Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist. We, like the rest of the world,
Speaker 1: have our eyes on the recent assassination attempt of former
Speaker 1: US President Donald Trump on July thirteenth, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: as we recorded this strange news program before that incident occurred.
Speaker 1: We are releasing a special full episode on the event,
Speaker 1: which will be published this week. Thank you for your time.
Speaker 1: Be safe and stay tuned.
Speaker 2: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 2: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 2: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 2: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name's Matt, my
Speaker 3: name is Noel.
Speaker 4: They call me Ben.
Speaker 1: We're joined as always with our superproducer Alexis, code named
Speaker 1: Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly, you are You are here.
Speaker 1: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: It is almost birthday season here at how Here it's
Speaker 1: stuff they'll want you to know. As we heard all
Speaker 1: headlong toward August and the news isn't stopping. Taco Bell
Speaker 1: has a retirement home. Just off air. We're talking about
Speaker 1: some big changes in Greece, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: are smuggling animals in their pants. That's hot again now.
Speaker 4: And they're apparently also happy to see us. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, there's one great case with a guy named Matt
Speaker 1: Pancake real name, stop it, real name. You can see
Speaker 1: him on YouTube getting caught in a leopard onesie asleep
Speaker 1: on a bench after he broke into a pet store
Speaker 1: and tried to smuggle a bunch of hamsters out in
Speaker 1: his onesies for sex stuff a.
Speaker 5: You know what, I'm wondering if it was it could
Speaker 5: have been floated out there.
Speaker 1: You tell us, folks, maybe there is an entirely wholesome,
Speaker 1: indeed noble reason that you would need to put on
Speaker 1: an animal ones and throw a bunch of hamsters.
Speaker 5: And maybe he just really identifies with the animal kingdom
Speaker 5: and he was trying to liberate his people.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: But I will say, we were watching the video that
Speaker 5: you've found Ben on that topic with Alexis code named
Speaker 5: Doc Holliday, and Alexis pointed out that the police were
Speaker 5: being quite fast and loose and rough with this fellow
Speaker 5: without thinking anything about the imperiled lives of the hamsters
Speaker 5: contained with him.
Speaker 4: That leopard onesie.
Speaker 1: Assumptions are dangerous and doc. Yes, agreed, you made an
Speaker 1: excellent point. Also, shout out to the guy who got
Speaker 1: caught with a hundred live serpents in his pants when
Speaker 1: he conspired to smuggle them out of Hong Kong. There's
Speaker 1: some great pictures there are.
Speaker 3: We talking babies, we're talking quote.
Speaker 1: If you go to the Guardian you will see that
Speaker 1: the way the way the authorities describe it. When he
Speaker 1: was caught trying to smuggle these from Hong Kong into
Speaker 1: Shenzhen was upon inspection, customs officers discovered that the pockets
Speaker 1: of the trousers the passenger was wearing we're packed with
Speaker 1: six canvas drawstring bags and sealed with tape. Once opened,
Speaker 1: each bag was found to contain living snakes in all
Speaker 1: kinds of shapes, sizes and colors.
Speaker 4: Wow. True coalition of certitudes.
Speaker 5: Of that should be political slogan, Our coalition of the
Speaker 5: unwilling you already have right, Yeah, basically Jesus.
Speaker 1: So, before we move into the news, do you guys
Speaker 1: want to talk a little bit about Greece's bold new
Speaker 1: six day work week.
Speaker 3: Sure, it feels like a weird move in the midst
Speaker 3: of you know, a lot of new work from home
Speaker 3: things new, Uh, get the job done. Get it done right,
Speaker 3: But we as a company aren't going to tell you,
Speaker 3: you know, how many hours you got to put in.
Speaker 3: Just make sure you're doing what we're paying you to do.
Speaker 5: And just a lot of chatter, and I mean understandably
Speaker 5: and rightfully so, around workers' rights and the idea of
Speaker 5: a separation between work life balance and all of that stuff.
Speaker 5: It does seem like an odd pr move at the
Speaker 5: very least. And I was questioning, like, is this because
Speaker 5: their economies in trouble, and Matt you pointed out it's
Speaker 5: quite the contrary.
Speaker 3: Right, well, at least according to the Prime Minister, right,
Speaker 3: who is kind of repping the move, saying, yeah, this
Speaker 3: is a good idea, guys, this initiative was necessary, the
Speaker 3: Prime Minister says, because quote the twin perils of a
Speaker 3: shrinking population and a shortage of skilled workers. So the
Speaker 3: thought here is instead of having a forty hour work
Speaker 3: week as a standard for many workers, you would have
Speaker 3: a forty eight hour work week. But well, if there
Speaker 3: are a bunch of other things they're saying, they're also
Speaker 3: saying a lot of workers at least in Greece, and
Speaker 3: one of the reasons this was done is because they're
Speaker 3: working overtime hours and not getting paid. They're not being
Speaker 3: compensated correctly for those overtime hours. They're working as a necessity.
Speaker 4: So this is putting the workers first, is the arlement.
Speaker 1: That's look, Greece already has an historically, it has the
Speaker 1: longest average work week of the entirety of the European Union.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of codifying what is already happening and
Speaker 1: making sure that people get that overtime pay. And if
Speaker 1: you work in a job where you do have to
Speaker 1: you have an assigned number of hours and you do
Speaker 1: have to go over that, you know that overtime is
Speaker 1: a huge deal. So on paper, in theory, this is
Speaker 1: not a conspiratorial thing. It's the right move. But I
Speaker 1: will add that for many, many years, Greece has had
Speaker 1: this sort of cultural understanding that a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't pay taxes or report things specifically, and there's still
Speaker 1: a big cash economy there. So it's going to be
Speaker 1: very interesting to see how this works, especially with the
Speaker 1: global contrast to so many other entities, state level or
Speaker 1: private industry who are dialing back their work week, you know,
Speaker 1: famously trying things like a four day work week.
Speaker 3: It's so weird to me because it does it feels
Speaker 3: like an opposite move of what they're saying it is
Speaker 3: because apparently it's only going to apply to private businesses
Speaker 3: that provide quote, round the clock services, So that's not
Speaker 3: like your service industry, hospitality, that kind of stuff. Necessarily,
Speaker 3: that's not round the clock services. And it feels as
Speaker 3: though if there are these companies that if let's say
Speaker 3: you've got an individual worker who works forty hours a week,
Speaker 3: then if you need that person to work another eight hours,
Speaker 3: you're going to pay them time and a half. Now
Speaker 3: the company only has to pay them time right for
Speaker 3: your standard, your standard going wage. So in the end
Speaker 3: it's saving companies money, right, but it's making the workers
Speaker 3: work more probably what they were going to work with
Speaker 3: over time anyway, but now they're going to get paid less.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: Also, yeah, wherever you live, I would be very skeptical
Speaker 1: when you hear a politician describe something as growth oriented,
Speaker 1: because the economy is not necessarily the people. But also
Speaker 1: I didn't know this. In twenty twenty two, the average
Speaker 1: Greek employee across industry worked one thousand, eight hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty six hours per year. That's higher than the US average,
Speaker 1: which is one eight hundred and eleven. And the US
Speaker 1: already has a reputation of people being overworked, you know,
Speaker 1: and not getting some basic benefits like PTO or vacation.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, absolutely, guys. There's an added thing here
Speaker 3: that I didn't realize, and I think I already misspoke
Speaker 3: because of this new information I'm getting from the Guardian.
Speaker 3: It says under the extended working week, staff and select
Speaker 3: industries and manufacturing facilities will have the option of working
Speaker 3: in additional two hours per day, right, So that would
Speaker 3: add up or an extra eight hour shift, and they
Speaker 3: would be rewarded during that time period with a top
Speaker 3: up fee of forty added to the daily wage. So
Speaker 3: they are still making over time overtime. Yes, it's great,
Speaker 3: you're right there. They are just kind of codifying it
Speaker 3: in the way business functions now.
Speaker 1: And if you're if you're a Greek national, or if
Speaker 1: you reside in Greece, let us know what the vibe
Speaker 1: is on the ground, let us know the lay of
Speaker 1: the land, and perhaps most importantly, please assure us that
Speaker 1: we can still have access to euros. That's not a
Speaker 1: washed joke and whatsoever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love a euro knocking on.
Speaker 5: Every year when it comes around to get that euro.
Speaker 5: I think euros should be for all year round.
Speaker 4: And then, of course not the only thing in cuisine
Speaker 4: that Greece is known and for. They have the plethora
Speaker 4: of incredible offerings. But it is a delightful sandwich.
Speaker 1: The civilization, this civilization, let's not get into a couple
Speaker 1: of things, a couple other things in addition to the Euro.
Speaker 1: So we'll give them their flowers there. And no matter
Speaker 1: where you live, this is one of our first big stories.
Speaker 1: No matter where you live in this wide world, no
Speaker 1: matter what you do for fun or for work, you
Speaker 1: need to check your passwords right now, Alexis, can we
Speaker 1: get like a weird breaking news faith perfect?
Speaker 4: Yes, all right, let's.
Speaker 1: Go to cyber news and rock You twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: all one word. Cyber news researchers recently discovered the largest
Speaker 1: password hack in known history. We're talking ten billion different
Speaker 1: passwords and it came through a file called Rocky two
Speaker 1: zero two four dot txt text file and was posted
Speaker 1: by a someone calling themselves Obamacare on July fourth. This
Speaker 1: this person has this entity or this representative of this
Speaker 1: group has already shared employee databases from law firms, leaks
Speaker 1: from online casinos, even student applications for colleges. Like, whatever
Speaker 1: they're doing, they're they're doing very well. And we were
Speaker 1: talking about this in a text thread we use sometimes
Speaker 1: we're not recording. We're also talking about it a little
Speaker 1: bit off air. But Noel, you in particular clock something
Speaker 1: that Doc. I think we both noticed too, and maybe
Speaker 1: you as well met that there has been an escalation
Speaker 1: of scam attempts, phishing attempts, phone calls. I've got I've
Speaker 1: got one story, not to make a personal story, but
Speaker 1: this is something that involves us. We may have mentioned it,
Speaker 1: but we haven't done it on the air. Our pattern
Speaker 1: familias of how stuff works. Absolute brilliant guy named Marshall Brain.
Speaker 1: Yes that's his real name, He's mister Brain. A while back,
Speaker 1: right around not two too long ago, received the text
Speaker 1: message from someone identified themselves as Marshall Brain, mentioning me
Speaker 1: by name or by the name I use here and
Speaker 1: asking me for stuff. And so, Matt, you'll recall I
Speaker 1: texted you saying recognize the number. And I think we
Speaker 1: both kind of got cracking real quick on the weekend
Speaker 1: right to figure out if this is the real brain.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I texted him, uh and I called him,
Speaker 3: left a voicemail and uh, yes, I guess it was him.
Speaker 3: I don't know. He didn't mention that in particular, but
Speaker 3: the same number is his.
Speaker 1: I emailed him because the text I got was from
Speaker 1: a different number than the one that we have for him.
Speaker 1: And then he wrote, ball, I have to send you
Speaker 1: guys the email to He wrote back a very nice email,
Speaker 1: gave us all the shout out. Confirmed it wasn't him,
Speaker 1: But it was odd the specificity.
Speaker 3: Oh it wasn't that.
Speaker 4: Him, tipped. It was not him. Oh, it was not him.
Speaker 1: It was someone who knew enough information to use these
Speaker 1: two names together and to probably try to get something.
Speaker 1: And that's just you know, that's just a microcosmic example, right,
Speaker 1: Like I think we were saying off air, we've all
Speaker 1: been receiving some kind of wackado glad handing attempts online.
Speaker 4: Right mm hmm.
Speaker 3: By the way, just really quickly, Marshall. Marshall reports that
Speaker 3: he is quote here in his super secret fortress of solitude,
Speaker 3: and his plans to save the world should come to
Speaker 3: fruition any day now.
Speaker 5: I was just saying, for my part, I have received
Speaker 5: notifications through Apple through my iPhone a couple of times
Speaker 5: over the last year or so that my data was
Speaker 5: part of an identified breach and.
Speaker 4: That I should change my passwords.
Speaker 5: And I don't know if anyone else has noticed that
Speaker 5: feature in the iPhone, but it is apparently a thing.
Speaker 5: I guess they get wind of this stuff and they
Speaker 5: send you these notifications or if it's like a setting
Speaker 5: you have to.
Speaker 4: Turn on or off.
Speaker 5: But you know, I've certainly now been the best steward
Speaker 5: of my passwords over the years. I have a couple
Speaker 5: that I use, and I switched them around and changed
Speaker 5: digits and add a few things on the end. But
Speaker 5: at the end of the day, I ultimately will get
Speaker 5: to a place where I've forgotten what I changed the
Speaker 5: password to, and then I have to change it again,
Speaker 5: and then if I'm not careful, I'll you know, rense
Speaker 5: and repeat. But I have gotten more into using two
Speaker 5: factor authentication, and a lot of times, you know, a
Speaker 5: breacher or someone who's really trying to do you wrong
Speaker 5: needs some other way. They can't just have your password,
Speaker 5: They need access to your email.
Speaker 4: If they're getting your banking stuff.
Speaker 5: If you have two factor, then you'll get something via
Speaker 5: email or via text. So it's not unless they control
Speaker 5: all of those, you know, those accounts. Can they actually
Speaker 5: really really really do you dirty? Not to say let
Speaker 5: your guard down, don't worry, You're fine, but I would
Speaker 5: say look.
Speaker 4: Into any form of two factor authentication.
Speaker 5: But what I was wondering is, like, do these because
Speaker 5: I've seen just a massive uptick in this particular type
Speaker 5: of scam call that I'd never heard before, where it's
Speaker 5: like comes from all over the country, different numbers, and
Speaker 5: it's saying that it's a loan company needing to confirm
Speaker 5: some data for the loan that I applied for, and
Speaker 5: it's happened multiple times, And at first I was freaked out,
Speaker 5: like did somebody apply for a loan in my name?
Speaker 4: But no, it turns out it's a pretty common scam.
Speaker 5: And I just have to wonder if with these data leaks,
Speaker 5: in addition to passwords, they must also be getting other information.
Speaker 5: The phone numbers are probably attached to some of these
Speaker 5: if you're you know, entering it for maybe political campaigns
Speaker 5: or forgetting text notifications or whatever. And it's kind of
Speaker 5: wonder how the folks that are capitalizing on these breaches
Speaker 5: are using this information. And if this uptick and scams
Speaker 5: you know via text message and phone calls has anything
Speaker 5: to do with those.
Speaker 1: You really don't need a ton of information. You need
Speaker 1: a startlingly sparse set of data points to be able
Speaker 1: to pull some financial shenanigans, to do things like credit stuffing,
Speaker 1: or to do things like you know, opening opening certain
Speaker 1: types of loans, or it's it's easier than it sounds
Speaker 1: to compromise someone's identity. And going back to our story,
Speaker 1: rock You twenty twenty four did not come out of
Speaker 1: the blue. Please check out this story, folks. It comes
Speaker 1: on the heels of things like the Rock You twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one compilation. Before just a few days ago, Rock
Speaker 1: You twenty twenty one was the largest single password breach
Speaker 1: collection in history. So whoever is doing this is not
Speaker 1: only keeping up with their previous iterations, but they're escalating.
Speaker 1: They're getting better. And no matter how secure we may
Speaker 1: feel we are, no matter how much security hygiene we practice,
Speaker 1: now is the time to go in and change your passwords.
Speaker 1: One thing that might be concerned that I don't see
Speaker 1: a ton of confirmation or conversation about here, even in
Speaker 1: some software forums, is the idea of compromising campaign databases, right,
Speaker 1: because those calls escalate really quickly around election season, and
Speaker 1: you know, election season here in the US is basically lobsterfest.
Speaker 1: It never ends, it's always going on. So that is
Speaker 1: to your point, that's a almost at a great resource.
Speaker 1: That is a very powerful resource for bad faith actors
Speaker 1: because they can scoop up some information about you, cross
Speaker 1: ref to a couple of other databases, and then boom,
Speaker 1: you get a very specific text that does seem like
Speaker 1: it could be legit because they know your name, they
Speaker 1: know where you live, they might have known some things
Speaker 1: you were doing earlier. It's ethics aside. It's it's a
Speaker 1: pretty brilliant operation. At this point. It can be a
Speaker 1: little disturbing for people because all the advice you're getting
Speaker 1: from the experts and from the armchair folks alike is
Speaker 1: just turn on you know, MFA multi factor authentication, reset
Speaker 1: all your passwords, you know, even if you think they
Speaker 1: haven't been associated with this leak. But again, ten billion
Speaker 1: more passwords than there are people on the planet, so
Speaker 1: the odds of you getting hit are very much much
Speaker 1: and zero yeah, it's just someone you know getting hit
Speaker 1: or or I wouldn't even say hit compromised in this leak.
Speaker 1: Are virtually certain it's probably one of us recording this
Speaker 1: evening or one of us listening to the show tonight.
Speaker 3: I got my LifeLock alerts specifically when this gut released.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, you still have the LifeLock mm hm. Back
Speaker 4: around to the phone number thing too.
Speaker 5: I've been using What's App for a while, which is
Speaker 5: tied to a phone number, and I hadn't logged onto
Speaker 5: it for a while. But then a friend of mine
Speaker 5: was saying, like, oh, I'm kind of trying to move
Speaker 5: all my text communications to WhatsApp because he uses an
Speaker 5: Android and as we know, there's some weird exclusionary stuff
Speaker 5: that involves, you know, the way Apple treats Android users,
Speaker 5: and it really is kind of obnoxious. So I totally
Speaker 5: get it, and I was fully game, and I went
Speaker 5: to log into my WhatsApp and I got a notification
Speaker 5: saying my account had been suspended due to suspicious activity.
Speaker 5: But I hadn't used it in months and months and months,
Speaker 5: and I very quickly just fill out a little form
Speaker 5: and said, I don't know what this is about I
Speaker 5: have no idea what could have happened. YadA, YadA, YadA,
Speaker 5: and they reinstated it very quickly. But I know there
Speaker 5: are lots of WhatsApp scams, and I have to believe
Speaker 5: that somebody fished my account, use my phone number and
Speaker 5: tried to use it to run some scams when I
Speaker 5: wasn't logged in because it was a dormant account.
Speaker 1: Yeah, dormant accounts. The empty parking spaces right are already
Speaker 1: pretty cozy for bad faith actors. If you were one
Speaker 1: of the many, many people who has a Facebook account
Speaker 1: that you never bother to use, then you probably want
Speaker 1: to check in on that bad boy too, because those
Speaker 1: can very easily be spoofed. I mean, it happens with
Speaker 1: what celebrities or public figures on Instagram all the time.
Speaker 1: They get spoofed. It's a good thing to keep an
Speaker 1: eye out for. And really the purpose of this story
Speaker 1: it's too recent for us to have a ton of
Speaker 1: fallout for this or to know what the actionable consequences
Speaker 1: will be. But it's more a clarion call. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a true it's a true thing, and it might
Speaker 1: feel boring to change passwords, but it's way cooler to
Speaker 1: be a bord for a moment than to have thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars stolen from you.
Speaker 5: And do you have a question though, like, it's at
Speaker 5: a certain point if everyone in the world's passwords have
Speaker 5: been leaked and literally like everyone is compromised, are there
Speaker 5: no protections in place? Like if everyone's being scammed? Like,
Speaker 5: isn't there is there like a ceiling for this stuff.
Speaker 5: It just seems outrageous for it to be that huge,
Speaker 5: that that maximalist of a leak, for it for you
Speaker 5: to be able to target like everybody. But I guess
Speaker 5: you know, once you get the information, then you weed
Speaker 5: through it and figure out who's the most vulnerable and
Speaker 5: who's like the weakest in the herd technologically speaking, right.
Speaker 1: Right, or who is the most high value target?
Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1: So this this brings us to another thing is there's
Speaker 1: a cricket industry game going on here too, because if
Speaker 1: you are someone who wants to remove privacy from the
Speaker 1: Internet or someone who wants to remove anonymity, this is
Speaker 1: a great argument to do so, such that the ultimate
Speaker 1: password in the scenario you're describing their noel would be
Speaker 1: biometric data even onto retinal scans or fingerprints will work
Speaker 1: anymore DNA stuff like that. It's enough to make you think,
Speaker 1: and I know we've got to keep this one short.
Speaker 1: It's enough to make you think maybe maybe society overall,
Speaker 1: the way we're doing it is kind of overrated. Maybe
Speaker 1: we should just retire to that new Taco Bell retirement home.
Speaker 5: Can you tell me more about this mean?
Speaker 4: What does this mean?
Speaker 5: Is it like the Taco Bell cantina where they serve
Speaker 5: margarita's but they also have like beds?
Speaker 4: Like what is the Taco Bell retirement though?
Speaker 3: Is it for people who are too far gone and
Speaker 3: just enjoy Taco Bell for the rest of your life
Speaker 3: while you got it kind of thing.
Speaker 1: It's similar to uh so I was talking with the
Speaker 1: Daily Zeyitegeist guys about this.
Speaker 4: Well back, It's.
Speaker 1: Similar to other come up branded retirement homes like the
Speaker 1: Disney ones.
Speaker 4: Really confusing.
Speaker 1: But if you would like to call off the rat
Speaker 1: race and live a life of case Ada fueled luxury,
Speaker 1: then look no further than that cantinas, where, according to
Speaker 1: Taco Bell, everyone can live like a retiree. As comes
Speaker 1: from Fox eleven out of La Shout Out to you guys.
Speaker 1: They say, this is a quote luxurious experience that will
Speaker 1: offer senior inspired recreation and cross generational activities. Early morning golf,
Speaker 1: tea times, afternoon aerobics, pickleball matches, and it's let's see,
Speaker 1: it is reserved for Taco Bell Rewards members. So you
Speaker 1: got you already have to be kind of Taco Bell premium,
Speaker 1: you know, the one percent of Taco Bell. I don't
Speaker 1: know how tough it is to join the Rewards club.
Speaker 4: There.
Speaker 1: You can get a day pass if you're not ready
Speaker 1: to jump all the way in, and it starts in
Speaker 1: just six days. They start selling access to the cantinas.
Speaker 1: As we record now it's July tenth. So if you
Speaker 1: are like millions of Americans I'm sure, just champion at
Speaker 1: the bit to live your Taco Bell life, then get
Speaker 1: thee to a Taco Bell on July sixteenth, or download
Speaker 1: their app and just make sure you know you get
Speaker 1: a good password. We're going to pause for a word
Speaker 1: from our sponsors, and we'll be back with more strange news.
Speaker 4: And we're back with more strange news.
Speaker 5: Gonna do two sort of teching news stories out of
Speaker 5: the Asian continent. One is sort of absurd, and one
Speaker 5: is both absurd and a little bit sad and potentially
Speaker 5: portentous of things to come when it comes to our
Speaker 5: robot friends and potential overlords. But first, there was recently
Speaker 5: a gubernatorial election in Tokyo. The results of that have
Speaker 5: determined Eureko Kowiki one amidst a crazy cavalcade of opposition,
Speaker 5: And that's sort of where the story comes from in Tokyo. Been,
Speaker 5: I know that you've spent some time over there, and
Speaker 5: you may have been there at some point during election season,
Speaker 5: but a big part of the election cycle in Tokyo
Speaker 5: are these like physical ad spaces that are sort of
Speaker 5: temporarily put up during elections that are like little squares
Speaker 5: that are kind of like these grids of squares. They
Speaker 5: are billboards on the ground that are put up, and
Speaker 5: you can rent these squares for something like one hundred
Speaker 5: and twenty five dollars a day.
Speaker 4: And because of this new sort of.
Speaker 5: Conservative group that has been running aggressively in the city,
Speaker 5: they apparently rented out a ton of these And I
Speaker 5: don't know if they're just trying to create subterfuge or
Speaker 5: create a situation where it's like a distraction or spoken
Speaker 5: mirrors from the Real series candidates to kind of you know,
Speaker 5: throw a wrench in the works, basically would rent them
Speaker 5: out to anyone who would pay them for their pre
Speaker 5: rent spaces, and that has resulted or had resulted in
Speaker 5: some pretty wacky and outrageous little political ads, including ads
Speaker 5: for like pornographic material sex shops. There was even an
Speaker 5: AI mayor candidate, and this was of course a gobernatorial
Speaker 5: race running on a platform of using artificial intelligence to
Speaker 5: run the government.
Speaker 4: A guy running on a golf platform.
Speaker 5: Where he apparently a big part of and this is
Speaker 5: also there are videos associated with these, not in the
Speaker 5: squares but online, and in the little clip or in
Speaker 5: the little square, he's kind of showing him practicing his
Speaker 5: golf swing, and you know, pictures of pets, pictures of kickboxers,
Speaker 5: you know, all kinds of you know, lurid poses. And
Speaker 5: the thing is, in Japan, the law has been that
Speaker 5: anybody running for office can pretty much say anything they
Speaker 5: want as long as it's not inherently libelists or slanderous,
Speaker 5: or as long as they're not supporting another candidate, which
Speaker 5: is interesting, but I guess makes sense that we would
Speaker 5: maybe like put it exactly like that over here, because
Speaker 5: the implication you wouldn't really be running if you were
Speaker 5: going to be supporting another candidate unless you lose, you know,
Speaker 5: a potential bid for a nomination, then you, you know,
Speaker 5: put your support behind a certain candidate, you endorse them
Speaker 5: or whatever. But this new hiccup has been specifically caused
Speaker 5: by this political party that has been renting out these
Speaker 5: spaces kind of creating a bit of a bizarro kind
Speaker 5: of show that a lot of citizens of Tokyo have
Speaker 5: commented they find distasteful. It's a little bit embarrassing, you know,
Speaker 5: it doesn't really cast their city in a particularly flattering light.
Speaker 5: So I don't know if you guys have any thoughts
Speaker 5: about that or as it relates to our political process
Speaker 5: over here.
Speaker 4: Is hit worse? Is it better? I mean, it.
Speaker 5: Almost seems a little bit lighthearted and lower stakes than
Speaker 5: what we're seeing over here in terms of some of
Speaker 5: the gnarly kind of hate.
Speaker 4: Filled, baiting kind of cam pains.
Speaker 5: That we see in political ads, not to mention with
Speaker 5: Citizens United and the ability of corporations to give unlimitedly,
Speaker 5: you know, to these types of campaigns.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Shenanigans are kind of evenly distributed around the world,
Speaker 1: for better or worse. And this is fascinating to me
Speaker 1: because Tokyo has such a huge impact on the rest
Speaker 1: of Japan right the world. Yeah, yeah, very much, and
Speaker 1: culturally as well. And there are still, you know, they're
Speaker 1: definitely far right forces in Japan. There are some active
Speaker 1: extremists in Hokkaido. Okinawa is going through some turbulent times
Speaker 1: right now because yet again US service members were committing
Speaker 1: some pretty heinous sex crimes and assaults. This the idea
Speaker 1: what you're saying, like the lightheartedness of this particular instance,
Speaker 1: I would agree with that. It is if anything, it
Speaker 1: is kind of embarrassing to the residents of Tokyo. And
Speaker 1: you see those those quotes from various you know, person
Speaker 1: on the street interviews with different media outlets. There was
Speaker 1: one I saw in uh infox by my Yumi noteap
Speaker 1: there was an office worker in Tokyo and just said, uh,
Speaker 1: mainly message that they feel this is embarrassing when outsiders,
Speaker 1: non Japanese visitors see what's happening and said quote, I
Speaker 1: see many foreign visitors passed by these billboards and they
Speaker 1: must wonder what's going on. As a voter, I think
Speaker 1: it's outrageous and disrespectful to the other candidates we're seriously competing.
Speaker 1: But you know, we get that in the UK, we
Speaker 1: get that in the US. Somebody runs as like, quote
Speaker 1: unquote a joke candidate. I love Buckethead. Remember Buckethead?
Speaker 5: Of course, yeah, you can shred too. Are you talking
Speaker 5: about the same guy? The bucket had the plays of
Speaker 5: the guitar. Maybe I'm not just trying to replace slash
Speaker 5: that's right, as in fact go by Buckehead as well.
Speaker 4: I could see the confusion there.
Speaker 5: But yeah, apparently this emerging Conservative Party is what the
Speaker 5: AP describes them as. And I've dug a little deeper
Speaker 5: and a lot of things that are, you know, in
Speaker 5: Japanese and I haven't really I don't know exactly what
Speaker 5: the name of the of the party is. But they
Speaker 5: apparently were even encouraging folks who weren't candidates to rent
Speaker 5: these spaces, and a lot of it ended up just
Speaker 5: being like vying for attention. And the leader of this
Speaker 5: Conservative Party, a guy with the name of Takashi Tachibana,
Speaker 5: said we have to be whackyer.
Speaker 4: We don't get media attention.
Speaker 5: And the AP also spoke to a professor at Nihan
Speaker 5: University by the name of Ryosuke Nishida, who is a
Speaker 5: political experts and media specialist, and said the point is
Speaker 5: to make it moral and outrageous actions. The reason why
Speaker 5: some people find these performances amusing is because they think
Speaker 5: their objections are not taken into consideration by politicians and
Speaker 5: existing parties or reflected in their politics. And I did
Speaker 5: see a YouTube video of an American. I believe he
Speaker 5: didn't have an accent. He seemed like an American living
Speaker 5: in Tokyo, seems to have been living there for.
Speaker 4: A long time.
Speaker 5: And he did point out that, you know, much like
Speaker 5: over here in other parts of the world, there is
Speaker 5: a perception of significant corruption in Japanese politics. So this
Speaker 5: is almost the thumbing of the nose at the system
Speaker 5: that many perceive as being broken.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but just to be clear, these billboards are meant
Speaker 3: to show the actual candidates they could vote for, that's right,
Speaker 3: and they are being just changed in these weird ways, misused, misused,
Speaker 3: But ultimately there is this the only way people learn
Speaker 3: about candidates or is this just like traditionally.
Speaker 5: It's a popular way and again, Ben, I would defer
Speaker 5: to you with your time there. But it is a
Speaker 5: cultural thing, these squares, these grids of squares that are
Speaker 5: put up seasonally. It is something that people have come
Speaker 5: to expect because I believe online campaigning wasn't even really
Speaker 5: much of a thing until relatively recently because of some laws.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Japan, as anybody who's been there or spend time
Speaker 1: there knows, Japan is far far into the future in
Speaker 1: some things like toilet technology and frankly food, but also
Speaker 1: seems to weirdly lag behind in some innovations right like
Speaker 1: fax machines are still very common, just because that is
Speaker 1: the normalized, expected way to do things. And so to
Speaker 1: the question about the paths of or the opportunities to
Speaker 1: learn more about a candidate as a voter in Tokyo
Speaker 1: or Japan, surely there are write in listeners let us
Speaker 1: know conspiracy, iHeartRadio dot com. Surely there are people who
Speaker 1: are maybe less tech savvy, or maybe they're older people,
Speaker 1: and they've just associated this platform in particular as their
Speaker 1: way to get a quick summation of the can you know,
Speaker 1: And people just like over here typically are going to
Speaker 1: vote with the party they already identified with in previous elections.
Speaker 1: It's kind of rare for folks to break ranks due
Speaker 1: to the tribalism, so I would say it's important there
Speaker 1: are other ways to learn about it, right and with
Speaker 1: you can just see how many candidates are in these
Speaker 1: kind of races, so they're not just racing for public approval,
Speaker 1: they're also fighting tooth and nail to get any sort
Speaker 1: of media coverage, and past a certain point, it's like
Speaker 1: the old Hollywood rule, does bad or good coverage matter?
Speaker 1: That Matt much is the main thing just getting your
Speaker 1: name and your face out there.
Speaker 4: I think that's absolutely right.
Speaker 5: And apparently like some of these entire billboards, of which
Speaker 5: there are tens of thousands, by the way, throughout the
Speaker 5: city of Tokyo, where they'll rent the same same square.
Speaker 5: You know, it'll be the same ad in an entire
Speaker 5: grid of by the way, forty eight squares in these.
Speaker 5: And it's sort of like if you go to New York,
Speaker 5: where there'll be walls around construction sites where it is
Speaker 5: legal to post bills, and then there's the ones that
Speaker 5: say post no bills. This is kind of like that,
Speaker 5: like it's sort of built into the urban landscape. Of
Speaker 5: the city, and apparently all of this is perfectly legal
Speaker 5: because of that lag that Ben's talking about, which I
Speaker 5: do find interesting. Japan does seem to be a play
Speaker 5: a country of conundrums, of sort of you know, what's
Speaker 5: the word I'm looking for, like contradictions, right like where
Speaker 5: it's like, you know, yes, they are so ahead of
Speaker 5: the curve on so many things, but there are some
Speaker 5: things like this that just don't quite catch up to
Speaker 5: the times, and there are people out there seemingly exploiting them.
Speaker 1: And to be fair, you know, this country's not not
Speaker 1: some kind of paragon of perfection, which is a redundant phrase.
Speaker 1: Like everything we just said about Japan can in some
Speaker 1: ways be applied to the US right very far ahead
Speaker 1: in some things and cartoonishly behind in some others. And
Speaker 1: it just depends on where you live and what gets normalized.
Speaker 5: Well, speaking of what gets normalized, And I think we
Speaker 5: can give this quick. I actually didn't think that this
Speaker 5: one was going to generate quite as more much conversation
Speaker 5: as it did, but I'm glad it did.
Speaker 4: I think these were all really valid and interesting points.
Speaker 5: Apparently, South Korea has for some time had the densest
Speaker 5: robot population in the entire world, and.
Speaker 4: That is something that I was unaware of.
Speaker 5: You if you're lucky enough to be anywhere near Buford
Speaker 5: Highway here in Atlanta, where there's some amazing cuisine and
Speaker 5: some restaurants that you might not find in places other
Speaker 5: than a Asia, you will notice that there are a
Speaker 5: lot of spots that have these serving robots that will bring.
Speaker 4: You your trays and bring you your drinks, etc.
Speaker 5: There's like a pretty popular rotating, revolving sushi restaurant called
Speaker 5: Kura I believe, and they have these little serving robots,
Speaker 5: and they are starting to become a little more popular.
Speaker 5: In cities like New York or Los Angeles, well you'll
Speaker 5: be walking around and see like a food delivery robot.
Speaker 5: But in South Korea they've been doing this for a
Speaker 5: very long time. And that also applies apparently to civil service,
Speaker 5: where there are robots that are helping with admin type
Speaker 5: tasks and sort of interacting with office workers. And in
Speaker 5: South Korea, in a place called Gome City, there has
Speaker 5: been what is being reported as the first robot suicide.
Speaker 5: And I have to just go ahead and caveat this upfront.
Speaker 5: I really do think this is quite hyperbolic and in
Speaker 5: many ways just sort of an entry into a conversation
Speaker 5: about what it means to be human and what it
Speaker 5: means to humanize robots, and what it means for artificial
Speaker 5: intelligence to simulate human emotions, because you know, people get
Speaker 5: bummed out, and isn't the idea of a robot that like,
Speaker 5: they're like all the good things about humans, but they're
Speaker 5: sort of impervious to some of the bad. But as
Speaker 5: we know with like things like chatbots becoming racist when
Speaker 5: you train them on the internet, they take all that
Speaker 5: stuff into and there is a question as to whether
Speaker 5: or not this robot was feeling overwhelmed and overworked like
Speaker 5: many of the probably other folks was working alongside so
Speaker 5: the robots worked for the Goomy City Council. Was found
Speaker 5: at the foot of a two meter long staircase, where,
Speaker 5: according to some reports, including one from tech report dot com,
Speaker 5: it threw itself down. I did sorry, I think describing
Speaker 5: the idea of a robot throwing itself dead so dramatic
Speaker 5: and really click paity and like good for a headline,
Speaker 5: but I don't know if I buy it. It was
Speaker 5: known as the Robot Supervisor, worked normal shift hours like
Speaker 5: everybody else, even had its own employee card and was
Speaker 5: very accustomed or programmed, I guess, to operate the elevators.
Speaker 4: And that's true.
Speaker 5: I think we've all been traveling together and maybe seen
Speaker 5: these in hotels occasionally where they do get off the elevator.
Speaker 5: They use the elevator, they've got something where they can
Speaker 5: either extend like an R two D two little finger
Speaker 5: and poke the button or whatever. But they do get
Speaker 5: on and on elevators. And according to this Tech Report
Speaker 5: article by Chrishy Chowdry, the reason for the suicide is
Speaker 5: not yet been determined, but the broken pieces have been
Speaker 5: taken away.
Speaker 4: In order to help determine the cause.
Speaker 5: So it's weird though, because it's not exactly a crime scene,
Speaker 5: I mean, but it does seem, you know, the anthropomorphization
Speaker 5: of robots really comes into play, especially in the way
Speaker 5: it's being described. And that's really the gist of it, guys.
Speaker 5: It was manufactured by a company out of California called
Speaker 5: Bear Robotics, and it began its work back in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty three. And all this writing about the robot's suicide
Speaker 5: I think is really overblown, borderline I responsible in some ways.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 5: Maybe that's me being a little too alarmist about it,
Speaker 5: but what do you guys think. I know we're near
Speaker 5: in the end of the segment, but I just want
Speaker 5: to quick I think this is worth a quick chat
Speaker 5: and then maybe bring it back up for another episode,
Speaker 5: maybe on robot servants, you know, or on the anthromorphization
Speaker 5: of technology.
Speaker 3: To me, it sounds like we need to get some
Speaker 3: robot doors, kind of like doggy doors, you know, or
Speaker 3: like the little fences that you'll put up on a staircase.
Speaker 3: She install one of those, or a bunch of those, like.
Speaker 5: Those those curve fences they put on bridges to keep
Speaker 5: humans from throwing themselves off.
Speaker 4: No, no, I'm joking. I know, I'm totally joking.
Speaker 3: Look, I don't know anything about this manufacturer, this specific robot,
Speaker 3: but it feels to me like it was some kind
Speaker 3: of error, right it wastant spinning in a circle, then
Speaker 3: went off the thing.
Speaker 5: So the deepend Matt the deep end enough.
Speaker 3: I just finished this game with my son called Stray
Speaker 3: on PlayStation. This game about a cat in a city
Speaker 3: full of robots, and it's very very cool. I would
Speaker 3: recommend everybody plays it, but just this way we apply
Speaker 3: our thinking.
Speaker 4: To the robots.
Speaker 3: I think that's you're right on that that's what's happening here.
Speaker 4: Any last thoughts from you, Ben before we move on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I'll save them for an episode with robot servants.
Speaker 1: You know, like you said, they're quite prevalent in the
Speaker 1: more develop parts of Asia. I've had some very weird
Speaker 1: run ins, the kind of things that leave you a
Speaker 1: little paranoid. But I'm sure everything's fine.
Speaker 5: Probably so and again I joke that, you know, our
Speaker 5: robot servants slash overlords. But it is the thing that
Speaker 5: we're like trying to train these things to be as
Speaker 5: human as possible without the inconvenient parts of being human.
Speaker 5: A big conversation around AI is that there comes a
Speaker 5: point where there's this this sort of I don't know,
Speaker 5: critical mass point where you can't filter out the things
Speaker 5: that you're you're training it with human stuff. It's gonna
Speaker 5: get the human parts as well, and then eventually it
Speaker 5: might just take over and start writing its code itself.
Speaker 4: But I don't know.
Speaker 5: I'm glad that you're into that idea, Ben, I think
Speaker 5: that'll be really really cool to talk about big picture,
Speaker 5: what does the future of robot assistance, AI assistance, all
Speaker 5: of that stuff I think could be bundled into a
Speaker 5: great episode.
Speaker 4: Well, let's take a quick pause.
Speaker 5: Here, here a word from our robot overlord, our sponsors,
Speaker 5: and then we'll be right back with another piece of
Speaker 5: strange news.
Speaker 3: And we've returned. Guys, how much do we all love driving?
Speaker 3: We're big driving enthusiasts, right.
Speaker 5: Don't love it on the regular in traffic and just
Speaker 5: for like functional and purposes. But out on an open
Speaker 5: road type situation, I had rented kind of a souped up, cooler.
Speaker 4: Car than I normally possess. That was awesome.
Speaker 5: I live for that, but like, yeah, in Atlanta driving
Speaker 5: kind of sucks because of you know, the traffic, and
Speaker 5: a lot of it.
Speaker 4: Isn't driving at all, it's just sitting there.
Speaker 1: I love it for a number of personal reasons related to,
Speaker 1: of course, one of the first shows I did with
Speaker 1: this network car stuff, but also depending on the kind
Speaker 1: of situations you're in, it's a it can be a
Speaker 1: much more dependable way to transport yourself or things as
Speaker 1: opposed to cargo ship or as opposed to flight, you know,
Speaker 1: because getting caught without wheels when you're at the mercy
Speaker 1: of a rental place or an airport and inclement weather.
Speaker 1: It's never an ideal situation. So for many, many reasons,
Speaker 1: I think there's a poetry to the open road and
Speaker 1: the idea of vehicles here in the US. Obviously it's
Speaker 1: not great that the majority of people living here are
Speaker 1: forced to depend upon those vehicles. But they're just cool.
Speaker 1: They're just so cool, man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, cars are the best. Driving is one of my
Speaker 3: favorite things to do on the planet. And you know,
Speaker 3: as you're saying, especially if you're at the mercy of
Speaker 3: you know, public transportation, no matter how good it is, right,
Speaker 3: no matter what state you live in, what country you
Speaker 3: live in, using public transit, you're using somebody else's schedule, right,
Speaker 3: you are hoping everything is going to work functionally. With
Speaker 3: a car, if it's yours and you're driving it, you
Speaker 3: get to get wherever you're going basically as fast as
Speaker 3: you want to get there or can get there, And
Speaker 3: you get to choose your own destiny. Right, you can
Speaker 3: decide to go somewhere else if you want to. There's
Speaker 3: a great freedom of a personal vehicle like a car, truck,
Speaker 3: or an suv, even a motorcycle, any of that stuff. Well,
Speaker 3: some of that personal freedom that car vehicles represent is
Speaker 3: getting taken away guys in the EU, in the European
Speaker 3: Union as well as in Northern Ireland at least to
Speaker 3: some extent, and we're about to talk about it. As
Speaker 3: of July seventh, that is the Sunday before we are
Speaker 3: recording this on July tenth, all new vehicles, all new
Speaker 3: cars sold in the European Union and Northern Ireland must
Speaker 3: have quote a range of technical safety features fitted as standard,
Speaker 3: including an intelligent speed assistance which is also known as
Speaker 3: a speed limitter. Now what does that mean a lot
Speaker 3: of newer vehicles, including the camera I'm currently driving it,
Speaker 3: which is a twenty twenty one model, they have things
Speaker 3: on them that will alert you that you are potentially
Speaker 3: probably going over the posted speed limit on a road.
Speaker 3: How does it do that? Well, in the vehicle I'm driving,
Speaker 3: there is a little speed limit sign that shows up
Speaker 3: on your heads up display in the or it's not
Speaker 3: really heads up display, it's on your dashboard, but it
Speaker 3: shows you what the posted speed limit is on that road,
Speaker 3: right next to how fast you're going on your spinometer.
Speaker 3: And in my vehicle at least it just lets you know,
Speaker 3: with a color coding if you're going green like under
Speaker 3: the speed limit, yellow right at that speed limit, or
Speaker 3: red you're above the speed limit, buddy, And that's all
Speaker 3: my vehicle does. It just lets me know that I
Speaker 3: am doing this.
Speaker 1: It doesn't interfere with your operation. It's like it's it's
Speaker 1: the onboard version of those speed monitoring kiosk that gets
Speaker 1: set up and like flash yes five if you're going
Speaker 1: forty five and a thirty.
Speaker 3: Five Yes, And in full honesty, guys, I notice when
Speaker 3: it's happening. I just see the little like I'll see
Speaker 3: the red pop up and I'm like, oh dang, I'm
Speaker 3: going a little too fast, especially if I've got my
Speaker 3: son in my car. It's really helpful. I'm like, I
Speaker 3: should probably be a little more responsible than.
Speaker 4: This doesn't beat at you, though, does it.
Speaker 3: It does not, But god, many many vehicles will beep
Speaker 3: at you, and other vehicles will even do things like
Speaker 3: make the make the accelerator more difficult to push down.
Speaker 3: It'll it'll give you resistance on your accelerator, which is
Speaker 3: kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: Other stitch to the insurance company, Oh.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, if you've got don't let me look if
Speaker 3: you've got your you know, apps up to date, and
Speaker 3: you've signed up for all the services, and you've said
Speaker 3: yes to all the things, and whatever vehicle make and
Speaker 3: model you're driving, it could potentially be, like Ben said,
Speaker 3: snitching to your insurance company. Well, there's other things that
Speaker 3: they can get around it, but officially, if you haven't
Speaker 3: said yes to the stuff, at least as of right now,
Speaker 3: it can't be used against you.
Speaker 5: It reminds me of the kind of like governors that
Speaker 5: like commercial trucks have in them. Right, it's sort of
Speaker 5: almost approaching that if it is actually hampering your speed
Speaker 5: because your school bus, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 3: Well here's the deal, guys. These new vehicles, according to
Speaker 3: these new rules in the European Union in Northern Ireland,
Speaker 3: and that's just vehicles that are sold in those two places,
Speaker 3: the new speed limitters will actually prevent vehicles from going
Speaker 3: above the speed limit in posted zones. Now, there's not
Speaker 3: I haven't seen the regulation anywhere in the Guardian or
Speaker 3: any of the other places I've looked at this that
Speaker 3: say which roads will be governed by these things, Like
Speaker 3: is it just on highways, is it just on residential
Speaker 3: streets or in school zones. Where where will those speeds
Speaker 3: actually be regulated? If it's just on a per car
Speaker 3: basis and it's in the entirety of the European Union
Speaker 3: in Ireland or wherever that vehicle drives, that's pretty intense.
Speaker 4: A lot of questions.
Speaker 1: It's actually it's more dangerous to have a minority of
Speaker 1: cars forced to be limited in that way, especially in
Speaker 1: places where people will tend to drive five to ten
Speaker 1: over the limit km or miles.
Speaker 5: It doesn't think you're sitting with duck and you can't
Speaker 5: outmaneuver others too. Let's say you're being chased or something,
Speaker 5: or you in like a situation where you need to
Speaker 5: I'm just saying, just putting that out there, but also
Speaker 5: like who decides where and how do you know?
Speaker 4: And is that not the slipperiest of slopes, right, there's
Speaker 4: stated aim.
Speaker 1: There's stated aim would be to probably number one priority
Speaker 1: to lower road deaths and fatalities and accidents. So so logically,
Speaker 1: if they're not rolling it out everywhere all at once,
Speaker 1: they would probably be looking for areas where people are
Speaker 1: more likely to die in car accidents.
Speaker 3: Yeah, apparently, at least to the Guardian, road deaths involving
Speaker 3: a speeding vehicle in Britain has risen faster since COVID,
Speaker 3: which is up twenty percent in twenty twenty two. So
Speaker 3: I believe what they're stating here, and I'm not positive
Speaker 3: because it's a little bit strange to read, but it
Speaker 3: says three hundred and three out of one thousand, six
Speaker 3: hundred and ninety five. To me, that sounds like three
Speaker 3: hundred and three deaths out of one thousand, six hundred
Speaker 3: and ninety five speeding vehicle accidents or something. But staying
Speaker 3: on logic, guys, tell me if I'm completely wrong here,
Speaker 3: what I've noticed in driving on highways in Atlanta and
Speaker 3: even just on you know, smaller residential roads around here.
Speaker 3: I use the logic of I drive roughly the same
Speaker 3: speed as the other vehicles that I'm driving around same
Speaker 3: flow of traffic because and you just maintain distance from
Speaker 3: the vehicles in front of you and around you, right.
Speaker 3: But if you don't do that, at least in this
Speaker 3: city they're is, it feels extremely dangerous because of I
Speaker 3: would just say, the tempers and the attitudes of other
Speaker 3: drivers around you, which you cannot control. How the aggressiveness
Speaker 3: increases as you slow down and maybe even.
Speaker 1: Anyone could have a gun.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, yeah, I mean that's.
Speaker 4: What's sitting duck again, Like I was saying, you know, but.
Speaker 3: It's for me. It's just the actions that another driver
Speaker 3: could take to aggressively get around me if I am
Speaker 3: not going roughly the same speed as other drivers. Because
Speaker 3: that's in my experience, that's when I've seen accidents on
Speaker 3: the highway, is when someone's upset and trying to get
Speaker 3: around somebody else, so they make a quick maneuver, which
Speaker 3: then they either run into somebody else or it causes
Speaker 3: a chain reaction.
Speaker 1: And you would have blend in when you're when you're
Speaker 1: in traffic, especially on a highway, so you kind of
Speaker 1: want to move with the herd. If you are picking
Speaker 1: up speed. You should know that speeding saves at best
Speaker 1: three minutes of travel time. I think last time I
Speaker 1: checked this stat So make your own judgment called make
Speaker 1: sure that three minutes is important enough to you, and
Speaker 1: be well aware that if you are chasing that extra
Speaker 1: three minutes and you get pulled over, you're going to
Speaker 1: lose much more than three minutes. You're going to be
Speaker 1: way later to whatever it was, and you might not
Speaker 1: make it depending on how fast you're going. Right, So
Speaker 1: this is I think there's a lot of human psychology
Speaker 1: that proves to us people are not necessarily built to
Speaker 1: operate cars in groups because there's still that line mentality
Speaker 1: like I want to be first in line to stop
Speaker 1: light or whatever. Yeah, this is this is an inevitable
Speaker 1: way of handling it. But the rollout itself, and I
Speaker 1: think this is the point maybe you're getting to there,
Speaker 1: Matt has its own potential for danger.
Speaker 3: Well it does. And you made a great point there,
Speaker 3: Ben that this is going to be a massive minority
Speaker 3: of vehicles on the road for a long long time.
Speaker 3: Not many people go out there and buy a brand
Speaker 3: new model whatever, right, and then go take it on
Speaker 3: the road. Most people, at least the ones that I
Speaker 3: know and the statistics I'm seeing, you buy a vehicle
Speaker 3: that's at least a couple of years out of date
Speaker 3: from the brand new model. And that's a strategic thing.
Speaker 3: That is a you know, that comes to how much
Speaker 3: money you're going to spend. It has a lot to
Speaker 3: do with a lot of things. Well, mostly because the
Speaker 3: brand new model is crazy expensive for what you're getting,
Speaker 3: especially since it loses a lot of its value as
Speaker 3: soon as you drive it off the lot. Right, That's
Speaker 3: something we've talked about over and over and over again.
Speaker 3: So there's just going to be a tiny number of
Speaker 3: cars that have to go the speed limit and stay
Speaker 3: as far over as they possibly can so other cars
Speaker 3: can go zip around them dangerously.
Speaker 1: I would also be pissed in the UK with this
Speaker 1: kind of control, even though there is a lot of.
Speaker 4: Validity to it.
Speaker 1: I would be I would understand the perspective of someone
Speaker 1: who says it's already crazy expensive to own and operate
Speaker 1: a car in London, you know, in particular like the
Speaker 1: road tax you have to pay just to drive your
Speaker 1: car or nuts. So I could see how a lot
Speaker 1: of people get up about this, as we used to
Speaker 1: say on car stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but the UK is out of this. It's not
Speaker 3: in there.
Speaker 1: For Northern Ireland.
Speaker 3: I mean, y, yes, exactly well, you know, yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 3: So that's that's going to create a whole other thing, right,
Speaker 3: because if you take highways far north enough, you're gonna
Speaker 3: be dealing with this stuff. But and again it's only
Speaker 3: in new cars. So if you want a solution to this,
Speaker 3: and you're gonna buy a car, in the next ever,
Speaker 3: just buy a vehicle that was manufactured before twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, honestly, you know, they're not perfect, but they will.
Speaker 1: I am increasingly bullish on this. I don't think you
Speaker 1: should buy new cars if you can avoid it, And
Speaker 1: increasingly the older cars become more attractive because they can
Speaker 1: there's still something that you own versus the newer models,
Speaker 1: which are very very much pushing for subscription models. And
Speaker 1: if subscribe to something that means you never really own it,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, So self sufficiency is always always a
Speaker 1: pretty good thing when you can possess it.
Speaker 3: Agreed. Agreed. My favorite writing about this thus far has
Speaker 3: come out of the Utopian by a gentleman named Matt
Speaker 3: heart Degree. Really love your writing, Matt, if you ever
Speaker 3: hear this. He just makes this really great point. He says,
Speaker 3: speed limits, you know, they're they're part of the social
Speaker 3: contract that we've talked about many times when we talk
Speaker 3: about the lines on the road, right, But he says,
Speaker 3: he says, you could drive one mile over the speed
Speaker 3: limit and expect to get away with it. But you
Speaker 3: rob one bank and all of a sudden there's a
Speaker 3: man hunt. I just I'm sorry. I love that feels
Speaker 3: like us talking on the show specifically, Ben, it sounds
Speaker 3: like you to me, because it's just like this, it's
Speaker 3: a perfect joke to me, it's.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is Honestly, there are emergency situations where
Speaker 1: you have to break a law. You know, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying necessarily a bank robbery, but you know, you've got
Speaker 1: what's the old eighties film trope. You have a pregnant
Speaker 1: person giving birth in the car. You would want to
Speaker 1: get to the hospital. You want to arrive at the
Speaker 1: hospital before the baby arrives on Earth. Right, that's a
Speaker 1: heck of a ticking time bomb scenario or a grievous injury,
Speaker 1: you know. A natural disaster is another thing that every
Speaker 1: year there are a ton of people in the US
Speaker 1: who have to temporarily evacuate due to things like hurricanes,
Speaker 1: and that already these I don't know. I'm on the fence.
Speaker 1: I can see both sides of this, but the main
Speaker 1: thing I see is that this is certain to occur,
Speaker 1: right it It will roll out, and the more it's normalized,
Speaker 1: there will be a feedback loops and more manufacturers will
Speaker 1: adopt it proactively, even if they don't, even if they
Speaker 1: don't legally have to, they'll adopt it just because it
Speaker 1: gives them a better chance to sell cars in the EU.
Speaker 3: You yeah, well yeah, And Matt makes this point that
Speaker 3: I really think will resonate with us guys. He says,
Speaker 3: increasingly car makers are trying to take the role of
Speaker 3: driving away from the driver. This view sees the driver
Speaker 3: as an unfortunate necessity, a stand in for a computer
Speaker 3: that will eventually do the job, and that view within
Speaker 3: car manufacturing is winning. So this concept of like the excitement,
Speaker 3: the freedom that you feel getting in a car, it
Speaker 3: will go away, as you're saying, Ben, all of that stuff,
Speaker 3: it's just gonna go away. Eventually. We'll just have to
Speaker 3: cling on to you know, a nineteenth what I don't
Speaker 3: know the year, but the nineteen eighty something Dodge charger. Man.
Speaker 5: We have talked about that though, and there is I
Speaker 5: think one could argue a greater good argument there where, like,
Speaker 5: you know, statistically speaking, if this were the case and
Speaker 5: the technology was good, it would reduce deaths. And it
Speaker 5: might be there might be a future where that feeling
Speaker 5: you guys are talking about would be relegated to an
Speaker 5: experience you pay for, you know, on a track or
Speaker 5: something that's like outside of the realm of like other people,
Speaker 5: you know, being potentially in harm's way.
Speaker 4: And I know that likely sucks to.
Speaker 5: A lot of auto enthusiasts, But I'm wondering if you
Speaker 5: guys have thought about the flip side of that, if
Speaker 5: there is a greater good argument here, if you know,
Speaker 5: sufficiently advanced enough technology were to come about.
Speaker 1: In depth, yeah, especially in car stuff, at least.
Speaker 4: On my end.
Speaker 1: Maybe I can't remember what show I made this analogy,
Speaker 1: and but one of one comparison could be when comparison
Speaker 1: could be the idea of horses. Right, pre automobile and
Speaker 1: internal combustion engine, a lot of people would engage in
Speaker 1: transportation with horses, right, because it's smart. It's been around
Speaker 1: for a while. But now as the automobile became more normalized,
Speaker 1: more affordable, now horses have been kind of relegated to
Speaker 1: this nostalgic thing for the And that might be what
Speaker 1: happens with cars that you drive yourself. It might be,
Speaker 1: you know, I can earn the sci fi story, but
Speaker 1: there's this great mystery sci fi story about a world
Speaker 1: wherein fossil fuel emissions are much more closely monitored and
Speaker 1: there's a guy who is just sneaking out and driving
Speaker 1: his old school and a museum type of car. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's possible. So maybe maybe that'll be it. Maybe the
Speaker 1: the cameras and the Ford focuses and the Ford escapes
Speaker 1: and what have used. Maybe if you have a car
Speaker 1: like that, you should hold on to it as long
Speaker 1: as you can.
Speaker 3: Hey, man, my camera gets forty MPG. Okay, come on, oh.
Speaker 4: Yeah with the cus but tiny thing for me.
Speaker 5: It also reminds me of folks that like refuse to
Speaker 5: upgrade their operating systems on their computer because they like
Speaker 5: the version of the software they use and they do
Speaker 5: not want to be forced to upgrade, so they like
Speaker 5: kind of remove that computer from the Internet. And this
Speaker 5: is true from a lot of audio, you know, or
Speaker 5: video editing. Perhaps somebody really liked the early version of
Speaker 5: Final Cut Pro and doesn't want to participate anything else
Speaker 5: because that just worked for them, you know. And so
Speaker 5: you just kind of remove yourself from that technological rat race.
Speaker 3: Well unless you can't, unless you cannot remove yourself at all,
Speaker 3: because if you own a vehicle, even in California, Senator Wiener, yes,
Speaker 3: that's right, Scott Wiener. He proposed a bill back in
Speaker 3: January to do this very thing in California, so you
Speaker 3: know it might be coming our way. That bill, by
Speaker 3: the way, it's not going through, and that cat is
Speaker 3: very excited to exit this room. So why don't we
Speaker 3: exit this segment? Thank you, Doc? Here we go ed.
Speaker 1: This brings us to one of our favorite parts of
Speaker 1: the show. This is where we pass the torch to you,
Speaker 1: fellow conspiracy realist. Have you have you like some of
Speaker 1: your faithful correspondents traveled abroad and ran into the robot revolution.
Speaker 1: What do you think about cars? So you get my
Speaker 1: car stuff? Had on for this. Really interested to hear
Speaker 1: the future of automation, the greater good arguments, and then
Speaker 1: of course change your passwords. We can't wait to hear
Speaker 1: from someone who is actually attending the Taco Bell Retirement Home,
Speaker 1: reach out to us online, tell us about all this,
Speaker 1: and most importantly, tell us what it's like to live Moss.
Speaker 1: It's a Taco Bell tag, min I'm doing Taco Bell references.
Speaker 4: More by I got it, I got it. It's good.
Speaker 5: It's true, though, Ben, you make great points here, and
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