Summary
Jurassic Park memories resurface and Sam Neill gets a heartfelt send-off, while tech randomness brings nuking asteroids and orbiting space mirrors into the mix.
There’s a wild story of a looksmax influencer injecting gold, and discussion of testosterone screenings in the military.
A record-breaking T. rex fossil is sold, a 77-year-old gets a surprising number plate, and two Kickstarter projects go head-to-head.
AI internships and LinkedIn lunatics round it out—plus plenty more.
Links
Nuking Asteroid in Flight
Space Mirror Approved
Annual Tetosterone Screening for US Servicemen
Longest Surviving Polio Patient Died
Lookmaxing Person Died from Ingesting Gold
T-Rex Fossil Just Sold for a Lot
Kickstart or Drop Kick – Elvis and the Last Biscuit
Kickstart or Drop Kick – BENI
Claude Corps
Show Transcript
This transcript was generated by an AI and may not be100% accurate. It pays to listen to the podcast, but if you have questions about any of the information found here, please reach out to us.
Sam [00:00:21]:
Hello and welcome to episode 589 of the Chris and Sam Podcast.
Chris [00:00:25]:
I’m Chris.
Sam [00:00:26]:
I’m Sam. Welcome along to your weekly fix of randomness, technology, and life brought to you from the Waikato here in New Zealand. If this is the first time listening to this, welcome. This is a 30-minute podcast of randomness, technology, and life.
Chris [00:00:37]:
Random being the key word there, I think.
Sam [00:00:39]:
I think so. We record this after work some days and I’m a bit brain dead. Apologies, but I’m pulling it together, Chris. This week, went to Whakatane, had a great time.
Chris [00:00:50]:
Oh, that’s right. Forgot about that.
Sam [00:00:51]:
That’s the end of that story. Rest in— I don’t know. Rest in peace, Sam Neill.
Chris [00:00:56]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I actually watched, um, Jurassic Park again last night.
Sam [00:01:01]:
I think everyone did.
Chris [00:01:03]:
The night before, whatever. Um, yeah, because they’d put it on TVNZ.
Sam [00:01:07]:
Yeah. They’ve got their whole collection.
Chris [00:01:08]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:01:09]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:01:09]:
So I watched that. I didn’t realize it was 1993. That’s a long time ago.
Sam [00:01:13]:
I was 11.
Chris [00:01:14]:
Oh, geez. Uh, yeah.
Sam [00:01:16]:
I was— Do you want to hear my Jurassic Park story?
Chris [00:01:18]:
I was just before I got married.
Sam [00:01:19]:
Oh no. Do you want to hear my Jurassic Park story?
Chris [00:01:22]:
No, go for it.
Sam [00:01:23]:
Uh, Dad was a projectionist in Rotorua, uh, a long time ago, and he worked in all the theaters there. And Jurassic Park wasn’t coming to Rotorua. They decided to not play it there or something. Anyway, it was a big deal. Holmes, the TV show, came along and interviewed a bunch of people, and one of them was me.
Chris [00:01:40]:
Oh, wow.
Sam [00:01:41]:
So I’m on TV at 11 going, I don’t know what I said, like, oh, it’s no good, it’s not coming here. And then eventually they did. It did go there because I remember what they did for the marketing for that. I think they put giant footprints, dinosaur prints leading up to the theater.
Chris [00:01:56]:
Yeah. So we were in London, my fiancée at that point and I, and we got married the following year. And so I wasn’t 11 and—
Sam [00:02:06]:
You could be knowing your weird stories. I don’t know. No, but you’re not.
Chris [00:02:09]:
And we thought about trying to get to the premiere.
Sam [00:02:14]:
Oh, wow.
Chris [00:02:15]:
London, because it would have been massive.
Sam [00:02:16]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:02:17]:
Yeah. It would have been. Back then, tickets were like £120 each in 1993. Like, it was ridiculous. Yeah.
Sam [00:02:22]:
Like $700.
Chris [00:02:23]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was, oh, actually, I don’t think it was that much. I think it was £110 for the both of us.
Sam [00:02:27]:
Okay.
Chris [00:02:28]:
That’s all right. But yeah, it was, it was more than we can afford.
Sam [00:02:31]:
I was in a meeting for the film festival and they were talking about some sort of film that Sam Neill had some sort of connection to. And I think Paige said, man, it’d be so amazing if Sam Neill could come along to the festival. And I went, actually, sorry, he died 45 minutes ago. And they’re like, what? And I was like, yeah, that just happened. And they’re like, oh my gosh, did not know. But amazing, um, collect body of work.
Chris [00:03:00]:
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. No, he was good. I mean, honestly, I, um, I spend, as you know, virtually no time on Instagram. I hate Instagram really.
Sam [00:03:09]:
Yeah, it’s not your favorite place to be.
Chris [00:03:11]:
But I used to see see his posts on Instagram every now and again.
Sam [00:03:14]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Chris [00:03:15]:
Yeah. And he did some really just so normal around the farm sort of posts. It was, it was cool. I really, really appreciated that about him. So yeah. Anyway, RIP.
Sam [00:03:26]:
Yep. Sounds like the, uh, anti-mining thing, uh, got to him. So he was anti-mining.
Chris [00:03:32]:
Oh yeah.
Sam [00:03:33]:
Um, and I think a lot of people were hassling him about that. like people that were pro-mining, like Shane Jones and different people who were dickheads. So anyway, that probably didn’t help, but yeah.
Chris [00:03:45]:
Yeah. I got some randomness for you.
Sam [00:03:49]:
I’ll be the judge of that.
Chris [00:03:50]:
It’s tech randomness. And I actually added this a few weeks ago because it was hot off the press then, but I’ve pushed it back.
Sam [00:03:57]:
It doesn’t matter, carry on.
Chris [00:03:59]:
Anyway, okay, so it’s that whole, they’ve done a study or a paper’s just been published on nuking an asteroid in flight. So what was the one with Bruce Willis where goes up and sticks all the dynamite in.
Sam [00:04:11]:
I want to say Armageddon?
Chris [00:04:12]:
Yeah, I think it is Armageddon. Yeah, that’s right. But you don’t need to do that. So what they did is they, for the experiment, they used a vacuum clip thing. They created a vacuum.
Sam [00:04:25]:
Yeah, they created a vacuum.
Chris [00:04:26]:
And they used coffee bean-sized rocks composed of quartz and silica.
Sam [00:04:31]:
And then what, a mini nuke?
Chris [00:04:32]:
No. And then they blast them with X-rays.
Sam [00:04:35]:
Oh, okay.
Chris [00:04:36]:
And in less than 20 millionths of 1 second, the rocks were accelerated to roughly 70 meters per second.
Speaker A [00:04:43]:
Oh, wow.
Chris [00:04:44]:
Just from X-rays. So that’s the thing. You don’t have to put the nuke in the asteroid. You just need a blast to one side. And it says that the researchers say results are scalable. A nuclear blast could push an asteroid as wide as 4 kilometers off course, or perhaps even larger. just from the X-rays from the blast.
Sam [00:05:04]:
Oh, okay. That’s cool. Because I think there is— is there an asteroid coming nearby?
Chris [00:05:10]:
I think there’s always an asteroid coming nearby.
Sam [00:05:11]:
I don’t know. And then they give you a figure and I can’t figure out if that’s super close or not.
Chris [00:05:15]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sam [00:05:16]:
But what they are doing in space, the space mirror has been approved. I think we spoke about this in the past.
Chris [00:05:23]:
Yeah, I vaguely remember it.
Sam [00:05:24]:
And I can’t remember what we thought about it. I was trying to find it and I was like, I don’t know which one episode it was, but maybe one of our longtime listeners will be able to tell us. But the FCC has granted authorization to the Reflect Orbital startup to launch its first demonstration satellite. It’s going to be the size of a mini fridge, and then it deploys and unfolds, and it’ll be 18 meters across. And it’s going to catch the sunlight while flying over the dark side of the Earth, and then precision aim it downward to cast a 3-mile-wide patch of light. On a designated target.
Chris [00:06:01]:
Which presumably is supposed to be like, um, solar panels.
Sam [00:06:07]:
Keep solar panels working, disaster zones, search and rescue, and nighttime construction sites. Imagine if this is commercially available, but there’s heaps of them and there’s just random spotlights floating around. What a world we live in.
Chris [00:06:22]:
That’s weird. That’s weird. Actually, talking of nuts, I just, I just love that. Uh, that’s my own pun.
Sam [00:06:29]:
Um, whatever entertains you is good, I guess.
Chris [00:06:34]:
Uh, sorry, I’m just waiting for this load.
Sam [00:06:36]:
So our, our favorite American, one of our favorite Americans, your favorite American, Pete Hegseth.
Chris [00:06:42]:
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he’s announced annual testosterone screenings for service members.
Speaker A [00:06:48]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:06:49]:
Um, basically, I, I just want to read this out because it’s just the dumbest stuff. It just sounds dumb. So this is The Hill, which is like a, um, Washington newspaper thing. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday announced a new effort to annually screen service members’ testosterone levels and offer testosterone replacement therapy, framing it as a way to keep troops on the leading edge of lethality.
Sam [00:07:14]:
Good.
Chris [00:07:14]:
The screaming— the screening, not screaming— added as part of warfighters’ periodic health assessments will affect troops aged 30 and older. Those under 30 can voluntarily choose to get the test. Hegseth said in a video message, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Which I saw actually. While we invest heavily in our weapon systems, platforms, and gear, our most defensive— well, decisive tactical advantage will always be the individual warfighter. Just his language makes me cringe. Anyway, we have a sacred duty to maintain that advantage, and that is why we must constantly look for new ways to optimize your performance, your resilience, and your long-term health. So they’ve just finished or he canceled all gender-affirming care in the military like 6 months ago. And now he’s putting this in because that gender-affirming care was for women.
Chris [00:08:10]:
There are 1 million male service members in the armed forces. Don’t know how many of them are over 30. I have no clue. There’s another 350,000 women.
Sam [00:08:23]:
Okay.
Chris [00:08:24]:
But, uh, testosterone replacement therapy is not cheap and it’s very strict. Like if you have a, when, uh, an injection, you’ve got to get an injection in the backside on the same day of the week, every, every week.
Sam [00:08:40]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:08:40]:
And it’s, you’ve got to be tested all the time. It’s going to cost millions.
Sam [00:08:44]:
Well, they probably got money invested in one of the companies.
Chris [00:08:47]:
Yeah. Oh yes. Trump probably owns something. And, um, You know, little things like war might get in the way. Like, you know, what are you going to do? Pack them off with a pile of bum needles so that they can carry them around in case they need them?
Sam [00:09:00]:
Maybe. I don’t know.
Chris [00:09:03]:
Anyway, that’s nuts.
Sam [00:09:05]:
I see all the comments online were saying he needs an alcohol breath test every day is what he needs from all the drinking.
Chris [00:09:11]:
Yes.
Sam [00:09:12]:
The longest surviving polio patient has just died.
Chris [00:09:17]:
Uh, okay. So we’ve, we pretty much eradicated polio. Yes. Is that, so that’s why that’s, is, is that the last?
Sam [00:09:27]:
Yeah. So she just died. She’s 78 years old and she spent 73 years in the iron lung. It’s a long time inside a machine. And she obviously got out at some point, like she got out for short periods and then went back into it.
Chris [00:09:43]:
So I think it’s. A little bit like, well, not like dialysis, but like you’ve got to be in the machine 3 times a day for a certain amount of time.
Sam [00:09:52]:
Yeah. Yeah. So she graduated with a degree in English, wrote her own memoir using voice recognition software. I think she was in there for quite a while. And the thing was the machine over time, they couldn’t find spare parts for it and things like that was the argument. And they had a spare motor, but they reckon nobody knew how to fit it, which I thought was strange. She actually came out of the, this version and tried a newer version, like a new boot one for whatever reason. And she goes, I don’t like it.
Sam [00:10:24]:
It doesn’t have enough pressure. And then she finally married, uh, her long-term friend that she met on the internet, I think it said, and she’d known him for a very long time. I don’t know, but, uh, yeah.
Chris [00:10:36]:
It makes you, it makes you appreciate the life you have.
Sam [00:10:40]:
That, yes, that’s true.
Chris [00:10:41]:
Hobbling around and everything.
Sam [00:10:42]:
That’s right. One day they’ll fix you.
Chris [00:10:45]:
One day they’ll fix me.
Sam [00:10:47]:
Um, if that’s possible.
Chris [00:10:48]:
Uh, actually on that, when you don’t know how good you’ve got it.
Sam [00:10:54]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:10:55]:
What are your thoughts on looks maxing? Or what do you know about it?
Sam [00:11:01]:
Oh, they just make themselves look better and do different things. Are we talking about the giant testicles?
Chris [00:11:06]:
No, we’re talking about the guy that just died.
Sam [00:11:08]:
Oh yeah. Wasn’t he like an influencer?
Chris [00:11:10]:
Yep.
Sam [00:11:10]:
And he did something stupid. Did he or did he not?
Chris [00:11:13]:
One of the things he was doing, apparently he’s doing a lot of things stupid by the sounds of it. He doesn’t go a lot into the details of this. I don’t think they know. Basically one of the main things, so the headline is, Luxmaxer Connor Murphy injected himself with gold to connect to higher powers.
Sam [00:11:29]:
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That seems like a good time.
Chris [00:11:31]:
It says higher powers in the headline, but in the article it says it was an attempt to Achieve superhuman strength.
Sam [00:11:39]:
I mean, that’s classic.
Chris [00:11:40]:
But he’s doing all these things. And I mean, looking at his face, like he’s got the chiseled look, it just looks deformed or alien to me. It doesn’t look Max.
Sam [00:11:51]:
No, they, they, it’s all about getting that jawline, I think, is a lot of it.
Chris [00:11:57]:
They—
Sam [00:11:57]:
‘Cause the first I heard of it was that whole chewing or that bitey thing.
Chris [00:12:01]:
Bitey thing or pushing your jaw forward or getting rid of— ’cause I looked at actually getting some of that. strong gum and, and using that.
Sam [00:12:09]:
Okay. But I don’t think a lot of these guys resort to like plastic surgery, like those freaky French twins that turned into weird puppet men.
Chris [00:12:18]:
No, no, I don’t think I have. I don’t know about that. I don’t maybe know, even know about that.
Sam [00:12:24]:
They’re like these 2 guys that were like high-end fashion models in the ’60s or ’70s, and they keep getting plastic surgery and injections and they look like puppets from Team America: World Police. But it’s body dysmorphia. They don’t think anything’s wrong with them. They think they’re great.
Chris [00:12:42]:
Yeah. And this guy was 32 and lived in Thailand, had YouTube and TikTok followers. But a recent video of him surfaced admitting he felt like he was dying every day, probably a red flag, just putting it out there. If you feel like you’re dying every day, maybe stop.
Sam [00:13:04]:
It’s weird though, eh? Like you’ve got some knowledge from whatever that you’re Googling or ChatGPT or whatever. You’ve got a million different products or items or anything you could inject into yourself. And he went with gold?
Chris [00:13:20]:
Yeah.
Speaker A [00:13:21]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:13:21]:
He started to get this fixation on gold. He started to believe that gold was some gatekept mineral by the higher-ups. Higher-ups.
Sam [00:13:29]:
Ah, he’s just nuts.
Chris [00:13:30]:
That basically gives you special powers if you ingest it. A few weeks later, he started an experiment. He was injecting gold. He was crazy. He was covered in discoloration from gold poisoning.
Sam [00:13:41]:
Did not know that was a thing.
Chris [00:13:44]:
Don’t you? He probably was turning green, you know, like when— oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m thinking of bronze, actually.
Sam [00:13:50]:
One of the most complete specimens of a Tyrannosaurus rex Ooh. Has just been sold.
Chris [00:13:56]:
Okay.
Sam [00:13:56]:
67 million years old. They named it Gus.
Chris [00:13:59]:
Of course they did.
Sam [00:14:01]:
It’s now the most expensive set of dinosaur bones ever auctioned off. They had one previously that was sold in 2020 for $32 million. This one’s better. They said it’s about 61% complete. Uh, it’s pretty massive. And they had a phone bid, Sotheby’s did. Exceptionally preserved, it looks amazing. They found it in 2021, they’ve documented it very well, and they’ve cleaned it out.
Sam [00:14:29]:
They thought it was going to fetch between $20 to $30 million. Do you want to guess how much do you reckon they got for it?
Chris [00:14:35]:
It’s like dropkick or kickstand to dropkick. Um, no, let me know.
Sam [00:14:42]:
$50.1.
Chris [00:14:43]:
Whoa.
Sam [00:14:45]:
Anonymous bidder.
Chris [00:14:46]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:14:46]:
As you do. And the scientists out there from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, which is an advocacy group of scientists and researchers and stuff, said, hey, like, this really should be put on public display. And we hope that the person, whoever it is, will do that one day.
Chris [00:15:04]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:15:04]:
Otherwise it’ll just be in their lounge.
Chris [00:15:06]:
Yeah. Pile of bones.
Sam [00:15:08]:
Yeah. Who knows? So that’s pretty cool.
Chris [00:15:10]:
I’ve got a fun one. I thought this was fun. I looked at the headline and went, nah. And then I read it. I was like, you know, I actually like this. Um, so a South Florida woman was surprised when she got her new license plate with a vehicle registration renewal and she got really upset about it.
Sam [00:15:29]:
Okay.
Chris [00:15:29]:
Um, cause the, the number plate and it’s, there’s not a, um, what do you call it? One of the ones you pick the letters or whatever. It’s a standard.
Sam [00:15:38]:
Oh, it’s like a generic one.
Chris [00:15:39]:
Generic one. Yeah. It’s not a, Personalized one. It’s not a personalized one. It’s SQZ A55, but that’s how it looks.
Sam [00:15:48]:
Oh, squeeze ass.
Chris [00:15:50]:
And she’s 77 years old.
Sam [00:15:52]:
Oh, good on her.
Chris [00:15:54]:
That’s awesome. And so she was quite upset and went ballistic, but she’s had a sort of a poll going with her kids and grandkids and 16 to 1 against. They’re like, you should keep it, Nana. So she’s thinking, She might keep it, but the Florida plate, it looks so funny because it’s, uh, the Florida has 2 oranges on it in the middle. And, and so the SQZ is spaced away from the A55. So it looks pretty personalized.
Sam [00:16:25]:
It does actually.
Chris [00:16:26]:
Anyway, I thought that was fun. Yeah.
Sam [00:16:29]:
Uh, I’ve got a kickstart or dropkick for you this week.
Speaker A [00:16:32]:
Yep.
Sam [00:16:33]:
You can have Elvis and the Last Biscuit. Or Benny?
Chris [00:16:36]:
Oh, let’s start with the obvious.
Sam [00:16:38]:
Okay. Um, so this is Elvis and the Last Biscuit. It’s a short film situation comedy.
Chris [00:16:46]:
Okay.
Sam [00:16:46]:
It’s an epic battle of one man who’s trying to resist the last biscuit. His willpower wanes as he descends into madness. Who will win? Uh, it’s an Australian comedy short film. Uh, there’s this video here of this guy talking and there’s a bunch of AI images that are sort of related to this Aussie worker dude, uh, resisting a biscuit.
Chris [00:17:10]:
And is it just a random Elvis or is it like supposed to be the Elvis?
Sam [00:17:14]:
I think it’s just a random short film. They’re hoping to make an 11-minute movie. They’re going to shoot over a weekend. It’s just like the films we make. Yeah, it’s the level of films we make and they want to cover all of this stuff. They want to bring this to life. I don’t know if these people that are doing it are even famous or anything. I think they’re just rando people that have done a Kickstarter project.
Sam [00:17:40]:
So they have got, uh, 28 days to go. They want to raise around $9,000 New Zealand dollars. And that will allow them to film everything. And I think if they make more than that, they can get into a bit of money for post-production.
Chris [00:17:57]:
Yep. Okay. Now, what are you getting for that?
Sam [00:18:01]:
Well, you’re just getting the usual stuff. So for $12 New Zealand dollars, you could get their heartfelt thanks.
Chris [00:18:07]:
Yep.
Sam [00:18:07]:
Good. Uh, for $30, we will get a 10-pack of digital pictures from behind the scenes of this film.
Chris [00:18:15]:
Yeah. And it just goes up from there and you get to, uh, none of it’s physical. It’s all digital.
Sam [00:18:21]:
Yeah. It’s like, thanks. Good on credits. Uh, $120 New Zealand dollars. You get a digital copy of the film script, uh, special funding credits. We go up to associate producer, co-executive producer, executive producer, uh, which is $900 or founding member and executive producer for $2,393. You will get an invitation to attend the shoot, IMDb credits. You get to watch the test viewing and screening.
Sam [00:18:51]:
Signed script, copy of the script, or everything else. But, you know, thanks on social media, thanks in the film, blah, blah, blah. There’s a lot.
Chris [00:19:00]:
That’s pretty good.
Sam [00:19:01]:
It’s pretty good, but it’s a random short film.
Chris [00:19:04]:
I know.
Sam [00:19:05]:
So think of you paying all of this money for something like the Challenge film.
Chris [00:19:10]:
Yeah, but usually the people that particularly go in for the bigger things, are somebody they know. And it’s just the fact that it’s on Kickstarter gives it a little bit more credibility, I think. I don’t think they’ll get a rando doing it. I think whoever gives them the bigger end anyway will be people they know.
Sam [00:19:32]:
Maybe, but like I said, I don’t know if these guys already have a following or not. It’s hard to tell. 28 days to go. They want $9,500 roughly. How much have they raised?
Chris [00:19:43]:
I reckon they’d get there.
Sam [00:19:44]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:19:45]:
I’m going to, I’m going to bet on these guys and say they’re already at $15,000.
Sam [00:19:49]:
$1,900.
Chris [00:19:51]:
Oh shit. I’m so bad at this game. I’m so bad at this game.
Sam [00:19:54]:
I like your effort. We do this a lot and once in a blue moon.
Chris [00:20:00]:
Okay.
Sam [00:20:01]:
So the next one is B-E-N-I.
Chris [00:20:04]:
B-E-N-I.
Sam [00:20:05]:
Benny. I’m calling it Benny. It’s your first all-terrain camera robot.
Chris [00:20:11]:
Okay.
Sam [00:20:12]:
Smart following, 17 miles per hour max speed, obstacle jumping up to 10 inches, auto-edited highlights, 4K imaging. It’s a 2-wheeled robot.
Chris [00:20:25]:
Oh, I see.
Sam [00:20:26]:
Um, and it can cruise along.
Chris [00:20:28]:
So the 2 wheels for those, um, listening at home are not, uh, in line like a bicycle. They are like next to each other, like a A trolley. Yeah. Yeah.
Sam [00:20:38]:
And it’s this cute little looking robot. Uh, must have gyroscopes in it. Not sure. And that’s what it is. Now, interestingly, I sort of was talking to someone at work about this and they were like, oh, I wonder if Disney will come after them. Disney has a range of bipedal things from Star Wars and it may be a toy. I’m not really sure what it was, but it looked weird. The top half of that looks similar to the top half of this thing.
Chris [00:21:04]:
When you first showed me that, I thought of it looking like something out of Star Wars, but I haven’t seen a lot of those things.
Sam [00:21:09]:
No.
Chris [00:21:10]:
Yeah, that was my first impression as well.
Sam [00:21:13]:
So the super early bird thing of this will cost you $950 for this robot. Okay, it’s out of your price range. That’s okay.
Chris [00:21:20]:
The only people I could see a use case for it is like skateboarders and stuff that are filming their, you know, the ones that maybe go down the speed things and stuff like that. That’s like the only thing I can think of. Um, or they’d race, um, robot cars and stuff and they want something following it and getting—
Sam [00:21:38]:
Yeah. I don’t know who the actual audience is for this.
Chris [00:21:41]:
It’s like, I’m just struggling to figure out.
Sam [00:21:42]:
Because you’re putting a lot of faith into this thing, which—
Chris [00:21:46]:
And I mean, it’s close to the ground. It’s not like it’s filming at 5 foot high. It’s filming at, we’ll say at 6 inches.
Sam [00:21:52]:
Yeah. And it can jump small obstacles. Cool. Okay. $950 gets you the basic, the entry-level model or entry-level tier. 52 days to go. They want to raise $85,000 New Zealand dollars until this becomes a thing. So I think this has only been going for about 8 days.
Sam [00:22:13]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:22:14]:
So it’s brand new. I think it’s got bugger all at the moment. It might have $2,000 or $3,000. Um, and I don’t think it’s going to make it. Okay.
Sam [00:22:23]:
So $85,000 is what they need. They’ve raised $3 million.
Chris [00:22:27]:
Jeez, I hate this game. There’s no way. No way.
Sam [00:22:32]:
People want it, but yet again, I don’t know if they’ve got a following. I don’t know if they’ve done something in the past.
Chris [00:22:38]:
$3 million. Goddamn it. Okay, I got some good news.
Sam [00:22:45]:
Good.
Chris [00:22:45]:
I think it’s good news.
Sam [00:22:46]:
Oh, okay.
Chris [00:22:46]:
Have you heard of Claude Core? Claude Corps?
Sam [00:22:50]:
No.
Chris [00:22:50]:
I’m not surprised. Most AI tech companies want to sell the tools and then they just leave you to it, right?
Sam [00:22:56]:
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Chris [00:22:57]:
OpenAI and Anthropic. So Anthropic’s put this program together and they’re calling it Claude Corps. Claude Corps. Corps, C-O-R-P-S.
Sam [00:23:08]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:23:09]:
It’s a $150 million national fellowship program.
Sam [00:23:13]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:23:14]:
And they’re placing 1,000 early career professionals. So they’ve got to be, it says there somewhere, but I think it’s under 19 or 20 or something like that. In US nonprofits for 1 year. So we’re going to get you a job in a nonprofit for 1 year. We’re going to pay you $85,000 salary with full benefits to build and teach AI systems. So the program requires no degrees. It’s open to anyone with under 2 years of work experience.
Sam [00:23:46]:
Okay.
Chris [00:23:46]:
So it’s, it’s like an intern program. Yeah. Yeah.
Sam [00:23:49]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:23:49]:
Uh, and requires in-person commitment. You’ve got to work at the nonprofit. You’re not like, you know, so, uh, the key program details, uh, fellows received $85,000 annual salary, full benefits and relocation support if they’re moving over 100 miles from home. Duration and commitment, 12 months full-time in-person at the host nonprofit. Candidates must be 18 or older with less than 2 years of full-time professional experience and authorized to work in the US, so you’ve got to be in the US. And there’s a bunch of other things, but basically they’ve got to complete Anthropic’s free Claude 101 and AI Fluency courses before applying. So they’re the basic thing for Claude. Yeah.
Sam [00:24:35]:
Okay.
Chris [00:24:35]:
And then they do a bunch of training before they put them in the nonprofit. They do a whole bunch of full-time training. And I think one week of the month they do training with Anthropic, which might be remote, um, on the AI stuff. So the idea is these guys are interning for a nonprofit for a year, and by the end of that year, they’ve got a whole bunch of skills. So it’s taking over the whole, um, intern thing. I think a great, great idea.
Sam [00:25:03]:
Why wouldn’t you do it if you met the criteria?
Chris [00:25:06]:
Oh, hell yeah.
Sam [00:25:06]:
Like, I mean, AI might just die and everything blows up and, you know, everything fails, uh, because they’re bleeding money and can’t keep up with it.
Chris [00:25:13]:
But it’s no different from any other job. Yeah, exactly.
Sam [00:25:16]:
Yeah, that’s pretty cool. It’s only a 12-month commitment.
Chris [00:25:18]:
Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s a brilliant idea. And that’s the first AI tech company that have thought about the marketplace rather than, like, rather than just sell the tools.
Sam [00:25:30]:
Okay.
Chris [00:25:31]:
Echo sphere around the—
Sam [00:25:33]:
I will say it’s an interesting idea because they didn’t have to do that. They could have easily just gone, hey, we’ll give you some free credit, free credits for the thing. Or almost like a competition where it says, if you help out a not-for-profit, we’ll give you some money. Like it’s $85K. It’s a lot of money.
Chris [00:25:51]:
$150 million they’re spending on it. And that includes, they do get cheaper or more tokens or whatever it is for the nonprofit as well. Like it includes a bunch of—
Sam [00:26:01]:
I don’t know. Like, yeah. Okay. It seems pretty cool for everyone involved.
Chris [00:26:05]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:26:05]:
Yeah.
Chris [00:26:06]:
So, um, yeah, I mean, good on you, Anthropic.
Sam [00:26:09]:
Yeah. Whoever came up with that and everyone agreed on it.
Chris [00:26:12]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:26:13]:
Excellent. Uh, that almost brings us to the end of the podcast.
Chris [00:26:16]:
All right.
Sam [00:26:16]:
TCast.com. That’s where you find us. It’s our little place of the internet that’s our own. We’re sometimes on Instagram. We’re sometimes on TikTok, if I remember. Facebook, normally there lurking, and LinkedIn.
Chris [00:26:29]:
Yeah.
Sam [00:26:29]:
Um, have you seen the LinkedIn Lunatics subreddit?
Chris [00:26:32]:
No.
Sam [00:26:32]:
Oh, it’s so good. It’s, it’s people posting some of the batshit things that these people on LinkedIn post. That’s so good.
Chris [00:26:40]:
Okay. I’m going to look that up now. Uh, no, that’s cool. Um, so you’re going to finish it off? You got something there?
Sam [00:26:46]:
No, that’s it. Uh, until next week, I’m Sam.
Chris [00:26:50]:
I’m Chris.
Sam [00:26:50]:
See ya. Bye.
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