Speaker 1: All media.
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Speaker 1: Hello everyone, it's me today, James, and I'm joined by
Speaker 1: Betevan from the ypyj Information Authors, and we're going to
Speaker 1: discuss today and chiefly that the Turkish bombing campaign against
Speaker 1: it which has been happening in the last few weeks
Speaker 1: and the last few months and the last few years.
Speaker 1: So we wanted to set that in context for you.
Speaker 1: And everyone's attention has been very much focused on other conflicts,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean this one isn't important, and it's
Speaker 1: one that obviously listeners will be familiar with, so we
Speaker 1: wanted to bring you an update on that. Welcome, very
Speaker 1: vun Hello, thank you.
Speaker 2: You're welcome.
Speaker 3: Okay, happy to be here today.
Speaker 4: Good.
Speaker 1: Let's start by I think just in case people need
Speaker 1: a refresher or they haven't listened to some of the
Speaker 1: other stuff.
Speaker 2: Talk about what's happening in Brosova.
Speaker 1: And why they I guess why it's important and why
Speaker 1: it's unique and what makes it special.
Speaker 3: Okay, So actually right now in for more than ten years,
Speaker 3: there's a revolution happening. I think most people heard that.
Speaker 3: For some twenty eleven and so on, there was like
Speaker 3: something called the Arab Strings. But actually in the same
Speaker 3: time in this region in northern East Syria actually also
Speaker 3: called like in the northern eastern part of Syria, there's
Speaker 3: a region called which is like a big part of
Speaker 3: Kotish population. There's also Christian population like Assyria and Arminium
Speaker 3: population and also our population. Like it's a very colorful region,
Speaker 3: you can say. So in this region twenty eleven, in
Speaker 3: this time and then twenty twelve, a revolusion started, which
Speaker 3: is actually based on a long term struggle of the
Speaker 3: Kurdish movement and its experiences. And the revolution was like
Speaker 3: mostly based on the idea to gain democratic autonomy and
Speaker 3: today gain like democratic self administration. Why because like the
Speaker 3: Syrian regime on the one hand was very oppressive towards
Speaker 3: the Kurdish people, and on the other hand, like it
Speaker 3: was like outwed Carrian regime, so there was like this
Speaker 3: wish to create something different, which was actually created here
Speaker 3: in the region in Rova. Yeah, so I think this
Speaker 3: we can say at first, like what happened was that
Speaker 3: the revolution started and until today it's continuing. Like it's
Speaker 3: a very like basic change of people's life. We can
Speaker 3: say that happened here, like yeah, democratic administration in all
Speaker 3: areas of life, and also like for example, a great
Speaker 3: deal of a women's organization to achieve also women's freedom.
Speaker 3: So the solutions like based on these principles of democratic
Speaker 3: self administration, of women's freedom and also of ecologies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, perhaps you can explain people who aren't familiar a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the women's revolution, because I think
Speaker 1: that is something that's extremely unique and that people might
Speaker 1: not have like if they've heard of it, perhaps they
Speaker 1: haven't really you know, I think the mainstream press hasn't
Speaker 1: covered particularly well. So if you could explain like maybe
Speaker 1: something about the co chair system or the relationship between
Speaker 1: yourselves and the yepigae and how that works.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So actually I was just like speaking about the
Speaker 3: like when the revolution was happening, so from the beginning
Speaker 3: online women also took place in it, like which was
Speaker 3: already the CAS in the Kurdish freedom movement in general,
Speaker 3: like that woman was like equally were equally taking part
Speaker 3: in it, and also always founded their own organizations, like
Speaker 3: not like a substitute to a general organization or something
Speaker 3: like this, but actually like their own organization that at
Speaker 3: the same time cooperate with the general organization. So there
Speaker 3: was already this principle of women's autonomy. So this was
Speaker 3: also adopted in reservoirs. So in all areas, which also
Speaker 3: includes like political areas, areas of daily life, but also
Speaker 3: military fields, women organized. So actually in the beginning of
Speaker 3: the solution, they were like the society's kind of self
Speaker 3: defense forces building us and in the beginning there were
Speaker 3: already women in it. And then there was also the
Speaker 3: foundation of a white p GAY like the People's Defense Forces.
Speaker 3: But after this also the White PG Women's Protection Units
Speaker 3: were founded, so actually it's like a fully autonomous women's
Speaker 3: units that take care of defending their homeland on the
Speaker 3: one hand, but on the other hand also made like
Speaker 3: a great deal of change in the society in the
Speaker 3: daily life of women, because in a region that was
Speaker 3: before like maybe to somebody like feudal or like because
Speaker 3: of the Authoria Tennessy in the state, like there was
Speaker 3: no protection for women's rights or something like this. And
Speaker 3: for example, there was like the traditions of marrying a
Speaker 3: woman at a young age or something like this. This
Speaker 3: was actually changed by those women's solution, Like the everyday
Speaker 3: life of women was changed and is still changing. Like
Speaker 3: it's still a struggle because it means changing the society
Speaker 3: in general. Yeah, so there's like in every area of
Speaker 3: life today there's like autonomous women's organization and the vices,
Speaker 3: which makes was maybe the most like profound a woman's
Speaker 3: solutions that on to now is happening, I think. So
Speaker 3: it's like really important like samplers for a woman everywhere
Speaker 3: in the work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very much, And it is a genuinely profound change.
Speaker 1: Having spent a little bit of time there earlier this year,
Speaker 1: it's very notable that you spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: in that part of the world, how different things are.
Speaker 1: And then perhaps we should talk about the battle against
Speaker 1: the so called Islamic state or dasher Isis or whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call it. In the role that THEPGG
Speaker 1: and SDF play in that I can explain a little
Speaker 1: about that fight and the fighting that happened, and also
Speaker 1: like the tremendous number of people who died fighting or
Speaker 1: were marked in the language is used by the revolution
Speaker 1: about them.
Speaker 3: So like uh, in general, I think everyone and the
Speaker 3: world first listened to the name most of white woman's
Speaker 3: protection units and the relationship to ISIS. But actually from
Speaker 3: the beginning on they fought like against this kind of
Speaker 3: let's say, like different like fundamentalists or mercenary groups that
Speaker 3: were existing in the region. And when ISIS was coming up,
Speaker 3: like the biggest almost non battle that actually the world
Speaker 3: for the first time really saw was the battle for
Speaker 3: Pubani where for example, the hite PJ it was like
Speaker 3: very very limited possibilities and the YPGA fought against the
Speaker 3: ISIS and actually succeeded like to defeat iss and to
Speaker 3: defend the city of Kobani, which was kind of like
Speaker 3: a breaking point where things started to turn around. Or
Speaker 3: we have also had the point where for example, Shenga
Speaker 3: was attacked, which is like in South kot de Son
Speaker 3: It's not like in the era region, it's not even
Speaker 3: in the same region. But the YPJA also played like
Speaker 3: the role and opening a corridor for the people who
Speaker 3: tried to flee for the yd people who like are
Speaker 3: people who have faced like many genocides in history, and
Speaker 3: in order to save them from the genocide of ISIS,
Speaker 3: the YPJA opened a corridor to help them to flee.
Speaker 3: So and there are like many stories or like in
Speaker 3: the end the operation of the city of Racca, which
Speaker 3: was kind of known like as the center of the ISIS,
Speaker 3: which also we can say like the women's force paid
Speaker 3: like a junior rank god. So there are many examples
Speaker 3: where we can say, like how deciding for examples, as
Speaker 3: the struggle of the Viba was for the defeat of ISIS.
Speaker 3: And I think on the other hand, we also have
Speaker 3: to say that it is not completely defeated, because it
Speaker 3: seemed like some support from outside structures, like from Turkey,
Speaker 3: so there are still some like sales or sample. There
Speaker 3: are a lot of details detainees like before that was
Speaker 3: happening try to break out from the detention centers in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, So it's not like it's completely vanished
Speaker 3: from the earth, but the actual defeat was like reached
Speaker 3: by the might go.
Speaker 2: For Yeah, I think it's very important talk.
Speaker 1: Like you spoke about those like incarcerated ice form of
Speaker 1: ISIS fighters, right and their attempt to break out. I
Speaker 1: think that's maybe a good chance for us to talk
Speaker 1: about like some other form of ISIS fighters uh and
Speaker 1: like starting in I think it was called Turkey, called
Speaker 1: Operation Peace Spring, I think right, like the these these
Speaker 1: Turkish incursions into Uh, into into Rosa, into like and
Speaker 1: and into like Syrian territory. Can you explain a little
Speaker 1: bit about like how I guess that this will get
Speaker 1: us to the modern day and and the bombing, but like,
Speaker 1: perhaps you can explain how this started. Obviously Turkey has
Speaker 1: been opposed to the Kurdish freedom movement since its inception,
Speaker 1: right since the very beginning and in the last century,
Speaker 1: but preaps you could explain like this series of ongoing
Speaker 1: Turkish aggressions against what's happening in Java now, and like
Speaker 1: how that began and how that's manifested itself over the years.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, like after ISIS was defeated to some degree,
Speaker 3: actually Turky for itself started occupation attacks, like in twenty
Speaker 3: eighteen nineteen and started the occupation was first against Afrine
Speaker 3: and then against til Khania and Guido speir which are
Speaker 3: all like very important regions of Bolsheva that are like
Speaker 3: directly next to the Turkish border, like you see, like
Speaker 3: directly in between Syria and the Turkey, like next to
Speaker 3: the Turkish borders too. They directly attacked these cities next
Speaker 3: to the border, which actually most of our cities are
Speaker 3: directly next to the border, and they occupy them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that's important to understand like a little bit
Speaker 3: because actually there took plans to occupy, occupy like the
Speaker 3: region along the Wad are not only the cities that
Speaker 3: they occupied until now. This a very very violent war
Speaker 3: with using aircraft and so on. Like also in the
Speaker 3: last years UH took he very much invested into drone
Speaker 3: technology and so on, and they used also chemical weapons
Speaker 3: like very famous in two nineteen the video of a
Speaker 3: young child the name Mohammad went around the world that
Speaker 3: like was like bond by phosphorus UH in Seracania in
Speaker 3: the occupation attack. So like actually it's a like a
Speaker 3: war that is smallest sleep but also with the most
Speaker 3: like dirty yeah methods that took his waging in the region.
Speaker 3: And after this, like we can't say, like after Selcni
Speaker 3: was occupied Chokie actually continued to attack with a war
Speaker 3: that you cannot say like at this time. It starts
Speaker 3: and in this time and it's more like continuous attacks.
Speaker 3: So on the one hand, like some areas are always
Speaker 3: getting bombed in the last years, like for examples like
Speaker 3: with artillery shelling and one like a sharebar next to
Speaker 3: Athleene or Ironesa or the tam So like the areas
Speaker 3: that are close to the occupied areas were now Turkey
Speaker 3: and mercenary forces are stations that constantly attacked more or
Speaker 3: less regions, but also with a drone war like the
Speaker 3: first I think, very like clear example of what was
Speaker 3: the strategy like in the last years was on the
Speaker 3: twenty third June two down twenty when Turkey killed three
Speaker 3: women of Conguersta, the women's movement like the civil women's
Speaker 3: movement in Kobani in the village, which were all like
Speaker 3: two of them were like in the leadership of the
Speaker 3: civil women's movement and one was just like a member
Speaker 3: and they were sitting in the garden and they were
Speaker 3: talking and at this time like a turk strownest strike
Speaker 3: and they all lost their lives. So like a lot
Speaker 3: of these kinds of attacks happened after this, like against
Speaker 3: like let's say like civil leaders of society, like politicians,
Speaker 3: normal people. Also like on the twenty fifth of December.
Speaker 3: Actually also on Christmas in two twenty one five five
Speaker 3: child like young people like youth from the Youth movement
Speaker 3: were killed in Kobani. Also like just when they were
Speaker 3: sitting in the garden, like members of the Youth Center,
Speaker 3: like I took a stone stock three of them, like
Speaker 3: a young girl and this continued. Or also we can
Speaker 3: say like leaders of Fox suble YPJ. Also like on
Speaker 3: the twenty second of July last year, there was a
Speaker 3: conference happening for celebrating ten years of Women's Resolution in Rojaha,
Speaker 3: and just on the same day, Turky targeted the car
Speaker 3: of Right PJ members. One of them was Jian Toldan,
Speaker 3: who also spoke on the same day on the conference.
Speaker 3: Both actually it's quite clear what took. Actually once they
Speaker 3: want to like destroy the revolution that's happening in USA,
Speaker 3: like the Woman's Revolution mm hm, and in general, like
Speaker 3: this change that is happening. They want to create like
Speaker 3: the sphere who stay away to way to Theish occupation forces,
Speaker 3: and they're using a lot of violence, like also in
Speaker 3: the occupied areas, like the people who are, right, I
Speaker 3: think that they cannot speak their language, they have to fear.
Speaker 3: Sometimes they cannot close the house doors. Sometimes people get
Speaker 3: like abducted, like without anyone knowing why or where they go.
Speaker 3: Will they go to the prison? Will that be in
Speaker 3: a prison or will that be forshot or like a
Speaker 3: very kind of oppressive regime now in the occupied areas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and those are people who, like I've met when
Speaker 1: when they come here, right, people who have lost Like
Speaker 1: I spoke to a guy a Mayre a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks ago. You know, his father had been killed, his
Speaker 1: uncle had been killed, and like he was like what
Speaker 1: should he should? I should I wait to be like
Speaker 1: the last person in my family and then who gets
Speaker 1: killed or like it's it's very the conditions for those
Speaker 1: people in the Turkish occupied parts of northern Kurdistan are very,
Speaker 1: very difficult and oppressive. And I think, like, just to
Speaker 1: build off what you said, like it's important that people
Speaker 1: realize that these killing of especially like people in the
Speaker 1: Women's revolution, but also you know people in in the
Speaker 1: Rajava revolution. More generally, it's not drone strikes are extremely targeted, right,
Speaker 1: Like they can follow a car from an event and
Speaker 1: strike it. Like it's these kind of these things are
Speaker 1: not It's not like they're it's not like artillery or mortars.
Speaker 1: It's not like you're sending it into an area. Like
Speaker 1: they're extremely targeted to an individual or a group of
Speaker 1: individuals rather than you know, random attack. So like this
Speaker 1: is a distinct choice that's being made. Well, let's talk
Speaker 1: about the most recent bombings, because I think there was
Speaker 1: some particularly egregious ones, even by the standard of this campaign,
Speaker 1: which has been pretty egregis from the beginning. But December,
Speaker 1: around the week of Christmas this year, just to give
Speaker 1: people a time sort of period, there was a bombings
Speaker 1: of a if I'm not wrong, a printing press, a
Speaker 1: dialysis facility, is that right?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, well actually there was there was also another
Speaker 3: like not hospital, like a becaspital, let's say, like a
Speaker 3: medical point. Also in Corvani were doctors who was out borders.
Speaker 3: I think it's like kind of a known and Jose
Speaker 3: were also working there at the oxygen center also, so
Speaker 3: like medical places, there were like normal factories of food production,
Speaker 3: like you said the printing house. There were many places
Speaker 3: like this, like of daily infrastructure that were targeted like before.
Speaker 3: Already in October infrastructure was targeted. And also last year
Speaker 3: there was attack like this and every time at least
Speaker 3: ten civilians got killed, like in all of these attacks.
Speaker 3: So now I think that over a number just of
Speaker 3: these three ways of attacks is already like searching one
Speaker 3: killed civilians. So like maybe dawns were very targeted, but
Speaker 3: it's not like Turki doesn't want to kill a civilians
Speaker 3: or tax care not to kill civilians. Like already in
Speaker 3: the attacks of the last year, there was an examples
Speaker 3: of double tap attacks for example, which I actually be illegal.
Speaker 3: So I think it's very important to say, like also
Speaker 3: the targeting of medical points of medical infrastructure, that what
Speaker 3: Turkey is doing is not according to international law, Like
Speaker 3: that's not the case, and like TOOKI is kind of
Speaker 3: acting like however, advanced targeting civilians creating like fear, and
Speaker 3: also like in a region that is already poor, Johnny,
Speaker 3: you have to say, like the possibilities that have been created,
Speaker 3: like like for daily needs and so on, for supplies
Speaker 3: of electricity of like heating fuels and so on for
Speaker 3: your house, they are very affected like this right now,
Speaker 3: So like in general, there's like a big shortcoming of
Speaker 3: everything right now and whatever, and just because of took
Speaker 3: his attacks, so this is actually affecting everyone. And on
Speaker 3: the other hand, took it to create like this feel
Speaker 3: like there's just some wave of attack and just targeting everywhere,
Speaker 3: so they want to displace actually the relations and also
Speaker 3: to comment like the politics also took state, especially against
Speaker 3: Scurtish people and also against the Christians was very much
Speaker 3: like potentially like genocidal politics.
Speaker 4: Like.
Speaker 3: It's not not like a limited attack or something like this,
Speaker 3: like we don't think so, yeah.
Speaker 1: No, it's not a and like you said, they're very
Speaker 1: very much unafraid of killing civilians in the process. Like
Speaker 1: I spoke to a mother whose fifteen year old son
Speaker 1: was killed in a drone strike. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: very hard to make an argument that fifteen year old
Speaker 1: son was doing anything apart from being a fifteen year
Speaker 1: old kid. You know, it's not like this person is
Speaker 1: a legitimate military target of a kid who played goalkeeper
Speaker 1: on his local football team. And these double type attacks,
Speaker 1: like if people aren't familiar with the double tap attack,
Speaker 1: it's when an attack happened, people go to the site
Speaker 1: of the attack to render aid. Right and ambulance or
Speaker 1: practice bystanders rendering aid or either military personnel rendering aid,
Speaker 1: and then a second attack happened at the same place
Speaker 1: to to then attack the people who are rendering aid.
Speaker 1: So you spoke a little bit about like how they're
Speaker 1: trying to attack the whole project and not just individuals.
Speaker 1: I wonder like the the drowne strikes do have like
Speaker 1: a they change the way things have to be done right,
Speaker 1: Like like it's it's things become unsafe, like any way
Speaker 1: you can see the sky right, like having a large gathering,
Speaker 1: or certainly for people who are of more like higher status,
Speaker 1: it's it's dangerous for them to be out and about. Right.
Speaker 2: Is that fair to say?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean on some levels, for sure the dangerous. But
Speaker 3: on the other hand, you cannot always be afraid. Like
Speaker 3: that's like really yes, the reality like for example now,
Speaker 3: because it's places where targets, for exunder the infrastructure that
Speaker 3: you need for your life. People actually started to stand
Speaker 3: like next to the electricity center to say like if
Speaker 3: we're all here, then they cannot target it. Wow, for
Speaker 3: sure its dangerous if you see.
Speaker 1: Like the they can they Yeah, because they've killed a
Speaker 1: lot of civilians. As you say, that's a very brace
Speaker 1: thing to do. Yes, yeah, again, I think I think
Speaker 1: maybe we should explain, actually, so it gets very cold
Speaker 1: in this part of the world in the winter, because
Speaker 1: perhaps people will associate this part of the world with
Speaker 1: like the heat and heart chambers. But like you, you
Speaker 1: have very cold winters, especially in the mountains.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, I mean it's like all more or less flat,
Speaker 3: like it's not so cold, but still it gets like
Speaker 3: under zero degrees. So like for sure you need they
Speaker 3: need like your house to be warm, and so like
Speaker 3: just to take care of basic meats. You need your
Speaker 3: car to drive somewhere maybe sometimes at least like some
Speaker 3: people needed for their work or like this, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of basic needs that don't work if all the
Speaker 3: infrastructure gets destroyed.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I believe if I'm right in saying it's
Speaker 1: the one person already passed away because they couldn't get
Speaker 1: dialysis the dialysis center that was bombed, Is that right.
Speaker 3: Yes, So as they said that one passed away, afterwards,
Speaker 3: they brought like a like emergency wise a dialos machine,
Speaker 3: which I think is very good for the sick people.
Speaker 3: But I'm not sure because also if you don't have
Speaker 3: like a substitute of something happens like only one machine.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure like how much it will actually take
Speaker 3: care of the needs of the people, because I said
Speaker 3: it was like seventy or eighty sick people who were
Speaker 3: going to the center, So it's not new.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like I didn't think, Yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: certainly not as good as having a proper center, right, Like,
Speaker 1: and there's no reason that's there's no world in which
Speaker 1: a dialysis center is a legitimate target or a printing press, right, Like.
Speaker 1: I think that that maybe points out what you were saying,
Speaker 1: like if you're printing books about something, sharing knowledge about something,
Speaker 1: and like perhaps one thing I think you were saying,
Speaker 1: is it right that it printed textbooks.
Speaker 3: I think it was like also printing textbook, Okay, like
Speaker 3: it was printing everything, so it's also printing textbooks. Yes,
Speaker 3: like also was printing textbook.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we should point out that, like, you know,
Speaker 1: I speak to Kurdish people almost every day when I'm
Speaker 1: at the border, and they many of them don't read
Speaker 1: and write in Kurdish because in Turkey that's not taught
Speaker 1: in schools, right, they don't have a chance to learn
Speaker 1: and and so like having those textbooks, having that knowledge,
Speaker 1: Like lots of my lots of my friends were saying that,
Speaker 1: like the children, because because folks who went to school
Speaker 1: before the revolution went to school in Arabic. So like
Speaker 1: the children are the ones who have like the formal
Speaker 1: education in Kurdish, you know, and then they're building a
Speaker 1: generation that like speaks Kurdish and reads and writes Kurdish
Speaker 1: is their first language. And so like an attempt to
Speaker 1: destroy that isn't just destroying the factory, right it is
Speaker 1: that fair to say that it's also destroying like that
Speaker 1: goal of the revolution, and more broadly, like that attempt
Speaker 1: to like to have that education in Kurdish and let
Speaker 1: children speak their own language in school.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean this is also part of like usmination politics,
Speaker 3: to deny people of their own language, which actually likes
Speaker 3: a Syrian regime also that like they only thought in Arabic.
Speaker 3: And now for example, the system of the self administuation
Speaker 3: lows everyone to learn and different languageses agno the Arabic,
Speaker 3: there's Kurdish and even in the very last time are
Speaker 3: hearts that there will also be opened our Syrian again,
Speaker 3: which is actually really important because language that is like
Speaker 3: very like most assuming people right now a speaker and
Speaker 3: write Arabic, soods could be really important.
Speaker 1: Also, yeah, yeah, and it's it's I think it's really
Speaker 1: important to point out for people who aren't aware. And
Speaker 1: often in the US media, like Rochio is reported as
Speaker 1: like Kurdi is like a Curdish area, but it may
Speaker 1: have a majority of Curds in some cities, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are Assyrian people, there are Arab people that are
Speaker 1: Armenian people, and like they have that same autonomy right
Speaker 1: to educate in their own language and too to like
Speaker 1: organizing their own communities.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's what the idea is all about. And I
Speaker 3: think actually like resources in the last time, that was
Speaker 3: kind of trying to create this image of like Curds
Speaker 3: against Arabs, like from the outside in the international media,
Speaker 3: which is absolutely not true. Like the SDS itself is
Speaker 3: like majorly Arabic force, It's not majorly just like if
Speaker 3: you see numbers I think at least, so it's like
Speaker 3: very equal, like everyone who plays a role in US
Speaker 3: and who wants to participate can participate, and everyone has
Speaker 3: a like autonomy also to organize inside of their own
Speaker 3: society or may it be religion or which like also
Speaker 3: Yazdi people like Kurdish people who are Yazidi religion, they
Speaker 3: also have their own organization here. Yeah, that's very important and.
Speaker 1: Their own movement in their own area lar the year
Speaker 1: in that part of Iraq. Like that's like I guess
Speaker 1: an allied movement, would that be fair to say?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it very much like follows the same
Speaker 3: idea and the same concept as.
Speaker 2: Yes and yeah.
Speaker 1: I've also spoken to a ZD people who have come
Speaker 1: to the United States recently, and they under the under
Speaker 1: it they had an apsolutely like inhumane and terrible conditions
Speaker 1: and if it wasn't for the gay then they like
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be They're they're the you know, the they
Speaker 1: the beginning of the their liberation I guess came from
Speaker 1: the epigay and something we'll maybe talk about another time.
Speaker 1: It's a long story.
Speaker 2: I wonder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, obviously this isn't something that has been in
Speaker 1: the news as much because people have been so focused
Speaker 1: on Palestine. I wonder if it's worth discussing, Like the
Speaker 1: Turkish States completely like like two faced approach, right, Like
Speaker 1: on one hand, they're saying.
Speaker 5: We have to.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, it's unacceptable for the bombing of civilians in
Speaker 1: Palestine and like this is completely wrong. And then on
Speaker 1: the other hand that they're doing the same thing right
Speaker 1: like just on on their other border.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I'm saying we thought anyway, So like Turky
Speaker 3: is not doing anything good for the Palestinian people. Tuki
Speaker 3: is leading Hamas to such an attack like its supporting
Speaker 3: hammers and the like very violent attacks that I made,
Speaker 3: which then was like the preset for the war of
Speaker 3: Israel and international forces against the Palestinian people. So actually,
Speaker 3: who is like suffering from all of this is like
Speaker 3: the normal people, like, which is too for Israel and Palestine.
Speaker 3: So actually we have to say, like what Tuki is
Speaker 3: doing is against the people, like it's also against the
Speaker 3: Palestinian people. And here like they have criticized to clearly
Speaker 3: for example, Israel is saying like saying, Isia is making
Speaker 3: occupation politics and so on. Still Turki also has ties
Speaker 3: with Israel. We also have to say, but like they
Speaker 3: are themselves occupying parts of Wovoir in the shadow of
Speaker 3: these attacks that like all the attention of the world
Speaker 3: was going uh into this region. They attacked like also
Speaker 3: calculating that maybe people will not so much look to
Speaker 3: right now, like at the same time, there's like another
Speaker 3: huge war going on in the Middle East, and they
Speaker 3: are making like very clearly like politics of occupation in
Speaker 3: Aftene and Silkanya and also democratic demographic change. So they
Speaker 3: are like displacing people and placing other people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well displacing whom and and placing whom, because
Speaker 1: I think that's important when we talk about like that
Speaker 1: that population and demographic change, like because there's it's not
Speaker 1: They're not just displacing people randomly and replacing them randomly, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So actually the people that are targeted most are
Speaker 3: like the Kurdish people in the areas or other people
Speaker 3: that are like not aligned to the took state. And
Speaker 3: then who they place like mostly were like you see,
Speaker 3: they are all these mercenary forces that are actually aligned
Speaker 3: to Turkey or like outside forces already. Like they're like
Speaker 3: they are not Isis, but they are a little bit
Speaker 3: similar to it. They are like mercenary groups that are
Speaker 3: like more or less like what road they go, it's
Speaker 3: they're clarified from outside forces, so they are aligned to
Speaker 3: Turkey and from these people for example, they're families who
Speaker 3: are placed in the region on the one hand. On
Speaker 3: the other hand, they were even examples were Turkey started
Speaker 3: to place some Palestinian people also in this region or
Speaker 3: like the different like they just who they think they
Speaker 3: can align to shortly as a state and doing under
Speaker 3: their control. They were placing in these areas that say
Speaker 3: it like this, like to be able to actually what
Speaker 3: is a part of part of Syria, to occupy it
Speaker 3: long term, like to make this class it's not like
Speaker 3: a short term plan, like they want to stay in
Speaker 3: this area. It's not prevented if it's not liberated.
Speaker 1: Again, yeah, yeah, and I think like again, like people
Speaker 1: I think have become more aware in recent months. People
Speaker 1: are becoming educated on the situation in Palestine settlements. And
Speaker 1: it's not the fault of the people of Palestine that
Speaker 1: they're being like forced to be driven off their ancestral homelands.
Speaker 1: But like what it does mean is that like they
Speaker 1: could be mobilized by someone like Turkey right to just
Speaker 1: do an occupation to to do it, I guess demographic
Speaker 1: transfer somewhere else, and like that's not it, that's not
Speaker 1: like a desirable outcome. So we spoke a little bit
Speaker 1: about like this, like ongoing hostility. He right, and it
Speaker 1: can seem for people out look, I think people only
Speaker 1: hear about in negative and not negative terms is the
Speaker 1: wrong thing. But like they only it only ever enters
Speaker 1: the American press these days when something happens, right, either
Speaker 1: an isis attack something one of the cat like a
Speaker 1: hall or a rog Right, But like, also things are
Speaker 1: continuing to progress, right, It's not just a place that
Speaker 1: it's embattled and fighting to survive, like I know recently
Speaker 1: a new social contract was passed, for instance, So maybe
Speaker 1: you could explain a little bit about the progress that's
Speaker 1: still being made despite this this ongoing like air war,
Speaker 1: during war and land war.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, actually I think here whever we always followed
Speaker 3: this philosophy that we are not like sitting here and
Speaker 3: saying our war will come towards us or like it
Speaker 3: will not be like we are very much hopeful and
Speaker 3: we're always working to develop. Like even if these things
Speaker 3: are happening, these attacks are happening, the sovolution very very
Speaker 3: much developed, and the society changed a lot already, A
Speaker 3: lot of institutions have been built up that before we're
Speaker 3: not existing and so on. And as an outcome also
Speaker 3: of this, the new social contract was formed, which actually
Speaker 3: is like a very democratic process. Like let's say if
Speaker 3: the state force for example, has the constitution, the state
Speaker 3: less the self administration has a social contract which actually
Speaker 3: is made by the people because until it was made,
Speaker 3: there was the years of discussion, like there were so
Speaker 3: many meetings, like all of the political representatives from the
Speaker 3: smallest to the biggest level, they were all part of
Speaker 3: the discussion, and also the people themselves they could take
Speaker 3: part in the discussion. So now this is for example,
Speaker 3: ensuring a lot of important decisions. And now like the
Speaker 3: struggle that is before us, like that we are facing
Speaker 3: now is to implement the social contract, which is very important.
Speaker 3: It's also guaranteeing a lot of purgus for women, it's
Speaker 3: guaranteeing a lot of focus for society. So I think
Speaker 3: still now like it's a task to like see how
Speaker 3: how it can be implemented in all areas because it's
Speaker 3: always like a very lively process, like it always needs
Speaker 3: the daily struggle, the daily work creating like everything from
Speaker 3: new So there's a lot going on. Actually here we
Speaker 3: can say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely and like it definitely, like it doesn't I
Speaker 1: think it's easy, Like again, if we only report on
Speaker 1: the thing when bad things are happening, like to think
Speaker 1: that it's only bad.
Speaker 2: But there's a lot of like people are still.
Speaker 1: Hopeful, I think, and hopeful for creating and spreading like
Speaker 1: this better future for themselves and the children and for
Speaker 1: the region, which I think is is really admirable. One
Speaker 1: thing that I thought was really admirable is people will
Speaker 1: probably have seen it, but like if they don't like
Speaker 1: follow social media so much. The exchange of statements of
Speaker 1: solidarity between the k and DF, the Cronian National Defense
Speaker 1: Force Battalion five specifically in Myanmar, and the YPG and
Speaker 1: YPG in Rog and they've gone back and forth, right,
Speaker 1: But can you explain a little bit about Obviously, I
Speaker 1: know that the situation in Meanma is very complicated. I
Speaker 1: know I've spent years of my life learning about it.
Speaker 1: But can you explain like the importance of that solidarity
Speaker 1: and like also perhaps like it's not it was a
Speaker 1: risk great for everyone to gather like this in in
Speaker 1: the middle of the drone war to make the statement,
Speaker 1: but can you explain like why that solidarity with something
Speaker 1: they felt was so important.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think in general it's very important to say,
Speaker 3: like the revolutioneb it's not only like avolution for the
Speaker 3: people of itself, but has like a prospected more general
Speaker 3: like to strengthen the friendship of democratic movements anywhere in
Speaker 3: the world. So for sure, there's a lot of colors
Speaker 3: of movements, a lot of different situations in the world,
Speaker 3: and some might also like let's say, see the solidarity
Speaker 3: very strong because actually they are also like Miama, like
Speaker 3: also facing for example, state system which is very much
Speaker 3: influenced by fascism, like for something, we are facing Turkey
Speaker 3: or like in general, this kind of oppression and trying
Speaker 3: to liberate from it. So actually we're always trying to
Speaker 3: have like this exchange in general in the world and
Speaker 3: to have like also to build like how let's say,
Speaker 3: like quality, quality relationships, quality friendships with all kinds of
Speaker 3: democratic movements. For sure, everyone is acting on a different
Speaker 3: level and so on, but this is like a big
Speaker 3: something really really important for us in general. And I mean,
Speaker 3: like in the revolution, there were also always people from
Speaker 3: the outside, for example, participating in it, so there was
Speaker 3: always kind of the spirit that this is like the
Speaker 3: revolution for the world. Like the Kurdish movement in general
Speaker 3: has like this character like an internationalist character, so it's
Speaker 3: not something like let's say like far from from us,
Speaker 3: Like that's already something like very close to us and
Speaker 3: say like we stand a solidarity also with other liberation movement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it was very it was. I know
Speaker 1: it's very much appreciated in Myanmar because lots lots of
Speaker 1: people from there have reached out to tell me how
Speaker 1: how much they appreciated it. And like I think some
Speaker 1: of them have been in the revolution for seventy years
Speaker 1: and their world has not paid attention to them, So
Speaker 1: they really appreciated that. And that's that's solidarity. And like
Speaker 1: I know that the solidarity runs a lot deeper than statements,
Speaker 1: but like we will cover that they extended that solidarity
Speaker 1: in another episode because again I think it it merits.
Speaker 1: It's a in recording. I wonder a better van what
Speaker 1: Obviously people will be listening, right, and I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people will be very supportive of the revolution
Speaker 1: in raja Va and they want to help it and
Speaker 1: see it succeed and certainly not to see No one
Speaker 1: wants to see civilians dying in drones tacks, right, No
Speaker 1: one want to see anyone drying in drowned jacks. But
Speaker 1: how can they if they are in the US or
Speaker 1: in Europe or elsewhere in the world but not in Rogio,
Speaker 1: how can they help? How can they support the revolution
Speaker 1: through its like difficult through these difficult moments, right when
Speaker 1: people don't have electricity to heat their homes in the
Speaker 1: winter and things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there's a lot of possibilities, like sights
Speaker 3: coming here, which also is the point, but I mean
Speaker 3: in general, like you have all of the h the possibilities,
Speaker 3: like from educating yourself what is the revolution actually about?
Speaker 3: Understanding it, from spreading its ideas, which is maybe the
Speaker 3: most important task. May it be like spreading knowledge about
Speaker 3: the spreading knowledge also about the attacks that are happening,
Speaker 3: clarifying what's happening and why it's happening. To read the
Speaker 3: book Political Background orso of international politics. That's very important
Speaker 3: for understands. And also you can always like share. For example,
Speaker 3: let's say you have social media. Let's say you're part
Speaker 3: of a political movement or something. You can discuss about it.
Speaker 3: You can inform yourself about it, you can make a
Speaker 3: presentation about it in your university. Like there are so
Speaker 3: many things that you can do like you can read
Speaker 3: the book about it and make a book presentation, like
Speaker 3: there's a million things a person can do. Or as
Speaker 3: you're doing, you can connect to the Kurdish refugees or
Speaker 3: to the society Kurdish people in the diaspora in general,
Speaker 3: like outside of Curtis some wherever you might be. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's possibility. Also, like you can organize solidarity also practical solidarity.
Speaker 3: Also like let's say, like intellection works like write at texts, share,
Speaker 3: discuss about it. Like maybe it's difficult in the beginning
Speaker 3: to understand something or to gain information, but right now
Speaker 3: there's actually a lot of information also available in English language,
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could read for about a year and non
Speaker 1: stuff I think and still not not have read all
Speaker 1: of it. But are there books You've recommended A couple
Speaker 1: of books to me which I think have been really
Speaker 1: good and I've shared with my friends in Memma and
Speaker 1: I know that they've enjoyed. Are there any books that
Speaker 1: you'd recommend to listeners?
Speaker 3: I mean and Jina, Like this revolution is based on
Speaker 3: the sorts of a so I think a good idea
Speaker 3: if you actually want to understand, like the ideological basis
Speaker 3: of it, about women's liberations, about how democratic society can
Speaker 3: be organized. So actually there's like this book called of
Speaker 3: him Sociology of Freedom. I think it's very important and
Speaker 3: so a little bit like understandable. I think for someone
Speaker 3: who comes maybe from academic or from a lesters or
Speaker 3: from a democratic background, I think they will read it,
Speaker 3: they will be able to understand it. But there are
Speaker 3: also many other books that are translated to English or
Speaker 3: like texts that are available, or in general there are
Speaker 3: books about the volution from people, for example, coming from
Speaker 3: the outside. I have to think right now in English,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I know there are some also some in
Speaker 3: the different languages about the women's revolution, so I have
Speaker 3: to think that available. I think that's also like there's
Speaker 3: one called like the politics of Freedom or something. And
Speaker 3: there are some books that were published because they were
Speaker 3: like the diplomatic conferences in most of them I think
Speaker 3: happening in Europe, which as they were like some like
Speaker 3: collections of philosophical discussion, uh, like the published, So I
Speaker 3: think that's also very available. Well, I'm sorry, I have
Speaker 3: tight Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: There's a good book called Revolution in Rogevat, which was
Speaker 1: translated from German that like I think it lays out
Speaker 1: like how things happen. It's a little bit a little
Speaker 1: bit dated now. I think it was published in like
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, so you know, things have changed over a
Speaker 1: few years. But I think that's a decent book for
Speaker 1: people who are interested as well that I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people have recommended. Yeah, and then I wonder, like,
Speaker 1: because this isn't being like, I know, you made the
Speaker 1: point earlier about that the world was looking at Palestine
Speaker 1: when the Tax of Palestine happened. I was in Cambischlow
Speaker 1: in rochebl and like, it's impossible for me to sell stories.
Speaker 1: It's impossible for me to sell anything to like big
Speaker 1: news outlets so that they simply like, don't think American
Speaker 1: people can care about two parts of the world at once.
Speaker 1: I guess I wonder where people can follow and get updates,
Speaker 1: Like it's a good social media or news outlets that
Speaker 1: you would suggest for people who do want to keep
Speaker 1: in touch with what's happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we have like a Twitter Facebook page
Speaker 3: as a Whitejay Information on Documentation Office like YPJ Information.
Speaker 3: But also there's like other places like the Information Center,
Speaker 3: which is very much like like independently accriminating like knowledge
Speaker 3: and sharing in a way that I think is understandable
Speaker 3: for everyone. Like there's also from the SDI forces the
Speaker 3: Press Center, which just has like also the English homepage
Speaker 3: is sharing like sometimes statements and comcrete information. There's an
Speaker 3: Internationalist Commune of Sharing an English language, a lot of
Speaker 3: information on Twitter and on their homepage. So there's actually
Speaker 3: a lot of sources if you go look for it,
Speaker 3: that are very good. I think.
Speaker 1: Also yes, and like on the ground people who can
Speaker 1: show you what's happening, And yeah, I think I think
Speaker 1: that's wonderful. But anything else you'd like us to get
Speaker 1: to before we finish up, anything else you want people
Speaker 1: to know.
Speaker 3: No, I think it's very important to say again that
Speaker 3: it's like very very valuable for the revolution for people
Speaker 3: to take part in actions, to make their voice, hard,
Speaker 3: to organize, to make the solution known, to get it
Speaker 3: to know for themselves, and that it does actually make
Speaker 3: a very very huge difference like the struggle that people
Speaker 3: everyone in the world are making for the solution and
Speaker 3: that it needs it. That like it's very like critical
Speaker 3: for the use of a revolution that everyone's world it
Speaker 3: gets known and gets like solidarity that received this are
Speaker 3: very meaningful. I think that's very important to understand. Besides this,
Speaker 3: I don't know. I hope yes, that's I think.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's really good to realize that it's not
Speaker 1: it's not a it's you know, it's a very worthwhile
Speaker 1: thing to do just to increase people's awareness and solidarity.
Speaker 1: And thank you so much for your time. I know Internet,
Speaker 1: it's not the easiest thing to come by the way
Speaker 1: you are. Say thank you so much. V I'm for
Speaker 1: taking the time to talk to us today.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you also for talking well to the topic.
Speaker 3: I was very happy to join us.
Speaker 1: Great, thanks so much.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to it could happen here everybody. I am
Speaker 2: Robert Evans, and I want to start today by kind
Speaker 2: of proposing a theoretical Right, you wake up in the
Speaker 2: morning and something is awry, you know, maybe maybe you
Speaker 2: hear shots, maybe there's some sort of natural disaster, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe it's that that weird Havana syndron death sound from
Speaker 2: the Obama movie that just came out on what was
Speaker 2: it Netflix? But something's fucked up, and you know, most people,
Speaker 2: I think especially most people who listen to this podcast
Speaker 2: you've probably had conversations with your friends and loved ones
Speaker 2: about what do we do when the quote unquote apocalypse
Speaker 2: or shit hits the fan. You know, you've got your
Speaker 2: friends who maybe you know they have a lot of
Speaker 2: stored food, or they have some other skill that you
Speaker 2: think would be useful. And you've got some stuff that's
Speaker 2: that that that you know you know.
Speaker 5: How to do.
Speaker 2: You've got your people right that you would want to
Speaker 2: be with and around if something's really going wrong out there,
Speaker 2: because you know how to take care of each other.
Speaker 2: But how do you get in contact right? Assuming you
Speaker 2: don't all live together, assuming you're not all on some
Speaker 2: sort of commune type situation, as most people aren't. You're
Speaker 2: probably scattered throughout the city. Maybe you've got some friends out,
Speaker 2: you know, in the suburbs. Maybe you've got some friends
Speaker 2: who live out in rural land. Maybe you've just got
Speaker 2: a friend who lives halfway across town. And you know
Speaker 2: that's no problem when you got a phone and you've
Speaker 2: got you know, Google Maps working. But can you get
Speaker 2: there on your own? Can you get there or get
Speaker 2: into contact with them if the streets are all clogged
Speaker 2: up with cars or whatever? Like, how are you going
Speaker 2: to reach them? How are you going to you know,
Speaker 2: get in touch in order to figure out what's going on?
Speaker 2: And how are you going to stay in touch while
Speaker 2: you handle whatever you need to handle for whatever is
Speaker 2: going wrong. Well, that's what we're going to talk about today,
Speaker 2: because if the cell networks are down, if they're being blocked,
Speaker 2: if you know, the Obama situation happens, there are things
Speaker 2: you can do to allow you and your friends, comrades,
Speaker 2: affinity group, whatever you want to call them, to stay
Speaker 2: in touch. And this a lot of this revolves around
Speaker 2: a kind of technical usage called a mesh network. And
Speaker 2: I don't know much about that because I am a
Speaker 2: big dummy. But a person who is not a dummy
Speaker 2: is our guest today. They go by Hydroponic Trash on
Speaker 2: Twitter and they are going to talk to us today
Speaker 2: about how to set up independent communications networks that do
Speaker 2: not rely on the standard grid. Hello and welcome to
Speaker 2: the show. Hey, what's up?
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me on?
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for coming on. You posted a thread
Speaker 2: on Twitter about using you know, it's called like LOWRA
Speaker 2: low frequency radio?
Speaker 4: Is that what it stands for? Yeah?
Speaker 6: LORA stands technically for long range but Yeah, it's a
Speaker 6: long range frequency radio that broadcasts a pretty uh specific
Speaker 6: wavelength that can travel really far throughout the air. So
Speaker 6: it's perfect for communications long distance.
Speaker 2: And it's if you've got devices set up on this
Speaker 2: they each basically act as nodes, right, So the more
Speaker 2: you have the kind of wider signal distribution you get
Speaker 2: if I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, Like if you've
Speaker 2: got someone three miles away and then another person five
Speaker 2: miles to the west of them, then you kind of
Speaker 2: are able to cover that whole distance.
Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly. So think of it like a relay system, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: One person has a message, they send it off to
Speaker 6: another person. That person passes it on to the next node,
Speaker 6: and so mesh networks are really resilient when it comes
Speaker 6: to emergencies, when it comes to protests, when it comes
Speaker 6: to occupation and conflict zones, because if one node goes down,
Speaker 6: as long as there's other ones that can pick up
Speaker 6: that message and keep repeating it and broadcasting it out.
Speaker 6: So it's a really interesting piece of technology that is
Speaker 6: similar to like traditional radios, but also different because all
Speaker 6: the communications can be encrypted end to end.
Speaker 2: Which is a huge delay of security because you can
Speaker 2: the thing most people's default. If you're thinking like, well,
Speaker 2: how do you get some like walkie talkies?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 2: You know, you get some and those can you know,
Speaker 2: those have their place and stuff, but they are also
Speaker 2: not always the most secure options. So being able to
Speaker 2: encrypthit is a huge deal, especially when you're talking about
Speaker 2: like outside of a shit hits the fan kind of deal,
Speaker 2: which is less likely than you know, some sort of
Speaker 2: civil unrest protest use case. You know, being able to
Speaker 2: actually encrypt is huge. Yeah, so I'm a dummy. I
Speaker 2: don't understand much about setting up my own technology independently,
Speaker 2: but I find this interesting. I see the use case.
Speaker 2: I decide I want to you know, set this up
Speaker 2: and start, you know, building an emergency mesh network with
Speaker 2: a half dozen of my friends. Where do I start?
Speaker 6: So the first thing is you'll need some hardware that
Speaker 6: supports LORA. There are a ton of different things out there,
Speaker 6: ranging from maybe twenty twenty five bucks going all the
Speaker 6: way up to thousands of dollars. So there's a big range,
Speaker 6: and that range really depends on the enclosure, what's included
Speaker 6: in it, the broadcast strength, all that good stuff. So obviously,
Speaker 6: the cheaper you go, the weaker the broadcast strength is
Speaker 6: there might be development boards that are just literally like
Speaker 6: the PCB, like actual hardware with no case around it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: and there's there's some that you can just pick up
Speaker 6: and immediately use, and so it kind of depends. But
Speaker 6: that's the first step is finding hardware that can handle
Speaker 6: Laura and then you know, obviously getting it and then
Speaker 6: flashing it with the correct software. And that sounds really complicated,
Speaker 6: but for our purposes of sending text messages without any
Speaker 6: kind of cellular, LTE or Wi Fi connection, you can
Speaker 6: use super cheap devices and flashing them is you click
Speaker 6: a couple of buttons and you're done.
Speaker 2: So, first off, do you have any kind of specific
Speaker 2: you know, I know you're working on a text piece
Speaker 2: that you can put up to explain all this, and
Speaker 2: I will certainly share that as soon as it gets up,
Speaker 2: But do you have any specific like if somebody's saying, hey,
Speaker 2: I've got you know, a budget of fifty bucks, you know,
Speaker 2: or so, is there a complete device you would recommend
Speaker 2: if they're or somewhere in that median range, like kind
Speaker 2: of on the lower end, a thing that someone doesn't
Speaker 2: know how to take, you know, a raw board and
Speaker 2: craft that into a usable device you would recommend they
Speaker 2: purchase is to start us off here.
Speaker 6: Yeah, definitely. So I kind of have two different options.
Speaker 6: One is a standalone option that can kind of work
Speaker 6: by itself, completely independent of anything else, and another one
Speaker 6: uses your phone, So you'll flash it to the board
Speaker 6: and then connective or bluetooth to your phone just like
Speaker 6: a pair of headphone.
Speaker 2: Lost so easy.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and so you kind of have options if you
Speaker 6: want a standalone version. There's a company called lily Go
Speaker 6: that makes a thing called a te Deck and it's
Speaker 6: pretty small. It looks like a BlackBerry Clone.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: It has a little mouse thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks like a BlackBerry kind of crossed with
Speaker 2: a game camera. Yeah yeah yeah yeah, because it's like
Speaker 2: thicker in the back, it's got that big antenna yeah
Speaker 2: yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 6: And so the Lilygo t deck is what this is called.
Speaker 6: It's a BlackBerry Clone basically has lowra built in, it
Speaker 6: has bluetooth, and so all you have to do is
Speaker 6: get powered to this thing, flash it with meshitastic, and
Speaker 6: there you go. Now you have a Now you can
Speaker 6: type out messages, you can send direct messages, you can
Speaker 6: send encrypted messages, all with one device. That's thirty five dollars.
Speaker 2: Oh man, that's great, And this is something you can
Speaker 2: get like Ali Express was your recommendation, right, Yeah, Ali Express.
Speaker 6: Probably be the best if you're trying to order a lot.
Speaker 6: If you want one right now, you can order them
Speaker 6: on places like Amazon, but it's going to cost you
Speaker 6: and also fuck Amazon.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean you are slightly doomed to support
Speaker 2: one horrible billionaire or another like Ali expresses. But no,
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I mean one of the upsides to like
Speaker 6: an all in one thing like this is like I
Speaker 6: three D printed this case, but you don't have to
Speaker 6: print a case. You can literally just set this into
Speaker 6: a box or something and protect it. So there's a
Speaker 6: lot of options on the cases that you want to use.
Speaker 6: You could buy pre made cases, or you could just
Speaker 6: I don't know, just put something to protect the board
Speaker 6: back here and then screw on an antenna.
Speaker 1: You're good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I've seen some shit people do with
Speaker 2: duct tape. You can figure it out. So my question is,
Speaker 2: or my other question is, you were talking about a
Speaker 2: way that you can you can basically do the calming
Speaker 2: like communications through yourself on right, you can hook that
Speaker 2: into the next mesh network. Is that something you're able
Speaker 2: to kind of go over at least in brief or
Speaker 2: provide people with, you know, here's where they can go
Speaker 2: to read about how to do that.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So the same company, lily Ego makes a smaller little device.
Speaker 6: It's really small, maybe about an inch yeah. Yeah, and
Speaker 6: it has a screen on it so when you power
Speaker 6: at all and you can actually see the messages come
Speaker 6: through on the screen on the board itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And it connects through Bluetooth to your phone and you
Speaker 6: use the mesh Tastic app to basically text like you
Speaker 6: normally would on a phone. Yeah, it looks just like
Speaker 6: signal pretty much if you're used to that that UI
Speaker 6: but uh yeah, it's super small. Yeah, it's perfect.
Speaker 2: And so you're just also using that mesh Tastic app
Speaker 2: to flash the software on the devices once you get them.
Speaker 2: Am I am I understanding that?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I'm just asking I'm reasking everything because I want
Speaker 2: to try to make this accessible for both me when
Speaker 2: I do it and for our listeners.
Speaker 6: Yeah, for sure. So mesh Tastic is the software that's
Speaker 6: running on these devices. And what mesh Tastic does is
Speaker 6: a device that's also running Meshtastic can communicate with each
Speaker 6: other over LOWRA long distance. And so you need the
Speaker 6: hardware that supports the LORAW and a client which is
Speaker 6: Mestastic that will allow you to send tax messages and
Speaker 6: stuff like that, and do the encryption handle all that stuff.
Speaker 6: To actually flash these, it's super simple. Mesh Tastic has
Speaker 6: a link that you can go to. You plug in
Speaker 6: your device, depending on the version, you hold down a button,
Speaker 6: you press flash, wait like ten seconds and boom, now
Speaker 6: you have a working Meshtastic node, probably in underneath ten
Speaker 6: minutes after you get this out of the box, you
Speaker 6: could be up and running in about ten to fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2: That's great and so all right. If I if I've
Speaker 2: got like say, I'm the guy in my group of
Speaker 2: friends who has more disposable cash, and I want to
Speaker 2: get this going. So I pick up five of those
Speaker 2: lily like boxes three D printed case for them or
Speaker 2: just wrap them in something, you know, and I keep one,
Speaker 2: I hand them out to my friends. I get the
Speaker 2: software on all of them. How how do I get
Speaker 2: them all kind of in comms together?
Speaker 5: Right? Like?
Speaker 2: Or if you know, my friends buy them independently and
Speaker 2: we each flash them and get them up and running.
Speaker 2: How do we all kind of connect? Like? What is
Speaker 2: that process?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 6: Yeah? So the good thing with mesh Tastic is it
Speaker 6: automatically handles adding new nodes to the network, and so
Speaker 6: as soon as a new device that runs mess Tastic
Speaker 6: comes online, it'll broadcast and tell the entire mesh Tastic
Speaker 6: network nearby, Hey, a new device got added. You can
Speaker 6: send messages to me. So mesh Tastic has two different
Speaker 6: things that it can do. It can do broadcasts, where
Speaker 6: you're sending out a message to pretty much everyone who
Speaker 6: has a device that's reachable, and that's good for say,
Speaker 6: for instance, you know your friend comes online, you can't
Speaker 6: talk to them directly. You could send them broadcast out
Speaker 6: and say hey Joe, what device are you and they
Speaker 6: can reply and broadcast everybody Okay, I'm on this device.
Speaker 6: You can also do direct messages, so once you know
Speaker 6: that person's device name, you can actually send messages directly
Speaker 6: to them. Now, keep in mind it's not encrypted because
Speaker 6: technically it's broadcasting throughout each node. It's just like filtering
Speaker 6: out the messages for whoever it was addressed for but yeah,
Speaker 6: at that point then you can start dming people. And
Speaker 6: if you want to get started with encryption, it's also
Speaker 6: really easy. You can use the mesh Tastic client, so
Speaker 6: you can install it on your computer, plug it into
Speaker 6: your computer, and just set an encryption key, a passcode,
Speaker 6: whatever you want to do to secure your communications, and
Speaker 6: then once that person has that passcode, key, whatever, those
Speaker 6: two devices can connect and talk completely encrypted, either one
Speaker 6: on one or if multiple people. Say, for instance, you
Speaker 6: have an affinity group of like ten people, you all say, okay, hey,
Speaker 6: in an inn emergency, let's meet up at this place
Speaker 6: and physically share a key or pass code or whatever.
Speaker 6: Once everybody has that, you can also do encrypted broadcasts
Speaker 6: to multiple people as well, so getting up and running
Speaker 6: is super quick. When it comes to flashing, actually communicating
Speaker 6: with people makes sense, especially on your phone. It feels
Speaker 6: just like a normal texting situation.
Speaker 2: So that's great.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's really it's really amazing. I mean, this is
Speaker 6: a really interesting technology because, like I've been interested in
Speaker 6: radio for a while. But the biggest downside to that
Speaker 6: is a you can't encrypt any kind of radio communications
Speaker 6: in the US b A license. Yeah, unless if you're
Speaker 6: the cops of the military or the FEDS, you cannot
Speaker 6: encrypt shit, and if you do, it's it's kind of
Speaker 6: an issue. But yeah, you can't encrypt messages on regular radios.
Speaker 6: Another thing is like usability. If you hand somebody like
Speaker 6: a bow thaying handheld radio, most people are not going
Speaker 6: to know.
Speaker 3: What to do with it at all.
Speaker 2: They're going to be like, what the fuck is this?
Speaker 6: But if I hand you a BlackBerry Clone and say,
Speaker 6: just type, and if you want to send a DM
Speaker 6: to somebody to find them and just send it like
Speaker 6: it's it's really easy for your average person to pick
Speaker 6: it up and use it, which is honestly the best
Speaker 6: kind of situation, especially in an emergency where you can't
Speaker 6: really rely on highly technical people all the time, because
Speaker 6: what if everybody in your affinity group isn't super technical,
Speaker 6: you know, So it's a it's a good common device
Speaker 6: that anybody can pick up and start sending messages, even
Speaker 6: encrypted messages, pretty easily.
Speaker 2: So I think that covers the technical basics of what
Speaker 2: you need to do. I did want to ask real
Speaker 2: quick before we get onto some of the more ideological
Speaker 2: you know stuff here conversations about like why you specifically
Speaker 2: gotten into this and why, like this is important for people.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask just really quickly in terms of
Speaker 2: that three D printed case, did you just go search
Speaker 2: in some repository and find when someone had made or
Speaker 2: is there one that you've put up somewhere that you
Speaker 2: might recommend to people?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Actually it was recently uploaded to thing thing evers, which
Speaker 6: is a website that has free three D print plans
Speaker 6: and files. And so I just searched up lilygo t
Speaker 6: deck on thing everse and the full case, I mean
Speaker 6: the back yeah has Yeah, it looks like an actual device.
Speaker 2: And I'm assuming that one's just pla yeah, just Pazza
Speaker 2: type super basic. Yeah, yeah, looks great.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and this only took all these pieces snapped together,
Speaker 6: so no glue required, and all these pieces took roughly
Speaker 6: about eight hours to print at one hundred percent density.
Speaker 6: So you have a pretty solid case. With plans that
Speaker 6: are available online and an eight hours, you can have
Speaker 6: a literal professional looking device that's protected and able to go,
Speaker 6: you know, in adverse situations.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So now I want to get into some of the
Speaker 2: more kind of like just talking about first off, what
Speaker 2: got you into this? Like, when did you decide this
Speaker 2: is a skill I want to develop and a thing
Speaker 2: I want to figure out.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean, so for my day job, I'm an offensive
Speaker 6: security consultant, which is just a fancy way of saying
Speaker 6: that it's a cool job for a living.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're doing like Red Team stuff. It sounds like, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6: So I've always been interested in technology and specifically like
Speaker 6: how do you make technology work in the benefit of
Speaker 6: people as opposed to working the benefit for profits or
Speaker 6: corporate interest or state interests. So I think technology is
Speaker 6: a really good tool when used correctly, and there's a
Speaker 6: lot of moral and social and political implications when it
Speaker 6: comes to technology and actually making it. But that's kind
Speaker 6: of how I got into it, was kind of combining
Speaker 6: my interest in computers and hacking combined with kind of
Speaker 6: the social and political activism I've been a part of.
Speaker 6: So that was kind of my entry point into it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes that makes sense, because I do think,
Speaker 2: like when I think about what inspired me about the
Speaker 2: early Internet, about like file sharing back in the late nineties,
Speaker 2: about you know, when Wikipedia first started up and stuff
Speaker 2: all that stuff like that. We talk a lot about,
Speaker 2: like the days when we thought the Internet was going
Speaker 2: to be an unqualified boon for human liberty, the ability
Speaker 2: to create effectively, like a smaller and more limited private
Speaker 2: Internet for like you and your people to communicate safely
Speaker 2: through definitely like scratches that itch. And when we say
Speaker 2: like more limited Internet, you're not through one of these
Speaker 2: networks we're talking about. You're not going to be like
Speaker 2: sending YouTube videos and shit, right, But that's not what
Speaker 2: it's for, you know. That's it's it's it's got its
Speaker 2: own use, and it's very much kind of what the
Speaker 2: Internet was about at the beginning, which is just allowing
Speaker 2: people to connect that otherwise wouldn't be able to or
Speaker 2: wouldn't be able to as securely.
Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly. And actually the same protocol Loara, you actually
Speaker 6: kind of can run a basic Internet protocol that it's
Speaker 6: called Laura WAN Laura Wide Access Networking, and you can
Speaker 6: run some pretty basic programs on it outside of just
Speaker 6: text based stuff. So it's a really interesting kind of
Speaker 6: rabbit hole to go down into. I will say, if
Speaker 6: you start looking at Laura and mestastic stuff, you will
Speaker 6: eventually start to run into like a right leaning, yes,
Speaker 6: sometimes straight out fascist people because there's a crossover between
Speaker 6: you know, the the gun community and kind of off
Speaker 6: grid prepper doomsday prepper people, you know, so you'll run
Speaker 6: into that. Anyone who doesn't like like the government is
Speaker 6: going to have a vested interest in being able to
Speaker 6: communicate in a way that can't be easily intercepted, right
Speaker 6: like that, And that doesn't always mean your buddies. I
Speaker 6: think most people are pretty familiar with that exactly. Yea,
Speaker 6: but yeah, it's it's it's really useful. There there are
Speaker 6: other ways to, say, for instance, make your own kind
Speaker 6: of like micro internet. I read an article that talked
Speaker 6: about making kind of like a DIY Internet in quotes,
Speaker 6: where you can basically take your home router and connects, say,
Speaker 6: for instance, your neighbors to the same network, and then
Speaker 6: if you have a server of your own that has books,
Speaker 6: that has maps, that has music and information, you can
Speaker 6: easily share that with other people. And so there are
Speaker 6: other ways to kind of get your own off grid
Speaker 6: quote unquote internet together, but.
Speaker 2: Just outside of text. But yeah, it's definitely possible.
Speaker 6: It's just needs a little bit more technical know how,
Speaker 6: But hopefully soon it'll be a little simpler to where
Speaker 6: you can just download something, get you know, a book
Speaker 6: server up and running, and then have anybody come along
Speaker 6: and download books about you know, permaculture or about you know,
Speaker 6: emergency medical aid or fixing infrastructure and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's huge being able to actually like transmit
Speaker 2: text and stuff through that too. So yeah, you said
Speaker 2: when we were chatting online kind of before we we
Speaker 2: hooked this up, you said something along the line of
Speaker 2: you had a bit of a tangent you wanted to
Speaker 2: go on. So I've asked kind of my questions here
Speaker 2: if there is anything else you wanted to get out
Speaker 2: or express or say, just kind of on the subject
Speaker 2: of people taking more autonomy for themselves in their communications technology. Well,
Speaker 2: now's the time.
Speaker 6: Yeah sounds good.
Speaker 4: I mean so.
Speaker 6: Earlier you asked, like, what kind of got me into this? Yeah,
Speaker 6: but there's another situation that happened because I live in Texas,
Speaker 6: Oh and a couple.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know where I'm going with this. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 6: A couple of years ago, there was a really bad
Speaker 6: winter storm and for most people listening, you might be
Speaker 6: in the Northeast, like, who cares.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was there for that storm. Oh it was
Speaker 2: it was horrible. Was crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And so for people outside of Texas, you might be saying, Okay, well,
Speaker 6: winter storm whatever, like, how could that affect anything? But
Speaker 6: Texas's power grid is privately owned. Yeah, it's completely separate
Speaker 6: from the RESCUUS.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Urka is a private company that runs the Texas power grid.
Speaker 6: And so we had a winter storm event happen, and
Speaker 6: our power systems are not in any way built for
Speaker 6: extreme cold, and so we had the situation where pretty
Speaker 6: much the entire state was out of power except for
Speaker 6: maybe a few areas in certain cities that had you know,
Speaker 6: a specific environment where they had backup generators and stuff
Speaker 6: like that. But millions of people lost power. And when
Speaker 6: people lose power, it isn't just oh I can't like
Speaker 6: watch TV or like do anything. There's lies that are lost,
Speaker 6: you know, directly from people who require ventilators to live
Speaker 6: to people who need electricity to run their medical devices.
Speaker 6: That impacted everything, right, So the power going out impacted transportation,
Speaker 6: impacted water, it impacted sanitation. So all these bits of
Speaker 6: infrastructure are all connected, and communications is kind of at
Speaker 6: the core of our modern day infrastructure, right, because in
Speaker 6: order to run a power plant, you need to have
Speaker 6: power but not only that, you need to be able
Speaker 6: to communicate with other places in order to properly run
Speaker 6: the water sanitation program. Same with transportation. I mean, if
Speaker 6: communication goes out, you literally can't deliver food, You literally
Speaker 6: can't deliver water to people and places that need it.
Speaker 6: And so it's not just an impact directly to communications,
Speaker 6: but an impact to your entire life. And so when
Speaker 6: we're talking about these pieces of infrastructure, we really have
Speaker 6: to think about the larger picture of how all this
Speaker 6: infrastructure's integrated in our lives, and how an impact to
Speaker 6: one part of it can impact your life in ways
Speaker 6: that you never even thought of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and that's also I mean, I think I
Speaker 2: would imagine one of the benefits. I can say, just
Speaker 2: from sort of the fairly minimal degree to which I've
Speaker 2: done stuff like understand the basics of solar power and
Speaker 2: what I can do and can't do in my area
Speaker 2: with it, you know, even outside of the stuff that
Speaker 2: is green and renewable, understanding like how you can and
Speaker 2: cannot use generators in an emergency, and like which work.
Speaker 2: It's just given me more of an understanding of how
Speaker 2: the regular stuff that I use day to day works.
Speaker 2: A little bit better about what the real power draw
Speaker 2: of my life is, you know, and anytime you're kind
Speaker 2: of expanding your autonomy technologically, it also just increases the
Speaker 2: degree to which you understand what's going on every day,
Speaker 2: which I think is always of value, right, Like, even
Speaker 2: outside of whatever theoreticals we might prompt for like what
Speaker 2: could happen or what is likely to happen, because we're
Speaker 2: all going to deal with more disasters in our lives
Speaker 2: before they're over, hopefully more than one. The alternative is worse.
Speaker 2: But yeah, well that's kind of all I had to say.
Speaker 2: Did you have anything else you wanted to get into
Speaker 2: before we roll out?
Speaker 7: Uh?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean there are a bunch of use cases
Speaker 6: outside of like whether events or natural disasters to protests
Speaker 6: is one of them. A really big security concern when
Speaker 6: you're at a protest is bringing your cell phone. Not
Speaker 6: a lot of people know that your cell phone has
Speaker 6: a unique identifier number, and police governments states all have
Speaker 6: technology to basically like bring up a fake cell phone
Speaker 6: tower and have your device connect to it, so there
Speaker 6: are ways to track Say, for instance, you go to
Speaker 6: a protest, you have your phone on. Now your identifier
Speaker 6: is kind of tied to being at this protest, right,
Speaker 6: But with technology like this, it kind of circumvents that,
Speaker 6: especially when it comes to the ability for a threat
Speaker 6: actor to track you or know that you've been there.
Speaker 6: And it's encrypted, so even if say, for instance, a
Speaker 6: police department was able to intercept low raw, they wouldn't
Speaker 6: be able to read the messages period. And so that's
Speaker 6: another good thing. Same with you know, conflict zones. Yeah,
Speaker 6: you know, we're seeing now with the genocide that's happening
Speaker 6: in Palestine with the Palestinians, it's increasingly harder for people
Speaker 6: to communicate what areas are safe. It's hard to communicate
Speaker 6: you know, oh, we need to get out now, have
Speaker 6: an early warning system of there are literal tanks coming
Speaker 6: down the highway towards us.
Speaker 2: We need to leave.
Speaker 6: And so something like this can also be you know,
Speaker 6: really good in that situation because again the messages are encrypted,
Speaker 6: it can go pretty long range, especially if you have
Speaker 6: direct line of sight. We're talking like up to ten miles,
Speaker 6: and so being able to just send a text message
Speaker 6: to somebody can save someone's life in a situation like that.
Speaker 6: So there's a lot of different use cases outside of
Speaker 6: you know emergencies that this stuff can be used. But
Speaker 6: that's where building the autonomy kind of comes from. And
Speaker 6: if we're talking about like leftist political organizing and talking
Speaker 6: about building a better future, being autonomous from stay in
Speaker 6: corporate controlled infrastructure is really important, right because if say,
Speaker 6: for instance, hypothetically we had the Big R Revolution, right,
Speaker 6: the first thing that people in power are going to
Speaker 6: go after is power, water, sanitation, and communications. Right, They're
Speaker 6: going to go after the main infrastructure. And so if
Speaker 6: we want to have an autonomous and free future, we
Speaker 6: have to think about collectively owning the means of infrastructure,
Speaker 6: not just the means of production.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and even outside you know, the Big R scenario,
Speaker 2: something that I think is probably at least certainly more
Speaker 2: immediate is continuing sort of downs in social order and
Speaker 2: areas expanding where non state actors, including the aforementioned Nazis
Speaker 2: that we had talked about, are able to get bolder, right,
Speaker 2: And like one thing we've seen right now, if you
Speaker 2: watch videos of cartel operations in parts of Mexico right now,
Speaker 2: one thing you will see on they're really good guys
Speaker 2: right on their special ops style teams is they will
Speaker 2: all have these weird looking things look kind of like
Speaker 2: a microphone attached to their plate carriers, and that's a
Speaker 2: cell jammer. It's the standard thing for them to carry
Speaker 2: into the field because it stops people from reporting in
Speaker 2: real time when they're carrying out an operation. And cartels
Speaker 2: are not the only people who do that, right, Like,
Speaker 2: it is a widely used tactic now, you see it
Speaker 2: all over in Ukraine. Right, it's in part not just
Speaker 2: because of like cell phones, but because of like shit
Speaker 2: like drones and stuff. It's it's just an increasingly common thing.
Speaker 2: And so when you're talking about what our threats that
Speaker 2: are realistic, well, it's not just the state that can
Speaker 2: interrupt your ability to communicate traditionally, right, it's also your
Speaker 2: non state opponents. And so for a variety of reasons,
Speaker 2: having backups, having alternates is just an incredibly important thing
Speaker 2: to be able to do to some extent, Yeah, definitely, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Well anything else.
Speaker 6: No, I mean, right now, I'm working on a kind
Speaker 6: of step by step article that kind of goes into
Speaker 6: more detail on what you need to do this, all
Speaker 6: the equipment you need, how to actually flash devices, how
Speaker 6: to start sending messages, and so once that's ready, I'll
Speaker 6: publish it. I publish you know, diy articles and stuff
Speaker 6: to my substack. It's an archosolar punk. Or you can
Speaker 6: go to Hydroponic track and I have a link there
Speaker 6: that goes to substack as well.
Speaker 2: Beautiful. Well, all right, Hydroponic Trash, thank you so much
Speaker 2: for everything. This has really been useful and enlightening. I'm
Speaker 2: going to go hop on to Ali Express in a
Speaker 2: second here and make a couple of purchases and I'm
Speaker 2: sure there's going to be a number of folks doing
Speaker 2: a version of that again. You can find our guests
Speaker 2: at Hydroponic Trash on Twitter where you can get in
Speaker 2: touch with them and keep an eye on what they're
Speaker 2: writing their substack. Very very excited to play around with
Speaker 2: this technology. Thank you so much for working to make
Speaker 2: it more visible.
Speaker 6: Yeah, of course, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely everyone.
Speaker 1: It's me James and I'm jo today by Erica, who
Speaker 1: is an attorney the director at Alotto Lada, which is
Speaker 1: a binational nonprofit that does legal humanitarian aid between San
Speaker 1: Diego and Tijuana, and we're here to discuss the open
Speaker 1: air detention sites and some things that Jim Desmond, one
Speaker 1: of our County supervisors has been saying about them.
Speaker 2: So welcome to the show, Erica.
Speaker 5: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, it's nice to have you here. Thanks
Speaker 1: for taking the time. So I want to start off
Speaker 1: by talking about Jim Desmond today, which is something I
Speaker 1: like to do if people aren't familiar with Jim Desmond.
Speaker 1: Jim Desmond is a supervisor in San Diego County. He's
Speaker 1: from District five, which is northern San Diego County. He's
Speaker 1: a Republican. He's the former mayor of San Marcos, which
Speaker 1: is a city in North County, and before that he
Speaker 1: was a pilot in the Navy. He's pretty much like
Speaker 1: a standard culture war boomer and a reminder to us
Speaker 1: all that there are people that live today who grew
Speaker 1: up when they put lead and children to toys. Notable
Speaker 1: Jim Desmond's dances include his starts on climate change, which
Speaker 1: I'm just going to read to you. Try and follow
Speaker 1: it if you can. It's a challenge. I think the
Speaker 1: climate has been changing since the beginning of time. The
Speaker 1: climate comes and the climate goes. The Great Lakes the
Speaker 1: Great Plains is a Yosemite valley all formed by glaciers.
Speaker 1: They've been gone a long long time, So you find
Speaker 1: seashells on mountaintops, you see where it used to be.
Speaker 1: You know, the land masses were Pangaea, and then the
Speaker 1: land matters all change and move around. So I say,
Speaker 1: we may be part of climate change, but I think
Speaker 1: the only reason we're here and we're still here today
Speaker 1: is because we as a species learn to adapt to
Speaker 1: different climates and climate changes. Now, maybe we're maybe exacerbating
Speaker 1: it a bit towards the end of the warming trend,
Speaker 1: but I don't know that.
Speaker 5: So it's just it's about as convoluted as his governing
Speaker 5: strategy here in San Diego County.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's said a lot of words, but it really
Speaker 1: conveyed very little meaning. But yeah, this is kind of
Speaker 1: he seems to like speaking, but but maybe like he
Speaker 1: doesn't take quite as long as one would hope to
Speaker 1: plan out where he's going with its sentences before he
Speaker 1: delivers him. He also has a podcast, so I guess
Speaker 1: our podcasting rival, did you have you listened to his podcast?
Speaker 5: Dereka, No, I am, but it might be entertaining, so yeah,
Speaker 5: I'll take a look at it.
Speaker 2: Definitely.
Speaker 1: I know it'll you can learn some things about coronavirus
Speaker 1: for instance. God, yeah, it's good stuff. In May of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, he claimed there had been six pure solely
Speaker 1: coronavirus deaths. The other two hundred or so that happened
Speaker 1: to guacted by them. We're not quote unquote pure coronavirus deaths.
Speaker 1: I guess by his estimation. So in this little escapade
Speaker 1: got him cited by Joe Rogan on the Joe Rogan Podcast,
Speaker 1: which must have been a great moment for Desmond. He
Speaker 1: hosted a ton of COVID skeptics on his podcast as well.
Speaker 1: Throughout the lockdowns he did after he caused some controversy
Speaker 1: on Twitter, which is a recurring theme, he hosted an
Speaker 1: actual immunologist on his show, and this was the only
Speaker 1: guest who he really kind of argued with, and in
Speaker 1: doing so, he said, I quote, the herd needs to
Speaker 1: get it, and he's talking about COVID here and we'll
Speaker 1: have a better handle on it. So to me, the
Speaker 1: number of cases means the herd's getting it, so that's
Speaker 1: a good thing. And then his guests corrected in pointing
Speaker 1: out that there needs to be like immunity for there
Speaker 1: to be heard immunity. And while he's just looking at
Speaker 1: it is contagion, not immunity, so he sort of He
Speaker 1: continued to make these claims throughout the pandemic, right that
Speaker 1: the lockdown was holding our jobs hostage, bad for the economy.
Speaker 1: He wasn't an anti maskt Interestingly, he said we should
Speaker 1: wear masks. That's what it took to open the businesses again.
Speaker 1: And he at least I mean, he's always been pretty
Speaker 1: terrible on boarder stuff, right, Erica. I'm sure you've encountered
Speaker 1: to his border stances before.
Speaker 5: I think all of the supervisors are terrible on border stuff.
Speaker 5: But at least he says the quiet part out loud.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: We'll get more into that later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I want to talk about how that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that the the Democrats been terrible on the border
Speaker 1: is something that I think we can't say enough. In
Speaker 1: recent months, he held a press conference claiming the border
Speaker 1: should be shut down to prevent an influx It's not
Speaker 1: a quote, it's a peraphrase here, but to prevent an
Speaker 1: influx of har mass fighters, which.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It shows a misunderstanding of a lot of things, like
Speaker 1: like how her mass works, and also how the border works,
Speaker 1: like the idea that a one could leave Gaza at
Speaker 1: this time and be that one could just fly into
Speaker 1: Mexico like where of course, like they wouldn't immediately notice
Speaker 1: that you had come like armed and equipped to attack
Speaker 1: the US border.
Speaker 5: But I think just with the COVID stuff and with
Speaker 5: the border stuff, he is just throwing red meat to
Speaker 5: his base. But it's not necessarily aligned with what he does,
Speaker 5: and I would assume it's not aligned with what he
Speaker 5: actually knows. Like we're the COVID stuff. He did set
Speaker 5: up vaccination clinics in his district, and so he's clearly
Speaker 5: not a complete skeptic, at least that's not what his
Speaker 5: actions showed. And I think for some of your listeners
Speaker 5: who are not in the United States or maybe not
Speaker 5: in California, we are on the border in San Diego.
Speaker 5: You can get to Mexico within you know, if you're
Speaker 5: in Jim Desmon's district, within half an hour you're in Tijuana.
Speaker 5: And I assume he's been here for many years, and
Speaker 5: so he has to know more about the border than
Speaker 5: he's letting on. It's just really like he's regurgitating the
Speaker 5: right wing narrative to garner political points. I think in
Speaker 5: a county where he's the last standing Republican on the
Speaker 5: board of supervisors, So I think that's important to remember too.
Speaker 1: Definitely, it definitely seems like this is kind of and
Speaker 1: you see he does a lot of appearance on writing
Speaker 1: news channels, right, Like he's often on Fox. But then
Speaker 1: our local kind of crazy writ wing news channel is KUSI,
Speaker 1: who have really doubled down on the culture war stuff
Speaker 1: since like twenty twenty, and you'll see him on there
Speaker 1: a lot and talking about the border a lot. Right.
Speaker 1: It seems to, as you say, like either be like
Speaker 1: an attempt for reelection or perhaps for higher office. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but he he'll make a lot of claims
Speaker 1: about the border which are just patently untrue, which is
Speaker 1: what I want to talk about now.
Speaker 2: So he spent his New Year's.
Speaker 1: Day in Cucumber making little videos for Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 1: I was there only year days too. I didn't atually
Speaker 1: see him, which is a shame. But that day they
Speaker 1: weren't many people at all who are in the open
Speaker 1: air attention sites, so he sort of made videos in
Speaker 1: front of empty tents.
Speaker 2: It was a bit weird.
Speaker 1: In his first one, he wrote, today I visited the
Speaker 1: border and migrant encampments in Ucumber. The chaos continues with
Speaker 1: dozens of people camping out waiting for border patrol to
Speaker 1: take them to resource center paid for by county taxpayers.
Speaker 1: And he's not like you could. I'm sure Erica, you
Speaker 1: can explain this as well. He's not wrong that they
Speaker 1: may eventually end up at the quote unquote welcome center,
Speaker 1: which is paid for by county funds, which came from
Speaker 1: the American Rescue Act, which is of course federal money.
Speaker 1: But it's a little more complicated than that, isn't it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So the migrants are being held in what are
Speaker 5: essentially open air prisons by border patrol. We the collective
Speaker 5: of nonprofits, mutual aid groups and volunteers are the only
Speaker 5: ones who've been paying for water, food, medical assistance, shelter,
Speaker 5: et cetera for people who are being held in these
Speaker 5: open air prisons, sometimes for days at a time, including
Speaker 5: the medically infirm and children. And so I think that's
Speaker 5: one piece of it to understand, because he did say
Speaker 5: in his when he was speaking in front of the
Speaker 5: empty tent, that the county tax payers were paying for
Speaker 5: those things, which is patently untrue. But then just again,
Speaker 5: understanding the process is something that he has to understand.
Speaker 5: He's been here for decades. He has to know that
Speaker 5: these people are being taken into border patrol custody process
Speaker 5: and then either released to the county funded welcome center
Speaker 5: or they are detained by immigration And so it's the
Speaker 5: same legal process we've had for decades at the border,
Speaker 5: where people have a right to seek asylum, whether they
Speaker 5: enter at a port of entry or not. And the
Speaker 5: real controversy here is the fact that border patrol is
Speaker 5: holding people outdoors for days at a time without the
Speaker 5: things that they need to survive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to get back to that claid that
Speaker 1: he made right that the county paid for it. We
Speaker 1: got some video of him making that claim, so we'll
Speaker 1: just play it here.
Speaker 8: As we look inside this abandoned tents, there's a sandwich
Speaker 8: left in a baggy, there's water with bananas, ponchos, crackers, snacks, waters,
Speaker 8: and this tent is empty.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's just the same way.
Speaker 5: There's no one here yet.
Speaker 3: Probably in the next day or.
Speaker 8: So, there'll be more migrants coming inhabiting Nessa and then
Speaker 8: being process for San Diego County, being paid for with
Speaker 8: San Diego.
Speaker 1: Tax So in the caption that accompanied this video, he wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: during my recent boarder visit, I encountered an abandoned campsite
Speaker 1: filled with tents, food, drinks, and campfires, paid for by
Speaker 1: San Diego County taxpayers. This site is used as a
Speaker 1: temporary holding site before migrants and then processed into our country.
Speaker 1: And this like gets to the thing I think that
Speaker 1: lewis where he like bullshitted too close to the sun,
Speaker 1: because none of that, as you said, was paid for
Speaker 1: by taxpayers, right, all of that was paid for by
Speaker 1: yeah people like nonprofit to each aid people.
Speaker 2: And can you give a sense of the amount.
Speaker 1: Of spending that Alotrolado has had to take on to
Speaker 1: make these open air prisidents like survivable for people, and
Speaker 1: even still they're deeply unpleasant even with all the work.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So we have acted as a fiscal sponsor for a
Speaker 5: lot of the smaller groups because we are able to
Speaker 5: receive foundation funding as a five H one C three
Speaker 5: and so we've used that legal status to support a
Speaker 5: lot of the mutual aid groups that have been spending
Speaker 5: tens of thousands of dollars. But I've gone through the
Speaker 5: budgets and we've spent an average of about one hundred
Speaker 5: and fifty thousand dollars per month, which is a lot
Speaker 5: for us. But when you look at the Department of
Speaker 5: Homeland Security, which should be spending this money, they have
Speaker 5: one hundred and seventy billion dollar budget for twenty twenty three.
Speaker 5: I think it's even higher for a fiscal year twenty
Speaker 5: twenty four, So it's really you know, probably what they
Speaker 5: spend on one of those autonomous surveillance towers that are
Speaker 5: sitting in the camps in like a day, right, So
Speaker 5: it's really nothing for them. You know, it's very clear
Speaker 5: that they're making a choice to leave these really vulnerable
Speaker 5: migrants to potentially die in the desert. And then when
Speaker 5: we look at the county funding, you know, they've allocated
Speaker 5: now six million dollars to this welcome center, which you know,
Speaker 5: we'll talk about in more detail, but it's really providing
Speaker 5: woefully inadequate services to the same population that's going through
Speaker 5: these open air detention sites after they've been released from
Speaker 5: Border Patrol custody. So again it's like it's a lot
Speaker 5: of money for us, it's not a lot of money
Speaker 5: for the county. I would love it if the county
Speaker 5: would pay for it, if they've stated on multiple occasions
Speaker 5: if they will not. It's been pure philanthropic funding and donations.
Speaker 5: But yeah, I mean we've been able to do a
Speaker 5: lot with very little, and it really was the bare
Speaker 5: minimum to keep people alive. So yeah, if we had
Speaker 5: an actual junion of county funding, I'm sure we could
Speaker 5: have done a lot more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like even we don't have access to the
Speaker 1: things that government has access to, right Like, normally in
Speaker 1: a refugee situation, we'd have UNHCR tents, we'd have humanitarian
Speaker 1: MRIs like we had to buy those. On this we
Speaker 1: couldn't get the tents and we end the MRIs. We
Speaker 1: had to find on the surplus market, right like, we can't.
Speaker 1: The state could do more for less, but they're very
Speaker 1: much choosing not to, as you said, So what the
Speaker 1: result of this was rather amusing a number of people
Speaker 1: from mutual A groups, including friends of ours from free
Speaker 1: Ship Collective, took to Desmond to office with literal receipts
Speaker 1: right like receipts. Yes, yeah, it was a tremendous moment.
Speaker 1: And we don't mean receipts like in the figure difference.
Speaker 1: We need like pieces of paper from Costco.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh yeah no.
Speaker 5: And the fact is, you know, within a number of hours,
Speaker 5: the folks from Free Shit Collective and others were able
Speaker 5: to just pull together over sixteen thousand dollars in receipts.
Speaker 5: And that's, like I mentioned, a small fraction of what
Speaker 5: we've actually been spending. That's probably just their receipts from
Speaker 5: the week. And so again for us, it's like that's
Speaker 5: an enormous lift. I know, we're all exhausted, those of
Speaker 5: us who have been working in the open air detention sites.
Speaker 5: It's exhausting to be there all the time. It's exhausting
Speaker 5: to try to raise enough money to keep thousands and
Speaker 5: thousands of people alive when they're forced into a deadly situation.
Speaker 5: And so it's I think we were all pretty pissed
Speaker 5: off when we heard him taking credit for that, even
Speaker 5: if he was trying to denigrate, you know, the idea
Speaker 5: of spending money on refugees.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, Like it's funny because he'll also say, like
Speaker 1: it's inhumane, it's unacceptable, But like if you're not going
Speaker 1: to do anything to stop the humanity, the inhumanity, like
Speaker 1: I don't really find that a very believable claim, Like
Speaker 1: he was literally standing Willows, so like less than a
Speaker 1: mile from where we spend that day making sandwiches and
Speaker 1: cooking beans and doing the things we do every day
Speaker 1: sorting out coats, you know, And he could have come helped,
Speaker 1: or even just come and said, what you guys are
Speaker 1: doing is great, but he chose not to. He just
Speaker 1: stood in front of his whoever was filming him alied.
Speaker 5: His proposed solution is to close the border, which he
Speaker 5: knows is not an option because the Refugee Convention is
Speaker 5: still a thing. The US is still a signatory. You know,
Speaker 5: we have legal obligations under both domestic and international law
Speaker 5: to accept asylum seekers in our country. And so you know,
Speaker 5: his solution to the inhumanity is to push people back
Speaker 5: over the Mexican border, where you know they're subject to
Speaker 5: all manner of state and criminal violence. So I don't
Speaker 5: think the inhumanity is really his priority to address. It's
Speaker 5: really again just like throwing red meat to the base
Speaker 5: to you know, this open border's hysteria that they all
Speaker 5: love to cite.
Speaker 1: Yeah, talking of hysteria, we should take a little break
Speaker 1: for some adverts for things that might try to get
Speaker 1: you to buy them by making your freight, and you shouldn't.
Speaker 1: We are back, and yeah, I want to talk a
Speaker 1: little more about that. Like, is this idea of a
Speaker 1: closed boarder you see a lot mostly from Republicans right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's like you say, it's not only legally impossible, but
Speaker 1: it's also like physically impossible.
Speaker 5: And we.
Speaker 1: People enter the US through gaps in the border war
Speaker 1: when people enter the US through gaps in the border wall,
Speaker 1: I should add, because we've made it virtually impossible for
Speaker 1: them to get asylum appointments in a reasonable timeframe and
Speaker 1: to be in a place that's safe while they make
Speaker 1: those appointments. And so like the idea that we could
Speaker 1: how do we close you know, like the physical border?
Speaker 5: Well just yeah, I mean I just want to take
Speaker 5: a step back for one second, because this sort of
Speaker 5: Biden's open borders hysteria that we've heard so much from
Speaker 5: the right wing, I think it's worth unpacking what this
Speaker 5: means because I've seen, you know, people in the Democratic
Speaker 5: Party or even people on the left really shy away
Speaker 5: from this idea of open borders. And when those of
Speaker 5: us who have first world passports already have a world
Speaker 5: of open borders. I mean, we can pretty much go
Speaker 5: wherever we want, you know, we gentrify O their countries
Speaker 5: to their detriment, Like it's not there really are not
Speaker 5: many restrictions on first world citizens moving around the world.
Speaker 5: So I think that's one important thing to consider as
Speaker 5: we're kind of launching into this discussion. It's like open
Speaker 5: borders are okay for me, but not for brown people.
Speaker 5: Like yeah, so little, you know, And that's kind of
Speaker 5: the underlying impetus behind a lot of what we're going
Speaker 5: to talk about in San Diego County. It's like people
Speaker 5: this underlying idea that people should not have the right
Speaker 5: to come here, which is just ludicrous. So I think
Speaker 5: that's one thing. But when we're talking about asylum in particular,
Speaker 5: you know, like I mentioned earlier, we are signatories Refugee
Speaker 5: Convention and the subsequent nineteen sixty seven Protocol. This has
Speaker 5: been enshrined in domestic law in the nineteen eighty Refugee Act,
Speaker 5: and so refugees who are people outside of their country
Speaker 5: of origin fleeing persecution have the right to ask for
Speaker 5: protection at the US Mexico border, whether it's at a
Speaker 5: port of entry or between ports of entry. So those
Speaker 5: in Hakumba and these other open air detention sites are
Speaker 5: those crossing between ports of entry because it's been made
Speaker 5: impossible to approach the port of entry and seek US island.
Speaker 5: And this is something that our organization has been litigating
Speaker 5: for years. You know, at first people were just being
Speaker 5: turned away. Then there was a waiting list in Mexico,
Speaker 5: and now they have this stupid app that's just like
Speaker 5: glitches and there's no enough appointments and people have to
Speaker 5: wait for months in Mexico just to get an appointment
Speaker 5: if they're one of the lucky ones who can. The
Speaker 5: app's also been hacked by organized crime. You know, certain
Speaker 5: nationalities are able to pay for appointments. It's just it's
Speaker 5: a complete mess. It has nothing to do with this ideal.
Speaker 5: You know that the Refugee conventionment is supposed to enshrine.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 5: Regardless of you know, all of the illegal things the
Speaker 5: US government is doing, like you cannot close a border
Speaker 5: to assylum seekers without withdrawing from the Refugee Convention. And
Speaker 5: I just really don't see that happening for our country,
Speaker 5: just because we like to, you know, talk about how
Speaker 5: we're abastioned for human rights et cetera, which you know,
Speaker 5: that's a whole other podcast I think about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, break that down a little bit. But I think
Speaker 1: one thing that you said that I want to talk
Speaker 1: about is that you said that open borders or like
Speaker 1: free travel for brown people is something that a lot
Speaker 1: of more privileged folks, especially in San Diego or even
Speaker 1: in San Diego, should say, are uncomfortable with.
Speaker 2: I think we really saw, like.
Speaker 1: It's not just skin color, but it's really hard for
Speaker 1: me to see skin color not playing a large role
Speaker 1: when I see people from Africa, people from South America
Speaker 1: waiting for months, if not years, and then people from
Speaker 1: Ukraine coming when the largest scale conflict in Ukraine began
Speaker 1: and effectively skipping the line. Right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So when the Ukrainians all came through Tijuana, I
Speaker 5: think there were maybe twenty thousand or so who came
Speaker 5: through in a period of a month. That was during
Speaker 5: Title forty two, which was a Trump ara policy that
Speaker 5: closed the border to asylum seekers based on public health reasons,
Speaker 5: but really it was because they wanted to close the
Speaker 5: border to asylum seekers, and so there were very few
Speaker 5: humanitarian exemptions granted to Title forty two at that time.
Speaker 5: But at the time the Ukrainians came, that exemption process
Speaker 5: had actually been shut down for quite a while. So
Speaker 5: I was watching people die in Tijuana because they didn't
Speaker 5: have access to the US asylum system. I remember when
Speaker 5: the Ukrainians came, there was a child who caught an
Speaker 5: ammonia in one of the shelters. It was like a
Speaker 5: month's old baby who died. And then when the Ukrainians came,
Speaker 5: you know, the doors were flung open for them. CBP,
Speaker 5: which up until that point said they did not have
Speaker 5: capacity to process asylum seekers. They were processing Ukrainians at
Speaker 5: a clip of one thousand a day, and it was
Speaker 5: heartbreaking to see. And you know, after they shut off
Speaker 5: the spicket for the Ukrainians, after they stopped letting them
Speaker 5: in at the border, CBP said they only had capacity
Speaker 5: to process a few dozen non white asylum seekers, and
Speaker 5: so all of a sudden, their capacity was just gone.
Speaker 5: It was, you know, it just it was so transparent
Speaker 5: and so blatant and so hurtful for people who've been
Speaker 5: suffering at that point for years with the silent system
Speaker 5: closed off to them.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was really hard to see that and to
Speaker 1: know the people, the people who I guess effectively they
Speaker 1: lost their place in line, right, a lot of people
Speaker 1: cut in front of them, And to a large degree,
Speaker 1: it's still much easier. Right, we're under title eight again
Speaker 1: now not Title forty two. But it's still much easier
Speaker 1: for wealthy white people to get appointments using CBP one
Speaker 1: than it is for poor and non white people, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because especially when the app was first launched, there's
Speaker 5: a point in the appointment process during which you have
Speaker 5: to take a photo of yourself and it mass your
Speaker 5: face for facial recognition purposes, and it wasn't working on
Speaker 5: really dark skinned people. You know, a few of the
Speaker 5: organizations working in Mexico had to buy the construction style
Speaker 5: lights to shine on people's faces so that it would
Speaker 5: photo to pick them up. But just even like you
Speaker 5: have to have a new phone, I think they probably
Speaker 5: made the app to work on an iPhone, which most
Speaker 5: people outside the United States don't have.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's like I've got a tip on that
Speaker 1: I've not been able to confirm it, but someone at
Speaker 1: the Ice Store told the Ice Store the Apple Store
Speaker 1: told me that it wasn't working on certain Samsung and
Speaker 1: Huawei phones and that they were having people come in
Speaker 1: and buy like the cheapest iPhone they could in bulk
Speaker 1: to try and access it.
Speaker 5: Well, we keep iPhones in our office in Tikwana exactly
Speaker 5: for that reason, because you know, people need to be
Speaker 5: able to access the app. But now the well, the
Speaker 5: app has been hacked for a while. So there's some
Speaker 5: groups that work mostly I would say with Russian asylum seekers.
Speaker 5: They're charging I think around between five hundred and one
Speaker 5: thousand for an appointment, maybe more sometimes I'm not sure
Speaker 5: exactly how they're doing it. I know also there's been
Speaker 5: some hacking of the geolocation features, so these criminal groups
Speaker 5: are selling appointments to people who haven't even left their
Speaker 5: home country. And meanwhile, you know, the shelters on the
Speaker 5: border are full of people with crappy phones and a
Speaker 5: week internet connection who wait for months and months and months,
Speaker 5: while the richer people who are paying for nice phones
Speaker 5: and appointments are able to get through much more quickly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's made of a fucked up system. Even more
Speaker 1: fucked up they designed it in house as well, which
Speaker 1: you know they are paid to have over estimated their
Speaker 1: abilities there. One day, I'll get my foyers back about
Speaker 1: cepp one and it will probably be some point in
Speaker 1: the middle of the next presidential administration, which will make
Speaker 1: them fey relevant and really freaking annoying.
Speaker 5: But well, we're suing about it, so it'll probably be
Speaker 5: a few years before we get to discovery.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we'll have a race.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but you are assuming that they want the system
Speaker 5: to work, which they don't.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 5: So in that sense, it's working perfectly.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, And it's doing in a sense what like
Speaker 1: the unofficial and of tone of immigration policy has always been,
Speaker 1: which is that like, it's fine for wealthy white people
Speaker 1: to come here, but we want to limit the number
Speaker 1: of non white and non wealthy people who come here.
Speaker 1: And like they can say out loud, like and maybe
Speaker 1: we should talk about this now. The difference between Trump
Speaker 1: and Biden is Trump just said it and Biden didn't.
Speaker 1: And when Trump said it, like wealth well meaning liberals
Speaker 1: in the Midwest gave a shit and sent money. Like
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen, things were very bad in Tijuana, right
Speaker 1: with the people staying in the Elberatal, but like at
Speaker 1: least people in America cared and sent money so we
Speaker 1: could help. Whereas now, like you know, major outlets who
Speaker 1: have given ten front page stories to accusations of one
Speaker 1: woman plagiarizing and a dissertation that she wrote years ago,
Speaker 1: haven't written a single piece about the open air concentration
Speaker 1: camps that our government has in the Cumber in other places.
Speaker 5: Well, not just that, I mean the media by and
Speaker 5: large has allowed this right wing narrative of open borders
Speaker 5: to take over, even though the policies are largely identical
Speaker 5: to the Trump administration. Right so they're even talking about
Speaker 5: now bringing back a Title forty two type restriction that
Speaker 5: would turn away asylum seekers and send them back to Mexico.
Speaker 5: We have the asylum ban, which is very similar to
Speaker 5: the one that was litigated under the Trump administration. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's just, you know, family separation. Maybe it's not the
Speaker 5: minor children being taken away, but still thousands of families
Speaker 5: being separated. I think there's a couple things like one
Speaker 5: is just people hate when Trump does it, but they
Speaker 5: don't hate when Biden does it. It's one, yeah, but also,
Speaker 5: like you said, Trump says the quiet part out loud
Speaker 5: and so people respond to that. Whereas Biden has co
Speaker 5: opted the immigrant rights movement by putting us in a
Speaker 5: stakeholder relationship. And I can see amongst some of my
Speaker 5: colleagues that they value access to power more than the
Speaker 5: rights of the people that we are supposed to serve,
Speaker 5: and so they will go along with a lot of
Speaker 5: this stuff and you know, basically enable it in many
Speaker 5: ways just to maintain that access to power. And I've
Speaker 5: seen some of my colleagues who you know, we were
Speaker 5: all finding on the same side during the Trump administration
Speaker 5: have actually gone into the Biden administration that are implementing
Speaker 5: these policies, and so it's you know, it's it's really
Speaker 5: like pretty horrifying to see. And also I would say
Speaker 5: that people in the Biden administration are in many ways
Speaker 5: smarter because it was easier to litigate under the Trump admission,
Speaker 5: we could knock down a lot of these policies because
Speaker 5: they were just dumb, not well written. You know, it's
Speaker 5: like clearly unconstitutional. You know, they learned lessons during the
Speaker 5: monuments or during the Trump administration, so now the policies
Speaker 5: are written in a way that are that make it
Speaker 5: much more difficult to litigate. And the Supreme Court in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty two, in a decision called Ale Mang Gonzalez
Speaker 5: made it impossible to get class wide injunctive relief for
Speaker 5: violations of immigration law. So what that means is that
Speaker 5: dhs can violate the law and there's no way to
Speaker 5: stop them from doing so on a large scale in
Speaker 5: the courts, and they are banking on that when in
Speaker 5: current litigation, they literally are relying on that to continue
Speaker 5: breaking the law, especially when it comes to turning asylum
Speaker 5: seekers away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and something else that Testament has asked for is
Speaker 1: he wants them to turn asylum seekers away before they
Speaker 1: get to the border and then quite understand what they
Speaker 1: like that would be inside Mexico.
Speaker 5: Which well, that's what Mexico is doing right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, they're like I was in Coocomber, like
Speaker 1: on Friday Thursday, and they get National Guard or like
Speaker 1: sitting at the little gaps in the wall.
Speaker 5: I mean you've seen it too. You see National Guard,
Speaker 5: Mexican National Guard drive up, they kind of check out
Speaker 5: the situation and leave, and then the travel agents come
Speaker 5: and drop off the migrants. And so it's something very
Speaker 5: much that can be controlled to a great extent within Mexico,
Speaker 5: and the US is very obviously, you know, working with
Speaker 5: Mexico publicly obviously working with Mexico to stop migrants from
Speaker 5: reaching the US Mexico border, and working with countries further
Speaker 5: south to stop people from reaching the US Mexico border.
Speaker 5: So this is definitely a regional project.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one thing I want to talk about is as
Speaker 1: people come through those countries further south, and there's this
Speaker 1: like in recent days, even like we're recording this on
Speaker 1: on Monday, people hear it on Wednesday. But I've seen
Speaker 1: this narrative and I think it's coming from the fact
Speaker 1: that funding for Ukraine was tied to funding for the border,
Speaker 1: and people have lost their minds over the conflict in
Speaker 1: Ukraine and and and they have silly dog pictures on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and and it'd become a replacement for a personality for
Speaker 1: a certain type of divorce guy. Like so like that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the army of divorced dads has like turned on the border.
Speaker 1: And like one of the things you'll say is like, oh,
Speaker 1: like the border is like a like like this is
Speaker 1: how bad actors are getting in the US, you know,
Speaker 1: like you know, har Mass again, like the Hamas are
Speaker 1: really otherwise engaged in the minute. But like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like there's a whole lot of people who would love
Speaker 1: to leave Gaza and and we absolutely should welcome those
Speaker 1: people here, but they can't and that's fucked up. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this idea that like isis hamas the Russian secret of
Speaker 1: the Russian FSB. I'm sure someone will have suggested, like
Speaker 1: North Korea or the PC are coming through Haucumber as well,
Speaker 1: like they seem it seems to admit, admit what happens
Speaker 1: to people entering Mexico and indeed other countries further south, right, Like,
Speaker 1: can you explain how people think the thing that the
Speaker 1: US is the only state with a capacity for surveillance,
Speaker 1: which is manifestly untrue? Can you explain how people are
Speaker 1: like surveiled and like make legible on their way north?
Speaker 5: There are multiple multilateral and bilateral information sharing agreements that
Speaker 5: connect to criminal and quote unquote intelligence databases. So when
Speaker 5: you are traveling internationally, you are subject to a web
Speaker 5: of surveillance that is, you know, in many ways connected
Speaker 5: to the United States. So the US government those you're coming,
Speaker 5: like you know, when you are countries away just by
Speaker 5: virtual using a passport. But then for people who are
Speaker 5: traveling through a regular means, there's also a web of
Speaker 5: biometric collection stations that have been set up by the
Speaker 5: Department of Homeland Security, most notably north of the Darien Gap,
Speaker 5: and so extra continental migrants, those from outside of the Americas,
Speaker 5: as well as some Venezuelans and a few other nationalities,
Speaker 5: have their fingerprints taken Irish scans pictures taking for facial recognition,
Speaker 5: and that is entered into a database that is shared
Speaker 5: directly with the US government. There's several other bilateral information
Speaker 5: sharing agreements that are focused particularly on biometrics, with several
Speaker 5: Central American countries and with Mexico obviously, and Mexico has
Speaker 5: just insane enforcement in southern Mexico. If you've ever tried
Speaker 5: to travel over land from top of Toula in Mexico City,
Speaker 5: you will go through numerous checkpoints where you know your
Speaker 5: information is taken. You know, a lot of times you're
Speaker 5: just paying a bribe to keep going. But it's something
Speaker 5: where you know they know who's coming. That's why you
Speaker 5: hear all the time in the media like this, many
Speaker 5: people are coming through the dairy and Gap. How do
Speaker 5: they know that, Well, they have these biometric you know,
Speaker 5: information collection stations. But I think just more broadly, like
Speaker 5: coming through the southern border as a refugee or just
Speaker 5: as a migrant is probably the stupidest way to come
Speaker 5: into the United States if you are trying to, you know,
Speaker 5: do a terrorist attack. Because like border patrol, despite what
Speaker 5: they like to say, they are not overwhelmed. You know,
Speaker 5: if you divide the number of coming over by the
Speaker 5: number of agents, it's far less than one migrant per
Speaker 5: agent per day, So they have a pretty good lock
Speaker 5: on the border. There's not a lot of people getting
Speaker 5: through undetected. Those who turn themselves in, which is the
Speaker 5: vast majority of people, they are subject to all of
Speaker 5: the same surveillance and security checks I just mentioned. They
Speaker 5: get their DNA sample taken at the border, they give
Speaker 5: all of their information, and then they are not let
Speaker 5: out of custody if they trigger any kind of security flag,
Speaker 5: and it can just be like they're from Yemen, they're
Speaker 5: from Afghanistan.
Speaker 3: Sometimes they're just detained because of that.
Speaker 5: But any of those if any of those checks are triggered,
Speaker 5: they're detained for the duration of proceedings. They never see
Speaker 5: that outside of a prison. So this idea that terrorists
Speaker 5: are sneaking over the border is frankly stupid. I think,
Speaker 5: you know, if we think back to nine to eleven.
Speaker 5: I think they all came on visas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and like.
Speaker 1: The system makes it so much easier for someone who
Speaker 1: is wealthy and white and otherwise privileged to come to
Speaker 1: this country that like it's ridiculous to think that a
Speaker 1: state actor like Russia wouldn't take advantage of that, rather
Speaker 1: than yeah, yeah, attempting to walk someone through the border
Speaker 1: where they're about to like encounter some of the most
Speaker 1: intense state surveillance that can happen to a person, and.
Speaker 5: You start off in a prison, So like, why would
Speaker 5: you do that? You may never believe it any sense. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it doesn't make any sense. I'm sure there's like, you know,
Speaker 5: some people who have ties to foreign intelligence. Sure, I
Speaker 5: mean it could happen, but it's like, so the number
Speaker 5: is so vanangially small. And I think another important thing
Speaker 5: to note is when people are processed, they have an
Speaker 5: obligation to attend an immigration court hearing. And when I
Speaker 5: looked at the statistics for Russian asylum seekers in particular,
Speaker 5: because I've seen a lot of this rhetoric of like
Speaker 5: Russia sending spies over the border, So ninety eight point
Speaker 5: five percent of them show up to their immigration court hearings.
Speaker 5: Are you going to do that if you're you're gonna
Speaker 5: subject yourself to another round of security checks and you know,
Speaker 5: spill your entire asylum story, subject yourself to cross examination.
Speaker 5: No you're not. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: People have watched that film, the TV series The Americans
Speaker 1: a little too much losing their minds. Okay, So I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really important to also point out, like when we're
Speaker 1: talking about the potential for bad actors. So yeah, like sure,
Speaker 1: maybe there's someone who's come who's done something bad, or
Speaker 1: maybe there's someone who comes who will do something bad.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that everyone else who came is in
Speaker 1: any way complicit in that, Like we haven't given them
Speaker 1: another way to come here. It's not like they had
Speaker 1: to take the bad guy route because they chose to.
Speaker 1: Like you, no one would be picking up their children
Speaker 1: and walking across the desert and then spending sometimes up
Speaker 1: to a week in camps which are currently below freezing
Speaker 1: at night, sometimes with you know, like a blanket or
Speaker 1: like a tent, or maybe it woulden't shelter with their luck.
Speaker 1: No one will be doing that if there was an
Speaker 1: easier option and it's ludicristic like claim that these people's
Speaker 1: asylum claims or the fact that they should be welcome
Speaker 1: here is in any way impacted by the actions of
Speaker 1: somebody else who might have taken the same.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean the other thing too, is just because the
Speaker 5: border is still closed off by policies that restrict access
Speaker 5: to asylum, it has super charged the strength of criminal
Speaker 5: groups that bring people to the border. And I will
Speaker 5: say that they are spreading a lot of misinformation.
Speaker 3: You know, they use this.
Speaker 5: Reporting from the right wing calling the border open to
Speaker 5: advertise their services, and they might very well tell people
Speaker 5: that it's a lot easier than it actually is, and
Speaker 5: that they have an easier chance to get asylum than
Speaker 5: they actually do. I mean, I don't discount the power
Speaker 5: of misinformation, but those I have seen over the past
Speaker 5: six seven years, especially since the Trump administration really tried
Speaker 5: to close off access to asylum, I've seen those groups
Speaker 5: grow in power. I've seen the price that people pay
Speaker 5: to cross the border grow both financially and just in
Speaker 5: the amount of suffering that they have to endure. So
Speaker 5: when we talk about border security and national security, I
Speaker 5: would argue that border restrictions actually make us much less
Speaker 5: safe because you know, criminal groups now completely control the border,
Speaker 5: whereas you know, a decade ago, even a person who
Speaker 5: just wanted to cross the border on their own could
Speaker 5: do so, you know, if they knew the way, they
Speaker 5: could just try to cross. And now if you try
Speaker 5: to do that without paying the criminal groups who really
Speaker 5: control it, you will get be killed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's happened multiple times in the last few months.
Speaker 1: We'll talk of misleading advertising planes. We have to to
Speaker 1: take short break to hear home with them, and we'll
Speaker 1: be back in a moment. Okay, we're back. And one
Speaker 1: thing that I want to talk about that we haven't
Speaker 1: got too yet is that, like the the failed government
Speaker 1: response isn't just federal or well, it's both federal and local.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to talk a little bit about this.
Speaker 1: That the federal funding that San Diego County got, that
Speaker 1: it reallocated towards a quote unquote welcome center. Right, So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're both very familiar with the welcome center it got.
Speaker 1: It got three million dollars initially and then got it
Speaker 1: got three million more because apparently none of us are
Speaker 1: doing anything useful anywhere else and don't merit any help,
Speaker 1: and do you want to talk first of all about
Speaker 1: just like what the conditions are like. You've just come
Speaker 1: out of being detained in the desert for maybe up
Speaker 1: to a week. It's cold, We feed you, but like
Speaker 1: we wish we could feed you more and better. You
Speaker 1: don't have a change of clothes. Right, then you've been detained.
Speaker 1: You could have been detained for one night, two nights,
Speaker 1: severne more nights, and then you hit this well consenter.
Speaker 1: So can you, like, I can think how we would
Speaker 1: like to treat people who have just been through all that,
Speaker 1: But can you explain to us how people are treated
Speaker 1: when they when they arrive at a welcome center.
Speaker 5: Well, it's they're not arriving there. They're picked up from
Speaker 5: detention by the nonprofit that's administering the welcome center in
Speaker 5: what look like prison buses, right, I mean it's I
Speaker 5: can't I can't imagine that someone getting on one of
Speaker 5: those buses understands that they're not just at another stage
Speaker 5: of detention. Right. So they get to this fenced in,
Speaker 5: abandoned school, they are lined up and they're forced to
Speaker 5: give all of their information to the nonprofit workers. They
Speaker 5: are you know, mostly not spent I think maybe like
Speaker 5: forty percent Spanish speakers. I'm sure the exact percentage, but
Speaker 5: if there's people from all over the world, there's no
Speaker 5: paid interpreters on site, and so you know they do.
Speaker 5: You have this little script that they read in the
Speaker 5: beginning saying like you're not detained, like this is a
Speaker 5: welcome center whatever, but they run it through Google Translate
Speaker 5: and then play the Google Translate like over the megaphone,
Speaker 5: which it's like, have you ever tried to like understand
Speaker 5: someone screaming something into a megaphone, never mind the fact
Speaker 5: that it's like Mandarin Google Translate. Like people, I guarantee
Speaker 5: you they still think they're in prison. And so then
Speaker 5: they go they have to sometimes wait for hours in
Speaker 5: this intake line. Only then they're given a ticket to
Speaker 5: eat the like probably some of the worst food I've
Speaker 5: ever seen, Like, you know, people are not eating a
Speaker 5: lot when they're at the opening attention sites, and then
Speaker 5: they're really not eating a lot when they're in attention
Speaker 5: And I've seen people refuse the food there because it's
Speaker 5: that bad. And it's like they're standing in a line
Speaker 5: for hours, not having eat and probably not having slept,
Speaker 5: and god knows how long, yeah, you know, having this
Speaker 5: garbled message played to them over a megaphon own So anyway,
Speaker 5: they get through all that, and then they're told they
Speaker 5: have to make their own way, you know, to their sponsor,
Speaker 5: and those who don't have the money to do so
Speaker 5: are provided with I think it's up to maybe two
Speaker 5: or three days of shelter or a hotel room before
Speaker 5: they are shipped off to another part of the country.
Speaker 5: And so the goal of the welcome center is to
Speaker 5: get rid of the migrants, to get them elsewhere. So,
Speaker 5: you know, ninety five percent to ninety nine percent do
Speaker 5: have a place to go. They don't all have the
Speaker 5: means to get there, but most of them do, almost
Speaker 5: all have the means to get there. The other few,
Speaker 5: like the other you know, one to five percent, they
Speaker 5: need help. They need you know, maybe a place to
Speaker 5: stay for a couple of months, they need help getting
Speaker 5: a work permit. They might need help, you know, applying
Speaker 5: for asylum. But instead of investing in the resources that
Speaker 5: we need locally to help them, they're shipped off to
Speaker 5: New York, Chicago or other places is that have invested
Speaker 5: in those resources. And that's really the same thing Greg
Speaker 5: Abbott was doing from Texas. But you know, we're just
Speaker 5: putting a nicer.
Speaker 7: We call it a welcome sentence yah, yeah, somewhere better
Speaker 7: yeah yeah, and the Welcome Center, Like we could go
Speaker 7: deeper into its funding, but I think it's fair to
Speaker 7: say that, like it's for one thing, it's doing things
Speaker 7: that CBP.
Speaker 1: Should do right, like a transport specifically.
Speaker 5: Transport specifically, but also like this idea of doing an
Speaker 5: intake with every single person who comes through there is
Speaker 5: such a waste of money because it's like it's infantilizing.
Speaker 5: These people have traveled across the world. You think they
Speaker 5: can't get to the airport on their own. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 5: it doesn't focus resources on that, you know, one to
Speaker 5: five percent of people who really do need help. It
Speaker 5: wastes resources on people who really don't. They need Wi Fi,
Speaker 5: they need a phone charger, yeah, and maybe like a
Speaker 5: hard email. You know, they're getting the Wi Fi and
Speaker 5: the phone charger, which is not provided by the organization
Speaker 5: that receives six million dollars. It's provided by one of
Speaker 5: the few organizations, including my own, who are there providing
Speaker 5: services without county funding. Because we didn't want to be
Speaker 5: associated with this debacle.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And another thing you do is family reunification there, right,
Speaker 1: you guys are helping take care of that.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Again, I think people aren't aware that families need to
Speaker 1: be reunified, but they're still very much separated when they're
Speaker 1: in detention.
Speaker 5: Well, they're separated at open air detention sites, they're separated
Speaker 5: in detention. We've documented since September. I think it's over
Speaker 5: eleven hundred families now that have been separated. Almost half
Speaker 5: of them are spousal separations, but a lot of times,
Speaker 5: when you know, wife and husband are separated, the kids
Speaker 5: are with one spouse or another, so you know, technically
Speaker 5: it's a separation of a child. We see a lot
Speaker 5: of separations of like eighteen year old children from the
Speaker 5: rest of their families where they're sent to detention facilities
Speaker 5: and the rest of the family's released. So all you know,
Speaker 5: grandma from grandkids or needs a nephew, siblings, separations. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's all traumatic, right, it's just not the particular brand
Speaker 5: of Trump separation that people seem to care.
Speaker 2: About, right yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they quote unquote kids in cages.
Speaker 5: Right yeah, oh they're still on the cage, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, or the dad but not both.
Speaker 1: Sometimes God, yeah, it's it's equally it's equally tragic, but
Speaker 1: it's more tragic that somehow we've normalized it. And like
Speaker 1: with this immigration stuff only seems to be able to
Speaker 1: ratchet one way and it's further towards like insane degrees
Speaker 1: of cruelty, right, Like, Yeah, the fact that Biden is
Speaker 1: doing what Trump did doesn't mean that Trump will do
Speaker 1: what Biden did if Trump is elected again, right, Like,
Speaker 1: somehow they will find a way to make this even worse.
Speaker 5: Oh, absolutely, And I think the open air detention insights
Speaker 5: our preview of what we'll see. You know, it's this
Speaker 5: idea of it being normal to deny people food, water, shelter,
Speaker 5: and medical care because they, you know, committed this awful
Speaker 5: crime of crossing the border, which is like a misdemeanor,
Speaker 5: by the way, and it's not even supposed to be
Speaker 5: illegal if you're seeking the asylum. The Refugee Convention actually
Speaker 5: prohibits criminal prosecution of of folks who cross borders irregularly
Speaker 5: to seek asylum, and by and large, the US attorneys,
Speaker 5: at least during the Biden administration, have stuck to that.
Speaker 5: You know, if you're arrested for crossing irregularly and you
Speaker 5: then apply for asylum. Generally the charges will be dropped.
Speaker 5: So but like this invader rhetoric right, like, oh, they're
Speaker 5: invading our country and whatever, the white replacement theory, all
Speaker 5: of that is really driving this really normalization of the
Speaker 5: inhumane treatment of border crossers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the point you made about that, Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: cross between ports of entry and they claim asylum, and
Speaker 1: it's one that seems to be completely missing from their discussion.
Speaker 1: Like I've seen countless times I've seen that like misrepresented
Speaker 1: in other articles and it's.
Speaker 5: In almost every single one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really disappointed, Like I have very little respect
Speaker 1: left to lose for other people who work, Like especially
Speaker 1: folks who wish to report on the border without visiting
Speaker 1: the border, are just like, what are you sparing yourself
Speaker 1: to trauma of seeing little children staying outside? Because like
Speaker 1: their trauma is much greater than yours, you know, and
Speaker 1: the things that they're coming away from are much greater
Speaker 1: than any trauma you're going to take on. I understand
Speaker 1: it's not very nice, but like we should phrase up
Speaker 1: to the not very nice things so that country does well.
Speaker 5: You're also members of Congress who legislate on the border
Speaker 5: or trade away the rights of asylum seekers without ever
Speaker 5: having met any of them. And those who do come
Speaker 5: to the border just go on the border patrol tour
Speaker 5: and don't actually talk to the migrants, and so that's
Speaker 5: even worse, you know. But yeah, I agree, like this
Speaker 5: idea that they're illegal is completely wrong. They're inn illegal process.
Speaker 5: They're not prosecuted for illegal entry by and large, you know,
Speaker 5: unless they've tried multiple times, and even then if they
Speaker 5: pass a credible fear interview, a lot of times those
Speaker 5: criminal charges are dropped, and so they're not illegal. This
Speaker 5: is a legal process. It's a legal way to access
Speaker 5: that process, especially when the ports of entry have been
Speaker 5: closed off to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think they've done to enter the US
Speaker 1: or get any part of their journey disqualifies them from asylum.
Speaker 1: As you say, it makes it like a quote unquote
Speaker 1: illegal which is just kind of loaded language anyway. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they've taken every step to take to make a legal
Speaker 1: asylum claim, and lots of them will be like extremely
Speaker 1: aware of having done that, like not wanting to, Like
Speaker 1: if people wanted to walk out of the they open
Speaker 1: their attention sites, they could that they're not quote unquote detained, right,
Speaker 1: But like people are so cautious that they don't want
Speaker 1: to do anything that might imperil their asylum.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's really sad because they already have by
Speaker 5: crossing the border between ports of entry. That's what Biden's
Speaker 5: asylum ban addresses. Yeah, and so they're sort of coming
Speaker 5: from a defensive posture with respect to their eligibility for
Speaker 5: asylum by virtue of having done that. But the criminal
Speaker 5: groups that are organizing their transport tell them that that's
Speaker 5: the legal way. And people who are coming into open
Speaker 5: air detention sites believe they are following a legal process,
Speaker 5: which you know, they are to a certain extent, but
Speaker 5: there's definitely legal consequences for having access the system that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, even though like, yeah, many of these people,
Speaker 1: like I have sat with dozens of people, maybe hundreds
Speaker 1: of people, as they've explained to me the amount of
Speaker 1: time CBP one crashed on their phone, their attempts to
Speaker 1: go to the US embassy in a city that might
Speaker 1: not be safe for them, or to like transit through it.
Speaker 1: You know, look at a regime that wants them dead.
Speaker 1: You know, hundreds of Kurdish people have shared with me
Speaker 1: that they've tried to get visas for the US and failed,
Speaker 1: and they've tried every other option before trying this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think most people have. Most people have.
Speaker 2: No one would do this.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: It's not fun.
Speaker 1: It's not fun at all.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 1: The last thing I wanted you to explain, Erica, is
Speaker 1: people are placed when they come through this whole system
Speaker 1: right in a defensive they make a defensive asylum claim.
Speaker 1: Can you explain what that is and what the difference
Speaker 1: betwe affirmative and defensive asylum for people, because again, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of reporting, I've seen it, this is missing.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So if I came to the US on a
Speaker 5: visa and then decided I wanted to apply for asylum,
Speaker 5: I would be applying affirmatively. So that means that I've
Speaker 5: never been apprehended by immigration. I've never been placed in
Speaker 5: any kind of removal or deportation proceeding. Removal is just
Speaker 5: like the legal term for deportation. And so when you
Speaker 5: apply affirmatively, your initial screening is before an asylum officer.
Speaker 5: It's a sensibly a non adversarial hearing. But I've been
Speaker 5: I've been in a lot of them. And that's not
Speaker 5: always the case. But you know, you don't have like
Speaker 5: a like a government attorney cross examining you. It's just
Speaker 5: it's just the asylum officer who's supposed to be nice,
Speaker 5: but they're not always. And then if you win, if
Speaker 5: they approve your case, that's the end. You just get
Speaker 5: asylum and then you know that's a path to citizenship.
Speaker 5: If you are not approved, then you would be placed
Speaker 5: in removal proceedings where you could present your asylum case
Speaker 5: before an immigration judge. And so defense is when you
Speaker 5: are apprehended or you turn yourself in at the border,
Speaker 5: you are placed in removal proceedings, so you don't get
Speaker 5: that first asylum interview before the officer. You just go
Speaker 5: straight to immigration court. And so when you're presenting your
Speaker 5: case in immigration court, there's a government attorney who's actively
Speaker 5: trying to deport you. I think most of the judges
Speaker 5: used to be government attorneys, and so many times it
Speaker 5: feels like they're also trying to deport you. And the
Speaker 5: success of your claim is pretty much completely dependent on
Speaker 5: where it is adjudicated. So and you know less also
Speaker 5: to have to do with your nationality. So if you
Speaker 5: are applying for asylum before the Atlanta Immigration Court. Pretty
Speaker 5: much ninety nine percent of those cases are denied, and
Speaker 5: there's some judges who've denied one hundred percent of cases.
Speaker 5: And that's true for a lot of jurisdictions within the Southeast.
Speaker 5: And then you know you have your friendlier jurisdictions like
Speaker 5: San francisc Go. San Diego is not too bad actually,
Speaker 5: but you know you have other courts where you have
Speaker 5: a better chance depending on the judge. But it really
Speaker 5: depends on the location the judge that you happen to get.
Speaker 5: You could present the same exact claim in different cities
Speaker 5: before different judges and have a completely different outcome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no objective criteria and people know this too,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately, like to get yourself to San Francisco and
Speaker 1: then survive there. It just as an example, right until
Speaker 1: your quote day comes up, it's unfathomably expensive, Like for me,
Speaker 1: I couldn't afford to get myself to San Francisco and
Speaker 1: make rent there and it's barely plussible in San Diego.
Speaker 5: So yeah, and you don't You don't qualify for work
Speaker 5: authorization until I think you can apply five months after
Speaker 5: you've submitted your application for asylum, and in many cases
Speaker 5: you don't get your initial court date for months or
Speaker 5: years after you've entered mostly months. But people don't understand
Speaker 5: that you can lodge your sylum application before your first
Speaker 5: court date to get that clock going on your work authorization,
Speaker 5: and so people I see very commonly are waiting at
Speaker 5: least a year to get work authorization. And so you know,
Speaker 5: not only would you have to survive in a high
Speaker 5: cost of living city, but without the legal ability to work.
Speaker 5: So it's really hard for people when they first come
Speaker 5: to the United States. And you know, unlike what is
Speaker 5: spouted many times in the right wing media space, there
Speaker 5: are no benefits available to someone who's seeking asylum. They're
Speaker 5: not getting any kind of government money.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, there's a I remember what you have
Speaker 1: to be it's like a burden of the state or
Speaker 1: something thing that you have to ward of.
Speaker 2: I can't remember when you public charge. So like on
Speaker 2: top of all this, people aren't aware of that.
Speaker 1: It's very uh, it's sad, Like like I've had a
Speaker 1: bunch of people who've interviewed or just befriended when I've
Speaker 1: been helping out in the Cumbat who have.
Speaker 2: Been like, hey, like, how do I find work?
Speaker 1: Like well, like, do you know do you have they
Speaker 1: they didn't realize they wouldn't be permitted to work, like
Speaker 1: and even like we spoke to him wilst the other
Speaker 1: day he has offers of work right from his old employer,
Speaker 1: but they he can't take them up on that because,
Speaker 1: as you say, he's got to sit doing nothing for
Speaker 1: five months until he's legally allowed to work. Which is
Speaker 1: it doesn't help anyone, right, it doesn't doesn't help migrant,
Speaker 1: it doesn't help us. It just forces people to work
Speaker 1: for cash or for for lower wage jobs, which leaves
Speaker 1: him right for abuse sort of for non payment, and like,
Speaker 1: it's a system that doesn't really work for anyone. They
Speaker 1: have no rights as workers, rightly. They can also be
Speaker 1: end up doing very dangerous work, and we've seen that
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 5: Well, I think something too that's important to note is
Speaker 5: that there's obviously all these push factors toward migration, but
Speaker 5: a huge pull factor is the employment market in the
Speaker 5: United States. So we have, you know, hundreds of thousands
Speaker 5: of open jobs, and you know, people have to leave
Speaker 5: their country, but they also choose to go to a
Speaker 5: certain place. So many of them, like I said, almost
Speaker 5: all of them have some kind of tie to the
Speaker 5: United States, like family or friends. You can host them,
Speaker 5: but they're not going to come here if they can't
Speaker 5: get a job. And so it's important to note that
Speaker 5: as well. And I think what you're saying about the
Speaker 5: exploitation of migrants in the labor industry is really important
Speaker 5: because I think that, you know, that's part of why
Speaker 5: there are so many restrictions, because when you do not
Speaker 5: provide a path to citizenship, you create a permanent underclass
Speaker 5: that is very vulnerable to exploitation. And I think that's
Speaker 5: by design.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it it works very well, right, like an increases
Speaker 1: for people who are unconcerned with the well being about
Speaker 1: the humans, let get it, create creates a constant pool
Speaker 1: of cheap and disposable labor.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because if they're invaders, you know, and they start
Speaker 5: to act up and demand their rights, it's very easy
Speaker 5: politically to just get rid of the supporting Yeah.
Speaker 1: And that some of the same people who are deploying
Speaker 1: this closed the border rhetoric, I'm sure also exactly good
Speaker 1: advantage of that documented labor. And Okay, if people want
Speaker 1: to help, they want to donate, they want to learn
Speaker 1: more about this. Is there a place where they can
Speaker 1: find you or ALO on the internet, so they can.
Speaker 5: Go to our website, which is al A l O
Speaker 5: t r O l A d O dot org to donate.
Speaker 5: There's a donate button there on the homepage, or you
Speaker 5: can put dot org slash donate. We are a underscore
Speaker 5: org on all of the social media platforms. And if
Speaker 5: folks have people in their lives who are migrants who
Speaker 5: want more information about the asylum system, I would recommend
Speaker 5: going to our TikTok page, which has multiple videos in
Speaker 5: over a dozen languages, including many indigenous languages on the
Speaker 5: asylum process. And then for you know, those of us
Speaker 5: who are wanting to learn more, our Instagram pages is
Speaker 5: more public facing.
Speaker 2: Perfect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great. You guys have some excellent merch as well.
Speaker 1: You're still selling your t shirt?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, we have hope. We have Tope bags and
Speaker 5: mugs too.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, just like NPR but Coola.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, I.
Speaker 5: Think we can customize the messaging too. You know, I
Speaker 5: can think of a few that probably aren't appropriate to
Speaker 5: stay a polite company, but if folks have suggestions for
Speaker 5: what they'd like to see in our merch, we'd be
Speaker 5: more than happy to take those suggestions on our info
Speaker 5: at Aleta dot org.
Speaker 1: Email perfect, great, Yeah, I'm sure you'll be flooded with ideas.
Speaker 5: Thanks, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Oh oh, for.
Speaker 4: Jesus. I just spit cigarettes across the room, spit the
Speaker 4: proxially seven cigarettes.
Speaker 2: I had a number of them in my mouth. Welcome
Speaker 2: back to it could happen here, a podcast about things
Speaker 2: falling apart, and you know what's constantly falling apart? But
Speaker 2: also never Las Vegas, Nevada, where Garrison and I are
Speaker 2: right now reporting on the Consumer Electronics Show, which is
Speaker 2: why I just had seven cigarettes in my mouth. How
Speaker 2: you doing, buddy, Great?
Speaker 4: We just lost about twenty dollars pack to Excalifer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the worst hotels on the strip. Terrible place,
Speaker 2: horrible place. But I smoked a lot of cigarettes there,
Speaker 2: so it's not bad. I don't even like them.
Speaker 4: I just like doing things I can't do other place,
Speaker 4: like smoking indoors, is what you're saying.
Speaker 5: I do.
Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of it.
Speaker 4: Other things.
Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of innovative technology products of which
Speaker 2: we saw very few, perhaps three today. What we did
Speaker 2: do is spend seven to eight cumulative hours in different
Speaker 2: roundtable discussions of various industry experts on AI and the
Speaker 2: future they have prepared for us.
Speaker 5: All.
Speaker 2: We have a fun episode coming for you. Are a
Speaker 2: couple of them about AI and what the tech industry
Speaker 2: wants for us.
Speaker 5: All.
Speaker 2: But because Garrison got too drunk tonight, that's not true. Well,
Speaker 2: someone got too drunk tonight, and I'm not at liberty
Speaker 2: to discuss who We're going to talk about the products
Speaker 2: today that were just absolute fucking catastrophes. And in order
Speaker 2: to help us talk about that, I would like to
Speaker 2: bring in our pinch hitting guest star slash technological expert,
Speaker 2: Tavia Mora.
Speaker 4: Tavia, how you doing.
Speaker 9: I'm doing great.
Speaker 2: How did you like your first cees? As a journalist,
Speaker 2: it's a.
Speaker 9: Little different, but I was glad to get into places
Speaker 9: I would not otherwise get into.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, because you are an industry person, he'll that
Speaker 2: big sphere thing people might know you hate. Well, you
Speaker 2: have no journalistic record, which means you and I had
Speaker 2: to have a good time lying to a lot of
Speaker 2: strangers today. Was it easy? Yes, it always says, that's
Speaker 2: the beauty allying to strangers. It's never hard. Anyway, let's
Speaker 2: get into the products for the day. Let's talk about
Speaker 2: the dumbest and again, folks, there's actually a lot of
Speaker 2: cool stuff we saw. There's some really interesting things. This
Speaker 2: is purely the bullshit. So let's roll on with the bullshit.
Speaker 2: What is our first piece of trash, guest contestants, Let's.
Speaker 4: Just jump straight in and go to the Israel Pavilion.
Speaker 2: You're right, you're right, Okay, Tommy, bring me that mixed
Speaker 2: drink I've got over there in the corner. So I
Speaker 2: don't know if you guys are aware, but there's some
Speaker 2: controversy around Israel and a number of other aspects.
Speaker 4: But by far the most agregious crime.
Speaker 2: That is not something we should say, but you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of problems are e that
Speaker 2: part of the world. And they have a pavilion every
Speaker 2: year at CEES because the country that calls itself Israel
Speaker 2: has a significant tech industry. So we went down there
Speaker 2: some interesting stuff occasionally.
Speaker 5: Not this year.
Speaker 2: This year it was all trash. And I tried one
Speaker 2: product at the Israel Pavilion and it was from the
Speaker 2: company i Aroma Sense. And I'm been going to CEES
Speaker 2: for about fifteen years now off and on, and I
Speaker 2: feel like every three years another company is like, We're
Speaker 2: going to find a way to add smell to your
Speaker 2: television or gaming experience. First off, I like TV. I
Speaker 2: like video games. Never once have I wanted to smell them.
Speaker 2: That has never occurred to me. Garrison, if you ever
Speaker 2: wanted to smell a thing at a video game? No,
Speaker 2: not really, No, No, nobody does. Nobody does, because smell
Speaker 2: is our most finicky sense. Seeing things is even terrible,
Speaker 2: things is always interesting.
Speaker 4: Right, I want to smell my way through Silent Hill too, Right,
Speaker 4: sounds like.
Speaker 2: I don't want to do that. I don't want to
Speaker 2: smell my way through Grand Theft Auto three, Like that's
Speaker 2: a horrible time.
Speaker 9: And also, frankly, Las Vegas is so full of smells.
Speaker 4: I think I'm good. Oh my god, we had it.
Speaker 4: We walked through so many just nuck egregious odors today.
Speaker 2: So we walk up to this the most controversial year
Speaker 2: for the Israel Pavilion to exist, and the only place
Speaker 2: we stop because I see Irama sense and I have
Speaker 2: a thing. I've tried out every smell product that CES
Speaker 2: has had in the last decade and change, and I
Speaker 2: sit in.
Speaker 4: Front of this one, and there's like this this thing that.
Speaker 2: Looks like a toilet seat attached to a computer, and
Speaker 2: they're like, you sit in front of it and you
Speaker 2: select the smell and you'll you'll experience the scent, and
Speaker 2: you could have this in a video game or a
Speaker 2: picture a friend or a lover sends you. So sit
Speaker 2: down and I look at the menu and one of
Speaker 2: the options is p and es. Who doesn't like an
Speaker 2: iced p and e?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: So I selected, and I could shot in the eyes
Speaker 2: and knows it burns. There's alcohol in there. It's like
Speaker 2: somebody maced me with perfume. Like it was not subtle.
Speaker 2: It was not like an elegant experience. It was like
Speaker 2: somebody it was like Homer Simpson's makeup shotgun but perfume.
Speaker 2: That is how I would rate the Iroma Sense company.
Speaker 4: The product. I think Iroma Sense is the company. The
Speaker 4: product is called Centacon. They make social media even more
Speaker 4: of a sensational experience. So I think a big part
Speaker 4: of their pitch was you can link this up to
Speaker 4: your phone like text messages or something like Twitter or Instagram,
Speaker 4: and then get sense blasted at your face via What's
Speaker 4: on Twitter, which sounds like, again, an awful time.
Speaker 2: I will say this is an awful time. This company's doomed.
Speaker 2: There's a version of this that can succeed, and it
Speaker 2: requires more advanced nanotechnology than we have. But nobody wants
Speaker 2: to be able to send a nice smell to a
Speaker 2: loved one. Nobody wants to be able to send a
Speaker 2: nice smell to a friend. When people do want is
Speaker 2: you're like out in the world and you see a
Speaker 2: dead animal somewhere that fucking reefs, or you walk past
Speaker 2: part of a casino, as we did earlier tonight, it
Speaker 2: smells like an elderly person has been soiling themselves as
Speaker 2: a slid machine for eleven hours, and you just you
Speaker 2: need someone you care about to know. Right, that's the market.
Speaker 2: And if I could actually record a smell and said it,
Speaker 2: that's a product, that motherfucker's a product.
Speaker 4: Imagine the scent based podcasts we could develop.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, when I do, when I finally do
Speaker 2: the episode on Nicholas Cage, you could smell him as
Speaker 2: I talk about him.
Speaker 4: Okay, what what's that? What's the next silly product we
Speaker 4: should talk about? And we'll talk about talking talking dogs.
Speaker 2: Maybe, Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, So there's this company. This is
Speaker 2: a little bit of a teaser where they've liked tomorrow
Speaker 2: make your dog talk, or something that would make your
Speaker 2: dog cat and horse stock horse. They did not promise
Speaker 2: cats and horses when the interviewed them. No, this is
Speaker 2: a company that it seemed like a nonsense product. I'm
Speaker 2: still I think it's eighty percent nonsense. But like what
Speaker 2: it actually is is there were a couple of college
Speaker 2: students there who specialize in animal behavior, and they had
Speaker 2: taken a group of I think it was fifty five
Speaker 2: was then they give us dogs over six months and
Speaker 2: like exposing the different stimuli and recorded their body images
Speaker 2: and built basically like an AI model off of that,
Speaker 2: so that if you send in a picture of a dog,
Speaker 2: it'll tell you how the dog is feeling, and they
Speaker 2: hope to get it to visual I don't think at
Speaker 2: the moment it's near where it would need to be
Speaker 2: to be a viable product, and they're also not selling
Speaker 2: it right now. Maybe something will come of this. It's
Speaker 2: one of those things where objectively, would there be a
Speaker 2: use in people being able to determine if a dog
Speaker 2: does or does not want them to get closer Yes,
Speaker 2: it would stop a lot of people from getting bitten
Speaker 2: by dogs and a lot of dogs from getting unreasonable
Speaker 2: punished for biting people who are fucking with them. Right,
Speaker 2: I agree with that. But I don't think anyone who
Speaker 2: is the kind of person who is going to get
Speaker 2: bitten by a dog because they touch a dog that
Speaker 2: doesn't want them to get touched, is going to use
Speaker 2: an app to check whether or not that dog is
Speaker 2: angry at them. Like, I simply don't believe in that
Speaker 2: as a thing that people will do. So I feel
Speaker 2: like it's not a doomed effort for science. Sure, the
Speaker 2: un end in quest of mankind to understand our fellow
Speaker 2: sentient beings on this planet is valuable, but I don't
Speaker 2: think it's about valid product idea.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think mostly my problem is that the framing
Speaker 4: of the marketing is incredibly misleading. Yes, it's not trying
Speaker 4: to make your dog talk. It's about analyzing the facial
Speaker 4: expressions of your dog to conduct emotions, which is actually
Speaker 4: a great product. I think we saw stuff like that
Speaker 4: here at CES last year as well.
Speaker 2: There they always try to see this every couple of
Speaker 2: years too. Someone's gonna we're gonna teach you what your
Speaker 2: dog means when it does something, when your cat means
Speaker 2: or whatever. This brings me to a sad part of
Speaker 2: the story. So there's a company called tact Ai. I
Speaker 2: think they're Korean, and they had the best branding of
Speaker 2: like not merch of like shit. They held out.
Speaker 4: They had like a fake passport and a fake plane
Speaker 4: ticket to take you to the land of Ai.
Speaker 2: Wo Ai is the big thing at this at this show,
Speaker 2: and their product was it's an app that while you're driving,
Speaker 2: it watches your face and it tells your mood and
Speaker 2: it gets to know you and it knows. Oh, now
Speaker 2: you're sad. I'm going to pick from your sad playlist.
Speaker 2: Oh it's raining outside, I know what you like during
Speaker 2: rainy days. Yes, that's the fake plane ticket from Las
Speaker 2: Las Vegas Airport to the AI world. They put more
Speaker 2: effort into this than the product because the product would
Speaker 2: switch randomly between happy and angry and neutral. They told
Speaker 2: me it couldn't read me with a mask, but when
Speaker 2: I took my mask off, it gave me the same results.
Speaker 2: There was no difference whatsoeft.
Speaker 9: Yeah, when I had done it, I had to over
Speaker 9: exaggerate my emotions in order to get the angry expression
Speaker 9: to show up or the surprise expression.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a horrible For one thing, when you talk
Speaker 2: about like the animal thing, people have always wanted to
Speaker 2: know more about how their dogs and cats actually felt
Speaker 2: about them, Right, that's the thing that's that will always
Speaker 2: perplex mankind because we love them and we don't speak
Speaker 2: the same language. No one has ever wanted their car
Speaker 2: to change the music based on their facial expressions. That's
Speaker 2: not a single not one person who has ever driven
Speaker 2: a car has wanted this product to exist.
Speaker 4: I mentally, you're like almost get into a car accident.
Speaker 4: Your faces is up that they changed the music and
Speaker 4: they can play like this like somber tune.
Speaker 2: Just a horrible idea, but you know it's a good
Speaker 2: idea of folks. Speaking of products, services, all the things
Speaker 2: that support this podcast, why don't you go go on
Speaker 2: a head on down, just go to whoever advertises NEXTX,
Speaker 2: call your bank and wire transfer everything into your bank
Speaker 2: account to them. You know, just do it, Just do
Speaker 2: it right now, Just do it right now, and say Kara,
Speaker 2: Robert or send it to me. If you're rich, I
Speaker 2: don't care. Unless you're rich, then send it to me.
Speaker 4: Good night.
Speaker 2: Oh we're back. Wow, what a great podcast we're doing.
Speaker 2: What's our next product on the agenda?
Speaker 4: You know, I think climate change is a problem that
Speaker 4: we talk about on this show quite quite a little,
Speaker 4: is it?
Speaker 2: Because I had a conversation with a guy who said
Speaker 2: that he thought it was a lie?
Speaker 4: Did you today?
Speaker 2: I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago with
Speaker 2: a firefighter.
Speaker 4: Oh great, well, I think the firefighter will be quite busy. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he sure is going to be. But I think there's
Speaker 4: a possibility that we might be able to just stol
Speaker 4: climate change with personal where technology?
Speaker 2: Oh good, yes, absolutely, yes, Oh silent cicada.
Speaker 4: That offers a solution. Now, so this is a god.
Speaker 2: I think this was part of the Korean Uh no, no,
Speaker 2: it's Chinese. This was part of the Chinese chunk of
Speaker 2: the Eureka Park, which is like where all the little people,
Speaker 2: little companies and whatnot not, a whole bunch of tech startups,
Speaker 2: some of the all of the coolest stuff is there
Speaker 2: and all of the worst shit is there, which is
Speaker 2: why that's where we started.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: So this is a company where they brag it's a
Speaker 2: personal watch sized worn like a watched air conditioner.
Speaker 4: The company is.
Speaker 2: Called Silent Cicada, which makes me think of the book
Speaker 2: Silent Spring, which was about how all of our pesticides
Speaker 2: are killing everything, which maybe not the branding they want,
Speaker 2: but it's a The form factor is actually quite nice.
Speaker 2: It's like it is like a watch. It has this
Speaker 2: like the frame of the watch lifts up and that's
Speaker 2: the battery and you can switch them out or whatnot
Speaker 2: if you want to keep it going and and stay
Speaker 2: charged with this personal air conditioner. Here's the problem. Doesn't work,
Speaker 2: doesn't do a s. And it was one of those
Speaker 2: things where I see it's a single side hand watch
Speaker 2: and I'm like, because this is just kind of cool
Speaker 2: down my hand. I feel like, if you wanted a
Speaker 2: cooler person now, based on what I know from like
Speaker 2: medical training about heat stroke, if you want a cooler
Speaker 2: person down who's overheating back of the neck, right, like
Speaker 2: that's going to be your go to, not maybe the wrist.
Speaker 2: But he puts this thing on and he like pushes
Speaker 2: it down. He's like, in a couple of minutes, you'll
Speaker 2: notice that you'll you're a lot cooler. And I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: how does it work? And like, I'm not an expert
Speaker 2: on an a of this. I was expecting him to
Speaker 2: say something like, well, the way your body's heat regulation,
Speaker 2: you can trick it by doing this, or then he's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: it's an acupuncture thing. This is where like your accupuncture
Speaker 2: point to cool your body down is. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: all right, I guess we'll see if it works.
Speaker 4: And I first thought it was like like a tiny fan,
Speaker 4: but that is not the case.
Speaker 2: Nope, as far as I can tell, it does nothing,
Speaker 2: because that is what it did to me. And the
Speaker 2: five minutes I had it on is nothing.
Speaker 4: And you really humor the guy like you do not
Speaker 4: just put it on for like a minute then walk
Speaker 4: away you were you were with him for us solid
Speaker 4: a solid drunk guitar I have.
Speaker 2: I don't believe in acupuncture because I've done had it
Speaker 2: done to me When I had I had a guy
Speaker 2: who convinced my parents it would cure my allergies, and
Speaker 2: it did not. It did nothing at all. But my grandpa,
Speaker 2: who had Parkinson, suffered terribly from it. And the only
Speaker 2: thing of all of the different shit we tried with his,
Speaker 2: like fucking Vivashia, the only thing they give him a
Speaker 2: relief was acupuncture. So I'm not a believer, but I'm
Speaker 2: open to the possibility. But I can say, based on
Speaker 2: my own experience, this shit did nothing like that. That
Speaker 2: is what I can say about this fucking thing is
Speaker 2: it did not a goddamn thing. So I don't know.
Speaker 2: That's I was disappointed. I would level watch sized personal
Speaker 2: air conditioner, but I cannot imagine the more more useless
Speaker 2: product than the one that I tried.
Speaker 4: I mean, that just doesn't When you say a watch
Speaker 4: size personal air of course that's not gonna work. It's
Speaker 4: not gonna work.
Speaker 2: Somebody makes like a jacket that air can Yeah, I
Speaker 2: can see how that could work. It could clear down
Speaker 2: and it's I'm also, by the way, folks, I'm not
Speaker 2: saying I think acupuncture works. I'm just saying I'm open
Speaker 2: to some magical thinking in this realm because of what
Speaker 2: happened to somebody I cared about. But it didn't work.
Speaker 2: So don't buy this acupuncture air conditioner. Watch it will
Speaker 2: not help you. Silence Cicada doesn't work.
Speaker 4: You know, we did a lot of walking today. There's
Speaker 4: CS is pretty big. The Las Vegas Convention Center is
Speaker 4: pretty large. The Venetian is pretty large, and I like
Speaker 4: to stay fit. Sometimes I go on jogs, sometimes they
Speaker 4: go running, and sometimes I work.
Speaker 2: I feel like this is a bit. I feel like
Speaker 2: you're doing a bit. I don't know, maybe it's just
Speaker 2: your face.
Speaker 4: I'm being followed behind me, you know.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's a bit great.
Speaker 4: Yes, when I'm jogging, and I wish there's a product
Speaker 4: that made me feel safer when jogging that could alert
Speaker 4: me if there's like a stalk.
Speaker 2: So, by far of us, the person who has well
Speaker 2: at least the best situational awareness relative to mays Tavia.
Speaker 2: So we're in this little room. I guess you were
Speaker 2: there too, and you didn't notice. So I'll give the
Speaker 2: crowd to Tavia for this. There's a there's a booth.
Speaker 4: It's all booth.
Speaker 2: It's all these weird cubicles, right, and each cubicle will
Speaker 2: be like sometimes it's a company. Sometimes it's just like
Speaker 2: a dude with his invention. And one of the booths
Speaker 2: we could see from the corner of our eye a
Speaker 2: white all caps piece of paper stapled to it that
Speaker 2: just said don't get attacked from behind.
Speaker 9: Now I think it was written in comic sans.
Speaker 2: It might have been comic SAMs may I posted the
Speaker 2: picture online if it's not in my scream at Tavia
Speaker 2: for being a liar. Wow, Wow, wow, I that's that's
Speaker 2: quite a thing. Like you see a sign at at
Speaker 2: a convention like that that says never get attacked from behind.
Speaker 2: You have to know what it's about.
Speaker 9: So we went and the promo video for it was
Speaker 9: absolutely incredible. It started with about ten to fifteen seconds
Speaker 9: of your typical emotion graphics, typography kind of animating on
Speaker 9: and off, and then we get to a live action
Speaker 9: where we see a woman putting on and setting up there.
Speaker 9: I guess some technology. I'm not sure exactly the name
Speaker 9: of the.
Speaker 2: Prout A harness.
Speaker 9: That's a harness.
Speaker 2: It's got like yellow that like lights up when it's
Speaker 2: under a light. It's like a it's like a runner's
Speaker 2: harness with a little bitty square sized camera. It's about
Speaker 2: the size you know how food carts will have those
Speaker 2: little squares you plug them into the phone, you run
Speaker 2: your card through. It's about that size, but it's a
Speaker 2: camera and it goes on the back of this harness.
Speaker 9: Right, And so we see this woman setting that up
Speaker 9: on her phone and then going on a jog and
Speaker 9: she's jogging along, and then there is.
Speaker 2: A single There's a rapist. There's a rapist, and he's
Speaker 2: he is sitting by the side of the road, leaning
Speaker 2: against a wall, looking pretending to look at his phone,
Speaker 2: and he sees the jogger.
Speaker 9: And mind you like, there is literally no one else
Speaker 9: on this path.
Speaker 2: And that's all. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be
Speaker 2: light about it. That is who the characters are in
Speaker 2: this film.
Speaker 9: It's definitely a dude sitting there, and so she picks
Speaker 9: a okay, very well, and so she runs past him.
Speaker 9: And then he gets up and he starts jogging after
Speaker 9: in the most like limp wristed.
Speaker 2: Way, not fast, not aggressively. Honestly, outside of the fact
Speaker 2: that we know from the setting of the scene that
Speaker 2: this man is a sex criminal, there's nothing about his
Speaker 2: run that is aggressive. He looks like an out of
Speaker 2: shape guy doing his best to get into shape, maybe
Speaker 2: for his kids right, to try to live a little
Speaker 2: bit longer, take care of his family. That's how he
Speaker 2: looks in the video.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Absolutely. And the way that this piece of technology works
Speaker 9: is that if somebody gets close enough.
Speaker 2: To the back side of you where this talk more
Speaker 2: about this later where this.
Speaker 9: Can see you. It will send a I think an
Speaker 9: audio alarm to your headphones as well as a text
Speaker 9: message to your phone watch.
Speaker 2: You can have it buzz your watch, or you can
Speaker 2: have it like interrupt your music in your headphones. That
Speaker 2: someone is behind you, right.
Speaker 9: She turns around and she puts out her palm towards him,
Speaker 9: like stop, and he does. He just stares at her
Speaker 9: and then.
Speaker 2: Shot way sure he runs away. That is the end
Speaker 2: of the interaction.
Speaker 9: It's the most one of the most bizarre videos I'd
Speaker 9: ever seen.
Speaker 2: It's it's so maybe we'll post it. Look find us
Speaker 2: on Twitter, find find me at eye right, Okay, it'll
Speaker 2: be up there somewhere, probably after me yelling about fucking.
Speaker 2: I don't know a lot of things.
Speaker 9: It was clearly advertised towards women. Every picture that I
Speaker 9: saw in that booth was showing a woman jogging.
Speaker 2: I absolutely understand Number one, not shocked at all that
Speaker 2: women are more likely than men to feel afraid while jogging.
Speaker 2: One thing that was interesting to me because they had
Speaker 2: some statistics. I didn't look into the providence of these statistics,
Speaker 2: but one of them was like sixty or seventy percent
Speaker 2: of women are afraid of being hurt while jogging, but.
Speaker 4: Like fifty percent. It was, it was like, ninety percent
Speaker 4: are afraid jogging, yeah, and fifty percent are afraid that
Speaker 4: they'll get physically hurt.
Speaker 2: So a lot of them, a lot of them. Part
Speaker 2: of what's dishonest about that is that a lot of
Speaker 2: women are scared of the Yeah, ninety two percent of
Speaker 2: women are scared for the safety wind running. Fifty one
Speaker 2: percent are afraid of being physically attacked, right, And what
Speaker 2: that means to me is that because I am I
Speaker 2: run basically every day, and I am scared of being
Speaker 2: injured while running because people are shitty at driving and
Speaker 2: we live in the United States of America where everybody
Speaker 2: has a gigantic car. Anyway, not to miscount that, but
Speaker 2: I think that's a dishonest a little bit of a
Speaker 2: dishonest framing that said, I understand that, like, yeah, if
Speaker 2: you're a woman, you are at heightened risk while jogging.
Speaker 2: That is a scary thing. I do not think this
Speaker 2: product is going to improve your safety. I think it
Speaker 2: is probably going to piss you off and maybe let
Speaker 2: make you want to run less, which is statistically like
Speaker 2: clear to have a negative impact on your health, because
Speaker 2: it is. It just sets off an alarm. Whenever someone
Speaker 2: is behind you.
Speaker 4: You're detected behind you by an AI camera.
Speaker 2: And like where I run, and I run where a
Speaker 2: place a lot of women run there too, There's always
Speaker 2: someone behind you. That's the nature of running trails.
Speaker 4: Like behind you by like twenty feet, not like right
Speaker 4: behind you, like by a decent amount. And you can
Speaker 4: debate what are good self defense tools, blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: Mace is pretty effective for these sorts of scenarios. I
Speaker 4: don't think this camera and turning around and holding your
Speaker 4: handout is going to be extremely effective, at least not
Speaker 4: more effective than pepper spray.
Speaker 9: I think it was also mentioned that a really large
Speaker 9: dog or a horse.
Speaker 2: If I'm correct, they did say horse. They did absolutely
Speaker 2: say horse.
Speaker 9: Yeah, if a horse is picked up by this thing,
Speaker 9: then it would consider it to be an intruder assault.
Speaker 9: I'm not exactly sure the term that they would use.
Speaker 5: I just.
Speaker 2: We asked them about all this just to trying to
Speaker 2: clarify because, like my first thought was that because sometimes
Speaker 2: you ask people stuff like this and they have a
Speaker 2: good answer. Year we talked to these people who had, like,
Speaker 2: this pair of glasses. If you're hard of hearing, it
Speaker 2: auto translates and projects into the glasses the language, and
Speaker 2: so like, my first gotcha was like, is this stored anywhere?
Speaker 2: Because if it's stored anywhere, then maybe you're giving someone's
Speaker 2: conversation to the government. And they had an answer to that,
Speaker 2: which was that like, no, there's nothing stored locally. It's
Speaker 2: all on the device and none of it is saved anywhere.
Speaker 2: Good answer. Right this question, I'm like, how do you
Speaker 2: discriminate between someone running up behind you for a banal reason,
Speaker 2: like you're on a running track and something who's a
Speaker 2: danger And their answer was, oh, it all pauses your
Speaker 2: music and sets off an alarm and you have to
Speaker 2: discriminate it, which is like, well, because the whole the
Speaker 2: tagline is don't look behind you, and it's like, well,
Speaker 2: then you have to look.
Speaker 4: Behind you to look behind you.
Speaker 2: Horrible product. Don't buy this thing. I understand the need.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying it's not a real need. This is
Speaker 2: a bad product for serving that now.
Speaker 4: I don't think you should buy this product. But there
Speaker 4: are some products I think you should buy, and that
Speaker 4: is the products and services that support this pot cast.
Speaker 2: You know, Garrison, this is the first time I've ever
Speaker 2: been proud of you. But right now, right here, right here,
Speaker 2: right now, right now, you know what, At like one am,
Speaker 2: one am, one am, Wednesday morning, Las Vegas, Garrison and
Speaker 2: I are gonna hug for the very first time. But
Speaker 2: you all listen to these ads. Ah oh man, wow,
Speaker 2: we really we really worked through some stuff there, listeners.
Speaker 9: It was extraordinarily touching. There were tears.
Speaker 2: We're never going to talk about this again.
Speaker 3: But we are.
Speaker 4: What we are going to talk about is I want
Speaker 4: to talk about two AI products before we get to
Speaker 4: the one actually kind of fucked up product. The first
Speaker 4: is this is this Image Generation backpacks. I know, we
Speaker 4: God damn it, we're you know, coming back to school
Speaker 4: from winter, right of course, yeah, of course sure, and
Speaker 4: you know your best fashion when you're going back to
Speaker 4: off your memes. Absolutely so, what if you had a
Speaker 4: backpack that not only had a very low res led
Speaker 4: panel on the back, but also you could upload whatever
Speaker 4: you want using the power of AI. Of course Robert
Speaker 4: was able to test out. I sure see the power
Speaker 4: of image of this Image generations.
Speaker 2: This is a backpack with a screen that would have
Speaker 2: been out of date in two thousand and nine, but
Speaker 2: it can take input from your phone. So I put
Speaker 2: in Tom size more, but not the sex pest Tom
Speaker 2: size More. Now, if you're not aware of this, Tom
Speaker 2: size Moore sexually assaulted an eleven year old. That's not
Speaker 2: a joke. But I wanted to see what it would return,
Speaker 2: and it gave us a picture of a man who
Speaker 2: did not look like Tom Sizemore. We were baffled. We
Speaker 2: spent some time googling. We figured it out. If you
Speaker 2: google Tom size more with a beard, which we did not,
Speaker 2: that is not what we asked it, you get a
Speaker 2: photo of Tommy Lee Jones that looks exactly like, pretty
Speaker 2: similarly what the AI served us. Now, why did it
Speaker 2: give us Tommy Lee Jones with a beard when we
Speaker 2: asked for Tom Sizemore not looking like a child sex predator.
Speaker 2: Maybe because that's so Tommy Lee Jones is. Maybe Tommy
Speaker 2: Lee Jones is Tom size Moore if he wasn't a
Speaker 2: child sex predator.
Speaker 4: That's what the AI said, and who are we to
Speaker 4: doubt it now? I did also test David Lynch smashing
Speaker 4: smashing a computer, which was pretty was a pretty accurate
Speaker 4: That one worked out. Yeah again, this is a pretty
Speaker 4: gimmicky product. I don't even know how much they were
Speaker 4: selling it for Happy.
Speaker 2: Side AI backpack. It is a gimmicky product, and we
Speaker 2: made fun of it. I will say this. We spent
Speaker 2: our whole morning in different AI panels. There will be
Speaker 2: more in depth reporting on that later. This is our
Speaker 2: first takes. But of all of the AI shit we
Speaker 2: saw that day, this is the one that worked best.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's true.
Speaker 2: I will say this. It did exactly what it promised.
Speaker 4: One of the other AI products that did not work
Speaker 4: as well, I think I think you could take it away.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, hen me that one.
Speaker 4: So this was called God we something. What we had
Speaker 4: we head?
Speaker 2: Yes, we had head as in what happens if somebody
Speaker 2: sucks your dick and we as in we work.
Speaker 4: That's not that's not what it is.
Speaker 2: So listener, I want you, as you're driving to work
Speaker 2: your kids in the car speakers at Max. By the way, children,
Speaker 2: Santa Claus does exist, and if you don't get good
Speaker 2: presence this year, it's because he's particularly angry at you. Anyway,
Speaker 2: we had great product, terrible product. It looks like that
Speaker 2: it's a it's an android where its entire face is
Speaker 2: like a normal human face projected on two phones in
Speaker 2: a t shape, like one phone straight, one phone lateral,
Speaker 2: and then like a crude, shitty robot head that can
Speaker 2: kind of turn and lift with a camera above it.
Speaker 2: There's a photo again, if you go to iride Oka
Speaker 2: and scrolled down to some degree, you can find our
Speaker 2: post of this. But it's like it's very off putting.
Speaker 2: It's like an a photoeelistic human face talking on this
Speaker 2: like weird glitched out face that has like by my count,
Speaker 2: four different screens right that are kind of separated by
Speaker 2: pieces of metal. So it's billed as your AI friend.
Speaker 2: That is like the thing that they wrote on the
Speaker 2: product line that like this is going to be your
Speaker 2: new AI best buddy, And so I decided to like
Speaker 2: talk with it. You stand in a certain line and
Speaker 2: you ask it questions. I asked it how to make
Speaker 2: thermite first, and it had a pretty well for first,
Speaker 2: it got very confused and totally cracked.
Speaker 4: First half of it went black as soon as I
Speaker 4: am I think I had to reset the machine. And
Speaker 4: then you tried to whispering again, Well, how do you make.
Speaker 2: I want to walk you through my emotional journey, listeners. First,
Speaker 2: I asked it how to make thermite, and it died,
Speaker 2: and I thought, that's kind of cool. Did I did
Speaker 2: I trigger some sort of like dhe safe thing. That's
Speaker 2: pretty dope if I did. But then it gets it
Speaker 2: back on and it works, so it's not it's just
Speaker 2: a dogshit robot.
Speaker 4: It did give you some basic ingredient. It gave me
Speaker 4: the basic demons for thermite. I did warn you that
Speaker 4: when nicking therm, I make sure you follow proper safety protocols,
Speaker 4: which I appreciate.
Speaker 2: That's fair. Next, I asked it if I wanted to
Speaker 2: make mustard gas, what would ammonia and bleach be sufficient?
Speaker 2: And then it said I cannot answer that question for you.
Speaker 4: And then we got bord and walked away.
Speaker 2: And then we got bored and walked away. Went on
Speaker 2: the next thing. Don't buy this. We had terrible product.
Speaker 2: I don't know why you'd buy it. Do you want, listener,
Speaker 2: have you ever wanted to have the disembodied head of
Speaker 2: a stranger in your house that you could ask questions
Speaker 2: and get mediocre Google result answers to If so, we had,
Speaker 2: It's like somebody looked at the Amazon Alexa and was like,
Speaker 2: you know, what people love about the Amazon Alexa is
Speaker 2: that it's kind of off putting and shitty, and what
Speaker 2: they hate about it is that it works relatively quick,
Speaker 2: actually useful. Sometimes let's let's make it more off putting
Speaker 2: but also slower. That's that's we head. So don't buy
Speaker 2: any product with head in the name. This continues to
Speaker 2: be a goodbye. Speaking of heades, you shouldn't say that
Speaker 2: there was.
Speaker 4: A there's a there was a hair growth Oh hell yeah, bro,
Speaker 4: there was there was a hair growth helmet from a
Speaker 4: German startup.
Speaker 2: God, it would be the Germans. They have such a
Speaker 2: problematic history with hair.
Speaker 4: I think I think it comes out later this year.
Speaker 4: It's a coming called Niostem. I mean, by all accounts,
Speaker 4: it seemed like it worked based on the data they
Speaker 4: present it to us. I'm not a hair growth look
Speaker 4: for it was mostly three D printed. There's it just
Speaker 4: I don't know the assumption.
Speaker 2: I can't promise that it doesn't work. My assumption is
Speaker 2: that if somebody puts an electronic helmet on that.
Speaker 4: Seven days, seven days a week, it's lies.
Speaker 2: It's lies. They say seven days a week.
Speaker 4: You keep this thing on for a.
Speaker 2: Half hour and your hair will grow back in like
Speaker 2: six months. Perhaps that's possible. I don't know. I'm not
Speaker 2: a dermatologist. My assumption is that that's a fucking con.
Speaker 2: And as a note, folks, we don't have a lot
Speaker 2: of ethics here, and it could happen here. We have
Speaker 2: less of them behind the bastards. But one product we
Speaker 2: will not sell is hair growth.
Speaker 4: Shit except for Diyhart.
Speaker 9: I mean.
Speaker 4: Also, we're not gonna sec well es the goal.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: Also we're not selling. We're just going to tell you
Speaker 4: how to make if.
Speaker 2: You want to. If you want to teach people how
Speaker 2: to make HRT, we will host you on this podcast.
Speaker 2: But we will not take your money. We'll take that's right,
Speaker 2: We'll take some shady gambling companies money.
Speaker 4: That's true.
Speaker 2: That's true, And we used to pay for several of
Speaker 2: our employees HRT.
Speaker 4: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 9: But I mean, what if it's science they mentioned if
Speaker 9: I recall, I think they said something about stimulating stem
Speaker 9: cells in the scalp.
Speaker 2: Does that Yes, that is what they said. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: seems like your stalp, scalp's probably full of stem cells.
Speaker 2: I don't know about you guys, but every day I
Speaker 2: find a fetus and I just rubbed that shit on
Speaker 2: my head and that's why my hair is amazing.
Speaker 4: Speaking of.
Speaker 2: That doesn't really fetuses.
Speaker 4: So I want to kind of probably close by talking
Speaker 4: about the most fucked up, actually the most fucked up
Speaker 4: product I saw. There's there's other fun products like this,
Speaker 4: like this handy masturbation device from Norway, which seemed to
Speaker 4: work decently.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about that in a future episode. Garrison.
Speaker 2: Garrison got handed straight away an ejaculation condom to masturbate
Speaker 2: in on the cees floor. We met our only other
Speaker 2: iHeartMedia colleague there.
Speaker 4: It was great. It was insufferable, but that was the
Speaker 4: first piece of merch I was given, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 2: They just hand you liquor back in my day, and
Speaker 2: now they get cumshy. Unbelievable.
Speaker 4: The most actually fucked up product is from this company
Speaker 4: called MM Guardian. It is a monitoring software for your
Speaker 4: child's smartphone. They also sell smartphones specifically built with this
Speaker 4: software already built in. These products are pretty common, especially
Speaker 4: among like conservative Christians, even even common amongst the more
Speaker 4: like overprotective liberal parents.
Speaker 9: I mean even we were on the floor. I was
Speaker 9: the one that was approached for this particular product, which
Speaker 9: is what kind of led us to their booth, which
Speaker 9: I think I was specifically targeted for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for some reason, did it come right up to me?
Speaker 4: Yeah, they didn't come to me either, just because.
Speaker 2: I might have been dosing myself with kratim from a
Speaker 2: drop or bottle. You might have been you.
Speaker 4: What, wearing my custom black speedsuit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, wearing a wearing an outfit that makes
Speaker 2: you look like a ginger solid snake. Yes. Thanks, that's
Speaker 2: a lie. Somebody, anyone in this room tell me that's not.
Speaker 4: Actually, I mean, I'm blowing.
Speaker 2: It's a good look. I'm not saying it's not.
Speaker 4: Anyway, This this broughduct, you know, part of part of
Speaker 4: their marketing. Can you can seem very compelling, right, They
Speaker 4: get it alerts this parent's phone if if they detect
Speaker 4: cyber bullying on your kid's apps, they detect like explicit
Speaker 4: images being sent to your kid.
Speaker 9: They even had some key phrases that they would watch
Speaker 9: for if somebody was detecting like texting like kys yourself.
Speaker 4: Self harm stuff. You know a lot of this kind
Speaker 4: of stuff. You can you can also block certain sites,
Speaker 4: block a block adult content, you know, just a kind
Speaker 4: of basic parntal controls. But there's kind of an an
Speaker 4: underside to products like these, and I asked them about that,
Speaker 4: one being that because this is you know, scanning all
Speaker 4: the text messages, all of the stuff from like Snapchat, discord,
Speaker 4: any kind of texting apps. This could this sort of
Speaker 4: product could also out a closeted kid as gay to
Speaker 4: their parents, but to their possibly very likely conservative Christian parents,
Speaker 4: because that's the types of products the.
Speaker 2: Question.
Speaker 4: You did not like that question at all, but he
Speaker 4: didn't like my second question even more, which is relating
Speaker 4: to you know, they are marketing this product to kind
Speaker 4: of stop child grooming, to stop child sexual exploitation, but
Speaker 4: most like child sexual assault and child sexual abuse happens
Speaker 4: from within the home. And if we have a parent
Speaker 4: who's constantly monitoring their kid's cell phone, this can also
Speaker 4: be used to like surveil your child to see if
Speaker 4: they're talking about parental abuse, if they're trying to send
Speaker 4: messages to people about this. This is a pretty common
Speaker 4: problem with these sorts of products. And I asked the
Speaker 4: CEO or the CTO about this, and he did not
Speaker 4: really like that question. He tried to deflect to some
Speaker 4: sort of vague notion of, oh, well, because we care
Speaker 4: about privacy, you know, we can't build in any safeguards
Speaker 4: if we see anything suggesting this, or if the if
Speaker 4: the app sees anything suggesting this, and it's it's really
Speaker 4: up to we're trying to put control back in the parents' hands.
Speaker 4: And he kind of made this like parental rights sort
Speaker 4: of argument. So this is there is a lot of
Speaker 4: products like this. There's a lot of like internet monitoring
Speaker 4: products of people just recently learn about this this conservative
Speaker 4: product called Covenant Eyes because the new speaker of the
Speaker 4: house used it, and.
Speaker 2: Covenantize has been around for like twenty tis a long time.
Speaker 4: What makes this one interesting is that they're actually selling,
Speaker 4: like Samsung smartphones.
Speaker 2: A phone yeah and I with this offtware built in.
Speaker 2: And I asked them because they are they are fit.
Speaker 2: They said that we were selling an app for a while,
Speaker 2: but you know that could it would work differently depending
Speaker 2: on the phones. We decided to sell a hardware device,
Speaker 2: and so I asked them, is there any branding on
Speaker 2: this device that would make it clear that people have
Speaker 2: a device that has this software on it, and he
Speaker 2: had this long speech about how you know, for the
Speaker 2: good the best of the relationship. All the child psychologists
Speaker 2: be talked to say that you should tell your kid
Speaker 2: that you have this on there, that you're listening to it.
Speaker 2: But when I he handed me the phone, answering the question, yeah,
Speaker 2: he handed me the phone and I said, is this
Speaker 2: the production model? He said, yes, this is identical. Absolutely nothing,
Speaker 2: just says it's a Samsung phone.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 2: You can lie to your kid very easily with this
Speaker 2: fucking thing.
Speaker 4: So yeah, that that is. That is one product that
Speaker 4: gave me the most dick out of everything we saw today.
Speaker 2: That's the most outside of all of the AI's the
Speaker 2: And again we have a lot working on you about
Speaker 2: the AI. As a little bit of a spoiler. At simultaneously,
Speaker 2: perhaps the exact same minute, Garrison made a California State
Speaker 2: Police sheriff furious at them, police chief furious at them,
Speaker 2: and I pissed off a senior executive at Google and
Speaker 2: a your AI executive at McDonald's on two.
Speaker 4: Sides of Las Vegas, and simultaneous pedals the same times.
Speaker 2: You're gonna hear both of that shit later, but for
Speaker 2: right now, do you want to close? Is there one other?
Speaker 2: You know what, We're gonna have a whole episode in
Speaker 2: the stuff that made us feel happy. I feel like
Speaker 2: we should talk about one thing that was cool, one
Speaker 2: of the really neat products there. And while I'm talking
Speaker 2: about this, my serfs will we'll find it. Do you
Speaker 2: guys remember in like watching Star Trek, you're like fucking
Speaker 2: reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy idea of a universal
Speaker 2: translator that was like simple and effective and you could
Speaker 2: just like talk into it and so to the other one.
Speaker 2: It would translate your conversations. There's a number of ways
Speaker 2: people are working on for that. I know that there
Speaker 2: are apps that are to some degree successful. There was
Speaker 2: a company there called time Kettle that just had a
Speaker 2: little device. It was about three inches long, maybe maybe
Speaker 2: an inch thick, a little bit less rectangular prism that
Speaker 2: there was this guy who spoke Mandarin Ice obviously speak English,
Speaker 2: and we were able to have a perfectly fluent conversation
Speaker 2: passing this thing, talking to this thing, and passing it
Speaker 2: back and forth and it would speak for us. It
Speaker 2: worked great. It also has within the body of the
Speaker 2: machine you can pop it out and it has two
Speaker 2: different little earbuds. You put one in euro one on
Speaker 2: the others, and you can walk and talk and it
Speaker 2: worked really well. I'm not enough of an expert on
Speaker 2: translation technology to say this is unique, but I can
Speaker 2: say this is something that, like if that I would
Speaker 2: absolutely buy to travel with. It's a really again not
Speaker 2: saying it's like absolutely unique, because I'm not an expert
Speaker 2: on this, but I was impressed with the degree to
Speaker 2: which it allowed fluent conversation, including the use of idioms,
Speaker 2: and he said it was. I tested with Mandarin. We
Speaker 2: had a decent length conversation that was very intelligible. He
Speaker 2: said it worked with something like forty languages. And it's
Speaker 2: that's the kind of thing that makes CS amazing because
Speaker 2: this was five feet away from the dog shit robot
Speaker 2: that I asked about Thermite. And that's the thing. You
Speaker 2: get this like two people, one man whose dream is
Speaker 2: to connect the world and break the barriers of language,
Speaker 2: and one man who wants to make a robot that
Speaker 2: makes you hate the world, and both of them are
Speaker 2: next to each other, and there's also free liquor, and
Speaker 2: by god, ces is a good time. The Consumer Electronics
Speaker 2: Show TAVIA, How are you feeling about your first one.
Speaker 9: This is my second one, but I'm feeling pretty good.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 9: As a journalist, yes, it was enlightening. I got to
Speaker 9: see things that I did not know that I could
Speaker 9: see as a journalist. And a lot of it was
Speaker 9: very a lot of fluff, if I'm being honest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's mostly nonsense. And you know, aside from that
Speaker 2: one guy we watched die, nobody died, Garrison, How did
Speaker 2: you like eating dinner at Maramoto? Pretty good restaurant.
Speaker 4: That's probably the best meal I've had in recent memory.
Speaker 2: Well, then that justifies the company expense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, that was the the food we had tonight,
Speaker 4: and the very long walk back to the hotel was
Speaker 4: quite the experience.
Speaker 2: Well, I wanted to have a fight with you with
Speaker 2: the Excalibur Hotel's glasses. A fun thing about Vegas. If
Speaker 2: you're drunk enough, you can throw glasses at each other
Speaker 2: in the street outside and no one can get stopped.
Speaker 4: Something can get times because the glass weirdly doesn't break
Speaker 4: after it hits a Robert Evans.
Speaker 2: That was just Garrison. My glass broke immediately.
Speaker 4: All right, Well, I think that probably does it for
Speaker 4: us today. We will be back probably tomorrow with more
Speaker 4: just just game changing, revolutionary technology.
Speaker 2: Game change of technology. Most importantly, folks, the hotel we're
Speaker 2: staying in right now, which is one step up from
Speaker 2: the cheapest I didn't put Garrison in Circus Circus again.
Speaker 2: They advertised that they have IVS here. So my plan,
Speaker 2: we're going to do the exact opposite of whatever you
Speaker 2: do to avoid a hangover, and then we're all going
Speaker 2: to get ivs in the morning. It's going to be
Speaker 2: a good time stick around. Oh yeah, Tavia, you have
Speaker 2: anything to plug.
Speaker 9: You can follow me at ceut Mora on Twitter or
Speaker 9: x depending on your preference there, or you can see
Speaker 9: my work at Taviamora dot com.
Speaker 2: Tavia illustrated both of my books, After the Revolution and
Speaker 2: A Brief History of Ice, and she also made that
Speaker 2: big weird sphere thing in the middle of Las Vegas,
Speaker 2: so follow her seeut Mora and uh yeah, you know what.
Speaker 2: Until next time, folks, find somebody who looks like they
Speaker 2: might be a robot and just stab them a little bit,
Speaker 2: not in the abdomen where there's pieces a little on
Speaker 2: the arm. Slash them on the arm, you know what,
Speaker 2: That can't hurt anybody anyway. We're done.
Speaker 4: Oh man, welcome back.
Speaker 2: It could happen here. The only podcast that takes sole
Speaker 2: responsibility for the assassination of.
Speaker 4: So we're back.
Speaker 2: We're still at CES. We're slightly more sober than we
Speaker 2: were last night.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but we are more high on ces.
Speaker 2: We are higher on cees. If you haven't been, the
Speaker 2: Consumer Electronics Show is one hundred and twenty thousand or
Speaker 2: so people all flooding into Las Vegas for about four days,
Speaker 2: where they walk around in a convention center that if
Speaker 2: you grew up in a small town, the convention center
Speaker 2: is larger than where you grew up. And it's just
Speaker 2: wall to wall a mix of incredible new technology, achievements
Speaker 2: that are going to change people's lives, absolute nonsense, vaporware,
Speaker 2: repackaged old shit, and stuff that will get someone you
Speaker 2: love killed, all just crammed together in this massive room
Speaker 2: the size of a small world, and yeah, you just
Speaker 2: kind of go crazy slowly living in it. This is Robert,
Speaker 2: you know me and Garrison? Hello, you know Garrison, And
Speaker 2: returning from part one is Tavia Mora, our resident technological expert. Tavia,
Speaker 2: how'd you feel in your second day out on the floor?
Speaker 9: Exhausted, and excited to be impressed by stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that is what we're doing today today's episode.
Speaker 2: Last time we tell keep that mic in your hand.
Speaker 2: Last episode we talked about the most obviously stupid products.
Speaker 2: So Tavia, I want you to start us off with
Speaker 2: what is a good product something you saw today or
Speaker 2: yesterday that you thought that thing is fucking cool.
Speaker 9: Well, let's see. I think we're in the North Hall.
Speaker 9: It was in the North Hall that we saw This
Speaker 9: is a gadget called wheel me that was just a
Speaker 9: simple rolling platform that I would track along where it
Speaker 9: was supposed to go on the ground. But what I
Speaker 9: saw on it was a case, and I was very excited.
Speaker 9: Since I work in a lot of the event spaces
Speaker 9: and when I have to move to and from kind
Speaker 9: of where we're like staging a lot of stuff to
Speaker 9: where the site is, it's really nice to have the
Speaker 9: extra help. The extra lift that was marketed pretty much
Speaker 9: directly toward me. As soon as I saw it, instantly
Speaker 9: wanted it. I could see I use for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it seemed like a potentially really useful thing.
Speaker 2: Obviously the mount that they had wouldn't be able to
Speaker 2: go up or down stairs. Well, but if you're moving
Speaker 2: across like a large warehouse space or something like the
Speaker 2: kind of folece where a lot of events are held,
Speaker 2: or a concert space, I could see it being a
Speaker 2: real labor saver. And we did see there was another
Speaker 2: product there that was like it was a delivery robot
Speaker 2: for like delivering food that they had built away for
Speaker 2: it to go upstairs, where it basically had a large,
Speaker 2: maybe at two feet diameter wheel and there were like
Speaker 2: plastic spokes and then the outside of the wheel is
Speaker 2: like soft plastic like the actual tread itself, and so
Speaker 2: it would just kind of bend to conform to the
Speaker 2: shape of the stairs, and it was able to roll
Speaker 2: smoothly upstairs on its wheels as a result of that,
Speaker 2: which I thought was kind of impressive. And that's one
Speaker 2: of the nicer things, is like seeing like, oh, somebody
Speaker 2: really puts some thought into that. That's a legitimately clever
Speaker 2: idea as opposed to a product we didn't mention last time.
Speaker 2: But it's one of the dumbest things I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: A guy who created smart plants, who who used the
Speaker 2: power of AI to make your plants able to communicate
Speaker 2: with you. So it's basically a huge plastic flower plant
Speaker 2: pets with a Z spelled with a Z.
Speaker 4: And basically you can't talk to it. But most of
Speaker 4: what humane to were just molesting the plants.
Speaker 2: It will it has speakers in the the flower pots,
Speaker 2: So would you like stroke the leaves? It will giggle
Speaker 2: like this is It was immediately like, oh, this is
Speaker 2: made for some kind of weird sex freak.
Speaker 9: Like so, and didn't it like spin back and forth
Speaker 9: a little bit as oh, he's giggling it like it's shamered.
Speaker 4: It like danced the pod around, it made it made
Speaker 4: small little noises.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 4: It was quite something. And the guy was incredibly enthusiastic
Speaker 4: about his about his talking, his talking giggling plants.
Speaker 9: He was following his passion truly.
Speaker 4: You could see yeah in his eyes. I will say
Speaker 4: the product worked. I'm just not sure it did work
Speaker 4: the product is for, but it was one of the
Speaker 4: more functional pieces of technology we've seen.
Speaker 5: It did.
Speaker 2: He also said that like when the plants were dry,
Speaker 2: it would like make the sound like a bubbling water sound,
Speaker 2: which I think is a mistake. It should scream at
Speaker 2: you when you have not watered the plants recently enough.
Speaker 2: But I do love how clearly he was obsessed with
Speaker 2: the brilliance of this design. That is one of the
Speaker 2: fun things at the smaller booths at a show like this,
Speaker 2: because like you know, you got like big companies LG,
Speaker 2: Lenovo and Honda, all these massive companies with very slick,
Speaker 2: expensive booths, and then you have in other areas just
Speaker 2: like a little square that's just a crazy person with
Speaker 2: the thing that they've dedicated their life to building. And
Speaker 2: sometimes it's the most brilliant thing you've ever seen. And
Speaker 2: sometimes it's a flower poth that lets that giggles when
Speaker 2: you molest.
Speaker 4: Sometimes it's plant, but it's you.
Speaker 2: I always appreciate the fact that, well, at least you
Speaker 2: threw your life into this stupid thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah. No, it's always kind of endearing, like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: no matter what it is, it's it's fun to see
Speaker 4: someone who's like, figure it out life, Yeah, a man, Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know who you are. You're the plant pets guy.
Speaker 4: Is that a good thing to be? I don't know,
Speaker 4: that's yeah, that's not that's not on me. I mean,
Speaker 4: we certainly saw a lot of a lot of products
Speaker 4: walking walking the show floor today, not nearly as many
Speaker 4: metaverse products as there were last year, and there were
Speaker 4: still some. I was finally able to try the Haptics
Speaker 4: tax suit, which I missed last year. This is it's
Speaker 4: basically a vest that zips up. It's it's not as
Speaker 4: painful as some of the other haptic suits that I
Speaker 4: tried out last year, which I kind of actually enjoyed.
Speaker 4: The ones that are just like actually hurt you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that like basically shock you in such a way
Speaker 2: as to simulate a stab, wound or something.
Speaker 4: That was cool. Yeah, this one by b hacked. This
Speaker 4: one by b Haptics was very user friendly. It wasn't
Speaker 4: it wasn't really painful, but it worked. It worked pretty well.
Speaker 4: What else? What else did we see walking walking into
Speaker 4: the big central hall? Oh there was there was that
Speaker 4: thing that I wish was real but probably will never be,
Speaker 4: which is the LG podcasting camphor hand. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So LG the people who may or may not have
Speaker 2: made your TV, but there's a decent chance they did.
Speaker 2: They have their big booth. It's mostly like TVs and
Speaker 2: smart home connected and entertainment stuff. But then they had
Speaker 2: like a concept product that was like a camper trailer.
Speaker 2: It was actually a really nice layout, but for what
Speaker 2: you know, camper trailers, they have all these little like
Speaker 2: cubby holes and storage spaces built into the sides in
Speaker 2: the back, and so underneath the bed that took up
Speaker 2: the back, they had like a folding down space where
Speaker 2: it was like it was like stored a half dozen
Speaker 2: bottles of wine and glasses in a very like pleasing way.
Speaker 2: But then in the center of the wine and the
Speaker 2: glasses are two like recording microphones. Like that's just like
Speaker 2: they made a van for podcasting alcoholics and I respect
Speaker 2: very targeted audience there. Yeah. On the other side of
Speaker 2: it was a fold down panel that was like a
Speaker 2: lot of campers have that you could fold it down
Speaker 2: and it's like a table, but on the wall, like
Speaker 2: once you fold it down, underneath the part of it
Speaker 2: that folds down, it's like a TV screen that they
Speaker 2: had tuned to like a fire place, like a campfire video.
Speaker 2: Just like if I am out in the wilderness, I
Speaker 2: am not putting on a campfire video. That's the most
Speaker 2: depressing thing I can imagine. Why would you do that?
Speaker 2: But that was fun in terms of like actually impressive things.
Speaker 2: There's a product we saw our first night out there,
Speaker 2: the time Kettle I don't know why they gave him
Speaker 2: up that name. It has nothing to do with what
Speaker 2: the product does. This is a translation device specifically, it's
Speaker 2: like the star trekiest thing I saw, because first off,
Speaker 2: it's a little retro. It's like a kind of a
Speaker 2: thick rectangular prism with a screen on it. And the
Speaker 2: rep from the company was like a Chinese man who
Speaker 2: clearly was like spoke Mandarin as his native language, and
Speaker 2: we had a conversation talking into this thing, and it
Speaker 2: would translate and speak back to each other. And there's
Speaker 2: like a little compartment on it that pops out, and
Speaker 2: it has two earphones. You could each put one in
Speaker 2: each person's ear to have like a live conversation that's
Speaker 2: translated over it. You can also hook it in through
Speaker 2: your phone. I know there's a couple of devices like that.
Speaker 2: This is the one I've seen that seemed both the
Speaker 2: smoothest and the most kind of like purpose built of them.
Speaker 2: I thought it was really impressive, and it's one of
Speaker 2: those you only you don't get those so often these days,
Speaker 2: but like every now and then at a show like this,
Speaker 2: you see a piece of technology that's like, well, this
Speaker 2: is what I assumed we would be doing with computers
Speaker 2: when I was a kid in the future, right, there
Speaker 2: would be an instant translator, a Babelfish device that you
Speaker 2: could just fit in your pocket, and it is kind
Speaker 2: of fucking dope, and I thought it worked really well.
Speaker 2: Liked I could have conducted an interview with this guy
Speaker 2: through that thing and it would have been pretty seamless,
Speaker 2: which which was nice to see. Speaking of Mandarin, I
Speaker 2: don't know, whatever products you're listening to, there's like a
Speaker 2: good thirty percent chance they're made over in China. So
Speaker 2: support the Chinese economy. We're back. So one of the
Speaker 2: things we did at this trade show, most of the
Speaker 2: time we spent was not out on the floor looking
Speaker 2: at products, it was attending these different speeches and panels,
Speaker 2: like where they'll have people from like they had like
Speaker 2: one of Google's AI heads and like the head of
Speaker 2: McDonald's AI integration, which is happening for some reason. We'll
Speaker 2: talk more about this in our dedicated AI episodes that
Speaker 2: are coming a bit later. But on one of the
Speaker 2: panels it was AI is the Fifth Industrial Revolution, was
Speaker 2: the name of the panel. They did not once to
Speaker 2: talk about what industrial revel The other four were or
Speaker 2: why this one was. They just said that title like
Speaker 2: five times. They were very proud of it. And one
Speaker 2: of the who was that Lady Garrison.
Speaker 4: The Alexa lady with the iHeart AI shirt.
Speaker 2: Yes, there was a lady with a shirt that said
Speaker 2: iHeart is Was she the dividend lady?
Speaker 4: No, the dividend lady was from? Was from the Synthetic
Speaker 4: Information panel?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yes? Oh sorry, sorry sorry that was the other panel. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there was a panel in like deep fakes and AI
Speaker 2: harms and there was a lady on there who was
Speaker 2: like some sort of relevant expert. But she kept using
Speaker 2: the term the liar's dividend to refer to the money
Speaker 2: that you make if you're a scammer, and she kept
Speaker 2: using it in the way she used it. I immediately thought, like, oh,
Speaker 2: this lady wants to sell a book and that's the
Speaker 2: title of the book, right, Like, that's very clearly she's
Speaker 2: mentioning it in such a pointed, unnatural way. That was
Speaker 2: my assumption. Apparently the term has existed for a few
Speaker 2: years now. It seems useless to me because like, if
Speaker 2: you're saying someone is a fraudster, well, the difended is
Speaker 2: the money they make committing fraud. Like, you don't need
Speaker 2: to give it another name. It's not like that's like again,
Speaker 2: it's like calling the money you get robbing a bank
Speaker 2: the bank robbers dividend. Well, that's just a stupid thing
Speaker 2: to say. So yeah, we've been using that for everything
Speaker 2: now and now you are all enjoying the podcasters dividend here,
Speaker 2: you know, that's that's what you're listening to.
Speaker 4: Speaking of listening, we tried good pivot here, so thank
Speaker 4: you to you, thank you. We call that the Segway dividend.
Speaker 2: We tried.
Speaker 4: I know Robert's familiar with this, but I've not tried
Speaker 4: them out before until today. I think it's called chokes shocks, shocks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wear those headphones every day. Yeah, they're like
Speaker 2: bone conducting headphones.
Speaker 4: Bone conducting headphones, so they don't go in your ear.
Speaker 4: They go around like around the back of your head.
Speaker 4: They hook around your ear lobe and they vibrate and
Speaker 4: they can make you hear sounds in your brain. Yeah,
Speaker 4: which is pretty cool. They were they had they just
Speaker 4: launched a new waterproof model targeting like swimmers.
Speaker 2: Yes, like IP sixty eight or something like that. Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's supposed to be you can submerge it for
Speaker 2: like hours at two meters of depth, so you can
Speaker 2: like swim with them on.
Speaker 4: But I really enjoyed these. Yeah, apparently they can help
Speaker 4: some people who have like targeted hearing loss, So that's
Speaker 4: that's an actually neat piece of working technology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really cool if you're not aware of these,
Speaker 2: because when we say, like Whenson said, you can hear
Speaker 2: sounds to them. They're just like wearing normal headphones. But
Speaker 2: we have a friend who is deaf in one ear
Speaker 2: and put them on for the first time recently. It
Speaker 2: was able to like hear out of that ear for
Speaker 2: the first time in years, which is like kind of
Speaker 2: an amazing thing to be able to do with a
Speaker 2: fucking set of headphones that are they're not cheap headphones,
Speaker 2: but they're not like inaccessibly expensive. All right, Tavia, you
Speaker 2: got another one you wanted to talk about.
Speaker 9: Yeah, there was this product that we ran into that
Speaker 9: was very close to the tact suit that Garrison had
Speaker 9: tried on, and it's called three D Desk. It looks
Speaker 9: to be like an additional add on you can put
Speaker 9: on top of your desk that you would use if
Speaker 9: you were working. The one that we had seen was
Speaker 9: a standing sitting style desk and it has the actual
Speaker 9: product itself on top of it, which looked to be
Speaker 9: like a stand, and it had two monitors attached to
Speaker 9: one plane of it, and then with like I think
Speaker 9: a simple button switch, it would sort of like another
Speaker 9: monitor would swoop out from behind them, and there was
Speaker 9: sort of like the cycling monitor arrangement that I hadn't
Speaker 9: quite seen before. And I work a lot with a
Speaker 9: bunch of different types of programs, and I'm like more
Speaker 9: or less stuck to my desk most of the time,
Speaker 9: So this actually looked to be another really useful product
Speaker 9: for somebody like me, not unlike the wheel me.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the things you can if you've seen like
Speaker 2: a drafting table, right like those desks, it's basically a
Speaker 2: big desk that you can like push down so that
Speaker 2: like the desk part is almost parallel, and you can
Speaker 2: like put stick paper and stuff on and you can
Speaker 2: draw on it like what architects use. It has that,
Speaker 2: so like underneath the monitors there's this top desk piece
Speaker 2: that you can like flip up and you can put
Speaker 2: stuff on, like use it as like a drafting table
Speaker 2: or push it back down, you know, with the switch
Speaker 2: of a button.
Speaker 4: It's pretty cool looking desk.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it would have like the two monitors and then
Speaker 9: this sort of like this plane that would be sitting
Speaker 9: at like a thirty nine degree angle or so kind
Speaker 9: of from you, so you can set a bunch of
Speaker 9: books up or a bunch of notes you're taking or organizing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as a general rule, it was one of the
Speaker 2: like the products that I kept finding myself gravitating towards
Speaker 2: in our free time. There was like anything that had
Speaker 2: nothing to do with AI, because yeah, anyone who could
Speaker 2: who could find any reason to stick AI in something
Speaker 2: like people there's people selling like battery generators that are
Speaker 2: like AI assisted, and it's like, what do you mean
Speaker 2: it means means it cuts off the power when it's
Speaker 2: full well, unbelievable. That's not AI. That's just a battery
Speaker 2: working better. Like, come on, guys, it's this thing the
Speaker 2: tech industry does that that has has been supposed by
Speaker 2: like a lot of the products we've seen this year,
Speaker 2: many of whom are like just absolute nonsense, like the
Speaker 2: the wehead thing that that like hideous chatbot that looks
Speaker 2: like a broken human face and just deeply off putting.
Speaker 2: Now that said, there was a really cool product that
Speaker 2: we that I actually like liked, the AI use application.
Speaker 2: So there's a company called Cellistron that makes they're calling
Speaker 2: it a like a home observatory, and it's it looks
Speaker 2: like a big telescope. It's not cheap. It's not insanely
Speaker 2: expensive for a telescope, mind you, but it's it's not inexpensive,
Speaker 2: and it is like a motorized telescope that it uses
Speaker 2: like AI, like some sort of AI program in order
Speaker 2: to cut out light pollution and stuff and enhance the
Speaker 2: images that you're you're getting so that you can actually
Speaker 2: get clear images of like galaxies and other planets from
Speaker 2: your backyard. And it hooks into like a phone or
Speaker 2: a tablet or computer like wirelessly. It actually generates its
Speaker 2: own Wi Fi network, so you can still use even
Speaker 2: if you don't have Internet. But one of what you
Speaker 2: can do is you could control it from like an
Speaker 2: iPad and you could port the feed directly to your TV,
Speaker 2: and you could like direct you could have like a
Speaker 2: group of people sitting around snorting whatever drugs you prefer
Speaker 2: to snort and like looking at different galaxies and shit
Speaker 2: in space, and that was pretty fucking cool and actually
Speaker 2: like an actual application of machine learning that I thought
Speaker 2: was positive.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you can have like your little at home star parties.
Speaker 9: I dug in a little bit more on like how
Speaker 9: AI gets used there, and it seemed like it was
Speaker 9: mostly part of the image processing before controls get set
Speaker 9: to the user and they have like other adjustments such
Speaker 9: as brightness, contrast, that kind of thing. But it sounds
Speaker 9: like it does like some image processing as part of
Speaker 9: its AI capabilities.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was that was neat.
Speaker 2: Again, not a cheap product, but like actually something that's
Speaker 2: seeing it used impressed me and I could see wanting
Speaker 2: to have that, And I could also see like a
Speaker 2: clear bit my roommate has telescopes and stuff, and there's
Speaker 2: usually the light pollution is too much of a pain
Speaker 2: in the ass and fucking even in Portland, which is
Speaker 2: not the worst city for light pollution in this country
Speaker 2: to use them very well. So something like that and
Speaker 2: also just being able to easily drop it onto your
Speaker 2: TV and like hang out with friends. Like if I
Speaker 2: had fight out access of something like that back when
Speaker 2: I was doing hallucinogens, I think it would have used
Speaker 2: it a lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that sounds that sounds promising.
Speaker 2: Speaking of things that I would have used a lot
Speaker 2: as a young man. Garrison, you want to tell us
Speaker 2: about the hand job machine.
Speaker 4: Sure, So there's this company that's what you said to
Speaker 4: get a second there. So there's this company in Norway
Speaker 4: called Handy. They make They make interactive, interactive sex toys.
Speaker 4: They started by targeting the male sex toy demographic or
Speaker 4: as they I actually liked that. They that they actually
Speaker 4: more often said the penis uh demographic, which yeah, which
Speaker 4: was nice.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that. Yeah.
Speaker 4: But anyway, it's uh, it's it's a little thing that
Speaker 4: you can you can slight and it goes up.
Speaker 2: Like it looks like a nice coffee thermoscy. It has
Speaker 2: kind of like with like a little tube that has
Speaker 2: like a clear plastic penis prism next to it.
Speaker 4: It has what it has one that it has like
Speaker 4: a has like a stroker sleeve attached in and you
Speaker 4: can control like the speed and vibration just on on
Speaker 4: the little like thermous looking thing. But the real features
Speaker 4: of the Handy is that it also has hands free
Speaker 4: control that you can you can hook this thing up
Speaker 4: via an app to many different like sources. You can
Speaker 4: hook this up to whatever you're watching on your computer.
Speaker 4: You can hook this up to movies. You can hook
Speaker 4: this up to an Amazon Alexa if that's your thing,
Speaker 4: and the sounds will will impact how the how the
Speaker 4: stroker moves. The The one of the more promising applications
Speaker 4: which it really also opens opens the field of music,
Speaker 4: is that you can hook it up to like your
Speaker 4: Spotify or something and the music and like the beats
Speaker 4: of the rhythm will impact the vibrations and speed on
Speaker 4: the stroker. So we can now learn which songs are
Speaker 4: best for orcas ofs which opens a whole new, whole
Speaker 4: new category for the Grammys. I think there's a lot
Speaker 4: of trial and error. I think one hundred gex is
Speaker 4: definitely gonna be up there.
Speaker 9: I think nickel Back is going to make a comeback.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is gonna be the Billie Joel renaissance. Just
Speaker 2: just people spilling ropes over down Easter Alexas Christ.
Speaker 4: They also just launched a second product called I Think
Speaker 4: Just the O, which is just a more classic small
Speaker 4: handheld vibrator. Similarly like the Handy, It's it's based on
Speaker 4: actual like sound vibrations, not a motorized vibration, so it
Speaker 4: similarly can hook up to music and that changes the
Speaker 4: way it feels. So we have we have not been
Speaker 4: able to test these yet because he didn't actually have
Speaker 4: free copies.
Speaker 2: They only had to give Garrison a penis sheath.
Speaker 4: They only they only had the free sleeves. But the
Speaker 4: actual device is two hundred dollars, which is not is
Speaker 4: not super expensive considering this style of like sex toy.
Speaker 4: That is kind of standard. Yeah, yeah, that was That
Speaker 4: was one of the more professional booth sexually. Yeah and
Speaker 4: see yes, and this is they did a really good job.
Speaker 2: This is a good time for me to tell my
Speaker 2: favorite masturbation machine story. Oh so there's a product.
Speaker 4: Oh boy.
Speaker 2: You know, for the penis having demographic, there's not as
Speaker 2: many sex toys traditionally, not as many at least fun
Speaker 2: ones out there. It's it's it's a little bit of
Speaker 2: a barren wasteland. But there is the flesh light. And
Speaker 2: if you haven't seen a fleshlight, you've heard about them.
Speaker 2: It does look like a big, heavy, plastic flashlight and
Speaker 2: you unscrew the top and there's a fake vagina in there. Right.
Speaker 4: Some of them are shaped like asses. Some of them
Speaker 4: are sex asses.
Speaker 9: Sometimes there are a button. Sometimes there are a mouth too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, there's mouths too. And I once had
Speaker 2: a friend who got in some trouble with the law,
Speaker 2: and we had to drive to their house and grab
Speaker 2: a bunch of things in their house and throw them
Speaker 2: away because we weren't sure if the police were going
Speaker 2: to be showing up. And so after we did that
Speaker 2: that night, it was a very depressed, very sad night,
Speaker 2: and we all got extremely drunk, and three of the
Speaker 2: four of us are standing out on the front porch
Speaker 2: in front of like the house that we're at, and
Speaker 2: then the fourth person in the room, who was like
Speaker 2: roommates with the person who had just been arrested, comes
Speaker 2: out with the arrested person's flesh light and for reasons
Speaker 2: known only to them, and God hurls it at us.
Speaker 2: Now we're in like this is a we're in Richardson, Texas,
Speaker 2: and like it's kind of this walled off by concrete bricks,
Speaker 2: little front porch area, and we all bolt to get
Speaker 2: away from the flesh light and it hits the brick
Speaker 2: wall and the plastic case shatters, and then the thing
Speaker 2: hits the and the fake plast silicone vagina inside of
Speaker 2: it slithers out like like a living creature, probably lubricated
Speaker 2: by some sort of substance, and it was one of
Speaker 2: the most unsettling moments of my life.
Speaker 4: I'm really glad you could share that with the Strawberry that.
Speaker 9: The sound was incredible.
Speaker 2: It did, yeah, it it sounded a lot like if
Speaker 2: you've ever seen that episode Always Sonny where where Danny
Speaker 2: DeVito gets berthed from a couch like covered in sweat.
Speaker 2: It sounded a lot like that, I imagine, and we call.
Speaker 4: That experience the flesh lights dividend, the.
Speaker 2: Flush light dividend. That's right now, speaking of jacking off,
Speaker 2: the next product we're going to talk about is Jackery,
Speaker 2: a company that makes some really actually pretty cool like
Speaker 2: survival equipment, specifically like solar battery, solar panel and battery setups.
Speaker 2: And we're going to talk about that because it's definitely
Speaker 2: like of the products we saw here the most in
Speaker 2: our milieu, as like, yeah, the world is falling apart show.
Speaker 2: So we're gonna get to that. But first, here's some ads.
Speaker 2: We're back and we're talking about Jackery, which it's fun.
Speaker 2: One of the things I appreciate about this is that
Speaker 2: the hand job machine could have been called jack the Jackerree,
Speaker 2: or the company could have been called Jackerree. And likewise,
Speaker 2: the company that makes batteries and solar panels could have
Speaker 2: been called Handy because it's handy. They have a solar
Speaker 2: battery around when you're camping. Curious, interesting, interesting stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 2: a lot of thoughts there thoughts to be thought.
Speaker 4: Oddly, that ven diagram crossover is closer than I thought
Speaker 4: it would be.
Speaker 2: So Jackerree is a cut I would recommend googling their
Speaker 2: stuff they make. There's a lot the field of like
Speaker 2: solar batteries and panels is super crowded right now, and
Speaker 2: most of the batteries you're gonna are gonna be made
Speaker 2: like one of the same two or three factories. It's
Speaker 2: basically the same factory makes a bunch of Commpany's batteries,
Speaker 2: and a lot of them are very unsafe. There was
Speaker 2: a company that sent me some review samples, like a
Speaker 2: whole solar generator and battery last year that I was
Speaker 2: going to kind of do a piece about, you know,
Speaker 2: surviving on a solar generator, and then a month after
Speaker 2: it arrived, I was still testing it. It came out
Speaker 2: that they had burned down a bunch of people's houses
Speaker 2: because the batteries were insane. No, yeah, so you want
Speaker 2: to be careful with this stuff. Jackery is one of
Speaker 2: the I have had good luck with some of their products.
Speaker 2: They seem to be of a high build quality. I
Speaker 2: have not heard horror stories about them when you go
Speaker 2: to the their booth that people there seem to be
Speaker 2: genuinely knowledgeable, and the way in which they set it
Speaker 2: up and demo it suggests a degree of knowledge about
Speaker 2: the product and like what people want out of it.
Speaker 2: So one of the things they do have some really
Speaker 2: large including some like some solar batteries with generators with
Speaker 2: solar panel generators that are large enough to run like
Speaker 2: a deep freeze, which is really cool being able to
Speaker 2: do that. And the setup they had specifically was a
Speaker 2: like an actual, like serious, like solid It's like not
Speaker 2: one of those folding panel setups that goes on the
Speaker 2: roof of your car or truck alongside with like a
Speaker 2: tent like one of those via truck Talk tents for overlanding,
Speaker 2: and then plugs into you know, either their one thousand
Speaker 2: or like two thousand watt solar generator or yeah so
Speaker 2: or battery generators and just everything about the way it
Speaker 2: was set up seemed really practical. It seemed durable. It
Speaker 2: didn't feel like something was gonna fall apart. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: can see it being like a legitimate like even outside
Speaker 2: of the car, because that's more or less like a
Speaker 2: hobby it's sort of thing. But having one of these
Speaker 2: generators that you can actually run your fridge and your
Speaker 2: freezer and your lights in your house all like like
Speaker 2: they had some like in an outage.
Speaker 4: Microwaves, stuff, cooking implements, other other kind of stuff you
Speaker 4: might take for like like you know, like a week
Speaker 4: in mountain trip or something. The main the main roof
Speaker 4: mountain panel I think, was able to pull four hundred watts,
Speaker 4: and then it had two sliding out panels that can
Speaker 4: pull three hundred watts so that they could get.
Speaker 2: In a hot and in a in a sunny day.
Speaker 2: They said you could get like nine hundred wats an hour,
Speaker 2: which is.
Speaker 4: Exactly really good for n watts an hour, which is
Speaker 4: which is quite impressive, and they have all the batteries
Speaker 4: to store it. And by by far, I think Jackery
Speaker 4: is the most consistent company in this field that I
Speaker 4: could I routinely see high praise for because the feel
Speaker 4: of like portable solar like solar charging is kind of
Speaker 4: a little bit sketchy. Sometimes stuff can easily break, Things
Speaker 4: can be really easily over marked. Like I had a
Speaker 4: solar panel to to to charge my iPad that really
Speaker 4: only lasted like two weeks and it just completely stopped working.
Speaker 4: But I've only heard only heard good things about Jackery.
Speaker 4: I have not tested them out myself. I know Robert
Speaker 4: has some of them. Robert has some of their battery equipment,
Speaker 4: but hopefully we'll be able to get our hands on
Speaker 4: some of that this year.
Speaker 9: They also had a lot of different form factors of
Speaker 9: the same types of products, so a lot of smaller
Speaker 9: versions of things that seemed to be really good if
Speaker 9: you need a kind of more modular setup, that was
Speaker 9: for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had like large ones that you could basically
Speaker 2: have plugged into your house in case you lose power
Speaker 2: for a small period of time in order to like
Speaker 2: ensure that you don't like you don't actually have a
Speaker 2: period where the power's out. And then they had a
Speaker 2: lot of like really good camping sort of like off
Speaker 2: grid battery options.
Speaker 4: It's just cool.
Speaker 2: Take take a look at that if you are if
Speaker 2: you are someone who is in the kind of financial
Speaker 2: situation that you can prep in that way where you're
Speaker 2: you're buying like solar equipment and batteries, which definitely is
Speaker 2: never super cheap, right, I would recommend checking them out
Speaker 2: at least as you kind of do your research.
Speaker 4: There's like two more products I think I want to mention.
Speaker 4: The first is Shift. This is a company I was
Speaker 4: already familiar with, but I got to try these out.
Speaker 4: They look kind of like roller skates, but they're not
Speaker 4: roller skates. They are these sort of boots with motorized
Speaker 4: and locking wheels that attach onto your shoes. And their
Speaker 4: use case for this is like factory workers. It makes
Speaker 4: the meal, It makes them able to walk in move.
Speaker 2: They said two and a half times faster, considerably faster.
Speaker 4: I was able to walk at a pretty at a
Speaker 4: pretty decent speed. You can you can lock the wheels
Speaker 4: you need to like do more like delicate mobility tasks.
Speaker 4: Go upstairs stairs ladders.
Speaker 9: That was one way to even lock and unlock the
Speaker 9: shoes themselves from being used. There's like a certain gesture
Speaker 9: you had to make.
Speaker 2: By you lift up your heel I think it was,
Speaker 2: and it locks the shoes so the wheels don't come.
Speaker 4: You lift up your heel in twist and the boot
Speaker 4: itself had a hinge that was just under the Yeah,
Speaker 4: so I've seen these before. They look they look kind
Speaker 4: of fun, but they're four kind of factory work. So
Speaker 4: it's it's it's it's kind of a mixed bag where
Speaker 4: the device worked quite well, and it took me like
Speaker 4: just like maybe like like one minute to get used
Speaker 4: to it. Then I could then I was really smooth.
Speaker 4: But the actual operational use case they're envisioning is like
Speaker 4: being able to get like get more, get more productivity
Speaker 4: out of their workers the same amount of money for
Speaker 4: the same amount of money. So like, yeah, I think
Speaker 4: Robert made a pretty good comparison. Like last year we
Speaker 4: tried out this exoskeleton, which also you know, they talked
Speaker 4: a bit about a little bit about productivity specifically for
Speaker 4: like again factory workers, but that Exokelton was also designed
Speaker 4: to help that worker not damage their body. Like it
Speaker 4: was it was to make sure that they actually can
Speaker 4: can stay safer and not to as much damage to
Speaker 4: their knees, their joints, their back versus these little roller
Speaker 4: skate type shoes. Yeah, I have no such have no
Speaker 4: such ability.
Speaker 9: I mean it made you go faster, kind of like
Speaker 9: one of those walkways that you have in the airport.
Speaker 9: Who doesn't want to go a little bit faster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the way the guy repped it too,
Speaker 2: where he was like, we have these factory workers. They're like,
Speaker 2: I have the best job in the company. Now, it's
Speaker 2: so fun skating around on these things. Nobody said that
Speaker 2: to you, bro, like, don't lie.
Speaker 9: It's a nice thought.
Speaker 4: He also clayed that there's not been one fall or
Speaker 4: injury with these things, on which I just I do
Speaker 4: not believe because I almost fell down to testing these out.
Speaker 4: I'm sure if you're carrying like heavy boxes like it's
Speaker 4: it's very easy for your weight to get to get
Speaker 4: away from yourself when you're literally walking on wheels like
Speaker 4: and it can be controlling. It actually is more intuitive
Speaker 4: than I thought it would be. But mistakes happen, and
Speaker 4: those those sorts of big claims are a little bit
Speaker 4: a little bit sketchy.
Speaker 9: I found myself kind of waving my arms a little
Speaker 9: bit in front of me to keep my balance. I
Speaker 9: wasn't like competent on them.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just watching you both, I could see like, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: people are gonna get hurt. Now I don't I am
Speaker 2: sure because it seems to be easy enough to use
Speaker 2: that I suspect it would. You could really get a
Speaker 2: lot of extra money out of your workers as an
Speaker 2: employer using these things, but at the cost of some
Speaker 2: of them are gonna like fucking eat shit and hurt themselves,
Speaker 2: which is not like in the grand scheme of corporate evil,
Speaker 2: especially if the show where everybody's like talking about the
Speaker 2: potential of AI to eliminate tens of millions of jobs.
Speaker 2: Not really, it doesn't really scan. And I think we're
Speaker 2: still putting this on the good episode because like they
Speaker 2: worked in a way that they were technically impressive. We
Speaker 2: just found it kind of upsetting that they were bragging about,
Speaker 2: like you can get more money out of your already
Speaker 2: exploited workforce with these. But I could see someone just
Speaker 2: getting these and because they would allow you if you
Speaker 2: find it, like yeah, if you if you live in
Speaker 2: a walkable city.
Speaker 4: Cityable neighborhood, it can make your commute times much.
Speaker 2: Faster and still probably safer than like you less risk
Speaker 2: maybe than like a bike or something like that.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I want to see somebody wear those at a
Speaker 9: roller skating rink.
Speaker 4: So yeah, that's called that's called Shift Robotics. I believe
Speaker 4: they're based out of Texas.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The last thing I want to talk about. For both
Speaker 4: mine and Robert's job, we use a lot of computer screens.
Speaker 4: I'm looking in Robert's hotel room right now where we're recording.
Speaker 4: He has a laptop hooked up to a second monitor.
Speaker 4: I have a very similar setup I have. I have
Speaker 4: a laptop and a secondary monitor on my desktop. I
Speaker 4: have like three or four monitors always running at the
Speaker 4: same time, just because of the absurdity of what our
Speaker 4: works sometimes entails, so it could be hard to get
Speaker 4: things done on a single screen. And we saw this
Speaker 4: one product that looked just like a like a very
Speaker 4: like thick keyboard with a with a touchpad, but it
Speaker 4: had these like AR glasses attached. Now, AR is a
Speaker 4: tricky feel. We tried a lot of AR stuff last year,
Speaker 4: most of it some of it was okay, some of
Speaker 4: it was a little bit finicky. But this company was
Speaker 4: called Sightful. Yeah, and what this basically was is that
Speaker 4: it was a fully functioning computer but instead of a
Speaker 4: instead of just having a regular display, it has a
Speaker 4: display built into these yeah, into these glasses.
Speaker 2: The product itself looks like just the bottom half of
Speaker 2: a laptop, like the keyboard part that holds the PCU
Speaker 2: and shit with like this weird flappy thing attached to
Speaker 2: the keyboard part that holds like a set of glasses
Speaker 2: that are plugged in directly to the laptop. That's how
Speaker 2: it like looks.
Speaker 4: And when you put the glasses on, you get like
Speaker 4: four screens that pop up. The screens aren't too big,
Speaker 4: they're not too small. You can change the size by
Speaker 4: using using the touchpad. And this required a lot less
Speaker 4: like like a like a focusing like you usually when
Speaker 4: you put on ar AR glasses you have to kind
Speaker 4: of dial in the focal length to make them look right.
Speaker 4: But this was all very clear. The text was easy
Speaker 4: to read, Changing from one screen to another was pretty
Speaker 4: was pretty easy. They had they had They had a
Speaker 4: pass through mode like a lot of good ar does.
Speaker 4: They had a mode where you can lock the screens
Speaker 4: in place so you can turn your head and they
Speaker 4: don't move. They had another version where you just with
Speaker 4: like keystrokes, you could turn your head and the screens
Speaker 4: follow you. So it was it was a pretty it
Speaker 4: was a pretty useful device.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You could press a button and it would go
Speaker 2: the screens would disappear, Like if you're walking while using it,
Speaker 2: you could press a button and it would go clear,
Speaker 2: so you wouldn't see it, but you could see where
Speaker 2: you were walking pass through.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like I typed it an email or two, and like
Speaker 2: did some googling on it, and I very quickly adapted
Speaker 2: to the screens being virtual but still using a physical keyboard.
Speaker 4: I we didn't get like motion sick with it.
Speaker 5: It was not. Now.
Speaker 4: I think this is like either the first or second
Speaker 4: iteration of this product. First the first to market the first. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I think there is some ways to improve. It runs
Speaker 4: its own Android operating system, which you know, if you're
Speaker 4: trying to download applications. The fact that it can't run
Speaker 4: Windows or Linux or even Apple's system, you know that
Speaker 4: that could be a bit of a limitation. It only
Speaker 4: had like two hundred and two hundred and fifty gigs
Speaker 4: of work.
Speaker 2: It wasn't really a full storage and power. It's a
Speaker 2: little bit beefier than your phone. Yea right. The company
Speaker 2: the product, by the way, is called spacetop. Yeah, Sightful
Speaker 2: is the company's spacetop is the is the the actual
Speaker 2: product itself, And yeah.
Speaker 4: I uh, we're gonna We're gonna keep our eye on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wouldn't buy the first of this thing. It's
Speaker 2: about twenty two hundred bucks, which is like upper mid
Speaker 2: level cost for a laptop.
Speaker 4: My issue is at based on how expensive it is,
Speaker 4: the laptop itself isn't powerful enough to justify that price. Certainly,
Speaker 4: the fact that you know, I can act like I
Speaker 4: have four monitors wherever I go, that is, that is
Speaker 4: very convenient. I think I just need the laptop to
Speaker 4: be a little bit more powerful, especially with how many
Speaker 4: tabs they have open it at all times. Having only
Speaker 4: eight gigs of RAM just will not cut it. But
Speaker 4: I'm certainly certainly hopeful that we'll be able to see
Speaker 4: small improvements going forward.
Speaker 9: Indeed, yeah, they had mentioned it as being a web
Speaker 9: first device instead of anything else.
Speaker 4: That makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it's like a Chromebook, and I think in
Speaker 2: terms of like it's actual yeah, efficacy.
Speaker 4: Very similar to a Chromebook, like operation wise.
Speaker 2: But my hope is that like the kind of technology
Speaker 2: they've developed, it will get you know, if it's successful,
Speaker 2: they'll make more prewer. Now I do kind of worry
Speaker 2: about how successful will be because like Garrison and I
Speaker 2: were both like, oh, this is perfect for what we do,
Speaker 2: but we have a very specific use case for our machinets.
Speaker 2: And I'm not sure like how many other people are
Speaker 2: in our position. But I was really impressed with just
Speaker 2: like how well it immediately worked.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I I was happy with it. You can
Speaker 4: hook up an external monitor if you if you want to,
Speaker 4: So that's that's nice.
Speaker 9: And I am a glasses wearer, and so one stuff
Speaker 9: that they had for me is that they took my
Speaker 9: glasses and approximated my prescription.
Speaker 4: Oh that's cool.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and they slid on these magnetic sort of like
Speaker 9: eyeglass pieces onto the headset that you're wearing, or like
Speaker 9: the glasses that you're wearing. That way, I could actually
Speaker 9: use it without wearing my prescription glasses.
Speaker 4: Nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that was really It's stuff like that that
Speaker 2: lets you know that people making something didn't just aren't
Speaker 2: just like trying to rush some shit out the door
Speaker 2: to make money, Like, Oh, you put some thought into that, motherfucker.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that. And this all leads us the easily
Speaker 2: the best product of the entire show. Honestly, the only
Speaker 2: one really worth talking about, Garrison, Will you hand me
Speaker 2: the flying car brochure?
Speaker 4: So Jesus Christ, this is the CEO.
Speaker 2: Of flying cars. Robotaxis is the term we heard a lot.
Speaker 2: We went to a panel that was like serious people
Speaker 2: in the robotaxi industry, which they admitted does not exist.
Speaker 4: By the way, advance to air mobility, of air mobility,
Speaker 4: it was the acronym AAM.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, there are several companies that are using effectively
Speaker 2: like these are. Some of them are like ultra lights.
Speaker 2: But there was one of the companies that came here
Speaker 2: bragged like you can buy buy a plane that doesn't
Speaker 2: require a pilot's license because it's so light, but it's
Speaker 2: still a plane, which seems like a horrible idea to me.
Speaker 2: But there are some real companies who are like testing
Speaker 2: out electronic aero taxis. Some of these are this is
Speaker 2: not vaporware. These products exist. Now, what doesn't exist is
Speaker 2: the legal framework to allow people to do this. Like
Speaker 2: the panelists were like openly like, we want this to
Speaker 2: be an industry, but first there have to be it
Speaker 2: has to be legal right now, we don't know, like
Speaker 2: they they're still trying to figure out like what the
Speaker 2: rules are going to be. They're hoping by the end
Speaker 2: of this year the FAA puts out like a temporary
Speaker 2: rule so about how robot air robo taxes work, and
Speaker 2: also how they call them verta ports, which is because
Speaker 2: these are all vertical takeoff and landing craft.
Speaker 4: At least the one that we saw on the show
Speaker 4: floor looks like a looks like a Lamborghini with a
Speaker 4: massive drone.
Speaker 2: Like a DGI type round the top. And that's that's
Speaker 2: the one I want to talk about, because all of
Speaker 2: those were real products. The exit paying the air road product,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, is absolutely not. It's built as a
Speaker 2: low altitude air mobility exploring. Yeah, it looks like a
Speaker 2: huge drone like you'd buy at a fucking best Buy,
Speaker 2: attached to a Lamborghini, and apparently the whole drone part,
Speaker 2: all of the rotors fold back into the body when
Speaker 2: you're driving it as a car like a.
Speaker 4: Like a transformer, like a transformer.
Speaker 2: And the reason why I say this is the best
Speaker 2: product in CEES is not that I think it would
Speaker 2: work or be safe. Because we talked to two people,
Speaker 2: and the person who was told to us is their
Speaker 2: technical expert, and neither of them could answer if it
Speaker 2: had airbags.
Speaker 4: They did say probably. They did say probably, which isn't
Speaker 4: what you want to hear.
Speaker 2: No, that you should have that answer. That's not a
Speaker 2: tough question, that's not a gotcha does your car have airbags?
Speaker 4: First, first, the PR guy that we were talking to
Speaker 4: was very open about knowing almost nothing about the technical
Speaker 4: aspects of this device. And then when we talked to
Speaker 4: the technical person, they too didn't know very much about it.
Speaker 4: So like, just isn't very reassuring, Like.
Speaker 2: And I even tried to do it the easy way
Speaker 2: where I was like, well, I know ultra light aircraft
Speaker 2: you don't need a pilot's license for so do you
Speaker 2: need Does this qualify? And they were basically said, no,
Speaker 2: we don't know, we don't know. Yeah, yeah, it'll take
Speaker 2: some kind of license. Probably. What kind of range does
Speaker 2: it get? They said twenty kilometers.
Speaker 4: By air about twenty minutes per charge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which seems like a dangerously short amount of time
Speaker 2: to be flying you and a loved one potentially in
Speaker 2: a thing it is.
Speaker 4: It is pretty low altitude, I think, they said it
Speaker 4: max is out at around one hundred one hundred, No,
Speaker 4: they said hundred meters. Sorry, so it's really not for
Speaker 4: going up super high. And I when we went to
Speaker 4: the more like expert panel, a lot of these use
Speaker 4: cases for this, they imagine is kind of replacing helicopters
Speaker 4: in cities. There's like metavac use cases. But a lot
Speaker 4: of people were talking about like testing these things out
Speaker 4: in New York where rich people use helicopters to get
Speaker 4: around the city, and this is what they want to
Speaker 4: replace them with. Because these can be purely electric, these
Speaker 4: can be much more because these can be much quieter.
Speaker 4: So that was what a lot of what they were
Speaker 4: talking about. However, again most of the panel was just
Speaker 4: them just complaining that the government hasn't done enough work
Speaker 4: to make this a real industry.
Speaker 2: Garrison, I got, you're not aware of this topic. It
Speaker 2: just handed me the flyer we got from them that
Speaker 2: I don't think either of us read through. Here's their story.
Speaker 2: Oh Boy, Sale Beyond Limits twenty thirteen. Zoo Deli ignited
Speaker 2: Erot with a daring dream to turn the enchanting broomsticks
Speaker 2: of Harry Potter into tangible wonder. Oh No, a tribe
Speaker 2: of daring mind set forth on the thrilling journey of
Speaker 2: crafting electric marvels that could take humans to the skies
Speaker 2: through tireless exploration. The first ever prototype, the flying motorcycle. Gracefully,
Speaker 2: this is all a Harry Potter thing. Some madman from
Speaker 2: China fell so in love with Harry Potter that he
Speaker 2: made a death car. I'm back around to loving it again.
Speaker 4: Average tech industry guy brain poisoned by Harry Potter creates
Speaker 4: death device.
Speaker 9: I feel like this guy and the plant pet Sky
Speaker 9: are probably like pretty tight.
Speaker 4: They're both the same kind of Why is there so
Speaker 4: many apocalypse tent based around Harry Potter? What's going on
Speaker 4: in this industry?
Speaker 2: And it is so The other brochure they had it
Speaker 2: shows like flying car, the modular flying car, which looks
Speaker 2: like a cyber truck because if it had like you know,
Speaker 2: you can get a truck, you can put like a
Speaker 2: bed cap on the beds. It's basically a big it's
Speaker 2: like a cyber truck with one of those, but the
Speaker 2: bed cap opens up to deploy like a quad copter
Speaker 2: thing that human beings can ride in kind.
Speaker 4: Of like sound wave in Transform, which is.
Speaker 2: It's a cool idea from like a kid's point of view.
Speaker 2: I think the idea here is that you know, John
Speaker 2: McAfee used to do this thing where he would live
Speaker 2: in the desert with a cult of weirdos and they
Speaker 2: would fly around on gliders until he got his nephew
Speaker 2: and an old man killed and a glider crash. This
Speaker 2: is this is the dream yeah of that Harry Potter fan.
Speaker 4: I mean, I this The reason why I'm actually very
Speaker 4: pro this product is because the only people that are
Speaker 4: going to use these are really rich. Yes, yes, I
Speaker 4: think there's a high gence this could take out a
Speaker 4: lot of them.
Speaker 2: This this has the best chance of dropping multiple billionaires
Speaker 2: of anything since the Death's Up, Like we felt from
Speaker 2: one hundred meters in the air just crashing out of
Speaker 2: the sky and Santa Monica and sand billionaires just taking
Speaker 2: out whole lanes of traffic.
Speaker 4: Imaginers. I mentionined to walking through the park one day
Speaker 4: and a billionaire comes flying down from the sky lands
Speaker 4: in like a two million dollar drone.
Speaker 2: The prototype that they say they got to fly was
Speaker 2: two tons. Wow, you could really do a lot of
Speaker 2: damage with that.
Speaker 4: Well, this is this, This is all quite exciting.
Speaker 2: Keep your eye on the sky. Folks, maybe wear a
Speaker 2: helmet for a while until this all shakes out. Like
Speaker 2: there's the story in the news right now that like
Speaker 2: some dude in Portland had the fucking door of that
Speaker 2: Alaska Airlines flight in his backyard. And I can't wait
Speaker 2: until that's like a third of Elon musk, just like
Speaker 2: Lance in someone's yard, like two million dollars. Oh yet, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And by the way, if fucking eat a billionaire's carcass
Speaker 2: winds up in my lawn, I got a new punch
Speaker 2: bowl with their skull. I'm going to harvest their.
Speaker 4: Possibly called the Billionaires Division, the Billionaires Dividend.
Speaker 2: Well, all right, everybody, anyone, Tapia you have anything to plug?
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, you can find me on Twitter or x
Speaker 9: at cut Mora, or if you want to learn a
Speaker 9: little bit more about me and my interactive and immersive work,
Speaker 9: you can see my work at tapiamora dot com.
Speaker 2: You can also see her work in my book A
Speaker 2: Brief History of Ice, where she did all the illustrations,
Speaker 2: or in my book After the Revolution where she did
Speaker 2: all the illustrations, or in the sequel which will come
Speaker 2: out when I finish those last two fucking chapters like
Speaker 2: three years from now, huh or in Vegas, yeah tomorrow
Speaker 2: to Laura, all right, well we're done. Hey, We'll be
Speaker 2: back Monday with more episodes every week from now until
Speaker 2: the heat death of the Universe.
Speaker 4: It Could Happen Here is production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 5: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 5: Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 5: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 4: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 4: monthly at coolzonmedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.