Episode 17 - Greg Wesolowski
Episode Preview
Join us as we discuss: Streaming giants, YouTubes surpassing Netflix in profits, and Dungeons & Dragons along with Special Guest Greg Wesolowski!
Hosts:
Matt Fischer @flooredmatt
Justin MacDonald @justintyme44
https://www.justinmacdonald.com
Fact-Checker:
Jesse James @thee_jessejames
https://www.theculturecurators.com
Executive Producer:
Dave Miller @dmiller1023
https://www.mavenphotoandfilm.com/
This episodes official "Person on the Couch":
Greg Wesolowski @cricketswiddler
Transcript of Episode 17
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, ocala, youtube, big, talking, stories, days, years, watched, played, downtown, dungeons, cars, nice, news, downtown ocala, ended, kids, game, tech
SPEAKERS
Greg Weslowski, Jesse James, Justin MacDonald
Justin MacDonald 00:02
Good morning and welcome to this edition of unwanted opinions. I'm your host Justin here with stand in CO hosts Jesse James. Good morning stand in fact checker and guests guy on the couch. Greg was Loski executive producer Dave's here in the studio handling the live streaming. Thank you Dave. We're broadcasting live at a workspace collective we're happy to be here and I'm happy to say that it was yet again another beautiful morning in downtown Ocala especially
Jesse James 00:32
beautiful is
Greg Weslowski 00:34
a winner I'm glad
Justin MacDonald 00:38
Yeah, terrible. Yeah, windows down driving this morning. Absolutely beautiful. I loved it. Yeah, this is like how do we like just keep that whether the majority of the year round you could do that. Especially during summer? Yeah. When it's 90 degrees when you wake up.
Greg Weslowski 00:57
September almost broke me this year. It was so bad like September. Yeah. September you're just like it's because it's still hot. And it's hurricane season. Like I've discovered one of my primary career goals now. I want to be a reverse Snowbird I want to leave Florida. July August in September, right. Like and when, like, hurricane season is over. Come back. That's okay. Yeah. It's just a matter of like, if we're gonna do it in a camper if we're just gonna like rent a space because like September just freaking killed me this year. Yeah, it's hot. Yeah. And it's been hot for like five months at that point. Yeah, right. Yeah, we're, we're over it.
Justin MacDonald 01:30
I actually. Yeah, I like the I don't you know, I mean, if I know that I'm like, going to be sweating. I'm okay. If I if I'm dressed super nice. And I don't want to, like get one drop. Yes. Well, let me then that's annoying, but every other time like, you know, it's hot dress for being hot. And just be okay with
Greg Weslowski 01:48
it. Yeah, but it rains every day is the problem. Like you can't go out like you know, as well as I do. We like Kayak. minutes. Yeah, but the threat is always there. And you're not going to like go load up the gear. And like, go out and do everything. Or like we have a running joke in like my job. Where like, I'm like, Alright, getting off work. Getting ready to go. Miko ride the bike.
Justin MacDonald 02:08
Yeah, that doesn't sound like a funny joke, actually. Yeah. Terrible for my heart. Yes. Real bad joke. Yeah, I don't I don't mind. You know, I mean, you just know what it's gonna do. It's like, I'm about two to three, it's gonna rain. And then we're good. After that. It's gonna
Jesse James 02:25
get 40 degrees warmer.
Justin MacDonald 02:29
I'm good with it. So
Jesse James 02:29
we're going out to Denver next week. So my buddy sent me a screenshot of his weather app, and it was negative eight. So on the way to max last night, I sent him a picture was 84. I was like, what a wild thing and there's 100 degrees degree spread.
Justin MacDonald 02:44
Yeah, that's, uh, that's intense was at 40 Yesterday. That's what it said on my phone. Oh, that's crazy. I don't remember getting that warm, like middle afternoon. But maybe it just, you know, cuz it's not so humid. Maybe it wasn't just bearing down on me. I
Greg Weslowski 02:57
don't know. Yeah, I don't know cold. Is there a big difference between 30 and negative eight?
Jesse James 03:02
In my mind? No. Yeah. Because it's like, I'm shivering at that point.
Greg Weslowski 03:06
You got the puffer jacket and clothes on at that point. So hopefully, now
Justin MacDonald 03:11
I can handle 30 degree weather and like, you know, a light sweater and shorts. Getting down to zero is is kind of terrible.
Greg Weslowski 03:22
I don't think I suppose that's like the big difference is 90 degrees. You can still be out in it overnight. You're just like, gonna like there's no threat of dying. Fair in 90 degree weather. Whereas like, you get drunk you make a mistake up north. Right? You know, like the Johnson college kid out front of somewhere the other day probably like got lost in the elements popsicle. Yeah, there's no threat of death.
Justin MacDonald 03:44
The first time I ever had to like drive and snow. I remember talking to a cop. And she was like, yeah, just you know, don't go down that road. You know, we closed off for a reason. She's telling us where we can illegally go to snowboard, which is awesome. And she's gonna close it off for a reason you know at least you know once every other winter we you know when the road on thaws we you know, we find a car down there a little body down. Oh, yikes. That happened. Did they die? Then? She's like, No, they they get stuck. Then they die. I'm like, Oh, how do people deal with this? That's terrible. I like the cold weather. I can take the cold weather. But I'm I'm just lazy. So I don't want to deal with like mud rooms and like scraping my car off and shoveling snow in the morning. Yeah, I'm just impatient. Like, I don't want to deal with all of that. I like one layer of clothing. Get a heated driveway. Yeah, right. Let's see. It should be
Greg Weslowski 04:39
I mean, I'm sure there's I'm sure rich people out there. You got a heated driveway or you just got someone that takes care of it. Whichever one is cheaper.
Justin MacDonald 04:49
I'm so impatient that I'll handle being cold instead of having a jacket because I don't want to just have to carry my jacket around.
Jesse James 04:57
I hate so that's the one thing I hate about Super cold you have to get bundled up somewhere and then get undressed to become
Greg Weslowski 05:06
rooms or thing up north. Yeah, like code checks and cold rooms are things that like you never think about like oh codes yeah but Jesse your fashion aficionados Do you like have code you get to wear like once or twice a year coats up
Jesse James 05:19
and I'm super excited about this trip because I have boots and coats that I had that I've known.
Greg Weslowski 05:28
Like I know like like, and I just got like, awesome new like thrift coat and everything and I'm about to put it up in like two weeks. And there's like, again, I have like thrift coats in the back for like events and everything. I'm like, I'm gonna have to just throw these away this year. Or like put them back in the thrift cuz I never even wore them this year for
Justin MacDonald 05:43
someone that wears jackets as little as I do. I have way too many. I have quite the selection that I pull out. Yeah, once or twice a year that are the same too.
Greg Weslowski 05:54
Yeah, like winter wars. Yeah,
Justin MacDonald 05:56
I got a bunch. Yeah,
Greg Weslowski 05:57
winter wardrobe in Florida is like, what, three weeks?
Justin MacDonald 06:01
So if you guys had to guess at what the biggest streaming service is visual streaming that music streaming, what do you think it would be? Yeah. Say it again. Vimeo, Vimeo, Vimeo. Like, Netflix. Not Amazon Prime. But Vimeo. Yeah, just throwing out a random one. Okay, that's fair. You actually hit it. And I shouldn't ask the tech guy this question. It's, yeah, it's YouTube. So here's what's crazy is, Google bought YouTube in 2006, which is, or YouTube started, like 2005. I didn't realize they bought it that early on. But they didn't break out earnings until 2020. So you know, the whole time it was just bundled under the, you know, alphabet, or whatever Google's parent company is. And so in 2020, they started breaking it out. And in 2021, they profited 31, or $34 billion, with a B with a B, where Netflix is that 30 billion, which is insane. I had no like, there's some people that I talked to that are like, oh, yeah, I'm on YouTube all the time. I'm like, I gotta start wearing my headphones more because I just like I don't. There's rarely a time where I'm just like, I'm just gonna pull up YouTube unless I'm specifically looking.
Jesse James 07:23
Right, right. Yeah. And that's that, I guess, with the the amount of stuff that's on YouTube, right. 40 clips is the amount of stuff that's on any other streaming service.
Greg Weslowski 07:32
I literally live on YouTube all day. Yeah, job I have. I listened to Lo Fi hip hop, right. And like I tell my funny thing is people are like, Oh, I have Spotify as my subscription service. I have YouTube. Alright, first, it was good to err, first it was Google music. And then it was YouTube music. I haven't had I've had ad for YouTube for like, 10 years now. And like I go to people put on YouTube. And there's an ad I'm like, What is this abomination? Like driving money get ad for YouTube, because you get the YouTube streaming service, and then you get ad for YouTube. So like, literally at my work, I have my monitors, I have Lo Fi hip hop on and one monitor because you know, it's just like good dumb background music. And then you know, I'm working. So like, yeah, my whole life. And then I actually just made the transition for my podcast. Google has a an app on their phone for podcasts now. So all my podcasts are under that. It's about like, and being the tech guy and everything. It's about, like the environments that you live in these days, which we can get into monopolies and all that, but like, my entire life is in Google. Like if you wanted to write a psychological profile on me these days, you can pull up my Google like Google knows everything about it.
Justin MacDonald 08:33
It's very, I remember reading something a couple of years ago, well, this guy's like, Yep, I have access to just one of your emails. Like just just just knowing the address. He's like I could I can within like a 5% You know, variance tell you who you're gonna vote for what you're gonna do, like, pretty interesting stuff. But yeah, I had no idea. I mean, I know. And what's funny is like, in my notes that I wrote on my phone initially, I started out like the antitrust. Oh, yeah. The whole peripheral that as we stream on Facebook it's just wild to me, especially when they it's like how did it take them that long to break out the earnings for YouTube? And then also like, here's the this is why I started going on that in the antitrust monopoly type stuff is the second the world's second largest search engine is YouTube. So you have the first is Google and the second is YouTube. That's the most searches happening with the most results in the largest database which is in saying to me Yeah, that's yeah. So Christy said that it's kids on on YouTube all the time. And I know that my kids for sure, like I have to like give them YouTube limits, because I am not going to watch what they're watching all the time. Right. But I also know that like I've got to be careful because one video can lead to the next can lead to the next and they're watching some weird crap or you know, in some happen
Greg Weslowski 09:59
with kids like years ago, where there were just these random like aI generated videos that were just but it was like frying their brains or something like it was super weird for man. I don't know, have y'all have kids these days? Yeah,
Justin MacDonald 10:10
I mean, don't get me wrong. YouTube does a good job of like, getting, you know, filtering that content and making it kids specific. Like when we, when I upload our podcasts on YouTube, it's like, is there anything in here meant meant for kids? Is there anything here? That's specifically not meant for kids? You know, they do a pretty good job. But my kid, like my six year old, he's like, Yeah, YouTube Kids is boring. Like, yeah, I know. But on
Greg Weslowski 10:35
the other hand, if you had any plumbing problems recently, YouTube, yeah, like I really have like, there used to be like, gatekeeper, gatekeeper knowledge before I now the now all the world is like, knowledge of the world is right there. Whatever, you want to spend enough time on YouTube, you don't got to go to college.
Justin MacDonald 10:52
You don't gotta go to college.
Greg Weslowski 10:54
Gotta go to college these days, if you really want to learn how to code or do something like that.
Justin MacDonald 10:58
I think that's very true. in a limited sense, for sure. One of the most hurtful things that my wife ever said about me, related to you to someone goes, is he handy? To which I think, yes, absolutely. I am. But to my wife, she goes, No, but he's good at like watching YouTube videos. You What did you just say?
11:29
He was 2am, adjusting scraping?
Justin MacDonald 11:34
By like, Okay, I'm sorry, I didn't know about this specific chipset for our washer that I had to go on. Like, okay, this chipset versus you know, the GE chipset, but like, I know what I'm looking for, and how to solder and all that to get it done.
Greg Weslowski 11:48
That's handy. I couldn't do that. Like, my version of that is plumber. Washing machine,
Justin MacDonald 11:57
right. So now I'm like, breaking stuff because I'm trying to fix it. tutorials. I had this
Greg Weslowski 12:04
great question. We have this this conversation frequently. So that you did that on YouTube and everything. Do you all put a time? Do you put a monetary value on your time? Oh, absolutely. Which is like, like, I put mine at around 2530 bucks our were like, where I see people are like going to go stand in line for a pizza for two hours. No, I'm like, You know what I mean, like when people see like free stuff, and there's like Sona repair, which you're a handy guy, like, I have to like pull up. Like, I have to pull out two bikes out of my garage to get to my tools, right? So like, I put like, if like, this project is gonna take me more than two hours, and I gotta buy a tool. I'm calling a guy. Oh, so what's your threshold for like, calling again?
Justin MacDonald 12:44
Um, well, so that that changes? It depends on, you know, if I'm at work, I'm not I'm not doing anything right there. My time is more valuable, you know, related to the things that I do on the upper tier of management right? At home? Is this something I can do after the kids go to bed? And I like to do it, it takes my mind off of it, like, by all means, and can I buy a tool and do this? I get excited about the like, Oh, cool. You know, when we did our flooring, I'm like, Alright, awesome. In my budget for flooring, I get to get a new chop saw, and a new table saw. And I'm like, This is awesome, because now I get to use these for other projects. And so the Forum is a great example. Because I did the same thing. I'm I'm of the mindset of same thing, you know, how long is it going to take me and how much money is gonna cost? And so for the flooring, I'm like, Oh, I saved 1000s of dollars doing it myself. And I get new tools, as opposed to when we took down walls. I'm like, I can do drywall. Right? It's not my favorite to do. But I can do it. Is it going to be the cleanest? Probably not, but I can do it. And so we took down a couple walls, and we had a hole. And honestly, the hole in the ceiling is what did it for me because, again, there's no wall there anymore. And so for that one, I literally added up the drywall, I added up my time, the tools were you know, really wasn't that big of a deal for that. And I was like oh, by all means I'm going to spend the extra 30% on this to get this done, you know, relative to what I'm doing because that 30% is under 1000 bucks. As opposed to if that were 30% on 5000 bucks. I'd be doing it myself
Greg Weslowski 14:25
everything you just said made complete sense. Yeah. So I
Justin MacDonald 14:29
definitely I very much budget my time exactly like that. So and I think it's it's important to do so even with like oil changes is a good example. I someone said to me at one point like oh, you don't do that yourself. I'm like I used to, but now it's sometimes it's even less for me to get have someone else do it. Then for me to buy the oil and dispose of it myself. And the timing. Like I can literally pull up there under my car. It's done. You know like Yeah, bye means I'm having someone else do that, even though I very much know how to change my own oil. And brakes is getting to that point to like, am I gonna do my own brakes? Probably not. Yeah.
Jesse James 15:09
Same.
Greg Weslowski 15:10
Do you want it done good or you want it done right? Another one of my things, I could probably do it, it might be a little loose. And that is, or just like, drop the extra couple bucks. I'm trying to find a plumber these days. Yeah, that's
Justin MacDonald 15:26
weird. Yeah, he's Johnson brothers. They've always been great for us. But honestly, any kind of any kind of trade like that is super hard. There's, there's one specific trade that I know a few people in sight don't want to say anything. But it's, I have a hard time getting them out to do to do jobs in my house. It's electric. I'm just gonna say, like to get like a small job done for less than 200 bucks. Is and that's one of those where like, do you want to? Would you say done or done right? Or something?
Greg Weslowski 15:59
Yeah, you want it done? Are you done? Done? Right? Yeah. Right.
Justin MacDonald 16:02
So with electric, I can do it. But there are certain things around like, if this is a fire hazard. We're testing and there's also risk of death. And yeah, all right about that, because I know where to shut the power off. But like, if I turn it back on, and I didn't, you know, I didn't wire something right in it, you know, sparks in my house catches fire, then I'm concerned.
Greg Weslowski 16:26
Yeah, that's just like one of those things. I'm like, I'm not gonna touch that. Right. Because, like, I know nothing about it. And that's a complex thing. It's like, and there's certain things like trades, like you know, like, I know, there's a big like, push for trade school and everything these days back when it was like, oh, go take out student loans for everything. Yeah, like, but now like the trades I tell everybody, like if I were like, in my career and everything in it, I'm like, just get into it, and ride the wave. You never know where you're gonna end up. And like, same thing. I'm like, you wrote like, Good, steady work here and for the air conditioning. First, we're never gonna want for work in air conditioning.
Justin MacDonald 16:59
Yeah, my buddy Ray Ray Powell. We were at a friend's birthday celebration. And he's like, I gotta go. Sup, man, he's like, oh, yeah, I'm working. He's in age. He's like, Yeah, I'm on call. I gotta call. I gotta go right now. Like, dang. But he just stays busy non stop.
Jesse James 17:20
He goes out somewhere. You need it now.
Greg Weslowski 17:22
Yeah, I paid money. Speaking of value in paying money for things every summer I drop like 90 bucks. And I have my air conditioned service. Yeah. And like, what is it? Like, may I have it done? Like, just because you? We live in Florida. And it's like your life spot? If it's like August in your AC. You're dropping to a hotel? Yeah, I mean, you're not as likely hurricanes are terrifying. Like Alright, so here's like, Florida boy thing, right? Hurricanes are terrifying. The real bad part of hurricanes is how long you're out of days afterwards, right? Like you get drunk during the hurricane.
Justin MacDonald 17:57
Well, like the drinking like the grilling, it's the it's the heat.
Greg Weslowski 18:02
passes and it's like 86 degrees out in August or September. That's the bad part of the hurricane there.
Justin MacDonald 18:08
Yeah, yeah, that's the very problem. And always makes me think like, why would people have moved down here? Before AC? Like what what were you thinking? Imagine No, I can't.
Greg Weslowski 18:23
This smells Yeah, I always think about this whenever people are like, Oh man, I wasn't born in the right here. I was meant to be a Viking and live in medieval times. I'm like, that's what it smelled like back then. Like before like Plumbing it like 1776 the good old days. What did it smell like when they were signing the Constitution on July in Philadelphia? No air conditioning? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like I know they had like incense and candles and all that and everything but that's always what gets to me. The smells of the cities back then.
Justin MacDonald 18:53
I am a huge proponent of just dealing with the stench rather than trying to mask the stench with incense or candles or air fresheners. There's nothing worse to me than being in a bathroom. And then like the automatic air freshener goes off with like the watermelon spray and I'm like it just smells like someone took a dump in a watermelon patch. This is just worse Wow. I don't want to eat watermelon a nice place to take a dump though. Watermelon patch
Greg Weslowski 19:18
joy you ever thought Have you ever like walked into a gas station bathroom? Yes, this is nice. Like you just walk into your like I'm stopping on 40 on the way out to the beach or something I'm going to stop by this thing hold my breath and like when you walk in there that's like payment in there scented candles like obviously someone nice alright. Well, this is a pleasant surprise.
Justin MacDonald 19:39
I had to go when I was heading down to like Tampa St. Pete or something and I was in a weird I was using backwards for whatever reason. And I was like, Oh man, there's this like little faux dunk rundown looking gas station. I'm like, whatever. I'll just, you know, get it done quickly as I walked in, and it was like They literally had like candles and rug. And it was one of the cleanest I've ever seen. And I like I come back in. And I talked to the guy I was like, by far, one of the most amazing bathrooms like not even guests. They said bathrooms, just bathrooms I've ever walked in. He's like, he's like, Man, I'm here. 24 hours a day. This is my gas station. Like, that's where I go like, like, I take very good care of him like, Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. Thanks for letting me buy you an extra five. Like,
Greg Weslowski 20:34
five out of five would recommend.
Justin MacDonald 20:36
He'll bring you incoming. Man. So I'm just still blown away by the streaming giant. They're glad that you guys know that.
Greg Weslowski 20:46
The numbers scale. Yeah. So like, and I think you guys were talking about this last week, you know, Tesla's worth more than the entire auto industry. Yeah, that's wild. Yeah, like that, which I think it's all like fake numbers and everything. Things just don't make sense. But like General Motors, Toyota, every car that you see driving out there, they roll out millions of lines for the manufacturers, and you're gonna tell me Tesla is worth more than all of them combined. It's just it's it's 10 the numbers in tech are mine.
Justin MacDonald 21:11
Yeah, I was gonna say that. It's, it's, it's tech is the bigger thing there. And it's, you know, their, their technology isn't just cars, either. There's so much more that goes into just their cars. But really what it is, is that's the market also saying like, hey, we believe in this doesn't doesn't mean it's gonna last forever. I mean, you look at someone like a GE, you know, where it's like, you know, for a long time or a better example, would be like a Sears because GE still does a lot of things that I don't think people are really aware of turbine engines and stuff like that. But we own
Greg Weslowski 21:41
everything. So you don't have Yeah, like the big mega conglomerate, you don't
Justin MacDonald 21:46
realize your Mega conglomerate, but it's people that go not only do you know, do I think that this is a worthwhile thing to do. I think this has value it has value now, but I think it has value in the future. And that's like the beauty of the stock market is going I get to invest in something that I think is going to be good long term, and therefore it helps build that company. And I think that there's obviously you know, some there's a lot of fanboy ism that goes into that. But, you know, I look at that and I go, there was no other than Fisker, you know, there was really no one else doing electric vehicles. And Tesla pushed the envelope on it. And now, pressure. I mean, the company like dodge that still doesn't have an electric vehicle out. It's like,
Greg Weslowski 22:31
is dodge still its own company?
Justin MacDonald 22:34
Yes, Ram, I think I don't know. Yeah. It's, I don't know. It's bad checker. But I mean, you have a you have a large. Yeah, you have a large company that that doesn't have an electric vehicle, you know, or I just to me, it's like, there's some weird like, anti Tesla, anti SpaceX like movement that's happening, which I don't totally understand. Elon is a weirdo. I get that Elon is a weirdo. But to me, I literally I've seen this, like, why do we even have to go to space? Tech tweeted from an iPhone and it's like,
Greg Weslowski 23:09
what happens? Like, it's just like, for every action, there's an equal reaction, like, there's gonna hate Good Everything good point. And like, and I think like Elon does, like a lot of really dumb stuff. And like, honestly, like, here's the difference. Elon is in the tech industry, there is a lot of BS in the tech industry as like, the biggest example of it being that one chick, the Theranos. Right, ladies, and then I don't know if you heard the big thing when we were in Adam Newman. Whatever her name was, yeah, like there is a very a very thin line between
Justin MacDonald 23:41
feminists right now. Hmm, you bring it up only bad cases of women right now. Well
Greg Weslowski 23:48
there's a well no, there's and there's Adam Newman, who is the WeWork guy as well. There's a very thin line between Elon in that girl because if Elon if they didn't make the Tesla work, Elon was gonna turn into her no like she just didn't see you believe so much that that technology she could like Will it into existence like Steve Jobs. And there's a lot of years history like
Justin MacDonald 24:08
there's a lot of dots in between those two that you're connecting that I'm I vehemently disagree with?
Greg Weslowski 24:13
Well, I'm talking like the salesmanship of the tech industry. You want smart but how much of these things as he personally developed where it's like he just put a brain trust together and hope that that brain trust Yeah,
Justin MacDonald 24:25
and okay, Steve Jobs and every other person ever, right? Like I'm not saying that he's the smartest person in the room and I'm not even like I'm not I'm not shutting him out. I'm just saying I under I don't quite understand the hate that popped up other than like, he created himself but to to connect him even loosely to to homes or whatever from Theranos. If you've done any looking into this, if you guys don't know what their Gnosis it was a company that basically said we are going to test all of your medical background or issues or anything like that by a simple blood test. Right and The issue there is, it was very evident on the front end that that was never going to work like you have to like be be science and medically ignorant to even think that that would work. Because there's so much involved in what you're trying to do that a simple blood test isn't going to do, right? Where I agree that they're salesmanship. But they're salesmanship backed off of like, Hey, this is actually going to work. And I don't care if someone puts together team says, this is the product and I'm the head of it. Like, he technically is the lead engineer of SpaceX right now, that's still just the title that he's given himself. But at least he's going I'm the guy that's in in trouble. If things go really, really awry. I've taken that heat off of someone else, even though there's a whole team, right? But I don't think he's the one that going like, Okay, well, structurally, this is going to work or not going to work.
Greg Weslowski 25:51
And it's and my point being in the tech industry, which because of her like, and she, she was like running parallel to Elon back when it was like 510 years ago, when it was like, move fast and break things. And the investors were just coming in and throwing money. When at the time like those same investors were probably like, it's just like, it's that sphere of money. We talked about Intel, right? We're like, Google can profit 23 Billions and probably buy like Sears with like pocket change, you know, where there's that much money running around where it's all like speculative trading, where like, that's what happened with Elizabeth Holmes. It's what happened with WeWork and everything. There's just so much money to throw at it. And might work. Yeah, Elon it worked out for and there's a little bit more behind and he made the electrode work. And even SpaceX isn't a part of Tesla that's directly owned, right. So it's just there's so much money running around there these days. But more research is being done into these tech people.
Justin MacDonald 26:44
Yeah, I agree that there's a lot of speculative trading. I mean, that's, that's the whole point of trading too, is like I'm gonna I'm gonna hedge my bets. And if you you know, did it incorrectly on Elizabeth Holmes, you lost a lot. She actually reminds me of the I can't remember the car brand. There was. No it wasn't data. Well, it was. I think HBO did a special about all the girl the lady. Yeah. The first like trans.
Greg Weslowski 27:12
Yeah, that was a phenomenal. He was like it was same thing. She was like, purely a hustler. Yeah, totally. The technology did not exist total grift. But she made it sound but she was such a good. She was like tech giants before tech.
Justin MacDonald 27:25
Yeah. So there's this. It's a lady that was pushing a three wheel three wheeled vehicle, I think out of California, originally. And then. Yeah, basically it all you know, is when it's all said and done. It was it was, you know, a scam. And I don't think it started though. I think that she genuinely thought that, oh, I'm gonna get this going. And I think I can make it work and just believed her a lie. And that just got caught up in it
Jesse James 27:55
late in the day.
Justin MacDonald 27:56
Yeah, yes. The day. That's what it
Greg Weslowski 27:59
is. Phenomenal series or documentary. Yeah. But yeah, that was like tech before tech. And I think that was one of the things she believed, genuinely, that the technology would catch off to her own sales. And when it didn't, it was a house of cards. But again,
Justin MacDonald 28:14
that's also an ignorance thing. Like when you when you talk to the engineers that were working for that company, they're like, yeah, it wasn't going to happen. And so and that's what I think about with Elizabeth Holmes is like, you should have known right? You can't it's it's neat to like have the idea. But by the time you have like an intelligent person go, you're missing like key components here. Like you obviously can't do this. Like, that's when you gotta go. Okay.
Greg Weslowski 28:39
Yeah. And that's what's amazing about it is there is just enough hype behind it. It's like there's a member where we got into the curve of things that like once like someone's interested, I want to use exponential exponential growth, I think is what I'm looking. Yeah. We're like she hit a certain point where there's enough investors buying in Russia, you got enough people behind it, they started throwing money. At Uber is like another primary example of like the fantasy. Remember five years ago when everything was going to be automated driving cars. And like these days, were just like,
29:13
flying cars. I have to take it back real quick. Your wife chimed in and said, Okay, screw you. I said, I didn't think you were handy when we were fresh and didn't have any projects going on.
Justin MacDonald 29:23
Ah, okay, gotcha. I'm gonna let her get away with that. Even though she said that, like two years ago. Thanks for listening wife. Yeah, I gotta be careful. I forget that. Some of those stories head on. This thing's live. Yeah. All right. Let's hop off with their nose and YouTube and all that their nose. That's I want to have a separate conversation about that though. Yeah, it can be super boring.
Greg Weslowski 29:49
Oh, no, it just leads into more of like the tech stuff that's just a rabbit hole forever.
Justin MacDonald 29:53
So I see you looking at the subjects I have over there. One of the things I want to talk about is that this is NYT revenue and that's New York Times revenue, which, in 2020, I think it was and yeah, I'm gonna have to like double check myself because I didn't write my notes down. Nick said, Dave asked JT how I got bested by moron yesterday. I'll get into that. But New York Times revenue as of like, I think the latest was 2019, or 2020 was still about 60% was subscriptions. And 2021 55% is just like gains and puzzles and like their, their majority of the revenue has is not coming from subscriptions for news now, which is insane. Well, it isn't. It isn't insane to me, I let my New York Times subscription lapse, I think last year, because whatever, I won't get it all that like I have a lot of new subscriptions. And my current one which I'm about to be done with. I have still a couple but the one that I like the least. And I don't know if I should even say it but it's the Ocala star banner.
Greg Weslowski 31:07
Oh no, it's conglomeration these days I get crap off of it better news off because that these days and then the star banner
Justin MacDonald 31:12
it's it's so I'm it's important to me to have local news. Because we need to know what's going on in our community. Like we are so disconnected in a lot of ways that when you now have a conglomerate news company, which it has been for a while, but it just seems to be getting further and further away from do you follow
Greg Weslowski 31:28
the Gainesville sun and the Ocala star banner? And they do this simultaneous? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And there's probably like several others. Like they're just pulling AP stories down, right.
Justin MacDonald 31:37
It's all it's all AP stories, very little local stuff. And and what it is, so I get an email yesterday, and I think they may have sent the correction. So I'll be careful about what I say. But I got an email yesterday. And it's like, oh, by the way, we're giving you more premium stories. So your price isn't going up. But you're just gonna have to renew your subscription more, because we're gonna take credits later, your subscription. And I'm like, what a sham. You know, I, I'm just gonna let that lapse too. Because I'm like, now I'm not going to pay more for news stories that I'm not reading because you decided that you're going to give me more of those, like, Oh, our price isn't going up. We're just going to give you more and take credits out of your account, like, okay, you know, that's weird. Yeah. And don't get me wrong. I saw this morning. It was like, whoops, we sent an email. So I'll read it. And I'll update in the comments if they said, Alright, nevermind, we're not doing that. And
Jesse James 32:32
what are the premium stories so they
Justin MacDonald 32:35
have like, subscriber only stories, which basically subscriber only stories are a local store, okay. And I'm okay, I will pay money if I know I'm going to get quality local news. Now if I start getting like, heavily opinionated pieces, I'm out. Like, I'll listen to the talking heads if I want opinionated pieces. Like I'm a huge fan of like, just the facts ma'am. Give me the dragnet just the facts. Like I don't want to hear and it's so obvious in a lot of ways like the way things are written like okay, this is just getting super heavily but let me
Greg Weslowski 33:09
let me like give you all kind of like diatribe as a government employee and a public employee. And we were talking about how I worked for go with management and everything. Good news is no news. And like, this is like and we're gonna get into local media and everything like as a person that works for the city of Ocala. I love working for the city of Ocala. I love being a public servant. Best part about my job is I get to give back to my community like in things that I do 40 hours a week, but you're never going to see in the star banner. Marion County Public Schools successfully transport 30,000 kids.
Justin MacDonald 33:41
What right Listen, today, ask my wife. I tell people all the time, the logistics. That's our biggest logistics program in Marion County. We have Lockheed, you know, we've got engineering places, the biggest logistics we do is twice a day moving over 30,000 kids when before the pandemic it was over 40,000 kids a day, twice a day. And so when I hear people complaining, Cashin get goosebumps. I'm getting all lit up. Oh, yeah. Like do you know this is gonna trigger?
Greg Weslowski 34:12
Like, as the government plays? Yeah,
Justin MacDonald 34:14
people take for granted. When someone complains about a bus being a few minutes late. I'm like, Are you out of your freaking mind? Do you know what they do? And then like, I think about driving with my own kids and how much they annoyed me as my own kids,
Jesse James 34:27
how many kids per bus right? And
Justin MacDonald 34:29
I'm like, you're driving somebody else's kids. And 40 of them are wow, you know, however many it is like, that's, you know, there's like a hole
Greg Weslowski 34:37
it. It rained in the summer. Did you know there's a whole department like dedicated to the fact that that rain does not stay on the ground. Like there's like a 50 person department. And like you never know news about them. Yeah, thank you, Rachel. They do a great job out there at Ocala electric utility. We're lucky here in Ocala that we have a publicly owned utility that thing but Like, these are the things and like it sounds boring AF but I'm like, fascinated behind like logistics of these where you have the city you have the county, I work in growth management, which is like code licensing office of homeless prevention. And like, I'm sure this is like news we'd like to get, but like, it's all it's all like clickbait and everything and that. Yeah, I think we're the fall of local news happen,
Justin MacDonald 35:23
right. It sensationalize, you know, what are we going to get? And and we you know, it's been very evident. Right. But I think that I think that there's an opportunity to break out of that. And I think that a lot of news based sources don't really even understand that. I think that there, they still go by the extremist people who are clicking, and don't get me wrong every now and then I find myself getting caught up in like, I'm reading this because I disagree with it. Right? I want to know, because this, this is another thing that I do. I think I've said this before, plenty of times on the podcast, also open up seven new sources. When I go, I don't like being inundated with news. But when I decided that I need to catch up on what's going on. I open up literally seven sources. I read across all of them go Alright, what's the different
Greg Weslowski 36:05
perspective? You don't want confirmation, right? What's a lot of people just fall into their circle.
Justin MacDonald 36:09
Right? So but every now and then when I do that, I'll go. Alright, I'm gonna read something from a new source that I don't believe, like, I don't think their news. I think they're heavily opinionated, but I'll read it just to see what that opinion is. And I get myself a little riled up and I'm like, okay, here, I'm falling into this right. But mostly speaking, I think consumers are breaking away from that. I think that you're seeing legacy media. And I'm not trying to sound super conspiracy theorist, you know, podcast or whatever. But I think legacy media is changing. I think that you're, you're looking at the numbers, and you're going, You know what, people don't actually want that. You know, they fell into it for a little while. Well,
Greg Weslowski 36:48
there's a big pie. And we're just talking about micro celebrity and everything. Why do I enjoy listening to unwanted opinions? Because you're too local guys that I know when you're probably going to talk about to like local things, right? Why is podcasting so big these days is because it's, there's a certain like, intimacy, like that exists, right? Like we live in like, it's more relatable. Like, why is Brogan so big right now? Cuz like, he's like, a dude, like, you're feeling like they're sitting around having a conversation, why is unwanted opinions gonna continue to grow? Because like, you're, you know, you and Matt have known each other for 20 years, you can pick up like the genuine chemistry between you. And you're going to talk about like, local issues and everything and things that pertain to it, where you're not going to get that from the star banner, right. And like your demo audience, like I'm sure our chat right now is probably most of our buddies, but it's not just our buddies. It's people like in our age range, that like, you know, we can like sit here and talk about the downtown parking garage, and like mutiny and all that stuff. It's hyper focus to what you want, where the New York Times wants 30 million subscribers, right, you'll probably be happy with like a hundo. Right? Yeah, so like, and that's it? Yeah. And that's
Justin MacDonald 37:49
like, so like and subscribe. Don't
Greg Weslowski 37:51
forget to hit that like, button. And that's like the attention economy and everything right, but like, the game has changed.
Justin MacDonald 37:58
Yeah. And I think that you're seeing just in general, more a more splintered audience for for specialist things anyway. And we talked about sneakers, and that last week, and it just got me on the mindset of like, the things that I'm into, and how it's, it's easy to find, like people that like those things, too. Like one of the I'm, I'm I'm kind of in a comedy now, right? Like, I'm really enjoying some new comedians. And I'll realize to me, like, that's my, like, echo chamber, right? Because I will, I'll tell some, like, Yo, Mark gag on sent me a message. And they're like, what, you have an outlet? And I'm like, oh, like, he's like a comedian, or like Andrew Schultz. And they're like, Who are you talking about? I'm like, these are like, the most famous people to me, because that's the little world that I'm living in right now. And it's not just that, like, you have these now, like, certain industry people, like if I were to tell you about someone in my industry for promotional products, you know, I It's like someone like, oh, I met Mark Cohen. Like, who's that like, Oh, he's like one of the founders of the industry. You know, like, there's so much you can do now that it's relegated to exactly
Greg Weslowski 39:08
what you say and I love like I love like, especially with social media and everything. The biggest thing about social media and especially like Facebook for me, like even with our podcasts, which we'll get into in a minute, like I still like put a lot of things through Facebook, and like a lot of people hate Facebook. Facebook is terrible. You like get your own like echo chamber, whatnot, but you like the thing of social medias, you can't just be on it. You have to curate it. Like if like someone starts like going on rants and everything or they're too loud. Or they're too like you either snooze them for 30 days if you miss them, or you just unfollow them, but like at three snoozes you get three sneezes, you're done. Um, but like the people you do have like I love touching into people's hobbies. Like I love to put sneaker stuff on and everything something I have or like you and Cody I think do boots. Yeah. Or is it Ryan? Or is it Ryan and Cody Ryan and Cody are on about boots and
Justin MacDonald 39:58
Ryan oarsmen Cody Cliff In case you guys want to the boot check out the boot
Greg Weslowski 40:03
boot boot boot boys the boot boys as much as I could as tag team, okay? They have to like I
Justin MacDonald 40:15
will believe that until I see an actual physical life not the metaphors
Greg Weslowski 40:21
are a different thing. I remember less like I love touching on like people's little micro highs or like specific hobbies or those are worlds like you do like sneakers and everything on culture curators, that is like this is a thing that exists in a world and every once and again I'll like go down that YouTube hole and just be like, Yeah, I don't think I placed absolutely no value in but boy do I love seeing like how passionate people get about it and everything. And like they just see like people's closet full of sneakers. And I'm like, do I ever wear those? But is it like toys that are like Minton box? Yes. Yeah, I
Justin MacDonald 40:52
like how you're talking all this trash and one of your best friends. Yeah, has an entire room.
Greg Weslowski 40:59
Like that's like my thing. Like I've gotten away from collecting these days. I'm like more into experiences and whatnot. But it's the same thing. But it's still like, I love seeing things that people are passionate about. Right. And that's what's good about social media for the good and the bad like we were talking about.
Justin MacDonald 41:14
I'm gonna I was gonna save this for later be