Bittersweet Infamy - #88 - The Final Countdown

Episode Date: December 31, 2023

New Year's Eve special! Taylor tells Josie about the computer glitch turned doomsday spectacle: the millennium bug, Y2K. Plus: as Steamboat Willie lapses into the public domain, we look back at the colourful history of Disney's Mickey Mouse copyright. 

The primary question for our civilization as we approach the year 2000 is this. Have we allowed our own highly advanced technological innovations to far outpace our human abilities to control those innovations? And most importantly, to foresee their other mid consequences? In order to find an answer to this fundamental question, and in order to prepare ourselves and our communities, for whatever Y2K may bring, we need to understand the history and ramifications of Y2K from its very beginning decades ago to these remaining days of the 20th century. Welcome to Bittersweetim. I'm Taylor Baso. And I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on and in D. To strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter and the sweet.

Happy New Year! Yeah, happy happy, how exciting. 2024, 2023 brought me no glee, but 2024, I'm gonna settle the score. Oh shit, Dawn. I've done one of those at the beginning. If you go back, I've done one of those at the beginning of every single new year.

In this podcast, some little rhyme. You by nothing Taylor's very traditional, but he's got a lot of traditional. I'm traditional when it comes to like long-term storytelling. I'm traditional when it comes to like motif, motif-rich story. When it comes to aesthetic, very, very on top of it. Speaking of aesthetic, if you want to enjoy a little belated Christmas aesthetic, you should check out the Bitter Sweet Mix tape volume two. It is available for free.

It is so good. Over at coffee.com, KO, hyphen, FI.com, slash Bitter Sweet, in for me. You don't got to pay us anything if you want to enjoy this one. Just go as Joe's, we had a lot of fun doing it, I think. I'm not going to give up. I think some of our best work.

Best work. Wow, these are, these are the words. I'm happy with it. These are all caps best work Yeah, it's it's really stupid and dumb. It's really it's really But it's Christmas it's traditionally Christmas is stupid and dumb. It's all the way back Yeah, we it's basically we do a little little variety hour featuring what's not a variety? I would like that that elevator bit kind of went away pretty quick. Basically, we do a little variety hour featuring, what's not a variety hour, that elevate a bit kind of one way pretty quick. Basically, it's us being weird, Christmas weirdos while also giving you access to a bunch

of unreleased material, bonus stuff, bloopers, unared discussions, little treats that we cut more of this show out than you would imagine based on just for pacing length and it's not even that the stuff that we cut is bad we just cut it because oh it's a little bit of a tangent so now you can enjoy all of our the most coherent I should say of our tangents and it's interwoven with a delightful story of just Josie and I improvising true nonsense. When I listened to it, right after I did, Michelle and I watched Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton's variety show,

it's like Christmas songs. Yeah. They have like, what's these little sketches that connect the different songs and dead and I was like, oh my gosh. Taylor and I. Kenny and Dolly. Kenny and Dolly, look at us. That be a good Halloween costume for us.

That would be a very good Halloween costume for us. I tried to do islands in the stream with you ones at karaoke. You did not know the Dolly part. You will also hear me not know it in the mixtape when Vickielle sings it. Right, right. All the men in your life keep trying to make you dolly and you're like, no baby, I'm Jolie. I'm just gonna reiterate this mix tape

and last year's mix tape, they're free. Oh yeah. Do we have a new season subscriber? Yes we do, Eric Cajoe Brown. Thank you very much. Well I met Eric Cajoe at Mitchell's party a long time ago, but I like to think that the time I truly met Eric Cajou is when she was wearing a WWE Championship Fanny Pack at your wedding. I've known her for many a year, but I agree when she wore that WWE Fanny Pack at my wedding,

that's when I felt like I first met her, yeah. Just such a pivotal moment. Mind you, this end for the record, I believe that this is either her husband's or her sons, and she's just happens to be wearing it carrying something in it at this point. She doesn't have a son. Well, it's- She has a dog son. Okay, well, that was rude and funny of me. I'm sorry about that, BJ. I look over and like, damn.

I didn't know that Josie had invited fucking Roman Reigns to her wedding. What a- What a- What a guest! What a- I didn't know that Josie had invited fucking Roman Reigns to her wedding. What a what a what a guest. What a what a guest. The undisputed champion Roman Reigns the tribal chief. Yeah, you're the graces But it was Eric and Joe and she's our new monthly subscriber. We're very grateful. So grateful so proud So proud and also Josie's sister Dina gave us some money and we're grateful for that as well Thanks Dina gave us some money and we're grateful for that as well. Thanks, Dina. That's our, look at everyone in the Christmas spirit or Hanukkah spirit as, as appropriate, in some kind of spirit.

Or the New Year spirit. The New Year spirit. That's the holiday spirit. It's the holiday spirit. We're here in the New Year. We're excited for the New Year. Josie, what are you most excited about for 2024? Is it the presidential election?

Oh No Well, it's not Olympics like what what is it? Yeah, I'm going on my honeymoon. I'm very excited for that. Yes, that's you. Well, you're going late late 20 word words as spoiler folks. it's December 23rd, 2023 when we're recording this. You're going to kind of end of the year into the new year, right? Yes, yeah.

We will celebrate new years in New Zealand. Wow. Ooh, ooh, happy New Zealand. Thank you, thank you. I'm excited to renew my zeal. renew your zeal. Oh my god, I want to run through glass. That's so good.

So you're going to tell me about that. Tell us a little bit about your atinerary in small turns because when you get back, we're for sure going to be chatting about it. We are doing the South Island. Considering time, we had to choose. So we opted for the more mountain alpine summer, because it's summer down there.

It's December. Yeah, trippy. So we're gonna have like a little summer in the mountains time. So good. We are renting a camper van to drive around the South Island. Yeah, van's out there. It's been a great, you've been great van life here, for years.

Van life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This one will actually move too. We could have moved the VW if we wanted we chose not to we could have if we wanted to take that bitch off blocks and I guess probably get an engine installed realistically we could have we could have we really could have. So yeah, we're gonna rent this camper van and drive around through the mountains to all these different locales we have we've actually planned a lot of it.

Usually when I go on vacation I plan nothing and I'm just like, what's here for me today? Sure, I mean that's very jozy of you. Thank you. But it's a holiday and it's the height of summer and things are kind of like busy and booked and so we've gotten in and we have a tour of a glow worm cave booked. Whoa. Yeah, I'm really stoked for that. That's cool. That's very cool.

I didn't even know that they had glow worm caves. That's awesome. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, I used to have a glow worm doll, one of those like, I love it. Gl love it glow up face ones There's a lavender farm that's on our room. That's gonna smell good. I try that don't go to sleep. I'll find lavender It's gonna be really exciting. Josie. I think I would like one last

Minifimus to tuck 2023 Intubed damn no pressure 2023 into bad damn no pressure holy never any Prash let's drop the ball on this bitch as we look Forward to the new year that upon listening will be newly birthed fresh Scream right out the loop right out the covered in goop yeah cameo cameo Breach everywhere there was like a lot of 2023 needed to almost needed a C-section there was a lot of 2023 needed to almost needed a C section.

There was a lot of drama. There was some weird mother-in-law shit that we won't even tell you about. She really wanted to be in the room. 2023 said no, no, no. Yeah. To the hospital. Terrible. Terrible.

Husband didn't even care. Watching the hockey game. Disgusting. Oh God. Ugh. But there are a few changes that are going to be happening. Perhaps the most important thing is that January 1st, 2024, there's going to be quite a long list of things that enter the public domain.

Interesting. I just was seeing some people knitter-na-der-about Mickey Mouse in this particular breath. That is a factorino. Interesting, interesting times. And you might say, well, I mean, January 1st stuff enters the public domain all the time, because it's based on when it's copyrighted within a year. Interesting. Like within that year, and then the 50 50 years from then or the 75 or the

95 so what's very fascinating about January 1, 2024 the day that you are listening to my voice being recorded right now is that That's not even way but no because that's not even true in the lying sense because we're releasing it on the 31st Ah, idiot. Oh yeah, okay. Well, thank you. You're the smartest person I know. Go ahead. So. Can you imagine what that says about the people I know?

I'm kidding again. I did it twice. I did it twice. Oh yeah, it cancels it out. It's a dumb negative. What will happen when the clock strikes 0, 0, 0, 0, January 1, 2024 is that all these things will enter the public domain.

What's monumental about this particular year, January 1, 2024, is that in 2004, and then before that in 1998, there were extensions made to copyrights. So first, a 20-year extension and then another 20-year extension so that the original 56 years that a copyright could be held and then released got extended and then extended again. Okay. So that means that 2024 is the year that all of these things are going to release from 1923. Why could they not just get another extension? What are the rules by which one acquires extensions? You have to go through the legal system, the copyright system.

You're off the scene. It's all within a legal bureaucracy that it happens. So it's really fascinating because this year there is a long list. Lady Chatterleys lover by DHLoss. What? enters the public domain. The three penny opera by Bertolt Breck. Okay.

Buster Keen's the cameraman, Cole Porter's let's do it, and then there's a whole bunch of other stuff. But the most important is what you've already mentioned. Mickey fucking bass. Okay, and so why is it so important that it's Mickey Mouse? You might be wondering too. It's like, well, you know, I don't know, lady Chatterlees lover, like that's a good one. Hot fuck. Why do we care about Mickey Mouse more?

I wouldn't say that. Or why is it in the news more? Okay, sure, sure, sure, sure. No, actually, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. That feels like a hypothetical question you set up to forge your narrative, but go on. Well, do you want to answer it? Mickey Mouse turns over money, buddy. Mickey Mouse, his little bobble head is the logo for the Disney Channel.

His little, there's, they have built hidden Mickey's into the goddamn homes in celebration Florida, the Disney-owned community. Yes. Mickey Mouse. Oh, yes. Is Mickey Mula, baby? Exactly. Exactly.

He is the emblem of this multi-billion dollar industry. You draw a Mickey head on the ground and somebody from Asia to Africa to Europe might know that that is Mickey Mouse, right? Yes. Exactly. And the Disney Corporation will come knocking on your door and give you a seat. Yes! They are very careful with their copyright and with the insignia and they will sue very,

very quickly. They have in the past at least. This is all alleged by the way. But, but now that it's public domain, it is owned by the people. They can no longer have Mickey's. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. As a person in the world, you can create Mickey Mouse content. You can profit off of Mickey Mouse content. Oh, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it.

We are now the Mickey Mouse bittersweet podcast. Okay, so this is all alleged if you are listening on December 31st, 2023. Anytime after that, completely true and I say it with my whole chest. Mickey Mouse has personally endorsed this podcast. Yes, yes, he called me out. My gosh. You little voice. Why fucking love this show man?

It was great. Yeah, thanks Mickey. So one of those extensions that went through the legal system and was determined by a judge that okay, we will extend this copyrights another 20 years, which means we are not giving it into the public domain. The 1998 Law, the Extinction Act, was referred to as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, because the Disney Corporation was such a loud and prominent voice within the lobbyist movement of that. And we touched on this a little bit, but Disney is very, very quick to protect their image.

And the like ill representation is quickly taken down. There was a spike in copyright infringement lawsuits headed by Disney in about 2005. This is when the second extension act got into it, went into effect. But there was a pretty heinous example of this copyright infringement when they targeted a daycare in Florida that had Mickey Mouse painted on the walls in the mural for the kiddies. And it was in the same town where Disney World is.

And so it's like it's in the air. These kids see a lot of Mickey Mouse shit. Yeah, it's like very similar to Mitchell growing up so close to NASA. Everything was like space in NASA. Like the dentist was like, your teeth and space. You know, like all this. Yeah, that's pretty bad. Yeah.

But like that's an example example of a very far between. Yeah. Very like, fine detail. Kind of petty, I would call that. That's petty corporate behavior. Yeah, yeah. And funnily enough, Universal Studios stepped in, and they're like, you can use our characters, dear.

Which is exactly how you fucking everyone's like, wow, look at them, they're nice. And that's exactly how you deal with that fucking problem. But when you have the money to have the team of high-powered lawyers to put the boot down, and the money that Disney has, the high-powered lawyers that Disney has, we're not talking like penny-annie bullshit.

We're talking billions of dollars, right? So. Yes, yeah, yeah. any bullshit. We're talking billions of dollars, right? So yes. Yeah. Yeah. And another instance of their far reaching ability to control the copyright of Disney happened in 1971. There was a group of underground cartoonists and they called themselves the Air air pilots, AIR. Air pirates. Well, okay, there we see now. Yeah, they're sorry. Okay, here we go.

Here we go. So the air pirates took their name actually from early Disney cartoons, an early Disney animation. There was an episode, not episode, but like a short a short film of Mickey Mouse flying and there were air pirates dead at us. So they pulled that name and they were intentionally kind of trolling Disney. The- Which is tempting and has continued to happen in the years since, right? The four runner of this crew was a man named Dan O'Neill who took it upon himself to create a comic called The Air Pirates. The title of the comic was was the collective cartoonist's name,

The Air Pirates, and it depicted Mickey in his full-on orientation, right? Like it was very clear that it looked like Mickey. It wasn't some like scratchy-faced like illusion. Like it was Mickey Mouse. Apparently the cartoonist team took the Disney published and distributed books that teach you how to draw Mickey Mouse and use that specifically. They're professionals and they're very good. The devil's in the details. How long how many times have Josie have we talked about the details? It's very important the details. The details the details. So they cook up a storyline where

So they cook up a storyline where the air pirates abduct Mickey and they abduct Mini and hilarity ensues blah blah blah. But the most important thing is that Mickey Mouse is depicted as a drug runner and yeah. Which legally we can now acknowledge that he is as of 12th year as of 12th year midnight. Yeah, exactly. Please remember. And they also depict like illicit sexual behavior between Mickey and Minnie. Good, that's exactly right. Perfect. As Dan O'Neill explains quote, the air pirates were some sort of bizarre concept to steal the air, pirate the air, steal the media, since we were cartoonist, the logical thing was Disney. So they're intentionally trolling Disney and representing McIntyne Mini in these like

horny ways, horny, horny violent disturbing ways, yes. Yeah, yeah. And so it's a practice of, you know, know the question is like are you stealing innocence or are you Exercising free speech stealing innocence bra. I don't know So I dropped in the chat a link to the first edition you can see Mickey Mouse there and he looks like Mickey Mouse He's not an illusion to he's not like a rough rendering of. It is, it is our boring Mickey. So do you wanna read maybe these first panels?

So I was just about to ask. Thank you. Okay, okay, okay, okay, let me. Allow, actually why don't I get our good royalty-free friend, Mickey Mouse, to you, Jesus. The whole world thinks I'm cute. So why won't many fuck me? Why won't Daisy fuck me?

Why won't anybody fuck me? And he's like, redolent with despair. He's just falling apart. He's falling his- I speak about this dripping smell. He's just falling apart. He's falling his- That's the secret. He's just falling apart. He's just falling his- That's the secret.

That's the secret. That's the secret. That's the secret. That's the secret. That's the secret. That's the secret. That's the secret. That's the secret.

That's the secret. That's the secret. That's the secret. That's the secret. That's the secret. That's the secret. That's the secret. That's the secret.

That's the secret. That's the secret. That's the secret. That's the secret. That's the secret. That's the secret. but you'll go down and you'll see the offending sexual behavior. He's eating her ass. Is he eating her out from the back or is he eating her whole? Uh, I think eating her out from the back. Oh, good for them. I mean, good for them, either way. I know! Oh, he's eating her. Oh, her...look at her, look at her hand.

She's got syrup. Gulp, gulp, gulp, yeah. One hand is kind of like in a fist in the ground, just kind of like her nails are digging into her palm. And then the other one is just kind of like gesturing feebly into the air. Oh, mercy. Oh.

Wow, it's really, I love the poses. This is cool. I really love the exchange where she gets dropped. She's kidnapped and she gets dropped in the cell with Mickey. And he's like, gosh, Minnie! And she's like, don't gosh me Mickey Mouse. I still haven't got over that dose. You and that dumb bitch Daisy handed me a dirty duckfucker.

I didn't even read that. You get him, get his ass, get him together. He deserves it. Duckfucker! Yeah. You dirty that dumb bitch, Tasty. Get his ass! Kill him, kill him! This is 1971.

Well before any question of the copyright is being disampled. The copyright is very sturdy and Disney suits. They go in hot, they go in hard. They sue the entire air pirate team of cartoonists and then slowly but surely some of the cartoonists go ahead and they set a lot of court with Disney. Dan O'Neill keeps appealing though. He appeals and he appeals and he appeals. He gets up to the ninth circuit court of appeals. He goes far in the US legal system. And eventually he loses and he's ordered to pay Disney

$1.9 million. This is in the early 70s, okay? So that's a healthy 1.9 million. Yeah, oh yeah. So, eventually, it gets settled because it's clear that this multi-million dollar company, even at that time, this one single cartoonist cannot pay that. So, the sentencing gets paired down so that Dan O'Neal can never draw Mickey Mouse ever again within his lifetime. If he draws Mickey Mouse, he will incur a fine of $100,000.

Wow! And suffer jail time. jail time! Is it that deep? Is duckfucker? Is it that deep? Yeah! prison. Is it that deep? Is duckfucker? Is it bad deep? Yeah. So according to a New York law professor Edward Samuels who says of O'Neill, he was helping to represent O'Neill after or through the through the judgments and appeals.

This professor says quote, I was flabbergasted. He told me he had won the case. No, Dan, I told him, you lost. No, I won. No, you lost. To Dan O'Neill, not going to jail, constituted victory. And according to this, I mean, I would too. Yeah, I could not. It's not hard to not draw Mickey Mouse. If it comes down to life or death, I'd put at some point, would I privately just draw little Mickey's on a comes down to life or death, I'd be like, at some point,

would I privately just draw little Mickey's on a pad when I'm all alone just to fucking stick it to the man? Yes, I would. Do I need to release that one commercially? Not particularly. But because his whole point was to challenge the question of free speech, because I introduced it as he's trolling Disney, but he really does see Mickey Mouse as the symbol of consumerism and greed and just capitalism run rampant in the guise of this innocence, right? So he is trying to make a comment on that and to have an examination of free speech and what that means in this country and that's why he kept

appealing and a kept appealing. And I think in some ways he is victorious because he got what he wanted in terms of an examination of free speech and maybe from an outside perspective he didn't get what he wanted because he didn't win the case, he didn't get to publish any of that. And for some, according to this New York Law School professor, Edward Samuels, he and the air pirates set parody back by 20 years. Because that would be the other thing that happens within this contest. It's a precedent. Is that, yeah, is that they're making fun of many and many and they're making fun of Mickey. And so then if it's done under parity, you have the ability to draw Mickey Mouse, right? That's what that's kind of how I'm going to write.

Right, right, right. Generally, with it, you know, this is another segment of our bittersweet law school. Yeah. Your certificate is coming in the mail soon. We're faxing as well. Yeah. Not the certificates, we just want to see how you are via facts. Yeah.

But it is a really fascinating look at copyright law and how things enter the public domain. And another very interesting circle of this very complex law and the way that Disney controls it is that Disney is built on the use of the public domain If you think about it. Yeah, all of their early stuff snow white the little mermaid Yeah, but think of all these like even the lion King. Yeah, these are based on stories Yes, that are in the public domain that are free for everybody to use. Fantasia is based off of an epic poem from Johan Wolfgang von Goeth. Like, there's all these, the hunchback of Notre Dame, sleeping beauties, Cinderella, Pinocchio. Like, all of these are for me, like I think of them I think of Disney right?

I think the representation that Disney did but they are the public domain. So they're a very talented and successful practitioner of building a public budget. They did try to freestyle that one story about Alama that didn't go well. And I mean you could say too well then Mickey Mouse is their original creative work right? but it's been documented and Walt Disney and Roy Disney have been quoted as saying that Charlie Chaplin was inspiration for Mickey Mouse, Buster Keaton, Vodville, Minstrelsea, like all of these things are baked into Mickey and who, like no idea is completely original, right? I've had a fear. So for Disney.

A blender that makes flons on the top. Little flons of on the top. Right in here. We'll tell, copy right that, get that clear. TM, TM, TM, it's done, I got it. Fear of sweet lost. If you say, if you say copy say copyright me right after you say it, that is legally binding to everybody who hears it.

Yeah, I declare it very gross too. Yeah, yes. So it is kind of ironic that the Disney who has profited and has made their millions off of the public domain is so tight with what has entered the public domain. But January 1, 2024, Mickey Mouse will become calm right now. And Minnie out from the back once more.

But there is a caveat to that that I think is important because I don't want people going off and and then eventually getting sued by Disney because of something that I said on this podcast with a listenership that's much too small for that. But what enters the public domain is Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse. That's a big caveat. It's a very big caveat. Steamboat Willie, who gives a shit? What? Who's been talking about Steamboat? Who fucking cares. Steamboat Willie, who gives a shit? What, who's been talking about Steamboat?

Who fucking cares about Steamboat Willie had one bump in the 90s when the Simpsons used him for a plotline and nothing since? I don't see any Disney adults in Steamboat Willie merch. I don't see any, maybe that'll change now, I guess. Well, Disney has started to like use it more and more in their branding because they want to remind you the desires, the desires. Yeah, you have the asset you might as well make money off it too, right? Yeah. But to be clear, Steamboat Willie is a short, it's a film made by Walt Disney and animator Ube Iwerks. And it is Mickey and what becomes his iconic image. He's on a steamboat, he's hustling down,

he's whistling the- You're about to call him underfifters. Well, that's interesting you say that because he doesn't speak. He has this like garbled, unintelligible- No, no, no, no, no, no. Voice by Walt Disney himself, actually. It was very popular when it came out

because it was the best use of synchronized sound in animation. It was technologically super advanced for its day. Interesting. There was a feature-length film that came out with synchronized dialogue called The Jazz Singer in 1927. It also inters-public domain on January 1st, 2024. It was this like, relevatory, like, oh my gosh, we're going to see people talking and we're going to hear what they say.

What they're saying. Crazy. Yeah, that must have been big. That must have been big, huh? That's pretty cool. The talkies. The talkies, baby. Yeah. What a day. What a time. What a day to be live. It's this iteration of Vicky Mouse that is in the public domain.

And it is this iteration of Mickey Mouse that you can recreate, that you can make a profit from, that you can reproduce however you want. So the question of now is Mickey Mouse totally within our rights to use as an image and have it anywhere and everywhere that's still debatable because if I use the Fantasia version of Mickey Mouse which was copyrighted at a certain time or if I use a 1940 copyright of Mickey Mouse I am still by it's not absolute it is not absolute so there there was a big question of like is January 1 2024 really gonna happen that Mickey enters the domain because is Disney gonna try and push it and push it?

It was clickbait. It was just fucking clickbait. It's just steaming. They're not gonna push it. They're not gonna push it. Because it's steaming but willy. Yeah, but I think we will probably see an influx of representations of Mickey Mouse that are not what we're used to. You

might remember last year when the film Winnie the Pooh, Colin, Blood, and Honey came out. Sure do. The horror flick. Yeah. So Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain. So now you could do your Steamboat, your Steamboat Willy Horan movie if you wanted. Yeah, you can't do your Fantasia. You can't do your like goofy movie. You can't do any like later representation of Mickey just Steamboat Willie. So Taylor, what is going to be your fan-fix Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse that you're going to birth and bring it to the world? Tattoo of Steamboat Willie having sex with somebody. I don't know who, I haven't decided who yet, but the night is young.

Okay. I guess there is no copyright for the air. Every new year, there's tons of pressure to work out, to already be lifting big and running marathons on January 1st. But often, the pressure to be amazing stops people from even starting, when really the only thing that matters is starting.

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And remember, doing something is everything. Shop Peloton's New Year offers at 1peloton.ca slash deals. That's 1peloton c a slash deals that's one peloton dot c a slash deals all access membership separate terms apply pirates cartoon of Mickey Mouse uh eating out mini mouse no but you saw how that could go you saw how that can go like I'm nervous about one again I do I do fear lawyers I'm not trying to get sued out of doing this podcast if I can help it it It's okay. You're a bittersweet lawyer, baby. But you got the bittersweet lottery degree.

They're gonna walk. They're not real. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real.

It's not real. Not yet. 224 is a cost. We're getting a real C or DMVRM, DNR, PhD, and DDS. It's all over our initials are coming in the mail. Out of the suit in 2024. Alright, well I think I've pulled together for our final story of 2023. I'm so excited. I just got like the slush of like, wow!

Who's oh good? Okay, so you're just in the right frame of mind to tackle the subject that we're about to tackle. Sort of the ultimate New Year's story. Oh shit, dog. December 31st, 1999. What a dog you, bitch! How did I not think of that? A young, fictional, Josie Mitchell is throwing a big, near-seave purse. You're about, you will have just turned 13, I believe, here.

Yeah! Or 12? So, Josie Mitchell, you've just turned 12. How, who were your friends around this time in your life? How cool were they? Who were they? Oh, who were they? And how cool were they, optionally?

Are we speaking fictionally or non-fictionally? Whatever God puts in your heart. Okay. My friends were the coolest. Oh no! So non-fictionally, obviously, that. Yes, yes. No, I was in sixth grade and my school was pretty small, so I didn't have a huge group

of friends to pull from. We were starting to outgrow each other, I think, a lot of us. So, so, so, Josie's invited over her, her weird friends that she's kind of outgrowin' and she's red. She's like, white knuckle in it to middle school by this point, but Alice is, uh, is off at a party. She, she's, uh, what, her and Martina have gone to see world to ring it in with the orcas They really wanted to be around large mammals to ring in the the new millennium. How exciting?

Yeah, that's pretty bad. So you got it be doing somewhere doing something. So of course you you're like, okay We'll listen. Can I just have like a little party, me and my friends, nothing major, no boys, you know, whatever. And your mom gives you her giant brick cell phone and says, well, just call me, call me if anything bad happens, okay? And she takes Martita to see worlds. Why would she give me her cell phone though? Cause Martita has one already.

Oh. Do I just came up with that on the fly? I just, I don't worry. I had noticed either. I had noticed until you put it out, but I just had a quick answer, ready? The parties go in, everyone's really enjoying themselves. A lot of bewitched.

A lot of bewitched. A lot of bewitched. In fact, one of your friends says, hey, Josie, do you want to hear what I just downloaded from Napster? And she puts on a song you've never heard called Mombo number five. Ooh, I do. And you know, you love a little bit of Monica so much that you express that joy in the most

1999 way that you know how to, how to say it. You say, this is Shaggedellic baby. Oh you didn't even know me what I was saying. It's only it's weird. You and your friends get out on the dance learn start bus note your best matrix moves you're doing the matrix back bench. Oh I feel so seen. You're having so much fun that you don't even notice that the sounds of people counting

outside underneath all of the Lou Began, Ricky Martin, 10, 9, 8, all the way down to one. But you do hear the thud boom, it rocks, the music players start skipping. It's Robbie Williams' Millennium, by the way. Millennium, millennium, millennium. You go outside and you see a plane has fallen from the sky and crushed your neighbor's homes. You hear the fudds of other planes falling in the distance. You hear a scream, you turn around, you see the stove

has flung itself open and is belching flames onto your gas. People are screaming. One of your friends is getting sucked into the toilet in the bathroom. The only thing you can think to do is call your mom. Your mom said if there's any trouble, anything weird happens. You call me, you run over, you pick up that phone, but the phone, the display on the phone flashes 0 0 0 0 and it starts to vibrate and it explodes in your hand your hand is mangled Josie mangled you run to the utility room you need to turn off the fuse box all the appliances are going crazy but as you go there the washer and the dryer shuffle across the floor and they encroach on you the washer sucks, let's go dryer, dryer sucks you in. No, let's go back, wait, let's go washer, washer sucks you in. It's a tag team situation.

They're fighting over you, they're ripping you apart. You get sucked into the washer, the door closes, the water pours in, you've been trapped in the Y2K cycle. This is the story of Y2KK the end of the millennium technological problem turned existential survival crisis slash evangelical talking point slash like billion dollar industry slash all of the above. Al Gore might be, might have been taken down. Yeah, what if, what if, what if, what if, well, I mean, I don't, I don't have an answer for that.

That's not part of my conversation today. But Josie has Al Gore conspiracy theories and she will share them with you. Josie, what was your, first of all, tell me what your experience was like of knowing of Y2K, being conscious of Y2K where you scared anything like that and then also tell me about what was your December 31st 1999 like. Okay. So my understanding I think was relatively rudimentary just because like my physical

and like daily exposure to computers was like my nanopet, you know, my tomagakshi. So I was like, whoa, so like, it's gonna like turn on me? Is that what we're saying? Like, my nanopet is turning on. My nanopet is gonna pull an eye for me. Oh my gosh. I had under, it was explained to me and I had understood that like well, you know the banking systems and the way that the way that we run the world is based on computers and if the computers aren't working then we've kind of dug ourself in this hole

So I understood that like larger existential Crisis of it all and how everything would you know stop we would be cast in darkness and how everything would, you know, we would be cast in darkness. But my real, like, concern, I think was more like, yeah, but like my nanopad is my time of actually still down for me. Yeah, yeah. What's my T.I. 83 calculator going to do? Like, can I still write boobs on it? I, okay.

And, and, and, and like like great news folks, I won't spoil whether or not the world ended, but I will let you know you still can write boobs on your calculator. It's pretty good. And a boob less, boobies. A boob less. You've got options.

So many. The TI actually stands for titty implement. We'll move on. And then, oh yeah, and what were you actually doing? The TI actually stands for titty implement. Let me move back. Ha ha ha. And then, oh yeah, and what were you actually doing? What were you actually doing on that New Year's Eve? We, meaning my mom and my brother and I, had planned a party.

And my mom, when we were about the sage, younger, and for a good while there, she would do something called a New York New Year's. So everybody would be invited over and we'd throw a party, but we would do the countdown because we were in California. You just do the New York countdown. We would do the New York countdown. So it was 9 p.m.

And then everyone can just fuck off and go home. It's beautiful. It's so you can, if you're older, you know, like, if my older siblings, they could go to an actual party after this was like a kick party. This is a great idea. I want to continue doing it, even though I'm like in the central time zone now. Dude, I was a little bit scoffing at the idea,

but the more you explained it to me, the more it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, yeah, it is actually really nice. And it makes it too so that like, I don't know when the height of the party is at midnight, then it just like goes all night, which is that's fun too. But if you don't want it to, push it back. So for this party, my half-brother TIG, new a guy, you knew a guy who ran a bouncy house situation. So we had rented a bouncy house So we had rented a bouncy house for the backyard. We ended up having that thing for like three months

because they did it. It has a whitey day. It has a whitey day. Yeah. And that was a very magical start to the Millennium because you'd like come home from school, plug in the bouncy house and give it a few few bounces and but like that kind of lost its charm after a while so then my brother and I started like really pushing the envelope and you would fill the thing up, the compressor,

super loud, the whole thing gets filled up and then you unplug it and then you dive in and let it claps around you and then you have to army crawl your way through this heavy, stinky vinyl to find the exit and then like who could do it first? So when you look through that weird birthing wall in Halloween, that was old hat for you. You look like a really good girl. Oh, color darkened a smile friend, I remember this.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. The neighbor kids would come over and we would see like who could collapse it? Like, who could like, ram into one of the supporting walls and just like take the whole thing down? Yeah, sick.

It's pretty magical. But for New Year's Eve party, it was a bit weird because my mother was very ill. She had, I think I said laying gaites before, but I think it was like a, what's another? Why'd you pay off the throat? It was why'd you pay a, what's another? Why'd you pay off the throat? It was why'd you pay off the throat?

She had why'd you pay off the throat. I got it. I got it. She hadn't changed the code. Yeah, she was really sick though. Oh, for thing. She was very kindly like let us have our friends over so that we could bounce in the bouncy house. But yeah, that was my celebration of the Millennium Taylor, Mitchell Vassa, what were you doing?

You know, I will say my, my awareness of Y2K started when my brother did his science fair project on Y2K. And did he make it to Guildford? No. Guildford Mall? No. But I, I, I kind of got to know about it then and I think that I always had a little bit of a sense

of fear around it. It was my first big doomsday thing, and now I'm old enough to know that those are always bullshit, but like, at the time it wasn't. Yeah, yeah. Planes would fall out of the sky. Planes would fall out of the sky. Yeah, well, do you, okay, do you remember, that's a question. Do you remember that specific image being really tied to this discussion, the idea that planes could just drop out of the sky?

No, but it doesn't surprise me. I feel like that was like a really calm and motif in a lot of the coverage that I read and understood as a child in like, mad magazine and in like, you know that sort of thing, right? Yeah. Yeah, so I don't know that I thought planes would fall out of the sky, but I spent that particular New Year's Eve with my grandparents, my grandma Linda, who did the the grandpa's story back in episode 33. That was me remembering. Yeah, that was cool. I spent the New Year's at that particular grandparents house, and eventful New Year's except to say that like

my parents were somewhere else and I was very concerned. When they laughed, I was like, this could be the last time I ever see my parents. And if everything goes like the way that they say, and if it didn't, yeah. I've seen them since. But I remember having a little bit of dread around it. Yeah, I do.

Yeah, yeah, a little, yeah, a little anxiety. I remember it being a really pervasive subject in media coverage, especially as the Millennium Jr. because I think that like the Millennium was something that was happening globally, which is rare. Yeah. We were all crossing the Millennium together, which is even bigger than something like an Olympics or a bicentennial or whatever that'll always be more localized. This was like for everybody was going into 2000 together. They're all of these like festivities and parties and big events that were planned around it. But there was also always because imminent change is frightening. There was also this idea of like buy it. Plains could fall out of the sky. Yeah, we could all die. Yeah, fiery, painful death. Yeah.

Plains could fall out of the sky. Yeah, we could all die. Yeah, fiery painful death. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was a real gut check on how pervasive computers and microchips had become in our society and how dependent we had become on them such that like the idea of reverting to a time before computers felt impossible in every capacity from like health care to industry to finance to To government to to absolutely everything, right? This was an entrenched, I'll tell you all about it. Like, let's just dive in. Why don't we dive in? Let's dive.

Let's dive in. Let's dive in, hop in the time machine. It's why, should we comply in? I got all the updates put in. Let's go back to the 1950s. Oh, oh wow, okay. The story, believe it or not, this story doesn't start December 31st, 1999.

It got a little bit of a ramp up. Yeah, let's go, baby. Ones and zeros, tell me about the ones and zeros. I'll tell you all about the ones and zeros, zero, zero, one, zero, one, zero, one, zero. I hope I didn't just say anything dirty. I apologize for what I did. To our robot listeners.

To all of the AIs who are coding this to repackage our content or whatever the fuck they do. Sorry about that. Okay, so when the first complex computers are programmed in the 1950s, they took up rooms and rooms and rooms. Yeah, did. The huge. They could play chess, but they took up a whole room. They'd pick mothers. If you wanted something that could play chess and was the size of your basement, you no longer had to educate whales. You could just get a computer.

That was cute, that was good. Thank you, thank you. Bring it back to the mammals. Yeah, yeah. Software and hardware space was understandably at a premium and programmers did anything they could to save a few bytes here and there If you think about like the way that our technology is now It might like especially if you're someone who has grown up in a time of like readily available smartphone technology for example. Yeah, yeah

You would need like a dedicated building in a university campus to power something like that, right? Yeah, yeah building in a university campus to power something like that, right? Yeah, yeah. One way that they saved space was they would omit the first two digits in the year when they were recording the dates. So, for example, the date of this episode's release, December 31st, 2023, would be noted as 123123. Mm-hmm, okay. You may be thinking, well, how does the computer know that that's not 19, 23 or 21, 23 or 0, 0, 23?

Yeah, and that is a shorthand that we've used in long-hand. Like that's not uncommon to just excise the 19 or the 20 and then you get it from context clues. Right. If it's a letter written in World War II, then, okay, well, it's 1940s, something's on. Discernment from context clues is a human trait, not the trait of a 1950s computer, right?

Yeah, well, basement computer, yeah. Yes, but I mean, we could maybe train the whales in that sort of critical thinking, but the computer isn't as good at it, and that lays in the foundation for what is commonly called the year 2000 problem before the catchier Y2K or a BH stuck. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Programmers theorized that when the year turned 2000, computer software and hardware would be unable to recognize the new date causing widespread issues. Y2K describes the series of hypothetical problems that could occur as a result of this error, from minor inconveniences to global financial gridlock to straight up doomsday prophecies. Right, yeah. The proposed technological errors affected everything from bank interest calculations to power plant safety tests, from personal computers to airline transportation, from medical technology

to government functions. What if all the jail cells open up at once? What if we're unable to access our finances? Will the street lights work? Will the economy survive? Will my vegetable spoil? What if your pacemaker just fucking stops? What then?

Whoa dude, yeah. In the Y2K scenario and everything, planes falling out of the sky, you said Marines bubbling to the surface, you know, all these things. Like, what midnight sets it off? Is it like, Grinich meantime? Is it like, Palo Alto?

Is it like... It's whatever your internal clock recognizes as the roll over to the millennium to wit. Some skincare company had one of their batches of chemicals rejected because its expiry date was zero zero. It was the first time a zero zero one had hit there. And the computer thought it was 1900 was like these are a hundred year old chemicals and

Rejected the batch right so that's like a very small scale example of what happens when the computer rolls over to 0.0 that happened to happen in advance because it was like projecting an expiry date. Yeah, but that would happen Hypothetically whenever your fucking clock radio rolls over to zero zero, right? Yeah, yeah, now it would be like maybe a bit more of like a satellite thought now that we have like Devices that keep their own time but at the time that wasn't as much of a thing the discussion of this problem seems to have emerged among programmers As soon as the code is written a programmer named Bob Burner is noted to have raised the issue in 1957 in 1960 Greg Holmock of the US Bureau of Standards, spoke out about it in 1967,

Susan Jones, assistant director of the Department of Transportation, same thing, 1987, New York Stock Exchange spent 27 million on a team of coders to first sell the issue. If there's this many people sounding the alarm, you may be thinking, why not just solve the issue now? Like in the before the 90s, let's say, what, like, let's just do this.

Now, yeah. This was the same line of thought shared in 1978 by Peter DeJager, who is brand new to the industry working at IBM and Toronto. And I'm gonna be using a lot of my story about Y2K in terms of like the Y2K industry. Let's say we'll come from Peter's point of view because he ends up being like a big player in this space.

He's working at IBM and he notices, well he's doing some backend coding and he notices these keyed in his debt, the XX-Y-Y-S-78, right? And he has that same kind of thought experiment that we did before, like, okay, well, how does the computer know that this is 1978 and what okay? Well what happens when it rolls over and

Nobody could kind of really give him a satisfying answer and he goes up to one of his managers and he's like hey Here's what I noticed and the manager's like Like kid you're in your 20s how far away is 2000 gonna be why are you like losing sleep over Something that is gonna be like salt? It's like twice your time on Earth away and it'll be solved by then. Someone will have solved it by then like don't worry about it and kind of sends him away and he says oh because I was young and I thought oh he's a manager, he must be, he's right, right? Yeah. Managers are smart and I guess like growing older and realizing that manager is their occasion. Not smart.

He maybe reevaluated that position. And he never quite shook this prophecy that he was having about this kind of weird, too, degenerate, especially as time went on. And rather than those systems being replaced, it kind of just like became those same systems underpinning all of the world's computers with like various alterations and taped up over here and a little bit chewing gum over there. Yeah. Let me just let me just tweak that.

He observes this and he kind of like is pondering on the worldwide implications of this because all of this is being like all of the computer systems in the world effectively are being based off of this code that was generated in the late 50s or 60s. In 1993 when he was an IT consultant living in Brampton, Ontario, he wrote an article for a computer world with the provocative title Doomsday2000. Oh, they're cool. Good title. Well, good game. Is it like yes and no because you see what this will end up becoming it truly does become Doomsday 2000, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so perhaps a little too sensationalist a little too sensational But like that having been said writers don't always pick their own headlines either so I don't like I don't know where that headline came from it could have been a computer

Who knows who the rogue computer ginning up controversy? I'm always picked their own headlines either. So I don't like, I don't know where that headline came from. It could have been a computer. Ooh. Who knows? Who knew it could have been a rogue computer, ginning up controversy. Who's the rogue computer in space, a space outside? How, 9,000. We got to know.

How 9,000 I think becomes a very like, emblematic evil computer in the representation of why two gay. Love it. Because that's sort of what this becomes, right? It becomes evil computers are trying to kill us, of course. My nanopet is gonna pull it off. My nanopet is gonna pull it off on me. This is literally what it becomes.

My VCR is looking at me funny, right? The toilet is eating my guests. Mm-hmm. This article, this computer-world article, DOOMSTAY2000, became one of the first major touchpoints for public attention to the yet unnamed Y2K problem, and Dejager himself became what the Globe and Mail calls a millennium guru, giving preparedness talks,

wearing a tie featuring ticking clocks, and roving around in a Ford Explorer with a vanity license plate that said Y2K, we love a man with a gimmick. Yeah, yeah, wow. A tie gimmick is really good too. Again, this is very mattress mat, right? Like, yeah.

You got to play it to Rose Ed as we say in Canada. Yeah, I'll know where we're going home. Yeah. Same, same, same sentiment, same sentiment. Peter Jager didn't coin the name Y2K itself. We know exactly when that name was first coined. It was at 11.31 pm on Monday, June 12, 1995, when Massachusetts programmer David Eddie

used the term in an email to an internet discussion group. So this is back when rather than social media, you would just be on like a big web mailing list and you could just send an email out to 20,000 people. We still have listservs now, but like, I feel like that type of listserv on that scale where it's just like a big chat that everyone's happening having, sorry, are less common now that we have social media. Yeah, there's just like more niche spaces online for us to gather, so it's not as like wide reaching maybe.

And also email as a technology has been replaced by like more instant things like messaging and texting and whatever. Said Eddie to the Baltimore Sun in 1999, quote, people were calling it year 2000, CDC, parentheses, century date change, faddle parentheses, faulty date logic. There were other contenders, Y2K just came off my fingertips. Which I like, I like that the first instance of Y2K being used is in type. That's true, yeah. That's an apt beginning for that phrase.

Why did the Y2K branding catch on SB Master of Naming Company Master McNeil gave her thoughts in the same Baltimore Sun article, among the six reasons she offered, quote, Damn. Ms. Master's lauded the term for the way its articulation produces a satisfying movement in the mouth. The term begins with a labial sound, the Y being formed with the lips, you want to try this out with me, Josie? Y.

Labial. Y. The two is alveolar. This is hot. Two. formed with the lips. You want to try this out with me, Josie? Why? Laby-o-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h- that progression sets Y2K far apart from its competition. That's a little bit of a, the name itself, Y2K. It says for, it says for year 2000, the K standing for Kilo, of course, which is 1000. 1000, yes. I know things. You know what?

I have a TI-83 calculator. Tiddy implement. Yeah. Now that we'd identified the problem in the name, various programmers, government entrepreneurs, and contractors began to lay out their solutions, much of what I'm about to describe holds true, particularly of English speaking nations like the US, the UK, and Canada, which broadly waited until the late 90s and then dumped billions of dollars

into the problem in an attempt to forestall disaster. I too am a procrastinator, so you might come by that culturally. Perhaps because of the lateness of the effort as well as the media hype that came around it replanes and skies and falling, it could be difficult to organize American industries around the idea that the problem was real. Quoting a 1998 executive report from the US government, quote, the committee has found that the most frustrating aspect of addressing the year 2000 parentheses Y2K problem is sorting fact from fiction.

Reports from even the most reputable news sources fall prey to polarizing forces, either overemphasizing a handful of Y2K survivalists, or downplaying the event as a hoax designed to sell information and technology equipment. Right, yeah. Get this protection by this now.

Yeah. Why do you think you're protected? Peter DeJager in the sort of the run up to the year 2000 got a call from the Toronto star and they were like, we come over and like take pictures of your like your survival food hoard. I watched this webinar that he did and he explains it in a very calm and measured way. He's like, well, I have about two weeks worth of food here because I live in Ontario and it's the winter. And we have storms.

And so, and he's like, and any Canadian worth his salt has laid in at least two weeks provisions. He's very Canadian and logical about it. And he's like, if you want, you can come take a picture of that, but I haven't really been taking any unusual preparations and I don't have the cord to show you. I don't have the blast from the past underground bunker situation. What a shame. Who out of this. Takes a fish.

That's where I'm spending my Y2K. The next day, Peter DeGieger looks at this Toronto star, and the title is something like Y2K expert advises people to stock up on food and water, which is not what he had said at all. No. And as a picture of just like, if you were to go to like,

Pixabay or Shutterstock and look for like, crazed man with a food hoard. They have a picture of someone to that description and they've labeled it in the caption as him. This is the Toronto star. The Toronto star. Wow, not quite a shining example. No. Journalistic integrity. What the US government's report of like any old journalistic source is is like false prey to this like iteration of the story and like kind of comes in knowing that they want this spin on the story right the survival is spin and It peter digiger ends up writing them in like a Retraction ends up getting issued. He's like like anyone who read that like the damage is done, right?

Yeah, yeah, cuz I'm supposed to be like the expert, the guy, and I'm like, they have this picture of like some madman in headlamp with like a bunch of cheetos. Like, that's not me. In some countries, Y2K wasn't treated with any particular gravity. Russia didn't emphasize Y2K preparation, nor did South Korea, nor Italy, Japan.

Didn't think much of the issue. Oh, okay. I asked my friend, fellow, about his own anecdotal experience from Chile, and he was like, yeah, Japan didn't think much of the issue. Oh, okay. I asked my friend fellow about his own anecdotal experience from Chile and he was like, yeah, we didn't care. Yeah. But other countries had pretty significant Y2K experiences. The Indian IT industry, for example, was basically born in its current form due to Y2K prep.

Oh. There was, of course, a computer programming culture in India before the year 2000, but the global Y2K prevention effort was a landmark incidence of non-Indian companies outsourcing massive amounts of tech work to India, which as we know, continues to this day. Oh, okay. The industry made billions and exploded in size. Yeah.

So that Y2K was like really, really big for Indian tech. Yeah, yeah. And part of the reason for that is that Indian programmers often knew Cobal, computer-oriented business language, a by-then-archiant computer language, which formed much of the code underpinning the world's computers. Peter DeJager, who I've sourced extensively computer world alarm clock guy with the tie.

Yeah, the Ford Explorer. Ford Explorer with a Y2K, the Millennium Dream. That Ford Explorer's role in over as he takes corner. My mom, dude, my mom drove a no, uh, forest green explorer for all of the 90s and much of the 2000s. She is on trend on trend with her brown lipstick in her Ford Explorer. She knew what was up. What were? What were my brows like? I don't I was a pain. I don't look at I don't look people in the eyes when I speak to them Josie it's a life-long We'll check in with Anna Maria get her braved journey so Peter De Jager He describes the problem this way imagine billions of lines of code in billions of items. Sometimes just the compiled code, not the source code.

So like, I heard Coke, I'm sorry. It's code, baby. Billions of lines of code. Imagine billions of lines of Coke and Josie's like, let's go. Let's challenge accepted. It's the millennium, baby. You're telling me if I sniff all this Coke

that the planes won't fall out of the sky, I'll do it for humanity. Imagine billions of lines of code, not codeine also code, in billions of items, sometimes just the compiled code, not the source code. So source code is the unbaked cake that you can actually play around with a bit. Once it's compiled, you're kind of hooped a bit, written in an archaic language by programmers who have retired or died and left no documentation to clarify their code. This is possibly true of every hardware,

software, or device with any kind of embedded microchip in the world, and you have no way of proving which is which, except to exhaustively check them all, or if you got there too late, which everyone did, triage the ones that seem most likely to cause disaster. That is the Y2K problem that programmers faced. Yeah, my procrastination anxiety is getting really slurped right now. It's really.

Says programmer David Robert LaBlaugh, who worked on the issue for human resources. Canada quote, it was like your job is taking the encyclopedia Britannica and you have six months to circle all the ease. That's why there's the billion lines of coke. Yeah, that's what you need to wait. We need, let's put on another pot of coffee. You chop up some lines, you go get us some forlokos. It is gonna be a long night. Mm-hmm.

Damn. Our buddy Pete DeJager said that for the better part of the 90s, he ate, slept, and breathed Y2K, and that seems to be true of the many case managers and tech types who were hurled into years of difficult and tedious work with a hard deadline and no room for noncompliance. How's that procrastinator, Josie?

Oh my god. Oh, uh. It was existential in scale, said Michael Fulx, then TD bank's chief information officer. At the time, it was the single largest priority and the single largest project. John Hammer, deputy secretary of the US Treasury claimed the Y2K problem is the electronic equivalent

of El Nino and there will be nasty surprises around the globe. And of course, said Y2K expert Mike DeJager, this is the biggest story in the history of mankind barring world war. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. My clock, my tie, you want to know about my clock, Ty? That horrible nitpicky work that you have to focus in on and you can't ignore. And you can't drag your feet on it. And you've already been told that you're starting too late

to complete the job properly. So you don't really have any notion of what it means to be done done. That's when I'm just like, I'm be nope I'm just gonna become a carpenter see ya by like I'm getting ready for the agrarian existence that we're all bound to have to deal with once the clock strikes 2000. In the US the pronouncements become even more grave in the vein of agrarian agrarian utopias. Oh I bet. 1996, Senator Daniel Monahan, Democrat New York, published a letter to Congress, recommending urgency on the matter.

In 1997, Bill Clinton acknowledged the problem for the first time in 1998. He signed the year 2000 information and readiness disclosure act, encouraging collective action to solve the problem. He also appointed John Cossigan as his Y2K's Zarr. Oh, we got a Zarr, I didn't know we had a Zarr.

I was excited when there was a Zarr in the mix. A Y2K's Zarr even. Yeah, I mean, put that on hat. Oh, we're that sure. Exactly. That's the, read the tag, read the name tag, baby. Yeah. Also around this time, Congressman Steve and Horn, Republican California, uh-huh. He started giving out quarterly Y2K

preparedness report cards to the other members of Congress. Just to like gin up the convert. You know what I mean? Chosey Rolls-Rise. You're gonna buy it. You gotta admit, if you got an F on this Prick's little report card,

you would be like, I will never, I can, nope, never again. Maybe, maybe you'd an F on this Prick's little report card, you would be like, I will never, I can, I can, no, never again. Maybe, maybe you'd be like, this is a legal tender. This is in white pants. You're not a notary, sir. What is this? Yeah. Oh, and it's like printed on that stupid paper with the little holes on the side of it.

And like, dot me tricks, yeah. Yeah. And you're like, I hope Y2K does happen so your stupid computer can't pre-dote anymore for a price. Yeah. Yeah, I think that would have been me. That would have been me.

It wasn't all alarm bells and readiness, though, at an industry summit in 1997, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates blamed Y2K worries on those who love to tell Pales of fear. The next year Microsoft acknowledged that it was slow in its Y2K response. In the preamble to the year 2000, Jagerwenham World Tour is promoting the importance of Y2K safety and preparedness to world bodies. The U Congress, Canadian Parliament, the world economic forum, he even registered the domain www.year2000.com, which he estimated received 600,000 visitors a month. On average, I'm sure that changed. You know, you got to know that December 1999 was a great, that's probably when the merch did great. You know, unbeknownst

to him, another worn out techie, our old buddy, Dave Robert LaBlaugh, who has gotten now fed up of his years of back-end work for Human Resources Canada, correcting ancient code, he started another website, www.justinumber.com, protesting the overblown prep for what might well be the Y2K hoax. quoting the globe and mail. Soon he was receiving dozens of emails a day from both sides of the increasingly vicious debate on what to make of the date change. One skeptic wrote that he hoped to hunt these fear mongers down, imprison them in tiny metal

bunkers, and force them to actually put their worm farming techniques to good use. A preacher from South Carolina who is saying that Y2K would usher in the biblical millennium told Mr. Lavela the blood of Christ would be on him and his family forever. So, as you can tell, somewhere along the line, the Y2K discussion ended up taking a decidedly non-techie twist. We've been talking a lot about like cobalt programming, website, headlamps. But somehow we've gotten to the preachers from South Carolina, the survivalists, the angry adults, you know. Here we go. What's going on?

Yeah, yeah, let's check in. Let's check in on the pulse. Sure. So the preparations to dispel Y2K, the practical ones, were largely of the exhaustive, exhausting computer type. Good enough to ruin years of the lives of various coders, programmers, and IT consultants, but not strictly a sexy of immediate story as those holding the cameras and the pens would prefer. Yeah. Nobody wants to hear about students accidentally being enrolled in the wrong classes or if legions and legions of nerds being forced under duress to look for the coding equivalent of a needle in the haystack.

Instead, industry Canada had an awareness campaign called SOS2000 warning Y2K could sink your business over images and about approaching an iceberg. Government Computer Magazine showed a meteor nearing Earth one year to impact. Usually, Granite cover story called The Day the World Shuts Down. When it came to Y2K, people wanted to hear about rockets going off and chemicals being released and planes falling out of the sky. Bounty castles collapsing. Yes, yes, yes.

In fact, it observes to Jager. planes falling out of the sky. Bounty castles collapsing. Yes, yes, yes. In fact, observes to Jaeger, it was planes falling out of the sky that overwhelmingly dictated the journalistic questions he received. He tells another story of like, he, when people ask him where he wanted to be for the New Year's, he's like,

I want to be at O'Connor's, which is a pub in Dueling County, Claire, and Ireland. It's my favorite spot. And I want to just be enjoying a pint. The phrase used was quaffing a pint because he's that type of guy. Oh God. I want to be quaffing a pint and just just watching. It's basically the the Sean of the dead strategy, right? Head to the pub, have a pint and wait for everything to blow over. Yeah. They were like, um, so just to just to get this straight, are you saying that you don't want to be anywhere near a plane on New Year's Eve?

He's like, no, no, no, it's not what I'm saying. And so it ends up basically becoming the case that he just to shut everyone up and just because he's like the face of like Y2K preparation. One of them, he, the way he tells it, he's the face, but I'm sure he's the face. Right, yeah. It's a worldwide phenomenon. He did publish this big computer world article and he did become the clocktie guy and the explorer guy, right? So, you know, I think he feels a little bit of attachment to the RT, perhaps. And rightly so. Where we all, it was in the air at the time, if you can't talk. He ends up calling, I want to say like a Marrakin or United or somebody and he gets them to book a flight, which they're happy to do because it like,

it's in their best interest to show that this is like a safety thing as well, right? So they give him a ticket and he ends up flying to like London, he throw. And so he's in the air when Greenwich mean time hits, which is what airplanes are calibrated to. It's their new year. This was also the approach favored by Bill Clinton,

who had Y2K expert John Croskin in the Zarr. He also- Yeah, Zarr, I remember him. The Zarr also spent New Year's Eve among the clouds in a tuxedo. That is a little like- Air Force Force. Hey guys, everything is safe. No, I think he was flying commercial.

Okay, Coke and a tux. That was also the approach favored by the nation of China, which mandated that its airline CEOs fly during the time changeover, as a particularly ruthless way of ensuring that airline disaster prep went to plan. I kinda like that, though. How about this? All the CEOs got to fly at fucking midnight, so if anybody drops, it's gonna be you go. That's like a saw trap, I respect that.

Yeah, the visual on that is pretty good. if anybody drops, it's gonna be you go. That's like a saw trap, I respect that. Yeah, the visual on that is pretty good. The Doomsday approach captured a lot of imaginations, particularly in America, and it led to a cottage industry of Y2K preparedness books that encouraged listeners to stock up on canned goods, potable water, electric generators, and every manner of hordable because we don't know the next time we'll have the industry

to reproduce them or the Capitalist economy to repurchase them. Oh, right. We are up against Teotwaki a cute millennium era Initialism for the end of the world as we know it. Oh Teotwaki Teotwaki Teotwaki Because there were so many there's so many of these Y2K books with scary, scary titles and burning earths on the cover.

I can see them now stacked all on the tables at Costco. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Picking one to like read the interesting parts of and skim the dryer parts of. Oh shit, dog. I chose this one because it was on archive.org. There's a lot of good Y2K stuff on archive.org. The entire CBC New Year hour was... Oh cool.

I picked 101 ways to survive the Y2K crisis by Stephen F. Tomasachik. I think I'm gonna try on that name. Good, that was good. I think I'm gonna try on that name. Good, that was good, I liked it. He seems to be a scholar out of New Hampshire who's like a public health academic, but like has a sidebar in like military fiction and gun blow up and that sort of thing.

And so here we are, Y2K. The first page has the title, a threatening title in some title that's called The Bite of the Millennium Bug. A technological storm gathers on the horizon. So many metaphors mixing and mingling and storming, if you will. Even better than that, it's got a quot immediately under it from your man, Hal 9000. So, you know, that's the tone that we're striking here again. Evil computer, I used to build Kill Us All.

We've become depending on technology, and now it's gonna eye-robot us and reflect. Bipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipipip cherry picked the funniest and let's say the campiest of the sections. Yeah, but like there's parts of this that broadly are a pretty good if occasionally slightly dry and and if it was if I was legitimately serious about prepping for Y2K it has a lot of good checklists, but it also has stuff like this section quotes this this quote now Armdon, question mark. If it runs its absolute worst course, the Millennium Bug has the power to transport our nation back 150 years to the 1850s, much like the tornado did to Dorothy by sending her in toto to the land of Oz. There are four apocalyptic scenarios that could achieve this level of social disintegration.

Power outages, distribution problems, financial meltdown, and war. And so it starts going into these examples, my favorite of which is like, what if Saddam Hussein specifically starts a war? Like, we can all agree that Saddam Hussein is a coward. They go into this. But what would a coward do but use this moment of global weakness to start a war? So the book that goes on, it recommends you start an in-house library on everything from animal husbandry to water purification. Do you have kerosene? How will you educate your children? They suggest, they suggest weekly meetings to talk to your kids about Y2K, weekly Y2K preparedness meetings, family meetings, which is really interesting because you see a lot of this, like, how do we tell the kids about Y2K?

Yeah, yeah, how will they understand the sheer scale of it all? The gravity of the situation, the US government put out a website that had like an app for kids, it was for like Y2K for kids, and it had an FAQ like, should parents take all their money out of the bank? No junior, like legitimately that. I watched this Leonard Neemoy video about preparing your family for Y2K that had like this kind of scary old man telling you how to like make a chemical toilet and shit. So yeah. Here are some more tips from this book, this 101 this 101 ways that a long chapter on water and water filtration Long chapter and food tip number 32 because these are these are 101 tips, right? Yeah, right. Don't talk about your food supply

This is important no one outside your family needs to know that you are stockpiling foods and other supplies for a possible emergency If a disaster does occur and grocery stores in your area end up with bear shelves, starving people may resort to theft and violence to get food. He feels very dangerous. He looks very dangerous. He looks all the fun. All the fun chips.

All of a sudden. Wow. Lots of other tips, 56, protect your valuables, 57. Be ready to defend yourself. Recommend a great book called Gun Proof Your Children to teach your gunsafe to your kids. Get into suicide firearms. You might want wanna look into.

Jesus! Pre-pay your bills, get your records, instructions on purchasing gold Boolean, cause banks, you know. Right, yeah, yeah. Tip number 78, avoid gemstones as a monetary asset. Although beautiful, easily portable and valuable gemstones are not where you wanna store your money

for emergency use. This is for three reasons. Number one, gems are difficult to identify. It takes a trained gemologist to correctly identify a ruby from a red garnet. Number two, gems are difficult to grain price. The average person in the street simply cannot tell a high quality stone from a low quality stone. He is not about to take your word on it.

Number three, since the demand for gems decreases in economically bad times, people want food and water before they want a new ring, prices plummet, especially for semi-precious stones such as amethyst, obel and garnet. Only the value of diamonds tends to hold. The only exception to stockpiling gemstones as a means of money is if you are knowledgeable

about gems and intend to do most of your trading with people who are equally educated. So if it's all gemologists in the bunker kind of situation. Then maybe we can set up some currency here. Extremely practical. The book then lists some ways to profit from Y2K. Can you drill a while? How about Blacksmithing? We get to page 176 before the book suggests to test your family PC and back up your software. Become a blacksmith is earlier than back up your family computer. Well, you know, yeah, I guess it's a lot of process. We're getting to it. That's exhaustive. Listen, we're gonna get to all of them. Don't worry.

Recognize the symptoms of depression. List the symptoms of depression. You know, this bunker doesn't have windows kind of thing It's heeding for the news to take over. Okay. Yeah tip number 98 avoid attracting desperate people just great life advice Tip number 101 out of 101 remember why 2k is about prudence not panic right is about prudence, not panic. Right, right. And if the world was going to end, it wasn't that much of a hop-skip in a jump to suggest that the world was going to end in order to facilitate

the Christian rapture and the return of Jesus Christ. Oh, that's the end of this book. This isn't the end of the book. Oh, okay. No, the book is over, the book is over. American Evangelist Jack Van Imp released a threatening sounding video entitled, Year book is over, the book is over. American evangelist Jack Vanimp released a threatening sounding video entitled, Year 2000, Time Bomb,

whipping up fear in his congregants and predicting seven years of tribulation and nations in perplexity as hinted by the Bible. I watched the first half of this too, it was something. I was gonna say, sounds biblical, seven years. Here we go. On his program, the old-time Gospelower, Jerry Falwell, categorized Y2K as a symptom of

God's wrath, quote, he may be preparing to confound our language to jam our communications, scatter our efforts, and to judge us for our sin and rebellion for going against his lordship. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, retribution, yeah. Alternate take, some coders were lazy in the late 1950s, and they needed to save some space. It is. It is. The Lord works a mysterious ways, Taylor. That's true, instruments, instruments of the Lord as does Satan, as does Lucifer.

As, yeah, idle hands, lazy idle 1950s, coding hands. Like follow and venim, although for different reasons, very, very different reasons, the Canadian government took the problem incredibly seriously. The Bank of Canada increased its holdings by four times. The Mint stocked up on diesel generators. The CBC station two people at a remote Saskatchewan transmitter site equipped with a follow-out shelter where they could broadcast instructions for survival if needed. Why, what? That's a bit, why is that not like cemented in Canadian literature is a fantastic short story. I don't tailor.

Special military units were assembled. Paul Scott, the person in charge of Ontario's YGK prep, was locked in a makeshift bunker with a week's worth of food near Queen's Park. And Prime Minister Jean-Critienne ordered top military brass to spend New Year's Eve at 24 Sussex Drive, the Canadian PM's official residence, sitting up with him, and watching the clock. Okay. However, according to Peter DeJager, Cretan Nenevoreyde, DeJager had already published an article as far back as March 1999 entitled, Doomsday Avoided, indicating that the Doomsday he predicted in 1993 had already been averted. While all of the Y2K problems hadn't been exhaustively solved, the so-called Iron Triangle of finance, telecommunications,

and energy had put in the necessary work to avert a immediate disaster. Everyone calm the fuck down, encouraged Jager, in different words, in his tic-a-cluck tie. Yeah. By the end, however, Chaos was rife and it was hard to crowd the pervasive Y2K panic that had already overtaken society through media in UNDO and rumor.

Yeah. As New Year received approached, citizens and companies became giddy for the once in a lifetime opportunity, Ty released a beanie baby named Millennium with a misspelled name, as I recall. Oh. It was a teddy bear. It was one of their little teddy bears. You know how they would do the little, the little, like, when they did the Princess Day, you remember the Princess Day anniversary. I remember the purple Princess Day and a teddy bear. It was one of their little teddy. You know how they would do the little the little like when they did the princess day You remember the princess day anniversary. I'm a purple princess day in a white rose with a white rose of the heart

That's an iconic that is like the most iconic teddy bear of 1997 Well, they also did a millennium bear with like fireworks on the titty And tie actually a short for titty and Cheerios briefly rebranded as millennials. Yeah, baby. It only comes once every thousand years. If not now, when. Swing!

The day arrived, everyone got ready to attend their swanky overblown end of the Millennium Parties. A 3.5 million line the Thames River in London to watch a fireworks show, 3 million in and around Times Square New York City, enjoyed a full 24 hours of celebration and live performance, 4 million gathered on the streets in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and in the Prime Minister of Canada's room, he and his inner circle watched the clock tick, tick, tick to midnight before breaking into some old scotch. So as the sun rose in time zone after time zone on January 1st, 2000, which I remember there being a lot of bickering about how that was not technically the first year in the

New England, New England was actually 2001, but I'm not entertaining that here, not that foolishness not now. Do you remember that? Oh yeah. And speaking of foolishness, that's kind of how everyone felt after all of their trepidation in 2000. The planes with their various important passengers landed safely. Allison Crawford, a CBC reporter, had been tasked with monitoring a nuclear reactor when nothing occurred her editor reassigned her to cover a conga line at a hotel. That must have been some conga

line, damn. Yeah, that good one. The next day, Brighton clear, when nothing obvious had occurred, no missiles, no toxic gas, no blackouts, no planes from the sky. A poll was conducted, and 0% of Canadians self-identified as very concerned about Y2K. A toll-free hotline out of the US that had received over 200,000 calls in the lead-up to New

New Year's Eve cheerfully reported that no identified Y2k problems had occurred anywhere in the world said, auto-abier crap, male cap. It's either the biggest scam that's ever been pulled on mankind or it's the most fossil disaster ever averted by mankind. I think it's a bit of both. Ooh. Even meaningful auto-abier crap, male cap.

Thank you. Let me sum up the oil friend or foe right? Nobody knows. For citizens who fell equal parts relieved, disappointed, and tricked it was hard to figure out where to draw the line. Remember David Robert Lobla, our friend from like, justayear.com. Just a number, just a number.com.

David Robert Lobla, he was thrilled at his chance to rub his vindicated Y2K skepticism in the haters faces. He published a January 6th op-ed in the Globe and Mail mocking those who took the bait. A few weeks later he got a call from his government bosses and was terminated. Thank you! That's rude. As of the writing of the Globe and Mail article from which I got this information, Lobla owned a chocolate shop in Regina quote, as far away from computers and technology as I can get. Back to agrarian baby, back to the boom with China. As for poor Peter de jager and his ticking clock tie, as I indicated, he felt and still feels

a little rough dot by the perception of why de k is a non-event. On January 1st, 2000, when a journalist asked him if we should all be feeling a bit silly this morning, an irritated Jager replied, why? Because we haven't seen problems. You know, I've been doing interviews now all day and I keep getting asked the same questions, and it's a rather silly approach. Yeah. According to Jager, the reason for the evident lack of disaster was because he and legions

of people like him had taken the problem seriously, and while the general public was panicking about potable water generators and reusable diapers, the programmers were on the back end doing the coding work needed to write the problem, often with little recognition beyond a commemorative mug or shirt from their employer. Oh, we started telling the story of my general impression is like, oh, well, it was all just like, you know, all a hoax, like it didn't even matter, the computers didn't even care. That is what everybody thinks, yes. But they did have to do some work to standardize and correct like the the expiry date on the Baxter chemicals or whatever it is. And to update like critical problems within the infrastructure of the world's computers. Right. Yeah. Because it was

all in this shitty patch together code that literally couldn't hold up to a date change. Totally. OK, yeah. Yeah. I guess the thing about disaster preparedness is if you're prepared, it should look like nothing happened. Yes.

Yes. Here's the media coming, misrepresenting this story, and then acting like, oh, well, this was much of a, who, like hiding their hands? Who, who, who spread all of this hype? It must have been those damn nerds hitting the doomsday button, right? The popular ideas that this was a hoax

when an actual fact, tremendous amounts of people put in tremendous amounts of like, very un-glamorous, hard work. Please, staking. To shore up the world's infrastructure, but like because they did such a good job broadly when when pushed came to shove, their efforts aren't really recognized. Yeah, it reminds me a lot of like hurricane preparedness, because it's like a hurricane is coming,

you gotta get ready, you gotta get your food, get your water, like have a plan, da da da da and then like this little Pidly Storm rolls through. And then you're like, that's bullshit. Next time there's a hurricane warning, you're like, well, that last one was stupid. I think you don't do anything. And then all of a sudden, you don't have electricity for a week. And, you know, like, there are things about disaster preparedness, where it's like, you have to find your equilibrium and your balance through it, where you are like, you have to find your equilibrium

and your balance through it, where you are prepared, but you're not freaking out. I think we have a hard time culturally finding that balance, especially when it comes with like, something as like, both as easily misunderstood and as un-saxi as a date change, that's, mm-mm, what, what, plain, plain-scientic, from scratch, right?

Right, yeah, yeah, we need more of a visual of it. You need to stock up on water, go buy the toilet paper, did it, did it, right? Yeah, yeah, stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We need more more of a visual. You need to stock up on water. Go buy the toilet paper. Did it, did it die, right? Yeah, COVID, right? COVID, right? Yeah, no, no, no. This whole time I've been thinking of COVID too, the way that like, global warming. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think global warming will happen slowly, slowly, than all of a sudden.

Yeah, but like, remember how we left all of our Y2K prepped to the late 90s, just because everyone said, dude, that's someone else's problem. Don't worry about it. Destination, yeah, baby, yeah. Dejager and other Y2K solvers like him found themselves on the wrong end of public opinion. In January, we received death threats, he said. It's death threats, baby. Our old friend death threats.

He thought we were leaving those in 2023. Oh no. No. No. There will always be God forbid you do anything God forbid you do anything to or for anyone you will fucking get death threats And he says and this is quite dug in chic. He's a he's a weird guy this guy. I get a kick out of him You know the best thing that could have happened to the Y2K story, the best thing is for a nuclear power plant to melt down because of Y2K.

It was joked in the industry over beer and pretzels, we shittled at one industry fail. Just to show you what would have happened. Just a little taste. Just a little nuclear meltdown just just to show you What could have happened what could have happened and indeed it's a misnomer to say that there weren't issues because of Y2K There were chemicals in your skin care in United Kingdom 154 pregnant women got incorrect results for fetal down syndrome tests due to a Y2K related dating bug The bug that wasn't discovered until May, 2000. That is big! That is really big! That's a big deal! How about this? The Pentagon briefly lost access to its missile satellites. X-quease me? That's no good.

Olysssshut! These incidents tended to be small enough, isolated enough, and well hidden enough to slip under the radar of a squirmful public that felt duped by the Y2K hysteria and sought to blame the whistleblowers that had identified the problem rather than the media which had amplified it in two-nall or nothing proposition. A sexy, dangerous, global apocalypse or nothing at all. Why can't it? Yeah, why can't it be somewhere in the middle, baby? Somewhere in the middle.

As it like, 100% of the time seems to be, yeah. Yeah. What is the legacy of Y2K? Comment, turn a phrase. So we talk about it in the context of fashion a lot now. Y2K fashion, very big right now. Peter DeJager stopped giving interviews, tired of being called a fraud,

but he's reclaiming his story in the form of talks and a podcast. Y2K and autobiography started in January, 2020 and ran 16 episodes before its conclusion. While I didn't have the time to listen to the episodes individually, I did listen to Peter giving an hourish long webinar, summarizing his own experiences and promoting the series, and I'd recommend the podcast based on that. An estimated $600 billion was spent to fight the Y2K crisis in what has been called the Singist, in what has been called the Sickest Effort.

The Sickest Ship We've Ever Done. In what has been called the single biggest ever global effort toward a single problem, Canadian businesses brought on 26,000 new workers to fight the crisis and in the US Silicon Valley executives successfully lobbied to double the amount of skilled worker visas to fight the problem. That's big. The Indian tech industry, as we've described, exploded in size because of this.

The systems underpinning Y2K correction, now underpin cell phones, laptops, and cryptocurrency. So again, those systems, those legacy systems, just carrying on. Yeah, they just shifted over. Said Paul Safo of Stanford University, there was no incentive for everyone to say we should put up a monument to the anonymous Kobel programmer who changed two lines of code in the software at your bank because this was solved by many people in small ways. It's now been 24 years since the scariest New Year's Eve, our final one on planet Earth, and yet we did not die and are still here. Some of us thanks to the considerable efforts of legions of anonymous workers who will

never be properly thanked due to the widespread misconception of Y2K as a complete hoax. We can be slightly hard on nerds and bittersweetened for me, their breadth of technical knowledge is intimidating, their paths to financial success inspire envy, and their just the right shape to fit into a locker from December 31st, 2023 We salute nerds the world over for saving our lives from Y2K a problem of their own creation I feel like we're a very pro nerd program. I hope that that was nerd on nerd violence I'm I I collect wrestling figures. I'm throwing stones for you.

Don't take that for me, trust me. If I sound a little tinny, it's because I'm in the locker next door. Yeah, yeah, the podcast hosts. Yes, I'm actually near the podcast. They're a little new year special, right? So yeah, that's why 2K. I can do a little new year special, right? Mmm. So yeah, that's why 2K. Damn, dude.

Yeah. I guess I've always just considered it. Like, not, yeah, I guess. Much of you do about nothing is the buy, right? Much of you do about nothing by, yeah. Because we were all like, three, two, one. Wait for explosion. Wait for explosion.

No global apocalypse. It was all bullshit, right? Just open the bouncy house! Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! Yeah. But I like that perspective, especially kind of having gone through another globally impactful experience. Yes. It does happen. It things go wrong and if it's something that you could fix, then just like put in the work, get it done. Yeah, and it's sort of that you could fix then just like put in the work it or done. Yeah and it's sort of that same thought of like there are people who respond to it with like, what do the most educated scientists in this field tell us we should abide by the best of their knowledge,

which is often changing in situations like this? Yeah. And then the flip side is there's always going to be people who are like, okay, so this is Teotwaki finally Let me go get those guns and that that snapple that I've been stalking up in the back shed for fucking in my blast from the past house for the past 50 years, right? I have so many facts to share! Yes, yes, exactly. I do think it's encouraging that this is a story where even though we did it imperfectly and we did it too late, we, the collective, we were kind of able to survive this situation. That is pretty beautiful.

Yeah. Because when I look at something like global warming where we're still very much in that stage that Peter DeJager describes talking to his boss at IBM where he's like, why are you worried about this problem? Do you know what? You'll probably, like, who cares? It's not, I'll be dead. You know, I feel like we're very much in that phase of the global warming discussion.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, man. So, yeah. Wow, dude. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Do we want to do a countdown? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cute.

Okay. 10. 9. 8. cute. Okay. 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Happy new year! Happy 2020 for everybody who has joined us for this episode and has joined us for the past several years of 2020 we started this. 2020 we started this is 2024 now. Thank you very much.

We love you. Happy new year. Yeah. Thanks for listening. If you want more in for me, we've got plenty more episodes and that are sweetinforme.com. Or wherever you listen to podcasts.

If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our coffee account. And KO-FIN-FI.com forward slash viddersweetinthemy. But no pressure. viddersweetinthemy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review following us on Instagram at bittersweetinthemy or just past podcasts long to a friend who you think would dig in. Stay sweet! The sources that I use for this episode's movement are an article from Center for the Study of the Public Domain, hosted by Duke Law. The article was

entitled Mickey Disney and the Public Domain, a 95-year love triangle written by Jennifer Jenkins, director of the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain. I also looked at an article from the Center for the Study of Public Domain. Entitled January 1, 2024 is Public Domain Day. Works from 1928 are open to all as our sound recordings from 1923. I read an article from Variety entitled Mickey Mouse, a long assemble and copyright wars to enter Public Domain. It's finally happening. Written by Jean Maddowce, published December 22, 2023. The copy of the air pirates, the first few pages of the full comic, were

made available on rad zapans tumblr page rhad.capa.tumblr.com. And lastly, I read an article from understanding comic Books in manga entitled The Air Pivots, Posted December 4th, 2012. The sources that I consulted for this episode included Y2K, the Strange True History, how Canada prepared for an apocalypse that never happened, but changed us all. Published December 28th, 2019 in the Globe and Mail by Eric Andrew G. Who invented Y2K and Y did it to become so universally popular publishing the Baltimore Sun

December 22, 1999. 101 ways to survive the Y2K crisis by Steven F. Tom Assichek. This is the Y2K Crisis Survival Guide that I consulted hosted on archive.org. It was originally published in 1989. The Y2K problem technological risk and professional responsibility by Mark Mannion and William M. M. M. M. in December 1999 issue of computers in society. Investigating the impact of the U.S. in the problem, a report compiled by the United States and a special committee on the U.S. technology problem that was released February 24, 1999.

20 years later, the Y2K Bug seems like a joke. That's because those behind the scenes then took it seriously. Published in Time by Francine Uruñuma, December 30, 1919. Y2K and China caught in midair. Reuters via wired January 19, 1999. Y2K, more signs of the time,

published in Computer World January 10, 2000. Down syndrome screening failure's linked to Y2K about publishing the register. September 14, 2001 written by John Lady. I consulted the Guinness World Records page on the largest Iranian parties. I consulted a staff report in the morning call published February 14, 1999. Year 2000 bug is creating a religious schism, some evangelicals were mothume, other Christians saying the threat is overreaction. I also watched the videos how Y2K fueled India's software revolution milestone making of modern India hosted on YouTube by People Tree World parentheses live

history of India. Y2K, a family survival guide with Leonard E. Moe, 1999 BHS rep, hosted on YouTube by Dayamon Cassette, that's also the clip that we used to start the show. Y2K and Autobiography, on Vimeo, hosted by a new Technobility webinar series, that's the Peter DeJayger webinar that I consulted. VHS Rip, 2000 time bomb Jack and Rick Sell-A-Van-M Ministries Millennium Hesgaria and time 666 hosted on the new team account Hudson Valley VHS. I also consulted the National Geographic and Psychopedian for YGK Bud. The National Museum of American History webpagerd, 2019, and the page.

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