The Gargle - Wiggles | Grok AI | ApeFest eyes

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

Married guest editors Laura Davis and James Nokise join host Alice Fraser for episode 136 of The Gargle - the sonic glossy magazine to The Bugle, with one rule: no politics!🔊 Wiggles deterrent 🤖 Musk's Grok AI🙈 ApeFest eyes🧑‍⚖️ Crypto fraud🦤 ReviewsStory 1: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-02/council-wiggles-hot-potato-homeless-bunbury/103049964Story 2: https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-announces-grok-a-rebellious-ai-without-guardrails/Story 3: https://gizmodo.com/bored-ape-nft-event-blinded-eyes-skin-burns-video-1850994930Story 4: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67281759HOW TO SUPPORT THE GARGLE- Keep The Gargle alive and well by joining Team Bugle with a one-off payment, or become a Team Bugler or Super Bugler to receive extra bonus treats!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donateCONTENTS0:00 Start01:27 Front cover02:39 Satirical cartoon03:30 Story 1: The Wiggles demand Bunbury Council stop playing Hot Potato to disperse homeless people10:05 Ads10:55 Story 2: Elon Musk announces Grok, a rebellious AI without guardrails17:47 Reviews22:39 Story 3: NFT party attendees report burning eyes and vision loss from bright UV lights26:37 Story 4: 'Crypto King' Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty of one of biggest financial frauds in US history33:36 Bye / Anything to plug? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Welcome. This is The Gargle, a sonic glossy magazine to the Bugle's audio newspaper for a visual world. I'm your host, Alice Fraser, and your guest editors for this week's edition of the magazine. James Nwokise, welcome back. Lovely to be here. I almost said welcome to you, but that's just the morning talking. We can all be welcoming to one another. And Laura Davis, welcome. Welcome, Alice, welcome. I think you are the first hosts that we've had who are married to each other.

Thank you. Thank you. Before we sit down together and have the cup of tea that is this week's top stories, let's have a look at the front cover of the magazine. The front cover this week is the looks maxing community feature, a feature article on the looks maxing community. If you don't know what the looks maxing community is, it's young men online who want to be hot,

including a guy on TikTok who recommends giving yourself a better jawline by hitting yourself in the jaw with a hammer so it's a good place to start you know just a hammer a dildo is that is that what it's been yeah be your own michelangelo yeah i yeah i don't know if it works like that but it's a nice way to sort of rebrand vanity, which has traditionally been seen as a more kind of a feminine art form. But I like the idea of masculinizing vanity to the point of hitting yourself in the chin with a hammer. It's the gua sha of the bro. Yeah, lymphatic drainage given a brutal twist. Keep the hammer in the fridge for puffiness yeah i just want young men lining up in bunnings looking looking at the hammers figuring out which one is the best for the face yeah i think if you're not masculine enough to already own the

hammer it's maybe not for you the satirical cartoon this week is a caricature figure representing cryptocurrency desperately trying to brush a dusty pile of sam bankman freed convicted on all counts under the rug and the alternative satirical cartoon this week is the stock market in america panicking at the widespread uptake of ozempic and other weight loss drugs and fleeing en masse from companies that are seen to benefit from America's obesity epidemic. This is a real move that's happened in the stock market in the last few weeks with the uptake of a Zempik. How do you feel about that, James? Well, I mean, crypto is really just

the weight loss drug of the economy, isn't it? You've got to take it up, man. It's the newest threat. It's going to be, oh, it's not working oh i'm in hospital well uh that's a that's a probably a spoiler alert for one of our latest stories but our top story this week is wiggles news and this is the news that the wiggles are deeply disappointed uh with bunbury council who are apparently using the Wiggles Track hot potato to try and make life inhospitable for homeless people. Laura Davis, can you unpack this story for us? Look, as a native of these lands, it is though they have not made Bunbury inhospitable enough for people who live there in the houses.

hospitable enough for people who live there in the houses. I just can't imagine how I would be able to continue with my life if the Wiggles were disappointed in me. I don't think everybody, like every Australian in a child is crying. Every Australian in a child is crying. If the Wiggles say, no, no, no, we're very disappointed in you, you change your behaviour, surely. Oh, yeah. Because, I mean, even if your parents are disappointed in you, you can rebel against your parents.

But you can't rebel against the Wiggles. Yeah, I can handle my parents being disappointed at me. I think Dorothy the dinosaur is just too far. I don't think I would be okay. I had trouble sleeping last night knowing the Wiggles were disappointed in Bunbury Council, you know, and I don't even work for Bunbury Council, which is a fate I have, you know, stridently avoided.

I mean, Bunbury is the place where I was heckled by a man who said, you're like bread, everyone touches it, no one wants it, which raised a number of questions. Probably makes sense in Bunbury. James, you went to Bunbury. Now, Laura, why would you trigger a repressed memory of me going to bunbury i look i that man now has scabies by the way uh alice that's you know you no one wants to touch bread well maybe get some fiber in your diet my my australian cousin i um look this is a very it's a very interesting thing because there are

variations of this kind of story around the world where they use music that they deem mentally destructive to try and get homeless people away now in this case they've chosen the wiggles which just feels like a double insult to the wiggles um they used to use Peter Allen's I Go to Rio, wait for it, De Janeiro. And I just, look, the Wiggles are not the only people who've ever been disappointed in Bunbury. Anyone who's been there has been disappointed. People still living in Bunbury are disappointed. Yes. James went to Bunbury and I drove him to the train station and I cried at the train station as though I was sending him off to war and then I had to go collect him at about six in the morning because the booker had

had he'd made his way back from Bunbury uh urgently because the booker had insisted on sleeping in the same bed as him, but, you know, to save on accommodation costs. And I was not paid extra for that spooning. I want to tell you right now, I don't usually put out on the first gig. You've got to promise me a headline spot for that kind of action. I think that it's also it's hot potato. spot for that kind of act i think that it's also it's hot potato the song is hot potato which is what they should be giving the homeless people also this is a big estimation of like it's a big guess about the the demographic makeup of these this homeless population because if any

of these homeless people are have been parents in the last 20 years i guarantee you they've gone deaf to the wiggles. They don't hear it. They've heard it so many times it's just white noise. Very relaxing. There's also lots of, you know, there's lots of families with young children who are being made homeless in this cost of living crisis. So perhaps they can just lean into it.

Just get some costumes. Yeah, let's not address the social issues and the economic problems. Let's just create a little Wiggles commune. I also found it amazing that the Dunbury MP who's against this, who's saying it lacks compassion, is a man called Don Punch, which is a very Western Australian name. I think we can all acknowledge that. But when you've got an Aussie called D Punch who's like, where's the compassion?

I think you've really messed up. It's a very good enemy name for the Wiggles to have. I mean, the Wiggles haven't had a very good nemesis storyline yet. They've got a lot of friends. They've got Henry the Octopus. They've got Dorothy the Dinosaur, Captain Feathersword. Maybe what they need is a dark city council. He starts off dark.

Regional Australian middle manager. I'm seeing it, guys. I'm seeing it. The Wiggles, they go to Bunbury, and it looks like their nemesis is going to be Don Punch. Oh, he's a scary man. He's a city councillor. No, he's an MP.

But then they discover he's actually a great friend, and he ends up dancing with Dorothy, and they drive down to that. Is it the world's longest wharf? Is that what's down in Bunbury? Oh, it's not far from there. I also feel like they've missed a trick here, playing hot potato. I mean, surely if you want to make something inhospitable

for people to sleep in, you'd play wake up Jeff. Is that not? It was right there, Bunbury Council. It was right there. They laid it down. The Wiggles laid it down. Do you think this could be enough to radicalise the Wiggles? Like I don't think that they have been stepping up to the plate when it comes to, you know, strong social change or red evolution,

but perhaps this is literally the wake-up Jeff call that they needed to realize there are a lot of problems and they could actually use their voice for a lot more than fruit salad yummy yummy well we can all put our hands together and hope that that is what happens I can't wait to see a whole bunch of like three-year-olds being radicalized into action on the streets. Your ad section now because you can't be what you can't buy. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Halloween. Sorry, it's brought to you by half-price Halloween leftover products and sweets. Don't mind if your chocolate's pretending to be a witch.

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Here's a show that we recommend. Every sport has their big, juicy controversy. Boxing has the Mike Tyson ear bite. Cycling has Lance Armstrong. Baseball has its steroid era. Curling has Broomgate. It's a story of broken relationships, houses divided, corporate rivalry, and a performance-enhancing broom. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate, available now. Acast helps creators launch, grow,

and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Now it's time for tech news. Tech news now, if you grok me. This is the news that Elon Musk has launched a new AI, a rebellious AI, which has few safety rails. It's being put forward in the name of free speech. It will tell you how to make cocaine. And some people are extremely excited about it. James Nukiso, you've been extremely excited about things in the past. Can you unpack this story for us? It's enough to make you say get grokked. Elon Musk, the biggest grokker in all of tech, has unleashed.

We haven't seen it yet. Here's the thing with Musk. He said it exists and it's coming, but he hasn't quite unleashed it. It's called grok. Its nickname is grok, I guess. It's an Grok. Its nickname is Grok, I guess. It's an advanced AI. It's sort of there to promote free speech. He says they've just built it in the last couple of months.

But again, with his company, it's probably built itself. There's probably a rogue, completely functioning AI out there already beginning to take over the world. I think the clear thing we've gotten from the couple of announcements we've had this week is that Musk has no idea what this thing is. They've said it's called Grok. The AI system is called Grok because it means to understand in tech circles. But we all know he just liked the name Grok. He absolutely has not gone aha yes it means to understand just got grok yeah cool it's got a k in it like it's gonna answer

spicy questions uh that's that's a genuine quote from a billionaire uh head of a company. We've built AI to answer spicy questions. I mean, none of them have ever been laid. Well, famously, Elon Musk has definitely had children, but you might be right, he may have not been laid in getting those children. He may have just grokked a few very sad women. I think these people have taken it too far. We just used to write boobs upside down on the calculator and leave it at that well so this is the thing on leading up to the release musk uh posted this thing on x um of an example of grok responding to a request for a step-by-step cocaine recipe and

that like many chatbots uh grok has like very sassy and has like has a bit of personality to himself and uh the problem i think here is the fact of the demonstration because elon musk quite famously and quite recently is a person who demonstrated the strength of his cyber truck uh by hurling a ball bearing through its window, then later trying to redeem that by having Joe Rogan fire an arrow at his cyber truck, and then he launched the idea of a robot, a sentient humanoid robot, by having a man come on stage in a suit. So I don't know how much we can trust this demonstration of Grok's capabilities.

It's a real sort of apocalyptic Willy Wonka thing going on. Like this is really grim now. And, you know, I mean, you also need to invent the time travel to go back to where defence from R3 is helpful in warfare. I mean, I'm slightly worried that his company that does AI is called XAI because it's very much like his son's name, which is XAE12, if I recall correctly. Or that's the beginning of a very long string of names. But it feels like he sort of circles around the same kind of naming conventions in a way that makes me worry that a man so celebrated for his originality of thought may in fact just be rehashing old sci-fi premises.

But how, Ellis, how can he be celebrated for his original thought when his truck looks like the one that Homer built in The Simpsons? Look, on the bright side, he is giving a lot of joy and hope to a particular kind of person who feels like they've been let down by the chattering classes and educated artistic types who've looked down on engineers for too long and don't enjoy it when people, for example, embrace free speech to the point of letting Nazis on their platform.

Yeah, go tell Grok all the mean things the feminazis said to you. Maybe that's it. Maybe they can just talk to Grok. Dr. Grok. I love Dr. Grok. If I know anything about technology and people, it's that it's only a matter of time before someone tries to marry Grok. What would work is if, because he's just come back on TV,

Elon Musk paid Kelsey Grammer way too much money, which Kelsey Grammer may take because we all love him but never look into his personal politics, especially if you're a big fan of Frasier. But wouldn't it be great? Oh, you think that Frasier is a sitcom about a flamboyantly left-wing man? Look, this is not the time or place laura davis for us to get into the debate over the political stances

all right we have we had this conversation in bundry not having it here on the garden yeah a man who is uh class big has class bigotry against his own father. Yes. Just champion of the people. I resent Frasier purely because he means that every American is incapable of pronouncing my last name correctly. Ah, yes, Miss Frasier. I love that he built Grok because he thought other AI were too woke.

So he's just built a c*** AI. Despite the fact that all the previous evidence indicates that AI, like one of the biggest worries about AI is that replicates previous prior bigotries and can be, in fact, you know, quite right wing, because if it's drawing on the whole history of human discourse, then I don't know. I don't know how to break this to you guys but a lot of our history was a bit skew whiff uh according to current morals really brock said it was all fine let's look at all these films about ai taking over the world and realizing that humanity is a disease

and it needs to be wiped out let's look at all of the art that's been made over the past 200 years about sci-fi dystopias and then go you know what ai is too kind let's make a mean one and put it on the largest social media platform out there and that brings us to our review section as you know each week we ask our guest editors to bring in something to review out of five stars james what have you brought in for us this week well uh i have brought in a new zealand native bird um because uh i don't know if you're aware, but friend of the gargle, John Oliver, formerly British, now American comedian, has crashed into the New Zealand Bird of the Year election,

which is arguably the most important election in New Zealand this year, and has sponsored one of our birds, the pool tiki-tiki, one of our birds, the Pulteketeki, and has said this should be the bird of the century. And he's crashed the New Zealand website, which is literally about four people working for Bird and Forest New Zealand going, oh, jeez, there's a lot of votes today. So it's really annoyed me, Alice yet uh this is colonization on two parts one it's a british man putting his snout into uh you know it's very lovely snout john but also hire

me as a writer um you know into the new zealand politics where we we don't want that mate that's why the maori party got a record number of seats in the election all right keep your your british and also it's an american trying to rig a foreign election. So just double bad one there, John. So I would like to review a different bird, which is the takahe, which is also a very endangered bird, just as endangered as the most endangered birds. endangered as the most endangered birds it's actually known as the bird which became alive again because it was thought to be extinct for 50 years until 1948 because I don't know if you know this Alice but most New Zealand birds are massive introverts so it's just hanging out by itself I think I think producer pads got us a sound of its its mating call or just a normal call

which sounds a bit like a marital bed being being used just a real good a consistent Why are you looking at me like that, Laura? Well, because why don't they fix the bed? Well, it's a bird, Laura. That's why. It's got claws. Laura just declaring that if that were their marital bed, you'd use WD-40 and solve the problem.

Yeah, absolutely. It wouldn't have lasted a night. Maybe that's why this bird's going extinct because now it's too smooth and it's not making any noises to attract a mate. Well look some critics will probably say that it looks like the Pookeko or the Swamp Hen to you Australians with diabetes

and that's arguably a fair call but it's a lovely bird, it's massively endangered and there's no reason for it to not get votes just because John Oliver is coming in with his mass-produced foreign money once again trying to just rig a New Zealand election. So anyone out there listening on the gargle, go find the takahe, there's an accent on the E, and give it your vote because it's not foreign election rigging if it's spearheaded by a Kiwi who's living overseas

on an international broadcast. If you look at a takahe, they do not seem particularly pleased to be back from extinction. Out of five stars, how much do you give it oh look i i give it six because um it's it's it's better than than a five-star bird which is what john have you say demagogue uh laura what have you brought in for us to review out of five stars? I would like to review exotic goats in zoos, please. Are you looking at an exotic animal because it is a rare mountain goat? Are you looking at a goat and you could be at a farm?

Where's the line? Should we be having exotic goats in zoos? Are they not maybe exotic enough to be in the zoo? Is a goat the most exotic animal that should be in a zoo? And all of the other ones should be put back in the jungle. I'm not sure exactly where I stand on the matter. I think out of five, definitely a three. Three stars for the exotic goat at the zoo from Laura.

And that brings us to people who may need to be kept in captivity for their own protection. A series of cryptoburros have been seriously injured after staring too hard into some lasers at a bored ape party, which is ironic if you know that some of the bored apes have lasers coming out of their eyes. We didn't realize that the lasers were actually going into their eyes. Multiple attendees at this party ended up going to hospital because the UV lights on the stage were so bright that they caused what's called welder's eye, which is UV damage to the eye and severe sunburn to the face.

Laura Davis, you've stared into the bright lights of the future. Can you unpack this story for us? Yes, this is what Nietzsche tried to warn us about. If you gaze into the board ape's eyes, the bored ape will also gaze into you. How long were they gazing into the ape? I mean, I assume a series of hours. Is it just a Medusa? What is this Medusa situation?

It was a laser stage show of some kind that involved very bright flashing lights in order to, I assume, cover the fact that the music wasn't very good. I'm not entirely sure. And the ideas are shonky. Yeah. Yeah, they can't read the fine print if they've got Welder's eye. unfortunate thing to lure people to an ape conference, specifically the Ape NFT, the Bored Ape NFT, because these are people who have been culled from the general population specifically due to their susceptibility to peer pressure. So you just know they're not going to be the ones who are looking away from the stage and

going, maybe I shouldn't be staring directly into this bright light just because all my friends are doing it. They're the ones who are saying, no, hold on to these, despite the fact that NFTs have lost 94% of their value since initial launch. So it does feel like shooting fish in a barrel to a certain extent. Yes, but what is art? It's not a Bored Ape NFT.

These people weren't using their eyes for anything anyway i love this performance piece this hansel and gretel sort of tale of modernity i love it i mean if the artist did this deliberately look i can't condone uh violence or damaging people as as a form of art but also it would be very funny i think i think it's weird that they tweeted about it like that's just that's the mental health issue at some point when because it's just so weird i woke up at 4 a.m and couldn't see anymore yeah and i asked dr grock what i needed to. So tell me and I will tweet it out. That's from someone called CryptoJune777.

So there's a whole bunch of red flags popping up here. Someone else wrote, I woke up at 3 a.m. with extreme pain and ended up in the ER. I don't understand. And then someone's like, i got it as well i went to bed at 1 30 and i woke up at five at five with eyes burning and you go why are these people writing about this like if it was a mate presumably it's voiced text at that stage well the spelling's very good for the siri take a take a note and post hey siri tell grok that my eyes hurt i think the strangest thing about the whole whole issue is like what you said alice they've

lost 90 of their value so these are really these are the true believers that somehow this is all these are the people who've like sold put the house into a second mortgage and bought up pictures of bored apes and are really, really banking on this thing turning around. And that brings us to our final story this week, which is the news that Sam Bankman Freed, the king of crypto, the poster child for effective altruism, has been found guilty on all counts of one of the biggest financial frauds in history. James Nokise, you've been guilty of trying to buy up the entirety of a small island to do human experiments.

Can you unpack this story for us? Look, that was Niue way and they weren't doing anything with that island anyway um it's actually pronounced fried uh as in fried eyes uh i think you're i think you'll find uh as apparently though the the the rumor that he was going to buy naru was just a just a thing that one of his people suggested to him apparently he wasn't seriously entertaining him and we can believe this because he hasn't consistently lied over a series of years.

I think the funniest thing of this whole, was his lawyer, who, you know, when there's these high profile cases, the lawyer comes out, we're going to fight this. We're going to, you know, this is an injustice.

His lawyer came out and said, we respect the jury's decision, but we're very disappointed with the result, which you're a lawyer. Well, you've been a lawyer, Alice. That's basically just like, well, you got me, like in lawyer talk. Well, I was following this trial fairly closely because it's an area of interest for me.

And basically he made it very difficult for his lawyers overall by, you know, for example, he was under a fairly loose house arrest and they kept having to tighten his restrictions until they ended up having to jail him. And I think he insisted on testifying despite the fact it was probably a very bad idea and he came across very badly in his testimony and under cross-examination. So I can imagine his lawyers were not necessarily the most pleased with him.

Also, the evidence was incredibly damning. And during his period of house arrest, they could not stop him giving interviews to every f***ing person who asked, including just sort of low-grade Twitter bloggers. But that's, I there's there's a wonderful comedy film that's going to emerge from this because this dude was just such a beautiful asshole just like like you're absolutely right like you can just see that that kind of gives context to the lawyer's quote like just now i'm just picturing a sad lawyer going it's over finally I can I can see my family again I I'm so like secretly just going thank god you found him guilty I would I would hate to have to continue to deal with this client he's yet to undergo sentencing um but the

apparently he's like he's potentially uh one of those cases where he could get up to 100 years of jail time unless the judge decides that he's too rich to go uh one of those cases where he could get up to 100 years of jail time unless the judge decides that he's too rich to go to jail or whatever whatever it is they they do uh with wealthy young men um but the the closing arguments of nicholas rose who was the prosecution said he took the money he knew it was wrong he did it anyway because he thought he was smarter and better and he could figure his way out of it, which seems to be a pretty concise summing up of what actually went on. Laura, did you follow this trial at all? I found it very hard to follow because so much of it is insane. I love the idea of house arrest interviews,

just no, no, you come to me. like if we could just meet i'll yell out all my problems out the kitchen window and you write them down it's a massive amount of money isn't it like it's about eight billion and that's i think that's about 25 naus yes yeah well so it was that eight billion were missing and that he had sort of misappropriated and moved around just huge numbers uh for an extended period of time but his company was valued at 32 billion dollars at one point um despite the fact that they didn't didn't do anything legitimately the whole time and we're just moving money around between their different entities i don't know how either of you two feel but i just i think we need a new turn i think billion has got watered down too much i think the word billion yeah we need something

because people hear 32 billion i feel like they just they hear the 32 and they don't really the billionaires like oh your people have billions now. Because it just seems like it's still not, we're not getting through how massive an amount of money this dude got. His lawyer was like, oh, he's just a maths nerd. And this guy out of control is like, no, he defrauded people out of billions. Is the solution to climate change to allow billionaires to purchase the Pacific Islands that are about to go underwater so that they have a deep vested interest? I mean, you know, you buy Nauru, you get it for cheap, but then, you know, it's the maintenance that really gets you.

It's stopping the sea levels from rising. Yeah. Maybe we should have given it to him. It's a strange thing that's happening, guys, which is too close to Laura's joke. New Way has just started a groundbreaking idea of getting people to sponsor the ocean, and that's part of their country.

So they're getting people in as sponsors of parts of the ocean to get that personal buy-in on the state of the area. So, you know, we are, as always, living in an actual satire. I mean, the nature of cryptocurrency is that a lot of the selling point of it was, what if money but we had it, because we got to be the first movers in a new money system, and that we could use this money in an unregulated way, which would mean that we wouldn't have all of the slow and inefficient regulations that keep people from, for example,

stealing all of their clients' money and trying to use it to buy an island. Again, I should clarify, he says he wasn't going to buy the island and use it for human experimentation. It's just something that was suggested to him in a the island and use it for human experimentation it's just something that was suggested to him in a google doc and he entertained for a while so we shouldn't accuse him of that but these crypto guys do often have island-based plans uh if they're not floating

boat based um you know international law plans they're often island-based plans and and and they tend to sound very reasonable up until their point where they start arguing about the age of consent. And that, I feel, is the red flag in the crypto plan for the crypto nation. I think the island is the red flag. I think by the time you've got to the age of consent,

you're too far in. I think if someone's like, hey, I've got an island, just be like, nope, I've watched this film it's ray finds your chef i'm not coming so and that brings us to the end of the show i'm flipping through the ad section at the back james have you got anything to plug um look i've just finished being a reporter at the rugby world cup which was a strange adventure for me. And if any listeners would like to know why I was there,

you can catch my podcast, Fair Game, Pacific Rugby Against the World, to find out all the infrastructure issues with the Pacific Islands and world rugby. Here's a hint, billionaires are a part of it. You don't say. Laura, have you got anything to plug? I would just like to plug the fact that you can buy my digital stand-up albums

on my website, and I should have another one coming out soon. I can recommend pursuing both of those recommended avenues from our guests today. You can help keep the gargle alive and thriving by joining Team Bugle if you go to thebuglepodcast.com slash donate and you can make a one-off donation or become a Team Bugler,

which means you get all the Bugle podcasts ad-free along with bonus treats including the exclusive Ask Andy podcast and a limited edition episode of The Bugle on 12-inch orange vinyl, which is a real thing that exists and could be in your hands. If you go to thebuglepodcast.com slash donate you can support those essential audio ventures. I'm Alice Fraser. You can find me online at patreon.com slash alicefraser.

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