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Hello, welcome back to the show.

My name is Matt, my name is Nola.

They called me Ben.

We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan.

Most importantly, you are here.

That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.

If you are hearing our strange news segment the Evening it publishes Welcome to July twenty first, twenty twenty five.

We have so much to get to.

Obviously, a lot of things are happening in the world, and we couldn't think of a better way to kick off the show than to commit to our YETI blood oath.

I don't know what that means, Ben.

Weirdly enough, it's not a code, Matt.

It turns out that a Denver seminary has met some deep internal division due to a YETI blood oath.

This was reported in the Pillar just yesterday.

We're recording on July sixteenth.

This came to us July fifteenth.

The clergy in the Archdiocese of Denver are intensely divided over a blood oath ceremony involving a vice rector and seminarians during a ski trip.

It happened last year, but the news finally broke to the public.

Here's what happened.

There was a group of seminarians, you know, divinity students basically studying at Denver Saint John Vienny Theological Seminary, and Friar John neppel In EPIL took the gang on a trip.

During this trip, they were woken in the middle of the night and quote invited to individually swear a blood oath in a ceremony involving a dagger and a man in a Yeti costume.

I mean, I'm not the idea of a Yeti priest.

That's cool.

None of us are Catholics, so we're not experts on this, but that that's not the usual thing, right.

I don't think so.

WHOA wait, I just clicked on the link.

Yeah, check out the costume.

Yeah, the Yeti costume is pretty intense cosplay level stuff.

Whoa yeah, this is okay.

So video of this was sent to the Pillar by multiple sources in the archdiocese and the seminarians were quote told to scream as if in pain, before returning with a bloodied cloth wrapped around their hand and their mouths taped shut to the room where other people are waiting to go swear the blood oath.

This was a farce, was a prank.

They assured the public and the lay folk that no one is in fact a YETI worshiper in this archdiocese.

I think maybe I am now a YETI worshiper.

I'm started.

Yeah, yeah, time to convert.

That's a fun theater thing, like the initiation, the secret initiation, where everybody's waiting in one room.

One person goes in at a time, and then you hear them scream, and then you've got a bloodied cloth as they exit.

And yeah the mouth.

Yeah, I mean, that's just theater.

That's just fun.

That's just fun.

The friar did apologize and quote acknowledged his imprudence, apologized to the archbishop and the seminarians involved.

While we get it, come on, man, what's wrong with a little fun.

No one was getting hurt.

Like, did the friar apologize for being the fun friar?

You know what I mean?

My bad, Sorry, guys, I guess you don't want these googly eyes on the crucifix anymore.

I put googly eyes on them so they're not so scary.

I put googly eyes on my rumba.

But then it kind of went rogue and stopped doing what it was supposed to do, so I had to put it down.

No, it was an old Yeller situation.

It really was.

Maybe it got Maybe the googly eyes brought it too close to AI.

That's something we're going to be returning to in a couple of a couple of stories this week.

We're also going to be talking about security leaks.

We're going to be talking weirdly enough about Waifu stuff, and of course electric bills and maybe a mention of Epstein.

But before we do any of.

That, I want to sit here about Epstein.

Stop talking about Epstein.

You are a person.

Let it go.

We're done with that guy.

He's been dead long times.

Sorry, I'm sorry.

We're gonna pause.

We'll get to it.

We'll pause for word from our sponsor, and then we're going to return with some fascinating stories.

One of which we were actually talking about off air earlier.

Happens and we have return with the trio of the strangest of news is that I bring to you today.

We're going to start with a quickie and an easy one.

And this just came to mind, I think because of a conversation we had with the fair Dylan the Tennessee pal slash Tennessee Chainsaw massacre Fagan about as a version to competitive card games, and specifically UN came up.

Maybe not specifically for Dylan, but that is the one that comes to mind when I think we all think of like family games that can get a little heated, perhaps and if I'm mistake, and we recently talked about how the Mattel Company, who owns Uno did come out with an official stance on the playing a plus something on top of another plus something.

Yes, right, and everybody ignored them.

Right, they said, nah, not cool.

Before we go on, I have no problem with family rules either, house rules, right, Like, yeah, do do what thou wiltst what you got, matt.

This past weekend we played Uno, myself, my mother, my father, my girlfriend, her daughter, and my son.

We're all playing Uno.

We're hanging out and that plus draw to thing came up, and that's applying and all of that.

Who has to draw and all this, Well I went into magic rules.

Well you've already played the draw too, so that goes that is on the stack, and that occurs someone plays another drug to We went into this long thing and everybody in the end he got kind of mad at each other.

Oh yeah, brother, let me just say I have experienced the wrath, the gaming wrath of your lady friend, and they're super intense about these kinds of things.

So I can see that getting a little heated.

For sure.

I've missed that that part of the experience and look forward to it.

But I got to tell you, yeah, even folks, as you know listening in, even the most loving of parents and siblings and familial relations will turn on you with uno, especially when it's time to draw those four cards and predict that color.

It gets gets wild.

Well, you know what's funny.

I always think the concept that in a gaming situation, you're supposed to like not play well against people, you know, like your kids get mad at you because you played the game right, I just does that blows up.

I don't understand.

That just seems to be counter to the whole point of playing a competitive game.

It happens with me and my kid with Mario Kart, which we are huge fans of.

My kid has absolutely attained an equal footing to me in that game that I've been playing for over a decade and takes it real seriously and gets real mad when I shell them.

But we are talking about Uno, and specifically a new era of Uno being unveiled on the Las Vegas Strip in Sin City.

George Alakiki, writing for news dot com dot Au in Australia, said the family friendly game has caused drama around the dining table for years, but it's now drawing a wild card at the poker table.

Beloved game Uno is set to debut in one Las Vegas casino with plans for more.

But there's a catch that catches no gambling allowed.

Yeah.

Mattel has given the green light to a Uno Social club that is located above the gaming floors at the Palms Casino in Las Vegas, off of the strip, with plans to expand it to more gambling locations.

There are different variations of the game that will be on offer at different tables during this little pop up period of July eighteenth through twentieth, so a couple days from now.

As we sit here recording.

The catch, however, is what I said, Guests wanting to gamble on the games despite the venue will not be allowed.

That comes from the article I quoted.

The decision is part of Mattel's main objective to provide a elevated social experience at casinos instead of real money games.

A spokesperson for the company, Ray Adler, who's the vice president and global head of games, said we created unosocial clubs to reimagine what game night can be, bringing people together for real world fun, connection and a bit of friendly competition.

Then Social Club in Las Vegas is just the beginning, and we're excited to see how these new experiences inspire players to show up, play hard, and make unforgettable memories.

But I don't know, guys, I could see this being pretty divisive, you know, being such a family game, and this is a little bit of an odd publicity stunt if you ask me, I.

Think it's going to work.

Maybe not to the degree that Mattel hopes, but it's it's partially because Uno is a very easy game to learn and it is fun to play.

But I also think there's going to be illegal gambling because it's Vegas.

You can't.

You can't stop people from walking by and seeing, you know, Matt's family, or maybe if I'm playing with you guys, ever seeing one person at the table and going, mmm, I don't know, man, I got I got five hundred on the kid.

Remember how boring the World Series of Poker could be.

Sometimes it's super super exciting if you're watching it.

But the personality is too right, like, yeah, yeah, but most people.

Why are some people allowed to wear sunglasses in that?

It seems like a cheat, seems like a hiding, like bad, bad medicine.

But I imagine if it's just a bunch of people in a series game of uno, like they're taking it so serious and nobody's betting at the table, but behind them with the camera's watching.

Just what you said, Ben, there's a whole secondary market where everybody's betting.

Well, yeah, I mean the first time I ever did any kind of gambling, well before we all went to Las Vegas together, certainly was my first time.

I think it might have been at least one of y'all's first time.

The only experience of gambling I'd ever had was at like a cabin with friends situation on like a dice game like farkel or one four twenty four, or a little you know, friendly craps or whatever.

I mean, a little friendly poker game.

Yea, it was that, but it was we put in some money.

There was some money to be made.

We have a lot of people, and then the buy in is low.

But with all those people, you can walk away with a little bit of cash.

So I have no doubt that people have been gambling on you, you know, for years in these types of settings.

There's no reason not to.

I mean people who like to gamble.

This is not casting dispersion.

We know it can be a serious problem for on any but people who genuinely like to gamble will gamble on anything, right, Like what's that?

There was a billboard I can't remember if we're talking about this on air.

There was a billboard I saw a while back that said be careful.

You know, something like twenty percent of people who begin gambling end up with a serious problem.

And then I immediately thought, come on, man, if you're someone who gambles, you're going to take those odds.

Bet on I like to bet on myself, guys.

I mean speaking of betting on anything, A big predictor that's used a lot in these days and things like politics or awards or whatever are the betting markets.

Like there are these apps that you can literally bet on any combination of factors in various world events like Calshee, I think is the big one.

So a lot of times when there's a big election coming up or an award or whatever like the Oscars, you start to see the odds favor certain things leading up to it.

That tends to be a pretty good predictor, because you know a lot of times people that bet in that way and at that scale are okay at it, you know, to some degree, until they're not.

Of course, there was some There were some influencers that were invited to these kind of events.

One named is Zuos, who has one hundred and thirty four thousand Instagram followers.

I guess he's an UNO influencer.

Said, good thing there was no betting, because I would have lost a lot of money.

The thought of the wildly popular game enjoyed by children and adults alike, arrival casinos is scary for some, though, says the article.

Despite a strict ban on betting on the games, there are fears it's now just one step away, and to be clear, it would be in violation of the Nevada Gaming Commissions regulations.

It is not they have to approve the games that are bet on be based on various factors and odds and things like that exactly.

So, Yeah, let's move on to another strange news story.

This one has a little bit in common spiritually with I think a story that you're bringing to us a bit later, Ben, bizarre Chinese national park ad for wild man job draws thousands of applicants in shino Jia National Park.

Forgive me, I'm not a Chinese Ormandarin speaker.

A bizarre job listing has come up in the Central China region for wild men looking to be hired to roam that national park and interact with visitors and essentially be half naked, making grunting sounds and essentially honoring the legacy of a lot of the kind of Yeti and wild man type of myths that you know are very popular and prominent in that part.

Of the world.

Ben, there was one we talked about very recently in our Cryptids kind of continuing series that seems to check some boxes for this theme.

Yeah, the Yeert We did an episode recently on on this.

Think of it like the Bigfoot or the Yetti of interior China, And it's a fascinating conversation because, unlike the United States and a lot of other Western countries, in China this was investigations into this creature were taken very seriously and it became a big part of the culture.

The best way to put it, I was talking with our daily Zeitgeispals about this is imagine if imagine if we went to the White House and said, hey, can we have hundreds of millions of dollars to hunt Bigfoot?

And the White House said, yeah, go go.

That's what happened in China.

Yeah, it does seem to be the case.

The article is reverencing this program.

Don't specifically mention the erin they just talk a bit more about just this the legendary wild man, China's equivalent of the Bigfoot scene or spotted historically in remote mountain regions and some of these forested areas.

So let's go a little bit more into the specifics of the job.

From The Independent over in the UK, the job listing offers five hundred wand sixteen nine dollars and sixty cents a day to act as non player characters, essentially live action performers to roam in the park, mimicking the famous legend of wild men of the region.

The organizers are using the fan groups on short video platforms like du Yen and Shao Hongshu to find people interested in applying for the job.

According to China Daily, and they have thus far received over ten thousand applicants, but only sixteen folks are going to make the cut.

So yeah.

This is in Hubei Province, by the way, the shang Xia Forestreet district known for mountainous terrain, lush greenery, and a lot of mystic folklore surrounding these types of creatures.

The creature is often described as being about two meters tall, covered in reddish brown hair, and making haunting wo wu calls.

They're so called wild men are a long standing part of Chinese mythology, often likened to the Bigfoot or the yet heat.

And Yerin, by the way, translates to wild men.

There you go, that's the one, Thanks Ben, perfect full sir.

It sounds like an awesome gig, right, especially if you're a little younger and you enjoy that kind of stuff, and man, that sounds so much fun, like scaring tourists.

It's a great thing to say on a date too, you know.

So what's your job?

I'm glad you asked.

It's It is open to all ages and gender is the only requirement being having a healthy body, So no fatties.

That's probably code.

That's probably code for height requirement too.

And they will okay maybe so that could well be yeah, I imagine just if you're out, because you're probably out there for hours, right, like, yes, running around with the hair.

There are some if you want to check out the Independent article of folks dressed up in these costplays, much like the yettie priest, and they are Candidates should be comfortable being fed by tourists, what little kinky, preferably able to eat raw food, and ideally enjoy isolation or the chance to act out their real nature.

While the employer provides accident insurance.

The selected participants must bring their own tents, arranged meals, and be ready to run if confronted by unknown creatures.

Well well okay, hold on, yeah, Well the images I'm seeing here correct me if I'm wrong here, guys, but I'm seeing more Neanderthal what might be described as caveman correct stuff rather than wild man, you know, fully hair.

Some of them are here suits, some of them are half naked.

Some of them look more like indigenous types perhaps, But yeah, there's there's there's a mix of interpretations.

I guess.

The one that I'm seeing here on a let's see, I think it's a Twitter feed is a video showing some folks actually acting it out.

Some of them have these like big sticks, some of them have their faces painted.

So there are various kind of ways of doing this.

You got to diversify, you know what I mean, because you want people to go more often, right, you want people to return.

So maybe you can make it there's something very clever in here.

Maybe you can make it a Pokemon esque or collectible kind of game.

I take the kids, take the kids, and you see the fig leaf one day, you see the yauguay another day in an ogre, and then a yurin.

What if you could teach a urine to play Uno with you?

Oh, that's a good mashup.

They need to have bigger cards.

Well, okay, we got one quick one that I wanted to add at the very ends here this one coming from viceed human skin teddy bear caused a panic at a California gas station.

If you happen to be cruising through Victorville, California this past Sunday, shout out to on cinema fans.

By the way, Victorville is a big thing in that YouTube series with Tim Heideger and on the guy that does Neil Hamburger whose name is escaping me.

This past Sunday, you may have noticed a whole lot of cops gathered around a teddy bear that looked like it crawled out of a horror movie.

But don't worry, it wasn't actually as horrifying I find as it first seemed.

It was just some oddly placed and admittedly gruesome art.

Authorities responded to a call about a teddy bear that appeared to be made of human skin was found near a gas station on appropriately bare Valley Road.

A deputy corner was brought in, presumably with the same level of urgency one might bring an archaeologist to a newly discovered cursed sarcophagus, and confirmed that the object's skin was thankfully not of human origin at all.

A forensic pathologist double checked and yep, it still was not a teddy bear made of human skin.

Oh boy, is it hideous looking?

Yikes?

Yeah, you all check if you have that link in front of you for the vice piece.

It is like something that was like Jeffrey Dahmer's Teddy Bear or who's the one that made things out of human skin?

Was that Dahmer?

That was ed Gean.

Yeah, it looks like something he would have slept with, cuddled up with at night times.

It was the work of a South Carolina based artist named Robert Kelly, who owns a company called Dark Seed Creations, a Netsy shop wearing.

Kelly designs and manufactures realistic looking horror themeed props.

Looking for a fetal skeleton in a baroque picture frame, They've got you covered.

The bear made of human skin is one of Kelly's creations, and it is again pretty damn convincing and quite quite grizzly.

One hundred and sixty five bucks will get you one of these.

Not bad.

It's a nice piece.

I don't think I want it displayed in my house.

It's really really gross.

He does make green style human skin lampshades, including human faces, of course he does.

Yeah, so give the artists some love that South Carolina based artist Robert Kelly.

Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna wrap it up for my segment today.

Let's take a quick break, we'll hear a word from our sponsor, and we'll be back with more strange names for you.

And we have returned.

I've constructed a little bit of a narrative through line here that I think will feed into some of the some of the stuff we'll discuss with you, Matt in just a bit.

For now, we're going to look at Ai.

Mecca Hitler aka rock over on X is now launching something new, and it's something that speaks to our earlier conversations with many of our fellow listeners regarding people having intense emotional relationships with lll ms.

Folks who feel that they have like that guy from Google a few years back.

Folks who feel that they have reached a sentience and intelligence not only connected with it, but fallen in love with it, or it's become their best friend or their spiritual guide, or it has revealed to them that they are in fact the Messiah.

Because the LM is essentially a yes and machine, it's a terrible friend in that respect, as well as a terrible therapist.

But could it be a lover?

That's the question that we learned from decrypt dot co in a story that came out just yesterday.

I'll give us the title first, just for initial reactions.

Artificial Gooning Intelligence Elon musk x ai launches wai Fu companions.

For grock gooning.

You say, oh, I think it's a little bit of a broad term.

I think it means different things to different people.

But doesn't it just mean like really long sessions of self love self care.

I'm a relatively square entity in a lot of ways, and I remember on Behind the Bastards, Robert Evans introduced the term and explained it to me in a way I didn't understand.

So I'm not sure I think your definition is correct.

I don't know if Robert was just messing with me, because he gave me a definition that meant, how do we put it, delicately, multiple people pleasuring themselves together.

See that.

I think that that's my point.

It's a little bit like it can be different things, because that's more what.

Like a like the old circle jerk right right?

No?

Yeah, to me, I've more understood it as like a form of like extended sessions of like self deprivation of pleasure in a way.

But I've never heard of group, yeah, the group version of it.

Let's just see what the old Internet has to say.

Really, yeah, check urban dictionary often associated with online communities.

Okay, I think.

The primary thing is it is associated with sex.

Prolong your self simulation with the goal of delaying or avoiding orgasm is the rough term urban dictionary.

And yeah, that's what I saw as well.

What we'd love to do is here your made up terms for gooning right to a conspiracy atiheartradio dot com.

Here's the story we're trying to get to, all right.

Grock has added on the heels of its anti semitic meltdown, Grock has added a series of interactive AI companions for grock subscribers.

You pay thirty bucks a month and you play something that's kind of like the Japanese relationship video games, where you have to take certain actions to reach a level of favorability with this companion.

You can also see this in video games like boulders Gate three or something.

Right.

You have to you have to make your do things that your companion likes and your relationship and relationship buffs, right, and when you get to okay, so x Ai has rolled out three different subscription based characters.

There's Annie, who is a blonde anime wife wu with a goth I'm quoting here, goth and old fashioned style wearing a tight black horset dress with thigh high fish nets.

Uh.

And then there's also Rudy, who is a red panda in a pink hoodie designed for wholesome conversations.

The thing is with Annie, A and I, when you get to level three whatever that is, you unlock the not safe for work content with your Twitter girlfriend and just to get in front of this no judgment, folks, but there is no level three not safe for work content with the red panda yet, thank god, so.

Far, there is nothing sacred.

I don't believe the red Panda sacred.

Guys, Guys.

I found that what goon actually stands for.

Is it an acronyms?

An acronym?

Oh, yeah, it's it's the Grand Order of Occidental Nighthawks.

Okay, it's.

Squad.

Yeah, it's real.

We are the Good Squad and we're coming to town bebeb.

So this is I wanted to bring this to everyone's attention if you haven't heard about it yet, friends and neighbors, because this seems to be the harbinger of much larger controversies on the horizon.

Uh the the company has been taking a lot of heat for missteps with Grock and with you know, other chatbots on Twitter for quite some time now.

This also is happening in step with something we talked about off air, a two hundred million dollar contract awarded to Grock from the Department of Defense earlier this Monday.

So like Lie fourteenth, it happened so quickly, and I think we can all say, without sounding like Luddites, that this can be concerning because imagine you're an adolescent, right, and you're growing romantic interest and inclinations in whatever your bag is, and you meet some LLM or some chat bot esque thing that purports to provide you that sort of interaction you're looking for.

Will the standards be realistic?

Will this damage your prospects of interacting with human romantic partners?

Right?

If that's your baseline, you know what I mean?

Absolutely.

I mean it's not much different from like peorn addiction, I would say, in that it can cultivate a very unrealistic view of intimacy because it's so self serving.

Everything's designed to feed your exact ego and your exact needs, quote unquote, and there's very little compromise, which isn't really how human relationships.

Work, right.

It's concerning too, especially in the ways that social media has arguably made folks more self centric, right and more.

I don't think there's anything wrong with being individualistic, but maybe self involved past the threshold of helpfulness to oneself add society.

We'll move on because there's other stuff we want to get to in this amount of time we have.

I do believe we can make an episode about that defense contract and about the high level state actor embrace of AI tools.

I think that's a full episode.

So this is a weird way to tease that.

Are they friends again?

I don't understand.

I thought that the beef was like irreparable between Trump and Musk, and now they're given in more contracts.

I guess it just goes to show that those types of things, in many ways are just opt and at the end of the day, it's all about business, and you know, the rich helping the rich.

It's just confusing to me why they would go with him when Trump seems to be very petty about these types of fall and falling out fallings out.

Yeah, part of it is due to just the the separation of personality and business.

I mean, unfortunately, a lot of our fellow conspiracy realist in the audience tonight know that your coworkers aren't always your friends, right, So maybe it's a situation like that.

The people having these conversations about this defense contract, it's they're going to be the career professionals, right, the people who actually make a rock run, the people who actually allocate funding for the Department of Defense.

It seems unlikely that the current US president and Ela Musk got in a room and a reried the hatchet and did their secret handshake, and then Donald Trump said, oh, by the way, my lad, here's two hundred million dollars.

That's likely check out my wife.

Who Oh they got a second bro, I'm about to get the level three Settle three, goone.

So that's maybe that's the basis of the new friendship.

But yeah, so I propose we do an episode on that.

I don't know if we need to do a full Epstein update, but I do think we need to mention this story.

I sent a joke to us in one of our group chats yesterday the Epstein prison video.

The saga continues.

We refer to the missing minute that was mentioned in the FBI and the DOJ's official conclusion that there was no Epstein client list, and thank you for everyone who has written in and responded to that.

We also found something for the audio video nerds in the crowd.

The news is this.

The Epstein prison video we mentioned didn't have one minute cut out.

According to the metadata that people are finding, the video has approximately two minutes and fifty three seconds that were removed from one of two clips that were stitched together.

So somebody was playing with the tape.

Yeah, In any kind of situation like that where you're looking at video evidence, you want as raw of a piece of videos you can get, right, So exactly what the system spits out when it's, you know, recording something.

In this case, it does appear, Ben, it appears that somebody opened it in a premiere pro Yeah, that that is what we edited many of the stuff they don't want you to know videos in so you know, there's some cool stuff you can do with that.

One of the primary things is just putting two clips together and then exporting it as one single clip, and you could say, hey, here's the original footage.

M hmm.

Yeah, and you, Matt deserved praise for doing such a fantastic and patient job editing out our our hapless host discoursions, curse words, and bloopers such that it did look like one single piece.

I'm remembering just the countless times that I would have to restate something or bungle a word, and you can get seamless.

You can do cool stuff in those DAWs, is what they're called.

But it just makes me nervous that it even entered some kind of editing program at all before it was delivered.

Right, Yeah, it's not a good look.

Fired has a great report on this.

The Independent Journal Review has a good report The Independent Journal Review.

You can read for free.

There's no paywall.

That published today, as we record, and what they break down here is the footage, as we said, was pieced together with Adobe Premiere Pro.

One clip was reduced from four hours nineteen minutes, so that's the raw, right, that was reduced by two minutes and fifty three seconds.

The cut happens at eleven fifty eight fifty eight PM.

So just at a minute before midnight, that's where that one minute gap occurs around there, So just before that there's the cut.

The second clip restarts at midnight at twelve am.

And is he then hanging?

Is he swinging at that point?

Like, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be crass, but that's what I picture in the fictional version of this type of meddling.

At what point is it a crucial moment?

We've talked about that.

I don't think we were one hundred percent sure.

I'm wondering if there's any new intel coming out about what portion was removed or damaged or you know, sus.

Yeah, that's that's a good question.

The cut to the first clip may not necessarily mean there's additional time unaccounted for, and this is from some independent forensic reviews.

The second clip picking up at midnight does suggest the two would overlap.

So it feels really suspicious at the get go, but is not necessarily evidence that we would consider smoking gut level.

Still, you know, I all like it.

Let's talk about something.

It's a little uncomfortable through our work on true crime, and I just I just went to a couple of places online to verify this.

We have learned that strangling a human being takes law longer than you may imagine that you see on films.

Right, Yes, so there's I mean, there's a pretty wide range because there's so many factors that go into it.

But you're looking at more like four or five minutes probably to strangle someone unless you can incapacitate them such that you can, you know, get something around their neck in this case and it's it's grizzly, but tie them in a way that they cannot get out right or cannot ease, they cannot stop it.

We're talking almost about breaking bones, like the highway bone and stuff.

It's just it's, Yeah, while it's still suspicious, I'm I don't know.

I'm still trying to figure out how do you get in and out and that fast and make it look like that, right?

And then what other you know, what other alternative explanations could there be for this.

That's I'm with you.

That's why I that's why I feel comfortable saying this is not smoking gun evidence.

But this is a bad look because at the very least, it draws into question the official statements, right, because if it's not a big deal, why don't you just mention it?

I don't know.

We'll move on.

We'd love to hear your thoughts, folks.

Thanks to everybody who's already responded to some of the Epstein news.

We want to hear your takes, especially if you are involved in video forensics, and we always have some great responses to this from people who work in related industries.

Hold on a moment, folks, We've got some breaking news.

Can we get a sound cue for that?

Dylan?

Yes, thank you.

Before we move on, it's important to note that the Epstein story slash scandal continues to develop.

Please check out the Wall Street Journal's new revelation that Donald Trump apparently contributed a salacious letter and drawing to a fiftieth birthday book for a disgraced sex trafficker and financier, Jeffrey Epstein.

We also know there's a lot going on in the wind at this moment.

Please note that we will stay tuned and we will update accordingly.

Now back to the show.

Two more things I want to hit before we move on.

This is something that I know a lot of us are going to write in about.

Have you been shocked by your electric bill?

Get it shocked?

Electric bill.

That's not our pun, but shout out to Emily Forlini, who wrote this for PC mag just a few days ago.

It turns out that artificial intelligence data centers and the cost of deploying artificial intelligence is spiking prices in thirteen states by upwards of twenty percent.

We're talking to Delaware, Illinois, Indiana.

We're talking to Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Deep Breath, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia dropped the people.

This is a crazy story because in Pennsylvania, businesses are seeing a twenty nine percent increase in their electric bill.

And you know, we're all the all four of us recording tonight.

We mainly reside in Georgia, and Georgia summers are brutal, right, Does everybody's build spike a little in some way?

Yeah?

Yeah, yeah.

I was just having a conversation with my dad about this, Like he was looking at his electric bill when I was over there last time, and he just went, Wow, that's more than I thought it would be.

Uh huh.

Interesting.

Interesting way.

That's the way Dad's talked too, talking about old man and saying, yeah, you know, it turns out I don't also run the electric company.

Well, yeah, he's not mad at me, Like he's definitely just last time I was out there, we were talking about things like Georgia Power, like a big electric company that we have here in Georgia versus he's like co ops like Swanee or Jackson or some of those, and just like is it better to have one or the other.

And that's when he showed me the old electric bill.

I was not happy.

It's it's especially considering that here in Georgia there's a bit of legislation in the wind that would make the price of energy or electricity cheaper for data centers, with the discrepancy being carried on to your organic, non business consumers.

Dude, I had a conversation with an HVAC guy who's out here because my AC is finally fixed.

Who he was talking about the thing you can sign up for or a lot of the places offer where it's like you get fifty dollars off every year or something if you let them sometimes turn off your AC at non peak hours or whatever.

And the HVAC guy said, oh, dude, I get calls all the time at peak hours from people.

I come out, I test their whole system, I look at everything.

It's the power company is turning off their AC at like mid day, you know, two pm when the sun is super hot, and he's like, I just disconnect the thing that lets him turn it off and it works fine.

Nice, nice one dude, Nice one.

HVAC guy.

Yeah, this is I know we're going a little bit long, but I think it connects to many of us listening tonight, especially Americans in the audience, because if you're wondering why prices are increasing with electricity bills in particular, it may indeed be due to AI and the construction of these massive data centers, or the just the surge and demand from processing power.

So please write to us and let us know what it's like in your neck of the global woods.

The last thing we want to mention was something that is good news from Britain, accidental good news.

There was a data leak, a massive data leak that exposed off gone assets and informants, people working in intelligence, and as we mentioned earlier in our New Your War episode, again, a lot of times those folks will end up getting burned by the government or the agency that is I won't even say employing, that is using them.

So as a result of this leak, thousands of Afghan nationals have been brought to Britain in secrecy to save their lives, which is, you know, leak aside, opsec aside.

That's a decent thing for the British government to do.

But not every leak turns out that way.

And with that I suggest we pause for a word from our sponsors and then get into some other leak stories.

And we've returned, guys.

The definition of the word strive.

Strive, according to Merriam Webster, is to devote serious effort or energy.

Also to struggle in opposition.

Strive.

Sometimes it's combined, like if you look at Oxford English and a couple of other places.

Is it is to devote serious energy, especially in heavy opposition strive if you say it in Swedish.

Is Strava Strava.

Now there is an app, a very popular app with that name, Strava.

It's a fitness app, kind of like you know, your Fitbit things and all the super popular ones here in the States.

This one is global.

It's started by a couple of guys who just had a cool idea after they were hanging out in Harvard, you know at Harvard, I guess in Harvard around Harvard.

Hard stuff.

Yeah, messing with the free run.

It was started in two thousand and nine.

I believe those guys were rowers.

You know.

It reminds me of the Skulls movie.

I think that was Yale, but skull and Bones maybe what it was called.

Anyway, weird stuff.

These guys figured, hey, let's make an app that you can really track what you're doing, how much you're doing it, where you're doing it, and let's make this thing social baby, so you could share stuff like how hard you're striving to get those fitness goals right, and you can show off.

You can even show off exactly where you ran and how long you ran and all that good stuff.

You know, you know what, Let's let people have maps of where they run.

That's a great idea.

That sounds cool, dude, Yo, that sounds really great.

Let's do that.

Okay, your wicked snap, your wicked smart maki.

But actually it is, like on the surface, it's great.

If you go to the Strava website Strava dot com, st r a v a dot com, you can learn all about the cool stuff they do, and it is cool.

If if I was on a serious fitness routine thing going right now, this would be at least up in the top one or two competitive apps that I'd be interested in.

The only thing is probably wouldn't be that excited because of the social aspects.

It is good to know.

If you're like me and you don't want social aspects to be shared, you can just turn those things off in the app and that's not a problem.

Cool.

The app still works, great, it's awesome.

But if you don't turn off the social aspects, uh oh, then you are gonna share with people if you decide to all of your location information, a ton of information, especially and specifically where you are running when you're deciding to share that kind of thing.

Even worse than that one website for Square, remember four square.

Which was just which was just essentially ayre with whatever, like Yeah, you have posted the.

Location and the time that you were at and there in real time, and it was gamified such that you know, if you went to the Dave and Busters all the time, you could eventually become the mayor of Dave and Busters, not a king.

Because the US is still a democracy.

But the thing that got me about it, I think we all initially had this reaction was looking at this from admittedly a paranoid baseline.

I remember distinctly.

I think it was you and me matt At looking at it and going, so, this just tells people when to rob you.

That's the game, It's like, is that the game of this thing?

So, but this sounds even more a more sophisticated, accelerated version of what for Square is.

And I think one of the first questions would be are the social settings on by default?

I don't know.

I assume they are somewhat or like, as you're setting up the app, like with many others, you give it access to certain things, right like your location data and then your privacy settings.

You can go in and change those after it's all set up.

But I haven't actually used it, so I don't know that.

All I know is that some folks who are using this thing are accidentally giving way their locations, and unfortunately their locations are really important because they are protecting high value human beings like the Swedish royal family.

So here we go.

This is from NBC News July tenth, Swedish bodyguards fitness app data reveals private locations of royal family.

I'm going to read just a couple of quotes from this and then we can talk about it.

The National Security Service there in Sweden said it's investigating reports that data shared by bodyguards on a fitness app Strava had exposed the private locations of some of the country's most powerful figures.

It comes after the Swedish newspaper doggins dag ns nithe I don't know how you say it and y h e t er.

They reported earlier that seven members of the security service were sharing details on their running and cycling routes on this fitness app, inadvertently revealing the locations of the King in Queen's personal vacations.

So like where the King and Queen are hanging out when they're in the Seychelles, or where they're in northern Sweden in a place called Storlin, or you know, out at the French riviera on a private luxury villa, which is fine, like, hey, that's where the King and Queen are.

But again, Ben, as you said, if somebody has ill intent towards one of these VIPs, then you just have to load up your Strava app and check out specific people if you know where to look and who to look for.

But it gets even worse.

Guys, just before all of this came out, the Prime Minister in Sweden's location was given away I think at thirty or thirty five specific places, including his home address, including everywhere he goes on runs, including like other important people's houses and places of business that he went to visit.

Just locations that you don't want to give away for security purposes, especially if you're in the business of protecting these folks.

Probably not a good idea.

And this isn't even close to the first time Strava has had a problem with this, just like other fitness apps and other location tracking apps have had problems, but this one specifically.

There's this cool thing that has happened in the past where someone will go on a run, right, and they will draw a picture on the map with their running.

Does that make sense, like you could draw a picture of a bunny rabbit depending on where you run, because it actually draws out with GPS coordinates the pictures you create.

That's fun, that's cool.

But another thing that happened back in twenty twenty two military bases in Israel, like the full bases.

The inner workings of the base were outlined through some of this Strava app stuff because personnel were walking through the base, and now you can know, oh, here's the ingress egress in all of these areas and where you can actually turn.

It's almost like giving somebody a blueprint of something.

It's exactly like that.

Yeah.

Well, like in the past, if you just had satellite imagery and you imagine you're an opposing force or something.

Okay, I can see there's a large building there, but I have no idea actually what's inside or how you move through it or anything like that.

Right now you have this data overlay there you go, and this is something that you can't really walk back.

Right For instance, the bodyguards here, assuming they still have employment with the royal family, they can turn off this stuff so it won't happen in the future.

But they can't.

I guess they could try to remove it from the system with help of from the company, remove that information in that data, but it's not going to remove it from the minds or the servers of anybody who already accessed it in the past.

I don't know, man, this is such a logistical headache because now you've got to imagine all the conventional regular routes have to be rethought, right, You've got to fight a new vacation spot.

I don't know, man, Well, it goes even beyond this.

Guys.

In twenty twenty three, there was a I don't know his exact position.

He's essentially in the navy, but he was a commander for the Russian Navy, essentially specifically for submarines.

He had his Strava profile open when he was walking around, and it suspected that that app gave away his specific location and he was assassinated.

It's suspected of that.

There was very recently somebody in Kiev who was assassinated and I don't know if Strava has anything to do with that, but it looks pretty similar to some of the reportings.

Like the initial reportings, they located this guy in a parking lot and just took him out really quickly.

There it goes back to during the last election, everybody, Kamala Harris, President Trump, everybody was being tracked with Strava because of the secret service that was around them.

It's like, this is crazy, It's it's nuts too, because this can happen in so many ways.

I agree with you, Matt, that this would be a timely episode.

I think it's again, it's easy for a lot of folks, not even royal family, right or royal family adjacent, It's so easy for a lot of folks to forget how public various applications will make your location.

Forgive the accidental rhyme there.

But you know, I think about that when we look at the big, the big social media things, right that always give you the opportunity to post your location.

Hey, everybody in the neighborhood who might want to steal this car, don't worry.

I'm in Botswata.

Here's a fun picture of me and some animals.

You know, you go, It's it's tough, you gotta be you gotta be careful with these kind of things.

But I it feels like these are just going to continue in the future, right, something like this is going to inevitably happen.

Similar to when we were talking about those poor folks who just missed their families, you know, on various submarines, and we're writing a letter to their loved win because they're in a very difficult long distance relationship and then boom, someone said, you know some enemy forces, like, oh they are by horror moves.

Yeah, yeah, really somebody working out as hard as they can on a sub and oh there's the location of that nuclear submarine that the like probably not probably not going to get the cordinate's out from the sub because of the signal or whatever.

But it's fine.

It goes back to twenty seventeen.

I completely missed this, I think.

I don't know if we talked about it.

I can't remember talking about it.

But there was a medium article written by a person named Drew Robb who looked at this thing called the Global heat Map, which is something that was created out of Strava's global network of athletes.

According to the article, and it is a global map of runs that people had taken, and it included a full walkthrough essentially of United States bases in Syria and Afghanistan, as well as the Royal Navy's fast Lane Base which Fasla n Base.

Major major security flaws.

So let's just keep our eyes and ears open on this.

Let us know if you use the app or a fitness app or a location tracker that you're excited about that we need to know about.

The post your location to us right, give us like a your social security number, blood type, list of childhood fears, what else?

Favorite favorite location on your nuclear sub Where do you guys work out?

Yeah?

How close is it to the bay?

Oh gosh, that's dark humor.

But it's a real thing, and it's something I believe we can all agree, everyone including us, needs to think about more often.

Agreed.

Well, that's it.

Thanks for listening, y'all.

Yes, thank you so much for joining us, friends and neighbors, Fellow conspiracy realists.

We can't wait to hear if you successfully nail that job in the Chinese National Park system.

Tell us about your experiences with Wi Fu companions.

Take a Yeti blood oath with us, or even better, tell us what a YETI blood oath should be.

We cannot, oh gosh, and we welcome everybody's observations about electric bills.

Those effect all all of us, regardless of demographic.

You can find us any number of ways.

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