This is Julio's Corner, my corner of the internet, where I talk about whatever is on my mind.

This will basically be my audio diary, where I'll dump my thoughts into the ether for anyone to hear.

I'll mostly talk about stuff I've watched, read, or listened to, but I may get introspective at times and reflect on my life or on society at large.

This episode's being recorded on Sunday, May 4th, may the 4th be with you, 2025.

So, here we are, Episode 1 of a second take, I guess, 2.0, so to speak.

For those of you who've never heard my podcast, which doesn't exist anymore, who am I?

I am a New Yorker living in New York.

My name is Julio, Julio's Corner, hence the name.

I am a bit of an aberration, I want to say.

And the reason I say that is because as you people may be aware, you internet savvy, leftist, leaning, maybe some right leaning people know, I am an anomaly because, you know, it's 2025, so five years since COVID.

We live in a world where isolation has become almost a norm in society.

Most people are disconnected.

Most people, a lot of people are isolated.

This has led to our current state of affairs where right leaning propaganda has escalated and has won over many people.

And currently that is the way of thinking that is currently running our country, and it's becoming a lot more fascistic.

And, you know, taking inspiration from the past of Germany from World War II and so on.

Anyways, that being the case, I myself am a single man, isolated, disenfranchised, struggling to make ends meet, working a dead-end job with no real, well, no upward mobility whatsoever.

No health benefits in my job, no paid leave.

I work an overnight shift, so I don't even have a social life because I work like, I work vampire hours.

I work when everyone is sleeping, and I am asleep when everyone else is awake.

So, that is a perfect formula for getting red-pilled and becoming an incel and being a man-hating, self-entitled, right-wing mob mentality archetype.

And yet, that is not the case here.

I am very still much left-leaning.

I take my cues from The Majority Report and clips from Hassan Piker and this new person, well, new to me, denim jeans or just denims, and other stuff that pops up on my YouTube feed.

Also, what I think helps is that I don't have social media.

I don't have, I'm not on any social networks.

The only social media I use, as I already mentioned, is YouTube, that's it.

I only use YouTube.

I don't even have a Reddit account anymore.

So YouTube is the only social media platform that I'm on.

And so I am completely cut off from the interwebs who like to chatter in said networks that I'm not a part of.

And I mostly, when not watching YouTube videos, I pretty much consume content.

You know, I read books, I watch shows or movies, and I listen to podcasts or music.

So anyways, that's, I think not being connected, not being, basically being off the grid has helped keeping me isolated from being red-pilled.

But also, I mean, my brain or my mental faculties don't lend itself to being red-pilled because I'm also a bit of a critical thinker.

I've always been a critical thinker.

I'm an atheist.

I, you know, my high school, high school education was through a Jesuit, all-men's high school.

So even though you would think all-men's high school Catholic and forced would be enough to, would be a great formula for indoctrination because it's Jesuits that were running it.

One funny thing about the Jesuits is they teach critical thinking, and they make you question stuff, though they still are a little bit dogma minded when it comes to anything regarding the church, of course.

But that aside, they still teach you to, you know, question things.

They had, they allowed us to read Nietzsche and the Koran, you know, samples from the Koran and other philosophies, Lao Tzu, Taoism and so on.

So anyway, also, when I was in high school, Galileo was finally, I don't know if he was pardoned or he was recognized as being correct by the Catholic Church.

He was correct in saying that the earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around, which everyone else in the world already knew because science.

But the Catholic Church was still living in, you know, pre-science times thinking that everything revolved around the sun.

And that's why Galileo was in their house arrest until he died.

And they didn't acknowledge that he was right until the 90s, 1990s, 91, I want to say, 1991, 92, around that time.

So, I mean, this is many, many centuries later after his death.

So things like that contradicting the church and so on, made me question religion and so on, bringing me to eventually become an atheist and so on.

So because of those, that part of my nurturing, it's kind of hard for me to get red-pilled, just because I'm always questioning those, that line of thinking.

And I listen to Majority Report and other left-leaning shows, which just make sense to me and therefore keeps me, keeps my defenses up, so to speak.

So anyways, enough about myself.

What else?

So why am I here?

Why am I making a podcast again?

Though it might be the first time for you people, because none of my stuff is really out there anymore.

Before I get there, one last thing I want to say.

Why did I stop?

Let's go with that first.

Why did I stop my previous attempts?

Number one, time constraints.

And just being a person with perfectionistic tendencies and always being over critical of myself.

It kind of killed the fun for me, the joy of podcasting.

And so that was part of the reason that I stopped.

Also, I was paying a hosting company to do my show.

And as I mentioned, I work to just scrape by.

So budgetary constraints didn't allow for me to continue funding my podcasting endeavors.

So yeah, that's why I stopped again last year.

So anyway, so why am I back?

The reason I'm back is it's the only creative outlet that I still feel drawn to.

I love talking on a microphone.

I like hearing how I sound on a microphone.

I like the whole process of recording and doing some, in this case, I will be doing minor editings and just putting it out there.

It's also a bit therapeutic to me.

Just getting all these thoughts out of my head because I have no one to talk to.

So this is my way of just letting out my frustrations and just my thoughts in general and my ramblings and just get it out of me to let in more such things populate my brain.

So yeah, that's where I get the therapeutic and just the whole process of it.

It's kind of relaxing.

It's kind of meditative.

Now what about the cost of doing a podcast?

Well, there is a free way of doing it.

I am going to be using wordpress.com, which is a free web blogging website that I can use to post my episodes.

And I'll be using the archive.org website to upload my files and then use that as the point of, you know, the point of contact for the MP3 file to have my podcast out and available through the RSS feed of my WordPress website.

Now, what am I going to do different on top of doing, you know, getting it up there and podcasting?

Well, as I said, I was a perfectionist before, so I also was frustrating getting over analytical and over critical about, you know, how can I push this?

How can I make it grow?

How can I make it a possible career?

What SEO tactics do I need to do to drive traffic?

What kind of perfect tagline should I do?

The title, YouTube, thumbnail sketches, et cetera, et cetera.

I'm not going to really do any of that anymore.

I'm just not going to sweat it.

This is just for me.

If people find it and listen to it, great.

And they want to share it with others, fine.

And then if it grows organically by itself without any help for me, because again, I'm not on any social networks, so I won't be able to really promote it anywhere.

Great.

Fine.

Otherwise, I'll just record and post.

It won't cost me anything other than my electric bill maybe a little bit.

And that's it.

And I'm not going to think about what niche target audience or niche demographic I should cater my podcast for.

I'm not going to do any of that.

My podcast is just going to be me talking about whatever is on my mind at whatever point in time.

If it's strictly media content heavy, then that episode will be media content heavy.

If it will be something political, it will be political.

If it's a combination of the two, fine.

If it's just me being introspective, okay, that's it.

There's not going to be a single lane that I'm going to be concentrating on with this podcast.

It's just going to be whatever I feel like talking about.

And as I mentioned, so I will also put it on YouTube.

Maybe that will be the one place where maybe I'll get some aggregate views or whatever.

But it's an audio show.

So I'm not recording myself on camera.

It's just going to be an audio file on YouTube with maybe some cheap moving graphics.

So if anyone's willing to listen to it there, fine.

If not, whatever.

Won't be anything for me to worry about because I'm not taking it that seriously.

Anyways, now that we've got all that out the way, let's talk about some some media stuff.

So I just finished watching a show called Grimm.

This show was on NBC in the early 2000s, well, maybe mid 2000s.

And I was always interested about it.

I was always interested and curious about it, but I never watched it.

And then, lo and behold, it was available on Amazon Prime.

So I started watching it there.

So yeah, the premise of the show is that the main guy, Nick Burkhart, he is descendant from the famous Grimm family that wrote the, you know, the Grimm tales.

And apparently, in this universe, these tales that they wrote, albeit, I guess, to help fund, I guess they made these stories, these children's stories, to fund their actual career, which was that of being hunters of said creatures of the night.

And these creatures in this show, they're called Vessen, W-E-S-N.

E-S-E-N, I should say, W-E-S-E-N.

It's pronounced Vessen because the W sounds like a V in German.

And Grimm's are the only people that can spot a Vessen in human civilization.

Because apparently, when Vessen have an emotional tick or outburst, they have this thing called, what they call voguing, W-O-G-E, where their inner self, creature self shows.

But it only shows to a Grimm, only a Grimm can catch it.

So they're able to, I guess, read their body language in a way that normal humans cannot, unless the Vessen goes full Vogue mode in which they want to reveal themselves and show out their fur and face and whatever.

So that's the basic premise of the show.

You know, his aunt comes to visits, you know, unexpected visit, because she's dying of cancer.

She only has a few days left to live.

And Nick Burkhart, at the same time, is starting to, all of a sudden, his Grimm powers are starting to awaken in him, because all this time he was never able to spot Vessen before.

He was just a normal human like the rest of us, until I guess his aunt was dying.

So because she was dying, he all of a sudden, his powers were not being activated.

And so she was revealing the Grimm legacy to him and her trailer, he left her trailer, she left her trailer with him so that he can carry on the Grimm legacy.

And she also told him to break up with his girlfriend, because this is a life of solidarity, because you're going to, you know, of being a loner, because of your abilities and, you know, no one is going to really understand what you do and why you do it, because you're the only one who can see the Vessin.

You're, you have to live a life of solitude.

And so you have to break it up with her, just for, you know, for, if anything, for her own safety, as well as yours, because she would also be a point of weakness, a point of vulnerability.

But of course, he doesn't.

And I guess I can say spoiler, even though the show ended in 2017, so you had plenty of time to catch this.

But he never breaks up with her.

And she obviously eventually gets affected by this life that he lives.

And because of it, you know, they eventually break up.

She turned evil for a moment in time, but then she had a moment of redemption.

And ironically, the first Vesson that Nick saw, which was a witch, which they call Hexenbeast, Adeline Shade, who was his first enemy, ends up being his lover at the end of the show, whereas his lover, at the very least, ends up being an ally.

So, that's ironic.

So yeah, overall, I think the show was really good.

The sixth season was a truncated show of only 13 episodes.

I guess they weren't given a full season to finish, but according to the writers in an interview that I read, they were okay with that because they were running out of ideas, and so they wrapped it up.

But watching the show, as I did, all in one shot, it felt rushed, it felt truncated.

The last two episodes especially, they were just wrapping a bunch of storylines.

And like the previous season, there was this big evil organization known as Black Claw that was running the world.

And that easily, they didn't finish them off in one season.

In season 5, that organization wiped out this other organization that Nick was helping to try to thwart them.

And yet, in the second to last episode, this other Grimm that he discovered in season 4 or whatever, Alex Trouble was like, when she came back to help him fight this final boss in the last two episodes, he was like, what's going on with Black Claw?

He's like, oh yeah, we just finished them off.

It was just an off-handed comment.

This organization that was a season long arc in season 5 and part of season 6 just disappeared with basically a wave of the hand because they have this new bad guy for the final two episodes of the show.

So yeah, there was a lot of, because of things like that, there was some inconsistencies in character work and plot points and what have you.

And especially the last two episodes, it got really, it was really hard to suspend my belief in some of the things that happened at the end.

They really were just, there was no more, because the first few, the first four to five seasons, there was definitely a little more consistency with the laws of the world, the laws of nature of the world.

As supernatural as it was, there was a consistency in cause and effect.

But the final two episodes pretty much stood that all out the window, and it was all deus ex machina type of hijinks that would bring the momentum to the bad guys and then bring the momentum back to the hero at the end.

And especially because, as I mentioned, the first episode starts with Nick just getting his powers as a Grimm, because his aunt was dying.

But then later on, in retrospect, later on, you find out that his...

Because he thought his mother died when he was 12, but eventually she shows up again in season three or so, or the ending of season two, I forget.

So that begs the question, well, hold on a second.

If he was just getting his powers because his aunt was dying, making him the last Grimm, how was his mother a Grimm?

Because that would mean that both the mother and aunt were both Grimms at the same time.

But the first episode, you are making it seem like there's always just one Grimm at a time.

So they don't ever explain that.

They don't ever explain that.

And then of course, Alex Trouble shows up, her character.

But again, in her case, she was an orphan.

So it makes sense in her case, because everyone from her family line, so to speak, was killed off since she was an orphan from the beginning.

So it made sense that she had her powers, her Grimm powers activated at an early age, since she had no one in her side of the family alive, while she was going through the whole foster care program, and being told that she was crazy for seeing these things that no one was seeing.

So there's that contradiction, the whole Black Claw disappearing out of nowhere, even though they apparently were ruling the whole world.

And a couple of other things.

Oh yeah, the very end made no sense.

He was...

The bad guy was just killing off everybody.

And Nick just couldn't get a punch in their fights.

He was always getting blown away.

But then in the end, towards the end, when he discovered...

Well, the spirit of his mother and aunt showed up telling him that you are the, you know, the destined hero, so to speak.

That his blood makes him the only one that can defeat this ultimate evil.

He just has to believe in himself, which he thought he could be the creature in the beginning.

So it makes no sense that now, with everyone killed off and the spirits telling him, no, just believe in yourself, all of a sudden now he can fight toe to toe with this guy and then eventually defeat him.

So there was that.

And then of course, and then they just fast forwarded 20 years later and the children finished the narration of the show.

So that's how that show went.

So it was, it was a fun show about, you know, werewolves.

Well, what they called them, Blood and Blocks and witches, which they call Hexenbeasts and other things, other creatures of the night.

So all in all, it was a fun show, but this just shows the weakness of Western television, American television in that, because they don't always write the show with an ultimate game plan.

They write for the season with some opening for a possible next season, and then if they get picked up, then they'll continue from that point on.

So with that kind of writing style, you may come to this inconsistency throughout the show and to the eventual ending, they just had to rush the ending.

Whereas K-dramas, because it's a one-season show, the ones I've seen anyway, and they're generally 12 to 15 episodes, generally, there is a beginning, middle, and end.

Like the writers of a K-drama know the pace of the show, and so they write it for that allotment of episodes.

And so you get a complete story that's consistent throughout, for the most part, you know, there's some bad ones out there, obviously.

But the ones that are good are amazing, because there's no inconsistency, because they already have it all mapped out.

Whereas a show like Grimm, they had a great premise, and they were just writing to the premise, and most of the show was episodic, with some, you know, little kernels of stuff, of plot points sprinkled through each episode to try to give you that season arc.

And then eventually other seasons eventually became more of a seasonal arc versus just episodic.

And then you had the final 13 episode season, six season that try to wrap everything up in a way that wasn't quite consistent, but whatever, it got the job done.

So finishing that show, I have a couple other shows that are in the queue that I'm in the middle of.

Orphan Black is one.

I have two more seasons of that.

I have a K-drama that I'm in the middle of that's still in simulcast.

So I like to collect all the episodes and then watch it in full.

And then there's also Scandal, which I'm on the last season.

I've been having watched it for a few.

I've been putting it on the back burner for a couple of months because, you know, binging the first five was a bit intense and I needed a breather.

And now I'm and this is my fault because generally when I take a breather, it's usually hard for me to get back to the show.

And so that's adding to my reluctance to get back to it because I'm my interests have since moved to other and better, you know, bigger and better things, so to speak.

So anyway, finishing Grimm, I have a few hours left on my shift and I decided to get a palate cleanser.

So let me just watch a movie because that's a one shot and it's a two hour affair and that's it.

So I decided to rewatch Robocop and how apropos of watching this movie, which is a satire.

Some might say dark comedy.

Others definitely would call it an action film.

Definitely science fiction.

It's set in the far future.

It's set in Detroit.

I forget the year.

I wasn't paying attention to the details there, but this movie came out in 1987 and I say it's very apropos because it's a movie about a dystopian future where capitalism has gotten to the point where they're now deciding to commoditize social programs.

Like, well, in this case, the police.

And it's very apropos because that is currently the agenda of the US government right now.

Doge, with the help of Elon Musk's Doge, which was an illegal agency because it wasn't elected by the people.

It wasn't created by the Congress.

It was just something this private...

I'm not even sure if he's a citizen yet.

Elon Musk, a South African who helped pay for the president's funding to get elected was given the keys to the kingdom to create this agency to disrupt a lot of programs.

And so he cut funding in NASA.

He cut funding in the Board of Education.

He cut funding in Social Security, I think he went into, the IRS, of course, the organizations that were affecting him personally in terms of his companies, agencies that were looking at antitrust laws and workers' rights and things of that nature, monopoly laws, things like that, antitrust laws, that's what they're called.

So yeah, he affected a lot of agencies that were important to the welfare of society.

And you know, their agenda is to privatize all of this.

They want to privatize health care.

They want to privatize US mail.

They want to privatize NASA.

Everything is all for corporate profits.

And so this movie, in this case, in this situation, the police of Detroit, the whole police department, is being controlled by, is being run by this private company.

I believe they're called OCP.

I forget the name.

And so they're cutting down, you know, for efficiency, quote unquote.

They're cutting down precincts here and there, and they're merging some.

And cops don't have unions here.

But because of these, you know, the layoffs and cuts, and the rising over time hours of the remaining officers, and the uptick in crime, killing a lot of officers on the job, the police officers are getting, they're scruntled, and they're thinking about striking.

And they're not, because corporations control the media and stuff, they don't necessarily paint the police in a good light.

And so, the citizenry are like, why the hell are they thinking about striking?

They got solid jobs, like they're taking care of, not knowing the situation about them being privatized, which is the irony of that whole idea, because the reality in the movie is that they don't have a secure job, because they're getting cuts for efficiencies and making other people overwork and so on.

So, this company that runs the police department are thinking of getting a, are trying to automate the police department, which is what is actually happening in our country right now.

They're trying to automate, they're trying to, you know, one of the promises that Trump made is that he's going to bring back, you know, factory jobs to the states, to make up for all the jobs that have been lost over the decades.

And that's why he's doing all these tariffs or whatever.

But really, these jobs that are going to come back are going to be jobs with, well, the thinking right now of the companies that are going to bring back quote unquote jobs are going to be jobs that are going to be taken care of by robots.

So it's going to be automated jobs.

So really, we're not getting any jobs at all.

There's going to be American manufacturing.

Yeah, there might be an uptick in American manufacturing, but that's not going to be an uptick in job openings because those jobs that are coming here are going to be run by robots.

So there's going to maybe be a few positions open to service the robots that are going to be doing the bulk of the work.

But anyway, back to the movie.

So yeah, the company, which is thinking of, you know, eliminating crime by, you know, by taking the business approach of efficiency.

There's two departments that are at odds with each other.

One department that's currently run by, like, the second most powerful person in the company.

He has these robots that he's trying to get into circulation.

But these robots are not really, you know, they're not, they didn't pass all the tests of, what's the word I'm looking for?

They're not, they're not, the compliances, they're not passing all the tests of compliance, because he tried to do, they did a demo at the board meeting, and eventually someone got, in the demo, someone got killed, because the robot told the guy to, because they're supposed to be able, to detect a threat to, you know, humans, and neutralize it.

So, you know, they gave the guy the gun, so he can aim it at somebody to simulate that he's going to kill someone.

The robot detected it, told him to drop the gun, you have 20 seconds to comply.

He immediately drops the gun, but the robot keeps counting down, you have 15 seconds to comply, you have 10 seconds to comply, because he, for some reason, because the problem with this robot, as I said, it didn't pass all compliances, it does not detect when the perpetrator that they're targeting is complying.

For whatever reason, it doesn't ever detect that they've surrendered and are ready to just be arrested.

So then he just proceeds to count down and then just completely decimates him with bullets.

So obviously, this machine is not ready for full operation.

But the guy whose department made this, he doesn't care that he hasn't passed all compliance tests and it's ready to go.

He just wants to put it out there because he's going to get some army contracts.

He's thinking about the money end of the bottom line, which is I have all these military contracts and so on, so who the hell cares that it doesn't work as it's supposed to.

The point is I got this business ready to go up and running, so let's just launch it.

We'll worry about the details later, which is kind of what's happening right now in this country with planes dropping from the sky because they're not being fully vetted for flaws, and so planes are crashing and so on.

But anyways, let me stick to the movie.

So anyway, this other guy in the company who has been trying to undercut the second in command, he steps in and he's like, oh no, this is my issue with his program.

I've been telling Mr.

Jones, I think, I believe his name was, I've been telling Mr.

Jones that his project was not ready for public consumption yet and my program is definitely, it will not only be better, but I can get it up and running in three months.

And his program is Robocop.

So the CEO of the company is like, okay, I'm going to give you a chance, go ahead and get me my Robocop.

So in comes, we go from the corporation that's running the police to this rundown police department in Detroit that this cop Murphy gets transferred to.

And he gets introduced to his new partner, and they immediately get called out to stop these criminals that are known cop killers.

And so, they follow them to their warehouse, to this mill factory, and they ask for backup, but they're being told that backup won't be there for another 10 minutes or so, even though, because these cop departments are not being, these precincts are not being run effectively because of all the mergers and what have you that are happening in the background by the private company.

So, rather than just wait it out for backup, these Murphy's partner tells them, let's just go in.

And of course, you know, two on five is not a winning combination, but whatever, this is a movie.

We're trying to get to the Robocop, so they both go in.

She gets knocked out.

He gets annihilated, almost killed.

He's half dead.

He gets brought in.

Secretly, well, he gets brought to the hospital, but then they move him to another place or whatever.

They declare him dead because he signed off on a contract, on his, I guess, employment contract.

There was a form that basically gave the private company ownership of his body, gave consent to give up his body for research purposes or whatever, if such an instance came about.

And here we are.

Guy is pretty much a bloody mess.

And so they decide to take his body for the Robocop project.

And they declare him dead to the world because no one's going to be able to see his face under the visor.

And they'll just make him a product.

He's no longer a human.

He's a product.

Got to love capitalism.

So anyways, they reformat his brain, so to speak, and they input their bios into him, and they give him a new...

They cut off his one good arm because his other arm was blown to bits.

So they decide, no, we want all his limbs to be prosthetic.

We don't want anything human that doesn't have to be.

So get rid of that other arm.

We're going to have both robot arms, both robot legs, mostly robot torso and so on.

And out comes your Robocop and he is in fact better than, I think that the machine, the robot was called ED-209 or something.

But anyways, fun movie.

It was as good as I remembered it when I first watched it back in the 80s.

And I just, as I mentioned, I love how apropos watching this movie was for me.

It was very reflective of today.

And how callous and profit-driven these companies are in the movie and how cut off from empathy the corporate executives are in seeing everyone as a commodity or as a product.

As I mentioned, Murphy, they just decided, well, he signed off on this contract.

You know, they put this hidden contract in his employment papers so that they can just decide, okay, you know, we need your body for research, quote unquote, purposes, and we're going to make you into this Robocop, and now you're not a human anymore.

You are our product.

You're our research and development for a new line of cops that we're making to fight crime.

And what was funny was there was this other, I mean, it wasn't really a big part of the plot, but it was just another example of how the director of the movie, I forget his name, actually I have the IMDb here, Paul Verhoeven.

So another minutiae information, you know, detail that he added, that's like, it's a nice, you know, chef's kiss, so to speak, was that there's this popular car in the movie called the SUX 6000, which, you know, SUX spells sucks.

And it's a gas guzzler, it only runs, it's a completely inefficient gas guzzling, eight mile per gallon automobile.

But everyone loves it for that, exactly for that reason, which is just a nice, satirical reflection on human, on American consumer society, our whole consumer driven, you know, society, and how we see everything in the world.

Because we have nothing else to look forward to.

We can't really be empathetic because we're all busy struggling to get by.

Crime is on the rise because there's no living wage in this world.

So, most people are committing crime and are drawn to crime if they're not cops or the corporate executives, you know, the very few at the top that are just profiting from the suffering of everyone else around them.

And so, yeah, it was kind of a nice, satirical outlook into society today for me.

And I enjoyed rewatching it and catching those nuances that I didn't catch on my first watch because I was like a kid at the time, or a teenager.

I don't think I watched it exactly in 1987.

I think I read the webcomic at that time, and then I watched it maybe five years later.

So I was like 12 or something when I actually did see it on tape.

But yeah, it was a nice reflection of the world today.

And so that's all I have for this episode.

I went long for me.

But it's the first episode, so we needed to get a lot of cross.

And so let's get to the outro here.

So as I mentioned, this wraps up the show.

If you have any questions, comments, or any thoughts you'd like to share, you can reach me by the contact form on my website or click on the contact me link in the show notes.

If you're feeling extra generous, you can click the donate link in the show notes and send me some dollars my way.

This show is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

What this means is you can share the audio, remix it, do whatever you want with it.

Just say where you got it from.

And as always, thank you for listening.