Sir Gene Speaks

0080 Sir Gene Speaks with Dude Named Ben

August 10, 2022 Gene Naftulyev Season 2022 Episode 80
Sir Gene Speaks
0080 Sir Gene Speaks with Dude Named Ben
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Sir Gene:

This is sir Gene dream me once again is sir, dude name, Ben name. Ben. How are you today?

Sir Ben:

I'm doing well, Jean as good as can be expected.

Sir Gene:

Well you never know. You might expect better

Sir Ben:

Eh, yeah. Well,

Sir Gene:

eh, okay. Maybe

Sir Ben:

been a, it's been an interesting week, man with everything going on. Pelosi's flight Taiwan, the apologist coming out for China, which that's a little bit of a leap for me when I hear people talking about, oh, China's got this great culture. Yeah. That's not the CCP. That's actually the Taiwanese that you should be supporting

Sir Gene:

yeah. I mean that politically absolutely totally agreed with you, but you know, the Chinese culture did not, did not originate on an island. It is a mainland culture of thousands of years.

Sir Ben:

absolutely. And I agree with that, but what I'm saying is that the CCP does not represent that culture.

Sir Gene:

No, the CCP tried to destroy that culture.

Sir Ben:

Exactly.

Sir Gene:

you had the culture of revolution.

Sir Ben:

exactly. So yeah, there there's nothing about the CCP that should be admired

Sir Gene:

No, no. But well, their efficiency in maintaining a dictatorship is pretty fucking good.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. That that's, that's not a goal to set

Sir Gene:

I mean, if you wanna admire some good dictatorship, I don't know.

Sir Ben:

Yeah.

Sir Gene:

Although, I will say the I think Taiwan has been getting a pass for a long time, simply because it's not as bad as China

Sir Ben:

Oh Taiwan, the Taiwanese government is not by any stretch of the imagination. Perfect.

Sir Gene:

And I think it's kind of gotten whitewashed, not as bad as Ukraine has gotten whitewashed, which is a complete fabrication in live, but certainly the Taiwanese culture's got a lot of in politicing happening. Let's just say,

Sir Ben:

yeah. You know, it's interesting that no one has really reported in the us news about Ja the Japanese response to these war games that China is conducting.

Sir Gene:

well, they're not forum. I assume.

Sir Ben:

No, in fact, they're pretty, pretty pissed off when Chinese missiles is landing in their territorial waters. So, realistically China is if anyone would to, were to declare war against China, I could see it being Japan, except that their constitution is so hobbled that they cannot declare war. They have to be attacked.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, exactly.

Sir Ben:

which, you know, missiles landing in their territorial waters. Could be considered that, but no, one's gonna push it unless there's damage done. You know, but all it takes is one fishing vessel being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, I, I don't see it happening. I, I don't think that a whole lot of support would happen if Japan cleared war in China it's happened before. The only thing it would do is actually start steering some of the people that don't support China inside of China to become more nationalistic and say, we're not gonna let Japan and may China again.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. Well, we'll see. I, I think China, if they're going to make a move on, Taiwan are gonna have to do it fairly soon because I don't think their economy is gonna last over the next 10 years. I think that, you know, they, we are just at a very, very big crisis point around the entire globe and, you know, it's it,

Sir Gene:

Well, this is what happens when you have globalism.

Sir Ben:

well, this is what happens every few generations. Anyway, you know, there, there are cycles to these things.

Sir Gene:

Well, for sure, but having all your energy needs met by Russia and Europe and having your demand of product needs met by the us and China, you know, the reliance, the over relies, I would say. On external production and consumption, which is globalism in the nutshell that is supposed to prevent any future wars. That was one of the design characteristics of globalism. Is that when people are so entangled,

Sir Ben:

No one can afford to

Sir Gene:

no one can afford him. Exactly,

Sir Ben:

only have proxy wars.

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

Well, we'll see how that works out for us.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Well, it's, it's definitely not working out particularly good for the us and, and things don't look like they're going to be on any improvement anytime soon.

Sir Ben:

Well, you know, listening to Gonzalo and some of his panelists, I'm just shocked at what some, some of the items that they, the, and, and maybe it's one of those things that I don't know enough about Ukraine to spot where there's just absolute bullshit.

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

Some of the things that they were talking about that, oh, China's economy is no longer as internationally dependent. It bull crap, all those small businesses and everything are supported by the massive amount of exports that China produces. You cut all. If the us stopped buying from China, a it would be very painful for us, but it would be equally as painful for China.

Sir Gene:

yeah, I, I think so. I think they would certainly have to shift their economy around. But China does have a lot more consumers than just the us. The us is the main consumer of high, high dollar value items. You know, we're, we're buying a lot more computer chips from China than pencils. Whereas in African nations, they're absolutely buying a lot more pencils in the us from China. So China does have manufacturing that produces items for the rest of the world, including African and south American countries. It it's not by any stretch producing solely for the us, but you're right in that the high dollar value items are predominantly produced for the us to some degree Europe and Russia and India is starting to get more, but India is their population is just getting to the point where they can start affording a lot of the higher tech items.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. So, you know, what, what strikes me about this entire situation with China is that you have, and we've talked about it and I know you don't find it to be valid, but talking about the real estate market crash in China and that destroying wealth so that breeds internal turmoil. You have the overall geopolitics of what's going on in Ukraine and the Alliance that is coming out of this for the first real time which is, you know, somewhat of a terrifying thought. And then you

Sir Gene:

time. I mean, this happened initially in the early years of ma

Sir Ben:

yeah. But

Sir Gene:

didn't wanna be seen as a little brother any longer, that kind of ruined the relationship.

Sir Ben:

yeah, well, I mean, and you know, MA's cultural revolution was pretty, pretty dark for everybody. I don't think anyone went, oh yeah, that's normal,

Sir Gene:

Oh, it was absolutely brutal. Yeah. No, and it, it kind of made Russia recognize that least shit, these guys are more, more brutal with their own people than we are with ours.

Sir Ben:

right. I mean, you talk about the purges and the USSR and everything else, but mals China makes that look like nothing you know, between Mau and PO pot. Jesus.

Sir Gene:

oh yeah.

Sir Ben:

But regardless, so we have this position that's really kind of got Russia and China and the Brooks nations in this Alliance and against NATO. And we have the us Senate deciding to have only you know, 95 to one for allowing the new admittance to NATO. What do you think the motivation for Pelosi's trip to Taiwan was like, why did they do this? It wasn't on her official agenda. She, they leaked that she would be going, which then China responded, which then meant she had to go.

Sir Gene:

mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

Versus if they would've just said nothing and just gone or not gone would not be in this position today. So what do you

Sir Gene:

trip, I, I mean, I have zero proof of anything I've not heard or seen any rational for it, but I tend to lean in direction of she was going to get a, a kickback from Nvidia. She was picking up her money.

Sir Ben:

As her husband sells off some of the stock that they had in

Sir Gene:

Well, I think the news of them buying the Nvidia stock manipulated the price of Nvidia and that had a ripple effect. And I think that's ultimately what she was there to do is collect on that.

Sir Ben:

possibly the other thought is like an extraction mission for some key personnel or to, you

Sir Gene:

I think that could be done with much less PO and circumstance. Yeah.

Sir Ben:

And, and then the other, the other thing that I I've seen, a lot of people talking about is, oh, she went there to tell Taiwan, you know, if China comes for you, we're not gonna support you.

Sir Gene:

they could do that on the phone.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. And not only that we would have to violate our own law to not respond. You know, we have a defense treaty with Taiwan, so, well, it's not a

Sir Gene:

the American people, the American people would not stand behind this. I, the, the, any response that has any chance of making an impact in Taiwan would require boots on the ground. And I just do not see moving towards an election American people supporting the shipment of 18 year olds to die in Taiwan.

Sir Ben:

We have amphibious assault craft in the area right now.

Sir Gene:

No one's died yet.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. I'm just saying we have,

Sir Gene:

As soon as somebody

Sir Ben:

troops and troop carriers in the area right now.

Sir Gene:

whatever parties in charge, when there are 18 year olds dying in Taiwan will get massive loss.

Sir Ben:

Maybe, you know, the, the thing is we should have never, we should have never accepted the one China policy. You know, what we should have done is in fact until the 1960s, the UN did not recognize Beijing as the rightful government of China.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, but that's, that's kind of cheesy.

Sir Ben:

yeah, well, but what we should have done is, and what should have happened was okay, Beijing, you've got mainland China, that's yours. Taiwan is now it's own free and separate nation because that's reality. Right? We talk about recognizing the realities.

Sir Gene:

is, is to effectively make Taiwan an American owned territory. That would be the only way to prevent China from trying to pursue taking over Taiwan. As long as Taiwan is a independent entity. Even if it's not a country, there is historical argument to say, look, this has always been a Chinese territory. The government of China has changed to a different direction called communism. That doesn't mean that the border of China has.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. But that said when Mao and the revolutionaries took over the government and the, at the time, the quote unquote legitimate government of China fled to Taiwan, they were able to defend that border and stop them from taking over

Sir Gene:

mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

Taiwanese territory. So you could argue that yes, there was a revolution and the holdover government was able to secure this. So therefore, basically you have mainland China that is thrown, you know, had a revolution and they had X amount of territory that they were able to capture an X amount of territory that they weren't. So, you know,

Sir Gene:

no, I, I get it. I mean, the funny thing is what you just described is literally the argument for Russia supporting down bus region.

Sir Ben:

Yes,

Sir Gene:

It was a legitimate part of Ukraine. They had a revolution, they pushed off to the side. They couldn't push any further. And now China slash Ukraine was getting ready for a massive offensive on Taiwan slash Don bus and Russia intervened.

Sir Ben:

Don't

Sir Gene:

So is the use going to do what Russia does? I don't think so.

Sir Ben:

I, I don't know. We'll see we have enough interest in there and not only that, so do a lot of our allies. You know,

Sir Gene:

Yeah, the video card. Market's gonna go to shit. If, if there's a war there

Sir Ben:

well, all, all I can say is without if the us has any hope of trying to contain China which, you know, the, the arguments that have I've seen presented, oh, why are you trying to contain China? Cuz China's evil. Cuz the CCP is really evil and no, we do not want a multipolar world where they get to be a superpower of I'm sorry, what did I, what did I say?

Sir Gene:

CPC. You said CP

Sir Ben:

Oh anyway. Chinese communist

Sir Gene:

rebranded

Sir Ben:

Yeah. Well I good for them. New. Zealand's about to rename themselves as

Sir Gene:

That's right. I heard about

Sir Ben:

always gonna be New Zealand.

Sir Gene:

What what's how do you pronounce that?

Sir Ben:

Idea. It's some Maury name and it's the wokeness gone wild. But anyway,

Sir Gene:

a little bit.

Sir Ben:

it, anyway, the, but the, the point remains I don't think anyone wants to see China really become a military peer to the United States. I don't think anyone in the world wants that. And if you see China start, I'm sorry.

Sir Gene:

China wants that.

Sir Ben:

Okay. I, I don't

Sir Gene:

I mean, you said anyone in the world, that's the fifth of the world population right there.

Sir Ben:

well, I, yeah. So if China starts to take over Taiwan and then starts being belligerent in the

Sir Gene:

Well, we can look at what, what areas does China have some claim to probably Cambodia? Probably North Korea. There's some border areas between China and India that are

Sir Ben:

That are very hotly disputed.

Sir Gene:

mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

Yeah. The, you know, KME with Pakistan and everything, it all ties in right there. Yep.

Sir Gene:

Yep. So there are definitely further targets as where I'm going with this for Chinese expansion,

Sir Ben:

Yeah. What about the Mongolia area? Are they gonna push up against Russia or is

Sir Gene:

Yeah. I think that is gonna be interesting cuz Mongolians official second language is Russian. It's not

Sir Ben:

is my point. Is that, so the Asian portion of Russia, it has been, it there's been a longstanding dispute between

Sir Gene:

Yeah. This is what

Sir Ben:

on that area.

Sir Gene:

Eh, Russia and China have historically been at odds with the exception of short period during the start of the the mam of China where they, there was support from Russia to help Mao take over China. But for the most part, including most of the the Soviet union's history, there's been antagonism with China. And I've said this before, and it's a it's, you know, literally a In fact you can read in history of books, is that during a large part of the cold war with the us, Russia always had nuclear missiles pointed to China because the Chinese threat, while not as like visible for the rest of the world as the us threat was a very real one. And it, I mean, that's a land war threat. That's not just a missile threat.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. And you know, it's interesting because the us has the advantage of basically, you know, the insulation of both the Atlantic and the Pacific now with the bricks nations and some of the south American nations. Shifting alliances and allowing military bases for both the Russians and the Chinese to be built in south America. I don't see us letting that happen. I just don't not to any, not to any conceivable amount that would ever threaten us.

Sir Gene:

yeah. I mean, it's, you have to, you have to believe in American exceptionalism in order to try and enforce the Monroe doctrine

Sir Ben:

Mm-hmm

Sir Gene:

because there, the Monroe doctrine is completely Hippocratic to the actions of the United States for the last 50 years, plus going across.

Sir Ben:

because we've put our foot elsewhere. Yeah.

Sir Gene:

everywhere. it's not, you know, there are not many continents, maybe Antarctica where we haven't had troops on the ground. So the, the us enforcing that I think would make a lot of people that are at least mildly supporting the us say, okay, well, if you're gonna enforce or prevent another country's providing aid, which is always what it would be called to say Columbia, right? Because the Monroe doc current, then they're absolutely legitimately able to kick out American military bases from the Pacific everywhere. Their sphere of influence you can't call south America to be the us sphere of influence and then have troops that are 500 miles from a border of another country and thousands of miles from the us.

Sir Ben:

So the, the problem you have with the Pacific stuff is we have interest in the Pacific as well. You know, we have Hawaii and Guam, so

Sir Gene:

those aren't really American. I mean, I think that's a, how do, how do we get, well, no Hawaii. Totally. Isn't because the, the occupation of Hawaii continues that was ne well, it's true. Look it up.

Sir Ben:

okay. So New Zealand and the ma ma okay. Samoa we're we're gonna, it's gonna be Samoa next.

Sir Gene:

I think I've, I've always been a supporter of Hawaiian independence myself, because it has been an under occupation a lot longer than than China has for that matter

Sir Ben:

So,

Sir Gene:

American Samoa. Didn't we get that during world war II.

Sir Ben:

yeah,

Sir Gene:

Yeah. That's

Sir Ben:

thing with Guam.

Sir Gene:

yeah. So, you know,

Sir Ben:

here's what I would say.

Sir Gene:

Germany during world war II. It's no longer part of the USSR, not part of Russia

Sir Ben:

Yeah. Yeah. So here's what I'll say. This reminds me of an Orson Scott card book. So America has never entered its empire phase. We are the only global superpower only risen power dominant power that never went into an empire phase.

Sir Gene:

I don't know if I would agree with that. In fact, that probably wouldn't.

Sir Ben:

Okay. Well, just follow the argument for a

Sir Gene:

Okay. All

Sir Ben:

and book recommendation of the podcast, read empire by Oron Scott card. I can see this next set of conflicts that I think is coming, kicking that off potentially.

Sir Gene:

Mm

Sir Ben:

And if successful, it would definitely be an interesting turnaround to otherwise what looks like a collapsing us.

Sir Gene:

mm-hmm.

Sir Ben:

So that could be the next evolution is all I'm saying.

Sir Gene:

So was the us collapsing in the book too then?

Sir Ben:

Yes. In fact, there was a forced internal civil war because of certain elites desire to move the us into empire phase.

Sir Gene:

Interesting. So this is not a sci-fi book.

Sir Ben:

book. Huh?

Sir Gene:

It's not a sci-fi book.

Sir Ben:

Not really. No it's set in the near future. It's a.

Sir Gene:

Oron Scott card books I've read have been sci-fi.

Sir Ben:

Yeah, and most of his stuff is sci-fi and fantasy he's of course known for Enders game, but he's got some, a lot of really good writing empire is pretty interesting in the, in, in the book empire, the divide, the dividing lines in the civil war that he envisions that all builds up to this is rural versus urban, which is, you know, interesting because this book was written in the nineties. You know, and yet we see it playing out here today, the maiden conflict lines in the us, or rural versus

Sir Gene:

well, that's kind of the dividing lines in Damon demon, Damon. However you wanna pronounce it.

Sir Ben:

Yeah.

Sir Gene:

who's that book by, I can't remember the GA author's name.

Sir Ben:

Daniel Schwarz.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Far as. Yeah. So that that's certainly the dividing line in that book as well. Plus, you know, hackers.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. Some unrealistic tech

Sir Gene:

Well, future tech. I mean, you know,

Sir Ben:

I'm sure. CSB will say, oh no, we can do artificial intelligent like that.

Sir Gene:

oh my God, can I have one fucking podcast where somebody isn't talking and CSB voice Jesus Christ,

Sir Ben:

it's fun to annoy both of you though. It gets under your skin and his.

Sir Gene:

Well, and there was, yeah, like on the last show Darren managed to in one comment, pissed off both both

Sir Ben:

heard it. I heard it. Yes.

Sir Gene:

I don't know if he thought about it beforehand or if it just came out of his mouth and then he realized what he said, but it was like, oh my God, I can't believe he just did that.

Sir Ben:

It was great. Fantastic needs to happen more often,

Sir Gene:

yeah.

Sir Ben:

More of

Sir Gene:

you know, before, before our Polish friend became insane with the whole Ukraine situation. He, he was courted by me and Darren to be in on the podcast, but he, and even he even said yes a couple times, but he always backtracked and said, oh, but I I'll just type things. And then you guys can say them or I'll, you know, I'll say them and in, in Polish and then Jean can translate. And I was just like, dude, people want to hear you talk. We know you talk English. Okay. So that's, that was the require.

Sir Ben:

Okay. Beyond that Techer max was on Tim pool last night.

Sir Gene:

oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was awesome.

Sir Ben:

Yeah, it was,

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Nobody liked them. It was hilarious. Cuz I was reading the comments. Well I was reading the comments while he was on and there they were, I'd say 80% negative.

Sir Ben:

really?

Sir Gene:

Yeah.

Sir Ben:

Why.

Sir Gene:

You know, commenters there's like there, there were a lot of comparison of him to Jack Jack what's the guy's name?

Sir Ben:

Paso.

Sir Gene:

No, the other guy, the guy with the beard that turned out to be a porn star that used to be in Tim pool all the time. It was like the God, what was his name? Jack Murphy. Jack Murphy.

Sir Ben:

Jack Murphy was a porn star. What?

Sir Gene:

Did you not follow that whole controversy? Do not know why he's no longer in temple.

Sir Ben:

Nope.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, because he

Sir Ben:

not a big pool fanboy,

Sir Gene:

he was, well, I

Sir Ben:

not know

Sir Gene:

He was so Jack Murphy, the guy with the absolutely 100% hair colored beard. It's it's it was the inverse pattern of what happens naturally that I was pretty obvious. That was fake. But anyway, he's all like, you know, Mr. Man's movement Christian and very, very much playing for the. People just need to live better lives kinda scenario. And, and then it turned out that when he was a guest on another show somebody had sent to the, the show a link to, or clip of a, an article that Jack had written

Sir Ben:

mm-hmm

Sir Gene:

that talked about him getting his wife ready to go out on a date with somebody else

Sir Ben:

Yeah.

Sir Gene:

and the, the rationalization or the very masculine thing to do. The absolute alpha thing to do is to be a coupled. And so he, he wrote this and that came up as a question and he exploded. So instead of trying to quash this as a like, oh my God, you found some old shit. Yes. That's what happens on the internet. Somebody will always dig up stuff that makes you look like, like a crazy person instead of dressing it. He's like, you know, fuck you. Why the fuck are you bringing this shit up? You're you should know better than to do this. Why you fucking with my life? You know,

Sir Ben:

yeah, or what he could have said was, yes, this was old. This is, you know, we

Sir Gene:

Yeah.

Sir Ben:

trying whatever, but we realized that that

Sir Gene:

and then I found

Sir Ben:

I've moved in this direction. Yes.

Sir Gene:

I mean, there's many ways to spin this. Right. But instead

Sir Ben:

Well it may or may not even be spin.

Sir Gene:

but whatever, you know what I mean? Everything spin. So he he got aggressive, which prompted other people to look for this. And they started finding more stuff about him and not just like living the cockled lifestyle, but but then it turned out that he and his wife were doing kinda like a precursor to only fans and

Sir Ben:

I, I knew none of this.

Sir Gene:

Uhhuh, Uhhuh, and where people could, in fact, you had videos I, this is stuff I wish I could unsee of Jack Murphy talking about how much he enjoys sex with young men and asking the viewers to that if they donate don't know how much sure it was or pay whatever it's$25. And then you know, I'm gonna play with this dildo in my ass. That was all on video,

Sir Ben:

okay.

Sir Gene:

right. I mean, it's like. And then of course, then he starts putting out statements about how people are trying to destroy him, including Tim pull and how, you know, they're, they're just going after him for what he did in his past life. And that's totally not him. Right. So now he's trying to backtrack. And then it, I, I was one of the people that, that did some date comparisons and found that he was literally doing this, this only fan shit while he was on Tim pool, like in the first few times that he was on and, and talking about the the, the Christian lifestyle with having you know, the man and the woman playing the rightful roles and this, this whole mask he's wearing, literally at the same time he was doing the porn. And then his rationalization was like, look, we were desperate for money. You know, I'd lost my, my business you know, one bankrupt, whatever. And so we needed to make money in, this is what we ended up doing. And it's like, okay. So the first possible way you thought of making money was to take your clothes off in front of a camera and stick objects into your ass. Interesting, interesting. That that's the first sub that occurs to

Sir Ben:

yeah.

Sir Gene:

and his whole liminal order became a big joke, which was, you know, like the liminal order was this men's group where it was all about empowering men and. The way that society's like been trotting on men, this is gonna empower them. And then it, obviously all the jokes and memes started coming out about how it's basically just a, a gay club for men that,

Sir Ben:

Yeah. So.

Sir Gene:

that are married.

Sir Ben:

So, I guess my advice to anyone wanting to be, you know, a creator or whatever on something like this, don't be too faced on stuff like that. It's gonna come

Sir Gene:

mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

you know? I mean,

Sir Gene:

yeah. If something comes out, talk about how it made you, who you are today

Sir Ben:

Or whatever, you

Sir Gene:

the focus back to where you are right now.

Sir Ben:

well, but is it really in your past or are you being

Sir Gene:

things well, exactly. But most people have things in their past that they would prefer not come up when you become a public figure, more things will come out.

Sir Ben:

and you know, what I would say is that there people often say, well, I have nothing to hide. No, you have nothing to hide from people you trust. There are always situations in your past and things that can be spun or made to be whatever it is. And you know, it, it can be good, bad and different. You know, I've got a pretty clean record

Sir Gene:

yeah. I mean, look at Tucker max.

Sir Ben:

yeah, I mean, and that's where I was about to go is why were they making comparisons to him? Because I think Tucker has been, I mean, I, I read Tucker max in college. Right. I hope they serve beer in hell, was given to

Sir Gene:

he wrote it. Shortly after college.

Sir Ben:

Right, right. And I mean, right in the same age frame and you know, it, it, the whole, he has hilarious stories. It completely honest about the Deb that his life was.

Sir Gene:

I think there's some exaggerations, but sure.

Sir Ben:

Okay, well, whatever it made himself look worse then, right? He's not

Sir Gene:

well worse to some people better to college students that were reading his book.

Sir Ben:

whatever the point is, he's not trying to hide

Sir Gene:

He's not

Sir Ben:

So I don't get the, I don't get the

Sir Gene:

No, I, I, I think the comparison is a very loose one from people basically saying, you know, here's another old dude that, that was doing all kinds of kinky shit when he was young. And you know, is now like wholesome, married with kids and promoting this lifestyle. How hypocritical of him and,

Sir Ben:

is that hypocritical?

Sir Gene:

well, I don't know. That's what commenters commenters dude. It's a whole different brand of people.

Sir Ben:

Okay, well, I'm gonna quote someone. I can't stand, but he's right on this. If you are not a liberal in your twenties, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative in your thirties, you have no mind, Winston Churchill,

Sir Gene:

yeah.

Sir Ben:

you know? Yeah. It,

Sir Gene:

had heard that attributed to a number of folks in

Sir Ben:

well, whatever, but the, the point, the sentiment of the saying is, yeah, you, you fuck around in your twenties. You learn who you are and then you build up. And I think he was absolutely right about stuff. Last night, you get some skin in the game and then you become a conservative, trying to protect it.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, then for the record, I've never been the liberal, but

Sir Ben:

being a liberal and being. Yeah, me, me. I've never been a liberal either, but I've certainly been wild I've you

Sir Gene:

think of the heart is a misappropriated organ that shouldn't really exist.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. Well, go ahead.

Sir Gene:

I, I was just gonna switch gears instead of talking about all the, the commenters and bashing of Tucker. I thought that it was actually very, very good to have somebody on that has drank the uh, Kool-Aid you know, swallowed the red pill, whatever you wanna call it and went full on into the God, I hate using the word prepper, but you know, the prepper lifestyle,

Sir Ben:

Mm-hmm

Sir Gene:

which he has in fact Tucker is he's not like a great friend or anything, but he's certainly somebody that I'll pick up my phone when I call or reply to my text message. And I was out to his place a couple of months ago, so I do know Tucker and I think that he has, and I've known him now for over 10 years. So he has definitely even just in the last 10 years, shifted more. Towards that kind of self-sufficient lifestyle. Let's just say than where he was. Because that's like I've, I've watched that happen.

Sir Ben:

well, it was definitely good to hear the, that shift and I, I think his opinions and what he was saying about building a community around you and you know, not being out just on your own, I think is absolutely right. I think the idea that, oh, I'm gonna build up a fortress and defend everything. Myself. All I need is me and my family. Well, that's not realistic. You have to have a community. First of all, you've you've, especially if we go full on grid, down collapse a you're going back to really pre 18 hundreds because you know, there's infrastructure that existed, then that won't now so a manual labor's gonna be a much bigger thing and everybody's gonna have to divide and conquer on their work.

Sir Gene:

yeah. I, I completely agree. I think that you could certainly go for, I don't know. Well, if you're prepared, you could probably go for a couple of weeks in the city and defending your house and your property. But you're not gonna go for a month on end doing that. You really need to have a community around you. You need to have a divide and conquer strategy because you know, how, how long can you go on taking 15 minute naps

Sir Ben:

well,

Sir Gene:

a full night?

Sir Ben:

in most people who live in a suburb there's not a lot of room to see stuff coming, you know, it's not like you've got acres. So that that's kind of problematic,

Sir Gene:

yeah, you don't you've and you've got you know, you've got a lot of neighbors that have stuff that if the roving mobs, which is what I would be most concerned about that are maybe triggered initially by a lack of food and no availability thereof in the supermarkets, which have all been completely you know, emptied out by those same mobs. At some point, they're gonna start going house to house, searching for supplies, and that's gonna be very violent. And each house they hit, they're gonna be not just grabbing the food. They're also going to be arming themselves. So you know how long you wanna do that in the city, in the burb. And by the way, the, the people that are gonna be part of the rowing mobs are not stupid. They're just not prepared. And so they will know that you don't go robbing the hood. You, you go to where people are more likely to have multiple refrigerators in their houses. You go out to that ring of suburbs.

Sir Ben:

Yep.

Sir Gene:

So it's, it's the, you know, well, in, in most cities, I would say it's the million dollar homes that are gonna get first in Austin. I'd say it's the$5 million homes cuz every house in Austin is at least a million bucks.

Sir Ben:

yeah, absolutely. But, well, not every house in Austin depends on the neighborhoods, but yes,

Sir Gene:

luck finding an empty lot in Austin. That's under a million.

Sir Ben:

I, I understand I

Sir Gene:

It is crazy here.

Sir Ben:

yeah, it's gonna stop. Don't worry.

Sir Gene:

yeah.

Sir Ben:

You might as well sell and get out now, gene.

Sir Gene:

I've been threatening to move for so long. I really do wanna move out to the country, but I'm torn as to where to move in the country because I need my gigabit internet. Goddammit.

Sir Ben:

yeah. Well, I mean, there's places where you can get decent internet and be a little ways

Sir Gene:

I've never found, I would love to find a website that basically shows internet speeds as the first sort criteria.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. That,

Sir Gene:

I mean, that would be awesome. I know maybe that is a business there,

Sir Ben:

Yeah. Or you can always, you know, find the perfect land and then build your own wireless is P to support your own internet, you know,

Sir Gene:

has to go somewhere. I know my friends are building a community in Mexico, private community right now for rich people, which a lot of people are doing that right now. And the fiber internet down there is costing them to put the fiber in is costing them. I wanna say it's around a thousand bucks, per hundred meters and they it's got, you know, it's gotta go several kilometers to connect up to their fiber grid. This is not a cheap investment to put fiber into the house in a country that doesn't have it already easily accessible here. The ISP take care of that in, in other countries, you're gonna have to do that yourself.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. The, the problem with Mexico is the land ownership laws. You can't as a non Mexican citizen owned

Sir Gene:

But that's the thing. Everybody just becomes a Mexican citizen.

Sir Ben:

Mm. I don't know how easy that is to do. And I don't know that I would want to do that.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. I mean, not wanting it is one thing, but it, it is not that hard. Their like my buddy's wife is going through that process. There's two ways to do it. One just costs money and then the other one requires time.

Sir Ben:

Yeah.

Sir Gene:

But with money you can get a Mexican citizenship right now for$220,000.

Sir Ben:

That's not cheap, but, okay. Yeah.

Sir Gene:

Well, it's, it's actually more expensive than a Canadian citizenship. Yeah. And

Sir Ben:

So

Sir Gene:

quite a bit higher than a New Zealand one.

Sir Ben:

and again, why would I want to, why would I want to build this out in a failed NACO state?

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, they like being close to the ocean and property. There's cheaper.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. But why not go to like Belize where you actually have

Sir Gene:

They can't drive there.

Sir Ben:

huh.

Sir Gene:

Can't drive to Belize. You could, but you have to drive through Mexico through the failed Naro state. That's gonna Rob you on the way down. Yes

Sir Ben:

Right? Yeah. But Belize has good property protection laws. It doesn't have a failed government. There's, you know, lots of pros.

Sir Gene:

although I don't know, the government believes is pretty shady.

Sir Ben:

yeah.

Sir Gene:

May not be failed,

Sir Ben:

anything south of the us border is pretty

Sir Gene:

It's shady. Yeah. That's true.

Sir Ben:

And I'd say that quite a ways north of the us border is pretty

Sir Gene:

shady as well.

Sir Ben:

yeah.

Sir Gene:

there's well, I'd say at this point, the us government is pretty shady.

Sir Ben:

It has been for a long time.

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

Did you see that did you see the meme that came out of the Jones trial?

Sir Gene:

I know. No, I did watch the Jones trial. I watched most of it.

Sir Ben:

I I I'll.

Sir Gene:

so fricking biased. It's unbelievable.

Sir Ben:

terrible.

Sir Gene:

Or the, the, the prosecutor did a good job though. All right. Get to your meme. Spit it up.

Sir Ben:

go ahead. So it's just Jones being asked about you know, Hey, you, you said on your show criminal criminal elements in the government supporting pet pedophilia and da

Sir Gene:

Oh yeah. I did see

Sir Ben:

And he goes, yeah. You mean like Jeffrey Epstein in the Clintons and it was perfect.

Sir Gene:

With a straight face.

Sir Ben:

Absolutely.

Sir Gene:

Yeah.

Sir Ben:

he's not wrong. So it's like, yeah,

Sir Gene:

So I really do wonder, I mean, I'm sure that officially this is gonna be like Alex Jones, bankrupt, and now on the street loses all his property, but I wonder how much, realistically, he has been smart enough to shelter. I don't consider him to be the smartest figure in the tree.

Sir Ben:

yeah. But he's not gonna have to pay the 40 some fly. He it's capped. So there's a, this is something

Sir Gene:

But, but I thought that's the cap is 40.

Sir Ben:

Nope, no, no, no. So the, the actual damages they awarded was 4 million and then there was the other port there. But the, but the cap, the statutory cap in Texas that the jury is not told about is that it's double the primary damages plus like 700 and some odd thousand. So he's only gonna end up paying

Sir Gene:

nine, nine, okay. Nine plus the four.

Sir Ben:

Yep.

Sir Gene:

So he's gonna pay 13 million.

Sir Ben:

So the, the point

Sir Gene:

don't know if he's worth more than 13.

Sir Ben:

oh, Hey. Absolutely. He is.

Sir Gene:

You think?

Sir Ben:

Yes.

Sir Gene:

I don't know, man.

Sir Ben:

Regardless. It's not gonna be the 40, some odd million that the jury ordered him to pay. And not only that, but he should be able to appeal this. And I mean, quite frankly, he should have been able to declare mistrial on his

Sir Gene:

Oh, I agree.

Sir Ben:

own lawyers

Sir Gene:

do it. Yeah, exactly.

Sir Ben:

And by the way,

Sir Gene:

his lawyer. And I, sorry to interrupt you. I literally posted an on NAS on no gen social before this incompetent moved by a lawyer that my impression was his lawyer was holy shit. He sucks. Why does he have such a shitty lawyer? And then we find out about the incompetence. It's like, oh my God,

Sir Ben:

Well, I mean, was it incompetence or was it on purpose?

Sir Gene:

Oh, I think it was incompetence

Sir Ben:

I don't know, man. You send basically all the files instead of what you meant to send for discovery. And then you don't take any legal action to call that back. Mm.

Sir Gene:

it, because he thought that was legal courtesy. He did say the guy, oh, disregard this. I'm gonna send you the real link. And obviously legal courtesy does generally exist between lawyers because no lawyer wants to be that guy. And this, this lawyer, the prosecuting lawyer will definitely get a reputation as somebody that doesn't have professional courtesy, because they're, they're much like Congress critters of either party tend to want to work with each other because they're there all year round. Whereas you know, they're, they're, they have to work for the people, but they really are trying to work together as much as possible. Same thing with lawyers, like whether you're a prosecutor or defense attorney, you're, you're both part of the lawyer club and you don't want to have the reputation that you are a lawyer that fucks other lawyers over because that will come back and bite you in the ass. And so I think this guy in wanting to push the boundaries by using evidence that was obtained through this kind of. Fuck up by the other side

Sir Ben:

mm-hmm.

Sir Gene:

is going to ruin his own reputation when it comes to his standing as a lawyer and will likely end up paying for this in the long run by having professional courtesy, not extended to him, not for this exact type of move, but there's a lot of things that lawyers have some leeway on that. I think other lawyers will see him as somebody. You can't trust.

Sir Ben:

Yeah, well that, that still, to me, isn't a justifiable outcome. That's not enough. You know, there, there, first of all, Jones' lawyer could, should possibly be disbar over this for negligence for his

Sir Gene:

I've had this happen myself. This is not that uncommon because you gotta remember they what you're talking about. People that are not necessarily, and usually not particularly technological using Dropbox or Google share box or any other means of conveying files. The difference between sending a link to the folder and sending a link to a zip file inside the folder is literally one click difference. And inevitably either them or a paralegal that's doing the actual work will make mistakes. It happens. And this is why you do typically extend legal courtesy is if somebody. Get sent something and then gets an email an hour later saying, whoops did not mean to send this to you, please disregard that is usually enough in this case, they wanted to go after'em badly enough that they didn't bother with they, that they expected a formal itemized, which is,

Sir Ben:

they never followed up with the actual link though. That's also the part of the problem. So he never actually sent the actual documents again in a different link. So I, I don't know.

Sir Gene:

Well, he said he did, the lawyer said he didn't.

Sir Ben:

huh?

Sir Gene:

And the testimony Jones's lawyer said that he did send it.

Sir Ben:

Yes. And the prosecute, the opposing the oppositions that he didn't. So

Sir Gene:

Right. So that's a, he said, she said, but

Sir Ben:

okay. But here, here, here's the deal. If you're Alex Jones' lawyer one, you better not make a mistake like that. Okay. And number, number two, you better fix it if you do and make damn sure because I mean, he's a target. This is not some, you know, more or less amicable thing. He is a target. The judge is obviously against you, you know, you have to go above and beyond. And the fact that he didn't, I just find egregious.

Sir Gene:

he was a shitty lawyer. Absolutely. He, he sucked with his objections. He sucked with obviously his conduct. These files, I dunno about being disbarred, but definitely this guy should have his race dropped substantially

Sir Ben:

Yeah, well, anyway, I don't know. To me, it's this entire thing. I, I hope Jones at least appeals. I hope an appellate court picks it up and they look at, you know, the particulars of this, but the problem, once you, once you have a court case, and this is something, a lot of people don't understand, the appellate court is only gonna look at the decisions that were made. So the only way he could get basically a redo is if an appellate court were to go in and find that the summary judgment that happened at first was in, you know, done incorrectly. That that's the only way he could get really out of those. Oh, absolutely. It was, but I mean, he's gotta go through that appellate process at the very least.

Sir Gene:

yeah, yeah. And he has to do this right now because other parents now that this has happened are filing lawsuits. This is gonna keep, keep repeating until he's outta money.

Sir Ben:

Yep. And I think this is I, it. There are many things wrong with our legal system and this is definitely one of them. You know, I, I, I think Jones goes a little above and beyond on some things a lot, but he's not wrong a lot too. So

Sir Gene:

Yeah. And I, I think that there's a I think that what he did in calling the Sandy hook, a red flag operation

Sir Ben:

flag. Yeah.

Sir Gene:

it false flag operation. Yeah. I was, what was I thinking of? Red herring is what I was starting to say, but yeah. Yeah. False like operation. I think that it is not unreasonable to have come to that conclusion at the time that he did given the publicly available information. And that would be the basis on which I would judge, whether he was actually engaging in defamation or not.

Sir Ben:

Well, it's not definition to ask questions.

Sir Gene:

Well, but he was doing more than asking

Sir Ben:

It that, and that's where he crossed the line. But what I would say is I.

Sir Gene:

even with making statements, is it unreasonable to say in the first day of COVID that, wow, maybe we should wear masks. I think it's reasonable to say that. I think the second day you might wanna do some research and find out that the masks you're recommending have literally zero effect on viral transmissions as was the case with studies done at the university of Minnesota. But on the first day, I think that's reasonable. Is it reasonable for him to say this looks like a false flag operation?

Sir Ben:

two, two things, two things. So one, when COVID first broke out, you know, I had some N 90 fives around the house from different projects. So I immediately made sure

Sir Gene:

of course

Sir Ben:

wife, wife, and kids had N 90 fives and I'm like, don't use'em yet. I don't think it is, but you know, this is the only type of mass that's gonna do anything if at all. And even the N 95, isn't great by any stretch. But what I would also say is that Sandy hook, anyone who thinks that your government would not sacrifice here, here's the thing. When I think about Sandy hook and Aldi it's interesting that both Obama and by, you know, Biden was in office both times that these sorts of things happened. It's interesting that we have the gun control moves afterwards that we have happened. I, sorry, but I don't think our government is above sacrificing a handful of people to push an. You know, whether those are crisis actors or whatever, I, I don't think that's the case by any stretch.

Sir Gene:

Again, one word for you, world trade center.

Sir Ben:

yeah. Yeah, WTC seven,

Sir Gene:

It won't go away.

Sir Ben:

no, you know, the Pearl Harbor you know,

Sir Gene:

Harbor, world war II, world war. I, I mean, all of these can be traced back to not simply the thing that is the official start of the war, but to factions that were egging on and trying to get a war going.

Sir Ben:

the Germans took out full page ads in newspapers, warning people that they were going to attack the main.

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm yeah.

Sir Ben:

Anyway, I, yeah, I, I don't know, man, we but you know,

Sir Gene:

Hey, let's put a blockade on Japan and see what happens.

Sir Ben:

yeah, well, or, you know, the us sending pilots and soldiers to fight in China. Right. The us was heavily involved in conflict against Japan, much like we are right now with, oh, well, those aren't our soldiers. They're just, you know, us civilians.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. They're they're trainers. They're they're training.

Sir Ben:

well, no,

Sir Gene:

engaged in actual fitting

Sir Ben:

no, no, no, no. So the, there, there was a group of airmen that were essentially the Chinese foreign Legion that were flying, you know, flying sorties against the Japanese. In fact there was a John Wayne movie about it, the flying tigers, you

Sir Gene:

yep,

Sir Ben:

Which very loosely historically based, but still the point is there were Americans fighting the Japanese well before Pearl Harbor, there are Americans today in the Ukraine fighting Russia well before whatever that event is yet to be.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, absolutely. And, and this is the, ultimately, this is the, the thing that I think may become the tipping point is the reckoning of America's actual history with what the mom and apple pie and American exceptionalism image created is. And that there was no reason to go into Iraq, that there was no reason to bomb Libya. There was no reason to occupy Afghanistan, all these things. And that there was no reason to go into Vietnam. There was no reason to do most military operations that the us has been engaged in because they were simply they were based on excuses. They weren't based on actual national threat to the United States Homeland

Sir Ben:

Not direct threat at the time, but, you know, for instance, Korea you know, Korea kind of started off this policing action, military campaigns, and you know, it, it's interesting because the idea was we have to stop communism. Well, you know, I, I think you, don't, it's hard because when you have a non communist government, that's somewhat aligned to you asking you for assistance and you have the mutual interests of stopping communism, what do you do? But I think that the problem with the way the United States handled it was to do it in such a limited fashion. You, you, you, you can't have a limited action that, that just doesn't work, right. You always end up bogged down and it doesn't work. And you know, the us military, you know, had some good success in world war II. But since then in basically every gorilla que engagement, we've, you know, I mean, you can argue whether or not we were successful in Afghanistan or Iraq based off of casualty differences and things like that. But I would say given the state of the countries, we, you know, just wasted thousands and thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. So I don't know I, I guess the actions, if America is, if we're gonna be isolation and isolationists enough to say we are not going to go into Vietnam and take it over, we're just gonna try and defend the government to which you know, we failed. We shouldn't have gone in at all. The only way you go into, the only way you go into Korea is in total war. The only way you go into Vietnam is total war. You, you go into that empire phase and say, okay, you want our help? We're taking over this territory. We're gonna fight off these rebels and then you're hours, that's it?

Sir Gene:

This is exactly. This is literally what I started the conversation with saying about Taiwan is that we should not have any kind of a, a treaty with Taiwan. What we should have done is simply make Taiwan a us territory. If they wanted aid that was done. Now you're part of the United States. Any attack on Taiwan is an attack in the United States because it is a us own territory. What we have right now is this bullshit kind of quasi we're gonna defend you, but maybe not kinda situation

Sir Ben:

well, let's say we go into, say we really wanna piss China off if us and the British said, if the us said we're going to annex Taiwan and the British said, China, you have violated the treaty. We're taking back Hong Kong.

Sir Gene:

mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

That would be interesting.

Sir Gene:

well, they can't do that because Hong Kong never belonged to the Britain. It was, it was simply leased from China. No, it was least

Sir Ben:

The government changed

Sir Gene:

the government did change. And as a result of that, you could argue that the lease was nullified and it was always part of the new government of China and that they were

Sir Ben:

or you could say that it was under British occupation and therefore under the control and

Sir Gene:

No. Well, but it's not separate. Look, if you have a lease to a property and the government changes, it doesn't mean your lease converts to ownership.

Sir Ben:

I don't know, anyway, regardless it was the, the Chinese are violating the treaty around Hong Kong, cuz they're not operating it as two separate systems. And that that's part of the problem is that, you know, they are really shifting timelines than they should. So I, I think with, as China gets more aggressive, the only answer is to be more aggressive back the Biden administration, you know, postponing, this ICBM launch. Why, you know, so on the one hand you're going to antagonize Russia by having the Senate vote, to admit new countries. NA, but on the other hand, you're not gonna go through with a test that was already planned and everything else.

Sir Gene:

So let me just interject, cuz this took forever to find we, we were talking about China. We still aren't talking about China, but I'm gonna slightly change the topic here. Cause you're you're saying that if the us stops trading with China, China is fucked. Is that the

Sir Ben:

It would be a massive dent to their economy. Yes.

Sir Gene:

Do you know how much China exported last year?

Sir Ben:

Sure. Trillions of dollars

Sir Gene:

you two yeah, 2.49, 8 trillion.

Sir Ben:

Okay.

Sir Gene:

Now in, in that same timeframe the, the United States accounted for 400 billion of that, the percent. That the United States actually consumes in China is roughly 16.7% of Chinese exports. Losing United States would lose the high dollar value electronics, but by no means, does it make the Chinese government go bankrupt?

Sir Ben:

Yeah. Here, here's the thing. It's not just about that. It's about there's. So there's lots of different things that are tied into this. It's not just the direct exports to the us, it's to a lot of the affiliated countries. So if we drew a hard line in the sand Britain, a lot of Europe coming with us, that sort of thing, most likely Australia, New Zealand, so on, if Australia and New Zealand, if Australia stops exporting coal to China, then that's a bigger impact to their economy than you might think. And then you also

Sir Gene:

about imports, not exports

Sir Ben:

but that, that that's part of this whole you know, Alliance of Western countries staying together and really sticking it to China.

Sir Gene:

and that's worked so well for Europe. I don't think any other countries are gung-ho to jump in and go bankrupt and to make their people freeze in the winter and star due to lack of food after what's happening in Europe. I don't, I don't think that new Zealand's gonna stop trading with China. I don't think Australia is gonna stop trading with.

Sir Ben:

I don't know. Well, I mean, if China takes Taiwan, I think it, Australia is a target at some point in time. So I don't know. Do you take temporary comfort, comfort over long term stability? That's that's a question for them, but. I think it is possible to reign China in. I don't, I don't think isolation of China is impossible. And as far as I'm concerned, unless the government of China massively changes, I think it's too dangerous to allow to become a superpower in the real sense,

Sir Gene:

It, it is a superpower. There's no allowance here. It is absolutely a superpower. It has nuclear weapons. It has more nuclear weapons than any other country, except for Russia. has more in the us.

Sir Ben:

But

Sir Gene:

I mean, saying it's not a superpower given that it trades

Sir Ben:

is India a

Sir Gene:

times as much as the us, it has more weapons than how's it not a superpower

Sir Ben:

Is Israel a superpower?

Sir Gene:

Yes. Because it controls a large part of the us.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. Okay. Look what I'm saying is they can, they, they, okay. So if you want to go to a, if you wanna

Sir Gene:

What, what is, what is the definition of superpower in your mind?

Sir Ben:

well, first of all, economically, they're getting close, but they're not equal to us, but they do not have the ability to the only country in the world that really has the ability outside of armaments to project power around the world is the United States.

Sir Gene:

Disagree.

Sir Ben:

Okay. We are the on look at our Navy versus every other

Sir Gene:

That's the only thing that we have is, is Navy. Yeah.

Sir Ben:

That's not insignificant.

Sir Gene:

It's

Sir Ben:

you, how do you move troops across continents? You know,

Sir Gene:

on railroad usually.

Sir Ben:

okay. So Russia and China can, you know, take over Asia and Europe potentially through ground conflict. How are they ever gonna get to the United States? You know?

Sir Gene:

But, but again, the, this idea that somehow you're your boats is what's going to win the war, I think is ridiculous because the us has never had any any Naval engagements since world war II. And this assumption somehow that the United States Navy is, oh, no, they haven't had any, what have they had? What what's that what's been a Naval engagement since world war II.

Sir Ben:

I could jokingly say the Gulf of talking

Sir Gene:

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's easy to have the, the best Navy in the world when you haven't actually used it anywhere. And what we've done is this is much like saying the us has the best army in the world because we took over you know, Iraq in a matter of two months. Well, yeah, but there was no army in Iraq. There's nobody that was actually fighting back. And I know I'm being hyperbolic here because obviously there was some of that, but I've spoken to a lot of people that were boots on the ground in the first golf war. That's my age group. Right. So I know a lot of those folks and there, there was virtually no resistance and partly because what we did is a complete bombing oblation campaign to the entire infrastructure. We took out electrical plants, we took out water, we took out everything. So by the time we had boots on the ground coming in most Iraqs. We're welcoming, going to a prison facility so that they can eat and drink water. That's not saying a whole lot for an army.

Sir Ben:

well, anyway. We're Hmm.

Sir Gene:

We are projecting American army and Navy supremacy based on the lack of actual conflict.

Sir Ben:

Well, you know, I think we

Sir Gene:

And we may get a

Sir Ben:

see here pretty

Sir Gene:

soon. Exactly. that's exactly where I was going.

Sir Ben:

so what I would say is given the number of submarines that we have that are nuclear armed given, you know, China and Russia have hypersonic missile technology that exceeds ours, you know, why they need that because that's the only way that they can counter our boomers sitting off their coast.

Sir Gene:

Not the only way, but it is the cheapest way.

Sir Ben:

yeah, well, we, we have it. We have that problem

Sir Gene:

are expensive.

Sir Ben:

way. Yeah. But they also give you greater utility in other things, for instance, I guarantee you, if let's say a lot of troop carriers started going from mainland China towards Taiwan, we could probably take out the majority of them. So I don't know, man. I, I think that I, if the us decides to project its power, I, it will be interesting to see what happens. And because I don't think the us will have to get in a ground war to defend its allies as needed. The only place where that might be is South Korea and South Korea, quite frankly, is the only way to stop the north Koreans from just taking over South Korea is to go with MacArthur's original plan. And that's to Nuop the north Korean peninsula.

Sir Gene:

Well, that wouldn't be very good for the south Koreans either.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. Well,

Sir Gene:

It's like new king, California has that. Arizona has few liberals.

Sir Ben:

well, you know, I, Hey that it's not a terrible idea.

Sir Gene:

Uhhuh Uhhuh. Well, I don't know. We'll see. I, I will say that my, my general take is that most Americans, whether in government or in the military for that matter greatly underestimate. China and they have greatly underestimated Russia, which now is changing based on what's happening in Ukraine, because with the literally billions and hundreds of billions at this point worth the weapons going into Ukraine, none of that is actually slowed down Russian progress in advancing. So,

Sir Ben:

what I would say there also is, it's pretty impressive what Russia has done by not taking the approach that the us did in the first Iraq war and being very limited in their use of air power. I mean, quite frankly, their dominance in the air could have ended this conflict a lot sooner, but they're trying to, I will say

Sir Gene:

And, and being very strategic. Yeah. Being very strategic in where they actually attack because they are going after military targets, non civilian targets, something the us has never bothered, worrying about,

Sir Ben:

Yeah. So they, I, I will give them that. So the they're being very limited. What I would say though, is, you know, the, the amount of aid that's gone to Ukraine is just ending up on the black market, alar large portion of it. So there is that. And the other thing I would say is we definitely have underestimated, at least the daytime fighting capabilities of the Russian armed forces. But you know, when you look at the us and the Russian militaries have just such drastically different tactics, so it's hard to.

Sir Gene:

mm-hmm it is. And there there's a there's a guy on YouTube whose videos I've posted quite often on no, just social who is, who's an American dude, but he was born in Russia and, and was part of the Russian military establishment. And he is written a number of books talking about the differentiation between us and Russian military doctrine and the use thereof. And he's, he's an interesting character, but, but he's also a very emotionally animated during these videos. And that turns a lot of people off. So if anybody watches him, I think his name's Andre, I can't remember his last name. But he's a, a white haired, heavy Russian accent dude that I posted on, on NoJa social. I think his YouTube moniker is Mr. Smoothie, but he, if, if you don't like his style of presentation, at least read his books because. They very much do cover the, sort of the differences between the Russian and American styles. And also he talks a lot about the American misunderstanding of other nations doctrines, which leads into a sort of overconfidence that is primarily based on the fact that the United States has not been in any wars since world war II. They've been in conflicts and they've been in fairly one sided conflicts, but they haven't been in any wars. There hasn't been a real

Sir Ben:

no one else

Sir Gene:

of American power. Well, smaller states absolutely have. It's just that

Sir Ben:

but none of the major power.

Sir Gene:

no, none of the major powers have no you're right about that, but this is also why I think every major power or SDAs their own military versus others. And that's true of China and Russia, just as much as anything is that there there's a, with a lack of testing, there is a tendency to compare your current tech and doctrine to your enemy's past tech and doctrine. And I think that's true of all the superpowers, not

Sir Ben:

well, you're always, you know, you're always fighting the last war until the new one breaks out.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Yeah. Which is why also there's a kind of a theory that. For the us Ukraine is really just a test of current weapon systems to see how well they compare an actual conflict to Russian ones. And it's not about Ukraine. It's not about any of this shit. It's just like, here's an opportunity for us to try a lot of different things in the real theater that doesn't actually, it's nowhere near

Sir Ben:

I mean, it's not testing the current us tech. It's giving them 1980s tech.

Sir Gene:

Well, we don't know that. I mean, it's GI it's officially for sure. Giving him old us tech, but we don't know

Sir Ben:

Mars and

Sir Gene:

the us

Sir Ben:

not exactly state of the art.

Sir Gene:

No, no, no, no, absolutely. And incidentally the more modern current state of the art tech was like the iron dome was next by Israel because they don't want that shit in Ukraine.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. Yeah.

Sir Gene:

And they, since it was cold or jointly developed or whatever they get, they get to say who, who gets it and who doesn't get it. Cuz the us was wanting to send that over right away.

Sir Ben:

yeah. And you know, for those that don't know, the iron dome is a missile defense system. That's actually been pretty damn effective for Israel. So,

Sir Gene:

Yep. That,

Sir Ben:

and even that though is late 1990s tech

Sir Gene:

I, I think it was two thousands. I believe.

Sir Ben:

the initial development started in the nineties, I believe.

Sir Gene:

They had a different defense system back in the nineties. But either way it's more modern than what we currently have. So yeah, design in 2005 and rolled out in 2011. So I think that there's a there is some of that happening. I don't think that like we're shipping the latest gear by any stretch to Ukraine, but I think there's also most likely one offs being shipped there that are not talked about in the media that we just want to get some practical usage of and get some data back. I mean, honestly, if we're not doing that, we're idiots, cuz we should be doing that.

Sir Ben:

Yeah, well, but do we trust the Ukrainians to do the testing or are

Sir Gene:

And that's why,

Sir Ben:

us military personnel that are

Sir Gene:

gotta hand it to us well or active duty on the ground

Sir Ben:

I doubt

Sir Gene:

they don't get

Sir Ben:

true active duty,

Sir Gene:

well, there's tons of active duty. They're just all observers and or training. They're not active duty involved in the conflict officially, but I mean, come on this whole revolution in Ukraine was a state department slash CIA operation to begin with. The idea that we don't have boots on the ground in Ukraine is ridiculous. We've always had boots on the ground. It's just that those boots are not wearing a us uniform.

Sir Ben:

AB absolutely. I'm sure the CIA is fully infiltrated and. Ukraine, in fact, a lot of the black market operations around our, you know, weapons and generating

Sir Gene:

The CIA is selling

Sir Ben:

they're

Sir Gene:

exactly. It's like here, here's the official$5 billion worth of shipments coming in which the gets sold on the black market for 1 billion or not even probably like 500 million and then 500 million goes into the CA black budget. Exactly.

Sir Ben:

absolutely

Sir Gene:

So, yeah, I, I

Sir Ben:

an organization that should be abolished.

Sir Gene:

what the CAA,

Sir Ben:

Yeah.

Sir Gene:

I don't know about that. I mean, every country needs a, a secret service.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. The CIA is outgrown their bridges a little too much, just like the FBI and the NSA and lots of things like that.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Yeah. I, I think that in terms of size, totally agree with you. I think it should be smaller. I mean, it is much smaller today than it was during the, the peak of the cold Wharf, but still I do think that every country should have an external covert. Intelligence organization like that to me, if a country doesn't have that, then they're relying on somebody else for their security.

Sir Ben:

yeah, it can be part of the military and it can be very externally focused and not this five eyes crap and everything else that we've done. Shifting gears

Sir Gene:

just getting around us laws. That's all that is

Sir Ben:

that's, that's a problem. Shifting gears a little bit, Tim had another guest on this week that this one pissed me off in the conversation and lack of pushback. So he had Rick's M Tom on there talking about a con con for

Sir Gene:

okay. I, I,

Sir Ben:

convention.

Sir Gene:

I purposefully did not watch that episode because that guy just makes me sick.

Sir Ben:

Oh, he, he, yeah, he is not a good dude in any way, but th they were on there making the arguments that, oh, well, you know, people who are against the con con, they, they really have no rational thought because you know, the ratification requirements or this, and, you know, we can constrain a convention really how'd that work. The last time we tried to constrain a convention to amend the articles of Confederation. It fucking didn't work. They went and did whatever they wanted to do. And to, to say that the ratification process couldn't be changed is absolute bull. And you know what, and here here's the thing. As much as I don't like Madison and Hamilton, they're a hell a lot better than the Rick end Toms of the world. So we do not have that greatest patriotic generation that had just fought off the British to rewrite the constitution. No, I'm sorry. I don't see a con con as a good thing.

Sir Gene:

So, what do you think dos are? It's coming up in the news a lot more frequently.

Sir Ben:

Oh, I, I, unfortunately I think we're gonna head to it, but I don't see. I don't see some great document coming out of it and maybe I'm wrong. But when even Rand Paul votes present, instead of against the NATO stuff, man, I, we do not have statesmen in this country. We do not have statesmen enough to rebuild a constitution. We just don't.

Sir Gene:

mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

So I think sticking with the current amendment process that as it's been used is the safer way to go. Because as soon as you turn that convention loose through parliamentary procedure, they cannot be restrained. So once they are turned loose, theys, write their own rules, they're gonna write whatever they're gonna write and they can write in whatever

Sir Gene:

Nancy Pelosi's gonna lead it.

Sir Ben:

No, no, no, no. It would be a convention of the states. It would be appointed by the state legislatures.

Sir Gene:

Well, you don't think California's gonna point her.

Sir Ben:

That doesn't mean she's gonna get deleted. The majority of the state legislatures in the us are Republican controlled,

Sir Gene:

You don't think that there's enough dirt on these people. See, this is the other problem is right now because of the, the. Massive connectivity that we all have and that there are no secrets anymore that I think the possibility of blackmail is so much greater for all politicians today than it was 200 years ago. You know, what's the worst thing that could come out 200 years ago. Oh, you had sex with your slave? Ooh, Boohoo today. Yeah. I think it's like, oh, you, you had sex with a 12 year old, you know? I mean, it's like,

Sir Ben:

So,

Sir Gene:

I just don't trust anybody. Here's the bottom line for me is I don't think that we should have it simply because I don't trust anybody, even if they have good intentions to not being swayed by black male.

Sir Ben:

well, regardless of that, even if they have good intentions and they're not blackmailed you know, how, how are they going to amend the second amendment, for example, to be any clearer? What, what are you,

Sir Gene:

Well, it would say that

Sir Ben:

I mean,

Sir Gene:

that, yeah, you're gonna define the militia as any government organized military group that is within the states.

Sir Ben:

Militia should not require a government organization. In fact, the irregular nature of a militia is a civilian fighting force, not a governmental

Sir Gene:

playing, I'm playing devil's advocate here, obviously. I'm I'm just trying to answer your question. Yeah. I mean, if they wanted to say the army, they would've said the army, they didn't, they said demo militia. Just like the term. Well regulated. If you actually look it up in dictionaries of the time, the way that I have well regulated is the same thing. As we would say today, a well oiled machine. It does it when we say, well, oiled computer, it doesn't mean we're gonna put oil into a computer. Yeah. That's that's what well regulated is it means somebody that is capable of executing things due to training and the readiness of the actual weapons themselves. It's not, it doesn't mean that they are regulated by laws.

Sir Ben:

completely agree. So, you know, we need, and we need to get rid of this idea of the incorporation doctrine, cuz I, I, I just, the, the last 50 years of the incorporation doctrine really being accepted and pushed is just utter nonsense to me. But if we go into a con con, what they're gonna do is they're going to codify that into the constitution. They're going to say that no, the us sub you know, the, the second amendment does apply to all the states 100% period. Well, that's stupid. That's not the way this country was meant to be the only, the only green, the only gold lining in this that I can see is if this happens and. It comes out so egregious and the ratification process is very simple and guaranteeing it to be ratified. And there's so many compromises in it. It might get states like Texas and Oklahoma and others to say, you know what, screw you we're out

Sir Gene:

yeah, maybe. I mean, there's already a big push for that right now. Obviously.

Sir Ben:

well. And you know, it would be the impetus. It, it would be an interesting impetus because you, you could say, well, you're changing the rules on us. Right. You're

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

the

Sir Gene:

well, how about the other way? What, what if at the constitu convention somebody decides to push out Texas say, you know, we're not gonna recognize them as a state any longer.

Sir Ben:

please do it. Thank you. Thank you, sir. May I have

Sir Gene:

I, I know that's your opinion, but I, but I'm just saying, there's like, you know, what are the bounds of what it would be allowed within the constitution? What, what if they say, Hey, the whole concept of states is just stupid. Let's just have a single country with no state borders.

Sir Ben:

Yeah, well, but, and we would go to provinces like Canada or anything else probably. And I have a

Sir Gene:

not, no, just get rid of the problem is local government. Let's get rid of local government and have everything be federalized.

Sir Ben:

Well, and here here's the thing. There is no way to limit a convention Rick's in toum and everyone can say that, oh, well, we can, you know, say that this is what you're supposed to do. The founders didn't even have the power to limit a convention. So what makes you think that you do it's arrogance? It's utter arrogance.

Sir Gene:

yep. Yep. That is a big problem in this country.

Sir Ben:

I'm slightly passionate about this and you know, I, for anyone who's interested and I'm gonna say something that some people will flag me as a nut job for saying this, but go look at some of the presentations that the John Birch society has done on a con con. I think they've done actually a pretty good job of explaining the history to people. And you know what, before I watched some of their stuff, I was actually pro constitutional convention because of the statements that were made, oh, we can do this, we can do that. But when you really look at what happened the last time around, and when you look at, you know, the, basically there is no constitutional power to limit a constitutional convention. So, you know, Congress can pass a resolution saying, okay, you're gonna go do this. We're only gonna do it, you know, in this limited nature, that's not how it works. The states call the convention, the states. Have no power over the convention, the convention is run by parliamentary procedure and that's about it and whatever they produce, they produce,

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Yeah. It's it would be a brave new world.

Sir Ben:

I need some Soma jams better than a dam.

Sir Gene:

Oh my God. I can't believe you remember. Actual little sayings like that.

Sir Ben:

Oh yeah. The whole the whole, one of my favorite parts of that book is the whole beta rant about not wanting to be an alpha cuz it's too hard and so on. It's like, oh my God. And then the deltas and their, you know, sexual depravity and all that. And oh man, it's a great book. Great book.

Sir Gene:

so what else go then

Sir Ben:

Oh, not much, man.

Sir Gene:

I finally get that, that gun that I've been waiting on.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. Yeah. I heard that sounds good, man. I'm glad you need to go to the range. You need to come over here and us to go to the range.

Sir Gene:

I do. And I I'll be in a better position to do that soon as I'm no longer employed.

Sir Ben:

Yeah, we we'll have to do that. And then the other thing I'd say is I found a really cool holster company. Here in Brian, Texas that has some pretty cool stuff. And I ended up going over and picking up one of their inside the waistband holsters from that M 17 I got,

Sir Gene:

Hmm.

Sir Ben:

which is a pretty big gun to try and conceal carry. But it, it, I like it.

Sir Gene:

You got the full size one, right? You didn't get the smaller one. Mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

Nope. I got the full, so anyway, it's a Ary and they have a combination. So the, their cool thing is that they're using, they've got the comfort of leather, but with the safety and rigidity of like kit X. So for instance, the holster, I got the outside, so not against my body, but to the waistband is kit X. You know, it's formed to the gun specifically. And then the back and what's touching me is leather and padding. So you get kind of the comfort of leather with the safety of kayak. So it's kind of nice.

Sir Gene:

I see. Well, I got plenty of natural panning on, on my waist, but

Sir Ben:

Which

Sir Gene:

the what's the is an inside or outside the whole, the pants. I can't. Which one did you say you

Sir Ben:

the waste man

Sir Gene:

it? Okay. So I used to carry that way years ago, but I just think it's so much more comfortable when it's outside the wayand,

Sir Ben:

Yeah. But it's harder to conceal. You're gonna print more.

Sir Gene:

but you don't really need to conceal these days.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. Well, I know it's one of those things that it's, it, it it's the only reason why I have never been a big concealed carrier person is cuz I never wanted the license. And now with the change in laws I don't want to scare someone with my gun. You know, my great-grandfather opened carried in fact he ended up quitting a job. I think I've talked about it on the show before over them saying you can't bring your gun to work anymore, bill. So I'm all for caring. I wish our society was normalized to the point where I could just open carry and it not be a big deal. But I don't feel like we're there yet. So I'm, you know, I'm not gonna worry about printing too damn much, but yeah. Again, I'm carrying a full size weapon and you know, what they say is you can never have a gun too small to carry and you can never have a gun too big when you wanna use it. So, I'm just not gonna worry about it too damn much. I will say that I was gonna try appendix carry for the first time. Yeah. That's if you're a male and you can appendix carry a full size firearm, I'm sorry for you.

Sir Gene:

What's the Bendix carry.

Sir Ben:

It's in right where your appendix would be on your right hand side there.

Sir Gene:

Do I know where my

Sir Ben:

over your crotch

Sir Gene:

Oh, okay. I don't even know where that is in the, inside the body. So how would I know what maps to it?

Sir Ben:

It was definitely not comfortable,

Sir Gene:

wait, so you're gonna, isn't that called a Mexican carry?

Sir Ben:

gene CGEN com

Sir Gene:

I, I think I know Mexican carry was just like a gun in your waistband right in the middle.

Sir Ben:

right. But this is with a holster and a lot of people do it. I, I there's some

Sir Gene:

oh, oh, okay. I'm the racist because somehow putting a holster there makes it not Mexican. Okay.

Sir Ben:

Anyway. Regardless

Sir Gene:

And you're the guy that just called it a failed NACO state. Incidentally,

Sir Ben:

that's because that's

Sir Gene:

sir, at Ben named dude,

Sir Ben:

been yeah. Yeah. Okay. What was that email address again? June?

Sir Gene:

sir, at dude named Ben dot period.

Sir Ben:

named ben.com.

Sir Gene:

That's what I said.

Sir Ben:

Anyway, the, the appendix scary has some pros and cons to it and it was something I was wanting to try, but it's just too uncomfortable for me.

Sir Gene:

I, I would tell you my, my personal most comfortable carry is a slightly lowered hip carry outside the waste bin, obviously.

Sir Ben:

yeah. Yeah. I mean, and if you're open,

Sir Gene:

the most comfortable open carry am.

Sir Ben:

If you're open carrying, I agree that a drop leg holster, you know, right on that thigh is a great position for it. In fact, that's what the military is doing for their side arms, you know? And it's, that's a, it's a great place for a holster because it's easier for you to reach. You don't have to lift your arm up so high everything. Yeah,

Sir Gene:

I think it works good. I I've tried all the

Sir Ben:

not gonna wear a leg rig in public. So,

Sir Gene:

yeah, yeah, yeah. You could wear kilts and then conceal it.

Sir Ben:

make very different fashion choices.

Sir Gene:

Well, that's true. I mean, I, for me, concealed carry just means that it's underneath the Adidas.

Sir Ben:

I can just see it now, Jean in a Jean, in a tracksuit with a shoulder holster under the Adidas jacket. Yeah,

Sir Gene:

exactly. Shoulder holster. Yeah. Dual, dual shoulder holsters. Yeah, so I'd like at the, this last weekend, I actually I did a trip where I took nothing but Adidas tracksuits with me.

Sir Ben:

you did

Sir Gene:

I, I did, I had four days, four different colors of Adidas, track suits, and they're all color coordinated. So I've got a bunch of'em now. That's that is my preferred uniform these days

Sir Ben:

Oh my God. I, I wish I could have gotten the picture of that. That's hilarious.

Sir Gene:

there. I I'm sure there are, there's actually video of it too.

Sir Ben:

Oh,

Sir Gene:

probably probably track that down.

Sir Ben:

Oh, so what else is new with you, man?

Sir Gene:

Let's see, what else is new? So got the gun thing need to go to the range to shoot it. I will say it's heavier than I expected.

Sir Ben:

Why

Sir Gene:

I don't know. I just expected it to be lighter. I guess my, my air 15 is super light. It's probably like four and a half pounds.

Sir Ben:

mm-hmm

Sir Gene:

This thing is seven. So it's definitely heavier even though it's a short barrel,

Sir Ben:

well, isn't it a

Sir Gene:

not the shortest barrel. It is forged.

Sir Ben:

it's a forged and milled receiver versus a stamped receiver for most AKs. So there there's

Sir Gene:

definitely. Definitely. Have you followed this? Yeah, go ahead.

Sir Ben:

I was just gonna say, everybody talks about wanting a light firearm, man. I don't, I don't mind

Sir Gene:

wow. You're pussy.

Sir Ben:

I'm sorry.

Sir Gene:

What? I don't know. I, I used to carry heavy guns and then I realized that it's much lighter to carry light guns.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. Well, you know, accuracy on target, follow up shots, recoil mitigation. There's lots of reasons.

Sir Gene:

there are reasons, but I just, I don't know, man, I've gotten to light guns and everything. My, I have a carbon fiber AR I have the Tika ultralight for my hunting rifle. And what else? I think that there's, oh, my shotgun. Yeah. That's so I've got an aluminum shotgun. I just, I like lighter weapons cuz most often you're just carrying the damn things. You're you're shooting.'em only a few rounds, right?

Sir Ben:

well, I don't know. I, I have just purposefully never minded a heavy weapon and it, you know, but I'm, I'm also not hiking in 20, 30 miles to go hunt where that Tika ultra light would be useful.

Sir Gene:

Ultra is useful when you drive to the stand and you have to climb up the stand

Sir Ben:

yeah, I, okay.

Sir Gene:

hunting with comfort. Yes. Yeah, no, I, I know what you mean and it, it does make it sound kind empathetic, but, but the extra two or three pounds of weight difference you definitely feel when you do have to make that hike. And it's not even that many miles. I mean like literally one mile walking with a weapon that is, you know, five, six pounds instead of a weapon that is like eight, nine pounds.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. And you also feel it when you fire that weapon and the recall mitigation

Sir Gene:

right now, if I'm going to the range, I want the heavy weapon, but if I'm gonna go hunting where I'm probably going to shoot three rounds a day, I don't want the heavy weapon.

Sir Ben:

Okay.

Sir Gene:

My, I have plenty of inertial compensation here. I can I don't, I don't need the weapon to take, to do that.

Sir Ben:

well, I, for those of us that lack that natural PAing gene, it, you know,

Sir Gene:

yes. Well, I, I think you've got enough. I don't think you're completely lacking,

Sir Ben:

no, I, I, my padding isn't where the gun would impact. So that's the problem for

Sir Gene:

but try holding the gun where the panning is.

Sir Ben:

God, no.

Sir Gene:

an image

Sir Ben:

yeah. Uhhuh. Yeah. So anyway I, I hear you and a lot of people are the same opinion. That's why the whole ultra light category exists, but I, I just, you know, have never minded a gun being.

Sir Gene:

Well, and I, I will definitely say that having the like my other recent acquisitions over all iwi stuff with the divorce seven and the whatever the hell of shotguns call, I can't remember, you know, they, they are heavy, but they are short due to the bullpup design. And so that somewhat compensates yeah. Center of gravity is in different place. Yeah.

Sir Ben:

Yep. And that's one of the things I've always liked about Bullpups in general is having that receiver further back, having the magazine further back gives you an entirely different balance point that, you know, has its advantages.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. I, I think there is something to be said for that. And I've got, now I've got a bunch of iwi ammo now I've got for every weapon. I've kinda, I don't know why I just started going in an iwi kinda here.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. Well, you know, Israel makes some good stuff from weapons standpoint, at least in small arms.

Sir Gene:

Good arms dealers there. So what's new on your end. Getting new guns.

Sir Ben:

Now, nothing new just, you know, getting into the concealed carry side of things a little

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

and gotta make some training rounds and, you know, I I'm a big fan of anything I'm gonna do. I, so for instance, I probably won't actually carry this in the way I'm intending to carry it until I've gone to the range and done at least some training and making sure that I can handle it the way I think I can. Right. I, it, it's not just a theory thing. It's a practice thing. So for instance, I've never really concealed carry. So I have to practice defeat my O overlay garment and things like that to feel where I'm adequate. And I'll do that with an unloaded gun many times before I feel like, okay, I've got this down and then go from there. So,

Sir Gene:

I'm gonna let me see if I can find some of my gift certificates for front site. That would be fun for us to go out to front site, do some shooting out there.

Sir Ben:

okay.

Sir Gene:

That's always a good time. You usually go through about a thousand rounds over the weekend.

Sir Ben:

Sounds fun.

Sir Gene:

Yeah.

Sir Ben:

I'll have to buy some more pistol IMO, but yeah,

Sir Gene:

yeah. Yeah. Well, this is this, this is why I used to buy more. AMLO in Nevada than I did in, in Texas.

Sir Ben:

Cuz sales tax.

Sir Gene:

no, because that's what frontside is. Cause I don't wanna ship it there. I wanna just buy it locally.

Sir Ben:

Got you. Got you. Got you.

Sir Gene:

And the, the local Walmart, Walmart, yes. Might as well be at Walmart. The local Walmart had a very substantial firearms and ammo section simply because a lot of people were buying a thousand rounds at a time.

Sir Ben:

I bet you, they don't anymore.

Sir Gene:

Oh, they probably don't. Yeah, I don't. I, I mean, these days you're lucky to get more than two boxes from a Walmart.

Sir Ben:

So did you see some of the some of the violence that was happening this week? There were several instances where people were trying to Rob. One was the liquor store and then one was a convenience store. Convenience store guy started stabbing him with a knife, the

Sir Gene:

Yeah, I heard about it. I heard about it, but I haven't seen the videos.

Sir Ben:

store guy. I, it was awesome. This guy's come in with AR

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm wow.

Sir Ben:

and start branding, showing him at him. And he just takes a shotgun and just nails him. And the, the, the thief runs off. He blew my arm off. He blew my arm

Sir Gene:

arm off?

Sir Ben:

No, it, he, he hit him in the arm and it peppered him. But, you know, anyway, they, the, the assailant didn't even fire a damn shot.

Sir Gene:

How was his follow up technique?

Sir Ben:

I'm sorry,

Sir Gene:

How was his follow up

Sir Ben:

it was a one shot thing. And they turned around and ran.

Sir Gene:

oh, well you should have at least taken two shots.

Sir Ben:

I I'd have been following after him shooting them in

Sir Gene:

I don't know. I mean, the way I was trained, it was it's it's always to the thoracic cavity one to the head.

Sir Ben:

Yeah, well, he was using a pump shotgun and he, you know, 80 year old, man, I believe, you know, he

Sir Gene:

mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

took care of it.

Sir Gene:

I guess you could do one shot without even pumping another thing.

Sir Ben:

Right. If you have one in the chamber.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Now I'll tell you one thing I did watch a video of which is fricking amazing is the, the new anti motorcycle, Rob regulations in Brazil. It's Brazil.

Sir Ben:

Yeah.

Sir Gene:

Where they basically, the, the problem had gotten so bad in people riding up on motorcycles next to cars, and then carjacking, ER, stealing their stuff or even pedestrians being written up on motorcycles. But the key element here is guys are on motorcycles while they're doing this. And apparently the solution that the government decided on was we're going to allow you to run over motorcycles now with a car.

Sir Ben:

Mm-hmm

Sir Gene:

And so there are videos on YouTube, which is amazing because YouTube generally prohibits videos of death. But these are definitely death videos where there is a video camera that is recording, you know, some street scene. And then you can see that there, somebody rides up on a motorcycle starts to do a carjacking or a robbery. And almost out of nowhere, usually some third party vehicle upon seeing this just goes full bore pedal to the metal, slams into the motorcycle, drives over them. People go flying and then backs out and drives over the people. It's pretty cool stuff, man. And it's totally legal now.

Sir Ben:

You know, I, I just don't see how that ends well for anyone.

Sir Gene:

Well it's, it's effectively, it's, it's allowing open carry for everybody in the country. That's driving a vehicle.

Sir Ben:

Well, but all you're gonna do is see a massive escalation of that.

Sir Gene:

But not in the robberies. You're not cuz now they realize that if they're riding on a motorbike, you're likely to die and they're gonna have to Rob people the old fashioned way on foot.

Sir Ben:

Yeah.

Sir Gene:

No, I like it. I think it is. It is a sort of a corollary to open carry it's like now your car is your open, carry your car now is allowed to be used in the act of peacekeeping, AKA homicide

Sir Ben:

So, you know, here's an interesting thing. I was doing some research because you know, wanting to do this legally, you know, the signs that everyone, when the concealed carry law changed in Texas a few years back before the constitutional carry and they, everybody was posting signs to not enter. I think it's a 5 0 3. Is that correct?

Sir Gene:

Yep, yep.

Sir Ben:

So the 5 0 3 only applies to concealed carry license holders. Did you know that?

Sir Gene:

Yes. Mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

if you're constitutionally carry and you do not have a concealed carry permit, that sign does not apply to you.

Sir Gene:

yes, but there's actually a lot more restrictions on constitutional carry than there are in concealed carry in terms of where you can go and where you can be. Like, for example, a constitutional carry does not apply in gun free school zones,

Sir Ben:

correct. And universities and so on, you

Sir Gene:

But a concealed carry license does. So there are differences. There is still a reason for getting a concealed carry permit versus just constitutional carry. If you don't want to learn all the nuances of what laws you have to do. Yeah. So I think

Sir Ben:

I, what I would say

Sir Gene:

be good if there was no difference. Ideally, I would like to see no difference between the two

Sir Ben:

I, yeah, I think you've just abolished concealed carry and make one set of rules. But when I say abolish, concealed carry, I'm talking about the permitting process, not the action, but anyway, it's just interesting, cuz if they don't put up the proper

Sir Gene:

at dude name.com.

Sir Ben:

if they don't put up the proper signage, they're missing out on an entire group. As my only point, it's a little nuance in the way the law is done. And it's interesting cuz I didn't realize that those are essentially no trespassing signs. It's under the trespassing laws that those

Sir Gene:

Yep. Mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

uh, it was an interesting to read about and learn

Sir Gene:

yeah. Yeah. And I, I think all the states use a similar template, like, back when I was a firearms instructor in Minnesota doing, you know, same exact kind of laws, same kind of deal. And in fact one of the issues that we we're teaching people on is that the, the font on the sign and the size of the text on the sign have to be compliant with the law or that sign does not count. And a lot of places just instead of buying pre-printed signs, just printed their own on eight, eight and a half by 11 sheets of paper. None of those actually

Sir Ben:

compliant. Yeah.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. They weren't compliant as signs. So it took a while before a lot of these places started putting signs up. But I remember having this conversation at target, like I was carrying into target C because their signs were illegal. They were, non-compliant and I was like, oh, there's no reason for me to not carry in here. And eventually we came to an understanding, but it was,

Sir Ben:

what I would say is, if you are asked to leave though, you still have the general trespassing doctrine that if you end up asked to leave, you should just leave.

Sir Gene:

yeah. But that doctrine is a lot weaker in Minnesota than is in Texas. In Texas. You can pretty much kick anybody out for any reason in Minnesota, that there were a lot more limits on what you can exercise the trespass on

Sir Ben:

well, regardless it's an interesting and new world. I mean, in, in, you know, what got me thinking about this was actually the conversation we had the other night. So Jean and I were on the phone and apparently someone didn't push the front door all the way closed and the front door came open slightly. And I didn't notice it until my alarm alerted me that the front door had been open for. 15 minutes. And it was at night, I was the only one awake and, you know, was like I'm gonna go clear the house and make sure that, you know, something nefarious didn't have. And I made the comment, I've got, you know, one second, I gotta go grab something. And you're like, you don't have one on you. And I'm like new. And anyway, it just, it, I hadn't even, I had been in the mindset of, you know, just castle doctrine, castle doctrine, castle doctrine, cuz that's the only way I ever operated. So guns around the house, guns in the car, that sort of thing. Just never permanently on me. And anyway, just your comment got me to thinking about, well, given the current change in laws, a lot of my original objections were, have been removed. Why am I not considering this?

Sir Gene:

mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

So there you go, Jean

Sir Gene:

So I got you to do this now. Okay.

Sir Ben:

in a roundabout way. Yeah.

Sir Gene:

Yep. Good. Well, I'm glad I had a positive effect on you.

Sir Ben:

Yeah, I, I don't know if everyone would agree that you've had a positive effect on me, but sure. A lot of that remains to be seen, you know,

Sir Gene:

fair enough. Yeah, I think probably a lot of people would say the same.

Sir Ben:

yeah.

Sir Gene:

my effect. I may have had an effect that maybe, but not necessarily a positive one.

Sir Ben:

Yeah, well, anyway, it's it is gonna be interesting also. Have you ever used a an optic on a pistol?

Sir Gene:

Yes, once I, I don't have any mounted currently.

Sir Ben:

What are your thoughts? Because everyone, I talk to says it's such a game changer. I've never done it. I've only ever used iron sites on a pistol or, you know, a laser.

Sir Gene:

It is a much quicker I think way to get on target. My biggest issue with it is simply related to holsters. Like there, you severely limits your holster choices.

Sir Ben:

So I think that's changed a lot because every whole, every holster I looked at during this process, all supported optics for the gun. But this gun that I have, the M 17 is optics. Ready? It's already cut. Ready to go. I just

Sir Gene:

mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

remove the plate, put the screws in for the optic and go. So

Sir Gene:

well,

Sir Ben:

anyway

Sir Gene:

mean, that's a good thing.

Sir Ben:

Yeah.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. I mean, there, I ha I think I still have it somewhere. Although I haven't seen it for many years, so maybe, maybe I got rid of it some at some point, but I had a, a Tricon pistol sized read that thing. And I never ended up mounting in, on any of my guns for whatever reason. I don't remember why. Probably cuz it was a pain in the ass and I decided there was too much of a pain in the ass. But yeah, I think in general, you know, I mean you've used plenty of red Dotts. They're easier.

Sir Ben:

Oh, yeah. Well, I've just never dealt with one on a pistol though. So, you know, most of my red dots are mounted to a receiver, not a reciprocating slide. So my immediate question on that is how well is this? So for instance, given the torture test that optic has to, you know, handle there. I mean, you know, you're talking a lot different reque stuff. I mean everything. And then you're talking about miniaturized size. How well is it gonna hold zero, apparently as long as you're going with like the Tricon or the Leopold the Leopold seems to be everybody's favorite, you know, they're, they're, they're doing pretty good. I definitely wouldn't put like a cheap Hollon or something like that on there. Because I mean, when you're talking about a pistol optic, it, it, that really is a totally different torture test than like an AR

Sir Gene:

mm-hmm yeah.

Sir Ben:

so,

Sir Gene:

Well, I mean somewhat different.

Sir Ben:

well, I mean, your slides reciprocating, so that, that, that optic is taking way more of a beating than an optic sitting on top of the receiver. That's just getting the recoil of the, the rifle, right?

Sir Gene:

But I don't think that, well, maybe, maybe I'll I'll I, because I think that the, the recoil on a rifle is going to have more GS applied in that initial fraction of a second than the reciprocation of the slide, which is at a much slower pace.

Sir Ben:

I don't know, I'd have to, I'd have to do some math. It just seems to me since it's moving and

Sir Gene:

the math and science. K

Sir Ben:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm not gonna do it on the show, but

Sir Gene:

do it live. Do it live while people are listening, do the math

Sir Ben:

Yeah. But anyway, regardless, it it's something that intrigues me. It's something else I'm gonna have to look into that I've never really done cuz I'm, I'm not much of a pistol guy, you know? I, I, I can shoot I'm decent, but I'm just, it's never been my modus operandi. So yeah.

Sir Gene:

yeah.

Sir Ben:

Now that we board everyone to death

Sir Gene:

yeah, exactly. No, there, oh God, there was something else that we were talking about that. Oh, what was it? That I wanted to bring up, that we discussed outside of the podcast. Wasn't

Sir Ben:

names, I don't know.

Sir Gene:

Was it computers maybe? Oh, I bought some new com. I bought a new MacBook air.

Sir Ben:

Oh yeah. What, what made you do that? Self-loathing practice.

Sir Gene:

What's got an M two chip,

Sir Ben:

Mm-hmm

Sir Gene:

is the brand new one. So I, it was time to get something new, I guess. And then the battery life predominantly, which is like 18 hours.

Sir Ben:

Nice.

Sir Gene:

So I, I need to get rid of my old MacBook air, which is like two years old, I guess now, but that did not have the M chips. That was the last generation of the Intel chipped versions of the MacBook airs. And yeah, so I need to get rid of that, but the new one comes in the much darker black, which I like cuz apple used to have black versions of their laptops back in the two thousands.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. So they also had candy colored laptops too.

Sir Gene:

they did, those were stupid, but the black ones were cool. And so this

Sir Ben:

Mac pros.

Sir Gene:

a lot closer to the black,

Sir Ben:

Yeah. Well, en en enjoy your en enjoy your OS 10.

Sir Gene:

Well, I mean, it doesn't really matter what the operating system is. It's always, it's basically running a browser.

Sir Ben:

I man, I disagree. So I'm, I'm still working on moving my main machine over. I've got two Dell laptops in front of me. One of'em is my windows machine that,

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

you know, Windows. Eleven's finally getting me to jump. So I've got another machine over here with a core I nine and 64 gigs Ram. That's running a Linux distro, and right now I'm working on getting drivers set up for actually the motu so I can hit bring in multichannel input, multichannel output, because right now everything it works, but everything's condensed into one set of

Sir Gene:

stereo. Yeah,

Sir Ben:

So that, but luckily there is there is some drivers out there that requires doing some kernel built rebuilding, but,

Sir Gene:

of course it does.

Sir Ben:

but it exists and, you know, between that and being able to run VMware workstation on it, I think I'm gonna be able to totally ditch windows as my primary operating system.

Sir Gene:

Yep. Is that good?

Sir Ben:

I think it is, I think it's a win. You know, I'd really like to go do something a little bit better. You know, something like cubes, but it's not there yet. Cubes OS is very interesting.

Sir Gene:

Not familiar with that.

Sir Ben:

So it, the idea is you have different VM infrastructure running different levels of security. So you would have your banking stuff, essentially, a spun up in one VM, Google it, it's pretty neat. And they're trying to go through and make a very secured operating system. I'm essentially doing that well, this workstation with VMware workstation and having different VMs and having that VM isolation but the cubes,

Sir Gene:

used to do that years ago.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. Well, I've always done that. So even on my windows machine, I've got, you know, VMware and tons of VMs. I even have a PF since VM instance to handle all the networking between the VMs and everything else, because you know, one Nat is not enough for me,

Sir Gene:

mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

yeah.

Sir Gene:

yeah, no, that's that's interesting. Yeah, I mean, nothing I do right now requires anything fancy it's 99% of my work is not web browser.

Sir Ben:

Mm. Yeah. I mean, a lot of mine is too, but from a work standpoint, almost all of mine is a, you know, basic apps and web browser, but, you know, there's a lot of hobby stuff and other things that require, you know, some horsepower.

Sir Gene:

yeah, I get it. That's makes sense. But if you can do all that in Linux, that's great.

Sir Ben:

Yeah, I, so there's a whole Lenox musicians, community that have been working specifically with the motu AV AVB since it came out. So there's quite a bit of development there around it.

Sir Gene:

Cool.

Sir Ben:

yeah, so it, you know, it, it's, it's something that I think I'm gonna be able to get to work and if not, then, you know, I can always have a windows VM for this and you just pass the USB over. But you know, we'll, we'll see what I can and can't do if I can get away with not, not having windows as a primary operating system and then that'd be great.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Well that's so I'm running a Mac.

Sir Ben:

yeah, that's a whole nother set of issues there.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. I, I don't know. I mean, I think the, the OSX is much better than, than windows for most things. It is a little, little more work to get at the underlying operating system. But again, I just don't do that stuff anymore. I just, almost everything I do is inside of a web browser.

Sir Ben:

Yeah, the, I mean, OS 10, it. There hasn't been a major lift and shift for OS 10 since, you know, the early two thousands. But there hasn't really needed to be. And quite frankly, you could make the argument that with a few exceptions, there was no real need to get rid of XP you know, that there could have been some similar tweaks and, you know, kept that you know, the windows 10

Sir Gene:

no needs for 11

Sir Ben:

no, no. And there are so many problems with 11 from a security standpoint that, you know, the, the real problem is Microsoft. I mean, Microsoft's settings, even in windows 10, the settings page versus control panel, the rewriting of that has caused so many issues, fundamental underlying issues. And it it's just, you know, I, I get what they're trying to do, but it, it's not beneficial for me, so,

Sir Gene:

Yep, yep. No, I, I get it. And I think certainly the maturity level of, of Linux distros is

Sir Ben:

oh, it's

Sir Gene:

greatly improved from, it was back when I first jumped on

Sir Ben:

Oh yeah. Back back when do you remember corral Lennox?

Sir Gene:

no,

Sir Ben:

So corral, like

Sir Gene:

I was used red hat. That was, that was generally my preferred one.

Sir Ben:

Well, Carll had stuff back in the nineties that was actually business oriented and trying, you know, word perfect and trying, they were trying to move offices to Linux for and off of Microsoft office. And that was an interesting one. There were lots of interesting Linux distros that came out of the nineties that didn't end up going anywhere. But then here in the, you know, really since the, the mid 2010s Lennox has really been on a massive comeback.

Sir Gene:

mm-hmm Yeah. Well, I I'd say probably in the late nineties is when I first got into it and if I got into it, meaning I had one machine that was running Linux and like five machines that were running windows and then a couple of Mac. But at least playing around with it. And generally I stuck with redhead stuff.

Sir Ben:

I I've always been a red hat guy too. You know, I like

Sir Gene:

I tried Debbie in, I tried some of the other distals out there, but I don't know redhead is what I kind of.

Sir Ben:

I always like

Sir Gene:

Yep. Yep.

Sir Ben:

anyway. Yeah, so Caral Lenox, which came bundled with word perfect office for Lenox came out in 99

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm okay.

Sir Ben:

minimum memory requirement was 24 megs of Ram.

Sir Gene:

That's a very small size of Ram

Sir Ben:

Yes, it is.

Sir Gene:

even for that, even for 99.

Sir Ben:

I mean in 99, I was on the windows side of things. I was running probably 128, me Ram, which was pretty high for that day in time too.

Sir Gene:

Man, I don't even remember how much I was running. That's a good.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. I, I can remember the exact computer I was running at that point in time. It was a Packard bell with a K AMD K six, two processor at 300 megahertz. So the hundred 28 megs of Ram, it came with 64 and I upgraded it and I also upgraded the hard drive and I ended up having a multiple, it was a, I can't remember the exact size, but it was a quantum fireball hard drive, which was, you know, 5,400 RP, fast, fast, hard drive for the day. And I put in a voodoo three graphics card, which was badass back in the day.

Sir Gene:

yeah,

Sir Ben:

It's sad that I can remember the exact specs of that could be

Sir Gene:

no, that, that is, that is pretty good. Yeah. I just, I think probably from about 96, till 2000 two, 2002, 2003, I really didn't play games. So I only used computers for business shit. And I think right around 2002, 2003, whenever battlefield 42 came out, whatever that year that was

Sir Ben:

1942. Yeah.

Sir Gene:

yeah. Battlefield 1942. That was that was when I kind of really decided to jump back into games and started upgrading my computers to better play games. But like I had the original voodoo card and I think I even bought a voodoo two, but I never got a voodoo three because I wasn't really. Playing games anymore.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. I so see me being more of a kid. I, I started like with castle Wolfenstein and all that, and just never really stopped. And I, my favorite lamb party game of all time is still counter strike. I mean, the, the was

Sir Gene:

yeah. See mine was quake. Yeah, that was

Sir Ben:

I played a lot of

Sir Gene:

was still,

Sir Ben:

I played a lot of

Sir Gene:

still doing quake during the land parties, but then I just stopped playing for quite a while. Yeah.

Sir Ben:

any of the open quake online?

Sir Gene:

yeah. Mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

it's actually pretty good. It's in, in browser

Sir Gene:

oh, I, I, yeah. Yeah. I've seen them, but I just like that whole running around a maze looking to pick up weapons and shooting people thing is just not interesting to me right now. It was when I was younger, but it just, it,

Sir Ben:

flying SP flying spaceships, that cost you real money, you know,

Sir Gene:

Absolutely. Yes. Flying realistic spaceships, even whether they cost real money or fake money is a lot more interesting. It it's something that requires more, it's a longer game playing session. There's also downside to it too. Of course. Which is that when you're playing these games that that are more simulation? Not, I mean, they're, none of'em are true simulations, right. But they're more simulation Your dedication of the amount of time that you're gonna be spending is quite a bit bigger as well.

Sir Ben:

Yeah, I, you know, I just can't bring myself to spend that much time. Like I I've got friends who play civilization all the time and I'll play civilization every now and then, but it just takes too it's too much of a time suck for me. So I, I, but I haven't played video games really

Sir Gene:

well, civilization four is really good or four, what am I saying? Six. Six is the last one. Yeah, I think, yeah, and that that's usually from me. Like I don't play it much either of these days if I don't play it at all, but, but when I used to play it, I remember it would probably be two to three days for a full game, not 24 by seven, but just multiple hours a day for several days. Yeah.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. I, I, I don't have time for that anymore.

Sir Gene:

no. And the one that's the biggest time suck is curve ball, which I actually haven't played for a few months, probably six months now, but KBA is where you're building the spaceships from parts. And then that is very much a simulation. So everything takes a quite a while and you have a lot of real world physics issues to deal with. And that game, I mean, like I had one of those games that probably ran for six.

Sir Ben:

I, I, man, I wouldn't dedicate that much time. I just can't, I can't bring myself to do

Sir Gene:

straight obviously, but just, you

Sir Ben:

regardless, just to have a single thread running for that

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Yeah. But you start with literally discovering normal flight and you're ending with massive bases on the moon. So it's a, it's a full progression that probably encompassed, you know, 50 to a hundred years of, of human history equivalent.

Sir Ben:

Yeah.

Sir Gene:

But I don't know. I like, I haven't played it lately. I'll, I'll tell you like yesterday, the only game I was playing is world of worship, which one of the advantage of that game is that your maximum time per session is 20 minutes. And if everybody dies sooner, then it's less than that.

Sir Ben:

Hmm. Well, I Hopefully we'll have some additional space flight capabilities after we get past world Wari here soon.

Sir Gene:

Well, somebody will, might be, China might be us

Sir Ben:

Or we could, you know, have no flight capabilities depending on how it goes.

Sir Gene:

well and, you know, just to throw more black pill stuff in here it is highly likely that if we do end up in a hot war, That China and or Russia will blow up all the satellites because they have both been testing that capability,

Sir Ben:

Yeah. There was an article the other day about Russian satellite stalking one of U the us communication satellites,

Sir Gene:

the us spice satellites.

Sir Ben:

Yes.

Sir Gene:

Yes. It was a Russian spice satellite that was snuck up and looking at a us spice satellite.

Sir Ben:

Yep.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, but the, the, the danger, of course there is that we could very easily trigger a a complete collapse of the satellite systems by introducing garbage from explosions that will then crash into other satellites, rendering all satellites for all countries inoperable. That, that is a chain

Sir Ben:

and yeah, and, and not replaceable. So that's the other thing is there's already enough junk in space that we're kind of getting to a point of saturation where having a stable orbit that is free of other objects is becoming increasing increasingly difficult. And if you have, let's say all the satellites that are functional and orbit today taken out in such a way where debris is just scattered. Well, now you're denying that space to anyone.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, no,

Sir Ben:

much a if I can't have it, no one can sort of move.

Sir Gene:

It is. It is in a lot of ways, the equivalent of a, a nuclear bomb for sure. And you know, larger structures like the ISS have had to have mitigating factors to prevent disasters from small collisions, but it's

Sir Ben:

Well, and there is no shielding for this, right? You can't because of cost and weight, you can't armor plate, your space station or your satellite. And as a result, you know, essentially something the size of a bolt can take out the international space station.

Sir Gene:

well, yes and no. Here in movies. Yes. Here's the, here's the problem?

Sir Ben:

not just in movies, gene,

Sir Gene:

Well, no, it is just in movies because the space station along with everything else that is stably in space is following an orbit and that orbit doesn't have to be perfectly spherical, certainly, but the speeds within the orbit are directly related to the altitude. And so,

Sir Ben:

and it's a relativity problem. Right.

Sir Gene:

yeah, so here's what happens. Let's say you have a satellite that explodes and a bolt is shot out of that satellite as a result of the explosion, right.

Sir Ben:

okay.

Sir Gene:

That bolt will raise its orbit

Sir Ben:

Maybe or lower it, depending

Sir Gene:

Nope. Nope. It only raise it because of that explosion, because your speed determines your orbit,

Sir Ben:

trajectory also matters.

Sir Gene:

trajectory in this case. Well, yes, of course trajectory does matter, but, but not in the way that you think

Sir Ben:

the only way it would raise its orbit is if it

Sir Gene:

mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

parallel to the direction of travel or plus 90 degrees so up you know, that 180 degrees sphere, if it's ejected in that direction, yes, it will increase its orbit. However, if it's ejected downward towards earth, that trajectory is not gonna be overcome by the cental force of the orbit of the of the satellite involved.

Sir Gene:

So if it, if it's ejected down, would it, well, no, it's not a 50 50 chance. The only way that it's going to stay in the same orbit is if it's, if it's traveling at the same speed,

Sir Ben:

Okay. So if we have an

Sir Gene:

will change its orbit. If it accelerates in any direction,

Sir Ben:

agreed. But you're, you're missing the point, but it, the relative closing speed is what matters for the the inertial impact. And so on. I, I I'm tracking you and agree with you on that. So two objects in the same orbit traveling the same direction,

Sir Gene:

mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

shouldn't be a large impact that said it doesn't matter which direction it's moving in. So if someone's in a clockwise orbit and someone's in a counterclockwise orbit, then you know, you've got a lot more con energy there,

Sir Gene:

oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And this is why we don't have, like, there are designated orbits for a direction of orbit that have been agreed to by all the countries. So you're not gonna launch this satellite that is moving counterclockwise in an orbit that's designated for clockwise.

Sir Ben:

right. But if you have a satellite that is destroyed and debris is then pushed into a counterclockwise orbit,

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Yeah.

Sir Ben:

the way, clockwise counterclockwise, we're just using these as terms for easy it visualization.

Sir Gene:

yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. The clock has nothing to do with it, but it moving in the opposite direction spinning around the earth in the opposite direction. Yeah. So if you have a satellite that is in a different orbit, that ends up exploding. And then as a result of that, the orbit changes, then that satellite may end up dipping into an orbit where. The satellites of that orbit are going in the opposite direction. That's totally true. Yeah.

Sir Ben:

Well, anyway, I'm just saying debris, but regardless it could get nasty and it could, you know, end up with a lot of junk up there that we have no way of

Sir Gene:

I think right now we're tracking everything that's over over 10 centimeter and there's about 35,000 objects up there.

Sir Ben:

yep.

Sir Gene:

So imagine the fun time of mapping all that stuff.

Sir Ben:

Thank you. Nor ad.

Sir Gene:

I don't know if it's Nora well, I guess Nora would have to know about it all. That's a good point. Yeah. But

Sir Ben:

You know, if you want your, if you don't want your ICBM to be taken out on the way,

Sir Gene:

Yeah. It's like, Hey, we're launching. Oh shit. All our stuff just died to debris. That's that's a very good point. But, and their estimating, there's 128 million pieces of space junk that are once millimeter or larger right now.

Sir Ben:

mm-hmm

Sir Gene:

So dust particles and, and up. So yeah, it's pretty pretty crazy that you know, that we don't have more frequent collisions, but also on the other hand,

Sir Ben:

the fear that we were talking about is big. Yeah.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. Yeah.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. Anyway, the, the problem is we launched a bunch of satellites early on with no real plans on how to deorbit them correctly and so on. And you end up with junk up there. So, yeah. And you end up with Microm impacts that take out something that wasn't intended to be taken out. Things happen

Sir Gene:

Yeah. I mean, solar panels are one of the most you know, prone things to be damaged because it doesn't take a very large object to damage. Yeah. It's a large surface area with fairly

Sir Ben:

fragile components. Yeah.

Sir Gene:

fragile as a good word for it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I don't know what I mean. I, I think that if we end up getting into a hot war with either China or Russia and that's the two most likely candidates, I think they probably, at some point will do the math on this decision and decide that it's better for nobody to have satellites than for the us to have satellites. And right now all our communication, you're talking about our big Navy. Well guess what? Our big Navy depends on

Sir Ben:

No, no, the us Navy also has a lot of ultra low frequency stuff. You know, for communications with subs and everything else. So, and you know, the underwater listening arrays and there's lots of technology that is

Sir Gene:

Underwater listing arrays. Aren't gonna communicate between ships that are 6,000 kilometers.

Sir Ben:

Okay.

Sir Gene:

you can do ship to ship communication. Sure. But right now the, the primary communication is coming over satellites for everybody, not just for the us.

Sir Ben:

I agree, but radio waves still work, so

Sir Gene:

Well, radio waves do still work and they can also still be jammed.

Sir Ben:

yeah. I mean it's harder to do, but yes. I mean,

Sir Gene:

Well, it's it's happening in Ukraine right now.

Sir Ben:

well, but jamming is so localized though. It's a localized phenomena. So anyway the other interesting thing that will, you know, so there's a whole big international treaty about weaponizing space and you know, not doing it. I am really interested to see if anyone has put, you know, rods from God actually in orbit.

Sir Gene:

One of my favorite movies which is the the one about the Nazis and the moon. What's it called black something,

Sir Ben:

Yeah

Sir Gene:

you know, the one I'm talking

Sir Ben:

I, I do. Yeah. Yeah.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. So

Sir Ben:

S character

Sir Gene:

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sir Ben:

iron skies.

Sir Gene:

Iron sky. That's right. That's like iron dome. So in that movie, there's a scene where the United nations is in a meeting and the, the president of the United States is. Trying to get them to see that the Nazis are coming to invade their earth or to attack the earth and then we need to stop'em and it everyone's kind of like, yes, but you know, I, we don't have the ability to, and then, then you watch a scene of a large American, I, I don't know if it was a particular satellite or just a generic American satellite just kinda open up and inside our guns. And then you'd see scenes of every other country's satellites that look like satellites, all of a sudden just opening up their shells and they're all military, they're all just full of guns inside. So I thought that was a great scene.

Sir Ben:

It's a hilarious scene because then the us immediately starts complaining about other countries breaking the treaty,

Sir Gene:

Exactly.

Sir Ben:

even though we, yeah, we were the first to admit it. Yeah.

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

India dammit.

Sir Gene:

that movie I think is, is greatly underrated. I love

Sir Ben:

it is a cult it classic the second one, eh.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. The second one was just trying to squeeze more money outta the same people.

Sir Ben:

Yeah, but the first one is absolutely hilarious.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. The, the the sort of idealistic German maiden you know, that's in there. And, and I still think that that speech is one of my favorite movie speeches that she gives about, you know, the, the, the cleansing that the world needs. It's it's.

Sir Ben:

Notice Jean is liking a Nazi speech.

Sir Gene:

it's not a Nazi speech per se. It just happens to be a character that was an X Nazi. That's giving the speech, but it's a speech that Sarah Palin then, I mean, the the president gives to the American people almost word for word.

Sir Ben:

mm-hmm

Sir Gene:

Um, but it, it is great.

Sir Ben:

Yeah, it it's very mocking of lots of things. It's it's a great movie. Yeah.

Sir Gene:

Yeah. So if anyone hasn't seen the movie do yourself favor, I think it's still available on all the regular movie rental places, even though it is kind of a cult classic.

Sir Ben:

Yeah. It yeah, it's definitely it's definitely more of

Sir Gene:

know if this is gonna work. Let me, let me try and see if I can play it. If it

Sir Ben:

on it's on Amazon prime

Sir Gene:

Oh, good.

Sir Ben:

and Netflix.

Sir Gene:

All right. Let's see if he can hear this.

Sir Ben:

Yep.

Sir Gene:

president here is the miracle you asked for. Okay. I probably could have cut out the music part. He will lead the campaign troops. Oh.

Sir Ben:

the volume on it a little bit.

Sir Gene:

Let me see if I can. I dunno if I can here. please. This is very simple. The world is sick, but we are the doctors. The world is anemic, but we are the vitamin, the world's weary, but we are the strength. We are here to make the world healthy. Once again, with hard work, with honesty, with clarity, with decency, we are the product, our loving mothers and brave fathers. We are the embodiment of love and bravery. We are the gift of both God and science. We are the answer to the question. We are the promise delivered to all mankind. For that, we raise our hand to one nation. We step to the beat of one drum. We to this world, we are the people who carry the children on our should. The same way that our fathers, Carrie, us and their fathers carry their, we are the one people United it's some, we are the one people of certainty, moral certainty. We are invincible and we have no fear. Anyway, I don't know how good that came across. I'll try and boost it a little bit in post, but,

Sir Ben:

Yeah.

Sir Gene:

I just like, they really captured that. Well, just taking sort of Nazi propagandistic kind of words and combining them with yeah. With very much within the American kinda exceptionalist mentality. And it, it, it fits very well.

Sir Ben:

Well, if you remember, yeah, a good movie, if you remember in mine, conf Hitler thought that England and the us would be natural allies to his third strike.

Sir Gene:

Yes,

Sir Ben:

And quite frankly, if it wasn't for Churchill and some of his dude at church, the there's a Churchill's war is an interesting read. For sure. Now David Irving is of course a very controversial historian, but you know, you can say lots of things about David Irving. You can say he is a Holocaust nower you can say lots of things, but. It's hard to dispute some of what he says.

Sir Gene:

As regular relating to Churchill, you mean?

Sir Ben:

I'm sorry.

Sir Gene:

Or just in general or relating to Churchill?

Sir Ben:

In, in Churchill's war that's a fairly well documented and written book talking about how Churchill really, really caused world war II in many ways. The lack of, you know, the lack of listening to German peace offers and lots of things up until, and before dun Kirk you know, the Churchhill financial situation and what he had to do to maintain power as it were. And anyway, there's just some interesting things. Also his book on Dresden and the fire bombing of Dresden is that is in a very enlightening book to say the least. So, and I'll just say this about world war II real quick, and then we can wrap up. But the only thing I know about world war II history is that I don't know the truth from any side. There's so much propaganda and I'm generationally removed from it far enough that all I know is that the allies weren't necessarily the good guys in full and our treatment of prisoners and the fire bombing of cities like Dresden, prove that to me.

Sir Gene:

Well, and I mean for that, go ahead. Go ahead.

Sir Ben:

Well, I just don't think the Nazis were good guys in general. I, I tend to buy into that propaganda at least saying, you know, yeah, no, I don't like a lot of this. So anyway, I,

Sir Gene:

Well the Nazis weren't

Sir Ben:

any side

Sir Gene:

yeah, exactly. Fascists in general are bad. Nazis were not the good guys and they were absolutely. And this is honestly the biggest problem. I think with Nazis, they were racist the restoration of German economy, the restoration of the German people to have a positive outlook online, those were all good selling points for the Nazis. And I think that they were legitimately based. The, the problem is the, yeah, the despotism, the you know, the, like let's say you after world war I, the goal was to gain back the German territory that was seated during world war or the post world war I era like that, I think could be a good unifying goal. But then you throw in the, well, the real problems, all these Jews living in Germany, it's sort of like. Well, now you're grasping at straws. You're just pointing out to honestly, other Germans who happen to be of a different background, but still living in Germany, part of the German society part of German mercantilism, you know, this is, this is not where the real problem was. So if I think in a lot of

Sir Ben:

was a scapegoat.

Sir Gene:

it was a scapegoat and that's, that's the issue. And this was one of the cracks. I think that formed in the, the Nazi movement was that people could point to this as being a scapegoat and not the real problem. And I think had Germany excluded the Jewish problem from its agenda. They may well have just been able to keep a lot of the territory they had and end the war in a a peaceful settlement.

Sir Ben:

I don't think Churchill would've allowed that, but you know, I, I think that there's, there are other problems, right? The bombing of the rights dog, the night of the long knives, there are lots of really bad things that happened in Germany, pre world war II. So,

Sir Gene:

yeah. Well the Nazi

Sir Ben:

coming to power

Sir Gene:

I mean, there was active all in the, yeah. The, the Nazi parties activities in the 1930s were absolutely designed to stir up people into a, sort of a, a fervor where they would want to support the party, making drastic changes to the government.

Sir Ben:

I mean the fair, the failed beer hall push what a lot of Western people don't understand. What, what a push is, is a attempted co it's an attempted revolution.

Sir Gene:

Mm-hmm

Sir Ben:

Um, so you know, the Nazi government, and this is, was not. And it was an elected government to an extent, but it was really a revolutionary government. When you look at what happened in Germany, it should be akin to what happened in Russia. You know, it, it was a revolutionary act.

Sir Gene:

Yep.

Sir Ben:

So anyway, the, all the revolutions that happened just the turn of the last century was bad. Let's hope this one doesn't follow suit.

Sir Gene:

Yeah, yeah, I guess, I mean, we we'll see what happens. It's I think when people feel disenfranchised and marginalized, they larger the number of people that feel that the more violent and the stronger the counter movement becomes

Sir Ben:

Absolutely. And with that happy note, gene.

Sir Gene:

let's wrap up.