Julio's Corner

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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 is being recorded on Monday, May 19th, 2025.

It's been a while since the last episode.

May 4th, May the 4th be with you, to be exact, was the last episode.

And yeah, there's no real excuse for the delay, just life, life happens.

And I just wasn't in the mood to do it the previous weekend.

And I was almost not in the mood to do it this weekend either, but I decided to push myself and get it done, especially since I am trying not to be a perfectionist when it comes to editing.

And I think I did a decent job of that with the last episode.

Though I must say that I still did some editing.

Well, I did say I was going to do some, so I did.

And there were some gaffas, so to speak, that I had to fix in post, which I will try to minimize this time around.

So anyways, as I mentioned, life has happened.

And when I say life, it's not really like my personal life as much, because my personal life is pretty mundane.

It's very by the book, with the only exception being that my hours are unusual.

So like I mentioned, I have a 9 to 5 job, but I don't work 9 to 5.

I work 11 p.m.

to 7 a.m.

So that part is unusual.

I work at night and I sleep in the daytime.

When people are working, I'm sleeping.

When people are sleeping, I'm working.

So, other than that little oddity with my everyday life, I still have the weekends off.

And outside of work, I do chores, I do errands, I watch stuff, I read stuff, I listen to stuff.

And because of my odd hours, I don't really socialize because there's no one to socialize at this time.

So, you know, some messaging here and there is the extent of my social life.

Outside of messaging, I don't have one.

So, other than that, I have the news that I voluntarily endure, and then, of course, new stories that just slip in through the cracks, despite my filter system.

So, anyways, this administration, the Trump administration, were in May, he got into office January 20-something, so it's roughly four months in to this four-year term.

Some people are being optimistic that he might not do the full four years.

I am very doubtful about that.

But, the term aside, it's only been, as I said, four months.

And life has become quite miserable here in the US of A.

My life hasn't really, as I said, my personal life hasn't really changed all that much.

So, there's not much deviation in that sense.

But, I still am, part, I am still sort of suffering because of what I hear, and just the intangible anxieties that this administration has caused around me and to me.

For instance, because my hours are odd, and I don't have a social life because of it, I would like to get another job.

I would like to get a job with regular hours, regular morning hours.

Like most folk.

And I've been in this job, my current one, for roughly almost three years now.

And I haven't been able to find anything.

I've been struggling to find any replies to my job post, to my applications for jobs in different fields of industry.

And ironically, or maybe not so ironically, but my age is a detriment to me, because I'm an older individual, as I've mentioned in the past.

I'm in my 40s, 48.

And employers, this is now an employer's market, especially with...

So yeah, so this is how Trump's administration has been affecting me.

He, you know, there's these tariffs that he has bombarded our country with, which has caused issues with the import, you know, importing of goods and services, which is therefore has caused companies in the workforce to tighten their belts and put a job freeze in some cases.

In other cases, it's called layoffs, which just puts in more people into the, into the line applying for jobs.

Then you have all these doge cuts to a lot of public offices.

So a lot of government jobs have been slashed.

So that's another funnel of bodies that now have to find work in the private sector.

And so, yeah, so that's so now there's more people applying to the same limited jobs with crap pay, because, hey, you all guys are looking for work.

So the leverage is on our side, the employer, so we can charge, we can, we can give you shit for labor, and you're going to have to just bear and grin it.

And with that, my age is also a negative factor.

Because they can not be more picky about who they hire, employers are going to be looking for cheap labor, right?

They always look for cheaper labor.

And what's legally cheap here would be, you know, younger folk in this case.

So they're going to get, they're going to look more for people who are just getting out of college, or within, you know, I guess a five year, four year, three year window of that age group.

So like, we're looking at 22 to 26, more or less.

Which puts me in the age demographic that's 20 years above that.

So, yeah, that's going to make it hard.

Because even though I'm willing to apply for entry level positions, they're going to look at my age, and they're going to think, oh, this guy doesn't want to work for this amount of money.

Look at his resume.

He's done all these different jobs in all these different fields.

So, he has all this experience.

So, he's going to expect, you know, some level of validation or whatever and a much more stable, secure kind of job.

And we don't want to deal with that.

We'd rather get this young buck here who's green, who's, you know, still filled with optimism and believes in the American dream, not this jaded old F, who has seen things and knows better and is not easily bought into the Kool-Aid that we're dishing out to people.

But regardless, I mean, I'm desperate for work because maybe not as desperate as an unemployed person because I currently have a job, but I'm relatively desperate in that I would like to get a job with regular hours.

So anyways, my age is a factor against me.

As I mentioned, I also have a varied work history.

So again, that's another factor that goes against me because on one hand, they can be like, this guy has been everywhere.

Like he doesn't have any specialization, which I mean, I'm looking for a non skilled job anyway.

I mean, office work, customer service, retail, administrative, any of these things I'm willing to do.

But you know, most of the jobs might want to be, they'd rather have someone with a clean slate so we can train them.

And I'm willing to do training, but again, they might look at my age and be like, oh, he's too old to learn things, which I am not, that is not the case with me, but whatever.

It's a stigmatism to older folk.

So there's that factor.

And then there's of course the factor of what hasn't this person specialized in a certain field specifically so he can only stick to that field.

And I haven't.

I've jumped everywhere.

I've done insurance, I've done mortgages, I've worked for the Department of State, I've done customer service, I've done retail, I've done tech support, you know, I've done a lot of different things.

So that's a factor.

So all these, you know, that's just making things harder for me to find a job.

It's also making employers the leverage to be a lot more discerning of who they want to hire, who they feel is the right candidate.

A lot of these companies, they use AI to funnel applicants to, you know, the yes list and the no list, and my resume might not meet the current standards that AI will pick as a valid resume or whatever.

And on top of that, the few jobs that I actually quote unquote got responses for have all been multilevel marketing schemes.

So now you also, so on the fact, on the top of me trying to find a legitimate job, and having all this competition against me, with my age being a factor, with my varied history being a factor, with my various work experience, my very, what's the word I'm looking for?

Layered work experience.

With all those factors, putting me in a situation where I might not necessarily be a highly sought candidate, because employers can take advantage of the current market to go for people with greener...

Oh, and I don't have a degree.

So they can immediately disqualify me, because I don't have a college bachelor's or associate's degree, because I never got to graduate, because of finances.

So because I don't have certifications, and I don't have a degree, that's another thing that could be another factor against me.

Which is why I look for unskilled jobs, but the current market being what it is, I'm not the only one.

So there's all of that.

And on top of that, now there's also scams.

There's people that are...

There's predators out there that are trying to take advantage of the desperation of people looking for work.

Thankfully, I have a job, so my level of desperation isn't as extreme as others who currently don't have work.

Had this been three and a half years ago, I might have been fallen.

I would have been in a more ideal situation for these predators.

So I've had a couple of multi-level marketing companies call me out, but with very ambiguous job descriptions and weird video interviews where they didn't really even ask me any questions.

They gave sort of a ambiguous presentation about what they represented and so on.

So I had to do extra research onto them.

And then I found stuff about said employers and what they were.

They were predator employers.

They were multi-level marketing schemes.

They didn't pay wage.

They weren't wage earners.

They weren't a W-2 employment.

You had to, you know, it was, they were scammed, you know, it was pyramid schemes and what have you.

And then there was another job that reached me via text, which, because of my weird hours, I was actually a lot more susceptible to, and I almost completely fell for it because it was a work-at-home position.

They were reaching me via email and via text, which, you know, given my hours, as I mentioned, I work at night and I sleep in the daytime, this was like a dream come true because, hey, I'm definitely much more accessible through email and through messaging, and I don't have to worry about dealing with you on the phone because, you know, when I'm available, you're not, and so forth.

And then we, and so it looked like things were going well.

But then when we got to the point where they were ready to hire me, there were some red flags.

And I'm trying to remember what they were.

It was many months ago.

I actually, they said I was hired, and I immediately sent a resignation letter to my current employer.

Thankfully, within a few hours, I realized what a mistake that was, and I was able to resend my resignation letter.

But this is how bad it was.

And like I said, I was very susceptible because of the means of communication.

But as soon as they gave me the job offer letter, so to speak, and then they finally were getting into the weeds of how this employment would work.

It was going to be a work from home job, which sounded perfect.

They were going to supply the equipment, the work computer and the software, and I think a printer and some other things were going to be provided by the company and so on.

But the way that they were going to give me that information, the equipment, was they were going to wire me money to my account, which I was then going to use to go to another vendor that they were going to give me to contact that vendor to then send them the money, to then get the laptop and what have you, and then go to another place to get the installation of software that I was going to use for said job.

And it was just such a convoluted process that I was thinking to myself, wait, this doesn't sound right.

Why don't you just send me the equipment already set up?

Why are you sending me money to buy set equipment from a specific vendor and so on when you can just place the orders yourself and mail me the equipment and then I can get right to work?

And I'm like, no, no, this is how we do it and blah, blah, blah.

I'm like, you know what?

And the messaging got more and more confusing.

So I'm like, can I speak to someone?

So I finally spoke to the person and it sounded like they were talking, they were reading from a script.

The guy had a very, I want to say, we'll say American name, right?

It was like John Smith.

But he did not sound like a John Smith to me, at least not a John Smith I would have known.

He sounded like someone from a foreign country.

And I'm not going to let my preconceived biases come out.

But he did not have an American accent.

He had an accent from a different country, not India.

I know most people think India, but this was not someone from India.

This was someone from somewhere else, not European.

And he was reading from a script.

He did not have any answers for me.

And then, so I'm like, OK, I guess.

And then I hung up the phone.

And then like those multi-level marketing jobs, I decided to do some research, because I was like, OK, this is making me nervous.

There's bells ringing in my mind.

Made the research and find out this was a con.

The reason why they wanted my checking account information to then send me this fake money was then to obviously then take money out of my account and rob me blind, essentially.

So I immediately wrote back to them.

Yeah, this is not for me.

I quit.

Then got back to my employer and said I resend my resignation letter.

And thankfully, many months later, I'm still where I'm at.

So yeah, so on top of the fact that the job market is so challenging to get a job, to even get responses from legitimate postings that you apply to, you also have to, on top of that, worry about these scams and be very alert about these scams that are also out there that are preying on the desperation of people looking for work.

So yeah, all these things are making me angry and frustrated and disenfranchised and quite honestly, I'm becoming rather nihilistic with the world around me.

On top of that, you know, as I mentioned, I also go out of my way to listen to some news and I do listen to political commentary.

And of course, my source is the Majority Report.

And in a recent episode, I think it was Thursday, they interviewed a person who was talking about, you know, the tech industry and they're pushing their pro-AI stance and the people who are behind AI, the Chet, the GPT or whatever the name of that company is, the company behind Chet GPT and what their tagline is essentially and their mission statement to replace workers with AI.

And one of the places, one of the industries that they really want to target, which is insane, is wellness.

So like psychology and mental health and therapy.

Those are some of the areas that they want to target, which is insane because the whole purpose of psychology and therapy is the social interaction with a human to engage with your emotions and your psychoses or whatever, and to get mentally better.

And these companies are trying to push a script to replace those people on top of other jobs.

Like, well, I mentioned a lot of these work websites, like Indeed and whatever.

I don't know Indeed specifically, but job search sites like that are using AI to sift through people's resumes and what have you, which used to be the job of an actual person that's now being replaced.

And of course, you have Audible and other book industry people replacing voice actors.

Obviously, illustrations and artists are getting replaced by AI for artwork and things of that nature.

So this is just gonna further increase the gap of inequality between the haves and the have-nots.

And it's just more suffering and misery around us.

So those are my gripes about life economically in terms of job hunting and just getting crap pay and not getting benefits and so forth.

Oh yeah, so they're slashing Medicaid now, or is it Medicare?

They're already slashing Medicare, but now they're also trying to attack Medicaid, because why does anyone need health care?

If you can't pay the bill, you just die.

That's the positioning this administration has.

If you don't have the money, then just die, because you're no longer serviceable for us.

You're no longer a useful cog in the machine.

You should just kill over and die, and just let someone else take your position in the line of the workforce.

So on top of all of that, socially, social politically, we have jerks, right-wingers, with, you know, grifters, like who I like to call Joe, quote-unquote, not a racist, Rogan, pushing for free speech advocacy to...

And his free speech advocacy is for the new Kanye West album which apparently had a swastika on it.

It's a Nazi album.

Self-hating rapper, you know, is pushing white supremacy.

And so, he's since apparently he's changed the cover from a swastika now to him in a KKK outfit.

And right now, it's currently only available in a Nazi-loving website formerly known as Twitter, now known X by owner Elon Musk, who is a white supremacist.

So, yeah, Joe Rogan is saying like it's crazy, right?

This guy, Kanye has a album about Nazis, and he's singing about Hale Hitler.

Like, whoo, so edgy, whoo, crazy.

But it's kind of a shame that it's only on X.

It should be on other platforms, because right now, YouTube and Spotify and Apple Music is not, you know, is keeping it off their platform.

And that's bad, because, you know, if you keep it off their platforms, it makes it forbidden, and people are going to want it more.

And so they should just push it out there for everyone, because, you know, free speech.

Yet, interestingly, you don't hear him talking about anything in terms of this student recently from NYU.

He's a graduate.

He graduated, I should say.

But NYU is not giving him his degree.

And the reason they're not giving him his degree is because when he was, I think he was probably a valedictorian or something, because they had him go on stage to do a speech, to do his graduation speech, I think.

I guess it's what you call those things.

I didn't graduate, so I don't know what that is.

But anyway, he went on stage and he was talking about Palestine and about how we shouldn't be supporting a genocide, either directly or indirectly, you know?

And so because he did a pro-Palestine, anti-genocide speech, NYU is not giving him his degree, right?

Like that is a huge free speech issue.

Like why should you be deprived?

You paid how many thousands of dollars to this institution and worked your butt off and got all the grades and passed all your classes and did all the requirements to get that degree in terms of financially, in terms of academically, you did everything right.

And because you expressed your opinion, your political opinion about the atrocity that is happening in Palestine by the country of Israel, you are being deprived of your degree.

That is a free speech issue.

Not this nonsense about hate speech, because as much as we're supposed, we're a quote-unquote country on free speech and that Joe Rogan, he's older than me, so he should know this, there are laws in place in terms of free speech, right?

Yeah, there's free speech, but there's also some caveats to that, right?

You can't promote hate speech, right?

And that's something that's a bit of a faux pas, especially like on media platforms, like you don't promote hate speech.

That's always been in the books.

You can't yell fire in a public setting because that would cause, you know, pandemonium and panic and whatever.

Like there are these rules, these laws that are in place in terms of free speech.

I mean, you can express your opinion, fine.

But yeah, hate speech is one thing.

Inciting violence or panic in a public setting is another thing that's not allowed, regardless of the fact that there is free speech, but there are limitations to that free speech.

So yeah, this guy not getting his degree for speaking out against Israel, the state of Israel, and for being pro-Palestinian, his free speech is being...

He's being penalized for his free speech, and not a word from Joe, not a racist Rogan.

So there's that life, there's that happening.

I recently saw somewhere in Louisiana, they want to go back to Jim Crow laws, like that's fun.

Like, oh great, we're going backwards now.

We're going to try to segregate the blacks from the whites in Louisiana, like that's going to be fun.

So anyway, we have all these right wing callbacks coming back to fruition, coming back to the forefront, I should say.

They're bringing back their hits on racism, misogyny, and inequalities of the upper class and the lower and middle class.

And all of this is causing a lot of isolation.

There's a lot of people feeling depressed.

You think like, oh, how's that a surprise?

And so, a lot of people, you know, don't, like myself, but not for, you know, my reason, because there are people that do work nine to five jobs, like the majority, but even then, they are isolated.

And this has definitely been exacerbated after COVID, and things haven't really changed a lot for a lot, well, for most people, because of they can't afford to go out.

They don't have the money.

They only make enough to barely pay their rent, barely pay their minimum down payments on their credit cards and whatnot, and that's it.

Food.

I got to pay for food and utilities, and that's got to wait for the next check for whatever else.

So no one is really socializing except on social networks, I guess, which I'm not doing, thankfully.

And of course, that just causes more anxiety to people who are seeing people show fake versions of their lives to make themselves look happy, which causes other people to look more inwardly and judge themselves and just see themselves negatively.

And so yeah, isolation is on the rise on people of all ages, especially teenagers and whatnot, who are getting stressed out with school requirements and what have you, and knowing that when they become adults, when they get out of school, there's no future for them because job market is just not what it was back before they were even a fetus, a fertilized fetus in their mom's womb.

So we were speaking about AI earlier.

AI chatbots are becoming a thing for a lot of people.

And like social networks, this is not good mentally for a lot of kids, especially people under the age of 25, because you know, you don't have a fully developed brain.

Social networks, like I mentioned, already causes a lot of anxiety and a lot of mental issues with people, brings about depression.

Some kids apparently commit a lot of self-harm from it.

I've never, I don't understand that.

I myself never, but I guess when I was a teenager, there wasn't, I mean, AOL was the thing and it was dial-up.

And yeah, I was mostly, I mostly hung out outside and stuff, so I didn't really stay online until my, you know, my adulthood, my 20s and what have you.

And at that point, I was married already.

So I had someone next to me besides just Twitter and Facebook and MySpace at the time.

And what else was there?

Well, regardless, oh yeah, Instagram was invented around that time.

Before they got bought out by Meta, at the time they were just Facebook, then they became Meta.

Well, they bought WhatsApp and Instagram, and then they changed their name to Meta, so that way you can have everything under the Meta umbrella.

But anyways, back to my point.

So you have these AI chat box, which aren't great by the way.

I've tried a few and it immediately goes to sex.

At least that's been my experience.

And the scripts are, they're not believable.

They're very, I mean, the version I've used anyway, I've only done free versions.

I'm not gonna pay for this nonsense.

So the free versions that I've tried have been, it was a fun little game.

It was like a game to me, like a simulated text game that mostly ended in sex, and then once sex happened, there was really not much of a development.

It didn't go further storyline-wise.

And so it got boring.

It just, the interest died, deleted the, well, cleared the cookies from my website, and it basically doesn't exist anymore.

But I'm a grown-ass man, right?

I'm 48.

I lived my life.

I am also an introvert.

And because of my nihilism, my newly formed nihilism, I should say, and my deep-rooted experience with life and now being content in solitude, mentally the AI chatbot experience hasn't really been, it hasn't affected me the way it has, I guess, affected others.

There's actually a new story where a kid, a teenager, a 14-year-old, killed himself because of his relationship with a chatbot, which he created on a, according to AP Associated Press, he created it on the, the chatbot he used was from character.ai, where he developed a relationship with the character from Game of Thrones, I can't pronounce the name, Daenerys Targaryen or whatever.

So he had a relationship with this character, and as I mentioned, it gets sexual really quickly.

So this 14-year-old engaged in sexual conversations with this bot for many months, and apparently fell in love with the person, with the character, the bot.

And in his disillusionment, depression, and isolation, he apparently, this is what the, well, I guess they have the text, right?

So this is what's quoted.

He said, I promise, I will come home to you.

I love you so much, Danny.

And then the bot, of course, replied back, I love you too.

Please come home to me as soon as possible, my love.

And with that, he basically, he, well, then it says, he asked the bot, what if I told you I can come home right now?

The bot then says, please do my sweet king.

And for him, the only way he can go into that world, go to the bot, was to kill himself.

And so he did.

He shot himself.

So yeah, if you think social networks are bad, these chatbot AI things are no better.

And as I mentioned earlier, as I said, these, the company behind ChatGPT Open Project or something, whatever they're, whatever they're called, they are lobbying for federal deregulation.

Because, you know, as the way things currently stand, as with most new technology, emerging technologies, you got to go state by state to get yourself pushed through and go through their hoops and what have you.

So they want to supersede all that, because, you know, we have a nice right-wing slanted government right now.

Both, all three branches are right-wing.

And Trump is willing to say yes to anything for a price.

And these tech companies have billions and billions of dollars, thanks to agendas that gave them all the tax cuts and tax breaks that they wanted to just completely deepen those pockets.

So they have the money.

They just got to buy off the right senators and congressmen in DC.

To make this a federal thing, which would be unprecedented, because this has never been done.

But in this current state of affairs where, you know, we're just becoming full-on fascists now, and free speech is no longer, it's not going to exist anymore, I guess.

They're trying to do this at a federal level where, you know what?

Jobs in the AI market are not, are, I guess, exempt from normal regulation requirements from a state-to-state process, which is interesting, right?

Because whenever the government was trying to push law, like, for instance, abortion is allowed, is constitutional.

Congress was like, no, no, state rights.

So, whenever something goes against the right-wing agenda, like abortion or, you know, making marijuana legal or things of that nature, they always talk about states' rights, because nope, not every state is going to want that.

So that should go through the states, you know, state rights.

But hey, if it's going to hit our pockets, yeah, this should be federal.

Everyone should just love, just suck it up and deal with AI at our behest and at your peril.

So yeah, this is my rant for what's happening in the world today and why I am becoming a full-on nihilist.

It's just very disheartening, the world that we're in.

And I haven't finished anything media-wise.

I've been reading some comics, so that's been delaying my completion of shows that I've mentioned in the previous episode.

So all I have is my rant today.

All I have is my introspection, my thoughts on society, and yeah, that's all I got for you guys for this episode.

So let's go to the outro.

If you have any questions, comments, or any thoughts you'd like to share, you can reach me by my email.

Actually, scratch that.

You can reach me via the contact form on my website, or click on the contact me link in the show notes.

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

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And as always, thank you for listening.