[00:00.000 --> 00:07.640]  ...heard Wednesday right after the WBAI Evening News on Wednesdays at 6.30 p.m.
[00:08.240 --> 00:11.380]  Now stay tuned for Off the Hook coming up.
[00:11.460 --> 00:14.580]  It is now 7 p.m.
[00:14.740 --> 00:15.320]  Stay tuned.
[00:17.000 --> 00:19.960]  And you're listening to radio station WBAI New York.
[00:20.160 --> 00:21.420]  The time is 7 o'clock.
[00:21.860 --> 00:23.620]  Time for Off the Hook.
[00:34.370 --> 00:36.350]  I cut myself while shaving.
[00:36.850 --> 00:38.850]  Now I can't make a cough.
[00:39.630 --> 00:41.670]  We couldn't get much worse.
[00:42.370 --> 00:44.230]  But if they could, they would.
[00:44.490 --> 00:47.150]  Bum-Billy-Bum, but the best is paid for worst.
[00:47.790 --> 00:49.630]  I hope that's understood.
[00:49.990 --> 00:50.750]  Bum-Billy-Bum!
[01:57.270 --> 01:58.870]  And a very good evening to everybody.
[01:58.950 --> 02:00.650]  The program is Off the Hook.
[02:00.670 --> 02:03.770]  Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening.
[02:04.030 --> 02:05.330]  Joined tonight by Kyle.
[02:05.830 --> 02:07.190]  Yes, yes, I made it.
[02:07.190 --> 02:07.990]  Rob T.
[02:08.330 --> 02:08.770]  Firefly.
[02:09.850 --> 02:10.730]  Good evening.
[02:10.950 --> 02:11.290]  Rob T.
[02:11.390 --> 02:12.550]  Firefly is very far away.
[02:12.630 --> 02:13.290]  Why is that?
[02:15.530 --> 02:16.390]  You don't know.
[02:16.570 --> 02:17.930]  A little closer to the microphone, perhaps.
[02:18.090 --> 02:18.590]  Yeah, that's better.
[02:18.670 --> 02:19.370]  That's better.
[02:19.770 --> 02:20.650]  And Gila, are you there?
[02:21.310 --> 02:22.190]  I am here.
[02:22.510 --> 02:23.970]  Okay, what, do you have a new microphone there?
[02:23.990 --> 02:24.410]  Is that it?
[02:24.910 --> 02:26.610]  It's a nice low-sounding microphone?
[02:27.450 --> 02:29.710]  Okay, well, Alex, haven't forgotten about you.
[02:30.590 --> 02:31.390]  I am here.
[02:31.650 --> 02:32.370]  Good evening, everyone.
[02:32.370 --> 02:32.890]  Great.
[02:33.510 --> 02:39.090]  Well, I won't lie, you know, it's been quite a week for me.
[02:39.230 --> 02:39.950]  It really has been.
[02:40.070 --> 02:45.350]  This has been probably one of the pivotal moments of my life.
[02:45.670 --> 02:49.990]  It was, it was, how do I say it?
[02:50.010 --> 02:51.450]  It was the week I got verified on Twitter.
[02:53.030 --> 02:53.430]  Twitter.
[02:53.430 --> 02:54.570]  I am Twitter verified right now.
[02:55.210 --> 02:59.390]  Yeah, and I gotta say, first of all, no disrespect to anybody here.
[03:00.470 --> 03:04.230]  I mean, if you see me less, there are other people now that I talk to.
[03:04.770 --> 03:06.310]  That's just, life changes.
[03:06.410 --> 03:06.910]  That's how it is.
[03:07.010 --> 03:11.730]  But I gotta say, it wasn't an easy path to get there.
[03:11.930 --> 03:14.430]  You know, I've been on Twitter for about 25 years now.
[03:15.870 --> 03:18.670]  And, you know, it's hard.
[03:18.690 --> 03:19.590]  It's hard sometimes.
[03:19.850 --> 03:23.830]  And when Twitter reopened their verification process after several years...
[03:23.830 --> 03:28.710]  By the way, I just applied when they closed it off last time.
[03:28.710 --> 03:32.470]  So my application was actually being processed when they decided, okay, no more.
[03:32.790 --> 03:34.630]  Maybe that's what spurred it.
[03:34.770 --> 03:35.410]  I don't know.
[03:35.590 --> 03:41.370]  But when they opened up again a couple of weeks ago, I was among the first to say, okay, here we go.
[03:41.370 --> 03:43.350]  And filled out the forms and all that.
[03:44.010 --> 03:44.990]  And then I got this notice.
[03:46.450 --> 03:51.210]  This computerized notice saying that this account does not meet the criteria to be verified.
[03:52.310 --> 03:54.870]  And I was beside myself.
[03:55.070 --> 03:57.570]  I couldn't... you know, I could not accept it.
[03:57.750 --> 03:59.210]  It was a total denial.
[03:59.370 --> 04:00.430]  This has to be wrong.
[04:00.550 --> 04:02.050]  This can't be happening.
[04:02.210 --> 04:03.070]  This can't be real.
[04:03.710 --> 04:06.190]  I mean, Twitter, no, you've got it wrong.
[04:06.990 --> 04:08.530]  This is a mistake.
[04:08.970 --> 04:09.670]  It's gotta be.
[04:09.770 --> 04:10.270]  It's gotta be.
[04:10.270 --> 04:14.870]  And, you know, I thank everybody for their support, for listening to me.
[04:16.670 --> 04:19.930]  Because after that, I grew to accept the decision.
[04:20.350 --> 04:23.550]  I was basically, yeah, makes sense.
[04:23.950 --> 04:25.690]  You know, I don't deserve it.
[04:25.930 --> 04:27.470]  I don't deserve to be verified.
[04:28.430 --> 04:31.550]  And then after that, it was interesting to see how it progressed.
[04:31.650 --> 04:34.890]  Because after that, I became thankful.
[04:35.950 --> 04:40.050]  I was thankful to Twitter, and actually kind of apologetic for even questioning them in the first place.
[04:40.090 --> 04:41.310]  Because you can't really question.
[04:41.510 --> 04:42.930]  It's an email.
[04:43.010 --> 04:44.110]  It's a machine.
[04:44.590 --> 04:46.130]  And it has its reasons.
[04:46.130 --> 04:48.430]  And you can't really second guess that.
[04:48.470 --> 04:50.890]  And I feel bad for even having attempted to do that.
[04:50.890 --> 04:59.070]  But I just felt like this is the signal I need to improve my life, you know?
[04:59.810 --> 05:00.670]  Yeah, sure.
[05:00.950 --> 05:05.290]  I've been publishing a magazine for, what, 35 years now?
[05:05.790 --> 05:07.630]  I've been doing this radio show forever.
[05:07.870 --> 05:10.570]  I've made a movie, put out two books.
[05:11.790 --> 05:13.570]  And I thought that was enough, you know?
[05:13.730 --> 05:18.470]  I thought that was enough to qualify me as somebody worthy of note.
[05:19.390 --> 05:23.270]  And Twitter, thank you for telling me that it wasn't.
[05:23.490 --> 05:25.850]  And for making me push a little harder.
[05:26.070 --> 05:31.850]  You know, now maybe I'll return Mel Gibson's phone calls and make that Hacker Western we've all been wanting to see, you know?
[05:32.210 --> 05:33.570]  Maybe I'll put out that rap album.
[05:33.570 --> 05:37.910]  Maybe I'll do something, an addition that I've been holding back on.
[05:39.470 --> 05:42.230]  Because Twitter told me that I could do more.
[05:42.390 --> 05:43.930]  I could make more of myself.
[05:44.170 --> 05:47.990]  And then, maybe then, I'll be verified.
[05:47.990 --> 05:50.270]  And I'll get that little blue check next to my name.
[05:52.510 --> 05:55.850]  And I gotta tell you, it was something.
[05:56.130 --> 05:58.210]  It was a lot of soul-searching going on this week.
[05:58.550 --> 06:02.830]  Realizing that, yeah, I might have accomplished some things, but I haven't accomplished nearly enough.
[06:02.830 --> 06:04.550]  And there's so much more left to go.
[06:04.690 --> 06:07.710]  And this is the signal that I was waiting for.
[06:07.870 --> 06:19.970]  So, as of a couple of days ago, I was really, really into just starting over and launching all these projects.
[06:21.250 --> 06:27.010]  And then, I discovered that they had changed their minds inside to verify me after all.
[06:27.450 --> 06:29.270]  And now, I've got a blue check next to my name.
[06:29.350 --> 06:31.470]  So, I don't really have any motivation to do anything more.
[06:31.690 --> 06:32.850]  I really don't.
[06:33.250 --> 06:33.770]  I'm done.
[06:33.790 --> 06:34.590]  I'm sitting back now.
[06:34.710 --> 06:35.530]  This is my retirement.
[06:35.810 --> 06:37.190]  I have the blue check.
[06:37.390 --> 06:37.930]  I'm verified.
[06:39.730 --> 06:40.410]  There you go.
[06:43.960 --> 06:44.920]  So, how was your week?
[06:46.380 --> 06:54.660]  Well, my week was different from yours in that I requested verification from Twitter when they opened it back up.
[06:54.720 --> 06:55.780]  And they said no.
[06:56.140 --> 07:01.020]  So, you know, I'm proud of the work that I do with you and elsewhere.
[07:01.020 --> 07:03.200]  But I'm just not that cool yet.
[07:03.500 --> 07:04.960]  Maybe you can put in a word for me now.
[07:05.660 --> 07:06.880]  Maybe you should try harder, Rob.
[07:06.880 --> 07:09.160]  Maybe there's more you can do as well.
[07:09.380 --> 07:15.500]  You know, maybe they're telling you that they see more in you than you see in yourself.
[07:16.560 --> 07:19.860]  You know, you might see a blue check next to your name.
[07:20.800 --> 07:22.420]  But that blue check is earned.
[07:22.660 --> 07:22.840]  Okay?
[07:22.900 --> 07:24.660]  That blue check comes with pain.
[07:27.120 --> 07:30.220]  And it's not easy to carry.
[07:30.500 --> 07:30.960]  It really is.
[07:31.100 --> 07:32.340]  It comes with a lot of responsibility.
[07:33.280 --> 07:35.100]  It comes with a lot of responsibility.
[07:36.940 --> 07:38.680]  And I may yet regret this.
[07:40.080 --> 07:41.700]  When you say something, people listen.
[07:41.980 --> 07:43.400]  People take you more seriously now.
[07:43.500 --> 07:45.840]  They see the blue check and right away.
[07:46.300 --> 07:47.680]  All right, you must know what he's talking about.
[07:47.700 --> 07:48.420]  And I don't.
[07:48.860 --> 07:50.100]  I really, really don't.
[07:51.000 --> 07:52.620]  But now I have to pretend like I do.
[07:52.720 --> 07:54.260]  And that's going to be a lot of work.
[07:54.780 --> 07:55.000]  Gila.
[07:55.800 --> 08:00.760]  Well, I just want to caution you because I know people who have had blue checks.
[08:00.760 --> 08:02.080]  Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
[08:03.440 --> 08:04.820]  Do you have a blue check next to your name?
[08:05.380 --> 08:06.100]  I do not.
[08:06.280 --> 08:07.280]  And you're going to caution me?
[08:08.580 --> 08:09.920]  All I was going to say.
[08:10.340 --> 08:11.400]  Yeah, let's hear the press.
[08:11.940 --> 08:14.260]  This is the kind of thing that they warn me about.
[08:14.460 --> 08:14.980]  All right?
[08:15.360 --> 08:16.180]  Okay, no, go ahead.
[08:16.540 --> 08:17.080]  Go ahead.
[08:17.340 --> 08:21.340]  I have known people who had blue checks.
[08:21.440 --> 08:22.100]  Uh-huh, uh-huh.
[08:22.300 --> 08:24.020]  And don't have them anymore.
[08:25.660 --> 08:35.820]  So, I'm just saying, don't rest on the blue check, Laurel, because he who giveth the blue check can taketh it away.
[08:35.980 --> 08:36.820]  It's 7 or 8 p.m.
[08:36.820 --> 08:37.920]  That's when the threat came in.
[08:38.240 --> 08:40.400]  The threat to my blue check was just made over the air.
[08:40.480 --> 08:41.220]  You got it, right, Kyle?
[08:41.680 --> 08:42.780]  Yeah, you're going to try some of those.
[08:42.780 --> 08:44.020]  You're on my side still, right?
[08:45.780 --> 08:47.100]  You better be on my side.
[08:47.280 --> 08:49.180]  Yeah, I mean, we talked about that earlier, right?
[08:50.300 --> 08:53.420]  What I said earlier is what I, yeah, I stand...
[08:53.420 --> 08:54.960]  Let's try and get on with the show.
[08:55.320 --> 08:56.580]  I'll do the best I can.
[08:58.020 --> 09:01.620]  Sensing a lot of tension here, though, just because I got a little blue check next to my name now.
[09:01.620 --> 09:03.260]  Oh, look, I think Alex has something to say.
[09:03.280 --> 09:04.840]  Yeah, Alex, what are you going to say?
[09:04.880 --> 09:05.620]  Are you going to burst my bubble?
[09:06.740 --> 09:12.480]  Well, you know, I know you're being facetious on several different levels.
[09:12.480 --> 09:13.080]  Oh, you do?
[09:13.080 --> 09:13.680]  You know this.
[09:13.840 --> 09:14.460]  You know me.
[09:14.480 --> 09:15.740]  You know me better than myself.
[09:15.980 --> 09:17.060]  Okay, good to know that, too.
[09:17.960 --> 09:23.820]  But I do want to ask, and this is a serious question, though, because this is something you've complained about for years.
[09:23.940 --> 09:25.620]  We only talk in serious questions here.
[09:25.720 --> 09:26.000]  Go ahead.
[09:26.580 --> 09:27.140]  I know.
[09:27.320 --> 09:29.980]  Well, you're a serious man now with this blue check, so I...
[09:29.980 --> 09:30.200]  Damn right.
[09:30.340 --> 09:31.080]  Don't you forget it.
[09:32.260 --> 09:34.620]  I haven't, and I'm sure you won't let anybody...
[09:35.520 --> 09:35.560]  All right, then.
[09:36.800 --> 09:38.760]  So, you know, there's no danger of that, right?
[09:39.220 --> 09:43.000]  But in all seriousness, you've been complaining about this for several years.
[09:43.220 --> 09:45.000]  It's obviously been very important to you.
[09:45.140 --> 09:50.400]  But we rail against the power of these social media platforms constantly on this show.
[09:50.400 --> 10:17.740]  We bemoan the algorithmic policy-driven contents that they constantly feed us, and that being part of this blue check posse now for you means that you are no longer on the side of the little guy here, no longer on the side of the person who is railing against the algorithmic feeds that are constantly driven to us,
[10:17.940 --> 10:20.220]  pushing more and more content from these blue checks.
[10:20.380 --> 10:21.160]  Should I explain it?
[10:21.820 --> 10:23.120]  You're not a friend of the algorithm.
[10:23.320 --> 10:24.840]  You're not an enemy of the algorithm.
[10:25.020 --> 10:26.800]  You're part of that algorithm now, Emmanuel.
[10:27.340 --> 10:27.460]  Okay.
[10:27.680 --> 10:30.640]  Well, first of all, we're all part of the algorithm, all right?
[10:31.040 --> 10:32.880]  Second of all, there is no blue check posse.
[10:33.220 --> 10:35.740]  Whoever told you that is lying and will be punished.
[10:38.500 --> 10:47.240]  And, you know, I think we at least ought to try to get along, because I have a lot of powerful friends now, okay?
[10:47.240 --> 10:48.520]  A lot of other blue checks out there.
[10:48.580 --> 10:49.380]  We stand up for each other.
[10:50.380 --> 10:50.700]  Yes.
[10:51.140 --> 10:53.760]  But, no, you're not answering the question, though.
[10:53.820 --> 10:54.560]  I mean, it does...
[10:54.560 --> 10:55.800]  You listed these achievements.
[10:56.000 --> 11:00.640]  You've been doing wonderful work now for, you know, the better part of, really, four decades, right?
[11:00.640 --> 11:06.760]  But, why was it so important to you to get this blue check verification from Twitter?
[11:07.020 --> 11:07.420]  What...
[11:07.420 --> 11:13.980]  Aside from the sarcastic, facetious remarks, though, but what was it that motivated you to really try for this?
[11:14.060 --> 11:14.620]  First of all...
[11:14.620 --> 11:15.640]  Because I feel like you didn't need it.
[11:15.720 --> 11:17.640]  I'm sensing that someone doesn't have a blue check.
[11:18.080 --> 11:22.760]  Second of all, thank you for complimenting me on my good work for the last four decades.
[11:22.760 --> 11:26.260]  I've been on this planet for six decades, though, so I'm going to take that as an insult.
[11:26.760 --> 11:29.520]  That I was doing bad work for two decades, fine.
[11:30.340 --> 11:32.220]  Third of all, you know what?
[11:34.120 --> 11:36.160]  Sometimes you just got to see what's possible.
[11:36.820 --> 11:40.340]  In the world of hackers, you just have to try something to see what happens.
[11:40.920 --> 11:46.020]  And now, now that I've got my foot in the door, I'm on the other side.
[11:46.920 --> 11:48.760]  I know what goes on in the blue check world.
[11:49.800 --> 11:51.940]  And maybe, maybe I can share that information.
[11:52.180 --> 11:54.180]  Maybe I can help those of you on the outside.
[11:55.140 --> 11:56.060]  You ever think of that?
[11:56.320 --> 11:58.120]  Maybe I'm still one of the good guys.
[11:58.120 --> 12:01.200]  I don't have to be evil, just because I'm now verified.
[12:02.580 --> 12:03.060]  True.
[12:03.400 --> 12:11.280]  You know, this is the argument that I've made, you know, countless times, you know, about, you know, working for change from within rather than without.
[12:11.680 --> 12:15.920]  You know, something I hoped to do when I had spent time with the government as well.
[12:16.600 --> 12:19.760]  But look, I do, I think it's, it's laudable.
[12:20.040 --> 12:29.320]  I, I checked the, I don't have the option of applying for verification now, but I would like to figure you further about it offline, about this whole process.
[12:29.320 --> 12:36.940]  And, you know, maybe you can teach us, you know, some, some of the ways that a blue check verification.
[12:36.940 --> 12:39.360]  The blue check envy is strong in this one.
[12:39.660 --> 12:41.020]  He's already trying to endear himself.
[12:41.200 --> 12:42.140]  It's just so pitiful.
[12:42.140 --> 12:48.240]  All right, you know what, Alex, after the show, we'll have a little powwow, and maybe we can guide you.
[12:48.780 --> 12:49.620]  Or I can guide you.
[12:49.740 --> 12:51.660]  I'm really the only one here that can do this right now.
[12:52.300 --> 12:52.640]  We'll see.
[12:53.480 --> 12:56.320]  I'm not very active at all on Twitter, I have to say.
[12:56.320 --> 12:59.300]  But, I mean, what if, what about Facebook?
[12:59.840 --> 13:00.800]  Oh, God, no.
[13:01.240 --> 13:01.480]  Oh.
[13:02.020 --> 13:02.380]  No.
[13:02.900 --> 13:04.920]  I'm sorry, but I have to draw the line somewhere.
[13:05.360 --> 13:06.400]  And, yeah.
[13:08.240 --> 13:12.260]  I'm on, as I mentioned, I'm on Facebook, but I don't actually do anything on Facebook.
[13:12.300 --> 13:14.480]  So people talk to me there, but I'm not hearing it.
[13:15.080 --> 13:19.320]  And sometimes, sometimes, like once a year, I go in and I check all the messages that I missed.
[13:19.340 --> 13:27.840]  And there are some life-changing events I didn't know about that people felt the only place to tell me about it was, you know, an artificial construct on a social media platform.
[13:28.460 --> 13:31.820]  But that's, that's our day and time, I guess.
[13:31.820 --> 13:33.500]  That's how people, people act.
[13:34.740 --> 13:38.860]  Well, speaking of Twitter accounts, yours is, is, is verified.
[13:39.140 --> 13:39.940]  What about the magazine?
[13:40.060 --> 13:41.560]  What about our radio show?
[13:41.980 --> 13:43.460]  That's, those are good questions.
[13:43.800 --> 13:46.620]  Those are very good questions, which I am not privy to talk about.
[13:47.360 --> 13:48.020]  Uh-huh.
[13:48.260 --> 13:48.680]  I see.
[13:48.780 --> 13:49.780]  I am not privy right now.
[13:50.020 --> 13:51.980]  Discuss with the posse and then refer to us.
[13:51.980 --> 13:56.320]  I cannot, um, go into any more detail on, I've already said too much, I think.
[13:56.500 --> 13:58.040]  And I'm sure our listeners will agree.
[13:58.180 --> 14:02.560]  Uh, but what I do want to talk about, uh, you mentioned, um, um, algorithms.
[14:02.920 --> 14:18.120]  And this was an interesting story that I, I, I saw, uh, pass over our, our news group the other day, um, that, uh, Instagram has changed their algorithm after alleged bias, uh, concerning the Gaza situation.
[14:18.120 --> 14:18.980]  Uh, yeah.
[14:19.460 --> 14:19.640]  Yeah.
[14:19.640 --> 14:27.000]  Now, uh, the, the, the current system had a bigger impact than expected on, on some types of, uh, of posts.
[14:27.260 --> 14:32.800]  Uh, it was an unintended side effect rather than an attempt to censor any particular viewpoint according to Instagram.
[14:33.180 --> 14:39.760]  Uh, but during the recent Gaza conflict, social media platforms were heavily used to spread messages of support on both sides.
[14:39.920 --> 14:49.260]  Many pro-Palestinian messages were among those widely reshared, which means they would have received less prominence than original posts under the current system.
[14:49.740 --> 14:59.920]  Um, a company spokes, uh, spokesman said the logic for prioritizing original posts was that most Instagram users had more stories to follow than time to check them.
[15:00.540 --> 15:05.580]  And the company believed people were more interested in original stories from their closest friends.
[15:05.680 --> 15:11.300]  It's also caused people to believe we were suppressing stories about particular topics or points of view.
[15:11.660 --> 15:12.680]  We want to be really clear.
[15:12.880 --> 15:14.180]  This isn't the case.
[15:14.460 --> 15:17.340]  Of course, that, that is, uh, what Instagram is saying.
[15:18.080 --> 15:31.640]  Um, the, um, the change follows a number of weeks in which some users and employees questioned how Facebook, which owns Instagram handled posts about the Gaza conflict on its own site and on apps it owns such as Instagram.
[15:31.900 --> 15:46.580]  Buzzfeed news reported on internal strife among the way Palestinian related content, uh, often had warnings attached while the financial times reported that a group of about 50 employees have been involved in raising concerns about supposed suppression of pro-Palestinian content.
[15:46.820 --> 15:55.060]  Many of the issues are believed to have been caused by large scale automated moderation rather than deliberate attempts by individuals to restrict content.
[15:55.280 --> 16:03.100]  Does that make anybody feel better when it's done by wide scale automated, um, uh, moderation instead of, uh, good old fashioned humans.
[16:03.380 --> 16:12.680]  Instagram said this newly announced shift towards equal weighting of original posts and re-shared stories will happen over time rather than being an instant change.
[16:13.060 --> 16:15.940]  We still think people want to see more original stories.
[16:16.080 --> 16:22.900]  So we're looking at other ways to focus stories on original content through things like, um, uh, new creative tools.
[16:23.000 --> 16:35.660]  And I apologize for, uh, if that story seemed a little choppy, um, when I printed it out, I printed the whole thing, but after it printed out, I realized that Instagram had stuck an ad in the middle of, of one of the paragraphs making it impossible to read.
[16:35.660 --> 16:36.580]  So, yeah.
[16:36.720 --> 16:43.520]  Uh, but I think you get the gist of it, that, um, these things are going on and that people are reacting to them and, and the reaction is causing change.
[16:45.360 --> 16:45.760]  Sure.
[16:45.940 --> 16:59.560]  You know, interestingly on that subject, uh, I, I think I mentioned this last week, but I should have an article coincidentally on, uh, in the financial times coming out on algorithmic transparency probably, uh, within the next couple of weeks.
[16:59.780 --> 17:02.420]  Uh, but this, this is also, you know, it's a big problem.
[17:02.500 --> 17:03.280]  Nobody really understands.
[17:03.280 --> 17:15.660]  I think even within the social media platforms, themselves, what the unintended consequences of algorithmic tweaks are, or even really how the entire algorithm that feeds us content actually works.
[17:16.260 --> 17:25.900]  And without having a, I think a holistic internal understanding of how these algorithms work, it becomes very difficult to explain to the outside world what they're doing and how they work.
[17:26.080 --> 17:30.940]  And then very difficult to hold these platforms accountable for what they're, what they do.
[17:31.340 --> 17:31.860]  Yeah.
[17:31.980 --> 17:41.460]  And interestingly enough, you mentioned that the financial times was, was concerned about, uh, silencing, uh, I guess, pro Palestinian voices.
[17:41.700 --> 17:51.020]  So two weeks ago I published an article about due process and fairness principles on social media platforms in the financial times.
[17:51.160 --> 18:05.280]  And if you check out, uh, the financial times as Twitter page where they promoted this article, all of the comments on the Twitter page have the hashtag hope to Gaza and are anti-Israeli.
[18:05.360 --> 18:21.980]  As soon as they put this, this article up on Twitter and promoted it, there were just a flood of comments underneath it that were entirely pro-Palestinian, uh, and, and entirely anti-Israeli and just seemingly coming out of nowhere.
[18:22.260 --> 18:24.240]  I'm looking at one of them right now.
[18:24.360 --> 18:29.120]  Um, they all seem like they're, they're fairly recent accounts, uh, very likely bots.
[18:29.580 --> 18:32.440]  So yeah, there's, there's a lot of weird stuff going on out there.
[18:32.580 --> 18:41.160]  Well, I can tell you, there are also a lot of people out there, but, uh, the point taken that these things can be automated and, and we've seen the tactic used before in many different arenas.
[18:41.480 --> 18:43.900]  Uh, so why would this be any different?
[18:43.960 --> 19:00.680]  But it's, it's fascinating to watch, to see how, how the social, uh, media networks handle situations like this, uh, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, uh, TikTok, they, they all, uh, have potential, um, uh, massive amount of influence, uh, in these, um, in these world situations.
[19:01.120 --> 19:09.020]  Um, speaking of, um, of massive amounts of, um, of, uh, uh, influence and, and, and things like that.
[19:09.020 --> 19:14.120]  Um, we talked about, uh, Trump's new blog that debuted a couple of weeks ago.
[19:14.860 --> 19:15.520]  Guess what?
[19:15.580 --> 19:16.360]  It's done already.
[19:16.560 --> 19:19.340]  He's finished with it, got bored and threw it away.
[19:19.340 --> 19:22.960]  Uh, it's, it's, um, I think it's donaldjtrump.com.
[19:23.060 --> 19:27.460]  Basically it just says from the desk of the president or something stupid like that.
[19:27.840 --> 19:33.080]  And it was supposed to be, um, um, a substitute for Twitter since he was kicked off of Twitter.
[19:33.640 --> 19:35.940]  Uh, he, uh, can't tweet anymore, obviously.
[19:36.220 --> 19:42.500]  Uh, but this would allow you to get his tweets sent to your phone through his website.
[19:43.000 --> 19:47.740]  And, um, yeah, it's, um, it's less than a month ago.
[19:48.220 --> 19:59.320]  Um, according to a senior aide to Trump, um, uh, named Jason Miller, uh, the page will not be returning and confirmed to CNN.
[19:59.500 --> 20:00.640]  The page had been scrubbed.
[20:00.740 --> 20:06.520]  It was just auxiliary to the broader, uh, broader efforts we have and are working on.
[20:06.520 --> 20:15.960]  Uh, those who attempt to visit the page are now greeted with a web form asking for their contact information for future automated billing, uh, endeavors.
[20:16.560 --> 20:19.260]  Um, the blog called from the desk of Donald J.
[20:19.380 --> 20:24.060]  Trump was launched on May 4th, came months after, uh, Trump had been banned from Facebook and Twitter.
[20:24.420 --> 20:29.000]  Uh, and at the time it was billed as a platform by which Trump could speak directly to his supporters.
[20:29.480 --> 20:32.080]  Now this is kind of interesting and, and, and pretty funny.
[20:32.340 --> 20:38.180]  Fox news, um, first reported that Trump had started the blog, dubbed it a new communications platform.
[20:38.880 --> 20:44.720]  I don't know why, but that particular phrase really set him off and he got extremely angry at them.
[20:45.360 --> 20:47.700]  Uh, Trump disputed Fox's framing in a statement.
[20:47.820 --> 20:54.900]  This is meant to be a temporary way of getting my thoughts and ideas out to the public without the fake news spin, but the website is not a platform.
[20:56.160 --> 20:57.340]  And then he took it down.
[20:57.820 --> 21:03.100]  I don't know what, what prompted that or, or what the big, um, hullabaloo is about being a platform.
[21:03.200 --> 21:03.860]  Gila, do you have an idea?
[21:04.560 --> 21:09.280]  I was actually, um, looking at a comparable story, a parallel story, I guess in the Washington post.
[21:09.480 --> 21:18.500]  And he's apparently still planning on launching a social media platform and was concerned.
[21:18.500 --> 21:26.560]  I believe that people were going to assume that this no frills blog site was the social media platform.
[21:27.100 --> 21:31.420]  And, um, apparently he was frustrated with low readership.
[21:31.780 --> 21:38.420]  So, uh, he 86ed it, but the platform is still coming.
[21:39.260 --> 21:40.420]  Is it really?
[21:40.780 --> 21:40.980]  Okay.
[21:41.220 --> 21:45.460]  So he's going to launch, you know, uh, NASA and NASA are going to launch a couple of, uh, probes to Venus.
[21:45.680 --> 21:47.040]  Which one do you think we'll get there first?
[21:47.660 --> 21:48.740]  I'm betting on Venus.
[21:49.000 --> 21:50.020]  I'm betting on Venus.
[21:50.200 --> 21:56.020]  I'm betting that something will come back from Venus before, uh, he gets any, any, uh, new platform launched.
[21:56.480 --> 22:10.940]  Um, here's an interesting story out of, um, Florida that kind of speaks to our, our, our passions has to do with hacking, has to do, uh, uh, with, um, uh, school districts and has to do with, um, clueless responses.
[22:11.180 --> 22:12.940]  Um, I'm sharing my bias.
[22:13.060 --> 22:26.680]  Well, a St. Petersburg high school junior hacked into the Pinellas County school districts computer network this spring and shut down internet access for all 145 of the district schools for two days.
[22:26.780 --> 22:27.640]  That's a big district.
[22:27.860 --> 22:28.340]  Wow.
[22:28.920 --> 22:30.800]  Um, yeah.
[22:31.040 --> 22:38.120]  Uh, the 17 year old was arrested on a felony computer crimes charge and expelled.
[22:39.460 --> 22:39.940]  Wow.
[22:40.080 --> 22:41.880]  They don't, they don't kid around down there in Florida.
[22:42.020 --> 22:45.420]  I mean, do whatever you want with guns, but don't mess with our high school computers.
[22:46.140 --> 22:51.820]  The Tampa Bay times is not naming the kid because of his age, but somehow managed to interview him and his mother.
[22:52.220 --> 23:02.680]  Um, the teen said he had become fixated on the idea of infiltrating the school district's network after seeing an online video showcasing the vulnerability of school networks.
[23:03.060 --> 23:07.660]  That's somehow, according to a search warrant, the search warrant talks about the video.
[23:07.800 --> 23:08.980]  I want to see the video.
[23:09.260 --> 23:09.700]  Yeah.
[23:09.880 --> 23:15.980]  That, that, that, that, it sounds intriguing and it inspired him to actually, uh, try out his, uh, his school district's computer network.
[23:16.100 --> 23:21.840]  He said he instantly regretted his actions and even tried to undo the hack by the time it was done.
[23:22.220 --> 23:23.820]  There was no way to undo it.
[23:24.120 --> 23:26.900]  If I could go back, I wouldn't do it again.
[23:27.420 --> 23:27.860]  Okay.
[23:27.940 --> 23:28.480]  Question here.
[23:28.860 --> 23:45.440]  Uh, what kind of hack, uh, can you not undo after I mean, you've logged in, you have access, uh, you know, unless his first act was to delete everything, which seems kind of hard to believe it is the system that's really poorly designed where if an unauthorized user gets in,
[23:45.720 --> 23:50.140]  there's, there's untold damage that can no longer be repaired.
[23:51.080 --> 23:57.600]  Uh, this, this, this hack is the, uh, the latest to show how susceptible networks can be to cyber attacks, uh, back in February.
[23:57.980 --> 24:04.180]  And of course, remember this is not really related, but, uh, someone tried to poison the city of Oldsmar's water supply.
[24:04.260 --> 24:10.760]  Also, I believe in Florida by hacking into its network and, uh, greatly increasing the amount of lye in the water.
[24:11.020 --> 24:18.360]  An employee noticed the attack was able to stop it, but, uh, experts say it underscored the vulnerability of the nation's infrastructure to cyber attacks.
[24:19.020 --> 24:33.200]  And earlier this month, of course, the Colonial Pipeline, the country's largest gasoline pipeline that runs from Texas to New York was knocked offline by a cyber attack leading to gas shortages and dumb asses filling plastic bags with gas all along the East Coast.
[24:33.700 --> 24:48.300]  Um, uh, uh, Tertanker Ghosh, the associate director of the University of West Florida Center for Cybersecurity said distributed denial of services attacks like the one on the school system are common and, uh, generally of low sophistication.
[24:48.420 --> 24:52.620]  So, uh, a DDoS attack is all this apparently was, at least to get access.
[24:52.760 --> 25:00.980]  Uh, in recent years, he said it has become a more popular form of attack often as a way to distract IT teams while attackers unleash something more sophisticated.
[25:01.200 --> 25:03.340]  The scale of this attack, it really stood out.
[25:03.480 --> 25:12.100]  Uh, he said a denial of service attack is, is pretty common, but the fact that 145 schools, their networks came down, that says something.
[25:12.560 --> 25:19.420]  In general, public universities and schools have less protected networks because they tend to believe in more open connection.
[25:19.800 --> 25:23.040]  Private companies, on the other hand, can lock things down.
[25:23.220 --> 25:24.900]  However, they often don't.
[25:24.980 --> 25:35.240]  Now for years, charter spectrum had, uh, you might be familiar with them, had provided distributed denial of services protection for the very same Pinellas school system.
[25:35.540 --> 25:50.140]  Um, however, and again, those of you who are spectrum customers might be familiar with this, uh, spectrum representatives told the district that, um, when the school district migrated to a new system in late 2020, spectrum failed to maintain the protection.
[25:50.980 --> 25:51.460]  Yeah.
[25:51.580 --> 25:53.000]  Spectrum just didn't keep up.
[25:53.180 --> 26:00.320]  Uh, the company has since reactivated the protection and, um, um, credited the school system with $23,000 for their payment.
[26:00.680 --> 26:05.520]  Uh, they paid without getting any protection, which was pretty obvious from, from the hack.
[26:06.280 --> 26:11.300]  Um, now, uh, this, this attack occurred sometime between March 22nd and March 23rd.
[26:11.520 --> 26:21.260]  Um, and after the main disruption, the district contacted charter spectrum and figured out that they had no protection and asked that they turn it the hell back on.
[26:21.560 --> 26:25.020]  On March 25th, another attempt was detected and administrators were notified.
[26:25.020 --> 26:27.880]  That was when St. Petersburg police were called.
[26:28.280 --> 26:35.160]  Um, the, uh, school district told investigators that the attack was considered critical because statewide testing was occurring.
[26:35.620 --> 26:40.560]  Um, according to St. Petersburg police, they filed to get a search warrant for the teen's phone.
[26:41.280 --> 26:45.300]  Um, the teen said the hack wasn't designed to disrupt state testing.
[26:45.380 --> 26:52.460]  He also said he didn't know how seriously the hack would impact all the schools in the district, including one his little sister attended.
[26:52.740 --> 27:00.780]  Uh, when the hack first occurred, they searched for suspicious activity, found the user who looked up the school district's public internet protocol address.
[27:01.340 --> 27:02.900]  That's always the first step.
[27:03.420 --> 27:05.800]  Uh, and that of course would be needed for the hack.
[27:05.900 --> 27:08.000]  He looked for which router was used.
[27:08.620 --> 27:09.920]  This is how they found the guy.
[27:10.280 --> 27:18.060]  They looked for which router was used to look up the IP for the school district and narrowed it down to students in a specific classroom at that time.
[27:18.960 --> 27:19.400]  Wow.
[27:19.660 --> 27:23.200]  Uh, through that, they traced it to the student's Samsung galaxy phone.
[27:23.360 --> 27:23.780]  Oh, come on.
[27:23.840 --> 27:25.800]  They have too much information on kids here.
[27:26.020 --> 27:31.800]  The student's school computer account had also accessed the IP search three days prior, according to the search warrant.
[27:32.000 --> 27:44.480]  Now, when first interviewed by detectives, the student said he bought a virtual private network from a web developer off the social media platform discord, and that the developer accessed the school's network.
[27:44.580 --> 27:51.160]  Detectives pushed the boy on inconsistencies in his statement, just like they do on TV.
[27:51.340 --> 28:00.060]  And he admitted he saw an online video about the fragility of school networks and became interested in the idea of infiltrating the network according to records.
[28:00.220 --> 28:05.560]  He had practiced a similar attack on his home network and a friend's network, which were successful.
[28:05.720 --> 28:10.320]  But when he attempted the attack on the school system, he at first was unsuccessful on discord.
[28:10.660 --> 28:14.560]  He found a man who had shared a video of him infiltrating a network.
[28:14.560 --> 28:15.620]  Boy, this sounds evil.
[28:16.280 --> 28:25.440]  The boy said Wednesday that he carried out the attack on the school district by taking district direct instructions from that man, though he never met him in person.
[28:26.140 --> 28:29.060]  That attack took about two weeks of planning and practice.
[28:29.640 --> 28:36.500]  Now, the police spokeswoman said the man does not appear in their system and has nothing currently initiated against him.
[28:36.600 --> 28:43.860]  The boy's mother said she believes the man he communicated with does not live in the United States, which is so completely irrelevant to any of this.
[28:45.040 --> 28:46.160]  What a story.
[28:46.520 --> 28:58.500]  And most of this comes to us from the Florida newspaper known as TNS, which we got off their website.
[29:00.820 --> 29:03.520]  Yeah, so Tampa Bay Times, actually.
[29:03.980 --> 29:07.660]  What do you guys think as far as the expelling and a felony?
[29:07.660 --> 29:14.380]  I mean, you know, it sounds like this network was was not that secure and it was not being protected.
[29:14.380 --> 29:15.560]  They were paying for protection.
[29:15.720 --> 29:16.960]  They weren't getting there's that.
[29:17.280 --> 29:22.760]  So in effect, this kid got them twenty three thousand dollars of credit in addition to being protected in the future.
[29:23.240 --> 29:26.300]  As for damage, I want to know more details about the damage.
[29:26.460 --> 29:27.860]  Did he intentionally damage something?
[29:27.980 --> 29:29.260]  If so, then that's something.
[29:29.520 --> 29:34.000]  But if he's just messing around looking for an IP, figuring out how to get access.
[29:34.700 --> 29:35.820]  And that's it.
[29:36.420 --> 29:42.740]  I don't think expelling somebody, ruining their lives, not that expelling somebody ruins their lives, but it does definitely complicate it.
[29:43.800 --> 29:46.240]  Or charging someone with a felony and that won't go away.
[29:46.300 --> 29:47.660]  And you know how difficult it can be in Florida.
[29:48.440 --> 29:52.080]  I don't think it's it's justified based on what I'm reading.
[29:52.220 --> 29:53.840]  Alex, as a lawyer, what do you think?
[29:55.160 --> 30:02.440]  Well, you mentioned, I think, a word here that that really should be dispositive, I think, in this case, at least in my opinion.
[30:02.760 --> 30:04.180]  And that's intent.
[30:04.640 --> 30:14.200]  And in criminal law, you have to have something called mens rea or literally it stands for it's Latin for the mental thing.
[30:14.440 --> 30:17.520]  Rea or reus in Latin is the word for thing.
[30:17.740 --> 30:25.280]  So it's the mental element of a particular crime, which is often interpreted as intent under the criminal law in the United States.
[30:25.380 --> 30:30.420]  So you have to have an intention to do something in order to be held culpable for it.
[30:30.680 --> 30:37.700]  Now, based on the facts that you had described, Emmanuel, it seems like there wasn't malintent here.
[30:37.800 --> 30:41.980]  He didn't necessarily intend to cause all of these particular consequences.
[30:41.980 --> 30:44.420]  Now, were these consequences foreseeable?
[30:44.900 --> 30:59.800]  Probably, but they're foreseeable to an adult who understands these issues and who understands the implications of the technological changes that he may be introducing into that computer systems networks, into that particular school system, or understands what he's doing.
[31:00.060 --> 31:14.280]  Now, on the other hand, however, to be fair, it does seem like there was a fair amount of planning that went into launching this DDoS attack, a distributed denial of service attack on the school district and planning with some kind of third party.
[31:14.460 --> 31:27.560]  But to my mind, the influence of this third party on an impressionable young 16-year-old should be seen more as a mitigating circumstance rather than an aggravating circumstance, because he does seem contrite.
[31:27.640 --> 31:28.560]  He does have remorse.
[31:28.620 --> 31:33.180]  He does not seem like he legitimately aimed to cause any of this damage.
[31:33.320 --> 31:39.420]  And the damages, as you rightfully mentioned, I think here are probably somewhat spurious.
[31:39.760 --> 31:48.320]  It does not necessarily make sense whatsoever in my mind to ruin this kid's life for simply being curious and poking around on a network.
[31:48.740 --> 32:06.160]  Yet, on yet another hand, I think there should be some consequences because we do want to, as a matter of policy, discourage people from engaging in reckless behavior when it comes to DDoS attacks that could knock systems offline like this.
[32:06.160 --> 32:11.700]  We don't want to have unintentional consequences cascading around cyberspace like this.
[32:11.820 --> 32:14.960]  Having the cops show up, I think that's discouragement enough.
[32:15.680 --> 32:18.160]  And first of all, just to clarify, he's 17, not 16.
[32:18.880 --> 32:23.520]  And as far as evidence that he planned this, what's wrong with planning mischief?
[32:23.720 --> 32:31.920]  I mean, every good act of mischief I've been involved in has taken a lot of planning, sometimes weeks, sometimes months, sometimes most of my life to work up to it.
[32:31.920 --> 32:35.460]  But the point is, the intent, as we're both discussing, the intent of this.
[32:35.840 --> 32:39.260]  What his mother says, it wasn't something that was malicious.
[32:39.260 --> 32:43.520]  By all means, it was just something like a video game to him in his head.
[32:43.520 --> 32:46.380]  He was just pushing it to see how smart he could go with it.
[32:47.160 --> 32:48.500]  He's super smart in that aspect.
[32:48.500 --> 32:51.100]  If he can apply it in a positive way, that's what he's going to try and do.
[32:51.100 --> 32:51.980]  He wants to work in security.
[32:52.160 --> 32:57.760]  I think the school district should hire him as a security consultant because he knows the weaknesses and knows the thinking.
[32:58.180 --> 33:10.840]  And instead of attacking the guy who, from what I've read, has not caused permanent damage to the system and didn't do malicious things, why not build some kind of a relationship from that?
[33:10.940 --> 33:13.500]  And he might be able to guide others from going down the same path.
[33:17.000 --> 33:18.320]  Does anybody agree with me?
[33:18.780 --> 33:19.520]  Rob, go ahead.
[33:20.540 --> 33:23.780]  There is a great paradox at work here.
[33:24.060 --> 33:27.900]  And many people in the information security world know this.
[33:28.040 --> 33:32.520]  It's kind of common knowledge that school systems are among the worst maintained out there.
[33:32.760 --> 33:41.440]  They're usually the work of tons of lowest bidders, often on aging equipment because no one can afford to put new stuff in.
[33:41.660 --> 33:48.960]  And the administrations of the schools are not always all that interested in the implications of having bad security.
[33:49.200 --> 33:55.940]  And at the same time, they're bringing in hundreds and thousands of kids with a new crop coming in every year.
[33:56.220 --> 34:02.840]  And kids, each generation of children, more technically adept than the ones that came before in general.
[34:03.420 --> 34:14.860]  And each one of which would, in terms of being the cool kid in school, it would be such a badge of honor to crap up your school system in some way for those into that sort of mischief.
[34:14.860 --> 34:25.900]  And so you've got really clever and inquisitive and imaginative people coming up that are going to take potshots at your system.
[34:25.900 --> 34:27.160]  That's just going to happen.
[34:27.440 --> 34:38.200]  And when this happens, they could be adopting some sort of bug bounty type thing, as a lot of big companies have done, where people are rewarded for finding and responsibly disclosing security holes.
[34:38.360 --> 34:41.380]  But there's also the fact that kids are kids.
[34:41.560 --> 34:42.320]  They are not adults.
[34:42.580 --> 34:49.300]  They do not have, in most cases, they do not have the adults' understanding of consequences to their actions and stuff.
[34:49.560 --> 34:53.220]  Kids need room to mess up because children are there to learn.
[34:53.400 --> 34:54.060]  They're there to grow.
[34:54.460 --> 34:57.340]  And eventually, they'll be a responsible member of society.
[34:57.500 --> 35:04.840]  But while they're kids, expelling them from school over something like this, charging them with felonies over something like this, that is not the way to go.
[35:04.960 --> 35:05.920]  That's not going to help the kid.
[35:06.060 --> 35:07.460]  That's not going to help the school district.
[35:07.560 --> 35:08.680]  That's not going to help anybody.
[35:08.840 --> 35:10.340]  All it's going to do is screw up a kid's life.
[35:11.040 --> 35:18.040]  And again, not to say that just because you don't finish high school, your life is ruined.
[35:18.440 --> 35:22.000]  I'm sure people will pick themselves up and figure out other ways.
[35:22.040 --> 35:25.560]  I know he's going for his GED, but he should be allowed back in, I think.
[35:26.500 --> 35:33.500]  If a kid is the one hacking his own school district, that school district is very lucky, okay?
[35:33.620 --> 35:40.880]  Because anybody in the world could be hacking that system and attaching ransomware to it and doing God knows what else.
[35:40.900 --> 35:48.100]  If you have somebody inside the confines of your own buildings who knows how to do this and is willing to share that information with you, that is a gift.
[35:48.360 --> 35:50.660]  That is a gift and you should embrace that.
[35:50.860 --> 35:53.120]  I know, you know, you're a system admin.
[35:53.240 --> 35:56.860]  You won't be the happiest person in the world when your entire system is compromised.
[35:57.480 --> 36:03.960]  But your system was compromised before somebody actually attempted to do it because you didn't have sufficient security.
[36:04.140 --> 36:04.860]  Now you know.
[36:04.980 --> 36:06.120]  Now you can do something about it.
[36:06.220 --> 36:08.500]  And now you can gain a very powerful ally.
[36:09.420 --> 36:10.420]  Rob, did you have something else?
[36:10.460 --> 36:10.580]  Absolutely.
[36:10.760 --> 36:18.020]  And yeah, and there's also the fact that the system, a school system contains data on the kids there.
[36:18.240 --> 36:25.260]  It contains identifiable, like personally relevant data that really could cause huge problems if it got out there.
[36:25.440 --> 36:26.940]  Like this isn't just trade secrets.
[36:27.040 --> 36:28.720]  This isn't the formula for new Coke or something.
[36:28.920 --> 36:32.480]  This is the, you know, personal details of kids.
[36:32.480 --> 36:37.160]  And that is something that needs more protection than, you know, corporate stuff, not less.
[36:37.760 --> 36:38.280]  Absolutely.
[36:38.440 --> 36:38.920]  Go ahead, Alex.
[36:39.860 --> 36:45.640]  I think Rob is absolutely correct in that these school districts are targets.
[36:46.060 --> 36:48.260]  And not necessarily just of students.
[36:48.520 --> 37:02.220]  There is one particular group that I've been tracking for over two years that has targeted a huge swath of critical infrastructure in the economy and several hundred local school districts for credentials harvesting attacks.
[37:02.740 --> 37:08.440]  And I imagine that in a fair number of them, they probably were successful in those particular attacks.
[37:08.560 --> 37:10.780]  And maybe they have persistence inside these networks.
[37:10.900 --> 37:23.500]  And that's why I think, you know, we're going to continue to see more and more ransom events at the local government level and quite likely at a faster clip because of policies with respect to paying the ransom being changed.
[37:23.720 --> 37:30.780]  But back to the original issue here with this particular case, I mean, I think there's so many mitigating circumstances here.
[37:30.840 --> 37:36.860]  I think you've got the kid's age, he's 17, and his brain is not fully formed at that particular time.
[37:36.900 --> 37:40.000]  I mean, there's obviously a lack of intent to cause real damage.
[37:40.160 --> 37:42.160]  There's some kind of influence of a third party.
[37:42.640 --> 37:49.500]  And I think critically here, there are missing security controls that used to be there on that particular system.
[37:49.760 --> 38:05.920]  And so, you know, if anybody's to be blamed for this attack being successful, I could see it being the service provider that was supposed to have been providing the particular controls, some kind of content distribution network that would prevent a DDoS attack of this time.
[38:06.020 --> 38:12.420]  And then you consider the long-term damage, the potential long-term damage to this individual's career and path in life.
[38:12.500 --> 38:21.400]  And even though, like we said, that's not the be-all end-all of life, if you don't finish high school, you can get your GED and move on and be quite successful.
[38:21.640 --> 38:23.900]  But it makes life harder.
[38:24.220 --> 38:25.340]  There's no question about it.
[38:25.520 --> 38:33.180]  All factors in my mind point to a week, maybe two weeks of suspension, out-of-school suspension, slap on the wrist.
[38:34.080 --> 38:34.600]  Expulsion?
[38:35.100 --> 38:35.900]  Absolutely not.
[38:36.100 --> 38:36.840]  Criminal charges?
[38:38.140 --> 38:41.080]  You know, maybe, but they should probably be dismissed.
[38:42.000 --> 38:49.300]  I think charging him with something and then dismissing it on the condition that he goes and does some community service.
[38:49.680 --> 38:52.060]  And that's free consulting services for the school district.
[38:52.940 --> 38:53.600]  Do something.
[38:53.820 --> 38:54.220]  Absolutely.
[38:54.580 --> 38:58.440]  But, you know, sure, slap him on the wrist, but don't punish him for the rest of his life.
[38:58.600 --> 38:59.240]  Certainly not.
[38:59.320 --> 39:00.560]  It's a big waste of talent.
[39:00.700 --> 39:01.180]  Kyle, go ahead.
[39:01.180 --> 39:20.780]  Yeah, I just think that the felony is a bit harsh in this scenario and that the schools probably got, contrary, I think, to what we have been saying, I think they probably have enough resources to have implemented like some kind of reverse proxy system or something that would be able to handle an attack,
[39:21.000 --> 39:21.960]  even a large attack.
[39:22.560 --> 39:48.580]  Because, as we know, I mean, schools are such hostile places with, as Rob was talking about, so many different people, such high traffic and dynamic environment, that they should be anticipating it, I think, a little bit more than throwing all of it onto a student who's kind of exploring and showing them where they need to do work.
[39:50.820 --> 39:51.260]  Absolutely.
[39:52.200 --> 39:54.760]  A learning experience here on so many levels.
[39:54.780 --> 39:58.460]  And I wish everyone would just see it that way instead of just acting.
[39:59.800 --> 40:02.820]  You know, we're all acting like cops with no sense of humor.
[40:02.820 --> 40:04.740]  And that's no way to live.
[40:05.680 --> 40:10.440]  Okay, we have an email address here at OffTheHook, O-T-H at 2600.com.
[40:10.600 --> 40:16.140]  People use it every day to write to us and send us their feelings, their thoughts.
[40:17.760 --> 40:20.300]  And we're going to read a couple of letters, if that's okay with everybody.
[40:20.720 --> 40:22.640]  This letter comes from Ashish.
[40:22.800 --> 40:26.580]  He asks, is there a way to turn down or off someone else's stereo?
[40:27.980 --> 40:28.340]  Huh.
[40:28.620 --> 40:30.740]  Well, that's an unusual question.
[40:31.180 --> 40:32.560]  I don't quite know how to answer that.
[40:32.620 --> 40:34.400]  Well, yeah, of course, you could just go and turn it off.
[40:34.500 --> 40:35.940]  I imagine you've already tried that.
[40:36.100 --> 40:37.760]  And of course, asking them to turn it off.
[40:38.380 --> 40:40.920]  This sounds like somebody who's bothered by a loud stereo.
[40:41.200 --> 40:43.240]  You know, maybe somebody can help me with this.
[40:43.400 --> 40:44.920]  I'm sorry, Ashish, to take over.
[40:45.040 --> 40:48.120]  But I've been curious about something that's completely unrelated.
[40:48.320 --> 40:52.900]  When I was a kid, I remember I could hear a radio in a neighboring house.
[40:53.420 --> 40:56.640]  And if I had a radio too, let's say there were two FM radios.
[40:56.780 --> 41:03.880]  If I tuned the FM dial to a different frequency, let's say they were on 106, I would tune it to like 93 or 94 or something like that.
[41:04.200 --> 41:08.180]  And if I tuned it just right, their signal would go silent.
[41:08.900 --> 41:10.240]  It was some kind of harmonic.
[41:10.240 --> 41:13.580]  I don't exactly know how it worked, but I swear it worked.
[41:13.740 --> 41:20.560]  And I was able to use this many, many times to just turn off someone's radio and confuse the hell out of them.
[41:20.700 --> 41:21.940]  And it was a lot of fun.
[41:22.160 --> 41:25.120]  These days, I'd be charged with a felony, but it was it was fun back then.
[41:25.320 --> 41:32.620]  Well, I think this style of of a phenomenon is a sort of a jammer.
[41:32.820 --> 41:49.740]  And because they're receiving on their radio, you could theoretically transmit a noise or or white noise or static of some kind or just silence at that frequency at a higher power level.
[41:51.180 --> 41:54.000]  That's a really simplistic way to put it.
[41:54.160 --> 42:03.880]  But technically, yeah, I mean, you could alter what they're receiving if it is a receiver, the odds of them receiving a radio station may no offense, because we're all doing radio right now.
[42:04.020 --> 42:12.160]  But a lot of people don't listen to radio, they listen to, you know, iPhones, and well, think of the other ways they might be connecting to that.
[42:12.380 --> 42:20.140]  Okay, so maybe it's, it's not FM, maybe it's a Bluetooth connection of some kind, because they're running it from a phone or Wi Fi.
[42:20.680 --> 42:24.240]  I assume this is somebody that that you know, so you find other ways to mess with them.
[42:24.380 --> 42:31.740]  So, you know, if you know their phone number, and they're playing music loud, you call their phone, they have to turn the music down to answer the phone, then you hang up, of course, you block your number.
[42:31.980 --> 42:34.000]  And then they turn the music up, and you just keep doing this.
[42:34.100 --> 42:36.400]  And eventually, they're going to throw something out the window.
[42:36.620 --> 42:38.680]  So at least you'll have a little bit of fun.
[42:38.800 --> 42:39.200]  Go ahead, Alex.
[42:40.400 --> 42:40.760]  Sure.
[42:40.960 --> 42:48.840]  I mean, one, one possibility would be to somehow, you know, pair your phone to their, their device, right?
[42:49.140 --> 42:49.560]  Oh, yeah, yeah.
[42:49.820 --> 42:50.580]  Access to it.
[42:50.920 --> 42:53.980]  If you had physical access to the device, you might be able to do that.
[42:54.680 --> 43:00.760]  You scan Bluetooth, though, you can find something that way, and then use all sorts of other ways to get more information about them.
[43:00.860 --> 43:06.660]  I did that once in a coffee shop, I saw somebody next to me was able to find their hotspot.
[43:06.880 --> 43:09.760]  From there, I was able to somehow get access to their list of music.
[43:09.940 --> 43:14.220]  And it got really scary, really fast, how much I was able to do and learn about them.
[43:14.700 --> 43:15.280]  Oh, I bet.
[43:15.360 --> 43:17.180]  And I'm sure their music taste was subpar.
[43:17.200 --> 43:17.700]  It was awful.
[43:17.840 --> 43:18.280]  It was terrible.
[43:18.840 --> 43:19.060]  Yeah.
[43:19.180 --> 43:20.480]  You could also write a note.
[43:21.040 --> 43:23.340]  You could write a note, but that's so 1950s.
[43:23.340 --> 43:24.040]  It's very direct.
[43:24.280 --> 43:24.340]  Hmm.
[43:24.640 --> 43:25.040]  Go ahead, Alex.
[43:25.140 --> 43:25.280]  Good.
[43:25.720 --> 43:36.340]  Another way of doing this very easily, it's been suggested, actually, by a colleague of mine who's happening to be listening to this show, would be simply to just kill the power to the device.
[43:36.700 --> 43:37.700]  Maybe the whole building.
[43:37.940 --> 43:38.560]  Just shut it down.
[43:38.700 --> 43:40.040]  Yeah, but doesn't that affect you as well?
[43:41.020 --> 43:42.000]  Maybe, maybe not.
[43:42.200 --> 43:43.280]  Maybe you're prepared for this.
[43:43.420 --> 43:48.900]  And plus, if it's somebody's phone, which I suspect it probably is, they've got battery power.
[43:49.180 --> 43:50.660]  So it'll last a long time.
[43:51.140 --> 43:51.580]  Yeah.
[43:51.700 --> 43:52.460]  And I don't know.
[43:53.420 --> 44:04.900]  If you tried to do that at a distance, you might have an unexpected result and then cause some sort of short and an appliance that otherwise was working might get overheated.
[44:05.160 --> 44:07.360]  And, you know, you could have some cascading problems.
[44:07.580 --> 44:11.800]  Send us more information on this because we want to make it our mission to figure out how to turn that stereo off.
[44:12.420 --> 44:18.140]  And we'll resort to any means to, like, learn more about it and just try creative solutions.
[44:18.720 --> 44:19.840]  It's just an exercise.
[44:19.840 --> 44:22.160]  An electromagnetic pulse might do this.
[44:22.160 --> 44:23.600]  I wonder what they're playing on it.
[44:23.720 --> 44:24.340]  Rob, what do you have?
[44:26.240 --> 44:28.120]  It might not be a stereo.
[44:28.280 --> 44:29.960]  It might be that they're watching television.
[44:30.140 --> 44:30.360]  Oh.
[44:30.440 --> 44:34.080]  In which case, you could possibly dig up a TV begon.
[44:34.080 --> 44:34.940]  TV begons, yes.
[44:35.660 --> 44:43.300]  Which is the invention of a friend of the show, Mitch Altman, which can turn off TVs from great distances through windows and whatnot.
[44:43.440 --> 44:45.500]  Technology can definitely be helpful here.
[44:45.680 --> 44:46.640]  Okay, here's another letter.
[44:46.700 --> 44:47.480]  Greetings from Seattle.
[44:47.480 --> 44:52.780]  You requested emails from listeners who were convinced to get the COVID-19 vaccine as a result of what was said on your radio program.
[44:53.200 --> 44:53.740]  Oh, yeah.
[44:54.740 --> 45:05.620]  You might not have heard this on the radio, but on Overtime, which is the show that follows us on YouTube, we had an extended conversation with one listener about the vaccine.
[45:05.760 --> 45:08.680]  We're not going to debate this every week, just to be clear on that.
[45:08.680 --> 45:13.060]  But, um, uh, there are people who believe that it is, it is not safe.
[45:13.300 --> 45:17.820]  Um, we happen to believe otherwise, and we think it's, uh, it's, it's a very smart thing to do.
[45:18.100 --> 45:20.540]  Uh, but we got, we got a number of letters on this.
[45:20.680 --> 45:35.380]  Uh, anyway, uh, this, uh, listener, I was, uh, says I was hesitant, uh, as someone who has a mental illness bias toward indecision, um, experiences magical thinking, has a parent who is anti-vaccine and pro-conspiracy and pleads with family not to get vaccinated,
[45:35.580 --> 45:41.120]  uh, is gender non-conforming and on hormone replacement therapy, which carries increased risk for blood clots.
[45:41.560 --> 45:57.280]  And that's a lot to carry, uh, when making a decision like this, when, when, when deciding the best course forward months ago, I had decided I, I wanted the Oxford AstraZeneca, uh, vaccine based on a comment Alex had made during lighthearted joshing around about the merits of Pfizer versus Moderna.
[45:57.460 --> 46:09.120]  The decision to change, uh, my preference came as a result of the indefinite weight for the AstraZeneca vaccine to become available, but also something you said last week, the topic you broached was that of distrust.
[46:09.340 --> 46:15.740]  While I don't usually extend trust to major pharmaceuticals, I can make myself vulnerable enough to mistrust them.
[46:16.380 --> 46:23.640]  Uh, thus I won't expect them to have my best interest in mind, but I won't let my prejudice against them prevent me from accepting an alternative.
[46:24.360 --> 46:27.700]  Generally, I mistrust mass media and agenda-driven reporting.
[46:27.700 --> 46:31.480]  I'm also resistant towards social engineering, even if it is done pro-socially.
[46:32.060 --> 46:39.180]  I wanted to make my decision based on scientific critique that had taken place, which requires some reading from reputable research sources.
[46:39.360 --> 46:41.100]  And that's, that's a very smart way to go about it.
[46:41.320 --> 46:48.040]  Uh, for months, I have rejected the non-scientific arguments, convincing as they may be, which always come up in discourse.
[46:48.040 --> 46:54.060]  I wanted to make the decision for myself and not because of what others were trying to achieve with their calls to action and inaction.
[46:54.480 --> 46:57.400]  I wrote all the above once and lost the draft due to a reboot.
[46:58.200 --> 46:59.220]  And we've all been there.
[46:59.400 --> 47:02.620]  I had shortened it to be able to be read on the air, but it's all gone.
[47:02.880 --> 47:05.060]  I have no expectation for it to be unmodified.
[47:05.060 --> 47:07.680]  If you do present it, well, so far, every word has been said.
[47:07.820 --> 47:08.800]  So be surprised.
[47:09.280 --> 47:14.300]  I'm also writing to seek your guidance and opinions regarding the upcoming Pacifica election.
[47:15.260 --> 47:17.580]  Oh yes, we have had a number of letters about that.
[47:17.700 --> 47:18.280]  Here's the thing.
[47:18.920 --> 47:20.940]  We can't tell you how to vote.
[47:21.260 --> 47:28.500]  We cannot say how, uh, you need to, uh, vote on these important bylaws that are coming up this month as a listener.
[47:29.200 --> 47:33.940]  Um, we can however point you, uh, point you towards, um, towards websites.
[47:34.300 --> 47:41.640]  We can encourage you to read both sides and listen to the dialogue that is taking place in many different forms.
[47:41.820 --> 47:49.840]  Rob, I believe you, you have, um, a link to, um, uh, to the actual bylaws themselves, which, which does not take one side or another.
[47:49.980 --> 47:50.360]  Is that correct?
[47:52.100 --> 47:53.500]  Uh, that is correct.
[47:53.760 --> 47:55.260]  I got to, uh, just find it here.
[47:55.540 --> 47:55.800]  Yes.
[47:55.940 --> 48:02.060]  Um, we have, uh, our station actually has a page up at, uh, and if you would like to write this down, um, it's, it's not complex.
[48:02.060 --> 48:09.720]  It's at www.wbai.org slash bylawsvote.html.
[48:09.980 --> 48:14.720]  That's slash b-y-l-a-w-s-v-o-t-e.html.
[48:14.960 --> 48:16.080]  And, uh, it's a short page.
[48:16.140 --> 48:17.400]  I can, I can read it out on the air.
[48:17.520 --> 48:18.880]  Actually, there's just one paragraph here.
[48:19.440 --> 48:20.940]  Um, and there's a link too.
[48:21.440 --> 48:22.280]  There's a big link.
[48:22.440 --> 48:22.880]  There is a link.
[48:23.000 --> 48:23.180]  Okay.
[48:23.640 --> 48:25.580]  Um, but this, uh, this is what it says.
[48:25.800 --> 48:28.580]  A proposed new set of bylaws is available for member review.
[48:28.780 --> 48:32.120]  Click here to access document and you can click there to access the document.
[48:32.320 --> 48:46.060]  The proposed bylaws would change how the Pacifica national board is elected, providing for nationwide elections every three years, uh, terminate the current PNB, install four transition officers in its place for three years, and change the duties and powers of the local station boards,
[48:46.220 --> 48:49.080]  which would no longer elect the PNB members.
[48:49.280 --> 48:54.420]  The Pacifica membership will be voting yes or no on the proposed amended bylaws for 30 days, beginning June 7th.
[48:54.560 --> 49:01.540]  Your membership must be current as of April 7th, 2021, in order to be eligible to vote in this bylaws referendum.
[49:01.960 --> 49:11.420]  And yes, there's the link on that page, which is again, www.wbai.org slash bylawsvote.html, all in lower case.
[49:12.120 --> 49:21.100]  And, uh, yeah, you can get the, the actual proposal that's there that is up for a debate here and you can read it through yourself and, uh, you can form your own opinions.
[49:21.100 --> 49:25.860]  You can, uh, find things to, to do searches about, to see what other people think about them.
[49:26.060 --> 49:37.120]  We are totally not allowed to tell you, uh, to vote one way or the other, but we can tell you in the hacker spirit of this program to get all the data you can and come to your own, uh, thoughts and decisions about it.
[49:37.240 --> 49:39.920]  And then if you can vote in this, vote with your conscience.
[49:40.540 --> 49:40.940]  Okay.
[49:41.360 --> 49:47.320]  And, uh, Lily finishes this letter by saying, thank you for the on air show and overtime last week, you helped to sort out my stalemate.
[49:47.380 --> 49:48.200]  And that's great to hear.
[49:48.380 --> 49:50.000]  Uh, one more letter from Edward.
[49:50.000 --> 49:53.820]  I heard you talking about vaccine appointments and such on last week's off the hook.
[49:53.980 --> 50:00.680]  Uh, yesterday I walked into grand central terminal at 10 30 AM and got my Johnson and Johnson vaccination and literally six minutes.
[50:01.000 --> 50:04.480]  The 15 minute waiting period afterwards was the longest part of it.
[50:04.940 --> 50:07.260]  Um, the side note, I cycle pretty much everywhere.
[50:07.260 --> 50:15.840]  And there was a person working at the grand central station site, uh, who took the extra time to place my bike in a place where it was safe while I did the procedure.
[50:16.000 --> 50:16.880]  And that's, that's pretty awesome.
[50:17.040 --> 50:18.100]  You're absolutely right.
[50:18.240 --> 50:24.100]  There's zero reason to not get the shot unless you have very clearly defined medical reasons not to do so.
[50:24.540 --> 50:30.100]  As for religious exceptions, I'm not going to go there because I get angry because of the stupidity that comes out when religion is involved.
[50:30.400 --> 50:36.440]  But I will say this, screw those people, cut them out of activities, places, and jobs.
[50:36.620 --> 50:44.160]  Their imaginary friend telling them the vaccines are bad is, uh, is just pure, unadulterated, no question needed word.
[50:44.260 --> 50:46.460]  I cannot say keep up the good work.
[50:46.540 --> 50:48.420]  I listened to both off the hook and off the wall.
[50:48.620 --> 50:50.020]  Thank you, Edward, for that letter.
[50:50.340 --> 50:59.000]  And yeah, you know, um, you don't have to be as, as, uh, strongly anti-religious to, to hold this viewpoint that, um, uh, you know, it's the right thing to do.
[50:59.460 --> 51:05.960]  Um, and I think there are plenty of religions out there that, uh, do encourage people to do something that, um, that makes sense.
[51:06.440 --> 51:11.020]  Um, and many times that is the guiding hand you need to get to a good place.
[51:11.580 --> 51:14.620]  Not always, but many times.
[51:15.200 --> 51:17.740]  Um, have you guys gotten the Excelsior pass?
[51:17.860 --> 51:20.560]  This is what you get in New York when you get the vaccine.
[51:20.560 --> 51:24.140]  It's a, it's a QR code that you can have on your phone.
[51:24.160 --> 51:27.280]  You can use it to get into various places that require vaccines.
[51:27.780 --> 51:31.960]  Um, I'll say right now, and you don't have to answer because some people feel it's a privacy invasion.
[51:32.520 --> 51:36.920]  Um, I'm kind of curious as to how, but we don't have to talk about that.
[51:37.060 --> 51:38.480]  Uh, I, I have it.
[51:38.700 --> 51:40.040]  Uh, Carl has it as well.
[51:40.580 --> 51:42.920]  Um, what do you guys have any feelings on this?
[51:43.220 --> 51:44.560]  Oh, oh, you're showing it to me.
[51:44.660 --> 51:45.480]  Well, you don't have to do that.
[51:45.900 --> 51:46.260]  Wow.
[51:46.880 --> 51:50.020]  They both just flashed it over the video link.
[51:50.160 --> 51:55.080]  Rob and Gila have both shown me their passes and Alex is meeting me with a cold stony stare.
[51:55.520 --> 51:58.820]  Um, does that mean that you don't approve this refuses?
[51:59.620 --> 52:01.180]  No, I just, I don't have one.
[52:01.280 --> 52:04.400]  I, I don't understand the process myself either.
[52:04.400 --> 52:06.760]  And I got vaccinated in Pennsylvania.
[52:07.360 --> 52:08.140]  So I'm wondering.
[52:08.380 --> 52:18.820]  Oh, uh, well, um, much like getting a blue check, uh, you, uh, you need to be part of a preexisting group of cool people, namely New Yorkers.
[52:19.280 --> 52:22.160]  Um, you could get, no, don't get another shot in New York.
[52:22.360 --> 52:24.780]  Um, that's a, there might be a way to do it.
[52:24.780 --> 52:26.440]  There might be a way to expand it.
[52:26.480 --> 52:27.800]  But what do you think about the privacy implications?
[52:27.960 --> 52:33.600]  Because I don't understand the objection to where people are saying having this is a violation of my privacy.
[52:34.000 --> 52:46.520]  It's not, it's not, uh, uh, tracking, uh, anything about you other than saying you have this, you verify that you have it much like a license you show to somebody to get into a place.
[52:46.800 --> 52:47.220]  Gila, go ahead.
[52:48.000 --> 52:48.160]  Right.
[52:48.300 --> 52:57.640]  I mean, I think that people objecting to the Excelsior pass or the equivalent in other states, um, you know, they're saying it's a HIPAA violation.
[52:57.640 --> 53:09.980]  It's the same way as people saying if they are, um, if they're stopped from saying something, say on a social media network, that it's a first amendment violation.
[53:10.240 --> 53:15.120]  Like, no, if you don't understand the thing you're trying to say is being violated, don't talk about it.
[53:15.120 --> 53:22.420]  But, um, I think that, no, it's, we tried scanning the QR codes just to see if there's any PII in it.
[53:22.800 --> 53:25.380]  And it's not, it's literally nothing.
[53:25.940 --> 53:30.020]  And, uh, we're going to have to continue this conversation on overtime.
[53:30.020 --> 53:37.920]  Please folks join us on overtime, our YouTube channel, channel 2600 or go to 2600.com and follow the link at the top of the page.
[53:38.040 --> 53:39.260]  We'll meet you there at eight o'clock.
[53:39.420 --> 53:40.100]  You can call us.
[53:40.100 --> 53:42.500]  We're not going to debate, uh, COVID vaccine.
[53:42.500 --> 53:43.820]  So don't try doing that.
[53:44.080 --> 53:52.360]  Uh, oh, also tomorrow, um, we're making an announcement concerning both 2600 meetings and the future of the hope conferences.
[53:52.660 --> 53:59.160]  So please, uh, uh, check 2600.com hope.net, uh, throughout the day tomorrow for more updates on that.
[53:59.600 --> 54:00.760]  We'll see you next week.
[54:01.320 --> 54:02.000]  Good night.
[54:02.000 --> 54:07.420]  From what I see, there's still a little hope.
[54:10.610 --> 54:15.070]  That's if we don't hang from too much wrong.
[54:19.420 --> 54:21.040]  Oh, dear.
[54:22.400 --> 54:25.820]  A local boy from the housing estate.
[54:26.680 --> 54:29.860]  High on hope and dreaming of this guy.
[54:29.860 --> 54:34.640]  He knows he's on his own thought to get out before he gets too late.
[54:38.250 --> 54:41.770]  He's looking good, the best I've seen for days.
[54:42.350 --> 54:45.490]  He's telling people how he's changed his way.
[54:46.110 --> 54:50.290]  He's given up for drinking and he's down for three smokes a day.
[54:53.230 --> 54:58.310]  From what I see, there's still a little hope.
[55:01.730 --> 55:06.190]  That's if we don't hang from too much wrong.
[55:08.760 --> 55:13.980]  From what I see, there's still a little hope.
[55:17.440 --> 55:21.880]  That's if we don't hang from too much wrong.
[55:41.390 --> 55:44.530]  Hey, Tommy, how you feeling up there?
[55:44.530 --> 55:48.430]  You're looking good with the cold-screw hair.
[55:49.070 --> 55:52.290]  You know that there's cotton to your suit.
[55:52.910 --> 55:59.050]  Telling everybody all about the crocodile booze.
[55:59.470 --> 56:01.610]  Telling you can't lose.
[56:04.350 --> 56:08.350]  A social mover always in the right places.
[56:08.890 --> 56:12.130]  Got all the contacts, knows the latest faces.
[56:12.130 --> 56:16.370]  But the flavour of it now, he's wanting another taste.
[56:20.820 --> 56:24.060]  Every night, he gets the urge to go west.
[56:24.860 --> 56:27.210]  A Knob's party, he's a VIP guest.
[56:28.340 --> 56:32.720]  He loves the life he leaves and he lives the life he loves the best.
[56:35.600 --> 56:40.440]  From what I see, there's still a little hope.
[56:43.720 --> 56:48.320]  That's if we don't hang from too much wrong.
[56:50.870 --> 56:56.230]  From what I see, there's still a little hope.
[57:06.520 --> 57:12.160]  From what I see, there's still a little hope.
[57:15.270 --> 57:19.750]  That's if we don't hang from too much wrong.
[57:32.060 --> 57:40.180]  A Knob's party, there's still a little hope.
[57:40.180 --> 57:46.820]  A Knob's party, there's still a little hope.
[57:46.880 --> 57:50.700]  A Knob's party, there's still a little hope.
[57:50.820 --> 57:54.140]  A Knob's party, there's still a little hope.
[57:54.140 --> 57:55.820]  A Knob's party, there's still a little hope.
[57:56.020 --> 58:02.040]  A Knob's party, there's still a little hope.
[58:04.020 --> 58:15.260]  Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go.
[00:00.000 --> 00:02.440]  Okay, I've got a blue badge party to be at at nine.
[00:02.720 --> 00:06.140]  Oh, hey, welcome back.
[00:06.440 --> 00:08.180]  This is Overtime.
[00:08.760 --> 00:10.140]  Everybody, I hope you made it.
[00:10.200 --> 00:12.540]  We're going to continue our conversation on Off the Hook.
[00:12.720 --> 00:13.980]  Emmanuel here, Kyle over there.
[00:14.140 --> 00:14.300]  Yeah.
[00:15.160 --> 00:16.060]  Rob T.
[00:16.620 --> 00:18.320]  Firefly over there.
[00:18.440 --> 00:18.640]  Hello.
[00:19.540 --> 00:20.280]  Where's Alex?
[00:21.140 --> 00:22.140]  Alex, where are you?
[00:24.500 --> 00:25.980]  Can't just walk away like that.
[00:26.640 --> 00:28.360]  I think he had some business to attend to.
[00:29.020 --> 00:29.380]  Hmm.
[00:29.980 --> 00:30.300]  Gila.
[00:30.420 --> 00:31.100]  Gila's not there either.
[00:31.340 --> 00:32.320]  What's going on, folks?
[00:32.440 --> 00:34.040]  Skeleton crew here for Overtime.
[00:34.180 --> 00:34.800]  Overtime's serious.
[00:35.140 --> 00:37.720]  She also had something to attend to, but she will be back in a moment.
[00:37.900 --> 00:38.080]  Uh-huh.
[00:38.240 --> 00:38.460]  Uh-huh.
[00:38.800 --> 00:40.460]  Is she and Alex conspiring?
[00:41.640 --> 00:43.460]  I think they went off to look for their blue checks.
[00:43.740 --> 00:44.100]  Yeah.
[00:44.760 --> 00:45.740]  Doesn't work that way.
[00:45.880 --> 00:47.720]  It seemed like they were a little sore about that.
[00:48.440 --> 00:50.100]  Listen, I'm sorry.
[00:50.140 --> 00:52.100]  It's just the way it goes sometimes.
[00:53.320 --> 00:56.380]  You could be a little bit more... I could be.
[00:56.480 --> 00:56.980]  I could be.
[00:57.040 --> 00:59.060]  But, you know, I spent my whole life chill about it.
[00:59.340 --> 01:00.300]  My whole life being chill.
[01:00.440 --> 01:02.360]  Now, maybe this is my time.
[01:02.640 --> 01:02.800]  Yeah.
[01:04.280 --> 01:04.760]  Okay.
[01:04.980 --> 01:10.740]  Well, I want to continue talking about the Excelsior Pass with the very people who aren't here.
[01:11.120 --> 01:17.480]  So, maybe, Rob, you can fill time while they get back to the microphones.
[01:18.140 --> 01:36.440]  Well, I can talk about our Excelsior Passes and our experiments with them because, yes, what it does is you put in your identifying info that it asks for, and then it checks the New York State databases to see that you did indeed get your vaccine at one of the centers here in New York.
[01:36.760 --> 01:47.400]  And when it confirms that, it gives you back a setting on your Excelsior Pass app, which gives you a QR code that you could flash at people and show off.
[01:47.520 --> 01:51.100]  And that QR code just decodes to a string of digits.
[01:52.020 --> 01:52.740]  That's all.
[01:53.120 --> 01:55.160]  It's a numerical string that means nothing.
[01:55.340 --> 01:57.460]  It's nothing to do with any personal identifying information.
[01:57.760 --> 02:18.360]  But what that QR code is good for is people running events and people at venues and people at businesses and stuff can install the app and use it to scan your QR code, get your string of digits, and then check that against the state's database to see that you are indeed among the vaccinated and that you can be allowed into,
[02:18.560 --> 02:23.800]  say, a concert or other entertainment event that is open to people who are vaccinated.
[02:24.080 --> 02:27.740]  So this is not actual personal information that's being flashed.
[02:27.900 --> 02:39.360]  It's basically a shortcut to checking the state's database, just as bars do when they scan your ID for letting you in to check your drinking age.
[02:40.200 --> 02:52.680]  And just as schools and things can check to see if you're vaccinated in, you know, ways that were understood to be common and necessary before the pandemic for other diseases and such.
[02:52.900 --> 02:53.940]  With one difference, Rob.
[02:54.120 --> 02:54.640]  One difference.
[02:54.820 --> 02:59.840]  This is incredibly easy to forge because, you know, people don't even check to see if you're the same person.
[03:00.060 --> 03:04.580]  Sometimes you just hold up the QR code and that's good enough for people there.
[03:04.660 --> 03:05.100]  They don't check.
[03:05.320 --> 03:06.760]  I'm not saying people should do that.
[03:06.860 --> 03:11.500]  But this misplaced notion that somehow this is Big Brother spying on you.
[03:11.660 --> 03:14.840]  Believe me, I know when Big Brother is spying, this is not it.
[03:15.000 --> 03:19.640]  This is something that, if people use it properly, can be very handy.
[03:21.340 --> 03:21.780]  Exactly.
[03:22.060 --> 03:23.980]  And I'm looking at the screen right now.
[03:24.100 --> 03:26.000]  It's got my name, which is known.
[03:26.140 --> 03:28.420]  It does have my date of birth, which is also known.
[03:28.580 --> 03:38.540]  So I think the idea here being that somebody checking my Excelsior pass can then ask to see maybe my ID card to see if the date of birth and name matches up.
[03:38.640 --> 03:39.920]  They do actually suggest that.
[03:40.120 --> 03:40.380]  Yes.
[03:40.680 --> 03:42.240]  And so that's it.
[03:42.300 --> 03:42.700]  There we are.
[03:42.860 --> 03:44.140]  It is a shortcut.
[03:44.140 --> 03:51.520]  It is not itself a privacy invasion any further than the normal stuff that you can be asked to show when you go to a place.
[03:51.740 --> 04:09.520]  How do you think we get here where these false accusations of privacy invasions are being used to back up this claim that vaccines aren't safe and that we have to... I don't know what the alternative is exactly.
[04:09.700 --> 04:11.580]  Continue dying from a disease.
[04:12.820 --> 04:15.760]  Alex, I'm curious if you have any thoughts on this.
[04:16.060 --> 04:18.260]  Because, you know, I'm familiar with all the concerns.
[04:18.520 --> 04:25.460]  I'm familiar with being in databases and having our privacy be completely compromised on so many levels.
[04:25.460 --> 04:30.740]  I'm familiar with giving up way too much of our personal lives.
[04:31.960 --> 04:40.560]  That's why I think it upsets me so much when I see those very notions, those things that I'm always fighting against, being used for something that doesn't make sense.
[04:42.140 --> 04:45.540]  Well, maybe for some people it does make sense.
[04:45.780 --> 04:51.060]  And that, you know, this is a personal choice that they're making that they may want to keep private.
[04:51.260 --> 04:53.660]  They may be vaccinated and want to keep that private.
[04:53.840 --> 04:58.400]  They may not be vaccinated and want to keep that private for for any number of reasons.
[04:58.900 --> 04:58.920]  Yeah.
[04:58.920 --> 05:04.200]  But Alex, if you're going into a public place, are you saying people should keep it private then?
[05:04.340 --> 05:09.500]  And the only time this is being asked for is when you could potentially be putting somebody else in harm's way.
[05:10.820 --> 05:11.260]  Perhaps.
[05:11.620 --> 05:11.860]  Right.
[05:12.000 --> 05:22.160]  But then also at the same time, let's say you're with people that you, they may not, well, you may not want them to know that you're vaccinated or not vaccinated.
[05:22.420 --> 05:38.940]  And by limiting what you can do on the basis of some kind of status of being vaccinated or not, which is essentially a medical choice that you're making, I can see that there is an argument that this perhaps is not such a great idea.
[05:39.100 --> 05:39.860]  I can see it.
[05:39.920 --> 05:41.240]  I don't necessarily agree with that.
[05:41.240 --> 05:41.780]  Yeah.
[05:41.880 --> 05:50.880]  But isn't it also not a great idea to go around spreading a disease when it's proven that it exists, that it's deadly, that it's still out there?
[05:51.180 --> 06:03.300]  I mean, I respect people's rights to not want to get a vaccine, but I don't respect their rights to just act like nothing is happening and continue mixing as if they did get a vaccine when that is probably the worst idea.
[06:03.840 --> 06:04.860]  Look, certainly.
[06:05.140 --> 06:14.320]  And I think, you know, there's plenty of other precedent out there where vaccines are required in order for entrance into, let's say, a public school.
[06:14.620 --> 06:30.980]  Now, I can't send my children to public school in New York without providing documentary proof that they are vaccinated against polio, against measles, mumps, rubella, and all of these other, you know, this full panel of vaccinations that you need in order to participate in that particular type of civic activity.
[06:31.100 --> 06:33.300]  So this has been going on for a really long time.
[06:33.500 --> 06:43.700]  But I think that it feels more sensitive for people now, because this whole process, the whole decision has been so polarizing politically.
[06:44.180 --> 06:46.460]  And I think that that's really what's driving it.
[06:46.640 --> 07:03.860]  Also, as we discussed last week, and probably the week before, too, this is just another way for people to feel like they're somehow being victimized by the state, you know, ignoring the fact that you have this overriding duty to third parties, this overriding duty to your fellow man and your fellow woman,
[07:04.000 --> 07:08.300]  not to cause them to carry a life-threatening illness.
[07:09.380 --> 07:10.140]  There's that.
[07:10.280 --> 07:13.700]  I mean, that's the whole reason why vaccination programs exist.
[07:14.040 --> 07:26.160]  But yet, you know, to be, you know, what Fox News calls it, you know, fair and balanced here, again, I think that the history of vaccines in this country are pretty terrible.
[07:26.540 --> 07:46.040]  And if you look at some of the court cases, where whether or not vaccines could be forced on a population were decided, even at the Supreme Court level, those very precedents were then used later on for the forced sterilization of the mentally ill.
[07:46.040 --> 07:48.040]  Yeah, but you know, you're talking apples and oranges here.
[07:48.120 --> 07:49.280]  Yeah, I get all that.
[07:49.280 --> 07:51.840]  I know about the injustices of the past.
[07:52.320 --> 07:54.560]  But that's not what's happening here.
[07:54.660 --> 07:56.400]  People aren't being forced to do this.
[07:56.640 --> 07:58.400]  This isn't the same kind of mindset.
[07:58.720 --> 07:59.800]  This is a choice.
[08:00.000 --> 08:03.960]  All I'm saying is, if you make that choice, then live by that choice.
[08:04.100 --> 08:05.360]  Don't pretend like you didn't.
[08:06.100 --> 08:07.000]  Well, that's fine.
[08:07.140 --> 08:08.640]  I completely agree with that.
[08:08.760 --> 08:12.800]  But I do think that we have to acknowledge that there is a pretty horrendous past here.
[08:13.480 --> 08:19.840]  And that forcing people to make some kind of medical decision one way or the other can rub a lot of people the wrong way.
[08:20.100 --> 08:30.340]  It's best for them to come to their own conclusion, like our listener did after listening, I think, to both sides quite regularly, that this is the right decision to come to.
[08:30.540 --> 08:32.420]  It's the right decision, I think, for yourself.
[08:32.420 --> 08:34.780]  It's the right decision for third parties.
[08:35.140 --> 08:48.320]  And that we have this, this overriding duty at this point in time, I think that we should hopefully look back on this point of time and time in 10, 20, 30 years, 100 years, and hopefully say that we did the right thing.
[08:48.540 --> 08:48.780]  Yeah.
[08:48.880 --> 08:53.120]  And if you have a different conclusion, that's fine, too.
[08:53.340 --> 09:04.240]  But you should not be acting as if you made the decision that we agree with, you know, I wish people the best if they choose not to get vaccinated.
[09:04.420 --> 09:13.140]  I don't think they should be risking other people who might still get the vaccine, the virus, even though they've had the vaccine, that is still possible.
[09:13.220 --> 09:13.940]  That's not a surprise.
[09:14.180 --> 09:15.940]  That's what everyone has predicted.
[09:16.160 --> 09:24.460]  Or people who, for other bona fide medical reasons, cannot get the vaccine, you're putting them at risk.
[09:24.460 --> 09:32.700]  It's, you know, and so I respect decisions, but I don't respect actions that are selfish and put other people in danger.
[09:33.520 --> 09:34.000]  Gila, go ahead.
[09:34.660 --> 09:47.320]  I think, and this is really something I've been saying for the last year now, more than the last year, is that there's this sense of, I got me and nothing else matters.
[09:47.320 --> 09:51.900]  And when people are saying, I'm not going to get the shot because I don't care if I get sick.
[09:51.900 --> 09:54.560]  I'm not going to wear a mask because I don't care if I get sick.
[09:54.600 --> 10:05.820]  The thing that we cannot force people to do, and it breaks my heart, we cannot force other people, force people to care about anybody else.
[10:06.000 --> 10:13.420]  And I will tell you that this past week, we had a bit of a scare in my family.
[10:13.420 --> 10:25.160]  Um, my mom called and told us that a friend she had visited with a couple of weeks ago when we were visiting her, despite being vaccinated, had tested positive.
[10:25.560 --> 10:26.620]  It can happen.
[10:27.300 --> 10:31.160]  And we did not know if we had been exposed.
[10:31.360 --> 10:36.240]  We spent 10 minutes with this person outside, but we were not sure.
[10:36.940 --> 10:41.080]  So we said, okay, we're both vaccinated.
[10:41.080 --> 10:42.380]  My mom is vaccinated.
[10:42.560 --> 10:43.740]  This friend is vaccinated.
[10:45.100 --> 10:51.780]  We said, we're gonna wait and reserve our nerves until the test comes back from my mom.
[10:52.000 --> 10:53.340]  And she tested negative.
[10:53.620 --> 11:05.200]  But this whole idea that everything that you do affects everybody around you, until people are willing to take that on board, we're never going to succeed.
[11:05.340 --> 11:20.400]  And I remember talking last week about polio vaccines and how people were... everybody got vaccinated for polio to the point where these diseases that we were able to eradicate through vaccination, and now they're coming back because people don't care.
[11:20.800 --> 11:22.980]  People don't care what they're going to do to other people.
[11:23.340 --> 11:23.700]  Yeah.
[11:23.900 --> 11:26.340]  And you know, this is not for that.
[11:26.500 --> 11:30.600]  This is not, I mean, it may be turning into a political issue.
[11:30.940 --> 11:31.780]  And maybe I'm wrong.
[11:31.880 --> 11:32.740]  Maybe it is a political issue.
[11:32.800 --> 11:34.200]  But I don't want it to be a political issue.
[11:34.660 --> 11:42.500]  You know, I don't I don't think there is something inherent in in Republicans that they are not going to get a vaccine.
[11:43.620 --> 11:48.080]  I think people are being led by those who want that to happen.
[11:48.980 --> 11:50.840]  And they're listening to the wrong people.
[11:51.020 --> 11:54.100]  But Republicans have common sense.
[11:54.340 --> 11:55.660]  Democrats have common sense.
[11:56.180 --> 11:59.820]  Socialists, communists, the Green Party, everybody has common sense.
[12:00.040 --> 12:03.600]  Whether we choose to listen to it or not, that's an individual decision.
[12:03.780 --> 12:13.320]  And I just hope more people don't look at the politics or don't look at what their particular political leader is saying and judge for themselves.
[12:13.520 --> 12:19.260]  And what I mean by that is, you know, don't just look for people to agree with what your initial biases are.
[12:19.720 --> 12:21.460]  Look into the science.
[12:21.720 --> 12:23.660]  Science is not the enemy here.
[12:23.840 --> 12:24.820]  Science is neutral.
[12:25.560 --> 12:28.340]  And that is what will lead us through this.
[12:28.440 --> 12:30.960]  That's what's gotten us this far in the first place.
[12:31.600 --> 12:33.840]  And make a decision based on that.
[12:33.960 --> 12:34.340]  Go ahead, Gila.
[12:35.100 --> 12:52.400]  The other thing I was thinking about is something that has been happening worldwide and happened in this country over the weekend, I believe it was, where someone decided to sell yellow stars of David that said not vaccinated.
[12:52.700 --> 12:52.980]  Oh, my God.
[12:53.040 --> 12:54.160]  Yeah, that that was something.
[12:54.340 --> 12:58.280]  We saw that on Twitter, where basically somebody discovered it on Amazon.
[12:58.420 --> 13:02.140]  And it was shocking because it was being sold by Amazon.
[13:03.080 --> 13:03.840]  There's that.
[13:04.060 --> 13:08.520]  But there's also there was a little store in I want to say, Tennessee, where they were making them.
[13:08.760 --> 13:11.020]  I've seen people wearing them at protested Great Britain.
[13:11.120 --> 13:12.000]  It was a hat store.
[13:12.720 --> 13:13.400]  Hat store.
[13:13.580 --> 13:14.980]  This is a worldwide thing.
[13:15.140 --> 13:20.420]  But they got and they got a bit of a blowback from Stetson, who pulled out of distributing.
[13:20.720 --> 13:25.340]  A lot of a lot of companies pulled out of distributing, using them as a distributor.
[13:25.580 --> 13:36.640]  But I think it's also important to remember that those were issued by the the Yellow Stars were issued to people to mark them as bad.
[13:36.820 --> 13:49.120]  And if you are choosing to put this on yourself and carry that mantle of victimhood because of this thing you have decided not to do because you're okay and you don't care about infecting other people... It shows ignorance on so many levels.
[13:49.680 --> 13:56.180]  Ignorance of history, ignorance of... It is just so offensive on so many levels.
[13:56.600 --> 13:59.480]  And I just wanted to put that out there, too.
[14:00.480 --> 14:01.800]  No, thanks for bringing that up.
[14:01.900 --> 14:09.280]  And I should also point out that it got taken down when people noticed it and started raising an uproar about it.
[14:09.480 --> 14:11.060]  And it's not going to be the last one.
[14:11.200 --> 14:16.000]  So we need to keep our eyes out for things that are horrible like that, that are being spread around.
[14:16.680 --> 14:21.240]  We may not be able to stop it, but we don't have to just stand by and let it spread.
[14:21.480 --> 14:22.140]  Go ahead, Alex.
[14:22.140 --> 14:34.220]  Another argument, I think, for the vaccine could possibly be taken from a 17th century philosopher, Pascal.
[14:34.220 --> 14:34.400]  Pascal.
[14:34.580 --> 14:36.540]  In fact, Pascal's wager.
[14:36.860 --> 14:52.420]  If we proceed from the assumption here that the vaccine has been provided to hundreds of millions of people around the world and that nothing bad has happened to them as a result of their injections.
[14:52.420 --> 14:56.280]  They might have gotten sick for a couple of days, but on the whole, everyone is okay.
[14:56.460 --> 15:06.380]  Okay, you know, there's been random blood clots, one in, you know, 10 million, whatever it is, very, very minuscule amount of fatalities associated with the vaccine.
[15:06.380 --> 15:10.760]  I mean, plenty, plenty, plenty more fatalities associated with COVID itself and the coronavirus.
[15:11.040 --> 15:19.820]  And so just in terms of probabilities, your probability of dying from COVID is a hell of a lot more likely than, you know, having even a minor complication from the vaccine.
[15:20.080 --> 15:29.980]  But, you know, our favorite 17th century French philosopher had an argument called Pascal's wager, which essentially was about believing in God.
[15:29.980 --> 15:42.340]  And he argued that it's probably better to believe in God based on what you can gain if it, in fact, turns out that it's true that God exists.
[15:42.380 --> 15:46.480]  Because then by believing in God, you gain eternal life.
[15:47.040 --> 15:52.340]  And if it turns out that God doesn't exist, well, you haven't really lost all that much, right?
[15:52.420 --> 15:58.860]  You know, you're not going to lose, you know, maybe you lost some time and, you know, during life and whatnot.
[15:58.860 --> 16:06.060]  But, you know, the gain to be gotten by believing is so much greater than not believing.
[16:06.300 --> 16:07.600]  So it makes sense to believe.
[16:07.900 --> 16:13.520]  So I feel like the same kind of argument can apply to the vaccine here, right?
[16:13.920 --> 16:18.480]  You know, there's really no documented harm from injecting it.
[16:18.520 --> 16:32.880]  And if you get it and if it works and now and this virus is real, which, you know, all the science points to all of those questions, all of those conditionals being answered in the affirmative, yes, the virus is real, yes, it exists, then you have everything to gain.
[16:33.280 --> 16:35.160]  So why wouldn't you do it?
[16:35.300 --> 16:39.900]  You have the ability to gain an Excelsior pass, to go to concerts.
[16:39.920 --> 16:48.820]  You have the ability to be free from a life-threatening disease that has killed 600,000 people in the United States alone.
[16:49.300 --> 16:55.980]  So, you know, maybe we should take our cue from those who possibly knew better in the 17th century.
[16:56.200 --> 16:58.220]  You know, I hear what you're saying, Alex.
[16:58.540 --> 17:03.060]  I hear what Pascal is saying, or did say, in that particular regard.
[17:03.300 --> 17:06.980]  I'm not sure that's the best parallel.
[17:06.980 --> 17:13.140]  Well, because I'm just thinking, I'm just thinking, you know, atheists and agnostics are among the most analytical people I know.
[17:15.140 --> 17:19.860]  And they would not treat the, well, why not just believe in God?
[17:19.960 --> 17:22.780]  What have you got to lose argument with much zest?
[17:24.460 --> 17:31.940]  And if they applied that to the vaccine, you know, say, well, why should I believe in something fanciful that I don't believe could possibly exist?
[17:31.940 --> 17:34.960]  Because you might wind up dissuading a few people.
[17:34.960 --> 17:38.300]  I'm just saying, I know where you're coming from, but I'm not sure it's the best.
[17:38.540 --> 17:46.440]  Yeah, look, you know, Pascal's wager is certainly, you know, a controversial argument in many respects.
[17:46.440 --> 17:50.220]  And even pragmatists like William James actually objected to it.
[17:50.220 --> 18:05.020]  Because he argued, you know, a 20th century American philosopher believed that Pascal's wager, if you supported that, it would require you to believe basically in any religion that promoted some kind of afterlife.
[18:05.380 --> 18:11.160]  So, you know, whatever it was should be believed in simply because there's some afterlife to be gained.
[18:11.160 --> 18:20.900]  But we're not talking here about the afterlife, we're talking about real life, we're talking about the here and now, and continuing to exist in this present plane of existence.
[18:21.240 --> 18:25.260]  Which I think is even a more pressing issue than the afterlife.
[18:26.160 --> 18:27.560]  I guess we could leave it at that.
[18:27.940 --> 18:28.600]  Yeah, I don't know.
[18:28.740 --> 18:38.440]  I mean, I just think like, since it's, to most of us, I think it is a form of magic, the average person taking the vaccine, it appears that way.
[18:38.440 --> 18:49.720]  But it diverges in that it is a scientific endeavor, it was tested for a, an actual perceivable result.
[18:50.760 --> 19:04.440]  So, I don't know, it, in a philosophical way, maybe, or in a sort of fundamental way, but I don't know, or mechanical way.
[19:04.440 --> 19:16.980]  But I don't know much more than where you would be putting faith, I mean, you're putting faith in data from peer-reviewed and phased trials and stuff.
[19:17.140 --> 19:17.740]  No, I got it now.
[19:18.200 --> 19:20.320]  The vaccine is better than God, okay?
[19:20.420 --> 19:21.120]  And here's why.
[19:21.320 --> 19:24.240]  Because you can prove the vaccine works.
[19:24.240 --> 19:26.560]  And you can't prove that God exists, okay?
[19:26.560 --> 19:29.200]  So, right away, the vaccine's got one up on God.
[19:29.360 --> 19:29.960]  So, there you go.
[19:29.960 --> 19:31.420]  Okay, yeah, that's the answer, yeah.
[19:31.600 --> 19:35.560]  That was my point about this existing, in this point of existence, as opposed to the afterlife.
[19:35.740 --> 19:37.020]  I'm sure people will accept that.
[19:37.020 --> 19:39.260]  If there were a God, he would get vaccinated.
[19:39.380 --> 19:39.840]  How about that?
[19:39.880 --> 19:40.860]  Or she would get vaccinated.
[19:42.140 --> 19:42.960]  They might be.
[19:43.140 --> 19:43.800]  All right, Rob, go ahead.
[19:43.940 --> 19:44.540]  Contribute to this.
[19:45.420 --> 19:57.380]  Now that we've raised the completely controversy-free and easily solvable subject of religious diversity here on this program, I'd like to invite our listeners to call in with their thoughts on anything we've been talking about or just whatever's going on.
[19:57.380 --> 20:03.360]  And you can call us at United States telephone number 1-802-321-4225.
[20:03.380 --> 20:05.260]  That's 802-321-HACK.
[20:05.400 --> 20:09.380]  Or toll-free at 1-833-755-2600.
[20:09.880 --> 20:12.720]  Because we are ostensibly here to talk with you.
[20:12.960 --> 20:14.300]  And we want to hear from you.
[20:14.420 --> 20:15.400]  We can't do that on the radio.
[20:15.400 --> 20:16.200]  We're doing it now.
[20:16.640 --> 20:18.680]  And, yeah, tell us what's on your mind.
[20:18.720 --> 20:19.740]  We already have a caller.
[20:20.040 --> 20:23.820]  And congratulations to this caller for successfully blocking their number.
[20:23.820 --> 20:25.200]  We have no idea where you're calling from.
[20:26.420 --> 20:26.900]  Hi.
[20:27.380 --> 20:28.140]  Oh, my God.
[20:28.500 --> 20:29.080]  It's you.
[20:29.380 --> 20:30.780]  I'm Eleanor Elizabeth Foreman.
[20:31.020 --> 20:36.160]  Well, you don't have to give us your entire name, but we know who you are because you called before.
[20:36.380 --> 20:36.880]  But, you know what?
[20:36.940 --> 20:40.780]  I think we're seeing caller IDs for calls that are going past us.
[20:40.920 --> 20:42.260]  There's a lot of calls, so let's go.
[20:42.380 --> 20:43.840]  It's weird how the system works.
[20:43.960 --> 20:45.740]  We're talking to you, but we're still seeing caller IDs.
[20:45.740 --> 20:47.060]  Okay, well, let's just acknowledge that...
[20:47.060 --> 20:48.260]  I don't want to explain things to people.
[20:48.260 --> 20:50.880]  The answering service isn't requiring us to press buttons anymore.
[20:50.880 --> 20:52.220]  Google just kind of fixed that.
[20:52.220 --> 20:52.540]  Really?
[20:52.620 --> 20:52.860]  They just stopped.
[20:52.860 --> 20:54.480]  We don't seem to have acknowledged them.
[20:54.960 --> 20:55.360]  Interesting.
[20:55.900 --> 20:56.200]  Okay.
[20:56.200 --> 20:57.460]  Go ahead, caller.
[20:57.540 --> 20:58.000]  What's on your mind?
[20:59.080 --> 20:59.340]  Okay.
[20:59.600 --> 21:00.200]  Two things.
[21:00.580 --> 21:06.200]  The Pascal's wager and the update you asked before.
[21:06.560 --> 21:07.560]  Let's start with Pascal.
[21:08.540 --> 21:08.980]  Okay.
[21:10.080 --> 21:34.720]  Pascal's wager is not a good wager because, as you've mentioned, there's no proof that any deities exist, any pie in the sky, and people spend huge amounts of time in the one life that they actually have doing or not doing according to religious beliefs that are very restrictive,
[21:34.720 --> 21:41.580]  and they waste the one life they have trying to gain the pie in the sky, which they're not going to get.
[21:42.720 --> 21:45.240]  Alex, do you wish to debate the issue further?
[21:47.240 --> 21:51.400]  I think it's a very valid criticism of Pascal's wager.
[21:51.960 --> 21:55.400]  Certainly, I don't subscribe to it myself.
[21:56.000 --> 22:10.840]  I'm simply merely referencing the argument as the analog for a situation where you have everything to gain from doing something, and relatively nothing to lose.
[22:11.020 --> 22:11.800]  But, you know, you're right.
[22:11.900 --> 22:12.620]  Absolutely, caller.
[22:12.620 --> 22:20.780]  If you spend all this time worshiping and going to church and being pious, etc., certainly you're losing a hell of a lot of your life.
[22:20.860 --> 22:35.440]  But if it's simply a matter of, let's assume, you know, the facts are different for a second with respect to what it means to believe in God, and if simply believing in God was sufficient for you to gain entry to the afterlife, then I think that, you know,
[22:35.500 --> 22:37.160]  Pascal's wager would have more force.
[22:37.160 --> 22:46.620]  If you didn't have to spend your whole life being pious and confessing minor transgressions and jaywalking and things like that, I think, you know, maybe the analog would be better.
[22:46.920 --> 22:53.980]  I think also some atheists might want to write in and tell us what they have to lose by believing in God, just out of curiosity.
[22:54.540 --> 22:56.160]  I think we might get a few hundred of those.
[22:56.700 --> 22:57.240]  Go ahead, caller.
[22:57.320 --> 22:58.120]  Finish with your other point.
[23:01.300 --> 23:33.900]  I hope that you will give out the link to my petition here on the aftertime, because it didn't seem to get signers from the radio show on the air, unfortunately, but hopefully the people who are cognoscente and have bothered to join us afterwards will be more more likely to actually sign the petition,
[23:34.160 --> 23:38.680]  as well as share it, and bug their legislators.
[23:39.720 --> 23:42.420]  But right now, I'm stuck at 20 supporters.
[23:44.580 --> 23:47.840]  If you would like to give that link out, please, please go ahead.
[23:48.680 --> 23:49.000]  Okay.
[23:50.320 --> 23:52.900]  Everybody got paper and pencil out there?
[23:52.900 --> 23:55.220]  Give him a second.
[23:55.820 --> 24:48.500]  Change .org Slash Disabled Need Vaccinated AIDS And AIDS is spelled A-I-D-E-S So disabled D-I-S-A-B-L-E-D Capital N-E-E-E-D Capital V for vaccinated V-A-C-C-I-N-A-T-E-D Capital A for AIDS A-I-D-E-S Change.org Slash Disabled Need Vaccinated AIDS Okay.
[24:48.800 --> 24:50.880]  Well, we wish you the best of luck with that.
[24:51.180 --> 24:52.020]  Alex, do you just want me to say?
[24:52.100 --> 24:52.280]  Go ahead.
[24:53.220 --> 24:55.240]  Yeah, it's such a long URL.
[24:55.500 --> 25:10.300]  I think perhaps maybe one of our listeners or maybe one of ourselves could do our caller the favor of perhaps registering a shorter domain name that could be used to redirect to that URL.
[25:10.300 --> 25:20.820]  Or maybe even creating some kind of much shorter Bitly link that we can give out to our caller to use for further promotion.
[25:21.620 --> 25:24.080]  You know, caller, it's extremely easy to do that.
[25:24.680 --> 25:33.170]  It did start off with a shorter random link, but it gave me the option of choosing a link that made sense.
[25:33.170 --> 25:50.350]  If you go to the site Bitly, which is bit.ly, you'll see there's a box there where you can put in that long URL and even request a custom URL so that it would be bit.ly slash whatever word you want, and it can be very short.
[25:51.170 --> 25:54.090]  Well, I did request this particular one.
[25:54.170 --> 25:56.310]  I mean, you're telling me it's too long.
[25:56.370 --> 25:56.970]  Well, it might be.
[25:56.970 --> 26:00.510]  It might be too long for some people, but maybe for some people it's just right.
[26:04.380 --> 26:10.260]  But also you could go to Channel 2600 on YouTube after this show if you're listening and you didn't catch that whole thing.
[26:10.500 --> 26:17.760]  And you can go back to now and go back and get that link again in the archived file.
[26:18.020 --> 26:19.740]  The archives will remain up in perpetuity.
[26:20.320 --> 26:20.640]  Go ahead, Kyle.
[26:20.640 --> 26:30.720]  The important thing is to try a variety of ways to get the information out so people can get under people's noses and get a little bit more of that momentum.
[26:31.020 --> 26:32.160]  Yeah, sign the damn petition.
[26:32.380 --> 26:32.660]  It's important.
[26:33.320 --> 26:40.900]  Well, I happen to know a Twitter checkmarked person.
[26:41.000 --> 26:41.360]  Oh, boy.
[26:41.400 --> 26:41.760]  Here we go.
[26:42.060 --> 26:48.800]  In fact, I believe I am speaking to a Twitter checkmarked person who would be able to tweet this.
[26:48.800 --> 26:49.960]  It's like winning a lottery.
[26:49.960 --> 26:50.620]  There's no desire.
[26:50.880 --> 26:54.240]  I got calls from relatives I hadn't heard from in 10 years, you know?
[26:54.560 --> 26:56.720]  Everybody thinks I can just move mountains for them now.
[26:57.340 --> 26:57.700]  Really.
[26:57.820 --> 27:01.780]  Seriously, folks, we're going to have to talk about this after the show because there's going to have to be some changes.
[27:03.200 --> 27:04.380]  By the way, we've got to get that.
[27:04.380 --> 27:09.520]  Well, if you would be willing to tweet for my petition.
[27:09.740 --> 27:10.720]  I'll see what I can do.
[27:10.960 --> 27:11.080]  I dare say.
[27:11.360 --> 27:12.320]  I'll see what I can do.
[27:12.580 --> 27:15.500]  Thank you very much for your call and best of luck.
[27:15.740 --> 27:16.660]  And congratulations.
[27:17.200 --> 27:17.960]  Thank you very much.
[27:17.960 --> 27:18.400]  Thank you.
[27:18.480 --> 27:20.120]  You know, it doesn't hurt to say that, people.
[27:20.400 --> 27:22.080]  You know, no one is saying that.
[27:22.200 --> 27:25.860]  That's just I'm getting all kinds of demands, requests, and insolence.
[27:26.480 --> 27:26.820]  Mm-hmm.
[27:26.820 --> 27:27.640]  That's what I'm getting.
[27:28.360 --> 27:29.460]  Congratulations, trader.
[27:29.760 --> 27:29.900]  Yeah.
[27:30.180 --> 27:30.300]  Yeah.
[27:30.360 --> 27:31.500]  You see, this is what I'm talking about.
[27:31.800 --> 27:32.200]  Okay.
[27:32.300 --> 27:37.620]  Our phone number, 802-321-4225, 802-321-HACK.
[27:38.860 --> 27:39.300]  Really?
[27:39.820 --> 27:40.440]  I'm sorry.
[27:40.580 --> 27:42.220]  I'm watching the Winnipeg Jets and they're losing.
[27:44.440 --> 27:44.880]  Damn.
[27:45.040 --> 27:45.160]  Okay.
[27:45.220 --> 27:46.420]  Well, there's still time left.
[27:46.660 --> 27:47.680]  There's still time left.
[27:47.880 --> 27:48.560]  Fingers crossed.
[27:50.700 --> 27:56.300]  So, anything else as far as controversial topics that we wish to focus on?
[27:56.440 --> 27:57.960]  Anyone has anything to share?
[27:59.180 --> 27:59.640]  No?
[27:59.960 --> 28:00.560]  Alex, you?
[28:01.200 --> 28:04.220]  I mean, I've always got, you know, something to share.
[28:05.200 --> 28:13.920]  I'm particularly happy that, you know, our callers are calling in and mentioning Pascal's way you're arguing philosophy off the hook over time.
[28:14.000 --> 28:14.840]  Well, that's because you did it.
[28:14.900 --> 28:15.920]  That's why they're mentioning it.
[28:16.360 --> 28:17.420]  Well, perhaps.
[28:17.420 --> 28:18.320]  Yes, of course.
[28:18.520 --> 28:19.360]  I mean, that's it.
[28:19.440 --> 28:23.360]  But, I mean, it's nice to have these philosophical arguments, you know, with real intellectuals sometimes.
[28:24.180 --> 28:25.300]  We have a call from Connecticut.
[28:25.300 --> 28:25.780]  Good evening.
[28:25.940 --> 28:26.800]  You're on off the hook.
[28:29.180 --> 28:29.720]  Go ahead.
[28:30.460 --> 28:31.480]  Maybe you're not from Connecticut.
[28:32.060 --> 28:33.240]  It said you were from Connecticut.
[28:33.380 --> 28:33.980]  Is anybody there?
[28:35.340 --> 28:36.200]  There's nobody here.
[28:37.120 --> 28:37.420]  Okay.
[28:38.660 --> 28:41.560]  The phone number, 802-321-4225.
[28:42.140 --> 28:43.460]  What were they, hang up or something?
[28:44.380 --> 28:47.980]  We may have caught them on the end of a ring or between two calls.
[28:48.220 --> 28:48.400]  Okay.
[28:48.780 --> 28:50.280]  So, there are calls coming in.
[28:50.460 --> 28:51.160]  People are out there.
[28:51.360 --> 28:52.400]  So, please provide...
[28:52.400 --> 28:52.840]  They're coming in.
[28:52.920 --> 28:53.560]  They're just not landing.
[28:53.940 --> 28:55.400]  Go ahead and give them that number.
[28:55.840 --> 28:56.680]  Bouncing off the runway.
[28:56.980 --> 28:57.120]  Okay.
[28:57.580 --> 28:58.960]  802-321-4225.
[28:59.120 --> 29:00.240]  How do you know if you haven't connected?
[29:00.900 --> 29:04.700]  The phone will keep ringing and you'll wind up in some kind of crazy voicemail that we can't access.
[29:05.520 --> 29:07.040]  That's how Google plays.
[29:07.780 --> 29:09.180]  802-321-4225.
[29:09.400 --> 29:10.660]  802-321-HACK.
[29:11.400 --> 29:12.520]  And we have a phone call.
[29:13.000 --> 29:16.820]  And this is from somebody who successfully blocked their number.
[29:17.640 --> 29:18.180]  Good evening.
[29:18.200 --> 29:19.160]  We have no idea where you are.
[29:20.880 --> 29:24.000]  Well, it doesn't really matter where I am because I don't have a blue check, right?
[29:24.700 --> 29:25.060]  True.
[29:25.360 --> 29:26.560]  See, he gets it.
[29:26.660 --> 29:27.180]  He gets it.
[29:27.220 --> 29:27.900]  Is that so hard?
[29:28.940 --> 29:31.800]  But just, you know, for the sake of argument, let's say I'm David in Oregon.
[29:31.800 --> 29:33.060]  Okay, we'll say that.
[29:33.760 --> 29:34.460]  All right.
[29:34.600 --> 29:57.800]  And I'm really fascinated with some of my conservative friends that are otherwise really good people, but they really seem to think that they're, you know, starting the birth of a nation or something by standing up to the utter injustice of, you know,
[29:57.900 --> 29:59.660]  confirming that they've been vaccinated.
[30:01.840 --> 30:05.020]  And I'm just like, what is that doing for them?
[30:05.360 --> 30:23.000]  And, you know, I've been reading around and such, a lot of times people that have been victimized in other ways really just kind of seek out that, you know, things to take the role of victim on and, you know, maybe safer things because no one is really coming to get them if they,
[30:23.140 --> 30:25.180]  you know, don't get vaccinated.
[30:25.180 --> 30:30.960]  It's a safe thing to say, you know, no vaccine or death or whatever.
[30:31.200 --> 30:35.840]  Well, it's the feigned indignation that I think a lot of people are being propelled towards.
[30:36.080 --> 30:41.640]  Let me ask you, your conservative friends, they don't want to tell people if they got the vaccine or not.
[30:41.700 --> 30:44.320]  Do you know if they actually did get the vaccine or not?
[30:44.320 --> 30:45.540]  And they just don't want to tell people.
[30:47.280 --> 30:49.760]  It seems to be there's a split.
[30:49.960 --> 31:02.660]  One is just that since there is so much misinformation, I mean, it's no, I think one thing we'd agree on is that big pharma is not the most honest, benevolent force in the world.
[31:02.660 --> 31:03.440]  Absolutely, yes.
[31:03.600 --> 31:06.480]  And so it plays into thinking there's a conspiracy.
[31:06.900 --> 31:12.720]  And in that, boy, they, you know, they choose to believe what they choose to believe.
[31:12.860 --> 31:13.700]  There is a conspiracy.
[31:13.700 --> 31:18.280]  The conspiracy is to make us healthy, to get past the virus.
[31:18.520 --> 31:19.440]  That's the conspiracy.
[31:19.560 --> 31:20.420]  That's a good one, too.
[31:21.500 --> 31:35.180]  Well, and if they're believing people that the whole thing is trumped up, then, pardon the phrase, that, you know, that they think, well, it's no big deal, then I'm, why should I be a sucker?
[31:35.320 --> 31:42.260]  And I think the most successful moment I've had was something like, oh, you know, they're putting in the tracking devices or whatever.
[31:42.260 --> 31:44.920]  And I'm saying, well, dude, you got a phone.
[31:45.080 --> 31:45.460]  They're covered.
[31:45.600 --> 31:46.460]  And he's like, oh.
[31:47.980 --> 31:48.720]  Exactly, yeah.
[31:48.860 --> 31:50.940]  Now, of course, they're not putting in tracking devices.
[31:51.140 --> 32:01.200]  But, you know, if they were putting in tracking devices and that was the price to, like, save your life, well, no, I still wouldn't consider it acceptable, but it's better than dying of a virus, that's for sure.
[32:01.200 --> 32:02.740]  But it's not happening.
[32:02.760 --> 32:03.320]  It's not real.
[32:03.400 --> 32:05.100]  I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole.
[32:05.460 --> 32:11.580]  But the interesting thing is that there are levels, there are levels of denial that I think we're seeing here.
[32:12.200 --> 32:18.080]  People who don't want to share information about themselves, believing it's some kind of privacy risk.
[32:18.260 --> 32:19.300]  Okay, that's one level.
[32:19.500 --> 32:23.740]  It's, you know, bad and inconsiderate, but at least you're not hurting yourself.
[32:23.740 --> 32:33.620]  Then there's the other level where you won't even get the vaccine because you're convinced there's some evil democratic conspiracy against I don't know what, and you're hurting yourself as a result.
[32:33.900 --> 32:38.680]  That, I think, is far worse because people are actually suffering.
[32:38.820 --> 32:43.200]  Even the people I disagree with are suffering and will die as a result of this.
[32:43.340 --> 32:58.700]  And, you know, it reminds me of, I don't know if you guys caught this over the weekend when Kamala Harris encouraged people to have a nice long weekend, and she got all kinds of crap from conservatives for daring to not mention Memorial Day when she had mentioned it so many times before.
[32:59.160 --> 33:05.600]  People are looking for something to get outraged at and to see as a violation or part of some kind of bigger conspiracy.
[33:06.060 --> 33:13.120]  It really almost doesn't matter what you say, because anything you say, they'll figure out a way to twist it and make it about what they're saying.
[33:13.520 --> 33:14.340]  It's really sad.
[33:14.660 --> 33:15.940]  Or maybe they didn't salute enough.
[33:17.180 --> 33:21.540]  I don't know what it's, it's, it's, it's, it's gotten past the point of ridiculousness.
[33:22.220 --> 33:25.080]  Well, I have one, one big idea I want to share.
[33:25.240 --> 33:25.540]  Go ahead.
[33:26.040 --> 33:33.320]  That is, one of the things that people keep saying is, well, you know, these CDC cards, they don't have any anti-counterfeiting.
[33:33.520 --> 33:36.340]  So what's the point of asking to see them?
[33:36.440 --> 33:53.260]  And for me, the point is that, you know, for maybe, maybe someone might feel that they're being heroic, like a local guy took a picture of himself in a Costco with no mask and said, well, you know, he wasn't real specific about what vaccine, and I wasn't real specific with my answer,
[33:53.260 --> 33:54.300]  and he thinks he's really smart.
[33:55.180 --> 34:04.260]  But, you know, there's a big line between saying, you know, just kind of gilding the lily about whether you've been vaccinated or not.
[34:04.260 --> 34:07.620]  It's another thing to present a counterfeit document.
[34:08.260 --> 34:19.480]  And I think a lot of people, even if they don't believe in the vaccine, they still understand that counterfeit documents are, at the very least, immoral, and could possibly have legal implications.
[34:19.480 --> 34:20.980]  Maybe Alex could comment on that.
[34:21.180 --> 34:21.600]  Thanks.
[34:22.120 --> 34:23.140]  Okay, thanks for your call.
[34:24.780 --> 34:25.900]  Oops, I'm sorry about that.
[34:25.980 --> 34:26.620]  Go ahead, Alex.
[34:26.780 --> 34:27.580]  And then Kyle.
[34:30.320 --> 34:31.380]  Alex, I think you're muted.
[34:31.980 --> 34:35.260]  Sorry, I was trying to find the unmute button there.
[34:36.220 --> 34:52.300]  You know, I want to expand on something I said a little bit earlier that I made it an allusion to, but didn't really have an opportunity to explain, which was this legal precedent about the authority of states to vaccinate its people.
[34:52.500 --> 34:58.720]  And it was 116 years ago, in 1905, a U.S.
[34:58.840 --> 35:01.500]  Supreme Court case by the name of Jacobson v.
[35:01.500 --> 35:12.440]  Massachusetts, that had to deal, if I recall correctly, with a priest who had objected to being forced to take the smallpox vaccine.
[35:12.740 --> 35:14.160]  And he got some kind of fine.
[35:14.340 --> 35:19.160]  I think back then it was like a couple of dollars, but it was, you know, substantial, obviously, money.
[35:19.920 --> 35:22.660]  And he refused to take this, refused to take the vaccine.
[35:22.740 --> 35:24.100]  And the case went all the way to the U.S.
[35:24.180 --> 35:24.740]  Supreme Court.
[35:25.300 --> 35:48.940]  And they ruled in favor of the state's power, because there is, since this ruling, the authority of the states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws, in that, you know, it ruled basically that there is a matter of individual liberty at stake, but it's that individual liberty is always subject to the power of the state.
[35:49.260 --> 35:50.860]  You know, we live in a society.
[35:50.860 --> 35:54.560]  We do not live in the state of nature where we can do anything that we want.
[35:54.560 --> 36:08.120]  We have, essentially, a social contract with the government and fellow man to do what's right, and that police power of the state can force us to do something in favor of third parties, which, you know, arguably, you know, interesting decision.
[36:08.460 --> 36:17.740]  However, later on, that case was then misused, I think, to establish something that was really terrible.
[36:18.640 --> 36:26.460]  And in fact, it was about 20 years or so later, in a case, again, before the U.S.
[36:26.540 --> 36:28.480]  Supreme Court, I think it was called Buck v.
[36:28.720 --> 36:28.940]  Bell.
[36:29.680 --> 36:37.880]  And this was a case where Oliver Wendell Holmes, an otherwise pretty brilliant jurist, said this, and I'm going to read this.
[36:38.380 --> 36:44.120]  We have seen more than once that public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives.
[36:44.480 --> 36:47.980]  Meaning, you know, we can force people into the draft.
[36:48.280 --> 36:52.400]  We can take people and force them to fight for our country or imprison them.
[36:52.900 --> 36:58.080]  You know, and a for two or by necessary implication, we can force people to get a goddamn vaccine, vaccine, right?
[36:58.360 --> 37:12.400]  But he's saying, if we can force the best citizens for their lives, to join the army, etc., it would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sapped the strength of the state for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned,
[37:12.440 --> 37:15.260]  or to prevent our being swamped with incompetence.
[37:15.400 --> 37:31.540]  It is better for all the world if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.
[37:31.920 --> 37:32.040]  Wow.
[37:32.660 --> 37:40.080]  Principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover the cutting of fallopian tubes.
[37:40.320 --> 37:41.180]  Okay, well, you know what?
[37:41.300 --> 37:43.700]  You've painted it about as darkly as it could be painted.
[37:43.900 --> 37:51.840]  And from the beginning, when you mentioned the smallpox decision, that's not something that I think very many people would go along with today.
[37:52.280 --> 37:54.120]  And I don't think that's what people are saying.
[37:54.120 --> 37:59.220]  I don't think anyone believes that the state should force people to get vaccines.
[37:59.220 --> 38:04.420]  But I do think that if you don't, there are certain things you shouldn't do.
[38:04.620 --> 38:07.000]  And that's just common decency.
[38:07.300 --> 38:08.620]  And I hope that we...
[38:08.620 --> 38:09.560]  What am I saying?
[38:09.580 --> 38:11.220]  We live in a society where that's valued more?
[38:11.320 --> 38:11.820]  No, we don't.
[38:11.880 --> 38:12.480]  But we should.
[38:12.720 --> 38:14.000]  It would be nice if we did.
[38:15.120 --> 38:16.620]  I agree with that.
[38:16.620 --> 38:19.060]  But I think there is merit.
[38:19.060 --> 38:31.220]  There's an historical record for the power of the state to come to require vaccines or to force them in one way or another, that that can lead to a dangerous legal precedent that can be misused.
[38:31.400 --> 38:34.540]  It's the legal equivalent of function creep.
[38:34.700 --> 38:35.200]  It can.
[38:35.320 --> 38:35.940]  It can.
[38:36.100 --> 38:36.240]  Yes.
[38:36.360 --> 38:40.820]  But it can also work very badly if you don't do enough.
[38:41.600 --> 38:49.920]  You know, if it's a free for all, everybody just, you know, doing whatever they want health wise, that's how you get into bad situations.
[38:50.440 --> 38:51.280]  Kyle, you have something to say?
[38:51.360 --> 38:51.500]  Go ahead.
[38:51.700 --> 38:58.840]  I think the caller made a good point about the CDC cards and distinction between being cagey and actually counterfeiting those.
[38:59.020 --> 39:02.860]  And I think we should also remember to think of them as more of our record.
[39:03.100 --> 39:06.820]  It's literally what they're giving it to you as, as your vaccination record.
[39:06.980 --> 39:08.180]  But it's like a receipt.
[39:08.180 --> 39:29.300]  And it's not that that information on it or that other silos of information, if you'll let me use the term, don't have a record as well and could not corroborate it based on what record you have and are claiming is when and what batch and all of that information.
[39:29.580 --> 39:35.840]  And to think of it, to think that this isn't being handled other is, I think, foolish.
[39:36.740 --> 39:47.160]  And in the case of the Excelsior app, that's just basically making it machine readable so that various places can adopt it as a control mechanism.
[39:47.420 --> 39:54.620]  The last thing I really don't have enough time to go into, but I would have loved to speak about vaccines and trust.
[39:54.820 --> 40:05.360]  And I think in this case, we have to look at the extraordinary circumstances that we've faced and consider the amount of people that are watching this situation.
[40:05.660 --> 40:10.560]  And in the development of this particular vaccine, it was not just a private entity doing it.
[40:10.660 --> 40:11.740]  It was also the government.
[40:11.980 --> 40:20.060]  Now, those two entities separately and alone may have varying levels of trust from the public.
[40:20.200 --> 40:30.060]  But I think together, given the circumstances and with the amount of light shown on the circumstances, on those two entities and how they work, they have entirely different objectives.
[40:30.360 --> 40:46.420]  So I think the oversight of the government to ensure that it continues to have taxable revenue and precipitate growth in its population, those interests are different than perhaps the research and development goals of Pfizer.
[40:46.560 --> 40:48.440]  And I think we could go back and forth on that.
[40:48.440 --> 41:02.660]  But I think the two of them together, or any other vaccine manufacturer, really is a strong, could and should build a strong sense of trust because of their shared goal in the rollout and distribution of it.
[41:02.860 --> 41:09.700]  You know, I would hope that they are keeping records because if they're not, that means people can just keep going back and getting a free beer every time they get a shot.
[41:09.720 --> 41:10.620]  And that's not right either.
[41:11.040 --> 41:12.100]  It's also not healthy.
[41:12.580 --> 41:14.740]  I think we have our Connecticut call back.
[41:15.180 --> 41:15.840]  Good evening.
[41:16.000 --> 41:16.660]  Is anybody there?
[41:17.800 --> 41:18.580]  Good evening.
[41:18.580 --> 41:19.200]  Yes, I am.
[41:19.300 --> 41:21.660]  And congratulations on your blue checkmark.
[41:22.020 --> 41:23.100]  Thank you very much.
[41:23.220 --> 41:24.140]  And that sounded sincere.
[41:24.500 --> 41:24.960]  That sounded...
[41:24.960 --> 41:26.480]  Unlike any of you, that sounded sincere.
[41:26.760 --> 41:27.260]  Thank you.
[41:28.300 --> 41:33.700]  I was going to mention, in 1954, they also were pushing out polio vaccines.
[41:34.840 --> 41:35.420]  Uh-huh.
[41:35.520 --> 41:46.620]  So there are good points where we do what is good for the in general public versus having, you know, waves of people saying, oh, no, no, no, I'd rather let my child.
[41:46.620 --> 41:47.680]  I'll die naturally.
[41:48.940 --> 41:49.420]  Yeah.
[41:49.700 --> 41:49.800]  Yeah.
[41:50.160 --> 41:51.140]  And measles, too.
[41:51.260 --> 41:55.040]  The primary thing that I was calling, though, for was about Amazon Sidewalk.
[41:55.640 --> 41:56.680]  Amazon Sidewalk.
[41:56.900 --> 41:57.020]  Here it is.
[41:57.380 --> 41:58.500]  Tell us all about this.
[41:58.600 --> 41:59.600]  Yeah, we didn't get to that story.
[41:59.740 --> 42:00.240]  Please share.
[42:01.420 --> 42:07.440]  Amazon Sidewalk is a low-bandwidth, long-range, wireless communication protocol developed by Amazon.
[42:07.440 --> 42:11.020]  It uses Bluetooth low-energy for short-distance communications.
[42:11.340 --> 42:16.520]  And in the 900 megahertz range, other frequencies for longer distances.
[42:16.520 --> 42:25.760]  The idea is that your Amazon devices will all work better if we just take some of your bandwidth in your house and open it up to the public.
[42:26.260 --> 42:28.160]  Only Amazon devices, of course.
[42:28.360 --> 42:38.400]  But still, if you think that your Internet speed is slow now, you can opt up, of course.
[42:39.000 --> 42:50.760]  But the fact that this was a project that they've had in the pipe, and now they're going to turn it on, and everybody who doesn't opt out of their program...
[42:50.760 --> 42:56.140]  So, I haven't really had time to look into this, but I don't really know anything about this, to be honest.
[42:56.340 --> 42:58.500]  I've heard just, you know, people talking about it.
[42:58.500 --> 43:05.120]  But, um, so, basically, your bandwidth, which you don't get from Amazon, correct?
[43:06.120 --> 43:06.720]  Correct.
[43:07.080 --> 43:22.620]  Uh, they will be able to somehow latch onto an Amazon device that is connected to your Internet, uh, uh, connection, and siphon off of that, and use it to feed other people walking by with their Amazon devices.
[43:22.780 --> 43:23.820]  Is that more or less correct?
[43:25.380 --> 43:44.760]  Yes, it improves the communication of all Amazon devices through this low-powered antenna that are in the, I think it's the third-generation Amazon Echoes, Dots, a couple of, um, various things, the, uh, show and the ID tags.
[43:45.140 --> 43:58.020]  So, so, basically, what you're saying is your Alexa will be sort of inside your house, kind of like a plant for Amazon that's helping out all other Amazon devices that are passing by your house with, with bandwidth.
[43:58.220 --> 43:59.040]  Is that, is that fair?
[44:00.200 --> 44:00.640]  Yes.
[44:01.060 --> 44:01.260]  Wow.
[44:01.420 --> 44:02.040]  Improving their connectivity.
[44:02.560 --> 44:02.740]  Yeah.
[44:02.940 --> 44:04.960]  That is something, that is, that is scary.
[44:05.180 --> 44:19.640]  Sort of like they're going to load balance all of our connections and then run, uh, a sort of, uh, underlying or, I guess, supervisory, however you want to imagine it, uh, layer that only connects those two.
[44:19.880 --> 44:33.520]  And, and from what I read just a little bit also, uh, what this will help them do is integrate other kinds of features and services like tags, I, I think was in the article.
[44:33.800 --> 44:57.840]  Um, like you lose your keys, say you're near somebody that, uh, or you lose them in out of range area, um, from your home, but another, um, show or dot or whatever at your neighbors where you were jogging by their device knows that your keys are up there and relays that to back to your home network.
[44:58.020 --> 44:59.560]  I guess that's the right.
[45:00.060 --> 45:00.520]  Sort of an example.
[45:00.540 --> 45:08.440]  Even if your house loses power, your neighbors, if they have power, could, um, register your devices on their system.
[45:09.040 --> 45:12.040]  Now let's say you don't like your neighbors and they don't like you.
[45:12.380 --> 45:14.740]  How can, how can this work?
[45:15.220 --> 45:19.940]  Uh, to, to, to basically your app, your Amazon app and opt out currently.
[45:20.100 --> 45:20.280]  Okay.
[45:20.340 --> 45:21.160]  No, I realize that.
[45:21.340 --> 45:22.960]  Uh, first of all, it should be the other way around.
[45:23.080 --> 45:24.180]  You should opt in, not opt out.
[45:24.180 --> 45:35.220]  But I mean, let's say that you don't like your neighbors and this system is on what could, what could happen that would make their lives more difficult using this particular type of a system.
[45:35.380 --> 45:36.420]  That's what I want to explore.
[45:37.680 --> 45:42.180]  Conceivably from what I've read, nothing, because it's going to be a low level network.
[45:42.380 --> 45:44.860]  It's only going to talk to Amazon devices, nothing else.
[45:44.980 --> 45:50.060]  Nobody's going to be able to breach that, um, network that they're establishing.
[45:50.900 --> 45:51.420]  Yeah.
[45:51.540 --> 46:02.060]  It's sort of only for their use as it were, or their products to use, to optimize their functionality.
[46:02.360 --> 46:11.120]  It's not necessarily like a user, um, a way the, the user, uh, user facing, uh, advantage.
[46:11.420 --> 46:14.280]  Well, it sounds like we're all chipping in to help make things easier for Amazon.
[46:14.560 --> 46:15.880]  That's what I'm getting out of this.
[46:16.060 --> 46:16.340]  Yeah.
[46:16.340 --> 46:25.780]  Starting June 8th, it will, um, it will be smart speakers, ring security cameras, out-location trackers, and outdoor sensors, primarily.
[46:26.040 --> 46:26.920]  That's where it starts.
[46:27.620 --> 46:27.820]  Wow.
[46:27.980 --> 46:32.380]  But if you think about it, it's really integrating all of the different pieces that were always there.
[46:32.500 --> 46:34.140]  It's just establishing...
[46:34.140 --> 46:34.980]  Yeah, but it's other pieces.
[46:35.220 --> 46:37.200]  It's not the pieces that you own.
[46:37.300 --> 46:38.360]  It's pieces other people own.
[46:38.520 --> 46:39.460]  It's integrating all of them.
[46:39.500 --> 46:39.560]  Yeah.
[46:39.560 --> 46:41.820]  It has kind of a sort of digital magnetism of...
[46:41.820 --> 46:43.960]  It's making some kind of singularity that's going to...
[46:43.960 --> 46:46.200]  I can't... Go ahead, Alex.
[46:47.260 --> 47:01.940]  I think there's a couple of interesting things with, with this rollout in a few days, too, that, you know, number one, that Amazon developed a new protocol, a new data transmission protocol for this very purpose.
[47:02.180 --> 47:14.580]  Uh, and I think a lot of people are having concerns about the rollout of a brand new protocol, sending and transmitting data, uh, you know, without it really being tested on such a scale.
[47:14.900 --> 47:22.340]  You know, there's going to be a massive rollout without, uh, you know, a really, truly scale-tested, um, beta of this.
[47:22.480 --> 47:36.340]  And then, separately, uh, and the caller mentioned this, too, is that these are going to broadcast on the, uh, 900 megahertz spectrum, which, uh, Emanuel will probably recall is the same spectrum for, for what?
[47:37.260 --> 47:38.680]  Uh, 900 megahertz?
[47:39.160 --> 47:39.640]  Um...
[47:39.640 --> 47:40.600]  Coralous phone.
[47:41.120 --> 47:43.900]  It's a cordless... it's not cellular, because cellular was 800.
[47:44.520 --> 47:45.020]  800, yep.
[47:45.020 --> 47:49.860]  But, but 900, that, but wireless, uh, transmissions, uh, cordless phones, that kind of thing?
[47:50.240 --> 47:51.340]  Yeah, cordless phones.
[47:51.520 --> 47:51.700]  Yeah.
[47:51.740 --> 47:52.140]  Cordless phones.
[47:52.320 --> 47:52.380]  Yeah.
[47:52.740 --> 48:09.240]  So, within that, within that same bandwidth, and I think that that, that, that 900 megahertz spectrum, I think 900 megahertz, uh, up to 999 or about there, you know, others would know better than me, but I believe that that bit of bandwidth is open to the public,
[48:09.460 --> 48:17.600]  uh, to a You know, you don't necessarily need an FCC license for a device to use a frequency within that period.
[48:17.840 --> 48:30.360]  So how much of that bandwidth, how many frequencies is Amazon going to be utilizing around 900 megahertz that could otherwise be utilized by other devices?
[48:31.340 --> 48:33.120]  Globally, not just in the United States.
[48:33.220 --> 48:38.540]  Now, that's interesting because, you know, we can never agree on what frequencies to use for what, from one country to the other.
[48:38.540 --> 48:41.320]  So somehow Amazon is able to do this everywhere?
[48:42.340 --> 48:43.360]  I don't know.
[48:43.540 --> 48:44.160]  That I don't know.
[48:44.280 --> 48:44.800]  I wish I did.
[48:45.000 --> 48:45.700]  I was asking the caller.
[48:48.260 --> 48:51.940]  There's nothing that I've seen that they've tested in every market.
[48:52.180 --> 48:58.460]  There have been questions about, what if I turn on one device in every home at the same time?
[49:00.880 --> 49:02.200]  That's how you think like a hacker.
[49:02.600 --> 49:05.640]  I think the initial part of this is just U.S.
[49:05.680 --> 49:05.940]  only.
[49:05.940 --> 49:15.200]  I'm not 100% sure someone will have to correct me, but I may have seen some fine print when I was skimming around some of the promotional or whatever.
[49:15.420 --> 49:18.420]  So Canadians, definitely let us know if this is happening by you as well.
[49:18.520 --> 49:19.260]  Yeah, let's find out.
[49:19.460 --> 49:23.020]  Maybe if someone can write in OTH at 2600.com.
[49:23.140 --> 49:26.000]  This is going to be affecting a lot of people, so we'd love to see some more stories.
[49:26.140 --> 49:26.580]  Go ahead, Rob.
[49:27.600 --> 49:40.400]  Of course, the other kick in the butt about this is that Amazon came up with this feature, implemented it in their software, in their devices, and decided to just help themselves to it because it defaults to opting in.
[49:40.840 --> 49:43.980]  I mean, it defaults to on, and you have to opt out of it if you don't like it.
[49:44.060 --> 49:54.420]  So people who aren't familiar with the issue just don't realize that their stuff is chipping in on this and using some of their own resources to help out Amazon and ultimately increase Amazon shareholder value.
[49:54.420 --> 49:59.880]  This seems like the sort of thing that definitely, as you guys said, should have been opt-in.
[50:00.300 --> 50:11.540]  There are probably enthusiastic Amazon users out there who would have voluntarily opted into this sort of thing, especially if, like, say, one of the biggest companies on Earth with the most money offered some sort of incentive or reward.
[50:11.880 --> 50:22.820]  But the long and the short of it is that the idea that the stuff you buy, not only do you agree to terms and conditions for every damn thing now, but it can just decide it once a little more of what you've got.
[50:22.820 --> 50:29.360]  And you're powerless to get out ahead of that unless they decide to make it up, and we're at the mercy of this stuff.
[50:29.520 --> 50:36.320]  You know, I got the thing to play music, and, you know, it decides to just go on without me and agree to things without me.
[50:36.460 --> 50:37.080]  That's creepy.
[50:37.540 --> 50:44.060]  Yeah, and I think we would look at this and take a dimmer view if it was, say, a foreign manufacturer.
[50:44.180 --> 50:47.420]  If this was a Huawei device, how would we look at it then?
[50:47.420 --> 50:51.160]  And what kinds of questions, what kind of conversations we'd be having around it?
[50:51.560 --> 51:00.400]  All of a sudden, a Huawei network of proprietary nature and, you know, perhaps whatever spooky things we want to attach to it doing.
[51:01.280 --> 51:13.480]  You know, why would we accept this from Amazon versus a company that has maybe an adversarial regime as a part of their ownership or something?
[51:13.540 --> 51:15.420]  I bet China won't be too thrilled to accept this.
[51:15.420 --> 51:17.100]  No, China will love these.
[51:17.300 --> 51:17.820]  I mean, they're just...
[51:17.820 --> 51:18.920]  Not from Amazon, they won't.
[51:19.780 --> 51:21.780]  Right, but they'll customize it for them.
[51:21.940 --> 51:22.540]  Yes, yes.
[51:22.780 --> 51:25.320]  Caller, any other topics?
[51:25.420 --> 51:27.580]  No, no, that was just the question of the day.
[51:27.680 --> 51:28.740]  So many interesting things.
[51:28.860 --> 51:32.980]  We're sharing on multiple Alexa devices in every house on the same day.
[51:33.100 --> 51:33.300]  Yeah.
[51:33.660 --> 51:34.960]  It'd be one hell of a load test.
[51:35.040 --> 51:35.740]  It should be.
[51:35.860 --> 51:36.340]  It should be.
[51:36.380 --> 51:37.040]  I look forward to it.
[51:37.280 --> 51:38.040]  Thanks for your call.
[51:38.120 --> 51:38.440]  Take care.
[51:38.980 --> 51:39.280]  Sure.
[51:39.440 --> 51:39.700]  Thank you.
[51:39.840 --> 51:40.020]  All right.
[51:40.740 --> 51:43.060]  And our phone number, 802-321-4225.
[51:43.060 --> 51:49.440]  We are running towards the end of our hour, which I guess is what we take now for over time.
[51:49.440 --> 51:49.880]  It's an hour.
[51:50.060 --> 51:50.940]  Is it an hour?
[51:51.120 --> 51:52.880]  I thought it was an hour and ten now.
[51:53.360 --> 51:54.620]  Well, it was last week.
[51:54.840 --> 51:55.480]  It certainly was.
[51:56.460 --> 51:56.760]  Wow.
[51:57.440 --> 52:02.280]  I like how the caller ID blocks the score of the game, so I can't tell, but they're still behind.
[52:02.540 --> 52:04.680]  That might have been a call, but I didn't hear a ring.
[52:05.040 --> 52:05.340]  Okay.
[52:05.980 --> 52:07.480]  Well, can you tell if anybody's there?
[52:08.620 --> 52:10.520]  There must be a way to tell somebody's on the phone.
[52:10.700 --> 52:11.600]  Well, I'll just turn it up and see you.
[52:11.600 --> 52:12.220]  The phone's not there.
[52:12.420 --> 52:12.900]  It's not there.
[52:12.980 --> 52:13.100]  Okay.
[52:13.180 --> 52:14.600]  You'll get a blaring...
[52:14.600 --> 52:18.280]  People were calling in, but they wound up bouncing off and going somewhere else.
[52:18.380 --> 52:19.920]  That may have been a hesitant call.
[52:20.480 --> 52:21.780]  802-321-4225.
[52:21.940 --> 52:23.760]  802-321-HACK.
[52:23.920 --> 52:24.580]  Have heart.
[52:24.720 --> 52:25.460]  Is our phone number.
[52:25.620 --> 52:26.180]  Try again.
[52:26.460 --> 52:26.640]  Yeah.
[52:26.860 --> 52:28.840]  And we're here for a few more minutes.
[52:29.480 --> 52:30.620]  Alex, it looks like you have something to say.
[52:30.700 --> 52:30.900]  Go ahead.
[52:31.560 --> 52:32.000]  Sure.
[52:32.000 --> 52:35.300]  We were talking about the Excelsior cards earlier.
[52:35.500 --> 52:35.780]  Mm-hmm.
[52:36.220 --> 52:40.920]  And I was wondering if you guys knew what Excelsior meant.
[52:41.060 --> 52:42.660]  That happens to be the state motto.
[52:42.860 --> 52:43.340]  Ever upward.
[52:43.640 --> 52:45.000]  You're saying Excelsior.
[52:45.220 --> 52:46.680]  Is there an H in there that I don't know about?
[52:47.320 --> 52:47.760]  Excelsior.
[52:48.000 --> 52:48.320]  Really?
[52:48.640 --> 52:49.900]  Why is the H in there?
[52:50.300 --> 52:50.680]  Because it's...
[52:50.680 --> 52:51.980]  It's how you pronounce it.
[52:52.100 --> 52:52.540]  It's a...
[52:52.540 --> 52:53.180]  Yeah.
[52:53.380 --> 52:57.540]  It's more of a medieval Latin pronunciation of Excelsior.
[52:57.680 --> 52:57.800]  Yeah.
[52:57.980 --> 53:00.180]  You can say Excelsior, but it's really Excelsior.
[53:00.180 --> 53:02.460]  You know, someone with a blue badge, I should have known that.
[53:03.020 --> 53:03.460]  Yeah.
[53:03.580 --> 53:04.120]  I should have known that.
[53:04.240 --> 53:05.660]  In Washington, it's Alki Alki.
[53:06.180 --> 53:07.820]  In Washington, it's Spokane.
[53:08.180 --> 53:08.360]  Yeah.
[53:08.480 --> 53:09.820]  I never could figure that out either.
[53:10.460 --> 53:17.040]  Although, I wouldn't say Excelsior literally translates the comparative form of the adjective Excelsis.
[53:17.500 --> 53:18.860]  And so it means higher.
[53:19.340 --> 53:21.080]  Literally, it just translates to higher.
[53:21.360 --> 53:24.780]  Oh, I thought ever upward was an eloquent way to put it, but fine.
[53:25.500 --> 53:27.900]  But yeah, higher is the literal translation.
[53:27.900 --> 53:32.800]  So we're going to be living up to that now that marijuana is legalized.
[53:33.900 --> 53:34.960]  Nice transition there.
[53:35.060 --> 53:35.560]  We have a call?
[53:36.380 --> 53:36.780]  Absolutely.
[53:36.980 --> 53:37.100]  Okay.
[53:37.120 --> 53:37.540]  We have a call.
[53:37.680 --> 53:37.960]  Go ahead.
[53:38.360 --> 53:39.060]  Yes, you're on the air.
[53:39.120 --> 53:39.360]  Go ahead.
[53:40.260 --> 53:40.520]  Yes.
[53:40.600 --> 53:40.800]  Hi.
[53:41.020 --> 53:44.880]  I haven't been able to hear the show for the last few weeks.
[53:45.060 --> 53:47.060]  I just wanted to get a quick update.
[53:47.720 --> 53:50.620]  What's the status of the HOPE conference for August?
[53:50.840 --> 53:51.860]  Is it on or off?
[53:51.860 --> 53:52.260]  Ah.
[53:52.360 --> 53:53.940]  Is it still too early to tell?
[53:54.120 --> 53:56.280]  Nice try, but the announcement is tomorrow.
[53:56.720 --> 53:58.580]  And that's when you'll find out.
[53:58.740 --> 54:03.960]  If you go to 2600.com or HOPE.net, you'll be able to see the announcement there.
[54:04.100 --> 54:05.660]  And of course, we'll be able to talk about it next week.
[54:05.800 --> 54:08.080]  But nothing official today.
[54:08.620 --> 54:09.160]  I'm sorry?
[54:09.360 --> 54:09.760]  What time?
[54:09.900 --> 54:10.360]  Do you have...
[54:10.360 --> 54:12.640]  It'll be in the afternoon.
[54:13.000 --> 54:13.920]  It won't be noon.
[54:14.100 --> 54:15.420]  Probably more like one or two.
[54:16.580 --> 54:17.000]  Okay.
[54:17.300 --> 54:17.640]  All right?
[54:17.820 --> 54:18.180]  All right.
[54:18.260 --> 54:18.660]  Well, thanks.
[54:18.740 --> 54:19.480]  I'll check that out.
[54:19.580 --> 54:19.860]  Okay.
[54:20.020 --> 54:20.280]  Thanks.
[54:20.340 --> 54:21.000]  Thanks for the call.
[54:21.860 --> 54:23.360]  I guess we have time for one more.
[54:24.060 --> 54:25.320]  If there is one more.
[54:26.440 --> 54:27.940]  802-321-4225.
[54:28.580 --> 54:32.560]  While we wait for that call, anyone have anything over on Skyplan they wanted to add?
[54:32.800 --> 54:33.820]  Rob, your hand is up.
[54:33.920 --> 54:34.140]  Go ahead.
[54:35.400 --> 54:38.100]  Just Alex, Mr. Lawyer, Mr. I Speak Latin.
[54:38.520 --> 54:40.660]  Stan the Manly said Excelsior.
[54:40.900 --> 54:42.440]  And I'm going to say it that way.
[54:42.780 --> 54:44.980]  And there's nothing you can do to change my mind on this.
[54:45.160 --> 54:45.780]  Oh, my God.
[54:45.860 --> 54:46.200]  It's on.
[54:46.340 --> 54:47.060]  There's a war between...
[54:47.060 --> 54:47.160]  Wait.
[54:47.420 --> 54:48.600]  Stan Lee's not alive anymore, is he?
[54:49.740 --> 54:50.680]  No, he isn't.
[54:50.680 --> 54:51.000]  Okay.
[54:51.120 --> 54:54.700]  Well, you're lucky for you, Alex, because he would wipe the floor with you.
[54:54.800 --> 54:55.500]  I'm pretty sure of that.
[54:56.460 --> 54:58.560]  Well, you know, it wouldn't be the first time.
[54:58.820 --> 54:59.740]  I'll put it that way.
[54:59.860 --> 55:02.040]  And then he would say Excelsior, and he'd say it that way.
[55:03.160 --> 55:03.400]  Yeah.
[55:03.560 --> 55:04.340]  Well, we're all...
[55:04.340 --> 55:07.300]  You know, look, we're all entitled to our opinions on these things.
[55:07.300 --> 55:10.960]  And, you know, some people like to put the accent on the wrong syllable.
[55:12.700 --> 55:14.160]  How long were you holding that one in?
[55:15.560 --> 55:16.080]  That's right.
[55:16.200 --> 55:17.020]  He didn't hold it in.
[55:17.260 --> 55:17.620]  Yeah.
[55:17.820 --> 55:18.820]  He was for a while.
[55:18.940 --> 55:21.800]  But, you know, I'm looking it up now on Wikipedia, and that will settle this, won't it?
[55:22.920 --> 55:23.320]  Go ahead.
[55:24.520 --> 55:25.760]  You probably beat me to it.
[55:28.600 --> 55:31.260]  Go ahead and talk about something else while I'm clicking keys.
[55:33.080 --> 55:35.620]  But we're all busy editing Wikipedia before you can get to it.
[55:35.840 --> 55:35.900]  Oh, God.
[55:36.520 --> 55:40.440]  There's just so many, many Excelsiors that I don't know which one to click on.
[55:42.060 --> 55:42.820]  Book of poems.
[55:43.360 --> 55:44.640]  Captain Sulu also said Excelsior.
[55:44.860 --> 55:50.580]  So, you know, are you going to tell Captain Hikaru Sulu of the United Federation of Planets that he's wrong?
[55:50.720 --> 55:51.420]  No, I don't think you are.
[55:51.460 --> 55:51.960]  That's the thing.
[55:52.060 --> 55:54.660]  Excelsior is a motto of New York.
[55:54.920 --> 55:58.200]  Who's to say New York can't just pronounce it differently because they feel like it?
[55:59.020 --> 56:01.040]  New York pronounces a lot of things differently.
[56:01.040 --> 56:01.720]  Exactly.
[56:02.080 --> 56:02.500]  Yes.
[56:02.800 --> 56:03.120]  It's the truth.
[56:03.540 --> 56:09.840]  But every state has its own particular peccadilloes, I suppose, when it comes to linguistics.
[56:09.880 --> 56:13.420]  One thing I've learned is don't tell New York how to pronounce things.
[56:13.640 --> 56:14.800]  Yes, especially New York.
[56:16.620 --> 56:19.300]  All right, so I guess we're not getting rid of that final phone call.
[56:19.700 --> 56:21.400]  Yeah, people are weary.
[56:22.860 --> 56:24.260]  There were a lot of stories.
[56:24.540 --> 56:26.120]  There is a lot going on.
[56:26.320 --> 56:28.380]  It's a sometimes scary world.
[56:29.160 --> 56:31.260]  It's sometimes a world filled with hope.
[56:32.500 --> 56:32.960]  Excelsior.
[56:33.560 --> 56:33.880]  Oh.
[56:35.560 --> 56:36.640]  Alex, that was the internet.
[56:37.480 --> 56:38.920]  Did you hear what the internet said?
[56:40.100 --> 56:40.560]  Excelsior.
[56:40.760 --> 56:41.900]  I didn't hear an H in there.
[56:43.020 --> 56:43.200]  Yeah.
[56:43.960 --> 56:44.420]  Interesting.
[56:44.420 --> 56:49.240]  It depends on what pronunciation you're striving to.
[56:49.520 --> 56:52.380]  If you're doing it, you know, literally, it would be Excelsior, right?
[56:52.680 --> 56:54.040]  Well, why wouldn't we be doing it literally?
[56:54.920 --> 57:07.420]  Well, I'm saying that a medieval church Latin pronunciation of this would have the C as being a sort of a C-H, almost like a double C.
[57:07.540 --> 57:09.320]  But we're not in a medieval church, are we?
[57:10.140 --> 57:10.460]  Are we?
[57:10.820 --> 57:20.500]  Although, look, I usually would even do a very classical Roman pronunciation of this would have been with a hard C as a K, Excelsior.
[57:20.800 --> 57:21.200]  Oh, boy.
[57:21.420 --> 57:24.420]  So it all depends on to whom you're speaking about this.
[57:24.700 --> 57:25.580]  Dead language.
[57:26.000 --> 57:27.000]  If you want to believe it, you...
[57:27.000 --> 57:27.940]  That's just the bridge too far.
[57:28.960 --> 57:30.520]  Then, you know, go for it.
[57:30.520 --> 57:32.760]  But we are not in a medieval Kirk right now.
[57:33.000 --> 57:33.240]  No.
[57:33.560 --> 57:34.120]  Thank God.
[57:35.340 --> 57:37.240]  Kyle, you were in the middle of a quote, weren't you?
[57:37.980 --> 57:38.720]  Oh, no.
[57:38.720 --> 57:40.760]  I was just getting philosophical.
[57:41.060 --> 57:49.620]  I was talking about the dynamics and things, and I was trying to go somewhere with it.
[57:49.760 --> 57:50.880]  And you never did?
[57:51.340 --> 57:51.820]  No.
[57:52.100 --> 57:52.260]  No.
[57:52.260 --> 57:59.280]  I mean, I was just filling time and, you know, thinking about the kinds of exciting things.
[57:59.280 --> 58:05.240]  I was going to talk about the Hyperloop for some reason, because I know that's going to be at the next World's Fair, and nobody's talking about it.
[58:05.540 --> 58:05.840]  Wait.
[58:05.980 --> 58:07.140]  They still have World's Fairs?
[58:07.400 --> 58:07.720]  They still do those?
[58:07.880 --> 58:08.320]  Oh, yeah.
[58:08.580 --> 58:08.780]  Wait.
[58:08.780 --> 58:10.060]  Where's the World's Fair going to be?
[58:10.860 --> 58:12.120]  And please don't say Queens.
[58:12.140 --> 58:13.020]  In the Mideast.
[58:13.180 --> 58:14.100]  I think it's in UAE.
[58:14.200 --> 58:14.700]  I'm not sure.
[58:14.800 --> 58:15.060]  Really?
[58:15.140 --> 58:16.020]  You can't quote me on that.
[58:16.240 --> 58:17.320]  Don't they have enough trouble?
[58:17.480 --> 58:20.200]  I mean, they've got all kinds of things in that region.
[58:20.260 --> 58:21.480]  The World Cup is coming up.
[58:21.480 --> 58:24.440]  So we're showcasing the Hyperloop and 5G there.
[58:24.440 --> 58:26.500]  So we better, like, make it look good.
[58:29.280 --> 58:30.740]  That's the only stuff that's going on.
[58:30.900 --> 58:34.880]  I was just trying to, you know, say there's exciting things.
[58:37.860 --> 58:39.060]  Broadband's considered infrastructure.
[58:39.320 --> 58:40.560]  I mean, that's exciting.
[58:41.640 --> 58:42.680]  Healthcare's considered infrastructure.
[58:44.460 --> 58:45.040]  I don't know.
[58:45.200 --> 58:46.760]  I had a point.
[58:48.100 --> 58:48.900]  Many of us did.
[58:49.180 --> 58:49.760]  Many of us did.
[58:50.680 --> 58:51.000]  Okay.
[58:51.120 --> 58:53.220]  We're going to leave one minute for a phone call, and then we're going to give up.
[58:53.520 --> 58:54.340]  Well, not give up.
[58:54.440 --> 58:54.960]  Just move on.
[58:55.000 --> 58:55.760]  Well, we're standing by.
[58:55.760 --> 58:56.180]  I'm here.
[58:56.240 --> 58:56.640]  I'm right here.
[58:56.680 --> 58:57.700]  I have my hand on the button.
[58:57.840 --> 58:58.100]  I'm ready.
[58:58.100 --> 58:59.960]  So it's 802-321-4225.
[58:59.980 --> 59:06.420]  If for some reason you can't dial an area code and can only dial toll-free, the toll-free number is...
[59:07.160 --> 59:07.680]  Hold on.
[59:07.700 --> 59:08.440]  Let me see if I got this.
[59:08.660 --> 59:13.400]  833-755-2600?
[59:13.660 --> 59:13.940]  Wow.
[59:14.040 --> 59:14.560]  I remembered it.
[59:14.580 --> 59:14.800]  Okay.
[59:15.000 --> 59:16.140]  I got it all by myself.
[59:17.120 --> 59:20.040]  We should also give out the number for BAI so people can pledge.
[59:20.320 --> 59:25.180]  And even though we're not on the station right now, so people can support that place because it really is pretty incredible.
[59:25.460 --> 59:27.820]  212-209-2950.
[59:28.300 --> 59:30.680]  Or the website, give2wbai.org.
[59:30.840 --> 59:33.100]  Give the number 2, wbai.org.
[59:33.260 --> 59:39.300]  Since 1960, broadcasting all kinds of different voices.
[59:39.300 --> 59:41.360]  And we're happy to be among them.
[59:42.840 --> 59:46.040]  Write to us, O-T-H at 2600.com.
[59:46.200 --> 59:46.920]  That's our email address.
[59:47.040 --> 59:49.540]  And sometimes we read the emails over the air.
[59:49.980 --> 01:00:08.600]  Be sure to tune in someplace tomorrow, whether it's 2600.com or hope.net or just listen in the street, because I'm sure people will be talking about it, we'll be announcing future plans for hope, hope conferences, and for 2600 meetings, amongst other things.
[01:00:09.540 --> 01:00:10.400]  We have a call.
[01:00:10.540 --> 01:00:12.440]  Can you do somebody call while I was giving the...
[01:00:12.440 --> 01:00:15.420]  Let's pick this one up and see if there's one last call.
[01:00:15.480 --> 01:00:15.700]  You really want me?
[01:00:15.700 --> 01:00:16.220]  Yeah, let's do it.
[01:00:16.320 --> 01:00:17.600]  They took the time to dial.
[01:00:17.760 --> 01:00:18.980]  They probably got something better to say.
[01:00:19.140 --> 01:00:19.260]  All right.
[01:00:21.240 --> 01:00:21.600]  Wow.
[01:00:22.100 --> 01:00:22.460]  Okay.
[01:00:22.660 --> 01:00:23.060]  All right.
[01:00:23.200 --> 01:00:24.100]  Well, thank you for that.
[01:00:24.280 --> 01:00:25.100]  That's just...
[01:00:25.780 --> 01:00:26.660]  That is it all.
[01:00:29.320 --> 01:00:30.780]  I said I would do it.
[01:00:30.980 --> 01:00:31.860]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:00:32.020 --> 01:00:32.480]  And you did.
[01:00:32.660 --> 01:00:35.300]  Well, they're calling back, so try one more time, and then that's going to be it.
[01:00:35.340 --> 01:00:35.560]  Go ahead.
[01:00:36.860 --> 01:00:37.500]  Good evening.
[01:00:37.700 --> 01:00:38.580]  You're on the show.
[01:00:39.680 --> 01:00:40.600]  Is anybody there?
[01:00:42.140 --> 01:00:43.060]  There's nobody here.
[01:00:44.380 --> 01:00:45.220]  There's nobody here.
[01:00:45.460 --> 01:00:46.500]  Okay, that's it.
[01:00:46.500 --> 01:00:46.960]  We're done.
[01:00:47.080 --> 01:00:47.440]  We're finished.
[01:00:47.720 --> 01:00:57.320]  We will see you next week, and please stay alert, stay happy, and stay healthy, and we'll be around.
[01:00:57.320 --> 01:00:59.160]  Better luck next time.
[01:00:59.760 --> 01:01:00.660]  Good night.