hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2460.txt

Episode: 2460
Title: HPR2460: The Alien Brothers Podcast - S01E03 - Decline of American Empire
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2460/hpr2460.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 03:37:32

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This in HPR episode 2,460 entitled, The Alien Brothers Podcast S-Nero 1-E-Nero 3 Decline
of American Empire.
It is posted by The Alien Brothers Podcast, ABB, and in about 114 minutes long, and carries
an explicit flag.
The summary is The Alien Brothers penetrated by Alan Belt to tap in, and transmits an intergalactic
podcast.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honest host.com.
At 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15, that's HBR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair, at An Honesthost.com.
The Alien Brothers Podcast with Casper and Redigord, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2
1, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2,
or another.
Welcome, Mr. Tumlus from the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Wow.
That's a deep pull.
Going back in time, not into the future.
Going back in time.
Yeah.
This is Ruddiger and with me is my constant podcast
and companion for the Alien Brothers podcast.
Casper, hello.
Thank you.
Thank you, everybody.
How are you, Casper?
I'm doing well.
I'm doing very well.
Yeah.
And that's the last of that you're going to hear
on this podcast because the last one I listened to
and I was not happy with my performance.
So I'm going to try and raise the bar here a little bit.
Why weren't you happy with your performance?
Too much stuttering.
My mind was overwhelmed with things
that should not have been overwhelmed with,
but now my mind is clear and I'm ready to podcast.
Mine like water.
What like water?
Mine's like water.
You've never heard that phrase before.
I've never heard that phrase before.
I don't know where it comes from,
but I know it's part of the getting things done movement.
It was picked up as a moniker or as a mantra.
You want to keep lists and I do know what I'm talking about
by getting things done.
Maybe for the benefit of our listeners,
we should talk about getting things done for just a second
because you know, I tend to explain things quickly.
So here we go.
Getting things done or GTD as the hip,
Gitter, Dunner might refer to it.
If you explain it, if you explain it as hip,
it is no longer hip, FYI.
It's a life hack, personal productivity methodology
that was certainly 10 years ago experiencing
quite a bit of 10, maybe more years ago,
renowned among the life hacker, life hacking,
like lifehacker.com crowd.
And it's basically boils down to the idea
that if you can train yourself to manage a set of,
essentially task lists and you're more or less
always focused on the next.
And the reason I think it was a big deal 10 years ago
or a little longer or whenever,
and I should probably shut out to the guy who wrote the book
getting things done, but I can't think of his name
and we'll put it in the show notes.
Oh, yeah, we were recording yet.
Eight Gerald, settle down.
All right, yeah, we are recording, okay?
I'm especially glad to not...
Just stay over there.
Okay, sorry about that.
So I'll just wrap it up.
The idea of where anyone interested
and especially if you do,
knowledge work or have to manage a lot of
anything else that requires managing a lot of concurrent tasks
that are sometimes highly asynchronous
is that you manage lists of different contexts
where a context could be,
I'm working in my home office or I'm in the car
or I'm on the phone or in front of a phone
and basically the idea is that you shit everything
out of your brain into these lists
and train yourself to refer to and work through the lists
so you don't have to keep it in your head
so you don't wind up ruminating on all the,
man, all this crap I gotta get done
and that way you can have minds like water.
So essentially what you're saying is organization.
Yeah, but I was describing a very specific actionable approach
to organization whereas organization
is like a dictionary definition word
that has multiple meanings.
To each their own.
So welcome to the Alien Brothers podcast.
This is the Alien Brothers podcast.
This is not another podcast.
Yes, this is the Alien Brothers podcast or A, B, P.
Season one episode, quote unquote three.
No, it's not quite, it's three.
Happy holidays.
Happy holidays to you, Casper.
Happy holidays to you, Reticard.
Did you get that thing I sent you?
I use, you send me things daily.
You send me, I can feel it coming through the ether.
Your love is a court.
Did you get that physical thing that I sent you via snail mail?
Well, you know, love can be a physical thing.
Yeah, but I can't.
If you're saying, if you're having, if you're having, if you haven't gotten it.
If you, I might have, it could be in this small mountain of mail sitting here
that normally goes directly from small mountain to shredder.
But in this case, assuming you're not joking with me,
I will look through it carefully.
Take a little look, see, I believe my handwriting
is unique.
And I believe I put a return address on there.
So let me know if you got that thing I sent you.
Okay, I, well, by now I certainly must have,
unless it was lost in transit or stolen by my soon to be ex roommate.
But I doubt either of those things happen.
I look forward to it.
Thank you.
On the flip, on the flip side, I am sad to report.
I have sent you nothing in the mail.
Well, that's okay.
I, I told you I was sending you something a while ago.
It took me about a week to get around to it.
Because my mind was not water, as you say.
But in the process of turning my mind from stone to water,
I was able to send out the thing that I said, I would send you.
It's nothing big.
Is it just a small thing?
Well, when you say it's nothing big, is it bigger than a bread box?
It is not bigger than a bread box.
Is it roughly envelop sized?
It is roughly envelop sized.
I actually had to use a, a vice to fit it into an envelope.
So it was something that was potentially like bread box size,
but you turned it into envelope size to the vice.
Now, it was about envelope sized, but just slightly bigger than envelope sized.
So I did a little bit of postal hacking, if you will, and, and used,
used the old vice and crimped it down to envelope size.
And if, if it does not get delivered, maybe it's because it got shredded
in the post office system in the mechanics, because that, that, that does happen
when, when you try to squeeze things into envelopes.
Well, I'm sure it's here, and I, I thank you in advance.
And it's, even if it's not, it's the thought that counts.
But you certainly had a, a been for a couple of weeks.
Do you, do you want to talk about that at all or not?
No, not, not at all.
I, I would not like to talk about that at all.
All I'd like to say is that I'm on the good foot doing well.
I have had an interesting couple of weeks, but it is all for the better.
And we've discussed this in detail.
And I'd prefer not to go into detail, but let's just say,
uh, life is a, is a, is a windy road.
And, uh, you go a little to the left, a little to the right, and then, uh, find
yourself, uh, around the center.
Okay.
Well, it's a wise, wise man used to say, was that, uh, Paul McCartney?
Uh, no, that was, um, on another, that was on your previous podcast.
Okay.
Well, low, low, low to the left, low to the right.
You end up, uh, somewhere in the middle.
I was probably referring to the way I would like to operate, but you know,
you have my emotional and spiritual support.
So as, as you have mine, anything, anything you need, Casper, as long as it
doesn't involve money.
No, in fact, uh, money is not.
It's something that really anyone needs, I, I don't think, uh, people, people,
people need food, they need water, they need clothing and shelter.
However, money does not necessarily, uh, I don't think you really need money.
I think, and anyone needs money as much as they need, uh, say, Bitcoin or
rubles or any other denomination of fiat currency, fiat currency, stored value,
or a form of debt, which is a great segue into what I believe, I, I don't
know if we decided on the topic, but I think we had, I think we decided on
two and you want to launch into the, the first one.
And before we do that, do we want to take care of show business or should
we save that for, for later on?
But there's no business like show business.
Okay, we'll save it for later on then.
So I think we had for two topics and with no further ado,
let's, uh, thank you, uh, listeners for enduring the 11 minute going on
three to one 12 minute intro and, uh, we're back on the rails and
Klaatu, you're out there mad props, respect.
Matt Oji, Oji of the, um, this podcast, the HPR, yes,
the HPR community, thank you for reminding me the name of the community.
This is what the HPR community, filling on the last thing I'd like to say
before we go to content is I am attempting to make things better for the
listeners.
I know my mouth breathing and nose breathing has been awful.
And I have been lazy by not editing it out in post.
And tonight I am making a conscious effort and a chemical effort, uh,
through affron on the nasal side and, um, not breathing through my mouth
on the other.
So I'm going to, I'm going to do the best I can as I was, uh,
mentioning to Casper for the, uh, before the podcast.
I don't know if I can post another, another episode where, to me,
the, the listening quality was so extremely poor.
I try not to scratch, scratch yourself, either, um, and also turn off or
down your cell phone, uh, so it doesn't make a, a, a ding or, uh, you know,
one of those things.
If you, if you could please, okay, I'll do, I'll do my best.
So you, I just heard you doing a good way to thought, way to, way to be a
thought leader there.
So Casper, what's our first topics tonight?
Well, I think the thing on everybody's mind right now, uh,
and, of course, this podcast won't be uploaded probably for another month.
But, uh, today, today is November 15th, 2007, or sorry, December 15th, December 17th.
Yeah.
Where's the time?
Where's the time?
It's, it's ephemeral.
Um,
but it's a time, it's a, yeah, timely topic.
Uh, net neutrality or net neutrality, yeah, it was past, they, they passed net
neutrality and they, they got rid of net neutrality.
Okay.
So do you want to, you want to explain that a little bit and did you, we didn't, we,
we're going to, we're free forming it here, folks.
So, and that will be a surprise to each and every.
Do you want to do a little explanation about net neutrality?
Sure.
I'm, I'm, I'm going to go happy to, I'm going to do it soon.
Everyone listening knows, but let's not.
So, oh, you're getting all with it, all right?
Yeah, Gerald gets really upset if, if we don't stay on topic.
Well, he's just a producer.
He should care about how the levels look and that's about it.
I know, I know.
I, yeah, I was talking to you, Gerald.
That's right.
I am.
Okay.
You've, you've got the, uh, the bad clone of Gerald.
I've, I've got the good clone.
Well, it's only one.
Uh, not neutrality neutrality.
So, yeah, we met neutrality the way I describe it to some friends.
And I, I think this is something that, uh, pretty much anyone could relate to.
So, um, what they're going to do is take the internet and it will,
then the internet will no longer be the internet as you know it,
where you can go to any site that you want to in most countries.
Um, in most countries, there are no blocks or barriers, uh, with the
exception of China, soon to be Russia and maybe even in the US, uh, to a unknown
degree, but you can go anywhere you want.
Uh, what they are going to do is make your internet package no longer just
about speed or the amount of bandwidth you're using.
It, they can now tear access.
So let's say I've got a Netflix subscription.
I pay $8 a month for that.
Oh, well, if you want to watch Netflix with your internet, you have to get
the premium internet package that allows for streaming of Netflix,
which starts at $99.99 a month.
Um, oh, you, you want to watch you porn or porn hub?
Oh, that's, that's our extra premium with special features.
So that starts at $139.99 a month instead of, oh, I mean, who doesn't?
Uh, and that's, that's the easiest way that I've been able to explain it to
friends and family.
So if I, if I think if I understood correctly, because I've never heard of this
net neutrality before, let me break down what I heard into two, two factors.
So it's about whether or not a, the net is, quote, unquote, free.
I say quote, quote, cause free means different things.
But in this context, free in terms of access to content, um, or whether that
content is filtered by a government or NGO or internet service provider or
other entities.
So I think the example you used is in the United States currently or
historically, we have fairly unrestricted internet access to sites, certainly
within our own country and across our borders.
North Korea on the other hand probably might be the, the whipping boy example of the
most restrictive where there is effectively an entire internet that is entirely
run by the North Korean government that has practically nothing on it.
And are you, are you mixing up North Korean China?
No, North, North Korea is a totalitarian state that's joined, that's attached to
South Korea and does not have, what, what, what are we up to?
Three, four billion people living in it?
That would be China.
North, North Korea has an internet.
It's just a completely state controlled internet.
China has a less state controlled internet.
Um, and I, Russia, I have no idea where the deal is.
So yeah, China, no, they, Russia's going to, uh, ban VPNs in their country.
So you can, you can no longer VPN over to Russia, uh, if you use a VPN, um,
and they are also going to ban, I believe they're putting in a firewall similar to China.
Okay, so I believe that's a goal.
That's, so that, I would describe that as the, is the left hand of the conversation,
which is restricting access to destination sites, restricting access in terms of types of
traffic that can run over it's like whether encrypted traffic of certain types,
such as VPN as you just referred to, is allowable, uh, where it's allowed, um, things of that nature,
things that are content related, the right, and then if I heard you correctly,
the right side of the conversation is tiered, uh, tiering access based on, uh,
bandwidth and, uh, on throughput and capacity throughput being how fast you go,
capacity of being how much you use, um, we already have that, that, that's already been allowed,
that's already an effect.
That was, well, that was, what do you thank you for pointing out one of the points I was going to,
that's nothing new. But it, it, it seems to be in the minimal research I've done,
the two, the two points get intermixed and confused and co-mingled, almost in every conversation
that's being had by plebs, meaning, you know, politicians or, you know, people who aren't
subject matter experts on it, but they, they, they both pop up in the net neutrality conversation,
and they're the main two points that I'm aware of that pop up in net neutrality. So there's the
paying more for more bandwidth piece of it because, and well, I guess we'll get to the arguments,
I'm assuming we're leading to a pro and con debate here, uh, the content access, freedom
piece and the, how much you pay, pay more to go faster, pay more to consume more
piece, but you understand why I'm segregating that. No, no, no, you, you, that was just the left hand
argument. So what, so what's the right hand argument? You're, you're just, you're just talking about
being charged for bandwidth, the amount of, so maybe you have, you've, have a 50 gigabyte
cap on your, on your home internet connection. And once you go over that, you pay more.
That's already in effect for a lot of companies. Yes, true. And, and you're also, you're also
talking about speed, the more you pay, the better speed you can get. That's also already in effect.
Yes, true. So net neutrality has nothing to do with those things. Okay, those, those come up in,
and practically every popular net neutrality conversation you have, the, the pay to put the,
because net, every popular conversation inevitably, just as you described in your own description
of it, drags netflix into it. Because why? Because they consume a radically disproportionate amount
of internet traffic, or its users do, right? So netflix, I mean, to dig down into that one for a
second, netflix, last time I checked, is an eight billion dollar company. They consume,
an outrageous, when you can see, when you consider the front and the back end, I mean, the
consumption side from their sides coming from their content, pushers from their content cloud,
and then we at home are pulling their content. But I've heard everything from 20% to 35% of the
US's internet traffic. And if either of those numbers are correct for an eight billion dollar
company, that's insane. I mean, that, that very much to me, make, to jump right into the argument,
makes the point that there has to be bandwidth hearing payment. Because the internet, I mean,
internet infrastructure doesn't grow in trees. Someone has to build it and maintain it.
It's, it's, it's not like the power of the internet, just like the power of all technology grows
exponentially. And it's a tax payers paid for what the internet is running on. It's,
it's not like we've already paid for that infrastructure. So who, here's a, here's a,
here's a simple question that I think kind of gets to part of the core of the argument. So is
the internet a public infrastructure? That is what people against repealing net neutrality believe
that the internet is now a more important infrastructure than television or phone service,
or you know, sometimes even electric or gas, if you're looking for a job, if you're trying to
say get an Uber or a lift, if you're trying to order a pizza, you, you may need the internet for
this. Exactly. In, in, in some instances, and that is the argument for keeping that neutrality,
but also for municipalities running their own infrastructure and building their own internet,
providing net neutrality through their municipalities, which will make these big companies,
Comcast, Verizon, compete with those municipal broadband networks.
All right. So let me, I guess, phrase the question again, you know, slightly different way. So
if, if the, so let's talk about the United States, since we're talking about the infrastructure side
of it now, we're not talking about the content piece of it. So if, how do I want to put this
simply? So I, I mean, I agree that the internet is critical, what we historically in America
considered critical infrastructure, which would be highways, bridges, it's electricity.
It's also tax taxpayer funded. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's in part taxpayer funded.
Now, if you're talking about the internet, you know, was it, was it not created by DARPA?
Is DARPA not a government agency? Yeah, but the, the cost of developing
ARPANET in 1969 compared to the cost of building network and maintaining network infrastructure,
there's, there's no, there's no connection. That's like the difference between the
patenting something, you know, as proof of art, and, you know, actually building something based
on that concept. So just because, just because a government agency, a, a, a skunk works one,
that that created the template for a resilience network that was not based on any one backbone
that, that doesn't make it public domain. And the, in taxpayer dollars in the, in the vast
majority have not paid for the infrastructure that the internet runs on. That's paid for by
Google, that's paid for by phone companies, that's paid for by internet service providers,
it's not paid for by taxpayers. Phone lines, I believe, were in large part taxpayer funded at
a time. Yeah, but okay, just, just like electricity, the telephone lines, and remember,
it wasn't that long ago that all of the internet was run over telephone lines.
Yes, it wasn't that long ago, but the, the amount of bandwidth that can, runs over the internet,
in which I guess would be one way of describing the size of it has gone up many, many orders of
magnitudes since then. So yeah, it wasn't that long ago, and in some places in the country,
you still can't get anything but a dial up line, which of course municipalities and Googles,
and everyone else are trying to fix by having balloons doing Wi-Fi and stuff like that.
But I mean, I'm not kidding, isn't that one? Isn't that one of Google's things?
You know, and good, and good on them, right? So that's the point. Yeah, good, good, good on that,
because when you use, and when you actually connect to some Google or Facebook balloon,
you'll find that your choices are very, very limited, as far as where you want to go. Of course.
So, and those are, well, one, it's in other countries, so it was not subject to the net
neutrality regulations that we have in the US, and two is exactly because of the point that you
raised, it's because it's their own infrastructure that they built completely independently on their
own. It had nothing to do with taxpayers. Right. Now, when a company decides, I agree with you.
So when a company, that that's the motivation there, and when a company decides to
build some infrastructure, it's up to them what provisions they associate with its use.
Back to the core question, and it comes down to a historical one, which is why I think
our legislators and everyone else is choking on this, is historically in America,
when critical infrastructure becomes critical infrastructure, it becomes regulated.
That's, I mean, we've seen that, with the phone companies, it becomes highly regulated.
Oh, now it's deregulated. Okay. So now it's regulated again. Oh, it's too big. You know,
we have to break it up. There's like a pendulum that goes on, and you've been alive
for part of it. Right. I mean, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, let's not bring ages
them into this. Come on. Well, I mean, it's just a number. Let's just, let's just say, I mean,
at least at like eight or nine, I could remember the, the, the making of the baby bells.
Right. So before then, there was a huge fucking phone company, and they said out monopoly,
and anti-competitive, air-go prices, too high service, too crappy, but break it up and regionalize
it. And then, okay, that goes, that trots along for a while, some of the laws change, and what
happens is you wind up with consolidation, which, and you, you wind up with a, paying a lot more
for a lot less. Yes. And I, indeed, that's the, you know, that's the nature of, of trust and,
and one of the natures of trust and anti-trust monopolies. Yeah. So, so here's, here's, I guess, a key
question. Oh, speaking of monopolies, I, I think it is worth mentioning, because this is very
topical to net neutrality, and it happened nearly in, in, in complete synch, synchronous, synchronicity,
but Disney bought Fox. Oh, yeah. There's there's huge correlate. I mean, that's, I can't say if
that's the prime motivator, but it's a huge influence. It was like, oh, net neutrality is repealed,
and oh, by the way, we're doing this. Oh, wow. Well, the media, it's member of that pendulum.
It's consumption, growth, consolidation, consolidation, consolidation. Who, who was it five,
who was it five years ago? Comcast and AT&T and who was it AT&T and Comcast? I should know this,
but I, what are you talking about? I'm talking about the big merger that got approved three or four
years ago. And, you know, the cable provider side of it, who I think was Comcast was like,
no, that, that was time Warner. Okay. However, but, you know, their big wigs are on the,
the tube saying, yes, this is how, maybe it was Comcast and NBC.
Maybe I should, this is, you know, this is the benefit of, of, there are so many mergers and so
little time, so many mergers. So, such little time. It's like, well, all the mergers happened
first or the singular. And also, one more note, I'm a novelist. I prefer to play as the dog.
But the, the guy, the, the head was the hot, some hot shows on the news saying,
do you know the mergers happening? And basically, we can't meet, we can't tell you that it means
internet prices will go down. We can't tell you that it means they'll stay the same. We can't
tell you how much they're going to go up. Right. So, the brainchild, or not the brainchild,
but the, the catalyst to bring this about, no surprise, everyone should be familiar with the
Ajeet pie. I went to the store to buy an Ajeet pie, but they were all sold out. I don't know what
that is. What is that? Ajeet pie is the name of the guy who is the head of the FCC.
Okay. Okay. That's a good one. So, now you may get the joke if I went to the store to buy an
Ajeet pie, but they were all sold out. You might get it. Okay. Anyway, this is, this is the guy who came
from the media company. He, he, he was a, he was a Verizon lawyer. Okay. And then he became the head
of the FCC. And he's repealing that neutrality. And everybody pretty much knows as soon as he's
done doing that, he's going to go back, start working for Verizon again. And I, I, I think he might
get a little bit of a, a little bit of a race, maybe a bonus. Maybe a, who knows what he's going to
get? He might get his own island. So, is it Larry Ellison style? Is it fair to say that
your belief in which case I would agree with you is that this is all happening to be self-serving
in the interest of corporations. And that is basically to their benefits and to the consumers
disservice. That would be my belief. Okay. Because that's kind of the crux of the argument. And
that's what you think is going to happen now based on the repealing of whatever protections have
been put in place. These are the type of things that would be wonderful to know. Had I studied before
we decided this was going to be the topic. It's a, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a clear cut case of
monopolization, price gouging, and continuing on this path of the race to the bottom where you have
zero, you have, you have one choice. And it's, it's, you buy from the one company that gives you
service in your area, or you don't get service in your area. There are some places that literally
just have one company serving them. This isn't going to increase competition. This is going to
decrease competition because the only people that are going to be able to play in this new arena
are the companies that are owning content already like Comcast owns NBC, right? You've got,
you've got Disney who I believe owns, well, they own most of the cable company network
because they own ESPN and basically when you pay for your cable bill, the money all goes to
Disney first because ESPN is the most expensive cable channel and then Disney distributes the rest
of the money to everybody else. It's, it's a weird, weird system. So if we agree that this maneuver is
to be self-serving the companies and we're expressing our position that it's going to further
limit choice, I guess to move beyond that. How, how do we get around that? How do we fix that? How
do we mitigate that? How, how are we as members of the, of, of the hacker public radio community?
What are we to do? No, that's a, what a, what a great question for our audience.
And I, my, my thought and I was actually just watching the Jimmy Dorsho
which I strongly encourage people to watch. Jimmy Dore, they were talking about, like I was
talking about earlier municipalities, apparently in Calahuga, Tennessee or Chattanooga, Tennessee,
they have free internet there. It, it's great. It, everybody loves it. You can get internet anywhere for
free. But most people never hear about this kind of thing because that's not the kind of thing that
the media wants to report. That there's a successful municipality that runs free internet and,
hey, there's free internet in the city. In Colorado, they're also doing that as well.
But what we can do on a community level, I think, is try to invest in networks.
It's, it's the proverbial, the proverbial, you know, tin can and string.
There's a lot of do it yourself projects that, that, that you can do.
It's similar to the way Comcast will broadcast an Xfinity signal that anyone with Xfinity can
just pick up on, except instead of that, we create one that's a community based one that is not
related to a brand or anything. It's a free, open internet that anyone can jump on to.
So somebody, somebody has to have built a device or a platform that's doing that.
It seems so obvious. Yes, there are platforms. There's a lot of people trying to do this.
And a lot of times they'll characterize it as, you know, internet 2.0 or 3.0. I know that there was
an internet 2, which was a high bandwidth thing between universities. But it never, I guess, caught on.
I don't really know what the stats of that was. But yeah, and I've known people even growing up
that built their own networks in small neighborhoods. And they were successful, small business owners.
And they made a good amount of money and they were able to, you know, provide access for a lot of
people that might not have been able to afford access otherwise. So it's possible. You can do it.
It sounds like in our show notes, we need to have some links to, since we're not referencing them by name
right now, we should have some names to some of these projects that are getting off and maybe some
links to how we can support them. Because at the Alien Brothers podcast, one thing I'll say is that,
you know, we're talking big ideas here. And we'd love to, we'd love to get into every specific.
I certainly would love to get into every specific, but I can't do it. I'm an old man, okay.
It takes too much time. I think we're already pushing the limits on Hacker Public Radio
with our two hour long podcasts. Yeah, well, that's one envelope that might need to
continue to be pushed. You know, as a wise man once said, and his name was Chris Farley,
you can push the envelope. Just don't lick it.
So with that, do we have, do you think we have more on net neutrality or should we take a break and
let that simmer with the promise that we'll do some some show noting in that as it stands today,
things are going to get more horrible when it comes to choice. Everything.
I mean, I'll just, just so I can contribute something to this conversation. And we very much
because this is Hacker Public Radio and because this is the Alien Brothers podcast, we very much
are looking forward to the feedback that will certainly come because we need it. Our growth has been
exponential, exponential. Well, that's what I want, that's what I do want to get to that. That's
what I kind of meant about a minister. Did you know that negative four times negative four is
16, positive plus 16. Yes, exponential growth here, folks. All right. I say we go on to the next
topic. I'm ready. Are you ready? Do you need a break? Yeah, I need, I need a break, but I'd like to
just, I'd provide just a few data points to this thing before we, excuse me. Oh, oh, no.
Yeah. Was that the thing you said you weren't going to do at the start?
I said I wasn't going to mouth breathe or make excessive nose noises.
I'm just taking the piss chap. So in my particular neck of the woods,
I have it better than most when it comes to network access. Not in my dwelling specifically, but
here we have here being Arlington, Virginia, the the Boston. Oh, God. Did you tap it? Did you tap into
some dark fiber? Did you split some optical cables and get in on the on the ground floor on some
deep, deep deep deep dark net? If I had all the things I got in on the the ground floor on
or all exploding now and are all things I've sold. So I have a like Homer Simpson. I have an
uncanny ability to to realize just when things are going to peak like the pumpkin market always
peaks just around the end of February. So all those pumpkins you buy before Halloween,
you're going to want to hang on to them. In February, that's when the price is going that's
the time to sell. I'm guessing you didn't see that episode of The Simpsons. But here in Arlington
did that work? Were I not living in this dwelling? My internet options would be outstanding. Now,
of course, this is the first ring of suburbs outside Washington, DC, a lot of tech, a lot of
young people, a lot of government, a lot of DARPA. In fact, I live five blocks from DARPA,
since you mentioned that here in the Boston neighborhood of Arlington. So we have Verizon.
I think you're a clone. I think you might be a clone. I might be being showed right now.
We have Verizon Fios. We have, of course, whatever is the satellite thing now, dish. Is it still called dish?
There's a gas. The one that runs on Hughes or on Echo Star, I should say. We have
Xfinity. So those are the wired options we have. I don't have it in my, all three of those options
in my dwelling because I'm in a building that was built in the 50s. So I don't have Fios,
and I don't, they don't just as policy allow us to put dishes up. So I do have it. Can you just run
a cord over from DARPA? It's like five blocks away. It's there would be, it would be so easy.
But I'm sure it's, it's possible. It's possible. Man, do the old
Dale Gribble just sneak in through the window, plug it in. It's amazing. It's amazing to think about
just what's going on over in that building and just like so close. They're probably thinking
the same thing about what's going on in your building. There's no question. I mean, there's no question
about it. But then on top of that, we have a relatively good AT&T signal in the northeast corridor,
especially here, not in this building again specifically because the walls are made of lead paint.
I think the, whatever brick or whatever was underneath them as long since eroded. So it's kind of
just the lead paint fossil. So I'm kind of in a Faraday box as far as that, although apparently
it's working well enough for us to communicate right now. And you know, we get other, you know,
and I mentioned that as an option because I, I hot spot with AT&T, you know, on those
occasions when Xfinity's having a bad day, although I should say service is, is, is quite excellent
for the most part. But I'm paying the Xfinity tax, of course. For I get, I have their fancy internet
and I can't tell you what that means in terms of committed consumer bandwidth, but it's like
130 bucks a month with my fancy pants content plan, which isn't all the content, but it's like
most of it. So I am on the very privileged end. I just have to say not to be elitist, but just
saying I'm on one end of the spectrum, whereas you might not have as many choices and Chattanooga
might have fewer. But then again, you know, we're in the nation's capital and we're important.
The nation couldn't live without us. We're American and we're exceptional.
American exceptionalism. What options do you have short of running cables? And by the way,
in our dorm room in Virginia. Comcast or Verizon. That's it. And well, or or or or satellite.
Oh, yeah, or satellite. So you're and and nobody does anybody really like Dave Matthews that much?
My one of my groomsman's wife is a huge fan of the DMB.
Yeah, I'd I'd a buddy that was a fan of the cover band of Dave. Oh, I don't even know. I
Oh, it's sad. And yeah, once satellite and it's like, what? Come on. I got it. I got it. Jump in the
shark. I got that that's that's the song that jumped the shark. I got the reference. I am not
ashamed to admit I saw the Dave Matthews band on at least two occasions at South Main Cafe in
Blacksburg, Virginia before they exploded because they probably played there easily
twice a month. And because they would just do the Charlottesville, Blacksburg, Rads, Radford,
JMU, you know, Central, Western, Virginia, Circuit. And hey, bra, bra, you going to the concert,
bra. I don't, I mean, we just went because the mom that the chicks were into it and they would
get loaded and you'd hope, hey, to pick up some, you know, commit some unintentional felony of some sort,
you know, well, well, that's that's definitely something that we do not officially endorse here
on the alien brothers podcast. No, we don't. And we do not endorse felonies nor do we endorse
misdemeanors or crimes of any nature. Yeah. And in the nature of disclosure, I have a misdemeanor,
but that, but I, I'm not looking for more. As I mentioned, I think in the first episode,
I don't, it's been a while since I've been on the inside. I don't want to go back.
In the nature of full disclosure, I used to have a mis, but I was not a fan of her demeanor. So,
I kicked her out. Wow. You have the skills to pay the bills. You're just like coming at it. I
don't know what direction you're going to come at it next. That's, that's what I do. What you did
right now, which is kind of like flying out of the sun. What could happen next is just like,
you could come out of another dimension. Burn and white hot, sir. Burn and white hot. I wanted to
give you the opportunity to do a alien brothers podcast. Well, thank you. Since you got off,
since you got off of work, thank you. And, and I knew that your text messages were a little too
concise. And I had a feeling. I had a feeling you needed some, some love, even if it's tough love.
And I, I've listened to some, some of our episodes in the past. And I realized I can come off as a
jerk. And I, I get that. But it's just to motivate you. It's, think of me as the marine saying,
you know what? Just, just take it one step farther. I would say if anything, you're weighed,
weighed to lacks on my BS. But no, I mean, if, if, if people were, you know, more,
less tolerant of my bullshit, I think the world would be a better place. So yeah, don't stop by any
means. And, and don't stop. Get it, get it. And to add some color commentary. The, so
as the, the loyal alien brothers listener, well, I don't know how much we've talked about this.
In my early recovery job, I work at a Harris teeter as the backup scan coordinator. So I work,
I work at a grocery store. I have a 20 year career in IT and a couple degrees. And I'm working
in a grocery store. And there's nothing wrong with working in grocery stores, by the way. But
that's what I'm doing. So my work doesn't follow me home at the moment. And yeah, it's as a,
as a peon in a grocery store, it's, it's like you're supposed to not even probably have a cell phone
on you, much less looking at it. So I have to go on a break or something. And at, at that point,
I'm catching up on whatever however many number messages. So yeah, you're getting probably some
pretty opposite of the verbose type of shit. And I'm at work, which is probably means I'm not
in it. Yeah, I'm probably not overjoyed at the moment. So you kind of know how that goes, right?
I know how it goes. I just get concerned when I don't get a text message less than a novel.
I know I know something's not right on on Rutiger's side. So I have to sometimes give
Rutiger a call. I have to say, Hey, are you okay? Is everything okay? Are you on a good path?
Are we on track? Or is everything good? And I have to say within the last year,
everything has been good. And I'm very happy about that. Are we coming up on a year now?
Uh, in terms of my sobriety day, yeah, it'll be January 28th, 2018. So 11 months coming up this month,
the big 12th. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Gerald. Thanks, Gerald. No, thank you, Gerald.
Yeah, he was, he was clapping. He's, he's sweet. Have you ever talked to anyone professionally about
how people that don't exist that you think do? What, what are you talking about?
So should we, no, uh, do you want to have, should we have a little fun non-sequitor before we
rock it into the second topic? And I do believe that our listeners do deserve a break.
That's the sound of the break. Do you want to, do you want to, would you, would you,
we'll be right back? Would you like Casper and Rutiger on the Alien Brothers pod?
Take them on a sonic voyage, Casper. Right after this break. Here, here.
I got a feeling, I got a feeling, the skies, the bodies,
getting that stuff all day. If I don't give, if the numbers that's already stood
don't come out right up, it's going to be a bad time for me, a bad time for me.
I got up in the evening, got up in the evening, who's falling down the hill,
who's falling down my hill. Got a hanging nose, has bags up, we muck them up, we muck them down.
I got a learn to get some mittens, I got a learn to get some mittens,
because I got a hang nose tag, said the ice cream section of the store.
My hands hurt.
This is the Alien Brothers podcast. This is the Alien Brothers podcast with Casper and Rutiger.
Thank you for bearing with us during that short commercial. That was, I hope, that was all,
I cannot wait to hear that. I can't wait to hear more of that band. What was that, I believe
that band was called Skinny Kitty. So thanks to Skinny Kitty for submitting that. That was,
Skinny. Wow. Okay. All right. Do you know that? Skinny, that's it. Okay.
We need to submit some more to us. Skinny Kitty was the name of a band that appeared in a season
of MTV's The Real World. Did you know? Well, we better, we better let them know that they can,
they can, they should probably change their band name. I don't think Skinny Kitty's are aware of
that. I don't think it, no, they weren't Skinny Kitty. It was Stick Kitty.
Okay. So Skinny Kitty is still still going strong. Well, now I got to check out Skinny's
Skinny Kitty on SoundCloud. Well, we'll be providing links with the show. Is there actually a Skinny
Kitty? Not with that kind of attitude. There's a Skinny Kitty tea house on Facebook. There's a Skinny
Kitty Farms there's no. We. I'm looking up Skinny Kitty. And order Skinny Kitty band. Skinny Kitty
band. That's what I must, must only believe Skinny Kitty. Skinny Kitty. Skinny, Skinny. Skinny,
Skinny, Skinny. Skinny Kitty in civil ray play 2030 Dundas West. That's about. How about,
How about the Skinny-Kinnities?
Sorry, sorry everyone.
Yeah, I'm so gassy.
Skinny-Kinnities.
So before our second and final topic,
would you like to give some love?
We're coming up on the hour mark here
at the Alien Brothers podcast.
We're keeping it live, keeping it fresh, keeping it real.
Yes, would you like to give some updates
on any of our social media activities,
any comments, any shout outs to other podcasts
on the network?
As always, I would like to point our loyal listeners
to GNUWorldOrter.info, which is Klatuz homepage, where
he has his own podcast.
And he hosts his own stuff there,
what he doesn't post on Hacker Public Radio,
or maybe he posted on both his own homepage
and Hacker Public Radio.
I don't actually know, but he has a following.
He has a following.
In other words, we need to be listening
to more podcasts on Hacker Public Radio.
In other words, you need to listen to more podcasts
on Hacker Public Radio.
I have listened to a good number.
And I am a fan.
I'm a fan of the work.
But you can only name one.
No, if I loaded up the schedule, I could name a few
that I've listened to.
OK.
So topic number two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two.
Oh, wait, wait, wait, hold up.
I would just like to point out, I believe
this was posted on the Alien Brothers Twitter
and Facebook today, because that got some action.
I'm just going to reach you this.
This is from Ron Swanson.
If you're not familiar with Ron Swanson,
he's a character on Parks and Recreation.
And he's a bit of a meme.
And if you don't know what a meme is,
then you're not listening to the show.
So it doesn't matter.
It says, dear Ajit Pai, FCC, or at Ajit Pai, FCC,
I noticed your pyramid of greatness
and thought it felt strange in your office, given your stance.
So I went to see Ron Swanson to ask
if he cared away in.
And he dictated the below to me, American flag.
This is what Ron Swanson had to say.
I'm flattered that your pyramid of greatness has inspired you.
I will remind you that the top category is honor.
Sadly, based on your duplicitous handling
of the net neutrality issue, and the way
you are willfully ignoring the public you claim to serve,
I feel you may need that term defined, which means,
of course, that you don't have it.
Thanks, Gerald.
So that wraps up our net neutrality and repealing
of net neutrality.
OK, on to the next one, related.
I think so.
What do you think?
I think it's related.
I think there's a key feature in the topic
that is represented by things such as legislation,
that favors the widening of a gap
between the ultra wealthy and the ultra poor,
which was something that happened in Rome, which was an end.
Where all roads lead to.
No, but no, they still say that, though, I know, I know.
But the topic you threw down was basically about,
I mean, I don't know where you wanted to focus,
but I think it was about civilization decline, right?
Civilization decline.
No, that's a whole another category.
If we're talking about civilization decline,
we'd have to talk about the sixth great extinction,
which we are now living in.
OK, so that's a completely different story.
Can I lay it down?
So what is the topic?
And if it's why, if it's why, civilizations collapse,
keep in mind how stuff works.
Can I kick it?
Yeah, do it, man.
Lay it on.
Can I kick it?
Since I apparently don't know what the second topic is.
Can I kick it?
It's here.
Can I kick it?
Yes.
You are obviously not a fan of a tribe called Quest.
You're supposed to say, yes, you can.
All right.
So the topic, second topic, we're
talking about here on the Alien Brothers podcast
with Casper and Rutiger is the Fall of the Empire.
Ah, yes.
The Fall of the Empire.
And this is topical, not only because of the repealing
of the FCC net neutrality or the rolling out of net
neuterality, it's topical because a new Star Wars
came out this weekend.
So empires are, they're striking back.
And we also feel that they should be brought to a swift decline.
At least that's my feeling.
There is actually a rating system that
is used by some international agency.
I haven't heard the topic yet.
The topic is the decline of the Empire.
Which what Empire?
You pick it.
OK, you're saying empires in general.
The decline of the Empire.
I mean, really of any empire.
Who what country has military bases in every other country?
You're talking about the, you want to talk specifically
about the decline of the American imperialism.
Yeah, that's bold.
And we were going to keep this under two hours.
Yeah, yeah, we're going to do it.
We're going to do it short, sweet.
I'm going to let you do the talking.
Before you do that, are you going to define Empire for our listeners?
Yeah, have you seen, if you've seen Star Wars
and you see the Stormtroopers, they're the white ones
in the big robot suits, that's the Empire.
And so they show up and they get out of their starships
and then they just start shooting people.
And that's kind of what we do.
But except we don't see it because we're not in the other countries.
Three things real quick.
And then I'll let you rant.
One, those are not robot suits.
Those are people inside of body armor
when you refer to Star Wars Stormtroopers.
Two, the definition of empire is an extensive group of states
or countries under a single Supreme authority.
And in the olden days, that authority would typically
be called an emperor or impress.
It has other definitions too.
I think that's the definition you're talking about here.
And three, if we're talking about the decline of American imperialism,
then wow, you're biting off a big one.
Remember that you're being listened to.
Remember that if you are a true Star Wars fan,
you should know very well that George Lucas created Star Wars
as a cinematic analog to the Vietnam War.
Were you not aware of that?
I've never heard him admit to that.
But I have definitely heard that.
He's wrote it as an analog to many different wars
and other contexts as well.
He pulled from a lot of different sources.
But no, I hadn't heard specifically about the Vietnam War.
So it was going on right before those movies were released.
I believe if there was a war that it was going to be focused on
or most closely resembling, I believe it was the Vietnam War.
If that's the case, who were the Viet Cong in the Viet Cong in Star Wars?
They were the rebels.
They were just defending their country.
A lot of the Viet Cong thought that the Americans were French or Japanese
because they had been fighting people trying to take over their country
for generations and generations.
And so it was the Japanese.
And then I believe it was the French.
And then it was us, my dad said that when he was over there
that a lot of the forts were old French forts that they'd stay in.
Indeed.
So in Apocalypse Now Redux, the extended edition of Francis
War of Copa's masterpiece, there's actually a whole deleted sequence
where as they are going up into the heart of darkness
up the river where they stop at a French plantation that's a hold
that is a holdover from the French colonial period and Vietnam.
So yeah, very interesting.
I hadn't heard, but yeah, that makes sense.
I mean, that war, our involvement and that war was shutting down
as Lucas would have been thinking about Star Wars, for sure.
But then again, he was thinking about it for a long time.
So OK, the decline of American imperialism.
So go.
The decline of the empire, more specifically, the empire.
There's so many different angles we could tackle this from.
But I know we only have a short time.
And I don't want to test hacker public radio and try and push pass
the two hour boundary.
But as you said, you don't have to work tomorrow.
So you can stay up as late as you want.
So we could do a couple pods if you wanted to do a couple nice and taste
these.
OK, we'll talk about that.
We'll see how we'll see how things are.
But go, the decline of the empire.
The decline of the empire.
So the reason this relates to net neutrality
is because I've seen, as I've been growing up,
as I've developed, as I've, as technology has evolved from iPods
with no display to iPhones with apps and Facebook and selfies,
and Instagram, and Insta chats, and Insta messages, and what's that?
And all these super cool, fun things.
Look at me, look at me, look at me, I'm, look at me.
Are you looking?
Look at me.
OK, people have become so self-obsessed and narcissistic
that they're doing things like making their own podcasts.
Can you believe that?
It's like, come on, leave it to the professionals.
Jesus.
OK, that was a little bit too meta.
But people are so, so into their phones.
They're looking at their phones all the time.
They're with family.
They're at the dinner table.
They're on their phones, on the phones.
Now, let's repeal net neutrality.
And maybe, just maybe, that will wake up some of the American public
that has been put into a comatose days by all these apps and games
and things, and you got to click, and you got the dopamine feedback
effect, and you got to keep checking your phone,
see who posted on your last message,
and then you got to see if somebody liked it,
how many likes did you get, and then you got to check it again,
and then your phone goes off, it goes ding,
and then you got to check it.
You know what I'm saying?
Do you feel me?
Are you suggesting that by net neutrality
being weakened or removed, therefore making it more
expensive to participate in the opiate
that is social media that basically citizens
will have to wake up and do other things
like realize the world that they're living in?
Yeah, they might actually have to go outside.
And this is something that was touched on in an episode
with clad two and other members of the HPR community.
They were talking about how to build grassroots movements,
and the first step is going outside, meeting your neighbors.
If you live in in suburbia, a lot of people
don't even know who their neighbors are,
where back in the day, everybody knew who their neighbors were,
and if you didn't know your neighbors,
you probably couldn't get by.
Yeah, if you didn't, or you ran them out of town.
You know, like, can I borrow some sugar?
I am your neighbor, you know?
They are an egg or milk.
That was a thing.
People did borrow, and people depended on each other.
It's the social fabric that keeps us together,
where a tribal being, we need people around us
and we've been put into this matrix, if you want to call it,
and this kind of starting to pivot to the big one
that we had talked about, but I don't want to go that far.
I just wanted to say that I think people
have been so centered on technology
and just looking at their phones and looking at their phones.
On Jimmy Doer, for example, he was talking about,
could you imagine if they made a drug that made people
just look at their hands all the time?
Like, imagine if there was a drug that was just taking the world
by storm, and everyone was just looking at their hands
for no reason.
And that's essentially what it is.
It's ridiculous.
I think it's horrible.
Well, it's social media obsession is frequently
considered what's called a process addiction, which is a...
The dopamine feedback loop.
It exhibits the other symptoms, not all of them,
necessarily, of a substance addiction in terms of having
it all to your mood, having it consume, increasing amounts
of your time and other resources, anxiety or discomfort
if you don't engage in it on a compulsive basis
and process addiction.
So this would be an example of one.
So I think the analogy is apt.
So that would, looking at your hand,
compulsively, as a form of problem.
Just staring, just staring, ignoring everything around you,
running into a phone pole, running into traffic,
because you're just on this drug and you're looking at your hand.
Or on the drug or not.
You know, having the obsession to do it in order to,
you're right, in order to trigger a dopamine cycle.
So the question to that analogy would be,
is, and this is an argument that you can make on both sides,
is there any intrinsic value to social media that would take it beyond?
Now, we might still very well be addicted to it.
And I think many people are.
I think there's certainly studies that probably won't show up
in the show notes that make it.
To me, it is intuitive.
That's, many people are addicted to social media.
And all you have to do is look at, or round you,
you certainly have a friend or a family member,
or maybe yourself who'd wonder sometimes,
I'm not talking about you specifically, Casper, of course,
but someone who's listening, who wonders,
do I spend too much time, you know, engaging in social media,
or playing a video game, or playing...
If you're asking yourself the question yet,
then the answer is probably yes.
Potentially, yeah.
But, yeah.
I'd say 75%, I don't know.
That's a good number.
In terms of...
Yeah, in terms of mapping, it's to the fall of an empire,
the most, I think you have an interesting point.
One, the one I made reference to,
which is that, you know, maybe if we did not have
this distraction, you know, I use the word opiate specifically
because lots of...
Oh, opiate of the masses.
Yeah, lots of opiate wars in China.
And then we took over Afghanistan
and we pumped up the opiate production.
And then we got a oxycodone
and we got all these big...
It works at all sorts of neat levels, not to mention
that, you know, religion's also been called
the original opiate of the masses.
Anything to distract people from.
And I'm not saying that's true, you know.
And nothing against religion at all,
but just distract from something
that might be closer to real, like an understanding,
or the best understanding we can have of what's going on.
So, yeah, there's some ballot points there.
I mean, when you talk about the declines of empires,
you know, I think of the most,
probably most studied example of all time,
of course, would be the Roman Empire.
And there's bread and circuses, baby bread and circuses.
All that you talk about the bread and circuses,
the points I'm aware of that come up in,
you know, I would say a majority of the research into it,
it's been so overstudied, but, you know,
the fact, a lot of factors cascading went into
Rome's decline, but they seem to break down,
do I think, about 10 or so?
And if I remember, it's like,
decline in morals, political corruption, inflation,
military spending, because the empire was so big,
so the border by definition required more and more money.
What else am I forgetting here?
Public health was bad.
Place was filthy.
I don't remember, I can't remember what the other ones are,
but, yeah, certainly,
when it comes to net neutrality,
this might give us an opportunity or lack thereof,
it might give us an opportunity to wake up a little
by pulling the adapt, the dongle out of the back of our head,
our collective head.
Yeah, although I don't really think that's very likely to happen.
First, you got to terminate the insect and inside your head
and get rid of all that black goo.
Remember, before they could, you know,
pull Neo out of the matrix,
they had to, you know, get rid of that big insect.
Yeah, there was a tracking device.
It was a bug.
Ooh, a bug.
Get it?
Oh, no, no, no.
The thing that they pulled out of it,
it was, it was, it was, and what are we communicating over
right now?
The ether?
We're communicating over the widest spread bug
in the world.
Well, yes, we are, we are being listened to, that's true.
That's, that's why when I believe we were at the beach
and we kicked off the Alien Brothers podcast,
we were talking about the NetApp file system waffle
and all of a sudden, I got some ad for, like,
mega waffles or something, it was ridiculous.
I was like, okay, all right,
putting the cell phone in the fridge now.
All right, it's known you win.
That's, so, I don't know if you share that with me.
That's terrifying.
No, no, it's absolutely true.
I think you're looking to, are you sure you,
at the, when we did the grocery run on the way there,
we didn't buy some waffles.
We did not buy any waffles.
We were talking specifically about file systems
as a potential topic for the podcast
and we were talking about the NetApp waffle file system
and I said, you knew a lot about that.
Maybe you should talk about it more.
That's the only context that waffles ever came up.
Guarantee it.
And I got that ad while we were at the beach.
So, and the only context in which I know a lot about
NetApp's waffle file system is when you compare me to
Nihander Thalman.
Okay, well, going on the, going on the same point here,
I want to point our listeners to something
that will be in the show notes,
that just came out on December 11th.
So, that was four days ago.
Former Facebook exec says social media
is ripping apart society.
Did you hear about this?
Did you hear about this, Rebecca?
No, I haven't heard about it, but I agree.
So, this guy, Chimoff, I'm not even
and tried to pronounce his last name.
He spoke at a vanity fair event.
He was at Stanford University.
And he spoke out about the harm of social networks,
what it's doing to civil society around the world.
He joined Facebook in 2007 and became
its vice president for user growth.
He says he feels tremendous guilt about the company
he helped make.
I think we have created, this is quote,
I think we have created tools that are ripping apart
the social fabric of how society works.
He told an audience at Stanford Graduate School of Business
before recommending people take a hard break
from social media.
And there is an hour long discussion that you can listen to.
I honestly only listen to about the first,
or I actually watched the first 20 minutes of it on YouTube,
which I may soon have to pay a premium for.
Actually, it depends on if what they do with VPNs,
but we'll see how that goes.
But then after 20 minutes, you had to stop
because you had to go check Facebook.
No, actually I had to go to sleep.
I was joking, you are the least engaged
with Facebook person, I know, to your credit.
I cut off Facebook as soon as I realized
that I needed to cut off Facebook.
It was just like the elves with the three Elvis rings.
As soon as they realized their nature, they took them off.
Yeah.
Lord of the rings.
Yeah, I'm familiar with that.
I'm some listener will get it.
Yes, so yeah, it's yes, I'm not as good as Stephen Colbert
on Lord of the Rings trivia.
My friend, my good friend, and sometimes bandmate Jim
was an anthropology major at UVA.
And what he noticed before what we know of as,
I mean, as what is now called social media,
but this was in the mid 90s in college
where we had precursors to that.
You know, we had text-based virtual chat rooms.
Muds.
Yes, exactly.
Like, foot hills was one that we used
where you build your little house.
Are you surprised?
I knew that term because I'm such a young, young book.
I wouldn't know about these sorts of things.
Do I do that a lot?
Have I offended you?
There's ageism.
I'm always feeling the ageism here.
I forget, well, I forget what a huge nerd you are
that you've done so much research
and that you actually know these things.
I mean, I am 10 years old now.
So, I mean, when I was doing that, I was...
So you think.
So you think.
That's all I've been laboring under.
It's like my poor ex-mother-in-law
who found out her husband was...
Her husband was after they got married.
It was 10 years older than he said it was.
Sorry, is that to share that?
It's so terrible.
Poor woman.
I had to bring some loyalty here.
So...
Okay.
All right.
So...
Anyway, this Facebook founder, he said that he tries
to use Facebook as little as possible
and that his children, quote,
aren't allowed to use that shit.
He, uh, end quote, he does use very...
He drops a lot of f-bombs and stuff in his talk.
It's kind of funny.
But the...
He prefaces the whole talk with...
He says, basically, when you get right down to it,
if you want to boil it down,
there's 150 people who own everything.
If you want to break it to 150 people,
own everything.
Infrastructure, they just own it all.
And he says that he's what he's trying to do,
or at least what he's saying.
And he's gotten some flag from other people.
I've...
This has been discussed on other programs.
But, he said that he's trying to get,
at least into that room,
you know, get behind the curtains, if you will,
with those 150 people.
And at least he can have some bearing
or to try and have a positive influence, you know,
in that realm.
At least that's what he's telling us.
So what's he working on now to do that?
Well, he's got a social...
It's like social investing or something that he's doing.
So he's trying to use money as a tool for change.
And that's essentially the message of his...
His hour-long talk there is that he's trying to...
Invest in change.
So the most extreme example that he cites
of how social media can be a bad thing
was he...
This is a...
This is...
Okay, sorry about that.
He said the worst case that he cited was in India.
There was this fake news or this rumor,
urban legend going around that people were raping people
in some town or something.
There were some rumors, some myth,
but it was going around on social media and it caught on
and I'm sure everybody's familiar with urban legends.
I remember my mom got one.
She's like, oh, I heard if there's a car with one tail
or with one headlight out,
then it could be like a gang.
And if you flash your headlights,
then they might like try to kill you.
And that's part of the MS-13 initiation or something.
And she actually got that from like a school email,
but it turned out it was just an urban legend
that it somehow made it through to the PTA or something.
But in India recently with the power of social media,
some urban legend or myth led to the lynching
of seven people in the streets
and it was all based off of this hoax.
So that's how bad social media can get.
And that's not even to mention
all of the suicide depression,
things when people are bullied.
That's been covered ad nauseam through South Park
and through other much more entertaining platforms than this
or not the platform, I'd say show.
Sorry.
Demi to offend the clatu and the rest of the gang.
It's definitely an interesting thought.
I guess my responses are
and to finish my thought regarding Jim, the anthropologist.
He was watching us do our muds
and play early shooters like Marathon
and whatever the first one,
network shoot probably some version of Doom
that actually let you play other players on a network.
And it was like, you know, the center point
of a village historically in early times would be the fire.
It would be like the bonfire and the central point
in this particular small civilization
or this social group we have
or all of us facing each other
while facing away from each other.
He thought it was just an interesting thing.
And then we're all alone together.
All alone together, very interesting.
No, no, but I use that term if I'm in a group
and everyone's on their phones.
I'll be like, oh, hey, at least we can all be alone together.
Yeah.
Just to try to get people off of their phones
and talk with people and maybe eye contact,
maybe a little bit, maybe a little bit eye contact.
Well, that example of, you know, that fake news
that led to all that chaos in India was it?
I mean, yeah, that's, that's totally tragic.
I guess the argument would be, I'm not saying we have it
right now, but it would certainly be when you think
of the list of characteristics, certainly
with the Roman Empire that led to its decline.
Gluttony.
Yeah, sure.
But the one that's not on there is technological.
Amazon Amazon Amazon.com was not on there.
Just basis.
The one that's not on there is technological advancement.
In fact, the one that's on there is lack
of technological advancement because
money's that would be funneled into that wind
up getting funneled into military and into the segment,
the segregation, the specifically what kind of what you're
referring to regarding the 150 people
that control everything, you know,
there tends to be a tremendous wealth element associated
with that and the Rothschilds.
Yeah.
So you, it's interesting that and then you mentioned bullying
where the counter argument will be is there's
always been bullying and until there are more a
and moral changes, I mean, I'm talking back
to like apes bullying each other.
I mean, animals primates bully each other,
other animals lower mammals bully each other.
I don't even know if insects do.
But the point is, you know, that existed before.
Now there's greater communication,
which amplifies the terror associated with it.
I was bullied in mostly in middle school until
and you always will be I was fortunate.
It's Casper checking in on the Alien Brothers podcast
keeping it real.
Okay, well, just stop the story.
I was sharing there with our listeners and say,
are we going to wrap up this segment?
Was there anything else?
No, you're talking about getting bullied
and I was just bullying you for fun.
My recommendation would be that even though
you might wind up getting your ass kicked
and sometimes it will tremendously backfire
because anything can go wrong.
And I mean that in regards to absolutely anything
that can happen in the world.
But there I tend to be a believer in the truth
that when you stand up to bullies,
they at a bare ass minimum go find somebody else to pick on.
And that certainly was the truth for me.
And it came out of exasperation basically.
Like you became a man in that exact moment.
I grew a foot and a half and hairs started sprouting out
where there were no hairs before and I started smell bad
and at that moment I was a man.
And you're like, why do I smell so bad?
Oh, I have to use the stuff called the odorant.
Oh, there's hair under there.
Oh my God.
Yeah, hair where there was no hair.
Then I took it, I'll finish by saying I took it too far
for a while and beat up bullies
so I became the bully of bullies.
But they're the anti-bullie.
But that's great.
I was like the dexter of a couple bullies
but it wasn't even, there was nothing out there.
Oh yeah.
There was nothing.
The ultimate hunt.
The ultimate hunt.
My lizard brain.
And there was nothing to make it absolutely clear
that I'm not deluding myself.
There was nothing altruistic about it.
It was revenge.
It was purely self-satisfaction.
I hope it was served cold.
It felt very good at the time.
That's all that matters.
And it feels very good to think about now.
Don't go, don't go, don't go, don't go picking on bullies.
No, be the anti-bullie bully.
If you're going to get in,
if you see someone being bullied, you should do it.
You should step up, step in.
You should, exactly.
If you see something, say something.
Is that like the stop, drop, and roll?
Are there actually, there have to be like slogans
and best practices now for bullying.
Oh.
When I was growing up, they had a thing,
they had this acronym.
It was called like debug.
And it stood for something like distance yourself
from the person.
And then like E stood for, you know, explain
that you don't like the behavior.
And then like B was like, I don't know, back.
I don't know.
They had some kind of thing about like if something,
you know, if you're being bullied,
you should debug that, you know, that's,
that's what I grew up with.
Was the G since it was the last letter for gonads?
This is where you kicked the bully?
No, it was like, go tell a teacher, basically.
That's terrible advice.
Oh, yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's the reason that.
And that's why nobody took it seriously,
because they're like, yeah, right.
My, my man, no, I actually found it.
My G is better, my G is better.
I found it, I found it, it's still a thing.
Stop and debug anti-bullying program definition.
Bullying is repeated in intentional acts of physically
or verbally aggressive behavior over time
that involves a real or perceived imbalance
of social or physical power with the more powerful person
or group attacking those who are less powerful
in order to harm them by bodily injury,
discomfort, fear, slander, or threat.
Policy, any form of bullying as to find above
between students and between staff members
upon students is prohibited.
All acts deemed as bullying by administration
will be subject to disciplinary action.
And I'll, I'll give a link to this too.
Oh, okay, okay.
So here's what debug actually stands for.
My recollection is horrible, because again, we didn't listen
because you were too busy being bullied.
We were like teachers, leave those kids alone.
So phase one, stop.
But stop isn't even in debug, it's just a stop.
I don't know why.
Stop and learn what's a stop.
Right, so D is for decide to ignore.
Okay.
Okay, so if you're being bullied, you just ignore it.
Which can, it can work.
Sometimes if, if, if, because they want to react
usually bullies, they want to reaction.
If you ignore it, they're going to, they might just move on.
It's like playing dead.
You know, it's like, oh, that kid's already dead inside.
So why am I going to kill it, kill his soul?
There's a mission mission that's already accomplished.
Yeah, you know, that was moving on to the next.
That was me a couple of weeks ago.
All right.
So the next one is exit.
So it's basically, you know, decide to ignore it.
See if it'll go away.
If not exit, you know, flea.
The bee is for be calm.
I don't really know if you've already exited, I guess,
then you don't want to have a panic attack.
So you should be calm.
Yes, yes.
The you stands for you.
I message, which, which, if I'm recalling this correctly,
this means like, I don't like the way it makes me feel
when you call me names, which is not going to get you anywhere.
I thought, I thought it meant, like, use, I, like,
E-Y-E, like, look at the bully, like, if you keep this up,
I'm going to kick you in the gonads,
which is all I want to do.
Did you see Dexter?
Did you see Dexter?
You want to see him?
Okay.
All right, that's what I thought.
That's what I thought.
All right.
Turn around.
We're talking about, like, Donnie Darko, you know,
Finn and off, Finn and off the bullies picking on the girl.
No, no, no bull.
I was never participating in the beating of any boy
that didn't deserve her.
That's right.
So, I'm okay.
So, Tupac, was it your contemporary?
Because Tupac never did a crime that he didn't have to commit.
Man, there's the eight.
That's all I'm saying.
Yeah.
And G.
G is, as I told you, get adult help.
Wamp, wamp, wamp.
It is fucked up.
I can't, I can, I can remember, like, being bullied
in the halls, which has an extremely small locus of people watching.
And, like, I can't imagine, like, what it would be like to be bullied
on Facebook.
I mean, that, that, I mean, I feel something right now,
just, like, putting myself in that situation.
How about if, how about if you were raped
and the video was then put on Facebook?
And you were then bullied because you were raped.
And you killed yourself.
That's fucking, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's pretty horrible, isn't it?
To say the least, I mean, I, there are, there's the words evil
were about to cross by this.
But, you know, that, that, that, that, that, it's a whole nother level.
That's a terrible fucking thing.
It's a, it's an abomination.
But, I guess, to your point, though, yeah, everything,
including every technology can be used for good and evil.
So, so does it become a question of governance,
or does it become a question of, I think, I think,
I think to your point, into the, into the point of the former Facebook exec,
you know, there has to be a point where some sanity has to prevail.
And as a culture, we seem really bad at acknowledging that point.
But, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe is a, maybe is a species, actually.
You know, because as, as a culture, and as a society,
we are, we are consumers.
We are taught to consume.
Yeah.
From before we can speak, we can recognize the golden arches.
And Ronald McDonald.
And, you know, more kids know who that is than George Washington.
Or, you know, so it's, it's, it's part of our America fuck yeah,
capitalistic society that we are consumers, we consume.
So, that's, that's what we're talking to do.
Yeah.
There, there's a great documentary that I will also put in the show notes.
As I'm noting all of the show notes here at live, as we speak.
That's the only thing to do that man.
Yeah, it's, it's hard to go back and do it.
Because that, but that fuck with Gerald doesn't come to it.
Oh, it's all bubba.
Like, no, we're not talking to you, Gerald.
Okay.
He just has to stay in the corner.
We can't talk about it.
What was the Blair Witch here?
I thought that movie was,
it's probably rated as good as it was.
It was neither over nor underrated.
The remake or the original?
The original, I believe.
If it was made back in the 90s.
Yeah, they, they remade it and it's to me as horrible.
To me, it's just as silly as the first one, basically.
But the, the difference being that the first one was innovative
and essentially launched the found footage genre.
And I've read and learned a little about how they made it,
including, you know, the cast not being completely in on everything
that was going on, supposedly, that actually raised my esteem
for the film as a, as a cultural event.
I just didn't think it was that enjoyable to watch.
It's my point, I guess.
Okay.
I'm sure I'm sure I'll enjoy the last Jedi a lot more.
I hope so.
I had a couple of friends that went and saw it last night.
They said it was good.
They said it was good.
That's, that's all I heard.
They said it was one of the better ones.
Out of which, which is out of which ones, which group?
I don't know.
Out of all of them, I hope.
I do.
I don't know.
But there are two documentaries.
It'll take me a while to find them,
because Deutscheweller is a German broadcast network
and they have some good documentaries,
because they have a tax, a tax-based public broadcasting system,
like we used to have.
And they have two, which I've watched recently.
One's called Greed and one's called The Divide,
but they're basically about the same things.
The divide is the large, large divide between the rich and the poor,
and they also explore that societies, people in societies,
like if you're in a poor society and everybody's poor around you,
you're not going to have an issue.
But if you're living in, say, Norway or Sweden,
and everybody's well off, but you're like the only poor person,
that's when you're going to have a lot of anxiety and issues.
No shit.
Yeah, well, it's something that they...
I want to have many things that they want over.
But Greed was also a good documentary in how it centered...
a lot of the points that I've already talked about,
how we're just designed and we're programmed
from a very early age to consume,
and that people try to seek immortality by just gaining more and more and more stuff,
because they feel like the more stuff they have,
they'll be able to live on somehow.
I think that's fair.
I think that the fear of death, that's a real thing.
People are afraid of not necessarily us,
but a lot of...
I'd say most people are afraid of death,
not being here, what is not being here mean, right?
I don't know.
I've always been here as far as I know, right?
These are the questions.
This is the Alien Brothers podcast.
This is good.
This is some good, good, extra follow-up data.
I'm definitely going to be checking out these documentaries.
And I agree that...
And I don't know whether I haven't really done intensive research,
although I'm sure it has been done.
I don't know if I believe it's a species thing or a society thing,
but certainly at the society level,
societies in decline definitely exhibit the loss of compassion for people.
Absolutely.
I put that another way,
which is essentially the consumption of people.
Did you see the way that cop consumed that kid in the hotel hallway?
Did you see that?
That was brutal.
Or any celebrity that, you know,
there are egregious crimes that are committed by all people,
including celebrities.
The example I love to use is...
Josh Homi kicked some photographer in the face at K-Rock acoustic Christmas festival or holiday festival.
Yeah, but I saw that.
He was really messed up, too.
Yeah, I saw that and nobody on Earth that knows Josh Homi would be surprised in the least
that he would kick someone, including a photographer,
and in the face while performing,
and it's still fucked up.
And my opinion for him continues to drop.
I'll still be...
I haven't reached to the point where I won't listen to music,
but I mean, he's a dick.
But the...
I mean, the one I did find the easiest to use as a definition would be,
like, the Lindsay Lowans or the Terror Reads,
where it's like we are obsessed with their self-destruction.
And I make...
You know, you can tie that directly back to the Colosseum in Rome.
And it's where you literally had the Christian or whoever being consumed by a lion for entertainment.
I mean...
Celebrity chefs.
Celebrity chefs direct connection to Rome.
No, you're truly...
You're making fun, but I know you know what I'm talking about.
No, I'm not making fun.
That's the truth.
That's the truth.
You know, and not to, you know, pick on him specifically,
but, you know, the Perez Hilton style of, you know,
let's pick out every fault in our...
Hey, talk about Perez Hilton again.
Gerald?
It's the last...
I'm giving him a final warning.
Yeah, Perez Hilton.
He has a...
Gerald cares nothing for our warnings.
We wish to consume, you know,
we want to feel bitter about ourselves, but it's also in its shot in Florida,
and it's like, well, it's fucking hilarious that this privilege person is self-destructing in front of us, you know,
it's just...
It's like a base need that's being fed, and it's, you know, that's...
And that's, you know, part of the...
It's even...
The moral fiber of society unraveling, basically.
I don't like to get political,
especially because politics is just...
As Frank Zappa said, the entertainment arm of the military industrial complex.
And that's the same thing, so true.
Yeah, but just the hate watching.
It's just hate watching.
Yeah.
People are like, oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
I'm so upset about this.
Oh, do you see what tweeted this?
Oh, oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
You know, I'm like...
I'm just like, wait, at least...
At least let...
Our new woman president invade another country before, you know.
I mean, what...
Like Obama was, you know, our president for eight years,
and all the hope and change that, at least my generation, was hoping for...
You know, I saw that.
That was gone, you know, after the first four years.
I didn't vote the second time, because I didn't see any difference between Romney or Obama.
I saw very little difference between Trump or Clinton.
And it's just...
I think George Carlin put it best when he said that, you know, he does more...
Not voting, staying home.
Then by going out and voting and letting...
You know, giving any...
Any kind of...
Legitimacy to that, that will charade the selection.
Well, rampant political corruptions, definitely on the list of empire...
Empire decline.
And we have that.
And I'm not just referring to our current president.
We've had that for...
No, quite a few decades.
And I like what a Julian Assange also had a nice quote.
And I'm sure we have many fans of Julian Assange in the hacker public radio community.
But he said, essentially, Obama was a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Trump is a wolf in wolf's clothing.
And I think that's accurate.
It's...
We like to consume.
And we're happy to...
To take on any spectacle that can be...
That can be shown to us.
And that's why I was asking you the other week about what...
What do I come home and listen to for the news?
That's not CNN.
Because CNN's news cycle has become locked in 100% to what did the president do?
To say today.
And I don't...
That's not really in the grand scheme of things.
Most days, that important.
Because I think we've kind of figured out what he's about.
And I'll leave it at that.
I guess I need to go to the BBC next.
You need to...
BBC RT, Al Jazeera.
Any international broadcast service will not focus on what our president is tweeting.
And that's...
I want to know what happened around the world.
What were the big things that happened?
I don't need to know about what somebody tweeted or hear some crap about Russia.
It's all garbage.
Well, I'm glad we went into the...
We ricocheted off the atmosphere's surface of the forbidden planet of politics.
But I'm sure it would be back one of these days on the Alien Brothers podcast.
But for now, we're coming up on that magic point.
Yeah, the magical moment where we don't want to cross into the boundary of the hacker public radio limits.
We don't want to fall out of any good graces.
And we don't want to push or lick the envelope unless it's absolutely necessary.
And I think we've whipped these things to the point that we lost our listeners long ago.
But there's always another time.
There's always another time.
There's always another time.
My redemption is possible.
We'll have to see what Kletzu thinks.
I think he's got the final say.
I think he...
If he hung on then...
He's probably the only one.
He's a man of great wisdom slash potential severe illness.
But we will see.
I want to end on one note.
And I do...
No, that's not fair.
Well, let's see if you can answer it correctly.
I'm not even sure if you were listening at the time.
But let's see if you can answer correctly, Rutiger.
Okay, lay it on me.
This is a calling response.
We'll see.
Because you failed at the can I kick it?
So I'm going to try something a little bit different.
If it's hip hop, I'm going to fail.
Okay, well, it's not.
So let's just try this out.
What about the voice of Getty Lee?
How did it get so high?
I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy.
I know him and he does.
That's my fact-checking cause.
I was supposed to say that thanks.
You're my fact-checking cause.
Close enough.
Sorry.
Not I know.
I met him and he does.
I know him and he does.
Yeah.
You're my fact-checking cause.
I don't feel, feel, feel.
All right.
How do we want to wrap it up here?
This is the alien brother just a case.
This is the alien brother's podcast.
You have not been listening to it.
This is the alien brother's podcast.
You have not been listening to a different podcast.
This is the alien brother's podcast with Casper and Rutiger.
All right.
Well, I'm going to hit the stop button.
Well, I'm going to shut down.
I'm going to shut down, sign off and disconnect.
Okay.
In three, two, one.
See you.
Thanks for listening.
We'll see you next time.
Bye-bye.
Peace.
All right.
Talk to us.
Oh, should I cut the tape now?
Shut up.
Cut.
Cut the tape.
Gerald.
Gerald.
You can cut it now.
Gerald.
All right.
Just save it.
Yeah, Gerald.
Cut it.
Cut.
Did you stop the tape?
Are we?
All right.
You say stop.
Okay.
The alien brother's podcast with Casper and Rutiger.
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