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Condolences to Omegle, Real Estate Agents and SBF
77 Plays1 year ago
- Real-estate class action lawsuit against realtors: Attorney says it costs homebuyers $60 billion per year in commissions | Fortune
- NAR lawsuit: After a $1.8 billion verdict, the clock is ticking on the 6% real estate commission | CNN Business
- Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty on all seven criminal fraud counts
- https://jacobschumer.com/2023/10/31/alan-wake-wrote-about-me/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQXfOfemYpc
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Transcript
Opening Banter and Podcast Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
evening fellas am i still wrong about what that song sounded like yep not even close not even a little bit right yeah as in are you wrong like you're not making the mouth sounds that match i'm not making the correct mouth yeah no i don't think you are
00:00:20
Speaker
The mouth of evil is all wrong. We should tell people what positions we don't have a theme song to introduce it. So I'm going to do it right at the start this time. Okay. Why is this podcast different from other podcasts, Andrew? Because we don't have any music. How dare you? That's because you can't use those words. Cultural appropriation. Yeah, that's not a way. No talent, no theme song. Especially now. What do you mean especially now? No.
00:00:43
Speaker
Go ahead, Andrew. Sorry. I'm sorry. Yes. This is ostensibly episode 28 for November 9th of 2023. I have a squiring mind. It's just three goofy lawyer friends goofing around for their own enjoyment. Nothing we say should be construed as legal advice of any sort. It's not. I'm one of the friends. I'm Andrew Leahy. I'm a taxi technology attorney from New Jersey. I'm joined, as I always am,
Meet the Hosts: Andrew and Jake
00:01:02
Speaker
by Jake. I'm going to get this wrong. You're a land and use attorney. And I just asked you a second ago, I said, are you a bar examiner? I know you're not. What are you?
00:01:09
Speaker
No, so I'm a land use and construction attorney. Well, I know that. Also, you're a professor. I am also a professor. In case you forgot that part. I should add that, okay. I'm a tax and technology attorney from New Jersey and a professor of law now at Drexel, adjunct professor of law at Drexel Klein. Okay, sorry, go on. Congratulations. Cool. Yes, thank you. And I'm also, this is as of a day or two ago,
00:01:37
Speaker
a member of the the board for florida uh board certification the uh or i'm sorry the committee for board certification for local government and land use or uh city county local government in florida which i only mentioned because
00:01:54
Speaker
Uh, like many things that I volunteer for these days, which I volunteer for a lot, man, it's a, it's a lot of stuff that we do.
Jake's Board Certification and Volunteering
00:02:01
Speaker
Uh, so board certification. Do y'all have board certification in your States? I don't think so now. Okay. There might be a state planning one in Indiana. I'm not sure. Okay.
00:02:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's like basically, you know, any any lawyer can practice anything. And then at some point, the bar is like, OK, you've done it so much, you're certified as an expert. You have to pass an exam in Florida, at least for any board cert. But yeah, so I'm going to be helping to prepare the exam, the board certification exam for this field. I'm going to be helping to vet potential attorneys.
00:02:38
Speaker
I'm gonna be helping to propose rules about what it means to be an expert in this field so it's like oh man I signed up for There's there's a total of eight of us in this board apparently the ideal size is nine so like
00:02:54
Speaker
It's nine people for the whole state. Uh, but it's brand new to me. I'll, I mean, you know, we'll see how much work it is or what, you know, what the actual amount of work or the actual responsibility ends up being, but now it's going to be interesting. It sounds like it's going to be a lot of work.
00:03:09
Speaker
That sounds like, I don't see how that's not a lot of work. I mean, that seems like a lot, you know, I keep signing myself up and it just keeps, you know, it keeps working out. I'm, I'm, it's like credit card debt, but for attorneys volunteering, I don't know. You know, it's good for the prestige though, right? Yeah. Your resume, you're building up that resume. Not that anybody at my age or experience level really
00:03:34
Speaker
cares about a resume that much because it's like, oh, we know everybody. So, you know, the resume matters less and less the older you get.
Meet Jason and His Legal Practice
00:03:42
Speaker
But anyway, OK, I'm not the only second person on this podcast. No, there's another second. Well, hold on. I think I think we're all second people. I think we're all tied for second and there is no first. We leave a chair open for the real host. Oh, my gosh. The listener is first. The listener comes first. Yeah. And by that, I mean the single listener.
00:04:03
Speaker
Yes. Hi, Jacob. Me? No, not you. Other Jacob. Jacob with a K in the middle instead of the C. Well, hi. I am Jason. I am an employment litigation attorney. I sue bad bosses. I sue your bad boss. I sue my bad boss. I sue all kinds of bad bosses.
00:04:24
Speaker
So if your boss is bad and you're in Indiana, preferably in the central Indiana area, but I go all over, then I'll see your bad boss. Maybe you said you see your boss refuse to comp my meal, which I had with myself at lunch the other day. Can you sue him? No. Why would he comp your meal? Cause I was hungry.
00:04:46
Speaker
He's just a mediocre boss at that point. He's not bad yet. He's not obligated to pay for your meal. If he took your spray and dumped it out on the floor, I think that that maybe that gets close to bad. Any of those sort of prison moment moves. Yeah. Yeah. You know, what would be more concerning is if he, uh, if he forced you to clock out for a lunch break because, you know, lawyers time clocks. I mean, we do, but I mean, all lawyers, I guess I don't, you know, I don't bill for lunch break. So.
00:05:15
Speaker
Yep. Yeah. So I see bad bosses. I'm also anti-work lawyer.com all sorts of fun domains. I'm the domain domain collector at this point. Yeah. That really should sort of, it's slowly. You're hearing your capacity as a domain owner of really like it's fine that you're an attorney, but all we really care about is the domain. And, and for all my domains, I can't get the one that I actually wanted, which is ramseland.com, which is available, but it's $15,000.
00:05:45
Speaker
So have you ever looked on archive to see what it was? Yeah, it's never been anything. Oh, I just did the other day. I'm sure market failure. I'm sure that somebody, somebody is probably just using it to host their email on and they're not publishing a webpage for it.
Podcast Theme and Random Chat Platforms
00:06:01
Speaker
So I tried to email.
00:06:02
Speaker
the admin, what I guessed would be admin at ramslan.com. And you know what? It was undeliverable. So life is pain. What a jerk. Yeah, that's true. That's the thesis of this podcast, actually. Life is pain. Life is pain. Life is pain. Yeah. If you take only one thing away, it's that none of this is legal advice. And then the second thing is that life is pain.
00:06:24
Speaker
Yes. OK, so talk about life is pain. I thought a fun mini topic we can touch really quickly is Omegle. We're going to have to explain what it is. Because I don't know. This is one of those things where if you're of a certain age, you certainly know what it is. Right. I have no idea what this is. You have no idea what this is? OK. No idea. Explain it to me. This was pre-Web 2.0 or maybe right at the cusp of Web 2.0. I feel like this, I think we can look at the grade. 2009 or something it got hot. 2009.
00:06:51
Speaker
Yeah. 2009, it gets hot. It is the first, I think, or at least was the first popular, um, randomly match you with another user and you can chat with them. I, what I remember was via text. It was like a chat box that you just, if you went to amigo.com hit chat, it just connected you to somebody and you can talk to them. My understanding has been moved to the same concept, same concept is like chat roulette.
00:07:13
Speaker
Yeah, but I guess that might have done video first and then Omegle sort of picked that up. I think the original Omegle was text, I think. Is that right? Is that your recollection, Jake? Yeah, yes. Well, yes. I will say, if they said at that point that there was video, I would have been like, heck no. I'm not randomly video chatting with a stranger. I would not have done that.
00:07:34
Speaker
That is, I was thinking about it. I thought this would be really for me, this would be a great productivity tool. Imagine a some sort of app you install on your laptop that if you like goof off for too long, you are randomly connected to someone else via webcam. Like, you know, as a punishment. Yeah, as a punishment. It was like, oh, you minimize Microsoft Word and you moved on. You're you're browsing whatever. You're going to get connected to a random person and have to talk to them for 30 seconds in, you know, 10 seconds or something. I would I would absolutely never not be productive.
00:08:03
Speaker
all I would do. This is my nightmare. Yeah. It sounds awful, but apparently people liked it. Question mark. Yeah. I think it was like a thing people did when like, you know, uh, if you have your friends over and you're together and you maybe have been drinking a little bit or something and you're just like looking for something to do and you don't mind seeing some random, uh, non-consensual genitalia. Um, you just, you know, you just throw it on and see like, see what crazy stuff happens.
00:08:34
Speaker
I would expect mostly non-consensual genitalia. It's what I would assume. It's sort of like if you told me there was a webcam that randomly connected to all the monkey cages in zoos around the world. I feel like pooping in their hands and throwing it is what I'm gonna see.
00:08:50
Speaker
Right. And so same thing here. I feel like that that would that would be what I would expect. And it seems like from what I'm reading is there was a hefty dose of that. But there were also people using it like especially during the pandemic to sort of, you know, feel less alone and connect with people and stuff like that.
Omegle's Closure and Legal Challenges
00:09:05
Speaker
Well, on TikTok, there's like some creators where their whole thing is they match with people, they match with people on a megal and then did like crazy, impressive or cool things with the people that they randomly matched with. So like, there's a guy, I think his name was Marcus Veltri, who he, he's like a professional like concert pianist.
00:09:27
Speaker
And he paired with a professional concert violinist and he would wear a Halloween, like a monster get up like dressed up as like Jason or something. And he would say request any song and they'd request a song and they would just play it because they're professional and they're extremely good. And it was really cool because you're just like surprise random people with concerts.
00:09:49
Speaker
playing like you know their favorite like they would play like the call of call of duty zombies theme or right uh studio ghibli song and that was so wholesome yeah no it was very wholesome yes exactly that that for every the one out of a thousand would be super wholesome cool content
00:10:08
Speaker
You wonder if those two matched, like you have to imagine they were not going on there for that purpose. Like the concert pianist was not going on saying, I wonder if I could maybe connect with a concert. What'd you say? A violinist? Yeah, there was a violinist and a pianist. It seems like a long shot. So you probably weren't there for that, I'm guessing. But you happened to come across this person? No, they're together in the same room and they match with randoms. Oh, I get you. OK, I'm sorry. Then there's also a guitarist named The Do, I think,
00:10:38
Speaker
the DOO who like pretends to be like a you know a bad beginning guitarist and then he turns around it turns out his guitar is like a double guitar and he plays like two guitar parts at the same time anyway it might be bucket heads secretly um but yeah there's cool stuff like that
00:10:59
Speaker
But yeah, for the most part, it was a hive of scum, so. And villainy. Yeah. Well, it is no more. So that is the point where we're bringing this up. It seems it just has been sort of, like I don't really, so if you go to the Omegle.com website, which I hadn't done in 15 years, but I have done now, you're met with a grave saying it's, you know, 09 to 2023, and the owner, designer, writer, programmer, et cetera, has a sort of,
00:11:29
Speaker
diatribe, I would say about freedom on the internet and how it's terrible and this is a loss, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm really, I'm not making fun of them or anything.
AI in Contract Negotiation and Mediation
00:11:40
Speaker
I suppose it is, but I really thought when I heard this that, oh, this must be a lawsuit. I mean, I thought we're going to talk about it probably because this has to be a lawsuit.
00:11:48
Speaker
somebody's going after like some horrible thing happened right some someone did something bad to a kid or something based on you know using your connecting via amigo it seems not he's not saying that he's not saying he's sued out of existence he's just saying that he can't deal with it anymore and that's it
00:12:03
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I think Omegle, so this is something that I learned as a public defender is that there's a federal law that requires certain kinds of constant providers to provide information on people who commit child pornography crimes.
00:12:20
Speaker
And so it might be that like the cost of, I know Omega was a mandatory reporter because I got some warrants that were based on information from Omega. Maybe that was like too expensive to do because Omega never like monetized in an effective way, I don't think. They literally just had like Google AdWords or something. I have not gone on Omega since I was in undergrad. So I can't say one way or another.
00:12:48
Speaker
I honestly didn't know they were still running. I assumed these sorts of websites were long. We're dead. Yeah, this is. Yeah, it does feel like a website out of time. Yeah, it in part of that diatribe there he does talk about.
00:13:02
Speaker
people have become more ornery. That's O-R-N-E-R-Y, E-E-R-Y, not the other thing that it sounds like. And it sounds like there's a constant barrage of attacks on communication services, Amigo included. And so, you know, people did crime on there and it cost people money and it cost reputation. And so,
00:13:24
Speaker
Part of the diatribe is basically, it's not worth it for me to do this. And you know what? That's not surprising. I feel that, yeah, that seems accurate. Yeah, I would totally agree. When I think about running a service like this and these sorts of things you would have to see and stuff you'd have to respond to and things you need to deal with, I don't know the number I would need to be making per year to make that worth it. And just sort of having your name tied to it too is like,
00:13:50
Speaker
Good luck doing anything else. You're this person forever. Somebody was like, I founded Omegle. I think that would be very impressive even if Omegle didn't have a great brand. It's like, yeah, that's really impressive that you built that. Yes, as long as it went out this way and didn't crash and burn the alternative way with some sort of really public
00:14:12
Speaker
horrible event having happened on, you know what I mean? Like you don't really want that. If you just shut it down and no one really knows the details of what was going on on there, I could see that. But, uh, crashing burns a bad way to go. Yeah. Among tech people, I think they'd be into it. They'd be, that would be, make them even more popular among like, that's true. They'd be like, Oh yeah, they, they took you down, man. They, like, they were, he built something beautiful and then they destroyed you.
00:14:40
Speaker
Yeah. Didn't they zip tie your mom? I thought I heard that. What about your mom? What? Zip tie? What? Oh mercy. Yeah.
00:14:49
Speaker
This is taking a weird turn. Okay, we can move on. Our second mini topic. I don't know what this is. I think Jake put it in the... I put it in somebody else. Sorry, if this is like a topic without a sponsor, but there was like some company that bragged about... This was actually from Matt in our Slack.
00:15:12
Speaker
I think. But it was like a company that was bragging that two AIs successfully negotiated a contract with a human intervention. Oh yeah, yeah. I don't know. I don't know. It seems like they're likely to be involved. Well, they were like, yeah, successfully negotiated a contract with that human intervention. Also, there were lawyers on both sides monitoring.
00:15:33
Speaker
And it's like, is that really what you're saying it is? I think it's called autopilot. Yeah, it's like that is that just that is that just chat GPT working and you watched it like, you know, is autopilot on my car, the car driving while I supervise it or is it me driving without barely ever touching with some. Yeah. Yeah. My thought on this any of an intervention.
00:16:01
Speaker
Yeah, my thought on this and with chat GPT as well is that it is quite a bit more difficult to correct the errors in a full document that has been generated by a person or an AI than it is to sort of do the work and do the research and write it yourself. Like if I imagine I had to draft a contract that I really didn't understand any of the underlying things I was attempting to have this contract contemplate, right?
00:16:29
Speaker
I would have to as I reached each section, I would have to look into it. How can I best look at other contracts? How can I best sort of encapsulate what I'm trying to encapsulate? How can we know what examples are out there? And I would learn as I went, if I went to chat GPT, and I said, here's the the, you know, here's like the maybe the term sheet or whatever, generate a contract for me, the level of expertise I would need to have to look over that contract and really know if that was correct or not.
00:16:55
Speaker
would be quite a bit higher. I think about it in the context of tax a lot. If I sat down and wanted to answer a client's question about a specific tax provision and whether or not it applies to them, I would do the research as I went and so I would know what I was talking about because I just looked into it now. But if I just went to GPT and had them generate an answer and then I was checking to make sure that was correct,
00:17:16
Speaker
I don't know if I'm qualified to do that. I think I'd be looking to find someone who wouldn't have needed to research it to write it to begin with. Does that make sense? Yeah. I mean, you definitely wouldn't want to trust that it's thought of all the issues that need to be thought about, right? Right. And if I can't either, then this is a problem, right? If it sort of gets out ahead of my skis, this is a big problem because I can't rein it in. The actual thing that happened here is one firm, the firm is called, it's a legal tech firm called Luminance.
00:17:45
Speaker
They basically created two AIs, which I don't think that's actually what happened. I think they created one AI and then imposed two instances of the AI. And they went back and forth over the details of a non-disclosure agreement between Luminance and one of Luminance's clients. I don't know if it's a real client or a fake client, but in any event, they created two instances of an AI that negotiated over an NDA.
00:18:15
Speaker
Cool. Congrats, Luminance. You put two instances of an AI working against each other and they successfully had a chat. This is like Twitter bots having conversations with each other on Twitter, except slightly smarter because you have caused this AI to ingest probably tens of thousands of different NDAs that can be found using Google searches.
00:18:41
Speaker
You know kind of what the permutations of an NDA look like. And that's fine. It's an interesting thought exercise to see an NDA being negotiated by one AI and another AI. What I'm wondering about here is what they seeded it with.
00:19:00
Speaker
So for example, what information was ceded to the AI for this customer prosapiens and luminance? Did you see the AI with these are our objectives in negotiating this contract? What was the prompt more or less if you're thinking about interfacing with chat GPT or
00:19:21
Speaker
Dolly or something like that. You do it with a prompt. Our prompt here was, here's a baseline NDA, here are our objectives. And they eventually came to compromises. Did you seat it with what compromises are acceptable and what compromises are not? Because basically then what you're doing is
00:19:40
Speaker
having a mediation where it's a race to the middle. And you've already told the computer is what the middle is. And so they're going to probe and find out what the middle is and get there, which is fine and interesting. I'm glad they're doing it. It's an interesting thought exercise. It's a good experiment to run. And it's probably going to be run a hundred thousand more times. But I'm not sure that it really accomplished anything other than, you know, like an
00:20:10
Speaker
orchestrated game of battleship where we've organized our pieces on the board and you fire until you get a hit and like, oh, okay, we can agree on this point. Let's move on to the next. That's what it is. It seems to me.
00:20:23
Speaker
I would love to see, I think this kind of article, this kind of puff piece is completely useless to a person who's interested in finding out to what degree AI is actually capable of doing something. Because I want to see the language that was struck out. I want to see why it was struck out, what you prompted it, as you said, Jason. Did you give them your ideal
00:20:51
Speaker
NDA provision like I and then it's not about like I don't know about you guys. I rarely I've negotiated a few Contracts which had NDAs in them, but I've never negotiated a standalone NDA. There's a lot of like NDAs that are part of Settlements and that kind of thing. Yeah so
00:21:18
Speaker
sometimes you will negotiate some objectives that are and give up some objectives in order to accomplish other objectives that are more important to you. Yep. Finding out which one is more important to you is such a huge part of it. It's like, did they basically just, it sounds to me like what they did was they put in simple paragraphs and it's like, try to figure out the middle ground in this paragraph. And it's actually super simple. What happened? And also it was,
00:21:48
Speaker
It was and it sounds like it might have just been like an English tool.
00:21:52
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. That's what I was thinking, because if you if you make the prompt sufficiently sophisticated, where you're going in and saying, like, here are the business decisions, I want you to wait, you know, this, us winning on this point, very heavily, right, this, I really want to get this, you know, this in the contract. These are ones that are negotiable. 5050. These are ones that are 20%. Like we give it 20% weight, I don't mind if we give these up. There comes a point where the prompt subsumes
00:22:19
Speaker
whatever the work is that you're doing. Yeah, it takes forever. Yeah, all it's really doing now is it's just generating an English doc. It's almost like translating a doc is what the AI is doing. It's translating your bullet points of what you want said and done into a written nice piece of English that can be read.
00:22:35
Speaker
And that is quite a bit less impressive. And I, in fact, I think GPT-4 could probably do it. You could probably do it on chat GPT. If you just said, you know, if you took like, take an NDA that exists, right? Go line by line yourself. This is not a prompt. This is you do it. Go line by line and make bullet points for what each line is intending to achieve. And then tell GPT to generate a contract, an NDA that makes these points. I bet it would look remarkably similar to the one you pulled all that stuff from. Right. Because it's good at writing language, just writing language, just converting it to
00:23:05
Speaker
And it can probably do legalese, you know what I mean? It can probably pick up the tone that should be taken and stuff. And so not nearly as impressive as, but part of it is, to Jason's point, a lot of it is like business decisions.
Real Estate Practices and Legal Reforms
00:23:19
Speaker
So I don't even know how you could make a demonstration like this that would be impressive unless you had it maybe ingest internal documents from the client and have them
00:23:31
Speaker
have the AI then smartly do the weighing of points. In other words, we know that what you really need to make sure you get in this contract, whether or not you realize it is this point. And so we negotiated hard for it and we got it for you. That's impressive. That would be impressive, but also I wouldn't trust that in a million years as of right now. Yeah, that's exactly right. One of the things that this sounds a little bit similar to was a few years ago at a conference,
00:23:59
Speaker
Somebody was talking about a pilot program that was being run. Maybe it was in some Canadian provincial court or something like that where they had basically set up this software system for small claims to be mediated essentially by software where people will put what their demand is, what they're willing to accept and compromise.
00:24:20
Speaker
the other side would do something similar and kind of the computer would see whether a result, a middle ground result was possible. And it was one of those double blind things like, okay, if everybody agrees that a result is possible, like if there's crossover between these two, you know, if the Venn diagram has an overlap, then great. We'll run the calculations and here's your settlement. And that's an interesting thing that we could take and apply
00:24:47
Speaker
Uh, the sort of machine learning AI thing to where you interact with the AI in a settlement discussion, a settlement preparation. Uh, and you tell it, these are the parameters that I'm willing to accept. And the AI, having done this a bunch of times and looked at.
00:25:04
Speaker
thousands of settlement agreements says, what do you think about this problem? Is this an important factor to you? If it is an important factor to you, what are the parameters that are necessary for you in a confidentiality clause? Do you care about that? Do you care about non-disparagement? How much do you care about non-disparagement? Is it worth actual money to you to have a non-disparagement clause or not? And so I see value less in
00:25:30
Speaker
AI is negotiating against each other, and AI is facilitating a mediation between people who can specify their parameters. And essentially, we're destroying an industry here, or we're disemploying mediators, or what we're actually doing is creating a mediation system
00:25:51
Speaker
that can be implemented in small claims courts where the value of the case, the stakes are low enough that it doesn't make sense to pay hundreds of dollars an hour for a mediator. That's the application that I think is really interesting is not AI is negotiating against each other, but AI is helping people negotiate against each other and reach a conclusion rather than just get stuck in the mud.
00:26:14
Speaker
Yeah, I think that is like the theoretically best case where it happens, though I also think that people who are in, like people don't negotiate like that because they care a lot more, like even at the big level, people have such emotional stakes about this thing. Yeah, it's the principle. Yeah, even reducing it to writing is a huge challenge.
00:26:40
Speaker
Um, trying to get, I can't remember the last time I got, uh, like the best I can get a client to reduce to writing their objectives is the amount, right? Like here's the maximum I'll authorize you. That's about it. But like the, uh, like if trying to get somebody to explain exactly what they're trying to accomplish through their NDA.
00:27:05
Speaker
That's a, that's a theoretical legal question. That's like, that's very hard to explain even for an expert. Um, but, and like, that doesn't go away when it comes to small claims. Like if anything, people in small claims, other than like, we're a collections company, we have a debt of $4,000 and you aren't paying it or $400 or whatever it is. Uh, and we know you're going to default anyway.
00:27:31
Speaker
other than that kind of thing. It's still principle driven. Yeah. I wonder, so does AI have now enough reputational standing such that, is the general consensus that these
00:27:51
Speaker
that AI is brilliant and gets almost everything correct. And this is astounding, such that an application like that would work to kind of bamboozle parties into believing that this is the ideal outcome. This is the good outcome. Yeah, right. And they said, well, look, if the computer says it, like, remember, like, old 80s movies where they would talk about that sort of stuff, like, there'd be some problem, and they would say they put it into a computer, and the computer gave them the optimal answer, and it's this, right? And everybody seems to just accept that.
00:28:17
Speaker
Would that happen where you can just say, this is your optimal outcome for you financially and for your terms of terms that you've given us and don't question it? Would it work? Well, it depends on how you program the AI. Do you program the AI to be Chris Voss, who's the hostage negotiator who wrote the book, never split the difference? Or do you program the AI with
00:28:39
Speaker
getting to yes, which was the baseline curriculum for mediation classes in law school, which is the exact opposite of Chris Voss, which is get to the compromise, get to the middle ground. And Chris Voss is like, no, squeeze every last drop that you can out of it. And he programmed the AI.
00:29:00
Speaker
bloodthirsty, cold-hearted? Show up to the mediation with a bomb vest. No, no, no. I have a much simpler answer to your question, Andrew. Are AIs trusted enough such that clients will trust that they actually came to the correct conclusion for them? I'm going to go with a hell no, brother. There is no chance.
00:29:22
Speaker
My clients, like if I tell a client, uh, like I, many of my clients trust me. I, if they, if I've told them something, they understand that I've thought about it. Right. And I've fought for it, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But if they believe they deserve more, they believe they deserve more. If AI sends them, no, you deserve less. They're not going to trust that. Like, um, they, they are not, I don't think they're going to believe an AI saying, actually it's 12 grand.
00:29:51
Speaker
as opposed to the 30 grand you think you deserve. I think they'll trust that much less than the human telling them, I don't think your case is going to as a reasonable value of 12 grand or however you end up phrasing it. But what if we put that AI? They definitely don't trust that. I get that.
00:30:11
Speaker
What if we put that AI in an anthropomorphized robot and it looks like one of the Disney animatronic guys from the hall of presidents or something. And you've got Abraham Lincoln with an AI inside of him telling you, this is a good deal. You should take it. Like, is that going to work? We're going to need a more universally trusted figure like Iron Man. There you go. Yeah.
00:30:36
Speaker
When you said anthropomorphize, I was imagining like the Chuck E. Cheese band, like maybe the rat drummer or something, right? Like repurpose to come in and tell you, I'm sorry, you're a slip and fall. It's five grand. You should take it. That's all you're getting at Chuck E. Cheese, by the way. We have my bar association tomorrow. This is too late by the time we're listening to this. So unless you listen in the morning. The bar event is at Chuck E. Cheese, isn't it? Oh, please.
00:31:04
Speaker
No, it's about chat GPT and lawyers. Um, but it's just interesting. It's like, we can't, we can't trust them to write a paragraph that is accurate. Um, not quite yet. Not totally them being GPT. Yeah. And so like, that makes sense. Yeah, exactly. Right. And so we can't trust them to negotiate either. I think the best stuff on this,
00:31:30
Speaker
I'm waiting for the academics to experiment. So many for-profit companies are coming out in vague articles about the thing their AI did. And it's all, I don't even think it's about drumming up business, it's about drumming up capital. And so I'm waiting for the academics to show that it actually did something good. Though I will say the case text feature that drew up a memo, I forget who gave it to me,
00:32:00
Speaker
or helped me with that and use the case text AI feature to generate a memo on the due process. It was like, hey, that was good. That was exactly what I was looking for. Maybe not exactly, but it's very useful. We would never disclose who did that because that's for personal use under their license, right? So we would never know. In fact, it never happened. JJ eyed that up. Thank you for the trial case text of your AI tool.
00:32:25
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Well, case exit is now part of Westlaw or Lexus. I forget which one. One of those big two. Yeah. Yeah. I think Westlaw is Reuters, right? Is that right? Yeah. Thompson Reuters. Yeah. It's all parent companies all the way up. Yeah. Thompson Reuters actually owned by Tencent, which was owned by the People's Republic of China.
00:32:48
Speaker
Is that true? No. Oh, I don't know. It's not that implausible. It could be true though. Right. It's not that crazy. Jake's got that deadpan delivery that actually convinces you that... Yeah. Thompson Reuters got bought up by Tencent. Wow. Okay. So talking about buying up things and I don't know, I have no segue for this. The real estate commission is probably going away. This is our main topic, right? No, it's not. I don't think that's the conclusion of that case. It's not the lead.
00:33:16
Speaker
It is that they are going to be. I thought we were doing optimistic 2023. I think Jason was saying that that's what he was trying to do. So I'm trying to come in here with some optimistic energy and say all the realtors of the world are going to be out of a job real soon. And you're just bursting those bubbles.
00:33:35
Speaker
2021 was the year of optimism. Oh, really? What? This is not that timeline. Where's the pessimism now? Well, 2021 is the year that I finished watching Ted Lasso, and I was optimistic. Oh, OK. Yeah. You've come down off of that now. Ted Lasso, season one. OK. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I've come down a lot since then. I both bought and sold a house since then. Yeah. And then you watched Ted Lasso, season two, and you're like, oh.
00:34:01
Speaker
Maybe the world is terrible. But then season three bounced back and he moved back to Kansas and all was great. Okay, spoilers. Oh my God. That was Telegraph. No more.
00:34:14
Speaker
Sorry if I spoiled Ted Lasso for you, you're late to the party. By the way, Bruce Willis has been dead the whole time in Sixth Sense. Oh, no. Oh, man. I was like, are you going down the road of Bruce? You know he's having health problems? Yeah. I want to remember him at his best, which was that and his cameos on friends, which were excellent.
00:34:45
Speaker
So the real estate commission is probably not going away, but it is probably going to be less of a gross, filthy cabal than it once was because there was this huge lawsuit. The first one has come to a judgment in Missouri.
00:35:05
Speaker
And that judgment so far is a $1.8 billion verdict against the National Association of Realtors, Keller Williams, and maybe some other big national real estate firm. I think a couple others settled out of court. I think maybe Remax had settled out of court and another had settled out of court for something on the order of between one and 200 million.
00:35:31
Speaker
I think that was, yeah, there you go. Between the two of those firms, basically saying that this is a super anti-competitive system, which by the way, I wholeheartedly agree with. It definitely is though. It absolutely is. It is. It's hard to even fight that.
00:35:49
Speaker
Yeah. As I understand it, the main target of it was this really filthy, disgusting system whereby the seller of the house, who's the person who's going to be getting a big check written to them, signs an agreement with their selling agent for a five to 6% commission, usually 6%. Sometimes if the market is competitive, maybe it's closer to five.
00:36:16
Speaker
You sign a check that is going to have a 6% commission, which if your house is worth $500,000 is going to be $30,000 of commission for this person who is taking pictures of your house or hiring someone to take pictures of your house, putting it on an MLS system and giving you some very, very basic legal advice, which I also have questions about. And that person is going to be paid $30,000 for doing this.
00:36:44
Speaker
And I'll tell you what, that is stupid. They're not actually going to end up with $30,000 in their pocket. They're going to end up with $15,000 in their pocket because the way they have constructed this system to entrench themselves is that the buyer's agent gets to split that 6% commission with the seller's agent so that you basically can't get a buyer's agent to come look at your property unless you get on that MLS, which is gate kept by that 6% commission.
00:37:11
Speaker
And also you agree to pay that buyer's agent a 3% commission. So the whole thing is gross, nasty, ugly, and I am delighted to see them getting slapped around in court for 1.8 so far. And they haven't even gotten to the part of it where there may be, I think treble damages at stake for this. Uh, and so they could be on the hook for up to five and a half, 6 million. Yeah. Yeah. Billion. Billion. Excuse me. Yes. Billion.
00:37:42
Speaker
I think the beginning of the end for them was when the MLS got
00:37:49
Speaker
I was Zillow that first sort of like got access to the MLS and made it open for people to just like regular access to search and look. Yeah. Because I don't know about you, but when any of the houses I've bought, I have sent to my agent the houses I wanted to look at and they always like added a fourth that was terrible and wasn't at all in keeping with what the other three were like an AI would honestly do better finding something that was similar.
00:38:13
Speaker
But I didn't I mean didn't you find your own house or did you have an agent find each of your houses? I think we found our own house. Yeah. Yeah I did not hire a buyer agent to buy this house I heard I had to hire a seller's agent to sell my house, right? And so they just get the full six percent, right? Well, I don't know about that because she screwed up and I think she got in some big trouble But I mean, okay, so let's not talk about your particular horrible agent and talk about all horribly Hey any of that commission obviously because you were the buyer right, right?
00:38:41
Speaker
Right. Right. But I think in that situation, they get the full six percent. Sure. Ordinarily, you know, separate and apart from your your your. Well, my when I was a seller, they had a thing where it was like if there was no buyer's agent, then you'll then I'll get five percent.
00:38:56
Speaker
dual disclosed agents because they will, because of this cabal, they're your agent and dual disclosed. So there's never, at least in New Jersey, this was the situation, you're never not represented by an agent. If you don't have an agent as the buyer, the seller's agent becomes your agent and you need to sign a dual disclosed agreement, dual disclosure agreement that they are
00:39:16
Speaker
Like, I don't know, representing both. I don't know. It feels so wrong. It feels like it should be illegal. Absolutely. That should be dual. Like it is the most conflict of all conflicts to represent the buyer and seller. It is the most clearly zero sum situation, right? Every dollar you give the seller is a dollar you take from me.
00:39:35
Speaker
Right. It has to. That's the only way it works. So I have no problem with the existence of real estate professionals. I think that there are plenty of situations where they can add some value to a transaction. If you are moving to a new area and you don't know anything about it and
00:39:55
Speaker
you know, Reddit is a hellscape and tells you that every neighborhood is terrible and you can't find a single place that's livable. And you know, Google has no useful results because it's all next door people being racist. Then like, yeah,
00:40:11
Speaker
In that situation, if you talk to a real estate agent, they can help guide you on that journey for a situation like mine where I know approximately what my house was worth. I know how to sell it because I'm a lawyer and I have done these transactions for people before. I shouldn't need that, but I did need it because it was gate captain.
00:40:35
Speaker
Our guy was very friendly, great, did a nice job for us, squeezed some money out of the buyer for us.
00:40:46
Speaker
did a fine job. I'm not complaining about him. I am complaining about the situation where in order to even be considered in a transaction, you have to be on this MLS that is gate kept by 6% of the total value of your house. And that part I think is what they were getting at in this lawsuit in Missouri. And it's at least one of the main points that they made. And that 6% gatekeeping costs, like let's let people meaningfully intervene to
00:41:16
Speaker
interfere with that and have something like
00:41:19
Speaker
Zillow and Redfin that is not poisoned by the National Association of Realtors to preserve the five to six percent real estate commission. And let's let them actually put things on this MLS and let's not have allow Realtors for buyers to confine their searches to only the MLS like, oh, you can't trust what's on Zillow. You can't trust what's on Redfin. Let's break up that cabal. God bless these people for working this lawsuit because they're doing the Lord's work.
00:41:49
Speaker
The MLS is definitely like the thing that makes the least sense and is most clearly anti-competitive. Because if you're an owner at this point,
00:42:01
Speaker
If there's very little reason why you should not just be able to put it on a website that it would be a competitor to MLS and say, here are my pictures. Maybe you get a realtor to, you know, you hire somebody to stage and help you present. It's not going to cost 30 grand or whatever it is. It's going to cost a lot less than that. Um, and then that would be it. Uh, and I know that's the danger for realtors. I do feel bad for all my, I have a, you know, a lot of people who.
00:42:31
Speaker
This is their livelihood. And man, the transition is going to be wild and terrible for them. If it actually comes now, which it seems like it's probably going to come sooner rather than later.
00:42:47
Speaker
I've worked with realtors that were towards the end of their careers and they'd been doing this for 40 and 50 years. This is a career. It boggled my mind then when I watched what they were doing that this is your whole thing. I kept waiting for you. Where's the bit of the job you don't understand? This other aspect that's like what you don't know is that, man, at night I'm down there just crunching those numbers trying to make this work.
00:43:13
Speaker
It never seemed to come. There never seemed to be that other part of the job. And I think they got about as far as they're going to get.
00:43:22
Speaker
with all of that and the internet age has caught up to them and people started asking those questions. Like I think millennials basically started buying and selling houses and asking, what are you doing? What is this? I don't understand. HGTV ruined everything. Yeah. Maybe it was HGTV because everybody suddenly had a real deep understanding of buying and selling and like marketing houses. I know that there is like a market of houses which
00:43:51
Speaker
I'm not sure if they go on MLS, but they have real specialist realtors because they are so expensive. There are way fewer buyers than normal and the sellers don't want to have to deal with a bunch of normies being looky-loos and just wanting to look inside the cool mansion. And maybe those are justified to the 3% commission on both sides.
00:44:14
Speaker
Uh, and you know, getting 3%, like those are cases where the buyer is so not cons sensitive that they could very well get an additional three or 6% or something like that just through their marketing genius or whatever. So we have a ridiculous, sorry. I am, I am the test case for that where I know how to complete a real estate transaction in the state of Indiana. I know.
00:44:41
Speaker
uh, the market in the Indianapolis area because I've lived here. And even when I didn't live here, I didn't live far away. And also I have friends and family who live in the area. And so like, I know it, I'm the test case for this and I go out and I make an offer on how saying, Hey, I'm unrepresented. So this whole transaction is going to be less costly to your seller.
00:45:03
Speaker
And so that's why my offer is a better offer than you might see from someone else. And they say, Oh no, well, we don't negotiate our commissions in purchase off purchase agreements or purchase offers or something like that. Like that is, and that was Keller Williams, by the way, Keller Williams, you suck. And yeah, I'm, I am positively
00:45:25
Speaker
How would the British say it? I'm chuffed that Keller Williams is getting stung by this. If we decouple the buyer's agent commission from the seller's agent commission, that is a great start in the right direction. Super happy to see this lawsuit going through and resulting in a huge judgment so far.
00:45:51
Speaker
I mean, that interaction is exactly why they lost, right? Because as a broker, the fact of your existence shouldn't be such a downside to
00:46:08
Speaker
uh to you know to the whole transaction as an owner oh yeah yeah yeah you don't negotiate our permission you i mean you probably should right um yeah i guess because they also i mean there's like thinking about as an attorney there's pressures that not go too low like societal pressures don't go too low
00:46:29
Speaker
because then you'll depress the market rates for our other lawyers. I mean, it happens at every like freelance contractor kind of situation where like if you go too low, you're going to undercut other people. But like this is totally different. This is like some other entity is determining the commission. Yeah. And that's nuts.
00:46:49
Speaker
I see a fiduciary duty problem in it too, where if I'm the seller's agent and I have this contract where now I'm the one who's got to negotiate with the buyer's agent to see what kind of commission that they'll have to take from my 6%. I've got a fiduciary duty of loyalty problem there because what if there is no buyer's agent?
00:47:09
Speaker
don't I have a duty to my seller that I'm working for to say, in the long run, this deal is actually better for you because really I'm only counting on 3% in this transaction. Even though my contract says five, that's the part that's really just vile about this whole thing. And if we decouple those, a lot of that goes away. Is there a fiduciary duty for brokers? I don't think there is one in Florida.
00:47:33
Speaker
there's a fiduciary duty for agents generally, right? The agent has a fiduciary duty of loyalty to the principal. Yeah, I think I remember talking to somebody and talking to a broker and them being very clear that there is no fiduciary duty in Florida. Like they spoke about it like,
00:47:57
Speaker
This was their defense as to why what they were doing was okay when they were basically compromising a person's negotiating position who they represented. Florida statute 475.011 I says, the duties of the broker as a fiduciary are loyalty, confidentiality, obedience, full disclosure, and accounting, and the duty to use skill, care, and diligence. I think that person was full of beans.
00:48:23
Speaker
Okay. How do you like duty of loyalty and negotiate with someone who wants to purchase a house because they don't have an agent? Here's the question. How do you have that fiduciary duty of loyalty when you also represent both people in the transaction?
00:48:37
Speaker
Well, yeah, that's hard. Because in this case, the same brokerage represented two parties. And one of the brokers, the buyer and seller in the property, and one of the brokers, the broker that represented the seller was highly pressuring that seller to go lower to satisfy the buyer.
00:49:06
Speaker
And they were just like, why are you doing this? And they were like, we don't have a duty. We're not compromising. There's no conflicts. There's no fiduciary duty. That part may be true. If it's a dual agency situation, then in my mind, they end up basically less of an agent and more of a mediator. And that I think is stupid. And we should get rid of that too. But what do I know? I'm just a civil rights lawyer. My bet would be some sort of
00:49:34
Speaker
convoluted argument that the duty of loyalty is to act in the best interest of your client and the best interest of your client is to like uphold the cabal and make this sale using a real estate, another, an agent that you like, for all the reasons you were saying, Jacob, like you can't trust listings that aren't in an MLS because they're, they're, you know,
00:49:52
Speaker
there's going to be shenanigans or something. So the best interest of your client is to, of your principal, as you are an agent of, is to act within the confines of the system and only negotiate with the people you're supposed to go. I'm betting some sort of nonsense like that, because otherwise I don't understand. There's no way. You can't have a duty to loyalty and have it discharged when you are... Imagine if
00:50:15
Speaker
you hired an attorney to represent you for something, and you noticed that before they were getting to the merits of your case, they were discussing with opposing counsel how each of them were gonna get paid, right? Like, let's work this out. How are we gonna, we'll split some money, how are we gonna, how can I feel like you're representing me? You're not, by the way. It's funny, that does happen, though. Oh, does it? That totally happens. It shouldn't.
00:50:39
Speaker
I mean, like it's that, you know, the defense attorney, there's a thing, the defense attorney night, like in most of these cases, defense attorney is getting paid hourly by somebody and it's like maybe they're in insurance, you know, whatever, but they will definitely make a deal with the plaintiff's attorney for like where the plaintiff's attorney gets paid their, you know, 30% or 20%, 25% or whatever it takes a cut.
00:51:03
Speaker
Um, where they're negotiating on terms, basically where it's like, we were going to make it profitable for you and then don't go for anything else because, you know, um, even if it wouldn't be as good for your client. Um, it seems icky. I want to be clear. I've, I've never been presented with a situation like that where, you know, I can detect plenty of times where I think defense attorneys are defending a bad case that they know that they're, uh, that they know is a stinker.
00:51:32
Speaker
so that they can squeeze a bunch of fees out of their client. Like, I know that there are times when that happens, but nobody is, no, even on the sly, no defense lawyer has ever come to me and said, maybe it's just because I'm unlikable, but they've never come to me and said, Hey, let's, you know, you wet your beak, I'll wet my beak, right? Eh? Like that's never happened. Is that how they sound anyway? That's, that's, I like that. I watched the Sopranos.
00:51:56
Speaker
Oh, okay. This is not the same situation at all, really. But in Florida, I'm just going to use this excuse to tell the story. But in Florida, you are not allowed to
00:52:11
Speaker
have a pure referral fee for an attorney. You can only get a paid attorney's fees if you actually work on the case and only commence for it with your amount of work. So there's, theoretically, under the rules of our professional responsibility, there are no referral fees. You can't get 5% just for sending a case to somebody, for example.
00:52:35
Speaker
Um, but it happens all the time because how are you ever going to police that? Right. Um, one time there was a, uh, there was like a medical malpractice case. There was, and one attorney sent it to another attorney and, um,
00:52:53
Speaker
And that attorney who sent it to the other attorney, they had a contract where that attorney got paid 5%,
Crypto Industry and Legal Challenges
00:52:59
Speaker
did zero work on the case, filed an attorney's lien. And there was a whole motion for summary judgment over that attorney's lien for 5%. And then the judge started asking, hey, you're not allowed to do this. Under our professional rules, you can't just have a pure referral fee.
00:53:20
Speaker
and then they then the two attorneys agreed to dismiss it immediately as you as you do right but the trial judge was like no i'm gonna rule on this right now you don't get to dismiss it i'm returning jurisdiction and then the and then they appealed that order because they're like hey we dismissed it you didn't have jurisdiction appellate courts like no we have jurisdiction we know what you're doing uh but it's just like you know if you
00:53:46
Speaker
There can be things that are illegal, but if both parties have the incentive to have it happen anyway and it'll never see it a light of day, it won't just happen. Their entire economies will spring up based on that existence of that illegal arrangement. And that, my friends, is how we end up with the National Association of Realtors and their huge lobby spending.
00:54:13
Speaker
The entire economy of illegal actions. They're like the second biggest lobbying spending industry, right? They are. Yeah. I think they're behind the NRA. Is that right?
00:54:27
Speaker
They're behind into it. They're behind into it. That's true. So I was looking at it. The National Association of Realtors, it was started 116 years ago. It's a 501c5, which I always forget what that is. That's a- The tax profit forgets. Yeah, some sort of tax. They have a membership of 1.5 million members.
00:54:50
Speaker
Yes, they are the second largest, but I don't know what the first is. I personally- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is number one. Oh, yes, okay. I personally, if real estate agents go away, I feel bad for the individual people who aren't getting paid and will have to go do something else.
00:55:06
Speaker
Um, but, uh, I'm fine. It just, it doesn't make sense the way it works now. If you're an owner of property, you should be able to hire a company to make your property look good, give you any contracts that you need, and then you can put it on Zillow, you know, like put it on something similar to Zillow, maybe a uniform Facebook marketplace database like that. And there are companies, Facebook marketplace. Why not? There are companies that will do that.
00:55:35
Speaker
and they'll do it for a much lower cost than 6%. The problem is the buyer's agents won't show you those houses because they're part of the cabal too.
00:55:45
Speaker
Right. Yeah, I mean, that's the real thing. But I think Jason, you said it. I can see the point of this. I was just doing quick math because there's a monstrosity house around the corner from where I live here. I think I've showed it to you guys. $25 million house. This guy was a pharmacist who started a company that has some sort of genetic profiling thing to suggest to you the best.
Sports Celebrations: Texas Rangers Win
00:56:08
Speaker
You have just several different blood pressure drugs. You lived out from the Sacklers, right?
00:56:13
Speaker
Is that how you know? No, no, I'm being sorry. Yeah. Oh, I don't know. I lived from the ushers from, uh, I don't know. Yes. Yes. Yes. Um, so he built this monstrosity, but then got ousted by his company, et cetera. Huge, $25 million house. I don't live in an area where there should be $25 million houses. My house is nowhere near that. Obviously, right. I wouldn't be on this podcast. I'd have, I'd have better things. Well, you, I've seen like your security wing, you have like a security wing where you like, you know,
00:56:43
Speaker
You monitor everything moving. Uh, and it's super cool. It's nest cameras. It's not $25 million worth of the media. It's nice except for that weird wall of mirrors. Weird wall. The whole house is a wall of mirrors. Yeah. The wall of mirrors everywhere. The coolest room I was in when I was a kid was always the room at the gym, which had a carpet and just like a wall of a mirror. Do you know what I'm talking about?
00:57:07
Speaker
Yeah, I don't remember a carpet at the gym. Why is there carpet at the gym? It's like, I don't know what it is. It must be an 80s thing. We have strayed all the things. You're so far off topic. Now we're talking about why are there carpets at gyms. But I'm into it. I want to know. What are they putting carpets in the gyms for? OK, so with that, we're doing carpet stuff. My grandparents had a carpet covered toilet seat. I think that's...
00:57:34
Speaker
Even weirder than not the lid, the lid. That sounds like it would feel nice for the first time that you use it and then untrustable for the rest of the time. Just the lid, just the lid, not the seat. It was not a carpeted seat. It was just the lid. Oh, well then that's useless then. But I remember thinking like is the idea here that we're so wealthy, which they weren't, we're so wealthy that we've carpeted everything even this because the carpet match the carpet in like the actual regular carpet on the floor in the bathroom.
00:58:02
Speaker
Very strange. I don't know what that was for, but I also don't know why you would have carpet in a gym. Anyway, point being, $25 million house, 3% of $25 million if I'm doing my math right is like $750,000. I think if somebody manages to sell that place for $25 million, you should get $750,000. You've done a good job. It's worth it. Go for it. I get specialty things, but like for normal houses,
00:58:23
Speaker
Why? It's, I mean, someone's going to buy it. Like, what are you doing? What are you really like? You're not marketing it per se. You're just listing it. Like you said, half the time I've sold my parents house when they moved out of it. Redfin hired a photographer that took all the pictures. The agent didn't do that. The agent had nothing to do with that at all.
00:58:39
Speaker
All they did was know how to work the little lock box when people wanted to see the house. That's it. That was the whole thing that she did. Well, but I have a whole staff and I have to advertise and all that stuff. Like, Oh, do you really have to do all that stuff or can I just put up a website? Right now? Yeah. People just like look in the area that they want to buy in shops by, by a certain real estate agency. Now what kind of psycho would be like, Oh, I'm not buying from anything but century 21.
00:59:07
Speaker
I don't care if the house is ideal. That's the only people I'll work with because my dad worked for them for 108 years and it killed them, but I only work with them. Now that we've burned all the bridges with the, uh, with the two realtors who listened to this podcast, uh, I'm, I'm, you know, we're saying true things. Uh, and also we're saying opinions, which my opinion is truth. So, uh, how do you, how do you like me now? That sounds true.
00:59:34
Speaker
They'll be working somewhere making little rocks out of big rocks. And they'll be doing just fine. You've got, you've got great marketing credentials, right? Yeah, for sure. Um, okay. So, uh, moving on, uh, last little bit of like followup stuff to the extent we care. Cause I think we talked about this. Sam Bankman freed, found guilty, all seven criminal counts. He was the FTX guy and the Alameda research guy. Uh, do we care? He's going to, he could go away for 115 years. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I think it is what?
01:00:04
Speaker
Did we talk about it in the context of it's weird how much of Stanford was behind this guy? No, but I like that. It is funny that like, so like Stanford professors somehow got super into FTX. Cause his father, his parents are Stanford professors, right? Yeah. And that, yeah. And though there's like, he had a long time girlfriend who testified against him and apparently came off super well in the stand.
01:00:32
Speaker
Yeah, he did not. And he did not. Yeah, Coinbase still stands alone as a company that seems to actually maybe want to continue existing as a business. Very diplomatically handled there.
01:00:54
Speaker
Yeah, would like to try to, at least until, so we're doing this every two weeks, we'll probably be talking about them with some sort of issue next time we talk. Well, the SEC is arguing that their whole business model is illegal, so maybe they get destroyed. They're saying that it's securities, right? Yeah, they're saying that their staking service, for example, is a security, which I have some Ethereum staked with them right now.
01:01:21
Speaker
Um, what's the, uh, what's the meme that is with the astronauts always has been going to the back of their head. Yeah. And not like, I don't, I don't care that that's the, that's the funny thing is like so much of the S E what the sec does is like.
01:01:39
Speaker
The more educated like you
Nostalgia in Film: Rocky, Rambo, and Stallone
01:01:42
Speaker
can be fully educated and about what's happening and understand the risk. And it's not a problem. But the problem is that, you know, you're selling to the problem is like the possibility of selling staking in a completely bold, you know, BS fashion with no regulation, you know, like railroad. There's plenty of railroad bonds that are perfectly valuable investments. But and
01:02:09
Speaker
But, you know, it was complete hucksters selling trash railroad bonds to rubes. Right. That that ended with the SEC existing. So I know like I know the deal is staking. All that money could could blip apart in an instant. I'd be like, well, that sucks. But anyway, because I'm not. Anyway, when the economy collapses. Yeah. I mean, when the economy collapses, maybe it goes up. I don't know.
01:02:39
Speaker
Um, but, um, but that's because I, you know, I read, I'm investing the tiny amount of crypto into crypto that I am comfortable losing, but that's not how a lot of people approach investment. They're like, Oh, crypto's the way to go. I'm going to put all my life savings as the crypto or game stop, or they got you on or AMC. And instead of, you know, just like investing what they're comfortable losing into something.
01:03:07
Speaker
changing their avatar to the laser beam eyes. Right. Yeah. That is an interesting point because when you think about it, the SEC's sort of the tacit, like one element of the distinction between a security versus not is the disclosure requirements you have to go through, right? And so the idea that somehow the sorts of disclosures that will meet what the SEC says is required
01:03:28
Speaker
Will sufficiently put on notice everyone involved in investing in this that they could lose money Would suggest then that there should be no one who ever lost money in the stock market and said I didn't know that could happen right and I don't think that that's true right because no one is reading those disclosures these circulars and things that are that are being
01:03:48
Speaker
put out no one's reading them they're just investing there you know you're they're opening an account with robin hood app and they're buying shares of something and it's click wrapped with some sort of i agree stuff and technically there's all these documents you know on sec edgar that you could look at if you wanted to but no one does well some people that's the thing i don't look at them
01:04:06
Speaker
but there are industry analysts that look at them and they will say like, hold on, this thing actually looks scary as hell. And then the market real will react and I'll be like, Oh, okay. But maybe this is a problem that I should be sure. Maybe I won't buy that one. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well then we don't care if he might go away for like 115 years. I don't know that long. He's going to probably terrible tragedy. Yeah.
01:04:33
Speaker
Uh, the only other follow-up we have is the Texas Rangers or world series champions. Do we care? Sure. I care who the world series champion is. I appreciate that. It's a relatively, it's a team that hasn't won it recently. So they've never won it ever. It's their first. Right. I mean, I'm, you know, the fact that it's not like the Dodgers or the Red Sox or, you know, one of those teams that seems to win it all the time. The Red Sox probably ages me to elder millennial status, but you know,
01:05:03
Speaker
uh, Astros. I don't know. National Red Sox, saying the Red Sox winning the world series a lot places you actually, it not only ages you, it also sets a limit on how old you can be because of, right. Like it's because of the curse. Yeah. We could zero in on, it's like, like, uh, uh, coring the ice and looking at the strata. We know exactly when you lived, if you think the Red Sox win the world series too much. Yeah. When I think of the Red Sox, I think of winning the world series. That means that I came of age during the Ortiz, Johnny Damon, Damon,
01:05:33
Speaker
Kurt Schiller. Manny Ramirez, yeah. You were right at the right age where the movie Fever Pitch just really struck a chord with you. Oh yeah. You absolutely loved Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore. I loved Jimmy Fallon. Oh yeah, Mandy Moore. Mandy Moore, what? I've never seen that. Wasn't she in that movie? No, it was Drew Barrymore. I don't know, maybe she was- Drew Barrymore? Drew Barrymore was the girlfriend.
01:05:54
Speaker
I thought Fallon was a New York guy. He's a Boston guy. I think it grew out of playing me. Yeah. Oh yeah. He was the guy in that movie, but I'm pretty sure that grew out of that dumb skit that they did on SNL with like an Enoma. Oh, geez. All right. Anyway. Okay. What about Freddie Prince Jr. And what was that summer?
01:06:19
Speaker
Freddie, Prince, you, you was a pitcher in a baseball movie. I'm dying. Summer. It's mostly called summer fling. All right. I'm looking at her.
01:06:30
Speaker
So anyway, the world series. Classic summer catch. Texas Rangers won the World Series. I feel really good about somebody winning the World Series for the first time in twenty twenty three. Feels great. I'm glad it's if it can't be the Braves. I'm glad it was not the Astros and not the Dodgers and not the Phillies. God help us, not the Phillies. Thank you. But, you know, there's good stories to be had there. You got Max Scherzer at the twilight of his career winner World Series.
01:07:00
Speaker
You've got Josh Young at the dawn of his career winning a World Series. You got Adolis Garcia, who maybe wasn't quite as great in the World Series as he was in the ALCS, but still really, really good score. I mean, the ALCS, that was a legendary ALCS for a player. Yes. Yeah. That was crazy. He shot up the all-time home run list and hit list or something. He went from not even being on there to being, I don't know, top five or something.
01:07:26
Speaker
Yeah. Good for them. Yeah, I'm super happy. Longest route, I think, if I remember correctly, that team was the longest route. Longest without a World Series victory, I assume, because they had a couple of appearances in 2011 and I think 2012 or something. So I agree. Great for them. I will do my recommendation quickly and then I will let you all do yours. It's a pretty simple one. The Sylvester Stallone Netflix documentary, pretty good.
01:07:52
Speaker
Surprising for millennials that have one conception of him and that could be kind of upset a little bit. Doesn't seem to be an idiot. Yeah, I wouldn't say he's an idiot. The story of how he wrote Rocky is crazy. I found out about that one like 15 years ago. Which one?
01:08:13
Speaker
the the first one no well which so the two stories are that he stole the whole idea from a new jersey guy uh bayon bleeder uh chuck wepner who fought mohammed ali and knocked him down and salone was watching that and wrote rocky that's one story that's not even stealing a story that like that doesn't that's the thing right like you the fact that a story happened and then you wrote about it the person who wrote that
01:08:38
Speaker
created like that is the hard work. The fact that it happened, it's like saying, Oh, you know, you stole the story of World War Two. No, that's not the story that is to the world.
01:08:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's saying band of brothers was terrible because that's the real thing that happened That guy though smart guy yeah, no, that's that was my that was the story that I had heard which is like about him like creating this
01:09:12
Speaker
this very good script, like interesting writing. It's a great script. It's a great movie. Like the original Rocky, if you watch it, it holds up. It is compelling. There's a lot of decisions where you go, this guy made that decision and he had never made anything before.
Gaming Highlights: Alan Wake 2 and Artistic Impact
01:09:29
Speaker
It's a fantastic movie. And the same thing goes for Rambo, like for First Blood, which is like, you don't realize how political that movie is.
01:09:36
Speaker
when you don't actually most I don't think most kids have watched Rambo or First Blood they just know Rambo as like a character that kills a lot of people and it's like that shirtless guy yeah at all no uh and he talks about that he conceptualizes Rocky and Rambo as the two extremes of
01:09:54
Speaker
One is completely see smiles that everybody happy with everyone sees the bright parts of the world and everyone embraces him. That's Rocky Rambo is no one has any time for him. He sees the world as a cold place. And these are like the two extremes. And I don't know if it's post hoc, you know, rationalization that he's coming up with that later, but
01:10:13
Speaker
super thoughtful documentary really has some like actual insights into stuff and surprising. I didn't expect that. I thought he was going to be kind of a little bit of a meathead. Yeah. Yeah. No, he's that's the thing. Like his his the two movies that like made his name are both way more interesting than their sequels or like the public conception of them were. So like I always I don't want to say always because the like I had that conception then I
01:10:41
Speaker
learn the story of Rocky and also of First Blood. And I was like, oh, this is like really this is political and personal. And it's like in a way that I didn't understand. And also he's like kind of like he made his own way in a way that I didn't understand. No one would cast him. So he wrote his own parts. And so if you apparently if you read the novel that Rambo is based on, he like heavily changed it for the movie. It doesn't it has almost no the original Rambo from the novel is like a homicidal maniac.
01:11:10
Speaker
He apparently like met with Vietnam vets that had come home and had difficulties and stuff and rolled sort of all of their stories into one and was trying to make a political movie. And that's why there's that a couple of years ago there came out the it's on YouTube. You could see like the alternate ending where he gets killed, where Rambo gets killed by Colonel Trautman at the end.
01:11:29
Speaker
And he apparently walked off the movie and said, I won't shoot anymore if you're going to try to make that the ending. Because I'm not going to have this movie about a Vietnam vet that comes home and has difficulties and then dies at the end so that vets can watch this and say, oh, OK, so there is no hope for me. I'm not doing that. That's interesting. It would have been a very fitting ending. Right. But his idea that this was tied to real people's experiences was like, well, I'm not going to. I can't end on that note. It has to be hopeful or whatever.
01:11:59
Speaker
Long story short, interesting documentary. Highly recommend. I'll stop there. Yeah. Confession time. I've never seen either one of those movies. They're better than you might think. You've never seen Rocky? Either one. I've never seen Rocky. Or Rambo. I've never seen Rambo. Did you grow up outside of the United States? Yes. I've never seen either one. You should watch one of them. You should pick one. We should do a Swearing Minds movie.
01:12:29
Speaker
thing. And this would be great because, like, you're this probably you're like one of those people who hasn't seen Star Wars. Everybody's seen Rock, especially of millennials. Everybody's seen parts of it. It was on TV. Yes. The thing is, Star Wars has continued. Rambo. They've keep making Rambo movies. They're making rockets, too. They do. And they keep making Rockies and the the Rocky, the new Rocky movies movies have been really good, too.
01:12:53
Speaker
Yeah, so. Never seen a one. This could be our first movie, like Christmas special where we talk about. We can do a watch along. We can MST3K the first blood. That's great. Just our three little heads. Or Rocky. Okay. All right, so I think Jason should go next with recommendations because I feel like Alan Wake is going to be. Because I'm going to talk too much about it. Yeah, that's true. If you're going to talk too much about it, I'm just going to leave.
01:13:18
Speaker
Uh, I don't have any recommendation. I don't have any recommendation this week. Uh, I am hyped about the super Mario RPG remake, uh, or reboot that's remastered. It's coming out for the Nintendo switch. I'm excited for it. It'll be out by the next time we talk. Cool. Me too. The, the Nintendo writing is always so like unexpectedly funny to me whenever they come out with a, with an RPG, it's like,
01:13:46
Speaker
It is self-aware in a way that I, that is always surprising for people who otherwise just play like Mario and it's just like, and then, uh, and then the RPG comes out and they're making like jokes, which like sexualize goombas. And anyway, Oh dear. Okay. I have good nostalgia for the original. I'm excited to play it again. And my nine-year-old is pumped too. Cool. Nice. Uh, yeah, my recommendation is that I'm like two.
01:14:15
Speaker
Um, I, I feel like I do this all the time, uh, because it's been a great year for games. Alan Wake, uh, is a, this game makes me say things, which makes me feel silly, but I've also seen other people say things like, wow, why aren't more games art? Things like that. Um, like, cause this is like, this is,
01:14:43
Speaker
Like a video game equivalent of watching. I would say like Studio Ghibli for the first time or something like that. But like imagine every single game is a Marvel movie and then suddenly outcomes like Inception or something like that. It's like, oh, there's like some people can make interesting things like people can make things that seem like really intentional. But Alan Wake for people who don't know was a game that came out 13 years ago.
01:15:13
Speaker
It's a kind of horror influenced shooter game. And the concept was you're a writer, you're having problems in your the Alan Wake as a writer, having problems with his marriage goes to a little town in Washington, very twin peaksy. And he starts having like, uh,
01:15:34
Speaker
He starts going through a situation where he starts finding written pages lying around, which seem to be written by him, which predict the future and say what's about to happen. And so he finds a page written on the ground that says that, then the taken attacked him and suddenly gets attacked by a thing. That's the simplest conceit of that first game.
01:16:01
Speaker
And that is, you know, that itself is kind of like a, they do, it's very interesting. It was good. It doesn't hold up super well, uh, in terms of gameplay, it's not that fun to play. Um, but they, so 13 years later, they came out with a sequel. It's the best, it's a survival horror game, uh, where the main mechanic like the first game is there are monsters which are covered in shadow and you make them vulnerable by shining your light on them.
01:16:31
Speaker
Um, that's the main shooting mechanic, but like the first game, it's also Alan Wake is writing and the pages that he's written, which are sprinkled everywhere, keep coming true.
01:16:45
Speaker
Um, and the interesting thing about it is first of all, it looks incredible. It is their visuals in this that I'm just like shocked. They're able to pull off. Like you're walking through the forest and suddenly you're also seeing a subway station and they're laying over each other with different lighting. And it's like hard to tell what you're even looking at. And it's like, nobody else is doing this. Um,
01:17:10
Speaker
But really, it's just like the writing is so dense, and it seeps into every part of the game. You play as both Alan Wake, who is stuck in like a nightmare dimension, and Saga Anderson, who's an FBI agent who is investigating killings in Bright Falls, the place where the first game took place. And it's so interesting because
01:17:36
Speaker
every single element of this game seems authored. When you're playing as Alan, you're in this nightmare dimension and you're in a nightmare version of New York City. There are signs everywhere that looks like New York City. All the signs are like, you're a terrible writer. Nothing you say has any artistic merit anyway.
01:17:54
Speaker
one of the first situations you appear on is like such a nightmare scenario, which is you appear on the talk show, where somebody a talk show host is asking you questions about a book you don't remember reading. And you have to answer for the audience about this book. And it's like such a specific nightmare. Right. And all of this is just
01:18:18
Speaker
It's hard to even express the level of design that went into this. And it's just so interesting that this came out and it's like like inception is what I would I would analogize it to where like there's little elements that are throughout the game that are just like so every single word seems to be placed intentionally and
01:18:41
Speaker
That's compared to like Baldur's Gate 3, which I think me and Jason have played. I don't know if you did you play any about Baldur's Gate 3, Andrew? I have not. No. OK, but that's like the Lord of the Rings. Right. It's a very traditional adventure. Right. It's good, but it's like traditional. It's like there's a bad guy and you go and you destroy the bad guy. And it's cool. You know, there's like some cool relationships that happen along the way.
01:19:07
Speaker
And then there's like there's like Zelda, which is its own. Right. Like similar like, you know, as a traditional game. Yeah. And there's so many good games that came out this this year that are just like mind blowing. And this is another one in a totally different way.
01:19:25
Speaker
I ended up writing a review of it. I was I was inspired enough to write a review this game has soaked into my brain with all of the imagery and writing and The the review is written in the form of Alan Wake writing about how I'm about to write a review And I'm not even the only person that did this Apparently somebody else wrote this exact form of review I didn't get that it was a reference to how Alan Wake is
01:19:54
Speaker
Written and so I thought yeah possible you were just going insane. Yeah, no finding sheets of paper places, but obviously not really Yes, so it is that reference but also it's funny because in the game Alan Wake is not a very good writer it was a fun thing to write because in the game Alan Wake is The dark dimension is a
01:20:19
Speaker
There's a lot of it that's analogous to writer's block. And so he needs to write his way out of it. Everything he writes comes true, but if he writes it in a way that doesn't match the genre of what he's writing, which is horror, then it will not come true and it'll bend back on him.
01:20:44
Speaker
Um, but his writing style is like a lot of short sentences a lot of uh abstract language so like He will write a lot of one-word sentences So his writing style is extremely different from mine. And so it was fun to write in that style about myself Uh as like just an experiment and we'll put that in the show notes. Yeah Um, but it was it
01:21:13
Speaker
It's I strongly recommend it for anybody who wants to play video games for like the direction of it or just like watch. Watch somebody play the first like hour of it or something and see whether you're into it because like the first five minutes really declares itself very strongly. Hmm.
01:21:34
Speaker
about what, this is what the vibe is. The vibe is dark and lots of kind of, they withhold information better than anybody else. That's the studio remedy, which also made control. One of their best, the qualities that I really appreciate from them is like, they have a shared universe with their other, with control the other game.
01:22:02
Speaker
But they are very good at not giving you the answers like they will pose the question and the question is part of the fun and they will not give you the answer they will let you feel out the The realities of the world, but they will never give you a direct answer
01:22:19
Speaker
But you can figure it out. If you think hard enough, if you read enough about it, you can figure it out eventually. And for a person, if you like to think about your media, it's like perfect.
01:22:32
Speaker
I'm sold, I'm going to, I will buy it. It works on, like Xbox is good enough. Xbox Series X, yes. Right, okay. It's definitely a next gen, like it is the best looking game maybe out there, which is crazy for like a relatively small studio, but it is the best looking game. Yeah, if you, like, but you have to be okay with being scared. This game is scary as hell. This is so scary. This game is actually the scariest game I've ever played.
01:22:59
Speaker
He's out, but he's also falling asleep, I think. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just I'm just a way out. Yeah, no, like there's like and they scare like watch that first like five minute segment because it is immediately like, oh, yeah, this is scary as hell. It's like the vibe is true detective meets like Twin Peaks or something like that. That's cool. I like all those shows. Yeah.
01:23:27
Speaker
Yeah. All right. It really it really rewards people who pay attention to the studio because there's a segment where it's where the the director of the of the studio is in the game.
01:23:41
Speaker
Playing a character who is analogous to Max Payne, who is another character from another game they made 20 years ago that they don't own the rights to. And then they comment on the fact that they don't own the rights to that character anymore in this game. They don't say that directly. I got to do homework before I can play this game, I think.
01:23:59
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's the thing. Like it's it's fun. It's fun context if you have played the previous games or if you know about them, but it's not necessary. The story like holds is designed to hold up whether or not you know about them. Is this fun to be like, oh, that's, you know, that's supposed to be Max Payne. And when he's complaining in this in this thing about how he doesn't get to be involved in the
01:24:24
Speaker
Adaptations of his work anymore. He's talking about max pain because they made a movie for max pain and he didn't get to be involved in it anyway It's so deep sorry And and also there's a there's a they have a van on call called legends of all which is a Which is in the game as? the old gods of Asgard by the way, there's a
01:24:54
Speaker
The Norse going Pantheon is heavily involved in this in this whole series. This is like the stage There's a God can't all the difficulty there's a