Reconcilable Differences

Merlin shares a new insight about the pre-flight, but, as usual John disagrees. Then, there's some discussion of playlists and that time John got Merlin into Chvrches.

There appears to be some continental disagreement about a ubiquitous facial expression, and John directs Merlin on some more of the things he supposedly pronounces weirdly. Your hosts might could want to explore the things it took them too long to realize, and Merlin graciously reads John one of his dreams.

Follow-Up turns to the continuing mishegas over on The Bird Site. Yikes. And this was even before they added the bedrooms and gave a copy of the keys to a right-wing nutty bar. Woof.

Eventually, this leads to a slight turn into how different people are exploring Mastodon. Do you treat it strictly as a Twitter replacement, or is it maybe a fresh opportunity to learn how a social media site wants to be used? Merlin misses a lot about LiveJournal, and John is just happy to be someplace that isn't owned and controlled by The Birthday Boy.

John's goodnatured insistence that Merlin's household acquire a dog is starting to have an impact, and John leads us on a close exegesis of an unpersuasive Billy Joel photo.

Finally, talk turns to Christopher Nolan in general and the movie Tenet in particular. How can you know when you're not supposed to understand what's happening in a film? Also, can an SUV really go that fast in reverse, or is that just because it's driving on the backwards side of the time partition? Who knows.

Also, good robots are considered, and Merlin extolls the virtues of the Mr. Noodle family.

Merlin shares a new insight about the pre-flight, but, as usual John disagrees. Then, there's some discussion of playlists and that time John got Merlin into Chvrches.

There appears to be some continental disagreement about a ubiquitous facial expression, and John directs Merlin on some more of the things he supposedly pronounces weirdly. Your hosts might could want to explore the things it took them too long to realize, and Merlin graciously reads John one of his dreams.

Follow-Up turns to the continuing mishegas over on The Bird Site. Yikes. And this was even before they added the bedrooms and gave a copy of the keys to a right-wing nutty bar. Woof.

Eventually, this leads to a slight turn into how different people are exploring Mastodon. Do you treat it strictly as a Twitter replacement, or is it maybe a fresh opportunity to learn how a social media site wants to be used? Merlin misses a lot about LiveJournal, and John is just happy to be someplace that isn't owned and controlled by The Birthday Boy.

John's goodnatured insistence that Merlin's household acquire a dog is starting to have an impact, and John leads us on a close exegesis of an unpersuasive Billy Joel photo.

Finally, talk turns to Christopher Nolan in general and the movie Tenet in particular. How can you know when you're not supposed to understand what's happening in a film? Also, can an SUV really go that fast in reverse, or is that just because it's driving on the backwards side of the time partition? Who knows.

Also, good robots are considered, and Merlin extolls the virtues of the Mr. Noodle family.

The ‘patron saint of the internet’ tells The Post he’ll never pay for verification but will learn to code if Musk offers him a job

"These are runs of two or more consecutive album tracks that rule. If you play the first song, you must play the others. I do not, as @darth says, make the rules."

"These are runs of two or more consecutive album tracks that rule. If you play the first song, you must play the others. I do not, as @darth says, make the rules."

"…And pretty maids all in a row."

Upon Merlin's request, John generously provides a tour of his app, SwitchGlass.

Things kick off with a quick look at the recent TicketMaster dustup. Merlin shares what a "news peg" is, and John has simple ideas for avoiding unnecessary logjams on the web.

We learn what itch John was scratching and how SwitchGlass differs from various other rows of icons on your Mac.

In the members-only bonus show, the guys talk about, you know. Twitter.

You can sign up today to hear all the member episodes, get more bonus stuff, and, yes, support our program.

(Recorded on Tuesday, November 15, 2022)

Trade-offs, risks, and feature requests relating to the next generation of panopticons.

Things kick off with about ten minutes of very useful nail clipper talk.

Up next, lots of good listener Follow-Up on the origins of CSS color names, how to pause a TikTok with your meat fingers, plus revealing some scalable methods for finding free money from the government.

Next, comes some FU on Lifestreams that somehow kind of becomes the basis for the rest of the episode.

How can we track the stuff that's valuable to us—but also provide the specificity and context needed to annotate that data in a way that makes it actionable?

Then, of course, you wonder about the privacy implications of living in a panopticon. Sure isn't working out too great for the Uyghurs. Won't somebody please think of the children?

The digital divide is real, but you may not realize how real until you watch someone else use a computer. Secret gestures, powerful browser plug-ins, and even general internet hygiene are still anything but evenly distributed.

Finally, John shows Merlin how to fix his notifications even as he continues to refuse a very generous job offer.

(Recorded Thursday, November 3, 2022)

COVID may be an inflection point in the relationship between the surveillance state and the surveilled.

The story of Nazi Germany's plundering of Europe's great works of art during World War II and Allied efforts to minimize the damage.

John has been looking into the unclaimed property of Massachusetts, but Merlin always assumes everything like this is some kind of jam-up.

Things kick off with John's strident observation of pre-show hygiene, and Merlin struggles to know his Targaryens from his Velaryons and his Valyrians. Merlin has a lot of problem with twins, and John mourns this new generation's lack of respect for proper media queuing. As ever, Merlin's demos are the worst.

There's some brief confusion about 80s music, and, even though he's drop-tuned, Merlin plays John a nice "FMaj7" chord. John claims to have no interest in Merlin making him a mixtape.

In Follow-Up, John interrogates Merlin about a new domain name. John pushes some commits to Merlin, as various tool tip options are workshopped in real time lol.

Merlin offers John a prestigious new position, because he's got a bunch of computer problems to put him on. John demurs.

This somehow leads to a surprisingly deep discussion of Letterboxd and the inevitable return of the evergreen topic of ratings and reviews. John and Merlin do not want to host their own email.

In the (101 minute!) members-only bonus show, John has real-time Letterboxd homework for Merlin, and your hosts consider what it will be like to pick through their digital lives after they die.

And, finally, yes: John has even more updates on his seemingly endless journey towards "home improvement."

Remember, you can sign up today to hear all the member episodes, get more bonus stuff, and, yes, support our program.

(Recorded on Tuesday, October 18, 2022)

Pay attention 007! Indisputably the most famous Corgi product release of all time, the 60's version of the James Bond DB5 from Goldfinger (1964)  is a feature packed replica worthy of Q Branch.

"Oh, perfect. I got a BUNCH of computer problems I'm gonna put you on."

by Nicolas Magand

John aggressively interrogates a new Secret Weird Thing Merlin Does.

Things kick off with an ambitious proposal to recognize outstanding work by team members and keep the relationship fresh.

After ticking an item off of his "queue," John leads a nominally rapid-fire round highlighted by a controversial new Secret Weird Things People Do.

Things wrap with a provocative Dog Update in which John leverages the love of a British TV show to re-home a new friend with Merlin's family. Merlin identifies the wrong Helen.

(Recorded on Tuesday, October 4, 2022)

"Relay FM and its community raised...$706,397.10"

they/them - A completely incomplete record of the pop culture references made on @ATPfm / Haphazardly maintained by @AdamTheSak

A spit-take is a comedic technique or reaction in which someone spits a drink, or sometimes food, out of their mouth as a reaction to a surprising or funny statement.

Four legs and two - meet the dogs we've helped at Woodgreen, and the humans getting them back on their paws.

This week, Merlin asks whether John is inoculated against stress.

John has concerns about why his fans are spinning up, and Merlin interrogates his recent obsession with the previous vice president.

Once the usual arguments about wording and meaning have been (mostly) settled, numerous angles are explored. Including an exploration of one of life's thorniest differences to reconcile: how much can I be "how I am" with other people?

In our (85-minute!) members-only bonus show, John has updates on his "home improvement" projects. [This is a good one]

Remember, you can sign up today to hear all the member episodes, get more bonus stuff, and, yes, support our program.

(Recorded on Tuesday, September 20, 2022)

Theory of Mind is the branch of cognitive science that investigates how we ascribe mental states to other persons and how we use the states to explain and predict the actions of those other persons.

Revising a book (or any piece of writing) is about exerting control and imposing order over the first messy draft. But it’s also about running up against the brick walls of your talent and realizing just how much of the success of the book you absolutely cannot control. So it’s not a huge surprise that in between revising bursts, I’ve been organizing the shit out of my house. 

Handle tough food scraps like fruit pits.

Exposure and response prevention (also known as exposure and ritual prevention; ERP or EX/RP) is a variant of exposure therapy that is recommended by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and the Mayo Clinic as first-line treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) citing that it has the richest empirical support for both youth and adolescent outcomes.

When Sperry removed the eye patch and the cats could see with both eyes, he performed the same experiment.

Does a split-brain harbor a split consciousness or is consciousness unified?

Wright's main point is that evolution hardwires us with intense emotions that are in fact delusions.

He interweaves secular Buddhism and evolutionary psychology with precision and clarity, and in doing so he has followed perhaps the best route for modern philosophy: to glean insights from contemporary science in order to examine the human condition and reflect upon our moral imperatives.

Apple announces some new products, London Bridge is down, and your hosts continue their tour of mini-topics.

John learns a little about a legendary Hollywood producer, and Merlin may not know how to do his job.

Git made it possible for programmers to coordinate distributed work across teams -- now GitHub makes it possible for everyone else

This week I tried a different approach when editing a document written by a colleague. Again the goal was not only to produce an edited version, but also to narrate the edits in a didactic way. In this case I tried bending GitHub to my purpose.

We learn why John is still behind on his podcasts as well as why Merlin liked it better when podcasts were less…"professional."

Things kick off with a brief debate on whether using things wrong makes you a hacker.

In Follow-Up, John has updates on that announcement about dropping a device in a plane seat, and Merlin expresses skepticism about announcements in general.

Then, there's some updates related to the prior discussion of performance reviews. Believe it or not, quantifying the unquantifiable is even more difficult than it sounds.

In our members-only bonus show: John has updates on Half-Empty Nest Syndrome.

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(Recorded on Tuesday, August 23, 2022)

The word "REPEAT" should not be used in place of "SAY AGAIN", especially in the vicinity of naval or other firing ranges, as "REPEAT" is an artillery proword defined in ACP 125 U.S. Supp-2(A) with the wholly different meaning of "request for the same volume of fire to be fired again with or without corrections or changes" (e.g., at the same coordinates as the previous round).

Merlin now owns two of these.

This is the "water landing" bit Merlin still somehow remembers 35 years later.

In conclusion, Helmuth von Moltke the Elder deserves credit for the words he wrote in German in 1871.

Your hosts dig in to the continuing saga of John’s TV.

In Follow-Up, John reminds everyone that RecDiffs listeners knew what’s bad about TV stands before any of the normals.

John also shares his Vacation Results—alongside some anthropological observations on the state of air travel in 2022.

(Recorded August 9, 2022)

As TVs get bigger, it’s gotten more complicated to set them up. One simple fix could have you streaming Netflix in no time.

This week finds both John and Merlin helping things leave their house.

In our members-only bonus show: John previews vacation planning progress.

Sign up today to get lots of extra stuff and to support our program.

(Recorded on Tuesday, July 19, 2022)

It is illegal to put items such as electronics, batteries, fluorescent bulbs, pesticides, and other chemicals in any of your bins. These items are not recyclable, compostable, nor are they allowed in our landfills.