Reconcilable Differences

As a main topic, your hosts wonder how many cults they've each been in—and, hey, what even is a cult anyway?

John will not relay messages from Merlin to John's wife, and Merlin feels like he's finally getting over whatever passes for summer. Marco hates it when his phone hits his junk, and both of your hosts consider how an eagle, a monkey, and a bucket of water can do heroic work together. Also, Merlin can't remember several things, but he claims to have a method for back-solving the stack.

In vitally important Follow-Up, Merlin has found the original recipe for "Bachelor Pasta," which, naturally, leads to a deep dive on The Modern MAN'S Guide to LIFE. Together, your hosts learn how to buy a computer in 1987.

Merlin has finally gotten religion on Twitterrific muffles, but John seems a little reluctant to lead a challenge involving regular expressions.

Several years ago, the founder of IHOP, Mike Bickle, created a list of seven ways to recognize the difference between a religious community and a cult. Written down, the signs seem clear:

The line between delusion and what the rest of us believe may be blurrier than we think.

I’m specifically not talking about preparing or cooking fresh pasta, how to execute any particular pasta recipe, or why you should never, ever buy pasta sauce in a jar. (You really shouldn’t, though.) This is just about the basics: how to cook and serve dried pasta as part of some larger recipe, the details of which are out of scope, for now.

John encourages Merlin to share some happy memories of his family's monstrous cat, and Merlin cries a little. This leads to a discussion of the journey of new pet acquisition.

Follow-up brings a couple corrections and a quick dive into the technology that was going to change how cities are designed. John thinks it's a miracle that the New York subway was ever built, and Merlin thinks a lot of politics is mostly about telling people they were right.

Decoder Ring examines the history of the Segway, Dean Kamen, DEKA, Ginger, IT, and Dan Kois, book agent.

The main topic concerns Merlin's recent turn as Mr. Mom.

John wonders about up-talk greetings, and Merlin confesses to some recent situational imbibing.

Follow-up addresses the "Too-Rye-Ay" question, the enumeration of pasta shapes, and how many kinds of beetles there actually are. Tangents include celebrity biographies, Adam and the Ants video casting, Alta Vista search operators, and the actresses that Merlin collects.

Feat. Amanda Donohoe

Feat. Amanda Donohoe and Simon Callow

Feat. Simon Callow

The Drift…is a process that two Jaeger pilots undergo prior to synchronizing with the Jaeger itself.

The high rising terminal (HRT), also known as upspeak, uptalk, rising inflection, upward inflection, or high rising intonation (HRI), is a feature of some variants of English where declarative sentence clauses end with a rising-pitch intonation, until the end of the sentence where a falling-pitch is applied.

"This is the lock-picking 📈 lawyer…"

"Realism does not lack its partisans, but it does rather conspicuously lack a persuasive theory."

There's follow-up on Merlin's Vacation Results, and your hosts wonder which Doctor they'd each be. The big topic of college continues with thoughts on the thistle of standardized testing.

Merlin shares his Vacation Results.

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"The word you’re looking for here is “diminutive”. Which gives me an opportunity to share one of my all-time favorite Wikipedia pages"

"There are over 5,000 identified diminutives in use in Australian English."

Remembering various animal actors, enumerating genres that need a name, considering the philosophies behind "bag in a bag," and contrasting college with the ordinary crucibles of post-adolescent life.

Exploring Italian food, celebrating markup languages, and (finally) beginning to tackle the topic of college.

(Recorded on Tuesday, July 13, 2021)

Setext (Structure Enhanced Text)[1] is a lightweight markup language used to format plain text documents such as e-newsletters, Usenet postings, and e-mails.

"Welcome to TidBITS-100 and our new setext format!"

(January 6, 1992)

"Every few months, though, it would occur to me that I dearly missed Textism, and I’d think to write Dean and tell him so — and to tell him that his offhand compliment in 2003 was still something I thought about all the time."

"I’ve written a text-to-HTML formatting tool called Markdown, which is now available for download."

"It is with unspeakable sorrow that we announce the sudden passing of Dean Cameron Allen, on January 13, 2018 at the age of 51….His absence is unfathomable.

Archive of the late Dean Allen's lovely website, ca. 2001.

"A venerable old trophy case stands in a corner. You curiously open the lid and peek inside."

"'Inside Job' is a 2010 American documentary film, directed by Charles Ferguson, about the late 2000s financial crisis."

Merlin just woke up, John is full of beans, and things get a little silly.

Meet Lidlicker.

Featuring additional music this week by Producer Jim.

Cameras! Just SO much about cameras.

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But, also: amusing primates, Taylor Swift, ““content creation,”” crummy band managers, widespread misunderstanding of Lucille Bluth, the genius and tragedy of Howard Ashman, RFC1178, plus John shares his nostalgia for one indefatigable computer naming scheme.

"Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying sh*t."

She condemned Braun's purchase; although she attempted to make peace, she denounced him as an "incessant, manipulative bully".

'After countless lawsuits, verdicts and settlements (26 in all counting the Beatles), as each party licked its wounds and counted casualties in terms of lost property, wasted time and treasure, perhaps it was the Stones’ guitarist Keith Richards who summed up the battle best: it was “the price of an education.”'

'[…]“Howard” is the untold story of Howard Ashman, the brilliant lyricist behind Disney classics like “Aladdin,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Little Mermaid” and creator of musicals including “Little Shop of Horrors.”'

(Merlin's fancy video camera)

As a main topic this week, your hosts discuss Theme Dining Nights. Why can't more experiences be like John's old deli? Differences regarding leftovers are, unfortunately, not reconciled.

This week kicks off with Merlin offering a heartfelt thank you to John for helping him know where he is. John shouldn't need to wiggle, and Merlin can't imagine ever asking for the return of "contact." Your hosts agree accessibility is good for everybody.

John has updates on drama in the NES Tetris Scene, and Merlin remembers bringing a pencil to the arcade so he could cheat. John repurposes an excellent graphic by Neven to ask how buttony a button needs to be to look like it's a button. This leads to a surprisingly interesting mini-dive into practical UX and ways that an affordance can let you know that it's an affordance.

John's worries that his dispose-all may be starving to death.

(Recorded on Tuesday, June 1, 2021)

Her decision was diplomatic, but it also amounted to relying on her gut rather than research. Since then, she said, she has asked her team to test the 41 gradations between the competing blues to see which ones consumers might prefer.

Compacted sugar, Jade theories, TV-remote button feel, and looking — but not reaching! — very far upward.

Affordances are properties of objects which show users the actions they can take. Users should be able to perceive affordances without having to consider how to use the items. For instance, a button can be designed to look as if it needs to be turned or pushed.

Track & Field is notorious for its button-mashing ways, and has built many legends around the methods used by ’80s kids to get high scores, from having a third hand help out, to the game’s notorious “pencil trick” which saw players see-saw a pencil between their fingers for knuckle-crushing, high-scoring action… Ahh, the suffering we went through just to become number one.