QAV 804 — The DeepSeek Black Swan

804 Club Audio

[00:00:00] Cameron Reil­ly: Uh, alright, wel­come back to QAVTK episode 804. Hel­lo Tony, wel­come back. Wel­come back to the QAV, Tony. How’s, how’s, how’s it going down there in sun­ny Vic­to­ria, Tony?

[00:00:19] Tony Kynas­ton: Sun­ny. So did any­thing hap­pen while I was away, Cam? I sort of haven’t noticed.

[00:00:23] Cameron Reil­ly: Noth­ing. Noth­ing’s hap­pen­ing. Noth­ing in the world. No news. I don’t know. Every day I open the New York Times. It’s just noth­ing. Just emp­ty pages. Sto­ries about kit­tens and bun­nies and, uh, just rain­bows. All that

[00:00:41] Tony Kynas­ton: Uni­corns. Great.

[00:00:43] Cameron Reil­ly: How about Tas­ma­nia, Tony? How was Tas­ma­nia?

[00:00:45] Tony Kynas­ton: Tas­ma­nia is fan­tas­tic. I love Tas­ma­nia. Um, had a week down there. Got back, uh, Wednes­day night. So I’ve been, I’ve been actu­al­ly almost back a week now. Uh, yeah, I played golf at Barn­bougle, which is fan­tas­tic, um, which is in the north­east part of the state. Uh, love­ly, love­ly golf cours­es, love­ly facil­i­ties, great golf, great food.

[00:01:09] Tony Kynas­ton: We um, we stay in some four bed­room vil­las, which are love­ly, they, on the course, they’re just like a four bed­room house, basi­cal­ly, with your own ensuite and a big com­mu­nal area. And um, one of the guys. Um, I mean, the food’s fan­tas­tic in Tas­ma­nia, but one of the days. One of the guys had hired the chef from Piper’s Brook, which is down the road to come in, and was, she was meant to bring us a graz­ing, like a graz­ing plate for the after­noon, a graz­ing din­ner.

[00:01:40] Tony Kynas­ton: Uh, and she came in at 3. 30 and we were still eat­ing at like 12. 30. Just, like, scal­lops, oys­ters. Um, lob­sters, duck, lamb shoul­ders, cheese plates. It was just a feast. Absolute­ly gor­geous. Yeah. And we played golf before that. So we had an appetite up. That was nice. So yeah, so it’s great food. We, um, I then went down to Hobart.

[00:02:07] Tony Kynas­ton: Had a lot of fun on the way actu­al­ly. Um, so the guys have, there’s eight of us in a minibus. It’s about an hour and a half north of Launce­s­ton. So I went back with them to the air­port. They were fly­ing out back to Syd­ney and I hired a car and drove to Hobart, which is two and a bit hours. Picked up Jean­nie and Alex from the air­port and then we went to an Airbnb.

[00:02:28] Tony Kynas­ton: But, um, Like high cast, I could­n’t be stuffed pair­ing up the phones, lis­ten to a pod­cast, put the radio on. And just hap­pened to luck out because it was, I think, two JJ’s 50th anniver­sary from their first broad­cast. So they were replay­ing the music from the playlist from the first day, which was just great.

[00:02:49] Tony Kynas­ton: Cruis­ing down the high­way, lis­ten­ing to Jump­ing Jack Flash and Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds and Long Tall Glass­es.

[00:02:58] Cameron Reil­ly: 50 years, so that’d be 75,

[00:03:01] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah. Mid 70s.

[00:03:02] Cameron Reil­ly: they were play­ing, oh, so not new music of the day then, just like clas­sic rock,

[00:03:08] Tony Kynas­ton: It would have been close to new music, 75, Jump­ing Jack Flash, five years old maybe.

[00:03:14] Cameron Reil­ly: Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds, that’s in the late 60s, I

[00:03:17] Tony Kynas­ton: They played, um, they played Elton John’s ver­sion of it, cov­er

[00:03:21] Cameron Reil­ly: oh, okay, okay,

[00:03:23] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, uh, Led Zep­pelin, Dazed and Con­fused. It’s just great the whole way down. It’s like great to cruise for a cou­ple of hours on the high­way with great clas­sic rock like that.

[00:03:33] Cameron Reil­ly: good, yeah, good dri­ving music, hey, can you, can you move your mic a lit­tle bit clos­er to your mouth or is it stuck where it is?

[00:03:38] Tony Kynas­ton: No, no, it’s fine. How’s that?

[00:03:41] Cameron Reil­ly: They’re a bit bet­ter. It’s a bit echoey in that room, that’s

[00:03:43] Tony Kynas­ton: Is it? Yeah. Okay,

[00:03:45] Cameron Reil­ly: That’s bet­ter.

[00:03:46] Tony Kynas­ton: good. And then, uh, Moda was bril­liant, duh, so good, every­one should see it, I mean the archi­tec­ture is fan­tas­tic, it’s, you haven’t been there have you, I’m not bor­ing you with

[00:03:59] Cameron Reil­ly: Nev­er!

[00:04:00] Tony Kynas­ton: nev­er, you got­ta do it.

[00:04:01] Cameron Reil­ly: Oh, I know!

[00:04:03] Tony Kynas­ton: great!

[00:04:04] Cameron Reil­ly: For years, Chrissie and I have been talk­ing about doing it, but just nev­er got around to it.

[00:04:08] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, and Hobart’s so good, it’s like going back in time, there’s no traf­fic, there’s, um, you know, the main street of Hobart’s a mix of coun­try retail­ers, and there’s a Myer store would be the biggest build­ing in the place, and yeah, a lot of, uh, a bit like New Zealand, a lot of Kath­man­du and out­door shops, um, great food, so we went to a place called Loco Sar­dinia, or Sar­dinia, Sar­dinia Lota, the crazy sar­dine.

[00:04:35] Tony Kynas­ton: A cou­ple of times for din­ner and anoth­er good place, Bur­da, for break­fast. But yeah, back to Mona, which has got great food too. Um, it’s, it’s, It’s like a mine­shaft. It’s hard to explain, but they actu­al­ly drilled, so you come in on the top lev­el and you go down a spi­ral stair­case three floors, and it’s all sand­stone.

[00:04:54] Tony Kynas­ton: So just that archi­tec­ture is just bril­liant by itself, hav­ing the cut sand­stone walls. And appar­ent­ly when­ev­er they want to add to it, they just drill anoth­er tun­nel. One of the locals, we have some friends down there who moved down from Syd­ney, they were say­ing that yeah, yeah, the fer­ry used to, the fer­ry stops at the bot­tom and peo­ple were hav­ing trou­ble with acces­si­bil­i­ty get­ting up the stairs.

[00:05:19] Tony Kynas­ton: So they just drill a tun­nel from the fer­ry stop to the bot­tom of Mona, to the front, front entrance, basi­cal­ly. Um, yeah, so it’s all sand­stone, uh, but it’s just amaz­ing, uh, I mean. As Alex puts it, part of it’s just to shock the normies. So as soon as you get in there, it’s a tri­al by fire. You sort of walk through a porno­graph­ic his­to­ry of art, um, which is fine.

[00:05:42] Tony Kynas­ton: My com­ment was, well, it’s free on the inter­net. Well, I don’t want to both­er pay­ing to go to Mona to see it. But, um, yeah, it’s designed to shock the normies, as Alex says. And then you get into some real­ly inter­est­ing stuff. So, I mean, there’s a, the next floor is basi­cal­ly what­ev­er they’re exhibit­ing, which is.

[00:05:58] Tony Kynas­ton: This time around was called name drop­ping. I don’t know why, but I mean, they’re prob­a­bly because there was a Van Gogh in there and there was a, um, some famous Chi­nese art. There’s like a full size blow up tank that had been deflat­ed. Um, and there was, uh, you know, White­ley’s and all the rest of it in there too.

[00:06:18] Tony Kynas­ton: But, but just kind of hid­den amongst all the oth­er art, just like a lit­tle Van Gogh, which you’d prob­a­bly over­look if you did­n’t know what you’re look­ing at. And that was the oth­er thing too. Cause. All the art I would like to go and see nor­mal­ly, like the Sid­ney Nolans, the Brett White­ley’s, etc. They’re all on a cor­ri­dor on the sec­ond floor with no light­ing.

[00:06:38] Tony Kynas­ton: Just like a walk­way between two gal­leries. And so like, we’re stopped just going, we’re stopped watch­ing this great art. And every­one’s just push­ing past us, you know, out of the way, out of the

[00:06:52] Cameron Reil­ly: Obvi­ous­ly, delib­er­ate.

[00:06:53] Tony Kynas­ton: yeah, so it’s all

[00:06:54] Cameron Reil­ly: What,

[00:06:54] Tony Kynas­ton: like that.

[00:06:55] Cameron Reil­ly: Yeah, yeah. Ah, that’s fan­tas­tic.

[00:06:57] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, and uh, great mod­ern art too, some real­ly good mod­ern art. Um, yeah, good pho­to­graph­ic art. There’s a whole wall of um, which is like a big mur­al, and then there’s an artist who per­forms every day at three o’clock. He just spends a day com­pos­ing, and then at three o’clock he comes out and plays what­ev­er he’s com­posed that day, uh, with a group.

[00:07:20] Tony Kynas­ton: Um, so, yeah, real­ly good. And then you go out­side, there’s, I think there’s, Four or five restau­rants, there’s a cel­lar door, there’s a win­ery, uh, there’s a big grassy area with a sound­stage, so they have free bands play­ing there. So, uh, and if you’re Tas­man­ian, you show your dri­ver’s license, you get in for noth­ing.

[00:07:39] Tony Kynas­ton: So, our, our friends who moved down there would go along on a Sun­day after­noon just to watch the music.

[00:07:46] Cameron Reil­ly: Hmm.

[00:07:46] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, so yeah, fan­tas­tic. Got­ta go and see it.

[00:07:50] Cameron Reil­ly: that’s great. Yeah. Well, I thought about going for a hol­i­day to Tas­ma­nia a while ago, but it’s like 12 mil­lion or some­thing now to fly to Tas­ma­nia from here. So

[00:08:02] Tony Kynas­ton: I’ll dri­ve down, take the fer­ry,

[00:08:05] Cameron Reil­ly: Could do that. Yeah.

[00:08:07] Tony Kynas­ton: see the rest of Tas­ma­nia. But, uh, and then we saw the oth­er muse­um as well in Hobart, uh, which is called TMAG, which is the Muse­um and Art Gallery, which is a old his­toric build­ing com­bi­na­tion muse­um, art gallery, a lot of stuff on the his­to­ry of the Abo­rig­i­nal geno­cide, which is very sad, but I’m glad they went through it in detail.

[00:08:28] Tony Kynas­ton: Fake news right now.

[00:08:29] Cameron Reil­ly: Fake news. Once, once Dut­ton is prime min­is­ter, it’ll be fake news. You won’t be allowed to talk about it any­more.

[00:08:35] Tony Kynas­ton: So that was real­ly good. And then, uh, Grave Art, um, as well. A lot of um, it also gave some space to design because of the Tas­man­ian tim­ber there was some real­ly cool fur­ni­ture on dis­play which I thought was a high­light for me. And then there was things like there was an exhi­bi­tion of Antarc­tic art, so the CSIRO has a show.

[00:08:58] Tony Kynas­ton: An ice­break­er based, and a whole build­ing at Sala­man­ca Place, where they leave from to go down to Maw­son Sound, and they take an artist every year with them. So there was a whole gallery full of four dif­fer­ent artists and their dif­fer­ent rep­re­sen­ta­tions of ice flows and the encamp­ments, the CSIRO encamp­ments and things.

[00:09:22] Tony Kynas­ton: It was very inter­est­ing.

[00:09:24] Cameron Reil­ly: Wow. Yeah, I’m very jeal­ous. That’s good.

[00:09:29] Tony Kynas­ton: So good fun.

[00:09:30] Cameron Reil­ly: life, Tony. Yeah, that’s great. Well, I cut my fin­ger off. I’m not just giv­ing you the fin­ger. Although, this is a good excuse to do that while you were hav­ing fun. I, uh, I was dri­ving home from Kung Fu about lunchtime on Thurs­day, and I was like, Oh, I’m gonna, gonna make a cucum­ber sal­ad with my brand new man­dolin slicer that just arrived, and I had this cucum­ber and I’m like boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. And it was so sharp, this thing, I did­n’t even know if it was cut­ting any­thing.

[00:10:04] Cameron Reil­ly: So I sort of leaned down to look under­neath it, and mean­while it became a cucum­ber and fin­ger sal­ad. Took a huge slice, about the size of a pinky nail, and about four or five mil­lime­tres deep

[00:10:18] Tony Kynas­ton: wow.

[00:10:19] Cameron Reil­ly: tip of my fin­ger. Just blood start­ed gush­ing every­where. Being on aspirin, blood thin­ner, it just was It looked like a Taran­ti­no film,

[00:10:31] Tony Kynas­ton: Cucum­ber and toma­to sal­ad after that.

[00:10:34] Cameron Reil­ly: So I did what every respectable pod­cast­er does. I wrapped it up, put some pres­sure on it to try and stop the blood loss. And I thought, well, I can’t, there’s no point going to the doc­tors now when it’s piss­ing out blood. So I just record­ed a pod­cast for an hour and hold­ing, hold­ing a rag on my fin­ger. Try and stop the blood.

[00:10:52] Cameron Reil­ly: Then I final­ly went to the doc­tor and he wrapped it up and I’ve been back a cou­ple of times, but yes, it’s, uh, it’s nasty. I have to wear this on it cause I keep, I keep bump­ing it and it

[00:11:02] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah.

[00:11:03] Cameron Reil­ly: Did­n’t stop me doing Kung Fu. I have to add since then, I’ve done like four hours of Kung Fu since I chopped the end off my fin­ger, but you know,

[00:11:10] Tony Kynas­ton: Fun­ny, we were talk­ing about that on Sat­ur­day. One of my nephews had a birth­day and we all got togeth­er for lunch in Mel­bourne. And one of my nieces is a very good cook and pas­try chef. And she was say­ing that she wears a chain mail glove when she uses the man­dolin. For that same very rea­son. And then some­body else Some­body else said the chain­mail glove was actu­al­ly invent­ed by Valerie Tay­lor to feed sharks with, and then the chefs picked it up to use with their knives and man­dolins.

[00:11:42] Cameron Reil­ly: well, I have a cou­ple of gloves like that in the garage for when I’m using the, uh, Jig­saw. So I went and got those and put them in the kitchen. So they’re de rigueur now when we’re doing any­thing with the man­dolin slicer in the kitchen. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Any­way, invest­ing Tony, um, Uh, as you told me, AFR, I know you, um, divest­ed your entire port­fo­lio to buy Trump­Coin while you were away last week.

[00:12:11] Cameron Reil­ly: Um, it’s a very good move, I think.

[00:12:16] Tony Kynas­ton: How does that, uh, how does that, I’m sure there’s laws in Aus­tralia against it, but sure­ly there’s laws in the states about You know, if you’re a pres­i­dent, you’re sup­posed to put things in a blind trust or some­thing like that. So, because that’s just basi­cal­ly fun­nelling mon­ey to the Trumps, isn’t it?

[00:12:33] Cameron Reil­ly: Uh, yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:34] Tony Kynas­ton: Buy­ing some­thing worth­less, worth­less, which they’re sell­ing is just giv­ing them mon­ey.

[00:12:39] Cameron Reil­ly: yeah, appar­ent­ly no laws, uh, as I under­stand it, in the U. S. For that sort of

[00:12:45] Tony Kynas­ton: Uh huh.

[00:12:46] Cameron Reil­ly: It’s like a tra­di­tion that you don’t, that you divest, but, uh, Trump’s like, yeah, you know what, I don’t think, uh, I made enough mon­ey out of this the last time around, so the Trump coin and the Mela­nia coin,

[00:13:05] Tony Kynas­ton: Good invest­ments. Yes or no? Go.

[00:13:10] Cameron Reil­ly: days before his inau­gu­ra­tion or some­thing.

[00:13:12] Cameron Reil­ly: Or three days before his inau­gu­ra­tion. He just, and the, like, the fun thing about it is, it’s only his fans that are buy­ing these things. So he’s just rap­ing and pil­lag­ing his own sup­port base to, uh, add some more bil­lions to his name so he can try and com­pete with Elon. Uh,

[00:13:35] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah. I was gonna ask that. How’s it, how’s it going com­pared to Doge­coin and how does Elon feel about it?

[00:13:42] Cameron Reil­ly: Uh, um, so yeah, that was fun.

[00:13:46] Tony Kynas­ton: a good, read a good arti­cle today, um, on Face­book. I for­got the chap’s name, but he is the. CEO of a com­pa­ny that, uh, again, I for­got the com­pa­ny’s name now, but it’s called MD. So it’s one of the neur­al link com­pa­nies, uh, who used to be a friend of Elon, who used to employ Elon. And for what­ev­er he want­ed, what­ev­er, you know, for what­ev­er rea­son decid­ed to put his assess­ment of Elon up on Face­book.

[00:14:15] Tony Kynas­ton: Um, and basi­cal­ly just said, yeah, the guy’s com­plete­ly trans­ac­tion­al. Every­thing he says is just about gain­ing pow­er. Um, I had to sack him. Uh, he’s very com­pet­i­tive. He’s now lurch­ing to the right because he finds them more easy to manip­u­late than the left, et cetera, et cetera. So it was actu­al­ly a real­ly good cri­tique of.

[00:14:36] Tony Kynas­ton: Where Elon stands at the moment.

[00:14:39] Cameron Reil­ly: Yeah, look, I think Elon’s an enig­ma. Um,

[00:14:44] Tony Kynas­ton: I don’t. It’s pret­ty, pret­ty out in the open. Mega­lo­ma­ni­ac.

[00:14:53] Cameron Reil­ly: and clos­et Nazi as it turns out.

[00:14:55] Tony Kynas­ton: I don’t think he is. And nei­ther did this guy from NV, Neu­roVig­il or what­ev­er the com­pa­ny’s name is. Um, I’m strug­gling to remem­ber his name. Tom Wil­son (real­ly Philip Low), I think. Any­way, but he said, no, no, he’s not a clos­et nasty at all. He just, he’s just try­ing to take the right back from Steve Ban­non. So he’s, um, he’s sig­nalling to them that he’s one of them.

[00:15:15] Cameron Reil­ly: so it was a Nazi salute, but he’s not a Nazi. He was just doing it as, uh, what are they, what, what do they call it? Sig­nalling? Uh,

[00:15:25] Tony Kynas­ton: Not virtue sig­nalling. The reverse. What’s the reverse of the lack of virtue sig­nalling?

[00:15:30] Cameron Reil­ly: Nazi sig­nalling. Oh dear. Chaos. Absolute chaos. And we’re going to talk about this lat­er on, but it sort of leads into it. So obvi­ous­ly, uh, the, the, Big launch of the new ver­sion, the R1 ver­sion of DeepSeek, Chi­nese AI com­pa­ny, caused a mas­sive sell off of some of the, some but not all, of the Mag7 stocks last night.

[00:15:56] Cameron Reil­ly: Apple did okay, and I think Microsoft did okay, but Nvidia Shared 600 bil­lion U. S. in mar­ket cap, the biggest one day loss in U. S. his­to­ry. Stock price plum­met­ed 17 per­cent. It’s the worst day since, uh, the begin­ning of COVID. Um,

[00:16:24] Tony Kynas­ton: How many bil­lion was that, Cam? That’d be a lot, would­n’t it? 17 per­cent of NVIDIA.

[00:16:30] Cameron Reil­ly: 600 bil­lion, that’s what I said. Sheds 600 bil­lion, yeah, US. Tril­lion dol­lars Aus­tralian, give or take. Um, now, uh, you prob­a­bly haven’t used DeepSeek. Do you know much about DeepSeek?

[00:16:43] Tony Kynas­ton: Only what I’ve heard in the last cou­ple of days, um, I haven’t used it. And I, all I’ve heard is that it’s about as good as Chat­G­PT for a frac­tion of the price.

[00:16:54] Cameron Reil­ly: Yeah, well, there’s, there’s a lot that, well, we don’t know, but it, it’s, the fun­ny thing is it’s a side project for a quant com­pa­ny in Chi­na called High Val­ue Trad­ing Com­pa­ny or some­thing like that.

[00:17:08] Tony Kynas­ton: Hap­py. Fun, hap­py, fun. High val­ue trad­ing com­pa­ny.

[00:17:10] Cameron Reil­ly: Yeah, um, it’s been around, and ear­li­er ver­sions have been around for the last year or so, and I’ve kind of paid a lit­tle bit of atten­tion, and I used an ear­li­er ver­sion of it. But, uh, they got a lot of smart boffins there that run their quant analy­sis stuff, and they were build­ing their own AI, I guess, to help them do that, and using open source stuff that was avail­able.

[00:17:36] Cameron Reil­ly: And they were like, well, why don’t, let’s just make it pub­lic. And they’ve trained it on So, there’s some­body, I saw some­body said on Twit­ter, so Ope­nAI stole all of the con­tent on the inter­net to build Chat­G­PT and now these guys have just stolen it out of GPT and giv­en it back to the world for free.

[00:18:02] Cameron Reil­ly: They’re like, I think there’s a, there’s a British, um, fairy tale about some­body who did that. Basi­cal­ly, they’re the Robin Hood of the AI world. They just stole it and gave

[00:18:12] Tony Kynas­ton: See the CCP of the AI world.

[00:18:15] Cameron Reil­ly: Yeah. Well, it’s, I mean, they’re a pri­vate com­pa­ny over there as much as, you know, they oper­ate in Chi­na. But yeah, and so the sto­ry, sup­pos­ed­ly, is they built it on Infe­ri­or chipsets to the lat­est and great­est Nvidia chipsets.

[00:18:33] Cameron Reil­ly: This is like old­er gen­er­a­tions that they could get their hands on. Now, peo­ple in the West, Elon does­n’t believe that. Dario Amod­ei from Anthrop­ic does­n’t believe that. He, they, he believes they’re using smug­gled H100s. They say they trained it for 5 mil­lion, 5. 6 mil­lion US ver­sus like the hun­dred mil­lion Ope­nAI Spent Train­ing 01.

[00:18:56] Cameron Reil­ly: This isn’t just equiv­a­lent, like DeepSeek’s not just equiv­a­lent to GPT 4, it’s equiv­a­lent to GPT 01, their advanced rea­son­ing mod­el, which is still very lim­it­ed access. You have to have a plus sub­scriber account and even then you only get a cer­tain amount of queries every day on it. Theirs is free and is basi­cal­ly equiv­a­lent, uh, and it’s fas­ci­nat­ing when you run it, um, as I have been doing a lot in the last cou­ple of days.

[00:19:30] Cameron Reil­ly: Um, like I’ll read you, um, one here. Let me just

[00:19:38] Tony Kynas­ton: What hap­pens if you ask it? What’s bet­ter? Com­mu­nism or cap­i­tal­ism,

[00:19:42] Cameron Reil­ly: Yeah, like a lot of peo­ple are doing that sort of stuff. Um, if you ask it about Tianan­men Square or stuff like that, it says, I’m sor­ry, I can’t answer that ques­tion. As I said to Sam­marti­no ear­li­er, unless I’m talk­ing about stuff that are polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive in Chi­na, what do I give a shit? I mean, it’s as good as any­thing else.

[00:20:02] Cameron Reil­ly: Like, try and have a con­ver­sa­tion with Chat­G­PT about why the US, uh, dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki, and it’s gonna tap dance around that sort of stuff too. But any­way,

[00:20:15] Tony Kynas­ton: Oh, by the way, I watched Oppen­heimer last night and could­n’t watch it to the end ’cause of the bull­shit they were going on about with Nagasa­ki and Ion. I dun­no if

[00:20:22] Cameron Reil­ly: got fur­ther than I did. I got about, I got about half an hour into it and gave up. I’m like, uh, yeah, just Yeah, I could­n’t, like I was dry heav­ing. So here’s, here’s, so one of the great things that DeepSeek does when you ask it a ques­tion, it shows you it’s pre think­ing. So it, it, like O1 does, uh, these mod­els do deep rea­son­ing before they answer.

[00:20:49] Cameron Reil­ly: So they think deeply about your ques­tion and then they give you the answer. But, and in Chat­G­PT, you can open it up and see that hap­pen­ing. But it’s kind of closed by default. DeepSeek, it’s open by default. It shows you. So, I asked it this morn­ing, Can you explain Infor­ma­tion Bot­tle­neck The­o­ry in sim­ple terms?

[00:21:11] Cameron Reil­ly: It thought for 22 sec­onds before it answered me, but here’s its think­ing. Okay, so I need to explain the Infor­ma­tion Bot­tle­neck The­o­ry in sim­ple terms. Let me start by recall­ing what I know about it. I remem­ber it’s some­thing relat­ed to infor­ma­tion the­o­ry, prob­a­bly involv­ing data com­pres­sion and rel­e­vance.

[00:21:27] Cameron Reil­ly: The term bot­tle­neck makes me think of a nar­row­ing or con­stric­tion, so maybe it’s about com­press­ing infor­ma­tion while keep­ing the impor­tant parts. I think the the­o­ry was intro­duced by Naf­tali, Tish­by and oth­ers. It might be used in machine learn­ing, espe­cial­ly in deep learn­ing, to under­stand how neur­al net­works learn.

[00:21:42] Cameron Reil­ly: The basic idea, as I under­stand it, is that when you process infor­ma­tion, you want to keep the parts that are rel­e­vant for a task and dis­card the irrel­e­vant details. So it’s a trade off between com­pres­sion and preser­va­tion of rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion. Then it goes like, let me break it down. Sup­pose you have some put, so it’s, it’s explain­ing to itself what it thinks this is, then it says, I need to make sure I’m not mix­ing this up with oth­er com­pres­sion meth­ods.

[00:22:06] Cameron Reil­ly: The key here is the bal­ance between com­pres­sion and rel­e­vance goes on. Then it says, wait, mutu­al infor­ma­tion mea­sures how much know­ing one vari­able reduces uncer­tain­ty with anoth­er. So if I max­i­mize. L is T colon Y, that means, it goes blah blah blah. Then it says, I should also think about an exam­ple.

[00:22:23] Cameron Reil­ly: Imag­ine you have a data set of images with labels. The raw pix­els, X, con­tain a lot of infor­ma­tion. Then it says, but I need to be care­ful not to over­sim­pli­fy. The the­o­ry is more for­mal using infor­ma­tion the­o­ret­ic mea­sures. So putting it all togeth­er, blah blah blah, wait! I should check if there’s a stan­dard anal­o­gy for this.

[00:22:39] Cameron Reil­ly: Maybe like squish­ing a big sponge, data through a nar­row tube, bot­tle­neck, and only the water, rel­e­vant info, that’s need­ed comes out the oth­er side. In terms, then it goes on, I need to make sure the expla­na­tion is sim­ple, avoids jar­gon, and uses relat­able exam­ples. Maybe start with the prob­lem of hav­ing too much data and need­ing blah blah blah.

[00:22:58] Cameron Reil­ly: I think, then it’s final para­graph to itself. This is not its answer to me, is, I think that’s a sol­id start. Now struc­ture it into a clear, con­cise expla­na­tion with­out tech­ni­cal terms, using every­day exam­ples and avoid­ing math. Make sure to con­nect the com­po­nents. Source data, com­pressed rep­re­sen­ta­tion, tar­get vari­able, the bot­tle­neck com­pres­sion, and the bal­ance between the two.

[00:23:20] Cameron Reil­ly: Then it gave me its answer. Like, it’s this long, detailed, very human­is­tic con­ver­sa­tion it’s hav­ing with itself.

[00:23:32] Tony Kynas­ton: has it learnt to do that? Or was it pro­grammed to do that?

[00:23:35] Cameron Reil­ly: It’s learnt. You don’t pro­gram large lan­guage mod­els, you build neur­al net­works and then, um,

[00:23:47] Tony Kynas­ton: So I

[00:23:47] Cameron Reil­ly: train them and using, um, you know, um, back train­ing as well, but you basi­cal­ly, basi­cal­ly it gives you answers and you, you score the answers. This is a good answer. This is a bad answer. And then it keeps going through that process.

[00:24:04] Cameron Reil­ly: It’s how you basi­cal­ly train an LLN until it’s just giv­ing you real­ly good answers every time. It works out itself how to come up with good answers by you just scor­ing the answers and then it devel­ops, you know, neur­al net­work weight­ings based on that. So like, but just every time I ask it a ques­tion, just watch­ing it think­ing to itself is just blow­ing my mind.

[00:24:29] Cameron Reil­ly: It’s crazy. Any­way, it’s, it’s free It’s equiv­a­lent of the best, pret­ty much the best mod­el that Ope­nAI has made avail­able. And their API, you pay for the API, but it’s 1 60th the cost, or, yeah, maybe 1 30th the cost, uh, yeah, of Ope­nAI’s API. So it’s like they’re mak­ing it cheap and that’s what has blown up.

[00:24:59] Cameron Reil­ly: The, the idea that Chi­na can do just as good, but with far less mon­ey for a whole bunch of rea­sons, cheap­er labour, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:25:09] Tony Kynas­ton: and, and AI is just like any oth­er indus­try. This is what’s been hap­pen­ing in Chi­na for the last 30 years, right? Hand­bags, wine, cars, air con­di­tion­ers, fridges, what­ev­er. They’ll just reverse engi­neer what’s out there and make it cheap­er.

[00:25:24] Cameron Reil­ly: Sam Alt­man came out and said, it’s one thing to do all the orig­i­nal research. It’s anoth­er thing just to copy some­body else’s work. But yeah, I mean, that’s,

[00:25:33] Tony Kynas­ton: are two dif­fer­ent things, but they’re both valid. You, you both passed, you both passed the exam, whether you stud­ied or whether you copied.

[00:25:42] Cameron Reil­ly: And this is what I’ve been say­ing for the last cou­ple of years on Futur­is­tic about AI, where peo­ple say, Oh, it’s going to all end up in the hands of bil­lion­aires. I keep say­ing, well, no, it won’t because this stuff, once it’s out there, it’s out there and any­one will be able to take the, You know, the the­o­ry behind build­ing these things and build them and put them out there.

[00:26:02] Cameron Reil­ly: This is open source, DeepSeek is open source too. So any­one can down­load it, train it, you know, how­ev­er you want, train it to talk about Tianan­men Square if you want, if that’s impor­tant to you and run it. And they have a light mod­el that runs on mobile phones, et cetera, et cetera. So it’s, um, you know, it’s, it’s just the begin­ning of this, the mas­sive pro­lif­er­a­tion of these things.

[00:26:25] Cameron Reil­ly: And,

[00:26:26] Tony Kynas­ton: Well, yeah, but it’s also, I mean, I won­der about the sec­ondary effects. It’s also. What will hap­pen, Elon’s not going to stand for it, Ulti­ma’s not going to stand for it, Apple’s not going to stand for it, they’ll start build­ing some kind of wall around their AIs, they’ll become even more com­pet­i­tive with each oth­er if they aren’t already.

[00:26:43] Tony Kynas­ton: Um, and yeah, I don’t know where that ends, it ends, You know, pret­ty much where tech­nol­o­gy ends today, con­cen­trat­ed in the hands of a few huge com­pa­nies. May become free, may not too.

[00:26:58] Cameron Reil­ly: well, I mean, the, the. Yeah, there’s got to be a lot of, um, you know, con­tin­u­al inno­va­tion and advance­ments in

[00:27:07] Tony Kynas­ton: Oh yeah, it’s ear­ly

[00:27:08] Cameron Reil­ly: may or may not be able to copy. But it’s, it’s, you know, these things are built around the the­o­ret­i­cal stuff for how you get our AIs to work. The the­o­ry becomes pret­ty well known. I saw Dario Amod­ei the oth­er day.

[00:27:23] Cameron Reil­ly: CEO of Anthrop­ic this morn­ing say­ing, well, get­ting your hands on tens of thou­sands of Nvidia chips is one thing, but we’re talk­ing about, you know, so one of the oth­er things that’s hap­pened in the last week was Project Star­gate, the first thing that Trump announced, um, 500 bil­lion dol­lar data cen­ter that’s going to be built for open AI.

[00:27:45] Cameron Reil­ly: I mean, they’re plan­ning these things to have mil­lions of Nvidia chipsets run­ning these things. Whether or not these Chi­nese com­pa­nies can build their own or get the equiv­a­lent of that over the next five years remains to be seen. But, um, any­way.

[00:28:01] Tony Kynas­ton: Well, two thoughts, but tak­ing it back to invest­ing, two thoughts. Um, I have You know, it crossed my mind that if AI gets loosed on the finan­cial mar­kets, it’s going to poten­tial­ly, well, it may spell the end of inde­pen­dent invest­ing because the, you know, finan­cial mar­kets these days are set up for very fast trades.

[00:28:26] Tony Kynas­ton: algo­rith­mic trades. If you then pow­er the algo­rithms times a hun­dred or times a thou­sand or times a mil­lion in terms of their abil­i­ty to dis­cov­er val­ue or dis­cov­er asym­met­ric oppor­tu­ni­ties or arbi­trages, it’s going to be very hard for us to step in and say, We think this stock is cheap. It would have trad­ed a mil­lion times before we get to it.

[00:28:50] Tony Kynas­ton: So that’s going to be an inter­est­ing devel­op­ment and I can’t pre­dict what will hap­pen. But the oth­er thing that I want­ed to men­tion, um, that struck me from read­ing about this, uh, down­turn in NVIDIA last night is I’ve seen this movie before. It’s just, it could well be the begin­ning of the end of, um, of the over­priced US mar­ket.

[00:29:14] Tony Kynas­ton: Now, I know you said the oth­er Mag 7 stocks haven’t come off, but NVIDIA has. But often­times, that’s how it hap­pens. It’s the weak­est link that goes, that breaks first, and it drops 20%. And that’s what always, It’s what does­n’t sur­prise me about the sit­u­a­tion we’re in is that stocks, you can wake up one morn­ing and every­thing’s down 20%.

[00:29:36] Tony Kynas­ton: And if you cou­ple that with the fact that index­ing is at its, you know, all time high as well in terms of how much of the mar­ket is pas­sive­ly invest­ed. And then because of the preva­lence of the Mag 7 and the US mar­ket in world index­es, it starts to drag down the whole mar­ket. The whole mar­ket. Now, it has­n’t done that this time around, but I mean, it’s only a mat­ter of time that it will.

[00:30:01] Tony Kynas­ton: It’s dragged it up, so it’ll drag it down as well. And it only takes a cou­ple of speed bumps for the mar­ket to lose nerve on these stocks and they crash.

[00:30:11] Cameron Reil­ly: Yeah. And then you get, you know, some big influ­en­tial fund or investor who says some­thing pes­simistic about the future of these things and peo­ple start bail­ing and, you know, it sets in doom and gloom and every­thing, you know, retreats.

[00:30:29] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, absolute­ly. It could be any­thing though. It could be that there’s an eco­nom­ic down­turn and peo­ple just don’t have the dis­pos­able cash to throw at them any­more too, um, for exam­ple. But yeah, it’s, uh, you don’t, I don’t like, one of the rea­sons why I don’t like over­pay­ing for things is because this is what hap­pens.

[00:30:44] Tony Kynas­ton: Some peo­ple say that they’re an investor in qual­i­ty at any val­ue, but I think that’s ass about. Sure, buy qual­i­ty, but buy it when the price is right.

[00:30:54] Cameron Reil­ly: Yeah. Well, we’ll see what hap­pens. A lot of peo­ple I’m see­ing online are say­ing buy the dip. Buy the dip of NVIDIA and maybe,

[00:31:04] Tony Kynas­ton: Maybe, yeah, absolute­ly. Buy the dip of Trump­Coin while you’re at it too,

[00:31:09] Cameron Reil­ly: yeah,

[00:31:10] Tony Kynas­ton: if that’s your method­ol­o­gy, yeah.

[00:31:13] Cameron Reil­ly: oh boy, well, a cou­ple of oth­er things I have to talk about, um, LAU, good QAV stock, um,

[00:31:23] Tony Kynas­ton: Lind­say Aus­tralia,

[00:31:25] Cameron Reil­ly: Wash­ing­ton H, Sol Pat­ter­son Co. Just took a, uh, chunk of that,

[00:31:34] Tony Kynas­ton: good on them. It’s nice to be in bed with those guys. We had them on the show and they’re kind of like minds.

[00:31:43] Cameron Reil­ly: um, I’m not exact­ly sure how to read this though. So, um, It’s change in sub­stan­tial hold­ing thing I’m look­ing at a mar­ket index. They pre­vi­ous­ly owned 12 per­cent now they own

[00:31:55] Tony Kynas­ton: So they’ve actu­al­ly sold down.

[00:31:57] Cameron Reil­ly: I, I, well, yeah, maybe. I think that’s right, right? They own a big chunk of it, but they’ve got less now.

[00:32:04] Tony Kynas­ton: yeah, that’s not unusu­al. I mean, you’ll see that all the time that peo­ple will buy and sell 1 or 2 per­cent of Just as they rebal­ance their port­fo­lios for what­ev­er rea­son. They may take the view that it’s they’re tak­ing some prof­it off the table, but it could also just be that they’re tak­ing a lit­tle bit out of every­thing to invest in some­thing new.

[00:32:24] Cameron Reil­ly: Trump coin, prob­a­bly.

[00:32:25] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, yeah, or Mela­nia. That’s got to be even bet­ter. Yeah.

[00:32:30] Cameron Reil­ly: Did you see some­body launched a bar­ren coin, but it was fake? And a bunch of peo­ple put mon­ey in it? And they rug pulled it, like, straight away? That was, that’s the oth­er thing with the Trump coin, like, uh, if you, any­way, accord­ing to, I haven’t looked at it that close­ly, but from what Tay­lor was telling me, they rug pulled it, like, with­in a day.

[00:32:51] Cameron Reil­ly: They took all the mon­ey and then they rug pulled it. They just sold the, the Trump and who­ev­er owns it, alleged­ly, just, just dumped it like day one. They did­n’t even hold on for a week or what­ev­er. They just took their mon­ey and dumped it, crashed the whole thing. Did­n’t even, did­n’t even wait. Um, by the way, Tay­lor’s in Syd­ney today being inter­viewed on the ABC.

[00:33:13] Tony Kynas­ton: Oh,

[00:33:14] Cameron Reil­ly: Did you see he was in the Finan­cial Review? He had a big arti­cle in the Finan­cial Review last week. He was inter­viewed, I think it’s his first time in the Fin, he was inter­viewed, and so were some of his cre­ators, about the Tik­Tok ban. Oh, that hap­pened while you were away. Tik­Tok was banned, then it was unbanned.

[00:33:30] Tony Kynas­ton: it? Yeah,

[00:33:32] Cameron Reil­ly: unbanned it. Um,

[00:33:35] Tony Kynas­ton: nice being in Tas­ma­nia where the news takes a while to reach.

[00:33:42] Cameron Reil­ly: yes, so Tay­lor’s being inter­viewed on the ABC. I think about that. He was­n’t quite sure what he was being inter­viewed about, but some­thing to do with the Tik­Tok band, I think.

[00:33:51] Tony Kynas­ton: Well, Tik­Tok’s back now, isn’t it? Did­n’t Trump bring it back? Oh,

[00:33:54] Cameron Reil­ly: well, he’s giv­en them 90 days to work out a deal. So rumours are that Lar­ry Ellison’s look­ing at buy­ing a chunk of it. Um, Ora­cle already

[00:34:05] Tony Kynas­ton: Elon?

[00:34:05] Cameron Reil­ly: cen­ters. Well, who knows?

[00:34:09] Tony Kynas­ton: uh huh.

[00:34:11] Cameron Reil­ly: but he’s giv­en, Trump gave him 90 days to work some­thing out.

[00:34:14] Tony Kynas­ton: Okay,

[00:34:16] Cameron Reil­ly: Um, some­body who did­n’t give 90 days was the CEO of Yan­coal, David Moult.

[00:34:24] Cameron Reil­ly: Uh, so we, you know, one of our red flags is a sud­den. CEO res­ig­na­tion and he sud­den­ly resigned and it was a same day thing, which is always sur­pris­ing. Um, I don’t own it in any of our port­fo­lios. It

[00:34:42] Tony Kynas­ton: I think Kohl’s

[00:34:43] Cameron Reil­ly: sell

[00:34:44] Tony Kynas­ton: yeah, I was going to say, I think Kohl’s is still a sell, isn’t it?

[00:34:47] Cameron Reil­ly: as far as, uh, I don’t know, could be. But, um, either way, I don’t own it. The share price has sort of suf­fered as a result. It’s still a sell? Sell? Right. Coal, Sell, Sell, Cok­ing is a Josephine and Ther­mal’s a Cell, yeah. But, uh, yeah. So, I’m assum­ing most of our lis­ten­ers won’t hold it, but if they do, you might want to have a look at that.

[00:35:15] Cameron Reil­ly: Uh, it seems like it was an ami­ca­ble part­ing, but

[00:35:19] Tony Kynas­ton: still

[00:35:20] Cameron Reil­ly: always very strange.

[00:35:21] Tony Kynas­ton: Hmm, I thought so too when I read the arti­cle. And it was, I think, just either just, or was either around the prof­it announce­ment or just before the prof­it announce­ment, which is also very strange, I think. And a red flag. Yeah.

[00:35:33] Cameron Reil­ly: Hmm. So there you go. Well, that’s all my news sto­ries for today, Tony. You got any­thing else?

[00:35:41] Tony Kynas­ton: not much hap­pened while I was away. Ah, yeah,

[00:35:45] Cameron Reil­ly: Well, David Lynch died, but we can talk about that in After Hours.

[00:35:51] Tony Kynas­ton: That was a shame, but it has flood­ed my socials with lots of lynch posts about movies, which has been good, but it’s a shame that the rea­son is that he passed away. Uh, yeah, well I’ve just got a pooled talk to do now. I

[00:36:08] Cameron Reil­ly: Who you doing today, Tony?

[00:36:10] Tony Kynas­ton: I’ve got ACL,

[00:36:11] Cameron Reil­ly: yeah,

[00:36:13] Tony Kynas­ton: Clin­i­cal Labs. So they’re at the very bot­tom of our buy list, so I’ll, uh, I’ll high­light that at the start, uh, and, but they have been on the buy list on and off since COVID, um, they shot to fame dur­ing COVID, even though the com­pa­ny goes, goes back a long way.

[00:36:35] Tony Kynas­ton: It was list­ed in 2021 by a com­pa­ny called, a pri­vate equi­ty firm called Cres­cent Cap­i­tal. They kept the share­hold­ing in it until about last year. It list­ed at 4 and I think Cres­cent Cap­i­tal sold out at about 3. 20 and the share price today is still below its list­ing. Uh, share price I used for analy­sis was 3.

[00:36:58] Tony Kynas­ton: 55. So, um, it was basi­cal­ly float­ed on the back of the fact that it was doing heaps of COVID tests because it’s a pathol­o­gy com­pa­ny. Um, rev­enue was up even though it was­n’t mak­ing mon­ey because doc­tor surg­eries were closed dur­ing COVID. And so they weren’t get­ting the nor­mal busi­ness. And they high­light the fact that they’re still not back to pre COVID.

[00:37:18] Tony Kynas­ton: num­bers in the pathol­o­gy busi­ness out­side of COVID, because there’s still income being made by this com­pa­ny around COVID tests and things, which sur­prised me because it’s now 2025. But any­way, um, what else can I say about it? ADT is 2 mil­lion, so it’s good for port­fo­lios of a decent 6 mil­lion. Also, um, and that’s one of the rea­sons why I’m pick­ing it.

[00:37:46] Tony Kynas­ton: I’m going to, uh, quick­ly read through what it does. This comes from Stock Doc­tor and their PRACI. ACL is a lead­ing Aus­tralian pathol­o­gy ser­vices provider formed through the con­sol­i­da­tion of sev­er­al enti­ties, includ­ing Health­Scopes, Aus­tralian pathol­o­gy busi­ness in 2015, and St John of God Health­care’s pathol­o­gy divi­sion in 2016.

[00:38:08] Tony Kynas­ton: The com­pa­ny offers a com­pre­hen­sive range of diag­nos­tics. Diag­nos­tic ser­vices such as chem­i­cal pathol­o­gy, hema­tol­ogy and mol­e­c­u­lar test­ing, serv­ing both pri­vate and pub­lic hos­pi­tals nation­wide. It’s under the lead­er­ship of CEO 2015. ACL has expand­ed its oper­a­tions and tech­no­log­i­cal Capa­bil­i­ties. And then from their own web­site, they have 73 labs nation­al­ly and over 13, 000 col­lec­tion cen­tres around Aus­tralia and near­ly 5, 000 employ­ees.

[00:38:41] Tony Kynas­ton: They’re also a lead­ing provider of skin can­cer care via the Sun Doc­tors brand and they oper­ate 31 clin­ics down the east coast test­ing for melanomas. Um, so that’s pret­ty much it in a nut­shell. Uh, there’ve been in the news in the last 12 months or so. They attempt­ed to merge with Lio, and I think Lio may have been on our bio list, uh, over the last few years as well.

[00:39:06] Cameron Reil­ly: Yeah.

[00:39:07] Tony Kynas­ton: uh, but the, the merg­er was blocked, uh, in late 2023, ear­ly 2024 by the a ccc, ’cause Lio was num­ber two in the pathol­o­gy mar­ket and ACL num­ber three. Um, since then, Helios has, I think, done poor­ly, um, and ACL’s. It’s been up and down, uh, the 2023 FY results weren’t that great. Rev­enue was flat, but the man­age­ment high­light­ed that, uh, they’re get­ting back to where they were in the non COVID area.

[00:39:39] Tony Kynas­ton: So non COVID rev­enue was increas­ing, uh, when I say get­ting back, get­ting back to pre COVID num­bers in the pathol­o­gy busi­ness, exclud­ing COVID test­ing, uh, MPAT was down 23 ver­sus the year before, but the mar­gins were ris­ing in the sec­ond half. Uh, when they held their AGM late last year, they said that they’re off to a good start this year as well.

[00:40:01] Tony Kynas­ton: Uh, they also, um, high­light­ed a cou­ple of oth­er things in their, uh, pre­sen­ta­tions. One was that GP num­bers are in terms of at least bill­able hours is down. And they thought that was because of the bor­der clo­sures dur­ing COVID. And so there has­n’t been, uh, as many, uh, Migrat­ing or immi­grant doc­tors into Aus­tralia, and so GP ser­vic­ing is a lit­tle bit low­er than what it was pre COVID.

[00:40:29] Tony Kynas­ton: And the oth­er thing is that, um, And it’s prob­a­bly a risk for this com­pa­ny is that it’s gov­ern­ment reg­u­lat­ed to a large extent in terms of what it can charge. And so, uh, they’re always tus­sling with the gov­ern­ment to raise the price of pathol­o­gy tests and that some­times work and some­times it does­n’t. So, um, there’s been a bit of pres­sure on keep­ing costs down, um, because of the cost of liv­ing impacts, but, um, yeah, it’s, it’s, yeah.

[00:40:56] Tony Kynas­ton: I’m always quite care­ful invest­ing in a busi­ness that relies on gov­ern­ment, um, reg­u­la­tion because, uh, uh, you don’t get to set your own pric­ing, uh, at least for part of a busi­ness any­way. If I look at the num­bers, um, I’m sor­ry, I should also say one more thing before I look at the num­bers. They’re cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing a share buy back up of up to 10 per­cent of stock, which was announced in the last results and will run for 12 months.

[00:41:20] Tony Kynas­ton: QAV num­bers, um, as I said before, the analy­sis share price is 3. 55, which is, uh, Way above IV1 of 81 cents and IV2 of 1. 85, but 3 per­cent less than con­sen­sus tar­get. The oth­er val­u­a­tion mea­sures net equi­ty per share is only 88 cents. And so book plus 30 is 1. 15. And net tan­gi­ble assets is much less due to lots of good­will on the bal­ance sheet through pri­or acqui­si­tions.

[00:41:47] Tony Kynas­ton: So we can’t real­ly call this a val­ue stock, which is why it’s at the bot­tom of our Uh, Div­i­dend Yield is 3. 38%, so it’s, uh, it’s okay, but it does­n’t score for us on that met­ric either. Stock Doc­tor Finan­cial Health is strong and the trend is steady, so that’s good. Stock­o­pe­dia, give it a qual­i­ty rank­ing of 85, which isn’t bad, and an F score of 7 out of 9, which is pret­ty good.

[00:42:15] Tony Kynas­ton: The over­all Stock­o­pe­dia rank­ing is 90. So that’s also in their top 10%. P for this com­pa­ny is 22. 4 times, which is the high­est in the last 3 years. So we give it a minus one score for that. How­ev­er, Prop­Caf is 4. 5 times, that’s why it gets onto our buy list. So it’s one of those com­pa­nies where it’s Rolling in cash, but it’s not all get­ting to the bot­tom line because the price to equi­ty is high, but the Prop­Caf is low.

[00:42:45] Tony Kynas­ton: Earn­ings per share growth is fore­cast at 21%, which is good. But with a high PE, it fails our test of growth over PE. being greater than 1. 5. Com­pa­ny does­n’t have an own­er founder. I guess on the pos­i­tive side, the CEO has been around for a long time. So, uh, there’s, um, a fair bit of expe­ri­ence from that point of view, but no own­er founder.

[00:43:09] Tony Kynas­ton: Can’t score it for that. It is a new three point trend line buy since the last result. So it gets a score for that. Um, but it does­n’t have con­sis­tent­ly increas­ing equi­ty. So we can’t score it for that. So it’s not great from our met­ric on qual­i­ty. It’s 44%. 7 out of 16. Um, but the Prop­caf is what dri­ves its rank­ing and the QAV score is point one.

[00:43:34] Tony Kynas­ton: So it’s at the very bot­tom of our buy list. Um, on the risk side of things, as I said before, gov­ern­ment con­trols the price on lots of the ACL’s rev­enue. They are actu­al­ly under­tak­ing a cam­paign. They have more of their charges auto­mat­i­cal­ly indexed each year, in line with infla­tion. Um, but so far, uh, that’s only applic­a­ble to about less than a third of their prod­ucts.

[00:43:55] Tony Kynas­ton: And a lot of the index­a­tion has been off­set by oth­er cuts in gov­ern­ment fee sched­ules. So, um, they, you know, are effec­tive­ly a gov­ern­ment lob­by busi­ness in some respects. Uh, there is also, um, I mean, they’re high­light­ing oth­er cost pres­sures in their own busi­ness, rather than the exter­nal­i­ties, but, um, but they are expe­ri­enc­ing labour short­ages again as a hang­over from COVID and the bor­ders being shut, uh, and with infla­tion, ris­ing wages, um, and so both of those have had impacts on their busi­ness neg­a­tive­ly.

[00:44:31] Tony Kynas­ton: Oppor­tu­ni­ties though, um, We are part of an aging pop­u­la­tion, and so there’s a growth in demand for pathol­o­gy ser­vices, so that’s a tick for them. And they’re in a very strong finan­cial posi­tion. Lots of cash, low debt, and so their his­to­ry is look­ing out for acqui­si­tions. Um, and they got knocked back on Helios, but it won’t stop them from try­ing to find oth­er acqui­si­tions as well.

[00:44:57] Tony Kynas­ton: So, um, the upshot I think for this com­pa­ny is that, uh, it’s prob­a­bly right to be on the bot­tom of the buy list. It seems to be a good com­pa­ny. It’s num­ber three in its mar­ket, maybe num­ber two, since the ACCC had a look at it with Helios in decline. Uh, it’s a very strong prop caf. Um, but it’s in a semi reg­u­lat­ed indus­try and, uh, that’s got to, you know, damp­en its abil­i­ty to set prices.

[00:45:21] Tony Kynas­ton: So, um, have a look if you have a large port­fo­lio. It’s a large ADT stock, uh, it might be some­thing worth, um, look­ing at. They are fore­cast­ing growth next year, uh, so it’s one of those, um, instances where we are able to buy some­thing grow­ing at 20 per­cent for a decent price.

[00:45:39] Cameron Reil­ly: Yeah, these, sort of, get­ting back to AI, it’s going to be inter­est­ing to me to see how busi­ness­es like this, uh, med­ical diag­nos­tic busi­ness­es are impact­ed by AI over the next few years, you know, and whether or not they, they start invest­ing large­ly in AI sys­tems to, uh, speed up their research, uh, to add new lev­els, new lay­ers to it.

[00:46:09] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, you’ve got to think they will. It’s a pro­duc­tiv­i­ty oppor­tu­ni­ty for them, I would have thought. 5, 000 employ­ees, you’d have to think there’s some labour sav­ing that’ll be done. Um, and as you’re well aware, AI has been use­ful in even pro­duc­ing bet­ter results, not just faster results for diag­nos­tics in the med­ical area, you know, test­ing for can­cers, et cetera.

[00:46:31] Tony Kynas­ton: So, it’s got to be an oppor­tu­ni­ty for them, yeah.

[00:46:34] Cameron Reil­ly: yeah. I mean, an AI sys­tem, if it’s trained around this sort of stuff, can, in the­o­ry, just look at the fine detail of mil­lions of mark­ers and, you know, very quick­ly return, um, alarm bells if there’s some­thing that needs to be high­light­ed. Well, thank you, Tony. Um, talk­ing about. Sig­nals, I had a cou­ple of ques­tions for you.

[00:47:00] Cameron Reil­ly: One was, came up in my mind in the last cou­ple of weeks. I’m not sure if we’ve ever talked about this before, but whether or not we should have a point in the scor­ing for when an under­ly­ing com­mod­i­ty has recent­ly become a buy. We score a stock if it’s got a new three point upturn, but what if its under­ly­ing com­mod­i­ty has a new three point upturn?

[00:47:23] Cameron Reil­ly: We

[00:47:25] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, look, it’s not a bad idea. Um, I just have to go back and have a look over the life of, you know, our data, whether it’s more like­ly, like, are we get­ting bet­ter than six out of 10, um, in those cas­es where it comes back. So it’s basi­cal­ly new on the com­mod­i­ty list because it’s a no, it’s a go, no go for us.

[00:47:44] Tony Kynas­ton: If it’s not a buy on the com­mod­i­ty list, we just don’t touch it. We sell it. Um, so that’s, you know, straight away a gate for us. But you’re say­ing, if it’s a new. Buy on the com­mod­i­ty list, whether it gets a boost and poten­tial­ly so. Yeah. So I’d have to have a look at the data and see if it sup­ports that.

[00:48:03] Cameron Reil­ly: Mm. I just, I was won­der­ing if you had looked at it in the past,

[00:48:07] Tony Kynas­ton: I haven’t. No, that’s a good idea though. And like­wise, too, I think I’ve been read­ing your posts on uh, your, uh, AI gen­er­at­ed. Analy­sis of alerts and there’s a num­ber of buy­backs going on, AC ACL being one of them. I saw in one of your blog posts that a NZ have announced the buy­back. Um, and I think GEM is also on the buy­back, but, uh, again, I’ll have to do some data analy­sis, but I think that’s a can­di­date for adding to the buy list as well, for an extra point at

[00:48:41] Cameron Reil­ly: Yeah,

[00:48:41] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah.

[00:48:43] Cameron Reil­ly: I’ve had a bit of a prob­lem in my new script for the last week that I was work­ing on just before we went on air. Um, so I haven’t put one out for a week, but, uh, I’m, uh, the last iter­a­tion of it I did, I’m actu­al­ly, um, uh, improv­ing the rel­e­van­cy score for buy­backs. So it push­es them

[00:49:04] Tony Kynas­ton: Oh, okay. Yeah. Good.

[00:49:05] Cameron Reil­ly: List of rel­e­van­cy.

[00:49:07] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah. ’cause they’re hard to, we, we don’t get a data down­load for them, so they’re hard to find.

[00:49:12] Cameron Reil­ly: Yeah. The only oth­er ques­tion I had for you, I’ve been think­ing about this week, is whether or not I should just nix the Stock­o­pe­dia Aus­tralian port­fo­lio. Just because it’s one more thing that I don’t want to have to pay atten­tion to. And it, you know, the point of it in the first place was to see how it per­formed vis a vis the Stock Doc­tor port­fo­lio.

[00:49:36] Cameron Reil­ly: I’ve been run­ning it for Near­ly 18 months. It seems to per­form just as well as the Stock Doc­tor, uh, Aus­tralian port­fo­lio. So I’m not sure there’s real­ly much point con­tin­u­ing it beyond that.

[00:49:50] Tony Kynas­ton: no, I think you, I think you rise to do that. You cer­tain­ly do enough work on all the oth­er port­fo­lios. So I don’t know. I mean, we set it up or you set it up so that you can com­pare it to the Stock Doc­tor port­fo­lio and make sure that we’re not miss­ing some­thing because the met­rics that you down­load in Stock­o­pe­dia don’t exact­ly one to one match with Stock Doc­tor.

[00:50:09] Tony Kynas­ton: But I mean, it is enough of an over­lap that they both per­form well.

[00:50:14] Cameron Reil­ly: Yeah. And I’ll keep the, the US Stock­o­pe­dia port­fo­lio run­ning obvi­ous­ly, but I think I might just col­lapse the Aus­tralian one. I think it’s served its pur­pose. All right. Well, that’s all I have for today, TK. Unless you have some­thing else we can talk about David Lynch.

[00:50:34] Tony Kynas­ton: No, that’s all I’ve got too.

[00:50:37] Cameron Reil­ly: Oh, so sad. It was very sad when I heard Lynch died. It like, uh, he’s one of those guys that’s been in my pan­theon of gods for my entire adult life. I prob­a­bly dis­cov­ered him when I was, I don’t know, 19 or 20 and just always loved every­thing that he’s done. Like it’s just, he nev­er miss­es for me. He’s like a Taran­ti­no.

[00:51:01] Cameron Reil­ly: It’s just, every­thing is great.

[00:51:05] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah. I, I can’t say the same. I mean, I think most of it’s great and, and cer­tain­ly greater than great, but, um, I strug­gled with Inland Empire and a lit­tle bit with Lost Hori­zons, but That’s fine. He’s, you know,

[00:51:16] Cameron Reil­ly: Lost High­way. I

[00:51:17] Tony Kynas­ton: lost High­way. Sor­ry, he’s out there. That’s fine. Oh,

[00:51:21] Cameron Reil­ly: uh, I loved both of those and in fact I’ve just queued them up to watch. I watched Lost High­way in the last six months prob­a­bly and yeah, I’ve just queued up. I haven’t seen Inland Empire since it first came out though, so I’ve queued that up to watch again. Um, I just watched Mul­hol­land Dri­ve again over the week­end.

[00:51:40] Cameron Reil­ly: Prob­a­bly my fifth or sixth time watch­ing that and I was telling Hunter on the week­end that every time I watch it When I get to the end, I’m like, Oh, now I under­stand it.

[00:51:51] Tony Kynas­ton: and work. Yeah. Thanks. A dif­fer­ent, a dif­fer­ent under­stand­ing each time, I guess as it

[00:51:55] Cameron Reil­ly: And I know that there is no under­stand­ing, like, um, there’s noth­ing to be under­stood, but every time I watch it, I have that, Oh, now I get it kind of feel­ing. And I’m sure, you know, it’s all in my head, but that’s, that’s why it’s bril­liant, right?

[00:52:10] Tony Kynas­ton: it’s a sump­tu­ous pic­ture.

[00:52:12] Cameron Reil­ly: you spend the whole movie going, what is going on? And then he, he sort of ties some­thing up at the end and gives you some hints and you’re like, Oh, right.

[00:52:21] Cameron Reil­ly: So she’s her and, and that’s also her. And that was her and that the dead body, uh, you know.

[00:52:30] Tony Kynas­ton: But that’s what’s so great about it too, it’s like it’s, we’re con­di­tioned to expect a mys­tery to play out and be solved by some­one, but it’s more life­like if it just He’s a mish­mash of ideas and real­i­ties and per­cep­tions. Yeah.

[00:52:45] Cameron Reil­ly: And I think it was, it was either Cole McLaugh­lin or Lau­ra Dern’s Obit on him in the last week. I think it was McLaugh­lin. He said, David real­ized that ques­tions are more impor­tant than answers.

[00:52:58] Tony Kynas­ton: Right.

[00:52:59] Cameron Reil­ly: So his stuff just made you ask ques­tions. And you know, yeah, I love it. It’s

[00:53:05] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah. No, I, I agree. And I’ve been hear­ing so much in my head with, with his voice in the last week as well.

[00:53:14] Cameron Reil­ly: If you can believe it, it’s a beau­ti­ful day. And I also, I kind of, I mean, it was sad, but I love the irony that he died in the mid­dle of the LA fires, when fire was such a huge motif. I mean, LA was a huge motif in his work. Fires were a huge motif in his work. Twin Peaks Fire walk with me. There was always fire imagery and that kind of stuff.

[00:53:40] Cameron Reil­ly: To die in the mid­dle of his town being on fire was sort of, uh, I don’t know, um, appro­pri­ate.

[00:53:50] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah. But also, I mean, it’s been great to go back over. Old posts and writ­ings of his too to talk about his process of, you know, he, he will just write down what­ev­er idea he has at the time and even­tu­al­ly he’ll go back and he’ll try to piece them togeth­er when he has enough. It’s a movie or a sto­ry or a paint­ing or a piece of fur­ni­ture.

[00:54:11] Tony Kynas­ton: Um, yeah, that’s his process. It does­n’t have to make sense.

[00:54:15] Cameron Reil­ly: And I love the fact that he was always cre­at­ing and always, you know, with, after the sort of trav­es­ty of the De Lau­ren­ti­is dune, had his cre­ative free­dom, did what he want­ed to do. You know, nev­er real­ly buck­led or wavered to Hol­ly­wood.

[00:54:36] Tony Kynas­ton: I would­n’t call, I would­n’t call the De La Renta’s Dune a trav­es­ty. I still think it’s much bet­ter than the one that’s been made recent­ly.

[00:54:43] Cameron Reil­ly: he thought it was a

[00:54:45] Tony Kynas­ton: He did, he did­n’t like work­ing with­in the Hol­ly­wood sys­tem, but it’s a, it’s a supe­ri­or

[00:54:49] Cameron Reil­ly: they, they took away 90 min­utes of the film or no, 45 min­utes. They cut out of the film. He lost con­trol of the edit, like Orson did in the Mag­nif­i­cent Amber­sons and they, they cut it up. They reshot some stuff. And so the final prod­uct was­n’t what he was try­ing to make, which is why he was, um, Angry and sad­dened by that.

[00:55:11] Cameron Reil­ly: I still love it too, though. I’m with you. I think it’s very engag­ing to watch. It’s bat­shit, but, you know, it’s fun. Yeah.

[00:55:21] Tony Kynas­ton: As opposed to the very straight­for­ward, I actu­al­ly watched Dune Part 2 again last night. The very straight­for­ward, you know, epic sort of style of sto­ry­telling, which miss­es all of the inter­nal mono­logue that I thought, you know, that Lynch brought to the screen in his ver­sion of June. And I’m rewatch­ing June part two, which I did­n’t like the first time.

[00:55:44] Tony Kynas­ton: I like it a bit bet­ter this time because it is sump­tu­ous and a great epic. But for me, The key part of the book was about Paul Atrei­des, he’s com­ing to grips with being able to see the future. I mean, how do you live in a body which every day when you wake up, you go, oh yeah, that’s hap­pen­ing today. Oh yeah, I do this, this, and this, and then you actu­al­ly have to do it.

[00:56:06] Tony Kynas­ton: It’s like, you know, at once bor­ing and at once, you know, Um, it, uh, it could, it could suck all the ambi­tion out of you, um, because you know what’s going to hap­pen, it’s like know­ing when you’re going to die, you know, the moment of your death and where it is, you know, it’s like, um, it takes away all the thrill of things, but, uh, that nev­er came out in June Part 2, but I think it came out a lot more in Lynch’s ver­sion of Shane.

[00:56:30] Cameron Reil­ly: And they, yeah, in the Denis Vil­leneuve ver­sion, they sort of rushed the end­ing of it as well, and it just all seemed to col­lapse in on itself. But the oth­er thing I thought about, uh, Lynch, and I feel the same about Bowie and Lew and Leonard Cohen, is his final real piece of work, cin­e­mat­ic work, was Twin Peaks The Return, which was com­plete­ly Lynch to 100 in every way.

[00:57:02] Cameron Reil­ly: It was like an absolute mas­ter­piece. For that to be his ulti­mate cre­ation, the last thing he got to do, and it was just per­fect. In my opin­ion, per­fect­ly done. The most Lynchi­an thing he could have done, uh, to go out like that as Bowie did, like, I think Bowie’s last album, uh, Black­star was per­fect. Lou Reed’s last album was his duet with Metal­li­ca that was so bru­tal.

[00:57:30] Cameron Reil­ly: Every­one hat­ed it and most peo­ple still hate it. And I just loved it. Like he was in his mid sev­en­ties and he just made The most hat­ed album, like there’s noth­ing more punk than you can do in your mid sev­en­ties to make an album. That is so bru­tal that every­one hates it. And then you die. You’re like, yeah, like that was like that.

[00:57:54] Cameron Reil­ly: Absolute­ly. The way Lew would have want­ed to go out. I’m quite sure Leonard Cohen’s last album was just mys­ti­cal and lush and poet­ic and beau­ti­ful. Like these guys man­aged to. end their artis­tic careers on an absolute high note of integri­ty and artis­tic puri­ty, which I real­ly admire. You know, they, they did­n’t, you know, this is why Taran­ti­no says he only wants to make 10 films because he does­n’t want to get old and weak and, you know, every­one go, well, don’t think about those years.

[00:58:32] Tony Kynas­ton: be where Lynch was. I strug­gled to think more than about, of more than about 10 films that he would have made, so sim­i­lar sort of verb. But, um, what I liked about the Twin Peaks re unit, I real­ly thought Carl McLaugh­lin should have won an Emmy for Best Actor because he played three parts, three total­ly dif­fer­ent parts in such a, in such a great, in such a great way, his act­ing was just sen­sa­tion­al, um, great script, and, and I love the way Lynch goes back to the same actors, he’s just had his coterie of, his entourage of peo­ple he col­lab­o­rates with, and, and they all came togeth­er in that last one as well, Lau­ra Dern was fan­tas­tic, Carl was fan­tas­tic, yeah,

[00:59:14] Cameron Reil­ly: I read her obit, uh, in the last week. She was say­ing she was 17 when she audi­tioned for Blue Vel­vet.

[00:59:22] Tony Kynas­ton: right,

[00:59:24] Cameron Reil­ly: Amaz­ing. And then she went and did Wild At Heart a few years lat­er with Nick. Cage,

[00:59:31] Tony Kynas­ton: Yep.

[00:59:31] Cameron Reil­ly: when they said Nicholas Cave. Um, yeah, which is again, one of my favourite films. I’ve always loved Wild at Heart, but, um, yeah, she was just a girl when she worked for him the first time, and I saw Nao­mi Watts being inter­viewed on Amer­i­can Morn­ing TV say­ing she was, she’d been in LA for 10 years.

[00:59:49] Cameron Reil­ly: 10 years and had got­ten noth­ing when she got the Mul­hol­land Dri­ve audi­tion. She was ready to pack up and go back to Aus­tralia. She’d just giv­en up and he called her in and she said she was so dis­en­chant­ed by then she sat through his whole, she said like his audi­tions were just con­ver­sa­tions over lunch.

[01:00:08] Cameron Reil­ly: She was like, yeah, yeah, we’ll just get to the point where you tell me I’m not right for this project. I’m too old. I’m not pret­ty enough. I’m what­ev­er. And just, you know, Let me go. And, uh, she said that he just obvi­ous­ly made her career, you know,

[01:00:23] Tony Kynas­ton: did you see,

[01:00:24] Cameron Reil­ly: she was great.

[01:00:25] Tony Kynas­ton: one of the clips that came up on my feed was, was her, Nao­mi Watts. I think it may have been on some­thing like the Gra­ham Nor­ton show, one of the Tonight Shows in Amer­i­ca, imper­son­at­ing Lynch. She, she rang him up and said, I’ve just been offered this role on King Kong, I’m not sure whether I should take it.

[01:00:43] Tony Kynas­ton: And I, I, I’ll para­phrase. And she did his voice, Well, you know, King Kong is always gonna be huge busi­ness for you, Nao­mi.

[01:00:54] Cameron Reil­ly: Yeah. Every­one, every­one in Newham City was just a sweet­heart, like a love­ly guy. Just real­ly, real­ly sweet. Any­way, so that’s that. What else? Toto. Yes. Toto are tour­ing. Some­body else asked me if I was going to go see them. I said, as long as they just play Africa for an hour and a half, if that’s all they do.

[01:01:16] Cameron Reil­ly: I will go. If they play any­thing else, I’m not inter­est­ed.

[01:01:20] Tony Kynas­ton: And I think it’s only Luca Thera, who’s the

[01:01:23] Cameron Reil­ly: He’s the only one

[01:01:24] Tony Kynas­ton: still in it.

[01:01:25] Cameron Reil­ly: yeah, look, I love, as every­one who lis­tens to my pod­cast knows, I have a deep, deep love for Toto’s Africa. Uh, if, if I die and I’m still, I think that’s guar­an­teed, but if I die, every­one in my fam­i­ly knows that’s to be played at my funer­al or my what­ev­er.

[01:01:47] Tony Kynas­ton: Well, let me, let me ask you, why do you, why is that song res­onat­ed with you so strong­ly and for such a long time?

[01:01:55] Cameron Reil­ly: cause it’s the per­fect song.

[01:01:57] Tony Kynas­ton: it’s the least sort of song I would asso­ciate with you or your per­son­al­i­ty or your body of work.

[01:02:04] Cameron Reil­ly: It is just, it’s just the per­fect­ly cre­at­ed song. It’s just, it’s every­thing about it. It’s just a mas­ter­piece.

[01:02:11] Tony Kynas­ton: and yet I think I for­got about it as soon as I heard it. And to me it’s music.

[01:02:17] Cameron Reil­ly: I’ve loved it since 1982 when I first, I don’t know, it’s just, there’s some­thing about the riff, there’s some­thing about the, the, um, chord change into the cho­rus, there’s some­thing about just the har­monies in the cho­rus, there’s just, uh, all, every ele­ment of it, just, what, there’s, and like, and the, the Non­sense evoca­tive­ness of the lyrics about Kil­i­man­jaro and dogs and this girl who’s com­ing and some old man and it’s, it’s just like, it’s, it’s a, yeah, it’s just the mish­mash of per­fect ele­ments that I fell in love with when I was 12 and I will love it to the day I die.

[01:03:00] Tony Kynas­ton: No, I get it if you fall in love with it when you’re 12. Yeah.

[01:03:03] Cameron Reil­ly: It’s like mon­key man or doc­tor who it was one of those things as a kid or dune for that mat­ter. You’re like one of those things that. Had a huge impact on me for what­ev­er rea­son.

[01:03:13] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, but you can

[01:03:14] Cameron Reil­ly: my teenage years was lis­ten­ing to Alice Coop­er and Black Sab­bath and Ozzy Osbourne and Van Halen, which I still all love.

[01:03:20] Cameron Reil­ly: But yeah, Toto just got in there. And then Joe Jack­son, is she real­ly going out with him? Um, And a lot of that stuff from the, like, those sort of mid­dle of the road, Leo Say­er. I still love Leo Say­er because it was the first record I bought when I was 11 or 12.

[01:03:37] Tony Kynas­ton: think it was one of my audio ones too. I was trav­el­ing down the road feel­ing hun­gry and cold. Yeah.

[01:03:43] Cameron Reil­ly: than me. It was, um, more than I can say was the first album I bought. And then I got to inter­view him on the pod­cast years ago, which was a

[01:03:51] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, I heard that.

[01:03:52] Cameron Reil­ly: Love­ly to talk to Leo. Yeah, I don’t know. There’s things that con­nect with you when you’re that age, you

[01:03:57] Tony Kynas­ton: I know. I get that.

[01:03:58] Cameron Reil­ly: they go deep in the sys­tem.

[01:04:01] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, no, I get that. But like, usu­al­ly I can, like, for exam­ple, with June or any­thing like that, I can point to it and say, here’s why I liked it, here’s why it was good, here’s why it stood the test of time, here’s why it was impor­tant. If I go back and think about the ear­worms that I used to lis­ten to on the radio, and, you know, were on my first mix­tapes and things like that, it’s like they’re just com­plete­ly for­get­table.

[01:04:24] Tony Kynas­ton: Because, like, com­mer­cial radio was com­plete­ly for­get­table from the late 60s, ear­ly 70s.

[01:04:30] Cameron Reil­ly: I still get goose­bumps when­ev­er Africa comes on and I break into the cho­rus. And, the oth­er one for me is Meat­loaf’s Bad Out­ta Hell, um, And I’m dying at the bot­tom of a pit in the blaz­ing sun, Torn and twist­ed at the foot of a burn­ing bike, Some­body some­where must be call­ing the bell, In the last, The next thing I see is my heart still beat­ing.

[01:05:05] Cameron Reil­ly: I mean that gets me every time. It gets me right down in the gonads man. Like it’s, I don’t know.

[01:05:10] Tony Kynas­ton: I was nev­er a Meat­loaf fan either. I always found it too musi­cal the­atre for me, but um, but I get it. Like I like the per­son Meat­loaf. I think, I think, you know, like I respect it, under­stand why it was suc­cess­ful. Just not my cup of tea. That’s fine. There’s plen­ty of oth­er things out there to like,

[01:05:27] Cameron Reil­ly: You were, you were, you were punky. You were more punky back then.

[01:05:30] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, and you are, you are into the heavy stuff as well, but that’s why I think it’s so strange that you also love the light

[01:05:37] Cameron Reil­ly: I love it all

[01:05:38] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, you and Yang.

[01:05:40] Cameron Reil­ly: I got a West Side Sto­ry. I love

[01:05:41] Tony Kynas­ton: Okay, I would­n’t, I’d, I’d rather pull my teeth out.

[01:05:45] Cameron Reil­ly: well, I grew up doing musi­cal the­atre, right? So I was, I was the lead actor in all the school musi­cals in my teens. And yeah, I played vio­la, musi­cal the­atre. I love it all. Love it all, Tony. It’s all great.

[01:06:00] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, good.

[01:06:01] Cameron Reil­ly: Did you get into Shostakovich yet?

[01:06:03] Tony Kynas­ton: No, I have not.

[01:06:07] Cameron Reil­ly: I’m

[01:06:07] Tony Kynas­ton: I told you, I turned the radio on and

[01:06:10] Cameron Reil­ly: yeah. Yeah.

[01:06:11] Tony Kynas­ton: Jump­ing Jack Flash was, was play­ing. Yeah, that’s more my style. Yeah, no, I haven’t got­ten into it.

[01:06:17] Cameron Reil­ly: I’m so deep up Shostakovich’s but­t­hole right now, man. It’s like I moved on from the fifth

[01:06:24] Tony Kynas­ton: There’s Luca Thera. Luca Ther­a’s up there some­where.

[01:06:28] Cameron Reil­ly: I’m into the string quar­tet num­ber eight and num­ber three and the eighth sym­pho­ny. And just, it just keeps going. It’s one of the things about Shostakovich is one, one, Piece, one of his works leads you to the next one.

[01:06:42] Cameron Reil­ly: ’cause they’re con­nect­ed sort of in ways they ref­er­ence each oth­er and, you know. Yeah, it’s great stuff, man. Great, great stuff.

[01:06:53] Tony Kynas­ton: Very good. And last thing I should say, well, two more things to say. It was my anniver­sary on Fri­day and Jen­ny’s too, obvi­ous­ly.

[01:07:00] Cameron Reil­ly: hap­py anniver­sary.

[01:07:01] Tony Kynas­ton: 27 years. 27. It’s a lot to reflect on. Yeah. We went out for a nice din­ner. There’s a restau­rant down here, um, at the RACV resort near­by called The Cape. And we had a, a nice degus­ta­tion din­ner, which was love­ly.

[01:07:18] Tony Kynas­ton: So that was quite mem­o­rable, but yeah, nice night.

[01:07:22] Cameron Reil­ly: do you have any tra­di­tions like anniver­sary tra­di­tions

[01:07:25] Tony Kynas­ton: Uh, yeah, we usu­al­ly for­get. That’s prob­a­bly our usu­al tra­di­tion. And then we hear like, this Aus­tralia Day is com­ing up. Oh, that’s right. What’s it about Aus­tralia? Oh, yeah, it’s our anniver­sary. That’s usu­al­ly how it goes after 27

[01:07:41] Cameron Reil­ly: what was it? It was a, you did­n’t meet at a Bowie con­cert, but you was your, was it your first date at the Bowie con­cert?

[01:07:48] Tony Kynas­ton: No, it was the first time we sat next to each oth­er and actu­al­ly had a chat.

[01:07:52] Cameron Reil­ly: Oh,

[01:07:52] Tony Kynas­ton: It was at the Glass Spi­der tour at Kooy­ong, Kooy­ong Court. Yeah, we went out with a big group of peo­ple, you know, a dozen of us, and we just hap­pened to sit next to each oth­er and got chat­ting. Yeah.

[01:08:04] Cameron Reil­ly: do you remem­ber what it was about?

[01:08:05] Tony Kynas­ton: Um, I remem­ber the upshot was she was telling me she just bought a beach shack down at Lox­port, which is about three hours out­side of Mel­bourne.

[01:08:15] Tony Kynas­ton: And, um, at the end of the con­ver­sa­tion, she invit­ed me down for a week­end. So that’s how it all kicked off.

[01:08:21] Cameron Reil­ly: Wow, that’s fast.

[01:08:23] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, smooth, hey. I can thank David Bowie for that.

[01:08:31] Cameron Reil­ly: yeah, so two things out of that, num­ber one, she hit on you,

[01:08:35] Tony Kynas­ton: Of course. Mate, I went to an all boys school, like I’d nev­er made the first move. I did­n’t,

[01:08:41] Cameron Reil­ly: Well, Chris­sy made the first move on me too. I, I knew, but I was­n’t gonna, like, there was such an age gap when we met and still, fun­ni­ly enough,

[01:08:52] Tony Kynas­ton: Ha ha ha.

[01:08:53] Cameron Reil­ly: uh, I was not gonna, I was not gonna hit on a woman that was, you know, she was only nine years younger and I did­n’t know, I thought she was like, I thought she was like 20 when I met her, like she was 20, 28, but I thought she was like 21, 22, there was no way I was gonna make a move on her, like I was, I was 30, what­ev­er, 38, 39.

[01:09:18] Cameron Reil­ly: Um, the sec­ond thing is, you said Meat­loaf was too the­atri­cal for you and you were at David Bowie Glass Spi­der.

[01:09:27] Tony Kynas­ton: Musi­cal the­atre. The­atri­cal.

[01:09:30] Cameron Reil­ly: That was like, The biggest the­atri­cal rock show ever done up until that point in

[01:09:36] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, it would have been. Yeah, it was huge. Big stage pres­ence, but Bowie’s still Bowie under­neath it, right? Like he still does a bit of Zig­gy, a bit of Lodger and all that kind of stuff. And Peter Framp­ton was there. That was the oth­er high­light. He came out and did a solo. What was his song talk­ing about?

[01:09:52] Tony Kynas­ton: Ear­worms when I was 12, where he did the, he blows into the pipe that dis­torts the gui­tar. I’ll show you the way or some­thing. Yeah. I want you. Yeah.

[01:10:03] Cameron Reil­ly: one big

[01:10:04] Tony Kynas­ton: me the way. Yeah. And he played in Bowie’s band. So yeah, but, but it was­n’t, um, West Side Sto­ry, right? It was Bowie’s Hits, just under­neath a big glass spi­der.

[01:10:16] Cameron Reil­ly: Yeah. I’ve seen, I’ve seen record­ings of that con­cert and not, not his best, uh, sort of live work. It was sort of overblown and Not his best era too, that sort of peri­od in the 80s when he, you know, posts Let’s Dance when he tried to go real­ly super com­mer­cial and have big hits and all that kind of stuff, kind of, not his best out­put in those.

[01:10:40] Cameron Reil­ly: years. Then he had to go and join Tin Machine and get back to his roots. Do you like the Tin Machine albums?

[01:10:47] Tony Kynas­ton: No, I don’t think I’ve heard them.

[01:10:49] Cameron Reil­ly: Oh man, do your­self a favour.

[01:10:51] Tony Kynas­ton: Okay. I’ll

[01:10:52] Cameron Reil­ly: Tin Machine.

[01:10:55] Tony Kynas­ton: Because I Yep. Sor­ry.

[01:10:58] Cameron Reil­ly: Well, he got a band. He was sort of retired,

[01:11:00] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah.

[01:11:01] Cameron Reil­ly: for a cou­ple of years and then he came back sort of around about the time he got mar­ried to Iman or was dat­ing Iman or some­thing like that.

[01:11:07] Cameron Reil­ly: And he, you know, he was clean and he’d been clean for a while, but. Sort of had to rein­vent him­self. And he got a band with a cou­ple of broth­ers that were like hard rock­ers. And he came back and it was not David Bowie and Tin Machine. It was just Tin Machine. He’s like, I’m just a singer in this band and, uh, grew a beard and wore a suit.

[01:11:28] Cameron Reil­ly: And, but it was, it was quite hard rock and stuff. Peo­ple did­n’t like it, but I always loved it. was great. They only did two albums, but it’s real­ly sort of hard rock, heav­i­ly pro­duced, but hard rock with Bowie, um, yeah.

[01:11:46] Tony Kynas­ton: I remem­ber

[01:11:47] Cameron Reil­ly: a good cov­er of, did a good cov­er of John Lennon’s Work­ing Class Hero. You know that song?

[01:11:51] Tony Kynas­ton: I do, yeah.

[01:11:52] Cameron Reil­ly: Yeah, they did a real­ly good sort of hard rock cov­er of it, which is great. Any­way, sor­ry, what were you gonna say?

[01:11:59] Tony Kynas­ton: No, I just remem­ber, um, pick­ing up the CD back in the 90s. I for­get now what it was called, with Bowie. He had a, um, hands clasped behind his back on the cov­er with a, like a V, a big col­lar on a suit. Earth­ling, yeah. I thought that was

[01:12:12] Cameron Reil­ly: Great album. That was his sort of dub, trip hop, sort of, jun­gle album stuff. Yeah. Great album. Like, one of those, you know, every, one of those things he would do where he’d go to a club and hear stuff that was sort of in fringe music and he’d go, okay, I’m now gonna Do an album with that kind of stuff.

[01:12:36] Cameron Reil­ly: Get a bunch of musi­cians in and get Bri­an Eno or who­ev­er to come in and help him pro­duce it. But yeah, real­ly good stuff. He was real­ly back in form, I think, by Hea­then, Hea­then, let’s say, but Earth­ling those days and, um, what­ev­er the one that had, um, I’m Afraid of Amer­i­cans on it. Um, I can’t remem­ber the name of that album, but it was around about the same time.

[01:13:01] Cameron Reil­ly: Like the nineties, you real­ly got back in form.

[01:13:03] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, he did. I agree. First thing was great.

[01:13:07] Cameron Reil­ly: Hmm.

[01:13:08] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah, and, uh, I’ve been sit­ting here at my screen watch­ing my text mes­sages come in because my phone’s turned off, but they’re still com­ing in on my lap­top because we had a win. Uh, our

[01:13:18] Cameron Reil­ly: Oh, you did­n’t talk about your

[01:13:19] Tony Kynas­ton: Lady Prancelot, uh, nar­row­ly won in Hor­sham about 10 min­utes before we start­ed to record today.

[01:13:27] Tony Kynas­ton: So that was good.

[01:13:28] Cameron Reil­ly: What was the race called?

[01:13:30] Tony Kynas­ton: Race 3 at Hor­sham. I don’t know.

[01:13:32] Cameron Reil­ly: Oh, that’s it? Does­n’t have a name? I thought they all

[01:13:34] Tony Kynas­ton: it was a maid­en. No, no. Well, I do it in the big races, but it was a maid­en win, so that was good. She’ll, she’ll, I’m hop­ing she’ll get to the city now. I’m rac­ing the city, which will be good. But sec­ond start for a win’s pret­ty good.

[01:13:48] Cameron Reil­ly: Yeah,

[01:13:49] Tony Kynas­ton: bred her, which is good.

[01:13:51] Tony Kynas­ton: Yeah.

[01:13:53] Cameron Reil­ly: So no dog food for Lady Proff this week.

[01:13:56] Tony Kynas­ton: Well, they don’t eat dog food. They may become dog food, but they don’t eat

[01:14:00] Cameron Reil­ly: what I meant. She, she won’t become dog food

[01:14:02] Tony Kynas­ton: No, no, no. We’ll keep her for a while. And, um, Chicha Changes, speak­ing of Bowie, races on Thurs­day of this week. If any­one lis­tened to this before­hand.

[01:14:14] Cameron Reil­ly: right. Well, good luck with that. Glad to hear that you’re hav­ing some wind. And how’s the health?

[01:14:22] Tony Kynas­ton: Oh, good. Real­ly good. Yeah,

[01:14:25] Cameron Reil­ly: That’s good.

[01:14:26] Tony Kynas­ton: no prob­le­mo. I

[01:14:29] Cameron Reil­ly: Uh,

[01:14:30] Tony Kynas­ton: joined up, I’ll tell you a fun­ny sto­ry, I joined up the local Rose­bud gym, the coun­cil gym, and I’ve been going to it on and off when I’ve been com­ing to Cape Schanck, because it’s just been ren­o­vat­ed, it’s huge now, it’s all glitzy, um, big, big indoor pools and stuff, and a good gym.

[01:14:44] Tony Kynas­ton: Um, and it’s a, I did­n’t want to join up because I was back and for­wards from Syd­ney and what­not, now I’m down here for a week at a time. So I was about 22 for a casu­al vis­it, which is fine. And then I decid­ed to join, now we’ve, I’ve moved down here at least for the year and I went online and they have an over 60s mem­ber­ship.

[01:15:02] Tony Kynas­ton: So it’s cost­ing me 12 bucks a week now to go to the gym down here, which is just great. I fig­ure I pay enough local rates and things to sub­si­dize it. So I can, I can lean on that one.

[01:15:19] Cameron Reil­ly: the over six­ties. When, when do you end up in the swim­ming pool doing the sort of swim­ming pool tai chi stuff? Is that part of that? Sub­scrip­tion?

[01:15:29] Tony Kynas­ton: a float­ie,

[01:15:29] Cameron Reil­ly: Yeah.

[01:15:30] Tony Kynas­ton: around my waist, yeah, and a noo­dle, yeah. Yeah, oh, we’ll do a broad­cast from the, the wad­ing pool.

[01:15:38] Cameron Reil­ly: Mean­while, I’m doing Kung Fu with a bro­ken knuck­le, sliced off fin­ger­tip. Ah, what else is wrong with me this week? Noth­ing. Oh, that’s so good.

[01:15:46] Tony Kynas­ton: No bike injuries, noth­ing, uh,

[01:15:49] Cameron Reil­ly: on a big bike ride on Mon­day morn­ing

[01:15:51] Tony Kynas­ton: uh huh.

[01:15:53] Cameron Reil­ly: Fox tried to talk me out of it because of my fin­ger. And I’m like, yeah. And I got, I got halfway. So

[01:15:59] Tony Kynas­ton: to talk you out of it. Why would

[01:16:01] Cameron Reil­ly: He’s like, that’s a real­ly,

[01:16:06] Cameron Reil­ly: he’s going through this stage where he’s every time one of us leaves the house, he’s like real­ly con­cerned we’re going to die. So he asks us to be care­ful and all this kind of stuff.

[01:16:16] Tony Kynas­ton: Oh, that’s

[01:16:16] Cameron Reil­ly: And then he was asleep though, when I went for the bike ride, it was the night before he asked me not to do it. I’m like, Hey, it’ll be fine.

[01:16:22] Cameron Reil­ly: I got up at five 30s on the bike by six, about an hour lat­er, I’m at my halfway point, I stopped and went to take my hel­met off and I did­n’t have a hel­met on. I was like, Oh shit. I for­got to put my hel­met on. So I was, uh, uber con­scious of

[01:16:38] Tony Kynas­ton: You real­ly are a risk tak­er, aren’t you? Man­dolin with­out a glove, bike with­out a hel­met, yeah.

[01:16:44] Cameron Reil­ly: Chris­sy’s say­ing I’m acci­dent prone now.

[01:16:47] Cameron Reil­ly: It’ll be the next thing if some­thing hap­pens, but, uh, yeah. All right, TK, QAV a good week.

[01:16:54] Tony Kynas­ton: you too.