They Told Us It Was Poison. We Still Drank the Mountain Dew.
Episode 2x08 – Property Taxes, Processed Food & Aliens (In That Order)
This week on Notorious Friday Night Posse, we tackled three things that feel unrelated… until they don’t:
You might not actually own your house.
Half your diet was engineered in a lab.
Aliens are somehow the least confusing part of all this.
Let’s begin.
🏠 You Don’t Own Your House. You Lease It from the County.
We spent real time on this.
You buy a house.
You pay it off.
You frame the mortgage-burning photo.
And then…
The county sends you a bill. Every year. Forever.
If you stop paying property tax, they don’t say, “Oh well, you tried.”
They take it.
So, do you own it?
Or is it a subscription service with better siding?
Your home value goes up because of “market conditions,” your tax bill follows, and suddenly you’re paying more for the privilege of staying put.
Your neighbor installs hydrangeas and you owe more money.
That’s not ownership.
That’s participation in a system you can’t unsubscribe from.
We’re told property taxes fund schools and roads.
Fair.
But let’s not pretend it’s not also the only bill that never ends.
🍔 America Runs on Ultra-Processed Everything
Then we hit food.
Roughly half of American calories come from ultra-processed food.
Half.
That’s not “we indulge sometimes.”
That’s “we live inside a convenience store.”
If something has 17 ingredients and six of them sound like WiFi passwords, it’s probably not farm-to-table.
It’s lab-to-lunchbox.
And then we’re shocked by obesity, diabetes, and metabolic chaos.
We don’t have a food pyramid.
We have a distribution network.
Inflation squeezes companies.
Companies squeeze quality.
You notice food tastes different.
It probably does.
They told us it was poison.
We still drank the Mountain Dew.
Because it’s cold.
And it’s convenient.
And it’s on sale.
🥩 High Protein: The New American Religion
We also talked protein.
America went from carb-loading to meat-worship in about 18 months.
Protein works. It keeps you full. It preserves muscle.
But there’s a difference between steak and eggs…
…and fluorescent powder you mix in a shaker bottle that smells like drywall.
We didn’t solve the food problem.
We just pivoted.
Same industrial system. New macro split.
🌎 California, Migration & Voting Whiplash
We hit the migration story.
People leaving high-cost, high-regulation states.
Landing in lower-cost states.
And bringing their politics with them.
If millions leave because policy feels broken…
…and then vote for the same policy elsewhere…
are we confused when the pattern repeats?
This isn’t red vs blue.
It’s incentive vs outcome.
People vote for what they think sounds good.
Then they move when it stops feeling good.
⚽ Sports, Culture & Corporate Neutrality
We also touched on the tension in sports culture.
Soccer. Corporate sponsors. Stadium policies. Identity politics bleeding into entertainment.
Sports used to be an escape.
Now it’s:
“Welcome to the match. Here’s your pregame activism and a $14 beer.”
Teams want neutrality.
Fans want expression.
Corporations want revenue.
And everyone wants to pretend this is simple.
It’s not.
👽 Aliens: The Only Honest Topic Left
Then we spun the Wheel.
Obama said aliens "are real!"
The internet heard:
“They’re landing.”
Every president teases declassification.
No one produces a spaceship.
At this point, aliens feel less confusing than property tax assessments.
If extraterrestrials are watching us argue about protein macros and escrow accounts… they’re not invading.
They’re auditing.
🔥 The Pattern We Didn’t Plan
By the end of the episode, it clicked.
Food engineered.
Attention engineered.
Taxes engineered.
Everything optimized.
Not for health.
Not for simplicity.
For revenue.
America isn’t collapsing.
It’s being optimized.
And we’re just trying to figure out whether to meal prep or refinance.
🎙 Episode 2x08 is live now.
If you’ve ever:
Questioned your grocery bill
Looked at your property tax statement sideways
Wondered if aliens are more transparent than Congress
This one’s for you.
NFNPPOD.com
Drink water.
Check your escrow.
And if aliens land, make sure they bring cash.
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