00;00;00;00 - 00;00;16;08 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer So let's let's congratulate our big wet president, on successfully tanking yet another right wing party. In in the Anglosphere cinematic universe, this time in, on, you know, Australia. The in the whatever it is every four years racism Olympics that, constitutes, their federal elections. So good on you, Mr. Trump. Very strong. 00;00;27;09 - 00;00;49;07 George They said that you couldn't make a sitting opposition leader lose his seat in, wave election twice in a row. And yet he's done it, folks. He's done it in two different elections. The right wing challenger to a sitting, center left government has gone down in their own seat. Thanks to the guy in the white House. 00;00;49;09 - 00;00;55;11 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Donald Trump is single handedly reversing the right wing authoritarian trend to chaos across the globe. 00;00;55;15 - 00;01;17;19 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer That's right. Propter Malone This is this is another election where it looked like the out of power conservative party had a significant polling lead right up until Trump took office. And then suddenly things reversed and Team Liberal pulled out ahead. It wasn't it wasn't as dramatic as Canada where they came back from, you know, like a 25 point spread, but it was still pretty sizable. 00;01;17;19 - 00;01;20;02 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I think it was, 10 or 12 points. 00;01;20;08 - 00;01;43;06 George And also the the new government is the largest majority that they've had in, I think, at least 30 years. And it's the biggest win for an incumbent, I think, in Australian political history. So it wasn't just, oh, he squeaked through, which you could sort of make the case for about the, the Liberals in Canada, depending on how you want to Dyson chop the popular vote. 00;01;43;06 - 00;01;46;04 George Not the case in Australia. It was a decisive victory. 00;01;46;09 - 00;02;12;18 Propter Malone It's probably not the best sign for America that we have parties winning on the back of what is essentially anti-Americanism, all over the world, right now. I mean, it's anti-Americanism process through the filter of Donald Trump. So I'm pretty sympathetic to that. But at the same time, like, there are kind of coalescing sentiments that we may have to sort of deal with and unpack a few years down the road if everything goes well. 00;02;12;20 - 00;02;45;09 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I just want to know that once again, America is saving the world. It's it is much to our detriment. But nevertheless, we are serving as a warning for everyone else. The only country that is not getting the message seemingly, is Britain. And that's to be expected because it's full of Brits. But but we're we're batting pretty solidly here. 00;02;45;11 - 00;03;11;23 George So I'm on vacation right now in Greece, and I have gotten three takes on other countries from Greek people. First off, they love Americans. They love that we funded, an archeological institute in the 1950s. They love that we're Americans. They're just they're into it. They really are ambivalent about the Turks. They, at least in the conversation I've had today, Turks being here, not a big deal. 00;03;11;23 - 00;03;28;19 George We had to fight them for our independence. But no harm done. The British, my Lord, these people hate the British. I didn't know this kind of hatred of the British was possible when they're about to 1776 these guys, if they can dredge up some help from the French somehow, like we did. 00;03;28;21 - 00;03;30;26 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Is is this because of the marbles thing? 00;03;31;00 - 00;03;32;28 George It's entirely because of the marbles thing. 00;03;33;00 - 00;03;35;08 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Okay. Can you explain the marbles thing? 00;03;35;10 - 00;03;57;03 George So there was this Scottish guy. He's actually not English, which is rare that a British person creates this kind of problem for, for the UK, from Scotland as opposed to England. But there was the Scottish guy who was ambassador to Greece. He bribed the Ottomans to let him essentially cut as much marble as he could organize people to carry out of the Parthenon and related buildings. 00;03;57;03 - 00;04;16;06 George And that's all now in the British Museum. He was the, Count. Count Elgin or Lord Elgin, I can't remember. Who cares? We had a revolution, so we didn't have to care about that sort of thing. Anyhow, he is despised. I did not know how deep the hatred went. And I thought the Greeks hated the Turks, and. 00;04;16;06 - 00;04;17;14 George Nope, it's the British. 00;04;17;16 - 00;04;39;27 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Yeah. Now we we don't give the Scots enough shit to be clear. You know, when you think about, like, Ulster, Northern Ireland, that's all the bad guys are. All the Scottish people. They're they're the ones who colonized the place. So it's high time that, we pay some attention to the Scots here and stop putting it all in the English. 00;04;40;00 - 00;04;44;12 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE We're just on a global tour to offend everyone in Western Europe, I think. 00;04;44;15 - 00;04;48;05 George Let's do it. Who? We're missing the Germans, the swamp Germans. 00;04;48;07 - 00;05;08;18 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer The bog Germans. Propter Malone I thought that the Brits were sitting pretty in Greece for a while. Because. Because of Lord Byron, actually. Who? Lord Byron, the poet who moved to Greece, spent his entire family fortune for the cause of Greek independence. And wound up sort of a national hero of a of a nation that wasn't his. 00;05;08;20 - 00;05;17;25 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer But I guess that that particular bump has now faded where Byron was not famously a normal man. He was he was kind of a kind of a superhero of the time. 00;05;17;27 - 00;05;21;24 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE How do you translate mad, bad and dangerous to know into Greek? 00;05;21;26 - 00;05;34;26 George Can't help you there. I'm stuck on the romance languages. Thankfully, everyone here speaks English, which is great. Very easy for want of, Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Something Acidophilus. Probably. 00;05;34;28 - 00;05;55;29 George So Lord Byron wasn't a normal man, but this week we figured it's been long enough that we've been doing a podcast called Normal Men that we sort of at least attempt to explain what a normal man is, and we're going to endeavor to do that tonight or today, depending on when you're recording this podcast. 00;05;56;01 - 00;06;15;17 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE I also think that, there there has been more attention on this in kind of, you know, major big publications. So there are a couple of different pieces published this week. There was a Ross Douthat interview, in the New York Times, with, guy named Kupperman. And we'll get into that here in a second. 00;06;15;17 - 00;06;56;17 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE But then there was also a Wall Street Journal essay from a high schooler that I thought was pretty interesting, in which he was trying to explain why some of his peers, are really into, like, the Tate brothers. So, like, Andrew Tate is right wing, reactionary, just monstrous, personality. Who has some capture, I guess, with, with younger men and, and I think, I don't know, on social media, a lot of people kind of went hard after the, the author of this piece, who, again, is a high school student and who I think was just trying to sort of project what it is that he thinks some of his peers think, 00;06;56;19 - 00;07;16;05 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE why they're interested in it, in Andrew Tate and all that. But it was also worth mentioning that that kid goes to an all male Catholic high school. And that is going to be sort of a group that generates some interesting thoughts, and perspectives about manhood and kind of masculinity and all of that just in general. 00;07;16;07 - 00;07;52;01 Propter Malone Yeah. I think that one of the big issues that we have in defining masculinity today is the changing definition and perception of femininity. What it means to be a woman has has obviously changed a lot over the lifetimes of everybody on this podcast. We've gone, in roughly our lifetimes, from I think it was a steady state of about 60%, out of home labor force participation, for women, to almost co-equal labor force participation, between women and men in this country. 00;07;52;04 - 00;08;11;23 Propter Malone And, you know, we've gone we've gone from a situation where, where control over reproduction was really limited. You know, you don't have to you only have to go back two generations to get back before hormonal birth control and back before Roe v Wade. So, you know, there are a lot of things that have changed on the distaff side of things. 00;08;11;25 - 00;08;36;12 Propter Malone And in some ways, the American vision of masculinity has not fully compensated for that, for that side of changes, because it no longer makes sense to me, at least to define masculinity as in opposition to femininity. What it is to be a man is not in opposition to what it means to be a woman anymore, because we're we're doing the same things. 00;08;36;12 - 00;08;47;20 Propter Malone We're competing in the same things. There's no longer there's no longer as much of a gender difference either in the workplace, or at home as there was for our grandparents generation. 00;08;47;23 - 00;09;11;12 George Yeah. And that's true in the weight room, too. I mean, I saw a video on Instagram this week of, I think she's a powerlifter or an Olympic weightlifter who was repping. It was a roughly 400 pounds for ten reps. And doing it, I, I pride myself on throwing my big boy pants, big boy shorts on when I get on the squat rack, and my max is only a little bit more than that. 00;09;11;12 - 00;09;30;17 George I mean, I'm six foot three, 240 pounds, and you know, for me, a good day on the squat rack has north of 400. And this woman's up here crushing ten reps. And I think that, you know, it seems like a silly thing to, to put in the context of grand social changes like the labor force participation rate and the role of men and women. 00;09;30;19 - 00;09;41;00 George But it really is true that women are doing everything that men are doing today. That's especially true if you just take a sampling of society as opposed to the absolute superlatives of of either gender. 00;09;41;06 - 00;09;54;17 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer And I think that's really how I would characterize being a normal man is simply embracing that, embracing the more, egalitarian world we live in, and not not just compartmentalizing everyone. 00;09;54;19 - 00;10;20;18 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE I think a thing that is interesting and Propter mentioned this before, but, but, but these are things that are not kind of in conflict with one another. You know, masculinity and and femininity. These are things that that coexist together. And I think that culturally, there's a weird reactionary tendency on the right to try to make things mutually exclusive, and make these things all one way or all the other. 00;10;20;20 - 00;10;42;25 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE So in that Douthat interview, one of the things that he and Kupperman talked a little bit about is how kind of the the new masculinity on the right, is sort of gleefully offensive, and kind of trolling and kind of über macho and über male, and things like that. And I think that that is true in terms of what the right wing is going for. 00;10;43;01 - 00;10;48;21 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE I just think it's really at odds with what most people experience in, like, the regular daily lives. 00;10;48;26 - 00;10;55;24 George And who is this guy Kupperman for? For those of us who are not terminally online or simply refuse to read Ross Douthat on principle, like. 00;10;55;24 - 00;11;14;26 Propter Malone Me, so Kupperman. Kupperman is a fairly unreconstructed white nationalist. He's he's one of the real bad guys out there. For my money, I was disappointed that he was getting interviewed in the times. Full stop. Because this is not just a this is not just a t. He. I have some dangerous things to say about race kind of guy. 00;11;14;26 - 00;11;39;22 Propter Malone This is this is a guy who is who is straight up exclusionary Nazi. And I don't think he really makes any bones about that. You know, he's he's talked extensively on Twitter about about white pride, about how about how people should be proud of their not just of their heritage, but but of their very racist opinions. 00;11;39;25 - 00;12;14;05 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE One of the things, one of the things that I found really just gross and irritating about the profile is that, you know, like your says, like, this guy is an unreconstructed white nationalist. So like, this guy doesn't have any business getting interviewed in the times anyway. But on top of that, Douthat is a terrible interviewer. Like the the interview itself is a lot of Douthat essentially going on at length about his own views, which which some of which Cooperman shares and some of which he doesn't, and then asking Cooperman to cosign them. 00;12;14;08 - 00;12;25;14 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE So it's not only did you bring a white nationalist Nazi onto your New York Times podcast, you did so in a way that is not even interesting and and is just a bad use of the form. 00;12;25;16 - 00;12;52;15 Propter Malone Yeah. And I mean, the context, the context of this, of this interview was talking about conservative art and what particularly film art might be conservative versus versus the assumption that most film is liberal, in terms of political slant, which I think is I think it's Broadway. True that most, most American film, is politically a choir is, is is politically inclined to the left. 00;12;52;17 - 00;13;35;21 Propter Malone But it kind of seemed like Kupperman's big takeaway is that anything he likes is conservative. And that's not a rigorous way of doing critical analysis of text that's, you know, you can get away with that. Maybe you're a junior in high school. But that's not even going to get you through an undergraduate syllabus. Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I also appreciate that Kupperman and Douthat, are once again living up to what we have all observed, which is that these, these white nationalist type guys, who believe in the master race or something, are always just cartoonishly not master race looking type people. 00;13;37;22 - 00;14;03;13 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE So the the thing is, is that Kupperman is, as far as I can tell, is it is not really any more interesting than anybody else. Okay. Across the entire kind of right wing podcasting and influence space. But all these guys have this, this really warped, kind of bizarre view of masculinity. That is about peacocking for other men. 00;14;03;16 - 00;14;19;09 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE It's not even about like, like trying to be presentable or attractive to other women. It is exclusively about trying to project manliness to attract other men, which I think is kind of fascinating in the way that it plays out. 00;14;19;11 - 00;14;50;11 Propter Malone In some ways, I think that's the central problem with with kind of the manosphere take on how you should interact with women. Is that the manosphere view has as a lot of trouble getting past the idea that that your woman, your wife, your girlfriend, whoever, whoever your partner is, such as they're your partner. Exists for you to show off to other men that the entire value of a woman to you is, is, is as a trophy for display. 00;14;50;14 - 00;15;14;11 Propter Malone It's not really about your personal relationship with her, except insofar as that relationship itself can be instrumentalized as a trophy, you know, look how look how well my wife listens to me or obeys me or whatever. And that's kind of the core of the Andrew Tate appeal is, is that he's, he's making the argument that there are there are women who will who will do anything for you if you just treat them the way I say. 00;15;14;13 - 00;15;42;10 George Which is both an excellent demonstration of how extreme the misogyny of these guys is, that that even your most, treasured relationship in life is instrumentalized for the purpose of other men, right? I can't imagine thinking of my wife as someone other than, the person I'm going to spend the rest of my life with. The most important person, that I've chosen to spend my life with. 00;15;42;13 - 00;16;16;25 George That relationship is being instrumentalized to other men. But it also demonstrates what, complete dead end it is. Because anyone with that attitude is going to struggle to an absolutely epic degree, to attract and keep around women of any kind, right? Whether it's family members, whether it's a romantic partner, whether it's colleagues, whether it's anyone in a social situation, if you're broadcasting that loudly, you are going to get shown the door very quickly in a lot of spaces. 00;16;16;27 - 00;16;27;29 George And it is a complete dead end as a way to spend more time around women or or have more access to it. So there's there's two ironies here. 00;16;28;01 - 00;16;31;09 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer They'll spend all their time crying about how they can't get laid. 00;16;31;11 - 00;16;32;27 George Ding ding ding. 00;16;33;00 - 00;16;53;20 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Yeah. One of the one of the, the the wildest things about kind of this whole sort of cultural space is what losers all these guys are like, like that is there's it's it's this whole it's not even an ideology really. It's just kind of this cultural movement that's basically based about misery. Like, like these guys are not happy. 00;16;53;20 - 00;17;18;20 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE They don't project happiness. You don't see any kind of, any kind of joy in their lives. Everything is just absolutely grim. And the only thing that they, they seem to really take any sort of delight or interest in is just mocking other people, and, and cruelty. And that's the only thing of interest outside of, you know, reactionary, white nationalist politics. 00;17;18;23 - 00;17;37;00 Propter Malone So we titled the podcast Normal Men, kind of as kind of as a joke because, you know, they're there's no such thing as a normal man, right? You can't go down to the store and get one standard man. You can't you can't get one normal, normal person. But at the same time, I think we all have a sense of what abnormality looks like. 00;17;37;06 - 00;18;06;04 Propter Malone You know, the difference, the difference between, deviation weirdness as a, as a positive thing and, and kind of abnormality as a dangerous thing. And it's really something that you're seeing pushed by these manosphere types that this, this kind of, this kind of really zero sum thinking that, that, that all of my relationships are instrumentalized just in what they mean to me as display pieces. 00;18;06;06 - 00;18;34;13 Propter Malone Is is coming to the fore. I've got, I've got two sons. So I worry about this a lot. They're they're getting on up knocking on the door of teenager hood. And I think that, you know, any anybody who's raising or interacting with, with boys at this point who doesn't wish to, who says they don't worry about it, is is lying to you because it's clear that there's a there's a pipeline here that a certain number of particularly men are falling into. 00;18;34;15 - 00;18;36;16 Propter Malone That leads them to some pretty dark places pretty quickly. 00;18;36;23 - 00;19;06;23 George And I do think it's worth keeping in mind that it is very easy to fall into the trope of the kids are the issue these days. The kids are doing something wrong. Gen Z are all a bunch of fascists. All young men are. Andrew Tate worshipers, this sort of general thing. And I think we have to be careful intellectually in not falling into that trap ourselves as, elder millennials to, you know, younger gen types in here, mostly the latter. 00;19;06;25 - 00;19;16;07 George We can't just say this is an anti Gen Z podcast because it's not because kids, the kids are almost always all right and will almost definitely be fine. 00;19;16;10 - 00;19;27;12 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer The kids will be fine. The real problem is, is Gen X, which contrary to what George, keeps insisting, Propter and HELLMACHINE and I are not members of. 00;19;27;12 - 00;19;54;11 George Yeah. Tell that to the board shorts, buddy. So, yeah, I think we we need to be careful to not fall into this world where the object we are criticizing or focused on is young men exclusively as as some sort of phenomena that needs to be addressed. And that's especially true when it comes to how we think about this project that the four of us are engaged in. 00;19;54;13 - 00;20;17;11 George We need to do some positive definitions as well. And it can't just be a reaction against a perceived situation. Elsewhere in society, I think to give my quick definition of what a normal man is, is someone that when you come across them, you don't immediately have a bad taste in your mouth. And that can take a wide range of of forms. 00;20;17;16 - 00;20;51;06 George It's everything from just being polite to people that you come across that you haven't met before, and day to day life to having a worldview that accepts difference and embraces it. And there's a lot more to it too. But I think if you're the type of man and most men are this type of man, contrary to some popular belief, if you can have a quick conversation with a coworker, stranger, family member, someone who also picks up kids at your kid's school, whatever, and not immediately turn them into what is wrong with that guy? 00;20;51;09 - 00;20;55;18 George You are a normal man and we embrace your brother. 00;20;55;20 - 00;21;29;16 Propter Malone One of the recent texts on this comes from, Blue Guys own, Doctor Samantha Hancox-Li about the new gender synthesis, which I think, you know, we're we're talking a little bit around, in terms of what we talk about when we talk about normal men and, Doctor Hancox-Li's, I think a fair summation of, of their thesis here is that, we are all gender performing at this point, which is, which is fine and reasonable. 00;21;29;16 - 00;21;57;26 Propter Malone People love gender. People love performing gender. But that, both on the cis male side and on the cis female side, there's, there's this kind of exaggerated drag in performing gender that can be really toxic, that people were people were putting on these, these, these over gendered masks, sometimes physically in terms of, in terms of surgery, in terms of hormones. 00;21;57;29 - 00;22;07;21 Propter Malone Whatever, to better or more completely perform their gender. And sometimes that's causing some friction, some problems. 00;22;07;24 - 00;22;36;08 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Well, I think what we when you an example of this and, and the reason that I bring this guy up is because he got namechecked in that Douthat interview of, like, five different times, but like, Bronze Age Pervert, who is a right wing reactionary who mostly has gotten big because of, you know, other reactionaries on Twitter, like, spends a lot of time on his Twitter feed posting an awful lot of interesting thirst traps. 00;22;36;15 - 00;22;54;20 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE We will say, in terms of a performance of gender that I think is sort of unusual, it's always, you know, cut abs, basically hairless bodies, attracted to a certain type of person and not not necessarily women most of the time. 00;22;54;23 - 00;23;14;10 George As someone that's currently spent the last 24 hours staring at marbled, chiseled abs, literally chiseled abs out of marble, from a society that had some weird stuff going on with respect to gender. Are you saying that there might be some weird stuff going on with respect to gender from Mr. Bronze Age Pervert over there? 00;23;14;13 - 00;23;20;18 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE I think there might be. I think it's an interesting approach to sort of performing your gender. 00;23;20;21 - 00;23;29;00 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer George, are you saying that the the RETVRN guys are not so far off as we sometimes think they are when it comes to, the Greeks and the Romans. 00;23;29;06 - 00;23;51;26 George More Greeks than Romans in the respect I think you're going for there. But yes, I think that is what I was going after. I mean, it's really interesting walking through, a museum of classical statues and seeing and being conscious of the specific ways gender is idealized and represented. And it is really idealized and represented in specific ways. 00;23;51;26 - 00;24;17;19 George The men have the exact same torso, the exact same proportion of bicep to pectoral, the exact same level of muscle, but, not chiseled ness, in their, in their abs. The women have the same body proportions as their, their bust to hip ratio is the same. The Greeks in the classical period got it down to a science in terms of idealizing gender. 00;24;17;22 - 00;24;38;16 George And, it does not surprise me at all that they were also, quite famous for experimenting with gender in a lot of different ways. Some of them non-consensual, which we don't have to, well, too hard on. But, you know, the fact that, Mr. Pervert would identify with that dynamic is, is not at all surprising to me. 00;24;38;19 - 00;24;46;18 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer We just need to remind him that the Greeks, for all their all their chiseled looks, they did, after all, get rinsed by the Iranians. 00;24;46;24 - 00;24;54;23 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE If anybody called me Mr. Pervert, I would throw myself in front of a bus. 00;24;54;26 - 00;25;04;27 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer And to be clear here, you know, we're very much in favor of gender expression here on the Normal Man podcast. Get down with your bad self with 1000 flowers bloom. But. 00;25;05;01 - 00;25;19;19 George Hell, some of us even do it ourselves from time to time, what with my squats and my, flat brim hats and my Nike Air Maxes and my pickup truck. I mean, it's fine. There's nothing wrong with any of that. At least I don't think. Wait, is there something wrong with any of that? 00;25;19;21 - 00;25;36;24 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Yeah. For for folks who have never seen him before. George, looks like he got, vomited out of a Blink 182 video. 00;25;36;26 - 00;25;58;27 Propter Malone Anyway, that's that's our that's our that's our big picture take on masculinity for the week. But we also had some pretty interesting news, happening in especially the national security space this week, with, tell a message which, shut down all service, apparently about about 45 minutes before we started taping this. 00;26;03;04 - 00;26;33;11 Propter Malone We talked some about signal messaging. Right. You guys are all familiar with with how our national security principles added a journalist to their signal message, chat about bombings in in Yemen. We once again have instant messaging in the news, this time, with, with signal. Once again, we talk to you about how, Pete Hegseth, and Mike Waltz, added a journalist to a national security chat. 00;26;33;13 - 00;27;00;22 Propter Malone Well, it turns out that they haven't been using signal, per se. They've been using tele message, which is a signal clone. Tele message, has the major difference from signal that while signal is end to end encrypted, which is to say, the only places that you can see the messages that you're sending back and forth are either at originator or its or at recipient, tele message archives these messages somewhere else. 00;27;00;24 - 00;27;23;24 Propter Malone Now that's not facially illegitimate. There's lots of reasons, there's lots of legitimate reasons you might want to do that. Maybe your a government agency that has some kind of legal requirement to keep archives. Maybe you're a company that has some kind of legal requirement to keep communications. Archive for for discovery. This is something that the FCC has been in a lot of people's face about, over the last several years. 00;27;23;27 - 00;27;56;27 Propter Malone But what it does mean is that in addition to your messages being subject to compromise, either by sender or by recipient, there's somewhere there's an archive sitting out there of your messages that potentially someone else could access. And in fact, that is exactly what has happened. Tell message downstream, from an image of Mike Waltz using tell a message in a cabinet meeting, got hacked at least twice. 00;27;56;27 - 00;28;24;10 Propter Malone Probably a lot more than that, in the last week. And, various caches of messages used by, either the United States government or by companies that are contracting for the United States government. Have been exposed by hackers. So far, the breaches that we know about are a set of CBP communications, which includes lots of information about CBP agent identities. 00;28;24;12 - 00;28;46;04 Propter Malone We've got a set of lobbying communications about trying to get some crypto stuff passed through the Senate. And, in the wake of those hacks, Telenet, which has now completely shut down their operation as of about 45 minutes before we started recording this podcast. So they're very much aware that they have a vulnerability here, and that this is a problem. 00;28;46;07 - 00;29;02;04 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE There's there's kind of an irony to the fact that they're using signal to avoid regular, normal channels of communication, but that they're not actually using signal if they're using a signal clone, which archives normal, you know, the traditional methods of communication. 00;29;02;11 - 00;29;25;26 George Yeah, I'm confused here. Isn't the whole idea of using signal for these people to avoid disclosures and recordkeeping? Like, isn't that the entire point of using in the first place? And which I realize would be highly illegal for a bunch of different reasons related to mandatory record keeping, but they don't care about this sort of stuff. So why are they using tell a message instead of, for instance, email? 00;29;25;28 - 00;29;51;14 Propter Malone So I think I think what's happening here is, is that signal is a is a convenient way to communicate. We we run our chat on signal, because it's handy. And once you, once you have people that are already on the signal app who are using signal for purposes of evading reporting, it still becomes useful for other people who don't necessarily want to have no record of everything, to talk to those people through that same mechanism. 00;29;51;16 - 00;30;17;00 Propter Malone So that's what that's what. That's where the message is coming in. It's it's it's allowing people who are essentially obeying these kinds of record requirements to talk to people who might be outside of that, within signal. Now, to be clear, telling message has had government contracts for a while. This isn't a new Trump innovation, that government agencies have been using tell a message to the company as a whole was about 20 years old. 00;30;17;00 - 00;30;40;03 Propter Malone I don't know how far back there their signal work goes. But it this is something where if you wanted to run signal through an official channel in a US government agency, my sense is that you'd probably wind up running, tell a message, to, to cooperate, with things like FOIA requirements, or with other message archiving requirements. 00;30;40;03 - 00;31;01;07 Propter Malone So, so it's possible that the people who are trying to do this right are the people who are who are using tell the message rather than signal. In the nat sex space. And this is going to be speculation rather than things I'm confident about. But one of the issues here is the telling message is an Israeli company, they were started in Tel Aviv. 00;31;01;07 - 00;31;34;14 Propter Malone They're founded by people who, used to work for Israeli intelligence. Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. The is Israeli spies or some of the best signals intelligence operators in the game. So there's there's a reason that you wind up running a lot of Israeli spies, for these kinds of info infotech companies. But we have a long history between the United States and Israel, of Israel spying on our spy apparatus and on our national security apparatus, like, constantly. 00;31;34;16 - 00;31;38;05 George What? Wait. I thought they were our ally. Why would they do that? 00;31;38;07 - 00;31;56;29 Propter Malone So. So to some extent, I think this is a little bit of a culture clash thing that Israel has felt for a long time that, as you know, kind of a, an occasionally, difficult to handle client state of the United States, it's in their best interest for them to be really sure that they know what we're thinking. 00;31;57;02 - 00;32;17;15 Propter Malone So from the Israeli perspective, this is maybe just good manners to spy on the United States so that they can be sure that they're not being, you know, snowed by our diplomacy and that they're reacting for good or for ill to things that are that, that we actually want. But this is this has been the source of a lot of tension in the past. 00;32;17;18 - 00;32;41;21 Propter Malone You know, we've had we've had spies in prisons for many, many years, for passing information to Israel. We've had many breaches from Israel into fairly secure things in the United States. It's it's the best spin you can put on it is that this is an extremely annoying thing your friend does at the table when you're eating dinner. 00;32;41;23 - 00;32;47;00 Propter Malone You know, this is this is it's it's extremely bad manners, but they keep doing it. 00;32;47;02 - 00;33;08;23 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE Do you think it's worth, just to be super clear, because I was a little bit confused at first. That that Tesla message, was an Israeli company. They are now owned by Smosh, who are a software company that is based about a mile from my apartment. But tel iMessage definitely did, originate as an Israeli company. 00;33;08;25 - 00;33;12;12 Propter Malone I believe that roll ups about about two years old. That's March acquired Telemessage. 00;33;12;14 - 00;33;22;05 George Sorry. Hold on. Smash. Are we serious with this name? Smash? That sounds like something a daughter would call her dad or something. I just smash. 00;33;22;07 - 00;33;47;03 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer No, that's a perfectly respectable, Bob German name. Propter Malone So, so Smarsh actually comes from the corporate reporting side of things. Where there. They're trying to do, messaging compliance, for, for mostly financial firms. And then telco message represents then branching out into more of the government space. 00;33;47;05 - 00;34;10;28 George And there were some pretty high profile SEC settlements, Propter alluded to earlier, over the past few years where financial firms were doing a lot of business over WhatsApp. Not necessarily signal. I don't think WhatsApp was the big one where, financial advisors or people in client facing roles would be communicating with clients, and with each other and with other people in the firm over WhatsApp. 00;34;10;28 - 00;34;43;24 George And these messages weren't archived for retrieval later. And that's a compliance issue, for certain kinds of financial firms. So there is a real I, again, outside of government leaving the Trump administration or the federal government completely out of the picture. There is a very real, business case to use end to end secure communications that are then archived somewhere for retrieval at a later date, with the big caveat that these end to end encrypted communications must actually be secure, which is where we appear to have run into an issue with iMessage. 00;34;43;27 - 00;35;09;04 Propter Malone Yeah. And and to kind of expand on that, you know, the SEC has been just smacking companies down on this over the last, over the last few years. I think they're up to over 100 companies that they've done some kind of enforcement action against, about these off channel communications. And some of these settlements are, you know, these are these are nine figure settlements, like this is this is a lot of money in play for this stuff. 00;35;09;07 - 00;35;55;19 Propter Malone So you kind of get why certain organizations might want to come up with a better solution to that than getting whacked for $100 million fine by the SEC. That said, at this point, it's fully breached. It's a disaster. We've already seen information come out of this that the United States government has represented in court that it does not have and could not get, such as, these CBP messages include, passenger manifests for these, these flights, to El Salvador, that the government has represented in court that it can't produce, that are now, you know, reasonably out there in the open. 00;35;55;21 - 00;36;22;03 Propter Malone So I think this is going to be a developing and continuing story over the next couple of weeks as we as we sift through, possibly related to this, one of the primary contractors for CBP, deportation for its global ECS got its website hacked today, by a hacker who communicated with foreign, foreign media, which was the same outfit that broke the first hacking story about the attack on us. 00;36;22;03 - 00;36;47;06 Propter Malone Such stuff, the day before. So I think there's there's some chance that there might have been maybe credentials or maybe something else in that, in that first hacked dump, that is going to result in more messages coming out, more information coming out. Now. They've got those. So they've got flight manifest for these deportation flights, despite telling judges that they cannot produce them. 00;36;47;06 - 00;36;48;21 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Judges love that right. 00;36;48;24 - 00;36;52;04 George Can confirm judges love that judge DNA. 00;36;52;06 - 00;37;23;02 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Who is who is the, the judge up in Maryland? Who's to, who is currently going through discovery, on things related to the Abrego Garcia case? Is doing an expedited discovery process right now this week. This is happening all at the same time. And this stuff is going to have implications for that discovery. 00;37;23;04 - 00;37;34;01 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE So speaking of the FCC and speaking of corporate filings and business filings and retaining records, George is going to tell us a little bit about quarterly filings. 00;37;34;03 - 00;38;02;02 George Ooh, earnings season. We love an earnings season don't we gentlemen. So once a quarter if you are a public company you're required to report certain information about your business so that everyone can tell what exactly is going on. And nothing sneaks up on them to, surprise them in any way. This inevitably leads to people forecasting what will be released in earnings and then being surprised by the, the, release. 00;38;02;07 - 00;38;19;24 George So, the SEC has managed to put us into a position where we have some information and we guess on that as opposed to no information and guessing on on that. People always be guessing and trying to make money in the process. What I am describing to you is the great dance known as earnings season. It happens once every 13 weeks. 00;38;19;24 - 00;38;41;16 George It runs for, about eight weeks. So it's going on roughly half of the year, which is, fun for me as someone that has a lot to do during earnings season. That recorder, most companies not all, but most have their quarters end on the 31st of March, the 30th of June, the 30th of September and 31st of December. 00;38;41;18 - 00;39;03;28 George So you get a nice snapshot of what was going on in that, in that, business. And it's usually released anywhere from a week to a month after the end of the quarter. So we've had most of the big companies report earnings thus far. We're recording this, Monday evening, US time, on May 5th. So, we still have some big names to, to come out. 00;39;03;28 - 00;39;24;04 George But in terms of market cap, most of the markets report at this point, the stock market actually rose nine days in a row ending Friday of last week. And there was a lot of consternation over this, given the fact that, trade is not looking any better. Really than it did a couple of weeks ago and maybe looking a fair bit worse. 00;39;24;06 - 00;39;49;03 George One reason that the market did so well for that short period of time is earnings. And we haven't had a an aggregate blowout quarter like really strong numbers. But we've had a lot of companies report, good numbers headed into the disruptions of, of trade and a lot of what companies have said about the disruptions of trade has been, the sort of thing that you would expect if it's a manageable problem. 00;39;49;05 - 00;40;12;00 George Now, whether that will end up being the case is another question entirely. But, based on the new information we've gotten over the past couple weeks, from some of the largest companies in the world and some companies that are impacted by trade pretty significantly. Things are looking okay. So I'm not saying this to say you need to go buy the stock market right now, and everything's fine and all good. 00;40;12;03 - 00;40;34;13 George But we got some new information. It's been positive. Markets been up. Whether that will continue in the long run is an open question. And important to note. We have not gotten reports from retailers yet. So, the most impacted parts of the stock market from this sort of slowdown in goods into the U.S. economy are not yet on the radar. 00;40;34;15 - 00;40;47;04 George And, and they may not give us a good, clear picture of what's going to happen to them next, even when they do report. So stay tuned. But thus far, corporate earnings reports have been pretty good for Q1. And that's where we're at with that. 00;40;47;07 - 00;40;50;20 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Have we have we gotten earnings from Apple yet? 00;40;50;23 - 00;40;58;28 George We did get earnings from Apple. So they had a pretty substantial while not the end of the world, but a substantial mess in China. They beat. 00;40;58;28 - 00;40;59;21 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE In the. 00;40;59;21 - 00;41;23;18 George U.S and they guided they their guidance basically was that they have a pretty good idea what's going to happen in Q2. But after that, they can't really predict what's going to happen next. So if you're, what we call a bear and think the market's going to drop, you take that and you say, well, that's really bad because, you know, who knows what's going to be happening from June on from the end of June on. 00;41;23;20 - 00;41;30;05 George And if you're a bull, you say, look their their business is doing well. And you know, maybe tariffs will hit or maybe they want but I think they won't. So we're good. 00;41;30;07 - 00;41;50;16 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Yeah I, I was thinking of them just as you know obviously huge consumer electronics company. A lot of a fair amount of dependency on manufacturing in China. And so I was imagining that if the, if the tariffs are going to hit really hard, that's going to be a company where you're probably going to see it. 00;41;50;18 - 00;42;26;18 George It will I will say, Apple's earnings call mentioned India I think seven times. They are really hyping up, India as their source for electronic goods. Now their full reciprocal tariff treatment, if we go down that road, then they run into a lot of other problems with some other Southeast Asian suppliers. But, for iPhones, they're hoping that by focusing on, India that they're going to avoid the worst of the, of the China tariff shock and be able to reroute those Chinese produced iPhones elsewhere in the world. 00;42;26;20 - 00;42;48;16 Propter Malone And just to jump in, there's there's been at least heavy rumors that India is, is is the first large country that there's going to be one of these long rumored trade deals with. So, it may be that that's, that's speculation about that is something that Apple is, is is is more closely attuned to, than the rest of us. 00;42;48;18 - 00;42;58;27 George Those rumors, to be clear, are not coming from the tall gentlemen in the corner in a trenchcoat that is just, Howard next standing on Treasury Secretary Bossert shoulders. They're they're not coming from they're they're they're very serious rumors. 00;42;58;29 - 00;43;05;20 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE I was going to ask whether these were actual serious rumors or whether these were like, Besson's Canadian girlfriend rumors. 00;43;05;23 - 00;43;32;21 George As far as I can tell, in the context of what we would normally define as global trade agreements between two countries. A new free trade agreement, any rumors of progress or nearing a deal are complete nonsense. Now, maybe what they're going to roll out is some sort of very limited, very narrow, quote unquote deal that is a way to generate positive press. 00;43;32;26 - 00;43;54;23 George But in terms of real big changes to the specific rules that govern trade between the two countries, there's not any evidence that they're making significant progress. And we just had a headline, earlier this afternoon saying, Japan has been told they're not going to get exempted from reciprocal tariffs, no matter what. So that's the end of that potential deal. 00;43;54;26 - 00;43;57;02 George As for India, who knows? 00;43;57;05 - 00;44;16;14 Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer Well, not until they not until they give up the bowling ball test, which is definitely a real thing. And not just Trump misremembering the David Letterman bit from back in the 90s. To be clear, the bowling ball test as a method of testing automobiles, where you drop a bowling ball on them, it's never been really clear to me what it's supposed to demonstrate. 00;44;16;17 - 00;44;22;10 Propter Malone But, but but, but but it was a memorable visual for many years. 00;44;22;12 - 00;44;42;25 George And that's why it's being trotted out. All right. Well, I think that's it for us this week as your faithful correspondent currently sitting within literal eyeshot of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. I had a really good time tonight, gentlemen. And, thanks for joining in, everybody. This listening, I really hope you get the chance to listen to this episode and then rate and review it. 00;44;42;28 - 00;44;54;05 George Because that's how people find us in podcast apps. And every podcast I listen to says this. So it must be important. So yeah, write us reviews. Tell your friends, tell anybody. Really. Just be normal about it. I'm George. 00;44;54;08 - 00;44;56;09 Propter Malone I'm prompter, Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer I'm Lowtax Speedrun Enjoyer. 00;44;56;09 - 00;44;58;15 GOLIKEHELLMACHINE And I'm GOLIKEHELLMACHINE. 00;44;58;17 - 00;45;07;01 George And this has been Normal Men.