2025.07.01: Pit Slop

I've made a terrible mistake.

Hey!

We're recording the podcast!

Gut up!

Good!

Morning to you, wherever you are, because it is

for July 1st, 2025.

My name is Bernie Burns.

Sitting right over there,

she's raising her eyebrows at me frantically.

What is that about?

What are you doing over there?

It's Ashy Burns, everybody.

Those are my suggestive eyebrows.

That's your suggestive eyebrows?

They go like this.

What's up?

You look like a cartoon character who just closed a deal on a used car.

What you look like.

Hey, everybody, how's it going?

We've had some technical difficulties today.

So this episode, I have a feeling Ashley is probably going to come out a little bit late.

A little bit late, probably, and maybe a little short.

Fighting mixers, been fighting internet today, been fighting VPNs.

Fighting the world, right?

Fighting Ashley.

It's you and me against the world.

You and me against the world.

I was was going to say at Elon Musk, but I don't want to be in that group.

Elon Musk is now saying he's going to start a political party over this.

I won't say the name of the bill, the fucking bill that's before the Senate.

They've apparently been there all night deciding whether or not this bill is going to go through.

I can't see a single positive thing about this bill anywhere.

I mean, I'm reading a lot of things about it.

Senators are resigning.

Yeah,

that's great.

You know, we've got like everyone is doing their best to basically find opposition to this thing.

Yeah, you've got senators who are saying that they just aren't going to run again because they can't vote for this thing in good conscience because it would cost their constituents too much.

It's just an absolute hellscape of political news right now as far as this bill is concerned.

And so Elon Musk has said that he's going to start a political party if it passes, and he'll fight everybody who...

voted for this bill.

Yes, he's specifically saying that he will fund

the political opponents of any Republican who votes for the bill.

Right.

So which is a pretty big departure from where he was, say, six months to a year ago.

So big, big shift there.

But we'll see how that actually ends up shaking out.

I'm not sure.

I'm convinced that he's got the focus to start and run a political party.

Has it even been 12 months?

since he put on the dark mega cap and went all in, right?

Because I feel like that was right before the election.

It's like a speedrun, man, of fucking around and finding out.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

So I don't know how.

I mean, just this one dude.

Just this one.

So yeah, I don't know how serious this threat of actually starting another political party is.

I guess we'll find out.

I guess we'll find out like anything else.

Speaking of finding out, Bernie,

yesterday, the Project Hill Mary trailer came out.

It came out.

Oh, did it?

Did it come out?

It came out just after we released our episode.

I came upstairs to tell you.

I opened the door and you go, I watched it.

It It had just come out.

I was about to get on a call, video call, a meeting.

And two minutes before the call was due to start, the two minute and 30 second trailer came out.

And I thought, oh man, you know what?

It's good that I don't even have enough time to watch it because at play,

it was the shortest amount of time in the universe between when I saw it and I smashed play.

So now having seen it, how do you feel about what it doesn't show?

Because that was the big debate, right?

Okay, I guess so.

But why is that the big debate?

Okay, I get it.

Because people, it's beloved and they don't want it to show too much because people want, they want other people to have the same experience.

Also, just go read the book.

You know what I mean?

It's like, or listen to the audio book.

It's still fantastic.

I mean, I get there's pushback, though, against trailers showing the whole movie, right?

That's what people get really worried about.

And I know there's some special stuff in this book that people want to have that like, that moment of surprise

and awe.

And that's great.

i think it's good that people want to preserve i agree with that but i don't think there's a realistic way to market this movie but this is too

without with especially nine months in advance without revealing some of this stuff to me the fact that they showed as much they did of this character if you've seen it at this point everybody knows who i'm talking about what i'm talking about if you haven't watched the trailer if you're still holding out i'll try to keep it

you managed to if you managed to like last longer than bernie did not watching it the only thing i think is if they showed that amount of that character now, then

that character is going to play in more heavily into future marketing.

Yeah.

Like the second and third trailer, you know, we might even get in the

trailer.

You know what I mean?

Right.

Featuring that person in particular.

Anyway,

I do, though, feel like at this point, people are trying to be like the Game of Thrones, you know, like, ooh,

I know what's coming.

I don't know what's coming.

And I think there is a lot of gatekeeping going on.

It's so much so, actually, I saw something I've never seen before,

which is

on the, I think it's the movie's subreddit, but on Reddit, they posted the trailer, then they took it down and they reposted it.

The mods reposted it.

And one of the reasons was, and they changed the title, was we got a lot of feedback that the trailer shows too much.

So they put a warning on it and they re-uploaded it.

I've never seen that before.

I've never seen that on Reddit before either.

I mean, look, everything gets uploaded on Reddit.

Everything.

I also, I don't think it warrants that because it's like, even if you just look at the book, if you've read the book, you might disagree with me.

But the first third of the book,

it's basically a process of revealing everything, like even the fact of where he is.

Right.

Like every moment is a big moment for the first third of the thing.

They also showed that in the first two seconds of the trailer.

Nobody's worried about those reveals, but this reveal in particular, I get it, but at the same time, it's okay.

We're going to be fine.

We can walk this off, actually.

The thing is, though, there's so much stuff being uploaded to Reddit that there's only so much you can control.

There's only so much you can, I guess, lock and re-upload.

I saw an article that Reddit is actually being targeted for like AI bot spamming.

What?

Shocking.

Specifically, and this is, I guess, a new thing is the new like Google SEO, like search engine optimization that was like such a big focus for you know a lot of companies when they're trying to like sell stuff right or like get their website surfaced so that you click on their thing when you're searching for whatever.

Now, now it's all about chatbots.

They want your they want their product to show up in discussions with chatbots.

And do you remember several months ago, Reddit signed a deal with a particular AI company

to allow this company to train their bots on

Reddit posts.

And that company turned out to be one Google.

Who saw that coming?

And so now, I guess there are a lot of companies are using these like spam bots to post all their stuff to Reddit, hoping that it then gets indexed by the chat bots and comes up in their conversations.

So we're entering like a whole new era of like weird indirect direct marketing.

Yeah, we really are starting to speedrun stuff.

Even this week, Meta announced a super intelligence division.

That's a that's a new term that people have used in a lot of theoretical ways.

I've never heard it associated as like a goal that a company is working towards superintendent.

Like, is this the thing that we want?

Is this our real aspiration?

But I think it also, you have to recognize that AI, the term, is kind of a moving target, like artificial intelligence.

Now, when you hear about things like super intelligence, that's really what I think in the past people have thought of as being artificial intelligence.

I guess so, but we were so busy finding out, Bernie, that we could.

We didn't ask if we should.

We didn't ask if.

We were so busy.

fucking around we didn't bother to think if we'd find out

but i i guess i guess you correct myself a little bit there because because I guess the intermediate term there is AGI.

But it's just, it's fascinating to me that Meta has a super intelligence division.

Can I bring up something about Reddit too?

You may, please do.

So, you know, we'll tell this in shitification.

Here's a platform you use that is on the fly, getting worse, right?

Because of automated processes.

So we have a website that we're currently testing and we have a closed beta test.

And one of the ways that we would like to expand that beta test in the near future is to maybe expand it to our subreddit.

And in the past, we've talked about for our subreddit is like, you know,

when is big enough?

Around 20,000 is probably big enough.

I did a speech at VidCon a decade ago, you know, where I was talking about, you know, the success of some of our crowdfunding campaigns and how everyone online talks about, you know, 10 million this, a billion views that, you know, it's all about like millions and millions of subscribers or views or whatever.

And that's not, you don't actually need that to be successful.

And I said at the time, like 20 to 25,000 people is a solid community in which you can get an incredible amount of things done.

And so we've talked about before, it's like, maybe that's the sweet spot of like, what would it look like if the subreddit went private?

Here's a reason to do it because we want to be able to do like closed beta information on the subreddit.

I was testing that yesterday on a test subreddit.

Did you know now in order to change your subreddit from public?

to the other setting is restricted.

I'm not sure what that is.

Like you have to approach it.

It's probably like 18 plus, like not for work.

That's a different thing.

Restricted is you have to approve all posts.

Can you imagine that fucking nightmare?

Nightmare.

Fucking nightmare.

And then just private, where the people have to, you have permission to join.

Basically, you're locking it and making it private, kind of like a lifeboat in this day and age.

Anyway,

if you change that setting, you have to request.

Reddit's permission in order to do that.

Oh, I, you know, I want to get approval now.

I wonder if that's because of the the reddit protests that took place a while back where there were a bunch of protests that set 100 price

or because you know it may be in right like our best interest to maintain a community of a certain size right because as far as we're concerned um the growth of a community is not necessarily the same as uh a continually improving community yeah you reach you do reach a point i believe where we say like how do we solve problems in this community or in this group and the solution should never be let's add a bunch of more people.

Right.

But I can see why Reddit's going, well, it's not in our best interest for you to be able to restrict that.

Hey,

can we get some more opinions in here, please?

Thank you.

That would really solve something for us.

I really think that would help us to create a nice cohesive vision.

No, but it is interesting, though.

That's like, that's, I don't remember that change being announced.

You know, not every change gets announced or it flies under the radar.

So, and flying under the radar is another motivation, too.

There's a certain size with the community where you're just kind of like, they're not interested, right?

You know, but then it's just might be metrics.

I noticed in my test subreddit changed, by the way, it was kind of automated.

It came back right away and said, oh, this is fine.

I'm guessing if it was like a million subs on that subreddit, then they start looking towards it.

Then it would be like, well, the automated process is not going to take care of that one.

Let us take a look at this.

Right.

Let's let's see if you deserve.

Hey, man, when you're on somebody else's platform, you're on somebody else's platform at the end of the day.

That is very, very true.

Yeah.

But there's something else I want to talk about, Bernie.

And that is, I don't know if you've seen this, but there's a big heat wave that's that's hitting, I think, actually, you did see this.

You should see it.

I told you, yeah.

45 degrees in Spain.

45 degrees, that's almost halfway to boiling.

So one of the things that we've recommended people do in the middle of a heat wave is take yourself to the theater if you can.

Absolutely.

Enjoy that air conditioning.

Just get in line nine months early for Project Hail Mary.

It'll be worth it.

If you've already seen the F1 movie, which based on its box office tracking, you may have.

It's doing really well.

May even be on track to overtake World War Z as Brad Pitts and all that.

Oh my God.

Do they have a popcorn bucket for that?

You know, it would be great if you just like ran up to the snack bar and they served you all your snacks in 1.4 seconds and then you ran away.

That would be awesome.

You can't get like the pit.

Near, near, near.

Jam Skittles down your throat with a funnel and then you run off.

But there's Jurassic World Rebirth.

I find that name creepy.

Rebirth.

Rebirth.

Well, it's kind of close to...

I don't know.

I don't like the name.

I get it, but I guess they're trying to call back because in this movie, I think they're going to the original closed park.

They're trying to harvest DNA from some dinosaurs for, I don't know, medical science.

You know, whatever.

Thin excuse to make a dinosaur movie, right?

Exactly.

They're going to make, and by the way, they're probably going to discover...

a new species of dinosaur they never put in a Jurassic Park movie before.

Oh, I believe, Bernie, these ones might have been the ones that were too dangerous for the original movie.

What are they leaving in the vault at this point?

Anyway, go ahead.

The space dinosaurs.

They haven't got to that.

Just wait.

But I guess I'm learning a lot about the film from the reviews hitting that I didn't know before, which I didn't realize that the original scriptwriter from Jurassic Park,

his David Kep,

who adapted Michael Crichton's book the first time around, is back to write this one.

So for me, that sounds pretty great.

And also, it's being directed by Rogue Ones Gareth Edwards.

So that's great.

And he also, I think, did the 2014 Godzilla.

So has some experience working with giant monsters.

Very cool.

But I read

the review on AP News.

I'm going to just read you the headline of this one.

Jurassic World Rebirth puts a wobbly franchise back on track with superb installment.

Sounds great.

But now I'm confused because it's also got a 54% on the tomato meter on Rotten Tomatoes.

So

there seems to be a big divide here.

Regardless, it's going to have dinosaurs.

It's probably going to have a little bit of around finding out um it's got scarlet johanson apparently she's really great in it uh and one of the dinosaurs started a political party

he's very centrist uh and uh i and it's gonna have air conditioning air conditioning is that that's the cell now you know listen i'm being a little snarky over here just for fun i i'm happy to hear uh people who love jurassic park that franchise i hope they get a great movie i'll go see it it's dinosaurs and scarlet johanson why wouldn't you go see it at some point right like it's just it's not it doesn't have to be smart it just has to be fun you know what i would would like to hear too from our Gen Xers in the crowd and even our Gen Zers because I feel like

I feel like Ashley, the Jurassic franchise is distinctly a millennial franchise.

I like Jurassic Park.

It's not beloved to me.

I would, you know what?

I could see that.

I could see that as an elder millennial or a zennial, if you will, myself,

it was very formative.

You know, it was a movie that like it came out and it made dinosaurs so cool.

Like when you're a little kid and you're like coloring you know in your coloring books and stuff dinosaurs are cool but when this movie came out like I was high school at the time it was awesome just like the way that they treated the dinosaurs it was formative it was a strong enough entry that I don't think anything since the original Jurassic Park has been as good but that one entry has been enough to sustain an entire franchise almost like Star Wars, if you will.

Well, yeah.

Well, see, Gen X, it's like Star Wars is a beloved franchise.

You've got like Jurassic, you've got Harry Potter, Gen Z's got Sidney Sweeney.

Probably the Marvel movies are Gen Z, right?

Yeah.

Like, yeah, absolutely.

They are.

We would all love them.

They're formative for Gen Z, sure.

Yeah, but Gen Z for the rest of the life will probably love the Marvel franchise.

And probably compare a lot of things to the Marvel franchise.

Very formative.

You know, the first movies you see, no matter how derivative they are.

If it's the first time you've seen the derivation, it's original.

It's not derivative to you.

Exactly.

Exactly.

But, you know, we were just talking earlier about trailers that give away too much.

I think about the Jurassic Park era when it came out.

I actually think in that era, more of like Terminator 2,

because the computer graphics were like, at the time, like so revolutionary.

And they did hold up, just like Jurassic Park held up for a really long time.

They did.

They did well.

But I almost, and Terminator is a great franchise, again,

largely on the strength of the early entries, right?

By the way, you talk about a franchise where they spoil stuff in the trailer.

They spoil

everything.

They spoil everything in the trailers for the Terminator franchise.

But do you remember when Jurassic Park was coming out?

Do you remember what the other big movie the summer was that year?

No.

It's interesting.

So it was Jurassic Park, and if memory serves, it was Last Action Hero.

Oh, I love that movie.

Which is like Arnold Schwarzenegger's only bomb.

Like they was...

That movie bomb?

Well, it was like, I think he was at that point where people were ready for him to fail.

Does that make sense?

Oh, they were just waiting for the shared down era.

And it got to be like almost like a hysteria with these two movies.

And there was a bidding war to put the name of the movie, either Jurassic Park or Last Action Hero, on the side of a rocket that took off.

And Last Action Hero won the bidding war and then bombed at the box office.

Oh, man, that sucks.

Last Action Hero, by the way, great movie.

I love it.

I think it's a great movie.

And

it's a great Schwarzenegger movie, too.

It's perfect for him.

It's like you couldn't make that movie really for almost anybody else.

Right.

Like, that is like tailor-made.

I think it's a great movie.

That's, that's a shame.

You know, so somewhere, I guess, up in space, there's a rocket with

last action hero on the side of it still.

Or there's going to be.

Did you hear?

I didn't know about this.

Apparently, Honda is getting in on the space game.

They just recently launched and then landed a reusable Honda rocket.

Oh, I thought you were going to.

I have a Hyundai story here in front of me.

That's cool.

So they had a reusable booster, is what they're doing?

Yeah, yeah.

So, and it was really cool.

So, it took off.

And then, here's the cool thing: it landed like 37 centimeters away from where it took off.

it got that close to its landing point.

Wow, let me ask you a question as an American.

Is that an impressive distance?

I couldn't even do that in Kerbal Space Program, and they're doing it in real life.

That's crazy.

No, that's awesome.

And I, like I said, I had no idea that Honda was even getting into rockets, but I was reading this article on Top Gear about it.

And apparently, they're not the only automaker.

Geely, I'm not sure what that is.

GM, Hyundai, Kia, Toyota, and Venturi are all working on like rocket and space stuff now.

Like they just ran out of cars to me.

I like this a rocket and space stuff division.

I would have done that.

We got space stuff.

You're over there working on your windshield wipers.

I got space stuff over here.

Like, oh, oh, you're in the super intelligence division?

That's nice.

I'm in the space stuff division.

Don't even fuck with me, pal.

So you say, say the name of the Korean car company again.

Hyundai Kia?

You say Hyundai?

Yeah.

See, I had the, I remember when they debuted in the U.S.

and I called them Hyundai.

So yeah, yeah.

They probably wanted the brand confusion with Honda and Hyundai.

I think that's why I pronounce it like Hyundai.

Like specifically, I have to pronounce it so differently.

Otherwise, in my mind, they're just going to merge.

So I came across an article that

I read this, and it's like, it just goes to show

how intertwined our world is, like on a global commerce basis.

I'm going to start reading this headline to you, and you tell me when this stops making sense.

Got it.

Okay.

Okay.

Hyundai's Alabama plants.

I mean, right there.

Exported just 14 cars in June 2025.

Experts are blaming U.S.

export tariffs.

None of that makes sense.

I read this whole article.

There are a lot of sentences there.

Yes.

But I need to treat this like one of those math story problems.

Go back and break it down in slow motion because there's a lot of sentences and I know that they're saying things, but those things things don't easily make sense to me.

First of all, I didn't know Hyundai had an Alabama plant.

I always thought that was an import, like those were import cars.

It's a foreign, it's a Korean car company.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

And that they would be made elsewhere and then imported to the U.S.

But there is a U.S.

plant that exported them.

It's a U.S.

plant in Alabama that makes and exports Korean cars.

And so now there's been a shift at this plant in the last month month where they only did 14 cars because now they're trying to focus on the domestic market because of tariffs.

So they went down 99%

and only exported 14 cars in June, which by the way, 14 cars?

Why not?

What's the difference between zero and 14?

Maybe they could fit exactly 14 on like one of those big, one of those trucks.

And so they went one, two, three, four.

Okay, you're done.

Yeah, are they shipping like via FedEx?

Like 14 cars?

How would that even register anywhere?

So, yeah, so that

headline in that article is so confusing.

I say, like, when you, you know, when you read a textbook and you read the entire page and then you get to the bottom and you're like, that did not stick.

Nothing I just read stuck in my brain.

Yeah, those were all words and strong, like one after another, those words fit, but they didn't actually make any sense to me.

But it just goes to show how intertwined, you know, all of our economy and commerce became over the course of the last few decades.

Like the other article, because I was trying to read about this Alabama plant, other one I read in 2023, they invested $300 million in that plant, not knowing what was coming down the road with tariffs and how it was going to affect everything.

It's crazy.

But it does sound like they're still making vehicles.

They're just staying in the U.S.

I think the article, it showed the character too soon.

That's what I think.

That's my expert analysis on that article.

If you spoil that this plant is Hyundai, it just, the whole story is ruined.

I ruined everything.

Now we know way too much.

I've lost all interest.

Those people who are getting 14 cars are going to be so disappointed.

They're going to know everything before it shows up.

Well, you know what, though?

Somebody can read this article, please explain it to me.

I'm begging.

Two of those 14 cars are going to today's sponsors, Jack and Brendan Ollman.

We're not actually sending you cars, but thank you so much for sponsoring this episode of our show at patreon.com/slash morning somewhere.

All right, I want to hear too.

I wanted to bring this up when we talk about movie snacks with the F1 Pit Stop.

What's your go-to movie snack, real quick?

Reese's.

Reese's what?

Reese's pieces.

Reese's pieces.

Delicious.

I knew that.

I knew that.

I knew that.

But you get the giant bucket of popcorn too.

Well, yeah.

I guess.

Okay.

So if I'm going, my default order is gigantic salty popcorn.

Here, for some reason, I don't know if this is maybe a thing since we've moved or if I just never encountered it before, but you can choose salty or sweet popcorn.

They have two different, so you can specify what kind of popcorn you want.

But it's always fun because say you get a salty popcorn.

Every now and again, one of your popcorns is going to be sweet.

Yeah, it looks good, like the onion when you're sneaking into the french fry.

It's just like a little surprise.

But I always get a popcorn and I'll always get a fountain drink because guess what?

That much popcorn makes me thirsty.

I'm just popcorn and a drink.

That's it.

That's it.

I don't want candy.

I don't want any of that stuff.

But a real bonus, if I'm like splashing out, I'm like, give me the oil change.

No hot dog.

Who gets a hot dog at a movie?

Like an oil change and four new tires.

Not doing it.

Not doing it.

All right.

Well, that does it for us today, July 1st, 2025.

We're going to be back to talk to you tomorrow.

We hope you will be here as well.

Bye, everybody.