The News as We See It

The transcript discusses various topics. Firstly, it mentions the rise of food delivery apps and the speaker's preference for getting their own food. Next, it discusses a list of recommended cars for teen drivers, both new and used. The speaker shares their own experience with their first car. Then, it mentions an AI-based parody of the TV show Seinfeld that was banned for hate speech. The speaker expresses their relief that computers haven't replaced their job yet. The transcript also includes a story about a man being injured by a robot at a robotics factory in South Korea. Lastly, it mentions a student in Japan who secretly lived in a shopping mall to save on rent. Hey, that's me of course. Hope you're having a good start to your Wednesday. And time for one of my favorite parts of the show, it is time for the morning roundup. The segment where I give you some of the most random things happening out there in the news right now and tell you what I think about it. Delivered by a true professional like myself, of course. And I've got some stories for you that I think you're going to enjoy. So I want to start off today by talking about food delivery apps. So the market for food delivery apps is now ranked as one of the biggest customer service resources in the USA. That is driven by the gig economy, of course, quote unquote, whatever that is. So this is where you sit at home in your pajamas, you're watching TV, you're watching season four of The Office on Netflix, you don't want to get up and actually go outside, get your own food. So you hire somebody on the internet to do that for you. Of course, you pay a larger fee to do it. And maybe this is where I'm the odd man out, but I prefer to actually go outside, get my own food in person, save that money like a cheapskate, of course. And I like to get in my car, go to the restaurant, see what's going on down there, and of course, after it's all said and done, give myself a generous 25% tip for my hard work. So that's just me. Maybe that's me being cheap, but I prefer to do it the manual way, the classic way. Our next story is about teen drivers. And this is from a car website called Kelley Blue Book, which is out with another list of some of the top cars for teen drivers. And I know we have a ton of parents who listen to the show, probably with their kids, some of them teenagers. And this is probably something they're going to want to hear. So the top new cars for teen drivers this year are the Honda Civic at almost $24,000 brand new, the Toyota Corolla at $22,000, and from the SUV lineup, the Subaru Crosstrek at $25,000. You've got to be kidding me. I'm going to stop there because there's nothing below 20K, so I'm just going to assume that most people probably don't want to spend that much. Maybe that's the wrong assumption. They do have a list of used cars as well, but they're all nearly the same price. I mean, look at the economy right now, look at car prices. It's all the same. You might as well just go get the new car anyway. If you click through the website, you've got to go way to the backroom's website on this one, but you can actually find a list of some of the older cars that they recommend. So these are cheaper. They're older, of course, so little Jimmy doesn't have to show up at school with the brand new BMW. He can come with the 2006 Toyota Corolla. It's totally fine. Just in case you're wondering, my first car, by the way, 1979 Ford F-150. It was 20 years older than me, had no safety features on it whatsoever, was made of metal on the outside and on the inside, had a radio with a knob you had to turn, and a heater that was either on or off. And let me tell you right now, this is the most fun you will ever have in a vehicle. Everybody loves this thing. When you park this thing in a parking lot, everybody wants to come up and talk to you and see where you got it, why you drive it. I just had so much fun. Our next story is about Seinfeld, and if you know me, you know I'm a big fan of the TV show Seinfeld. Now, I pretty much watch an episode of Seinfeld every night before I go to sleep. I think it just kind of calms me down after a long day. And Seinfeld is a show with cast members who never really tried to be larger than they were. The show ended, they rode off into the sunset, and that was kind of it. Of course, you got Larry David making Curb Your Enthusiasm, Jerry doing a stand-up comedy, but that's kind of it, right? There's no reboot, no False Hope, but then all of a sudden came the TV show Nothing Forever, which was an AI-based Seinfeld that took the Internet by storm. So it was broadcast on Twitch on the Internet. You could go watch it. It was broadcasting 24-7, non-stop. It was basically an animated parody of the show, completely driven by AI. So AI voices, AI animation, everything is just robots. And now it's been banned for inciting hate speech on the Internet. So I just want to say, maybe it's not time to replace every job with computers just yet. I think I can hold on to this job a little bit longer without the computer getting too smart and taking it away from me. So let's just hope that continues for a while. I would rather do this the more personal way, with a personal touch. So keeping with the theme of robotics, this next story is out of South Korea, where a man working at a robotics factory was seriously injured after a robot mistook his head for a box of vegetables. I don't know how that happened. And crushed his face into a conveyor belt. So apparently they were attempting to test if a robot could distinguish between a box of vegetables and something that is obviously not a box of vegetables, and move it over to the conveyor belt. The test did not go well, as you might imagine. And I'm just going to go ahead and assume that people who are lifting boxes of vegetables onto conveyor belts right now probably have some job security. So at least take it for that. And our last story brings us to Japan, where a local authority has discovered that a man had been sleeping inside of a shopping mall for over six months. So he's a student, and secretly moved into a mall to save on rent. Very clever, if I do say so myself. Authorities found a tent, an ergonomic chair, a desk, and a computer. And of course, he had multiple power strips to borrow some electricity from the mall outlets. Can we give this guy a little bit of credit, though, for finding an ingenious solution to a complex problem? I mean, I've lived on campus before, let me tell you. Expensive lodging, inedible food, booming music all night long, it sounds like some sort of Swedish nightclub. And there were times of setting up camp at the Starbucks down the street, sounding like heaven. Look, I promise, you won't even know I'm here, okay?