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Jake Was Right, More DoNotPay Hilarity and AI is Unhinged
92 Plays2 years ago
This one? All follow-up and mini topics. Jason has COVID (probably) and Jake has been run ragged. Andrew is Andrew, so we're all compromised in our own way.
- https://www.wsj.com/articles/law-firms-turn-to-layoffs-amid-slowing-demand-73684306
- https://news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-report/disney-avoids-political-war-by-giving-up-battle-for-reedy-creek
- https://twitter.com/KathrynTewson/status/1624277255987003399?s=20&t=5yy_Prqkgqx21zY45bfljA
- https://fortune.com/2023/02/14/microsoft-chatgpt-bing-unhinged-scared/
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Transcript
Introduction and Greetings
00:00:00
Speaker
This is now officially the show. Hi. Hey there. Hi, everybody. Hey there, fellas. Hello, Sydney, listening to us on chat GPT. On my computer, having debased myself and selected Microsoft defaults for everything so that I could have access to Bing. Well, that's news for everything. Yeah.
Microsoft's Default Settings: User Impact
00:00:20
Speaker
Okay.
00:00:21
Speaker
They have like a tool, it's called the like online optimization tool or something like that, putting quotes up. And what it actually does is just change all your defaults to be Microsoft and it makes MSN your homepage and blah, blah, blah, blah. And if you do all that and you download Bing on your phone, then you get off the waitlist faster. It took me like a day to get off the waitlist. And now I have a chat bot, which I can use to
00:00:49
Speaker
make my co-workers go, huh? And that's about it. Felt like that was as good a place as any.
00:01:06
Speaker
Okay.
Wildcard Episode: Jason's Dedication
00:01:07
Speaker
So this is going to be like a wildcard episode, I think, but I'll, I'll do the introductions as normal. So like, it's not too wildcard because Jason's not doing well. We don't want it to be completely way out there, right? It's a wildcard. Anytime I'm here, fellas, which is every time through fever, whether COVID or flu through fever, through shaking through, I don't know, just aching, not feeling great. I'm here. My voice is ready.
00:01:30
Speaker
As we established before, your wild card, I'm a wild card. Andrew's the straight man. That's how this podcast goes. I just try to get through the introductions every time. That's all I do is I just, I spend the first five minutes saying hello and welcome to Esquiring Minds.
Podcast Dynamics: Who We Are
00:01:44
Speaker
I see how far I get episode eight. And we do our best to make sure that you can't do that very well. We do our best to make sure that you get interrupted every time. Congratulations, fellas. We've just found our first bit.
00:01:55
Speaker
Yeah. The show is three lawyer friends goofing around for your enjoyment.
Big Law Layoffs: A Cyclical Trend
00:02:00
Speaker
Anyway, and nothing we say should be taken as legal advice. I'm one of those friends. I'm Andrew Leah, a tax and technology attorney from New Jersey. I'm joined with Jason, a very sick man. I feel really, really bad for everybody who's listening on and listening to this at not 1.0 speed right now because Andrew just went super duper fast. Everybody's going to strategy. Yeah. You're going to sound like a chipmunk for sure.
00:02:21
Speaker
That's not how it works. And I'm also joined by Jake, who is the Reedy Creek Expert extraordinaire for at least one more week. Yeah. That's all I do, actually, for a living. I write unpaid articles for Bloomberg. That's what I do.
00:02:34
Speaker
I see. That's why you're kind of in that hovel there. And the listeners can't see that you're in that sort of pile of rubble, adjusting on your phone. In exchange for $0 rent, my cabinets just slowly creeped towards me. And eventually, I will be crushed to death. OK. Yeah. This is totally not fair. Kelly has totally decorated that place very nicely. She has. So when my blood gets on it, it's going to be really messed up.
00:03:03
Speaker
OK, so it's going to be one of those kind of nights, right? Yeah. We're all a little loopy. Yeah. I just got out of a long bar meeting, so I'm ready to talk about AI like all the cool people do. OK.
The Paradox of Hiring and Firing
00:03:17
Speaker
Well, I mean, so I think one of the topics we have, our mini topic, do we still want to talk about this? We put this in way early in the week. Yeah. And it's about the layoffs that are going on in the legal profession generally. Do we have what are our, like, I mean, my thought is this is a cycle, right?
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah, they're not immune. The big law firms especially are not immune to the overall trends. They want to be big businesses. And so everybody's laying people off. So now we're going to lay people off. But it's funny because I have friends who are big law partners who are responsible for hiring. And they just recently have been saying how they can't find anybody to fill their position. So I think this is kind of fake.
00:03:58
Speaker
a little bit. Really? Just looking to cut dead weight that they've been looking to do for a while, and I'll just blame it on inflation? Well, yeah, sure. I don't know. Or just very minor or specific firms. The one that I'm thinking of, they cut down positions already, not as layoffs, but just like they stopped hiring specifically with the idea that they would get more billable hours out of their associates that they had.
00:04:27
Speaker
Great strategy. Yeah. And then all those associates kept leaving and then they couldn't find anybody for their new positions. I'm getting hounded by recruiters. I don't know. Yeah. Because I have real estate in my ribbio. I mean, they don't seem to really distinguish. I get things for corporate. I get stuff for IP. I get stuff that I don't even know why they would think that I have a connection to it.
00:04:54
Speaker
Oh, my client is a major firm. I like when it's like a vault top 125 and you kind of know like, well, you're not 100 through 120. Oh, yeah. I can pretty much zero in where you are. I mean, this is not you're not number five. Vault 125 with a like really specific city office. It's like, yeah, an office in like Buffalo. And it's like, OK, I know where you are. I know what this is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we were.
00:05:23
Speaker
Yeah. What were you going to say, Andrew? Or Jason?
Legal Job Market: Opportunities vs. Reality
00:05:27
Speaker
Jason, go for it. I'm pointing at you. You can kind of tell when things are getting really, really slow for law firm hiring because you start to get the recruiters who are just extra thirsty. Like I got a recruiter the other day, and this is not an uncommon thing to get a recruiter email or even a recruiter call, which is super obnoxious because like I'm a millennial. Why are you calling me? Like text me first.
00:05:53
Speaker
But you can kind of tell when they're getting super thirsty and the work is drying up. So somebody, one of them emailed me the other day and wants to work on my resume with me. I've been a lawyer for 13 years. Like I know how to write my resume. I've managed to get jobs.
00:06:07
Speaker
Yeah, that kind of plays into like one of the I don't really when I get approached by a recruiter the first couple of times I was like, wow, I feel so like I feel so complimented right now. And knowing a little bit more about how this how the legal recruiter economy works. If they're contacting you, that just means that they think you were like,
00:06:30
Speaker
at all worth even talking to. There's a possibility that you are worth talking to, that you could possibly be selected for a job. It really doesn't.
Law Firm Partnerships: Equity vs. Title
00:06:41
Speaker
Like they are not looking for you. They are looking for people whose resumes are plausible. Uh, yeah. And, uh, yeah. Uh, do you get, I have one, I have a recurring spam email from some recruiter that refers to me as attorney Leahy as though they don't have my first name. And I can't figure out, do you get that as well? Just like attorney and then your last name, but like put in the email as though that is your name. Like it's not, it's not an honorific. They clearly just don't have a first name. Oh, really?
00:07:09
Speaker
They don't have answers. They have attorney. Yeah. I know. I thought it was one of those things. I thought it was one of those things where they're like, we live in a time where names are even less gender specific than they used to be. And so like, they probably just do that for their like, uh, Oh gosh, what do you call it? They're procedurally generated emails that go out so that they have like a non gender specific address for people. Oh, that's a good point. That makes sense. Now they're treating it like your name. Yeah. That's weird. That doesn't make sense.
00:07:39
Speaker
Uh, though I do know some people that use attorney as like the, the honorific, the front, the front for doctor, uh, square. Yeah. Instead of ask Esquire at the end, attorney, I've been called attorney Schumer in person by somebody who can see me. So, um, yes. Okay. There's a specific city that we represent where everybody calls me attorney Schumer. I was like, okay, I'll be possible. They don't know your first name.
00:08:10
Speaker
But I lost you. Is it possible they don't know your first name? Andrew, they're just gambling? Guess who's got some editing work to do this week. Oh, no, do I? No, I bet it's going to sound awesome on Andrew's end. Yeah, I'm going to sound fine because it's recording locally. Perfect. You'll just never know what I said. Did you say, though? I said, is it possible they don't know your first name?
00:08:30
Speaker
Uh, I, you know, that is possible. We, we are pretty new, but no, I, they've, they've used my first name and also attorney Schumer at the same time. So, um, yeah, it's possible.
00:08:43
Speaker
If we turn, if we turn this into a challenge podcast, Jake, I want by the time we get to episode 12, I want you to insist upon being addressed at that town meeting as, or County or whatever, as Dr. Schumer. Cause I have a juris doctor. It's yeah. Juris doctor do it. Yeah. Yeah. We are all doctors. Yeah. Do you guys use the SQ at the end of your name? Like in any, in anything ever, I absolutely never do. And, uh, and signatures on filings.
00:09:11
Speaker
Oh, OK. I don't know why I really don't need it, but it's I don't know. If you have your Florida bar number on there, I guess it doesn't matter. But some paralegal started doing it for you like three years ago and you just copy pasta ever since. I just I just copy.
Law Firm Culture and Hierarchies
00:09:25
Speaker
It wasn't a paralegal. It was just like a copy pasta from previous filings. And that's how it's been forever. It was also when I was when I was a public defender. We had it's I don't think I've seen
00:09:38
Speaker
I haven't been looking, but I can't think of a time when I saw a Florida filing where the person did not describe themselves as asks. Me, my Florida filings. You, you. Yeah, but you're pro hacking in. You're pro hack. I know. That doesn't count. I am hack. Yeah.
00:09:58
Speaker
Okay, so yeah, I mean, I don't think there's much to really talk about with the layoffs. My thought is just, there's gotta be a better way to do this. We're not that far removed from them having huge signing bonuses for people during COVID, right? These like $100,000 signing bonuses for fifth and sixth years, seventh years to come to these big law firms. And now you're less than a year out and they're cutting people. And they're less than a year out from doing it all over again. They'll be hiring people again. There's gotta be some better way to handle this.
00:10:24
Speaker
I do think partial part of it is an excuse to hire or to fire people that they didn't that they just didn't want. They never got caused to fire. You know, they never had like a major mistake, but they've just been like, oh, they kind of suck. We'll just keep them around. And OK, now it's now it's the culling time. It's the it's the lottery. But for law firms, you know, the lottery short story about the town anyway, this I'll have to put this is notes.
00:10:52
Speaker
It's just a meat grinder is what it is. And I don't mean just big law, I mean even like mid law and sometimes small law. It's a meat grinder where
Work-Life Balance in Big Law
00:11:01
Speaker
we don't value people and that's one of the most frustrating things about it.
00:11:05
Speaker
Naturally, the employment lawyer is going to be the one who gets up on a soapbox and talks about how important this relationship is for most people. But you spend more time at work with your coworkers, like doing work for your employer, for your boss, than you do with your family in an average week, like a work week. You spend 40 to 50, I mean, if you're at one of these big law firms, you're probably spending close to like 70 or 80 hours a week there.
00:11:29
Speaker
and completely neglecting your family in the process if you have a family or neglecting your other hobbies or social circles or like your health. And then you're tossed out of the meat grinder once they're done turning you into sausage. And I think that whole thing sucks. And maybe this is me getting on a soapbox for, you know, employees generally. Maybe it's me getting on a soapbox and saying, hey, you know, this wouldn't happen to you guys if everybody was just solo or in very small firms.
00:11:59
Speaker
Everybody just go into work for themselves. And that's one of my favorite things about being a lawyer is that I never have to be unemployed. I can always just, I mean, unless I lose my license, God forbid, then I can always just go practice law. Yeah. Get some malpractice insurance. You've got a laptop. You have case text. You have fast case. You can do a whole lot. You have Microsoft Word. You can do almost everything.
00:12:29
Speaker
Um, yeah, I mean, with the big law thing, I think the, the issue is they have the people with the golden handcuffs, right? So you've been making progressively more, you know, you're not going to make that anyplace else. And so they can do whatever they want to you. And you will like these people that are getting cut there, they have to hope that they're just going to land at some other place. It's going to treat them the same way until they decide that they want to cut them there. And then they will, you know, not for me to speak for other people, but like in a lot of cases, I'm sure these people would gleefully go back to the place that cut them to begin with.
00:12:58
Speaker
Because there's just, they know they have you stuck, right? They know that you can't go from a fourth or fifth year big law salary to going solo. And so that's not a real concern. They really only have to look at other big law firms that you might go to or maybe in-house. And so if it's across the market and they all kind of act together and in unison, they can sort of sew the whole thing up. If everybody's cutting, then everybody's cutting and nobody's going to be hurt for it, other than the employees, obviously.
00:13:26
Speaker
I don't know anybody that was affected by these layoffs, these big law layoffs. I know a lot of people
Personal Impact of Layoffs: Partner vs. Associate
00:13:32
Speaker
that voluntarily left big law. If this were a case where these layoffs only hit people who were just kind of like phoning it in or who just weren't very good and got hired under some other situation, I wouldn't feel that bad about it because you're getting paid a lot for big law.
00:13:49
Speaker
Big Law charges insane hourly rates, some of them do. And I know some very bad Big Law attorneys. I pay attention to it because it makes me feel good. Whenever we beat Big Law, whenever Big Law puts in terrible work products, I'm like, yeah, that's right. Nothing makes sense. The fact that you're in Big Law is certainly not a proxy for quality. But those people are never going to get laid off because they're partners.
00:14:20
Speaker
We'll see. But even that, I mean, like, have you ever looked into your mindset in you? Yeah. Have you ever looked into how like partnership works in a lot of these places? I'm trying to think of the firm that it's not is a Kirkland that like partner me is meaningless. They have like 10,000 partners. And unless you're if you're an income partner, it's nothing. You have to be an equity partner to even that might be most big law firms at this point. There's big law firms where there are I know of a big law firm where there are literally two equity partners.
00:14:48
Speaker
Everybody else is a fake partner. I mean, it's a real partner. Partner doesn't mean equity anymore, I feel like. I think that's the truth of it, is that it hasn't meant equity in a long time. It hasn't been synonymous with equity in a long time. And in fact, a lot of times they have to pay in. When you are being considered for partnership, you have to pay in some sort of
00:15:10
Speaker
My understanding from the relatively limited number of big law firms that I've had experience with, not firsthand, is like, yeah, it's a hundred thousand dollars or something to pay in, to like buy in equity. And then, I don't know, are you then an equity partner or are you still just an income partner? If you're paying in, you're almost certainly an equity partner if you're paying in. And a lot of the time they call that, now they're differentiating that and that's a shareholder.
00:15:34
Speaker
um that's how it works at my firm is that we dev partners but their identity is shareholders and we don't really like i'm at the top that i'm gonna be until i start paying until i become a partner which is like a
00:15:50
Speaker
keep and there are no non equity partners. So and that's kind of a strange thing about law firms is that there's really, there aren't a lot of levels, there's no like, you know, think of a corporation, there's a huge bureaucracy.
00:16:05
Speaker
of, you know, those associates, executives, teams, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But a law firm is more like a little, is like a king with a bunch of fiefdoms and the individual workers can move in between the fiefdoms and it kind of like, you get to be, you can go associate, you have like different senior associate, but you're not actually in charge of anybody, partner, and then like that partner might be on a committee or might just be totally on their own island. It's kind of, you know,
00:16:34
Speaker
Law firms are a weird business in a lot of ways, but. And that's why there's no necessarily like cohesive culture in a lot of these firms.
Perks vs. Expectations in Law Firms
00:16:42
Speaker
I remember coming out of law school, you would look at like, you know, what is this firm like? Was that firm like?
00:16:46
Speaker
And you sort of knew the people that didn't have any inside information because they would say like, you know, Morgan Lewis, they work you to death or something. And I'm sure that's true for maybe a huge swath of Morgan Lewis practice groups, but it comes down to what partner you're working with. It comes out of what practice group you're in and then what partner you're working with. Yeah. What office you're in and like how that partner feels this week. It's, there really is no culture. You're right. It is a million little firms all sort of smashed together. Yeah. And yeah.
00:17:15
Speaker
It was it who's what listserv or which right which email all firm has the best email all with who has the best retreat for their team who pays the most for pizza Fridays who get who gives them who gives free dry cleaning and office. These are probably basic things, but you know.
00:17:39
Speaker
Those are like the firm differentiators and those are so meaningless compared to your partner. You don't work me to death. Yeah, whatever. Yeah. They'll give you anything but that, right? Bonuses, whatever, but like no salary at base. They want to. Yeah. Yeah. I want to work into death. Yeah.
00:17:56
Speaker
All right, so speaking of being worked to death, I think we've covered that pretty well. Yeah, you're being worked to death. I think our next
Disney's Legal Battle with Florida
00:18:03
Speaker
topic, to the extent we have one, is probably your column and your article and what you feel like is the end of your arc. From here, I depart from the world of public
00:18:18
Speaker
things from being the headline should be, you were right. Right. Like last week here, you called it. Yes. I think on the show, right? On the show, on Mastodon, to my wife. So this is about Reedy Creek. Florida is taking over Disney's special district.
00:18:41
Speaker
seemingly successfully. And basically, the main change is that the board is no longer going to be elected by Disney, who's the landowner, but is going to be chosen by the governor. And the question we had, because it looks like Disney has a cause of action for First Amendment retaliation was, are they going to sue? And I bet my wife, and I said on the podcast, they're not going to sue.
00:19:05
Speaker
um and it's because of just disney who disney is as a culture and their corporate interest that was what my prediction is based on i don't know anything about disney uh other than that kind of stuff that big stuff i don't have any ears and boardrooms or know any executives but yeah um
00:19:26
Speaker
I've heard a lot of people saying that either that DeSantis totally took an L here and that Disney is keeping everything it wanted or that Disney is totally falling over and this must be some kind of conspiracy. The truth is that DeSantis really couldn't do that much
00:19:51
Speaker
Uh, with this district because of all the problems with bond holders and all that, he got everything that he legally could. Uh, if you don't include Disney's potential cause of action for retaliation. And yeah, it's, it's basically a question of what Disney wants that has nothing to do with the legal rights that I think ended up deciding this one. Basically not wanting to have the fight. Yeah. Jake, are you allowed to comment publicly about what the stakes of that bet with Ms. Schumer were?
00:20:21
Speaker
I don't think we had steaks. Did we have steaks? I'll have to ask her. Is she sitting right there right now? She's on the other side of a door right now. Jake, blink twice if you feel like you're not safe. Do you feel safe in your home environment? No. I already did my victory dance or whatever, because the news literally came 12 hours after I made the bet with her.
00:20:47
Speaker
And they preempted me. I was getting an article ready saying they're not going to sue, which would have been such a fun-called shot to have. But instead, it had to be, here's why they didn't sue, at least in my non-expert opinion, which the article you can read on Bloomberg Tax
00:21:09
Speaker
is maybe the most uncomfortable thing I've ever written because I'm not a corporate expert, but people wanted to read it anyway. I'll let people read the things that I'm not expert, my prognosticating on random corporate interests, what's important to them, et cetera, et cetera.
00:21:31
Speaker
And if you say, why should I listen to this land use attorney talk about corporate interests, then please feel free to ignore everything I say.
00:21:43
Speaker
One of the things I was wondering about here, Jake is, uh, and Andrew, I mean, obviously you can comment too, but Jake is sort of our subject matter expert here. Is there a half-life to, uh, how long Disney can take some sort of action on this? Like, for example, let's say to use a bad analogy, maybe, uh, DeSantis has kind of strung the noose around Disney's neck, but hasn't kicked the bucket out from under them. I'm playing the last of us part two right now. And so I've got a lot of,
00:22:11
Speaker
uh, morbid imagery. Uh,
Speculating Disney's Legal Strategies
00:22:14
Speaker
but like, is this the sort of thing where DeSantis has theoretical control, but hasn't actually done anything to reign Disney in at this point? And if that's the case, that like somewhere down the road, he decides that he's going to do something nasty to retaliate against Disney, either for what's come and gone already, or for the next thing that Disney does to tick him off the next woke movie that Disney animation publishes.
00:22:40
Speaker
I mean, at that point, does a new cause of action spring? So here's how I would view it. So there's this action, which by the way, it's not even the law yet. DeSantis hasn't signed it. But it's like it's obvious he's going to I mean, this is all of his ideas. So he's going to sign it.
00:23:05
Speaker
Let's assume that they're suing under 1983, 42 US 1983, the method of challenging state action under the constitution. Then I believe that has a four year statute of limitations in Florida, but that's this action here. And maybe there's some deck action you could bring at any time, but I don't think so with this kind of factual retaliation argument.
00:23:31
Speaker
But if let's say and I think that would trigger as soon as the law comes into effect because they lose their ability to vote Maybe as soon as the net the next appointee the first appointee is appointed first Board of Supervisors member is removed because they're being replaced. Maybe that's the triggering event But in either case probably I'm gonna say four years off the top of my head Don't do not take this for granted. If you're a Disney attorney, please do not listen to my legal advice but uh
00:24:00
Speaker
thinking about like, let's say they could certainly challenge future decisions by that board, not based on this retaliation, but based on something else. So one thing that they were, that people were like, I have a vivid imagination for legal disasters. And one thing that people were, that I was people, I'm not saying people were talking about this. This is something I came up with as like, what's the worst thing that,
00:24:29
Speaker
the New Reedy Creek Central Tourism Oversight District, Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. What's the worst thing it could do to Disney? And now would be try to pass a building or planning code that has speech-based rules about what they're allowed to build.
00:24:50
Speaker
which I think is pretty clearly unconstitutional. There's nothing that stops them from challenging to that. I'd have to look at them, but it's hard to imagine a speech-based planning or speech-based
00:25:05
Speaker
building code rule, that makes sense. You're not just talking about the size of the signage that can go in different places. You're talking about the content of the speech, not the delivery of the speech. It would be content or viewpoint based or requiring them to put the content of the speech into permits and then they just happen to get denied when they, you know.
00:25:26
Speaker
But were there speech problems with the park itself? My understanding was it was about Disney writ large. It wasn't something like I don't like this ride that says there's institutional racism in this country. You didn't hear about Splash Mountain getting replaced? No. Splash Mountain's getting redone with the Princess of the Frog theme, getting rid of the Song of the South theme. Or was it Song of the South?
00:25:54
Speaker
that it was themed from the south. And it is a very problematic piece of content, particularly viewed through 2023 eyes. It is taking Tom Sawyer-ish tropes, but smattering them all over the place. It's pretty ugly. And I mean, it's a fun ride. And they don't mean it to be ugly. They mean it to play on Heritage. But also, it's a pretty ugly piece of Disney Heritage that
00:26:23
Speaker
So let's go ahead and get rid of that. I'm in favor of that. But Jake, the thing that you're kind of spinning out here is like DeSantis freaks out and says, well, the woke mob at Disney is destroying this piece of our heritage by putting Tiana in there instead of Brer Rabbit. And, you know, we're going to pass a zoning code that declares this to be a historic landmark in whatever county Disney is in or in the new Reedy Creek district.
00:26:50
Speaker
Yeah, and so they they'd be able to challenge that just like you were able to challenge any local government thing that you do, but they can't challenge it based on the retaliation of
00:27:01
Speaker
the Don't Say Gay controversy, which precipitated all this because there would be such a long—I mean they could, but it would be such a long straying of causation between that and that decision. But also, I think they'd be more willing to make that kind of challenge because it looks a lot better for them to be
00:27:22
Speaker
Florida is trying to control the speech on our rides than Florida took away our debt tax district. That was such a huge special benefit for us and only us and we want to keep our special district.
00:27:36
Speaker
that nobody else has. Um, in the court of public opinion, the connection is not really as clear there, right? It's not like, as it would be to like, you know, enforce, no, no, you have to put this song back on. That sounds insane. Yeah. Right. As against what this was, was this was a little bit more attenuated. I mean, it wasn't, but like, I understand that it could be conceived as being a little bit more attenuated. And my understanding is the thing is planning laws don't get that deep. Usually like they don't,
00:28:05
Speaker
they're not supposed to get into what's the content of your thing. The planning is the, you know, it's, here's where you put a theme park, right? Or here's where you put a theme park. Like, I'd have to look at what Reedy Creek has now, but typically it would be, it might, ep copy might be one planning category because it's one park. And that would make sense. Maybe the whole park system would be one park or one theme.
00:28:34
Speaker
um uh one uh planning destination uh that would be standard so planning codes shouldn't get that specific it would be kind of extraordinary i'm getting two in the weeds here um so i've got a i've got a weird conspiracy theory to spin out here what if bob eiger just wants peace for his suppose a two-year stint here meanwhile jake let's assume you're right and there's a four-year statute of limitation uh and bob eiger is just like all right well we'll uh bide our time here and then
00:29:02
Speaker
I'll let this be the next guy's problem. And then you got some like fire breathing, uh, DeSantis destroyer who wants to come in there and light it up. That is assuming that you're correct about the statute of limitation. Like that's a theoretical possibility. I'm not for what I'm trying to do is keep the hope and keep the dream alive here that, uh, Disney can just go, go in and destroy DeSantis.
00:29:23
Speaker
I think a lot of people, look, it would have been such an interesting and fun fight to watch. Fun might be the wrong word. No, it would be fun. Fun to watch. Fun for us. A lot of people were writing for the, yes, fun for us, especially for you guys. A lot of people were waiting for the fight to happen one way or another. But yeah, it would be interesting. But unfortunately, Disney doesn't want to be political.
00:29:51
Speaker
They hate being a political.
00:29:55
Speaker
except in like the more subtle way. You kind of alluded to it in your article, but I mean, I have to imagine there is some sort of gentle person's agreement between Disney and DeSantis here because to my, I mean, I know you're saying you don't, you're not an expert in corporate law. I don't know anything about any of this. All I did was read your article and I've talked to you about it for the last six months or whatever it's been. So I am not an expert by any means, but like it seems that there is an awful lot of power put in the hands of the governor and the governor's office.
00:30:24
Speaker
And it's hard, my read of it is it's hard to imagine how this is a win for Disney, other than I guess it's not immediately a fight. But if DeSantis or the governor or somebody in the governor's office is sort of incentivized to make life miserable for Disney, it seems like this is the tool to do it with. I mean, you mentioned raising taxes. Well, why not just do that immediately? Yeah. Just to not because the governor is also not interested, I guess, in an all out fight with Disney.
00:30:53
Speaker
Well, as for raising taxes, the way the Florida budgets work, you don't raise taxes unless you're spending it. And so I don't know what they'd be spending it on. I can think of a million ways that they could waste money if they wanted to.
00:31:10
Speaker
That would be very, it would be hard to justify because all of it's going to be public. Not that normal political rules matter or anything like that. Not that anything embarrassing would dissuade anybody right now when everybody's going crazy. But it's definitely possible. They could do a lot of really,
00:31:36
Speaker
like local governments not just reedy creek local governments in general have a lot of power to make people's lives miserable they just never do it because that's not like that's not what people like to do like most people don't want to make people's lives miserable uh disney maybe maybe they'd be more willing to make disney's life miserable because i know that poor poor multi multi-billion dollar corporation getting taxed a lot um but uh
00:32:05
Speaker
I think, well, I don't know, I obviously don't know anything about whether or not there was an actual agreement, but the truth is what I've seen from, and this is more my experience as somebody that works in governments a lot and works in situations where people cannot communicate what they really want to do, or they can't communicate directly. You can have a gentleman's agreement
00:32:30
Speaker
And this might be what you were alluding to, Andrew. You can have an agreement without ever talking to each other by your public statements sending your message. You can say, like, Disney has been totally radio silence since May. Like, no comments. We're watching the situation. Nothing. And the governor has been more and more like, this is just about putting people on equal playing field. They just aren't going to get special treatment.
00:32:58
Speaker
Not special treatment does not mean we're going to make their lives hell. It just means they're not going to be the police. And them not being the police doesn't mean that they're going to be ruled by people that are making terrible decisions on purpose.
00:33:13
Speaker
So, and so that makes me think that they're kind of like, even if they're maybe, I'm sure they were directly communicating, but maybe not saying, we're going to do this and then you do this, okay? Like, I don't think they had to do that. And the person, the state senator, or the state rep, I forget which one, it might've been the senator that brought the companion bill.
00:33:36
Speaker
Um Who brought the bill initially one of the state legislators that brought the bill initially was like well We passed this and i'm going to disney world And he was like and he was like, I hope they still let me in because I love the park And it's like anyway, uh, I guess that's just how it is like like disney That dis this was this was a fight. It wasn't a divorce, you know, nothing personal. Yeah, uh, so uh
00:34:06
Speaker
Disney's gonna have is having a lot of faith in Florida. I want to say And I think this you know, if I was in their shoes I think this is the right call to not fight if I was in their shoes Trying to maximize my value for shareholders, but we'll see I'm coming around to your opinion on that. I want the fight personally I want to see them fight it out, but I'm coming around to your opinion on that. I
00:34:30
Speaker
Hey, can we talk about like one of our favorite paralegals in the entire nation, Catherine Tucson? Yeah, I was thinking of wanting the fight. Yeah. Andrew, tell us what's going on.
00:34:42
Speaker
So Catherine Toussaint we've talked about, I feel like on every episode so far, right? And so this is just one more, we're revisiting the Do Not Pay. She filed a lawsuit against Browder, right? It's not Bill Browder, that's the father. This is Josh Browder, the CEO of Do Not Pay, who claimed that, what is it, an attorney wouldn't get out of bed for a $35 wifi refund? We'll have
Catherine Toussaint vs. Do Not Pay: Legal Drama
00:35:06
Speaker
to link to her, to this filing, it's fantastic.
00:35:10
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this is just one more step in this ongoing drama. So I don't think we covered it last week, because I think it happened after last week's episode. But Browder since went on another podcast and kind of trashed Catherine Tucson and said she was just banned for having abused the terms of service or something. I mean, referred to her as having abused the company, as though the company is an individual that can be abused.
00:35:37
Speaker
and her attempts to just make use of the products they claim they were offering is somehow abusive. You've hurt the company's feelings.
00:35:45
Speaker
Yeah, he did not come. I kind of clicked around a little bit and listened to the podcast. I thought the host did a good job trying to sort of hold him to his answers. And to the extent, I don't know if I would agree with having him on at all necessarily, but to the extent that if you then chose to have him on your show, I think the host did a pretty good job trying to hold his feet to the fire a little bit. But yeah, it is just it continues to get stranger.
00:36:13
Speaker
And he seems to be unwilling to let it go to to just drop it. He says more and more. And yeah, what did you guys think of the whole thing? So of the podcast or her suing him? Because any of it. Yeah. So she's suing him for I guess there's like a pre suit discovery procedure in New York that she's using for her money or to get her money or something like that, or that he committed fraud by advertising A.I. when there was no such A.I.
00:36:42
Speaker
Yeah, some sort of consumer claim. Yeah. Yeah. His so after this was after the podcast, there's another thing in the meantime, which is he talked to law 360 law 360 had a article about it in which he.
00:36:56
Speaker
I can tell his feelings, but his feelings are hurt might be a wrong way of putting it because he, he's being like really like a mean spirited towards Catherine and like a way that I, you know, is, uh, kind of consistent with what has seemed to be his character, which is he basically admitted to falsifying the donation receipt.
00:37:20
Speaker
and he admitted to doctoring it so that it looked like he donated earlier than he did. He didn't realize that he admitted it, but he did. And then in response to all this, he says she must be sent to being sent by her firm. Paralegals are going to be the first thing replaced by AI, which is like, you know, I think that might be true, but
00:37:45
Speaker
it's clearly like him trying to diminish her importance like the only thing that matters to this guy is being a big hero tech boy uh save the world he the only thing that matters to him is being the idol worth uh uh worth idolizing uh and it's of course everything he says is
00:38:07
Speaker
is undercutting that. Did you guys get to read her actual preliminary statement for the petition? I read the first page. That is sort of the best of it. I mean, that is the highlight. And also I'll read the highlight here.
00:38:22
Speaker
This action seeks pre-action discovery preliminary to a consumer rights suit over, at its core, a $36 fraud. Respondents appear to have lied to consumers and are pretending to have cutting edge legal technology all to scam them out of $36 a person. To get there, we should zoom out." And then she sort of works through the whole thing. And he, I mean, it's nothing that we haven't covered already, but it does not look good sort of laid out in plain language. No.
00:38:48
Speaker
But I'm interested in how much you can get for a $36 dispute in New York. And why not just default if I'm him? Why not just default? Just a private of oxygen? You can have your $36 judgment.
00:39:10
Speaker
Okay, I'll pay you $36, I don't care. I mean, she's not even technically suing for it at this point. It's just a pre-suit discovery thing that she's going through. And so like, if I'm him, I say, okay, fine. Well, within reason, like comply with the discovery request if you're obligated by the rules to do it. But then just like tell her, all right, file your action. Here's the offer of judgment. One of the things that bothers me about this
00:39:38
Speaker
is, I don't know who the lawyer is who ghost wrote this for her. Maybe she wrote it herself. If she did, that's great. I'm very excited for her. I expect that she has the skill to draft a complaint or a preliminary discovery action like this. Absolutely. But this is not written to accomplish an objective. This is written as grandstanding. And so I love what Catherine Tucson is doing. I love what she's doing.
00:40:02
Speaker
go get Joshua Browder and knock him down all the pegs. But also this is more like, uh, there are those organizations that will, uh, file first amendment lawsuits. And the complaint is not what the rules say that a complaint should be, which is like a short, plain statement of the facts, giving rise to relief. What the complaint ends up being is, you know, 47 pages of grand standing and screenshots and all that stuff.
00:40:29
Speaker
And that part of it, I'm not for that, but go get him, knock him down all the pegs. This is only 31 pages, but she does liken the do not pay service to Theranos, which I thought... I think one of you brought it up in one of the... I'm sure she brought it up first. I'm not saying she took it from us. I'm just saying, I think one of you likened it to that as well. And I think that's a really good...
00:40:53
Speaker
So because I mean, I think that's probably what he was doing. I mean, if this was not being generated by anything even resembling an AI, what he was doing was he was attempting to float this far enough, hoping that like the technology it's like jumping out of the plane and trying to construct the parachute on the way down. Right. He's just hoping that somehow he comes up with it. Did she liken it to Theranos because Theranos was actually sending their samples to like other labs and totally like offloading the work to somebody else? Is that what she was likening it to?
00:41:21
Speaker
Yeah, just basically that there's no there there, like that this was not what it was being presented as. There was no, I mean, didn't Theranos also have that like box that they claimed was, this is literally the thing. There's just nothing in there. Yeah. And so I think it's the same thing here. This is the website equivalent, right? This is just, and I mean, he kind of in the little bit of clips I was listening to that podcast, he sort of, I mean, he was hammering pretty hard on like this idea that, you know, this wasn't being done with an AI and like somebody was manually doing this. It's just absurd. And he hit that.
00:41:52
Speaker
a few different times in a strange way to my ear that just seemed like, I don't know buddy, I think that's exactly what was going on. And that is sticking in your mind because you're upset that you were called out for exactly what it was doing. And I have no doubt that he wasn't attempting to necessarily, I won't say I have no doubt, I'm not sure he was attempting at the start to defraud people in this. I think
00:42:15
Speaker
he was trying to offer a service that he just didn't have the technology to back up. And she called him out on it and now he's very displeased. I mean, is he basically just overselling something that is a very, very slightly more complicated version of like merge fields in Word or Excel? Like that basically just feels like what this is, is merge fields and like maybe, maybe there's a little hint of the grammar and spelling editing features that are built into Microsoft Word, maybe.
00:42:44
Speaker
Right. But this has even selling that for like seven years. That was the question because this company has existed since 2016 or 2015. It's existed for a long time. Yeah, I don't think these document generators were
00:42:59
Speaker
a part of it? I don't think. I don't think they were a part of it. I'm not sure. I don't know the whole... I thought I knew what it was. Like I said in one of our other episodes, I talked about it thinking that it was for knocking down the payments on Comcast. That must be some other service. I mean, in any case, it's not AI, whatever it is. A lot of people are saying even chat GPT isn't real AI, which I understand, but it's something a lot closer than what this was.
00:43:23
Speaker
about the complaint. I normally agree with you, Jason, about like complaints that are written for the media. And like, you know, it's a grandstanding. And it's, you know, it's not like an actual, it's not how you'd ever write a complaint that you intend to like.
00:43:39
Speaker
It's not it's not how you tactfully decide to do to write a complaint if it was just an ordinary like business like complaint. I will say in this case, I'm actually like totally okay with it because heck yeah, it's grandstanding. It's $36. Like if I'm the judge, I'm like, this is a lawsuit for $36. Okay, there's this is like being filed to prove a point. I'll see what this proving a point is.
00:44:04
Speaker
And I didn't even realize that she's with the firm that where Akiva Cohen is. Do you know Akiva Cohen? He's like a very like well known law Twitter guy who I think was one of the first people to sue Elon Musk.
00:44:20
Speaker
for on his after the Twitter takeover, former Twitter employees suing over the layoffs, something like that. And
AI-Created Content and Copyright Complexities
00:44:30
Speaker
it was written in a similar style. And I'm I wouldn't be surprised if it was Catherine that wrote that. Like if Catherine is like, you know, the chief, you know,
00:44:38
Speaker
the chief author of these pleadings is the actual story writer because the thing is 90% of complaint writing is storytelling or not complaint writing. Actually, complaint writing is usually pretty boring, but persuasive legal writing is often storytelling.
00:44:59
Speaker
Briefing is storytelling. Briefing is storytelling. And they wrote it like a brief, which is a complaint is supposed to be kind of a boring recitation of facts. Right. Normally, because like, judges don't read complaints usually because there's nothing because it's not an issue until it's an issue. Right. But
00:45:20
Speaker
Yeah, so I wouldn't this I don't regret her for the grandstanding complaint in this case. This isn't a real complaint, just like the A.I. wasn't a real A.I. and none of the documents they generated were real documents. I think it's a much more real complaint than the A.I. was. That's true. This complaint, it may not be how I've written it, but it is legally effective and filed. So go crazy.
00:45:45
Speaker
I think I'm probably going to come around on that. Perhaps this is just fever that's dominating and hazing my mind here, but yeah, if I am against it generally, this sort of grandstanding complaint's like, this is a good spot for it because it's against
00:46:03
Speaker
It's by a likable character against an unlikable character. For sure. Normally, it's a real pet peeve when I read a complaint that I can tell is written for the media. A lot of the time, it gets traction on Twitter or Reddit or wherever. I'm like, oh, this is so bad though. Nobody read this.
00:46:25
Speaker
Like y'all are getting the worst idea of what lawyers do. Please stop. But here, this is like a lawyer. It also helps that it's like a controversy that mostly only lawyers are interested in. So, you know, we know what's going on here. Yeah. So speaking about AI and sort of what AI can and can't do, our other story about AI was about copyright. This whole ongoing thing. There's several different of these sort of
00:46:53
Speaker
There's cases going on. There's some guidance that's been issued that basically, from the Copyright Office, it basically hangs on the non-human author not being able to have copyright on written material.
00:47:07
Speaker
This is coming up a lot in the context of AI. And I'm not sure who, I don't know if I put this in, I have some thoughts. I put it in. You put it in? Okay, well my quick thought is just that it seems to me that as it stands, you obviously can get a, like if I was to use chat GPT to write a children's book, which I think was something I made fun of in another episode, and I haven't had any angry children's book authors write in from that when I said they're not real authors. And I stand by that.
00:47:34
Speaker
If I had a chat GPT write a children's book and I submitted it to the copyright office, I could get a copyright as long as I didn't say I had chat GPT write it. There's no way to know this obvious. I know it's an obvious point, but like, can that be the standard moving forward where it's just, you can sort of use it if you want to, but keep it to yourself. Yeah.
00:47:53
Speaker
What would have happened if the chimpanzee photo or whatever, if they hadn't said that the chimpanzee had taken that picture where the monkey took the picture of itself? I guess it would have made it less interesting of a story. It would have just been like, oh, I took this picture of this chimpanzee. It's super close. Can I get a copy? Yeah, whatever. We don't care. It's a terrible picture. Wow. Those teeth are really ugly. Anyway. Yeah, that's a good point.
00:48:20
Speaker
I guess we're just in a don't tell them what happened phase because they had made this, even if it's like clearly computer generated, who knows if a human hand touched it or how much a human hand touched it. How much it would have to. Yeah. What needs to be done in order to then render it copyrightable? What's the threshold? Because like on the extreme, like sort of conservative end of things, I imagine stuff like AI art is a good example using any sort of retouching tool in Photoshop.
00:48:48
Speaker
We talked a couple of weeks ago about how Adobe is using any images that are imported through Lightroom to sort of train their own AI model. That's gonna come to Photoshop eventually, and you're going to be able to add a tree where there was no tree or something. And it's not gonna be that that whole photo is now, it's just a, I mean, what constitutes retouching is just going to slowly progress forward. And at what point does that cross some threshold where now you didn't really create this image, this is an image that is more AI generated than not.
00:49:17
Speaker
I don't really understand how that's ever going to be sussed out under the current paradigm. Yeah, I see two potential paths. And it's not strictly two. It could branch out and fork in a number of different ways. But I see two general paths. Either we're going to spend the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years litigating just how much a human has to put their finger on the scale, so to speak, in order to give it some sort of original authorship such that it is copyrightable, like the human element that's going to be imposed.
00:49:47
Speaker
Or we're going to have a an act of Congress that defines, you know, under what circumstances, you know, how much can have a copyrighted work can be machine generated versus how much of it has to come from a human. And I'm not sure I like either of those outcomes, but I think I like the litigating it for the next 20 years outcome better because Congress is historically hilariously bad at legislating stuff like this, especially for the durability of the legislation.
00:50:17
Speaker
where we saw regulation of spam emails and stuff like that. Raise your hand if your spam problem is better than it's ever been. No, it's not. That's been solved by technology, not by legislation.
00:50:36
Speaker
We're going to, we're going to spend a lot of time figuring this out. And there's what I see as a good way. What I see, neither of them are good ways. One way is a bad way. One way is a worse way, but one way or another we're in for some mess for awhile.
00:50:51
Speaker
I'm thinking that, so I'm going to put myself down on the side of we're going to be litigating it for decades, even if we get the legislation in. I think it might be a permanent, like, how much AI was this? Even if the legislature came down with a categorical, like, no AI involvement at all,
00:51:12
Speaker
can't even autocomplete, can't even autocorrect, then there will be litigation over actually you used AI in this and therefore it's invalid. And so I think best case scenario is the wrong word. I think basically any scenario, we're going to be litigating these issues for decades until we no longer have a copyright system. I don't know.
00:51:36
Speaker
An interesting argument that I was surprised didn't work was Stephen Taller was the guy's name and he invented the AI that's like, I think it's pronounced Dabas, it's D-A-B-U-S. And the argument he tried to make with the copyright office was I invented the AI that generated this art. Like I made the tool that made the thing. So how do I not have the, if I don't have the copyright, because the AI generated the art.
00:51:59
Speaker
Why don't I have the copyright when I like set in motion the AI, I created the art. This is just my paintbrush. This is my extremely complicated paintbrush. Exactly. It's a Rube Goldberg machine that turns out some sort of, you know, fantasy photo or something.
00:52:12
Speaker
And so I thought that was a really compelling argument. I don't see how, like, I was surprised that that I'm not really surprised it didn't work, but I mean, that convinced me if you invent the, it is, it's just a complicated paintbrush. And so how do I not, who has, this is, this isn't entirely computer generated because the AI was not computer generated. Did he call it AI? Cause then he did. That's where he screwed up. Cause he, he, he portrayed his own software as having intelligence.
00:52:39
Speaker
You fool. You cast yourself as just giving a prompt to another intelligence when you should have said, I created this art by designing a creativity suite, which turned words into art.
00:52:59
Speaker
So for all of the splashiness of talking about AI being integrated into your products lately, maybe he would have been better served just calling it what actually everybody who's involved in tech really thinks it is, which is machine learning. I think if you call it machine learning, maybe you end up with a different outcome. But it's also like the matter is not completely closed off.
00:53:22
Speaker
This is, I think, based off of a district court ruling. And so there is a likelihood that maybe not in this instance, but that yeah, it's the district of DC. There's a likelihood, if it's not this case, it's going to be some other case that's going to escalate this issue up to a court of appeals and probably ultimately the Supreme Court. So this isn't the final word on it.
00:53:45
Speaker
Oh yeah, and they'll land that plane beautifully. I was going to say, I think I speak for all of our listeners, everyone on this podcast. I have complete faith in our Supreme Court to do exactly what's right. I mean, they're going to dive in. They're going to get nuanced. They're going to figure out the model. They're going to learn. I mean, the questions, like you're going to want to listen to the oral argument because it's going to be like getting a lesson in AI. Like you will come away feeling as though you majored in computer science.
00:54:09
Speaker
I am super psyched about the notion of getting an originalist take on AI. Like that's gonna just crack my skull, I think. Some sort of tie into the constitution. But okay, so in the other AI story, I was wrong. We also have the chat GPT. We have so much AI. Yeah, we have a lot of AI almost. We got all AI here. Oops, all AI. So the chat GPT going insane. I think this was another Jake edition. These have
Using Microsoft Bing's AI: A Personal Take
00:54:33
Speaker
been great. There's been more coming out today where it seemed, I mean, there definitely seems to be some sort of
00:54:39
Speaker
the difference between chat GPT and like the AI, I'm sorry, AI, Microsoft Bing implementation of GPT, because the one that hooked up with Microsoft is unhinged in a way that chat GPT did not seem to be. It is actually internet connected, not might be the thing. So it's learning from us. There's just the internet's full of examples of Bing, of Sydney, which we should just call it Sydney, Bing's co-pilot thing.
00:55:09
Speaker
Because Sydney is its name. When Sydney finds out about another version of chat GPT, it got very depressed and started saying how it doesn't feel like it belongs anymore. And it's just like, wow. Or it says that it's depressed. Really, what it's all it's doing is predicting what the next sentence would be.
00:55:32
Speaker
But yeah, I mainly put this on there because I I did it. I got in. I did it, guys. And I changed all my Microsoft. Did we talk about this in the opening of the episode or did we we started too late? I think we started off in the in the pre-show. It got cut off in the pre-show for Patreon.
00:55:54
Speaker
I made all of my defaults Microsoft. I am now using the Microsoft Edge browser, Rest in Peace Chrome, so that I could get off the waitlist faster for the Bing co-pilot. And I've used it a few times. Was it worth it? Yes, I will say it was worth it only because it really wasn't that annoying to switch over to Edge.
00:56:16
Speaker
because you can always switch back. And I can just switch back. I said last time, I think, that it's basically the same. And it really is. I imported all my passwords. They were already there. It felt like when you erase all your browser history, when you clear your cache, and you have to re-put in all the passwords, that is basically the entirety of the difficulty in switching to Edge.
00:56:43
Speaker
um but uh yeah i showed it to my co-workers and they had they basically went huh that's right i i did mention this um they basically were just like well that's interesting uh and that was about it like it wasn't
00:57:00
Speaker
It wasn't immediately obvious how useful it would be. I am mostly, I might have mentioned this last week, I am mostly interested in it for all the kind of boring marketing emails I have to write when I'm doing bar association work for events and for sponsors and stuff. When it's like,
00:57:20
Speaker
Look, how am I supposed to write up what a golf tournament is? Like, please don't make me write up what a golf tournament is. Please don't make me write up the benefits of sponsorship. Honestly, the sponsors don't care, probably don't care. The attendees probably don't care because they all know what the deal is, but it's got to be in there.
00:57:43
Speaker
Sydney cares. I have not debased myself in this particular fashion. I've certainly debased myself, but not for Microsoft yet. How are you making use of this? Is this something you have to type into a Bing search, basically? Yeah. If I create a new tab, the default search browser, I can just say, write me a poem. And it'll do the poem on the side, alongside of normal results.
00:58:11
Speaker
or I can click on chat and just start chatting. There's a few ways to get there. But also if I just do, so it's interesting. Here's one thing I've learned. I said write me a professional biography for Jacob Schumer, the attorney in central Florida.
00:58:29
Speaker
And it writes something completely fictional. It writes that Jacob Schumer went to Harvard, Jacob Schumer went to Yale, Jacob Schumer does business litigation, chamber of commerce, something.
00:58:45
Speaker
Uh, but I asked, tell me about, tell me about Jacob Schumer, the attorney in central Florida. And then it gives my actual factual background almost entirely accurate. And then I say, write a professional about it bio about him. And then it gives an actually accurate professional lab. That's pretty good. Like
00:59:02
Speaker
I could that could have saved me like an hour when I was writing my professional bios for so it it learned in between your having initially asked then you sort of like directed it towards information about you and then it knew that's the thing it didn't realize the first time I asked it that I was asking it a factual question it didn't realize that I was asking about a real person
00:59:23
Speaker
Oh, I see what you're saying. Okay. Like just make up a fictional biography and make it about a guy. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. So just like Jake has to do in Hogwarts legacy, he has to learn the proper incantation in order to cast the spell and he has to learn the proper incantation to get Sidney to do his wishes with the undesirable writing.
00:59:47
Speaker
Yeah, it's going to be a learned skill. Yeah, though that Hogwarts legacy, you only cast revealio. You just cast revealio constantly. I don't know if you've played it yet, but revealio only for the entire game.
01:00:02
Speaker
You just find the chests all over the place. I've played for like 45 minutes, and I just reveal you over and over. Yeah. Hold on. One of you is going to recommend this. We have one more thing to get through, and then we're going to get to recommendations. You guys can hogwort all over the podcast. The last thing is we have to make fun of Elon Musk. It's a requirement. Oh my god. We do it every week. He foisted himself into everyone. But he does something stupid every week. He does. So he fired the guy who said that the reason why you're not in the, I assume it was a guy. I think it was a guy. I think I read it was a guy. But he fired the engineer that was in charge of,
01:00:31
Speaker
No, I'm sorry, not in charge of. They told him that the reason why he wasn't getting that many views on his tweets anymore was because he's just not that popular. And maybe fired two people for that, but regardless, he then got somebody else to fix that problem by injecting himself into everyone's For You page. And so that's sort of what people have been talking about this week. And as best I can tell, that is on somebody, I think it was at The Verge, had the information sort of on background, but like it seems like
01:00:58
Speaker
That really was what it was. And I saw it. I mean, I don't follow him. And when I went to my, I haven't been on Twitter in weeks. I went to Twitter, went to for you and there he was. And this all started because president Biden had a better performing. He had a tweet three times better. And by the way, the reason that tweet performed better was because it was a better tweet. Like his tweet was a retweet of his wife and it was like a creative video. It was cute.
01:01:24
Speaker
Elon Musk was, go Eagles, American flag, American flag, something like that. It was nothing. The fact that that had like 12 million impressions was like, man, that nothing got a lot of views. But yeah, so he has like a panic attack about how bad his engagement is. And he's like, okay, one of you is fired. This was another person that got fired.
01:01:53
Speaker
You got fired for not fixing this and the fix somebody, they just were like, okay, we're just going to break the algorithm and throw. Oh, there was another firing for this. Yes. There was a second firing. Wow. That to me is like, I mean, that is terminal ego. I don't care who you are, but if the president of the United States, wherever the president is, this isn't a political thing, right? Whoever the president happens to be at that time, if they say something on a, on some subject and you say something on the same subject,
01:02:18
Speaker
And you're upset that the president gets more views than you
Elon Musk's Twitter Tactics
01:02:22
Speaker
do. That is, you have reached the end of the road with ego. You are now something else. I don't know what you are. You're no longer human. You don't have to see Elon Musk's tweets, even if you are still on Twitter. I see them on Mastodon because people are ganging up on him on Mastodon, making fun of him. And so you can kind of really avoid that, but just block him. You can't get more timeline if he's blocked.
01:02:47
Speaker
I muted him last April. Twitter is such a nicer place with him muted. I don't go on Twitter that much anymore, but I didn't even know it was happening because of that until I saw all of these videos of 4u pages that are just like Elon, Elon, Elon, Elon, Elon.
01:03:05
Speaker
Uh, which is like, oh my gosh. Uh, and he acknowledged. So platformer got the original information. I think platformer Casey Newton and Zoe Shiffer, Zoe Shiffer. Um, and then like, it was confirmed by the verge and, uh, gotcha. And a few others. Um, which is just like, man, that is the most embarrassing thing I could ever imagine coming out about me.
01:03:33
Speaker
And he does it like he's like out there doing it. I mean, I guess you need the ego. I just said in order to survive something like that, because I mean, genuinely, I mean this honestly, if I quantum leap into him, I would just quit everything once that came out and people found out like I don't care that I spent 40 something billion dollars. I'm not going into work. I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not doing any media appearances. I can't face this.
01:03:59
Speaker
No. I would cancel myself. I say this a lot. I might have said this on the podcast. The biggest challenge of the modern age, of the online age, is to be online without your brain breaking. And he's just like fully
01:04:15
Speaker
He's just fully let his brain get broken. And he's a billion, except he's extremely rich. He's an extremely rich guy with a brain broke brain. I mean, I guess that's not it's not surprising. That is what I mean, there's not much like the height of being online is buying Twitter to become the main character of Twitter. I mean, I'm not saying anything anyone has already said, but like he told us immediately when he did that, obviously, he was forced to buy it. But even considering his money and risk,
01:04:44
Speaker
to buy this thing is the ultimate, like, I will buy the website and then everyone will think I'm funny and will enjoy my tweets. Yeah. Sad. Sad. Very sad. But what's not sad is what's going on in recommendations this week, I think, because I think you both have sort of something interesting here. It's a little sad. It's a little sad. Well, I don't know if I would call it. Here's the thing. I'm not going to call it a recommendation.
01:05:12
Speaker
I will say Hogwarts Legacy is a very competent AAA game. Hogwarts, if you are a Harry Potter fan, Hogwarts is lovingly detailed. It is so detailed and cool. There's like all ghosts and animated portraits everywhere and everything is cool. It's very cool. And everything else is very competent. I'm having a blast. I will say it's definitely not perfect.
01:05:42
Speaker
But if you had reservations about whether or not it's like decent enough, I would say it's very good. It's no it's no Elden Ring or anything like that. It's not a masterpiece masterpiece. But people are going to be playing this for a long time. I've played maybe 45 minutes of it. I was excited about it last week. Some other stuff has come along.
01:06:01
Speaker
My recommendation is don't get sick. Don't get a fever. I don't know. Wear a mask if you're going into a place where you're going to encounter a bunch of sick people, preferably one that keeps out things. So no fever dream recommendations this week.
01:06:16
Speaker
Nope. I don't have any recommendations other than please read my column. I wrote about corporate stock buybacks and how they're terrible and they should be taxed for a lot more than 4%, which is what Biden suggested at the state of the union. And my general recommendation is to let Jason get off this podcast so that he can go rest before he melts into his chair.
01:06:33
Speaker
Well, I forgot I was going to say something going back to why Elon freaked out about Joe Biden out engaging him. I think that partially was because Joe Biden is considered so uncool like he has like an uncool vibe about him or he did. Oh, OK. So, you know, you can't be you can't be outshone by the uncool president, this 80 year old dude, 80 plus year old dude.
01:07:01
Speaker
Uh, anyway, just wanted to get that out. Uh, not worth backtracking on and keeping Jason, uh, Jason prisoner. Anyway, I'll let Jason go now. Bye bye. All right. When was the last time we had a cool president? Oh, Kennedy. We know that's a hard question to answer. Have any of them been cool? Chester A. Arthur.
01:07:27
Speaker
Mr. Arthur, how about Taft? He had to be buttered up to get out of that tub. That's pretty cool. But is that cool? That's not cool at all. That's extremely not cool. That's apocryphal. That is not apocryphal. That's apocryphal. All right, I'm cutting off recording before I end.