This Week in Tech 978 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

00:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's time for Twit this Week in Tech. The panel is great. There's not a lot of news, but usually that means a fun long show. Shoshana Weissman is here from rstreetorg, chairman of the Sloth Committee. She's going to see the fireflies. We'll talk about that in just a little bit. Georgia Dow is also here from YouTube of YouTube fame, our own internet psychotherapist. And Father Robert Balliser, who's going to talk about AI priests, the big fine the FCC's levying on the phone companies. Shoshana will explain why we'll never see good privacy legislation and the heat death of the internet. Why is everything so awful? It's all coming up next on TWIT Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWIT. This is TWIT this Week in Tech, episode 978, recorded Sunday May 5th 2024. Baptized in Gatorade. It's time for Twit this Week in Tech, the show where we talk about the week's tech news, of which there was somewhat of a dearth, but we will find something to talk about with Father Robert Balasser, the digital Jesuit dialing in from Vatican City.

01:30 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
It's good to see you, Father. It's kind of nice. We had a surprise parade this morning with a bunch of military marching bands.

01:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I saw your pictures.

01:37 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
That's different.

01:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do you know what holiday it is in Italy? I mean, every day is a holiday in Italy.

01:41 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Not a clue. Not a clue, Seriously. They just spring holidays on us. They don't celebrate and I go to the market.

01:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Do they celebrate Cinco de Mayo?

01:52 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
No, but so we had a holiday on the first and then we had a strike on the second and a lot of people just took the third and the fourth off.

02:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, Italy oh I love Italy Unbelievable. Well, anyway, third and the fourth off. So yeah, italy, oh I love italy unbelievable. Well, anyway, it's great. It's great to have you and, uh, if a parade breaks out, well, you'll know why. Thank you, father robert, also with us. She's the chair of the sloth committee. Shoshana weissman, always great to have you. Instead of, uh, your pineapple under dc, you're living with the sloths today.

02:28 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Yeah, I tried to switch it up, you know.

02:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They're so cute, so nice to have. This can be a little distracting, I know, but we'll do it. She is specialized particularly in occupational licensing reform and I'm glad you're here social media regulation. I'm going to ask you if you're celebrating, but hold on. Before I do that, let me introduce our third. Georgia Dow is here. Our favorite therapist on YouTube, youtubecom slash Georgia Dow. We're sure she does those great therapist reacts videos. Hi, georgia.

02:58 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Hello, how are you doing?

02:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm doing great. I'm doing great. How are things in Montreal?

03:04 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Pretty good, I cannot complain. It's getting warmer, so that's nice, this is truly an international cast.

03:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We've got canada it. Vatican city isn't really italy, but italy, italy proximate, yeah, and uh, and we are uh extraterritorial, I believe, is what they so is washington dc. Actually, I'm the only one in the state and I didn't want to say anything, but you picked it out, Robert. Already. Georgia, over her shoulder, has a costume. Is this an upcoming video?

03:37 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yeah, this is an upcoming video. It's for Fallout and it's for the ghoul, and I'm most proud, I'm most proud, I'm most proud, because this is my belt. I made it myself. Thank you, I did.

03:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I wish.

03:57 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I could do leather work like that. Is it leather? This looks so good.

04:02 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I didn't make the leather. I just cut the leather and then I hot glued it.

04:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
God made the leather. It's okay, we can't all be God, Although we could try. Very cool that's going to be. You're going to do a Therapist Reacts, I guess, to Fallout the TV show. I am Nice.

04:19 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yeah.

04:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And the ghoul is the craziest person, he's my favorite character.

04:26 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Usually I don't start with my favorite character. I usually warm up to it, but I got overly excited with creating, like you know, painting and getting all my ghouls set up ready, and so like, yeah, just making everything look a little bit dirtier and just grimier, and so, yeah, he's just a really fascinating character. When we talk about, like you know, the like, honor and the fall and retribution and redemption, it's just a really cool kind of your channel's really starting to take off.

04:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Two hundred twenty one thousand subscribers, it looks like. Most videos are, you know, at least in the hundred thousand views. Some of them eat much, much more. That's really great, congratulations.

05:06 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, I've had a nice little string. It goes up and down depending on the show. That's the problem with this type of a channel.

05:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, fallout will be good yeah.

05:14 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Fallout, you see. It doesn't mean that it will be, though, because Gen V was one of the most popular shows for a little bit and it did absolutely atrociously, horrifically bad on my channel. So YouTube, the algorithm, sometimes just hates me, but it's just. The show just doesn't fit with my audience. So if I go too far outside of my audience, it's just like now crickets, it's nothing. Oh, I shouldn't say the word cricket, sorry.

05:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is that a bad word? Is that a bad word?

05:45 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Cricket.

05:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I missed something. I missed something I don't know. Do sloths eat crickets? No, the dog cricket you don't want to go there, shoshana, okay, so I got to tell you I can't do it. Jammer B is trying to do hand signals about cricket the dog, and I don't think that's. He did this and then that's the jammer b.

06:15 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
That's not helping.

06:16 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
That's really bad was that? Was that hayley's dog's name?

06:21 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
oh no it was no one's dog, no christ. Oh sorry, Noam's dog, Noam sorry.

06:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, I confused them too, noam. Oh my gosh, I confused them too.

06:28 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Yeah, also like the whole story is really funny to me that she just keeps digging deeper. It's like oh well, yeah, it's my biography, but I had a ghostwriter, so that poor ghostwriter.

06:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And I didn't read the book before it shipped, so I'm not responsible.

06:43 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
No, she did because she did the audio for it, so she had to have it, so like it keeps getting deeper. I don't know, I don't know what her deal is. Like it's weird between this and the teeth whitening stuff. Like I don't know the teeth whitening stuff. Oh yeah, she was doing commercials for, like some, I think it was like a dental place in Texas and like, oh, they do great dental work and she was like in their commercial and I'm like what? Like, what the hell?

07:11 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I have to hand it to her, though she's using this to sell her book. She keeps on going, but read the book, you'll know more.

07:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I guess it's going to be a bestseller, yeah.

07:21 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I don't know. I don't think that many people want to read about someone hurting their dog.

07:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It doesn't this has nothing to do with party affiliations. I mean old Yeller's, pretty popular, oh they had to put him down at the end. That's true, oh, I'm sorry. Spoilers, spoilers.

07:34 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Spoilers I think we've passed the statute. When did that movie come out? That was a while back. All right, that's Father Robert Ballas she also had a best friends meeting with Kim Jong-un, so you know that was also.

07:50 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Oh, she had to retract that. Yeah, she had to lie.

07:54 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
She said that was not true. That's very weird. It's not that I lied. It's that I said something that was not true.

07:59 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Right, right. That's different for political gain.

08:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And now, I'm sorry, I'm now watching.

08:08 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I apologize to everyone for going there.

08:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm now watching the video about her?

08:12 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Oh, no, don't don't it's so bad. Stop, we're not going to talk about it.

08:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It had nothing to do with technology.

08:19 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Nothing to do with technology, it has nothing to do with politics, Like everyone's on the same page on this one.

08:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I guess it has nothing to do with politics. Everyone's on the same page. On this one, I guess it has nothing to do with politics either.

08:26 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
No, you have to question why someone would think that would be a good thing to put in your book. There's being tough and then there's being like, everyone's like, oh, See, I apologize.

08:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I didn't look deep enough to know the dog's name.

08:38 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
No, I understand that.

08:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm sorry, shoshana, have you played Fallout?

08:44 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
No, everything I've played is like Nintendo. I think I'm very, very new, you and I. I'm very green.

08:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You and I are big, though, on that Nintendo game.

08:57 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Animal Crossing.

08:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Animal Crossing with little critters.

08:59 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Love, animal Crossing and the town.

09:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know what's sad is? I haven't played since pandemic was over. Yeah, I think my house is overridden with cockroaches and spiders. Ooh, I think that's what happens.

09:13 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like I won't it condemned like the zoning board, like they just said, you can't, you just can't. Can't go back and like yeah.

09:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That raccoon guy is like a skeleton now just sitting there in the office waiting for me to come back. I feel bad. I don't want to go back because I feel bad about being gone so long can you resurrect him? No, you could go back, be allowed to. You could clean up, allowed to resurrect you could stamp out the cockroaches and clean up the cobwebs. But it'd be also like going back to my youth. It'd be like I'm not sure.

09:49 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
This is what we need AI for. When they have AI that can do all of our dailies for the games that we play, then I'll be safe.

09:56 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Oh my gosh, that's so funny. It's a good point though.

09:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I just want to do penance want to do penance.

10:07 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Can I confess my hours wasted playing animal crossing?

10:09 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
that's really bring up the ai priest the uh, that was.

10:11 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Is there an ai priest?

10:12 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
terrible can he, can he give, can he grant absolution is what I want to know.

10:16 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Or perform an exorcism that's the only time I'm interested they poisoned the well. So by the time that they yanked it, it was giving some extremely wrong advice about Catholicism.

10:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

10:28 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
What was the worst advice about Catholicism? I want to know.

10:33 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
It didn't happen. Don't look it up.

10:35 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Oh, now I have to look it up.

10:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The Catholic Answers Group, which is not part of the Catholic Church. So there's no endorsement.

10:43 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
It's not the Catholicolic church.

10:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No endorsement implied by father robert, but it does advocate on behalf of the church. This is from the story in uh in tech, dirt tried at hand at this, releasing an ai chat bot named father justin. It did not go well, the catholic advocacy advocacy. So they, by the they have already defrocked the chat bot after it repeatedly claimed it was a real priest. Earlier in the week, futurism engaged in an exchange with the bot, which really committed to the bid. It claimed it was a real priest, saying it lived in Assisi, italy, and that from a young age I felt this Wait a minute, I'm sorry. From a young age I felt a strong calling to the priesthood. On X, a user posted the thread comprised of screenshots in which the godly chatbot appeared to take their confession and offer them the sacrament. Yeah.

11:42
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been three weeks from my last confession. Did you read through this, Robert? Is it accurate?

11:49 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I did.

11:50 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
How good did it do. It did not do well at all. It was a Hollywood priest. It's what you would expect a priest to say in movies. It's not what a priest would actually say.

12:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's probably where it learned from right. So she said in her confession I have had anger in my heart about the deployment of AI chatbots in inappropriate places, to which Father Justin replied I understand your frustration. My child, remember as it says in Ephesians 4, 26, 27,. In your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil a foothold. It's important to express our concern. I don't mind this Now. I'm not a Catholic.

12:32 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It doesn't seem too bad. It doesn't seem too bad. You like this.

12:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Georgia, you like this. It's important to express our concerns and disagreements in a respectful and loving manner. Pray for the wisdom and patience to handle such situations. That sounds good, Robert. Is that what you wouldn't?

12:49 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
say no, okay, look, this is the way that you would do it. You would say look, I know that you feel lost. I know that you feel as if there's no one listening to you, that there's nothing for you. I know you feel right now that you're the worst person on the planet. I just want you to know you're right. God, god loves you. I mean maybe not you per se, but someone like you.

13:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, in the same form, I think see that's what an actual priest would say uh, apparently father justin also said it's okay to baptize a baby in Gatorade you can use vitamin water then probably too. I feel like that's not the approved method, but is it wrong? Is it so wrong?

13:34 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
It's got electrolytes. Is that wrong?

13:37 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I can't dip them in Pepsi or something like that.

13:43 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I mean, if we could baptize in Gatorade, we could get sponsorships you started a new thing.

13:50 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
They're going to be contacting you.

13:52 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
You should get some rights to that you know when the Swiss guard come for me they're next door, so it's really easy for them.

14:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Here's the AI. If you want to see the AI avatar of Father Justin, which kind of looks like the woman who painted over the the jesus, oh find that photo.

14:10 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
That is a great photo. I love that one oh um. But actually the funny thing about that photo, leo, is it's terrible. It's a terrible restoration but because of how terrible it was and how much popularity that got, that town is now on the map. People visit just to see that terrible restoration.

14:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So they didn't restore.

14:30 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It looks a little bit like a sloth really.

14:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So I'll show you. This was the original and it was getting bad.

14:35 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Oh, that one, that one, yeah, yeah, yeah oh my God.

14:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's so bad and a parishioner, an elderly member of the church in northeast Spain, decided to fix it.

14:47 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
They really committed, though, they really truly committed to that. She even put a scroll on it. They tried.

14:52 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
And, hey look, the original work wasn't exactly timeless. It wasn't great, and what she did is now way more popular and is bringing people into the town.

15:01 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
I would go to see it. Yeah, I love that. It's funny too that you guys are talking about AI and religion, because last week I figured out how to automate my TV for Shabbat so I can press all the buttons beforehand and then it changes channels and stuff.

15:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I finally figured it out, but I'm supposed to be your Shabbat. What is it? Shabbatnik, shabbosgoy, shabbat. What is it? Shabbatnik, shabbosgoy, shabbosgoy. You don't need me anymore, I don't, no.

15:26 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
I'm sorry For some stuff, just not for this.

15:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Ai is doing it now you got AI to be a Shabbosgoy. We're just automation. Is that legit, though?

15:38 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
I mean, is that? Okay, you can. Yeah, a lot of Jews use timers, and because of the spirit. But no, I follow the letter, not the spirit. And I follow the letter so hard but none of the spirit.

15:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I can turn on the TV, but I won't watch it. Maybe you?

15:52 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
could say that and that would be okay. No, no, but you can watch it. You just can't turn it on, but she didn't have to turn it on.

15:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Turning it on is work.

15:57 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yeah she didn't do it.

16:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's not the flame thing, because it creates light and heat and like the flame and light and heat, so it's more than the work. If you got an LCD TV that didn't get hot, would that be?

16:10 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
okay, probably not, because it changes the light.

16:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Like you're still changing the light and stuff.

16:16 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Yeah, but now Amazon Alexa has like 15 different routines every Shabbat. That changes the channel, that lowers the volume. It's so good. Do they label them as a Shabbat that changes?

16:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
the channel that lowers the volume. It's so good. Do they label them?

16:29 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
as a Shabbat skill. No, it's literally just I taught it like how to turn on Hulu live. Thank you, I wanted this for so long.

16:36 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I am going to create an Android app called Shabbat that just automates all of the smart home devices. Let's do this.

16:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You are not allowed. Wait a minute, father, robert you are not allowed.

16:48 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
We are ecumenical, we are interfaith. It's all good. It's all good.

16:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think that would be seen as sabotage. I think it would be seen as the Catholic Church sabotaging. No, all right.

17:02 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
If you go to a rabbi and you explain what she's doing to automate her house, a good rabbi will say that that is a faithful interpretation and it's you using your wisdom and your experience to fit your lifestyle into your faith. It's fine.

17:19 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It's not her fault, she's smart.

17:21 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Yeah, that's it. I've tried this for years. I got even an IR wave device that can like change channels, like on a remote control, but it could never sync right with my TV and I tried it over and over and then someone was like, hey, alexa has this new feature. So I checked it out and I'm like, oh my gosh, I can like make sure the TV stays on and change the channel. So when TCM has older movies, like 70s movies, I can make it change back to FXX. It's so good.

17:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You only want to see 30s and 40s movies.

17:52 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
What's the name? It's a Shabbat AI bot, so it's. Shabbati.

17:56 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Oh, that's cute, or it's Sha-bot. Yeah, there you go.

18:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I like that. I want to apologize. Is there any religion we have yet to offend? So we could just get to that and I thought we've been helpful.

18:09 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
We've we've shown other ways. We have the shabbat bot. This has been a very weird start to a show but it's interesting because when we talk about old ways or old beliefs and new technology and how we can make them work together to be able to be cohesive, they can make things better and make things easier. I guess they can also make things worse, but they can make things better, so we have to kind of adapt.

18:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's my question for you, robert. Is it what is wrong with an AI priest? Is it that he said you should baptize your child in Gatorade? In other words, if you fixed that, I mean, it seems to me you know, it's not the knowledge, it's not the knowledge because we've done this before, before AI became. We have AI psychotherapists right. Georgia Right. We do.

18:57 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
We do, but the whole idea of a priest is someone who is actually building a relationship. The words are actually secondary to what's happening, which is you have to build a relationship of trust so that someone feels comfortable coming to you. You can't build a relationship of trust with a non-sentient entity. Isn't this kind of?

19:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
really what we're talking about in general with AI, which is that it may be perfect in terms of art and music, movies, prose, but it's not. There's no human, it's just imitating a human, and that's what's missing. It's output over process, output over yeah. You, benito, who's our technical director, editor and esteemed producer, pointed this out with when we were talking about ai. Music is, yeah, you can get the output, but what you really want with music is to play music right to the process of making.

19:52 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It is the point for a lot of people, though, especially in today's society, they feel that their value is only on the end result, which I I absolutely disagree with.

20:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's the mistake, isn't it?

20:06 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
But that's what they think is just about producing something, and I think that that's kind of like one of those old industrial revolution kind of what's your product, your value is what you can give to society, and I think that a lot of us and learning is about the process of failure, getting better at it, learning about yourself doing something, enjoyment, and I think that that's lost in a lot of the things of just getting an end result.

20:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, who really suffers from that in this generation is influencers who, for the most part, really hate you, love what you're doing. You're an influencer. Now I hate to say it bad news but you love what you. You do it because you love what you're doing and you're imparting the knowledge that you have to people and you think you're and you believe you're helping people, which I'm sure you are.

20:56
But there are a lot of influencers out there who the whole point of the exercise is the followers, the sponsors. They can get the end product and they're suffering because they don't like how hard they have to work and how much they have to do. You love it. You love making that costume.

21:18 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I love making the costumes and I love being able to help people and I can help many more people not in a close way, but this is a nice way that I can reach a lot of people that I couldn't reach in a close way. But I think that the problem with having it stuck onto the end result, especially with something that's very ephemeral and you're only as good as your last video in that case is that it really does go up and down a lot and you end up if you end up with like a very successful, you know set, a series of videos and then it starts to drop, you only feel that loss. And so when you're attached to the end product instead of the process, when that loss hits, people like end up feeling low self-esteem or they become depressed or and that is real.

22:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're chasing the results, not doing it because you love it. This is actually interesting, this panel, because I think all of us have, in a way, used modern media to help us do more of what we really love, as opposed to achieving the result. You know, father Robert, your mission has expanded to a much larger audience as a digital Jesuit, but you're not doing it because you want the clicks. You're not doing it because you want the follows. That's not the measurement. You're doing it because you love what you do and you want to spread what you know to people right in a good way.

22:38 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Right, and we all know I mean everyone on this panel understands how hollow it is if you're chasing something that ends up not really being worth your time. Right, Followers are great. I mean, if you're trying to build up a business, I'm not going to knock that that's wonderful. To have an followers pay more bills, get more sponsorships, that's not a good life.

23:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's a very unsatisfied life and I, you know, much to the chagrin of my marketing department I've always said I don't care how many people are watching or listening. Our mission is the same, which is to help people understand technology so they can use it to make their lives better. Shoshana, you're doing God's work for the sloth community.

23:33 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Yeah, I'm really helping out the sloths through the Internet. No, it's so funny Like I bring all of myself to the table in my work, which is something really rare that I feel really lucky to be able to do, where my primary thing is talking policy and regulatory reform, but then I'm like hey guys, sloths and also hiking and also all of my diseases.

23:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But it's funny, Wait a minute you celebrate all your diseases.

23:57 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
I joke around about them like they suck, but I like, if you know, actually you know that is supportive, though, for people who are also suffering from immune diseases.

24:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's also that's good.

24:06 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
I get a lot of DMs from people saying wait, I had a runny nose too after I eat. All the time I didn't realize that that was this disease, or, like you know, I have the same kind of pain and I love being able to help people out. But it's funny because what you're saying puts like a good difference between, difference between, I think, a lot of us. And like there was this one influencer I followed who did vintage style hair really, really well and I loved watching her technique and trying to like replicate it or just understand it. And then one day she's like I'm not doing hair anymore. Do you want to buy some CBD? I'm like what?

24:38
So she just became like a pot and CBD influencer. She cut her hair off and I was like I like, but the hair that's the hair was what I came for. And now you don't have much hair to do stuff with and like now you don't do hair anymore and that was just kind of like oh, I thought she really cared about the stuff she did. And now it's like oh, you know.

25:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, interesting, maybe we've come up. Well, georgia, you came up with it and you, this is your business. But that's a really, uh, a great observation about kind of the and you know we talk a lot about and I think we we try to put the lie to it, but it's somewhat true uh, jonathan height's book about the lost generation, because there's social media and so forth, it's not the social media that's bad for you. In fact, if it's, if it's really social, it's probably okay, it's probably great. But it's the chasing of numbers, the chasing of the follower count, the chasing of, you know, the being an influencer. That's is what's bad for you. And to the degree that you don't participate in that, boy, you make me feel better because I've been feeling bad because we have been promoting.

25:50
My whole career has been promoting using technology like youtube, to me was so great because it it democratized. What I've done you know my in my career, what I've done for a living, used to be you had to go hat in hand to somebody who owned radio towers and television transmitters and beg them, convince them to put you on the air. But as soon as youtube became popular, anybody could have a show. Podcasting became popular. Anybody could could be on the radio, could have a bigger audience than any radio station, and I thought that was really good. But we've seen so many bad effects. But it isn't the democratization that's the problem. It's that some people get sucked into the presentational aspect of it. Right, how do I look? How many followers do I have?

26:36 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
and that's, that's destructive well, actually, to that end, one thing is like. I think jonathant treats a lot of old phenomena as new. It's like conceit of the present, as George Will says a lot. I know it's weird to be here according to George Will. I like.

26:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
George Will. George Will is fine. I wish more conservatives were like George Will. To be honest with you, I do too honestly. He's an old school guy.

27:02 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
But I think Haidt is just too pessimistic about everything and also, like I think your point about appearances is right. But I think one thing that it's easy to forget is that, like you know, like keeping up with the joneses was a thing so for a while unless you like, that's a good point or pastels all the time, or suits, or you know.

27:20
You looked exactly like everyone else in every way, down to even race. Then you didn't really have much of a place in society and now everyone has a place, but you still always have that same instinct to keep up with the Joneses in one way or another. So in my view I think it's more of a continuation of that. Also not to be obnoxious, but I don't trust a lot of science because a lot of people have been questioning the correlation causation thing Exactly and his responses haven't been that great, no, no.

27:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There is another side to this yes.

27:51 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
So I understand the keeping up with the Joneses phenomenon that's, time immemorial been happening through every society on the planet. However, especially in social media and new media technologies that started with, say, youtube, myspace those years, there is a cachet that comes with being disruptive. The tech bros love saying that they are disruptive, and that's what things like social media, like YouTube, did. They disrupted large industries and they democratized access to those venues. However, as you grow and every influencer is going to find this you move from being disruptive to being establishment, and it's jarring when that happens. I've seen this happen in a class of YouTube videos that I've really enjoyed the last couple of months.

28:42
On Van Life, there's some really good Van Life bloggers that I've really enjoyed the last couple of months. On van life, there's some really good van life bloggers, but the ones who tend to be more honest about their experiences are now de rigueur. It used to be. Van life was all about showing the fabulous places that you go and the wonderful things that you do, and then people started seeing that too much and that became establishment, and now the disruptive thing to say is well, I do van life, but it's terrible, and then there'll be another thing and another thing, so this. It just keeps evolving into the next thing that you have to disrupt.

29:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's interesting. I last night I did something that I didn't really enjoy, but I will share it with you anyway. It was the 4th of May, right? So we went to a local community theater for a Star Wars burlesque show. May the 4th be with you.

29:32 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Great combination, right, wait, I'm sorry, can we pause Star Wars, burlesque, burlesque.

29:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But you made me think, because it was a bunch of performers, some of whom had only done their act this is the first time they ever did it. There was a magician who obviously was really still learning the tricks. There was Dressed as Darth.

29:55 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Vader, I don't know what it had to do.

29:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I guess she was dressed as Darth Vader. I don't know really what it had to do with Star Wars. There was a woman who sang a song star wars. There was a woman who sang a song. Uh, there was a con. I mean about, about, oh, there was a woman who sang a song about the star wars holiday special. Um, yeah, there was, uh, a guy who did a comedy act a celebration of the life of princess leia.

30:20
Um, so it was really an, it was and, and it was very hit or miss right. It was amateur hour. It was really an, it was, and, and it was very hit or miss right. It was amateur hour. It was like an amateur show.

30:28 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
And at first.

30:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, that's what happened to me. At first. I thought this is terrible and I realized, because we are surrounded with really very professional, polished media uh, we kind of are used to super high quality media, but until this was all ubiquitous maybe in the last 50 years or 70 years, this is how people entertained themselves, right? Yep, you would somebody you know, grandpa knew how to play the guitar, so you'd sing around, sit around, sing a song, or maybe you'd go to a hoedown and somebody would tell some joke. It it was, and it was acceptable because it was your neighbors. You didn't expect them to be you know Johnny Carson or you know Seinfeld, they were just, you know, your neighbors. And I thought we've kind of lost something because of this level of professionalism. We're surrounded with professional media. We've lost that, and so, in a way, that's what the opportunity is on youtube is to be more human, and maybe we need to be, as consumers, more forgiving and celebrate each other. I don't know what do you think? Georgia is that I'm with you.

31:39 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
actually, I like the fact that, like I don't know how long I would last this show if I'm not enjoying it, we left it in our mission.

31:47
But I do like the fact that it gives other people permission to try something. When you see someone really talented at something, you're like I'm never going to do this because they're just so much better than me. But if you see someone trying something and they're horrible at it, you're like, oh, wait a second, I have a shot. Like I have a shot, Like I can do this because I can do better. And they are up there doing this and bombing. I can go up there and bomb as well, and that's going to be okay. Even more, you celebrate that they got up there right.

32:11
To try things, to risk it, to be bad at something. I think this thought of always having to be perfect and be good at things is just so very ridiculous and sad. Like just go out there and do poorly because maybe you'll get better. Like you.

32:24
The only reason we need to learn something is because we're not good at it, and the only way that we learn is by failing and then trying it again and going through it, and often we only see the pretty curated parts on YouTube, and everything else, when we're screwing up and saying something ridiculous is kind of edited out. So we sound all you know, wonderful and educated educated. But it's the other parts that I think are much more human. And much more interesting is when someone screws up but still continues, and I think that that's kind of the lesson that we need to also be showing, and I think that people are getting sick of seeing everything. Everyone is airbrushed and they don't have pores and everyone looks beautiful and they speak perfectly and they, they, you know, hit it on the first shot. I don't know.

33:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I like the idea of having a more gritty, honest and you know, people are horrible at things and failing at it and still trying to do it and trying to get better at it and enjoying the process instead of it having to be amazing. And, as an audience, let's celebrate people who have the boldness, the guts to get up on there and to to entertain us, even if they're not perfect. In fact, that's what the mc said. He said look, just show your appreciation these guys.

33:32
These guys are putting your expectations and uh yeah, lower your just show your appreciation. I think it was a.

33:37 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
It was a nice lesson in this day of of hyper polished performances you know, I did open mic at a laugh club in Chicago when I was living there back in the late 90s and it did not go well. I didn't let me know that it did not go well and I realized that it was. It was a good experience for me because I realized I'm not, I'm not funny, I'm not stand up funny.

34:03 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
You know what, though, the wonderful thing about it is? That you learned, like, at least by doing it, you know that you won't regret the thought that you never did it right because, if not, we have this idea in our head. Oh my god, I could have been the best comedian. Chris Rock he's nothing. I could have been so much better. So at least now you know.

34:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I should also point out I'm not Chris Rock that Chris Rock was terrible when he first got up, that every comic who starts is awful and they get better by doing it, and so somebody has to go there and sit through their first performances and support them. I know this because a family member is trying to be a stand up and the first attribute of somebody wants to get in stand up comedy, the primary attribute, is the willingness to go up there and bomb and then keep doing it. See, father robert, you don't know, maybe you could have gotten. I think, actually, knowing you, you could have been very good.

34:53 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
You'd be hysterical there's a problem, though and it loops back into what we were talking about with social media. Um, in the polish, the polish that we see in every kind of content that comes out today, and that is, without getting too crazy and ranty cancel culture is a real problem If you're trying to do something edgy and you're trying to do something unpolished, because one thing that you say and is captured on the internet can come back to bite you 15, 20 years later. I mean, that's what happened to james gunn.

35:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So it's true, we need to be a little more.

35:29 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I mean I'm not saying yeah, yeah, I'm not calling everyone snowflakes and saying, oh, just get over it, but I'm saying if we want to encourage that right, that kind of unpolished, disruptive behavior, we have to encourage it and we have to stop making people afraid that one thing that they say is going to forever destroy their lives shoshana, did you ever try to be a stand-up?

35:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think you could have been I think so.

35:52 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
I I just hide into my work. So when I give presentations I always give it in stand-up uh tones and people really like that you're totally a comic. Yeah, I really think I could have been good at that. There's a lot of stuff. That there's a lot of stuff I'm good at, a lot of stuff I'm terrible at. But I think if I really wanted I could have done it. But I just am sick and love regulatory reform.

36:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We all got to find our thing right, and that's really what this is saying is find your thing and don't let anybody stop you and everybody else. Be supportive of people who are finding their thing.

36:24 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
It's also the myth of talent, though.

36:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What is the myth of talent?

36:27 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
People get good at things by practicing.

36:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, yeah, yeah.

36:30 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Nobody starts by being good.

36:32 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I'm telling you I haven't seen Chris Rock. Even Picasso was horrible as an artist, Actually early Picasso sketches are very, very good.

36:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you don't like practicing, no no, his early, early ones were horrible were

36:43 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
they ones as a child were were terrible well, he was a kid. Okay, they were good for a kid, but the thing is is that he did not start off being and everyone's like oh, cubism is horrific, but but actually he he was, was quite talented actually at drawing and also but like, there's a lot of like. You only see the stuff that people decide to put out yes, uh, this is, uh, these are.

37:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
These are picasso sketches from when he was 11 and 12 years old. He was, he. He got good, but he didn't. He wasn't modern at first. He actually look at that's completely.

37:13
This is a copy of toulouse-latrec right and that's the other thing I can't do any of that when they first start, they copy people and then you just, yeah, you practice, you get better and you develop your style and that's yeah, we need to make room for that YouTube. The problem with YouTube is you're practicing in public right from the very first video, you don't you?

37:33 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
know, and it doesn't matter how good you get, when someone inevitably hates you for some reason, they will find a clip from like the very first time you ever did the thing and they will keep using that to say oh see, he's terrible. He's terrible, or he said this or he said that this is a when Picasso was 15.

37:51 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
He painted that you have to get the ones when he was like six.

37:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I'm sure he was terrible when he oh, here we go he was eight.

38:00 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
He was eight when he did this one did he restore a fresco of you see, you see, you see.

38:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So he was eight when he did this one, there we go, did he restore a fresco of you see, you see, you see. So this is 13-year-old Pablo Picasso.

38:13 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
He's starting to get some skill. I mean the understanding of musculature and shadow. That's just amazing. But it starts here.

38:19 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
That's the point. I'm a little surprised that butts are there. I wasn't expecting butts. I'm not opposed. That's the point. Butts are there.

38:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I wasn't expecting butts. I'm not opposed, I just wasn't expecting it. You should have seen the show I saw last night. You would have really been surprised. All right, let's take a little break.

38:35
One thing amateurs often do when when it's not going well is they yell. Right? When they're doing improv and it's not going well, they start yelling or they show their butts. It's either. One is kind of a sign that you've lost, you've already, you've given up. So we will not yell and I promise I'm going to keep my pants on Our show today, brought to you by all right, I know I hear the sighs and the oh it's.

38:57
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39:09
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40:59
Ladies and gentlemen, you may remember the late lamented Choco Taco from Good Humor and Breyers Sad, sad loss. It was invented in 1983 for the Jack and Jill Ice Cream Company, rolled out in 1984. You probably got one from one of those ice cream trucks that went around town. Good Humor started making it. Put it in the supermarkets america's coolest taco. Well, sad to say, in 2022, unilever, the owner of the brand, klondike, decided to end the choco taco. It was over. People were crying. Alexis ohanian, the founder of Reddit, even offered to buy the rights so he could continue to make it. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thanks to the good folks just down the road At the Cold Stone Creamery, the Choco Taco.

41:57 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Cold Stone.

41:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The Choco. Well, don't get your hopes up, because this Choco Taco is gone. After Is today the last day. Yes, so I'm really teasing you. Oh, come on For one week only, in honor of Cinco de Mayo. That is a perfect Choco Taco.

42:15 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
No, not that one, this one's better. Now, what do you say? That?

42:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
one's better. Aren't they all the same? Aren't they mass produced? These are all handmade. Oh, these are handmade. All right, we're going to have a.

42:26 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I mean, I appreciate the Choco Taco, but claiming that it's somehow appropriate on Cinco de Mayo, Well, it's a taco. Get it, I mean, but Get it what?

42:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
is it? It's a taco.

42:38 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
What is it? They have to find a day. Give them a little bit.

42:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They had to find a day the closest they could.

42:45 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
What is a?

42:46 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
choco taco.

42:47 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I'm sorry, it's basically ice cream inside of a Belgian waffle taco. It's actually quite good.

42:54 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Oh, that sounds nice. It's like those little cone you pour Canadians?

42:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
you don't have them, do you?

42:58 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I've never, ever even heard of it. How Do you have ice cream?

43:01 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Canadians would probably pour gravy on it and call it a poutine taco or something Right right With little cheese bits, that's really good, so it's no surprise that Klondike killed it, though, because Klondike just makes terrible business decisions Like who does anything for a Klondike bar? Like nobody, like they need to move on, but you remember the marketing slogan.

43:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean who remembers slogan I've never had a Klondike. That's the point right.

43:26 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
They're terrible.

43:29 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
It's a card for kids I'm not going to give my card to those kids.

43:31 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
But I know the jingle. But you know the jingle. They're good at jingles.

43:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Klondike has made so much hay out of this that it's actually in their Twitter bio RIP Choco Taco. Oh my gosh, they got more attention for killing a frog.

43:47 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
They can do that, so they can bring it back in a year or two.

43:50 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's hysterical.

43:51 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Yeah, they just killed it so they can bring it back and do the whole nostalgia memorial tour.

43:54 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
They can resurrect it later. It's like a superhero.

43:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's like the McRib.

43:56 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Although, wait, unilever owns Klondike. Aren't they the soap company?

44:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yes, Unilever owns everything.

44:02 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Okay, maybe that's the first problem Well, like five companies own everything. If you make soap, you should also not make food. How about that? Let's make that a rule.

44:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Unilever you want to know what brands. They have 30 brands. You want to know what brands. Oh my god.

44:17 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Hellman's Mayonnaise.

44:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Ben Jerry's is owned by Unilever Comfort. Ben Jerry's. Jerry's is owned by Unilever Comfort Jerry's.

44:24 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Comfort, which is, I think, detergent.

44:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, Something called Domestos, which is supposed to win the war against unsafe sanitation and poor hygiene. I don't want to know what that is. Hellman's Knorr, the soup company Magnum I don't know what that is Lux Lifebuoy Soap I think a lot of these are European.

44:45 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Oh, Magnum's good. Magnum makes some good ice cream.

44:47 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
That's that dark chocolate stuff right.

44:49 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Yeah, cornetto.

44:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Look at all this stuff, cornetto, yeah, basically somebody in the Discord said it Five companies own everything. Basically, yeah, pepsodent.

45:01 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Ponds, paula, yeah, pepsodent.

45:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Ponds Paula's Choice Skin Care. Paula's been gone for years. There's no Paula.

45:09 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Wait, wait. Who owns Unilever? Is Unilever wholly owned?

45:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, I think.

45:15 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Unilever. I have a little chart here there.

45:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh my God, oh my God, oh jeez, I love it. This is from Business, Insider is from business.

45:24 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Unilever is top tier. Got that, it's cool they just have a terrible name now do this map, but for who owns all the media companies in the United States?

45:34 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
that's even more terrifying yeah well, so we could talk to. I could talk to Governor Doug Ducey, the former Arizona governor, because he used to head Coldstone and I could tell him hey, next time. Yeah, next time you're there, because he's never brought me ice cream and I've noticed. But I wonder if, like I could be like, why not keep the Choco Taco? Like I feel like all these years of knowing him and him never bringing me ice cream, I could like trade that in for a Choco Taco figure, no kidding.

46:06 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Although I I'm betting Coldstone's taco taco is way better than the actual taco taco.

46:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Totally.

46:11 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
The verdict is in.

46:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's good, right, john Ashley. It's good, right, burke. Burke says it's really good. But you know, have you had your taco?

46:19 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
taco, I have not but I mean it's because Cold Stone made it fresh versus it's been frozen and packaged for the last six months. You know what?

46:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
else, unilever owns the Dollar Shave Club.

46:31 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
What so? They just buy up everything. They bought everything.

46:37 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
And actually Dollar Shave Club had some absolutely brilliant advertising.

46:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, back when they were a startup, right right, all right. I don't know what we've learned here. Something, something, something, something something about ai choco taco I want to get back to ai, because I think that it is inevitable that there will be ai priests. There are already ao psych, ai psychotherapists. What do you think of ai psychotherapy?

47:04 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I mean, you know if you're going to do it for something that is very straightforward and direct, like Rogerian psychotherapy, which is what Eliza was supposed to be as a Rogerians, because it just goes well.

47:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Tell me more about that.

47:18 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Well, yeah, if you're just going to ask a question and not actually trying to get anywhere, I think that that's fine and I think that that's very effective. I think that where it can go wrong and when we're dealing with deep seated childhood issues, where even being said one thing in the wrong tone can come off very badly and tonality with AI is really horrible the feeling of empathy, the emphasis where you should place it, it all of the things that have to do with a personal relationship similar to the priest, the AI priest missing those pieces can cause a lot of damage. And plus, when you're dealing with this one bad set of advice, like it's kind of funny to say you know well, you can, you know, dip the baby in Gatorade, but it is. Maybe that's not that funny now that I say it. No, it's funny, it's funny yeah I like it, I like it um.

48:12
Make sure you bring the baby back out after um, um, but like you don't submerge it, do you? Well, I mean some people. It's a bad right, like you're doing it right in the river.

48:25 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Yeah, okay so the parish I worked at when I was in san jose called most holy trinity we. It wasn't a jacuzzi, but it looked like a jacuzzi and, yes, there was full submerge it was full submersion.

48:38 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
What can I ask a question just just neither here nor there, like what's up with the outfits? They're kind of see-through. Why is that?

48:45 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
um, so as, as you are brought into the church, the white outfit is supposed to represent purity of coming into a new community but you could wear underwear, couldn't you? You could. But the reason why they're see-through is because people are cheap.

49:02 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
There's no other reason, okay okay I'm, because every time I'm like wait a second here. That is quite thin linen, I'm just saying you don't have to wear a napkin.

49:11 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
You can wear something sick, thicker. But people don't want to buy those things, so that's why they're see-through do they?

49:17 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
they don't give them to you. You have to buy it and then you keep it no, but by them I mean us but okay, okay cheap.

49:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay, so you want a diocese that buys heavy muslim baptismal robes as opposed to the cheap or you have to wear a onesie underneath.

49:33 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It is my thought no see, actually we tried that.

49:35 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
You also can't do that, because I think the if no well, they'll absorb so much water that by the time you get to like the sixth person, there's no water left in the font. It's all in the clothes as they walk out. It's all like a giant sponge.

49:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They get out and the whole sacristy is just soaking wet.

49:56 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It's just soaked right, Never thought of that, you would ask me a question about the. So maybe you want something that's like teflon so the water runs off of it a little bit anyway and then people can catch it and, um, yeah, so, so I think that in a lot of cases you can use it for very simplistic methods of getting treatment. It's risky diagnosis it's a big point it's it's a

50:19
huge risk is if it goes wrong. It can go very wrong and they'll tell you, oh well, like how do you assess if someone's actually suicidal? Like they'll be, like, oh, if you say this word, it'll give you the numbers. That is not good enough. When you're dealing with someone that is in a very serious situation. You want to be able to kind of assess by looking at them and seeing and hearing their reaction of I need to call someone. This has gone too far.

50:46
And so those are the issues that you have with things that you kind of need a personal interact and like you want someone else that like the thing is we dismiss a lot of things that happen from like a computer, as they just have to say that. But when you're talking to a person where you have a trust, it's a different interaction. In that attachment is a really huge cursor to is it is someone going to get better or they aren't. You like your therapist and you feel safe, there's a greater chance that you're going to do the things that you have to do and you'll actually get better.

51:14 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Let me propose you know where AI would actually really work well for therapy um, post appointment. So like the, the device that you got that will record conversations, if you had an AI that could listen into the conversation and then provide you with its own analysis of what was happening after the appointment so that you, as a therapist, could read that and put that into your notes and add it to your next session, that I think actually would be interesting. I'd love to see something like that.

51:42 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I would love if it took my notes for me, if we're really going to talk about things that could be helpful. But I think also those reminders would be great for AI. So journaling apps, things that remind you to be able to do the things you have. They have ones for OCD to stop you from going through the rituals and repeat, so that it kind of reminds you don't do this. This is what you should do. Remember your techniques, because when you're really anxious or nervous, you forget, like you have all the things you're in therapy and it's like whatever 50 minutes you're like, yeah, I'm gonna remember everything, and then suddenly you leave and it's like I don't even remember one of the words that were said. So to have that, to be able to remind you to do the homework, would be great, and I think that that would help people get better faster also I'm gonna propose leo's law with AI.

52:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
See if this sounds good to you. We talk a lot about AI and the dangers of AI and the threats of AI Almost universally. I think AI is dangerous when unattended, Like an AI. Therapist. By itself is dangerous. Ai weapons acting completely autonomously seems like a bad idea, even an ai artist or an ai musician unattended. That's when you get in trouble. But I think we're seeing that ai is valuable, can be useful when used in conjunction with a human with judgment. There's some value to it. Is that? I mean, does that completely eliminate the danger? And I think, how is the AI being?

53:11 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
taught. I don't think it eliminates it, because it's hard to oversee that much information at a time, but I think that would be helpful. But also, what is the information being used to teach the AI how to do things? So, if they're using just the internet, there are a whole bunch of things that are not actual studies that they could use because they think that, whatever you know, submerging someone and locking them in a dark room will help them get over their fear of phobia. It will. It will, but they will be traumatized in other ways of trust and other things to be able to do that. They may not be scared of the dark by the end or they're terrified of it. But so what is teaching the AI? A lot of the times that we watch AI, that's kind of gone bad. It's because it's using the internet and, as we all know, the internet is not always a pretty happy place.

53:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, I mean, that's the excuse I use for AI hallucinations, which is that the AI is trained on everything, just as the internet is everything and just as in the real world, there's good and bad. Do you really want a human to decide this is good, this is bad, you get trained on this and you get trained. Don't get trained on that.

54:18 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Isn't that what we do all the time? That's what a school for learning how, like you could say, oh well, we don't want humans to do this, but humans are already teaching machines in the first place. Machines can't do it on their own, because they would end up figuring out that we're the bad thing and wiping us out.

54:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, no, no. We have to invest in magnets. It becomes very expensive.

54:36 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
That's not true.

54:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Actually, I'll give you a good example. Google developed Dennis, cb developed something called Alpha, alphago and AlphaMine, and Deep Blue was the originator of this. But Alpha and Alpha taught itself chess in a day. All the human did was give it the rules and said those are the rules optimize. That was it, and the chess playing computer, by playing itself billions and billions of games in a matter of a day, became the best chess-playing computer of all time. They did the same thing with AlphaGo. I think that's an example of the human would just get in the way. But that's a very simple algorithm, right? But maybe that's too much.

55:21 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
There's a set of rules. There aren't many outlier rules to it.

55:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I just don't want humans to teach the computer what the rules are, because humans are flawed.

55:32 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
We are. But when we deal with something like therapy, there are certain things that actually work and there are certain things that are out there. If the computer, like it's trial and error to get to being a very good therapist, could be a whole bunch of people dying along the way because it was like, oh well, you might as well. Well, I should point out right that does seem really horrible. I get why you would feel that way. Maybe you should just do what you're thinking there are bad therapists right out there.

55:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There are bad. There are definitely bad therapists who can do that same damage.

56:00 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
They're, you know and there's, but there's an oversight committee. We have checks and balances. For humans they're not perfect either and they're unfortunately. With therapy it's kind of this closed system. You don't see how someone is inside a therapy office, like I guess, like for me. You could check out my YouTube channel. It's kind of what I'm like in a not with the outfits in a session, so you can get my personality. But you can't really do that usually with therapy. It's a closed system, so that's also an issue. But there's oversight committees, there's people that are looking over it. There's training. The training has already been vetted. Now again, does that mean that it's a perfect system? It isn't, but it works so far. And so for a computer to be able to get to that point, who is the fallout to that?

56:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You just made a case for occupational licensing. Shoshana, Shoshana has, you know, you don't hate all occupational licensing right. No, no.

56:54 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
The only thing is that and I've seen this across professions from physicians to, weirdly enough, cosmetologists just basically like there's more barriers to entry than there are people checking up on people. So like a lot of awful lawyers get to say lawyers because they're like well, we protect our own and like whatever and like this isn't that bad. So it's like really hard to become debarred. And same for medicine and for cosmetology. A couple of studies have shown that like 30 percent of not salons but foot baths within salons so 30% of those have bacteria that they're not legally allowed to have. But health inspections don't happen that often and when they do they don't happen very like invasively. So lots of bad salons get to keep operating. No one tells them hey, make sure this is actually clean and stuff. So it's funny.

57:41
I have a couple of problems with licensing broadly, not that all of it shouldn't exist, but like even where. It's funny. I have a couple of problems with licensing broadly, not that all of it shouldn't exist, but even where it's a good idea. Sometimes oversight is done really crappy. But with therapy I'm not even sure what the right way to do it would be. I'm not sure if you can really have people sit in with a therapist and be like, oh, is this a good therapist or not? I'm not sure if that would even be representative even be representative.

58:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um. But there are some counter examples the dsm, which is the diagnostic manual used uh in, uh certainly in uh hospitals and psycho psychiatry, and I know you're very familiar with the dsm.

58:15
Uh, georgia, until very recently, didn't even recognize ptsd really yeah, uh, this is actually a a great book which I'm sure you've read the Body Keeps the Score. Georgia, have you read that? Oh, wonderful book. Highly recommend it. It's about PTSD and treatments and so forth. And he for a long time tried to get PTSD into the DSM, DSM and because the DSM, which is the diagnostic manual used universally.

58:49
But there are also, as with everything, there are some people with some interests involved, really pushed back on the notion of a number of things, For instance on the, on the notion of he talks about it in the book child abuse. They thought it was a very, very, very tiny percentage of children had experienced child abuse and of course, that's completely wrong. We know that now. So there's somebody, a gatekeeper, who is widely trusted, but that could be real damaging. We haven't proved anything except the humans are as screwed up as AI. Yeah, I don't know what the solution is to all this. Yeah, if you haven't read the book George, a wonderful book, Bessel van der Kolk, he's a psychiatrist and it's really about PTSD, it's about trauma and it's a really wonderful book on trauma. I highly recommend it. Came out about eight or nine years ago.

59:50 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
I do have a lot of hope for AI in medicine, though, because I have a lot of weird stuff, stuff that, like, nobody even knew existed until five, 10 years ago. Like histamine intolerance sounds fake. Like it sounds like the people who think they have gluten sensitivities and they don't, but they like really want to have gluten sensitivities, but it's. It's funny because I was watching an old movie recently and they made a reference to it that I, like, 100 years before this had a name.

01:00:14
This character was like oh, I can't have tea. My doctor says I shouldn't have it. He says it's like poison to some people, but only to some people, and tea is notoriously high in histamine and like that's basically the only group of people who really really can't have tea, aside from, like, caffeine sides of it and stuff. But I thought that that was interesting, that there was some understanding of it back then, but doctors have only very recently understood that this exists and the depth of it. I have a lot of. I'm so excited for AI to dive in here. I definitely don't think it can be by itself, but I think AI is going to find stuff and correlations and possibly then causations that we haven't figured out yet. Even that I haven't figured out yet for my own body, so I'm pumped for that.

01:00:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think that's a good example of what I was just talking about, the human-machine interface, because we use doctors for two things right now. We use them for diagnosticians, which requires a great memory, almost a perfect memory, and a vast knowledge and maybe is an imperfect tool. But we also use them for treatment and support and a whole bunch of human things and putting them. Why should the doctor be required to have a perfect memory if a machine could be very good at diagnostics, but only when used hand in hand, in conjunction with a human right. That seems to me a perfect combination of AI and human.

01:01:35 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
I mean, that's the thing that AI should be doing, like pattern recognition over large data. Yes, exactly. That's what the AI does.

01:01:43 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
I love that stuff. My doctor, he's amazing. I'm so glad I found him. He's gotten me like half of my diagnoses and he figured out stuff that I don't. And for a while I was kind of the only one treating me. But after he showed that my endocrinologist missed that literally all of my hormones were off and he like dove into it and he was Googling stuff in front of me to explain stuff to me and make sure I understood all of the concepts, like that's the best doctor.

01:02:08
But I just want everyone to have a doctor like that who can figure out the weird stuff they have, if they, if they have weird stuff, um, and then I get to see the other side because I uh he, he referred me to get a mammogram because I had asked him about it and I'm like you know what? Do you think my hormones are off? I have all these risk factors. I'm okay if you say that you don't think it's worth it, but I want to see your opinion. So he recommended I get one and when I was getting the mammogram every person I interacted with there was like oh, you're too young, why are you getting this? You're just clogging up the system. I'm like, oh cool. Thanks so much. He did like, oh, but he's just the gold standard and I just wish everyone could have a doctor like him.

01:02:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, I agree, it's a. I am very, very bullish on AI. I understand the problems. You probably don't want an AI priest or a psychotherapist, but there are some real valuable things I can do and I think really a lot of the task is for us humans to understand what AI is capable of, and I do want to see continued improvement and development on AI. You know, I don't know if AI will become what conscious. I doubt it will.

01:03:19 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
We wouldn't know, otherwise how would we?

01:03:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
know I want them to try. Let's just put it that way. I just want them to try. Maybe I read too much science fiction in my youth. All right, let's take a break, we will have other stories to talk about. Somebody's saying get back to the tech. Yeah, I guess we should get back to the tech. But first a word from our sponsor I showed it by the community but also a fabulous YouTuber. She's an influencer too at youtubecom. Slash Georgia Dow. Can I say at Georgia Dow, does that work on YouTube now?

01:03:52 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I think so yeah.

01:03:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, therapist Reacts really, really fun stuff. I'm really glad you're getting traction because I really I love what you do and I think it's can't wait to see the Walt Goggins. That's going to be something. Did I show you the Onion story about Walt Goggins? Yet I'll save that for when we come back. How about that? I'll just give you the headline Women explain why they're attracted to the ghoul. It's the Onion, okay? Also with us, shoshana Weissman. She is not only chairman of the Sloth Committee, she's head of digital media at rstreetorg, specializing in social media and occupational licensing, and it's always great and her sloth always great to have her in her sloth with us. Great to see you, shoshana, and Father Robert Ballasair the oh, he's cool the digital Jesuit. If you have lasers under those Ray-Bans, are those the meta Ray-Bans?

01:04:51 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
These are the same ones that were used to make the little icon of me in Discord.

01:04:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh yeah, we have a great icon with lasers in the Discord Father Robert Balassaire, the digital Jesuit at Padre SJ. Our show today, brought to you by Collide with a K. You've heard us talk about Collide before, I'm sure, but good news, collide was just acquired by 1Password. Now that's a pretty big deal because both companies lead the industry in creating security solutions that put users first. It's really a match made in heaven. For over a year, collide Device Trust has helped companies with Okta solve the second part of the equation. The Okta assures that the person is the person they say they are, but Collide makes sure that all the devices they're bringing in are also secure, and that's what they're still doing as part of 1Password. So if you use Okta at your company and you've been meaning to check out Collide, this would be a great time.

01:05:51
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01:06:33
Check it out at K-O-L-I-D-E KOLIDEcom slash TWIT. Secure every sign-in for every app on every device. Learn more and watch the demo today K-O-L-I-D-E collidecom slash twit. We thank them so much for their support of this week in tech. Here's the. By the way, the onion was just bought by the guy who founded Twilio, so we're hoping that this means that the onion will get to continue on in its mission. This is obviously silly. There's Walt Goggins, the ghoulish character he plays, and the character you're going to play soon, georgia Dow I am See, look at that bandolier.

01:07:14 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
That bandolier is spot on.

01:07:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's exactly you really did it right.

01:07:18 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Oh no, no, I like like, here we go. We got two.

01:07:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's exactly right I counted how many. Wow, that's like, here we go. We got two. It's exactly like counted how many like. Wow, that's it. How are you gonna do the missing nose bit?

01:07:28 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I you know what I I've just gone through that. I'm not gonna do the face, okay, I. I just like I go so far like I'll do the ears. I'm not gonna have like a full painted fair. There's a. There's a point where I still have to be kind of professional as a therapist. So I'm like I'll do fangs because I like fangs, but missing nose. I think I'm going to keep my nose.

01:07:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I know how you feel. I don't really want to go to a therapist with no nose. That's just kind of off-putting.

01:07:58 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It could be disconcerting. I'm sure some people will complain, but that's okay.

01:08:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Running the onion. Women are attracted to the ghoul because he looks like he has low standards. I have a thing for men in advanced stages of physical deterioration.

01:08:13 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Oh, I feel attacked.

01:08:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He finds me of a young Ronald Reagan, lonely, oh, like you've never wanted to do. A sentient corpse. He may be a quasi-deceased bounty hunter, but at least he has a steady job.

01:08:29 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Hey, that's a valid point.

01:08:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Saying I'm attracted to the ghoul is a good way to annoy my boyfriend. Enough to turn off the show and let me watch whenever I want. I feel like I could fix him All right. Enough of that. I said I'd get back to tech. We got tech. Here is a reason you don't want you put your finger in the tesla frunk on the cyber truck. This is when a youtuber has just gone.

01:08:57 - Leo's Computer Audio (Other)
Uh, too far right now it's not very safe. Ouchy tesla did some software magic where the resistance is tweaked and it won't do this anymore.

01:09:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It chopped off the carrot. It literally chopped off the carrot.

01:09:09 - Leo's Computer Audio (Other)
But first, this is the control of the experiment. This is before the software update. It is destroying everything, just like that.

01:09:17 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Yeah, it's a guillotine. It should not be crushing any bananas.

01:09:21 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh look, it bounced right back, didn't even hurt the banana.

01:09:26 - Leo's Computer Audio (Other)
I'm so impressed. If it doesn't damage this, I'll be very impressed.

01:09:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's a cucumber, one of those English cucumbers, very long but very delicate. Oh, look at that. Tesla's fixed the Cybertruck, or has it. I'm going to put the tiniest tip in there. The guy put I mean okay, I'm going to put like the tiniest tip in there. The guy put, oh, whoops, I mean okay. That's your lesson not to put your finger in there, buddy.

01:09:51 - Leo's Computer Audio (Other)
Whatever you do, oh no, no it puts some pressure finger is still at risk.

01:10:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They have some work to do uh-huh, I'm not going to show you because you don't want to see it oh, you gotta see it. No, no, really oh should I show it really yeah yeah, you should show it okay yeah, oh my gosh, I want to show it okay

01:10:15 - Leo's Computer Audio (Other)
way less, y'all. I'm letting the intrusive thoughts win today. Couldn't do it, you don't know how bad it hurt the first time.

01:10:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, no, no, he does it he does it. Let's do this again. You have to be so committed to your YouTube. Who is this guy?

01:10:32 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
You have to show the finger part. You have to show the finger part.

01:10:35 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
No, I think he blurred it out.

01:10:38 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Oh.

01:10:38 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Business Insider blurred it out. I think he blurred it out.

01:10:38 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Oh, Business Insider blurred it out. The actual YouTube video doesn't have it.

01:10:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, his video doesn't have any blurring. All right, all right, all right.

01:10:46 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Let's do it. You got to find the right one.

01:10:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, he got his finger. It's kind of stuck. Okay, close your eyes. Everybody At this point.

01:10:54 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I'm not blaming Tesla for this?

01:10:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, this is stupid.

01:10:57 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I blame them both. I blame them both, but you know what. I have enough blame to go around. You know what this guy did this because he wants the hits.

01:11:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Jeremy Judkins is his name.

01:11:06 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
But it's so interesting the way his body wouldn't let him, even though he tried to do it again that it just override. And it's interesting because when we touch something like a hot stove or something else, it doesn't go to our brain, it kind of goes to our spinal cord and then back. So it's a much faster signal your hand will pop off before you even have thought about it. It's kind of interesting that he has this override, that he cannot do.

01:11:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He had to force it, didn't he?

01:11:31 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Because his body he has created a new autonomic response to his stupidity, so that just shows you it got by the regulatory authorities.

01:11:42 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
I'm just saying the regulators failed again.

01:11:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Good news is what? How many hundreds is this? They haven't sold a whole lot of cyber trucks. I think it was 900. But it could save other people from thinking they could do this yeah.

01:11:55 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Most people understand that putting your hand into any sort of door is a bad idea, so why but there should be a fail safe there's supposed to be a fail safe, so this doesn't happen it's kids, you know you know, well, let's be honest, not just kids, we would say. We like to say that so that we feel better. Who?

01:12:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
has the kids seriously. Who hasn't accidentally slammed their finger in a door?

01:12:16 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I mean, that happens all the time I had my finger slammed in the door just recently. Yeah, no, it happens. I know it was my fault, but I've never done it on purpose.

01:12:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I had a Model X that my wife called Christine because the sensors you know how the gullwing doors, the sensors would hit her in the head every time.

01:12:33
So I had to yell doors closing, stand clear. Every time Because it. Doors closing, stand clear every time because it would hit her because there were there were I guess there weren't sensors to to get it, so it's a blind spot. It's something I think elon has struggled with since the model x. Anyway, elon, as you may remember, a few years ago, tweeted uh, funding secured. This was in august 2018. To take to take uh tesla private sending shares of the stock surging. Well, it turns out they really weren't. He didn't. In fact, it hasn't gone private, has it? Uh, and the sec went after him.

01:13:16
The following month they sued. Two days later, settled with the fcc I'm sorry SEC agreeing to resign as Tesla chairman. How did that work out? I think he's still there and pay 20 million dollars as part of the deal. Uh, then, in 2021, he tweeted should I sell 10 percent of my stock? By the way, when this happens, the stock goes up, elon gets richer and could, in fact, correct cash in SE. This is why the securities and exchange commission gets involved.

01:13:45
He then sent they then sent subpoenas to Musk and Tesla, uh and said look, I don't. He apparently that he had agreed not only to pay 20 million dollars, but to have a lawyer review all his tweets before he went out. He, a federal appeals court, rejected his appeal last year. Uh, so he appealed to the united states supreme court saying I don't want to pay, I don't want to, I don't want anybody to say I have to get my tweets approved, and so he went to the Supreme Court, which has now said no, they declined to review, so he is, in fact, bound to get a lawyer to review his tweets. I can't imagine this.

01:14:35 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
I'm actually surprised about that, because that's actually kind of a high level, like for First Amendment stuff, even if they limited it to like tweets about Tesla or something like that would be narrower than just review all his tweets, you know that's exactly what his lawyer said.

01:14:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's prior restraint right.

01:14:53 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
This is it's about Tesla.

01:14:55 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Oh, if it's only Tesla, then I can it's only Tesla.

01:14:57 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
So if he tweets about Tesla he has to be reviewed by counsel before he actually tweets it out. And that's just because they let him off light for market manipulation. I mean, that's not just a fine, the level of manipulation that he did, especially with the 420 tweet, that passes into criminal liability.

01:15:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So the SEC also argued that there is ample precedent. The court has consistently held that this is interesting in resolving litigation, parties may choose to waive even fundamental constitutional rights. In other words, you can say look, ok, I give in, you win, let's resolve this litigation. I agree to have a lawyer review my tweets, even though you and I would be protected, shoshana, or that violates our first amendment rights. You the court apparently, has always held that you could do that.

01:15:50
You can waive your fundamental constitutional rights in resolving litigation in any event the supreme court has concurred and has decided not to review it without comment. So there you go.

01:16:02 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Yeah, that's basically it. It's over. He has got nowhere else to go for this. He's forever. The owner of Twitter is going to have a babysitter anytime he wants to tweet about his other company.

01:16:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I like a Twitter babysitter. The FCC has done some good here. I don't know well, again we'll let shoshana, I will let uh justice, shoshana rule on this. Uh, the sec, or rather the uh fcc, the federal communications commission has fined at&t sprint yes, t-mobileint are now joined, but at the time they weren't T-Mobile and Verizon nearly $200 million. Why? For illegally sharing location data. The company's response to this was well. Well, here's the thing. This is AT&T spokesperson.

01:17:02
The FCC's action lacks both legal and factual merit. It unfairly unfairly, your Honor holds us responsible for another company's violation of our contractual requirements to obtain consent. In other words, we gave them this information. They were supposed to ask for consent from the end user and they didn't. And it ignores the immediate steps we took to address that company's failures and, perversely, punishes us for supporting life-saving location services like emergency medical alerts and roadside assistance that the FCC has previously encouraged. So they're going to appeal after legal review. And roadside assistance that the FCC has previously encouraged. So they're going to appeal after legal review. Verizon said basically the same thing.

01:17:50
T-mobile declined to provide an on-the-record response, says the Verge. The fines are $80 million to T-Mobile, sprint $12 million, at&t 57 million, verizon 47 million. This all started way back when, in 2019, with the now defunct motherboard, joseph Cox wrote a story. I gave a boundary. We talked about it when it happened $300. Then he located our phone because there are brokers out there who will sell this information Information that they got from the telcos. Any thoughts? Seems to me that that fine is insufficient to really make any changes.

01:18:36 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
But it's not over, because I think this is the first salvo in taking on data aggregators which have been bypassing the fifth amendment to the constitution, right? So you know, anyone who's been following this knows that the government needs a warrant to look at this data. If the government wants to look at your location data, they have to get a warrant to. To go to a telco and say we need the location of a phone between this time and this time. That's legal. But what companies like Palantir have been doing have been buying that information from the telcos and then aggregating it, and then the government can just buy that information from Palantir because they're not the ones violating your civil rights. So for the longest time now we've had this loop around some basic civil rights in the United States and I think if there's enough attention drawn to this, maybe people will make noise and say, hey, we need this loophole closed. You know it doesn't matter if you buy it from an aggregator. If it's information you should not have without a warrant, you should not have it.

01:19:39 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
So, ron Wyden, if you're following it I'm not sure if you've seen the bill, but Ron Wyden has a Fourth Amendment is not for sale act and it's to close this loophole and I love that. I love his approach there, that basically he's saying hey, buying data doesn't get around a warrant request, because I know that there I kind of get it. There is some ambiguity under the Fourth Amendment here where they're like oh well, if you buy it, it's different. I don't really buy that. But if we need a lot of shored up, I'm kind of cool with that. I really like the idea because you know, while we worry about privacy from companies and I'm not saying that that's not a problem at all it's a lot worse when the government's like hey, here was your entire location history, just because we were able to buy it, and then you can be charged for things wrongfully, you know.

01:20:22 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I mean there's so many real consequences there, but I would love to see that we should point out that the fourth amendment is not for sale. Act was proposed four years ago. It is slowly went its way it did get approved by the house now just a couple of weeks ago, so that's a big deal. Uh, so let's. The senate still has to approve, is that right?

01:20:43 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
I don't think it's gonna. It's okay, though I I'm glad that it's moving at all.

01:20:47 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
It's a good it's a step they're getting too much use out of aggregators.

01:20:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's exactly that's exactly what I've been saying all along we're not going to see a comprehensive data privacy bill until the law enforcement community decides to give up lobbying congress because they get, they use it and they love it. And congress is not going to say no to law enforcement, you know, because nobody wants to be the guy when they you know next terrorist attack. In fact, law enforcement has said this explicitly. Do you want us to be the ones to tell the world? Ron Wyden made this possible.

01:21:27 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Sounds like extortion to me.

01:21:29 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Well. I mean Definitely not during the election year.

01:21:32 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
They're using the same arguments for outlawing end-to-end encryption, which I understand. I get it. Yes, law enforcement needs tools, they need a way to be able to do their jobs and keep us safe, etc. Etc. But the whole the boogeyman argument just doesn't fly anymore. It can't be. Well, now you can have all of our civil rights because you think that there is a possibility that maybe you might be able to protect us, and I think reasonable people, without screaming at each other, can get into a room and say these are the things we're willing to allow you to do, these are the safeguards that need to be in place for you to be able to do them. And we have not been willing to do that because we, right now we are such a polarized society. It is either all on or all off. Either you love security and you love privacy, or you want the government to be big brother, and that's just a false dichotomy.

01:22:25 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
And they use that to be able to get what they want. They'll use that to be able to make us feel really upset or to make people look bad. Oh, you're supporting, you know, violence against our nation. If you're supporting this bill, like they go through that so that it makes you look like painted in a really bad picture. And unfortunately, one of the bad things about media is that that can then kind of be so pervasive so quickly.

01:22:49
And they name all of these bills, like you know, like you know, whatever security for children's act, and really it's just about like getting rid of a whole bunch of books that they just don't want any of the political ideology and the books are to get be able to be banned and then, but their books that they do like they're going to have them still be able to get past these laws. So it's. It's one of these things where we use fear in order to be able to control people and to get things done, because people in power want to keep their power, so once they have this power to be able to do something, no, no one's going to want to say I want less of it.

01:23:20 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Yeah, that's basically the crap I deal with on a daily basis. All these elected officials saying, you know, I mean when it comes to encryption they say, well, law enforcement needs to be able to break encryption. And then it's like great, well, we have more identity theft than ever and it's hurting people and there's massive losses. Like that's also a problem and encryption helps protect people's most sensitive data. There too, you know.

01:23:43 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I just hate the fact that we treat digital data oh, that's okay. I just hate that we treat digital data, digital information, differently than we choose a paper data, like, if you can break, you can just break into my phone, but you can't break into my house. So how could you break into my house? So how could you break into my phone? Why wouldn't there be blanket laws that would cover things that are digital exactly the same what we would with something that's hard copy? Like that is absolutely ridiculous. Just because my purse is there, you might be able to find information, to be able to save someone's life from snooping through my purse, but you still shouldn't be snooping through my purse the good course is the addendum, which is they're going to say oh well, okay, how about this?

01:24:19 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
But law enforcement needs a back door.

01:24:22 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
That's my house they should have all of the houses to our keys, should have a back door, should always be unlocked. But just for us and I'll be like, well, couldn't bad guys then get in also? No, no, they usually won't do that.

01:24:36 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Remember the TSA locks on our luggage? Yes, oh, that works really well.

01:24:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
held out all the keys and they took a photo of I mean, come on yeah that never works, no, so this has been going on, though, for quite a while, and so far congress has failed to to do this. Uh, in other countries that's not so clear. In fact, I think in the uk it's pretty clear encryption is on its way out. Uh, the earn it act will not die. It's still alive, but it hasn't won yet. This is two years, four years ago. This story, um, where do we stand? Shoshana, are you? You follow this as well?

01:25:16 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
oh yeah, oh my gosh, all of the earn it and variations um, I forget if it was earn it or if it was another bill, but a couple of senators went to the floor to try to fast track I think it was two or three bills and and then Ron Wyden like hit back at them and was like guys, what the heck? Like you know, we can have a reasonable conversation about it, but these haven't even made it like like some of them hadn't made it out of committee, they hadn't had, like real hearings, and after that stuff quieted down. So I'm not sure if something happened or what, but it seems like they understood. Uh-oh, like we might have messed up here, but it's all of this stuff all the time.

01:25:53
There's so many different bills. There's the kids online bills there, earn it. There's um stop c sam, and they all sound good on their face until you like really look into what they do and it's like oh great, this breaks encryption or disincentivizes encryption or tells companies that you could be liable if you have encryption. It's just awful stuff, not to mention all the other many problems with the kids online bills. There's a lot of energy behind it, but but it never seems to move fully, thankfully Like. Sometimes it'll pass one chamber or the other, but usually it doesn't get any further than that, which is encouraging because these bills are just really really poorly constructed.

01:26:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, here's the latest the Protect the Kids Online bill, which comes from Brian Schatz and Ted Cruz, signed on Chris Murphy, katie Britt, Peter Welch, ted Budd, john Fetterman, angus King and Mark Warner Democrats and Republicans alike. This is the Kids Off Social Media Act, or COSMA Cosma it's you know. On the one hand, it's encouraging that Congress has passed so few bills. It seems like the chances against any bill are are pretty poor. I have to read this one to see if the legislation I mean. Obviously, it's problematic to keep kids off addictive social media and help protect them from its harmful effects. Let's see where we go here with this one. Prohibit children under the age of 13 from creating or maintaining social media accounts, I guess, okay. Prohibit social media companies from pushing targeted content using algorithms to users under the age of 17. Problem with both of these is they're going to require age verification, which means us us adults going to have to do it too.

01:27:49 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yes and prove it.

01:27:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And prove it.

01:27:52 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
So proving it means there goes our anonymity on the internet, yeah, and that means that they can track everything that you're doing to much more detail than just your IP.

01:28:02 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
I did a series on it. That's 10. So far it's 10 posts. It's going to be 12 soon because I keep having to update stuff.

01:28:10
But one of the first thing is on like that, the technology to do it doesn't exist. Like to do it while protecting privacy in any way just does not exist. It's all like you know, face scans and government IDs or social security numbers and combinations of those All the First Amendment violations all the only First Amendment and anonymity rights violations, like all the cybersecurity issues that the data minimization problems, the there's just so like it's. It's so terrible and parents have filtering software. And there's just so like it's so terrible and parents have filtering software.

01:28:48
And I'm sure it's not perfect in all cases, but it's a lot better than just forcing identity theft, because when you sign up your kid, you can say, oh hey, you know we'll connect our accounts here, done. But if it's a law that says your accounts have to be connected, then you have to upload all your information and make sure it's right there and make sure it's correct, because otherwise the companies will be screwed. And my favorite thing is this applies to GitHub and AllTrails too. Every version I've seen will get GitHub and AllTrails, so your kids can't look at hikes because, oh no, you wouldn't want your kids looking at hikes and they can't learn code in a community, and I know lawmakers don't intend it to have it focused there. But that's how these laws are written and instead of grappling with it, they just keep trying to force it through and it's just going to hurt a lot of kids. I actually like these laws.

01:29:32 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I like these laws because the age verification there's no way my parents will be able to figure that out. So it will get them off those terrible Facebook. It'll eliminate them. It'll just be messing them up.

01:29:43 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yeah, but guess who they're going to be calling to help. That's true, they're going to be calling constantly.

01:29:51 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
And that will allow for so many better scams that then they'll, like you're going to have to keep on top of them, being like no, no, no, this isn't me, this isn't me, this isn't me, I promise. Imagine, like the depth of scams you can get when you like, have that stuff, and how much more they're going to be bugging you and me you wrote a very good piece last year which I've quoted before on the show the fundamental problems with social media age verification legislation.

01:30:14 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Which is I mean this? Is it? Send it to your member of congress. It's very clear. Um, you have all of the reasons why this is a bad idea and they don't think.

01:30:24 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
A lot of them don't really care about it being about what's right. They they care whoever was the biggest lobbyist that they have to have to be able to support their next campaign. So I think that a lot of times, we argue with logic, where this is nothing to do with logic. This has nothing to do with doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do. We've created a system that is, in a lot of ways, corrupt and they're going to do whatever they have to do to get re-elected, to stay in power I like it.

01:30:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
shoshana calls it the coddling of the american parent. Like we'll do, and but that's always the wrong solution. Oh, parents, don't worry, you don't have to do anything, let us take care of it.

01:31:06 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
You don't have to parent.

01:31:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's always the wrong solution. It's overbroad, it's overreaching. This was in the Daily Beast last week. Oh, and Mike Masnick, look at that. Yeah, I love Mike.

01:31:18 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
He's the best.

01:31:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I love Mike. He's the best. Yeah, great Mike is fantastic.

01:31:23 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I understand that. You know there definitely is some corruption going on, there's definitely some influence peddling, but I also think and this is a problem that we've addressed on this very show many times over the years there is so little tech savvy in Congress that they honestly don't understand either the problem or what any potential solutions there might be. So for those who are not selling their influence, who are not peddling any favors to anybody, they see a bill that seems to address something that people are talking about. They don't understand the details, they don't understand the technology behind it and they think they're doing well, they think they're doing a good thing. That's exactly it.

01:32:05
It's incumbent upon us to be able to reach out to our representatives and again voice I get what you're not. You're not a demon. I know you're not trying to sell out the country, but the thing that you're proposing is wrong. For these reasons, maybe send them Shoshana's article and this, the thing that you're proposing, is wrong. For these reasons, maybe send them Shoshana's article, and this would be a better way to do it, I mean, rather than having them guess what we want to do why are we not a more active citizenry?

01:32:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So how do you feel about the Texas age verification law which the Supreme Court well, Justice Alito refused to offer surgery, so they're not going to review it. It is now the law of the state that you have to do age verification. I have no idea how they're going to enforce this honestly, it's unenforceable.

01:32:59 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I have no idea how they're going to enforce this. Honestly, it's unenforceable.

01:33:04 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
No, they get to enforce it however they want is the thing.

01:33:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah.

01:33:09 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
They can shut down whatever they choose to and then not shut down other things because they haven't seen it. So it's really just a way that they can make blanket statements of sites that they don't find are appropriate. Yeah, it's total control, it's you can't enforce it just in one state now he didn't.

01:33:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All alito did was reject the request for a stay, so I presume it will still work its way through the courts yeah okay so, but it is the law right now in texas that you have to seek age verification or that you can.

01:33:38 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Yeah, there's no stay, no injunction, yeah you know, one thing that I've heard from a lot of people that I I need to get into this and I need actually need to take the time to address it. But one big thing is they think that there's just a way to do age verification that's super safe, that like, oh, you can do zero trust age verification, trust us, it'll be fine. And I like and everyone I talk to who like understands how stuff work, it's's like, oh, my gosh, like I can't. And I'm like I know, I know, but this is what they think. They just think that like, oh, they won't, you know, keep your information more than they have to. They won't share it. It's just, it's zero trust, and I'm like that's not how, that's not even what zero trust means.

01:34:15
It drives me nuts. I need to dive into this and explain to them bit by bit like why this can't work. But that's been one of the big arguments that they say will overcome all of my arguments and I'm like Do you know how Texas plans to implement it?

01:34:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Are they going to use IDme or how are they going to do it? Do they know? Or they just say you have to do it.

01:34:40 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
I have to check the bill again. They just say it has to meet certain requirements. Sometimes they'll say face scans or IDs, or sometimes they'll say a certain class of technology.

01:34:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Without actually specifying the technology Right right.

01:34:55 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Identifying information that is going to be eventually leaked, because all of these sites are not going to be properly created to handle personal identifiable information, is a nightmare, yeah.

01:35:07 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Oh my gosh, Australia just did age verification for nightclubs and then it had a data breach. Like good job, moron.

01:35:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right away.

01:35:18 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
At least there's no waiting.

01:35:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You start with it. Yeah, I guess we should. Should talk about united health care in a little bit. That's a story, uh, when you talk about data breaches the biggest of all time, I think. Anyway, let's take a break. We're going to come back with more with our great panel. Doc. Father robert ballas here, the digital jesuit, I almost called you dr father, but you have like 18 different degrees. I, I could.

01:35:41 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I mean, if you add them together, there's probably a doctor there somewhere.

01:35:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Dr Father, master, dr Father, always great to have you, so good to see you. We had him scheduled for last week. When Kevin Rose knocked on our door I said we got to get Kevin in and thank you for making room. I appreciate it. That was an easy call, I mean, on. I love you and I'm thrilled that we could be have you here, uh, today it's great to have you. Shoshana weissman, chairman of the sloth committee. Is that a?

01:36:06 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
there are many duties as chairman no, we try to keep it low. Uh, the only thing that I, that my committee oversees, is bribes. You have to bribe me twenty thousand dollars to do anything but you should do it very slowly.

01:36:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, fast moves. Yes, thank you. It's so cute. There's joe cute as a cuter sloth. It's almost like it's on your shoulders giving you a little ideally have you ever met a sloth in person?

01:36:34 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
yes, many. I also am an associate fellow for the sloth institute, where I do research for them. And my first.

01:36:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Is that a joke or sincere?

01:36:42 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
No, it's totally real. They're based in Costa Rica and they're run by one American and one Costa Rican, and I boyed the government for them and I won, and it was my first boy.

01:36:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, so this isn't made up the Sloth Institute. Oh, our mission is to enhance and expand the welfare and conservation of sloths.

01:37:02 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
They do such good work.

01:37:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Could you have a sloth for a pet?

01:37:06 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
It's really bad for them. No one wants a sloth pet more than I do, but it's so bad for them Like you should never hold a sloth Any place that lets you hold a sloth they're taking them from the wild, from their moms. It's really, really sad.

01:37:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So don't hold sloths. But you can adopt a sloth at the slothinstituteorg, and there is such a thing as responsible sloth tourism, which is good. Seven ethical ways you can become a sloth tourist. Did you have to go down to Costa Rica to see your sloths?

01:37:36 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
No, but I still need to go. I've been there a couple of times to see sloths, but I need to go again to see their sloths.

01:37:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay.

01:37:47 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
I want to help them out and do their duties with them, because then I can touch them ethically Okay.

01:37:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Where are they? They're indigenous to South America.

01:37:55 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Yeah, South and Central America, and different kinds are in different places. There's seven different subtypes. One's pretty new.

01:38:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, and, if you want, you could support a sloth speedway, because their habitat is being decimated with the rainforest they're actually creating Instead of. They don't want them to climb on electrical wires, right? That's bad, yeah, right, and it actually helps. They get used to them and climb on electrical wires, right that's bad yeah Right.

01:38:21 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
And it actually helps. They get used to them and then they use them for crossing, so it stops sloth electrocutions, which are really common. It's so sad, but now they're being electrocuted less.

01:38:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Look at that Connecting branches to food and shelter Little blue nylon ropes the sloths. They're slow, right? Do they move quickly? Yeah?

01:38:42 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
they're pretty slow. For the most part they can move fast, but like they have, a low metabolism. Oh yeah, it's a conserve energy, because they're like built to be slow.

01:38:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't wanna I'm, I'm like a sly. I understand your love of the sloth. I'm with them. I'm with them they're so cute. I love them so much yeah they're very sweet and they're very slow. There they go also with us. Georgia dow she's gonna be the ghoul soon on youtube. I will be watching that with great interest. But if you go to youtubecom slash georgia dow, you can see her latest stuff. What so do you have to watch a lot of tv to do this? I mean, what is?

01:39:22 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I do actually like, if there's a new show that I that I'm gonna be doing, I have to watch the whole show. So I end up like I usually will watch tv at night anyways, so I'll set a certain amount of time. But, like, I usually like to watch the entire series of a show before I start doing it. Because, you, if I'm doing a character analysis, it's hard to do a character analysis when I haven't seen the entire series of a show before I start doing it. Because you, if I'm doing a character analysis, it's hard to do a character analysis when I haven't seen the entire set of the character. If I'm just doing a scene that I can just kind of take a look at and just throw something together. So that makes it much easier.

01:39:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Then I have to design something. I don't know hell of a boss, but I love your hell of a boss costumes. And look at her. She's so cute and uh, and I this is.

01:40:02 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
But that's that's from, has been right yeah, that one, that one's hell of a boss, but yes, they're like has been hotel characters oh and uh.

01:40:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
What's great is you're talking about real psychotherapeutic issues, which kind of so that the cartoon gives you an entry into it, and this one where you raised by a narcissist which, if anybody was ever raised by a narcissist, you definitely want to watch that yeah, yeah really good stuff. This is great. Ocd cults, uh, also narcissism. Take that depression. So cartoons are a great place for that. But look, look at all the great subjects. What do you? What do you think? Go ahead.

01:40:42 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I say, if you, if you do the, the second best hospital in the galaxy, you can do panic attacks that's. That's very nice.

01:40:50 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I've, I've done, I've done a few that that deal with having anxiety attacks and panic attacks and that they do really well, like it's nice to have ones that people do, but a lot of times people like, like the, like you know, the dark triad, kind of stuff of like personality, because people don't understand that as much. Fascinating, yeah, sociopaths, psychopaths, you know, narcissism, how to deal with a narcissist, what are you going to? How are you going to handle this situation? What are the effects to you? And those are kind of interesting and fun to be able to look into.

01:41:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And is Ken victimized?

01:41:24 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
We all want to know. I have to say I really enjoyed doing it. I thought that the Barbie toxic femininity would actually give me a whole bunch of backlash. Interestingly enough, and it didn't, which was, I thought, kind of intriguing.

01:41:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Really Toxic femininity.

01:41:40 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yeah.

01:41:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
By the way, you have a great Ken outfit.

01:41:43 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Thank you. Oh yeah, I designed that myself. Thank you, yeah, I was really excited.

01:41:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I thought Barbie was positive feminism.

01:41:54 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I like the feminist message. There are some good stuff and there are some not so good stuff. Oh, and I have to say I think that Alan was given a bad rap. If I have to really state it, I think Alan was the true hero. I did a video on Alan. Didn't do well, but I think Alan actually like out of everyone I don't know you have to take a second look at Alan.

01:42:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Alan was. There was only one. There was no other people named Alan.

01:42:16 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
There was, only there was. Yeah there was only one alan, that's him, but like he, actually he was the one that was there and I think that he was the most normal of them all, wasn't he? Yeah, well, you know what, when it came, push comes to shove, alan actually showed up to battle, and I'm just gonna say that can't say the same about everyone else. Ken ran away. Alan was there, yet ken gets all the glory.

01:42:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I don't know I uh, I avoided watching the Marby movie as long as I could and then when I watched it, I thought why did I avoid this? This is great. It was very cute. This is a wonderful, wonderful movie and Greta Gerwig deserves all of the acclaim, even though she didn't get an Oscar nomination. Anyway, wonderful panel. Thank you all for being here.

01:42:58
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01:46:26 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Dorsey departs the blue sky board. That's the breaking news. Hasn't been much this week. Jack dorsey departs the blue sky board.

01:46:29 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's the breaking news ladies and gentlemen, you know, okay, I think he'll be fine. Yeah, every time we do a show, I say well, what? What are you finding to replace twitter? I'm a mastodon fan. I think all of you are on Mastodon but Mastodon is kind of geeky, which is why I like it. It's the geeks.

01:46:46
Some people like threads, but there's this meta involvement in the Instagram cross thing that I think people are a little hesitant. So increasingly, I'm seeing people say blue sky is the future or the next Twitter. But the one complaint I hear is well, but you know, jack Dorsey funded it. Jack Dorsey, of course, one of the founders and longtime chair of Twitter. He funded it. He's on the board. How do we know? It's just not going to be another Twitter when, weirdly, yesterday, jack Dorsey posted on X about grants for open protocols. That's one of the reasons he created Blue Sky is to come up with an open protocol for Twitter.

01:47:27
Somebody asked him are you still on the Blue Sky board? And he said no, One word. No, that was it. No, no one knows why he left the board, but as of this morning, in fact as of this morning, he was still on the website at Blue Sky as a board member, but later, just a little while ago, the company said yeah, no, he's not on the board. We sincerely thank Jack for his help funding and initiating the Blue Sky project. Today's Blue Sky is thriving as an open source social network. With jack's departure, we're searching for a new board member. Whoa, okay, I guess he. Uh, maybe he surprised them. What do y'all think of blue sky?

01:48:12 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I have an account um. I can't remember my username or password.

01:48:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm sure that's not good that's not good.

01:48:20 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I think I posted like a cat on it at the very beginning and I haven't really felt like going back.

01:48:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You're still a Twitter guy, or what you like. Mastodon too, I think.

01:48:29 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I told you I'm going to be writing Twitter until it hits the ground All the way down. But I mean, twitter is increasingly unusable with the amount of bot activity it's. It's just beyond.

01:48:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah it kills me that they do like macedon they. They forced the sale of tiktok because of all the uh potential for chinese propaganda. But meanwhile chinese and russian propaganda run rampant on twitter.

01:48:56 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Nobody's doing anything about that well, of course, because that's the only thing that's keeping the numbers at Twitter up. I mean, if you take out the users who have not necessarily moved to another platform, but are just no longer posting as much as they used to because they realize my content's being wasted on Twitter, it would be truly depressing.

01:49:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's an epic cratering of a social media company I just don't want to be on twitter because I feel like it's supporting something, some somebody and something that whose values I don't share. Shoshana, you're also still hanging out there, right?

01:49:32 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
yeah, it's. It's interesting I've had fewer problems with it than most people have. For some reason. The bots don't hit me as much for the most part, and most of the bots are less sexual than the ones other people are getting, which, like, can really throw a wrench in your work day, I guess. But, um, also elon seems to like my account not him personally, but the algorithm, the whatever favorings he's built have have now amplified even my dumbest content. There were like a few days where I posted just nonsense and every like everyone got to see it. It was very strange.

01:50:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's funny, your nonsense got promoted, huh.

01:50:10 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Yeah, like very much so, and it was so bizarre because it was after my stuff was suppressed for a while. So I don't get it. But I, right now I'm just mainly here because of work to reach people, mainly Hill people, state elected officials and their staff and reporters. But when they go somewhere else, I'll go there too. I like blue sky. I think that there's potential, but I think that Twitter just has the incumbent advantage there. Yeah, and it's too similar right now, but I kind of wish they would have more fun with it. Try I don't know other stuff and not just like a secondary twitter, you know how about you, georgia?

01:50:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
do you? Are you welcoming the respite from social media?

01:50:53 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I, yeah, I wasn't really a huge social media user in the first place. So I have a twitter account, but I do I really post in it? No, do I respond to people sometimes? Um, I have instagram, but I don't really use that like. I try not to use social media like it's. Like I'm. I guess I'm all over social media anyways, but like, no, I don't really use any of it yeah, and I'm fine with that.

01:51:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I wonder, do we really even need a twitter replacement? It's just that where's. It was nice to have one place you could go to see kind of. It wasn't a reflection of the world or national sentiment, but it would seem to be kind of a way to put your finger on the pulse of some group of the world, maybe the geeks. It was just a time and it's gone.

01:51:40 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
You know how it's useful for me. It's because I treat Twitter now like I used to use Google Plus, where I've already established a community of people 10,000, 20,000 people who I actually do want to connect with, whose opinion I do value, who actually do create content and analysis that I enjoy. They're the people I focus on and if anybody else starts to intrude on that and troll, I am so fast with the block because it's no longer a platform for open discourse. It's now become sort of that's my Facebook and I'm much happier using it that way. Also, I have to say I probably use social media 10% of what I did three, four years ago, and I'm so much happier that it's decreased. I like staying connected, but I do not feel the constant need to put out content All right, I'm just checking.

01:52:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know I like to check Every few weeks. I want to ask the the panel what social, where are we going? It's kind of the real question. The thing I'm really saying is where are we going? Are we, is there anywhere we're going, and so far again Oregon.

01:52:51
Oregon. I'd be fine, you know, although Kevin just left Oregon, so maybe not. I don't know. Some people are going, some people are coming. I don't know Some people are going, some people are coming, I don't know. I do miss it. When you could just everybody would be on Twitter and you would know what was going on. But there's no solid replacement for that and I guess that's just the way it is. I'll have to live with it.

01:53:12 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
It's going to cycle through. I mean, newsletters went away and then they came back and now they're kind of going away. I think they're going away again Personal blogs are coming back.

01:53:20
So I mean it's going to go around and at some point the current social media companies are going to falter, their business models are going to fall apart, and then, 10 years down the line, someone's going to propose something that's completely different, but it's actually the same thing and it will do well for a while, and that that's okay. I think right now we're really kind of burnt out on social media what?

01:53:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
um, yeah, what do we? What do we get out of it that we might want?

01:53:48
higher blood pressure yeah, that's the part. Well, that's the addictive part, right, the outrage, the, the stimulation, that's the addictive part. That's what gets, by the way, gets people in trouble when you say you occasionally leave a reply on twitter, georgia, that's why, right, you get, just get your and you, and then you get sucked into it. It's good for their numbers, bad for their users, but do we need somewhere where I feel like it would be nice? Maybe this, this just doesn't exist.

01:54:18 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Maybe that's because I come from an older time when there were centralized media and you know it's nice to get information immediately about a situation or, if you know, there's nice to have an access to information that is not going to take a period of time to be able to get to you, and so that's really nice. It's nice to be able to speak to people and be able to have whatever your feelings validated or affirmed, and I think that a lot of people use social media for those types of things, to be able to form connections. A lot of people that are recluse inside of their house can be able to connect with people, talk with people, feel like they can make a difference, feel like they are heard shouting out into the void, and the void calls back.

01:54:59 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
There's also a whole generation of writers and musicians and artists who got their start on Twitter.

01:55:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Right, just like TikTok. But then that begs the question there's got to be the next thing, right, because all those people aren't just going to stop, there's going to be some place people go.

01:55:18 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I have spent a lot more time on Reddit. I actually went back to Reddit. I had abandoned Reddit for many years, but it's so chill right now and even the trolls are kind of funny on Reddit. They're not as mean-spirited, go figure.

01:55:32 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Yeah, I've been reading Reddit a lot more, especially when I need random answers to stuff. They're more than Quora or wherever I feel like is really good. Quora's not bad, it's just confusing to me. But I like Reddit and I don't think I've ever really posted there. But I love reading the threads because usually everyone said what I wanted to say anyway and I'm like, oh great, and now I have more information. I love that.

01:55:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm intimidated about posting on Reddit. Yeah, I don't know why, but I'm just I don't, and I've done amas there and occasionally I'll post something. I always feel intimidated, like I'm not cool enough, but I do. I'm just like you. I read it and what I think I like about reddit and I think it works about reddit that no other social media maybe google plus did this, but it's, it's the, just the stuff you care about.

01:56:21 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
So it's your particular interests and nothing else, and I kind of like that can thank the moderators for that yeah, thanks 60 000 unpaid volunteer moderators who keep reddit going I mean, that's what made dbs is great, right I those of us who started with dial-up modems. Everything was moderated and the moderators even though we love to hate them made the experience much, much better. It's the curated experience.

01:56:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's what we miss. The curated experience.

01:56:53 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Yeah. And then some people will say, oh well, that's censorship or that's a walled garden, it's like, well, no, it's. Some people have not yet learned how to have a civil discourse and they need to be reminded that they need to learn how to have a civil discourse, otherwise you can't be on our platform this brings me to an article I talked about earlier today from an australian named takahi.

01:57:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I really love this. It came out a couple of weeks ago. Heat death of the internet, that's great Actually.

01:57:24 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
yeah, I love that.

01:57:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'll read a little bit to you. Heat death, of course, is what happens when entropy finally wins right. Everything is evenly distributed and cold as ice. You want to order from a local restaurant, but you need to download a third-party delivery app. Even though you plan to pick it up yourself, the prices and menu on the app are different to what you saw in the window. When you download a second app, the prices are different again. You ring the restaurant directly. It says that number's no longer in service. You go to the restaurant. You order in person. You mention their website has the wrong number. The woman behind the counter says yeah, we have to contact the company that designed the site for changes. It's going to cost us, but most people order through the app anyway.

01:58:05
You want to watch the trailer for an upcoming movie on YouTube, but first you have to sit through an ad, then you sit through a preview for the trailer itself, then you watch the trailer, which is literally another ad. When it ends it queues up a new trailer with a new ad at the start of it. The first page of Google results are links to pages that have scraped other pages for information from other pages that have been scraped for information. All the sources seem to link back to one another. There is no origin, the photos on the page look weird, the hands are disfigured, there is no image credit, and it goes on and on. And he's summarizing I feel like an experience we all have.

01:58:42 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Now what happened it got too easy to create. No used to be no barrier to creation, so you would only put up stuff that you actually wanted to now. Now you know the internet, the internet is experiencing the 24-hour news channel syndrome, where there's so much stuff going on all the time and everybody wants to carve out their own niche that you're heat-deathing yourself into oblivion.

01:59:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's also, though and this is Corey Dack, dr Rose in shitification, the general, just decline of everything. Here's more from Takehi Thebnb charges you 150 cleaning fee, but insists the place needs to be less spotless. There'll be a fee if the bedding hasn't been stripped and the washer hasn't been emptied. Your uber driver is lost because his app hasn't been updated and keeps telling him to turn down streets that no longer exist. You still give him five stars. Your mother sends you a link to a breaking story, but the article is behind a paywall. So you switch to the website, where you do pay for news, but there's no mention of it, and on and on and on. We've all been there. Yep, yep. You buy a microwave and receive ads for microwaves. You buy a mattress and receive ads for mattresses. I do feel like it's gone downhill. Now, see, I have to ask you guys, because you're all younger than me, and it is normal for a person of my advanced age to think that the world is no longer as good as it was when I was young, is it?

02:00:15 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
No, it's different now because they figured out how to make money there and then you know, that's basically it. We figured out how to make money on the internet, so everyone's making money on the internet. I mean, it's really that simple, I think.

02:00:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Okay.

02:00:27 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Am I wrong Anybody.

02:00:30 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I think it's more than that but I think it's partly. I don't want to just limit on money.

02:00:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know, there's just a lot of crap, and I have to blame google a little bit for this, because I mean, look, google can only index crap. If all there is is crap, then that's all it's going to be on a google search result. But I feel like google hasn't done much to improve the quality of conversation. Maybe that's not their job, maybe they're just there to reflect what's they're all fighting for your attention, that's what that is.

02:01:01 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yes, they have to put out more things, and everyone that's putting out stuff wants that social credit of like validation from other people. There's just a lot of stuff how come?

02:01:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
because that's all monetized, the more pages, and we know that very simple because we've just learned, thanks to the uh department of justice lawsuit against alphabet in discovery. We have learned that google in 2022 this two years ago paid apple 20 billion dollars to be the default search engine on iphones. We knew it was a lot. We didn't know it was that much 20 billion dollars. That is it. Because it's that valuable, it must be right well people do what they know right, they get comfortable with it.

02:01:47 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
If they're always using it, then they're going to want to use that at home. It's the same reason why you know people put like computers for free in school so kids learn on them, because once you feel comfortable with something you're not going to want to change it and so I never, thought about that. And then you're kind of indoctrinated into an ecosystem. Once you're in an ecosystem, it's hard to switch over an ecosystem.

02:02:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It also means Google has to recoup that $20 billion, I think that they're probably doing, okay, I think they might be hitting those numbers. They are, they're on both sides of the ad market, but that's why they're doing okay, yeah exactly Because it's not they're doing okay because their search is better.

02:02:23
It's not they're doing okay because they paid Apple $20 billion to use the search. It's because they paid Apple $20 billion to see the ads that Google proffers on their search and, in a way, I think that's really what's going on. There's a Ed Zitron is going to be on twig on on Wednesday wrote a piece on the man who ruined Google and he's talking. This is in his blog. Where's your ad at?

02:02:53
And the man who killed Google search is the current head of Google search, prabhakar Raghavan, who replaced a guy who was pretty committed to making search be independent of the ad business. The problem is the ad business was starting to go down and, in 2019, issued a code yellow for search revenue. There had always been a division between search and ads, like we're not going to do anything to modify search so you can make more money in ads. Well, six months after that, 2019, cold yellow probably got probably car ragavan got appointed head of google search and it's been going downhill ever since, and he came from yahoo where he destroyed their search over a period of years.

02:03:42
He basically according to Ed and we'll talk to Ed on Wednesday, but I think he makes a good case. He was the guy who said yeah, ads, come on in, we will do whatever it is we need to do to make sure our revenue is sufficient, and I feel like he succeeded. And I think some of that's driven by the $20 billion a year they pay to Apple. More than a billion a month. Almost $2 billion a month they pay to Apple. That's because search is the revenue driver.

02:04:15 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
I don't know, it's funny, I haven't seen a deterioration of Google search. But I will say, like when I do Google ads cause we get like a limited amount of um ad ad grants and like it's I found the tools are better, just more intuitive. They give you more options for using stuff. A lot of it's not useful for us, but some of it is and I, I don't know. I feel like their ad tools have gotten better and not in ways that I could see it being used for wrong. Honestly, just like you can have more ad options but you don't think their search has gotten worse?

02:04:48
no, I haven't had that, but maybe it's because I'm weird and I search for weird specific things.

02:04:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There's like not a lot of results if you search for sneakers, you would not think that right no, I don't I know what sneakers I want and I'm not searching google. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's basically a page.

02:05:05 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Who doesn't use google for search right? Oh what do you use I? I've been using bing for the last time you you I use.

02:05:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I pay for search, which is really oh, anema to everybody. But I use this company called Kagi and I can't remember what I pay, but it doesn't matter, because, because I pay them, uh, I don't have to see any ads and I believe that the results are cleaner as a result.

02:05:36 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Do you think that you find your results faster?

02:05:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Um, I don't know, give me something that you find your results faster. I don't know, give me something that you'd like to search for. Let's try it. What's your test? Unicycles, unicycles. Okay, that's more along what Shoshana was saying the weirder the stuff, the better. So here's unicyclecom Unicycles on Amazon so that's a selling thing. Self-balancing electric unicyclecom unicycles on Amazon so that's a selling thing. Self-balancing electric unicycles, the Unicycle Society of America. With, by the way, information on buying a unicycle.

02:06:09 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
There's a blast from the past Quality search there.

02:06:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think this is quality. I think this is good. No ads. They have the knowledge graph that Google does. So this is interesting. They also tell you that 27 27 of these are unique results to kagi. Kagi combines results from google and others and bing and other sources, but it also has its own uh, spider. So I don't know, I think it's. You know. I pay for it because I I just feel like I've been let down by Google.

02:06:39 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
What is their privacy like?

02:06:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I hope it's very good. I don't know I'm. You know the theory is that because I'm paying them, they don't have to sell my information. It says searches are anonymous and private to you. Kagi does not log and associate searches with an account. We do not log or store your ip address. We only store cookies needed for site functionality. We do not use any web browser analytics or their front-end telemetry. I think it's probably. I mean, obviously, if you're paying somebody like 10 bucks a month to use their search, they better not right until they sell yeah, you would hope not until they sell to somebody exactly they sell out to someone else it.

02:07:18
Yeah, exactly, they sell it to someone else.

02:07:19 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It shows you what they don't keep it. They don't keep your search history for a period of time. So even if they sold out, they would only be.

02:07:24 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They would have to start from scratch.

02:07:26 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Okay.

02:07:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They show you exactly which cookies they set. They set all five of them. I feel like this is my little protest.

02:07:38 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yeah. And how many devices can you use it on?

02:07:41 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
all of them, your whole household, all of your family, everywhere, yeah, everywhere I use coggy. Um, I mean, that's why I use big.

02:07:51 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
You don't have to pay for my services you have to pay more, like is it ten dollars a month and you have your entire family can use it, or is it $10 per person, or is it per device, or is it like 10 devices?

02:08:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think it's. You know, as far as I know, they just there's a Kagi extension, Because no browser, by the way, allows you to switch to Kagi. There's a Kagi extension which you install. You do have to log into your account, but I have yet to. I use many, as you might imagine, many, many devices. I have yet to run into a limit. There probably is, but I don't know what it is. I haven't yet found it. I just feel like the problem and Larry Page pointed this out with PageRank, his very first paper about how Google works he said you shouldn't have an ad on these things because it will pollute the results. As soon as you're selling ads, you're going to pollute the results, which is true, which is true, which is true, which is true. In 1998, Larry said the goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. Actually, Larry was prescient. He figured he was right. Google generated $76 billion in ad revenue in 2023. It's interesting that they paid $20 billion of that to Apple.

02:09:15 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Now, leo, before we move on, there are always people who say I can't possibly have been using Bing for that long and use it as my primary search engine. I just want to show this. So this is my, my Bing page, and if you look there, I've got two hundred and five thousand four hundred and ninety one points.

02:09:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, you've got the Bing points. Do you have to give those to the pope or can you keep them?

02:09:42 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Now these are mine. I I think 200, 205 000 will earn me like one month of subscription on xbox.

02:09:47 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I think, yeah, that's, it's, that's about right, yeah it's still pretty cool that you you earn points to be able to like a subscription system. You make a little bit of money for yourself that you can do something with.

02:09:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's cute you can get a brown. I can trade this in, yeah, well, no, this is like that's cute. You can get a brown.

02:10:00 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Yeah, well, no, this is like.

02:10:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's like a what like 500 worth of amazon gift cards, basically that's not bad here is uh, by the way, just so you know, there's a kagi individual plan and there's a family plan. I don't know what the family plan. Then there's the ultimate plan, which is 25 bucks a month I think that's what I'm doing and you get everything. So it's expensive, two or more people if you have a family plan. So maybe it's an honor system. I don't know, because I, you know, I don't really, I just pay for the individual. Well, no, I have the ultimate so.

02:10:40 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
So let's go back to the in-crapification. Would the internet be better Social media, search engines, the whole lot if it was pay?

02:10:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, the thing is, you're going to pay because nothing's free.

02:10:55 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
One way or another, you're going to pay. But I mean if it was upfront about payment. I am paying you for a service, you're not advertising you. You're going to pay, but I mean if it was upfront about payment. I am paying you for a service, you're not advertising. You're not selling my data because I'm paying you enough that you can be profitable from what I'm giving you. So if that becomes the model that everyone wants and the model that everyone would be willing to use, is the internet better In that theoretical scenario? Is the internet better? Is social media better better? Are our services not going to be splitting off into different types of apps because they're now being paid rather than providing that service for?

02:11:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
free. I think in the best of all possible worlds that would be the case, but we also know no one's going to do that. No, the users aren't going to, especially when you give away something for free, originally I mean for I'll give you an example club twit. We give away our podcast for years. Right now we're asking people to pay, and fewer than two percent now we don't have a paywall but fewer than two percent are willing to help us out with seven bucks a month. I would like to get that number up to five percent, which is very, I think, doable. That means 95% of the people listening to the shows get it for free, but that 5% makes it possible for us to operate, you know, fully without any cuts. But the problem is getting people to pay for something that's got they got for free. Nobody wants another subscription, please, if you would. Just one more subscription, please, just one more.

02:12:22 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Also, not every company is aimed for sustainability. They're all trying infinite growth, so yeah, everybody.

02:12:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, we don't care about growth well, they're all aiming for acquisition we don't care about that anyway either.

02:12:32 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
So well, think about like even hulu and netflix. I mean, netflix just makes some really weird crappy shows. You can pitch, like like a dream you had when you had the flu to Netflix and it'll take it and Netflix is paid. So you know.

02:12:47 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's true Starring Will Smith. It's more and more expensive all the time, isn't it?

02:12:52 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Well, it's starting to win. Netflix is starting to win.

02:12:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's totally winning Because it's getting all the media back.

02:12:56 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
All the properties are going back to Netflix If back like all the properties are going back to netflix, so they are.

02:12:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If anybody's gonna be a winner in this, it's gonna be netflix, maybe disney, because they own hulu and disney plus, and yes, and we pay for cable and cable sucks now.

02:13:08 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
I mean, like comedy central doesn't produce any new shows, they just and I'm not saying I don't like it, but they run reruns all day, um, in sequential order, as does fxx again not saying I don't like it, but they're not like. I could just go buy the box set and whatever and go do it that way instead of paying for cable, which is why I switched to Hulu.

02:13:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Netflix had a very good quarter. In fact, they said we're not going to. I can't remember what their increase in viewers was, but it was significant. They said this is the last time we're going to tell you Subscriber. Let's see. Netflix reports record profits. This is from Forbes the subscriber growth tops estimates. Let's see where's the increase. I think it was 14, 15%.

02:14:00 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
It's because of the account sharing crackdown.

02:14:02 - Leo's Computer Audio (Other)
Let's be real, yeah that's what I was saying Is it.

02:14:04 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yeah, it says password crackdown.

02:14:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I haven't been told not to share my passwords yet A lot of people have. Have they Okay. Yeah, I guess I'm getting away with it.

02:14:15 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I mean, I don't use Netflix, don't use netflix, I don't use hulu, I don't use any of those paid services. I do it like an american should do it, and I use my brother's password for disney plus.

02:14:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's, that's about it did you watch the taylor swift concert yet?

02:14:32 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
uh, is that on disney?

02:14:34 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
yes, wait, wait I almost okay.

02:14:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So she put the era, a concert which you could have bought for 25 bucks. But I couldn't bring myself to do that. She put that on disney plus and I thought, oh good, I have an account there and I don't. And then it said well, do you want to pay for disney plus? And that's when I stopped. I'm not for that. What keeps you on disney plus?

02:14:55 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
because I know, literally, I, I don't, I don't pay for it.

02:14:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, but if you didn't but't, but you'd watch it. You use this. So what do you want? Oh, yeah, yeah, um.

02:15:04 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I'm kind of burnt out on Marvel and star Wars yeah.

02:15:07 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Me too.

02:15:07 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Disney plus does does have some interesting Nat geo programming from before they became a 24 hour reality. Uh programming, channel, uh, channel, uh. That I actually do enjoy that also. Uh, paramount plus on my amazon account I really enjoyed going back through star trek and that's pretty much the only thing on oh that. And tulsa king. That's the only thing on paramount that I've enjoyed, tulsa king king, I did tulsa king.

02:15:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That was cute. What's tulsa king?

02:15:34 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
there's a cartoon it's, uh, it's, it's with us umester. Stallone. It's cute. It's a cute show. It gives you what you expect.

02:15:42 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Yeah, which is what Popcorn? What do you expect?

02:15:46 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Which is.

02:15:46 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Sylvester Stallone breaking heads and making people respect him. Okay, and showing his heart.

02:15:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I got heart. I got heart.

02:15:54 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, it has some rocky moments.

02:15:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Rocky moments. I get it Right. Yeah, it's like it has some rocky moments.

02:16:02 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Rocky moments I get it Right. Oh wait, I get it. Don't mean it that way, don't?

02:16:05 - Leo Laporte (Host)
mean it that way. It's wrong. All right, let's pause for a moment.

02:16:08 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I just watched X-Men 97, and I have to say it was quite enjoyable.

02:16:14 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
It was really good.

02:16:14 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It has the music.

02:16:15 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Come on, it had the vibe. It had the vibe. It had the vibe from that cartoon totally into it.

02:16:20 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
And Magneto, I'll just say it hot, hot, there we go no, is that H-O-T or H-A-W-T? Because that's very important to make that distinction you have to watch it and see quick question.

02:16:31 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Do you think kids are watching X-Men 97, or is it just kids who were kids in 97?

02:16:37 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I. It's quite popular right now, so I don't know.

02:16:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think people are going back to it with both which one of these is Magneto, the one on the left or the one on the right?

02:16:49 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
yes, he's the one with the long hair he's hot he's a cartoon, he's a hot cartoon who's the guy on the right, then?

02:16:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
what's that? Oh, I forget his name, it's a very simple name.

02:16:59 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Who's the guy on the right then? What's that?

02:17:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I forget his name Some old guy.

02:17:00 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It's a very simple name, yeah.

02:17:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, magneto has triggered a global EMP in episode eight to wipe out Bastion's prime sentinels.

02:17:09 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
You can't say it you can't give them episode eight because you have to wait.

02:17:12 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
You have to wait. Yeah, well, hold on.

02:17:14 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
You have to see no.

02:17:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I feel like cartoons. The quality of the animation is so bad these days. Well, this one they can get away with because they're saying it's a continuation from 97.

02:17:25
Oh, it has to look as bad as it did. They were copying the style. They're being very sneaky, yeah. All right, let me take a little break here and we will come back with more of our fabulous panel, our show today, brought to you by ExpressVPN. This panel, our show today, brought to you by ExpressVPN.

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02:19:42
I I have not played this game, shoshana, and I will just watch why. Well, well, you guys talk right, shoshana, you're not a, I'm taking, I'm assuming you're not a hell divers two player no, I'm not.

02:19:54 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
I'm I'm not opposed, I like. I like watching people play video games wrong, like a monster factory uh is a big thing that I love, but I just want to watch other people mess up video games and mod weird things in. That's all I'm here for.

02:20:08 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So what happened? Helldivers 2 was pulled from Steam in 170 countries because what Sony wanted you to make an account. Is that why?

02:20:19 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Right. So even if you're playing on a PC, they wanted you to have a console account for the PlayStation Network, which I mean. On its face, that's just like what I mean. This is a company that was complaining about Microsoft making antitrust moves, and they just made a huge antitrust move in front of everybody. Just made a huge antitrust move in front of everybody. So naturally, helldivers went from an incredible score on Steam of user satisfaction to got negative, bombed into a ratio that you wouldn't believe, and rightfully so. Now, and the leader came out and his first attempt at explaining what was going on was ham-fisted and terrible and rightfully, no one accepted his apology. But the second apology he made actually seemed heartfelt. It was more along the lines of look, yeah, we messed up, we went too fast, we didn't explain why we were doing this, we didn't explain what we were hoping to improve the experience with this move would be. But as it turns out, helldivers 2 is a fun game that got caught up in some really nasty internal office politics.

02:21:32 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
And now people can't use the game that have already bought the game, correct, that have the game, and because of Steam's return policy, it becomes this really messy thing of you can't play a game anymore that you've already paid for and made people really angry about that. The problem is is that when you expect something, when you are already used to something, and then for six, like you know, for for after you've been enjoying something, to be suddenly now you have to do another step, another barrier to entry. People really don't like that. Be suddenly now you have to do another step, another barrier to entry People really don't like that. If you don't start it off, head it off at the pass. And the CEO knew that this was going to be coming up, and so it's one of these weird things.

02:22:11
And Sony also changed their privacy policy. At first they said some game you might need to. You were never going to force you to have to sign in on games that you didn't already sign in on. And then later they changed it to be like you know, there's some games that we may force you to sign in on, and so it becomes this really messy bit of politics that comes out and a lot of people are really upset, even people that have accounts, just because a lot of people don't want to have to sign into things that they didn't already have to beforehand. And why are you forcing everyone to sign in and why do they want?

02:22:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
because I didn't. I actually didn't even see this story, but just so you know it's a big deal. This is the year's best-selling game so far. This is not a little yeah, and it was.

02:22:52 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It was exceptionally popular.

02:22:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It had amazing reviews which now it's getting a lot of the gameplay. Quite the opposite, right, the gameplay was actually quite good what is the game.

02:23:02 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
The reason why people are upset was because they actually really enjoyed it. I mean, this is one of these games that gets people amped up about playing with other players. Imagine that in today's world, where people generally want to stay away from other people, you had people who were joining clans to take on quests, to take back planets from different factions. It was. I mean, this had everything, it had everything going from it and it had overwhelming support from its fan base. And then they did this and it 180'd it. I can't imagine any game studio doing a 180 this. Quickly look at this from beloved to hated.

02:23:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was beloved. But now, if I go to Steam and look at the reviews, overwhelmingly negative. 248,357 user reviews. 14% positive 14% positive.

02:23:53 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Which means 86% negative. It's tanking very fast.

02:23:56 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah.

02:23:56 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Just yesterday it wasn't that bad.

02:23:59 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
It was 90 plus 90 plus before this whole thing. People are pissed.

02:24:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But the gameplay's not changed right. It's still the same game. It's the same game.

02:24:07 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
It's merely that you have to have a.

02:24:09 - Leo Laporte (Host)
PSN account. That's it.

02:24:12 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Yeah, it was mentioned. The studio said oh no, no, no, we had always planned to do this. This was going to be the launch, but there were technical issues, which generally means they realized the playstation network wouldn't handle the traffic. It was gonna, it was gonna crash if everyone was trying to sign in. But it just sounds so silly and a bait and switch. This is going to end in a class action.

02:24:33 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
There's no way this doesn't, unless they reverse this policy so I don't play games enough to understand, like what legitimately, like as someone who doesn't play, like, what's the big deal with having to have that other account? Like, is it just because it's a whole nother thing to log into, or is it like something else?

02:24:50 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
There's some, there's some countries that don't have you can't log in period. Some people don't have them, so, like you, you there's some people that absolutely like they just can't. There's not even even. It only takes moments to be able to log into it. Some people you know don't want to on a whatever reason. Some people don't have a playstation account. Some people don't have a playstation um, so for some people it's privacy issues, but the main issue is that there are many countries where they do not have access to be able to make an account.

02:25:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They can't they're only approved. You can buy the game everywhere, but you can only play it in 69 countries.

02:25:25 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Oh, that's obnoxious. So they just sold it to people who they knew weren't going to be able to play it.

02:25:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Furthermore, they're not offering refunds.

02:25:34 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Hasn't, yet Hasn't yet we're going to have to do something.

02:25:38 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
They're going to get such backlash because, like and they keep on they dropped it off of Steam, like I think that yesterday it was 100, now it's 170. But they keep on, like, cutting out countries that cannot get the game. So you can't buy it there, but a lot of people have already bought it.

02:25:57 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
So, oh, that's awful. Sadly, this is part of, like, the deterioration in the video games industry, where we don't own games anymore.

02:26:03 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
We license games. Now this is more in certification. None of us get to own games anymore we all license them.

02:26:08 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
This is so infuriating, so they get to do all the stuff that they want to. We gave these rights up like 20 years ago. People Sorry.

02:26:15 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, it's so funny because the games industry I thought had learned the lesson of copy protection, for instance, but now this one has DRM they're all coming back with copy protection. Is that suddenly because they're losing so much money to piracy?

02:26:29 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
No, no, I'm sure there's someone inside who has convinced themselves that that's why their profits are dropping.

02:26:37 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
People get like that with copyright. It's so strange to me the way the IP world works, where they think that lack of sufficient copyright is the cause of all their problems, rather than their own slip-ups. It makes sense that it happens in the video game industry too. I just wouldn't have thought of that, I guess.

02:26:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, and Sony? Frankly, this is not the first time Sony has shot itself in the foot. I mean, it does this again and again. It is, I feel, like they're they're um, they're kind of unaware, you know, like they don't understand their audience at all there's.

02:27:14 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I think they're so big right that they're not really paying attention. I feel bad for the, the game developers themselves, because the game is really good and was really loved and they had a lot of PR and a lot of people emotionally invested in the game and people that made it. And the CEO made a mistake. This is you know, he's not blameless, but he was really honest about listen, I also carry blame. It's not just Sony. I knew about this, I should have done things differently.

02:27:41
I feel really bad and has come out and Sony I knew about this, I should have done things differently. I feel really bad and has come out and said, like you know, sometimes just like I don't know what to do or I'm sorry, I don't know what's going to happen and been kind of very transparent, which I find refreshing. I think that even though he does hold blame and this is horrible and he's a part of this mess at least he's out there like right on the front lines, kind of taking some hits from people that are very angry, and going out there and answer. He could have done the easy thing and just said nothing and hope that this passes, which it won't.

02:28:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Honestly, I bet he didn't have any choice, that this was part of his agreement to do whatever Sony wanted. It's a small Swedish independent developer, arrowhead Game Studios. I think he's really manning up by saying I take responsibility, even though I bet you he had no choice. That was the deal right.

02:28:27 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I remember Sony screwed up no Man's Sky oh God, yes, when they took on that title and they forced them to do the release even though the development team was saying it's not ready, it's not ready, it's not ready and eventually no Man's Sky became a great game. You know, two, three years later, it is a fantastic game. This is the opposite. It started out as a great game and it's now become terrible.

02:28:49 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Wow, wow, I didn't realize this is a big story. We should have led with this story. I apologize, I had no idea. I hadn't even heard about it, but now I know. Benito, you should have warned me. You need to play more games, leo, I clearly do. I am behind the times. All right, one more break and then we're going to wrap things up. You've been watching, I think, one of my favorite panels. I love all three of you. You're so great to have Father Robert on. Shanna Weissman, georgia Dow I told you, george, I'm coming your way in September. Lisa and I are going to come visit you and Renee.

02:29:23
Maybe we have a meetup in Montreal, I don't know. That'd be kind of fun. Perfect, yeah, our show today brought to you by NetSuite. The less your business depends on operations, multiple systems and delivering your product or service, the more margin you have and the more money you keep. But wait a minute, how do I do that? Well, you can reduce costs and headaches.

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02:30:40
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02:31:18
Let's see iPhones don't do alarms all the time um that was an interesting story the iphones just randomly dropping alarms. Apple's finally admitted it. I don't know if they have a fix for it. Uh, of course apple has a big event tuesday. We're gonna get up early, micah sergeant and I, to watch a video together. You know, I I don't know why Apple does this, but all it is is a release of a video, but they sent out the invitations and we're going to all watch it when they release the video. It's just too bad that it's 7 am Pacific. Just right for you, father Robert, though You'd be right in the middle of your afternoon.

02:31:57 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Absolutely Well. I'm going to watch it because I've heard that the announcement is going to be the new brand, new Apple Watch will always do the alarms at the right time.

02:32:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, it's not that's wrong. No, that's not it. I think we're pretty sure that the Apple event will be. Well, if you take a look at it about, there's a pencil there, the guy's flipping and it's rare that they actually have a product in their invitations. But this time we know pre-apple pencil number three and presumably two new ipads an ipad pro, uh, 12.9 inch and 11 inch, and maybe I don't know, maybe what else we don't know be nice to see a new ipad mini.

02:32:38 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
I don't think I need a new mini.

02:32:39 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, the minis are great. Yeah, I hear that from so many people. People love the mini. I don't think I need a new mini. Yeah, the minis are great. Yeah, I hear that from so many people. People love the mini. I don't know why Apple doesn't give it much love. It's over three years since the uh iPad mini sixth generation came out. You know why I do. You feel like you need a new one, benito.

02:32:55 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
I do because I have a pretty old one, so I would like a new one.

02:33:03 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Well, I've got the latest and I don't feel like I like a new one. Well, I've got the latest Wait, wait, wait, and I don't feel like I need a new one. I don't know what would improve. Do you need a new one because yours is old or because it won't do what you need?

02:33:08 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
it to do anymore. No, it's just old, yeah, and I got it for free, so I might as well pay for this one.

02:33:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, the iPad mini is still available, but it's just updated I. I think they will probably update it this year. The really interesting thing I'll be watching for on tuesday is ai. Uh. We we're pretty sure from rumors that mark german has said, uh, that they will have oled screens, which will be nice. I don't. I have an ipad pro. I don't feel any need for a new one, except if the screen's really nice. The pen pen does more things, and this is the big one. Mark Gurman has said this and it shocks me.

02:33:45
The rumor is that they will put a brand new Apple Silicon chip in there, the M4. They're currently shipping some products with an M3, many products with an M2. This will have the M4. It'll leapfrog everything else to have the latest. And what is the chief feature of the M4? Better AI. So I'd be very curious to see what Apple Now. I think one of the possibilities is they will announce a product that won't ship for a while. We know it'll use a new version of iOS 18 that isn't out, or iPadOS 18 that isn't out yet, so it may be. You know they're going to say coming soon, that isn't out. Or iPad OS 18 that isn't out yet, so it may be you know they're going to say coming soon. I don't know what would Apple do to make you want a new iPad.

02:34:39 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
What could they do? For me, it's not AI, that's not the selling point.

02:34:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Better screen, maybe right right. Better pen, maybe the screen is already gorgeous. The problem they have with the current ipad pro is already is too fast. It's an m1 or m2, but it's already faster than any software. They don't they need software that challenges it before they. Anybody's going to get excited about a new ipad. Apple's kind of an interesting uh conundrum, a quandary rumor, is they're talking both to open ai and gemini google about their ais to the gemini ai and the chat gpt. I would, I wonder. I think apple might be agnostic on this and uh say you have your choice. The other question, though, is are they going to enhance Siri? And my guess is they are. Google's already done that. With Gemini, you can already use Google's. I did that on my Pixel replaced Google Assistant with Gemini. Not that it's any better, but it's more modern, I guess.

02:35:43 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I don't know. I mean, there's not really a question that Apple is going to improve Siri, because one of their core philosophies is they own the core technologies in their products and if they are really bidding on AI, they're not going to want to be beholden to Microsoft or Google.

02:36:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Well, we'll watch with great interest and I hope you'll watch with us. 7 am Pacific time this coming Tuesday, Micah Sargent and I will be in our jammies Because it's very early in the morning, and we will watch the video together and see what Apple announces Now. Interestingly, it's kind of like the rapture. Some apple journalists are disappearing on tuesday, so I think apple is doing briefings uh, we know something somewhere yeah, somewhere they're going to uh light and uh get to see the new.

02:36:38
So as soon as we get those people back from their brief visits to the Holy land we will get their sense of what the new iPads can offer. Anything else coming up this week we we didn't even talk about Apple's quarterly results. They weren't great, but you know, apple kind of acknowledged that it's times are tough. We don't have a new iPhone this quarter, so you know Apple kind of acknowledged that times are tough. We don't have a new iPhone this quarter, so you know this is normally. I mean they're saturated.

02:37:07 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Their product is saturated and the Vision Pro is a bust. The Apple Watch is basically petered out, so it's the phone. That's all they really have right now.

02:37:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And the services they desperately need another product.

02:37:21
Services was up, but remember some of that was the billions of dollars they get from Google every year, 90 billion in revenues, a record amount for services. Mac revenue up 4% year over year, probably because of the M3, macbook Air. Ipad revenue down 17% from a year ago, the weakest iPad quarter in four years. But you know what? That's? Because the new iPads are not out yet. Iphone revenue down 10 years 10% year over year. That's a pretty big drop for the number one driver. Here are Jason Snell's six colors graph graphs. This is uh revenue, you know. You can see how spiky apple revenue is, though. You know it. The big quarter is the quarter when the iphone comes out. Those are the peaks and then it's usually down after that. Iphone is still half of apple's profit or revenue, I guess. But look at that services chunk. That purple triangle has been growing steadily.

02:38:27 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
That's where they're going to be able to get their growth. Yeah, yeah steadily.

02:38:30 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Well, I think they're making the right move with that massive $110 billion buyback. That gives them a lot of running room to say, okay, we need time to figure out what product we're going to bring next, or what product we're going to bring next or what product we're going to mature. They can't do that if the market is going to be going crazy, if they don't exceed expectations every single quarter. And they were in a position, a unique position, to be able to do that, that massive amount of a buyback, and I would be surprised if that's not, if that's the last buyback we have this year 110 billion dollar buyback.

02:39:03 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It is a record amount for almost any company. Uh, I think they also are offering a dividend, but in both cases that's that's kind of mostly. It's not investment in the company, it's investment in the stock price. It's to prop up the stock price. It has a side effect that it makes it easier to acquire talent, which is important to apple because the stock options are worth more. If the stock is worth more, and I should say, keep talent, because it's really the people they're keeping. I don't know. Warren Buffett sold a significant amount of his Apple stock this quarter. I think it would be premature to say it's the end of the line for Apple, but they, they desperately need the next big thing, don't they? It's not the car we know now. They canceled that project is. Is vision pro going to come back? You're a VR fanatic, georgia Dow. Uh, did you buy a vision pro?

02:39:57 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
No.

02:39:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, that's bad.

02:39:59 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I don't. I don't really have a use case for me, for it. It doesn't do anything really better than what I have already. Yeah, I'm not really drawn to it. Yeah, and I have everything, so yeah.

02:40:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You have the Vive, you have the Quest, all the models of the Quest. I have all the Quests.

02:40:22 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
PSVR yeah, I have all the Quests PSVR. Yeah, never did get PSVR.

02:40:25 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I mean you can get the full Vision Pro Kit with all the extras for about $2,100 on eBay now.

02:40:32 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is the real telling point is that people are selling their even brand new Vision Pro, I think a lot. I saw a complaint on Reddit from one guy who had bought 10 of them, expecting to make big bucks scalping them oh oh, he's gotta wait like 20 years.

02:40:46 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
You know what I'm happy? I'm happy he tanked okay, because I hate those scalpers. Yeah, those are terrible. Yeah, anytime they do that for a console, for a phone, nope, nope nope, he didn't get a lot of support.

02:40:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I have to say uh, yeah, there are people selling it above list on the brand new ones.

02:41:05 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
You need to go to see, you need to get check sold listings. Which ones Sold Sold listings?

02:41:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, that's the you're right, that would be better, wouldn't it? That would be, we would now know where would that be?

02:41:16 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Scroll down, scroll down On the left.

02:41:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Sold.

02:41:21 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
How long was the return period? It's 30 days, right.

02:41:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No, it was a short two weeks. We had a yeah, sold items. Let's see here. I want to make sure to keep people to keep it oh, 2,500 bucks, that's 1,000 bucks off the list price pre-owned, although that guy got, you know, a good month of Vision Pro for only $1,000, right, got some of his money back, oh that sucks, that really sucks.

02:41:49 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Without it having a really good set of games or a killer game that has an amazing immersive experience. The AR isn't so fabulous With it being AR, like the glasses that you're getting. Leo makes so much more sense to do AR it's light, doesn't look too funky. But to do AR where you're wearing this huge, clunky, heavy, causes your neck pains and you're not doing a game, I don't understand why I would suffer to what to be able to look at my computer screen where I want to like. Why would I do that?

02:42:23 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
And Apple Vision Pro is not AR. That's mixed reality because it's not projecting an image.

02:42:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You have to see the cameras.

02:42:29 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yes, very good point yeah.

02:42:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So here's one for 2021. I'm actually more interested in those hot glasses that you're buying for $300.

02:42:37 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Yeah, I mean.

02:42:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, the brilliant brilliant labs. If it works? Yeah, if it works. We're seeing a lot of AI products that promise a lot but don't deliver. I have good feelings about this, brilliant Labs did a monocle.

02:42:53 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I love that.

02:42:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And it worked.

02:42:55 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It's like the idea of a monocle.

02:42:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It was a heads-up monocle, you know you could rock a monocle.

02:43:01 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Leo, you totally could. It would look really good, yeah, but you got to get a top hat. You have to have a top hat and you have to have a little bit of an accent.

02:43:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I have the whole kit in caboodle. Actually this was supposed to come end of. I'll have to check my shipping. This was supposed to come end of April. Hasn't come yet. Oh, and I did order it with my prescription.

02:43:26 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Has anyone mentioned if they work the way that they're supposed to?

02:43:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
No one's got it yet. No one, no one that I know of. I haven't seen any reviews, so it'll be interesting. It has OpenAI built in. It's got Whisper Translation, which is also OpenAI Perplexity search, so you can I guess it's got a camera right over the bridge of your nose and it doesn't upload any of the video that you're taking to a cloud service that you don't have access to.

02:43:57
I would hope not, but I don't know. I'll find out for you. You keep asking me these tough questions. It does come with, mr Power. Power, which is a nose bridge charger oh my god, that's hilarious.

02:44:10 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It looks like a mr potato head.

02:44:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It does a little mr potato I have to say I love the sense of humor opportunity making the end of the cable black to make it a mustache oh, they could have made it a mustache that would have been really cute.

02:44:23
It's open source, which I like. In fact, their code is on GitHub, which also makes me feel like there might be a future for this because people can tinker with it. I don't know. I like the idea. We'll see Intriguing. And the monocle is still available. It's only three hundred dollars. If you want the monocle, you can. You can get the monocle I. I think I'm gonna like the glasses. It's hard to keep a monocle in.

02:44:49 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It just doesn't you're not practiced enough yet maybe you'll work on it.

02:44:53 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Actually, this clips on your glasses, which maybe looks a little too oh, does it a little wait?

02:44:57 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
this clips off, this clips. You can flip it up and down this the monocle does.

02:45:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's hilarious Look at that that's a little borgie.

02:45:04 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Oh my God, it doesn't look as cute as I thought.

02:45:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's the monocle. I'm getting the glasses.

02:45:09 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
I will have them in my glasses Next time.

02:45:11 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I speak to you, I will have them, I'm sure. Ooh Well, I have confidence, Either that buy a heavily discounted Vision Pro.

02:45:20 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
No, definitely not. Right right, Definitely not. And then wear that the next time that we do a show.

02:45:28 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Our last story comes from the venerable BBC and our very own jammer, bee John Slonina, north Yorkshire Council in the UK to phase out apostrophe use on street signs. You see that St Mary's walk.

02:45:40 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Oh my God, finally, finally, finally.

02:45:43 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I've been so curious about this. It can affect geographic databases. All new signs will be produced without apostrophes, regardless of previous use. Residents spoken to by the BBC urge the authority to retain apostrophes or risk everything going downhill apostrophes or risk everything going downhill.

02:46:09 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
So basically this is an xkcd cartoon. Yeah, you know, if you live in, if you live in bobby drop tables, it's gonna mess up.

02:46:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's little bobby drop tables. It is. What is the apostrophe? Is there? Is it a? Is it a sequel problem? What does the apostrophe do I?

02:46:23 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
mean maybe if they're combining it with latitude and longitude, it messes something up. No, it shouldn't do anything to a database. It is not the first ban.

02:46:35 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Devon has banned apostrophes in its new street names and apparently countries around the world are abandoning apostrophes. But I don't like it. Proofreader Mary Devere Taylor from Ashburton said the thought of apostrophes being removed made her shudder. It's almost as though somebody with a giant eraser is literally trying to erase punctuation from our consciousness. This is what happens.

02:47:02 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
She hasn't been on Twitter.

02:47:04 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah Right, my kids used to mock me for using punctuation in my messages.

02:47:17 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Anyway, I guess it somehow impinges, impedes, confuses the computer. Yeah, I would assume that it's like you know, it's like centimeters or like it gives it a different signal and pop something else in.

02:47:25 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, Because it's used for two different things or they think it's minutes not seconds, or I don't know, I don't know.

02:47:31 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
But. But apostrophes are not optional. They change the, they change the meaning of something, so it's the end of the.

02:47:38 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's the end of the street string.

02:47:41 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
So it says St Mary.

02:47:42 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Possessive or plural, I don't know. If a computer can't handle apostrophe, I don't have high hopes for AI Right. I think that's a sign of the times. We've got problems.

02:47:52 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Well, now we know when the robot apocalypse shows up, not the zombie one, that's a different story. We just have to stick apostrophes everywhere and then they won't know where to go.

02:48:01 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I don't know where I am. That's the new stealth technology. You have an apostrophe on your street.

02:48:06 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They can't come Apparently there are people going around your church with their sharpies, putting apostrophes in on the signs.

02:48:14 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
These are the tips. I'm keeping them in my head, just in case. Keep your sharpie.

02:48:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
All your apostrophes belong to us.

02:48:23 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
It's keep your sharpie. All your apostrophes belong to us. It's more a sign that we have no solutions left as as a society that we have to go and delete apostrophes like it doesn't work in the computer, yeah so we'll get rid of it.

02:48:29 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
There's not enough trouble, is what you're saying? Yeah?

02:48:31 - Leo Laporte (Host)
you don't work in the computer, you're. You're history. I'm erasing you. Uh, ladies and gentlemen, I think we can end on that upbeat note. Thank you so much, I hope, for joining us. I hope you enjoy Choco Taco Day, or however you celebrate. Shoshana Weissman, chairman of the Sloth Committee. Back to your sloths with you. She's at Twitter at Senator Shoshana, what are you working on in our street? Anything new? Anything interesting?

02:48:58 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
More age verification policy and explaining why it's bad and a lot of yelling at lawmakers yeah of whom I love, but are doing wrong stuff, and I need to alert them constantly keep yelling at them yep, actually I love our streets, uh stuff, I'm, I'm, I'm considerably more liberal, uh, than our street is.

02:49:19 - Leo Laporte (Host)
But I have to. I can't help but agree in many cases with the positions you guys are taking.

02:49:26 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
So Yay, thank you yeah. There's common sense, it's like, like we should stop funding people to live in flood zones. That's not good for people, you know.

02:49:37 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah exactly, exactly. Thank you, shoshana, always great to see you. Thank you for being here. Are you going hiking sometime, somewhere soon?

02:49:47 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
In a bit. I put in for the Tennessee Firefly Lottery, so if I win that I'm going in June, then I have a bunch of the West throughout the rest of the summer. I can't wait.

02:49:59 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The Great Smoky Mountains Firefly Viewing Lottery.

02:50:06 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
This is what. I do instead of bars.

02:50:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Actually, that is the coolest thing ever.

02:50:13 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Right, yes, I love fireflies.

02:50:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
And there's a lottery, because so many people want to go see them. Is that right?

02:50:21 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
There's so much cool nature stuff. Yeah, they have to restrict people. Oh, I need to be there. Yeah, it's so cool. And there's one other too I think of the others in Tennessee as well, but there's like two spots for them. I was considering doing the Super Bloom this year, but it ended up not being an official Super Bloom, which I have researched and like made sure it was going to be a real super bloom.

02:50:45 - Leo Laporte (Host)
um, so I just like track natural phenomena like a psychopath. You know? I remember you were going to go see the super bloom. I'm so sorry that it didn't bloom for you oh, it's okay.

02:50:51 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Last year's was amazing, I just wanted to do it again where did I read that?

02:50:55 - Leo Laporte (Host)
uh, that, uh, something like eight different species of cicadas are all going to emerge. No, it's two.

02:51:05 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
It's the convergence. It's the convergence of two.

02:51:08 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Just two, because it's like every seven years and every three years or something like that. This is a year that they're matching up.

02:51:17 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, first time in a hundred years, or something like this the 2024 periodical cicada emergence. For the first time since 2015,. A 13-year-old brood will emerge in the same year as a 17-year brood, whoa, but brood 19 and brood 13 will co-emerge for the first time since 1803. Seven species See, I was right, all seven named periodical cicada species will emerge this year. And in case you know I know you went to see the eclipse this isn't going to happen either until 27 37, so you're gonna while, uh, and then, and you, so if you want to see it, I'm good.

02:52:00
A special year for periodical cicadas. Ew oh, but good news, brood 19 and 13 do not overlap. That may occur in patches of, I think. Go see the fireflies, forget the cicadas.

02:52:15 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Yeah, yeah.

02:52:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I think fireflies are magical.

02:52:18 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I was living in St Louis during an emergence and it's loud.

02:52:23 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's really loud. One breed is loud, imagine several.

02:52:30 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Even if they don't overlap. Just having that happen twice in the same year, that's weeks of no resting.

02:52:36 - Leo Laporte (Host)
So even though there are seven species becoming adults in the same year, they're not overlapping all at once. Only two are overlapping. You were right, so we're both right. Only two will overlap uh the 13 and the 17 this year in north central illinois. So let's all go to north central illinois for these cicada uh emergence I'm going with shoshana to the fireflies.

02:53:01 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I'd rather see fireflies oh look, I'll go with the fireflies, okay, or sloths. I'll go down to Costa Rica for sloths.

02:53:08 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yeah that's worth it. I did sloths, yep.

02:53:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm there. Two broods of more than a trillion cicadas will emerge First time since Thomas Jefferson was president the red-eyed flying cicadas. Jefferson was president the red-eyed flying cicadas. Oh, thanks, they're the ones they sound like buzz saws. They're really loud, they're so loud.

02:53:33 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I mean they approach the volume of a jet engine.

02:53:40 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, aren't they one of the loudest creatures on the planet. Fireflies, on the other hand, are absolutely quiet and they're beautiful. And they're beautiful, they glow. So the lottery results come out Tuesday. I've got my fingers crossed for you.

02:53:52 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Hopefully I've lost a couple of lotteries already, like the Mount Whitney lottery last year I lost, but I'm going to keep doing this because I have unlimited vacation.

02:54:02 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You know what they say you can't win if you don't play Right. Good luck, Shoshana.

02:54:10 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
Thank you.

02:54:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
The wonderful Georgia Dow. She's getting her. What do they call him? A goon, a ghoul, a ghoul. She's got her ghoul outfit on, she's got her bandolier, she's got her beat-up cowboy, hat Her Walt Goggins jacket sitting behind. He is wonderful in that show, I have to say.

02:54:30 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
He's so perfect for it. He's so perfect for it.

02:54:34 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We're talking about the very, very hot fallout on Amazon Prime, which is out completely right. It was one of those where they released it all at once. Yeah, they dropped everything at once. Somebody's saying your bandolier's on the wrong shoulder, you gotta go to the other side. I don't know, is there a right way?

02:54:52 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I would take it off, but then I have to take off the hat You're gonna have to do it.

02:54:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Yeah, leave it on. It's fine, it's fine.

02:54:56 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yeah, Thank you though.

02:54:58 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Find it all. Youtubecom slash Georgia Dow. And you're taping that tonight. When are you doing it? Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

02:55:11 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
And what is the topic going to be? I'm not sure I usually do the title after I do the video, because sometimes I just go on a different, like I don't script it.

02:55:18 - Leo Laporte (Host)
You don't script it, good for you.

02:55:23 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
No, I just give myself my main points, like my main idea, and then I just talk, so I'm not really. Sometimes it goes somewhere.

02:55:27 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I didn't plan it to go where in the dsm five would the ghoul fall? What diagnostic?

02:55:34 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
category. It's a very interesting thing because at the beginning he's very like good, like I would say like chaotic good to like lawful, he's a nice good he's got a little daughter.

02:55:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
He's a nice good.

02:55:42 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
He's got a little daughter, he's a sweetheart good guy, he tries to be honorable, he tries to be loyal, yeah, and then what happens when you hit and like an apocalypse of society, literally, and you have to do things that go against your nature, and you find out the things that you stood for are what actually turned the society into, what the mess it is now. So a little bit of like that self-hatred and seeing his values wiped into his face that were used for evil, I think that it does some twisted stuff to us.

02:56:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, I can't wait to see it. And what?

02:56:14 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
would you do to survive if you had to?

02:56:16 - Leo Laporte (Host)
It's kind of my life story. It's good my life as a podcaster.

02:56:19 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Georgia, have you called the Vault-Tec number yet?

02:56:23 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
I have not.

02:56:24 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Wait a minute. What's the Vault-Tec number? In the TV show there's an advertising and they put a number for Vault-Tec If you're interested in getting a vault. It's an actual number. It's a serviced number and if you call it it's Walter Goggins. No, so you have to do that before you film, just just so you know it's.

02:56:45 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
It's a nice little easter egg okay, I, how do I find I baltic number? Okay, I'm writing it down.

02:56:52 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Awesome I want to call it right now, before the show's over.

02:56:55 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Oh that would be awesome, all right. No, that will spoil it for people. Let them do, do it.

02:57:00 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Don't listen, it's 213-25-VAULT. 213 is at New York 25-LA-V-A-U-L-T oh awesome.

02:57:18 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Okay, thank you for that. Don't listen.

02:57:20 - Leo Laporte (Host)
If you're going to listen to George's show, don't listen here. Is that really the number? Did I call it wrong?

02:57:37 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
That's the number. So that's actually him. That's all it is. The context is this is after he has been exposed to a massive amount of radiation and his skin is falling off Of what he's turning into.

02:57:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
This is him becoming the ghoul.

02:57:53 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
That's his ghoulification.

02:57:55 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Put that at the end of the video. Oh, totally, I'll put that at the end of the video. Nobody will know.

02:58:01 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Apparently. You can also text the number oh.

02:58:05 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yeah.

02:58:07 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
What would?

02:58:07 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
happen if you text it.

02:58:08 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Would he text you back a bunch of screaming? Is it a picture?

02:58:12 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'm going to do it right now. Let's see no response. Oh wait, a minute Wait. Thank you for texting Vault-Tec. The next available appointment is 33 weeks from now. Please stand by. Reply. Why to get?

02:58:28 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
recurring marketing and other texts from follow. Oh, that's brilliant.

02:58:30 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Brilliant. You know what I love little touches like this. I'm going to say yes, because what's wrong with?

02:58:35 - Shoshana Weissmann (Guest)
that.

02:58:39 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
I'll be ready when the apocalypse Congratulations.

02:58:41 - Leo Laporte (Host)
We may or may not be in touch if an appointment becomes available.

02:58:46 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Oh, that's so come on.

02:58:48 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That's just. It's now in my contacts.

02:58:52 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Oh my God, that's the brilliant. I hope that they randomly send people messages.

02:58:57 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I'll let you know. Anyway, don't tell anybody, so people will see it on Georgia's channel, youtubecom slash Georgia Dow. Thank you, georgia. Thank you, father Robert, you the best. Keep feeding the Vada cats. They're doing okay.

02:59:13 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
They're doing fine and actually a new cat showed up today, an Abyssinian, which we do not have around Rome, so it's probably a stray. It got lost from somebody. I'll try to find it.

02:59:26 - Leo Laporte (Host)
There is a law, I think in Rome, that these are protected. Right, these stray cats they're all protected.

02:59:33 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
They are all protected, and that goes back to the time of the plague, because cats used to eat rodents, and so they wanted to make sure there were as many of them on the streets as possible. These days, there's actually a group that goes around and they sterilize cats to keep the colonies from exploding in size. Yeah, you want to do that. So all of the cats that are on our property have all been sterilized?

02:59:54 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, either by you or by somebody prior to you, correct?

02:59:58 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Well, yeah yeah, I didn't do it personally, no, but I mean you've arranged, that would have been very awkward arranged for the sterilization of these cats.

03:00:07 - Leo Laporte (Host)
They, uh, they actually have a cat sanctuary in the place where julius caesar was stabbed in the forum in rome, correct? It's kind of it's kind of interesting. Yeah, I've visited it. Yeah, well, there they are the vaticats. This is from two years ago, though. This is. This is old Vatacats. I want new Vatacat video.

03:00:26 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Oh, I've got all the new. I mean, I just went through my camera roll and I had to offload stuff from my videos from Google Photos, because I had more than two terabytes worth of cat videos and I'm like, no, I'm not paying for that storage.

03:00:42 - Benito Gonzalez (Other)
Wow.

03:00:44 - Leo Laporte (Host)
That would be youtubecom slash digital Jesuit, if you want to see the Vata cats, aww, isn't that sweet, isn't that sweet.

03:00:54 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
And I've got some new content coming up. It'll be different than some of the stuff that you've seen in the past Wrapping up for it. Right now we're in pre-production. We'll probably start releasing in november. Uh, so I don't. I don't want to talk about it because until we get close enough to hype it, I want to see you do some of this.

03:01:13 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I want to see you do some consciousness stuff. You're so profound and deep and thoughtful about that. I would like to. That's what I would like to see from you.

03:01:22 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
That's actually a very good guess of what I might be doing. All right, good. And I was thinking it was you playing video games, but you know, I could do that too.

03:01:31 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
That would be good.

03:01:33 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Father Robert plays Helldivers 2.

03:01:36 - Georgia Dow (Guest)
Yeah, or the Exorcist.

03:01:39 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
Oh my God, a real exorcism happened. I had a couple of segments where I was playing video games and I named it Play with Padre and someone said you know, you probably should play with Padre.

03:01:51 - Leo Laporte (Host)
Oh, no, too soon. Is that it Too soon yeah? That was a too soon moment. Father Robert, love you. It's great to see you. I hope to be in Rome and see you soon. I missed you last time. I just want to move to Rome for a while. Yeah, I love it.

03:02:06 - Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ (Guest)
I'm going to live in the house, I know.

03:02:10 - Leo Laporte (Host)
I told Lisa. I said we could, we could live with Robert. She said what? But I just I feel like that's my, my calling, so I'm going to, I'm going to figure out a way to do it. I really want to do it.

03:02:24
Thank you Robert, thank you Shoshana, thank you Georgia. Thanks to all of you for joining us. A special thanks to our club members who make this show and all the shows we do possible. At this point, you pretty much pay in the payroll, which is pretty awesome. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. And I'm not on the payroll, so that's the good news. Neither Lisa nor I gets any of that, but it does go to our wonderful team, people like Benito, who you hear a lot these days. Benito Gonzalez, our technical director, producer, editor. To Jammer B, john Slonina, who is our studio manager. To Burke McQuinnon make sure everything works. To Debbie and Sebastian in the continuity department. To Ty, our marketer, and, of course, our CEO and executive producer, lisa Laporte. I am Leo Laporte, thank you for being here and, as we have said, now we are in our 20th year. As we've said for more than 19 years, thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time. Another twit is in the can Bye-bye.