Gene 0:15

That's a Sir Gene with me. And once again is sir dude name, Ben name, Ben. How are you? Ben?

Ben 0:21

Gene I'm I'm doing pretty good. I'm better than the people in Arizona.

Gene 0:26

May what's going on there?

Ben 0:27

Well, you know, some pro abortionist tried to storm the state capital.

Gene 0:32

Did they really?

Ben 0:33

Yep. Tempted, insurrection, everyone.

Gene 0:35

Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. That only works. If you're a storming the capital and you're a conservative, you see, I'm sure these people were not conservatives in Arizona.

Ben 0:42

This is true. I, I will say this

Gene 0:45

peaceful protests.

Ben 0:46

yeah, mostly peaceful. I, I will say that you know, I, I, I think this road decision is really, really gonna strain this combined with the gun. Bill passing is really gonna strain our societal bounds.

Gene 1:03

Is that a nice way of saying people are gonna start getting physical? Mm-hmm

Ben 1:08

Uh, I think they already have overnight. So, you know, the storming of the Arizona state house is, you know, not a small thing. In addition, you see protests mostly in large liberal cities where abortion will stay legal, which is funny in and of itself, but in then outside the house of Clarence Thomas. So that, that to me You know, I, I, I am worried about our justices and their lives and yeah, I don't know, man. It's, it's a bridge too far for both sides. I think both with the gun control bill and this abortion ruling, I think both sides are gonna get pretty animated.

Gene 1:48

Yeah, I could see that. I mean, I'm certainly a lot more concerned about the restrictions on gun rates than I am about the other stuff. And I, I think people that have been listening for a while already kind of know anyway, but I'll just say it for clarity's sake. I really was not particularly bothered before this decision came down to abortion and the most states had reasonable rules on it in my opinion. And now it's just simply left totally up to the states, which means some states, including the one we live in Texas here will restrict all abortions, which again, I'm like, okay, well that I think federalism and states each having, deciding what they want to do based on the population that lives there is probably a better route to go anyway. So I guess in that purely political sense, this is a, a good move by the courts. As far as pro or not, you know, my opinion, it, I, I think that up to about four or five years old, Nothing wrong with it. Been around way too many loud kids to say that abortion should be completely legal, but I also recognize that that's just my opinion

Ben 2:54

Yeah. And you know, for those who don't know, Texas has a trigger law that's in place. So in the next 30 days all abortions from conception will be illegal with only with the only caveats and exceptions for rape incest and so on.

Gene 3:10

and health with the

Ben 3:11

Yes. And health of the mother. You know, here's where it comes down to for me, I I'm a libertarian, I cannot abide the state telling me I have to live for someone else. I have a problem with that at the same time, post viability, there is no moral argument for the rights of the mother to abort the baby. As soon as that baby is viable, there's no reason why we shouldn't say okay, you don't have to have anything to do with it. We're going to take the baby. We're going to have a preemie, whatever the case is, we're going to care for it. We're gonna do as much as we can for it. And that life is going to live. You don't have, you can give it up for adoption. You don't have to have anything

Gene 3:53

devil's advocate in this situation then.

Ben 3:55

Mm-hmm

Gene 3:57

Uh, not everybody can afford$25,000 for hospital bills to have a kid.

Ben 4:04

And I, I think this state can handle that.

Gene 4:07

Okay. So you're pro

Ben 4:10

No, I'm not pro socialism, but I am, I am pro pro-life in the sense that I don't think we should allow a child to be killed. I mean, the state funds abortion today, so why not fund a birth? You know? I, I don't see those as in Contra. I'm sure it will be. Yes. Especially when you take and by no means, am I a fan of our current adoption laws or, you know, child protective services or anything else, but I mean, you're talking about life.

Gene 4:45

What about the life of the mother who has to live with the fact that she is forced to carry a child and then birth a child that she doesn't want?

Ben 4:54

Well, I'm saying you can. So I, I struggle with that because again, I don't think the state has a right to tell anyone to live for someone else. And that includes, you know, social welfare programs and me having to pay for them.

Gene 5:14

Yeah.

Ben 5:15

But and I'm not suggesting that a mother has to carry the child to term really what it all comes down to is if people were being responsible. None of this would matter if abortion was for the cases of rape or incest or, you know, were not used as contraception. I don't think this

Gene 5:37

the irony of all those purple and blue haired people. I don't wanna gender them as women, of course, cuz who knows what a woman is, but the irony of all those people with their signs and I'm not going back to the fifties, all of whom are products of mothers who didn't abort it's, it's sort of like the non-drinker rallying the call for abolition or non Abha. What was it? The prohibition prohibition being a horrible decision in which it was, but, but if you're, you know, somebody who is not a drinker and perhaps living in Utah, what do you care if the rest of the people are drinking or not?

Ben 6:22

Yeah.

Gene 6:24

So that, that that's got a little bit of that going on. Cuz these people that are in the blue states are the ones that are mostly protesting blue states, blue hair. And it is It's I guess in their minds, they're advocating for the rights of the women who are trapped hostage, living in red states who have no, no permission to leave the red states. They have to live there and birth children nonstop. And that's where the concern comes from, I guess.

Ben 6:56

Yeah. And, you know, we're just a step away from enforced monogamy and, you know, in cells being passed around and given, given women I and

Gene 7:06

Well, that's

Ben 7:07

I say that, I say that in

Gene 7:09

women, not be given women.

Ben 7:11

Yeah.

Gene 7:12

Come on, come on, man. Don't go down the socialist path.

Ben 7:16

Yeah.

Gene 7:16

in one. I'm sorry,

Ben 7:18

what's your email now?

Gene 7:19

my email. Mm-hmm

Ben 7:22

um, again,

Gene 7:24

your email. You got that fancy new one.

Ben 7:26

yeah, I did. It's what is it, dude, name bend, no dude name to bend.com.

Gene 7:32

you go, dude. Yeah. So anybody who doesn't like socialism, go ahead and email.

Ben 7:36

Man. I, I just, I guess my big fear and worry at this point is how far this extends and where it goes. I don't. So the Supreme court's decision, I do not have a problem with at all, because all, all that. First of all, you, you don't

Gene 7:53

a badly argued decision in the first place. This is just simply a fact. If you go to law school, if

Ben 8:00

Roe and Casey.

Gene 8:02

yeah. You, they, they are some examples that are commonly used in schools going to in teaching the topic of decisions that demonstrate strong judicial activism versus interpretation.

Ben 8:18

and here's the thing. The way it was set up and

Gene 8:22

Mm-hmm

Ben 8:24

the equal protection clause just falls apart under this argument. Now whether or not state laws around abortion are just good, bad or indifferent, that's gonna be on a state by state basis. And that's what people need to focus on. If you think abortion should be legal, then advocate vote in your local elections. So on so forth. The federal government does not have limitless power. Tim had a guest on last night that just drove me batty. You know, he, he was, he, he is a status. I'm trying to remember his name right now. Sorry, here I am disparaging the guy.

Gene 9:03

Chamberlain,

Ben 9:04

There you go.

Gene 9:05

or will not. Wilt. Wilt is a different guy. Will Chamberlain.

Ben 9:09

Anyway, status and

Gene 9:12

He's a lawyer.

Ben 9:13

well, and totally misunderstands the constitution. Apparently.

Gene 9:17

I'd like all slows too.

Ben 9:18

The federal government is limited in what they can do. And, you know, the, the, the other ruling that came out of the Supreme court this week, the second amendment ruling, while I appreciate it. The second amendment doesn't apply to the states and that's, that's one thing that, you know, people really have a hard time with, you know, your, the state has a right to its own laws. Now I'm a fan of New York now being a shall issue state versus a may issue state, but that's not the court's role. You know, states internally the state constitution is what matters and state law should be settled by a state Supreme court, not the federal court, unless it is a power that is directly granted to the federal government

Gene 10:11

right. But if the states start restricting rights that are enumerated in the constitution, which is federal law, then don't the federal, you know, doesn't the federal government have a obligation to step in

Ben 10:24

only where it is constitutionally mandated. So for instance

Gene 10:27

amendment, not constitutionally mandated across the entire.

Ben 10:31

So I, if you go back to the ratification debates so especially the Virginia ratification debates, it was a hotly contested topic on whether or not the federal government should be able to enforce anything upon the states. So specifically the federal government should ensure a Republican form of government, which in some states I would argue, namely, California, you don't have and Republican is little R not big R you know, the second amendment is worded in such a way that it can be interpreted, apply across the states. But if you look at the first amendment, Congress shall pass no law. So the first amendment does not apply to states. It applies to the federal Congress and in the theme of that. And when you look at their drafting of the bill of rights and you read the ratification debates, I truly believe the bill of rights was only meant to restrict the federal government. I'm a, I'm a second amendment advocate. You, you know me? I, I, I like my guns. I don't like this go.

Gene 11:39

socialist a little bit too, but yeah.

Ben 11:42

Yeah, I, I I'm, I'm, I'm a lefty that likes guns anyway. The, the point I'm making though is the federal government is supposed to be very restricted in what they can do. And the states are supposed to be the ones with the majority of the power. You know, they were arguing last night about the you know, having a strong federal government is important. And it's why we won't devolve into civil war, you know? And what do you want to go back to the articles of Confederation? Yes, actually, yes, I do. And I would say that the reason why we've had a civil war and why we're going to have another civil war most likely is because we have a strong federal government that is overreaching and overstepping and ignoring the bounds to which it was placed. And I think the two issues, both the abortion issue and the gun rights issue are going to be a, a point of contention for a long time at the very least. And you know, luckily so far, we haven't seen a ton of violence, just the Arizona stuff, but we'll see. I mean, Maxine waters was up in arms outside of the Supreme court this morning saying that we are not going to abide by this. Who are they? We are not going to listen to this ruling.

Gene 12:52

mm-hmm

Ben 12:52

Okay. I mean, I, if you really do have people start to ignore The laws ignore Supreme court. And the Supreme court has no enforcement capacity. This really starts feeling like the 1830s through the 1860s were nullification. South Carolina exposition and protest started building up. And I'll, I'll, I'll say it this way. It's always the north that ignores the law. So, you know, in, in, in the 18 hundreds, it was the north that was defying the courts. It was the north, it was defying federal law. And the south finally had enough of it and left. And it wasn't just the you know, fugitive slave act. It wasn't about slavery. It was about the abominable tariffs. It was about the states not being equally treated. It was lots and lots of things that built up over time. You know, you, you gotta remember that in the 1830s, John Z. Calhoun at the time vice president of the United States authored South Carolina expositions and protests. The vice president of the United States said, you know, a civil war is coming 30 years later, it happened.

Gene 14:05

And

Ben 14:06

we live in the information age and. Tensions are higher emotions are running higher. We are not in the age of reason that they were I don't think it's gonna take 30 years.

Gene 14:19

Yeah, I, I would certainly not expect it to, but is this not a good thing? Don't we need to have a reckoning in this country as the country's going down toilet

Ben 14:32

Well, it could be, it could be the reckoning that we need, and it could be something where America ends up in a divorce and we split up and AR you know, some states emerge stronger and better for it and others not it could be a total collapse, you know, it, it could be the invitation that, you know, if America really does go into a hot civil war, which I don't expect militaries on battlefield in the us, what I expect is protests.

Gene 15:02

a lot of weight goes is what I expect.

Ben 15:04

Exactly. Yeah. Waco's and Ruby Ridge.

Gene 15:08

Hmm. Probably not Ruby Ridge. That took way too long. I think that'll be a lot more fast decisive, overpowering actions in the use of military against civilians.

Ben 15:21

Quite possibly. But I, I expect. The secession movements to really gain some steam in both the south and the north. I, I think I think there's more and more appetite for it. You know, we, we, we live in different countries fundamentally right now.

Gene 15:38

We do, but here's the distinction is that I think the right is okay with living in different countries and believes in federalism. The left is not, and does not enhance all the blue state people currently protesting for the red states to not be allowed to make their own decisions.

Ben 15:59

Yeah. I mean, it, it comes down to, at what point do you allow people to make their own decisions? And this is why I use the term status and that's what most people are. They want the government to fix their problem. They want the government to enforce morality. They, you know, and it's on the right and the left and it's, imoral both ways in enforcing marriage, for example, you know Clarence Thomas in his. His agreeing opinion used some language that could quote unquote threaten the gay marriage the legalization of gay marriage, which the court also did versus a legislature, which is not okay. But what I would say there is why the hell do you want government enforcing marriage? That is a social contract. That is a religious agreement. You know?

Gene 16:57

Well, I don't think the government has ever had say or currently does have say in the religious agreement. I think what they have saying is the financial consequences thereof.

Ben 17:08

and what I would say is get rid of marriage as a institution entirely out of law and replace it with a civil contract take what is currently marital law and make it a contract, a contract between two

Gene 17:22

not have sex without having a contract in place

Ben 17:24

I, I mean, seriously. Yeah. Yeah. You and your cameras. One of these days, I'm gonna get your address and just drive by and hack those cameras and

Gene 17:34

Yeah, you do that. You do that. You'll you'll you can make a guest appearance on my only fan page.

Ben 17:39

I'll be scarred for life anyway. Yeah, I, I, there, there has to be some changes, but fundamentally the question is, do you want Liberty or do you want the state imposing it's man?

Gene 17:51

I had to jump in there. He said, do you want Liberty or death? Mm-hmm

Ben 17:55

give me Liberty or give me death. I wholeheartedly agree. And you know, my birthday was last weekend. We took last weekend off because of your, your computer issues. And then, you know,

Gene 18:07

oh, I thought it was cuz of your birthday. I don't, I don't know what you're talking about. Computer issues. I, I have no computer issues.

Ben 18:13

Anyway

Gene 18:14

So happy birthday anyway.

Ben 18:15

thank you. I, I bought another gun for my birthday and father's day. Yeah. And my wife was like, you're doing an FFL transfer. This is the second one. What, you know, why are you suddenly okay with this? And I said, well, you know, with the pandemic and everything, I've been buying ammo online. So credit cards have been used anyway. And you know, she was like, okay. And I

Gene 18:36

where'd you get it? Bass.

Ben 18:37

no, a local local gun store had it in stock. But you know, I, I just said, you know, if I feel like I need to hide my guns, it's probably time to use them.

Gene 18:47

Mm-hmm

Ben 18:48

So I don't know, man.

Gene 18:50

yeah. Well, you know my position, I've never, I I've I've everyone's got my fricking signatures and everything else, so I don't really don't care. Well, congrats on gun. I'm not a huge fan of STIGs, but you know, again, that's just me.

Ben 19:03

Yeah, for people who are listening, I got the M 17, the new civilian version of the military side arm. It was just nice fit, but you know, we need to talk about the gun control bill. Have you looked at it much?

Gene 19:16

No, I actually haven't. I, I, you know, wrote all my Nesty grams to the politicians that flip flopped on the issue to let it pass. But I, I have to admit, I have not actually read the bill.

Ben 19:30

haven't read it in its entirety, but the main things are, we're going to increase background checks for 18 to 21 year olds, which if you're between 1821 and affected by this, you need to immediately bring suit. I would love to, but I'm older and I don't have standing because this, this is a case for equal protection under the law. They're discriminating by age. That is not okay. You know, to say that someone is an adult at this point,

Gene 20:00

well, and that's where I think this is going is we need to raise the age of adulthood to 21 just to make everything, cuz this is already an issue with drinking laws, in my opinion. You can't forbid an adult merely by the age that they happen to be a restriction on what is otherwise and allowed activity.

Ben 20:23

Well in the, the way the federal government, if you remember in the seventies, lots of states had a drinking

Gene 20:30

Yeah. Because you can't send the guy to his death and not allow him to drink

Ben 20:34

and the way the federal government got the states to change that. And the way 21 became the legal drinking age was actually through the highway system and the federal gas tax. They said, you will not get funding if you don't do this same thing they did with the speed limits and everything else, the federal government has too much power, a

Gene 20:55

the states are complicit in this. I, I'm not letting'em off the hook because the states ought not to be allowing federal highways within their jurisdictions.

Ben 21:03

the states should not send a dollar of taxes to the federal government. Yeah.

Gene 21:09

You shouldn't do either. You shouldn't accept money, send money or allow any federal placements within the boundaries of the states.

Ben 21:17

So there are a couple of states that have decent laws on preventing state and local police from aiding the federal government. But the fact of the matter is the federal government ha should not have any policing powers. Yet. We have the, a ATF, we have the FBI, you know, we have the DEA and we are just so far removed from where we should be.

Gene 21:41

Yeah. Well, you know, we did have the voting age at 21 up until 1971.

Ben 21:48

Yes, that did that

Gene 21:50

So 21 does have some precedence.

Ben 21:54

Well,

Gene 21:54

the age you were supposed to get married.

Ben 21:57

well, you know, whatever the age of majority is, whenever you come into age, whatever we decide as a society, I, that that should be, you know, the trigger for you're an adult.

Gene 22:11

So 30

Ben 22:12

well, no, the other big problem with the, the gun bill is the change in the definition of FFL. So if you sell a gun for a profit, so let's say I buy a gun from you.

Gene 22:25

mm-hmm Oh, which one?

Ben 22:27

Well, but now you might be considered an FFL. So by doing so by changing this definition of an FFL, you're essentially saying to sell a gun, I have to get a license and do background checks is the way it's gonna be argued. Now I'm I'm I'm good. I don't sell guns. I just buy them. But.

Gene 22:48

is the cost? I remember I looked into this like 20 years ago. I thought about getting a, a. Type three FFL license, but,

Ben 22:56

I, I, I don't know. I haven't ever looked into it because of, I, I don't want the ATF to have all those records on me and what I have in my possession.

Gene 23:05

Hmm. I think the major argument was always cost is that they made it so expensive that the casual seller could not afford to really do it.

Ben 23:15

Yeah. Well, the, the problem is if this is a back door, which is the way it's being treated to universal background checks, it's a problem.

Gene 23:25

Mm-hmm

Ben 23:26

You, you don't seem so shocked by that,

Gene 23:29

well, they've been talking about it for 30 years, dude.

Ben 23:33

Yeah. I recognize that, but there's a big difference between talking about it and actually doing it.

Gene 23:37

well, we have a large number of senators and congressmen. What is it? 14 in the Senate and 11 in, in

Ben 23:46

All of them should be noted and voted out of office. By

Gene 23:49

I think everybody should be voted out. I'm I'm gonna make a pledge right now today on this show, I will not vote for a single incumbent on the next election. I don't care what party there. No incumbent. It's really time to fix that issue. And the bigger issue is that these are career politicians across the board.

Ben 24:08

Yeah, so you're gonna vote for Beto

Gene 24:12

If, if the if he's running against our governor. Yeah. Hell yeah. Cuz there's no way I'm voting for the lame guy. I said that years ago cuz he, he caved in. I'd rather vote for Beto.

Ben 24:21

I don't wanna live in that state, but I will say this, I will vote for the libertarian candidate.

Gene 24:26

Well, there you go. Why would I vote for Beto? If I could vote for the libertarian guy, I've done that most of the time. My point is I'm not gonna vote for any cus I don't care what they're in.

Ben 24:34

I will not vote for any incumbents. I don't like, I, I, I, I don't believe in party line voting. I've never done that. I always vote for the individual and if there's not a good alternative, then I will, whenever I fill out my ballot, I fill it. I don't just check all Republican or anything like that. And one of my rules is I never vote in an unopposed election. So for instance, if someone's running for judge or something like that, and they're running an opposed, I will not vote for them. And the reason why is because of some of the recall laws in taxes you know, it, you have to get more votes than they got in the initial election to recall them. So why add to that? If they turn out bad, I wanna be able to remove'em more easily. In addition, it's just the principle of dude. You're not even running it post. I'm not voting for you. I, you know, no

Gene 25:22

Yeah, the unopposed is bullshit, man. Yep.

Ben 25:25

it's and it happens a lot in a lot of really key positions, mainly in the judiciary. And I just do not understand it really. No one else wanted to challenge this, you know, anyway, I, I, I think that what we need to start doing it, we need to start saying is people being engaged, running for local office. And, you know, if you see someone running for a position unopposed, oppose'em, doesn't matter if you win a lose, just oppose'em

Gene 25:58

yeah, I did that and they got snuckered into actually running. Oh yeah,

Ben 26:03

well, and, you know, even if you run and maybe you don't win, or maybe they just trounce, you, it's still a note to them to say, Hey I, I don't have free reign here.

Gene 26:15

exactly.

Ben 26:15

People will call me into account and check.

Gene 26:18

Mm-hmm yeah.

Ben 26:19

So what's on your mind other than, you know,

Gene 26:22

Well, I'm just looking up the cost of FFL licensing. So 3000 bucks. So it's definitely higher than most people are willing to spend. On a license, 3000 bucks plus 500 to do the class three stuff. So if you wanna play with full auto guns, it's gonna cost you three and a half grand a year, a bunch of paperwork. You may not get approved. And if you do it may take a year and you're gonna be allowing inspections of your facilities anytime the ATF wants it.

Ben 26:52

Yeah. So, I mean, depending on how this actually ends up getting interpreted and how the ATF decides to run with this definition of FFL FFL, it could functionally end private cell of firearms.

Gene 27:04

Yeah. Yeah. And that would be a huge thing that the Republicans are responsible for.

Ben 27:09

Not a good one. Yeah.

Gene 27:10

But no, but I mean, no, not a good one, but a major change is what I meant to say by a huge thing. Yeah, no, that's absolutely the case. So I, I guess just going back to the whole argument about, you know, Tim, pool's been definitely pushing the idea of civil war is coming. I think that it's, it's gonna be instigated by the left, but they've also got the military on their side.

Ben 27:40

Do they.

Gene 27:40

And it's basically going. That's why I said it's gonna be a lot more like Waco. I think we're gonna have a lot of a lot. Let's put this way. We'll have way more civilian deaths in the same duration of time than what's happening in Ukraine, where Russia is targeting military installation and limiting civilian deaths.

Ben 27:59

Do you think they have?

Gene 28:01

I think the lefties consider everybody a oppos to their opinion and they control everything right now. They consider everybody a post to their opinion as a criminal.

Ben 28:11

yeah, but I, I don't think they control the military. I think the military

Gene 28:15

They do. Are you kidding?

Ben 28:16

in what

Gene 28:16

they do. In, in the way that they have a president who is the head of the military, that is as lefty as we've ever had,

Ben 28:24

Yeah, but I mean, in reality, are they actually going to follow follow? Do you think they would follow the orders of a senile old man? Someone

Gene 28:32

gonna follow the

Ben 28:33

even someone who literally can't even ride

Gene 28:35

superior. Who's gonna follow the orders of their superior. This concept that somehow the military has a sense of right and wrong in individually is total nonsense. People in the military are going to follow their orders. They've done that for thousands of years. That's how military operate. If the military decides to switch sides, as sometimes happens like happen in Egypt, for example, and depose the the newly elected regime it's because the military is now under somebody else's political control. Not because there are people that grew a conscious, you know, became disillusioned with what was what's going on politically and decided to flip sides? No, it's the military is the arm of politics that is granted the right to commit atrocities,

Ben 29:32

And this is why our founders did not want us to have a standing army you know, NA Naval power being able to project power abroad, but not a standing army. This is also why police forces in their current configuration being essentially armies. Yes.

Gene 29:46

You you're seeing what's happening with the the police department that was completely participating in the murder of those children just recently. They've hired a private law firm to fight against public records, disclosures. They want everything sealed that has to do with that shooting.

Ben 30:05

Yeah. And what Jean's referring to is Aldi, by the way,

Gene 30:09

Yeah. Yeah. I guess if somebody's listening to this more than the current time, if it's a pass episode, that's true. But you know, it, it, it makes you wonder was Alex Jones, right? And is there some. You know, non-kosher activities, a foot here in terms of what that shooting actually was, or is this simply the level of entitlement that we've gotten to, where everybody in that police department considers themselves to be of a higher rank than the service that they're working for. And therefore there should be exceptions made for them and they get to decide how they execute their work, not the people that pay their bills.

Ben 30:53

well, I think it's an, regardless of the motive, it is an overstep. And you know, I, I, I certainly

Gene 31:01

They were literally tasing people that were trying to get save children.

Ben 31:05

yes. Parents

Gene 31:07

Yeah.

Ben 31:07

be, let's be specific about that parents.

Gene 31:10

But it doesn't matter who, I mean parents or there was also a a guy that was a border patrol guard.

Ben 31:18

well, he, he ended up going in,

Gene 31:20

yeah, but he was still being stopped until he ended up going in. They weren't like, oh yeah, you can go in

Ben 31:27

yeah, the, the, the fact of the matter is the police in Aldi at the very least were complicit in what happened at worst because of their delay, because of their interaction. They cost additional lives.

Gene 31:44

mm-hmm Yeah. Back in the olden days when police acted that way, there was a hanging in town.

Ben 31:52

Well, and I, I, what I was gonna say is I think that this is a step too far. I think them trying to seal the records is going to do nothing but provoke the backlash. So there's already gonna be a backlash because of their interaction and what, what happened. The fact that they didn't go in guns, a blazing, the first officer that was on the scene should have confronted that shooter. He should have, you know, sacrificed his life to try and stop that shooter if needed,

Gene 32:20

Mm-hmm

Ben 32:21

but that's not what happened.

Gene 32:22

again, this is why I keep going back to the fact that the police, the military, everybody, except for firefighters, in my opinion, these people are there to get a paycheck. These are their jobs, the job has certain risks, but they're not gonna take those risks, given them the opportunity not to take those risks.

Ben 32:39

Yeah. Well,

Gene 32:41

The only people that I see constantly making a conscious choice to risk their own lives for somebody else's safety, with very little compensation to boot is the fire department

Ben 32:54

to boot, he sounded Canadian there for a second

Gene 32:57

Well, I meant boot, not about.

Ben 33:00

anyway I, I, I tend to agree you know, my uncle was chief of police at Beaumont, Texas, and he. He, he really shaped my opinion on police. He, he had a saying I had a job once I didn't much like it. So I became a police

Gene 33:14

Yeah, I, I wrote a paper in high school that talked about how, the difference between police and the criminals that they're apprehending has more to do with the the one or two friends they had than it does with any level of legality or consciousness. I mean, it's, it's the same mindset that goes into both professions.

Ben 33:34

mm-hmm

Gene 33:35

There, there are people who think that rules don't apply to them.

Ben 33:39

well, and there are good police. So Jack MCLE you know, who was involved in Ruby Ridge. He was there with Bo rides. He was one of the guys that talked

Gene 33:48

they're good individuals who happen to work as policemen, but that profession does not create good people.

Ben 33:56

I tend to agree because power corrupts. Anyway, Jack was a police officer in Arizona. He was known as officer friendly. He really pioneered the idea of community policing and, you know, had his officers walking a beat again, versus being in the patrol car. One of the things I learned from him is, and this is something that happens in policing today. Being in that car separates you from the people. So you get this idea of being separate of being seen as powerful and everything else versus you are walking the beat. You're vulnerable, you're out there with'em, you're talking, you feel what the people are feeling towards you versus being isolated. And I think that was a, to me a, just a very enlightening statement

Gene 34:39

yeah. And in the Texas clan, we got a bunch of guys that are excos they're great guys.

Ben 34:44

for those who didn't listen to last week's unrelenting chains in the clan.

Gene 34:49

Well, yeah, yeah. In the world of worships clan for Texas video game

Ben 34:54

what, what was your what was your leader called again?

Gene 34:57

Well, he's, he's really into Renaissance fair. You know, he does all kinds of mask and stuff, so I think he was some kind of dragon.

Ben 35:04

not helping your calls here, gene.

Gene 35:06

I've just, I play video games, man.

Ben 35:10

Uhhuh any, any any crosses burning or white robes involved?

Gene 35:15

Well, I mean, when you're sailing a German ship, it typically has swastikas on it, but there's not really any kinda, you know, Well, I guess the ships burn and their whites, but no, there's no, there's no. What are you, what are you getting at? I I'm, I'm not liking this this interrogation I'm going through here.

Ben 35:35

that's all good. Now June's just you know, you you're a Yankee it's okay. It's okay. You're just a transplant. Well,

Gene 35:42

I am a transplant. And I, I feel like, you know, there are people that have those bump bumper stickers about, you know, being the, of Texas and all that. And that I, I think I, I actually had to make the conscious choice to come to Texas. So, you know, I, I wasn't granted the luxury of having been born here.

Ben 36:03

the one you need the bumper sticker you need is said not born at Texan, but I got here as soon as I could

Gene 36:08

Yeah. There you go. Yeah.

Ben 36:09

the one I always had was Texan by birth Aggie by the grace of God.

Gene 36:14

And you have to be a Texan until, you know what the fuck that means

Ben 36:17

probably so Texas

Gene 36:19

not, not everybody knows who the Aggie are.

Ben 36:22

Well, my did pretty well in the world series, but Oklahoma knocked us out, man. That was, that was rough. And I was in Oklahoma when that game got lost college world series of baseball. Yeah.

Gene 36:35

I was gonna say, cause that's, that's not a state team, so it's not the world series. Which is funny. Anyway, world series, who the hell else plays BA baseball. What other countries? Japan does, I guess. Yeah.

Ben 36:49

Cuba.

Gene 36:51

Cuban Japan. Is there even the Canadian team

Ben 36:56

yeah.

Gene 36:57

is

Ben 36:57

Blue Jay

Gene 36:59

Oh, okay. What are they? Vancouver?

Ben 37:01

Toronto,

Gene 37:02

Same thing.

Ben 37:03

opposite sides of the country, gene and geography.

Gene 37:08

Yeah. So thes. Yeah, we can start a podcast

Ben 37:11

We, we, how not to learn geography from gene.

Gene 37:14

they're just not that relevant. That's all. No, it's, it's a we'll see what happens in Texas, man. I think that there might be a consolidated push for people from the blue states to move here, just to flip the laws in the next election.

Ben 37:29

It. I, you know, I, I think that that's quite possible. You know, the way this decision came down, the way this gun bill is being put out the way all of this is happening, feels very engineered to me. You know, and I, I think Clarence Thomas is an ID log. I think he's very true to himself Kavanaugh Barrett. Oh, shoot. Anyway I, I don't know that this isn't a set up for build back better and moving the needle in the direction of what the world economic forum wants. AKA 20, 30, you will own nothing and you'll be happy.

Gene 38:10

Yeah. Which in so many ways that's such a great prediction, cuz there are so many paths to get there and we're literally moving in that direction across multiple paths.

Ben 38:20

Yeah, absolutely. You don't own any digital content you've ever purchased.

Gene 38:26

no, absolutely it, well recently you, you may still own some from the past, but not recently for sure. And the convenience wins out every time, you know, I'm as guilty as anybody cuz I've been buying games on steam because it's super handy to just click a button and have a game pop up on your computer instantly. Back in the old days, we used to go to stores to buy CDs or DVDs with games on them.

Ben 38:52

And you know, if you don't have kids and you don't wanna hand stuff down, then that's fine. But you know, if you want to pass down your library or your music collection or anything like that, that's no longer a thing.

Gene 39:05

Nope. Of course. Kids usually just sell that shit, but yeah.

Ben 39:09

Yeah. But at least there's an economic transfer. This is just wasted.

Gene 39:14

Yeah, it's we we're going to a society of leasing and renting versus owning.

Ben 39:19

and with interest rates moving and changing, I don't know about in Austin, but here the housing market is already feeling it.

Gene 39:25

Really no, Austin market is still pretty, pretty strong, but that's the Austin market is mostly fueled by two things. One is Californians selling a two bedroom house for one and a half million in California and moving to Austin going, oh my God, I can get four bedrooms for a million and a half. And then the other issue is we've had a lot of corporate housing purchasing going on in order to rent houses, to a lot of the people moving here to Tesla and other companies, cuz the, the rental market's like crazy prices have tripled on what rents used to be from 10 years ago.

Ben 40:00

Yeah, a friend of mine in DFW was just complaining to me that their rent went up by 12 or 15% this year. Yeah.

Gene 40:08

Yeah. I mean, people are like, rent's increasing literally a thousand bucks in the course of a couple years. Well

Ben 40:14

I mean, E even a 12 to 15% increase is pretty substantial.

Gene 40:19

that's inflation.

Ben 40:20

true. True.

Gene 40:21

that's our, our inflation at best is 15 and probably more realistically is about 23. Right? Based on the shadow stats stuff.

Ben 40:30

Well, and for those who don't know, that's looking at, you know, prices of gas, for example, and staple goods and thing, you know, calculating inflation the way we did up until about the 1970s

Gene 40:43

I think the late eighties as that would've changed

Ben 40:46

Carter made some changes to the way it was done because of the inflation that was going on under him. Now, the shadow stats model may be the same from the eighties, but the original changes in the way inflation happened was under Carter because you know, same thing as in, I, I really think that Biden barring a civil war and him being Buchanan at the, at the best, he will be a.

Gene 41:11

mm-hmm oh, I think he's out covered Carter already.

Ben 41:14

Yeah. So if we don't have a civil war and he doesn't become Buchanan who do you think is gonna be the next Reagan DeSantis?

Gene 41:21

Probably not. Although I do like DeSantis and I totally plan on voting for him. I don't care if he's on the ticket or not, I'm voting DeSantis, but it'll have to be somebody that came from the liberal side and is prominent in flip flops.

Ben 41:36

Why is that?

Gene 41:37

That's what Reagan was.

Ben 41:38

Mmm, I, I mean, so you could be making the argument for Trump there.

Gene 41:41

No, definitely not way too old. No, it's gotta be somebody way younger.

Ben 41:45

well, I, you know, you could what's the Congresswoman from Hawaii, former.

Gene 41:51

Yeah. Yeah. She could be that. She has to run. She's not running right now.

Ben 41:56

What was her, what was her name?

Gene 41:59

Oh God dammit. What is her name? I'm actually subscribed to her stuff. See, now you're making knee blank out. Da, da. I'm gonna look her up. Tulsa Gabbard.

Ben 42:06

Chelsea Gabbard. I wanted to like, have wanted to say Gabby Carter, but that's a totally different person.

Gene 42:11

right. Yeah,

Ben 42:14

not sure

Gene 42:14

I, I like her. She looks good in the bikini. I mean, you know, the important bits,

Ben 42:19

little old for you though.

Gene 42:21

She's on a lot of counts. She is the most reasonable of people who still call themselves left and I keep waiting for her to drop that moniker.

Ben 42:34

Yeah. And you know,

Gene 42:36

sure is held. Doesn't want

Ben 42:37

the parties left her. I, I, I can see her as a vice presidential candidate, so, you know, and I'm just blanking on names today, but there was the the ticket of while back where you had a Republican and the independent guy running together,

Gene 42:53

Hmm,

Ben 42:54

little short guy. I can't remember

Gene 42:56

little shirt guy.

Ben 42:57

Yeah. You

Gene 42:58

Deka?

Ben 42:59

know? Anyway, doesn't matter. I can see a mix ticket. I can see I can see

Gene 43:03

I think she's more likely to be nominated to to be the head of some department by Republican president,

Ben 43:12

Hmm. That's a possibility

Gene 43:13

you know, whatever, the thing that she's interested in that they're willing to give her.

Ben 43:21

Yeah. I, I, I can see a Trump DeSantis ticket really taking over and, you know, if Trump got in there and just said, you're fired to everybody,

Gene 43:30

mm-hmm

Ben 43:31

uh, and then let DeSantis rebuild for eight years after. And we had good 12 solid years. I mean, that could be a good thing, but I don't know, man, I don't see the left would lose their collective minds and maybe they just eat themselves and it fizzles out.

Gene 43:47

is where I, I think it's impossible for Trump to get reelected. And I don't think he ought be running because

Ben 43:55

think he should be running either, but I

Gene 43:56

regardless of the fact that he got more votes than he passed candidate in the history of elections for the president, he's still lost. And if somebody thinks that the, the liberals are gonna allow Trump to get elected again, they're insane. It it's gonna be a much stronger effort if he's the lead candidate to where instead of, you know, collecting ballots from a hundred people, they're gonna collect ballots from a thousand people, half of whom are debt, but they, they will guarantee that Trump loses and the Supreme court will once again say no one has standing in, in election. So the only people I can Sue are the two people running. Everybody else has no standing as far as they're concerned, which is, I think a misinterpretation of the law, but they get to do that because they're the Supreme court.

Ben 44:47

did you see that the Texas G O P said that Biden is not a legitimate president?

Gene 44:52

Yeah. Yep. So that

Ben 44:54

Yeah. But you know, we're not, we're not moving towards civil war.

Gene 44:58

Doesn't really mean anything, but sure.

Ben 45:00

I, I, I actually think it's pretty symbolic. Right.

Gene 45:04

Yeah. That's all it is. That's my point is it's purely symbolic.

Ben 45:09

a, it's symbolic of where

Gene 45:10

It doesn't affect the

Ben 45:11

the legislature

Gene 45:12

but it doesn't affect the state's interaction with the federal government, even though the state believes that the federal government is legitimate

Ben 45:19

well, it's a party, but it's the party in control of the state of Texas currently. So no

Gene 45:23

Yeah, but nothing's changed since that came out is my point.

Ben 45:27

nothing has changed except, you know, we, we are going to be moving, but it's the rhetoric. I mean, what happens bef before any war or any civil conflict or strife, the, the rhetoric increases, people get violent and then you either resolve the conflict in the issue, or it eventually goes kinetic. And you know, this is one thing that I, I get in arguments about. Surprisingly frequently, you know, the argument that violence is never the answer. No. At some point violence is the only answer that is

Gene 46:03

oh yeah. Violence is really the only answer ever. everything else is just negotiation

Ben 46:10

Well, every

Gene 46:11

without the threat of violence. There's no need to negotiate.

Ben 46:15

Exactly. And where we're headed is the, I mean, look at what has happened over the last few years. Look at

Gene 46:23

And I'm a pacifist.

Ben 46:24

largely I am as well. But what I would say is it, one side has exercised violence so far not

Gene 46:30

Yeah.

Ben 46:31

and the, the backlash is coming

Gene 46:36

Oh yeah. But we've been saying that for a long time. So the real question is, are we saying that the backlash is coming this year, this decade, the next a hundred years? cause I, I don't have a good pulse on when it's coming. Cuz all I hear is rhetoric.

Ben 46:53

Well, like I said, at the beginning of the show when this started in the first of war, it took about 30 years worth of buildup. I think that you could say that the first real tear in this in, in, in where we're at today could. Bush V gore, right? You go back to that and people sing Bush as an illegitimate president and, you know, the left, not wanting to accept that election and you know, going from there and it's being, you know, it's building, building, building. So, you know, even if you don't take that as an initial start point and you just look at what's the rate of escalation over the last couple of years, I, I don't see, I don't see us getting out of this decade without either an authoritarian boot on our next or some massive, massive political shifts and changes.

Gene 47:44

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It it's, you know, when we had the the protestors here in Austin blocking the streets and the one of the guys ended up feeling threatened and shot a pro a protestor that was

Ben 48:00

blocking the road

Gene 48:02

Yeah. Well, not just blocking, but he

Ben 48:03

on his car.

Gene 48:05

yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and I think he had a gun as well, but you know, when that happened, I was like, oh, well, let's see if this is something that starts happening across the country where people have had enough. We're gonna have a moment where this is going to be flipping the switch and saying, no, you guys don't get to do whatever you want and build violence on challenge because the all the attorney generals have been put in by Soros. And no one's willing to actually. Arrest these folks or at least to, I mean, they're arrested, but they're, they're released instantly because the prosecutors are not prosecuting. And this goes back to your argument about like every, we should have grand juries for everything.

Ben 48:47

mm-hmm

Gene 48:48

Um, but it, it really didn't happen. It just like, it kind of slowed down the protests here in Austin, but that's about it.

Ben 48:58

well in written house would be another case of the same sort of

Gene 49:01

yeah. But yeah, so I, I think the post written house protests in Wisconsin probably slowed down and Illinois protests were at least slowed down, but there's not enough of that. And I, I don't mean not enough violence. What I mean is not enough people that are pushing back

Ben 49:20

So here, here, here's where I think that may change. And I think that this this abortion decision is why I think it's gonna be a catalyst. So you already have calls to violence from the left. You already have calls to ignore the laws and. W, you know, there's been predictions and we'll see what happens over the weekend. There wasn't much that happened last night, other than, you know, rating of the Arizona state house. Which is significant, but I think you're gonna see churches and you know, these pro-life clinics burned. And I think what you're gonna see, you know, and Tim has called, you know, protect your churches and do all this. Well, I, man, I, I don't know about you, but I don't wanna kill someone over a building and I don't want to

Gene 50:10

oh, I would've no

Ben 50:11

I, I, yeah, I, I don't wanna put myself

Gene 50:14

doing that for

Ben 50:14

I don't wanna put myself in that position, but what I'm saying is I, I'm not gonna go out and protect a church and stop someone from burning it down. I'm not gonna go protect a clinic and stop someone from burning it down at the cost of a human life. But I'm telling you right now, there are people who are going to.

Gene 50:31

well, good. I mean, I think that if that happens, then we'll see actual change. But my suspicion is that there'll be very few and far between there'll be one here, one there there's not gonna be enough of a mass movement to call the violence that's happening from the other side, the only way to stop violence. And this is why police are armed is with violence. There, there is no talking in one of these black, black Antifa people talking to them and changing their mind. It doesn't happen. It's not ever gonna happen. The, the only thing that people that are committing violence understand. Is a greater inflection of violence upon them. That's it? That that's it literally is the argument for having police in the first place.

Ben 51:23

Well, yeah. And when you say violence, you don't necessarily mean equivalent. What you mean is so doing so, doing them in, whatever me, by whatever means necessary. So I, I don't know, man. I, I think that it,

Gene 51:36

What, I'll give you an example. Violence is what happened with the January 6th nonviolent protestors, the response back at them by the federal government has been greatly more violent than their violence in coming into the capital

Ben 51:55

yeah, absolutely. The

Gene 51:57

I've been sitting in prison for over a year. Yeah. In solitary over a year without charges

Ben 52:03

Yep.

Gene 52:03

and not a single court is willing to do anything about that.

Ben 52:08

Which. It further degradation of our society and why this all is gonna have to fall

Gene 52:15

because of political opinion.

Ben 52:17

Yeah. And this is why it's a problem. And you know, what, what I'm saying though, is I, I think that I, so here here's something that you may not see because you're not in the same circles. I am, I'm seeing churches who have organized security details where the parishioners have, you know, sent some of the church shootings and things like that come together and said, okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna conceal carry. We're gonna, you know, be strategically placed in church and so on and so forth. I see some of these churches putting up people to watch the church and to make sure because there is a fear that some of these leftist terrorists are going to burn things down.

Gene 52:58

they will. That's their motive. That's and magically bricks and gasoline appear every time. Well,

Ben 53:04

Right. So what I, what I'm saying though, is I, I think the churches and some of these groups are already preparing a response and are, it's gonna be, it's going to be a, some long summer of civil strife is what I fully expect. I don't,

Gene 53:25

No, because the alternative is worse. The alternative is a further erosion of rights because there is no pushback. The alternative is the next compromise bill. That'll come outta Congress. Won't be for 18 year olds. It'll be for 50 year olds. Ah, you're too old to own a gun, you know, you're Cile now. Sorry. And that's Jack the tax on ammo to some unreasonable amount of money, so, oh, you're too poor owned again. Sorry.

Ben 53:56

remember, there, there are two things that I would say this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. You know, I, I

Gene 54:03

I'm all for that.

Ben 54:06

all for what?

Gene 54:07

I'm all for a big reset. I think that people have fucked up things so much lately that without some kind of a big reset taking place, that we're, we're fast moving to what Jones described as prison planet,

Ben 54:23

yeah. And you know that I agree, but with that big reset, there there's even people calling for a convention of the states, which you know, on the no, no, no, no.

Gene 54:35

not a convention.

Ben 54:36

Well, but anytime you do that, you, you, you are gambling on the outcome.

Gene 54:43

Yeah. But because that gamble is better than the alternative. And right now people clearly think the alternative is better than the gamble. Like, well, they things couldn't get that bad. So it's really not worth trying to push any harder on this issue. You, you have people that were voted in to protect our civil rights, including the second amendment of whom a significant enough portion has decided to play. Nice with their counterparts in the Senate and the house, instead of serving the constituence that elected them, they don't care cuz they know nothing's gonna change. They know they're gonna get reelected. I sent that letter to koan saying, Hey, congratulations on your last term, he's gonna get reelected people. Aren't gonna do what I'm doing. They're not gonna throw the bastards out. They don't care because they have people that have done the math. They've they've got actuarials predicting the outcomes of these things.

Ben 55:43

so what's your line where you say, okay, violence is now an option I'm picking up arms.

Gene 55:49

So I think that when I'm threatened with violence, I will respond accordingly.

Ben 55:55

Well, that, that's not what I asked, but, you know, I I'm just saying at what point

Gene 56:00

Well, that is the point is so far I haven't been threatened with violence. You know, AB abortion is not a major issue for me. so if I am threatened with violence and it becomes a major issue, well then I will respond accordingly. What's yours.

Ben 56:18

Well, I, I mean, part of the reason why I'm doing this podcast with you is because I think that we are getting to that watershed moment and, you know, crossing the Rubicon is imminent. And once we get to that point in overturn any hope for nonviolent means of resolution go out the window. So I'm lending my voice to this and saying these things as a warning and trying to get my ideas heard

Gene 56:44

Mm-hmm

Ben 56:45

that said, you know, what I, what I told my wife the other day is when I feel like I need to hide my guns, it's time to use them.

Gene 56:54

yeah, I I've heard you say

Ben 56:55

that, that that's a, that that's my line. I'm, I'm not gonna,

Gene 56:59

So is the gun issue, the only issue you'd be willing to become violent about?

Ben 57:04

no, but I'm not gonna do it over you know, abortion. That's not, that's not my line in the sand. I know it is for a lot of people. But you know, I, I think that's. Man. I don't know. I, I just really would like Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, just let's leave. Just let, let the rest of it burn down.

Gene 57:23

but you know, that's not gonna be a panacea either because even though. We have a, at least so far a conservative majorities all three of the cities have liberal majorities.

Ben 57:35

Mm-hmm

Gene 57:36

And actually, I don't know about San Antonio, but definitely Austin Houston and DFW have liberal majorities.

Ben 57:43

not Fort worth. And most of the mid cities and so on are pretty

Gene 57:47

DFW as a unit certainly is more liberal than conservative.

Ben 57:50

It's pretty close to 50 50.

Gene 57:53

Well, they vote liberal. If you look at the voting maps, they voted liberal conserv conservatives don't have enough to take those votes.

Ben 58:01

yeah. Well, you also have towns up there that have had armed police for quite a while. I mean that there are lots of pockets of conservatism up there and you know, out outside of downtown Dallas and downtown Fort worth you are pretty conservative.

Gene 58:17

yeah, I think certainly as you start getting further out, but I would say where I used to live in Frisco, it's less conservative now than it used to be.

Ben 58:25

Agreed. Yeah. Agreed. But Frisco's still pretty conservative grapevine, Irving, you know, but anywhere you have big cities and big population centers, you skew left just because you're so on top of each other. And because you're still on top of each other, you wish to enforce things more, the more you spread out and get away from each other and people aren't impacting you daily life, you don't care as much.

Gene 58:51

No, you really don't. That is true. But just to throw some counter opinion on that topic though, why, why did the people living out in the country give a shit? If their neighbors are screwing somebody of the same sex?

Ben 59:07

I, I don't know that

Gene 59:09

is it that those, well, I mean, right now we've certainly moved a long ways, but historically these were the areas to sort of Baptist south. That was very opposed to any kind of homosexuality

Ben 59:23

I mean, Baptists are also supposedly against drinking, but, you know, so here here's the thing For me. I, I, I think that there are, for me, I, I don't think there's degrees of sin. If you're asking my religious beliefs, I would say the wages of sin is death. And I am a sinner just as much as anyone else. And when I sin, it's no different than when someone does something that I don't like sends. So it, it really depends on the person and their interpretation. I think it's more of a tribalism thing than anything. And this is one of the things that I avoid by, you know, having my rational mind versus playing team sports. And that's really what it comes down to is, oh, they're not like us. They're different. It's the discussed mechanism, it's the othering. And you know, I, I, I don't think that's a great lifestyle. It's not something I would ever engage in. But do I care if my neighbor doesn't? No,

Gene 1:00:29

mm-hmm right.

Ben 1:00:29

also don't care if he goes and does something with his animals, you know, it, whatever, you know, who cares? I, it's not me. It's not mine doesn't impact me. I'm not one of those people who think gay marriage, somehow lessens marriage as a whole may lessen yours. But my marriage is between me, my wife and God, not anyone else.

Gene 1:00:51

Yeah. Well, that, that makes sense. But I don't know how we get on this topic, but it's definitely one of those things where.

Ben 1:00:58

were talking about conservatism in rural

Gene 1:01:00

I guess, rural life. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is like, there is no panacea here, Texas, Oklahoma, et cetera, not a panacea living out in the country versus city. Certainly better. It's not perfect either that you, you, you could be the one guy stuck with a shitty neighbor, even if you live in the middle of nowhere. So it's a, it's one of those things where you just have to make your life be less dependent on what others do and think

Ben 1:01:33

Well, and what people need to, what, what I would hope for. And I think the way out of this is to be kinder and better people to each other.

Gene 1:01:45

mm-hmm Yeah. Except for the guys that are throwing mult off cocktails at you.

Ben 1:01:51

Well, you know, they can get a Darwin award. In all, in all, just you know, with everything that's going on and what I see happening, I, I, we, we kind of talked about it last night, a little bit. I've never been one to conceal carry. I I've had, you know, weapons in my vehicle, things like that, but I'm definitely considering it.

Gene 1:02:11

Yeah, and I've done it for decades, but I, I don't do it consistently. It's, it's sort of like, depending on, you know, whether I remember to or not. I, I, I'm just being honest. I mean, it's one of those things like I, well, I used to be a a firearms instructor. I was a guy certifying people to be, to be able to carry concealed back when it was harder to do so. And I think I actually told, but I predominantly worked with the military personnel that were returning back from service overseas in getting them in a different mindset than what they had over there. And it's, it's a big difference. And it's actually the opposite. What people think the mindset isn't that, Hey, you can't be, you know, shooting all these bad guys around you. The mindset is is actually, you don't have to worry, or you don't have to wait to get permission from a higher up to shoot like that is within your purview. At this point, you, you you're constantly walking around with a a permission to engage the bad guys. The, the problem is you don't know who the bad guys are, cuz they look just like you. They're not wearing turbines.

Ben 1:03:25

Yeah, I, and that's part of policing and former military joining police forces that I actually have a problem with is because, you know, the idea of the enemy the job of the police is not to stop crime it's to investigate and you know, take care of things after the fact. I, I, I think police are too. Itchy on engaging with what they see as the enemy. And, you know, that's the unarmed populace is that we're in a lot of places because the fact of the matter is the average person isn't carrying. So the, the population walks around in the us the majority of the time. Totally disarmed, regardless of whether or not they have guns at home or not.

Gene 1:04:09

Mm-hmm yeah, no, I, I think it was much better in the, in the old west where if you are a man you were expected to carry

Ben 1:04:19

I mean, I, movies aside, you know, I, I think there was some validity to that, that it was better in a lot of ways, but not even the old west. I mean, my great grandfather carried a weapon to work even you know, in the twenties, thirties and forties. So I don't know,

Gene 1:04:39

see a banker.

Ben 1:04:41

Engineer, he worked for Magnolia oil

Gene 1:04:44

Oh, well, that sounds like a dangerous job to me. Can they make oil outta Magnolias? I didn't realize that was a thing.

Ben 1:04:49

Magnolia oil was bought by shell. It, it was just the

Gene 1:04:52

Oh, so it's actually dinosaur oil. Got it.

Ben 1:04:54

Yeah.

Gene 1:04:55

Got it. Yeah, I'm just making fun here. Magnolia is an interesting tree, cuz it's it smells like something roting, but it has very pretty flowers.

Ben 1:05:06

Beautiful tree.

Gene 1:05:07

Yeah.

Ben 1:05:08

So second half of show material here. Got a question for you.

Gene 1:05:14

Yeah. Got an answer.

Ben 1:05:15

What do you think of abiotic

Gene 1:05:16

So I mean, we certainly don't know everything about oil and we we're taking a lot of guesses, so I couldn't rule it out, but I would always look for a reproduction that can be demonstrated as to what the process is.

Ben 1:05:34

oil? Well, I mean, the question that comes to my mind is how do you how are refining oil as deep as we are given current tectonic theory and everything else? It seems to be impossible. That oil is as deep as it is. And the sweeter crudes are at the bottom and just, you know, there's lots and lots of things there that

Gene 1:05:52

Yeah. I mean, it points to the fact that we just don't know this very well. But the, the molecules that exist here are mostly recycled material, right? So the, the carbon, the hydrogen that we have in the oil, it had to come from somewhere.

Ben 1:06:07

Well, yes, but you could have elemental. I mean, so you could have elemental carbon, things like that that under geothermal stresses and everything else forms oil,

Gene 1:06:17

Well, I think you have to, I mean, how do you, how else did you explain oil?

Ben 1:06:22

well, the, but I'm saying without biological material being involved,

Gene 1:06:27

So the real question would be, was there oil prior to life on earth and my completely not physics and science brain says, I doubt it.

Ben 1:06:40

you should look up at the you should look at the rational Wiki page on abiotic oil. I think you'd find it interesting. Yeah.

Gene 1:06:47

Rational. What?

Ben 1:06:49

Wiki.

Gene 1:06:50

Wiki. Okay.

Ben 1:06:51

Yeah, the, the the, the, the problem I have with the current theories about oil production and everything else is that they assume that, you know, oil is a scarce resource that we are running out of. And I don't think we know enough to do that titration experiment. So

Gene 1:07:08

think it is a, a resource we're running out of. We've had billions of years to build up enough base materials to be underground. Why would it be run out anytime soon?

Ben 1:07:19

Well, and when I say a titration experiment, what I mean is is if you have a bathtub full of water and you undo the stopper and start letting water drain out, but at the same time you turn the SP it on to full,

Gene 1:07:34

yeah.

Ben 1:07:35

is the bathtub gonna overflow or is the bathtub gonna drain?

Gene 1:07:39

Yeah. It depends on how much water,

Ben 1:07:41

what depends on how much water is coming in and how much water is going out. Well, last time I checked

Gene 1:07:46

if the size the bathtub is increasing.

Ben 1:07:48

well, the size of the bathtub is the constant, but yes.

Gene 1:07:50

Well, the universe is increasing in size.

Ben 1:07:53

Yeah,

Gene 1:07:54

How we know that everything. Isn't what

Ben 1:07:58

I'm sorry. So you, you, you think the space between atoms is growing greater?

Gene 1:08:02

it might be. We don't know.

Ben 1:08:04

I, I think we do yeah.

Gene 1:08:06

Wow. Well, I'm not so positive, dude. See, I'm a philosopher. I'm not a science and math.

Ben 1:08:10

Yeah. So, oh, the other thing, the the that we didn't talk about this last time, cuz we skipped that week, but the, the trans episode of strange new worlds came out.

Gene 1:08:22

Oh, yeah, I haven't been watching it. So you tell me

Ben 1:08:25

Yeah. So not super in your face. In fact again with makeup and everything else and aliens and so on. I, I don't know that I would've pegged this actress as that to begin with. But they are setting her up as a reoccurring character. And they did a tie in to star Trek five and SP brother and all that. So it's, it's gonna be interesting to see where they take that,

Gene 1:08:51

Hm. Okay.

Ben 1:08:53

but yeah, it, it, it was not it was not. So in your face that, you know, it was just a problem.

Gene 1:09:00

I read your, your link here on the rational Wiki to abiotic oil, where they say it's basically just wishful thinking.

Ben 1:09:06

Yeah. Yeah. I was wondering if you're actually gonna follow through with that or not.

Gene 1:09:10

Well, it took me a while, but no, I found the page. It's not very obvious, but you know, I, I, I think. I think there there's a lot to be said for for what science has been able to document and the the repeatability of experiments that can be conducted using scientific method. But it doesn't mean that we, by any stretch have all the answers and that's something that everybody, I think eventually notices as you get older, you start to see more things that you learned when you were young, be demonstrated to have been bad assumptions. And does that invalidate all science? What?

Ben 1:09:56

you mean like Pluto being a planet?

Gene 1:09:58

Hey, fuck you, man. Pluto still is a planet that one's personal.

Ben 1:10:02

I agree with you.

Gene 1:10:04

Yeah.

Ben 1:10:05

Arbitrary switches is what I'm pointing

Gene 1:10:08

yeah. Well, and you know, they, they, they try to cover up for, well, no, it's still a planetoid, you know, it's still, it's still like, we're just saying it's not the only planet out there. There's a bunch of of these big rocks floating around just like Pluto. So we're not gonna call all of them planets they're planetoids

Ben 1:10:25

Well, so

Gene 1:10:26

That's a planet.

Ben 1:10:27

Pluto is an interesting case because it isn't an orbit similar to the rest of the planets, but Pluto and its moon are very close in size and they have an orbit where they revolve around each other center of mass, not the way the moon revolves around the earth. They resolve, they revolve around the center of mass between them. So it is a little

Gene 1:10:53

does that, dude, that that's just, that is science.

Ben 1:10:56

Mm.

Gene 1:10:58

The, the, the central point between the earth and the moon just happens to be underneath the surface of the earth, but the moon doesn't revolve around the center of earth. It revolves around the common gravitational center

Ben 1:11:11

yes, I understand that. But the difference is the difference is the earth does not revolve around the, they are, we are not. No, no, no. The, the mass disparity is such that the center of mass between the earth and the moon is in the earth as you pointed out. And that is, that is the common thing. So to, for instance, to functionally say that Jupiter co orbits with its moons, it really doesn't, there's such a mass disparity.

Gene 1:11:40

Corbis with Jupiter.

Ben 1:11:42

Yes. Because of the mass similarities, but still, there's a big difference between the sun and

Gene 1:11:51

there is yes. One of'em never got to be a. We,

Ben 1:11:54

Jupiter. Yeah. So Jupiter's pretty close to being able to

Gene 1:11:56

a, a dual

Ben 1:11:57

binary system.

Gene 1:11:58

Yeah. That that've been awesome. Imagine those sunsets and sunrises?

Ben 1:12:02

do you really want Jupiter to be a brown dwarf? I don't think that'd be a great thing. It's not

Gene 1:12:06

No, I want it to be a red Wharf.

Ben 1:12:08

big

Gene 1:12:08

little more mass. Just that's all we need. Just a little more mass and Jupiter.

Ben 1:12:12

Yeah. So I'm gonna

Gene 1:12:13

I've seen too many sci-fi fantasy pictures of binary system sunrises to not want that just saying, so why did you get on the topic of Pluto again? Explain that one.

Ben 1:12:26

I, I was just saying how you were talking about science changes and it's it just an arbitrary change versus we learned anything different.

Gene 1:12:36

Yeah. Like when I was young, we were worried about global cooling in the coming ice age.

Ben 1:12:43

Mm-hmm

Gene 1:12:45

That has not been the case for a while.

Ben 1:12:48

yeah. So just as a point of reference, even though Jupiter is, you know, big, the diameter of Jupiter is 140,000 kilometers. The diameter of the sun is 1,000,300, 400,000 kilometers.

Gene 1:13:05

Yep.

Ben 1:13:06

So over a 10 X difference there, right. At a 10 X difference,

Gene 1:13:11

Yep. And

Ben 1:13:13

just saying.

Gene 1:13:14

the sun is bigger than Jupi. Yes. We can probably agree on that, but eventually the sun will become even bigger and then it'll become even smaller.

Ben 1:13:22

Yeah. So Pluto is 2000 kilometers in diameter.

Gene 1:13:27

Mm-hmm

Ben 1:13:28

Slight slight difference there.

Gene 1:13:32

well, how big is the moon of Pluto?

Ben 1:13:33

I would have to look that up. I don't know

Gene 1:13:36

so you, you didn't look up Jupi you just had that number on top of your head.

Ben 1:13:40

I did, but the, the tool I'm using right now doesn't have Pluto, the, the, all the moons, just, just as a reference though, our moon is larger than Pluto

Gene 1:13:50

Yeah, totally.

Ben 1:13:52

by a thou over a thousand kilometers.

Gene 1:13:54

Mm-hmm

Ben 1:13:55

yeah. Anyway,

Gene 1:13:58

but it's, Pluto's still a planet Pluto doesn't rotate around another planet, which is the, the, the distinction of moons. you have any other examples of science changing? That's I think where we were going with this

Ben 1:14:12

oh, arbitrarily. Sure.

Gene 1:14:14

mm-hmm

Ben 1:14:15

The, I, I, I think Babylon B hit it very well with the, what is a woman

Gene 1:14:19

what it that's a damn good question that no one knows the answer to.

Ben 1:14:23

well, apparently they do though.

Gene 1:14:25

I don't know. Did they do, I think they may have temporal perceptions of what a woman is, but even the term woman, what does that actually mean? All it means is just not man.

Ben 1:14:37

Mm mm-hmm

Gene 1:14:39

I mean, even, even the ancients who created our language didn't know what the hell a woman was. Oh, kinda like a dude, but not completely sort of more attractive in the way, but not necessarily. I mean, what, like, you don't know, nobody knows.

Ben 1:14:58

well, after the road decision, they certainly seem to, I mean, all the women's rights have been removed.

Gene 1:15:03

Oh, but not a cast AOC. That was very careful to say this is a, a women's and men's rights issues because plenty of men have, you know, wanna have abortions apparently,

Ben 1:15:16

you know, if CEOs of companies are paying for the travel, I might want to go to Hawaii. Yeah,

Gene 1:15:21

pretty much every large company and some small ones are.

Ben 1:15:24

Yeah. I think I, I, I think I need to go to Hawaii.

Gene 1:15:27

I agree with you. I think I'm starting to feel like I just might be pregnant right

Ben 1:15:32

well, I mean, quite frankly, if anyone asks, I mean, you, you can show'em your physique, you know, you, you're not quite at the, yeah. You're not quite at the bill gates level, but you know, It's so funny, man. The pictures

Gene 1:15:45

appears a little more pregnant than I do, but

Ben 1:15:47

I mean,

Gene 1:15:48

appear more like the what's his name? The dwarf character and Lord of the rings. Uhhuh.

Ben 1:15:53

Yeah, you, I mean, it's just funny seeing bill gates in that blue shirt, you know, with his gut and then the pregnant man emojis. Like

Gene 1:16:01

Uhhuh.

Ben 1:16:02

it's not a pregnant man emoji, it's just bill gates.

Gene 1:16:05

Yeah. How did bill gates get an emoji on apple iPhones? That's why I wanna know.

Ben 1:16:10

exactly.

Gene 1:16:11

Yeah.

Ben 1:16:12

Not just apple, Android

Gene 1:16:13

Well, and, and he's a guy that's been wanting to greatly increase the number of abortions or at least prevent conception. So he's gotta be feeling pretty bad right about now.

Ben 1:16:24

Oh, that's okay. He'll make up for it by you know, releasing mosquitoes with vaccines in them, which by the way, ha have

Gene 1:16:30

how that word usually works?

Ben 1:16:31

have you been tracking the the Pfizer data and what what's out there now?

Gene 1:16:37

No something new.

Ben 1:16:39

yeah, so Adam and then brought it up on no agenda the other

Gene 1:16:42

Yeah. I'm a few episodes. End

Ben 1:16:44

So looking at this, there, there is no doubt of the impact of these vaccines and the, especially on motility of sperm being impacted majorly eggs fertilization issues, spontaneous abortions lots and lots of things here.

Gene 1:17:03

but tall as expected stuff.

Ben 1:17:05

Yes, but it's actually coming to the public floor and that,

Gene 1:17:09

I mean, it's really tough because on the one hand, these are not good things. On the other hand, I kinda have a little bit of that. Well, if you took the damn vaccine, you deserve it mentality. And

Ben 1:17:20

yeah, well, I, I, I

Gene 1:17:23

I have relatives that have taken it, but I feel exactly the same way about them. It's like you made a conscious decision to do something stupid. Why do you expect something good to be the result of that stupidity?

Ben 1:17:34

but what about the people who are somewhat forced into it?

Gene 1:17:37

Nobody was forced into it.

Ben 1:17:39

You don't blink,

Gene 1:17:40

Nope. Nobody had a gun to their heads. You could always quit your job.

Ben 1:17:45

eh, an economic gun is still

Gene 1:17:48

not a gun. No

Ben 1:17:50

threat of homelessness and so on.

Gene 1:17:52

that is known, no. What you saying that you had the only single job you could ever have for the rest of your life? Because you have so few skills that you could not possibly do anything else. And the safety net of the government, which spends about$60,000 per person in the program is not sufficient enough to provide you an alternative. And therefore you had to keep working at your job.

Ben 1:18:14

I mean, Jean, I changed jobs over

Gene 1:18:17

I know that's exactly right. Most of my friends had as well.

Ben 1:18:21

you

Gene 1:18:21

people I know are pure bloods,

Ben 1:18:24

When the, when the CEO of the company I was working for last said he didn't wanna mandate vaccines, but he felt he had a right to, I decided I didn't wanna work for him anymore. So I, I, I get your opinion, but I am saying that there are some people who know they can't go get a job easily because age ageism, things like

Gene 1:18:42

said easily being the key word. So if you're more willing to sacrifice your personal health, by taking an experimental gene therapy, let's call it what it is then you are at looking for another job. Well, I'm sorry. I mean, you kinda get what you deserve.

Ben 1:19:00

I I'm

Gene 1:19:01

There's a big difference between that and the completely forced vaccinations done by bill gates in Africa.

Ben 1:19:08

Yeah, absolutely.

Gene 1:19:09

Those people did not have a choice they were taking whole villages with white men in white coats coming and just stabbing people that I think is absolutely a war crime.

Ben 1:19:22

Well, the amount of deaths that were caused by some of the vaccinations that they put out, the instances of polio that have kicked back up that are directly related to the vaccine and not just wild polio, there, there's lots of things there that is very troubling, but the.

Gene 1:19:39

literally like learning,

Ben 1:19:41

Mm-hmm

Gene 1:19:41

let's say learning three pages worth of commands in a computer programming language that you've never understood before and saying, okay, I got this. I can make a hello world program. Let me write the new operating system. I can, I can tweak the shit outta this thing and fix bugs that people that knew what the fuck they were doing, and that's God for you, religious types you know, they didn't, they made mistakes. I'm gonna fix those mistakes. Now you're an idiot. You're an idiot to trust in something that is so poorly understood that has not been thoroughly tested and vet. I like, why, why would you do that? You look at Fauci and how, how could anybody trust to even buy a rug from this guy far less an experimental gene therapy treatment. And he's got a, a reputation literally written about in books about the atrocity he' committed during the aids epidemic with him in charge.

Ben 1:20:41

the fact that

Gene 1:20:42

made aids a nationwide disease because of him.

Ben 1:20:45

the fact that Kennedy hasn't been sued out of existence tells you the the real world impact of his book on Fauci. It, it, it, it obviously is legitimate and his claims are not spurious. Otherwise Fauci would've sued him for defamation. But FCIs problem is he knows he can't prove that in court.

Gene 1:21:05

Mm-hmm no, it's, it's insane. And this is where I go back to Trump's errors. And the fact that the guy does not know how to hire people at all, and that he relies way too heavily on the opinions of others who are very self-serving and the same people that effectively sabotage him for the last two years were the ones he was relying on for the first two years.

Ben 1:21:29

he hired John Bolton, I, I,

Gene 1:21:31

What the fuck was that all about? Nobody should be hiring jive, Bolton. How, how does he get talked into this? He just either doesn't care or doesn't know or both, but neither, neither one is good. That's why I'm not voting for him next time.

Ben 1:21:47

the only good thing Trump could do is come in and really dismantle it all. So, you

Gene 1:21:52

not gonna do it guaranteed. This is the problem. He had two years to do it when he first came in. If he didn't do it, then at this point, he's now a politician. He's no longer the, the non-politician coming into politics to clean things up. Cuz when he was that and he failed to do what he should have done and what everybody voted and expected him to do.

Ben 1:22:13

I mean, he deregulated a lot.

Gene 1:22:16

Not enough.

Ben 1:22:17

I mean, he deregulated a lot. I I'm surprised he got done

Gene 1:22:21

quantify what you mean by a lot, cuz I don't think it's a lot.

Ben 1:22:24

For every regulation they put in, they removed two. Okay,

Gene 1:22:27

That's bullshit. That's just a made up number. Show me where that is actually calculated. Cuz I don't believe it.

Ben 1:22:35

well you talk while I Google.

Gene 1:22:36

to wars, which is good. You know, I can list some good things about him that are incontrovertible.

Ben 1:22:42

Yeah. He bombs Syria though. That was not cool.

Gene 1:22:44

That's bad. yeah. I mean that he allowed a lot of his administrative decisions to be made by people who had contrary opinions to the people who elected him. And that is one of his greatest faults is that he was willing to let others make decisions and agree to them when he wasn't personally affected by the topic. I don't want that guy in there again, cuz he didn't do it the first time. Sure. Sal, isn't gonna do it this time,

Ben 1:23:18

so.

Gene 1:23:18

you see the story talking about how Trump is now the most popular us president in terms of polling liked in Mexico?

Ben 1:23:28

no, I hadn't

Gene 1:23:29

Mexicans? Yeah, they do polls I guess to see what, you know, our neighbors think of our president. He is the number one president, according to Mexican polling there,

Ben 1:23:39

Interesting.

Gene 1:23:40

which, which is great for a guy that was talking about forcing Mexico to build the wall, to keep them up.

Ben 1:23:46

Yeah. Well, so Trump versus Bush and Obama Bush put in right at 7,000 reg new regulations almost 2000 of Bush were significant. This is from the Cato

Gene 1:23:58

reading this from?

Ben 1:23:59

Cato Institute.

Gene 1:24:01

Okay. Mm-hmm

Ben 1:24:02

Uh, Obama was 6,700 again, almost 2000 significant regulations. Trump was 4,000 total new regulations. A thousand of which were significant and deregulation acts neither Bush or Obama removed a single regulation. And under under Trump, he removed about 300. So, you know, well,

Gene 1:24:28

yeah, I don't believe that. I think that's, again, propaganda dude. There's no way that Bush Obama didn't remove any regulations. Cuz there are plenty of regulations that were contrary to what they ran on.

Ben 1:24:40

I will send you what the Cato Institute

Gene 1:24:42

I know I'm just saying Cato is biased in this matter and I'm not gonna believe it.

Ben 1:24:46

actually Cato in this article is pretty again, taking the line that you are. So anyway.

Gene 1:24:53

Yeah, but you can't have a number like neither Obama nor Bush removed any regulations. Cuz I guarantee you I'm gonna bring a list of what they have removed right now.

Ben 1:25:02

Okay.

Gene 1:25:04

Go ahead your turn to talk while I do the research.

Ben 1:25:08

listen to Ben and gene Google things.

Gene 1:25:11

You know, if we were doing this on YouTube, that would be a much more interesting show. We could do a splint split, screen of our Googling activities.

Ben 1:25:22

yeah, for the record I'm using deck go, but yeah, which I need to stop it's when they came out and censored, I

Gene 1:25:29

the other thing, the the ones that don't track and sell your shit.

Ben 1:25:32

yeah. Neva is kind of an interesting business model for a search engine, but they're pain in the ass to use cuz you gotta sign in. So I don't like that.

Gene 1:25:41

I've just been using and it's not very good, but I've just been using the the built in one and brave.

Ben 1:25:46

I don't use brave though. So that's,

Gene 1:25:48

Oh, that's right. You're on that archaic browser.

Ben 1:25:51

Yes.

Gene 1:25:53

Yeah, it's fine. You know,

Ben 1:25:53

I, I just don't like chromium based browsers. What do you want from me?

Gene 1:25:58

whatever. I, I just don't think that the one you're using is better. That's all.

Ben 1:26:02

Well, it, it works for me. I've got my tweaks in it, you know, after years and years and years of setting

Gene 1:26:10

your own version. Got it.

Ben 1:26:11

No, no, no, no. But I use certain extensions. I've got things set up the way I want it's it's like changing laptops. It's not easy for me to do.

Gene 1:26:19

mm-hmm.

Ben 1:26:20

It's a, it, it literally changing certain technology stacks, like a laptop or a browser is equivalent to moving into a new house. Almost for me. Everything's gotta change.

Gene 1:26:31

As somebody who just had to rebuild their computer from a crashed SSD,

Ben 1:26:36

Mm-hmm

Gene 1:26:37

believe me, I I'm well aware of the the difficulty of bringing things back to the same state.

Ben 1:26:42

yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's a major interruption to your life in lots of ways. And

Gene 1:26:49

I couldn't imagine how somebody that doesn't have any computing, you know, skills

Ben 1:26:54

mm-hmm

Gene 1:26:55

to to like, how do they deal with stuff like this?

Ben 1:26:59

They don't, they take it to other people and pay them or they call, you know, like, come on. You're not tech support for your family.

Gene 1:27:05

No, no,

Ben 1:27:07

Really? How'd you get out of that one?

Gene 1:27:09

they're all Mac people. but No. It's my dad's, he is been very computer knowledgeable cuz he was an engineer. So was my mom. My sister's a programmer tending to keep going.

Ben 1:27:24

Okay, cool.

Gene 1:27:26

yeah. So I've not been texting. In fact, if I have technical conversations, that's usually where I start getting challenged by having the wrong opinion,

Ben 1:27:34

Good for you. Like, like that you should

Gene 1:27:38

Uhhuh. Well, and I do, and I I've talked about this too. Like I've, well, maybe not on the podcast, but you know, I've been using a Mac literally since 1986. There's always been a Mac. I I've I'm by by what's the right term by operating system or by whatever I use both Mac and PC and I've, I've had PCs running probably since about 1992. So not as long as max, but I kind of find that each has their own advantages. I can do more quick and dirty building of stuff on the PC. You know, but I used to program on the Mac, but I really haven't for many years. Last thing I did was like a iPhone app, like 12 years ago or something

Ben 1:28:32

Yeah. What was the app?

Gene 1:28:34

it was an app for backing up your photo library to Amazon. This was before Dropbox, before all that shit was

Ben 1:28:41

Hmm.

Gene 1:28:43

and it,

Ben 1:28:44

an S3 bucket connector.

Gene 1:28:45

you got it? Yep. Yep. So just doing automated backups cuz there back then your only other option was iCloud. So it was either iCloud or nothing. Um,

Ben 1:28:57

I'm surprised they even let you publish that to the app store because of the, you know, Apple's non-competitive nature.

Gene 1:29:05

yeah. Well I didn't finish the app, so it never, I was in, I just had privately published. I never put it out there.

Ben 1:29:12

Yeah.

Gene 1:29:12

Still had some bugs.

Ben 1:29:14

yeah, this is one of the problems I have with apple, you know? Oh, you can't have an app that competes with our app.

Gene 1:29:20

Yeah. That is kind of bullshit. I agree with you. I think it's, I I'm perfectly okay with them having rules for the store to keep apps that are literally broken or, you know, gonna steal your data from being in the store. But that same rule should not be applied to simply competitive apps. Like how's that? Not you know, been yeah, exactly. Like how, how have they not won or how have other companies not won lawsuits against them for that kind of anti-competitive behavior.

Ben 1:29:49

mean, my God, if Microsoft can be threatened to be broken up over internet Explorer, being included with windows, how is that? Not the same thing.

Gene 1:29:58

Yeah. It's worse because at least you could download something else with Explorer and never use it.

Ben 1:30:04

Yeah.

Gene 1:30:05

Which is what most people do.

Ben 1:30:06

which there have been beams going around you know, the, the, it rip internet Explorer, the best tool for downloading other browsers ever invented things like

Gene 1:30:15

exactly. Cuz no one's going to FTP sites to download other browsers. So it's pretty much always done with the internet Explorer. The irony is that we're actually an edge right now in my system because I, I keep edge completely free of any plugins and nothing else in it. So that I can run Z caster in it.

Ben 1:30:37

Why is that?

Gene 1:30:39

Well, I had to pick a browser. It doesn't matter which one, but I wanted to separate cuz other browsers like that I have like brave are very configured with a whole bunch of stuff, extensions, different properties and settings. I I've not recompiled it, but I've been thinking about just doing that myself as well, just to have a version that is more in line with what I wanted to do,

Ben 1:31:02

right,

Gene 1:31:03

but edge, you know, that's just meant to run this and nothing else.

Ben 1:31:09

but what, what uh, what interferes with running Zencaster on your current

Gene 1:31:14

You start getting occasional audio drops.

Ben 1:31:17

Interesting.

Gene 1:31:18

Yeah.

Ben 1:31:20

Well, I I'm using Chrome for Zencaster right now and it's the only thing I use Chrome for. Hmm.

Gene 1:31:26

Well, there you go. So it's exact same kind of, I, and I, I use Chrome for work brave for home and edge for this. That's my, my breakdown.

Ben 1:31:37

Yeah. I don't do any work on my personal laptop, so,

Gene 1:31:41

Yeah. Yeah.

Ben 1:31:42

and I don't do anything personal on my work laptop, so

Gene 1:31:46

and I don't, I don't have a work laptop. You, so I'm I'm a hired gun rumor.

Ben 1:31:51

right. But I mean, so I, I, even if I were in that same position, I'd still probably have at least a VM for work. Right. Yeah.

Gene 1:32:00

I've done that in the past. Absolutely. No, that's totally true. But the, the browser is kind of the VM. I mean, I don't do anything with any apps locally. Everything that I do for work just lives in the browser.

Ben 1:32:11

See, yeah. I couldn't live without OneNote for work. I'm, I'm a huge OneNote user. Yeah. Have been since college. One of the really cool features that a lot of people don't realize about OneNote. And I use this in college a lot was you can record audio while you're taking notes. And if you go, what the hell does this note mean? You can highlight it and go, and it'll play the audio that was recorded when you were taking that.

Gene 1:32:35

oh, I use Otter for that.

Ben 1:32:37

I'm not familiar with it,

Gene 1:32:39

Oh, Otter is a transcription app. So basically every, every conversation, every phone call, everything I do is transcribed, recorded and transcribed.

Ben 1:32:49

Good to know.

Gene 1:32:50

Mm-hmm

Ben 1:32:51

Texas is a single party state, so I should have assumed with you

Gene 1:32:55

Yeah. And the way the party states work is that it's the person doing the recording and where they live, those rules apply.

Ben 1:33:02

yes, indeed.

Gene 1:33:03

So talking to California is not a problem. Fuck him.

Ben 1:33:06

Well, yeah, you think John's gonna ever get outta California?

Gene 1:33:10

Nope.

Ben 1:33:11

Why is that? I, I guess I

Gene 1:33:13

He owns way too much property there.

Ben 1:33:15

Well, that would now would be the time to cash out before the economy absolutely collapses. Mm-hmm

Gene 1:33:20

yeah, I, I don't know. I think, well, most of it's rental property, so he is actually making very good money. I think he makes more doing that than anything else and has for quite a while, John. And, and this is some of this is, has second hand. Some of this is when I was asking him questions when I had dinner with him, but it, some it's it's I, I know his, his, his son a lot better than I know him it's through that way. But John got into real estate pretty early on in California and saw the potential, I guess. And so, you know, he, he is a hoarder, but he's not a, he's not constantly on the lookout for the latest and greatest thing either. Like that mouse thing that'll never catch on. So, consequently, he was taking the extra money that he had and investing it in real estate.

Ben 1:34:11

mm-hmm

Gene 1:34:11

I don't, I couldn't say how many off top of my head, how much property owns, but the what's been implied to me is that it's, it's in the mid double digits.

Ben 1:34:23

Wow.

Gene 1:34:24

And with the price of California housing, you gotta imagine that each, each individual house is at least a million bucks.

Ben 1:34:34

Hmm. Well, uh, yeah, and I, I wonder what the rental revenues would be from that. I mean, that that's substantial, so,

Gene 1:34:40

Well, again, I don't know of anybody that rents a house in California for less than three grand a house,

Ben 1:34:45

there you go. Hence, why DevX comfortable in the shades lounge?

Gene 1:34:50

the shades lounge works. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, that's something that I think all of us would like at some point sooner than later, probably is to be able to be in the position where what you do is not tied to how you live.

Ben 1:35:08

absolutely. Fuck you money.

Gene 1:35:10

Yeah.

Ben 1:35:10

And, and, you know, P fuck you, money is different for everybody,

Gene 1:35:15

Yeah. And, and I think John was more disappointed about you know, getting kicked off of writing for PC mag. When he wrote a nasty article about lecture cars, just because it was something he enjoyed doing, and he'd done it for over 20 years

Ben 1:35:30

Right.

Gene 1:35:31

and probably over 30 years to the point where they were literally the people running that magazine were not born when John was already writing for it.

Ben 1:35:40

well, I certainly remember reading his articles and you know, whole back in, when I was growing up, you know, ZDT was around when I was jet probably, you know,

Gene 1:35:52

youngster uh,

Ben 1:35:53

when did CDT come out?

Gene 1:35:55

early nineties, I thought

Ben 1:35:57

I think it was not early nineties. It was late nineties. Wasn't it? Yeah. 98.

Gene 1:36:02

Okay.

Ben 1:36:02

Yeah. So I was 12. Yeah. So 98 to 2000. So, you know, 12 to 14 and yeah, I mean, big part of my my history. So.

Gene 1:36:12

Yeah, and I was, I always loved John's articles on the back page. He had the last page before the cover in Mac user. And there were two Mac magazines back in the eighties. It was Mac user and Mac world. And John had the, the sort of the devil's advocate articles in Mac user on the back page were, it was always critiquing something about the Mac every month. You, you get, I'd look forward to reading that sort of, you know, grumpy,

Ben 1:36:44

Yeah,

Gene 1:36:44

style article about, you know, why, why did they do this? This makes no sense. Why couldn't they just do it this other way?

Ben 1:36:51

well, and he was very good at playing the cranky geek, you

Gene 1:36:55

Oh yeah, yeah.

Ben 1:36:56

still is

Gene 1:36:58

Yeah. I think that's his general kind of demeanor.

Ben 1:37:01

if Devor were to be summed up in one joke, it would be back in my day, we had WW dot squat. Mm-hmm

Gene 1:37:10

what squad? I, my favorite video is still the video of him talking about how awesome the PS two is the IBM PS two, and the modularity of it. And then not being able to take it apart because you know, parts were very tight I was like, and eventually just kinda giving up on it. It's like, well, it's yeah, it's, it's kind of, it's supposed to work that way. You know, clearly this is a point where they, they didn't do a test run in the studio before recording.

Ben 1:37:42

indeed.

Gene 1:37:44

And so it came across as pretty damn funny. And the PS two was actually a pretty good system. It just, that was IBM's kinda last gasp, but trying to get away from windows operating system. And so they built a, the new modern computer from IBM, which wasn't the Mac and didn't run windows

Ben 1:38:04

Well,

Gene 1:38:05

well that worked.

Ben 1:38:06

well, I mean, OS two was pretty damn good though.

Gene 1:38:09

Well, it was good, but it was completely not popular.

Ben 1:38:12

Yeah. Well, lots of things aren't BOS was really pretty good, but wasn't very popular. So, you know, there's lots of things, Solaris. I mean, the people don't realize it,

Gene 1:38:23

Sosh was just expensive. That's a different

Ben 1:38:26

well and the hardware, right? So running Solaris on power PC or whatever was really, you know, shooting yourself in the foot. And if you didn't buy the sun hardware, but what a lot of people don't realize is, you know, everybody's talking about Kubernetes and containers and, you know, so on and so forth these days that originated on Solaris in the, you know, nineties, this is not a new thing. People

Gene 1:38:49

Yeah, most of that stuff was not new. It, it just, a lot of things became more available and more popularized in the two thousands.

Ben 1:38:57

Well in ZFS, you know, ZFS was just brilliant and why it, if ZFS was not legally encumbered the way it is, it would be the file system everyone should use.

Gene 1:39:09

That was a something right.

Ben 1:39:10

Yeah, well kind of, so ZFS stands for the Ze bite file system, and it is essentially a file system that work functions as a raid. So you can have different pools, you can have different redundancy levels in the

Gene 1:39:24

yeah, I thought it was for sun for some reason. I don't

Ben 1:39:26

it, it, it was developed, it was originally on Solaris, but there's some op and that's why it's partially legally encumbered. So sun has some of the patents to it, but it was also partially developed on during an open source license. And it's just in this quasi, just whatever state. But I, I mean, I, I remember in the early two thousands, I was working for Amanda service provider and we needed uh, this is before, you know, Amazon was really. Selling storage the way they are today. But we were gonna be providing backup storage for some of our customers. So we had to build build out in the data center, you know, a pretty massive storage array. And I used ZFS at the time instead of you know, some of the sands and commercially available things at the time. And it, it, it worked out very well actually for us.

Gene 1:40:15

Interesting. Yeah. It's, you know, there there's been a number of things that have, I think, migrated to the popular usage. I mean, a lot of the, the rewriting of the Mac O S for the Intel platform was a result of what jobs did at next, in basically taking BSD and and know, creating a new operating system out of it, but eventually rolling it into what became Mac OS

Ben 1:40:51

Yeah. OS 10. The, the real problem I have with that from just so the, the BSD licensing allows you to take and use it without contributing back to the. To the community. I get that. But you know, even if Mac, even if apple would just publish the drivers that they write for, you know, not even their own hardware, but, you know, basic Intel hardware and things like that. If they would just publish those and let the community have those drivers, I would feel much better about it.

Gene 1:41:24

Yeah, but they also were not particularly happy about people running OS 10 on non apple manufactured systems.

Ben 1:41:32

Yeah.

Gene 1:41:32

for them to prevent that from happening.

Ben 1:41:34

Well, it still happens.

Gene 1:41:36

It does. And I, you know, friend of mine had a, a hacking Tosh for quite a while, but it's a pain in the ass. I know.

Ben 1:41:42

it is. It is speaking of pains in the ass you MIS tagged me on no agenda to social. You hit up our Australian friend instead the second time, you know, this has

Gene 1:41:54

no, I, I thought I tagged a totally different guy. Cause look, here's the thing. There's a like five dudes name, Ben named Ben. I know agenda the social in a variety of names and yours happens to not even include, do name Ben name Ben. So how the hell am I supposed to even know who you are?

Ben 1:42:13

because we talk and you know, I'm in your

Gene 1:42:15

Okay. But realistically though, how am I supposed to know that you think I'm gonna M remember who I'm talking to on the phone?

Ben 1:42:21

well, I mean, just, just look for the BSD demon icon and you got.

Gene 1:42:26

Okay. Watch me find like 10 people with that icon now. Jesus Christ. Now it's, it's an inconsistency in naming and look, I have it as well. I'm not searching on there. Somebody else snagged that,

Ben 1:42:39

mm-hmm

Gene 1:42:40

but you know, at least my account's been around for long enough where at least it's like, it was one of the first ones created in the system.

Ben 1:42:48

well, I mean, so first of all, I have been, you know, dude named Ben protector of Mike Watts for a while now for a good long while. But when I was creating my no agenda social account at the time I just went with a standard username that I use, because I wasn't thinking ahead. So there you go.

Gene 1:43:08

Well, is the protector of megawatts taken? Have you thought about upgrading it?

Ben 1:43:12

Well, no agenda to socials kinda locked down. I guess I could ping people and ask to see about that,

Gene 1:43:19

Yeah. I mean, you could ping the dude name, Ben who runs it.

Ben 1:43:22

I could,

Gene 1:43:24

And the fact that it's locked down probably means that it it's not taken. Although, like I said, somebody did snags Jean, but fuckers,

Ben 1:43:31

yeah, well, it's just one of those things. It's not something I'm too worried about, but regardless

Gene 1:43:38

cuz you brought it up that I Mista you again.

Ben 1:43:41

right. But I

Gene 1:43:41

only Mista you cuz I don't know what your name is.

Ben 1:43:44

For love of God. This is a really bad segue. I was trying to segue into the gentleman who you, you were trying to allow me to rebut and I am gonna rebut on renewables.

Gene 1:43:57

New Zealand dude that thinks that greeny power is the way to go in the future.

Ben 1:44:01

Right. And you know, for New Zealand hydro is doable for parts of the us. Hydro is doable for New Zealand. Geothermal is doable outside of Hawaii and parts of the us well and Yellowstone geothermal is not really feasible here and doesn't produce a lot of power. So the example I would use is in Texas, we have toda bend it's a 90 mile long lake. It's a huge lake. It has two generators on it that produce a whopping total of 90 megawatts. And because it was built for flood control,

Gene 1:44:37

about 90 being w whopping

Ben 1:44:40

right? I mean, it's no power at all. The, yes,

Gene 1:44:43

C yeah.

Ben 1:44:44

the, the fact of the matter is renewables are, are just not plentiful enough in Texas. You know, you've got west Texas and you've got a lot of wind and that's fine, but the way the wind produces in Texas is it produces a lot at night, but in the heat of the day, the wind actually dies down and that's a problem. So.

Gene 1:45:03

what is ful in Texas?

Ben 1:45:05

Well, you've got lots of oil, lots of natural gas and believe it or not, lots of coal. So we do not have, you know, the anthro site and stuff like that, but we have a ton of river old river bottom night. And liite is,

Gene 1:45:20

that don't know what the hell difference is between ANCI and ignite, what's the difference?

Ben 1:45:24

One's more dirt. One's a rock and you know, it's just the orders of coal ignite has fewer BTUs than anthro site. There are different orders of ignite though, you know,

Gene 1:45:36

but it's on the surface.

Ben 1:45:37

yes, it, it is surface mining. It's not like, you know, I got the black lung pop. It's not that kind of mining. It's big drag lines, removing surface dirt, getting down to the ignite, pulling it out. And then the Recla when, when they're done the acclimated land is very usable as even, you know, a ranch or cattle country or whatever. So it it's, it's not strip mining. It's not, it's not the same thing. People think of

Gene 1:46:04

and, and people have to realize trees don't grow in Texas. We, we have shrubs and some of those shrubs get to be tree height, but they're not really trees. So they, you're not really killing a hundred year old trees.

Ben 1:46:16

Gene has not been to east Texas. Apparently

Gene 1:46:18

East, Texas, Louisiana dude.

Ben 1:46:20

the Piney woods is all I'm saying you have, you

Gene 1:46:23

I know it's there, but,

Ben 1:46:25

in the us.

Gene 1:46:26

of the, of the area of Texas with trees that represents a fairly small area. They're, they're more cacti in Texas than there are trees.

Ben 1:46:34

Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, but regardless the, when they reclaim the land, first of all, the way the veins of lake night go, and you can y'all can go Google, Luminate, Kassi mine or any of that. And go look at some of the mining in tech operations in Texas for this you know, there are trees still, they, they build in water features. There's lots of stuff when the land is actually reclaimed. But the point is you know, one of the last coal fired power plants to probably run in the United States is Oak Grove. And it's right here outside of college station. And the reason why I say it's gonna be one of the last coal fire power plants in the us running is because it was built in 2010 and 2011 is when unit one and unit two came online. The local mine to this power plant is seven miles away. And in that single mine, they have about 20 years of fuel. They also have other properties around the area that they can open up as mine sites. The cost of fuel for Oak Grove is under$10 a megawat. I won't give away the exact number to give an example,

Gene 1:47:41

what's a windmill. Do.

Ben 1:47:43

huh?

Gene 1:47:44

What, how much does it cost to generate using a windmill like in New Zealand? Mm-hmm mm-hmm mm-hmm mm-hmm mm-hmm Well,

Ben 1:48:56

natural gas plants can cycle off. They can turn off and wind can bid into the market at a very, very low rate because they have the tax subsidies. They can actually go negative in their pricing and the coal plants because they can't shut off, have to stay on. So if you're producing a thousand megawatts and the price is negative five bucks, you're paying. Negative$5,000 an hour to be online. That's what's killing coal in Texas.

Gene 1:49:22

that sounds to me like a regulatory issue, not a coal issue.

Ben 1:49:25

It is, it's absolutely a regulatory and subsidy issue.

Gene 1:49:28

Yeah.

Ben 1:49:29

Anyway, the point was just to respond to the guy and say, look in New Zealand, maybe the geothermal and you know, hydro works for y'all and in parts of the us here, hydro can work. But in Texas, we do not have enough drop and head pressure where, where our lakes are to do that. And most of our lakes in Texas are manmade. So there you go.

Gene 1:49:53

Mm-hmm,

Ben 1:49:54

Other than Cato, I think all the lakes in Texas are manmade.

Gene 1:49:59

I've heard that before. Yeah. And they all have the same shape. It's really funny.

Ben 1:50:03

just about, there's not a lot

Gene 1:50:05

all basically just rivers

Ben 1:50:07

yep. Damned up rivers.

Gene 1:50:08

damned up rivers. So the shape is kind of a chicken foot shape kind of thing.

Ben 1:50:15

Mm-hmm

Gene 1:50:15

Usually either two or three fingers with a. Part where the

Ben 1:50:20

man. Well, and you compare like the amount of generation out of Toledo, which is, you know, like I said, 90 miles long versus something like do shack in Idaho, where do shack is still long lake it's 50, but you know, it's door shack dam is the largest concrete structure of its type in, in north America. It's like 700, some odd feet deep at the dam.

Gene 1:50:42

Mm-hmm Wow. Well, so Texas generates its power, mainly from what? Right now, gas, coal oil

Ben 1:50:49

natural gas, NA

Gene 1:50:50

natural

Ben 1:50:51

natural gas is the dominant you know, but we've also retired a ton of coal plants.

Gene 1:50:55

Now why we not build oil plants,

Ben 1:50:58

well, no one wants to burn fuel oil. Fuel oil is inefficient. It's nasty. You know, when you, when you,

Gene 1:51:04

just coming right out the ground though. Isn't it?

Ben 1:51:06

right, I mean the fuel oil is not very refined. It's just fuel oil plants are not fun to be around. Now, there are plants that have fuel oil as a backup fuel. That's actually somewhat common. Lots of places got rid of that because of environmental reasons and so on. But you know, the after, after Yuri, actually a lot of plants have brought it back because had they had fuel on site, even if they were rigged for natural gas and being able to switch over, would've been very beneficial during that time. But, and, and that's the thing. So one of the other advantages to coal and fuel oil is that those are fuels that can be stored on site. And you don't get into this distribution problem where, you know, Hey, the natural gas pipelines are a dependency for the electric grid. And the electric grid is a dependency for the gas pipelines and the compressor stations. Now we've got this competing interest and you know, another thing that happened during URI was the natural gas pipelines have to prioritize home usage over over industrial. So that, that was another issue.

Gene 1:52:16

Hmm. Yeah. I, I think that depending on where you are, obviously you're gonna make different decisions about what is the most cost effective way to generate electricity, but let's stay on the topic of electricity cuz something else that came up when I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, who's recently moved to California. I know crazy. Right. But good job. And he was saying, you know, if, if gas goes more higher than the$7 that we're currently seeing, it's gonna be hard to live in California. And of course my prediction is I keep putting out there is, I think it'll hit 18 bucks before it's done. But as far as California, having higher gas prices, even if it's not$18 what do you think the the impact would be if everybody just stopped driving cars that were powered by gas and switched to electric cars, whether in Texas or California or anywhere else.

Ben 1:53:16

We can't, I mean, it it's, it, it depends on the timeframe. Currently the, I mean, the fact of the matter is we just don't have enough generation at all to support that.

Gene 1:53:25

So what would happen in that's you basically, you would have new rules about when you can charge cars, maybe only when the windmills are going or something, right.

Ben 1:53:33

well, I mean, even then you just, you do not have enough when you look at the amount of oil that is consumed by just people driving around. Okay. We won't take in shipping or anything else. You just look at the amount of energy that, that represents, and you do some conversion to electricity. So you're converting the chemical energy of the gas used by the consumer, driving around

Gene 1:53:55

Well, you don't even have to do that. Like we know that most Teslas are somewhere between 80 and a hundred kilowat hours and they're typically charged at, let's say 60% of that every night. So let's say they charge 50 kilowat hours every night. Can we, how many cars can take that out of the current grid and how close are we to not allowing electric cars at all?

Ben 1:54:17

Okay. So I'll, I'll use Texas during the summer peak, as an example, generally out of close to 80,000 megawatts being utilized, we have a reserve margin of around 4,000 megawats

Gene 1:54:32

So how many cars is that at? 50 kilowat hours.

Ben 1:54:35

I mean, I would have to do

Gene 1:54:37

You're a math guy. Come on.

Ben 1:54:39

Okay. Okay. Okay. Let me bring up a calc.

Gene 1:54:41

This is what you get for talking about your math and science background.

Ben 1:54:46

You said 50,

Gene 1:54:47

Yeah. I'd say fifties, an average

Ben 1:54:49

you could do about eight eight to, if you're saying 50 and we've got a rough, I mean, it'd be 8,000 ish. Yeah. Just based off of the reserve margin at peak though.

Gene 1:55:00

yeah, and we got a Tesla plant, just four miles from my house

Ben 1:55:03

right. But it, I mean, if you.

Gene 1:55:04

out 8,000 per month.

Ben 1:55:06

Right. But if we, so let's say we took our peak generation and just ran it all the time and you charged overnight when that usage drops to about, you know, from the 80,000, let's say it drops to 50. So now instead of a reserve margin of 4,000, we have a reserve margin of around 20,000.

Gene 1:55:23

Curves.

Ben 1:55:25

no, it'd be, it'd be more like 40. So you, you might be able to get 40,000 cars on the road, but

Gene 1:55:31

think they should switch to

Ben 1:55:32

how many millions of cars are in Texas?

Gene 1:55:35

Exactly. Exactly. I, but I think they should switch to that measurement and just say that, you know, our current electrical grid is running at 6,000 Teslas from peak

Ben 1:55:47

okay.

Gene 1:55:47

The Tesla is a good measurement. I don't understand why we don't use that as a measurement in Texas for electricity.

Ben 1:55:54

Well, why don't you write an RFC on it?

Gene 1:55:56

I, I probably should. Yeah, I'll have some free time soon.

Ben 1:55:59

yeah. And, and private and commercial cars in Texas is around 8 million, by the

Gene 1:56:06

8 million total. I wonder if, if there's stats on the number of electrical

Ben 1:56:10

doesn't seem right

Gene 1:56:12

8 million cars, that's probably right. Well, it probably includes the three or four cars on stilts and somebody's trailer park.

Ben 1:56:19

no, no, that seems low.

Gene 1:56:22

oh, you think that's low? 8 million is low.

Ben 1:56:23

That's way too low.

Gene 1:56:25

You wait, you think every person has a car in Texas?

Ben 1:56:29

I think it should be pretty close. I would just, I would expect it to be at least half the population anyway,

Gene 1:56:37

Well, I can tell you this in Austin, nobody that lives in downtown has a car.

Ben 1:56:42

that's Austin.

Gene 1:56:44

And I don't think anybody in the state under 25 has a car.

Ben 1:56:48

That's objectively not true

Gene 1:56:51

Hmm. Mostly true.

Ben 1:56:52

anyway, regardless. The, the point is the grid

Gene 1:56:55

mean, all the girls I date, I end up having to drive them around. So, you know

Ben 1:56:59

the point is the grid could not take all low electric

Gene 1:57:02

right. That's where I was getting to. So our, our, our availability is about 8,000 more cars.

Ben 1:57:07

well, and let's, let's say it's, it's not, let's say it's 20,000 more cars. It doesn't really matter. It's a drop in the bucket and you you're really gonna have to look at doubling generation capacity and you're not gonna do that through wind and solar, and you're not gonna do it through batteries.

Gene 1:57:22

Well, isn't, isn't the problem simply that if people were to put on solar panels on every new house built, couldn't we just solve this problem. Why not?

Ben 1:57:34

well, one the distribution. So California's running into this, right? So California subsidized the hell out of people putting solar panels on their roofs and PG E and others w is having issues balancing the grid because the distribution level isn't really meant to have that much generation on it, right. Distribution is really programmed and set up and meant for consumption, not, not generation. That's why very few

Gene 1:58:02

not feed electricity back in the grid. Just basically unplug the house from the grid while there's enough electricity being generated by the panels.

Ben 1:58:10

well, first of all, I'll use ERCOT as an example wind. And so ERCOT is the reliability coordinator in Texas. So it's the system operator. So they use wind and solar at 20% of capacity. So if you have a hundred megawats of wind and solar generation ERCOT counts on 20% of that, meaning they count on 20 megawatts of it because it can shift so rapidly. So the issue you would have is you'd have to have a auto switching system set up. You would have to have.

Gene 1:58:42

the Tesla battery lets you do.

Ben 1:58:44

Which you would have to have some sort of battery to buffer. And what would have to happen is you'd have to be switching back and forth constantly. The problem that that would introduce from a system operator standpoint. So an I co a whack or so on whatever the ISO is. The issue you're gonna have is you're gonna have unpredictable load demand. So that makes balance,

Gene 1:59:06

How, how do you predict that

Ben 1:59:07

Well, that's why you a have a reserve margin. But B you wanna balance the grid. So the object of any system operator is to get as close as they can to having enough generation to meet to meet the load, but not too much in excess because it's wasteful, it's inefficient. So they do that through models of environmental conditions. So for instance, for the last week or two, it's been over a hundred and the majority of the state of Texas. So, you know, air conditioning loads are gonna be high. You know, you know what what's gonna go on. So you can predict per house on average what the demand is going to be roughly. They know the, on the county rolls the square footage of the house, the age of the house, things like that. So all of that goes into the modeling of what the usage is gonna be.

Gene 1:59:57

but can't can't they just simply bump everybody's thermostats to 84, like they did with me.

Ben 2:00:02

Yeah, this is why you don't have it a, a connected thermostat.

Gene 2:00:05

well, maybe you're not allowed to have an electric vehicle charging unless you have a connected thermostat.

Ben 2:00:09

And this is,

Gene 2:00:10

like to charge your car or air conditioning?

Ben 2:00:13

Air conditioning.

Gene 2:00:15

No, I'm, I'm saying that would be the question for the consumer to make that decision.

Ben 2:00:19

mm-hmm

Gene 2:00:20

And, and this is also why, obviously they only want you charging your car at night when the ACS less likely to be running.

Ben 2:00:27

Yeah. And, and again, it, it just comes down to the question was why can't everybody just have solar panels on the roof and that fix it? The, the, the fact of the matter is because when a cloud goes over your house and you now have to take from the grid that is not substantially predictable,

Gene 2:00:41

but, but also you should have a Tesla battery in your house, which provides you at least 10,000 kilowat hours of battery.

Ben 2:00:49

which doesn't I'd have to go get my power bill, but the, you know, 10,000 kilowat hours is not a lot.

Gene 2:00:56

No, but it's meant to cover that when the cloud passes over the, the roof

Ben 2:01:01

Yeah. My point is at the distribution level, you have, you can't introduce that much variability into the way our power systems work today. Maybe in the future, we can, you know, have a smart grid and it work,

Gene 2:01:16

or microgrids, maybe even.

Ben 2:01:18

well, if you're gonna go with microgrids, then you need local generation, which I'm all for.

Gene 2:01:23

Yeah. Well, you can, you do you know, charge up the microgrid from the big grid.

Ben 2:01:28

I mean, again, battery storage is limited and you know, one of the things we learned outta Yuri and people didn't realize is our battery and reactive resources were essentially useless. And the reason why is you cannot charge or discharge lithium ion below freezing you'll destroy the destroy, the battery,

Gene 2:01:45

Well, fair enough, but why couldn't we just use lead acid

Ben 2:01:48

It inefficient,

Gene 2:01:50

inefficient. So it takes more space, but it's cheaper and it it's still gonna have power at cold weather.

Ben 2:01:56

I mean, have you lived in the north and tried to start?

Gene 2:01:59

most of my life. Yeah.

Ben 2:02:00

So what, what happens when you don't have your car plugged in and sitting outside and it's really cold?

Gene 2:02:05

Well, depends how old your battery is.

Ben 2:02:07

Why is that?

Gene 2:02:09

Well, they, they lose efficacy over time. Everybody does that,

Ben 2:02:13

mm-hmm okay. So. You

Gene 2:02:17

that's also why you get a bigger battery from

Ben 2:02:20

I, I mean, even if you have deep cycle batteries and you look at, you know, Marine batteries yeah. Old sub batteries, what people do for Al the grid stuff. It, there there's limitations. Right. Everybody who I've seen, try and live off the grid makes massive consignments to do it. And people just aren't ready for that. You know, you don't, people don't wanna go to a propane or natural gas refrigerator. That's half the size of their current electric fridge, you know, stuff like that.

Gene 2:02:49

Yeah, no, I, I mean, some people put in the wood gas fires in, along with generators too, but

Ben 2:02:55

Well, I mean,

Gene 2:02:56

folk.

Ben 2:02:58

Hey, I'm all for having that as a backup when shit hits the fan thing, but you know, the reality of day in, day out life, it's just not gonna work.

Gene 2:03:08

Yeah. Well, it's interesting. I, I had a friend that made a movie called life with Tesla about his Tesla and living completely, not, not so much off the grid, but where he was making money every, every month on his electric bill

Ben 2:03:23

Hmm. By charging at night and discharging during the day.

Gene 2:03:27

No, by, by having solar panels in the roof.

Ben 2:03:30

Hmm.

Gene 2:03:31

And the solar panels provided enough power to charge his car and whatever electrical use he had at the house.

Ben 2:03:41

Well, I, you know, I, I suppose, but I don't think it's a long term or scalable strategy is all I'm gonna say.

Gene 2:03:48

Well, and, and the roof is one place where I think it does make some sense to put solar panels. If you live in the south, if you're too far from the equator, it doesn't make sense, but certainly here and south, I think it does make some sense to do that.

Ben 2:04:03

I mean, again, the solar panel without government subsidy will never make enough back to pay for itself. That's the problem. And if you're just putting panels on a roof and it's not tracking the sun and all that, you're very

Gene 2:04:17

another way to say that is electricity is too cheap currently, and those prices need to go up

Ben 2:04:21

No electricity is actually, it is too cheap in a lot of ways because of subsidies, but you take away those subsidies and what happens is no one buys, wind or solar and you stick with the fossil fuels we've been

Gene 2:04:37

but maybe you need to put on some additional taxes on the oil base electrical generation so that it gets cost wise more in line with the no subsidy version of the solar and wind.

Ben 2:04:51

or we could just stick with what we got that works.

Gene 2:04:55

Well, we could, we could, I'm just exploring possibilities. I'm I'm, you know, I'm giving you a little bit of a devil's advocate perspective

Ben 2:05:01

well, devil's advocate point of view from my standpoint is build Comanche peak three and four, you know,

Gene 2:05:08

Yeah. Which is the nuclear expansion of the plants.

Ben 2:05:12

Yeah.

Gene 2:05:14

Yeah. And I, I totally agree. I think nuclear's O the obvious answer to all these problems is nuclear.

Ben 2:05:20

Well, it is the, I mean, if people,

Gene 2:05:23

reactors,

Ben 2:05:23

yeah, I mean, if people are really concerned about the environment and think fossil fuels is, you know, not the answer, then Nokes are the way to go. Absolutely.

Gene 2:05:36

And, and how many Teslas using the new measurements does command should peak power

Ben 2:05:41

Command peaks, 2000 megawatts.

Gene 2:05:43

so if we use that entire 2000 megawatts to power Teslas at 50,000 kilowatt hours or 50 kilowat hours rather, well, what do we end up with?

Ben 2:05:53

Well, Jean, you can do the math. How many kilowats are in a megawatt.

Gene 2:05:58

thousand.

Ben 2:05:59

Okay. So 2000 megawats

Gene 2:06:03

Yeah. And what you waiting for me to do the math Godammit that's what you're for. So what, what is that 2000 times the divided by 50? So how many cars is that? So we got

Ben 2:06:16

that'd be 400,000.

Gene 2:06:18

400,000. Yeah, I was gonna say 40,000 Now, if we add two more of those that would double the capacity roughly, or, or be more than double,

Ben 2:06:26

It depends on the amount of generation output of the facility

Gene 2:06:29

would they be, would the new, would the breeder ones be less or more?

Ben 2:06:32

It, it, it, it depends. So you can, if you go with a module or reactor design, it depends on how many of you you put in. If you go with another light water plant, you could easily have the same generation capacity. It would, it would vary. You know, it all varies based off of you know, design, nameplate design of the plant.

Gene 2:06:52

Mm-hmm, just don't have GE build it. And so

Ben 2:06:57

Well, the, the joke in the power industry for forever is, you know, GE you can buy better, but you can't spend more.

Gene 2:07:05

that's good.

Ben 2:07:06

Yeah.

Gene 2:07:07

All right. Well, I think with that, we might as well wrap things up a little bit or a lot maybe even I think boy, I, I don't have the page open, but I think we got some money from our mutual friend here.

Ben 2:07:18

ah,

Gene 2:07:19

Yeah. I believe he sends them in.

Ben 2:07:22

well, we're gonna have to get him on the show.

Gene 2:07:24

Yeah, I think at this point even without the donations that he's making. We should have'em on the show. And it's funny too, cuz I make it really difficult for people to deny money to this show. Cause I don't give out any contact info or anything else. So they have to track that down manually to make a donation. But I I'll tell you what we did make cuz we made$4 in advertising fees. Yeah. I put an ad at the test how that works in the last podcast.

Ben 2:07:50

what, what ad?

Gene 2:07:51

So it's a very benign, it was actually an ad for another podcast.

Ben 2:07:55

Okay. What, what, what did I miss?

Gene 2:07:58

Oh, if you download the episode, you can hear it.

Ben 2:08:00

What what

Gene 2:08:01

But it's so I'm gonna try this for a couple of'em and we'll see if people are opposed to it or not. It's basically just cross promoting another podcast and, and I'm, and I'm I, well, they're different every time cuz I don't want'em to be boring, but, and I'm the one picking the podcast. So they're, they're typically gonna be political podcasts, you know, like, maybe we'll do a communist podcast, then we'll do like a anti-abortion podcast then we'll do, you know, just kind of mix it up a little bit just to give people a chance to listen to some other opinions. But here's the cool part. So every time I do that, it generates like four.

Ben 2:08:41

Woohoo.

Gene 2:08:42

Yeah. So, and right now the cost of the podcast is about 50 bucks a month. So this is making a significant dip across that$50 by dropping it by four. Yeah. But you know, if people start bitching too much, then we'll stop doing those ads, but I wanna do this for a few episodes and just kind of see, see if there are any negative reactions or if people don't mind like

Ben 2:09:06

Is it a, is it a pre-roll or what?

Gene 2:09:09

It's a mid

Ben 2:09:09

Midroll uh,

Gene 2:09:09

yeah. Which is to say that it's randomly placed somewhere in the middle.

Ben 2:09:14

Yeah. So cut us off right. During a conversation and

Gene 2:09:17

Yes, exactly. And here's why I abortion it. And now would you like to listen to Exactly. Exactly. So again, I like I'm doing this as an experiment, so treat it as such, which you know, like, believe me, if this generated like 40 bucks instead of four, it wouldn't be an experiment. We'd just start doing it. But, but given that it's$4, it's absolutely an experiment. Just out of curiosity, more than anything else.

Ben 2:09:43

well, I'll subsidize the four bucks a month if we need to

Gene 2:09:46

that's pretty good. I mean, that's like, okay, keep going. We'll get some. Equitable here. Well, plus now you, you laugh about this, like yeah. I'll pay the four bucks. You wait till you do your own podcast and you don't have plenty of plenty of expenses. You're gonna want to subsidize.

Ben 2:10:02

Okay.

Gene 2:10:03

I mean, you already spent what, like how much do you spend on your audio equipment at this point? So 200 bucks for Mike give or take

Ben 2:10:12

No, the re three 20 S more than that right

Gene 2:10:14

more than that. Okay.

Ben 2:10:16

Right. So Mike stand all, that's probably right around 300 and then, you know, the baby Mo two I'm using right now, the M two is

Gene 2:10:24

but first you bought one that you're not using. You gotta add that in as well. Cuz that

Ben 2:10:27

took that back. I got a refund.

Gene 2:10:29

Oh, you did? Oh, lucky. I didn't realize you had enough time to get a refund.

Ben 2:10:33

Yep. I, I was able to get a refund. Yep.

Gene 2:10:37

Good.

Ben 2:10:38

So

Gene 2:10:39

a couple hundred bucks for the other one

Ben 2:10:40

yeah, probably about five, 600 bucks right

Gene 2:10:42

headphones.

Ben 2:10:43

I already had I'm using the headphones I already had. Yeah.

Gene 2:10:46

Oh, okay. Got it. So anyway. Yeah. So you're you, you're basically your entry point is minimum about 500 bucks. And if, if you wanna do it the way that I'm set up, then it's more like a thousand bucks, but it's it's still a fun hobby even with those expenses I think. And, and really you. I've said this before. You've said it, I think as well is we still have these conversations, whether the microphone is recording or not.

Ben 2:11:16

Well,

Gene 2:11:16

It just so happens that we're sh

Ben 2:11:18

when I have a conversation with Eugene

Gene 2:11:20

well, that's good, cuz it's always transcribing when I have it with you, but cuz I gotta fill out the reports anyway. But the the fact that we're also making these conversations charitable and public with you guys is I think that's, that's something that you get to get a little glimmer of the, the, the private phone calls that we also have, cuz unlike Adam and John, we do talk to each other during the week.

Ben 2:11:46

little bit Yeah.

Gene 2:11:48

Yeah. Occasionally depends how drunk you are, I guess

Ben 2:11:51

Uhhuh

Gene 2:11:54

Uhhuh. All right. All right. Thanks everybody for listening. And remember if you wanna help us non monetarily post some reviews. That is honestly the best way to get other people to be suggested. Listening to this podcast is if there are positive reviews, either on Google or apple audios, mofos.