Nonsense with cj little and Jeff Parker – Détails, épisodes et analyse

(0:00) Open

(1:35) The Race is On

(3:26) What’s a Bubble?

(11:34) The Scale of These AI Investment Numbers

(18:03) The Circle of Investing

(26:04) How Might This End?

(27:28) Final Thoughts

(30:13) cj’s recommendation: The AI Daily Brief: 5 Reasons AI is A Bubble (And 5 It's Not)

(31:04) Jeff’s Recommendation: The Big Short

The race for Generative AI is driving trillion-dollar valuations and creating instant fortunes, but is this truly a digital gold rush, or a massive speculative bubble?

This episode the guys dissect the terrifyingly familiar warning signs, from companies with thin revenue streams commanding astronomical prices to a $1.2 trillion debt load funding an infrastructure build-out that's outpacing necessary market adoption - or is it?  They try to make sense of the complex web of circular investing—where massive deals between giants like Nvidia, OpenAI, and Oracle look less like market growth and more like internal capital round-tripping to inflate perceived scale.

The technology is revolutionary, there’s no doubt.  But are the valuations a silicon mirage, backed by insufficient revenue projections and a Shiller P/E ratio not seen since the dot-com crash?

Tune in as we ask the trillion-dollar question: When the euphoria ends and concrete results are demanded, will the financial history books record a boom or a spectacular bust?

Internal Oracle Data Show Financial Challenge of Renting Out Nvidia Chips — The Information

OpenAI, Nvidia Fuel $1 Trillion AI Market With Web of Circular Deals

JPMorgan Says $1.2 Trillion Debt Tied to AI Tops Bank High Grade - Bloomberg

$2 trillion in new revenue needed to fund AI’s scaling trend - Bain & Company’s 6th annual Global Technology Report

Is Silicon Valley repeating dot-com bubble mistakes with AI frenzy? - Los Angeles Times

Is AI fueling a stock market bubble? We debate it.

Investment Outlook 2025

🧠 How Nvidia and OpenAI Fuel the $5 Trillion AI Money Machine

The AI Economy Keeps Doing Deals With Itself

The AI bubble and the US economy – Michael Roberts Blog

🫧 Is AI a bubble? - by Azeem Azhar and Nathan Warren

5 Reasons AI is A Bubble (And 5 It's Not)

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(0:00) Pre-Show

(0:41) Open

(1:26) Back to the Future Day

(2:25) cj's week: Little Meats!

(4:45) Jeff's Week: Dodgers!

(6:19) Headline: The Freedom to Cough on People:  Idaho Makes Vaccine Requirements Illegal

(21:48) Headline: Mystery Object Strikes United Flight Over Utah

(23:46) Headline: X's Handle Hostage: Pay Up for Your Username

(26:49) Headline: IKEA Says: If Your Phone Sleeps, Maybe You Will Too!

(28:57) The Pulsar Time Computer

This time on Nonsense, we’re taking a cross-country flight straight through America’s weirdest headlines.

First stop: Idaho, where “medical freedom” now means you can’t even quarantine an unvaccinated kid during a measles outbreak. It’s the state where bodily autonomy trumps public health, and homeopathy apparently trumps immunology.

Then—mid-flight—something smashes into a United 737 at 36,000 feet. Was it space junk? A rogue weather balloon? Or just Shohei Ohtani hitting another one into orbit?

Back on Earth, X (formerly Twitter, formerly tolerable) launches a new scheme to sell usernames for up to seven figures—because now your identity is a subscription service.

And finally, IKEA wants your phone to take a nap. Literally. Their new “Phone Sleep Collection” gives your device its own bed, proving once and for all that even our electronics are better rested than we are.

Come for the satire, stay for the science—and maybe pick up a tiny, “some assembly required” comforter for your iPhone.

Idaho Banned Vaccine Mandates. Activists Want to Make It a Model for the Country.

Homeopathy - Wikiwand

Something from “space” may have just struck a United Airlines flight over Utah - Ars Technica

X is launching a marketplace for inactive handles | The Verge

IKEA just launched tiny beds for smartphones | Famous Campaigns

Phone Sleep Collection

Rolex: The Complete History and Strategy

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(0:00) Open

(2:08) The $100M Hometown Deli

(10:33) OTC Markets Group

(14:20) A Reverse Merger

(16:59) Price It Your Way.

(19:01) The SPACs

(27:13) In Conclusion: Behind the Bars 

(31:12) cj’s recommendation: Jim Downey on Conan O’Brien

(32:32) Jeff’s Recommendation: The Wolf of Wall Street

Partway down a residential street in the working-class town of Paulsboro, New Jersey, stood a seemingly unremarkable Italian deli. But this wasn’t just any sandwich shop. Despite its doors often being locked and its annual revenue having plummeted to a meager $13,976, this single business was the sole asset of a publicly traded company valued at an astonishing $113 million.

This baffling discrepancy, initially exposed by a hedge fund billionaire as a prime example of financial "quasi-anarchy," had sent reporters and regulators on a wild chase for answers.

The deli's president was the town’s beloved high school wrestling coach, who had inexplicably teamed up with a shadowy network of investors in Macau and a motley crew with a history of legal troubles. As the story unraveled, it revealed a tangled web of empty shell companies and fraud accusations.

The deli raised a chilling question: was this a complex money-laundering front, or a new kind of meme stock whose value simply defied all reason?

The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again (Shepperton Studios / 1978)

HWIN stock: $100M NJ deli company delisted for disclosure irregularities

Volkswagen: The scandal explained - BBC News

Hometown International - Wikiwand

Father and Son Sentenced for Role in International Market Manipulation Scheme Related to New Jersey Deli | United States Department of Justice

"Whatever it is, it's not very good": The strange, incredible case of the $100 million deli - Fast Company

The Mystery of the $113 Million Deli - The New York Times

Special-purpose acquisition company - Wikiwand

"Jim Downey" on Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend | Team Coco

The Wolf of Wall Street Official Trailer

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Welcome back dear listener, we hope you enjoyed your time off during the holiday break.  We are extremely excited to bring you the first episode of Nonsense Season Two: The (Slightly) Better Season!

We want to start the year out with something fun, so in this episode, we dive into what can happen when you take an (arguably) perfect thing, convince yourself it’s not perfect, and try to make it “better”.  But while the “better product” was considered worse by pretty much everyone, it did ultimately (and accidentally!) remind everyone just how perfect the OG product was.  It’s a fantastic story that you will certainly remember if you are a Boomer or Gen Xer.

This year started with a couple of headlines that we just had to slip in: the unbanning of the Apple watch ban, our dear friend Mickey Mouse entering the public domain (finally!), and in between upgrading his cables, Jeff discovers how flyovers at sporting events work.  2024 is off to a great start!  Give Season Two a listen and let us know what you think!

Celebrity Jeopardy!: Robin Williams, Catherine Zeta-Jones & Sean Connery

Celebrity Jeopardy! Kathie Lee, Tom Hanks, Sean Connery, Burt Reynolds

Celebrity Jeopardy!: French Stewart, Burt Reynolds, & Sean Connery

Celebrity Jeopardy!: Bill Cosby, Sharon Osbourne, Sean Connery

Celebrity Jeopardy!: Hilary Swank, Keanu Reeves, Sean Connery

Celebrity Jeopardy!: Sean Connery, Burt Reynolds, Jerry Lewis

Celebrity Jeopardy: Sean Connery, Anne Heche, Chris Tucker

SNL40: Celebrity Jeopardy

Incredible shots of the awesome  @Whiteman_AFB  B-2 Spirit (93-1086) Rose Bowl flyover - Scott Lowe

B2 Bomber flyover

Aerial video of a B-2 Stealth Bomber flying over the 2024 Rose Bowl Game

Apple Watch ban: everything you need to know - The Verge

Mickey Mouse has left the house: Steamboat Willie enters the public domain

Steamboat Willie on Youtube

1928 Mickey Mouse AI Generator

'Steamboat Willie' Horror Film Set After Mickey Mouse Copyright Ends

Infestation: Origins - Official Reveal Trailer

Mouse - Official Early Gameplay Trailer

Welcome to the public domain, Mickey Mouse - The Verge

Public Domain Day 2024 | Duke University School of Law

Gaming Like It's 1928 - itch.io

Pclanglais/Mickey-1928-dataset · Datasets at Hugging Face

1985 - Billboard Top 100 Songs - playlist by Sam Hudachek | Spotify

For God, Country, and Coca-Cola - Books

The theory regarding the introduction of high fructose corn syrup ("HFCS-55") is completely false, for two reasons. - Reddit

Have a Coke and a KS Smile

Why Coca-Cola's 'New Coke' Flopped | HISTORY

Did Coca-Cola Ever Contain Cocaine? | Snopes.com

Fact check: Cocaine in Coke? Soda once contained drug but likely much less than post claims

Coca-Cola Max Headroom | Max Headroom Coke commercials

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This is it folks, the last episode of 2023; and we have bad news for you listener, you may likely have never had the pleasure of tasting real extra virgin olive oil.  Surely you’re asking yourself “how can this be possible?”

Over the past 40ish years, olive oil has become known by another name: liquid gold.  It’s so popular and good for us that everyone from father-and-son grifters to the mafia is dressing up anything from seed oil to lamp oil (!!) and selling it as extra virgin olive oil.  Some people will give you a list of what to look for, which unfortunately doesn’t really ensure you’re getting the good stuff.  As it turns out, the only way you can truly ensure you are getting real, legit olive oil is to look for a certain stamp of approval, one that might surprise you.

But before that: yet another Tesla story (a small one, we promise), Epic wins their Google App Store fight, push notifications get a little bit safer, more lawyers use AI poorly, and VW returns to buttons - how it should be.

Tesla knew some of its parts had high failure rates but reportedly blamed drivers anyway

Epic wins!  Jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight

Beeper Mini, the app that gives Android users blue bubbles on iMessage, is back in operation after Apple’s attempt to shut it down

Apple will no longer give police users’ push notification data without a warrant

Michael Cohen’s lawyer cited three fake cases in possible AI-fueled screwup

Volkswagen is returning to physical buttons instead of touch controls

Emerging trends in olive oil fraud and possible countermeasures

Is your olive oil legal? Theft and fraud rampant across the Mediterranean

How To Shop And Eat Better In The Extra-Virgin Olive Oil Crisis

Police in Europe Break Up Network Selling Illegal Horse Meat

68,000 Gallons of ‘Unfit’ Olive Oil Seized by Italy and Spain

OOCC

Mandatory Testing

Food fight over olive oil sparks larger debate about the California brand

Assembly Bill No. 535

Leo | Official Trailer | Netflix

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Welcome to the infirmary episode folks: Jeff is still recovering from his recent triple-threat vaccination and cj is recovering from the ‘rona. But considering we shorted you an episode last month, we knew we couldn’t get away without releasing something. We have got a fantastic segment in this episode about two nerds who successfully recorded every melody of every possible pop song, ever! That’s 69 billion-with-a-bee melodies! Why these two did it, and what they did with the tracks, will likely surprise you. It’s a fantastic story that we are excited to share with you! But before we get to that, we’ll have to tell you about some (more) Tesla drama this week. As it turns out, we aren’t the only ones who think Tesla's Autopilot isn’t meeting the marketing expectations they set.

World Wildlife Fund

Shohei Ohtani is a Dodger

MLB Opening Day

Tesla recalls nearly all vehicles sold in U.S. to fix system linked to Autopilot

Tesla's response to the DMV's false-advertising allegations: What took so long?

Tesla raises price of feature it calls ‘full self-driving’ to $15,000

Matthew Perry’s Cause of Death Revealed as ‘Acute Effects of Ketamine’

Every Possible Melody Has Been Copyrighted, Stored On A Single Hard Drive - Hypebot

The Hard Drive With 68 Billion Melodies

38 million tracks on music streaming services were played ZERO times in 2022

"Scrambled Eggs" ft. Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney's Scrambled Eggs which Evolved Into One of the Most Recorded Songs of All Time

Katy Perry wins in Dark Horse copyright appeal

Ed Sheeran beats second ‘Let’s Get It On’ copyright lawsuit

Copyrighting all the melodies to avoid accidental infringement | Damien Riehl | TEDxMinneapolis

Ghostbusters (song) - Wikiwand

All the Music LLC

Spotify Playlist: Same, Same, but Different?

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As all our listeners know, technology makes all things better, and as it turns out, diamonds are no exception.  Modern diamond-growing technology has made diamonds SO GOOD, that you need a machine to tell them apart from diamonds dug out of the dirt.  The way said machine detects a classic “dirt diamond” is by looking for the impurities that are not present in lab-grown diamonds.  You may want to read that again; the diamonds that we’ve been harvesting with slave labor for centuries are a WORSE product than what we can produce in the lab, for less cost, and without slave labor.  In this episode, we’ll scratch the surface (get it?!) of the world of diamonds.

But first, we’ve got a new AI from Google (and it’s really good!), something about Goldilocks, how silk is made (spoiler alert: it’s terrible), OpenAI & Keurig.  So much to discuss, and such little time every episode!

Archie Bunker - A Sock And A Sock And A Shoe And A Shoe!

Norman Lear, Whose Comedies Changed the Face of TV, Is Dead at 101 - The New York Times

Google launches Gemini, the AI model it hopes will take down GPT-4

Puss in Boots 2: The Last Wish Movie Clip - Goldilocks & Bears Search For Puss in Boots (2022)

Family Guy Goldilocks and the 3 bears

How Is Silk Made? The Ethical Dilemma of Its Origins | Discover Magazine

There’s a new iMessage for Android app — and it actually works

New report illuminates why OpenAI board said Altman “was not consistently candid” 

Due to AI, “We are about to enter the era of mass spying,” says Bruce Schneier 

Vivid blue diamond sells for nearly $44 million at Christie's auction

⁠Elon Musk on Advertisers, Trust and the “Wild Storm” in His Mind | DealBook Summit 2023⁠

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Well, you made it; you had to suffer through a headlines-only episode last week (yes, we read your hate mail about this terrible tragedy), knowing you would be rewarded this week with another smooth segment to sate your curiosity, even if just for a few minutes.

So, for your consideration, dear listener, we present an entire extended-length segment today on “Super Blacks: The Blackest Blacks Known to Man.”  These are paints, pigments, and coatings that absorb so much light it will trick your eyes into thinking that it's a void of space leading to another dimension.  But there’s more to this story than simply “some really black paint,” and we look forward to telling it to you in this episode.

But before that, there are all sorts of headlines this week, touching on Munger, De Niro, Apple, Nvidia, and of course, no episode of Nonsense would be complete without an update from our Lord and Savior, Musk.

Best Friends Animal Society

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade - Wikiwand

What happens to the helium in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons?

Is the helium supply up in the air for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade?

Time Lapse: Inflating Macy's Parade Balloons

NYC LIVE Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloon Inflation 2023

10 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloon Accidents and Mishaps - Giant Parade Balloons of Chaos

Charlie Munger on the Acquired Podcast

Inside Robert De Niro’s Gotham Awards Speech Debacle

Nvidia’s CEO thinks AGI will be here in the next 10 years

The mystery of the disappearing Google Drive files

Post • Instructions to recover Google Drive • The Register Forums

Utah Data Center

Elon Musk has boosted the 'pizzagate' conspiracy theory five times in the last two weeks

Apple and Goldman Sachs are breaking up over money-losing Apple Card

Super black - Wikiwand

Vantablack - Wikiwand

Anish Kapoor - Wikiwand

A Short History of Vantablack: the Darkest Color on Earth - GARAGE

The Vantablack Controversy: Anish Kapoor vs. Stuart Semple

New non-nanotube super-black coating demonstration

The 'blackest' black: How a color controversy sparked a years-long art feud | CNN

BLACK 4.0 - The blackest black paint in the known universe *NEW* – Culture Hustle

Anish Kapoor on Instagram: "Up yours #pink"

Thanksgiving '97. The day Barney was killed

Barney Died a Violent Death at the 1997 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

2020 BMW X6 Painted In Blackest Black Vantablack

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It’s a short holiday week, and with a couple of amazing stories in the news, we at Nonsense knew we had to put out a headlines-only episode early before you all slip into your turkey-and-gravy-induced coma.

Today’s secret: the easiest way to create a company worth nearly a billion dollars is to first start with an AI juggernaut worth nearly $90 billion and let an inexperienced board of directors unceremoniously fire the beloved CEO while providing no explanation to the public, let alone employees.

In addition to the still-developing OpenAI story, we’ve got some comments on Twitter’s advertisers (remaining and otherwise), Nothing Chat’s terrible idea, iRCS, totally new refrigerators, AI weather, lithium mimes, and cryspy gene editing.  It’s a lot really.

Happy Thanksgiving to all our stateside listeners!  We’ll be back next week with more of our regular Nonsense!

The OpenAI Story

⁠OpenAI Talks Continue as Sam Altman, Company Push to Reunite⁠

⁠Elon Musk Really Doesn’t Want IBM’s Money⁠

⁠Twitter bets big on ... CEO's son

Nothing’s rival to Apple’s RCS was a privacy disaster | TechRadar

Nothing Chats beta removed

Inside Whirlpool's ambitious plan to reimagine the refrigerator

Google's New AI Weatherman Will Leave Forecasters in the Dust

Trust in science down; trends worst in minorities, Republicans

A lithium mine for EV batteries is coming to Arkansas, says Exxon

Crispr gene editing shown to permanently lower high cholesterol

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We have missed you, dear listener.  After a one-week hiatus to allow cj to serve his civic duty as a juror, we are back with more of the Nonsense that you have come to love!

This week we dive into the Epic v. Google lawsuit that is putting the future of the Google app store in the cross-hairs.  The Verge has summed this up well, saying: “Epic sued Google back in 2020 after a fight over in-app purchase fees, claiming the Android operating system’s Google Play store constituted an unlawful monopoly. Epic wants Google to make using third-party app stores, sideloaded apps, and non-Google payment processors easier — while Google says its demands would damage Android’s ability to offer a secure user experience and compete with Apple’s iOS.”

Our take on this lawsuit likely won’t surprise our regular listeners, but we believe you’ll enjoy hearing us work through it.  And ahead of the lawsuit, we chat briefly about RCS support, iMessage on Android, autonomous fruit-picking robots anonymous, more AI nudes, and what the hell is going on in Iceland.

We are happy to be back, we hope you enjoy the show!

Google is trying to force Apple to support RCS

Nothing is bringing iMessage to its Android phone

Autonomous Fruit Picking Robots

AI Nudes of Classmates in the US

Iceland is shaking

Epic v. Google: everything we’re learning live in Fortnite court - The Verge

Barry Diller emails Google exec (c. 2019)

5 things we learned from the Epic-Google antitrust case this week | TechCrunch

Even the cool kids love Nonsense, apparently.

The Saint of Second Chances | Official Trailer | Netflix

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