Governments worldwide think your privacy is adorable but outdated. Say hello to mandatory selfies and ID checks, and goodbye to anonymous cat memes.
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- 🌊 Grab Sats with River!
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- 💬 Boost with Fountain
- Global Age Verification Laws 2025
- Age Verification Is Coming for the Whole Internet
- Chris Middleton on X: "🚨 UK’s Online Safety Act just came into effect, promising a “safer” internet. It’s a lie. This law threatens YOUR privacy, free speech, and democracy and paves the way for a surveilled, censored web. Want to know how bad it gets? 🧵
- YouTube rolls out age-estimation tech to identify US teens and apply additional protections
- First Steam, now itch.io has been forced to start delisting adult games
- Grand Theft Auto "Potentially At Risk" Of Being Delisted By Payment Processors
- ZOOM Platform also had payment processor issues, say they "have no plans to remove any titles" | GamingOnLinux
- Suspects accused of dressing up as a bear for insurance fraud case in LA County - YouTube
- Robotic Rabbits A new hope against Everglades' python threat - YouTube
- RECALL: High Noon hard seltzers mislabeled as Celsius energy drinks - YouTube
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This is The Launch, Episode 30 for August 5th, 2025. Streaming from the beautiful Pacific Northwest and the mighty American West Coast, We greet you all a good morning, a good evening, or whenever your timeline may fall. Time-appropriate greetings. Indeed, to one and all, this is The Launch, and my name is Chris. And I'm Angela. Hello, Andrews. Hello. We got a show today. We got a show. We're going to get into it. So a couple of things, in case you want to give us your mind, your feedback, your opinion, give us a call. Leave us your name and your town, 774-462-5667.
Probably going to have some feedback this week. That's 774-462-5667, name and town. We're live on Tuesdays, 1130 Pacific, 230 Eastern, in a podcasting 2.0 app or on our website. And then the show comes out Wednesday mornings, assuming the scheduler works. And, of course, we have our Launch HQ chat room and our Mumble Room going as well. And we'll post links to the things we talk about at weeklylaunch.rocks, where you can get all that, the authoritative information. Well, Andrews, I have it on good authority that even though you decided you had plenty of cats since last episode, you have ended up with a new cat. Congratulations.
Yeah. Well, so I had tried out Gypsy's sister, Penny, and it didn't work out because Penny was very, she'd be good as an only cat. But your wife happened across a very young kitten, maybe 10 or 11 weeks, that traveled 18 miles in an engine. Yeah, in the hood of an engine. How does that survive? Well, he has some like whiskers that are like curled, burnt. A little singed? Singed. Yes, that's what I was. Yes, thank you. God, that must have been horrible. Yeah, but no visual, no visible burns or anything like just the singeing. So anyway, and so, yeah, I woke up Friday morning and she was like, Ange, do you want a cat? And I was like, oh, no.
And I thought, man, this could be perfect, right? Because I thought a kitten, harmless. I mean, like some basic instincts, of course, but no established territorialism or whatever. Shouldn't be a problem with my cats. Well, so I drove up to Burlington, apparently where there are where I might get a speeding ticket in the mail. I don't know. I have no idea. I didn't see that. But a super sweet cat, black cat, white paws. Very nice. Just everything that we have wanted in a cat. Very snuggly. Like, yeah, sits on us, lays on us, super playful, right, because kittens are. Introduction with Gypsy went bad, right? Like, she was mad immediately.
Gypsy's a girl cat? Gypsy's a girl cat, two years old. And the new kitty named Toes is a boy cat? Yes. Okay. Toes. And, because he has big toes, he's going to be a big kitty. And then Rocky introduction, Rocky just looked at him like, what is that? You know, no issues. No real. Or no and really in gypsy she didn't growl she didn't one out of two yeah right but when gypsy had an opportunity to walk up to said kitty that was playing she attacked and she's ferocious she's been killing somebody she just left a rat on our front doormat like a week ago she's killed uh blue stellar jays like she is a killer uh she.
Went in for the kill. She did i think she will kill him yeah so I interfered right I grabbed her by the scruff of her neck because I thought that that was okay or you know like the the logical thing to do place to grab yeah and there's claws going everywhere yeah and she bit me once and I was like oh okay and I actually I let go got a. Bite while you're grabbing her by the scruff. Huh yeah well it was yeah because I didn't get a good grip uh and so then she went back to the cat thankfully the kitten was hiding so this time I went in And knowing full well I could still get hurt, I grabbed her by the scruff of the neck again.
And this cat needs like her demons exercise because she turned her head full 360. Like a horror movie? Yeah. And chomped on my hand. Oh. Chomped it. It could do damage. It did do damage. So I managed to get her outside. And I did not hurt her, right? But I did get her outside. And then I tended to my wounds. I had three good puncture wounds on my thumb, like at the base of my thumb. And it would not stop bleeding. and you picked up the kids like maybe an hour after that and then I went straight to the walk-in. Wow. It was just bleeding still?
Not only would it not stop bleeding, but I lost feeling in the side of my thumb. Oh, that's like some nerve stuff going on. I have nerve damage, yes. No. Yeah. So they prescribe two antibiotics. Normally amoxicillin is prescribed, but I'm allergic to penicillin. Oh, they're worried about like bacterials in there. Yeah, it's, I'm forgetting the name of it, pastorella, I think is the pastorella bacteria. But that typically the infection starts three hours to 24 hours later. I'm like 72 hours out now. And there's no... I don't know if I'd take it then, to be honest with you.
That's where I'm at, right? Oh, yeah. Especially because the reason why they had to prescribe two antibiotics instead of one was because it's not penicillin. It's probably pretty tough stuff. But there's a 10% chance that I will react to it because it's a cousin of penicillin. And then it's in your system. Yeah. And it's five pills a day and it's three of one and two of the other. So there's no there's no opportunity to probiotic in between, you know, without possibly counteracting the whole reason why I'm taking them. But then not not a huge deal, but kind of a kind of a huge deal.
Cannot drink alcohol on this. It will make me projectile vomit, apparently. It has an ingredient. One of them has an ingredient in it that they use to cure alcoholics of drinking. I wonder if that could be a prank if it doesn't have a taste, you know? I mean, if. Puking is a prank. Yeah. Well, I mean, I do need to lose some weight. So I think that. Puke, die. No. Right? No. So, yeah, I'm on the fence. The puncture wound has healed really nicely. There is a little pink around it, but that's normal. The only problem right now is that I am getting the chills.
And I'm not sure if it's because I was sitting out in the sun or if it's because infection. It's probably menopause. I wouldn't worry about it. It is not menopause. Thank you very much. Nope, not yet. But anyway, so I'm watching it. I have those pills ready to take. Yeah, just in case it seems like it's infected. Yeah, I don't know. So is there a strategy here to make peace? What's the plan? I don't know. Will they make peace over time? I don't know. So basically, I prepared the kids that we might not be able to keep him. And I have a couple options for my neighbor.
His cat died two years ago, or two months ago. He might be willing to take him. Cat's so sweet. I wish I could take him. I know. Well, I wish I could keep him and maybe give it a gypsy, but that's not what you're supposed to do. You bit me. You're out. You're out. Well, no, you just, yeah, you can't welcome any other cat into this clan. You don't bite the hand that feeds you. Right. Yeah. So, yeah, she's just mad. Man, I mean, sometimes they... I'm sure there must be listeners out there that have gone through this. There must be people that get cats to cooperate. Is there a process or a strategy that...
Let us know. Boost in and tell us. Because, like, it would be nice. Such a sweet cat. I want to come visit the cat. Yeah. We're keeping him in Abby's room, you know, separated. Okay. Like, there's really only been a couple minor introductions. And his smell has been getting all around the house when the other two cats are outside. So, yeah, I don't know. Oh, and the other thing is the neighbor that I'm thinking of would keep him indoor only. So he would never run into a gypsy outside. Oh, man. Can you imagine other poor cats that are just out having an afternoon walk? They run into gypsy and it's just on, I bet.
Well, so she is being targeted by what we call Bobtail Bock. It's a different cat in the neighborhood that just cornered her again today. And I want to be like, you stupid. This is what you're trying to do to that little kitten. Yeah. And he's so small, she would totally kill him. Like, I know that she would kill him. And I told that to Dylan about this Bobtail Bock and how she's doing the same thing. And he's like, Gypsy doesn't know English. You can't tell her that. All right. Let us know what you would do. Gosh darn animals.
So it only took me 20 episodes of listening to you say that number and Hank Hill saying that number for me to have it memorized in my head. Because I wasn't intentionally going out of my way to memorize it, but now it's there. I think people should just put it in their contacts. And when they think of something, they just call us. Yeah. We have it. The launch. The launch, yep. And of course, you can boost in what you would do about our cat problem, too. Because I'm all in on this cat. I want to visit this cat. I know.
We've got to solve this. He's a great cat. He's a good cat. So let us know. Support the show with a boost. All right. Let's get into it. Well, there is a ruckus online about just a wave of age verification laws and rules that are sweeping the Internet, really getting kicked off because the UK's Online Safety Act rolled out on July 25th, which it claims its aim is to shield children from a harmful adult online content and maybe certain things they shouldn't be exposed to on social media. And a key component of the UK's Online Safety Act is age assurance to make sure that minors are correctly identified and avoid these things.
And there's several methods by which one can verify their age, including facial recognition where they try to recognize your face and guess your age. ID submission where you take photos. And of course, you'd be more than welcome to set up a digital identity wallet with your government ID. So it seems like, you know, maybe some good intentions, protect the children kind of a thing in here. But as you can imagine, the implementation is really chaotic. Companies don't really know how to comply. Users have to go through these invasive, half-broken verification processes.
And all in all, the systems don't seem that effective because things like a VPN can get around it pretty quickly. And those VPNs are heavily advertised across the Internet. Now, platforms like Reddit are going to support this. YouTube and X are deploying AI-based tools. Like, for example, YouTube is going to monitor your watch behavior. And if it seems like you're watching some content focused at younger people, they'll pop up a thing making you identify yourself and perhaps even do photo ID. Spotify is doing something similar. Some podcast apps are looking into how to do age verification for podcast apps.
NVIDIA seemingly mistakenly did age verification for some of their stuff. So if you were a kid, you couldn't get access. Mistakenly? Well, it seems like maybe that was a little bit of a mistake. I don't know. Some of the stuff they're still trying to figure out. Chris Middleton on X has a thread that I'll link to, and he argues that the Online Safety Act, while marketed to protect children, is really a threat to privacy and free speech. He says it's got vague, complex language. It's 250 pages just for the age verification stuff, and it's all really, really vague, and it applies to a lot of Internet communications.
and in it it imposes a quote duty of care on all platforms where they have to go back and proactively remove anything that might be harmful or illegal in this case to minors and they have to implement age verification and it implicitly puts pressure on applications like signal and whatsapp to proactively scan messages if you can imagine how these encrypted privacy apps would implement that it would be a nightmare they'd have to break the encryption and it also to suggest the back doors might be appropriate so that way that the government can audit this kind of thing, which I don't know if any of this has ever really worked.
And then here in the states, we've had a couple of U.S. states that are passing age identification laws sort of to, you know, follow kind of, I think, in the general kind of direction of this UK online safety law. How are you feeling so far as I roll this out to you? As you know, you and I are both parents with kids that are on the internet. I mean, but kids don't have official IDs. Are they going to implement a requirement for state IDs for younger than 15 or 16? Well, if you're in the UK, I think you can't get this digital wallet. But yeah, I think a lot of them are going to have to opt to do the face scan stuff.
So then they're going to have scans of their faces. And remember just last episode, we talked about the T app that just leaked all that crap. Yeah. Yeah. Huh. All these different. So what if the scan says, because Bella looks a little older than she really is. Yeah. Is it going to accept this? This face scan stuff, by the way, our two daughters do not look, I mean, they look related, but they don't look exactly, they don't look like twins. However, they can sometimes unlock each other's face ID phones. Oh. Yeah, have they never shown you this? No. It doesn't work all the time. But yeah, they can see. Crazy.
I know. That's really crazy. How good is this face? I could see Bella and Dylan being able to, well, Dylan's face is being a little more chiseled now. A little more man face. But it was really a surprise. So, yeah, they're going to they're going to have to do the face scan stuff. But, you know, like our kids very quickly figured out how to bypass filtering at school to get to social media while they're at school. Like they just on their own figured it out. Right. You know, what's funny is my phone has figured out that that's Gypsy. Oh, yeah.
And that's Rocky. But then it also has Mother North from a game I play as a people. It's a screenshot or something. Yeah, it is. I don't know. It's kind of neat. Yeah, it is neat. It is decent at detecting the faces, but I like that it does pet stuff. Okay, so now, at the same time all this kind of age stuff is going on with Spotify, Xbox and PlayStation are also kind of implementing these policies. Roblox announced they plan to. Oh, yeah. No, they already had. The kids had an issue with verifying because you can't chat unless you provide some sort of, yeah.
It's all kind of happening at the same time. I mean, I'm not here to fry bacon. Oh. But if I was cooking some conspiracy bacon, it's just weird that as the Online UK Safety Act lands, maybe they all just decide they have to do this. Sort of like the cookies law that's crapped up the whole internet. But the thing that does make it a little sus is at the same time, it turns out gaming platforms are being pressured to remove adult content. So there's some adult games. Steam and itch.io were the more popular ones that were forced to start delisting adult games. It seems that Itch.io decided to air some of their dirty laundry and released a statement.
Steam didn't say anything, but Itch.io says in their public statement, quote, The organization, Collective Shout, launched a campaign against Steam and Itch.io, directing concerns to our payment processors about the nature of certain content found on both platforms. So the payment processors that Steam and Itch.io deal with started pressuring these companies to drop adult content or else they wouldn't be payment providers for them. So it comes kind of from that end. Now, Collective Shout was started in 2009 in Australia, It sounds like some other games are targeting. They're going after Grand Theft Auto.
The Zoom platform, which is sort of a competitor to good old games, the Zoom platform and good old games also announced that they have been pressured by the same group. I thought GOG did something really awesome. They decided to put all 13 of the game titles that were being targeted on sale for free for 48 hours in protest. Yes. So, all right. Well, we don't need a payment processor. They're free. Yeah. Right. That's funny. Zoom said, quote, they have no plan to remove any titles and instead are exploring alternative payment options such as a wallet system, which would allow users to add funds to their account and spend them on all of its products.
It is kind of ironic that these payment processors are leveraging their position to do this when stable coins are becoming a thing because you could solve this with stable coins. You could buy some stable coins. You could put them in an online wallet and you could buy your game with stable coins. And you could bypass Visa or MasterCard altogether or whoever is their payment process. ByteBitten has an excellent point. We have to protect the kids, so upload their verified data to our servers that might get hacked. Like, it just really, like, and it's like joining a do not call list.
Well, now you're on a list that can be sold. Like, yeah, for sure. It's, are you, you're, yeah. It's the, it's the age old thing of trading, trading privacy for security, and it never ends up being an equitable trade in the long run. And especially with these things getting compromised. Here's my steel man argument. I think there is a way to verify identity online to an extent. It's not perfect, but I don't think it needs to be perfect. And I know people are going to roll their eyes when I say this, but PGP, pretty good privacy, solved this a really long time ago.
And the way PGP works is you have a public key that the world can know, and then you can verify that's you with a private key that only you have and know. And that combination, a public key and a private key, is really all you need to prove identity because only you can have that private key. And if once you know, okay, this is XYZ who's really a person, that's 90% of the battle. Now, if you want to attach other types of verification that could be done at a different layer, it could be attributes that get saved along with that public key.
And it doesn't necessarily need to be this private thing that each tech platform implements. And then each tech platform could have their own security vulnerabilities. They could have their own issues or they could have common problems, too. And there's other standards that are these decentralized ways to do identity that are just math-based, that aren't government-based, that aren't corporation-based. They're just math-based. It's just using the standard old form of crypto that we used to call encryption. So you don't have to go this route. And if you had to – I don't hate the idea that our kids couldn't get on TikTok until they're 18. I don't hate that idea.
I don't want them uploading their faces to TikTok servers to verify their age. Right. And then the other problem is a lot of time these age-gating things are just stupid. Like Steam does this already if there's a game that's slightly risque or has violence. Before it'll show you the game page, you have to verify your age. Right. So, like, when Dylan and I are looking at a game, we just pick a random year. We scroll way up, boom, click it, and go. We just look at it, right? Or after Abby had, you know, wanted to get something in iCloud. I can't remember what it was. Like, we had to remove the kid restriction on her account so she had access to something. I can't even recall what it was.
But, like, the platform is building these stupid limitations. And then I, as a parent, am the one that overrides them. Right. Well, you know what happened recently is they took over my Netflix profile and filled it with a bunch of stuff. Suggestions now that don't match. You know and thankfully i don't. Really watch algorithm wreckers yes they they wreck my youtube algorithm sometimes yeah. Well so i was like we'll stay out of there and then uh so abby took over rick kai's. Hopefully hopefully he doesn't use that anymore i don't think he's using it uh yeah i saw that she also i had her create a youtube profile on the tv at my place.
Oh for her. Yeah oh yeah okay cool and she's good about using it probably because you talk to her but yeah yeah she's good about using but at first it was like well. She has a youtube because she does that's. How she. Listens to music is. Youtube i don't know if it's like her account or if it's just like a separate profile on my app or whatever but it works yeah okay and that's really i mean that's about as much as i need and then i as a parent don't mind monitoring the situation and be like no let's not watch that or yeah watching too much of that or whatever like Like it's.
Yeah. When I have a era content filters. Yeah. We're almost growing out of those because, you know, what what really is going to be so bad that they look at at this point? I don't know. But they're still on. There's there's this aspect of personal responsibility and parent responsibility. And then people come back with, well, but clearly they're not doing their response. You know, it's this whole age old argument. I imagine our kids, when they have kids, this is going to be settled. I bet a lot of this, I bet, I bet. They'll look at it as when they're our age, they'll look at it and think, boy, we had access to the entire internet. How weird was that?
Right. I cannot wait to find Dylan severely restricting his kids. Yes! Where we minorly impacted his life. He's going to wreck his kids' lives. It's going to be great, though. I mean, there's so many moments that I'm going to look back at and be like, hey, you remember? remember absolutely yeah yeah. I'm just gonna i'm gonna have a smirk. I should make a note i should keep a note so i don't i mean the big ones i never forget future self yeah yeah i feel like i should keep a note um so let us know what you think if we're overreacting thankfully it doesn't really impact us directly because our kids are all getting to the teenage years they're generally we have we have other means of filtering but it is going to make using the internet i think worse, I think because you know that means you you and I are going to also all of us are we're all going to have to go through this process yeah so they know and that's going to make it worse I think that's just the reality of it but maybe it's worth it I don't I don't know I'd love to know if I'm over my skis on this one or if the audience agrees with us let us know you can send us a boost or of course you can leave us a voicemail as you know as you know, All right, what do you say we upped the mood with a little bit of music?
This one's a fun song. It's called Pork Chops. I think it's maybe Pork Chops Fried. Yeah, I'm going to say it's Pork Chops Fried is actually the name. Not Fried Pork Chops. Don't get it wrong. It's Pork Chops Fried by Hey Citizen. Now, we did get a good batch of voicemails this week, and Papa John calls in to talk about the T-app, amongst other things. Hi, JB. This is Papa John from the beautiful west coast of British Columbia, Canada. Just thinking about that T-app, yeah, it can be pretty damaging if people can spread false rumors on stuff like that pretty easily.
For myself, I try to stay off social media. at least the mainstream ones on Mastodon a little bit. But just from the beginning of COVID and just seeing how crazy it got on there, I just stopped using it altogether pretty well. AI, we don't really use it at work. I'm an electrician, and so it doesn't really do a whole lot for me in the trade. And that's about it. and I really enjoy the show. Thanks for everything. Thanks, Papa John. Awesome. You know, the thing about AI in the field for an electrician who's experienced makes sense, but what about someone who's just coming up and wants to learn about a quick conversion or look something up?
Because, you know, I imagine people that actually know how to work on cars don't look up the stuff nearly as much as I have to look up when I'm working on stuff or anything electrical. I don't know. I feel like they'll do what I did and dump the motor out, the mode motor out. You know, like they'll see a summarization, but not understand the depth of what needs to be done. That's probably true. I don't know. Southern Fright Sassafras comes in with a plea to save the launch. A little bit clippy on the signal, but it came through. This is Southern Fright Sassafras saying, I love the launch. Please don't cancel it.
You just brought it up in the love show, and I had to call in and leave a voice note right now. I was going to call to my defense this week, But life got in the way with welcoming the newest JB extended family member. So please keep watching. I love it. Listen to it every week, even if I don't always do this really good voice film. Thanks. Bye. Congrats on the new family member. Nice to hear from you, Southern Pride. Also, this is the first I've heard of canceling the lunch. Remember last week? Well, the two weeks ago, somebody boosted in about canceling the lunch, and then somebody called in about it.
Because nobody's been boosting or calling recently, So everybody's stepping it up, which I appreciate. Well, they said. Save the launch. I know in LUP. I don't remember that. Oh, okay. All right. I think what I was is I was kvetching about no calls. That sounds like something I was saying. So maybe I did. Yeah. If I don't get any calls, I'm ending the show. Okay. Show's over. A guy named Ryan's back. He has a take on. This is 12th time, probably. 10th, 12th. Is it? With takes on shirts, I think. Hello, JB True. This is a guy named Ryan. Long time, 11th time. The prompt was... Do you wear shirts with things? First off, I am approximately your age, and I love to wear shirts with geeky things, like a thingy-style shirt.
I got a DJ Enzyme breaking it down. I got a Y'all Need Science shirt. So I wear those almost every day. It's pretty much all my personality at this point. And I love it. I love it if someone comes up and reads it and tells me that it's a funny shirt. I point out funny shirts and compliment other people when I come across them when I'm out and about. It's a whole thing for me. I really enjoy it quite a bit. And, Chris, you're not nuts. No Fear was everywhere. All right, good, good. I never understood it. It wasn't really my thing. But yeah, definitely brought back some memories. So thanks everyone for the great work. Keep it all up. And I look forward to the next episode.
Those shirts are definitely conversation starters. Yeah. Sounds like a guy named Brian would really enjoy Psybite. Yeah. Yeah, I bet. Like it'd be kind of outdated at this point. And I don't know if it's available in the archives, but Psybite with Chris and Mars Base. I wonder, we should have some shirts with sayings on them. Why don't we sell shirts with sayings? Right? like Brent's I don't install computers or whatever no it was. I hate building computers. Yes. PCs, yes. Absolutely. Oh, my gosh. That should be next year's Linux Fest shirt. That would be good. We definitely do one for Linux Fest. Thanks, a guy named Ryan. Always good to hear from you. Kevin from Raleigh's here.
Hey there, Launch. Kevin from Raleigh calling you back about the OLMs especially. Well, the internal only has the internal information, so it's completely useless for script writing. So that's a challenge. It looks like legal is telling us we can point to the website, but they haven't built in a scraper. So I don't hold a lot of hope for it, but did again, GitHub Copilot the other day made my life a lot easier when we had to do a script to do some stuff. And I think the net result is it's a big piece of trimming tens of 10 million or so out of some licensing costs.
So let's hope that's true. It is helping. But yeah, because, you know, what's cheaper than contract labor, a machine. So they will replace anybody they can. Have a great one. Still enjoying the show. Yeah, it's interesting because we were wondering if something that's an internal-only LLM would be as useful because of that problem. And then, yeah, I guess you hook up to other sources. I suppose that works. But curious to know how that actually plays out. Kind of sounds like the momentum might get lost in that. Thanks, Kevin. Good to hear from you.
We have a trucker with a funny story. I don't know if he gave us his name in town, but I liked it. Hey, Chris and Angela. I have a funny story for you just listening to the latest episode. Um, this happened before I was married. Um, I'm a truck driver and this is before I started, got, bought my own truck and started my own company. Um, I was driving a company truck, broke down in Sparks, Nevada and, uh, Ended up being there for a couple of days while the truck got repaired. But I had to do laundry, and I didn't have any extra clothes with me because I wasn't planning on being out overnight.
And I was at the Petro truck stop in Sparks. I got a hotel room, and I had to buy a little bit of clothes so I could do laundry. And I bought this shirt. It was a black shirt, and I didn't really pay too much attention to what was on the front. There was a silhouette that said FBI on the front. And I was wearing this around for a couple of days, not knowing what it said until later. And, you know, it was just a design. I didn't pay much attention to it. And I'm sure you can figure out what it was, especially when it was in Nevada. It's not the FBI that does law enforcement. Right.
The worst part is I'm a Christian, so that was, I just, I had to laugh at it when I realized it. Thankfully, nobody approached me. All right. Hey, Christians can be body inspect. Catch you later. He did call us back. I think he had something to tell us. Hey, it's me again. I forgot to tell you the whole reason for my story. That's why I don't, one reason why I don't like wearing clothes with luggage. Sure. Whatever. Just plain. Logos are corporations that just want to make money. That's their primary function. And other times I'm not observant enough to notice things in every occasion.
All right. Anyway, bye. That's why I never understood the no fear thing. I couldn't tell. Was it just somebody came up with a saying like got milk and wanted to put it on a bunch of shirts and stickers? was selling that and that was the product or was no fear like the product of another brand was no fear the brand of something like i never got it i never liked it and i never understood it, magnolia wraps us up this week with our last call hey. It's uh magnolia i i guess i should have said who i was in any of the other calls that i've been in but sometimes it's just a joke anyway um so this is completely off subject to the show this is kind of a community thing i wanted to.
He cuts out, but he'll come back. What about this one? Any Suzuki? That's good. Also, if anybody out there has any UFO or weird ghost stories, call in at Art Bellis. Do you have any? Nothing weird? I don't think so. Actually, I have a funny story. So my ring camera in the backyard is plugged in, right? So I could do continuous recording. You get the time lapse and stuff? Yeah. But I didn't realize that the 24-7 was only a 30-day trial. So anyway, so I was like, oh, I should really just buy it so I can scrub anytime. What finally pushed me over was the camera caught some big shadow running across the backyard. But all I could see was that it was a shadow, right?
And so I was like, is that a coyote? Is that a giant cat? Is that something else? What is that? So I converted it to a purchase, or I upgraded my plan right to the $200 a year one. And it was a spider that was really close to the lens. Camera tricks. Yeah, all I had was the moment, like a snapshot. But then when I scrubbed it back to that, I was like, okay. Well, one expensive spider. I always think, because I heard this voicemail as I was collecting them this morning, and I thought, I don't really have any, Like I wish I had a good UFO story.
I wish I could say like all those nights of driving late. I saw something up in the sky or, you know, being out in the woods. I saw something like a UFO in the woods. No. But for like a little while, it was this weird phenomena when I was in, you know, Grade school or maybe middle school. Probably middle school, actually. Sixth grade, maybe. Seventh grade. It was wolf spiders. I would get this weird sense that, like, one of my stepdad's friends would be over at the house. Oh. And then I would show up and they'd be there. And it's like a mile walk from my bus stop to where the house is at. So I don't know if I was picking up on a smell.
Is that telekinesis or tele-something? ESP kind of a thing? Yeah. I don't know. Interesting. And it was shocking enough, and it happened a couple of times, and I still remember kind of like the feeling. of being like, what? Weird. And I would have no reason to know. And they weren't even friends that were over regularly either. So anyways, that's the closest I ever got. It's the closest. But maybe somebody out there has gotten a little closer. Let us know. I'd be really curious to hear some of those stories. That could be fun. Boost in or call and let us know. And thank you everybody.
Who left us a voicemail this week. We appreciate it. And we got some great boosts this week. Mr. Turd Ferguson's our baller booster. 63,933 sats. Branded shirts or sayings can be a pretty handy way when you're at a... Oh, it can be pretty handy when you're at a conference for meetups. It helps you find your tribe quickly. Mm-hmm. For sure. Yeah, that's kind of what we're thinking about LinuxFest Northwest. Yep. I'm on board with you. Thanks, Turd. Nice to hear from you. Appreciate the boost. A-Ron's here with 3,333 sats. It's sad to see that Charles got caught up with the wrong crowd.
Hopefully Mr. Cheese learned his lesson. I had to go home, A.A. Ron. When I went home, I had to show that to the wife. I had to go to the show notes. I went to the show notes of the episode and pulled up the YouTube video of Chuck E. Cheese getting arrested. And I'm like, just watch this. And you know what I saved, too? Did I keep it? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I saved a sound bite. Got arrested. I love the way she says arrested. So if you want to boost in, you get that. Oh, yeah, that's what A.A. Ron was doing. Is that right? That's right.
Oh, yeah, that's how you're supposed to. Yep, yep, yep. All right, thanks for reminding me. I just got so excited because A.A. Ron has his own soundboard. PJ also came in with a Chuck E. Cheese boost, 3,333 sats. My odd pets have been small and not too crazy. I've had a guinea pig, a toad, and various fish and rats. One day it might be cool to have a pet crow, raven, or a possum. Okay, don't agree on the possum, but I was just telling the boy yesterday I want to train a raven or a crow. Yeah, to bring you money? Whatever. I would love that. Bring me cash. There's goodies all over the farm, and we have hawk-sized ravens.
I mean, these things are king crows. They are got to be 20-pounders. I mean, they're big ones. So would love to train those things. Any tips to make a raven army or just a crew of raven workers, please send them in. He says, also, I loved your bass story. We caught kelp and some catfish alive in a neighbor's swimming pool. And his dad said, keep them fresh. He just throw them in there. Keep them fresh. He says, catfish can live a long time in and out of water. Oh, I don't know why you know that, but I think I have an idea. Thanks for the boost. a dinner comes in with a 300 nope 3333 sats no message just the value appreciate that, And, of course, Musical Coder is here with a Chuck E. Cheese boost.
First boost ever! Woo! Well done. Thank you. Sending over my fountain earnings. Thanks for turning me on to Fountain and keep up the awesome podcasts. Well, glad you're liking it, Musical Coder, and keep an eye out. There's some nice improvements coming, too. Nice job at earning those sats. Well done. Odyssey Wester is here with a row of ducks. 2,222 sats. He says, yeah, I was a thrift store kid too and even got into those tie-dye and family pattern shirts back in the late 90s. Nowadays, I still wear branded T-shirts, but mostly now either gaming-centric Comic-Con or from you guys.
Yeah. I still have that patch you put on the T-shirts from TechSnap back when y'all started doing the Teespring thing. Remember when Teespring was awesome? Yes. There was a minute. You know what? The peak was when they were willing to coordinate the last challenge coin with the last shirt orders. Never again have we seen customer service like that. Nope. And it made it possible to execute in a way that was great. It was so cool. Only a couple missing from orders. Thank you, Odyssey. Good to hear from you. Mick ZP's here with 5,000 Sats. Couldn't agree more about ghosting since the pandemic.
I dread plans now than I did before 2020. I've always blamed the pandemic. Yeah. You know, it's good and bad. Like, before the pandemic, there were some Thanksgivings and Christmases where we'd be going to, like, three in a day. Sometimes four. There was at least one where we did four. Yeah. And now, if we have a Thanksgiving, it's because we throw our own. Yeah. Which is better, but also weird that they just all fell apart. They all just fell apart. People moved and. Well, we divorced and your family was like, sorry, Ange, you're not part of the family anymore. Right. But I mean, there's no family. There is no family.
Yeah. My family moved away. They just sort of stopped doing them. Yeah. It's a mess. Oh, yeah. My grandma passed away and that was the end of that family. I think that's part of it. Yeah. There were some elders in the family that kept these things going and some of them passed. Yeah. I will recreate this village for my kids. Yeah, maybe. Somebody should. But yeah, I think that's interesting. And I think mixed up other people have also experienced the same thing. Thank you. Appreciate the boost. Bobby pins here with 4,000 sats. Always great to catch you all live. Well, thank you for making it live.
Appreciate that. Mr. Wes Payne's here with 6,666 sats. Oh my God. This is great. Seattle now has bus lines that go right to the mountain trail heads. That is so cool. That is. Cause also often the parking's pretty packed. It is stupid. Yeah. Especially like Mount Baker Forest. Like they're all parked up on the edge. Take the bus. That's brilliant. It is. If money, kids or other limitations and regional commitments weren't an issue, could you ever see yourself living car free in a big city in the U.S. or international? Why or why not? If I live downtown, I think I could. Assuming I mostly work from home.
My thing when we did live in cities or, you know, as much as we got, which is like, you know, Everett area and things like that, was I had to, of course, do contract work. And I sometimes have to drive between clients. Well, every day. So even when I lived kind of quote unquote downtown, I couldn't really take advantage of the car free lifestyle. Yeah. Do you think you could live car free? No. Because the kids? Well, yeah. But kids not an issue or not a thing is what Wes said. But no, I actually have recurring nightmares. About being a driver while at school, you know, high school, forgetting that I drove and taking the bus home and then having to take the bus back to school or the opposite.
I used to have it. You still have that nightmare? I do. No. Yeah, it's very fresh. It is very fresh in my in my memory. So, yeah, no, I like to be efficient and public transport is not efficient. It does take longer sometimes. Yeah. But, you know, think about the overall cost savings, especially over a five-year period, say, of not having to pay for gas, maintain a car. Well, yeah, or not being able to just jump in the car and go get fast food so you're not spending money. That's true. You would probably sometimes do this. Or you'd door dash more, and so the savings would be put into delivery fees.
No, I mean, that would be what would happen for me. Yeah. Also, it seems like it would be, although I guess you would lean into Instacart, right? I was going to say grocery shopping and things like that would be difficult, but you would just Instacart. I already do Instacart for Costco. Like I just don't really prefer going to Costco. Yeah. But I pick out my own produce. It's a good question. For Safeway. I would like to, in fact, I would really like to sell two of our cars and just get one car, but I do not want a car payment. And I don't want. Or the juggle.
Yeah. Right. The juggle is real. And selling a car is such a pain in the butt. You know, like you got to, you got to, if it's got any problems, you got to fix it up. You got to clean it up. Then you got to list the sales. Then you got to like, you know, respond to the queries and wheel and deal. It's considered a step toward RV sales. Yeah, right. Yeah, I like it. Yeah, that's a good point. I'd rather sell an RV, I'll tell you what, than sell my own car. Make it look like a house inside. This is my camping version. Yeah. I don't know. I think I could probably do it if we had one car in the family.
You know, so like if Adia kept her car and I could give up my car if I lived downtown and then when I needed to go. Oh, well, we need to find a studio up there then. It's been nothing but airplane noise. I mean, that's probably the first thing. What? Let's find a studio up there so that you could make a one car situation work. Yeah. Yeah. Where? I don't know. Yeah, it's getting old driving down here. I bet. Well, especially with this fish tunnel. Yeah. Yeah. I drove in on Friday. I'm like, it sucks. Yeah, it does. Sometimes it just takes an hour to get each way. But I love that question. Thank you, Wes.
Yeah. Good luck traveling. Thank you, everybody, who boosted in. We had six of you stream sats. Not a big showing on the sat streaming, but you did stack 2,745 sats for us. Just listening and streaming as you go. When you combine that with our total sats, which means our boosters as well, then we stacked 98,495 sats. Thank you for sending us some value and a message to the show. It's a great way to support this production and made episode 30 possible. If you would like to boost the show, all you need to do is grab something like Fountain FM, load it up with some sats, and send in a message.
Or become a Jupiter Party member and support the automatic, ongoing production. Just set on autopilot and support the show. A couple of odd stories, just to wrap us up. I don't know how smart these individuals are. I'm going to guess they're not the brightest bulbs. They came up with a scheme to fraud insurance companies. And I'll see if you can identify where they went wrong, okay? Okay. So they collaborated together to damage cars and then file for the insurance claim, trying to, at one point, get up to $300,000 by getting reimbursements from multiple insurance companies.
And they had a pretty good process, except for one minor bit, and that is that they dressed up as bears and tried to pretend like it was bears that attacked the car. And, well, they just kind of used Halloween costume, so the fur and stuff wasn't actually actual bear fur. You may remember this shocking video from November when four people were arrested for allegedly faking bear attacks in luxury cars to collect insurance money. Well, today they appeared in court. So they show footage of a bear climbing into a car, attacking the interior. And in the grainy, digitally zoomed and cropped at night surveillance camera footage that they have, it still doesn't look like a bear.
That's so funny. And then when the police got into their place, there was bear costume and bear claw stuff everywhere. So it's why. Why did they even submit video? So good. Well, I think I don't know if they submitted. I don't know. That's a good point. Yeah, because it looks so fake. Luxury cars to collect insurance money. Well, today they appeared in court. Cake House Joy Benedict shows us what happened. It's security video giving bears a bad name as investigators say someone in a bear costume ransacked multiple cars. The only honey inside a false insurance claim. You each waive and give up that right and agree that your preliminary hearing would be timely.
It's a case that certainly turned heads in San Bernardino County. And Monday, all four defendants faced a judge for a pre-preliminary hearing. Proven, from Rosian, yes, Your Honor. They waived their rights to a speedy hearing. The three men and one woman are out on bail. None of them wanted to speak on camera after the court appearance, but we're learning more about this case and the bare necessities of the complaint. Oh, she loves the puns. You know they're real winners when they show up to their court case in sweats and T-shirts. Too.
And they look like total jerks. They pulled multiple insurance policies on. Well, no, they had multiple cars they wrecked. Oh, OK. Yeah, from different insurance companies. So no one insurance company necessarily was hit. Right, would be the wiser, yeah. So interestingly enough, back in 2022, April 17th. So as you know, just a couple of weeks after Dylan's birthday, I got a notification from our insurance. It was a home insurance notice of non-renewal. And it said, quote, we are unable to provide coverage because it was discovered that there is a dangerous animal on the premises.
Amazing. And so here's here's what I captioned this ridiculousness on my social media. I called farmers and told them I'm only slightly offended. They referred to my newly teenage son as a, quote, dangerous animal, end quote. When they said that wasn't it, I realized maybe they think I'm old enough to be a cougar. Not that either. I explained that we have animal allergies, that we don't even have animals on our property. And so they rescinded the non-renewal, which from all appearances was an error. What a weird thing to just like, and how would they even know if there's a dangerous animal? Yeah. Well, what's interesting is there was a pit bull on the loose from that house down the street that we had kept in the backyard for him until he was claimed.
But what are the chances that they would have seen that animal on the property behind the fence? Unless they're really watching? Right. Yeah. Yeah, like super bizarre, super bizarre. You know, when you have stories like you pit bull on the loose, right? We've talked, of course, before about bears on the loose. We recently talked about a pig that was on the loose. Technology can provide a solution. And in Florida, they got python snakes on the loose. Not great. They got a real problem. They're hard to catch. They're sneaky. That's scary. I know. So technology comes to the rescue, and the solution is to deploy robotic rabbits.
What? Yep. Scientists hope that these fluffy decoys can help with a very real problem. Yeah, Burmese pythons have devastated native wildlife in the Everglades. Now, as Wink News reporter Bridget Bruchalski explains, researchers turn to, Hoping robotic rabbits can lure the snakes out. Wait, is this a glitter bomb? Like, is it going to explode inside the python? I don't think so, but that's what I was thinking, is it should blow up. Yeah. Blow up. Maybe they do. But then, you know, people might come along, you touch the bunny, and then they blow up. So you can't...
Oh. Yeah. Only after a stomach acid is detected. Positive identification of snake. Burmese pythons takes more than just a sharp eye. They're sneaky, slippery, and hard to spot. But now wildlife teams have a new snake hunting tool in their arsenal, robot bunnies. The South Florida Water Management District and the University of Florida have teamed up to create what looks like a toy rabbit. These solar-powered robo-bunnies move, emit heat, and soon they'll even smell like a real rabbit. All to fool Burmese pythons into thinking dinner's been served. If the snakes come to them, it could save teams hours of searching in swampy alligator-infested terrain. If that python is detected, then it contacts someone like myself, who's available 24 hours a day, and then I can deploy one of our many contractors to go remove it.
Pythons have been a disaster for native wildlife. Lead invasive animal biologist for South Florida Water Management District Mike Kirkland says they've wiped out up to 95% of mammals in parts of the Everglades. If we can see a statistically significant number of pythons that are coming to investigate these robotic rabbits in the pens, that would be a success. They warm up. The rabbits warm up. That's really interesting. It smells like rabbits. It's crazy how they wiped out 90% of the mammal population. Yeah, I thought if it's in crocodile or alligator, I can't remember what it said, infested waters, then why are we bothering it?
And it's killing all the things. You know, if it's, yeah. I know, I know. Okay, so that's weird. That's weird. Robot rabbits. I'll let it finish up because it's almost done. Right now, pythons do a great job of staying hidden. Robo rabbits are still in their trial phases right now. Researchers told me that it will take years to find out if they're effective or not. So for now, they're going to rely on hunters and tracking programs to get those pythons out of the Everglades. But for now, reporting in Estero, Bridget Bruchowski, Link News. You know, it's funny, too, that there's like a python strike team.
so that when the rabbit detects a snake, it, like, contacts a state employee who then dispatches a contractor 24-7. Like, they are on it. Python war going on down there. Okay, last but not least, this one, this one's more of a public service announcement. It turns out that alcohol got into some of the Celsius energy drinks. And as somebody who occasionally drinks Celsius and this particular flavor, this is just a hilarious story. We are back now with a wild recall to tell you about this afternoon. Some Celsius energy drinks, the ones you use perhaps for the gym or to wake up in the morning. Well, they might actually have some alcohol inside as well.
Might be giving you a bit of a different buzz than you expected. The High Noon says some of its drinks were mislabeled as Celsius Astro Vibe Sparkling Blu-Raz Edition. The products were not shipped to Texas distributors, but that does not necessarily mean none of the impacted products made it here. So if you have any cans, you might just want to throw them away just in case. Oh, yeah, sure. Geez. Wasn't it vodka in there? Yeah. Yeah. That would be so bad for me. Yeah. Although I've never had an energy drink still. Kids, you know, kids these days are drinking energy drinks like crazy.
I don't know. They're all going to be a bunch of caffeine addicts. But there you go. We'll have links to those in the show notes if you'd like the full videos. In fact, we got the gosh darn links to just about gosh darn everything over at weeklylaunch.rocks. And you know the real pro move, right? You do know the pro move. That's to join us live on a Tuesday. That way you can be part of the live vibe. We appreciate that. Now, remember, we want your tips for making cat peace because she's going to have to get rid of that cat. and then I'm not going to have a really cute cat to visit. We've got to solve this. So let us know. Let us know.
Also, if you've got any of UFO or extraterrestrial or weird, bizarre, out there kind of stories, that could be a fun one. Let us know. Maybe I'll make a whole episode out of it if we get a few of them. All right? Well, from the beautiful Pacific Northwest and the mighty American West Coast, thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Launch, and we will see you right back here next week. Thanks, everybody!
This is The Launch, Episode 30 for August 5th, 2025. Streaming from the beautiful Pacific Northwest and the mighty American West Coast, We greet you all a good morning, a good evening, or whenever your timeline may fall. Time-appropriate greetings. Indeed, to one and all, this is The Launch, and my name is Chris. And I'm Angela. Hello, Andrews. Hello. We got a show today. We got a show. We're going to get into it. So a couple of things, in case you want to give us your mind, your feedback, your opinion, give us a call. Leave us your name and your town, 774-462-5667.
Probably going to have some feedback this week. That's 774-462-5667, name and town. We're live on Tuesdays, 1130 Pacific, 230 Eastern, in a podcasting 2.0 app or on our website. And then the show comes out Wednesday mornings, assuming the scheduler works. And, of course, we have our Launch HQ chat room and our Mumble Room going as well. And we'll post links to the things we talk about at weeklylaunch.rocks, where you can get all that, the authoritative information. Well, Andrews, I have it on good authority that even though you decided you had plenty of cats since last episode, you have ended up with a new cat. Congratulations.
Yeah. Well, so I had tried out Gypsy's sister, Penny, and it didn't work out because Penny was very, she'd be good as an only cat. But your wife happened across a very young kitten, maybe 10 or 11 weeks, that traveled 18 miles in an engine. Yeah, in the hood of an engine. How does that survive? Well, he has some like whiskers that are like curled, burnt. A little singed? Singed. Yes, that's what I was. Yes, thank you. God, that must have been horrible. Yeah, but no visual, no visible burns or anything like just the singeing. So anyway, and so, yeah, I woke up Friday morning and she was like, Ange, do you want a cat? And I was like, oh, no.
And I thought, man, this could be perfect, right? Because I thought a kitten, harmless. I mean, like some basic instincts, of course, but no established territorialism or whatever. Shouldn't be a problem with my cats. Well, so I drove up to Burlington, apparently where there are where I might get a speeding ticket in the mail. I don't know. I have no idea. I didn't see that. But a super sweet cat, black cat, white paws. Very nice. Just everything that we have wanted in a cat. Very snuggly. Like, yeah, sits on us, lays on us, super playful, right, because kittens are. Introduction with Gypsy went bad, right? Like, she was mad immediately.
Gypsy's a girl cat? Gypsy's a girl cat, two years old. And the new kitty named Toes is a boy cat? Yes. Okay. Toes. And, because he has big toes, he's going to be a big kitty. And then Rocky introduction, Rocky just looked at him like, what is that? You know, no issues. No real. Or no and really in gypsy she didn't growl she didn't one out of two yeah right but when gypsy had an opportunity to walk up to said kitty that was playing she attacked and she's ferocious she's been killing somebody she just left a rat on our front doormat like a week ago she's killed uh blue stellar jays like she is a killer uh she.
Went in for the kill. She did i think she will kill him yeah so I interfered right I grabbed her by the scruff of her neck because I thought that that was okay or you know like the the logical thing to do place to grab yeah and there's claws going everywhere yeah and she bit me once and I was like oh okay and I actually I let go got a. Bite while you're grabbing her by the scruff. Huh yeah well it was yeah because I didn't get a good grip uh and so then she went back to the cat thankfully the kitten was hiding so this time I went in And knowing full well I could still get hurt, I grabbed her by the scruff of the neck again.
And this cat needs like her demons exercise because she turned her head full 360. Like a horror movie? Yeah. And chomped on my hand. Oh. Chomped it. It could do damage. It did do damage. So I managed to get her outside. And I did not hurt her, right? But I did get her outside. And then I tended to my wounds. I had three good puncture wounds on my thumb, like at the base of my thumb. And it would not stop bleeding. and you picked up the kids like maybe an hour after that and then I went straight to the walk-in. Wow. It was just bleeding still?
Not only would it not stop bleeding, but I lost feeling in the side of my thumb. Oh, that's like some nerve stuff going on. I have nerve damage, yes. No. Yeah. So they prescribe two antibiotics. Normally amoxicillin is prescribed, but I'm allergic to penicillin. Oh, they're worried about like bacterials in there. Yeah, it's, I'm forgetting the name of it, pastorella, I think is the pastorella bacteria. But that typically the infection starts three hours to 24 hours later. I'm like 72 hours out now. And there's no... I don't know if I'd take it then, to be honest with you.
That's where I'm at, right? Oh, yeah. Especially because the reason why they had to prescribe two antibiotics instead of one was because it's not penicillin. It's probably pretty tough stuff. But there's a 10% chance that I will react to it because it's a cousin of penicillin. And then it's in your system. Yeah. And it's five pills a day and it's three of one and two of the other. So there's no there's no opportunity to probiotic in between, you know, without possibly counteracting the whole reason why I'm taking them. But then not not a huge deal, but kind of a kind of a huge deal.
Cannot drink alcohol on this. It will make me projectile vomit, apparently. It has an ingredient. One of them has an ingredient in it that they use to cure alcoholics of drinking. I wonder if that could be a prank if it doesn't have a taste, you know? I mean, if. Puking is a prank. Yeah. Well, I mean, I do need to lose some weight. So I think that. Puke, die. No. Right? No. So, yeah, I'm on the fence. The puncture wound has healed really nicely. There is a little pink around it, but that's normal. The only problem right now is that I am getting the chills.
And I'm not sure if it's because I was sitting out in the sun or if it's because infection. It's probably menopause. I wouldn't worry about it. It is not menopause. Thank you very much. Nope, not yet. But anyway, so I'm watching it. I have those pills ready to take. Yeah, just in case it seems like it's infected. Yeah, I don't know. So is there a strategy here to make peace? What's the plan? I don't know. Will they make peace over time? I don't know. So basically, I prepared the kids that we might not be able to keep him. And I have a couple options for my neighbor.
His cat died two years ago, or two months ago. He might be willing to take him. Cat's so sweet. I wish I could take him. I know. Well, I wish I could keep him and maybe give it a gypsy, but that's not what you're supposed to do. You bit me. You're out. You're out. Well, no, you just, yeah, you can't welcome any other cat into this clan. You don't bite the hand that feeds you. Right. Yeah. So, yeah, she's just mad. Man, I mean, sometimes they... I'm sure there must be listeners out there that have gone through this. There must be people that get cats to cooperate. Is there a process or a strategy that...
Let us know. Boost in and tell us. Because, like, it would be nice. Such a sweet cat. I want to come visit the cat. Yeah. We're keeping him in Abby's room, you know, separated. Okay. Like, there's really only been a couple minor introductions. And his smell has been getting all around the house when the other two cats are outside. So, yeah, I don't know. Oh, and the other thing is the neighbor that I'm thinking of would keep him indoor only. So he would never run into a gypsy outside. Oh, man. Can you imagine other poor cats that are just out having an afternoon walk? They run into gypsy and it's just on, I bet.
Well, so she is being targeted by what we call Bobtail Bock. It's a different cat in the neighborhood that just cornered her again today. And I want to be like, you stupid. This is what you're trying to do to that little kitten. Yeah. And he's so small, she would totally kill him. Like, I know that she would kill him. And I told that to Dylan about this Bobtail Bock and how she's doing the same thing. And he's like, Gypsy doesn't know English. You can't tell her that. All right. Let us know what you would do. Gosh darn animals.
So it only took me 20 episodes of listening to you say that number and Hank Hill saying that number for me to have it memorized in my head. Because I wasn't intentionally going out of my way to memorize it, but now it's there. I think people should just put it in their contacts. And when they think of something, they just call us. Yeah. We have it. The launch. The launch, yep. And of course, you can boost in what you would do about our cat problem, too. Because I'm all in on this cat. I want to visit this cat. I know.
We've got to solve this. He's a great cat. He's a good cat. So let us know. Support the show with a boost. All right. Let's get into it. Well, there is a ruckus online about just a wave of age verification laws and rules that are sweeping the Internet, really getting kicked off because the UK's Online Safety Act rolled out on July 25th, which it claims its aim is to shield children from a harmful adult online content and maybe certain things they shouldn't be exposed to on social media. And a key component of the UK's Online Safety Act is age assurance to make sure that minors are correctly identified and avoid these things.
And there's several methods by which one can verify their age, including facial recognition where they try to recognize your face and guess your age. ID submission where you take photos. And of course, you'd be more than welcome to set up a digital identity wallet with your government ID. So it seems like, you know, maybe some good intentions, protect the children kind of a thing in here. But as you can imagine, the implementation is really chaotic. Companies don't really know how to comply. Users have to go through these invasive, half-broken verification processes.
And all in all, the systems don't seem that effective because things like a VPN can get around it pretty quickly. And those VPNs are heavily advertised across the Internet. Now, platforms like Reddit are going to support this. YouTube and X are deploying AI-based tools. Like, for example, YouTube is going to monitor your watch behavior. And if it seems like you're watching some content focused at younger people, they'll pop up a thing making you identify yourself and perhaps even do photo ID. Spotify is doing something similar. Some podcast apps are looking into how to do age verification for podcast apps.
NVIDIA seemingly mistakenly did age verification for some of their stuff. So if you were a kid, you couldn't get access. Mistakenly? Well, it seems like maybe that was a little bit of a mistake. I don't know. Some of the stuff they're still trying to figure out. Chris Middleton on X has a thread that I'll link to, and he argues that the Online Safety Act, while marketed to protect children, is really a threat to privacy and free speech. He says it's got vague, complex language. It's 250 pages just for the age verification stuff, and it's all really, really vague, and it applies to a lot of Internet communications.
and in it it imposes a quote duty of care on all platforms where they have to go back and proactively remove anything that might be harmful or illegal in this case to minors and they have to implement age verification and it implicitly puts pressure on applications like signal and whatsapp to proactively scan messages if you can imagine how these encrypted privacy apps would implement that it would be a nightmare they'd have to break the encryption and it also to suggest the back doors might be appropriate so that way that the government can audit this kind of thing, which I don't know if any of this has ever really worked.
And then here in the states, we've had a couple of U.S. states that are passing age identification laws sort of to, you know, follow kind of, I think, in the general kind of direction of this UK online safety law. How are you feeling so far as I roll this out to you? As you know, you and I are both parents with kids that are on the internet. I mean, but kids don't have official IDs. Are they going to implement a requirement for state IDs for younger than 15 or 16? Well, if you're in the UK, I think you can't get this digital wallet. But yeah, I think a lot of them are going to have to opt to do the face scan stuff.
So then they're going to have scans of their faces. And remember just last episode, we talked about the T app that just leaked all that crap. Yeah. Yeah. Huh. All these different. So what if the scan says, because Bella looks a little older than she really is. Yeah. Is it going to accept this? This face scan stuff, by the way, our two daughters do not look, I mean, they look related, but they don't look exactly, they don't look like twins. However, they can sometimes unlock each other's face ID phones. Oh. Yeah, have they never shown you this? No. It doesn't work all the time. But yeah, they can see. Crazy.
I know. That's really crazy. How good is this face? I could see Bella and Dylan being able to, well, Dylan's face is being a little more chiseled now. A little more man face. But it was really a surprise. So, yeah, they're going to they're going to have to do the face scan stuff. But, you know, like our kids very quickly figured out how to bypass filtering at school to get to social media while they're at school. Like they just on their own figured it out. Right. You know, what's funny is my phone has figured out that that's Gypsy. Oh, yeah.
And that's Rocky. But then it also has Mother North from a game I play as a people. It's a screenshot or something. Yeah, it is. I don't know. It's kind of neat. Yeah, it is neat. It is decent at detecting the faces, but I like that it does pet stuff. Okay, so now, at the same time all this kind of age stuff is going on with Spotify, Xbox and PlayStation are also kind of implementing these policies. Roblox announced they plan to. Oh, yeah. No, they already had. The kids had an issue with verifying because you can't chat unless you provide some sort of, yeah.
It's all kind of happening at the same time. I mean, I'm not here to fry bacon. Oh. But if I was cooking some conspiracy bacon, it's just weird that as the Online UK Safety Act lands, maybe they all just decide they have to do this. Sort of like the cookies law that's crapped up the whole internet. But the thing that does make it a little sus is at the same time, it turns out gaming platforms are being pressured to remove adult content. So there's some adult games. Steam and itch.io were the more popular ones that were forced to start delisting adult games. It seems that Itch.io decided to air some of their dirty laundry and released a statement.
Steam didn't say anything, but Itch.io says in their public statement, quote, The organization, Collective Shout, launched a campaign against Steam and Itch.io, directing concerns to our payment processors about the nature of certain content found on both platforms. So the payment processors that Steam and Itch.io deal with started pressuring these companies to drop adult content or else they wouldn't be payment providers for them. So it comes kind of from that end. Now, Collective Shout was started in 2009 in Australia, It sounds like some other games are targeting. They're going after Grand Theft Auto.
The Zoom platform, which is sort of a competitor to good old games, the Zoom platform and good old games also announced that they have been pressured by the same group. I thought GOG did something really awesome. They decided to put all 13 of the game titles that were being targeted on sale for free for 48 hours in protest. Yes. So, all right. Well, we don't need a payment processor. They're free. Yeah. Right. That's funny. Zoom said, quote, they have no plan to remove any titles and instead are exploring alternative payment options such as a wallet system, which would allow users to add funds to their account and spend them on all of its products.
It is kind of ironic that these payment processors are leveraging their position to do this when stable coins are becoming a thing because you could solve this with stable coins. You could buy some stable coins. You could put them in an online wallet and you could buy your game with stable coins. And you could bypass Visa or MasterCard altogether or whoever is their payment process. ByteBitten has an excellent point. We have to protect the kids, so upload their verified data to our servers that might get hacked. Like, it just really, like, and it's like joining a do not call list.
Well, now you're on a list that can be sold. Like, yeah, for sure. It's, are you, you're, yeah. It's the, it's the age old thing of trading, trading privacy for security, and it never ends up being an equitable trade in the long run. And especially with these things getting compromised. Here's my steel man argument. I think there is a way to verify identity online to an extent. It's not perfect, but I don't think it needs to be perfect. And I know people are going to roll their eyes when I say this, but PGP, pretty good privacy, solved this a really long time ago.
And the way PGP works is you have a public key that the world can know, and then you can verify that's you with a private key that only you have and know. And that combination, a public key and a private key, is really all you need to prove identity because only you can have that private key. And if once you know, okay, this is XYZ who's really a person, that's 90% of the battle. Now, if you want to attach other types of verification that could be done at a different layer, it could be attributes that get saved along with that public key.
And it doesn't necessarily need to be this private thing that each tech platform implements. And then each tech platform could have their own security vulnerabilities. They could have their own issues or they could have common problems, too. And there's other standards that are these decentralized ways to do identity that are just math-based, that aren't government-based, that aren't corporation-based. They're just math-based. It's just using the standard old form of crypto that we used to call encryption. So you don't have to go this route. And if you had to – I don't hate the idea that our kids couldn't get on TikTok until they're 18. I don't hate that idea.
I don't want them uploading their faces to TikTok servers to verify their age. Right. And then the other problem is a lot of time these age-gating things are just stupid. Like Steam does this already if there's a game that's slightly risque or has violence. Before it'll show you the game page, you have to verify your age. Right. So, like, when Dylan and I are looking at a game, we just pick a random year. We scroll way up, boom, click it, and go. We just look at it, right? Or after Abby had, you know, wanted to get something in iCloud. I can't remember what it was. Like, we had to remove the kid restriction on her account so she had access to something. I can't even recall what it was.
But, like, the platform is building these stupid limitations. And then I, as a parent, am the one that overrides them. Right. Well, you know what happened recently is they took over my Netflix profile and filled it with a bunch of stuff. Suggestions now that don't match. You know and thankfully i don't. Really watch algorithm wreckers yes they they wreck my youtube algorithm sometimes yeah. Well so i was like we'll stay out of there and then uh so abby took over rick kai's. Hopefully hopefully he doesn't use that anymore i don't think he's using it uh yeah i saw that she also i had her create a youtube profile on the tv at my place.
Oh for her. Yeah oh yeah okay cool and she's good about using it probably because you talk to her but yeah yeah she's good about using but at first it was like well. She has a youtube because she does that's. How she. Listens to music is. Youtube i don't know if it's like her account or if it's just like a separate profile on my app or whatever but it works yeah okay and that's really i mean that's about as much as i need and then i as a parent don't mind monitoring the situation and be like no let's not watch that or yeah watching too much of that or whatever like Like it's.
Yeah. When I have a era content filters. Yeah. We're almost growing out of those because, you know, what what really is going to be so bad that they look at at this point? I don't know. But they're still on. There's there's this aspect of personal responsibility and parent responsibility. And then people come back with, well, but clearly they're not doing their response. You know, it's this whole age old argument. I imagine our kids, when they have kids, this is going to be settled. I bet a lot of this, I bet, I bet. They'll look at it as when they're our age, they'll look at it and think, boy, we had access to the entire internet. How weird was that?
Right. I cannot wait to find Dylan severely restricting his kids. Yes! Where we minorly impacted his life. He's going to wreck his kids' lives. It's going to be great, though. I mean, there's so many moments that I'm going to look back at and be like, hey, you remember? remember absolutely yeah yeah. I'm just gonna i'm gonna have a smirk. I should make a note i should keep a note so i don't i mean the big ones i never forget future self yeah yeah i feel like i should keep a note um so let us know what you think if we're overreacting thankfully it doesn't really impact us directly because our kids are all getting to the teenage years they're generally we have we have other means of filtering but it is going to make using the internet i think worse, I think because you know that means you you and I are going to also all of us are we're all going to have to go through this process yeah so they know and that's going to make it worse I think that's just the reality of it but maybe it's worth it I don't I don't know I'd love to know if I'm over my skis on this one or if the audience agrees with us let us know you can send us a boost or of course you can leave us a voicemail as you know as you know, All right, what do you say we upped the mood with a little bit of music?
This one's a fun song. It's called Pork Chops. I think it's maybe Pork Chops Fried. Yeah, I'm going to say it's Pork Chops Fried is actually the name. Not Fried Pork Chops. Don't get it wrong. It's Pork Chops Fried by Hey Citizen. Now, we did get a good batch of voicemails this week, and Papa John calls in to talk about the T-app, amongst other things. Hi, JB. This is Papa John from the beautiful west coast of British Columbia, Canada. Just thinking about that T-app, yeah, it can be pretty damaging if people can spread false rumors on stuff like that pretty easily.
For myself, I try to stay off social media. at least the mainstream ones on Mastodon a little bit. But just from the beginning of COVID and just seeing how crazy it got on there, I just stopped using it altogether pretty well. AI, we don't really use it at work. I'm an electrician, and so it doesn't really do a whole lot for me in the trade. And that's about it. and I really enjoy the show. Thanks for everything. Thanks, Papa John. Awesome. You know, the thing about AI in the field for an electrician who's experienced makes sense, but what about someone who's just coming up and wants to learn about a quick conversion or look something up?
Because, you know, I imagine people that actually know how to work on cars don't look up the stuff nearly as much as I have to look up when I'm working on stuff or anything electrical. I don't know. I feel like they'll do what I did and dump the motor out, the mode motor out. You know, like they'll see a summarization, but not understand the depth of what needs to be done. That's probably true. I don't know. Southern Fright Sassafras comes in with a plea to save the launch. A little bit clippy on the signal, but it came through. This is Southern Fright Sassafras saying, I love the launch. Please don't cancel it.
You just brought it up in the love show, and I had to call in and leave a voice note right now. I was going to call to my defense this week, But life got in the way with welcoming the newest JB extended family member. So please keep watching. I love it. Listen to it every week, even if I don't always do this really good voice film. Thanks. Bye. Congrats on the new family member. Nice to hear from you, Southern Pride. Also, this is the first I've heard of canceling the lunch. Remember last week? Well, the two weeks ago, somebody boosted in about canceling the lunch, and then somebody called in about it.
Because nobody's been boosting or calling recently, So everybody's stepping it up, which I appreciate. Well, they said. Save the launch. I know in LUP. I don't remember that. Oh, okay. All right. I think what I was is I was kvetching about no calls. That sounds like something I was saying. So maybe I did. Yeah. If I don't get any calls, I'm ending the show. Okay. Show's over. A guy named Ryan's back. He has a take on. This is 12th time, probably. 10th, 12th. Is it? With takes on shirts, I think. Hello, JB True. This is a guy named Ryan. Long time, 11th time. The prompt was... Do you wear shirts with things? First off, I am approximately your age, and I love to wear shirts with geeky things, like a thingy-style shirt.
I got a DJ Enzyme breaking it down. I got a Y'all Need Science shirt. So I wear those almost every day. It's pretty much all my personality at this point. And I love it. I love it if someone comes up and reads it and tells me that it's a funny shirt. I point out funny shirts and compliment other people when I come across them when I'm out and about. It's a whole thing for me. I really enjoy it quite a bit. And, Chris, you're not nuts. No Fear was everywhere. All right, good, good. I never understood it. It wasn't really my thing. But yeah, definitely brought back some memories. So thanks everyone for the great work. Keep it all up. And I look forward to the next episode.
Those shirts are definitely conversation starters. Yeah. Sounds like a guy named Brian would really enjoy Psybite. Yeah. Yeah, I bet. Like it'd be kind of outdated at this point. And I don't know if it's available in the archives, but Psybite with Chris and Mars Base. I wonder, we should have some shirts with sayings on them. Why don't we sell shirts with sayings? Right? like Brent's I don't install computers or whatever no it was. I hate building computers. Yes. PCs, yes. Absolutely. Oh, my gosh. That should be next year's Linux Fest shirt. That would be good. We definitely do one for Linux Fest. Thanks, a guy named Ryan. Always good to hear from you. Kevin from Raleigh's here.
Hey there, Launch. Kevin from Raleigh calling you back about the OLMs especially. Well, the internal only has the internal information, so it's completely useless for script writing. So that's a challenge. It looks like legal is telling us we can point to the website, but they haven't built in a scraper. So I don't hold a lot of hope for it, but did again, GitHub Copilot the other day made my life a lot easier when we had to do a script to do some stuff. And I think the net result is it's a big piece of trimming tens of 10 million or so out of some licensing costs.
So let's hope that's true. It is helping. But yeah, because, you know, what's cheaper than contract labor, a machine. So they will replace anybody they can. Have a great one. Still enjoying the show. Yeah, it's interesting because we were wondering if something that's an internal-only LLM would be as useful because of that problem. And then, yeah, I guess you hook up to other sources. I suppose that works. But curious to know how that actually plays out. Kind of sounds like the momentum might get lost in that. Thanks, Kevin. Good to hear from you.
We have a trucker with a funny story. I don't know if he gave us his name in town, but I liked it. Hey, Chris and Angela. I have a funny story for you just listening to the latest episode. Um, this happened before I was married. Um, I'm a truck driver and this is before I started, got, bought my own truck and started my own company. Um, I was driving a company truck, broke down in Sparks, Nevada and, uh, Ended up being there for a couple of days while the truck got repaired. But I had to do laundry, and I didn't have any extra clothes with me because I wasn't planning on being out overnight.
And I was at the Petro truck stop in Sparks. I got a hotel room, and I had to buy a little bit of clothes so I could do laundry. And I bought this shirt. It was a black shirt, and I didn't really pay too much attention to what was on the front. There was a silhouette that said FBI on the front. And I was wearing this around for a couple of days, not knowing what it said until later. And, you know, it was just a design. I didn't pay much attention to it. And I'm sure you can figure out what it was, especially when it was in Nevada. It's not the FBI that does law enforcement. Right.
The worst part is I'm a Christian, so that was, I just, I had to laugh at it when I realized it. Thankfully, nobody approached me. All right. Hey, Christians can be body inspect. Catch you later. He did call us back. I think he had something to tell us. Hey, it's me again. I forgot to tell you the whole reason for my story. That's why I don't, one reason why I don't like wearing clothes with luggage. Sure. Whatever. Just plain. Logos are corporations that just want to make money. That's their primary function. And other times I'm not observant enough to notice things in every occasion.
All right. Anyway, bye. That's why I never understood the no fear thing. I couldn't tell. Was it just somebody came up with a saying like got milk and wanted to put it on a bunch of shirts and stickers? was selling that and that was the product or was no fear like the product of another brand was no fear the brand of something like i never got it i never liked it and i never understood it, magnolia wraps us up this week with our last call hey. It's uh magnolia i i guess i should have said who i was in any of the other calls that i've been in but sometimes it's just a joke anyway um so this is completely off subject to the show this is kind of a community thing i wanted to.
He cuts out, but he'll come back. What about this one? Any Suzuki? That's good. Also, if anybody out there has any UFO or weird ghost stories, call in at Art Bellis. Do you have any? Nothing weird? I don't think so. Actually, I have a funny story. So my ring camera in the backyard is plugged in, right? So I could do continuous recording. You get the time lapse and stuff? Yeah. But I didn't realize that the 24-7 was only a 30-day trial. So anyway, so I was like, oh, I should really just buy it so I can scrub anytime. What finally pushed me over was the camera caught some big shadow running across the backyard. But all I could see was that it was a shadow, right?
And so I was like, is that a coyote? Is that a giant cat? Is that something else? What is that? So I converted it to a purchase, or I upgraded my plan right to the $200 a year one. And it was a spider that was really close to the lens. Camera tricks. Yeah, all I had was the moment, like a snapshot. But then when I scrubbed it back to that, I was like, okay. Well, one expensive spider. I always think, because I heard this voicemail as I was collecting them this morning, and I thought, I don't really have any, Like I wish I had a good UFO story.
I wish I could say like all those nights of driving late. I saw something up in the sky or, you know, being out in the woods. I saw something like a UFO in the woods. No. But for like a little while, it was this weird phenomena when I was in, you know, Grade school or maybe middle school. Probably middle school, actually. Sixth grade, maybe. Seventh grade. It was wolf spiders. I would get this weird sense that, like, one of my stepdad's friends would be over at the house. Oh. And then I would show up and they'd be there. And it's like a mile walk from my bus stop to where the house is at. So I don't know if I was picking up on a smell.
Is that telekinesis or tele-something? ESP kind of a thing? Yeah. I don't know. Interesting. And it was shocking enough, and it happened a couple of times, and I still remember kind of like the feeling. of being like, what? Weird. And I would have no reason to know. And they weren't even friends that were over regularly either. So anyways, that's the closest I ever got. It's the closest. But maybe somebody out there has gotten a little closer. Let us know. I'd be really curious to hear some of those stories. That could be fun. Boost in or call and let us know. And thank you everybody.
Who left us a voicemail this week. We appreciate it. And we got some great boosts this week. Mr. Turd Ferguson's our baller booster. 63,933 sats. Branded shirts or sayings can be a pretty handy way when you're at a... Oh, it can be pretty handy when you're at a conference for meetups. It helps you find your tribe quickly. Mm-hmm. For sure. Yeah, that's kind of what we're thinking about LinuxFest Northwest. Yep. I'm on board with you. Thanks, Turd. Nice to hear from you. Appreciate the boost. A-Ron's here with 3,333 sats. It's sad to see that Charles got caught up with the wrong crowd.
Hopefully Mr. Cheese learned his lesson. I had to go home, A.A. Ron. When I went home, I had to show that to the wife. I had to go to the show notes. I went to the show notes of the episode and pulled up the YouTube video of Chuck E. Cheese getting arrested. And I'm like, just watch this. And you know what I saved, too? Did I keep it? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I saved a sound bite. Got arrested. I love the way she says arrested. So if you want to boost in, you get that. Oh, yeah, that's what A.A. Ron was doing. Is that right? That's right.
Oh, yeah, that's how you're supposed to. Yep, yep, yep. All right, thanks for reminding me. I just got so excited because A.A. Ron has his own soundboard. PJ also came in with a Chuck E. Cheese boost, 3,333 sats. My odd pets have been small and not too crazy. I've had a guinea pig, a toad, and various fish and rats. One day it might be cool to have a pet crow, raven, or a possum. Okay, don't agree on the possum, but I was just telling the boy yesterday I want to train a raven or a crow. Yeah, to bring you money? Whatever. I would love that. Bring me cash. There's goodies all over the farm, and we have hawk-sized ravens.
I mean, these things are king crows. They are got to be 20-pounders. I mean, they're big ones. So would love to train those things. Any tips to make a raven army or just a crew of raven workers, please send them in. He says, also, I loved your bass story. We caught kelp and some catfish alive in a neighbor's swimming pool. And his dad said, keep them fresh. He just throw them in there. Keep them fresh. He says, catfish can live a long time in and out of water. Oh, I don't know why you know that, but I think I have an idea. Thanks for the boost. a dinner comes in with a 300 nope 3333 sats no message just the value appreciate that, And, of course, Musical Coder is here with a Chuck E. Cheese boost.
First boost ever! Woo! Well done. Thank you. Sending over my fountain earnings. Thanks for turning me on to Fountain and keep up the awesome podcasts. Well, glad you're liking it, Musical Coder, and keep an eye out. There's some nice improvements coming, too. Nice job at earning those sats. Well done. Odyssey Wester is here with a row of ducks. 2,222 sats. He says, yeah, I was a thrift store kid too and even got into those tie-dye and family pattern shirts back in the late 90s. Nowadays, I still wear branded T-shirts, but mostly now either gaming-centric Comic-Con or from you guys.
Yeah. I still have that patch you put on the T-shirts from TechSnap back when y'all started doing the Teespring thing. Remember when Teespring was awesome? Yes. There was a minute. You know what? The peak was when they were willing to coordinate the last challenge coin with the last shirt orders. Never again have we seen customer service like that. Nope. And it made it possible to execute in a way that was great. It was so cool. Only a couple missing from orders. Thank you, Odyssey. Good to hear from you. Mick ZP's here with 5,000 Sats. Couldn't agree more about ghosting since the pandemic.
I dread plans now than I did before 2020. I've always blamed the pandemic. Yeah. You know, it's good and bad. Like, before the pandemic, there were some Thanksgivings and Christmases where we'd be going to, like, three in a day. Sometimes four. There was at least one where we did four. Yeah. And now, if we have a Thanksgiving, it's because we throw our own. Yeah. Which is better, but also weird that they just all fell apart. They all just fell apart. People moved and. Well, we divorced and your family was like, sorry, Ange, you're not part of the family anymore. Right. But I mean, there's no family. There is no family.
Yeah. My family moved away. They just sort of stopped doing them. Yeah. It's a mess. Oh, yeah. My grandma passed away and that was the end of that family. I think that's part of it. Yeah. There were some elders in the family that kept these things going and some of them passed. Yeah. I will recreate this village for my kids. Yeah, maybe. Somebody should. But yeah, I think that's interesting. And I think mixed up other people have also experienced the same thing. Thank you. Appreciate the boost. Bobby pins here with 4,000 sats. Always great to catch you all live. Well, thank you for making it live.
Appreciate that. Mr. Wes Payne's here with 6,666 sats. Oh my God. This is great. Seattle now has bus lines that go right to the mountain trail heads. That is so cool. That is. Cause also often the parking's pretty packed. It is stupid. Yeah. Especially like Mount Baker Forest. Like they're all parked up on the edge. Take the bus. That's brilliant. It is. If money, kids or other limitations and regional commitments weren't an issue, could you ever see yourself living car free in a big city in the U.S. or international? Why or why not? If I live downtown, I think I could. Assuming I mostly work from home.
My thing when we did live in cities or, you know, as much as we got, which is like, you know, Everett area and things like that, was I had to, of course, do contract work. And I sometimes have to drive between clients. Well, every day. So even when I lived kind of quote unquote downtown, I couldn't really take advantage of the car free lifestyle. Yeah. Do you think you could live car free? No. Because the kids? Well, yeah. But kids not an issue or not a thing is what Wes said. But no, I actually have recurring nightmares. About being a driver while at school, you know, high school, forgetting that I drove and taking the bus home and then having to take the bus back to school or the opposite.
I used to have it. You still have that nightmare? I do. No. Yeah, it's very fresh. It is very fresh in my in my memory. So, yeah, no, I like to be efficient and public transport is not efficient. It does take longer sometimes. Yeah. But, you know, think about the overall cost savings, especially over a five-year period, say, of not having to pay for gas, maintain a car. Well, yeah, or not being able to just jump in the car and go get fast food so you're not spending money. That's true. You would probably sometimes do this. Or you'd door dash more, and so the savings would be put into delivery fees.
No, I mean, that would be what would happen for me. Yeah. Also, it seems like it would be, although I guess you would lean into Instacart, right? I was going to say grocery shopping and things like that would be difficult, but you would just Instacart. I already do Instacart for Costco. Like I just don't really prefer going to Costco. Yeah. But I pick out my own produce. It's a good question. For Safeway. I would like to, in fact, I would really like to sell two of our cars and just get one car, but I do not want a car payment. And I don't want. Or the juggle.
Yeah. Right. The juggle is real. And selling a car is such a pain in the butt. You know, like you got to, you got to, if it's got any problems, you got to fix it up. You got to clean it up. Then you got to list the sales. Then you got to like, you know, respond to the queries and wheel and deal. It's considered a step toward RV sales. Yeah, right. Yeah, I like it. Yeah, that's a good point. I'd rather sell an RV, I'll tell you what, than sell my own car. Make it look like a house inside. This is my camping version. Yeah. I don't know. I think I could probably do it if we had one car in the family.
You know, so like if Adia kept her car and I could give up my car if I lived downtown and then when I needed to go. Oh, well, we need to find a studio up there then. It's been nothing but airplane noise. I mean, that's probably the first thing. What? Let's find a studio up there so that you could make a one car situation work. Yeah. Yeah. Where? I don't know. Yeah, it's getting old driving down here. I bet. Well, especially with this fish tunnel. Yeah. Yeah. I drove in on Friday. I'm like, it sucks. Yeah, it does. Sometimes it just takes an hour to get each way. But I love that question. Thank you, Wes.
Yeah. Good luck traveling. Thank you, everybody, who boosted in. We had six of you stream sats. Not a big showing on the sat streaming, but you did stack 2,745 sats for us. Just listening and streaming as you go. When you combine that with our total sats, which means our boosters as well, then we stacked 98,495 sats. Thank you for sending us some value and a message to the show. It's a great way to support this production and made episode 30 possible. If you would like to boost the show, all you need to do is grab something like Fountain FM, load it up with some sats, and send in a message.
Or become a Jupiter Party member and support the automatic, ongoing production. Just set on autopilot and support the show. A couple of odd stories, just to wrap us up. I don't know how smart these individuals are. I'm going to guess they're not the brightest bulbs. They came up with a scheme to fraud insurance companies. And I'll see if you can identify where they went wrong, okay? Okay. So they collaborated together to damage cars and then file for the insurance claim, trying to, at one point, get up to $300,000 by getting reimbursements from multiple insurance companies.
And they had a pretty good process, except for one minor bit, and that is that they dressed up as bears and tried to pretend like it was bears that attacked the car. And, well, they just kind of used Halloween costume, so the fur and stuff wasn't actually actual bear fur. You may remember this shocking video from November when four people were arrested for allegedly faking bear attacks in luxury cars to collect insurance money. Well, today they appeared in court. So they show footage of a bear climbing into a car, attacking the interior. And in the grainy, digitally zoomed and cropped at night surveillance camera footage that they have, it still doesn't look like a bear.
That's so funny. And then when the police got into their place, there was bear costume and bear claw stuff everywhere. So it's why. Why did they even submit video? So good. Well, I think I don't know if they submitted. I don't know. That's a good point. Yeah, because it looks so fake. Luxury cars to collect insurance money. Well, today they appeared in court. Cake House Joy Benedict shows us what happened. It's security video giving bears a bad name as investigators say someone in a bear costume ransacked multiple cars. The only honey inside a false insurance claim. You each waive and give up that right and agree that your preliminary hearing would be timely.
It's a case that certainly turned heads in San Bernardino County. And Monday, all four defendants faced a judge for a pre-preliminary hearing. Proven, from Rosian, yes, Your Honor. They waived their rights to a speedy hearing. The three men and one woman are out on bail. None of them wanted to speak on camera after the court appearance, but we're learning more about this case and the bare necessities of the complaint. Oh, she loves the puns. You know they're real winners when they show up to their court case in sweats and T-shirts. Too.
And they look like total jerks. They pulled multiple insurance policies on. Well, no, they had multiple cars they wrecked. Oh, OK. Yeah, from different insurance companies. So no one insurance company necessarily was hit. Right, would be the wiser, yeah. So interestingly enough, back in 2022, April 17th. So as you know, just a couple of weeks after Dylan's birthday, I got a notification from our insurance. It was a home insurance notice of non-renewal. And it said, quote, we are unable to provide coverage because it was discovered that there is a dangerous animal on the premises.
Amazing. And so here's here's what I captioned this ridiculousness on my social media. I called farmers and told them I'm only slightly offended. They referred to my newly teenage son as a, quote, dangerous animal, end quote. When they said that wasn't it, I realized maybe they think I'm old enough to be a cougar. Not that either. I explained that we have animal allergies, that we don't even have animals on our property. And so they rescinded the non-renewal, which from all appearances was an error. What a weird thing to just like, and how would they even know if there's a dangerous animal? Yeah. Well, what's interesting is there was a pit bull on the loose from that house down the street that we had kept in the backyard for him until he was claimed.
But what are the chances that they would have seen that animal on the property behind the fence? Unless they're really watching? Right. Yeah. Yeah, like super bizarre, super bizarre. You know, when you have stories like you pit bull on the loose, right? We've talked, of course, before about bears on the loose. We recently talked about a pig that was on the loose. Technology can provide a solution. And in Florida, they got python snakes on the loose. Not great. They got a real problem. They're hard to catch. They're sneaky. That's scary. I know. So technology comes to the rescue, and the solution is to deploy robotic rabbits.
What? Yep. Scientists hope that these fluffy decoys can help with a very real problem. Yeah, Burmese pythons have devastated native wildlife in the Everglades. Now, as Wink News reporter Bridget Bruchalski explains, researchers turn to, Hoping robotic rabbits can lure the snakes out. Wait, is this a glitter bomb? Like, is it going to explode inside the python? I don't think so, but that's what I was thinking, is it should blow up. Yeah. Blow up. Maybe they do. But then, you know, people might come along, you touch the bunny, and then they blow up. So you can't...
Oh. Yeah. Only after a stomach acid is detected. Positive identification of snake. Burmese pythons takes more than just a sharp eye. They're sneaky, slippery, and hard to spot. But now wildlife teams have a new snake hunting tool in their arsenal, robot bunnies. The South Florida Water Management District and the University of Florida have teamed up to create what looks like a toy rabbit. These solar-powered robo-bunnies move, emit heat, and soon they'll even smell like a real rabbit. All to fool Burmese pythons into thinking dinner's been served. If the snakes come to them, it could save teams hours of searching in swampy alligator-infested terrain. If that python is detected, then it contacts someone like myself, who's available 24 hours a day, and then I can deploy one of our many contractors to go remove it.
Pythons have been a disaster for native wildlife. Lead invasive animal biologist for South Florida Water Management District Mike Kirkland says they've wiped out up to 95% of mammals in parts of the Everglades. If we can see a statistically significant number of pythons that are coming to investigate these robotic rabbits in the pens, that would be a success. They warm up. The rabbits warm up. That's really interesting. It smells like rabbits. It's crazy how they wiped out 90% of the mammal population. Yeah, I thought if it's in crocodile or alligator, I can't remember what it said, infested waters, then why are we bothering it?
And it's killing all the things. You know, if it's, yeah. I know, I know. Okay, so that's weird. That's weird. Robot rabbits. I'll let it finish up because it's almost done. Right now, pythons do a great job of staying hidden. Robo rabbits are still in their trial phases right now. Researchers told me that it will take years to find out if they're effective or not. So for now, they're going to rely on hunters and tracking programs to get those pythons out of the Everglades. But for now, reporting in Estero, Bridget Bruchowski, Link News. You know, it's funny, too, that there's like a python strike team.
so that when the rabbit detects a snake, it, like, contacts a state employee who then dispatches a contractor 24-7. Like, they are on it. Python war going on down there. Okay, last but not least, this one, this one's more of a public service announcement. It turns out that alcohol got into some of the Celsius energy drinks. And as somebody who occasionally drinks Celsius and this particular flavor, this is just a hilarious story. We are back now with a wild recall to tell you about this afternoon. Some Celsius energy drinks, the ones you use perhaps for the gym or to wake up in the morning. Well, they might actually have some alcohol inside as well.
Might be giving you a bit of a different buzz than you expected. The High Noon says some of its drinks were mislabeled as Celsius Astro Vibe Sparkling Blu-Raz Edition. The products were not shipped to Texas distributors, but that does not necessarily mean none of the impacted products made it here. So if you have any cans, you might just want to throw them away just in case. Oh, yeah, sure. Geez. Wasn't it vodka in there? Yeah. Yeah. That would be so bad for me. Yeah. Although I've never had an energy drink still. Kids, you know, kids these days are drinking energy drinks like crazy.
I don't know. They're all going to be a bunch of caffeine addicts. But there you go. We'll have links to those in the show notes if you'd like the full videos. In fact, we got the gosh darn links to just about gosh darn everything over at weeklylaunch.rocks. And you know the real pro move, right? You do know the pro move. That's to join us live on a Tuesday. That way you can be part of the live vibe. We appreciate that. Now, remember, we want your tips for making cat peace because she's going to have to get rid of that cat. and then I'm not going to have a really cute cat to visit. We've got to solve this. So let us know. Let us know.
Also, if you've got any of UFO or extraterrestrial or weird, bizarre, out there kind of stories, that could be a fun one. Let us know. Maybe I'll make a whole episode out of it if we get a few of them. All right? Well, from the beautiful Pacific Northwest and the mighty American West Coast, thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Launch, and we will see you right back here next week. Thanks, everybody!
