for off the hook coming up in the next hour and we're about and we're going to
transition to that program right now so stay tuned for off the hook WBAI New
York WBAI.org stay tuned
it is seven o'clock more or less it's time on WBAI New York for another
edition of off the hook
And the very good evening to everybody in the program.
off the hook. Emmanuel Goldstein here with you. Joined tonight by Kyle. Yeah I'm over here. Can
you can you read me? I could never read you Kyle. I can at best give a wild guess.
Well thanks for trying. Yeah I do try. We have Alex. Good evening. We have
Rafi Firefly. Good evening. And we have Gila. Good evening. Welcome to all you folks in
Skype land. Well you know I've got some things to say. Yeah I'm outraged. I mean I'm sure we
all are outraged. I'm sure we're all fed up and just you know basically trying to figure out how
best to respond to this latest outrage. You know this latest this latest injustice. And you all
know what I'm talking about right. It's it's basically what we are expected to do now. Okay.
In New York City. When we go into New York City we are now expected to show proof that we have
been vaccinated before we can go into a restaurant or into a gym. The two places I like to go to the
most. And now I'm told that I'm going to have to have this this card that I have in my hand. All
right. I'm going to have to show this at the door when I go into a restaurant. All right. So let me
explain to you my problem with this. This thing. Look at it. It has my name on it. Okay. I am now
giving my name to the person at the restaurant when normally I wouldn't do that until when I
was giving him my credit card. Okay. So now I'm expected to give him this information before I
even set foot in the establishment. Yeah. It's got my name on it. Not in my handwriting. Someone
else wrote my name. But now the guy at the door knows my name. He knows that I have been vaccinated.
He knows that he even has a date that I got vaccinated. I mean where where does this stop.
It's it's it's it's such an infringement such an infringement on on on our liberties. We have
to do something about this. Now you know it's bad enough that when I give my credit card to
the establishment they have my name. I always cross it out. You know when they give the receipt
I always cross it out. And then I asked them in a loud tone of voice who am I. You know and see
if they if they remember my name. And sometimes they do. And then I just shout out other names
David Phil George until they don't remember my name anymore. That is what the founding fathers
had in mind. OK. It's called anonymity. It's one of our cherished God given rights by the United
States of America. And I will be good and God damned if I'm going to show this this piece of
paper just to walk through the door and use my credit card inside an establishment. It's it's
just I'm livid. I'm livid that we are expected to do something like this. How dare them. I have I
have no other words. Alex you know what I'm talking about right. To a certain extent. It's
outrageous. What what a sacrifice for everybody to have to do this to have to carry this. It's
first of all another piece of paper I have to carry in my pocket. You know many things I have
to carry now. They want me to carry a license. They want me to carry the credit card to pay for
things. Now they want me to carry this to prove that I was vaccinated so I can go in and do
things. Well I mean my my biggest gripe with the whole situation is that the vaccine card doesn't
actually fit in a wallet. It's not wallet size. So whoever designed this I think should be fired.
But you guys have have it easy. I feel like because you'll be able to rely on your Excelsior
pass for most of this access having it on your smartphone waving that in the face of the bouncer
at the gym that you inevitably go to every morning. Emmanuel and you know me on the other hand or I
don't know what I'm going to do since I was vaccinated out of state. I have researched
whether or not I can get the Excelsior pass with an out-of-state vaccine and apparently you cannot.
So I guess I'm just going to be ordering takeout for a while. In Pennsylvania. Yes in Pennsylvania
although I am in New York tonight. They let you in. They let me in. Let me in these days. I don't
think that the barriers go up at the Lincoln Tunnel until early September. Well the wallet
situation is easily solved. I tape it to my shirt. So it's always I always know where it is. And that
way I don't even have to have a conversation with people at the door. They just look at me and they
usually nod or sometimes roll their eyes. But yeah I'm trying folks. I'm trying to find the
outrage here. I really am. And I feel like I'm not doing enough. People are upset at this.
You know when when I first heard that there was a vaccine earlier in the year I naively thought
people would be happy and that they would be crowding to get the vaccine. But I realize now
I'm in 21st century America and no people are never happy. We need to find something to complain
about. And that's that's what I need your help with is to find something to complain about here.
Having to show this card this piece of paper that has my name on it and shows that I was
vaccinated. That is that is an attack on my freedom somehow because yeah that's that's where
it breaks down. I can't figure out the rest of it. Yeah I mean I frankly see it as not so much
it as not something that should have has come as a surprise to most of us. I mean there are so many
if you can hear that obviously I'm still in the city. There are so many barriers to doing certain
things with public institutions based on vaccination status to begin with. I mean I
can't send my my kids to public school in New York without providing some form of proof of
vaccination. And I think traveling internationally it's been that way for for quite a while as well.
So you know this is just I think a public health initiative to protect the majority of citizens
and it recognizes that being vaccinated is not a choice that has entirely to do with oneself.
But it has to do with a duty to third parties the duty to protect others and an overall
responsibility of the government to ensure the public health.
Okay so Rand Paul says that we don't have that duty to defend other people. All right we don't
have to be courteous. Just ask his neighbor he knows. We don't have to think of anyone but
ourselves. And again that's what the founding fathers had in mind when when they started this
whole thing. Sure. Well I mean in one sense though I mean there is this this competing legal doctrine
about the duty to help other people or the duty to rescue. And in most states in the in the United
States if you see a dying man on the street who's about to bleed out you could save him by
you know putting a salve to the wound or creating a tourniquet or you have no obligation to do so.
You have every right to just continue walking down that street. He made that choice. He made
that choice and that's yeah that's on him. Well but that's the duty to rescue. That's the duty
to affirmatively step in and help somebody who is in need. We don't have that duty. All right
in this country in almost I think every single state. I'm not sure if it's a if that's the law
in every state but in most states it is. But the duty to not harm others. I think that's not only
moral but also can be considered to be a embodied within the common law of the United States as well
because you know we have these laws prohibiting assaults and batteries and menacing and all these
things that we do to third parties that could be harmful. They're prohibited. They are. And when
are they not harmed? When is assault and battery not harmful? I guess when it's consensual. That
would that would be my guess. A lot of people do like to consent to that kind of thing. I don't
think that's what the founding fathers had in mind. Well you never know. They you know they
had some funny clothes. In any event the I think that the duty to help others is very different
from the duty not to harm others and I think that being vaccinated is a duty that we impose on
ourselves or rather that society imposes on ours and we have to fulfill to not harm other people.
So I think philosophically it's very different. But to be the you know the real devil's advocate
here I you know we mentioned this in overtime I think several weeks ago but you know the law about
forced vaccinations in this country hasn't always been great. It's led to some pretty horrible
legal precedents. Things that happened you know 100 years ago but again we've evolved as a country
over this last 100 years. Vaccines have I think a permanent place in in our culture. They're
rationally related to public health and the government can impose these certain restrictions
without it offending constitutional norms or principles. You know I was I was reading
something I think it was Thomas Jefferson way back in the 1700s who regretted not not getting
a smallpox vaccine for I believe one of his kids. That was Ben Franklin. Ben Franklin. Okay yeah I
didn't know that was Ben Franklin. I didn't know they had vaccines all the way back in the 1700s
but let alone actually wasn't anti-vax movements. Well that's how he said it. It was his words
literally his words. He used I'm pretty sure he used the word in an inoculation rather than a
vaccine. Okay fine inoculation but that's still a pretty big word for them to use back in the 1700s.
Yes it certainly was. A lot of syllables for for an 18th century man but it but it was very similar
to what a vaccine was. An inoculation in the 18th century involved usually you know there were some
kind of sores or or pus from somebody who was sick and what you would do is you would take a
little bit of that and inject it into the skin of a child. So essentially you were infecting them
with the pus of somebody else who was infected. It's a pretty horrific process when you think
about it and so it's understandable that Ben Franklin would not have wanted to inflict this
upon his child but the the whole idea of the inoculation and a vaccination was very similar
and that you were injecting a small amount of a deadly virus or or disease into the body so
that you could fight it and the body would learn how to protect against it in the future
and so you know even though there's a difference I think that it's it's a distinction with with
a minor difference but the sentiment is is was absolutely on par and I believe that
Ben Franklin's young child I think was a four or five-year-old child died from I think it was
smallpox was it smallpox I think it I think it was smallpox yeah I think it was yeah I mean it's a
very sad story but there's no guarantee that the inoculation itself wouldn't have killed the child
because they weren't injecting a a weakened version of smallpox into the system you were
injecting you know pus or sores or some kind of you know bodily fluid here's here's the actual
quote in 17th from Ben Franklin in 1736 I lost one of my sons a fine boy of four years old by
the smallpox taken in the common way I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I
had not given it to him by inoculation uh-huh so it's kind of a a strange phrasing but it's
basically saying you know take precautions you stupid idiots who are anti uh doing the right
thing and very much regretful very much regretful yes Rob go ahead um yeah we've uh it is for the
public good and we have long been used to other uh you know surrenders of uh personal data when
it's for the public good you know when you go into a bar or a nightclub someplace for grown-ups
um everyone's checked at the door to make sure that they're old enough to be you know drinking
what they serve and uh dancing and doing whatever the heck else you don't you want to do in one of
those places and you know you're supposed to be able to go in secure in the knowledge that everyone
else is a grown-up like you and uh you know that that leads to whatever it leads to but um you know
if I'm going into a restaurant I don't mind giving up my name at the door because yeah I am going to
be paying with a with a card that has my name on it uh most likely but even if not I like going in
and uh being able to assume that everyone around me has been vaccinated everyone around me is doing
the right thing everyone around me is not putting the people around them at unnecessary risk I mean
if you're into total anonymity maybe eating out now is not for you no I mean look okay I I see
what you're trying to say here okay but you know it's it's a stepping stone it's it's it's basically
you're giving away a little bit of your identity every single time when you go to the restaurant
and they ask you table for how many and and they ask you for a name you don't give them your name
you give them somebody else's name you hold on to that anonymity as as tightly as you possibly can
and and then you just don't give away anything I'm trying really hard here but it's it's so
difficult yes Gila please help I'm willing to say that this is actually almost more anonymous
because here's what I'm thinking we went to a Panera Bread a couple of months ago and they
not only asked for my name when I got there they asked for my phone number and my email address
but come for contact tracing purposes huh this yeah this way if all I have to say is what my name
is that's fine also I never give my name at restaurants but that's because my name is very
hard to pronounce so I usually give the name of whoever I'm with you know Radio Shack was way
ahead of its time they were doing contact tracing back in the 70s uh boy well that that that is
something that is that is amazing yes Rob but when when you have your dinner you know if you're
that concerned about your anonymity it's really hard to you know eat your dinner and have a good
time when you're wearing your plastic uh V for Vendetta guy fox mask it it's just it makes a
big mess and you know it's not good for anyone around you I just think um it's it's not nearly
the scandal and in fact these um moments are reminders to us all that we're not necessarily
living through um sort of regular circumstances and to that end I just would say you know this is
a real crisis a worldwide crisis and um you know this the hasty hasty um moves to reopen in many
ways um some of the the guidelines being so varied and disparate around the country and um the real
the real um deluge of misinformation that this um inoculation program has has met been met with
I mean real headwinds in getting that critical group of hesitant folks folks that are being
you know submitted to all kinds of of um postings and opinions and pundits some of that's changed
in the last couple weeks just because the numbers are so crazy now I mean we're talking doubling
and uh projections of a hundred thousand new cases I think is is where we're hoping to level
off with this wave so let's um let's maybe you know I guess temper our expectations that things
have been normal now and and um and this is all so unusual no this is ongoing it's been ongoing
and this was the warning we will have to take steps in the reverse if things don't continue in
the right way and and uh right now I guess in a lot of hot spots the the numbers don't look right
we talked about this with a lot of people having the crap scared out of them right now uh because
they see these numbers they see that things are going badly and deteriorating rapidly in those
places where people you you you say hesitant I say obstinate because hesitancy means you can be
convinced with with information and obstinance is when you just refuse to listen to the information
and that's what we're seeing on a wide scale and you know it'd be very interesting to figure out
just how we got there in the first place is it all trump is it all politics is it all uh left
versus right or is it something else you know we we really need to do some serious psychological
studies as to how uh we got into this position in the first place of literally arguing with people
who don't want the virus to go away and there's no other way to say it because um there is one
way to get it to go away and that's to get a vaccination against it it doesn't go away on
its own it will never go away if you don't get vaccinated unless unless something really
horrible happens and there's no more life forms left to infect um you know we're a hacker show
we deal with issues of privacy and anonymity and questioning authority all the time
and you know it's it's we've been we've been lectured by many people saying how can you say
things like this how can you give away your your privacy i'm i'm as you can see i'm really
struggling to figure out how something as simple as as showing uh proof of vaccination going into
a gym or a restaurant in any way is a violation of your privacy gives away any kind of um uh
location information yeah the um uh the um the smartphone app i could see that being used
uh as a tracking device if we allow it to be if someone simply takes a look at it that's that's
harmless if they scan it enter it into a database yeah that's something to be concerned with i'm not
seeing that happening of course i haven't used it a single time but um these are the things to to
look out for but we also you know we can't be so um uh paranoid that we forget about common sense
we forget about things that actually are there to help us and this kind of thing it's it's there
for our own good yeah and i think one of the other reasons you hear a lot from people that are
interviewed about this is a certain toughness they feel they are tough enough to withstand um coming
down with this uh disease and um or that they won't be infected in the first place because they
are so tough and so forth and i really would like to see that same toughness um face a simple shot
you know what i'm saying i think if you if you're that tough you can handle a vaccine exactly there's
a lot of really bizarre paradoxical kind of logic floating around and it really needs to be kind of
met with a little bit more common sense all right let's let's move on um and folks if you haven't
gotten the vaccine yet please please go out and get it no matter where you are uh our future depends
on it it really does it's it's it's super important um so uh this was nothing compared to what i was
battling over the past uh well actually quite a while uh i've been dealing with um with amazon
you might have heard of them uh lots and lots of fun whenever you have to try and fix a problem
um i've been involved in this project over the past year or so where i'm trying to um
share family slides that were basically on slide carousels for the last few decades i'm trying to
share them with other family members and so i figured it would be a great idea to simply um
digitize all these uh and make them into uh tiff files and then upload them someplace where i could
share them with other members of the family and i i found something called amazon photos which
seemed to fit the bill pretty nicely uh it allowed you to um basically upload pictures and uh and
view them on on say if you have an alexa show one of those um alexa devices it has a video screen
uh you could actually have it um share with that device and you could see your pictures
and that worked great you know i i started using that a bunch of months ago and it was it was
amazing i was thinking hey i could just share this amazon photo collection with various relatives
and they could just see the photos show up on their alexa show device it's it's perfect but then
one day the people at alexa or alexa show or whatever department it was decided it's time
for an upgrade they upgraded their software and when they did that they broke everything
it it certainly did not work as it used to work um and where i could see um uh photos before uh
basically staying on the screen for about a minute them going on to the next one kind of a nice way
to just see various memories of the family go by throughout the course of a day they decided no a
minute nobody wants that um we're going to make it three seconds three seconds is all you got
and if you if the slow setting okay the slow setting will be 10 seconds so right away it's
like rapid fire um picture changing uh i didn't like that very much then what they also did was
they decided that the clock which was mandatory on the alexa show devices um had to be increased
in size so that people could see it because obviously that's what you have it for so you
can see the damn clock so now the clock takes up 25 percent of the screen space obliterating a good
part of the photos that you're trying to share you know there are people all over the place
complaining about these things saying this is awful this is not what we want and and if you
look at the um uh the the message boards the feedback that they have on amazon you see hundreds
of people literally hundreds of people complaining about the same thing and no response at all it's
not just amazon it's all these massive companies that have what they consider to be support you
complain on on twitter you know you tag them on twitter you instantly get a reply from somebody
saying oh i'm so sorry you had this problem please contact us and direct message or we'll reach out
to you and then you go through this this song and dance for a few days where it seems like they're
trying to help you but then you wind up at a dead end and right back where you started because you
bitch them out again on twitter and then somebody else comes and says the same thing and invites you
to a another useless uh banter fest that goes absolutely nowhere so um oh and i didn't mention
the other new feature that the alexa show had where instead of going through all your pictures
it goes through three and then stops for an hour and goes through another three stops for another
hour and just it's it's it became completely useless i took it off that device it was unusable
but i figured you know all right i've uploaded all these things to amazon i can at least
share a link with people uh so that they can see the photos on their on their uh computers and i
thought yeah that's a that's a pretty good idea and i started looking through them myself and um
i noticed that um i was seeing a couple of pictures more than once you know how when you're um i don't
use facebook very often but i you know sometimes i i use facebook and i scroll through um friends
for instance and it doesn't seem to be a top to bottom list it seems like they repeat like you're
scrolling down and then all of a sudden you see somebody that you saw before because there's some
kind of a a weird loop that they've got going on or or maybe it's some sort of a setting similar
thing on amazon photos i was going through all the photos and i just noticing some of them were
showing up more than once so that was a a little bit disturbing um and then i i i downloaded um
a bunch of um what i call albums because um i i made each slide carousel into an album
i figured i'd keep the order that they were uploaded in and i noticed when i downloaded
them that hey i was getting duplicates when i downloaded them too so it wasn't my imagination
it wasn't just on the screen they actually for some reason were duplicates i figured i must have
done something wrong when i was trying to uh get the alexa show to read it properly uh maybe i i
copied um one of the albums over and there are more so i deleted everything and then i found out
that deleting everything doesn't delete everything it puts it in the trash where it's not deleted
and you have to say delete forever and wait for that to happen did that uploaded everything all
over again took about half a day and then uh decided to try and download the entire thing as
as one massive zip file i had 1644 uh different slides that were digitized and when i downloaded
it i noticed after merging all the different zip files because it made something like 12 zip files
for downloading when i merged them i had file conflicts because there were duplicates again
and when i got rid of the duplicates i only had 1253 pictures instead of 1644 it literally
erased pictures and replaced them with duplicates so you know at this point i'm on twitter complaining
about amazon photos they're reaching out to me i'm talking to them and one person said yeah you know
this is a a known problem but it won't happen if you get the app instead of the uh the website
so they they gave me a link to the app uh which uh didn't work because it wouldn't install so i had
to go to another machine and then i had to of course copy all the pictures over to that machine
delete all the pictures from amazon delete them forever upload them again to amazon and go through
this entire thing which took a day and a half only to find out that the exact same thing happened
which is exactly what i expected would happen because how could the app make any difference
it's all on their end but they will never admit this so i literally spent the entire weekend trying
to solve their problems for them and not getting anywhere not having them in any way acknowledge
that this is a problem with their system they told me uh clear your history they told me to
reboot my computer i think i'm surprised they didn't tell me to unplug it didn't you do something
with cookies too they said to to uh clear my my cookies and my cash and all that um i was using
different browsers i know that wasn't a problem and nine times out of ten the consumer knows
what they're doing and um you know we we have this impression that it's always the customer that
messes something up no sometimes it's the mega corporations that mess something up and they don't
care enough to fix it because every problem i've had i've noticed many many people complaining
about similar or the same things and always it's the same response nothing no response at all
it doesn't get fixed the dialogue gets closed and you have to move on to something else well uh
i moved on to google photos having some problems with that in that i can't seem to make zip files
for no reason at all just doesn't do it uh it's very hard to share with people who aren't using
gmail they want to basically bring everybody in um but at least they can count at least at least
i'm able to have the same number of photos coming out as they were going in i think that's a very
important part of archiving photos is to have the same number coming out as as going in so that was
uh my little um adventure in uh corporate photo archiving land i don't recommend it
i i think probably the best thing to do is put everything on a flash drive and send it in the
mail yeah you you could definitely do that sort of thing because digital photo frames are a thing
that have existed for a long time they're a little screen you load pictures on it with a usb
or you know stick a flash drive in it or whatever they're very inexpensive and they do what you want
to do you can configure the uh the display times and you know the cycling and all that good stuff
and yeah they are very cheap devices and it's funny that amazon's uh you know echo device that
has you know amazon's zillion dollar infrastructure behind it uh gives a fun gives a measurably worse
experience um and also it's it's cloud-based and you don't actually control how these things work
or where they go uh it's you know it's the crap version it's the cloud version and emmanuel i i
happen to know that you have access to your own machines that are on the internet that you could
upload things to and uh and share without involving uh you know advertising companies
that uh that uh you know sell your data to increase shareholder value so yeah but rob
rob uh you know try telling an elderly relative how to use a linux-based machine you know you
need the interface and one thing that both amazon and google have are are decent interfaces the
problem is they just don't work properly and you wind up losing things as a result of that because
i guess they assume people really don't care all that much this is this is where i left it this is
the last message i i sent to them uh we're just going around and around here the rep i just retold
the whole story too has no solutions seriously this is about having numbers add up on my screen
where i uploaded 1644 photos it says i have 1.6k items which is correct but when i select all
it shows 1253 please solve that and they're working on it no they're not working on it but
nobody's gotten back to me nobody ever will um yeah it's it's great to be able to do these
things yourself and we do many of these things ourselves we run our own mail servers run our
own websites and it's great but something like this where you want to be able to selectively
uh um pick photos and and and download the right ones uh and be able to browse through them yeah
it's it's definitely doable it's it's work and i figure you know if there's if there's a service
out there and you're already paying for it through another service it should work and i'm just here
to say that doesn't work and we need more human attention to these things i am so sick of talking
to bots have you realize you're not talking to a human and and sometimes when you seem to be talking
to a human in some other part of the world it sounds like they care but they always wind up
getting and i i'm generalizing when i say always because i have had good experiences they get to a
point where they just can't do any more they can't get past their own uh end if loops and um it's
just frustrating because we could be doing so much better i think the the this particular problem
isn't getting as much attention because both of the larger entities you named that have substantial
network capacity and um and other services and uh social uh communications and stuff
um in their various platforms they're more than capable of doing it but their profit motive yeah
they're so obsessed with monetizing everything and your private photos shared with your private
family doesn't involve ads it doesn't involve i mean all of what you just said doesn't really
even speak to them holding here your art hostage and mining all of the visual information their
facial recognition there's so many things they could be doing with your stuff that you're not
even questioning you just want basic functionality but they can't uh transparently
um sell you anything so why care and that's why i don't think there isn't a team but the other
thing is there's this trend of just making sales making a product that looks good enough to sell
and then hitting those sales numbers there's no uh accountability or recourse or um guarantee or
anything along with it it's just oh we release this new thing we and and it's more for them at
this point because i feel like they're already wielding the control with a lot of the hardware
devices home assistants and so forth they can reprogram them and control them infinitely more
than the average consumer they're not showing you how to customize it they're not showing you
how to sideload software or to connect it to your own cloud server to to manage it the way you want
they're not actually giving you any control and in fact just the opposite you've the veneer
of a product that does something that you want but it absolutely doesn't
yeah i think that's the key in that they're not giving you any ability to make changes yourself
you have to rely on them and they make an upgrade or a software revision you have to live with the
decisions they make for instance the the 10 second maximum showing of a picture uh if you're if you're
sharing your photos on alexa show that that is ridiculous you should be able to to uh enter the
values that you want to live with you shouldn't have to everyone is different you know some people
don't want a clock to take up 25 of their screens some people don't want a clock at all some people
want a clock that looks different you know you should have it's not like the technology doesn't
exist it's just the will has to exist to allow people to do this when you think that the the
customers are all stupid and all the same and they can't make these decisions for themselves and i've
seen this i know people who think this way of the populace and i don't want to be like that i don't
want to be in that that class of of people that thinks they're above it all and everybody else
is just an ignorant end user no these are the people that make all of this possible the people
out there who consume and who basically use all of these things that are invented and distributed
we need to listen to them we need to uh figure out ways that everybody can can manipulate
technology to their liking this is very much in line with what we say all the time about old and
new technology old technology shouldn't just be cast aside we should figure out ways to adapt it
to learn from it to build things that are better and um and and know how it all basically comes
about i think it also has a little attribute of homogenization because i mean who really wants
to go see someone else's photo frame look exactly like the photo frame they have in their own home
so it's it's conditioning people in this strange way i think probably a parallel uh topic to
kind of conform and just accept this this conditioned environment or user interface
or whatever it is that they're presenting and and rob just to speak to your point about the
photo frames uh i you know in in uh my desperation trying to get the alexa show to work i bought a
photo frame in fact i even bought another alexa show because i heard alexa show eights uh were
basically intolerant of certain uh configurations but alexa show fives weren't so i bought an alexa
show five and it's exactly the same so i just realized only amazon can get me to buy more of
their inferior products to try and fix their problems but anyway i i bought the uh the photo
frame and i realized after buying it that it doesn't read tiffs doesn't read tiff files so
then i had to convert all 1644 of my damn photos into a format that it liked and then once i did
that and copied it over um i didn't have any control over what displayed when you just had
to pretty much wait which you know it was fine it's what it is but um it's not what i'm trying
to do here where people can pick photos and download them and and save them to their own
computers and look at them whenever they feel like yeah and uh you make you make a very good
point about that and also i think i think it's time we went back you know we as in like general
users of the internet and you're right we do need usable interfaces we need links that we can send
to non-technical people in our families or circles or whatever but uh there are companies out there
whose business is images and hosting images and sharing images and they are and uh there are
companies out there who do this who are not subsidiaries of amazon or google or another
massive mega corporation that just you know has a little image service as a throwaway
loss leader to pull you in and do their main business with you um and i i think maybe we
maybe we in general have lost sight of the value in supporting maybe a smaller site somewhere that
that has you know maybe a free plan and maybe a pro plan that you can throw a little money at
that uh you can use to actually functionally you know share images i mean flickr is back again
i'm seeing more and more people using that i've been looking into these options
flickr is considered smaller and and yeah they well they're they're no longer owned by
yahoo verizon that sort of thing they're now owned by a company called smug mug
whose business is images they're not uh you know they're not a google level uh mega corporation
they they're just there now to provide images and host images and uh let you share the images and
you know it seems it seems that when a site does one thing well maybe it's worth using for that
rather than a site that does a zillion things badly so they can sell you ads no you definitely
have a great point there and i i recall so many instances like the company that makes our our
robots for for uh for printing discs uh premiera premiera yeah that's a great example i don't know
if they still make robots but they do when we when we made dvds all the time that's the company that
we went through and we'd have problems occasionally and whenever we contacted them we always got a
human being that worked to fix the problem and always did always was able to small company but
they they cared and those are the kind of people that you should be supporting you know the the
small companies with actual human beings that will respond to problems and that care that want
to fix the problems because they want to make something as good as possible they they they
don't you know transfer you to some some uh uh you know artificial intelligence bot somewhere
uh to try and and and eliminate you from their queue uh they actually are in the same game as
you are trying to trying to make something work as as much as possible they have funny stories about
that um there's a a small repair shop too that also does um replaces and repairs and refurbishes
this particular robot and the guy the guy who runs it is a preacher actually so he's you know probably
makes his like you know evangelizing discs or whatever but he's really into fixing these things
and does a great job yeah you find somebody who who is just impassioned about a particular model
of a particular machine and knows everything about it that is the person to go to you don't
throw it out you you get somebody who who knows how to take care of it and appreciates it because
you know some of these especially you know older uh machines are are built to last and uh it's just
incredible that's a real workhorse that that robot that we we sent out to be repaired by the preacher
yeah that that was that was quite a story um hey uh let's um move on to a couple other things because
i've just been bitching about one thing or another this whole hour um here's something to be happy
about in australia is this australia looks like um phone calls uh are going to be free from pay
funds actually no there's a there's a caveat here uh call okay local and national and calls
to mobile phones so they won't be calling the united states international calls are not included
there but the phone company announced that um uh these uh calls from a telstra pay phone telstra
is a phone company down there would no longer incur a charge that means the days of scrambling
for 50 cents in change uh which apparently is what it cost in australia 50 australian cents
or devising a code involving a predetermined number of rings or effectively over they still do that
wow you know my my my grandparents used to do that you know to to let us know when they got
home safely after visiting they'd ring twice was that phone fraud i don't know uh the phone company
would probably say it was alex what do you say well my uh my parents uh and relatives used to
do something similar they would make a collect call so if we took a flight you know to florida
or something you had to come back you know you didn't want to make a long distance phone call
from the airport it would have been you know extortionately expensive so we used to make a
collect call home to my father or mother whatever from alice fine which is you know like all is all
is fine i get it wow yep yep all alice fine this was you know my my mother's innovation i think
in in phone freaking that's uh that's something wow and that's a that's a level of fraud above
what my grandparents were doing that that's true but you know when i started to learn italian in
high school too i was so curious about you know other cultures and speaking to people that i used
to i used to just make random collect calls to cities in italy just to hear people answer the
phone and and have the and hear the the cadence of their speech it was it was very similar to me uh
they did very very uh fascinating me rather and that you know but speaking of australia and free
phone calls um one of the things i have distinct memories of from probably 1993 or 1994 at the 2600
meetings in new york that used to be around the huge lobby of pay phones in the city group building
was somebody a phone freak from australia calling up the pay phones whose name was phony if i recall
correctly that was his his phone free candle and he used to use a device that would shock the pay
phones in australia it would administer some kind of electrical shock to the pay phones uh that would
then allow him to call around the world at his convenience it was always fascinating me and he
called almost every single meeting there were always people on the phone with phony you see
that's that's the difference that's the difference between america and australia we just sent little
little beeps and tones but they actually send electrical shocks to get their phones shock
treatment of a of a pay phone but did you have a message for phony well i think phony you know
look he's he's i think his wish is half true here right he can go to a pay phone and and call up his
friends but he's still gonna have to administer shock treatment to to the pay phones i think to
call new york the uh telstra ceo his name is andy penn and oh it says it says in parentheses phony
this is nickname uh said the move to make every pay phone free would cost the company around five
million dollars a year just watching over the last 18 months how they've played a role in emergency
situations through the brush fires and keeping people connected and particularly those that
are vulnerable and disadvantaged i just thought we've got to a point where we can make this free
it's not a big deal for telstra andy penn is now my favorite ceo in the world okay no seriously this
guy gets it not only is he being generous and and giving something for free they could easily
charge for but he's recognizing the importance of pay phones and how they played an instrumental
role in emergencies when you didn't have cell service when there was uh an important message
that needed to be gotten out you have to have these devices it's a perfect example of old
technology existing to back up the new technology so they have to be referred to as public phones
then right because they're not pay for anymore like they're not pay phones they're just simply
public phones or phones for the public yeah well they always call them public phones but i guess
yeah but now they're only exclusively public phones unless you're calling international i'm
not sure how that works but you know what it's worth a trip to australia to find out and andy
penn you just convinced me thank you thank you for that it's interesting if other systems follow
that you know if other uh carriers and other places realize the benefit hey i want to share
something with uh with people we've been doing this project now for the last few weeks where we
release lost audio from our archives that we have been collating over the past past year or so about
the same amount of time in collating photos but this went a lot more smoothly because we're doing
it ourselves every day we release something new and i believe this was yesterday we released an
episode of a show that i used to do called news of the world that was a shortwave uh appreciation
program we basically would listen to shortwave radio stations in english and um and and broadcast
some of the newscasts that came from different countries i like it because you also gave some
background and a little bit of insight into some of the the on-air stuff that you're hearing yeah
you always got to explain things that's important and and and people really pick up on it um anyway
the whole collection appears on 2600.com audio dash segments where you can get to it from our
main page at 2600.com i want to display you an excerpt from yesterday's release of um of a bit
of news of the world you'll hear uh what's known as an interval signal which basically is a musical
chime that repeats to let you know that your radio station is about to come on the air you recognize
those particular musical chimes now the broadcast could be in all different languages but if it's a
strong signal it's probably aimed at your country and um well you'll hear um who who starts out this
particular broadcast
do
this is radio moscow there is an all-spurs the headlines the west german foreign minister
hans-dietrich denscher has completed his official visit to the soviet union on tuesday
in moscow participants international forums science technology and peace have handed to
andre ramiko their address to the heads of state and governments and poland observed its national
holiday the day of rebirth okay that's all we're going to hear right now but uh it's fascinating
fascinating stuff and that's just one example of the audio that we're releasing on a daily basis
again the website 2600.com audio dash segments new piece gets released every day
we started this in mid-july and it's going to be going through october i believe that's that's how
much audio we've got lying around the interviews uh just fun musical uh bits outtakes some of the
worst newscasts ever broadcast on radio that i was involved in um and it's uh it really is kind
of neat to be to be sharing all this we we did some things in um iqaluit which is uh currently in
nunavut it was in northwest territories when i visited it back in 1987 i believe and we were
broadcasting some of their local radio and how the radio host there was getting kids to call in
and imitate ravens on the air so he'd basically pick up the phone and instantly there'd be
somebody pretending they were a raven that's local radio that was an incredible thing to record
um so uh yeah get your get your fix and if you want to uh find it quickly there's a slide just
look for something that says the lost tapes and that'll take you right to the segments page and
you can go to any of the things we've already released you can download them you can stream
them yes go ahead rob um i just want to mention really quick uh we we are doing a 2600 meeting
this week this friday that's right and uh and uh we are we are doing them here in new york uh we
are doing it once again virtually and physically we are meeting outdoors so if you want to come to
our meeting in person it is outdoors at the entrance to the atrium on 53rd and 3rd um
and if you want to attend virtually there there will be a a video conference meeting as well so
check out nyc2600.net for all the info on that and join us now uh similar to last month if uh
you're involved in a meeting there are just several um qualifications that you have to meet
you have to be in an area where the total vaccination rate is 40 or above
and uh we're seeing more and more places meet that which is great uh you have to contact us
you can either email us meetings at 2600.com or tweet to us or send us a direct message
our twitter handle is 2600 meetings 2600 meetings and um let us know the details of your meeting now
if you had a meeting before you know everything went crazy uh in in 2019 or 2020 um it's not going
to automatically be relisted we need to hear from you we need to know that there are people still
there that are interested in doing this if there was no meeting anywhere near you this is a great
opportunity for you to get some attention for the meeting that you want to start so simply email us
and um tell us where you want to have your meeting they they generally take place the first friday of
every month between the hours of five and eight that's flexible uh so let us know if um you need
to change those hours uh but again meetings at 2600.com or 2600 meetings on twitter that's the
best way to get a hold of us and of course you can go to 2600.com slash meetings to see a list
of all the meetings that are taking place currently they're all in the united states
we expect that to be re-established in other parts of the world as we hear from them
but alex i know that a lot of your history comes from 2600 meetings in the in the past
it does indeed yeah there's been a lot of hijinks and i and a lot of learning that's
happened at them you know things and techniques and uh things i still use to this day that
are all a product of my misspent youth mainly at 2600 meetings and now you're a prestigious lawyer
so just think about that kids what what what you could uh be in for uh we're out of time but we're
going to over time go to youtube.com channel 2600 you can join us there or just go to the link that's
on the main 2600.com page you can call us and we'll talk to you that's for the next hour starting
at 8 p.m it's all about knowledge we'll see you next week write to us write to us at oth at 2600.com
or break open our veins solely to know solely to know solely to know
to feel all of the skin all of the skin all of the skin
the thrill of the knowing blasts me out of my brain i want to know i want to know
into our eyes hundreds of flashes cause us to feel the life in the sky i want to know i want to know
you