smenor/tangents

Recalibrate

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Episode Transcript

there I'm Scott and this is Tangents.

I have to say I was just listening to my

last episode with my mom and sister while driving and I noticed a couple of
things and there are things that I think need to be at least a tweet.

It's not so

bad that I would go back and redo the episode, especially given that I don't
really have lots of time to myself to do that kind of stuff right now.

But it is

definitely stuff that I'm going to change going forward.

And first of all,

first of all, I noticed there were so many homes and us in there which is weird
because it's something that I've been working on.

Like I've been I did call it

radio in the mid 2000s and I started my first podcast also around the same
time.

And I've been working on that for a very long time.

Very long time.

And it's

not something that I generally do.

It's not if you listen to my older stuff you

won't hear so many homes and us.

It's something that I've kind of, I had previously

thought, worked my way out of.

I, you know, it's something that everybody

kind of does.

But it's something that I thought I got to the point where, oh, I just

don't really do that anymore.

I don't have to worry about it.

And I can only

guess that I have backslid.

I'm not taking it seriously enough or I was in a

weird mental place or who knows what.

I don't know if it's been like a gradual

progression or if last one was just particularly bad or maybe it wasn't
even that bad and I just noticed it because it is one of those things of course
that it's it's very obvious and especially once you start listening for it
it's going to be excruciatingly obvious and it was so so bad that whatever
whatever the case I am going to make a very concerted effort not to do that
because that is not what I want to put out.

I definitely also noticed the

audio quality.

I'm still using my air pods and I need to, I have, I have some

condense for my upstairs.

I don't really, I moved to my sister's place and I

don't have all of my stuff at least easily accessible.

I don't know where it is

and I don't really have a place to set stuff up and I don't really have a place
to keep stuff that is easily accessible.

So for the near-to-foreseeable future, I don't

know what I'm going to do about that.

I think I would probably like to get some

kind of mic or mics that I can use that sort of work well.

I thought I had this

with, I had these weird rectangular rodents or in shorts things which I
strongly did not like and do not recommend.

I see people, I see people recording

with them all the time and they look a little weird.

They don't really work

that well and the user interface was kind of crappy and I, I just had a lot of
issues with them.

I was not impressed.

Don't recommend them.

But I definitely

would like something that is kind of the same idea.

Like ideally I'd like

something that I could put on myself, mic myself up easily, be pretty much anywhere
and do that and have it sound good.

And it'd be nice that the cat's tail thing

would also be kind of useful.

Those are on those except I don't know where

buying are.

They're sort of gone.

And then it would also be nice.

I've been

thinking about trying to do one of these at least one and maybe even like a series
with my mom.

I've been trying to persuade her to write a book, don't buy books.

I know, so that's my book.

I don't know what I'm thinking of.

I've been trying to

persuade her to write a book which would be a stupid crazy bitch.

And the reason

that it would be called this is that this is something that she's been talking to me
about for my entire, maybe not quite my entire life, but certainly my adult
life and into high school was just when she, she was first in attorney or
sorry, she was first a nurse and then had me and my sister and then went to law
school and became an attorney and was an attorney until she retired.

And one of

the things that she really noticed and remarked on and an unfortunate thing
that she faced a lot was obviously just misogyny.

And one of the, this is

probably informs and maybe is a factor in why I'm so pro-abortion and why I think a
lot about this and I'm extraordinarily self-conscious and worried about doing
anything and probably to do an access into my detriment.

But anyway, the thing

that she would always talk about and it would be nice to get her to actually talk
about it instead of just me secondhand telling you this.

But it was basically that

you know at first, guys would, and this is especially happened in law.

Although it was a

thing that she noticed in general, but law is where she really found it.

At first, people

would just call her stupid and apologies sick and all of that stuff.

It was a term that

at the time was much more normalized and now obviously it was an ableist connotation
to it and aspect to it than I didn't know or appreciated the time.

Although I think

it still works because it was the word that they were using specifically, not her.

And

so she's just repeating it, not saying it.

But first they would call her stupid and then

start realizing that, you know, you're not stupid.

You actually are like, you know what

you're talking about, you've done research and you're kind of dangerous for us continuing
the horrible shit that we're doing.

So then they would transfer to calling her crazy.

Again,

ableism and all of that kind of stuff.

But again, not her word, it's what they would

call her.

And, you know, then when that didn't work, transitioned to just calling her a

bitch.

And I think, especially when you hear it in her words and you hear the stories,

it really captures a certain thing that I think is unfortunately it's still very relevant
today, which is, I'm recording this on the 11th of October 2025.

And you would think,

Incidentally, I assume that that would say 11 October 2025, but in the transcription, almost
without fail, whoever's doing the transcription, it changes that into the museum month
day year, which is just bizarre and annoying.

But anyway, never mind that now.

The fact

that it's 2025 and this is still a thing that's relevant is fucking annoying.

And I mean,

similar to obviously racism, white supremacy and all these other things, you would like to think
they don't really matter and they're not a factor anymore.

And yet, here we are.

And I just,

I just read something actually that I think really captured something where we took a wrong turn,
which was, it wasn't that it's important.

And it is important to me wrong to address the underlying

feelings and the way people are treated and all those kind of stuff.

But the really important thing

is not to make people not be racist or not to make people not be misogynistic or anything like that,
but to remove their ability to do harm through racism, through misogiting and so on.

This says two effects, because one, it actually solves the real problem, which is the harm,

because somebody saying words that are mean stocks and it's annoying, it's terrible and all this,
and it has other consequences, but it's not stopping you from getting a house.

It's not stopping

you from getting a job.

It's not limiting your ability to, you know, muster a salary or make an

argument in court or do any of these kinds of things.

Those are another aspect that's the harm

that's actually being done.

And the other thing that it does, and I think this is easy to kind of

lose sight of it.

Maybe I'm just overly optimistic about it and it's not real, but I think I think

if you cut the balls off of the ability to actually do harm with this language, as a secondary
effect, I think you start diminishing the amount that people are using that language.

In a certain

point, people realize, oh, you're pushing up against a brick wall, you're not getting anywhere,
and I think that kind of causes people to extinguish whatever anti-social behavior they're engaging
in.

I could be wrong, but I think that's the case.

I think it's like how many people are going to

continue doing something if it doesn't achieve anything, if it doesn't accomplish anything for them.

I don't think that many.

I think it wears itself out, which gives you in the end the stated

goal of sort of suppressing the act of people doing that kind of shit as a secondary effect.

It's again one of these things.

I know a lot of people chase happiness.

I can't remember who it was,

but there was somebody who famously had somebody asked them like, what do you want to,
what do you want to be when you grow up, and then they said happy? This was meant to be a really
good thing, and it was meant to say like, oh, well, being happy is a better goal than success or being
in a particular profession or whatever.

Being happy is nice.

Being happy and experiencing joy,

not to focus on the fucking joy thing, but having an experiencing joy is a good thing.

The problem

comes when you make the goal, the joy, but you make the goal the happiness.

I think that does a

couple of things also here, because one, it's very elusive.

It's not something happiness and joy

and satisfaction are things that come from doing things and come from accomplishing things
and come from certain things that like activities and ways of engaging with people and so on.

They're not things that you can easily just go like, I want to be happy, and then you steer

your entire life to being happy and it's never going to happen.

In fact, I would say probably

if you want to be unhappy, you want to guarantee that you are miserable, trying to pursue happiness
as an end goal unto itself is going to get you there.

It's going to get you into a really kind of

hellish place and it's going to be miserable for people around you too.

If your goal is, I want other

people to be happy.

It's good to think happiness is something that is a nice side of

fact of stuff or to have other people feel satisfied.

It's a nice side effect, but if you really want

people to be happy, unless you are giving them drugs or electric way stimulating their brains,
you're not really going to achieve that goal.

I personally would say that giving somebody

drugs to make them feel happy or satisfied or electric way stimulating their brains or whatever
not really a good thing.

It's not a, I'm going to go way out on a limb and say that.

The other thing that I noticed when I was recording or rather when I was listening to my last

episode is the Fox.

And I have to say, I have no problem with the word fuck, obviously.

Obviously,

you listen to the last episode, you'd certainly know that.

But I do think, and I even would

go so far, actually, as to say that I don't think that you should moderate your language
just to accommodate people necessarily.

I do think there is a thing that you shouldn't be

obnoxious about stuff.

You shouldn't be, I had lunch with my mom today and there were people

behind us who were excessively loud.

Like ridiculously, I would say performing loudness and

excitement and all of this kind of stuff and they're just talking about all of this stuff and
the super loud and intrusive and invasive.

And don't get me wrong.

I'm glad that you're having a good

time.

But at the same time, there are other people on the fucking planet.

And this is one of those things

where it's like, if everybody behaves in the same way, all of you accomplish is everybody has to
ratchet themselves up to 11.

And everybody's competing with each other to be the loudest to be

heard and all of this versus if everybody speaks at like a comfortable conversational tone,
then at least we can all hear each other and we don't have to like ramp this up and it's not
a vicious cycle that just makes things worse for everybody and ruins everybody's experience.

I'm not saying you necessarily should have like the Japanese thing where

everything is almost to an excess set up to accommodate other people and not to offend other
people.

Maybe that's going too far.

But I do think going on the fucking Metro,

there's my fox going on the fucking Metro.

It's funny given how little fuck or how few

fox I have to give that I'm so like used so many fox in that one.

But getting back,

going on the fucking Metro, there it is again.

Going on the Metro in Tokyo and people are not loud

and obnoxious and talking to each other in a super loud voice.

It's so nice.

It's really nice.

It's very pleasant.

It's incredibly pleasant to be on the street someplace and not have like

a bunch of drunk people loud and obnoxious intruding everything and getting just into your space
and getting you in this position where it's like if I want to be heard, I have to fight.

I have

to ramp myself up and then I'm part of the noise.

I'm part of the cacophony and they are getting

louder to compete with my cacophony bullshit and I'm getting louder to compete with them and then
it's just this cycle which never ends.

It's not going someplace good.

Versus, everybody sort of

dials things back to a comfortable level to a level where you're heard by the people around you.

You're as expressive as you need to be still.

I don't think you need to be

suppressing yourself or holding back.

You could be having a lot of joy and having a lot of excitement.

Having a lot of verb, so to speak, not a word that I would actually use.

But in that state,

not being fucking obnoxious.

Really, you don't have to be obnoxious.

And so anyway, I think the folks are a thing that I'm not going to stop.

I'm definitely not going

to make this a air quotes clean podcast.

I'm not going to make this something where I avoid certain

language.

There are a couple of words that I would not say.

When I say a couple, I mean really like

a small handful of words that I would not say.

I wouldn't have heard of me to say them.

Also,

I never have in my life an occasion to say the end word.

The closest that I would ever come is

if it's in a song or something.

And even then, I don't really have the impulse to say it.

In fact,

I have the very strong aversion from saying it.

I wouldn't use the R word.

I wouldn't use the F word.

And I don't mean fuck there to be clear.

It just never would occur to me.

To use that in a

disparaging way against people.

And all of these things also incidentally are quite annoying right now

because a lot of people, a lot of people who look like me incidentally, a lot of white people,
are getting weird about this stuff.

And they're like, oh, I can say the R word whenever I want.

And they get fucking obnoxious about it.

They're using the the end word and the F word.

And

so many of these other things.

And it's just like, guys, A, not everything is for you.

Just that's

and the thing about that also is like, I don't have, I'm using a lot of likes here.

I notice.

But I don't have the impulse to do it.

And I don't feel like I'm being restrained in some way

by not using those words.

It doesn't really seem like holding back.

It doesn't really seem like I have

an occasion where I'm like, I just need this word and I can't come up with something else.

The closest that I have to that actually is in trying to rig myself of ableist language,

it's extraordinarily difficult.

And I'm not suggesting that I should that I'm making a mistake.

I think it's good to rig yourself of ableist language and say in this language and to sort of

stop like the body shaming.

Like, if you're criticizing Trump, for example, I see so many people

engaging in just casual, gross homophobia and transphobia and they love going into the body shaming
and ableism and so many fucking horrible things.

And it's like, this is a person who has

endless real legitimate criticisms you can love against them.

And you're going for this stuff that

is just petty and shitty and just not cool.

It's making other people feel bad.

It's harming other

people and he doesn't give a fuck.

He doesn't.

In fact, he's the kind of person that uses that language.

He's the kind of person that does make fun of people for how they look and does make fun of people

for where they are in terms of abilities and all of this kind of stuff.

Don't be like that

mother fucker.

Be better.

Be fucking better.

And the reason that I have trouble, like I struggle a

little bit with that is not because I want to do it necessarily.

It's just that the English language

in particular in the way it's used in the US that I've been raised with natively is so ableist,
just so deeply fundamentally shitty in that way that I've noticed like first it's easy enough to
stop saying like this is stupid or this is dumb or you know this is again the R word never really
occurred to me to say even when I was a little kid and it was socially acceptable to do so
never really a word that I had any impetus to say but stupid crazy silly well I guess silly is okay
but yeah you go through and there are so many words like this it's the first layer is you start
getting rid of the obvious low hanging fruit which is just you know if you don't need to call
shit stupid you don't you just don't need to you can find other ways you don't need to say something
is crazy saying something is wild achieves basically the same thing and it's not a saying
is sort of thing so it's it's easy enough but then the remarkable thing happens and when I say
remarkable I mean not in a good way is you get rid of those words and then you start noticing
that it oozes out through the cracks like you you're trying to find other words and first off you
will come up with some obscure word that in its etymology is actually ableist or you know in a
many cases it comes from some racist term as a horrible term really not great stuff to be using
those are the obvious ones the second the secondary obvious ones but then also like the concepts
the way that you're trying to think of it it's not just that you're pulling for those words
you're pulling for those concepts and it's really challenging and when I say this I mean
I'm still struggling with this I'm pretty good at it I think but I'm really I found it to be
a very big challenge something that takes a lot of effort and some concentration and some
real deep consideration and not using other terms or other like phrases that basically mean the same
thing and or or at least like skirt on the same stuff it's remarkable and it's horrible how hard
it is to avoid so anyway I'm not going to be those those terms I definitely wouldn't use but
fuck I'm gonna I'm gonna fuck a little bit less on my episodes not because I again like want
this to be something where anyone who has sensitive ears to those words is not just going to be
okay I'm just listening to it I'm I'm definitely gonna say fuck but I don't want to undermine my
point and like the Greta one I really had a couple things I wanted to talk about and in listening to it
I feel like they're the fox or they're to such an extent but it's actually an active
distraction the arms and ears are there to such an extent that it is an active distraction
and listening to that episode I really struggled I really struggled not to be focused on those things
now maybe again this is just me because I'm the one listening to myself and that makes you more
aware of certain stuff but it definitely did not did not really work for me it didn't really
feel like this is something that I would be proud to put out there and have random people listen to
much much less my mom and my sister so I'm going to put some stuff out that is going to be
better quality I think at least that's that's going to be I think if the goal is to improve things
I don't think that's ever a bad thing as long as you're idea of improving things is not yeah
is not bad now one thing I'm not gonna address that any further that's I think that's plenty
one thing I definitely do want to talk about is my Patreon and I noticed in that episode also
this is fucking weird and I don't know like I feel bad asking people to subscribe to my Patreon
although I also I know there are people probably listening who could you know maybe you could do
seven dollars a month or maybe you could do twenty five dollars a month or maybe you could do a hundred
dollars a month or maybe you or somebody who can do like thousands of dollars a month and it's no
big deal I don't know I have no idea but I'm sure there's some amount and you get enough of those
together and it starts adding up to something substantial and I just keep thinking about what I would
like to be doing in life and also at the same time how difficult it has been to
I've been applying to so many fucking jobs so many fucking jobs and many of them are jobs that I am
really just seriously severely overqualified for like I could very easily do these jobs but they're
also like jobs listen to the likes and working on that one too but they're they're also jobs
where it's like there it is it's hard it's really hard you don't just listen to me trying it
you try it yourself it's very difficult there's an um but not jobs that I would really be interested
in not jobs that I would consider under normal circumstances their jobs that are sort of like
entry level positions where I'm I should be pretty significantly far behind beyond some of these
things and I'm like I'm not saying I don't I want to be the fucking CEO or VP or something but
I would like to not be doing stuff that's like data entry or some kind of complete bullshit that is
and I don't mean to say that it's beneath me but it's fucking I have some skills and some training
and some experience that should put me a little bit beyond some of that kind of stuff and I don't think
like at the same time also I don't think given what they're gonna pay for it that it would justify
the pain and annoyance from these things this is another thing also like I've been going through
job applications and so many so many now are like onsite there's another like so many are onsite
only like zero remote work and or or it's Google just had this thing that came out where if you do
remote work one day they're gonna count you for a whole week and they have this thing where it's like
flexible there's another like by the way I wasn't gonna address it but it it is
extraordinarily difficult I am working on it though but they're talking about how they have this
thing where it's so great and you can work flexibly four weeks out of the year for many where
and now they're kind of tightening that up and they're also changing it so that it's not
four weeks it's four weeks but technically because if you work one day from someplace else we're
going to count that as a full week and it just keeps shredding this fucking shit and all I can
think here is for most of the jobs especially the kinds of jobs that I would do and especially
the kinds of the developer jobs there's another one that people at Google would do developer
product project manager all of all of these kinds of things you do not need to be physically
onsite it's I had a company where we were doing hardware development and even with bring up
and stuff like that we worked fully remote and it worked pretty fucking well I think it worked
actually very well there's some stuff that is a little bit challenging there are some moments where
in the need of certain specialized equipment or something or it helps to have a few people in the
same place but those are a few in far between unless you're doing board bring up constantly or
integration constantly it's not stuff that you really need to all be in the same place for and
especially if you do it right and you sort of break things up in a natural lot and reasonable way
you don't need to have every single person on the team in the same space touching the same
stuff you can have the mechanical person figuring some stuff out and they can send it to
electronics and they can integrate the boards and do all of this kind and you can go back and
forth a little bit you can 3D print stuff especially if you have the right equipment you can have
some oscilloscope and some soldering irons have them kind of spread around let people do stuff that
way and it just works pretty well it works actually remarkably well and it's just it's just
fucking silly and at a certain point in fact this has been studied and productivity goes up
the amount of work and frustration people have goes way down and there's so much attached to
in person work that sucks that is counterproductive like for example spending all the time
commuting which you're wasting and you're not actually working during that is time that either
your burning out because you only have so much time that you can really focus and only so much
energy in life so you're wasting time on that or you're eating into the time and energy that you
have to do to do work and then you're also feeling that much more worn down by it because it's not
just the time that you're at work it's the time that you're preparing to go to work and the time
that you're traveling to work and the time that you're parking and doing all that kind of stuff
and then the time that you're leading work and the time that you're taking going home and all of
this all of those little things add up to so much and I'm not even saying necessarily that
you would be using that time to work work although certainly some of it probably certainly
if you don't need to look at the clock and then get the fuck out at five o'clock exactly or six
o'clock whatever you're forced to do you know you're probably used some of that but also
and this is a very big thing but I definitely noticed in my last job
you spend all that time in energy getting back and forth and being frustrated and dealing with traffic
and being part of traffic and it just burns you the fuck out and for me I am pretty
especially like it's not consistent it's not like I turn it on and then I'm just hard-working
constantly forever but when I'm really in a nice flow state I work really hard and I work long hours
and I'm not saying that that's the thing that you should do all the time I don't think anyone should
but that's my sort of natural thing in fact the the one thing that I kind of like about
physically going to the office is that you can use that as a boundary and say I'm not going to
I'm not doing fucking shit when I'm not here which is what I ended up doing it's still ended up
being a pain in the ass because especially like the kind of work that I do there's another like
the kind of work that I do and the kind of work that I was doing there is not work that is really
well confined to time and space it's stuff that especially for cognitive work especially when
you're kind of solving problems it's stuff that tends to sort of happen on its own schedule
there are sometimes I might spend a couple of hours not being able to do anything or get anything
down and then I'll figure some stuff out and stuff will start moving really naturally
and I'll just want to work until like 3 a.m.

on something because it's it's coming that smoothly

and when you have that fixed 95 or 8 to 5 or 8 to 6 or whatever the fuck your ridiculous
schedule is when you have that it doesn't really it's it's very brittle and doesn't really
afford that kind of flexibility so it's something that I don't want to deal with the other thing
with my Patreon is again I'm going to be there's another like I'm going to be working on stuff
no matter what and I would really like given that one was actually a proper like but I would really
like to have the energy and the time that I have to spend on stuff going to stuff that matters
and that actually is helping people and is actually moving the ball forward and it's actually
stuff that I feel like is worth my time and I don't want to deal at all with the bullshit I don't
want to I don't want to deal with having to to waste my life in my time and my energy
on stuff that is just ridiculous independent of the schedule but especially also I don't want
to waste it on this schedule for garbage which is one of the reasons why it's really difficult
when it's a job that I'm very over qualified for very uninterested in doing and it's on site
full time applying to that and taking it seriously especially especially if they're asking me to
write a fucking cover letter and put a lot of time into each like even even the the simple
applications take a lot of time and some of them require a cover letter and a statement of research
and a statement of education and it's like a day or two of work to apply for one position
that I'm probably not even going to get a negative from like I'm probably not even going to get
thanks but no thanks from that's another thing actually also applying to so many jobs
that I am over qualified for and I'm not interested in a mostly I'm not getting any responses at
all which it sucks and it's annoying but it's not the worst thing the worst thing is you apply
to a job that you are wildly over qualified for that you could have been doing in a high school
basically or in your first couple of years of undergrad could have been doing that job and then
they send you a fucking thing and you didn't want to do the job and also it's on site and
you know it's it's a layer upon layer upon layer of nope and then they said you a fucking email
that's like that we we decided you didn't satisfy our minimum requirement so some other bullshit
it just it makes me I don't know I if yourius is not the right word it's just like
fuck this fuck this I don't want to deal with it so it comes back to the Patreon I will be working
on stuff no matter what I will be if I had if I didn't have to worry about fucking money I would
probably be doing things that would make bigger contributions to society and I would probably
also inadvertently like not as a thing that I'm going for as a goal but just by happened
stance I would probably have multiple companies if I had the resources and the time to pursue
my interests I would definitely have more than a few products and it is annoying to be sort of
spending my wheels on other bullshit and I could be making things that would actually be useful
for people and interesting for people and helping people and all of those kind of stuff and instead
I'm just wasting time on bullshit and I don't have the resources to really devote to these things
I would like to change that I would like to not be in this position and so I made this Patreon
and I'm going to try I'm really going to try not to fuck up my name because somehow in my last
episode I fucked up my name so many times it is patreon.com slash the era mark echo november austero
meo the era mark echo november austero romio I've written down that's the only reason I can
I can say it correctly because I kept fucking up my own name I kept somehow putting the R and the O
backwards or or something like that but it is simply my name, Esmanor, uh, Sierra Mark echo
november austero romio I'm pretty good I have to say at the NATO alphabet at this point
but there are a couple things like that that just get to me, uh, it's irritating, there's an arm
so if you have money and if you want to support me and I'm not saying like if you don't
don't feel pressure don't feel any don't feel bad about it but if you if you do if you can
I would greatly appreciate if you went there and just whatever amount you can it could be something small
could be something big it was big it would be awesome if it's small still good I greatly appreciate it
and if you can't do it I still you know thank you for listening so that's that's that
the other I think this is going to be the final thing that I talk about today is I have I haven't
trying to get away from Apple for a long fucking time and it's actually quite frustrating to me because
my long-term trajectory has been I when I was when I was young had dating myself here I had a PC
it was dust based and had the dust based PC and then Windows came around I got that
OS 2 came around I got that for a little while and ended up back I'm Windows because OS 2 was cool but
it wasn't great and I kept seeing this power PC stuff for Macs and I got excited about it and I
liked the idea of it but never quite got into it and then they came out with Mac OS 10 which was
Unix under the hood I should say at this time I was I had Windows but I was dual booting to
sometimes Linux but mostly sometimes free BSD and often open BSD and then X Windows and a
various X Windows managers it was a pain in the ass because I was constantly tweaking stuff and
one of those things also where and when I first started doing it it was fun when I first was at work
and I was working on a X and using X Windows managers and I'm like dialing things and getting
stuff just so it was fun but then you'd go and you'd be on a new system and suddenly you're on
HP UX and you can't use the same Windows manager and you have to figure that shit out and you have to
re-dial it in it was okay and then you do that like two or three times and then you just like
fuck this I don't want to deal with it I just want somebody else to worry about it and give me something
that looks good and works well and also has the Unix underneath and so when Mac OS 10 came out
beta I was excited about it I was excited about any XT and I was really excited about Mac OS
10 and I switched then I got I was working at Intel at the time and I still got a power PC based
titanium MacBook Pro or I guess it was titanium powerbook at the time powerbook cheaper
it gives you a date and I'm working it Intel and people that Intel were not super excited about
a more I'm out of role-based chip mode of role-based computer but still I liked it I really enjoyed it
and that was decades ago and I've enjoyed Mac OS in a lot of ways although I will say
it's been a little annoying progressively more over time because there are certain things that I want to
do that are basic they're not ridiculous they're not things that are things that really should
require that much work they're not things that they're just things that should be solved
talking problems for example I want the volume at a comfortable level like I don't know it's a ridiculous
thing to want but I want the volume at a level that doesn't hurt my fucking ears I want to be
able to hear what's going around around me I want to be able to hear the the music or the podcast
that I'm listening to and I don't want it to blast my fucking ears out and for the longest time
then this is both macOS and iOS have fucked up the audio so badly like the lowest I can turn
the volume is if you if you do the volume up and down buttons it's these giant increments and again
audio levels are a logarithmic like you can keep taking it down in order of magnitude
forever it will be inaudible at a certain point but you can keep going really low really really low
but instead they have like fucking loud loud still loud off like off two fucking loud off
two in a in a quiet room and when I'm walking I need it like a quarter to a third of the way
up depending on what I'm listening to but in a quiet room the lowest level is too loud for me
and not only that but they give you this thing where you can go option shift and then hit volume
up and down and now you're moving in quarter steps and on the Mac you could also dial it by hand
on the on iPhone and either one of these it's too fucking loud or it's off still through fucking
loud at a quarter step and then it's off and then on top of that just to make it more annoying
ship will like randomly adjust on its own and there are things where you can turn it on and off
the ability to adjust for the environment and make you have your personal audio levels or something
like that that's not what I'm talking about I've got that disabled by the way disabled is a
precarious word I have it turned off but it still fucking turns itself up so I've already got the
problem where it's too loud at the lowest level and then I'm listening to stuff and it is just
there it's getting louder no for no fucking reason it just starts getting louder and I'm listening
to it getting louder and I can even watch the thing dial itself up it's like why who thought this
was a good fucking idea like if your users set the volume to a low level let them keep it there
it's one of the things I really miss about the wired headphones that I could use the little
analog volume adjuster and I could dial it way down to a comfortable level also another thing
that I really miss about those this is something that kind of pisses me off because I've got
air pod pros and there is a swear I'm not imagining this that I've read about it so I don't think
it's just me but I think they've got active noise canceling on even when it's turned off
there's a little bit of it eight because I've heard it actually actually turn off at a
couple of occasions but be because I I feel the same pressure that you get from the ANR it's not
as severe as when you turn it on but it's there and everything sounds muffled and I can hear
myself in the way it's it's like cotton in my ears and I don't like it I want I missed those old
wired air buds or whatever the fuck they were called that I could listen through here the
street noises here what's happening around me and hear the music and adjust the music to a
comfortable level I missed that shit I actually did such an extent that I really am kind of
debating if I should just go back to them although I don't know if there's an analog volume
control anymore I think you're fucked on that but it's just it's just fucking annoying it's just
really fucking annoying I hate it and I hate that they're making decisions for me that I don't
want made and that that stuff is just that's without getting into the politics now you've got
Tim Cook doing all this fucking shit, placating Trump, sucking up to Trump, taking down ice
block from the app store all kinds of shit I'm sure they're gonna back door stuff at a certain point
and you just look at that you know like I don't want to deal with this shit anymore I want
something better and also also they've just then done in this iOS and Mac OS 26 thing
this new glass interface look with glass interface the only reason for it I swear is just like all
this bullshit fake AI shit giant audible air quotes AI they're getting computers that are so powerful
and so fast that now they have all those performance you have a supercomputer in your pocket
and they're trying to figure out shit to do with them and they're just making up problems to
what I would I would really rather is to get the because all of that performance what it could
do instead is give you the ability to run an operating system which looks pretty good it's like
five or ten years old and do it at a tenth of the power consumption a hundredth of the power
consumption and you start thinking about that and then it's like oh you could have an iPhone
that just works for days you could have your MacBook Pro just working for days because it's not
wasting so much time on the goddamn user interface looking which already looks pretty good looking
a little bit more slick looking like a little bit oh we're gonna deal with refraction and we're
gonna do all those kind of stuff it's I don't give a shit about that I don't I really truly don't
I'm not saying it doesn't look cool but it doesn't add anything to my experience and I know
you're wasting power on it and you know you have these three nanometer process chips and you could just
have like the tiniest amount of that chip dedicated to running the OS and give me if I want to
actually use that power for something I'm compiling shit I'm doing stuff that actually takes
that processing I don't need you to waste it on a fucking user interface I really don't I don't
need it I don't need my phone to have like a little glassy user interface it's silly and
especially also I don't need the fucking LLM and my phone inserting words that I don't want
there and changing words after I hit send I don't need that chip I don't want it it was bad
enough when you were changing the fucks to dox and now it's like I'll hit send and it adds a
goddamn word after I hit send I don't want that I don't hit all and then you add onto that
the ice block shit and the sucking up the trunk and all of this other bullshit and I just I
want something else so I really think my next phone will be a fair phone and not only that there's
an operating system for it which I think is called EOS although I don't put me on that
which is D Google Android this is one of the reasons why I'm not already switched to an Android
because it's like oh you can it's a very lateral move to go from iPhone to an Android phone I want
to be under something that is not either of the above I don't want that so the fair phone I think
uh and I'm not I'll also I'd you think it'd be nice to be able to have your computer last for
20 years and I think we're to the point where unless you're doing stuff that's really pushing
the edge if you're just sitting there like web browsing and doing word processing and shit
you could have a computer from 20 years ago and it would be perfectly serviceable there's no
reason that you need you know tariflobs of processing to do that or you could have tariflobs of
processing and not have to push it further you know you don't have to keep updating the OOS
in a way that is just getting more and more expensive and so I would like to have a thing where
you're buying this stuff once and you could live with it for a long time I don't like having a
glass phone for this reason I don't like the idea that the the screen on my phone is basically
designed to break it it exists in a metastable state that is inevitably given enough time going to
break and is worse because I don't wear it out I don't wear I don't use a screen protector because I hate
that but even if you have one it's still going to break eventually I don't want that so
the fear of phone I do think has a glass screen unfortunately but if it's nice to just get
away from Apple that's my next that's my next thing the reason I say that is because I'm hoping
that if you're listening you get that unfortunately annoyingly they're a Dutch company and they
don't sell directly in the US so you have to deal with that shit which anyway I thought this was
going to be a 20 minute long thing and ended up being 50 so far and I could go on for another
half hour but I have some urgency to stop actually so I am going to discontinue at this point
thank you for listening I will I will really be working on the Oms and the O's I will be
working on on fucking things a little bit and just we'll try to put together a little bit of a
better thing I do think and I hate this but I do think having an outline helps and I'm going to
try to do that a little bit more I have a couple of things that I wanted to do also but this
when I thought preempted it because it was really the last one was really bad and I want to
recalibrate first and then we'll move on from there so thanks for bearing with me thanks for all that
again if you have money and you have the capacity to do this subscribe to my Patreon patreon.com
slash cia martico november hosker romio es menor and I'm not gonna complain whatever you put in there
it would be great and if you can't do it also I'm not going to complain with that thanks again

再见

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smenor/tangentsBy Scott Menor, PhD