I'm going to rehab tomorrow to get off the bottle.

Got 100 hours of Behind the Bastards and another 100 of Lions led by Donkeys.

Edit: Thank you all.

Hey ya'll,

Long time listener and occasional poster. With the sheer fuckery that is happening here in the United States, technofascists, and Zelenskyy saying that if the US fully sides with Russia, Ukraine is done. My mental health is always kinda shitty and I get hit hard when bad shit happens, even if it doesn't directly impact me. I don't know if it is me being chronically listening to Behind the Bastards, Last Podcast, and Knowledge Fight or I am depressed even with my wedding on the 24th but any advice to help? Sorry for rambling, I just feel overwhelmed with no power other than going to vote. I just, I don't know, I don't know what to say just that everything sucks even with me getting a new job and getting married in 6 days. Sorry for rambling. I ramble when I am anxious (which I am chronically) or when I am overwhelmed. I don't expect a response but just wanted to vent and say ya'll mean a lot to me.

Feel like this is the inevitable next step for him, and am honestly waiting for the day they change the rules to allow it.

Proton has a list of companies founded by former Palantir workers (the so called Palantir Mafia). That ecosystem is growing and becoming increasingly influential.

Several of these companies are working with police forces and one is building AI technology for the Israeli military. Proton notes additionally that they are not replacing established military companies, but adding to them.

Most people involved are definetly deserve at least a side bastard title.

Link: https://proton.me/blog/palantir-modern-warfare

Disclaimer about Proton: This is a company, who prominently sells privacy focused software and infrastructure. They are most famous for their emails. It is thus there business model to "raise awareness" about privacy problems. Most information from them is good, but they want to sell something to you at the end of the day.

The BTB episodes with Jamie were great, and I don't expect Robert to try to cover the science angle of science/tech related stories in too much depth - this is a podcast about, to use the term the air crash investigation people use, 'human factors' and that is what Robert is exceptional at - but its probably worth to understand as long as BTB episodes are, it can only cover so much because the universe is fractal and infinitely complex. Non-fiction writing (and quant modelling, to be honest) is at base level about trying to weave a narrative through the massive amounts of data.

I think this was not as much missed as not the point and purpose of this podcast during the Theranos and Oceangate episodes; in understanding social disasters or bastards its probably important to always make room for more complexity and not treat the simple narratives reductive to any model or non-fiction writing output as the whole truth.

There is a sci/tech/engineering angle to every story that could be looped into the human factors story, but to stick to our analogy, aviation safety takes into account institutional, economic, and cultural factors, but tries extremely hard to keep to emphasise the factors that can best be controlled by engineers because they are engineers and engineering human institutions - if even possible - tends to be unreliable. What the safety engineers can do is to try to account for that via processes and making sure the hardware can withstand those degrees of freedom they have limited agency over.

Here's the instructive quote from Hank's video.

Deeply complex systems lead to convoluted dysfunctions. The incentives of content ecosystems and communication push away from explaining convoluted dysfunction and toward simpler and simpler stories, feeding on our justified outrage, our excitement, our hope. Simple stories lead to belief in simple solutions. Belief in simple solutions leads to scammers who will exploit justified outrage, uninformed excitement, and of course, the various psychologies of wealthy investors. This cascade existed long before Theronos that Theronos is a textbook example. And all that makes me feel like I need to revisit the reason why people, or at least myself, thought Therronos might be a super valuable company. The version I hear most is they would use less blood. And this was a thing that Theronos focused on so much in Elizabeth's interviews and in their advertising. If you were to sort of think of torture experiments, it would be a phenomenal one. You sit there and sort of watch as your blood is sucked out of you. I think it took half my blood. Why do they need that much blood?

They're overdoing I would prefer all of my blood to be inside me doing what it's supposed to do. But as a person who's had a lot of blood pulled out of me, this is actually of limited value. Removing too much blood isn't really much of a problem. In certain situations, like the ICU or pediatrics, it can be a problem. And we have solutions in those places, but for most patients, we aren't removing a clinically significant amount of blood. One of those tubes might contain 5 milliliters of blood, which is roughly 1% of what is removed when you donate blood. It's less than.1% of a typical adult's blood volume. But the real important part of the pitch that really hit is that with new technology, all of this would become much cheaper and more accessible. And that's a wonderful Robin Hood story that might actually change how healthcare works in a significant way. And then Theonranos would become a part of that. And then eventually they could raise their prices and make billions of dollars. And I guess making existing chemistry smaller and more automated could be considered an invention. But man, I really did think when I was hearing about Theronos that they were doing something different, that they had a real revolution on their hands. You can imagine saving on labor or reagents or just like scaling up so that you have a lot of these machines and then they become cheaper. But using less blood doesn't deliver any of those savings. 

Robert mentioned that Robert e Lee would make his Mount Rushmore of American bastards. I don’t think he’d make mine, there were eviller confederate generals, and I think Jefferson Davis was most responsible for the civil war and he was a complete idiot.

Mine are Douglas MacArthur, Jefferson Davis, Trump and Georgia tann.

Dishonorable mentions would be Epstein, Andrew Jackson, Reagan, Limbaugh, William F Buckley, Alan Dershowitz, and J Edgar Hoover.

Nvm on Murdoch he’s Australian.

In light of the recent episodes.

LinkedIn is like that side of town where you only go when you absolutely have to then leave right away and you feel like you should take a hazmat shower afterwards.

This seems excessively weird even for LI.

Longstreet was both a confederate general defending slavery but after the civil war, supported the union and civil rights. Robert said in the niemoller episode that for a Nazi to truly earn ‘redemption’ they had to put their life in danger against the regime. In that sense, Longstreet did in the battle of liberty place. In 1874 New Orleans Longstreet lead black troops against his own former soldiers attempting to overthrow the elected governor. I still consider Longstreet a scumbag overall, but he’s a very complex person.

How many bastards do yall know of that genuinely put effort into redemption or fighting something they helped create?

Playing the new Modern Warfare 4 and it’s interesting that it’s actually acknowledging the the world of the declining American Empire, the post Oct 7 Middle East, and effect of the Russian-Ukraine War

It’s a bit more nihilistic and cynical than the last two and It actually feels…. Modern in a way the last two Modern Warfares haven’t

If we had a book club set up; which ones should be on the list?

Victor Salva is pretty mid director of mostly horror movies who was convicted of molesting Nathan Forrest Winters, the 12-year-old star of his movie Clownhouse, in 1988. He spent only 15 months in jail, continued to direct into the 2010s (in which he worked with other child actors) and his victim was black listed from Hollywood. All because Francis Ford Coppola had discovered him, liked his work, and was using his money and influence to pull for him despite knowing what he did. Like to the point of allegedly counter suing the victim's family for 5 million dollars.

Please share your best bastard-based Gay Halloween mashup memes.

Thank you.

Explanation of meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-hate-gay-halloween

Had to share the latest episode of Scam Goddess on this sub as soon as I saw the title and description 😂 (There’s different sections of the podcast that aren’t related to the topic, so skip to the middle if you just want the main story)

Apparently there’s an ex-convict who changed his legal name to “Lafayette Ron Hubbard”, claiming to be the reincarnation of L Ron Hubbard and is scamming Scientologists with his Temu version of auditing sessions. I think Robert would eat up the fact that renowned con-man L Ron Hubbard HAS A CON-MAN OF HIS OWN who’s doing an off-brand version of Scientology to scam the Church of Scientology 😭

I was just listening to the new Posting Through It (edit — I meant QAA) episode on this psycho last night, perfect timing

https://bsky.app/profile/paleofuture.bsky.social/post/3mxyvr6r5ns2m

Just admitting he’s into bestiality and he really likes horses. That’s neighsty.

I was given some AMC gift cards and I’m not working today. Which should I go see? Musk or You Can See Everything

I've made the mistake of listening to in succession, both the series on Jimmy Savil and the French guy who was drugging his wife and inviting dozens of men to take advantage of her, which led me to taking a break from the podcast.

Peter Scully, from what I remember, he was briefly mentioned in the episode about reality TV star turned sexual predator, Josh Duggar, who got caught by the FBI after using his work computer to download the infamous hurtcore video Scully made, where two masked accomplices tortured a 16 month old, who did survive, but had permanent health issues as a result. Scully is serving life in prison in the Philippines, he's convicted of molesting over 70 children IIRC, and at least one murder, where he raped a 13 year old, made her dig her own grave, and he strangled her to death. The true crime book The Darkest Web goes into the most detail on the deep web hurtcore scene, and the absolute horrifying levels of depravity, like a UK med student who was blackmailing people into sexual sadism, getting increasingly more cruel with threats to show everyone they know about the pictures they were coerced into taking.

The Junko Furuta case, in Japan, a 17 year old on her way home from school was kidnapped by teenage delinquents and held captive for over a month, being tortured daily and apparently raped by over a hundred men, until they got bored and killed her. Naturally, the boys basically got a slap on the wrist by the judge, and I'm pretty sure they became career criminals, like one of boys bragged that his dad was in the Yakuza. I read a Manga about the case, that went way too graphic in detail, by the end, I had no faith left in humanity.

The other was a case in South Korea, I don't remember the names, but there is a movie about the aftermath called Hope (2013) which I haven't seen. It was an 8 year old girl on her way home from school, when a drunk repeat sex offender grabbed her, and brutally raped her for half an hour, leaving her near death, with severe injuries like needing a colostomy bag for the rest of her life. I've heard that her parents have to keep her living a sheltered life, just watching children's entertainment. The man who did it got away with it, the inept legal system decided since he was drunk, he didn't know what he was doing. South Korea has spent millions of dollars a year on surveillance of this man, because of the constant threat of vigilantes, one did break into his house trying to murder the pervert. He's the most hated man in the country. And I don't know how you talk about this story without it becoming unbearably miserable and infuriating.

Robert said these episodes were a reverse bastard because he didn’t write the script or talk on the subject and just acted as a guest.

But is a reverse bastards what Robert said, or is it a great person who isn’t a bastard at all, or is it my favorite of the options, a baby who comes out of the womb causing destruction and genocide but grows up to be an amazing person who greatly contributes to society in a positive manner and unfortunately had no ability to limit their bastardy as a baby?