hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3051.txt

Episode: 3051
Title: HPR3051: The COVID-19 Work From Home Stream - Day 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3051/hpr3051.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 15:50:05

---

This is Hacker Public Radio episode 3,051 for Monday 13 April 2020.
Today's show is entitled The COVID-19 Work from Home Stream Day 2.
It is hosted by Thach Sarah,
and is about 43 minutes long
and carries an explicit flag. The summary is
a few HPR characters decide to spend some of their social distancing time being social.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by Ananasthost.com,
get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15,
that's HPR15,
better web hosting that's honest and fair at Ananasthost.com.
.
.
.
.
That's another wonderful day here in Paradise.
I guess if that's how you want to go about it, yeah, for sure.
I was your OBS video going.
Oh, I knocked that out pretty quick.
It went out yesterday, so hopefully people are using it.
Have you thought about pulling just the audio of that?
And then publish it as an HPR show?
I mean, I could, it would be,
it's real visual because I'm like, go over here to this corner and do this.
So I don't know if that it would probably just be better off to redo it
and try to do it more audio-ish.
What about just like publishing it to YouTube?
You fell off there at the end.
Sorry. What about just, can you just publish it to YouTube?
I could. The only problem is I think the way that
because of my work, we have to track the actual use of it.
They're doing it through the university's system.
So I'm not sure how cool they would be with me posting it elsewhere.
Okay, so it's the way you have it.
The way the video is structured is geared more towards connecting directly
into the school servers.
Well, it's not even that. It's just that.
I don't know. It sounds like terribly proprietary,
but because I created it for the program,
they want it to stay in the program's stuff.
So every time somebody accesses it and watches it,
they can keep metrics on it to prove that the grant is doing a thing.
So putting it out in the public sphere would kind of hijack that.
I get.
I don't think they would care if I did something similar and put it out publicly.
Like my boss wouldn't care.
But if I did like just the same video,
that would probably be a no-no.
Gotcha.
Python learning.
So far so good.
Just keep hacking away at things that's been the go of it.
I'm still kind of at the point where it's all stuff I remember.
It's just I haven't done it in a long time.
I'm getting it back into my brain is helpful.
I'm hoping I get to something more interesting soon,
because I'm kind of getting tired of doing it.
So if you have to teach this,
have you come up with anything besides just the,
you know, obligatory hello world to help teach?
Yeah, I'm not sure.
That's one of the things that we're actually I'm probably going to have to.
And a little bit jump into a meeting about it is how.
The state Department of Education once things to go.
And kind of what their curriculum is based on the standards that they created.
And go from there.
I know what.
So one of the schools I meant currently has computer science,
but it was just the school offered it just because they could they had somebody could teach it.
And I've been looking at their stuff and looking at the standards.
And it doesn't quite match up.
As a matter of fact, the computer science that's being taught now is actually a little more.
Um, thorough than what the state is asking for.
Um, so it's it's going to be dependent a lot on what they want.
And then I can sort of build the curriculum and then meet with my team and decide how.
How much we want to, uh,
to hand hold how much we want to be remote instruction, how much we want to have.
Um, in person instruction, how much we want to have like, uh,
we've even toyed around with the idea of sprints,
like having statewide sprints on projects.
And that would teach kids how to use things like get and how to do contributing to programs and stuff like that.
So it's all sort of up in the air at this point.
Um, but I'm hoping whatever I can create,
I can kind of reverse engineer and make public outside sort of the same situation we're here.
And now with the other video,
I'll have to make this stuff for the state.
But then I could probably make whatever I want and just make it public.
And it, it essentially be sort of the same thing.
That sounds like a very difficult task because it,
it seems like with Python programming that there's a lot of different directions.
You can go with it, you know, whether it's, um,
you know, like Pi game or using it to,
as opposed to our with bash to, uh,
to automate stuff.
Without any sort of a general direction to start off with,
it seems like it's,
to form a path to, of learning both for you and for the kids.
Yeah, that's kind of where we're at.
It's just going to be hard.
I mean, the beginning stuff is going to be easy no matter what.
It's like, how do you write?
Um, how do you set a variable?
How do you write a if statement?
How do you, you know,
just the basics of programming and in a classroom setting,
that's going to take, you know, probably a couple of weeks.
It's something that you and I can sit down and do in person and probably a day.
But just because of the structure of things,
it'll take a little longer in the classroom.
And going from there,
it's like, what does the state want?
How do they want, are they just going to say,
do whatever you want to do?
And maybe it looks different at different schools,
depending on what the kids want to do.
Then we kind of have to have,
either my team is going to have to decide a direction
and we just go that direction.
Um, or, you know,
we'll have to make multiple directions.
So different schools with different priorities can kind of go down those paths.
Um,
and that's where I'm going to wind up calling in sort of,
the actual computer science people did university to help me out,
um, doing it.
It's just, I'm the only person on our team that has any computer sense whatsoever.
So this kind of just got dumped on my plate.
That's kind of scary that there are the only one with any real computer sense.
Well, I mean, it's our entire team is just run by educators.
So it's not, you know, they're all brilliant people.
They're, they're very intelligent.
It's just as far as the computer thing, that's not their,
um,
it's not their thing.
Uh, so it's, it's more on me.
I'm, I'm the guy that just kind of came in with that knowledge.
And there are other agencies doing pretty much the same thing that we're doing.
Um, and I'm actually working with a couple of them to sort of
coordinate a little bit to where our things match up and, uh,
stuff.
But once again, because I'm under a grant,
we want to provide it that service to
to make ourselves,
um, marketable and valuable to the state.
And so, um,
I'm going to wind up just kind of redoing a lot of what other people are doing.
And we're doing our own spin,
but I want to make it at least different enough to where it's worth doing.
I don't feel like there's an interesting gap when it comes to, uh,
computer knowledge of those,
there's a large group of people who know nothing about computers,
who like bowl,
computer age,
just kind of pass them by and
they just kind of think of them as that like magic box that,
that stuff and they don't want to do anything every time they touch it.
Like, I don't know.
I think I broke it.
And then you have the kids today who like pick up things like programming,
like nobody's business granted.
I think I think a lot of them are being.
Uh-oh.
There you are.
Plumble you are.
Plumble just completely crashed on me.
But I'm sitting here talking next to you.
No, I look down and it's just the home screen for my phone.
I'm like, oh, what the hell?
You're not the first person to say that.
You're not the first person to say that.
Really?
I've never had problems with Plumble.
It's one of those things that it seems like it either works or it doesn't.
And when it doesn't,
it spectacularly doesn't work.
Or make it.
Anyways, talking about what you were talking about when you dropped off.
Um, I,
I see it a little differently because I work with kids every day.
That same,
uh, sort of dichotomy between people who know and people who don't know
or willing to learn to people who aren't willing to learn.
That happens in kids too.
There's some kids that are just like, oh, my God, I'm not touching anything because I broke it.
And there's some kids who just like coding is like breathing to them.
It's, um, I, I see it less generationally than I do.
Just people who have an act for and people who don't.
Yeah, that's probably true.
Like one of the things we've been doing the last, uh,
about actually the second half of the school year so far as we've been working with this robotic system with a bunch of kids.
And we get a pretty good cross section of kids of different kind of abilities that come to our after school stuff.
And, um, some kids like they love the robot part, like the actual mechanical part.
They don't want to touch the code.
I've got some kids that just all they want to do all day long as code.
And I've got some kids don't want to do either.
They're just like, oh my God, this is the most boring thing in the world.
My opinion that sounds incredibly fun to code for a robot.
It is, um, I, I kind of hit the place where some of our kids are, our kids who are a little more into it.
Um, just because of the system that we bought, uh, the level that it's at.
It's pretty quick to hit a wall of like, oh, I can't really do a whole lot more than what I've already done.
Um, so I had some kids that within a month, they were like, yeah, I think I've pushed this about as far as I can go.
And they're not wrong.
Uh, there's not a whole lot more.
And that's basically just because of the maturity of the system.
There's just not a lot in the API to be able to do it that besides, you know, moving directions.
Well, that's thanks.
Yeah, it's one of the, there's this big, um, golf, I think at work between, uh, me and everybody else.
My, my base instinct is, let's just buy a bunch of parts and these kids build their own robots.
And they learn how things actually work.
And, um, for me, that's easy because it's, it's in my wheelhouse.
And I'm like, okay, I can do that.
But I have to account for all the other schools that have other directors who are not savia with it as me.
And so they get mad.
They just want something that comes in a box of instructions that they don't have to actually work with.
Not because they don't, they don't want to.
It's just it's so far outside their, their ideas, um, of how to do things that they, they just, they can't comprehend it.
And I, I think that kind of does it to service.
We, we also wind up spending a ton of money on these prepackaged things instead of just buying parts and doing it ourselves.
Like these robotic systems that were, we bought are like almost a grand piece.
And it's probably $50, $60 worth of parts to build the same exact thing with, you know, just a really nice injection molded case that's really all it is.
That's crazy, but I can understand what you're talking about.
Yeah, it's, I feel a lot of times like the thing that would be best for the kids and the thing that would be best for our programs is held back by the people who work for the program.
And what they are comfortable with.
I feel off saying this because I don't want to be into the, the, those teachers, but at the same time, I think if you're going to be involved with an after school program or that's or just a program that teaches robotics.
You got to kind of throw yourself completely into it, don't you?
You would think that the problem was is when they tried to staff this program, or at least my understanding of when they tried to staff this program.
They basically had to beg me to come on board. It was very difficult to find people who would join the program.
I can see that.
Are you still working on that part of the MIT?
No, not for anything.
I did the program just sort of they got because they were part of MIT Media Lab.
That all fell apart when all the Jeffrey Epstein stuff happened.
And then there were other things.
I think the program still technically exists.
But it basically everybody that I know that work there besides the one person is gone because they were just like we are not associating with this program anymore.
Well, that sucks incredibly.
Yeah, I basically got an email from my executive director and a couple of phone calls.
It's like, yeah, pull the plug. We're not associating with them.
We strip everything that says we were ever associated with them out of anything because there's too much drama involved around them right now.
I mean, there's no more trips to Boston. I know there.
Yeah, now that does suck.
I did actually enjoy that part of it.
But it is what it is.
I mean, I can't go to Boston.
I guess whenever I want.
True, but this gave you an excuse.
It did.
And it was really like I legitimately like hanging out there.
It was it was a cool place.
But you know, thanks come things go, I guess.
So what do you think the chances are that they try shutting everything down?
I don't know.
I mean, the pragmatist in me says they probably should.
But it's going to there.
I don't live in a world where I don't see how hard that's going to be for a wide variety of people.
So it's it's hard like how do you tell people who can't not do these things to just stop doing everything?
I mean, just the fact that they've closed down on, you know,
the mentor closed down just restaurant and bars is hurting tons of people.
Oh, I know.
Like there's, well, I mean, because I work with teenagers a lot.
And so that's how most of them make money.
But they don't need money to survive.
But you'd be surprised how many of their parents do the same thing.
And, you know, how do you survive if you can't work for a month?
That's going to be very, very difficult.
I mean, even, even small things like your situation where it's like what happens when we don't have state subsidized child care all day every day.
That becomes an issue even for people who have good jobs.
And it's, it's just kind of a mess.
We, we had never had a backup plan for this.
No, I mean, no one really ever thought that I don't like this would happen.
But we kind of have a backup plan.
Sort of, I mean, we can, we can think as a country, we have a backup that the country has kind of a plan.
And then at the same time, individuals don't necessarily have a plan for this.
Yeah, that's kind of an, I won't say argument.
That was a discussion that we were having yesterday, I think, on our cast planet.
And it was, you know, it's not that hard to prepare for something like this.
If you just thought about it ahead of time or, you know, just somebody made the comment like we'll just go buy every time you go to the store buy like an extra thing of beans or buy a thing of rice.
And I, I kind of chimed in.
I didn't mean it to be kind of, it started a whole thing and I feel bad for it now.
But it's like, I'm not that far away.
Like two years ago, I didn't have enough money to buy the food we needed, let alone to buy extra.
And I know a drastic part of the population is in the same position to where even if you had the wherewithal to think to have done it, you didn't have the resources to do it.
And so that's, there's just a lot of blaming people for not being prepared for it.
And it's like some people just didn't have the, the way to do it.
And even like people in big cities, like, okay, you live in an apartment in New York.
How are you going to store extra food?
Like you may not even have the ability to cook in your, in your apartment.
Like you may have to go out and eat every meal just because that's where you are.
It's easy for people in certain areas and it's certain socioeconomic levels to be like, oh, well, this is easy.
This is a no brainer and they just don't consider other possibilities out there.
Right.
And the, so I was talking with my store manager because we were, we kind of get the feeling like something is coming down the road soon.
That's going to be drastic like shutting everything down.
Like people are hearing rumblings from people who are in, you know,
military, I'm trying to think of the reserves and stuff that be.
You know, people getting called up that, you know, they're all trying to get some sort of plan going for a just in case type of a deal.
And, and our work, we're kind of, we're kind of an necessity.
So we technically can't close down, but like what is what, how do we adjust to this situation of, you know,
and else is closed down except for us, how do we, how do we adjust for that?
Yeah, there's, there's not going to be a pretty solution to anything.
It's always going to be kind of clooch together.
I, I, I think it's kind of good that the military is preparing for things because it, like I said the other day, I, I'm scared it could get ugly.
I don't want it to get ugly.
I hope that we get it sorted out before then, but having them on hand, I don't think it's a bad thing.
But I know a bunch of people are like, oh, they're going to declare martial law.
That is never going to happen in the United States.
Like it just won't.
There's no, it could be literally like Mad Max happening on the streets and they still would not try to do martial law just because our military is not capable of deploying and controlling the geographic regions that are the United States.
Like it's just, that's infeasible at every level.
They may do it in strategic places, but I don't see them doing that across the country.
That's true, but I'm, and I, I, I fall in the same boat as you.
I don't think they enforce martial law.
But like, what would be the difference between enforcing martial law and just basically shutting absolutely everything down?
Quite a bit.
I mean, on paper.
Yeah, enough.
I mean, they can, unless the martial law would be probably they, they, they would force people to stay in their own home.
Yeah, but you can do that without declaring.
I said, you can actually do that without declaring martial law.
Like all you have to do is say the military is coming in to reinforce local police.
And we, you know, the local police and the civic government are in control of the military at that point.
They basically become the, the commanders on the ground, at least for my, my understanding of it.
Um, martial law would be all powers centralized to the military, the military and military commanders then become.
They, they over, they take over the civic government.
And they run it themselves instead of they still, if they're just helping the police force, they still take their orders from the civic government.
Yeah, for sure.
I think that that's the most likely and, and to be able to honest, I think that's probably useful is saying, hey, we have extra resources.
Tell us where you need us to help and, um, you know, sort of a more decentralized way of doing it.
It's probably better.
Like they probably don't need to roll out the national guard in my town.
Uh, most people seem to be doing what they're asked to do.
And, you know, it's not a big deal.
I, I think probably the local police can handle any issues that are not, um, where a bigger city, they probably might need to back up.
Definitely.
You're lighting up, but nothing is coming through.
Good Lord.
I heard that.
Uh, what, what is going to be the thing that, that tips the scale in either direction at this point?
I mean, is it, I don't think they're going to find a cure for it.
So we just going to pull a China and then just shut the slope.
We're just right now slowly shutting everything down.
You know, let people prepare, make them fully aware and then shut everything down for the two, three weeks until we make sure that everybody has it as has it and then air.
I mean, what's, what's going to tip the scale in either direction at this point?
Uh, probably just how well our medical system is handling the burden.
Um, so like right now, I think the reason that that stuff hasn't happened is because if you, um, there was, who was the guy?
He's a mathematician.
I want to say at Stanford, he did, um, sort of a data analysis of like staying below the threshold of like what our medical system is able to handle in a given time.
And so like if you look at Italy, that's the problem.
They let it go so long that there are so many cases that their medical system is completely overwhelmed.
They cannot keep up with the, um, amount of people who are coming in with symptoms, um, to where what we've done.
Apparently, you know, has at least squashed the curve enough to where we're underneath that threshold.
I think if we go above that threshold, that's where things would get nastier or not even nastier, just more restricted than they are.
Funnily enough, I think if the food supply situation gets hammered out to where, um, like you were talking about yesterday, like things just not being able to be reordered or things just aren't able to keep up.
If they can get enough lean time built into that system to where people can go to the store and get what they need and go home.
I think they can avoid all that stuff.
It's just that's not what the system was built for.
So it's, you know, can we retrofit it to be that quick enough?
I think that the scary thing is, is it has, I think now been a week since, uh, all a little over a week since, uh, the governor of Lisa Massachusetts called, um,
a state of emergency.
So I mean, that's when things first started panicking here and it feels like it's been a lot longer than that.
Yeah, no, this has been like the longest week ever.
For sure.
And I'm saying that I hate being home.
Like I, if I'm in one spot more than eight hours, not sleeping, I get antsy.
So being stuck here for multiple days is not, uh, not conducive to my mental well-being.
But, you know, it is what it is and you just tough it out and get over it.
Like I'm one of the few people in the world that would kill to go back to work right now.
Yeah, for sure.
I don't know what your job that's for sure.
Yeah, I was, again, when I was talking with my, uh, my store manager, he's saying something about how, uh, there were some areas that, um,
there were only letting people out on the trip.
It was Italy or China where they were only letting a certain number of people into the grocery stores at a time.
They would do like a, they'd use one of those, um, little laser pointer type temperature thermometers, which I'm very accurate.
Um, uh, on people through the door, asking a few questions and let them in.
They were, it's only a certain amount of time to shop and just get the hell on out.
Um, that would be very interesting to see happen.
Yeah, that's not very much the American temperament, but it may have to be.
I mean, I mean, that's one of the things that, uh, you know, it's, we were talking about it yesterday.
How does this change things going forward?
Like, maybe what we, what we like and what we're used to just isn't feasible anymore.
And we have to change whether, you know, it's because of this or just because, you know, that's the way things we're going to be regardless eventually.
We're just getting ahead of the curve instead of being behind it.
Um, and I don't know. That's, that's bigger questions than, than I have the ability to answer or even accurately comprehend.
All right. No more virus. Who do you like in November?
Uh, yeah, yeah.
Once again, going back to my, uh, regrettable conversation on Matrix yesterday.
Yes, I saw that.
I, I felt bad because I, I always go into those situations trying to be cordial and trying to be friendly.
And like, I'm totally cool with everybody disagree. That's not the problem.
It never fails somebody jumps in and just like goes to a thousand.
And it's like I just pulled somebody into a conversation where they got beat up.
And I feel bad about it.
I don't know. I think they're both betting a thousand there.
I don't know. I, I, I realized that by my opinions are very different than most peoples.
And I'm, I'm used to defending them and doing it in a way that is non hostile or at least tries to be non hostile.
I don't know if I pull it off. I may be a raging jackass and just don't know it.
Well, from my experience, you seem to be all right.
Are you just as crazy as I am?
Nope, just a bigger jackass.
That is also a fair.
Yeah, there's a, there's a point where like after the previous election, I was all set for like,
what are there to limit certain parties?
Because I like the kind of general idea of the libertarian party stands for it.
I mean, I made the decision way back in the beginning of this that there was only one way.
There was only one path to where I was even possibly going to participate in electoral politics this time.
That path is effectively closed. So I'm just going to sit back and just watch the world world burn at this point.
My, the only thing that will make me happy is if Trump is not anymore.
And let me just purpose that by saying everybody has their own view, political views about way he did conduct business blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
If you take that out of it completely and just look at the way he acts, he cannot fly from act like the position that he holds.
He can't act like a president.
See, you start talking about Trump and you automatically get booted from the hacker public radio room.
They got him.
Got me in the mouth.
I just made that joke.
You start talking about our glorious leader.
You just disappear.
I don't agree with his politics, but I don't agree with a lot of other politics politics, but just act like a president.
You know, could I look at jackass?
I, you know, I would actually honestly be okay with being a jackass if you did something different.
Like that's my ultimate problem.
Every time I voted my entire adult life, nothing has changed.
Like nothing of any substantial amount has changed from voting.
Now that is also because I live in a deep red state.
And no matter how I vote, it's never going to count because of the electoral college.
But like every movement forward that has been worth doing was not made through politicians.
It was made through, you know, grassroots things that finally push politicians in the right direction.
The politicians that instigated the change to begin with.
So I'm just at the point where I'm just not voting anymore.
I'm not getting involved in it.
I'm not getting upset about it.
I'm just not doing it because it doesn't matter who gets voted in.
They're going to do the same thing they've been doing since Reagan.
Like nothing is going to change.
That's a very fair point.
But I don't know.
I'm also in the same book that if I feel like that if I don't vote, then I don't have a right to bitch about things.
I voted.
I can listen.
I tried it.
I failed.
Yeah.
I don't know.
It's more of a protest thing for me now.
The fact that I can vote and vote.
Well, and it's really, I'm like double screwed because I live in a place where I'm really close to a town.
But I live outside of the town.
So therefore I'm not allowed to vote for anything of the town.
Like literally me voting counts for nothing.
Just because of geographical care where I live.
So it's just like, well, why waste my day doing it anymore?
I'm more vote for Vermin Supreme.
That's it.
If we could do right ends, I would do it just for that.
You can always do right end.
I don't believe you can hear.
I have to double check.
I'm pretty sure you can.
Well, I wrote myself in just about anything where I didn't see like any party that anybody ran on a post on anything on the belt.
When I voted, I always wrote my own name and that is a brilliant strategy.
But if you get two or three people to do it, you might actually win.
I need to do a spear out running on a pose and then just kill like a little post for myself.
We'll do it with the thumbs up right by the voting booths.
My name and the information that they need to need what name and address.
Just name and address the picture beautifully thumbs up either that.
If you don't like voting for vote for this guy, then put my name and information in thumbs up.
This guy, he has no opinions and no stances.
He's just going to stand there and look good.
And even that is subjective.
Yeah, that's the one thing about this election that because it's so been so much fighting.
There are no third party candidates like none.
Like nobody's even talking about running it that I'm aware of.
Well, there are third party candidates, but I don't know.
They didn't make good.
Well, they're not.
They didn't cover.
It's.
I'm.
Um.
It's not happening.
Then we're going to be allowed to be at the base.
First through that one up for everybody.
Yeah, I forget who was talking about it.
And it was, it was a thing that made sense to me.
Um, it was the idea that, you know, if we could just completely redo elections.
That it would, like the most fair thing to do would be kind of all the primary slash caucuses happen on the same day.
Um, and it would work sort of like a caucus to where anybody who gets over a threshold of a certain number of supporters would be viable.
And then you just vote and vote and vote and vote and you just spend the whole day voting until you get to the last two and then it's over and then those two people run.
Um, no, no protected long bullshit that we go through now just get it all done in one day, pick your two people and vote.
I like to take your bag Money contract to the point of just kicked with parties.
Just keep you parties and have people just stand on their own, you know, on their own.
Not with these sort of party.
And then just you vote for those people and whoever let it in again like you said that you could do primaries and whoever is the top
top two top three whatever the hell you want to top four for the for primaries just a narrow down from God knows how many other people are going to be there
because it's going to be about everybody on there, but just like I don't care if it's the topic in 2020, just narrow it down and out of that list, choose your top one.
It's the same reason that I think the electoral college is still a thing like I think if they did an up-down vote of all the people in the United States, there would be no electoral college.
It would just go away because I think everybody just kind of intuitively knows that like that's kind of broken because it was invented to to thwart the theory of sort of the image
the Germany of the majority of majority that you know the majority is always going to win just because that's what it is and what it's turned into is the tyranny of the minority.
The center of the country decides everything for you know where the population centers are and that that that's going to be a problem no matter what.
But I think the primaries in the way they're structured the same way you kind of see it it's strategically brilliant like watching it from behind the scenes is amazing
is watching what happened to the democratic primary they flooded it with enough people to where somebody who was really popular and destructive to what the party was was winning.
They just made phone calls and had enough people to drop out and learn their support to the candidate they really wanted and it totally turned the tide in one day like they game the system in a brilliant way to just instantly shifted to what they wanted to happen.
You don't get that if the game is too simple.
That's fair.
I am a horrible tree.
What is the purpose of the party system why why is it why did it come about and honestly who cares.
I don't know I don't know like going far enough back where it comes from.
I do know that like as much as I hate authoritarian regimes like a lot of this gets solved in a one party system because people inside the party just argue with each other.
So you get de facto like coalitions inside of a singular party.
So even when you get rid of parties you still kind of get them.
It is what it is. I think it's just sort of human nature to band together in tribes that have at least somewhat similar goals.
I think that's ultimately what a lot of the pressure in the two party system has been.
I mean you see during the Obama years and leading up to Obama what kept the Republicans from winning was a far right faction that was withholding votes to keep.
You know there was sort of the tea party people on one side and there was sort of the main centrist Republicans and that sort of ruined some elections for them.
And you're seeing the same thing happen on the left now that's what happened with Hillary Clinton.
It's probably what's going to happen with Biden is that there's going to be a far left contingent that just will not vote for whoever they put up because it wasn't their person.
And as long as you have a two party system you're always going to have that middle ground win.
And that's sort of why whole thing a matrix there isn't a two party system. There's there is a one party that markets itself differently to two different buying groups.
And that's just sort of why we never get any change.
And to be fair some people think that that's a feature like they don't want system change because things tend to go all right for certain subsets.
So you're part of that subset. Why change it seems to be going well. Let's just keep going over doing.
I just think once you get out of that mainstream things are not going well for everybody and has been that way for 40 years.
I think the hard part is I think there's a lot of problems out there.
And we can't I'm sure what the answers are to half of them and then we can't and once we even figure out what like if you put a bunch of smart people together and come up with a good answer, then you have to sell it to people who to vote it in.
And I can't see any way to make make any actual change, which then falls back onto your previous point point of if nothing seems to be changing no matter how much us little people try the why bother.
I don't know when you see polling of if you just do like up down polling of proposals that don't have like you do as much as you can to obfuscate like what.
What direction or what party they come from you're just like hey here's an idea and you just up down poll people.
You tend to get really pretty heavily one sided numbers in one direction or the other so I think there is sort of a majority consensus on a lot of things.
So like just two things in general like universal health care is like 73% of people want it.
You know, and if you're in a democracy and 73% of people want something how that's not happening doesn't make sense.
The other one is like gun control like it's almost exactly the opposite direction and not one at gun control so.
You know, but that one somehow works in democracy I just I don't understand how the system how things that if you divorce it from the party system and just sort of say here's an idea that things can pretty generally fall into a camp of where.
There's a majority on one side or the other like why those don't actually happen some things are dead in the center like I mean you look at abortion that tends to be pretty much 50 50 no matter what.
So it's like it to me that makes sense that that's not a thing that makes any movement ever happens on it's just a lot of arguing about there's you know just things like that if there is a will for things to change in one direction why the system doesn't allow for that.
One word money well yeah that's.
It's my viewpoints right health care is one of those things of you hear some say that universal health care is great it works benefit everybody of another people who say universal health care is you know.
Complete tire fire in other in other countries and stuff where people who need stuff can't get stuff and no one can agree upon whether it's good or bad in places that have it and so no one nobody here can agree upon trying to trying it out.
Yeah it's the I know what I have and I can deal with what I have before I'd rather do that than try something that might not be what I have you know it's.
What are they the devil you know right if I know this works to this extent I don't want to go any further but I think I think universal health care gets is high of numbers is it gets not because it's the policy itself I think it's just because it's a change people know that like it's not working the way it is like just change something.
You know as much as Obamacare was touted is this big thing that was going to change didn't change a whole lot like it basically didn't do much but make everybody premiums go up.
So it's I think people just want something to change on that front because I mean I supposedly have good insurance my insurance is just fucking terrible like I hate it I hate dealing with it I hate going to the doctor like I will not go to the doctor just because I don't want to deal with my insurance company because I know it's going to be a fight every time I go to the doctor.
Right and it's so damn expensive half the time that I mean you almost ask yourself why last year I did I did the math because I'm a math guy you know I we spent 26% of our income just for health care like more than a quarter of what we make goes to health care which if you start looking at other countries like it's drastically less like I'm to the point where to take 15% of my money and I'll pay it in taxes just to try something new.
To see if if the cost goes down cool I saved money if it doesn't okay then I can go back to paying my 26% but that's just to me for one thing that in last year we barely used our health care because our deductible was something like 6 grand so like it was if you were sick or you got hurt it's just walk it off like I don't have 6 grand to drop on taking you to the hospital.
Now if you don't mind me asking how much do you guys pay for your health care last year it was it was a racket because it was through my university and there there's this bad what we have now is to my wife's school district and it's a little better I think for our family we're paying I want to say it's like three something a month.
And our deductible is three grand so it's it's much less and that lets us do an HSA so we put I think like a hundred bucks a month in the HSA.
So like our cost plummeted from that because we didn't have that availability so it's a little bit better and but I mean we went to the emergency room once this year and our deductibles pretty much gone I think there's maybe like $800 left on it.
But the problem we've had with HSAs in the past is we can't put money in it fast enough that we use it.
So we can never get like I think ideally you would build up your deductible and then have that deductible sending there a year behind so then like oh something happens here's the money I don't have to worry about it's already saved.
But we wind up spending the money that we can put into the HSA as we're putting it in there because people get sick people get hurt especially my kids they're kind of clumsy.
So we wind up going to hospital more than once a year.
Yeah our family motto which we need to make it pressed for is no hospital visits.
Oh yeah that's a good year if you're like oh thank god we made it through we didn't have to do that but I last year was the first time that we didn't.
And that was there were times we probably should have we didn't because we were just like let's just make it through this year let's just get to this year and not have to do that.
Oh I don't think any of us have made it through a full year having to go to the hospital for something but you know anytime you do that does something to be called what what's the family rule no hospital visits.
Alright sir I got to head back work. Alright catch you later Matt. Have a good one.
You've been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio dot org.
We are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday.
Today's show like all our shows was contributed by an HBR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording a podcast and click on our contribute link to find out how easy it really is.
Hacker Public Radio was founded by the digital dog pound and the infonomicon computer club and it's part of the binary revolution at binrev.com.
If you have comments on today's show please email the host directly leave a comment on the website or record a follow up episode yourself.
Unless otherwise status today's show is released on the creative comments, attribution, share a light 3.0 license.