2025.08.05: Stashed Cucumbers

I love you, but you don't know what you're talking about.

Hey!

We're recording the podcast!

Gun up!

Good!

Morning to you, wherever you are, because

it is!

For July 5th, 2025!

My name is Bernie Birds.

I said July is August.

Sitting right over there.

Say I'd ask you everybody.

It's Ashley.

I was thinking about the date and thinking how how yesterday I said, hey, I didn't fuck up the date.

And then I put it in the dark.

And then in the title, yeah.

I corrected the title for you.

I got your back.

I had it late, but I had it.

Around Ashley, if you can picture this, if you can.

I have put all around her timers.

You have no less than four timers.

And none of them are running

clocks around you so that to remind Ashley of like

what our time is.

Why don't I just have a goddamn calendar right in front of me?

One of the things I do, just to

give you a little hind-the-scenes look here, is as soon as I start the

theme song, playing of the drop, I switch to the front page of my iPhone.

Instead of maybe just looking at the lock screen for a second where it says

important information, like the date.

I knew that it was the 5th.

I was right about that.

Even when I went to go say it, I thought,

July 5th.

I feel like we've already done the episode for July 5th.

Wow, deja vu.

Am I right?

Heaven's all right.

Listen, busy week.

It is.

There's a lot going on.

Calvin P in the subreddit posted a really funny image of a cat like frantically working, and that's exactly how I feel.

It was

that's how you look running around the house.

You're on calls.

I'm constantly.

Last night, I'm like dragging a naked baby back, being like, He's on a conference call, baby.

You can't run through the room naked.

No, you cannot run through the room

on a conference call.

One of my favorite things from the pandemic was the guy who was doing the interview.

Was it on the BBC?

Yeah, yes.

He was doing the interview from his like work from home office, and it was about something quite important.

It was financial news, I think.

And

his little baby

opens the door and waters in the room.

And then his wife's trying to like be really low down so to be out of camera, but is clearly not out of camera, like trying to get this kid out the door.

And it's, it's so, it's so human, right?

It's just like, it's really funny.

It was a beautiful, lovely moment.

And I loved it.

I love that it happened.

And he's doing his best to get through this really important information and be professional while his kid is wreaking havoc in the background.

And who hasn't been there?

Also, the way the kid comes in the room, like the door opens and this little girl comes wandering in and she's like marching with her elbows up.

She's just like with pure confidence, man.

She's having a blast in the background.

It's always great to have little kids around because you get reminded of like just how simple life can be if you let it be.

We're coming down the stairs for breakfast today, and I've got Finn, the five-year-old with me.

We're coming down the stairs and I stop and I say, what is that?

And he goes, what?

And I go, right there.

What is that on the stairs sitting right there?

He goes, that's a cucumber.

And I go,

right.

I see it's a cucumber.

Why is there a cucumber on it?

It's like a cucumber spear.

Like it was clearly from either lunch or dinner yesterday.

And I said, why is there a cucumber just sitting tucked in the corner of the stairs?

And he goes, because I couldn't finish it when we were on our way to bed last night.

And then he picks it up and I go, you're not eating that right now.

Put it aside.

Just what that makes sense.

I'm on my way to bed.

I'm not going to finish my cucumber.

So I'm just, this is, this is, here's a flat surface.

I'm going to put it down here until later.

Stairs, by the way, the kids are treacherous.

They are.

They've got, yeah, there's this morning, we found a bunch of Lego on the stairs.

It's like, they got cowtrops.

That seems like a plot.

It does.

Right.

Are they practicing for home alone?

I don't know what they're doing.

We take away their ninja swords and look, the next day they're going to be like...

The next day they weaponize Lego.

They're adapting, Ashley.

I'm glad that people agreed with me that the UK

calling it a ninja sword is like...

It's totally inappropriate.

Are you sure that's what you need to call them?

It's inappropriate.

That's inappropriation, Ashley.

Well, I guess, and they're also specifically quibbling.

They're like, well, we're calling them that because there are certain like antique two-bladed swords of historical value that of course people are going to want to keep.

I'm like, you know what?

Those can still stab.

All the UK government is telling me is they're afraid of ninjas.

They're revealing, they're showing their hand there.

They're afraid of ninjas.

Yeah, what about King Arthur, guys?

You're not banning knight swords, I know.

Racist.

Who's afraid of a little knight?

So, what else is going on in the world?

We got a big thing going on here today.

We had another windstorm here.

Big windstorm.

So we're recovering from the latest windstorm, which was, what was this called?

Storm Floris.

And to be fair,

it was a wild storm.

There were winds up to 124 miles per hour further north in the Scottish Highlands.

It cut through the countryside like a, I can't even say what it was like, but it was like a blade that a

warrior would carry.

I don't want to get baited.

But yeah, so there's been these huge windstorms.

So there's loads of, we've got to clear a whole bunch of trees this afternoon.

She's not kidding.

As if you were bigger than that.

There's a lot of things that are down.

There's a lot of trees around here.

Every time that happens, we see it happen, like a tree falls over.

We're like, this is heartbreaking.

And everyone's like, yeah, it's a big pain in the ass to have to cut this tree out of the road.

And we're like, no, you don't understand.

That tree is older than our country.

It is.

It's crazy.

It's crazy, but it just happens here.

I did hear from somebody, though.

Somebody did say that we've always had windstorms in this area.

They do seem like they're getting stronger.

And if we lost three trees that were like 100 hundred years old,

it's like some indication, right?

Yeah.

That they haven't dealt with this sort of problem before.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's, by the way, there's like, there's like tens of thousands of trees around us.

So when I say three trees, a lot of people who live like in a city are probably going to be like, oh, you lost three trees?

Oh my God.

Yeah.

But

the biggest effect for us is probably going to be around to carry a chainsaw in the car for a couple of days.

It's a thing.

And then you just like you approach and there's a tree down across the road and you just have to get out and clear it.

Yeah, and get out there with your Makita chainsaw.

You got to be careful, though, because

you learn lessons by near death when clearing stuff because like a tree laying on its side, you're like, oh, that's okay.

I'll just like cut this limb off, not realizing that you're removing an enormous amount of weight from something that is.

doesn't look like it, but it's basically balanced on the ground.

Laying on the ground doesn't mean the same thing to something that long with that many different branches.

So you cut something and all of a sudden a big fucking thing shoots.

Like rolls over on you or something.

Yeah.

It can be a dire situation.

Could be a concern.

See those ones where somebody's cutting something and then they cut and they cut and they cut and finally the thing gives way and everything shifts and the person just disappears.

Like they get vaulted out of the frame.

Oh, yeah.

I've seen someone basically turn themselves into like trebuchet material.

Yeah, yeah, it's like a catapult.

Yeah.

We can have those in the UK.

Are we going to argue about whether it's a trebuchet or a catapult?

Right.

Right.

Because we can't keep a ninja sword in our look.

I almost said boot.

Listen to me.

I almost said boot instead of trunk.

Wow.

I had to search for the word trunk.

No, it's all in the marketing, right?

Can you call it a ninja sword or is that just a marketing term?

It's a marketing term, right?

It's just

a big blade.

At the end of the day, why go through the trouble of banning machetes, then a little bit later banning ninja swords, just like blades over 12 inches long.

Well, here's the thing, Bernie.

Blades over three inches are already banned.

So what's the deal with these things?

I don't know.

They're just going down the zombie list and making sure that no one has a plan, buddy.

I actually had a thing one time where I thought it would be helpful because of situations like we're just talking about, where I could buy a machete.

So, I bought a machete and had it shipped to the house.

And I showed a guy who helps us around the house.

I go, oh, I got this just in case we need it.

He goes, you need to turn that in immediately.

It's like, you can't have that.

You cannot have that thing.

And I said, oh, really?

He's like, no, you can't have something like that here.

But they shipped it directly to that.

It's a zombie machete.

Those are specifically made.

It was, it wasn't a zombie one.

I don't know what a zombie one is, but it was just normal.

I think they're just a normal machete, just a normal machete for clearing brush, is what it was.

But they're like, no, no, no, that's done.

You're not having that.

I assume they have to compare them to zombies because otherwise, like, people don't like it.

Let's talk.

City people, you know what I mean?

City people, right?

Don't know what a machete really is unless you relate it to zombies.

Because everyone's seen someone swing a machete at a zombie.

No one's like going out bushwhacking with a machete these days.

No one's like just going through the underbrush.

I had to machete my way to school both ways.

It's also, it's not as helpful as you think.

Have you ever tried to use one of those?

I mean, you're not making a lot of progress quickly.

No.

No.

Maybe ours isn't sharp enough.

Like that was on the guy's.

It's been through too many zombies.

The jungle explorers and they're just like chopping them.

That take a half a day to go 12 feet doing that stuff.

It's insane.

No, instant nets, burning, all the marketing.

But speaking of marketing, I was thinking about something this morning.

I was making my coffee.

And you know how you have like thoughts that aren't all, they're not entirely put together early in the morning.

And I was, our coffee machine is in the same room as like, it's really like our drinks room.

So there's like the wine in there, and then there's the, the, the bar further up with like all the, the, the liquors and stuff.

And, and there was some rum out from having a cheeky little rum and Coke.

And I was like, I wonder if I should put a little rum in the coffee.

That's an intrusive thought.

I did it.

This morning?

I didn't do it.

You want to talk about it?

Like I said, intrusive thoughts.

I didn't do it, but it's like it's there.

And you think about being cheeky because it makes you feel naughty, even though you're not going to do it.

But then I got thinking about hot-buttered rum, right?

And

I got thinking about hot-buttered rum.

And it occurred to me that when you say hot-buttered rum, I think,

that sounds delicious.

Is that what you think about?

You think that it sounds delicious?

Because when you say hot-buttered rum, I immediately think of one thing and one thing only.

Let's talk about your cable A so words.

Let's talk about buttered sausage.

What is that?

That's Gary Busey.

You don't remember the interview where Gary Busey talked about buttered sausage?

I do not.

I'd say it's so weird you bring this up that you're bringing up hot buttered rum right now and buttered sausage.

I completely interrupted with a drop here.

Sorry.

I just found out this weekend, this past weekend, that's a deep fake.

It's not even Gary Busey.

No, you're like.

I'm learning two things at once.

One, I'm learning that Gary Busey was talking about buttered sausages, and now I'm learning that Gary Busey did not talk about buttered sausages.

Let's talk about buttered sausage.

Talk about buttered sausage.

Yeah, it was some comedian.

They just did a full-on deep fake.

It was like back around the time they did the

like the Carlin fake thing.

Yeah, yeah.

I thought it was a real interview because I utterly believable.

You know what I mean?

Like Gary Busey is like a walking deep fake to begin with, you know?

That's how it is.

Yeah.

That's how he lives his life.

He lives in the Uncanny Valley.

He lives his life like a high slop.

And

I completely thought it was real.

And I just found out this week.

And I guess I'm disappointed that the guy's not completely insane.

I don't know why that would disappoint me, but

I didn't like the feeling of being duped.

And I get it a lot these days with AI.

Bring this back around to your marketing thing, where,

like, I'm watching a video and I'm just, I'm utterly shocked.

at how realistic it looks.

You take it for granted that it looks completely photorealistic.

Like it took everything else, video games, regular CGI, took everything else forever to get to the point where it was photorealistic.

The AI stuff fools me up until a certain point where it completely falls apart.

It's usually like something unfolds or like somebody goes flying off or like somebody cut a tree limb or something.

Right.

Like someone's like arms absorb back into their body.

Somebody pulls a ninja sword out while living in the UK.

Impossible stuff.

But it fools me up until that point.

I get fooled by it.

So back to my hot-buttered rum.

Brittany, have you ever had hot-buttered rum?

i don't even know what that is i mean sounds good it's i don't know it's some drink i've never had it either but here's the weird thing if you say hot buttered rum i think delicious right i've never had hot buttered rum but i think delicious and i think i figured out why and it's because butter and rum are two things that are good so why wouldn't they be good together the epic mealtimes used to always add candied bacon to their stuff i guess it's a canadian thing candied bacon i've never had candied bacon.

I feel like it's the most delicious thing I've ever eaten.

I know exactly what you mean.

I know what candy is, and I know what bacon is.

And it's like, I would never put them together, but when I hear it, I'm like, oh, absolutely.

And like butter and rum?

Why would I want that?

Right, it's like, I don't need to know the real thing.

Just call it things that I like and I'll be on board.

I was actually, I had something similar because I've been working on a water project, right?

When we're in the U.S.,

you drink water like you eat codfish and chips, right?

That's it's like it's overfished, it's going extinct you got to get it while you can do water's going extinct no no you drink flavored waters like they're going to go extinct and you have to get them now quick before they're gone you know why that is though we're invested in all sure okay but also we get access to the but also you can't help yourself right right uh and so i thought to myself i'd like bernita to have that here as well and there's just not a lot of flavored water on the shelves it's just not the same so i found these little they're like these little squeezy bottles.

And what you do is you just squeeze a little bit into your water and it flavors it up really nicely.

And I thought, if you want to get super fancy with it, you can add it to some soda stream water.

And there you go, bam, flavored water, all on your own.

It's right there.

It's going to be great.

But I fell into a trap.

The names on these little flavors are things like boost, immunity, focus,

energize.

And I sit there.

Like new age drops.

It's so, yeah, it's so dumb.

But every time I go to use that now, I sit there and I think for a minute, what do I need?

Do I need to focus?

Do I need energy?

Do I just need a little bit?

Am I trying, should I work on my immune system right now?

What is it that I need?

They're flavored water drops.

And even knowing that it's dumb, I still spend time thinking about it every time I use them.

It's a decision.

This marketing is brilliant.

What do you want?

Yeah.

Do you want to be boosted?

Do you want to be vital?

It's a valid question.

It's not like a whole bunch of vitamins.

It's just flavors.

Am I having like, I don't know, orange guava or am I having echinacea lime?

They're just different flavors.

So I was looking this up.

Butter rum.

Because butter rum to me was a flavor that was in things for a long time.

Right.

It's like you can get like a hot butter rum slushy flavor or ice cream or something.

I feel like butter rum.

was the red velvet of the early 80s or late 70s.

Like there was a lot of stuff that was butter rum.

Do you know there's butter rum lifesavers?

I said said that I said that weird.

I said that like three different words or four different words.

Butter rum.

Butter rum lifesavers.

Yeah.

Not lifesavers.

You know what?

Sounds delicious.

It is weird how the emphasis completely changed that word.

Do you want a lifesaver?

Sure.

Do you want a lifesaver?

A what?

Do I want a lifeguard here?

A person who saved lives?

But butter rum.

Butter rum was everywhere.

And then I feel like kind of like red velvet kind of came out of nowhere in the late 90s.

Suddenly, like, everything was red velvet.

Sure.

And red velvet, I feel like, has stuck around for a while.

But I also found out, too, that red velvet is just chocolate.

But they're like a shitload of red diet.

A shitload.

Probably not good for you at all.

I'm trying to think, though, what would work on me?

What's the market?

You spend time with me.

What's the marketing thing that works on me?

Oh, no.

I already, this is easy.

I already know this one.

Protein.

If you call anything like high, like high protein whatever, we have this, we have this granola in the cupboard and it says it's like protein granola it's it's not it says protein packed on it yeah it's like it's like high protein granola and you're always eating that stuff and you're like yeah protein i'm like have you looked at that have you looked at that that is not a protein based food where were we just recently i'm gonna prove your point against me here really quickly we were somewhere recently there was a biscoff

is a candy bar let's call it what it is it was a it was a biscoff bar and biscoff is kind of I told you we were on the train.

Oh, we were on the train, right?

We went shopping for train snacks.

But it said on it it had eight grams of protein.

I was like, oh, well, this is perfectly fine if it's got if it says like high, like high protein and like a little banner on the label or something.

Doesn't matter what it is, you're going to get it.

You're going to be like, yeah, protein.

Shit, I just realized too.

That's how Finn convinced me to eat that cucumber this morning.

He said there's protein.

It is true.

I will ignore every other macro if it just says it's Italian protein.

You are 100% correct.

There's, so on a slightly related note, going into kind of current events, there's a whole bunch of stuff going on with Vegas right now.

One of the big things is that you, I think you told me that Las Vegas hotels have, like, all the casinos are unionized, which is crazy.

But the other thing I saw is that tourism in Vegas is down significantly year over year, which is unusual.

But a lot of people have been talking about it and they're like, it's because the fun of Vegas is gone, right?

They like all the Excaliburs and the circus circuses, like all the weird themed casinos are gone and they've all been replaced by like the sleek, glassy, big square things that have death rays across the pool, right?

You can't even get hot buttered rum anymore.

It's the real tragedy.

It is, it really is.

And

I wonder how much of it is that they all switched their marketing from try to appeal to somebody to try

not to unappeal to anybody.

Can I put on my conspiracy theory hat for just a moment?

Do it.

If I may.

You do it.

I do find it's interesting, right as they are starting to reveal the fact that every casino on the strip has unionized.

What a coincidence.

That's a huge deal.

It's absolutely huge, especially for a town like Las Vegas and especially for an industry that's a service industry.

Right as that's about to be announced, suddenly there's all this negative press about how

Vegas is suffering.

Oh, like Vegas is in

the business level.

Yeah.

I can't help but notice that those two things came back to back.

Allow me to be a little bit skeptical when I see that.

Allow me a chance to get skeptical.

Who's going to be like, you don't believe any conspiracy?

Right.

Right.

I mean, it's, you know, it is interesting that all of a sudden, why is there so much negative press about the business of Las Vegas?

And there's a lot of factors, too, that can play into it.

A lot of things you said.

Also, people are fucking broke, which is also probably a big reason why people are starting to unionize because that's pushback.

That's true.

Right.

And so it's like, and what's going to be one of the first things to go when everybody goes broke is, let's just go, you know, to the Sodom and Gomorrah of modern America and let's go there and throw away all of our money.

And it's funny, though, like they can, they can have as many headlines as they want about how, you know, the casinos are in trouble, whatever.

I have very limited sympathy for the house because they love the phrase, the house always wins, right?

They built the entire city off everyone else losing.

So I have very limited sympathy for if they're their tourism dropping 5% or whatever.

There was always too this conspiracy that the mob was trying to keep gambling illegal because that made it more lucrative for the mob to do it, right?

And by mob, a general term for organized crime.

But here it is.

Now sports gambling is legal everywhere, online casinos and everything.

And now people just don't need to go to Las Vegas, you know, spend the money to go there if they want to gamble and that's what they want to do.

It's becoming more of a destination, kind of like a Disneyland for adults.

But saying that out loud, even that is shifting now because Disneyland is Disneyland for adults.

Yeah, it is.

It is.

Maybe, you know, if we want to tackle, Bernie, the sports gambling problem, because it does seem like the UK is really weird that

they're cracking down on on like the ninja swords and the machetes and all this stuff.

But gambling, which is a fair, like known as a fairly predatory industry,

bold statement, Ash, is all over the place.

I know, hot take, right?

It's all over the place.

Like you can't walk down a street without there being some kind of like sports betting shop.

And if we want to tackle them, all we have to do is change the marketing.

Right.

Right.

Right.

We just have to start like painting in their windows machetes and ninja swords, and they're going to be banned in no time.

Well, yeah, I mean, no, it's a really good point.

The UK isn't the least bit concerned about barely legal gamblers, right?

Because then they're just legal.

They can gamble at that point.

They're only 18.

They're not.

The really weird thing, too, is,

is this a pun that is lost on me for the culture?

You know, like in America, we have OTB, off-track betting.

We do have in some states, some like places where you can go and gamble, like in a strip mall.

Those are all over here in the UK.

The big one, the name of it, do you know what it is?

I do.

It's called Lad Broke.

Lad Broke's.

Yeah, they're telling you what you're going to be.

You're going to be some broke lad after you walk out of here.

Weird name.

It's a weird name.

Yeah.

It's like, it's like if somebody just opened, like if

like Steve Wynn opened the new empty pockets casinos.

We invested a billion dollars to shake you down at the empty pockets casino.

Have you ever urged to go back to Vegas?

I mean, every now and again, but I can't imagine being there for more than like two days now.

It's exhausting.

Conspiracy theory hat coming off here.

I did read some people who like have experience going to Vegas.

You know, this is all anecdotal stuff.

But one of the things that someone said who goes on a regular basis said, I have seen this change over 20 years.

It's just greed, uncontrolled greed, which is, it seems to be a symptom of the larger problem we've got in the world.

We always had greed.

It just like whatever kept uncontrolled greed in check just seems to be gone.

Like all those checks and balances have evaporated.

And whatever, we've got like weaponized greed now.

And that's basically what they were describing is that like the minimums that tables went up, you used to be able to do like five bucks.

He said, now it's like 20 bucks minimums that you can go for a table.

Like if you want to play a hand of blackjack, it's 20 bucks.

It's so hard to find like the lower minimums, which makes sense with inflation, but when you hear it, you're like, yeah, that's a lot to spend on a lot of blackjack.

And he also said they're just getting killed with resort fees, you know, just all over the place.

Just like every single thing, nickel and dime.

Yeah.

And even in the service industry, I was just, I can't remember the franchise or the establishment that was doing it, but it was like some big nationwide establishment that has people that serve you.

And now it's like, hey, we're adding 4% to every bill.

for

livability and,

you know, sustainability of employment fee.

And it's like, just raise your prices.

You know what I mean?

It's like, just include that.

I think tipping culture is quickly coming to an end in the U.S.

Well, it's weird when there's like, here's like a mandatory like livability or like, here's, this is like a mandatory percentage we're now charging, but also you should tip.

It is in a way, like I think we're learning this with the discussion around tariffs.

In a way,

you can have a fee that becomes so systemic in a culture, it's a tax, right?

Right.

Like a a tariff, they don't call it a tax, but it's a tax, and it's a tax on the people who are buying the things within that country, right?

And it, and people are very wise to that now.

Like they can identify those things when they happen.

In the UK, we have something called VAT, value-added tax.

It's like sales tax in the US, but goddamn, it's 20%.

It's 20%, and it's on everything.

And so, like, think about it.

All the services,

basically everything that you can pay money for, if it's like a service or a thing or whatever, there is probably a 20% tax on it.

When you say service, you mean like a guy who comes out to fix your washing machine.

Sure.

Like that.

That's 20%, not like somebody who serves you in a restaurant.

No, no, no.

Not like that kind of thing.

But there's no tipping here, right?

So I was talking with, I think, Jason about it when I was back in the U.S.

last time.

You think about it, it's so high, that individual thing, that you can't help but think about it every time you go to buy anything.

And it's lower, way lower on stuff like food.

It's a very, you can look it up.

We'll link a Wikipedia entry article on it if you want to go down that particular tax rabbit hole.

But you think about it.

I think about it all the time.

Like, when, oh, somebody quotes me, like, how, how much it's going to be to like

build a fence or like, you know, help me remove a tree.

That's a great example for today.

I need help to remove this tree.

I know I need to add 20% to whatever they're going to quote me, right?

Which is not really a thing in the U.S., except when you go places now, everywhere you go, you get your state sales tax, which in Texas is like 8%.

And then you get, depending on what kind of tipper you are, you probably pay anywhere between 18 to 25%.

So you're already paying over 20%.

It is.

So in that way, it's like, it all comes out of the same pocket, right?

Yeah.

I mean, a lot of the

tipping prices, like being able to price things low and then rely on tips instead, that's all marketing too, when you look at it, right?

They're marketing lower numbers.

So you think you're getting a great deal, but then you have to mentally add to it.

It's like when you are in a grocery store in the U.S.

and you look at the price of something on the shelf and you have to mentally add the 8% or whatever your local

sales tax is.

You just have to do it mentally and keep track of it yourself, but you see the price and you think that it's lower.

Yeah.

Right.

It's all the marketing.

Call what it is.

In the U.S., tipping is a nice guy tax.

It is a tax on nice people, people who care about other people.

There are people in America, when you talk about 20%, it's significant.

There are people in America who pay far less for their existence because

they can be assholes and they're okay being assholes and just not tipping, right?

Right.

It is, it is discretionary.

Imagine if the IRS, when they did an audit, what they did was they came in, they sat at a table with you, they put down an iPad, they turned it around and go, what do you think?

And then like kind of looked away, did like the privacy like look away.

And you're like, 12%?

Right?

That's not what a tax should be, right?

It shouldn't be discretionary like that.

Like they have that PayPal account now or whatever, a Venmo account.

Oh, yeah,

Venmo the government.

If you're like, here, I'm going to help out with your debt.

Aren't those called bonds?

Right.

Don't get anything in return, though.

Here's just like, we have a tip jar now for the United States of America.

What the fuck is that, man?

What is that?

That's crazy.

It's insane.

It's insane.

But yeah, so I'll always tip though if something is since it's got, you know, 100 grams of protein in it, though.

100%.

I'll always tip for that.

And all the tips.

Before we go,

did you read about the chat GPT?

That there was apparently an option on Chat GPT, which might still exist, and they're working feverishly to remove it, to make your chat logs publicly searchable or part of the public search.

I did.

I did.

I read that a bunch of people's chat GPT logs ended up on Google.

Yeah.

And

everyone's like, how did this happen?

The weird thing is, is like, it's, it goes back to every time there's a new technology, it's just like the old one.

We got to learn all the same lessons all over again.

Do you remember when AOL did this during the search era when they put a bunch of anonymous search data out?

Oh, yeah, yeah, wait, that was the one they put out a bunch of like, like, here's what people searched for.

Right.

Um, but they had it all there, like, but it's all, it's like, you know, we just have.

Like we have the like anonymized like ID numbers or something for the people, but it's not, you know, but it's not actually like their names.

But then people were able to very very quickly figure out exactly who the people were.

Right.

Like if you, if you have anonymized it.

Yeah, here.

This is from a ZDNet article from 2006.

Although AOL, that's America Online, had used identification numbers rather than names or user IDs when listing the search logs, that did not quell concerns of privacy advocates who said that anyone among the 658,000 users could easily be identified based on the searches each individually conducted.

and people did it right away like you're like hey what's this rash on my butt and then your next search is you know what's a thai restaurant in my zip code and if you look at someone's searches it's basically just you know a list of every random thought they've had you know it's like a train of thought but documented and so they could easily identify people based on the information or get within like 500 meters of their house.

It's pretty crazy.

Yeah.

It's pretty crazy.

Yeah.

No, I do remember that happening.

And it was one of those things like, let's not do that again.

Guess who's doing it again, baby?

Always, it's always a new technology.

People are like, oh, this is something that's on the public global network.

Go figure that someone's going to get access to this.

Here we go.

We just removed a feature from Chat GPT that allowed users to make their conversations discoverable by search engines such as Google.

This was a short-lived experiment to help people discover useful conversations.

This feature required users to opt in first by picking a chat.

So they had an opt-in, but I mean,

come on.

It is interesting because this comes up again and again.

It came up because the whole,

what was the reason?

Probably the Cold Play concert thing, that whole drama that unfolded there.

But the idea of having a right to privacy or an expectation of privacy in a public space, the internet is also a public space.

And I think a lot of people who, when they sit down.

at their terminal and they start typing away, they think they're in private because there's no people around them, but you're actually like connecting to literally every other

on the planet, you know, so that expect, but we have an expectation of privacy when we engage in some of that stuff.

You know, we hit the little sunglasses guy.

Right.

Or we, you know, we go like, look, I'm on incognito window.

Doing crimes.

This is where I go for my crimes.

Gotta do my crimes button.

I, I, excuse me, I'm on incognito.

How can Chat GPT track anything?

The funny thing about that incognito mode is that it basically keeps you from tracking anything, but everyone else.

Everyone else gets the tracking.

Right.

It's just your computer is not not tracking that stuff, but everyone else is tracking whatever they want.

You know what my biggest use case for incognito mode is?

Go ahead.

I do want to know this.

If it's if I need to see what something looks like when I'm not logged in to like to a site or whatever.

100%.

But I don't actually want to log out.

Which is a weird problem to have because I don't know what's happened in the last like 10 years, but now nothing.

Maybe because I've locked down my own security, but I don't know how I got it to this level.

The remember me checkbox on every website does nothing.

It does nothing, Ashley.

Here's every website is like, I've never met you before in my life.

Every time I get you reject cookies,

I must reject.

Can you get like some cookies?

Can I just get like a bite of a cookie?

Can I get that cookie?

What happened to moderation of cookies, Ashley?

I want moderate cookies.

I just don't want the bad cookies.

You want the cookies that have names like focus.

I want the cookies that have 12 grams of protein.

Don't care about the rest of it.

I'm not bothered by that.

What if they don't have protein, but they say they have protein?

Well, that's illegal.

Well, it has one gram of protein.

Oh, they just have like protein now with protein?

Protein-packed, yeah.

It has vitality in it.

All right.

Well, I want to say a big thank you to our marketing specialist, Jay Cordroys and Jack Debussy.

Thank you both so much for sponsoring this episode of our show at patreon.com/slash morning summary.

You feel bad for playing the Gary Busey clips now.

Now that we had a Debussy in here, no relation.

That's of the Buseys.

If you want to bait a shirt to the Israelis Day, no, like, no, like, with like within the hour, they're getting removed very soon because guess what?

Midnight is coming up on the Howland Islands.

All right, well, that does it for us today, August 5th, 2025.

We will be back to talk to you tomorrow.

We hope you will be here as well.

Bye, everybody.