All right, this is WBAI New York 99.5 FM and WBAI.org online.
Stay tuned for Off The Hook, coming up.
Okay, we're back.
We're on the air, figured it out. I think we're getting worse at this week after week.
We're going to take an extra couple of minutes because of the delay it took for the station to get a hold of us.
It's Off The Hook. We're back after two weeks.
And welcome. Emmanuel Goldstein here with you, joined tonight by Kyle.
What?
Rob T. Firefly.
Hang on, I didn't press the right button. That's on me.
Rob T. Firefly.
You got to say something, guys.
Okay. Aguila.
Hello.
And Alex.
Alex, you just waved. What the hell?
You got to talk, Alex. It's not a TV show.
You think you're on delay or something? I am talking. Good evening, everyone.
Wait, we're on delay? How are we on delay?
We're talking to you through a computer right now, so how are we on delay?
Delay meaning that there's some latency in the network that's not allowing communications to get to you effectively.
Not delay as it's known in radio.
Okay. You sound terrible.
I don't know what's going on with the network.
But wow, this is, like I say, it's like we're getting worse and worse week after week.
Things get slower. People forget how to do things.
Maybe if we were on every week, this wouldn't happen.
I don't know.
Okay. I notice, Alex, you're on the phone, too.
Are you also on a phone call or are you talking to us somehow?
I'm trying to multitask here.
I got a work call. It's confidential. It's legally privileged.
And you're on a work confidential call on the radio.
Okay, fine. Whatever.
Nothing surprises me anymore.
Well, it's another exciting week of technology-related stories that we're going to get into.
And first of all, an important thing, if you value this kind of broadcasting,
you might want to give a call to our special phone number, which I have in front of me.
Hang on one second.
Things are in such disarray.
516-620-3602.
It's 3602, right?
You wrote to me and gave the wrong phone number.
See, everyone's getting things wrong.
That's not the number.
516-620-3602.
That's it, right? Okay.
We want to thank people who have become BAI buddies.
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These are all BAI buddies who have signed up in recent days.
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Look at this.
We also have people who have pledged for other things.
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I don't know what this is.
Etobicoke on Canada?
Is that a place?
Okay.
Keith is – oh, wait a minute.
It's Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada.
That's what it is.
Okay, I figured it out.
But see, they capitalized the O but not the N, so it looked like the word on.
I'm sorry.
Keith from Canada as well, from Toronto.
Thanks for your generous donation.
So all these people are pledging and are keeping us on the air, as it were,
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I think if we get another 20 or so BAI buddies,
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It really makes a huge difference.
If a lot of people do that, it's the equivalent of us basically doing
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And make sure you say that Off the Hook is your favorite show,
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But again, thank you to everybody for the support.
It means so much, especially in these times when everything is just
completely messed up.
Today we found out the president is a murderer.
Well, I mean, some of us already knew.
In fact, some of us said it on the air.
But boy, are you guys following what's been going on in recent hours?
No.
What's the latest?
Because I'm always afraid that whatever I heard most recently has been
totally subsumed by some new horror.
Are you talking about a manual that the president withheld very serious
information and intelligence about the seriousness of the coronavirus
and COVID-19 pandemic from the rest of the United States population?
Yeah, I figured that would be the lead story,
but apparently there are other things competing for it.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
He knew how dangerous the goddamn pandemic was from the start,
and he withheld that information, and over 100,000 people died.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
Do you have something else?
Yeah, I thought that might be it.
That's it.
You got it.
According to the White House, however,
he was just doing what any ordinary leader would do,
which was to down – not necessarily downplay –
That is just paternal crap.
No.
You don't want people panicking around the United States about something
that could kill them.
What would the alternative to panicking about something
that is about to kill them be?
Just die?
That's what it sounds like.
I hate it.
It's this paternal, I know better, I'll take care of you.
No, I don't need hand-holding from such an idiot.
Yeah, and I don't think he even believed that himself.
So anyway, I don't want to spend the hour talking about this.
I just wanted to basically put a bookmark here.
This is where we are in history.
Today is when we found this out, and there's quite a reaction.
I'm seeing nonstop reaction to this from all corners,
and hopefully if you're not already awake, this wakes you up,
and you realize that, yeah, elections have consequences,
and we are in great danger right now,
and that we have to continue to fight the fascism that is taking over our land.
There's just no compromising on this,
and I think everyone at BAI is committed to that.
I think most people in New York City are committed to that,
and I sure hope most people in the country are committed to that.
I think you're right.
I mean, the attacks, well, I wouldn't say the attacks.
I would just say the information that has been coming out about the president
over the last week.
Today's revelations I think were particularly illuminating in terms of his character,
but what he said about veterans and members of the military who were killed in action,
as reported by The Atlantic, is also just absolutely extraordinary.
I feel like it's taken almost four years,
but people are finally seeing the true colors of this particular bird that we have in the light.
Yeah, but Alex, why did it take that?
I mean, he's been saying things about Mexicans, about immigrants of all sorts,
about poor people, about minorities, about women.
He's been desecrating the environment and the economy,
but it's not until he attacks the military that people become outraged.
I mean, yeah, be outraged, but really, you needed this much to tell you?
Look, to be fair, I think many of us, probably most of us and most of our listeners,
have been outraged for a very long time right now.
We're starting to, because it's now affecting other demographics of the population
who were not as outraged about the outrageous activity that should have outraged them in the past.
Now they're outraged about, frankly, really outrageous stuff because it involves the military.
I find that outrageous.
However.
I do.
However, if people are moderately outraged, their outrage has exponentially grown.
But if they weren't outraged, they're still not.
We broke the record.
We just broke the record for saying outraged the maximum number of times in a single hour.
Thank you, Gila, for putting us over the top.
Continue with your sentence.
I'm sorry if I'm interrupting.
Anytime.
Absolutely.
All I was going to say is that people who were angry are getting more angry,
and people who were moved are becoming more moved,
but people who are entrenched in his support of his positions and his policies
and his business acumen and what have you are really just getting retrenched.
And I have seen people I grew up with who were talking about what a wonderful victory for capitalism
it's going to be when he gets reelected and how much they support him.
And I'm terrified, but they're really excited.
Go ahead, Rob.
That's something else that really drives me nuts about this is,
according to what people are saying, Trump has been fully aware of the danger of this since February,
and he has people who listen to him.
I'm not among those people, but there are so many thousands of people who are,
and he could have saved people who like him by coming out and saying,
Okay, this is serious.
Here's how you can protect yourself.
Here, it's not a hoax.
It's not a magical thing.
It's not going to magically be cured.
He could have told people who listened to him that this was serious,
and then they might have listened.
Then they might have taken it seriously.
But as it is, he's putting his own crew in danger.
To this day, though, this continues.
There are rallies going on where people are not observing social distancing,
where they're not wearing masks,
where Trump is mocking people who wear masks, including Joe Biden.
It's not like he delayed things for a little while until we all realized how serious it was
and then sort of guided us into the hell that we're living through right now.
He's continuing it.
He doesn't care.
Not to mention the xenophobic scapegoating of China.
Absolutely.
Yes.
I mean, if you're going to name a virus after the country responsible for spreading it the most,
it's the American virus now, for sure.
But seriously, how's that for a global response?
I mean, it's pitiful.
It's disgusting.
And we would be back in the studio now if this had been handled correctly.
As it is, I don't see when we're going to be back in the studio.
I don't see when life is going to resume.
We're at a stage now where this thing is just completely out of control.
And we're talking about rushing vaccines to the market,
which is another dangerous thing to do that people might jump at out of desperation.
So we really have to pool our resources and fix what's going on right now
before we can fix everything else that's now broken.
It's really scary, upsetting, but I also feel a good sense of community.
Just talking to people, hearing what people have to say, and I hope we all kind of share that.
I know there are things that not everybody sees eye to eye on,
but for now we have to work together to stop what's going on in this country
before it becomes past the point where we can't do anything about it.
Truly, it has reframed the way we look at problems, all of them, big and small,
in an entirely new light, and then also how we approach those problems,
the kinds of solutions we throw at things.
I think these responses and sort of the human behavioral stuff
that's coming alongside the actual news and story that is this pandemic
are really a reason for pause for a lot of people just to reassess their approach to the issue
and then how to approach it.
There's an interesting story on vice.com that I thought was worthy of rebroadcasting here
written by Casey Johnston.
The article published in The Atlantic pointed out that Americans absolutely suck
at being contact traced for coronavirus so far.
There are a number of reasons given.
There are too many cases.
Test results take too long.
People don't trust the government.
And after this completely botched handling of a pandemic
where the government has allowed nearly 200,000 people to die, who would?
But we dug this contact tracing by phone grave long ago
when we allowed our phone system to be ruined by spam calls.
Yeah, contact tracing, we're told here in our destitute country,
works beautifully in Europe where people dutifully hand out their phone numbers to businesses they visit
and then dutifully answer the phone when they are contacted about any potential risk
from other people they might have come into contact with.
I noticed that when I'm in Europe.
I wonder if I'll ever be in Europe again.
But when I've been in Europe, I notice people answer the phone when it rings.
It's generally something relevant.
So people in Europe can safely give out their phone numbers and safely answer the phone
because the European Union prohibits calling people to solicit services without their explicit consent.
Imagine that.
In South Korea, it's a different system.
While telemarketing and robocalls are a problem there,
the contact tracing system works largely by text message.
That's according to a reported piece from The New Yorker back in April.
Both contact tracing efforts and COVID-19 test results are delivered by text.
In the case of test results, they arrive within hours of the test administration.
Another delightful contrast to the U.S. where test results throughout most of the country take around a week to arrive,
which makes them worthless because your situation may very well change within a week.
Here in the U.S., meanwhile, people almost never answer the phone when an unknown caller rings,
and for good reason.
As of 2018, roughly 30% of all cell phone calls in the United States were spam,
which can be annoying at best and actively dangerous at worst.
Also, it can be expensive if you have the wrong plan.
That number was up from only 3.7% in 2017.
Imagine that.
3.7% of all cellular phone calls were spam in 2017.
3.7%, one year later, 30%.
Wow.
I wonder what it is now.
Texting could actually work a bit better in terms of getting people to respond,
but still there remains the issue of trust that the person who is contacting you is who they say they are.
Without a government that can even figure out how to get its own phone number to reliably show up as,
say, New York Health Department instead of spam risk when it reaches out to people,
we're not positioned super well to build trust.
And even then, new developments in scamming technology allow for scammers to spoof the numbers of anyone,
meaning that even that wouldn't be foolproof.
So until the United States takes its scam and spam call problem seriously,
we're probably going to be in the contact tracing dark ages for a very, very long time.
Again, that article from Casey Johnston, vice.com.
And, yeah, I think it hits the nail on the head of what our problems are with the way we set up technology,
with the way we think of how phone calls work and how governments work and how contact tracing should work.
This could be something that would save a lot of people, but it's just it doesn't work here.
Yeah, there are so many elements of the modern communication environment in which we depend,
but are simultaneously really bad at.
You know, society in general is not used to all this level of interconnectivity.
And we just we've been given powerful toys by science and invention and progress.
And we sometimes break those toys and it's our own damn fault.
Yeah, I mean, look, I tend to agree with this.
And, you know, a lot of the good things and the technology that we have is just essentially, you know,
been been ruined by over commercialization and bogus sales items.
I mean, I think I had three or four robocalls today, two of which were about, you know, my car's warranty,
which is totally crazy because how many times can your car's warranty, you know, about to be about to expire?
You know, all of this stuff is just so it's so low and base what we've allowed to happen without any repercussions to the spammers,
to the people that are that are also not only spammers, but scammers taking advantage of the elderly.
There's so much victimization that happens through the telephone here that people are afraid to answer the damn line.
I mean, it is a totally different situation in Europe and all things are are more highly regulated.
Yet at the same time, somehow exponentially cheaper than in the United States.
You know, it just seems like it's totally incongruous.
But when I lived in London, you know, not only was my Internet connectivity so much cheaper than what I paid in New York,
but paying for a mobile phone was also a tiny fraction of what you pay in the United States.
And so, you know, we've got a hell of a lot, I think, that's broken.
And the fact that we have a Republican led FCC is is not going to change any of that for us in the near future.
On that subject, just just to scare you even more, Alex, I don't know if you heard Trump's address later,
late in the afternoon of his wish list for the Supreme Court.
Ted Cruz, Supreme Court Justice Ted Cruz.
Just just swill that around a little bit and see how that comes out.
And Tom Cotton, too, I believe. Yeah, it's it's I'm sorry, I'm just I'm affected by all this.
It's it's just too much, too much of the bizarre to try and digest at once.
I mean, wasn't it just just literally almost exactly 40?
No, it had to be a little bit more than 40 years ago that he was saying terrible things about Ted Cruz, his wife, if I recall.
And father and father. Right. I mean, this just and Ted, too.
It doesn't matter that I just wanted to guys feeling at all, just, you know, particularly fatigued by any of this.
I mean, I'm the last couple of days, I have to say I've been feeling just tired from the work from home situation,
the car, the barrage of bad news, information, school delays, closings, all this.
Like I feel like it's starting to get to me a little bit. I'm I'm tired.
Yeah, I think I think we're all pretty tired. Yeah, I'm kind of up and down.
I have like it comes in waves. I don't know. I get in various moods.
But regarding one of the the aspects of that predatory business that these industries and sort of basically all of the underbrush,
shall we say, that comes up in the forest of capitalism, that that allows this does facilitate a lot of fraud straight up.
Like it can be misleading and maybe there's a business there, but it's so fake.
It's so flimsy. And we just sort of allow this to flourish because we want to say, oh, well, this is the marketplace.
And years and decades of Republican deregulation has made it so that these revenue streams.
And this is my real point, are are just another option for the greed of the large trees in that forest of capitalism.
And in this case, we know the telephone company, even when they get dollars allocated to like broadband, they don't actually invest it.
They just skim off as much as they can. They change the planning and the kinds of structure of people's service to cram less quality calls.
And then they have these other little optional streams of revenue that like scammers that buy bulk calling abilities.
And it is it's just it all goes back in a lot of ways to greed.
We're just promoting that as though there are no consequences or that that subjecting the entirety of the consumer population to that is OK and allowed.
Yeah. And we come to expect it to we adjust our lives to fit the scammers and the spammers rather than the other way around.
And it's it's it's unacceptable. I think we've stopped.
We stopped realizing that it is. We just got this email.
It's addressed to me. Laurie mentioned to me that you called earlier while I was doing an orientation.
Feel free to contact me to discuss our regional tractor division. I've attached information for your review.
Thank you. Look forward to speaking with you soon. What kind of spam is this?
This is a guy, Phil Weiner from Ohio, contacting me about regional tractors or regional.
I don't know how to say it. Regional tractor division. I should just call and follow up on this and get some tractors out of it.
It was absolutely epic. It was so that email came actually to the show list.
We all got it. But it's addressed to me. It's addressed to me by name.
So yesterday afternoon, I'm sitting over in my workspace in our apartment and Rob is sitting over in his workspace in our apartment.
And I began laughing hysterically, like loudly head back whole business.
And he said, what's going on? I said, you need to see this email we just got.
It is the single strangest piece of spam I've ever seen.
And but and like then I was looking at the attachments, which I know is not really a safe thing to do, but I did it.
And yeah. Do you want to drive a truck? So those those those attachments were actually a tractor related.
This appears to be tractor trailer related. This appears to be some sort of like long distance truck driving concern.
Did I did I express an interest in this? Maybe I did call this if you want to take the open road.
Well, I would love to drive a tractor trailer. I really would.
We've been we've actually been kicking around getting our CDL long haul truckers have long been my heroes because they they move things around and they get things done.
And there's so many different large trucks you could drive and they are a lot a lot more involved.
They're just an interesting, distinct piece of transfer to transportation. It's always intrigued us.
And they listen to the radio, too. They might not always listen to good radio, but they do listen to the radio.
So any long haul truckers listening to us right now? I don't know if they still use a CB.
Do people still use CB radios? I guess maybe they do. Yes, they do.
Oh, OK. Yes, they do.
OK, I was just can we take it back for a second?
Because I signed us up for a service called Nomo Robo, and I don't know if you guys are familiar with Nomo Robo.
That's us as in this household, not as in this household. I was going to say, how dare you.
Nomo Robo.
Nomo Robo. I just also enjoy saying Nomo Robo.
Yeah, so we were busy. We still have a landline, which is, you know, it's through the cable company, but it's a landline.
And we were getting a lot of spam calls. So I signed up for this service called Nomo Robo.
And basically what it does is it it rings your house in this like database in tandem.
It simultaneously rings there. And if the number on your caller ID is on this like known database of scammers, it cuts it off.
But I was like, great, this is great. We're going to get fewer junk calls.
But at the same time, the privacy implications of it are staggering.
And I am torn, frankly, because we haven't gotten, you know, Chinese voicemail in like a week.
Which was formerly a pretty routine occurrence.
Have you ever taken the time to actually translate those Chinese voicemails? Because they're very good opportunities.
You're lost. You're lost.
The end result, though, is that some machine somewhere has a log of every call that comes into our home.
Yeah. Yeah. There's that.
It's decided that some of the calls we get are legit.
And I'm glad they haven't decided like my mother is a scammer.
OK, wait, hold on a second. Can you add your mother to the to the scammer list somehow?
How does that list get generated?
I don't know. Well, you can actually once you're signed up, then you can go in and if it missed one, you can say, hey, you missed one.
Add this to your scammer list or whitelist this one.
I can just see it now. I swear to God, you call me one more time.
I'm putting you on that scammer list. You won't be able to call anybody.
Yeah. You have to go out and change your phone number.
Robo. Anybody who's got no more Robo is fun to say.
But that was I was you know, I was torn between the convenience and what it means in a broader sense, which I think is probably the decisions.
A lot of the decisions that we're making now.
Yeah, I think I just want to add that you're put in that position because the telephone company wants the revenue stream and it's their greed.
They're passing that along to you and you're put in that predicament.
And then you have to come up with giving away something in order to do to mitigate something that they could do at the network level in their systems.
And with probably a wide range and a lot more power and impact impact, not power than the average consumer.
But yet, because they favored this kind of law and we've completely abandoned regulation as evil boogeyman, we have this.
We have to face those kinds of surveillance issues and then come up with other solutions and even pay for a service.
Et cetera. And of course, there's the do not call registry, which we should probably mention.
I believe it's do not call dot gov that you register.
It's pretty useless because what that does is that adds your number to a database.
Guess what? That database is shared with telemarketers.
So you're on a list of people you really shouldn't call, but you're on that list.
And I was on that list for a while.
I got lots of calls.
You're supposed to report every time somebody calls that isn't supposed to call you.
And there are plenty of plenty of instances where you may think you're not supposed to be called where they have every right to call you.
For instance, a politician can call you any time with with robo calls.
And if you let's say let's say you use Grubhub or something, which a lot of people have to do with forced to in this day and age.
Well, now you have a business relationship with them.
They can call you. They can text you.
They do all the time.
So there are instances where you can't get out of it.
But if somebody does call you and they're not supposed to, yeah, you report it.
Nothing happens.
They call you again. You report it.
Nothing happens.
If the day ever comes where they're charged with something, they might have to pay a fine.
Do you get any of that? No, you get nothing.
All you get is the the fun of having to report somebody over and over again and get really frustrated because you already gave your number out to all these telemarketers.
It's useless.
It doesn't do any good.
One thing we're always going on about is like how how much like not to be that person who's like shaking a cane at a cloud and saying this is, you know, things used to be so much better.
But we have become accustomed to things getting worse and worse and worse over time and just accepting that that's the way it has to be now.
And that sort of fatigue is what we were talking about before.
It's the same thing that's happening on a grander scale with just the trauma and challenges to our mental health that every person on this planet is suffering at the moment.
And, yeah, it's very easy to just get tired and just decide this battle isn't worth fighting anymore.
You know, I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
Oh, I'm sorry.
So I got a notification on my phone earlier today that we're going to be able to New York City is going back to restaurant dine in at the end of the month.
Twenty five percent is apparently 25 percent.
But still want to go meet in a restaurant.
I mean, it's this idea of we're done with this now.
We're done with this and we can't do it anymore.
And what is the point where we as a society throw our hands back up and say things are going to go back to normal because I'm deciding to go back to normal now, despite whatever might be going on in the broader world.
Well, I think a victory or two might a victory or two might actually be helpful where people feel like things are now going to change.
I think that's going to do a world of good.
And after that, actually progress, real progress on combating the disease and eventually eliminating it.
It will end at some point.
It has to.
And I hope at that point we remember how to be happy, remember how to have fun, how to congregate in large crowds of people, because those are good things.
And I don't think anybody out there wants those things to go away.
It's funny how you see various political parties accusing other people of wanting the economy to fall apart.
Why would anybody want that?
Why would anybody want to end school?
Well, I know why people want to end school.
But, you know, why would people want to end the concept of it or businesses or all the things that we all miss, that we all want to have?
One thing that I can't really wrap my head around, maybe you guys can help me with this.
There's a bowling alley out here that went out of business because of the pandemic.
Now, I don't understand why any business has to shut down because of this.
The reason, OK, you have to pay rent, you have to pay utilities.
Why?
Why do you have to keep paying rent if you don't have a business?
Why do you have to keep paying utilities if the utilities aren't serving you?
Why can't these things be suspended so that everybody feels the pain equally?
You got to pay the landlord.
Why?
Why do you have to pay the landlord?
Why does he have to pay taxes?
Why?
Why does he have to pay taxes?
He's not getting services.
This scenario where the little guy always has to pay for everything, whereas the people on the very top, they don't have to pay anything.
These massive chain stores, they're bemoaning the fact.
Some of them have said, we're never going to open in New York City again because it's just too hard for us.
They have stopped paying rent.
They haven't been paying rent for months on their massive stores.
If they do this, why can't the people who are further down do the exact same thing?
This bowling alley is shut down now.
What I don't understand is, it's a bowling alley.
What's to stop me from, when the pandemic is finished, walking in there and saying, hey, want to start a bowling alley here in this bowling alley-shaped building?
What is the difference between that and the person who ran the bowling alley being suspended for a few months until it's safe to reopen again and then just starting from where he stopped?
Am I being- I mean, I know I'm being naive because I usually am, but how much am I missing the mark here?
Why do businesses have to shut down permanently because of this?
Alex?
Well, look, it's an issue of contract law here.
When you are a commercial tenant in a building, you sign a contract, pay a certain amount of rental per month to have access to that property without interference from your landlord.
And that's a contract that you sign that obligates you to pay regardless of whether or not there is a health crisis.
You may have certain language in your contract that exempts you from paying and allows you to breach that contract because of force majeure or an act of God.
And whether or not the pandemic would fit into that is another thing.
But I think that's possibly why we are seeing and have seen so many coronavirus-related domain names that relate to lawyers and law firms because there are so many legal issues arising out of this pandemic because of people doing the exact same thing that you were suggesting, Emmanuel.
Now, when it comes to a place like a commercial tenant, like a bowling alley, like you had mentioned, when you break that lease, there's some serious consequences for that business because they may be on the hook for the rest of that lease anyhow.
But if it's a corporate entity, they're not going to be able to pay, so the landlord is just going to be out of the money until they can find a new tenant.
But it's the whole structure of the system, I think, that really just stinks in a way because it allows landlords who own property like this to use the last known rental value that they had from a tenant to acquire other loans or to secure other properties that they're buying.
So sometimes there's an incentive to not have a tenant in your property because it allows you to further expand your empire.
Exactly.
Look at the East Village.
The East Village, all the vacant stores, why don't they simply rent at a lower price because of what you say, because they can expand their empire by having a bunch of vacant storefronts?
And the problem here, too, is systemic.
And this is where I think we can tie it back to the hacker community here because what we're dealing with is a broken system in that the laws that regulate landlords and tenants are not promulgated by county authorities or city authorities.
They're not promulgated by the city council in New York City so that the East Village can be saved when there's a massive pandemic like this and people are just going out of business willy-nilly.
They come from Albany.
This is where landlord-tenant law has literally since the 18th century been passed.
And Albany doesn't want to abdicate its authority to regulate how landlords treat their tenants and how tenants are obligated to their landlords because they think there'll be a major disparity in how New York City does it as opposed to how Albany does it as opposed to Rochester does it.
But you know what?
That's probably a good thing.
Local control over rental laws is probably a damn good thing, and it's exactly what we need in New York City to save this economy.
Well, either local or uniform throughout the entire nation because in other countries, people are being paid even though they're not working.
People are having their rent subsidized.
They're not suffering as much as they're suffering here.
And I think this is the time where you need government to be there.
That is what government is for, to step in and help out when there's a disaster going on.
And there's a disaster going on.
I know a lot of us don't want it to be going on, but it's going on.
Look around.
And this is when we need to turn to those people that we elected to actually do their job and help get us through this.
I don't think there's any other way around it.
Yeah.
I mean, look, I agree with you there.
And government, to a certain extent, has always been some sort of safety net.
You look back to horrible economic times and the government provided jobs.
You have the back to FDR is, I guess, a perfect example of all this.
And we do need something like that right now.
But look, it's on the right and the left here.
I think that there is just a failure of leadership on both sides of the aisle here.
And I think we've always been critical of the left when the left deserves to be critical.
And I think that we need real leadership here.
We need people that are good at governing, not just good at campaigning.
Being great on Twitter and social media is a hell of a lot different than being a good legislator that takes care of your constituents.
Absolutely.
Hey, what happened to Robin Gila?
What happened, Kyle?
I had some problems.
Well, there was this Darth Vader noise coming from there.
You muted them and it went away.
But I didn't mean for them to go away permanently.
Yeah, I don't know how to make it go back.
Oh, boy.
Oh, they're there.
OK.
You guys still with us?
I think we're here with you.
Yeah.
Well, there was like a mechanical lung type sound.
And when we muted you, it went away when Alex was talking.
Oh.
I tried to undo it.
I think you had the control or something after I muted it.
Did you have something to say?
All right, I'm going to guess you didn't.
I was going to say we should have put our iron lung in the corner.
All right, here's a letter from another listener.
Number of listeners or HOPE attendees in Wyoming is unclear.
We mentioned Wyoming a couple weeks ago, if you recall,
because the Republicans forgot to count Wyoming.
They were counting up their votes.
Since moving here to Wyoming from an East Coast commonwealth,
I haven't found another hacker or a privacy enthusiast.
But, no, there is at least one listener here.
Thanks, Hack5190, for writing in and letting us know that there is at least one listener in Wyoming.
I always assume there's at least one listener in pretty much every state.
Did you guys hear this story?
Did you guys hear this story?
Amazon drivers are hanging smartphones in trees to get more.
Okay.
What was that about?
A strange phenomenon has emerged near Amazon.com Inc. delivery stations
and Whole Foods stores in the Chicago suburbs.
Smartphones dangling from trees.
Now, they don't grow there naturally.
They're put there.
Contract delivery drivers are placing them there to get a jump on rivals seeking orders.
That's according to people who are familiar with the matter.
Someone places several devices in a tree located close to the station where deliveries originate.
Drivers in on the plot then sync their own phones with the ones in the tree,
and they wait nearby for an order pickup.
The reason for the odd placement, according to experts and people with direct knowledge of Amazon's operations,
is to take advantage of the handset's proximity to the station
combined with software that constantly monitors Amazon's dispatch network
to get a split-second jump on competing drivers.
That drivers resort to such extreme methods is emblematic of the ferocious competition
for work in a pandemic-ravaged U.S. economy suffering from double-digit unemployment.
Much the way milliseconds can mean millions to hedge funds using robo-traders,
a smartphone perched in a tree can be the key to getting a $15 delivery route before someone else.
That story from Bloomberg.
We live in some pathetic times, I gotta say.
So weak. So, so weak.
Has anyone here ever been an Amazon driver?
I was kind of curious what it must be like, you know, to deliver packages.
But I don't think any of us have ever done that, have we?
I can't say I have, although I've also never hung a smartphone in a tree.
So, you know, if I were that kind of clever, maybe I could drive for Amazon.
I don't know, if I learned how to drive.
Alex, nothing?
I think it's interesting.
No, I mean, I have not been a commercial driver of any sort.
I've never delivered pizzas.
I've never delivered anything, to be honest with you.
You did mention a profession that I did engage in briefly when I was younger, earlier in the show.
That would be telemarketing.
That was kind of interesting, being a phone freak and a telemarketer.
Yeah, I did that, too.
I did that, too, for about two days.
It was fascinating, and I figured I had to hack the phone system, too, at the same time.
I believe it.
I mean, these were days when literally we were calling people from photocopied pages of the phone book.
Like that was our list of telemarketing.
And I was selling chimney sweeps.
And you got fired if you didn't make a sale in three days.
What we would do to scan the system was call somebody who's your friend, and they would set up a chimney sweep
and then cancel it the week that it was supposed to happen, and you got another couple of days of employment out of it.
But that was a disaster, that job.
It just seemed like such an abuse of the system.
But to go back to the phones hanging in the trees, I mean, look, desperate times call for desperate measures.
People are willing to do these crazy things to make $15.
It's a very sad commentary on the state of our economy that people have to do this to make a living, and that it's so competitive.
Can I just say desperate times call for desperate measures?
I desperately need a new phone, so can I drive by Amazon and just have my pick from various trees of the latest model of phone?
I mean, is somebody watching these things?
You can pick one, but only if it's an Apple phone.
Yeah, very funny, Rob, very funny.
Hit the mute button on Rob.
We don't tolerate that kind of thing, Rob.
I can't find it.
Yeah, you know the rules.
Where is it?
You know the rules.
Can I say something?
Has anybody ordered something from Amazon recently?
It's okay.
You can confess.
You can say, I did.
I have.
That's how I'm able to say what I'm about to say.
We have, yes.
Okay.
Do you notice you get emails telling you that your item is either on the way or has arrived?
Occasionally.
Okay.
Do you notice those emails don't mention what it is that you're getting anymore?
They stop doing that, and the reason they stop doing that is because Gmail is reading your mail and sending you competing offers for products that you're buying,
and Amazon caught wind of that and doesn't want the competition, so now they're just saying, hey, your item will be,
and you have to figure out what the item is by matching maybe the price or something like that,
but it's really inconvenient for the consumer because, you know,
if you're going to send me a notice saying something is here,
I kind of like to know what that something is rather than have to go back through my transactions to figure out what it is.
However, they also do the same thing, though.
I have a Chrome extension on my computer called the Amazon Assistant, which means I can add things from whatever.
Anytime I look up anything that is any kind of product, the Amazon Assistant gives me prices for that at Amazon,
whatever it is that I might be looking up, so the fact that they're willing to do it but not have it done to them is fascinating to me.
Not surprising, though.
Not surprising, but fascinating.
My heart goes out to the workers driving and that need this kind of income desperately
and are piecing together some kind of living with such an impersonal activity,
and perhaps many people enjoy it.
No, perhaps maybe a couple people enjoy it or they're like retired or I don't know what instance this would be a fun thing to be doing,
driving around delivering people's stuff, and I'm sure economically for Amazon, this is a great business model,
but I fear it's sort of addictive, the competition and stuff that people aren't –
they're just barely getting by enough to play the game again, you know,
and it's sort of like they're rolling the dice to see if they can get work doing crazy stuff like this.
But then again, I guess it's innovation, but it's a strange sign of the times.
Go ahead, Rob.
Yeah, I feel like it's the delivery drivers for Amazon and similar that have been keeping this country, this state, this planet,
whatever, running through this pandemic when none of us have been able to leave our homes
except for the people who are keeping it all running.
And the fact that some of the most essential people that any of us have dealt with on a commercial level
are the ones getting paid among the lowest rungs to the point where they have to, you know,
use tricks like this to get an extra $15 call or what have you.
And the fact that it's worth it enough to them to spend however much money it takes to get a smartphone you can hang up a tree
and have it continue to work and weather the weather and all that,
and still they're reduced to having to scrape by with this sort of trick.
You would think the people who have been keeping the blood running through the veins of this country
would have maybe been compensated appropriately for that, but that doesn't work for the people running the businesses.
Well, folks, we're into our last couple of minutes.
Any final words for people?
I know school is beginning, and a lot of people are filled with trepidation as far as whether or not they should send their kids to school.
It's definitely kind of a strange time.
We're going to find out in the weeks ahead if we're turning the corner or not.
And with outbreaks at college campuses being a barometer of what we might be in for in future weeks,
I can't say I'm very optimistic about it.
Alex, yes, we can't hear you.
Wave your hand.
Go ahead.
Sorry.
I was trying to unmute myself and simultaneously illuminate myself.
You have one minute.
Yeah.
Look, I'm going through the same thing right now and trying to determine whether or not we send my oldest son back to school.
And that goes back to something that Gila had mentioned earlier today, too.
I mean, we are messing around with so many variables, especially in New York City,
reopening indoor seating and restaurants right around the same time that kids are going back to school.
It all just seems like there are far too many variables being mucked about with in a way that we are not going to be able to track
what's the effect of any one particular change on the city when it comes to this pandemic.
It makes me very hesitant to send my son back to school because what we are thrusting our children into right now is definitely an experiment.
And we don't know how it's going to go.
We know that bureaucrats and administrators are in charge of it.
It doesn't give me a great amount of confidence.
All right.
We have to leave it at that.
I want to thank you guys for being a part of the show.
Sorry for the rough start.
Hopefully next week we'll get it right.
We will be back.
You can write to us, othat2600.com.
And until next time, stay safe.
Good night.
Nobody's agreeing.
They say it's suicide when dead bodies are swinging.
Cowards are hunting black men.
That's what I'm seeing.
How many toasters have been burnt down?
And once Central Park was a thriving black town.
Yo, Chuck, I'm fighting the power right now.
Thanks to you, Flava, P.E., putting it down, putting your life on the line so I can rap now.
The next generation still singing fight the power.
Fight the power.
Fight the power.
Fight the power.
Fight the power.
Fight the power.
Fight the power.
Fight the power.
Fight the power.
We've got to fight the power.
Police think they way.
Six-nine over the law.
Want to give a short stick, but we really need a long.
To the boys in the hood, got some bullets and batons.
Some boys in the hood, triple Ks on they arms.
Four fingers on my palms, screaming fight, change the policy.
Defund, buy back our property.
You love Black Panther, but not Fred Hampton.
Word to the Howards and the Aggies and the Hamptons.
They book us, won't book us, I'm Booker.
Team Washington, George killed 420.
Think about it.
That's 2,000 pennies.
The value of Black life, the cost of going to Wendy's for a four-quarter burger.
Ended in murder.
Fight for Breonna and the pain of her mama.
Gotta fight the power.
Fight the power.
Fight the power.
Fight the power.
Fight the power.
Fight the power.
Fight the power.
Fight the power.
We've got to fight the power.
Yeah, generations is how long we've been at war.
The revolution on our platform.
You break a man's mind and it's back.
Your solidarity is what I'm wearing all black for.
For comrades who don't fought without me.
It's not to try and change our thoughts about me.
Or to redirect your reports about me.
Dear white people, you should take a course about me.
Because is it the long and long and four-finger ring?
The sciences or the arts?
The songs we can sing?
I really want to know why y'all so scared.
Probably because the promised land we almost dared.
But look, I think of images that fuel my youth.
Interviews by Craig Hodges and Abdul-Raouf.
Examples like Olympic black power salutes and panther troops.
I saw as I pursued my truth.
If racism isn't cancer, black thoughts the answer.
Gotta get up off the back porch.
Emancipate your mind.
Get your bodies back from rancor.
And all black hands up for the anthem.
Fight the power.
Fight the power.
Yo, yo, check this out.
This is a song I wrote.
Fight the power.
Yo, yo, check this out, man.
Bring that beat back, man.
One, two, three, four, hit it.
People, people stronger than this evil.
Smashing your power structure.
Melanie Royerico.
System designed to kill and unprotect.
Worldwide hit the streets just to get some respect.
Our fight and our rights for freedom will never waver.
Justice Breonna Taylor.
Salute Chuck and Flava.
Feel the same anger since Radio Raheem died.
Black power to the people.
I was born to fight.
I made it off the block, though.
Thought he had a gun and he was black.
That's the convo.
The police killed George having a convo.
They killed Malcolm X to kill Dr. King.
They gave us guns and dope.
They want to stop our kings.
Trying to erase our history.
Stop and think.
History class ain't tell us about Juneteenth.
Cops don't give a damn about a Negro.
Pull a trigger, kill a Negro.
He's a key, bro.
Fight through the North Korea.
They respect violence.
If you ain't trying to have your city on fire,
put some respect on our name.
We come from gold and diamonds.
Fight the power.
Fight the power.
Fight the power.
We got to fight the powers that be.
Elvis was a hero of the month,
but he never meant to be.
You see, straight up, racism suckers were simply playing.
Cause I'm black and I'm proud.
I'm ready, I'm hyper, I'm amped.
All my heroes on a piano stand.
Sam Paul look like you looking for nothing,
but Redding for 400 years, if you check.
Don't worry, Ne-Yo.
Was the number one jam.
Damn if I said you could slap me right here.
Get it.
Let's get this party started right.
What we got to say.
Power to the people, no delay.
Make everybody see.
In order to fight the powers that be.
Power to the people.