But, with that said, the previous program is Economic Update with Richard Wolff, heard Wednesdays at 6.30 p.m. 
right after the WBAI Evening News. 
Stay tuned for Off the Hook. 
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The telephone keeps ringing, so I ripped it off the wall. 
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And a very good evening to everybody. 
The program is Off the Hook. 
Emmanuel Goldstein here with you, joined tonight by Kyle. 
Yes, coming in loud and clear. 
Yeah, we are. 
And over in Skype land, we have Gila. 
Hello. 
Looking at your phone. 
And Rob T. Firefly. 
Hello. 
Gila, give me your phone. 
It's my turn. 
And not on a train this week is Alex. 
Good evening. 
Hopefully coming in a little bit clearer. 
We can hear you this week. 
What a marvelous turn of events that is. 
So, Alex, I take it when you were on that train heading back from Washington, D.C., you were actually finishing up protesting outside the homes of various Supreme Court justices? 
Am I reading you right? 
No, as a matter of fact. 
You're not. 
I was not. 
That wasn't on my agenda for that first week. 
Golden opportunity right there, you know. 
Well, I would imagine that most of them don't live in D.C. 
proper anyhow. 
I'm not sure about that. 
Well, maybe they do. 
They live in Cherry Chase, Maryland, Alexandria. 
Well, you know, I can give you the addresses later. 
That's not a problem. 
Thanks. 
And you can book your next ticket down there. 
But, no, you know, I was actually talking to a bunch of people who were part of that. 
And, you know, the Republicans are going nuts about this. 
They're saying that these people, why aren't they being arrested? 
It turns out there's a law. 
There's a law against protesting outside a judge's home. 
Did you know about this, Alex? 
As a lawyer, you should know about this. 
Because I'm sure many times you've been tempted to just get a couple of picket signs and go outside a judge's house after they rule against one of your cases. 
Yeah. 
Well, that so rarely happens that I get ruled against. 
Yeah. 
Well, you might want to get used to it. 
You know, we have some dark days ahead from what I'm led to believe. 
No doubt. 
In all fairness, yeah, it would sound somewhat appealing, given the posture of some of my cases several years ago. 
But, yeah, I was unaware of this law. 
So, Ted, tell us more about it. 
It's USC 18, subsection 1507. 
You'd do well to read it. 
However, with the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer pickets or parades in or near a building housing a court of the United States or in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer or with such intent uses any sound truck I don't know why they picked that, sound truck, or similar device or resorts to any other demonstration in or near any such building or residence shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year or both. 
That's the law. 
Well, it's interesting. 
It seems like it's tied to the intent to influence a judge's opinion one way or the other in an active case. 
Isn't that what you do every day in court? 
Yes, that's exactly what we do every day in court. 
Yeah, yeah. 
But it also reminds me of way back when, I mean, God, I don't even remember what year this was, but it was probably before 2000 when we held a protest outside the U.S. 
Federal District Court, the Southern District of New York. 
Oh, my God, you're right. 
We did that. 
We demonstrated outside a courthouse. 
That's right. 
That was in what year was that? 
Do you remember? 
That's what I'm saying. 
I don't remember. 
It was a long time ago. 
Okay, it was a very long time ago. 
It was last century, wasn't it? 
It was 1990. 
The statute of limitations has to be passed on that. 
Oh, it certainly has. 
We're sorry. 
We're sorry for expressing our opinion in federal buildings or in front of federal buildings. 
I don't think that we would have violated that particular statute because there wasn't an active case or controversy before the court in front of which we were demonstrating. 
That's true. 
Demonstrating for Kevin Mitnick, who was held in a very distant court. 
That's correct. 
I think that we were okay to be in front of the Southern District when there was a case in front of a separate U.S. 
Federal District Court. 
The thing that bothers me about this is that people really buy into the fear factor and say that, oh, my God, this is against the federal law to be outside someone's house chanting. 
You know what? 
It might be. 
This law seems to make it seem that way. 
It seems to make it seem like if you're anywhere where there's a judge, you could be violating the law. 
And I say, so what? 
At a time like this where the Constitution is being dismantled, where you're having rights for the first time taken away by a Supreme Court, it's time to get angry. 
It's time to act. 
It's time to say, I'm going to express myself. 
Law be damned. 
If that's the kind of law that exists now, then the law is wrong, too. 
There are people outside the homes of those justices that are apparently intent on dismantling Roe v. 
Wade and throwing the country back half a century at least and just making life hell for so many people. 
And no, I don't think we should stay quiet for that. 
Of course we should vote. 
Of course we should change things down the road. 
But you see, you know, if we just rely on our elected officials, you get more of what happened today in the Senate where absolutely nothing got accomplished. 
Basically the same old people voted against doing anything of substance, and we just wind up saying, well, the Republicans beat us again, even though there was less of them. 
So, yeah, you know, don't be intimidated. 
If somebody says, let's go to a demonstration outside Clarence Thomas' house, take them up on it. 
You know, be loud, be abrasive. 
Don't be violent. 
Don't be breaking things or vandalizing. 
That's not what this is about. 
It's about expressing yourself. 
You should never, ever be afraid to express yourself. 
And, you know, also this is kind of funny because I was helping people basically find houses because, you know, it's kind of a detective work sort of a thing. 
It's not hard. 
It's not that hard because there's always information somewhere online linking people to certain places. 
But the thing that got me, the thing that was really, really funny about this, the way to confirm where Supreme Court justice lives, let's say you have the street or the neighborhood, you just go on Google Maps and you move around a little bit and you keep looking at the houses. 
And when you get the house that's all blurred out, that's their house every time. 
It's simply incredible. 
Another time, once I got the address, I just plugged the address into the Internet and I got a nice Zillow video, a tour of their entire home inside and out, just left online. 
And the great thing is, at the end, there was a realtor who was narrating. 
He said, if you're excited seeing this online, you'll be thrilled when you see it in person. 
If that's not an invitation, I don't know what is. 
Well, look, I think, you know, I don't think we should advocate for people breaking the law. 
I think, you know, to play devil's advocate here too, I mean, as a lawyer, judges really are supposed to restrict themselves to the consideration of things that are part of the record, the testimony, the evidence that the parties adduce, things like that. 
And this law seems to be designed to try to insulate the judiciary, in particular the federal judiciary, from undue influence outside of the record, meaning, you know, people going and shouting things or presenting evidence that might be hearsay or evidence that might be inadmissible in court. 
And so you have these very, very strict rules of evidence about what a judge can and cannot consider. 
And I think that this law actually does serve a purpose, so that if we start saying things like you did, Emanuel, you know, in times like these, we should begin ignoring the law. 
I think you're just inviting anarchy. 
We should ignore those laws that work against us and are unfair. 
You know, every fascist society of every era always had the law behind them. 
They always were able to point to that. 
You know, 12 Years a Slave, watching that movie, you realize how the slaveholders always pointed to the law to say, I'm within my rights to have this person bound and enslaved indefinitely. 
So, yeah, the law is often flawed. 
And when it is, you have to challenge it. 
You don't simply blindly obey. 
And, you know, I think maybe because of the magnitude of what has happened here, people will see that. 
And they'll realize that there are, you know, values and then there are laws that thwart those values. 
And in times like that, you have to speak up. 
You have to be loud. 
You have to be out there. 
But at the same time, you know, your values dictate that you don't hurt people, you don't break things, you don't break into people's homes or anything like that. 
It's not what anyone I know is advocating. 
But certainly, how do you express yourself otherwise? 
What's left? 
It really becomes frustrating. 
And that's a very unhealthy society if you're not able to speak freely. 
That's Vladimir Putin's society. 
And I certainly don't want that here. 
Rob, looks like you have something to say. 
Yeah, just one point that I've seen made a number of different ways by a lot of people out there is the very fact that the people in power are telling you, no, you're protesting the wrong way, that in itself, I think, is a pretty solid sign that you're protesting in exactly the right way. 
You're protesting in the way that gets their attention, that, you know, you don't want to quietly just, are you comfortable with this? 
I'm going to just protest you now. 
Okay. 
No, I think this is a sign that the protests are having an effect, are being heard. 
Well, look, and to that point, I think, you know, civil disobedience is a long and very storied history in this country, especially with respect to things like the Civil Rights Movement. 
We wouldn't be here if people were not ignoring the law and flouting the law and disobeying the law. 
I mean, you even go back to, you know, the union miner strikes, you know, people like Utah Phillips would remind us that, you know, the reason why we have eight-hour days and laws busting sweatshops and busting child labor, these weren't benevolent gifts from enlightened management. 
They were fought for, bled for, died for on illegal picket lines. 
And so I agree with all of what you're saying, but I think as part of civil disobedience, you know, there is the component of punishment, and that breaking the law comes with a penalty. 
And when you disobey the law like that, even in a civil way, part of that protest is to accept the punishment that's meted out. 
Yeah, but we're already living the punishment. 
That's the thing that people are protesting. 
Yeah, and to some degree, these laws are giving the current court a lot of shelter in a moment when the application isn't necessarily with what the majority has in mind for society, and they do have a right to redress their grievances and so forth, and by, you know, and knowing the law, you can work sort of around the strictures of it in whatever kind of action you feel you're going to take. 
And we all know that laws themselves are interpreted by the public actually sort of along a continuum. 
I mean, most people follow them in sort of the common, widely interpreted way, but instances like crossing against a pedestrian signal, there are signals and laws and technical things that we don't necessarily always abide by. 
And in this case, someone is, there's power being exercised against the will of many people with lots of grievances to redress and give shelter to that process of them voicing that. 
There may be people that are going to want to work out around the strictures of that law and perhaps in moments outside a little bit to get the point across, right? 
And so that's what I'm seeing and hearing in this. 
Yeah, I think, you know, when you see on the right-wing media this law being trotted out, it means that the people showing up and protesting, holding signs, chanting, it's scaring them. 
It's scaring them a lot, so they have to find something that's really never been enforced before to try and scare people away from doing this in the first place, because, you know, unlike what we're constantly being told, and we're told this from people on our side and on other sides, that our voices mean nothing. 
And, you know, the people that we agree with who tell us that, they're frustrated. 
They don't believe that it's ever going to work. 
They've been out on the streets so many times, they voted, and still nothing seems to change. 
So that's why they believe that doing this is pointless, whereas the people on the other side, they don't want you to do that because you're a threat to their way of life, which they are succeeding in enforcing on the rest of us. 
Either way, you can't listen to that. 
Listen to yourself, and do what feels right, and use the values that you hold dear, and I think that's the best way forward. 
Gila. 
Thank you. 
I just want to throw this out there very quickly, which is if you have a voice and you want to use it, there are actions, there are protests that are planned this weekend all across the country. 
Find the one in your local area. 
Get out there. 
Make some noise. 
There are protests this weekend. 
There's a massive thing happening in Washington next week. 
Find out. 
Be heard. 
Be part of this. 
Don't sit and be silent and stoop. 
Now, do you have the website? 
If you don't, we'll find it, because we were talking about this last night as well. 
It's, I think, Planned Parenthood Action or something like that? 
Planned Parenthood Action, yes. 
Okay. 
And they will actually, if you go there, they will direct you to your local event. 
For those people who are in the New York City area, which is probably everybody who's listening to us right now, the event is starting in Cadman Plaza, going to march over the Brooklyn Bridge and finish at Foley Square. 
Join us at noon. 
Go to plannedparenthoodaction.org to find your local information this weekend all over the country. 
And when I looked at the site, there's a little dialog box for you to enter your zip code. 
It didn't say zip code, but I figured it out. 
But enter your zip code there, and it'll tell you where the nearest demonstration is. 
And, Gila, you mentioned something is happening next week nationwide. 
That's not this weekend. 
Not nationwide. 
There's actually something happening a week from yesterday, next Tuesday in Washington, actually mostly focused on the Jewish community, but in Washington, sponsored by National Council of Jewish Women, among other organizations. 
You can find out more at ncjw.org. 
I know of at least one chartered bus that's going from New York to Washington for this event next week. 
And keep listening to WBAI, because we are your source for information about this and all sorts of other activities that are going on related to this and so many other things that are happening. 
WBAI is really a tremendous source for that. 
And, by the way, I should point out, please help support us. 
Keep us on the air, because we don't have commercials, and we piss off a lot of powerful people, and they're constantly trying to shut us down, constantly. 
Give to WBAI.org. 
That's give2wbai.org, or you can call 212-209-2950. 
If there are people there, just say, I want to pledge a certain amount, and they'll find a thank you gift that's appropriate for that amount. 
Stay plugged in. 
Stay invigorated. 
And thanks for sharing that information, Gila, about actions in everybody's locality and, of course, the information you had about laws. 
Know the risks. 
Stay safe out there. 
But don't wait or feel like you're alone. 
There are so many people that have taken immediate notice and are mobilizing. 
Yeah, I think that's important. 
Don't feel like you're alone, because you're not. 
Even if you are physically alone, even if you're in some desolate place on Earth and you feel like no one's with you, we are. 
And we can get together in all different ways, online, offline. 
The important thing is to act intelligently and to stay true to your own beliefs. 
Hackers break the rules a lot. 
We get into trouble because of that. 
It takes the form of many actions, many experiments. 
Here's one that took place on Monday. 
Hackers replaced Russian TV schedules during Vladimir Putin's Victory Day parade. 
You guys watch the Victory Day parade? 
I missed it. 
Oh, it's fabulous. 
It's worth seeing. 
A lot of tanks, a lot of trucks, a lot of people marching around. 
We talked about this on the other radio show yesterday, but everybody's walking and looking to the right as they walk, looking at the leader. 
I don't understand how they're able to keep walking straight without tripping over each other. 
I certainly don't know how they're able to drive tanks and massive vehicles while staring to the right, which they do. 
Alex, I know you have some military experience. 
Maybe you understand how that works. 
Well, yeah, something like that. 
I find the whole Victory Day thing fascinating, though, because this was victory over the Nazis we were talking about. 
The original, the OG Nazis, yeah. 
Yeah, I mean, the Nazis, right? 
I mean, not neo-Nazis, not anything like that. 
And so you have this almost co-opting of Victory Day over the last several years with Vladimir Putin, and it's becoming more and more militaristic, more jingoistic, more about these external threats that are facing Russia, and revisiting this whole notion of the threat of Nazis that they've then misused and abused through misinformation, propaganda, censorship, and a strict enforcement regime domestically to justify the war in Ukraine. 
And it is really, really unfortunate, and I think it was, I don't remember who it was from the UK, but one of the ministers from the United Kingdom had called it out and said, it's really unfortunate because Russia and the Soviet Union, in fact, held this really important place in helping to defeat the Nazis. 
I mean, it was they who were instrumental and critical to the fall of the Nazi regime. 
That's true. 
Yet they themselves are committing these atrocities that are going to tarnish and stain forever that historical mark that they left on the world with the defeat of the Nazis. 
The amount of people that Russia lost, or the Soviet Union at the time lost, during World War II, I think it's something like 20 million. 
27 million. 
Unfathomable for us. 
And, you know, at that time, not that I was around for it, but at that time there was a certain camaraderie between Americans and Soviets at that moment where the war was over because of our combined efforts. 
And, yeah, a lot of that has been lost, forgotten, tarnished. 
And, you know, on both sides, too. 
I mean, what Russia is doing is absolutely terrible at the moment, but our hands are not clean by any stretch. 
Anyway, to get to what happened on Monday, yes, Russian television schedules were hacked to display an anti-war message as the country celebrated the National Military Festival. 
On-screen program descriptions, we all have those now. 
They were replaced with the hacker's text when viewed on smart TVs. 
How do we do this, folks? 
I really would love to be able to do that here. 
We'd probably be in prison for life, but still, it's a worthy hack. 
According to BBC Monitoring, that sounds very Orwellian, doesn't it? 
But I guess BBC is out there and they're just watching what we're doing. 
The message read, The message read, On your hands is the blood of thousands of Ukrainians and their hundreds of murdered children. 
TV and the authorities are lying. 
No to war. 
That is the most magnificent statement. 
Yes, I'm sure it violates all sorts of laws, but I am very happy that somebody had the courage to do that and very thankful. 
Major channels, such as Russia One, Channel One, and NTV Plus were changed. 
Francis Scarr, who works for BBC Monitoring, which is defined here, the branch of the BBC that follows mass media worldwide. 
They tweeted a short video of a screen showing the TV schedules on which every program showed the same description. 
The hack came during Russia's Victory Day celebrations, which is a national holiday and military parade overseen by Vladimir Putin, which was being televised all throughout Russia. 
As we mentioned, the annual event celebrates the Soviet Union's victory alongside allied forces over Nazi Germany in 1945. 
Under a near blackout of independent media and social media platforms, which exist today, most Russian viewers can access only Kremlin-controlled messaging about the conflict in Ukraine. 
The message in Monday's hack runs deeply counter to Putin's claims that his forces are in Ukraine to quote-unquote liberate Russian-speaking Ukrainians. 
It's unclear who was behind the alteration of the schedules on Monday, but the hacker group Anonymous retweeted a message saying good morning Moscow within hours of the hack. 
So, yeah, not really an organized group, just a lot of people pulling resources and accomplishing incredible things. 
And then you have Anonymous NB65, their affiliated network battalion, NB65. 
They allegedly targeted a Russian payment processing platform known as Kiwi, QIWI, and leaked 7 million payment cards as proof of a hack. 
This happened on May 1st, and they're defined by this story in hackread.com as one of the Anonymous affiliate hacktivist groups. 
They published a tweet in which they claimed to have gained access to Kiwi's databases for Operation OpRussia. 
For further information, Kiwi is a Russian giant that provides, a giant company I imagine, that provides payment and financial services in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. 
Those are countries that were former Soviet republics. 
NB65 is the same group that hacked Russian state-run television and radio broadcaster VGTRK, which is also known as All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. 
That happened back in April, and they also leaked 786 gigabytes worth of data online, something we discussed here. 
As for the attack on Kiwi, NB65 also tweeted that it managed to extract 10.5 terabytes of data comprising 30 million payment records, and they filtered 12.5 million credit cards of Kiwi customers. 
They also posted a statement revealing that the attack was aimed at disrupting the Russian financial system, in case you couldn't figure that out. 
Here's what they said. 
Kiwi, in your last press release, you clearly stated that the sanctions against the Russian financial system did not affect your business in any way. 
Well, it will definitely affect your business. 
Signed, NB65-Anonymous. 
They also stated they encrypted the platform's networks with a ransomware kit Furthermore, the group threatened to release one million records every day after the three-day contract period expires, and the platform fails to reach out to them. 
So Kiwi, reach out to NB65. 
They're trying to reach you, and you're not answering. 
It's important, and you're going to lose a million records every day, and your business will be affected quite a bit. 
I'm not a fan of ransomware or vandalism of this sort, but in certain situations, you go with what you got, and this seems like an effective way to show outrage and kind of mess up the system a bit. 
Thoughts? 
In situations where there's persistent action that's running unabated, that is not being deterred, and it just basically comes down to maybe helping that attacker change their priorities a little bit. 
And if you're good, you can protect yourself against this sort of thing. 
Sounds like they're not that good, and that's how these things happen. 
Of course, it happens in both directions, too. 
The Russian hacking group Kilnet. 
Wow, whatever happened to Fluffy Puppy and the nice-sounding names we used to have? 
No, it's Kilnet. 
They threatened to shut down ventilators at British hospitals. 
Yeah, they don't waste time, do they? 
They're just going to go for the ventilators and shut them down. 
But this is in retaliation for the arrest of an alleged member. 
So try to catch up here, because this has nothing to do with what I was talking about before. 
A 23-year-old supposed Kilnet member was arrested in London on Monday for the attack on Romanian government websites. 
This gets complicated. 
Kilnet has reportedly demanded his release and threatened to target life-saving ventilators in British hospitals if their demands aren't met. 
The message said, if he is not released within 48 hours, I will destroy your Romania, Great Britain, and Moldova. 
Yeah. 
I'm not sure why Moldova got thrown in there. 
I will destroy your entire information structure and even your Ministry of Health. 
All ventilators will be attacked. 
Only then will you begin to realize the mistake you have made. 
Seems pretty serious there. 
The alleged Kilnet member was reportedly arrested by National Crime Agency officers alongside officials from Romania. 
That raid took place at an address in Tottenham, North London. 
Go Spurs! 
Where the hacker was detained on suspicion of assisting with Kilnet's attacks on the Romanian government and media earlier this week in retaliation for supporting Ukraine in the Russian invasion. 
So it all comes back to Ukraine in the end, I suppose. 
The hacker is reportedly a Putin supporter with Facebook posts emblazoned with Russian flags and the letter Z, which is the invasion symbol that you see on Russian tanks. 
So, yeah, you know, it's just madness and mayhem out there. 
But what I wonder, and I always come back to this, why are ventilators accessible online in the first place? 
Do they need to be? 
It seems like a fairly simple way to keep them safe is to not have them be able to be hacked in the first place. 
Maybe I'm naive, but I just don't see why that needs to be something that the whole world should be able to alter. 
Yeah, that's alarming. 
Really, truly impressive. 
And if it is a capability, they're wielding and kind of really trying to get people to take pause and, you know, confront. 
Both Rob and Alex look equally thoughtful. 
I'm not sure which one is more thoughtful at the moment. 
Rob, let's go to you. 
Yeah, I'm wondering the same thing. 
I'm wondering, you know, if there's someone at a ventilator company somewhere who had that eureka moment of going, you know what we should do? 
We should put this damn thing on the net. 
That would be a great idea. 
I just don't see the advantage. 
I mean, are people not going into work and keeping people alive? 
You show up in person for that, right? 
I could see some system that works in conjunction being vulnerable. 
Go ahead, Rob. 
Gila, I want to let you know that this is my medical wish that if I ever end up on a ventilator, pay extra if you need to to get one that's not Internet controllable. 
Just turn off the Wi-Fi. 
No, you can do the Internet of Things respirator. 
Turn off the Wi-Fi on your respirator. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
Sorry. 
Skype fell. 
There was a mute. 
How else are you going to remotely monitor your battery and breathing rates and all these things? 
Aren't you curious about that when you're not on a ventilator? 
Here's the thing. 
You can monitor things. 
I look out the window and I see the moon rising, but I can't control it. 
There's a nice moon out there, and I can call you, Alex, and say, Alex, look out the window. 
Look at the moon. 
We can both be looking at the moon, except maybe you have more power over the moon and you can do something. 
Similarly, I can call the hospital and say, hey, Dr. 
Intern or whatever, can you please change the setting on this since you're there and I'm not? 
I can see it, but I can't change it. 
Simple things like that. 
What fun is life-enabling hardware when you have aged firmware? 
You're right. 
I take all the fun out of hospitals. 
I know. 
I know. 
I have worked in multiple places that had air-gapped intranets where something needed to be networked, but they didn't want it to be accessible from outside, so it was just an internal-only network, and that was just protecting data. 
There were no lungs connected to it. 
Yeah. 
It's common sense. 
We all came up in the BBS era, and I think a lot of kids had better security than major hospitals and corporations have today. 
I think that continues, too. 
I think a lot of kids running their system probably have better security. 
Please write us at OTH if you know about vulnerabilities like this because I think this is still an exaggeration. 
You didn't finish the email address. 
OTH at 2600.com. 
Yes, it's important to finish the email address. 
Go ahead, Alex. 
Maybe I should just write in with this information, perhaps, but I have found an article from 2016 here about Philips, and there is this trilogy of portable ventilators that are slated to be connected to something called a care orchestrator, which is connected to a care management application, and the care orchestrator program appears to be a cloud-connected health app designed to connect informatics and intelligence information for providers, payers, and patients alongside clinical management workflow information. 
There's quite a few mouthfuls for you there justifying what was a really horrible idea nearly six years ago when they had the idea of putting ventilators on the internet via cloud-connected apps. 
That is something. 
As if you don't have enough to worry about going on a ventilator in the first place, but being hacked shouldn't be one of them. 
Yeah, okay. 
If you know more things like that, as Kyle said, write to us, OTH at 2600.com. 
Hope update, today we announced virtual ticketing. 
You can be an attendee at the conference without coming to the conference if you feel more secure doing that. 
I know a lot of people are still a little wary of traveling and wary of being with other people. 
I get it. 
You might actually be a speaker, too, that feels more comfortable putting in something that is remote. 
We're in a transitional period. 
I know it's not going to be back to 100%. 
It's going to be great for those of us who are there. 
I believe it'll be a historic moment. 
It'll be a new location for us at St. 
John's University. 
But I don't want to exclude people who can't make it for whatever reason. 
On our website, just check it out, hope.net and 2600.com. 
There's information on how to participate in various ways virtually as well as in person. 
We're going to have a lot more information in the days and weeks ahead with speakers, talks, activities that we're going to be announcing. 
It's shaping up. 
Full details at hope.net. 
We have this interesting update that we got from a few different people. 
Apparently, if you type the following, and, and, and, and, and, and each and should be a capital A and have a period after the D. 
So, five instances of the word and with a capital A and a period at the end. 
If you do that in Google Docs, according to this Yahoo article, that will completely crash your Google Doc page. 
Apparently, it'll crash it permanently, too. 
Wow! 
Engadget was able to confirm the issue on a, I don't know why the size of the monitor matters, a 16-inch 2019 MacBook Pro running Monterey 1231 and Google Chrome 100.0.4896.127. 
And we were summarily greeted by the something went wrong popover as well as this loathsome cousin unable to load file, reloading the file, reloading the page as prompted results in the same popovers, in effect, a death loop. 
Attempts to replicate the issue on Firefox 99.0.1. 
Isn't it weird that both Firefox and Chrome are at 100 at this point. 
100 releases. 
On a significantly older and worse MacBook Pro, maybe it's the Macs that's the problem. 
Everyone's running Macs. 
This one's running Big Sur 11.1. 
That was not successful, but a respondent on the Google support forums claims to have experienced the same problem on the same version of Firefox. 
So what exactly is happening remains a mystery. 
Though the reporter on Yahoo reached out for clarity on what is likely a small if amusing technical oversight. 
How this bug was even discovered is itself an enigma. 
Apparently it was part of somebody's poem. 
He wrote a poem that happened to have the word and written twice in just that format. 
Yeah, it really is something. 
Don't do that then. 
If you have a Google Docs document, apparently you will run into some regrettable problems where you won't be able to access your document anymore. 
Anybody out in Skyplane want to try this? 
Actually, we've been trying this while you were reading the story and it is fixed now. 
So sadly you cannot explode your Google Docs by typing this in a document now. 
There was an update to the Google support page about the bug on May 6 where they say we have fixed an issue in Docs related to repetitive use of the word and this fix should soon be in place for all customers. 
So yes, this was taken care of but my favorite thing about this story is that one of the links we got sent to us about this was a new story on yahoo.com and I'm sure someone at Yahoo was very happy to press the button on a story about something messing up at Google, the very company that ate Yahoo's lunch so many years ago on the internet. 
The update I was reading was May 5, 6pm so May 6 they fixed it. 
Good for them but boy, I don't know how these things happen in the first place. 
Another reason I don't use Google Docs. 
Okay, Twitter. 
I guess we've got to talk about Twitter because what Elon Musk said recently is that he plans on reversing Twitter's ban of Donald Trump. 
He said he would do that assuming that he follows through with the plans to buy the social media company. 
I don't think there's any way out of it now, right? 
It's pretty much happening. 
He spoke virtually at a Future of the Car Summit hosted by the Financial Times. 
He said Twitter's Trump ban was a morally bad decision and foolish in the extreme. 
He said permanent bans of Twitter accounts should be rare and reserved for accounts that are scams or automated bots. 
Hello? 
Were you in the country during those four years? 
That was a scam. 
That was president scam right there. 
It fits the definition in so many ways. 
Twitter banned Trump's account in January 2021 for incitement of violence and the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. 
Capitol. 
I don't care what Musk says or thinks but unfortunately we're all going to be at his beck and call because he's the one that will be making the rules. 
I think that was a mistake because it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice. 
Actually, it really calmed things down quite a bit. 
I don't know if people remember what it was like when he was taken off Twitter but all of a sudden there was a lot less hatred on the internet. 
It did have an effect. 
Musk continues, so I think this may end up being frankly worse than having a single forum where everyone can debate. 
I guess the answer is that I would reverse the permanent ban. 
Now, Trump said he has no intention of rejoining Twitter even if his account was reinstated, saying that he's going to stay on whatever platform he's running this week. 
I think it's Truth Social is the latest one. 
Yeah, get this. 
Musk also says that Twitter currently has a strong bias to the left, largely because it is located in San Francisco. 
I mean, where do you get this nonsense? 
How do you have a bias to the left simply because you kick people off who are inciting violence, who are running scams, who are spreading lies? 
Maybe it's because a particular political ideology is doing that more than another. 
And not so much because the entire platform somehow, like all journalists are accused of doing, is slanted to the left. 
Maybe the left is more straight ahead than you think it is. 
And these people, entities that are running afoul of the rules are basically peddling lies and things that really we shouldn't be spreading around. 
Here's where I have a problem. 
If I go on Twitter and I say something that's false, nobody really is going to care. 
You know, a half a dozen people maybe. 
I'll get called on it by a couple of people. 
If somebody with 10 million followers, if they start spreading lies, well then it catches. 
Then it becomes dangerous, especially if it's incitement or spreading complete falsehoods. 
You cannot simply say everybody's got the same rights because you don't by definition. 
We don't all have the same audience. 
And if you have everything from institutions to individual people with massive amounts of influence, just basically being able to spread whatever falsehoods they want, unquestioned, and they will be unquestioned because if anyone here says something to question them, no one's going to hear about it. 
They only hear about the people with millions and millions of followers. 
If that becomes the norm where everybody has the same rights but very, very different amounts of power, then it's simply going to be one set of lies. 
Maybe some powerful people will debate those lies, but it's not a healthy environment. 
Alex, I'm sure you want to play devil's advocate on this. 
Well, I think what you are advocating for here in a sense is something more akin to algorithmic transparency as opposed to some kind of rebalancing of speech rights on a platform because I think in essence what you're driving at there was about the power or the amplification of certain persons' speech over or opposed to other persons. 
I think as a matter of free speech though, I think frankly both the right and the left have it wrong. 
I think on the right maybe their pants are a little bit too tight and on the left maybe these long-haired hippies have to grab a scrunchie and get the hair out of their eyes because what we're talking about here is the First Amendment as it applies to a private institution. 
Twitter. 
Twitter is a corporation. 
In the eyes of the law, Twitter is, for better or for worse, a person with its own First Amendment rights and it is a matter of the First Amendment that they can establish their own standards, their own community standards and determine on the basis of their freedom of speech what they want to publish and what they want to not publish, what they want to limit. 
If we think about this very fundamentally, Twitter's free speech rights should not be infringed by the government, forcing these types of community standards upon them from on high. 
As was recently just done, I think this is probably something we should address in overtime, but there was a Texas law that wasn't joined meaning there was an injunction preventing this law from going into effect that I believe, I think it's the Fifth Circuit now has reversed this law and allowed it now to take effect which prohibits social media companies and I think anybody with over 50 million followers any kind of web service with over 50 million users from discriminating on the basis of viewpoint what is and what is not published which is just totally crazy. 
When you think about how much the right loves to throw in our face the rights of corporations to do whatever they want the rights of corporations to not pay taxes, the rights of corporations to do this that and the other thing, well corporations have First Amendment rights too so I really think we should explore this new regulation I think in more detail on overtime and not forget that really at root we have to be fair when it comes to the First Amendment. 
Overtime begins at 8 o'clock on YouTube, it's on channel 2600, you can click on the link on the 2600.com webpage or on our Twitter account and we're going to be on the air until 8 o'clock Go ahead Aguila. 
That was what I was going to say actually, thank you for bringing that up Alex Emmanuel when you noticed I was on my phone at the beginning of the show I was looking at an article about this decision, it was literally breaking news an article was published 10 minutes before we went on the air, so I was reading it and that was what you caught me doing, I apologize and I sent it to everybody or I sent it to Rob who sent it to everybody because he can email better than I can but it was fascinating and the Fifth Circuit un-enjoined it but there's a similar law in Florida that is still what's the word I'm looking for un-enjoined and thank you no, it's absolutely it's fascinating what's going to happen and this is I think an interesting question but the other thing I was thinking about Elon Musk and this has less to do with technology and certainly less to do with law was remember when people who were like having midlife crises after breakups just went and bought a fancy car and they didn't buy a social media service that's all I'm thinking, like could he not do something less publicly destructive and publicly problematic like, I don't know can't he get a tattoo or something in his midlife crisis I just keep thinking how is it that he's gotta be the guy that's gonna fix it because he has this naive viewpoint that he's the savior, that he understands what free speech is and the rest of us don't we get it, we know what free speech is, we just don't want that version of it because it's disruptive it's naive it's basically saying oh everyone's opinion is the same when it's not it's like discussions happen after every news story that you read online where people who don't know what they're talking about are given basically equal exposure to the person who wrote the damn article in the first place and researched it and did all the work and then you have some idiot who's writing from their house oh this is all false, this is stupid and they don't have any facts to back them up but yet we're told that we have to listen to them just as carefully. 
I don't believe that I believe you earn the right to be respected as a source and that we're not all on the same playing field we define what that field is. 
Go ahead Gila.
 Something that I've been speaking about a lot in really the last 20 years I would guess is that really since, I would say since the growth of reality TV that there's come this idea that if you say it louder and more often you win the argument. 
It doesn't matter if your argument is sound it doesn't matter if your argument is true but if you say it more loudly and more frequently then you win and it doesn't matter where it's coming from it doesn't matter what it's about and I think about all the people who are like oh do your research when you talk about vaccines or whatever I read an article on Google I know what I'm talking about I didn't go to medical school but I did my research no it's someone I knew aggregated 120 articles about vaccines and I said your college major was Spanish what are you doing? 
And you know who did do the research? 
The researchers the scientists, the medical people, the experts in whatever field that you are pretending you know something about you know I'm all for sharing theories and ideas and arguing you know but when the people who don't know what they're talking about become the dominant voice then you have a situation like what we have right now in this country where a bunch of ignorant people are leading us down some very dark roads. 
Go ahead Rob Talking about doing the research and not getting good info I'm looking at quotes from the judges in this Texas case that let this bad rule get put back in place and they're telling the Net Choice and Computer and Communications Industry Association which represents Twitter and Meta and Google and places like that the judge told them your clients are internet providers they're not websites. 
At one point Judge Andrew Oldham suggested that if the platform succeeded it would be the same as allowing like Verizon to kick people off their service because they're getting very confused about the whole common carrier end of this which does not exist anymore because the common carrier status thing was reversed by the, that was put in place by the Obama administration was reversed by the Trump administration so do with that knowledge what you will It's not the same thing at all my god they really don't know what they're talking about do they? 
No phone companies are common carriers you know you could say whatever you want over a phone line and the phone company is not allowed to discriminate against you for saying one thing or another over their service but the social media companies are not common carriers and they're being treated like they are by these judges. 
Ah yes and we're now to look to them please tell us how to do culture right and discourse we're obviously doing it wrong so please enlighten us. 
Alex in one minute because that's all the time we have left what can happen with this case is it's the final word or can it be can smart people take Sure as Gila noted you know there is now a circuit split on this so I think it's very likely to go to the Supreme Court but remember you know in dismissing a case as moot last year Justice Clarence Thomas of all people had in that dismissal what is usually two or three lines written a long opinion that we discussed at length here on off the hook that essentially argued that Twitter was or should be regulated as a common carrier because it does have aspects of some kind of public forum. 
I think that that is an interesting idea because we have litigated cases where Trump has blocked and banned people and said that was unconstitutional from the perspective of the user so how we are dealing with these platforms I think remains to be seen. 
We're dealing with them in a legally inconsistent way but unfortunately I think most of these laws are performative in nature that come from the state legislatures. 
They're designed to galvanize the base. 
They're not designed to survive strict scrutiny by the courts. 
They're designed to just get people out to vote in midterm elections. 
They're going to be struck down. 
Alright we're going to talk further about this on overtime. 
It's an interesting conversation. 
We're not afraid of speech. 
Speech is great. 
What I fear is the power that certain individuals will have to steer the rest of us in a very bad direction. 
Unimpeded. 
Unchallenged. 
That is where the real danger is. 
Join us on overtime. 
Go to the link on top of 2600.com or just go to Channel 2600 on YouTube. 
Write to us, oth at 2600.com. 
Please support WBAI. 
Give to wbai.org or call 212-209-2950. 
This weekend is Euro 2022. 
Eurovision 2022. 
That's where all kinds of songs are played from 40 different nations and a winner is chosen. 
There is only one song of the 40 that is, in my opinion, rock and roll. 
It comes from Bulgaria. 
We're going to go out with that. 
Intelligent Music Project. 
Good night. 


And welcome to everybody on YouTube. 
This is off-the-hook overtime Where we can take your phone calls and continue our lively discussion Online not on the air unless of course somebody's rebroadcasting us over the air in which case we'll try to watch our language Everybody make it Kyle. 
I see you over there. 
Yeah Gila you there. 
I'm here and Rob. 
I see you. 
I also am there And and Frank no wait, who's Frank? 
No, Alex. 
Yeah, that's that's who you are Barely here. 
Okay good All right, and we are on YouTube and we are sounding good. 
Okay. 
Well, that's that's the listeners judgment call there so anyone have any points they want to expand upon from what we were talking about before with Twitter and Freedom of speech and disobeying laws and various fun things like that Well one important thing we were talking earlier in off-the-hook about the protests coming up over the next Weekend and and so on regarding the regarding the reproductive rights Situation we find ourselves in and I do want to raise the point for anyone Considering going to protests that one of the very basic protections you can get is to leave your phone at home If you must bring your phone turn off location tracking If you must bring your phone turn off location tracking also do not have face ID or fingerprint ID enabled on your phone because if you are arrested and Alex tell me if I'm wrong here But I believe the the prevailing rule is if you are arrested the police cannot force you to input a passcode They can however Force you to unlock a phone with your finger or your face Yeah, I believe that's the case And it goes back to the Fifth Amendment and forcing you to provide a password could be considered a form of self-incrimination Yeah, yeah does seem that way I don't know this whole this whole Twitter thing kind of bugs me because It's not that I I shy away from from arguments that's not it at all It's that I don't like bullies and this is what We're heading towards is where the bullies come back Can say whatever they want can incite all kinds of horrible things and we just have to treat it like oh, yep freedom of speech and you gotta let them say what they what they're gonna say regardless of the fact that they have so much more pull Than anyone else will ever have and it just seems like a really really bad Idea I mean we would not have had the last four years of hell were it not for social media. 
There's no question about that And I just worry about What we are facing in the future Alex. 
Yeah, good You know to go back to the point that I had made during the ordinary hour of off the hook, which is that? 
the the reason why Twitter can discriminate on the basis of viewpoint about what it publishes and what it doesn't publish is because it Itself has First Amendment rights so this whole notion of Elon Musk returning the concept of freedom of speech to Twitter is at the same time destructive of Twitter's freedom of speech It would at that point Eviscerate its own ability to distinguish between speech that it likes and speech that it doesn't like and and treat everything You know as just one big Dumpster fire and really that's where we were with Twitter prior to 2016 I may remember this many years. 
Well, there were no rules about this and if you don't have Some form of rules or some form of community standards. 
This is going to Deteriorate very quickly into something that looks like one of those fringe You know image boards that are out there the the four chance the eight chance 16 chance 32 chance Whatever the hell they're up to at this point. 
Yeah, is that really what we want from Twitter? 
I mean it almost seems as if Elon Musk in his return to this no-holds-barred version of public discourse and public dialogue is trying to destroy the very thing that he's Intent on by well, he's being a disruptor and being a disruptor is cool But basically, you know when when you talk about the rules Who makes those rules? 
The people running the platform make the rules and if you're told that Yeah, you're not you're not allowed to be there and you're not allowed to be anywhere Then you have censorship then you have a situation that's very unhealthy That needs to be fought when you have one company saying yeah, we don't want to do business with you We don't want you on our platform as far as I'm concerned they can do that, even if it's not completely fair if they if they Use flawed logic to do that in the first place They deserve to be shamed for that, but they still have the right to do it And I think what we're moving into now is just this hugely naive area where everybody is just treated as if they they have, you know, equal equal say in everything and yeah, then you have you have the situation Alex that you were describing of just Complete mayhem Kyle and then Rob I just want to jump in and point out the use of the word morally his Concept there. 
It's not technically it's not legally it was wrong for Twitter to make a decision about The former president being on their platform or removing him from it. 
It was morally wrong in his view, I'd love for him to just Elaborate to the end of days about about how important that is because I Would pose in response what morally? 
Was he doing? 
Right to deserve to be there. 
Mm-hmm. 
I mean you want to take it to moral terms. 
It's Again a totally different comparison. 
There was a whole lot of moral wrong Going on from that account in Many a myriad people's point of view and just look what happened in the way, he was using that platform and this Person wants to talk to society about Morality, are you joking? 
Maybe maybe he is. 
Go ahead Rob And just the just the whole concept of a Privately held or you know a privately held concern a company a person an individual whatever that puts a website onto the net Has to let people put things on on that website that they don't want there I mean imagine if you had a house and anybody could put whatever signs they wanted on your lawn, you know, I'm an artist I don't have to I've never had to deal with somebody who hates me telling me what I should put in my painting and Emmanuel imagine if you had by law to publish every single article in 2600 that somebody thought should be in there I mean that that would be craziness that would be madness and it would also destroy the usefulness of of the of the publishing venue like We can decide what we make, you know how much paper that would take though It's that would be insane be bad for all of us. 
But yeah, you know when I signed on, you know, it's out of fun to What was that what was the the Trump media outlet before truth social there was another one that ended in fire and disaster anybody remember Are we supposed to remember these things? 
I think the internet was forever, but apparently it's not well Okay talking about parlor. 
Yeah, I was parlor. 
I signed up for a parlor account and You know, I was truthful about who I was and what I stood for my account got deleted my account Because of who I was apparently I didn't fit in Apparently they can do that. 
That's not a problem. 
And you know what I said fine go ahead You know that it just basically proves what I thought about you Because I didn't get to say anything I just had a profile and that was enough to get deleted just because it didn't match Well, you know, they're gonna have a problem with this too. 
It's you know, it goes both ways if if we're forced to have every conspiracy nut and and right winger and white nationalist given a free speech platform on On some outlets like Facebook and like Twitter Then I guess the left wing has to have outlets on everything that they hold near and dear And I want to know how that's gonna work out. 
But I also want to know I was just gonna point out we're available For syndication on all the AM stations. 
Yeah, imagine if we you know, we're well radio is different because there's a limited a finite amount of Bandwidth and and frequencies and things like that So but you could you could draw some parallels, but I wonder you know We still as far as I know we we run an IRC network and we have IRC channels Are we not allowed to kick people out of channels when we feel like it? 
You know because that's a big part of IRC is getting kicked out of channels, but maybe now that's illegal Maybe now that's something that would violate their free speech rights. 
It's immoral Well, I always felt that but you know Alex what what's what's your legal opinion on that I mean IRC could be in danger here I Think I need to do some research and get back to you after Thoroughly writing and vetting a memorandum. 
I Think that's such an interesting question. 
I don't think that Anybody has ever thought of the application of these crazy laws to a service Like IRC because of and I think because of the amount of users that would be on IRC It could come under the purview of these laws, but unlike something like Twitter or Facebook There doesn't seem to be any kind of helm of IRC right in the sense of there nobody Individually controls it no, there's no entity Channels have operators. 
So, you know, whoever the operator is they control that and there's a system operator to that controls the entire network Possibly so maybe the system operators so, you know, maybe like back in the day, you know, like UI you see right University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, right? 
That was one of the big IRC how about how about IRC that 2600 net our own IRC server currently up right now you know, we control the domain and we have people who control the Network, and then we have people who control the channels. 
So there are people with control there Absolutely. 
Look, I think if you control the IRC server and you meet the threshold Requirement for the minimum amount of users for the law to take effect then there may be an argument that the law could apply Why is this based on number of users? 
Well, that's what the law says this is to exclude services that are smaller or up-and-coming I feel like Gila has the statistics more at her fingertips than I do But I think it's something like 50 million or 5 million a number What was it? 
It's 50 million. 
So right so IRC, I think it would be you know, it'd be tough I think I don't know if there are I don't know if we have 50 million users, but okay But okay, so maybe that's how Trump gets away with it too with true social because they don't have 50 million people Yeah I mean look that that's a good point to that They've chosen a number that's high enough that it would apply to Twitter and Facebook but low enough that it wouldn't necessarily implicate true social and Trump's hang on a second hang on a say if if if they go and they kick off even more people And they go below 50 million problem solved right then they don't have to do it anymore True. 
Yeah. 
Hmm. 
That's true. 
But you know that the whole point of all this nonsense, right and they in the The removal of any kind of barrier or community standards with respect to free speech or dialogue isn't necessarily to make this more of an egalitarian Egalitarian public sphere or public square or place for debate the whole idea behind it is What we've known for really quite a long time now, I would say at least over a decade, which is a contention and pugilism attract people, you know you Fundamentally you think about you going back to elementary school or junior high when there was a fight in the hallway Everybody gathered around and watched it right. 
Nobody just kept walking This is the same reason why we rubberneck when there's a car accident on the side I know we'd like to see this type of tragedy and conflict and we observe it and we watch it and that observation and this conflict generates more and more users more more eyeballs on the platform and they stay on the platform longer the longer or the greater the conflict is and The more time you spend on that plug platform the more data and analytics are being collected about you the more data and analytics that a platform has the more likely they are to be able to monetize that data to sell it to advertisers and and And put some kind of bizarre promoted ad in front of you. 
I mean it all seems to be very basely and simply Designed to attract people to this type of fight But Alex to carry on that analogy just a little bit if you're you know And I'm onto your school and you're walking down the hallway and you see, you know, two kids having a fight Yeah, you're tempted to to watch for a little bit What happens when you walk down that same hallway and it's two teachers having a fight. 
It's a little bit different, isn't it? 
It's you know, it carries a different amount of weight So what I'm saying is that when you have a huge following I think what you say should be under a bit more scrutiny just like you know Elected officials are held to a higher standard Based on what they say and what they do I think the same thing should hold true if you have all these people hanging on your every word or even maybe Maybe the blue checkmark is how we do it. 
Maybe you know if you have one of those then you you have a higher standard you must live up to whereas anybody else you can Basically just speak out of their ass at the coin a phrase But again when you have a huge number of people I do think that is something that changes The whole dynamic Kyle. 
Do you have something and then then Gila? 
Oh Gila. 
Go ahead Gila first I'm thinking about this. 
I was looking at some stuff about Hb-20 this is the the law in question is hb-20 in Texas, and I'm thinking about the intersection of Hb-20 and Elon Musk buying Twitter because remember when this passed remember when this happened This law was passed in the September this Bill this law I suppose came up as a knee-jerk reaction to Twitter banning Donald Trump That's the whole point here was there saying well you hurt our heroes feelings So we're going to pass a law against you. 
That's where it came from. 
And there's a reason that these exist in Texas and in Florida They've still they're still enjoined by the circuit in Florida, but I wonder What's gonna happen with this if? 
Elon Musk is like, oh well Donald Trump can have his Twitter account back and they're also, you know They're required to be really transparent about policies like this. 
It's Bills and ownership of large social media companies should not be knee-jerk reactions to anything The immediacy that people are trying to act with now in so many ways is Disrupting the norms of so many things and I don't mean disrupting in a good way I don't mean disrupting in the way that it's become used in in business This is bad people need to think a little bit Well, that's the hard part I'm Presence I think in this conversation is the possibility of Those numbers being boosted and I'm hearing this number I'm I get and I'm I'm getting the feeling that it's arbitrary like the that it could change with this threshold number and in these things as you said it was sort of a made-up law this number or the threshold itself could be changed and I'm curious also what might play out as far as Users and what the the kind of error rate of or Cushion, shall we say of fake users there would be in various instances if a company could boost their user to get above a threshold or perhaps remove users labeling them as as a sort of Synthetic user or in so so as to fit a threshold that Suits, whatever that entity wants to do. 
Oh my god. 
I just I just thought of it I just thought of it. 
So somebody if they want to hack us on our IRC network They just have to create 50 million bots Which they could do and then all of a sudden we have to follow that rule now and and let them say whatever they want to say that That's exactly the scenario that I was kind of thinking we have to stop this as we were discussing it just I became really cognizant I was Seeing that vividly the other one the small thing. 
I wanted to point out was from what Alex had been talking about is this lifecycle? 
sort of of information and ads and targeting and I just want to add I want to complete the circle of that ad and User information lifecycle and that is the age-old the one we know most about and that is the ad itself Once it's targeted it makes you feel inadequate or as though You know, you're missing something it's selling you a lifestyle or something about yourself that you don't know you need and of course that enrages you and Makes you want to go and lash out at others or prove some Asinine point just to get the score one because of how how Manipulated you've been in that circle of of this sinister data brokering Rob then Alex the the the salient point here and a really interesting point now that I think about it is that HB 20 specifies that the site must have 50 million active monthly users And I'm wondering like does this include the bots that are all over social media? 
There are lots of spam bots There are lots of fake accounts, but there are also some good bots You know, how will this will this put the onus on sites like Twitter to verify their users? 
real identities So to speak and how would they do that in countries where where they're not connected to like? 
National ID systems or things like that There is so much there are so many cans of worms here now that this is that this is gonna open I would love to hear what our listeners think about this Yeah, I think bots would be counted Rob Just because they are they would count it as a user I guess it would it would depend on how the act had defined what a user is But there certainly would be an argument to discounting bots But my main point was that is speaking of arbitrary numbers Ours is 802 3 2 1 4 2 2 5 if you want to cook So I thought this was about taking phone calls, man Well, don't we don't you said you wanted to say more things that before so that's why I think you had something to Yeah, I was looking at an older article from when the law was passed and just the the Specificity of the way it works and they the bill also require law. 
It's a lot I apologize but the way it was written was that you have to or the social media companies are required to investigate any reported illegal activity within 48 hours and I cannot even for a moment understand how that particular Proviso might be Adopted by Malicious actors. 
I cannot imagine that people would not just be operating on good faith in that particular piece of this law They're just the way it's targeted. 
It's very much like we're gonna get you Twitter and we're gonna get you Facebook It's like hey Zuckerberg. 
We're coming for you Now do I have issues with Mark Zuckerberg and the way he runs his company? 
100% do I think this law is terrible also true. 
Can two things be true at the same time? 
Yes 8 0 2 3 2 1 4 2 2 5 is our phone number 8 or 2 3 2 1 hack What if Twitter started charging people a monthly fee that would that was certainly talking about that would weed out a lot of people including me Well, that's a thought that was one of the suggested changes that Elon Musk was Floating is to do that. 
But specifically for corporations and government entities I think that some of these some of these apps really should have admitted that from the beginning I know we've talked about we've had speakers at hope talk about it Ron Lanier his talk was about how We started out offering everything for free and then tried to figure out ways to pay for it in that way ended up being ads so, I mean this has been been discussed and certain platforms Start to have changed or and evolved over time, you know Netflix used to send you discs. 
They don't anymore there's Good reason to maybe reassess this stuff. 
I think apps like Instagram should admit that it's really like mostly social commerce Like the tagging and the photography that may have been where it started We love the idea, but that is not how we are using Instagram. 
It is Totally a like social Marketplace like social commerce site people create personas or talking about what they do Then they do brand endorsements and immediately it's like, okay This is an ad like it starts one way and it is not how it is and ends up once that profiles bill And so I like I think they need to really admit like what are we for? 
Go ahead Gila and then we're gonna take this phone call And I think the question is also How things could be tiered in the same way and you know is Looking at social media and when people and brands are trying to have the same conversation at the same time and sometimes it's fun like when There were a bunch of snack food brands and sort of tweeting at each other like they were people and that was very funny But I was looking today. 
I was on cameo today I was looking at something and there are a bunch of people on cameo now who have two different tiers for their videos You can pay one fee if it's for a regular video and another fee if it's like for a business shout out So what those two places come together? 
I think yes Kyle exactly, and I think you you maybe like take a look at how it is being used and and and Maybe add a level to that and if that can if that moves in a better direction because I think in many ways yeah, the promoted stuff and the sponsored stuff that is was ads but There are other tiers of I guess usership and ways people Take advantage of that. 
I mean how many think of the rules around tagging your thing as This is an ad or like this is for you know an endorsement I'm being paid to say this basically and then how often that is enforced It's not really enforced like if you don't say that you're paid for something what's gonna happen who who? 
Honestly goes it gets there some kind of discipline after that They don't it's maybe like enforced by peers if you're caught in some You know in broadcast drama, it's before the FCC enforces that in broadcasting, but not online Not online not on like a social marketing platform as I described it Go ahead guilt, but do they enforce that? 
I mean like when you're talking about sponsored content in TV Specifically like I'm not talking about the apps. 
I'm saying that I mentioned that and yeah, they're supposed to they don't always obvious They're supposed to but like if you are in middle of a Saturday Night Live sketch and you realize that this is actually sponsored content For Taco Bell. 
Yeah, I don't know but they didn't say it was spawn con for Taco Bell I see spawn con is absolutely insidious. 
Well, and it is incredibly hard to discern. 
Go ahead. 
Mm-hmm No, that was yeah, I was just pointing to me you can't really tell I mean there's like so many the the type of advertising now There's a lot of like breaking the fourth wall and like the cuss the consumer being in on things knowing What's going on? 
Anyway, we can talk about advertising another time but Anyway that that that is a factor to it. 
I think we have a call. 
Yes. 
We have a patient caller. 
Sorry about that Good God Okay, and that's what happens when we turn a new button up on the on the maybe turn the Skype channel down just a little Bit. 
Okay, Scott goes down. 
Let's see. 
This is where everything gets screwed up when we introduce Try this again try that once more. 
Okay, I think we have a caller. 
Is there a caller there? 
Hello. 
Yes, how you doing? 
Hello, yes caller we go ahead Yes You are correct I had two different things I wanted to ask you about or maybe three, okay, but I Got back from a trip to find out that my long distance had been cut off. 
I Got WorldCom through MCI and MCI won't talk to me because I don't know my account number MCI still exists. 
I Thought they're part of horizon now And now what year is this Is this made basically amounted to a line on your your phone company bill and you pursued why it was cut off and then they told you that They cut themselves off by going bankrupt or something or getting bought No They they won't talk to me because I don't have my I don't have the account number handy somebody else pays my bills and They haven't been able to find it The account with me the service would have been on your traditional phone bill the previous one before you upgraded Before you were upgraded before you were forced to upgrade. 
I Was forced to upgrade. 
Yeah My question is there's not a separate account or yeah, was it was it billed through your your your regular phone bill before I Don't know as I said somebody else Does the phone bill paying and they haven't been able to find it? 
Well, you know what? 
You can always change your long-distance company. 
That'll teach them Well, I wanted to keep the deal that I got well these many years ago and It gives me a flat fee for each phone call instead of paying by the minute You don't think there's another deal like that out there and all the long-distance companies that exist. 
I Don't know. 
I I haven't searched through it. 
I just want to keep what I had. 
Uh-huh well, you know, it seems like If you call this company and say look call me back on my phone number and you know, obviously, I'm who I say I am We need to reset certain things just basically say there was a fire and you lost all your paperwork he can lie, you can come up with all kinds of different stories and You know I can't believe that. 
I really can't I Mean, you know if it's physically impossible Well, I'm just saying it doesn't seem to track because what if what if the person that pays your bills is no longer on this Okay, what if that happens well the way you supposed to do then are they saying that there's nothing we can do in here You're basically tied to us forever. 
Okay? 
Well, then you're talking to the wrong person has to speak to a supervisor. 
That does not make any sense Hasn't worked out for me yet. 
Uh-huh. 
All right. 
Hey listen, I have advice a separate Related to the Forcible upgrade this box that they gave me for if there's a if the electricity goes out that only works if you have a corded phone and what I have is two handsets, is there such a thing do you know as Being able to have one handset and one corded phone for the same phone number Yeah It sounds like if you have like a wireless base station and a you're talking about a an indoor Wireless handset, right? 
You have two of those Yeah, so wherever there might be another jack for your telephone in the wall. 
I would imagine you could hook up a Like a slim line or just a small Telephone That is wired versus that handset There's all kinds of little accessories and stuff. 
You might be you might need to Make a multiple plugs out of one like get splitters and things like that, but it's certainly possible Okay. 
Now my separate question Nothing to do with me personally is about the wretched Pacifica safety net people that have asked the FCC not to renew WBA ice license and Complaining about Gary Nolan Christine Blasdale and you Emanuel. 
Yeah, that was funny, wasn't it? 
Yeah, it's it's not something really know a whole lot about but yeah, it's it's some some wacky people are going around Trying to get WBA I taken off the air Unfortunately as it's so typical at the left They're affiliated with Pacifica already and they want to take down another part of Pacifica because it's not part of their faction or something Like that. 
I don't know why we're included in this. 
I really don't Hawking the Hope Conference Which is for profit Which Yeah, well all we do is talk like we do with 2600 meetings like we do with every Activity that we're involved in we let people know about it and and most of the time We're trying to get people to to participate to speak to you know engage in some way. 
It's not about selling tickets We tell people go to the website for more information including tickets. 
Yeah, it's there But we never ever give prices out over the air And you know, we were very aware of the rules have been doing it this way for decades It just seems whoever is filing. 
This is is grasping at straws. 
I can't speak to you know, the other parts of the complaint I don't know enough about it, but I do know our operation I do know what we do and I do know that we're above board. 
We know the rules We've been at this for a very long time Like I said, it's kind of funny I don't know, you know what they're what they're trying to accomplish but we're quite confident as you can hear You know We're saying the exact same things on the air now that we said before as for because we're on on level ground here We're doing everything by the book and there's so many things Personally I don't make a penny and anything that comes in that's above our expenses goes right back into the conference And that's you know, that's just how we've always operated So the only people who make money off of this are the people who run the venues people who sell food or you know other things to our attendees, but We're just trying to we're just trying to Break even make sure that we don't lose our shirts and make sure we're able to do it again and so many of the things that we're doing on air are for fundraising efforts at the station a lot of The things that we come up with for the for the premium gifts our donations themselves We're constantly interviewing people outside the New York area people from around the world people in the local community trying to Get their voices out there promote the things that they're doing the events that they're hosting. 
So it's kind of More of exactly what we've stayed committed to for so long about sharing and Presenting what the hacker community is up to to the wider Listening area and here's something else too. 
We basically we try to include as many people as possible We try to give back as much as possible When it comes to fundraising at the radio station, what we do is we donate our premiums meaning whether it's tickets Whether it's DVDs whether it's flash drives whether it's it's shirts What what many producers that many radio stations do is Is give premiums to the station, but then they bill the station a discounted rate for those premiums. 
So it's not really a donation it's more like at-cost sale in our case, it's always 100% donation and That that is our way of supporting the radio station and it works, you know If you really want to support the place that you're broadcasting Then you have to actually make a donation not just sell something to them for a lesser cost That's always been my impression of what non-commercial radio should be all about As anybody Come You know any of the people on our side Come around to talk with you about defending this Well, I'm not going to go into details as to who I've talked to and who I haven't talked to or what they said but basically Everyone has been very supportive. 
I think I think we all share a bit of disbelief at how Ridiculous, this is the thing that that's annoying is that and maybe Alex can speak to this when? 
These kinds of frivolous complaints are filed it gets expensive because you have to defend yourself, even if it's complete nonsense and You know, there should be some kind of insurance that protects you against that sort of thing But there's absolutely nothing that you can do to prevent it because there are these crackpots out there that will simply come up with all kinds of craziness and You know, you can't just not show up. 
You have to say something you have to you know, pay somebody to do you know the defense to prove that you're You're in the right and then when you're exonerated you still out that money it's not like you have to the people make the the Accusations are responsible. 
So it's it's really and they're trying to bleed it Yeah, I think that that is what we're really looking at here. 
And when you look at The people that supposedly are behind this they've been trying to do this for years. 
I don't know why I don't know What gets into someone's head that would make them want to destroy a part of a network that they? 
Belong or they did belong to maybe it's it's it's some kind of disgruntled people that no longer have the positions They had in the past. 
I don't know. 
I don't care this, you know, we just want to do what we do and and and and be left alone by People who have all these ridiculous fights going on Alex. 
Did you have anything to add to this? 
Yeah, sure, I mean I think with respect to your point about this being a or rather Having to defend yourself from nuisance suits and there there should be some kind of rule against us I mean, it's it's a very interesting policy choice that we've made in the United States You know about Litigation and and who funds it and who has to bear their costs. 
It is a very rare instance in a lawsuit that a party who's granted attorneys fees everybody asked for attorneys fees at the end of We're at once a case has has gone to some kind of disposition the winner is gonna ask for their attorneys fees They're never granted. 
They're very very rarely granted as a matter, of course because we have made this Policy choice a very long time ago in the United States that Parties have to fund their own litigation In the UK. 
It's exactly the opposite and it acts as a disincentive to Filing a frivolous lawsuit because they have something known as the loser pays model so that let's say, you know, I'm in litigation with I don't know Alex Jones, right and You know, we're fighting each other long hard-fought battle and I win and we've been fighting for two years Well, Alex Jones then is on the hook for all of my legal fees because he deserves to be Well, he should be yeah, let that bastard rot in jail. 
I say For not paying yeah the You know the downside of this too though is in a loser pays model as opposed to the funding your own litigation side Once you get so far into the litigation once you've sunk a certain amount of costs it then becomes difficult to walk away It's like being at the casino in the sense. 
You have to keep going. 
You got to keep chasing those losses You can't afford to walk away and then cover the other side's costs because you already sunk so much into it So it's it's hot. 
It's a very hard balancing act. 
I think to figure out, you know what the right policy is, but You know going back to the merits of this particular accusation with regard to Pacifica I think we should just let it run its course I don't want to speak to the facts or to the merits at all on this I think we should I think we should move on You know, no, no disrespect to the color. 
I don't mind talking about it I mean, you know, let's say if someone accuses us of something. 
Oh, I you know I'm an open book as far as this kind of thing goes. 
I think we all are It's nonsense, but caller you you seem to know more about who's behind it and then we do we just you know Saw some ridiculous. 
I don't mean I don't mean the specific names of people. 
I mean, what do they represent? 
Quote Pacifica safety net and what is that the people who tried to put Pacifica in I think it's receivership Are these are these the same people who took the station off the air in 2019 You got it. 
Okay, so that's significant right there Okay, that's that's significant that it's the people that actually came in and took the station off the air in 2019 and lost in court When when it was challenged and BAI went back on the air, you know a few weeks later, but boy Those were some dark days and okay, you know, it kind of makes sense now We sort of embarrassed them quite a bit actually on Our airwaves online. 
We did a show from downstairs in the Commons at Atlantic Avenue where WBA is and We broadcast that online and we challenged these people and You know, we we basically said we're not we're not going to play ball with people like this. 
I I believe we were Offered to go back on the air if we didn't criticize them. 
I remember Remember that kind of a statement being made And of course we refused to do that. 
So I think I think there's a lot of Animosity towards us because we didn't back down because we expressed us We didn't back down because we expressed us, you know the same reasons as always first before speaking out on what you believe in That's when the people who want to shut you down always strike for that Does anyone know who paul? 
Lansberg is or nancy cohen or michael herico are I have no idea who those people are. 
Why are you looking for them? 
They're the three people in the Bbi-listening area who are supporters of the petition What do you mean three? 
There's only three people who support the petition? 
There's only yeah, you heard correctly There are exactly three people uh in this pacific and Is is this to fulfill some sort of legal obligation that you have to have a supporter in the local area? 
right, okay, so Who knows maybe they don't exist. 
Maybe they do. 
Uh, it's not hard to find three people to sign on to anything. 
So Um who they are. 
I don't think really is is that relevant? 
well, if they could if those three people could be persuaded to uh, uh to leave The suit they just find three more they they they would just find you know, they'd pay off people who knows It's um, I don't think that's that's the way you fight this No Gila did you have something look like you had something to say All right, no, okay, sorry Does that look disagree with you? 
I don't I don't know. 
Alex is in lawyer mode now, I think Uh Possibly I I don't know if they'll pay people off or or do any I would I wouldn't suggest anything like that but I think the uh I think they might threaten people. 
I think they might threaten to kill their their their parents, you know If they don't sign on am I going too far? 
Am I saying things? 
I shouldn't say, you know I don't have an off switch. 
I'm, sorry You're in as long as you preface it with you know, I I believe you bore. 
It's my opinion, right? 
I mean you which i'm sure you meant to do Uh, yeah, okay. 
I could I could say that too uh, yeah that then then look and you're entitled to your uh, your your opinion there, but I I I think to to get at The point at which you're driving at I think which is that it's easy to find people to sign on to these things I I think you're right. 
I think if these individuals Drop the suit they will probably find others to pick it up. 
Um, you know, especially if the threshold number is so low um, and if that's the case, I mean I I wonder about the the wisdom of The uh procedural choices that we we've made to to bring these types of challenges Over to the fcc anyhow, it seems sort of nonsensical um, but I I you know, I I think um I I think that the more we give this thing oxygen the more It you know, it can have legs. 
And so I think that you know, we should starve this nonsense of oxygen Okay. 
Well, um, hopefully the fcc feels the same way because they're the ones that currently Have this this complaint I believe but I I honestly don't see it going anywhere not Certainly not as far as we're concerned and uh, yeah, well, I don't think I find it hard to To understand how they could lump you in with gary now and christine blasdale I I think it's it's probably a personal thing. 
It's probably because uh, we were outspoken and you know when when when When the same thing happened in the coup of um of 2000 and 2001 Uh, basically We didn't play ball then um and uh We weren't friends with the people who were occupying the station Even though we managed to stay on the air. 
We were we never signed on to The nonsense that they expected us to and mind you we don't want to be Uh in a position where we're having to take sides. 
We just want to do the radio show, you know make some kind of uh, Fundraising goal when it's time, you know to raise money for the station But beyond that we don't interface with much else there. 
It was never the point so these age-old battles where It makes no sense to us because at every moment when it comes to How does the show inter interact with the station? 
We turn we we approach that moment anew even if we're behind on the last premiums we approach that movement moment anew we say Uh collectively what can we do to contribute to this goal? 
and we try to get our listeners as Invigorated and excited and interested and engaged in that particular Uh need for the station What this group is doing these kinds of actions? 
are It's a perennial thing. 
It's unfortunate We've seen this kind of stuff and it's people That take a look at that situation that moment when we're saying hey, we need to get some new producers Or we need to get some more. 
Um, uh uh outside donations or uh donations that are continuous, uh Billing, you know that kind of uh to be a buddy program all those ideas and programs and getting um Fresh shows on fresh programs. 
Um, you know, really even just having a vision for the station collectively this group is people that take a look at that moment and just say Okay Now let's uh, let's start over. 
We don't want to do this. 
We don't we don't want to have any kind of altruistic belief in the the community that we've created or that is here and and that is dangerous because that is a fragile thing that community is it's uh Ethereal it's in the vapor. 
It is Not something tangible. 
It is a collection of people that show up that do stuff and that believe even if they're not like the other programmers at the station believe in the concept of it and this grievance whether it's you know, uh personal of um, uh histories or people that didn't um That feel that maybe the station hasn't provided the right direction And and they aren't touch moved and inspired and move and willing to be on board for what the station needs Even if it sounds dire or crazy or like it's not enough This attitude that oh, well, it isn't enough or it's not my way or I don't like the people involved or I think that there are um you know one or two programs at the station that that are dragging the whole place down or or Whatever is made up in their head their response is let's tear it apart Let's burn it down and let's guilt and blame every last person that doesn't approve of that We were one of those groups. 
We said you know what we're going to continue to be here We're going to continue to contribute in that altruistic way be a part of wbai Do our best to continue it in the grandest tradition that anybody else who's been on that radio station has done In the past we don't want to tear it down and there are people that they're just uncreative They don't want to do the work. 
They don't want to find premiums. 
They don't want to Make new shows that can compete that can get listeners. 
They don't want to do that work their idea of of a better job at this uh programming and and this station is To tear it down to syndicate other stuff and or to sell the frequency all together Yeah, I mean that says a lot right there and it says that we have pissed off the right people too because if this is the modus operandi then um We want nothing to do with that kind of thinking at all. 
You know, we've always Like I said, we've been an open book every single one of our shows online uh You know to uh to show exactly what we say and what we don't say Um, and and we're proud of that. 
We're quite proud of the things that we've covered in the past And it's not without controversy. 
We've been threatened many times by uh government agencies Uh by uh other people that don't like what it is We're talking about people think that we're too political or that we have the wrong politics Uh, the important thing is to as we've said in the previous show hold true to your ideals And uh be honest with yourself and I think uh, we can all say that we've done that I hope that answers your question Okay Oh, I hope you'll keep us posted about the case as you Are involved in it since you know, they've bagged you into it whether you wanted Or not. 
Well, you actually seem to know more than we do. 
How how are you getting the information? 
Um the Actually, uh, so, uh when it first came out I emailed you at at 2600 uh the the papers the pacifica foundation uh Right, but you got those papers somehow before we did how'd you manage that? 
uh it was um, uh, I was part of a a group, um, you know, I get emails from Uh people who support pacifica without tearing it down And so I I I was sent the The download thing which I downloaded and actually read. 
Uh For for the actual papers and their actual exhibits and so I passed them along Yeah, I went through I went through some of those exhibits myself just had a curiosity and they have they have entire shows Transcripted it's hilarious I was reading our show and just basically I was fumbling with the phone trying to get things to work and just basically berating each other and Having all kinds of fun on the air. 
It's just I couldn't put it down. 
It was it was it was really funny but You know, I just they got it from you from your from 26 of course because we have everything available Yep, that's what we do. 
Anyway, anything else? 
Uh, we're going to move on see if there's anybody else out there That was it Okay, good evening from you Good evening. 
All right. 
Take care Our phone number eight zero two three two one four two two five eight. 
Oh two three two one hack Good fun It's just you know we try to keep these things off the air, uh, or off the discussion because you know, it's I don't want to I don't want to waste time with our own personal baggage But this isn't baggage that we asked for it's baggage that's been thrust upon us and it's not our baggage So take it back to the airport There's lying down somewhere there's plenty of uh media and uh writers out there that Had all kinds of uh time to write about the demise of wbai maybe they could you know do some research write an article investigate a little bit and uh, Celebrate the wbi is still here. 
Isn't that something and uh, and it's it's still sought after even in these Uh inglorious ways. 
Do you remember? 
uh, I think it was october of 2019 when they came for the station and and shut it down locked the change of locks and Destroyed equipment and and basically literally ripped up papers and made it impossible to operate from that building Even though we could get into the building We couldn't operate from there anymore because of the vandalism that these people did And all of the media in new york city all of the media showed up and reported on the demise of wbai on the air since 1960 and uh signing off for the last time in 2019 and um You know, we went to court and we fought a good fight and we won we came back on the air I don't think one of those One of those outlets reported that we were back on the air So in the eyes of a lot of people wbai went off the air in 2019 and never came back Even though we were back on the air a month later That's you know part for the course. 
That's just the madness and yeah Someone should write a book someone should do a movie or maybe a maybe a mini series because let's not make it too long There's so much drama Let's take a phone call Good evening. 
You're on off the hook Good evening. 
Emmanuel bobson You heard it. 
Okay an entry from The eurovision song course, let me ask you as as a bulgarian. 
Did you know that song before I played it? 
Oh, I heard it on the show on tuesday Well, we didn't play that song on the show, I mean on on on eurovision on the semifinals On the eurovision semifinals, but during it. 
Yes. 
So that's something you actually watch is eurovision semifinals Well, yeah, okay that that should show you the importance of eurovision To people in europe that bobson will actually pay attention to it. 
I got a question. 
Go ahead. 
Go ahead. 
Hey Did you did you hear it during the year at all? 
Like, you know in a Restaurant or like just in the background because a lot of times the songs are familiar to people because it's played and then There's nothing like that We're kind of unfamiliar with how the whole process works I think most people who don't even know about eurovision, but you know We we saw it for the first time last year and it's just really intriguing to see how uh, all these countries put forth a song and then there's a You know two semifinals and a final which is taking place on saturday And everyone seems to pay attention. 
Yeah, I only say that because it seems like some of the songs are really popular going into it Yeah Oh, well, no the the song is weird and the band is kind of strange They're doing it It's a rock and roll song. 
Of course, they're strange Well, that's not all that's strange about it, uh, but one of Rainbow's formal singers came over here and started A band or some such rainbow as in the band that came from deep purple Yeah, wow, you know their former singers, uh-huh came over here and started doing His stuff, you know, uh Richie blackmore lives on long island now. 
So, uh, he's he's he's uh, fairly local well, he knows the He knows the singer i'm speaking of personally, yeah It's a small community. 
So that's cool Now, um, I should point out just for the benefit of listeners Um that while I played the bulgarian song and and uh, no offense bobson I do not think the bulgarian song is the best song of the 40 the one that I think is the best song hands down Uh, well, maybe you want to say what your what your favorite is first Unless it's bulgaria. 
Well, i've only watched the first semi-final because the second one is gonna be shown Later today, okay Uh, did you have a a favorite? 
Uh, not yet. 
Okay, my favorite Moldova Wow It's all about a train ride from from chisnow to uh bucharest Which is the opposite of what kyle and I did a few years ago But boy it captured spirit and it was it was probably the most unique song in the whole competition. 
So moldova hands down for me Yeah, I enjoyed that. 
I remember hearing it great video, too First Yep And of course ukraine had a good song as well Although it sounds like the song from last year. 
Did they repeat part of the song from last year? 
I have no idea. 
Well, I I think there's I I just recognize it and I shouldn't recognize it if it's a new song Well, uh bobson alex here, uh coxy bobson, by the way, by the way, how dare you You just declared war on his ancestors and called him a water buffalo on top of that You you think so? 
Maybe I mean only only bobson will know right right bobson I mean i'll leave you two to settle that score But yeah, I answered I answered your question You did I didn't hear it because somebody was talking over you Oh, okay answer his question again, please Yeah, okay, very good. 
All right, so it's on at dawn I guess is when we'll settle this. 
Yeah All right, very very glad to hear that. 
Uh, i'm wondering though, you know with this whole eurovision thing I've i've never seen any of it. 
So we're in the finals now. 
Is this like, you know, like a uh, Where the semi-finals are there the first semi-final was last night and the next one I think is is is it today? 
And then the final is saturday. 
Is that how it works? 
What do you mean? 
How are they just? 
Second semi-final is on thursday night thursday. 
Okay, european type, of course And alex you can see all the songs on youtube just type in eurovision 2020 and you'll see something with with 40 songs I'm, sorry 2022 uh, you'll see uh 40 songs and you can just play them all it doesn't take very much time because they're all three minutes long So you get through the whole thing in about two hours? 
Well, i'm i'm wondering though And are they judged on the basis of a live version of their song or a recorded version of their song? 
And i'm imagining this this room or a concert hall festooned with the flags of the european union where everybody goes in and plays on equal footing, but i'm not sure if that's the case Well as far as I know this every time the location where it's performed Is Based on last year's winner. 
Yeah last year italy Last year italy won. 
So this time it's a whole it's a concert hall in italy And I might add that last year italy song that won was a rock and roll song which doesn't happen very often Yeah, it was Um So, yeah as far as how it all works I got very confused by the rules I know you can't you know people vote people call in but you can't vote for your own country You can only vote for other songs from other countries But then there are other other ways of voting too from I think expert voters or something I'm, not really sure. 
I understand how it works. 
I do know that last year Somehow the united kingdom got zero votes So, I don't know how that exactly happened but it's a weird system just like most european soccer systems are weird in our eyes Well, it's it's good fun I think Yeah, it's great fun what I don't understand though israel Not in europe, but they're uh, they're part of eurovision australia really not in europe and they're part of eurovision Maybe you know we could get into eurovision somehow. 
I also noticed in this year's competition. 
There's a lot of songs in english and um a lot of songs Where there aren't even accents it seems like you know, like belgium and germany It seems like americans and a lot of songs where the actor or the singer has a copy of themselves And they're like clones of themselves. 
There's a lot of copies of people There's videos because every every song has a video sometimes it's a live performance, but it's still a video But yeah, as kyle said a lot of uh, the protagonist of these videos in the end you find out. 
Oh that person is him It's all circular. 
It's duplicitous Maybe it's been done before. 
It's just yeah, some of it's really cheesy, but um, it's all good fun And it's all you know, I was just listening, um before uh to bbc radio five, which I just found out exists And uh, it's a sports channel and they were having a rousing debate about whether eurovision was better than euro Euro being the the uh, the soccer competition takes place every four years But they were having a good conversation about who has you know More affinity to their country and how it brings out the best in people Not the kind of sports conversation you hear in america, but it was really kind of interesting to listen to Well Sounds good I wish I had Heard that Well, you can probably find it online i'm sure it's it's easy to uh to play these back that's how I did it Oh, well, maybe All right, well I think uh, I think we've covered just about everything any other uh questions or comments before we move on to I I think our final call Um, well nothing I can think of okay Thanks for the show and Have a good night. 
Everybody. 
All right. 
Good hearing from you boston. 
Oh and and alex is holding up some kind of Uh bulgarian dessert you want to tell us what that was because since he can't see you uh, yes, bob, so I have a um, I haven't tried these yet So we can I think you need to call back next week But I did stop by the bulgarian grocery earlier this morning on my way to pennsylvania And uh, and I had picked up some uh, varova. 
I think it's called varova. 
Is that is that right? 
I don't sound like anything They're basically like these milk chocolate kind of wafers with uh It's a cacao Creme cacao cacao, I guess is uh, uh Cocoa, yes. 
Yeah. 
Yeah, and creme would be cream Right, what would what we would see is kpem would be creme, right? 
Yes Yeah So, um, yeah, i'm i'm looking forward to these these they seem to have quite a selection of different flavors of these cookies, so Um, we will be sure to to try every single one of them in the weeks ahead. 
It seems all you ever get is dessert Well, when are you gonna get meat or something? 
Yeah, you know, in fact, I did pick up some some meat today But um, it turned out to be I thought it was polish kielbasa. 
I actually wound up being a russian kielbasa So I hope I didn't violate some kind of sanction I think you might have to report that to somebody uh, because that certainly is not in keeping with um, The values that we wanted to pass on to our kids Yeah, that is true, yeah Um, I will say that I guess I guess a lot of bulgarians, uh still speaks russian in a sense, right? 
Do you speak russian at all? 
bobson Well, yes I studied it in Great school All right What a wise ass You know, I I think and and correct me if i'm wrong about bobson Bobson but a lot of people in bulgaria don't want to speak russian They just were forced to learn russian when they were growing up because of the influence, right? 
Well, there is that too Yeah, well Yeah, same to you doubled I'll look it up later. 
Uh bobson great to hear from you. 
Take care You have a good evening, thank you I think the uh, the sun is coming up where bobson is right now. 
So, uh that's uh Always good to hear from him. 
Okay, so we're gonna um open the phone lines for one more call That's eight zero two three two one four two two five eight. 
Oh two three two one hack And then we'll be signing off for this week I Just assume somebody would say something if I just relaxed for a second But no apparently not, uh, no one has anything to say, okay great, um, go ahead please um, and i'm sorry, I wasn't able to share this earlier, but my favorite eurovision moment is a um, well first of all the Uh the movie the netflix movie from a couple years ago that functionally was eurovision 2020 fire saga Um, that's sort of fantastic but the other thing is um Speaking of israel. 
There was a cd that was put out by some studio musicians And it's like the best of eurovision and they sang everything phonetically So if you listen to the israeli songs that won They're total gibberish and it is the funniest thing ever Um, I love everything about it But by the way this year's um, uh israeli entry is great it really is it's one of my favorites, uh that Ukraine, uh, but moldova moldova takes it all and moldova was the best um Yeah, I think serbia did a good one too. 
Serbia had a pretty good entry this time Did you see the us equivalent? 
What is the u.s? 
so Uh, it was called the american song contest and it just ended. 
Uh, um This week and they had people from representing every state and every um like uh territory And it was fascinating because some people were complete unknowns and like michael bolton was representing connecticut Well, wait, he made it to the final michael bolt. 
Hold on a second. 
He's not an unknown No, some people were complete unknowns and some people were not yeah, but why okay, first of all, how come How come we don't know about this second of all? 
Shouldn't it be for people pretty much on an even level like, you know to have paul mccartney competing You know with the kid next door just learn how to play guitar Kind of unfair, uh, you know, it should be something honestly. 
I don't know how they found the initial representatives but like You know if you're thinking of a singer from alaska, so jewel represented alaska, but got eliminated in the early rounds Um, I will admit I wasn't watching it sounds like mostly superstars then but I think it'll be more interesting really Okay, really? 
All right. 
Uh, I think it'd be more interesting if if there were you know, um new people that are New on the scene should be new music And I do not disagree with you But I would also say that the um, then the netflix movie eurovision the story of fire saga Which came out a couple years ago was really quite good the music was good They got actual eurovision performers from previous years to make cameos in it um I enjoyed it very much. 
Do they explain the voting how it works? 
a little bit all right sort of I'll try part of that because there's like will ferrell running Yeah, but I gotta I gotta learn these things just like I have to learn how to play cricket, you know People explain it to me and then I forget it and I just I would like for it to stick Best of luck. 
All right. 
Let's uh, take this last phone call and good evening. 
You're on off the cover time. 
Go ahead Greetings, it's uh, kirby s from etobicoke. 
Hey, how you doing? 
Not too bad. 
Um, the reason I called today was I wanted to ask you guys i'm planning to come to the conference and there's several options for the Accommodations and I was wondering if anybody could shed any light on the Um hotel options or the on-campus options or well, do you have specific questions about about at all? 
Yeah, specific questions about any of those options and we can we can certainly answer them or try to well just um uh, you know, has anybody stayed at the facilities On it's on campus. 
Uh, a good idea is an interesting experience, you know, just uh, well, okay Obviously, this is the first time for everything right kind of thing I'll do my best and i'll hand it over to gila who's been uh managing most of this Uh, we're all new to this. 
It's a new location for us. 
We we do know of a Double hotel that's down the road a ways about a mile or maybe two miles From the site, uh, which is offering a discounted price Uh, and it's near a lot of restaurants and there's a dive bar downstairs. 
So it's it's kind of a cool place to um, It's kind of a cool place to um, uh to be in fact It's right on the long island expressway. 
You can look out your window and see the expressway going by So if you want the you know, an interesting queens Experience that is one way to do that. 
It's you know and it's basically a place where you can Get away from the site for a while if you want to do that Now if you want to be on site, then there's the on-campus housing situation um, and that is obviously very very convenient because you're right there you wake up on campus, uh, but the um, uh The other part of that is that you're part of st John's community at that point you have to follow the st John's rules they have they have what we consider kind of uh, strange rules for instance No alcohol allowed on on campus or in the dormitories and the dormitories are same sex. 
So, you know you you can't have Say a husband and wife or a family or a girlfriend and boyfriend. 
You can't have that In the dormitory, so if that's something that is a deal breaker, that's what the hotel is for but if you want something that is really convenient and right on campus and um, uh, I think that uh, that's a good option. 
I'll get it. 
Go ahead Yes, so, um, I absolutely agree with everything. 
Emmanuel is saying let me throw in a couple more points for you Um one thing we really want to make sure that people understand it's not just that you're going to be subject to st John's policies, but that is very true. 
Don't forget. 
This is a college dorm You are going to be sleeping in a single bed If you're okay with sleeping in a twin bed On campus may be a good option for you. 
There's also a possibility that if you sign up for a room Let me try this again You're going to sign up for a room rooms are part of suites. 
There is a very distinct possibility You'll be sharing a bathroom with a stranger if you stay on campus. 
You just need to be prepared for that Now if you stay on campus or you stay in a hotel breakfast is included no matter where you stay And no matter where you stay, you don't need to pack sheets and towels. 
Those things are included as well So if that's a factor in your considerations Don't worry about that um Free parking on campus parking costs at the hotel, but also please don't forget st. 
John's Is pretty easy to get to no matter where you are In four of the five boroughs, I can't vouch if you want to stay on staten island That's a little more complicated. 
But if you want to stay in midtown manhattan, you can do that the hotels we have uh, the hotels that st. 
John's has connections with that we're using are Uh, there are two chain hotels. 
It's a a garden in and a courtyard. 
They're both marriott properties They're very nice If you've stayed in one somewhere you have an idea of what to expect and they're right next door to each other They're right next door to each other. 
Here's the thing to remember. 
They're not enormous hotels We are not going into a space the size of the hotel pennsylvania If you want to stay in one of the hotels, please get on that sooner rather than later They're not huge. 
They may sell out. 
Yeah, they will they will sell out at some point And our block closes july 1 Yes, good to know good to know And you know, there's no need for a bigger hotel because we're not having the conference in the hotel the the hotel is simply for people to uh, to to sleep in Uh, but again, it's convenient. 
There's a bus that goes right to campus or it's a very quick uber ride or uh, many other ways to get there lots of places to say one Very important thing we want to remind you about in terms of staying on campus And if there are questions that you have that we have not answered, please give us a holler um please don't forget that if you Are a person who does not? 
If you identify as non-binary You should not stay on campus. 
This is a policy thing It's not our policy. 
You need to identify as male or female and if you don't Staying on campus is not a good choice for you. 
We don't love it at all but this is A policy of our host institution, but we're talking about i'm sorry We're talking about this filling out the forum, right? 
It's not like someone's going to come to your room and check and say what are you? 
Right, but you do have to choose one or the other that's that's how they choose one or the other and you have to provide photo and photo id right They and that's how they assign your housing. 
The other thing we need to remember is um That if you don't stay in the dorms, you can't go to the dorms um You're gonna st. 
John's is issuing id to our attendees who are staying in the dorms And we are um Not in charge of that st. 
John's is going to have personnel who are checking ids on the way to the dorms um If you don't have a dorm reservation, you can't go to the dorms. 
We cannot stress this hard enough, right? 
So if you're staying in the dorms and planning on having a party, please don't yeah And they're they're asking for your id. 
We are not asking for your id. 
We do not get your id The dormitory st. 
John's that's their policy. 
This is an on-campus id, right? 
And this is not a hope staff thing hope staff is not We're not doing housing assignments. 
We can't change your rooming if you don't like it. 
That's we have nothing to do with this But you can uh request that uh, you can request a roommate But the makeup of your suite is not able we cannot guarantee the rooming the makeup of your suite So hold on, uh as far as roommates now, uh, there's two options, right? 
There's there's a single and a double now if there's a double Uh, there's two people per room and if it's somebody, you know, then that's the person that you'll be with Otherwise, it could be a completely random stranger or you can you can choose to have a single Which is not that much more expensive than a double and then you have the room to yourself. 
Did I have that right? 
That's absolutely correct. 
Um suites rooms are assigned to suites Even if you have a single room, you will be sharing a bathroom with another person. 
Just bear that in mind as well um, but yes, if you and a french decide you want to share a room and you sign up together we can make that happen as long as it's a roommate of your same gender like I Rob and I cannot share a room at the conference. 
It's silly. 
It's silly, but it's um silly It's not ours. 
And also remember that this is a college campus and we're Adults, and they were not their core constituency. 
Yeah, it's just uh, consider that There's other options. 
So it's not like that's the only thing right exactly That's why we have multiple options so that people can can make a choice but just understand that you know Their campus their rules as far as that goes as far as the conference goes. 
That's what we run also, if you want to look for an airbnb somewhere in queens, you could literally the entire city is at your feet here and You can get there easily from anywhere um You know when I went to college at a tiny university in los angeles and they said the city is your campus And it's very true you can You know, it's a heck of a slogan, but you can come to the conference and then you can Stay wherever you like get back to back and forth from campus very easily Uh, were there other questions that you had that we have not addressed? 
I mean, no, but that's uh, that's fabulous in terms of the information you provided. 
I'm sure lots of people Probably, um, we're wondering the same thing as I and I'll tell you I I was staying at the hotel to your um Thorough explanation, which is cool and i'll get on that shortly for my uh particular, you know, I may want to Commiserate or of course visitors or something without people but at the same time, uh I think um My big problem is i'm trying to figure out how to get to the conference And so I was wondering if each of the hosts could speak on um, what they think is a possibly the best or a cool way To get down there from canada. 
Uh now you're in ontario, right? 
Yeah, okay as far as I understand I could cross the border in um in an hour from where I am now. 
Uh is is flying your preference or land travel? 
I mean at this point It doesn't i'm open to anything. 
Well cool. 
If there's a cool line that runs somewhere There's a good drive or you know, well driving is easy, you know, because you simply you know, come down, uh the interstate and um, basically you can get to saint john's very easily that way just crossing over one of the bridges and uh, Flying is simple because um la guardia airport, I believe has uh has flights from canada And certainly jfk does and they're both very close to campus and very easy to get to Uh, then of course there's amtrak, but there's only one train a day Uh that comes down through new york state from from toronto. 
It's called the maple leaf uh, and um That takes that takes you to penn station would have been good when the hotel pennsylvania was there Uh, because it was right across the street but but it's also easy to get to uh, you just get a you know, get off and uh, Get on to actually stay in penn station you get on the li double r and take that out to I believe jamaica Which almost every train stops at and from there you hop on a bus and you're on campus. 
I think there's full Directions. 
Am I right gala on on our website? 
There if you go to hope.net slash travel dot html You will find all kinds of information on how to get to saint john's from new york It is up to you how to get to new york But then we give you information for subway rail bus car Everything you may need to know about getting to campus. 
We've got it there for you. 
Um, I think if you want to Drive, that's a great option. 
I think the train understanding that there are convenience issues um Flying into all of these things are possible Also, don't forget if you land if I have a penn station, you can also take the subway from that's right penn station Yeah, the subway you can you can take the e-train from penn station, which will take you Straight out to queens. 
It is also less expensive than the li double r. 
It's not quick though that the subway will take a while The subway does take a while. 
Um But there are lots of options. 
Um, if it were my call I would say Um when you get to the city take an express bus out to queens, um, I am a huge fan of the express buses which run directly from manhattan to queens, um, or Really? 
They run to all the boroughs, but the ones we're talking about here run to queens Um, I did get rob on his first express bus a couple weeks ago. 
I think it was a life-changing experience for him It's basically a coach bus that the mta runs um, so there's space there's USB chargers at your seat Um, there's a little fan for your face Um, I would take an express bus. 
I think they're kind of fantastic um But and is that you get to see some of the city is that outlined on the website as well the express buses the mta express bus I um when I wrote up the travel instructions I kind of went nuts on all the different ways you could get to campus everything you could possibly need to know That's that's all we ask that people go nuts when they are describing The various aspects of hope so I hope that that answers your question Oh, certainly certainly, you know, definitely shed some light on stuff because you know, it's especially these days. 
It's a little daunting planning a trip and uh Figuring out exactly what to do Yeah, I mean we've heard that from a lot of people In fact, that's that's one of the reasons why we introduced the virtual option for people that you know It's too daunting and they don't want to take a trip this this early on or they just you know They're exhausted from the last few years. 
We get that Uh, and we just want to make sure everybody is included one way or another so those of you who decide to get a virtual ticket you can Participate in all the ways that we had in 2020 uh, and um Those of you who want to give a talk virtually we're going to have a track for virtual talks as well So we're going to try and do a lot That's great If I was kirby what I would do I would go from toronto to london Ontario And then I think you can get into like detroit. 
I don't know how that works. 
I'm curious about that area Windsor windsor ontario that connects to detroit i'd still check out london though because I i'm curious about that city I haven't been to london and canada And then um family in london. 
Okay. 
Okay. 
So there you go. 
You stop in you have dinner Or are you planning out his whole trip? 
Well, he asked what every single person on the show would do were they him planning this trip I'm, just answering the question. 
I'm the innocent one here. 
Okay, so now he's gotta have dinner with his family All right, and then so obviously he can't leave till the next morning They're gonna want him to stay over then you go to chicago Chicago you spend some time in chicago. 
Yeah, you backtrack a little bit. 
When is he leaving june? 
and then and then you get on uh You get on the amtrak train because amtrak Yeah, yeah, the lakeshore limited. 
That's it. 
That's a good train, but there's still with me There's still only one of those a day. 
Yep I said the maple leaf because that comes the maple leaf comes from toronto Although you know what? 
It's not it doesn't go to toronto now because of covid but it will start in june 27th Just a little point of information. 
Uh, the lakeshore limited is the amtrak train that goes to the east coast there's also Um, it's a sleeper though, what's the southern the indiana rail? 
Yeah, that's not gonna work for him. 
That does that goes to chicago That goes from chicago from indiana. 
It doesn't go to new york. 
I would still check it out But yeah lakeshore limited that'll get you. 
Uh To the to one end of the country Yeah from from the mid of the country that will that will send you to the east and then whence you're in the east You uh, you would follow what gila had suggested for all the myriad ways you can get to queens Have you been to new york before kirby? 
Yes, I have. 
Okay, so you'll you're somewhat familiar I could be in um, I could be in niagara falls new york in like an hour and a half from where i'm sitting Okay. 
Oh, there you go. 
That's another way. 
Well, the maple leaf stops there You need a barrel. 
Well, some people have told me to go through go do that because There's all kinds of um commotion at our airports right now. 
Okay, uh, the regulations that the um Government still has in place are taking two or three minutes extra per customer And so it's like three four hour waits. 
Wow, um to get processed in and out of um to toronto airport Interesting. 
Okay. 
So yeah, maybe i'm probing around Are you thinking of uh taking a a plane from upstate new york or getting on a train in that in that area? 
Some people uh, they go to buffalo And they take planes from there. 
Okay. 
Well, that would definitely work. 
That's quite easy to access And uh, yeah, maybe a train even just cross the border and get it on a train Well only one train a day, but uh as far as I know. 
Yes. 
Kayla. 
Go ahead Okay, i'm coming up with a new idea. 
All right Okay Get yourself across the border fly To jfk, I got it. 
Okay, get yourself across the border fly from I don't know the buffalo Fly from that area to jfk Okay take the air train to the e-train To the bus to campus That's how I would do it. 
You don't need the e-train. 
You just you can get a bus from jamaica after the air train That's also true. 
Yeah, um take the air train to jamaica And then get the bus and then you're there all Possibilities abound. 
So yes, hope dot net slash travel dot html. 
This is all there. 
We can't get you to new york But once we get you to new york, we tell you what to do I feel like there's a competition. 
I feel like we've just started. 
Uh, uh the the hope turn by turn competition How how do you get to hope you don't tell us where exactly where you start? 
We don't really care that hope is the only conference where getting to the conference is part of the conference. 
Yeah Wait, do you guys remember a couple years ago? 
I suggested that as a premium we offer ourselves as like a voice for your ways and no one took us up on it Yeah, yeah There's not that many recordings to record on your ways either This is what i'm saying though. 
Like I think getting directions from the off the hook panel Oh my god, kirby you're doing amazing things here. 
We appreciate it Well, i'm gonna have to i'm gonna have to figure this out i'm gonna have to plan soon because um I also have the possibility of a plane into um, the other airport. 
What's the other airport laguardia? 
Right laguardia the other airport, uh newark That's not as close. 
Yeah, newark. 
It's new jersey. 
Well, we have a we have a downtown airport that it's basically getting on a bus like you go down, um to the Basically middle of just downtown and then there's an airport right there You take a little you take a little tunnel or there used to be a ferry Like 10 minutes or five minutes and you can fly in the plane. 
It's like an hour and 20 minutes to that airport Okay from downtown toronto interesting Well, whichever way you go, um, i'm sure it'll be good it'll be unique We're gonna figure it out and we're gonna uh, we'll get there one way or another Okay, and keep checking hope.net for updates on the conference is it's going to be amazing. 
Thanks for listening Yeah, absolutely And we'll see you in july you bet. 
All right. 
Take care. 
Great And I think that's going to do it for us here tonight Right, it's so early Actually, it's it's it's 9 30. 
We've been at this an hour and a half good good 90 minutes And we did an hour show before that. 
So it's not it's not as early as you might think Oh, yeah, I know. 
Well, I was being sarcastic, but it's hard to tell Yeah Sarcasm, yeah, that'll work, but I do enjoy this. 
I enjoy your sarcasm so much Sarcasm is the best it is. 
Um again, it's like the station. 
It's like everybody's like hey we should uh, we should all We should all be serious and someone's like yeah, i'm gonna do sarcasm. 
Let's do that That's like the equivalent to the fundraising or like let's destroy the station thing. 
Mm-hmm Mm-hmm A lot of that going around. 
Okay, so, uh oth at 2600.com email address write to us uh as far as I know we'll be back next week and um yes, um, keep checking hope.net for updates on on that and um, send us your stories or thoughts or anything like that. 
We're looking for speakers for the conference and workshop participants and Anything you have an idea to do we can probably help you do it at the conference So that's um, that's pretty awesome. 
All right till next week. 
Good night