Sir Gene Speaks

0070 Sir Gene Speaks with Dude Named Ben

May 21, 2022 Gene Naftulyev Season 2022 Episode 70
Sir Gene Speaks
0070 Sir Gene Speaks with Dude Named Ben
Sir Gene Speaks +
Get a shoutout in an upcoming episode!
Starting at $3/month
Support
Show Notes Transcript

I recommend listening at 1.25X

Weekend Gaming Livestream atlasrandgaming onTwitch
StarCitizen referral code STAR-YJD6-DKF2
Elite Dangerous
Kerbal

Podcast recorded on Descript and hosted on BuzzSprout 

Story Images and Links are only visible to Podcasting 2.0 Apps - see all the latest APPS for Podcasting 2.0

Donate via Bitcoin or Lightning strike.me/sirgene 

Support the show

I recommend listening at 1.25X

And check out Gene's other podcasts:
justtwogoodoldboys.com and unrelenting.show

Gene's Youtube Channel: Sir Gene Speaks
Donate via Paypal http://bit.ly/39tV7JY Bitcoin or Lightning strike.me/sirgene

Can't donate? sub to my GAMING youtube channel (even if you never watch!) Sub Here

Weekend Gaming Livestream atlasrandgaming onTwitch
StarCitizen referral code STAR-YJD6-DKF2
Elite Dangerous
Kerbal

Podcast recorded on Descript and hosted on BuzzSprout

Story Images and Links are only visible to Podcasting 2.0 Apps - see all the ...

Sir Gene:

That's the surgeon, once again, the width third dude named ma'am. How are you been?

Ben:

I'm doing great. Jean had a little bit of a rough morning and we've had some technical difficulties, unfortunately, but

Sir Gene:

Did you have a glitch? Is that what you had a glitch?

Ben:

Apparently we've got a little glitch with my, a temporary audio interface, not producing the game that it was last week.

Sir Gene:

Oh, you're not as gainful. All right. Well, I think we got it figured out more or less.

Ben:

I think we can work.

Sir Gene:

Uh, yes, we, we will, we will endeavor to work with it. so it's been an interesting week. I've actually been pretty busy at work. So I actually have not spent all that much time paying attention to the news, but certainly some of the news, even if you're not paying attention, makes it towards you and boy, the videos from a project Veritas.

Ben:

Yeah,

Sir Gene:

cow.

Ben:

They've produced some good ones here recently. And then, uh, you combine that with the, um, ministry of truth, uh, on the surface, at least failing quicker than CNN plus. Um, Yeah. there's lots of great memes out there

Sir Gene:

Yeah.

Ben:

going on.

Sir Gene:

fired a bunch of, wokes

Ben:

Well,

Sir Gene:

not enough. They need to cut at least half the company for them to really start making a dent in the people that are woken that.

Ben:

Yeah. I think Netflix, I think what they did was nothing but a utilitarian given their subscriber base. I don't think there was any messaging. There are, you know,

Sir Gene:

Well, there's a little

Ben:

our politics. It's just,

Sir Gene:

I here's what I think it is. I is, I think that all of Netflix is woke from the top all the way down to the bottom, but I think the guys at the top, the ones that are making millions. are not getting their bonuses because the company is going down the toilet and they're starting to realize that, Hey, it's, you know, either beaten at this point. So if it takes some sacrifices of like-minded folk to convince people to come back, let's try that. So I do think that they are targeting the most vocal communist. The people on Netflix or the people that worked for that likes that are the most prolific posters on Twitter and other platforms with their communists messaging. Um, I do think they're getting rid of those, but they have to get rid of somebody. Like they had no choice here.

Ben:

Well, and you know, the Netflix has squandered their first mover advantage tremendously. I mean, you got to think that

Sir Gene:

They invented the category.

Ben:

pretty much yeah. Them and Hulu, right. Um,

Sir Gene:

Hulu, way way be hurtful. I have Netflix, not that fixed. I had Netflix streaming, uh, when I was working, um, at, uh, Amex back in 2006 or seven, we had the other, as I was building out the, uh, the SOC I needed something to test bandwidth and, uh, At least that was the excuse. So all the moderators in the sock were running Netflix streaming so we can saturate it.

Ben:

Well, you know, so my point in saying, and Hulu was Hulu was a year or two later, uh, when they started up. And my point is those two players have been around for a lot longer Disney plus everything else is just right here. Very, very recently they had such a long-term. First mover advantage that has just been squandered. Um, I actually think the Netflix stock price is really going to start tanking and the, and this is not stock advice, but it's just, they, they are no longer the big player in the room. Other people are producing great original content and their catalog is suffering because now they're in a competitive market for that back catalog of ex.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. And the advantage that they had was exactly the same advantage that HBO had back when they were the first mover. Uh, I remember I first got HBO in 19 80, 19 80. I don't think we'll get it in 79, but definitely in 80, how they feel and, you know, they were the one cable channel available back then. Uh, everything else was over the

Ben:

I was born, but yep.

Sir Gene:

Well, yes. Do you remember back before you were born when HBO was the only other option? Yes. Uh, and so they're the big dog and then. started coming in and HBO kind of sat on their laurels for probably a good decade without doing a whole lot. And I don't think it was really until the Sopranos that HBR really kind of kicked it into high gear. And instead of trying to, you know, be the same thing as every other cable channel decided to start producing shows that couldn't be shown on broadcast TV because of the violence and the sex and nudity and everything else. And at the same time, Have really a movie production quality.

Ben:

Yeah, and I mean, HP has done several, they've done some good things with their storytelling, and then they've done some bad things with their lack of successful storytelling as well. So I, I think what we're seeing is that we're reaching a saturation point and. I, I really think that, you know, you're going to see a collapse of a lot of these streaming services down into

Sir Gene:

Yeah, I think we, we need there's two that many of

Ben:

Yeah. Well there's, and you've got these one onesy twosy shows here and there, you know, um, you've got, uh, Paramount plus has some of the new star Trek stuff, which, you know, some of that, they, they are destroying my childhood in so many ways,

Sir Gene:

Hey, by the way. Speaking of star Trek, though, I did see the first episode of the new star Trek.

Ben:

with the, the strange new world,

Sir Gene:

Yeah.

Ben:

I haven't watched that? one yet. No.

Sir Gene:

So it's on YouTube.

Ben:

Okay.

Sir Gene:

They put the whole first step sowed out on YouTube as a form of

Ben:

advertising, Yeah.

Sir Gene:

but it's like Jeff, I can watch it with no ads and for free, uh, yeah, no. I will say that, um, given the woke direction that star Trek has been going with, well, frankly, both the movies and the, uh, TV shows, uh, where the Orville is closer to star Trek than star Trek.

Ben:

Yeah. Orville is definitely tos material and, you know, has a good sense of humor. I will say That a lower deck star Trek, liver X, the animated show that somewhat supposed to be a comedy is actually pretty decent. I liked that one discovery.

Sir Gene:

actually my idea. They still up,

Ben:

How was that your idea?

Sir Gene:

well, I came up with that 20 years ago. I said, you know, what we really need is not a show about the captain. What we need is a show about the peons on board

Ben:

Yeah,

Sir Gene:

and then a talk talking about the average lives of the guys that, uh, rarely if ever see the camp.

Ben:

Yeah. Well, it's a decent show. I'm the star Trek discovery, man. That, that was just brutal because. Is it, it hurts my soul because Picard is, you know, the cap that I grew up with and it's, you know, it really just is disappointing. Um, but you know, Hey, uh, maybe, maybe, uh, after the Stacey Abrams, uh, John on discovery, you know, it'll all just turn around.

Sir Gene:

this particular show, this first episode with the, uh, I forget the guy's name, the new captain pike. Yeah. So the, the guy that's, uh, the original 1960 show. As being the captain that, um, uh, what's his face was a,

Ben:

So pike was the original captain, right? So when, when they did the, the, uh, the menagerie, which was the original pilot, um, You know, uh, which they ended up passing on and Roddenberry, and then went back and recast and redid some things. But it was interesting cause the, the Monash Canary was even more progressive for the time. I mean, number one, you know, it was second in command, was a woman on the first on, uh, and they, they had to get rid of that, but, uh, yeah,

Sir Gene:

They should have just kept her and called her number two instead of.

Ben:

Yeah. Uh, but, uh, no. So pike pike got woven into tos. So the menagerie was the original pilot that never aired. And then, um, they went back and did a two-part episode. Um, and you reuse that footage, uh, during, uh, I forget which tos seasons. But, uh, anyway, go on. What about the new series? Did you like? Or didn't like,

Sir Gene:

It's funny, you call it tos. I just call it star Trek since I grew up watching.

Ben:

it's a generational difference. It's the original series to

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Well, and, and like, I'd call the, uh, you know, the next generation I call the next generations,

Ben:

Yeah. T O S N T N.

Sir Gene:

yup. Yup. Anyway. So I, I actually enjoyed the episode. It did not seem to overwhelm me with wokeness, which was good.

Ben:

Yeah,

Sir Gene:

Pike is, well, he he's a no Kirk, but he's definitely leading in that direction more so than the previous ones. Um, meaning on the scale of Manliness, like he, he didn't, you know, screw every alien that he came in contact with. So he's not quite Kirk. Um, But, uh, the actor seems pretty good. I really like, uh, what's her name? Romaine the, uh, number one there I got, what is her name? Something remained?

Ben:

I haven't gotten a, I haven't gotten there yet. I've been busy doing other things than watching TV.

Sir Gene:

really, oh, that's shocking. Um, with a young kid, you're doing something other than watching TV.

Ben:

Yeah, two young kids and, uh, you know, at night when they're asleep, I'm

Sir Gene:

Now how long do you consider them? Young kids instead of just kids.

Ben:

Uh, I think anything under five is a pretty young.

Sir Gene:

before sentience,

Ben:

I think you think it takes a child till five to be sentient

Sir Gene:

what's your oldest.

Ben:

w memory has nothing to do with sensations?

Sir Gene:

Sure it does. If you don't remember what's happening to you, you're not really sentient,

Ben:

Uh, I think, that there's a difference between sentients and our memory capacity. Uh,

Sir Gene:

century and through relies on memories, existence.

Ben:

Yeah, but I mean, my son has a memory right now. He remembers things that happened in the past. I mean, traumatize a child in any way, shape or form. And they'll remember it for a long time, you know? So I think memory does exist.

Sir Gene:

that's what the hippies say anyway.

Ben:

W okay. Well, I would say the definition of sentients is self-aware and knowing that you are an individual and I think a two year old, certainly. No. himself from anyone else. So.

Sir Gene:

I would disagree. I mean, I agree with your definition, but I don't think a two year old does know, I think the two year old just sees things happening around them. I don't think there's a sense of self.

Ben:

I mean, it's, it's hard because most two year olds can't really talk very Well, So that's, that's part of the problem is understanding what they're actually thinking.

Sir Gene:

Well, and I would say it's that point where you start deviating behavior from the rest of the animals on the planet, where you really demonstrate your sentience.

Ben:

Well, yeah, so, I mean, Th there is a lot of variability in human development as well. So we've got to keep that in mind. Um,

Sir Gene:

Like, I think, you know, bear Cubs are cute as hell. I would love to have a pet bear, but I don't think they're Sensient.

Ben:

I, I wouldn't, I don't think, I don't think there are very many animals on the planet other than man that are, if any.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Well, I think dolphins, probably people think they do anyway.

Ben:

Maybe, Uh, again, language barrier becomes hard to determine that

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Um, well, and then there, there are tests that they do with mirrors to determine if the animal recognizes themselves. That's a large component of

Ben:

but it mean if you're willing to take that, then I would suggest that a young child at one or two is sentient. If that's going to be your definition.

Sir Gene:

I don't think they recognize themselves. I think they just see something interesting in.

Ben:

Nah, like you can take a video of, uh, a kid and play it back to them, show them them, and they'll be like me, you know, the, they

Sir Gene:

I would love to do that in a test environment with no other humans around

Ben:

Okay.

Sir Gene:

it's a year. You're definitely affecting the test of if you're sitting there and Googling, talking to the baby of the same.

Ben:

Yeah.

Sir Gene:

Who's a good Lu. Who's a good little boy. Come on.

Ben:

I, hate maybe talking. I, I do, uh, you

Sir Gene:

I think

Ben:

eh,

Sir Gene:

don't hate it, but I do think it is kinda universally, uh, ridiculous.

Ben:

well, it's just one of those things. You're are you trying to teach, are you trying to give your child a speech impediment and

Sir Gene:

Right? Exactly.

Ben:

why would you talk to them in a way that you wouldn't want them to then repeat and talk?

Sir Gene:

So speaking of speech impediments, I don't know if you notice this because you are a bit younger, but I've definitely noticed in the current people on media, uh, generally younger millennials and zoomers, I would say they seem to pronounced hard. Jeez. Like I would say, Hey, I'm going over there. And most people pronounce it. I'm going over there. Nah, I'm accentuating the G they wouldn't say it quite that strongly, but definitely a lot stronger than I'm going over there. And when, when I was younger, if you watch television, people would say, I'm going over there almost sort of jumping over the G. So that's not a regional thing. Like this is average conversational kind of pronunciation back in the seventies, eighties.

Ben:

I haven't. I haven't noticed that, but, uh,

Sir Gene:

you will now. Cause I've mentioned that you're

Ben:

wouldn't surprise me. Surprise me given how many, uh, little mill use there are around speech. Like one of the things that I've noticed is verbiage and, um, you know, just cadence. Really easy to pick up on, on who's around who, and it's funny when you watch a meal, you like watching the kids or whatever, and a new, a new word or phrase gets introduced and they all start using it. all the time. Yeah.

Sir Gene:

I think

Ben:

I'm sure will

Sir Gene:

was that, for me, for awhile when I was young,

Ben:

like yeah.

Sir Gene:

everything was like, totally like awesome. And like, cool.

Ben:

Yeah, totally amaze hang.

Sir Gene:

eventually started hearing yourself saying it and you're like, God damn it. I need to stop using that word.

Ben:

Yeah. I mean, I, someone pointed out that I say right, a lot and now it's annoys the hell out of me and I'm trying to get out of the habit. So

Sir Gene:

That's a bad one to use because that's actually an indicator of a, um, a lack of a self-assured. So every, every time in speech patterns, when people insert right, uh, subconsciously what they're doing is they're asking for confirmation, we should demonstrates their lack of assuredness themselves. Um, now most people just sort of pick it up if everybody around them speaks that way. I agree with that. But, uh, somebody that is very self-assured and if you ask somebody about a topic they're thoroughly familiar, They were very rarely used, right.

Ben:

Hmm. Interesting. Well,

Sir Gene:

Words have meaning,

Ben:

I agree. I don't know that the psychology on that one works for me, but we'll leave it there.

Sir Gene:

right?

Ben:

You know, one thing I do want to talk about that I do know a little bit about is, uh, a subject from Thursday's no agenda that Adam got a little wrong.

Sir Gene:

which one?

Ben:

Uh, just a little bit on the power grid. Uh, you know, they were, they were talking about Erekat specifically and I, um, I'm a little bit familiar with that. Uh,

Sir Gene:

A little bit. Wait. Okay. So it's Thursday. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't listened to the Thursday one yet.

Ben:

Yeah. So the reserve margins in Texas are definitely low. So ERCOT target reserve margin for the last several years has been around 12% to give everybody a idea of what that means. Um, for

Sir Gene:

let me interrupt and ask you though, is that 12%?

Ben:

peak.

Sir Gene:

margin or is that 12% not including plant shutdowns margin

Ben:

That that is 12% of operating available generation compared to the peak expected demand,

Sir Gene:

theoretical available or actual available.

Ben:

theoretical available.

Sir Gene:

Okay. So when they plan a shut down for three weeks to go clean something it's taken out of that 12%.

Ben:

Correct. And that's why that's well, That's. why we do outages and ERCOT during what are known as the shoulder months, Right. There's very spring and fall. Now This spring part of the reason why the grid has been so tight.

Sir Gene:

summer, by the way.

Ben:

Exactly. It's been a warm, warm spring, and you have a lot of plants shut down. So as a result, the grids have entitled. So we ERCOT target their stated target of what operating reserves they wanted was 12% for a very long time. Now I assume new England, for example, I assume new England runs a 30% reserve margin. Um, ERCOT before deregulation ran a 30% reserve margin. 30% is generally industry standard.

Sir Gene:

Yeah.

Ben:

The, the problem we have is that 12%. So when Adam and them were talking about wind, one of the things you have to realize is ERCOT only dispatches wind at 20%. So if you have a hundred megawatts available, they're only counting on 20% of it being there. So hundred megawatts, they're only counting on 10, 20 megawatts, but. The oh, here's where it gets real fucked up. So they're, they're dispatched. Numbers are like that. Then what they do is the overall generation capacity is counted towards the reserve margin. So it's not 20% of the generation capacity. That's counted towards the reserve margin, even though they can only dispatch 20% because it's

Sir Gene:

We'll be counting the full that's ridiculous that's bullshit numbers.

Ben:

Yes. And as a result, the wind subsidies are what's killing a generation in Texas. And in the reason why is, again, when we've described this before on other podcasts, but the way the ERCOT market works is you have a bunch of different players. You don't just have the transmission companies, the distribution companies and the generation companies. You've got hedge funds in there. You've it's, it is a commodity market

Sir Gene:

Yeah. And that's the other

Ben:

can play in it. And that, that is a problem with it? And you can do futures trading and everything else. Um, another thing is as a 15 minute market, uh, not five, but that's neither here nor there. You can put in calls every five minutes, but the trades are actually every 15.

Sir Gene:

What's to stop somebody just from buying futures and not really.

Ben:

Well, the energy, the physics of the grid. Um, okay. The generators are still online, but you're not buying and storing the energy. It's just a financial

Sir Gene:

but if I want to just fuck Texas up, couldn't I just basically pay to turn off electricity

Ben:

Um, I mean,

Sir Gene:

and then, well, you know what I mean, buying it and then selling it for a ridiculous amount of money that no one's willing to.

Ben:

No, no, no, no, no, no. Uh, because I mean the generator still going to. generate, so the way the, the actual real-time market works is generators are bidding in, at, um, X amount of price. Right. So, and it it's dispatched on lowest cost first. I mean, you could try and manipulate the market rules and you could try and do something Like that. But I think rationality, I think rationality would prevail,

Sir Gene:

Yeah. I can eels Mo Elon Musk, like by all the Texas energy to send to Boca Chica.

Ben:

Boca Chica.

Sir Gene:

Yeah.

Ben:

Well, w w I don't get the reference to.

Sir Gene:

Oh, that's where the third port is.

Ben:

The wet.

Sir Gene:

That's where they build the rockets.

Ben:

Okay. Uh, I am, I was unaware, but I mean, you, you still have a grid. You still have what can be delivered. The bulk electric market is not a, is not a retail market right there, there, the, the market is split into multiple sections. So you've got the bulk electric market, which is a futures market. You have. Generation you have transmission and you have distribution, which is just the retail market you're paying for what you're using and so on. And where people got screwed during URI was several people had signed up for power plans that, you know, we're just going to tack on 5 cents a megawatt, and then you pay, you pay the market price. Well, when your average price in Texas is, you know, 25,$30 a megawatt. That's great. When it suddenly goes up to$9,000 a month.

Sir Gene:

that's not so good.

Ben:

Yeah. So, eh, you know, th there, that was an issue there, um,

Sir Gene:

And do you know what kind of margin California runs?

Ben:

uh, generation, uh, no, I'd have to go look it up, but, uh,

Sir Gene:

Cause they have like brown outs.

Ben:

yeah, but you got to understand, California is California is screwed because. I, I, there are several companies that have wholly mismanaged, lots of things, lot of the California brown outs and things that have happened are happening at the distribution level. Not like grid issue, transmission

Sir Gene:

Okay. So it's not so much power generation as it is.

Ben:

Well, I mean, they've got power gen problems as well. I mean, they're bringing in power from Nevada and everywhere else, quite a bit. Um, you know, the former company I worked for, we, we were deploying the largest battery site in north America, uh, for PG and E um,

Sir Gene:

Mike last with batteries.

Ben:

lithium ion lithium.

Sir Gene:

to me. And maybe I'm totally wrong. Cause you know, I'm not a physics or math major. Um, but. I would think for large quantities of buffering doing like a, a gravity based battery would be much better, more efficient

Ben:

And, and there are, you know, uh, there are some projects in like Michigan and elsewhere where they literally pump water into a retaining pond and then use hydro. Yeah. Th there are some things like that that have been done. Um, the lithium battery is the only reason why they scale at all is subsidies.

Sir Gene:

Well, they don't really scale because the price of lithium has gone up by 8,000.

Ben:

That's why I'm saying the only thing that the reason why they're available is because of, uh, subsidies and here's the really messed up thing. They, uh, so it, anyone who knows anything about control systems, the batteries are using canvas. So the inverters and the batteries are using cannabis for communication. Cannabis was designed in the eighties for the automobile industry. It is not meant to be a scalable control system. So what ends up happening is you have all these banks of batteries running these canvas architectures and each bank of battery. It has its own node. And then that has to get scaled out, which causes a huge problem. Also, when you think of IO, um, so a large coal plant, modern coal plant, you know, 1900 megawatts of generation, uh, 1600 megawatts generation, um, has 80,000 points of IO, a. 300 megawatt unit, which is a three hour, a hundred megawatt. So a hundred megawatt can output a hundred megawatts for three hours. So you called a 300 megawatt unit. I had 128,000 points of IO because each cell on the batteries has the cell voltage cell temperature, amperage, et cetera. So it doesn't scale where the crap, um, we've also seen at some of these large battery sites, both ones I've been involved with and others where you've had thermal runaway, these digital inverters that are coming from China, they have not been proven out at utility scale. And anyway, it's. Setting ourselves up for a nightmare

Sir Gene:

absolutely.

Ben:

because you know, California is closing down a fairly new, uh, natural, uh, natural gas combined cycle unit because of its startup time, because it was designed as a base load unit. It was not designed to cycle on and off as a result. That's actually a little bit more efficient as long as it's up and running all the time. But the market conditions that California and Texas are creating. Means that if your power plant, if you're a, if you're a fossil unit and you can't cycle, if you can't turn off and turn on pretty regularly and follow that market, you're you're, you're not available. You're you're just shooting yourself in the foot. The irony of this is some old, simple cycle combustion turbines are actually what we're. Ancillary units that almost never ran and everything else are running more and being more profitable. And the reason is because they can cycle on and off faster.

Sir Gene:

Interesting.

Ben:

in fact, one of the projects I was involved with, uh, before has changed companies was building out a battery unit. For a simple cycle combustion turbine where the batteries would come on and provide that instant load until the combustion turbine was at full load and the batteries would fall off. So that's actually kind of a cool use case for batteries where it's, we can be instantly available. The unit ramps, batteries go offline, back and forth. Uh, But anyway, the point I was trying to make is that the issues in the market, or it's an oversimplification to say that it's just the commodity market, the commodity market is broken and it really should just be the players involved should be generation, transmission, and

Sir Gene:

I totally agree.

Ben:

Then you solve that commodity market. The other problem though, that we have is the subsidies for some of these technologies that don't provide. Consistent power and the way ERCOT and others are calculating their reserve margin. They're shooting themselves in the foot, on the reserve margin.

Sir Gene:

So what do we do? You know, we don't want to leave Texas because they have shitty power here. What do we do?

Ben:

uh, well, the first thing is to get a decent governance board in on ERCOT. The other thing I would say is too. Focus on market participation rules and some things changing there. And then the real big thing would be to get rid of the subsidies for, well, my

Sir Gene:

sounds like what you're saying is really just changed government,

Ben:

free market. Um, what I would say is you cannot do this. Half-ass deregulation because you're, you're, you're calling you're distorting the market to the point of causing functional failure. If you get rid of the subsidies for wind and solar, which would be my preference,

Sir Gene:

right?

Ben:

coal becomes profitable again in our Cod overnight. Um, if you that, or, you know, you can, if you want to have the. The easiest fix for a market like this would actually to be, to add a capacity payment or a, uh, fuel storage, uh, payment. So some, anything that can store like after URI, one of the big issues that we had was pipelines not getting power and thus, you know, or even

Sir Gene:

me ask you this now. I'm sure it's people way more versed in the stuff than me at posed this question before, but I'm curious to see your answer. If, if we have generators that. at continuous operation. Um, why don't we use a buffer, like a gravity based battery system continuously. So you have that generator running at consistent load, but all it's doing is pumping water up.

Ben:

Well, Texas doesn't have a lot of geographic, uh, you know, diversity

Sir Gene:

Yeah, well, there's also compressed there in, uh, underground, uh,

Ben:

yeah, but there's, but there's only so much you can store. It is what it comes down to.

Sir Gene:

Well, fair enough. But how much of a buffer do you need a day?

Ben:

Uh, Well, I, think URI showed us that we needed way more than we have. Um, you

Sir Gene:

Well, I, that was pretty obvious.

Ben:

I think that, uh, I think fossil fuels that that energy has been stored. It's just a matter of converting it. I think you can stockpile, you know, 10, 12 days worth of coal for a large plant onsite. I think you can, uh, have a combustion turbine that can burn. Natural gas when it's efficient or fuel oil. So that when something like URI happens in homes, get prioritized for natural gas, you switch over to your fuel reserves that while it's dirtier. Yeah. But Hey, would you rather us burn a little bit dirtier fuel right now that we have onsite or would you rather not have power?

Sir Gene:

Well, Biden would prefer to not have power, of course, because people should just be able to, you know, just get used to not having things that they used to have because.

Ben:

Yes. Well, regardless

Sir Gene:

can I interrupt this train of thought and then, um, take a glance at the Zencaster screen while you're talking.

Ben:

Yes.

Sir Gene:

So here's something I just realized, and this is a little behind the scenes talk. Um, you know, all the tweaks that I did to, to boost you up and change the cue and all that good stuff. It's all on my aunt. And I just realized I'm not, I'm not using descriptor record, this I'm using Zencaster, which means none of that is getting applied to Zencaster because it's recording directly. What's coming out of your mic.

Ben:

Oh boy.

Sir Gene:

So this episode, if you're hearing this episode guys, and not just my voice, that means that there's some magic of foot because a Ben's levels are super fricking low rates. And we may be, uh, we may be having some issues. So what we're going to do

Ben:

D attraction

Sir Gene:

what we're going to do. We're going to stop it right now.

Ben:

Yeah.

Sir Gene:

I'm going to download a clip and listen to it. And if I see if it's usable at all, if it is we'll continue, if it's not, then we might have to restart. So if you're hearing what I'm saying right now, that means we were able to use it. If you didn't hear it, then we probably wouldn't. Okay. So let me see. So, Uh, pick a topic. This is the fun episode, take a topic. I don't care, whatever.

Ben:

did you see the, uh, army selected a new, a battle rifle?

Sir Gene:

I did. I did. I also saw that the civilian version or the closest thing you can get to that is up a thousand dollars compared to what it was a year ago.

Ben:

Yep.

Sir Gene:

Bastards.

Ben:

Well, the interesting thing is the cartridge selection, you know, so they're going with a very hot six, eight cartridge that, I mean, the, the pressures of this thing is just insane. So it,

Sir Gene:

people would say modern.

Ben:

well, I mean, I, it is in a lot of ways, but it's going to be interesting to see

Sir Gene:

use it in any other guns,

Ben:

Right. So you, you have designed compatibility issues. Um, I highly doubt NATO is going to adopt this cartridge. So that is kind of an interesting selection. And what does that say about the long-term viability of

Sir Gene:

I don't know that. I mean, this, I got to imagine them with the new cartridge. So the, the civilian version is sold with the traditional 5, 5, 6. But with this cartridge, the price of the guns is going to be quite a bit higher

Ben:

Yeah,

Sir Gene:

because the machining has to be more precise and materials are going to have to be high quality.

Ben:

well, in the manufacturing or the cartridge, cause it's a, it's a bi-metal cartridge. So you

Sir Gene:

is a bi-metal

Ben:

you know, you have a steel ring and then brass. So it's going to be very interesting. It's not going to be a reloadable cartridge.

Sir Gene:

Nope. Nope. It's a military only Carter.

Ben:

yeah. And it's. It's interesting to hear the, a lot of the military types bitch about the recoil. Um, it just is astonishing to me, but then you have to realize that most of

Sir Gene:

Well, what are they used to, right?

Ben:

exactly. And

Sir Gene:

it's not like they're shooting

Ben:

no, and apparently the gun has a lot done, uh, for the recoil impulse. It's, it's very interesting. It is, uh, you to look at it, you think what's different from the it looks like an AR largely, but when you look at the actual mechanics of the gun, it's a drastically different gun. Um, also it's a short barrel rifle, uh, out the gate, you know, it's meant to be suppressed. It's.

Sir Gene:

is it? 14 inch.

Ben:

Yeah. The 13 five, I

Sir Gene:

Thirty-five

Ben:

Yeah. Um, but that's part of the reason why they went with the Carters they went with because in that short barrel, you know, the six, eight bullet that's far superior and ballistic coefficient reasons, and lots of reasons to the 5, 5, 6 is up around 3000 feet per second with a larger, larger round. So you've got way more energy on target. You have the ability to defeat, um, some body armor. And when I say some I'm talking, you know, uh, you're a ceramic

Sir Gene:

I get

Ben:

yeah. Russian Barty armor, a ceramic plate or a steel plate. Body armor is not going to be defeated by this round. Um, but,

Sir Gene:

It depends what the rounds, if it's a steel core, it will be

Ben:

uh, if you have a penetrator yes, but I believe that their conventions against that for, uh, infantry

Sir Gene:

why are, why do we make them then if there are conventions against it,

Ben:

uh,

Sir Gene:

why don't we make steel core? Penetrators

Ben:

W we do four anti armor.

Sir Gene:

Right. So what do you mean by conventions?

Ben:

Uh, I, I don't, I think this falls into the same reasons why we typically don't use soft points on, uh, for anti personnel rounds, right? The, the penetrators are designed to penetrate vehicle armor was the idea there. So anyway, I may be totally

Sir Gene:

No that's no, I get it. I get it just like phosphorus is meant to just show a bright light.

Ben:

Yeah. Tracer round is for fighting at night and so on here, which apparently the Russians can't do. But anyway, it's an interesting gun. Uh, it's an interesting cartridge. I, I think if they make that rifle in different calibers, you know, with the larger platform. So the currently available civilian version that you're talking about as the, uh, AR 15 sized with the army is going to is more of the AR 10 size law, more intermediary, more like a 3 0 8

Sir Gene:

do you remember the model? It's the SIG like M M P X or something? Or? I

Ben:

Yeah. It's the, uh, it's the, uh, X, M five.

Sir Gene:

Oh, there you go.

Ben:

And once the military fully had, uh, the opposite it'll drop the accent. It'll be

Sir Gene:

So just the yeah.

Ben:

Yep.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. SIG got a hell of a deal. Um, they've been winning contracts left and right,

Ben:

well, and it's, uh, it also goes with the new vortex smart optic.

Sir Gene:

right. Yes.

Ben:

So the, you know,

Sir Gene:

surprisingly they chose a crappy brand for that.

Ben:

You know, vortex, um, vortex, low end stuff sucks. They're the first generation vortex stuff sucked.

Sir Gene:

Yep.

Ben:

The second generation stuff that they're out with now. Um, I bought a vortex, uh, razor, uh, you know, uh, PST, you know, uh,$1,200 scope. Um, It's okay. Uh, I'm reasonably for the price. I'm reasonably happy with it. The glass is nice. It's the first focal plane. The biggest bitch I have about vortex scopes is the iBox the iBox on the vortex scope sucks when you compare it to a Leopold or fuck even an icon, you know, that it's just night and day difference on that. iBox and that I wish that would be something they would fix on their scopes that said I have a vortex, um, on my that's an Australian scout style scopes. So it's a one X to six X, eight replaces a red.in the magnifier for me. And I love that thing. That for that use case, it is fantastic. So

Sir Gene:

yeah. I picked up a, um, a SIG read that recently.

Ben:

Yeah. Yeah.

Sir Gene:

And I reason I went with SIG is because of the lifetime warranty.

Ben:

Yeah. I mean, vortex has a lifetime warranty on stuff too. Uh,

Sir Gene:

I didn't realize that

Ben:

When it comes to now, I will say this when it comes to red dots, I am an aim point guy. Give me my aim point.

Sir Gene:

they don't, I've not seen the name point. that I like. I dunno.

Ben:

Uh, I mean, I've, I have an old comp M three that I have beat the hell out of for over a decade. And what I love about it is I can leave it on, on a operable light rating. So out of 10, I can leave it on at a seven and five years later, I go pick up that gun and the, the red.is still going to be on

Sir Gene:

yeah. And how old is that?

Ben:

it's over 10 years old.

Sir Gene:

Hmm. Yeah, I guess,

Ben:

it's on one of my main truck, a ours that just gets beat to hell. So yeah.

Sir Gene:

I'm considering with the current technologies, what that allowed like 10,000 or more hours on battery and or now a lot of them getting a solar power as well. I'm very, very tempted to sell my Aycock because, uh, that thing was 1300 bucks when I bought it, which was 15 years ago. And it's$200 every time I send it in to get the Tridium replaced. And you pretty much have to do that every seven years. So consequently I've now put in what, like two grand into it, 1800 bucks. So, um, at what's three and a half X, so.

Ben:

Right. But it's fixed power.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, it's fixed power. Right, right. But I don't even mind to fix power. I mean, I, I, but I'm just saying I could get like a four X read that for considerably less money that I wouldn't have to send in every seven years to get the tritium replaced. So that that's something to think about because the price has not gone down at all on the, on the Trijicon stuff.

Ben:

well, look at the one to six power, uh, one or one to eight power, uh, scopes.

Sir Gene:

It's two grand.

Ben:

Well, not, not even just the Trijicon you can look at, uh, SIG vortex, lots of different ones that have the option for an illuminated radicle. Um, because that to me is a good compromise where you can essentially use it as a red.at one X with a LuminAID reticle, if

Sir Gene:

I don't know that I need, uh, even six sex on a, uh, 5, 5, 6.

Ben:

Yeah. I don't own a 5, 5, 6 guns, so I can't help you

Sir Gene:

Yeah. I mean, it's like, that's the gun out to maybe 400 yards,

Ben:

Yeah. But depending on what you're doing is six acts, even at 400 yards can be.

Sir Gene:

six X versus three and a half X. It's not even twice the magnification.

Ben:

Uh, it depends on what you're doing.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. I mean, if I CA if I can't see something at three and a half X, I don't know that I should be shooting at it. You know what I mean?

Ben:

Oh, it depends on what era it aim small Ms. Small. So it depends on what you're trying to do, you know? And they, you can obviously have way too much

Sir Gene:

something I would say is what I was trying to do. I don't know. I, again, my, my point is that the distances of that gun, I don't know that I would ever need anything more than three and a half and having something that's fixed. And then granted, you can leave a variable scope in that. And effectively, it becomes a fixed scope. I get that, but, um, it's really hard to beat a large lens, fixed scope for brightness. Like it's almost brighter than the ambient light.

Ben:

True.

Sir Gene:

really bright.

Ben:

The problem you have with it is if you're at a shorter range, um, field of view.

Sir Gene:

Yes. Yes. That is absolutely true. And they, they have the little mounts on top to get the thousand dollar red dot on top of their,

Ben:

Exactly. So, uh, like I said, with the variable power, I don't know, I

Sir Gene:

no, I look, I think it's a good idea. I'm you twist my arm harder to have me buy more shit, please.

Ben:

I'll send you some links to some of the scopes you can play around with them. Um, I, I, it depends on the utility of the gun. So like for instance, my AR that is my sits in the truck when I go to the deer camp, whatever, um, it's my sub 300 yard AR E regardless of caliber. I've got an aim point, red dot on there. No magnifier.

Sir Gene:

It regardless or just regardless.

Ben:

Regardless. I said regardless.

Sir Gene:

We can, we can play the tape back. Okay.

Ben:

regardless I have a, you know, no magnification red dot on there. Now it's a two MOA red dot I like a small red dot. I don't want a big four MOA red dot personally.

Sir Gene:

Oh, you're going to love it. The one I got

Ben:

Y

Sir Gene:

16 MOA.

Ben:

you know?

Sir Gene:

Yeah.

Ben:

Yeah. Why would you, why would it be 16 MOA.

Sir Gene:

It's on a shotgun.

Ben:

Okay. Oh, okay.

Sir Gene:

purpose. It's for a purpose,

Ben:

Okay. That that's fine. But, uh, on a rifle, I just, do you want to hit a barn or not?

Sir Gene:

At the general vicinity the same and in general vicinity, that's all you get.

Ben:

Yeah, but,

Sir Gene:

I, I picked this, uh, the SIG, uh, read that specifically for the new shotgun.

Ben:

yeah, but one, the, one of the things I will say there is a. I just, I picked my optic and my gun for a purpose. And then you're good.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, exactly. And that, that's the thing. So I do like to standardize though. I will say that, um, sort of like you've standardized on 3 0 8 as a cartridge. I'm now in a process of standardizing on all iwi guns and I'm kind of tempted now to start standardizing on the SIG.

Ben:

So I have standardized to an extent. I mean, I have, I like 3 0 8. I have several 3 0 8. It it's a good rifle for a purpose, but I also have a handful of other cartridges. I just wasn't ready when I was buying this new bolt gun to add in yet another cartridge and go with like a six, five, you know, some of the six millimeter stuff.

Sir Gene:

3 0 8 is a great cartridge.

Ben:

yeah.

Sir Gene:

I think it's the best American cartridges as far as I'm concerned, because it combines a, a shorter action with plenty of distance coverage.

Ben:

I mean, I would argue like the, the, the military, uh, selection of this really crazy six, eight. I think if they would've gone with six, eight SPC, um, they would have been better off, you know, that that's a equivalent length to a 5, 5, 6 cartridge. So it's smaller than the 3 0 8, but it's got the six, eight bullet. Um, and it's, the casing is larger and you could get some pretty interesting velocities out of that, but you know, it, it will be interesting to see because they, they built this gun to fight in the Hills of Afghanistan. And I don't think that's where the next war is going to

Sir Gene:

Exactly. That's exactly it. Um, so the interesting thing that the competition brought, the guys that lost the competition with the army were things like, uh, plastic rounds,

Ben:

Yes.

Sir Gene:

or I shouldn't say plastic grounds, plastic casings,

Ben:

Yes. Which is just

Sir Gene:

which is brilliant. I love that.

Ben:

eight.

Sir Gene:

So I've actually ordered some now.

Ben:

Why would you want a plastic casing?

Sir Gene:

Uh, well, two reasons. One is precision. There are much more accurately. And two is the weight savings. They're about a 50% lighter in weight, which means that your infant, your man can carry about a third more ammo at the same amount of weight. So I got them because they look cool. from a practical standpoint, for the military, it's all about the weight savings

Ben:

Uh,

Sir Gene:

their, um, plastic. Well, the type of plastic they're made from, I'm sure it's not just your average, you know, Bakelite crap. It's a particular kind of polymer, but either way, it's readily available to be manufactured versus brass, which has to be mined and is going up and up and up in the.

Ben:

Yeah, I get that. But I think that, you know, a reloading, uh, is not a thing. And then secondly, the pressures that you're going to be able to operate at are drastically reduced in LA you know, your, your pressure ranges are going to be reduced and you're more reliant on the

Sir Gene:

not at all, dude. That's none of your, so the thickness of the brass that you're using, if your plastic was the. same thickness, then yes, absolutely. You'd be running at much lower pressures, but the plastic is actually thicker.

Ben:

I understand that it's thicker, but now you're getting into the chemistry of the gun powder and being able to produce a, uh, larger, uh, explosion with less actual material. And they get, again, you're talking about at the best case, trying to equal out the pressure. You're you're certainly not going to ramp up the pressure over brass

Sir Gene:

Uh, well, apparently you need a steel case if you're going to ramp up the pressure.

Ben:

yeah. Base. Yeah.

Sir Gene:

So anyway, um, but there's a company here in, uh, in Texas that was making the rounds for that, uh, for that particular challenger in the competition.

Ben:

What

Sir Gene:

they have now started selling sample packs of their plastic rounds.

Ben:

What caliber are they selling them

Sir Gene:

Uh, they're selling a 3 0 8.

Ben:

Uh huh.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. And these are not. cheap rounds. They're about five bucks a piece

Ben:

Oh

Sir Gene:

they're samples. They're not meant to be like purchasing quantities of a thousand, but holy shit, do they look nice? It's a white, uh, round and, uh, it has a white. They're using. I mean, they just look gorgeous,

Ben:

yes. Because when you're fighting a war, what you really care about is what's your ammo looks like,

Sir Gene:

Well, if you're fighting a war on a gun range, which is where it let's face it, where most of us are currently fighting a war,

Ben:

uh,

Sir Gene:

I'm not only pulling out a cool plastic gun, but then pulling out your cool plastic grounds. I mean, that's next level, man.

Ben:

Yeah,

Sir Gene:

Check this out. I'm going to burn through$5 bills. Like you've never seen anybody burn.

Ben:

okay. Uh, Jean at the strip club, everybody,

Sir Gene:

No, that's a, that's a waste of money.

Ben:

I, I couldn't agree more, man. It's never been my it's never been my thing. Um, let me ask you this. So pivoting a little bit and going into Ukraine and looking at, looking in a little more on what, the way the Russians are fighting and everything. What is with the open, uh, open sites, iron sights on. On their, on their gear. Uh, what is with them not fighting at night and what is with the reported Russian body armor being fake.

Sir Gene:

Uh, okay. So couple things, first of all, there's virtually no images of Russians fighting Ukraine. There there's maybe been 10 minutes of that in the last two months, the vast majority of what is portrayed as Russians in Ukraine, whether they're getting their tank blown up or something else happening, isn't actually Russians. It is the east Ukrainians that are driving around with Russian gear and, uh, not poorly well, uh, maintained gear. Um, the Russian army has a prohibition on any sort of recording. Uh, reporters are not allowed in areas where they can record Russian, actual Russian soldiers. So they only videos of Russians in Ukraine are videos produced by the Russian department of defense or the equivalent thereof. It's not called that, but basically it's that. So 99% of all videos that you see on the internet or the TV or anything else where they talk about Russians, are they showing Russians? What you're actually seeing are not Russian military troops. You're seeing Russian ethnic people supplied with Russian equipment, but they're essentially. coming from the Donbass region. And if you were to watch Russian media, they make a distinction between the two. They, they talk about where the armies of the Donbass region are and where the actual Russian ones are. And, uh, it is, it has been the case pretty much since the start of the special operation, that there's a prohibition on any type of video recording of the Russian army. So that's the first thing I would say. Um, as far as fake weapons, there's no reason to fake equipment. Uh, cause you could just simply not give somebody body armor. There's no point in giving them fake body armor. So there again, I would be extremely suspicious of anything that is fake body armor as having come from a legitimate source. It's either somebody that's sold their actual body armor to make a few bucks on the side and then got some fake body armor to make it look like they didn't sell their body armor. And people do this all the time. I mean, not just in this conflict, that's it happens in all conflicts where, when you have a bunch of soldiers that didn't like gung ho want to go to battle, there they're effectively under duress, or at least under a lack of desire to be there. The, the concept of selling your military gear to get some cash is not at all unique to Russians, but it certainly is also true of Russians. It's true of the guys from Donbass history of the Ukrainians. I mean, for the number of millions of dollars that we've pumped into Ukraine and, and all this talk about shipments of military weapons, all we've seen is about 30 videos. Of guys with either stingers or, um, uh, javelins blowing up tanks that you can't even tell who's tank it is, or whether it's actually moving. So there there's not enough there and there certainly isn't any enough credible coming out of there to really say why somebody would have fake, uh,

Ben:

Well, let me ask you this. Why are the Russians seemingly not fighting at night? We would expect any modern military

Sir Gene:

Well, again, you're

Ben:

Why are they

Sir Gene:

there are no videos of Russians fighting. So what makes you say they're not fighting at night?

Ben:

well, I, I would say that there are no Ukrainian videos reporting them fighting at night either. So, uh, the, the side of the story is, you know, no, one's the Russians. Certainly haven't disputed this. The claim by the Ukrainian side is that, you know, the Russians entrenched at night and then starting, uh, start again in the morning. So.

Sir Gene:

we, we do know that, uh, night vision is not as readily available in Russia as it is in the U S that the only special forces have night vision equipment, not every ground deployed soldier. So. it would make some sense for them to be hunkering down at night and then actually advancing during daylight hours. So logically I think it makes sense, but also like I've seen no video evidence showing that that's the case.

Ben:

Well, I, I think you hit the nail on the head. There is that, you know, us uses a lot more night vision than I think any other army out there. And I think that is a strategic advantage for us, if whatever comes down to it and, you know, quite frankly, Russian night vision, it is not the kind you want to get if you're getting night vision. So,

Sir Gene:

Yeah, this is an area where Russia has been behind for many, many years.

Ben:

but I mean, from a technology standpoint, night, vision is well enough understood. And enough samples are in the civilian market, in the U S have really, really good night vision. Why do you think Russia hasn't made that.

Sir Gene:

I don't know. I mean, there is just a rag in rush a little bit. I think there has been a lot less of an emphasis paid to the value or the potential, uh, you know, uh, impact of the infantry. Like, yes, everybody knows the benefits of having special forces, but the benefit of having infantry. When that money, rather than buying night vision for a whole battalion could be spent on buying some more, um, you know, uh, MLR RVs then. Yeah. Like that's what they're going to do. They're going to spend on, on equipment, not on equipment for individual soldiers, but more equipment, uh, for, you know, making an impact then in the field. So whether that means, uh, additional rocket launchers, whether that means additional tanks, whether that means, you know, whatever, whatever the gear is, it's not necessarily going to be outfitting an infant Truman.

Ben:

Well, let me ask you this. Why, when will Russia move away from the AK platform for their rifles? So we talked

Sir Gene:

a damn good question. My favorite gun that they've used has been the AAN 94. I, thought that that was a revolutionary weapon. I would love to get my hands on one of those. I'm probably never going to happen because there's no such thing as a semi-automatic a in 94,

Ben:

well, you know, if you take a private flight and come into the country that way, uh, yeah.

Sir Gene:

I could probably get to, I probably shoot one, like somebody that has one as part of their collection, like probably get, get away with shooting one, but I could never own it. And the whole advantage of the N 94, it makes it so unique is the fact that it, it had a delayed impulse, uh, system, which allowed you to shoot two rounds before there was any felt recoil in the stock of the gun. And before you moved the gun in reaction to the, uh, impulse, so you literally have a two round burst. Uh, that was at, I think, over a thousand rounds per minute. And, but the normal rates of the full auto on it, I think was like six 50 or 700. But the first two rounds of, of, uh, they were effectively shot, uh, during a single, uh, recoil impulse.'cause they're like the second round is preloaded. So it's just waiting there to be swapped out for the first round. So before the, the first, uh, cases fully Jack, the second rounds are in the chamber.

Ben:

I would have to look at the mechanics of that.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. It's pretty, there's a video online. I know. Um, cause I watched it back years ago when the skin was a little more utilized. Um, but there was a video showing the, the exact action and that was pretty cool, but yeah. Uh, it, the way that it was designed, allowed for this sort of double tap to happen before the barrel moved at all due to recoil.

Ben:

Hmm.

Sir Gene:

Um, but it. really get away from, well, I mean, AKA is just the brand,

Ben:

Well, I mean, it's the

Sir Gene:

brand name. It's, it'd be no different than,

Ben:

it's like saying AR is a brand name. Yeah, sure. It stands for armor light, but really it's the design of the rifle.

Sir Gene:

Well, it isn't, it isn't, I mean, the latest one is actually the, the, what is it? The AK a 10. They K

Ben:

I mean, it's still, it's still basically based off of collision of costs design, and the problem is, you know, it's, it's just, uh, it's a very different, it is a 19 F the, the Russians, my point is, and this is the Russians are using the same sort of battle rifle design that you saw really successfully done in world war II and in the 1950s. And.

Sir Gene:

Well, it's a good design. It was a better design than the, Uh, AR platform.

Ben:

Uh, I don't know about that. Not what not with the M four has evolved into, I think you could argue that the original, M 16 with no Chrome line barrel and the way it was set up was problematic. But I think a modern, M four versus even a modern AK, the M four wins,

Sir Gene:

In what? In what capacity?

Ben:

um, accuracy, reliability.

Sir Gene:

No, definitely not reliably. Kidding. Are you kidding? No way.

Ben:

I, okay. I, I think that the AKA's reliability is somewhat overstated and modern in modern census because you know, the tolerances, if you want an accurate AK and you want to push it, if you want to push an AK out over it, what, what go ahead. I'm sorry.

Sir Gene:

AR

Ben:

My but what do you mean brand

Sir Gene:

you don't own the unit. You don't actually own a 5, 5, 6 AR. Um, I was going to say, when I finally get my fricking Israeli, a K I'd be more than happy to put it up against the NEA are out there,

Ben:

Okay. Um, I mean

Sir Gene:

apparently it's back-ordered for a year, so, you know

Ben:

well, that's interesting. Um,

Sir Gene:

I'm hoping it's not, but it sure seems that way. I've been waiting for mine for three months.

Ben:

I mean, don't get me wrong. There are good AKA's out there. I think Palmetto state actually is doing a pretty damn good job.

Sir Gene:

to the Israeli one. Those are crap.

Ben:

uh, have you looked at their new generation and what they're doing?

Sir Gene:

Yeah. I've watched reviews of people comparing them.

Ben:

Okay.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. I mean, I'm talking about like a$2,000 AK here

Ben:

Why would you ever spend$2,000 on an AK.

Sir Gene:

because it's the best AK ever made.

Ben:

But, but okay. How do you Mount an optic on the AK

Sir Gene:

That's what makes it good? Is it has a full rail on top.

Ben:

that's attached to what?

Sir Gene:

That's attached to the upper. What do you mean attached to what

Ben:

Well, N I K doesn't really have an upper, it's just a sheet metal cover, so,

Sir Gene:

this thing has? No sheet metal at all. It's all machines.

Ben:

okay. Well, regardless the design, my point is that there are no good attachment points. Um, you've got, look, I'm a big fan of gas, piston guns. I think that the piston is better than direct impingement for many, many reasons. Um, so I won't argue that. Um, but I'm just saying that there, there's not a great mounting point on the design of the AK for optics for different things.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. It wasn't meant to be used with optics initially.

Ben:

I, yeah, I agree. But the problem, the problem is updating the, uh, AK to a modern rifle that you do want to use. Objects is a, is a challenging thing.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Um, okay. So if you're talking about like, Well, not really, I mean, I thought I sent you a link to that. Uh, is there anyone that I'm on him that I'm like waiting on? Because that I think takes all the things you're going to bring up as disadvantages and gets rid of them.

Ben:

Well, shoot

Sir Gene:

It's an AK in the sense that the, the design of the breach and the, uh, the gas system. Follows the AKA original design, but really externally the gun is nothing like an AK.

Ben:

Okay.

Sir Gene:

So it's got a free-floating barrel. It's got, um, a,

Ben:

can you have a free floating barrel when you have a, uh, a gas piston?

Sir Gene:

well, okay, so it's a,

Ben:

Send me the

Sir Gene:

it's not technically a free floating barrel. Yeah, I guess. But it's got a, it's the same exact mechanism. Well, I'll, I'll send you a link. I'll send you a link. Uh it's. Plus we're talking about something that you have to really look at to people on a podcast,

Ben:

So, so,

Sir Gene:

think, I think here's the, here's the bottom line. I don't have any Russian eight or any other case because they all suck this, this Israeli one is the first one that I've actually thought about buying because the quality is there. Uh,

Ben:

okay.

Sir Gene:

All the reviews, everything I've, I've seen that people have compared it to pretty much across the board, say that if you're going to have one AKA style gun, this is the one to have.

Ben:

Okay.

Sir Gene:

the Israeli one's actually based on a finished design, that was a copy of an AK I believe, um, and improves on that. And now we're in gem to have these rarely version. So there's even more

Ben:

What caliber are you going to get it in?

Sir Gene:

uh, traditional, uh, seven 60 by 39.

Ben:

Okay, interesting. Um, yeah, I'll take a look at it.

Sir Gene:

And they've got them like they're readily available in 5, 5, 6 they're back and seven 60.

Ben:

Well, what I'll say, Jean is I like gas, piston guns so much that my, my truck gun that I've got that aim point on it's a six, eight AR 15. So it's 6.8 SPC. And it's running a, uh, Adam's arms gas piston on it. Uh, just because I beat the hell out of that gun. And I don't like direct impingement. You got to clean it too much.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. And that's the main problem is that it's, it's easy to cook barrels. It's easy to get the, the gas system gummed up. Like all these are much bigger issues with the AR platform

Ben:

Okay, well, but I can have an AR platform with a, uh, with direct impingement or gas piston.

Sir Gene:

you can, and you can have an AK platform with a rail on top.

Ben:

I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. And well, and the one that I'm waiting on specifically is also a, um, a 12 inch barrel. So it's, uh, it's a lot more compact than.

Ben:

So you're going, uh, so you're, you're, you're going to be on the list for the SBR.

Sir Gene:

I'm on every list already. Anyway, it really doesn't matter.

Ben:

All right.

Sir Gene:

I I've never, I've never tried to be all like, oh, I'm only buying guns that don't require registration.

Ben:

Do you have a trust set up for your NFA items?

Sir Gene:

No,

Ben:

You totally should go down the trust

Sir Gene:

I know. I've been thinking about it and I would love to go down that path. Um, I just haven't gotten

Ben:

Yeah. Have you ever looked at silencer? CO's uh, they've got,

Sir Gene:

their ads. I haven't looked at the website, but I've seen their

Ben:

take a look at it because they have a, it's like a legal zoom asks sort of set up for NFA

Sir Gene:

like a self create kind of

Ben:

Yeah. Yeah. But it's, it's inexpensive. It's a hundred and something bucks.

Sir Gene:

Really? Okay. Well now you got me interested. This episode brought to you by not legal zoom.

Ben:

Yeah.

Sir Gene:

Oh, that's cool. I didn't realize it was that cheap. Yeah. That's a neat idea

Ben:

Well, I mean, I don't personally have any NFA items, but if I did definitely the way I would go.

Sir Gene:

Well, and I I've often talked with buddies about how we should, we should all do this. We should just all just get trust and, you know, have, have guns. We can just each use and lend out to friends if we want to just never get around to

Ben:

um, yeah, it's definitely one of those things that if you're going to have those items, it's a, it's a good thing to do, but yeah, the, I think it's like 150 bucks or something like that. They may

Sir Gene:

that's not too bad by the way. Um, my understanding is right now, they are really doing those, uh, stamps fast.

Ben:

uh, depending on what stamp you're going for, if it's for individual or trust and things like that. Yes.

Sir Gene:

But I, I, like I was in the store with somebody and I was asking, so how long did you end up pointing and, uh, about six weeks,

Ben:

I mean, that's pretty

Sir Gene:

which is way better than a year is what it used to be.

Ben:

Yep. Um, They actually have, uh, the, uh, the silencer co they actually have not only the rust, but they, they have a package deal where you can get the trust and the silencer suppressor. Um, but

Sir Gene:

uh, so speaking on, just reminding me, so that SIG, that is the civilian version of the, kind of like the one that the military just adopted. They have a version that has an integrated silencer

Ben:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no,

Sir Gene:

and

Ben:

that the Army's right. The Army's version is supposed to run suppressed.

Sir Gene:

Right. All right. And, and so this thing also does, and it comes with a, uh, I guess, a blank that you can use while you're waiting for the suppressor paperwork to come through, and then you just swap it out and put the suppressor on there. But the suppressor is a, uh, like it only lengthens the barrel a few inches, but doesn't lengthen the barrel. But you know what I mean? Um, because it seems to like wrap back around the barrel,

Ben:

Interesting.

Sir Gene:

which I think is what the army one is as well.

Ben:

Yeah. So the, uh, NFA gun trust through them is$129.

Sir Gene:

that's a hell of a deal. That's almost a no brainer.

Ben:

No kidding.

Sir Gene:

Hm. Interesting. Okay. All right. I wonder how much, uh, or, or how much of a hassle anyway, uh, even ignoring the cost factor, but how much of a hassle it is to add a remove people from the trucks.

Ben:

Um, that, I don't know. I think on a typical trust, it's as long as you're in control of it, um, you know, whoever, whoever the controlling party of the trust is it's fairly simple

Sir Gene:

Interesting. Well, we'll have to definitely look into it.

Ben:

and you can set up beneficiaries and all that as well. So, you know, right now the way, if you. If something were to happen to you and you were giving an NFA item to someone in your will, they would have to go through and get a tax stamp. And there's only X amount of time before that, you know, anyway, it, it can be a mess. So

Sir Gene:

the sad part is I suspect if I left any NFMS for anybody at this point, they would just simply be sold. I don't, I don't, I don't think anybody getting anything out of my will with the beekeeping guns.

Ben:

Yeah. Uh, that's a shame.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. my, uh, My, uh, closest, uh, likely designate is my niece who lives in New York. Cause I don't have kids. Uh, but she lives in New York. So not like she's anti-gun or anything, but she lives in New

Ben:

It's getting in, in, uh, getting, uh, depending on what part of New York she's in getting the ability to keep an NFA item is very difficult. Yes. Especially if you're in the city, you're dealing with city regulations and everything

Sir Gene:

Well, and I just more broadly speaking, if you choose to live in New York, even if you're not anti-gun you're probably also not regularly a shooting enthusiast

Ben:

Indeed.

Sir Gene:

is if you are shooting easiest, you would not live in fucking New York

Ben:

Well, unless that's where you grew up and you live there and everything else, you know, I mean, there are parts

Sir Gene:

not again. That's easiest. I'm sorry.

Ben:

are parts of New York state that are very conservative man. One of my

Sir Gene:

York city.

Ben:

oh, yo no, New York city is

Sir Gene:

She lives in New York city.

Ben:

I, well, we need to find when you say New York, what, you know, there is a

Sir Gene:

am. I forget that there's a state I was just thinking of the

Ben:

It's controlled by the city, but there's a

Sir Gene:

It seems to be sure. Seems to be, Hey, did you watch that clip of some cats that I posted?

Ben:

I did. I did.

Sir Gene:

And what were your thoughts just briefly here,

Ben:

That is the, I, I wished him was like that all the time. That, that that's, that, that Tim is so middle of the line milk toast, most of the time, which I know he, he's not that tells me he's not really that way. He's keeping it that way so he can stay on the air, which that's problematic in of itself.

Sir Gene:

Tim is one of the very, very few purely political shows that has managed to stay on YouTube.

Ben:

and, you know, let me ask you this people like Tim people, like, uh, Alex Jones, why are they not jumping all over the podcasting? 2.0 bandwagon.

Sir Gene:

Well, they're visual media guys for one

Ben:

But I'm talking about the funding funding elements.

Sir Gene:

the funding elements. Well, I think they're, I mean, they're, they are doing a direct funding models. Both of them, Alex Jones, uh, as well, as, uh, Tim, they also have substantial enough size audiences that they also do commercial funding. So every single episode of Tim caste is sponsored, but he doesn't even talk about the sponsor. Right? That's the thing is people are willing to sponsor the episodes, um, even without a mention

Ben:

well,

Sir Gene:

uh, they're, they're getting enough out of it sponsoring the episode of just being able to say we're the sponsor of Tim cast and their own advertising, but utilizing Timken. Drives enough sales that Tim doesn't even mention them on the show. And he talks about this a few times, or he talked about it a number of times where he says, Yeah, these guys have been sponsoring me for four years. I only bring them up. Maybe once every few months I talk about

Ben:

well, his, his model, like with safe and ready meals.com, you know, he, he, they, they sponsor him and he brings it up in the segment and says it in a way that is much better than any ad read that they

Sir Gene:

But he also, but for them as well, if you look at it, he only mentioned them once a month.

Ben:

Yeah. But it's in a way. And in the, it is a much stronger call to action the way he does it though,

Sir Gene:

and it's, it's pretty much his choice when during that month he'll mention them. So if something is relevant and oh, and by the way, this is why I like ready, you know, safe and ready or whatever the hell, uh, which we're not sponsored by it. But,

Ben:

not at all. In fact, I, I personally use a competitor's product, but

Sir Gene:

I do as well. Which one do you.

Ben:

um, I have a mix, uh, but from a long-term food storage, not, not a tactical food storage, but a, you know what I consider cheap insurance, my Patriot supply has probably the best 2000 calorie, uh, price point. Um, so for like dehydrated freeze, dried stuff, there's that? And then there's, uh, some of the MRAs, uh, that I use are different brand.

Sir Gene:

Got it. Yeah. I I'm a huge fan of mountain house. I've been using their stuff for 30 years, probably over 30

Ben:

I've used mountain house and camping, hunting and stuff like that. Um, you know, I,

Sir Gene:

think mountain house has the best tasting freeze, dried food out there.

Ben:

well, I mean, it it's definitely. My choice when I'm camping and hunting. It's when I'm looking at storage and disaster preparedness, I'm not necessarily worried about as, uh, the taste as much as I am, uh, shelf life and cost per calorie and what I can

Sir Gene:

Well, cost is the only factor shelf license. The same, uh, the mountain house makes their, their foods for NATO. I mean, you can buy them. They just cost three times more. And mountain house is one of the more expensive dehydrated food companies to begin with. So if you want to pay, you know. 15 bucks for a meal, you can buy the actual NATO packets that they make. If you don't, you can get the exact same ingredients in a mountain house, branded foil for about five bucks a meal. If you want to get two bucks a meal. Yeah. Then you've got to go somewhere else.

Ben:

Well, and again, I'm, I'm not the type of person that, uh, well, let me put it this way. I do not have to have, uh, years and years worth of food storage. Uh, I, I

Sir Gene:

a year is usually.

Ben:

I have other people for that, but, um,

Sir Gene:

You're going to eat other people.

Ben:

no, no, no, no, no, no. It's just that

Sir Gene:

cannibalism action.

Ben:

my parents are definitely the stockpilers of the group,

Sir Gene:

Okay. so your dad's got a few years worth

Ben:

yeah. I have a bug out location to where I'm good, but you know, at the same time, I, I, I think having some food storage is, uh, incredibly beneficial,

Sir Gene:

well, I tell you this is where it was nice during that snowstorm.

Ben:

well, not even just that, but let's look at a, a, another scenario. You lose your job

Sir Gene:

Yeah.

Ben:

and you now have the ability to cut out a grocery bill.

Sir Gene:

so I literally did that last year. Cause I, as, as a lot of people know, it's not a secret at all. I didn't work at all last year. And, um, uh, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you. look at it, I pretty much ate all the dessert packets of the mountain house.

Ben:

Interesting. That's what you

Sir Gene:

well, I mean, it's not like I was starring, right. It's not like I needed the food to survive, but I was trying to spend less money. So I wasn't buying any desserts, but I had some mountain house packets for desserts. And, uh, it was, it was kind of like a, a apple crumble, the hydrated, apple crumble. So you just put some hot water in there and mix it up a little bit, turns into apple crumble. Oh my God. So delicious. And the sad part is they stopped making that one. So now they

Ben:

that you ate up all your supply.

Sir Gene:

all the ones, the one that I actually like now they have the hydrated ice cream, which tastes not like ice cream. I mean, I don't know what the hell it is. They really shouldn't be calling it ice cream. Um, I mean, if they want to call it. Cookies and cream without the cereal, maybe that'd be something, but it's not ice cream. And they got like a couple other desserts, but none of them are as good as this apple crumble thing that they have. That was dehydrated. So, Yeah. that is a very practical application, uh, where I basically just tapped into the reserve food supply, uh, and the desserts reserve food supply.

Ben:

Yeah. Well, I mean, there you go. It's just, I think it's a practical thing to have on hand. Um, you know, and it's just one of those things that, especially with inflation going the way it is and everything else, you know, it it's food storage is almost, uh, an investment grade commodity at this point.

Sir Gene:

it is. I've, I've been half tempted to get a freezer for the garage.

Ben:

Now.

Sir Gene:

'cause I'm a. You know, I, I mostly eat meat and, um, sometimes, you know, you get, uh, availability of something you want to stock up on. Get some good Buffalo meat. It's a, it's a lot easier to get if are easier to have it consistently, if you can stack it up versus just hoping that you can get some at your grocery store.

Ben:

Yeah, I, you know, um, I have a freezer in the garage and I keep a pretty good, you know, uh, stockpile, but you know, if you ever decide, you want to go in and, you know, split a cow or something, let me know.

Sir Gene:

Well, I'll tell you if I get a freezer, you're going to be my first call because that'll be a fun little test as to get a cow and then

Ben:

Yeah. I mean, you're going to end up with a lot of hamburger. You're going to end up with some morose. I mean, you, you're not going to get all steaks, but you're going to get it way cheaper. Um, and you know

Sir Gene:

Well, I honestly, I think that there are more interesting meats than the cow that I would want to stock up on like that, But that could be a whole animal. Um,

Ben:

But you know, the advantage of doing something like that is oftentimes you get to pick out, okay, I won't no antibiotics. I want something that's only grass fed or finished, or, you know, uh, grass fed than corn finished or

Sir Gene:

I hear Panda meta super tasty.

Ben:

Uh, I think pandas are endangered,

Sir Gene:

Um, but I hear they're really tasty.

Ben:

uh, right there with the pangolin. Right.

Sir Gene:

No, pangolin is, did not taste good. I've tried penguin before

Ben:

Have you.

Sir Gene:

that. Yeah.

Ben:

Why would you try pangolin?

Sir Gene:

I like to try things.

Ben:

I know, but you've, you know what a pangolin looks like,

Sir Gene:

Yeah, they're super cute. They walk in their hind legs. I like them. They're cool animals. They're just not very smart

Ben:

No, they are not.

Sir Gene:

now. I won't, I won't eat a smart animal. This is why I do not. eat octopus.

Ben:

Have you eaten horse?

Sir Gene:

I have eaten horse. Yes.

Ben:

You don't think horses are intelligent?

Sir Gene:

Not as smart and as an octopus. No,

Ben:

No, they're not as smart as an octopus, but there are some pretty intelligent horse. I mean, a horse can be right up there with a dog.

Sir Gene:

I've eaten dog.

Ben:

Alrighty.

Sir Gene:

Hey, what have you never been to China? Come on, man.

Ben:

No, I have not. I have not been to

Sir Gene:

Have you really? I figured you would've been in one of your trips.

Ben:

One of my trips.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. You know, for like getting new equipment gear things.

Ben:

Now now, now, uh, in fact, um, so from a work standpoint now, I actually, we, uh, w no, uh, all our manufacturing sources from just, uh, everything had to have been a us company. And now they're, there could have been, there could have been sources from China, and they're oftentimes where IEC, the inverters used in a lot of these battery projects. What's really scary about those inverters is they're running a full blown Linux operating system. That's, uh,

Sir Gene:

I remember.

Ben:

in Chinese and only available from the original Chinese manufacturer. Yeah. Let me connect this to my network, right. And no, thank you.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Hey, how about all like the re remote, uh, power controllers and all that kind of stuff. That's all. Yes. Made,

Ben:

uh, what do you mean remote power control?

Sir Gene:

you know, things that, uh, lets you control the.

Ben:

Uh, well, so generally at a power plant, you're going to have a, you know, staff there and then you're going to have a SCADA system that, uh, you know, you have automated generation control and that's usually over an RTU remote terminal unit. Um, that, uh, is you utilizing DB three on the back end. And yet most of those are us companies. Um, a lot of the control system stuff, believe it or not as maiden, Mexico, um, some of it, some of it is European. It totally depends on the brand. So like Foxboro Foxboro is manufactured in Mexico.

Sir Gene:

Okay. Cause I used to go to a show. I'm trying to remember what it was called, but it was like a big security show. Um, what were they called? Uh, did you go on any shows

Ben:

I'm going to one this week.

Sir Gene:

which one?

Ben:

Uh, I'll be at a DistribuTECH, it's a power industry conference for, uh, mainly distribution, uh, SEL. Uh, we'll be there. Lots of, lots of interesting technology, as far as that goes.

Sir Gene:

Um,

Ben:

I mean, over this, show's got over a thousand people showing up from around the world and like I said, it's a power industry focused things, so that's, uh, that's kind of a big one.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, I'm trying to remember what the hell this one was. Um, they haven't one. year in Dallas, but it kind of moves around. Um, yeah, I can't remember whatever well, but,

Ben:

yeah.

Sir Gene:

but this was, this was a, uh, a security show that ranged from, uh, physical security to digital security to government security. so it had all the vendors and I went to, I think, two of them and there was pretty fun. God damn. I can't remember. But this would have been like 2008, 2009 timeframe. So like 12, 13 years ago. Uh, but I remember at that show, there was a lot of, a lot of vendors that had SCADA gear and, um, uh, there was a, um, I, there was a, I don't know, I mean, it just looked like there was a lot of stuff that was being demoed by vendors who barely spoke English a few.

Ben:

Oh, yeah. And there's still plenty of that. Um, in lots of ways in SCADA. So one of the things you have to realize is there's a difference in, uh, control. Uh, so when you're talking about it, first of all, it all depends on your industry. And then what, what the process is. Uh, so SCADA type controls are not real time process oriented controls. They're, you know, supervisory they're they're, um, remote oversight of a large operation, for instance. So in case of power gen or transmission, you're, um, you're doing strategic large areas. Uh, stopped. So for instance, a generation control center will have multiple power plants under it, and there'll be balancing the amount of generation from each based off of market conditions and so on. Um, that said that SCADA system that can balance multiple power plants over a large geographic area is not going to be used for actually running the power plant. That's going to be, uh, DCS and turbine control systems. And, you know, you're going to have, depending on the style, you're going to have balance plant system and then your turbine controls, or, you know, you may have a large amount of boiler controls and then ancillary skids for oxidation, air blowers, water D mineralization and so on.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, I mean, SCADA it's, doesn't have to be, you know, power related, even

Ben:

no, not at all. Um,

Sir Gene:

industrial control monitoring.

Ben:

well, and that's the thing is the, the term everybody, uh, art, especially early on, uh, like 2010 when industrial cyber security was really kicking into gear, there was a lot of fights over, well, I don't have a SCADA. I have a DCS. Okay. This, and this is where the term ICS com uh, came in and then DOE tried to CA or not DOD DOD tried to come in and said, well, ICS doesn't really that that's not a good descriptor. So we're going to use cyber-physical systems

Sir Gene:

oh yeah, they love the word cyber.

Ben:

my God, it well, and the DOD, their, their big push on this is how insane the DOD can be. Sometimes their big push is that, you know, building control systems, we have to defend building control systems. If the building control system fails, then the, the, uh, building ha ceases to, uh, provide its function.

Sir Gene:

Yep.

Ben:

Really the building control system stops the roof from working. Oh, you mean the army has such pansies that if the AC goes out, they have a problem. Okay. Th they're fat enough that they have to take an elevator. They can't do the stairs. Yeah. I'm just saying it, it it's that, that to me. And Hey, I'm, I'm, I'm a little overweight too, but that to me just seemed like just such a stupid initiative to spend that much money on. Well, yeah, sure. Protect your building control systems. But to say, to make the statement that a building, if you're building control systems failed, the building stops ceases its function at a

Sir Gene:

well by, uh, yeah, I mean, by definition, the processes are part of the, the buildings function. So the process is stopped. The billing cannot function.

Ben:

I mean, I guess, but again, Uh, how, how many millions and

Sir Gene:

door likes fail, it's no longer a secured building and they fail open.

Ben:

well, maybe have a physical backup

Sir Gene:

Well, maybe it depends what your budget was like.

Ben:

and not only that most like most mothers building automation can. Uh, all right. So magalogs right. Uh, the way those magalogs work battery, uh, can stay on for a very, very long time.

Sir Gene:

Yeah,

Ben:

Anything else you want to talk about Jean

Sir Gene:

no, I think we're bored everybody to death at this point, talking about skater

Ben:

well, you know, I think we had some, a little bit more fun topics that, uh, unfortunately didn't make the cutting room floor due to the technical difficulties or you had today.

Sir Gene:

Oh my God. Yeah. This is a bit nuts. Yeah. And it's, um, it's, it's a little bit sad, but, uh, it is what it is. What do you do? Uh, we have a. We had some gremlins in the system. We had some quirks, first of all, that managed to turn your levels down drastically.

Ben:

And I've got the new interface should be here Thursday,

Sir Gene:

which one did you get?

Ben:

the empty for

Sir Gene:

Oh, you did order a DMT. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I think sound quality wise. That's going to be your best bet. It'll

Ben:

Well, as long as I can get consistent levels out of it, that'll be, that'll be the first

Sir Gene:

by the way, where you want to have, uh, your interface running at is 48 kilohertz,

Ben:

Okay.

Sir Gene:

you don't need anything faster than that, but 44 1 creates some artifacts and sound.

Ben:

Uh, right now it is running at 48 kilohertz right now on this

Sir Gene:

That's where, that's what we want.

Ben:

Okay. And block

Sir Gene:

you get the new one, yeah, that's fine. That's just for latency control. So when you're, um, when you set up the new one, set it up for 48.

Ben:

Okay.

Sir Gene:

I'm actually curious. I've never played with them too. I know that's their cheapest product. So it'd be interesting to find out just what you think of it.

Ben:

I'll let you know. Uh, I mean, quite frankly, it's only it's it's um, what,$70 more than what I've got now. So it's not exactly a spending thing. I, it, it, I had, I known that this was an option. I probably would've gone with it first, but, um, trying to get the newer ultra light is just problematic right now. So,

Sir Gene:

I know, I get it.

Ben:

the other option that I have is, you know, some of the, some of the Yamaha mixers or something like that to do some processing, but,

Sir Gene:

That's going to be another waste of money.

Ben:

uh, so you tell me, so I'm trying to hold out for that ultra light.

Sir Gene:

Yup. Yeah. And I mean, honestly, if, if they know that there's going to be here, it'd be nice. If they came up with a new. Something, they can manufacture every, if you're going to wait a year, you might as well have a new model out

Ben:

Well, I think the problem is the chip shortage.

Sir Gene:

Yeah.

Ben:

had a lot of, they had a lot of gear destroyed and then they've, then they can't get any chips. So I think it's a combination of a retooling, the manufacturing facility, and then B you know, precursor parts, not being available.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. And I had that, I think I mentioned that I had that happen with my mouse. I have a mouse called the swift point Z stands for Russia and, uh, that mouse, um, as the, it was designed as the best gaming mouse in the world.

Ben:

Jane.

Sir Gene:

It's very good.

Ben:

You cut out for a second.

Sir Gene:

Oh, probably. Cause I said the word Russia.

Ben:

Yeah, he started, uh, you,

Sir Gene:

Uh huh.

Ben:

you, cut out

Sir Gene:

So I said this gaming mouse or this, uh, swift point mouse, it was designed as the best gaming mouse in the world. Uh, it has the most features. It's super configurable. It has, uh, an LCD screen on it. It has

Ben:

Yes, because that's what you, that's what you need on your mouse as an LCD

Sir Gene:

absolutely. Because you can flip through profiles of different games. You want to have your mouse program too. And, uh, I got another Kickstarter. I want to say it was around 280 bucks right around there. Um, then they dropped the price down to about 1 50, 1 60, which is a lot more reasonable. Um, so I got two of them. One is a backup and then my original one died after five years and I wrote the company and I said, Hey, can I get any kind of discount on a, getting a new one? And I love your product. I've had it since the Kickstarter, but it just died. And, uh, their reply was what's your address? And they just shipped me out a brand new.

Ben:

Well, that's nice.

Sir Gene:

Like a$200 product, what the hell kind of services That isn't that amazing?

Ben:

That is

Sir Gene:

You just don't expect that.

Ben:

well, maybe they saw that you were part of the Kickstarter campaign and really wanted to thank you for getting

Sir Gene:

Yeah, well they did. So they sent me another one and then I bought another one just to have another backup. And, uh, and then about two, three months ago. So they, the original Kickstarter was probably seven, eight years ago, seven years ago. The, uh, they just wrote everybody a couple of months back saying, Hey, unfortunately the company that was making our mouse is now out of business. So what we got is all there will be if you'd like another one, buy it today. Cause they will sell out. Um, So I'm hoping that they find another manufacturer in China, but it's still going to be probably, you know. three to six months. If they do that before the first new batch comes out.

Ben:

So let's kind of pivot to China and the problem of global, uh, supply chain.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Meaning Chinese supply chain.

Ben:

Yeah. And the lockdowns and everything that's going on there. And, oh, by the way, the, uh, the, I won't call it a treaty, but the agreement, the Biden administration is making from an executive order standpoint with the who and, uh, seeding some of the U S sovereignty, you know, it's

Sir Gene:

Illegal, totally illegal.

Ben:

well, here's the thing. They cannot enter into a treaty without two thirds vote and Senate.

Sir Gene:

That's why it's illegal.

Ben:

But what they're doing is same thing as the Paris accord saying, we will abide by this and. You know, the force that's going to come into play. People would say, oh, well, the next administration doesn't have to do it. Well, except if the rest of the world says, okay, you can have your sovereignty over there by yourself. Then that, that, that sets up an interesting dichotomy.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. I don't know. I think China is also overly panicked about not just COVID, but all diseases. Like honestly, the best thing you can do is enhance the human immune system. That's the best solution. It's not

Ben:

I don't think China's worried about COVID at all. I think the COVID the zero COVID policy. Isn't about

Sir Gene:

So you think it's just a pretext for locking people up,

Ben:

Yeah, I think, I think I,

Sir Gene:

seems to be locking up people that they're not really, like, it's not targeting a particular group of dissidents or you.

Ben:

I think it's about eggs exerting.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, fair enough. I I'd agree with that, but I just, it, the group that are exerting control over seems to be fairly random.

Ben:

Uh, perhaps, um, it's interesting that the, the, uh, the white, uh, you know, bio suited, uh, guards running around are now being referred to as the white guard instead of the red guard

Sir Gene:

Yeah.

Ben:

I found, I mean, the, there

Sir Gene:

I hadn't heard that, but that sounds good.

Ben:

there there's some, there's some, uh, stuff like that

Sir Gene:

The white guard.

Ben:

well, there are a lot of people, uh, who are, you know, Chinese ex-pats that are really comparing what Z Z is G is doing to yeah. What he's, he's getting some comparisons straight to Mao, which is terrible.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I don't think he's, Uh, you know, unique in Chinese politics at all, though.

Ben:

Uh, no, I wouldn't say he's unique, but I'm just saying that he is, he is being seen as going down the totalitarian route that mal went down that ended up killing, you know, more people than anyone else.

Sir Gene:

Right? Kind of like just, you know, I guess.

Ben:

Well, Trudeau, I, at what point, like I, man, I keep hoping for some sort of revolution. I, it terrifies me to say that we do that. And what door does that open up for China? But at the same time, you know, if we allow our own government to become China, uh, or even no offense to anyone but Australia or Canada,

Sir Gene:

Yeah,

Ben:

I don't know.

Sir Gene:

it's it is pretty bad. Uh, the, the old adage always holds true. Every nation deserves a government that has

Ben:

You know, I I'm, I'm reminded of an old Reagan's speech. Uh, it was, uh, during the 64, uh, the, the 64 nomination for RNC, uh, Goldwater. Yeah. Goldwater was nominated. And man, that Goldwater speech, if you haven't listened to it in a while, or anyway, it's, it's worth listening. Um, but

Sir Gene:

Yes. And if you've never heard of Goldwater, you'd go look up very good.

Ben:

yeah. Goldwater Miller campaign definitely Johnson. This country would be in far better shape today. Had cold water, actually one, um, regardless. You know, Reagan, uh, had an anecdote in his speech about a Cuban immigrant and you know, the Cuban immigrant coming to the U S and you got to remember, this is in the sixties. This is right after the Cuban missile crisis and

Sir Gene:

Ricky, Ricardo.

Ben:

Yes. And the Cuban immigrants saying, you know, uh, how lucky, uh, how lucky he was for America to exist, you know, and Reagan was going out. We're so lucky that, uh, we live in a free, free nation. I can't imagine the oppression you must've been under in the immigrant response, how lucky you are. I'm lucky that there was a place to escape to, and, and the point that Reagan was making all the way back into the sixties was if the us fails, where do we go?

Sir Gene:

Right. And that is, uh, also very close to the remarks of the, I can't remember the guy's name now, but the ex KGB agents that, uh, defected to the United States in the seventies cannot remember his name, but there's a video recording.

Ben:

change and mold two generations.

Sir Gene:

No, no, no, no, no. This is a different guy. Um, but he, he in, in the interview, which was, I think from like 80 or 81, uh, early Reagan years, but he was talking about how he was very fortunate that there was a place to defect to, that his greatest fear is that if the United States goes the way of socialism. Uh, there will not be any place defect to, at that point

Ben:

Yeah. So I think what needs to happen, uh,

Sir Gene:

needs to happen. That's what needs to happen?

Ben:

founded by Texans.

Sir Gene:

Well by adoption, south African by birth Texan by the option,

Ben:

well, I have you read the expanse series.

Sir Gene:

of course

Ben:

Yeah. So,

Sir Gene:

the last two.

Ben:

yeah. Um, w

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Texans and then, yeah,

Ben:

yeah, exactly. Uh, um, I, I think what's going to have to happen is we have to stop something here. We can't allow the devolution of our freedoms to continue. And, you know, we may see a rise of China in global politics, but maintaining the bastion of freedom that the U S has been up until fairly recently, you know, has to, has to be done.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Even with all the problems the users had And and the, the horrible presidencies like, uh, that on Lincoln, uh, it's still was a beacon in the world. It was a place people could escape to

Ben:

And

Sir Gene:

were not escaping to China. They're not escaping to Russia, Ukraine, or any other country in the. Uh, they were escaping to America and that goes back even during the old, uh, uh, Imperial times,

Ben:

Yeah.

Sir Gene:

you know, and it it's, America was always a land of opportunity. And right now there's a very significant portion of the population and why I'm still pessimistic about the upcoming midterms that I don't think it's going to be the wave that a lot of Republicans think it is, is because the, I think a lot of Republicans are underestimating the number of people that have bought in, into the socialist propaganda.

Ben:

I tend to agree with you. And that's part of the reason why I think we are going to see a civil war at some point in time, a real civil war. And you know, it is important that freedom wins. Um, I think it's going to hurt us, but we have to see that freedom wins. And, you know, while America, today is the least socialistic of the Western countries, which is scary. W, you know, um, when we compare ourselves to the rest of the world, America is still, I think the place to be as far as freedom is concerned. But if I think about what my great grandfather would have, what he would say about this country, he wouldn't recognize it.

Sir Gene:

damn Yankees gun and ruined it.

Ben:

Well, uh, you know, uh,

Sir Gene:

just trying to deal in your grandfather's

Ben:

well I'm talking about my great grandfather. He was in world war one, you know? Um, and it, interestingly enough, uh, a pretty big isolationist that ended up having to go over and fight in world war one.

Sir Gene:

So, if you watch that Tim clip, I thought that the Catholic dude on there, uh, Seamus had a great, great point, which is when the neo-con said, well, you know, not everybody hears an isolationist like you, Tim. Haha. Is it now? Hold on, hold on. I have to jump in here. Why are you calling me a shut-in because I don't want to leave my house and go beat up my neighbor.

Ben:

Exactly. Yes.

Sir Gene:

Uh, there, there, those are two separate things. One is going out places and being, uh,

Ben:

Trade and so on.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. and like being active in trading with your neighbors, wholly different than going out to go beat up your.

Ben:

Yeah. And I don't think we should be involved in foreign wars. I think that, uh, we have spent far too much time and treasure that has cost us a lot of, lot of

Sir Gene:

all for selling weapons. I have no problem with selling weapons. I don't like the government taking tax money and giving weapons to somebody because no matter how you pretend that it's not, it is engaging in war for that party and against the party they're at war with.

Ben:

Yeah. I, I mean, w before our direct involvement in, you know, world war II and world war II, we were, uh, giving arms to, uh, to great Britain and so on. So

Sir Gene:

Yeah, we were also, IBM was also providing the computing machinery to be able to index the Jews.

Ben:

yeah. Um, no doubt, but I I'm, I can see there being a distinction between, uh, providing a trading partner arms that they are paying for. And. What's happening in Ukraine. Isn't that? So let me be clear selling weapons to great Britain before our involvement in world war II. I don't think that was an act of war. Um, now I think our shipping, uh, was definitely a target for German subs. And why wouldn't it be

Sir Gene:

target.

Ben:

yeah, 100% legitimate target. Yes. And you know that didn't get us into world war two. Um, I think that us, us giving Ukraine or well, quote, unquote, us reportedly giving Ukraine damn near the defense budget of Russia.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. In one month we've gotten the Ukraine, the defense budget of Russia for a year.

Ben:

That's an act of war.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. And, but it goes beyond that. It's not just money it's intelligence. It's it's using the trillion dollar American military network to provide up to the minute intelligence

Ben:

of the Moskva

Sir Gene:

on all The Russian assets. Although Russia is still maintains, that was an accident that had nothing to do with any kind of attack, but whatever.

Ben:

Well, and people saying, oh, it was the flagship. It was the, that ship. Okay. Okay. Timeout, you know, I've even heard people say, oh, it was one of their latest and greatest ships. It was launched in the seventies.

Sir Gene:

yeah. it was actually launched as a Slava, uh, which is a, uh, one of the large battle cruiser lines, which would have been like a battleship in the world war II. Um, but it was a valid cruiser and then it was rechristened the Moscow. Uh, there is an, a sister ship that went through a modernization. The Musk squad had not, and there was talk of decommissioning it and turning it into a museum private prior to this conflict.

Ben:

Yeah. And to be clear, Russia is not a Naval power. They mean Russia has one aircraft carrier. Now I, that said, I don't know that carrier groups

Sir Gene:

Russia only has three seaports anyway, as one in the, in the Arctic circle, uh, one in St. Petersburg and then one down in Kramer.

Ben:

Yeah. So, anyway, regardless, I don't think that, uh, Russia, Russia is a land of power, that's

Sir Gene:

Mm,

Ben:

Um, but anyway, to your point, the use of U S intelligence to target gear, um,

Sir Gene:

Yeah. a us intelligence to not target just, uh, a ship, if that's what, you know, what was actually the case, but all these stories about Russian generals getting killed. That's exactly what I mean by us targeting like us is ability, which clearly Ukraine lacks in having satellites, sitting there overhead with a one inch resolution or better and tracking movements. And they're, they're using, uh, an old and actually pretty good strategy. Like I've always thought this is the proper way to conduct. Is to be head units rather than killing massive numbers of people. So you always shoot the highest officer that you can at every opportunity. And that creates more impact through the disruption than simply shooting any random soldier.

Ben:

Yeah.

Sir Gene:

And that's exactly what Ukraine is doing, but there's no way in hell Ukraine would be able to do that without full blown us intelligence support.

Ben:

Well, I've had, I've kind of written off those stories of the Russian generals as somewhat propaganda. But what you're saying

Sir Gene:

No, I mean, there, there are, there are a disproportionate number of dead Russian generals as a result of this now, w we're not, we're not talking like, you know, four star generals here. We're talking about guys that are actually in the field, uh, obviously, which is why they're getting. But nonetheless, I would be, I think it would be way too unlikely to have, like six generals end up getting killed in two months.

Ben:

Well, regardless, the us involvement in the conflict is, um, more than I'm comfortable with. Um,

Sir Gene:

Well, and I think Tim summed it up perfectly on there. When he said that there would be no war, were it not for American support? This war is 100% the result of America getting involved because Russia would have walked in either Zelenskyi or whoever he would have been toppled. Something would have happened that. Uh, shifted power fairly quickly and with minimal death or purely from a Ukraine, standing up with their existing army and fighting and getting defeated within the first three weeks. But either way the war would have been over, we would have had a Russian occupation. For sure. That's fair to say, but the war would have been over with a lot fewer casualties than what is happening right now because it's in America's interest to create as much damage to the Russian military as possible, because that helps the week in the country.

Ben:

let's rephrase. It's not in America's interest because I think it's really trying borderline getting ready to provoke a larger scale conflict it's in the globalists and the warmongers best

Sir Gene:

Yeah. It's in the American current leadership's interest. Not, not necessarily the population's interest. but for sure. Biden and whoever's controlling his teleprompter, it's in their interest. And, uh, I, I do think, and this is somewhat of a separate issue is that there is a, uh, uh, a lack of fear for some reason that seems to exist with these. Neo-cons where they, they compare Putin to, uh, Kim Jong-il like, they, they think that Putin is just some crazy dictator. Um, they are idiots and we've talked about this topic. We don't need to go too

Ben:

I think that to compare Kim Jong IL, who, uh, is a desk spot that is rules by pure,

Sir Gene:

yeah, he's the, he's the kid kid of, Uh, yeah. Or regular

Ben:

third generation.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Third

Ben:

And, you know, versus Putin while he may be somewhat despotic, he is popular

Sir Gene:

Yeah, yeah. Hey, you can have a popular Monarch and just because somebody is a Monarch doesn't mean that they're a, uh, uh, an authoritarian.

Ben:

yep. Well, let's, uh, let's wrap it up, but man, this has been a weird episode, sorry, everybody for the audio issues and the technical difficulties that we had, that was a weird

Sir Gene:

Well, the good news for the listeners is, um, we talked for a lot more than we recorded. So there's a lot of hot air that you're not going to have to listen to.

Ben:

Well, you know, I D I, I, if they didn't want to listen to it, I don't think that.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Well, and, and, you know, I think I told you this privately too, and I just checked recently. It looks like we're, we're growing the average listenership of each episode by about 5%. Every time a new episode comes.

Ben:

Well, that's encouraging.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, which is very good because, uh, and so is my other show by the way, which is very cool that, uh, uh, the show I do with you as well as the show I do with Darren are both growing at a decent clip. So that means in five years, you know, we're going to be no agenda size.

Ben:

I doubt we'll sustain that, but sure. That'd be nice

Sir Gene:

Yeah, well it's, well, at some point we're going to grow each show by the total number of downloads today.

Ben:

oh yeah. Easily.

Sir Gene:

If we keep doing this long enough anyway, well, I hope everybody enjoyed it for whatever it was. And we will certainly be back in about a week. And we've talked about bringing on additional guests. So if you'd like, there are other dude named Ben named Ben, uh, two weeks ago, you may enjoy some of our future guests as well.