The Tide is Turning | Ep. 067 Lemonade Stand 🍋

18:29Atrioc:Yeah. That's, I mean, one of the things AI is remarkably good at is pattern matching on giant, giant quantities of data, right? And so this whole thing, so what's really weird about this is you know a survey if we talk about elites in russia or the people starting to get upset with what's going on part of how you clamp down on that as a dictator is through surveillance right but they've literally had to take their entire surveillance system in moscow down essentially they can't use it they're like it's not valuable if it's not connected to the internet you can't i mean they can't even do the same kind of ai analysis right and this is happening in other cities i actually looked up if you pull this up perry this is from comparatech they did this study looking at this the countries and the cities that have the most surveillance cameras because i was like wait a minute is 300 000 a lot so china is not even on the map because it would blow out everything else but yeah but this map uh kind of shockingly india has a ton of surveillance cameras all over the place i did not yeah you know america and europe doesn't have a lot like there's a good amount in london and uh in paris in new york city in los angeles like you know the real big ones um but the top 10 most surveyed in the world china just beats everything but then it's india india india pakistan south korea russia afghanistan singapore and russia so it's top 10 yeah yeah and so it's interesting if you just look at the map it's very kind of like it's southeast asia but also dictatorships and suddenly dictatorships is setting up giant camera systems to track their people have become a massive liability that they probably need to shut down that is such a weird dynamic happening yeah yeah it's weird again i i just think this is this tech is is changing things in a lot of weird ways a lot of unexpected ways uh and i think the ukraine war is a great insight for me it's awesome like all those cameras i've been putting in your house like now i can just say is he in the shower right now i was wondering why you keep doing that i don't have to sit and monitor actively anymore you can just you know you can just tell him no right you don't have to let him in well he's on my podcast co-host and he's like i have the right I just tell him no.

20:37And we still do the podcast. You're actually blowing my mind right now.

20:41Aiden:This is, does this include, this is cameras that are set up by like the government or state in some capacity or CCTV cameras. So this would this exclude like flock say like private, like are like ring cameras.

20:55Atrioc:Yeah. It's cameras used by government entities such as law enforcement. So, you know, this is, this is definitely an increasing trend around the world, but this, uh, this AI, you know, look, everything is going to be hackable basically. And then the fact that, Oh, other like foreign entities are just going to be able to tell where everybody is. It's kind of scary. I mean, it would, I think it would be kind of nice to, uh, if it reverses this trend, I'm not a huge fan of it. You know, we were in China and we talked about the fact that there are cameras everywhere on everything. It is, it is pretty kind of creepy and dystopian.

21:26Atrioc:Um, and that's not something they might start to have to roll back on because someone who hacks into their stuff can use it to figure out anything.

21:33Aiden:I don't, I haven't watched these yet or like haven't watched like part of one, but Ben Jordan, a big YouTuber did a couple of videos on people's private cameras being hacked fairly easily and the access that people are finding through that. I think it's an, it's an interesting problem in general, like the scale of this, the fact that it can affect, uh, you know, a dictator and it's a now a security vulnerability to the people setting it up. But then on the other end of it too just like the scale at which we are willingly installing cameras and them being available to people who choose to hack them in some capacity it's a lot of uh middle american cities were rolling out these flock cameras on like street poles and shit and people i mean just covered them all up with trash bags like i there's a photo here i don't know if you pull up but like but this is is that in sf no this is like dayton ohio okay okay because i so i haven't looked into

22:31Atrioc:this much but you know flock is being credited as one of the things that is helping bring down crime in san francisco and that's something people are happy about because sf has had a real crime problem for the past six or seven years and they're talking about that i'll be like oh yeah this is allowing us to track down the people who are going smashing windows all over the place i mean we talked about when we were in china like all the people in china were like it's cool there's

22:52Aiden:no crime now yeah everybody everybody in china vouched for this shit for that reason yeah

22:59Atrioc:it's obviously not this black and white but it but it is kind of weird to be like hey would you be okay with cameras everywhere that could be used to track you if crime almost disappears and i think a lot of people i mean i would have to really think about it man especially if like once i have kids yeah it's weird so it's just straight out it depends on who holds the camera power honestly yeah i guess if the question is do you want putin to have access to cameras in your neighborhood it's like or trauma i don't know it's a different so anyway uh interesting stuff. Well, the thing about

23:26Aiden:Russia, Ukraine is that it's a really simple topic that doesn't have any cascading consequences. Right.

23:32Atrioc:Right. And I think actually the only two updates are that that one battle we talked about and cameras in Moscow. Yeah, I think that's probably the two updates. Probably it for 2026. Yeah. Well,

23:43Aiden:I lied. I lied. There's more. No! I wanted to update you guys about how gold is replacing U.S. Treasuries as the top reserve asset in the world for basically the first time since U.S. Treasuries became really prevalent. I love gold!

24:05Atrioc:That is true. You do love gold. I love gold!

24:08Aiden:No, these are real and they're mine. You can keep them. That's fine with me. Gold collectively as the country's reserves has hit 27 % globally, uh, up from, you know, like mid twenties in the previous year and U S treasuries, uh, partly because of like the U S is placed in the world and like the value of the U S dollar, you know, the stability of those bonds, uh, have fallen from a Brown, the same like 27 % down to like 24 % this year. And, uh, this is part of a huge movement, which I think we had talked about before uh when russia invaded ukraine the one of the things that the u.s did was freeze uh the u.s dollar holdings that russia had at the time both like uh treasuries and then straight up like the the cash in u.s dollars that russia had a couple hundred billion dollars and the world sees that the U.S.

25:15Aiden:does this. And regardless of the stance on Russia choosing to invade Ukraine at the time, everybody kind of wakes up and is like, whoa, all of this money we have in U.S. dollars, they can just do that? Yeah. Like that action had never really been taken before, certainly not in that capacity. And as a reaction, the demand for gold in recent years has spiked to like record levels. It's part of the gold price, like hitting$5 ,500 an ounce, I think at the beginning of this year. Yeah. And although if you look at this, like if you look at overall reserves held by countries across the world, I think U.S.

25:59Aiden:denominated assets, which includes like, you know, stocks, other things like that are valued in U.S. dollars that countries may be holding is still like 47 % in total. the share of gold is growing and it's coming from countries like China, India, Turkey, purchasing massive amounts of gold in recent years because this fear of the U S holding this economic power over your country by choosing to hold this reserves has, has fueled it because the U S finally chose to take action. You pull this chart. It's similar to this, but it just shows that like there's this period, this warped period, I guess, between 1995 and now, basically, where the green bar, U.S.

26:41Treasuries, was the highest thing people had in their central bank reserves. Central banks around the world held more treasuries than anything else. And gold was at its lowest. And now it has bounced back to being just edging out dollars and is now the highest.

26:51Atrioc:I didn't realize that only changed in 1995. I guess in my American patriot brain, I thought we had the highest dollars or the most reserved. Well, I just think gold was like hundreds and hundreds of years. And then the dollar grew post-World War II. And finally in the 90s, it - You know, it's also hundreds of years, America. Yeah, true. I mean - So that's a ridiculous argument. Also, remember that doubloon I bought for$600? Has that gone up in value now? Hmm. I mean, for - Wait, when did you buy it? America's been around for hundreds of years, but it hasn't been a power until post-World War II.

27:23No, I was joking. Okay. I was like, all right.

27:26Aiden:I think the big swing was when we, I mean, this trend towards treasuries being the majority started after we left the gold standard, right? I think it was further after World War II. Well, we left the gold standard in 71. So you can see it right there where it actually kind of drops for a bit. People go on gold. It's like the 80s or 90s whenever we start switching back. But I mean, you're right there. You can see on the right that 2020 basically. Ukraine happens. We seize the reserves and everyone's like, we got to have gold. I need it. It's the only safe thing to have central banks. And they've been buying it like crazy.

28:01Aiden:Yeah. And it's a big, a big swing. And I think these countries starting to set the tone also caused a lot of like private, either private investors or, you know, like hedge funds to follow the trend and buy massive amounts of gold during the same period of time. And then alongside just buying gold countries like France, moving their physical gold reserves from where it was stored in the United States back home to France in order to keep it safe, not have it under American control anymore.

28:34Atrioc:Yeah. Okay, I have a question. Okay, so if everybody else is buying gold and less America stuff and they're taking it home, to me, somebody who doesn't have an MBA, why do I care? Why do I give a fuck as like an average person? Genuine question. Like, do we care? Why does it affect me? Go for it.

28:51Aiden:but maybe here you give your big a answer to this because i think i have a a longer maybe a longer one but yeah the reason we care is that these people these central banks used to be the safest and most reliable purchaser of u.s debt that's the u.s treasuries they would hold yeah they would do that they would just mechanically like oh other other countries all the time all the countries and now a larger percentage of their their reserves are going to gold. So they're not buying as much debt. Now we've made up that fact because we have a much larger percent recently of hedge funds and like lightier investors buying our debt.

29:30So we haven't like private private investors. Okay. But those guys are the most likely to panic if things go wrong or whatever. Central banks were the most really, that's who you want to buy your debt. Cause they, they don't care the price almost. They just buy it as a thing. They need to have a certain percent. Okay. Now they've changed their percent. So the idea is that like, if this happens, it undermines our ability, which we need to do based on our deficits, to keep issuing gargantuan amounts of debt because there's not the appetite there was. Okay.

29:57Aiden:I mean, this is kind of what I was going to get at as well. I read, there's a really, really good article I recommend called Trump's Empire of Debt that came out last week. And it's kind of talking about the historical context of how great empires fall as they continue to spend an extraordinary amount of money on war specifically. And they're unable, as they continue to try to maintain the control over the world as their empire has formed it, they continue to spend more and more in order to be able to maintain that and inevitably draw debt on in order to fuel that. They continue spending. And then as you get more aggressive in your approach to control, this effect basically snowballs.

30:55Aiden:People are more wary of the enforcement you're using or the damage you're causing, which causes them to fight back more or things continue to crumble. there are people that help fund your war effort through the buying of your debt that are no longer willing to buy it anymore. And the cascading consequences of you continuing to up your aggression, the, you are no longer able to fund that war effort anymore because nobody is willing to buy the debt. It's like this, it's like this chain reaction and your empire begins to crumble because of this.

31:37Atrioc:we gotta fix this or we can't keep attacking Iran

31:42Aiden:and I thought it was this really interesting historical look at how the spending of this like debt fueled money in the context of war is kind of its own undoing as soon as you start on this train you're heading towards something even before treasury like you go back to Rome that they overextend on war and then they have to like they start putting less gold in each coin what are they I don't know what it's called. It's called basically counter-shrinkflation. Yeah, shrinkflation in their own coins. And that destroyed their economy. And then the Spanish Armada, they spent too much money on war and they had to start doing the same thing.

32:17And then Britain spent too much money on war. I mean, there was the quote,

32:22Aiden:Louis XIV, the warmongering profligate, son, king of France, apologized on his deathbed for loved war. He loved war too much and spent too much. And I think this, I mean, this ties into something I want to talk about later too, but I think this aggressive stance that the U.S. has chosen to take in the last year specifically is causing all of these things to unfurl in a way that devalues its debt. and like will cause us to continue to have to like raise interest rates to attract the remaining portion of buyers and continue on taking on more and more. Now the trouble figure it out.

33:11Atrioc:The most support for this show comes from Shopify. We're high energy, baby. Woo, baby. Every ad. Let's go. What's up with Shopify?

33:20Aiden:Have either of you even used Shopify? Yeah. Okay, you actually have used it. I used it to run a store. I used it to run a store for Ludwig for ages. Yeah, I bought some things on that store. Yeah, and you'll never get your money back. Or the clothes. But that's a problem with my fulfillment. That's a problem with your fulfillment. Not Shopify. Not Shopify. To be clear, Shopify did everything correctly, and I chose to ignore his order. We used to sell all of Ludwig's mogul moves, like his original run, shipping out of the garage. We used Shopify to build that original version of the website and sell all those clothes to people.

33:55He sold them at a booth at Smash events, and he left them all at my apartment. I believe that. I 100 % believe that. And they took a lot of space in my tiny little apartment in San Jose.

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34:33Atrioc:That's right. Serval AI enables IT teams to automate various processes. Instead of having to drag and drop stuff, you can just describe what you want. IT processes can cause such a headache at companies. Atriok, there are certain employees that cause so many problems for the IT team. So back when I was at Twitch, Twitch got hacked, and they did a new security system where everyone had to change their password all the time. And I always forgot it because they have very intense rules. And so I would constantly have to ask them to reset my password. And then - Those are individual tickets, like somebody on staff.

35:05Atrioc:Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Server would have helped a lot here, both me and them, to have shaved the embarrassment of me walking in with my laptop. And then one day I walk in and they open my laptop and I had put a sticky note with my password on it and they got really mad at me. That doesn't make sense. There's no security issues. Why would they be mad at that? Serval platform is designed to eliminate repetitive tickets that IT can focus on strategic work instead of having to build and deal with crazy tickets like Brandon's. You can make this whole process much faster with resolving requests, building workflows, transforming tickets.

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36:16Terms at aka.ms slash college PC.

36:19Atrioc:you know who would fix this is sbf because we could issue more crypto coins without causing inflation on american dollars exactly much like but that guy's in prison fuck what are we gonna do get him out pull this up perry speaking of trump and sbf sam bankman freed officially as of today submitted an official pardon request from trump and i want to do a little bit of a retrospective here on SBF. We talked about this last week, how Trump has been doing... Okay, it hasn't happened. It hasn't happened. It probably won't even happen. I'm not going to say it will, even though... Dude, he's pardoned.

36:54He's pardoned a lot of people, a lot of them in the criminal industry, and all of them doing the same playbook that SBF has done. However, they were less well-known. So it's a little easier to get away with because there's no heat. SBF is very well-known and not well-liked. So it's harder to get away with the pardon. However, he has been doing... I think we've covered this a little bit before, but he's really leaning into it lately. A lot of pro-Trump tweets to like build the case. This is one recently that was funny where he just talks about how the S &P is hitting all-time highs. How about during Biden?

37:25Aiden:It's just so blatant. It's unbelievable. So he's been doing that, but I want to do a quick retrospective on SBF because I don't know if anyone remembers why he went to jail in the first place. He - Was it for being bronze in league? Yes, that's why. He spent too many games on Lee and he didn't get it. He took crypto investors' money. They gave it to him to put in a vault, which he did not put in a vault. He took out of the vault and he gave it to his own hedge fund, Alameda Research, to gamble. That is why he went to jail. That is like the simple reason is that he speculated with investor money in a way that he did not say that he would do.

38:03And so pretty simple. That's why he went under. However, people have taken a look back at the things he gambled on. And a unique story has emerged, which is that after he went bankrupt, they were like, we have to pay these people back. So they sold everything that he gambled on immediately to try and pay back the investors. But it turns out that some of the things he gambled on were a company called Cursor, a little company called Anthropic, and a little company called SpaceX. And he put hundreds of millions of dollars, in some cases billions of dollars, of investor money in these companies in 2022.

38:39Aiden:You're telling me these prosecutors had paper hands, Adrian? They had paper hands, Aiden. So it turns out -

38:47Atrioc:On it, a visionary. To invest in Cursor in 2022 is wild. It is a five, I'm sorry, it's like a 5 ,840 % gain. Oh my God. But they sold it all, right? They sold it all at the lows. In the lows of 22, they sold all of these companies at the lows. Now, again, many things he gambled on were trash meme coins, but it turns out that the total amount they owed investors at Owlin when it went bankrupt was$11 billion. The three or four billion he gambled on these companies are worth$111 billion today had he not sold. 10x the value of the entire company. I wonder how many like criminals are out there in the world where they just do horrible things, but one out of 10 times they hit it huge and they just get to keep it.

39:35Atrioc:had he somehow made it through that summer, he would not only have like recovered all the losses, but he would be one of the wealthiest men in the world. And like considered the greatest investor. Oh my God. It's crazy how much his life diverged because he got caught basically doing this bankrupt. But yeah, it's come out that his venture bets would have made him a hundred billion dollars richer had he stayed out of prison. It's crazy. I mean, buying Anthropic at like the valuation it was in 2022 is, I mean, it's like a 500 % gain on billions of dollars. It's crazy. Yeah.

40:07Aiden:A visionary. I take it all back. I take it all back. Yeah. You know what they say, the ends justify the means. They do say that. I think he belongs in jail. I just think it's very funny. You know, it's got to sting him a lot more.

40:24Atrioc:He belongs in jail with a Bloomberg terminal. Yes. Like we let him lead. Let him lead some rounds. It's like the end of catch me. If you can, let's let him part. partner with us. Let's bring him out. Tom Hanks and let him pick some startups. I just thought that was funny. I mean, cursor is a crazy one that was completely unknown. He put 200 million into it. Now it's worth it. It is worth saying, dude, we did a Vaughn. We did a corruption episode last week and we didn't talk about, cause there's literally too much. But one of the things is that Trump keeps pardoning people who've done, or maybe we did like massive financial fraud.

40:57Atrioc:Oh yeah. We didn't even talk about that specific category of people. Trump keeps part like pardoning. He's like, open up a window, like a shop. You can just like pay to play. They show up, they pay a fee and they get a pardon. It's crazy. He doesn't even know who they are. People ask him about an interview. He's like, I don't know who that is. Like, it's just a couple million bucks and you get a pardon. It's crazy. Wait, that's sounds like a good deal. But I think SBF is not going to get it. I actually don't think he's going to get it. Why not? I literally think Trump doesn't care enough to get the heat on this one.

41:28People, people don't like this guy and they know about it too. It's too blatant.

41:31Aiden:Yeah, he is. The tweet is insane. It's like if you, like if I ghost wrote it for him as a joke, but that is a stop Trump.

41:40Atrioc:I don't know, man.

41:42Aiden:Trump's penis in 2026, eight inches. Biden's last year, a frail four. No, but I mean, I don't know if you guys remember, but SPF, I mean, I remember this. This is like, this is well known, but he literally had a plan leak.

41:58Atrioc:This is like, like everything's starting to crumble, right? And he does like an internal thing where he's like, I'm just spitballing. Here's some options for like how we could get out of this. Yeah. And right wing grift was in there. Go on Tucker Carlson, your favorite guy. Come on. Hold on.

42:13Aiden:Hold on. That's and to be clear, if you were grifting, you wouldn't go on Tucker Carlson's show. It's where you do your authentic messaging. Part B, come out against the woke agenda. Part C, talk about this cartel of lawyers destroying value. So that's the that's the that's just a funny thing. He literally, you know what he called his shot? Barry Bond style. You know what I'm saying? You pointed to the rafters, and if he gets the pardon, that's actually so. Yeah, and we should also be clear.

42:41Atrioc:He's doing the steroids part. He's breaking the law. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure, for sure, for sure. Anyway. Yeah. You know what's going on in California? Bunch of fucking elections. I'll tell you what, Doug. Fucking fraud. It's fraud. Fraud. It's fraud. Fraud. Fraud alert.

42:56Aiden:If I, you know, if I. I'm burying my gold, and I'm hiding from this fraud. If I've learned anything from X the everything app, it's that this election in California this year has been robbed from the people, Doug.

43:10Atrioc:So tell me a little more about that. Barry, bring this up. We're going to show you two proofs that California is rigging the elections. First off, this is the result for the Los Angeles mayor. Okay, now I'm going to highlight four people here who are the most notable. You got Karen Bass. Karen Bass is the incumbent. She's been here for a while. She's sort of an establishment Democrat, let's say. You got Nithya Raman, who's the more like far left progressive sort of side, emulating Zoran Mamdani's sort of style. And then you got Spencer Pratt. Now, if you don't live in Los Angeles, you probably don't care too much.

43:40Atrioc:But the reason this is interesting is because Spencer Pratt came into this race as a Republican. This is in Los Angeles. This is a deeply, deeply blue city in a deeply blue state. And this dude basically has a whole campaign, which is essentially just shitting on Karen Bass and saying she caused the fires. videos that was his big that was his big innovation yeah i to his credit he trump is maybe like a too strong of a comparison but i think he's good at making like bombastic things that get attention you know like when they did a debate those three like he just keeps doing these like attacks no i think trumpian is right it's a very yeah it's like uh it's attention grabbing yeah and his thing is very much like uh look it's not about being a republican it's that they're ruining the city and we need to get it back and blah blah blah blah so um spencer pratt was a total underdog you wouldn't think that this oh by the way his entire background is that he's a reality tv star from the mid 2000s from the hills he was like a villain in the reality tv and then he's made i believe a crystal shop since then uh i'm not deeply researched on spencer pratt's history

44:43Aiden:i have a fun fact for you guys after you know a guy i know a guy on this one really oh wow okay crystal shop guy or a reality TV guy? I'll tell you, maybe a little both. So LA deserves a reality TV crystal shop mayor. We're a crystal guy. Especially New York deserves a Knicks fan and we deserve a guy who opened a crystal business.

45:08Atrioc:So I don't think a lot of people are super stoked about Karen Bass, respectfully. I don't think people who live in Los Angeles feel that the city is going in a great direction. It's kind of establishment. But so Spencer Pratt comes in. You wouldn't think would get any very again trump kind of ask and then just like gets all the attention and so uh we started the election in california last week and then the top two move on to the general election in november karen bass is currently in the lead but if you look at this on online currently nithya raman is in second place but wasn't you see when the results were first coming in and this is where you play you know dark conspiratorial music the first day when there was the elections coming in okay karen bass was winning and spencer pratt was in second place not only second place solidly in second place he had a dominant lead but then they started to find mail-in ballots aiden and the mail-in ballots are overwhelmingly for nithya raman the super progressive candidate and suddenly spencer pratt's lead which he fairly earned has been disappearing and over the last couple days he went from the obvious person that's going with karen bass to the runoffs to now almost certainly locked out of the race another person who got left behind my favorite that's right nelson chang uh age 23 from uc berkeley who is currently in last place and i just want to highlight one of uh sort of his standout policies what is your professional background i'm a roblox youtuber who has been doing roblox game with my team of friends and fans along with other popular roblox youtubers we do not agree with the new age verification requirements that roblox is imposing to limit online chat and scan minor spaces voter in la and it's that roblox has age verification and that is the answer to the question what is your professional background so uh what about barack obama shaw that was the guy who's yeah that was funny i'm sorry i didn't look up i do have i do have your guy from last week so so as you could probably imagine this is uh causing regardless of the sort of candidates this is causing the exact same conversation as 2020 because the republican was one of the two leaders of the race and then suddenly the mail-in ballots are coming.

47:13Atrioc:This has happened kind of sort of not really into the same degree, but with the governor election. So here are the current results of the governor. Xavier Becerra is currently number one in the lead, but Steve Hilton, the Republican candidate, who again has been doing way better than you would think as the governor of California candidate, was in the lead solidly. I think he had 33 % in the first 24 hours, something like that. But over the last week, awfully suspicious bunch of mail-in ballots are coming in suddenly he's not winning so two questions first of all where are we january 6th thing for steve hilton because obviously this is a diehard steve hilton to be clear so i've been saying that thank you spencer bratt the mayoral candidate for los angeles is now basically locked out and he's not gonna be able to run all right but with the governor it is almost certainly going to be xavier barcero and Steve Hilton.

48:06Atrioc:So he's still in the running, but Tom Steyer did not get into the top.

48:10Aiden:I'll give you a dud. You caught me. Because Tuesday last week, I rolled up to the mailbox that is near my home and I dropped in about 50 ballots for Nithya. You did 500 ,000. I mean, you were out there all day. No, that was in the coordinated telegram chat. Isn't it just very obvious that older people more likely vote Republican and they also do in-person voting. Yeah, so that's what I looked into.

48:39Atrioc:I was like, okay, all right, what's going on here? I'm sorry, I'm harshing the vibe. So even Trump has weighed in on the California elections. He also votes mail-in Trump, just to be clear. And he was like, you know, again, he's like, voter fraud, why does this keep happening? Republicans are winning day one and then the mail-ins just like happen to do this. So what is actually going on in California? California is incredibly slow at counting votes and this is a valid criticism that kind of sucks that we have to wait weeks or like a month or whatever to know who wins an election and california is i believe the slowest by far so why is that 80 of ballots are mail-in for a for a state of 40 million people that is a shit that's so many 80 and on top of that like california mails ballots to everybody to to mail in it is funny though to be like we shouldn't count the mail-in ballots in a state where it's 80 %?

49:30Atrioc:It's like, yeah, well, that's the thing. We should only count 20 % of our votes. Well, no, I mean, they've pushed for it, right? And then the problem, in quotes, is that they have to be, you just have to get it in the mail by election day. So it might not arrive for up to seven days before you can even count the ballots. And then you have to do all this extra verification because it's mailed in like signature checks. So the Secretary of State has like a whole little thing talking about this. So you have to verify signature. You have to vote. They didn't vote. And you have to verify they didn't vote in other places and all this.

50:01Atrioc:So essentially the short version, California has decided to do a very long process here that is encourages mail in voting. And then is really thorough about making sure the votes are not fraudulent. So are they fraudulent? No, it's just California is really slow. And then because Republicans with, for example, Donald Trump have been talking about mail in voting as this fraudulent thing, they don't do it. And so what happens is they all vote day one. like you said, they go and vote in person. And then all of the Democrats or young people or whatever, or old people are all mailing. Just watch that to me.

50:33Yeah. Or I vote mail in hip. Yeah. What are you? Right.

50:39Atrioc:You know, if you're, you know, it's kind of a little painful to stand up and walk to the ballot. When I get my hip changed, I go, I do the mail in voting. Right. Right. So it's interesting that this is sort of causing this, you know, conversation around like fraud. It's not fraud. California has opted for this incredibly slow system. There are a lot of calls from Democrats being like, even Ro Khanna this morning was like, guys, we, we need to make this faster because it just looks so bad, but it is not ultimately fraud. And I want to end with proof that it is fraud because Perry, if you pull this up, your candidate for governor living for God and country DeMott.

51:16Atrioc:Yeah. Who's currently in second to last place. Yeah. Unfortunately, second to last, he's not doing the best. Yeah. I mean, I was looking over the policies of our, of our top three. For example, Steve Hilton, one of the key policies is make California, the crypto capital of the world, which to me is actually top of the list. Yeah, this is top of the list. The top of the policies list is make California, the crypto capital of the world. That's actually above keep California. The AI capital of the world. It's funny going through.

51:45Aiden:Even if you're a really tech intensive guy, you wouldn't want crypto to be ahead of AI, right?

51:52Atrioc:Yeah. This is the guy who got second. So affordability is below cutting car registration fees. Yeah, it's got the candidates are an interesting spread, but probably the most interesting is living for God and country. DeMott first name, living for God, middle name and country third, final name DeMott. And I thought some of the cool policies here, if you read the full platform is that he wants to create a, where is it? He wants to create a militia in California, and then we're going to create our own sovereign wealth fund. And then we will no longer engage with the federal government and only use our own money.

52:26Atrioc:Dude, this guy's awesome. I'm glad I stuffed mail-in ballots. If we go stuff some ballots right now, we get our fucking king living for God.

52:34Aiden:You know why he's not dead last? Because I was crammed ballots. I want to say this. My dual Nithya-Demont ballots were going crazy.

52:46Atrioc:They could really get something done. and i just want to point out uh if for audio listeners next to his policies he just has photos of his passport and driver's license here are pictures of my passport and driver's license it just says here are pictures of my passport and driver's license join the dumpster fire response the dfrt every everything is about dumpster fire if you're sick of demo publicans and republicrats then uh dude this website's money yeah this beast living for god so let

53:14Aiden:Aiden knows a guy, a little segment that I'm bringing back. Okay. An interesting thing. So a friend of mine, I found out, worked for Spencer Pratt. Oh, really? Before this election. Wow. I didn't know. Like at the crystal shop? Dude, not literally at the shop, but had insight into his finances. Okay, wow. And what he did. And I was just like, what was working for him? And he was like, dude, it sucked. Cause he was, well, one, he was kind of a weird, like demanding guy in general, he said, but he said he had insane spending habits. So his paychecks for the hill were very big. Like he was getting paid an extraordinary amount of money and he spent all of his money from that show on things like starting the crystal store.

54:09Aiden:And to the point where he ran out of a parent, this is just what my friend told me. So this is all a legend from him working there. Isn't it the American dream, though, to strike it rich on reality TV and then open up a crystal shop with the money and go back around? He didn't put any of the money aside and spent so much of the money that he earned from that show on things like the crystal store that he had to move back in with his dad. Really? Yeah. That's what we need running California. This is just what... This is what my friend worked for him for, like, I think, like, a little over a year or something.

54:42Aiden:And this is like, like at the crystal shop, not literally at the crystal shop. He, uh, but he was like, yeah, that's why I didn't vote for him. I was like, this guy's not responsible at all. Like I, and I kept, he was like, I kept telling other people like, like I have a real, just, I think this guy was shitty to work for. So I just didn't vote for him.

55:03Atrioc:Just on a human level. Maybe some people just need more power. And then, you know, you promote, you keep promoting them until they find their groove. Yeah.

55:13Aiden:If they just become the mayor, it'll be fine. Does he play Xbox? That's funny. Does he? Yeah.

55:22Atrioc:I don't know if Spencer Pratt plays Xbox. Wait, hold on. Let me try another transition. Speaking of the new world record on Mario 64, can I play that on my new Xbox? Mario Kart Wii. Mario Kart Wii. Oh, Mario Kart Wii shit.

55:35Aiden:Okay. I thought it was interesting because I've been seeing of little things circulate on my Gaming is Back timeline that the new Xbox CEO, Asha, she is apparently killing it, doing a very, very good job, at least as far as Xbox fans go. So during this tenure, I think we talked about a while ago when Phil Spencer, the previous guy, was removed from this position or he resigned. He resigned. I mean, he's been there a long time. I think it seemed like he was removed, but it's obviously one of those things where it's like, I'm stepping down. Honorably discharged. Yeah, yeah. Honorably discharged.

56:23Aiden:Since taking over for him, they have done things like lower the price of Xbox Game Pass, like the multiple versions of it, which they got a lot of heat for. And they did lose like millions of subscribers over when they raised it last year. they're changing the logo and going back to like an old sense of the branding, changing like the marketing campaigns announced that they were bringing back console exclusives, which is something that fans wanted. They are announced a new console venture altogether, nicknamed Project Helix, and trying to also apparently internally promoting people that have been on the Xbox team for a long time to sort of get a feel for like the old culture at Xbox to like set the tone with this fan base.

57:12Aiden:And I think there is this collective reaction from gamers online that like Xbox has kind of fallen by the wayside. One of the reasons being, they don't know how to name consoles. They don't know how to do it. It's a billion dollar company. They really don't know how to name damn consoles. I couldn't tell you. I think they've made four. I'm not sure. Four of them. I think they've made four Xboxes. There's four versions of the last one, bro. The Series X.

57:34Atrioc:So there's the Xbox. There's the Xbox 360. Yes. I can get there. And then it was the one. Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X. But are those different? No, those are the same. But aren't those ones the same? No, those are the same. And then there was another one, right? No. After Series X. See, that's the thing. Nobody knows. The Series Q. Xbox console launches. Can I push back on this? No, maybe. Let me. Let me do like a big finish, I guess, finish.

58:02Aiden:I think there seems to be a general positive reaction from Xbox fans on things like the subreddit for Xbox on Twitter that she's she's goaded. She's moving things in the right direction. and also from what I could see, allegedly she gets to do a lot of these things because during Phil's time in that position, he had this mandate of a 30 % profit margin after they had acquired massive studios like Activision Blizzard. And it's like, hey, now that we have these things, we've spent a ton of money. You have to make the Xbox or like the Microsoft gaming division a lot of money now. That is your goal.

58:48Aiden:And then he then like failed to do that. And apparently, or the idea is, they have removed that mandate internally. And that's part of the reason she can so freely make a lot of these changes or decisions. That's like a theory going around. I mean, yeah. I fully agree that there's clearly a tide shift in public perception. When she first got announced, people were like, gamers were like, who's this woman gonna come in? And now they're like, oh, she's kind of based. but realistically everything you listed is like it's like deck chairs in the titanic bro it's like tiny it's like they lowered the price of game pass to still higher than it was before they raised it they announced exclusives but they're just at their big conference it was like gears of war is the one exclusive console exclusive and it's still on pc they like there's this general trend of console hardware sales are already declining outside of the switch like ps5 and and Xbox are both.

59:44And the Xbox what? Give the full name. Xbox Series S and Series X. Okay, nice. They're both like on hard times and it's going to get worse because all hardware consoles are going through this RAM price spike. So everybody has to raise prices again. So there's a big risk that everyone's going to get super pissed really soon. Nintendo's raising prices in September. I think Xbox is doing theirs pretty soon. PS5 is doing theirs pretty soon. So everyone's going to be mad about that. Thank you. And they have no real big exclusive that's like changing the tide. It was already a losing battle. They were already losing.

1:00:19PS5 was already beating the brakes off, I'm really. And now it's like they got a new CEO who's like dressing things up a little bit. But it's not. Nothing has changed substantially. And she's just nicer to the community than people thought. It's like, I guess, cool. But the business is not any stronger than it was before. If anything, it's weaker. More time has passed. And they keep announcing. you know like she got um a lot of pushback from fans for including the logos of ps5 when they announced new games because the games are multi-platform they have to make money and so she's like you know what you guys right we heard you we're gonna take those logos out but they're not gonna not release them on ps5 nothing has changed the games are still releasing on ps5 no no but the logo but the logo is not there at the bottom when they announce it in the xbox conference

1:01:02Aiden:this is that's it's just minor so i had the same general pushback or thought specifically to the game exclusives thing as this something as something the community was excited about because one i was like i saw two of the exclusives that got announced one was like a gears a new gears of war game and then i forget the other it's a clockwork something yeah and i was like that's what that's not turning the ship around this isn't mario it's i do not think an exclusive at this point does anything significant to save the brand. And I also don't even really understand like why an Xbox fan would be particularly excited about that game being exclusive.

1:01:41Aiden:What does it do to you as a fan of the brand to like have that game on other platforms to begin with? I don't even, like, why would you complain about a PlayStation logo? No, console, I mean, they want it to be exclusive because if not, right now, the ideal strategy for a gamer, if you want to get access to everything, if you're real hardcore into it, is you buy a PS5 and you have a PC or you buy a PS5 and you have a Switch. And that covers everything. It covers all the releases. Yeah. All major releases. Xbox is not included in that. But is this just like an Xbox, like console wars fan that she's appealing to basically?

1:02:14Yeah, basically.

1:02:15Aiden:But that's like - Someone who's wearing the Xbox jersey. Yeah, they're weird. They shouldn't care. They shouldn't care. But if you're a new consumer, it's like, I'm going to become a gamer now. It makes no sense to buy the Xbox. You're just not getting anything unique. So there's no reason. but Sony has timed exclusives for big games. So what else I thought was interesting in the vein of the console stuff is that they have already kind of walked this back when I looked into it. Oh, really? And because of the spiking costs of creating these things right now. So because RAM specifically is so expensive, among other parts, Project Helix is being like totally reworked.

1:02:51Aiden:They don't have like a timeline. They aren't sure if they're going to be able to push it out. and uh and this being one of the big announcements that like the fan base of xbox was particularly particularly excited about this isn't even something they can commit to at the moment even on like a two to three year timeline uh yeah the steam deck just went up to a thousand dollars and the steam machine so i've been keeping tabs on the steam machine all year and this is a uh valve's big entry to the console market sort of because it's technically still a pc right and they have delayed it from when it was supposed to initially launch and i think may to later this year with an asterisk because they're trying to figure out how to make it even remotely price competitive with how the components are spiking and i can't remember a time when i was a kid where i watched console prices go up significantly over the years of a generation it's insane they should be going down they should be doing mini versions and and yeah it's it's it's wild i mean i'm seeing uh you know games industry commentators say it's it's making games like hardware console gaming into like a upper middle class only activity like it's literally like pricing out the broad families that used to buy it's called except for nintendo which is doing pretty well their their console is more expensive than the last switch but they priced it above the cost expecting tariffs to be a problem.

1:04:17Instead, RAM became more of the problem. But they've been able to have very minor price increases. So Switch 2 seemed very affordable by comparison. And it actually had the best year of any console Nintendo's ever had in the 50 years. Switch 2? This last year is the best launch they've ever had of any console back to the NES. None of them.

1:04:37Atrioc:That is shocking. Look it up, I promise you.

1:04:40Aiden:We talked about it on the show. The opening month was the best month ever.

1:04:46Atrioc:Yeah, it's not like I don't believe you. It's just very surprising, given that the Wii in particular was just unbelievable. No, it's insane. It's like Switch 2 is crushing.

1:04:55Aiden:The Wii for that time frame.

1:04:57Atrioc:Okay.

1:04:57Aiden:Oh, maybe not long-term. Not total sales, but yeah.

1:04:59Atrioc:Could we turn it around with, this is what I would name the next Xbox, Xbox One 5. Xbox One 5. Because you already have, there's four Xbox Ones. There's the Xbox. There's the Xbox One. There's the Xbox One S. is the Xbox one S. Yeah. So Xbox one five. I like this. I like it. It's simple.

1:05:17Aiden:It's why not keep it simple. Asha. Why not keep it straightforward and understandable or the word series in there somewhere. So I know that it's like cool. Hear me out.

1:05:27Atrioc:Yeah. X the everything box X the dude partner with Eons and it can love that tweets while you

1:05:34Aiden:weird Xbox fans will love that.

1:05:38Atrioc:there's a there's a venn diagram of people for whom that that would be the greatest moment of their life i i just don't understand why people would pay for this when you can go to claude and

1:05:48Aiden:say claude make me xbox five i think i i do think it's kind of i do you think the era of new exclusives is sort of over like you need to have nintendo nintendo's leaning in they haven't change a damn thing no but that's because it's like you need to have like an established recognizable game character to be able to get away with it i feel like or you know in sony's case sometimes that'll be like spider-man but that's a you know it's a recognizable character i have a hard time imagining any time with like how gaming has aged and like where the industry is at making a new ip console exclusive that is successful and drives for the sales of the It's changing.

1:06:35I got to talk to some people through the reporter, Jason Schreier at Summer Games Fest. And some of the things I heard about behind the industry is that more likely, despite all the hype about Asha Sharma, there's going to be layoffs probably. The increased cost of the console is, like you said, making them panic. And very likely, it'll have to be a managed decline on the whole business based on the way they're headed. Like the sales have not picked up. Like what she's saying. so and and uh in general sony's handling that better but also like a managed decline of like this old style of console hardware uh selling the mass like that's all changing people are adapting in different ways so yeah i think the industry is reacting that's why i think i think

1:07:21Aiden:valve's plays smart like valve valve has like the best position how's that different in what way uh i think they just have like a really like truck they've developed like a really really trusted brand and they're just like building a skin for what is basically a pc that you can use in really any way that you want like i think it's more fitting of like their industry position and also the way that the broader industry works now is like what they're doing well is having a store

1:07:48Atrioc:that makes a zillion dollars a day i mean microsoft would be doing whatever the fuck they wanted if they had steam okay right steam is amazing i think it doesn't fucking matter what the steam machine does. Yeah, that's a good point. Well, I think it's a smart thing. I mean, I think the RAM prices kind of fucked their plan. Yeah. But I think the idea is like, hey, our store is now significantly better and we get a ton of great new indie games, which are now out-competing AAAs. Yeah. We make Steam Deck for mobile to compete with Switch. We make Steam Machine to compete with consoles. We get on your PC.

1:08:15We're going to win every market with this bigger store. It's a good

1:08:17Atrioc:strategy, but then if you take out Steam, I think suddenly the whole business is much more changing. They don't have to rely on it. Yeah. Right. They don't have to do anything. They have a billion dollars. Half-Life 3 in 20 years maybe. Yeah, they barely make any games. Don't get ahead of yourself. God. Whatever your thing. It could be anything. Canva helps you make that thing a thing. Canva is a simple online tool thing. It's a way to design with our magic AI tool things. You can social media your thing. Generate images or videos of your thing. Make decks or presentations to show your thing. Whatever needs to be done for your thing, Canva can make it an even better and bigger thing.

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1:09:35Aiden:Hi, I'm Maria Sharapova, host of the Pretty Tough podcast. Each episode, I sit down with high-achieving women to discuss the pursuit of excellence without apology.

1:09:43Atrioc:This week, model, Sports Illustrated cover girl, and entrepreneur Ashley Graham talks about the time she almost quit.

1:09:50Aiden:I called my mom and I said, Mom, I just, I'm not going to do this anymore. And she told me, no, you are going to stick this out. Your body is going to change someone's life. Every decade, you're going to go through something different. So be really happy with who you are right now because things change. Check out Pretty Tough, new episodes on Wednesdays. You can watch it on YouTube or listen in your favorite podcast app.

1:10:17Atrioc:Well, speaking of games, Fable was just announced by Claude. Well, Fable 3 was announced by Microsoft, and then Claude said, we're going to one-up that shit. Oh, these are different? And they said, Fable 5. We're skipping 4. Wow. No, I saw this as I was about to come to this podcast. Literally, they released today kind of a surprise launch. I don't think it was announced. No, it was not. Yeah, they just dropped it today. A brand new model from Claude called Fable 5. And I do want to show you some things from their announcement. This is basically Mythos. This is the one they've been talking about.

1:10:48And they did a couple things. You know, they hyped this up as it was going to be a huge security vulnerability for the world. And everyone's got to be prepared. They said, this is what they'll do. If you try to use this thing to hack anything or anything untoward, it automatically, behind the scenes, reroutes it to a really weak model, like their old Opus 1 or whatever.

1:11:05Atrioc:Yeah, it defaults to Claude Opus 4.8, which until yesterday was the most powerful model. It's not like super weak sauce. okay uh but anyway i want to pull up the uh their launch page here where is it because it did something that was seemingly impossible it beat pokemon fire red using only vision can you show this perry interestingly this is like a thing i've this has been like a test yeah it's been like a thing and previously all the models required a lot of scaffolding to be able to get through it and like it would break at certain points and they would have to fix it. So this one entirely through just analyzing what's on screen and then responding, it was able to, this is a speed run and we're going to show it in 50 seconds.

1:11:52Atrioc:Thank God we can finally outsource playing video games. Yes. Humans are not. Automate that away. But this is real.

1:12:00Aiden:The footage looks a little crisp, perhaps Nintendo. They may have played this on an emulator. It may not. Nintendo take down claw. I may not have actually owned the game. Send the SWAT team. Get in a large legal battle with claw. but uh pretty you know it's solving even the i mean it took me a long time to solve that cubone puzzle i was a kid but you figured it out i did figure it out i did get there

1:12:22Atrioc:i'm sort of a self-learning ai you're sort of a recursive self-improving child i am like a

1:12:28Aiden:uh anyway we're cruising through this i should i mean for somebody who like doesn't the reason

1:12:34Atrioc:why this is impressive amongst other things is you need a lot of context to progress through a game like this right it's for a while now you could have an ai that's like fight in this pokemon battle but if the idea is okay you have a badge here and now you need to know to go to this area to go back to this area that isn't making forward progress but eventually it's part of this longer term goal like that's the challenge i've seen there's been little channels on twitch that are like claude plays pokemon for a while and they inevitably get stuck in like one gym that's a little more complex or a part of the game where you have to actually like have some thought beyond just what is in front of me right now.

1:13:07Atrioc:Yeah. And so I'm excited to see that them replace lawyer jobs with Pokemon playing AIs. Yes, that's their plan, I think, here. So anyway, I thought it was just interesting. I thought it was an interesting release. The last thing that's interesting about it is that this is their most advanced model. It comes out and they go, hey, if you're a subscriber, use it to your heart's content. All right, enjoy this thing. It's fucking awesome. It's the brand new latest tech until I think it's like July. 3rd or something in the near future if you can find the exact date it's like a very soon date and they're like after that though it's uh it's token based price june 22nd june 22nd token based pricing that's two weeks you get paid you have to pay us based on the usage which is a sign of course that like this uh you know the subsidized uber model is like burning through enough cash for them they they have to they've been doing this for business clients and now it's coming to regular users where if you want to use the latest and greatest models you're gonna have to basically pay to play for the amount you're using it for you right now getting a subscription you could just like ask it to do a lot of hard things and you're making out on that deal yeah it costs them a lot more than it costs you they're they're adapting that because they're burning through a lot of money so this is like a big after this moment it'll be interesting to see quad which right now making the most money of any ai company revenue not profit but revenue uh if people adapt do they switch to a cheaper chinese model do they what do they do whenever it costs you a lot more to do the things you want to do.

1:14:32Atrioc:That's a good question. It is much more expensive than some of the recent open, like DeepSeek, actually, the, you know, the Chinese breakout one, they just came out DeepSeek version four, and it is very good. And it is so much cheaper than these models. And so now the question is going to be like, okay, if Anthropic or OpenAI is going to IPO and then say, hey, we are going to have so much profit. All the companies are going to use our AI for everything. but then DeepSeek just launches a new ultra cheap thing, which is maybe just as good in many different contexts. It's like, is that sustainable of a business model?

1:15:06Atrioc:Yeah, it's a big question. Surely it'll be sustainable enough to keep paying us, but will they be able to? Well, it's especially interesting. You guys, we talk about this in the show where it's like all the IPOs, SpaceX and Anthropic and OpenAI, we're going to be included in the S &P 500 early and they're going to change all the rules. Are we talking about that at all?

1:15:24Aiden:A little bit, but I actually wanted to lead into that because the news just came out that OpenAI actually made its SEC filings to go public. So they're prepping, you know, this is the confirmation that they are indeed prepping to do it as we have mentioned on the show. And I wanted to ask you guys what the update was on that because I heard that the S &P rules held strong. So if the S &P had caved to basically SpaceX and then potentially Anthropic and OpenAI, It would allow these immediately listed, the IPOs of these stocks to be picked up by everyone's 401ks and retirement funds, which immediately provides a lot of demand and support for the price and the amount of money that they're hoping to raise through going public.

1:16:12Aiden:But the S &P did not change their rules and are demanding a certain profitability from these companies in order to get listed. Yeah, there's like two big rules. One is the seasoning period. It's the idea is like, hey, this is a brand new company. before we take everyone's retirement money and buy it, let's see where the price lands. Let's like give it a year and let's see where it evens out. That's the seasoning period. And the second one is the profitability requirement where you have to have multiple quarters of being an actual profitable company so that you're not dumping some hype machine onto the public.

1:16:42These rules have held for a long time and they've been great for investors. And Elon got out of these rules for the NASDAQ and they thought they were gonna get out of it for S &P, but they held strong because people were really mad about it, which is cool. And I think it's one of the reasons that like these companies that are IPO-ing now are like, well, that was our big plan to like get a bunch of new money. And we have to now start getting towards profitability. Because if you don't get listed in the S &P, that's like trillions of dollars you're locked out of. That is like a lot of money and a lot of passive retirement funds.

1:17:12Aiden:Yeah, I mean, I feel like the investment advice I've gotten literally from a young age is just keep dumping money into the S &P 500 index. And that is your saving. It's half the market. Half of the stock market in terms of like trades is people's passive 401ks buying the S &P 500. So yeah, you can't really afford to be locked out of it long term. Okay. I did want to ask because what was the change with the, because the NASDAQ also was going to make a change in order for SpaceX and. They did make the change. Yeah. They have a six month seasoning period. They lowered it to 15 days for SpaceX and they got rid of the profitability requirement.

1:17:53Yeah. So essentially, they're just like, their argument is that SpaceX is too big to ignore, and we would not be representative of the big tech companies if we didn't include them as fast as possible.

1:18:02Aiden:But this isn't a rule that just applies to SpaceX. This is a rule that now applies to any company looking to get listed on the NASDAQ in the future. No, it's an exemption for like super mega cap. You have to be like over a trillion bucks. You gotta be a fat cap. The idea is you're so fucking big that if we ignored you, we wouldn't be doing our deal. You gotta be crazy. You gotta be big. Nasdaq chair is like, you gotta be big for me. You gotta be fucking huge for me. And then I'll let you know. You gotta be swole. You gotta have an Elon Musk type body with like the Cybertruck build.

1:18:32Atrioc:But to be clear, it's not, you don't have to be big in terms of profit. Just the idea of being big. You gotta have big dreams. Like a big confident guy.

1:18:42Aiden:You can be a big, huge baby with money leaking out of every orifice as long as you're big. That's the thing. They don't make as much money as most people. But will this, I assume this also will apply to Anthropic and OpenAI. They are companies that would be big enough for this exception. They're about a trillion. So it's funny because the revenue of SpaceX plus Anthropic plus OpenAI all combined is one-tenth of Walmart. But each one of them is valued bigger than Walmart. Yeah. Or like around Walmart. Well, okay. I don't have a Walmart app on my laptop. That's true. I don't see Walmart beating Pokemon.

1:19:20Aiden:Okay. I don't see that. it's funny because Walmart's like shifting strategy is like they are emphasizing online sales and it's kind of catching on and they're doing a really good job, like relatively. So, but you know,

1:19:33Atrioc:that'll be in a different episode. Yeah. What were you thinking? No, just Anthropic. They said this in May. I forget if we mentioned it, but they said they're going to have their first profitable quarter. So one of these companies might be making money soon. That's cool. Let's do it. Damn. That's, you know, yeah. I told you guys, AI is going to fix everything. Yeah, I think they got that. Companies are going to make money now. We've invented it.

1:19:58Aiden:What if the business made money? Yeah, you're fucking crazy.

1:20:02Atrioc:The meme where the guy gets thrown out the window. Yeah, you know, I will say for people who are more in the AI sauce or interested in it. One of the interesting things that's going to happen with this fable model is. Is it is the mythos model, which if you remember a month or two ago, anthropic came out and was like this model we've come up with is so powerful it will destroy all of the cyber security around the world we cannot release it it is dangerous we are going to pick a few selected winners of society who we will share with them and they will fix everything like firefox and banks and whatever else and then like i think last week i was going to mention on the podcast we don't have time you know they're like we're releasing it to more people and countries and whatnot and we might even release it to the public soon and the question i think prime made a video about this or talked about it and he was like you guys last month were saying it was too dangerous like to release into the wild and now you're saying it's coming out in a couple weeks and then it was apparently in a week and now it's out i'm gonna ask you to hack the government yes can you hack the government for me so i think what's interesting is the you know the worry or one of the big things is like these models are getting so powerful it's gonna break everything thing it switched to opus yeah that's that's all if i ask why it says it has safety measures that flag cyber security or biology topics yeah wow so guess what i can't hack the government in theory that's part of what they're trying to pitch as their valuation is like we anthropic are going to fundamentally change all of software and so this thing being out we're going to start to see is this hype or not because we don't know we we don't know how much of this is hype or not so So it'd be kind of interesting to see, like, are there a bunch of companies that are like, holy shit, everything's breaking, or we fixed all our bugs, or blah, blah, blah, blah.

1:21:44Yeah, I played around with it today just to see if it was like, oh, is this crazy? It felt like the last one. I mean, I'm not using it for a gentick song. I'm using it for asking a question.

1:21:51Atrioc:I think for, like, a casual AI user, even for me in the level of I'm not doing advanced coding, it's like these things are all plenty good. You're talking about can you give it a giant code base and find, like, major security vulnerabilities? I did see this. I don't know if we can check it out. it's like apparently he asked it to create a horror game and this is what it one shot this is look i know you're like hyped up on ai and i don't want to hurt your feelings this doesn't mean anything no i don't think this is like i'm just saying i don't think you could do that in the last claude so this is interesting i don't know what the fuck it means but that's in browser right that's something it's weird it doesn't look like a very good horror game but obviously you know that's the thing you say about it's just it's just a weird my estimate if you asked me yesterday is that this shit is uh bad and really far is what i would have said and this is like more than i would have expected so i'm just gonna update my analysis slightly and be like okay well this is interesting yeah that's fair place in a browser is is is kind of wild to me it doesn't it's not like that that doesn't beat resident evil right it's just like an interesting thing that they can do yeah i think the big the really big i guess no that's not fair i was going to say the big question is like can this stuff actually help an enterprise software but you know that that's very it's very question i ask myself every night programming coded i'm always like can this help an enterprise software it's something i could my sas product could i give it a jira ticket and it runs on its own and i don't have to do additional testing and sure for b2b sas companies

1:23:24Aiden:Don't talk about Jira on this show.

1:23:26Atrioc:You don't like Jira? I hate Jira. Yeah, nobody likes Jira. Well, everybody, Brandon left. He said, I'm done with this fucking show. I'm bored. Nothing you guys are saying is interesting. And he just, with no context. So I guess just keep going, Aiden, you and me.

1:23:42Aiden:Okay. Doug, for audio listeners, I'm looking at a stuffed Care Bear and the head of a Barbie, a small toy fridge. I'm just curious why you pulled this image up.

1:23:53Atrioc:oh this is it now that brandon's gone i figure this is the show um okay the fun story and it's real bummer that we lost brandon because he would really love this that's right ladies and gentlemen it's the most exciting time of the year it's the annual uber lost and found index wait what is this so i didn't know about this uber every year publishes info on how much shit people forget in ubers and leave behind and so this is the 10 year celebration as part of that they list the most unique items that were found this year in actual ubers including breast milk dentures 420 donuts meaning like uh marijuana oxygen tanks brand new mini fridge um thought that was silly and then you know 10 most commonly forgotten items they list out to be expected phone wallet luggage new york city is the most forgetful city of uber out of guard fucking wamby i'll tell you that well my miami who also forgot to and that's why they're not in the playoffs um the boo boo on the loose yeah i just thought this was fun so they post this whole

1:25:01Aiden:report of how much stuff people forget in cars did that say 70 tiramisu cakes have been left uh is that what that said that was me i'm sorry it's you guys been making my way how do you spell tiramisu my weight so i'm like i just buy it but then i leave it in the uber so

1:25:18Atrioc:i don't eat it what do i sir i don't know how to spell tiramisu i'm realizing oh right there yeah this was this year so they list out the most notable this is in one somebody left their wedding cake in an uber what's funny about this as well is they they said in the thing they're going to have a new like lost and found feature in uber where you submit that you've lost an item and then you could pay for the driver to come back and deliver it to you which i think is a funny little business. Maybe that's why the switch is selling so well. They keep leaving them in Uber. Didn't you have to do that in China?

1:25:46Atrioc:Did you pay a driver? And we had to go get our translator to call the Uber back

1:25:52Aiden:and we paid him to bring the phone back.

1:25:54Atrioc:Oh yeah. And then just tipped him. Yeah. I mean, everybody knows somebody who leaves shit in Ubers. So it's funny that this is so common that they need to make reports about it. And this is completely unnecessary, but somebody left tickets to the Atlanta Falcons. Brutal.

1:26:12Atrioc:one red bottom

1:26:13Aiden:top five toys and novelty items left behind care bear is number one that's why they have a picture of a care bear DS eyes you watch the reason my why does it say my green scooter type it into the app you're leaving your baby having to call the you're like a 34 year old man I didn't realize this is what they send

1:26:34Atrioc:it in it's like hello my small hello kitty pouch that says j boogie on it that's so specific I'm gonna have to gold Rolex you said this is an

1:26:43Aiden:index how can I invest interesting so I'm profiting on all this I hear to sell these I heard the SMPs compromised right now I'm looking to put my money elsewhere

1:26:53Atrioc:um oh yeah they have the most unique that have ever been lost divorce papers a the head of a salmon a lobster

1:27:01Aiden:in 2017

1:27:04Atrioc:why is that dude and that's the update on the Uber lost and found report. Stay tuned

1:27:09Aiden:in next year when we give you the 11th annual report. Dude, I want to, now I kind of want to compete for this. Maybe this is dangerous. You know when like, you know when like we try to get the craziest thing and get on the list. Polymarket odds. What's what's found in the Uber? This is dangerous. This is like when the WNBA dildo thing broke out and then people started doing it for money. It's like we could bet to get on this. Well, that was for betting. There's no money in this, right? Not until we make a polymarket. Well, I'm just saying it could be fun. It could be on the list. We could find the craziest thing we leave it in an uber then we call and go you lost my uh prosthetic aiden or

1:27:42Atrioc:whatever okay hear me out dead body one of us volunteers that would top the list dude sorry i left my fucking dead body i'm so sorry i left my friend in the car my friend is dead

1:27:58Aiden:he's in the back of your car this is easy me and doug weekend at bernie's atrium in the back of a in the back of an Uber. We leave you in there.

1:28:07Atrioc:No, okay, wait, wait, wait, hold on. All three of us want to have kids now, I think. Whoever has to go first, we ask our lovely partner to have birth in the Uber and we forget it. We see if we can get on the list. Having birth in an Uber, I forgot something. Oh, the kid. I didn't enter with the kids so I didn't remember it. You forgot about the kid already. You're doing a great job. You're doing a great job. It's so funny to call the Uber driver. Is there a crying kid back there? You got my baby in the car. You got my baby in the car. I can't find him. Close the door on the umbilical cord. Yeah, I love where our head's at with this.

1:28:43I think we should move into it.

1:28:44Atrioc:I would love to birth is a fun fact about Norway. Well, the Nordic fun fact of the week. Wait, hold on. Sorry, that wasn't enough possessed. Can you intro Nordic fun fact with like a lot of hype? Yeah. Me? Yeah, this is the big segment. Everybody looks forward to it. This is the segment I hate more than anything in the world.

1:29:02Aiden:Well, and that's why we're saving the Nordic fun fact of the week this week. What do you mean you're saving? You're bringing it? You're not bringing it? I know you're drooling for the Nordic fun. No, I'm not. And for the Danes in the comments who have been complaining about not enough Denmark and Nordic fun fact of the week. Yeah, that's. It's about Denmark this week. Ladies and gentlemen. There is introducing. More than your own partner, you would listen to a Danish person in the comments. Absolutely. Nothing Aiden cares about more than someone who's Nordic coded in the comments. My girlfriend went to an American public school.

1:29:32Atrioc:She's dumb. The Nordic fun fact of the week featuring Aiden McKay. And now kicking it off.

1:29:41Aiden:Three, two, one, go. Well, I really did want to save this though. You want to save? No. You actually cannot. It's in our list. I wanted to save it. Nordic fun fact of the week is a main video exclusive. I wanted to save it for the Patreon. No, that's not a Patreon. We're at it. We have three minutes left. It doesn't matter. The people watching are desperate for one thing. You to give them some esoteric bullshit. We can't promote the patron. We're like, hey, tune in every week for the Nordic fun fact. Being an Aiden friend in real life, this is what it's like. He just tells you random shit about fucking Nordic areas.

1:30:14Yeah, so it's like our former parasol warriors.

1:30:16Aiden:Viewers at home or listeners, if you're listening to the audio, I'm your real friend telling you that if you pay me, I'll tell you what the Nordic fun fact is.

1:30:23Atrioc:No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, I can talk about medical asses, I guess. No, tell us the Nordic fun fact. Wait, are you for real? I'm for real.

1:30:31Aiden:This is like, this is like. I had to pee. It's not our full timer. I want you to tell me the Nordic fun fact. I'm demanding it for the audience. Okay. Fine. Fine. There was an electorate in Denmark this year. They had the big election. Thank God.

1:30:47Atrioc:Thank God. This is free. We cannot pay all this. You can't pay all this important information. Okay. What happened? What happened? No, you know. I talked about. I talked about California. I want to hear about Denver. Don't be all standoffish about it. Tell them. You got to sell it to us, okay? What excited you about this?

1:31:07Aiden:All right? What? The fucking... They had to form a new coalition government. I feel bad. Why did you make me feel bad? It shouldn't feel bad. You hyped up a fun fact that there's an election in Denmark. Okay?

1:31:23Atrioc:We can't only talk about California elections. We got to hear about a specific Scandinavian country election. Just hear about it.

1:31:29Aiden:I don't even know, I guess.

1:31:31Atrioc:You're saying. Hey, go, go. Who were the, who were the, I'm going to, I like, I feel like it's like the parent trying to be like, so that's exciting. So who was the belligerents? Who were the two competing? Who do you like? Who do you like, honey? Who was the.

1:31:46Aiden:Well, I mean, Mette Frederiksen won. Oh, really? Frederiksen. How. Okay. I want you to imagine. Okay. You're Mette Fredrickson. Mette Fredrickson. She, and it's in Danish. I like a fish. You guys sound like you have potatoes in your mouth. I can't do it. I can't say it right. I like a fish. I want you to imagine you're at the end of 2025. And you, your approval rating, you're the leader of the Social Democrats in Denmark, which is like a center left party in Danish politics. All right. And you've been the prime minister for quite some time. I think since 2019, maybe a bit earlier than that. Since 2020, when your approval rating, I believe, peaked at 79%, your approval rating now is now in the low 30s.

1:32:38Aiden:People are sick of you and the Social Democrats. They don't like me.

1:32:45I'm in character. You said it'd be character. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:32:47Aiden:No, I like that you're leading into it. I appreciate that. And right at the beginning of the year, something rocks. Danish politics. Can you think of what that might have been? Someone tripped on a Lego.

1:33:04They covered it for weeks, bro.

1:33:10Aiden:Anything else? Any other ideas? I don't know.

1:33:13Atrioc:Like a bike fell into a river. Yeah. Someone closed the bike lane and the city shut down. No one could get the way they needed to go.

1:33:24Aiden:Okay, well, you're close. You're close. Trump threatened to invade Greenland. I remember that. I remember that. You know what? That was kind of an American bad. Yeah. I was with you. And - It was my proudest moment. And we did all support it, 100%. We have talked a lot on the show how Trump's aggression in the second term has dramatically shifted elections in other countries. And this actually did the same in Denmark. So the social Democrats saw a huge uptick in support. Mene Frederickson saw a huge uptick in support. Similar to Carney, similar to Australia. Like she saw a surge in her approval for her government's response to Trump's threats of Greenland earlier in the year.

1:34:09Aiden:And they kind of capitalized on this surge and gambled by calling an early election. Now they had up until November of this year to call for that election. And it just happened, I think, at the end of March. And then because they thought this is the time where we're going to be able to get enough seats. The other main player here is Lars Luka Rasmussen. I would say Rasmussen is a little eccentric. He posted this. He's leaned into calling himself the GOAT. Takes a lot of pictures smoking publicly. And when it posted like an Instagram photo with him, like next to a goat and to help insinuate it.

1:34:55Aiden:He also, upon being asked about becoming prime minister for a third time, which he cannot be like in this current government. He said, rule it out entirely. That would be a strangely weak position to put yourself in when you're the goat. Right. Which I thought. I mean, that's what the goat would say. People have actually liked his general response to Trump's aggression earlier in the year. is seen as like the second party in the government prior to this election as like part of that response that people liked. And also in this post-election period, he was seen as this kind of kingmaker because as the leader of the moderates, he is able to greatly shift what the coalition government post-election is going to be.

1:35:41Aiden:He could either choose to have the moderates lean in the direction of the right-wing parties in Denmark and shift and give them like the power in government, or he can go back to like the left-wing parties and the social Democrats being one of them and give them the power. And prior to this election, he publicly proclaimed that he would not work with the further left-wing parties in Denmark, one of them called like the red-green party. And he, after the election is over, the numbers come in, And now they have to form the government based on which parties have won the seats, right? And it takes a way longer than normal.

1:36:24Aiden:It takes over 60 days to like get everything together. And Fredrickson and the Social Democrats maintain power by forming a block with enough of the left-wing parties and the moderates led by Rasmussen seemingly walk back their promise publicly and do form a coalition government with the other left-wing parties, leaving them in the majority over the right-wing ones. Okay. And Isn't it kind of funny how, you guys ever seen Code Geass? Yeah. I've seen like an episode. This is a very, it's a spoiler actually. So if you're to cover your ears, it's such an old show. The main premise of Code Geass is that he makes himself into the world villain at the end so everybody unites and he saves the world by being the bad guy.

1:37:06Yeah. It is kind of funny that Trump has had this effect on so many elections. What if he's secretly a deep cover? Like, I just read that solar panel pickup has hit all time highs massively because of the war in iran what if he's an eco-terrorist that is like he's like i'm going to make uh green energy adoption and i'm going to

1:37:29Aiden:help the center-left parties of europe the new government like fridrickson announces like her her cabinet of ministers 21 people first time in denmark's history where there's more women than men in that cabinet as well. And they released this like a paper basically of how we're going to govern and the policies that we're going to pursue during this like next term of government. And one of the things is like within the next 10 years, we're going to roll out free dental care to all dates. And within the next year to a certain people below a certain income level, they'll get free dental care within that one year.

1:38:08Okay.

1:38:09Aiden:And to think that like Trump through his actions. He's like, I wanted to get all Danish people free dental care. Yeah, that was his plan. He doesn't get enough credit for it. But that was the, honestly, that the way this party was able to maintain power is a direct outcome of this polling burst that came from Trump's threats. And I thought that was kind of wild. It's just like another global domino of like how his actions have helped

1:38:37Atrioc:shape. Imagine it's 2016 and Trump is like, what can I do to make the world move as left as possible and I make a fuckload of money. Holy shit. President of the United States. I think he's a super nice guy. Everyone around is like, but you're going to have to be a villain. I'll do it. I'll shoulder that burden. I'll do what I have to do. And he starts working on the hands. He read moral ambition. Yeah, yeah. How can I? He's actually sure that every country around the world shifting to the right. Shipping at his garden. Yeah, probably.

1:39:15Aiden:I think the last interesting thing about this was they had to make... What was the first interesting thing about it? Sing, dude. I'm kidding! It was... Don't put on your pouty American hat. I'm curious for the Danes listening what big parts you feel like I may be missing from my understanding. you know, Fredrickson is like a pretty milquetoast candidate that is like nobody's like super jacked or excited for. And her party did lose seats compared to the previous election. Like they still, like it was just not as dramatic of a loss as it could have been. And it was, the damage was mitigated. They had to end up making concessions to further left-wing parties in Denmark that actually saw seat increases.

1:40:06Aiden:And things like the free dental care are things that those further left parties are like drawing a line in the sand on that the social Democrats have to like compromise and say like, okay, well, you'll give us the majority and we'll like back your advocacy for like that free dental care policy. You pull this up, it's just interesting. You're right. I mean, like literally they both need this little tove. I'm making up a color. What is that? What is the M color? No, it's tove. The M's are the moderates. Yeah, I know, but they need moderates. They need the moderates. I don't know what color that is.

1:40:40I'm trying to say taupe, lavender, taupe.

1:40:44Atrioc:I think it's taupe, yeah. Yeah. So the taupe party is our kingmaker. Yeah, they're kingmakers. They're clearly kingmakers.

1:40:51Aiden:I think if any Danish person listening to this has insight, one thing I didn't really understand is like why Rasmussen like walked back his commitment to maybe working with right-wing parties and saying he wouldn't work with the left-wing ones this time. Yeah. Because I heard one explanation that I won't even repeat here because it just didn't make sense to me. So if anybody could synthesize that a bit better. Yeah. But that is the Nordic. That's the Nordic fun fact of the week. It was pulling fucking teeth. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Pulling teeth and they're now super clean. Dude, if I just said.

1:41:21For free.

1:41:21Aiden:You know what's annoying? If I described this whole election and I said it was like, this is how Vermont does its elections. He'd be fine with it. He'd be fine with it. But because it's Denmark, he's got attitude.

1:41:32Atrioc:You fix the problem right there. You lie. You say you're covering the like Vermont elections at the end. You're like, it was Finland the whole time. I need to start sprinkling in stories.

1:41:43Aiden:I just might get away when his name is Ludwig Vermansson.

1:41:51Aiden:Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, super fast story.

1:41:53Atrioc:I just need to correct it because I got this very wrong. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about Google Glasses and those being announced and how they're going to come out later this year. and I incorrectly said that the meta glasses currently do not have displays in them. And that is wrong. I was misunderstanding what was going on. They actually did the meta Ray-Ban glasses. They now have a version with a display. But, and apparently it's like good and people like it, but it's been like way sold out, is not available outside of the US. So I think I kind of conflated those things as well as the really big holy grail is glasses that are going to be able to have two displays, right, on both sides.

1:42:28Atrioc:and so that may or may not come about the end of this year uh there's some good uh marquez brown lee videos about it if you search for those uh with titles such as wait smart glasses are suddenly good but just quick you know update to that because that was just that was so wrong that's

1:42:44Aiden:your uh i was and i appreciate i appreciate that you want to correct something like it could have to do with smart glasses it could have to do with iceland it was we all make mistakes i think it's important to make corrections on this podcast when we fuck up. So if you hear anything, perhaps about the Denmark story, that you want to correct it in the next episode. You know what we should do is we should do a Nordic fun fact of the week and then a Nordic correction of the last week's fun fact. We could do like, if we could fill the last 45 minutes of the podcast with like some esoteric Nordic thing.

1:43:13Like long apologies, a lot of bowing.

1:43:16Aiden:We want to apologize for this. That would be my ideal. I'm done. I gotta go do my other fucking podcast. I gotta go do that one. Bye guys. Thanks for joining us on this week of the news. Bye, everybody. See you next time.