2025.07.28: Reedus By Proxy

Right now, I'm not feeling very confident about this story of yours.

Hey!

We're recording the podcast!

Get up!

Dude!

Good morning to you, wherever you are, because it is!

For July 28th, 2025, my name is Bertie Burns, sitting right over there.

She was on a train yesterday.

Say hi to Ashley, everybody.

Does someone say train?

Somebody say train?

She was with me.

We went on a train yesterday to Edinburgh.

It was fun.

I love that city so much.

I love that city.

It is, though, there's not a whole lot to do for a long period of time.

I will say that.

But what a gorgeous city.

Gorgeous city.

If you live in Edinburgh, sorry, there's probably a billion things to do.

And I just don't know.

That's one of the tricks, right?

It's like living in a city and the communities of like things that you can do anytime is very different than when you're in a city for a very limited period of time and what you can do in that period of time.

This is so gorgeous.

It's gorgeous.

And it's really cool to be able to just hop on a train and just go down there because we just don't have that in the U.S.

And boy, are we missing something, Ashley?

We're missing something.

Of course, it helps when we're going like what

120-ish miles or something to get down there as opposed to 3,000 miles.

Yeah, yeah.

They say, what is it?

That 100 miles is a long distance in the UK and 100 years is a long time in the US.

Right, right.

And those actually line up because it takes 100 years to go 100 miles

if you're driving because everything is all curvy and meant for horses and stuff.

So it was fun, though.

We saw Peter Hayes, old Rishi the Lum,

made about a billion animated gifts over the years.

You probably have seen more of his work in different places than anybody else.

Pretty much, yeah.

He was ubiquitous.

If you've seen any sort of like clipped meme or anything like that, that was probably he was involved somewhere there.

Yeah, probably somewhere at some point in the process.

He's probably involved.

So it's good to see him and had a lovely lunch at a ramen place that you love.

I do.

I do.

And they do like, it's funny though.

We go to the city and then it's like, what do you want to do?

And I'm like, I'm going to go to the Lego store for the kids.

Yeah.

I've gotten so lame.

I'm like, I'm going to hit up the drugstore.

You know, like the, I'm going to go to the pharmacy and I'm going to get myself some makeup.

And then I'm going going to go and I'm going to buy my kids some Lego.

Well, and I should have been I really know what to do in the big city.

Doubly lame because a lot of times when we go down to Denver on our own, that's when we can get like American food when we've been missing it because there's like a burger place that we like.

Oh, we're going to go get a burger and a pizza place that we like.

So if we had said, hey, meet us at the burger place.

Instead, it was just.

just the we it was just we were the lame part everything else was great yeah and also this weekend uh past weekend we went and saw fantastic four we did a little talk on the Patreon about,

how do you abbreviate it?

Just tell me what the abbreviation for it is.

The show.

F4.

Say it.

Just say it out loud.

F-4.

Just four?

FF4?

See, why F-F4?

That's me, too.

I don't know.

I guess you're right.

It would be F4, right?

Fantastic.

But it is FF4, though.

It's wrong, but it is FF4.

That's what I was trying to get at when you're going, fuck.

How many F's is in that?

It's a lot of F's.

Bottom line, line, we liked the movie, and it's doing great.

You were telling me, Bernie, that it's already made back what it cost to make the film?

Globally, it's made something like $210 million,

and it cost the budget for it was $200 million.

I don't want to hear about average.

Marketing spends, et cetera, et cetera.

The point is, it's a good sign for how well it's doing.

It's the

first Marvel film of the year to hit that benchmark.

It's doing great.

So this has been, overall, a really great month for superhero movies that are being well received.

Let's make a commitment right now.

Superman as well.

What's up?

We talk about the budget of a movie.

That's the budget of the movie.

That's the box office.

Because we don't talk about the marketing or whatever.

It's going to make double the thing.

Superman had a lot of discussion around it, about that.

Because while we're talking about the box office, we're not talking about whatever it'll make on streaming or whatever.

So that'll make that money on streaming.

So we're only going to budget.

box office.

That's it.

Easy peasy.

This is morning somewhere.

This is not an in-depth analysis of the economics of box office.

We make our own math.

Fuck yeah, we do.

We make it easy on you.

You're waking up.

You haven't had your coffee yet, man.

Did you know that two plus two can equal five?

Stop it.

My favorite part of Fantastic 4-4,

we won't get into it.

I liked it.

Did you like it?

I did.

I thought it was great.

My favorite part was...

Sue Storm.

I thought she was amazing.

What I was going into it, hoping for was the vibes, the sort of very retro futuristic vibe, and it had that so that that was what i wanted to see and i got what i wanted to see if i had gone back in time and told myself as a kid they're going to make movies about all these comic books and one of your favorite characters like top five out of all these characters is going to be the invisible woman from the fantastic four i would have said why are you telling me this and not like stock tips i'm 12 and i know

it's precious time why are you talking why are you wasting the time telling me this instead of

about stocks or 9-11?

Talk to me about Bitcoin.

And then I would say, how do you know about 9-11?

I'd be like, oh, shit, Jesus, get out of here.

Bust it.

Do you think that movie hits a little bit differently for us as parents?

Oh,

there's a big reason why I love Sue Storm, right?

I mean,

we don't have to get into it because it's in the Patreon thing.

So it was great.

But yeah, if you've watched the movie, feel free to check that out.

It's not like

an academic discussion about the film by any means it's just like we watched it and then we sat down and then we digested it verbally a little bit uh you know so it's very casual but uh the the bottom line is we liked it and while we're talking about uh successful uh actresses from the marvel cinematic universe gwyneth paltrow had a new role this weekend astronomer the company the company that we're still like it's been explained to me in so many ways now with someone came on our our subreddit as well to explain what astronomer does and how it's actually like a really good company and their product is really good.

And they explained it in really great terms.

And I was still like, I don't know what you mean.

Over like three paragraphs.

Yeah, they did.

They broke it down really well.

And I was still like, okay.

No, I sincerely appreciated that because I was having a lot of trouble getting to sleep and I read that.

What you needed was if we could just get Gwyneth Paltrow to then read the paragraphs, it's all going to make sense.

So she,

who knows how much she made for this?

But there's also a weird tie-in, too, because

she's formerly married to the front man for Coldplay.

Well, that has to be, I mean, that's a very deliberate tie in, right?

Right, it's gotta be.

So, what happened is basically the company astronomer hired Gwyneth Paltrow to film this sort of PSA video for them,

basically acknowledging that they're seeing a lot of scrutiny and attention right now.

There's a lot lot of interest in the company.

A lot of interest in the company.

And so they're here to answer questions, which is really to kind of tell you all about their product, you know, in the way that it is.

So it was a, I thought it was like a cleverly handled PSA, right?

And it's, you, you,

this is the first time most of us have heard of the company astronomer, right?

Yes.

And it's because of this whole thing.

So now this company is in hot water, but the CEO

and the HR lady who were caught on the cold play kiss count have both resigned.

They're both out of the company, right?

They're gone.

So, yes.

So now, like, they started this whole firestorm, but they're gone now.

And so the company of 300-plus employees is like, well, what do we do now?

Well, yeah, right.

And there's also this sentiment sometimes, too, of like.

you should do more.

Literally, that's your full relationship with these people is you work at a company with them.

If you terminate that entire relationship, it is called termination.

It's like corporate corporate execution, right?

There's nothing else that can be done at that point in time.

You terminate the relationship and what else can you possibly do?

Right.

Now you're stuck at this company that everyone is like, you know, making jokes about and wondering about and is seeing.

And it's more or less the people who are left there.

It's their job to, at this point, I think make the most of the attention.

There's 300 people who I think deserve a chance to try to save their goddamn job because two people went off.

Nobody else had a say in whether or not this could happen.

Now, suddenly, the 300 people that are left behind are having to deal with all of this.

So, yeah, people are kind of up in arms about this tongue-in-cheek PSA, but they should be able to do something to try to save their goddamn jobs.

Speaking, Bernie, of people doing things and sharing things without other people's permission, have you been following this tea hack?

Someone will spill the tea?

I'm thinking about the other one.

Yes, the tea hack.

so apparently there was this this app that women were using to essentially share information about guys they had dated to almost like or were currently dating or were currently dating to like see if there were any issues with these guys like if they were like a creep or you know if like weird or had behaved poorly or had the red flags so they were basically building like a comparative database of dudes um and so i the the part of that is with, that's without permission is that like, it's not the guys said, yeah, go ahead and, and put all my information on this site for you and your anonymous internet girlfriends to talk about.

Right.

It'd be great if a pop-up came out.

Are you enjoying dating me?

Yes or no.

At the end of this ride, rate me five stars.

It's funny how if you on the that app pop-up, if you hit no, it doesn't give you the chance to rate the app at that point.

No, it doesn't.

Weird how that happens, isn't it?

By the way, on my iPhone, we should point out, you can turn that off.

You can turn it off where you can, they can request ratings from you.

And it's one of the best features they ever had.

That's good to know.

But so there was, there was this site, but what's happened is this T app

required women to upload their ID or photo for basically like an ID verification check and said that they didn't keep those on hand.

Well, thousands and thousands of those have now been leaked to 4chan.

Yes, so and they were kept in an unsecured bucket like

a completely unencrypted bucket, just like they were just there.

Exposed to the internet.

It was in a folder called like attachments or something equally stupid.

Called raw dog IDs.

And so it was, you know, there's a lot of people now because

or partially because I guess of what this app was for and like what the women were using it for.

There is now an entire segment of people that are gleefully doxing the women whose IDs were leaked because

the whole app was about sharing real information about the men they were dating without the men's permission.

And so they're seeing it as like a weird karmic justice, but also it's this like weird, gleeful revenge.

Everything about the story sucks.

It sucks that everything got doxxed.

It sucked about the way that they lied to the users and kept the information not just on hand, but on hand in such a public way.

It sucks what people were being subjected to where they were, you know, reviewing people online.

And then it also sucks that women felt like they had to do this.

You know, it's like every bit of the story sucks from the beginning to the end and then back again.

You know what I think the right solution here is?

Let's just cancel dating.

Fantastic idea.

I'm on board.

Let's do it.

We don't date anymore, people.

The weird thing was, though, did you see that like 50% of the women who were using T looked just like Norman Reedis from Death Show?

Yeah.

This is like all these threads coming together.

They really are.

So this new thing with the UK

ID verification for like for you have to verify your age

to access all these potentially like adult content sites and things.

So the and the verifications are now getting fooled by

basically the

photograph version of like the photo mode on Death Stranding using Norman Reedus.

And that's realistic enough to fool the

detector.

Yeah.

So does the selfie thing require you to make a certain kind of face?

Yeah, it'll be like, now make like an open mouth, like, ah, face.

Now close, now close your mouth.

And you can do, you can do that.

You can choose expressions in Death Stranding, like in this photo mode.

It's one of these like ultra weird, like Japanese things that makes no sense at all, but suddenly has become this incredible use case for bypassing this restriction that the UK has put in place.

Well, you know, it's funny you mentioned that, Bernie, because I think the next version of verification check is going to be like you catch a fish.

Right?

You have to fish.

And this is just like a thing in like every Japanese game, There's always a fishing mini game, right?

So the Japanese are going to come.

They're going to

save the day again.

As soon as phishing becomes the verification check, they still got our back.

Yeah, but it turns out a couple of the women on T were all dating Norman Ritas at the same time.

Fucking Caramel comes around fully.

It all sucks.

But no,

what's the other hack you were talking about?

Let me ask you this.

Are you familiar with the Microsoft product called Microsoft SharePoint?

I mean, I am.

I'm sure.

I used it when I worked at Microsoft.

This sounds to me like you have a repository to share documents, right?

Yeah.

Doesn't this already exist in like five other different flavors?

Like, don't right now, even when I start to make a Word doc, it like throws it up in the cloud for me.

I'm like, please don't do that.

I don't want to want this Word document going up in the cloud.

Yeah, I guess so, but if I had to make a comparison,

and this is just, this is off very vague memory, think of SharePoint as like the professional enterprise version of OneDrive.

Like you have a OneDrive and you can share folders with another person, right?

That's a thing that can happen.

But now imagine that like your company has a OneDrive, right?

And you can have, people have access to various folders and things like that.

So that's kind of, it is a,

in this case, it wasn't actually cloud sharing.

It was like a local, like an on-premises thing, right?

Like it wasn't the actual cloud SharePoint that was, that was compromised in this, this weird hack, but it was an on-premises version, they're saying basically like the non-cloud version of SharePoint.

But it's, yeah, like a document storage,

network storage solution.

To me, it's like when you would get Microsoft Office, you would get it for Word and Excel.

And then if you were really unfortunate.

What about Outlook?

If you were really unfortunate, you had to use PowerPoint.

If someone tells you at your job to install PowerPoint, because they want to go over some stuff with you, just

quit immediately turning your resignation.

Instead of loading a PowerPoint, load a board.

Just upload your resignation letter to SharePoint.

Exactly.

It'll be publicly distributed across the entire globe then at that point.

But

there was a fourth, a fifth one in there because Outlook's in there as well, which was Microsoft Access.

And that one always, I never, I always, I was always skeptical of it.

I'd look at it.

I go like, it's suspect.

I don't know what access is.

I don't know what it does.

Microsoft Access, I don't even like the name of it.

It's just sitting over there.

Do you know what it is?

What is it Access?

I think it was a thing where it would like live between all the other programs and share data between them.

Okay,

you mean like the like that Adobe creative manager that I hate I hated so much.

I had so much trouble with that stupid

Creative Cloud.

Yeah, the Adobe Creative Cloud Manager.

After I left Rooster Teeth, I no longer had the Adobe account.

And because I didn't have the Adobe account, I couldn't uninstall Adobe Creative Cloud.

You had to log in to uninstall.

I had to go through so many steps to manually uninstall that goddamn thing that I still hold a crudge to this day.

Isn't there like a, you had to download a program in order to.

I basically had to download a cleaner.

Yeah, and that Adobe had to provide.

to you

but it was like it was it was a mess so anyway so sharepoint was compromised uh and it was compromised by this term that you just hear in the news all the time, like it's a nothing term.

Chinese hackers.

I guess we just accept that there are state-backed groups of hackers in China that just attack our stuff all the time.

I never hear about like U.S.

hackers

getting involved with anything or doing a big breach.

Well, maybe the American hackers need to step it up and be more successful.

Maybe they're getting away with it the whole time.

Maybe that's it.

Maybe they never get caught, which is why we never hear about them.

It's a confirmation bias or the opposite of confirmation bias.

Anyway, so these Chinese state hackers, they got in and they hacked a bunch of stuff, including they got access to documents for like the nuclear weapons commission in the United States.

That seems concerning.

So it's horrifying.

Do you think they're keeping like all the nuclear codes their SharePoint just to make sure that like everyone has the newest set of codes?

You know, I was just thinking about like we always talk about the nuclear codes, like they're this incredibly secure thing, but have I'm assuming that they have the top cryptographers and security personnel working on that to update it all the time.

It's got to be more than just like a 10-digit code like it was in the 50s, right?

Well, I'm picturing one of those like 32-digit keys like Microsoft.

I think you can ask Chat GPT to just generate a nuclear code for you.

Yeah,

probably.

I think like a blockchain Bitcoin wallet is more secure than the nuclear codes.

Maybe it follows the rule you're supposed to do with passwords of like it's four words.

some kids five dollar investment on wall street bets has more security i'm worried about than our nuclear program

scary it's really scary man if you think about it but i guess they would never tell you what they've got in terms of security because

you're right because then you know exactly what you're working with honestly at some point the most secure thing is just to disconnect the fucking thing right right at some point is i mean look i'm just saying that's what they had to do when battlestar galactica came around around.

Maybe we should consider doing it with nukes.

Battlestar Galactica came around?

What does that mean?

You don't know that's a documentary?

When it came around?

Yeah.

Well, you know, like the Cylons attacked me had to go back to like wired telephones and stuff.

Oh, I love it.

Bring it on.

Bring the Cylons on.

Take them all down.

Take them all down.

Speaking of, though, sci-fi and robots and stuff, Bernie, so did you watch the Murderbot TV series, the Apple series?

No, JD read the books.

I watched it because you like side-eyed it because you were watching it.

So it seemed like fun, but it just wasn't something that grabbed my attention.

So the good news, first of all, loved it.

Good news, it's been renewed for a second season, but it's given me

a new

ambition.

in life.

I have a new metric for success.

For a long time, my metric for success was having a fridge that has water and ice in the door, right?

Oh, you mean personally, you know, you made it.

it with a certain amount of time.

Yeah, like, like, this is this is how, like, I'm going to know that, like, I've made it.

I've accomplished everything that I want to accomplish in this life.

For a long time, that's been fridge with water and ice in the door.

That's changed.

That's no longer the case.

I've never, I've still, I've still never had it.

Never had it.

I've never had it.

But

it's fine because that's no longer the metric for success.

And now the metric for success is, I want to star in a TV show in a TV show.

Oh, like within the made-up world?

Be in a TV show.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, yeah.

That would be a lot of fun to be in that.

It's fun.

So this Murderbot show,

the premise of it, right, is that if you're not familiar, is that there's this

kind of like robot cyborg.

He's part organic, part inorganic,

and he's hacked what's called his governor module, which more or less enforces commands that are sent to him.

So he doesn't have to follow commands anymore.

He does because he doesn't really want to get caught, but mostly he just wants to watch TV TV shows, right?

He's just downloading shows from the galactic internet.

And he watches this stupid show called like Rebel Moon.

And it's very, it's, it's fun because it's really ridiculous.

It's got, um,

oh God, it's got Clark Gregg, Agent Coulson, is in this like this fake show.

Uh, and the guy from, okay, here we go, the Netflix anime series that only ran for the one season.

No, the other one,

Cowboy Bebop.

The guy from Cowboy Bebop is in it.

And so they're in this fake TV show within this TV show, right?

And it's really like melodramatic and crazy and soap opera and spacey version of like Star Trek, but also super campy and fun.

And I love that.

So my new ambition in life is to do a TV show inside a TV show.

While you're talking about Murderbot, you did have a funny moment, though, where you loaded up either your Kindle or Audible.

It was a dynamic digital library and you went, ugh.

And I said, what?

And you showed me and they had updated the cover of Murderbot to now be the, you know, now look at the new major motion picture or the digital series.

It's now the Apple series cover, basically.

And don't get me wrong, Alexander Skarsgård has a beautiful head, but it no longer matches the cover of every other book in the series.

It also wasn't what you bought.

They updated it.

Like they changed yours in your library.

And it's, it's so, yeah.

So I'm not, not a fan of that.

No one is ever a fan.

I know, because I went to go show you, haha, look, my Project Hail Mary is still the original one, but they had updated that.

Yes.

Super Ryan Gosling.

I hate it.

I hate it.

Don't do that.

I don't want that.

Or let me choose.

You know what I mean?

I want the original cover.

I get their promoting shit, but come on, fuck off.

What a weird thing to tell someone in the past, too.

After you tell a 12-year-old about 9-11, you'd be like, and in the future, we'll be able to update your books

to promote the movie that's coming out.

And you're going to be mad about it.

For some reason, that's going to make it.

But also, don't forget to charge your book.

By the way, I feel I have to point out: John Cho is who I was talking about from

the Netflix anime.

I believe he also plays Harold in Harold and Kumar.

He does indeed.

He plays Harold.

Wasn't he.

Kumar was on like

some presidential committee.

Like he had a position in one of the administrations.

I don't remember, it might have been

the Obama administration, yeah.

Kumar, whoever played Kumar, all right, he had a position in that.

So, anyway, never know.

Reach for the stars, everybody.

Yeah, reach for the stars.

One day, you too might have a TV show and a TV show via White Castle hamburgers.

You too can uh, you two can join the presidential administration.

It's just fun.

I like the idea, I like, I like the

when people who are making a TV show are also making a TV show inside because because it shows you sort of like how they see TV shows.

Exactly.

You know, when you're talking about this, I'm thinking about when in the boys, they make the seven movies and they're always over the top and ridiculous.

Yeah, like they're just like, they're just crazy.

When you were watching, you recently watched the studio, right?

The Seth Rogan show.

It's all about making stuff.

Right, right.

And it's all super ridiculous.

Yeah, and it's just like over the top.

And it's like, it's fun when they're kind of poking fun with themselves and being self-aware and just like, let's ham it up.

Why not?

Like one one of the big running bits in the series, it's from the very first episode, is they're making a Kool-Aid movie.

It's like the Kool-Aid movie.

That's how far I've got.

I'm like two or three episodes in.

I'm going slow on that one because I have such a hard time with people being awkward with each other.

And there's so much of that that I'm like, I like this and I'm trying really hard to get through it.

But like, my anxiety is peaked.

Hey, so we're talking about two Seth Rogen projects here back to back.

He's doing a lot of of stuff because he did The Boys.

He's behind The Boys.

He's behind the studio as well.

Was he behind that show, The Franchise?

Was that a Seth Rogan thing?

Let me look that up.

Seth Rogan has turned into a hell of a producer, man.

So the franchise, and that's, by the way, that's a really hard thing to look up.

TV show.

Yeah, the franchise.

Yeah, so I've watched, that's created by John Brown, Executive Bruce, by Brown, Armando, Ianucci, and Sam Mendez.

But it is an HBO show.

That one was interesting.

I haven't haven't watched all of it yet.

I guess that wouldn't be too close to the point.

But it is,

but it is very much about that sort of TV show within a TV show, but they're making a superhero movie.

Yeah.

And it's like, oh, yeah, and all the actors are drama queens, and you have to, like, you know, kid gloves the director.

And then also, you've got the studio coming in

who has no respect for anything, being like, I don't know, make the woman have more powers so that they think that we're good at women and all that stuff.

And it's, you know, it's also got a lot of, it's also very stressful because the, the filmmaking process is very demanding of a lot of people.

But it's, uh, it's very dedicated to the, how the sausage gets made.

I think that got canceled after one season.

Oh, really?

Yeah,

people kept telling me to watch it, and I never did.

You know, it's another Seth Rogan one that's doing really, really well.

What's that?

Invincible.

That's also Seth Rogan.

That's him too?

Yeah.

Damn, he's got his fingers in a lot of pies.

Yeah, he's fucking killing it, dude.

Yeah.

He's executive producer of the animated Invincible series on Prime video who would who would have called it would you have called like seth rogan back when he was doing was he in the one that where they uh held in mirror and make a porno

oh yeah he was in that yeah zach zach and miri make a porno was that what it was or i guess the first time i saw seth rogan was and he looks completely different was in the 40-year-old virgin What?

He looks like he's like a big beefy dude in that.

Looks, to me, completely different, almost like a surfer California kind of a guy.

He almost reminds me like Jon Favreau does that a lot, where he changes shape a lot, and he doesn't look like himself from one role to the next.

Like, he played Rocky Marciano and then Happy Hogan.

Even Happy Hogan looks different from the beginning of the MCU to the end.

Go explain to yourself that the pineapple, your 12-year-old Bernie, that the Pineapple Express guy is going to be like one of the biggest

forces in Hollywood.

And 12-year-old self is going to go, the fuck is Pineapple Express?

What are you talking about?

What do

Stay in your lane.

Future time.

Stocks, come on.

Well, I want to say a big thank you to our biggest things in Hollywood, Alex Springer and Scott Underwood.

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

And very quickly, congratulations to Calvin P, who won the first election for moderator of the Morning Temperature subreddit.

The second round of that is currently running, and we will not know who won that until what, like six o'clock our time.

But the polls are heating up.

So go vote if you want to go vote.

All right, well, that does it for us today.

July 28th, 2025.

We will be back to talk to you tomorrow.

We hope you will be here as well.

Bye, everybody.