Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 213: Aint Free Yet But Close
Episode Date: August 26, 2021This we take a look at Planet Earth: is it really the "hidden gem" of the universe? According to one Kentucky CEO, it certainly is. After that we take a brief look at the army of contractors making mo...ney off of the pandemic. Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty
Transcript
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However, it does look like I need to change my batteries.
Let me go ahead and do that.
I'm sorry, guys.
Are you getting them off-brand shits?
Like, instead of Energizer, they're called, like, I don't know, Re-Energizer or some shit?
DG Home, baby!
DG.
Dolce & Gabbana batteries, hell yeah.
My Aunt Sheila used to manage the Dollar General store up at May King.
And she would bring the whole family
when she'd have to do inventory
and we'd stay up for like two straight nights
inventorying everything in that store
and I hated every second of it.
Yeah, my mom worked at a like
locally owned dollar store
and we had to do the same motherfucking thing.
Did y'all have to do it on New Year's Day?
New Year's Eve? Might have been, i don't know oh misery you have to count every
motherfucking thing in the store anyone who's worked retail had to do inventory
i worked at urban outfitters uh actually toys of rust is what i did i had to do inventory man
i hated that you would think because i was handling like toys and whimsical
children's play things that it would be a bit more bearable, but it was not.
Not at all.
Not at all.
Well.
It's there that I learned a lesson early on is that to avoid doing hard work,
you can always hide because I got down in that little pit that had all the pillows in it
and I just snuggled up in there and went to sleep.
I would count so slowly.
I would be like, one, two.
Hell yeah.
That's what you do.
You got to do work slowdowns, man.
I wasn't even getting paid.
This was child labor.
I wasn't getting paid.
This is my fucking mom making me come in to just help her ass.
Shout out to the veterans of children of
retail workers my god god damn um tanya i saw where you um mistakenly thought that you were
on the river on september 11th where you thought august 11th was september 11th
August 11th was September 11th.
You were going to break this up?
Yeah, I couldn't let that... I sat there and I looked
at that for about five minutes.
I thought it was a bit at
first. I was like...
It was a bit. It was a bit. Let's just
say that. Let's just say that.
Y'all got to recap because I'm not a liar or anything.
So what happened? What did you say?
Our boy ain't on twitter no more
what happened I don't even know what got you kicked off I don't even know what got me kicked
off either man I don't know the tweet was it was something like oh I just realized I was on the
river on 9-11 it turns out it turns out I really did forget this year or something like that yeah
that's amazing nice time okay okay that, okay. That's a good one.
I'll tell you why this happened and actually it tracks back to Terrence.
So this is your fault.
I can always find a way to fault Terrence.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm not surprised about this.
And like two other people in the same day.
I saw three tweets about 9-11 in one day and I was like, damn, did I miss 9-11?
Shit, I did.
Shit, I did miss 9-11.
And it was like you fucking Roger May and somebody else were tweeting about 9-11. Shit, I did. Shit, I did miss 9-11. And it was like you, fucking Roger May, and somebody else were tweeting about 9-11 for
no goddamn good reason.
And then I did too.
Oh, and 8-11.
It's coming up.
It's like Christmas, you know.
It's 9-11 season right now.
So you can tweet about 9-11 in 9-11 season.
9-11 being the original crate challenge.
I lost it.
Yeah.
Well, 8-11 is now
Trillbilly Holiday when Tanya exposed
herself as the true dumb blonde bitch
she is.
I don't care. I left it up.
I could have deleted it.
No, don't delete that shit.
I deleted it.
I always delete my embarrassing ones.
Yeah, you're better than I am.
Delete that shit up.
No shame. No shame.
No shame.
I'm fully unglued, people.
Should we clap?
So they can put this together somehow.
Yeah, can we clap, please?
One, two, three, clap.
One, two, three.
No, that was a good one.
That was pretty good.
I got a question.
This one is for Terrence, first of all, because I'm noticing a trend.
You notice that there's a music guy, like this archetype.
So, for example, Charlie Watts of Rolling Stones died yesterday.
Yeah.
And there's like a music guy that's like,
and sometimes they're in conflict with each other,
but they sort of, I don't know if it's a flex or not,
because I guess I have certain opinions about this too,
about stuff I know very little about.
So when I'm calling these people out, I'm calling myself out.
But a guy that really breaks down music to the finest details
and is like, man, Charlie Watts was always in the pocket.
I saw this one guy called him the human metronome,
and then another guy said the best thing about Charlie Watts
is that he wasn't a metronome, baby.
He was just preformed.
And I always think it's funny when people really get down to the granular details
of how you play an instrument or whatever
and actually have debates about that.
Yeah, where they can employ metaphors and shit like that.
Yeah.
I imagine it's like that guy Fantano
that does all the record reviews.
The needle drop.
That kind of dude.
Yeah.
Well, it kind of seems antithetical to the whole
idea of rock and roll right like the whole idea is you don't want metronomes like you're just free
free uh free balling speaking of that though did you see where tom petty tomty's account tweeted out a thing for Charlie Watts?
Sure going to miss Charlie Watts.
Prayers up for his family through Tom Petty.
Been dead three years.
Tonya, did you know Tom Petty died?
Did I know Tom Petty died?
Yeah, yeah.
You looked quizzical there.
That was just news
it was broken to you well i did know after you said it but when you were first making the joke
i was like damn tom petty's dead but i remember i remember nobody dies anymore i got a smooth
brain y'all i have smoked my earlobes off and i'm happy to report that uh i'm sleeping good good good climate
ain't keeping me up regret nothing i got nothing going on between these ears nothing but glitter
in here honey charlie watts's drum feels you got any of that keeping you up at night nope
no metronomes up here. What about the fact that Obama's 60th birthday party
has single-handedly ruined the D.C. party scene?
Did you guys see that?
Nah.
He's 69?
I'm still sore that I didn't get invited.
I'm going to be honest with you.
None of us got invited.
We want to steal our ideas but not invite the trail bullies. That's fucked up man i'm a great time well so all these all these people
got covid from it like i don't remember how how many damn it turned into a super spreader event
it was a super spreader did we predict that 30 something people got that wasn't hard to predict
i guess yeah yeah wait you said 30 something people it was a lot wait how is
this not i know i'm not like in the know about anything going on but how's this not bigger news
i feel like this should be like on tv or something like that joe biden has banned npr wait was joe
biden saying no from saying anything bad about his his boy you gotta have a Joe Biden got COVID episode next. Let's go. Biden was not there.
He was not there.
That actually is peculiar.
Why is it Joe Biden at Barack Obama's
60th birthday? I got a better one for you.
David Axelrod, his campaign manager,
got disinvited.
Uninvited. Oh, that's right.
Because they had to scale it back. We did talk
about this. They had to scale it back and we
were surmising what it feels. We did talk about this. They had to scale it back, and we were surmising
what it feels like
to be uninvited.
I wasn't invited,
but at least my ass wasn't uninvited.
You talk about the man
who helped Obama win got
uninvited.
But Eddie Vedder made the cut.
That's fucked up, man.
So did Erykah Badu.
She posted a video from it. He could So did Erykah Badu And she posted a video from it
Did he? He could have killed Erykah
They specifically
Asked that no one
Post any pictures or video from it
And she did
I love her
She's a witch
Erykah Badu's a witch from way back
She's a North Star
Interesting, say what you mean by that
What's a North Star? Like what you mean by that what's a north star like a guiding
a guiding presence a guiding light yeah exactly i love erica badu i cannot believe she went to
obama's birthday she does love to have a good time though i mean is it that i mean she's been like
remember that she had a uh music video of walking, like, naked through Dealey Plaza?
I don't know.
She's, like, friends with these elite people.
Maybe there was some kind of subversive message.
I'm sorry.
Like, sort of subliminal message there, she was trying to say.
She's running some odds-wide shit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But, so, I think I cut you off, and I apologize.
I got too excited.
Y'all were right.
The stimulants were too much for me.
I couldn't hack it.
Well, apparently we were wrong.
Wait, wait, wait. People were telling us we were wrong, yo.
Yeah, wait.
Can you say that again?
Can you say that one more time, real slow?
We'll all be quiet.
Listen, this is what happened.
Hold on, hold on.
Let's put a pin in this.
We'll come back to it.
Because it is relevant. hold on hold on let's put a pin in this we'll put it we'll come back to it um but because it
is relevant but you're saying erica put it all over the internet when she was asked not to
she posted like a video from it like of her and michelle and obama dancing but i don't
i don't buy that anything like a three-way slow dance hot no no no it's like um what a flex i
don't know like on michelle's ass no he was like incredible
they were fucking jamming to like usher or something it was like some it was a fast dance
i don't buy that anything these people do is accidental everything is all orchestrated it
on purpose so i'm sure that it was some pr thing to maybe to maybe kind of like cover over the fact
that like 30 people got coveted or
something who the fuck knows you know bury the news cooler by hanging out with yeah erica badu
i could see that um but there was a funny um politico article going around it wasn't an
article it was just like a it was a news brief on like it's something called their playbook, which is like a podcast.
It's their weekly kind of rundown or whatever.
There's a news and it had the funniest goddamn thing I'd ever seen.
The bashing of former President Barack Obama's birthday bash is having a chilling effect on the D.C. party scene.
As especially Democratic polls and their staffers scramble to figure out when and where,
or even if, they can party again.
Oh my fucking God.
Wow.
The whole thing was basically about how Republicans can still party
because they don't have any moral compunctions about it.
But Democrats are not sure how to party now.
They lost their mojo.
They can't party anymore.
They're like always, gotta say it they're like always uh restricting or restraining themselves or tying
themselves up you know what i'm saying because we talk about this all the time like republicans
you can't you can't call them hypocritical because they have no shame right but the democrats they
don't actually believe in this shit but because they have to give up the veneer that they're the
adults in the room they actually have to hold themselves to their own standard so seeing them get kind of caught up like this is kind of
funny you know like if cuomo was a republican he'd still be governor you know what i mean like they
wouldn't right yeah exactly exactly that happened while i was on the river i came home to that news
what good news that and a little bit of good Britney news.
Wait, what good Britney news?
Well, she ain't free yet, but she's close.
She's weaseling out of her conservatorship. Isn't that the story of all of us?
Close.
Unfortunately.
Close, but no cigar.
No cigar.
No cigar.
Indeed, indeed.
Hey.
But, uh...
Fuck.
I remember I'm pretty sure this was like an Obama
interview I'm digging
deep I'm wading through my
smooth brain and I'm pretty sure
in a Obama interview
he talked about how politics
were better
when
politicians all lived
in D.C., Republicans
and Democrats alike, all their kids
went to school together.
And they would have dinner together.
Like, it's just different now.
That fucking sounds like
the shit he would say. And it is like, it's different
now, you know, we don't, you know, it's like a lot of people
ain't even got kids. It's like these old
motherfuckers' kids ain't in school no more they ain't none of that you know like i don't know but
this sounds this reminds me of some bullshit like if we all could just party together we'd figure it
out exactly exactly yeah yeah about i've known many people that made that their politics and ended up in ruin. Yeah.
I'm trying to figure out if there's any Republicans that were invited to his birthday party.
I mean, if so, probably like, you know.
Eddie Vedder's not a Republican.
Hell no.
Eddie Vedder's like the biggest lib of them all.
I can see someone like John Boehner.
Like somebody in that vein, you know what I'm saying?
Like a moderate, quote, moderate Republican.
Who was the guy, Chuck, what's his name,
that all the Democrats love back around Obama's era?
Like, oh wait, Chuck, he was shortlisted to be Obama's VP.
Remember when Obama was courting a couple Republicans to be his VP?
Joe Biden did that too, just as a PR stunt.
I forget what his name was now.
Chuck Schumer.
Chuck Schumer.
No, maybe it was Russ Feingold.
Maybe it wasn't a Chuck at all.
It was a Russ?
Was Russ Feingold a Republican?
There was Chris Dodd, but he's a Democrat, I think.
I don't know.
Tim Kaine was also shortlisted.
Really?
Tim Kaine, the world-renowned, well-known, famous Tim Kaine.
Yeah.
He'll win the Latina vote if he speaks Spanish.
Oh, shit.
Well,
alright, well, so if
Democrats can't party anymore,
we certainly
know that venture capitalists
and CEOs
can. I wanted
to read an article brought
to you this week by the Rolling Stone
magazine.
Tom, Tom's like, yeah, yeah. Brought to you this week by The Rolling Stone Magazine. We've covered this.
Tom's like, yeah, yeah.
Tom's like, so hot.
Well, we've covered this specific thing, like, I think, like, at least two or three times out of the last, like, four or five episodes, public and Patreon.
But that was before this article came
out, so you gotta cover it.
There's some fucking great
quotes in here.
But Rolling Stone did a
profile, like a whole
long-ass
profile on App Harvest.
Oh shit, really?
Yeah, and on Jonathan Webb.
He don't quit coming, baby.
He never quits coming.
That ass don't quit.
What?
This is in Rolling Stone.
If you want to follow along, it's called
Is This Giant Hydroponic Greenhouse
in Kentucky
the Future of Farming?
We sure as fuck hope not.
Inside App Harvest's quest
to be the world's biggest ag tech company.
Save the Appalachian economy
and ensure the global food supply.
Wow.
So, as you can see,
and as we pointed out before,
they've got some lofty goals.
Yeah, ambitious.
They want to be the... They're very ambitious, yeah.
And we've not really talked about this aspect of them that they are trying to be.
Well, Jonathan Webb touts himself and App Harvest on being the first publicly traded ag tech company.
So this is the angle they're going at, right?
And it dovetails with silicon
holler and other things that we've talked about on this show before like the non-profit industrial
complex in eastern kentucky and other things like they're they're they are an ag tech company
and they are trying to harness capitalism uh for good um but like jonathan webb himself we've talked about how weird he is um you know
his his attempts to be a rap star uh that's all pretty weird but this fucking article has some
like choice quotes in it like we've got some good cuts here do y'all know i mean we'll get to it in
the meat of this but just what I want you to keep in mind.
Do you know, like, the people on Twitter who only see the world in comic book movie terms?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or, like, Star Wars terms.
Or Harry Potter.
He is that kind of mind, I've learned by reading this.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
And he's got, like, billions of dollars behind him. So is he trying to be, like, an Elon Musk or, like, who else am I thinking of?
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, Elon Musk and Bezos, like, they're, like, I guess they would consider themselves, like, futurists, you know,
where they're combining technology, as you were saying, Terrence, with, like, you know, capitalism to try to like you know like uh harness like I don't know
like the the the good that can come out of like you know a uh you know a system like this you know
instead of uh it being for evil I guess it's interesting that you bring that up because he
specifically defines himself in opposition to those two um because his whole thing
it's a very interesting thing like he's trying to carve out this niche for
himself as like the the tech overlord that like thinks we should invest in earth and not get off
of earth yeah as opposed to bezos yeah yeah yeah sure i'm trying to escape her yeah exactly right
but like his quotes about this are completely bizarre.
I don't know.
It's just, you know, I was like talking to Tom about it earlier today. It's like what someone would say if they were not a native of Earth.
We'll get into it, but that first quote from him is pretty insane.
We believe that Earth is the hidden gem of the known universe.
Like, motherfucker. Let's have a group of yeah like who's from the top okay we're at the top starting from the top
like terence said he has billions behind him i mean we covered this probably in season one i think
or two but this motherfucker had tons of what a venture capitalist money yeah he started out as um
he he didn't start out with vc money they started out with like usda grants and stuff and then they
had to pivot to vc like in the last couple years because they realized like i mean this thing is
not chasing the grants is a dead end yeah chasing grants is a dead end. Yeah, chasing grants is a dead end. And if you're trying to scale it up to what they want to be,
if you're trying to become the world's largest global food supplier
of ag-tech hydroponic food, then you can't do that with grants.
Can't do that being a promise zone recipient.
All right.
I would pay good money to get a hold of one of their grant applications,
to be honest with you.
Okay, let me start here.
When Jonathan Webb arrived at the 500-acre former cattle farm
he purchased in 2019, it was an essentially empty green field.
He bought an RV and set it up on a hill with the water tower behind him and daniel
boone national forest out front when massive earth moving construction started the same year
webb joked with locals that he was building a giant communication tower to the aliens
helping other intelligent life find morehead kentucky i'm sure that played well all right
first of all first of all if you're if you're a science fiction nerd or above the one thing you don't want to do is attract the aliens yeah like what you don't you
don't want to do that shit that's the first thing you don't it's like he seems to be implying that
unintelligent life lives in moorhead so he's they're trying to get intelligent life not to
mention the thought of him out here just heckling people in the grocery store like did you see I'm building
a big tower?
What a fucking freak.
Yeah, just ribbing people at the supermarket line.
Just elbowing them.
He's trying to start rumors about himself.
Here's something I want to point out too.
They're building
or they did build already
Moorhead is one of a handful of places
in the country that built like a space station.
Yeah, yeah.
Moorhead works with NASA.
Can you imagine just being John Q. Moorhead
and within a couple of years,
there's a space station that goes up
and then this guy that just wears crispy, fresh Carhartt,
like no work being done in them.
And he says,
I'm building a contact to the aliens
and he's all wide-eyed about it.
Yeah, this motherfucker is out here
pressing his Carhartt.
Fresh from the dry cleaners.
Oh my God.
Okay, yeah.
Helping find other intelligent life
by Moorhead.
But Webb's real interest was saving planet Earth.
We believe that planet Earth is the hidden gem of the known universe,
Webb tells me during a tour of his Zapp Harvest facility,
the $150 million, 60-acre greenhouse, think 50 football fields,
that briefly ranked as the ninth largest building in the world
when it opened in October 2020.
I did not know that.
That's crazy.
Say that again.
This facility they built.
It's a 60 acre greenhouse.
It briefly ranked as the ninth largest building in the world when it opened in October 2020.
That's insane.
Building, period.
God damn.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's fucking crazy. that's baffling
i can't even conceptualize it yeah so but it's a greenhouse so dirt floor they consider that a
building i don't know everybody's got their different definitions i'll tell you a funny
little antidote here is that i once purchased myself like a hundred square foot, like huge greenhouse in Moorhead and broke it down and moved it thinking I was going to have me a little greenhouse operation.
Y'all remember this?
What?
I don't remember this.
When was this?
It was when I had my little truck because that's how I hauled it with a big fucking.
was when i had my little truck because i that's how i hauled it with a big fucking uh okay this greenhouse went out of business when i was with cody y'all remember him yeah okay i had a trailer
trailer that i pulled behind my truck and we we spent like two months taking down a great like it
was it was like basically free because this greenhouse went out of business and we spent
like almost two months taking this thing down.
Because I thought you just had to take it yourself.
You had to move it yourself.
Piece by piece, labeling it so that we could put the motherfucker back up.
Moved it to his family's barn.
Your bitch never seen it again.
Because I'm the biggest mark alive.
In fairness, that was the time of the Wendell Berry Renaissance
where every Tom, Dick, and Harry thought they were going to have
their own little farming operation.
Well, just call me Harry.
Well, when we've got a Tom, that makes me Dick.
I'm a huge believer that nature is the most technologically advanced thing
we have on planet Earth,
and we need to harness it, says Webb.
What the fuck does that even...
All right, man.
Yeah, no, I'm...
I, like...
Again, like, who the fuck would say this?
Like, of course...
I mean, planet Earth...
I mean, in this article, they keep capitalizing the words planet Earth,
which makes me think that, like, Webb wanted that.
Like, you know even the p
in planet they're capitalizing planet yeah they're capitalizing planet earth
interesting editorial choice it makes me feel like i'm not on earth like am i not a part of
planet earth like that's funny you're right he does talk like someone who's from another planet. He is, ultimately.
The planet is high society, like Louisville.
Like, rigid Louisville people.
We have to remember, this man cut his teeth on what he's doing now
by convincing the DOD that he could reduce greenhouse gas emissions
if he just made their tanks run on solar power.
Wow. Are you serious?
Yeah, no, dead serious.
He cut his teeth making sure the
war machine was green.
Yo, that's bleak as fuck. Oh my god.
Yeah,
whoever developed...
Okay, this is so
bizarre. Whoever developed nature out, this is so bizarre.
Whoever developed nature out there,
that's higher forms of intelligence.
Building an iPhone?
That's easy.
Go build organic biomatter and have it grow all over the place.
What?
Organic matter already grows
all over the place, motherfucker.
What he's saying is that
whoever developed nature out there,
that's higher forms of intelligence.
Like, he's a Christian, ostensibly, but it's such a weird way of putting it like whoever developed nature out there trees plants oh okay so he's just saying god yeah this is his way
or like basically or i guess is he saying that like like other like the the most technologically
advanced thing you could do is to harness nature yeah like you know like the the most technologically advanced thing you could do
is to harness nature yeah like you know like blah blah blah whatever and whatever
beings intelligent beings supposedly out there that have done that that's like
you know what i mean well what he's doing is he's trying to basically so they're ag tech right and
so what he's saying is that their harnessing of nature is more technologically
sophisticated than building an iphone which is like what he says here building an iphone that's
easy it's like yeah okay sure i mean uh you want to tell that to the people who make like three
fucking cents an hour and like all those people at foxconn that work such brutal hours they commit
suicide at like weirdly high rates. That's child's play.
Yeah, exactly.
We can take it up a notch.
Let's go.
But yeah, no, this is their iPhone.
You know, the building,
growing beefsteak tomatoes
in a 60 acre greenhouse.
I got a lot of comments from New Jersey people
over the beefsteak tomatoes.
New Jersey has laid a specific claim to, I didn't know. It's comments from New Jersey people over the beefsteak tomatoes. What the fuck is a beefsteak tomato?
New Jersey has laid a specific claim to, I didn't know.
It's apparently a New Jersey thing that makes them special.
We've gotten a lot of support from the New Jersey contingent for challenging Webb on beefsteak tomatoes is all I know.
Buddy, if it ain't Granger County, it ain't shit.
As a native New Yorker, I feel obliged to talk shit about new jersey but
i won't for the new jersey contingent of the show i won't i won't um uh the morehead facility is the
first of 12 high-tech farms that webb is planning to build throughout eastern kentucky um just a
little spoiler alert another one of them is in Somerset, which is not eastern Kentucky.
Neither is Moorhead, but whatever.
At its core, App Harvest runs on the agricultural resources that have helped humans feed themselves for over 110,000 years, sun and water.
But there's two caveats.
First, App Harvest doesn't use soil.
Its hydroponic system means it is heavily reliant on man-made
fertilizers but without pesticides second this made me wither and die inside second
the greenhouses use technology like robotics and ai to better predict crop health and yield
web in fact balks at the term greenhouse term greenhouse, preferring to call his colossal projects data-driven farms.
Oh my fucking God, bro.
Yo, you know what's so amazing about capitalism, man?
Isn't that how you could just reinvent the wheel?
This motherfucker is like, for tens of thousands of years, people would just watch the weather like predict like when was the best time to crop but instead we have to invest millions of dollars in like technology to get that shit right
which half of the time doesn't fucking work people be growing fruit with the farmer's almanac for a
long motherfucker time yeah with a fucking little wind flag up in your yard this motherfucker really is i mean as far as griffs go
you gotta this motherfucker has raised billions of dollars to convince people he knows the best
way to grow a goddamn tomato well i got as far as griffs go it's pretty high i mean
respect honestly this motherfucker is hold on hold on before you give him any ironic props let me
give you this a friend of the show that knows what he's talking about in this realm sent this message
that stupid stupid man invested 10 million in a saudi ag company that specializes in desert
production of tomatoes and water scarcity for his tomato production
in a state that is literally underwater
with record rains and getting wetter and wetter every year.
Fucking God.
Wait, okay, so break that down for me.
He got a Saudi ag company.
There ain't much rainfall in Saudi Arabia.
If y'all didn't know, there's not much rainfall.
Here's what I think.
I think Webb heard somebody use the phrase food desert
and took that hyper-literally and went and found a Saudi ag company
to waste a bunch of money to.
So basically he contracted out a saudi ag company who has some
know-how presumably although not guaranteed about growing tomatoes in the desert and he used that
know-how in a state that's literally underwater and getting wetter every year so he should have
went the opposite direction and like you know got somebody in like i don't know i mean maybe morehead isn't
considered eastern kentucky but i think it is still in the rainforest like this is a rain
this is not the cold rainforest you know it's not like yeah but it is in a temperamental rainforest
god that is incredible that is insane so cool. Also, that Saudi connection is interesting.
His motivation goes beyond
just, well, what he says here is
his goal is to lower domestic dependence on
pesticide-laden foreign imports,
which provide
70% of U.S. vine crops.
But his motivation goes beyond that.
He says, to the same obsessive anxiety
many in his generation are facing the
screeching freight train of climate change web web claims app harvests controlled environment
agriculture is the third wave of tech-laden solutions following renewable energy grids and
electric cars and will help shore up a u.s food supply amid these unpredictable weather extremes. Dude, this part blows my fucking mind.
This part blows my fucking mind.
Because part of, one of the biggest criticisms about App Harvest,
and they get into this later in the article,
but they use a lot of energy.
They use a fuckload of energy to make this, to grow these plants.
But a minimal amount of water?
Is that what they're saying?
They recycle the water, yeah.
But, like, all of that energy, I mean, 70% of Kentucky's, like, utility sources is coal.
It's all fucking coal-powered.
So it's just, like, how the fuck is this contributing
in any way? You know what it's like?
It's like I went out to eat one time and they had
paper
straws, but the paper straws
were packaged in plastic.
So it's kind of like
counterintuitive.
You know what I mean?
Incredible.
I hate a goddamn paper straw damn shit suck man it just dissolves in your mouth actually they have this uh go ahead
it's like you wouldn't believe what they're doing with that paper straws now
um webs is an unapologetically eco-modernist approach with a full throttle embrace of
capitalism though in a strange though in a strange contortion he self-identifies as anti-establishment
i'm anti wall street this is the first stock i've ever owned he says adding that he has since bought
into both bitcoin dogecoin and a few others the reality is, how do we use the private sector for good?
The eco-left would say that runaway technology and capitalism got us into this climate mess
and are the last tools we should be reaching for.
But Webb is betting big that they are wrong.
We can use private sector capital to rebuild this world, says Webb.
We can't just demonize the systems in place.
We need to use them.
All right, bro, you win a bet.
We're all pawns.
Play the game and win.
This generation has got to be the one of action
and less talk at this point.
There's nothing to talk about anymore.
Just do it.
Play the game.
We're all pawns.
I think there is a couple things to talk about, though.
Namely, didn't we just read an article last week that cited him getting funds from the CEO of HP and also this guy that ran this huge hedge fund?
Yeah, but he says he's against Wall Street, though, right?
I'm against Wall Street.
I've heard a lot of leftists say this, too.
Like, I'll use the tools of industry and blah, blah, blah to further the cause of leftists say this too like i'll use the tools of you know of industry and blah blah blah
to further the cause of leftists like bro like i understand you gotta live in this world or whatever
and think about your nest egg but like yeah you you everything ain't leftism you know yeah i mean
those are the people that like bastardize was that rg lord quote right dismantling the master's house
with the master's tools but like trying to take that to like fucking everything you know what i mean where it's like as you said tom like not
everything is about you know like left and rightism you know it's a it's just objective
there's objectivity in that you know where it's like yeah motherfucker like you say you're anti
wall street anti-establishment but of course you're using the establishment to get this shit
done you know there's no other way you could do it but also to say like play the game like we're all pawns it's like i don't know man that's like very uh i don't know like kind of
like uh you're choosing like who lives and dies right i'm saying that well we're just stronger
right we're better you know what i mean like survival of the fittest type that's what it kind
of reminds me of you know yeah oh fuck man we're all pawns play the game and win yeah or die or drown
after like 60 feet of water man just crazy shit like that i mean i mean harry potter shit
i i obviously like don't agree with it when it come like let's say for example like i don't
agree with it but i can see where some people are coming from when they point to solar panels or grid-scale batteries and stuff.
I can understand it.
I don't agree with it.
I don't agree that you need tech, you need capitalism
to drive innovation to solve climate crisis.
But even setting that aside, his particular product does not work
i mean like it's it's like even if even if i don't know it just doesn't even fucking work
on its own merits or own logic it's 60 fucking acres how many people they employ in 500 500 a figure that he is
attributed to his
the reason they've had a slow start and lost
32 million
they um so they have 500 people
employed
right yeah
I mean this article goes to
you know it talks a little bit about like how he got
into this it has a hilarious image
of him wearing a shirt that says
APPH NASDAQ listed which i thought that was the biggest what a brutal time though it's like
this article like came out like like a day before maybe a day after like their the announcement that
they're getting investigated for securities fraud oh right app harvest is? Yeah. He jumps between topics quickly, pausing to tell me he has attention deficit disorder.
Interesting.
Wow.
Has he considered...
What are you on, Tanya?
Well, I have some advice.
I tried to get Vyvanse, because that seems to be the best.
My insurance company denied it, so my doctor gave me Ritalin,
which sucked.
So hopefully he gets stuck with Ritalin too.
Fuck him.
I've snorted a lot of Ritalin
in my day.
I know, I didn't call a shoe to stay alive,
but hell, I'm 35.
I ain't got nothing to do.
Yeah, it's like,
it's weird at this point like yeah i'm pushing my
mid-30s i can't be snorting anymore well i wasn't snorting them but i was i was taking them
because i don't drink coffee you gotta do something shit i couldn't have coffee i had
no i never have really my god i can't hack it it. You know, I can't have a lot of caffeine.
No way.
L.A. is my only caffeinated beverage.
I can't imagine not having a black cup of gel in the morning, man.
No.
I do love tea.
I hate tea.
Not caffeinated, though.
Yeah.
I know.
That's a strong proclamation.
Yeah, I know.
Right?
I was like, wait.
I hate tea.
Calm down.
I know, right?
Oh, God.
That's what got you kicked off Twitter.
Right.
It talks about how he first envisioned
App Harvest in a cabin in Pike County.
I don't know how the fuck.
I still cannot get over this motherfucker.
Y'all remember him convincing an entire school
to bring all the kids into the gymnasium
and him pacing back and forth
on a motherfucking
gymnasium stage telling these
kids that they can live well
off shit tomatoes or whatever. Y'all remember this?
You can be anything
you want to be. Yeah, he had J.D. Vance
and a bunch of shits up there.
I think when you told me about this, I
hadn't put it together quite yet that that's who
he is no we did an episode about it we watched the video oh you're right like way the fuck back
in the day like 2018 it's not an episode that's like one season one or two we were trolling this
piece of shit um okay and then it talks about him building and that's when they were claiming they
were putting this in pike county they did a bunch of bullshit they did a bunch of pr and then it talks about him building And that's when they were claiming they were putting this in Pike County
They did a bunch of PR
And then they were like actually JK
We're not doing this
It's going to be too hard
Thanks for letting us use you on a grant application
We're going to go down the road a little bit
Yeah
Been there done that
Yeah no it talks about him
Working for the Department of defense etc etc at the same time
web began hearing about food security by 2050 the world will need up to 70 percent more food
than it currently produces to feed a predicted 9.7 billion people and a rising middle class
according to an off-sited 2009 report by the un's Food and Agriculture Organization. Webb read
about a solution
in a 2017 National
Geographic article, How Netherlands
Feeds the World, highlighting
enormous Dutch greenhouses that provide
huge quantities of food year-round with
a smaller square footage than traditional
farming. He quit his job and started
App Harvest that same year.
This is a hilarious fucking quote.
Again, it's like something a fucking extraterrestrial would say.
To get to 50 to 70% more food as we currently grow it,
we would need two planet Earths.
More human labor, more human slave labor.
See what he's saying?
Me, I read an encouraging story about a boy that stuck his finger in a dike
and saved Holland.
I took that model and applied it to tomatoes and you can too, children.
I also, I kind of love that.
Like this motherfucker and many like him who think they, who are trying to make millions by claiming they're thinking about human growth.
Didn't factor in a completely
government botched pandemic taking out millions globally
well somebody who's gonna buy them tomatoes somebody well it's funny in that last article
somebody had had messaged me on twitter and said that I don't know if they said they had worked there or not, but had knowledge of that he uses a lot of migrant labor
at his facilities or whatever,
which is whatever.
I'm not making a judgment call about that,
but for a company that has positioned itself as,
I'm going to, you know,
this is going to be something that's going to employ
all the beleaguered coal miners
in Appalachia going forward.
And he knows
that and this person said
that he would hide
all the migrant laborers that
work at his facilities when the press
would show up.
And it would just be like however many
ex-coal miners
ex-whatever whatever that are
working there now
he don't hide them when i shows up yeah that's like man that reminds me of some uh like 1960
shit like you know like early days of integration you know but you had a black secretary but you
didn't want like you know people coming to visit to see her so you'd like push her in the closet
or some shit man you know like hide her away you know to pull it back out jesus fucking christ dude yeah so uh then you know then the article gets into like the kind of you know what what what exactly
is just so weird and fishy about this whole deal a 2015 study in yuma arizona comparing hydroponic
lettuce with conventional lettuce growth reported that while hydroponics produced over 10 times the conventional yield, growers also used 82 times more energy.
Oh, my God. like you see the way this article is a perfect example of you see the way like all the the
various like dances and evasions and moves and maneuvers that people will do to avoid the fact
that what the real problem here is is capitalism like you if you are concerned about a greater rise in need for food in 30 years, you have to abolish private property.
That's all there is.
I mean, like, that's the only way we're going to do that.
I mean, otherwise, because if you're, I don't know, I guess what I'm trying to say here is that you have two choices.
trying to say here is that you have two choices you can either continue down this road and use hydroponic farming at even greater expenses of energy and contribute more to global warming
i guess you maybe you feed more people but we know people starve anyways under capitalism so
it doesn't fucking matter or you could just abolish capitalism, collectivize all the land and farming, and feed everybody, and also cut down on fossil fuels.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, what the fuck?
It's just getting increasingly more comical, man. like like uh the contorting oneself right into like these different kinds of like well we could
do this we could do this but nobody actually wants to get down to like you know like i guess
the fundamental system that is you know because i mean that would that would require like actually
like educating people and organizing people and like you know a possible overthrow of the system
and these motherfuckers don't want to think about that man you know what's what's always bizarre to
me about like all of of these disruptor solutions
about whatever sector these people are disrupting at the moment
is they always speak in these generalities
about how this is going to be a game changer for humankind,
but they never tell you
how everybody's going to share in that prosperity.
What does one dickhead having this high-tech,
futuristic, hydroponic outfit,
what does that mean for
that John Q.
Moorhead guy that's walking around Moorhead
terrified because of the aliens?
It doesn't mean
fucking much.
It's just like we have this...
We assume that I think
since the 50s and 60s that
technology, with the advancement
of technology, humanity will
inevitably progress.
So the idea that
Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos
were going to be doing space tourism
for future space exploration and we're all
going to enjoy in this new
technology. But I mean
that's not really how any the i
guess the monopolization of that technology or resources it never works like that you know
it's never for everybody you know it's only for the people that can afford it it's only or and
i mean now half the time doesn't even fucking work you know it's just pie in the sky to make
us feel better about the future instead of like what we actually need to do to ensure a better
future you know what we were told we were going i mean and this is a twitter trope so i'm not like you know saying this to be
banal or anything but what we were told we were going to have in the future is really not
materialized i know man like look at the jetsons dude the jetsons took place in the the what that
that was shows in the 60s and they were imagining like the 80s or some shit like that the 90s the five cars and
shit man but no no it ain't turned out like that this article is kind of interesting because it
it basically what it does is it um eventually pits webb against this organization that I know two of you will be familiar with, is Community Farm Alliance.
And basically, they, at Community Farm Alliance,
pick apart, you know, Webb's vision of this.
They say, app harvest isn't farming,
it's industrial food production.
When you're farming, it's about a relationship
with a piece of land and good stewardship.
And I don't know, I just think this article is interesting because
what it's basically doing is it's pitting
the web version of
food production against the Wendell Berry
version, which is like small yeoman
like farmers with
this romantic connection
to the land. And it's like
what if I was to tell you that
you don't have to buy either of those
options? What if I told you there was a tell you that you don't have to buy either of those options what if I told you
there was a third option that allowed you to produce food at the industrial scale but every
the workers own the means of production and everybody gets fed enough yeah enough what if
I told you there you didn't have to buy into these either of these dumb ass ideas I don't know I think
it's so funny because the Community Farm Alliance guy goes,
it is a bit of a slap in the face for those of us who have been doing this work for a long time
to see that work ultimately go to this for-profit and their shareholders who aren't even in Kentucky.
Well, it's just like, that's just how capitalism is.
Yeah, exactly.
What the fuck?
capitalism is exactly like what the fuck like i don't i just i just i'm annoyed because they quoted this organization and i know them to be like one of the big players in the sort of local
non-profit scene and it is interesting because within the elite there are these arguments and
you know confrontations but But again,
what if I told you
you didn't have to choose either of those?
I don't know.
Yeah, and ultimately, I mean, the other thing
too, just as a practical matter, both of these approaches
are insufficient.
As close as you could come
to some sort of socialist central planning
vision, and that's how you
curb these food deserts.
I'm just talking about
measurable things that could be done in the not
too distant future.
But yeah.
The yeoman farmer down
by Port Royal and also
the futuristic
tech genius
bro raising
venture capital. You can check
out of both of those there's this there's this uh
there's this quote from here i'm just kind of going through it where it's it's amazing
he says uh quote we have two distinct paths and there's no middle web says web says we're going
into a post-apocalyptic mad max world or we're going to an avatar type world where we're going
to use technology and align with nature but there is no in between
it's one or the other I don't know if this motherfucker
saw avatar
sucking on blue titties in the future baby
I don't know if this motherfucker saw avatar
but like the whole point of avatar
was the exploitation
of nature by
like fucking like settler colonialists
you know what I'm saying like it is a funny
fucking yeah
it's like oh yeah we could live in a post-apocalyptic um wasteland or we can live in a
colonialist still capitalist yeah it's like you're right aaron it's like in that movie it was still
pretty fucking dystopian i mean the whole point of it the movie where they killed the fucking big
tree spoilers if you haven't seen it it came out like 20 years ago but like they killed the fucking big tree which is avatar spoilers
coming second one coming out another 10 years but nah man that's like it's i mean i don't know man
it's it's just kind of bleak where people where people like this look at i mean that's already a
fictional world and within that fictional world where I mean the producers the writers couldn't spell
it out more for you you know
like talking about like you know consumerism
and like kind of like
capitalism and the way we deal with the climate
as much as they could have done in that film
and you couldn't watch that and fucking get it you couldn't even
get it watching that man
that film opens up with a huge
aerial view of strip mining
yeah exactly literally the opening
of the film i watched it in 3d and it's like i threw the fucking glass you're like hold this
is too real right now i was on a date i was like i can't do this
also another thing i want to point out is like uh mad max is already here just mr webb just doesn't
you know he's just you know where that's happening right exactly exactly what both both of these
realities are here um you can embody avatar like um you know false people in the world and like
i don't know like so divisions between, which is like one critique in Avatar.
But there is also still colonialism.
I mean, like both of these worlds are the world we live in.
It's fascinating, though, that he would watch Avatar and not see the exploitation.
It's just it's an amazing glimpse into the psychology of a CEO, of a capitalist.
Exactly, exactly.
Because, I mean, they couldn't spell it out.
I mean, it was literally Pocahontas.
I mean, they couldn't spell it out more clearly for you if you fucking saw that movie.
And whether you agree with it or not, whether it was like a problematic representation or not, yeah, you're right.
But it was still a representation of some form of exploitation.
And he's just like, like well this is pretty cool
just fucking yeah he says we're literally trapped here on planet earth unless you're
the billionaire that's going to spend 28 million dollars to go fly with jeff bezos like are you
fucking kidding me the rest of us and i would put myself in that camp although things are changing
financially every day i'm not flying off
but i gotta say i've been in baslin a little bit lately and uh
put his old dumb ass on blast in a rolling stone they drop it the same time as he's being
investigated this guy has an astonishing simultaneous lack of self-awareness and
too much self-awareness although things are changing financially every day how do you like
god man he threw that in the parentheticals like nobody
was gonna notice that real quick you know what i'm saying this motherfucker is leonardo dicaprio
a wolf of wall street like i ain't going i ain't leaving if the ship is going down i'm not going
down with y'all forgot him jumping off this shit amazing these people are demonic These people are demonic. These people are fucking demons.
I swear to God.
Oh, Jesus.
Oh, man.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, I don't know.
I could understand why if someone was to listen to this, they'd be like, why the fuck are they talking about this um i guess the only reason why is because it was for a time brought into our world
because we all worked at non-profits and so it was brought into our world as something we had to deal
with and like engage with and if you weren't you were just a naysayer and you weren't offering any
solutions and you just needed to get the fuck out or get on board i guess or get on board exactly and so
i don't know i just um i don't know it's just it's just an interesting look at yeah the somersaults
we will go through to not deal with the underlying problem here yeah man and you know it's it's like
more increasingly like my sister the other day, her coworkers were in their family.
Their family was here.
And my sister introduced me as like the communist, you know, because like, like, you know, haha and Jess, you know, she thinks it's funny and shit.
And this guy, he wasn't challenging me, but he was just asking me, like, why do you believe in this and that?
And increasingly, the only thing I have to say is climate change, bro.
Like, that's it.
You know what i'm saying like we have to like you know we have to have some sort of centralized planning to like you know to like deal with this shit because i mean
there's no getting off of planet earth unless you bezos you know i mean there's really no
go ahead tony no i interrupted you no no go ahead it's just like we're in a we're in a never-ending
pandemic this is climate chaos this is what climate change is it's a never-ending pandemic
that they're just like oh just wear a mask okay you don't have to now well maybe wear it again
let's get another shot these people are completely fucking insane yeah yeah for real for real yeah
it's interesting that you bring that up aaron because like reading this i would even say that i guess i'm a communist because i at this
point can no longer deny the fact that if we're going to challenge this we need a complete and
thorough revolution like because i i mean for all the people especially in this article this guy quoted, like, wow, we've lost our connection to the land and everything.
It's like, that is true.
And Wendell Berry and these people are right when they raise that question.
Because industrial capitalism has basically severed us from our connection to the quote-unquote natural world.
But, like, we do have to restore that somehow we do have to integrate
ourselves back into it in a way that's not destructive and contributes further to climate
change and all this and the only way that i know how to do that would be yeah a social revolution
that both yeah it completely sweeps away all of our not just all not just the economic mode of production but
all of our um cultural precepts i guess about like how we view our relationship to the world
and to others and our social relations as well and um and i don't know i guess that's a pretty
scary notion and i understand why people would be pretty terrified by that but um but i'm just i
just don't know what the alternative is at this point.
What the fuck is the alternative?
It's like you said, we're in a fucking pandemic.
What is the alternative if this is the road that's brought us here?
It has to be some kind of pivot.
I don't know.
I think the social revolution, too, is a big thing, man.
I don't know. I guess capitalism revolution too is a big thing man because um like i don't know
i guess like you know capitalism and kind of the way it's been filtered down like you know the way
we learn about the world and each other is like we mystify our relationship with nature you know
what i mean like you know you could say that labor is the source of all wealth but really like nature
is the source of all of that you know and it's kind of troubling that this dude kind of understands like the
importance of nature but is also still operating under this like you know bourgeois premise that
like oh yeah all we need to do is control nature instead of living and learning how to live with
it you know and by the way we got an app for that you know what i mean yeah
well um i know we're coming up on an hour but there is one other thing i wanted to talk about
i don't know if you guys are okay with that if you're not it's totally chill we can totally
there's an app for that keep rolling um well there was an article i wanted to talk about it's in it
and it talks a little bit about this actually it talks a little bit about like kind of the um the sort of non-profit approach to um the world uh to our
you know issues right now specifically about the uh like the vaccine rollout and the um everything
going on with uh covid right now It's in the Washington Post.
It's called,
How the U.S. Vaccination Drive Came to Rely on an Army of Consultants.
God damn.
It's man-tall out here.
Fight worse than death.
Private contractors, this is the subheader,
private contractors cost taxpayers millions
while demonstrating few clear results in papering over weaknesses in the country's public health
system wait i love i love that that they're gonna focus this on health care instead of the fucking
war machine jesus fuck i mean the the u.s military gets away with Countless war crimes
By contracting it out
Okay I'm sorry
I'm sorry
The uh
I guess there's a few things to point out
Before I start reading this
Um the first is that I kind of disagree
With the framing of like
Costing taxpayers millions
Um there is no
such thing as taxpayers um i just i just i think it's a really middle class you know concern and
issue that i think is pretty pointless to the working class like um there's a good article
by this guy named jesse myerson i think it's called i think it's literally
called there is no such thing as taxpayers or something like that but anytime you see an article
that says cost taxpayers so and so your sirens should go off a little bit so yeah um kind of
you know be aware of that they're trying to appeal to the bourgeois classes exactly exactly exactly
um and then another thing i wanted to point out is
that like you know they talk about private contractors i don't really think that there's
a right way that this could have been handled i think that the government has basically forfeited
all of its sort of legitimacy uh you know in the last 40 years that even if we did have a robust
public health system i don't think it could have dealt with this pandemic.
Everything was so fucked.
There was nothing that was going to basically help us out here
and ensure full vaccination or I don't even want to say that.
Herd immunity, I guess, would be a better umbrella term
or anything like that.
You know what I mean?
Like, this was all all
the cards were already laid out before um shit really started hitting the fan um but i i won't
go through this entire article i'll just kind of summarize it and read a little bit um when
gavin newsom outsourced key components of california's vaccine rollout to the private
sector during the pandemic's darkest days last winter the democratic governor promised the This is ridiculous.
He said in february so um just to recap
they basically turned over the vaccine rollout to a private health insurance company
for equity oh my god dude like do these people just live in like you know like an opposite world
not even opposite days you know what i mean just they live in a world in which like nothing is
what it actually means man that's insane yeah this is a fucking democrat i don't mean to be like the, well, Cuba does it this way person. But in Cuba, when it's like dengue season, like mosquito season and everything,
they pay people to go around in the neighborhoods and turn over standing water.
And then they fumigate the neighborhoods.
It's like an all hands on deck kind of thing.
You know what I mean?
Like what we do in this country is we punt to the worst people when like they should hire people to go out and say,
go people that are living on the streets.
Let's get you vaccinated.
What do you need?
What are you?
You know what I mean?
It's just the most insane approach.
Motherfucker.
They should be going door to door.
We should be going door to door if we can.
You know what I'm saying?
Vaccinating people, yo.
It really does.
Through this pandemic
you can trace almost every decision back to they it's almost like their actual goal is to not make
life easy yeah for any for people exactly because they could just pay us to stay home they could pay
us to get vaccinated they could pay us to care for one another they could pay whatever it literally if if the solution is going to make
your personal life easier what that's socialism exactly that's too much exactly too fucking much
well and that's why i don't really blame anybody for not getting the vaccine because
why the fuck would you if your entire life experience had been these the government and
pharmaceutical companies hurting you why the fuck would you just be entire life experience had been these the government and pharmaceutical
companies hurting you why the fuck would you just be accepted to suddenly be like
okay i guess they won't hurt me now like yeah that's logical actually how many times how many
times how many horror stories have you heard of i'll even use like an example from the bourgeois
classes like somebody's husband was sick in the hospital
or wife or somebody was sick in the hospital.
And during this whole ordeal,
these insurance companies were hectoring and badgering them
and not paying for certain stuff
and creating all this added stress or whatever.
If you want to point to why is the pandemic response
in this country been so piss poor,
maybe it's the people that badger you in your lowest moment and don't look out for you and fleece you with for
money every year and also on the other side of that don't cover you because you can't afford their
sort of ephemeral product or whatever like what makes you think that that that those are the
people that should
take the reins of the pandemic response you know and in california it was literally those people
you know what i'm saying like a literal insurance company was the ones rolling this out like
wouldn't that if you had heard that or if you knew that like i don't really know that the average joe
would really know that but But, like, still,
it doesn't engender
any trust in the community.
It'd be like the same jackals
that are trying to fleece me
out of a fucking,
you know, $5,000
for going in
for an ingrown toenail
are trying to give me a vaccine.
Right.
Fuck, man.
The people charging me $9,000
for goddamn Tylenol
are gonna make sure
I see my way through this thing.
Literally, if there's anyone to be trusted less than the U.S. government, it's the U.S. pharmaceutical insurance people.
The only one to be trusted less than the U.S. government.
It's like you were saying, Tanya.
It's like you were saying, Tanya.
It's like, you know, you have this response which is supposed to be geared towards like supposedly like you know like saving human life you know what i mean but
it's like everything they do is antithetical to that so all you end up doing is like a meat grinder
where you're almost purposefully like i have to think like you know we've talked about this before
like you know bordering on the conspiratorial but like man maybe they just want motherfuckers to die
you know i mean it's the same as like people who
are against abortion. They claim that
this is all about life when they
literally love legislation
that makes life miserable
for children and all people.
It's just the same.
It's pretty, I guess it's just par for the course
at this point. These people hate fun.
I don't know. They hate living. They hate being
alive.
Well, I think in this case it's a combination of several things one is is ideology like people don't know at this point politicians public health officials others they literally don't
know how to deal with the crisis in any other way than through the private sector and this kind of
goes back to the jonathan webb app harvesting and so that just becomes their default thing
um and then there is the cynical aspect of it the materialist aspect of it you know like they're just
in it to make money um but i also i would really caution against anybody, because I see this on the left a lot, and you even saw this with Bernie, and I'm sure I even indulged in it as well.
There is this kind of temptation to say, like, oh, well, yes, you're right.
The private sector is the problem, you know, when they contract out to, like, Blue Shield of California.
california or if they if like some states do like ohio and pennsylvania did like in this article they contracted out with fucking mckinsey and boston consulting group to like roll out the
vaccine um if i can understand how uh some people could say well what they actually need to do is
just keep it all in-house and have the government distribute it um you know like in a proper like
social democratic state.
Well, I don't think that that's possible anymore either.
And that's kind of what I was talking about at the top of this.
Like in the neoliberal bargain, it wasn't just that we outsourced every single aspect of society
to private industry and auctioned off the commons to the least lowest possible bidder.
It was that we also sold the legitimacy of government to act in that kind of capacity.
You know what I'm saying?
So it's like, so I mean, it's not like we, I don't think there is any scenario in which
the government could have acted as a responsible, reliable actor here.
In this article, they do point out the state government of Vermont
has a much higher vaccination rate,
and they're much more successful at these public health metrics
than Pennsylvania, Ohio, California,
the states that did hire out these private consultants.
But if anything, that just goes know goes to show show you really like
what investing in public health does but i don't think it's any kind of argument for like oh we
just what we need is a nicer government because like that that ship has sailed so fucking long
it's like it's like in a way the dream of or you know or whatever you know the bernie dream of like social democracy is like probably
even at this point harder to achieve than like a full-blown you know revolution type of situation
yeah yeah i think culturally yeah man culturally is like you can't put the genie back in the bottle
like even the way people think about government you know like you know even people who you know
could be ostensibly swayed to the left like they don't want like nowadays like people are so distrustful of the government for good
reason that they don't want the government to fucking do anything you know what i mean so even
in terms of the fuck the they're evil yeah they're evil exactly motherfuckers they're awful fucking
people i mean i don't i don't you know nobody fucking should trust them at all i mean i just i saw somebody uh you know how like
uh in in kentucky basheer had like the governor for those that don't know had signed like the
mask mandate and then the state supreme court struck it down and like i saw like a lot of
liberals on twitter that were like you know they're kind of like you know daddy andy liberals were like his hands are
tied the supreme court like struck it down so it's like okay because six limp dicks and coats
including one guy from our hometown sam said that oh you can't do that it's unconstitutional so we
should just let people die you know what i mean yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah because we can't we can't we can um
we can't interrupt uh the the like this this kind of prestigious sort of like like the way that we
think about it yeah exactly exactly so people therefore must die yeah it's the fucking thing
tom aren't there already thousands of kids in quarantine in Lexington since school started, what, two weeks ago?
Here's my thing.
I want to say something because I don't want to sound like I'm an anti-vax person or anything like that.
I don't want to peddle in conspiracies, regardless of what I've been charged with over the last couple of weeks.
Someone accused us of peddling too much misinformation recently, which I thought that was the funniest fucking thing ever.
Somebody also had a picture.
Somebody also did a picture where they thought that I was un-vaxxed.
So it was like three flowers or some shit.
Like, these people are insane.
Yeah, and one flower that was, like, limp and dead.
Like, Aaron ain't vaxxed.
Motherfucker, I said I was vaxxed in the episode.
Motherfucker, you're not listening.
No way.
Literally said it.
Yeah, listen to it, bro.
Oh, my God.
Anyways.
Anyway.
Sorry, Tom. I never see any of this hate mail. I hate you. Don't start sending me this. Anyways, sorry, Tom.
I never see any of this hate mail.
Y'all don't start sending me this.
No, no, no.
Yeah, no.
Okay, so basically, and again, strictly anecdotal,
but you can't tell me the number of these breakthrough cases,
particularly in places where vaccination hasn't been
spectacularly successful for a number of reasons,
including, yes, there are the chuds
that are like spitting people's face and coughing
and shit like that.
But there's also, you know,
the people on the side of it where like
they're out in this economy trying to survive,
peddling together, whatever it is,
you know what I mean?
You know, getting sick and everything else like it it doesn't it just feel like and again not
an anti-vaxxer i'll say everybody out there should get vaccinated i just it just feels like
we were sold a bill of goods about this thing in a way in the sense that that they've moved the goalpost on what efficacy is.
Right. Like move the goalpost somewhat fully vaccinated.
Right. Right. Now we need boosters. Right.
Well, what I'm saying is like I was given to understand that if I take a vaccine that's 90 percent effective, that means it's 90 going to protect 90 effective and then it became
and then it became well that just means you're not going to get really sick or go to the hospital
but i thought like the breakthrough cases were kind of bundled in that like eight to ten percent
like margin you know what i mean and then biden comes on tv if you've been fully vaccinated you
don't need to wear a mask and then two months later he says i didn't say that yeah dude it's it's blown my fucking mind just in the last week that like when they got the
fucking fda author uh authorization for pfizer literally overnight it became oh well see the
thing is like these things aren't that effective.
There are breakthrough cases, and then that's why you need a third booster shot.
Why don't you go get a third booster shot so then you can be fully vaccinated?
And it's just like, okay.
I don't really understand, though.
It's like we were saying last week i think tom like it feels like at some point they
knew that they were wrong about this but they couldn't admit it because at the beginning of
the administration they billed themselves as the administration that beat the virus
and that's what they were telling us do you remember late may the last week of may early
june there was this feeling like oh we finally beat it
what's everyone we're gonna do with post-pandemic summer we're all gonna be fucking and it's like
they could not admit yeah exactly yeah truly they couldn't admit because that would be them admitting
that they actually had no fucking clue what they were doing they were just making it up and it was all for fucking
but why say hospital like there's no legitimacy continue like people already don't believe people
i mean like why keep saving face like that why don't you try to save lives sorry go ahead
sorry our hospital has more covid cases right now than it ever has in more hospitalized covid cases
than ever before it's on the cover of our fucking paper
jesus christ dude like i and you know i had i had my little hot girl summer
i ran out too like oh fuck yeah and i just i've been getting tested again i started getting
tested again because now i got the fear of god back in me because literally everyone
people are dying again.
And there really was like a four week.
My doctor said, she said, my doctor said
I didn't have one positive COVID case
for four weeks.
And then they were back with a vengeance.
And they're never, they'll probably never
admit that they fucked it up, that they fucked this up.
Telling people that you don't have to wear masks.
There was never even a mask mandate.
There was never a national mask mandate. There was never a national mask mandate.
Man, it's like...
Nah, I don't think there was a national
mask mandate. I think he said he was going to do that.
That's one of the first things he said he was going to do.
I didn't do that.
Anyway, I have my little
hospital, your little
online records. I get on there to check
to see when my results drop for my
COVID test. And I had them my covet test and it had them
all lined up and it was like i was getting at least one test a month all last year because i've
been getting tested like right on the regular and then this summer there's a block where i didn't
get tested april may june and now i've been tested four times in the last six weeks and i was like
tested but i was like that guy in that cave in Serbia.
You know, all that.
I'd sneak out at like 11.33
right before the grocery store closed.
When nobody else was away.
Double mask.
Tiptoe into the grocery store, looking around, making sure that
if anybody behind you did six feet, like,
let's buckle back up.
Well, I've been saying this is just gonna become a flu shot
you're gonna be like that's what they want you like you're just gonna have to keep getting it
it's gonna be an annual which at this point it's more this is what we're coming up on our third
shot in six months no that's what that's what these pharmaceutical companies they got together
and that's what they said that they're gonna be like that that would be a that would be a relatively decent outcome of all this.
Yes.
One shot a year, sure.
But that's not where we're heading.
Where we're heading is like, I don't know. I mean, if they keep doing this, if they keep shifting the goalposts and just completely, you know, fumbling their messaging, contracting this all out to private corporations, etc., then it will head in the direction of greater police power and greater militaristic control of our movements and what we can do and can't do
i mean i i you can't you can't attend this rally unless you're vaccinated yeah i mean exactly like
i can't i mean it just feels like just in the last week there was like this um i don't know
there was a doctor in alabama who said he wouldn't treat unvaccinated people which
whatever but then like a few days later then that is a violation yeah right well this whole
fucking pandemic has been a hip viral violation like how many fucking like doctor influencers
have you seen like post their fucking face on their twitter tl and be like oh my god like i
had to deal with this fucking
dumbass today who did blah blah blah
and they give, like, all these identifying details
of, like, someone they had to deal
with and it's just like, I don't
know, like, I don't
know. I'm just fucking sick of doctors
bitching. Yeah,
exactly. Shut your fucking mouth.
Yeah, I mean, like, this isn't,
um, I'm not speaking about nurses,
because that's a whole different thing.
I just get really fucking annoyed
when I see doctors bitching and complaining about, like,
oh, man, this isn't fair, man.
I'm not going to treat the unvaccinated.
Shut the fuck up, bitch.
You're a fucking doctor, yo.
You make, like, $300,000 a year.
Yeah, we're-
I'm not going to treat sick people.
I'm not going to treat sick people.
Exactly.
You know what?
It's like, I bet there were people like that during the HIV crisis in the 80s and 90s.
Yeah, of course.
I mean, no.
This isn't conjecture.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like, you still took a note.
You know what I mean? It's like, you still took an oath. You know what I mean?
Like, that's just what it is, you know?
It's like, but that whole, like,
I'm not going to treat you because you're unvaccinated.
Yeah, I get it.
It's annoying and everything for people that like,
you know, probably know better or whatever, quote unquote.
But it's like, you're going to say,
you're not going to treat an HIV patient.
Oh, well, you shouldn't have fucked that person or whatever.
You know what I mean?
It's like, fuck out of here.
They bundle it up in like like responsabilization and individualization
and I mean if like throughout
all of this man if the
alternative like truly is just death
you know what I mean if we were not like
we don't do what's required that just really
means that like I don't know if I know if I'm
using the phrase properly but like the term
necrocapitalism you know meaning that this is
all just based on like the death of people the wanton like you know not even wanton i mean the
purposeful like death of people the fact that people need to die i mean why the fuck would
somebody want to go get vaxxed you know and i'm saying go get your vaccines but again it's kind
of like where we're talking about a couple weeks ago especially if you're a person of color or you
know you're you're a poor working person and the kind of history of medical experimentation
on black and working people, it's like...
That is not conspiracy fodder.
This is fact.
It's fact.
Yeah, it's fact, man.
I mean, we had a sexy sex ed summer camp
and we did a whole workshop on eugenics
and the history of birth control being forced sterilization.
Like, there's no way to
there's just no way to
overstate
how much proof we have
of just
violence
against us.
And this anti-vax stuff, these people
bucking against that is the chickens
coming home to roost
of that neoliberalization project.
It's what it is. And nobody wants to say that.
And they try to pigeonhole you like you're this
conspiracy peddling fucking
anti-vax person. It's like, motherfucker, I was
the first one in line. And I
recommend everybody go get
and do the shit. We did
outdoor, we did an outdoor
fucking photo shoot
for the Bitter Southern. Tom wouldn't take his mask
off. In the great outdoors,
six feet apart.
I know, I ain't seen this man.
Oh my god.
Alright, it's been an hour and a half
and I'm depressed. I think we've
done our job.
I just need to be
nicer to each other.
And I am vaccinated. For all you people out there i'm fucking vaccinated okay
i was in the salon yesterday like i got my hair done yesterday and i had and i should not be in
a salon but there were half of us were wearing our mask and half weren't and we were but but we
ended up in that room all talking about it we had a long long conversation about like, is there going to be another lockdown?
Should there be another lockdown?
Everyone in the room was vaxxed.
But literally everyone in there agreed.
Like, I totally understand why people won't get vaccinated.
And they're only they were pissed that apparently on Facebook.
I'm not on Facebook now, so I don't know.
But apparently now the whole thing is blaming vaccinated people for the spread.
Oh, my.
It's like it's like, well, now that we know that, like...
It's kind of true.
The whole, like, mask off thing, yeah, it's kind of interesting.
Well, because you can still pass it on even if you don't...
Yeah, well, they didn't know, yeah, that, like,
yeah, vaccinated people can carry it to the extent that they thought.
And so, yes, it is kind of true that what's going on is a lot of us got
vaccinated and then just started fucking traveling everywhere like fuck it and then just we're
spreading it around with this took joe biden that uh pillar of uh fidelity it's advice and
if you've been fully vaxxed you can take take your mask off. It is out there. Who two months later swears up and down he never said that.
This truly has been just like a mass governmental misinformation campaign.
Just propagandizing people into the meat grinder.
That is what fucking frustrates me so goddamn much about people saying,
like accusing us of being like spreading misinformation when it's like
the fucking channels of legitimacy that you people have arbitrarily just selected for yourselves
whether it's the fucking wapos new york times or the government are all spreading misinformation
yeah i didn't do it first motherfucker losing i didn't miss it for me first my fucking yeah
it's like and that's when i've told a friend the other day like i don't know it first motherfuckers i didn't miss it for me first my fucking yeah it's like
and that's when i've told a friend the other day like i don't know if i can do this show anymore
because like it like it has broken my brain in a way that like it makes me feel like i don't have
a good solid read on anything anymore you know what i'm saying it's like well before i don't
like all right none of us do is that the point of showing that we don't fucking know the thing is before i could be like this is propaganda
this isn't this is propaganda this isn't and now though because i've got all these people now in
my sphere who i previously communicated with no problem whatever now like half of them are
fucking just like crazed insane like um saying that like oh uh you know
haha you didn't get a vaccine you deserve to die and then the other half of them are saying
like my feet are gonna blow off if i get the vaccine like i don't i'm just like i'm i'm
fucking losing so anyways i was talking to a friend about it this morning and he was like look
i'm just gonna give you some advice he's, go back in your mind back to last summer
when there was about three or four days
when it looked like this country might actually get revved.
Like, this thing might actually fucking go.
It might actually fucking happen.
And he was like, just dwell in there.
Just sit in that moment for a minute.
He's like, that's how you know it's real.
And I think that that's good advice.
Like, that's something real that you can hang on to.
That was a moment of real, actual solidarity
and militarized, like, organized resistance
against an actual power structure.
And it was real.
And it eventually got picked apart, and it got beaten and co-opted and whatever structure and it was real and it eventually got picked apart
and it got beaten and co-opted and whatever but it was real and you can hold on to that because
like you have to hold on to shit that you know is real right now that's a good ass point man and i
guess like you know let's go here soon but like it's a real good point because uh when i went
i think it was like maybe a week after rashardard Brooks was killed down here in Atlanta, Georgia.
I went to like this rally, like protest.
And at that point, the city of Atlanta, the mayor had instituted a curfew.
And we all knew that the curfew was coming because the cops are warning us about the curfew.
You know, like they were already like APD was already in front of us, militarized with their shields and shit.
And exactly, exactly. like apd was already in front of us militarized with their shields and shit and exactly exactly well this is day this is the day after i think two days after seeing that
center so they were just like completely had the area on lockdown and for a moment you know
there's that moment where right before like we got kettled you know where they started bum rushing
us where everybody kind of looked at each other and it was like past eight o'clock or whatever
it was like 803 and we were all like oh shit man we're all in this together we're all here
no matter what happens and that moment was kind of like i've never been a part of something with
so many people where something decisive and honestly violent you know possibly violent was
about to happen and not like see people run away right to see people kind of look to beside each
other and be like there are other people here okay i don't know what's about to happen but when it happens it's going to happen
to all of us together and like that little kind of pocket of solidarity man to just kind of hold
on to that shit you know it makes things a little less bleak i guess it's real yeah it's real it's
real you can hold you in a world of constantly shifting illusions and um you know uh confusion and chaos you gotta hold on to
things that are exactly hold on to the solidaristic ass beating from the cops hold on to that shit's
real exactly you're gonna ask us to be together bro let's go
shit i know i did fuck oh jesus all right fuck alright that's a good
that's a really good note to leave it out on
thanks for humoring us for an hour
and 40 minutes
hopefully the whole thing wasn't too bleak
or whatever I don't care
well if you want more
go to the Patreon. Patreon.
P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com slash TrillBillyWorkersParty
Thanks for listening, everybody.
Anybody have any final parting thoughts?
Nah.
Nope.
Nope.
Smoke weed, meditate, go outside.
Fuck. Do what you outside fuck do what you can
stay elevated
today's Wednesday
right?
I
can't find any
of the chargers for my vibrators
and three good men gone this week
three vibrators down this week
solidarity you fuck them if you got them fuck them if you got them
i gotta unpack and find my fucking plug-ins hold up didn't you just put batteries oh i guess they
use different batteries you just put batteries in your no they're charged oh they're chargers
oh you're talking about the block oh bro this this is the fucking Zoom. God damn. And my battery. Is that for like a video camera or some shit?
No, these plug into a fucking wall.
Damn, you look like you're about to power a TV or some shit with that, man.
Oh, man.
All right.
All right, guys.
Good luck out there.
Good luck out there.
All right.
Stay strong.
We'll see you next time.
Bye.
Peace out.