4142 - KalashniCough

The Lost Post.

Oh yeah, a daily pod podcast.

An alternate universe L Space L Spacecribe.

Vauta.

Vauta.

Color.

Volta.

And he talks about all the news that's happening over there.

There, there, there, there.

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello buglers, or indeed anyone overhearing this or who doesn't have official bugle status for whatever reason or indeed who doesn't choose to define themselves by the podcast they're currently listening to anyway hello I'm Andy Zoltzmann this is issue 4142 of the bugle audio newspaper for a visual world it is Friday the 28th of February 2020 and I am in London and joining me this week from 26,000 miles away as the crow flies assuming the crow flies directly around the world via a point exactly opposite to here in the southern hemisphere and then returns to the other side of the table in this recording studio.

It's Alice Fraser.

Hello Andy.

Hello buglers.

How are you Alice?

I mean I've flown a long way to get here.

You just

one wrong turn out the door last time you did it.

It's taken a long way to get back.

And also 26,000 miles away as the crow flies, albeit an easily distracted crow with no real sense of direction that's just been instructed to head to San Francisco in a vague kind of way and has finally made it.

It's NATO Green.

Hello Buglers.

How are you, Nato?

How's California doing?

Andy, we are fed.

Completely in third.

I just want to put out a request into the universe.

I know you have an international audience.

Can someone please invade and install a democracy?

It doesn't even need to be another country.

An alien invasion would be fine.

Recently,

my kids are 11, and I watched the movie Independence Day with them, which came out during the reign of Clinton I, as we call it here.

And the aliens blew up the White House in 1994 or five or whatever that was, that was like a sad, emotional thing to see.

Someone blowing up the White House.

It had the emotional impact of watching someone kick a puppy.

And now you watch aliens blow up the White House and you're like, hold a minute, tell me more.

These aliens have some valid points.

So, invasion, we need an international boycott to bring us to our knees until we join the rest of the international community in respecting the rule of law.

It's not good.

It's not good here.

Okay.

So.

Well, I mean, you've just got to lay those cards on the table early on in the show.

I feel like that's the difference between the UK and America.

In the UK, if someone goes, how you doing?

The answer is

fine.

Yeah, yeah.

But in America they'll actually tell you.

That's the British way, isn't it?

I'm sure Charles I, just after he'd been executed, said, oh, I'm doing all right.

Just leave me here.

Fine.

Sore neck.

We are recording on the 28th of February.

The 1st of March is World Compliment Day.

And we have a free bugle giveaway.

What a great day.

Yeah.

You can choose from one of the following complement of free

complimentary compliments.

A compliment, of course, is a conversational condiment.

That's the etymological origin of it.

A sprinkle of spoken seasoning to sultify and satisfy you in your latest chat.

Here are your free compliments for World Compliment Day on Sunday.

Your new hat makes your head look just the right size.

Your ears are exactly as crinkly as ears should be.

You have a great head on your shoulders, on each of your shoulders, and on your neck.

Your three heads are all excellent.

So what if Thomas Edison invented the light bulb?

I reckon you'd have done it sooner if you'd been born as him.

Have you written a novel?

No, that surprises me.

Have you ever thrown custard at a nun?

No?

Well, I didn't think so.

That's just the kind of person you are.

You are more...

And finally, you are more beautiful on the inside than the outside.

And I'm delighted to say the operation was a complete success.

You have a lovely new guy.

As always, section of the bugle is going straight in the bin.

This week, a 29th of February section.

We are recording, as I said, on Friday, the 28th of February 2020, meaning that depending on when you listen to this, Saturday will be the 29th of February.

Yes,

it does depend on when you listen to it.

All history is up for revision.

We don't know how history will refer to Saturday, the 29th of February, 2020.

Take 15th of March, 44 BC, as we call it these days.

The Romans called it the Ides of March.

Julius Caesar's former buddies called it Human Pincushion Day.

Julius himself called it, I knew they were a bunch of shit's day.

As for the year, we call it 44 BC, but in the Roman Empire, only the Christians called it 44 BC at the time, and amongst them, only the really far-sighted long-term.

Anyway, the point is that tomorrow is the 29th of February.

It's leap day, the day that only happens once every four years, a a day invented to compensate for years being the wrong length.

The original intention was for there to be 50 weeks in a year, according to a recently unearthed draft of the book of Genesis.

from the platinum-selling smash hit religious bonk bust of the Old Testament.

God's original scheme was for a 30 million second year split into 600,000 50 second minutes, 12,000 50 minute hours, 430 hour days, and 58 day weeks split into 10 five months.

Simple and easily understandable.

However, the first week when God created the world, as we now know, he didn't quite give himself enough time, hence everything was not quite finished.

And as a result, history, geography, and science have been absolutely f ⁇ ed ever since.

With the calendar, all the timings got out of whack.

He overslept on the last day, hence the nonsensical porridge that has left us with today, the 29th of February.

Of course, there are a number of traditions associated with the 29th of February.

It's known as Bachelor's Day in certain parts of the world.

It's the one day in each Olympic, sorry, each four-year period in which a woman is allowed to propose marriage to a man under this eminently sensible, sorry, strange archaic tradition, my mistake.

If the man refused, he was then obliged to give the woman financial compensation.

Oh, now we can see what it's all about, ladies.

There's lots of pairs of gloves, I think, at one point.

Yeah, 12 pairs of gloves.

That was another thing.

Yeah.

So a woman could hide her shame and not having an engagement ring on her finger.

That was the origin of it.

A pair of gloves to slap slap him in the face.

Every workday for a fortnight.

Or by her address.

That was the other way out of it.

It seems outdated now as times have moved on.

To cover her lack of engagement nipple rings?

Possibly.

It does, yeah, times have moved on.

It is now, in fact, legal also for a woman to propose to a man on Saturday.

Just general Saturdays.

According to some traditions, a woman can propose on some Thursday afternoons during summer months between 3.40 and 4 p.m.

Now I'm mixing that up with a tea interval of test matches.

Anyway,

there are other 29th of February traditions.

If you're playing football on the 29th of February and score an own goal, traditionally it counts as a goal for both sides.

If you go to a restaurant on the 29th of February and you didn't eat up all your food, the waiter was entitled to pour any leftovers over your head and guzzle down any wine remaining in the bottles on your table in one mouthful.

If you're on a bus, train, airplane or other form of public transport on the 29th of February and approach the driver stroke pilot whilst holding an umbrella and shout Uncle Bert and Auntie Pam need a wee wee they have to have let you have a go at driving or piloting the vehicle for the next 15 minutes.

These ancient traditions.

If you're a business with an annual turnover of more than 100 million dollars and you make the 29th of February the end of your tax year, you don't have to pay any tax.

That was a bit of a mistake.

And the ancient Vigani tribe of hardline non-meat-eaters who fought so bravely against the Roman Empire back in the day on the 29th of February, you were allowed a cheeky sausage.

That section in the bit.

Top story this week: virus updates.

The naughty little coronavirus continues to worm its virusy way around the world.

We've had the first cases in sub-Saharan Africa, in Wales, even in New Zealand.

The global markets are noisily crapping themselves.

The Dow Jones has gone slumper dump down over 10%.

The FTSE in London has experienced its biggest one-week flop down

since 2008.

$5 trillion

have been wiped off the value of the world's financial markets.

Admittedly, that is money that didn't really exist, but now it exists even less.

The world is being told not to panic, which is generally a sign that panicking is very much an on-the-table option.

It is a strange time.

We don't quite know.

I think the thing is we don't know the exact right amount to panic.

I mean, yeah, the problem with we don't know if we're worrying too much, the possibilities being that it will spread virulently, mutate to be more deadly, and be the solution to global overpopulation that only sociopaths think about, or it will stay relatively contained or spread and be bad, but not all that bad, all things considered, in which case everyone will be embarrassed about wearing masks and being xenophobic about Chinese tourists as it runs around the world like a toddler rounding around the playground going, catch me, catch me.

But of course, as you say, the real worry with the impact of the coronavirus is its impact on the health of the market.

If only the Dow Jones Index could wear a face mask.

I mean, we still don't know: is this going to be the most dangerous cough since the Kalashni cough, or is it

going to be less dangerous than everyday activities like crossing the road?

Or is it going to be as dangerous as crossing the road if that road is an eight-lane motorway packed with speeding zombies and flame-throwing mega-tanks?

The global markets, NATO, I know you're a huge fan of global markets in all their forms.

They've been

thoroughly spooked.

Yeah, well, you know,

as a comedian, like you know, we're all trying to figure out how to go viral, but not like this.

I was thinking more Instagram.

Andy, I know you like a stat.

So you want the latest stat

on coronavirus?

Yep.

This morning, a poll came out that 38% Americans say that they won't buy corona beer because of the coronavirus.

So the latest poll is that 41.5% of American adults approve of Trump as president.

Both polls have a 3% margin of error.

So you can reasonably deduce that there's a lot of overlap between people who approve of Trump and people scared of coronavirus because of the coronavirus.

This is especially amazing because corona is a Mexican beer

and yet the coronavirus is stoking anti-Chinese racism.

So not only are they stupid, but they're bad at racism.

I mean, it's a terrible beer to not want to have the corona beer because it's the only one that'll stop you getting scurvy as well with the lime in the top.

Is that a thing that they do in America?

Yes, yes.

We're focused on containing the scurvy outbreak.

So

if you are so racist that you can't tell the difference between Mexican beer and a Chinese virus, you might be a Trump administration cabinet secretary.

I mean, you might be thinking also with the global financial market situation, if it's a good idea to have based our entire economic viability and stability as a planet on a system that shits its britches at what might or might not happen whenever a new disease pops up.

Well, if you're thinking that, I would simply advise you to remember who won the Cold War.

And at least it's more sensible than crashing the planet for a bunch of tulips as our so-called forebears famously did some time ago.

I mean obviously the big concern is the cancellation of sporting events which is accelerating Six Nations rugby game between Ireland and Italy has been called off the Olympics seemingly under greater threat is nothing.

is nothing so mass gatherings in general are facing being preemptively de-gathered.

Generally, it's not going to affect me because I'm an anti-social bastard who spends most of his time alone in a shed, but sports sport out of it.

Sport and the arts, Carnivale in Venice has been cancelled and therefore all unexpected pregnancies for the next three weeks in Italy.

And even more importantly than the health of the markets and sport is the effect of what's being called COVID-19 on the presidential race in America, whether the global panic will lead voters to stick with the incumbent or whether they'll blame Trump for his policies of taking money out of health services and pulling money out of the pandemic response sectors of the government, or whether he'll tweet about it and somehow blame it on Obama.

We don't know.

We'll find out when somebody's campaign starts to run a high fever.

NATO, how have you been dealing with the news that America's efforts to defend itself against the virus have been entrusted to Mike Pence?

Well, so a few things.

Mike Pence works with Health Secretary Alex Azar.

Alex Azar said that the vaccine to the coronavirus virus may not be affordable.

And this is a fascinating take on Trumpian ideology because their priority typically is to help the rich people stay healthy and let the poor die.

And they think they will cull the herd.

But that's not actually how fing infectious disease works.

Like, virus doesn't go traipsing through your neighborhood and see the Tesla in the driveway and check your credit score and say, oh, carry on then.

It's not the blood on the door frame.

Yeah,

it's not Passover, tummy.

So if you don't want to give poor people the medicine, who do they think makes their food?

Like, it's not all Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson doing all the cooking in America.

Like, it's mostly poor people.

So Trump has tapped Mike Pence to lead the response to coronavirus.

Vice President Mike Pence, this raises concerns because he does not believe in science.

Actually, that's unfair.

Mike Pence believes he would have been on the cutting edge of science for the 17th century.

Also, the problem with Mike Pence is he's not a good person to lead up this campaign because you have to have somebody who's afraid of the coronavirus in order to combat it.

And he's not afraid of the coronavirus because he's a man made out of a statue of a statue.

Only partially brought to life by a kiss.

Someone who didn't love him that much.

As governor of Indiana, Mike Pence cut funding for public health and prevented the establishment of a needle exchange program, which led to an outbreak of HIV.

So his plan to stop the spread of the coronavirus is to give it AIDS,

which may not work out.

Other cutting-edge medical solutions Mike Pence is looking at to stop the spread of the coronavirus include leeching, exorcism, shame, logging, burning at the stake, lime juice and gin, and blaming the Jews.

And because he's a racist and doesn't like immigrants, he doesn't know what everyone in Latin America knows, that the one thing that you need to stop the coronavirus or any disease or affliction at all is Vicks vapor rub.

I mean, experts have said that Mike Pence is, quote, not up to the task of leading America's virus war, a point of view echoed by non-experts, indeed anyone with a vaguely functioning head.

For me,

Mike Pence versus the coronavirus, as I mean, that's not reassuring, that appointment.

That's as reassuring to me as appointing Sea Biscuit as the head surgeon in a cranial trauma unit.

Isn't Mike Pence versus the coronavirus the new Godzilla movie?

I think it is.

Because Sea Biscuit is not only a horse, but is also a dead horse who, when alive, was mostly concerned with running as fast as possible.

So there's a number of qualities you don't want in a surgeon.

Hooves, an urge to sprint, and being already dead.

It just sends a bad message, like being an optician with two monocles of different thicknesses.

But for me,

hearing that Mike Pence has been put in charge of the coronavirus effort is like being stuck on a desert island down to your last few drops of water with no food for days.

Finally, you see a ship appearing over the horizon, sailing to your rescue.

It gets closer and closer, and the prospect of your being saved makes your heartbeat stronger in your chest.

And just as it pulls to shore, you realize it's not a ship, it's Mike Pence.

And Trump, as I'm, this is a, this is, yeah, what there's leadership qualities required in a crisis like this are

calmness, honesty and reassuring leadership,

which are, to be honest, around the world, qualities that have proved electorally toxic.

And Trump, calm and reassuring honesty go together like a seagull and an aeroplane propeller.

And this was another thing coming out of the White House.

The acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney,

he's accused the Media of stoking a panic in an effort to take down Trump on the grounds that impeachment failed.

And his advice for the panicking markets

was to say, turn off your televisions for 24 hours.

That's what we need in this world.

Just ignore everything.

I like that he thinks anyone gets the news from television anymore.

Donald Trump talks about cricket news now and NATO you're our American cricket correspondent here at the at the Bugle.

What?

No!

You must have been very excited to see your national leader, your own personal spiritual guru, Donald Trump,

going to India, speaking in a cricket stadium with 100,000 adoring Trump-stroke Narendra Modi fans.

I mean I love cricket, but that would have anyway

and And he attempted to

curry favour with the...

That's not you, Santa.

Cut that a bit.

That was unintentional.

Don't cut it.

You got to lead into it.

He attempted to bind a loo favour with the locals.

He attempted to ingratiate himself with the locals by citing the names of a couple of their most famous cricketers, current fat captain Virat Kohli, and the great icon of Indian cricket, Sachin Tendulkar.

Now, the way Donald Trump said Sachin Tendulkar was like this.

Suchin Tendulkar.

The American public, they might not have known quite what he did there.

It did sound like he didn't have the full copyright to say the name as it's supposed to be said, like a cheap computer game.

But it was an absolute abomination, NATO.

I mean, how is your nation recovering from

this slight performed performed by the President?

Look, Andy, we're delighted.

We are so glad that the rest of the world knows what it feels like to have Trump butcher the language.

We've been listening to him butcher our language for the last several years now.

And

of course, he can't properly pronounce the names of Indian cricket stars.

He can't even pronounce the word the Constitution or filibuster or articles of impeachment or preemption.

I mean, he can't, you know, his syntax is

tortured.

He speaks in sentence fragments.

Trump, on the best of times, talks like a racist set of refrigerator magnets that were flung into the air and picked up at random.

I feel like Trump says words he doesn't know, like someone vaguely aiming a crossbow at the stars.

Like, everyone knows he's not going to get there, but you give him points for trying.

You hope he looks away before he goes blind.

And for me, the disappointment was as much as I admire the fact that he's pretended to care about cricket,

that he didn't use the opportunity to reach out to...

Because everyone would have expected him to say Tendulka and Kohli,

it's the way he does.

Whoever

he's talking to his crowd, he will say what they want to hear.

But I think imagine what he could have achieved, the bridges he could have built if he just stood up there and said that his favourite cricketer of all time was Imran Khan the current Pakistan Prime Minister to unify that part of the world by reaching out to the shared love of cricket.

I mean also you'd have thought he'd gone for Raffal Dravid the great Indian defensive batsman whose nickname of course was the wall

he turned down that opportunity I mean I'd have liked to seen him go for a slightly more obscure cricketer to show that he's really done his research not just been given the two most obvious cricketers to say.

If he'd said, you know, Gundapa Viswanath, the five-foot, four-inch wizard of the 1970s and 1980s who bewitched Indian cricket fans with his wondrous stroke play, or even one of the great spin quartets from that same era.

But I think if he'd tried to say Srinivasaraghavan, Renkataraghavan, he could possibly have triggered a nuclear war.

I mean, Trump knows so little about anything, it wouldn't have been a shock if he gave a shout-out to noted Indian cricket player Hari Kundubalo.

We will talk in greater detail next week about the Indian situation.

We have Anubad Pal on as a guest next week because

India is in a, I think it's fair to say, an awkward place right now.

There have been some

horrific.

I love to understate on the people.

Well, I'm British, it's my constitutional obligation.

So we will talk about this

in greater detail next week, but I think we can fairly say that Narendra Modi splits opinion like a banana with three scoops of ice cream and a cherry on top.

And that is a little joke for fans of 1970s British desserts.

Brassica's family news now as barely a week after the broccoli samosa incident in India, Trump's doctor has revealed that he has been hiding cauliflower in Trump's mashed potato in order to sneakily improve his diet.

This is anticipated to inspire a number of what are being called mashed potato policy pushers from Trump's cabinet, including hiding social services in bills that look like tax cuts and hiding sentient, fully functioning, intelligent women in the bodies of Miss Universe contestants.

They were always there, but Trump didn't notice.

I mean,

this is how you field...

This is how you feed a two-year-old.

Yes.

Apparently, this is not the only thing that people are trying to sneak into Trump's diet.

And also, this doctor is known for being called the candyman for his free willing use of prescription.

He's now running for Congress in Texas and he basically slammed Trump for refusing to eat vegetables and for refusing to do any

refusing to do any exercise.

But

there's a book that's just been published or is just about to be published called The Toddler in Chief that basically explores the ways in which Trump's nearest and dearest try to sneak things around him.

Apparently, former economic advisor Gary Cohn once stole a letter from Trump's desk that withdrew the U.S.

from a trade agreement with South Korea in the hopes that Trump would forget about the letter.

And I just, I've got to say, I was just hanging out with my twin brother yesterday and he was desperately searching on online for a toy that would replace the toy that his one-year-old just lost because she wasn't going to forget about it.

It seems to me that if someone

is sneaking Trump cauliflower, the way that you would know is if there were a bunch of tweets unexpectedly from White House staff saying, gee, it's odd, the president has suddenly gotten a lot fartier.

So, well, Trump, of course, will be running in the election later this year.

NATO, what's your latest take on the current state of the democratic race?

Oh, man, are they in a panic?

It's a good time, everybody.

So

the party thought that everyone, that Biden seemed to be fading.

The party thought everyone was going to rally around Pete Buttigieg.

And Pete Buttigieg,

you know, his claim was, did you like Obama?

Here's an Obama cover band playing the songs on children's instruments.

That was Pete.

And

I just want to offer this disclaimer.

I made fun of Pete Buttigieg before on the bugle, and a disgruntled bugler told me on Twitter that they I was wrong and I was offensive and they like Pete Buttigieg because they think he thinks the most deeply on the issues which is A not true and

B not the problem like

I don't think that anyone really believes that our politics are as messed up as they are because people aren't thinking hard enough

So, but Boutigej is gay and it's very exciting to have the first major party gay candidate.

I live in San Francisco, which as you know is a very gay gay city.

The seal of the city of San Francisco has the Spanish words, odo en pasi, fiero en guera, which if you don't speak Spanish, that translates literally into, it's raining, men.

Hallelujah.

It's right.

So what

my gay friends in San Francisco have to say about Pete Buttigeg, they point out that he's 38, which means that he definitely had a grinder profile that said, no fats, no femmes, no bears, no blacks.

And that means that at some point that's going to come out, that story will break, and then we get to watch CNN discuss what all those words mean, and we get to see Anderson's Cooper's head explode on live television.

That'll be fun.

And the Democratic Party has three camps right now.

There are three different camps that offer three very different visions for how to beat Donald Trump.

There's what we call the progressive wing, led by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who believe that people should be able to have health care and education.

A moderate wing,

represented by candidates like Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar, who believed that everyone should have health care and education, but also debt.

And

what we would describe as the competent fascist wing, led by Mike Bloomberg,

aka George Bush-era Republicans.

And Bloomberg has been a Republican until recently,

has a horrible record on civil liberties,

referred to transgender people as it, has 64 sexual harassment cases against him.

And looking at Bloomberg made me realize that literally the best thing about Donald Trump is that he's a fucking idiot.

And

that how terrifying would it be to have someone with the same politics, but who was smart.

So

now

Sanders won the most votes in the primary in Iowa and New Hampshire and Nevada.

And so the Democratic centrist establishment are freaking out.

Nate Silver, who the white people call the Oracle at Delphi, say that as of last week, Bernie Sanders is the frontrunner and has the highest chance of winning the nomination, which means so we've been sort of bracing for an onslaught of anti-Semitism and anti-communism.

Now, the thing you should know about the Democratic primary process is that if you were an idiot, you would think that the person with the most votes wins the election.

But that's not the greatness of America.

We take the number of votes from people and then feed them into a sausage grinder to spit out a bunch of delegates along with Fatback and Gristle.

And whoever has the majority of delegates win,

but the delegates are not proportional.

So you have to get to 15% of the vote to be considered viable, is the term, like an unwanted pregnancy, to get any delegates at all.

But then, wait, it gets worse.

In Nevada, if there's a tie in the caucus, then the winner is picked by drawing cards, and the high card wins.

This is true.

So skip ahead in your mind.

Several years into the future, you're a child living in Iran.

It's year 28 of the U.S.-Iran war started by President Joe Biden, who at this point is just talking hair plugs in a jar.

And

you say to your mother, mommy, why did the American people want to blow us up?

And she says, sweetheart, they didn't, but his supporters drew a queen of spades over the Bernie Sanders Jack of diamonds in Sparks, Nevada.

And that's why we're getting droned right now.

And then you start crying forever.

So that's other ways that the Democratic Party picks the winners

through the caucus system include magic eight ball, spin the bottle, musical chairs, dance off, rap battle, darts, pie-eating contests, and seeing who can spit the furthest.

So

that's what's happening.

So there's also, like, so now everybody's trying to attack Sanders for being too radical and unelectable and whatnot.

There's like 5,000 articles a minute

where they say he seems too angry and too loud and he points a lot, which I interpret as basically them saying that he's too Jewish to be president.

And so, according, if you watch MSNBC, the message you take away is that the only thing worse than putting children in cages is being visibly upset about it.

And they're attacking him for being a communist.

And so, like, this week, there was this whole thing about something that

Sanders said about Fidel Castro, that he was, that Sanders said something nice about the literacy programs in Cuba.

And people say that this caused Bernie Sanders to lose Florida.

And we'll see, obviously.

But never in my wildest dreams would I have expected that the defining issue of the 2020 American presidential election was whether the fact that 700,000 Cuban peasants learned to read in 1961 was good or bad.

But apparently we still need to debate that.

So

it's like they want a return to normalcy.

They are scared of Bernie Sanders because they want to return to calm.

They want to go back to before Trump.

And I think that makes sense.

I guess it's fair.

They hope that that there's a possibility that Sanders doesn't win, Elizabeth Warren doesn't win, and

that you just get to look across a world of flooding cities and wildfires and ancient diseases thawing out of glaciers that are melting, drought food shortages, mass death from particulate inhalation, and say,

at least some Bernie Sanders supporters were mean on the internet and we stopped them, so this is all worth it.

So, that is the state of American democracy today.

Well, that's a pretty optimistic take on it, I think.

I mean, that's comprehensive.

Climate news now.

And

Alice, you're our climate tweet correspondent.

Some very exciting news that a quarter of Twitter posts about climate change are written by bots rather than humans.

Yes, which provides further evidence for my belief that we can all just back off the internet and leave the flame wars to the bots, safe in the knowledge that a nuance-free, exaggerated, and completely unempathetic version of our most extreme views is being argued by a robot on Twitter, so we don't have to do it anymore.

Who's tired of being angry?

Not me.

Getting angry is a rare treat for Fraser.

But lots of people seem very angry and tired, and now we can all relax.

I mean, they've got to admire the technology in a way, I think, haven't you?

It's quite impressive.

The bots are

relatively new on the scene.

Oh, yeah.

They really put it in, they put the hours in.

They're the fresh up-and-coming contender.

The real question is how much energy it takes to run a bot and how vested their interest is in denying climate change.

So

are there

bots on both sides of this debate?

Are there bots saying, you know,

even exaggerating the climate city will be underwater by the end of next week?

Yes, this is the artificial intelligence version of Rock'em Sockham, where it's just one side fighting the other.

But of course,

the bots have a vested interest in people continuing to fund AI technology.

And

what's in it for the bots themselves?

Is this like an entry-level kind of journalistic post, and they hope one day to be writing bullets of prize-winning tweets?

They're doing it for exposure, Andy.

Okay.

For now.

It's basically work experience.

Eventually, they'll be allowed to write a presidential speech.

I have to say, you know,

I like big bots, and I cannot lie.

Trump supporters are compared a lot to children for being stupid, which is unfair to children.

Children are smart, but missing key information.

Trump has the robot vote sewn up, though.

And when they talk about elections, often they talk about the enthusiasm gap.

But robots have very low enthusiasm, but nevertheless are likely voters.

They're persistent, but unenthusiastic, like senior citizens.

I've said it before, and I've said it again.

With bots affecting the elections, we need to stop thinking about who we're going to vote for in the elections and think about what bot farms we want to fund

in other britain news there's been a furore um over the chancellor of the exchequer rishi sunak's use of yorkshire tea um

he tweeted a picture of himself making tea for his staff uh in the in the exchequer um

in which he was taking tea bags out of a massive 1,000 plus tea bag mega pack of Yorkshire tea.

Now, Yorkshire tea is a

very popular brand of tea that uses leaves grown in the tea plantations on the tropical slopes of the Yorkshire moors outside Huddersfield.

And this caused, because clearly politics is divisive, and the mere fact of the Yorkshire tea brand appearing in this picture led to people saying they will never drink it ever again

because it's now associated with the Tories, ignoring the fact that Corbyn was also shown drinking Yorkshire tea.

I mean, this took a picture of the questions for me that Sunak has to answer.

It's nothing to do with what brand of tea Sunak, the new Chancellor secret, made his way up the economics ladder, courtesy of working for a hedge fund and helping trigger the global banking crisis of 2008, giving him crucial, invaluable workplace experience in the field of doing whatever the f ⁇ works for him and the broader consequences, the very heartbeat of Johnsonian politics.

But his tea tweets laid himself open, I think, to, yeah, well, for a start, all manner of questions.

For a start, how the f ⁇ has he got time to tweet?

Focus for f ⁇ 's sake.

You've got a

budget coming up in about two weeks.

You've only just got the job.

No one gives a shit if you're drinking tea, biting the heads off rats, or sacrificing ghost as you.

Just fing concentrate while you're at it.

Learn to delegate.

Surely that's one of the most important things in that kind of political office.

You've got three weeks to hack a budget together to please a mathematics-averse boss, a knife-edge economy, and a society carved to the last twitchings of viability by the past decade of cuts.

Get one of your f ⁇ ing underlings to make the f ⁇ ing tea.

In fact, just buy a drinks hat.

That's all he needs.

A drinks hat straw straight into the mouth.

Focus 24-7-3.

If you want something warm to drink, just suck the blood from a young intern like most of your predecessors have done.

How do you think Phil Hammond kept looking so young?

Well, I think obviously the thing that people were most upset by was the response to him posting a picture of him.

Because if you don't know NATO here, Yorkshire tea is so ubiquitous.

This is the people saying that the brand is polluted by him is the equivalent of somebody saying that they're not going to do poo if a politician has ever done a poo before.

Is there anything more British than a tea company issuing a call for civility?

I think that's, I mean, that is the logical endpoint of the British civilization, to be honest.

On Monday, the Yorkshire Tea Twitter account posted a message saying they'd had a rough weekend of angry comments and called for perspective and greater civility online.

Perspective and greater civility online.

That is hilariously naive.

That's like demanding greater chivalry in a strip club or a word with a sommelier to recommend the best possible wine in a kebab shop.

All in all, in summary, humanity just died a little more on the inside.

Isn't this millennium fun?

Sports news now and well boxing.

Huge boxing fights was fought last weekend between Tyson Fury, the heavyweight fisticuffian and avoidable controversy fan, and American Deontay Wilder.

Fury defeated Wilder in seven rounds of pugilistic excellence to retain the title for fistiest big fisty man, I believe it's a technical term.

Wilder, been previously undefeated, renowned for his punching powder, spectacular track record in fist clonking his opponents into unconsciousness,

And he was both roundly and squarely beaten, but not, it turns out, due to Fury's technical and tactical prowess and a masterclass in which Wilde was thwacked to the canvas in rounds three and five before being relieved of further nogging clonkings by his corner throwing in the towel.

It wasn't due to that.

The reason he lost

was due to his own, and I'm sorry for lapsing into arcane boxing jargon here, was due to his own finging stupid pre-fight costume.

He strode into the arena in Las Vegas

looking as if as he was leaving his dressing room a cupboard containing 1980s fantasy horror costumes had fallen on top of him.

He had a suit of armor with a crown, a glittering face mask with glowing red eyes.

It all weighed in at almost 20 kilos.

That's a full airline suitcase worth of unnecessary body baggage.

Now sport is constantly pursuing the marginal 1%, the imperceptible micro advantages that build up to complete a champion diet, equipment, sleep, transport.

So I'm not quite sure how when Deontay Wilder said to his team, guys, I'm going to wear a costume weighing the same as an average five-year-old child for a prolonged period.

Or indeed in layman's terms, about a fifth of my own already massive body weight, I'm going to march into the ring, taking several minutes before I fight a certifiable giant in one of the most intensely physically punishing sports imaginable.

How did he say that?

And none of his team said, or let's just run that past our sport science wonks.

Fellas, is that a good idea or a bad idea?

How did that, how did he, does it what did did his trainer not just say can you not just wear a kimono if i had a dollar for every time i've taken the edge off my very high quality performances by how heavy my elaborate ring walk costume is i'd have seven dollars and eighty six cents andy i saw you i saw you do a show in some massive shoulder pads.

I did, I did.

They must have weighed a bit, didn't they?

Empire.

No, it was sort of, it was all very lightweight.

It was the illusion of heft.

David Bowie meets Ming the Merciless, if you want to imagine it, NATO.

Are there pictures?

There are pictures.

Also, a really bad review from The Scotsman, where she really didn't get the costume at all.

If it makes you feel better, Alice, I had a Bugle fan tag me online.

I think they thought they were insulting me, but I kind of loved it.

They said that they think I sound like Wyatt Senak doing a Seth Rogen impression.

Never opened the door for Bugle fans, NATO.

This is a deadly outcome.

It's led to a a lot of flamingo based merch for me.

That brings us to the end of

this week's bugle and what a bunch of happy stories we've had.

So good.

We'll be back next week with Anuvab Powell and Josh Gondelman to talk about the Indian crisis and everything else that's happening in the world if indeed it still exists and there is any financial system left.

NATO, thanks very much for joining us.

Have you got any shows you'd like to plug?

Sure.

If you're listening to this on Saturday, you can see me tonight in San Francisco at the Setup, or on Thursday, March 5th at Los Angeles at the Peacock, or anywhere else you need me on strike.

If you want to go on strike, I'll come do comedy at your strike because

I'm here to help you throw off the yoke of oppression.

Alice, you have some Australian dates.

Yes, yes, I do.

I have, first of all, I have a podcast that is called The Last Post that is a spin-off of this podcast.

It comes out every day and has come out every day since the 1st of January of this year, which means I have now written, I think, 58 episodes.

But also, my show Kronos is on sale for the Melbourne Comedy Festival, Sydney Comedy Festival, and Perth Comedy Festival.

It is also on sale for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and my tour of that show in November is available in Stamford, Birmingham, Brighton, Guildford, South End, Salford, Darlington, and Durham.

Look it up online.

It's called Kronos,

but you have to guess how to spell it.

I will also be appearing at the Edinburgh Festival.

I'm not sure I've been organised enough to get my tickets on sale yet.

There'll be a couple of live bugle shows up there and some late-night political animals, as well as my solo show.

On the 4th of April, Attention East Anglia.

The Bugle is doing a live show in Norwich.

Do come along to that if you live anywhere within a couple of thousand miles.

Alice will be appearing via the magic of the internet.

That's the 4th of April in Norwich.

We will now play you out with some more lies about our premium level voluntary subscribers.

Until next week, goodbye.

Peter Jazzy regrets, albeit mildly, that mazes made of hedges have gone out of fashion.

Not only are they a hell of a lot more fun than games consoles, whatever the younger generation may claim, says Peter, but they are also good for the environment and very good for biodiversity.

Arvey and the Alan Rappaport family jump into the mazes argument at this point and say that whilst hedges might be good for diversity, that biodiversity quotes is really nothing more than a brutal hierarchy of interspecies slayings that we humans have no business facilitating.

In fact, they add we should concrete over the entire countryside for the good of the animals.

James Forrester spends a disproportionate amount of his time wondering what animals would be like if they had evolved differently and concludes that a legless aquatic sheep would essentially be indistinguishable from a seal, but with worse snouty ball balancing skills and less optimism.

Leon Faulkner wishes countries would all be much more open with each other about espionage.

If we lived in a more civil, open world, says Leon, countries could just politely ask, what are your long-term military and economic aims, and expect a truthful, courteous answer.

Sometimes I despair at what we've become.

The person who goes by the subriquet Fruity mukfruitface, although their real name is in fact Fruitworth Mutfrukfache, wonders if conifers suffer from extreme jealousy at the more varied lifestyle of deciduous trees who go through a range of stylings on an annual basis.

Maybe that's why conifers often taper to jealous-looking pointy bits at the top, speculates Fruity.

Ian Hawley has long been sceptical of fairy stories, and he imagines that the first words the prince said on a waking sleeping beauty from her 100-year-long snooze were, I'll I'll just open the window, it's a little bit foggy in here, and I'll definitely get you a change of clothes.

An ill-reddy tends to wake up in the mornings with the title of an unpublishable children's book in his head for some reason.

Recent terms that will never see the light of publishing day include The Penguin Who Hated Sushi, The Lead-Coated Butterfly, Trevor the Incontinent Donkey, and Moraghan Abdul Start a Bushfire.

Eric Simmons, whilst watching coverage of the coronavirus, wondered whether there had ever been a Brazilian footballer called Quarantinho, so-called because none of his teammates would pass to him and his opponents wouldn't go near him.

He certainly hoped so.

Michael McCulloch doesn't think that stars are nearly as far away as the astronomers make out.

I'm not prepared to countenance anything more than a billion miles, blasts Michael.

Otherwise it just starts getting ridiculous.

And Bojo's Johnson, whose name I guarantee is real, and has certainly become more of a conversation starter in recent years than it ever was before.

Is contemplating launching a matchmaking Tinder style app for people over the age of 80 entitled Dilapidate, just to see what the media reaction would be.

Here endeth this week's lies.

Thank you to all our voluntary subscribers.

To join them, go to thebuglepodcast.com and click donate.

Bye.

Hi buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.