An NGO called the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance has classified the United States as a backsliding democracy. A list of popular passwords may indicate people are increasingly less cautious than they should be. Multiple cities are falling prey to crowdsourced looting, thought to be coordinated in advance via social media. All this and more in this week's Strange News.
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Noe. They called me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. It is the top of the week as we continue our march towards two. So much stuff is going on in the news. The trial of Glenn Maxwell has reached a new milestone as the court tries to pick jurors that don't seem biased, which is going to be a tall milkshake. Most interestingly, perhaps defendants or co defendants have been published. They include things like the Weinstein Company and Walt Disney a lot of other people. It's available online. You can read it now, but we're holding on an update for that until we get more information and maybe see what the trial shakes loose if it is indeed an actual trial and not a very wealthy kangaroo court. But for now, for anyone who's paying attention to news, things are things are looking fragile, folks. They always have been kind of a house of cards, but now we're seeing great growing unrest that was predicted in countries across the world, places like Chile, A, places like Eastern Europe, Central Europe, the United States, and the United States. Spoiler alert, stay tuned for the entirety of this segment. We're also we're also going to see something that something is causing experts in the world of online activity to say, hey, maybe people are getting dumber for now. Maybe we open up with a story of unrest from here in the good old us of A. You guys, have you ever been in a Louis Vatton store. Yes, there's a really bougie mall here in Atlanta. Uh is it Lenox or Phips, one of the fips. They have a Louis Vaton store. I think I didn't go in because it was like COVID times and it was there limiting them then they were limiting how many people could be in there at once. But I did walk past it and it sure looked fancy. Yeah, our office used to be right by those two malls, which are walking distance from one another Lenox Mall, which has by far the better food court, and Phips Mall, which is very much for the upper class and doesn't have the best food court, which is mystifying to me. I guess, uh, I guess. The idea is that if you, if you have the wherewithal financially to shop at a place like Phipps Plaza, and you are not the kind of person who enjoys good greasy burger, which I feel like it is an unfair stereotype. But they do have some really expensive food over there, though they do. They do, they have some unnecessarily fancy restaurants and weird themes to them as well. Maybe there's an eyes wide shut kind of vibe that we just weren't getting when we were a bunch of like broke video makers. So so another store that's kind of fancy or to some I don't know, I don't know. Is Nordstrom a fancy store? Where is it in like the hierarchy of department stores medium? I think? And then there's also a Nordstrom Rack, which I think is like the more like um middle class facing version of Nordstrom. Maybe nor Strom was like one of those Legacy New York kind of Fifth Avenue, you know, department store. That's how I think of it. But I'm not really sure it's it's like fancy or Macy's, I think. Can I say this. I went into a Macy's to buy some clothes recently for a thing, and I didn't realize that it was all these big expensive brands that filled Macy's when it comes to clothing. For some reason, in my mind, it was like shopping at any other I don't know, gosh, I just realized I don't spend enough money, maybe on clothes. I don't know that. I've never seen more expensive clothing in my life than that that Macy's. And then I was told by a friend that that's like on the cheap side. So now I just don't know what to think. Guys, did did you get a suit? I got some parts of a suit. Nice man nice. Uh. Yeah. It's strange because also the era of brick and mortar department stores has has been on the decline for a while with the rise of online shopping exacerbated by the rise of COVID. Here's what's going on. Looting, looting is happening, and Moss it's not getting a ton of reporting, which is kind of odd because it is red meat for the sort of mainstream news that makes money by telling people the sky is falling in the world is ending one way or another. Just a few days ago, this Nordstrom store in Walnut Creek, California, encountered a kind of shoplifting that had had not occurred before since and probably wouldn't occur outside of an old school riot were it not for social media. Dozens and dozens of people, about eight people rushed into this store in Walnut Creek and robbed everything that wasn't tied down. One employee was pepper sprayed to others were punched, kicked, subdued. All of those folks, all three of those folks have minor injuries and thankfully no one was killed. But the suspects we're attacking the store as an organized group, and law enforcement isn't sure how this happened. But think about this. This cinematic cars or so blocked the street and ran interference while a crowd of almost a hundred people ran into the same store. Think about how understaff stores are now. There's no way for people to stop them, even if you are one of the security folks, and you're the best person. You're like the Captain America of department store security. You have no chance against a D people. In fact, also many corporations have laws that prevent these security guards from physically engaging with a shoplifter or something. Right, so we have video from the scene thanks to the good efforts of Jody Hernandez and Jodie Hernandez is and journalist in the area. She found that of these a D people who are in ski mask we were carrying crowbars, etcetera, three managed to be arrested, and that is a terrible rate of rate of success for law enforcement. I wanted to bring this story to everyone because it tells us some pretty fascinating things. First, it was clearly coordinated. This is like, this is crowdsourcing, like the improv everywhere people, except instead of doing acute see seemingly spontaneous dance party, they have they have gone on TikTok or a telegram or a signal or what have Probably not Facebook because Facebook is so hilariously compromised Facebook as an op at this point, but they've probably been on TikTok or something like that planning to pull this off. So we've got short staffing, we've got social media allowing for this kind of planning. And then add to that, because of concerns about supply chains, these brick and mortar stores, these physical locations are trying to amass more inventory than they usually would have, right so they they want to get ahead of possible shortages as the holidays loom closer and closer. So this means it's the perfect time to commit a crime like this, And we're not condoning it. I don't think any of us are, but we are saying the timing couldn't have worked out better. Had you guys heard about this before we talked about it on air, Nope, No, I just heard about it looking through the news this morning. Seems pretty intense. I've heard of things kind of like this before, but we've like talked about just in in amongst the three of us. But this seems like a whole operation that you could make like a TV series about kind of thing. And this isn't tied to any like opportunism around like riots or unrest or anything. This is just like its own thing. No ties to Ahmed Arebrey, no ties to the Rittenhouse, decision. This did not occur in a vacuum though, because there were other lootings the Friday night before in Union Square another crowd attack UH and other areas of San Francisco. A Louis Vuitton store got hit, a berbery store, a jewelry store, of Walgreens, an eyeglass shop for some reason, of Bloomingdale's, and even cannabis dispensaries. And I understand there's money there, and I understand there's marijuana there. But also, as one of the employees doubtlessly said, like think about the karma, dude, what are you doing. We're you know, we're not the man, We're not at the power structure. But they still got they still got got, they got hit, and they when they got rolled. The people responsible for these crimes made off for the most part hashtag no Bernie. What I'm saying is they got away. And this this is something that I think the US will see more of in the future. In response, law enforcement in the area is pledging to quote flood the street with cops. So they're going to be more police out there, but they're out there after the fact. And so what I what I before we get into a thought experiment. I have to mention that in San Francisco alone, overall crime is up almost fifty larceny and theft is up almost eight percent from last year. And we know that there are two big seasons for a lot of these kinds of crimes. When the holidays are on the way people need to get gifts where they feel social pressure to do so. And summer when a lot of older kids are out right and they're out of school and they've got more free time. But with this, I propose that the three of us and you there at home, have a bit of a thought experiment. And it's similar to something we had thought about several months ago. I think time is odd h this. Let's say we're planning a crime like this. We're not to anybody, our legal department listening. But let's say let's say we're planning a crime like this, and we crowdsource through some um online forum, hopefully using proxies to hide our identities. Uh, the idea that we're gonna get together, we're gonna hit up FIPS or we're gonna hit up Lenox, and we do so, and most of us get away right Uh, and then the police presence is now being increasingly prioritized in Buckhead. What have we done? Our next move, if we continue this caper is to hit someplace far away from Buckhead, right, yeah, Disney Store, the Mall of Georgia. Yeah, it's funny you mentioned the summer situation. I can't rememberfer mention this in the podcast before or not, but um, over fourth July weekend, I went to get together at our buddy Alex's girlfriend's family's place and came back and, uh, you know, I've been drinking and stuff and went to play my Nintendo Switch later that night, and my controller wouldn't connect and I all of a sudden realized, oh, my controller won't connect because the switch and the dock and the power supply and everything are gone. Um. And it was the only thing that was stolen. My daughter's room was kind of rifled through, but it clearly was the kind of crime that like, you know, kids on bikes looking to just kind of like smash and grab or like you know, just check doors and take whenever they could carry were after um. And it was a really weird feeling I felt, you know, especially after noticing that my kids room have been rifled through, but nothing else was stolen, and I have a whole room, you know, my house was full of like, you know, thousands of dollars worth of equipment for recording and music and stuff. And they didn't even go in there. But clearly was a crime of opportunity. Yeah. And conversely, or in contrast, these are crimes that are premeditated. Right, those kids may have been on bikes saying let's see if there or any houses without cars in the driveway, right, that's right, Yeah, Yeah. I think the fact that it was fourth of July and they knew that a lot of people were off, you know, traveling or like at parties or something, was what created the opportunity. And in this case, what we're seeing is a incredibly effective tactic. This has been employed in other parts of the world before without social media. In fact, in Europe, I believe some segments of the population have been accused of engaging in this tactic pretty often, and it ties into, to be candid with you, it ties into discrimination against the roma population of various countries who are said to go in mass into some kind of store that usually has one to two, maybe three employees and just absolutely crowd bombit. So you can't keep track of what everybody is doing, much less stop one person amid that crowd. It's kind of like that earlier example of could Travis Scott or could any entertainer isolate one person in a crowd of fifty thousand, you know, on a on a smaller level. So this is a very successful strategy, which means it's going to be used again. It's also occurred in Illinois in oak Brook there were people who swarmed another Louis Vuitton store. And we know that there was preparation because they came with the right kit for the job. They have garbage bags and their coats, They had their identities concealed with a bala clava or a there a scheme mask I guess you would call it here uh, And they came with the tools they needed to open the open the containers holding the high value stuff. What this means now is that this presents a danger not just to you if you work at these places, not just to you if you live in the neighborhood, but it presents a danger to you if you live in these cities, because this could be also used as a pretext to further uh further militarized the police force in your neck of the woods, which I know sounds like a distant concern, and people may say, well, this is a necessary thing. Police are supposed to stop robberies and things like this. But what happens when there is a group of eight people who look like they could be anyone because of their disguises, and you're someone who is in the area, then you kind of become a suspect. It's it's unfair to everyone involved. But um, this also I think maybe leads us to some philosophical points. What do you guys think? For me, I think we're going to see a lot more of this as as the divide continues to widen between those who are able to go and drop a ton of money at them all and those who are not or likely will never be able to do that. And you know, within any short term future, and as a society, as a culture, just through popular culture, we are doing that to ourselves. You know, we think about the television shows, the movies, everything, not everything, but most things that exist for consumption that are very popular, you know, involve clothing like this, involve watches and other just material things that exist on characters and are part of a character even in the reality TV shows. It's like the thing to have if you're going to have status. And if you cannot achieve those things or get those things by normal means, then why not resort to something like this? Yeah, I mean, all these things are like signifiers of this class and status. And as that as those you know, two polls become farther and farther apart, it becomes kind of a stand in for a a widening discontented nous, you know, I mean it. I think it's deeper than just wanting the stuff. It's a way of like lashing out. I mean, to me, these are the kind of signifiers of what you might see in the climate leading to an uprising, you know, like where people are truly unhappy and and they're seeing this divide between the super rich and the even just the middle class and letting let alone if you're actually you know, quite poor or disenfranchised in some way, or you've lost your job and never gotten back on your feet after the pandemic, and all the while while others are just raking it in, you know and kind of maybe not intending to, but rubbing it in your face in many ways. Um, I understand where that that it's a it's a form of kind of hurt, you know. I mean, I really do. I think we all see it, even if we're very um lucky to have the jobs that we have. You know, there is this American ideal of kind of always wanting more and always wanting the next thing, and not ever having enough be enough. And that's a product of the narratives were fed with reality TV, like you're saying, Matt, and now more so with social media and just seeing everyone over sharing, especially celebrity types and folks with like just way too much money, and you start to be like, well, I deserve that, I should have that. Why shouldn't I have that? Um? And then I think for some it causes them to lash out. Sure, yeah, like always I was saying earlier. I can't remeber why I'm saying this, But it's the coupons, Baby, who has the most coupons? How many couples before you die? Yeah? Yeah, how many coupons? Oh, let me get the name brand thing, whatever the I mean, you make it. You guys are making really good points, And I would like to end with a with a message with a twofold message. First, to the folks who hear about stories like this and agree with our prediction that these will only continue in the future, I would want to caution you from being misled by bad actors in mainstream media. This is red meat for folks who want to delegitimize various protests, and many protests have occurred over this time. Um, when you hear about looting during like a Black Lives Matter rally or something, you have to ask yourself, were those actually conscientious protesters who suddenly decided to break in some place for a scarf? Or was this organized crime seeing a tremendous opportunity. I advanced to you that it was the latter much more often than the former. Ben I couldn't agree with you more. I recently had at a private d M chat with a listener who I posted something, you know, a political opinion about the the Kyle Rittenhouse outcome. Uh, And somebody um had a bit of a knees jerk reaction to that and said, oh, all these Black Lives Matter protesters are just a bunch opportunists and this, that and the other, and you know it's disgusted to me where I live. I just see them like literally you know, moving in on targets and and all of these shopping centers and just literally you know, disrupting people's lives and commerce and just throwing bricks through windows and stealing stuff. And I made the point to this individual that I think for the most part, uh, there may be some issues in leadership with BLM at times. I think for the most part, he's talking about how they were paid, and I'm like, well, what, it's more likely that they were paid by Black Lives Matter or by the opposition, and an effort to just you know, to delegitimize that movement um and and call attention to the bad actors who are maybe not even part of the movement at all. Yeah, And this my second point, and this is the message that I that we need to end on. You're going along, you know, I want to thank everybody listening for your patients, because what I'm about to say is mission critical here in many ways. If you're involved with these things, if you are an opportunist, I know how exciting it can be too for any number of rationalizations. Say hey, we're fighting the power, We're fighting these big evil corporations, We're fighting inequality. We're taking stuff back, but the people who are going to end up bearing the brunt of these actions the consequences. Uh there, it goes way deeper than the three people who got popped out of fifty to eighty or whatever. What. What you will be doing results in red meat for the same organizations that you are attempting to fight against. It galvanizes them, It feeds them, it empowers them, it gives them the wherewithal the causes belly. Two further oppress people to do worse things to people who have nothing to do with you that you will never meet, just regular people. And ask yourself, you know, if it feels exciting. Two, If it feels exciting to skirt the on the wrong side of the law, I think everybody has done that at a a time or two. How would you feel if you like, had to look in the face of the next person who was an elderly lady who dies because there was a kick door at the wrong address. How would you feel about that? Does the sweater still feel good? Do you like walking around in the boots? How's that PlayStation? Does it play the same? We're gonna leave it there and pause for word from sponsor will be back with more strange news, and we're back, and then I think you made some excellent points in that last uh story. It's obviously something that is very very relevant to all of our lives and indicative of kind of like where we're going as a culture. Unfortunately, another place that we're going as a culture is in the direction of being kind of dumb. Um that I think I've followed the suit to that story, but also in terms of just guarding our own personal data. Uh, it seems like a day doesn't go by where we don't hear about some giant hack of some corporation, you know, with all of all of this uh personal information being compromised or financial information or whatever. Uh, you think after all of that, all of those news stories, all of these conversations about Russian hacking, and you know, us being target of of international um infiltration, you know, to to steal our identities or whatever. The people would be a little more clever with their path paswords, you know, use like two factor authentication, UM, use one of those password wallets, etcetera. UM, But unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case. And full disclosure, the study that I'm about The reference is in fact from or or was financed by a password wallet company, a company called Nord pass Um, which is very much you know, it's a service where you can have them create strong passwords, have them generate new passwords on the regular one where you use like a master password to keep your password wallet everything kind of safe. Um. But they did, in fact, they have for for quite a few years running been coming out with this list of the most common passwords, and the list for one quite closely resembles the list for with the number one most popular password UH in all countries UM being one two, three four five six UH in In their in their results, the data they actually have UH a column of the ranking the password, how long it took to crack it, and then how many UH in their in their study or their their analysis, how many there were UM of one two, three, five six took them less than a second to crack it, and there are a hundred and three million, one hundred and seventy thousand, five hundred and fifty two people. I think one five six is a good one seconds only to one two, five six, seven eight nine, which also took less than a second to crack UH. The number goes down quite a bit to forty six million and some change. Then you have one two five, followed by forty password six seven eight one one one one one one two three one two three one two five, six seven eight nine zero ago. Still all of these take less than a second to crack, and then they start getting a little more interesting as you go down the list. Um, you know, things like swears are very popular. First names with no numbers are very popular. Um, things like five six Q you know, surprise, I'm not saying any like asterisks in any of this or any like asking you know, Like I mean, I try to always have you know, all of the hallmarks of a of a strong password in my password, just like a capital letter, some sort of non numeric symbol, uh, a number, you know, and in a mix of letters and numbers, um, Liverpool number one, I love you one is number one two. You've got things like Michelle Funny enough. First names take longer to crack for obvious reasons, because I should just go through obvious first names. So Michelle took three hours to crack. There's three thousand Michelle's uh Andrew, But weirdly, Andrew only took two minutes. To crack. I'm a little confused about that metric because if it's if it's a brute force hack, it starts on a oh, there you go, thank you, Ben nailed it. But there's there's something really interesting before you go. I gotta say I love this image. Doll of uh somebody doing a one to three, four or five six, right, and that's that's number one of the list. It's easily cracked. But I love the idea that one through nine is somehow more difficult, Like, so, what's cracking the code? They get to one, two, three, four or five six and they're like that doesn't work, and they're like, let's it. I don't know, there's no there's no bigger number. What's this. It's like it's bigger like that old Mr. Choke sketch it. They can't think of it. They're like, surely this one's one lauder, this one's one bigger. Can I just say how much I love the password that is quirty U I O P, Because theoretically, if you were going to enter that password, let's say that open your computer, you would just run your line. If you have a quirty keyboard across one section or keyboard and it would open your machine. Now there's some wacky ones in here. So if you go to this is a neat study because you can go through and look at them UM by country, and so of course depending on different countries you get different like kind of pop cultural touchstones and things like that. One thing that I found really interesting is in Australia, number twenty six is my space and the numeral one, which took three hours to crack, and there are nineteen thousand, two d forty seven Mycepace ones. UM. I didn't think my Space was still in play, but maybe it's a different, different deal in Australia. UM. But it's it's a it's a thing people are being not particularly good stewards of their data and of their personal information. It would seem this whole study was funded by nord Pass, but it was compiled in partnership with independent researchers that specialized in cybersecurity research. Vice has a great article about it. UM. They looked at four terabytes of data UM across fifty different countries and this is the third year that they've done the research. UH. And again you can also see it broken down into individual countries. Patricia surni ascate excuse me for butchering that it's a tricky one. Um, who's a spokesperson for nord Pass, had this to say to Vice. We honestly didn't expect to see so many cultural references in the country lists. So depending on the country, you would have, you know, references to the most popular sports teams. Um. So in the U s that you've got Steelers quite popular. In the UK, you've got Liverpool. In Chile, you've got Colo Colo, and in Brazil, Nacional Sparta in the Czech Republic, Marseille in France and Shalka oh four in Germany, and then also in Greece you have Olympiacos um. Also lots of beverage names like Guinness in Ireland. Um. And then some religious password as well and Nigeria, christ was very popular. In Saudi Arabia, Bismilla top the list. Um. So yeah, it's pretty wild. Uh, let's see. Um. The spokesperson for nord Pass also had this to say. For the first time ever, eminem Is entered the list, and speculation in this Vice article was this some sort of millennial revenge for gen z TikToker Is trying to cancel eminem, which is an icon that they grew up with. They're trying to like keep them alive in a word that no one will ever see in spirit. I those uh, Naruto and Superman and Pokemon, we're also popular choices. Um yeah, it's it's it's fascinating stuff. Uh. And of course you know, if you go to the list and see God Forbid, one of your password is on there, I would change that bad boy right away and maybe considered subscribing to Nord pass, who are not sponsoring this episode. So far as we go, so far as we know. But what do you guys think? I mean, you know, as part of being part of a big company like we are, we are literally forced to change our password regularly. Um, and it and it can't it can't be the same as the last like five we've had. So inevitably, what a lot of people probably end up doing is just adding a numeral at the end, or we're upping the numeral by one digit at the end, because it gets a little ridiculous. It starts to become very unwieldy to remember all these passwords, especially if you're using one for work, you're using one for your personal emails. Maybe you have you know, bank accounts and uh crypto accounts and wallets and things like that, you start getting in the password overload. So I understand Dan the malaise around it a little bit, but not to the degree of some of these. In the top twenty five that I'm seeing, I mean, the top number overall is six five four three to one, and before that is six six six six six six. So to go back to the question you would ask, UM, I can't speak for anyone but myself here. One of the easiest ways to guard against this is first, like Matt said, to have a more secure password, but secondly, to practice things like two factor authentication, which can feel like a pain in the keyster, you know, because you have to have your phone with you or some you know, other channel of communication. And also that's something that not everybody has. But it's an important and a relatively painless way to circumvent a lot of these problems. And that's why you'll only see two factor authentication UM exploding more in the future. You will also see biometric identification, like, Hey, it doesn't matter how complex this string of text, you know is, we need your fingerprint. Let me get a look at that eyeball. That kind of stuff, um, which personally I'm not the biggest fan of. I understand when it needs to be used in things like military applications are very sensitive intellectual property kind of stuff. But for this, like if you're going on Facebook or what have you, um, then just have just have it set up to send you a text. You can prove that you are who you are and that should stop a lot of hackey. Then I imagine you're not a iPhone user who uses the face I d I don't care for it, and I understand why not just over speculated, But maybe in your thinking this is not military grade, you know, like it's a new feature. It seems like maybe it hasn't quite uh you know, met the same rigor as as what they've been using, you know, in like spy movies for years. I mean, Apple might argue otherwise, But is that you're thinking or does it just kind of make you uncomfortable? Yeah? I mean, I to be completely completely fair, I do not think that anyone cares what my face in particular looks like when I open an iPhone. However, I also don't like the idea of all the dopey faces that I might be making when I'm reading stuff. You know what I mean, Think about when you read out of the phone. The angle is terrible. It's right up your nose. Everybody like if the n S A is looking, they know all your bookers. And this is so it's for much much more vain, much more petty reasons on my part, though I do acknowledge there is there is uh danger that comes along with pervasive facial recognition, just as there is convenience. Well, I mean, I don't want to get beat up, shot or stabbed and have my assailant pick up my phone and just go. That's like the like for me, that's the whole point of facial recognition. So what do you get hurt and you can still open their phone? Said in spy movies too, man, whereas someone gets like the throat slit and then are they they literally ripped their eyeball out and stick it up to the eyeball scanner, or they dragged the body up and hold the face up. I mean, that's a really good point. In this case, it's literally you're on the ground, somebody holds your phone by your face and it's open and they've got everything. I don't know whatever, I ain't even think about that. You're you're really causing me to rethink my use of biometric recognition for my device. Yeah, Um, what was I gonna say? Oh? I wanted to talk about demographics. You guys age demographics across the world, and when I'm thinking, when thinking about these passwords, I'm I'm looking at Statista. I think that's how you say it. Um. I don't know, maybe it's wrong, but just that in North America, in I think Europe, in a couple other places, you look at the over sixty five population and the under fifteen population, and I'm imagining a lot of those groups, and in North America there will be seventeen percent on the older side, about eight percent on the younger side. And I'm wondering if those demographics maybe line up with some of these easier passwords to remember, or repeated passwords, or even when you get Pokemon and some of the other, uh, like really popular things like Spider Man showing up in in passwords. If for dudes, you've got a lot of people using Metallica and slip Knot and apparently the most popular band name over the past three years, especially in Australia and Canada and Ireland, is blink one two, I guess because in their minds, you got a word, and you've got some numbers, they're already halfway there and hats and bold to the front of that, and you're technically have a strong password. Maybe switch it up, do like, uh, blink forty one and some one two you know of it? Yeah? Hit hit him with the platsuist shamalan it. I mean this is only going to be more important. But also we have to remember the biometric information and the facial recognition and all all that jazz, all the hits, that's going to be inevitably more common, uh for the average consumer over time, just because it feels more seamless, it feels like it's more secure. Uh, it's gonna increasingly feel maybe and a mark of antiquity to enter it, Like we're we're quickly entering into um love part of technological evolution where it'll seem old timey to use your hands and computer things like I'm still I'm still fighting. I'll say this, I'm still fighting voice recognition technology being increasingly forced upon me and normalized in a very non consensual way like you call a company, right, it could be a financial services company, it could be a utility company. And you can still in many cases access the touchtone menu, but that menu is becoming increasingly more difficult to find. Just the way that sesame credits started off as an opt in thing and then became a mandate, vocal recognition is becoming a mandated technology, and it's starting in the private industry, right. And so the guy I would love to hear from people who have complained to one of these businesses or asked for details about what they're doing with the audio data they're gathering from your voice. Are you getting a cut of it? The answer is certainly not if they are selling it, and there's nothing to stop them from selling it in many many cases. Yeah, even if we were getting a guy like we did, uh, I forget it was it was it was maybe data story, yeah, big data and you. But they boiled it down to a monetary figure and it ended up being like fractions of a penny per use of your data, so it was like not even valuable to you, or at least at market rate. I'm I'm probably misremembering that a little bit, but um, it is wildly, all of it. The level of head and the sand nous, of which I exhibit plenty. Even you really did just kind of like pull my head out of this hand when it comes to the biometric face stuff. But like you know, I know some people who are much more cautious about their cameras on their phones and on their computers, and I just don't give it, um, but I probably should. But at the very least, I do have strong passwords. I have a handful of them, and I don't think any of them have been compromised yet, and I you know, don't change them frequently. But I used to have one of those passport while it's back in the day, but even that got on wheeled deer. I have upgraded and I don't remember exactly what happened, and I lost the software and I never looked back. But um, yeah, right in, let us know, use dumb passwords. This is a wake up call for you or he does not really care, um, let us know right to as a conspiracy I heart radio dot com. Um. And in the meantime, we're gonna take a quick break and then back with one more piece of strange news. All right, We're back and We're going to keep this short, but this is important, just like that other podcast on our network, which is Yeah, I didn't hope that was a purposeful reference. Yeah, I love I really love that show. Okay, Um, I'm gonna read to you from an Al Jazeera article that was recently posted as of today when we record this November in first United States added to annual list of quote backsliding democracies. This is a report that was released by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. Now you will know just by that name, this is one of these organizations that we've mentioned in the past. Uh Ben, It's an n g O. What are those those that are non governmental organizations. It's also an umbrella term. It's a very vague phrase. Not all of them are created equally. Their association in the West January really is something like these are not for profit entities that are trying to make the world better in one specific way. However, not everybody shares that opinion, and they aren't all not shady correct definition as fairer as hell. So, um, this one in particular, you can go to I D E A DOT I n T. So that's their organization than International and you can learn about them. They have a slash about us page you can read there. You can read all about the member states that exist within it, including their chair from Australia, their first vice chair from Barbados, and their second first vice chair from Germany. Um you can learn all about what they do. It's this is what they say. According to their website, they say that membership to this organization is quote open to governments which demonstrate, by example in their own state their commitment to the rule of law, human rights, the basic principles of democratic pluralism and strengthening democracy. Interesting stuff there, I do have to say, at least on their official website, I'm seeing countries like Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, India, Philippines, Peru, Panama, Norway not seeing the United States, just putting that out there, not seeing the US. They don't seem to be a part of this organization. So this organization that does not have the United States within it or at least as a member state, has said that the United States is backsliding. It is a backsliding democracy, as in it is deteriorating. Things are happening, and it is being pushed more towards an authoritarian or hybrid state, as they would describe it. And one thing we could have told you that, well, maybe that's the way it feels to me. It perhaps feels that way a little bit personally, just when I look out at events and how things have been shaped and changed over the past gosh, several decades that I've been paying attention. But um, to see it put out here in a report that is fairly extensive if you read the entire thing that you can find on their website, UM, it is a bit alarming. It It specifically points to nineteen and as being a flashpoint for a change that has begun to occur within the United States. Specifically, they're calling out the words and actions of President Donald Trump upon losing his second term election and having a sitting president who's on his way out questioning directly the results of a democratic election within a country, right within the country that that this president is serving. You know, that's maybe one thing, but it is also it just love read you this quote, kind of an alarming thing to have a president question the results of an election, because then you know, that makes everybody else question it. And this is not casting as versions necessarily directly at President Trump. It's just that that occurrence, no matter who it was in office or who was questioning the authority of the democratic process, would have eroded this, like the core democracy of it all. So much of so much of that core is based on following you know, kind of protocols and following um tradition, you know, and none of it's necessarily enforceable by law. It's just we just depend on people kind of carrying this legacy of like accepting the results of an election and like, you know, being a good sport. But once you start having someone who said in the president actually maybe that we don't need to do that, then you start to see that backsliding. It feels like, yeah, I've is something I've brought up over over the years, and it's something it's easy for people in the US and really the global West to forget. It's that the most vulnerable time in any empire is the time in which the transfer of power occurs. And you might be surprised how many countries don't get it right and how startlingly close they come to dissolution. The peaceful transfer of power is like the number one most vulnerable time. It is. It is literally the equivalent of an animal's malting stage. It's very vulnerable. The skin is new, will the core survive? And I don't think that's hyperbolic to phrase it this way. I know we're going to get, probably Matt, We're going to get to the writing of John Bago or Bagot Glub, the guy who put a time limit or proposed an expiration date for Empires right two or fifty years ago. Talk about that, we can. I mean, we've already talked about that on this segment. That's true, that's true. So we refer back to that and instead we say that this is this perceived thing, American exceptionalism as an ideology, aside this perceived um danger. If it is a thing that is happening, if this in GEO is right, then they are also inherently seeing it at a macro cosmic level. There are other things happening in countries and they're similar. Like Chile is currently in a runoff and one of the lead contenders is um another Bolsonaro, you know, and that is the current leader of Brazil. There is a far right resurgence and it's been going on for a while. We talked about it in the past. Isn't there a connection to with um the COVID nineteen pandemic, And that is all something you kind of see historically like a big upset, a big you know, kind of inciting event is oftentimes when an authoritarian regime can kind of grab the reins a little bit. Well, it's also when you can most clearly see discontent of the of people who live within a state that is maybe slipping right a little bit. Well, there's unrest, what better time to rob the nordstroms of democracy, you know what I mean? See, it's all my god, it's all coming together. Also, we have a full episode on Empires expiration dates. We do, we do, and and this is just to point out this one specific report. And it is also not to say that just the United States is in this boat and is you know, backsliding into some other form of government non democratic. You can read through the report. You can see Hungary, Poland Slovenia as places that are backsliding, established democracies that are having issues. You can look at a few countries that, according to this n g O, are actually improving, like Ukraine and North Macedonia. However, Ukraine is like as we record, this appears to be dealing with some stuff with Russia. Again. We'll see what happens if these intelligence reports actually pan out into something terrible or not. Um. Other places like Turkey, Nicaragua, Poland Serbia, Brazil were rated as having the quote most significant democratic declines over the last decade. UM. I can't urge you enough to actually head on over and read the report. You can get it online. It's free. You can look at the entire thing. Just check it in the way it's divided up to you can select regions and different attributes like representative government, fundamental rights, checks on government. These are like they're I guess bell weathers for you know how they're measuring whether this is into the backsliding. Yeah, it's it's it's it's really good work. Uh. You know, they're gonna be people who say that it has inherent biases most works of humanity do and don't know why. That's like some sort of news or surprise. But sometimes that's a bad faith reaction too, because not everybody agrees on the idea that democracy is necessarily a good thing. There are a lot of people who think democracy is it's sold to other countries is really a trojan horse for resource extraction, and as much as I hate to admit it, there is validity in that claim. And then, of course there are other people who say fascism get a bad name and should get a you know, let's do it right this time. I don't agree with those folks, but those are those different viewpoints. It's important to say that not everybody agrees on the idea of democracy being the best thing since sliced bread or what's that other quotation, um the least worst or the best worst form of government. Uh. The reason it's important is that this in theory, when democracy works, it gives you the right to have a problem without being black agged and disappeared. It gives you the right to show up and publicly as long as you're not trying to harm people say stuff like like it's so weird. You'll see protests over like a reboot of fantasy series that people don't like and we don't like how they change this that or the third about the characters. We're gonna protest the studio and they'll see other people who are protesting political decisions. You can't do that in every country, Like people forget how powerful that is. Like, look at and this is not to be xenophobic, This is certainly not to be nationalistic. Uh. This is in the US, which is far from perfect. There are a lot of things people take for granted. And one of those things is the fact that you can stand up and you can talk in public, and you can still you know, live your life in many cases, as long as you're not saying, like, hey, let's get together and burned down the so and so. But that's not the case in many other places. Try that in Belarus, you know, try that publicly in Beijing, try try that. See see see if the rules for Tenement Square today are the same as they were when the tanks rolled through. The answer is unfortunately yes, Jesus. So starting off the week on a high note here, everybody check out. There's a Reuter's article posted to yesterday, November one, titled democracy slipping away at record rate. In her governmental body warns fun really just puts the stuffing in the turkey for me. So but again I'm saying, you're right, it is allarming to see this, but it's also stuff that we can kind of see with our eyes. Uh here with our ears and and and just like we are, we are living in a historical time of unrest um and device division, you know, And I think a lot of what you're describing, Matt is a manifestation of those divisions. Guy is gonna silence us all real soon. Oh yeah, that Mother Earth's sketch and Sorr. It's pretty funny. Earth is a super organism. That's another interesting episode. We'll we'll see what happens. But I've gotta I gotta say as we're closing out, Um, the world is ending for someone every day. There hasn't ever really been a peaceful time in human history since. But it's been cool for some people at some points in time, just not everybody at once. And that's the goal. That's where you know, uh, that is that is when you win the game. I guess. Uh. Now get that shopping spirit at Nordstrom. When you get that shopping spirit at Nordstrom, jeez. But for now, we're going to end today's segment. We've we've asked some questions that we would love to hear your take on. We would love to hear your ideas about the future of crowdsourcing crimes through social media. We'd love to hear your passwords, send along with a list of your fears, your mother's maiden name, the first car you drove, the city, yours, and the last for digits of your social if you don't mind h and then tell us in your opinion the ideas of what a backslide from democracy is, what that means, how to combat it? Is it being alarmist? Is it accurate? And then also last, and perhaps this is most important, when you order guacamole at the hips or should it come by itself? Are you is it inherent in the purchase price that you are also getting chips? Not gonna name names, but this is uh, this is a matter of great importance, matter of great importance to us the show. So please answer that question for us. And even more importantly, when David Busters finally does send some chips out to you because they don't have servers anymore, they've just got electronics, then they're supposed to know where you ordered, where you ordered. If they bring you a tiny bit of cheese dip, like a tiny, tiny single dips worth of cheese tap, should you moray send that back because you did not in fact order it, or should you just accept the cheese dip, I asked Delphie. Actually, yeah, the Ai Delphi, Delphi, the oracle of no, no, no, the Ai less aggressive, uh, with a new version of it. Uh. And they said it's good. Um. Afraid of the cheese dip though, or the action like follow up? I tried to follow up, but you know, the do we see as though through a mirror darkened? I guess is the old line? But ever, but this is. But we want to hear your opinion on this. I love that we're alluding to this at the end. Um. We also want to shout out everybody on Twitter who wrote to us with their own I mean this is more of a listener male thing, but who wrote to us with their own experiments asking the oracle. You can see those if you visit our Twitter handle where we are at conspiracy Stuff. You can also find us on Facebook. We love to shout out our Facebook page. Here's where it gets crazy. You can meet with your fellow conspiracy realists. The memes are good, the discussion is better. Uh. And you can also find us on Instagram where we are conspiracy Stuff show. But wait, you might be saying, didn't you guys spend so much time telling me the dangerous, dilatorious potential of social media. Aren't I supposed to be off it? How can I contact you because I have opinions about guacamole. Well, that's entirely up to you, but if you wish, you may also contact us via telephone, old school telephone kind of situation. You can. I think even a rotary still works on that. It's one A three three S td W I t K. You can leave a message. You've got three minutes, let us know what to call you, make up a cool nickname, first name, anonymous, whatever. We will respect your wishes and most importantly, make sure you let us know if we can use your audio on the show, and then you yes, you might appear on one of our weekly listener mail episodes. If you don't want to do any of that, there's one final, also somewhat old school way of contentting us. You can send us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at our heart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know is a production of I Heart Radio. 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