The News But We Change Personalities | Ep. 073 Lemonade Stand 🍋

13:41Aiden:We need a few more of those plants. All right, next story. It's about Netflix. Big, big company going through some tough times in their stock. It's about a corporate retreat gone wrong. This is Kevin Bailey. He makes$1.1 million a year as a Netflix executive. And I want to ask you what, actually, this is a great time to ask you guys what you would do. Okay, so you guys are at a corporate retreat and it's a trust and wellness exercise.

14:10Atrioc:Do we have guest speakers or like maybe a presenter like BTS? No. Okay, sorry. Go ahead. No, BTS is not there. No, you're at a corporate wellness retreat and they say we're going to do a trust exercise where everybody can just be honest with each other so we all become closer as an executive team. Okay? And they ask you to reveal like what's your biggest, darkest secret or something you're uncomfortable about. Okay? I don't know if you... I don't know what you guys would do in that situation, but there's a bit of a risk because it's a corporate environment. So Kevin Biley here...

14:47Aiden:And I do like corporate environments. You do. You do.

14:51Atrioc:So this is Sendero Ranch. Sometimes corporate environments, friends are like family, really. The co-workers. That's what they want.

14:58Aiden:Well, I think they can rejuvenate a stagnating economy. But this is just Netflix. You know what I would say to that answer? So it's not only rejuvenating any economy. This is just Netflix. Okay.

15:07Atrioc:I would say there's a part of me inside that I've been scared to show my friends and family, but maybe one day I'll learn to accept myself and they'll love me for who I am. Okay. So you are similar to Kevin in this situation. Cool. So Kevin has a dark secret. Which is that, no, no, he doesn't love BTS. He has a dark secret, which he uses ketamine to cope with his mother's death, which is really not a problem. But he says it in the Netflix. They ask him for his dark secret. He says it and they say it's trust and safety. no worries here and then he finds out that after the retreat he's charged with uh like drug use by the company and then they fire him they fire him because of what he said during the trust exercise at the wellness retreat so he is now in a rampage lawsuit against the company that's the worst to be vulnerable about who you really are and people don't even respond positively sorry go ahead a man

16:04Aiden:keeps it close to the vest. He didn't. He made a mistake. Which is rare for corporate executives.

16:18No, you're right though. Honestly. You're right. It's rare for these fucking corporate executives to do anything of fucking value, to be honest. That's just what I think. I mean, you say that, but I watched this movie

16:30Atrioc:where one of the kind of managers of... Yeah. What, you paid money to a fucking corporate shill so they could keep you sitting in your seats consuming slop? I mean, to be honest, it's Netflix. Wake up. Dude. Wake up. Have you seen K-pop Demon Hunters? No. So the manager. Have you read? There's a lot that you could read. It's like a really good guy. I would love you to get on some reading. I could, some literature. Is there more to this story? No, there's actually no more to this story. The story is that he's currently in an ongoing lawsuit with this corporate machine where he opened up one aspect of his real life and then was shot down by these fucking skinwalkers and suits.

17:10Atrioc:I just feel like, yeah, I mean, you come down, but he could be golden.

17:19Atrioc:If he's just honest with his friends and family about his ketamine use. Have you seen K-pop Demon Hunters? Who is tough? No, have you seen K-pop Demon Hunters? It's a beautiful reduction. I haven't seen it. Have you woken up and broken your chains? Okay. Unshackle your chains.

17:38Aiden:I like your passion. Okay. I like your passion. I do. I'm wondering here because is this a civil suit? Is this a criminal trial? Is the government stepping in here in any way? In no way is the government stepping in here, although they should. The government should step in. The government should step in. Honestly, Netflix should be nationalized. I would argue that it's terrifying to hear something like, the government is here to help. That's not really what it's for. It's not terrifying. It's actually awesome. The government should be stepping in at all points and should nationalize Netflix. And that would stop crimes like this from happening.

18:21Aiden:You're starting to sound like commie. You got me. You're just literally communist? Wow, early snipe. Great job, man. Hardcore communist. Are you just a guy that's seen K-pop Demon Hunters?

18:34Atrioc:Guy who has only seen one movie and relates everything to that. And I feel like if he's just honest with his friends, they'll come together and they'll perform at the concert. I haven't seen K-pop Demon Hunters. Oh, my God. You've got to see K-pop Demon Hunters. Everything can basically come back to the messages learned in K-pop Demon Hunters.

18:51Aiden:Now, I got to wonder, because this exec seems like he's probably a good guy. He might have made a mistake. Like, what sort of, has there been any trickle-down effects? Are you Ronald Reagan?

19:08Aiden:Ronald Reagan, parentheses, loves trickle-down economics.

19:13Atrioc:Wait, is there any other than this guy got reprimanded for ketamine? He didn't get reprimanded, he got fired. He got fired? He got fired.

19:19Aiden:Yeah, but is there anything else? I mean, no, not really. Is this related? Okay, this is an actual follow-up to this. because didn't their their share price is going through like a historic fall off right now right yeah i could tell you what's going on with netflix as a company but i thought anything to do with this no no no honestly their revenue growth is just slow uh but okay i think it's an interesting story in that the guy opened up at a retreat and they literally fired i mean it's not much more to it prompted and then wait did is anyone shared what he shared at the retreat no he would The ketamine use.

19:52Aiden:Oh, it was that he did the ketamine. Yeah, he shared a vulnerable moment that he's been using ketamine since his mom died, and then they fired him when he got back to the office. You know, I'll give all steel man for ketamine here. Yeah, I know. I was so locked into Ronald Reagan that I thought you meant that he answered the question while on ketamine. No, he wasn't on ketamine as a thing. Anyway, his lawyer, I guess I can tell you a couple more. His lawyers found every single instance of his boss drinking at a work event to show that like this is an insane double standard.

20:26Atrioc:Wait, dude, this is so. Okay. So for people who are not aware, ketamine is now like prescribed for people with anxiety, depression, all sorts of things. This is like a common thing now. Yeah. A lot of people do it. It is surprising to me. like if he if he was like guys i'm doing hard like black tar heroin at work to cope with my mom's dad i would get it kind of it's like academy though okay also here's the real question do you think there should could he should be allowed to say anything in the trust and safety circle i mean yes you should be able to right you should be able to tell your friends you're actually half demon, but I would never actually believe that at Netflix they would keep that secret.

21:12That's and you're right. I mean, you're right. These fucking corporate shows. You can't trust them as far as you can throw them. I 100 % get it.

21:19Atrioc:You think the ketamine should be given back to the means of production? Yeah. Well, yeah. 100 % each ketamine of his means. I think everyone should have as much ketamine as they can eat. All right. All right. Story three. story three next we're going to talk about autonomous vehicles in London turns out that there's many people in this hat who probably don't have a lot of good opinions about these news stories or relevant opinions all right hey you know what's cool there's a battle going on in London right now all right it's a tragedy it's called the battle of no what is the what was the world war two all right real quick for a joke what was the name of the bombing in World War two blitz of London.

22:05Atrioc:Was that it? Wasn't it just called the bombing? Yeah, right? The blitz of London.

22:09Aiden:I know.

22:09Atrioc:Okay.

22:09Aiden:I mean many people call it many things. Okay. All right. I mean, there's a battle going on in London right now between the regular people and the millionaires and the billionaires.

22:18Atrioc:That's right. Really? You're going to drop the accent right away. wonder who that could be how can I do it without the accent I'm gonna give you guys my pitch the core details here and then I'll let you know what I really think in London autonomous vehicles they're finally starting to launch and there's a battle going on between three major companies first off Waymo talked about a bunch they're the dominant ones in the United States and they started testing in April of this year. So they got like 100 cars. It's in a small area in London. Still have drivers, so they're in the testing phase, and it's their first international market alongside Tokyo.

23:01Atrioc:This is Waymo trying to expand outside the US. Okay. That's player number one. Player number two, Uber and Wave. In June, Uber said they're going to enter soon. Wave is a UK company that makes the software for self-driving cars, kind of like Applied Intuition, where they're not making the car, but they're making the software. Uber's invested in them, So those two are going to pair up. It's actually wave makes the software Uber makes the taxi app and then Ford is making the car. They don't have an official date. But again, a month ago, they're like, hey, we're going to launch in the coming months.

23:32Atrioc:We're just waiting on the regulatory approval. You'll be able to use the Uber app. And now as of today, the third contender has begun testing. It is Lyft and Baidu who teamed up, which I was not aware of. Baidu is the biggest Chinese autonomous vehicle player. So they have essentially Uber, you know, Waymo in China. They're about the same size of China. They're in 20 cities. They're huge. And Baidu makes all of their own stuff. They're the only company in this list that is making the car and the software and the app. So I guess a year ago, Lyft and Baidu partnered up and they're like, hey, Lyft, you will manage Baidu's robo taxi hubs in certain spots in Europe.

24:13Atrioc:So they're starting to test right now with drivers. And they're also pending on regulation. So now you have three drivers or three players all in London right now kicking off testing, waiting for the London government to give the OK. This is basically the kickoff for Europe. And, you know, whoever can dominate probably dictate a lot of their success around Europe. Up until March, a couple months ago, the UK government was doing a call for evidence that ended. And now in May, they said applications are open. You can go see these on the UK government. but right now it was supposed to kind of be like all cleared up and they were going to give companies the okay.

24:48Atrioc:And instead they are still waiting and doing, doing their thing. They're taking a long time.

24:54Aiden:I mean, I imagine the London cabbies like would be upset about this transition that is potentially automating away their jobs. But at the same time, the, the pros and cons of the different companies launching at the same time, competing against one another. there's a lot to consider here. I just think the working class needs a voice. They need a voice of the regular people. And I think that these big companies are trying to take away jobs from the regular average worker.

25:25Atrioc:I think that's a good point. And I just think the sort of sniping and name calling that's been going on, ultimately it needs to stop. Now check out this drive.

25:44Atrioc:and 9-11 was bad

25:46Aiden:wait my god it exploded what do you think Bernie this is dude this is if you're an audio listener I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry I have to I feel like you really you have a strong message and I appreciate that about you because you go back to it a lot but I think you are quick to criticize technologies that could have long-term advantages and disadvantages and it's really hard to say what could be good or bad about them

26:25so if I were to tell you that I really think that the millionaires and the billionaires are the

26:29Aiden:problem and I think there's problems with them okay so you agree but I think there's a lot to consider. What do you agree? I agree, but also disagree.

26:42Atrioc:What about these major tech companies coming in? Maybe about taxi drivers losing jobs. Obviously a huge part of it.

26:48Aiden:You have to feel for the taxi drivers that are losing their jobs, but you also have to be sympathetic to the, to the advantages that this technology could present to the city, the efficiency at which people would move around the alternative. What do you think? What do you think? What do you think? Fence sitter. What do you think? I do. Is that yours? It's. I think that we need to consider all of the possibility because it is a nuanced. Okay. Right. No, let me, okay. Let me get,

27:16Atrioc:let me do a couple of bullet points here. Cause ours was easy. So let me give you a couple of bullet points and then you keep giving feedback. Okay. First off, why don't you, you read a bullet point and then ask me if I think it's good or bad. Okay. Okay. Uber, right. They're fighting against the three players. Uber, baidu waymo and what's crazy is that uber is also partnered with their rival baidu yeah baidu runs their own app in 2025 partnered with uber to operate robo taxi services in the middle east and asia plus the other big three chinese av companies uber has partnered with all of them and has agreed that they're going to run some of the app section of these cars what do you think about that it's hard to say oh my god why is it hard to say well you just introduced so much

28:04Aiden:nuance that i wasn't familiar with before so i need to do it he's nuanced everything's nuanced

28:10Atrioc:let me give you two more fun bits okay uber is also partnered with their rival waymo uber and waymo are also partnered together waymo's cars you can order them in phoenix arizona and then also like in Austin and Atlanta Waymo got added in some Uber through Uber. There must be advantages and disadvantages. I love asking the funny question. I want to understand the story. I need to understand. Are you just telling me that every self-driving car company is becoming incestuous in all the major cities of the globe or what? What particularly Uber? But yes, this big competition is heating up in London while simultaneously they're all partnering with each other in other markets around the world.

28:56So they're fighting in the ones they could compete in and the ones where Uber... I guess they're like picking battlegrounds.

29:02Atrioc:I mean, that's Uber's thing right now. Like they are not making any cars, neither is Lyft. But I think the real thing to consider here is Aiden's opinion on Baidu's strategy, the Chinese maker. Yeah, what do you think about what Baidu's doing?

29:17Aiden:It's so beautifully complicated. So it's really hard to say. could we wait for it to play out? Do you have hobbies? Hobbies? Do you have things you like? Well, I think I have trouble. I do enjoy things, but then I think about the things I don't like about them.

29:43Aiden:And so it's really hard to come to anything clear. Yeah, that makes sense. I am a professional fence sitter.

29:50Atrioc:I have no idea.

29:51Aiden:I am guy who refuses to give hard opinion on anything because it's nuance.

29:59Atrioc:See, if we didn't have that on this show, people wouldn't get a balanced perspective. I appreciate you being here, Mr. Nuance. You were George Bush? Yeah. Okay. I was making sure. No. You said 9-11 was bad. Yeah, check out this drive. But you also planned it, so it's tough to figure out what that is. Autonomous vehicles are wild, though. This is a weird little, as you said, incestuous thing. Yeah, it's a weird story. I don't know who's going to win, honestly. The Chinese ones being thrown in is kind of weird. It's really weird that Baidu, who is doing everything, is also partnering with Lyft and Uber to have them run the platform when they have a platform app that is working in China.

30:39Atrioc:So it's really strange to see how they're kind of fighting, but arguably whoever kind of kicks off in London successfully will have a major foothold and advantage across Europe. But maybe they'll keep partnering. I don't know what the isn't taxis like a massive industry in London. Like they have a big, uh, I wonder what they're doing to fight. Yeah. I guess I, I guess I don't know specifically. I mean, something that we said in our applied intuition episode is I think what's more exciting about autonomous vehicles is consumer autonomous vehicles, both because that's where you get the biggest safety benefits and you're not taking, you know, you're not like attacking what is a huge industry for, for many, many people.

31:15So I mean,

31:16Atrioc:It'll probably get pushback from the public as well once it starts running. But again, all these companies right now are testing. From all this automation, taking jobs and putting money in the hands of the millionaires. And of course. Now check out this drive. Of course, the billionaires. All right, the new one.

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32:12Atrioc:Introducing Meta Glasses. Hey Metta, any last minute tables for two tonight? Sure, there's a great Italian restaurant 15 minutes away. Hey Metta, where's the nearest flower shop? Five minutes away, straight down Broadway, past the bodega. Their lilies are trending on Instagram. Just saying. Hey Metta, am I forgetting anything else? How about setting a calendar reminder for next year? Metta glasses, available in more than 20 styles. This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace, and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message, and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist.

32:56Atrioc:The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer, find more on Facebook. next story oh we got a fun one ukraine strikes iranian ship dude i don't know how i'm gonna do this okay okay okay okay uh aiden what the heck's going on over there

33:27Aiden:okay so i'm just gonna tell it like it is first yeah what i from what i know so an interesting development in you know one of two wars in a way or maybe an update in two wars at once. Ukraine struck an Iranian cargo ship killing one person one Iranian on board of the cargo ship and one ship it was one one ship in the Caspian Sea. It was transporting strikes

33:57Atrioc:way more ships. Anyway, go ahead. We'd be we'd be striking. No, I mean. I mean I don't care but yeah I mean sometimes we have to do some things to protect the country I just don't think it's like one ship is a big thing to brag about but sorry go ahead so so

34:12Aiden:Ukraine strikes this one Iranian cargo ship in the Caspian Sea and it was transporting military equipment to Russia uh now the the brief fallout since it's happened is Iranian officials have threatened uh retaliation basically saying like this is a a break of the UN charter for this to happen and uh ukraine in kind of response is like you have no standing to be a victim uh given that you're supporting russia in a war with us uh and the uh i i think while this seems small scale you might be wondering you know why does this matter uh russia since the invasion of ukraine has been using a lot of cheap and effective drones, a lot of which come from Iran.

35:00Aiden:And Ukraine has also recently now been assisting the Gulf states defend themselves from Iranian drones because of the experience that they have gained through the war, offering their services and knowledge in combating drones to the Gulf states that are now - Do you think we had to go to war though? Which one? of the two Ukraine Russia we can't let Iran get a nuclear weapon I mean it's like I don't like the guy but like we had to do that right this boat didn't have nuclear weapons on it well it's part of the larger war effort I don't even care but I'm just saying like we had to this war had to happen well you might find this interesting then Ukraine today Zelensky is meeting with Trump and it might actually be happening while we're recording with this.

35:54Aiden:And it's because of this attack, it's seen as Zelensky's like opportune time to potentially tie Trump back into the Ukraine and Russia war to give Ukraine more support from the American side because of this supposed alignment in the conflicts. And this is like an example, like Iran is supplying Russia with like drones and military equipment. Trump is tying in more with Zelensky? No, Zelensky wants to convince Trump of the relevant ties between these two wars in order to gain back American support for the Ukrainian side. And what does Trump think? And the argument, they are having a meeting today.

36:35Aiden:I think it's literally happening while we're filming this episode. And it hasn't happened yet. But the argument from a Zelensky position is that like, look, Russia is giving Iran intelligence on like American targets in the war that's unfolding for you guys. Iran is supplying military aid to Russia in the war that we have. We are relevant allies to each other still, especially now since the Iran war started. Please, you know, provide us with the support.

37:02Atrioc:Did he? I could convince Trump better than that. You fucking give him like a gold drone and he'll be like, oh wow, yeah, no, you're right. We should definitely support him. Give him a gold nuke. I don't know.

37:14Aiden:Can I be real with you? I mean, regardless of the situation, I don't think these three dumb asses know what they're talking about. Which three dumb asses? But I will. I stay tuned in to let them know that. How tuned in are you? I'm tuned in every week. I watch plenty of news. It usually comes from just this show, actually. And I have four monitors at all time watching all news channels. You were talking about Trump and saying some shit about GIFs. What'd you say?

37:43Atrioc:Yeah, I'm saying I could do a better deal than Zelensky. Convincing Trump is not that hard. To be clear, Zalinski... I mean, I don't like the guy. I'm not going to stand here and defend him. I don't like him even more. He's pretty good at deals. He's done a lot of good deals for this country. Dude, I actually

37:59Aiden:have no idea who you are. Are you just like... Are you like Jared Kushner? I have no idea

38:05Atrioc:who anybody is.

38:10That's tough.

38:13Aiden:And they're all balding. Did Zalinski wear a suit? I've got no air you've got no air you've got no air you have the least air and you're fat

38:26could be two people could be Aiden or a commenter and to be honest with you I cannot

38:31Aiden:I don't think I actually listen to any of the news that was presented to me in the previous 30 minutes I've never listened to any news I weigh 800 pounds I have no fucking idea who Doug is I don't know I didn't even read the paper. I've got no idea. I just, I just think people need to give our president more of a, like some respect. Honestly, he's a, it's, it's an important office.

38:57Atrioc:I think we should make love to him. Okay. I'm actually on board with that a little bit. I'm more on board.

39:06I'm actually on board with that a little bit.

39:09Aiden:My username on Reddit is lazy dash dictionary. and I don't think the show knows what it is, but I do like talking about it. You're a commenter. You're a commenter. You're a commenter. I don't know who Doug is. Let me, okay. I have even less of an idea than you do. Who did you vote for? Cause I'll be honest with you. I'll say it. I voted for Trump in the last election. I voted for him twice.

39:40Atrioc:I'm guy who has to one up everything.

39:53Aiden:That's really funny. I never would have guessed that. Wait, are you? I'm not political. You're not political? I'm not political. To me, politics is a waste of fucking time. It's interesting because a lot of your answers are, do feel political. Yeah, you're talking about Trump. Yeah, I voted for him. I think he's doing a good job. but like it's not I don't care it's like it's not a big deal politics is not something I care about are you a Gen Z male I'm a I'm a guy who's not political who's extremely MAGA

40:26Atrioc:who's extremely MAGA I'm not political guy who's extremely MAGA God I'm a tough one God I'm a tough one Jesus Christ do we understand the story I'm going to try to understand the story actually wait wait this story is kind of fucking crazy on a real level because it literally is like soft beginnings of World War III. It's crazier than that. Nah, it's chill. No, sorry. Ukraine, but Ukraine's sunk. I didn't realize they had the capability to sink boats right now. That's crazy. No, they've been sinking all sorts of boats. I think in my brain, I've been stuck in the like, Ukraine is mired in this war with Russia, not like they have naval capabilities or naval striking capabilities.

41:09I don't know if you know, but

41:11Aiden:I don't know. But I mean, the point is that Ukraine is striking Iranian ships and now this war has... If Iran has Russia and China as proxies and America is a proxy with Israel and I guess Ukraine, I mean, we're getting back into them. I heard the deal went well. I heard the talk. I was doing the character earlier, but I heard that the meeting has happened and Zelensky said good things about it. Yeah, I mean, my... So I don't know what was in the talk at all yet, but the the supposed line is that Zelensky is positioning himself to get USAID back and capitalize on this time in the Ukrainian war, uh, where it's going well.

41:56Aiden:Basically like here are the reasons that we should be supporting one another because you're involved in this other conflict that has a bunch of crossover, give resources back. and at this time when we have seemingly have Russia on a bit of the back foot. Better chemistry. Yeah. I mean, I got to read this thing right after we're done recording. I mean, I heard kind of the angle on it is that the U.S. is, Ukraine has been doing a lot better, and so U.S. is kind of jumping more back on the ship now that it's like.

42:27Atrioc:Because they want. Trump would love like a wartime good news. Yeah, like something that was a win.

42:33Aiden:I mean, imagine if he gets to, if he, I'm not saying that it's definitive of whether or not they could get through this like with or without the US I'm not like a fortune teller but if he's hopping on this train where things are looking good already and then he gets to be the guy that says the US like ended the Ukraine-Russia war during this time period I feel like no one will give him credit for it I feel like he'll do all that great work and then you know I don't want to say but like lives and the left doesn't give him credit and it's just weird like I don't give a shit like it's not whatever everyone's got their own opinion you seem like you give a shit You come on the show every week and you say you don't give a shit.

43:10Aiden:It's like, I don't care. Everyone can think what they want. I just think he should... No one gives him an ounce of credit. Everyone wants to jump on his throat for every little thing. Maybe he's making some real progress to save this fucking country that Joe Biden threw in the fucking dirt four years ago. We have one more story. We have one more story where we all get to pull one more thing. Okay. All right. All right. All right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right. We're running out of characters, and we still have a lot more stories to get to, but we'll do it for this one. I want to talk about what's going on with eBay.

43:42This is a long-running story. To be clear, I've heard about this story for years and years now, and it finally has a resolution, so I want to talk about it. This is Ina and David Steiner, seen here in their old age. Good traditional Americans. They are actually, I think, a nice couple. This is them back in 2002 when this all started. they ran a little blog in the early days of the internet called e-commerce bites where they talked about selling things online and they would write little blogs talking about the challenges and tribulations of selling things online and again you can't see it here but i'll scroll it up they had like 43 comments on these things it's not like insanely popular but it was a decent blog separate story ebay around this time is founded and ebay has uh this on their website called their five core values.

44:29We believe people are basically good. We believe everybody has somebody to contribute. We encourage you to treat others the way you want to be treated. These are core values of the eBay company that are on the website at the time. Now, you look at the website now, this is gone. This is gone. Take down during this lawsuit. Anyway, go back to these guys, Ina and David Steiner. They start writing blogs during the formative years of eBay about problems and challenges with eBay and certain sellers, like just certain bad things eBay does, how their algorithm doesn't work a certain time, their search is bad, they change certain things, how they've screwed certain sellers.

45:03They're just putting these messages out that are true to people in the world. eBay has an internal security team designed to protect their executives at functions. But this security team begins to warp. Over the years, it starts to get more and more militant. and they start deciding that it is their core mission to take down enemies of eBay within and without. This is a real story. And so - I do like that. A stalking scandal begins where they decide it is their mission to shut down Ina and David Steiner from publishing their blog. And so they begin a multi-year harassment campaign where they mail threatening deliveries to them like live cockroaches, a bloody pig's head math, and a few mix at mask and a funeral wreath they're just trying to get unwelcome people out

45:57Atrioc:okay and i'm loving the background color of that page that's an interesting okay that's a really interesting take on it i would probably disagree with you but i'll find out in a second i uh so i'm sorry so anyway this goes on for years and years and years and they sue and they are just being punished by ebay until finally the resolution is that happened today that they were awarded a massive massive win a 54 million dollar settlement that not only uh makes ebay pay for all the harassment but sends some ebay people to jail for because what they did is literally illegal in multiple years of harassment so i want to know what you guys think but first

46:39Atrioc:wow i think there's nothing wrong with the executives of that company promoting eBay first. No, totally. What were you talking about? I might have to go here in a second. Could you, I mean, read one more story to me. I'm sorry, continue. I just. No, it was your story. Yeah. Sorry, what were you saying? What did you think about this?

47:04Aiden:He got.

47:08Aiden:He got you.

47:13Atrioc:we're ending on a strong one guys

47:21Atrioc:I'm realizing we got three of mine

47:31Atrioc:I think Pikachu's the wrong color what are you just a racist I'm Nick Fuentes.

47:43I'm your Pika shit.

47:47Atrioc:How'd you know? How'd you know? I'm Bush right after hearing about 9-11. How do you, how do I present the story?

48:04This was tough. This was tough, bro.

48:18You wrote that one, Doug? Yeah, these are all mine. I like that Bush is in there twice. You guys have any real thoughts on this story? It's kind of fucking crazy. It's kind of insane. Yeah, you may first, bro. All right, now I'll get to the camera. I've read a lot of this story. I can tell you more about it, but you can tell me if you have any questions.

48:39Aiden:$53 million and people who worked at eBay go to jail. I actually feel pretty cool about that. It's an honest point. It took a long time though.

48:46Atrioc:Was this like security guards? Who are the fucking lunatics who are doing this? That part of the story is crazy. They got this security guard who's like ex-CIA and he's just super into it. And over time, he slowly fired every member of the security staff and hired them with young blonde women who were like on contract work. So they were afraid to be fired. And he would like he called them. I think his name was Bill Bill's Angels. Okay. Yeah

49:20Viewpoints on this show I know Well, I never thought about what Pikachu would tell about some of these things and that's honestly a good point The friendship was the power inside that we needed the whole time um no but he runs this and everyone that works for him is afraid because he fires women constantly to hire new ones and so they end up just doing whatever he says and he ends up asking them to like send horses heads and and harass people and he thinks he's part he's like an insane person you ask Adish to do stuff like that has literally gotten those packages yet I've been telling Adish

49:55Aiden:to say go to a forwarding address some guy has been getting so anyway I guess good for them because they literally been dealing with like 18 years of harassment and they finally got the lifelong payout that I don't think e-commerce bites is going to give them

50:08Atrioc:yeah I don't know so that guy went to jail presumably then no I don't think so I think honestly the woman that's still I think the jail time is still being meted out the payment has been the only woman who's guaranteed going to jail is the woman who worked for him who was like 24 years old and admitted to everything. She like confessed. That kind of fucking sucks. I mean, you hope that it continues to go up. Yeah, I think it goes up. I think she's admitting on what he did, and so it should be go up. But yes. Insane story.

50:41Aiden:They were litigating for 10, like over 10 years. It was a very, very long trial, yeah. Like they started in, the trial started in 2012 or started in 2002? No, no, no, no. They started the blog in 2002. eBay harassed them for many, many years. I think the trial started closer to 2019 or right before COVID, but it's been many years.

50:56Atrioc:Not to be Aiden's fence sitter character again. It doesn't feel like it just takes seven years to be like, hey, that was wrong. You shouldn't send horse heads to people. Yeah, I don't know why it took so long. It's insane. I think you had a very well-staffed team of lawyers. I'm sure there's nuance here.

51:11Aiden:Some people grow up in families where they send horse heads to each other and it's considered a sign of respect and we should be, have we considered? Are you a nuanced guy again or are you Pikachu? Yeah, I'm just nuanced. Because Pikachu also talks like this. It's actually the same character. It's actually the same character. Well, if you want to hear a story about long lawsuits, I did have a little update on the European Union fining Google. So recently, for a breach in EU rules over preferential treatment in search results, the EU has fined Google about a billion US dollars, 890 million euros.

51:54I heard Trump said they're stealing from our companies. The Europe is trying to steal from our companies.

52:00Aiden:Yeah, yeah. He basically said this is like an unfair tax on American companies that are like performing well. But the issue is that Google is supposedly treating shopping, hotel, transport, and sport results listings, like prioritizing their own versions of those over third-party listings on the site and like not giving equivalent opportunity for those to like rise in search results. Is there an example? What's something that Google has that? Um, I mean, for like, so Google has a built in hotel surfacing, like, like UI and like price comparison and like price checker. Right. If you Google, uh, hotels, Vienna or something, it's going to give me a Google.

52:46Aiden:You'll get like Google's version of that. Or if you're into sports, if you Google like sports standings, you'll often get Google's version of sports data over like embedded into the search result, but you would have to go and like click into ESPNs or like do something else like that. Right. So they're prioritizing their own like first party products and, uh, they are getting fined because this does break a U S rule. And I thought what was, or sorry, an EU rule. And something I thought was interesting about this is in the Reuters article that I was initially looking at about this. It was covering like the history of them being fined.

53:20Aiden:And I did recall from like the late 2010s that they were getting hit with huge fines around then. And then like navigating those, uh, the, the appeal process of those things. And, uh, I think just within the past, like, I think since 2017, they have been fined like$10 billion by the European union. Um, they are just trying to, and I, and so, I think they're unfairly attacking some American companies. The thing that is kind of interesting here is that the length of time it takes for these payments to take effect. Now, in the case of these EU fines, this is a significant amount of money, like no matter how you cut it.

54:08Aiden:When you're talking about finding a company for billions of dollars, at the end of the day, it does matter to them. And they're going through - That's data center money. You can't even take your money from Google when they got it by data center. No, no, you can't interrupt that. And it takes years to actually get paid. So just recently for, I think, the fine that they got hit with in 2017 and then the one in 2018, they have just gone through the final appeal for those and paid them as of the last two years. So one got paid last year and then one got paid very recently. And that comes to like just short of like 5 billion euros.

54:47Aiden:And then what happens when these cases hit or these fines hit is it kind of opens up precedent for individual companies to sue Google and then increase the amount of damages they're seeking or shore up precedent in the case they're pursuing. So an example of this is Price Runner, which is owned by Klarna. I actually won. This is my Nordic fun fact of the week. Okay. they won almost 2 billion in u.s dollars in damages uh in a swedish court because uh instead of like surfacing their product equally on google search results this like price tracker and price comparison tool uh sued uh google inst or in stockholm and like won this gigantic case the issue with these like individual lawsuits is like even though these companies like are finding like room to win google they're often like seeking less uh less money than like the eu is able to like fine for and then uh because like this example is like one of the largest cases uh and then google can just like drag out the process for much much longer so even like the clarna spokesperson that was commenting on this win is like yeah we're pumped that we won in principle but the reality is this like amount in damages will not be paid for you know it could be like five to 10 years because Google can just like continue to drag this out.

56:13Aiden:And, uh, this is the kind of exchanges, like how effective is fining or suing Google for these, even these large amounts of money when they can extend the appeals process over the course of such long periods of time, like basically stretching it across 10 years and making it like this, uh, dispersed cost of business rather than, uh, yeah, I guess it depends. I mean, I'm losing a billion dollars can't be good. Uh, but I can, if it's, you know,

56:46Atrioc:our government function just fine. We just kept the 35 trillion down the can forever. True. And then we just keep sending it mid. I don't know. It seems like it's kind of talking to work for us. I don't think Google has a money printer though. In the same way. I mean, Google search is kind of a money printer. Yeah. I mean, what was the total fee they had to pay?

57:03Aiden:Uh, for the, so the recent one they got hit with is 900 million, 890 million euros and that is the most recent EU fine of the total of like almost 10 billion they have been fined by the European Union in the last 10 years and those fines are more likely to be seen through like the EU laws that are used to find them are usually pretty strong yeah and even though Google can drag it out they're relatively likely to win at the end of it only one and it was one of the smaller ones, of these EU fines has gotten overturned in the last 10 years. I guess the real question is then like... But then, hold on, the individual companies' lawsuits, like these companies that see the fine and are like, our company can take individual action against Google, it's our time to sue them.

57:49Aiden:Those are less likely to be successful and they're more likely to be hurt through the long legal process that Google will drag out. But like the ultimate question is, does Google make more money by ignoring these things and paying the fine and just stretching it out and keep doing what they're doing? Or are they forced to change? That's the size of the fine that has to like make you want to stop, right? So I don't know. That's the real question. And the goal of this is to make them be more competitive, right? So they have to have more options and they can't favor themselves. Yeah, I think like in the 2018 case that just got paid out, the EU was like, okay, when Android phones are like preloaded with Chrome and another app, that Google proprietary app.

58:34Aiden:You're not letting people like pick their web browser of choice. You're like letting yours win from the jump. Yeah, I got to imagine like owning the web browser of Europe is probably worth more than a billion dollars or whatever this costs. I mean, that one was for four and a half billion. So it was more. That's a pretty big number. Yeah. Certainly a drag.

58:52Atrioc:I mean, for what easiest comparison number is, what, a month ago now, two months ago, they sold stock to raise$80 billion. So there you go. They were, you know, they were like, you know, I think this year we'll just get$80 billion in cash so we can buy more data centers. Yeah, but they're spending it all. I mean, I do think I saw, I just, it just feels like if, if of that 80 billion, they have to set aside 2 billion for lawsuits. They'll probably make it through. Okay. Like it does feel like it's still a fairly small amount of money overall. I think it's really relevant though, because Google, this is google's free cash flow for the past uh 25 years of its business you'll notice it's been gargantuan and for the first time ever it has turned negative this is like actual money left over in their pocket after expenses after the quarter so uh yeah it's google for the longest time could probably shrug off fines no problem they had infinite miles of money coming in i'd say this is the first quarter where it's like oh this kind of sucks yeah this is the kind of the

59:53Aiden:oh this is from the ft article on it right i think the in the ft article they're kind of emphasizing is like okay now this cost of doing business approach that they or mentality they might have been able to have for a long time is this is this the tipping point where it changes

1:00:09Atrioc:towards the future because you're trying to like outspend all of your ai competitors this is the first time where like they are actually genuinely short of the cash or there's pressure to spend all of this.

1:00:18Aiden:So that one, so that one billing USD you're getting hit for it, even if you're not going to pay it until like six years from now, it still means a lot. Yeah, no, that makes sense. They might have to change. I know that like when you did the, the lawsuit on Apple for the USBC, they had to change. They changed. They didn't just pay that fine. And I remember also there's the lawsuit on privacy data, GDPR, they called it. And I remember being at Nvidia at the time and everybody had to scramble to change a bunch of software and things just because the EU did a fine. Like nobody wanted to ignore it.

1:00:48Yeah. Cause it was such a big deal.

1:00:49Aiden:That was crazy. I remember GDPR. I was working at smash GG at the time and like we had to last minute change about everybody had to like scramble.

1:00:56Atrioc:I forget. Is that the one where now every website ever I have to agree to cookies and I say no and everybody loves that. I think that was the end game of it. And I do think the end game of some of these fines is going to be like obviously there's a lot more to GDPR but they're going to do the most legal cost. Just bare bones. Yeah. Count as competition. Like whatever. It'll pop up. I don't know how they'll do it, but it's weird because a search result still has to pick a winner, right? What if the winner is Chrome? I don't understand. It's weird.

1:01:23Aiden:What is like the oversight of that process to make sure that you're fairly like who's judging the fairness of that process?

1:01:30Atrioc:One of the silly things when people criticize Chrome, I believe Sundar said this of like, we never. This is when they were like in Congress during Joe Biden's administration being accused of political censorship, basically. And, you know, Republicans are saying you, Google, are making it so conservative viewpoints aren't easy to find and you're suppressing us and blah, blah, blah. And Sundar, I believe this was in his congressional hearing, said, we don't do that. We don't have anybody who's like there and is going to say, yeah, this topic gets boosted. This topic is going to be like pushed down.

1:02:01Atrioc:And then the counter argument, I think from like Naval or something was that's the entire purpose of Google. is to rank things to tell you what to search for. That is, that is the product. What do you mean you don't rank it? I mean, even if it's not a person picking topics day to day, there's not like a guy shuffling papers and deciding what appears like. That is fundamentally what a search engine is. So it's like, of course, you're prioritizing things in some way. Yeah, I guess, I don't know what the argument is on like whether or not, if it's entirely driven by user preferences and data, like what they click on the most.

1:02:34Atrioc:Yeah, that's the argument of like, we're just giving what people want to see but then you you also you are making the algorithm that determines that um yeah it's weird it's chicken and egg right because once it's big enough that's how people get their opinion and they're right that there's not a guy who's sitting there going yes more joe rogan today like that's not how it works but they software engineered an algorithm yeah weird interesting you know what else interesting company spacex yeah oh yeah dude Okay. Quite an interesting week. Terry, I sent you a video, and this is just some space footage just to get people excited while I say a bunch of numbers.

1:03:08Atrioc:The SpaceX IPO was a month ago. Look at that rocket. Incredible. Now, just look at that rocket. Don't think too much about these numbers, I'm about to say. IPO'd at 135 a share. By day four, the SpaceX IPO shares cost$200. They had a valuation of$2.64 trillion. dollars that is almost as much as airpods and nike combined and germany um yeah right actually you know perry if you just pull up spacex stock so they had four days that were just cooking they were cooking and elon musk became a trillionaire and peaked at 1.3 trillion dollar net valuation but then as we'll see in a sec over the last month it has been plummeting so So 10 days ago, I mean, this is like a month ago that this launched, right?

1:04:00Atrioc:As of 10 days ago, they had to cancel their most recent like Starship launch. And as soon as they did that, stock drops 5 % more. It goes down to 123 a share. So it's now officially below their initial offering. And at this point, the valuation of SpaceX is down to 1.63 trillion. This is as of, I think, about 10 days ago. But you can see it's gone down basically even more since then, which is just a crazy stat in one month they lost a trillion dollars of valuation um so you know short middle little update this past friday a couple days ago they do another starship launch that's the youtube video that we had up very briefly and they do successfully launch starship which is their you know big new rocket they get it into space they get it to land the booster also lands they haven't tested reusability yet you know the cool stuff where it lands on the matchstick and then it's ready to go but they dropped it into the ocean it was all very controlled it went very well and so this is the closest they've gotten to this world where they actually have a reusable giant rocket and so again the whole underpinning of the premise of spacex's value is one they're a rocket company and this is important to that two they have starlink which is a genuinely great business that you know in theory this will allow them to send up more satellites but then three it's space data centers right that's why they have supposedly are worth this valuation and grok and crock they own grok and grok a revenue center for the future we will be able to uh run grok in space if all things go well so starship is spacex is like giant literal moonshot project it's also the one that is supposed to work with nasa to get to the moon right like as soon as like next year 2028 um so this this went well they're still like a year behind but they're at least getting closer to the idea of we have starship a gigantic rocket that is reusable which is like the the thing underpinning any of their supposed evaluation.

1:05:54Atrioc:So I think it's pretty interesting. There's some cool, you know, various people saying it seems like we peaked on tech stocks. This might have been the top like SpaceX's IPO is going to sort of precipitate the fall of everything from Bernstein Suck John analyst Douglas Arnon is his name. No, the company is called Bernstein Suck Gen. Okay. Suck Gen. Okay. S-O-C-G-E-N. Okay. Probably not suck John. If I had to guess. Bernstein's been sucking John and reiterated, quote, that he thinks it's an outperform rating on SpaceX, insisting that the$107 stock is worth twice that. He pointed out this is the same ship they're going to send to the moon.

1:06:36Every single Wall Street analyst is saying this is a$200 stock. Pump, pump, pump. Hell yeah. It's crazy, and it keeps declining. And what's interesting, Douglas Douglas, is that on August 6th, like really soon, a massive, all this share trading and this decline has happened while there's only a tiny amount of the flow, like 4 % of the shares. And that is really conducive to a pump. And that got it for a few days and it's declining. On August 6th, like another 28%, like a massive amount of the company. I don't know the number.

1:07:11Atrioc:Numbers, currently there's 639 million shares for trading. by the end of this year there's going to be 5.3 billion exactly it's going to increase yeah over august and then the next three months there's like a massive amount of insider shares that suddenly dump on the market and it's that is so much selling pressure on top of what already is down below its ipo price about this george bush you just heard about 9 11 what about this another tower hitting into your mental psyche invade for 20 years we have to do it we have to invade space We got to send our ships into space. There's no other solution than to send our troops into the Middle East for the next 20 years.

1:07:47Get Karl Rove on the phone.

1:07:49Atrioc:I heard the moon's getting WMDs.

1:07:54And do not double check the work with the inspectors.

1:07:59Atrioc:Shame on you. Yeah. Don't be twice. Actually, you're more of a finance slut than I am. I'm a finance slut. Would you say... We made finance slut. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in theory, if you know that the amount of shares is going to almost 10x over the next couple months, does that sort of force an almost like artificial suppression of the price because you know it's going to come out? Yeah, it's happening right now. So all the employees that have millions and millions, 10,$20 million in SpaceX shares, they are very, very concerned about the short-term movements of the price before their lockup ends.

1:08:34Because if it drops a lot, they went from having$20 million when they actually sell to having 10 or five or what. It's a big difference. And so all of the employees have been doing what Mark Cuban did in the 2000s when he got his big stock payout and couldn't sell it quickly. They're called basically like strangles. It's where you like, you give up all your, you're basically selling an option that if the stock goes up, I have to give you the stock and I have to sell it at the price it is right now. So I get none of the upside if it goes up. But I'm buying a bet against SpaceX. They're buying a put option on SpaceX.

1:09:06SpaceX. This is all complicated option stuff, but basically almost all the employees are using these complicated webs to bet against SpaceX to save themselves from protection if the stock goes down so they can keep their amount. It's like they're covering the upside and their downside, just like it strangles you put in one spot. And when they do that, the market makers who take that bet have to hedge the bet because they're never trying to actually make an actual bet. They're just trying to fuck the middleman. So they hedge their bet by selling SpaceX stock. So even though they haven't yet sold, they're essentially selling early through this bet.

1:09:37And that is a lot of the reason why there's pressure early. So I don't know if on August 6th, it'll rapidly change things because everyone's already betting against, they're making it happen early almost. Everyone knows what's going to happen. But in theory, some of the people

1:09:48Atrioc:who would be buying right now, who would be interested are like, I'm going to wait till this flood of new shares hits the market and then I'll start buying. And in theory, it could go back up. It's quite possible that like people are worried about what could happen with this and they want everything to settle down. But it does seem like this was a elaborate scheme to pump things early and it has run out of steam pretty quickly. And the real loser of all this is not Elon Musk, who is still making ungodly amounts of money. Sorry, I'm having a stroke. It's Anthropic and OpenAI who had other big IPO plans.

1:10:24And this not doing well is a huge, I mean, IPOs are very momentum driven. They happen, they like to cluster together like a frenzy mania wave if this one's doing badly a month in it is such a dour effect on their ipos and they might even pull them or delay them there's a real shot that that open ai like tries to push it for a better moment because doing it now there's a chance it just flops like people are afraid because of what happened with spacex um so anyway interesting story yeah i definitely think uh yeah it coincides with what's happening with tesla which tesla had a pretty interesting earnings report where they said, listen, car revenue is probably the worst it's ever been.

1:11:05Like in terms of like profits, I'm sorry. They're actually selling a lot of cars, but the profits are the worst it's ever been. And they reported record profits, but the record profits comes because Tesla owns some shares of SpaceX and they booked that IPO bump as a one-time thing. But if you take that out, Tesla actually had one of their worst quarters ever and so their stock is also getting cratered so elon musk is only going to have a mere 500 to 600 bill i don't know what he's at right now i can tell you and this is it's been a fun

1:11:34Atrioc:episode and i'm sorry to yeah drop something a little somber from 1.3 trillion dollars a month ago he's now only 792 billionaire this is tragic you hate to see it happen because because i thought

1:11:50Aiden:he was different. I thought he was different and now he's the same as all that.

1:11:55Atrioc:No, no, no. This is the hero's journey. You have to fail and go to rock bottom so that you can find your way back to the top. That's true. A trillion dollars doesn't feel earned unless you really had to go through the doldrums in the 800 millions. He's barely richer than he was before SpaceX IPO'd. It's a tragedy. Do you put all that work? He did work really hard. It's so fucked up and I just don't like I know that for you and I, we could probably feed our families on this amount, but he has a lot of kids. And really, he thinks of all of us as his children. So it's just like, I don't know if you can afford, you see what grocery prices are lately?

1:12:35I mean, they're hot. They're hot. They're hot. No, I don't know about that. Yeah, interesting. You're right. Definitely the big news.

1:12:41Atrioc:But if you just love space, good news is that the people who actually run SpaceX and do rockets, like they're making progress. We're getting closer. And, you know, again, part of us getting to the moon with the NASA program that we talked about with Mark Kelly requires this starship to be not only reusable, but also testing mid orbit refueling, which they're supposed to do with the Apollo capsule next year. All the timelines are sort of shifting. So if you're just stoked about space and moon stuff, this is actually a really good step towards that. Stock price is kind of its own funny thing. I think SpaceX is a cool company that is all this stuff around it.

1:13:15That's weird.

1:13:16Atrioc:Gwynn Shotwell, who runs it, apparently is like a badass. And I heard nothing but good things from the people I spoke with who worked at SpaceX. So the people doing all the work right now are great. The rocket doesn't make any money right now. It's literally like a moonshot business. They make their money off Starlink. That's basically it. They have a couple contracts for the thing. And all this combined for$2 trillion or whatever is insane. It doesn't make any sense. What's the next one? Got a Sam's Cafe pizza order up. You know the best part about this spicy Italian sausage? I voted for this topping.

1:13:55Atrioc:Yeah, just another perk of being a member. Come join us. Sam's Club.

1:14:00Aiden:Oh, you got it? Tell me. You got a little something. What's been going on with old Mitch? He's playing shy. He's been a little coy. Uh, okay. So the update on Mitch McConnell is that he has not been seen in now officially 43 days. He has not shown up, not no official communication. There was one photo that is, you know, pretty suspect, but whatever. That's it. That was clean. It could be. I actually don't know. That's the point is we don't know. Now let me clear up some communications.

1:14:38Atrioc:He doesn't have any job. Like this is fine, right? so he's actually the senator of kentucky and so like in america in america american senator mitch mcconnell is supposed to be voting on things that help our government function and he has just not shown up nor given any communication to anyone for 44 days and so now the governor of kentucky who is a democrat andy beshear is demanding that he justify his weeks long unexplained as an absence from Congress or he resigns. So he's put out this open letter. It's basically saying, listen, the people of Kentucky are owed an answer. Yes, the rules say that senators can do this, which is kind of crazy.

1:15:19I think I got the specifics. Senators can, every member of Congress can essentially go on paid medical leave for as long as they want, whenever they want.

1:15:30Atrioc:That's so cool that we have universal justification. and zero and unlimited.

1:15:37Aiden:And time off for our senators. That's so sick. Because I'm tired of people coming for this guy's head when he's doing something that is completely above board. He does not have to prove that he can walk, talk, or think coherently, and he still gets paid this full time. So theoretically, he could do this for years. There is a, the idea is that before 2024, 2024 the the governor of kentucky could call a special election to replace him but because the only democrat in all of the government of kentucky is the governor andy beshear the rest of the state legislature in 2024 passed a law removing his ability to do that almost anticipating this problem so he cannot get rid of mitch mcconnell he cannot call a new special election and um um, so Mitch's is, is could be dead.

1:16:31We don't, we don't, I mean, that's really a story. If he's that, I assume maybe he's just incapacitated, but he is not responding to anything. And then people are coming out and saying, Oh, I had conversation with him, but there is nothing on the record. There is nothing said. There's nothing.

1:16:44Atrioc:That's how I want to go out. Like my friends and family not hearing from me for weeks. Yeah. Just a long period of unknown. It's to show them. Yeah. Just exert control one last time.

1:16:55Aiden:because it says you can't. Yeah, I'm addressing this letter to Senator Mitch McConnell under the assumption that he's capable of reading and responding verbally. And if he's not incapacitated by means of consciousness or cognition, if you're unable to respond for either of those conditions, consider this letter a demand for his Senate staff to be honest and transparent with people of Kentucky, which is funny because that's all he can ask for. He can't even ask him to resign. He just wants them to be honest and transparent so maybe we can get a public pressure movement. It's crazy. I think that the thing I keep thinking is I don't think he's dead because surely it would be crazy to week into Bernie's this yeah yeah I I feel like it's just ridiculous for a senator to die and then presumably be in a space where some amount of people know that surely that leaks I I yeah I agree with you I I agree with you But it's funny because nothing has leaked.

1:17:53Aiden:Yeah. Like even if he's like unwell, he has just completely gone off the grid. He's a senator that we cannot ascertain or see footage of or talk to or hear about. It's like really odd when you look into the story more. And I do think there is motive for in some ways to just downplay this or not do anything that would lose him his seat. Because since Lindsey Graham's death, the voting math on what's going on in Congress is very, very razor thin. And so his vote, I believe, or him getting replaced could matter. This thing is like, it's just getting to the point where a Mitch McConnell absentee dead vote is going to matter a lot.

1:18:33Atrioc:I thought he was retiring at the end of this year though, right? Right. So if there was a special election, would that person only work to the end of the year? I don't know the answer to that question. I do not know. It's a good question. All I know is that there is a motivation. to, I mean, the motivation could be just personally, you don't want to appear as degraded mentally or physically, but, um, it is a weird story, especially as Lindsey Graham died during these 44 days, which is like a reminder of the, ah, it's so strange. Uh, the much younger and healthier relative to Mitch McConnell. It's what a strange, uh,

1:19:10Aiden:I guess it depends on depends on the state, but basically there isn't just an, you know, an automatic party replacement necessarily. I'm sorry, yeah. So in 2024, previously, if there was somebody who was incapacitated, the governor could just appoint a temporary senator until the next election. Now he is not allowed to do that. They must hold a special election, which will likely go to a Republican because it's Kentucky. Kentucky, huh? Yep. How old is he? Mitch McConnell? He's spry, dude. He's a whopping... Oh, he's 84. 84 years young. Can I say something crazy? He's younger than I thought he was.

1:19:52Pelosi's 86, bro. Man, we got some old fucking people in government.

1:19:58Aiden:My grandpa's 87. He's still pretty chipper. Trump's 80? Yeah. There's like, it's crazy that Trump is 80 and he could be the young one in some meetings. He could be literally like five to six years younger. 80 years old. That was sick. Schumer's 75. Dude, we have our 75. Yeah, we got some old ones. But you know what? It's the age comes wisdom. One of the characters was a boomer with three paid off houses who wants you to pull yourself up on your bootstraps, but we didn't get that.

1:20:33Atrioc:One more story. This is about YouTube's AI content policy. Yes, YouTube is having an AI problem like many others. Yeah, it is. It's very annoying. I look on YouTube in the fields that I like to look at, which is like history and economics and politics. And there's a fucking wave of basically repackaged Wikipedia articles with an AI voice that have a pretty interesting title and thumb. And I click them and I realize instantly that I'm watching a faceless AI slop YouTube channel. Tell me what Wikipedia would say. Yep. Yep. So what is YouTube doing about this? Well, let's hear from one of the head of policy creators.

1:21:12Atrioc:if you pull this up, Perry. Here's a little bit from the VP of Trust and Safety on YouTube. The AI can actually allow people to make a lot of videos. Sometimes those videos are great and it really enhances creativity and you can create a higher volume of high quality content that we want to encourage and have in YPP. But that exact same new tool can allow you to make lots of videos really quickly that are very similar. They're very generic and don't really have a narrative arc and don't really show your creativity so the same technology what the hell was that wait what happened that was ai so while explaining the problems with ai the editors of this video deep fake them into various fruit costumes wait that was great play it again yeah no this is talking about their policy on youtube and they did a cheeky little wow that is insane i didn't know is that for audio listeners we're watching two people dude that means his arm right there was entirely ai generated like his bare arm his face would have to be oh look at his is his skin there messed up wow that's that's that's actually skin yeah so they thought it'd be a cheeky thing in their video explaining ai policy to have the two speakers including the vp of like trust and safety be defaked into fruit costumes every couple frames it's uh it's kind of wild and so insane timing on And yeah, when he's talking about that problem.

1:22:38Atrioc:Yeah. Bizarre to be like, this is the time to do a cheeky thing.

1:22:42Aiden:Well, you could argue that the video became higher quality.

1:22:46Atrioc:There's nuance is what you're saying. So look, I would love to sit here and say they're really cracking down on AI content because it's clearly causing some problems. They're clearly not based on his answer there. So here is what the answer is. This is a week or two ago now. I was going to mention this last week. We didn't have time. So YouTube has come out and basically said, we are not changing our policies, but we're clarifying our policies because people are starting to abuse it. And our key goal is, quote, you have to upload original and authentic content. So here are the policies that already exist, but they made this video specifically to call out to be like, hey, we're going to get stricter on these.

1:23:21Atrioc:One, videos are not supposed to be, quote, generic and repetitive. so videos that are basically just the same like content farms where it's just a moderately changed thing and they're just flooding youtube with endless basically ai videos amazon streams a

1:23:36Aiden:little bad for ludwig streams bad you don't even you i hate amazon streams they just how is that actually one mogul moves if he has to upload one of those i mean the yard they talk about pee and

1:23:47Atrioc:poo every week you know are we gonna filter that out is that gonna be no because we kind of do a different every week what's funny they've only made five episodes and the ai got enough training data trained it um number two is distressing or off-putting so if you're trying to get views by being emotionally manipulative and he gives the example of videos that show animals in distress or like minors in situations of distress so apparently a new category of videos that are starting to cause problems on youtube are people using ai not even in those like crazy cartoon videos but just to make up fake like distressing scenarios that's all over facebook bro yeah they put like cat in trouble or something and then someone saves it and then all the boomer comments like finally a good american or something yeah yeah yeah they just do like high intensity emotional situations wait and they're gonna get rid of those quality of that's fucking crazy they are saying this is again they're not changing the policy but they're like hey this is our policy you need to be aware of this because they're clearly implying they're going to get stricter because this is now being abused.

1:24:48Atrioc:I really hope they do. And the third one, which I didn't even realize was an issue is AI personas, which is where a human creates an AI persona that talks about sensitive topics like finance, legal, or healthcare. So it's not just AI voiceovers. It's people like this who ironically, if you pull this up, I tried to find this and the best thing I could find, this is a video about how to make your own AI influencer who is all AI. Dude, we're through the fucking looking glass, bro. You imagine three years ago talking about this? This is like so insane how fast it's moving. So there are now AI influencers that are making channels teaching other people how to make AI influencers.

1:25:28If your character doesn't actually look and feel

1:25:30Aiden:real, the whole thing falls apart. So I spent the last couple of months testing out different methods. Did you test exactly how to build a 30 seconds generating this not only look real, but stay consistent across hundreds of posts.

1:25:44Atrioc:Okay. So this, this is the kind of update from YouTube. They are trying to call this stuff out specifically and people are making these AI influencers, not just for innocuous things, but now for things like talking about healthcare and politics and stuff. And YouTube is basically saying like, we are going to be more aggressive. Are they going to like go after these people no they're just not going to monetize it they're saying you're going to be booted out of the youtube partner program which to be fair it's the same thing it's the same thing they're not going to make it if it doesn't get right right the only incentive to do this um quote what he said we are agnostic to the tools that are used to make the content so you're explicitly not saying you cannot make ai videos it's you have to follow these things you know not generic repetitive and abusing all this stuff so that that i thought was interesting It's weird, man, because like Spotify, for example, found out that if they create a separate shell company that creates easy listening AI music and then list it in their own playlists, they can avoid having to pay a lot of money out to human creator.

1:26:49Because a lot of humans will put that on a playlist and they don't know it's not AI.

1:26:52Aiden:and they it's because the the way spotify revenue works is they pay out artists as a share of listening time so like a set amount of revenue comes in every month and then it's not based on like your quantity of streams it's how your streams stack up against the rest of the site like what little sliver of the pie chart of listening did your streams take up and if they can flood the platform over time with more and more AI music that they own, then they get a larger and larger take home of the pie chart of revenue every month. And they said they weren't doing this the whole time, but it came out that they did.

1:27:29And so it does feel like, I wonder what YouTube would, I mean, they don't want to do it now because it's not them creating it, but it would be interesting to see what YouTube would do if they could have creators that they own that are uploading AI generated stuff and they could just not have to pay them out. I don't know. I think if I'm a young

1:27:49Aiden:man, I'm like 15, I got a side hustle, I'm making the most emotionally moving AI cat videos where like some guy swoops in and saves him from getting run over by a car. Why can't I fucking monetize that? Why can't I monetize that and upload maybe four or five of them a day? 400 of them. Yeah.

1:28:11Atrioc:okay so while looking into this i found what i thought was a pretty fun example per if you pull this up one of the people doing this this is recent this happened in 2025 got in trouble because their name is true crime case files and they uploaded fully ai fake true crime videos which are incredibly popular on youtube and so this one quote or this is the name of the the video was called husband's secret gay love affair with stepson ends in grizzly murder this got so many last part true crime documentary in parentheses yeah yeah true crime documentary from the from the channel true crime case files so this is a fully made up video so cook how many views does this have no it's well it got taken down but at the time it got so popular and got so many millions of views and is about colorado that colorado journalists started looking into this because they were getting complaints from viewers saying why didn't you ever cover this this is a crazy story fucking cock and so here in denver post they're like this is all fake none of this is real and so npr turns out they did an interview with the creator of this channel and there's some wild things where he justifies this and says like he used to make other other ai videos and then eventually realized that true crime is really really popular and then he said this is to npr at the end of the day true crime no matter how much it's dressed up as we care about the victims or this is finding justice it's a form of entertainment npr yeah but i mean if you're so critical of true crime and if it's causing all these problems in the world why are you making it john i'm creating all no i'm creating an alternative to it because this way people can have all the luridness they want but it's not hurting people so i see myself as sort of like the vegan alternative to true crime.

1:29:58Atrioc:What the hell does that mean? That makes complete sense. Do they think other true crime journalists are doing the crimes to create it? That's not how it works.

1:30:05Aiden:I do. Hold on. And I hate to bring out the nuanced guy. I hate to bring him out.

1:30:11Atrioc:You hate to bring out the nuanced Pikachu.

1:30:13Aiden:I don't think, I think he's doing this for money. Oh my God. I think he's doing this. You drew the wrong one. He's obviously just doing this for money because he even copped to it. He's like, I tried a bunch of different stuff until I got something that just hit. But it's not like, I don't know. I'm not a fan of true crime. I think it's sort of inherently problematic. There's a nuance to it, but you're saying. If you're creating, is this not better than like actual true crime content in a sense? I would argue the negative effects of true crime,

1:30:45Atrioc:which has been shown. If you watch a lot of that stuff, you think crime is worse than it is, even though crime has nationally been going down. People who consume a lot of this stuff. So it's like not good for your mental psyche. The fact that the crime never happened doesn't matter. You're still watching stuff that is making you believe that there's this enormous amount of crime happening everywhere. In 2025, the channel got shut down. And according to YouTube, which NPR reached out to, they had deleted his channel, not because they were made by AI or that he lied about them being true, but because it was violating policies prohibiting child sexual exploitation.

1:31:20Atrioc:So some of the made up stories were too risque, not the problem that he was making AI content. That was false. Strange. And so the cap this off, I tried to go see, is this still a thing? And there is now a new channel called unreal true crime where the cases are shocking are so shocking. They feel almost unbelievable, but they're real and they have the same names. They have the same, the exact same things. there's literally the same uh you know husband with gay whatever they just flood the platform it's just it's even if one is a flop they just make a hundred million until one of them gets human brain stupid yeah they make two of these a week and they say that it is not ai i looked at it it's like we use ai for our voiceover yeah but all of the story is original from our team and i'm fucking think it is i don't think you're making two 40 minute true crime documentaries a week that are all fake and have the same titles as these other people it looks like they deleted the gay one they could be real they could just feed another true crime documentary into the thing and say generate you know it's that's the problem with this stuff is that it's i don't know

1:32:36Aiden:it's fucking up youtube for me it's so annoying uh yeah i mean this is i i think i i feel like i stumble either if even if it's not an ai voiceover i feel like i'm encountering that genre of video essay where it's they like weirdly repeat their points over and over and they could just be bad

1:32:56Atrioc:writers yeah and that's a problem in itself yeah it's a hard time to be a bad writer uh but everybody thinks you're just ai oh true yeah rw likes hyphens yeah yeah you're pretty screwed yeah uh

1:33:10Aiden:I think this is, yeah, what's frustrating about it is I don't have a clear solution in front of me. In any platform where the content is user submitted, the tools to defend against this right now feel so limited. And it's weird because pretty much everybody agrees that there's something that makes the platforms worse. Nobody really wants to, like, consume these things once they find out what they are. I feel like maybe I'm in my own bubble. Maybe I am. Maybe there is just a bunch of people who are above the age of 50 in Florida commenting on AI cat videos on Facebook that are like. They fucking love it.

1:33:56Aiden:AI cat videos are fucking great. And it just. But I feel like this. It waters down the quality of the platform. And you don't have faith in what you're doing anymore. I've seen my dad scroll reels and he gets some shit there. And he just. It doesn't. it's no different reaction to him he enjoys it all it's all the same but do you know it's ai i

1:34:13Atrioc:do think if people for example with this true crime i do not think this channel would be successful at all and and also that channel i just highlighted said this is fake this is fake right like so much of this and that's where i think you know youtube is walking a weird line i wish they were a little stricter but they are at least saying very clearly distressing or off-putting content that is created by ai that's meant to be emotionally manipulative is going to be demonetized and the fake true crime should fit in that, right? So in theory, it will improve, but we have to see how strict YouTube actually gets with this.

1:34:43Aiden:You know what I've been doing? I'm a fucking hypocrite, dude. I'm a fucking hypocrite because I have been watching AI-generated content lately. I listen to AI-generated Swedish conversations in the car to practice language. Is this like a YouTube channel? It's a bunch. If you look up, what did I search the first time? I looked up like Svenska conversation on YouTube and a lot of these videos are like fake, like a single AI generated image of like kind of a Pixar looking character, an anime looking character with like automated audio and subtitles. and it's like slow paced conversations. And I'm listening to them right now because I'm trying to just work on like language recognition basically.

1:35:32Aiden:And the pace at which these videos deliver language right now is consumable to me. Like I'm just trying to, it's hard for me when I listen to, like sometimes I listen to this TV show called Bonus Family and it's really dialogue heavy, but people speak quickly and it's hard for me to understand right now. So I've been listening to these videos because I can understand a lot of them. And it's like a whole genre of language content on YouTube that I wasn't aware of. And I've been listening to them in the car because it like I'm practicing. And maybe so maybe I'm a big old fat hypocrite. I guess, you know, this isn't I wouldn't call this art, though.

1:36:15Aiden:Like I have a very utilitarian.

1:36:17Atrioc:This is a person saying, look, we recognize there's people who want a large amount of generated conversations to practice at a certain level. And that feels different than, hey, we are going to abuse people's emotions by making fake stories that are intentionally going to swamp out other things.

1:36:32Aiden:No, I think it's the same thing as generating.

1:36:35Atrioc:There is no nuance on this one. Yeah, it's interesting. This one doesn't like that doesn't annoy me as much because based on the thumbnail, like everything about it, you know what you're getting into. But I find it so frustrating that there's so many attempting to pass themselves off. I saw one. This one really pissed me off. there was a history channel covering like interesting battles in history and they opened everything. And they had the description of saying this was not made with AI, but I am quite positive. It was, and there's nothing that stops you from saying that.

1:37:03Aiden:Yeah. There's nothing from stopping you from just going like, this is all human created. And like for most people, that's all they need to hear. The guilt is out of their mind. And then they, it's just annoying. And last thing I'll say on this, cause we're about to close. We're a little long. Uh, do you guys remember the recent Kentucky primary where Thomas Massey lost to Ed Galrean. Did you know about that story? Well, Ed famously ran some AI ads that showed Thomas Massey in a throuple with AOC and Ilhan Omar and like catching them in like black and white photos, like going out to dinner together and like saying he's a secret super woke lib.

1:37:39And it turns out, I mean, everyone criticized those ads when they happened, but now that it's been since time since the primary and he lost, there are studies into old people in Kentucky who voted and many of them report in surveys, they thought it was real. They're like, oh, I thought that was a real... And that's fucking crazy. They literally thought that they caught him in a throuple with AOC and Illinois. And it swayed their vote on which Republican to vote for, because they're Republican voters. And I think it's just like we are through the looking glass on some crazy fucking things. Oh, that's awesome, man.

1:38:16Anyway, what do you think Pikachu would say about that? what do you think Pikachu would say about that news story as we close out our show be sure to check out

1:38:27Atrioc:our Patreon if you're interested in a full hour of this episode where all three of us will just be a Pokemon and give no other commentary this is a soft launch of our Pokemon after learning about 9-11 but it's Pikachu and the towers were both Pikachu that's sad that's sad to think about Doug but Osama Bin Laden's a human With a Pokeball. Guys, thanks for watching our show. We'll see you next week and a bonus hour on Patreon if you want to watch right now. Thanks for watching. Bye, everybody. Bye.

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