Bears & Bentleys
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Wow. Welcome to the Hat Chat Podcast episode number, what is it Ross? Oh, it's 179. Wow. Almost at the big 180. We are your hosts, there's three of us today, which is nuts. I'm Chris Trott. Hi Chris Trott, I'm Ross Holmby. Hello Chris Trott, I'm Alex Smith. How you doing everybody? Thanks for saying hi to each other. Hi Ross. Hello, hello. You're right, yeah. In case you aren't watching this live on twitch.tv slash hatfilms or the YouTube channel Hat Films, we are sat next to each other.

And it's quite easy to... The table is being brought up over and over again. We have a round table now. We have a round wooden table. It's a nice table. It's a nice table. It's so shiny. It has good reflections. It's been kept in good condition. It hasn't. Look at the edges of this table. Look at the grooves of this table. It's a Victorian table. It's a revamp, sure. It looks... And also, it just... I mean, Jesus, I don't know what that is, but it's stuck to me. It's stuck to me.

Well, we finally moved from fold-out plastic tables to something more permanent, which is, it is nice to have. It's a huge upgrade. It's nice, yeah. We should get carpet under here next. Some rugs. Imagine that. That would be cool. It would probably help with sound. Bloody rugs are expensive, though. I mean, unless you go the IKEA route. Facebook Marketplace. What we could do is... We should get all our rugs. We could find stray dogs. We could find stray dogs and...

Pelt. We could create pelts from stray dogs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I bought a jacket from a thrift store the other day. Otherwise known as a vintage store. Sometimes known as a charity shop. It just really depends on how confident they are with their stock. What was the price? £30. Yeah, so it's not a real charity shop. It's like one of those...

Those fancy ones that claim they're vintage and it's really just charity stuff. Exactly. It's really about how confident they are. When you walk up to the thing and you're like, vintage shop, huh? And they've got like six DVDs of like... So it's a marketing. We've been foiled by marketing. Yeah, I believe that ultimately vintage stores are just stealing good stock from charity shops and reselling them. But anyway, let's not get into that. I bought a denim jacket and I was like, wow, denim jacket. So you can double denim?

- You could. - I could. I could double denim. Yeah, I mean, when I bought it, I was wearing jeans at the time, so I had to walk home in double denim. But plenty of people like that. - It's like that picture of Justin Timberlake in double denim. And Britney at the same time. So it was quad denim. - Yeah, there's so much denim. - Funny enough, that's exactly what I looked like. But anyway, I got home and I was like, "Do you wash, you know how you're not really meant to wash denim?" And then I was like, "Well, should I wash this?" It seemed clean.

You got it from a thrift shop. You know people boil denim? That's not just a Charlie Kelly meme. Boiling denim is a common thing, apparently. Yeah, they are. Double denim looks great. He has a denim hat on. We're looking at a picture of Justin and Britney back in their prime, really, when they were pure denim.

So I got into the world of boiling denim and it turns out it's part of the hobo code. So the hobo code back in the day, you know, when we're talking like boil denim, you'd boil your denim or boil your clothes before you joined another group of like hobo travelers. Um,

because they didn't want you to bring fleas into the camp. Right. And just washing your clothes in regular heat is not enough to kill fleas and some lice. You have to go 100 degrees Celsius or above. Oh, wow. So 90 degrees doesn't cut it? No. You've got to go 100. But is there a risk of shrinkage with denim in any way? Well, I don't know. I haven't boiled my denim. I just risked it. But apparently, yeah, there is a reason to boil your denim, but only if you're buying from...

shops that... Would you spray it with some sort of antibacterial spray? Like a spray you would spray counters with. Would that do the trick? It might bleach your clothes. 99.9% they say. It might bleach them. It might. It would certainly bleach your clothes. What if it's without bleach? Denim's just cotton. Woven in a specific way. Right. Yeah, I think so. It's whatever cotton is and its temperature resistance is what denim is.

Unless, you know, the weaving pattern has made it a little bit more durable under heat. I mean, yeah, I've washed loads of jeans. But like... You've still got lice. I just don't dry them. You've still got the lice on there. You've still got lice. But I want to keep the lice. That was my lice. Denim story. That's an insane denim story. Yeah, I know. That was cool as hell. Anyway, sorry for the gaps in head chats. Yeah.

Do you want to do a little update? Yeah. What did we do? Well, I was away. Unfortunately, my dad was ill. And so I had to go and check him out. Family matters. Family matters. Had a cheeky little very quick heart operation. Open heart surgery, which is...

Pretty serious. Insane. But he's okay. He's doing all right. He's at home now. The good news is he's doing well. Which is quick. Two weeks. Yes. I found that quite insane. It is nuts when you realize that. And normally earlier for more basic things, well, I say basic, stents. Same day sometimes. Same day. Yeah. Just go and get it done. Outrageous. That's insanely good. So, yeah. Luckily, all good. What I feel kind of sort of,

- A little bit. You know how like, yeah, stents, put it in, stick it up. So they put it up through your leg usually, right? So they go into the main artery and your femoral artery. They run a wire or something all the way up to your heart to find the blockage. And then they push this little thing in, which is a stent, which literally just widens out the pipe a bit, right? So it literally just forces open that. - Like a balloon, just gonna blow up. - Yeah. - Not too much now. - Well, not too much. Forces open that pipe again and allows blood to flow properly in through the heart. - Allows that grease to pass through.

Yeah. Exactly.

All that sausage grease. Yeah, a real backlog of sausage grease. That's all it takes. That's the difference between a person living and dying. Just getting a little bit of metal, which of course is taking huge amounts of ingenuity and invention to get there, but just a little thing that just holds that pipe open a bit. That's a living person. And if you don't have it, they're not. I almost want to get pre-stented is what I'm getting at. Pre-stented. I could stent you if you want. Yeah, you can stent me. I could run a wire through you. Why don't you ask the doctor about that?

Because my dad had his aorta basically replaced. With what? Or like a plastic tube, essentially. Because the wall lining was too thin and it was about to dissect.

split in two which is kind of crazy just hold chest cavity with a flood flood of blood it would be almost an instant death yeah so if they didn't catch it early enough bam be a very different story i'd be in a very different kind of mindset and mood right now yeah um yeah i think hat chat probably may not have come back this week maybe yeah but um so yeah there's a tube inside the aorta that just you know keeps it structurally sound and you know safe to use continuously until death i feel like there's a market there

For... They call it an elephant trunk. Designer aorta valve. Nice. Like, you know when you go to Ikea and you're picking your surface material and colour. Can I have mine in marble, please? Yeah. Imagine, like, choosing a pattern. Like, do you want RGB? I mean, it's kind of fading out now. Do you want RGB lights, yeah. RGB. What sort of, like, tactile texture do you want on it, in case? Hmm.

the next surgeon goes in and is like, oh, this is nice. That's the only person that's going to want it. Apple fitness tracking installed. We actually put a lot of microchips in there while you opened up. That's a good point, right? So you get your heartbeat from smart devices. What if you just had a device in your heart whilst they're in there?

to get a really accurate heart reading at all times. And then you have a little panel, a little LED panel screen here. It's like, that's my heart rate all the time. What if we take it even further than that and you have a...

a fun digital avatar which represents crying the state of your health we just get the Iron Man kind of chest thing oh yeah just pulsing get that put in there and just be like well yeah let's just do something fun with it no I don't think he was awake to actually make much of those choices so he didn't go for the digital avatar option he goes through the catalogue beforehand it was very much just like oh actually we need to just

operate right now otherwise you're gonna die oh I see it was an emergency oh do I not get to flick through the catalogue can I not go through the catalogue and start choosing how many materials are there which materials for this thing which we don't even know fully what it is until I'll just go carbon fibre carbon fibre just make it carbon fibre I want it to be strong but yeah that's pretty crazy an elephant trunk they call it elephant trunk yeah I don't know why they call it that it's just a word because it looks like an elephant trunk but there is a technical name for it I don't know what that is

But whipped it in and out. And I may be at risk. I may have a thinning walled aorta. So I need to get that checked. And then just find out that I just need to have less salt. It's not exactly the type of thing you can just go, oh yeah, well can I just hop on another bed and you pop one in me please? Can you just do that for me now? Some quick open heart. Got time to think about it. You're going to get all your leathery done.

My leather's retined, yeah, yeah. Came out completely. Leather work. He came out with tan leather. Tan leather chest. Yeah. Just looks like that one, that ape chest Mr. Burns wears. Comedy chest, yeah. But yeah, so that was one reason why I was up and down to the hospital. So not much recording done, not much hat chatting done. On a more positive note as to why we've been busy as well. Yeah.

We have announced now that we are taking part in a big venture. Um, hat films has invested and we are now co-directors of many as fate, a live action role play festival LARP that's coming next year for four events. And that's been a huge undertaking. Um,

headed by Smith initially. This was your pipe dream idea that you enlisted both us as Hat Films to help with, but also other people of the LARP community that you've assembled together. We've got a whole video on that if you want to check that out on our YouTube channel explaining our involvement with it and what you're expected to see with it. But I don't know if Smith, you want to do some top level...

Talk about it? Yeah, I imagine a lot of people are paying attention to our content have probably heard about this by now. We had the vlog that went out last Monday. Yeah. I think it's when it went in. Yeah, the vlog went out on Monday and then Tuesday was the stream where we focused on a bit more

Q&A. You guys crashed the website. So yeah, basically it's a LARP. It's a new festival LARP and it's high fantasy. It's original, obviously. It's huge and complicated and we hope that you may be interested and you come and give it a try. It's one of my... No, it's my favourite hobby. It's my favourite thing to do and...

It's a really awesome thing. Sorry, just to make that clear, it's high fantasy, not Thai fantasy. It's not Thai fantasy, unfortunately. Very different. Different event. I mean, if this goes well, maybe we can branch out. Yeah.

We'll make many different lamps to fill many different tastes and it doesn't even need to just be last. They could be events. Oh, yeah. We're showing some of the footage we took of the costume. First costume brief we did where we worked out all of the individual clothes and identities and things like that of the nations. There's like nine nations. There's nine nations. All the different costume briefs. Yeah, it's going great. We will be launching our first event next April and...

And yeah, check out the website, manisfate.com for more information, more to come. But yeah, it's been a crazy undertaking. It's taken up a lot of time. Those guys have seen some shit. Cirodonia's seen some shit. Yeah, Cirodonia needs to like, you know. Calm down. Stop listening to Mike. Get out of the cave. Save on Cox Internet when you add Cox Mobile and get fiber-powered internet at home and unbeatable 5G reliability on the go.

Touch grass now, again. I'm not okay.

I love Johnny. Johnny's one of the directors. He's the one with the big ginger beard. His smolder on all of the shots. He does a lot of smoldering. Yeah.

And he knows it. That's part of it. He's LARPing and he's enjoying it. He LARPed for a very long time, that guy. So we've got some really high-level LARPers on board that run LARPs already. So they are very experienced with understanding how LARP works, both from a mechanical point of view, like coming up with the rules and things, but also when you actually get onto the field and have to deal with people,

and managing that sort of thing, like the logistics of toilets and catering and all that sort of stuff. So we've got good people on board, thankfully, that understand.

Yeah, because there's a lot of moving parts. And, you know, it's a growing process. It's been interesting, isn't it? We're learning a lot as we go. And, you know, we're going to make mistakes along the way. But our passion is very much there. And that's going to drive us to the end line, I think, the goal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a growing thing. It's a changing thing. I mean, the first few events won't be the same as the next two, if you know what I mean. Like, we're going to retcon stuff. We're going to change stuff.

There's a lot of unknowns in terms of how the game will play, but it'll be interesting. It's gonna be like Woodstock mixed with World of Warcraft launch is how I'm thinking it. It's not going to be like... With less music. Firefest. It might be like Firefest, but in which case we'll film that happening. If it starts getting Firefest-y, I'll get the camera out. That'll be a very expensive Hat Films video. Yeah.

Someone's got to film and document this. Yeah. The big thing is we released tickets now, and also we did a big Q&A stream and released the rules, at least the initial rules that we've kind of had the team work on for a very long time now. It's an iterative process, and we're opening up feedback so that people can give their responses to it, find spelling errors, that sort of thing, or things that don't make sense. So...

Between now and April, I'm sure it'll be nice and tidy. Yeah. And we'll be doing lots of real-world testing, that sort of thing as well between now and then. In January, we're going to do some more filming for more promo material. So it's a big undertaking by Hat Films, basically. We've got this whole other business going on now, which is exciting, but also, you know,

it takes a lot of our time. Yeah. The dreamers of the dream. We are the makers of the chocolate. We also, we've also got like some really awesome stuff coming out for how films very soon as well. Um, specifically for things like members as well. So we, we really appreciate, you know, the modern world of YouTube right now is it's very much based on members and, and you know, subscribers and other forms, but Twitch subscribers as well. Patreon supporters, all you people. Thank you very much. You're essentially like funding us directly. And, um,

We have a really awesome thing maybe going live next week. I'd like to. That'd be cool. I'd love to see Craig's panicked look. Is...

In vague terms is a way that you're going to be able to get involved with green lighting certain projects for us. And, you know, we'll be able to present ideas, big ideas, big videos that we've got for films. And then we're going to present you with a way of helping direct that and direct the kind of content you want to see.

there's an awful lot in the works. And unfortunately, that means that sometimes our forward-facing presence is diminished in the form of a few missed hat chats. But we hope you're enjoying it today. We've got some funny news, I think, that probably we should focus on as well. There's quite a lot of funny news. We haven't done that in a while. But yeah, thanks for listening. Thanks for joining us. And thanks for continuing to support us as we...

try many, many things as we grow, as we change. One final update for members. That is, uh, Crocoman is still going. And in fact, you might see this table. Oh, uh,

from the second half of the season. So look forward to a slight shift in how it looks for the rest of it. Around a table made more sense, so we're going to give that a little go. We've taken a look at Crocoman, looked at all your feedback, and the second part is going to add some of that in. Yeah. Exactly. Anyway, funny news. We listen. We listen.

What's the funniest fucking thing you read on the news this week? I'm sure we'll mention Men In Fate over the next coming weeks or so. Months, I'm sure. But there are more featured stuff about that. Funniest news that I've got? Okay, hang on, let me...

Well, this wasn't funny news. This was interesting news. And this was the world's first wooden satellite developed in Japan is headed to space, which is quite cool. It's the size of a box. It's designed to burn up in the atmosphere so you don't have like particles. And something to do with also how it can withstand space because it's not...

exposed to oxygen. It's about the size of a Mac Mini. It is. The new one or the old one? One of them. If you've ever seen a Mac Mini, what else is that size? It's a size of your hand. A box of eggs. It's about the box of eggs. Yeah, yeah. About the size of a box of eggs. These are microsatellites, aren't they?

These are microsatellites, yeah. And it just seemed quite an interesting thing that they're popping that into space. What do you think about it? It's made out of the same wood as our awesome table. I think it might be... No, this is... Did it say what type of wood it is? It's probably...

It just says early tests using timber and lunar and Mars exploration. Maybe it's a bespoke wood, a hybrid, an alloy of woods. Well, it's in a metal frame, so it's still like using some metal. So maybe that's a lot. Maybe I got excited for nothing. You know, what's chucking a bit of wood? But I want to know if they can move wood around in space and build things with it, which would be quite cool. Yeah, it is cool. I mean, like the Japanese are amazing at this kind of thinking, aren't they? Where they sort of go and like...

Well, what's the simplest way we can do it? Do we need to use like, you know, I mean, yeah, it kind of makes sense. I hope that they make the wooden satellites. I mean, when they burn up, obviously, that's when the heat comes in. But apart from that, I guess they have to worry about like the wood naturally flexing and bending and moving over time. But if you just like draw all the moisture and all the sap and stuff out of it, then...

should be good should be inert right i'd like it for the starlink ones with wood yeah there's a lot of starlight runs up there well yeah i feel like they're bigger than six thousand how big do you reckon the starlink satellite is quite big i think massive yeah yeah if you look at the falcon yeah and they come out in a big tray uh out the back and then they all disperse out of the falcon the falcon's not a small

spaceship either just spits them out yeah dumps them out like a big fat shit any alien news the current any alien version oh my god there was this other story oh hang on okay the each starling satellite is 260 kilograms so 573 pounds that's fucking heavy yeah it's hell and size of a table table i can lift that i just want you guys to know i could lift that for sure um

200 and how much? 260 kilos. I don't know if you could. I can lift that easy. How? What kind of lift? One arm dumbbell. Fucking hell, that's just like the least likely. That's not the one I thought. Are you accessing your adrenaline strength? Yeah, yeah. That's full adrenal strength. Yeah. Now there's a bear damaging cars in Lake Arrowhead. It was actually a person in a suit.

Fuck sakes. It was some form of insurance fraud. Before Los Angeles area residents were arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of insurance fraud and conspiracy after allegedly falsely claiming a bear got into their vehicles and damaged them. There was no bear. Rather, a person in a bear costume.

Must have been pretty convincing there. We've seen in video footage provided with insurance claims, so they filmed it as well. I mean, there is a photo of the bear suit, and it kind of looks pretty convincing, although the bear does have like sharpened, what looks like kind of sharp knuckle duster style claws. So yeah, I mean, it's an interesting way. I mean, that's quite creative. I applaud their creativity. Oh, wow. There it is. Oh, wow. Yeah, he's just holding like spiked weaponry.

If you had a bear suit like that, what would you use it for? If you weren't using it for insurance fraud? I'd wait in long corridors at night until it was quite dark, stay very still, wait for a person to see me, wait a couple more seconds, then charge him. Right, okay. And what kind of thrill do you feel like that would give you? Fucking terrify them, wouldn't it? It would just be like, so you'd be excited from their fear. What if you didn't realise that they were armed?

They're a bear. Well, you're going to be the bear. Yeah, what if they have a gun? You didn't realise that that fucker is ready for that kind of shit. Guess I'm dying in a bear suit. Just a little glove box glock. Because if you saw that bear in the UK, would you be immediately suspicious that it's not actually a bear? Yeah. I think you might get like... There's no bears here. If you can get like sprung upon...

I think you might be so like taken aback by it. You might believe it for a second to act in an emergency way, you know, like flight and flight might kick in. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, just jumping out on somebody is enough, isn't it? And then you want to kind of see what, what its movements are. And they're like, hang on a second. Is that right? You're a man in a bear costume. I can see the zipper on the back. Come on, dude. But I won't get out my glove box Glock. You have a glove box Glock. Yeah. Always. Little tiny little pea shooter. Yeah. A small Glock. Oh, well,

We are now watching some video footage of the bear clambering in a man in his hands and knees. Oh, come on. The movements with the arms are very obvious. That looks shit. That's hilarious. It was convincing until... What car is that? Is that a Mercedes? And so what? They're like, oh, a bear climbed into my car, damaged everything.

And then what? They're going to get a new car from that? Oh, look, and it's a Bentley. Yeah, they're clearly doing that. A Bentley? Yeah, yeah. Or a Rolls, sorry. Is that a Rolls or a Bentley? That might be a Rolls. Fucking hell. It's the little padding of the paws. What's the claim going to give them? Is it going to give them a newer car? Yeah, I mean, yeah. A newer version of that car. Or a cash equivalent. Yeah. Yeah.

So if they got through ill-gotten gains or bought in cash, one way to legitimize and wash that cash... It says Rolls-Royce in the title. It is a Rolls-Royce. Is that video footage filmed by someone or is that supposed to be like a...

That camera's moving. The camera's shaky. Someone's filming it. It's not like a ring camera, which if it was, that'd be more convincing. That looks like a balcony filming scenario. So how the fuck is it getting in the car? How's a bear getting in the car? There has been footage of bears kind of getting into cars. Maybe that's what their inspiration was. They saw a bear get into a car and were like, hang on a second, we've got a fucking unique, but so unique that it would raise every eyebrow at the insurance firm. And the scratches are so shit. Perfect those scratches are.

It's showing scratches that are perfectly aligned. There's no real tearing. It's literally five parallel lines. That's it, yeah. That's very pathetic. That's so stupid. I think we could dress up as a bear and be more convincing as bears, don't you? That's why white-collar crime is so much more effective. Yeah.

commit some sort of finance crime. Yeah, a lot easier. A finance crime and you'll be fine. Well, also, like, I think... Dressing up as bears and... Like, I'm not saying that I'm, like... I'm not saying that I'm a criminal expert, or any of us are. In fact, I'm sure we would get caught very quickly if we were to do anything bad. We wouldn't think of every possible outcome, would we? This episode is brought to you by Indeed.

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I don't know. I feel like smarter people don't get caught. Smart people don't get caught. I feel it's kind of still the rule. I mean, even dumb people don't get caught, especially in the UK with the state of our underfunded police. Like, you know, if you're a thief...

You can pretty much just be a thief now. You can just pretty much be a thief because of the way it depends. I've got a new hobby, which is pretty fun. Like you just wear a balaclava and you're on a little bike. Yeah. And then I'm riding around the center looking for people with their phone out. And I'm just like, mine now. Easy, easy. People are barely paying attention. So I've been doing that a ton. Yeah, that's happened a lot recently. Because the economic conditions are right for that to be worth doing.

You know, like, cause you wouldn't do that. Right. You've seen that, right. You've seen that people snatch phones. You wouldn't do it for a couple of reasons. One is probably initially the ethical and moral reason. Right. Because you have that would be really shit for them. Yeah. Yeah. The second one is it's not worth your time or the money isn't worth the risk. Right.

Yeah, it depends on what... Because you can sell this thing for 500, 600 quid, can't you? Yeah. But you wouldn't rob somebody for... You personally wouldn't rob somebody for 500 quid. You wouldn't go, that person has 500 quid in their pocket, I'm going to rob them. But I'm not in their boots. No, you're not in their economic scenario. You're not in their economic social scenario. So all of it's just a fucking symptom of a situation

But yeah, ultimately, unfortunately, what that means is you can do crime pretty easily now. And if you're smart, you know, if you don't do things like pretend to be a bear and use like tools to like scrape up a seat, you probably could do quite a lot of crime and make quite a lot of money. I do wonder, yeah, because they just used like this specific tool to scratch the seats and it wasn't anywhere like a bear. Yeah.

Imagine calling the police and saying that. Do you want to know the biggest crime? What's that? That I've been doing, getting away with my whole life. Oh, yeah. Go to self-checkout, pretend to scan. Oh, my God. Nice. I mean, I can believe that. I've not actually tried that, but apparently that's one of the biggest money losses that the retails have right now. They invested a ton of money into self-checkout, and now they're trying to strip them out because they're losing so much money from it.

Yeah. Well, fucking their fault for taking jobs away from people, isn't it? Well, fuckers. Fuck supermarkets. They tried to let machines win.

and also they gouged us through covid they gouged us through this war in ukraine they're all fuckers burn them all down steal as much as you want as far as i'm aware but they're so uh philanthropic we get our food from farmers it's controlled by farmers don't give it to us today when you go to the checkout and you like you finish is how would you like to donate 52p to the charity that we support oh my fucking god yeah that is a

nightmare as well. I think McDonald's is the same, yeah. They've stopped even putting the sign up to tell you what the 25p you're donating is for as well. So I'm sure people have encountered this wherever they are as well, but if you haven't, in the UK it's now insanely common every time you use a card terminal for it to first ask you for a charity donation. This is becoming more and more common as the cost of living is getting higher and higher and higher and it's the most tone deaf thing in the fucking world. Well, the business gets to use that as like a tax relief as well.

that money that they invest into the charity right well so you could obviously charity like charitable donations are not taxed and yes there is some relief they can reduce their profit yeah yeah okay i'm okay you're gonna have to tell me i'm not i don't know how that would work i think you should just believe it based on yeah okay but anyway it is a bullshit thing and um

I mean, half the people that work in places where they have those things will reach over and cancel it anyway. Have you ever seen those? Don't worry about that. It's just like, I want... Yeah, it's hard to... Does it make you sound anti-charity? I don't think it does, does it? It makes you sound anti-charity, but then it's also knowing the company reasons why they've done that as well. Because there are tax benefits to doing such things. And then they get to... It's like, was it carbon...

Yeah. Buying carbon or something so that you can offset, carbon offsetting or whatever it is. Like you're still doing the damage, but then you're just planting some trees in some other country. Yeah, you're investing in carbon neutral research or something like that. But like, yeah, it's kind of just, yeah, plastering over a massive wound. I will support the charities that I feel I have vested interest in and feel that are doing proper work. It's usually their huge marketing budget or things that piss me off, like people on the streets. Yeah.

And getting constant phone calls. Like if you reduce your monthly charity donation. I go to Alzheimer's UK for example. I have done for many, many years. And I just reduced it a little bit. And they're instantly on you. It's like is there any way...

you can up that again. And like they, they monitor it. And that kind of puts me off even more. It's like, well, at least I'm contributing something and have done for the past decade or so. Yeah. They're just trying to squeeze their profit. Yeah. No, you're completely right. I am. I donated to, um, NH, one of the NHS charities as well. Like, um, after my dad was in hospital and, uh, I was like, I,

for like a Christmas or a birthday gift or whatever, like my dad doesn't ever really want anything. And I was just like, well, I've made a donation in your name to the NHS charities. And it's basically people that like look after, like, you know, give nurses, um,

like coffee breaks and shit, like, you know, like just like things to try and help people who work in the NHS have a slightly less difficult time. And unfortunately, following that donation, I think they must have spent at least half of my donation in postal and printing costs trying to get me to do it again. And I'm just like,

who the fuck thinks this is the way to do things like yeah yeah yeah and it's just like obviously like the cost of that is offset by how much people are giving them yeah and so they're obviously still like it's worth driving it it's worth yeah yeah yeah I've wasted my money and I had the exact same reason as you I was just like fuck me come on like

This is like being a YouTuber. You know, it's like trying to... Like, well, any business, like, you know, any business that uses CRM, customer retention management, which is like...

actually part of the job I used to do before I did this, which is where you would send out marketing emails all the fucking time, trying to maintain customers and, and, and increase average order spend and all that sort of stuff, which in a business makes sense strategically, but it does certainly, um, sour the charity feeling, doesn't it? Yeah. Anyway, but at the same time, um, you don't hear about certain charities unless you get told about them. Fair enough. Um,

And that's why you should support things like Jingle Jam because at least we aren't trying to peddle anything on you. We're not working for the companies directly. We've chosen these charities out of our own choice and

and we hope to give something back as well like with the bundles that we sorry collection of games that the developers very kindly give us keys for it's a very carefully managed yeah the charity as well so they'd rather put all their money into one they they're more passionate about which is pretty good to have the option yeah and what it means as well is that like it's it's a

carefully researched and nuanced group of charities that then a big cash injection goes into, but it's from Jingle Jam. It's not for like, so I imagine it's a lot less easy to like target all the individuals as well, which is kind of nice, I guess, if you don't want to be constantly spammed with emails, but through that,

And we're involved in Jingle Jam. We're going to be doing a music stream and a couple of other things as well. There's a game show. I'm sure that Craig is excited for that bad boy. And yeah, so look forward to that. I mean, we might as well tell them right now what we're planning to do. It's a strip show. So it's a full striptease. So it's a full striptease. We're calling it... Every 100,000, Craig loses a piece of clothing. Yeah, we're calling it Craig's Last Night on Twitch.

But yeah, so we're doing a game show with Craig, hopefully. We are doing a music stream with maybe a guest appearance from Perion at the end. We are doing a farming tournament. That's right. We are going to be bailing once again. I might be in a...

A quiz show. Oh, that's okay. And I think that's everything we've agreed to so far. There's some longest Johns. Are you partaking in that, do you reckon? We shall see. But there will be one as well. Yeah. Everything is still to be confirmed. Depends on whether I've got any energy left, basically. Finalize things on their behalf. I do know... It was mentioned. Two of our days are back-to-back. So music stream into the next thing. Oh, really? Yeah, look forward to that. What is it? The farming? Yeah. And music stream.

Those are early on and they're back to back. So you get a lot of hat films early on in Jiggle Jam. Okay. There is a kissing stream. Yeah. Doing that on the 32nd of December. 32nd, yeah. We've not set a deadline for that either. So we're going to start the stream. We're not set an end of the stream. It's going to be like, yeah, until we hit a certain number. We're going to stop kissing. That's why we've got a little Vaseline to hand. Yeah, but that'd be on the 32nd, right? That's 32nd of December. 32nd of December, yeah.

All right, what about the aliens? Come on. Well, there's no aliens, but this headline just caught me. It was a bank robber pillowcase disguise had no eye holes. A bank robber...

Who are you? Where are you? A bank robber put a pillowcase over his head to hide his identity, then had to take it off as he could not see. Matthew Davies failed to create eye holes in the cover ahead of the armed raid at a bank in Dunfermline Fife last September. A 47-year-old who threatened staff with a meat cleaver of all things. Fucking hell. Left a branch with nearly 2K, but was later arrested. Two grand. Is it worth it for two grand? But I guess, you know, for some it would be.

You could nick four phones out of people's hands without a pillowcase on your head. That's true. He could be wearing a balaclava and have a high-speed electric motorbike. Can we put that sign up again, Craig? Which is what they're using. Normally, there's two of them as well. One grabs, one rides. Yeah, you've got to work as a duo. It's an operation. It's an operation. They're working hard. You've got the bag man, and you've got the driver. You've got the bag man. He thought he was the bag man. He just...

He just happened to have that bag on his head. I got a pretty good bit of news here as well. Oh, yeah, okay. Give us some news in there. Smuggler caught coming back with over 300 kinds of exotic insects strapped to their body from Peru.

Oh my god. Most of all were tarantulas. How many survived? Strapped on his body. Hundreds of spiders and insects were found on a man trying to leave Peru for South Korea. Look at all these fuckers. That's insane. Giant tarantulas. Boxes and boxes of the fuckers. There's about 15 at least. They are big as well. They're like fist size. He had nine bullet ants on him. Known for having the most painful sting on the planet. A bullet ant.

He had them strapped to his body in various layers of bandoliers. He had a load of babies. He had 35 juveniles, 285 tarantula specimens.

And he tried to 110 centipedes, which are really gross. - That's so many. - Fucking centipedes. - How long did you get through any scanner with all that on you? - Well, he didn't, he got stopped in Lima. - So he doesn't have a brain, he replaced it with a spider. - He did, yeah. But I mean, it's super lucrative. So they're worth like hundreds and hundreds of pounds each per animal. And he could have had literally hundreds of tarantulas he could breathe. - And that's for the private sale,

Yeah, this is for private sale in South Korea. Toss it into your forest and be like, well, yeah, good luck. He's not an activist. Yeah.

Or no. Nah, it's fine. But that was just a story. I was going to give an arachnophobia warning just in case you were going to show it. But if we're not going to show it, that's fine. You can research in your own time. That's ridiculous that he managed to bring so many over and keep them alive. There was a massive UFO hearing. From the first whistle to the final drive, FanDuel takes the NFL playoffs to the next level. Because right now, new customers can bet $5 and get $300 in bonus bets if you win.

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It's all just like, I'm telling you it exists. It exists. And I've got people who also say it exists. And it's like, well, that guy banks me. Where is it? Let's see it then. Where is it? The thing is, right, I still believe, still believe that we are, there's something fucking going on, guys.

But they're not getting to the bottom of it in those fucking hearings, that's for damn sure. Do you know why they're not getting to the bottom of it? What? Because only James Cameron's got that deep and they're all in the ocean. So this is, yeah, I mean, it's interesting, yeah. They're all in the ocean, right? And they've been there longer than humans. See, I, so, right, okay, here's a fun question related to the James Cameron thing about him going down and raising the bar by diving down as deep as he could into the trench with his submarines, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Elon Musk, people like that, obsessed with getting to Mars, even though objectively there's a lot of reasons why we don't even want to live on Mars. We'd much rather live on an Earth that's a lot nicer and better cared for, right? So if a billionaire instead put all of their money towards trying to make the Earth a more habitable place, already a perfect paradise for our species, why on Earth do we need to go to Mars? Once he realized Mars was not viable, he then did a quick pivot to actually liking Trump rather than saying that he was a danger to the...

the country. So this is where I'm, this is what I'm leading to people who are that rich. It's not difficult to believe they might have,

access to certain information or maybe he's an alien look at his chest maybe they've seen stuff that's alien told stuff he's got an alien in his chest controlling yeah like like men in black like a man when he touches here go on he's not an alien he was just raised terribly guys all right by aliens by aliens okay to america because they're from south africa geniuses like that sorry

or billionaires I'm just annoyed that anyone with a billionaire like tag on them is worth a lot of money what if James Cameron knows that there are aliens under the sea is the point I'm making what if they've all like seen stuff or they've heard conversations where they're like yeah no we do actually think something's going on or like yeah there is something moving around in the ocean we don't understand and they're like well let's go fucking look Avatar

- Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. - He's obsessed with fucking aliens. - He's obsessed with fucking aliens. - Exactly, right? It all tracks. - It all tracks. - And then the reason that Elon Musk is so obsessed with space and pushing the space envelope is because they know something's up there or something's out there. - They wanna get to it. - And we still have no real capability to get to it. And I do think that like, you know, that could be a really strong driving force.

course i don't know if that's actually the case looking at them i'm gonna guess that's not the case i don't i don't believe that i think they just want the accolade of being the first people to get to it and therefore they go into the history books yeah that's how i see it it's like they want to be weyland-yutani yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah for sure maybe this is wrong but like

What was the example I heard? Imagine a room, just a basic room. The amount of discovered universe is a grain of sand or something in terms of how much we've actually seen. Oh, the observable universe is there's more than the grains of sand. Well, there's more grains of sand on the beaches. Well, there's that, but there's also in terms of a space, how much we've actually discovered. One grain of sand is actually how much we've actually seen. So to also then think that we've just got aliens

And within that grain of sand. Yeah, within that grain of sand is then a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little speck of a thing. We're just lucky, Ross, that we've got ocean dwellers and also Mars Martians. Yeah, we've literally got our own Gungans.

We are Naboo and we haven't met the Gungans yet. The other thing is the stat that I always love, which I will probably always misquote is I think the universe or our universe or our galaxy, whatever you want to call it, is about 14 billion years old. And our star is only about five or six billion years old. There are other stars that have been out there that have probably been developing for longer.

that could have just had the exact same track as us, right? And we're at this five or six billion year point and that's created us and this conversation. I mentioned also probably in a previous hat chat that the James Webb

telescope deep space telescope um has kind of broken the current physics theories by noticing um more developed galaxies than they expected post big bang yeah it's like how could they have formed that much that quickly um that's kind of throwing out the uh the expansion theory yeah of everything being evenly distributed and working at the same rate whilst instead it looks like the universe is more pockets of of of different things yeah i know i saw that as well

Yeah. Anyway, that's it, really. There's no real new alien stuff. It's just the same old, well, surely there must be sort of scenario. Honestly, though, there's aliens in our oceans that have been here longer than humans have. And they're just mocking us with their little orb tic-tacs. Well, jokes on them. I'm going to throw another bit of plastic in the ocean.

There it goes. You're gonna get one of those aliens with one of those beer-like plastic things around its throat. Oh shit, sorry bro, hold on, let me pop that open for you. Sorry bro. Gotcha, gotcha. I knew it. Yes, look, here it is. Now I'm sick. Because they've got weird diseases. Oh, and they're allergic to water. That'd be weird, one minute.

The other story that was quite funny was that The Onion has bought Alex Jones' InfoWars. This is huge. Because obviously Alex Jones, the kind of guy who said the frogs are gay or turning people gay or something. They're turning the frogs gay. He had to sell his...

production company. Yeah. To make up for all the lies he said about the Sandy Hook survivors. Well, the people who were murdered in Sandy Hook. The funny thing is, the Onion own everything. They own all of it down to all the equipment, everything. So it's like the ultimate fuck you. I don't know what they're going to do with all that. Well, it's like you said yesterday. It's just like, well, their content doesn't have to change. They can just put it on that platform and it's still just as wacky and dumb as it ever was. People are going to believe it because it's InfoWars. Well, that...

That's a stupid thing. So I don't know what they'll actually do, but apparently also some of that money or some of the people who chipped into it were the people who he owed money to as well. Sandy Hook families, yeah. So Sandy Hook families, so...

Yeah. But I don't know what they do with it because essentially you just shut it down. Oh my God. But then now they bought this asset. So apparently they took a lower settlement payout, some of the Sandy Hook parents from the lawsuit, obviously, so that the Onion could buy it. They all kind of gathered together. It's like, we're going to take less of a settlement so that you can buy out. That's crazy. Yeah.

So that's pretty funny because he's a bit of a whack job. Yeah, some positive news. But what stops him from just streaming to X.com? He doesn't have the platform. Which is formerly Twitter. I mean, he probably will. He's now just a poisonous rat hole. He's going to do something like that, isn't he? Yeah. But he's lost his main platform, at least. Yeah. So that's good.

But he had to pay up because he just did spread loads of lies. Yeah. Yeah, he did. It's pretty serious stuff. Fucking asshole. Yeah, 1.5 billion was what he owed. Imagine being able to raise that much money. I didn't realise he was that well off to even get to that stage. You couldn't have afforded that. Yeah, that's kind of crazy. I don't think that's a good point.

But Infowars paid off. Yeah. Well, it also shows you that there's serious money in just telling people that the frogs are gay. Oh, yeah. They also did a gotcha on Fox News. Grifting, yeah. Fox News took an Onion article saying that they had trillions of views every month. Trillions. Trillions, oh, yeah, yeah. And Fox News actually...

posted that thinking it was true. So they only got Fox News as well in the same breath. Is it their goal literally to try and get caught? To make it as believable as possible? I know the joke is there, but to actually be reported as fact is quite hilarious. And also really confusing now because there's so much misinformation everywhere. But obviously do your own research is what they always say. Then they fall down that right wing rabbit hole. It's like punked for news, isn't it?

You got the onion. Yeah. You got onions, yeah. Anyway, that's probably enough. Make sure you do your own research. Find the answers that you're looking for. Yeah, it has to be firsthand. Otherwise, it can't be real, right? From somebody else on the internet. It's like me and A-Land. I've not experienced any of the things I've said. Not at all. The internet could be lying to me entirely. All those people. I think it's time.

for us to do the groundwork. I think we need to do our own research. I think we need to get out there. We need to go UFO hunting. We're going to go journalist. We're going to go hat films journalist. We're going to do the stuff that other people aren't willing to do. We're going to Ocean Gate. We're going to go down. I've got a Logitech controller. I've always wanted to build my own submarine. I think we can all get Logitech controllers. I can build submarines.

I don't know if you can. I feel like you've said this before. We can get some tubs from Tesco. Tubs? They're sealed. Speaking of tubs, great submarine concept. Two bathtubs sealed together in the middle. The perfect... Just no more nails and clothes. No more nails, two bathtubs together. You've got to get in it first. But what you do, you get a garden hose. Put plugs in. Hose to the surface. Hose to the surface. Amazing. I always like to breathe through a hose in a vacuum sealed pack. What do you think that experience will be like at the bottom of a very dark river?

We'll find out, won't we? We should use grain silos. One large grain silo. Filled with grain. Pre-filled with grain. That's your food. We'll eat pure grain. And the best thing is, as we eat that grain, we lose weight, therefore it slowly brings us back to the surface. We become guardward genius. Into the grain. Somebody said, Mattis Murph said, call it ocean grate.

Ocean's great. Ocean's great. Anyway, look forward to that project coming up. We could totally go UFO hunting though. We'd see a lot of satellites. We'd see a lot of Starlink. There's another line of them. It's amazing. Yeah, going around pretty frequently. Around that warm. It'll be cold out there. The funny thing is we could stream a UFO watching session using Starlink.

Like that would be like the funny thing. Like, you know, you would use the satellites that you're observing to stream it. Here they come. Hi, it's us.

Fucking mental. Right, anyway, thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. We've got some big things coming up, as we mentioned in the past, and that's all thanks to our wonderful members and supporters. So thank you very much. You're also aiding this, you know, very important educational content going out to the masses and keeping everyone educated and informed. So thank you. The world needs this. The world does need this. Now that Infowars is gone, they need us more than ever. So thank you for the support.

And we'll see you in the next Hat Chat. Goodbye for now. Goodbye. Please don't steal. Thank you. Well... Marketing is hard.

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