 It's Thursday, July 5th, 2018. I'm rim and this is Geek Nights tonight. Bike shares and car shares and I guess scooter shares because that's the thing. There's more money in scooter shares than bike shares. Holy shit. Why don't we make one? There's someone's trying to do it in New York and the city's like, yeah, if we find your scooters, we're taking them. Why don't we go work for them? Because there's some shitty start up that will pay you in stock. And the city's not going to let them do it. Why not? Why don't they make a deal like the bike shares? Yeah, because I feel like there's corruption involved. I feel like there's a lot of reasons why there's going to be no deal and nothing cool is going to happen. But also those scooter share things seem to be really shady and or shitty. Like Vespas. No, I'm talking like the worst of the worst possible scooter. That's what I'm saying is they should be given a real Vespas, the high end ones. Yeah, I mean, Zipcar was basically that with actual cars and see where that got them. Like I probably ride a Vespa, give me like 10 minutes to practice whenever. Doesn't seem hard. All right. I should go to if I go to Europe, I should get one. I guess got an opening bit about the fireworks. Wasn't it? I saw something about Macy's isn't doing it anymore. Yeah, it's gonna be. Yeah, we didn't do a show on Tuesday because it rained. And I guess we don't do shows in the rain. Well, I was home all day and then I was going to come down here. But it's like it was inconvenient to come down here with any method other than bicycle. Which is true. I'm not I don't blame you for that. And it's raining and it's like, well, suppose I couldn't help but think of that Seinfeld where Jerry's trying to find out why Newman did deliver the mail because it's raining and it's like it was raining. Neither rain nor since the first one. But I had the Geek Knights is not the U.S. supposed to serve it. We never made a claim that nor whatever will cause another rain nor sleet nor nor PUBG update will keep us from making our appointed podcast. But so we didn't do show on Tuesday because of that, but rest assured, the next Tuesday show, we're talking about PUBG. We're going to go because we're playing. Do this episode about the Odyssey, which I said I was going to read while I was on the beach and I read zero words of it while I was on the beach. And while I would like to say, come on, Scott, we were supposed to do the show on the Odyssey. Zero words of it on the beach. I read. No, I read one or two words because I looked at it on my phone and then I decided that was not the time nor was it the place to read the Odyssey. And instead I closed my eyes and took a nap in the sun. The fireworks, though, yesterday from our rooftop, despite all these buildings built in my neighborhood, there's really just one building. Yeah, well, they build all these other buildings. None of them are in the way of the fireworks. That's the one that's been in the way for like two or three years. Yep. So there's like, I think there's five Macy's barges or four Macy's barges. We can see the fireworks from all but one of them. You can see barges one, two and four. The building blocks barge number three, but it blocks it like a hundred percent. It's almost funny. It's like it's censored. Yeah, it's it's pretty much it's like this is a black bar over there. It's a good time, though, because I went running during the day because I don't have to work. And I forgot that the fourth of July, the neighborhood we live in, or that I live in, especially, becomes kind of a problem whenever there's a fireworks. Well, remember when it used to be on the Hudson River? Then it wasn't a problem. Nope. But I think it's time to go back to the Hudson. We had East River. It was Hudson River so many years in a row. And I was like, what the fuck? Why, you know, East River? Then they did East River so many years in a row. Yeah. All right, we can go back now. But well, I guess the argument would be still, but I mean, my argument would be the East River. If you put them where they put them, the maximum number of humans can see them. You got three burrows right there. Where they put them right now. The maximum number of New York humans can see them. I think that's exactly what I said. No, you said maximum number of humans. And on the other side, it would just be Jersey humans. I'd stand by my point. But basically, everyone from the suburbs and everyone from like far out parts of New York come to our neighborhood to try to watch the fireworks and people who live in New York know the deal. So like you show up and cops like check your bag and they don't let you carry alcohol. What's that? A Bort Connecticut license plate? Turn your ass around. You ain't parking here. But the funny thing is the suburban people because they just, I guess there's must be like some set of 10,000 people every year who cleverly think, wait, why don't I just drive to New York and go where the fireworks are going to be? And I'll see them real good and real close. Get here at the crack as a dawn and stand in a place where they won't let you leave and you can't pee or poop unless you peep in your pants. More importantly, you find out that you're not allowed to park fucking anywhere in our neighborhood if there's fireworks way out and take a train in just like everyone else. Yep. Actually, if you took Metro North and then a subway, you'd probably be all right. Yeah, actually, you'd be as all right as any other New Yorker. LIR has a stop right there too. Yeah, I'm sure it's running. I think that one only runs on weekdays that aren't holidays though. It's a small weird stop. It's a connection to the seven. Like I want to use it to get on the train to go places. Where are you going to go on Long Island? Exactly. I could use it. There's there's a there is a LIR our way to get to the airport for the first time in my life because we biked to the beach and then I had to get home. I used it to visit Emily from Ron Concoma. I think I were you in Ron Concoma because I drove Lisa to be with her family. Okay, and then I took the train into the city for a few days. Anyway, left your car in Ron Concoma. Yeah. Okay. Now take it into the city. But the funniest thing are all these people from out of the city drive in and they don't know what to do when the cops are like, Yeah, every road over here is closed. Pedestrians only. Oh, and you can't park anywhere because no parking during the holiday. And I don't know what to do. And I witnessed easily half a dozen separate cars of chubby middle aged suburban white folk screaming at cops and demanding something to happen. Well, the cops stand there. There's a particular New York pose a cop has where they either cross their arms or they have like one hand on their head. And they're not rolling their eyes. They're not actually rolling their eyes. But the eyes of the soul are rolled. I think it is if you're a New Yorker, it's sort of like obey and you know that would like a day live, right? Yeah, I look at them. I see their eyes going. Yeah. But when a suburb person looks at them, they're not moving. Yep. Basically what the cops body language is saying on the glasses, I can translate the New York cop body language because that cop body language is I'm waiting until you stop saying words and then I'm going to say the exact thing I just said to you again and we'll repeat this all fucking day because I'm getting paid overtime and I literally do not care. And I may put you in jail if I feel like it. Yep. I'm not too lazy. But then they get clever and they think, what if I just drive onto Roosevelt Island? That's right next to the fireworks. When I biked home. Yeah. I went past Roosevelt. Oh, you saw the cop there. There were many cops. Yeah. And I saw actually a bunch of cars coming off the island. So I think they may have let people on, but I don't know who, but it wasn't, it wasn't like, you know, a flood, right? It's like they let some number of people over. Oh, no. Yeah, I know what they do because at that moment, just after fireworks, there was cars coming and much more than there are at any other time I've ever gone. So last year I discovered the Roosevelt Island thing and I asked the cop who was standing there because it was like, it's eight a.m. I was out for a run. And he basically said, we don't let anyone on the island in a car unless they can prove they live there. Or they give the address like an address in a phone number of someone on the island. And then unless there's a line, we'll call that number right then and see if they're lying. And otherwise they don't let them on. So yeah, 4th of July, the fireworks were good. You give them my phone number and name and then I'll pick up the phone and say, yes, I live on Roosevelt Island. Oh, yes. That is my friend. Fandalay Industries. That is my friend. Yes, my address is blah, blah, blah. Roosevelt Island. I think I feel like New York cops, if you have enough of a hustle, they let you get away with it because the vast majority of people have zero hustle because if they had hustle, they'd be living here. I don't think it's that they would be living here. I think it's that you, you know, there are people who respect game. There are people with hustle who don't live here. True. There are zero people who live here without us. That is true. With the possible exception of people who inherited their wealth. Well, no, I guess if they inherited their wealth, they live here. They either get some hustle or they lose all that wealth together, giving out free CDs. Every day I'm hustling every day. So in the news, which is if you haven't seen this story, it's tragic, fascinating. There's a lot going on here. But in case you're unaware, I guess you can introduce is your news. Okay. So in Thailand, those is what's a soccer team, right? I think it's yes for football team. Football team. Sure. Yeah. Soccer team and their coach, they went, you know, on a little field trip into this cave system. And it's like a touristy cave system. You can go explore, which is totally like mammoth cave in the US. I totally want to go to an awesome cave like that. But they ran into a little problem. And let me, you know, let me explain this problem by telling you a story of me and Rimware in Australia. We'll walk it around this island, which is a beach island, but it wasn't in season. And we get to we see all these signs that are like, can't go here between these hours. And basically what happened is during those hours, the tide came in and it was impassable because the water came all the way up, covered the whole beach and covered even more of the land. So you couldn't walk that way. Unless you walk through the very thick brush and probably poison spiders, you had to wait for tide to be low and go out. So then you could walk along the beach, right? So they went into this cave system and the tide didn't come in, but the monsoons did. The monsoon came in and the rainy season came in while they were deep in the cave. And it basically, they can't get out of the cave because it flooded and it won't unflood for months. Now, no one was like, people weren't sure if they were alive. Like what the deal? They were just missing. They were like, well, but they knew they went in the cave. They just didn't know. And it was like, well, they went in the cave. They didn't come back. Oh shit. Yep. So basically the government sent a bunch of military cave divers. We'll get back to cave diving. This is like, this is like 12 or 13 people, right? So you could send a big old search party. It's worth spending. It's not like one missing person. Yeah. The US sent 30 experts, including 17 members of the Air Force, Australian, Australia, Japan, China, Myanmar, Laos, all sent people because all these expert people, you know, who are experts at diving and such, they don't really have anything better to do on the whole earth right now. And they're experts at this. So, and if they succeed, they're going to save a whole bunch of kids lives. Right. So basically the Thai Navy Seals from what I heard went in and they found them in this tiny little area of the cave, way fucking deep, completely trapped by water. And it's almost impossible to get them out. Now, part of the reason why the story is interesting is that the divers are there like bringing them food and all the armchair internet people everywhere. There's comments everywhere. People talk about it. Always seem to ask the exact same questions. Well, if you die, if people dived in, why don't they just put like scuba gear on these kids faces and dive them out? Or these people don't know anything about scuba diving. Yep. So scuba diving is actually a super technical, pretty dangerous thing to do. That's why I will never do it. Cave diving is insanely more deadly than scuba diving. Right. It's like the difference between like skydiving would be like scuba diving. Right. And wing suiting. Yeah. Wing suiting with no parachute. It's like cave diving. Like it's weird that I know a lot about cave diving because of one specific thing. Fark, the web, one of my favorite internet community other than the front row crew form community is obsessed with cave diving because there's a lot of really crazy stories of cave diving. The only thing you could do more dangerous than cave diving would be to do cave dive welding. Dive into a cave and weld something down there. I mean, I guess someone dived into this cave to wet to stick this fancy metal sign into the wall. I doubt they welded it down there though. I'm pretty sure they didn't dive in the cave to do that because the probably wasn't flooded at the moment. No, this this image is underwater. Yeah, it's underwater now, but it's always underwater. Oh, okay. It's all this image is a famous sign from a site that kills a lot of cave divers and the sign basically says it's a really good sign with this skeleton and it just like prevent your death. Go no farther. And then it's just like there's nothing beyond this sign worth dying for, which is true because if you go back there, it's just rocks and water. Yep. And dead people. Yes. Like a lot of the famous cave divers who have died. Skeletons with scuba tanks in a praying position. Yep. But so a lot of famous cave divers have died trying to find and bring out the bodies of their friends who are also cave divers who died. This is how you know something is dangerous, right? Is when that's why I was talking about skiing being dangerous because people who are pros, Olympic skiers will severely injure themselves skiing, right? That tells you it's dangerous. So if professionals at a thing hurt themselves doing a thing, that is not something that a nonprofessional should even go anywhere near. So it's like if the fire eater burns his mouth on a torch, you should not try to become a fire eater. So the reason why they can't just scuba dive these boys out is that it would probably kill every one of them. This is cave diving is such a difficult and technical thing. So they tried pumping the water out, but the water's coming in too fast. So that doesn't work. Yep. They tried. They were thinking about drilling a hole in there, but the area that they're in is so tiny that drilling in there might just collapse the whole thing and kill them all too. And there's a basically a mountain on top of them. There's no good way to drill in. Drilling in would be super, super hard. They're looking to see if there's a natural opening because they found a natural opening, but it goes into a different area that wouldn't help you unless you also scuba dived. Yep. So they're bringing the kids supplies right now and they're debating. They're trying to train. It's a miracle that none of the professional diving people have, you know, messed themselves up while bringing the supplies. They brought like a doctor in there and stuff. I've read a couple of statements that even these experts said this is an extremely difficult and technical cave dive. Yeah. It's like when they go in, there's times where they basically can't see anything. They don't know which way is up, which way is down, or anything. And they have to keep swimming underwater with the scuba tank attached to you and make it through somewhere. And some of the spaces they have to go through. Like I've, you know, I've gone in like archeological digs where there's like certain parts you have to crawl through and it like the place you're crawling through is literally the size of a tiny human body. And you like you basically it's one person at a time in a straight line going through there. And there scuba swimming diving through such a space that is narrow enough for just one person. Yep. And things will happen like, which is fine when there was no water in there because the kids probably crawled through and it was way fun. But once it was filled with water, there is no way through there. Yep. And it's not just a danger to the kids. Like you might say, well, if the flood waters start rising, maybe you got to go for it. There's a good chance that they try to bring those kids out. It will kill some number of the professional divers. Yep. Because the way cave diving accidents tend to work is if one of your people has a problem, pretty much they're just dead. But if they're too close to you, they'll probably drag you down with them. You can't just do something like attach a rope to the kids and pull them through either. That doesn't have to happen. Yep. They're going to have to learn cave diving and scuba diving pretty quickly. Assuming all these kids even know how to swim. Yep. They don't even know if they know how to swim. Granted, at least most of the swimming they would need, there's not that much swimming they need to do. Yeah. But they'd have to learn things like- It's sort of a prerequisite for diving though. They'd have to learn things like- At least intermediate swimming. Like how to use the foot flappers? I don't dive. I don't know any of that stuff. I avoided scuba diving. So I actually did come up with one idea that's not crazy. Right? So they- All right. All right. So here's my idea. Arms are crossed, eyes not rolling. All right. So what did you do? You make a tunnel out of like a plastic tube that's water tight. Someone posted that exact suggestion- And then you pump the water out of the tunnel and then they can crawl through the tunnel. Yeah. I read that exact. So here's a separate question for you. Let's say someone is in like a 10 foot deep pool, like not a super deep pool, and somehow their foot gets stuck on the bottom of the pool. Okay. Could you just take a tube down and stick it in their mouth so they could breathe through it? No, because it just spit all the water out. So let's say then you pump all the water out of that tube. The tube- The tube gets pulled down, no water in it, it has a little cap that's edible. The kid puts it in his mouth, bites the cap off, and now it's just a clean path to air. Could- Would that help the kid? Yeah, I think so. No, it actually wouldn't. Why not? Because the water pressure difference and the tube length combined would make it very difficult for the kid to draw enough air into his lungs to not just something anyway. Oh, see here's the thing I'm saying. It's like you're thinking that the other end of the tube is in the water. I'm like no, no, no. Where the place the kids are in now has air. They're in an air place. How many kilometers deep do you think they are? Very many. How are you going to make a tube long enough to get through any of these sections? It's crazier than drilling the hole. I mean it's less crazy than drilling the hole. I think it's more- And it's less crazy than making him scuba dive. Also, it would have to be rigid and unable to be penetrated by a crawling kid times 13 plus a bunch of adults. Yes. It's not, it's impossible. There's no, material science would not allow this to work. You could, you could do a piece by piece too. Just got to attach them one at a time carefully. No, that wouldn't work. There's no way that to work. One end of it is where the kids are out in the air. The other end is on the air or the other side and then you can pump all the water out. And then you can start crawling through. Why not just pump the water out of the cave? It's the same amount. You can't because water's coming into the cave. That's why you need the tunnel. Yeah, I don't think you could build that tunnel. I think it would take months to build that tunnel. It would be hard, yeah. I mean, but that's, it's going to be hard no matter what the options are. Also, I don't think you could build that tunnel with the constant flooding. It wouldn't, because you don't pump it until the end once it's complete. So how are you gonna, so Scott, some of those passages are really narrow. How is someone going to install the tunnel? Carefully. Nah, ain't gonna work. So in some other news, this is a totally sort of fun aside thing. And it's, I didn't, this isn't rigorously researched or anything, but inflatable tunnel. It starts as a string and then you inflate it. How much pressure do you think you need to inflate it enough? A lot, but you know and how thick does it need to be so that it doesn't get punctured? Listen, we gotta invent it. Yeah, I think we might just invent like a teleporter or something first. I don't think a teleporter is a little harder or a brain scanner. We just scan the kid's brains and then leave them there. Print new copies of the kids with all their memories up to that point and just tell them they survived. Just nuke them out and then we can drill a hole. I feel like that might make a collapse. Maybe. On the kids. Maybe. So in some other sort of side news, if you're not aware of the Dada movement of art, a big part of it is that it came out of the sort of like artistic reaction to the horrors of World War One itself, a product of the logic and reason of the middle-class capitalist society that birthed it. And I don't want to get into like the history of Dada or anything in detail here. It seems like you do though. I do, but I don't want, I want to, but that's not what this show is about. And also, if we go for more than say five minutes, I run out of knowledge and I'm in over my head and I will drown in the Internet. Please someone who knows about art history come down on rim who is over his head and is drowning in a tunnel with no time. So this is a tweet that has a nice thread behind it where basically there's some article that was like why is millennial culture and humor so surreal and dark and weird and meaningless? And I'm just going to read this tweet. This is called Dada and it first emerged in the wake of the First World War out of the belief that a society that could create such a horror had no intrinsic value. Replace First World War with modern capitalism and there you go. So this is an argument and the thread gets into a lot more details and I actually googled around a little bit and this is not a new revelation and this is being discussed in art circles currently by people way smarter than us about how the weird millennial culture and internet bullshit that I like for example all that nonsense is very reminiscent of the Dada movement and has many parallels in terms of the things happening in society that might be driving it. So this is my defense of potato conditions. This is so rim because it is a post-hoc explanation which is the key aspect of rimism. Well most explanations are post-hoc because the world quantum theory in the world. That in and of itself is a post-hoc explanation of post-hoc explanations which is meta-rimism. Yeah because you don't even have any free will you're just rationalizing the things you already did so your entire consciousness is nothing but a post-hoc rationalization of things you did probably randomly. And that is not just one that you don't see. Post-hoc explanations are a core tenet of rimism but that is the core tenet of rimism. But the parallels are very interesting because honestly the current state of late stage western capitalism is pretty fucked and we're really starting to see that it's going to destroy society. Can we have an ism without a late stage it just just keeps working. I mean so far late stage democratic socialism is people mostly have health care. Like so far so good. Alright I think that killed enough time. But anyway things of the day so this was making the rounds if you didn't see it it is utterly delightful but basically in I think Edmonton this couple a man and a woman try to rob a convenience store and it goes hilariously poorly. It goes way bad. Like it looked this the thing is the cops are doing a bad job too. Well because there's only one cop and he's trying to he's been this cop is really trying to deal with the situation without inflicting undue harm or killing anyone. But he's also trying to arrest these people forcibly. Yeah yeah I feel like this cop honestly should have used more force earlier. Yeah just whack him on the head with a stick. But that's the problem is in the UK the cops got sticks they just whack you on the head. Yes a taser too it looks like. I thought it was a gun. And that's why I thought the reason he wasn't shooting it because he's going to kill somebody. If it was a taser you should have shot him right away. Yeah well in this case probably. But basically if you watch this video without knowing it's really you would assume it's from a TV show. Like that is the level. Yeah that TV show it is from a TV show it's called cops. Yeah I don't know if it's still on the air. But it keeps alternating between the dude in the front having this really hilarious standoff with this derp cop. And meanwhile in the back his girlfriend is trying to sneak out and has multiple attempts of sneaking out of the building all of which ended disaster. Oh I remember the one that I saw which is better than yours is the one that is mashed up with Metal Gear Solid. Oh I did see that one that was really good. That's the one that's best so you should post that one because it's better than yours. So my thing of the day is that this video you've probably seen it it really made the rounds. My thing of the day is that people are mashing this up with all sorts of different music. The Metal Gear one is the best. The Metal Gear one is the best one. Yackety sacks is the obvious one. I haven't even I only thought of the Yackety sacks one I didn't actually see one. I did see the Yackety sacks one. I'm sure it exists. And the Lupin the third one works surprisingly well. So yeah you can enjoy this. What do you got for me? So you know there's a there are Jews of a lot of different levels of you know observancy right. There are people who are only barely Jewish and there's people who are very very very Jewish right. And the ultra Orthodox and Hasidim in their neighborhoods around the world some of their neighborhoods are known to be unfriendly to outsiders. So if you were to if they were to see you in public you know disobeying their laws I mean perhaps you were a woman not wearing enough clothes or you come into their neighborhood but you're not a person that they like. I've been yelled at by people in a certain neighborhood in Brooklyn biking there right. They will do things to you like some of them will throw tomatoes at you right. This is a real thing that happens. So here is an animated gif and the title of the animated gif is ultra orthodox men drenching sweet innocent girl in bike lane because you know they they there's a sweet innocent girl biking through their neighborhood and that is exactly what this video is exactly what this hundred percent this is a good video and you should watch it and you may enjoy it in the middle of the book book probably not next Thursday but the following Thursday because there isn't going to be a good night's next Thursday yeah I think with two weeks I think I can get this done. I think it's not a long book we are going to most of the way done already. Yep Emily Wilson's modern translation of the odyssey by homa it's fantastic we keep talking about it just read it you could probably start it today and finish it before us yes it's not long and unlike the translation you read in high school or middle school it's much more readable it's readable and just it is it is not full of ye old fancy talk it's enjoyable directly and at face value even if you do zero analysis and don't worry about any of the metaphor and also the forward gives you all the analysis you possibly need yeah where I don't even know what we're going to talk about other than just repeating what the forward says yep I think I'm mostly going to talk about how my opinion of Odysseus himself has changed yeah and also all the slave stuff yeah and that's in the forward yeah that that is in the forward but it really hits home when you're reading it like especially the nausea bit because she's got a lot of slaves like a lot otherwise uh we are going to be at tax west you didn't buy a badge for it well that sucks good luck I'm pretty sure only monday is not sold out no I mean if you live close that buy one of those mondays yeah monday is totally available still if you don't live close do not buy one of those if you live within like a couple hours trip if you can drive there yeah Seattle or take like a train there are there trains it goes yeah dude I there's an Amtrak that goes from Seattle and Portland I've used it multiple times okay it's actually really really pleasant and actually really cheap but anyway uh monday at tax west you might think oh why don't want to buy the last day it's short right it still goes to like six or seven p.m it still has an expo and it has a omega-thin finale yeah it has a thing that only happens on that day so uh tax west is coming up in 56 days 17 hours 29 minutes and date line this episode right now three seconds and then after that there's going to be other conventions the rest of the year like pack some plug yeah anime nyc magfest right at the beginning of the new year and then right from there into pack south and then the cycle starts again coming up really soon though in new york city when is it it is the 14th of july so not this weekend but the next weekend after that no is going to be the game developers of color expo in oh yeah new york city and the schomburg center i think right that's where it is that's where it was last year yeah i think it's the same place it was last year it's a really great come it was worth it to go for a few hours just like we went last year and i saw like of all the in you know the places or people showing off you know video games and indie games that they made that was the best one that i've seen way better than those chiefs meows and stuff i saw real good shit there so it's worth it if you're in new york city that's josephine there's picture i think there's pictures of our all our friends here okay but yeah if you're in new york city it is worth it to go there for a few hours during the day to check out the awesome games there yep and also you know i'm not saying you should do this this is not a geek night's thing or anything but unless it's like pouring rain me and scott and emily and a bunch of our friends are going to do the harland valley rail ride which we talked about we did it last year it was the best bike ride it went on last year it was it's way fun and there is a version of it for literally all levels of skill if you can make a bike go forward without falling over you could do one of these rides and what the smallest one 28 miles 28 miles something like that yeah that's gonna take a slow person like my mom like four or five hours 23 33 45 57 72 at worse probably three hours for a normal person 100 and the i'm not doing it 100 there's two centuries one of them just i'm doing baby 100 i'm either gonna do baby 100 or 72 because i don't know 72 last year yeah i might do it again it was real fun i'm gonna do baby 100 and if for some and it's like i can definitely finish it no problem i'm like but there is the escape hatch right it's like but the only the only question is it's not will i finish it it's will i finish it in time because i don't i don't have a puff so i have a puff if i don't finish it in time i'll just hop on the escape vehicle i think mostly it's i gotta i'll probably make it at least 80 but you know whatever the time limit is yeah i could do the 80 instead of the 72 i think the problem is it's like it's like only eight miles more why would i do 72 it's because the 80 has way mad crazy hills compared to the 72 that's why those eight miles are hellish eight miles they tack on the hundred is from the regular hundred is probably easier than that 80 that's why i'm doing the regular baby 100 the leg saver hundred is what they call it but the cool thing is basically what we do is we we take like metro north up there with our bikes and other people drive or whatever and we just camp for free just in this park in town and you can go up as early as friday night now they changed it i think we're going to get there saturday morning i think saturday last time we went there saturday afternoon that was too late yep i feel like saturday late morning is the perfect time to get there yeah hang out go to sleep early get a good rest that way you can wake up early and bike right away yep and if it's you me and emily and our friends we should eat at the more expensive tapas place mm who knows if it's any good though i looked at some reviews it seems like it's good it seems like the only complaint people had was that it's way expensive compared to the cheapo italian place we ate it it's one of those places that like new yorkers take the train up for a nice bed and breakfast weekend and that's the place they all it's a little town that has nothing going on yeah that's why i don't want to get there the day two restaurant town because i don't think there is a second day's worth of stuff for us to do there is biking and enjoying the nature that's what you do up there yeah but if we're already gonna bike and enjoy the nature you just do it just do it extra yeah i guess we just bike around there's a lake there you can swim yeah didn't seem probably mad full of water and there's something new this year there's gonna be a hot shower truck whoa last year i didn't get a shower till i got home that's right all right oh we got like 12 people watching this why go away 12 people modern day version of timmy trapped down in the well the metalgear solid one is better yeah are you saying are you saying that last year you can go and rescue the tie kids because if so i got i saw it last to the other day what was the the one that kids now who listened to geek notes to young do remember baby jessica was that the one what you don't remember that kid who fell in the well no yeah baby jessica what was the show how do you not remember this this was like in the air in the mid eight middle eight eighties this was like the news cycle i never remember that do you remember there was a show that was like lassie but it was a dolphin flipper oh that's what that was yeah i watched that okay i didn't watch it by saw it was one of those shows that was either ending or starting next to one of the shows i did watch well because it was on uh nick usually yeah but i think it was in near the tunami slot before tunami exist uh i think it was i think it was boltron then flipper and i was like nope oh man you saw that uh one of my favorite vocalists in the world died who was that knit knit knit knit knit knit knit knit nick that guy really he's gone i didn't the guy who did all the nickelodeon jingles from the height of nickelodeon i didn't even know think of that person i was gonna i think someone even posted someone i think someone posted in our forum about it i didn't see that uh pretty sure anyway i was gonna make that my news next week because i i didn't want to i didn't want to talk about it yet on the show it's real sad what was that guy's life like after the i know nothing about him except for those jingles maybe he was a bad person what do you know i was gonna look at the the way the internet reacted to his death i feel like he's not a bad person but i have not done the research yet anyway let's see i got a million news is here about i think we're gonna talk about all right so you might hear this word like silicon valley tech pros use this word a lot if anyone ever tells you that something is really already old hat i don't think they use this anymore the sharing economy yeah so they still they care about coins yeah well coin crypto the crypto coin sharing economy but sharing economy is one of those phrases like cryptocurrency where if the person who says the phrase is not making fun of it they're probably a person to avoid yes and we're not going to talk about the like intrinsic problems of the sharing economy like why uber is evil because you should know by now we talk about it kind of often but you got a whole thread in our form about uber and our evil yeah so we're not going to dive in and how the other uber like companies are not as evil but are also evil yep we're not going to get into how all these things just exist and not have to pay people a living wage or give them health benefits and it's all a giant scam because that doesn't have to do with the sharing part that has just to do with being an evil business yep so we do those things with or without having a sharing business so there's been a bunch of news on the coasts and in the middle of the country too weirdly about all these bike sharing scooter sharing car sharing things that are not uber and lift though some of them are becoming left right or uber well the idea is that you know back in the day you would if you needed a thing you could buy that thing you could rent that thing you could lease that thing right uh you could borrow that thing from a friend but the sharing idea is like well a company owns the thing and you basically you rent it but you rent it for a very short time and actually what you do is you buy some sort of membership and then you can use that thing whenever and it's like well that's what a gym is that that is exactly what a gym is it's a room full of machines and you pay money on a monthly basis and then you are free to use those machines as you wish except here instead of having one you know place full of stuff you just have the stuff all over the fucking place now the theory of that i'm actually really okay with partly because as long as it's a non consumable good so it's like you could have you know for example yeah you don't want to have a straw sharing service right it's like hypodermic needle sharing service for example we have laundromats but you go to laundromat and you pay per use what if there was a chain of laundromats and you could wash all the clothes you wanted in any one of the laundromats as long as you pay a monthly fee i would be all over that i know why don't we start that business maybe we should but i mean basically people have used this model for basically transportation mostly bicycles cars yep bicycles but if you think about it like go back to the gym example uh in the suburbs what people tend to do is just buy everything they want because they don't want to share it with people and they want and they have places to keep shit yep and i've noticed that there seem to be two reasons i have the reasons people do this are they don't want other people touching their stuff and they don't want to interact with those people but the other half the reason you live in a suburb with a house that's far away from the street is they don't have to interact with other human beings because you're anti-social and bad so you got a hundred houses and ever and there and in those houses are a hundred treadmills and a hundred weight machines yeah you can tell if you look at a neighborhood if you see houses that are up on the street and are close to each other and have porches that's a friendly neighborhood where people talk to each other and have good times if you see a neighborhood where all the houses of gates or have real long driveways and big-ass front yards uh and no porches that's a bad neighborhood where people are not friendly don't talk to each other yep but i like the idea like in the city like i could buy extras as equipment that'd be stupid where are you gonna keep where am i gonna put it this apartment's tiny so instead people in cities just share things with each other and usually you have to charge a reasonable amount of money or else because there's actually you have to have one you know group that maintains all the some things yep but there are some problems with it because if you have sharing things that are free or cheap enough what tends to happen in the US at least things just get trash tragedy of the comic yep so the general business model at least for gyms is that you people are paying this monthly fee but you've only got so many treadmills at your gym if everyone who paid came all at the same time to use a treadmill you wouldn't have enough treadmills you'd be in deep shit the reason it works is because you have people who pay who never fucking come but they keep paying and you make a lot of money that way because you don't need to buy that many treadmills you don't need to rent that much commercial real estate you know you can just you can your expenses are at way low compared to the number of people who join and keep paying and forget to cancel and they join and they use it a whole bunch when they first joined in January for New Year's their resolution and then the whole rest of the year they pay and only but in July only hardcore people are there and most of the gym is empty and you're totally chilling and it's always funny because there's a gym in my building and it's pretty much exclusive to me because like no one's ever down there everyone in this building is technically in their rent paying for the maintenance and upkeep and equipment in that gym and rim is the only one using it except every year so the building makes a lot of money by having it Emily uses a lot too but every year for about three weeks after New Year's I can't go down there because it's completely full of people and by February they're all gone and it's my private gym again I think maybe four or five times ever other than January have I gone down there and there wasn't a treadmill to use right when I wanted to use it did they have a fake not moving bicycle they got one of those I actually use it kind of often in the winter that's the only gym equipment worth using and I like lifting weights I lift a lot more weights than I used to all right I don't need to lift any if you feel you feel a lot better if you lift some weights I can lift my mouse so anyway here's the deal in New York City we had a thing called city bike which I signed up for and so did I look we all used it I didn't sign up I didn't sign up for it until they put it right next to my house some months ago and then I signed up for it yep and you might have like less than a year ago Roman Scott why did you use this thing you actually knew my new job gives me free membership but I can't take advantage of that until my current membership expires and it's actually already become a very very critical part of New York's commuting even though I own two bicycles for one person I use city bike a lot yep and the reason I use it though I use it I don't have a membership right now but I'm thinking about getting it again now that there's one right outside my building one been outside your building longer than been outside my building true but when I first signed up it costs less than half what it costs now so I signed up because it was so cheap it is still so cheap yeah but it is more than double what I originally paid it's like a hundred something a year yeah I used to pay like I pay more than that for the subway for a month true and I probably use city bike more than use the subway this month but I'll keep I decided I'll just keep paying the MTA the full price every month because I'll subsidize it yeah I can afford to whatever and also I like the freedom of never it will have yeah and never have a subway whatever I want yeah but when they originally made the bike share in New York City the city bike thing the deal is that the bikes are awful they're like 55 pounds and made out of steel there they vary a little bit they're not all exactly the same some of them have different shifters and stuff like different lights there's a little bit of variance but for the most part they're all bikes where the there's no top bars you know it's so you can you can step in real easy you adjust the seat you can't take the seat post out all right they all have about three speeds inside of a one of those internal gearing like what are those called again all the hub gears hub gears they have all of at least three speeds on a hub gear right they're heavy as hell the tires are enormous they're really really slow and really hard but you know what I can bike it over the bridge I can bike it anywhere it's like I can ride it pretty much anywhere I need to go the worst bike it'll get you there the worst bike the shittiest scooter is still infinitely better than walking yep so when they originally did it we got a lot of like there's a lot of resistance to it mostly from all the garbage scam companies that rent bikes to tourists in central park yep and all the bike shops who are worried that people won't buy bikes anymore and won't rent bikes from them well they were all wrong actually but I saw something that something like 30 percent of all bike shops in New York went under since city bike opened oh well deal with it yeah I don't get even the bike shop right here is gone now is it because the city bike though that bike shop I think it's gone because this neighborhood gentrified very rapidly yeah and you can't make a lot of money with the bike shop no I mean does it the Ben's best deli out in forest hills matter business and they blame the bike lane on Queen's Boulevard yeah right and it's like even so here's the thing right with that let's say let's say they're right I don't care right it's like I clean more important than any business right exactly it's like all right if it's probably not true that the bike lane put you out of business the reason you're awesome Jew deli which has amazing food that I want to eat when out of business is because that food is expensive and people don't really eat pastrami sandwiches every day like they used to right but let's say it was the bike lane that put you out of business well guess what since 2015 when they put that bike lane in Queen's Boulevard previously known as Boulevard of Death has had zero people die zero which means putting in that bike lane that absolutely undisputably saved somebody's life at least once probably more than once which means if you if you're complaining about that bike lane putting you out of business what you're saying is that we should murder people to keep Ben's best deli open in which case I say all right let's murder Ben's best owner's children to keep Ben's best deli open that'll save him the money he needs to spend on their education he might be like okay win-win well then okay but I can't argue with someone who's that evil but you're right you you see where I'm going yeah but what's interesting is that city bike was sort of aimed at tourists and the reason why they doubled the price and like changed the business is because tourists did not I do see tourists using it I do see tourists using it but not enough almost everyone used it was like me and new yorkers are using it and paying the annual fee it's like a hundred something annual fee but city bike as much as you want and I think I can describe the three reasons people use it reason number one they're trying to get cross town yep that if you don't know in New York the public transportation which even though it runs 24-7 and even though we complain about it still is way better than other places to the point where you can actually use it uh doesn't really go left and right it only had at least in Manhattan it mostly goes up and down so if you're in first avenue and you want to get to 10th avenue you can find a bus or walk or use a city bike and city bike is absolutely the fastest way and no matter what yep no matter where you're standing and city bike is the fastest the second reason is to get to places the subway doesn't serve that well right so you're somewhere out in Brooklyn or like Kips Bay or something yeah Kips Bay is a good one right it's like well you need to get to the train while the six trains pretty close but you got to walk to the six train it's going to take you like 15 minutes but if you city bike to the six train that'll take you like two minutes yep and so you can get to a place in Manhattan or even anywhere in New York where the trains nearby but not super nearby like even my apartment I could walk to the train in under 10 minutes I can city bike to the train in less than two minutes I'll use it just to go to the train and the third reason I think a lot of people use it is when there's a subway problem suddenly you see people running out of the subway station and all the city bikes are gone last night when I went home from the fireworks right so it started I went out of the apartment and I felt some drops and I checked and they were not air conditioner were random water drops it was rain so I said well it's raining so I'm not going to city bike which is usually the fastest way home from here and I saw that the end train up above was messed up there was a fire and I saw a message on my phone that said it was messed up so I went and anyway if it's raining the bus is better because the bus goes right to my apartment and then doesn't mean I don't have to walk in the rain so remember I said that the train is like 10 minutes walking right I don't want to walk 10 minutes get wet so I went over to the bus and a bus came it was a hundred percent full I couldn't get on it the bus driver closed the door like I tried to get on the bus start the bus driver was like no more so then another bus does not come it just doesn't come people are packing it up in the in the station hiding under the scaffold and no buses come none and cabs come and I'm not paying one of one of those nope not for no reason and then I realized wait a minute it's not fucking raining so I walked to the nearest city bike and I pulled pull it out and there's got a fucking front flat tires front the front the front tires flat and I was like god damn it so I put it back in and I tried to push the repair button to which will lock that bike in place so no one can accidentally take it and will let them know that it needs fixing and the repair button's broken so luckily that doc had one other city bike added that was not broken and I took it and went home and without without that I would have had to like walk all the way down 21st street to get home so the more like it is why we talk about city bike so much is that in our experiences New Yorkers it is 100 percent a success story it is actually one of the better things that's happened to transportation in the city in a long time right it is now an it is so important now that a city bike outage get like it is as dire to some people as a subway problem or a bus problem yeah I mean like there are times we're all like okay I go to the end train it's busted well if I can get to you know where rim lives I can get on a different train like a r-train or whatever right but I got to get there and everyone else is already running for the bus it's like or also do you know how many people like I know who city bike is a critical part of their commute usually they take a ferry because we have a new ferry system too and the all and all the ferry docks because they're on the water kind of out of the way there's a million city bikes and people take the ferry and take the city bike because you don't want to take a your own bike the ferry does not go the ferry goes near my apartment it does not go near my work so if I were to take the ferry on the other end how do I get to work there's not any subways near it on the other end yep you have but there is a city bike docker right there next to the ferry terminal on the other end so why is city bike so good and so well run because new york city basically wallet technically a private company runs it new york city just got bought by lift lift yeah we'll get into that new york city came down on this thing like a hammer and said oh you want to build this in our city we gotta follow our rules and they're basically running it like it's an extension of the subway they just put it everywhere it's everywhere it's spread you know it's not it's not really everywhere but they spread it it is in fact in my raccoon wounds they spread it a whole bunch you can't walk without seeing one the docks have a ton of bikes on them the I see when I bike to work I see easily hundreds of people on city bikes also biking to work granted I bike to work on my actual bike because I have a bike yeah I have one too and I have a bike room in my office I don't use I don't use city bike to go all the way to work but like if maybe I take the subway to work and then I take the subway here to do a podcast then I'll use city bike to go home exactly I've even paid one off oh I'm not going to use the city bike to go home today because I have my real bike here yeah yeah one of them and also it makes it really accessible to people who can't afford to own a bike people who live in apartments too small to have bikes people who don't want to worry about their bike installing yep people who just didn't bring their bike today and now it's nice out that's me that is often me right so the idea so the thing is you can see how when you had this business model of you own stuff and then people pay a fee to have access to the stuff whenever it can totally work but it keeps different companies keep implementing it in ways that are slightly or very very evil right so well I think this comes down to regulation the only reason the New York one works so well is that the city heavily regulates it right we talked about the gyms and how they do and that's only slightly sketchy right it's like it's your fault for buying a gym membership but not using it but you know they could remind you that you're not using it and tell you to cancel but they're not going to do that right but then you get the companies like the Uber who take it to the maximum evil where it's like you're sharing this car this well this chauffeur you're sharing this exploited chauffeur it's a chauffeur and a car and people are sharing it right it's the same idea except yeah they pay the chauffeur basically nothing yep and they ignore regulations and there's all sorts of problems so the other thing about these city bikes is that they have docks they're like a subway station or a bus stop there's a dock and the bikes your trip has to start and end at one of these locations otherwise you get charged an arm and a leg for stealing the for holding the bike too long and you have to if you're a tourist you got to dock every 30 minutes so you can go for more than 30 minutes you even without paying again you just have to dock and then take another bike or the same bike again if you're not a tourist you have an ant you pay the annual fee you can do 45 minutes but then you got to dock and then take a bike out and frankly you're not riding this more than 45 minutes right well they're doing it to make sure why did they do this to make sure that you don't bike way far away from the docks yep you got to keep it in the system relatively oh and if you don't leave the bike in a dock and it gets stolen they charge you like thousands well I mean if you don't buy if you don't dock within 45 minutes you just start racking up the fees and if you never put it in a dock again you can get charged $1,200 yep so don't fuck it up so there's all these startups whenever I whenever I slam the bike in the dock I always wait for the notification that it was confirmed to docked before before I walk away so there's all these startups and things trying to do like more clever bike share scooter shares a thing now or electric bike shares and most of them are ignoring regulations like if someone tries to do an electric bike share in New York electric bikes are illegal here anyway yep so that won't fly but there's arguments to be made about whether they should be and stuff like that but I think they should be but they should be heavily regulated so then there's these companies like Lime and Jump that are basically trying to do the same thing depending on the city they're doing it without the city's permission and they're just leaving bikes around with no docks that have like GPS trackers and self locking hubs and they just leave them on the fucking sidewalk and if you buy their app you use their app you can just leave the bike wherever they'll just take care of it and it seems like what's happening is people are just picking these bikes up and throwing them in dumpsters leaving them in people's lawn just leaving them all over the place some cities are actually just rounding them up and throwing them away like garbage because they never the company's never got permission to actually do anything yeah it's like what's this random bike just sitting here on the sidewalk that doesn't belong here it's taken up sidewalk space right and the thing is what they're doing really that's wrong is it's not that oh your bike share doesn't have this docking mechanism it's like that's not really the problem yep the problem is is that you're putting this bike on a sidewalk that is public property and using it that public property as the land of your private business without compensating for or getting permission and you're just getting everyone's way it's like you know if you want to set up you know a little a little vending stand in the sidewalk there's a whole bunch of rules about that because you're taking up this public space for your private business and your private profit you know you're not buying real estate or renting commercial real estate you know it's like I can't just go outside and like just set up a studio in the public park and be like oh it's mine now this is my space now it's like no it's not your land it's public land so when you put your dockless bikes out there you put them on this public land it won't belong there you didn't you know you're not compensating the public for your use of that land for a profit get the fuck out but the docks even though they're you know taken up this space it's like well the DOT like said you could they specifically got rid of parking spaces to put docks there but more importantly by regulating them heavily the city's basically treating them like infrastructure and as a result they get the right level of attention respect regulation and control to make sure that the system serves the purpose of bettering the lives of the people in the place as opposed to monetizing some startup that's paying its employees probably in stock yeah so the DOT in New York City did it actually are going to legalize and give permission to the dockless ones but it looks like they're doing it in a far out neighborhood they're doing it the same way they do with the green calves if you don't know in New York yellow calves are the real regular calves they work like normal calves they have medallions you should not get in a cab that is not yellow nope but well you can get in a green one yes because the green one if the green one will let you in the green ones are special they work totally like a normal cab in New York except they cannot pick anyone up in Manhattan yep so and they can't pick you up in an airport either yep but it costs way less to ride them and way less to get a license for them right so if you want to have if you want to drive a yellow cab it needs to have this medallion on it and the price of the medallions have gone way down because of Uber being evil yep but the yellow cabs are legit so you shouldn't ride any ubers or lifts or any of that garbage or you should get any yellow or green one but if you're in Manhattan a green one can't turn on the meter because it's GPS locked not to work when the car is in Manhattan you can they can drive you to Manhattan they just can't drive you when they're already in Manhattan yep but the idea was well look there's people who want and who need a cab who are in Queens the Bronx Brooklyn far away no yellow cabs are coming over there even though they come near me and those people need rides and there's not enough yellow cabs so will allow pretty much anyone to make a green cab and but we'll make it so the green ones don't compete with the yellow ones and such and such yep so in terms of car shares because you know I've talked about this before I used to use a zip car I ditched it because it's garbage now but the reason car shares have really failed to work in major cities like every time they definitely can't work in a suburb everyone has a fucking car yep you have to have a car live in the suburb the only people who don't have cars in the suburbs are the kinds of people and even if you do live in a suburb without a car how are you gonna get to the bike share it's I mean to the car share you're gonna bike there it's far away yep and also I suspect the people who live in the suburbs don't have cars are too poor for the company that's running the car share to be able to successfully exploit them so in the city the car share was great because the only reason anyone in New York wants a car share is to be able to rent a car to leave the city for a weekend without having to talk to a human being right is there's no way if you're living the city you don't need a car except when you're going on a somewhat longest trip you don't need it within the city we have public transportation yep bike we got all this other stuff and if you're going to another city you don't need it you just fly or take an Amtrak right or a bus if you're going from a major city to a major city you don't need a car the times you need the car is when you're live in the city and you're going to a suburb like oh I'm gonna go to the I'm gonna go on a trip to the woods or you know something like that that and the train doesn't go where I'm going I need to go visit someone who lives out in Long Island and they're not near the Long Island Railroad and it would take me four hours to bike there and if I took the Long Island Railroad I'd have to take a cab from the train station to them anyway that's sort of that's when you need a car for someone who lives in the city so that's that's when you want one is only in those occasions but a car usually usually you're going to end up taking the car on Friday after work and bringing it back late on Sunday yep so you no one can make money having car shares in the cities because one a couple hours in the city unless they're moving in which case they probably just rent a moving van right so you basically all the cars that would be shared would be sitting there unused Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday Thursday, Friday disappear on the weekend and then on Friday there wouldn't be enough of them right because they're taking up space like that parking space is cost them money right the cars just sitting there cost them money they're not being used you're losing money every day of the week those cars just sitting there because they're not integrated into the transport system the city the city bikes outside are constantly going in and out in and out in and out all the data is public you can look at every city bike ride and see how they get used a ton these cars are sitting there five days of the week not making any money and then all of them get used exactly once for three days that's when all the money comes in and then they get parked again now you'd think because when they first I remember when they first did it they put these zip cars at a lot of the metro north stations way up north the idea being you come out of the city you pick up the zip car do your thing whatever you're doing upstate in the woods and bring the zip car back to the to the train station when you're done but even then that wasn't enough because most of the people who need a car in that situation tend to drive it somewhere and want to leave it there like for their commute which again is not part of the transit system so it won't actually work and you can't easily monetize it and on top of all that Uber and cabs seem to have filled the gap of someone needs a car to take them somewhere it's easier to take your evil Uber to the Costco and from the Costco than it is to rent a car from a car share to do it yourself yep so I think what you have to do to make this work is you would need to find to some other way to make money from those cars Monday through Friday right maybe get someone shitty hotels you can sleep in them for 40 bucks I think what you could do is you could have people do you know Uber type driving with those cars Monday through Friday and then on Friday that driver has to park the car by a certain time you know maybe like two or three and then it becomes rented to the person who's going to take it out of the city and they had to bring it back by Sunday and then Sunday night then then the person can start driving it again ah but here's a problem with that for hire the thing city city bike irrespective of its monetization because I'd be fine if the city just ran it for free with our tax dollars sure why not but it's the same other way it achieves a meta purpose of adding more transportation to the city like it improves the quality of life of people in the city anything that puts more cars on the road decreases the quality of life of people right well I think the idea is that hopefully this would decrease cars on the road if it works because you're gonna you have cabs driving everywhere already right so this is going that one that uber driver just replacing it's already an uber driver who's just going to be doing this instead it isn't going to work on the weekend right and then there's someone out there in the city who owns a car and only uses it a few weekends and all the other weekends it's parked and not moving all the rest of the time maybe you can convince that person if this exists and hasn't there's actually enough cars and the price is right that they could sell their car and then use this instead and that would decrease the total number of cars because just one of these shared cars could replace how many owned cars yep that are only used on the weekends but at the same time the another way you could go is the model of people who own cars and use them usually could go into some sort of compact with other people like time shares on their own cars that's a model people have tried with the shared car people have tried the problem is people who own cars for some reason don't like other people driving them which I can see even if there's all kinds of insurance and stuff it's like you know I've seen the way other people drive and if I own a car I would never let fucking anyone drive it but I mean even if it's no skin off your back if they crash insurance just buys you a new car it's not your fault oh yeah true but then I don't you can just set out upright that I might not have the car right after they crashed it or they might make it smell like pee yep well you know insurance has to cover all this or handle all those problems yeah because one problem with all that like the city bikes and those kinds of bike shares is that they are treated with the same respect that people here treat the subway they there's a reason they're 55 pounds because otherwise they would all have been destroyed you know I haven't seen people vandalize city bikes no why don't early on when they first appeared there was a bunch of vandals and then it just sort of stopped I feel like what we could do is like take a city bike and then we've got you know like we can if you keep docking it and undocking it we can just like paint it real nice not like like you know put artwork on it and then put it back unauthorized but I mean that's technically vandalism but yeah I mean you know a lot of street art is that kind of vandalism that is true all right I think we killed enough time okay good all right