being squeezed. I did fuck this up a little bit. I saw the perfect segue to that topic, and then I forgot which one of ours was first. Then we're going to have four Aiden stories in a row. We're going to have four Aiden stories in a row. We're going to squeeze you so hard. You know I'm a second half guy. What's going on with Flock? All right, let's say what's going on with Flock. All right. Let's say what we think first, me and Aiden. About Flock. Yeah, I mean, I love Flock. Let me set it up for you. I know you love Flock. More than you. More than me. Actually, I don't really like that much when I think about it.

47:14I'm not even a big fan, but you are a huge fan. It's mostly me.

47:16Aiden:Yeah. You've been pulling me into it, but I kind of been backing away. And yeah. And I pulled up that Ben Jordan video where he's like showing how easy it is to like hack flock cameras and like spy on your cameras. Yeah, you were like. And I was like, we should do this. We should spy on people.

47:30Atrioc:All right. As of this month, there are now 120 ,000 flock cameras in the United States. A flock camera, if you are not aware, is traditionally, it is a small camera that is all about license plate. It's often called, oh my God, A P license, A L P R, an automated license plate. An Alper. Sorry. Is it,

47:48Aiden:is it 120 ,000 or 102 ,000? Okay.

47:51Atrioc:So there is 120 ,000 reported by flock, but this is a map called D flock. And there's two open source projects that are basically trying to track this. So you can go and like look in America because people have found these. So like, if we go here to LA, right, you could actually look like, okay, so we'll go to a truck's home here. There is, you can see a truck. Oh, his house is like south of four of these cameras, right? But you can actually look and go, okay, if I were to drive to work, I could do a route that avoids them because they're all tracked publicly. And what I would say here is like, if you come from the south, there's no coverage at all.

48:27Atrioc:And if you were to then leave east, there is no ability for the police to track what you did. It is please. This is the whole screen. Blur it. And so consider the idea. Don't even put it in Los Angeles. no also so that we don't have to blur this is not a truck's address brandon leaves his home unlocked most of the time he does not have a ring camera no cameras uh but yeah no so you can actually look and see in any city in america the of the 120 000 there are uh about a hundred thousand that they have tracked and added to this database when you're looking at this it is a lot and so what the you know what's happened with flock well dude there is so much the short version of this is that as it has grown absolutely massively to cover so many different cities and states and jurisdictions and there's like it's not just police departments who want this stuff who are the you know the primary use case to be able to track criminals or stolen cars or whatever uh you know an abduction happens they can quickly find whoever did it it's also like homeowners associations.

49:32Atrioc:It's like various groups or schools that want to be able to set these up and then say we will be able to rapidly get information about like any license plate of any car that goes in our area. That's the that's the business proposal. Yeah. Can I ask you all understand because I'm not a flock expert. Is it what is the difference between flock and like CCTV? Like if I was a homeowner association and I get a bunch of flock cameras from my neighborhood, what is the difference between that a regular camera? Is it just that it AI tracks the license plate or what? Yeah. So the core product is, I mean, it's kind of the camera, but really we've had license plate tracking technology for decades, right?

50:06Atrioc:You know, that that's a thing that like police have had. The difference is that now it is a software company that is installing all these cameras where all of the data gets sent to a centralized database that can track it all against each other. Right. So that's really the product you are purchasing access to it. And this is where it gets controversial to all or some subset of the data. And that way you can go to flock and say, Hey, I need information about this thing and you pull it against all these different pieces of data that they have, right? So it's really the network that pulls all this information together on top of they are the ones, you know, putting these cameras all over the place.

50:40Atrioc:Interesting. As you can imagine, a lot of people aren't stoked about this. And so according to LA Times, this past month, LAPD announced they are pausing their Flock contract after a three-year contract with Flock, which Los Angeles has been using that stun. And they are saying that their main concern is actually not really about mass surveillance. It's about data privacy. So there's two problems that people have with Flock primarily. One is the concept of mass surveillance. It's kind of creepy. We'll get into that. Second is the idea that if you're a little city or a big city like Los Angeles, you want these things for your local PD to help with crime or whatever.

51:21Atrioc:You don't want federal agencies to be able to track what everybody in Los Angeles has been doing. So in theory, when you sign up for FLOC, you are signing up to have, you know, a certain areas information shared and tracked. But there have been many, many instances where FLOC, even though they say they're not sharing, whoopsie daisy, a state department or a federal department does end up getting access to it. So this keeps happening over and over. And sometimes it's they they don't actually they don't directly give access. But whoops, the people running LADP or LAPD, excuse me, like sent some of the data to this agency or gave them permission or said, hey, ICE, you can come in.

51:59Atrioc:And this is particularly becoming contentious because ICE has been shown now to access like both LAPD and San Francisco PD's database to find where people are, despite on paper, this not supposed to be the case. And so this is, you know, this happened in L.A., which is a pretty notable case. It's happening in actually a lot of cities now. So like Santa Cruz, El Cerrito, Santa Clara County, Mountain View, all California cities are all stopping their contracts or turning off Flock because of the data, like saying, hey, our data is going outside of our network. We are not OK with this. There's 53 cities last year that quit Flock.

52:35Atrioc:That's from Tech Times. But at the same time, Tech Times reported that nearly 800 cities approved new Flock contracts in 2026 alone. so it's interesting that some major cities in california and other ones around the country are starting to say no we're not okay with this using the data distribution as like the main thing uh but it continues to just absolutely balloon all over the city get out of it let's say i'm a small town mayor and i have to spend a fuck ton of money to pay this software company to come set up cameras all over my city what am i what am i getting out of it well so the pitch is and it's worth i look i know everybody's gonna fucking quote do the ben franklin quote okay and they're gonna post in the comments and show how smart they are and i and i get that all right but let's at least make an honest argument for why you would care about this and actually san francisco is a good example so they started pushing this a couple years ago they've now installed about 400 cameras in san francisco and you can go look at it and san francisco had a major crime let's say either perception or problem depending on how you look at it post covet and certainly everybody i knew there was having cars broken into constantly massive property it was very very bad from first-hand experience or my friend's experience not from twitter yeah or you seem like no that

53:52Aiden:was i feel like it by the by the last like couple years more people i knew in san francisco had had their car broken into than hadn't yeah like it they got insanely good at it was an insanely

54:06Atrioc:polished system of... It was polished in just like wanton destruction. It was like they were just breaking everything and like every friend I knew had it happen. It was like you didn't you couldn't park a car anywhere near any popular area because they were... They hit the tool and just shattered a window. But they would shatter regardless of whether there was something in there. It was just to check. So it was horrific on top of all this property crime, whatever else. So crime really did get horrifically bad according to many people I've spoken with in San Francisco. So then they do this big anti-crime push and as part of that, Mayor London breed at the time starts pushing for this program of we are going to install these cameras that will help us track criminals faster these guys who are coming in smashing a bunch of windows and driving off before we can get anything like a police report hours later doesn't really help them the person's already gone right so uh they've been installing a massive amount of flock cameras and their other tools like drones and reported this is from flock that in 2025 crime in san francisco fell by 25 % in a single year.

55:01Atrioc:Homicides are the lowest it's been. And Mayor Daniel Lurie has said that Flock's combined tech is, quote, a turning point for public safety in San Francisco. So both Flock and San Francisco, the PD, and the mayor are saying, thanks to these tools, we have massively reduced crime.

55:16Aiden:This was last year, right? I think 2025, they... Yeah. Yeah, okay. So we've talked about it before. It's just a big interesting question, right? Because, you know, in China, this is par for the course. We walked around. there was a camera every damn three feet they didn't even think about it wasn't even like a and i it's just a question of i mean i really do think hearing this story i am the most concerned similar to this with data privacy where it's the idea of whatever they're collecting being used for uh or being just put into the model and trained and used on things way later for way different purposes yeah that's that's a scary thought because these things always seem to evolve and grow past what they say they're going to be used for yep i think and actually let me just let me

56:00Atrioc:say this first because i know people this happened the last time brought up flock you know there's no we can't prove that flock is the thing that caused crime to go down right it's one of many factors maybe not even a factor at all right it's hard to know they're obviously biased in this um and the second is uh it turns out sf standard and 404 media reported that whoops the sfpd let out of state cops run, I think millions of searches on their license plate database, including on behalf of ice. And so now they're talking about like, we're going to be stricter about it, but it does come back to this fundamental question.

56:34Atrioc:So San Francisco, you have a city where there was massive crime, where people were really, really upset about crime and we're looking for a solution. And this is being attributed to one of the things that is allowing police to respond to things much faster. And there are real examples where you report that somebody broke into your house and drove away you give a license plate to the cops and they can within 10 minutes locate the person that is cool to stop crime that's also means that cops can track you in 10 minutes right it's obviously good you know it's obviously horrible for privacy and tracking and government

57:07Aiden:surveillance yeah you need to you need to have faith in like the institutions to effectively use the tool uh not have like third parties misuse it and like have respect for for privacy and i I don't think there's any, like, I cannot imagine kind of across the board right now. There's that really that trust in government to like use the data appropriately. Confidence in U.S. institutions near all time low. I think it is actually an all time low. This is an older article. I think we're at an all time low. So that, yeah, I just think people don't have the trust in this being used correctly right now.

57:39It is the same thing as like if someone asked me in the government, they're like, hey, can we raise 10 billion in taxes to build, I don't know, a train or a bridge? I'd be like, in theory, I very much love that, but I'm very worried that I can trust you and take this money and not build it. It could be 10 years later you haven't built it.

57:55Atrioc:It's a lack of trust. Yeah, it's weird to, you know, again, when we were in China and you talked to somebody who's like, oh, it's great. Crime is way down. You know, to be explicit here, I do not like this world where flop cameras can allow companies to track what everybody is doing. I'm not a fan of this, but it's also it's hard to go to somebody in San Francisco and be like, you're giving up your privacy. And they're like, yeah, but my car doesn't get broken into anymore. It's, it's, it's tough. I think when there are people that feel it's greatly benefited them. Yeah.

58:26Aiden:I think that it's, it's ultimately like a personal question, right? I think about the China trip all the time because like bringing up the point of. Your privacy being lost and the onset consequences of having that information available or accessible by the government and those people being like, hey, this doesn't matter to me because the difference in crime between now and like 10 or 20 years ago is like night and day. And this level of enforcement through the surveillance state is like what improved my life. And like I wouldn't make that choice. I don't want that personally. but you know for certain people like they're willing to make that trade off because of the because of what it was like before and I think yeah I think that's just what any question we talked about we could talk about we could talk about another crazy situation don't transition out this is an Aiden story next guaranteed what's crazy tell me about it what's your guys do what's your guys's next one again okay okay

59:26Atrioc:wait hold on the remaining between me and a truck I think it's literally just just AI insurance fraud. And then it's for Aiden stories. So if you can transition harder to my story than any of yours, we can do that one next.

59:39Aiden:Your last one is so tough from here. We might have to go to South Africa. South Africa. Give me some pace,

59:47Atrioc:Aiden. Travel South Africa.

59:50Aiden:Okay. So I saw this story crop up at the end of June and basically a unique, unique movement. at least from my perspective. Talked a lot about on the show about how anti-immigrant sentiment has risen across the world. And I remember our Japan trip especially because there was this rising criticism of immigrants within Japan. And admittedly, as an outside party, I thought this was kind of hilarious in like a very bird's eye view because Japan is almost as homogenous as it gets. There's just not a lot of immigrants in Japan period. The number of immigrants there has increased over the last, uh, you know, the last few decades, but ultimately this is a country that is pretty much all Japanese people.

1:00:43Aiden:So to see the pattern of country encounters, economic problems, blame immigrants happen in a country like Japan. It was like, it was almost so absurd. It was just funny because not, not that you can win an election on it, which is great. You can win even there. It just is a golden standard. So that, that apparently like this, this like political strategy is like, you can apply it at any time. And I think people have an understanding of, uh, parties around the world right now in Western countries, especially pushing back, uh, right wing parties pushing back against immigration. And I saw this story in June about South Africa, where a similar sort of thing is happening.

1:01:25Aiden:So I imagine you guys understand this to some extent, but South Africa has not been doing particularly well. And like the early, like to late 2000s, there was kind of this surge in South Africa changing and the post-apartheid era. And it looked like it was in that kind of developing to developed countries sort of stage. It was gonna become one of the next like big countries on the world stage. but as time has passed that hasn't really come to fruition. South Africa is maybe the most unequal country in the world, an enormous disparity between the richest people and the poorest people in the country, incredible levels of government corruption, incredible levels of unemployment.

1:02:08Aiden:I had sort of a jokey story earlier in the year about how South African unemployment had fallen from, uh from i think like 38 percent to 35 percent they did it uh but this is you know when we talk about unemployment in like the u.s for example we're looking at an unemployment rate of like like four uh or if things if things get to like if things got to 10 that would be really really bad and this is a country with over 30 percent unemployment and has had that for quite some time it's funny you mentioned them like in their rising phase because i remember thinking when they first made bricks it was like brazil russia india china and then south africa felt like the i was like are they really like one of the we're in there yeah but they were in there they were like they were yeah like you said they were like this rising economic star of asia yeah and they had the world of africa they had the world cup and i i think there's there was a lot of spotlight on the country to succeed now we're in a position where the country has been doing quite poorly for quite some time.

1:03:12Aiden:And there are huge populations of immigrants within South Africa. A lot of people from other countries in Africa that have immigrated there over the last few decades, people from Nigeria, people from Malawi, people from the Congo, looking for opportunity in South Africa, which is relatively better than like the area of the country that they might be coming from. And in recent years, there has been a huge rise in anti-immigrant sentiment among the like poor populations of South Africa in these like areas or like slums in South Africa, basically taking issue or accusing foreign born individuals of you came here illegally.

1:03:59Aiden:You're trafficking drugs. You're at the root of the crime. You're at the root of the unemployment. You are stretching social services and education in ways that make it worse for us South Africans to live here. And the there has been a rise in basically vigilante groups. Really like some community leader will start gathering like support and people and advocating for the exit of these immigrants and have begun pressuring people to leave the country. if they are foreign born because they are at the root of these problems they are accusing of. And - Pressure them like how? They are threatening like potential, sorry, threatening them with violence or earlier in the year, they had set a deadline of like, you need to leave the country by June 30th or we are going to come raid homes and businesses as groups and physically remove you.

1:05:01Aiden:That also sounds like violence. Through, through, sorry. Yeah. Through the threat of violence. I think, sorry, prior to be clear, prior to this deadline, it had been more like community demonstrations. Maybe there had been like smaller one-off incidences of, uh, attacks or intimidation. casual racism on xbox 360 but the the big thing that was happening is there was this issuance from a variety of groups that if you are not leaving the country by june 30th then we are going to show violence in order to remove you from then naturally a lot of people within the country are very fearful of their position because of these threats right and the government because of the overall state that it is in, it is not necessarily endorsing any sort of like policy or backing these groups, but they are often like standing by or not really enforcing or policing the way these groups are interacting or threatening immigrants.

1:06:02Aiden:They are in some cases, but largely the government is very out of touch with how these communities are like being threatened. And these vigilante groups have been able to posture these threats without facing many consequences for it. Um, so in the buildup to this deadline, I thought it was crazy. Like it's giving examples of like this Ethiopian store owner and his brother have lived there for 11 years and they're interviewing some of the people that come to a store, some of his friends. And they're like, we can't do anything. Like they're going to come with guns and they're going to, uh, and I, I don't want my friend to have to leave, but I think he should leave for his own safety.

1:06:41Aiden:And in the buildup to these threats, uh, tens of thousands of people start to leave the country, even if they have the papers or documents. So the, the thing about this, like vigilante sort of system, not to say that it would be justifiable, justifiable to like, you know, where they're not killing their box, kill somebody that doesn't have papers is, uh, nobody like the vigilante group. Isn't like kicking down the door of the shop and saying like, show me your visa. they're kicking out people based off of their foreign born status, or even if they like people who have been born in South Africa, but are parents of those immigrants.

1:07:16Aiden:And so naturally a lot of people fled in like fear of this happening. And as more and more people have begun to leave at the same time, uh, these massive like camps have begun to form at like certain borders or in certain cities where multiple, like tens of thousands of people are congregating in camps, waiting to be like repatriated back to their country, their original country in, in order to just stay safe. So it gave, sorry, go ahead. I was going to say, but now the South African economy is thriving, right? And everything's great. This, so I've been told this works. You just, you violently, it's crazy.

1:07:55People who are different. They picked the other options. The other option. Sorry. No, one of the two, there was no, and now South Africa is thriving and everyone is happy. and everyone has a job. It wasn't violence. There was the threat of violence. The threat of violence, but they had to do it because this was the problem. And believe it or not,

1:08:09Aiden:in July, the country 180.

1:08:16Aiden:I think the thing that gets noted over and over again is when like experts weigh in on the topic. Like I was reading some articles from like a South African newspaper where like people are writing like in South African, like academia, like weighing in on this issue. It's like, these are people who are engaging with very real problems in their country. Social services do suck. The country is incredibly corrupt. There is a lack of opportunity for people. But ultimately, the same story is playing out here where they are scapegoating a population that has very little to do with the material challenges that the country is facing right now.

1:08:58Aiden:But, and look, I don't live in South Africa. So it'd be crazy for me to just like go up to a population. You're a podcaster. I'm a fucking. Say your piece. But I read through the, I think it was like YouTube video comment sections of like an Al Jazeera piece and like a DW piece, which are very much taking the angle that I would say I'm taking right now, which is that immigrants are probably being unfairly blamed for problems that they probably have very little to do with. And the argument from the South Africans in those comments and it is basically, we are like stepping in where our government refuses to step in.

1:09:37Aiden:We see that there's like a lack of like control at like the border, a lack of like oversight over immigration. And we are like taking our country back and in like enforcing the laws and the capacity that they should be enforced. That's the way these vigilante groups see it. Listen, I don't know enough. I literally don't know enough. I'd have to learn more about it. I do know, or at least history has shown that on economic problems specifically, this type of action is not, it was not going to change. It's not going to suddenly make the unemployment rate fix. And it's like, that's, that never happens.

1:10:06And I think there's a kind

1:10:07Aiden:of a sad story is in the, basically the last few months, like over, I think over 50 ,000 people, uh, had like left prior to that deadline. And then tens of thousands more have like gone into these, like, uh, these temporary, like basically temporary refugee camps before like transport comes to like bring them back to the, like their country of origin. Um, and it sounds like the government has stepped in there to like manage those. So there's like this tacit approval from the government about like all of this happening while like not being the initial vehicle for it happening in the first place.

1:10:42Aiden:I just thought this was an insane story, uh, because the scale at which it's happening, it's like, you know, one camp has like 20 ,000 people from Malawi that have many of which have like lived in the country for, for years and years and years, just have to leave their home or separate from their family because of these like movements going on. That is a truly insane and dark story coming out of South Africa. And it reminds me so much of another story about Bud Light sales by the exact same person, Aiden. There's no, I can't do transition. Okay. You know what? What are I getting? Yeah, I get it.

1:11:18Aiden:Yeah. I reap what I sow. I, I, I fucked around with the run of show. And now I have to talk about families in South Africa being split up by vigilante groups. That's right. I now have to talk about how Bud Light isn't the best selling light beer in America anymore. Yeah. Was it a mistake to put the bolt on the sheet?

1:11:39Atrioc:No, maybe we can do this. We can transition it. Okay. Yeah. So is there a lot of humanitarian aid that the U.S. is sending to South Africa?

1:11:47Aiden:No, Doug, we're selling all the leftover Bud Light that is fucking selling. Okay. Whoa, that's interesting. Tell me about that. You're saying it's not selling? It's not selling? What's happening? What's going on with Bud Light? Okay. This is a small story that I saw that I thought was kind of funny, which is that Bud Light has officially been surpassed as America's top-selling light beer. Wait, let's guess. Who beat it? Who do you think? Who's taking the crown, boys? Who's the number one light beer?

1:12:15Atrioc:It's going to be somebody random. I'm going to guess. No seltzers, right? We're talking light beer? Light beer. I'm going to guess Corona. Heineken. Nope. Michelob Ultra. Oh! Hot dog. Maybe I'm just out of the game. I don't feel like I've ever in my entire life heard someone say, hey, get me a Michelob Ultra. I just like...

1:12:38Aiden:Well, the interesting thing about this, AB InBev, which is the overall holding company for not only Bud Light and a ton of other beer brands, including Michelob Ultra, including Budweiser which had had the crown in the past uh this holding company just owns all these beers all beer in the world almost they have they have like a third of all beer consumed yeah it's insane it is funny because when I clicked on this article I kind of like I think in a passive way I I knew that these companies weren't directly competing with each other but it I was like I opened the article and I was like wait this company just owns all these things It's like, this is a fake battle.

1:13:18And wait, I remember this because there was the big Kid Rock, like cancel Bud Light, like shooting the cans thing. And then it was like, yeah, Bud Light got dethroned because they got dethroned back then too. And it was a different ABM company. So they just moved the dollars from a different, all the consumers were buying the same company's beer from a different brand.

1:13:37Aiden:So what's kind of interesting is there's a huge, huge fall off of light beer sales. Like if you, in general, Like if you look at Bud Light, Budweiser, and Michelob over time, and you look at where all of these brands stand for this year compared to previous years, there's just this gigantic trend of like light beer consumption in America falling off. Wait, I have the chart that he's looking at. It's so funny because it looks like a Ray Dalio Rise and Fall of Empire chart. It looks like Great Britain, America, China. Okay, so...

1:14:11Atrioc:The era of Bud Light peaked in 2010. Yeah, Michelob Ultra is now the king, which is a fraction of the light beer sales in 1990. Yeah, damn, we used to drink.

1:14:21Aiden:And the story that is kind of told here is that in 2023, Bud Light did that ad campaign that they got a lot of flack before where they worked with a trans influencer and she was like drinking, you know, the drinking Bud Light on her Instagram story or in an Instagram post. She did one Instagram post, yeah. And immediately there was this huge like right wing pushback and supposedly Bud Light sales did fall. And I'm not denying that they did. But as I dug into this article, there was a couple interesting things that I saw, which is that not these brands were all on a huge fall off already. This entire category of drinking has been declining.

1:15:04Aiden:And also AB InBev dropped the marketing spend for Bud Light in recent years. They just cut the marketing budget huge. So they weren't spending as much as they used to. Whereas with Miclub, they just started spending a bunch more money on that brand. So it's like Miclub was the beer of the world cup. Right, right, right. At least, uh, was it just in the U S or is it the whole world cup no matter what? Um, and they've increased the marketing spend on that brand a ton. And then also what's kind of funny is if you look at their, uh, there was, you know, the claim of like losses around that time because of the backlash to that ad campaign, which, uh, you know, I won't deny that like the backlash in America like existed, but they are now 30.

1:15:48Aiden:If you check the market cap of AB in Bev compared to what it was during that time to now, the company that is now worth$38 billion more by market cap, even with the decline in sales of Bud Light and these drinks. We won.

1:16:02Atrioc:We won.

1:16:03Aiden:We won. We won. And, uh, so the, the, new it's like the the the mountaintop is lower than ever but Michelob's the new king and all of the competitors are just owned by the same guys yeah no joke which it is funny based on this chart like Bud Light has been in free fall since 2010 it's like it's not it no individual thing stands out in this chart and the fact that people have just been drinking less of it every year since 2010

1:16:31Atrioc:no way that hey I'm happy to be wrong here. There's no way that there's going to be a big resurgence of light American beer. I just feel like... You never know. Did you see... I don't have the statistic in front of me, but very recently it was announced that Americans are now doing cannabis more than any other substance. Zoomers don't drink and they smoke weed way more.

1:16:53Aiden:I think alcohol as an entire industry is kind of in a rough spot compared to its historical position. People aren't going out in the same way. I also think like the public rhetoric, especially in the U S around drinking has just completely changed. Like, I feel like it's way more mainstream to be like completely sober, uh, to talk about the negative consequences of alcohol on your body and just be like, nah, that shit's poison, man. And like, have that be the, I heard, uh, you know, like back in the day, since I'm a fricking onk, you know, you would talk about going out and dating at like bars and clubs and like, that would be the party area.

1:17:33Yeah. And it says everybody's using run clubs now. Younger Zoomers don't go to bar. Bars are not a thing. And like the nightclubs is way less of a thing. Many nightclubs are closing. People are now doing like fitness clubs and run clubs. That's how they meet people to the opposite sex. It's just interesting. They're lame. They became lame. They got to drink more, dude. That's the coolest thing to do. They got to drink more and be unhealthy. If you're not crushing Bud Light, you're not cool. You want to be like us? Come on. We're cool. Are you Gen Z?

1:18:00Aiden:Get a Bud Light. Get back out there. Get it back out there and pipe. This is their marketing strategy. They paid us for this ad.

1:18:06Atrioc:You might think, might take a sip and go, this Bud Light tastes like shit. And then think, ah, surely Michelob Ultra is better because it's doing better. And you'll take a sip and you'll be surprised as well. That's exactly the same. But it's cool. We told you these, we told these guys you were cool, all right? Drink more Michelob or whatever. You know what's cooler than Bud Light? What's cooler than Bud Light? Is it? Trump's IRS immunity. No, it's AI insurance fraud. I don't know. I think we could. Let's try a couple transitions. Okay. You know what's cooler than Bud Light? You know, it was very cold.

1:18:40Atrioc:You know, it's very cold. The Nordics! The Nordic country! Nordic fun fact! Nordic fun fact! Nordic fun fact! You're making me do three in a row. Yeah. Aiden, not only are you doing three in a row. We can squeeze an IA insurance fraud. I'm telling you right now. No, he wants to hear about insurance fraud. That's boring, bro. If this is not the fucking sickest Nordic fun fact, I'm going to be pissed. you promised us a full toothpaste of squeeze and this Nordic fucking shake your body here it is okay okay

1:19:05Aiden:well I have a question for you both do you like war hmm I like no you might not like this one wait wait wait wait there's no way did they come out and they denounced war or something he's like hey in the Ukraine yeah in the Ukraine Mark Carney said that war is bad. How quickly can I pivot this to Ukraine? No, this is about Denmark. And I promise you, Nordic Fun Fact listeners, I will give Finland a bit of love very soon. Don't you worry. I will. Like there's a clamoring for Finland-specific Nordic Fun Facts? There is. It's so important. Sound off in the comments if you're ready for a Finnish Nordic Fun Fact.

1:19:50Aiden:I know you've been dying for it. Okay. There was interesting changes. The Danes are changing some of the rules around conscription. Oh. So in 2024, something that they changed was that not just men are eligible for conscription. It's been in women or it's applies to women as well. And that was a change they made back then. Aren't Danish women like average six feet tall or something? They're warriors. You're thinking, you're thinking a good point. I think you're thinking a Dutch, but I'm not the Rick front back guy. I don't have any facts. Netherlands is not Nordic. It sounds like it is. It's like it's in the club.

1:20:35It's adjacent.

1:20:37Aiden:The big change they just made is that that service that you were put into when you were conscripted before was a four month period, unless you chose to stay longer. and they have just recently expanded that time to 11 months. So everyone that is conscripted has a longer base amount of service that they have to do. Required. Mandatory. I think this is required in Denmark. Can I bonesperge it? How do I get out? How do I, if I'm Danish? I think there's ways out of it. I think Danish people weigh in on this, but my understanding is that it is required, but there's a lot of ways for you to get around the service.

1:21:21Aiden:And this expansion to both including women and this raising of a change to 11 months is especially in reaction to the threats to Greenland, the invasion of Ukraine, just this dynamic of conflict, like changing in Europe, where they feel threatened and want to prepare in a way that they haven't in the past. And there is like a decent amount of feedback, even from young people in the country about this, um, where that four months is just like a very short period of time to like be able to really learn anything and like,

1:22:01Atrioc:or abroad. Yeah.

1:22:02Aiden:And this 11th month, 11 month period gives you a lot more time to like learn, uh, things while you were in the military. Uh, the expectations of this program is by 2033, they're hoping to raise the annual number of conscripts that they have. from 5 ,000 to 7 ,500 to increase the size of the military. I'm looking it up right now to see how you can get out of it. I wanted to see if I was a Denmark citizen, Dane, and I wanted to get out of conscription. It is saying that they have a certain number of slots they want to fill. And most of the time, all those slots are filled by volunteers. And if that happens, nobody gets called no matter what lot you draw in the fucking conscription.

1:22:40It doesn't matter. You can opt out.

1:22:42Atrioc:But if you drop below like a certain percentage, you get margin called. You got to go in. You get margin called.

1:22:46Aiden:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they start taking the lottery numbers. So if they're increasing the number of slots, the volunteers have to also go up. Otherwise you start actually getting, yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting, interesting. And a lot of these initial people being pulled in are, you know, one of the places they're getting sent to is Greenland for like initial like training or like stationing. But they, the military wants to increase the recruitment to 13 ,000 people per year overall. So the expectation is about like half of that is going to be coming from conscription. Wow.

1:23:20Atrioc:That is a lot of people. It's also saying that people were fine to volunteer when it was four months, but they're way less likely to volunteer. Now that's at 11 months. Yeah. So the number of volunteers actually dropping. Yeah.

1:23:31Aiden:So I think that I assume I would guess as a young person, the positive feedback about being able to learn more within that time period is the minority of people.

1:23:40Atrioc:It's one of those things where, you know, something that's like 1999 as a price feels a lot less than, or whatever, like$6 feels way less than$9. Like four months just feels like, eh, it's kind of like a long vacation. You can do that. I could fight and grill it against Trump for four months. Yeah.

1:23:58Aiden:But I think, you know,

1:24:00Atrioc:the idea in,

1:24:03Aiden:on Denmark's part is not necessarily to have this like massive standing army, but to have this larger portion of the population that is available to be called upon if a conflict were to actually happen. You have a bunch of people that have gone through like 11 minutes, 11 minutes, 11 minutes. I volunteer for that. I go 11 months of training in whatever capacity so that if a conflict were to break out that involves Denmark, you're able to access like a larger portion of the population that has been trained in some capacity. If you're from Denmark, very curious what you have to say about this. I'm sure your experience in the danish news about this is quite different but this is uh just what i had seen if they're from denmark they get this news from you some of them do i know which is if you're danish and you're getting it from me please get it somewhere else no this is the nordic fun but i've seen so many comments because i'm a nordic citizen and i get my news i pulled

1:24:57Atrioc:up our youtube demographics right here so i look after the united states canada uk germany australia you know what the next ones are in order of most people, Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Finland, which are collectively about 5 % of our audience. That's great. That's definitely

1:25:15Aiden:because of Nordic fun. Sweden is like the biggest chunk of that. It's like two, I think 2%. And I had to send all of our viewership data across all of our accounts for Swedish viewers for my immigration application. Hey, that's great. So it's good that we're collecting them. We literally are 2 % Swedish. I'm not even kidding. If you're Swedish watching this show, you had a hand in me getting accepted into your country. Quit watching. I need you to keep watching. I need you to keep watching. In fact, if you're American, change your VPN. It's 90 % Swedish. And don't do that. And send that clip to the immigration store here right now, man.

1:25:54Aiden:I wouldn't want you to do that because that would be fraud. Immigration. That would be fraud.

1:25:59Atrioc:Wait, hold on. Are we talking about AI insurance fraud or about Trump not being eligible for fraud claims because of the IRS immunity. That's also fraud. That's also fraud. Which one did you mean? He counter transitioned.

1:26:12Aiden:Which one do you think? I'm in AI insurance fraud. I meant your story.

1:26:15Atrioc:Oh, okay. All right, Doug. Boring. AI insurance fraud. What's that? Oh, wait a minute. Can I guess what this is? I have literally no stories, but I'm already thinking of how I would fraud an insurance company with AI. Yeah, go ahead. You could break your car or pretend to break your car, right? You could just like send a photo. They asked for a photo. am i hey go ahead go ahead i'm sorry no deliver the story cut it out no no no i mean it that was legitimately i was literally just guessing i'm not giving you shit so this is what is happening and i think everybody is aware of ai scams that are like you know somebody calls you and it's a fake voice or whatever people are hearing about that uh but simon one of our lovely viewers who works at a german insurance company and is like involved with a lot of this stuff who we've chatted with actually a couple times now um is saying something i i didn't even think about this being the case which is hey you know how when like you get in a car accident or you break your glasses or house or something and then you send photo or video evidence to an insurance company to tell them that something did break and they owe you money well it turns out ai is really really good at this and so simon was saying actually i sent you yeah if you scroll down perry on this there's these examples keep going you'll see it uh here so where people can just you know you take a real photo of your car and you could put yourself in a car accident sure but you could also make the damages look worse you could uh you know remove bind standards or do whatever else so i thought it'd be fun if we do a little game show and see if you guys can tell if you pull this up we have to be auditors what's the difference and so i added a couple different photos why did you delay this is the beginning of the show okay okay okay so the question is i'm going to have a photo that you might send to an insurance claim okay and i'm going to make a difference and we're going to see if you can tell what I did and if you'll be able to see if it's fake.

1:28:04Atrioc:Okay. So here's the first one. Car accident. It looks bad. It looks bad. You know, there's like a bystander in the back. Well, okay. Wait, are you noticing what I'm noticing? Yeah. Is it feel like there's a bumper, but why is it stuck to the this is the original, but isn't this is the original. This is real. This is real. Yeah. Okay. And then here's see if you notice the change. Okay.

1:28:32and I was so excited for this segment. You really have me all hyped up. I was so excited. And that's the end. I think it was so if I had to point out the difference,

1:28:44Aiden:could you go back? I actually want to make sure. I think it's like you've taken most of the car from the first image and you've put it over three men having sex with each other. Yeah.

1:28:57Atrioc:And so basically is an example of what people are doing. getting this. The insurance analysts are getting a lot of this. Down Perry. So you guys kind of get the idea. So Simon was telling me all about how this has become a major, major new problem that insurance companies. No, that's not what he's telling me. Well, not that specifically. That was my I tried to create an example for you guys. Yeah. I just feel like it works better if you see it. So why is this stuff so hard if you're an insurance company? Well, the problem is that You know, like, I don't know if you guys could tell. I didn't even use AI there.

1:29:31Atrioc:It was Photoshop. But you can use these AI models to create images and videos and change images. And every single model now can, like, do it in different ways. You did that with AI? No, that actually. Was it pure Photoshop? Yeah, it's crazy. These all AI? Okay, so these are examples where somebody is using AI to modify photos.

1:29:53Aiden:Audio listeners, for the segment that you just didn't see, be happy you didn't see it. Yeah. And for the segment we're looking at now, we're looking at AI photos of car crashes. Yeah. I guess they're real car crashes, but they've altered them to make the damages. Right. So there's multiple options here. So this is because it reminds me of like, you know how they'll give you a free water cup at a restaurant to go get, but you can't get the soda. You're not allowed to get the soda. But it's like people cheat and they take the water cup and they get Sprite. And if enough people do that, they just don't give the free water cup anymore and they change it.

1:30:24it's like this is actually a pretty convenient tool where i can send a photo and get an instant insurance thing but they're gonna get rid of it now because everybody is gonna defraud it with these ai tools and now it's gonna be a huge it's already a pain in the ass it's gonna be such a pain in the ass yeah in real time i'm very frustrated with this this is very annoying

1:30:44Atrioc:yeah i don't think you know any of us are stoked about the average insurance company but if you're in their shoes and you just genuinely want to make sure hey there isn't like an insane amount of fraud it's actually it's getting incredibly hard and it's again it's not so this is what simon was giving some some internal details about it's not just oh these ai images are really good because what's the obvious way that you counteract it well you train an ai that can detect whether it's ai but then if every new image model that comes out from all the different companies with all the different variations all have their own way to sort of hide it and do a spin you have to train a model on every single one of those and somebody finds a new way of slightly altering whether it's model or whatever it instantly goes undetected now if you get a false positive and someone takes a normal photo of their car wreck and you go that's ai you're open up to a pretty big fucking lawsuit yes yes shoot the shit out of you because i mean that you claimed it was like you know you're gonna get harassed even more by the insurance company pretend i mean hopefully not obviously but like now they're having to be far more careful aviva insurance the uk company said that in 2025 the fake insurance claims that they had were worth more than 230 million pounds there was over 18 ,000 suspect claims as in like these are fake claims that people are sending in to try to scam them and that it's a record level like this is skyrocketing and even even Simon was like are there do we have like exact numbers from a lot of different companies and he's like they don't want to share numbers because this is what they're aware of what's happening the amount of undetected cases that they don't even know about could be absolutely massive and a lot of the apparently a lot of the things that people are catching are because they're using the same photos to do scams multiple times so this photo you can pull this up perry this is not this is a real photo don't worry this is glasses and apparently on german imagine if you did it again that would be wild now see look at the reflection of the glasses so this is if you google german glasses this is like the first image so apparently this image has been used for just for him dozens of times for people trying to scam them for free glasses from insurance claims but these are famous glasses from jurgen klopp who's the national soccer team coach people are so fucking lazy and so in the point of this is not always very stupid to google broken glasses and use the first result apparently these glasses are so famous they're in a museum not only is that stupid the the fact that there's this much fraud being detected right now and a lot of the reason it's detected is because people keep trying to do it repeatedly with the same images is crazy and so like insurance claiming my broken bell and you liberty liberty bell it got a big crack in it and you can do it with images and so and there's a whole weird thing we're now insurance companies are having to figure out do we can't send a real person to go check every single claim so then you're trying to figure out which claims to go for and there's these there's companies that i looked at like veris that are trying to sell products that are like we're gonna figure this out we have your customers only take photos with our app and then we'll tackle check all of these things and it's like dude maybe that's where it has to go but holy shit i'm gonna print out a picture of the german glasses and i take the app then i'm gonna Take a photo zoomed in on it.

1:34:01Atrioc:Right, right. So this is a, I hadn't thought of AI scams and insurance. What a crazy, crazy world. And it's like, this is one where it doesn't feel like people are benefiting. Like nobody, I guess like some broadsters, but just broadly, this is just going to suck.

1:34:17Aiden:I think they'd be able to detect Doug's image. I mean, it's not AI. You have to give him that. Yeah. I don't know if they'd give you a refund on your three gay men having sex, but. Well, no, it's the car. The car is the part I want the refund on. The car happens to be there. It'd be funny if they get it mixed up and send you the wrong refund. They send me three new gay old men. Those men are too old. They're too old to love each other. What an auspicious note to end our episode on. Gentlemen, we learned a lot about the markets today. We learned a lot about ourselves. Did it. And you can learn even more in our hour bonus Patreon that we're going to record.

1:34:57We're calling it 10 hours of Aiden. Only Aiden stories. It's going to be all the Aiden stories that he's fit to be squozing from. Come squoze me. If not, we'll be back next week with another covering of the news here on Lemonade Stand. Thanks guys for watching. Squoze me. Bye, buddy.

1:35:12Aiden:On the Patreon.