August 25, 2025

Sounds like a Whisper

1 hour 36 minutes

Re-recorded this one becuase the audio quality was awful

Image By © Hans Hillewaert, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7279259

Episode Transcript

Hey there, I'm Scott, and this is Tangents.

It is 25 August 2025, and this is like my fourth time of starting this one. I recorded a full one, and I recorded it a little bit late at night. I'm recording this now at 10.42 in Bangkok.

I recorded it at night, and I felt bad. I didn't want to keep up with the neighbors. I'm in a hotel, and I can hear people outside, so I know they can probably hear me. I didn't want to bother them.

So I recorded it in the bathroom, and the reverb on that one is just fucking terrible. So I'm redoing it, which kind of sucks.

And then I'm in, like, not that you need to know all the technical details here, but I'm using my AirPod Pros. The audio quality from the first episode was actually not that bad. I was kind of surprised.

So I'm doing it again. I'm going to be doing it while I'm traveling, at least. I'll probably go to a better mic when I get back.

I'd like to figure out something that I can do that's kind of sustainable and, you know, just works wherever I am.

But for now, this is good enough, I think, and hope.

Apple is so fucking annoying anymore. So fucking annoying.

First of all, at some point, it decided to start connecting to my phone, and it wants to use my phone's mic as a mic.

And every time I open up Logic, it's trying to reconnect to it, and there's nothing I can do.

Now, granted, I have a macOS beta. I have an iOS beta, the 26 versions.

And maybe it kind of seems like the previous one, there was a way to do it, to disable that.

But in the current one, if it's there, and I'm not convinced that it is, but if it is there, it's buried someplace.

I can't find it, and it's really fucking annoying.

And it's just, like, Apple anymore, you know, their whole thing used to be just works.

Like, literally, that was their thing. It was just works, TM.

Yeah. And it didn't ever actually just work. Like, everything wasn't perfect.

But it did kind of work pretty well. Like, there were a lot of things where you could tell they were making things better.

And recently, and when I say recently, I mean, like, the last probably five to ten years,

especially since Steve Jobs got really sick and then died, and especially recently,

it's just been getting worse and worse and worse.

And again, like, I'm not saying that he was perfect or awesome or, you know, like, without faults by any means.

But you can just tell, like, Tim Apple is not Steve Jobs. Let's just say that.

And the company, I mean, like, it's very obvious that the company that he built is very toxic.

And Tim Apple, I'm not going to call him Tim Cook. He's just become Tim Apple.

So, if I didn't have such derision for the man, I might be nicer to him, but fuck that guy.

But anyway, it's very obvious that Jobs built an extremely toxic culture and horrible company.

Yeah, as much as I like some of their products and some of the ideas about the stuff, and, you know,

I do love a lot of their engineering.

But, you know, the whole structure was extremely terrible.

And there was this competition between, like, Tony Fidel, Fadel, however the fuck you say his name,

and Scott Forrest Dahl, or I don't even care what the fuck his name is.

And all these other people were kind of, like, vying to be the next CEO.

And Tim Apple got to the top of the pile of assholes, which I think doesn't make him a great guy.

It makes him, like, the biggest asshole.

I think it's a condemnation, like, the fact that he got there.

Big fucking condemnation.

The fact that they bought Beats by Dre.

Like, they could have bought that and then had Dre be the...

And I'm not saying that Dre is, like, the best possible CEO for the company.

But dude built Beats by Dre and could have done some interesting stuff.

They acquired his company and then just kind of, like, shelved him.

Um, and again, like, I'm not saying that he's a great guy.

I'm not saying that he's the guy I wanted to be CEO.

But would have been better, probably, than fucking Tim Apple.

Like, in fact, a lot of people would have been better than Tim Apple.

In fact, I don't even like Tony Fidel, the Nest guy.

I kind of hate that guy.

He would have been better.

That Scott guy would have been better.

You know, a lot of people would have been better in the role.

And it ended up with, like, the, again, the biggest asshole.

But anyway, the shit is turning really crappy.

And, like, they're doing stuff, like, a year ago for the previous version of Mac OS X.

They, in preview, this is just one example, but it's emblematic.

In preview, the application for, like, doing PDFs and images and stuff.

They used to have an icon.

And, in fact, like, I'm looking at Logic right now.

And if I look at the window, at the top of the thing is the file name.

And then there's a little icon of the file.

And I can click and drag that icon and just do whatever I want with it.

Now, in preview, they decided, well, we're going to hide that.

And so you can kind of see some stuff, but you have to mouse over it.

And then the delay before it shows, I want to say it's 200 milliseconds, but I think it's more like 500 to 1,000 milliseconds.

In fact, it might even be 2,000 milliseconds, like, two seconds.

It is ridiculously, ridiculously long.

In fact, I'm going to see if I can open it right now.

And for some reason, oh, it just crashed.

It just crashed.

Maybe I shouldn't be trying to do stuff while I'm recording.

I am using beta software, so it's kind of my fault.

But it was a ridiculously long time.

I do think, actually, like, two seconds seems obscene.

But I think it actually was that.

I timed it, and I made a, well, I made several bug reports and feedback things.

They always ignore them.

But, yeah, I've made that.

And it doesn't, the thing about it is it, like, doesn't save really any screen real estate.

It doesn't do anything other than make it look maybe a little tidier.

But this functionality, which I use all the fucking time, like, multiple times a day on a daily basis, it makes you go and, like, hunt for the thing.

And if I didn't know it was there, I wouldn't even know to go there.

But I know it's there, and I have to go up there, and then hover the mouse, and you have to wait two seconds.

And then you drive, and I think it is two seconds.

I've convinced myself.

It's just, like, what the fuck are you guys doing?

What the fuck are you guys doing?

Jobs was weird with, like, skeuomorphic interfaces and things like this.

You know, not the greatest guy, but that kind of shit.

And just the mystery meat, this thing where you hide UI elements, and you have to, like, randomly click on stuff and move the mouse places.

It's just shitty.

And, again, like, there's plenty of space.

It's not saving space.

It's not really, I mean, obviously it's saving some number of pixels and some percentage of the screen.

But it's a negligible amount.

And it's, like, you've made it 1% cleaner, and you've saved, like, a fraction of a percent of the screen area.

And in doing so, you've made it 1,000 times less usable.

Like, I don't know what the fuck you guys are thinking.

It pisses me off.

It legitimately pisses me off.

One of the things also, and I, it kind of pains me to say this, I think I'm not going to buy any more Apple shit.

Which, I say that now, if they do come out with a Vision Air that is good, I might still consider it.

Because that Vision Pro, I have to say, like, I don't like a lot of things about it.

I'm not a big AR, VR fan.

But one thing that, I didn't bring mine with me, but one thing that I really like about it, and I kind of miss, is it would give me, like, a great, giant, high-resolution screen.

And, you know, it, unfortunately, it's really heavy, really bulky, but you could carry it with you a lot easier than you could carry a monitor.

And I say that, I don't know how much an external monitor weighs and how much bulk it has.

It's probably comparable, actually.

But, you know, if you're wearing those things, and they do, they're very heavy, they're very fatiguing.

I don't like staring at a screen right in front of my eyeballs for a long time.

But having that virtual display, like, floating there with you, and, you know, I mean, like, one of the things I miss, that there are not that many things I miss about not having my own space right now.

One big one I miss is not having a whiteboard.

If you could figure out having that, that would be fucking awesome.

I don't know how you could do it well.

And I think, I do think it is one of these things, like, I have show notes.

And I did this partly because I listened to the previous episode, or sort of, like, the new episode one of this.

And I think it's pretty good, but I do repeat myself a number of times in there.

And I was sitting there going, like, I don't, that's not what I want.

I don't want to waste your time just rambling on, circling the same things.

So I made an outline.

And my plan, at least with this outline, is not to go, like, point by point through everything and write down exactly what I'm going to say.

But I want to make sure I hit certain things.

And then I want to make sure I don't go back to them.

Unless I'm actually, like, adding something material to them.

You know, if I'm adding, if I'm going back to them and, like, adding layers, that's different.

The tangents that reconnect.

Different threads reconnecting, that kind of stuff.

That's different.

But when it's just, like, repeating the same shit, which I did, it's not good.

And again, maybe it doesn't bother you.

It bothers me.

It's not something that I really want this to be.

So, anyway, 10 minutes in.

Getting back to what I recorded on the previous one.

And I'm calling this one Sounds Like a Whisper.

And this is a deliberately kind of double entendre.

Double entendre.

No.

Just kind of up my ass.

Sorry.

But it's a deliberately double meaning.

One of the meanings is about Tracy Chapman's talking about a revolution.

And this is a song.

Like, I remember it when I think, and I'm dating myself here, but I think I was in middle school when it came out.

It may have been grade school.

I don't remember exactly.

But it was, like, that area.

And I just didn't, like, I mean, I enjoyed the song.

Don't get me wrong.

But at the time, I was, you know, obviously I was raised in the United States.

I had the standard sort of U.S. public education.

I think I got a pretty decent public education, actually.

I think, you know, especially compared to a lot of people.

Had pretty good teachers.

Had, you know, I didn't see it at the time.

But I think I benefited from not getting fast-tracked and not getting, like, accelerated and stuff.

And not getting pushed into the, air quotes, advanced classes.

It was kind of annoying, and I felt shitty about it at the time.

But I think it's really detrimental to kids.

And most of the people I know who got, like, skipped a grade or two.

It fucked them over.

Like, it robbed a piece of, you know, you're only in school one time for so long.

And that's precious time.

It really is.

There's no real advantage.

Like, I've known people, I've known a couple people who went to university when they were, like, 15 or 16.

And, yeah, it's kind of cool.

And you're like, wow, you must be.

I used to think they were really smart.

I think now it's just, it's got more to do with the family and getting pushed.

But I would not want that.

Like, you're way outside of the cohort of people who are sort of your age.

And I will say, like, I never, I always felt more comfortable with adults than other children.

Like, as long as I can remember.

I never really, I didn't vibe with the other kids.

I just never did.

It was never until probably into late undergrad or even grad school before I started feeling, like, comfortable with my actual peers of a similar age.

Like, before then, it was just, like, I don't understand you fucking people.

I don't, you know, I mean, don't get me wrong.

I had friends at various times and I hung out with people.

But for the most part, I just didn't, it's like, you know, like, what, I don't understand your values.

I don't understand what you're doing.

I don't understand, you know, what you're saying and what the subtext is behind everything.

And it just felt like, you know, like, I felt like everybody is, I'm surrounded by aliens.

Like, what the fuck?

It just is weird.

So anyway, that was my perception of the revolution song then.

Now it's changed a little bit.

Like, I didn't at the time realize why, you know, someone might want a revolution.

And in retrospect now, looking at, you know, what I know about the United States and the fact that this is a country built on a genocide on a scale that would make Hitler blush and that inspired him.

And built on top of slavery and built, you know, on empire and fucking over so many countries and destroying so many democratic governments just because they didn't kind of vibe with our, with our companies.

They weren't really working for our sort of world order, so to speak.

It, I see why people would want a fucking revolution.

And, and I think also, like, I know, and granted my Facebook experience is a little different than, than most, but I have a lot of sort of brunch libs connected to me there.

Mainly from running for office, connected to a lot of Democrats at the time.

And a lot of just the mainstream Democrats, especially the people who are actually active in the party, are very privileged, often very white.

And often, let's just say not really, they're, they're not sharing the standard experience of living in the United States, which is to say, you know, like they're, they're getting, especially the boomerish kind of thing where they could work a, not necessarily very, you know, highly skilled job, so to speak.

Highly skilled is a bad, not a job that required a lot from them in terms of like preparation, let's just say that.

And they could have enough money to get a house and have vacations and send their kids to college and do all kinds of stuff.

And they're, you know, like now they have 401ks and their 401ks have been booming and they feel like, um, genocide Joe was fucking awesome because under him, they're, you know, the stock market was going well and all this kind of stuff.

And they're like, Oh, the economy is amazing.

And they have no idea that a lot of people, um, have been working multiple jobs just to be able to pay rent and barely scrape by.

They have no idea how much like the increasing of food prices has really gotten to people.

They have no idea how much just everything has started to really suck there.

Uh, and when I say started to, I mean, obviously it sucked for a lot of people for a long time, right?

Um, like my dad was able, he had a pension, um, although he got fucked on his pension and forced retired after 29 years and 11 months just so that he wouldn't get the full 30 year pension.

Um, it's pretty, pretty fucked up thing.

And then he ended up getting cancer and dying.

Um, you know, that's, it was a, it was a situation.

Um, but not that the pension, not, you know, like getting screwed on the pension didn't cause the cancer, but it made his life harder and things sucked more, uh, needlessly because some greedy bastards wanted to get a little bit more money.

But anyway, um, yeah, I'm just, I'm thinking about like, he was very fortunate.

There are a lot of people who didn't get pensions.

There are a lot of people who are like my mom's age, um, in their eighties.

There, there was a woman who worked, um, in facilities at the, that ASU biodesign where I was, uh, in my last job.

And she was in her eighties and she's cleaning the place and doing hard physical manual labor, long days, all those kinds of stuff.

And I'm sure she has to, I don't think it's just because like my, my dad's mom, um, she kept working at a sandwich shop for a very long time into, I think at least her seventies.

And I'm sure she didn't mind like the little bit of extra money, but she was mostly doing it because she wanted something to do, right?

She didn't want to just be like sitting around the apartment watching TV, which I think is, is something.

I get that. Um, I, I don't think I would ever want to retire per se, although I definitely would want to not have to work for some other asshole.

That's, that's a big thing.

But anyway, um, I, I'm actually going to jump ahead of what I wanted to talk about a little bit.

Not that you know that. Um, but I think this fits in because I've been traveling.

I'm currently in Bangkok, uh, in Thailand and in my traveling this time, I've kind of noticed a number of things.

This is, this was not deliberate and I'm sure somebody else, well, first off, I'm sure other people have actually done comparative analyses and people that.

Like know what the fuck they're doing and are actually qualified to do this kind of stuff.

But I have noticed a number of things that I think is worth, or that I think is, that I think are worth talking about.

And, um, oh, I'm, I'm, I'm going to jump into that in a second.

I do want to finish this whisper thing though.

Now, the reason I was talking about whisper other than just the Tracy Chapman thing and the need for a revolution, uh, and then I will get back to, to the other part is that in doing this, I really want to offer a, a text-based reason or way to, to experience this.

I have some other things that I want to do eventually that are going to take a lot of software development.

And I haven't had a chance, I haven't had time to, to make them yet, but I want to, um, and, and for this and for accessibility reasons, I really want to have good transcripts.

And so I've been looking at like, how can I transcribe these episodes?

And yeah, in doing this, I did some research and I, I fucking despise Sam Altman and open AI.

Uh, but what I did notice is they have this open source, uh, it's called whisper thing and it's a large language model and does sort of speaker independence, speech recognition, and it's supposed to be good.

And again, it's, you know, you can do it on device.

So you're not really using the resources.

You're, you're using something that just exists.

So I thought I would try it.

I thought, you know, okay, I'll see what this is.

And I, I try, uh, I try working with, you know, like I, I despise them.

I have tried playing with Claude and ChatGPT, ChatGPT, I should call it.

And, um, I can't even think of what it's called.

Deep think and, or deep mind.

I don't even remember what the fuck it.

I, I, I, I've used these things a little bit and in using them, I have really discovered how shitty they are.

Just like how unbelievably bad these things are.

In addition to just like being a horrible ecological catastrophe and ridiculously, you know, resource intensive, uh, both for the actual application and for the training, especially.

And the training wouldn't be so bad if it was like you train it once and then you're done.

But what they do is they keep retraining their models over and over again.

And each time they do it, it's like, uh, some number of households, annual carbon footprint over and over again.

And everybody else is chasing them and doing the same kind of stuff and doing the same, you know, I mean, you look at this and it's like, you'll get a lot of people who are like, oh no, it doesn't actually use that much water.

It doesn't actually use that much energy.

And then at the same time, in order to power these things, there are all of these data centers going in all of these places and they're having to expand, like spin up old nuclear reactors and do all kinds of things.

Like it's obvious, it's obvious that it's actually extremely resource intensive.

You don't have to, you don't have to look at their metrics and look at, you know, like the, the stuff that they're doing to know it just is.

It's, it's fucking obvious.

It irritates me that people are so disingenuous about this and just straight up lying about it.

Or they might be genuinely misguided.

It's certainly possible.

But anyway, they have this whisper thing and I thought I would try it.

I thought, okay, I'll see what this is.

I'll see if it's any good.

And I made the captions and I was stunned.

A, you know, just looking at the, the models, cause they have on their, um, it's, it's on GitHub and you can look at the papers on it and this kind of stuff.

Um, the fidelity, like the, the, the percentage error rate, like how many words it gets wrong.

Um, it's, it's, it's like 90 to 95% for most languages for speaker independence, speech recognition, which is not great.

It's really not great.

And I just think about this and it's also extremely slow.

Like they have a tiny model, tiny.

Um, and then they have a turbo model, um, giant air quotes turbo.

And you can set these things up and you can use like GPU acceleration or the neural engine acceleration and all this other stuff.

And you do that and it's fucking slow and it's extraordinarily, uh, memory intensive.

Like they have these giant models and they need a fuck ton of memory to run and they need a shit ton of processing.

Like I thought I, I, before actually playing with this, I really thought that the big costs was in the training and the training is horrible.

Like the training is wasting so many cycles, but just in the application of these things, just in the transcription.

And I did just as a slight aside, I really would rather support humans that transcribe.

I have friends that are, um, that do transcription and I would like to support them.

Um, the problem is like, I looked into this and the price per minute of audio, uh, was like a buck 50 or two bucks.

And I typically make one of these that say an hour and a half or at least an hour long.

And you start thinking about it and it's like, um, every week that would be a couple hundred bucks, which if I had, you know, if I was in a position to afford it and I might one day actually be, uh, then I will do that.

But, but at the moment, like, it's just not, it's not feasible.

It's not something that I could afford.

It's not something like, you know, and as long as I don't have a job, probably fucking hard.

I don't really, you know, like even just hosting this is probably more than I should be doing.

And the time that it's taking to put this together, even if it wasn't for like having to rerecord it and then fight with Apple.

Um, like I, again, I started this one four or five times cause it kept using different audio or it's turning on the monitoring or it's doing all kinds of weird shit that I don't want.

And you're just like, motherfucker, I just want you to work just fucking work.

Um, and it gets to one of these things that like bad automation is much, much, much, much, much worse than no automation.

And, you know, I mean, it's like auto incorrect.

Um, I, I need some kind of auto correct on my iPhone just because with the soft keyboard and there's no, you know, like my, my fidelity on an actual like touch typing on an actual keyboard is pretty good because there are home keys and I can orient my fingers and I can know exactly where I am and I can type.

And I know if I made a typo and I can go back and correct it, but on the soft keyboard on a screen, there's no registration.

And so it's really easy, especially if I'm typing quickly and not looking at it to, to miss the keys.

And I need something to correct that.

If I turn it off, it is unusable.

It makes so many mistakes.

It's painful.

And there are some things where they actually deliberately disable it and it's just frustrating to use, um, like the translate app.

But when I've got it turned on, it's inserting shit at the end of the stuff that I've already typed that I don't want.

Or it's taking a word that I typed and spelled correctly.

And then after I've typed it and after I've looked at it and kind of like casually proofread it, I look away and then it changes it.

I hit send and it changes a word or it adds a word and changes the meaning.

I, you know, like it, it likes to do things like changing hell to heal or heal to hell.

And, you know, like in, in, in places where it's completely inappropriate, the way that it goes.

And like, I typed deliberately the thing that I wanted to type.

And it's, it's annoying also because like, I, I have certain stylistic things that I do on purpose.

I have certain, like, I care about my choice of words.

I care about my choice of how I present things.

And usually if I'm doing something a certain way, I'm doing it intentionally.

So, and having something coming in and changing it is fucking annoying.

And I can't disable the whole thing because if I disable it, it disables the part that I actually need.

Like, but if I leave it enabled, it's infuriating, it's fucking infuriating.

But anyway, coming back, um, it's just like, ah, motherfuckers.

So I'm dealing with, uh, this, this open whisper thing.

I, I run it and it's so slow.

It's so slow.

And I, I, I cannot believe how long it takes to transcribe, you know, like literally like 15 minutes.

Uh, to transcribe an hour and a half, maybe even more.

And the transcription is not perfect.

And I just look at this and I think about like, okay, we're in 2025 right now.

Um, more than halfway to 2026.

And there was a program called Dragon Dictate in the 1990s and the early 2000s.

And I think it called like, or it changed its name to like Naturally Speaking or something.

And it sucked.

I do want to say it did suck.

It wasn't great, but it had, uh, speaker independence, speech recognition and on the hardware of the

time, which was extraordinarily slow and didn't have very much memory at all compared to any

machine today.

You know, like we're talking like megabytes of RAM.

If, if even that we're talking, you know, like the, the processors were like a microcontroller

now, like your, your watch, your mouse probably has a processor that's more powerful than the,

than the processors and the computers of the era.

And they could do, uh, like 90 to mid nineties percent speaker independent speech recognition.

Um, they did pretty good.

They didn't do quite as good.

They didn't get like some of the punctuation, right.

They didn't get some things right that the new ones do to, to be fair.

But the thing is, it's, it's like, I would liken this to, you take a car off the, and you took

this car and you souped it up and you put it in the coffee can muffler and you reprogrammed

it so that it's like burning fuel rich.

And you do, you did a bunch of things to make it, you know, to squeeze out a little bit

extra performance.

And you got like a 10th of a horsepower extra, you know, and I'm only half exaggerating there,

like say one horsepower extra, you know, less than 1% improvement.

But in doing so, you've legitimately gotten, yeah.

I mean, to say it's like a thousandth of a, or a thousand gallons to the mile, like is,

is not that much of an exaggeration because you think about like, it was able to do in real

time, pretty good speech recognition back then.

And now in way less than real time, you are with the current processors and with gigabytes

of RAM, sometimes like tens or even hundreds of gigabytes of RAM for these big models.

You're able to get a tiny bit of improved performance and fidelity.

It's, it's not worth, not remotely worth it.

And you just take like the stuff people were doing back then.

And granted, I understand like the, the approach is very different, the capabilities, the, all

these kinds of things are different, but you look at that and you're like, okay, even if

you say like that was kind of a dead end and we had other ways to go, the idea that you

have spent 25 years and you've got something that is marginally, marginally better and uses

so many more resources and is so much slower and still is pretty bad.

You know, it's, it's not great.

It's like, I go through these transcripts.

This is another thing that I'll get to, but I go through the transcripts and edit them.

And, you know, I'm, I'm trying to make them not suck.

I want them to be presentable.

And even then I'm sure lots of crap gets through and I'm changing so much stuff because they're,

they're shitty.

They're just fucking shitty.

And then Apple again, and their awesomeness, like I've got the transcript that I generated

that I went through and deliberately made, you know, like I fixed some things.

Um, Apple has regenerated the transcripts for me and I've got it set up so that it's supposed

to use the transcript that I uploaded, but it's not, um, which is fucking annoying.

And I can't, I can't get in there.

I can't do anything with it.

And I can't edit the transcript that they've generated, but the transcript that they've

generated, and it is cool.

Like it's showing word for word highlighting as I'm speaking, which I love.

I think it's awesome, but it's also fucking up a lot.

Um, it's also taking a lot of time.

I don't know how many, like, I, I'm not seeing the compute resources that it's using, but I'm

sure it's not insignificant.

And again, like I've just wasted all my time, uh, doing this transcription, uploading or editing

the thing, uploading it.

And then you're fucking doing it on top of me and reintroducing the same errors that I

changed and new errors.

And it's fucking annoying.

It's really annoying, especially like I'm trying to put in like the, uh, I'm not going to

um, Vietnamese spelling of Ha Long Bay or Hanoi or whatever.

And you know, you've, you've changed it back or you're re transcribing it to something else.

It's, it's annoying.

I don't like it.

I don't fucking like it.

Um, bad automation is worse than no automation.

All right.

So anyway, um, getting, I, I, Apple, I bitch about Apple in the same sense that I bitch

about the, uh, the Democrats because it is like, I, I'm not a Microsoft fan.

I don't like them.

I've not, I tried very briefly.

I got so fed up with Apple.

I got a, uh, a surface pro at one point and it sucked.

I got like the, at the time flagship, um, because I was like, I was sick of my MacBook

pro.

And back then they had these Intel processors and the thing was just roasting.

Like it was so hot and the fan was so fucking loud.

I like, I could not use the thing.

I wanted to discus it and it started just getting weird.

And like, it had an issue with the motherboard and it was just like flaking out.

And I had to get the motherboard replaced on it like two or three times.

And in that moment, I got a surface pro and I realized like windows sucked even more.

And I'm, which is not a, you know, it's not like saying Apple's awesome.

It's just saying that the alternative that had, um, was pretty shitty.

And then Linux, you know, like I, I switched, I used to long time ago, like in the nineties,

I used windows.

And then I also dual booted into, um, Linux and then also like BSD, open BSD or free BSD.

And I, I switched to a Mac because I wanted the Unix stuff and I wanted, um, you know,

the consumer polish and the Mac has nicer consumer polish than, than windows.

And it has Unix kind of ish under the, under the hood.

And I've used a Mac since then and mostly like the, the stuff and broad strokes, but

they keep just like, um, throwing sand in my eye and it fucking annoys me.

So anyway, with all of that stuff, I am sitting here and, uh, I, I'm sorry to, again, Apple,

I bitch about more than Microsoft, not because I dis, or because I like Microsoft, because I

like the idea of Apple, I use it, um, moving on though.

I'm, I'm in, I'm in Bangkok.

This was the reason I was talking about whisper, uh, because of the whisper thing.

I am in Bangkok and I've been traveling.

And one of the things that I found interesting in this travel is just kind of seeing different

countries and sort of how different political and economic systems have, have worked or not

worked.

And it's, it's been enlightening.

And again, you know, like I, I am not qualified to, to speak on this in any way.

Uh, my background is definitely not, this is not the domain of my expertise.

I'm sure other people have done a much better job.

I'm sure other people are much more qualified, but I'm just going to give you some of my,

my thoughts and observations because I do think it was to me, at least interesting.

Um, and so Thailand where I am now, there are some things I would characterize this as

a sort of hyper-capitalistic, uh, society.

And it's interesting.

I have a friend here at dinner with a few days ago and he said, it's kind of like the fifties

and the eighties happened concurrently.

And I kind of get what he means.

In fact, even like I, I, yesterday or the day before I went to a mall here and the malls

are like the malls in the eighties.

Yeah.

I mean, obviously with like modern tech, incidentally, also a bunch of phone companies that I've never

heard of from China that make it, you know, they're, they're companies with like 8% market

share.

I've never heard of the company before.

And they make phones that look pretty fucking decent.

And I'm just sitting there like, man, the U S is such a fucking scam.

It's such a goddamn scam.

Um, but you know, the malls are nice.

The malls are actually nice.

And you know, if you go to the, to the extent there are malls left in the U S, which is not

much, uh, they are scary.

Like they're, and I don't mean like dangerous, dangerous, but you know, like it's just dark

and dingy and nasty and all the stores are closed and it's not a place you want to hang

out.

Um, these places are bright and light and clean and you know, like the air is filtered, which

you need here.

Cause in the city, it's a little, there are all of these cars and, um, and scooters, gas

powered scooters.

And it's, it's, it's a little unpleasant to breathe.

Honestly.

Um, there are a lot of people wearing respirators and masks, and I think they're mostly wearing

them because of the air pollution.

Not because they're worried about, um, pathogens and infectious disease and all that kind of

stuff.

I'd love to think that it was that, but you know, it's not a public health thing as much

as a personal one, but you know, it's nice in the mall cause it's, it's clean air.

It's bright.

It's air conditioned.

It's not hot out or not hot in.

And I can see like, it's a place where kids could hang out and just be like in a decent

place.

It's not, it's not like hanging out in the woods.

It's not as nice as that.

I was very fortunate as a kid to have, uh, like forest preserve in my backyard, at least

for a few years when I lived in Pittsburgh.

And that was, that was fucking amazing.

I, I, I feel, I feel bad for myself not getting that after that, but I feel worse for kids.

Like I go through neighborhoods and, um, in Arizona and you see kids like playing just

in the street or playing in the cul-de-sac or something.

And it's like, man, this is so, A, it's dangerous.

It's an interesting thing here.

Like there are so many cars, so many, um, people on scooters, so many, you know, there's

a lot of traffic here, but you can just, and in Vietnam as well.

And in China, um, but you can just like walk into the street and you're not going to like,

like, people will act like they're going to hit you, but they won't hit you.

They, they'll stop.

They, they're not like fucking weird.

Arizona, if you're walking and doing everything right, like you feel like people are going

to hit you and they actually will try to hit you, like literally try to hit you.

Um, here you can feel that like being a pedestrian is a first class kind of thing.

Like it's, and in Vietnam, I, it w it was amazing and weird just how that worked.

Uh, and especially like, it took me a minute to, to recognize like what you're supposed

to do, but basically you just, uh, leap of faith it right into the traffic and the cars

stop for you.

The, the scooters stop for you.

Um, here it's a little different, but it's a little bit, pretty much like that.

And I've never in, in my travels since in like the last month or so, I've been

going around, I've never once felt like I was going to get hit and in the U S and

especially in Arizona and in California, I feel like I'm going to get hit all the

fucking time.

It's really, you know, it's a very different experience.

So anyway, um, I would say here it's very hyper-capitalistic and this manifests itself

in a lot of different ways.

But one of them is like, there are, and this is just a ridiculous thing that just, I don't

know why people have to make the same mistakes over and over and over again, but one of them

is like, they have multiple different Metro systems.

They're all incompatible.

They have like, one of them has tokens, uh, which, which are nice.

They're, you know, it's cool.

They work well.

Uh, one of them has cards and they're, they're cool.

They work well, but they're not mutually compatible.

They're separate systems that, you know, like if you get a card for one and you get a card

for the other one, they're not into, you have to have two separate, it's just like, and then

the stations, like they won't be exactly connected.

It's like there'll be a station and then there's another major station for the other system, but

you have to walk 10 minutes away to get there.

Or if you were my mom, it would be a real fucking pain in the ass.

Um, you know, like somebody who's older and has limited mobility, um, and the, yeah, it's

just like, I don't know.

I guess Tokyo used to be like this.

They used to have a bunch of different Metro systems and they still do have a bunch of different

private Metro systems, but at some point, uh, they, they got the Suica system and this

other, actually it's kind of ridiculous because they've got like multiple competing different

equivalent standards and they're, you know, it's like just fucking make a standard.

It doesn't matter what the standard is, uh, make a standard and use it.

And it's like Apple with these fucking, um, lightning connectors versus USB-C, you know,

they could have made lightning just a universal standard and opened it up and got everybody

using it and blah, blah, blah.

But they insisted on having their own.

Um, and then you have all these different connectors and they're all incompatible and

it's just like, why do you want to fucking do that?

Why do, why do we have to keep going through the same ridiculousness?

You know, it's just, it's just irritating.

And I understand like, especially when you're pushing the edge of the envelope with technology,

it's a little hard to know like what's going to be the right thing.

Are you going to go beta max?

Are you going to do VHS?

But you know, like going through, especially when stuff gets mature and especially when

it's something like a Metro system, which people have built a thousand times for well

over a century, um, a thousand times, it was an underestimate, just fucking do it right.

Just make them all incompatible.

Even if you're going to do like private separate ones, um, make them all compatible, build them

together, network them.

And you get so much more power out of that.

You get so much more benefit out of that.

And it's just, I assume inevitably at some point, like if you come back here in 20 years,

they'll probably have a single like unified system with things that are linked well.

And you know, it's just like, why not just fucking do it?

Why not just fucking do it?

Um, another thing that I noticed here is like, and I am coming from Vietnam where there's a

lot of, a lot of poverty, poverty.

It's, it's, it's obviously like air quotes developing country, um, here, you know, like

that there's stuff there that's nice, but for the most part, it's kind of like, eh, you

know, it, it's, it's not quite what you're used to.

Um, but you come here and there's stuff, especially around the area that I'm around.

Um, there's some hyper-modern, nice stuff.

The, the metros look really cool.

Everything is built well.

And, you know, like things seem extremely nice.

And then you go for a walk and you walk like 10 minutes in the wrong direction and you see

like shanty towns, like just like people in improvised, improvised housing, although with

addresses and mailboxes.

So it's obvious that it's like some kind of system that's, you know, semi-organized, but

it's just like no real shelter, like just a few things and open door.

And that's somebody's house at somebody, somebody who lives there and they're all on top of each

other.

And, you know, like that juxtaposition, this is the thing about capitalism.

Like capitalism can give you some really nice stuff, but, and for the winners, it's

amazing, right?

It's, it's super cool.

If you're like at the top of the heap, um, it's nice.

But then for the people that are not doing so well, and especially if you don't have a

good social safety net, it really can suck.

Like the, the poverty here, I think is worse than the poverty in say Vietnam, even though

there, there's a lot more poverty.

I think it's just not as extreme and it, or at least that's my perception.

I don't know the details and I've, it's not like I've interviewed a bunch of people or

gone around extensively and I'm basing this also out of cities.

I'm not going like into the countryside.

So who knows?

You know, I could do more research.

I should do more research before like making broad sweep, sweeping statements.

But again, I preface this by saying, this is my perception.

I'm not in any way qualified to even have an opinion on this.

So giant grain of salt.

Um, it, it's an interesting thing also, like there's just, and I think this is partly,

I don't know that this is necessarily a capitalism thing, but it's definitely like a organizational

thing and a societal thing.

Um, in, in Japan or in Korea or in China or most of the places that I've been, uh, you

can wander down a street and, you know, just if, if you want to go around the block, you

can, if you want to go like, um, down this street and then turn left and go down that

street and turn left and go down that street and turn left, do it a few times.

And then you can come back to where you are, um, here where I am.

Yeah.

I mean, you can do that on a large enough scale, but I, the first time I was here, the first

night that I was here, I go down the street that I'm, I'm looking at right now, which is

lovely by the way.

Um, and then I turn right down the next major street and I go way down there for like a

half hour.

And then I turn right.

And then I am using Apple maps for navigation and I'm looking at like, how can I get back?

I don't want to backtrack.

I just want to try exploring a little bit, you know, like to see new stuff.

And so it sent me through a neighborhood and it sent me to a dead end and it like around

here, it's all fucking dead ends.

It's, it's weird how many there are, it's weird how much it's just like, it's not conducive

to wandering.

And I think a lot of this is just kind of, you've let stuff get built up and you've done

it without any regulation or any real control of how things are going to be organized or

any kind of planning.

And then you end up with stuff that's just not really usable for humans.

Um, don't get me wrong.

I mean, it's like way more walkable than Phoenix and there's a lot of, you know, like I would

rather this than a lot of other places, but compared to places in China or in, you know,

again, South Korea, Vietnam, Japan, any of the places that I've been, it's annoying.

It's really annoying.

And, you know, like I don't like backtracking and I'm going up and down the same street

that's right by my current place over and over and over again, because there's not,

you know, that in order to take a loop, uh, I have to go way out of my way.

I have to go on a pretty big path.

Um, it's, it's, it's an interesting, interesting difference.

And then you go to like, um, South Korea and Japan and I'm going to lump the two together.

Although you can see really like South Korea seems to be doing much better.

And Japan, or at least in the more recent times and Japan like was doing really well in the

eighties and the nineties, and then just kind of like booted and did not progress very much.

Like economically, if you look at, um, their GDP or things like this, decent, like most metrics,

uh, they, they were going really well at a certain point and they just kind of stagnated

for decades. And you can feel it when you're there that things have not advanced much. Like

the first time I went there was in the early two thousands. And at the time, like you'd just

go to Akihabara or something like this. And there would be these fucking like futuristic phones that

were wild and they were cheap. And you know, it's like, holy shit, this is like the future.

And now you go there and it's still kind of like the same future, but it hasn't really

advanced much. It's, it's weird. Cause it's like, and you can see the stuff that was really

new then is kind of run down and you're like, and it's, it's yeah. And of course, like most places

you have the sort of population inversion. You have a lot of older people and not as many younger

people. People are not having kids cause things are too expensive and for a lot of other reasons.

And so, you know, you, you can feel things kind of degrading. Um, in Seoul, at least where I was,

things seemed like they were kind of booming. They were kind of, you know, like really pushing and

making a lot of nice new stuff. And it just kind of felt a little bit more clean and a little bit

more polished and a little bit less stagnant. Um, that was, that was something that I definitely

noticed. They have pretty nice metros in both places. Yeah. And again, obviously these are

two very different countries, but I'm, I'm lumping them together a little bit because they,

in the scale of the places that I've been, they have a lot of things in common. They have some degree

of a social safety net, some degree of universal healthcare, um, still very capitalistic and all

this kind of stuff. And you can, you can definitely, I don't know. It's interesting just

how being there is. And still, there are a lot of things where you're like,

I don't know of the places that I've been. I don't know where I would want to live. I do know

I wouldn't, I mean, I don't get me wrong. I can live anywhere. I wouldn't want to live in Vietnam,

especially not like, um, how long Bay I'll get to that in a minute, but that was, it was weird.

It was very weird. Um, Hanoi was not bad, but you know, there's again, like so much,

so much poverty and so many places where it's just like, uh, you know, not quite shanties.

They're like, you know, buildings, proper like multi-story buildings, but you know, just like full

of dirt and debris and kind of nasty. And then, you know, like not really any sidewalks and it's very,

very random. Um, wasn't really, wasn't really my first choice. And of course, not a lot of public

transit and of course, no high-speed trains and all that kind of stuff. And then you go to China

and you know, it's sort of nominally communist. Uh, they have the CCP and all of this kind of stuff.

And it's like, uh, Chinese communist party. Um, it's, I don't think you could actually call it

communists exactly, but they will call it that because that's what they call themselves.

And they, they have done some things like, you know, you look at, um, and the, the same with the

USSR, uh, the, the progress of taking people out of extreme poverty and especially in like the last

decade. Uh, but over, over time, it's very hard to argue that like, they're not doing something

right there. They're now they, they do have some things like, uh, you know, basing where you can

live on where you were born. And that kind of locks people into more agrarian sort of situations,

which kind of locks people out of being able to, to advance socioeconomically, um, to the extent

that that's a thing, but they have brought a lot of people out of object poverty. They bought,

brought a lot of people like kids, I say kids being like younger people now, um, don't want to

work in factories like their parents did. And I can't fucking blame you. Like, would you,

would you want to work in a factory versus like delivering stuff on a, uh, on a scooter where

you're outside and kind of doing something and you kind of feel like, you know, the rush of air

versus being like in a box with air conditioning and building shit and just robotically doing the

same stuff over and over again for somebody, you know, I mean, it would be nice to do something

better than either of those things. We can imagine better things still, but yeah, I can, I can get

that. And I guess people make pretty decent money doing that. Um, they have high speed rail. Like I,

and I took, I deliberately took a train from, um, mainly because I wanted to annoy myself,

but I, I took a high speed rail from, uh, Beijing to Chengdu and Chengdu. Chengdu. I'm probably,

I'm sorry, my pronunciation, I know it's terrible. Um, and it's just like fucking amazing. Like,

you know, not as nice as, uh, Shinkansen, I would say, although I think faster, but pretty fucking nice,

pretty decent. And the country is crisscrossed on these things now. And you can go from one city

to the next in a short period on these things. And it's better than air travel other than like

extreme long distances. Like I did, when I went from, um, Chengdu to Shenzhen, uh, I flew just because

I didn't want to take another six hour train ride, but I could have taken the train and, you know,

it's just for anything longer than I think like three hours, um, flying ends up beating it. But

for things that are like the distance of Phoenix to LA, the train is a no brainer, complete no brainer.

And it's so easy to go from city center to city center. You go wherever you are, you get on the

metro, um, you get on the train, you get to wherever you're going, take the metro. Um, it's

just, it's just so much better. It's just so much fucking better. I, I, and especially like, you know,

you look at, um, like Arizona where I lived and you need a car there. You like without a car where I

was, um, it took literally like two and a half to three hours, uh, trying to take public transit to get

from Gilbert to ASU. And with a car, it would be like 30 minutes. And you just think about like how

fucked up it is that you're in that situation. Or if you take public transit there, the frequency

is so low. Like, I don't think people appreciate in the United States, unless you live in New York

or you've been someplace like that. I don't think a lot of people appreciate what high frequency

public transit is like. And like this thing where you can just walk over, you know, you cross the

street, you go to a metro station and you wait three to five minutes and there's a train. And

then you get on the train, you go wherever you're going and it's cheap and it's easy. And it takes

you basically where you want to go and all that kind of stuff versus like in Arizona, you take the

boss and you're sitting outside at a fucking hot bus station and your bus stop rather. And you have to

wait. Like some of them, the high frequency ones are like 15 minutes, but most of them it's a half hour.

Some of them it's like an hour that you're waiting in the sun. And if you miss the bus, then, you know,

it's like completely fucks your day. And, you know, you just, it's, it's a very different experience.

It makes it much worse to use than nice high frequency rail. And like Arizona, they have the,

the light rail and Phoenix. It's enough to make me feel like in 50 years, they might have a decent

public transit system, maybe assuming that the city is still habitable, but you know, it's just,

it's depressing. It's fucking depressing. Um, one thing that I did notice on the train, especially

is like, we're passing all of these cities and the cities, and this is in China, the cities have,

you know, giant areas where it's like 50 copies of the same building. I might, I might be exaggerating

about the number of copies, but it's like a bunch of copies of the same building. And this,

it kind of reminds me of like Soviet era brutalist architecture, although nicer architecture,

but still, uh, like clone homes, but for multifamily big high rises now. And again,

clone homes, totally us kind of thing. So I'm, I'm definitely not, I'm not saying that like one is

worse than the other. Um, and I used to think negative things about this, especially because

again, raised in the U S propagandized in the U S and, you know, and I'm not saying again,

that the Soviet union was amazing, but you know, you look at the poverty things, you look at the

number of people that got housing, you look at how many people owned homes and how many people

currently own homes in China. You look at the literacy rates in these countries and just like

by any objective metric, these places are a lot better. And having these cloned buildings makes

sense when you're trying to house a lot of people in a dense area and you know, you don't have the

time to re-architect everything. You don't have the tools to do it well. And you know, you just want

to mass produce stuff. You end up with a bunch of trains that all look the same, but they all work.

They're all interoperable. And this is a thing where like the sort of centralized planning stuff

works really well. Uh, one thing about China that would be painful for me and the reason that I

wouldn't, I mean, I, I, again, I could live a lot of places. I could easily live in a lot of places

there. Um, but, and this is coming, I'm sure from a lot of like scarcity and, you know, like issues that

they've had in the past and probably will resolve itself in time. But when you, if you're in Japan

and you're getting on the Metro, um, people will kind of stand off to the side, they let people

exit and then they get on as a very general rule. I'm making generalizations. Nobody's a monolith,

all this kind of stuff, but very generally, um, you're getting on the elevator. You kind of stand

to the side, you let people get off and then you get on right in China and the places that I was,

you have people like standing right in front of the elevator door and then the door opens.

And while people are still getting off, people are rushing in and they're like, if you would just

get off to the fucking side and you let people off before you get in, um, it'd be easier. It'd be

faster. It'd be smoother. And it makes it worse for everybody. But you know, again, like I'm, I'm sure

it's easy to understand how this came about, but it's still fucking annoying. I don't like it. I found

it. I like queuing. I like order. And again, actually the, the way that Japanese people do this

also comes from trauma and some weirdness. So it's not like it's, you know, not like it's great,

but, um, it's just, I don't know. Um, and then you have the great firewall, which was very annoying.

And I have to say though, like I look at that and I can't fully claim that it's bad because you look

at like how much, um, people in like all across the world have had this like march of right-wing

fascist sort of stuff. And yeah, I, again, like not having people criticize the party and having

sort of people be monolithic and all this kind of stuff, not great. But when you look at like the U.S.

or UK or Canada or Spain or any, any of these other countries where people are really badly

propagandized and badly getting pushed very, very extreme, right. Um, the fact that China has this

has let them kind of escape that at least to some extent. And yeah, I can't really, I can't completely

fault them for it. I can't even say that it's terrible. And also like when you're there, um,

you do have alternatives that basically give you the same apps, but they're, they're different.

And also like, you know, you go to any restaurant and, or, or any store or whatever,

you can pay with WeChat, WeShinPay and, or Alipay. Again, it's not, it's annoying that you have like

three or four competing things, but you can, most places do all of them. It's just like,

there'll be three QR codes and you have to pick the right one, which is a little annoying, but

again, you go there and you can order. Like you go to a restaurant, you can get the menu on,

on WeChat and then you order and then the food comes out to you. And then when you're done,

you pay and you just walk away. And it's just, it's like doing capitalism so much better than the

U S you go up to a stand or something on the street and everybody's got a WeChat pay and, and

Alipay and a bunch of other stuff like that. It's just so much better. And when you look at that

versus like the U S kind of, you have Apple pay and Google pay and sort of works ish, but it doesn't

really, it doesn't give you the menu thing at all. Like you're not going to a restaurant and there's

like a standard way to order your food. And it's just, it's just so much like, I don't even know

how to explain it, but it makes it so much easier, so much less painful. And then like Vietnam,

I think was a, it's kind of own different thing. And one thing I have to say about Vietnam is,

you know, it, this is a country that defeated my country, which yeah, maybe it's just because I

was again, propagandized my whole life, but I enjoy this sort of underdog beating the empire a little

bit. I, I watched star Wars, you know, I, I like the rebels winning to some extent. I'm not,

and again, I'm not saying like any country is perfect or terrible, but the fact that they beat

the U S says something, it's kind of, you know, kind of made me feel good about them. It kind of

gives you some hope about like where, you know, like we could actually get things into a better

situation. That'd be, that'd be kind of nice. I think it'd be kind of nice. Um, and you look at

that and you're like, man, this is, this is a country that did not have a ton of resources.

Didn't have, you know, and they're up against people with like fighter jets and napalm and agent

orange and all this kind of stuff. And they still want, they still fucking want that stuff is cool.

That stuff is, you know, but at the same time, you know, especially in it, I want to really

emphasize that I went to Halong Bay, um, in the off season. So, you know, I'm there at a time that's

not like super popular, but everything felt a little weird. And I'm talking mainly about there

and not the Nang or Hanoi. Uh, everything felt a little weird. Everything felt a little, like,

didn't make sense. Uh, they're building all kinds of new buildings. They're doing all kinds of

construction and remodeling. And, um, at the same time, like all the buildings that are there,

everything seems kind of empty and I'm walking by stuff and everything is kind of like gutted out

and filled with stuff that looks, it looks like years ago has been emptied and stuff is just sitting

there and they just piled up a bunch of crap inside of the buildings and the offices and all the store

fronts and all this kind of stuff. And, you know, like you go to a restaurant and it'll be a huge

restaurant with a lot of staff and, and granted, it's nice to staff and they're getting paid in the

off season, but yeah, totally empty. And there are a lot of people there and you go. And if you're

getting food, like it's, it's a surprise and they're not really extremely helpful. They're kind

of like, which I guess I get if you're getting paid to just sit around and hang out, you know,

seems like a bad sign also that the people at the restaurants were mostly eating like, um, cup

of noodle ramen sort of things and not the food from the restaurant. It didn't seem like a great

signal. And, uh, what else I, you know, environmental regulations seem like they're,

shall we say a little lacking there. Water supply is not great. Uh, the air is obviously from the,

the scooters and things kind of polluted, but also like, if you looked at the AQI, the air quality

index, um, objectively, it shouldn't have been that bad, but I, especially again in Ha Long Bay,

um, felt like I was being poisoned. And I think like, as I was driving there, I saw a bunch of

factories and a bunch of like piles of trash and things and you're on some, some sketchy stuff.

And I'm sure that there were bad emission controls and probably releasing, you know,

God knows what chemicals into the air. And I felt very sick. I felt like I was being poisoned the

whole time. Uh, much more so than like here, if you go out on the street, um, from the scooters and

stuff, it's bad and it burns. And, you know, even wearing a mask, I'm kind of like feeling weird,

but I don't feel the same, like everything is kind of toxic feeling, which I felt there.

Maybe it was in my mind, but I didn't go there expecting that at all. And it was kind of surprising

to me, but that was like, especially because that was where I went last. Um, I was just itching to get

out of that country. Annoyingly, there's, um, I can hear someone nearby and it's just like very

distracting to me. Um, I'm going to wrap pretty soon, but then trying to think, I think that was

pretty much all I wanted to say about that. Um, and again, like you can do, I'm sure people have

done comparative analyses of different countries and economic systems and things in a, in a much

better way. I just, you know, those are some sort of highlights that of my experiences and my

perceptions, uh, that might be completely wrong, but you know, I thought I've found have been kind

of interesting differences and similarities. Like all the places that I've been, um, just in terms of,

you know, if you want to walk to a restaurant and you want to eat and just live someplace,

um, seems a lot easier than the U S it's, it's kind of annoying actually to, to see just even the,

the worst of these places. Like, you know, you can for a lot less money and get a pretty decent meal

and get a lot of variety and you could just, yeah, it's just, it's just so fucking, it's so

annoying how bad the U S is in terms of like, everything is so expensive and so difficult. And

it's just very, uh, it's very, it's not a very human place to live. It's very like, I think one of

the reasons that all this fake audible air quotes, AI shit is so popular, especially these, uh, like

chat kind of conversational interfaces is that a lot of the world and especially like the U S

is so depersonalized and so, um, like isolating and so like devoid of any kind of communal

feelings. Like people are not interacting with each other. I was talking again with a friend

here and like, he has a kid and he was saying, you know, like a hundred years ago,

uh, you could just go out on a date and your kids would be fine. Cause they'd all be hanging

out together and you'd have adults there watching them and all be part of the community. And you

wouldn't really have to pay for a babysitter organize that kind of stuff. It would just be

like natural and net, which is not to say that things were easy then, or, you know, like things

were perfect by any means, but they're having that communal or communal sort of network really

has a lot of benefits versus now in, in the U S and a lot of places that are emulating

us. Um, everybody's isolated. Everybody is kind of on their own doing their own thing,

which means that you have to solve like every single person has to solve the same problems

over and over again, rather than solving them as a community. And that gives you a lot of problems

that don't need to exist. And it makes things a lot harder. And it means that the burden on

individuals is much, much greater than it needs to be. Because again, like if we pool resources and

all do the same stuff, uh, like how, how often do you need your drill, right? You might have a drill

and you might use that drill a couple of times, but if you're not a contractor, you probably don't need

it every day. Um, and a bunch of other people have bought their own drills and all of those people

probably could share the, share one drill and it would be fine. But instead we have a hundred

different households that all have their own drills. They all have their own, you know, like

babysitters. They all have their own, you know, like, it's just like, you look at all this stuff

over and over again. It's one of the things like the idea of like in capitalism, you can, um,

if, if you really succeed and you really do well, you can get a private jet, you can get a private

driver, you can get a really nice car and all this kind of stuff. And the way that that works,

it's so resource intensive, so damaging, so harmful to everyone else. But it's also like

your experience there is shittier than it would be just living in a nice walkable city where we've all

invested communally and accessible city where, you know, you can get around, um, where we built,

uh, pub, you know, like public transportation networks where you've got like high speed rail that

takes you, you know, basically from door to door with a little bit of help. And you take that

comparison versus like, okay, you're super rich. You can have your driver at your place, take you to

your plane, and then you go to an airport and then you fly someplace. And you're using the resources of

like a thousand people for a year to do your stuff, um, versus almost no resources using like an

electric train that's powered by sunlight or, you know, hot rocks or whatever. And it's just like,

it's so fucking ridiculous. Um, and then once you get someplace, no matter how nice your car was,

where you started, you got to get a car there. And then that car, you have to have a driver or,

or you're driving yourself and you have to deal with getting places and just the difference of

that. I wish more people would get this experience. Just like be in Tokyo and take the Metro to Tokyo

station, take Shinkansen to Kyoto or Nagano or whatever. And then, uh, well, Nagano is a bad

example, but you know, like say Kyoto, take it to Kyoto. And then you got a Metro there. And then that

takes you to a five minute walk from your hotel. And that just, that, that is so much nicer.

You don't have to have a fucking car. You could have a car if you want to, but it's kind of a

detriment. And, you know, especially if you're someplace where things are built to be accessible.

So if you have, you need mobility assistance, you can do that. If you're older and your feet

shuffle a little bit, you don't have to worry about like, um, it's a fun thing here. I keep walking

into bumps in the sidewalk and the difference between that and like a place where people

actually care, um, and do a good job. I'm not saying people don't care, but you know, like

enough that there's a societal something to, to keep that from happening. Um, it's, it's

just nice. Even as somebody who can see and, you know, and you're paying attention and all

this kind of stuff, not to have that kind of stuff. It's much nicer to be someplace where

things are just easy and work. It's just nicer. It's so much nicer. Um, and I was talking

to a friend, um, actually on Tik TOK like a week ago, and he said something that kind

of, it was both hopeful and kind of a little bit depressing, but he was talking about how,

uh, you know, we were in feudalism for so long and then for a while gotten to this sort

of mercantilism and that, you know, took things and it gave a little bit more to a few more

people and, you know, made things a little bit, you know, a little bit less imbalanced.

And then we got capitalism, which still sucks, but gave things, gave more stuff to more people

and gave more people some kind of a path outwards. Um, although obviously is not sustainable and is

like, if you really succeed in capitalism, then you end up with monopolies and you end up with

all these competing standards and, you know, like it's, it's not a great plan. It's not a great long

term solution, but a lot of that stuff takes decades to sort of sort itself out. And, you know,

you think about that and we've been in this system for order of hundreds of years, uh, which is like

halfway through the mercantile period, I think is what he was saying, which I think was rough. Right.

And you think about that and you're like, I don't know what the next system would be. Although I

think it would have, you know, if you're, if you're looking at this kind of progression and you're

somewhat optimistic, um, I'm cautiously optimistic person. And of course you have to consider the,

like we have the ecological catastrophe going on that we've caused, um, you know, not, not,

not just the climate catastrophe, but also like humanity. Um, if you look at like the biomass

on, on the surface or in the sea, uh, the vast, vast majority of it at this point is

either directly by humans or influenced by humans or, you know, and it's not just like livestock and

crops, which is like 95% of, of surface biomass now, which is fucking scary. Uh, but it's also

like, you know, you look at the indigenous organisms that we've killed. And then you look

at the other organisms, uh, like rats and pigeons that sort of live with us and are part of our

society in some sense. And we've just completely upended, um, our entire ecosystem and the entire

fucking world that we evolved and our civilization grew, um, to exist with. And it seems kind of like

a not great sustainable thing. And it's easy to imagine that going really badly, but you can

imagine if that goes, like, if it doesn't completely kill us, if we haven't already failed the great

filter, if it, you know, like, uh, and of course what's depressing is you could imagine, it's not

that hard to imagine like a massive contraction where I say a massive contraction, like it's, you know,

completely sterile and not a big thing, but you know, like billions of people could die from

starvation and from terrible things. Um, a lot, like you could just go down the list and, and wars

and so on. And if we somehow make it through that kind of stuff, and especially if it's not as horrible

as it could be, you do kind of think like, maybe we get to a better system. Maybe we sort of figure

this shit out and start realizing like, Oh, um, we can build better stuff for, and it'll be a better

experience for all of us. And we could just do that. And this, this sort of dovetails into the last

thing I want to talk about, which is strange new worlds. I'm a big fan of Trek and largely because

I like the sort of, um, sort of gay space, um, fully automated space communism thing. Um, I like

the idea of being in a world where you don't have to, um, you don't have to just like do everything

for, for money. You don't have to do, you don't have to pay rent to exist. Essentially. You don't have

to, um, monetize anything you do. You can actually, if you want, you can have hobbies. If you want,

you can study stuff just because it's interesting. You, you can do research just because it's

interesting and that can be your life. And you can just babble in a bunch of stuff. You could

have a restaurant in New Orleans and not charge people and just like serve good food and make

that your thing. And imagine like the world that you would live in if that existed, like you could

just go to Cisco's and it was a free restaurant. And it's like a guy that really likes cooking and

really wants to do this and doesn't have to worry about like making it make sense economically.

This, this was a thing I was, um, where the fuck was I? Oh, I'm not, I'm not going to be able to

finish this thought, but I was in some situation recently and it, I was just having this experience

like this does not make sense economically. And I really, really loved that it, oh, I was at a

restaurant. Okay. Yeah. That was it. I was in LA and my mom and I went to a restaurant.

I can't remember what it was called. Um, it will come to me. The new deal. I think it was called

the food to be fair. The food was okay. It wasn't outstanding, but everybody there is like an actor

in period guard. Now maybe we just happened to hit a date where they're doing this and all this kind

of stuff, but everybody there is an actor in period guard, um, trying to do performances,

trying to be in character. They were, it was a new thing. They were just trying to figure it out and

see how it worked. But I'm sitting there and like, this does not make any sense under the current

economic system, but it's fucking awesome. It's like, you know, you could imagine a world where

people just do shit like that. And like, they, they have a restaurant and that restaurant could be,

it could have a theme or it could be like, this is a person who loves cooking and they just want to

make awesome food. And they also want to make an entertaining experience. And they have friends

who are actors and those friends who are actors are in a situation where they can, like, they don't

have to worry about paying the bills and they don't have to worry about like being completely drained.

They can go out and just fart around and cosplay and just for fun, sit there and, you know, put on a show

for you and put on a show for themselves. And they could be like, they don't have to be working

there. Even they could be like partly just hanging out with their friends, uh, enjoying the place that

they've got and partly putting on a show for the people that want to be there and experience it and

interact with it. Um, it's kind of like that kind of thing could and should exist. And in, in a lot of

human societies, like if you look, you don't have to go that far back in the past and people on one

hand, life was harder in some ways. Um, but at the same time, you know, like you didn't have a dentist

that you could go to. Um, you didn't have like processed food that you could buy. But when you look

at indigenous populations in a lot of places, pre Western contact, a lot, a lot of places, they had

food forests. They had stuff where things were set up. Um, and it was very much like not the natural

state. It was stuff that people built over many, many generations, but they had situations set up

where you could work basically like 10 or 15 hours a week. And work was a very light work that was done

with friends and family. And from that, you would basically just be able to survive and have plenty

of food, just have a smorgasbord around you. You're hungry. Uh, there's just shit growing on

trees. There's stuff that you could get anywhere you want to go. And with a very small amount of

effort, you could get something good and make it, or you can have somebody else make stuff for you and

get it. And, you know, it's kind of like a gift economy. And again, you know, like most of your time

is just free and hanging out and just existing. It doesn't have to be this constant, like a gun to your

head. If you don't work, um, you're not going to survive. Yeah. And, and you think about like all

of the stuff that's lost by all the people that could be thinking about stuff and making stuff

that's making the world better. And instead they're out stuck, um, you know, working in a

factory or, um, sitting on a scooter running shit around for other people or doing whatever the fuck.

Um, it's just, it, it would be a better world. It could be a better world. It should be a better

world. And I do think that, you know, I'm again, cautiously optimistic. Oh, I worry that the path

to getting there is a little bit precarious. And I also worry that, you know, like, uh, some things

like, even if we do get there, we've already committed ourselves to some very seriously fucked

up shit. Um, unfortunately. So I don't know how that's going to go, but anyway, getting to the

strange new worlds, I like Trek cause it puts you in that kind of thing. Um, obviously also,

you know, like I do know people who look at that and they're like, well, the Federation

is actually an empire and blah, blah, blah. And the argument is not lost on me. I like,

I don't think they're completely wrong. Um, and then especially the fact that it's like

emulating the United States and it's easy to, to see some things where you're like, eh, this

is not as cool as it seems, but it is kind of cool. And you can imagine or imagine like

certain things about it. Like, I like the idea of somebody trying to come up with, um,

an idea that they think of like what things could be. And it's not a fucking horrible dystopia.

And it's an annoying, lazy thing with a lot of writers that, uh, you know, like it's easy

to make a future where everything is horrible and dystopian and you can make drama there.

You can make weird stories there, but it's not that hard to imagine. I guess you have humans,

humans are humans. You're still going to have social interactions. You're still going to have

tension. You're still going to have people aspiring to do stuff that they can't quite do.

Um, no matter what the system is, even if they don't have to struggle to survive, even if they're

not living in Brazil, um, the movie, not the, uh, the country. And you can imagine like, I, I wish more

writers were better about this and more, a little bit more create clever and creative about like,

Oh, these are things that could exist in. And again, it's not a utopian world necessarily,

but in a better world, this is how things could be. And it's not just like things have turned to

shit and it's hellish. You know, it's not just like, Oh, the sky is Brown and most people are dead.

And, um, you know, they're, you're, you're struggling to survive and it's just horrible.

It could be like, Oh, this is actually a place where people, people don't have to, uh, toil to

exist. They can actually just like exist and they can actually like go to university and study if

they want. They can do art. They can spend a decade working on a project if they wanted to,

or they could dabble in different stuff or they can travel. They could just do all kinds of stuff.

And you can build a world where like people traveling isn't an ecological catastrophe. And

it is just, it would be nicer. It's a thing that I wish people would come up with because I think,

you know, that part of the, part of the duty and responsibility of creators and people, I hate that

word creators because of TikTok, but of people who are like writing stuff and coming up with media and

content. And I hate, again, the fucking word content coming up with like, you know, shows and

stories and novels and all of that. Part of that is giving people ideas that they can build into

stuff eventually. It's like, Oh, this is actually a good idea. And then we make it, or we make

something like it. And then you have flip phones. Um, you know, and I wish more people would come up

with better stuff and be creative about it and come up with like settings that are not just hellish

because I think people can't imagine some of this stuff or what it could be as easily. They just see

like the concrete, terrible stuff. And then it makes the world worse. I think materially worse,

especially when you do that over decades. Um, so strange new worlds, it came out of discovery,

which is not a show that I really liked. Like I, the first episode I really thought was going to be

amazing because it's like, it's kind of nice. And then you had the, uh, the captain and the first

officer. And you know, you're looking at that and it's like, if that was, if the, if the show started

there and it was like the first season was just, uh, the matriculation of Michael Burnham to becoming

captain, uh, and, you know, like starts out under George O and then you watch, uh, the promotion and

all this kind of stuff. And it just kind of like worked. That could have been so much better. And it

just existed in that time period and didn't get really weird and dark and didn't have to do all

that I could go on about how much that show annoyed me and disappointed me. And then they,

they fucked up the timeline so much. And then they jumped, like they destroy the Federation

and rebuild the Federation because destroying the Federation kind of sucks. And then they, um,

it's just like you go through and it's like, come on people. Just, it doesn't have to be like this.

You could make another show in another universe or you could just exist in that time. And it irritated

me. And then they had Picard at the same time, which was again, um, you know, I, I don't like

the, obviously like civilizations ebb and flow and nothing is perfect. And you know, like the

experience that you get, um, on a starship in the Federation might be different than the

experience that you get on earth, but it's also like, you just, your, your imagination is really

limited and it's really fucking frustrating. And you, you don't have to make this horrible

fucking shitty situation. It's, it's, it's kind of irritating to me. I find it annoying

and offensive. Um, you don't need to make a dystopia again. And yeah, I also, it's not

just dark, like metaphorically, they made it so fucking dark. All the sets were so dark

and weird. And you're just like, why are you guys doing this shit? Um, and then strange new

worlds came off of that. And I was honestly like not super hyped about it because I was feeling

pretty bad about those two shows, but the first season of that was pretty good. I thought

that it was interesting. And I really liked a lot of the characters. I really liked a lot

of the actors. Uh, the sets are kind of beautiful. I think they're a little weird because it's

like the, you know, the people are in a shuttlecraft and the bridge of the shuttlecraft is bigger

than the bridge of the defiant was in deep space nine, which is supposed to be hundreds

of years into the future. Um, you know, it's, it's just, and again, like they don't

need to preserve continuity exactly. You know, it's a problem with sequels, especially

when they're separated by decades and our technology has moved on. Like you, you can

reimagine, I, some of the stuff I don't mind, like you're re-imagining like, okay, we're

not going to make, we know what a computer looks like now. Um, doesn't have to look like

the idea of a computer in the sixties. Right. But some of it is also just like, you don't

need to imagine like the, because the ships in, in, in this, they look very much like

the same ships from the end of discovery that are set like a fucking millennium in the

future, you know, versus a couple hundred years in the future. Like you could put some

kind of continuity into it. It doesn't need to be like jumping so far ahead. I think I

get why people want to, you know, like put things as far forward as they can, but be a

little bit more reserved. I wish that they were. And yeah, again, I had the first season

I liked there, although there were a couple of things that irritated me. I've talked about

these before, although not in this continuity here, but like the, um, the calling quarantines

lockdowns really fucking annoyed me. Um, they, and they did this in enterprise too, but using

torture and then showing torture as an effective approach of getting information, um, really

fucked up and, and, and a number of things like that. Um, but the first season overall

with a few exceptions I liked, and then the second season was a little rough. Um, and I,

I kind of accepted that it was like the writer's strike and some other stuff and you're like,

okay, this is annoying, but okay. Um, and then the third season is just like, you know, you

guys have, they're, they're past the halfway point now of the show. They know the thing

is ending. And I understand the rush to like, the last episode that I watched was like, um,

Kirk and Uhura and Scotty and a bunch of, not quite the whole original series cast, but you

know, like a bunch of people from that show and from the enterprise there. And they're all

kind of getting together and don't, don't get me wrong. It felt, you know, like it gave

me the tingles. I enjoyed it. But at the same time, it's like, this is not the show that

I need or want you to make. And I wish that you just like take the characters that you have

and the time that they have and the situation that they're in and just have them have experiences

and put them again, again, I do understand it's very difficult because it's hard to sort

of know what you're getting to. And, you know, you have plot armor for some people,

which immediately removes any kind of, um, yeah, you can't make it seem like Spock might

die, for example, because you know that he's going to be okay. Although it is an interesting

point that you can have, like Apollo 13 is an interesting movie to watch. Um, even though

you know what the outcome is there, there are a lot of situations like that, where even though

you know what the outcome is, it's still interesting. Uh, but it is, it is challenging

because you have to still make things dramatic. You have to still find ways to make things

interesting. Um, it's more work, but it's not impossible, but it's just like, I don't know,

there's some things with this that I'm finding. Yeah. I I've gotten, I listened to, um, what

is it called? Um, Ian and Danae on captain's pod. That is it. And it's, there are people

from, uh, cinema sun's universe basically. And they're, they're talking about the show

and I'm listening to them. I'm listening to Aaron Dicer come on there and he's, he's talking

about it. And I was listening to those a couple episodes before the ones that I was watching

because I don't really care about spoilers. Um, but I'm listening to that and I'm like, yeah,

I really do. But at the time I hadn't watched the episodes that they were talking about. And

then I watched the episodes or got halfway through and I was like, yeah, I really, really

kind of agree with this Aaron guy. That's like, I do, I do like some of the stuff that you're

doing. I like some of the, you know, I'm enjoying it. Like it's, it's tickling the right neurons

in my brain for sure. But at the same time, it's just like, I, I don't know. I wish that I'm,

I'm really, I've gone from the point where I'm like excited about the show too. I'm going

to go through it. I'm going to watch all of the episodes. Um, but I'm, I'm kind of just

on, I don't need it to be on. And I wish that you guys, I'm, I do kind of feel like it needs

a break. Although I also don't want to not support it because it's nice that Trek exists.

Although it'd be nice also if people were making more, you know, again, more sci-fi that's not

dystopian would be really nice to see. Um, but I don't know. I, I don't have a specific coherent

point there as just something that I've been thinking about because it's been, you know,

again, I'm watching it. I'm also watching foundation and like the first season, I feel

like that one, I mean, obviously they're deviating. I've not read the books, so to be fair,

but obviously they're deviating a lot from them just to kind of make something that works in a

series, which is fine. Um, you know, it doesn't have to be the thing that's the source material,

but one thing about it, that's kind of getting to me is just like the first season felt like they,

and this seems to happen a lot. The first season felt like they had a really good plan. They had

a kind of arc and it worked well and things were interesting. And now it's just like, you can feel

they're working backwards and reverse engineering. Like they want to get to a certain point.

This is the same problem, I guess, with, um, strange new worlds. They know where they're

going and they're going to reverse engineer stuff to get there versus like we are in a

certain situation and people act as they would act in, you know, given the characters that we've

established for them, um, and advance from that situation to the next situation to the next

situation and then organically get to where they're going. Um, it's, it's much harder to write

that obviously, but you can really tell the difference and it's like, well, why is this

person doing this thing? Or why is this person here? Why is this, um, you know, why are they

in this giant cavernous space, but everybody's standing in one tiny little place in it? And

it's obvious that it's like, oh, they did this on a green screen and they put the stuff in

post and didn't really know what it was going to look like and didn't think, you know, like,

oh, we could actually, we don't have to be, we don't have to go this ridiculous about this.

Um, but you know, just kind of like, I don't know. It's, it's just irritating. Just irritating

to me. It's like some of the stuff, like the, uh, the Q episode, fucking awesome. I enjoyed

that, but for the most part, and there are parts in all of them that I'm liking, but it's

just like, eh, eh. So anyway, uh, keep rambling. I probably should, uh, it's already past noon

and I have to get started for the day for, for real. I have a lot of stuff that I want

to do in terms of, uh, like actually just going around town and work back, like actual

work stuff. Um, not that I'm getting paid for it, but you know, stuff I want to build

and kind of working on. Um, and I haven't been doing that yet today. Um, but I, I will

be doing that soon. I think today I'm going to take more of a, like a touristy

day and cause I've been doing other stuff, but, uh, anyway, with that, as, as

always, thanks for listening. I really hope the audio is better on this one. Um, if

it's not, I'm not going to rerecord this one again, cause this is already, you know,

that one I already recorded for like an hour and a half and then did the like

listen through and some other stuff. And I've spent like several hours on that.

And then I threw that out and now I'm doing this one and it's already an hour

and a half. And by the time I get everything done, it'll be, you know, so it's

like a day or two worth of work going into this episode, at least spread over

two or three days. So this is going out and I just hope it doesn't suck. Um, I, I

have a bunch of other stuff I want to talk about, but I think that will do for

today. And so as ever, Zaijin. Oh, and thanks. Thank you. Of course.

But Zaijin.

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By Scott Menor, PhD