Episode 224 - Gaming The System
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Noam and Jen know that 2026 is hard and scary and that everyone wants to return to 2020. But alas, we do have to discuss the things happening in 2026, like El-Sayed’s very slim win in the Michigan Democrat primary for Senate. As per usual the polling was wrong. The problem is, the polling was very, very wrong and people are starting to ask questions about if that happens for less than honest purposes. Speaking of manipulation, Twitter announced that they will be rolling out a new content creator payment system that seems designed to demonetize those who aren’t providing anything of...
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Episode 223 - The Web Of AI
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Jen and Noam take a (slight) break from discussing the depressing political news to talk about important things, like the controversies surrounding data centers and generative AI and the new Spider-Man movie. Important things. We get a bit into the drama surrounding the YouTube content creator Hank Green, who has for some reason self canceled over his sin of….using ChatGPT to do his grunt work so that he can have more time to make more content. Yeah, we don’t understand either. We also get into the thornier issue of authors allegedly using genAI in their writing, which has become a...
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Episode 222 - Beware Geeks Bearing Grifts
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Noam and Jen spend a little time talking about things like Iran and what’s going on now before getting into the most important topic of the year: Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Spoiler alert - it’s a good movie and will win many awards. We discuss the movie itself and, of course, the extremely weird online reactions to the movie and its success. Just a good, old fashioned Ambitious Crossover Attempt episode, like we used to be able to make before everything went pear shaped.
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Episode 221 - The Mainechurian Candidate
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Jen and Noam record a day late because they were busy mourning the loss of Lindsey Graham. OK not really, but we did have to push back recording to make sure we could get a full headcount on current GOP leadership and their health status. Luckily Mitch McConnell also made an appearance (kinda) after being MIA for a month, but it’s fair to say we have a bit of an old man problem going on. As for the other Graham that left us last week, Graham Platner’s Senate run finally came down in flames after Politico ran the story the NYT wouldn’t detailing the sexual assault allegations...
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Episode 220 - Real Americans
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Noam and Jen finish up their America250 celebrations in time to record an episode this week, because woo boy last week was a doozy. SCOTUS handed down their long waited but predictable (kinda?) decision upholding birthright citizenship, along with a few other notable decisions involving executive power and campaign finance. Speaking of campaigns, Platner’s isn’t going so well now that he’s out of the primary, and the knives are starting to come out. For this week’s WAWC, Noam recommends the video game Cairn, which does a great job of simulating the stress of actual rock climbing....
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Episode 219 - Wiener Dogged
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Jen and Noam check in to discuss Scott Wiener’s bad week of being hounded in public over his very tepid support of Israel, the primary win of Darializa Chevalier in the NY-13 district and should we care, and what exactly is going on with the “ceasefire” with Iran and why it is that the US is needing bomb the same places we bombed back in April. For our WAWC, we go back to our roots and tell you to watch anime! Noam finished up Dr. Stone (and Dr. Stone finished up producing new episodes) and he gives a few thoughts on the series as a whole now that it’s over. Jen recommends the first...
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Episode 218 - Reflecting Poorly
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Noam and Jen reflect (heh) on the past week, starting with the reflecting pool and moving on to what exactly is going on with the US and Iran and the MOU. It’s all a bit murky, nobody is doing their best work, and everyone has someone to blame for the failure. For our WAWC, it’s time for season 3 of House of the Dragon! We finally get our big boat fight, some character deaths, and Jen pointing out that everyone in the show under the age of 30 needs to be locked away somewhere so they stop messing everything up.
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Episode 217 - Happy Birthday To Me
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Jen and Noam are celebrating the president’s birthday! No, we aren’t actually! But we are talking about Trump and his on-again, off-again affair with Iran. After we finished recording this week’s episode there was an announcement of an alleged deal between the US and Iran, which sounds more like Trump capitulating to try to give himself a birthday win. Needless to say, we’ve heard this one before so until there is a signed piece of paper we don’t believe you. We do believe, however, that the new era of drone warfare is here thanks to Ukraine and the success they have had...
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Episode 216 - The Platner Files
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Noam and Jen are on time this week, because there’s a lot to talk about. As we somewhat alluded to last week, the NYT dropped a story detailing Graham Platner’s past. While it is being slammed as a soft catch and kill, and the main named accuser Lindsey Fifield has said there was a lot more that wasn’t included in the article, what was included is pretty damning. Damning enough that, 20 years ago, Planer would have needed to drop out to keep his life from being a distraction. Alas, we don’t live in those times anymore. Earlier today, it was announced that Iran has fired missiles into...
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Episode 215 - Trump 250
Ambitious Crossover Attempt
Jen and Noam are late again, but that’s Noam’s fault because he’s a Euphoria fan (?) now. But we don’t just discuss the season (series?) finale of Euphoria, we discuss the DC based America 250 events that are falling apart in real time because Trump can’t keep his hands off the celebrations. And yes, despite the feigned indignation on the topic, it’s a little hard to say Trump isn’t making this about Trump when there’s huge banners of his face on government buildings in DC. And he decides to cancel a concert in lieu of his making a speech. Primary season has officially...
info_outlineJen and Noam take a (slight) break from discussing the depressing political news to talk about important things, like the controversies surrounding data centers and generative AI and the new Spider-Man movie. Important things.
We get a bit into the drama surrounding the YouTube content creator Hank Green, who has for some reason self canceled over his sin of….using ChatGPT to do his grunt work so that he can have more time to make more content. Yeah, we don’t understand either. We also get into the thornier issue of authors allegedly using genAI in their writing, which has become a flashpoint in the anti-AI space. The issue is, who is to say if an author used genAI, the AI? Readers? Publishing houses? And at the end of the day, does it really matter to consumers, or is this the latest cause as identity?
And of course we do a fairly in depth discussion of the new Spider-Man movie Brand New Day, which brings us all the way back to episode 0 of this podcast when we talked about No Way Home. Ah, the nostalgia. Warning - we do spoilers so if you don’t want any of that (and have somehow managed to miss spoilers elsewhere) then save the back half of this episode for after you’ve seen the movie.