Red Scare - Mumford & Cucks

Episode Date: June 27, 2021

The ladies discuss John McAfee's death, David Brooks' lookism op-ed and

Nice. Cool. Okay. We're off to the races. Alright. No problems. Nice. Yeah.

Oh. Yeah. That's good. Okay. Alright. I know. Okay. Alright.

Alright. I know. Alright. Alright. Alright. Alright. Okay. Alright.

Okay. Alright. Okay. Alright. yeah. Hello from Sienna, which you told me was built on a horse track. Yes. There's something. Yeah. You've been here before. You've been to Italy. Yeah, I've been a bunch of times. There's like a pit in the ground in the city center. That's where I went today. I went to the pit and lied around. I saw two separate weddings. Yeah, I was watching your stories. I love that. It's

like very like Fellini omar cord. Nothing's changed and they're like riding around in tiny vintage cars. Yeah, exactly. It's I can't believe Italy is actually like this and Italians actually talk like that. Like what? Like Mamma Mia. Hello. Yeah. Grazie. Prego, prego. Welcome. Welcome to the podcast. So how's your, how's your Italy experience going? It's been okay. I've been working a lot. Okay. And then I had the weekend off, but then I moved to Sienna to keep shooting. And I was in like a resort in another part of Tuscany called like Bon Jovino. And that was a little bit, it was like a very Germanic like thermal spa that felt very well back in or almost like a Michael Hanna key movie or something. And the food was not, I finally had good food last night.

Yeah. And in Sienna is a little better because it's more walkable. I felt very like kind of alienated in the countryside and everything was kind of resorty and not, not very good. Yeah. So okay. So your take is that Italian food is relatively mediocre and overrated? I do think it's kind of overrated, but I'm open to having my mind change. You know, like I kind of, everyone's always always talks about how they like go to Italy and have like a bowl of pasta that was like so simple, but so good and like made by a 100 year old like Nonna or whatever. And I have it, I definitely haven't had anything that I've been like, the food in New York is much better. It's the simplicity of the ingredients.

Yeah. The freshness. Yeah. They just like dump some olive oil and like basil and whatever. It's a lot of olive oil. Yeah. Who cares? You know, that's, that's an interesting take. I think maybe it's because you were at this particular resort that possibly caters to tourists. I don't know. I'm not, I'm one of these people who's very much eat to live rather than live to eat. And I have to say I've had two really good culinary experiences in Italy, which may also not be representative, but the first one was like at this pizza joint that was like a total tourist trap in Florence. And the, it was like a cheese pizza that tasted like meat. It was like so delicious. It wasn't, it didn't have any meat on it. And then

like the best dessert I've ever had was like an affogato at a truck stop somewhere in the middle of Italy. That's what I'm, I would love something like that. Maybe I think in Siena I'll have, I'm coming around honestly. I kind of was like Tuscany is kind of a dump, but then I went into this town that was very beautiful. And now Siena is gorgeous. Yeah. It's like a nice medieval city. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, yeah, I guess you can be open to having your mind changed. I don't know if Italian food is like the best food in the world. A lot of people seem to think it is. And I agree with you that like New York has really stellar food, just like casually on every corner. I just love a New York slice. And I don't like the pre-nisecundi, the, you know,

yeah, I'm like, maybe if I was actually on vacation, I'd be more willing to like indulge in like the multi-course Euro thing, but because I'm like tired and working and I don't want, you know, I just want like to eat something normal and not have to communicate so much with Italians. No, they're, they're lovely. I, yeah, I'm, I feel very lucky to be here and I am having a nice, a nice time. Yeah. But everything is closed on Sunday, like you were saying. So we're recording this over Zoom. Yeah. I brought, well, I brought my mic, but then I have like a newer MacBook that doesn't have a USB cord, which is so fucking annoying. Yeah, that's gay. And I couldn't find a converter anywhere in Siena on a Sunday. How do you feel about what are you going to do? Stuff in Europe

being closed on Sunday. Lazy. Lazy. Indicative of their like lazy. Yeah. I think it's what you're a fan. Good or bad. No, I'm, well, I'm not a fan because I'm an American and therefore I'm used to like 24 seven American amenities, but I appreciate that they're holding on to, they're like hanging on to this much more humane way of life. I can appreciate it, but I think it feels like, realistically, it's just like a matter of habitation. If you're used to things being like open and available on demand. Efficient. Yeah. It's just, I lost my wallet again at the airport. And the last time I lost my wallet while I was traveling, I went to Switzerland, which we all know I hate it. And when I got to this Jimmy Bona Sunday and I was like trying to

figure out how to get my life together without my wallet and there was like nothing I could do. Yeah. And that's what I really soured on it. Our business manager sent me a new debit card. Oh, nice. Well, you know, I'm getting a new debit card too because somebody defrauded my account by spending $500 at Muji, which I, you know, how did that happen? I don't fucking know, but I think it's such a fake and gay and laughable thing to like buy stuff at Muji. Like if you're going to defraud somebody, you have to like go big or go home, like go up in Bloomingdale's, get yourself some silk eye mask, get yourself a piece of furniture. What do you do in buying tiny pencils and like plastic containers, you loser? Maybe they needed, yeah, they needed some bins.

They just needed to get their life together a little bit. They needed like a lint roller and a Swiffer to first holder. Yeah. The aroma diffusers are kind of expensive. Yeah, they're fine. Yeah. That's a high price point. Yeah. So yeah, but your physical card wasn't stolen. They like made some online purchase. Yeah, they like, yeah. I feel like more like a boomer than ever. Yeah. I'm like one of these old people that's vulnerable to email phishing scams. Boomer. Yeah, I have more problems. I mean, like Ben Shapiro is really on my shit list now, because ever since we spent that $4 apiece to subscribe to his clickbait news outlet, I feel like they sold, at least they sold my email to a bunch of like weird political

email lists. So I get like these crazy emails that are like, Anna, are you a patriot? Are you sick of this country going down the toilet? And I'm just like, leave me alone. I can't like unsubscribe. Yeah, it was all worth it though, because now we know what's really going on in the world. Yeah. So wait, so when are you back? I'm back next week. I'm back on Tuesday. And this is the end is your final destination. I'm going to take the weekend to maybe go to, I don't know, if anyone has any recs, I guess. Yeah, give her that cheap Ryanair rec. I was going to maybe go with some of the cast to like the Amalfi Coast or something, because I'm shooting, but I don't, I want to go swimming

and I want to do something kind of relaxed, but then I also want to see like Venice. It's hard. There's so much and I'm kind of not, I don't feel too invested in any of it. So I could kind of do anything. So it's hard to know what the right move is for like a weekend, John, with some of my colleagues. Yeah. Well, I've never been to the Amalfi Coast and I've been to Venice. So I would probably say go to the Amalfi Coast because you could probably swim and have some good seafood. And I feel like Venice is like a tourist trap now. And it's really hot. And it's hot. Yeah. In Italy right now. So it seems like, I think the Amalfi Coast probably also is what there's not that much tourism really because of the COVID. So it's actually a good time maybe to do the like

Rome or something. But I'm the only one who's like a total Philistine who hasn't ever really been to Italy. Yeah. Well, that's, I mean, there's a first time for everything. Exactly. I'm learning. Yeah. I mean, I'm with you. I only did the, I did like the bulk of my traveling with Eli right before COVID hit because I'm like a provincial bumpkin from landlocked central Jersey. I do feel when I talk to Italian people, like I'm making fun of them when I try to speak Italian or something. Well, do you ever have that thing that like I have this thing about around all people with accents? I just want to kind of gently, benignly mock them. Like not in a mean way. I just want to kind of mimic their accent. And then I have to like stop myself like moments before I do it.

Cause I'm like, this just seems really rude and unacceptable. I've been doing it constantly. And I was like, oh, thank you. It's like laughing, but people don't do that when they come to America. No, they don't like do something. They're not like, hello, they don't do some weird affect when they come to this. Yeah, they're not like, hello. Oh, shucks. I'm gonna pay for this with my credit card. Um, how's, how's the rape meter in Italy? Rapey. It's rapey. Okay. Big time kind of, yeah, not really, I don't want to travel alone because I'm a, I'm a codependent person to begin with, but also because it's just not safe for blondes, you know, you know, for a gorgeous blonde like me alone, the men are, the rumors are true.

Yeah. They, they love and want to marry blondes. Yeah. And they're looking at me with their, they're all undressing me with their eyes in it. Yeah, they're looking at you with their exhausting with their dark eyes, with their oily eyelids and vague Arab flavor. They're, the, the Italian men are like really rapey, like hands down the rapiest people, I think in Europe. I've never been to Albania, but I wonder when they'll get there, like me too moment, because the French are kind of rapey as well. They're having, you know, a bit of a reckoning. Yeah, but the French are like, there is an Italian crew member on set who keeps DMing actresses. Really? Like he's going down like a Rolodex. Basically. Yeah. And one told him like,

stop, please. This is like a professional and then he just, he did it again. I mean, I remember like the first time I went to Italy, I was like 16 and my sister was 14. We were like in a tour group with my mom and my grandpa. And it was like the worst thing ever, because when you're 16, you're like horny and adventurous and you want to hang out by yourself and not be surrounded by like a tour bus full of boomers in sun hats. And I remember like the bus driver was this 36 year old bachelor, Genaro, who like lived with his mother. And by the end of it all, like we were like going across the country, he was like banging the tour guide, who was like one of these like horny, big breasted British women that looks like Daido and travels to Southern

Europe to shack up the tribulos. It was like that kind of vibe. The Brits have a whole thing with Italy. It's like they are kind of way of accessing a more libidinous kind of like savage lifestyle or something. Yeah, the British women love going to like Greece or Italy and like getting their identity stolen by some like gay for pay jiggalo. Or straight for pay, I guess. Yeah, you get your back blown out by Italian stallions. Some of them are hot for sure. They're okay. They look, it's crazy because Italian men in Italy look like skinnier, more refined versions of Italian men in America. Like the dress code is the same. Yeah. It's totally hardwired in their DNA to wear like true religion jeans with like bedazzled pockets. And like,

I'm seeing a lot. I saw a lot of like Fred Perry. Yeah. And yeah, like bedazzled denim at the resort. But those were Germans too. That's just kind of like a European, the Philippine vibe. They love it like a soft driving moccasin and like transition lenses. Yeah. Basically soft. They dress like soccer fans. But I remember like, if by the way, if you have a chance, you should also go to Sicily, which is like my favorite place in the world, because it's like not Italy. It's like very weird. And I've been told to go to Sicily, but it's a bit of a trap. Yeah, it's a trap. And I'm flying out of Rome. So I don't want to, logistics are not my strong suit. Yeah. You have to really have somebody else do the kind of logistical, the planning for you,

which is like why I'm grateful to Eli because he did everything and I just went along and like pointed at stuff I wanted and like, bitch. Did he have a tour manager? No. Oh, cool. That's nice. That's nice of him to take his provincial girlfriend. Yeah. Usually he has like handlers in the respective countries and they make things easy for you, especially like in China where the white man, the round eye is not allowed to roam free. Totally. But everybody was really nice. But Sicily was really fun because I got almost raped so many times. Like, I don't know if I ever told the story on this podcast of how I like swam over to some rock in Taramino that had like an estate on it and some guy like came out

of it. This is when you were like a teen. Yeah, I was a teen. I think I have told the story and this guy just like basically invited me to like have sex with him in like open air, which I kind of regret not doing because I probably would have gotten an STD, but it would have been like an even funnier story. It would have been a memorable experience. And I remember just like peeing in amongst the lemon trees and there was like some guy jacking off. Wow. They're really horny. They're like satyrs. They're like satyrs. So horny. Yeah. And I'm not even blonde. No, but you're gorgeous. Thanks. You've got that nice full lip. I'm horny. It's like, well, I've been here too long. You know, I feel a little too untouched. Yeah. A little too. I'm very,

very tan. Yeah, that's great. I would show you my tan lines if I was on. Yeah. Well, I'll see them in a week. I'm really happy and proud of you for having, for getting a tan because that's like an important rite of passage for the summer. And I'm like hasty as shit. Like a weird shut-in. But I love like a nice even Italian. It's been a long time. I think I've really had like a gray kind of cast to my to my skin from being in New York and like not going outside during like the pandems. Yeah, eating canned fish. Which is good for your skin. It is. Omega threes, babe. Oh, true, true. Yeah. What about the mercury levels? Oh, yeah. Yeah. My skin looks great, but my teeth are falling out. And I'm chronic fatigue. Yeah. I don't know why I look so sickly, but I'm looking

much better. I think it's literally, Dasha, it's literally like the vitamin D deficiency of living in New York City and not ever going out in the sun. Or like when you do, there's so much like trash and stuff around. Yeah, which is like also why COVID was so bad in New York, because everything, everybody is like packed like sardines. It's dull, it's gray, and nobody is getting the vitamin D levels that they need. I saw a raccoon on the street yesterday. It was really cute. I saw, you posted a pic, it was, it was really peering around. I wanted to hug it, get rabies. They are so cute. I love their little hands. I was like, do you want to meet the baby? I'm a stroller. Come here. But you're lucky that you get to be in Italy, like in the warm,

eating mid-range, but still good food, because all there is to do now in New York is like follow this boring-ass mayoral race. Oh yeah, how's that going? I have no idea. But it's, I mean, it's the usual thing. This guy, Eric Adams, I think basically kind of swept the outer boroughs and the New York Times published a map that was essentially kind of like a racial and class map of New York. So all the kind of people of color and working class people were for Eric Adams, who's kind of a typical establishment Democrat with a law and order record. He's like a former cop. Nice. Yeah. And then if you look at the map, like Williamsburg and East Village went to this woman, Maya Wiley, who is the AOC endorsed candidate, the one that had the line about

overcoming trauma on her bio of her website. Yeah. And it'll be interesting if one of them or somebody else, it'll be interesting no matter what happens, because the guy who's running on the Republican ticket is the guy who we should have on the show, because he's the guy with the berets, the guy with the beret. Yeah. What's his deal? He's a local eccentric freak. He's like an OG New York guy. He started The Guardian Angels. So they were like the subway, the grassroots subway vigilante group in the 70s and 80s, right? Yeah. And that's the guy. And I thought it was... He started them. Wow. Yeah. And I really... We're going to run against a former NYPD cop. Well, yeah, I think it's like the perfect cherry on top to this kind of year-long saga,

because if Eric Adams gets the nomination, it's going to be law and order running against a slightly crazier version of law and order. Vigilante. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've been spending a lot of time with a former cop here in Italy. He's an actor, but he was a former cop. He was a cop for 20 years in the NYPD police department. Okay. And I love him. Yeah. And I'm kind of pulled like Blue Lives Matter now. You are. Yeah. Cops are closed. You heard it. I'm like actually like refund the police. Yeah. Because we talked about it, and he was making... I was... He was like, well, of course the police department should reform, but for that to happen, you need training, and that takes money. And I was like, yeah,

actually, no brainer. Well, he's one of the best guys I've ever met. Yeah. I love like the good cops who have like large arms, and they're like daddy figures. He's great. Yeah. Protect you. Yeah. Very good vibe. Just a nice like... How's the bod? Cool, humble guy. I mean, he's a knot, you know. Great. He's wonderful. No, that's... He's tall. He's tall and strong. Yeah. That's great. I mean like the whole like reforming the police, which I agree with, is like a bigger issue. You have to kind of reform and rebuild communities. I think most people want, of course, a police presence in their communities, especially if their communities are you know, as we call it vulnerable or underprivileged, but they want the police force

to look like them and they want them to be part of the community. Yeah. They don't want some randos running up in there. Totally. But yeah, so that's... Everybody around me has been talking about this mayoral race, and I'm just like, you know... I mean, we should care about it more. We do live in New York. Yeah. I should stop being a mincey little bitch and like register to vote here, because I've been here for like 11 or 12 years at this point. There's no excuse that we registered to vote in New Jersey. Yeah. I'm in New York. You are in New York. But yeah, it'll be interesting. I wouldn't be surprised. I don't know how... Like because they did this ranked voting thing where you, you know,

tick off your first, second, third, whatever, fourth, fifth choice. Again, it'll be interesting if Eric Adams wins. It'll be interesting if they fuck Eric Adams somehow and appoint this Garcia woman or this Wiley woman. It'll... We'll see. How would they? I thought he was ahead by a wide margin. I think like the Democrat... I think through the ranked voting thing, the Democrats could really kind of pull a rabbit out of that and do something. I'm not sure how it would work, but I wouldn't be surprised. Right. Crazier things have happened. Yeah. Yeah. Bernie would have won, et cetera. Yeah. Anyway. We have a... We have kind of a skimpy docket. Yeah.

McAfee. I'm a little... Yeah, John McAfee found... Found dead by hanging in a Spanish prison cell. And yeah, and I guess the question on everybody's minds is, did he get upsteined? Yeah, which he said basically, he got a tattoo that said whacked. Yeah. And basically said many times that he wasn't suicidal and wouldn't kill himself. So if he was found dead, but he is so unhinged that it's exactly the kind of thing... It seems highly plausible that he would say that and then kill himself. Well, so he was facing like a kind of bevy of financial crime charges in the United States. Tax evasion. Tax evasion and then also like pumping and dumping crypto. So he had like a multitude of different indictments. So I... He was also 75 years

old and I don't know what your take on this is. 75. 75, yeah. Oh, I didn't realize. He seemed younger. I guess that's the well. He had a young spirit. He reminds me of like... Like he's like this kind of like old school, rugged, high T-Mail. Lover Taran. Yeah. Like he reminds me of like Burt Reynolds or like Charlton Heston or something. Yeah, a dying breed. Yeah, he looked like an actor. Like he looked like he could be in soaps in the 80s and 90s. Totally. Not gonna lie. Probably a one on the binary for me. For you, for real. Definitely a zero for me. Well, because I like rugged, disgusting, awful men. I like a barrel chest, but I just like a more cerebral vibe. Yeah, this guy had like Dan Bilzerian

vibes. Exactly. I don't know. For me, it's like, yeah, RIP, John McAfee, rest in power, rest in white power. I mean, also, it's not out of the realm of possibility for me that anyone would fake their death. Yeah. For various reasons. Yeah. And he seems like a great candidate for something like that too. I think, okay, here's my take. I think that he was 75. It's totally conceivable that he decided to end it all because spending his golden years in a jail cell, like dealing with permanent litigation is not a sexy option, especially for a guy who's used to living a life of jet setting and hedonism and also dramatizing his jet setting and hedonism. Exactly. And not, he's obviously not like a coward. Like he could, he could pull it off.

Yeah, totally. And creating all this like assassination mystique around himself is also kind of in line with something that he seems like he would want. Yeah. Like I really think that he orchestrated kind of a performance or prank because he saw what had happened to Epstein and he knew that his fate would be debated posthumously forever and ever. Exactly. And that was like his last act. I agree. I basically completely, that seems totally plausible, which, you know, it's pretty more plausible to me than him. It seems more plausible even than him being murdered. Yeah. Because I think if Epstein was definitely murdered, but McAfee, I'm going to go with suicide. 100%. Yeah. Same. Same. Things aren't what they seem.

But he also, didn't he say he had like a dead man's switch that like if he was murdered, he would like release all this information, compromising information he had. And it seems like none of that has like come to light yet. So, yeah, I doubt, I just doubt it. Yeah. I think like he's, he's like, he's a good crisis actor and he's like keeping everybody on the hook in the afterlife, which is really cool. Well, I actually think he, the drone footage of Little Saint James that I used in Scary, I kind of had a feeling that maybe he was the one who took it. Wait, what makes you think that? Because he's likes to like float around that zone and like probably has an eye, like whoever took it either has an island of their own

or access to an island or some kind of boat, like to be close enough to operate a drone over Little Saint James. I think it just seems kind of like something an eccentric. Was he a billionaire? Maybe. Millionaire. In any case, you would probably lie about that, like Kylie Jenner style. Also, he claimed he had 47 kids. Yeah, right. Okay. Well, maybe. I mean, yeah, there was, he's busting and busting nuts left and right. Yeah. There was like that comment about him considering lady boys, women. Yeah. He was a, you know, very progressive. Yeah. Can't accuse that guy of transphobia. He, it's kind of the one thing you can't accuse him of.

But you know, like I was reading the New York Post article about this and they were saying that he has like a 10-pound indictment for evading millions of dollars in taxes that he skipped paying taxes from 2014 to 2018 on income that he had made through speaking engagements and selling his personal story for a documentary and doing consulting work. And then also he, in an accomplice, allegedly built Bitcoin investors out of some 13 million and two schemes. So he, and on which he made a $2 million profit. And to me, this is like a joke. This is a kind of like chump change. Like he seems like a small fry all in all. Like anybody who's a kind of like eccentric raconteur and has too much of a footprint is always a fall guy, is a scapegoat. You know what

I'm saying? Like the real tax evaders and like, yeah, they're so, they're so bland as to be totally invisible. They're like t-shirt dudes. And they're, they're smart. They're discreet. Yeah. They have some offshore bank accounts. They have like some place in the Caymans and they, you wouldn't, they're like ghosts basically. I think the real, the real sickos. We just would never, would never hear about them. And I mean, like, you know, it's funny that he was nabbed for tax evasion because I mean, literally no billionaires pay taxes. I mean, we were talking about briefly mentioned this like pro-publica story about like Bezos and Elon Musk and like all the kind of head honchos who just like don't pay taxes. And you know, it's also like, didn't Elon Musk do

a pump and dump scheme with like Dogecoin? Basically, right? I mean, people really know how it works. But nothing happened. I also noticed Nassim Nikols Taleb was melting down on Twitter over Bitcoin, which to me means like one of two things. Either he has beef with somebody over an investment, or he's creating like drumming up some fake controversy so he can make a power move like later. Like all these guys, you know. Yeah. Men are so pathetic sometimes. I just really find, found back at these whole shtick and not to speak ill of the dead, but just so kind of very masculine kind of torments that I don't relate to or find endearing or really all that interesting. Well, it's gay and melodramatic. He really does remind me of like Burt Reynolds or

Sean Connery or like Kirk Douglas, like these guys who were like really kind of like manly men on screen. Or again, like he's a total soap star, but who are actually just like female style narcissists. Exactly. Who like to make it about them and are kind of like, you know, like lacrimose and like entitled or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, that vibe. And I think he was like, he was really an expert at kind of manufacturing fake controversy around himself. Yeah. So this is totally in line with he died as he lived. Yeah. Being a faggot. Yeah. But being a drama queen. Being a drama queen. Being desperate for, yeah, like attention and intrigue and seeming more interesting and important than he actually

is. Yeah. Which is like why he's the perfect fall guy. Well, fall guy for what? Like for whatever. I mean, he's a perfect also like distraction. Like people are going to be talking about him forever or not a fall guy, but he's like a perfect kind of scapegoat for like the, the greater systemic fact that millionaires and billionaires are constantly defrauding the system at all times. Don't pay taxes are doing all sorts of like speculative stock market schemes that the system is basically primed. It's rigged for it. Yeah. And he's like the designated villain. And he's kind of like a comical comedy style villain. Exactly. Well, yeah. The hunkers and the boats and the

yeah, I don't like have like a scat, scatophilia thing too. That I don't know. I haven't, that's, I just heard. I mean, he would. Nothing's off limits. I don't think he's a fall guy in the way that like, or scapegoat in the way that, you know, made off or Epstein was because I think like Epstein, in spite of his crimes, again, was kind of the sacrificial lamb of like a deeper, darker conspiracy. And McAfee, I think is more of a lone wolf, a maverick, a maven. Yeah. Who capitalized on the Epstein myth on some level. Exactly. Exactly.

Because he saw an opening there for, for a way to like pump his own rep in the afterlife. He was so old. Yeah. He has that, he has that Kelly and Conway thing where he looks chewed up and like a formerly attractive person. I'm going to see if I can find a young pic of him. Oh yeah, that's a good idea. Because he got rich off the antiviral software. Yeah. Oh no, he's actually, he became kind of, oh, he's so gross.

I can't believe he's a one for you, Anna. Only because I hate myself, not because I actually find him attractive. He was kind of okay when he was younger, but mostly no. I'm going to look him up too while we're googling. He's always kind of looks old. There's no like very young pictures of him, but... It's interesting though that he's sort of like a kind of tech entrepreneur, tech czar, because you know, he's by far the most colorful one of them, because the other ones are literally like Zuck and Elon Musk.

Yeah. It's like guys that have to get checked for melanoma when they go out in the sun once. Oh, well then there was a Q post that was on his Instagram after he was found dead. Yeah. Which is also just such a like annoying, yeah, a feminine thing to do. Okay, no, Dasha, I agree with you because I'm looking at younger photos, and he was kind of like boring and unremarkable. I think he looks better as a gnarly old man.

Yeah, he kind of grew into his eccentricities and that, well, where I guess we're going to talk about this David Brooks op-ed about lookism. Yeah, I just, I wonder what's going to happen when Dan Bilzerian suffers his like 967th heart attack and people think that he was like off by a lunatic. Because he knew, he knew too much about getting pussy. He knew where the pussy was buried and they had, they had so awesome. Um, shall we move on to the next thing on the docket? Yeah.

Any more comments about McAfee? I really, you know, I don't care. I don't either. I really don't care. That's the thing. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard for me to muster the muster enthusiasm around it. It feels just too, it feels very manufactured. Yeah. Now that you're under the Tuscan sun, there's like other stuff. Exactly. I'm on some epray love shit. So I can't get wrapped up in any of these conspiracy theories again.

Yeah, it takes too much time. Now that I'm an elite. But speaking of kind of attractiveness, David Brooks wrote a totally pathetic op-ed in the New York Times called, why is it okay to be mean to the ugly? In which he kind of makes a case for lookism as a particularly sinister form of bigotry. Yeah. Citing studies that attractive people have not only like a physical advantage, but people sort of project a moral superiority onto them.

He says Spicer suggests attractive people are more likely to be offered job interviews, more likely to be hired and more likely to be promoted than less attractive individuals, more likely to receive loans, blah, blah, blah and unattractive people. An American worker who's among the bottom one seventh in looks earns about 10 to 15% less a year than one in the top third. But the bottom seventh is like that's a very ugly quadrant like that. Okay. My big question is who decides who counts as unattractive in these surveys and studies? Like who's the faceless committee behind the mirrored glass?

Yeah, like they're deciding who makes the cut. That alludes to like facial symmetry and stuff. I know firsthand that attractiveness really transcends like symmetry. It's really more of like a vibe that people are basically kind of free to cultivate. I think, I don't find that to be attractive, but seeing photos of him younger and then older, I think he became more attractive even though like objectively I'm like committee's metric. You would be less attractive as you age, but I think becoming more of one self makes someone more attractive actually. Yeah, becoming more of like a...

I just, I definitely buy, I don't buy. Like I'm sure, yeah, like people who are stunningly attractive have some like nominal advantage that I would basically just attribute to like very banal and normal like psychological factors. But I, for the most part, I think people who aren't like totally conventionally attractive or have like an awkward adolescence or early adulthood are more motivated to be successful in other realms and to like cultivate traits that endear people to them in spite of them not being like a perfect 10 or something, you know? Yeah, like being a podcaster or like starting a great podcast or making an independent film. And then it doesn't matter

that you have like a mole, a prominent facial mole. Yeah, you compensate through more if that were all cerebral measures or something. Yeah, my faint mustache and Groucho Mark's nose has not stopped me from achieving what I've wanted to achieve in life. Yeah, I think, okay, like whenever people start to try to codify, taxonomize attractiveness, I kind of check out because there's a lot of other external variables that go into it. Like confidence is really key. Exactly. I understand the argument that, you know, if you grew up with the feeling that you were unattractive, you might that might pay negative dividends in the future because you suffer from like a lack of confidence or something. Right, right. But that's difficult to attribute to like

an actual kind of like bigotryphera active prejudice. Yeah, I mean, like again, like I'm going to quote Dr. Maya Angelou who said that, you know, it's not what people do or say, it's how they make you feel in the end. And I think like if you have a kind of like big and warm personality that goes a lot farther than being merely hot. Exactly. And I would actually also like devil's advocate and say that like, personally, the people that I've encountered who have the lowest self esteem very often are like beautiful women who like are used to they're used to valuing themselves strictly on the basis of their looks. And they're almost like shy and receding, especially like beautiful tall people. It's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I know you mean. Yeah, I've met a lot

of kind of like really beautiful wallflowery people in my life. Yeah. And like, I've often found myself more attracted to yes, someone with kind of like a scrappy confidence. Yeah. And also rather than like a pristine physical beauty. Yeah. And like, you know, more importantly, I wonder why David Brooks of all people is writing this op-ed now. It's like a weird subject matter for David Brooks. I did wonder. Yeah, like what he was on about seems like he's like smoked weed or something and had a hot take that he wanted to expand upon. He well, he makes the case that we are a pagan culture. Yeah. And he says pagan culture holds up a certain ideal hero those who are genetically endowed in the realms of athleticism, intelligence and beauty.

This culture looks at obesity as a moral weakness and a sign that you're in a lower social class. Yeah, pagan culture places like I don't even know what reality he's referring to. Yeah, I would argue that this is I'm not even sure this is true anymore. I think for the first time in history, we actually identify with like weakness and ugliness on a cultural level or at least like in the mainstream media and also like, yeah, I don't know. It's funny because it's like David Brooks discovers kind of the natural, irreducible hierarchy, like biological hierarchy that can't be gamed by like equality or democracy, like some people are hotter than others. Yeah, exactly. I love this part. Why are we so blasé about this kind of discrimination? Maybe

people think lookism is based and they're baked into human nature and there's not so much they can do about it. Maybe it's because there's no national association of ugly people lobbying for a change. And I was like, wrong, wrong. This is like the whole purpose of Jamila Jamil's foundation. Mm-hmm. I way. Yeah. And that's, I mean, yeah, and there is so much, it's not like lookism per se, but that's fundamentally what like the fat acceptance, fat activism is about. Yeah, there's been like a paradigm shift in that, at least on the surface, like, for example, like obesity is no longer considered weakness or whatever he calls it or moral decrepitude. I mean, it is, right? Like when they

talk about kind of medical bias and stuff like all of that stuff is true. But yeah, as you said, like ideologically, I think we affirm and celebrate weakness. Yeah. And are a very decaying culture, basically. Yeah. And then he ends on this very bizarre note where he says a society that celebrates beauty, this obsessively is going, is going to be a social context in which the less beautiful will be slighted. The only solution is to shift the norms and practices. One positive example comes oddly from Victoria's secret, which replaced its angels with seven women of more diverse body types. When Victoria's secret is on the cutting edge of the fight against lookism, the rest of us have some catching up to do. What a weirdo, man. Yeah, David Brooks is also

What is he on about? He's like, unlock the secret that horniness is not about perfection, it's about abjection. But it's funny. Do you think he's he's suffering from low self-esteem? I mean, even the title like of the piece, which maybe was like an editorial decision, but why is it okay to be mean to the ugly? Yeah, I would say in general, it's like our culture doesn't really per is not permissive of meanness. Well, um, well, yeah, I would like problematize that and say, actually, what happens a lot of the time, because truth claims have given over fully to like this kind of postmodern condition of warring subjectivities is that who's ugly or not often depends on what team they play for, whether it's your team or not. Right. Even somebody who's unattractive, if they're

like one of the good guys, they're sort of like awkwardly affable, my funny valentine. And if they're on the bad guys team, they're like beyond the pale and like an example of like that physiognomy is real and that their outward features have been warped by their like, inner I do think you get the face you deserve. Basically. Yeah, I mean, it's very hard to like actually kind of slaw off the idea that that's true. I think if you're like a virtuous, like, like exempting the extremes, you know, the bottom seventh quarter quadrant and the top, whatever, like, obviously, there's attractive people who aren't morally virtuous. But basically, I think if you are a virtuous person with integrity, like it'll be reflected in your appearance.

If you respect your if you respect yourself, people can tell if you take care of yourself yet. And I think like, you know, as far as like kind of like genetics are concerned, it's really interesting because you know, genetics are not like a hard law, they're a general guidebook. And I think like, they the way that kind of your genetics, for example, express themselves in your physical being varies depending on whether you take care of yourself or not. Right. Like, you know, those memes that go around or they used to go around a couple of years ago that were like, you're not ugly or just poor. And it would be like photos of like Kylie Jenner before and afters. Well, that's made, you know, also a big, big part of it.

Yeah, it's like, I think like a lot of it has to do with just like, yeah, whether or not you take care of yourself, unfortunately, whether or not you have access to certain material means. And like, yeah, it all kind of like so yeah, to reduce, it feels dumb to even talk about about it because it feels it's such a half baked like idea from David Brooks, it's so wrong on so many levels. Well, I would just disagree with his basic premise that as a culture, we're at this point in time uniquely obsessed with beauty, I would say that actually that's the longer the case. The opposite is true. I think we're extremely aesthetically impoverished. Yeah, and I don't value you. Yeah, at all we value like, I don't know, convenience and victimhood somehow. Yeah,

and democracy, but the wrong form of democracy. Yeah, I don't think we're a pagan, pagan culture at all. I think, because the pagan stuff is like, Paulia harps done that all the time. Yeah. And that's sort of her like utopian ideal kind of of how like a society functions or like it integrates kind of it's like, pagan impulses into like, a society. Yeah. And, but it's aspirational. It's like, it's just not the case. I wish we were a more pagan culture. Yeah, I would probably agree with that. I mean, the Victoria's Secret Angels thing is like, case in point, and that like, there is no longer kind of an overall veneration of like, an implicitly agreed upon like conventional standard. Like, what's happened is that like,

everybody wants, again, the bar not just lowered, but customized to suit their particular like, identity flavor profile. David Brooks isn't that ugly. He shouldn't be tripping about it. I'm looking at it. He's kind of a one for me. Okay. Wow. Let me look. He's, I mean, he's just like, he's a guy who would never be appraised by those criteria in the first place, because he's like, a middle age white guy who's like, certainly not in the bottom seven, a toughness scale. Yeah, but I think most people, it really is like a bell curve. You know, most people are kind of somewhere in the middle and it's fine and they're

not, they don't have the advantages maybe of being a great beauty, but they also aren't disadvantaged by like some facial deformity or like extreme asymmetry or something. It's, most people fall somewhere in the middle and that and lookism is basically irrelevant in that case. Yeah. And by the way, it's like the bell, the bell curve, like, you know, at one end of the extreme, you have people who are like, I guess really ugly because they're like physically deformed and nobody makes fun of those people because everybody feels sorry for them and understands that it's like not their fault. And also on the other extreme, you have like the extremely beautiful top one percentile of people who are also freaks of nature because all of their genetics aligned

fortuitously, which is very hard to do. Most people have like a mix of like attractive and unattractive attributes, right? Like you have like, and the thing of the whole, yeah. Yeah, like you have pretty eyes, but weird teeth or you're like a nice body, but bad skin or something like that, you know. Yeah. And attractiveness is really about the gestalt and kind of an impression that is made. Yeah. And it's funny because the church bells are ringing and wait, I can't hear. You can't. It's my window is closed, but I can hear faintly. Incredible. Yeah, I love that. That's beautiful. If it wasn't so hard to communicate, I'd stay here. But the language barrier really is somehow harder than other places.

Yeah, but you're a Russian speaker, so I feel like it's not that hard for you to learn Italian. Italian. Yeah. I think if you stayed there for like six months, you'd be fine. You'd be conversational. Ciao. That's all you need to know. You need to know. Ciao. Buongiorno. Buongiorno, yeah. Espresso. And it's really funny because like, you know, it's weird that he cites this example of Victoria's Secret, which is just like a naked attempt at rebranding. Yeah. It's not, it's not, you know, a net positive or a net negative. It just sort of like is what it is, you know. Seems kind of the whole piece seems a little phoned in, like he ran out of ideas. Yeah, it's like, it reminded me of like the thing that happened this week when the kind of

the kind of military adopting the rhetoric of like wokeness and anti-racism and that guy, the general Miley, who's like the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, was like, I want to understand white rage and I'm a white guy at like a house hearing. And what did he say? That he, he was like recorded at a hearing saying that he as a white man wants to understand white rage. Okay. I mean, you know, this is the highest ranking officer of the American military. And people are, that's not good. I mean, it's, it's weird, but it's also not like people are like locked into now debating whether his remarks are genuine or cynical. And it's like, you know, probably a little bit of both. Yeah. I don't, and I don't, I only get

matters. You what? Yeah. And it's like, yeah, I mean, it's true that the American US military is like a multicultural institution that's moving away from high casualty ground wars to like automated drone wars. Why was he on about white rage anyway? I think like, because the, you know, like, wokeness, I guess, is the new jingoism. I don't know. It's like the new kind of like soft power export. But I think like it's Well, because they're going to do, they're trying to combat like domestic terrorism. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And employee, as somebody else pointed out, a bunch of kind of iffy,

translucent Pete Buttigieg types to be kind of back end administrators and drone operators. And also are trying to fold kind of bring more people of color into the fold. So I think it's like, you know, fruitless and stupid to debate whether this is like a cynical thing or like a sign of progress, you know, that's the wrong debate to have. Just like it's stupid to debate whether Victoria's secret is doing body positivity or a cynical rebrand. Yeah, it doesn't matter at the end of the day. Yeah. Anyway, All right.

I'm seeing a, what else, what else did he say? It's interesting that he cited the statistic that the study that the unattractive black women take the biggest pay hit of all unattractive people. I think they earn like 63 cents to the dollar of their more attractive counterparts. Systemic races. That's just, that's all attributable to like more meaningful forms of prejudice. Yeah, I don't think that's like racism and sexism. Yeah. And it's funny because like, you know, I've said this a million times before, but like one of the signs that we do not live in a white supremacist nation and that in fact we live in a very multicultural society is that the beauty norms, whether you like it or not, have really changed to incorporate

darker skinned people. I mean, I think it may be more like ethnically ambiguous, but I do think colorism is a thing. Yeah, but that's like a stepping stone, you know. I don't know. I don't think actually like dark skinned people have usurped like beauty norms. I think it's in a very kind of like mocha zone. No, no, not at all. Not at all. But I saw, it's funny because I saw like a funny tweet the other day of somebody was making kind of like a negative comment on, it was like a GQ or Maxim cover. And they were, it was like a side by side of like a Kate Upton cover from like 10 years ago maybe and like the new Tiana Taylor cover. And they were making the point. Let me look up the Tiana Taylor cover. I guess if you just Google Tiana Taylor.

I don't know. I don't remember. It's one of those like fake men's magazines that is actually only read by gay nerds or is read by nobody now. It was read by gay nerds in like 2006. But they were making this kind of point about like social decline because Tiana Taylor is like dark skinned and is dressed in a tomboyish kind of aggressive fashion. Androgynous. Yeah, Kate Upton is like soft and blonde and whatever. And I was like, Kate Upton, fantastic upper body, but down below not so great, you know. No, but I was thinking like actually kind of my like bleeding heart, libtard came out and I was like what? Like Tiana Taylor looks just as good if not better than Kate Upton. Like what are you

on about? This woman's like way better than Kate Upton. She's insane. She has two kids. She looks great on this guy. She doesn't even look androgynous. No, she looks like kind of like a little video girl from 1997 or something. That waist is really hot. Oof, oof. And I was like this actually to me was not an example of like wokeness in action or anything. Yeah, no, I think that is very just kind of zeitgeisty. I can't believe Maxim is still around. It's Maxim who's the magazine. Okay, yeah. Yeah, the bigger question again is why is Maxim still being published? Who's reading Maxim? Who's reading Maxim, yeah. Magazine. Literally, yeah, nobody.

They have like a subscription of three people and like two of them are the editors, you know. Anyway, should we talk about Mumford and Sons? Yes, a band that I literally have, I don't know what they sound like. I've never heard a Mumford and Sons song or actually I have, I'm sure I'm certain of it, but in like one of the coffee shops with succulents and seven dollar lattes. Exactly, 100% you have. You know, yeah, if you pointed me to a Mumford and Sons song, I would probably be like, yeah, but like, yeah. They're super annoying. They suck ass. They suck really bad. It's like banjo. It's like civil war core kind of banjo stuff. Yeah, which is ironic that the guy got canceled for being like a conservative and like a white nationalist or

whatever because their whole aesthetic is like the dregs of the Confederacy repackaged for like Williamsburg liberals. I think they're English. Oh, okay. So they're doing like American Confederacy role play. They're doing like Americana. It's all very, very racist without even needing to like overtly be a fan of like, what did he get in trouble for? I like missed this scandal. Me too. I just, I saw it on Twitter and I was like, oh yeah, this is like kind of like So wait, he quit the ban. Did we say that? Yeah, his name is Winston Marshall and he's like the banjo player in Mumford and Sons and he published an op-ed in Newsweek explaining his decision to leave the band because as he claims, he kind of ran afoul of woke pieties and was, it made life too

difficult for his bandmates. In March, he tweeted this like anti-fah chronicler Andy Know to congratulate him on his new book Unmasked, which then set off this firestorm of cancellation. He writes, over the course of 24 hours, it was trending with tens of thousands of angry tweets and comments. I failed to foresee that my commenting on a book critical of the far left would be interpreted as approval of the equally abhorrent far right. And then yeah, he goes on, nothing could be further from the truth. 13 of my members were murdered in the concentration camps of the Holocaust. My grandmother, unlike her cousins, aunts and uncles survived. She and I were close. My family knows the evils of fascism painfully well to say the least. To call me fascist was

ludicrous beyond belief. And then here's the funniest line in his op-ed. I've had plenty of abuse over the years. I'm a banjo player after all. Yes. Well now he's not anymore. He's gonna start a podcast or something. He's gonna start busking on the Williamsburg All-Stop. Do you think he, things actually are okay between him and his bandmates or do you think he was kind of ousted? Nope. I think that they, they probably didn't fire him, but they tacitly pressured him to leave. Yeah, I bet things were tense at the, at the studio. I've been like burdened son's practice space. I think like either he's being a martyr and like performatively falling on a sword or they really kind of like edged him out and or both, you know, there was something like really

passive aggressive in his line that he wanted to make life easier for his bandmates because, you know, they are regarded as a unified front. Right. Right, right, right. That like didn't sit well with me. There's, I'm pulling up, there was Mark, Markey Smith, RIP had a really great quote about, he gave an interview where he was complaining about playing festival shows with bands comprised of quote, ass lickers. We were playing a festival in Dublin the other week. There was this other group like warming up in the next sort of chalet and they were terrible. I said, shut them cunts up and they were still warming up. So I threw a bottle with them. The band said, that's the sons of Mumford or something. They're number five in the charts. I just thought they were a load of retarded Irish folks.

Troubling bards of wokeness. Well, the lead, the main, the lead singer of Mumford and Sons is married to Carrie Mulligan. That's another thing I know about them. Okay. And they live in like the English countryside together. Yeah, so I'm sure she, she wasn't happy with, with his banjo player either. Yeah. Yeah. She like called them up and raged that a promising young woman was slated to an an Oscar. So they had to drop the loser. Yeah, where are they going to find another banjo player? They have to get a trans woman. Smart. Yeah. With like kind of a Charles, Charles, like a Manson girl look. Casting call. Yeah. I, and then he says, I don't think trans people like Mumford and Sons. No, probably not. I haven't met anybody who likes Mumford and Sons.

I'm sorry to beat up on this guy, by the way, I kind of, I feel his pain on some level, you know, like he says, I've spent much time reflecting reading and listening. The truth is that my commenting on a book that documents the extreme far left in their activities is in no way an endorsement of the equally repugnant far right. The truth is that reporting on extremism at the great risk of endangering oneself is unquestionably brave. I also feel that my previous apology in a small way participates in the lie that such extremism does not exist or worse is a force for good. So I guess he apologized and now he's walking back. I like, I kind of like how he set that up. Like I was expecting him to walk his comments back even more, but he doubled down on

them. He does say like there's something wrong with being a conservative, even though he doesn't identify as one because he sees himself more as like a liberal or a centrist. I sympathize with that point, you know, like I was watching the Alex Jones documentary on Bohemian Grove the other day. Oh, cool. Yeah, Alex Jones rules. He's so cool and cute. I know. And in it, he says like kind of exasperatedly, he's like, I'm not a right winger. I'm not conservative. And I don't think he is. He's a guy who like does not map cleanly onto the matrix. Yeah, he's not. He's he isn't. Yeah, he's doing his own thing. Yeah. And the thing is like the problem, the problem is that like I sympathize with this guy and that he has to now be like a little circus seal bouncing a ball

on his nose for a bunch of liberals because I just said I just used that I said to someone the other day I said I feel like a circus. I said I have to keep the ball in the air like a seal. Yeah. Yeah, we all do. Yeah, we all do. And I like sympathize with him having to like do this thing where he's like, by the way, the far right is equally repugnant and abhorrent. And you know, yeah, I don't know a ton of about Andy know, but I kind of feel like he's he's this guy that basically follows the antifa around and puts himself into positions where he gets beat up to document their kind of violent excesses, you know. Yeah, right. And but he wrote a book about the or about the antifa that was like a New York Times bestseller, I guess. Oh, yeah.

That was the book. No, yeah, I remember that guy that guy was always around and all like in Portland. And yeah, he was like on the front on the front lines of the great like larp larp antifa war. Right, yeah. And I just I mean, I feel bad for this guy because I was also thinking like, like, this is the hill you're going to die on like, Andy know, like, you're not even like, you're getting canceled for for liking Andy know, which is just depressing, not like Charles Murray or Steve Saylor or somebody totally like untouchable, like, come on now. Like, well, maybe he'll till triple down and become increasingly reactionary. Maybe he'll go and Tucker and stuff. Yeah, and give us slightly more articulate. But yeah, I really do sympathize with kind of like old school

earnest, centrist, liberal types at this point, who are like, legitimately confused and bewildered as to why they're being not only canceled, but called conservatives or fascists. But the problem is that their worldview and their like, means of defending themselves are obsolete. I mean, Bill Maher is kind of like a classic centrist, classic with classic liberal. Yeah. And he but he's kind of carved out an audience, much like us, like, you know, he's sort of set the tone and the stage and the limits of his own like, he's not he's not getting canceled. But because like, Mumford and sons are part of the like, flailing music industry. Yeah. He has to fall on the sword. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it's really a problem. It's a kind of question

of audience to like, if you are coded as like, left or liberal, people get way angrier than you if you're coded as conservative or right wing, because they don't pay attention as much to right wingers, they're in their own, everybody's in their own like little Warsaw ghetto. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. But the problem with this kind of like, rationalist, liberal approach, like, which kind of aims to get through to its opponents through kind of facts and logic, is that it may be like moderate and honorable or whatever, but it doesn't work. Because, you know, the people that you're dealing with don't respect, they don't share the common standard of conduct in wartime. Exactly. And it's totally emotional and

lividness for people. Yeah. And these people are all politics is sexual pathology. And there's just no reason no reasoning with that. Yeah, it's all like Freudian. And that's been kind of completely exposed revealed in the last few years. And, you know, your opponents are like terrorists and gorillas, they're not kind of like equal opponents. They want to like murder your dog, you know, and they don't want to break bread with you or reach some consensus. No, because they need to protect their own psyches. Yeah, which is like what you know, they also when people do this thing that like, I've been guilty of like, myself, when people try to reason with them or try to bring up their

ancestry or something, they smell blood. Yeah, they're like disgusted and revolted by this approach. I mean, this all freaks me out on a broader scale, because I've heard, like recently, I've heard a lot of people echo this idea that we're entering into a new dark ages. And so, well, like, you know, the, the idea that like, people, there's, there's a general decline, for example, incompetence and technological ability. I've seen some people argue that it's possible, for example, that we're hitting kind of a technological wall. That's kind of the argument of the stagnation is that like, innovation and progress have stalled, which leads to stalling out of the culture as well. It's like the Ross Douthat argument. Yeah, that's what I was thinking

of. But, but the Douthat, yeah. No, sorry, go ahead. It does seem that way, but it seems like it's like Douthat says like, Rome was falling for like 400 years, you know, it's like such a slow process, actually. Yeah, it's not like a delusion. It's a leak. Exactly. It's like a punctured breast implant that leaks into your sternum and gives you autoimmune disorder. But like setting that aside, like on a more basic level, yeah, it gives you like, yeah, there's, there's just like an overall decline in basic comprehension and literacy, like in the basic skills of like following a line of reasoning and argument, you know? Yeah, unfortunately, yeah, that's probably true. Yeah, and I'm not, I'm not 100% sure if that's always been the case. And we only see it now because there's more like

availability of information, or whether there has been an actual decline, I think probably a little bit of both. And it made me think again, of this like, I have an illich point that I bring up of like, atrogenics, right, which he talks about in reference to healthcare, that there was like a threshold or watershed where advances in medicine and healthcare stopped being unanimously like positive and beneficial and became harmful instead. But you can also apply that to the concept of like mass media and mass literacy in a way. So that, that's what freaks me out that like, that kind of like totally postmodern reality where you can't get through to anybody. Yeah, but don't you think it's also like, I don't know, it's such a microcosm of like, media squabbling? Yeah, totally. Like Twitter,

like cancel culture is such a like, Twitter phenomenon. And in that way is actually really divorced from and not reflective of like, larger social trends. It's all, it just, it's, it just feels a little myopic or something or like there's something else going on. I guess that is what you're saying with the postmodern reality, like there is something else going on that we just don't have access to. And the only reality that's like reflected to us is this like, increasingly broken retarded one. Yeah, that that is that you're right is like an unreality in a simulation that basically only existed for a time on like comp college campuses and in social media, but that gets reaffirmed all the time, because that's all that people talk about. And I was thinking like

on a positive note on like a compassionate note, you know, there's this whole obsession, fixation in the culture on like these ideas of compassion and empathy, which are often used actually to terrorize people. But the fact that that exists, that it's being like codified in language suggests that people collectively into it, that our culture has become too cruel, that there is in fact, like a real lack of compassion and empathy. Yeah, but it's unclear how to like break through to the other side. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to get into this whole like existential no, no, no argument or the Mumford and Sunsky band. Like I said, that I will never listen to willingly at least. Yeah, I agree with you fundamentally. Yeah. And I think yeah, it's all everything just feels kind of

manufactured. Yeah. And like it refers fundamentally to a microcosm. And that people like in their actual real lives that we have less and less access to, especially post COVID. Yeah, it's like, it's, it's, it's fake. It's not real. Like the reality on the ground is like, so much nicer and cheerier. And like, you know, like I go to like the laundromat and the lady who owns the place that her husband pinches my baby's cheeks. The other day, I was like, struggling to get my like little stroller up the stairs. And this guy who sells like random crap by the side of my apartment handed me like he came over and like gave me some baby booties for the baby, which was so sweet. Oh, like he didn't have to do that. He's also he helped us

more like people are a lot nicer, more compassionate in reality. Yeah. And being on like a on location on a production, I feel very like embedded kind of in like a workplace more than I usually do. And I'm like interfacing with people constantly who I've been working with for, I mean, like six or seven months now. Yeah. And I really respect it's in care for a lot of like, my co workers and like, the crew and like, and all it takes doesn't like really enter into like our the decency. Yeah, it's nice. humanity of actually just like being amongst people working towards a common goal. People like respecting and taking their jobs seriously and doing good work. Yeah. And by the way, even when your colleagues, your co workers are like annoying or over dramatic

or whatever, you I'm sure plenty of them. Yeah, because they're like 3d people in front of you. Exactly. And you're and I'm sure many of them, if they knew, or maybe they do know about my little podcasting venture would find are like a sense of we woke or like would find some of my like takes to be a point. But when you actually are interfacing with human being. Like the time you said David Brooks was the one on the binary. Yeah, sorry. Exactly. Yeah, I hope. I hope she said refund the police. Well, that's one of my co workers. Yes, you say. Well, yeah, as it turns out, yeah, things are a lot like more kind of like, yeah, like friendly and amenable in real life. Yeah. And so maybe breaking on through to the other side is really just a case of like

logging off. Yeah, or or applying the kind of human model to like, you know, giving people the benefit of the doubt. And I'm always struck with the thing that I'm always struck by is how like people on the internet are not only stupid, but they're uncharitable, like their, their interpretations, their reads of things are not, it's forgivable. For me, it's like forgivable that people are, you know, stupid or wrong. Sometimes what is not forgivable for me is when they jump to the most uncharitable conclusion. Constantly, right? It's like very obviously like not worn out by reality. Like when they they interpret, like there's this, there's like a tendency, for example, like on the kind of self identified online left or whatever,

there's this idea that like, basically, they have like some monopoly on humor or irony and the people that they deem their enemies or their opponents are incapable of humor or irony. So anything that they do or say, if it's funny, it's unintentionally so. Right. No, it's very, very retarded. Yeah. And just a minefield of like, project, yeah, projection and bad faith arguments. Yeah. So I guess my interest going forward is how to like, get out of that type of situation without resorting to this kind of liberal, rationalist outlook, which has its actually as its logical conclusion, the total breakdown of social norms. Totally. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's the dark ages of increasingly anti social

definitely, I would say. Yeah. Well, anyway, on that note, should we wrap it should we wrap it up? Yeah, we've done like an hour and a half. Yeah, get well soon, Mumford and son's guy. Yeah, RIP McAfee, if you're really dead, which you may very well not be and it's really none of my business. Oh, yeah, that's smart. Maybe he faked his death, like Kenny Powers, and he'll come back with like a firm or something. Anyway, we'll see you in home. I'll be back, I'll be back next week. So we'll resume our regular scheduling. Yeah. See you in hell. See you in hell.