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1:05

Hi. I'm Robert sex Reese,

1:07

host of The Doctor sex re Show, and

1:10

every episode I listened to people

1:12

talk about their sex and intimacy issues

1:14

and yes I despise every

1:16

minute of it, and she she made

1:18

mistakes too everyone

1:21

at her wedding. But hell is real. We're

1:23

all trapped here and there's nothing any

1:25

of us can do about it. So join me.

1:27

Won't you? Listen to the Doctor Sex

1:30

re Show every Tuesday on the I Heart Radio

1:32

app, Apple podcast or wherever you

1:34

get your podcast. Hey, everybody, Robert

1:36

Evans here and I wanted to let you know. This

1:38

is a compilation episode. So every

1:41

episode of the week that just happened

1:44

is here in one convenient and with

1:46

somewhat less ads package for

1:48

you to listen to in a long stretch if you want.

1:51

If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,

1:53

there's gonna be nothing new here for you, But you

1:55

can make your own decisions. Robert

2:01

doing the run so we can start the badcast.

2:04

Um, I think we should just start the podcast with

2:06

you asking, Robert, do you want to grunt? So we can

2:09

start the podcast. Um

2:11

that that seems avant garde. I

2:13

don't know what I want guard means, but this is it could happen

2:15

here, a podcast about how things

2:17

are falling apart and how maybe maybe

2:19

they don't always need to be falling apart. Maybe we could

2:21

do better. Uh. Speaking of doing better, you

2:23

know one thing that sometimes

2:26

helps us do better getting

2:28

getting in the face of people fucking shut up and

2:31

being like, hey, that's not that's not

2:33

cool. Don't be doing that, Garrison,

2:35

that's your leading. Take it from here. Yeah.

2:38

Hi, So we

2:41

I've been I've been trying to keep better,

2:44

a better job of like following ecological

2:47

defense movements happening both

2:49

in the States and in other countries. I know there

2:52

was there was a big one up in Canada

2:54

recently. There was a huge one in Germany

2:56

too, just the other day. Um, I

2:59

know, the the one, the one in Canada. There's a uh

3:03

the uh, I forget, I

3:05

forget what the actual indigenous

3:07

group is called. Um

3:09

maybe maybe someone else. So the the

3:13

um house on Sauti

3:16

Um yeah, the people who

3:18

who who took

3:20

back their land and blocked the

3:22

road off and now

3:24

the to

3:26

and the wet suit end. Oh yeah yeah, yeah,

3:28

yeah, yes, thank you. Um there

3:30

we go. Yeah, basically taking

3:32

their land back, blocking off the road. And now our SAP

3:35

is getting called in and we'll see how that develops. And

3:37

in Guatemala there's protests

3:40

against Canadian mining um

3:42

in maya indigenous community

3:45

that have have have gotten pretty

3:47

heavily militarized at this point. There's

3:49

fun, there's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of stuff off

3:52

on psychological defense side

3:54

of things, um, including

3:56

including in you know, the Pacific Northwest here

3:59

with all of with all of the forests

4:01

and and as such in this

4:03

area and part

4:05

of this kind of exploration into into

4:08

ecological defense. I wanted to talk

4:10

with some people who are a little

4:12

little bit more well versed in

4:14

this type of thing than I am. So

4:16

I've there's the two people have agreed

4:19

to talk with us, um

4:21

salmon cat put both people who

4:24

work who work on the kind of thing from

4:26

like an activism standpoint. Um,

4:29

Yeah, say hi, Hello,

4:31

hey y'all. So very

4:34

very thankful that they are going to be talking with

4:36

us today. So I thought we could

4:38

we could probably just start by kind of discussing

4:41

what forest defense is and

4:44

how it kind of has a history specifically

4:46

in this area, but but kind of more broadly, like

4:48

if if people listened to the Earth First

4:50

episodes, you know, that kind of that covered like anti

4:53

pipeline stuff, but we didn't really get much

4:55

into like forest defense, and you know, like

4:57

the traditional like tree sits and that kind of thing. UM.

5:00

So so yeah, what's what's up with

5:03

defending the forest? What's what's

5:05

what's going on with that? Um? Yeah,

5:07

thanks for that great intro. UM.

5:10

I mean, forest defense is I think

5:13

probably the most characteristic

5:15

UM type of direct action in this bioregion.

5:17

And here we're talking from Cascadia right

5:19

now. I actually moved out here from the East

5:21

Coast ten years ago specifically to get involved

5:24

with forest defense because this place has an

5:26

incredibly rich history UM of

5:28

people basically just throwing down, risking

5:30

life and limb to stop jain saws

5:32

from taking down some of the oldest and most

5:35

special forests out here. UM.

5:37

And so i'd say, you know, for forest

5:39

defense, direct action is in a lot of ways rooted

5:41

right here UM in this bioregion. And

5:44

obviously, UM, like all kinds

5:47

of movements, things have changed over

5:49

the course of time. UM back in the

5:51

eighties. UM, when in seventies,

5:53

when forest defense was really really kicking up and stopping

5:56

old growth logging, specifically out here, when

5:58

it was kind of like rampant old growth UM

6:01

clear cutting. UM, it really took

6:03

the shape of trying to focusing

6:05

on ecology, focusing on the integrity

6:08

of these ecosystems and basically like doing

6:10

everything possible to stop the chainsaws.

6:12

And Um, Now, obviously a lot

6:14

has changed. We have the Northwest Forest

6:16

Plan and some policies which are doing

6:18

better to kind of like protect old

6:21

places and old forests. But at the same

6:23

time, the same ship is happening.

6:25

Um. You know, the timber industry is

6:27

great at using euphemisms to kind

6:30

of cover up it's clear cutting anyways,

6:32

and finding policy loopholes

6:34

to target some incredible places.

6:37

And now I think, um, where we're at with like

6:39

the direct action movement is we're in the context

6:41

of climate change, So we're not just defending forests

6:43

for the stake of these like incredible ecological

6:46

strongholds, but we're also defending them

6:48

because we recognize that forest defense is climate

6:51

defense. This is a like environmental

6:53

justice issue, it's a human issue, it's a community

6:55

issue. UM. And so now

6:58

direct action I think, is you

7:00

know, happening not just the name of our forests, but in the name

7:02

of our communities in our future. UM.

7:04

But it's just as rich um

7:06

now as it has ever been, and especially

7:09

right now and especially since which

7:12

I know we'll get into people have been

7:14

throwing down all over this fire

7:16

region to protect what's left of our forests.

7:19

Yeah, and I think it's it's good to get into kind of

7:21

why how the fires have impacted

7:24

this because one of the shady things that has

7:26

been done is we had I think most people

7:28

in the country are where Oregon had unprecedented

7:30

wildfires this year, and we had

7:33

unprecedented wildfires last

7:35

year, and we're

7:37

going to have unprecedented wildfires every

7:39

year for a while. Um

7:41

And whenever these fires run through, they don't

7:43

like destroy every tree in their wake, but they

7:46

char them. And logging companies

7:48

then come in under the guise of like, well, we

7:50

have to make this area safe so that like the fires

7:52

don't burn here next year. So we've got to cut down all

7:54

of these trees, um and

7:57

and clear cut this part of area of

7:59

public four. So, like, as you're driving around

8:02

in forests that you used to be able to do

8:04

stuff, and you'll find areas that are just like blocked

8:06

off because mining companies are coming or logging

8:09

companies are coming through and clear cutting all of these trees

8:11

that could very easily recover from

8:14

the fire, um or that weren't

8:16

even burned by it, but we're just like in this area

8:18

that they said, Okay, well we have to clear this out in order

8:20

to make it safe. And it's kind of this

8:22

way to like back door and

8:24

the guys of fire protection like expand

8:27

logging. Yeah,

8:29

and just to add to that to the logging companies

8:31

love to say that the reasons we have increased

8:33

wildfires because there's an

8:36

overgrowth in the forest because of the Northwest

8:38

Forest plant, because there's more protections for the

8:40

forest. Fires are happening worse

8:43

because we're not getting there bogging the forest

8:45

and removing all the fuel. M

8:48

hm. So we have like this two part thing that

8:50

like Kat just mentioned, where like, on the one hand,

8:52

companies are like, we need to log more to prevent

8:54

wildfire, which is bullshit and

8:57

we can talk about why. And on the other hand, after

8:59

fires burned through an yeah, they're like, we need

9:01

to log because we need to help

9:03

the forest recover ecologically. Also, we

9:05

need to salvage all of the timber

9:08

before it rots and goes bad,

9:10

and like all of these reasons and so basically

9:12

it's just like fire has become the excuse

9:14

to just like log preemptively and

9:17

log after the fact, and yeah,

9:19

it's a total total ship show. Yeah.

9:21

I mean I think this this kind of falls into capitalists

9:25

trying to use climate change is just

9:27

another way to find things to extract

9:29

and things to grow on. Right, It's they're they're

9:32

going to try to find their own way to sneak in

9:34

when all of this you know, ecological

9:36

disaster is happening to you know, sell

9:39

you whatever green safe product

9:41

is going to help against the collapse, or you know, package

9:44

things in a way that makes it seem like it's

9:46

solving this you know problem, but it's actually

9:48

it's part of it's part of the same thing industry

9:52

from the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Right, it's

9:54

it's you see this in every single industry, and it's

9:56

always it's it's gonna be like this because this is the only

9:58

way that capitalism knows how

10:01

to address this issue is by just turning

10:03

it into another turning it into

10:05

another thing to consume, another thing to

10:07

sell in package. Pretty

10:10

pretty grib yeah. And there's I

10:12

mean, there's cascading effects too, because

10:15

they cut down these trees under

10:17

the guise of making it safe for the next fire

10:19

season, but which also makes a

10:21

big chunk of land a lot more vulnerable

10:24

to like mud slides and the torrential raining

10:26

that we're having right now. Um, and

10:28

it's also going to get more common, because that's how

10:30

fucking climate change works. It's it's just

10:32

like the comprehensive

10:34

fury comprehensive. And

10:37

let us be clear too, that logging

10:39

doesn't actually work to prevent wildfire,

10:42

you know, even you know, they

10:44

say that it does, but the kind of logging that

10:46

they do in the name of wildfire prevention

10:48

just looks like clear cuts. And we have a

10:51

pretty robust body of science

10:53

now showing that those kinds of activities

10:55

actually make fire hazard more severe

10:58

for local communities. So that's like one

11:00

of the things they're doing. And we've been calling it just

11:02

gaslighting, like they're gaslighting all

11:05

of us by saying, you know, there's nothing to

11:07

see here, there's nothing to see here. We're taking

11:09

care of you all, you know, we're barely logging

11:11

at all. And then we've got community members on

11:13

the ground, um, despite the closure

11:15

orders who are like, actually there's a

11:17

lot to see here, and you all are like completely

11:20

devastating the landscape and further harming

11:22

our communities. Um. So yeah,

11:24

it's total gaslighting. Yeah,

11:27

an Oregon has both in terms of like watching

11:29

fires and watching logging some like rules

11:32

that are not in place in other areas,

11:35

especially for like even for for press and

11:38

the like. Like it's it's actually hard to get in

11:40

to look at this stuff, um

11:42

without you know, breaking

11:44

some sort of law technically, which

11:48

is not at all shady. Um. Yeah,

11:51

yeah, I feel like that's another important thing. And maybe cat

11:53

can jump onto is just um

11:56

basically, I mean, I think what people aren't understanding

11:58

is that after the fire, the

12:01

these federal forest managers

12:04

closed gates and essentially

12:07

are converting public land into

12:10

private land by you know, using

12:12

the threat of violence to kick people

12:14

out if they go onto their public land.

12:17

And since and they say

12:19

until at least the

12:21

only folks allowed behind these gates are

12:23

cops and loggers. And so this is like

12:25

literally, um, you know, the enclosure

12:27

of our public lands and like the privatization

12:30

of our public lands so that cops and loggers

12:32

can do whatever the hell they want. Yep.

12:36

And it's the kind of thing I mean, it's

12:39

the kind of thing that people if

12:41

you're if you're if the if the Bundy's

12:44

and that group actually meant the stuff they were saying,

12:46

like the rhetoric they were putting out, it's the kind of thing they

12:48

would be piste off about. Two, Because you're right, it is the

12:50

enclosure of public land

12:53

by the government UM

12:55

and corporations without any kind

12:57

of consent from the people

12:59

who are supposed to be the collective

13:01

owners of that land. It's it's a

13:05

again something that a lot of people should

13:07

be angry about, who aren't angry about

13:09

because there's been this huge propaganda campaign in the

13:11

Northwest about timber unity and the like

13:13

and like supporting the timber industry

13:16

UM by destroying like

13:19

the single greatest gift this entire part

13:21

of the world has. Uh, it's it's pretty

13:23

frustrating.

13:25

Ye. Anyway, I have to we have

13:28

to actually have a quick break so I can go watch

13:30

my soccer game at the Timber Stadium.

13:32

Uh, completely unrelated. So I'm

13:35

gonna drive out to Wheeler, Oregon myself.

13:37

But we all have different things to do during the break,

13:40

um. But also in the break, I guess we could probably

13:42

do an AD break here because why not? All right, Yeah,

13:45

everybody loves ads and

13:47

we're back still talking about

13:50

force defense. I wonder there's something that people

13:52

should probably know before we go further about

13:54

the way that that Oregon works. So for

13:56

a while, Oregon is a place where you

13:58

can't get elected, um

14:00

in a lot of parts of a lot of populated

14:03

parts of Oregon if you're a Republican.

14:06

So the Republicans just plain

14:09

ice um and and pretend

14:11

and like throw out some some social justice

14:13

e language while while still doing all

14:15

of the extract of stuff they were going to

14:17

do anyway. And that's the story with like Ted

14:20

Wheeler, um and his family. So Ted Ted

14:22

Wheeler, the mayor of Portland, comes from timber

14:24

money. His father was a major Republican

14:27

donor. Not that the Democrats don't have a lot of

14:29

extractive history behind them, but like it's it's very

14:31

obvious what's happening with the Wheelers where um,

14:34

they were huge Republican donors and huge

14:36

backers of the right, and then Oregon

14:39

had this kind of switch politically, um,

14:41

And so Ted Wheeler just started

14:44

throwing out nice social justicey language.

14:46

But the the whole you know, he's he's I'm

14:48

sure going to make a run for governor at some point

14:50

in the near future. And you've

14:52

got this like this

14:55

dressed up very

14:58

extractive logging industry and

15:00

politicians that always find

15:03

a way to kind of make it seem palatable

15:05

to the liberal majority. Um

15:07

that. And they've gotten pretty good at that because it

15:10

doesn't I don't know, I

15:12

think maybe we're coming to the end of this period,

15:14

but like I haven't, I haven't seen up until

15:16

this last year a lot of widespread

15:19

kind of outrage about the clear cutting

15:21

um. And they also hide it pretty well. Like if

15:23

you're driving through these beautiful

15:26

public forests in Oregon, the areas

15:28

that are right along the road will generally

15:30

be pristine and you'll see old

15:32

growth and everything. But sometimes you can see as

15:34

you like turn a corner or something that like, oh, that

15:37

old growth only goes back a

15:39

couple of couple of dozen yards and

15:41

then it's a clear cut um and they'll

15:43

they'll they'll hide it so that it's it's not as

15:45

obvious because they know what upsets people. So there's

15:48

this there's this kind of surprisingly

15:51

um surprisingly

15:53

thorough campaign to do

15:56

as much of this as possible without upsetting

16:00

people UM which which means there's a potential

16:02

to upset people, which means there's a potential to

16:04

actually stop this if enough

16:07

people get upset. But it's you

16:09

know, you're you're you're going against folks who have thought

16:11

a lot about how to do this in a way that

16:13

isn't going to upset the apple cart. So

16:16

how do you upset the apple cart? I guess that is what I'm

16:19

asking. Well,

16:24

I think one way that we upset the apple cart

16:26

is by bringing people out to these places. And

16:28

you know, in the action that happened on Tuesday that

16:30

looked like disrupting and disobeying

16:33

a federal closure order in order

16:35

to bring people out to these places. Um,

16:37

you know, basically metaphorically walking behind

16:40

what you were describing the beauty strip along

16:42

the highway and seeing what's behind it.

16:44

Um. And you know, as we were

16:46

saying earlier, unfortunately, because

16:48

of all these federal closure orders after the fire,

16:51

that looks like risking um, you

16:53

know, repercussion, state repression, arrest

16:56

even um, in order to just lay eyes

16:58

on it. But that is the way that we check

17:00

the apple cart. We get people to see

17:03

these places so that it cuts through

17:05

the gas lighting that the industry is doing and

17:07

people can literally viscerally feel

17:09

and see the damage. Um. And

17:11

there's no way to convince them that that's

17:13

okay. Once they see it, and how do you

17:15

do go about like finding people to bring

17:18

into this, convincing people to come Like what does kind

17:20

of that effort look like? You

17:24

want to answer this one cat, You did a ton of recruitment, Yeah,

17:27

totally. Um. I think a big

17:29

part of it is getting them while they're young. UM.

17:32

I think that like young people right now are already

17:35

pretty radicalized, um compared

17:37

to ten years or so, probably because of

17:39

I think George Floyd and Black Lives Matter and social

17:41

the use of social media and those movements. Um.

17:44

So I I am a college student

17:46

and we're seeing like so many people coming in and

17:49

ready to throw down, like they just cannot

17:51

wait to get involved, and we'll kind

17:53

of just show up to anything. Um.

17:55

So. I think that that's like a major tactic for

17:57

sure. UM. And then also making

17:59

sure it when you have like a an action

18:01

that you're recruiting people for that it's I'm

18:04

very easy to plug in. It's like very accessible,

18:07

um and kind of just like having

18:09

it organized very well so it's not daunting

18:11

to come in. Do

18:14

you want to add to that, Sam, Well, just to

18:16

like share a little more about like how we did that with

18:18

this particular action. That happened

18:20

on Tuesday. UM. Basically,

18:23

you know, we it

18:25

was a Tuesday, brainy,

18:28

freezing middle of the forest planning

18:31

this action, did not think and behind

18:33

a federal closure order. So everyone on

18:36

site risking arrest um

18:38

and planning this action, it felt like we

18:40

would be lucky as ship if we got ten

18:42

people out there. UM. But I will

18:44

say, UM, it was easy as ship to

18:46

get fifty people out there. And that's

18:48

because people care. UM.

18:51

And you know, I think we did. In

18:54

terms of organizing strategy, we use the

18:56

affinity group model, and so we

18:58

had a core you know, there was a core group of organizers,

19:01

and those organizers recruited through affinity

19:03

groups and their affinity groups and UM.

19:05

That helped to keep kind of information secure

19:08

and UM, you know, everything tightly

19:10

organized. But UM, people want.

19:12

People were really desiring to get

19:14

together and do something. Especially in the past

19:16

couple of years of COVID, people are just like eager

19:19

to do something. UM. And on top

19:22

of that, you know, we we promised that this

19:24

isn't just an opportunity to

19:26

potentially get arrested, but this is an educational

19:28

opportunity and a movement building opportunities.

19:30

So while the road was blocked with

19:33

a slash pile and a fire truck. There

19:35

were workshops going on, There were hikes

19:38

going on in the forest that's supposed to be cut

19:41

UM. There was discussions about know your

19:43

rights trainings and affinity groups. We had

19:45

UM a band um playing

19:47

on top of a fire truck, and there was a dance

19:49

party and basically, you know, we're like

19:52

building community and solidarity

19:55

UM in a positive way while sucking

19:57

shut up. I think that's the key.

20:01

And I mean, where do you uh, how

20:05

do how do you have like what is the let

20:07

me think of a way to phrase this. What

20:11

is kind of the next step here because they

20:13

haven't started logging

20:16

this area yet, but they're kind of doing

20:18

like the pre prep work. Um,

20:20

what do you what do you think actually can

20:23

be done to to halt it? Like is it

20:25

is it a problem? Like because it seems

20:27

to me that it's there's got to be like a mix of tactics

20:30

there to actually get them to stop. And you're

20:32

dealing with a number of different UM

20:34

threats, including not just at

20:36

the state level, but these federal closure orders.

20:39

Like what is I don't know what what does

20:41

the path forward look like to you? Yeah?

20:45

So there's a preliminary injunction being

20:47

forth by some nonprofits, and

20:50

so this is a really good example of different tactics

20:52

coming in and so UM,

20:54

the preliminary injunction is basically to state

20:56

that what they're doing before service is doing is

20:58

illegal. UM. But before

21:01

that that can be passed, they can come in at

21:03

any point and log the area. And so

21:05

that's where direct action comes in to slow

21:07

them down and halt them as much as possible until

21:09

the courts can process that injunction. And

21:13

that feels really huge to Like what Kat

21:15

just said is like where is the place

21:17

of direct action in forest defense? This

21:20

is like the golden moment for

21:22

direct action while there's like an open legal

21:24

case that we're waiting on a judge to settle, and

21:26

the timber industry is like coming in ready to

21:28

moot out the case by logging before it can even

21:31

be decided. And like to just add a

21:33

little bit more backstory to on, like, another

21:35

reason why people are so pissed about this

21:38

um is that you know, this watershed

21:40

has been I think like

21:42

beloved and also embattled since the

21:45

eighties, Like the infamous

21:47

Easter massacre logging event

21:49

happened in the same watershed where could

21:52

eye Yeah, no, totally

21:54

um it. A

21:58

timber company was planning to

22:01

clear cut log old growth forest out

22:03

there and started moving on it on Easter

22:06

UM in the snow, and a bunch

22:08

of badass direct action activists

22:11

set up a five tiered

22:13

blockade on a logging road to

22:15

hold off the logging and successfully

22:18

did for um days and days

22:20

until a bunch of them, I think over a dozen

22:22

folks got arrested, thrown in jail and

22:24

the forest was clear cut. UM. So hence

22:27

you know the Eastern massacre name

22:29

UM. But a ton of folks who

22:32

you know still work in force events in

22:34

the spy A region. We're there and remember that story

22:36

and we're with us um when

22:38

we were out there this week telling that story.

22:41

And you know since then, between and

22:43

now, people have been showing up again

22:45

and again and again in this watershed because it is so

22:47

special to try and fight off logging, and

22:49

myself and Cat have been a part of

22:52

efforts over the past handful of years

22:54

to um fight off a number

22:56

of logging projects out there. We were successful

22:58

in doing that. We actually snacked the

23:00

forest services grubby hands off of a bunch

23:02

of oil growth because our scrappy friends

23:05

spent days exploring this watershed

23:08

and documenting doing like site specific

23:10

science, citizen science documentation

23:13

and giving it to the Forest Service. And we fought them

23:15

and one and protected a bunch of the forest.

23:18

And then the fires came through and they closed

23:20

the gates and they secretly changed

23:22

all of these contracts to include clear

23:25

cut logging. And so that is why there

23:27

is an open lawsuit because we believe it's illegal

23:29

what they're doing. It's sketchy and illegal,

23:32

Yeah, but it does it does illustrate like kind

23:34

of the depth of the fight necessary,

23:37

not just in forest defense, but at all

23:39

efforts of kind of resisting the

23:41

extract of industries that are driving

23:43

a lot of climate change. It's it's not enough,

23:45

it's never enough to win the first victory.

23:47

They're going to find some way to to to swoop

23:50

around to the flanks and try to take it away from

23:52

you, like they're doing right now. Um,

23:55

which is exhausting. Um, it seems exhausting,

23:58

but it doesn't

24:00

mean it. You can ignore it.

24:03

It's fucking exhausting. Yeah. I

24:05

always say it's like our forests, our federal management

24:08

agencies, they suffer from this powerful

24:10

amnesia where they just like keep coming back

24:12

with the same bullshit proposals, but

24:14

like our movement does not suffer from that,

24:16

and we are just like building power and getting

24:18

stronger and getting more successful. So

24:21

like when people left on Tuesday, UM,

24:23

there was a promise that people will be back if

24:25

logging happens, and we're very sure that

24:28

that would be the case. And if

24:30

if people are in the Cascadian

24:33

bioregion and are like, well

24:35

this sounds pretty sweet.

24:37

I wanna, I wanna, I wanna keep

24:40

keep some trees where they are as opposed

24:42

to putting them on the back of a truck to drive

24:45

somewhere else. How could

24:47

they get involved? Where where might they reach

24:49

out to? Well,

24:53

there's a few different groups who were a

24:55

part of this, UM definitely UM,

24:58

the Portland Rising Tide, Cascadia

25:00

Forest Defenders, UM CAT can talk

25:02

about Climate Justice League and UM

25:05

maybe the action that you all put on yesterday as

25:07

a follow up, and like how folks can get involved with

25:09

that UM But basically, yeah, you can

25:11

follow us on Twitter, UM and Instagram

25:14

and and please, UM, you know, keep a lookout

25:16

because we will be we'll be getting it out far

25:18

and wide. If there's a call for folks to get

25:20

out there again. Yeah,

25:23

and Climate Justice League is an organ

25:26

UM at the University of Oregon and

25:29

people are free to just join the organization.

25:31

Community members are also involved. UM.

25:34

But we did put on an event yesterday

25:36

where Tyler Ferres of Ferris

25:38

Logging or First Timber UM,

25:41

who is actually the company that bought

25:44

the rights to Brighton Bush, which was the area

25:46

where we did UM the action

25:48

on Tuesday, he was giving a speech

25:50

at the University of Oregon UM to

25:52

talk about post fire logging, which was just

25:55

like crazy timing. They kind of just like

25:57

put it in our lap, and so we recruited

25:59

from that action or like let's just drop the hell out

26:01

of this UM talk, and

26:04

so we like showed up and kind of tried to sneak

26:06

in. They were having zoom issues, which

26:08

like luckily distracted them from the fact

26:10

that there was like forty or fifty

26:12

like pretty punk anarchy looking kids

26:14

in the room. UM. But we

26:17

like let him go on for a little bit and

26:19

then we started to ask him questions that he obviously

26:22

didn't know the answer to. UM. We kept

26:24

like asking questions about you know, the science

26:26

says this, but you're stating this where you getting

26:28

your science from. And he kept saying things like, well,

26:31

that's more of a political question and the

26:33

statistics don't really back up what you're saying,

26:36

um. And then yeah, we just chanted

26:38

and made him really nervous. Yeah.

26:40

And as a heads up, if you're if you're looking to

26:42

win an argument on a zoom call, you can just

26:44

say, uh, the statistics don't back you

26:47

up without citing statistics. It's it's it's

26:49

really the easiest way to do that. I

26:51

guess it'll kind of curious for like you

26:54

guys said, you've you've prevented you know, some of

26:56

the stuff in the past by doing stuff like documentation,

27:00

um. And you know when

27:03

when when that kind of thing becomes

27:05

not enough. You know that this this area does have a

27:08

rich history of kind of direct

27:10

action stuff to protect

27:13

forests with a get also like a mixed

27:15

success, like by no means does direct action

27:17

always always work to do anything?

27:19

Right now, we still have the line three pipeline,

27:22

we still have all of these things that direct action has

27:24

tried to prevent. But it turns out

27:26

a lot of the kind of direct action that's associated

27:28

with these types of like ecological things is

27:32

kind of more performative than anything

27:34

else, you know, like it is kind of like a

27:36

tree set is about gaining media media

27:39

like publicity, because they're gonna

27:41

get you down right like eventually, and

27:43

it's and it's and it's gonna be painful because

27:46

like you're not going to be sitting up there for years

27:48

to to to to to to prevent

27:50

the treat from being logged. So how

27:53

close do you think we are into to like reaching

27:55

that kind of territory like it was in like the nineties

27:57

and eighties where it is like a lot of lot

28:00

of people like blocking off roads and

28:02

doing and doing that kind of thing. You know,

28:04

more like you know what what it crosses

28:06

into that it's more like autonomous. It's not it's not like

28:08

led by a single organization by any means.

28:11

See, it's more it's more decentralized. But did

28:13

you see that kind of happening

28:16

soon? And you know, how, how how

28:18

do you think we can balance out direct

28:21

action with like other like thoughtful

28:23

means of trying to draw attention to

28:25

these things and maybe actually and and other things

28:27

like actually physically physically preventing

28:30

the logging of certain areas. That's

28:33

such a good question And UM,

28:36

I'm really thankful that we're talking about strategy

28:38

because um, kind of, like I mentioned,

28:40

I moved out here like ten years ago

28:43

to do forest defense work and have seen so

28:45

many instances in where people are trying to do direct

28:47

action in a in a time and space where it doesn't

28:49

make sense, UM, where it's like basically

28:52

slated too. It's going to lose because it's

28:54

just impossible too. As you said, you know, hold

28:57

this blockade for weeks and weeks and weeks

28:59

and the snow um indefinitely,

29:02

you know, as we you know, as they continue to try

29:04

to log indefinitely. So there's definitely a sweet

29:06

spot for where um, the sort of

29:08

kind of the sort of direct action that we're talking

29:10

about, like blockading, where

29:13

that is most useful. And that sweet

29:15

spot is definitely when there is another

29:18

decisive move, like another like

29:20

legal victory that's waiting in the wings

29:23

or um. You know, we won one in Washington

29:25

without a legal victory because we shamed the ship

29:27

out of the Department of Natural Resources in the Seattle

29:30

Times and they were like WHOA, We're sorry,

29:33

um, And so direct action held off something

29:35

until we were able to sufficiently shame them

29:37

and deter them, but typically they don't

29:39

shame well, um and so typically,

29:42

um, you know, we need illegal there

29:44

needs to be a legal element um

29:46

backing it up. So direct action is a time

29:49

buyer. But that said, like obviously,

29:51

blockading things is not the only type

29:53

of direct action, and part of the rich history

29:55

of force events in the Spire region is other kinds

29:58

of more um necess fairly

30:00

you know, discrete kinds of direct action that obviously

30:03

you know, I'm um not a part of

30:05

speaking on this radio show, but um, what would

30:08

publicly, um you know say like

30:10

those things probably need to happen, and

30:12

I hope they have what what what? What I could

30:14

say is that I've I've seen these things

30:17

happening in other places, like in like

30:19

in the Atlanta Defending Forest movement

30:22

right now, I have I I have seen

30:24

evidence that individuals not associated

30:26

with any group are putting

30:28

spikes and trees, and that is that is that is something

30:31

that is happening, right, And all

30:33

that takes is one person, right, It's

30:35

that's not like a group of twenty people going

30:37

into the forest to do that. That's the one person

30:39

in an afternoon, right. So those are

30:41

the types of like single person direct actions,

30:43

which again, yeah, any type of direct action is

30:46

going to be scary, right You're you're once

30:48

you start doing that, that is

30:50

you know, that introduces certain things that will is

30:52

is kind of is kind of more frightening to you

30:54

as a person. Um.

30:56

But but it's it is something that is happening

30:59

in other places, is um. And it

31:01

has showed to at the very least upset

31:04

the people who are wanting logging to happen.

31:06

Generally, they're not thrilled when they when

31:08

they find when when they find these things

31:11

um. Yeah, yeah, because

31:13

like it's like it's I mean, I think like when it comes

31:15

down to it, it's like about knowing

31:18

what your goal is with this tactic. Like

31:20

on you know, in in the action

31:23

that happened this past week, there

31:25

was an understanding that the goal

31:28

was to you know, shine a light

31:30

on this thing that's happening in secrecy, shame

31:32

the Forest Service, and build movement

31:35

movement building so that we're ready when

31:38

people need to throw down for real and and and that

31:40

might happen soon. We weren't trying

31:43

to hold the space for weeks and weeks and weeks.

31:45

Um. That wasn't the goal. So like going in being like, what

31:48

kind of an action are we trying to do? What are we trying to complish?

31:50

Are we trying to be decisive? Are we trying to like

31:52

shape the conditions necessary for success

31:54

and like culture build, or were trying like what are we

31:56

actually trying to do? And then like coming

31:58

away with that, having having that clear

32:00

having a clear sense of that beforehand,

32:03

I think really really is crucial because I've definitely

32:06

observed direct actions where

32:08

that is not the case, and people have not thought

32:11

those things through and it becomes

32:13

the kind of unfun version of

32:15

chaos, um where

32:17

you know, things, things don't really get done,

32:19

and you're just kind of sitting around and everyone's kind

32:21

of slightly miserable because again you're in a freezing

32:24

forest, um, and no one really

32:26

knows what the hell they're doing. Um.

32:28

So definitely having those kind of things thoughts through

32:30

beforehand is extremely

32:33

useful when you're deciding to trudge

32:35

your way into some

32:37

cold, dark woods. Yeah,

32:39

we're going for a chaotic good, not chaotic evil. Yeah,

32:42

well, a little bit of chaotic. Well, it

32:44

depends, it depends what it depends what we mean by

32:46

evil evil evil to some people,

32:49

we we yeah, anyway,

32:51

Um, and any other kind of historical

32:54

notes on forest defense or any other kind of random,

32:57

random tidbits you like to mention before

32:59

before we close out. The

33:01

one thing that I feel like it's super important to say

33:03

to people is that forest

33:06

defense is not just about protecting

33:09

forests. It's about protecting

33:12

all of us. We know now

33:14

like forest defenses, climate defense. Our

33:16

forests are our best natural

33:18

tool for fighting climate change. And

33:20

also like we need them here. Most

33:23

of Oregon get their drinking water

33:25

from forest and water sheds, like they literally

33:27

are sustaining all of us. And so yeah,

33:29

we hope folks join, like not just for the sake of

33:31

like being you know, hippie tree huggers,

33:34

even though you know some of us are, but also

33:36

because like we need to survive

33:39

as a people and as a planet, and

33:41

um forests our best way to do that. It's it's the cheapest

33:44

most advanced form of carbon capture

33:46

we have yet. So yeah,

33:48

it seems seems kind of asinine

33:51

to chop that all down to build some shitty

33:54

sheds. M hmm, all

33:57

right, well that's

33:59

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37:15

It's it could Happen here, the podcast

37:17

that occasionally has ads

37:19

from Washington State Highway Patrol. On

37:21

a completely unrelated note, Garrison,

37:24

you want to talk about the Washington State Highway

37:26

Patrol today, I sure would

37:28

love to talk about our our good

37:30

friends at the Washington State Patrol um

37:34

because yeah, they just they've've

37:36

they've come up on my radar in a in an unrelated

37:38

matter, and now we're gonna talking

37:40

about So now we're talking about them.

37:42

Yeah, so this is the show about things falling apart and

37:45

kind of part of societal and

37:47

political stuff kind of crumbling.

37:49

Usually that gets related

37:51

to some type of law enforcement agency more often than

37:54

not. And uh, in

37:56

terms of like tensions rising in

37:58

stuff, there's a lot of you know, force

38:00

gets force gets exerted

38:02

via law enforcement and uh, one

38:04

such law enforcement Yeah. Well, and one such

38:06

agency that does this is called

38:08

the Washington State Patrol. UM.

38:11

So they were

38:14

I I don't know, I I just discovered them

38:16

recently. UM. So they

38:19

were founded exactly one hundred years ago.

38:21

UM. And they were originally called the Washington

38:24

State Highway Patrol UM.

38:26

Now they're just the Washington State Patrol. They were moved Highway,

38:28

but they still do the same thing. They're basically glorified

38:31

traffic cops um who operate

38:34

all around all around Washington

38:36

State. UM. And

38:38

we're gonna talk about some of the ways

38:40

that they've been making

38:43

things worse within the past decade. UM.

38:46

I'm since they have a one hundred year history,

38:48

I'm sure we can find lots of historical examples.

38:51

UM, but we're we're gonna we're gonna do stuff

38:54

that's more that is more recent, because

38:56

this is you know, generally trying to keep things

38:58

around the current, the current

39:00

crumbling. Um.

39:02

And because we're gonna talk about police, the

39:05

first the first thing we're gonna be discussing, oddly

39:07

enough, is a racism um

39:10

because I know, Um,

39:13

when you think of Washington State Patrol, that's

39:15

you know, it's it's kind of shocking that they

39:17

might have a race issue. Um. So,

39:20

Anyway, twelve years ago,

39:22

researchers working with working

39:24

with Washington State Patrol found that troopers

39:27

were searching drivers from minority communities, particularly

39:30

um local Native American

39:32

tribes, at a much higher rate than

39:35

than white people. And they recommend

39:37

an additional study, which the Washington

39:39

State Patrol declined to UH

39:42

to investigate further. They they're

39:44

like, no, um, no,

39:46

no more studies. So meanwhile,

39:49

since then, the troopers have continued to continue

39:51

to search Native Americans at a at a rate much

39:54

higher more than five times than that

39:56

of of of white people in the area.

39:59

Yeah, so but there are

40:01

five times as the popular

40:04

there, there's five times as many Indigenous people

40:06

in Washington as white people right there, there's

40:08

not. Oh

40:11

yeah, ok. So an analysis

40:14

by Investigate West showed

40:16

that the Patrol continued to do searches at

40:18

a much elevated rates for

40:21

for black people, Latino, Pacific

40:23

Islanders, and natives within Washington

40:25

State. UM. And yet when

40:28

when troopers did decide to search

40:30

white motorists, they were more likely to

40:32

find drugs in contraband. UM.

40:35

Which is something to Washington State Patrol actually acknowledges

40:37

is that when when they search people of minority

40:39

communities, they are less likely

40:41

to find to find illegal

40:43

things. Yeah. I mean that's yeah nationwide

40:46

and very very

40:49

robust data. So UM,

40:51

government records obtained via

40:54

like from information

40:56

requests and various other you know of public

40:59

records searches UM also

41:01

show that there there there is a state law

41:04

that Washington State Patrol is supposed to collect

41:06

and report semi annually to the

41:08

Criminal Justice Training Commission in Washington.

41:11

UM about you know, race and ethnicity

41:13

data of motorists is tapped by troopers. But

41:15

uh so this is supposed supposed happen semi annually,

41:18

but the agency report of those findings

41:20

only three times in the past fifteen years. Which

41:25

isn't sounds kind of like the Portland police not

41:27

doing the things that federally they're supposed to do

41:29

because they're so violent.

41:32

Yeah, being out of compliance with a

41:34

bunch of federal rags three three times,

41:36

three times in fifteen years is not semi

41:38

annually. Based on what I know,

41:41

the term semi annually to semi

41:43

decade. So yeah,

41:47

UM based on responses for over

41:49

thirty public records requests UM from

41:51

from three different agencies looking looking

41:53

at Washington State Patrol and more than like fifty

41:56

interviews with current and formal law enforcement officials

41:58

and people with experience in interacting with Washington

42:00

State Patrol UM and also data

42:03

from millions of traffic stops that all this was

42:05

looked at in total, examined about

42:07

eight million traffic stops from two

42:09

US and nine to US in fifteen. This is what Investigate

42:11

West was doing UM, which was which was the most

42:13

recent data available, and the analysis

42:15

found that UH it focused on twenty

42:18

incidents of what researchers called like high discretion

42:21

searches. That's when troopers had the most like

42:23

personal leeway to decide whether or

42:25

not to pull over and search a vehicle.

42:28

UM. Black drivers were twice as likely to be searched as

42:30

white drivers, and Latino specific calendars

42:32

were eight percent more likely to be searched.

42:35

Of of these incidents where officers had

42:37

discretion and like they could choose whether or not

42:39

to pull someone over. Um, so it wasn't

42:41

like it wasn't like they were like obviously speeding

42:43

or doing you know, like like you know, like like regular

42:45

like actually observable traffic violations.

42:48

This is when like people could choose when

42:50

they investigate. West thing got published, they

42:52

contact Washington State Patrol and the spokesperson

42:55

said that, uh, here's

42:57

here's here's the quote that Ray

43:00

Sprace was not the only factor when troopers

43:02

decided whom to search, and that's partially

43:04

because blacks, Native Americans and Latinos

43:06

are more more more likely to be searched regardless

43:09

of how much discretion troopers have, which

43:12

that doesn't really make very much sense. Um,

43:14

I don't know what person,

43:18

I don't know. What they mean is they're more likely to

43:21

be searching regardless

43:25

what the who was that

43:27

bad checking the copy?

43:30

Which is weird because later on the spokesperson

43:33

said that, um, we're same

43:36

guy, we're in the Basically we're agrees

43:39

that we're in a basic agreement that minorities

43:41

are searched at higher rates, but we find less contraband

43:44

so um.

43:47

And he also he also

43:49

noted that complaints about like a racial

43:51

bias encounted for little more

43:53

than ten percent of all complaints

43:55

of the state patrol filed

43:57

last year. So I

44:00

guess he thinks that's a good He thinks that's a good

44:02

stat

44:03

Yeah, yeah,

44:06

um. And another kind of not

44:09

great thing is that uh. The analysis

44:12

found that not only are Native Americans more likely to

44:14

be searched, but all of the most

44:16

of those searches happen always that like the edges

44:19

of reservations UM. The analysis

44:21

found that the two highest concentration of

44:23

searches in Native Americans by state troopers are

44:26

on the US nineties seven, where it

44:28

encounters um a reservation

44:31

at ol Mac about about a mile from

44:33

its intersection at a state wrote

44:36

one fifty five, which is and more

44:38

than one thirty miles south of

44:41

of the same when the same highway enters another

44:43

reservation. So nearly

44:46

one third of high discretions of high discretion

44:48

searches. So when troopers can decide whether or not to

44:50

pull someone over like like they

44:53

they they have more discretion whether they can. So

44:55

one third of those happened on these two stretches

44:58

of highway right on the edges of these

45:00

reservations, Like they're patrolling outside

45:02

these reservations to specifically do this. Um

45:06

there was I saw an interview

45:08

on this topic that we talked that talked to Native

45:10

Americans in this area and they're like, yeah, every time we leave

45:13

the reservation, we get pulled over. But then we watched

45:15

tons of white motorists go by and no one cares,

45:17

like and like and they're like you're doing like they're

45:19

just speeding by, it doesn't matter.

45:22

Um so yeah, that

45:24

is. That is the first first

45:26

you know, unsurprising tidbit about Uh,

45:30

some an organization who started as a highway patrol

45:32

is, yeah, they're gonna pull people over

45:35

who are not white more often. That is that's

45:37

pretty not not super shocko

45:42

yeah, and then makes a public statement

45:44

like l o O yeah

45:47

yeah that that does. That does sound a lot like

45:49

with the Washington State Patrol. Uh sounds

45:51

like, um

45:54

so we're gonna So that

45:56

that was that was the first obvious thing. Uh.

45:59

This next her it's a little bit more fun.

46:01

Um so in in two thousand nine,

46:04

the Washington State Patrol made made

46:06

the decision to fire eight troopers,

46:08

which is you know, pretty pretty rare um

46:12

And the reason why they got fired is

46:14

because they used fake diplomas

46:17

to claim pay raises. Yeah,

46:20

so there was there was this whole scheme

46:22

about getting fake diplomas to get

46:24

the troopers more money, like

46:27

like like individual people that there's this whole,

46:29

this whole operation going on. It

46:31

resulted in the in in eight in eight people getting

46:33

fired. So troopers can can

46:36

boost their pay about two percent by earning

46:38

a two a two year degree or four percent

46:40

with a four year degree. And there was this

46:42

group of of a troopers who

46:44

just uh started just forging diplomas

46:50

see Garrison. This is

46:52

a separate conversation. But they didn't need

46:54

to forge diplomas. They could have just become

46:56

doctors of of of of magic,

46:59

like like that's what

47:01

I've tried to do religious

47:03

PhD. Yeah. So there's

47:05

all sorts of fake diploma mills come on Washington

47:08

State Highway Patrol. This

47:11

this is pretty funny. So

47:15

so the

47:17

investigation began after federal

47:19

agents shut down a diploma mill in

47:21

the Spokane. Criminal charges

47:23

were not filed, but the Patrol

47:26

to decide to fire these eight troopers.

47:29

Yeah, so that is one of the more funny

47:31

things we'll be talking about today. And I

47:33

think it's time for an ad break. So

47:35

yeah, speaking of funny, here's

47:37

these ads that may or may not be the people we're

47:39

talking about. Rob No unrelated,

47:42

unrelated. Uh

47:45

We're back, which is also unrelated.

47:47

Yeah. Another thing that's putting

47:50

pretty common around police is that

47:52

the past few years, they generally

47:55

don't think COVID is really real or

47:57

that it is the past few years. Now that

48:04

Robert, we're less than a month away from two.

48:07

Yeah, I hate that. It's like it's

48:10

it's like it's almost two. Almost ten

48:12

percent of your entire life has been COVID.

48:14

I'm not going to think about math um.

48:17

So generally they don't think COVID

48:20

is real. And also they think vaccines

48:22

are the mark of Satan or something. Well

48:24

obviously they are. But yeah, so

48:27

in in in mid October this

48:29

this past October, Washington Tate Patrol announced

48:31

that one hundred and twenty

48:33

seven of its employees lost their job

48:36

after the state's COVID nineteen vaccine mandate

48:39

deadline of October eighteen. So

48:42

unlike the Portland Police Bureau who who

48:44

the port who port and many other cities where

48:46

city officials caved to the demands

48:48

of the police that vaccine mandates

48:51

not be not be extended towards police,

48:54

Uh, this did not happen in Washington and they actually

48:56

got it enforced. So over a hundred

48:59

UH patrol employees quit

49:01

quit their job, including a sixty

49:03

four commissioned officers. It

49:06

was like six sixty seven troopers, six

49:08

sergeants and one captain. Um.

49:12

Yeah, So you know, Washington State Patrol has about

49:14

two thousand personnel

49:17

within like between like eight districts. Um.

49:20

So losing like a hundred and twenty

49:22

seven of them is not a it's not an insignificant

49:25

loss. Um.

49:27

And it's it's been a it's it has been been

49:29

trying to hire a lot more people

49:32

in the in the past. In the past like a few

49:34

months, because of this, they've been they've

49:36

been trying to do a lot more recruitment, which is why they're

49:38

Um. I've heard from other people that

49:41

they are putting uh advertisements

49:43

out on the internet to become a Washington

49:45

State trooper. This is something

49:47

I've I've heard from from people online

49:50

when I've been doing all of this uh deep

49:52

deep extensive research. So yeah,

49:55

they are, they are, they are recruiting. Uh

49:58

So, if you uh want to be

50:00

h Washington Patrol officer, don't don't.

50:02

Actually that's a bad idea. Um,

50:05

don't do that. Yeah,

50:07

I mean us act. You want to like really funk

50:10

with people who live on a reservation if

50:12

that's if that's your goal, it's Washington

50:15

State Highway Patrol is your your dream career?

50:17

Or have another option for you. You could

50:19

also just get COVID and die. Well,

50:22

yeah, that is an option. That's an option to thing

50:24

I think might be freedom is what makes

50:26

this nation great. Uh so I

50:29

think you know of the

50:31

choice. Anyway, continue Harrison.

50:34

I'm gonna send a picture inside

50:36

our group chat first because we're gonna were gonna

50:38

be talking about one one specific

50:41

evil dude. Next, I'm

50:43

setting a picture in the group chat that I want you to look at

50:45

first, just so you get a sense of who we're talking

50:48

about. Oh based, okay, I'm

50:50

I'm excited. Yeah all

50:52

right. Oh no,

50:55

oh no, the

50:58

boat I really brings it all together.

51:00

Oh no, you said bow tie, which

51:03

does not make me optimistic. Robert

51:06

no, but is wrong

51:08

with it? Who? Yeah,

51:12

who puts a bow tie on a uniform? Like,

51:14

guys, I found a better quality image.

51:17

Um, good god, there we

51:19

go, the same image better He looks like Tucker

51:21

Carlson and the Starship Troopers

51:23

universe when he gets drafted. So

51:26

this is the next guy we're talking about. Um,

51:28

somehow feels like I hate crime towards the

51:30

Weasley family. So

51:32

yeah, it feels like a hate crime towards

51:35

the guy based off Tucker Carlson in

51:38

Starship Troopers. So this

51:40

would be a big fan of ron Ron Weasley's

51:42

family. This this

51:45

is This is Sean carr

51:47

Um, a former Washington State Patrol a

51:49

sergeant um

51:52

who resigned for

51:54

reasons. We will discuss fun.

51:57

That's exciting. Yeah

52:00

yeah anyway. Um.

52:02

So in twos and fifteen and Associated Press

52:04

investigation uncovered about a thousand officers

52:06

in the United States who lost their badges

52:08

over a six year period for sex crimes

52:10

or misconduct such as like, uh,

52:12

this is this is a quote here which I disagree with framing

52:15

here, but this is this is a quote propositioning

52:18

citizens or having consensual

52:20

but prohibited on duty intercourse,

52:24

which is uh, pretty

52:26

bullshit. Way to frame that because

52:28

basically you're it's it's police raping

52:30

people. M and police

52:32

officers being accused of like using their

52:34

power over people to rape

52:36

them is extremely common. Yeah, and it's

52:38

often just like yeah, well the person said okay,

52:40

And it's like, well they said okay to a person with

52:43

a gun in the legal power to murder

52:45

anyone they want or put them into jail.

52:47

Like like there's a lot of scent. Yeah,

52:49

you know, I would argue you can't consent, uh

52:52

to sex with a police officer

52:54

who's on duty in a uniform because it's

52:57

they have the power to murder anybody they want or

53:00

who just arrest you. Like, like, it's a lot

53:02

of stuff. So like there was a studied at least

53:04

a few years ago that an analyzed

53:07

data of like a five hundred and fifty arrest

53:09

cases from the years of two US

53:11

and five, two US and seven just this is just two years

53:14

and uh and a four hundred officers

53:16

employed by like three d and twenty

53:19

non non federal law enforcement

53:21

agencies located throughout a forty

53:23

three states. Um and findings

53:25

indicated that a police sexual misconduct

53:28

includes a serious forms of sex with related

53:30

crimes and the victims of sex related

53:33

crimes by police are typically

53:35

younger than eighteen years old. UM,

53:37

so it's it happens a lot

53:40

with miners. So there's a lot like

53:42

like more like a ridiculously

53:44

common like if you if you google is which

53:46

I honestly don't recommend, but you can find

53:48

like dozens of stories coming out

53:51

like basically every like not

53:54

you'll find at least one new story every

53:56

month of a kid getting raped by

53:58

police. It happened pretty

54:00

commonly. So over the past ten

54:02

years in the Washington State Patrol, they've

54:04

investigated and confirmed four cases

54:07

of what they call sex on duty

54:10

um according to the agency. And this is including

54:13

including Shawn Carr now

54:16

Sean Car's cases particularly sensitive

54:19

for the agency because he was

54:21

married to the uh

54:23

the daughter of the Washington State Patrol chief

54:26

UM and and Shaun Carr was also

54:29

himself a sergeant, so he was

54:31

connected to like the big leagues

54:33

at the Washington State Patrol. So

54:35

Car met a civilian woman who

54:37

also works at Washington State Patrol but as

54:40

like you know, like has like an office job, so they isn't

54:42

isn't a trooper. Um. They met

54:44

in twelve and struck up an online friendship,

54:47

and a few months later they both of

54:49

them told investigators that the relationship did

54:51

turn sexual. Um

54:54

Car admitted to six sexual encounters for

54:56

the next like five years with the woman, of five

54:58

of which happened when he was on duty and like on

55:00

state property or driving a vehicle or

55:02

while in uniform. UM but the woman

55:04

recalled as many as as twenty and all

55:07

but one of them were when he was on duty and

55:09

well. And so the woman said that most

55:11

of their encounters were were what she would

55:13

describe as consensual, but she

55:15

described three incidents where Car

55:18

did uh pushed

55:20

the boundary and she she she has

55:22

described being raped by him multiple

55:25

times. UM, so there

55:27

was there was an incident. I think the first

55:29

one happened in the beginning of UH

55:33

with inside his patrol

55:35

car in a church parking lot. UH.

55:38

The woman had recently started dating another man,

55:40

and Carr wanted to know who it was. When

55:42

she wouldn't say so, he uh

55:44

he grabbed her arm hard

55:47

enough to leave bruises, and the woman

55:49

said that Car made her pick from two options, give

55:51

up the name of the man or give Car

55:53

oral sex. Um

55:57

Car later told investigators that he said this

55:59

in a quote joking context.

56:01

Oh that's you know, I was thinking,

56:04

because that's almost exactly my

56:06

my tight five for my stand up set. I

56:09

mean, some some comedians for some reason

56:11

do like making jokes like that and not

56:14

not not great usually not great to normalize

56:16

that kind of thing. So um. The

56:18

woman said that she did like like

56:20

s his his like commands

56:23

and she's which she said, we're like very much not

56:26

done consent. Yeah, and she said it's

56:28

very much not consensual. Um. She she told

56:30

investigators that he raped me on the side

56:32

of the road. Um. And if and if

56:34

it was anyone else besides car, she

56:36

she she she said she would have called nine one one. Um.

56:40

So the second time happened when

56:43

a car backed her into a corner of a highway away

56:45

station and forced her to have sex with him. Um.

56:48

She called it a coerced Car

56:50

said that consent was mutual. So

56:54

despite the sexual assaults, uh, and

56:56

and and like and you know and and like assaults

56:59

you know, like you know, crapping someone's army hard to

57:01

believe a bruise, she said. The

57:03

woman said she kept in touch with Car because she

57:05

was going through a difficult time in her life and she

57:07

needed somebody to talk to. Complicated,

57:11

that's yeah, that this is even like

57:13

people who are imbutive can also be

57:15

emotionally supportive sometimes, Like that's

57:17

one of the things about abuse. That's such a real, real

57:20

motherfucker. It's not simple.

57:22

So yeah, Car Car may not have gotten in trouble

57:24

had the woman not confided in another patrol

57:27

employee after she left her job.

57:29

UM. Then the other other patrol employee

57:32

mentioned the situation to someone higher up,

57:34

triggering an investigation. UM.

57:36

And then in twenty nineteen, the woman formally reported

57:39

Car to uh TO to like the

57:41

patrol Office of Professional Standards. So

57:44

records store that the patrol of pretty quickly confiscated

57:47

cars, badge, and gun and placed him on home assignment,

57:49

where he remained until he and he

57:52

resigned voluntarily. UM.

57:54

The patrol gave gave the case

57:56

to the Sheriff's office to investigate because of the

57:58

criminal nature of the allegations.

58:01

So Car's personal file includes

58:03

other on job violations, including using

58:05

a taser on a drunk driving suspect.

58:08

He was handcuffed, and records

58:10

show that in February, Car

58:13

was accused of frequenting

58:15

a coffee stand and making unwanted

58:17

advances on an employee by waiting

58:19

near her car until her shift ended and

58:22

making derogatory comments about her boyfriend.

58:25

UM. So she was

58:27

also stalking this barista, is

58:29

what it sounds like. Um? Yeah,

58:32

yeah, that's that is what that sounds

58:34

like. Terrifying. So

58:38

yeah, so car after

58:40

the woman told investigators that she was

58:43

raped after UM,

58:46

the the county sheriffes recommended hard to

58:48

be filed. But she wasn't willing to.

58:51

Um. She wasn't willing to testify. She

58:53

did not want to. She did not want to do that. Um.

58:56

But but she she didn't tell prosecutors that she did

58:58

have one wish that that car again,

59:01

the son in law of the state patrol chief

59:03

be be not not allowed to police

59:05

again. UM. Yeah, that's a pretty

59:07

reasonable request. Car

59:10

of obviously denied all the accusations

59:12

of non consensual sex and assault,

59:15

but you know, it did admit

59:17

to a to a consensual sexual relationship

59:20

on duty um, as well as other

59:22

you know, like patrol regulation

59:25

violations. UM.

59:27

He he resigned in July

59:31

before the patrol could decide whether or not to

59:33

fire him. Um. And then

59:35

the state went about trying to strip him of his law

59:37

enforcement cert of occasion requirement to

59:39

carry a gun and badge and be hired

59:41

as law enforcement in Washington. Getting

59:44

de certified forms conduct by

59:46

the Criminal Justice Training Center in Washington

59:49

is very hard. Very few people

59:51

have actually been decertified. Yeah,

59:55

And to to be certified, the panel

59:57

must be a panel must be convinced that on

1:00:00

duty behavior rose to the level

1:00:03

of official misconduct and constituted

1:00:05

a crime committed under the

1:00:07

color of authority as a peace

1:00:09

officer. That's the that's the

1:00:11

color of authorities an interesting

1:00:13

way to phrase that. Cars

1:00:16

attorneys argued that the state failed

1:00:18

to make to meet this high bar and there was quote

1:00:20

no legal basis to decertified

1:00:23

car. Meanwhile, the

1:00:25

c j a t S the Criminal

1:00:27

Justice Training Center alleged his behavior

1:00:29

did constitute official misconduct and failure

1:00:31

of duty, but without

1:00:34

actually they didn't actually include the

1:00:36

sexual assault allegations. Instead, it

1:00:38

contended that he used state

1:00:40

resources for his own benefit or neglected

1:00:43

to do his duties when he was engaged

1:00:45

in sexual activity on duty,

1:00:47

So they didn't actually include sexual assault

1:00:50

or anything in this. They just said you were basically

1:00:54

like you were because you were doing because

1:00:57

you were having like sexual activity on

1:00:59

duty. You weren't doing your job and that's the reason

1:01:01

that we want to decertify you. Um.

1:01:04

So the date of Washington has about eleven thousand

1:01:06

certified officers at any given time UM

1:01:09

and since to us in three they've decertified

1:01:11

like two hundred and thirty and

1:01:14

at least four of them for on duty sex and

1:01:16

one of those cases was overturned

1:01:18

on appeal um. But in one

1:01:21

around mid May, the c j TC

1:01:24

in its final order said that Cars constituted

1:01:27

UH crimes of of failure

1:01:29

of duty and official misconduct

1:01:32

by, among other things, quote, intentionally

1:01:34

choosing to pursue his own sexual

1:01:36

gratification rather than using his on duty

1:01:38

time to perform his lawful responsibilities as

1:01:40

a peace officer. So he

1:01:42

he did get decertified, but again not actually

1:01:45

discussing the actual like assaults

1:01:47

and rapes. Um. Yeah. So

1:01:51

the the the sheriff

1:01:53

County Prosecutor's office designed

1:01:56

declined to pursue charges on the case last

1:01:58

year when the woman was willing to testify,

1:02:01

but the deputy prosecuting

1:02:03

attorney UM did say that

1:02:06

she she believed they just happened, like

1:02:08

like she she believes this that the stuff happened, but

1:02:10

because of the lack of evidence due to time passing

1:02:14

and the woman not wanting to testify. There

1:02:16

it's hard to prove guilt in court, so

1:02:18

they're not going to pursue these charges at

1:02:20

the moment. Yeah. So

1:02:24

that that is UH, that is Shawn car So

1:02:26

that yeah, he is not not not allowed

1:02:28

to police as of That

1:02:32

is a cursory glance at

1:02:34

stuff in the Washington State Patrol. Oh, I guess one

1:02:36

of the one other thing I found out today

1:02:39

is that so Washington State Patrol

1:02:41

has a has a psychologist

1:02:44

for UM recruitings. Basically

1:02:46

for if you want to join the patrol, you

1:02:48

have to go like through like a psychological screening.

1:02:51

Sure, that makes sense. And

1:02:54

he just just resigned because

1:02:56

he was he was he was probably going to get fired.

1:02:59

Um. This is after Stale

1:03:01

Times and Public Radio Northwest News

1:03:03

Network UH published a peace

1:03:06

show showing that since UH

1:03:10

the psychological screenings rejected

1:03:13

where is it? UH rejected

1:03:16

of white candidates over the past four years.

1:03:19

Um, but the psychologists

1:03:21

that they hired h rejected of

1:03:24

black candidates, of Hispanic

1:03:26

candidates, and forty one percent of Asian

1:03:28

candidates. So again, I'm not pro people

1:03:31

being police in general, but

1:03:33

there is a clear disparity on who

1:03:35

they are wanting to become police,

1:03:38

like who like who are they They're letting in

1:03:40

a lot more white candidates than

1:03:42

they are letting in candidates of color.

1:03:45

Um so this

1:03:47

this uh, this psychologist screener

1:03:49

is is no longer on the job as of like a few

1:03:51

days ago. Um. Yeah,

1:03:54

so just another another

1:03:57

level of stuff because yeah, you know, there's they

1:03:59

want there to be more white officers

1:04:02

than anything else. Um

1:04:04

so yeah, that is that is the Washington

1:04:06

State Patrol. I guess the one other thing I want to do is

1:04:09

I'm gonna again send in the group chat.

1:04:11

Their their current logo, their

1:04:14

current logo current

1:04:17

you're smirking. I

1:04:19

hate it when you do this. I'm afraid. I

1:04:22

don't know, soph Maybe it'll be fine.

1:04:24

It's actually it's it's it's kind of fun.

1:04:27

That's their logo. That is

1:04:29

their current logo. They

1:04:32

design it in like paint, Yes,

1:04:37

they probably they probably did design

1:04:39

it in MS paint. Oh man,

1:04:41

Yeah, that that looks like it belongs

1:04:43

in an angel Fire website. Gar So do you know what

1:04:45

angel Fire was not? Oh

1:04:48

my god, you fucking teenagers.

1:04:51

Um yeah, that looks like it belongs in an angel

1:04:54

I will I will let all of the other people who

1:04:56

feel very old right now know that it looks

1:04:58

like something you'd see in an angel Fire website.

1:05:00

Like shittlely animated blinking

1:05:03

across the screen. No, like it

1:05:05

looks like something from a ninety nineties

1:05:08

website. All right, well, now I'm both

1:05:10

angry about the police and I feel a thousand

1:05:12

years old. So this is good? What

1:05:15

a good? What a good? What a good feeling? Well

1:05:18

that that wraps that. That wraps it up for today.

1:05:21

Um and hey again, I

1:05:23

have heard that they are recruiting and they should have a

1:05:25

new psychological screener soon. So

1:05:28

great, there we go. I'm imagining

1:05:31

the primary psychological screening

1:05:33

is you're white, right, that's

1:05:35

that's that is what it used to be. I

1:05:38

mean, I'm imagining that's what it's going

1:05:40

to be. Still probably maybe

1:05:43

not. All right, Well, this has

1:05:45

been a great time. I'm sure everybody's

1:05:47

feeling good. Uh, goodbye,

1:05:51

get out of my house. A

1:06:00

chain of teens from foster care is a topic

1:06:02

not enough people know about, and we're here to change

1:06:04

that. I'm April Denuity, host of the new

1:06:06

podcast Navigating Adoption, presented

1:06:08

by adopt us Kids. Each episode

1:06:10

brings you compelling, real life adoption

1:06:13

stories told by the families that lived them, with commentary

1:06:15

from experts. Visit adopt us

1:06:18

Kids dot org, slash podcast, or subscribe

1:06:20

to Navigating Adoption, presented by adopt

1:06:22

us Kids, brought to you by the U. S Department

1:06:25

of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children

1:06:27

and Families, and the Council. Here's

1:06:30

to the great American settlers.

1:06:32

The millions of you has settled for unsatisfying

1:06:36

jobs because they pay the bills,

1:06:38

and you just kind of fell into

1:06:40

it, and you know, it's

1:06:42

like totally fine, just

1:06:44

another few decades or so and

1:06:47

then you can enjoy yourself. Of

1:06:49

course, there is something else you could do.

1:06:52

If you've got something to say. You

1:06:54

could, I don't know, startup podcast

1:06:57

with speaker from my heart and

1:07:00

east your creative freedom and spend

1:07:02

all day researching and talking

1:07:04

about stuff you love and

1:07:06

maybe even earn enough money to one

1:07:08

day tell your irritating boss

1:07:10

as you quit and walk off into

1:07:13

the sunset. Hey,

1:07:15

I'm no settler. I'm an

1:07:17

explorer spreaker

1:07:20

dot com. That's spr

1:07:23

e a k E R hustle

1:07:26

on over today.

1:07:31

I'm Colleen with join me the host

1:07:33

of Eating Wall Broke podcast, while

1:07:35

I eat a meal created by self made entrepreneurs,

1:07:38

influencers and celebrities over a meal

1:07:40

they once ate when they were broke. Today I

1:07:42

have the lovely aj Crimson, the official

1:07:45

Princess of comfin Asia.

1:07:47

Kiddingk and Asia. This is the professor.

1:07:49

We're here on Eating Wall Broken. Today,

1:07:51

I'm gonna break down my meal that

1:07:54

got me through the time when I was broken. Listen

1:07:56

to Eating Wall Broke on the I Heart Radio

1:07:58

app, on apple Pie podcast or wherever you

1:08:01

get your podcasts. Welcome

1:08:09

to the Hudcast. This is a

1:08:12

crypto podcast where we talk about

1:08:14

the best n f T investments and

1:08:16

how you can get rich. To

1:08:19

bro, if you just accept the wave

1:08:21

of the future and decentralize

1:08:23

your finance and invest in a bank

1:08:26

that can take all of your money overnight

1:08:29

and disappear because it was really just being run

1:08:31

by a guy in Macedonia and

1:08:34

he it was just a rugpole the entire

1:08:36

time, and you lose your life savings and

1:08:38

you have no recourse and that's the fucking

1:08:40

future of investments. Bro. Hey,

1:08:43

bro, you're fired. Yeah,

1:08:45

that's fair. This

1:08:48

is it could happen here podcast about how things

1:08:50

are bad sometimes a podcast

1:08:52

about how to make them less bad. Today we're

1:08:54

talking about the former how things are bad,

1:08:57

and we're talking about financialization,

1:09:00

um, and specifically the financialization

1:09:02

of like human beings and the

1:09:04

endeavor to create art. Uh

1:09:06

and so art art

1:09:09

is a broad broad term.

1:09:11

I mean, I said the endeavor to I'm

1:09:14

sure they all want to be creating art.

1:09:16

Well, this won't make any sense to people yet, so

1:09:18

I'm gonna I'm gonna give a brief overview. There's an

1:09:20

article in the Atlantic that dropped on November twenty

1:09:22

nine called what Happens when You're the Investment.

1:09:25

It's by Rex Wouldbury Um,

1:09:27

who I hate um.

1:09:30

So as a note, okay,

1:09:33

let let me just get the the the nut

1:09:36

of the article is, and that there's been a couple of

1:09:38

other articles on this guy. Um.

1:09:40

His name is Alex

1:09:42

mass mesh Um and he is

1:09:44

a French kid, I think,

1:09:47

who decided to tokenize

1:09:49

himself. And what that means is so

1:09:51

like you've got the etherory and blockchain

1:09:54

right. He basically he's he's putting

1:09:57

he's carving up aspects of

1:09:59

his like potential future earnings,

1:10:02

and he's putting those on the Ethereum blockchain

1:10:04

as like tokens that people can buy.

1:10:07

And the idea is that this kid had

1:10:10

wanted to like start a business and be an entrepreneur,

1:10:12

but he didn't have any money. So using

1:10:14

like on the ether blockchain, he turned

1:10:16

himself into tokens basically like

1:10:19

his potential future earnings and his

1:10:21

time. And basically people are able

1:10:23

to buy up coins effectively,

1:10:26

I mean not coins, but tokens shares.

1:10:28

Yeah, yeah, dollar sign Alex is like

1:10:30

the name of the token, which basically shares they're

1:10:33

buying. He's turned himself essentially

1:10:35

into a publicly traded company kind

1:10:37

of um. And holders

1:10:40

of his coins are like, he's splitting up

1:10:42

fifteen percent of his income for the next

1:10:44

three years basically among people who

1:10:46

like hold his coins.

1:10:48

And he raised like twenty grand this way.

1:10:51

Um. And it's not just like it's not just

1:10:53

his future earnings that are being kind of tokenized.

1:10:55

You can also use tokens to like buy retweets

1:10:57

from him, or one on one conversations

1:11:00

or and here's a line, I love an introduction

1:11:02

to someone in his network. And

1:11:05

and it's the overall idea because

1:11:07

there's you can find some other good articles good

1:11:09

as an interesting word to use. You

1:11:11

can find other interesting, fascinating

1:11:13

articles about this this idea, which

1:11:16

is like human beings tokenizing

1:11:19

their future earning potential um

1:11:22

in order to raise

1:11:24

money um and and it's

1:11:27

uh the way this is usually sold as

1:11:29

a good thing. In fact, I should probably just read a quote

1:11:31

from this Atlantic article to give you an idea of

1:11:34

how uh mass measure is,

1:11:36

or of how um um the art the

1:11:38

author of the article, Rex good Wouldbury,

1:11:41

is is trying to sell this ship.

1:11:44

We all have the slightly annoying friend who

1:11:46

insists that she knew about so and so before

1:11:48

they were even famous. When it comes to Taylor Swift,

1:11:51

I'm that friend, and I'm more than slightly annoying

1:11:53

about it. I was a Taylor fan in her pre fearless

1:11:55

full on country days, years before Conway

1:11:57

interrupted her on stage at the v m AS. But

1:11:59

in our constructive fandom, I'm

1:12:01

treated no differently than a fan who discovered

1:12:03

Swift on SNL a few weeks back. This

1:12:06

would be different, though. If Taylor had done what mass

1:12:08

Measure did and turned herself into an investment,

1:12:10

she could have issued a social token, whereas

1:12:12

non fungible tokens or n f t s

1:12:15

are so called because of the uniqueness of a digital asset.

1:12:17

Social tokens are fungible. In other words,

1:12:19

each Alex token is interchangeable with every

1:12:21

other Alex token, just like a dollar bill can be

1:12:23

traded for any other dollar bill. Say

1:12:26

Taylor issued had issued her own token, Let's

1:12:28

call it a dollar signs swift, and

1:12:30

say she had sold dollar signed swift to her

1:12:32

biggest fans. Yeah, say I

1:12:34

was one such fan. Over time, as Taylor's

1:12:36

popularity grew, the value of the Swift

1:12:39

token would have appreciated. As an early

1:12:41

believer, I would have shared in the financial upside

1:12:43

of her growing fame. The Swift token I had

1:12:45

brought for a hundred dollars in two thousand seven might be worth

1:12:47

a hundred thousand dollars today. The

1:12:49

Taylor Swift mini economy would serve

1:12:51

both the singer and early fans like me. As an

1:12:53

artist, Taylor could have funded her work by selling

1:12:56

dollar signs or Swift tokens. She might

1:12:58

not have needed to sell ownership of her master and she

1:13:00

might not have been forced to re record her albums

1:13:02

to take back control over her art. Taylor's

1:13:04

fans, for their part, would have been rewarded for a decade of patronage.

1:13:07

We're all evangelists for our favorite artists,

1:13:09

yet we capture little of the value that we helped

1:13:11

create. And then there's

1:13:14

a lot that like I find unsettling.

1:13:16

There. One of them is the idea that like, yeah,

1:13:19

the fact that I was a fan of someone earlier means I should

1:13:21

get some sort of reward for it, Like I should be

1:13:23

treated differently because I liked it earlier, which

1:13:26

you might recognize like the thing that everybody

1:13:28

has been shipping on for like fandoms

1:13:30

for years now, like it's been a it's been a

1:13:32

huge thing, where like, yeah, you're being an asshole

1:13:34

if you're if you're talking about like if you think you have some

1:13:37

additional ownership of Star Wars because

1:13:39

you watched it ten years before the fans today and

1:13:41

so you like different stuff in it, Like that's we

1:13:44

all recognize that as like toxic um.

1:13:46

But the the whole argument of this article

1:13:49

is that like, no, this is how the entire future

1:13:51

of creativity should work. We find

1:13:54

unsettling. And it also it also

1:13:56

ties into like a really concerning

1:13:59

development in paras social relationships

1:14:02

of like to like invest in

1:14:04

someone to buy a conversation

1:14:06

with them in like this really weird

1:14:08

way um and the

1:14:10

fact that young artists are going to be pressured into

1:14:12

this kind of thing is really scary.

1:14:15

Yeah, because there's like one of the things mass Measure

1:14:17

did as like um uh

1:14:20

as an experiment, was like allow people

1:14:22

who had bought his tokens to make

1:14:24

life decisions for him, like tell him

1:14:26

when to wake up in the morning and whether or not to

1:14:28

eat red meat and stuff like that. And

1:14:31

he stated that like, well, none of this is binding,

1:14:33

right, Like I'll I might do what they

1:14:35

say, but like I'm not going to do anything crazy or whatever.

1:14:38

But also this is like the first iteration

1:14:40

of this um. And I

1:14:43

like this Atlantic article, which

1:14:45

I think is unhinged for reasons we'll get into,

1:14:47

but it's purely talking about like, look

1:14:50

at this incredibly successful person. I imagine

1:14:52

if they've gotten to be incredibly successful using

1:14:54

this method instead, and it might have like

1:14:57

spared them this thing. But when I keep thinking about

1:14:59

is like, Okay, well, the vast

1:15:01

majority of people like there's

1:15:03

no reason to invest in them, Like

1:15:06

yeah, maybe if you come out with a great song

1:15:08

or a great video, like yeah, you could get investments

1:15:10

and I'm sure that could work out. I'm sure, like Taylor

1:15:12

Swift is a successful enough person, I'm sure

1:15:14

she could have found a way to succeed under that system

1:15:16

too. But what I think

1:15:19

will be much more common because there's no real

1:15:21

reason to anticipate that the average person

1:15:23

will have an earnings potential. If you give

1:15:25

them twenty grand, that's greater than twenty

1:15:28

grand. Um.

1:15:31

The most likely thing is that like people just buy shares

1:15:33

and poor people to make them do fucked up ship. Yeah,

1:15:35

it's gonna be how would you not? How would that not be

1:15:37

where it goes? That's that that's the only way

1:15:39

that this is going to get like used

1:15:41

on a large scale.

1:15:44

People just selling themselves. People

1:15:47

are people are kind

1:15:49

of use the Ether blockchain to like

1:15:53

crowdfund and crowd uh

1:15:56

cast a new jackass basically,

1:15:59

Like it's going it's not going to be like a thousand

1:16:01

Taylor Swift's all token izing themselves.

1:16:03

It's going to be like millions of people

1:16:05

in the global self issuing tokens

1:16:07

to like vote on whether they roll down the hill

1:16:09

in a barrel or in like a

1:16:12

fucking porta potti. Like it's

1:16:15

just it's a nightmare to me to contemplate people

1:16:18

actually adopting this. You know, there's

1:16:20

there's a lot of really like the thing I think

1:16:23

is the most incredible part about this is that like, okay,

1:16:26

so like it basically

1:16:28

doesn't matter what

1:16:31

like economic

1:16:33

theory you used to look at it. It's like every

1:16:35

single one of them tells you something just like

1:16:37

absolutely fucked about it, and

1:16:40

like, you know, because because I mean they're there, there's there's

1:16:42

there's some extent to which I look at this and it's like,

1:16:45

this isn't that much different than

1:16:47

the fact, you know, it's like okay, so you're paying someone to do

1:16:49

whatever you want, but like, okay, like that's not

1:16:51

that much different than just a job,

1:16:54

right, Like it's it's not it's not inherently

1:16:57

that much different than the fact that everyone

1:16:59

is to just do wage labor. But

1:17:02

also, like there's

1:17:07

one was interesting things to me that I thought about this when

1:17:09

I was what I was reading this

1:17:11

was so, do you just know what capitalization

1:17:14

is? Yeah?

1:17:16

Yeah, so this is this is just capitalizing a person,

1:17:18

right, Like it's

1:17:21

literally taking a person public

1:17:23

effect putting turning them

1:17:25

into like a tradeable share and that's

1:17:27

like an investment. Yeah, I mean this is all

1:17:29

one of the things that like a Forbes article I found point

1:17:31

is like this is another kind of unregulated

1:17:34

securities training. Yeah yeah, yeah.

1:17:36

But what's what's interesting to me about it is that like, okay,

1:17:38

so you know this is also already

1:17:41

how accounting wise, every corporation

1:17:43

sees a person, right like every every every every person in

1:17:45

the asset book is you know, yeah,

1:17:48

you know, like a wage is just capitalization,

1:17:50

right, It's like how much will you pay now for this much money?

1:17:52

Later? You could, but it's like people are doing

1:17:54

it to themselves now, which

1:17:56

just like this, Yeah,

1:17:59

you could argue that like elements of this or

1:18:01

how like banks treat you when you get a mortgage,

1:18:03

right, um, like, but but also

1:18:06

that's much more rigorous

1:18:09

and limited, like it has like

1:18:11

regulations and it has rules

1:18:13

for how those things work. It's not some like

1:18:16

twelve year old getting like

1:18:18

like going on to coin base and buying part

1:18:21

of you as a joke with your with like his dad's

1:18:23

money, right, like, because it's

1:18:25

like yeah, because what if it's like there's

1:18:27

no law against a seventeen

1:18:29

year old I guess if maybe

1:18:31

their parents may need to consent, but there's no

1:18:34

law against the seventeen year old getting a facial tattoo

1:18:36

of like the doors of a concentration

1:18:39

camp on their face. But what if

1:18:41

some kid tokenizes himself for forty grands

1:18:43

so he can drop an EP and that's

1:18:45

what like a bunch of four channers

1:18:47

who buy up his his shares want

1:18:50

him to do um. And maybe the fucking

1:18:52

kid does that because he knows it's going to get him,

1:18:54

because his brain is not done and he knows it's

1:18:56

going to get him. A bunch of fucking social

1:18:58

media cloud. Yeah, Like it's

1:19:01

there's a lot of and there's no way to

1:19:03

regulate that. Like, it's just an inherently toxic

1:19:05

proposition that I don't think

1:19:07

the government would. I don't know what side

1:19:10

of this the government would even step in on. Like

1:19:12

what is the regulation of people deciding

1:19:14

I'm letting random strangers who pay

1:19:16

me money vote on what I do with my life. What

1:19:19

do you ever think? It reminds me of a lot is

1:19:21

like the micro lending stuff from the nineties,

1:19:24

where it was like, oh, well, we'll like empower these

1:19:26

people by we'll go in and uh,

1:19:28

We're going to give them like a small amount of money and they have

1:19:31

to pay back, and it was like you know, and and

1:19:33

all of the same stuff that you're

1:19:35

reading, all the arguments about why this is

1:19:37

a good thing are exactly the same as the micro lending ones

1:19:40

and that stuff. You know. There there were two ways it

1:19:42

turned out. One was basically

1:19:47

you get the scenario where both sides are scamming

1:19:49

each other, where

1:19:51

you know, all the people who are getting these micro loanchers, they're

1:19:53

just taking the money and walking right like that's you know,

1:19:55

the their their their things. Oh this is I can just get

1:19:57

money like this and we can just keep I just keep

1:20:00

paying it back. And so I'm scamming them.

1:20:02

But then on the other side you have these people who are

1:20:04

like, oh cool, I can give this person this loan and turn them

1:20:07

into a debt peon and it

1:20:09

and you know, and and the the the really depressing

1:20:12

side about it is so that the people who couldn't get

1:20:14

away, like I mean, we're

1:20:16

literally reduced the debt pions and you

1:20:18

know, I mean there's a huge wave of suicides in

1:20:21

Indias. Probably don't say example, is a wave of suicide

1:20:23

is people drinking past a side because they couldn't pay off these

1:20:25

loans and so and And the

1:20:27

thing that's different about this is that

1:20:30

like I mean, a you're doing it to yourself.

1:20:32

But then be again,

1:20:34

there's no regulation, but that also

1:20:36

means there isn't any way to force someone

1:20:39

to do what you

1:20:41

say you're going to do. It's

1:20:43

unclear how it's going to be enforced. And the

1:20:45

other thing that is clear is like what does

1:20:47

losses look like? Like what what happens

1:20:50

when someone like you cannot make back

1:20:52

on like an investment, but if the investment

1:20:54

is a person, how does that

1:20:56

work? And if someone's contractually obligated

1:20:59

to give us and share their income, what happens

1:21:01

when there's not enough income for that? Like like you know,

1:21:03

so those types of things. Yeah,

1:21:06

I mean there's no answer to that. Uh,

1:21:08

And there's nobody like the

1:21:10

money that's going to be whatever made

1:21:13

in this is going to be made before

1:21:16

anyone steps into to try to answer

1:21:19

that if anyone ever does, like, um,

1:21:22

it's it's gonna be the next because

1:21:24

I think we're I think we're heading for a crash with

1:21:26

with n f T s. Like there was just an

1:21:28

article today about how what is of

1:21:31

nfc T trading is done by like ten percent

1:21:33

of people, which further back because

1:21:35

the allegations of n f t S is that most

1:21:37

of what's happening isn't people actually buying

1:21:39

them. It's people like the same

1:21:42

person using multiple wallets basically

1:21:44

trying to jack up the perceived value by

1:21:46

throwing a bunch of other Internet money that they

1:21:48

already have. So these these whales who have like

1:21:50

a bunch of crypto gaming

1:21:52

the system, and we've seen some of them, and the biggest

1:21:54

n f t S salever, it was like half a billion dollars

1:21:57

and it was a guy selling it to himself and then

1:21:59

transferring it back into another wallet to

1:22:01

try to make it look like it was worth half

1:22:03

a billion dollars even though no one had actually really

1:22:06

paid that for it. Um

1:22:09

so I and I think you know that. And kind of

1:22:11

what we've seen with the regulations

1:22:13

the government's financed for n f t s, I think that's

1:22:15

a problem for them in the near future. And

1:22:18

I wouldn't be surprised to see this

1:22:20

takeoff next, especially given like

1:22:23

the creator economy that we're seeing on like

1:22:25

the kind of that TikTok,

1:22:29

yeah, TikTok, Like I wouldn't be surprised if you saw

1:22:31

a rash of big TikTok stars tokenizing

1:22:33

themselves and like I'm not

1:22:35

even sure, I'm I'm I'm sure it would be a mix

1:22:37

of the person making the tokens

1:22:39

being the one doing the scam and the person

1:22:42

receiving or the people buying the

1:22:44

tokens being the one doing. Like, I'm sure it would be a mix

1:22:46

of different kinds of exploitation. But it's

1:22:49

not gonna be good, I mean, And and just like

1:22:51

a, it's gonna make like I

1:22:54

don't know, fifty people super rich when they

1:22:56

when they first start trying it, right like that

1:22:58

that is that is like when this happens,

1:23:00

like when a TikTok star with million

1:23:02

followers, when they do this, they will make

1:23:04

boatloads of money. It's just unclear what

1:23:07

happens after that. Yeah,

1:23:10

well Fleet of Mexico. Yeah,

1:23:12

I mean, that would be the smart thing. That would be the smart

1:23:14

thing to YEA. In this

1:23:16

Forbes article I found, which is a thousand

1:23:19

times better than the Atlantic article, Like even

1:23:21

though it's written by someone I think who's also into

1:23:24

crypto, it's just it actually it

1:23:27

asks some of these questions we've been talking about

1:23:29

um and it cites David Hoffman, who's

1:23:31

the CEO of a of a token ized

1:23:33

real estate platform, um

1:23:36

on what he sees as some of the problems, Like

1:23:38

what he, as a guy who's supports

1:23:40

aspects of this kind of thing, sees

1:23:42

is the problems with this and

1:23:45

uh, it's yeah one sec

1:23:48

um Hoffman re returning

1:23:50

to his core problem with the personal token model model.

1:23:53

Hoffman re emphasized that the assurances and utility

1:23:56

that come with some

1:23:58

of these tokens don't exist, for with

1:24:00

with certain kinds of tokens don't exist for like these

1:24:02

personal tokens, how risky this investment

1:24:05

is is completely defined by the individual.

1:24:07

In his disclaimer, he's and he's talking about one of

1:24:09

the guys who's token himself, this guy named Kerman.

1:24:12

In his disclaimer, he says this is a highly risky

1:24:14

investment and that you could lose all your money, which is a terrible

1:24:17

thing to say, because with personal tokens, the issuer

1:24:19

is in complete control over exactly how risky

1:24:21

the investment actually is. It's largely

1:24:23

up to them whether there are risks or not, which

1:24:26

is like a kind of illegal securities

1:24:28

trading that I don't think we've ever anyone's

1:24:30

ever done. Um, Like

1:24:33

it's this It's this fascinating new

1:24:37

con where you're literally

1:24:41

the you're you're doing securities

1:24:43

trading, but instead of it being over a company, it's

1:24:45

just you and technically there's

1:24:47

no consequences if you just take the money and run,

1:24:51

Like, I don't know what kind of contract, Like,

1:24:53

you couldn't have a contract that says that you

1:24:55

could say, they're that you're obligated to pay

1:24:57

out your future earnings. You

1:25:00

couldn't have to work like that's

1:25:02

not enforceable. You can't like contractually

1:25:05

obligate someone two to

1:25:09

like work, like you're allowed to quit

1:25:12

a job. I mean, I guess you could put

1:25:14

penalties in it, but I don't, like, none

1:25:16

of the current ones have anything, I mean, or they could go to

1:25:19

The other option is is that they could go to jail

1:25:21

for fraud if they try to if

1:25:23

they try to not follow through on the investment.

1:25:25

If you say, like, yeah, I I invested

1:25:27

in you and you said that you would do these things,

1:25:30

you didn't do them, Now you can go to

1:25:32

prison. That is the other Yeah,

1:25:35

and I think that will at some point, like

1:25:38

there will be scams and some of that will

1:25:40

come in, but like, none of these current ones, none of them are saying,

1:25:42

here's my specific I'm going to make this special. It's

1:25:44

not like like if you like

1:25:47

with a Patreon, right, You're you're paying

1:25:49

a little bit at a time on an ongoing

1:25:52

basis for a very clear product. Generally,

1:25:55

this is so far These aren't that. They're just like,

1:25:57

I'm gonna try to do something that makes money

1:25:59

and if it does, you get a cut of it. And

1:26:01

that's it's so much like there's

1:26:03

nothing that's stopping mass metch from saying like, hey, my

1:26:06

my and my attempt didn't

1:26:08

work. Uh so we're done. No no

1:26:10

money for anybody like that, and I

1:26:13

you're not. There's no accounting requirements, there's no

1:26:15

there's a bunch of ways in which it's sucked up from a financial

1:26:18

except it's not it's not his,

1:26:20

it's not it's not you're not investing in his business.

1:26:23

You're nesting in him. So even even if even if

1:26:25

he takes another job, they're still

1:26:28

it seems to be contractually obligated

1:26:30

to still get that of his

1:26:32

income. Yes, and I think that's that's

1:26:35

the area in which I think it would be abusive for the

1:26:37

person being token ized, because

1:26:40

most people aren't gonna like

1:26:42

most people don't make that much money, so they

1:26:45

raise someone manages to like raise five

1:26:47

or ten grand and then just winds up

1:26:50

for years giving a cut of their income

1:26:52

that winds up being more than they got initially

1:26:54

to a bunch of like it's almost like a like

1:26:57

a payday loan that you've blocked.

1:27:00

Yeah, you know, Okay, so this is this is what I'm

1:27:02

thinking about, because so there's I don't know if I talked

1:27:05

about this on the show, but there's a

1:27:07

thing in China where they've

1:27:09

been kind of cracking down it now for funding

1:27:11

like nineteen like literally every single

1:27:13

app like had a like

1:27:16

had a pet a loan thing in it, so like like

1:27:18

your flashlight app would have would

1:27:20

offer you a pet a loan, and it was basically it was yeah,

1:27:22

they were They were originally tied in with like people

1:27:25

who buy um, you know. I

1:27:27

was originally tied in with like like the the

1:27:30

services that like their version of Amazon for

1:27:32

example, would like, oh, hey, we'll give

1:27:34

you a loan so you can buy this, you can order fried chicken. And

1:27:36

I was always wondering when this would

1:27:39

come to the US, and I

1:27:41

think it might never hope, I mean hopefully it never

1:27:44

does, and I think it might not just because of how like

1:27:46

powerful our petty a loan industry is. But

1:27:49

it's like we've we've now invented

1:27:51

it seems like it's gonna happen, but like

1:27:53

dumber, like our our version

1:27:56

of it is like this thing which

1:27:58

is just you know, it's

1:28:01

what what if? What if paid a loans but on the

1:28:03

blockchain? Except

1:28:05

you know, I mean when I guess this is the everything

1:28:08

you know that that we've've been getting at is that the

1:28:10

difference between this being a paid a loan

1:28:12

and this being you scammed

1:28:15

a bunch of people is what the enforcement

1:28:17

mechanism looks like. And

1:28:20

you know this this this comes back to some

1:28:22

other things I think you're interesting about. This. One

1:28:25

is that you know, so

1:28:27

the whole theine n f T drift right

1:28:29

is based on convincing people

1:28:32

that there's value in ownership,

1:28:34

right there, Like ownership itself has inherently

1:28:36

has value. And yeah,

1:28:39

but but this this is not that this is this

1:28:41

is you know, this is going back to know your

1:28:43

value value is built on labor, right,

1:28:46

Well, yeah, it's like labor

1:28:48

and like like personhood, like like

1:28:51

you as a personal brand is the

1:28:53

thing that they're trying to get at. But but the thing,

1:28:56

the thing that's missing here, though, is that in order

1:28:58

for like, you know, in order

1:29:00

for like labor to produce value

1:29:03

right in this way, there has to be like

1:29:05

there has to be a way for you to force them

1:29:07

to pay you like you need you need coercion for

1:29:09

it. And if there's no coercion, then

1:29:12

you know, you just take a bunch of money and leave. And

1:29:15

and that that I think is like this, this is going

1:29:17

to be the battle over like, if

1:29:19

this becomes a thing, it's going to be you

1:29:21

know, the people who buy these things are

1:29:23

gonna wind up like trying

1:29:26

to you know, I think they're gonna be the ones you try to put your regulation

1:29:28

because they're gonna you know, they're gonna go in. They're gonna

1:29:30

be I want to get my money back, And

1:29:33

that could end really really

1:29:35

really badly if you

1:29:37

know, I mean, it probably

1:29:40

will. I Like, I don't know how

1:29:43

popular I think this will be because I think that I

1:29:45

hope that this is a maybe if there'd

1:29:47

never been like a Patreon or something. But the actual

1:29:49

use case of this seems

1:29:52

to already be well served by the

1:29:55

existing capitalist infrastructure,

1:29:58

Like people I think more people

1:30:00

wanted back a creator's Patreon than

1:30:02

they want to like own pieces of a

1:30:05

person's time and earning potential

1:30:07

like that. That seems like a

1:30:09

more niche and weird desire to people

1:30:12

than just like, oh yeah, these guys make a video I like

1:30:14

every week, so I'll throw them three dollars. Well,

1:30:16

I think I think the difference though, is that pitch

1:30:19

your on money gets you money for normal people. This

1:30:21

gets you money from like tech bros. And that.

1:30:23

Yeah, that's always yeah,

1:30:26

it's it's a grift designed to And

1:30:29

I want to dive back into this Atlantic article because

1:30:31

it's so bad in such a comprehensive way that I

1:30:33

think it deserves analysis. That's what what put

1:30:36

a pin in what you said. But I want to start

1:30:38

with, like how the person writing

1:30:40

this, this Rex motherfucker, like

1:30:43

his his concept of the the history

1:30:45

of the Internet, um, because it's completely

1:30:48

wrong. Quote. We're on the precipice

1:30:50

of the third era of the Web. The Web's first

1:30:52

era was about information flowing freely. Think

1:30:55

Google giving you access to the world's knowledge.

1:30:57

Most of us were passive consumers in this era.

1:31:00

The second era was the social web Facebook,

1:31:02

Instagram, Twitter, people began to create

1:31:04

their own content, and that content became the lifeblood

1:31:06

of the big platforms. We became active

1:31:09

participants, but the platforms devoured all

1:31:11

the profits. The promise of the Internet

1:31:13

and the Internet was to erase the gatekeepers. Instead

1:31:15

of waiting for a record label to sign you, you could

1:31:17

share your music on Spotify. Instead

1:31:19

of asking a publication to share your words. You

1:31:21

could tweet, instead of being tapped by a studio

1:31:24

execut you could become a YouTuber. What

1:31:26

happened is that these platforms became the new

1:31:28

gatekeepers. The third era of the web

1:31:31

is about writing the ship. Social capital

1:31:33

becomes economic capital. Value

1:31:35

no longer accumulates to brokers and intermediaries.

1:31:39

That's number one, completely

1:31:41

wrong. But one thing, Yeah, the first

1:31:43

era of the Internet, I would say, was about

1:31:45

the idea that information should flow freely. And

1:31:47

Google came in like a decade or more into

1:31:50

that period. Like I had been on the Internet

1:31:52

five years before Google hopped into that ship, and Google

1:31:54

was actually the start of of the

1:31:57

end of that period um And

1:31:59

it's it's the idea that, like the

1:32:01

social Web, was people creating

1:32:04

their own content. Most

1:32:06

of the social Web's initial capital

1:32:08

and like all of its initial money came

1:32:11

from taking content that people were

1:32:13

being paid to make on legacy platforms

1:32:16

that had existed before social media, taking

1:32:18

that content, putting it on social

1:32:20

media, and then monetizing that without

1:32:23

paying money back to the people had made the content.

1:32:25

The money in social media did not initially

1:32:28

come from people making their

1:32:30

own content, and the way that they mean it, like

1:32:33

yeah, you at college humor or

1:32:35

whatever, we're making your own

1:32:37

content and sharing it on social media. But you've been

1:32:39

doing that before social media. Social media just

1:32:41

actually made it less profitable eventually, Like

1:32:44

the way he summarizes this is so wrong

1:32:46

because what the social web actually

1:32:48

did. And the other thing I'd argue is that the first era

1:32:51

of the Internet, the like early days when

1:32:53

things are happening on like forums and and weird little

1:32:55

angel fire websites and like even my space.

1:32:58

Um would I think is kind

1:33:00

of my Space kind of straddles the first in second

1:33:03

eras UH, that was

1:33:06

fundamentally much more an era of people

1:33:08

creating their own content. Because the

1:33:10

the lifeblood of UH

1:33:12

social media today isn't people really making

1:33:15

their own content, it's people reacting to content

1:33:17

that other people made. UM. And again,

1:33:19

it just shows the fact that he's he's summarizing

1:33:22

it this way in a way that I think is so wrong

1:33:25

and inaccurate to how things actually developed.

1:33:27

Uh. Is characteristic

1:33:30

of his attitude towards this stuff where he's

1:33:32

kind of seeing the only real meaningful

1:33:34

evolutions in in in the Internet

1:33:37

through the corporations that monetized

1:33:39

it, um, which is

1:33:41

just telling of like how this guy actually

1:33:43

sees the way the Internet has developed. And you

1:33:46

will not be surprised to know, Uh, this

1:33:48

motherfucker is an investor at Index

1:33:50

Ventures. Um. Yeah, like

1:33:52

he's he's he's a guy

1:33:54

who's business is capitalizing

1:33:57

things, um. And so that's

1:33:59

the only way he sees the development of the Internet,

1:34:01

even though that's not the accurate way of looking

1:34:03

at how the Internet evolved. And I think

1:34:05

I think that there's one more really important thing that

1:34:07

he leaves out here, which is that because

1:34:10

you know, like we're talking, oh, this is the third age of the Internet,

1:34:12

Like, no, the third day of the Internet started, like I

1:34:14

don't know, the mid early mid tends.

1:34:17

When I would say when gamer

1:34:19

Gate hit is when I would I would I

1:34:21

mean, it's going to be a little off, I depend

1:34:24

it depends what it depends what you mean by age.

1:34:26

So one of my friends worst in advertising, and

1:34:29

he was talking about this where you know, can we

1:34:31

can we can talk about like gammer Gate in the sort of fascist

1:34:33

Miles. But there was something else happening back end, which

1:34:36

was the Internet of things stuff and the Internet things

1:34:38

stuff like you know, like

1:34:40

nobody it's kind of a I don't know, like

1:34:42

I think we mostly think about it is like it's kind of a joke

1:34:44

or like it just sucks. But really

1:34:46

what it was was that that that was the period

1:34:49

in which people figured out that the thing that the actual

1:34:51

money and to be made on the Internet was some selling people's personal

1:34:53

information and that and the

1:34:55

and and the Internet things like just dramatic, like just indescribably

1:34:59

increased the amount of data that you could extract

1:35:01

from people. And that

1:35:03

that was that's the actual that was the actual

1:35:05

change of like like that that that's that's that's

1:35:07

the thirty of the Internet, and that the earth the Internet will last

1:35:10

basically for everyone until we destroy it, which

1:35:12

is that you know, the commodity

1:35:15

is just all of all of the information

1:35:18

about who you are, where you go, like what

1:35:20

you buy, who you talk to, that

1:35:22

just being sold off to two advertisers,

1:35:26

is you know the thing that he's

1:35:29

very very carefully not talking about

1:35:32

and instead focusing on, Oh, it was users

1:35:34

creating content. And it's like, no, they the

1:35:37

Internet just they they

1:35:39

sold spying on the entire world.

1:35:42

Yeah, And I think there's there's two good

1:35:44

ways to to divide the Internet

1:35:46

into ages, and the ages would be slightly

1:35:48

different each way. One is kind of how you're doing it is

1:35:51

the way in which it was monetized, Right, That's

1:35:53

that's that's one way too. And and then if that's

1:35:55

the case, it's going to start with it was not at all. It was an entirely

1:35:58

public project and everybody on it was on it like

1:36:00

a university, and like people did not pay

1:36:02

to access it. Other than that you had to be

1:36:04

at an institution or a university. And then

1:36:07

like we get to the kind

1:36:09

of the dot the era before the dot com

1:36:11

boom and of the dot com boom, and then like

1:36:13

the early pre social Internet

1:36:15

stuff like something awful and like having

1:36:19

stumbled upon and and whatnot, and

1:36:21

like those sending traffic to sites like

1:36:23

where I used to wear, cracked and um,

1:36:25

and then kind of the social media, which is the start

1:36:27

of as you said, like the data being monitored

1:36:30

monetize like individuals data being the thing

1:36:32

either that's being directly monetized or it's

1:36:35

being used to deliver like targeted adds

1:36:37

to you. Um. And

1:36:39

then there's like if you think about it in terms of content,

1:36:42

it's it starts like for the first

1:36:44

era wouldn't even involve Google because it would be

1:36:46

like the start of us neet up to eternal

1:36:48

September in nine and then

1:36:50

you know on from there. Um.

1:36:52

But either way, this guy doesn't like everything

1:36:55

he says about the history of the Internet is

1:36:57

dumb. It's just a very simplified

1:37:00

version and you don't actually look at like the interocking

1:37:02

systems. Um. Because I

1:37:04

mean, yeah, I don't know why he describes it

1:37:06

this way, because it is it

1:37:08

is like it's accurate if you

1:37:11

squint and don't think about it. Um.

1:37:13

But it's weird because like this article is like it's

1:37:16

for tech bros. So I don't know why

1:37:18

he describes it this way because I feel

1:37:21

like he could describe it a lot more accurately, um

1:37:23

if you if you wanted to, Well, it's something I'm

1:37:25

gonna get into. I'm gonna say this point like twice Episode'm

1:37:28

gonna get into the neoliberalism episodes, and I'm writing,

1:37:30

but one of one of the key features of neoliberalisms

1:37:32

that they lie, is that the neo liberals have

1:37:34

to have two versions of what they believe. They have the version that

1:37:36

they tell everyone else, which is completely a lie

1:37:38

and is not what they believe at all. And then it has they

1:37:41

have the version that they tell to each other, which is what they

1:37:43

actually believe, and they completely they contradict each

1:37:45

other completely. They mostly believe

1:37:47

things. Everything they say in public is just a

1:37:49

complete lie. And that I think that's what he's doing here, which

1:37:51

is that this that like that history of the Internet

1:37:54

is the one you sell the public consumption, because

1:37:56

yeah, that that's that's that's the lie you tell people to

1:37:58

take money from them. And then he has a thing

1:38:00

that he believes but which he will not ever

1:38:03

tell you because you know, if if

1:38:05

if he tells you what like he actually wanted to do, you would

1:38:07

run screaming from the room. And you

1:38:09

can you can read between what he wants

1:38:12

you to believe. I think is made very

1:38:14

clear by how he divides.

1:38:16

By the fact that when he starts like dividing up the ages

1:38:18

of the Internet. He says, the first one is the time in

1:38:20

which people wanted information to be free.

1:38:23

And what he's kind of saying by doing that is thaying like

1:38:25

that was an infant stage of the Internet,

1:38:27

and obviously the natural evolution

1:38:30

of the Internet is for every single

1:38:32

thing on it to become monetized. And because

1:38:34

I also believe the Internet should be every aspect

1:38:37

of our lives, like this is a megaverse guy or

1:38:39

a metaverse guy, like I think the Internet should should

1:38:41

be involved in every aspect of life. That

1:38:44

means every aspect of life should be financialized.

1:38:47

Um, and that's extremely

1:38:49

radical, but it does not sound that

1:38:51

way. When you describe it that way, people's

1:38:54

heads go over it. But like what he's saying is deeply

1:38:56

radical. And I think also, like again

1:38:59

you want to talk about like the first and

1:39:01

not just the early age, because the first

1:39:04

people who kind of built the backbone of the Internet

1:39:06

were mostly like very radically anti

1:39:09

uh capitalizing on Like there

1:39:11

was this idea that like it absolutely should

1:39:13

be as free as possible. Like Steve Wozniak,

1:39:15

the guy who functionally invented

1:39:18

the personal computer, had a background

1:39:20

like as a phone freaker, like literally literally

1:39:22

robbing phone companies to get like free phone

1:39:24

calls and stuff like these, Like most of the early

1:39:27

Internet pioneers were like some kind

1:39:29

of criminal um

1:39:31

and the early ages of like Internet

1:39:33

content being monetized mostly started

1:39:36

with people doing ship for free.

1:39:38

Like that was how the people who made money on it. That's

1:39:40

how all of my bosses and that's how fucking I got

1:39:42

started. Was like you would just start making ship and you would put

1:39:44

it out for free, and eventually

1:39:47

like that would get enough traffic that you

1:39:50

you you you draw ads to you and

1:39:52

whatnot, and you'd make money. But it was always

1:39:54

like all of the content that that made the

1:39:56

Internet, and all of the content creators who were huge

1:39:59

now mostly started um

1:40:01

doing something like even it was just like throwing up videos

1:40:03

on YouTube, right or like going on. And

1:40:06

that's that's less the case with the zoomers

1:40:08

now because a lot of them got started on at things

1:40:11

like like Twitch, where the idea is to

1:40:13

from the beginning be trying to monetize yourself

1:40:15

and while you're like building a brand, you're constantly

1:40:18

monetized. But that's a really

1:40:20

recent change, and I actually I

1:40:22

find it kind of unsettling because that was

1:40:25

I don't know, it's a mix because I'm certainly not of the

1:40:27

I'm not of the of the mind that like, if

1:40:30

someone is asking you to do work, you should be getting paid

1:40:32

for it. But if you are trying to if

1:40:35

you are trying to like build a life as a

1:40:37

creator, the best way to do that

1:40:39

creatively is to just make the things that you think

1:40:42

are cool and then make

1:40:44

like if if other people like it, you make

1:40:46

money. Like better things get made than

1:40:49

that. That like that that is the way

1:40:51

the best art gets made. I think it's

1:40:53

a few things going on here because like the

1:40:55

way I think, like I think actually the reason why

1:40:57

he frames it this way is because he's trying to get back

1:40:59

to his idea of freedom. Right he

1:41:02

describes like the golden age of the Internet being information

1:41:04

flowing freely. He thinks that the blockchain

1:41:07

is a new version of that, So that's why he's framing

1:41:09

it in this way. The second thing is

1:41:11

in terms of artists and creators, um

1:41:14

if you think about like yeah, like like the when the

1:41:16

early age of what he calls like

1:41:18

the of what we we kind of all been refraininged to it. Like the second

1:41:20

area when like era of like when social media

1:41:22

and like content creation like sites

1:41:25

are a thing. It's like, just use YouTube as an

1:41:27

example. Um. Because there

1:41:29

was a low saturation and content, it was

1:41:31

easier for someone to rise up and gain a

1:41:33

platform. Let's say someone like Bo Burnham right,

1:41:35

who started as just a kid and now is like

1:41:37

a very popular comedian. Um.

1:41:40

But then YouTube instead

1:41:42

of backing creators like that, um,

1:41:45