Overtired

Jeff and Christina kick off the Overtired Podcast with a hearty dose of election angst, send their well wishes to Brett struggling with health issues, and dive deep into coping strategies for the shitshow that is US politics. They throw shade at the DNC, reminisce about the nightmare of 2016, and fantasize about burning it all down. In a lighter twist, we get the lowdown on a revolutionary terminal emulator, Mitchell Hashimoto’s Ghostty. Oh, and Tim Walz playing Crazy Taxi? Priceless. All this while navigating the wild west of social media insanity. Buckle up!

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Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter.

Election Madness and Terminal Emulators

[00:00:00] Introduction and Host Greetings

[00:00:00] Jeff: Hello, brand new America. This is the Overtired podcast. Uh, I’m Jeff Severns Guntzel. I got Christina Warren with me. Hi, Christina.

[00:00:14] Christina: Hi, Jeff. Um,

[00:00:16] Brett’s Health Update

[00:00:16] Jeff: you follow Brett on social media, uh, and maybe if you don’t, uh, you will now know that he is having some health issues. Um, and, uh, and we wish him so well. He is not here with us.

[00:00:28] Christina: he is not here with us. He’s, he’s with us in spirit. We hope that he’s doing well and that we figure out, hopefully, you know, by the time this episode goes up, he’ll be closer to figuring out why he’s been having some, uh, some fainting spells and some other stuff, which is super, super scary. So, and a fucking terrible week for it.

[00:00:45] I mean, it’s a terrible week in general, but like, of all the weeks for like, you know, to have to have like a health crisis on top of everything else.

[00:00:52] Jeff: Yeah, it’s like the only week that would also explain that particular health

[00:00:55] crisis. I’m not saying It’s I’m definitely

[00:00:58] Christina: no, no, Oh, no, [00:01:00] no, no. It doesn’t seem to be, but no, but yeah, totally. It is one of those things. Well, the thing is, if it hadn’t started like before Tuesday, I think that that would have been um, like, if I were the ER doctor, I’d be like, are we sure this isn’t just a stress response?

[00:01:16] Jeff: right. Yeah. Are we sure there’s not people across America passing out consistently right now?

[00:01:22] No. Uh, feel better, Brett. Uh, and

[00:01:26] it just sucks, and hopefully he figures it out, and if you do follow him on social media, send him, send him well wishes, um, and hope that he posts no more photos of himself from the ER.

[00:01:36] Christina: Yeah. For real. For real. Um, and, and, and, and, Very sad. Um, and, and if you’re either a doctor or an armchair doctor, please respond to him, um, with, um, suggestions for how you can solve his medical problem without actually knowing what his symptoms and, and situation is, because I know he will love that.

[00:01:58] Jeff: That’s a little special request he sent [00:02:00] through us.

[00:02:00] Christina: It is. It is. It is.

[00:02:01] Jeff: and we, we like to take care of him.

[00:02:03] Christina: We, we, we do. Just, just say that, you know, Christina and Jeff wanted to make sure that he doesn’t get any sleep.

[00:02:08] Jeff: Yeah, definitely. And if you’ve Googled this thing or something, you know, let him know the first thing you see, cause that’s sometimes the best thing.

[00:02:15] Christina: Yeah, it’s, it’s never the worst. It’s never gonna freak anybody out or like take them down another sort of spiral. It’s never gonna do anything else. No, um, please don’t, please don’t actually do that.

[00:02:23] Medical Advice and ChatGPT Discussion

[00:02:23] Christina: And, and, and Brett, if you’re, if you’re listening to this, please don’t, like, WebMD yourself. Like, we, we all know that, we all know the, the fear of, or, or at this point, okay, mindfuck.

[00:02:39] People are, because I’m already probably thinking of doing this, people aren’t going to WebMD themselves anymore. They’re just going to ChatGPT their symptoms.

[00:02:47] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is, which can be not helpful. Probably can be helpful in some scenarios, but can

[00:02:53] Christina: I was going to say in

[00:02:54] Jeff: And you can’t know, is the point.

[00:02:56] Christina: I was going to say, like, I actually firmly believe [00:03:00] that if you had a really good medical LLM, or like, like a medical version of ChatGPT, which frankly, that’s what, that’s what OpenAI should do. They should start making like specialized, like off the shelf LLMs.

[00:03:10] So we’re doing things specifically for certain industries that are models that are tuned similar to like GitHub Copilot, like where things that are like, Hey, this is tuned on medical analysis and information and we can have statistical data and, and we can refine the parameters so that, um, uh, certain functions are not happening, um, you know, like, um, non deterministically but are actually happening on a deterministic system.

[00:03:32] So like math and things like that are always going to be correct, but we can make sure that like the, the, the training data is good. Like. Um, I could actually see, you know, that being a really, I mean, already doctors are using it and they’ve used, you know, like, uh, you know, things for years to be able to kind of like run through symptoms and try to get, you know, like, things back.

[00:03:51] But like, you could see, and, you know, that be, you know, really, really good, like, diagnostic, and like, uh, analysis tool, right? [00:04:00] Um, and, and even for like, lay people, if you even had like a, a, again, you know, like, OpenAI, like, make this, make, make the medical grade one for the doctors, but then also make, like, a home version where, like, people can pay, like, 40 a quarter on addition to their ChatGPT, you know, plus bill, and they can get, like, the personal, you know, MD sort of thing, and, like, get, like, you know, like, talk to your doctor about this, um, but, like, yeah, I mean, I guess you’d have to get chemical compliance, but, Anyway, I’m coming up with all kinds of business ideas for, for OpenAI.

[00:04:35] Jeff: rich by the end of this podcast, probably.

[00:04:38] Christina: no, I mean, it won’t be, but like, and God only knows, like, what it’ll cost them to actually run those things.

[00:04:44] Jeff: What about just a, what if, what if our goal could be by the end of this podcast to just have a little walking around money? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:49] We don’t have to

[00:04:49] Christina: that would be great.

[00:04:50] Jeff: Yeah, I

[00:04:51] guess

[00:04:51] Christina: mean, I would love it.

[00:04:52] Jeff: gives us, is a little bit of walking around money.

[00:04:54] Um, Yeah. I, uh, there’s a funny, um, my, um, [00:05:00] there’s somebody in my life who was in the ER recently, I won’t be, I won’t give any indications, but she gave birth to me, um, and, and, she was, she got tested for something and then was reading the results You know, you’re in the ER and you’re, you have results, but you’re still waiting for a room for somebody to talk to you.

[00:05:20] You can’t help but look at them. And she, she texts me and she says, it says, I have a collapsed bladder. I don’t, I’m eager to know what that means. And I was like, yeah, no, probably it doesn’t mean anything bad because. Medical language is funny. And what occurred to me is it might mean that you just don’t have any pee. And, and sure enough, she got to the doctor, she’s all worried about the like, collapsed bladder. What does it mean? It just means your bladder is empty. Oh, right.

[00:05:48] Christina: Amazing. Amazing. Yeah. And, and, and that’s

[00:05:51] Jeff: sound good.

[00:05:52] Christina: no, no, but see, that’s actually a great example again of like a personal, like medical, like jargon thing. Like what does this mean? Like honestly, [00:06:00] even putting aside, okay, genuine like product idea and it doesn’t have to be OpenAI. Anybody could do this.

[00:06:05] Because in this case, you wouldn’t have to be necessarily, I mean, it would be better if you were fine tuned on like, you know, medical, um, uh, books and, and, and things like that. But, but, but it wouldn’t strictly even have to be. So just having like a, a, a well tuned kind of like personal, you know, explainer be like, I can type in what this medical term is from my doctor’s office and this is going to tell me in real language what it actually is.

[00:06:30] Jeff: Yeah, that’s, I love that. Yeah. I’m gonna actually, I’m sure she could have seen this on Google, although she didn’t seem to. I’m in ChatGPT, or in the most recent Roderick on the Line, John Roderick called it ChattyG, which is really amazing, and

[00:06:44] I, I, it’s so in my head that when I

[00:06:46] opened Alfred just now, I started typing ChattyG.

[00:06:50] Christina: Amazing. I mean, honestly, honestly, I kind of want to like, make that my alias for it.

[00:06:55] Jeff: So good. I know it was just my thought like, Oh, yeah, maybe I’ll do that. [00:07:00] Ooh, Collapsed bladder, often referred to as bladder prolapse or a cystoseal, occurs when the bladder drops from its normal position in the pelvis and presses against the vaginal wall. This typically happens when the muscles and tissues supporting the bladder become weakened.

[00:07:14] That’s not at all an empty bladder, says Chatty G.

[00:07:18] Christina: Yeah, I was gonna say, Chatty G seems like a very different thing. So, uh, so maybe not. Maybe, maybe, maybe this is not. Maybe, maybe we’re not having a good idea. Like, we’re

[00:07:28] Jeff: about this? Isn’t it just an empty bladder? Welcome to Chatty G with Christina and Jeff. Uh, isn’t it just an empty bladder, Chatty G? Let’s see. Hmm. It can indeed sound like I might refer to it, wow, it’s actually a structure. Well, that’s not what the doctor told my mother. All right, let’s stop there. Uh, and, uh, we’ll, we’ll take this to my chart.

[00:07:51] Election Night Reflections

[00:07:51] Jeff: Um, Anyway, so, uh, mental health, what, how about Mental Health Corner

[00:07:56] is, what are your coping strategies for, [00:08:00] um, the thing, the, the,

[00:08:02] The disaster?

[00:08:03] Christina: The disaster. Um, yeah, I’m curious to hear yours. So, I’m going through like the, the stages of, of grief and whatnot, and, and I’m pretty stuck in anger. Um, and, but, but the, the, like, the focus of my anger is shifting. And, um, which I feel like that’s growth. So, um, I, I kept, I, so. It was obvious to me on Tuesday night, fairly early, West Coast time, what was happening.

[00:08:31] Um, the same way that it was obvious to me in 2016, um, uh, then on East Coast time, like, what was happening. And so, I started having this sense of deja vu, and you see the numbers coming in, and you see, like, the polls, and like, you know, look. There can always be upsets, but in general, they follow a typical standard, and 2020 did as well, right?

[00:08:50] Like, it was really close. The thing that was shocking about 2020 was Georgia, um, I mean, Arizona a little bit too, but Georgia, just the fact that we didn’t know, and it was so close, and that they had to do their [00:09:00] recount, and that they had to do, like, the runoff for Senate, right? Like,

[00:09:03] Jeff: Thank you, thank you, Warnock.

[00:09:05] Christina: yeah, exactly, um, and Stacey Abrams, and all, uh, you know,

[00:09:09] Jeff: Yes, so Stacey Abrams, I’ll tell you later why I think of Warnock first, but yes, thank you all those people.

[00:09:15] Christina: Well, I mean, you know, obviously he was the one running for Senate, so, you know, um, and, and, and she, you know, had, had, had lost governor, so, you know, which is still amazing that she was able to pull in so many voters, but, like, you know, you, you, we, we saw even before it got to that point, like, we saw that it was close, and we saw, I mean, like, virtually tied, and that, and that it was, it was more competitive than we’d ever thought it would be, um, and, and so that, that, like, 2020, you know, It changed things, right?

[00:09:42] Like, like that was different, but like you didn’t, you knew early on that it was going to be like a tightrope, but like you felt good. Like 2016 though, I remember being like, this is, this is bad, she’s lost. And I felt the same exact way this time. And so I was, you know, kind of tweeting about it and posting about it [00:10:00] on threads and posting about it on Macedon and Blue Sky because we were The world is awful.

[00:10:05] Jeff: yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:10:06] Christina: And, so you have to be all those places, and all of them suck, and, and, you know, um, our, our, and, and Twitter, the worst one, is the only one that is real time at all. I mean, blue sky, I

[00:10:16] Jeff: I miss, that’s when I miss Twitter the most, is

[00:10:19] things like election night. So

[00:10:21] Christina: totally. And, and, and, but, but, but Elon has ruined it, and so it’s like the worst people in the world are there, but yet the news is there too, so it’s one of those fucking mixed things.

[00:10:29] So I’m kind of, kind of expressing, like, my, my anger, then I’m like, you know, I feel sick, I want to throw up, and I was like, I’m, I, you know, I, but, but already I started seeing people doing the whole, well, just put your chin up, you know, kind of attitude, you know, we’ll continue to fight, and I’m like, go. Fuck yourself.

[00:10:45] People are allowed to be mad. And like, that’s what I said. I was like, I was like, I started saying like, like Tuesday night and then into Wednesday, I was like, let people be mad. Let them feel what they feel. I’m not even saying be angry forever. And to be clear, I’m not saying don’t be angry forever because I have [00:11:00] some sort of sense of duty about like, oh, we all need to pick ourselves back up and do

[00:11:04] Jeff: Yeah, yeah.

[00:11:05] Christina: No, it’s because the anger Anger, it can be fueling and it can be good for a time, but ultimately it can become toxic. And so my whole thing with the anger is purely selfish. It’s like, as long as the anger works for you, be angry. But at a certain point, for most of us, anger is no longer, um, a, a beneficial response.

[00:11:24] And it winds up being hurtful. So when I say get rid of the anger, it’s not for the other people. It’s not to have peace for them, like, fuck them. It’s, it’s the same way I view forgiveness. Forgiveness is not for other people. It’s for yourself. You forgive so that you don’t have to live with that, right?

[00:11:38] And, and, and that is, you know, so that you’ve let it go and it’s no longer, like, eating at you. Like, fuck the other person, right? Like, that, that’s not who it’s from. Forgiveness is for you. Um, and I feel like

[00:11:48] Jeff: It’s not even an effective gift in many cases, right? It

[00:11:51] is something you have to do for you, and

[00:11:53] Christina: You do. Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Because it’s like, okay, because you can’t control whether or not someone forgives you or not, [00:12:00] especially if they really do.

[00:12:00] Right. Because a lot of people say, Oh, I forgive you. And then they don’t. Um, they’re, they’re still holding that through. Right. So it’s like, you know, if you’ve wronged someone or even if you haven’t, but they perceive that you have, like, there’s not a whole lot of control you have over that. Right. But like, I can control how I feel about a situation for someone else and how much I continue to let it affect me.

[00:12:18] And I feel the same way about anger. Right. But sometimes the can be really, really. fueling and, and really, frankly, like can feel good. So, you know, I’m not saying be angry forever, but I am being like, let people fucking feel how they feel and don’t immediately go into that, all right, time to get back to work.

[00:12:36] Like, first of all, fuck off. The work didn’t work last time and we should really talk about it. Um, you know, and there’s a lot, there’s enough blame to go around to everybody, but I, you know, the, the, the people I want to hear from the least are the fucking resistance, you know, like, Libs who have done jack shit for us in my opinion over the last eight years That’s who I’m really kind of pissed at now because

[00:12:58] Jeff: Well, it also feels like, when people do that, it [00:13:00] feels like they’re, it’s like, are you actually talking to yourself? Cause like, otherwise, who are you addressing? Everybody?

[00:13:04] Like, what is this fight? I mean, give me a minute.

[00:13:08] Christina: Right, right.

[00:13:10] Coping Strategies and Mental Health

[00:13:10] Christina: So anyway, you asked about coping strategies. My mind is basically just maybe like be pissed off and I’m okay with it. I’ve also been trying to like, you know, do some work and do some other things. I’ve got an insane next six weeks of travel planned. I’m gonna be in Salt Lake City for KubeCon next week.

[00:13:25] I’m gonna be in Chicago actually the week after that for Microsoft Ignite. So I’ll be near you and Brett. Then I’m going to be in Atlanta for Thanksgiving. Then I’m gonna be in Seoul for kind of a quick trip. Yep. Um, and then, then I’m going to be, um, uh, back for like a week, then I’m going to, um, uh, Rome, um, with a friend for a long weekend, and then I’m going to, then I’ll be back in Atlanta for Christmas.

[00:13:49] So, yeah, like, the next. I know. I know. And that was not all, like, three of those things came out, like, very recently. So it was not originally supposed to be that [00:14:00] hectic, but things were, like, added on to my plate kind of last minute. And honestly, I was like, fuck it. Let’s do it. Like, when I had the, um, opportunity last week when I found out that I would potentially be going to Seoul and it was confirmed this week, I, I, I didn’t have to go.

[00:14:16] And given all my other travel, like. Honestly, it’s kind of a mixed bag whether I should do it or not, but you asked for coping strategies and I did have the thought last week, I was like, depending on how things go, I might really want a distraction, you know, where I’m just go, go, going and, and I know from, um, you know, when I used to travel like this all the time, so this is going to be like.

[00:14:41] Uh, uh, back to pre pandemic Christina a little bit, um, uh, I, I know that it’s a real good way of, of avoiding things you don’t want to think about or focus

[00:14:52] Jeff: sure is.

[00:14:53] Christina: It’s, it’s just to be, as you know, from somebody who’s, who’s traveled a ton and been a bunch of places and, you know, [00:15:00] uh, during, you know, times of, you know, kind of domestic crisis, it’s nice to just be busy, you know?

[00:15:09] Jeff: Yeah. And I mean, I feel like it’s, it can be a great way to, uh, avoid things you need to avoid. And it can also be a great way to metabolize things, just to not be, uh, in your own four walls, moving, moving, moving, while also metabolizing who he’s going to pick for this post or what he’s promising now is actually like, for me, a better way.

[00:15:31] I can hold it better. Yeah. Yeah. Then if I’m sitting at home,

[00:15:34] Christina: totally. No, that’s the thing, right? Like, and I think that.

[00:15:37] Comparing 2016 and 2020 Elections

[00:15:37] Christina: Um, I want to, I want to, uh, talk to you about how you’re coping and what your mental health is like, uh, first, but one thing I do want to, I think would be interesting for us to talk about would be, um, Like, I guess maybe comparing and contrasting, like, how this feels versus other, like, election, you know, like, losses that, you know, we’ve kind of gone through, [00:16:00] um, because when I think about 2016, that was hard for so many reasons, and it was very different than how I felt then is very different from how I feel now.

[00:16:10] But part of what made that both harder and easier was the fact that I was a journalist. And so it was, it was harder in the sense that, like, you couldn’t disconnect from it. Like, there was nothing I really could do. Like, I, even not being a political journalist, you know, being like a technology journalist still, like, there was something about it all the time.

[00:16:26] And, and, you know, and I worked in a newsroom and I couldn’t get rid of it, right? It was, it was in your face and you could not ignore Like the, the, the news dump that happened literally, you know, from the day he was elected up until, you know, and then it got only bigger, you know, once he was inaugurated and all that.

[00:16:42] Whereas, whereas this time, you know, but, but, but, and so that made it suck, but at the same time, there was also like that busyness of like, okay, well, there’s always a story to write. There’s always a thing to do. And so you didn’t have to like think about it too much. And, and I’m curious from like your perspective, like.

[00:16:59] You know, [00:17:00] um, uh, as somebody who, you know, is a journalist, but not like in, in a newsroom quite the same way. Like if, if, if it, if it makes you, if it’s easier or harder, like when you have to think about it all the time, right? Or if it’s better to have a distraction, I guess that’s what I’m trying to get at, right?

[00:17:17] Like in some ways, like the, the day to day news stuff could be a distraction even if it was about him. Whereas almost like it’s harder, like, Um, once I was no longer in journalism and I was having to, like, actually follow everything that happened, like, as a layperson, like, in some ways that was almost harder because I was like, you know, the, the, the, the Mueller investigation and all that.

[00:17:37] I was like, okay, I, I have to either choose to engage or not because, you know, this is gonna, like, I, I, I have to find something else to distract me or else this is just gonna be a thing that, like, overtakes my brain and, That’s not, that’s not helpful.

[00:17:52] Jeff: Yeah. Well, actually my, I have an answer to that initially that it ties into kind of my own coping strategies or like the [00:18:00] challenges in this election. Like I didn’t, when I was a journalist, I managed to, I managed to convince my editors that I would be not only no good at, but deeply resentful about having to do any kind of in the moment coverage of any kind of in the moment politics thing at all.

[00:18:18] Christina: Mm hmm.

[00:18:19] Jeff: I’m not the best person for it, and I kind of despise it. I despise the coverage that comes out of it most of the time. Not despise, but like, I just wonder why.

[00:18:28] Um, and I know I just feel like I was throwing my life away in dramatic, which is not what I feel about the people who are doing it. I literally, that will, is what would happen inside of me if I were doing it. Um, and, And so it’s, it’s much better for me to be able to fully manage the way that I follow and metabolize and everything, this stuff. Um, though I have really good friends who are journalists where it’s like, that is, they would never say it cause you’re not supposed to say stuff like that, but that is how they metabolize it

[00:18:56] and they need it and is their coping strategy.

[00:18:58] And I thousand percent [00:19:00] respect that. And they do great work with, um, but for me, like, even So we had some really great friends. These two couples that, um, my wife and I have been close with through getting to know through our kids were friends. And then we’ve just been like friends since our kids were in kindergarten.

[00:19:14] So I love them. I love being around them. And they were, one of them was hosting kind of just us and, and, and them basically to, to watch the election results and, and have a dinner. And I knew instantly, I don’t do those things. Um, but I also, you know, knew that it’s really good to be with people you love, uh, on a hard night.

[00:19:33] And so I was like, I’m just going to do the dinner. And, um, which is what I did. But like, even there doing the dinner, what is, what is so difficult to me, and it’s not unlike the journalism thing, and why that doesn’t work for me is like, I am managing my own kind of anxiety, my own hopes, my own fears, all that stuff, and I’m doing it in whatever way is like very much me, and the way I do that stuff is, it’s very inward, it’s very like in my head, so I can actually, you know, I can be [00:20:00] scrolling back in the day, I could be scrolling Twitter, but I needed to be doing it alone, um, and, and have like utter control, because as soon as I have other people in my ear processing in their way, um, and some people process by, you know, constantly looking up information and sharing it out while you’re watching the TV, which is already putting all this like useless information, graphics that make it look like something big has just happened, but nothing’s just happened. Um, and so like, I can’t, that stresses me out so much. So I actually did something this year that I have never done. And, I’m really glad I did, and I’m not putting it out there as some like, this is what we all should have done, this is a wise thing, because often when people suggest what I’m about to suggest, it comes in a very fucking annoying package. Um, but I got home from that election party thinking I was going to turn on the TV and just watch it with my wife and, you know, whatever. I actually got home and I’m like, I’m not turning anything on. Like, I’m really fucking tired, I haven’t been

[00:20:53] sleeping well, probably not unrelated to this. There’s nothing I can do, but hit my nervous system over and over [00:21:00] again.

[00:21:00] And it, and it doesn’t help me process. Like it does, again, I totally respect it helps people. I know process just be watching it with someone, whatever, talking, but I was like, I think this time I got to be no, no, nothing. So I didn’t watch anything. I fell asleep and I woke up at like three, uh, central. And so I was like, look at the phone.

[00:21:21] I was like, no, don’t look at the phone. Try to go back to sleep. And then I, I stayed in, don’t look at the phone, try to go back to sleep for an hour and a half, and at 4. 30, 5. 30 Eastern, um, which is when he did his victory speech basically, or started it, that’s exactly when I turned my phone on, it’s like, Trump is about to begin his victory speech, and I was like, holy shit. And so anyway, I took that in, got up, couldn’t sleep, obviously. Got up, went into my workshop at like 5 a. m., sorted work gloves, and then just was like, I’m not taking in any news for the first half of the day. And I didn’t. And then I started, and I was ready. And I, so one coping strategy, pre coping strategy was [00:22:00] just to like, totally unplug, which is not my

[00:22:02] nature.

[00:22:03] Um, and, and, oh my God, I needed to, but then To your point, and to some of the points of your Macedon post that I appreciated, as soon as I logged in, it was like, now we fight, now we fight. And I was like, you know what? No, I’m gonna go ahead and take a rest. I’m not like I, I’ve known fighting in my days. I’m not, I’m not averse to fighting.

[00:22:22] I’m not a complacent person. But I also know that I know what it’s like to destroy yourself. And I’ve watched other people destroy themselves. And I’ve watched people figure out that rest is a really important part of being in any kind of fight. And that’s it. This is the time. We got a minute. We got a minute to rest.

[00:22:40] It’s over. That’s we’re not contesting this thing, right? Like, um, we got a minute and it is, and to your point, however, anyone needs to do this need to do it. And so when I see people saying fight, fight, fight over and over, I’m kind of like, there’s a part of me that’s like, I mean, I get it. I respect it. I’m not, again, there’s no way of responding to this [00:23:00] thing that I disagree with exactly because I think everyone’s doing it the way they need to.

[00:23:04] But social media is different because you’re being told things all the time,

[00:23:06] people telling you. And so it’s just like, I tuned in for like, an hour. First thing I saw was actually your post being like, you know what, no, you can just feel what you’re gonna feel. You don’t have to fucking fight right now.

[00:23:17] Like you had a great, you had a great post, which I’ll link to in the show notes. That was the first thing I saw when I came on. And then I saw all the fight things. I was like, Christine, I think you’re the only Social media posts I liked in that entire, like, hour that I was on. Um, so yeah, I mean there was that also just that part of like, you, you really have to trust yourself, like really have to trust yourself.

[00:23:37] Like if people saying now we fight doesn’t feel good right now,

[00:23:40] it’s fine. You’re not complacent, you’re

[00:23:42] not anything. You just, you, you can’t actually fight good if you’re not in a good place. Anyhow,

[00:23:46] Christina: No, no, and it’s not a failure to be like, no, I’m, I’m taking a breath, right? Like, like the, the, the, the, the, that’s not, that’s not a moral weakness or, or, or anything. And in fact, I think some people would say, when you lose, [00:24:00] which like, to be clear, like the Democrats like lost, lost, lost, lost, like, like lost, like, like, like, like, like, this was, you know, like a repudiation and a referendum, right?

[00:24:10] Like this was, this was a, this was a loss. There was like, 2016 was. I guess now I can talk about like my theories about like how this is different from

[00:24:19] Jeff: Yeah. Do it.

[00:24:20] Christina: But like, um, but, but just, just to, to, to close the thought here, like when you lose like this, like for anything, whether it’s like a sports team or it’s like you get, you know, you, you, you lose a job or like something happens like in, you know, league ship or whatever, like, you know, like you lose a big deal, whatever the case may be, like the, the normal thing to do is to like reassess and I’m not saying we need to have the whole post mortem now, but like, sure.

[00:24:48] Don’t give up and continue keeping on. I, I can, I can be down with that idea, but I’m also kind of being like, okay, if the same strategy has not worked for, let’s say, [00:25:00] Um, just, just, just putting that out there. I don’t know.

[00:25:04] Jeff: Yeah, yeah,

[00:25:05] Christina: I love, just, you know, I, I, I don’t know, like, let’s, let’s just say that.

[00:25:09] If that has, if, if something isn’t working, maybe it’s time while you’re, like, before you get back up and fight to reassess, like, what you want your tactics to be. And that, to your point, I think, does require some, like, reflection. And look, if people feel better because they want to, you know, express the platitudes of fighting than doing whatnot.

[00:25:30] I’m not going to tell you how to feel, I’m not gonna tell you what to do. I’m just not going to be shamed into immediately jumping on the toxic positivity rhetoric of being like, oh we got this, everything will be fine. No, we don’t actually know, right? And that’s the point. It’s okay for people to be fucking mad.

[00:25:48] Um, I got so pissed off. I mean, this was some motherfucker on Twitter, so what do you expect? And I, and, and I, I didn’t engage other than like my one response, but like when I, I did tweet like Tuesday night, I was like, people are allowed to, you [00:26:00] know, be mad, you know, let them feel how they feel. And he was like, you know, anger is one thing or whatever.

[00:26:04] He was like, you know, but, um, he said, you know, like, um, uh, you know, burning buildings and, and, and some other thing is, is another. And I was like, What the fuck are you talking about? I was like, already, already, this was like Tuesday night, I was like, what the f I mean, if I

[00:26:19] Jeff: from Minneapolis.

[00:26:20] Christina: right, exactly, what I wanted to be like, is I wanted to be like, we’re not the group of people who refuse to accept results.

[00:26:28] And we’re not, we’re not the people who like, you know, like, stormed the Capitol, um, because I know what, I knew what he was dog whistling to, but I was like, actually, what that really made me think of was January 6th, and we will not do that. But I was like, what kind of bullshit escalation is that, right?

[00:26:42] Like, no one’s saying that, right? Like, that’s, that’s the thing, right? Like, but, but that honestly kind of like put me in like a, a. Fucked up sort of even notion to just be like, this is how fucked up the world we live in is, is that there are people who, to be clear, this guy sucks, but like, and it was a dog [00:27:00] whistle and the whole thing was, was bullshit, but like, you know, where the rhetoric is such that saying something as simple as like, you’re allowed to be mad, people can, for him it’s not in good faith, but for some people it could be, be like, yeah, so a way some people respond to that is to try to burn it down and, and, and have a coup.

[00:27:22] Like, that’s fucked up, right? But like, you know, but like, unfortunately, that’s the reality we’re in. Um, okay. So anyway, here’s my theory about how like this is different from like 2016. So 2016, I think for a lot of us, for most of us, was a shock. And, and even if you had like a sinking feeling that Trump might win, and even if you’d like thought that he was more, you know, So they’ve had a false impression that, like, Hillary Clinton is more, um, competitive than, um, the, the, the media, uh, mainstream media, especially political media gave him credit for, for a long time.

[00:27:50] And that, you know, like, he was a real, like, force to be reckoned with. Like, even if you had a bad feeling, the polling, um, everything indicated that, that Hillary [00:28:00] was going to win. And, and then when she didn’t win, but she did win the popular vote, right, which, you know, uh, was, was similar to like a Bush v.

[00:28:10] Gore thing. But In this case, it was like decisive, like it was obvious, like that. was almost like there was this huge shock, right? Um, and, and how did this happen? But there was also this, um, not comfort, but like this, I guess, additional kind of like sense of kind of like outrage, which is like, okay, but the Electoral College is, you know, should not be a thing that we do anymore.

[00:28:34] And like, this is the second time now in 16 years that we have a different outcome from the different popular vote and, and, um, you know, electoral college makeup. And like, this is clearly not the will of the people, you know, collectively, right? Like, like, I don’t remember the number, but like millions more people have voted for her than for him.

[00:28:50] Jeff: gap. Yeah.

[00:28:51] Christina: Yeah, exactly. And, and so, you know, so it came down to, you know, the, the bullshit electoral college system. And, and so, [00:29:00] That, like, you had the shock, but then you also had, like, in a sense, you were like, okay, but this is not the will of the people, right? This is not, this is not, um, what, um, the, the, the majority

[00:29:10] Jeff: less confusing.

[00:29:11] Christina: Right. Well, right. In some ways it made it like that much more shocking and like upsetting, but at the same time you were kind of like, okay, well this is, this is not the will of people. And then in 2020, you know, again, like, you know, won the popular vote by a large margin. And um, obviously it became very, very close and came down to a couple of states.

[00:29:28] And, you know, Georgia really did come down to the sand votes. But, um, although we even in like, you know. There wasn’t a buffer or whatever, uh, you know, like if Georgia or Arizona had been lost, like, you know, uh, Biden still would have won, but like, you, but you still had that thing, you’re like, okay, the people did not vote for, for, for this, right?

[00:29:47] Like, um, from an electoral point of view, uh, from, from a, um, you know, like populist, whatever, uh, you know, um, any popular vote point of view. But this time, A, [00:30:00] It, it wasn’t the same shock, at least for me, um, because again, like, I felt the spidey sense. I was like, I know what this feeling is like. I’m having deja vu.

[00:30:08] Like, this is what’s happening. You can see the, the, the things come in when I saw every single swing state, every single one, you know, come in, um, for, for him and, and, and, uh, demographics coming out stronger. Like, the big thing is, is that like with 2020, I think that we had a little bit of a false boost where way more people did show up to vote, which is great.

[00:30:30] That did not happen this time. And on the contrary, where you saw an uptick and an increase in voters was, was, you know, on the Republican side. Um, so their ground game was better. Um, uh, they, they got more people out. They got younger people out for them, which, which, you know, um, uh, the Democrats did not. Um, and then, um, more of them.

[00:30:48] More of them voted, right? Like for, for him. And, and to me, I was like, what made that, um, like, I’ll, I’ll find a thing that I sent to a friend of mine who’s Australian. Um, let me find this. If we want to put

[00:30:59] Jeff: Ooh, [00:31:00] Engaging the Australians. That’s always good for, for like, uh, balancing out any feeling. I love the Australians.

[00:31:06] Christina: Me too. Well, my friend, um, was lovely and like reached out to me at like, um, uh, you know, midnight my time. And so, um, I, I don’t even want to know what time it was, you know, for, for him, um, uh, the next day, you know, and so, so it was like 2 AM your time. And so, you know, very early or very late for him. Um, and he was, he was like, he was like, um, he’s like, Hey, I’m really sorry.

[00:31:29] I hope you’re doing okay. And I said, thank you. And he says, you know, um, he was like, uh, he was like, I don’t even know what to say. And I said, um, Uh, I said, I don’t either. I wish I did. So I wish I was more surprised. I thought it would hurt less this time. The shock value of 2016 isn’t there, but it’s still just as depressing this time.

[00:31:46] We know some of the outcome and it’s not good. And it’s like, what do you even say? We can’t even blame the electoral college this time. This was the will of the electorate, full stop. And that’s almost as upsetting as these people winning again, [00:32:00] that this was such a decisive blowout. And, and so. That was, that was the real thing for, for me.

[00:32:06] I was like, this, this was the will of the electorate. Um, you know, it was. Um, and so what it reminded me more of and like how I felt both Tuesday night but especially Wednesday when I kept feeling like, and I think I, I posted about this as well, I felt exactly the same way I did when I was, um, I just voted in my first election in 2004.

[00:32:30] And, and John Kerry lost. And he lost badly, right, like he, he lost about as badly as,

[00:32:36] Jeff: was

[00:32:36] Christina: lost about as badly as Kamala did. Yeah, right? I mean, you know, but like, yeah, totally, I mean, that, that didn’t help, but like, you know, the whole thing, you know, he wasn’t, he never connected with people, that campaign was flopped for a lot of reasons.

[00:32:49] But in that case, you know, I was, I was a college student, it was my first election, and I was, was angered in a way where I was like, Similar to this, I was like, [00:33:00] you know, we have, um, you know, a criminal in his cronies and, you know, a liar who we already know who this motherfucker is and we’ve reelected him, right?

[00:33:13] And that was how I felt in 2004. I was like, we know who George W. Bush is. Like, you could make an argument, I guess, in the year 2000, you know, why people might have voted for Bush. I didn’t really know much about him other than, you know, whose dad was, and he was, you know, governor of Texas, and, and Al Gore ran a very bad campaign, um, uh, you know, and, and really wanted to try to separate himself from, from Bill Clinton, which wound up being a mistake, regardless, right?

[00:33:35] Like, people, and, and he doesn’t have charisma, and so, you

[00:33:39] Jeff: Hoo, doggie. No.

[00:33:40] Christina: No. But, and, and, and, and, and unfortunately George W. Bush does. And, but so you can understand how even though that was literally came down to hanging chads, and, and, and again, Al Gore won the popular vote, like, you could, you could see, okay, people didn’t know what they were voting for.

[00:33:55] But then after that, when we’re in the middle of this

[00:33:58] Jeff: We knew that we were [00:34:00] voting for a conman and a liar and a credible warmonger, even if you generously say he was puppeted to be a warmonger, he was that person.

[00:34:10] Christina: was that puppet. He was that puppet. And, and you’re still, and, and you’re also voting for the puppet master, right? Like even, even

[00:34:15] Jeff: Yeah,

[00:34:16] Christina: that the, the, the, even if you believe that Cheney is the one pulling on the strings, well then you fucking voted for Cheney, right? And, and, and, and so

[00:34:23] Jeff: We knew who he was.

[00:34:24] Christina: absolutely, nobody was under any illusions about that, right?

[00:34:28] Which is again, why like promoting the fact that like, you know, Cheney’s endorsing, anyway, anyway, I’m not going to get into

[00:34:34] Jeff: Oh, I know, I was just like, oh god, I’m everybody just settled down on

[00:34:39] Christina: Exactly. It’s like, this doesn’t get, this is not going to win you any votes on either side, right? Because no one, this is like, this is something no one likes. Um, and, and no one wants to hear from. But like, but that was the thing, right? It was that I was, you know, I was so young and I was, it was my first election and I had just this feeling of kind of like heartbreak because I was like, And what was most heartbreaking wasn’t that it didn’t go my way, [00:35:00] but I was like, this was the will of the people.

[00:35:03] People know what this is, and they say we don’t care. We would still rather have this than this other thing. And that’s a hard thing to grapple with. And so that’s what this reminds me of. Yes. I was gonna say in some ways it hurt, in some ways this hurt a lot more, that that hurt more than 2016. And I feel like this hurts now too.

[00:35:23] Because again, for all the anger that I’m still having right now at like the fucking Democratic Party and, and you know, the fact that maybe if we’d had a candidate who’d had more than 100 days to run a campaign, we would have done better, right? Like in some regards, like I can be kind and be like, I never voted for her in the primary.

[00:35:42] I didn’t think she should be VP. And she would not have been my pick to be. On the ticket here. However, she, I thought, actually did a great campaign for what she had, especially the time that she did. She did way better than I thought that she, you know, would. And I have to, like, be honest about that. It was not enough, [00:36:00] but I also, for a certain amount, I’m like, you know, only about half of, only about a, only about a quarter of it, you know.

[00:36:05] Can be attributed to her. The rest of it is like things outside of her control, right? Because she was going to put it into a shitty position too, right? Where it’s like, well, what are you going to do? Are you not going to take the, you know, um, uh, the, the, like, who else can they nominate at that point when, you know, guy drops out a hundred days before the election?

[00:36:21] Like, what else can happen? You don’t have time to do a real primary. And, you know, unless you want to drag things out even worse, which, more which would make things even worse, you have to put up and she herself has to probably be thinking. Well, this is my only shot at ever being president because I’m sure as hell, you know, never going to win a normal primary.

[00:36:41] And, you know, like, this is a, a long shot, but, but I’ve got to do it, right? So, like, she was kind of put in a shitty position and she did better than I thought she would. But, like, is putting, like, my anger at, like, the Democratic Party and all that aside, um, like, you said that the thing, it just, it hurts because it’s like, [00:37:00] This, this was the will of the people and, and, and I, I can’t even be mad just at them because I feel like there were so many errors made.

[00:37:11] Um, I mean, I can be mad at some of them, but some of them I can just be like, well, I mean, we know that we are a country of dumb fucks, right? Um, and, but, but this is where we are. And so, yeah.

[00:37:24]

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[00:37:24] Christina: All right, so speaking about like the, you know, dumpster fire that is social media, having to deal with, you know, Twitter and threads and Blue Sky and Macedon and anything else, I guess even Facebook, uh, which I was not on, but, uh, other things, you know, there is a good antidote to all that, and that is a personal homepage.

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[00:38:05] Jeff: I spun up a blog, I spun up some posts, very, very easy, elegant, uh, simple, as the, as the software company is called Good Enough Software. It was like, good as good enough. Yeah. Uh huh.

[00:38:19] Christina: It’s great. Yeah. And so it was really easy to create like a beautiful, clean blog or website without any of the usual tech headaches, which, you know, um, it used to be really easy to like create a blog and now it’s not. And so it’s nice that there are services out there like this, which help you do that.

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[00:38:49] So, no comment. Uh, it is also way less complicated than using something like WordPress, and it’s a better investment of your time than posting [00:39:00] Everything to social media, which is what I do. Uh, and, uh, just for you, we have a special deal. So when you visit pika. page slash overtired and decide to go pro, use the code overtired20.

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[00:39:40] Pika dot page slash overtired. Ha

[00:39:43] Jeff: And let me tell you something, here’s how easy it is, while Christina was talking, and really only in the last 30 seconds, I went ahead and claimed pika. page slash peekaboo,

[00:39:52] Releasing Back into the Wild

[00:39:52] Christina: ha!

[00:39:53] Jeff: which I

[00:39:53] will release back into the wild after one week, but I could

[00:39:56] not believe that wasn’t

[00:39:58] Christina: You have

[00:39:58] Jeff: so now I have [00:40:00] it. Yeah, you’re gonna have to, you’re gonna have to buy it off me, I am

[00:40:02] gonna get

[00:40:02] Christina: a boo! Peek a

[00:40:03] Jeff: money by the end of this.

[00:40:04] Christina: No, exactly. You need some walking around money and thankyoupika. page. And also now I want to see a peek at a page from you slash peekaboo. Um, but no, but go, go, go, go, go, go, go to Overtired, uh, use the code to thank you Pika. Um,

[00:40:16] Jeff: you.

[00:40:18] Political Comparisons and Criticisms

[00:40:18] Jeff: Yeah, the people who put 14 flags on their car won. I mean, that is, yeah. And the 2004 thing, part of why I was glad for you to say that is like, one of the things that I’ve really Yeah. Yeah. Bristled at from the time Trump was first elected is, and I understand why people say this. Everyone’s like, wow, this kind of makes you, makes George W.

[00:40:40] Bush look like, oh, you know,

[00:40:41] someone you might want. I was like, you know what?

[00:40:43] The Impact of the Iraq War

[00:40:43] Jeff: That guy, that guy caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands

[00:40:48] of Iraqis. That is the definition of a monster. And. And like, and granted, that’s also just the machinery of the presidency of an imperial like nation, whatever, right?

[00:40:57] But like, he didn’t have to do that. [00:41:00] Everyone agrees now. Everyone agrees now that war was a mistake.

[00:41:03] Christina: it was based on lies. It was

[00:41:05] Jeff: means that based on lies, we murdered hundreds of thousands, some say up to a million people. We can’t really know how many people died that would not have died otherwise. But the, the estimates are hundreds of thousands to a million, right?

[00:41:16] Like it’s a lot of people. If it was 150, 000, which is the lowest estimate, that’s a lot of people. And so for me, it’s like, yeah, that guy is kind of charming in a kind of dipshit way. And he does make adorable paintings. And

[00:41:29] that’s really funny.

[00:41:30] Christina: I was gonna say his art is actually incredible. Like, that’s the fucked up thing. Like,

[00:41:33] Jeff: Yeah. It’s super

[00:41:34] Christina: art, his art is actually profound. Like, his art is profoundly

[00:41:37] Jeff: Yeah. But like, you know, that thing of like, yeah, Trump is a monster too.

[00:41:42] And he, and he’s ruining, he’s going to ruin lives and people are really. Vulnerable and people are going to be hurt. People we care about are going to be hurt. People that fit into any number of categories that are not sort of the mainstream, like

[00:41:55] cis white people, whatever, are going to be hurt. There are people that I love and care about and will fight [00:42:00] for.

[00:42:00] And

[00:42:01] Christina: people are also gonna be hurt,

[00:42:02] Jeff: Yeah, I know, everyone gets hurt a little on this one, probably, and so yes, he’s terrible. We don’t have to compare them at all,

[00:42:11] but I can’t stand people softening on George W. Bush because the man

[00:42:17] was a murderer, and that is not something that gets softened over

[00:42:22] time. it should not. It should not get softened over

[00:42:25] Christina: No, no, it shouldn’t. We should reject all of it, right? The same way that we should fucking reject Ronald Reagan and like not look back on him with like the rose colored glasses that even some liberals have, right? I think most people at this point like know enough not to. I mean, obviously, history will forever treat Ronald Reagan great, but You know, people who actually look at, like, what the impact of his policies were, shouldn’t.

[00:42:47] Um, and, um, but, but, George W. Bush, like, everybody, everybody, everybody agrees. They agree. Like, that war was a mistake. It was based on lies. It never needed to happen. Um, the Iraqi deaths, which are, are, uh, you know, just [00:43:00] absolutely monstrous, as you said. But also, like, Selfishly, like my friends, right? Because I was, I was, you know, like 18 and, and when, when that war started and, you know, like, like people who signed up, you know, for out of either, sometimes in a sense of duty, you know, because of 9 11 or what I’m in most cases, they’d signed up because they wanted to have college paid for, right?

[00:43:23] And you have people who were like, your recruiters are telling you, oh, you’re never going to go to war.

[00:43:27] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:43:28] Christina: They go on six duties, right? And then some of them come back and some of them don’t, right? I had friends who did not come back home, who did not sign up for that. And it wasn’t a draft, but it essentially was.

[00:43:37] Like if you, if you’d signed up for the military and you were young enough, like they were going to fucking send you.

[00:43:43] Jeff: Yeah, you don’t come home or you don’t come back all the way.

[00:43:45] Christina: right, exactly. Right. And it went on for fucking 20 years, right? Like we were fucking stuck there for

[00:43:50] Jeff: Twenty years.

[00:43:51] yes, and That’s what that man unleashed and he is not to be softened

[00:43:55] Obama’s Rise and the DNC Reset

[00:43:55] Christina: Not at all, not at all, but I would say to be slightly hopeful on this, the [00:44:00] thing that I think did come out of 2004, and you might have better memories of this than me, especially since you were kind of all over the place, um, uh, in your perspective on this might be better than mine, from what I recall, that was sort of a wake up call moment for the DNC.

[00:44:18] And there was a big reset. Um, and so, and that was how we wound up getting Obama. Um, now ironically, the people that led that reset are the same people that I personally now think we need to have move on. Um, and, and, and be replaced, right? But hey, you know what, like 20 years is a long time to kind of have, you know, like stuff in, in, in, in place.

[00:44:42] But, you know, but, but from what I recall, and, and I could be wrong, but like, it seemed like it was, You know, you had the Howard Dean people who really were trying to kind of change

[00:44:50] Jeff: Howard Dean

[00:44:52] Christina: the the Netroots folks, right? And then, and then he blew his campaign and didn’t, you know, was, was obviously never going to be the guy.

[00:44:58] Um, but those people [00:45:00] then All shifted to Obama. And saw, OK, here’s a guy with charisma, here’s a guy who’s fantastic, who has, you know, just, just star quality out of the wazoo, who was a star, I think. It was the 2004, um, Democratic National Convention, that was his big breakthrough speech, right? I mean, that, that, I mean, I think more people will remember that speech, nobody remembers what John Kerry said.

[00:45:22] Um, uh,

[00:45:23] Jeff: sure it was not interesting.

[00:45:25] Christina: No, but, but people remember Obama, right? And, and then the, the, those people who were kind of coming up like these, these new kind of more, you know, at the time we were calling progressive, you know, kind of voices kind of came through and that became the basis for getting Obama elected in, in 2008 and 2012.

[00:45:42] And, um, do I think that those same people should be leading things now? No, I don’t. I think that the, the, the tactics and the playbook. from that era don’t work, or more to the point, the way that they’ve been done in the last, you know, four cycles [00:46:00] doesn’t work, but, um, I, you know, maybe if you took some of those lessons about how, you know, like, Millennials actually voted for Obama, um, you know, like, I don’t know, maybe have a candidate who actually inspires people, I don’t know, but like, You know, but like, just, just a shock, but, or, or here’s a shock, here’s, here’s an idea.

[00:46:19] Have somebody under 60 run. Like that’s just throwing it out there. Just throwing it out there. Right. And, and, and that’s not even a dig at Kamala’s age or anything. She was far younger than anybody else running, but like, you know, he, Obama was in his forties. And, and we, you know, we hadn’t had that. Um, I mean, I guess Bill Clinton was, but like, you know, like, that’s, it’s a very rare thing to have.

[00:46:41] And it’s like, we need that again. Um, especially, you know, at this point when we have all this, you know, this old man kind of, um, energy, uh, for the last, you know, it’s going to be 12 years. Um, but, but by the time, um, uh, this, this next term of office is, is over, you know, remains to be seen if, [00:47:00] if the, the 78 year old, um, you know, Makes it through the whole thing, but regardless like it’ll be, you know, 12 years of Oldman being elected.

[00:47:09] Um, I don’t know so maybe that’s like my, my sense of hope. Uh, sorry for the pun. Um, of being like, maybe this will be like a wake up call moment where once we kind of reassess people can be like, okay, now how can we, As, as a party, as kind of a, you know, um, institution, whatever you want to, want to call the thing, you know, uh, an ideology, how can we, like, reassess how we actually fucking win?

[00:47:37] And, uh, maybe, maybe you can only do that if you get your ass fucking killed, like, and beat, in every way that you can be beat.

[00:47:45] Jeff: Yeah. And then, looking forward, before we do Grapptitude,

[00:47:51] it’s gonna be a funny pivot.

[00:47:53] The Long Haul of Fascism

[00:47:53] Jeff: Looking forward, I do, I mean, the other part of Processing all of this is like, fascism [00:48:00] is a long haul. And, and whether it, no matter how many of those letters are capitalized in the version that we’re going to get, um, it’s a long haul and, and it’s not the fight or a fight.

[00:48:12] It’s, you got to stay on your feet somehow. Like you can burn out, flame out so fast. And I’ve known people who live in. Fascist states, totalitarian states, and, and I, and I’ve seen them on the, on the tail end, like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, where, I mean, there were certainly people resisting and quietly being killed, but like, I’ve definitely seen the end where everyone’s like, look, this is just what it is, you know? Um, and, and that’s because it’s so total that you know, that your neighbors could rat on you and that’s how total it gets. Right. And so it’s definitely important to know what that can look like and, and to look out for signs of it. Um, and, and I do think, and I know I’m sure you do too. I do look forward and think this is going to be a horror show

[00:48:58] and, [00:49:00] and sometimes it’s not as bad as we think, but a lot of times, um, it’s in ways we forgot to imagine. And, and like, I’m. I, part of the resting thing for me is like just being grounded enough to be able to take it all in. And, and while keeping, while keeping hold of myself,

[00:49:20] Processing Political Stress

[00:49:20] Jeff: I was, I remember thinking, especially during the pandemic in the early days when he was giving press conferences every day and, and he was just making us all terrified and, and everything. Um, I remember my wife and I started doing what we called worry walks. We’re like, let’s process this motherfucker on the sidewalk so that when we’re home, we can just be home.

[00:49:41] And so we’d just take a walk every day and just be like, all right, what are you freaked out about? What are you pissed about, about this guy?

[00:49:45] We’d process him. That asshole went on every walk with us for most of 2020. Goddamn him. Um, and, and I, I, the thing I keep thinking about too, is like, you know, How hard it is to keep that guy out of your body, which, which has all kinds of meanings different for women than it [00:50:00] does for men different for me right now than it does for almost, you know, what I’m talking strictly semantically, like, how do you keep them out of your fucking body? Like, how do you keep them from like, moving into your house? Right? Like, and that’s, that’s the thing that’s so One of the such wicked things about him is the way that he, he takes us all with him. I mean, even if you don’t want to, I was joking with my wife, like Biden should pass an executive order funding the therapy for everybody who didn’t vote for Trump for the next, at least two months, because we’re going to use it up on the federal government.

[00:50:34] And it should be a federal response.

[00:50:36] Christina: It should be. It should be. No, no, no. I’m with you. And like the, and the hard thing is, is you’re right. Is it’s like, we, we want to like, how do you keep it out of your body? Um, but at the same time, like, cause part of me, I’m still here, right? I’m still in this place. This is not where I will be in a month, um, this is where I am right now, but there is a part of me that wants to [00:51:00] be like, okay, fuck it.

[00:51:02] You voted for this. Let it burn. Let it fail. Sometimes the only way that you can actually show people. That sometimes the only way you can show people like what mistakes they’ve made is if you fucking let it fall apart. Um, and, and to a certain extent, that was also a lesson from 2004, right? Like a lot of things happened, you know, the war progressively got worse than we had, the financial crisis and everything else.

[00:51:23] Reflections on 2008 and Racism

[00:51:23] Christina: And like, I think that as much, I mean, obviously Obama ran a great campaign, great person, but he had to overcome being a black man in 2008. Um, you know, and, and, uh, it would,

[00:51:34] Jeff: With the name Barack Hussein Obama.

[00:51:36] Christina: Correct. Right. He, he, he, he had to over, exactly. He had, he had to overcome all of that baggage in a time when, you know, despite what people might want to say, oh, this is the worst time for, you know, types of, people’s like, no, it was actually worse then, right?

[00:51:48] Like, things have actually improved. Like, it’s hard sometimes to see how much things have improved when things still seem bad and we still seem so far off with, with equity. Um, but things are, better. And things that like [00:52:00] rhetoric that people could get away with then you couldn’t do now like I remember driving through Kentucky in 2008 and seeing people having I mean, this is awful.

[00:52:10] I mean, this is, it was one of the things that made me so embarrassed to be from the South, which is something I don’t have any control over, um, to be clear, right? Like, I have no choice over where I was raised and, and where I was born. Like, I have nothing to do with that. But like, I saw people who had, um, nooses and like, stuffed Obama dolls hanging their houses.

[00:52:35] Jeff: Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

[00:52:38] Christina: September, October 2008, right? And that was the sort of thing like that, that made me embarrassed to be in the South. It made me embarrassed to be an American. Like, that’s the sort of thing like viscerally, like, yes, right? And, and the fact that people were just doing it on main, right?

[00:52:53] Like, forget about people, people like, oh, people are really coming out with their full racism on Twitter and TikTok now. Yeah, you’re right. Um, but like, let’s not [00:53:00] pretend people weren’t like literally like from their houses, right? In neighborhoods, just, Out there, right? Like, it was just an acceptable sort of thing.

[00:53:08] Um, I, I, I do think that you would have a much harder time doing that now, right? Which, which is a good thing, right? That’s progress. But, but anyway, my point being, like, I think that we could, and I’m, I’m sorry, I’m rambling, like, we could, There, there’s an argument we made, I guess, that it’s like, maybe we, things do have to fall apart for people to realize what, what, what it is they did.

[00:53:32] And, and we just have to hope that, that our democracy is strong enough to, you know, survive this sort of thing, even some failings, so that we can get to, you know, another general election and, and, you know, um, Uh, maybe, you know, better people can be put in charge and that it doesn’t devolve like, you know, some fascist regimes do where, you know, it does become essentially, you know, like tyranny and [00:54:00] people don’t have real choice and people are afraid to do other things, right?

[00:54:02] Like, so, you know, I do understand like, because part of me is there. I’m like, I fucking let it fall apart. And then there’s another part of me too, where like, back to my anger, I’m getting great joy and, and hitting stop on every fucking text I get from the DNC who’s asking me for money now or asking me for anything else.

[00:54:19] I’m like, fuck you. You know what? I will give you money in a couple years as I, as I have before, but right now I don’t want to see any of your texts and I sure as fuck don’t want to give you a dime. And so I feel like,

[00:54:29] Jeff: out which nonprofit came out the day after being like, we’re ready. We just need your money. I was like, Hey, fuck you. I

[00:54:36] like, I don’t

[00:54:37] Christina: like, absolutely not.

[00:54:37] Jeff: man. Like, yeah.

[00:54:39] Not doing that.

[00:54:40] Christina: absolutely not. Well, that’s the thing, too. It’s like, if you came out, if you were like, This is what we’re gonna do different, and this is why we need it, great.

[00:54:48] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:54:48] Christina: But, but, A, you don’t have that now. Even, even the best equipped people don’t have that now. B, it’s like, read the fucking room, right?

[00:54:57] Like,

[00:54:58] Jeff: way, it’s no different. So [00:55:00] in the days before the election, I got, uh, the business I’m part of, we got a, um, we got an email from our liability insurance provider that said, do you have a plan for civil unrest? And I was like, man, that’s callous. I realized it’s a cynical business and that’s a cynical fucking move.

[00:55:16] And that’s exactly what I felt the day after when I forget who it was. It wouldn’t be a shock to anybody, whoever it was, but it was just like, no, no, not yet.

[00:55:26] Grieving Political Losses

[00:55:26] Jeff: Now I want to say a closing word about Tim Walz and the woman who would have been our governor, Peggy Flanagan. Yesterday I watched, um, again, Tim Walz playing crazy taxi and talking about his Sega Dreamcast,

[00:55:39] um, on a Twitch stream with AOC.

[00:55:41] And I want to say that the thing that I loved about Walz and I. I had a lot of issues as well. It’s not about most of his agenda in Minnesota, but during the George Floyd uprising it, you know, it’s probably like objectively okay that he sent in the National Guard when he did, um, [00:56:00] although that makes me terrified and very scared because I’ve seen that same National Guard in other contexts

[00:56:07] and and seeing how quickly things can go from like, well, this feels all right, to like, whoa, that’s a checkpoint and you just killed somebody in a car. Um, but he actually, when the Chauvin trial was happening, he sent the National Guard preemptively. And I had a military convoy go down my street. That was like one I would have seen when I was in Baghdad in 2003. And that was, that was very, very upsetting to me that, that it was that easy for him to make that call when there was no credible threat of anything that would warrant.

[00:56:33] The National Guard. And when you can just do be responsive, you can be responsive. It’s okay. Like you can let in America where we are allowed to protest, you can go ahead and just let the protests go

[00:56:44] and then decide if in your role, with your mindset, your view on the world, do you need to send in the National

[00:56:50] Guard?

[00:56:51] Like you can do that after the fact. And I had

[00:56:53] Christina: do that.

[00:56:54] Jeff: I had basically checkpoints. I had many of the streets in my neighborhood, my pharmacy, my grocery store, my gas [00:57:00] station. There was a Humvee on one side of the road and a Humvee on the other. And the thing I, I tired, people tired of hearing me say, but I have seen it. It was like. I want you to know that two things, people would be like, well, their magazines aren’t in their guns. It’s like, you know, soldiers are trained to get their magazines in their guns pretty quickly. That is a nice gesture, but this isn’t like a huge point of comfort. The other one is when you have a Humvee on either side of the street, it is just a matter of seconds before it’s a checkpoint.

[00:57:22] And once you have a checkpoint, a whole new range of possibilities opens up and almost none of them are good. And so anyway, I was upset with him. Flash forward to me watching him play Crazy Taxi and talk about a Dreamcast.

[00:57:35] Christina: You’re

[00:57:35] Jeff: I was like, first of all, Crazy Taxi is just not a game anyone references, but in my house, it is a beloved

[00:57:41] Christina: Oh yeah. Mine too. Mine too. I mean, I mean, I mean, look, the, the, the, the trailer, we used to play it at, at my very first job and, and, and it would just be that, that offspring song and, and showing the whole thing. And, and, and so it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like two minutes of bliss because we had like these promo videos that we would run.

[00:57:57] And I was always so excited because I was like, man, I get to listen to [00:58:00] good music at work. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:58:02] Jeff: yeah.

[00:58:03] Christina: But like, but the game was so fun. The music was great. You know, it was just this ridiculous thing where it was, it was very similar to, in some ways, Grand Theft Auto 3, which was the first good Grand Theft Auto, where like, you could run people over like accidentally.

[00:58:15] And in fact, there was like, there were missions in both Grand Theft Auto 3 and in Vice City, which were taxi missions, which were basically crazy taxi, but in GTA. And you know, which, which is

[00:58:27] Jeff: Crazy Taxi is like, is like the equivalent of Oops All Berries for video games in relationship to GTA, where it’s

[00:58:33] like, all you’re taking out is the fun driving and the wacky people and the

[00:58:37] things that you can do driving down the street with people. You take that out, you leave all the other stuff over with GTA and the Vice game and everything else. It’s totally, I just realized that it’s the Oops All Berries of video games.

[00:58:47] Christina: It totally is. It totally is. But it’s so fun. It’s so fun.

[00:58:50] Jeff: Yeah, and the thing that I appreciated about him as a VP candidate was really that he was never someone who seemed like he was working towards that. And all of a sudden he was there.[00:59:00]

[00:59:00] And I’m actually kind of glad to see him not get sucked into the imperialist machine, even though

[00:59:06] it exists at every level and him being able to deploy the National Guard is a version of that. But what I’m really sad about is Peggy Flanagan, who would have been the first Native American governor in the country, um, and who is, like, objectively a good person, uh, would have become our governor, and what is extra beautiful about that, and I don’t think this is strictly, um, cynical politicking is that there’s a picture I love.

[00:59:34] So I have this shirt that says protect trans kids in this like, really like, um, aggressive font. And then it has a knife on it and a rose on it. It’s just a very aggressive shirt. And, and there’s a great photo of her wearing that shirt and smiling. And like, and I feel like if I could have had a governor that was willing to take the chance of wearing that shirt, and then possibly meaning it, um, not with the knife, but you know what I mean?

[00:59:58] Like, I would have been [01:00:00] pretty. Pretty amazing to both get Tim Walz to where he was going to be, which I guess would have been obscurity for four years, but, and then to get her as a, as a, and so I’m, I’m, I’m grieving a little bit losing her, but I, I do, and this isn’t something my circle completely agrees on.

[01:00:15] I am very happy to still have him as our governor. I think we’re the only state that has a consolation prize, um, in this election, which is to get him back.

[01:00:25] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. No, I’m, I’m happy for you. I’m happy you like him. I mean, it’s, it, it, and hopefully, you know, that she will have, like, next, I mean, so, is this his second term or his first term?

[01:00:35] Jeff: it’s his second.

[01:00:36] Christina: Okay, so, so maybe she can, you know, uh, have a, have a strong showing to be able to run, um, uh, whenever, you know, this, this term is up.

[01:00:44] Jeff: I will say she, she was one of the people, one of the politicians in the country that dressed as Tim Walz for Halloween,

[01:00:50] Christina: amazing.

[01:00:51] Jeff: which

[01:00:51] is just like, wow, maybe you do really like this guy. That’s a good sign too.

[01:00:56] Christina: Yeah, yeah,

[01:00:57] Jeff: mean, I, it’s funny because when I talk about all [01:01:00] this stuff, like I, I, I am someone who holds like, I know we’re both like this, you can hold two truths next to each other.

[01:01:05] One is that I don’t believe. That there can be anybody that walks into the White House and could do the kind of good that I would hope they can do. Um, I was horrified and zero surprised and have been about the, the handling of Gaza and didn’t vote. Um, would not have never, would never have not voted because of that.

[01:01:24] Um, in part, because that machine is, is rolling, rolling, rolling,

[01:01:29] and whoever, whoever enters the office is, is being, is being chewed up by that machine and is too much of a sort of something to to compromise to make, you know, meaningful decisions of integrity, not to say it’s not complex, but it obviously, there’s a simplicity to that many people dying. So I do hold also like this sense of like, burn the system down. But

[01:01:52] I’m also like, that’s Steve Earle, my son and I went and saw Steve Earle a few months ago. And he’s like, He’s very [01:02:00] radical and he’s, he’s like, look, everybody vote. The election day is not where you vote your hopes and dreams and aspirations.

[01:02:06] It’s a transactional affair. And, and so go do your transaction, right? Like,

[01:02:12] and I really appreciated that, that take. Um, but anyway, and I liked him. Well, sorry if anybody’s mad at me for saying it.

[01:02:20] Christina: No, I, I like him too. I mean, if anything, I mean, like, look, are there, look, and I don’t live in Minnesota, so I can’t speak to what his, you know, time there was like as a governor and I I don’t think any politician of any, you know, thing when we’re talking about like governor, president, whatever, like, even smaller than that can be, can be perfect and to your point can do the good that we always want them to do.

[01:02:43] There’s a certain, um, amount of, um, uh, both like just realistic requirements of like what you can and can’t control and there’s also a certain amount So, there’s a lot of ego that’s involved with people who are actually capable of reaching those jobs that, that, that can, you know, interfere with [01:03:00] maybe, um, always standing to your principles, right?

[01:03:03] Like, even I think probably our most principled president, Jimmy Carter, probably made decisions, you know, as a politician that were, that were, were, were, were, you know, to, to get elected or self serving or whatnot and not just for doing the right thing. Because if you always do the right thing, you’re never going to win and then you can’t accomplish anything, right?

[01:03:17] So, I, I can recognize those trade offs, but I, you know, I, I, not having lived in his state. I, I wasn’t familiar with him, but I liked him. I liked his personality. I did, I was a little annoyed that like it did seem like on the campaign, I mean, and part of it too, this is again, me again, I’m just, I’m in blame mode.

[01:03:33] I’m, I’m just angry. You know, it felt like he was sidelined maybe to some extent during, um, uh, the, the, the, the campaign. Although at the same time, you’d be saying, well, What else is a, is a VP supposed to do? Um, obviously he was not going to be able to out debate, um, uh, J. D. Vance, although, you know, it wasn’t horrible, but he, you know, he, um, w w was

[01:03:55] Jeff: wait, there’s a, there’s a podcast called the Says Who Podcast, my friend Dan does it. [01:04:00] He, he described that debate in the most beautiful way. He said it was like being stuck in a car with a fart.

[01:04:04] Christina: yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, you’re exactly right. Right. But, but what I mean is, is that it’s like, okay, so, you know, there, Uh, we can make arguments like, Oh, you know, he wasn’t, you know, um, maybe used enough on the campaign trail around. I have no idea. It did feel like he was, you know, maybe like a better surrogate before he was VP, but I liked him.

[01:04:23] And, and I, um, I hope that this isn’t the last we ever see from him. Right? Like, obviously the man is never going to be president. Um, and I, I don’t think that he would even want to be, but, yeah. Hopefully there is a day when there will be like a administration or something else where, you know, he could play a part if he wants to, but at the very least, I’m happy that at least the people of Minnesota have what seems like a genuinely good guy who genuinely does care, right?

[01:04:48] And who’s willing to like get on stream and fucking play Crazy Taxi

[01:04:52] Jeff: Which is how, let’s just go ahead and imagine him, let’s pretend that he’s just waiting for the next big call, but he’s doing that just playing crazy taxi [01:05:00] in his basement while

[01:05:00] Christina: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:05:02] Jeff: He’s just like, I need to rest. That’s right, Jeff. I need to rest.

[01:05:06] Christina: He’s like, I need to rest. And, and then they’re like, wait, you know, you’ve gotta pick up, you know, like you’ve, you’ve got, you, you’ve got, you know, 20 seconds

[01:05:12] Jeff: Yeah,

[01:05:13] exactly. Exactly.

[01:05:14] Christina: to pick up your customer, you know, or, or, or you lose. Um, yeah, no, I mean, yeah. Uh, resting on, on the governing side of not resting on, um, you know, moonlighting as a, uh, crazy taxi driver in Southern California.

[01:05:28] Um.

[01:05:29] Jeff: Exactly.

[01:05:30] Christina: All right. So we’ve talked about all the things, well, I’ve talked about the things that I’m mad at.

[01:05:34] You’ve been trying to keep me more in line. Do we want to talk about some things we’re

[01:05:36] Jeff: I’m not trying to keep in line, shit,

[01:05:39] Christina: No, I know. No, you’re, you’re, you’re not trying to keep me in line. You’re just, you’re being more, you’re, you’re like in a, you’re in a more healthy place than I am at this point, but that’s okay.

[01:05:45] I’m, I’m

[01:05:46] Jeff: Maybe just externally.

[01:05:48] Grapptitude: Tech Tools and Apps

[01:05:48] Jeff: Um, so yeah, Grapptitude. Uh, it’s funny. Like I’ve been trying to shift my brain into Grapptitude and all I keep thinking about is how, um, [01:06:00] how I recently used something we, that I learned about from you in Grapptitude, which is, um, was it from Brett? Find any file?

[01:06:07] Um, uh, it’s just a great, very old app.

[01:06:11] And it’s funny cause I use, and I’m going to say it cause I, I don’t have anything new to say today. Um, and, uh, I use Who to spot for everything, but

[01:06:19] like, when I want to search system files, like, find a file is just right there. It’s ready to do it. And it’s been such a huge help to me this week, just based on the kind of work that I’ve been doing. Um, so that’s one bit. And then I’m going to do a second one just cause they’re both sort of repeats of past. Uh, so I I’ve used drafts ever and ever and ever.

[01:06:41] Um, but I only just finally sat down and Super configured my actions and my like custom actions. Menu, because I’ve always just like had a million action groups on there.

[01:06:55] So if I was doing Markdown, I’d go to the Markdown one. If I was doing whatever, I’d go to this [01:07:00] one. I was just bouncing around. It was super inefficient and I could never find what I was looking for. And so I, I finally decided to configure and make my own custom sort of like toolbar that helps me do everything that I personally do all the time in drafts.

[01:07:13] And I don’t know how it took me these many years. Cause I’ve been using it for probably, it hasn’t been around more than a decade. I think I’ve

[01:07:18] been using

[01:07:18] Christina: it’s been about a decade. Yeah.

[01:07:20] Jeff: Yeah, I mean, I think I’ve been using it since pretty much the beginning as like the place I go to, to where all my text starts, as everyone says, um, but I have just been blown away because part of doing that was looking at what I might want that I don’t use, um, and I’ve just been blown away by what I can do, uh, my, uh, my continued frustration with that app, and I’m Sure.

[01:07:41] There’s a decent explanation for this is that I can’t use it. Like I use Envy Ultra or almost any other sort of text based app that I like, which is I can’t have a folder of text files that I can act upon from any app. It has to be in that app, which means when I search who to spot, I don’t get things that are in drafts.

[01:07:59] This [01:08:00] drives me crazy. Crazy. But that’s how much I love the app, that like, I am constantly overcoming that, that total frustration. There’s one super hacky workaround for that, that allows you to at least, this is the other thing you can’t do with it. Now I’m just, now it’s grAPPtitude,

[01:08:14] uh, is you can’t open your thing in another, in an external editor.

[01:08:17] I can’t open it in Sublime Text and do all the things I do so quickly for the last 10 years to my friends. to my plain text. Um, I have to paste it in and come back and there’s a hack for that that’s really wonky or wanky. Let’s say wanky. Um, but anyway, all that said, I fucking love drafts and I cannot believe really what a perfect app it is except for those two things that otherwise would feel big to me, but because it’s so perfect, it’s not.

[01:08:40] So those are my two.

[01:08:42] Christina: Yeah. No, it’s, it’s, it’s a great app and I think I’ve, I think I’ve used some of those workarounds for a long time that like I’ve, I’ve been. Um, okay with like, you know, that aspect, but you’re right, like, it’s so good you want to use it everywhere. Um, and yeah, the automation stuff is, is really [01:09:00] great. Um, I also have to say like, as just like a, an iOS app, you know, like on my iPad and my iPhone especially, like, it is so good because the thing is, is that if I’m being real, I have a lot of options on my desktop, um, for, for doing any sort of notes stuff, so many options.

[01:09:16] And so drafts is not always where I go. Uh, but on mobile it’s different. If I’m wanting to do something where I’m really wanting to do like, especially like a more, you know, like, um, uh, markdown kind of centric, you know, like heavy sort of thing that I know I’m going to be converting to other formats and whatnot.

[01:09:33] Like, I know some people like Ulysses and Ulysses is great. Um, but. Yeah, I mean, it doesn’t really work with, I guess, kind of my flow, where it’s like, is beautiful. And, and I think that if, if you are, if it works for like your kind of like writing flow and your workflow, like, awesome. But I’m somebody,

[01:09:51] Jeff: it does yeah.

[01:09:52] Christina: but, but, but I am somebody who like, I actually, you know, like to have kind of my, my automations and integrations and, and see my markdown and like, [01:10:00] you know, see like what that looks like and, and, and type that kind of stuff out.

[01:10:04] And so, um, I, I love drafts. Um,

[01:10:07] Jeff: Well, and, oh sorry, go ahead.

[01:10:09] Christina: no, no, I was just going to say, I love it.

[01:10:11] Jeff: And, and also, since you’re talking about iOS, like, the thing that’s amazing that is Part of my toolbar, because I mostly use it on iOS, is like, I can do the things on iOS that I can only do in VS Code or Sublime

[01:10:23] Text otherwise. So I have buttons that allow me, yeah, I have buttons that allow me to skip forward by a word, go to the beginning or the end of the line, move a line up or down, like

[01:10:31] the kinds of things you could never imagine doing on iOS, I can do with just a little button that’s at the bottom of the screen, and that is incredible.

[01:10:37] Christina: No, I, I feel the same way. Like, honestly, I think like the iOS thing is, yeah, because, yeah, I can use any number of text editors and have, um, on Mac, right? But it was in, in, and I think that’s why it was an iOS app first, and it’s great that it is on the Mac, um, because then you can have access to all of your files and stuff there.

[01:10:52] But for me, like, it was one of those things that I was like, no, I want to have, you know, originally, I mean, this is how long the app has been around. Like, you know, it was [01:11:00] kind of, I was like, I need my, TestMate on, you know, my phone. Um, at least the way I use TestMate, right? Not so much as coding, but for writing.

[01:11:09] And, um, and with the action stuff, especially, it’s, it’s just really, really good. Um, and, uh, um, uh, big fan. Um, so, um, yeah, plus one on that. Great, great, great work. Um, also the developer is just such a great guy too. And so it’s just, you know, I always love to support identity. Good dubs. Um, also another app that he makes, um, uh, this is, uh, I think this is a free one.

[01:11:33] I, I don’t even know if it has any in app purchase things. I think it might be completely free. Um, but if you want a really good, um, like, um, a thesaurus slash dictionary sort of thing on iOS, there’s an app called Terminology that he makes and it is really, really good because like the built in, um, uh, Like, Thesaurus on macOS is actually pretty great, but there isn’t anything like that built into the iPhone.

[01:11:56] And so, terminology is, and so it’s [01:12:00] awesome where, you know, you have those moments where you’re like, what’s a word for this? Terminology is.

[01:12:05] Jeff: Yes.

[01:12:06] Totally, totally plus one on that one.

[01:12:09] Ghostty: The New Terminal Emulator

[01:12:09] Christina: um, okay, so my pick this week, um, is actually a little bit of a tease, and I apologize for this, but I did still want to give it a shout out. Um, it will be available in a couple of weeks for everyone, but you can get access now if you join their Discord. So, um, I don’t know if you are familiar, uh, Brett, with, um, uh, Mitchell, um, uh, from, uh, the creator of, uh, Hashicorp.

[01:12:31] Um, uh, you know, Terraform and, and all that stuff. Okay. So, so, uh, Mitchell Hashimoto created a company called, uh, HashiCorp, which, um, was, uh, then, um, I think when public and it was been acquired and is worth lots and lots of money, and he stepped down from, um, them, um, a couple years ago and just decided to be a rich guy.

[01:12:51] And, um, uh, he,

[01:12:54] Jeff: Oh! I know who this guy is! My son talks about him all the time. Yeah, okay. Go

[01:12:58] Christina: Okay. Anyway, um, [01:13:00] he has been building for like the last year, he’s been building a new terminal emulator, like in public. And I know what you’re thinking, Christina, you’ve talked about terminal emulators before. You told us about Westerm like a few months ago. Like, do we need another one? Well, yes. Right.

[01:13:14] Cause as much as I love iTerm2 and, and like Brett and I talked about that at length, um, a while back and as much as I give to their, like Patreon and everything now, like I’m a big, big fan. There are some things that it does that are slower, like it’s beautiful, but there are some things just the way that it does things that are slower if you’re doing a lot of actions and whatnot.

[01:13:35] Um, and, um, this is where some of the Rust, um, uh, based, um, terminal emulators are really great. Um, Ghosty, which is what Mich Mitchell has been working on, um, it’s actually based in which is, I guess, like kind of a similar, kind of, it’s. Similar to Rust in that it’s very fast, um, but he’s been working on making it, like, the most accurate, like, kind of best terminal emulator he can make, and it’s also a [01:14:00] native app, so it’s available, it’s cross platform, unlike iTerm, so that, that’s one of the cool things, so it’ll work on, um, uh, Linux and, um, uh, Mac, and the Windows support is, is there, but it’s coming, I’ll be honest, I think Windows Terminal is pretty great, but it is, it is coming there as well, um, he’s been writing a lot of stuff on, on his blog, kind of devlogs about it, and he actually released a thing, like, Uh, two weeks ago, basically being like, ghosty 1.

[01:14:20] 0 is coming and saying it’ll be publicly released in, in, um, 2024, uh, December 2024 as an open source project under the MIT license, which is awesome. And then he kind of talks about how he wants it to basically be the best drop in replacement for your kernel, current terminal, terminal emulator, you know, Mac OS or Linux.

[01:14:38] Um, and, uh, yeah. I’d been seeing his tweets and I’d been seeing other stuff and I was like, man, how good can this really be? Um, I joined their Discord, which I will have linked because right now it is in private beta, but they are letting people in the Discord in fairly often. And I don’t even think I engaged in the Discord, but it, maybe it was a week and, and I was given access.

[01:14:58] And so then I have access to the [01:15:00] GitHub where you can file issues, but the Discord community is also really great of terminal nerds, you know, very responsible to feedback. Daily updates are coming. And I’ve been using it. Um, there are still some things that I prefer about iTerm2, but part of that could probably just be like 18 years of, of using it.

[01:15:18] Um, but, um, I really, really, really like Ghostie. So it’s free, it’s open source, it’s cross platform, it’s very fast, and the Mac app is native as fuck. So, um, you know, there are, uh, right now, the, the way the preferences work, it’s a config file, and you can access that in, in the Mac app and kind of enter in what you want to enter in.

[01:15:37] But there’s not a GUI. Um, but if I, but if we can be real, the GUI for the preferences in iTerm is really not any better understandable. Like, it’s, it’s, it, you know what I mean? Like, like, let’s be real, like,

[01:15:51] Jeff: Like, I know it because I’ve been using it a long time, but

[01:15:54] every

[01:15:54] Christina: even then, even

[01:15:55] Jeff: reset, I’m just like, oh boy.

[01:15:58] Christina: You have to reset. And then in that [01:16:00] case, you have to like find the plist file, right?

[01:16:01] Like in this case, like you have, like it, it, it, it by default will create a config file in your dot config folder in your home folder, dot config slash ghosty slash, um, uh, config. And, um, you know, you can then port that, you know, to other machines. Um, so you can, you know, sync that with your dot files and get or anything else, which is really great.

[01:16:20] Um, it automatically will pick up, um, like if you already have like a, um, you know, like, Oh my Zosh or. Or Zshell, whether OmaiPosh or OmaiZshell or, or one of the other, like, uh, you know, managed, managed things, like customized, um, you know, uh, terminal, it should pick up on those settings automatically, um, but even out of the box, the defaults are really good.

[01:16:41] Um, I, I like it. So, so Ghosty, Ghosty is my pick, um, and, and join their Discord because their Discord is, is cool. Um, I’m, I, uh, was like kind of refreshingly surprised to see. It’s rare to see like a cross platform community of terminal owners because usually it is [01:17:00] just like the Linux ricers and nothing against them but like I use a real desktop operating system for a reason and you know I don’t always want to like You know, I think it’s important to hear about that stuff.

[01:17:12] So like, it’s a nice mix of, of, of, you know, Windows and, and, uh, and, or not Windows, um, Mac and Linux people, some Windows people there too, but, but, um, Windows is a little bit, um, harder, um, support wise. Um, it hasn’t been a priority, but they are, they do have builds. So, um, Ghosty is, uh, that was very long of me, but Ghosty is my

[01:17:32] Jeff: No, I just, I put that stuff in the show notes, including the Discord server, and I just joined the Discord server, because I want to play.

[01:17:41] Christina: Yeah. And, um, I’ll talk to you offline, I’ll get you, I’ll get you the latest DMG, it’ll auto update, so.

[01:17:48] Jeff: thanks.

[01:17:50] Christina: Look, this is, this is gonna be MIT licensed. I don’t, I don’t feel

[01:17:53] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, right, right,

[01:17:54] Christina: being like, here you go.

[01:17:56] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. [01:18:00] Alright, awesome.

[01:18:02] Closing Thoughts and Self-Care

[01:18:02] Jeff: Well, might get some sleep, I doubt it.

[01:18:06] Christina: Yeah. I’m gonna, I’m gonna try to, um, I haven’t been sleeping well, um, understandably, but we’ll, we’ll see. Um, I, uh, have a cold as well, so I don’t know, I’d like, I’d like to get some sleep. We’ll see. But yeah, uh, take care of yourself, um, and all of you out there, I know this week is gonna be hard for a lot of you too, so take care, take care of yourself and, uh, do, do, do whatever you need to, yeah, get some sleep and, uh, Brett, Brett, Brett, Brett, most importantly take care of yourself.

Brett, Jeff, and the fabulous Jay Miller dive into hilarious and chaotic tales of surviving corporate reorgs, handling ADHD, and wrestling with DevRel magic. From API designing demands to repeated layoffs, they share hearty laughs and personal struggles. Jeff finds mental solace in his organized workshop, crafting metal art while Brett recounts school rebellions. The trio also discuss AI tools, secret SkunkWorks projects, and quirky app designs. Expect tech talk tangents, live coding passion, and a touch of corporate drama – all with a dose of irreverent humor!

1Password Extended Access Management solves the problems traditional IAM and MDM can’t . It’s security for the way we work today, and it’s now generally available to companies with Okta and Microsoft Entra, and in beta for Google Workspace customers.

Check it out at 1password.com/overtired.

You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network

BackBeat Media Podcast Network

Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter.

Give Yourself a Five

[00:00:00] Welcome and Introductions

[00:00:00]

[00:00:00] Brett: Hey, welcome to Overtired. Yes, that’s two weeks in a row consecutively. Um, this is Brett Terpstra. I am here with Jeff Severns Guntzel. Christina is out, but in her stead, we have the fabulous Jay Miller. Uh, you can find him at kjaymiller. com. How’s it going, Jay?

[00:00:19] Jeff: It’s good. It’s good. Glad to be back.

[00:00:22] Jay: Hi, Jay.

[00:00:24] Brett: So,

[00:00:25] Jay: I feel like this is four in a row.

[00:00:27] Brett: is it really?

[00:00:28] Jay: I think so.

[00:00:29] Jeff: There’s been a lot. I’ve been excited. I’ve been listening.

[00:00:32] Merlin Episodes and Podcasting Dreams

[00:00:32] Brett: Thanks to, thanks to Jeff and his fill in Merlin episodes, I

[00:00:36] Jay: Yeah, you get who you can.

[00:00:38] Jeff: The Merlin sodes have been, have been good.

[00:00:42] Jay: That was a, that was a blast talking to Merlin. It was really, really lovely.

[00:00:45] Brett: Merlin told us that he would come on anytime, uh, if we could stand him. Um, so yeah, we, there will be more Merlin episodes. Look

[00:00:57] Jay: The funny thing about talking to Merlin [00:01:00] one on one is that I’ve been listening. I mean, probably like all of us, maybe listening to Merlin’s podcasts for like 12 years. Um, and there aren’t many other podcasts that I listen to regularly. I would say I listened to one of his podcasts every week. I don’t usually listen to all of them.

[00:01:14] Jay: And I used to have this dream that I was on some podcast I loved or another, and I just really, really messed it up. And it was just, I’d wake up feeling like such a failure. And the first time Merlin got on, I was like, Oh, this is that dream where I’m like talking to someone that I’ve only really known through podcasts.

[00:01:32] Jay: And it’s got to work. Anyway, it was really nice. It was delightful.

[00:01:35] Brett: Someone, someone said, uh, I like it when you have Merlin on because unlike his other podcasts, he hasn’t gotten comfortable enough to just descend into grievances.

[00:01:49] Jay: That’s funny.

[00:01:50] Mental Health Corner: Jay’s Work Challenges

[00:01:50] Brett: All right, should we, uh, should we kick it off with the Mental Health Corner, our longest running, um, uh, segment?

[00:01:58] Jay: Yes,

[00:01:59] Jeff: Yeah.[00:02:00]

[00:02:00] Brett: Uh, Jay, would you like to go first?

[00:02:02] Jeff: I always feel like when I lead it, it’s the worst. I’m always super long and I guess me muting things as,

[00:02:11] Jay: the guest.

[00:02:12] Jeff: okay, that’s fine. I’ll own it. So, yeah, work has been interesting, uh, as I put in a blog post recently, I have survived yet another layoff, um, that’s the,

[00:02:26] Brett: missed that.

[00:02:27] Jeff: yeah, that’s the second one at this company, and I’ve only been here since February, which is great, um, the third re org, which is, you know, company’s gonna company, I

[00:02:39] Brett: In how long?

[00:02:40] Jeff: since February.

[00:02:41] Brett: Since February. Third reorg since February. That’s even worse than mine.

[00:02:45] Jeff: our entire original department is gone. Our company has no more marketing department.

[00:02:51] Brett: Yeah, that does sound like Oracle.

[00:02:54] Jeff: they’re like, we just don’t need this anymore. Um, but what’s funny is I was, [00:03:00] I, I’m not a movie person, so I don’t have like a great reference other than like Suicide Squad. I, I kind of got called into this Suicide Squad of a team that was like, hey, You have a special set of skills and we’re going to do a thing and we’re not going to let half the company know what we’re doing except for we’re only going to give them snippets of what’s happening behind the scenes.

[00:03:29] Jeff: Um, and you’re responsible for giving those snippets because that’s your superpower here. Um, so do you want to be loved by this team of like 10 people and hated by the other 180 people on in the company? because you’re just not doing the things that we normally do.

[00:03:45] Jay: 10 people are. Yeah.

[00:03:49] Jeff: very senior staff level engineers, architects, like this is, this is all good.

[00:03:54] Jeff: And that’s why I feel like the, the analogy is breaking down a little bit, but I got, I got [00:04:00] asked to be on a special team at work. The team is doing some like not so top secret, secret stuff, but what’s interesting about it is my role on the team is part. API designer, part like project manager, part developer advocate.

[00:04:24] Jeff: So there’s, there’s a lot going on, but it very much reemphasized some of the things that I’ve been working on in a recent blog post, um, or series of blog posts, which are like, what are the valuable skills that engineering. teams or development teams actually need that aren’t coding because I’ve seen a lot of code.

[00:04:52] Jeff: I’ve seen a lot of production level code. They’re not hiring people for their coding skills. That’s obvious. Um, code is bad. [00:05:00] Um, and no matter how big or small the company is, the code just gets bad over time. Um, bad decisions are made for good reasons. Bad decisions are made for bad reasons. The code sucks, so there has to be something else.

[00:05:13] Jeff: And I’m, I’m slowly learning just from people who have worked at companies like Google, who’ve been architects for Google, architects for Microsoft, Shopify, like some of these bigger companies that have seen a lot of success and are doing things differently. Just like picking their brain and really learning a lot, but also having them see The value in good production, like I have to do a weekly demo to the rest of the company of what we’ve been working on every single week.

[00:05:47] Jeff: And often it’s like, Hey, here’s some infrastructure stuff that Jay’s never had to touch before. And then also here’s Jay giving the demo of how to use this. And the resounding response [00:06:00] is like, Jay, your demos are the thing that everyone looks forward to now on the call because all the other ones are like watching bread turn into toast out in the sun.

[00:06:14] Jeff: It’s, it’s just, it’s grueling. So it’s, it’s great to, to be loved and to be like wanted by a team of people who are very, very experienced and often have to re explain things to me because I have no clue what they’re talking about, but then also. Because of this shakeup at work, there’s kind of been this rift in that our current team is under new management.

[00:06:40] Jeff: That new management wants me to stick around because kind of the hope is if this team is successful, then it becomes a new department, and then the people who are there just kind of stay there. So old company wants me, or old team wants me around, new team wants me around. A third team that is like Hey, you probably should actually be over here anyway, because that’s what makes [00:07:00] like logical sense.

[00:07:01] Jeff: We also want you around. And everyone is throwing out like, do you want money? Do you want management? Do you like what do you want? So it’s, you know, safe to say like, aside from feeling kind of overworked and a little stressed out, which is just I feel like a normal thing. I I’m feeling very much wanted and having, having a little bit of survivorship bias, having, you know, these conversations where people are like, you know, what can we do to keep you happy with, you know, the team that you’re on and with the projects that you’re on.

[00:07:40] Jeff: And that’s been really, really blinding of the fact that I just lost. Another half of my existing team and some of the people I worked closest with due to these, this last layoff round. So it’s like, Hey, rose colored glasses, going to put those on [00:08:00] and ignore like the atomic bomb that just went off in our company that mostly impacted my areas.

[00:08:08] Jeff: But also, Hey, this sunset’s looking really nice right now. Um, so yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at.

[00:08:16] Brett: So when I first started at Oracle, they wanted me and, and they gave me a good salary and they gave me a bonus my first year and a raise. And then we went through multiple reorgs and I feel completely unwanted now. Um, I got no raise this year. I got no bonus. I got nothing. Um, and that feels like punishment.

[00:08:40] Brett: Uh, you know, when, you know, inflation is going up and your, your salary isn’t going up, um, that’s basically a pay cut. I’m really jealous that you feel that you literally are that wanted. Um, I wish, I wish.

[00:08:56] Jeff: I think the downside to that though is none of these like only one of them [00:09:00] was like, maybe it comes with a pay increase. And that’s just because to level out, again, you’ve got like, like staff level architects from Google coming in making that kind of money, we kind of have to balance things. But everyone else like, Everyone else is like, hey, we just laid off a bunch of people because we’ve got to save money.

[00:09:20] Jeff: So I’m, I’m also kind of in the camp of like, I feel like as much as they want to promise me more money come time for like, hey, let’s do a review and let’s talk about compensation. That’s going to get left out somehow.

[00:09:32] Brett: Yeah, yeah, and that sucks, um, all this saving money when your stock is doing fine shit. Yeah.

[00:09:40] Jay: oh yeah, there’s this spectrum that’s starting to sort of emerge in my mind and I want you to help me fill it out. So there’s what you’re talking about, which is you survived the layoff. You have a blog post about this too, which I’ll put in the, um, in the show notes, or I put in there. Uh, you survived the layoff and you feel wanted, right?

[00:09:58] Jay: On the other end is you’ve been [00:10:00] laid off and you feel totally unwanted. Another one is you’re Brett and you’re there, you’ve survived layoffs, but you also feel unwanted. What is the one between Brett and you, Jay? Like, is it just, I feel wanted and. But I may die any day?

[00:10:15] Jeff: My team is designated for future layoffs. That’s, that’s like the space in between where things are great. Everybody’s gelling and there hasn’t been a layoff in six months. So, You’re, you’re like, hey, this is good while everybody braces for impact. I talked about this in that blog post of that like being a military veteran and being someone who’s been diagnosed with PTSD like I can, I can honestly say that dealing with layoffs at Elastic, followed by layoffs at Microsoft, followed by two rounds of layoffs at Ivan, like, and, and they don’t, they don’t want to call them layoffs, they want to call them restructuring, but like restructuring comes with like, if [00:11:00] more than three people got laid off at the same time from different departments and I feel like it could be justified as a layoff, um, you know, for the same reason, When those things happen, there’s no good way to do it.

[00:11:14] Jeff: And that’s the problem is that like, in Microsoft’s case, hey, we’re gonna lay off 10, 000 people while also announcing that we’ve had record sales, you know, record revenue generated.

[00:11:27] Brett: The, the in between is that, um, that 1950s, 60s, uh, mentality that no longer exists where you get a good job, you do your job, you, you do everything that’s asked of you, and every year, um. You get an incremental raise and a Christmas bonus and, um, and you’re not worried about layoffs because you’re doing your job.

[00:11:53] Brett: You’re good at your job. And now, like, the reason they gave me for not getting a bonus was I only [00:12:00] scored, um, uh, Uh, there’s like five, it’s like a one to five rating in your review, and a three means adequately performs all duties. And when I started, they told me just always get a three and you’ll get what you need.

[00:12:16] Brett: And like, if you put a five down for anything, then like management gets like uneasy that you’re looking for a promotion or whatever. And the reason they gave me for not

[00:12:26] Jay: I don’t know about this guy.

[00:12:28] Brett: The reason they gave me for not getting a bonus was I only had a three on my review and I like, it’s a self review too.

[00:12:36] Brett: So I just gave myself threes and everything. Cause

[00:12:38] Jay: And it’s a self review. That is capitalism, right? Like

[00:12:42] Jeff: you’ve denied yourself a raise.

[00:12:44] Jay: Yeah,

[00:12:45] Brett: a, it’s a self review that your manager can argue with if he feels that you overranked yourself and rarely will they, uh, up your score for you.

[00:12:54] Jeff: It’s weird in that like Microsoft was the same way except for basically we were told hey don’t [00:13:00] screw over like it was a peer review, so the ruling was you never screw over one of your

[00:13:06] Brett: Sure. Why would

[00:13:07] Jeff: put in the good stuff, you never put in any bad stuff, so there’s no growth whatsoever, there’s no like personal development, but then also at the same time, They’re like, hey, we know that you’re lying.

[00:13:20] Jeff: So therefore we’re going to just throw out this. And it’s like, it’s not even lying. It’s just like, if, if I’m having to basically re interview for my job every six months. give you all the good stuff and turn all the bad stuff into more good stuff, then like I truly am not developing as a human being and our company has a bunch of robots and then that’s when I get bored and I bounce.

[00:13:44] Brett: Well, it’s, it’s bullshit. Like you should, your manager should do your rating and they should be on your side. And, um, this whole, this whole system, you’re right, it does not inspire personal growth. Um, [00:14:00] I will say like not getting any compensation, uh, it feels like they thought that would inspire me to work harder, but it, it absolutely does not.

[00:14:12] Jeff: Yeah, it will make me work harder on everything other than my job.

[00:14:18] Brett: Yeah, exactly. It makes me work harder at looking for a new job.

[00:14:22] Jay: Or it makes you dig into a passion project or something, right? Like, it’s just like, okay, fine. I’m going to go where I, I already know how to feel, uh, satisfied and valuable, but you’re just not the framework in which I could do that.

[00:14:34] Brett: All right. So Jay, does that sum up your mental health corner?

[00:14:38] Jeff: Yeah, no, that’s it for me.

[00:14:40] Brett: All right.

[00:14:40] Mental Health Corner: Brett’s Health Journey

[00:14:40] Brett: Mine is actually not work related. I do actually want to talk about what’s happening at my job in brief later on. But the weird thing for me right now is I feel like I have Both ADHD and bipolar, like under control. Like I’ve got, I’ve got [00:15:00] focus.

[00:15:00] Brett: I’ve got like, uh, when I’m sleeping anyway, like I’ve got, uh, just like steady mood, um, motivation and like, it’s weird. It’s weird to be like both bipolar stable and ADHD attentive at the same time. Um, I have had. Sleep issues ongoing, like this has been going on for months and I’ve talked about it, um, and I tried, I started having lightheadedness, uh, like persistent, not just when I stood up, just like constant lightheadedness that was on the verge of like euphoria, um, like it felt really good, but also made it unsafe to drive, so I figured I should do something about it.

[00:15:48] Brett: Um, so we tried the, the only reason they could come up with was it must be caused by the gabapentin. So I tried to get off the gabapentin, which gabapentin [00:16:00] also acts as an anti anxiety medication. And I went cold turkey off it and had the worst day of anxiety I have ever had. I was absolutely certain I was going to lose my job.

[00:16:11] Brett: I was absolutely certain that everybody hated me. It was a real rough day. Um, so, so I kind of went back on the gabapentin and tapered myself off and tried this drug called DayVigo, which is supposed to help with sleep, but as has been my experience with every other sleep medication, I got no sleep. Um, it did nothing.

[00:16:36] Brett: So I’m currently back on the gabapentin. I am not anxious, and today I am not lightheaded, and I am not convinced that the gabapentin is a problem, which means I have to go in for like pulmonary and brain scans, um, to try to explain the lightheadedness if it comes back. Because, uh, yeah. So I’m, I’m, I’m filling out [00:17:00] forms to try functional medicine.

[00:17:01] Brett: Are you guys familiar with those?

[00:17:04] Jay: I don’t know. Explain.

[00:17:05] Brett: It’s like a cross between western medicine and a more holistic, um, kind of, uh, what’s the word? When they give you a bunch of supplements and recommend electromagnetic therapy.

[00:17:22] Jeff: I was meds, crush them up, dip like acupuncture needles in them and then like, Do that or

[00:17:31] Brett: so, yeah, I, I don’t know yet, um, I wasn’t impressed with the, like, consultation phone call I had, but I’ve got, like, GI issues, I’ve got bipolar and ADHD, and I’ve got, um, sleep issues, and I have specialists for each one of these, but none of the specialists agree with the other specialists, and in my mind, all this shit has to be connected.

[00:17:55] Brett: In some way, there has to be some underlying problem and functional medicine seems to [00:18:00] be the only option I have without going to like fucking acupuncture and stuff. Um, with no, no offense to acupuncturists. I just don’t think it’s going to solve like

[00:18:11] Jeff: I love acupuncture. I’m not using it for those

[00:18:15] Brett: yeah, exactly, exactly, but like, um, what, wellness, the wellness industry, I guess, is like, I don’t have a lot of faith in, um, I think it’s a, uh, mostly a rip off, but functional medicine seems like my only hope for finding, um, connections?

[00:18:35] Brett: And, like, you start with, like, urine samples, saliva sample, fecal sample, and it takes, like, five weeks to analyze all this, and then they come back with, like, a recommendation, I guess, so, I’m gonna give it a shot, we’ll see. Um, last thing in my mental health corner is Uh, health insurance. I, uh, one of my therapists, multiple [00:19:00] therapists, um, does not submit to insurance, so I have to make claims myself using her super bills.

[00:19:08] Brett: And, um, I, I submitted like 20 bills for the year and I got back 20 separate 25 checks for, to cover, they’re supposed to cover 90 percent of like a 280 bill, which they reduced to 20, 250. And then instead of giving me 90 percent of that, they paid me 10 percent of that, which means now I have to like resubmit all these claims.

[00:19:38] Brett: And when you’re resubmitting, they require faxes. So I have to fax in Receipts, which obviously I do online because there’s no fax machines in the world anymore.

[00:19:50] Jay: my god, no, there’s not.

[00:19:52] Brett: and so, like,

[00:19:53] Jay: There’s only super spammy fax services online.

[00:19:57] Brett: And then for, yeah, [00:20:00] I found one that’s free, or like for 2. 90 I could send a 20 page fax. Um,

[00:20:06] Jay: was it?

[00:20:07] Brett: no, I can’t remember, it’s called like FreeFax. com or something. Um, but they also, my last 10 I submitted, they sent back 10 separate envelopes, each one containing a single piece of paper that said, Hey, for how to network claims, contact our partner.

[00:20:25] Brett: Uh, this, and they’ll help you like get your bill reduced or whatever. And I’m like, that’s, you have fully reimbursed me for this provider in the past and something is wrong now. So I spend an hour on the phone with customer service and it

[00:20:43] Jay: The upside

[00:20:44] Brett: and more faxes.

[00:20:46] Jay: the upside is that somewhere there’s an envelope licker who has dodged all the layoffs.

[00:20:53] Brett: right. That’s all, that’s all I got.

[00:20:55] Jeff’s Workshop and Mental Health

[00:20:55] Brett: Jeff, how are you doing?

[00:20:57] Jay: doing pretty good. Um, yeah, I’m [00:21:00] doing good. Uh, I know I’ve, I think I’ve talked about my lathe and my mental health check in, or maybe just my workshop. Um, but I, a new sort of like, Cause I mean, the background is that a really severe manic episode, unlike anything I’d ever had or have had since in October of 21 led me to fill my garage and my driveway with things from, uh, from auctions of closing steel factories.

[00:21:23] Jay: It’s quite a thing. Um, and it took me probably, I mean, it took me until about four months ago to get out from under it, which I obviously wasn’t doing that. Constantly, but when I could, when I could stomach going into my garage and kind of facing sort of the shame and frustration of this self of mine that, that existed for one month, that is of course still me, but like was a little screwed up by brain chemistry and the wrong medication.

[00:21:47] Jay: Um, it took me a long time to get out from under it. Finally, I have a workshop that is just like, it’s exactly what it should be. It’s a lovely place. Everything’s organized. Any tool I want is within reach. All my drawers are labeled. And, um, and I have this lathe. [00:22:00] I, I have this, it is amazing. I have this lathe, this hundred year old lathe I’ve been unmasked on about it a lot.

[00:22:05] Jay: And, um, and I have a machining teacher, a mentor who I learned how to use metal lathes and, and bridgeport mills to machine metal. Five, six, seven years ago. Um, he’s a lovely person. He’s unlike anybody I would have ever imagined a meeting that would teach and mentor and machining. And I finally felt confident having him over, um, because my shop was just a nice place to be.

[00:22:28] Jay: And I, and I wanted his guidance and I wanted him to help me problem solve and all of this stuff. And so it was the first time I had invited somebody into my workshop. Cause I’ve normally just kind of like. People would be over and they’d be like, let’s go look at your workshop. And I have to be like, no, not now for years.

[00:22:41] Jay: And it was just horrible. Um, cause I knew that it was just like, it was like, why is he ashamed of his workshop? And, uh, so I had my, my, uh, teacher over. I served Nepalese, uh, food at the work table, um, on a big old piece of cardboard. where he drew how he had recently [00:23:00] created, uh, built an elevator, like a freight elevator using the mag drill I gave him that I got at an auction.

[00:23:07] Jay: A mag drill is like when you see people breaking into safes in the movies with a giant magnet. That’s what a mag drill is. Uh, he drew a whole, like he drew a whole picture of another thing. And then we just like, we spent like three hours Um, investigating how a thing was put together a hundred years ago so that we could take it apart.

[00:23:24] Jay: And, and the, there is something in that, that is such a calming, um, experience for me to be staring slowly at a thing and going, how do you want to come apart? Like, I see, I see maybe there’s some threads under there. I see there’s like a Woodruff key. I’m just going to use jargon. And, and, and just, and doing that with someone else, um, and then ultimately succeeding in, and then really appreciating what you find underneath, or, or when you realize how it is that they, they devised this, this, you know, this thing and having just [00:24:00] like really like unmitigated joy, like goofy childish joy.

[00:24:03] Jay: Um, he’s a great match for that. And, and so it was awesome. And he’s also happens to be right now building a seven foot beer can that, uh, for a brewery that actually tips and pours beer and then tips back. So he also is just like a lot of fun. Um, so anyway,

[00:24:19] Brett: an Axeman trip for sure.

[00:24:21] Jay: exactly. Um, so that was like, that was a huge milestone for me and so directly related to mental health.

[00:24:27] Jay: Um, and, and so it’s just amazing.

[00:24:31] Brett: am totally like that with code, especially with writing regular expressions. Like I just find the world around me calms down, especially when I’m like looking through someone else’s really good code to figure out how they did it. Um, and, and you, there’s just all these, like, delights along the way and you learn, like, all new, all new functions and, and API calls and, yeah, it’s, it’s really nice.

[00:24:56] Brett: I had a metals teacher in high school [00:25:00] who was, he told me, um, I have to give you an A. I think you’re dumber than a box of rocks. Quote. Dumber than a box of rocks, but I have to give you an A because you, you did everything. Um, I kind of was, I, I, I, I screwed off a lot in his class. Um,

[00:25:19] Jay: cuz it’s shop.

[00:25:20] Brett: Yeah, it’s shop.

[00:25:21] Brett: And like, we were, we were like chasing each other around with like metal files and pouring molten lead down

[00:25:27] Jay: it’s shop.

[00:25:29] Brett: I got the back of my tennis shoe burned off by like molten metal.

[00:25:34] Jay: It’s really a science class about evolution.

[00:25:37] Jeff: So wait, wait, wait a minute. Hold on. So your, your shop teacher said that you, you, you gave yourself a three and was still able to promote you into the next grade.

[00:25:48] Brett: And then in, in college, I took a metals class and again, it, in the review at the end, he told me I was an asshole, but he had to give [00:26:00] me an A and I’m like,

[00:26:01] Jeff: this time, I guess.

[00:26:03] Brett: yeah,

[00:26:03] Jay: only ever got told I

[00:26:04] Brett: this time I was a smartass. I made some cool, I made, I made a, so they brought in a nude model and had her pose and we had to draw one part of her body and then sculpt it in metal.

[00:26:19] Brett: And I chose

[00:26:20] Jay: the knuckle.

[00:26:21] Brett: I chose her hand, which she was leaning against a table, and no one can see this because this is an audio podcast, but she had like her wrist

[00:26:30] Jay: bit like Brett has rigor mortis.

[00:26:32] Brett: yeah, she had her wrist bent, and it was resting on the table, so I sculpted from the elbow down, and I flipped it upside down to make a little table out of her hand, and did the whole thing in like quarter inch steel, Um, and welding that again was a very calming process.

[00:26:51] Brett: It took hours and I just zoned in. I was on a lot of heroin, but I just, I zoned in and it was awesome.

[00:26:59] Jay: So [00:27:00] here’s my question for your shop teacher. Is he listening? Is he, is he listening to the podcast? Um, I assume it was a he. Uh, what, when you have come up in the world of welders and, and machinists, somehow to act like being an asshole. It’s, it’s like, outside the norm, or even not required, or like, an obstacle, like, this is why it took me so long to get into this kind of stuff, is I didn’t wanna, you know, I didn’t wanna be in a community of assholes.

[00:27:29] Brett: Well, so I feel like what happens for me is, Um, especially in high school shop class, I’m, I’m, I’m not being elitist, I’m just, I think I was smarter than most of the class, which meant

[00:27:45] Jay: You’re still smarter

[00:27:46] Brett: was, I was more likely to make, uh, snide remarks, um, more likely to point out contradictions while the teacher was talking.

[00:27:57] Brett: Um, and like, just [00:28:00] that kind of trap that, you know, What do they call them, uh, gifted and talented kids fall into? You have so much potential. If only you would apply yourself. Yeah.

[00:28:09] Jay: You really lack empathy, yep.

[00:28:12] Brett: Um, yeah, yeah. But thanks, Jeff.

[00:28:15] Sponsor Break: 1Password

[00:28:15] Brett: Um, let’s take a quick sponsor break. We have one of our favorite sponsors this week, 1Password, once again, talking about part of their product that none of us actually use.

[00:28:29] Brett: So when they tell us to make this

[00:28:30] Jay: Wait, what a rousing start to the ad read. Can that just be our policy from now on when we’re reading an ad for something? Now we’re going to read you something today we’re really grateful to hear. We have never touched this.

[00:28:41] Brett: it’s, yeah, but like I said, like one password is just, it’s awesome.

[00:28:46] Jay: I’m implementing 1Password across my organization right now. We love it for everything we know

[00:28:51] Brett: Yes. Yes. So that’s our, that’s our rousing, um, promotion of the sponsor. But I’m going to talk about, [00:29:00] uh, extended access management. Uh, so imagine your company’s security like the quad of a college campus. There are nice brick paths between the buildings. Those are the company owned devices, IT approved apps, and managed employee identities.

[00:29:15] Brett: And then there are the paths that people actually use, the shortcuts worn through the grass that are actual straightest line from point A to B. There are unmanaged devices, shadow IT apps, and non employee identities such as contractors. Most security tools only work on those happy brick paths, but a lot of security problems take place on the shortcuts.

[00:29:38] Brett: 1Password Extended Access Management is the first security solution that brings all of these unmanaged devices, apps, and identities under your control. It ensures that every user credential is strong and protected, every device is known and healthy, and every app is visible. 1Password Extended Access Management solves the problems traditional [00:30:00] IAM and MDM can’t.

[00:30:01] Brett: It’s security for the way we work today, and it’s now generally available to companies with Okta and Microsoft Entrout and in beta for Google Workspace customers. Check it out at 1password. com slash overtired. That’s 1password with the number one dot com slash overtired. Thanks 1password. We’ll continue to talk about, you know, using like end user stuff because we all love it for that.

[00:30:32] Jeff: I mean, I’ve been a mobile device manager before and I’ve had to do IAM things and yeah, this was, this was like, job right out of the military. Like,

[00:30:42] Brett: then you can actually speak to this. I should have let you do the ad

[00:30:46] Jeff: I’ve never used the 1Password bit, but I’ve definitely used some of the other tools that they talk about. And yes, I will say that there was always the like, Hey, why is this app banned? And it’s like, because it’s not on [00:31:00] the one, like, the one of, 20 apps that we allow you to use. And then we see them pull out another phone and go, but here I have this work contract here on my personal phone and I need to get it off of my personal phone and this is the only app that I have.

[00:31:14] Jeff: And it’s like, congratulations, you’ve snitched on yourself. Good job. Um, give me that. Um, now we need to wipe both phones. But

[00:31:24] Brett: so I, I am the, I am the person on the, uh, the, uh, the path that, that is not the brick road. Um, like, I got so fed up with using my work. Authorized laptop because of the limited number of apps I could use and the way that they forced me to work. So I set up a whole little like VPN tunnel on a mini in my basement to make my My Mac studio appear like it was a work authorized app, but without any of the control.

[00:31:59] Jay: give myself a [00:32:00] three.

[00:32:02] Jeff: Brett spends a whole lot of time every day in this one app. That’s

[00:32:09] Brett: Yeah. Um, but it, you know, we do what we have to.

[00:32:13] Work and Developer Relations at Oracle

[00:32:13] Brett: Um, so I, real quick, I want to say that. Um, so my job is, I, I work in developer relations, but for the last three years, I have basically written content for developers, how to articles, and, um, demos for different technologies, and right now they have me producing two minute videos for two minute videos.

[00:32:38] Brett: So, to promote AI solutions at Oracle, and like Jay was talking about earlier, I’m doing demos on technologies I’ve never used, so I have to work with, you know, the creators of the project to figure out what the hell they’re talking about, and then try to like compress all the impressive bits of it into two minutes.

[00:32:57] Brett: And that’s okay, I enjoy the [00:33:00] production, I like that part of my job,

[00:33:01] Jeff: part.

[00:33:02] Brett: but it doesn’t feel like it. Uh, Relationships, um, Developer Relations, so I came up with this scheme. If you will, to build a, an aggregator that finds us everybody on the web, like indie bloggers that have good search engine ranking that are writing about us or about similar technologies on our competitors and doing things like writing how tos and writing overviews and Um, and, and aggregating all of them and then putting together a team that actually develops, like, reaches out and develops relationships with these developers to, um, hopefully get them to write about our technologies.

[00:33:50] Brett: Um, maybe do side by side how tos, like, here’s how you do it on S3, here’s how you do it on Oracle Object Storage. And like, actually [00:34:00] get that content, because right now, all the content we write goes into the Oracle ecosystem. So if you’re not following Oracle already, if you’re just Googling, you’re not really finding these specific solutions.

[00:34:13] Brett: So, This, I, I made a mind map for this proposal and I sent it, they asked for a doc, a Word file or a PowerPoint, and I said, no, I’m going to send you a mind map. And every time I do that, people are like, oh my God, this is so cool. I love seeing it like this. I get, you know, at least three

[00:34:33] Jay: love mind maps!

[00:34:35] Brett: Even if they don’t like making them, they like reading them.

[00:34:38] Brett: Like it’s a great way to present information.

[00:34:41] Jeff: Oracle has their own AI. I mean, this is an amazing tool right, at

[00:34:46] Brett: they have, they have the tools you need to build an LLM, um, they don’t have like their own language model or anything, um, but they do a lot of,

[00:34:58] Jeff: I would take a template [00:35:00] of what they want and take your mind map and just feed it in and go, here. like

[00:35:07] Crafting Personalized Outreach with AI

[00:35:07] Brett: what I want to do is all these, for every AI solution we promote, we have to write a one pager. I want to be able to feed this one pager into a tool that generates the search to find people talking about specifically. The technology in that one pager so I can reach out and then I want ai to summarize what that person is already written so that I can approach them with at least a cursory knowledge of what they’ve already done.

[00:35:35] Brett: Because that’s how you contact a blogger.

[00:35:37] Effective Blogger Engagement Strategies

[00:35:37] Brett: You say hey, I read this article you wrote. I really like point A and point B that you made. I wonder if you’ve heard of This thing that I produce that you might also be interested in. Like, those are the emails, when I get them, those are the ones I pay attention to.

[00:35:53] Brett: Um, the ones that are not just like, Hello, Brett Terpstra, we noticed you’re interested in this broad technology. [00:36:00] Would you like to try our product?

[00:36:02] Jeff: not just that but like also the Like, if Brett comes to me and says, hey, your last blog post was super dope, like, that means something. If someone I’ve never met before says, hey, good blog post, how would you like to write for us now? Like, no, that’s

[00:36:22] Brett: Or, or even worse, how would you like a sponsored article from us on your blog?

[00:36:27] Jeff: yeah, like,

[00:36:28] Brett: cause you showed up in our

[00:36:29] Jay: You’re offering that to me?!

[00:36:32] Building Genuine Connections in Tech

[00:36:32] Jeff: like, I tell people the, the best recruiting tactic that worked on me was Microsoft, in which my boss was. Sponsored me on GitHub for two years. Like, replied to like, tweets that I was doing, replied to some talks that I had given. Like, had a genuine interest in, wow, Jay’s content’s actually pretty cool.

[00:36:56] Jeff: Like, there’s, there’s an investment in this. So that when they reached out and they [00:37:00] said, hey, My team is hiring and I think you would be a good candidate for this. It wasn’t just like, hello stranger I’ve never met before. How would you like a brand new opportunity? It was like, oh no, I actually have some rapport with this person.

[00:37:15] Jeff: Like, I know that they are heavily invested in not just their team’s success, but my personal success in the fact that they’ve been paying me for two years already. Like,

[00:37:28] Brett: Um,

[00:37:28] Jeff: and a wrong way to do this.

[00:37:30] Innovative Projects and Their Impact

[00:37:30] Brett: my most successful project at Oracle, the one that has been the most beneficial to the company is one I did because someone else at Oracle had been following me for years and they knew what I could do, um, and they asked me to come. work for their team and write tools that would convert their entire Confluence wiki into a GitHub.

[00:37:53] Brett: Well, in this case, a Oracle has some GitHub clone, uh, but basically into Markdown [00:38:00] files that they could turn into a repository of information. And I built this and their writing team was spending two hours per page to convert these and then clean them up. And I made it into you could do an entire hundred pages in 30 seconds.

[00:38:22] Brett: And like I took care of all the requests and saved them, according to their estimate, thousands of hours. However, I did not include this in my self review because technically I was doing it in my off hours and it wasn’t authorized by my manager. So I figured maybe I shouldn’t mention that I had put, you know, hours into this project and saved the company thousands of man hours, man and woman hours.

[00:38:49] Brett: and non binary. Um, but, uh, I, I got a letter of commendation from them. I, I requested like, if I saved you this much time, [00:39:00] write me a glowing letter of commendation. And I sent that to my manager. This is like two days after I found out I wasn’t getting a bonus. And I’m like, fuck you here. This is, this is what I’ve done for the company.

[00:39:12] Jeff: And also, I will go work for that team

[00:39:15] Brett: I asked them, can I just switch to your team? They’re like, we have zero headcount. We have to lay someone off this month anyway.

[00:39:21] Jeff: oh no, the, the interesting part of that though is we just had this conversation yesterday as I had to give this demo to our team, and they were like, wait a minute, y’all have done all this work, where’s the JIRA tickets for this? Where’s the GitHub repo? And we’re like, they’re all private. And the team was like, what, how dare we not be able to see what this super secret squirrel team is doing.

[00:39:47] Jeff: All the time, and put in our comments,

[00:39:50] Challenges of Corporate Metrics

[00:39:50] Brett: I hate JIRA so much that I find ways around actually using JIRA. So when managers go to look at [00:40:00] JIRA ticket count as a metric of success, I look horrible. I have like two tickets completed for the whole year.

[00:40:07] Jeff: well, and the thing that we came, we came to finally was like, we’re doing all this work, it’s all listed as private, but here’s the thing. These five super important things that make our company the company that it is, and how it operates, and how it ultimately makes money, were all done as SkunkWorks projects.

[00:40:28] Jeff: And people’s off time just because they were tired of the way that it was working and they made it better. And then it got adopted into, Hey, this is really great. We should use this for everything now. And to me, it’s like, wait a minute. What we’ve learned is that yes, we can be open and transparent about things.

[00:40:47] Jeff: Doesn’t mean that everything needs to be open source made available to the public on day one. Sometimes, especially when you’re working in a company, it’s better to be like, let me get my idea out there and [00:41:00] done. And then when it’s at a place where I can present it to the company, Then I’ll present it, then we’ll take all the criticisms, then we’ll take all the feedback and apply it as needed, but if you’re coming out the gate on day one with just like, Well, you chose Fish as your terminal editor, I don’t know why you did that, you should be using T Shell, because Reasons.

[00:41:21] Jeff: And you’re just like, nevermind, now I want to quit and go find a new job.

[00:41:26] Brett: Yeah,

[00:41:28] Jeff: But also, you shouldn’t have given yourself a three on that, Brett. That’s, that’s totally five work.

[00:41:33] Brett: Well, dude, the, the, the ratings are like, how is your leadership? I’m not a manager, I don’t,

[00:41:40] Jeff: leader.

[00:41:41] Brett: I, I don’t want to be a leader. I want to, I want to do shit behind the scenes and make shit better for everybody. Um, and,

[00:41:48] Jeff: being a leader.

[00:41:49] Jay: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[00:41:52] Jeff: That’s the definition of a leader, Brett.

[00:41:54] Brett: Like, and I edited maybe 20, 20 long articles and I did a great [00:42:00] job of editing, but my name doesn’t go on those articles. Like I’m invisible at this company.

[00:42:06] Jeff: I have another blog post that I am actually working on in that whole series that is exactly what you’re saying. Like we, talking with a bunch of architects has taught me one thing. Commit count, line, like code line count, all of those things are very, very horrible metrics. And what are better metrics are, how many things did you help push across the finish line?

[00:42:30] Jeff: Not, not like, oh, I’m the one that wrote the code, but like, I was the person that said, Hey, you should run this through a linter, or, hey, you have a typo there, or this is off messaging, or whatever, or even, Oh, you’re stuck on this here. Here’s an example of some code that I wrote in my spare time that explains how to solve that problem, and like, all of those things are not easily quantifiable.

[00:42:58] Jeff: And that’s the [00:43:00] problem with companies.

[00:43:01] The Value of Unquantifiable Work in DevRel

[00:43:01] Jeff: And again, we’re both in DevRel. DevRel has this horrible, like, challenge in that everything that we do that brings value is not quantifiable. Everything that we do that

[00:43:13] Brett: all DevRel is unquantifiable.

[00:43:16] Jeff: Like every, and like both, you know, people who give talks at DevRelCon will argue this, but everything, all the challenges of like, we need to figure out how to turn blog posts into quantifiable metrics and conference talks into quantifiable metrics.

[00:43:31] Jeff: I was asked to keynote at a conference next year that hasn’t been announced yet, so I won’t, I won’t do that, but I’ll be keynoting at some conference next year. And as I had to justify travel, eventually I was like, okay, look, I’m an influencer in this community. I can go there and, like, regardless, I’m going to go there because they asked me to keynote.

[00:43:53] Jeff: I’ve blown them off a couple of years in a row because of other work things getting in the way. I’m going this year. The [00:44:00] options are I can take vacation, I can go on my own because they’re going to pay me to go, and I can be super excited to talk about my company and all the cool things that we’re doing, or,

[00:44:12] Brett: Right.

[00:44:13] Jeff: or, you can pay for me to go.

[00:44:16] Jeff: And then I’ll be really, really excited and I’ll want to give demos and I’ll try to go to meetups and stuff and I’ll like extend my time there and have a really good time that benefits the company or you’ll continue to piss me off and I’ll just go and then I’ll let people know that I’m looking for work in which then I will have five offers.

[00:44:34] Jeff: So it’s your choice. Like

[00:44:36] Brett: but when you’re making this argument, you can’t say it’s going to result in this many new customers because that’s not trackable. Like you, new customers don’t get. There’s no, there’s no, uh, signup thing that says, how did you hear about us? And they put down Jay Miller and you

[00:44:56] Jeff: that one time, that one place.

[00:44:58] Brett: All right.

[00:44:59] Brett: We should get, we should [00:45:00] get to our, uh, gratitude. Before we run out of time here, Jeff, you’ve been kind of rail railroaded out of this conversation. You’ve been quiet. Would you like to go first?

[00:45:09] Jay: Oh, I don’t feel railroaded. I’m a listener. Yeah, sure.

[00:45:13] Exploring Useful Apps and Tools

[00:45:13] Jay: My app is, so you know, there are all these apps that we all have that have been there for so long and they are just working and then maybe you forget that your computer behaves this way because a certain person made a certain app hazel, right?

[00:45:28] Jeff: a new update.

[00:45:28] Jay: So, oh

[00:45:30] Brett: quick, quick note

[00:45:31] Jay: yeah, please.

[00:45:32] Brett: I wish Hazel, when it came up with the buy a new version dialogue, it should tell you, you currently have this many Hazel rules running on this many

[00:45:43] Jay: Yeah, yeah,

[00:45:44] Brett: Because I forget how much Hazel is doing for me in the back, sorry Jeff, go ahead.

[00:45:49] Jay: No, it’s a great, it’s a great, it’s the ultimate example, right? Like, um, so the app is front and center, John Siracusa’s app, um, from 2020 and front and center [00:46:00] just restores a classic Mac OS feature. I think Siracusa used, uh, the classic OS from like age nine to 26 before OS 10 kicked in. And what it does is so simple.

[00:46:12] Jay: When I click on a window of an application, All of the windows that are on my desktop open, uh, appear. I use this mostly for Finder. You can actually just an exclude list. So if you don’t want it to happen to other apps, that’s fine. If you shift click on an app, it won’t bring them all forward, but it is something that for me, I found I wanted all the time.

[00:46:33] Jay: I especially want it with Finder windows because I spray those things like indiscriminately onto my four monitors or whatever. Um, and so it’s just a lovely, elegant app. It’s constantly updated. You wouldn’t think. There’s a lot of attention that needs to be paid, but like, if you look at, I mean, it’s not surprising given it’s Siracusa, but like, if you look at the change log, there’s just these little incremental meaningful changes that happen over time, as recently as two weeks ago, even though it’s a 2020 [00:47:00] app, app that does a very simple thing.

[00:47:02] Jay: So highly recommend.

[00:47:03] Brett: Can you, can you reverse it so that it only brings forward all windows if you hold down

[00:47:09] Jay: Yep, you can have a classic mode or a modern mode. If you have it on modern mode, then shift click gives the classic functionality. If you have it on classic mode, shift click gets, gets the modern.

[00:47:19] Brett: I could see that being useful. In general, I’ve gotten really used to the current macOS behavior, and I often only want the window I click on to come forward. But, in the cases where I, the Finder is a good example, like you said, um, to bring forward all windows,

[00:47:35] Jeff: I’ve been playing with the tiling manager and the reason why it is not my Grapptitude is because my brain hasn’t wrapped around it yet.

[00:47:44] Brett: right?

[00:47:44] Jeff: I’m still like, why, why is this one window so

[00:47:47] Jay: Wait, like a, a specific timing manager or?

[00:47:50] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, called Aerospace. Um, more, I, I’ve been on this quest to make the terminal my friend again. Um, [00:48:00] and it’s, it’s weird because this isn’t a terminal focused application, but it’s one that a lot of.

[00:48:07] Jeff: Terminal First content creators have all kind of endorsed. So I was like, ah, we’ll, we’ll try it out. And, and it is definitely a brain thing. But like, Brett, when you said, can it reverse it? I thought you were like, can I reverse front and center? So like, back and off to the corner. Like, like, like, if I click shift, if I shift click it, that it like moves into the smallest window possible.

[00:48:33] Jeff: Like,

[00:48:36] Jay: Awesome.

[00:48:37] Brett: well, speaking of terminal, Jay, what you got? I

[00:48:39] Jay: their

[00:48:40] Jeff: mine is because I’ve been trying to go back to the terminal lifestyle for no, no particular reason other than I want to challenge my brain to do something different. And I’ve always been a big fan of terminal things, but I am using a Um, multiplexer called Zellige, or Zellige, I’m not sure [00:49:00] how the J is pronounced at the end of that, um,

[00:49:04] Brett: Y. I think it’s Zelia. Okay.

[00:49:07] Jeff: Zillia, there we go, um, it’s ultimately an alternative to something like a TMUX, um, It is pretty much feature has like feature parity with tmux.

[00:49:19] Jeff: The big difference that I see with it is that a lot of, a lot of tmux commands either have to be aliased out of like the leader or you didn’t have to like play configuration hell with them all. This, this, uh, starts at that spot. It, like, while it supports the TMUX, like, leader and then going into another thing, you can also just do the natural thing.

[00:49:47] Jeff: So, panes, tabs, windows, sessions, all those are relatively quickly accessed with just control and then a logical letter. Other than session, which is O, and I don’t know why [00:50:00] session is O, but whatever. Well,

[00:50:02] Brett: I term, I term Command Shift O is Switch Session. Maybe they were just

[00:50:06] Jeff: Okay, so maybe it’s

[00:50:07] Brett: But I don’t know. I also don’t know why it’s like that in I terms. So,

[00:50:11] Jeff: The thing that I like most about Zelig that kind of made stuff start to click for me was this idea of a floating window for excess things. So where I’ll In TMUX, if you try to go to like list your sessions, it pretty much takes over the entire screen, and then you have to go do stuff and find things and move things around, and then like everything goes away.

[00:50:36] Jeff: Um, with Zealage, it’s like this little tiny window in the center of your terminal window. that just like pops up really quick. Oh, do what I got to do, click it, it goes away, and everybody’s happy. And I can still see the context in which where I am. The nice thing about that is you can also have floating panes.

[00:50:53] Jeff: So, hey, I have a static site generator that’s built in Python called Render Engine. I use it [00:51:00] to maintain my own personal website. And it has, uh, It’s a file watcher and like auto reload functionality. So now I just always have a local version of my website always running and it’s just running in this little hidden floating window.

[00:51:16] Jeff: So I can just like write a blog post, save the blog post, go to a terminal or go to an internet browser and like preview that article and if I make any changes to it, you know, give it like two seconds and then I can see those changes live as they’re happening. Which is usually it’s like. As I’m writing, I have Marked open, so I’m looking at it, but then I haven’t gotten to the point where I have all of my CSS, you know, custom piped into Marked yet, so then it’s like, what does this look like?

[00:51:48] Jeff: Okay, cool, go over here and do it. But it also works when I’m trying to, like, edit the CSS layout, or change terminal stuff, and I don’t have to think about if it’s running or not, because it’s just always running, and if something, [00:52:00] Get squirrely with it. I’m just like, boom. Uh, was it control PW then to pop up that little window, write, you know, terminal stuff, relo, relaunch the server and then hit control PW again, and then it just pop pops off back into the background and like, I’m happy.

[00:52:19] Jeff: Um, and this, this has been great ’cause for the first time now I actually have like SSH windows and stuff that I have running. that I’m connected to that are just like, oh, off in the background. Oh, I need to do that thing really quick. Pop it up and go. But my brain couldn’t get Tmux. Zillage seems to be working for me.

[00:52:34] Jeff: So hooray.

[00:52:35] Brett: my brain has finally gotten TMUX. Um, I’m definitely going to check this out, but like I use anytime I SSH into a machine, I immediately open TMUX. Usually I have it as part of like the profile. Uh, this is an SSH session, open TMUX and I, I have run into plenty of issues. Um,

[00:52:58] Jeff: suggestion I would [00:53:00] make if you’re going to try it, switch to the compact UI. or the compact interface, because the default interface is kind of chunky. So you’re losing real estate if you’re not doing the compact one.

[00:53:14] Brett: cool. All right. I will, uh, check. Yeah. Jeff.

[00:53:18] Jay: roadmap visualization is bananas, and I’m not sure if that’s just something that already exists as a way you do roadmap visualizations, or

[00:53:27] Brett: never seen this

[00:53:28] Jay: it is bananas. I put a link in the show notes. I was

[00:53:32] Brett: like a, it’s like a pie chart, mind map, concept

[00:53:35] Jay: It’s a little hard to take in, but it’s like, A for effort.

[00:53:38] Jeff: It looks like that thing that Brett was talking about where you take your bipolar medication and then crush it up and dip it into it.

[00:53:48] Brett: I don’t know what the purple versus the tan means.

[00:53:52] Jay: No, it’s a little bit of a mindfuck, but I also, it’s just like, okay, alright, you mean it though.

[00:53:58] Jeff: Hey, if it works for them, [00:54:00] right?

[00:54:00] Brett: Yeah.

[00:54:01] Jay: Awesome.

[00:54:02] Brett: Um, all right.

[00:54:03] The Future of Link Management

[00:54:03] Brett: Mine is, uh, Link Warden. Um, I’ve been seeking out slowly a pinboard, uh, replacement. Uh, pinboard hasn’t seen an update in years.

[00:54:16] Jay: you’re going to do it.

[00:54:19] Brett: yeah, well, so I was thinking about doing it and I pitched the idea on Mastodon and a few people replied with, wait, somebody’s already done this.

[00:54:27] Jay: I said yes. Fuck whoever’s done it. It’s not good.

[00:54:32] Brett: Like all

[00:54:33] Jeff: Brett more work, but I would also sign up for whatever Brett’s version of this is.

[00:54:37] Brett: I, all I really want is like the exact functionality of Pinboard, but with a way better interface on the web, but like a replicated API, which is already a replication of the delicious API. Um, and Yeah, like to just bring that forward, add maybe a few new functions, [00:55:00] uh, but like Pinboard is a very overall, very simple database app.

[00:55:06] Brett: Um, but one of the alternatives that was presented to me is called LinkWarden and it is a beautiful open source version of a link manager that also handles. Um, archiving and PDF duplication of websites. You can also easily submit a link to the Wayback Machine and it has a decent API. It’s poorly documented.

[00:55:36] Brett: Um, so I have a couple of GitHub issues in right now. Um, but it was easy to export all of my pinboard links, 8, 000 of them, um, and import them into LinkWarden. I’m currently having a little bit of issue with. importing tags, uh, which they replied to my issue as, well, that’s odd. Um, [00:56:00] but I haven’t gotten any resolution on that yet.

[00:56:04] Brett: And using it without tags is pointless to me. Um, so I’m hoping they resolve that. The people I’ve talked to that are already using it have had no problem with tags. So this is something unique to me, but it’s beautiful. It works well on iOS. You can add shortcuts to Safari, it has plugins for Chrome and Firefox, and, um, it looks great on mobile, and it, it offers like screenshots of every link, you can view, uh, you can sort your links in any way you want to, you can organize by tags, or you can create folders, which, um, Um, I, I was using link bundles on Pinboard, um, which make a little more sense to me, but I think I could replicate that functionality in LinkWarden.

[00:56:53] Brett: Um, but yeah, if you’re looking for a Pinboard replacement because Pinboard hasn’t seen an update and the [00:57:00] creator of Pinboard has been going slowly mad on social media and I don’t have a lot of faith in the future of Pinboard. Um, BigFan, LittleFaith, and LookingAround. So LinkWarden is my top pick.

[00:57:16] Brett: LinkDing is another one, but LinkWarden looks better.

[00:57:19] Jeff: I, I’m really tempted to, so this is like the, the combination of tools enabling this. So I could see self hosting this on a Raspberry Pi

[00:57:31] Brett: Ha ha.

[00:57:31] Jeff: activated by like, um, I keep wanting to say Tailwind, but Tailscale.

[00:57:37] Brett: Yeah, yeah.

[00:57:37] Jeff: And then I, then like, then I’m happy because all of my links are saved for me and I don’t They’re all mine, I’m not sharing them with the world, I really have no desire to share what I watch or what I look at on the internet with the world outside of like what I do from like a micro blogging standpoint.

[00:57:54] Brett: that’s the thing. Is I, like, my web excursions are all driven by Pinboard. I just [00:58:00] save. Uh, links to Pinboard and they turn into blog posts for me, um, so there are some that I want public.

[00:58:08] Jeff: Is there not a world where this can just be stored in plain text? Because I’m, I’m, I’m really trying to figure out the like, all right, look, I understand that AI is the devil, or the the angel that is here to either save or damn us. And I’m like, I do look at a bunch of links. And I often am just like, I don’t know what I know anymore.

[00:58:30] Jeff: And I don’t know where I went. So I’m just gonna look for it again to save myself the energy. And If I had something that I was like, give me everything that I need to look at regarding this.

[00:58:41] Brett: you seen HistoryHound?

[00:58:43] Jeff: History. It sounds familiar,

[00:58:46] Brett: I think it, I think it was C Command, but, um, HistoryHound will track your web history and you can then search everywhere you’ve been by just typing any words that appeared on the page [00:59:00] and it will find people. Links you’ve already visited. It is, it’s pretty cool. I don’t personally use it.

[00:59:05] Brett: I, I, uh, like a more curated approach to saving my web history.

[00:59:11] Jeff: yeah, I think, I think that was that. I, I have used HistoryHound in the past and I, I think I just, I think I didn’t use it, which is the problem. Uh, like I used it, but I didn’t use it. And that’s, that’s where I like the idea of a pinboard because with pinboard, it was like, I just clicked a button. And then when I went to need it, it was like there.

[00:59:37] Jeff: And I, I think that the future of that is kind of like. I have some collection of these things and now I, I just say, hey, you know, local LLM, here’s all of this content, quick search it, and then you tell me what I should be

[00:59:57] Brett: That’s kind of a brilliant idea.[01:00:00]

[01:00:00] Jay: on now, Brett, let’s really quick talk about how you’re going to build this app, because Cause here, the problem with, I know we don’t,

[01:00:07] Jeff: two enablers,

[01:00:07] Jay: know we don’t normally, we don’t normally argue in Grapptitude about apps, but here, here is the primary problem. Use the word twice in describing this app. You said beautiful.

[01:00:16] Jay: It can’t be beautiful. I hate it when it’s beautiful because I feel like I’m in a browser on a webpage and what I love about Pinboard, even more than I liked Delicious, is how plain and simple it is. And it’s not like Craigslist, like it’s not that bad, right? But it’s like. The only, my only complaint about it is when I have private links, cause I like to have my links generally private.

[01:00:36] Jay: They’re grayed out in a way that I find aesthetically very unpleasing, but here’s the thing. I know that you would make beautiful without making it beautiful. Uh, if that makes any sense and

[01:00:47] Jeff: I would just take raw, like, give me raw JSON. Like, I don’t care. Like, I want it to

[01:00:51] Jay: yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And, and, and I would, I would love the incremental changes you would come up with over the [01:01:00] years to this service, because I think they would all be thoughtful and lovely.

[01:01:04] Brett: I really like, I really like the AI idea where

[01:01:08] Jay: Oh, I do shit like

[01:01:09] Brett: stores the text of everything you bookmark and then you can just ask like a, a small, a, a small language model. Um, you can just ask it, hey, tell me more about this thing that I bookmarked 20 tabs. Remind me, like, where I was in this research.

[01:01:29] Jeff: this is where, like, the, the combination and, like, if, Brett, if, if no one’s going to give you a five, let me give you a five here. Like, you have

[01:01:40] Jay: Are you giving him a five to the future?

[01:01:42] Jeff: you have so many projects that can be combined in this, with like, doing, I see like, yeah, I see like doing in SearchLink, just working together with some easy bookmarking system.

[01:01:56] Brett: with gather and maybe curly cute. [01:02:00] Like someone,

[01:02:00] Jay: Jay. Well

[01:02:01] Brett: me, someone sent me,

[01:02:03] Jay: Way to speak his language. I like, I feel like Jay just definitely like manipulated you. I mean, I think Jay meant it, but I also think Jay knew it was like.

[01:02:11] Jeff: percent of the code already exists. You’ve

[01:02:14] Brett: someone, someone sent me a keyboard maestro macro today that combines, um, search link and gather. So with keyboard maestro, you can just type in a couple of keywords and get back plain text version of the result, which, yeah, I think that’s kind of brilliant.

[01:02:32] Jay: that’s amazing. All right, well, Brett, I look forward to checking in next week on how this is going, because you have an opportunity here to save the world, and that doesn’t happen much, and the world needs saving.

[01:02:42] Brett: All right, all right,

[01:02:44] Jay: All right, great to talk to you, Jay.

[01:02:46] Jeff: Absolutely. Um, but I guess my one shout out here is everyone be, be kind to yourself and each other. I think we’ve got like, what, a week or [01:03:00] a week and a half before half the world loses or half of America loses their mind. Um,

[01:03:06] Brett: well, yeah, yeah,

[01:03:07] Jeff: oh, I’m sorry, they’ve already,

[01:03:08] Jay: technically 48%.

[01:03:10] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:03:11] Jay: The undecided voters are going to be

[01:03:13] Jeff: Yeah, but ultimately, like, I, I have my opinions, and I will say, we have survived the last eight years with and without whoever your favorite person running is. Let’s not kill each other because of a decision. I think we’re going to survive another four years and then maybe we’ll survive another four years after that.

[01:03:39] Encouraging Open Source Development

[01:03:39] Jeff: Um, but also like, hey, if you’re wanting to get into open source development, you know, reach out to me. I have opinions. I’m Last time I was here, I think we talked about Black Python devs a little bit. Brett, we have almost 900 people in that Discord now. Like, it’s, it’s so wild. We’ve, we’ve, you know, [01:04:00] been able to sponsor events all over the world.

[01:04:02] Brett: so cool,

[01:04:03] Jeff: fantastic. But if it’s taught me anything, it’s taught me that Again, people don’t hire people because they write good code, they hire them because they’re actually helpful. And give yourself more fives. Come on, let’s,

[01:04:16] Jay: Jay, hold on.

[01:04:17] Live Coding and Teaching Insights

[01:04:17] Jay: I know, I know that we’re technically wrapping up, but I wonder if you could talk about your sort of live coding and live sort of teaching, because I’ve really loved skimming through those and it’s, and you’re just, you’re wonderful at

[01:04:28] Jeff: have to still be doing it, um,

[01:04:30] Jay: talk about, I mean, you’ve done it, right? Like I.

[01:04:33] Jeff: I’ve been doing some live streams with some friends who are trying to get into programming, and I’m a firm believer that like, if you read a book and you just try to follow the book, it’s not going to teach you anything other than how to do what the book is doing.

[01:04:45] Jeff: Try to build some stuff. Go out there, build stuff. You’re smarter than you think you are. Sometimes it’s helpful to have a person there that has maybe done this before and walked you through it. But I’ve been working with a few friends and, [01:05:00] um, helping them to just build stuff that they want to build. And it, a lot of it is more of like, here, I’ll show you where you can find this information and I’ll show you what it looks like in this language.

[01:05:13] Jeff: But ultimately have fun with it and just. Just, just do stuff, and don’t be afraid not to do those things, and if you want to see more of that stuff, go to my YouTube channel, um, youtube. com slash K. J. Miller, K. J. A. Y.

[01:05:27] Jay: you’re a great, you’re a great teacher. You’re great. I think you’re just, you’re great at that. I don’t think it’s cool that you tell people at the end, I’m giving you an A, even though you’re an asshole, cause you did the work. But otherwise I think you’re a fantastic teacher. No, truly it is. The spirit of it is wonderful and it’s almost good ASMR.

[01:05:43] Jay: Uh, I really recommend it.

[01:05:44] Jeff: I appreciate that. I, I am, I’m not so great to look at, but just like, you know, put me off in the background and just do, do some other stuff. You’ll be

[01:05:52] Jay: awesome. Well, we’ve loved looking at you.

[01:05:56] Brett: for sure, all right, you guys get some sleep.

[01:05:59] Jay: Oh,

[01:05:59] Jeff: some [01:06:00] sleep.

This is the second part of a two-part conversation with Merlin Mann.

Join Jeff Severns Gunzel and Merlin Mann on a whimsical journey through AI antics, creative teamwork, and nostalgic rabbit holes. Get insights on ChatGPT’s quirks, AI integration in daily tasks, and practical wisdom from the Wisdom Project. Expect pop culture musings, heartfelt chats on personal growth, and humorous tales—from DIY hacks. Dive in for tech talk, life lessons, and a pinch of philosophical reflection.

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Part 1 of this conversation:

The work of Merlin Mann:

Odds + Ends:

Apps:

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Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter.

Beauty of the Lonely Boys (Merlin Mann Part 2)

[00:00:00] Jeff: Hey everybody. This is Jeff Severns Gunzel. This is the Over Tired podcast. This is the second part of a two part conversation with Merlin Mann. Welcome back Merlin.

[00:00:11] Merlin: Thank you for having me, Jeff

[00:00:12] Jeff: so the Overtired, anybody who listens has noticed there are large gaps between episodes.

[00:00:17] Jeff: And in those off weeks, I was thinking I wanted to pick up on a conversation I’d had with Merlin we had started to have when you were on the on the podcast earlier this year about ChatGPT and it was to me a very interesting conversation as opposed to a very stale conversation and I think you and I are sort of kindred spirits and how we use this thing and so originally the idea was hey you guys mind if I just do like a one on one with Merlin about this so we did it. We did a first try at that. And it ended up being such a delightful, um, uh, opportunity to talk about a million things that weren’t ChatGPT that here we

[00:00:53] Merlin: Jeff, we got to talk about music and I was very, I was so, well, first of all, I was pleased because I don’t know where anybody sees anything [00:01:00] anymore, but, um, and you know, I was really hoping people would listen to it, but I didn’t want to be like too like meh, go listen to me talk, ramble for a long time.

[00:01:08] Merlin: But the people who did discover it and listen to it, uh, a few of them have contacted me and you to say that they enjoyed it. And I just wanted to say to our friends, uh, who especially enjoyed the music, thank you for enjoying that and for saying so. The music, the music talk, because we talked a fair amount about music.

[00:01:23] Jeff: Yeah, it was lovely to hear people kind of being excited about that. It was

[00:01:27] Merlin: This is my version of World War II, with all respect. Like, I don’t have anybody to talk to about what it’s like, you know, to be in the trenches. Well, you know, the trenches of 1994

[00:01:37] Jeff: Yeah, exactly. That’s all you got. 1994.

[00:01:40] Merlin: didn’t watch my friends die face down in the mud so that you could say shit about polvo.

[00:01:45] Jeff: There was a great, there’s a great Minneapolis band called More Ram. And this was in the 90s. And it was the singer of this band Hammerhead is a great band on Amphetamine Reptile local band here. But he had a song called She’s My Vietnam.[00:02:00]

[00:02:01] Merlin: Um, Trump told Howard Stern one time that venereal disease was his Vietnam.

[00:02:05] Jeff: Oh, shucks. Yeah, no. Yeah.

[00:02:08] Merlin: guess the Bonespurs didn’t bother him enough for but

[00:02:11] Jeff: Oh, oh,

[00:02:13] Merlin: Hey everybody, you’re listening to Overtired. It’s an alternate week episode where Jeff talks to Merlin Mann, which is a thing we’re gonna do from now on.

[00:02:18] Jeff: sounds great. Sounds great. Um,

[00:02:20] Merlin: neck of the woods? Good afternoon. Hello. Woo!

[00:02:24] A Collaborator, Not a Crutch

[00:02:24] Jeff: Um, I will tell you, I have, I have kind of an idea for how to get into this conversation so that we’re, we’re not just talking about ChatGPT, but I really, really want Um, and so, you know, I think it’s really important to have that conversation because I think that the, kind of the overarching themes of like curiosity of, of like, do we love this because, because of how we are?

[00:02:44] Jeff: Is it, what’s the difference between collaborating with this thing and just leaning into it or leaning on it? Jesus, I didn’t mean to go all Cheryl, you know, Sarah on you.

[00:02:51] Merlin: Oh, I know what you mean. These are these are great. These are great. Are these things just out of curiosity? You’re Um, wonderfully dogged about wanting to discuss this, which is great for me, but [00:03:00] these are things that, it sounds like these are things that you’re, you’re thinking about a lot. Is that true?

[00:03:03] Jeff: I think about it all the time, in part because, um, you know, I, so I’m, in my, in my work, I’m, I’m part of a member owned research and evaluation cooperative, and there are seven of us, and I do work a lot differently than, and everyone would agree, than everybody else that does this work, um, in our, in our organization.

[00:03:23] Jeff: And part of it is that a lot of what I do is, is building and is, is kind of creative in nature. So it’s the kind of stuff where it’s like, when you’re planning it, it’s the hardest shit to project plan, because it’s kind of like, I was going to build a deck this summer, I didn’t. But when I was going to build it, somebody said, you know how to build a deck?

[00:03:41] Jeff: And I said, I will when I’m done.

[00:03:44] Merlin: Right. Can I, can I ask, can I ask an early, early question just for my, um, so you guys, your group, your team of people works together. If you can say within, you know, privacy reasons, like what, um, what is the deliverable or what is the [00:04:00] product that people come to you to get? What is the thing that you, Produced for your clients.

[00:04:05] Jeff: Yeah. Okay. So we do something that’s called developmental evaluation. And the idea is like, rather than really dull, stupid, uh, done by Rand and other defense contractors, uh, program evaluation, um, we do this kind of evaluation where it’s like, you’re an organization, you’re often a small organization, but we’ve worked with some really large ones.

[00:04:25] Jeff: You’re trying to do a thing. And instead of So instead of being evaluators that are off at a distance, sort of looking at what you’re doing and then feeding back some report at the very end of the, of the

[00:04:33] Merlin: Like the classic Arthur, whatever it used to be, Arthur Anderson, DeLay, Touche, those kinds of, McKinsey.

[00:04:38] Jeff: Yeah. So we are like, we are kind of a critical friend working alongside these people, but we’re really focused on the stuff that they think they are, are doing well, or that the stuff that they have promised a funder they will do.

[00:04:52] Jeff: And we try to work between them and the funder. I’ll get to the deliverable in a second.

[00:04:56] Merlin: No, no, this is fast, because my wife works with, um, does a lot of [00:05:00] stuff with, uh, grants, where she has to like, you know, there’s all kinds of, um, Uh, not World Health Organization, what’s the big one that gives grants? I’m sorry I’m spacing out, but she has to like, yeah, there’s a lot of that putting stuff together where there’ll be like some kind of a mandate that’s stated or implied and you’ve got to show progress on these kinds of things and then there’s metrics and

[00:05:19] Jeff: Yes.

[00:05:20] Merlin: evaluations of the, of the scholars,

[00:05:22] Jeff: this stuff, right? And so like, what we’re always trying to do is if we can get between the funder and the organization and say to the funder and the organization, all right, you’ve promised these things, like, this is what you’ve told them you’re going to do to release the money.

[00:05:35] Jeff: But in reality, there are going to be moments where you’re like, fuck, why did we tell them we were going to do this? Because now that we’re in it, what really is working is this thing over here. We’re there to kind of like

[00:05:45] Merlin: where you commit, commit too early to

[00:05:47] Jeff: Yeah, you commit too early in part because you’re just trying to get that money, right?

[00:05:51] Jeff: Like, and, and so we’re there to kind of help between the funder and them to go to the funder and be like, hey, just so you know, we’ve interviewed like all these people that are kind of like the people these folks are trying [00:06:00] to like, help or the systems they’re trying to impact. We’re actually seeing that while they thought they were they were heading here, they’re heading over here.

[00:06:06] Jeff: And we actually think that’s like something you should really be supportive of.

[00:06:09] Merlin: And maybe you couldn’t even be in contact with those people until that first part happened. It’s like, it takes the doing of that thing to discover that what they need is food vouchers. Not, uh, tote bags or whatever.

[00:06:20] Jeff: Yeah, exactly. And honestly, like, if I’m being really, really frank, like, for me, the what, what I like to do in supporting people who are doing the work is to like, be a firewall from the people who like, let’s face it, most funders, most people giving grant money, they’re only at the table, because they have money.

[00:06:37] Jeff: They are at the table, because they have money. And you are the one doing all the work to Uh, suffering through all of this stuff, experiencing the pain of failure or of having kind of like aimed wrong, um,

[00:06:49] Merlin: some of it also could be in various ways managing expectations with different stakeholders.

[00:06:53] Jeff: Yes. Now, on the most, like, if we’re just looking at my work, and so I should say [00:07:00] deliverables are not like there’s a final deliverable. It’s like all along the way we’re doing, we’re like facilitating meaning making sessions with the, whether it’s with the funder or with the organization to kind of be like, this is what we’re learning as we observe your work and talk to the people that are, you know, your work is meant to help.

[00:07:14] Jeff: And, and, but let’s, but we’re not experts. So let’s like make some meaning together, figure out kind of like how to do this, the, The way that like,

[00:07:22] Merlin: Wow. For the, for the right kind of groups, that must be great. Like I have this cascade I think about in my life a lot, which is, you know, when I tend to think about new information or things in my life, and this is admittedly very oversimplified, but I tend to think about this cascade or this array of like, When new information comes into my life, like, how will this, how can this help me to think differently?

[00:07:43] Merlin: How can this help me to decide differently? How can this help me to do differently? And then, of course, like you’re implying here, on this meta level, and then is my ladder against the right wall? Like, how do, what are the checks that are in place for all those things? And, I’ve found that kind of stuff very challenging with, in this case, as you [00:08:00] said, the middle people between these organizations, and it’s sometimes tough to be the person who breaks the news about.

[00:08:07] Merlin: I’m going to speak a little bit in douche speech because it might be useful to our listeners. What if you just, how do you, how will you discover? that you’re not aligned on something you just assumed everybody was aligned on.

[00:08:19] Jeff: Yes.

[00:08:20] Merlin: And boy, it’s tough to be the one, especially if there’s representatives from both sides, like North and South Korea on either side of the blue line, where you’ve got to like break it to both of them that, you know, the bad news is that neither of you have your eye on the right ball right now.

[00:08:32] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:08:33] Merlin: And that, that’s, that’s, that’s gotta be tough. So it’s more like you’re integrated into the process of what they’re doing. It’s not like you just give them some brick of a report and come back five years later.

[00:08:41] Jeff: Right. Exactly. And, and there’s a, there is sort of a accepted premise at the start, which is not always something that the client remembers, that we are, we are focused with them on the emergent. And so we aren’t ever going to just stay in the gray zone, but we are going to definitely recognize that things emerge and those things should have a chance [00:09:00] to guide the work you’re doing.

[00:09:01] Merlin: God willing.

[00:09:02] Jeff: Yeah, God willing. So and

[00:09:04] Merlin: not so obvious when you say it, but in

[00:09:06] Jeff: I know, I know.

[00:09:07] Merlin: it’s, people are so resistant to that for all, all understandable reasons.

[00:09:11] Jeff: Yeah, so resistant. And then like, so if I’m being super concrete, oh my god, Merlin. Is my computer about to go again? Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Hold on. I’m back. Jesus.

[00:09:22] Merlin: Hey everybody, just so you know, Jeff won’t say it because he’s a gentleman, but earlier on, uh, we’d recorded a bit, and then Jeff said, Computer. I think the technical term is it shot the bed. And so we started over. So

[00:09:33] Jeff: it. Yeah,

[00:09:34] Merlin: you didn’t miss much

[00:09:35] Jeff: That’s right. Um, okay, so here’s like, I’ll just give you the most concrete thing,

[00:09:39] Merlin: because it could crash at any time. We should wrap this up.

[00:09:41] Jeff’s Jobby Job

[00:09:41] Jeff: This is, yeah, exactly. This is a little outside of what I just described. So, one of my projects right now is there’s an amazing organization here that is called, it’s called Foster Advocates, and it is in Minnesota, and they are made up of mostly ex Fosters, and they have done amazing work at getting legislation passed, all this stuff.

[00:09:59] Jeff: They went [00:10:00] around to all 87 counties in Minnesota and the tribal nations and held sessions where they talked and recorded conversations with fosters about like what rights they expect they should have, what rights they know they have and, and where they wonder what the hell rights do we have at all?

[00:10:16] Jeff: And they, they hired us and I’m sitting with 85 hours of audio and I go through with qualitative analysis

[00:10:23] Merlin: Okay.

[00:10:25] Jeff: for patterns. I look for the things that are the nuances that might be missing. We do the meaning making

[00:10:30] Merlin: Is it some, some of that, I’m guessing some of that is, um, probably Sort of concretely quantifiable and others are not like I just read this recent report about how Richard Stallman’s not a very good guy And they use this entire process of like this is the number of times that he said this particular objectionable thing Like you were like, but it’s also you also there’s right you’ve got to quantify Nobody nobody likes the tote bags or like 90 percent of people but like but That’s complicated because it also depends, what questions did you ask?

[00:10:59] Merlin: Did [00:11:00] you always ask in the same way? And then there’s the fuzzier, like, as young people would say, the vibe kind of thing, like, that you probably got to report on too, which is like, this part of the company, everybody’s happy that this thing works, they don’t even notice it runs so regular, but then there’s these other things.

[00:11:13] Merlin: There’s this kind of deep, there’s a shared disc, inchoate disquiet about the future of leadership here that we only discovered after we’d done this for a month.

[00:11:23] Jeff: Totally. And then inside of the issues, like the, the organization, which is like preparing this kind of bill of rights package for the state of Minnesota, the organization would be like, okay, so we know that one, one, one theme is like, when you age out of foster care, your credit, how are you going to have credit?

[00:11:37] Jeff: Because everything you need to do to succeed, you need to get an apartment, maybe you want, you know, whatever you want to do. And so we already know that Credit is an issue, but like, what comes up in the conversations is how many people’s like, parents, their biological parents kept using their name and social security number throughout the years that that child was in foster care.

[00:11:54] Jeff: So their credit is shot because of that. So

[00:11:56] Merlin: Oh dear. Oh dear.

[00:11:57] Jeff: that like,

[00:11:58] Merlin: They treated it like a burner phone.

[00:11:59] Jeff: [00:12:00] up. Yeah, and it can kind of rise up into this. So you can add that nuance to the issues. Anyway, that’s, that’s one version

[00:12:06] Merlin: And so, and so, I think it sounded like you were about to talk about how this works with your work, in ways others don’t do it?

[00:12:13] Jeff: Well, yeah, so I mean, I would just, I guess that the theme for me, and this is if we’re getting back to ChatGPT, is that like, I use it for a lot of things, and most people in my field just assume that it’s dangerous, that you would be leaning on it

[00:12:28] Merlin: Dangerous and unreliable.

[00:12:30] Jeff: unreliable, when in reality, like anything, it has everything to do with what, how you approach it, right?

[00:12:36] Jeff: But I will say, it also has a lot to do with your inherent sense of curiosity. And that is something that I think you’ve brought up. I remember listening, there was a reconciled Global Differences some time ago when John kind of interrogated you on your understanding of, of ChatGPT and AI. That was a delightful episode.

[00:12:54] Merlin: like, like so many of those conversations, it’s, it’s the implication that I’m not even allowed to ride on a bus unless I [00:13:00] understand diesel engines.

[00:13:01] Jeff: Exactly. Exactly.

[00:13:03] Merlin: Why don’t, why don’t you, why I would, I would simply learn everything about everything.

[00:13:07] Jeff: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[00:13:09] Merlin: but no, no, really, really seriously, though, all I really want is like a chunk of code that will let me use CSS to hide this author on this one page.

[00:13:16] Merlin: And so, so John, John, I, John, of course, if you ask John, whom I love. He would never even give you a straight answer. But what I could gather from that would be, well, just simply start at the beginning and learn everything

[00:13:29] Jeff: Right, right, right.

[00:13:31] Merlin: Because if I know about it, and this is the thing, John’s a type, and he doesn’t want to admit this, he doesn’t know this, I’ve met John’s type before, and again, I want to stipulate that I love him.

[00:13:38] Merlin: He is a type where he is not aware a certain cataract that he has. This is true for almost all of this, but you notice it with John because he’s so lucid. John only talks about the things that he wants to talk about. And John only gets excited about the things he wants to get excited about. And he has this tick that even a lot of, or especially a lot of nerds have, which is my [00:14:00] deep and complete knowledge about something is what it is.

[00:14:04] Merlin: And your falling short of that is a problem. And the, but conversely, or inconversely, if that’s a word, your deep interest, I remember I heard a, I heard a friend of mine who I really respect a lot, white guy from Oakland, Podcast host who, um, who really loves hip hop, especially like Bay Area hip hop. He knows everything about all of those things, but if you start talking about comic books, he goes into like a mode.

[00:14:32] Jeff: Hmm.

[00:14:33] Merlin: he like, he goes like, oh yeah, you and your funny stories, or whatever, and it’s like, well, I don’t expect you to love comic books, but I do expect you to have the presence of mind and the class to realize that everybody’s different about that stuff. And it’s a bummer that you’re gonna miss the opportunity to learn about something.

[00:14:51] Merlin: Why does everybody else like this thing that I hate? Well, that’s an opportunity you’ve now lost, because you’ve been an asshole. But also, be careful because, like, [00:15:00] you are very close to becoming, uh, all I have is a hammer guy.

[00:15:03] Jeff: Mm hmm.

[00:15:04] Merlin: And so, like, if you are in curious about those things, or you wanna change it to the conversations, like you studied for the wrong blue book essay, and now you you wanna say, well, yeah, but I do know a lot about I didn’t read The Ambassadors, but I know everything about Moby Dick.

[00:15:17] Merlin: Can I take a different test? Well, that’s lame. Like, that’s, so it’s not a Siracusa thing, but you, it’s very related to this problem. I’m probably cutting you off, but like, that’s the problem here is, I don’t, I mean, yes, it would be nice to know how everything works, it would be nice to know everything. It is peculiar to me how under the microscope, even the most anodyne benign use of this stuff is, because it, it, it’s sort of like saying, well, like, yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m looking at weird, you know.

[00:15:49] Merlin: Uh, porn from Thailand, but like, it’s for my work, and you’re like, ooh, you shouldn’t even look at that at all. It’s like, well no, like, there isn’t, I’m sorry I’m going on, but [00:16:00] like, and I don’t mean to get emotional about it, but it is a little frustrating sometimes when people who do all kinds of insane shit every fucking day with all sorts of tools, including computers, things that are unreliable, things that are stupid, but those are all normalized and they’re used to that.

[00:16:14] Merlin: They’re used to, we’re used to going to West Portal near our house, and the cellular is just not available for this one, two block area. I don’t get mad every time, like I’m used to that. Do you ever get frustrated with Google results? Sure, but you keep using Google. Well, then, can, is there any analogy to be found there?

[00:16:32] Merlin: Is there any analogy to be found, and I’m going to go check on this even if somebody else told me it’s right? Or is it possible there are some things where it really doesn’t matter that much whether it’s right, and you go into it knowing that?

[00:16:44] Jeff: Mm hmm.

[00:16:45] Merlin: That is a very frustrating prospect to people who think they know a lot about things.

[00:16:49] Jeff: There’s also the, the sort of thing about going, you know, to the very root, learning everything from, from sort of the bottom up, um, is, is a huge trap [00:17:00] for me because it’s a

[00:17:00] Merlin: It’s also deeply privileged. It’s a hugely privileged thing, and people don’t realize how privileged

[00:17:04] Jeff: Yeah, sure. Yeah. And, and for me, it’s a temptation that can become an obsession that will never see itself through. And so I have that temptation and have to stop myself off. When John, when John Siracusa talks about how to learn Unix, I

[00:17:21] Merlin: do! That’s the other thing is he won’t tell you! I’ll say to John, well, how do you pronounce your name? And he refuses to do it. He says, I did it in episode 35. Okay. Why are we talking about this? Or, or, but no, it’s not just him, but that is, like, a pretty common thing. It’s, it’s almost like there’s a library of code, and we’ve already covered that, so, like, why would we program around that?

[00:17:40] Merlin: Tch!

[00:17:41] Jeff: right, right, right, right, right. Yeah. I mean, so as much as I would love to learn Unix in that way, in the end of the day, what I really started needing to do was just figure out which command did this thing. And, and it’s super cool for me to go thumb through the what is the Unix

[00:17:56] Merlin: CD, CD, LS, PWD, like,

[00:17:59] Jeff: Yeah,

[00:17:59] Merlin: [00:18:00] I don’t get started.

[00:18:01] Jeff: Exactly. Exactly. Um, okay. So I, here’s, that was all kind of a riff on, on curiosity. And the reason I, I even started using that word was like, one of the reasons I actually don’t try to talk about ChatGPT with too many people is because what I find right away, and this may be unfair, but, and I may be too quick to judge this, what I find right away is there is not, there is not the base curiosity needed.

[00:18:25] Jeff: Um, So that we can actually have an interesting conversation. We’re just going to be talking. We’re just going to be rehashing the shit that I can, I can listen to on, on NPR. I can, you know, like whatever, like whatever the most sort of base,

[00:18:36] Merlin: What it, and like, and just, I mean, there is sort of a little bit of a step zero to this, which is like, it certainly doesn’t seem very cool. Like, it, it, it isn’t like, I don’t know, like, Pickleball. I, I don’t know that much about Pickleball, but everybody talks about Pickleball. People, people really like it, and like, eventually they, people might see the attraction of that.

[00:18:55] Merlin: Or whatever. It’s just that the way, whether or not you like, I, people like me kind of don’t [00:19:00] always love the way this, these questions are posed, but there’s that step zero of like, ugh. You know, I mean, again, it’s like asking people, like, nobody, nobody smokes their first cigarette thinking they’re going to die of emphysema, you know, but so, but there’s this part of you that’s like, well, why would he

[00:19:16] Jeff: that’d be a super dark turn. Why, why do you want to try it? Well, here’s the thing.

[00:19:20] Merlin: Well, you’ll die, but like, that’s not how life works. That’s not how human habits work. And that’s why I love the, I think, It’s easy enough for somebody to just turn this off at this point and go, God, curiosity about how math works. Well, no, but like, Jeff, I think you’re talking about at least a couple kinds of curiosity.

[00:19:38] Merlin: The kind that may be obvious and is worth being obvious is that, hey, I’m kind of curious, there’s this new thing, and like, what does it do? There’s the other kind of curiosity, which is like, I may not understand I may not be so close to the metal that I understand how, like, transistors or fabs or whatever.

[00:19:56] Merlin: I may not understand how the metal makes computer go, but I [00:20:00] am deeply curious about how it arrived at this particular way of looking at the question that I asked. And there is almost inevitably something for me to learn from that. And that’s it for today. I, if you, if anybody out there wants to go like, well, yeah, I mean, that’s the same thing as like looking at tea leaves or, you know, uh, slaughtering a chicken to see what the future’s going to be.

[00:20:18] Merlin: You can put value and purpose into anything, but I do believe that I am, I’m learning a lot about something. And a lot of times I’m not sure what it is that I’m learning about, but I’m definitely learning something. And the results continue to be extremely interesting. And that just makes me more curious.

[00:20:37] Merlin: And to your previous point, it’s, I really honestly don’t mean this. So, you know, it’s, in the critical way that it often sounds, but like, it’s not for everybody.

[00:20:45] Jeff: Right.

[00:20:46] Merlin: And

[00:20:47] Jeff: Right. Like that’s part of the curiosity problem. It’s like, you should, part of being curious is to assume immediately,

[00:20:52] Merlin: like imagine somebody’s like, Oh my gosh, my phone’s out of power and I can’t charge it and I got to go on this long flight. And you’re like, well, here’s a copy of the Power Broker and you’re like, [00:21:00] Oh, thanks. So there’s like a 1200 page book, like really, uh, but really I just want to charge my phone.

[00:21:05] Merlin: And you’re like, yeah, but this is a really good book and you should read it. And like, and, but you know, it’s a silly analogy, but you know what I’m saying? Like it’s, I actually. Ended up accidentally saying a lot of things I liked about this on the latest Dubai Friday, so forgive me if I repeat a little bit of this, but like, the way I look at it in some ways is that people, even people who are like using or are aware of LLMs, or in particular for me, ChatGPT, it’s, I think they treat it a little bit like a vending machine, where it’s like, Or, like, imagine a vending machine at an airport where you can buy a tooth, or like at a hotel where you can buy a toothbrush.

[00:21:43] Merlin: Like, or, or, there’s another vending machine where you can go and buy chips. Well, like, I don’t need to buy anything right now, so I don’t need any vending machines. Well, of course, there will be the day you realize you forgot your toothbrush, and you’ll pay 7 for a vending machine toothbrush, because you really want to brush your teeth.

[00:21:56] Merlin: That’s how life works. I don’t think it’s wholesome, [00:22:00] and this might be a straw man, if so, forgive me. I don’t think it’s wholesome to look at this as a vending machine. In, in, in one way it’s, I’ll explain in a minute, it’s useful to look at it as a vending machine. But if you think you’re going to walk up to this thing, hit a button and get a Coke.

[00:22:13] Merlin: You’re going to be disappointed, because that’s not really what this is for. In some versions of this, it’s not even very good at arithmetic. Oh my god, look how dumb this thing is, it’s a computer and it can’t do arithmetic. Well yeah, but we know enough to know that that’s not, I mean, okay, alright, alright, I’m fine.

[00:22:27] Merlin: But then on the other hand, that vending machine analogy works because there are people who act as though they’re asking a Coke machine whether they should get divorced.

[00:22:35] Jeff: Right.

[00:22:36] Merlin: we know Coke machines are good at is giving you a Coke. So if you want a Coke, that’s a good time to use a Coke machine. If you don’t drink Coke Or don’t have a credit card or a change, as we used to say, then you’re probably not going to interact with the machine.

[00:22:49] Merlin: But when you do, if you think about it, it’d be pretty weird to go to the machine, start hitting buttons, and ask it if I can get divorced. If I should get divorced and what I would say is, [00:23:00] well, okay, first of all, you didn’t even put any money in the machine, so you can’t even get a Coke. But is that really a good use of a Coke machine? And I think it’s cynical to do the equivalent of saying, I asked this thing if I could get, if I should get divorced and all it did was give me a Coke or it gave me like a Fanta when I’d ask for a divorce. And it’s like, that’s how it feels to me sometimes when, when people try to impugn this entire sector.

[00:23:28] Merlin: And I’m going to be the director of this huge growing piece of our future technology with this whole like, well, I didn’t have a use for it today and I’m pretty sure I don’t trust it and everything that comes out of it is bad and it stole everybody’s art. And like, it’s, then we’re getting into something that I call the phenomenon of everything is everything.

[00:23:45] Merlin: Well, can we just talk about like one part of that? Maybe let’s start with the part of, I need to disabuse you of the idea that this is a Coke machine. And if it is a Coke machine, don’t ask it for relationship advice. And I feel like that’s, [00:24:00] to me, that’s a good way to understand it. What if you understood this more as like, talking to a friend who doesn’t know everything?

[00:24:06] Merlin: Do you not talk to people if they’re sometimes incorrect? Do you not talk to people?

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[00:27:00] Thank you, Pika, for sponsoring Overtired. Very grateful. It’s a great service. And now back to my conversation with Merlin Mann.

[00:27:09] Because of How We Are

[00:27:09] Jeff: You said something. This was also I mean that I revisited that Reconcilable Differences, because it was such an interesting, it was kind of where I initially thought I really want to have Merlin on Overtired, which was the first time earlier this year. Um, but you said something there, and you said, I can immediately see the usefulness of this thing because of how I am.

[00:27:27] Jeff: And, and I’m wondering if you can kind of give me an example of, of something that is just a perfect example of what the usefulness is for you, and I know there’s lots of different ways, but and and how it is useful because

[00:27:40] Merlin: because of how I am.

[00:27:42] Jeff: does that mean?

[00:27:43] Merlin: Um, I think, is it cool to talk about this?

[00:27:48] Jeff: Yeah, please.

[00:27:49] Merlin: I can give you one. I mean, I’ll avoid all the prologue stuff, but like, I’ve been at ChatGPT for, I don’t know, I think over a year now. I’ve done some image generation stuff, but [00:28:00] ChatGPT is the one I’ve sort of imprinted on in the Conrad Lorenz sense, like this is my daddy.

[00:28:04] Merlin: Like this is the one I feel like I mostly understand. It just doesn’t make sense to me to run around and try 60 of these. You know, learning one, let me learn this one hammer before I buy more hammers or even try more hammers. Here’s one of the first ways is. A term I might be abusing or misusing, but is that I, for whatever reason, there’s a thing you can learn.

[00:28:28] Merlin: A consultant can come out and you’re gonna teach all the executives about lateral thinking. Or what some people, I think, erroneously call thinking outside the box. But, you know, There are, there’s, there, if you think of the world as, as these, these series of different kinds of grids or, uh, graphs or spreadsheets, you know, with two different kinds of things on it, like, I, without even being able to help myself have a kind of emotional synesthesia, where I very easily, easily slip into at least thinking about things that are related to the thing in a way that others don’t.[00:29:00]

[00:29:00] Merlin: Which on the one hand is what occasionally makes me funny. Honestly, part of being funny is being able to relate to unrelated things. Okay, so, like, I go into this thinking, like, I hear somebody speak in a certain cadence, and it makes me think of a line from The Simpsons. Or something a little bit more Like, really closer to the liberal arts in terms of like, well, that process that you just described sounds a lot like one of Hegel’s tripartite charts.

[00:29:27] Merlin: And like, not, not necessarily, not, not to brag or like say like, oh, listen to me, I read a book, but more a way of saying like, when you become widely read and learned at least about a handful of topics, you kind of can’t help but keep relating them to each other. So I just want to stipulate that that’s one thing that’s weird about me in a way that I think is unusual.

[00:29:45] Merlin: I’m a mess. Talking to me is a nightmare. But like, I can’t help but think laterally because that’s just how I think. I think maybe if you wanted to put that more negatively, one of my challenges, apart [00:30:00] from problems with authority in life, is that I am, I’m not good at thinking laterally. Unilaterally.

[00:30:06] Jeff: Hmm.

[00:30:07] Merlin: And that doesn’t mean I can’t stay on topic because I sure can, but I find it, I feel like it really just grinds it into the ground to when you’re sitting around with people and you go like, okay, well we’ve done, we’ve done one, and we’ve done two, and we’ve done three.

[00:30:18] Merlin: What do we think comes next? Everybody goes, well, I think that’s gonna be four. All right. And then after four, and you’re, I’m like. Oh my God, you guys are killing me. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, that could be the Dave Brubeck song, 5, that could, like, there’s all these different things where I’m like, my brain is going in a million directions about what 5 means, Jackson 5, my list of 5, like, I can’t stop doing that.

[00:30:38] Merlin: So here’s an example. One of the early things Well, honestly, was realizing that this is a good fit for people who think that way. I don’t, I’m not going to say that it’s a bad fit for people who don’t think that way. I watch so much TV in general, but I also, I’m always thinking, for example, oh, it’s that [00:31:00] guy from the thing.

[00:31:01] Merlin: Except from that thing, not the thing, that would be Wilford Brimley. But like, uh, but, but like, for example, last night, I, I gotta make my wife watch the worst shit. We were watching, I was watching the 25th anniversary, uh, performance of, uh, Les Mis. And they do this wonderful thing where all of the, like, you know, available original cast comes out there, you know? And like the guy who plays the, what’s it called, like the innkeeper, the Sacha Baron Cohen character in the movie. La la la la, master of the house, da ba da ba da ba da ba da la there’s a free for all. He’s played by this actor in 1985. He’s played by this actor who I love from lots of British TV shows.

[00:31:43] Merlin: Uh, uh, especially Shakespearean stuff. He’s in the Hall of Crown. Uh, the Henry the Fourth, uh, and Fifth, uh, thing. And I was just saying to my wife, like, that guy, I love that guy. He’s one of those guys. He’s one of those guys like Jared Harris or like the guy who plays Filch in Harry Potter. That guy’s [00:32:00] in everything.

[00:32:00] Merlin: So what do I do? I let go and I let God. I’m accepting the fact that I’m weird and I think like this and I go in one of my early things that continues to be something I do a lot. And I’m not going to read this. I’ll just. because I’ve done this so many times, uh, make me a markdown table of everybody who’s been in at least one episode of Doctor Who, at least one episode of Game of Thrones, um, Uh, Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, um, what was the other one?

[00:32:30] Merlin: Uh, oh, oh, oh, and then like Hot Fuzz, I threw in a few, or Shakespeare, blah, blah. I’ve done this a million different ways. But even if you do that with three things, if you do that with Harry Potter and, um, and Game of Thrones, you’re gonna say, oh, it’s the guy who played Filch, it’s the guy who’s Walder Frey.

[00:32:47] Merlin: He’s been in all those things. It gives you a table of here’s like seven people. And then I say, Oh, that’s a pretty good table. It’s got, you know, you can, if you’re a nerd, you know, all this stuff there’s as everybody knows, there’s only 11 actors on the entire [00:33:00] island. But, but, but you know what I’m saying?

[00:33:01] Merlin: And then, but then I say, that’s really cool. Okay. Now new columns for name of role. And it just knows to do that. One time I asked it this kind of question where I said, actors who’ve been inductor, actors who’ve been inductor, who Hot fuzz and some Shakespeare production, Henry the V or whatever. And then I did this thing where I said in the columns, I said, roll in a Harry Potter movie.

[00:33:29] Merlin: I didn’t have to tell it. In the, quote, question or prompt, it just knew what to do, and it just added that column.

[00:33:37] Jeff: Yes.

[00:33:37] Merlin: Now, why is that great? Well, great, that’s great because that’s the way my mind works, and I think it’s kind of cool to see that, um, God, what is that guy’s name? David Bradley. David Bradley, he’s in, God, he’s in everything.

[00:33:47] Merlin: And he’s the guy who mumbles in Hot Fuzz, the guy who has the guns.

[00:33:51] Jeff: No, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:33:52] Merlin: Have you seen season four of Game of Thrones?

[00:33:55] Jeff: Yep.

[00:33:56] Merlin: So you know Wal you know Wal you know Walder

[00:33:58] Jeff: Yes, of course, yeah.

[00:33:59] Merlin: Okay.[00:34:00]

[00:34:00] Jeff: Amazing. That’s

[00:34:02] Merlin: know his granddaughter’s name.

[00:34:04] Jeff: right.

[00:34:06] Merlin: Waldeen,

[00:34:09] Jeff: Oh my god. It’s been a long time.

[00:34:12] Merlin: but, uh, so on the one hand, okay. Would I ever do that on my own?

[00:34:17] Merlin: Would I ever really like sit down and go to IMDB? And remember, everything has to be perfect. So I have to find this exactly right. So by hand, I’m going to go in, I’m going to go make a spreadsheet, right? If I did this by myself, you can see where this is going. It would be kind of silly for me to do that.

[00:34:33] Merlin: Number one way that this is good for the way that I am, this is already how I think. And And I run into challenges with how I could take what I think or what I’m curious about and turn it into something without a grave amount of extra work. Okay. So first, I know it can do that. And second of all, it will do that.

[00:34:51] Merlin: And what it comes up with may not be perfect. Sometimes it’s not even right. But that’s one way, that’s a starter, okay, [00:35:00] is like, you may be a person who does not think this way. You may not be a person who makes a lot of spreadsheets. I have spreadsheets about every flashlight I’ve ever owned. I have spreadsheets about every Uh, two factor authentication, Dingus I own, with pictures and serial numbers and links to documentation.

[00:35:19] Merlin: I have a PDF of the manual for every item I own on iCloud. These are, that’s all weird, and that’s okay. But if one asks the question, who is this nonsense for? Oh brother, is this nonsense ever for me? Or I can just say, make a block, I need a block. Uh, that’s, uh, 50mm wide with a circle through the middle that tapers on the end and has a chamfer of this fillet on the, on the edges, and it’ll create me a 3MJ, like a 3D object like that.

[00:35:46] Merlin: Yeah, that’s how my mind works. I would rather do that for a simple device than have to learn CAD. Yeah, but do you really understand FDM printing if you haven’t learned CAD? I’ll never find out! Like, I’m willing to learn CAD when I need to, but if [00:36:00] there’s this thing that can do that thing for me, and it’s the same thing that’ll tell me what David Bradley’s in, and plus then, I’m getting way ahead now, with the addition of memory, which is not working so great on the current model, but like all those different kinds of things, uploading images, all those things like that, and that’s what leads me to just a slight sadness that it’s not something somebody else could find as interesting as I have, but if we keep doing The bar seems to keep coming back to these two things, which is like, is there anything bad or nefarious in any conceivable way with what this thing is?

[00:36:31] Merlin: Wow. Sounds like pretty much every technology, doesn’t it? Is there something bad or nefarious and like, could this actually be something useful but limited even if it’s not always quote right? And the answer to both of those questions is a no brainer for me. Like, go show me the thing that’s always exactly right.

[00:36:46] Merlin: That’s always exactly right and up to date. That’s always exactly right and up to date and contextual. You know what that takes? It takes your fucking brain going in and deciding what you think about whether that’s the correct answer.

[00:36:57] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:36:58] Merlin: And it’s just that in the case of this, [00:37:00] because it’s not thinking in a conventional sense, it’s not computing in a conventional sense, you’re going to get some really weird stuff.

[00:37:07] Merlin: And then when you say to it, well, did you forget that David Bradley was this and that, it’ll go, I’m sorry, I’ve made a mistake, blah, blah, blah. I asked it recently, last week, I can tell you specifically, I asked it what year the building that my mother lives in was built. For hurricane reasons. And it very confidently gave me a year, I asked for the citation for that.

[00:37:28] Merlin: Asking ChatGPT for a citation is funny, because in some ways it really can’t know what the citation is. Like, it’ll make up a citation, because the same way that the human mind will come up with a reason why it does everything. But it doesn’t. I, and I just kept pushing it and pursuing it and said, no, that was incorrect.

[00:37:44] Merlin: I shouldn’t have told you that. It was like a French, it was like a waiter that had dropped a roll and felt really bad about it and just didn’t want to talk about it. And I kept pushing it and pushing it. And I was like, no, no, no. I want to like figure out, it’s not, I’m not mad. LLM. I’m just curious how you arrived at that.

[00:37:57] Merlin: And it told me how it thinks, [00:38:00] this is the thing. It told me how it thinks. Thinks it made a mistake about something where it has no way of knowing that it made a mistake. So it came up with a reason why it thought it was 1998 or 1973. It came up with a reason why it got that wrong. You don’t saying like all the way through.

[00:38:16] Merlin: I find all of that endlessly fascinating and it doesn’t make me trust it less. It makes me. As aware as ever that this is not where to go for facts a lot of the time. And if it is where to go for facts, I mean, if it makes me that table dude, like, can’t I just go in and fix the stuff that I know isn’t right?

[00:38:37] Merlin: Or where it came up with a synonym for something? It still saved me, like, it saves me three hours of work on every task, every day.

[00:38:46] Jeff: if you’re the type of person, which you and I both are, who is going to take the time to make that incredibly tedious

[00:38:52] Merlin: fact check all my tweets,

[00:38:54] Jeff: yes, this thing is going to get you. I mean, I just, the other day, I, you know, I’ve been sitting on a pile of my [00:39:00] tickets from First Avenue shows, uh, from the nineties, I was sitting on that pile forever.

[00:39:04] Jeff: I love to look at it. And I’ve always wanted. A spreadsheet of everything. And so I was like, ah, I’ll try this. I took pictures of five at a time and I put them in the chat GPT. And I said, I want, I want a spreadsheet. I want a CSV and I want you to put everything. I want the door time, the, the show time. I want the price.

[00:39:21] Jeff: I want, I want the opening band, all the opening, whatever, everything. Right. Like everything I want

[00:39:25] Merlin: And I think also importantly, maybe not First Avenue, because you’re all at the same place in the same city. For me, it’s also the venue. Where I’m like, I can’t remember if this was at the Cuban Club in Ybor City, or, you know what I mean?

[00:39:35] Jeff: Yeah. And if it’s the early show, say it’s the early show. If it’s the late show, say it’s the late show. And it created this, this CSV that I will say when I looked at it, um, I, I have, for whatever reason, I have a deep compulsion to be able to hold a lot of things at once in a way that I can look at them all.

[00:39:54] Jeff: And that makes me feel very calm. And, and when I looked at what was [00:40:00] essentially a timeline of a really important decade of my life, And this thing gave that to me. Um, it was, it’s exactly why I use this tool. There’s a million other reasons. I use it for really

[00:40:11] Merlin: Yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s difficult, but isn’t, I mean, we’re both, I think, struggling a little bit to describe what the thing of that is. I can answer the question of why I think it’s good for me, because of how I. How I am, if you like, or how I think, but, but like what you’re describing there, like, just creating a table that I would fill in later.

[00:40:29] Merlin: Well, thank God for Brett’s table flip, which is a great app. But you know what I mean? Like, even just

[00:40:33] Jeff: That’s not Brett. Christian Tietz, the guy who created the archive.

[00:40:37] Merlin: oh, oh, wait a minute. Oh, wait, is he the Zytel,

[00:40:42] Jeff: Yeah, Zettelkasten guy, which, Zettelkasten, not unrelated to this conversation, but very unrelated in a lot of

[00:40:48] Merlin: put a pin

[00:40:48] Jeff: We’re not, we’re not gonna, it’s,

[00:40:50] Merlin: Sorry, sorry, I regret the error. But like, even just the mechanics of I mean, it sounds easy, but you go to IMDB and look up David Bradley, you can see everything he’s in. Well, that’s one, [00:41:00] that’s one angle of that. That’s one row or column of that. But how would I even know what I don’t know about?

[00:41:08] Jeff: Mm

[00:41:08] Merlin: And that’s where, and if it fills in a table, if it creates the basis of a table with 25 lines in it, I can always change all of that later. I can also ask it to do better. And it often does. But, you know, and then it’s frustrating because sometimes I might, one of my original use cases was making playlists for YouTube and Spotify back, back in the day when the store first started and you can have different, you know, um, I seem to have kind of gotten away from that a little bit.

[00:41:33] Merlin: I don’t exactly understand why, but like, it’s even just creating the, you know, the And the frame for what it is that I’m exploring helps me think about it better.

[00:41:43] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:41:44] Merlin: And singing, and here’s another example. When I said, God damn it, oh, you know what it is? Here’s a recent one. As of a week or two ago, a kid and I went to see Megalopolis and I said, I want to see,

[00:41:55] Jeff: my boys to see that this weekend.

[00:41:57] Merlin: my God, [00:42:00] get back to the club.

[00:42:01] Merlin: Um,

[00:42:03] Jeff: Okay, anyway.

[00:42:04] Merlin: you know, you can stop time.

[00:42:05] Jeff: Ha! Yeah! No, yeah, right. Woo!

[00:42:11] Merlin: A lot of ideas. A lot of ideas in that. Um, but, uh, but. I find, and again this, I’m trying to be big hearted and open and honest and kind to everyone in the way that I say this, but I, I don’t mean this in a mean way, but maybe this is not interesting to other people.

[00:42:26] Merlin: Maybe people want a Coke machine that produces just the Coke that they want, this is exactly the temperature that they want, and the more, but the more time I spend with this, the more I realize that it is a collaboration, that there’s ways that, you know, we I could be better at asking for, asking what I want, like I, cause we’re all in the same way that we have these occasionally somewhat long term dysfunctional relationships cause we don’t know how to ask for what we want or to ask people what they want, we don’t know how to talk to people about stuff and so we satisfy through life with all this like sort of getting by.

[00:42:57] Merlin: Well, with this, I get a much more. [00:43:00] Active in a direct way, however this thing is made, whatever computer it’s running on, there are things to learn from this.

[00:43:06] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:43:06] Merlin: And the thing is, if I tell it, hey, you know, you did a bad job at that, do this instead, this is what I wanted. Not to be mean, but just, again, collaboration, which is like, I see how, now I think I see how you got there, but what I really want is more of this.

[00:43:20] Merlin: And then with this latest model, as I was saying to Alex, it’s more and more I’m getting away from this XY problem of going in and asking for something deeply technical instead of just saying, go make this for me. And it does. And I don’t know. I don’t know how you don’t find that exciting. I’m somebody who first started multitrack recording with two cassettes.

[00:43:41] Merlin: and a pause button. I used to try and make mixes that way. Like, I, I had a four track, uh, our college had one, and then I have, like, I’m forever using, like, spit and bailing wire and rubber, rubber bands and Maxell tapes to try and produce a world that makes sense. And [00:44:00] anything that helps these parts It’s like, it’s part, can we, is there no way to look at this as another tool in the box?

[00:44:22] Merlin: The title of the episode comes from this, The Greatest Screwdriver in the World, is the idea that like, no matter how good your screwdriver is, you can’t use it for everything. Even if you have a, uh, like a, uh, a Vera, like really good screwdriver with, that’s, it’s still not, it’s not even good for every screw, dude.

[00:44:37] Merlin: It’s, if it’s a flathead and you’ve got a Phillips head, well, that’s not what that’s for. And that doesn’t mean the screw failed you.

[00:44:45] Jeff: you, you said something a little bit ago, or you kind of got towards something that I, that has been really meaningful to me. And if I were to use it, if I were in a classroom and I was using ChatGPT to teach something, what I would teach is essentially the experience for [00:45:00] me of Being forced to slow down and be specific.

[00:45:05] Jeff: And like you said about what you want, right? And in human relationships, the funny thing is, it’s bad at, it’s bad at interpreting what you say you don’t want. It’s, it’s really only good at interpreting what you say you do want, which I think is a very funny, very human dynamic. But like,

[00:45:18] Merlin: And that’s something, that’s something we tolerate or sometimes enjoy, I guess, that kind of chunking and heuristics and all the sorts of things are the kinds of things that make, make our day to day human life with each other. Like. Like bearable in the same way that like you say to somebody how you doing and they go into a 14 minute speech about their how their mudroom is getting relined and it’s taking forever and you’re like, well, I just said that to be polite.

[00:45:41] Merlin: I didn’t really want to know about your mudroom, but we tolerate that. We have such a low tolerance for how wrong this, these things are all the time. And it’s like, I don’t know if that’s the best way to look at it. I mean, is a, I mean, a Xerox machine is wrong in some ways because all it’s doing is making in the back in the day, and we have black and white image.

[00:45:58] Merlin: It’s not the book that’s just a black [00:46:00] and white image of the book. I don’t mean to get all semiotic, but like it’s not actually that complicated. We interact with stuff all day long, every day our entire life. That is far less reliable at ChatGPT, it’s just that they’re less reliable at things we’ve learned how to tolerate and not be scared of.

[00:46:15] Jeff: yes, yes. I’m wondering, you, I don’t know if you want to talk about this or not, but I know

[00:46:21] Merlin: I want to talk about your repo, all this stuff you’ve got in here. My

[00:46:24] Jeff: you see that? I took, yeah, okay, so I’ll explain. I

[00:46:27] Merlin: But, you know, I just, I don’t want to

[00:46:29] Jeff: Yeah, we’ll get to

[00:46:30] Merlin: a way that we don’t get to talk about all your very good stuff you’ve put in here.

[00:46:33] Jeff: Um, I, oh man, what was I saying? What was I

[00:46:37] Merlin: Um, ChatGPTs and the right tool for the job or tolerance, tolerance for people and tolerance for incorrectness. Yeah.

[00:46:46] Jeff: I’ll tell you what, I will, I will actually, this will come back to me, I’m sure, but like, this thing about slowing down and being, So I’m going to talk a little bit about what I have found, I mean, I’ve found this literally, it’s almost like we talked about practices last [00:47:00] time. It can be almost like a practice because my nature is to want to gather up so much, so fast, because I want to see the connections in the world.

[00:47:09] Jeff: I want to see through some other window. I mean, I think there’s a lot of reasons that this connects to how I grew up and my kind of interior life as I was

[00:47:17] Merlin: Yes,

[00:47:18] Jeff: sort of, sort of

[00:47:19] Merlin: Expansive, and Expansive, this is the beauty of the Lonely Boys title, is that expansive inner world, that like, we always wanna like impose upon our children, of like, you should be bored more, it’s like, no, god, what a piece of shit you are to say stuff like that, but like the expansive interior world of like, this is the book I’ve got, and I’m gonna read it and read it and read it, and like, I’m, you know, just like the funny drawings that you make, and all those little things that are just part of, An expansive interior world where you haven’t learned to be ashamed of, of how little you know in life and what excites you in life.

[00:47:53] Merlin: And everybody’s supposed to become so ashamed about all those things and so confident about all these other things and like [00:48:00] put on this big show and it’s like, well, no, I’m always going to be, I’m always going to be a Lasky Child at heart.

[00:48:04] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Wondering, wondering, wondering, right? Like, imagining what these connections might

[00:48:11] Merlin: Too much time, not enough money. No, it’s too much time, not enough money, a life in Florida. There’s a

[00:48:21] Jeff: Oh, that’s good. I like that. I like that a lot. Um, yeah. Anyway, I found that really, and initially I experienced that in trying to do code stuff, but then when I just wanted information, when I wanted to make those goofy tables, I, I eventually got kind of quick at it, but like, I actually loved having to stop because this is the thing.

[00:48:38] Jeff: It’s almost a manic energy to me wanting to

[00:48:40] Merlin: I know, I know, it’s weird that I feel like I know exactly what you mean, which is like, think about the scene when Luke is doing the trench run,

[00:48:49] Jeff: Yes.

[00:48:49] Merlin: right when, right when Obi Wan tells him to like, use the force, and right, you know, it’s before he turns off the, the targeting thing, but there’s that moment where he has this like, little, you know, Human caesura, where [00:49:00] he’s kind of like, okay, this is the way I’m going to do this.

[00:49:05] Merlin: And, you know, the way, and I’m not saying like, oh, I got to talk myself off. No, but that’s, sometimes we find a moment of grace like that where you go, oh, wait a minute. I can totally do this. And I just need I need to, my head in the game, I need to focus on this, I need to do the thing, but being weird about it is not helping.

[00:49:23] Merlin: You know, a two meter target, that’s a very small target. Isn’t that kind of what you’re describing? Then when I sit down, I’m like, I’m so used to this, like, ah, you’re a coke machine.

[00:49:31] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:49:32] Merlin: the factorial of blah is, and like, you’re stupid. And instead just go like, oh, I see. But if I ask for it this way, and with different models, you learn different things.

[00:49:43] Merlin: But you’re right though, you, it’s a slower, more deliberative, purpose, on purpose kind of thinking.

[00:49:50] Jeff: Which is not something I think it takes. This is getting back to the, like, does somebody have the curiosity to have the conversation? That is the thing that is miles away when you [00:50:00] start most conversations about ChatGPT. And it’s the first thing I’m thinking about. It’s the thing I’m trying. I’m waiting for the point where in this conversation, I can say this part.

[00:50:09] Jeff: So we get past all of your incuriosity. And I can say, think about this part, right, that they’re actually, you know, there was a point at which I fed it. Talks I had given about storytelling or story gathering, I fed it old bios I had written, I fed it interviews with me on podcasts, and I said, tell me about this guy.

[00:50:27] Jeff: And, and what it gave, what it gave me back was all the stuff that I am. I am too something to tell myself I am. It was right. I was like, that is me. Goddammit. I would never say it out loud, but you have just described me to me in a way that actually amazingly gives me a little permission to sort of like hold that and be proud

[00:50:47] Merlin: I mean, was it doing it? If you can say, like, how was it trying? Was it trying to describe the person who said all that? It was

[00:50:54] Jeff: Yes. So it was a

[00:50:55] Merlin: qualities or like tendencies or

[00:50:57] Jeff: me qualities about this person. Tell me what [00:51:00] this person’s priorities are. Tell me what kind of, you know, life is important to this person. Um, and, and there was, everything was like right on. I’m like, yes, no, that is how I would describe myself, but have always been a little too something to do it.

[00:51:13] Jeff: Like, that voice is in you going, oh, shut the fuck up. Um, yeah. And, and so here was this thing, and this would sound so absurd to so many people here, was this thing that in reflecting back to me, myself at my fucking request, by the way, uh, , like I actually,

[00:51:30] Merlin: for this. I said I wanted this.

[00:51:32] Jeff: I felt things, I was able to actually like unlock a sort of relationship with myself that wasn’t there.

[00:51:37] Jeff: I don’t wanna over blow this, but like, but it was, this is the kinda shit that like if you get, if you get past the, in curiosity and.

[00:51:45] Merlin: But I mean, think about Eliza, which is a story everybody knows, which,

[00:51:48] Jeff: I

[00:51:51] Merlin: but the, um, but the, the, the, the thing where the guy at Berkeley, I think, came up with the program, it’s the famous, God, I’m sorry, I’m telling the story like Siracusa, but like

[00:51:59] Jeff: know it.[00:52:00]

[00:52:00] Merlin: oh, E L I Z A, Google it, um, and this guy had come up with a program that appears to be, it’s very basic, like, you know, Command line program where he says, Hey, hi, I’m Eliza.

[00:52:09] Merlin: Like, how are you? And you talk to it and it’s a very elementary program. So a lot of what it does is mirroring and asking questions. And it says, well, how do you feel about that? And the story, and this is, I don’t know, this could be one of those twice told tales was like the guy showed it to his admin and like, she was like, could you please leave the room?

[00:52:29] Merlin: I just want to do this for two hours. People would get so involved in Eliza. And at no point did somebody think that was a real person, quote

[00:52:37] Jeff: yeah, yeah,

[00:52:38] Merlin: doesn’t change the fact, like, why do, why are people so resistant to realize how much of themselves they bring to their work and what they do?

[00:52:46] Merlin: Because if you did that, you would go, well, of course this is interesting. And I know this is a machine. Like, I was a child, I could throw a ball against a wall for two hours and be pretty happy. I mean, I didn’t think the wall was a person, but I was more amused than I would have been doing nothing. And [00:53:00] in that instance, because you are talking about yourself, but you’re realizing things.

[00:53:03] Merlin: It’s. It’s a continuum of an exchange, even if it’s with a computer. Do you know what I mean? And it’s like, it’s like, we’ve known about that for 40, 50 years, that that’s a thing. And like, if you set somebody down in front of Eliza today, the exact same thing would happen.

[00:53:19] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, it’s a yes. That’s a

[00:53:24] Merlin: I see what you mean though. It does, it makes you, you’re getting at something emotional here. Like, it may just be a computer, but like, maybe you’re realizing something about yourself as you’re doing it. And I don’t. I think that’s unwholesome.

[00:53:37] Jeff: No, yeah, exactly. It’s not unwholesome. I like that. I mean, and even to you, I mean, you had mentioned this repo. So I, I created a repo for the last episode where I wanted to just take the transcript and fuck around in ChatGPT and put what’s in there. It’s what came out of it in there. So the show notes are there too.

[00:53:50] Jeff: That was human made, but like with the help of ChatGPT. But one of the things I did, and it took a lot of collaboration. It wasn’t just an easy thing was to, I wanted [00:54:00] a glossary of terms, uh, because what struck me about that conversation, which is the kind of conversation I love to have. And if I kind of tick off my, the closest people in my life, they’re almost all people with whom I can bounce around in that way.

[00:54:14] Jeff: And, and that is a feeling of joy and wonder for me that I don’t always find with humans, right? Like, and, and so when I made that glossary of God knows

[00:54:22] Merlin: I have so many things I can’t say about what you’re saying right now. I, there’s, it would be very difficult for me to agree with you more. To, to borrow, to borrow, again, to borrow a phrase from my brother, my brother and me. It’s just so, so difficult sometimes to find someone who’ll play with you in the space.

[00:54:38] Jeff: yes,

[00:54:38] Merlin: You know?

[00:54:39] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, instantly if the person is not, or is that person, right? Like, it’s like, Oh, I got to figure out how to

[00:54:46] Merlin: You’ll know pretty darn quickly.

[00:54:48] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. I said Bon Jovi way too soon in this conversation.

[00:54:52] Merlin: Or like, I tend to think of it in terms of layers or levels, where it’s like, and my frustration, as I’ve said, is that I do feel like I sometimes, I’m [00:55:00] not trying to build myself up or puff myself up or anybody else down,

[00:55:04] Jeff: ChatGPT do that for you.

[00:55:05] Merlin: I’ll let Jeff GPT do that for me.

[00:55:07] Merlin: There’s a lot of people out there who are very resistant to going any more than two levels into anything. It’s, and I’m not even talking about like weird like, you know, um, inception type stuff. I’m talking more like, well, here’s my, here’s my raw, hot take on this, here’s a yeah, but turns out about that.

[00:55:23] Merlin: And it’s like, the thing is like, we haven’t even gotten to the third or fourth layer where we figured out this is actually not what this thing is about at

[00:55:30] Jeff: Yes.

[00:55:31] Merlin: there’s so little interest in pursuing that, and because people like that fast thinking. And at this point we should probably mention Daniel Kahneman, but I mean, I think that is related.

[00:55:41] Merlin: The, the thinking fast and slow idea of like, there are these in behavioral economics, there are these things where like if, if I ask you, if you were a person like me and you, uh, and I ask you what 2N2 is, you can’t help but think four. You can’t, it’s like don’t think of an elephant type stuff. Whereas if I ask you to do longer [00:56:00] division with numbers that ends in, you know, sevens and nines, it gets harder, and you have to do a different kind of slower thinking.

[00:56:06] Jeff: So I’m curious with you.

[00:56:07] Jeff: Okay, so when I think of when I looked at that glossary when it was done, and if you look at the glossary, if anybody looks at this, I’ll put a link in the show notes. The descriptions are not something I have fully edited,

[00:56:17] Merlin: Oh my gosh. Oh my God. Okay, so, sorry, sorry, sorry. So, so just to be clear, ’cause I’m stupid, you got from DS script or Mac Whisperer or something. You got a transcript of the show, it knows who’s who, what kind of prompt. So what I’m looking at here is a, uh, at least 260 line, uh uh, sorry, row. Markdown table with term category and definition.

[00:56:42] Merlin: Can I ask, am I jumping ahead to ask roughly what you asked to get this?

[00:56:45] Jeff: Yeah, sure. I mean, I’ll try to retrace my steps. I sort of played between models, the new, like, whatever, oh, one

[00:56:51] Merlin: Like, how, how did you let it know? Like what should, how would you like Glossary would include? So it’s just anything novel.

[00:56:57] Jeff: so actually, I started in kind of a [00:57:00] funny way, which was to sort of test it, and that was something I’ve been doing with some interview transcripts in my work, was I fed the new model, our transcript, and said, I want to see a markdown checklist of all the things you think might have been mistranscribed, right?

[00:57:16] Merlin: I love this. I

[00:57:17] Jeff: And that, that became that was the beginning of the glossary because and they were coming up with stuff like Karras is not with a C, it’s with a K. And it comes from Kurt Vonnegut and like all that,

[00:57:27] Merlin: I, I I, I’ve done that thing where like, this is a big thing people talked about for a while. Ask it to be this or ask it to be that. Ask it to do this. I, I’ve asked it to be the, the most knowledgeable person in the world about home, home technologies, like smart home technology and, um, show me the, the show in the thing that I just wrote is the thing that I just made.

[00:57:46] Merlin: Um, show me the things that are the biggest problem. Show me the things that are most likely to be untrue. Fact check my work, act like you’re the smartest person in the world. Find the, here’s another way to put it, find the weakest part of my argument.

[00:57:58] Jeff: Mm hmm.

[00:57:58] Merlin: And it’s pretty good at [00:58:00] that.

[00:58:00] Jeff: Mm

[00:58:00] Merlin: When you ask it to be somebody smart,

[00:58:02] Jeff: Well, and what blew my mind, I intentionally did, so initially when I tried to do this, I gave it like my bio and yours and like, here are the two guys that are talking, now go through this and whatever, right? And it actually wasn’t that effective. It got kind of confused. When I said nothing, it pulled that new model, pulled sort of context so well, and caught things that it should never have caught.

[00:58:22] Jeff: Like, it shouldn’t have known how to spell Sebedo, like necessarily, because

[00:58:26] Merlin: you must’ve, you must’ve really put it, you must’ve put a hurting on some tokens here. Likes. Seriously. Like

[00:58:34] Jeff: Yeah, yeah.

[00:58:35] Merlin: I mean, there’s so many I’m see, I see so many tokens in what it came up with here.

[00:58:40] Jeff: so here’s so okay, so if I’m if I’m walking through the process, that was the beginning of the process. And actually, in the repo, there’s a there’s one file that’s just amusing corrections that it that it felt like it was seeing it. So that’s, that’s where I started like, okay, well, that’s really interesting.

[00:58:56] Jeff: So actually, actually, I mean,

[00:58:58] Merlin: I like to cut up your [00:59:00] jib.

[00:59:00] Jeff: I’d like to cut up your chip. It’s

[00:59:02] Merlin: Um, so, so actually Vampire title is an album, not an ep. Um,

[00:59:06] Jeff: That’s the other one. It’s like such a, such a dude half the time.

[00:59:10] Merlin: oh, I know. It’s, it’s a character from U Nice. Today I call Carl Van Hoot. So actually, um,

[00:59:18] Jeff: So okay, so actually here was the me here was the me It was the manual step. I, I like, I never ask it to fix things in a transcript and feed me the transcript back. I say, give me a markdown checklist, and then I go through. So I actually manually changed based on that checklist. Then I fed it in again.

[00:59:34] Jeff: What do you see that might be wrong? And then I felt like I was ready to say, I want a glossary of terms. And it took a little bit of like, no, no, when I say terms. I don’t want these things. I want these types of things. And then it was like, but then it was pretty easy. It was like, I want a column that’s sort of a description.

[00:59:51] Jeff: I want you to group it. I want to give a little category so you can group it. And the kinds of shit that it was filling in was really unbelievable to me. [01:00:00] Um, and so, yeah, that was the back and forth really. There was a lot of just massaging, like, yeah, you basically got it. And then I edited three or four of the entries.

[01:00:08] Jeff: And it’s not that there’s not more that should be, but those are the ones that

[01:00:11] Merlin: Huey Lewis sports

[01:00:13] Jeff: Yeah,

[01:00:14] Merlin: Huey Lewis and the News sports.

[01:00:16] Jeff: actually, uh, I think it also corrected, you had said,

[01:00:21] Merlin: Tripanning. Didn’t like my tripanning.

[01:00:23] Jeff: oh yeah, that’s drilling into the head, uh, there was a point at which you, you, um, were talking about David Bowie introducing Adrienne Ballou, and you

[01:00:32] Merlin: Actually, he’s from

[01:00:33] Jeff: from, and it was like, actually, Adrienne Ballou was from, it’s just amazing,

[01:00:38] Merlin: that’s so great. How much did it cost you to hire everyone on Mastodon?

[01:00:43] Jeff: Yeah, exactly.

[01:00:44] Merlin: I can only have one of two opinions about everything. Either I don’t care about what you’re saying, or I think it’s wrong.

[01:00:51] Jeff: But Merlin, here’s the crazy thing. Like, when I was done with that and I looked at it, it was similar when I looked at the list of like, I don’t know, 36 [01:01:00] songs or something. I think there might be a few more, but the ones that I identified through ChatGPT were 36. Um, I, I looked at that and I said, that’s all in me.

[01:01:10] Jeff: Like that, that was a, that was the transcript of just the 90

[01:01:14] Merlin: By the way, it would be one thing to see, like, your EKG or something expressed as a line and go, Well, that’s my heart. And in this you’re like, Oh my gosh, this has all been in me the whole time, it’s just now I’m seeing it in a table.

[01:01:25] Jeff: Yes. And that’s

[01:01:26] Merlin: I know what all these things mean. Isn’t that weird?

[01:01:28] Jeff: Yes. And that and the fact that you and I were bouncing on that. It’s like there is another person and there are there’s other people that for some fucking reason, some of it you can you can guess certain movies, we’re all going to talk about Big Lebowski, right? Like, that’s not a surprise.

[01:01:41] Jeff: But like, the sort of the sort of like, multiverse kind of multiverse

[01:01:47] Merlin: not wrong, Walter, you’re just an asshole.

[01:01:49] Jeff: Exactly. Exactly. So anyway, I, when I say, um, that it feels almost warm to see my

[01:01:57] Merlin: the fact, okay, but like here’s the thing about what you’re saying right [01:02:00] here. So let me find the one I was looking at a minute ago in your, this, this playlist, the glossary. Okay, so it did a pretty good job of finding 266 That’s individual monads of thing that we talked about in this show. Turned it into a table, said what kind of category it was, and it even defined it.

[01:02:18] Merlin: Let me go look down here. Oh, geez. Boy, well, that’s a shame. Look at line 43.

[01:02:24] Jeff: Wait, I’m not in it. What’s

[01:02:25] Merlin: Oh, it’s okay. It’s just a bummer. It says, Buy Thomas Harris, instead of

[01:02:30] Jeff: mean,

[01:02:32] Merlin: Thomas Harris is the, I mean, I know this. Like, I, like, unlike ChatGPT, I know this. Thomas Harris, you know, wrote the Hannibal Lecter novels. But, what a shame.

[01:02:42] Merlin: And it’s even in the wrong order. It’s between Buzz Osborne and Carl Hyasson. What a shame.

[01:02:50] Jeff: it was good to leave some of that. I should say, I made it add

[01:02:54] Merlin: But it knows what Columbia House is! This is fucking insane that it can do this!

[01:02:59] Jeff: Oh, it’s completely [01:03:00] insane. Yeah. And that’s, so that’s it. Like, and I look at that and if somebody said, would you like to listen to 90 minute conversation in which all these things are mentioned? I’m like, you know what, maybe

[01:03:09] Merlin: Well, when you put it that way, it sounds bad.

[01:03:13] Jeff: Amazing. So, yeah, that’s a, that’s just a way of, I like that a lot.

[01:03:18] Jeff: I mean, I’m whole, so okay, do you remember the Beastie Boys magazine Grand Royal?

[01:03:22] Merlin: Mm hmm. I, I posted, I just, I just found a copy in,

[01:03:28] Jeff: you posted about Grand Royal.

[01:03:29] Merlin: yeah, it’s the one with, um, Scratch Perry on the cover. It looks like a Wheaties box.

[01:03:34] Jeff: Yep, I

[01:03:35] Merlin: it’s the, it’s the one where, um, Rad Rock goes to the Guitar Tech, Institute of Technology with the Mullet Wick.

[01:03:42] Jeff: So okay, so that’s a great example. I have the I have three of the episode. I think the first three

[01:03:47] Merlin: Mine’s still got the decal for a shirt in it, and I’m thinking about making a

[01:03:51] Jeff: doesn’t. Mine doesn’t. One of them has a record in it. Um,

[01:03:54] Merlin: it came with the FlexiDisc in one of them, I

[01:03:56] Jeff: a

[01:03:57] Merlin: Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, Grand Royal, great. Spike Jonze, Spike Jonze [01:04:00] and Beastie Boys, Manor Magazine.

[01:04:01] Jeff: this was a magazine that it’s no surprise you and I both hold dear, because it is exactly the kind of collection of the world that is all over the map, is so dense, and somehow Despite all that, it might really, really overwhelm a lot of people.

[01:04:19] Jeff: But when I hold these, I’m holding all three now, I grabbed them last night, actually. When I hold all three of these, I feel like I’m holding a whole world. And if I wanted to just go into somebody’s world, it’s, it’s like a novel, practically, right? But it’s also a doorways to a thousand other worlds. And as much as I am always on the watch, in me, for my gathering instinct.

[01:04:44] Jeff: Um, my gathering instinct is also a core piece of who I am, and my whole life has been figuring out how to harness it in a way that it doesn’t, it doesn’t sort

[01:04:54] Merlin: I like that you’re saying gathering, the word we probably want to use is learning, but that would [01:05:00] put people off. So I like the way that you say gathering, but it’s like, I can’t learn enough new things. It’s just, I will never get sick of learning a new thing.

[01:05:09] Jeff: Yes, and this, and this thing gives you an opportunity, just all by yourself, unless you choose to post about it, which I love to do, um, to just explore your world in the most fucked up ways. And sometimes, look, people say, well, but it’s wrong. Sometimes it’s wrong in really delightful ways that

[01:05:25] Merlin: and sometimes, I

[01:05:26] Jeff: weird

[01:05:26] Merlin: is a This would actually be a useful podcast episode if we ever made one of those, but I think it could be argued that the errors are some of the most interesting things, or at least some of the most instructive things. At the very least, how do you not see an error and go like, wow, I wonder if that’s an error I could have helped with?

[01:05:44] Jeff: Yeah, definitely. Or, or it’s the kind of thing, I had a friend, there was this amazing, he’s still around, Hiro Tanaka. He was a, he’s a Japanese guy who came to Minneapolis in the, in the early 90s, went to a Babes in Toyland show, met Lori, the drummer, she fell in love with him and had him stay, [01:06:00] fell in love, like, what a great human.

[01:06:02] Jeff: And he went on tour with them. And for the next 10 years of his life, he was almost always on tour with an American indie rock band. And, and he went on tour with My band, he would just get in a van with people and he was always learning English with a notebook in his hand. And fun fact, my brother owns a bar in Brooklyn and the bathroom walls are papered with the pages of his book.

[01:06:23] Merlin: That’s so cool.

[01:06:24] Jeff: and, and you now imagine Merlin, he’s learning

[01:06:27] Merlin: Boy, that must feel like a really insane place to urinate.

[01:06:30] Jeff: he’s learning in English

[01:06:32] Merlin: Oh my

[01:06:32] Jeff: band vans in band vans So one day he comes to visit me. I remember he was on tour with with the Selby

[01:06:40] Merlin: in the bottle.

[01:06:40] Jeff: Yeah, he was on he was on tour with the Selby Tigers It’s a great band from Minneapolis and I was living in Chicago and they were staying overnight and I was in this kind of shitty neighborhood in Chicago and he and I were sitting outside in front of my house talking and in the like brown, weedy grass stuff, a mushroom was coming up and he looks at it and he goes, Oh, [01:07:00] ghetto mushroom.

[01:07:03] Merlin: Oh my

[01:07:04] Jeff: And that is exactly the kind of shit that can happen in ChatGPT where it’s like, that is a delightful mistake.

[01:07:10] Merlin: Oh, I totally agree. An example, uh, I, I used before, there was one where, okay, and this, this goes back to, I’ll make this quick, but, um, okay, so you know what, actually, this is also, if I may say, a good example of your, one of your original questions, which is what is it that makes this so well suited for you, or you so well suited for it?

[01:07:28] Merlin: And I had mentioned lateral thinking. So how did this start? It started off, this is just how my stupid fucking brain works. I think it started off as I wanted, I’ve got these, it starts out so boring, but it gets so good. I’ve got, um, what are called Nanoleaf lights. Most people, if you’ve ever seen those hexagons in douchey YouTube videos, but they do all kinds of lights.

[01:07:46] Merlin: And, but the connectors for these things are garbage. Like so many of those kinds of like where you get the little belt with the connectors and you can cut them to fit and like light strips. And my light strips would always pull out. of the dingus that connects them to the electric. Long story [01:08:00] short, I basically just gone in and said like, what are some of my options for dealing with this?

[01:08:04] Merlin: And I’m like, well, you could do this or blah, blah, blah. And I said, Hmm, I said, act like you’re somebody who’s very knowledgeable about HomeKit things, about home automation, and You’re somebody who does DIY stuff and isn’t allowed to avoid the warranty a little bit, something like that. Boom! It drops all this great stuff, all this crazy stuff, which is not dangerous, but one of the things was you can just hot glue it.

[01:08:29] Merlin: And I’m like, fuck, of course, I can just hot glue it, that’s really easy. But then I said, okay, well now, give me a Caravaggio painting. And in the style of, of this, give me a Caravaggio painting of, of people. I said, no, first I said, now, now give it, now explain what you just said to me, but do it in a hundred words and in the voice of a 1930s hobo who refers to himself in the third person as Cletus.

[01:08:52] Merlin: And it’s, and it actually did that. And it goes, Oh, Cletus got a hot tip for you. Got to be real here. You got to get that glue nice and hot. But old Cletus knows that. And I [01:09:00] was like, now make a Caravaggio painting of people. Cletus, Demonstrating this to other hobos, who are, and one of the hobos, at least one of the other hobos is eating beans out of a can.

[01:09:08] Merlin: You’re with me so far. Who the fuck

[01:09:09] Jeff: I

[01:09:09] Merlin: this way? Raises his hand, and you, but you know, it was hilarious, it was fucking great, it did like a pretty passable fake Caravaggio, but what’s great is there was a big pile of beans on the floor, and a can next to it that said Nanoleaf. And, like, if that doesn’t make you happy, I guess that’s okay, but I was like, I mean, like, the dumbest part that I could say from all this, well, that just teaches me a little more about, like, how to ask for things.

[01:09:34] Merlin: Cause I asked for beans, and it gave me beans, and it gave me a can, the can said Nanoleaf on it, because that’s what Cletus was showing people how to do with a hot glue gun. I’ll send you

[01:09:42] Jeff: Yes, yes. Oh, that’s

[01:09:44] Merlin: like that, okay, now that’s a pretty good example of almost all of those things. And, and, and like so many of my examples, it’ll be useless because people will go, that’s silly, I’m a normal person, why would I ever do bullshit like that?

[01:09:54] Merlin: Why do you, why did you play with anything when you were a kid? Why did you ever imagine that you’re somebody whom [01:10:00] you’re not? Why did you ever imagine a world that doesn’t currently exist? I mean, I mean, I’m gonna get all bummed out. Fucking Bobby Kennedy on your ass, but Jesus Christ, like, is there nothing that you can see in that beyond the dangers that other people have told you about?

[01:10:13] Merlin: I

[01:10:13] Jeff: right, right. Exactly. Yeah. What about, so that’s a great example of a practical use. The other day I, I, I,

[01:10:20] Merlin: know if it’s practical

[01:10:22] Jeff: That’s it. No, it is. It’s

[01:10:23] Merlin: definitely lateral.

[01:10:24] Jeff: practical. And then becomes Cletus, which

[01:10:26] Merlin: I get to show off the fact that I enjoy Caravaggio.

[01:10:30] Jeff: I, um, so I restore old tools, uh, large and, and

[01:10:35] Merlin: You’re an old tool.

[01:10:37] Jeff: I’m an old tool. Um, and,

[01:10:39] Merlin: You know, like one of those YouTubers?

[01:10:41] Jeff: yeah, like one of those

[01:10:42] Merlin: Like you’ll turn a cheese board into like a modern thing or make a pinball

[01:10:46] Jeff: No, no, it’s, it’s more like, it’s the

[01:10:48] Merlin: Restoring like an old hammer or

[01:10:50] Jeff: see a picture of a terribly rusty power tool, uh, from the forties,

[01:10:54] Merlin: love it.

[01:10:55] Jeff: You know, and then you, so I, over the summer, I experimented, we talked just a little bit about this.

[01:10:59] Jeff: I [01:11:00] experimented with rust removal, just all these different ways of rust removal. And I realized

[01:11:04] Merlin: Now you’re speaking my love

[01:11:06] Jeff: was holding all this shit in my head. And so I went to ChatGPT and I, and I said, help me create a decision tree for rust removal strategies because I realized I was, I was coming, sometimes I was, I was kind of jumping a little too

[01:11:20] Merlin: But notice what you did. I’m sorry to interrupt, but you didn’t, you didn’t say, How do I use this remover? Or like, Find the ba ba ba ba Coke machine. Right?

[01:11:30] Jeff: Yeah,

[01:11:31] Merlin: I want to show me the work.

[01:11:32] Jeff: yeah, exactly. Exactly. And and that’s interesting, too, because it is weird to jump like yesterday I was working I have this like one ton hundred year old lathe metal machining lathe that I’m rebuilding.

[01:11:43] Merlin: So you can do woodturning?

[01:11:45] Jeff: This is metal turning, which is even more insane.

[01:11:49] Merlin: I’m gonna make one of those vases out of colored pencils.

[01:11:51] Jeff: Oh, yeah. Oh, I saw you posted that. I love

[01:11:53] Merlin: such an upsetting

[01:11:55] Jeff: love them. I love them so much.

[01:11:57] Merlin: put a root on this thing and now it’s turning. [01:12:00] Anyways, you’ve

[01:12:00] Jeff: So I’m in there. I when I’m in that world in my workshop, like I, I’m not particularly drawn to my phone or my computers, because I’ve got like grease from the Coolidge administration on my hands, right? But like, actually,

[01:12:14] Merlin: It’s like it’s just a way to disappear from the world.

[01:12:16] Jeff: It’s a way to disappear from the world, but actually I’ve started more and more going to it to say, okay, I’ve got gear oil.

[01:12:22] Jeff: Uh, what, what should not have gear oil on it? Right? Like, it’s just like shit like that, where if I was going to the forums, I would have to go through a bunch of like, why the fuck are you even looking at gear oil? Right? Like, do you even have gloves?

[01:12:33] Merlin: would be an automated post that says, have you checked the FAQs? But no, absolutely, because if you treat, again, if you treat it like a Coke machine, you might be, and this is a concept I learned from John Siracusa, please put it in notes, the XY problem, where what you really, you really want Y.

[01:12:48] Merlin: But you ask people for X. So like, you ask for some really complicated technical explanation for how to do something because you’re smarter than the average bear, when the real answer is just unplug it and plug it back in. Like, what is it that you [01:13:00] really want? I mean, there’s that famous story about like, you know, why do you buy a drill?

[01:13:06] Merlin: You buy a drill because it puts a screw in the wall. Why do you want a screw in the wall? So I can hang up a painting. Why do you want to hang up a painting? Because looking at a painting makes me happy. So in some ways you bought a drill because you want to be happy, you just don’t know it yet.

[01:13:18] Jeff: Yes.

[01:13:19] Merlin: like, if you, if you think that that is an overly circuitous and not useful way to think about life, you’re probably fairly unhappy a lot of the time.

[01:13:27] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:13:28] Merlin: Right and that’s that’s isn’t that kind of what you’re doing here though? It’s like hey You know I got this Leatherman that can do all these different things and sometimes I can even use the Leatherman for the wrong thing and sometimes That’s kind of cool.

[01:13:39] Jeff: Yep. Sometimes it’s kinda cool. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Um.

[01:13:45] Merlin: How are we on time?

[01:13:47] Jeff: We’re good. Well, we’re at 113 for this round. I

[01:13:50] Merlin: Oh, we should we should probably bounce pretty soon, right?

[01:13:52] Jeff: an hour 13. Yeah, we should bounce. I have a final topic for you. Which, which sort of comes sort of [01:14:00] related to what I was saying about feeding all of my kind of life information and asking it

[01:14:03] Merlin: Oh, I would love to talk about this.

[01:14:06] Jeff: So,

[01:14:06] Merlin: my god Well, the the memory stuff is so great, but I filled my people, people, can we assume people know what we’re talking about?

[01:14:13] Jeff: well, I don’t know. Oh, the Wisdom Project. This is where

[01:14:16] Merlin: So, no, no, no, sorry, sorry, sorry, I’d love to talk about that too, always, but, no, but like, there was an introduction to something a few months ago that’s been really a game changer for me, that could be more of a game changer, with fewer constraints, but there’s a thing called memory, where you go in and say something as simple as, my name is Merlin, I live in San Francisco, and what that means is, from now on, in future threads, it’ll remember what you told it about yourself.

[01:14:39] Merlin: You know, you can probably imagine all the ways this is useful. A second one might be, I really prefer Markdown. So when you give me stuff, give it to me as Markdown. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But like, I I, I put in all the information about my family, where they were born, all that kind of stuff. And then, and it was working great.

[01:14:57] Merlin: And again, remember this works across threads.

[01:14:59] Jeff: [01:15:00] Yeah.

[01:15:00] Merlin: So this is really powerful. But then, you know what I started doing, entering all kinds of, I started taking photos of things like, you know, the information panel on my Synology or my AeroGarden. Upload that. Remember this is an AeroGarden called BigGarden. This is an AeroGarden called OldGarden.

[01:15:14] Merlin: Now remember that on this day I changed the water and added plant food. Remember, remember, remember all this stuff. And I was. It was fucking incredible. I would put my entire life into this thing if I could, but after a week or so, it said meh, your memory’s full. So I had to start deleting stuff. But what you’re describing, once you start dipping a toe into that, you think shit’s integrated now, just you wait until it actually knows what your life is like.

[01:15:39] Jeff: Yeah, it’s funny. I have not ever used that memory function. I mean, I

[01:15:43] Merlin: Have you ever seen updating memory, where it goes, like, you say something, maybe, for example, with your tickets, I would bet you Dimes the Donuts that it says updating memory because it’s remembering that you were at that replacement show or whatever.

[01:15:55] Jeff: So it’s, so you’re saying this memory function, which somehow I don’t, I’m not even aware of is something that[01:16:00]

[01:16:00] Merlin: Do you have it open right now?

[01:16:01] Jeff: Yeah, I have ChatGPT

[01:16:02] Merlin: Okay, uh, you have the app on your Mac?

[01:16:04] Jeff: Ah, yes, I

[01:16:05] Merlin: Okay, command, comma, and go down to personalization.

[01:16:10] Jeff: Mm hmm. Is this like what you did for Joe Walsh? Oh, that was in the, that was in the part of the recording that got, but we’re just

[01:16:17] Merlin: the last year of Rocky Mountain away. Um, if you look under manage memory, you’ll see all the things that it remembers about you.

[01:16:23] Jeff: Oh shit.

[01:16:25] Merlin: So my first one is, uh,

[01:16:28] Jeff: It’s using Hover as their domain registrar. Okay. You can let that

[01:16:31] Merlin: about my mom. Merlin is feeling kind of tired today. And remember, Merlin prefers shorter responses. Here’s where Madeline was born. Merlin’s son, Billy, is a little reluctant and doesn’t like technology. That’s because I stuck the phone in Billy’s face with advanced voice mode on. And I said, Oh, don’t worry about Billy.

[01:16:48] Merlin: He’s just a little reluctant. It doesn’t like technology. Well, it remembered that. imagine this filled with, Oh, here’s my two synologies. Here’s what the serial number is. Imagine that, you know, that, that, that, that folder I’ve got on [01:17:00] iCloud with hundreds or dozens of manuals. How far away are we from me just dropping that or not even needing to drop that in?

[01:17:08] Merlin: Like, you know what I’m saying? Like, but this, having it remember all of these different things is ridiculously, I haven’t remembered my. Again, think about my garden, or think about my 3D printer, or you could think about your automobile. If you’re an automobile person. When did I buy this automobile, how many miles are on it, when’s the last time I was checking it?

[01:17:25] Merlin: Like, this is the dream. It’s like, in the same way that I have this dream for this bike log idea for Apple products, I also have this dream over here of like, I just want to like, start talking and have it remember and integrate things, have it be my outboard brain, and if all that information about your, not even your quote, your life, but like, have you ever wanted to make a timeline?

[01:17:45] Merlin: I’ve always wanted to make a Full Timeline of my life in Excel. Where I lived, for how long, who my housemates were, like, when did that person leave and get replaced by this one? Like, I don’t know why, that’s just something I’ve

[01:17:56] Jeff: I have, I have a spreadsheet. I’ve lived in 38 places[01:18:00]

[01:18:00] Merlin: when I was in college, I would move four times a year in

[01:18:02] Jeff: Every, every single place I lived, who I lived with, if it was my mom, she had a friend

[01:18:06] Merlin: And don’t you want to kind of see that? Now,

[01:18:08] Jeff: Oh,

[01:18:08] Merlin: system where that all just gets remembered, and it says, oh, this is kind of like that thing Richard said one time. And you’re like,

[01:18:13] Jeff: Oh, you were in Chicago at this point,

[01:18:15] Merlin: Right, but that, that memory part, and it sounds like you were not expressly aware of it. And by the way, this will don’t, so use this in 4.

[01:18:22] Merlin: 0. Not in the new one. The new one does not do well with

[01:18:26] Jeff: add things myself,

[01:18:28] Merlin: hell yeah. Here, try this. Just open a new 4. 0, right? Like an old one. Um, and just say, remember that my favorite fruit is apples, or whatever. You can also add them manually in those lines, but that’s the easiest way. It’s just as you’re going.

[01:18:44] Merlin: Or like, remember I changed the water in this thing today.

[01:18:47] Jeff: Okay. Okay. Got it. Yeah.

[01:18:50] Merlin: And now, now, now, why is that useful? Well, that. That’s it. So I, when I was doing that dumb demos of the worst, and I say, I go up to Madeline and I’m like, uh, can I introduce you to my wife, Madeline? And she [01:19:00] goes, oh, hi Madeline. Nice to meet you. And she’s like, what are you doing? Can you go? And I said, I said, uh, where was Madeline born? And she goes, Madeline was born in Providence, Rhode Island. And it’s like, she’s like, get that away from, get

[01:19:10] Jeff: Wow.

[01:19:10] Merlin: from me.

[01:19:12] Jeff: Okay. Hold on. Let me just, there’s, there’s three bits in my memory that are cracking me up and I want to, I want to bring them out. So I had at one point asked it to make me a playlist based on whoever was the centerfold of Circus Magazine, uh, between a certain date and a certain date,

[01:19:27] Merlin: Oh my, that’s already

[01:19:29] Jeff: So. So this says, it is interested in creating playlists based on specific themes in historical context, such as magazine centerfolds for a

[01:19:37] Merlin: Oh no,

[01:19:38] Jeff: Almost, almost, almost.

[01:19:40] Merlin: tweet.

[01:19:41] Jeff: And then I’ve got is using vinegar and salt to derust tools and then soaking them in baking soda and water, drying, wire brushing and applying WD 40.

[01:19:48] Jeff: And then I’ve got has traveled to Iraq on multiple occasions,

[01:19:51] Merlin: Oh, that is so funny. This is all memory stuff. Oh my god. Let me look at mine. Merlin has an X1C printer. Merlin’s [01:20:00] tomatoes in his AeroGarden are a few inches tall. What it doesn’t say right here is that it remembers when you said that. Merlin has a special edition, The Hardest Job in the World pencil, which is a collaboration between Palomino Blackwing and CBS’s John Dickerson. Thanks, buddy! Merlin uses the app Drafts for macOS and iOS. Merlin is interested in trying different It’s so When you read it this way, it does sound kind of insane.

[01:20:27] Jeff: It does. I mean, and there’s also

[01:20:28] Merlin: It remembers which Milwaukee drill I have.

[01:20:31] Jeff: it’s great. That’s great. Then there’s kind of stuff that seemed that’s very sort of passing, like is customizing their zprofile to include specific manpager setting that uses BAT

[01:20:41] Merlin: Merlin is researching Ray Davies wife.

[01:20:44] Jeff: What if the entire podcast was just just taking turns reading this

[01:20:47] Merlin: It would be called a show with John Siracusa.

[01:20:50] Jeff: Oh,

[01:20:51] Merlin: Anyway, let me tell you the joke in four bullets.

[01:20:57] Jeff: okay, let me before we are done.

[01:20:59] Merlin: Merlin set up the [01:21:00] birdhouse yesterday. I wanted to see

[01:21:04] Jeff: is yesterday?

[01:21:06] Merlin: well, it knows, but I wanted to find out, like, I, I have another, see, these are all such disparate little scraps of paper. I have a calendar called journal. A calendar called journal where I just write down when something happened. So I changed my medication on this day, I installed the new X on this day, and if it’s stuff where like, you know, sometimes it’s stuff where it goes either under journal or environment are my two calendars.

[01:21:26] Merlin: And one is like, hey, it’s been six months, change the filters in the um, in the air dingus. But why do I need that in 60 different places? And do I really want Apple to be the arbiter of all that? Couldn’t there be some kind of standardized XML style, JSON style thing where like, all my stuff just goes into a thing and then it just all learns from me?

[01:21:44] Merlin: It doesn’t seem like that much to ask. They have a universal

[01:21:46] Jeff: system? Do you have a oh, system, system. Do you have a system for archiving your chats, or even just like a

[01:21:53] Merlin: No, it’s a huge, it’s a huge amount of my memory.

[01:21:56] Jeff: thing for

[01:21:57] Merlin: I get a periodic, like, when I’m downloading. And [01:22:00] some open source materials. And it’ll say like, and Downey will say like, you have 116 gigs left. I’m like,

[01:22:06] Jeff: Yeah.

[01:22:07] Merlin: So I go and I go to Daisy disk or I sort by, you know, whatever. And I go and I go, and it’s always my directory, my tilde slash application support slash, Wait, sorry, slash library, slash application, slash, like, MESSAGES.

[01:22:21] Merlin: Whoa. Cause I keep the attachments too! I need

[01:22:24] Jeff: Yeah. Oh, yeah, of course. You need it for

[01:22:25] Merlin: No, I should, I should do that. If I lost it, it would be fine. But it’s just a weird PAC GRAD compulsion I have.

[01:22:32] Jeff: I’ve started doing this thing where if it’s something I want to remember, actually, the last thing I ask in the thread is summarize succinctly in a bulleted list, what I have asked of you in this thing. And I have a notes file where it’s just like the, the link to that chat. And then that

[01:22:47] Merlin: You’re kidding me! I, I sometimes will also do it to, sometimes I, occasionally I’ve done this to cheat, but more often just cause it’s, it’s like we’ll go through a whole long thing and I’ll be like, uh, give me a 100 word prompt for how I would ask [01:23:00] for this. Again, or something. Like, like when it’s being a dick about like, I can’t make you a Caravaggio painting, or like, I can’t make a David Hockney painting, or whatever, and you’re like, describe the work of David Hockney.

[01:23:10] Merlin: There’s David Hockney, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I just copy and paste that, take out the first part of the sentence, and drop it in, and it’ll give me what I want.

[01:23:16] Jeff: yes, yes. Right, right.

[01:23:19] Merlin: by obscurity, or lessons by sessions, or something. I don’t know. Who needs a name? Sorry.

[01:23:26] Jeff: Um,

[01:23:26] Merlin: you know, though! Now you know about memory!

[01:23:28] Merlin: But like I say, I don’t know if you understood what I said, but I don’t think it’s working with oh one preview. So try it with 4.0 4.0 and all the other ones and you’ll be fine.

[01:23:37] Jeff: Okay, sounds good.

[01:23:38] Merlin: ’cause like you can’t, you also can’t upload images to oh

[01:23:40] Jeff: No, it’s just driving me

[01:23:42] Merlin: it won’t make you 3D prints. It’s got a weird knowledge

[01:23:45] Jeff: I, I promise, this is the last thing I’ll say, and then I want to ask you about the Wisdom Project, very specific question, I want to, um, but I am, so I’m going to the UN archives in November, I’m spending like a week there, because

[01:23:58] Merlin: As in the United Nations.

[01:23:59] Jeff: I [01:24:00] have this project I’ve been doing for 10 years on and off where I’m,

[01:24:03] Merlin: You should read the power broker on the plane. He had a big role in,

[01:24:06] Jeff: give it a shot

[01:24:07] Merlin: wouldn’t really even have West Side story if it, if it wasn’t for Robert Moses.

[01:24:10] Jeff: oh my God, I just, sorry, this is

[01:24:12] Merlin: Talk about, no, that’s lateral. That’s lateral. Realizing the West Side Story is a movie about Robert

[01:24:17] Jeff: And, and I’m going to continue this, uh, and you’ll see why in a second. So I went, hold on, now you got, so you fucking got me trapped in a net. Uh, I grabbed, I grabbed a, uh, issue of Punk Planet, uh, that we did, um, in 2005 about podcasting called The End of Radio and, um, and I opened it up.

[01:24:35] Jeff: This is, I’m going from the power broker

[01:24:36] Merlin: yeah, yeah.

[01:24:37] Jeff: Uh, I wrote sort of the main feature line, then we had a bunch of interviews. Who does the interview with something called Neighborhood Public Radio? Fucking Roman Mars. Just like 2005 in a, in a feature package about what the fuck is this new thing that we

[01:24:51] Merlin: Was he living in, oh, was he in Oakland at the time? I didn’t, I don’t think of him as a punk rock guy.

[01:24:56] Jeff: he was in Chicago and he wrote with, he wrote for Punk Planet here and

[01:24:59] Merlin: [01:25:00] You’re kidding me.

[01:25:00] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. And, but

[01:25:02] Merlin: you listened to that podcast yet?

[01:25:03] Jeff: Oh my God. I can’t. You know what my problem is Merlin? Is that I’ve been wanting to read The Power Broker forever and I cannot

[01:25:09] Merlin: There’s only one chapter in the book where you should stop and read the chapter, and it’s a late episode. Well, there are people that I know who would disagree.

[01:25:16] Jeff: Yeah.

[01:25:17] Merlin: But there’s, there’s one called R. M. late in the book where it’s worth, because it’s the most, they, they both say, and other people agree, it’s the pivotal chapter in the book.

[01:25:25] Merlin: It’s like in the 30s. It’s a very late chapter. That’s so cool! I have a photo of me with Roman Mars.

[01:25:30] Jeff: That’s

[01:25:31] Merlin: I met him at, I was a, oh my god, I’m not even gonna say it because people will look it up. I was a guest on Political Gab Fest once and it went

[01:25:39] Jeff: I know you were. I

[01:25:40] Merlin: I did some, but I wasn’t, it’s not my, it’s not

[01:25:41] Jeff: was the, it was the, was it, it wasn’t a conundrum show.

[01:25:44] Merlin: No, it was a live show

[01:25:46] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:25:47] Merlin: friend asked me to be on and I met them and I didn’t do very well. Here’s a picture of me and Roman Mars, I’ll send you that.

[01:25:54] Jeff: Sounds good. Um,

[01:25:55] Merlin: We both, it’s so funny, my kid has identified a type. This really, really came to the [01:26:00] fore when my kid and I went to see The Flophouse a few months ago live.

[01:26:03] Merlin: And there’s a line for question askers to, like, come up and, you know, ask a question. And Billy’s, like, just, because we, we got really good tickets. We got in the front row and, um, we were, like, right by Dan. It was exciting. And, um, in the shadow of Dan. But Billy looks at the line of people waiting to ask a question to the Flophouse podcast people and he goes, every one of those people looks like one of your friends. And I said, I said, that’s what they all look like. I said, Billy, I bet every one of those people has a podcast. Hey. Because we, we are, we are a type.

[01:26:36] Jeff: Oh yeah, completely.

[01:26:37] Merlin: I just send you my stuff, text me, so I can talk to you like a person. Anyways, um, before we get to the wisdom document, you’re going to the UN.

[01:26:46] Jeff: I’m going, thank you. I have been working on a project on and off, uh, which is basically telling the story of a single day in Gaza in 1956 after the Israelis had invaded and occupied it in order to clear out [01:27:00] the fedayeen that were living among the, it’s a very familiar, Story. Um, but for reasons I won’t get into here at this point, uh, I am focused on this specific day.

[01:27:09] Jeff: I’m looking for a specific list of the dead, and I have identified sort of a chain of possession, um, and have identified kind of the 25 boxes that might have this at the UN Archives, right? Um, but I also

[01:27:23] Merlin: this is exciting.

[01:27:24] Jeff: But I also had found, um, reference to these documents that are like verbatim minutes that are really relevant to what I was trying to do among the Secretary General and a few other people in 1956.

[01:27:35] Jeff: And so when the archives sent them to me, I opened them up, and the words, the words

[01:27:40] Merlin: Who’s the Secretary General in 56? Is that Dag Hammershulge?

[01:27:44] Jeff: yeah,

[01:27:45] Merlin: was the guy forever, right?

[01:27:46] Jeff: oh, yeah, Forever, good guy, uh, I mean, I, you know, I never met him. Uh, but, so, okay, so, the, the, this very important, like, previously strictly confidential verbatim meeting notes from 1956 I think are very important to what I’m [01:28:00] doing, but the, the text is so fuzzy that I can’t read it.

[01:28:03] Jeff: I write back, I’m like, is there any chance you have some better, no, that’s all we have, and I couldn’t do it. But I put it in, I tried to OCR

[01:28:09] Merlin: this like that Dell commercial with the

[01:28:12] Jeff: So I took, I don’t know what that is, but I took a

[01:28:14] Merlin: Was it able to figure it out for you?

[01:28:16] Jeff: took a screenshot, I put it into ChatGPT, I said transcribe this for me, and it was perfect because I could then go back and kind of

[01:28:23] Merlin: Isn’t that awesome and upsetting at the same time?

[01:28:26] Jeff: And so now this invisible

[01:28:28] Merlin: It’s better than you, Jeff. It’s better than

[01:28:30] Jeff: Or better than me, it’s way better than me. I mean, that’s

[01:28:32] Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s just something you live with, yeah.

[01:28:34] Jeff: to me all the

[01:28:35] Merlin: Yeah, yeah, I know, I know.

[01:28:36] The Wisdom Project

[01:28:36] Jeff: All right, Wisdom Project. So give me the, just for the listeners, describe the Wisdom Project as briefly as you want.

[01:28:45] Merlin: Well, with some projects, uh, um, the way I remember it, and this may not be right, I’m so glad the train’s back, it started out as a challenge on Dubai Friday, which was to use, um, what’s that app? Alex’s Gay Bones for Obsidian. It might have started with that, to use the Obsidian app, and it’s a text based app, [01:29:00] and it’s really cool.

[01:29:00] Merlin: But anyway, I, and, and, and. I don’t know. And I’m going, I’m going something with Alex and me. Um, I really, I’m very into the buildings and Alex is obsessed with the scaffolding. Sometimes I’m not sure what Alex makes with all of their tools, but I’m very into the what you can make with it stuff. That’s my, I really love, I mean I like the stuff too, but I was like, Oh actually this kind of dovetails with an idea I’ve had for a while, which is like, to start writing down, The point is, the Wisdom Project is to write down, uh, stuff it took me too long to learn in life that I would consider good advice that is just hard one and the part that gets missed in this is it’s not me necessarily haranguing strangers about how to act, it’s more of like, here’s stuff it took me too long to realize, sometimes very painfully, um, and it’s, uh, you know, just a bunch of those, like 500 some bullets, um, And then, you know, part of the reason it continues to be successful for me is that I’ve never tried to do anything with it.

[01:29:57] Merlin: I, I’ve only ever just added a new bullet [01:30:00] and the occasional horizontal rule for visual interest. But, uh, you know, I’ll sometimes tweak previous things. I’ll add more bullets to the beginning. I’ll work on, but like I deliberately have avoided turning it into anything because I love that it’s, it’s just a, now it’s a repo.

[01:30:15] Merlin: For the longest time, the problem is with a repo you can turn off comments, you can’t turn off comments on a, on a gist, so I had to make it a repo. Actually, you may not be aware, the bowling balls were actually invented in Shut up, shut

[01:30:26] Jeff: Oh, no. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:30:27] Merlin: So anyway, and that’s what I do, and so, um, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s done as it is, the whole idea was just to like, have that be a thing, and, um, that’s the wisdom, I’m very proud of it.

[01:30:35] Merlin: Um, because I can like, you know, it’s like St. Crispin’s Day, which is around this time of year. I can strip my sleeve and show my scars and say that I was there that fought upon St. Crispin’s Day. These are all the things that were, these are a lot of the things that were difficult for me. It’s a fun writing exercise.

[01:30:49] Merlin: I love to write. I love to write in this style and um, I like wordplay and so it’s one of those things where you could, it could be just a bathroom book. It could be, it’s pretty deep in a lot of [01:31:00] ways if you actually read it though.

[01:31:01] Jeff: Well, and that’s, okay. So that gets me to my question about it. So I’ve, I’ve listened to you on your podcast for a very, very long time. And, and I know that this kind of warmth and, and, and wisdom and thoughtfulness is something that arises in all of those podcasts. I have observed, maybe with the exception of Back to Work, that, and I hope it’s okay for me to say this.

[01:31:22] Jeff: I have observed that there, there are times in some of those other podcasts, less so with Alex I would say, where when you get into the mode that is represented by the Wisdom Project, you can kind of ricochet off of it quickly. Um, no one is interested in this, I don’t, you know, that kind of thing, right?

[01:31:37] Jeff: Which is all fine,

[01:31:38] Merlin: It’s a it’s a lot to ask of

[01:31:39] Jeff: you’re in these,

[01:31:40] Merlin: It really is It’s a lot to ask people to even like even consider like looking at it And also it’s just like this is this is such a thing where a guy gets old and then has a vanity press book A memoir or something and it’s like but the thing is I I don’t know.

[01:31:55] Merlin: I I yeah, I do bounce off it pretty fast I’m not embarrassed of it. I’m deeply proud of [01:32:00] it It’s just I can’t find people who are as into that stuff as I

[01:32:02] Jeff: no, I think you’re

[01:32:03] Merlin: but it won’t stop me

[01:32:04] Jeff: the sense it’s context. So here’s, here’s what I, I loved so much when this came out was that this is a part of you I love when you go into this in any podcast, I’m always that

[01:32:15] Merlin: You mean like when I’m when I’m when I’m nice and I’m sincere and I’m

[01:32:18] Jeff: no, I love it all,

[01:32:19] Merlin: how I actually am in life?

[01:32:21] Jeff: No, I love it all.

[01:32:22] Jeff: Um, but the point

[01:32:23] Merlin: sound, fart sound.

[01:32:24] Jeff: Not knowing you, I, when I read that, I thought, this is interesting. Something, something worked for Merlin that Merlin felt like he could not only do this thing, but call it the Wisdom Project and, and, and live with it and live around it, talk about it, reference it all the time, which I think is really amazing.

[01:32:43] Jeff: And I’m curious, and I hope I’m not being presumptuous, but when I use the example of having ChatGPT say back to me things that I kind of wasn’t allowing myself to do. to like acknowledge out loud. I’m wondering if there was something in you that had to [01:33:00] change or that at some moment where you’re like, I can do this.

[01:33:02] Jeff: And here it is. And I’m going to say it. I’m going to say Wisdom Project all the time, right? Like or the document, which is how you refer to it sometimes. But was there something? Was there some

[01:33:11] Merlin: a really good question. Yeah. I think it’s a I think it’s a It’s a great question for at least for me. It’s a great question that I could talk about quite a lot because There’s a, hmm, this is too big to talk about, but I think this might actually be a line in the document. Start acting like your life matters.

[01:33:32] Merlin: Do you notice how I like, I really like snuck it in, like in the middle of something else? If I made that first, nobody would keep reading.

[01:33:38] Jeff: right, right, right.

[01:33:39] Merlin: The first, the first one is, uh, sometimes an email is just a way to say I love you. Because you can read that in several ways and most people will not fully understand because they, Have no time to think about these things.

[01:33:50] Merlin: Sometimes an email is just a way to say I love you. Okay, cool. Thanks. What’s the next one? Okay, but like, did you ever really think about that? Like when you get annoyed in an email? Did you ever really think that maybe that’s somebody saying I love you, [01:34:00] just in a way you hadn’t expected? Oh, okay, whatever.

[01:34:03] Merlin: Yeah, but like, did you really think about it? Because did you ever, did you ever think about how sometimes you write emails to people because you love them? And maybe there’s a different way you could choose. There’s so many ways you can look at, and to me anyway, the reason I found all these things so absorbing, it’s not my wisdom, it’s what the world had to fucking show me.

[01:34:18] Merlin: I just made it into words that are readable for people who can fucking read. It’s, in some ways, it’s kind of like the culmination of anything like A Life’s Work that I’ve ever had, um, in, in a weird way, and it’s, it’s so close to who I would like to be that it gets difficult sometimes.

[01:34:37] Jeff: Yeah.

[01:34:38] Merlin: because it is very vulnerable, and it’s not, it’s not all just fart jokes.

[01:34:41] Merlin: I mean, there’s some jokes in there. For people who can actually fucking read, you’ll see a couple references to I Think You Should Leave that most people wouldn’t notice. There’s several little things like that. You can use too small a

[01:34:51] Jeff: No, I can’t drive!

[01:34:53] Merlin: can’t drive!

[01:34:55] Jeff: Not everybody can do everything! Sorry, sorry,

[01:34:57] Merlin: you’ve got the mud pie, and then you use too small a slice.[01:35:00]

[01:35:00] Jeff: sorry, go ahead.

[01:35:01] Merlin: But, just, don’t, don’t touch the receipt! Um, no, but like, um, it takes, This is, boy, this is, Jeff, this is the most important moment in the entire history of podcasting for me, because it all comes together in this one thing. This is the chicken problem. This is the wisdom document. This is so many of these different fucking things where It can be very, the things, the things that make you who you think you are, the things that you treasure, all these different things, very difficult to talk about with people.

[01:35:34] Merlin: It’s the ultimate kind of vulnerability in some ways. And but it also takes a lot of, um, you have to believe that your life is worth living on some level. I’m not, I don’t mean that as a pep talk or as a, like, cheerleading or anything. But like, you also, but like, and then the ultimate temerity is to say that the things that I think are worth writing down and the things I write down are worth editing.

[01:35:56] Merlin: The things that I think are worth editing are worth collecting. [01:36:00] The things that I think are worth collecting are worth going back to and improving. The things that are worth improving are worth sharing. There’s this cascade of apparent self involvement that is instead the thing that I would wish upon every person, which is that you care very intensely about the things that matter a lot to you.

[01:36:16] Merlin: And then you spend less time feeling distracted. By the things that you really know in your heart are not the good things in life and this, this, that could be that essay better that I read. That could be, there’s all kinds of different ways you can look at this, at least from my POV and the way that it’s received is something I’m touchy about because it’s a lot to say to somebody to like, oh yeah, that guy who just couldn’t be bothered to update his blog anymore is writing self-help again.

[01:36:42] Merlin: It’s like, well, don’t. But I don’t mean it that way. The first bullet in the list is the true one that mustn’t be missed. I hope you read it as a fun, breezy thing that makes me sound like a confident person who’s read a lot of Kurt Vonnegut. I hope you enjoy that. I really super do. And there are some things in there where like, but like, the, what it took me to put those words [01:37:00] together in that order took so much more work.

[01:37:03] Merlin: Personal effort, and it wasn’t personal effort this month, it wasn’t even that much personal effort last year, it was personal effort when I was 11 and couldn’t figure out why girls weren’t nicer to me. Like, I could place almost every single one of these things, from the most trivial, like, kind of like put your keys in a bowl shit, life hack stuff.

[01:37:29] Merlin: All the way down to my favorite one, which is about what it means when you have a kid and the kid changes. That’s my favorite one on the list, which I will look for right now. But it’s um, I feel very vulnerable about it. I don’t, touchy’s the wrong word for it, but I, I do love it a lot. What I don’t apologize for is that the project exists and I love doing it, and that it will never be done.

[01:37:50] Merlin: The whole point of this is that this be an ongoing thing. I mean if I only ever, if I never add another one, I mean, God, go, go get it. You can go make it in EPUB. It’s easy enough. Um, But, it [01:38:00] means a lot to me and I don’t really have a way to talk about that stuff because it’s not on brand for my usual stuff.

[01:38:06] Jeff: Yeah, yeah. Oh, it’s beautiful. I love it. And I,

[01:38:09] Merlin: Do you? Well, what, what, what are the other ones you like?

[01:38:13] Jeff: Oh my god, what are the ones I like? I’d have to pull it up. I’ve read them aloud to my wife at

[01:38:17] Merlin: I think, I think it’s useful and there’s a thing I’ve always done when I’m editing. Or I don’t know, is there a better word than that when I’m rewriting, another way to put it, if you don’t like the word editing? Um, which is like I, I,

[01:38:27] Jeff: word for me.

[01:38:28] Merlin: Well, like when I record songs, I always listen all the way through, from the beginning to the end.

[01:38:31] Merlin: Sometimes I’ll stop and go back, but I always end up going back to the beginning. Like, if, and this is why it really helps to like the things that you write. If you don’t like the things you write, you’re probably not going to become a very good writer, but you’ll get to walk around and go like, oh, of course, I never look at my own stuff.

[01:38:44] Merlin: Well, wow, it must suck. I laugh at my own jokes all the time, that’s how I know they’re good. Can I read you my favorite one?

[01:38:49] Jeff: Yep,

[01:38:50] Merlin: Your kids are not little versions of you. They’re little versions of themselves. So don’t be sad or alarmed whenever they are becoming something different from you. Because they will become [01:39:00] lots of things that are different from you, and that’s arguably the whole point.

[01:39:04] Merlin: It is inarguably a thing that you need to cheerfully celebrate and support.

[01:39:08] Jeff: Oh, it’s

[01:39:09] Merlin: Now, why did I say that? Because I grew up, everybody grew up, I think, implicitly believing that a little, every kid is a little version of their parents. Oh, that’s, that’s real deep, man. Yeah, but did you really fucking think about it?

[01:39:22] Merlin: Did you ever think about how much shit you’ve had to carry around your entire life? Maybe not because of your parents, certainly because of your parents, but maybe just because of other people who had these expectations that you’re a little version of your parents. You have the same values with them.

[01:39:33] Merlin: You have the same concerns, the same anxieties, the same aspirations. You’re a little version of your parents and you’re doing it wrong. What if you accepted from the beginning that a baby’s just a cute pre adult and it’s your job to get the fuck out of the way and help them become the person that they are?

[01:39:51] Merlin: That they are, or the person that they need to become, or sometimes, admittedly, the person they need to not be anymore, and you need to help when you can, but you need to stay out of [01:40:00] the way, and one way of staying out of the way is to stop looking at them as little versions of you. Because do you want, are you a little version of your dad?

[01:40:07] Merlin: Are you a little version of your mom? How do you feel about that?

[01:40:09] Jeff: Yeah.

[01:40:10] Merlin: It’s very inhumane, and like, I love that one though, because that’s one of the ones where like, there’s so many levels to that for me. Cause, no matter what the situation, kids are full of surprises. Some kids are full of more surprises than others.

[01:40:23] Jeff: But

[01:40:23] Merlin: And that’s the greatest thing in the world to me, I wouldn’t trade a single piece of it. And getting to the point where I could type that, rewrite it, and get it to where it’s my favorite one in here, represents a lot of progression from where I was in Cincinnati in say 1975.

[01:40:36] Jeff: Yeah.

[01:40:37] Merlin: It means a lot to me, Jeff. It honestly does.

[01:40:39] Merlin: I have nowhere to discuss it, but it means a lot to me.

[01:40:41] Jeff: Yeah, I know. That’s great. I love it. I’m scanning through it now and it’s just like, yeah, it’s, and I did wonder, I mean, how much time or how much it took to order it,

[01:40:50] Merlin: That’s the beauty. Well, I very, sometimes I’ll change them because you can’t have two that are too close together. There’s some business, as we say in programming, some business logic to how I would want to turn this into something more [01:41:00] automatable. But if there’s anything that’s made this successful, it’s the fact that I have not been distracted by saying, I wonder if I should put this in Describener or,

[01:41:08] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:41:10] Merlin: or, or SQLite or whatever.

[01:41:12] Merlin: It’s like, if somebody else wants to build something that’ll turn this into like an EPUB, I mean, I’ve done, You can go look at the source code. If you go into the repo, you can find where I’ve had automation stuff inside of VS Code to generate EPUBs. But my near term goal is to have this generate an EPUB every time there’s an update so people could always get, but I don’t know how to do that and I don’t want to learn how to do that.

[01:41:34] Merlin: I could learn to do that, but maybe this needs to go in the document, Jeff, is like the document exists because I stopped trying to do other shit with it. Which gets to you another point of wisdom, which is like,

[01:41:44] Jeff: God, that’s its own. Yeah.

[01:41:46] Merlin: do better. People tend to screw up their next thing because they’re not paying careful attention to their current thing.

[01:41:52] Merlin: Yeah. Ask me how I know that, like how I’ve learned that 60 different ways and I still follow [01:42:00] shiny objects when I get to the difficult part of a project, unless I catch myself and I go, remember you wrote that thing down? You know how to do this once your party’s been seated. Always order a large pepperoni pizza for the table.

[01:42:11] Jeff: John Roderick.

[01:42:12] Merlin: Roderick. Sometimes

[01:42:15] Jeff: piece of wisdom. Very practical.

[01:42:17] Merlin: have a good run. I like this one. Throw out all shitty scissors. Bring

[01:42:21] Jeff: Oh, I was just going to read that one to you.

[01:42:23] Merlin: Well, what do you do? Well, right here, you might have heard this during this. This is a Japanese company called Kai, K A I. And they make, I learned about this from Marco, they’re the deadliest, sharpest scissors in the world, and you will, you will personally mangle every, you will destroy, with extreme prejudice, every other pair of scissors you’ve got.

[01:42:41] Merlin: You only need one good pair. Um, let’s see, bring in your neighbor’s trash cans. Talk to your pets and remind them that they’re not so bad, considering. Close the door behind you. Except, always hold the door. Say, I thank you, and mean it. Try to fix more things than you break, and calm your mind. Everybody’s doing, people hate this one, everybody’s [01:43:00] doing the best they can each day, even though what they can do is rarely enough.

[01:43:03] Jeff: Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Well, it’s a great project,

[01:43:07] Merlin: Thank you, man, and thank you, thank you for having me on your program.

[01:43:09] Jeff: Thank you for doing this, Merlin. It’s been really fantastic. Goodbye, everybody. Get some sleep.

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Join Christina, Brett, and Jeff as they embark on a chaotic journey exploring everything from Marjorie Taylor Greene’s concerning weather tweets to Asheville’s artsy past drowning in climate disaster. Dive into debates over Joker 2, Deadpool’s wacky showdown with Wolverine, and ponder corporate charity tactics. Christina’s Waymo love affair, Jeff’s garage guru tales, and despair over old-school Marvel flicks. Add a sprinkle of WordPress scandal, a walkthrough of the PropEdit plist wizardry, plus some cheeky banter about sleep, weather, and world takeover plans. What an epic ride!

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Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter.

ISIS Pickup Lines

[00:00:00] Introduction and Greetings

[00:00:00] Christina: You’re listening to Overtired. That’s right. We’re back with another episode. I’m Christina Warren joined as always by Brett Terpstra and Jeff Severins Gunzel. How’s it going guys?

[00:00:15] Brett: Really good.

[00:00:16] Jeff: Good.

[00:00:16] Brett: It’s like Sunday. Hey Jeff, thanks that last episode with Merlin, that was great.

[00:00:21] Christina: That was

[00:00:21] Jeff: You’re very, very welcome. It was very fun. We, we, I made a Spotify playlist because so many songs were either mentioned or sung and it was a total of 36 songs.

[00:00:31] Brett: Oh, put, give, put that in the show notes.

[00:00:34] Jeff: I will. I will. Um, yeah. All right. I’m excited to be with you.

[00:00:41] Brett: Yeah, we’re all excited.

[00:00:43] Jeff: Let’s do this.

[00:00:44] Weather and Asheville Crisis Discussion

[00:00:44] Jeff: a beautiful, I know, who wants to talk about the weather when you’re not even gonna listen to this the day we recorded it, but it is a beautiful, beautiful day out, and I have not experienced a beautiful, beautiful day, by my standards, in some time.

[00:00:57] Brett: It’s like 65 degrees here, [00:01:00] what do you got?

[00:01:00] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, same, same up here, up north, up north on the Mississippi.

[00:01:04] Brett: Meanwhile, holy shit, have you guys seen videos out of like Asheville?

[00:01:08] Christina: I about to say, I was like, of whether it’s awful and like there’s, it sucks. Um, I, I know some people there are kind of in that area and, um, you know, I know that they’re doing their best to get. Uh, aid to the region and all that, but Jesus Christ, like it is just really, really bad.

[00:01:30] Brett: I sent multiple hundreds of dollars to a mutual aid fund, uh, that was going directly to people on the ground.

[00:01:38] Christina: Yeah, I, I did too. Um, I used, um, what was it? Samaritan’s Purse because I’ve, I’ve heard from people on the ground that they are actually going out there and getting stuff directly to people. Um, so it’s, it’s hard to vet those organizations, but, but it was important for me to find one that’s like, if you can anyway, that’s, you know, 5013C because then you could do employer matching. [00:02:00] So, so

[00:02:00] Brett: Oh yeah, I should, I should do that. I should, cause I bet you Oracle has a,

[00:02:05] Christina: I’m sure they

[00:02:06] Brett: something, cause they have like a whole search engine for like things you can donate to that they’ll match.

[00:02:10] Christina: Exactly. It’s probably Benevity. That’s what most of the corporations use, but

[00:02:14] Brett: I will, I will double up. I will gladly donate it again.

[00:02:18] Christina: Yeah, that’s what I did. I, I, well, yeah, all, all you usually have to do is like find your receipt and they’ll match. Um, I actually donated weirdly. I usually go directly through the site, but in this case, like I went through the portal because I gave them 500 bucks and I was like, you know what?

[00:02:33] Take it out of my paycheck because it’ll also count for me. Cause like, this is our giving month, like October. And I

[00:02:37] Brett: Oh yeah.

[00:02:38] Christina: I was like, perfect timing, but this way it’ll, you know, whatever. And then, um, you know, so basically I was able to give them a thousand dollars, which is great. My favorite is when, and, and this is just a pro tip for anybody out there who’s ever wanting to donate to stuff.

[00:02:52] If you’re a corporation, which if you work at a large place, um, There’s a, if it, at least in the United States, there’s a good [00:03:00] chance that for tax reasons, if nothing else, that they will do, you know, um, employee matches. So check into that, but obviously the size of the company that you work at, you know, not guaranteed.

[00:03:10] But if you work at a place with an employee match during some giving months, which are usually like October, November, um, sometimes even December, um, some organizations will also have their own matches that will be put up by. other, you know, like benefactor, other people or whatnot. And you can like basically, essentially get a triple match out of that.

[00:03:32] So like the Internet Archive and the EFF, both of them have in the past had, um, match periods where they’re like, Hey, if you donate, you know, 500 to us, we’ll We’ll get a thousand. The way that that works is that you can’t do the quadruple match where, you know, the thousand would become two, but you can have like your 500 become 500 from your employer.

[00:03:55] And then also get the 500 from, you know, whoever is doing the matches. So it can go [00:04:00] 1500. So those are just pro tip out there. Be on the lookout for things like that. Cause That way you can really benefit, like, multiply the amount of money going to, um, organizations you care about.

[00:04:12] Brett: This year when I was in Asheville, I, we, we started before we left, we started immediately making plans for our next trip

[00:04:21] Christina: Oh, that’s right. Cause you guys were just there.

[00:04:23] Brett: Yeah. Just in March or don’t know. May, I think. Um, yeah, I’m like, we’re not gonna build a C Asheville again like that for a decade. Um, it’s gonna take the arts district just completely washed away.

[00:04:40] And, I mean, death count, Is horrible and seeing that much, uh, beautiful, artistic, um, like communal property just washed away is. It’s kind of devastating.

[00:04:57] Christina: It’s completely devastating. And it, and it’s, [00:05:00] I don’t know, like a lot of people like to discount climate change and you know what I mean? I’m sorry. I’m like, you see things like this that happen. You’re like, yeah. Like, okay, some of this might be inevitable regardless of what we were doing to our planet, but not.

[00:05:15] Yeah. Not this much, right? Like it had gone from, you know, like they’d, you know, knew a storm was coming and then it changed like so fast into, into hitting them. And then just because of where it’s located and, and how high up it is, just devastating. Just absolutely awful.

[00:05:31] Brett: I have a friend who’s worried about their son, um, because after the news hit about this, he started going on about weaponized weather.

[00:05:43] Jeff: Oh boy.

[00:05:44] Christina: Oh,

[00:05:44] Brett: was like, yeah, I’d be worried

[00:05:45] Jeff: Marjorie Taylor Greene just tweeted, they can’t control the weather. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:50] Christina: Jesus. Fuck off,

[00:05:51] Brett: you serious? Like for real?

[00:05:53] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:05:54] Brett: I thought that was a joke. Oh my

[00:05:56] Christina: know if it was or not. And

[00:05:58] Jeff: I thought it was serious. [00:06:00] I’ll go look it up. So, it’s true.

[00:06:03] Christina: she was not joking, be very

[00:06:04] Jeff: Either way, it’s true. Either way, said it.

[00:06:07] Christina: yeah, to be clear, I’m sure that she was not joking, I’m saying, like, I wasn’t sure if you were joking, not, I was like, I was like, I bet he’s serious, because that does seem like the sort of insane shit she would say,

[00:06:18] Jeff: Yes.

[00:06:19] Brett: Is she relevant anymore?

[00:06:22] Christina: I mean, she’s still a congresswoman, but, after

[00:06:25] Brett: hear about her at the rate I used to. I it’s election season, all the news is diverted.

[00:06:31] Christina: exactly. Like she’s definitely going to win her seat. Lauren Boebert might lose hers. Um, and, uh, you know, she’s the other crazy who got in the, the cunt fight. Um, like, like, like, like, like my turn of phrase there.

[00:06:45] Jeff: Sounds

[00:06:45] Brett: don’t get it.

[00:06:46] Christina: Uh, because, because, um, one of them called the other one a cunt. Um, on, on, on, on the, um, on the floor of Congress.

[00:06:56] Brett: This what we’ve become.

[00:06:58] Christina: It really is. So yeah.[00:07:00]

[00:07:01] Brett: Uh, I bet C SPAN had a blast with that. All right.

[00:07:06] Mental Health Check-In

[00:07:06] Brett: So, mental health check in. Um, how you guys doing? Jeff, you want to tell us how you’re doing?

[00:07:12] Jeff: Um, sure. I, uh, I’m doing good. I had I spent all morning in my Workshop, which I don’t always get to do. And, um, and, uh, and I’ve been perpetually cleaning it out for years. Um, sometimes I feel like all I do is go in and move things around and don’t actually get to do projects, but, um, it’s clean enough now that I can kind of go in and I was, I started a daunting project, which is, um, sort of refurbishing a one ton, hundred year old lathe for machining metal that can’t even be moved an inch without an engine lift.

[00:07:50] Christina: Jesus.

[00:07:51] Jeff: and, uh, it’s a terrifying tool in the first place. And so taking it apart, in little pieces and cleaning up those pieces and putting them [00:08:00] back is a little nerve wracking to like, what will this whole thing be when it’s done? Because it is, you know, I mean, like, for people that don’t, like, here’s a way of kind of really, and I’m getting to the mental health part, but like, a lathe, a metal lathe is like a tank because it’s, it’s made to carve metal, right?

[00:08:16] Like, essentially. And, and so you don’t want like, um, screws that aren’t quite right. Screwed in right when you’re carving metal. Um, but I think I trust myself. Uh, anyway, so there was a point once years ago when my wife walked into the garage workshop when I was in there and she was like, you know, there’s no other time that you are this landed.

[00:08:40] And, and it is true. I like, I feel so completely landed when I am surrounded by especially old tools and, uh, and, and have an amazing local community radio station on. And I have like a two car, like a two garage door garage in my old South Minneapolis home that [00:09:00] actually faces towards the house and away from the alley.

[00:09:02] So I have this like kind of compound and I can just open up these two garage doors and I have

[00:09:07] Brett: How do you,

[00:09:08] Jeff: Workshop in there. And it’s like, it’s unbelievable. It’s like,

[00:09:11] Brett: do you get a car into that garage?

[00:09:14] Jeff: we don’t put cars in the garage. Cause there’s a, there’s a one ton, a hundred year old lathe in there. Um, the thing is like, the thing is this garage is so funny.

[00:09:23] Like, um, I am totally doing the Tim Allen total like thing of taking over a garage. But like. You can’t actually get a car in there, right? And so it just works out in my favor.

[00:09:36] Brett: There you go.

[00:09:38] Jeff: But anyway, it’s, uh, I truly, I mean, it’s like there is a, it’s better than any of my medications. I just, it’s so calming.

[00:09:47] Brett: I like this term, landed. Um,

[00:09:49] Jeff: I liked that term too.

[00:09:52] Brett: tell me more.

[00:09:53] Jeff: Um, sorry, turning

[00:09:56] Brett: walked away.

[00:09:56] Jeff: It’s just, you know what, I’m going to go back to workshop. [00:10:00] Um, landed like, um, just, uh, light, um, on my feet behind my eyes. Uh, and, and just, I mean, for me internally, I can’t really say exactly how it projects out and what made her say that other than what I understand about the internal feeling is like totally at peace, just like totally, totally at peace.

[00:10:22] Um, and, and that’s whether I’m building something or just You know, schlubbing around.

[00:10:29] Brett: Nice. Alright.

[00:10:30] Jeff: yeah, it’s wonderful. And so anyway, and this is the time of year when it’s really great, because we’re just leaving the part of the year when it’s too hot to go out there and be in a garage. It’s like 90 degrees or something, and it’s insulated, so it just holds the heat usually.

[00:10:43] Um, so yeah, it’s beautiful.

[00:10:46] Brett: Awesome. Hey, Christina. How are you?

[00:10:50] Christina: I’m pretty good. Um, I, uh, not too much to kind of update. I’ve been under the gun with some work stuff. So I’m trying to [00:11:00] kind of get a bunch of things done that way, GitHub universes in a few weeks. And so kind of coming under the gun with that. So I’m a little stressed about trying to get all my work things done, but other than that, uh, pretty good, pretty good.

[00:11:11] I went to San Francisco for like a day and a, for like two days this week, um, for OpenAI’s dev day. That was pretty fun. Um, And, uh, yeah, just, oh, I saw Megalopolis, uh, which was terrible as, uh, as it’s been rumored, um, but I still think probably better, at least more fun to watch than Joker 2, not real sure, um,

[00:11:34] Jeff: I’m bummed about both of these being apparently not great.

[00:11:37] Christina: I mean, same, but, but, I mean, Joker 2, I think we, look, what, did, it did not need a sequel, and the fact that it got one, and, and then the fact that, like, apparently it’s a courtroom drama, mostly, which is

[00:11:51] Jeff: a musical.

[00:11:52] Christina: and a musical, but then the musical, it’s like, It’s like the American songbook.

[00:11:56] Like, it could not be more [00:12:00] poorly aligned for its target audience and target demographic, which is, I mean, I kind of appreciate the troll in that. But anyway, I mention these things because these movies make me happy and that does help my mental health.

[00:12:13] Jeff: Nice.

[00:12:14] Brett: haven’t seen a good movie in a while. I feel, no, I feel like I loved the last movie I saw, but my memory is such that I don’t remember what the last movie I saw was.

[00:12:25] Jeff: I had a good run, like a month ago, I watched I think five different, like, noirs from the 40s and 50s, and

[00:12:31] Christina: Oh, hell yeah. I

[00:12:32] Jeff: so awesome.

[00:12:35] Brett: Oh, it’s like, there’s something like twinkling in my memory that I found on I don’t remember. I did, I did enjoy the Deadpool Wolverine movie.

[00:12:48] Christina: did two actually. That was one that I was, um, I was not expecting to enjoy that the way that I did. Um, it was very, very funny. It was, um, the [00:13:00] music, uh, the needle drops were great. Um, it was overly indulgent, but it worked. And then what I,

[00:13:05] Brett: Totally.

[00:13:06] Christina: well, what I really appreciated about it and, and like, cause I, I’ve seen like all the Deadpool films now, but I didn’t realize until I watched that movie that I also, because I guess it was the 2000s and this was probably my heaviest, you know, movie going experience, especially going in the theater, because I would literally go every week, um, and sometimes multiple times a week, um, sometimes multiple times a day, um, but, um, I, I think I’ve seen basically it.

[00:13:33] Every one of the Fox, you know, like, um, uh, Marvel films, um, for, for better or worse. And in most cases, let’s be very clear, it was for worse because the Fox Marvel films were not good, right? So for, for people who don’t know, those were the, the X Men series. Fox had the rights to, to those, and they had the rights to, uh, Daredevil and, uh, whatever the fucking

[00:13:54] Brett: Green Lantern? Was that, was Green Lantern? Yeah.[00:14:00]

[00:14:01] Christina: Ryan met and cheated on their respective partners together, and now they’re married.

[00:14:06] Hey, look, you know what? No shade, because honestly that one worked out.

[00:14:10] Jeff: That’s showbiz!

[00:14:11] Christina: mean, look, Daredevil is where Jennifer Garner and Matt Ben Affleck met and cheated on their respective partners, or at least she cheated on hers. I don’t know if he was with anybody. And then whatever the Daredevil sequel was, which I, Elektra.

[00:14:25] I don’t It was bad. Um, and, uh, not to mention, um, you know, obviously like Logan being kind of like the highlight and, um, uh, both attempts at, uh, at the Fantastic Four films, like those were all Fox. And so, um, but what was kind of great about, um, uh, Deadpool, um, uh, versus Wolverine is that in many ways, you know, it was kind of a continuation of kind of the, the Deadpool kind of trope, whatnot, but it was also like a love letter, to those Fox films,

[00:14:54] Brett: Totally.

[00:14:55] Christina: which I really appreciated.

[00:14:57] Like the, this isn’t a spoiler for anything, but like the, the final sequence, [00:15:00] like during the credits, they like show a lot of the behind the scenes footage basically from like the year 2000, like onward of, you know, the cast and crew from those films, which is fucking crazy because you see like the mini DV fucking video that they’re using, you know, to capture the behind the scenes stuff.

[00:15:16] And like, everybody looks so young and like, you know, it’s just. I don’t know. I, I, I very much appreciated that because nobody, including myself, as I just like went on a rant, gives the Fox films any love because you shouldn’t. Almost all of them are terrible. Um, but, um, it also, cause the Fox studio doesn’t exist the way that it did.

[00:15:35] They now all have to be kind of Marvel fied and, or, you know, Disney fied and all that. And I thought it was really, uh, it was very nice and, and kind of classy, you know, to kind of give all those, those films, um, both in the story and then in the, you know, Post credit stuff. A wrap up. thought it was nice.

[00:15:53] Brett: So, someone sent me, and it might have been one of you two, I’ve forgotten, but there was, uh, there [00:16:00] is an animator for Bob’s Burgers that is now a producer of Bob’s Burgers, but still does, like, um, fan, fan art. Uh, like animations of like the characters from Bob’s Burgers, and, and he did one that was the youngest girl, whose name I’m blanking on, um, in a, Louise.

[00:16:24] Louise in a paper plate Deadpool mask doing the Backstreet Boys dance almost its entirety just like the movie.

[00:16:34] Christina: It was NSYNC. It was NSYNC,

[00:16:35] Brett: NSYNC, I’m so sorry. How could I ever confuse Backstreet Boys and with 98 Degrees? Like it just, how do you,

[00:16:44] Christina: Well, here’s the thing. You actually

[00:16:47] Degrees for either of them, but Backstreet and NSYNC absolutely make sense to confuse because literally NSYNC was created to be the backup band for Backstreet I’m not joking. They like, they like, yeah, so, so it’s the [00:17:00] same exact management team, same exact thing.

[00:17:02] You start at them and then they lied to Backstreet Boys, like didn’t even let them know that they were working on this other group too. And, and then all of a sudden Backstreet Boys are burnt out and can’t do this Disney special and NSYNC are like, yeah, we’ll do it. And they become like very famous.

[00:17:18] Jeff: Yes. I love

[00:17:21] Christina: there, there are two great documentaries if anybody wants to get into this stuff. One is called The Boy Band Con, which I, I, I’m sorry to give him credit for this because he’s my least, well, no, that’s not true. He’s my probably third least favorite, but he’s definitely not in the top tier of favorites, but like, um, Lance Bass produced it and he actually did a good job.

[00:17:37] And it’s a documentary about Lou Pearlman who, um, died, but, but he was a famous, um, purveyor of Ponzi schemes and other stuff. And it really kind of goes into. The machine and how hard all of them worked and how much, how little money they made until they, they sued him. Um, and that’s on YouTube. It was a YouTube original.

[00:17:56] And then Netflix put out a three part series [00:18:00] also about Lou Perlman, which is also pretty good. And then there is a great book called The Boy Band Con, um, about Lou Perlman, um, that came out like 15 years ago. So anyway,

[00:18:13] Brett: drop those in the show

[00:18:14] Christina: I will.

[00:18:15] Brett: cause I’ll never read those. I don’t have the attention span to care,

[00:18:19] Christina: no, but it was super fascinating because the guy that created both of those bands, like, he was, until Bernie Madoff, he was the purveyor of, like, the largest Ponzi scheme history.

[00:18:30] Brett: Yeah, no, that’s, that’s interesting. I, uh, I just have a backlog of nonfiction that.

[00:18:35] Christina: Oh yeah, no, and I’m not saying should read it, I’m saying that this is like an actually, it’s like a notable weird kind of thing because you wouldn’t think, oh yeah, the boy band guy, You know, who, there was also some questions about, um, his, uh, sexual interest in the boys, which was not great, and some of the things that he, maybe, things there, but the, the thing that he actually went to jail for, and died in jail for, was the [00:19:00] Ponzi scheme, which was, uh, yeah,

[00:19:03] Jeff: Wow.

[00:19:04] Brett: I’m currently listening to an audiobook about a gay hornless unicorn and a gay wizard who’s in love with the prince who’s engaged to the chief knight and it is the bitchiest novel I’ve ever read. Red.

[00:19:28] Jeff: I assume is Lord of the Rings fanfiction? Hehehe.

[00:19:34] Brett: No, I really, I enjoyed, I enjoyed a book from this author and I thought, Oh, I’ll try another one. And it turned out to be just like, I picked him because he was like a queer sci fi fantasy guy. Um, and there’s not a lot of that out there. And this one just turned out to be like queer to the max. Like almost every character, there’s one, there one bisexual [00:20:00] character.

[00:20:00] Christina: Well, know, I

[00:20:01] Brett: Fluidly sexual character. Everyone else is just straight up

[00:20:05] Christina: else is just like, sort of gay. I love that. Uh, and quick correction, the book was called The Hit Charade. BoybandCon is the documentary, but Hit Charade. Yeah, I got it in the show notes.

[00:20:15] Jeff: was the unicorn born without a

[00:20:17] Brett: No, it was, I haven’t, like he lost it at some point and he’s working to get it back. That’s like a subplot.

[00:20:23] Jeff: okay. Okay.

[00:20:24] Brett: Um, so anyway, my mental health, um, things are, things are overall pretty good. So like for almost six months, I was waking up every day at like three, 2. 30, 3 a. m. and just unable to fall back asleep. But I would go to bed early enough that that would be six to seven hours of sleep.

[00:20:44] And I kind of just was existing on that. And, uh, I had a couple of. Like, runs of bad nights, but I never felt manic, not in the way that I’ve come to know mania. And, [00:21:00] um, I was just being pretty productive and waking up early and, and it lasted way long. Like my manic episodes are like three to five days long, and this was six months long.

[00:21:12] And it finally crashed. Um, I, I was like, I don’t know if this is mania or not until it ended and I hit the depression and I was like, Oh, that was mania. And I’m just praying that the depression doesn’t last as long as the mania. Because I’m used to like five days of mania, then two weeks of depression and then a period of stability.

[00:21:35] Um, so if I have six months of mania and then I have like two years of depression, shit’s going to go bad for me. Um, but maybe the depression will be as like, hypo as the mania was. Um, but anyway, I got passed over for even a token bonus at work. Um, and, and that feels honestly like [00:22:00] So, you should get rewarded for, for doing a good job, but you should also get a token reward for existing at the company for a year.

[00:22:11] Um, and that, and you should get at least a cost of living raise. And I haven’t gotten a raise in three years, and my last bonus was piddly, but it was a token bonus. Getting nothing feels like punishment.

[00:22:28] Christina: hmm.

[00:22:28] Brett: It feels like they’re telling you you did a bad job. And I asked why I wasn’t getting a bonus, and they said it was because I had only been meets all expectations on my review.

[00:22:42] And to

[00:22:42] Jeff: Were you like, what about the point where my manager disappeared for four months? that, is that a dark, is that a dark period in reporting?

[00:22:52] Brett: Oh, it was, so I got, I was annoyed. I started shopping around, um, but after a few days of [00:23:00] being just like, fuck this, I’m bummed out. I came up with like a really good idea, um, for, to like turn my job into something I actually enjoy and also get visibility. And so I wrote, I wrote a little script, almost. An app for, uh, the Docs team at work that converted their Confluence, uh, like their compendium of Confluence documentation into, uh, like GitHub ready Markdown, and they were spending, they were spending two hours per page to do this, um, and plus like JIRA ticketing and Wrike ticketing and everything.

[00:23:46] And it was taking forever. And they were looking at six months. Uh, to do this current project and I wrote them a script and they’re done. Like they’re done. And, and this [00:24:00] didn’t show up on my review. Like I did this kind of after hours on kind of off hours. I did it for another team with no permission from my manager.

[00:24:09] I didn’t mention it on my review.

[00:24:11] Christina: shit, you should have, you still should

[00:24:12] Brett: Uh, well, so I got a letter of commendation from the team that I’m going to present to my manager and definitely include in my quarterly review and, um, yeah, I, cause I, I saved the company thousands of hours. Like when you look at this total project,

[00:24:30] Christina: No, save them thousands of hours, thousands of, you know, tens of thousands of dollars, you know, hundreds thousands if you really want to, you know, calculate it that way. Um, yeah, I’ve, and I say this as somebody who’s bad at, at doing my own reviews. Um, so I, but yet I can see the flaws. Um, that I make, uh, with others and encourage them otherwise.

[00:24:52] Yeah, something like that, whether you got permission or not, if you’ve made that sort of impact, like that’s what review things are for. It’s for bragging about [00:25:00] yourself. Nobody will ever,

[00:25:01] Brett: Well, so I

[00:25:02] Christina: no manager is ever going to look at anything, no matter what they tell you. They’re never going to be like, Oh, well, you didn’t mention these things, but I know you did them.

[00:25:10] And so I’m going to you

[00:25:12] Brett: well, and that like my first, my first manager at Oracle told me that like, it was status quo to just rate yourself three out of five across the board and then let your manager like, uh, promote you. And that worked when I had managers that were good at promoting me. But my current team leader, we don’t even have a manager anymore, but my team leader, um, is not interested in that.

[00:25:45] Um, I, I will not say anything else about him. He’s a good guy. He’s a stand up guy. Um, anyway, that’s, that’s, that’s my mental health update. We got to take a quick sponsor break. We got to squeeze this in before the [00:26:00] 30 minute mark, cause we got a note last time that 38 minutes in

[00:26:06] Jeff: See, you don’t, I don’t think you should say that. I if you’re responding to

[00:26:09] Brett: it. But I said it.

[00:26:11] I said it. And we’re, we’re, we’re following, we’re following direction.

[00:26:14] Sponsor: Pika

[00:26:14] Brett: So anyway, blogging is making a comeback and Pika is a great way to get a blog online fast. Jeff can attest to this. 20 seconds from sign up to blog post.

[00:26:25] Jeff: Yeah, wait, just, it was actually, it was amazing. I was like, all right, let me try this thing out before we go on. And I didn’t even mean, it wasn’t a test to see how quickly I could post, but literally within 20 seconds I had a post published. It was awesome.

[00:26:38] Brett: There you go. So visit pika.page/overti. That’s pka.page/overti to get blogging. Not only is PIKA a great way to start blogging, but it’s also a great way to build a personal [email protected]. You can customize your homepage and easily add pages to your. [00:27:00] The beautiful editor is great for writing your pages as well as your blog posts.

[00:27:05] And you don’t need a master’s degree to work with PICA’s simple theme and customization

[00:27:10] Jeff: Wait, that’s true, because I don’t even have a high school diploma.

[00:27:13] Brett: ha ha ha ha! With a PICA Pro plan, you can add an unlimited number of pages and blog posts to your site. And overtired listeners. Visit PICA. com. Pika. page slash Overtired to sign up, and if you decide to become a Pro member, enter the code Overtired20 to get 20 percent off your first year of Pika Pro.

[00:27:38] Yes, 20 percent off, Pika Pro’s already reasonable price, and you get unlimited pages, blog posts, guestbook entries, and the ability to add your custom domain for a truly personal website on the internet. And this is miles more affordable than Squarespace. Oh, and you have to see this guestbook feature.

[00:27:57] Guestbooks are a throwback to the, a throwback to [00:28:00] the aughts, or maybe even the 90s. Back then, people would connect by signing the guestbooks on each other’s websites. Christina remembers this.

[00:28:08] Christina: Yes.

[00:28:10] Brett: With Pika, not only can people write in your guestbook, but they can also draw you a picture. How cool is that?

[00:28:17] I’ve looked into some of the drawings on Pika’s own guestbook and there is an impressive amount of artwork people can make with this little tool. Also surprising, uh, surprisingly few dicks.

[00:28:30] Jeff: Oh, man. Okay. Oh, wait.

[00:28:34] Brett: Visit PICA. PAGE. OVERTIRED, again that’s P I K A, to give yourself a chance to experience the personal internet as it was meant to be. Again, P I K A. PAGE. OVERTIRED, and remember to enter the coupon OVERTIRED20 to get 20 percent off your first year of PICA Pro.

[00:28:56] Christina: Fantastic.

[00:28:57] On Dick Drawings

[00:28:57] Brett: us Jeff, what want to interrupt?

[00:28:59] Did it have to do [00:29:00] with

[00:29:00] Jeff: about blogging, and one is a penis item. Um, at the State Fair two years ago, they had the Ford F 150 Lightning, the electric F 150. And my wife,

[00:29:13] Brett: better than the Cybertruck even.

[00:29:17] Jeff: So my son, uh, my youngest has an amazing thing he does to Cybertrucks now. And it’s, it’s a little, it’s like, I’m a little bit like, should I let him do this? Cause he’s going to get his ass kicked. Maybe. I don’t know. Is that if he’s, if he’s on the sidewalk and a Cybertruck goes by, he just extends his arm with the thumbs down and goes, Boo! Uh, and I, I think that’s amazing. Anyway, they have like a, an app on the, like, you know, stupid computer screen in the F 150 Lightning where you can draw. And there were two boys in there that we were waiting for them to leave so we could check out the inside of this truck. Sure enough, we got in there.

[00:29:53] Dickenballs, uh, it’s just like, you couldn’t, I mean, granted, it’s also an F 150. So maybe it came, maybe it just came [00:30:00] with that. Maybe that was just like the sample art, like,

[00:30:03] Brett: Built in truck nuts. Digital

[00:30:05] Jeff: built in truck nuts. Do you know that my dad thought he invented truck nuts? He, he did actually, without knowing about the fleshy ones, he came up with this idea of hanging giant, like nuts, like, like, uh, nuts and bolts nuts.

[00:30:19] And, and he was so disappointed. Um, he also invented something that ended up being a SkyMall, uh, uh, product called, um, Crocker, which is a combination of soccer and croquet. And see, he would have never seen that. So he

[00:30:32] Brett: and that’s how your family got all their money, right?

[00:30:35] Jeff: how my family got all that public school teacher money.

[00:30:38] Um, Yeah. Okay.

[00:30:39] Blogging and Personal Writing Reflections

[00:30:39] Jeff: So anyway, here’s the thing about blogging. I, that I, I recently, um, resurrected like my ghost account just because that’s what I’m trying and Pika, maybe I’ll move to Pika. We’ll see. But like I had, I’ve started blogs over the years. I’m like, Oh, I just want to blog. I want a place to write again.

[00:30:56] And I’m, I’m divorced from the desire for any kind of audience. I [00:31:00] just want to write at this point. Um, but what I, what I realized is my need for blogging Now is I want to be able to point to something where I’ve written something longer. Specifically, I want to, um, I want to use, I want to just kind of like publish excerpts of things I wrote over the years and publish that I thought were fun parts of a story, but I actually don’t want to publish an entire story.

[00:31:22] So as an example, I put up, I did this, cover story on the Hold Steady for City Pages, the alt weekly here in like 2007 when they were like a huge band. And I had, I had known those guys forever. We came up in the same scene and, and so it was easy to just kind of talk them into letting me follow them around for an evening or afternoon.

[00:31:41] And the opening scene of the article is like the side stage before they go on at this pretty big theater. Um, and it was the first time that it was the biggest show they had ever played in Minneapolis. And a few of them were from. Here and from this scene and stuff and the crowd, like their crowds are so excited.

[00:31:58] Um, and, [00:32:00] and so I had never been side stage where there’s a band that’s about to go on and the crowd is so, so anticipating it. And the curtain is down and the band maybe peeks around to kind of check out what the crowd looks like. And the whole opening scene is just me standing there. I mean, it’s like, I’m describing what they’re doing.

[00:32:19] Like their, their singer hasn’t showed up, then he shows up in an elevator. Like there’s all this just little stuff. The, the security guy comes over to yell at the guitar player. Cause he has a drink and ends up bumping and spilling the drink on And like, there’s just like all these little moments and it’s not a long intro, but I loved rereading it.

[00:32:35] And I was like, well, this is really fun. And it’s like a peak of something. And actually the way that ended was, I was so. Um, kind of committed to my observational role that I was like on their heels as they actually walked on stage to the point where I realized I was visible and looked like a member of the band and like quickly turned around, but I got that feeling of what it’s like to walk on to a screaming giant crowd and it [00:33:00] was very disappointing to turn around anyway.

[00:33:04] So that was like a. A blog need I have all of a sudden is like, I want to be able to post on Mastodon to my 14 followers, which I think is up to 89, um, that I have this thing and, uh, and on threads. Cause I do threads. I like threads. I can’t, I wish I had a thing that felt like

[00:33:19] Brett: I used to like and then it got real, it got real weird. My feed got real

[00:33:24] Jeff: I should say I like it enough.

[00:33:25] Um, I will never be as happy as I was on Twitter when Twitter was a place to be happy. Um, is, you know, uh, I, I just, it’s, I, I long for it the way I long for Tumblr at its height. Like how that felt. Oh God, it felt so good. I met so many People through Twitter that I should have never been able to meet or develop a relationship with.

[00:33:48] And I got an, I got a byline in the New York times because I, I connected with like a, a New York times reporter on Twitter that was reporting on the same thing I was reporting on it at [00:34:00] American Public Media. And he’s like, Hey, do you want to write something? And it was just like, Twitter was insane. Um, anyway, we all know this, this is an old story, but I, I like this idea of having a place where I’m not trying to direct people to the blog, but I can post to something that I’ve written and, and say, Hey, this was fun.

[00:34:16] Go, go look at it if you want.

[00:34:18] Brett: Nice.

[00:34:19] Jeff: Anyway.

[00:34:20] Cybertruck and Twitter Musings

[00:34:20] Brett: I, uh, speaking of Twitter and the Cybertruck, um, we, all, we’re all aware of the many shortcomings of the Cybertruck, but I learned something this week that just blew me away. Blew my mind. Um, you can shift gears on the Cybertruck using the digital, like, touchscreen, which is weird enough, uh, to not have a

[00:34:43] Jeff: Super weird. Super

[00:34:45] Brett: Do you want to know where the alternative Prindle is?

[00:34:49] Jeff: In the back.

[00:34:51] Brett: Above your head on the ceiling.

[00:34:53] Jeff: Oh my

[00:34:54] Brett: Like you have to, and it’s not even visible until you tap it. So to shift gears, you have to look [00:35:00] up, tap the ceiling, and then slide your finger over this. Two and a half foot long fucking Prindle in the sky and like under maybe if it were an entirely self driving vehicle and you were reclining, but if it’s self driving, why do you need to shift?

[00:35:20] Christina: Right.

[00:35:20] Jeff: Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right.

[00:35:23] Christina: No, you

[00:35:24] Brett: it’s like Elon, It’s like Elon said, I want to disrupt automotive manufacturing, but without any thought as to what would actually be an improvement or useful in any way. just want to be different. different means making things shittier, so be it.

[00:35:42] Christina: I’m seeing so many more of them all over Seattle, which is not surprising because we have so many Teslas, but it’s also disappointing because I’m like, they’re so ugly. And yeah, it’s your point. It’s like, if it were all self driving, if that was really the goal, fine, but then why shift?

[00:35:57] Speaking of self driving, um, I took [00:36:00] a bunch of Waymo’s when I was in San Francisco,

[00:36:03] Waymo: The Future of Self-Driving Cars

[00:36:03] Jeff: That’s,

[00:36:04] Christina: this week. Holy shit. It’s the greatest. Waymo so fucking good. Uh, Merlin. Merlin commented on this, uh, on, uh, uh, uh, Mastodon, um, uh, a few weeks ago. And we were both, uh, Merlin and Manon, we were both, like, uh, commiserating about how much we love it.

[00:36:20] But yeah, if you’re not familiar, I mean, Waymo is, is Google self driving car taxi service thing they’ve been working on for a long time. And it’s in Los Angeles or parts of Los Angeles and, um, Phoenix and San Francisco. And it’ll be coming to, um, Austin and Atlanta and some other areas. And it’s really fucking good.

[00:36:39] It’s

[00:36:39] Brett: like an AI voice that makes annoying conversation with you while you Oh, what, what am I even paying for at that

[00:36:46] Christina: Uh, you are paying for a car. Yeah, exactly. You were for a car that is clean, where you don’t have anybody talking to you, that takes you where you want to be, where you can control your music. Like you can select like what iHeart radio stations you want to listen [00:37:00] to. So I was

[00:37:00] Brett: get to listen to annoying techno?

[00:37:03] Christina: no, I mean, if you, I mean, could, if you wanted to, I was listening to Taylor Swift, um, radio from iHeart.

[00:37:09] Um, and, uh, yeah, you know, and it, you can control the temperature. Like it’s. It’s freaking great. And then it is weird cause you see like the steering wheel like turn, right? Like you see this stuff happen, um, on, on the car, but like, it’s, it’s, it’s fantastic.

[00:37:25] Brett: What, what over, what override features does it have? If something goes wrong, what can the passenger do? Get out? Okay.

[00:37:33] Christina: Yeah, I mean, no, I mean, yeah, literally there is no like break, like there is no way to take control and, and that’s by design. So you’re, yeah, there’s

[00:37:42] Brett: did see a video of an officer trying to give a citation to a Waymo vehicle. And like, they’re, apparently they automatically call into like the control center. So someone’s talking to the cop over the speaker.

[00:37:57] Christina: Yes.

[00:37:58] Brett: Haha.

[00:37:59] Christina: I guess. [00:38:00] Okay. That is actually true. I forgot about that. So there is the override is that. Yeah. They’re not spying on you, they say. They’re not like listening to what you’re doing in the car, but they can monitor what’s happening if there’s a problem, right? So like I, I, I had one thing, like it was dropping me off at a location and I did the thing that I always do in a car, which is like I unbuckled my seatbelt, even though we were technically still moving.

[00:38:22] Car did not like this at all. It was very upset. And so it kept like coming up on screens like, Oh, if you know, if you do this more, you know, we might have to call in and check in on you or whatever. So like, I assumed that if there were some sort of. Problem. Like you could in the app or on the touchscreen, like you could reach out for help and then someone

[00:38:38] Brett: unbuckle your seatbelt. Yeah,

[00:38:43] Christina: like you can be connected with like a human person who I think can remotely control the cars potentially, or at least like in, in the, the cop example, you know, talk to someone, although that has to be freaky for the cop where they’re like talking to the car, you[00:39:00]

[00:39:00] Brett: a little thrown off.

[00:39:01] Christina: I’m sure, I’m sure.

[00:39:02] The Challenges of Human Drivers

[00:39:02] Christina: I mean, and, and there have been, you know, instances where they’ve, they’ve run, you know, certain lights and, and they’ve done other things, but like the, the studies have shown, and, and this isn’t bullshit, like this is actually true. Like they are significantly safer than regular cars, certainly significantly safer than regular taxis or Ubers.

[00:39:19] Um, the, the downside with these things is that it’s like, you know, uh, how much, Like the, the training set that they can get, you know, for, for the LIDAR for where they go, like they don’t have a lot of highway experience. And so like, you can’t take them to the airport and things like that. So they’re, they’re limited areas.

[00:39:35] And, and that’ll be, I think the, the challenge, that’s why I’m curious about what they’ll do in Atlanta. Cause Atlanta, like you get on the interstate. Um, so I don’t know if it’s going to be limited to like a certain area or what, or if they’ll just be doing more testing, but the, the real, you know, Problem with a lot of these things has not actually been like the, the AI, which can get pretty good, especially if it has good visibility into things.

[00:39:56] It’s that human drivers are fucking terrible [00:40:00] and trying to account for how to drive to, while still following the rules, but while not, you know, Um, succumbing to getting hit by a human driver who’s a fucking asshole and is, you know, got his hand down his pants while he’s like looking, you know, at his phone and, you know, his other hand is up his nose.

[00:40:20] You know what I mean? Like that sort of shit, which happens. Yeah. I mean, I finger whatever. Um, you know, got the whole thing going on. Like that’s like, You know, like the instance is where, um, there was the Tesla driver who, like, got in the crash because, like, they were genuinely going hands free and doing stupid shit.

[00:40:39] And then the car crashed and they’re like, oh, I thought that the autopilot was supposed to do it for me. And it’s like, fuck off, dude. Like, I don’t want to defend Tesla in any way, but you actually were, Not using things as designed, but even regular human drivers. I mean, I don’t drive. So to be clear, um, I’m, but I, but I’m smart about it.

[00:40:56] I know that I’m not a good driver, so I don’t do it, but like human drivers are fucking [00:41:00] terrible. So that’s the problem with training these systems is it’s like, how do you have these, you know, self driving cars that can follow the rules of the road, but also won’t get fucked when a human driver being a piece of shit?

[00:41:15] Brett: I have also relatively recently realized that I’m not a good driver. Um, I used to think maybe I’ve gotten more daft in my older age. Um,

[00:41:26] Christina: aware.

[00:41:27] Brett: yeah, and that’s entirely possible. I just like, I miss shit. I’ll like, I like merge when there’s a car in my blind spot and like have to swerve back over and I’m just, I’m not, I’m not alert.

[00:41:41] I’m not, um, I don’t predict other people well. Um, I take stupid chances and if I could be given a self driving car, it would do the world a favor. Um, yeah, if I, if I were taken. [00:42:00] Out from behind the wheel. But living in as small a town as I do, it’s not really, um,

[00:42:09] Christina: Right. Okay.

[00:42:10] Brett: I’m too, I’m too car dependent at, I am looking at getting an ev and if I could get one with at least like assisted, like lane assist even, um, I would be in better

[00:42:21] Jeff: Recommendation. This my recommendation.

[00:42:23] The Debate on Electric Vehicles

[00:42:23] Jeff: Do not buy anything EV or electric, we have a hybrid, until after we know how this election shakes out, because here’s the thing, you’ve seen all the movies, you’ve seen The Last of Us, you’ve seen everything where like, all the roads look like the video for Everybody Hurts, where the cars are everywhere, it’s all gonna be these electric cars, and here’s the thing, this got me thinking the other day, What is the truck that ISIS uses?

[00:42:44] Because those motherfuckers know, they’ve selected, right? And they use the Toyota Hilux, I think you call it. I’ll put a link in the show notes, cause there was a great, there was a great moment a couple of years ago where the U. S. was trying to figure out how ISIS was getting so many of these Toyotas. But I like,[00:43:00]

[00:43:00] Brett: because, like, what is the, what is the solid, dependable pager that Hezbollah uses? Like, you gotta,

[00:43:08] Jeff: we’re gonna be past that, if everything falls apart, we’re not gonna have, we’re not gonna have, like, Israeli level, uh, you know, infiltration, they’re not gonna be in the supply chain, cause everything’s gonna be fucked.

[00:43:20] Brett: Fair enough. What,

[00:43:25] Jeff: Uh, anyway,

[00:43:25] Brett: like we, we gotta get a show title out of that right there. Like, the, the truck, the truck that ISIS, ISIS trucks? I

[00:43:35] Christina: truck, the ISIS

[00:43:36] Jeff: what’s the ISIS truck?

[00:43:37] Christina: I mean, honestly, that’s, that’s not a bad, that’s not a bad point. It is funny. It’s just like a Toyota, right? Like that’s, that’s, that’s a, that’s such a blow to everybody else. Who’s like, Oh yeah, we make, we make, we make our Hummers

[00:43:49] Jeff: F 150, it’s not Ranger,

[00:43:51] Christina: Right, well, I was gonna say, we’ll, we’ll range over, like, who even fucking owns them anymore, right?

[00:43:54] Like, they’ve had so many owners, um, the law’s

[00:43:57] Jeff: always Toyotas overseas. It’s the Land [00:44:00] Cruiser. It’s like, they’re just, they’re incredible trucks. We, I don’t want to get into that, but they’re incredible trucks.

[00:44:05] Christina: Fucking Ford, man, like, honestly, like, how the fuck, like, how, how do you exist as Ford when, like, Toyota makes better trucks than you? Like, what the fuck? Like, genuinely, like,

[00:44:14] Jeff: they tried to integrate the dick and balls feature, but

[00:44:17] Christina: They did, but it didn’t work. No, but I’m with, I’m with you, Brett. Like, I, um, and Merlin and I talked about this on, on Macedon as well, but, like, So I would love to own a self driving car.

[00:44:29] I would love that. Or there have been talks, this is one of the things I think that Cruz wanted to do, and who knows if we’ll get there, but like the fact that I can, at least in large swaths of San Francisco, take a robo taxi is promising. Um, but like, it would be cool if you had kind of like a zip car sort of thing where like you share ownership with number of people.

[00:44:49] So, you know, cause, you know, or, or even you buy the car, but like. It could be when you’re not using it, it could be used, you know, for, for taxi purposes or [00:45:00] whatever. Like, you know, um, maybe you don’t buy the car, but like you lease the car. I don’t, I don’t know if I would want to necessarily, unless I’m getting paid for it, I don’t know if I would want to volunteer something that I’m owning and that I’m, is a depreciating asset, uh, being used by others.

[00:45:14] But if it is significantly less money, And I have, you know, guaranteed hours I can use it or something else. Like that’s actually, I, I like that concept a lot of kind of like a, a zip car, you know, kind of thing, but, but, but matched with like a self driving EV, like that would be, that’d be cool. But yeah.

[00:45:33] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:45:34] WordPress Drama Unfolds

[00:45:34] Brett: Do you want to talk about WP Engine before we hit Grapptitude?

[00:45:39] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. Um, we, we should talk about the, the WordPress drama. Um, Because, uh, you’re mentioning blogging, Jeff, and like normally I would say to a lot of people I’d be like, Oh, well, you know, this is a great case for WordPress or whatever. Speaking of that, there’s a lot of drama happening in the WordPress community, even more than usual.[00:46:00]

[00:46:00] So the background, and this is not going to be completely exhaustive, I’ll find a link that probably gives the latest updates just because there’s too much of it. So please don’t at me for missing nuances. I’m, I’m trying to be fair here. Uh, so two weeks ago at WordCamp US, which is like the, the biggest, you know, like WordPress community event, uh, Matt Mullenweg, who is the CEO, um, and founder of Automatic, which is like the largest kind of like official WordPress company that the people behind WordPress.

[00:46:25] com and Jetpack and WooCommerce and all that stuff, um, He’s also the co founder and the BDFL, uh, benevolent dictator for life of the WordPress project. Uh, he gave his closing speech at, at WordCamp US and he spent it basically calling out, um, kind of like vultures in the open source ecosystem, people who are, Takers and who are not giving back to the community.

[00:46:54] And the, the main, um, uh, target of his, of his, uh, uh, comments was, [00:47:00] uh, the managed WordPress host, uh, WP Engine. And WP Engine was acquired by a private equity, uh, firm, um, Silverlake, um, in like 2018 for hundreds of millions of dollars. And apparently they, uh, make hundreds of millions of dollars a year. But according to, to Matt, based on whatever the, the notions of however you define contributions back to core, they donate only like 40 hours a week back to the open source project.

[00:47:25] So, you know, they’re making hundreds of millions of dollars. They’re only, you know, they’re donating very little back. And so he kind of went scorched earth a little bit, calling them out, basically encouraging people to potentially like move away from them. Um, And, uh, according to Mullenlug, he said that he’d been having conversations for months with WP Engine trying to get some sort of trademark licensing deal because I guess how they use the WordPress trademark on their website is potentially violating terms.

[00:47:54] I’m not a lawyer. I can’t speak to that. And so he was wanting to, you know, work out some sort of, A deal where either they [00:48:00] contribute time towards core, um, in the terms of like, you know, employee hours or, um, uh, a certain amount of their revenue, um, gross, um, to, to, um, uh, WordPress. And, um, he, so he calls them out, he gets kind of spicy in, in, in his words about it and then WP Engine is not happy.

[00:48:20] And so they send a cease and desist, which, you only made things worse. And so the cease and desist was basically like, don’t, you know, keep, keep my wife’s name out of your mouth and don’t talk about this stuff. And, and, uh, and so, um, Mullenweg’s response was then to block access to WordPress. org, which he personally owns and controls all WP Engine sites.

[00:48:44] And what that effectively means is that those sites can’t get updates to plugins or themes or security patches from the WordPress. org servers. So, after some backlash because regular people, you know, regular clients and agencies and people who manage [00:49:00] sites for WP Engine are impacted by this. There was some, you know, um, backtrack on that.

[00:49:05] So they’re like, okay, well, you can have access for like four more days so that you can build your own infrastructure to do this. Host, you know, a copy of the, the plugin, um, uh, directory and theme directory and serve updates. Um, so he did, he did that. Um, that’s actually kind of shitty because this is like a built in mechanism into WordPress.

[00:49:22] And in my opinion, it’s actually kind of a security issue because WordPress, it would be like if, if Debian said Ubuntu can’t access Apt. It’s basically like kind of how I think about it. Right. And, and I’m not saying that the WP engine shouldn’t be contributing back more because they. Absolutely should be, but I also feel like if this is a built in part of the ecosystem and this is how people get updates and how they get things, cutting people off, um, especially when you don’t make it easy in core to come up with a replacement is kind of a, you know, Not a great move, at least for your end users, putting aside [00:50:00] whatever the, the, um, uh, you know, merits are from the, um, uh, host itself.

[00:50:05] Okay. So he then continues to talk about this publicly and, uh, you know, Twitter spaces and on a couple of podcasts and YouTube channels and other things. And then WP Engine files a lawsuit against him personally, as well as Automatic and other things. And in the lawsuit, they start revealing some of their communications, which may.

[00:50:26] It looked like Matt was potentially trying to extort them for, for money, basically saying if you don’t give me this amount of money, then I’m going to go public with all this stuff. Um, again, I don’t, look, I’m not a lawyer, I don’t think there are a lot of merits in this lawsuit, but it certainly, all it does is escalate things.

[00:50:42] The, now the net effect is that there are a few plugins that WP Engine maintains like, um, Advanced Custom Fields, which is a very, very popular plugin that has been banned from the, um, WordPress, uh, plugin repository. So nobody can get updates from it, which sucks because again, built in [00:51:00] updates have been a feature for like 15 years now.

[00:51:02] 13 years. I’m not sure how long. It’s been a long time that you’ve been able to do automatic updates through the WordPress backend. And so individual users or individual site owners will have to figure out, you know, going through to, you know, download updates to, um, and, and the thing is, it’s not just WP Engine customers who use this plugin, like millions of people use this plugin because Custom fields is not built into WordPress core.

[00:51:25] Maybe it fucking should be. Anyway, um, so that’s been blocked. And then, um, uh, Mullenweg gave his employees at Automattic, basically said, Either you’re aligned with me or not. And if you’re aligned with me, game on. And if not, or if you have any other reason that you just want to bounce, I’ll give you 30, 000 or six months of salary, whatever’s higher.

[00:51:49] And like 160 people left the company. So like 8. 2 percent of the company left. And then there’s all kinds of blocks happening on, on Twitter and other things. [00:52:00] I don’t know. It’s sad. I feel like I feel like there are really valid reasons. I feel like there are no heroes here. And the only real losers are like the end users.

[00:52:12] Yeah. Because I don’t know.

[00:52:14] The Impact of Open Source Contributions

[00:52:14] Christina: I feel like we should be having a conversation about how much companies give back to open source, especially companies that profit tremendously off of it. And in WordPress, it’s, it’s, it’s web hosts who usually are frankly, pretty, you know, like parasitic. But

[00:52:30] Brett: sure. Well, you come from a company that has a great track record these days with open source. Oracle is one of the largest contributors to the Linux open source.

[00:52:42] Christina: hmm.

[00:52:43] Brett: And yeah, that is, if you’re going to sell open source software, uh, for the millions and millions and billions of dollars that the U S economy, like tech, big tech does, you [00:53:00] absolutely, it, it’s not free to you.

[00:53:03] It shouldn’t be free to you.

[00:53:05] Christina: Agreed. Agreed. The hard thing is, is that like the license terms, you know, you can’t really require that anybody give that. Um, and so the, the, the mechanism that, that, that Matt is arguing is that they’re violating the, the WordPress trademark. And, and I don’t know, you know, there may be some validity to that or not.

[00:53:23] I don’t know. It’s, you know, that lawyers can figure that out. I don’t know. The disappointing thing to me is just how this whole thing has escalated because it’s end users who frankly don’t care about, you know, Billion dollar companies fighting with one another. They want their software to work and then now their software doesn’t work or their plugins that they install, they don’t even know that a new version is out and they can’t do anything about it without going through, you know, jumping through a bunch of hoops.

[00:53:49] And

[00:53:49] Brett: well, when you are the default, like website framework for what percentage, like 60 percent of the

[00:53:58] Christina: 40%, but yeah,

[00:53:59] Brett: [00:54:00] 40%, 40 percent of the entire web runs on your software and they installed it because it was free and because it was actively maintained and they didn’t do anything wrong by choosing it. And when, what amounts to personal, like an ego dispute.

[00:54:20] If you boil it down, uh, like the drama behind it is affecting 40 percent of the web in ways that they did not make, they did not choose to put their money behind a certain horse. Um, they chose free software that was actively maintained and was making money on its own merit and not through their money and then to have the rug kind of pulled out from under you.

[00:54:48] Like, that’s, you, Matt, well, Matt, Matt Mullenweg has a certain amount of responsibility. to keep the web running at this [00:55:00] point with a 40 percent share of, uh, of the framework it runs on. That would be like AWS having like a petty dispute and just like cutting off services.

[00:55:13] Christina: which, which I mean, well, the irony there is that like AWS like has been like licenses have changed because of their refusal to give back to open source. But yeah, like

[00:55:22] Brett: Oh, really?

[00:55:23] Christina: oh, yeah, yeah,

[00:55:23] Brett: Oh, I didn’t know about

[00:55:24] Christina: yeah, the whole reason Elastic’s license changed, um, and I think Mongo’s and some other ones did too, is because basically AWS would just make a hosted version of their service, would contribute nothing back.

[00:55:35] Or they would make changes which would be beneficial to them, but they would because it was hosted. The way the GPL works is that technically if it’s a service, then you don’t have to give the contributions back. And, oh, it’s, it’s beyond shitty. Yeah, no, no. Amazon’s open source track record, um, it’s gotten better, but it’s not great.

[00:55:51] Um, although even Elastic has made some changes with some of their, their sourcing in, in the years since then. But yeah, I mean, you know, so, but. Like I [00:56:00] said, it would be kind of like, to me, the biggest thing was, I’m like, look, if you want to kick, if you want to, you know, go after them for the trademark stuff, if you want to publicly, you know, shame on the companies, I don’t have a problem with that.

[00:56:11] Um, I, some of the community people I think are like overly invested in, in WP Engine, which feels weird to me. I’m like, they’re not going to fuck you, bro. Um, I mean, unless you’re their, your employer, in which case, cool. But like, otherwise they’re, they’re a host just like anybody else. Um, but like If you want to, if you want to do that stuff, that’s fine.

[00:56:31] But I feel like cutting off access to the update servers when you don’t offer an easy mechanism for other people to things, kicking popular plugins that are very important out from, um, you know, getting updates like this is all stuff again. And again, like you’ve designed your system in a way that you actively have been hostile to people who’ve been like, well, what if we didn’t have this reliance on this wordpress.

[00:56:54] org system? Um, um, And so that, that’s where I have a problem with it. And then I [00:57:00] think that just kind of the, the knee jerk, like, anti response to anybody in the community who expresses concerns, like, I don’t think it’s a good look. And so, like I said, I don’t think there are any winners here at all. I don’t think there are any heroes.

[00:57:13] I think that the losers are the community. But the real fear I have is like, and I’ve never really thought this before, it’s, it’s like, Are we going to have some kind of schism, right? Because I don’t really think that you can have a viable WordPress fork. Like, I don’t think that can really happen. Um, I think that the money that would be required would be so much that people are like, Oh, well, what if WP Engine just forked WordPress?

[00:57:35] And I’m like, well, they could, but the whole, The point of the dispute is that they are not giving money back. So are, if you think that their response to this is going to be to invest hundreds of millions of dollars potentially into building a, and maintaining a fork, I’m sorry, but I think you’re, you’re wrong.

[00:57:54] I don’t think that they will do that. Right. So. Potentially you have people moving on to [00:58:00] other things or less secure things. You know, Ghost came out of members of the WordPress community who didn’t like its decision for various reasons, but it’s not code based at all. Um, and so I, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’s, it’s, uh, certainly, um, it’s like not ending.

[00:58:18] And I keep hoping that like, You know, cooler heads will prevail and that it will not be as bad, you know, as this is, but I just, I don’t know. Even though I’m not like an active WordPress user, I mean, I use it for some things. It’s too important for this to be

[00:58:36] Brett: Yeah.

[00:58:37] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:58:38] Christina: like, to crash and burn. I don’t know.

[00:58:40] Jeff: Definitely.

[00:58:42] Brett: I, uh, I, not that I wasn’t paying attention to what you were saying, but in the back of my head, I figured out our episode title.

[00:58:49] Christina: Fantastic, Helis.

[00:58:50] Brett: You ready? ISIS pickup lines.

[00:58:55] Jeff: wow.

[00:58:55] Christina: good. That’s really, really good.

[00:58:57] Brett: Thank you very much.

[00:58:58] grAPPtitude

[00:58:58] Brett: All right, you guys ready for some [00:59:00] Grapptitude?

[00:59:00] Christina: Yeah.

[00:59:02] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:59:03] Brett: Um, Jeff, you have your sound. I’ll go first. Um, I, we’ve talked about this app before, but I recently gave it a run for the first time in a few years, and it is NameMangler, uh, from ManyTricks Software, and Um, I, for a while I’ve just been using Forklift’s internal renaming tool which allows like Regex replacement and is satisfactory for most of what I do.

[00:59:33] But NameMangler allows you to batch rename files by dragging together, multiple actions. And you can even do custom scripts inside of it to handle like edge case renaming. And if you have a bunch of, well, and the metadata stuff where you can pull in, like, if you’re renaming a bunch of photos, you can pull in dates and locations and [01:00:00] dimensions and use any parts of those for, The final filename, which could allow you to come up with much more descriptive names than image underscore zero zero zero nine two.

[01:00:12] And instantly turn your folder of files into something, far more readable and usable. I’m using it right now to rename batches of files for my blog and I, I’m pretty blown away. It is, uh. And it’s really pretty.

[01:00:28] Christina: It’s so

[01:00:29] Brett: app.

[01:00:29] Jeff: pretty.

[01:00:30] Christina: Really pretty. Um, and just a note for anybody out there, um, it is available in the Mac App Store, or you can buy it from them directly and they’ll get more money. If, like me, you bought it many years ago, um, whenever the 3. 0 version was released from the Mac App Store, if you want to cross grade to the, um, non 3.

[01:00:48] Um, uh, App Store version. All you do is, um, launch it at least once from the App Store. Then, um, download the, um, [01:01:00] application. Do not move it to your applications folder yet, but, but move it to another folder, install it, launch it. And then you’re good to go. It’ll then give you like a temporary license, um, that’ll only work on that machine.

[01:01:11] So if you, you know, move to another machine or, or reinstall or whatever, you’ll have to redo this step. Uh, and then you can uninstall the, uh, Mac App Store version and move the other one to your

[01:01:21] Brett: Oh, I should do that with Marked. Like, Marked has a, you can get a free crossgrade from the MAS version to the Direct version from within Marked. You just go to, like, Help, Crossgrade, and it’ll, it’ll generate you a license as a Mac App Store user. Um, but then you have to, like, download and enter the license.

[01:01:40] And it would be really cool if people, if I could just be like, just download the, Just tell me the direct version because the Mac App Store version, the only difference is sandboxing.

[01:01:50] Christina: exactly.

[01:01:51] Brett: and when you’re dealing with like a markdown file that can include images from anywhere on the disk or one that can run custom processors, um, that have [01:02:00] to be like executable by the system, a sandboxing is just unworkable.

[01:02:04] So I cross grade people all the time.

[01:02:06] Christina: yeah, yeah, um, and I’m pretty sure, like, I can probably find after we get off, I’m sure people have written, um, ways that they’ve, um, you know, automated this, because I assume all it does is that it’s looking for the ID, you know, um, on, on the system, you know, wherever it would be, and then it’s just, you know, basically checking, does this exist?

[01:02:25] Yes or no? If yes, then unlock, right? Like, I’m

[01:02:28] Brett: Oh yeah, like the receipt, uh, App Store file. Yeah.

[01:02:32] Christina: And then once you’ve done that, like you can delete it and it doesn’t matter. Um, but yeah, so, uh, but yeah, Namingler, I haven’t used that in a long time. Um, but when I have used it, I just looked at it again. I was like, Oh, that’s really pretty.

[01:02:43] And, um, God, we’ve been giving them a lot of love lately because, uh, the new, uh, Moom, um, uh, is really too.

[01:02:50] Brett: many tricks makes good

[01:02:51] Christina: They make very good stuff.

[01:02:53] Jeff: Sure do. Yeah. Mine is not a maybe. I put it down as a maybe, uh, in our show, in our [01:03:00] notes. But, uh, I am, there’s this, um, it’s a, it’s a web app, but it’s also just kind of like an approach to personal finance called You Need a Budget or YNAB. They’ve been around forever. We’ve used them in our house forever.

[01:03:14] Um, Back when they even used to have an app you could download. Now it’s just a web app. Um, and I have been, I just decided to, we just kind of blew up our budget and rebuilt it in, in YNAB, like using the YNAB principles as much as possible. Let me tell you their entire podcast dedicated to this, their YouTube series dedicated to this, so I won’t get into the, into the weeds, but I will just say that as kind of budgeting software, and I used Mint way back in the

[01:03:41] Christina: I say, and the Mint, it was down.

[01:03:44] Jeff: yep.

[01:03:44] Um, it is so elegant. It is so well thought out. It is so constantly developed and updated. And if you are just kind of looking for something like some kind of way to wrangle and have like a single view of all of your, your world, [01:04:00] your credit cards, your bank accounts, your saving accounts, even if that’s all you want.

[01:04:04] It’s great for that. And then it has this whole like kind of framework for budgeting that we’ve been using for a long time. That’s durable enough that like, if you fall off of it, you can, you can get back up, um, and, and get going and it doesn’t all just kind of like implode. So anyway, they just do beautiful work.

[01:04:21] Um, and I, I really recommend taking a peek at it.

[01:04:24] Brett: What kind of, what kind of automation does it have?

[01:04:28] Jeff: Meaning, I mean, like, I don’t know if you mean like, does it import your accounts and shit, yeah, very, very solid importing of all, every account I’ve ever tried to put into it. Um, and, and if ever anything breaks, it’s because on the bank side, they did something Um, I’ve, I mean, it just like, it’s unbelievable how reliable, um, it is and how good communicators they are, if there is any little issue.

[01:04:55] Um, so yeah, it’s been. It’s been great. Yeah. It’s if you just wanted to go in [01:05:00] there, pull everything in and look at it, it’s kind of like,

[01:05:02] Brett: But like, can you like, can you categorize transactions? So future, future Yeah.

[01:05:08] Jeff: That’s the point of it. You put in your recurring transactions, you can categorize transactions, you can add targets. So you’re, you know, every paycheck to like send money here or whatever. Um, it’s great. And like rocket money, like I still think rocket money is over there running my imports.

[01:05:24] Uh, just, it’s so nice to just have a thing where you just import everything and you can just look at it at once.

[01:05:30] Christina: Yeah, I was ask it

[01:05:31] Jeff: can be nice.

[01:05:32] Christina: because, because Rocket Money is great for like the recurring stuff like you forget about. I didn’t know if any of those services have something like that built in, which would be cool. Like,

[01:05:39] Jeff: not to the extent, not at all to the extent Rocket Money does. You can kind of use it off to the side, uh, which is what I did when I just kind of did my Rocket Money run a couple of years ago.

[01:05:48] Brett: Oh, I Rocket

[01:05:49] Jeff: It’s amazing.

[01:05:50] Brett: use Rocket Money every

[01:05:51] Jeff: I need to actually go back to it cause I’m got some weird shit. Why do I have two one passwords?

[01:05:56] Oh, I I have two set up. I have two set up

[01:05:58] Brett: my, all, all [01:06:00] I’ve forgotten about,

[01:06:01] Jeff: Yeah, exactly.

[01:06:03] Christina: No, that’s awesome. I’m thank, I’m glad. Thank you for mentioning that because I’ve had this, like, in my mind I’m like, um, ’cause I don’t really use anything right now other than like a spreadsheet for certain stuff or, you know, just me, you know, eyeballing accounts and, I have, I should have a much better system.

[01:06:18] Um, so, um, I, I, but I’ve heard great things about, um, um, wine a so.

[01:06:24] Brett: for years I’ve heard great things.

[01:06:26] Jeff: really, it’s really great. Also just great exporting. That’s which is for me, any software I’m deep into, I better be able to export a CSV or whatever else nice and clean. And, and obviously it’s not rare with financial stuff,

[01:06:38] Christina: Well, no, but more well, it is and it’s not, right? Because, I mean, famously, the fucking Apple credit card, it was like six months before you could export transactions from the fucking card. Which is

[01:06:50] Jeff: Yeah,

[01:06:50] Christina: Insane. It is insane. I’m like, still now, like the fact that like, you know, you have to use your fucking iPhone to like get your transactions.

[01:06:57] There’s not like a web view. Maybe there finally is a web view, but [01:07:00] I’m like, what are you doing? Like it is, I mean, it’s fine. I, I basically only use that credit card for Apple purchases, which, you know, is, you know, You know, I still, it’s still spent thousands of dollars a year on it, but it’s not like a daily card or anything.

[01:07:13] And part of the reason for that is that like, you know, American Express, Chase, you know, Citi, all of them give you really good tools to export and integrate into those systems really well. Even if you’re not using, even if you’re, you know, like me and you’re just using your Excel thing, like at least I can export all my transactions and like Apple card, you would think.

[01:07:33] No.

[01:07:33] Brett: would think.

[01:07:34] Jeff: but we gave you widgets on your lock screen.

[01:07:36] Christina: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[01:07:39] Brett: Every time I see the abbreviation YNAB, I think of the Merlin podcast, You Look Nice Today.

[01:07:47] Christina: That’s

[01:07:48] Jeff: Oh man,

[01:07:48] Brett: and I don’t, I think it’s just the Y and then letters. I

[01:07:55] Christina: think I feel like, I think I get like it in NIMBY confused, even though like they’re that the [01:08:00] letters are completely different. Yeah,

[01:08:03] Brett: see an acronym, I just assume NIMBY. Ahaha I just assume, ah Neighborhood watch something.

[01:08:13] Christina: in my

[01:08:13] Brett: Um,

[01:08:14] Christina: Or maybe I know. Here’s what I get confused with. YIMBY. That’s what it is. Yeah. Cause yes, in my backyard, which is like the, um, the,

[01:08:21] Jeff: in my backyard.

[01:08:22] Christina: the alternative thing, which is like, yes, we need to build, which I actually agree with. But yeah,

[01:08:27] Brett: I am NIMBY on a lot of stuff.

[01:08:28] Christina: same.

[01:08:29] Brett: You can have my backyard. All right, Christina, looks like you have a fun

[01:08:32] Christina: I do. So this was one that I actually discovered yesterday and I was really excited to discover it because I was like, I probably would have had another pick, but I discovered this one and I was really excited about it. So it is a app. It’s a new app. It came out like a month ago. It’s called Prop Edit. It is in the Mac app store.

[01:08:48] It’s 8. And it is a editor for plist and JSON files. So basically it’s like a, an Apple property list, um, um, editor. Um, and it’s, and, uh, this is, uh, how [01:09:00] the developer describes it. PropEdit is a viewer and editor for Apple propriety, uh, property lists.

[01:09:09] It’s aimed at both software developers and end users who want easy access to the standard file types. So you can, you know, change any entry in the files, um, you know, property names, entry types, values can be edited freely. They can be removed, added, and sorted. And it handles, you know, nested depth. So basically this is a sandboxed and, they call it a simplified version of PrefEdit or PrefEdit app. And, and both of those have been around, like, like PrefEdit has been around since 2000 and PrefEdit app, I think, uh, you know, came out in 2011 and those are some of the oldest, you know, apps for working with property lists on macOS.

[01:09:47] Um, and. Uh, but there have been, you know, issues, I guess, they’ve made some changes so that you can get this in the App Store essentially. Um, so like PropEdit does not support direct work with the macOS preferences [01:10:00] system since they no longer allow that in the App Store. So instead it uses the JSON format, um, uh, next to plist.

[01:10:06] But uh, I, like I said, it was 8. I don’t have to edit like my plist often, but sometimes I need to look at something and I’m curious how it works. I’d actually, I think I even had a trial of, um, uh, PrefEdit before, and it, it’s fine, but I’ll be honest, it was a little more complicated than what I probably needed.

[01:10:28] Um, and so I, I, I bought this and it’s, it’s a really nice app. So if you fall into the category, they, they said of, you know, developers are enthusiasts and you occasionally need to, you know, mess with, with plist files, you know, hell yeah.

[01:10:43] Brett: So just for, for anyone listening who is a Mac user and doesn’t know why they would need to edit a plist file, all preferences for all apps on your Mac are stored in plist format. All of Your system [01:11:00] preferences from like your dark mode to your accent color to more esoteric stuff is all stored in plist format.

[01:11:10] So if you want to explore any of those settings at more of a system level, you need to be able to read and write plist formats. Um, and plist comes in both binary and text, and an app like PropEdit can read both binary and text

[01:11:27] Jeff: amazing.

[01:11:29] Brett: um, I am curious, uh, you said it can’t edit default preferences, but I assume it can still edit app preference

[01:11:37] Christina: right, right, so what it says is that it, um, uh, it can open and write the XML based stuff. Um, so that’s why they’re using JSON because the, um, macOS like changed things in 2012 for sandbox apps. So you can still open that stuff, it’s just it has to use the JSON. Um, rather than, than I guess, like, [01:12:00] the direct way.

[01:12:02] Brett: Cool.

[01:12:03] Jeff: I’ve, I’ve wanted something like this forever. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:12:06] Christina: because it’s useful for sometimes, like, when you are moving from, like, one system to another, and you don’t necessarily want to just move, like, the plist over. Automatically, because you’re like, maybe I do want to make a modification, but you’re like, okay, but what, what were my settings? Like, it’s just an easy way of viewing it, you know, if nothing else, even if it’s just as a viewer, right?

[01:12:25] Sometimes that’s all you need, but it’s also useful to be like, okay, well, now that I see it, how can I edit it? And there are some things like, obviously there are ways that many times, you know, you can change the settings, you know, end user or a command line, but if you can also just change, you know, like it in the file itself, even better.

[01:12:42] Jeff: Yeah, it’s awesome.

[01:12:44] Brett: All right. Good show, guys.

[01:12:47] Jeff: Good show. Good show.

[01:12:48] Brett: We had, we had talk of ISIS,

[01:12:52] Christina: Mm hmm.

[01:12:52] Brett: self driving cars.

[01:12:55] Jeff: ISIS driving

[01:12:57] Brett: like,

[01:12:57] Christina: we got it all.

[01:12:59] Brett: what a show, [01:13:00]

[01:13:00] Jeff: What a show! What a show!

[01:13:02] Christina: Brett’s plan for, uh, taking back, uh, you know, the bonus. Um,

[01:13:10] Brett: My plans for next year, um, yeah. All right. Well, you guys enjoy the weather. Have a a great rest of your weekend.

[01:13:20] Christina: you too. Get some sleep, guys.

[01:13:22] Jeff: Yeah, get some sleep.

This is the first of two episodes. The idea was for Merlin and Jeff to discuss how they were using chatGPT in ways that are maybe novel. The thing is, the pre-show banter became in-show banter that barely touched the intended topic, which is awesome because now, thanks to the transcript of this episode, we have fodder for chatGPT experimentation between episodes.

1Password Extended Access Management solves the problems traditional IAM and MDM can’t . It’s security for the way we work today, and it’s now generally available to companies with Okta and Microsoft Entra, and in beta for Google Workspace customers.

Check it out at https://1password.com/overtired.

With that, we present to you these show notes:

Merlin’s list of useful things to say to yourself:

Books:

You’re downloading today’s show from CacheFly’s network

BackBeat Media Podcast Network

Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter.

Merlin Mann (Part One): S-Tier Face

[00:00:00]

[00:00:04] Introduction

[00:00:04] Jeff: Hi, everybody. This is the Overtired Podcast. I am Jeff Severns Guntzel. I am normally here with my comrades, Christina Warren and Brett Terpstra. They are not here.

[00:00:16] Jeff: They are comrading somewhere else with somebody else, and I have instead Merlin Mann joining me. Hello, Merlin.

[00:00:23] Merlin: Jeff, how are you? I love your name. You have a, you have a nice, no, I like, I like the, the, as we say in poetry class, I like the scansion of your name. I like how, I like the mouth feel of your name. I shouldn’t

[00:00:33] Jeff: Is that the, is, is that the poetry version of, I like the cut of your jib?

[00:00:36] Merlin: It is very much like that. It’s a very, it’s kind of nautical verse.

[00:00:39] Jeff: Nautical verse? Yes. Hey, listen, I want to get something out of the way.

[00:00:43] Merlin: Yes, do.

[00:00:44] Matthias Jabs

[00:00:44] Jeff: Um, which is, um, and I put this in the, in the show notes kind of cryptically, um, there have been a couple of cases in listening to your podcast

[00:00:53] Merlin: Wait a minute, this is about the scorpions.

[00:00:56] Jeff: yes.

[00:00:57] Merlin: The

[00:00:57] Jeff: where, where you are, you are starting a [00:01:00] sentence that is about to include the name Matthias Jabs.

[00:01:04] Merlin: no, I got it wrong.

[00:01:05] Jeff: I say to myself, I don’t know, maybe it’s not, how is it supposed to be said?

[00:01:08] Merlin: The thing is, you know that phenomenon that needs a name? I’ve read this word approximately 200 times, but I’ve never had to say it out. I still have friends where I don’t know really how to pronounce their name, and I don’t know, and like, you pick up your, in my case, that’s how I learned the solo for No One Like You was from Guitar for the Practicing Musician, which would have, every issue would have, this is usually called magazines, you’d buy them, and it had tablature for usually like three.

[00:01:38] Merlin: Like songs. It could be eruption. It could be, you know, whatever, but like, yeah. And I, for some reason, my friends and I, I guess, cause we thought we were cool. We, we said Matthias, but I don’t think that’s right.

[00:01:48] Jeff: Matthias. Yeah. I would have only read the name in Hit Parade or Circus Magazine. You know what I mean?

[00:01:53] Merlin: Boy, they loved Def Leppard for a while, didn’t they

[00:01:55] Jeff: loved Def Leppard. So okay. So here’s, here’s why Matthias [00:02:00] Jabs, I mean, besides the obvious, which is that he should be spoken about

[00:02:03] Merlin: He shreds. Is he the one with, is he the one with the Explorer?

[00:02:06] Jeff: yeah, I think he’s the

[00:02:07] Merlin: He’s kind of the more, he’s, he’s the less, he’s, I was going to say he’s the handsome one, but he’s the less grotesque of the, uh, of the people.

[00:02:13] Jeff: a nice way to put it. And also like saying his name as a young man might’ve been the first time words came out and I felt sophisticated. Matthias

[00:02:21] Merlin: Yeah. Isn’t that a good feeling until the second later when someone goes, that’s not how,

[00:02:25] Jeff: That’s how you say it, exactly! So there have been these, I think it’s twice, maybe three times, I’m listening to a podcast, you’re talking, you’re starting a sentence that will ultimately have the name Matthias Jabs in it, and I somehow know it’s coming, and it is said in my mind at the same time, and I think, how the fuck does that happen with Matthias Jabs?

[00:02:45] Merlin: Isn’t that, isn’t that funny?

[00:02:46] Mean Time to Weird

[00:02:46] Merlin: Before we were recording, we were talking about an affliction, affliction, a gift that, that some people like us have, which is like you have a very close association between some piece of audio and either like a time or a location or a feeling, [00:03:00] often a location. But I think it’s somewhat allied to that or like today when the 45th president, because I’ve watched a lot of his rallies,

[00:03:08] Jeff: That’s the one with the T.

[00:03:10] Merlin: the testosterone?

[00:03:12] Jeff: No, the letter T.

[00:03:14] Merlin: Oh, yeah, but that’s all, it’s also the testosterone. That’s part of

[00:03:16] Jeff: Yeah, that’s also the

[00:03:17] Merlin: Yeah, yeah, they put it on hats now. But, uh, but he, uh, but

[00:03:21] Jeff: Don’t lick my, stop licking my hat! It’s getting aggressive!

[00:03:24] Merlin: ask you nicely, very nasty woman licking my hat. Think of it. He, but no, he does that thing where he goes like, you know, they’re bringing in, they’re letting him in 21 million people.

[00:03:34] Merlin: They’re, from their, from their jails and their prisons, their mental institutions and their insane asylums.

[00:03:40] Jeff: they’re insane. It’s like chai

[00:03:42] Merlin: Okay, but here’s the thing now, Jeff, because we are, we are in the same, um, carass about this. Do you know what the next thing might be after he says, and insane asylums? Do you know what the next line is, could be if he’s in the right mood?

[00:03:57] Jeff: What? No.

[00:03:58] Merlin: He simply says the, he [00:04:00] begins next, his next sentence, he pauses for a minute to soak in the adulation, and then he says, the late great Hannibal

[00:04:07] Jeff: Oh, the late, great Hannibal Lecter, of course!

[00:04:09] Merlin: And do you know, do you know, have you, have you arrived? The reason why he always says that right after that,

[00:04:15] Jeff: No, I’ve never gone for the full context, which is probably what he would ask me to

[00:04:19] Merlin: this is something we’ve been exploring on, uh, do by Friday, another podcast I do, and I, and this, this very much is, um, is I’m applying scholarship from, from actual, like journalists and professional spec, professional speculators, but. What does he say? He says that they’re bringing over, they’re emptying out their jails.

[00:04:35] Merlin: Then you hear, the crime is down in Venezuela, and he’ll say 70, 72 percent, 80 percent, 90 percent, right? But in this particular one, this is the vintage of the last few weeks has been, they’re emptying out their jails, their prisons, their mental institutions, their insane asylums. Hold for whatever. And then he goes, the late Great Hannibal Lecter.

[00:04:56] Merlin: Silence of the Lambs. Does anybody remember the movie Silence of the [00:05:00] Lambs? You know, he would like to have you for dinner. And this has been widely, widely reported, but I wanted to, for those of you who have not heard this, or maybe you don’t follow this stuff as closely as I am, um, apparently doomed to do, what’s the last thing he said?

[00:05:14] Merlin: D D D D D, ellipsis, mental institutions, and insane asylums. Somebody figured out, he thinks that, that is what political asylum is.

[00:05:24] Jeff: Yes, yes, yes, yes. I was

[00:05:26] Merlin: Or he’s made an association in his head the same way that we have these broken brains where like, I think of an overpass in New Zealand, every time I think of talking about vocational wheel, like he, no, that’s, that’s that back to work podcast episode, but yeah.

[00:05:39] Merlin: Yeah. So like it’s. And you’re like, oh, and then, because he really is, I said to somebody the other day, it’s, it’s almost like he’s memorized a Markov chain, like somebody gave him an MD5 hash, and he somehow unintentionally memorized it, and now he can’t unremember it. 729 2202 was my phone number when I was 10, and I [00:06:00] will know that for the rest of my life, and I don’t need to know that.

[00:06:03] Merlin: But if I see the number 729 in the wild, I think of my phone number. If I see the number 207 in the wild, I think of my laundry number in military school. You can’t unlearn those things, and I think he is in such a state at this point. Cut all of this out. I’m so sorry, Jeff. Hi, Jeff. How are you?

[00:06:20] Jeff: I love it. I love it. I love it.

[00:06:21] Jeff: Um, and also you’re reminding me in that sort of, um, that space between saying insane asylum and saying Hannibal Lecter, I’m reminded, I know you’re a fan of John Dickerson.

[00:06:32] Merlin: really, I think John Dickerson is so smart. I

[00:06:35] Jeff: In the most recent Political Gab Fest, he, he coins the phrase Mean Time to Weird.

[00:06:41] Merlin: Oh, am I allowed to cuss? Forgive

[00:06:43] Jeff: Yeah. Yes. Please,

[00:06:44] Merlin: Hey Jeff, fuck you, because I actually wrote that down. I wrote, no, let me find it, um, no, it was so funny, and, cause he said it, and I was like, there’s no, wait, what, [00:07:00] that, that, okay, I have this from, in drafts, oh god, this is a really poorly taken note, on, uh, September 12th, at 3.

[00:07:07] Merlin: 44pm pacific time, I wrote down, John D, Mean Time to Weird. I literally wrote it down in drafts. That’s the only thing in the whole draft.

[00:07:16] Jeff: That’s awesome. He’s brilliant. He’s brilliant. He’s such a delightful thinker to follow.

[00:07:22] Merlin: was watching him after the most recent debate, um, with Kamala Harris and on Colbert. And one of the things I really admire about him is he does something that is so. unusual and so difficult to do well, which is like Colbert would ask him a question, and when every time he’d respond, he’d have a very thoughtful response.

[00:07:43] Merlin: But whereas a lot of people would hear a question and then go like, Okay, well, I have the training to know how to reframe this into the answer that I want to give. And that usually involves beginning a sentence with the word so period. And so you, you know, you do this thing where you go, so [00:08:00] the way that this, but in John’s case, he doesn’t do that.

[00:08:03] Merlin: And he doesn’t sound like an asshole, but he very gently acknowledges what the person says, integrates it into his answer. And then rather than necessarily exactly answering the question he was given, he provides the context that he thinks is necessary for understanding how the thing that person said fits into a larger landscape.

[00:08:21] Merlin: He never loses track of that. And even as he does that, he does not sound like a conservative. Conservative, small c, Ding a ling, like he’s a very active thinker about things and he never stops reprocessing things at levels that a lot of us who are obsessed with media and think everything is everything, like he’s really good at disassembling the parts of something in a very humane way, giving it back to you in a way that makes you both seem smarter, which is really difficult to do, believe me, I know.

[00:08:47] Jeff: It’s a great way to put it. I also love something he does often when he’s talking is he stops and says, what do I mean by that?

[00:08:53] Merlin: Oh, I totally agree. And I’m like, I like, even on that, if you go back and watch that Colbert interview, where he’s wearing a very [00:09:00] handsome suit, um, you know,

[00:09:01] Jeff: a very handsome man.

[00:09:02] Merlin: he’s really good looking guy. I mean, his face from every angle is, is, is very, is very, he has an S tier face.

[00:09:13] Jeff: From every angle. Oh,

[00:09:14] Merlin: angle, I’ve seen every angle of his face, I’ve photographed his face, I know it’s dimensions. The other day I posted a photo of him and me outside my office because I’m

[00:09:23] Jeff: I saw that. I saw

[00:09:24] Merlin: Now that was followers only, but I had to, I realized I know too many people named John. It occurs to me every time I look at my photos.

[00:09:33] Merlin: Persons area. And I’m like, I know too, I know too many men named John or some variation of John and like that I need to really cull this herd at some point. Um, yeah, I mean, but he is also, I find him, you know, I’m, I’m gonna say something Jeff. I don’t, I don’t use this word a ton because I think it has not only been abused, I think it’s not a useful word.

[00:09:55] Merlin: And I think on some level it doesn’t mean what people think it means. But I find him inspiring [00:10:00] in the sense, and I’m not saying like I want a poster of him or something, or get a. John Dickerson poster that says hope for some reason. I don’t mean inspiration in that way, I mean the way he rolls. The way that he conducts himself.

[00:10:12] Merlin: He is, in the true sense of the word, a gentleman. And, and being just very, very, very, very, very, very lightly acquainted with him. He’s like that. He’s really, really nice, and really warm, and really smart, and he’s, he has worked his humanity, his history, his background, his family, and his Catholicism into a worldview that I find very invigorating.

[00:10:37] Merlin: I wish there were more John Dickersons in this world.

[00:10:39] Jeff: And he’s someone like Colbert who works his Catholicism into his work in ways that are just really, really beautiful.

[00:10:47] Merlin: his nerd stuff! The same way the

[00:10:48] Jeff: And his nerd

[00:10:49] Merlin: is always fact checking the Lord of the Rings stuff.

[00:10:52] Jeff: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[00:10:54] Merlin: fact check. No, they couldn’t have taken the eagle, I know. [00:11:00] Um, but yeah, it’s I think Mean Time to Weird is good. I’m sorry, continue.

[00:11:05] Jeff: Mean Time to Weird.

[00:11:07] Merlin: One thing I really I was looking I’ve been looking forward to doing this with you despite what you could have guessed over the summer with our various

[00:11:15] Jeff: Oh, shit. Shh,

[00:11:16] Merlin: this.

[00:11:16] Merlin: Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. Settle, settle. No, no. I didn’t mean it that way. I meant to say, I really, I was just, uh. I, I would like to do this show probably more often than you would like, because

[00:11:29] Jeff: Nah, no such thing.

[00:11:30] Merlin: this tickles a part of my brain that begs for more use. And on the one hand, it’s fun because I get to go off with you about things that sound like, sound like Guided by Voices EPs.

[00:11:43] Merlin: But also, like, this gives me access to discussing the kind of stuff that I feel is so, sometimes so subtle. And yet so powerful, and yet gets kind of dropped out of the discourse in which everything is everything, and I’m really grateful that you put up with me to [00:12:00] schedule this, and, uh, I, I enjoy being here, and if you wanted me to be on more often, I would.

[00:12:04] Merlin: Not, not enough to be annoying, but I really enjoy talking with you. And I follow you on the internet now.

[00:12:10] Jeff: guess. Good to see you on Mastodon.

[00:12:12] Dingalings Failing at a Heist

[00:12:12] Jeff: Uh, recently a, a, a big hit on, on Double Indemnity. Um,

[00:12:18] Merlin: my God.

[00:12:19] Jeff: a movie I had honestly hadn’t even registered, or I probably heard of it. Hadn’t registered until,

[00:12:25] Merlin: I think everybody’s probably seen clips of Barbara Stanwyck walking down the steps or something. But you like, if you’re like me and you grew up with My Three Sons, you’re like, I cannot believe that it’s Fred McMurray. It’s, it’s, he’s so off, and Edward G. Robinson, all three of

[00:12:40] Jeff: Edward G. Robinson, my

[00:12:41] Merlin: good in that movie.

[00:12:42] Merlin: It’s really, it’s such a well played movie. Told Noir and I think it’s not only famous because it is a very good noir but also just it’s a very watchable noir in a way that like The Big Sleep is completely confusing. Don’t bother reading the book. The book does not make any sense at all but The Big Sleep is still a fun movie.

[00:12:59] Merlin: But like you [00:13:00] ever see DOA?

[00:13:01] Jeff: Nope.

[00:13:02] Merlin: Um, can I give you the log line?

[00:13:04] Jeff: Yeah. Give me the logline.

[00:13:06] Merlin: A guy realizes, I want to say that every guy realizes he has been poisoned and has 24 hours to find the person who poisoned him and why. And this is from the 50s.

[00:13:19] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:13:19] Merlin: How cool is that? It’s got been remade badly several times,

[00:13:22] Jeff: It sounds, yes, so I’m, I am kind of in love with 40s and 50s noir movies right now. I watched, like, I watched The Killing. I watched Human Desire, Double Indemnity, of course. And, and I am, I am amazed. I think when I was younger, I watched a lot of this kind of stuff. But I mean, I’m talking when I was like 16 or 17.

[00:13:39] Jeff: And as a grown ass man, it all just lands differently. Like it’s a, it’s,

[00:13:45] Merlin: I totally agree. And as a grown man, but also as if I could add to that, as somebody who then has unintentionally been loving movies and increasingly now TV shows that you don’t even realize are a noir, I mean, it’s [00:14:00] just, I’ll be basic. The Big Lebowski is a noir. There’s two big genres that we tend to think of as artifacts from other decades.

[00:14:07] Merlin: Times when they’re really, like, and less so, like, noirs, right? Like, I don’t think noirs were ever that mainstream. I mean, what is that Elliot Gould movie? It was a long, uh, the long goodbye in the 70s. There’s all these kinds of movies that are noir ish, but, you know, the other one’s westerns. Where there’s so many things, when you watch them and really pay attention, I guess Star Wars is kind of, in some ways, uh, considered a western.

[00:14:30] Merlin: But, like, Mandalorian. is straight up a Western down to like when he walks, there’s a spur noise.

[00:14:36] Jeff: yeah, exactly, exactly,

[00:14:38] Merlin: And, but like, you, you know what I’m saying though, what’s interesting about that is like, it’s to me, this kind of synthesis, contra my, my declaration that not everything is everything. I do think it is really.

[00:14:48] Merlin: Um, uh, it gives me life to be able to associate one thing to another and then to look at the, to compare and contrast. But even just on an aesthetic level, it’s so fascinating to [00:15:00] be, to be into the second act of almost anything. Everything the Coen brothers has ever done and realized, I mean, yeah, I get that this is about ding a lings failing at a heist, but I didn’t get how much so many of their movies are really a kind of a noir, but simple, I guess, obviously, but

[00:15:17] Jeff: Blood Symbol, so good,

[00:15:18] Merlin: oh my God, how great are those kids?

[00:15:21] Jeff: yeah,

[00:15:21] Merlin: But yeah, I mean, I, uh, I like stuff a lot, you know, and

[00:15:26] Jeff: love stuff.

[00:15:27] Merlin: I really, oh god, I love stuff.

[00:15:29] Music is the Best (Part 1)

[00:15:29] Merlin: Again, I told you, I was up till three last night for absolutely no good reason apart from I just kept listening to music that made me want to listen to more music. And

[00:15:36] Jeff: And what was the, what was the chain, what was the

[00:15:39] Merlin: do you really care? Christ, this is hard to meter because it involves YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Apple Classical App, but let me go look at my Mastodon because that’s usually, that’s usually the trails of my effluvium.

[00:15:58] Merlin: That I can, I can best. [00:16:00] I can see I ended with Freddie, Freddie Mercury. Oh, you know what it was? I got into a little bit of a jack. Oh, yes, you know what it was? Um, do you ever, there’s a really good YouTube channel that I recommend to people who like things. Um, Trash Theory is a YouTube channel. Yeah, so it’s this English guy.

[00:16:17] Merlin: I love it when people Really put effort into something and this guy makes these videos like the one I recommended the other night was hey Have you ever heard that song Common People by Pulp? It’s a song that I really like a lot It’s a very important song to me from that time. He does this amazing video about like how we got to Common People.

[00:16:34] Merlin: He does one about like pre 1976 punk. One of my favorites, for selfish reasons, is like Power Pop before My Sharona, like how we got

[00:16:44] Jeff: Oh, nice.

[00:16:45] Merlin: but he in particular has a series, because he’s an English person as far as I know, called New British Canon, where he’ll just do a thing on Suzy and the Banshees.

[00:16:52] Merlin: His one on Eurythmics is so thought

[00:16:55] Jeff: My eyes just hit it at the same time as you said it, yes,

[00:16:59] Merlin: I give you a [00:17:00] factoid?

[00:17:00] Jeff: please,

[00:17:01] Merlin: Um, so they, they arrived pretty big in, I think, 82, 83, 82, I think, with Sweet Dreams in America. You know, and of course, he goes through the tourists, the two of them, their previous pop band in England that I adore. But he goes through all that, blah da da blah da blah, but by the time, I think it was their second video, uh, uh, D k d k d k d k, Love is a Stranger, where she’s in the backseat of, like, a limo, and she’s got,

[00:17:25] Jeff: yep, totally.

[00:17:26] Merlin: yeah, um, MTV pulled that video until she agreed to show her birth certificate to prove that she was an assigned female at birth person.

[00:17:34] Jeff: Wow.

[00:17:35] Merlin: Now, I didn’t know that. And that’s just one of the indignities to which she was subjected. Who does that to Annie Lennox? She’s Scottish. It’s horrible. Check out The Tourist. Check out the tours. They do a cover of, uh, I Only Want to Be With You, that old 60s song. They do an amazing cover of that. It’s real, real earworm.

[00:17:55] Merlin: Um, and, oh, but like, okay, so I was listening to Trash Theory, and I was listening [00:18:00] to an episode I’ve heard before, but I actually really, really listened to it, which is Another one of those, so you get the idea, which is like, almost like, uh, Hit Parade, the way Hit Parade goes, the wonderful podcast Hit Parade is like, this is a song that was number one, fantastic podcast, where he’ll go like, and so that gives you, let me tell you the history of boy bands, or let me tell you the history of, one of my favorites is an early episode, UB40’s, the history of UB40’s Red Red Wine.

[00:18:24] Merlin: Which is a surprisingly compelling episode. Great

[00:18:27] Jeff: Awesome.

[00:18:27] Merlin: Ditto with this guy, where he’ll go like, how we got to Nevermind. And I, I love Nevermind. That was a super important season of music for me. That’s my season of Superchunk. That’s my season of my second wave of teenage fan club, um,

[00:18:43] Jeff: your seeds around. Around.

[00:18:47] Merlin: Cast Iron. Cast Iron. And seed toss. And then they, they, they, they, they, they covered two sedo songs. They cover, not only did they cover two Sedo songs on the same record, they released a [00:19:00] single that had a, and the B side were both Sedo songs, both from the same album. And actually, uh, I think it was from Weed Forton.

[00:19:07] Merlin: They covered two songs that were actually like, like in order on the Sedo album. That’s a ballsy move in

[00:19:12] Jeff: That’s an excellent move. That’s

[00:19:15] Merlin: know, any thought could be the beginning of a brand new tangled web you’re spinning. Anyone could be a brand new love. Um, but anyways, so I was watching this one on, on grunge and I have to be honest, like I’m in, in the many, many, many genres out there.

[00:19:30] Merlin: Grunge is not near the top for me as a thing, but like mainly there was a, we had a free jukebox in college that had. That Mudhoney, Keep It Out of My Face song on it. I knew that. I knew the drummer in my band really liked Melvin, so I knew Houdini. I knew a handful of things. I don’t know, I really lost you there, yeah.

[00:19:50] Merlin: I don’t mind stealing bread. But, like, going back and listening to what, like, actually what Soundgarden sounded like at first, all these bands sounded like at first, and that got me into a [00:20:00] Melvin’s Jag. Then, I

[00:20:01] Jeff: that’s a good jag.

[00:20:02] Merlin: rediscovered, oh my god, have you seen King Buzzo show you how to play, um, Honey Bucket?

[00:20:09] Jeff: I have seen that. And

[00:20:11] Merlin: It’s so simple, but it’s so cool.

[00:20:13] Jeff: was an HBO series at one point, I have a, we were on the same label, uh, Amphetamine Reptile Records. And

[00:20:20] Merlin: wait, I’m sorry, I’m having, I’m having some kind of a neurological event. Can you just, is there a way to just include once, what, you, you, you were in a band that was on Amphetamine Reptile?

[00:20:31] Jeff: yeah, yeah, the Meathead label. I mean, I say that lovingly.

[00:20:34] Merlin: Do, do, would I, would I know the name

[00:20:36] Jeff: You wouldn’t, we were at the end, we were a band called the Freedom Fighters. We were one of the last like four releases before Tom Hazelmeyer just like burned out and shuttered the whole thing and just spent all his time at the shooting range.

[00:20:48] Merlin: See, like, the kids don’t know from this. Today you say Homestead Records or Caroline Records and people are like, what? What? I like indie records. Anyway. But, oh, okay. So. Wow. Wow. My

[00:20:58] Jeff: And the AMRAP [00:21:00] offices were in an old dentist’s office here in Minneapolis, um, and the studio was downstairs where they recorded the records, but there was this one room that was just piles of weird shit like promo, like test pressings and, and VHS recordings of, you know, shows from the various bands over the past like 10, 15 years, and I’d been such a huge fan.

[00:21:21] Jeff: So I put in I just start putting shit in because there’s a TV and a VCR there and there was some HBO show that I’d never heard

[00:21:29] Merlin: And you don’t know. You have no idea. There’s probably a piece of masking tape on there that says show three or something,

[00:21:34] Jeff: exactly. Exactly. So there’s this I put in this VHS thing. It just says like, it just I think it’s just says Melvin’s and there’s just a bunch of random shit on it. And and Buzzo is on the HBO show where he’s going to buy a mansion, which he can’t do. And,

[00:21:47] Merlin: Wait. Approximately what year?

[00:21:50] Jeff: this must have been okay,

[00:21:51] Merlin: Did he have the big hair and everything?

[00:21:52] Jeff: yeah, definitely.

[00:21:53] Jeff: I would have been in there in like 98, 97. And so it would have been around around there. So he walks in with this realtor this [00:22:00] mansion and he’s carrying he’s carrying a lunchbox like a 1950s style

[00:22:03] Merlin: got to see this. Oh my God.

[00:22:06] Jeff: and

[00:22:06] Merlin: How so that now that’s an HGTV show. I would watch sort of like fishing with John. Yeah. Where you go

[00:22:11] Jeff: Fishing with John. Oh my God.

[00:22:12] Merlin: Yeah. Yeah. But I would, I would watch, I would watch an HGTV show where just King Buzzo goes to different places. Open houses.

[00:22:20] Jeff: Oh, yeah, totally. What? Fishing with John a, a mixtape favorite for

[00:22:23] Merlin: I bought a, I bought a, I bought a, the Criterion DVD of that. The Willem Dafoe episode of Fishing with John is very, very important.

[00:22:31] Jeff: and, and the Tom Waites one has a bit where he’s singing in the canoe along the river of men, of men

[00:22:38] Merlin: Can you imagine fishing with Tom Waits?

[00:22:41] Jeff: no, I can’t, but I can kind of ’cause of that show. Okay. So anyway, he’s, he’s, he goes into, and the realtor’s looking and I’m like, who the fuck? Fuck is this? I mean, of course, it’s like, you

[00:22:51] Merlin: For those of you who don’t know, King, uh, what’s his name, Buzz,

[00:22:54] Jeff: Oh yeah, we should do this. Yeah. Buzz Osborne.

[00:22:57] Merlin: these three guys, talk about a power [00:23:00] trio, these three guys who at first were one of the fastest punk bands of all time, but then in time became famous. Their contribution in the canonical story of Seattle Grunge, they were the ones who brought in very heavy, very loud, very loud music.

[00:23:15] Merlin: Um, people say Black Sabbath, I don’t totally agree, but like, for, for, but think

[00:23:19] Jeff: slow, but fast.

[00:23:20] Merlin: think about Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath, one of the greatest songs

[00:23:22] Jeff: That’s a good. Yeah. Yep.

[00:23:27] Merlin: You know, like that, but so sledgey. Oh my God, going blind.

[00:23:31] Jeff: Oh, oh,

[00:23:32] Merlin: he, as a power trio, the three guys, all great musicians and Buzz, known as King Buzzo, how, I guess an afro? How do you describe what his hair was? It was like a weather system.

[00:23:43] Jeff: special. Yeah. It’s a weather system that works. Yeah. That works.

[00:23:47] Merlin: And he’s out buying a mansion. He’s buying a mansion, huh?

[00:23:50] Jeff: looks like the stills of the early nuclear tests, you know, a little bit.

[00:23:53] Merlin: Yeah, or maybe like, like you could have mistaken for like a silhouette of Sideshow Bob.

[00:23:57] Jeff: And his lyrics are complete gibberish [00:24:00] and yet evoke emotion in

[00:24:03] Merlin: You wouldn’t know, but he’s really

[00:24:04] Jeff: really smart. Really smart. So, so he’s buying this house and the, and the realtor’s like increasingly just like, who the fuck? This isn’t real. And, and when he gets the sense that that’s happening, he, he kneels down and he sets the lunchbox on the floor and he opens it up and he pulls out a magazine on which he’s, he’s on the cover.

[00:24:21] Jeff: And, and it just says, king BuZZo, god of grunge. And he says, he says, well, look, you

[00:24:28] Merlin: Well, that and 20 percent will get you a

[00:24:30] Jeff: like, yeah, he’s like, you can see here, I am the godfather of grunge, on which he tries to buy this house.

[00:24:36] Merlin: mean, like you can keep that copy. I’ve got more, but that’s now my, that’s my 20 percent is me on the cover of this.

[00:24:42] Jeff: Incredible.

[00:24:43] Merlin: sent you the, uh, do you remember when the solo records came out?

[00:24:47] Jeff: Oh, yeah, of

[00:24:47] Merlin: So, there’s three guys in the Melvins, and this, I posted this last night, and this is how I remembered this, was like, the, the, oh my god, the whole story of the KISS, the KISS solo albums are their own story.

[00:24:57] Merlin: Like, the cutout sensation of my youth. [00:25:00] The, the four KISS solo, the four KISS solo albums were in cutout for over a decade. Everywhere you went, there was copies of, like, the Ace Frehley one with, you know, New York Groove. So, when the Melvins did solo

[00:25:11] Jeff: was, was Beth on Peter Criss solo

[00:25:14] Merlin: No, Beth was on Destroyer.

[00:25:15] Jeff: I don’t do Kiss trivia well. Okay, go ahead.

[00:25:17] Merlin: I think they were on Destroyer 76.

[00:25:19] Merlin: Um, but anyway, there was that and that led me into, then I got into looking at one thing I love about Trash Theory also. Hi, my name is Merlin Mann and this is a podcast about things I like. Um, he does a really good Spotify playlist for every episode. And you’ll get why, like, like, you know, let’s talk after and I’m going to curate exactly the right first episode for you to watch of Trash Theory.

[00:25:41] Merlin: But then he does a really good, like, like Hit Parade, there’s a really good Spotify playlist where like every song that he played a portion of is in it. But then that led me into. Oh, then, then the Algo pulls up, um, Freak Scene by Dinosaur Jr., and I suddenly was struck. Here we go, Jeff. You ready? Write it down.

[00:25:59] Merlin: Here’s another [00:26:00] one. The very clear recollection of me, not arguing with, but bantering with Chris and Marty, the other guitar player and the drummer in my band in college, about whether Bug, the was just a little bit too poppy because I, I had cut my teeth on You’re Living All Over Me. That was what got me into Dinosaur, was then, which is a little heavier, definitely a little weirder.

[00:26:23] Merlin: It’s got Polito. It’s got that weird Sebedo song on it. And, but then the Algos, now it’s off the hook because now I get Love is All Right Tonight by Rick Springfield. And that is one of the This performance in particular is like, you don’t realize like how gifted that band was. You just think of like, oh, it’s the guy from General Hospital that had a pop

[00:26:43] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Heh heh

[00:26:44] Merlin: a Sammy Hagar cover. It’s really weird. But, um, but that’s really, and then that got me into Pat Benatar. They whisper

[00:26:50] Jeff: hell is for children.

[00:26:53] Merlin: and the one, two, three, four. And they’re still married. Did you know that? They’ve been married [00:27:00] since 1980. I checked chat GPT. I said, I said to chat GPT last night. Ooh.

[00:27:05] Merlin: You see how I bring it around? You see how I bring it around?

[00:27:07] Jeff: heh heh heh heh heh heh. So,

[00:27:11] Merlin: I,

[00:27:11] Jeff: to Chep GPT,

[00:27:13] Merlin: says to it, I says, I, and what had happened

[00:27:14] Jeff: is that, Derry Girls? So I says to myself, says I. Heh heh heh heh

[00:27:18] Merlin: I’ve been tied up with my own shoelaces! They tied me to the radiator! It’s just not as nice! Um, God, I love that show. Um, so I open up Chat GPT, I open up, uh, whatever, 400IO Preview, and I just type the sentence, Are Pat and Spider still married? No context. Are Pat and Spider, Spider with a Y, still married?

[00:27:40] Merlin: And it said As of my knowledge, cut off in October 23, Pat Benatar and her husband, Neil Spider Giraldo, are still married. They’ve been together since 1982. Does that make you feel good?

[00:27:51] Jeff: makes me feel super good.

[00:27:52] Sponsor: 1Password

[00:27:52] [00:28:00] [00:29:00] [00:30:00]

[00:30:36] Full Catastrophe Living

[00:30:36] Merlin: I’m almost done. Then the Algo brought up my favorite version of Somebody to Love by Queen, which is not, I, everybody’s like, you know, Live Aid’s a good show, but there are other shows, people.

[00:30:49] Merlin: Um, Somebody to Love in Montreal, 1981. This is all on my internet site, you can find. Um, and, and that got me into that, but then that got me into, I went off on a jag and somehow I [00:31:00] went off on an angle. And usually at this point I would open up Apoclassical and listen to Vivaldi’s Summer and try to go to sleep, but, which I shouldn’t do because the last, last movement of that is one of the most baller metal things ever written.

[00:31:11] Merlin: But I, and I found myself instead listening to lots of, I don’t know what you call this genre, but do you know the band Boygenius?

[00:31:16] Jeff: yeah, yeah

[00:31:17] Merlin: Okay. So like, I don’t know what you call that genre.

[00:31:20] Jeff: which is like a super group, right,

[00:31:21] Merlin: Yeah, there’s, it’s, it’s Lucy. I gotta say this right, it’s Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers, and uh, and um, and Julien Baker. These three women who are just super interesting.

[00:31:33] Merlin: And I got into like, and then I was listening to Hannah Eide, who I can highly recommend, and I ended up going back and listening to Torres, T O R R E S, one of the great records. If you like theatrical, musical theater, oh, oh, oh, I have a Torres video, it’s gonna change your life. Um, and that’s where I was and then I finally went to sleep according to my watch.

[00:31:51] Merlin: I went to sleep at like 3. 05 AM. But, but here’s the thing, Jeff. I made a logistical pivot at this point. uh, uh, uh, I, [00:32:00] I don’t, the listener is almost certainly not familiar with my work. But, but one of my thought technologies the last few years has been, uh, it’s one thing to feel bad and it’s another thing to feel bad about feeling bad.

[00:32:11] Merlin: And so I’ve discovered that applies very heavily to sleep in my case. Well, yeah, I mean, it’s the second arrow. Like it’s, it’s what the, the Buddhist, the Buddhist says, you know, the first arrow is the one that, that somebody shoots at you and hits you in the leg, but you feeling about bad about that is the arrow you shoot into yourself. And, and all of my, so many of my strategies to, to bring in another piece of terminology of mine, the mean dad voice. Sometimes when we’re not sure what to do in life, or when we’re vulnerable, or just in our repose, or just being alive, a mean dad voice tells us what’s wrong with us. And how we’ll never get it right.

[00:32:50] Merlin: And that is a uniquely terrible thing to be litigating as you’re theoretically trying to go to sleep.

[00:32:57] Jeff: Awful.

[00:32:58] Merlin: You can’t make yourself go [00:33:00] to sleep. You can’t, you can’t yell yourself into falling asleep. Like it just doesn’t work that way. And so, this little part of the concerto I’ll draw together by saying like, so, I think the practice in your words for this is to say to yourself, I mean, you could do something as glib works for me as like, I’ve decided, I’ve decided, I’ve decided not to worry about this or I’ve decided this is going to be okay.

[00:33:26] Merlin: And like kind of make a deal with yourself and it can may sound like happy talk, but like seriously, dude, has, have you, as yelling at yourself ever helped your heartbeat go down and let you go to sleep? And I’ve realized, and so I

[00:33:38] Jeff: knows I’ve tried.

[00:33:39] Merlin: And I’ll cut, flash forward through years of this practice, and I have a lot of practices about sleep I’d love to share with people, um, but one of them is I say to myself, hey, you know what?

[00:33:48] Merlin: What, what, what, what’s, what’s going to happen? What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? Like tomorrow is actually Thursday is my Thursday. Thursday is my day when I do things like schedule a podcast with my friends, but it’s also when I do a lot of my like power pottering [00:34:00] around the house stuff.

[00:34:01] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:34:01] Merlin: And so, like, what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? I said, well, I know I need to be up to talk to Jeff at, you know, ten. So just set an alarm for eight. I had four, four and a half hours of sleep, and then it’ll be fine. You’ve done stuff on four hours of sleep lots of times, and maybe you’ll take a nap later and maybe you won’t, but you can’t really catch up on sleep, but you also, there is no benefit to stressing out about sleep you didn’t catch.

[00:34:30] Merlin: And knowing that before you, quote, try to go to sleep, I find more helpful than it seems. Does that make sense?

[00:34:39] Jeff: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, it just, it’s the worst thing in the world to be wrestling with yourself.

[00:34:44] Merlin: inclination then is to go, what the, what, what’s wrong with

[00:34:47] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on, man.

[00:34:50] Merlin: on! Um, that, you know, another one, another, if you, in terms of these, I should write these down, but another nice thing to just very gently say to yourself, [00:35:00] you know, I’ve decided not to let it bother me. That’s the actual phrase that I, I

[00:35:03] Jeff: Mmm.

[00:35:03] Merlin: for lots of things, but, but another one is, oh, I’m going to put this right on my list.

[00:35:09] Merlin: Um, you ready for this? This is a thing you say to yourself. So, however you got where you are in a given moment, you find yourself thinking. You don’t yell at yourself. You find yourself thinking, um, it’s not the time for that.

[00:35:24] Jeff: Mmm. Yes. Yes.

[00:35:27] Merlin: how about just very gently, not now. way you’d say to a little kid, well, as much as you want to go to Disney World, we need to go return these batteries at Walgreens.

[00:35:37] Merlin: And

[00:35:37] Jeff: It’s a, the not now thing is a huge act of self compassion.

[00:35:41] Merlin: oh my God, do you think, do you do, do you do anything? No, honestly, do you do anything like that?

[00:35:46] Jeff: You know, it’s only, I don’t, I hope this is related enough, but it’s something that really

[00:35:50] Merlin: not gonna matter either way. I’m just like

[00:35:52] Jeff: I suppose, while, while you were talking, something that kind of came up for me that, that, that really made me think of. So I had a, I dropped my, uh, [00:36:00] oldest son, my first born off at college about a month ago, like 11 hours away.

[00:36:04] Jeff: And, and man, with two things. One is I did have to decide months earlier, I have to stop grieving this now. Because there’ll be a time to grieve it.

[00:36:12] Merlin: I’ve already started. I’m still, I’m still grieving stuff from sixth grade as my kid is getting ready to apply to college. I’m still, I’m still two wars behind at every juncture.

[00:36:25] Jeff: Yes, yes, yes, it’s hard. Well, so but here’s the thing. Okay, so I successfully, it took me a minute and it took me, you know, bringing it up in therapy, but I got to the point where I’m like, okay, I’m not grieving this anymore, because I can’t enjoy him here. Because everything makes me think about how he’ll be gone.

[00:36:42] Jeff: Right? I can’t do that.

[00:36:44] Merlin: Oh, oh my god.

[00:36:45] Jeff: I want to have here.

[00:36:46] Merlin: Oh my God, I’m so ashamed of how often I think that. I’m so, there’s one point, there’s one point in the early part of my kid’s transition where I were like, we just kind of quietly, not like banned photos of my kid on [00:37:00] devices, but there was a time when we were still like getting our hands around it, where it was weird to see a photo of our baby and be like, Oh my God, we’re adjusting to so many things.

[00:37:09] Merlin: In addition to everything about having a teenager, there’s another big thing. That wasn’t bad in any sense. I think. I don’t know. I hate to sound needy about it, but like, I fucking love my kid. But like, there was a point where like, you’re like, in the same way for you, like, the day that you dropped your kid off at college may not be the day that you come back and watch that video of your kid having a bath

[00:37:29] Jeff: it’s

[00:37:29] Merlin: he was, when he was one.

[00:37:31] Merlin: Maybe that’s not the best day for that,

[00:37:32] Jeff: It’s not the best. It’s not the

[00:37:34] Merlin: Or maybe it is. Maybe it is. I mean, I guess it varies.

[00:37:37] Jeff: The thing that I think was actually a, a first time truly integrated lesson in this was that, um, in the week before we were to take him, I was a wreck. I was feeling agony that was flavors of a terrible breakup, um, and, and flavors of a death where you’re like, I don’t have anyone to be mad at.

[00:37:57] Jeff: This, I mean, you know, some deaths, I don’t, let’s say a [00:38:00] natural death. I don’t have anybody to be mad at. I can’t reverse

[00:38:02] Merlin: Well, it’s hard to say you didn’t know it was going to happen. It’s like,

[00:38:05] Jeff: Exactly,

[00:38:05] Merlin: not surprising that it happens. It’s surprising when it happens.

[00:38:09] Jeff: So I was having these moments for that entire week. It really is kind of this, it’s this agony. And now I’m still, I don’t cry easy. And that’s not a point of pride.

[00:38:16] Jeff: I just don’t cry easy. Um, and, and as it’s getting closer, I am almost by the end, I’m in a constant state of sort of sniffling. And I can’t say words that are related to us taking him away. I can’t even say the words, right?

[00:38:30] Merlin: Talk about a deep down, complicated, like, knot of emotions. It’s not even, it’s not one emotion. It’s not like you go, I’m sad. It’s like, it’s so, it’s, it’s like almost the definition of the word bittersweet. Which is like, I have irreconcilable feelings right now, and it’s not one or two or three feelings. I have like seven irreconcilable feelings.

[00:38:50] Merlin: And they’re all real. There’s none of them that aren’t real.

[00:38:53] Jeff: And, and there’s this point where it’s like, yeah, This, I’m like, okay, agony. I can, I can sit with agony and figure this out a little [00:39:00] bit, because I’m doing this to myself right now, right? Like, I can be very sad, um, uh, without doing this to myself. And I was like, I had this thought, because I was really crying.

[00:39:10] Jeff: I just had to kind of steal away to cry all the time.

[00:39:12] Merlin: Especially if it’s not easy for you, right? I mean, you have to like almost like probably enter into some kind of like a chamber and like go, well, now here comes the process of me letting this happen.

[00:39:22] Jeff: I have to be like in a car or something. So, so I’m like, okay, I’m crying at this, and I need to cry through it. Like, I’m moving at this, but I need to move through it, right? Like, that’s,

[00:39:32] Merlin: only way out is through. Yeah.

[00:39:33] Jeff: Oh my God. And when I, when I had that, I was like, it still was hard. Next couple of days were really hard, but there was such a different feeling to it.

[00:39:42] Jeff: And again, it’s like one of those things where it’s like an accidental, I mean, I guess the act of self compassion was just stopping and being like, okay, fucking hold on. This is horrible. Let’s just take this apart.

[00:39:52] Merlin: Well, I mean the act of compassion is like you’ve accepted that You can’t, in the same way that you can’t yell yourself to sleep, [00:40:00] I, I, I say in that document, like, that I feel like negative, quote unquote negative emotions are like cockroaches, where like you can scare them away for a little while, but that, they’ll, they’ll come back.

[00:40:11] Merlin: They’re like the sand people. They’ll, they’ll be back in greater numbers. You know what I mean? You can’t, yeah, they, they, they, you know, that’s why they walk single file. To disguise their numbers. Feelings. Hi, I’m Merlin Mann and I think feelings are like Tusken Raiders.

[00:40:31] Jeff: But then it becomes like the, um, what’s the, the feist video for the 4 song where you think it’s one person and then the, yeah, it’s great. Um, yeah. So anyway, that was, you ha, I thought about that when, when you were talking about this, it’s like a, it’s a different thing. It’s a different space, but it is that thing of having to tell yourself, hey,

[00:40:50] Merlin: But you can’t do that. I can’t do that. Anyway, without a certain level of just to really state the obvious. I find it difficult to do that unless I make it a [00:41:00] practice or a special project or unless I basically say to myself, you know what, I, going in this, like a, it’s almost like a Daniel Kahneman thing.

[00:41:07] Merlin: Continuing in this first order thinking way about this is not great for me. Like, I can actively put all of my energy into avoiding this feeling or I can accept that maybe the feeling won’t kill me and it might actually make me feel more human in some way.

[00:41:23] Jeff: yeah. Yeah.

[00:41:24] Merlin: There’s a book, um, God, where is this from? Oh, it’s originally from Zorba the Greek, but a guy wrote a book, which, oh God, who wrote this book?

[00:41:32] Merlin: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. This is Jon Kabat Zinn. The, the

[00:41:34] Jeff: Oh,

[00:41:34] Merlin: writes a lot about, yeah, you

[00:41:36] Jeff: Also, weirdly, Howard Zinn’s son in law.

[00:41:39] Merlin: I did not

[00:41:40] Jeff: I built Howard Zinn’s website.

[00:41:43] Merlin: Are you kidding me?

[00:41:44] Jeff: No, I’m not kidding you. Yeah.

[00:41:47] Merlin: um, let’s can you put a pin in this one? We I want to talk about, um, fame famous pe websites for famous people we’ve made. Let’s let’s will you write that

[00:41:54] Jeff: Okay. That’s great. Yep. I’ll write it

[00:41:55] Merlin: My kid is currently I we had we had back to school night for my kid’s junior year, [00:42:00] uh, last week. And, uh, one of the things they’re reading is people’s history.

[00:42:04] Jeff: Oh, that’s excellent to hear.

[00:42:06] Merlin: I mean, you could do a lot worse. Yeah, this school, boy, they’re terrible. They, they include social justice in everything they try to do. What a bad school.

[00:42:13] Merlin: Oh, my God. I love this school so goddamn much. Um, yeah. So have you heard of this book, Full Catastrophe Living? You might

[00:42:19] Jeff: Yeah, it’s behind me.

[00:42:21] Merlin: Oh, really? Well, it comes from Zorba the Greek, but he refers to life as the full catastrophe.

[00:42:28] Jeff: Yes.

[00:42:29] Merlin: Does that, I’m, I’m not putting this well, does that, maybe you could explain it better than I, but is that’s kind of part of it, right?

[00:42:35] Merlin: Is instead of, instead of putting my, this goes for sleep, this goes for lots of things. Instead of taking all the energy from my, um, insert Star Trek reference, instead of putting all the energy into keeping my shields up, maybe it’d be better off to just kind of stop the air, stop the ship for a while, and really think about what we’re doing here because.

[00:42:54] Merlin: The shields I’m putting up are not helping, they are depleting my energy, and it’s not getting me closer to saving the people [00:43:00] on the, uh, Kobayashi Maru.

[00:43:02] Jeff: Yeah, definitely. I was reading this morning, I don’t have it in here, and it’s a name I don’t know I can say, which is Pema Chödrön, I think is her name.

[00:43:10] Merlin: She’s the source of one of my all time favorite quotes.

[00:43:12] Jeff: Which is?

[00:43:13] Merlin: Remember, you are the sky, not the weather.

[00:43:15] Jeff: Oh, that’s so good.

[00:43:17] Merlin: It’s one of the greatest quotes I’ve ever heard.

[00:43:18] Jeff: That’s so good.

[00:43:19] Merlin: also has two diureses in her name.

[00:43:22] Jeff: Uh,

[00:43:23] Merlin: She has two umlauts.

[00:43:24] Jeff: sounds, it gets too

[00:43:25] Merlin: Sorry, keep going.

[00:43:26] Jeff: stole the umlauts from my name at Ellis Island, I think.

[00:43:29] Merlin: Really? It used to be Umlautowitz?

[00:43:33] Jeff: Yeah, yeah. Whoa! Hey! So this book is, How We Live is How We Die. And it is

[00:43:42] Merlin: Happy birthday, Grandma.

[00:43:44] Jeff: yeah, I know, you know what’s funny?

[00:43:46] Jeff: I was reading it

[00:43:47] Merlin: I love you, Grandma. Here’s a book.

[00:43:49] Jeff: I was leaving, I was reading it as my youngest came down and I hid the cover like it was porn. I was just, I don’t want him to just have to take that and be like, what the fuck?

[00:43:56] Merlin: do that with my O’Reilly book about Pearl. [00:44:00] When my wife, when my wife comes in and finds me eating Snickers bars and listening to Valdi, I’m like, Oh, at least it’s wholesome.

[00:44:09] Jeff: exactly, exactly. Yeah, so her thing is like, Think everything’s always dying, right? Like, I mean, it’s a, it’s a dark turn in a way, but it’s like, maybe we can find

[00:44:21] Merlin: every glass is temporarily unbroken. But,

[00:44:26] Jeff: Bridges says, in, in season one of the, um, of the old man, everything’s always in free fall, uh, which is a little dark, but,

[00:44:35] Merlin: but that’s the full catastrophe though, is, is to, to realize it’s not, it’s not a way, and this is a very Alan Watts esque thing. Concept that I will very poorly mangle because I’m making this up as we go along. But like, the reason I keep saying stuff like this goes for sleep, one of my sleep technologies, and this is, I think, related, is that I started to realize things that tend to happen before I go to sleep.

[00:44:58] Merlin: Not that I brush my teeth or turn off the [00:45:00] lights, because who brushes their teeth? But like, but at bedtime, there are things that go through my, I think, I bet everybody has these things. It’s usually described as like, my mind is racing or blah, blah, blah. I’m thinking about tomorrow and all these things.

[00:45:11] Merlin: But I. Would sit with that and learned in time to sit with that and a funny thing we don’t time to get into this But like this is a huge deal for me is realizing there are three or four things That tend to go through my mind before I go to sleep. This was such a breakthrough for me. And, like, they include things like, well, first, I realize I’m, I’m, I feel bad that I’m not just going to sleep.

[00:45:34] Merlin: I’m not talking about, like, being up all night. I’m talking about every single night before I go to sleep. This is, which is important. If you only meditate when you’re sad Did that become something that just you associate with being sad if you just start instead start noticing something on a regular basis and you make it a practice or a project.

[00:45:49] Merlin: Nobody needs to know about it. Nobody needs to know about this, except that it might help. And I realized just in summary. Yeah, I tend to think like, Oh, man, I’m having trouble going to sleep. And then I tend to, like, [00:46:00] have a sudden jolt. of not panic, but I’ll suddenly realize something I don’t like thinking about right before bed.

[00:46:08] Merlin: And everybody’s got their own version of that. Then I tend to realize sometimes I have a really weird, like sexual thought, like that’s not not even my sex stuff. And it’s just but like, it’s weird and like upsetting to think about. And then I, you know, but what’s funny is, Once you just watch the traffic without getting in the car, that all becomes very instructive because guess what I have now?

[00:46:32] Merlin: Now I have a way of saying another phrase I like a lot. Oh, Here comes that feeling.

[00:46:38] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:46:39] Merlin: And because I’m the sky, not the weather, that feeling of that jolt. How about instead I realize that means I’m now in, for my purposes, step two of the falling asleep process? And like and now once I feel like a slight tingling.

[00:46:54] Merlin: On my skin or on my like this part of my body, I know now I’m about 10 minutes from falling asleep or [00:47:00] five minutes from falling asleep. And like, you can make, you can think of that in any way that works for you, but like, no, we’re not at Disney World yet. But we just took the exit with a big green sign says Walt Disney World.

[00:47:12] Merlin: So, Don’t worry, we’re still moving toward where we need to go. We’re not there yet. But once you’ve commuted on a route 50 times, you can have really, maybe even too clear heuristic for what happens. Oh, and when we see the water wheel, that means we’re five miles away from Auntie Susie’s house. Like you, you get more confidence why the way back is always seems faster than the way there.

[00:47:36] Merlin: The familiarity of that. And once you stop trying, what is the takeaway, as they say, about that? Instead of trying to reject Or, uh, reparse, or normalize, or just reject a feeling that you’re feeling. How about you just watch the car how about you just watch the stream without jumping into the water, [00:48:00] and now you know, okay now, yeah, just like every night I’ve moved on to step three.

[00:48:06] Merlin: And what’s weird is the weird meta part of that is once you know that that’s what you’re doing, and it’s gonna be different for everybody, but I encourage people to think about this and try this in sleep and life, but once you start doing that and it stops being something you fear or reject, It just becomes another thing.

[00:48:24] Merlin: I mean, it’s like, it’s like you don’t get as mad or sad or you don’t feel as vulnerable and broken. And this last part of this is what I realized over time. I can’t, I can’t prove this, but all those little thoughts that unbidden that come to me, those, like, I’m trying to evade those thoughts or outrun them in my head.

[00:48:45] Merlin: Like, First of all, yeah, well now that’s just part, I know that’s just part of the process, and that’s okay, you develop a certain familiarity with it, you start saying things like, oh, you know, here comes that feeling again, but the meta part of that is, now I’m not dreading [00:49:00] going to sleep, because I have a toolbox.

[00:49:03] Merlin: for at least putting some kind of a frame around this, and the ultimate life hack, in some ways, is to not need the life hack. Like, once you’ve found a way out of your own aversion to the full catastrophe, I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but that’s not a thing you get a vote on. You don’t get a vote on it.

[00:49:22] Merlin: Why do I cry? after something is over? Why didn’t I cry at the time? Why is it that like you’re kind of like you’re describing, right? Like, but also why? Why are there’s all these things where the emotional part of it seems like it comes at the wrong point? Well, what I’ve realized is that in the same way that my young person telling me who he is, was a gift.

[00:49:45] Merlin: My kid trusted me enough to tell me who he really is. I could be mad about like one, one could be mad about how your kid is not what you Expected and another one is to go, Holy shit, can you [00:50:00] imagine how brave that kid was to tell me who he really is? I’m the luckiest person in the goddamn world that they have a kid who knows who they are and then tells me who they are.

[00:50:10] Merlin: And I don’t, I don’t think honestly, I mean, you’d have to know me to know, but, um, I can’t imagine a greater gift than that. And I maybe wouldn’t even have learned at that point How good my kid was at life until I had the vulnerability to go, that’s, that’s great. I, I have nothing to add to this holler if you need money, like just do your thing.

[00:50:36] Merlin: But I don’t know if that makes sense, but, and so how do I attach that to sleep? Um, well, I start to realize that again, cause I have a practice of this, that vulnerability that I feel that I used to reject, that’s just an indication that I’m human and that I’m alive and that maybe. Is it possible? This is crazy.

[00:50:55] Merlin: Really follow me on this, Jeff, because this is what they call the big takeaway at the New York Times. The big [00:51:00] takeaway is that, is there a chance that I had that feeling I don’t like having, specifically because I’m vulnerable, specifically because when do you get vulnerable? So, you get vulnerable when you’re relaxed.

[00:51:13] Merlin: You ever had a cat?

[00:51:14] Jeff: Yeah. I have two cats. That’s Yeah, exactly.

[00:51:17] Merlin: a cat, and most cats, especially if they used, well, think about, think about this, you get a cat, and like, most cats like some kind of interaction, but, you know, some cats really like interaction, but most cats, in my experience, like interaction on their own terms. And so, they’ll come up and let you know when they want to scratch, or they’ll let you know when there’s a new box, or whatever.

[00:51:37] Merlin: And sometimes, if the cat gets very relaxed, it seems to want you to rub its tummy, and But the thing is, a cat will get so relaxed, this is, this is, I swear I’m going somewhere kind of with this, the cat gets so relaxed, it kind of unintentionally lets you rub its tummy. But what happens, a cat is an animal, the cat realizes it’s on its back, and it’s vulnerable, its belly is up in the air, and it’s [00:52:00] just, it’s like a deer at the watering hole.

[00:52:02] Merlin: And what happens when you rub a cat’s tummy, and then it realizes it’s getting its tummy rubbed? It might bite you, or it might scratch at you, or it might just simply leap out of your lap,

[00:52:10] Jeff: Whoa, hold on. Yeah.

[00:52:12] Merlin: because that’s the cat realizing it’s vulnerable, given a state of relaxation. Now, how can we, as just only barely slightly differently advanced beings, go, well, maybe that thing, that little, like, ah, I feel that maybe that’s life rubbing my tummy, where like, I feel I can cry.

[00:52:30] Merlin: Because I’m not actively experiencing the bad thing anymore. Maybe I can have this feeling and that doesn’t undo me. I’m the sky, not the weather. And then I get to laugh at myself a little bit because I’m like a sleepy kitty.

[00:52:43] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:52:44] Merlin: you, I mean, do you get that? Does that make,

[00:52:45] Jeff: Yeah. I totally get that.

[00:52:47] Merlin: But, but if you don’t, if you don’t accept that, that vulnerability is part of going to sleep, it’s going to be hard to get a good night’s rest.

[00:52:53] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And the thing that kind of occurred to me while you were talking about, you know, the whole watching the traffic thing is like, [00:53:00] you were talking on Mastodon the other day about your, your frustration about door management on The Walking Dead. And, and I feel like the way we instinctually

[00:53:08] Merlin: to say about door management. And it made me realize that door management in life is about so many more things than the gate at Alexandria.

[00:53:16] Jeff: it’s like, you left the fucking door open. And that is what you’re,

[00:53:19] Merlin: Yeah, the fucking priest, the guy from The Wire, left the gate open?

[00:53:23] Jeff: yeah,

[00:53:23] Merlin: What? Didn’t, I thought you were just specifically hung a lantern on it. One of the other guys, the guy who leaves his own door open on his cruiser, Grrrr, specifically said, make sure you close the gate, church guy. Doo doo doo doo doo! I guess some people wandered in.

[00:53:39] Merlin: Throw Rick out, he wants two of those strict measures! Anyway, door

[00:53:43] Jeff: Close the fucking door. Well, that’s it. That’s it, right? So the, so the, the other, the other thing that happens in Falling Asleep when you’re yelling at yourself is you’re, you’re treating it as a door management problem, right? Or it’s like, why am I letting this shit in? Why did we leave the fucking gate?

[00:53:58] Jeff: Who left the fucking gate [00:54:00] open?

[00:54:00] Merlin: And what do you do? You say to yourself, well you use phrases, and again this is meaningful to me, I like words, um, oh god, I can’t go to sleep. I can’t stop thinking about this. Talk about rehearsing failure. And I’m not saying don’t acknowledge the truth. What I am saying is, why do you have to add such a negative valence to something instead of just looking at it?

[00:54:20] Merlin: Like, why do you have to have a strong opinion about everything instead of just going, yeah, there’s a thing. There’s that feeling. There’s, you know, and like, I, or like, you know, what do they say in, in, uh, the, the singer in the Sondheim musical? I made it through all of last year and I’m here. Like, you know, the full catastrophe.

[00:54:36] Merlin: Boy, this is a deep podcast,

[00:54:38] Jeff: I’m gonna make it through this year if it kills

[00:54:40] Merlin: I’m gonna make it through this year. You ever seen Craig Finn sing that with Mountain Goats? This is, this is maybe the thing, I’m guessing in my head, this might be the thing that John Roderick probably most hates me sending to him. But, cause I love the whole study. It’s Mountain Goats, um, performing this year with Craig Finn singing the lead vocals with

[00:54:58] Jeff: Oh, I’ll have to look it up. You know,

[00:54:59] Merlin: [00:55:00] And, no, but like imagine Craig Finn, like you can tell he’s a nerd, right? Even in his coolest moment you can tell he’s a nerd. He’s writing songs about John Berryman, who you know from, you know.

[00:55:07] Jeff: yeah, of course he’s buried here. Yeah.

[00:55:09] Merlin: But he didn’t so he died, you know?

[00:55:11] Music is the Best (Part 2)

[00:55:11] Merlin: Um, I don’t know if you, do you like the Holt Steady?

[00:55:14] Jeff: So I have a very close relationship with that band going, going back.

[00:55:18] Merlin: Do you, do you know Lifter Puller? Did you know

[00:55:20] Jeff: Yeah. I, we used to play with Lifter Polar all the

[00:55:23] Merlin: No way! That’s so cool! Their performance of Stuck Between Stations on Letterman is one of my all time favorite things. He likes the warm feeling but he’s tired of all the dehydration! The guy’s always in a totally pressed suit, he sleeps in a van, but then he comes out and, and he does the little Stephen vocals on Stuck Between Stations.

[00:55:47] Jeff: yes, here’s the thing. So since we’re here and now we’re in, like, very obscure territory, and

[00:55:52] Merlin: Show notes for this are gonna be a bitch. You’re gonna need technology. You’re gonna need, you’re gonna need a new model to help

[00:55:57] Jeff: this is the only way Chippy T is going to come [00:56:00] into this conversation is when I throw the show notes through

[00:56:02] Merlin: We have pages and pages of notes about ChatsheepieT to talk about. We got to do a part two.

[00:56:07] Jeff: But let’s, let’s stay here because I. I absolutely loved Lifter Puller and I’ll, and I will send you this, but my band and Lifter Puller, I organized a Christmas show and, and we recorded a single together where we

[00:56:20] Merlin: Oh man! By the way, single is, is, is a trademark of IRS records,

[00:56:24] Jeff: yeah, exactly. And their song was called Bitchy Little Christmas.

[00:56:30] Merlin: Were Lifter Polar, and please, please help people out by explaining what Lifter Polar is and why they have a funny, they have a funny spelled name.

[00:56:37] Jeff: Lifter Puller was a, was a Minneapolis, was a Minneapolis band.

[00:56:41] Merlin: It’s the guitar player and the singer from the whole study, right?

[00:56:44] Jeff: Yeah, so it’s, well, Tad Kubler was the bass player, um, of the, of Lifter Puller, uh, and, and Craig Finn was the singer guitar player, and, um, they had a, Dan Monick was the drummer, amazing dude, amazing photographer, but anyway, Lifter Puller was this band from Minneapolis [00:57:00] that got a little bit, like, minor famous towards the end, and were on, like, Jenny Jones and Letterman.

[00:57:06] Merlin: Were they like, were they like regionally, they’re not like twin tone famous, but like they’re regionally well known?

[00:57:11] Jeff: Regionally. Yeah, exactly. People loved them here. People sang along. I mean, it’s hard not to sing along to those stories. And I guess the biggest thing, and you can say this too, the biggest thing about Lifter Polar and the Hold Steady is the stories are incredible. It’s like if Bruce Springsteen was one of us.

[00:57:25] Merlin: and seriously, Stuck Between Stations is not like, I’m not here to say that it’s about John Berryman and the Dream Songs, but like, you know, John Berryman is like, he likes the golden gophers, you know,

[00:57:37] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

[00:57:38] Merlin: yeah, but like, it’s like, but there is

[00:57:40] Jeff: First time the Golden Gophers were ever mentioned on this podcast.

[00:57:44] Merlin: I think, I think this might be why. Like maybe perhaps, why I can’t know if Roderick’s ever actually listen to them I mean, I think he’s just naturally he naturally rejects bands that are kind of similar as his, but um But that’s what really got me when I very first heard Not [00:58:00] Boys and Girls in America, but the oh oh oh oh oh Shoot.

[00:58:04] Merlin: What was the one before, with uh, started out with, The Positive Jam

[00:58:08] Jeff: yeah, yeah,

[00:58:09] Merlin: you know the one, the first one, but when I first heard that and I was like, Oh my God, this is really, this is like MFA version of Bruce Springsteen

[00:58:17] Jeff: Yes. Yes. Yes.

[00:58:20] Merlin: with, with, with both of the things that make those two things wonderful, like reading, reading things like John Berryman, but also really enjoying something like Thunder Road.

[00:58:28] Merlin: Like that is reconcilable in a really exciting way. Lifter Puller, man.

[00:58:34] Jeff: Lifter Puller. Amazing.

[00:58:35] Merlin: you heard Nothing Painted Blue?

[00:58:37] Jeff: Heard what?

[00:58:38] Merlin: Nothing Painted Blue? So I mentioned a minute ago the Mountain Goats, uh, uh, Peter Hughes was, he wasn’t in, he wasn’t in Nothing Painted Blue for my favorite time. He was in a little earlier, but I will find a record for you, but check out Nothing Painted Blue if you like Too Clever by a Half, you know, kind of like listening to Jonathan Colton sing [00:59:00] about fractals.

[00:59:01] Merlin: Like, if you like that kind of thing, but like, a little more serious, uh, I’m gonna write that down. I’m gonna tell you about Nothing Painted Blue. Very, very smart band. Are we gonna talk about the internet, or not?

[00:59:13] Jeff: We’re getting there, I

[00:59:13] Merlin: people, people don’t tune in to hear us talk about life. They, they, they’re here for the hot tech tips.

[00:59:18] Jeff: Sorry, fuckers. Oh, God.

[00:59:22] Merlin: got, I got your model.

[00:59:24] Jeff: Yeah, no, we can do this. I have to say, having wound our way to Lifter Puller, I’m a little dizzy. Like, how is this happening? And starting with Matthias Jabs, by the way, which is great. Like, just a nice bookends to that part.

[00:59:38] Merlin: What was your, what was your, what was your first record? Was, was it, was probably, you’re probably younger than me, so probably the one with, uh, the Bitch is Hungry song on it. Dun dun dun. Rocky Like a Hurricane. That, that was probably like, see, I’m, I’m a breakout, I’m a breakout guy.

[00:59:50] Jeff: Yeah, and I mean, I got to break out. Uh, I can say that when I got a viola thinking I was going to be in band, the only thing I ever learned was, was rock you like a, was rock you like a [01:00:00] hurricane.

[01:00:00] Merlin: See, I would have thought you’d be into John Cale. I could see you being very into John Cale. Mmm.

[01:00:06] Jeff: time. Long time. Yeah. But, but since you asked, but let’s just pretend you asked what my first album was generally, and I will say that the first one that I bought of my own volition was the cassette of Huey Lewis Sports.

[01:00:16] Merlin: Oh my god, really, 1984. I, um,

[01:00:20] Jeff: when I came

[01:00:21] Merlin: so you’re also then, you’re also old enough to remember Columbia House,

[01:00:25] Jeff: Oh, yeah.

[01:00:25] Jeff: This, okay, so here’s the, so, okay, fine.