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The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall. I cut myself while shaving, now I can't make a cough.
It couldn't get much worse, but if it could, it would. Bundilly Bump are the best, expect the worst. I hope that's understood. Bundilly Bump!
And a very good evening to everybody. The program is off the hook.
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Kyle.
Hi, how's it going?
Pretty good, pretty good. And out in Skypeland, we have Rob T. Firefly.
Good evening.
We have Gilan.
Good evening.
And we have Alex.
Alex.
Good evening. Happy Thursday from London.
In London, as he's mentioned, yes. And just a quick note here, we started a couple of minutes late.
How about we split the difference and end one minute late?
So we'll be off by 7.56 for those folks back in the control room there.
I think that's only fair, right? We'll split any difference there?
Good. Okay. Because we want to take phone calls tonight.
Tonight is our monthly call-in show where we talk to BAI listeners.
Yes, BAI listeners, not overtime listeners.
Well, sometimes they're both, you know.
But we like to take phone calls from the people actually listening to the radio live.
And we'll be giving out the phone number in just a moment.
Please don't call until we do that.
So any word from anybody out there? Any adventures?
I know, Alex, you're in London, so something exciting must have happened over there.
Yeah. I'm in the Chelsea Arts Club in London here to teach cybersecurity law at King's College.
I'll be here for about a week.
And, yes, it is very exciting.
But also, as you may have heard through my voice here, I got some kind of bug from my kids before I left the United States.
So I brought some kind of germs with me over to the United Kingdom.
So I'm happy to say it's not the other way around this time.
All right. I'm sure the people of the United Kingdom are thrilled to hear that now.
So if you see Alex walking down the street in London, he might want to cross over.
And, yeah.
Okay.
That's good advice.
How are things in Queens, Rob Gila?
Things in Queens are well.
A bit cold?
A bit productive?
A bit cold.
Big news from here is that I broke down and joined Blue Sky.
Wow. Welcome.
How about that?
Thanks.
I have had one follower so far, and it's a sex bot.
So...
How did you...
Okay.
Blue Sky is...
You know, everybody's like, oh, it's great.
It's just people.
And no.
So the first person who found me was, in fact, I haven't followed by no people.
And the only follower I've gotten so far is not a person.
How are you going to get followers if nobody knows you're there?
Now people will know you're there.
Of course, you have to give out your username to do that, but...
I mean, I did follow a bunch of people, one of whom I'm speaking to right now, who could have followed me back.
Well, you know, I haven't paid attention to a whole lot recently, so I'll follow you back.
I will.
I promise.
Thanks.
Thanks, Emmanuel.
I appreciate that.
Yeah.
But the one thing you do on Blue Sky to get followers is to join those starter packs.
So you find starter packs that basically address your interests, and you follow everybody there.
And a good number of them will follow you back.
And before you know it, you're having a conversation.
And there are big organizations on there, too.
I think the Times is on there, the Guardian, various journalists of all sorts.
You know, anybody who pretty much appreciates journalism and is fed up with what's going on on Twitter, or X, whatever they call it this week, they migrate either over there or Mastodon or to both.
So, you know, it's my hope that this is what we're going to see more of this year.
Yeah, being able to start over and not try to beat yourself up about it.
I think that's the best policy.
I'm with Gila.
I did the same kind of thing.
I'm not really, like, doing the starter packs.
I didn't drag everybody from one account all the way over to try to simulate the same environment.
I just started again and did as much as I was comfortable with, but only really to explore it.
And I don't know, people sort of follow every now and then, and actually more so than I think other accounts.
And I was able to follow people that had abandoned Twitter during the pandemic and other instances where it was just untenable.
So it was cool to follow people again that were otherwise invisible to me on other platforms.
And then myself, just being a little bit, just like doing a little bit, it seems like you do sort of get a little visibility, especially if your current network sort of does, as Gila described, you know, you get a little bit of following from people you know, and then maybe try those starter packs.
It does sort of work to get you going, but I'm fine with it not being the exact same account and the exact same thing or the, you know, I'm not trying to bring my brand or my presence anywhere.
I'm just kind of exploring a platform.
So everybody has different attitudes and what suits me that might not suit you or somebody else.
And that's why it's good for individuals because, yeah, you're not importing a brand.
So it doesn't have to match exactly.
You can be a little bit different.
And that's always the case online.
You can always just start again and be slightly different, be a different.
You don't have to use real names.
You don't have to do any of that.
It's the magic of online identity.
You know, you can redefine who you are and just change things about a bit if you wish.
Or you can be the same person, whatever you're comfortable with.
Well, and it's work as is.
So it's like to put all this work trying to make it exactly like something you lost.
Oh, you know what?
Just kind of like start anew, I think.
That's my idea.
And you're starting on the same level as pretty much everybody else.
You know, it's basically you don't have to worry about somebody who has a million followers.
Oh, you're never going to get a million followers.
But now that same person has to start from scratch, too.
So, you know, it's good getting in on the ground floor of certain things.
Not that Blue Sky is that new.
Yes, Alex.
Well, speaking of Blue Sky names, a few weeks ago, maybe a month or so ago, I was down in Washington, D.C.
for this Project Liberty Summit on the Future of the Internet.
It had a lot to do with decentralized projects, migration over to Web3, all these things.
So I was at this lunch session.
And everybody was going around the table.
It was kind of a Web3-focused lunch session.
And so everyone's going around the tables and saying who they are, what their title is.
And the CEO of Blue Sky happened to be at the table right next to me, a woman, fairly young.
Her name was Lanshan.
And so I started looking up a little bit about Blue Sky and decentralization and whatnot.
And one of the things that struck me in terms of names was that this woman who's the CEO of Blue Sky, Lanshan, is her name.
And do you know what that happens to mean in Mandarin?
You know, I did know this because I'm aware of her.
And she's known in the community.
But I forget what the name actually meant.
But it was very interesting.
I do remember that.
The name itself is interesting.
Yeah.
It means Blue Sky.
Okay, there you go.
I should have remembered that.
But it happens to be a total coincidence.
And the name for the Blue Sky platform was chosen way before she became CEO of the company.
So it's just one of these funny things.
There are no such things as coincidences.
Things happen for a reason.
This happened for a reason, Alex.
Yeah, you may be right.
We may not understand why.
But, yeah, she's in the right place at the right time.
And maybe we will be, too.
I'm still not on Blue Sky.
Okay, well, we can help you with that if you're having difficulty, if it's confusing or anything like that.
It's pronounced Blue Sky.
And some people pronounce it Blue Sky.
That's true.
Okay, you know, this is our Farewell to Democracy show.
Because next week at this time, God help us.
I don't know what's going to be the state of affairs in a week.
It's been a fun ride.
And I wish everybody the best as they make their way out to somewhere.
No, but, you know, we're survivors.
We're fighters.
And we're going to maintain what's important to us and defend all those who are possibly victimized by policies, people, events.
Who knows?
It's kind of an adventure, isn't it?
We're all embarking together, seeing just what's going to happen when you put a felon into the White House, a lunatic who had a disastrous first four years and for some reason has been put back democratically.
Yes, we do believe in the system.
And his mega followers will be running everything.
And, wow, you know, it's incredible to me because already, you know, he's not in power yet.
But so much has happened as a result of the things that he is threatening.
Canada, Greenland, Panama.
Today he's taking credit for Middle East peace, even though he had nothing to do with any kind of ceasefire deal.
It's going to be madness.
It's going to be crazy.
But here at WBAI, we're going to - we're not going to do what the high-tech companies have done.
I don't know if you've noticed.
Certainly Twitter, that was a lost cause as soon as Elon Musk got his hands on it.
But now we're seeing Facebook, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, cave in, donate all kinds of money, stop checking for facts.
Yeah, that's something.
That's something, isn't it, that you don't need fact checkers anymore because, well, it's just the people will tell you what's right and what's wrong.
I mean, how could that go wrong?
How could that go wrong to just simply not have people that can do the research and tell you what is true and what is not true?
Because, you know, facts are facts.
There are true facts.
There are false facts.
They're not facts anymore at that point.
They become lies.
But if nobody is there that has the experience, the background, and you simply rely on a popularity contest, I guarantee you there will be a lot of quote-unquote facts that are not true that will be spread around on Facebook.
And, of course, Jeff Bezos also, Amazon, bending the knee, kissing the ring.
It's sad.
You know, you'd think if you have so much money, if you have billions and billions of dollars, that you would also have some courage, that you would also be able to stand up to impending fascism and bullying and just utter stupidity and self-defeating policies.
But, no, you have less courage than the average WBAI listener.
I guarantee you that.
Well, they have a lot of maintenance costs, and their relative status is precarious because it's based on the ability to generate and profit at a certain rate.
And to keep their status socially and maintain the cost of living for the lifestyle they've chosen as a result of their wealth, they're in a more precarious situation for their class of person, of individual.
So I think, you know, they do have to kind of grovel and make sure their business model doesn't get disrupted so they can afford fuel in their yachts and stuff.
I suspect that a lot of angry people might disrupt their business model.
But we'll just have to see how much power we, as individuals, actually have.
Even the village people, for God's sake, even the village people are so scared that they are performing for Trump and basically threatening to sue anybody who calls YMCA a gay anthem.
You can't make this up.
Of course, there is only one original member of the village people, and apparently he's conservative.
But regardless, YMCA is a gay anthem.
And I'm sorry if that makes the people who's saying it uncomfortable, but it's true.
And that's a fact right there.
So I don't know how Facebook will deal with that.
But this is just a preview of what will be ahead in the weeks, months, and years to come.
Yes, Rob.
One thing that I think is very important for us to mention is that we are here.
We will be here next week.
WBAI has been here for 65 years through so many administrations, through so many levels of hostile government.
And, you know, Off the Hook has been on since 1988 and has also been through many, many of these pendulum swings.
And as long as you out there keep us here on the air, keep WBAI doing what it does, we're going to be here because this is what we do.
This is why we do it.
And, you know, we we will we will not be silenced by big companies deciding that they want to throw money in one direction or another.
You know, there was a very famous cartoon that just happened recently, a cartoon that was drawn by the cartoonist for a cartoonist for The Washington Post about Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.
And Elon and everyone kowtowing and handing big bags of money to Trump.
And that was censored by The Washington Post and The Washington Post fired or the Washington rather the cartoonist quit The Washington Post over this.
It should be pointed out that The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos.
Yes. And so, you know, that's a that's a platform that is deciding.
Yeah, they they are very loudly saying what side they're on.
They are very loudly saying we are not going to allow these voices.
And here at BAI, I think I think you know what we say about that within the limits of the words we're allowed to say on the radio.
So and yes, thanks to everyone who's been keeping us going out there because you, the listeners, are all that keeps us going.
That's true. That and what's left of our sanity.
And this would be a great time to give a nice, healthy pledge to buddy dot WBAI dot ORG.
And you can make a monthly payment or whatever you feel is is wise.
Keep this place going. We're going to need it. We are really going to need it.
All right. Enough of that. We all go ahead.
Sorry, I just want to piggyback on that for one quick second.
If you're becoming a BAI buddy or just making a gift to the station in general, don't forget to tell us.
Don't forget to tell them that you're doing it for us.
The more you use our name in connection with your gift, the better.
Thank you. If you're becoming a BAI buddy, do it in the name of Off the Hook.
Off the Hook.
That's awesome.
The other thing is one thing that you will not see at BAI is preemptive compliance,
which I think is really what we're seeing in a lot of places.
I just it's a horrible thing, but a really fun phrase, preemptive compliance.
And we're not doing that.
It's like self-censorship, right?
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
Alex, quickly, we want to take some phone calls.
Yeah, I just wanted to say, I think we at BAI, we have preemptive defiance as opposed to compliance.
That's the that's been our motto for 65 years here.
That's what that's what you can expect starting next week.
OK, can I say my thing now?
Your thing doesn't fit in right now, Kyle.
OK, but you know what?
We're doing stuff.
All right.
And I just.
Well, OK, let me just let me set you up.
I'm not the first person.
I'm sure someone else.
Can I can I set you up so that it flows a little better?
So, you know, there there is this new thing going on in New York City.
I don't know if you've realized this, but if you drive into New York City now, you have to pay.
You have to pay nine dollars during peak hours and I think two twenty five during other other people screaming bloody murder about this.
But the amazing thing is, it seems to be working and it's called congestion pricing.
But maybe maybe that's not the right phrase.
Well, so I'm someone that has some some occasional hay fever and I kept thinking about this.
I was like, why is it called congestion?
We're calling it the problem.
It should be decongestion pricing.
Call it.
Name it the solution.
People want to pay for the solution.
If you keep saying you have to pay for congestion.
Yeah.
I don't know if it's there's any like science behind it.
I'm sure someone thought of this, but it just seems to me that they're going to be begrudging it every time they bring up.
It doesn't make any sense.
But if you're like, hey, you're paying to decongest this zone.
I think maybe it's it's I know it's not just I know people are smarter than that.
They can read, but I think it helps in how they think of it subconsciously.
The medication is not called a congestant.
It's called a decongestion.
So decongestion pricing.
That is the proper phrase.
Thank you, Kyle, for setting us straight on that.
I'm sure some street artists can adjust the signs and then the city can.
You mean the official signs?
Well, do they say congestion pricing?
OK, if they do, then, yeah, they need to be corrected.
Absolutely.
Hit that up and then the city can get on it and print some new ones or something.
A couple of extra letters.
But it's just so bonkers how much people are complaining.
All right.
Thank you for that.
And that's just goes to show language changes right here on WBA.
OK, our phone number and take note of this because it's not the usual station phone number.
I can just see the switchboard is probably all full.
And we only have one line, but we don't have a busy signal because that's just how technology
works these days.
So what that means is if you get to a voicemail situation, we'll never be able to get you
from there.
You can leave a message.
Maybe we'll even hear it one day.
Maybe we'll even play it on the air.
Who knows?
But if you reach us, then you are the only person reaching us.
And for that reason, we're asking you to be as brief as possible.
We're also asking if you've called recently, and that includes over time, please let someone
else have a chance so that we can hear from our listeners.
OK, phone number, area code 802-321-4225.
That is our phone number, 802.
Yeah, it's in Vermont, but we're not.
802-321-4225.
And as soon as the phones start lighting up, we'll put them on the air.
Nothing yet.
And on the Internet, but mostly the air.
Yes, yes.
There we go.
All right, let's take this first listener phone call.
And good evening.
You are on Off the Hook on WBAI.
Where are you calling from?
Calling from Long Island.
Long Island.
OK, well, that's a pretty big place.
Nassau County.
Nassau County.
516.
All right.
What's on your mind?
I want to first wish you guys a happy belated World Logic Day.
It was actually yesterday.
Was it?
Yeah, and I was thinking, given what your commentary was about Donald Trump, what could be more illogical or irrational than electing Donald Trump after what he did the first time around?
And so I'm struck by the irony that yesterday was World Logic Day.
And on Monday, January 20th, the most illogical and irrational person in America is going to be the leader of the free world.
And you know what really bothers me more than anything about that?
Actually, a lot bothers me about that.
But another thing, just to make it even worse, it's Martin Luther King Day.
Everybody has off on that day.
It's like it's a holiday, but not for him.
And they're even going to be smirched in memory of Jimmy Carter by raising the flags that are supposed to be at half staff.
The Republicans are going to do this.
I hope people in New York don't do that.
And it's just, you know, it goes against common decency.
But I have to ask you, so Logic Day, where does that come from?
Why is it on the 14th of January?
The 14th of January is the birthday of Alfred Tarski, who is a famous logician.
And Kurt Gödel, another famous logician, died on January 14th.
Wow.
So one famous logician was born that day, and another one died that day.
And UNESCO and the International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences decided, given the significance of those two individuals, that that date would be set aside for World Logic Day.
Wow.
Okay.
That's interesting.
Thanks.
Well, I wish all of us good luck for the next four years.
We're going to need it.
And I look forward to hearing your show and the coming to get me through the next four years.
Well, we will be here.
We promise we're not going anywhere, and we are not going to back down with what it is we stand for and what we say.
And, you know, I just hope more people follow that.
So thank you.
Thanks for those sentiments.
Any thoughts in Skyplan before we take this next call?
Well, make it quick.
Alex, go ahead.
Well, apropos of World Logic Day, I just wanted to say to our caller, modus tolendo ponens.
Somebody will get it.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
And let's take our second phone call.
Good evening.
You're on WBAI.
Where are you calling from?
New York.
Okay.
What's on your mind?
I am calling, by the way, from your convenient, although unannounced, toll-free number.
Do you want to give that out?
Because I don't have it in my head, to be honest.
Sure.
833-755-2600.
That is kind of cool.
We had nothing to do with this, but it's one of our listeners, and we thank them for that.
So what's on your mind, as we do need to get to a bunch of other calls?
I discovered, I tried to place a, I at the moment don't have a long distance, I tried to place a collect phone call, I was disconnected from the operator, I tried again, I said, I was just accidentally disconnected, I'm trying to place a collect phone call, and the operator told me, there is no such thing anymore.
I'm surprised it's such a thing, I'm surprised it's such a thing as an operator.
How did you find an operator?
I dialed zero in front of the phone number instead of one.
Wow, okay, that still works.
You know, I haven't done that.
So, I'm sure I'm the last person to find out.
How long has this been, and how is it that there is no such thing as collect phone calls anymore?
Yeah, I imagine it's because, you know, most people don't even have long distance.
You're one of the few remaining ones that still have a long distance service that you don't get.
I don't have long distance.
That's what I mean, that's what I mean.
So, everything that we grew up with is disappearing.
It really does seem that way.
So, you know, collect calls, person-to-person calls, busy line verification, all of that.
Pay phones.
I don't know what busy line verification is.
That's if you're calling somebody.
People don't know what a busy signal is.
But if you call somebody and you get a busy signal and you're not sure if they've fallen in the shower or something and the phone's off the hook or if they're actually engaged in the conversation, you can have an operator.
This used to be free.
Then it started costing money.
You can have an operator, quote-unquote, verify the line and say if there's a conversation going on or if it's off the hook.
Now, yeah, that's where the phrase comes from.
And I don't know how that relates if they're, you know, if they're on a modem.
Well, no one has modems anymore anyway, so it doesn't really tie into this.
Maybe they're sending a fax.
Nobody has those either, do they?
And then emergency interrupt is one step above that where, okay, after you get your verification and you know there's a conversation going on, you have an operator come and barge into the phone call and say, hey, somebody is trying to reach you.
Can you hang up the phone already so they can call you?
And they either agree or they refuse.
And that's the story there.
Well, how long has no collect phone calls been?
I have not tried to make a collect phone call or received one in a long time.
Gila, do you have an answer?
I do, actually.
According to the world of Wikipedia, apparently Verizon discontinued collect calling in 2016.
AT&T not long after that.
But it does appear that the 1-800-COLLECT service is still operational if you want to give that a try, caller.
And who runs that?
Is that, I thought that was MCI, but they're not around anymore.
It was MCI.
It was bought, like, out of bankruptcy in 2016 by Viz Communications, a Canadian company.
How about that?
Well, how do you get this 1-800-COLLECT?
You dial it.
You call the number.
1-800-COLLECT.
Yeah, that's as simple as it could possibly get.
Is that enough letters?
Yeah, it is.
It's exactly enough.
It's exactly enough.
Yeah, find a phone with letters on it.
Well, you can find a phone with letters on it, and I can tell you what letters are on any number, too.
So it's just something that's ingrained.
Thank you, Gila, for giving me that information.
We are a bastion of knowledge here.
Every now and then, one might need to make a collect phone call, and now I can do that when I need to.
All right, just don't try it on us.
All right.
Thanks for your call, and we will move on to the next call.
Okay.
802-321-4225.
Again, if you're calling while we're talking to somebody else, you're going to wind up in some kind of voicemail that we have no control over because, again, no busy signals anymore.
So you have to have call waiting, and it just goes somewhere else, and we can't get it back.
I'm sorry.
Okay.
Okay.
So I got to thinking while we were talking about this whole, like, is there an operator?
Are there these different things you can do?
And it seems to me that if you could do all that stuff, you wouldn't really need to be anywhere specific.
Like, I'm basically saying all of the things that operators had to be in an office doing can probably be done mobily now, right?
Sure, yeah.
Like, we all imagine operators, like, sitting at a cord board or something or, like, in a fixed position, but aren't they more or less able to do all of that Vultry, like, virtually with sort of, like, enhanced features on a soft phone or some kind of…
Sure, but you know what's really funny is that way back in the old days, before my time, before any of our times, operators used to operate from their homes.
Right, right.
So they basically were the first, I guess, at-home employers, employees of the phone company that basically all the calls would come into their living room, and they would have to pick up all day long.
It just struck me that we were thinking of, like, oh, where'd they all go?
Yeah, well, they're all basically walking around with smartphones, like, any operator that can do anything more than what we can do on a phone probably doesn't have to be in any particular building, if they even exist.
All right, let's take this next phone call.
Good evening, you're on WBAI.
Where are you calling from?
Hi, I'm Dennis from Yonkers.
Yonkers, beautiful place.
What's on your mind?
What I want to tell the WBAI listeners is something that will be beneficial for them, and that is to consider donating blood.
Why?
You get a free mini medical, and they check your hemoglobin, they check your blood pressure, and if you're eligible and you can donate then, there's so many benefits when you donate blood.
It can reveal potential health problems when they test your blood.
Giving blood can reduce your harmful iron stores.
It even lowers the risk of suffering a heart attack.
And giving blood also reduces your risk of developing cancer, and it lets your liver stay healthy.
And not only that, at the end, you mentally, you know you did something noble, and you're helping someone else, so mentally, it gives you a boost.
And so few people donate blood, especially in the black and Hispanic community.
We need more donors.
And again, it's free.
And you get a free medical.
You know, sometimes your medical issues, if you catch it in time, you can prevent serious problems down the road.
Do you agree?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Can you guide people who might be hearing this and saying, yeah, I want to donate blood?
How do they get started?
Go to the New York Blood Center.
Just Google it.
And they're on 67th Street, and they have blood drives all over the city.
Westchester, Yonkers, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, all over the place.
Staten Island.
And, you know, again, it's something free to do.
It's something noble to do, because you're helping others by donating blood.
And a little selfishly, you're getting a little checkup on yourself, and you're helping your body.
Definitely.
Well, thanks for the advice.
It's definitely something we should all consider doing and take very seriously.
Could I ask you, did you donate blood recently?
Not recently.
So I'm going to look into doing that sooner rather than later.
And I advise everybody else do that.
I'm up to 156 pints.
Oh, my God.
Wow.
Hopefully not in too short a period of time.
That's a lot.
Well, I'm 71.
And I regret, you know, you hate to have regrets in life.
I wish I started this when I was 16, when you could start donating.
For this simple reason, I was afraid back then of the needles.
I didn't know if they used the same needles.
It would hurt.
It's absolutely painless to donate blood.
That's true.
It's painless.
That little needle they stick into your arm, you don't feel it.
It's like a little pinch.
And then it's over.
And you don't feel anything during the whole process.
The whole process takes about 30, 35, 40 minutes tops.
I'm surprised it takes that long.
I thought it just took a couple of minutes, really.
I guess waiting online probably is the longest.
Well, that's it.
But, you know, it's a lovely, it's a noble thing to do to help others.
Yes.
And, you know, again, selfishly, though, you're getting a little bit of a free mini-medical
and your hemoglobin's off, your iron's off, right away now you know to go to a doctor.
Yeah, I got turned away once because my iron levels weren't high enough.
I'd been up all night and it was embarrassing, but at least I learned not to do that in the future.
So, yeah, they do give you a little mini-checkup.
Anyway, thank you for that.
Thank you very much.
It's definitely good advice.
I hope people take it to heart.
And let's open up for more phone calls, 802-321-4225.
Any comments?
Kyle, I know you had something in Anguilla.
I was thinking about doing this.
I think some of the universities are also places you can find out about these drives.
And it's worth pointing out also that if you ever find yourself on an operating table in some unfortunate circumstance
and you need blood, it would be good to know that the blood donation and the availability of certain types of blood is there.
That's also perhaps even selfishly like, don't think that you may not need it yourself.
And perhaps giving a little bit.
And I am also going to point out and acknowledge that it has not always been illegal because of HIV or legal process for all groups of people.
Yeah.
Specifically the queer community and, you know, I think a lot of that stigma and stuff lasted with people.
You know, maybe they did it once in high school or something and then never again because of some of those fears.
And a lot of that has changed, as the caller said.
There's a lot more screening and information you can get from this process.
Yeah, the benefits are so tremendous.
You know, I just realized, I don't know my blood type.
And I've asked.
When I've been in the blood bank and I ask, you know, what is my blood type, they can't tell me or they don't know.
And who knows blood types?
You know, it should be written on your medical chart, but it's not.
So I'm going to start trying to find out what that is.
That should be a service.
802-321-4225.
We don't have a call, do we, Kyle?
Not yet.
Okay, so 802-321-4225, our phone lines are open.
And Gila, go ahead.
Okay, so firstly, I'll proudly announce that I am B positive and I do wear that as a badge of honor.
That's a good one.
Isn't that great?
Also, there are people who sometimes will pass out when they give blood for many reasons, but there are things you could do that aren't just giving whole blood.
Like sometimes if you can give plasma, it's a different process.
So that's a thing.
But can we go back to the congestion zones for a minute?
Because I had an idea, which I'm throwing out from the city of New York.
Go for it.
For free.
Okay, because they're like, apparently it's working and there are thousands fewer cars in the zone right now.
So maybe all the money they thought they were going to raise on these tolls isn't going to happen.
But are you ready?
I have a plan.
Sudafed presents the congestion zone.
Okay.
The congestion zone.
Okay.
All right.
The Sudafed congestion zone, right?
If everything is corporate sponsorship at this point.
Yeah.
And I'm just saying, like, and yes, I work a couple of blocks north of the beginning of said zone.
So it all does say congestion.
But yeah, like how cool, the Sudafed congestion zone.
And you know that, like, you know, it's the good stuff.
They sell behind the counter.
So Sudafed will be improving the subways.
Yeah, but does that cause drowsiness?
It might.
It might.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I also think, you know, I've seen many cheerful MTA representatives saying how fewer cars there are in the streets.
And I don't think they'd be so happy if they weren't getting the money somehow.
So I think that's probably a good thing.
That's what they wanted.
That's what they wanted to see.
It's a win-win.
If you have less cars, if you have more cars and you have more money, it's probably something that...
It hasn't even been a month.
Yeah, it hasn't.
So we need more time to figure this out.
Let's take this phone call.
Good evening.
You're on Off the Hook.
Where are you calling from?
Hi, it's Bobcat.
I'm calling from my desk.
Your problem with the Google Voice not having a busy signal?
Have you thought of recording a busy signal as your greeting?
That would confuse people an awful lot, but it's something we could do because it would be busy and then it would beep.
Yeah, if we do it for like two minutes, somebody would have to stay on for a while.
You can do a five-minute busy signal if you want.
No one hangs on to a busy signal for more than three loops.
But, you know, wouldn't it ring first and then turn busy?
Because it rings before voice...
Yeah, I think it does.
I think it rings and then it goes to voicemail.
So what if it does?
There's a lot of things that do that.
It's not real, all right?
It's not a real busy signal.
I want a real busy signal.
I'm entitled to that.
Okay.
Sure.
All right.
Thanks.
Go ahead.
I have one more quick thing.
The court in California decided it's okay to force you to unlock your phone by...
Sitting on your hand and putting the phone against your fingers.
So use a weird finger.
Don't use your thumb.
Don't use your forefinger.
Use the little thing under your pinky that's on your palm.
It still works.
And they won't figure it out.
Okay.
That's some good advice.
Good advice from BAI listeners.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
All right.
Kyle's trying to figure it out right now.
And our phone lines are open.
802-321-4225.
And Rob, go ahead.
Yeah.
The point where you can be forced to unlock your phone with your fingerprint, that's been
a known thing, I think, for a long time in most jurisdictions, if not all.
And yes, the police, if they're arresting you, detaining you, they can fully grab your
finger and make you press it to your phone to unlock it.
Or they can hold your head still so your face unlocks your phone.
They still cannot, I believe, force you to reveal a password or a passcode.
So if you lock your phone with a code or a password, you've got a little more leeway
there.
Yeah.
But if you think about it while they're capturing your brainwaves, you really have other problems.
You know, I can't believe that someone hasn't come up with a technological way of violating
people's privacy where they take the fingerprint and turn that, you know, what you're booked
with, with ink and all that, turn that into a finger that they simply press up against
the phone without your consent, without you even being in the room.
Is that something that people are working on?
Because I'm sure the evil corporations have that on their agenda.
Yeah.
That's kind of wild.
Like the entire fingerprint database could unlock like all phones.
I guess.
It's quite a stupid idea to do that in the first place.
Don't use your finger.
Don't use your eyes.
Don't use any part of you that, you know, you can't hide.
Just don't use the phone.
Throw it in the river.
Well, I don't know about that.
That's a bit much.
No calls?
802-321-4225.
Maybe people think we're busier than we are, but you know, you can get through.
You can get through.
802-321-4225, and we only have a few minutes left.
Yes, Rob, go ahead.
I'm just talking about the blood donations.
My favorite blood donation story is I was in a jury pool once when I lived in Suffolk County,
and they brought the van up from the blood bank to solicit blood donations.
The bonus being that if you were sitting in the jury pool and you didn't want to get selected for a trial,
you could instead go out and give blood and be out of the running for however long that took,
and a lot of people happily took advantage of that.
Nice.
Very nice.
Giving plasma is called aphresis.
And that's good to know as well.
We don't have any phone calls.
We don't have any.
What's going on?
The last time we did this, it was one after the other, and we couldn't stop it.
All right.
You know what?
We're just going to hold the lines open for a little while longer.
Then we can dive into some other things as well.
But this is once a month we do this, where we have phone calls on WBAI.
We usually have overtime afterwards.
We're not having overtime tonight, but we usually have overtime afterwards on YouTube where people can call in there.
But it's a different audience, you know?
It's a different audience for the most part, and it's actually far less busy than it is when people call from on the air.
And we do have a phone call.
And good evening.
You're on Off the Hook.
Where are you calling from?
Pennsylvania.
Hey.
Good evening.
What's on your mind?
The fingerprint thing was interesting.
It used to be the technology for unlocking the phone didn't actually need - it could actually read the fingerprint without a live finger.
The newer unlocking mechanisms actually need depth of the fingerprint.
So the technology actually changed and made it slightly harder.
I see.
It probably also reads your pulse or something, too.
Some of them - some of the newer phones do.
Last I understood, it checks for heat.
Okay.
Oh, yeah.
What's wrong with a good long password?
I just don't see why that stopped being the best way to protect your data.
I don't know.
People stopped forgetting - or started forgetting them, maybe?
I mean, there's been a long discussion about some of that for a while, too, and, like, the little - drawing the little designs on the phone and stuff, too.
Mm-hmm.
But -
People are overloaded with passwords as is, to your point.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, if you want to play the game, you've got to play by the rules.
And I think passwords are something that we need to keep using because there are just too many ways around this, around, you know, using fingerprints and retina scans and faces and all that.
It's just - you can't change those.
Yeah.
All right.
Thanks for your call.
Thanks.
Have a great evening.
All right.
Take care.
Bye.
And our phone number remains, 802-321-4225.
I think I know what's happening is that since we can only take one phone call at a time, people wind up being transferred to the voicemail and it takes some time to dial back.
Or maybe they don't want to dial back again after, you know, maybe there's somebody actually at a pay fund throwing a quarter in and being unable to make any more phone calls.
But, again, we do have that 800 number, too, for people that, for some reason, can't call long distance.
Except I already forget it.
I know it starts with 800 and ends with 2600.
Am I right about that?
833.
Oh, I'm even wrong about the error.
Good.
833.
7-something-1-2600.
We're terrible.
7-5-5.
7-5-5.
2600.
Wow.
We don't even know our own phone number.
But our regular phone number is 802-321-4225.
We're only on for about another five minutes or so.
So if there's something you want to share with the WBAI audience, and, again, this is 99.5 FM in New York City broadcasting to the tri-state area.
Well, you better hurry up and call in.
What are your thoughts on this being the last week before things change?
And we have new leadership in Washington, D.C., and very uncertain times ahead.
Any thoughts on that?
How is that going to affect technology?
How is that going to change your life?
Or maybe there's some form of technology you'd like to talk about or some event that you'd like to share or something that happened in the last year.
There's all kinds of things.
You don't need me to figure out how to call in a show.
Please give us your opinion on federated voice-over IP systems and perhaps what you've done to implement it yourself.
We'd love to chat about that as well.
And our email address is OTH at 2600.com.
That's if you want to write to us and maybe have us read something on the air.
We did have a few pieces of listener mail.
But, you know, if I start reading those now, that's the end of phone calls.
And we're going to be discussing the letters for a while.
So I'd like to give people every opportunity to call in, 802-321-4225.
And that's the last time I'm going to say the number.
It's a very good number.
It's a distinguished number.
And thanks again to our listener, Lucky, who set us up with that toll-free number.
It's something we do appreciate.
And our listeners appreciate, as we learned, you know, tonight, it's still in the running.
All right.
We have no phone calls.
Wow.
I didn't expect this.
Last time we had too many phone calls.
This time we don't have enough.
I bet if you start reading a news story, someone will call immediately after, like, the third sentence.
No, that's what's going to happen.
And if I do that, it's going to be very frustrating because either I don't finish the news story or I don't take the call.
All right.
Try to get the title or the subject.
Okay.
This poor guy, he had an 11-year quest to dig up a landfill and recover $765 million in Bitcoin.
Yeah, it's a hard drive that his partner threw out years ago.
And he's been trying ever since to dig up a landfill to find the hard drive.
This is happening over in the UK.
Guy wants to excavate a landfill.
He says a hard drive with access to thousands of Bitcoins was mistakenly dumped over 11 years ago.
James Howells has been hoping to recover the laptop hard drive that he says contains the private key for cryptocurrency,
which he says he mined back in 2009.
There, there's the phone call.
I told you this would happen.
I told you.
Okay.
But I knew it was going to happen.
I told you what you already knew.
Yeah.
We can get into this later.
Did he find it?
Or are you just going to leave him hanging?
No, the judge said he can't dig in the landfill anymore.
Oh, no digging.
Yeah, he's, he's, his, his question's at an end.
It's sad.
All right.
You're on WBAI.
Where are you calling from?
Hi, New York.
New York.
We've heard of it.
Yes.
What's on your mind?
I have two questions for you guys.
Um, one, do you think that TikTok is really going black on Sunday or is this like what happened last time
and they're going to extend it and it's not going anywhere or you can use it on a VPN or it's just not going to be able to update
and it'll still be on your phone.
And do you guys think it's a good idea or a bad idea to, um, move on to Red Note?
I'm not familiar with that.
Uh, Rob, are you?
Yeah.
Red Note is a Chinese app, um, in China, run in China, based in China.
That's basically, um, like, it's a lot like TikTok except it's in Chinese and something remarkable that's happening right now
is a lot of American TikTok users are installing this Chinese app, um, that's in a language they can't read
and posting to it and, uh, you know, in, in defiance of the, uh, coming TikTok apocalypse.
And, uh, so wait a minute, hold on a second.
If, if everyone is so bent out of shape over a Chinese app that captures your data,
why wouldn't they be bent out of shape over another Chinese app that allegedly does the same thing?
There, there is, uh, a very popular video that's been posted to this red app, um, with a, uh, a young person saying,
um, to Zuckerberg, can you imagine being so basically odious that we're doing this rather than move to your app,
move to, you know, Meta or something?
I mean, that's, you, you, you gotta give, uh, give a nod to that.
Um, what, what, what, what I, I heard recently though, and I think we all heard this,
is that, um, uh, they're considering selling it to Elon Musk?
Yeah, all of a sudden China's looking pretty good right about now.
I mean, do you really want, no, I'm sorry, uh, the, the, the guy is toxic
and I, I trust him less than I trust the Chinese government, uh, at least with, with TikTok.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
One of you talk.
Alex, go ahead.
Sure, I'll, I'll, I'll jump in.
I'm just like,
maybe you shouldn't have been the one to talk.
Yeah, I know.
Tell me about it.
But I, I do think, you know, it is, a red note is a little bit dangerous because it is a Chinese app,
you know, which means that it's subject to Chinese law, which means that it could
be essentially weaponized as an arm of the Chinese government, which is
the, the biggest problem with TikTok, even though they tried to distance the U.S. subsidiaries
from the, the actual Chinese parents.
But, you know, the, the platform also collects a lot of data, you know, it collects your personal
data, collects your location data, your browsing activity, device specific information, IP
addresses, much like many, many other apps, but you're putting that data in the hands
of China.
And I think that's, that's very questionable.
Well, China or Musk is a horrible decision to have to make.
And, uh, we got to figure out other ways of, um, of dealing with these things.
Hey, uh, we're out of time.
Uh, yeah, it went fast and, um, we knew that would happen.
Um, write to us, OTH at 2600.com.
Uh, and again, we are not having overtime tonight.
We will have overtime next week.
And, uh, of course we will take calls on overtime when we return there.
Um, and yes, this is our last show before Trump takes over again.
It's going to be unsettling for many of us.
It's going to be scary for many of us.
Let's, um, stick together and we'll get through it.
We'll get through it.
BAI is going to be here.
Let's keep BAI strong.
Buddy.wbai.org is our, um, web address to donate.
And, um, stay tuned.
We're always going to have something interesting on, something relevant, and we're never going
to shy away from the controversy.
Bright times ahead.
See ya.
Life is a debt
That must someday be paid
Born when we were born
Left us helpless and self-obsessed
Last night on earth
Well, don't pick up that pen
We're so ill-equipped to deal with all
The pressure, risk and stress
They can't hurt you now
It doesn't matter what they say
You can still feel onion across the grave
But it was fun anyway
It was her job
To see through all that shit
She did it by herself
In some tough, tough places
But the system is sick
The rubber band's wrong
Collecting their debts
I'm filling up that road
You can't live alone
You can't live alone
You can't live alone
You can't live alone
They can't hurt you now
It doesn't matter what they say
You can still feel
I'm gonna cross the grave
But it was fun anyway
It was her job
To see through all that shit
She'd go walking out
In some very cool places
But the system is sick
The rubber band's wrong
Buying up the land
Your feet
Putting kids in the ground
You can't live alone
You can't live alone
You can't live alone
You can't live alone
Last night on earth
Last night on earth
Last night on earth
Last night on earth
Last night on earth
They can't hurt you now
They can't hurt you now
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Last night on earth