Education Flaws, FDA & One Gross Thumb

0:00 push, push is words that when you put it. But it's okay. So here I'll just hold it. Well, wait. What? I'm enacting this. Do this. Yeah. They should work. 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.

0:19 It's not. It's not an insult. It's actually a good thing. Your voice comes through much clearer. I mean, not with the way we've been. Filter it, 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. We can't always hear it.

0:35 You start laughing. Ecclesial. It's like, wow, that must be a jackhammer. Yeah, it cuts the left. And like that, like she must spear the 747 landing. They must be in front of you. Say, like the air is like, you gotta cut that noise. We gotta get rid of it. Yeah. Like that. Can't be here. That's too loud. It cannot be human.

0:55 Vocal production. That's our boss. It's like we're prioritizing voice here. No. Not construction. No, it's, you know, not whatever that background interference. Is it? But it was like, you know, the starting gun, gunshot, is the I labels it as not a. I think I've already said this on the podcast before, but there was one time that I went to a cinema and there was a guy doing, you know, the normal calling that they used to do back in the cells 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 prices. Chicken coop over here. Oh, yeah. You're ordering. Oh, yeah. Well, order Barkers. 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 just exactly the same thing he had just said right back at him. And, I mean, it bounced off all the buildings and everything else. And he's he walks up the hill like shocked as hell of a competitor. There can only be one is the highlander of of fucking commanding, booming voices in this field like fucking folks rode him from the, you know, from the hilltop.

2:24 Yes, yes. Forced us. You're trained by the Graybeards. You are a flag. You are a grave area. Oh, yeah. Under that is a lead. That baby. Oh my God, that's fighting I those guys are silent. Far too much for me. In there. It's so, that whole thing about the order, Barker, you know, is that it's cool and stuff.

2:49 And remember, I was like, you know, the just the attitude is, is so infectious that I was describing, like, the worst, you know, it's Seattle or whatever. You go by this like, oh, fishmonger Barker and he, you know, he's like pointing what, what you got, what you got. And really, you know, you all of a sudden you get a fish in a newspaper and you had no intention of buying a fish.

3:07 I just let the personality just you just got enraptured to this dude's like, perfect, you know, fish mongering slash, you know, product barking. I mean, the ball, you were watching him throw the fish or 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.

3:23 It's just the, the the, energy, the action, the activity. Yeah. 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 going on here with this? I'm here in a hotel. What am I, you know, what am I going to do with the like the.

3:40 I'll just give it back to him and say thanks for the experience, you know? Right? Right. Hey, give me a 25% discount. Like maybe the trash cans all in the vicinity or just bloated 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.

4:01 Yeah, yeah. Then you have more flies and like a freaking Indian food market. Oh, no. You've seen those online. I have, I have that's like it. It's nuts guzzling 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, swarming marauding insects anywhere near my food about interested and anyway like right, right.

4:27 Keep you're laughing. Yeah. No, sir. And I know modern food production is like we eat a certain percentage of rats heard and fucking insights as it is. But, you know, still if they're like visually can see them, you know, just kill me, right. Oh, right. But I mean, if I'm going to buy, you know, ragu and I know there's a certain percentage, a rat crapping 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, will make sure the fame of rap who isn't enough to to really army even though now they fire people at DDA, they fire people at the you know it all the at the CDC, all of these, they made all sorts of things very unsafe, from devices to foods.

5:11 We are they fired enough people in the communications area of the FDA. We are not getting alerts about in 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 classic, you know, of baby food.

5:32 I guess it's just just. Right. Okay. So it's just. Okay. It's like, you know, it's 2.1% is just fine. Oh, yeah. You know, ushered in every third vial is fine. There. Just it just creates more business for the medical. Yeah. For the they say the traditions are now this this feeds the medical industrial complex just the right amount.

5:56 That's like, you know, busting the glass and is like, look at all the activity from destruction. And like, this kind of there's, you know, there's some kind of narcissistic capitalist out there. It's like, yeah, that's right. See. It's like this, this fed into the system just right, generated all this money on all these different tiers of service. Right?

6:16 Right. So we could do around poisoning everybody and, and, you know, ruining the esophagus, 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 smoky back planned but a degree of that in place. Right. Thanks for sure.

6:36 Oh 100% I mean, you know in. No I never believed in the smoky backroom planning. I just really believed in general human incompetence. And, you know, I was like, why it what's the quote why attribute to malice what can be explained by terrible incompetence, something to that effect. Yeah. So it's like, you know, that was generally it, hey, we're just stupid and there's too much going on.

7:04 We can't manage it. Right? Yeah, but now it's beginning 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, 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 for 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 has gone too far and they, they want some kind of like. So on the simplest level, bad news merge. Yeah, right. Maybe. And on a higher level they go back and create candidates.

8:02 Right. That will satisfy that need. Yeah. And then you know, oligarchy slash kleptocracy too, where it's capitalized on anything and now like capitalism or anything and just might as well just do it her way because then people will say, oh, how smart. Instead of someone like behind the scenes capitalizing on 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 informational. 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, say, how facing that crisis, I knew how I could profit

8:55 off it. And so I did that. Now it's kind of like they're saying it out loud if, well, some. And there has been some backlash in recent years when people have bold gone for the bag and they'd gone for the money grab. Right. Like whenever people were going to all the Dollar Generals and buying up all the hand sanitizer during Covid and then openly selling it for five x or ten x, then from what I understand, there's laws about that too.

9:19 Like you can only in a crisis, you know, up the price of something so much like you can't sell a 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. So yeah. Yeah, it's like my yeah, I just think, Florida is an armpit.

9:37 Yeah. Which is, you know, wrong. Florida has some nice, you know, places. But it does look I mean there's a lot going on there that's not great. Where you know Florida man doesn't always trend for no reason. That'd be fun. Like top ten for a man in our extra content eyes. Oh, yeah. There. That'd be farms out, you know.

9:59 Or just the top five articles we can find in five minutes on Florida. Man.

10:05 Well, I mean, there's a whole genre, right? Yeah, yeah. So, another thing came. Came, to my mind lately, 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, societies, loved ones. Actually, let me explain. So, like, I was at a memorial service recently and there was a, you know, not in name names.

10:37 There's a gentleman there that was really hard of hearing. 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 factory for years. The machinery just even with ear plugs, just, you know, destroys the, the the the mechanics of the gear. And some of those just don't naturally repair.

10:57 And so like you have a hearing decline and estate is loss. Hearing loss right. It stays. Yeah. It does damage damage. Same could happen with earphones. Yeah. It just doesn't come back. And so, you know, when you're young you're you're a 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, spill hearing loss or even going fully deaf anyway, there was, you know, it was a memorial service.

11:25 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 out of 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. And then 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 bodies. And I'm saying, God. And so he's acknowledging this. And so it makes it this reality rather than really just acknowledging it as a compensator and helping. Yeah. And you could tell that she right off right away. You could see that she was like, well it was like another hit of this burden that's on her.

12:55 Yeah. You know, you can like and see it in her facial expression. You see the energy, you can just boom, like almost like a continuous sigh. Like, here we go again. You know, I got to, like, be. I've got to be like, I have to repeat in a certain way, in a certain volume, you know, in a certain amount of directness directly to him in a certain way and 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 whenever, you know, insurer or hearing aids or an outsized cost. I mean, they are stupidly expensive. But if you if this person could afford it, I wouldn't be.

13:43 I definitely can and not initiate. Then there's no excuse. There really is other than personal pride. It's just pride. It's pride. It's it's pride creating, 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 there, health insurance plan is there.

14:06 Everything is there to get the proper exact medical device necessary to function early? As far as theory goes. Okay. Right. And, yeah, like think about the times a million like times. All the nuance throughout all of society, all the people who are in denial of their of their issue, whether it be mental or physical in that that's creating a direct, you know, load on family, society, spouse, caregiver, you know, etc..

14:36 So for the collective burden of that, wow, right? Has to be over Bernie Kiss and all the people that are right now taking care of someone at home, like someone that special, 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.

14:57 Like you're basically especially someone who's bedridden or something like that. You're literally waiting on somebody hand and foot, you know, like you're at their disposal 24 seven, you know, and that I don't want to say like unpaid labor, but uncompensated effort or an uneven recognized or acknowledge effort in many cases, a lot of cases, this is like a child, you know, an adult child who'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, like you said. 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, shame bombs like, hey, all these women, regardless of what they've done, that they've spent their lives caring for their families, they now have pension 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 and all men do too.

16:11 Yeah. I don't like that at all. I think that, like humans do again. But that was just my own foray 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 for dead boys, people up, you need to be able to apply for a wage. Yeah. Or somehow.

16:31 Yeah, right. Still be able to function yourself while you're undergoing that. Burn it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, ideally, you know, you'd have, like, a surplus or decent amount of generational wealth saved up to when the family does need that kind of resource. It's there. Yeah. Well, 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 humanity and even 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 have. So I really think it it was never something taught to me in school or given an opportunity for to be taught to me, and I, I really think that needs to be a cornerstone of you.

17:23 Oh, maybe you need to start talking to people about it in seventh grade or so. I think that ongoing, right? Yeah. I'm not only like teach these critical life skills is a barbecue. That place is amazing. He is 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 bread Bridges barbecue.

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18:05 Sorry. So and it's just a job we're not really sponsor endorsed by that place. No I do link wink, I just exclaimed happily. Because, you know, my, inner fat kid was, just so happy it's seeing this place that the bacteria, your gut bacteria that craves, yeah. Slow, slow roasted pork fat is is just is now it's doing the talking.

18:34 Yeah. Yeah, it's it's taking over probably for the next 20 minutes, but so, 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 that. Right, it might look delicious and tastes delicious, but it's not healthy for you in any way.

19:05 The phrase batters flavor may trip you up. It was true. And it's and it's protein. It's not even meat anymore. Is is protein what what protein do you want? Yeah. Give me a break. Because, you know, a German is such a better language, right? It's just flesh. Nice, right? It's just flesh. Meat is just flesh. That's great. I mean, right, that's what it is.

19:27 Yeah. It's flesh. Let's. If we if we call it flesh universally, like in America, you know how bad the sales would be here. We talked about that the other day of how language is so softened 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, you know, it's a, it's a bit of a trope at this, this point.

19:50 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. 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.

20:12 They should teach that in school, right? With no education background. No. You know. Right, right. No. There's there's an intuition without being trained that the education system wholesale is not really prepping people well for their life. Yeah. Yes. And you know. Yeah, sure. And, it's the intuition, I would think, if you just bare faced as people is, you know, do we need these basics?

20:42 And then on top of that, do we need, you know, it's kind of like a sandwich. We need the basics in the foundations, but we also need to be training people for these high level skills 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.

21:03 How it can be used as a tool against you. And now I'm 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 I.T. 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.

21:24 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 that or is trained in that particular, you know, knowledge that. So and then their $0.02 about education is, oh, their kids should, you know, should should learn because one reason the fucking constitution is written in cursive is because they only had like, a pen and, you know, a quill.

21:49 Quill and an equal. Yeah. And that was like to hit the pencil later, right? You to flow, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. If they had a fucking word processor, the thing would have been they had generative AI. Yeah. The Constitution would be like, you know, mostly, you know, recipes for chicken soup. Ill, my god, or whatever AI is, you know, consistently goes to as far as its output.

22:12 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 is isn't really as good as it could be like it could. 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 basics.

22:41 You said economics, the basics of economics, how the economic system works. Yes. Not just how to balance a checkbook, but like how money actually works in the system. Well, yeah. Yeah, really works nuts as well. Get out 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.

23:02 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 a school before you get out of high school 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.

23:21 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. No. But if you will understand how to get if you understand how the mechanics of it will work, you have more of a chance of being in order.

23:44 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. But learning systems, then, you know, I think that when you're then in that system, we're working within that system, you're better. You're most likely to have a better outcome.

24:03 Like so. For example, if you think about the, if you're driving for DoorDash, let's say, or Uber was to say boring music, 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. But, you know, when you learn the systems and how the true machinations 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.

24:32 If you understand how the system works, it's not just you. You deliver this, you know, food and then you get some money. Like that's what that's what the common entry point is for something like like a DoorDash or a, you know, Uber or something like this. But really, you know, you have to calculate the where entering your vehicle, your time, your, your, you know, your resource allocation that goes behind the scenes that you're not putting into the equation.

24:55 So in systems learning, in systems understanding, you have to understand all the facets, all the dynamics, all the inputs it outputs. You know, not even all nobody really ever really understands all of the inputs and outputs. But you have to know things like opportunity costs and ultimately systems learning can also be higher level than what you're saying. Two systems can be okay, I understand this black box does these things to is typical inputs.

25:21 And that's the kind of thinking you need for composability. And that's through true because I don't think many people even get to that black box level understanding. But on, you know, knowing what's happening inside that fly box. Exactly. So, you know, you you approach it like, hey, this black box does these things typically, and then you, like you said, you dive into the black box and you say, well, these are your options to implement this idea.

25:47 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 morass 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 were clicking together to simplify it, like Legos or Technic pieces or whatever, you know, in yeah, if you take a system like the financial system, the how, how money works, you know it. If you don't know the basics on 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 those are the defaults.

26:37 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 the trial is buying you assets for your birthday not, you know, stupid gifts that don't do anything. Right? Right. Not only that, you know, sure. 100%. But take it to the next level.

27:00 And the training as to why that s why that's such a bitter birthday gift, right? Right. Yeah. Because, I mean, I would always we grew up where I would always get practical gifts, so would not, you know, socks. Like, I unwrap fucking socks for Christmas. Exactly. Like, you know, in me, the same as every year. But I would assume a rich family is just getting those things normally, right?

27:20 Yeah. And then. And 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 a middle class family now, and my kids would never unwrap socks unless it was a joke for me. Right. But I did the same thing as you growing up.

27:35 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 would 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. You're not right. You'd better be terribly disappointed. You know, it's it's not the latest Atari or whatever the Calico mission or Activision that week.

27:56 Okay. That puts a certain date bracket onto that. And like if you've read a magnavox Odyssey two. Oh come on, that's us. Wait, that's extreme. Or the original pong game. I don't even know who that was by Atari. Has I heard of it? Had the paddles? Yeah, I have the I had the single button on the side and then the overlay that would stick to the TV with static Genius.

28:22 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. That was like a phone pad. Now it it had like numbers zero through nine with, with star and and pound. Yeah. And so how many buttons you get out of that and you do the math real quick.

28:43 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 it would like it would last for a while. And winter. Right. 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.

29:05 Cool. So based on the game, you'd put a different overlay into it so it tell you what the buttons were, right. You know, I think that's right. Yeah. And they had those for keyboards back in the day for, you know, of your productivity applications for whatever. You know, you had all these overlays and these cheat sheets. Yeah.

29:21 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, break that contextually. So it was a nice way to get a contextual, like change to the interface in a, in an analog way, in the buttons. Of course, we're all analog press.

29:39 There were those little, chick lit style buttons or that they were they were completely round. So like, they'd have the, Dawn kind of press. Yeah, that's the chick lit buttons. Chick lit. Okay. Yeah. And it would have like a, pretty, pretty decent feel, but it was also a cheap feel. You could tell that, like, it was it wasn't going to last or they got, you know, the bubble would kind of start to, you know, and it would stay like, partially indented.

30:03 So and then you would learn your controller over time, do like which ones you press harder or which ones do lighten up. But it was just a great, you know, just tactile. Yeah. Yeah. And 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.

30:18 Yeah. The special thing you do to it where it would make it less wonky and it would work. Yeah. So the Activision controller was pretty sophisticated, had side buttons and then it had for the main control pad, directional pad. It had a disc like a metallic disc around the top like disc that would rock, you know, back and forth for your directional movement anyway.

30:38 And even though it was a disc, it would only respond to, the eight compass points, like so it really had like a yeah, hitting on soldiers in it. Yeah. Inside, you know, and the disc was like balanced in the middle and a spring. So, you know, you, you push in, you'd find that contact here. So if you wanted to go.

30:55 Yeah. To the bright or in this case by my description East you, you would rock the disc over until it depressed that that sensor for. Yeah. And you got to where you knew exactly where to hit to hit it. Oh yes. It is possible. Oh yeah. Yeah. And the range of motion on your phone was like press extensive.

31:11 So you get a little bit of like that, that stress blowing in your gear in the base of your thumb until you, you know, playing like way too much and then your thumb would be strong as I'd be a great hitchhiker or. Yeah. Plum. Shoving your thumbs in plum pies. Yeah. Kid's story or plum expert, or so I don't know.

31:34 There's a joke there somewhere. Braids in our thumbs in the butt, I don't know. Oh.

31:41 Well, that just ruined that. Yeah. You go with hitchhiker, and then a you know, it Norman Rockwell metaphor to something like, you know, some nursery rhyme about plums and dance and you just go for blah, blah. Damn. Well, there's, you know, there's space for all that. It's fine. But. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, in in that's the thing.

32:06 We're just we're just saying, hey, you had a mammoth thumb. You know what? Most of us were young enough. We didn't get, a repetitive stress injuries out of this. Yeah, my video game playing gave me a cringe, insane grip. Right? Like it comes once I got it. Once I grab something that was. Yeah. So speaking of grotesque thumbs, and I'll tie it back to the story about this memorial service with this, hearing aid.

32:32 Knitting guy. The the gentleman that passed away was my uncle, and he was a Vietnam vet, and, we had actually, no one really knew this, but we'd had some really long form 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 drummer.

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, sherry spirit, right? It feels less alien. It feels less. You're not afraid to expand their sensibilities. You know, they that you can bring it as deep as you need to to be 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 sheer bravado, war story to tell you from the perspective of like, what it felt like. Yeah. Are you able to like, get your emotions up?

33:32 Exactly. It's a little bit it it's a tiny little sliver of healing. It is. So we would talk at length about some of our shared experiences and like, ideas about that kind of stuff or whatnot. But anyway, after you got to when you 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, like idea of really, playing the the veteran tough guy, you know? So the persona that he was putting forward was that, you know, on this hard ass that just came out of war, you know, don't mess with me. Yeah. It's but that wasn't really his nature. It wasn't really who he was.

34:13 So it was this juxtaposition between, like, this persona that he was trying out versus who he really was. And that juxtaposition was, like, pretty palpable. You could even as a young kid, I could feel the I could sense the, the paradox between those two, elements. You know what I mean? Yep. You could see I'm having to walk somebody through bicycle.

34:39 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 that somebody has attached to a desk and a dock for their laptop. So I had to explain that. So enter. What is this? No, it's fucking it's Gen Z that's there. Oh morons. To.

35:10 I thought we made a vow not to trash Gen Z other as.

35:16 Regardless, differently experience. What are you talking to? Yeah, they're not morons. I mean, it's just. I mean, how do you confuse a charger that has three, 2 or 3 prong, three prong plugs and a couple of USB ports on it with a laptop dock?

35:38 I think I know the difference between those two, but I can, you know, imagine how someone might not. 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 mark. There's a USB cable coming off the monitor. You got to plug it up to that.

35:52 And there's USB ports on the monitor. Plug your USB item up to the monitor. Watch this, have them call the help desk and and create a ticket. Why are God help this? Why are you the export the help desk yesterday took 2.5 hours to install dotnet eight on my computer, install the Dell update utility and then run the updates that didn't give me the driver on you, and I told him it wouldn't give me the driver I needed it.

36:24 I was like, it lists the drivers. It's going to install. Okay, well, we have a bit of a shared experience there, sir. Yeah. So that's why we're not calling this help as understood. I can't tell you how many hours I spent, like, free I.T. support, like for friends, family, coworkers. That's a that's part of the tax that I think you get as being an it's a it is, it is.

36:50 But she's just trying to hook up a USB serial console cable. 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 walked her through how to get like, admin access and all this stuff. Yeah. So anyway, sorry, I'm hijacking text.

37:09 No. No problem. So, have her put the thumb drive into her universal scuzzy connector. And you can see the smoke not just coming from the trees in the woods here, but you can see the smoke coming from her ears all the way from back to Charlotte. It's like, okay, trying to figure out now you have to make sure that your scuzzy chain is properly terminated.

37:30 Yes, yes. Okay. Yes. And I'm not sure if it's a token ring or a token or.

37:42 Yes, it token ring with the information will come around to you inevitably. Oh, wait. No packets. And the spells anyway. So some, like there was a tie into a thumb drive. That's why I said thumb drive. Because you're talking about thumbs. And I. 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 probably their own unique experience. But there's some common threads. Yes. And, this was an era when people came back from war, not very much celebrated, but more, you know, spat upon or looked down upon by society. That baby killer, you know, and it this was a war that we didn't win.

38:28 And it wasn't glorious. Yeah. Like that. That song by Alice in Chains rooster that is actually about it. 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, motorcycle gangs, several prominent motorcycle gangs were founded by Vietnam vets, the Mongols, the Hells Angels.

39:04 It would make sense to feel outcast from a society and might then just adopt that role, take it out or, you know, embrace the role rider and identify 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 and say, okay, fine.

39:22 And if that's that's what I'm going to be, then I'll be that. Yeah. And that's a whole thing. We talked about expectation, drawing on a few different characteristics. 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 Thoms. Is that, he had had a job, doing logging, like timber work in a tree arborist, expert or tree feller or whatever the, you know, all the terminology there is, lumberjack, for lack of a better term.

39:58 Does he, like a better terms? And, he was doing some of the really dangerous shit, like, in high up and getting put in the tree spikes on the climbing up the tree, cutting limbs off wrap, 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, you know, 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, in the way of one of these ropes as a really huge log, like, felt like a knot.

40:39 And then the rope, like, snapped really tight and hit him in the hand and cut the end of his right thumb off. Really? Yeah. From, like, just above the last double. So, like, everywhere the nail was pretty much up was just chop right off day, just, smacked off or smashed off by this by the by a snapped.

40:59 And all of a sudden. Yeah like so all this chainsaw work and you'll find never, never had any like issue with the chainsaw but a rope. You know, getting taught the extreme forces was enough to like, you know, whip the end of his thumb. All basically. Right. That's insanity. I mean, we're talking about with a glove on everything else.

41:15 So the physics are crazy, right? And so, he had to go obviously to the hospital and get some skin grafted to the end. And they were able to like, you know, save, oh, half of the bone there that shaved the bonkers like it was surgery to. Okay. Yeah. You know, so they recovered and reshaped what was left of his thumb.

41:34 Yeah. They do like take some skin off his ass or something and put your eye on a saw man. Right. Tie enacted what you said about butts in thumbs. Yeah, but anyway, so, like, the bottom part of the thumb as it were healed and scarred, like, had this weird hair growing out of it. Shit like, you know, it was just a strange graft, but whatever.

41:52 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. It was disgusting. It was gross on all levels.

42:11 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 thumb. 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 the, you know.

42:29 And so for years and years, when I was a kid growing up, he was like taunted me with this disgusting fucking foul rant. And the funny thing is that over the years I would ask him, you know, as adult I. But how is he that I saw him? Really? Let me see how the thumbs do it. And believe it or not, like the thumb actually it didn't like grow back, right I think.

42:47 But like it got better and better over time. Like it became more like a foam again. Like, I don't know, it started off as like this disgusting Frankenstein. But over time he over time it like, yeah, like some of the tissue softened. And you know, you're 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 still had a thumb, you know, like get a really close look to even notice that they even have a did they have a little fake nail on it.

43:14 So no, no. But I remember drawn 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 has a sense of humor enough about it that he let you draw a thumb on it. Oh, you're a loverro. That was later. That was later. Yeah. At first it was just a torture device, to the disgust and forget it. Right. You would just poke you with. 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. So do we have to pause again? Yeah. No problem.