0:00 Question is words that going to put it? But it's okay here. I'll just hold it. Well wait a minute. Can just do this. Yeah. Take care to walk. That should work, right? Yeah. It's better. It's better. Like you speak about twice as loud as me. So then we try to keep the reporter, like, 25% in my direction. It's not.

0:19 It's not an insult. It's actually a good thing. Your voice comes through much clearer. I mean, not with the way we felt or get help. We the way we've been filtering it. It it cuts me like 75%. And a lot of times if I make a comment, I'm standing beside you but can't always hear it, you start laughing it.

0:38 It's like, wow, that must be a jackhammer. Yeah, it cuts the left to nothing like that. That must be a must be it. The 747 landing. It must be in front of the sailor. The air is like, we gotta cut that out. We gotta get rid of it. Yeah, like that can't be. That's too loud. That cannot be human.

0:55 Vocal production. That's sound. Boss. It's like we're prioritizing voice here. Not not construction. No, it's, you know, not whatever that background appearances yet, but it was like, you know, the starting gun, gunshot. Is where the AI labels it as not laughter. I think I've already said this on the podcast before, but there was one time that I went to Savannah and there was a guy doing, you know, the normal calling that they used to do back in the South for, you know, orders for people and trying to get people to come in.

1:32 Right? Yeah. And, you know, they used to do it like crisis chicken coop over here. Oh, yeah. All you're ordering. Yeah, well, order Barker's. Yeah. Order Barker. And so he was standing outside trying to get people to come in, and it was kind of in the middle of this, the downtown busy area. And, I was standing on a hill just above him, and Gavin's like, I bet you could be louder than him.

2:00 And so I screamed and just exactly the same thing he had just said right back at him, you know, I mean, it stopped all the buildings and everything else, right? Right. And he he looks up the hill like shocked his hell. Right, a competitor, they're gonna be one. It's the Highlander of the freaking commanding, booming voices in this life force rotating from the, you know, from the hilltop.

2:24 Yes, yes. False da.

2:29 You're trained by the graveyards. You aren't. You are a great barrier. Oh, yeah. That is a lead gray beer. Oh, my God, that's fine, I those guys are silent. Far too much for that in the. It's so, that whole thing about the order, Parker, you know, is that it's cool and stuff. And remember, I was like, you know, the just the attitude is just so infectious.

2:53 I was describing, like, the war, you know, at Seattle or whatever. You go by this like, oh, fishmonger Barker. And, you know, he's like pointing what you got, what you got. And really, you know, you all of a sudden you got a fish and a newspaper and you had no intention of buying a fish. I just let the personality just.

3:09 You just got raptured in. This dude's like, perfect, you know, fish pondering slash, you know, product barking. I mean, you were watching him throw the fish. You're like, I need to be involved in this. Yeah, right. Like, I yeah, I want to be involved with this. Some reason I don't even know why. It's just the, the the, energy, the action, the activity.

3:28 And so next thing you know, you're, like, walking around, walking away with a card, you know, like, wrapped in a newspaper. You're like, what? What is this? I'm here in a hotel. What am I? You know, what am I going to do with the like this? So I just give it back to him and say thanks for the experience, you know?

3:43 Right? Right. Hey, give me a 25% discount. Like, maybe the trash cans all in the vicinity are just loaded with fish every day because people just get sucked into the performance of the five fish. I bet they have, like, special fish trash cans. Yeah, like the ones that are all mesh, you know, just. Yeah, yeah. Then you have more flies than, like, a freaking Indian food market.

4:05 Oh, no. You've seen those online. That's like 80 stuff's gusting food. It's not just in India. It's all over the place. Yeah. It's like, you know, I think we could say Pan Asia. Sure. If there's if there's like, you know, a swarming, marauding incites anywhere near my food about interested in any way like. Right, right. Keep your laughing.

4:28 Yeah. Not she saw it and I know modern sweet production. It's like we eat certain percentage of RAF turn and fucking insects as it is. But, you know, still, if they like, visually can see them, you know, I'm just kidding me right out. Right. But I mean, if I'm gonna buy, you know, ragu and I know there's a certain percentage of rat crap in it, I'm kind of okay with that.

4:47 Yeah. Because, you know, our our, you know, wonderful government that surely will protect us. We'll make sure they wrap who isn't enough to to really arm me, even though now they fire people at the FDA, they fired people at the, you know, in all the at the CDC, all of these, they made all sorts of things very unsafe, from devices to foods where they fired enough people in the communications area of the FDA.

5:14 We are not getting alerts about a timely manner about things like, you know, food poisoning alerts, you know, for salmonella or listeria, things like that. Sounds like a good idea. Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. There's a certain amount of glass that you have. Baby food. I guess it's just it just. Right. Okay. So it's just. Okay.

5:36 It's like, you know, it's a point. 1% is just fine. Oh, yeah. You know, a shard in every third vial is fine. Yeah.

5:47 Just it just creates more business for the medical. Yeah. For the. They are now this this beats the medical industrial complex just the right amount. That's like Zork, you know, busting the glass. And it's like wicked. All the activity from destruction and like, this kind of there's, you know, there's some kind of narcissistic capitalist out there that's like.

6:05 Yeah, that's right. See?

6:09 It's like this, this fed into the system just right, generated all this money on all these different tiers of service. Right? Right. So we could go around poisoning everybody and, and, you know, ruining the esophagus and intestinal track of babies because it's more money for doctors. That's the answer. I think that you know to a degree there's, there's you know, not necessarily explicitly smoking back room clanged but where I had to grieve that in place with things for sure.

6:36 Oh 100%. I mean, you know, and no, I never believed in the smoky back room planning. I just really believed in general human incompetence. And, you know, I was like, why? What's the quote? Why? A tribute to malice? What can be explained by tumbling competence, something to that effect? Yeah. Yes. It's like, you know, that was generally it.

7:01 Hey, we're just stupid and there's too much going on. We can't manage it, right? Yeah, but now it's getting where they're maliciously planning it, it seems that way. Or it's almost like maybe the quiet part out loud, you know, type setting. But also it's this unbridled capitalization on on crisis or any type of opportunity or opening, you know, so, you know, for example, public sentiment is really, culture has kind of been strained due to like, you know, a really strong push on the on the extreme, far liberal left, for example.

7:37 Okay. And so that then created a capitalizing opportunity by which someone can, you know, pounce on that public sentiment, wanting to have a counterpoint to that, because it's people just have this intuition or emotion that it's gone too far and they, they want some kind of like. So in the simplest level, batteries merge. Yeah. Right. Maybe. And on a higher level they back and create candidates.

8:02 Right. That will satisfy that need. Yeah. And in a, you know, oligarchy slash kleptocracy to where it's capitalized on anything and now like capitalize on anything and just might as well just do it overtly because then people will say, oh, how smart. Instead of someone like behind the scenes catalyzing a crisis, like, for example, someone seeing a bunch of waste piling up.

8:23 And so they invest in permits for waste cleanup, you know, like something like capitalize on something they see or know, come across information that's a service that generally helps people at least. Yeah. So trying to capitalize on something that is a trend or something that's otherwise, you know, knowable, predictable based on just data, for example. And then someone comes in and tries to capitalize on that and does and does a really good job of capturing a lot of wealth as a result, usually doesn't go around and say, yeah, I saw that there was a crisis rather than like work on the root causes of how facing that crisis, I knew how I could profit off

8:55 it. And so I did that. Now it's kind of like they're saying it out loud, if you will, some. And there has been some backlash in recent years when people have bald faced, gone for the bag and had gone for the money grab. Right. Like whenever people were going to all the Dollar Generals and buying up all the hints and it's there during Covid and then up and selling it for five x or ten x.

9:16 And from what I understand, there's laws about that too. Like you can only in a crisis, you know, up the price of something so much like you can't sell baby for a baby Florida, you can't sell baby formula in a in a crisis zone where you know that people are desperate to, you know, feed their babies. Florida is a crisis.

9:32 So yeah. Yeah, it's like my. Yeah, I just think Florida is an armpit. Yeah. Which is, you know, wrong. Florida has some nice, you know, places, but it does. But I mean there's a lot going on there that's not great.

9:47 You know Florida man doesn't always trend for no reason.

9:53 That'd be fun. Like top ten for men and our extra content. Yeah. Yeah, that'd be fun. Oh, you know, or just the top five articles we can find in five minutes on Florida, man.

10:05 Well, I mean, there's a whole. Right? Yeah, yeah. So, another thing came came to my mind lately that I want to share. That's really interesting. I never thought of it this way, but, like, denial of disability, like, disability denial can cause extreme stress in families, society's loved ones or too. Let me explain. So, like, I was at a memorial service recently, and there was a, you know, not named gentleman there that was really hard of hearing.

10:40 And he knows he's hard of hearing. He's been hard of hearing for many years now. And, like, full on knows, you know, he worked in five, three for years. The machinery just even with the earplugs just, you know, destroys the, the, the, the mechanics of the year. And some of those just don't naturally repair. And so like, you have a hearing decline and it stays.

10:59 It's lost hearing loss. Right. It stays. Yeah it does physical damage. Same cannot be with earphones. Yeah. It just doesn't come back. And so you know when you're young your, your whole your anatomy is a little more resilient. Compensate a little bit better. But you're creating damage though in your later years could really, you know, spell hearing loss or even going fully deaf.

11:20 Anyway, there was you know, it was a memorial service. So all these pleasantries were being spoken about the person who no one ever spoke so pleasant about when the person was alive, but, you know, still, you know, that goes anyway. The one gentleman was like, the brother of the person that passed away. And so as the went around the room sharing stories, this guy was like, you know, prompted to share stories.

11:46 And when he was prompted, he didn't really everyone in the room could hear what the prompt was, you know, such and such. Do you have anything to say? You know, and this was like over a microphone and very loud. So you could definitely hear very clearly what was being said over the microphone. Well, he had turned to his wife and, and basically gave you could see this pattern kind of expression of like what?

12:06 Like what did they just say. Yeah. And he's learned to like, hone in on her voice and kind of, I think to a degree, probably like read her lips or read her expressions to pick up on on the hearing loss is pretty substantial, right? But the thing about it is that this guy is like an old man, but still, he's just in denial of wanting to, like, he has this idea that, like, if he ever goes and gets hearing aids, that means he's old or something, that means there's something wrong with him.

12:28 Or it's like a confession that there's a problem of some kind. Related to age and wear and tear on the body. You say what I'm saying. Got it. So he's acknowledging this. And so it makes it this reality, rather than really just acknowledging it as a compensator and helping them. Yeah. And you could tell that she right off right away.

12:49 You could see that she was like, well it was like another hit of this burden that's on her. Yep. You know, you can like and see it on her face suppression, see the energy. You can just boom. Like almost like a continuous sigh. Like you're here we go again. You know, I gotta like, be I've gotta be like I gotta repeat in a certain way, in a certain volume, you know, in a certain amount of directness directly to him in a certain way, even a certain cadence, because they.

13:15 Yes. The flow of the syllables. Exactly. And so, you know, I imagine that over this is gone on for many, many years now. I can imagine the like, collective burden that that's in frustration that that's needlessly put on this other person liver, you know, insurer hearing aids or an outsized cost. I mean, they are stupidly expensive. But if if this person could afford it, it wouldn't be a definitely can and not an issue, then there's no excuse.

13:47 It really is other than personal pride. It's what is right. It's pride. It's it's pride creating a not just a nuance, but a burden. Like a, like a serious collective physical and mental burden on somebody needlessly. The money is there. The health insurance is their health insurance plan is there. Everything is there to get the proper exact medical device necessary to function early.

14:12 As far as here he goes. Okay. Right. And yeah, like think about that. Times a million like times. All the nuance throughout all society, all the people who are in denial of their of their issue, whether it be mental or physical infant that that's creating a direct, you know, load on families, society, spouse, caregiver, you know, etc..

14:36 So for the collective burden of that, wow. Right. Has to be overwhelming. Yes. And all the people that are right now taking care of someone at home, like someone, especially someone with a really strained, like terminal illness or, you know, stage four cancer patient or something like this knows that the total load of that burden is crap. Like you're basically especially someone's bedridden or something like that.

15:00 You're literally waiting on somebody's hand and foot, you know, like you're at their disposal 24 over seven, you know, and that I don't want to say like unpaid labor, but uncompensated effort or uneven recognized or acknowledge effort in many cases. But a lot of cases, this is like a child, you know, an adult child that's taking care of an elderly person that never even is on.

15:24 It's not even on the record at all. Like, there's no it's not on the person's resume. It's not on the person's like tabulation of of of effort. Hey, you see what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah, it's it's one of those things that we keep swirling around and talking about in, like, okay, in Mexico. They've acknowledged it. Hey, there's these, there's caregiving and this, this tax and burden on society.

15:50 And so Claudia shine bombs like, hey, all these women, regardless of what they've done, if they've spent their lives caring for their families, they now have bench it, because that was work that buoyed up society that improved all. Yeah, there's, there's that there's that whole thread of like, you know, women do all this unpaid labor. I don't.

16:11 Men do too. Yeah. I don't like that at all. I think that like humans do, you know. But that was just my entree into it. But I think there should be a compensation. Doesn't matter if you're male, female, non-binary, whatever. If you're doing non-paid work or dead boys, people up, you need to be able to apply for a wage.

16:30 Yeah. Or somehow. Yeah, right. Still be able to function yourself while you're undergoing that burden. Yeah, yeah. I mean, ideally, you know, you'd have like a, a, a surplus or a decent amount of generational wealth saved up to when the family does need that kind of resource. It's there. Yeah. But you know, we know reality is that many families are paycheck to paycheck.

16:50 And right now people don't even understand. You were talking about the base before you did the podcast. You were talking about you and EV be trained in the basics. The basics need to include financial literacy, and I don't even have financial literacy to the level that I needed to manage the resources I had. So I really think it it was never something taught to me in school or given an opportunity for him to be taught to me, and I, I really think that needs to be a cornerstone of, oh, maybe you need to start talking to people about it in seventh grade or so.

17:28 I think that ongoing, right? Yeah. Not only like teach these critical life wheels. And that place is amazing. You'd be. Yes. It shows up in like, the best barbecue books. Consistent. Ladies and gentlemen, our sponsor for the training. We are in Shelby and we just passed Red bridges barbecue. They smoke the barbecue with the corn would. It is delicious.

17:51 And this is amazing. Okay, I know too much about barbecue places, y'all. For all our vegan listeners, there's a beautiful. Yeah. Now that now that you're shutting author. Yeah. Everything we have to say from here, you know, just shut us out intellectually to everything that is going to commence. Sorry, sorry. And it's just a joke. We're not really sponsored, endorsed by that place.

18:11 No, I do link wink, I just exclaimed happily. Because I, you know, my, inner fat kid was just so happy it's seeing this place. The the bacteria, your gut bacteria that craves. Yeah. Slow, slow roasted pork fat. It's just it's now it's doing the talking. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's taking over probably for the next 20 minutes, but.

18:40 Yeah. So yeah, it's back to back to life skills.

18:46 Greasy dripping pork fat is not healthy. There you go. Yeah. There you go. For all of our for all of our young listeners, right. Yes. Like one of the things we need to be taught in schools is. Yeah, if something is glistening with fat, right. It might look delicious and tastes, but wishes but is not health healthy for you in any way?

19:05 The phrase fattest flavor may trip you up in true. And it's and it's protein. It's not even me anymore. It's just protein. What protein do you want? Yeah, give me a break. Because, you know, I the German is such a better language, right? It's just flesh. Nice, right? It's just flesh. Me is just flesh. That's great. I mean, right, that's what it is.

19:27 Yeah, it's it's flesh. Let's. If we if we called it flesh, you're like in America. You know how bad the sales would be here. We talked about that the other day. How language is so soften to like, make something terrible good. Right. Like, yeah, something terrible actually be desirable. Anyway, so back to this basic for like, you know, education.

19:48 You know, it's it's a bit of a trope at this at this point. I think like everybody, I can't, I can't even think of an industry or, or like a learned person that doesn't, when they do speak about the education system, doesn't have some claim on what they think should be taught in schools versus what is taught in schools.

20:05 It's like a it's like an American trope, you know, at this point to like oh well they should you know, they should teach this in school. They should teach that in school. Right. With no education background. No. You know, right, right now there's there's an intuition without being trained that the education system wholesale is not really prepping people well for their life.

20:28 Yeah. Yes. And you know. Sure. And, it's the, the intuition, I would think if you just barefaced ask people is, you know, do we need these basics. And then on top of that do we need, you know, it's kind of like a sandwich. We need the basics and the foundations, but we also need to be training people for these high level skills.

20:53 Like we need to be running them through a course that explains to them the rudiments of machine learning and AI. We need to be what kind of effects they can have on you psychologically, how it can be used as a tool against you, and how giving too much data can undermine you in these ways. And yeah, let's see, here we go from a perspective of like people that are well versed in it.

21:14 You know, we of course then favor education in that dimension. Right, right. Yeah. Someone that's a constitutionalist is going to be like, oh, you know, kids should all learn how to cursive. They shouldn't have taken cursive out of school because the Constitution is written in cursive. And, you know, people need to, you know, from that perspective, that's that's important to someone, someone that has an affinity towards it or is trained in that particular, you know, or set.

21:38 So and then their $0.02 about education is, oh kids should, you know, should should learn their reason. The Constitution is written in recursive is because they only had like a pen and, you know, a quill. Quill and an egg. Well, yeah. And that was like doing that the best way to write you the flow, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

21:56 If they had a fucking word processor, the thing would have been they had generative AI, you know, the Constitution would be like, you know, mostly, you know, recipes for chicken soup make or whatever AI is, you know, consistently goes to as far as its output. But anyway, the point is, is that, like everybody does have, I think, I think there's a core intuition that we have prevailing across society that education isn't as isn't really as good as it could be like it could.

22:24 It could have a lot of areas of improvement. And for me, in a non IT capacity, I'm saying that like, I think some of the core skills that should be taught are like, you know, basically the basics about food and the basic that use that economic, the basic of economics, how the economic system works. Yes. Not just how to balance a checkbook, but like how money actually works in the system.

22:49 Well, yeah. Yeah, really works. Not just like financial literacy in that you understand, not just to microeconomics, macroeconomics, and you understand what's happening to your tax dollars. You understand what's happening to your world. Exactly. Yes, absolutely. But I'm also talking about managing your own resources, however large they get, you should be able to understand how to they should be able to teach in a school before you get out of high school.

23:14 How to manage resources up to $1 million in income a year. Well, when you hit that kind of level, don't you have like experts that are. Yeah, but I'm saying if you understand it, then you can get there. Oh, you're saying okay, right. The core skills you would need to get to that point. Yeah, yeah. Because like, you know, once you're over a certain amount, you're not handling your money.

23:34 No. Like, but if you understand how to get the if you understand how the mechanics of it will work, you have more of a chance of being in order. It's definitely why I like systems learning, because when you learn systems, you learn like, first of all, you have to learn thoroughly to be a systems learner to to to understand systems.

23:53 But learning systems, then, you know, I think that when you're then in that system or working within that system, you're better, you're most likely to have a better outcome. Like so, for example, if you think about the, if you're driving for DoorDash, let's say, or Uber, let's just say argument sick, okay. And, you know, the system of how Uber works and how these kind of schemes, I think I'd call it without risking a lawsuit.

24:19 But, you know, when you learn the systems and how the true mechanisms of these systems and how they work and, and where the, where the money and the resources really go, why they're so profitable. You might think twice before signing up for to do such a service. If you understand how the system works. It's not just that you deliver this food and then you get some money, like that's what that's what the common entry point is for something like a DoorDash or a, you know, Uber or something like this.

24:45 But really, you know, you have to calculate the winter in your vehicle, your time, your, your, you know, your resource allocation that goes behind the scenes that you're not putting into the equation. So in systems learning, in systems understanding, you have to understand all the facets, all the dynamics, all the inputs and outputs. You know, not even all nobody really ever really understands all of the inputs and outputs which have to know things like opportunity costs and ultimately systems learning can also be higher level than what you're saying to systems can be.

25:15 Okay, I understand this black box does these things to its typical inputs, and that's the kind of thinking you need for composability. And that's so true because I don't think many people even get to that black box level understanding. But, you know, knowing what's happening inside that fly box. Exactly. So, you know, you approach it like, hey, this black box does these things typically.

25:39 And then you, like you said, you dive into the black box and you say, well, these are your options to implement this idea. And then you have these other black boxes that do similar things, you know, and then you dive into those. But yeah, systems thinking brings us out of the more ass that we're in, because it allows us to see things, to manage things as humans on a higher on a, on a higher level, and not deal with all the details.

26:07 We have systems that we're clicking together to simplify it, like Legos or, or Technic pieces or whatever, you know, in. Yeah, if you take a system like the financial system, how how money works, you know it. If you notice to know the basics of how money works, you would just know certain truths by default. And then preferably, you'd be in a situation in your family to where mostly the the defaults, as you progress through your life are, you know in your favor to where you're always building wealth throughout your generational wealth throughout your life without even having to trust, is buying you assets for your birthday not, you know, stupid gifts that don't do anything

26:54 right. Right. Not only that, you know. Sure. 100%. But take it to the next level. And the training as to why. That's why that's such a better birthday gift, right? Right. Yeah. Because, I mean, I would always we grew up where I would always get practical gifts, so would I. Yeah. Socks. Like, I unwrapped fucking socks for Christmas.

27:13 Exactly. Like, you know, and in me, the same as everything. But I would assume a rich family is just getting those things normally right for your birthday, you might get. Oh, you know, I bought you 200 shares of Microsoft. Yeah. We're not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. We're middle class family now. And my kids would never unwrap socks unless it was a joke for person.

27:33 Right. But I did the same thing as you grown up. I mean, it would be socks, and underwear was a component of what I would get. It usually wasn't all of it, but that was part of it. And yeah, and kind of also like the poor, the poor training of like, you know, faking that that's acceptable like that.

27:47 You're not right. You better be disappointed. You know, it's not the latest Atari or whatever, the Calico Vision or Activision the like. Okay. That puts a certain date bracket onto that, right. If you are a magnavox Odyssey to oh come on, that's that's wait that's extreme.

28:09 Or the original pong game. I don't even know who that was by. That's Hari. It has a had a it had the paddles. Yeah I have the I had the single button on the side of singing that they would stick to the TV with Static Genius. Yes. And Activision had the Activision game console had a little sleeve that would come with the cartridge that would slide into the slotted thing over the controller.

28:31 That was like a phone pap. Nice. It had like number zero through nine with with star and and pound. Yeah. And I'm so how many buttons you get out of that and you can do the math real quick 12. Sure. And so you basically then have the slot in the top that the little, I don't know why thin plastic, you know, mylar or whatever the hell it is, but it was pretty thick, though, so, like, it would last for a while.

28:57 It wouldn't tear. It was thick enough to not tear, but it was thin enough to where you're when you pressed over it. It wouldn't interfere with the button press underneath. Cool. And so based on the game, you'd put a different overlay into. So tell you what the buttons were right. You know thing. That's right. Yeah. And they had those for keyboards back in the day for, you know, of your productivity applications for whatever.

29:18 You know you had all these other layers and these cheat sheets. Yeah. It's a clever analog like, you know, system that was in place before. It was just a digital screen that you could press that could morph anything. Right? Contextually. So it was a nice way to get a contextual, like change to the interface in it, in an analog way.

29:37 And the buttons, of course, we're all analog press. There were those little chick lit style buttons, or they were they were completely round. So like, they'd have the dome kind of press. Yeah, that's the chick lit buttons. Chick lit. Okay. Yeah. I knew would have like a pretty, pretty decent feel, but it was also a cheap feel. You could tell that like it was is it wasn't in the last third they got, you know, the bubble would kind of start to, you know.

30:00 Right. And it would stay like partially indented. So and then you would learn your controller over time to like which ones you'd press harder or which one do you lighten up on. It was great. That's a tactile. Yeah. Yeah. And you adapted to it and you figured it out and you knew how to, you know, say if one of the controllers was a little wonky, you had this special thing you'd do to it where it would make it less wonky and it would work.

30:24 Yeah. So the Activision controller was pretty sophisticated, had sideburns and then it had for the main control pad, directional pad. It had a disk like a metallic disk around metallic disk that would rock, you know, back and forth for your directional movement. And even though it was a disk, it would only respond to, the eight compass points, like so it really had like eight.

30:45 Yeah. In it. Yeah. Inside, you know, and the disk was like balanced in the middle and a spring. So, you know, you, you, you push and you'd find that contact. So if you wanted to go to the bright or in this case by my description East, you would, you would rock the disk over until it depressed that that sensor for.

31:03 Yeah. And you got to where you knew exactly where to hit to hit it. Oh, she asked as possible. Oh yeah. Yeah. And the range of motion on your thumb was like pretty extensive. So you get a little bit of like that, that stress building. And you're, you're in the base of your thumb until you, you know, play, play way too much and then your thumb would be strong enough to be a great hitchhiker or.

31:22 Yeah, plumb a shoving your thumbs and plumb highs. Yeah. Kids story, plumb experts. I don't know, there's a joke there somewhere. Braids. Not tons in the. But I don't know. Oh.

31:41 Well, that just ruined.

31:45 Yeah. You go with hitchhiker and then a, you know, Norman Rockwell metaphor to something like, you know, some nursery rhyme about plums and thumbs, and you just go for buffalo. Damn. So, so there's, you know, there's space for all that. It's fine. Yeah, yeah. I mean, in in. That's the thing. We're just. We're just saying. Hey, you had a mammoth thumb.

32:10 You know, most of us were young enough. We didn't get our repetitive stress injuries out of this. Yeah, my video game playing gave me a shame grip. Right? Like it comes once I got it. Once I grab something, it was. Yeah. So speaking of grotesque thumbs, and I'll tell you back to the story about this memorial service with this hearing aid needing guy.

32:33 The the gentleman that passed away was my uncle, and he was a Vietnam vet in a we had actually no one really knew this, but we'd had some really long phone conversations about our military experiences and that kind of thing. Like over the years, you know, there were some really good conversations because a wartime veteran can really talk to another wartime veteran in a way that is hard to talk to someone that's not a wartime memory.

32:59 Yeah. I'm sure. So, you know, it's just sometimes some of the conversations were a little easier to have with someone that has a similar, you know, share experience. Right? It feels less alien. It feels less. You're not afraid to spend their sensibilities, you know, they that you can bring it as deep as you need to to find that relief.

33:18 Yeah. And both of you know that it's like something that's not really fun to talk about, and you don't really want to talk about it. Right? You're talking about it not from the perspective of like kind of share bravado, war story to tell you for the perspective of like what it felt like. Yeah. You have to like get your emotions up.

33:32 Exactly. It's a little bit of it. It's a tiny little sliver of healing. It is. So we were talking at length about some of our shared experiences and like ideas about that kind of stuff or whatnot. But anyway, after he got it, when he first got out of the military, he was, pretty keen on this. In his transition back to civilian life.

33:53 He was pretty big on this idea of really, playing the the veteran tough guy, you know, so the persona that he was putting forward is that he on this hard ass that just came out of war, you know, don't mess with me. Yeah, I fit, but that wasn't really his nature. It wasn't really who he was. So it was this juxtaposition between like, this first Sona that he was trying out versus who he really was.

34:20 And that juxtaposition was, like, pretty palpable. You could even as a young kid, I could feel the I could sense the, the, the paradox between those two, elements. You know what I mean? Yep. You could see I'm having to walk somebody through, basically, there's so many things happening to this person right now. She's trying to figure out how to like she doesn't know the difference between a charger.

34:48 It's somebody has attached to a desk and a dock for their laptop. So I had to explain that, say Inter, what is this? No, it's fucking Gen Z. It's there. Oh morons. Tear!

35:10 I thought we made a vow not to trash the rest.

35:16 Regardless, I'm differently experienced. What are you talking to? Yeah, they're not morons. I mean, it's just. I mean, how can you confuse a charger that has three, two, three, three porn plugs and a couple of USB ports on it with a laptop dock? I think I know the difference between those two, but I can, you know, imagine how someone might not.

35:42 And then and it was like, okay, we talked about this before and I showed you yesterday, you just have to plug it up to the market. There's a USB cable coming off the monitor. You got to plug it up to that. And there's USB ports on the monitor. Plug your USB item up to the monitor. Why don't you just have them call the helpdesk and get create a ticket.

36:03 Why would that help desk? Why are you the IT sport? The help desk yesterday took 2.5 hours to install Net eight on my computer, install the Dell update utility and, then run the updates. That didn't give me the driver I needed, and I told him it wouldn't give me the driver I needed it. I was like, enlist the drivers.

36:26 It's going to install. Yeah, well, we have a bit of a shared experience there, sir. Yeah. So that's why we're not calling this. Help us understand. I can't tell you how many hours I spent. Like three. I see support, like for friends, family, coworkers. That's a that's part of the tax that I think you get is being an insane.

36:48 It is, it is. But she's just trying to hook up a USB serial console. That's all she's trying to do. And when she hooks it up I'm like, okay, now you need to install this driver that I gave you. You have it because I walk her through how to get like, admin access and all this stuff. Yeah. So anyway, sorry, I'm hijacking Dick's.

37:09 No. No problem. So, have her put the thumb drive into her universal SCSI connector.

37:17 And you can see the smoke not just coming from the trees and the woods here, but you can see the smoke coming from her ears all the way for Beckton. Charlotte. It's like, okay, trying to figure it out. Now you have to make sure that your chain is properly terminated. Yes, yes. Okay. Yes.

37:34 And I'm not sure if it's a token ring or a token ring.

37:41 Oh yes. He talking ring. What? The information will come around to you inevitably. Don't worry. The packets and the spells anyway. So some like there was a tie into a thumb drive. So I said thumb drive because we were talking about thumbs, you know. So I was talking about this attitude of, you know, this transitioning phase going from military to civilian life.

38:05 Again, it's it's difficult on people in different ways. Everyone has their own unique experience. But there's some common threads. Yes. And, this was an era then people came back from war, not very much celebrated, but more, you know, spat upon or looked down upon my society. That baby killer, you know, this was a war that we didn't win and wasn't glorious.

38:29 Yeah. Like that. That song by Allison changed rooster. That is actually about something somebody Vietnam experience about how they were spit upon and hated in their own land. There you go. And, you know, and it's like. And then you've got on top of that, hey, it's even thought that maybe Vietnam vets coming back or the reason we have a motorcycle gangs, several prominent motorcycle gangs were founded by Vietnam vets, the Mongols, the Hells Angels.

39:03 It would make sense to feel outcast by society and might then just adopt that role and say, you know, embrace the role, right? Or not, it we are outlaws. We are these modern day pirates. Yeah. I mean, sometimes when you feel like you're the pariah, it's one way through is to just identify, as I'd say, okay, fine. If that's that's what I'm going to be, then I'll be that.

39:25 Yeah. And it's that whole thing we talked about expectation drawing out of you different characteristics.

39:33 The expectations that society puts on people, not just invokes but draws out different aspects of, you know, personality and character. So anyway, back to thumbs is that he had had a job. Doing logging, like timber work and a tree arborist expert or tree feller or whatever the you know, all the terminology there is a lumberjack, for lack of better permit is a lack of better terms.

40:01 And, he was doing some of the really dangerous shit, like in high up and getting, putting a tree spikes on and climbing up the tree, cutting limbs off of your crap, you know, up in the tree and you have to tie them off in certain ways. And then when the, when the log, you know, it's free, the rope kind of tenses up.

40:17 And when that rope tenses up, this, like, slack in the rope all of a sudden gets pulled tight from a, you know, maybe one ton limb coming now. Yeah. You know, you're talking about some pretty serious physics. You don't want to be anywhere near that. Oh, yeah. Well, anyway, his hand had gotten up in the way of one of these ropes as a really huge log, like, fell, like, now and then the the roadway snapped really tight and hit him in the hand and cut the end of his right thumb off.

40:46 Really? Yeah. From like just above the last novel. So like, everywhere the nail was pretty much up was just chop right off day, just, smacked off or smashed off by just by the by the snap held us up. Yeah. Like so all this chainsaw work you'll find never, never had any like, issue with the chainsaw, but a rope, you know, getting taut with extreme forces was enough to like, you know, whip the end of his stomach, basically.

41:11 All right, that's insanity. I mean, we're talking about with a glove on everything else. So the physics are crazy, right? And so, he had to go to the hospital and get some skin grafts it to the end, and they were able to like, you know, save a half of the bone there that shaved the bunk was like it was surgery to.

41:29 Okay. Yeah. You know, they recovered and reshaped what was left of his thumb. Yeah. They were like, take some skin off his ass or something and put it on his thumb and right tie. And back to what you said about butts and thumbs. Yeah. But anyway, so, like, the bottom part of the some as it was healed and scarred, like, had this weird hair grown out of it, shit.

41:48 Like, you know, it was just a strange graft. But whatever. It saved as much of his thumb as possible to save. But he had this fucking disgusting, nasty cudgel of a thumb that was, you know, no, no nerves in the end of it and all that kind of shit. And, like, this hard, calloused scar tissue with, like, the bone right underneath it.

42:07 It was disgusting, right? It was gross on all levels. Yeah. And so you tie that in with this badass persona that he was trying to put. And of course, he's, like, jabbing you with this disgusting thing. So not only is it hurt because it's bony and hard and gross, right. But it's disgusting because it's this gnarly, you know, thing that you don't want to be anywhere near that, you know?

42:29 And so for years and years, when I was a kid growing up, he was like taunting me with this disgusting fucking foul breath. And the funny thing is that over the years, I would ask him, you know, as adult, like, hey, let me see that. Something like, let me see how that thumbs do it. And believe it or not, like the thumb actually isn't like grow back or anything, but like it got better and better over time.

42:49 Like it became more like a million. Like, I don't know, it started off as like just disgusting Frankenstein. But over time he over time it like, yeah, like some of the tissues softened and you know. All right. It was mostly functional. So. And he didn't look handicapped. It didn't look like, you know, it was enough of his thumb was still there to where it looked like he saw the thumb, you know, like get a really close look, even notice that they even have a do they have, like a fake nail on it.

43:14 No, no, no. But I remember drawing one on there one time for fun with a Sharpie. But anyway, so, so, you know, just a a thumb story that ties into this memorial I was to, was that recently in these other stories? But, yeah, it's just like, you know, little cudgel of a thumb for years of this menacing, you know, nothing like taking something that's disastrous and turning it into some fun.

43:38 It's hilarious. And it's cool that he had a sense of uma enough about it that he let you draw something on it. Oh, you're all that was later. That was later here. At first it was just a torture device to disgusting and funny it. Right. You would just poke you with it? Yeah. Just jab. It was a jabbing.

43:53 It was like built in a built in cudgel. Oh, my God. I have to join a zoom meeting. So we have pause again. Yeah. No problem.