[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:05] Speaker B: You're listening to casual talk radio where common sense is still the norm whether you're a new or long time listener. We appreciate you joining us today. Visit [email protected] and now here's your host, Ler. [00:00:21] Speaker A: The so called digital age hit rather rapidly, evolved rather suddenly and unfortunately it resulted in a lot of, let's say, disproportionate exposure for people. And I don't really, I struggle that I struggle the different people seem to absorb it so differently. I've done in my own mind as much analysis as I can do to try to wrap my head around the disparity in that. I'll tell a brief story and then I'll get to my topic which has to do with television. But my brother, the one that my older brother, he oldest, he at one time arguably the most brilliant person I could think of, he was into Pascal. He would talk about Pascal, that he Pascal's the future. And this is, this is, you need to learn this. This is what it really should be. I actually found an old photo where he was part of a computer club. And this is, I think it was even after he graduated from that school, I don't know, but he was part of an old computer club and he was like the only black American in the class. And I was again enthralled when he was talking about it. And if you don't know, Pascal was used in certain banking systems. Pascal has origins in cryptocurrency. Pascal is a very powerful language. He's still a brilliant person, but he moved away from the technology focus. He moved into other focuses than the technology side. Now, whether that was because of opportunity or because of desire, I can't say. But he moved away from what seemed to be, per his own words, the future, and went to a different path. The irony of exposure, so exposure to anything doesn't matter what it is. You get used to it, acclimated to it, adjusted to it. You identify something that resonates. You say, this works for me. You say, I'm going to keep going. Right? And, and sometimes it's what you don't expect. I've always said when, when I was way, way younger that I never wanted to do my hobby as a career because I didn't want somebody telling me how to do what I enjoyed doing, bar none. Now I had it right. But where I was flawed in my younger years is defining the hobby. Because my hobby was not what I was interested in at the time. It kind of became a necessity as per, as Opposed to a hobby. My hobby is landscaping because I'm good at it. I'm extremely good at it. I have the finest lawn in the, in the area. Everybody says doesn't matter if it's here, it doesn't matter if it's Washington State because I did the same thing there. Didn't matter if it was Nevada initially until they started, you know, becoming Nazis. The I have an acclimate, acclimate aptitude rather for taking even the worst of situations and turning it into an amazing looking lawn. And I've acclimated. That's where I was going with that. I have acclimated to the reality that I have to my. I misunderstood my hobby. I misunderstood what, what is my hobby? Something that I was interested in was not my hobby, it was just something I was interested in. So I have an interest in technology only, but not in its current phase, but only because of what I thought it could do for people. I've always ever said technology should serve the human, not the other way around. Instead, higher level people are trying to push technology to replace the human and make the human less of an of a situation. This is strategic. It's coming from the top levels. They don't want individual decision, they don't want individual choice, they don't want individual failures. They don't want people to think for themselves. So yes, I am kind of going George Orwell here. They don't want you to be able to think for yourself and they don't want you to decide for yourself. And those that would be in positions where they could do are being replaced by the technology. I don't even mean jobs, I'm talking even your thought. And I am going to George Orwell again because these open AIs and chat GPTs and all these tools that they're pushing on you, they're pushing them on you. The streaming, they're pushing it on you. They're pushing everything that it distorts your thought process and it causes you to take less time to think for yourself. Thus you lose your power. Now I understand how accessibility can be a strength with some of these technologies, but that's within reason. I've tested the AI tools because again I've worked technology and it's staggering how often they get it wrong. It's staggering. They could not. I gave them a band, it's a band from Motown and they mistook that band, which is a arguably a lesser known band from Motown, but that was the test. This is somewhat of a lesser known band and they confused this band just Completely confused. It got it absolutely wrong. They came back and said, this band, which is not what I gave them, with Cretan's Clearwater Revival, which is a more known, well known band this is. Then the flaw I saw is that I can only know what a human would assume without doing deep research. And then it just leaps to the right answer. It doesn't even go deeper to say, chances are it's A, B or C to at least give you options to where you can choose of which one it is that you're trying to find. It just leaps to the pot, to the wrong answer. Straight up wrong answer. It got it flat out wrong. And I'm not sure how it got it wrong because obviously the band members and those two that I was looking at are completely different people. So even facial recognition broke down. Ultimately, I distrust anything AI. I completely distrust it. People who don't know any better, who have never been taught to think for themselves and be self sufficient, blindly follow the AIs because they think that something is now helping them not think that's a dangerous outcome. It is dangerous. It is the definition of dangerous. But it got me thinking as well. The unfortunate truth of what AI could have been is AI could have been used to facilitate an outcome without the thought being part of it. So, for example, building a website. There are AI tools to build you a website. All you do is tell it what you're looking to do and it will build the website for you. It's not going to add the content for you. It's not going to add search engine stuff for you. It's not going to broadcast it to social media. Some will, but most don't. But it will build the site for you. It'll get it started and you have to do the rest. It's not going to set up your email, it's not going to set up your chats. You know how you reach the chat, how you respond. You have to do some work. You got to put some work in. So there are people who have literally asked, can you build me a website? And I say no. And people think that's selfish. It's not. It's because there are tools out there that will do it for you. So why not go there? Because why are you asking another human to do it when there are tools that do it for you There, you can learn how to do it yourself. You can learn what it takes. You can learn all the mechanics of. Because building it's not the problem. Maintaining it is the hard part. Keeping it up, keeping it up to date, keeping it going, right? This goes to everything. And this is why I keep telling people, why I say no. I'm my neighbor, she has a very jacked up yard. It's just jacked up, weed infested mess. So I'm giving her tips and things of how to mow and how to trim and do these things. And she asked, and she was serious, she said, you know, how much would you take if I paid you to do the lawn work? And I said, no, I won't. Not because I don't want to help her. I'll teach you. But I got enough to take care of my own, I have to take care of mine. That's time, right? And you have to learn to do it. You have to learn to do it. You have to be able to be self sufficient. You cannot rely heavily on somebody else. You can hire a landscaper, certainly if it's, you know, you're disabled or you work in or something. I got it. Hire a landscaper and they'll do it that way. They've got the certifications, they've got everything they need. You're helping small business, etc. But my point is that that's, that's why, because there's things already in place to do stuff for you. That's why I say no. I say no, because there's already stuff. And it tells me that. And I get it. With her, my neighbor, those, those landscapers can't touch me. They're not close in skill. They can't come close to what I can do. They see it. They see that my yard is amazing. And no matter how many landscapers they hire in the neighborhood, they can't come close to mine. Yes, I understand that. So you're wanting to pay me because I got the quality that they lack. I got it. But what you should do is instead tell those landscapers to step their game up, point at my yard and say, your job is to make my yard look like his. They'll say, well, we need to know what he did. But we can renovate your yard, just, you know, rip it out and start over and it'll look like that. But you still got to maintain it, right? And I didn't rip mine out and do that. Mine is just naturally renovated. I didn't have to tear it out. I didn't have to redo the whole yard. I just did my usual tricks that are designed to improve the health of the yard. And the soil is terrible out here. So when you look at like my neighbor on the Left. He's got a weed infested mess. She has a weed infested mess. There's weed encroachment coming from, like, the parkways and everything else. So you can tell that it's coming from underneath. It's. It's literally in the soil. And mine is kind of fighting it off. It takes a lot to keep mine looking this way. That's why I told her I can't, because it takes enough just to maintain mine. What should happen is everybody should challenge their landscaper to step the game up, because that's already available for you. You're already gonna be spending money. I wouldn't have done it for free. Right. If mine. If we didn't have the encroachment, I might consider doing it if I wasn't working full time. I might consider doing it if I weren't. And I'm getting to this point, I'll be honest. If I weren't working, tech landscaping is probably what I would be doing for a living. Because I think it's a good. For me, it's a good thing to do to make a living and you can help other people and you're improving property values. Like, it really has no downside. We are in an area that's kind of squirrely. And I. I mean that kind of jokingly because we have excessive squirrels and they damage yards. They'll dig them up and do all sorts of chaos because of this encroachment I described. That's what they're going after. They're going after all this stuff that's underneath the ground. But I said, I am going to just work mine and inspire other people to watch what I do. Hire whoever, employ, whatever, to try to emulate my behavior. That's always been my mantra and it's been successful for me. I've learned in my current with my client that there is not a tolerance for that. There's this faulty. I can only describe it as faulty narrative that you should tell somebody exactly what to do or do it for them. And I'm sorry, but I was the director who I've told story about, and if you're new, welcome. But I told the story about the director who. That was the hardest boss I ever had. But if were not for her, I would not. I probably wouldn't have even. I think I would have survived, but I wouldn't have been able to thrive without her, without her pushing me in the right direction and getting me, putting me in a. In the right state of mind. It was a. It was a Shock to my system to have that kind of a person the way that she was doing. Some people couldn't handle it. I was stronger, I was made of tougher stuff. But she was, she was rough and I needed that. I needed it because I didn't have a good. I was exceeding, but I was not excelling. So then fast forward now and some of those requests have died down, but they're still out there. They request for me to do stuff for people and I still say no. And I say no, not because I don't want to, but because ultimately people have to be self sufficient. They have to learn to do it themselves. When there's tools to do it, use those tools, do your own research, do your own searching, figure it out for yourself. Nothing's changed. Self sufficiency is a necessity. It always has been. I got that of, of every lesson that I didn't get from certain people, that was the one that I did get that I would resonate is a strong lesson that I would share with anybody else. Self sufficiency is critical and everybody must learn how to embrace it in my personal opinion. Now I'll talk about the real topic. I wanted to put that out first because it kind of links a little, a little bit of a way. When I was much younger, I don't even know how old I was, but I was at one point tasked with babysitting my niece, briefly. My, my brother that passed away, his daughter. I had to babysitter. I don't remember what the setup was. I don't remember what was going on, but was a brief period of time I had to babysit her. Now, of course I had done, you know, babysitting, but not like this, not like this. This was different. So I'm not sure. And I didn't have any kind of a relationship with her. And if she listens to this, she may or may not remember this interaction, but it happened. And I have a perfect memory in this regard. In any case, I sat her down and I had her watch. So I had a VHS of the Phantom Toll Booth, one of the greatest children's films ever made. One of my favorites. I had a friend who loved it and he was a grown adult and he loved it. It's just great, great, great stuff. Nowhere near the dreck that passes for children's stuff today. In any event, I set her down with this Phantom Toll Booth because it's a, it's a kids movie. It's going to keep her occupied. And this is before the era of, you know, tablets and Whatnot. We had computers, but not like, tablets and stuff. So sit her down, watch. She's watching for a little bit. Then at a point she turns to me and she says, and this, I will paraphrase, I don't remember the exact quote she said, but essentially the gist of what she said was, I didn't ask to watch this. Now, it was at that moment that. This is a key moment in my mind. And this gives you a bit of my psychology of how I work and how I'm wired. It was at that moment that I realized I'm probably not going to have a good relationship with this child. It's not that I disliked her. It's not that I was against her, but she was her father's kid. She was. Because I could imagine her dad saying something like that as a kid, having not known him as a kid, I can imagine him saying something like that. So I knew he was. I knew she was her father's child. I knew that. But I also knew how I worked. If I am tasked with overseeing you, however briefly. And again, there was multiple that I was. And this was the first one that did that. We're not going to get along. It just isn't going to happen because there's not that level of respect. Now, it might have been a benign something, but it was the. It was the messaging, which didn't work for me. I was reading how apparently there were some dads that got together and they designed a streaming service called Hopscotch tv. This Hopscotch tv. The thought behind it was they were trying to cull together some of the more enriching, wholesome television for kids, as opposed to the garbage that's out there now. But I'll give you a list of some of the great stuff. And I remember each one of these cartoons, too. And they were indeed great cartoons. So Inspector Gadget, you know, G.I. joe, Super Mario World, Sonic the Hedgehog. Not the current garbage. I'm talking the old school one. Strawberry Shortcake, Paddington Bear, remember that one? These were fantastic cartoons. These were fantastic cartoons and fantastic content. But he also was going to some of the older cartoons that I had not heard about. And these were ones that were talking about. They were doing a better job of talking about actual historical events. This one, Liberty Kids, which I hadn't heard of, but it apparently talks about stuff like the Boston Tea Party, Valley Forge, which are actual events in American history that, you know, most cartoons do not teach. They don't educate, they don't inform, they don't enrich. The kid. They're designed to. Today, they're designed to kind of impose a message. They're not like the older cartoons. So I was really intrigued about this and I'm passing the message. I wasn't compensated. I'm just passing because I heard about it and I was very fascinated that somebody thought to do this. But this hopscotch TV is allegedly available. I hadn't seen it myself prior to recording today, so I have not had an opportunity to vet. But I have no reason to think that they would not have done that with, you know, hopscotch is the game, right? With the pebble. Hopscotchtv.com if you want to check that out. You might think, well, what about YouTube? Can't we watch the same stuff on YouTube? And they, they raised a good point about YouTube. Is that YouTube's first, the algorithm, right? They are, they are feeding you content based on what they think you like, not what necessarily you deem appropriate as a parent for the kid to watch. Second, when they do the autoplay next, which is designed to keep you and trap you on the site, you can't really control what is going to show up next. You have no control over the programming because it's all YouTube. And then of course, they're farming your information and then they're using that to pitch you products because they're selling it. So there's a lot of downsides to the YouTube alt. You might not care, but these were stated as things as motivating reasons why you would consider hopscotch TV over YouTube is you have better control over what your kid sees. And to me, that's vital. If you have a young child. And I would, I would strongly recommend for something like this, if you have not been doing so so far, if you just hand them a tablet and go at it, I would strongly advocate that you reconsider and get them focused on real child content. They can still have a screen, but something that is designed for them. Get them if they're on. If you let them get on social media, please get them off of it. If you've embedded them in the, the negatives of technology, please get them away from it. There's nothing wrong with cartoons. There's nothing wrong, especially if it's the right cartoons. I'm talking the right ones, not the garbage ones. You know, Dora the Explorer is not a good cartoon. It is imposing beliefs and values on people that your kids should not need to be thinking about. Let's get back to fundamentals of, you know, the Garfields and Inspector Gadgets, these that they're just fun, right? But they also educational in what they do. And they're not trying to impose a message. They're not trying to convert your kid. They're not trying to do anything other than. And entertain my opinion, it's how I state it. Hopscotchtv.com if you want to check that out. And I go back, if we'd had something like a hot Scott hopscotch TV back, you know, at that time, I'm sure that she probably would have trashed that too just because she is her father's daughter. But at least it would have given something else another option to consider where I can possibly have influenced that. And I don't think, I don't think it's like too late or any of that for anybody. I think now is the right time to be thinking about the content that we feed kids. Because if you expose them early to the I these ideal cartoons and these ideal programs, the ones that do instill those kinds of values, it might encourage the child to generate their own form of self sufficiency. Because a lot of what's taught in some of those cartoons, believe it or not, I know there's been flack on Tom and Jerry and some of these other ones with the black faces and all that. That's focusing on the negatives. And that's because you have an inherent desire to do so instead of focusing on the things that it teaches you. You know, Tom and Jerry teaches assertiveness, it teaches, you know, creativity. I mean there's all sorts of stuff you, you can and do learn from these programs. Then there's other programs, obviously Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, Pinwheel. I remember that one, the one with the pop, the one with the mannequin up in the attic. I forget the name of it. There's all sorts of great programs that. And then of course Bob Ross. So just be thinking about how we enrich our kids with content and what really is that teaching our kid something that is going to be empowering to them, not something that's going to set them back or set them up for failure.