Recognition and Blogging Resurgence

ISIS Pickup Lines

[00:00:00] Introduction and Greetings

[00:00:00] Christina: You’re listening to Overtired. That’s right. We’re back with another episode. I’m Christina Warren joined as always by Brett Terpstra and Jeff Severins Gunzel. How’s it going guys?

[00:00:15] Brett: Really good.

[00:00:16] Jeff: Good.

[00:00:16] Brett: It’s like Sunday. Hey Jeff, thanks that last episode with Merlin, that was great.

[00:00:21] Christina: That was

[00:00:21] Jeff: You’re very, very welcome. It was very fun. We, we, I made a Spotify playlist because so many songs were either mentioned or sung and it was a total of 36 songs.

[00:00:31] Brett: Oh, put, give, put that in the show notes.

[00:00:34] Jeff: I will. I will. Um, yeah. All right. I’m excited to be with you.

[00:00:41] Brett: Yeah, we’re all excited.

[00:00:43] Jeff: Let’s do this.

[00:00:44] Weather and Asheville Crisis Discussion

[00:00:44] Jeff: a beautiful, I know, who wants to talk about the weather when you’re not even gonna listen to this the day we recorded it, but it is a beautiful, beautiful day out, and I have not experienced a beautiful, beautiful day, by my standards, in some time.

[00:00:57] Brett: It’s like 65 degrees here, [00:01:00] what do you got?

[00:01:00] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, same, same up here, up north, up north on the Mississippi.

[00:01:04] Brett: Meanwhile, holy shit, have you guys seen videos out of like Asheville?

[00:01:08] Christina: I about to say, I was like, of whether it’s awful and like there’s, it sucks. Um, I, I know some people there are kind of in that area and, um, you know, I know that they’re doing their best to get. Uh, aid to the region and all that, but Jesus Christ, like it is just really, really bad.

[00:01:30] Brett: I sent multiple hundreds of dollars to a mutual aid fund, uh, that was going directly to people on the ground.

[00:01:38] Christina: Yeah, I, I did too. Um, I used, um, what was it? Samaritan’s Purse because I’ve, I’ve heard from people on the ground that they are actually going out there and getting stuff directly to people. Um, so it’s, it’s hard to vet those organizations, but, but it was important for me to find one that’s like, if you can anyway, that’s, you know, 5013C because then you could do employer matching. [00:02:00] So, so

[00:02:00] Brett: Oh yeah, I should, I should do that. I should, cause I bet you Oracle has a,

[00:02:05] Christina: I’m sure they

[00:02:06] Brett: something, cause they have like a whole search engine for like things you can donate to that they’ll match.

[00:02:10] Christina: Exactly. It’s probably Benevity. That’s what most of the corporations use, but

[00:02:14] Brett: I will, I will double up. I will gladly donate it again.

[00:02:18] Christina: Yeah, that’s what I did. I, I, well, yeah, all, all you usually have to do is like find your receipt and they’ll match. Um, I actually donated weirdly. I usually go directly through the site, but in this case, like I went through the portal because I gave them 500 bucks and I was like, you know what?

[00:02:33] Take it out of my paycheck because it’ll also count for me. Cause like, this is our giving month, like October. And I

[00:02:37] Brett: Oh yeah.

[00:02:38] Christina: I was like, perfect timing, but this way it’ll, you know, whatever. And then, um, you know, so basically I was able to give them a thousand dollars, which is great. My favorite is when, and, and this is just a pro tip for anybody out there who’s ever wanting to donate to stuff.

[00:02:52] If you’re a corporation, which if you work at a large place, um, There’s a, if it, at least in the United States, there’s a good [00:03:00] chance that for tax reasons, if nothing else, that they will do, you know, um, employee matches. So check into that, but obviously the size of the company that you work at, you know, not guaranteed.

[00:03:10] But if you work at a place with an employee match during some giving months, which are usually like October, November, um, sometimes even December, um, some organizations will also have their own matches that will be put up by. other, you know, like benefactor, other people or whatnot. And you can like basically, essentially get a triple match out of that.

[00:03:32] So like the Internet Archive and the EFF, both of them have in the past had, um, match periods where they’re like, Hey, if you donate, you know, 500 to us, we’ll We’ll get a thousand. The way that that works is that you can’t do the quadruple match where, you know, the thousand would become two, but you can have like your 500 become 500 from your employer.

[00:03:55] And then also get the 500 from, you know, whoever is doing the matches. So it can go [00:04:00] 1500. So those are just pro tip out there. Be on the lookout for things like that. Cause That way you can really benefit, like, multiply the amount of money going to, um, organizations you care about.

[00:04:12] Brett: This year when I was in Asheville, I, we, we started before we left, we started immediately making plans for our next trip

[00:04:21] Christina: Oh, that’s right. Cause you guys were just there.

[00:04:23] Brett: Yeah. Just in March or don’t know. May, I think. Um, yeah, I’m like, we’re not gonna build a C Asheville again like that for a decade. Um, it’s gonna take the arts district just completely washed away.

[00:04:40] And, I mean, death count, Is horrible and seeing that much, uh, beautiful, artistic, um, like communal property just washed away is. It’s kind of devastating.

[00:04:57] Christina: It’s completely devastating. And it, and it’s, [00:05:00] I don’t know, like a lot of people like to discount climate change and you know what I mean? I’m sorry. I’m like, you see things like this that happen. You’re like, yeah. Like, okay, some of this might be inevitable regardless of what we were doing to our planet, but not.

[00:05:15] Yeah. Not this much, right? Like it had gone from, you know, like they’d, you know, knew a storm was coming and then it changed like so fast into, into hitting them. And then just because of where it’s located and, and how high up it is, just devastating. Just absolutely awful.

[00:05:31] Brett: I have a friend who’s worried about their son, um, because after the news hit about this, he started going on about weaponized weather.

[00:05:43] Jeff: Oh boy.

[00:05:44] Christina: Oh,

[00:05:44] Brett: was like, yeah, I’d be worried

[00:05:45] Jeff: Marjorie Taylor Greene just tweeted, they can’t control the weather. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:50] Christina: Jesus. Fuck off,

[00:05:51] Brett: you serious? Like for real?

[00:05:53] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:05:54] Brett: I thought that was a joke. Oh my

[00:05:56] Christina: know if it was or not. And

[00:05:58] Jeff: I thought it was serious. [00:06:00] I’ll go look it up. So, it’s true.

[00:06:03] Christina: she was not joking, be very

[00:06:04] Jeff: Either way, it’s true. Either way, said it.

[00:06:07] Christina: yeah, to be clear, I’m sure that she was not joking, I’m saying, like, I wasn’t sure if you were joking, not, I was like, I was like, I bet he’s serious, because that does seem like the sort of insane shit she would say,

[00:06:18] Jeff: Yes.

[00:06:19] Brett: Is she relevant anymore?

[00:06:22] Christina: I mean, she’s still a congresswoman, but, after

[00:06:25] Brett: hear about her at the rate I used to. I it’s election season, all the news is diverted.

[00:06:31] Christina: exactly. Like she’s definitely going to win her seat. Lauren Boebert might lose hers. Um, and, uh, you know, she’s the other crazy who got in the, the cunt fight. Um, like, like, like, like, like my turn of phrase there.

[00:06:45] Jeff: Sounds

[00:06:45] Brett: don’t get it.

[00:06:46] Christina: Uh, because, because, um, one of them called the other one a cunt. Um, on, on, on, on the, um, on the floor of Congress.

[00:06:56] Brett: This what we’ve become.

[00:06:58] Christina: It really is. So yeah.[00:07:00]

[00:07:01] Brett: Uh, I bet C SPAN had a blast with that. All right.

[00:07:06] Mental Health Check-In

[00:07:06] Brett: So, mental health check in. Um, how you guys doing? Jeff, you want to tell us how you’re doing?

[00:07:12] Jeff: Um, sure. I, uh, I’m doing good. I had I spent all morning in my Workshop, which I don’t always get to do. And, um, and, uh, and I’ve been perpetually cleaning it out for years. Um, sometimes I feel like all I do is go in and move things around and don’t actually get to do projects, but, um, it’s clean enough now that I can kind of go in and I was, I started a daunting project, which is, um, sort of refurbishing a one ton, hundred year old lathe for machining metal that can’t even be moved an inch without an engine lift.

[00:07:50] Christina: Jesus.

[00:07:51] Jeff: and, uh, it’s a terrifying tool in the first place. And so taking it apart, in little pieces and cleaning up those pieces and putting them [00:08:00] back is a little nerve wracking to like, what will this whole thing be when it’s done? Because it is, you know, I mean, like, for people that don’t, like, here’s a way of kind of really, and I’m getting to the mental health part, but like, a lathe, a metal lathe is like a tank because it’s, it’s made to carve metal, right?

[00:08:16] Like, essentially. And, and so you don’t want like, um, screws that aren’t quite right. Screwed in right when you’re carving metal. Um, but I think I trust myself. Uh, anyway, so there was a point once years ago when my wife walked into the garage workshop when I was in there and she was like, you know, there’s no other time that you are this landed.

[00:08:40] And, and it is true. I like, I feel so completely landed when I am surrounded by especially old tools and, uh, and, and have an amazing local community radio station on. And I have like a two car, like a two garage door garage in my old South Minneapolis home that [00:09:00] actually faces towards the house and away from the alley.

[00:09:02] So I have this like kind of compound and I can just open up these two garage doors and I have

[00:09:07] Brett: How do you,

[00:09:08] Jeff: Workshop in there. And it’s like, it’s unbelievable. It’s like,

[00:09:11] Brett: do you get a car into that garage?

[00:09:14] Jeff: we don’t put cars in the garage. Cause there’s a, there’s a one ton, a hundred year old lathe in there. Um, the thing is like, the thing is this garage is so funny.

[00:09:23] Like, um, I am totally doing the Tim Allen total like thing of taking over a garage. But like. You can’t actually get a car in there, right? And so it just works out in my favor.

[00:09:36] Brett: There you go.

[00:09:38] Jeff: But anyway, it’s, uh, I truly, I mean, it’s like there is a, it’s better than any of my medications. I just, it’s so calming.

[00:09:47] Brett: I like this term, landed. Um,

[00:09:49] Jeff: I liked that term too.

[00:09:52] Brett: tell me more.

[00:09:53] Jeff: Um, sorry, turning

[00:09:56] Brett: walked away.

[00:09:56] Jeff: It’s just, you know what, I’m going to go back to workshop. [00:10:00] Um, landed like, um, just, uh, light, um, on my feet behind my eyes. Uh, and, and just, I mean, for me internally, I can’t really say exactly how it projects out and what made her say that other than what I understand about the internal feeling is like totally at peace, just like totally, totally at peace.

[00:10:22] Um, and, and that’s whether I’m building something or just You know, schlubbing around.

[00:10:29] Brett: Nice. Alright.

[00:10:30] Jeff: yeah, it’s wonderful. And so anyway, and this is the time of year when it’s really great, because we’re just leaving the part of the year when it’s too hot to go out there and be in a garage. It’s like 90 degrees or something, and it’s insulated, so it just holds the heat usually.

[00:10:43] Um, so yeah, it’s beautiful.

[00:10:46] Brett: Awesome. Hey, Christina. How are you?

[00:10:50] Christina: I’m pretty good. Um, I, uh, not too much to kind of update. I’ve been under the gun with some work stuff. So I’m trying to [00:11:00] kind of get a bunch of things done that way, GitHub universes in a few weeks. And so kind of coming under the gun with that. So I’m a little stressed about trying to get all my work things done, but other than that, uh, pretty good, pretty good.

[00:11:11] I went to San Francisco for like a day and a, for like two days this week, um, for OpenAI’s dev day. That was pretty fun. Um, And, uh, yeah, just, oh, I saw Megalopolis, uh, which was terrible as, uh, as it’s been rumored, um, but I still think probably better, at least more fun to watch than Joker 2, not real sure, um,

[00:11:34] Jeff: I’m bummed about both of these being apparently not great.

[00:11:37] Christina: I mean, same, but, but, I mean, Joker 2, I think we, look, what, did, it did not need a sequel, and the fact that it got one, and, and then the fact that, like, apparently it’s a courtroom drama, mostly, which is

[00:11:51] Jeff: a musical.

[00:11:52] Christina: and a musical, but then the musical, it’s like, It’s like the American songbook.

[00:11:56] Like, it could not be more [00:12:00] poorly aligned for its target audience and target demographic, which is, I mean, I kind of appreciate the troll in that. But anyway, I mention these things because these movies make me happy and that does help my mental health.

[00:12:13] Jeff: Nice.

[00:12:14] Brett: haven’t seen a good movie in a while. I feel, no, I feel like I loved the last movie I saw, but my memory is such that I don’t remember what the last movie I saw was.

[00:12:25] Jeff: I had a good run, like a month ago, I watched I think five different, like, noirs from the 40s and 50s, and

[00:12:31] Christina: Oh, hell yeah. I

[00:12:32] Jeff: so awesome.

[00:12:35] Brett: Oh, it’s like, there’s something like twinkling in my memory that I found on I don’t remember. I did, I did enjoy the Deadpool Wolverine movie.

[00:12:48] Christina: did two actually. That was one that I was, um, I was not expecting to enjoy that the way that I did. Um, it was very, very funny. It was, um, the [00:13:00] music, uh, the needle drops were great. Um, it was overly indulgent, but it worked. And then what I,

[00:13:05] Brett: Totally.

[00:13:06] Christina: well, what I really appreciated about it and, and like, cause I, I’ve seen like all the Deadpool films now, but I didn’t realize until I watched that movie that I also, because I guess it was the 2000s and this was probably my heaviest, you know, movie going experience, especially going in the theater, because I would literally go every week, um, and sometimes multiple times a week, um, sometimes multiple times a day, um, but, um, I, I think I’ve seen basically it.

[00:13:33] Every one of the Fox, you know, like, um, uh, Marvel films, um, for, for better or worse. And in most cases, let’s be very clear, it was for worse because the Fox Marvel films were not good, right? So for, for people who don’t know, those were the, the X Men series. Fox had the rights to, to those, and they had the rights to, uh, Daredevil and, uh, whatever the fucking

[00:13:54] Brett: Green Lantern? Was that, was Green Lantern? Yeah.[00:14:00]

[00:14:01] Christina: Ryan met and cheated on their respective partners together, and now they’re married.

[00:14:06] Hey, look, you know what? No shade, because honestly that one worked out.

[00:14:10] Jeff: That’s showbiz!

[00:14:11] Christina: mean, look, Daredevil is where Jennifer Garner and Matt Ben Affleck met and cheated on their respective partners, or at least she cheated on hers. I don’t know if he was with anybody. And then whatever the Daredevil sequel was, which I, Elektra.

[00:14:25] I don’t It was bad. Um, and, uh, not to mention, um, you know, obviously like Logan being kind of like the highlight and, um, uh, both attempts at, uh, at the Fantastic Four films, like those were all Fox. And so, um, but what was kind of great about, um, uh, Deadpool, um, uh, versus Wolverine is that in many ways, you know, it was kind of a continuation of kind of the, the Deadpool kind of trope, whatnot, but it was also like a love letter, to those Fox films,

[00:14:54] Brett: Totally.

[00:14:55] Christina: which I really appreciated.

[00:14:57] Like the, this isn’t a spoiler for anything, but like the, the final sequence, [00:15:00] like during the credits, they like show a lot of the behind the scenes footage basically from like the year 2000, like onward of, you know, the cast and crew from those films, which is fucking crazy because you see like the mini DV fucking video that they’re using, you know, to capture the behind the scenes stuff.

[00:15:16] And like, everybody looks so young and like, you know, it’s just. I don’t know. I, I, I very much appreciated that because nobody, including myself, as I just like went on a rant, gives the Fox films any love because you shouldn’t. Almost all of them are terrible. Um, but, um, it also, cause the Fox studio doesn’t exist the way that it did.

[00:15:35] They now all have to be kind of Marvel fied and, or, you know, Disney fied and all that. And I thought it was really, uh, it was very nice and, and kind of classy, you know, to kind of give all those, those films, um, both in the story and then in the, you know, Post credit stuff. A wrap up. thought it was nice.

[00:15:53] Brett: So, someone sent me, and it might have been one of you two, I’ve forgotten, but there was, uh, there [00:16:00] is an animator for Bob’s Burgers that is now a producer of Bob’s Burgers, but still does, like, um, fan, fan art. Uh, like animations of like the characters from Bob’s Burgers, and, and he did one that was the youngest girl, whose name I’m blanking on, um, in a, Louise.

[00:16:24] Louise in a paper plate Deadpool mask doing the Backstreet Boys dance almost its entirety just like the movie.

[00:16:34] Christina: It was NSYNC. It was NSYNC,

[00:16:35] Brett: NSYNC, I’m so sorry. How could I ever confuse Backstreet Boys and with 98 Degrees? Like it just, how do you,

[00:16:44] Christina: Well, here’s the thing. You actually

[00:16:47] Degrees for either of them, but Backstreet and NSYNC absolutely make sense to confuse because literally NSYNC was created to be the backup band for Backstreet I’m not joking. They like, they like, yeah, so, so it’s the [00:17:00] same exact management team, same exact thing.

[00:17:02] You start at them and then they lied to Backstreet Boys, like didn’t even let them know that they were working on this other group too. And, and then all of a sudden Backstreet Boys are burnt out and can’t do this Disney special and NSYNC are like, yeah, we’ll do it. And they become like very famous.

[00:17:18] Jeff: Yes. I love

[00:17:21] Christina: there, there are two great documentaries if anybody wants to get into this stuff. One is called The Boy Band Con, which I, I, I’m sorry to give him credit for this because he’s my least, well, no, that’s not true. He’s my probably third least favorite, but he’s definitely not in the top tier of favorites, but like, um, Lance Bass produced it and he actually did a good job.

[00:17:37] And it’s a documentary about Lou Pearlman who, um, died, but, but he was a famous, um, purveyor of Ponzi schemes and other stuff. And it really kind of goes into. The machine and how hard all of them worked and how much, how little money they made until they, they sued him. Um, and that’s on YouTube. It was a YouTube original.

[00:17:56] And then Netflix put out a three part series [00:18:00] also about Lou Perlman, which is also pretty good. And then there is a great book called The Boy Band Con, um, about Lou Perlman, um, that came out like 15 years ago. So anyway,

[00:18:13] Brett: drop those in the show

[00:18:14] Christina: I will.

[00:18:15] Brett: cause I’ll never read those. I don’t have the attention span to care,

[00:18:19] Christina: no, but it was super fascinating because the guy that created both of those bands, like, he was, until Bernie Madoff, he was the purveyor of, like, the largest Ponzi scheme history.

[00:18:30] Brett: Yeah, no, that’s, that’s interesting. I, uh, I just have a backlog of nonfiction that.

[00:18:35] Christina: Oh yeah, no, and I’m not saying should read it, I’m saying that this is like an actually, it’s like a notable weird kind of thing because you wouldn’t think, oh yeah, the boy band guy, You know, who, there was also some questions about, um, his, uh, sexual interest in the boys, which was not great, and some of the things that he, maybe, things there, but the, the thing that he actually went to jail for, and died in jail for, was the [00:19:00] Ponzi scheme, which was, uh, yeah,

[00:19:03] Jeff: Wow.

[00:19:04] Brett: I’m currently listening to an audiobook about a gay hornless unicorn and a gay wizard who’s in love with the prince who’s engaged to the chief knight and it is the bitchiest novel I’ve ever read. Red.

[00:19:28] Jeff: I assume is Lord of the Rings fanfiction? Hehehe.

[00:19:34] Brett: No, I really, I enjoyed, I enjoyed a book from this author and I thought, Oh, I’ll try another one. And it turned out to be just like, I picked him because he was like a queer sci fi fantasy guy. Um, and there’s not a lot of that out there. And this one just turned out to be like queer to the max. Like almost every character, there’s one, there one bisexual [00:20:00] character.

[00:20:00] Christina: Well, know, I

[00:20:01] Brett: Fluidly sexual character. Everyone else is just straight up

[00:20:05] Christina: else is just like, sort of gay. I love that. Uh, and quick correction, the book was called The Hit Charade. BoybandCon is the documentary, but Hit Charade. Yeah, I got it in the show notes.

[00:20:15] Jeff: was the unicorn born without a

[00:20:17] Brett: No, it was, I haven’t, like he lost it at some point and he’s working to get it back. That’s like a subplot.

[00:20:23] Jeff: okay. Okay.

[00:20:24] Brett: Um, so anyway, my mental health, um, things are, things are overall pretty good. So like for almost six months, I was waking up every day at like three, 2. 30, 3 a. m. and just unable to fall back asleep. But I would go to bed early enough that that would be six to seven hours of sleep.

[00:20:44] And I kind of just was existing on that. And, uh, I had a couple of. Like, runs of bad nights, but I never felt manic, not in the way that I’ve come to know mania. And, [00:21:00] um, I was just being pretty productive and waking up early and, and it lasted way long. Like my manic episodes are like three to five days long, and this was six months long.

[00:21:12] And it finally crashed. Um, I, I was like, I don’t know if this is mania or not until it ended and I hit the depression and I was like, Oh, that was mania. And I’m just praying that the depression doesn’t last as long as the mania. Because I’m used to like five days of mania, then two weeks of depression and then a period of stability.

[00:21:35] Um, so if I have six months of mania and then I have like two years of depression, shit’s going to go bad for me. Um, but maybe the depression will be as like, hypo as the mania was. Um, but anyway, I got passed over for even a token bonus at work. Um, and, and that feels honestly like [00:22:00] So, you should get rewarded for, for doing a good job, but you should also get a token reward for existing at the company for a year.

[00:22:11] Um, and that, and you should get at least a cost of living raise. And I haven’t gotten a raise in three years, and my last bonus was piddly, but it was a token bonus. Getting nothing feels like punishment.

[00:22:28] Christina: hmm.

[00:22:28] Brett: It feels like they’re telling you you did a bad job. And I asked why I wasn’t getting a bonus, and they said it was because I had only been meets all expectations on my review.

[00:22:42] And to

[00:22:42] Jeff: Were you like, what about the point where my manager disappeared for four months? that, is that a dark, is that a dark period in reporting?

[00:22:52] Brett: Oh, it was, so I got, I was annoyed. I started shopping around, um, but after a few days of [00:23:00] being just like, fuck this, I’m bummed out. I came up with like a really good idea, um, for, to like turn my job into something I actually enjoy and also get visibility. And so I wrote, I wrote a little script, almost. An app for, uh, the Docs team at work that converted their Confluence, uh, like their compendium of Confluence documentation into, uh, like GitHub ready Markdown, and they were spending, they were spending two hours per page to do this, um, and plus like JIRA ticketing and Wrike ticketing and everything.

[00:23:46] And it was taking forever. And they were looking at six months. Uh, to do this current project and I wrote them a script and they’re done. Like they’re done. And, and this [00:24:00] didn’t show up on my review. Like I did this kind of after hours on kind of off hours. I did it for another team with no permission from my manager.

[00:24:09] I didn’t mention it on my review.

[00:24:11] Christina: shit, you should have, you still should

[00:24:12] Brett: Uh, well, so I got a letter of commendation from the team that I’m going to present to my manager and definitely include in my quarterly review and, um, yeah, I, cause I, I saved the company thousands of hours. Like when you look at this total project,

[00:24:30] Christina: No, save them thousands of hours, thousands of, you know, tens of thousands of dollars, you know, hundreds thousands if you really want to, you know, calculate it that way. Um, yeah, I’ve, and I say this as somebody who’s bad at, at doing my own reviews. Um, so I, but yet I can see the flaws. Um, that I make, uh, with others and encourage them otherwise.

[00:24:52] Yeah, something like that, whether you got permission or not, if you’ve made that sort of impact, like that’s what review things are for. It’s for bragging about [00:25:00] yourself. Nobody will ever,

[00:25:01] Brett: Well, so I

[00:25:02] Christina: no manager is ever going to look at anything, no matter what they tell you. They’re never going to be like, Oh, well, you didn’t mention these things, but I know you did them.

[00:25:10] And so I’m going to you

[00:25:12] Brett: well, and that like my first, my first manager at Oracle told me that like, it was status quo to just rate yourself three out of five across the board and then let your manager like, uh, promote you. And that worked when I had managers that were good at promoting me. But my current team leader, we don’t even have a manager anymore, but my team leader, um, is not interested in that.

[00:25:45] Um, I, I will not say anything else about him. He’s a good guy. He’s a stand up guy. Um, anyway, that’s, that’s, that’s my mental health update. We got to take a quick sponsor break. We got to squeeze this in before the [00:26:00] 30 minute mark, cause we got a note last time that 38 minutes in

[00:26:06] Jeff: See, you don’t, I don’t think you should say that. I if you’re responding to

[00:26:09] Brett: it. But I said it.

[00:26:11] I said it. And we’re, we’re, we’re following, we’re following direction.

[00:26:14] Sponsor: Pika

[00:26:14] Brett: So anyway, blogging is making a comeback and Pika is a great way to get a blog online fast. Jeff can attest to this. 20 seconds from sign up to blog post.

[00:26:25] Jeff: Yeah, wait, just, it was actually, it was amazing. I was like, all right, let me try this thing out before we go on. And I didn’t even mean, it wasn’t a test to see how quickly I could post, but literally within 20 seconds I had a post published. It was awesome.

[00:26:38] Brett: There you go. So visit pika.page/overti. That’s pka.page/overti to get blogging. Not only is PIKA a great way to start blogging, but it’s also a great way to build a personal website@pika.page. You can customize your homepage and easily add pages to your. [00:27:00] The beautiful editor is great for writing your pages as well as your blog posts.

[00:27:05] And you don’t need a master’s degree to work with PICA’s simple theme and customization

[00:27:10] Jeff: Wait, that’s true, because I don’t even have a high school diploma.

[00:27:13] Brett: ha ha ha ha! With a PICA Pro plan, you can add an unlimited number of pages and blog posts to your site. And overtired listeners. Visit PICA. com. Pika. page slash Overtired to sign up, and if you decide to become a Pro member, enter the code Overtired20 to get 20 percent off your first year of Pika Pro.

[00:27:38] Yes, 20 percent off, Pika Pro’s already reasonable price, and you get unlimited pages, blog posts, guestbook entries, and the ability to add your custom domain for a truly personal website on the internet. And this is miles more affordable than Squarespace. Oh, and you have to see this guestbook feature.

[00:27:57] Guestbooks are a throwback to the, a throwback to [00:28:00] the aughts, or maybe even the 90s. Back then, people would connect by signing the guestbooks on each other’s websites. Christina remembers this.

[00:28:08] Christina: Yes.

[00:28:10] Brett: With Pika, not only can people write in your guestbook, but they can also draw you a picture. How cool is that?

[00:28:17] I’ve looked into some of the drawings on Pika’s own guestbook and there is an impressive amount of artwork people can make with this little tool. Also surprising, uh, surprisingly few dicks.

[00:28:30] Jeff: Oh, man. Okay. Oh, wait.

[00:28:34] Brett: Visit PICA. PAGE. OVERTIRED, again that’s P I K A, to give yourself a chance to experience the personal internet as it was meant to be. Again, P I K A. PAGE. OVERTIRED, and remember to enter the coupon OVERTIRED20 to get 20 percent off your first year of PICA Pro.

[00:28:56] Christina: Fantastic.

[00:28:57] On Dick Drawings

[00:28:57] Brett: us Jeff, what want to interrupt?

[00:28:59] Did it have to do [00:29:00] with

[00:29:00] Jeff: about blogging, and one is a penis item. Um, at the State Fair two years ago, they had the Ford F 150 Lightning, the electric F 150. And my wife,

[00:29:13] Brett: better than the Cybertruck even.

[00:29:17] Jeff: So my son, uh, my youngest has an amazing thing he does to Cybertrucks now. And it’s, it’s a little, it’s like, I’m a little bit like, should I let him do this? Cause he’s going to get his ass kicked. Maybe. I don’t know. Is that if he’s, if he’s on the sidewalk and a Cybertruck goes by, he just extends his arm with the thumbs down and goes, Boo! Uh, and I, I think that’s amazing. Anyway, they have like a, an app on the, like, you know, stupid computer screen in the F 150 Lightning where you can draw. And there were two boys in there that we were waiting for them to leave so we could check out the inside of this truck. Sure enough, we got in there.

[00:29:53] Dickenballs, uh, it’s just like, you couldn’t, I mean, granted, it’s also an F 150. So maybe it came, maybe it just came [00:30:00] with that. Maybe that was just like the sample art, like,

[00:30:03] Brett: Built in truck nuts. Digital

[00:30:05] Jeff: built in truck nuts. Do you know that my dad thought he invented truck nuts? He, he did actually, without knowing about the fleshy ones, he came up with this idea of hanging giant, like nuts, like, like, uh, nuts and bolts nuts.

[00:30:19] And, and he was so disappointed. Um, he also invented something that ended up being a SkyMall, uh, uh, product called, um, Crocker, which is a combination of soccer and croquet. And see, he would have never seen that. So he

[00:30:32] Brett: and that’s how your family got all their money, right?

[00:30:35] Jeff: how my family got all that public school teacher money.

[00:30:38] Um, Yeah. Okay.

[00:30:39] Blogging and Personal Writing Reflections

[00:30:39] Jeff: So anyway, here’s the thing about blogging. I, that I, I recently, um, resurrected like my ghost account just because that’s what I’m trying and Pika, maybe I’ll move to Pika. We’ll see. But like I had, I’ve started blogs over the years. I’m like, Oh, I just want to blog. I want a place to write again.

[00:30:56] And I’m, I’m divorced from the desire for any kind of audience. I [00:31:00] just want to write at this point. Um, but what I, what I realized is my need for blogging Now is I want to be able to point to something where I’ve written something longer. Specifically, I want to, um, I want to use, I want to just kind of like publish excerpts of things I wrote over the years and publish that I thought were fun parts of a story, but I actually don’t want to publish an entire story.

[00:31:22] So as an example, I put up, I did this, cover story on the Hold Steady for City Pages, the alt weekly here in like 2007 when they were like a huge band. And I had, I had known those guys forever. We came up in the same scene and, and so it was easy to just kind of talk them into letting me follow them around for an evening or afternoon.

[00:31:41] And the opening scene of the article is like the side stage before they go on at this pretty big theater. Um, and it was the first time that it was the biggest show they had ever played in Minneapolis. And a few of them were from. Here and from this scene and stuff and the crowd, like their crowds are so excited.

[00:31:58] Um, and, [00:32:00] and so I had never been side stage where there’s a band that’s about to go on and the crowd is so, so anticipating it. And the curtain is down and the band maybe peeks around to kind of check out what the crowd looks like. And the whole opening scene is just me standing there. I mean, it’s like, I’m describing what they’re doing.

[00:32:19] Like their, their singer hasn’t showed up, then he shows up in an elevator. Like there’s all this just little stuff. The, the security guy comes over to yell at the guitar player. Cause he has a drink and ends up bumping and spilling the drink on And like, there’s just like all these little moments and it’s not a long intro, but I loved rereading it.

[00:32:35] And I was like, well, this is really fun. And it’s like a peak of something. And actually the way that ended was, I was so. Um, kind of committed to my observational role that I was like on their heels as they actually walked on stage to the point where I realized I was visible and looked like a member of the band and like quickly turned around, but I got that feeling of what it’s like to walk on to a screaming giant crowd and it [00:33:00] was very disappointing to turn around anyway.

[00:33:04] So that was like a. A blog need I have all of a sudden is like, I want to be able to post on Mastodon to my 14 followers, which I think is up to 89, um, that I have this thing and, uh, and on threads. Cause I do threads. I like threads. I can’t, I wish I had a thing that felt like

[00:33:19] Brett: I used to like and then it got real, it got real weird. My feed got real

[00:33:24] Jeff: I should say I like it enough.

[00:33:25] Um, I will never be as happy as I was on Twitter when Twitter was a place to be happy. Um, is, you know, uh, I, I just, it’s, I, I long for it the way I long for Tumblr at its height. Like how that felt. Oh God, it felt so good. I met so many People through Twitter that I should have never been able to meet or develop a relationship with.

[00:33:48] And I got an, I got a byline in the New York times because I, I connected with like a, a New York times reporter on Twitter that was reporting on the same thing I was reporting on it at [00:34:00] American Public Media. And he’s like, Hey, do you want to write something? And it was just like, Twitter was insane. Um, anyway, we all know this, this is an old story, but I, I like this idea of having a place where I’m not trying to direct people to the blog, but I can post to something that I’ve written and, and say, Hey, this was fun.

[00:34:16] Go, go look at it if you want.

[00:34:18] Brett: Nice.

[00:34:19] Jeff: Anyway.

[00:34:20] Cybertruck and Twitter Musings

[00:34:20] Brett: I, uh, speaking of Twitter and the Cybertruck, um, we, all, we’re all aware of the many shortcomings of the Cybertruck, but I learned something this week that just blew me away. Blew my mind. Um, you can shift gears on the Cybertruck using the digital, like, touchscreen, which is weird enough, uh, to not have a

[00:34:43] Jeff: Super weird. Super

[00:34:45] Brett: Do you want to know where the alternative Prindle is?

[00:34:49] Jeff: In the back.

[00:34:51] Brett: Above your head on the ceiling.

[00:34:53] Jeff: Oh my

[00:34:54] Brett: Like you have to, and it’s not even visible until you tap it. So to shift gears, you have to look [00:35:00] up, tap the ceiling, and then slide your finger over this. Two and a half foot long fucking Prindle in the sky and like under maybe if it were an entirely self driving vehicle and you were reclining, but if it’s self driving, why do you need to shift?

[00:35:20] Christina: Right.

[00:35:20] Jeff: Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right.

[00:35:23] Christina: No, you

[00:35:24] Brett: it’s like Elon, It’s like Elon said, I want to disrupt automotive manufacturing, but without any thought as to what would actually be an improvement or useful in any way. just want to be different. different means making things shittier, so be it.

[00:35:42] Christina: I’m seeing so many more of them all over Seattle, which is not surprising because we have so many Teslas, but it’s also disappointing because I’m like, they’re so ugly. And yeah, it’s your point. It’s like, if it were all self driving, if that was really the goal, fine, but then why shift?

[00:35:57] Speaking of self driving, um, I took [00:36:00] a bunch of Waymo’s when I was in San Francisco,

[00:36:03] Waymo: The Future of Self-Driving Cars

[00:36:03] Jeff: That’s,

[00:36:04] Christina: this week. Holy shit. It’s the greatest. Waymo so fucking good. Uh, Merlin. Merlin commented on this, uh, on, uh, uh, uh, Mastodon, um, uh, a few weeks ago. And we were both, uh, Merlin and Manon, we were both, like, uh, commiserating about how much we love it.

[00:36:20] But yeah, if you’re not familiar, I mean, Waymo is, is Google self driving car taxi service thing they’ve been working on for a long time. And it’s in Los Angeles or parts of Los Angeles and, um, Phoenix and San Francisco. And it’ll be coming to, um, Austin and Atlanta and some other areas. And it’s really fucking good.

[00:36:39] It’s

[00:36:39] Brett: like an AI voice that makes annoying conversation with you while you Oh, what, what am I even paying for at that

[00:36:46] Christina: Uh, you are paying for a car. Yeah, exactly. You were for a car that is clean, where you don’t have anybody talking to you, that takes you where you want to be, where you can control your music. Like you can select like what iHeart radio stations you want to listen [00:37:00] to. So I was

[00:37:00] Brett: get to listen to annoying techno?

[00:37:03] Christina: no, I mean, if you, I mean, could, if you wanted to, I was listening to Taylor Swift, um, radio from iHeart.

[00:37:09] Um, and, uh, yeah, you know, and it, you can control the temperature. Like it’s. It’s freaking great. And then it is weird cause you see like the steering wheel like turn, right? Like you see this stuff happen, um, on, on the car, but like, it’s, it’s, it’s fantastic.

[00:37:25] Brett: What, what over, what override features does it have? If something goes wrong, what can the passenger do? Get out? Okay.

[00:37:33] Christina: Yeah, I mean, no, I mean, yeah, literally there is no like break, like there is no way to take control and, and that’s by design. So you’re, yeah, there’s

[00:37:42] Brett: did see a video of an officer trying to give a citation to a Waymo vehicle. And like, they’re, apparently they automatically call into like the control center. So someone’s talking to the cop over the speaker.

[00:37:57] Christina: Yes.

[00:37:58] Brett: Haha.

[00:37:59] Christina: I guess. [00:38:00] Okay. That is actually true. I forgot about that. So there is the override is that. Yeah. They’re not spying on you, they say. They’re not like listening to what you’re doing in the car, but they can monitor what’s happening if there’s a problem, right? So like I, I, I had one thing, like it was dropping me off at a location and I did the thing that I always do in a car, which is like I unbuckled my seatbelt, even though we were technically still moving.

[00:38:22] Car did not like this at all. It was very upset. And so it kept like coming up on screens like, Oh, if you know, if you do this more, you know, we might have to call in and check in on you or whatever. So like, I assumed that if there were some sort of. Problem. Like you could in the app or on the touchscreen, like you could reach out for help and then someone

[00:38:38] Brett: unbuckle your seatbelt. Yeah,

[00:38:43] Christina: like you can be connected with like a human person who I think can remotely control the cars potentially, or at least like in, in the, the cop example, you know, talk to someone, although that has to be freaky for the cop where they’re like talking to the car, you[00:39:00]

[00:39:00] Brett: a little thrown off.

[00:39:01] Christina: I’m sure, I’m sure.

[00:39:02] The Challenges of Human Drivers

[00:39:02] Christina: I mean, and, and there have been, you know, instances where they’ve, they’ve run, you know, certain lights and, and they’ve done other things, but like the, the studies have shown, and, and this isn’t bullshit, like this is actually true. Like they are significantly safer than regular cars, certainly significantly safer than regular taxis or Ubers.

[00:39:19] Um, the, the downside with these things is that it’s like, you know, uh, how much, Like the, the training set that they can get, you know, for, for the LIDAR for where they go, like they don’t have a lot of highway experience. And so like, you can’t take them to the airport and things like that. So they’re, they’re limited areas.

[00:39:35] And, and that’ll be, I think the, the challenge, that’s why I’m curious about what they’ll do in Atlanta. Cause Atlanta, like you get on the interstate. Um, so I don’t know if it’s going to be limited to like a certain area or what, or if they’ll just be doing more testing, but the, the real, you know, Problem with a lot of these things has not actually been like the, the AI, which can get pretty good, especially if it has good visibility into things.

[00:39:56] It’s that human drivers are fucking terrible [00:40:00] and trying to account for how to drive to, while still following the rules, but while not, you know, Um, succumbing to getting hit by a human driver who’s a fucking asshole and is, you know, got his hand down his pants while he’s like looking, you know, at his phone and, you know, his other hand is up his nose.

[00:40:20] You know what I mean? Like that sort of shit, which happens. Yeah. I mean, I finger whatever. Um, you know, got the whole thing going on. Like that’s like, You know, like the instance is where, um, there was the Tesla driver who, like, got in the crash because, like, they were genuinely going hands free and doing stupid shit.

[00:40:39] And then the car crashed and they’re like, oh, I thought that the autopilot was supposed to do it for me. And it’s like, fuck off, dude. Like, I don’t want to defend Tesla in any way, but you actually were, Not using things as designed, but even regular human drivers. I mean, I don’t drive. So to be clear, um, I’m, but I, but I’m smart about it.

[00:40:56] I know that I’m not a good driver, so I don’t do it, but like human drivers are fucking [00:41:00] terrible. So that’s the problem with training these systems is it’s like, how do you have these, you know, self driving cars that can follow the rules of the road, but also won’t get fucked when a human driver being a piece of shit?

[00:41:15] Brett: I have also relatively recently realized that I’m not a good driver. Um, I used to think maybe I’ve gotten more daft in my older age. Um,

[00:41:26] Christina: aware.

[00:41:27] Brett: yeah, and that’s entirely possible. I just like, I miss shit. I’ll like, I like merge when there’s a car in my blind spot and like have to swerve back over and I’m just, I’m not, I’m not alert.

[00:41:41] I’m not, um, I don’t predict other people well. Um, I take stupid chances and if I could be given a self driving car, it would do the world a favor. Um, yeah, if I, if I were taken. [00:42:00] Out from behind the wheel. But living in as small a town as I do, it’s not really, um,

[00:42:09] Christina: Right. Okay.

[00:42:10] Brett: I’m too, I’m too car dependent at, I am looking at getting an ev and if I could get one with at least like assisted, like lane assist even, um, I would be in better

[00:42:21] Jeff: Recommendation. This my recommendation.

[00:42:23] The Debate on Electric Vehicles

[00:42:23] Jeff: Do not buy anything EV or electric, we have a hybrid, until after we know how this election shakes out, because here’s the thing, you’ve seen all the movies, you’ve seen The Last of Us, you’ve seen everything where like, all the roads look like the video for Everybody Hurts, where the cars are everywhere, it’s all gonna be these electric cars, and here’s the thing, this got me thinking the other day, What is the truck that ISIS uses?

[00:42:44] Because those motherfuckers know, they’ve selected, right? And they use the Toyota Hilux, I think you call it. I’ll put a link in the show notes, cause there was a great, there was a great moment a couple of years ago where the U. S. was trying to figure out how ISIS was getting so many of these Toyotas. But I like,[00:43:00]

[00:43:00] Brett: because, like, what is the, what is the solid, dependable pager that Hezbollah uses? Like, you gotta,

[00:43:08] Jeff: we’re gonna be past that, if everything falls apart, we’re not gonna have, we’re not gonna have, like, Israeli level, uh, you know, infiltration, they’re not gonna be in the supply chain, cause everything’s gonna be fucked.

[00:43:20] Brett: Fair enough. What,

[00:43:25] Jeff: Uh, anyway,

[00:43:25] Brett: like we, we gotta get a show title out of that right there. Like, the, the truck, the truck that ISIS, ISIS trucks? I

[00:43:35] Christina: truck, the ISIS

[00:43:36] Jeff: what’s the ISIS truck?

[00:43:37] Christina: I mean, honestly, that’s, that’s not a bad, that’s not a bad point. It is funny. It’s just like a Toyota, right? Like that’s, that’s, that’s a, that’s such a blow to everybody else. Who’s like, Oh yeah, we make, we make, we make our Hummers

[00:43:49] Jeff: F 150, it’s not Ranger,

[00:43:51] Christina: Right, well, I was gonna say, we’ll, we’ll range over, like, who even fucking owns them anymore, right?

[00:43:54] Like, they’ve had so many owners, um, the law’s

[00:43:57] Jeff: always Toyotas overseas. It’s the Land [00:44:00] Cruiser. It’s like, they’re just, they’re incredible trucks. We, I don’t want to get into that, but they’re incredible trucks.

[00:44:05] Christina: Fucking Ford, man, like, honestly, like, how the fuck, like, how, how do you exist as Ford when, like, Toyota makes better trucks than you? Like, what the fuck? Like, genuinely, like,

[00:44:14] Jeff: they tried to integrate the dick and balls feature, but

[00:44:17] Christina: They did, but it didn’t work. No, but I’m with, I’m with you, Brett. Like, I, um, and Merlin and I talked about this on, on Macedon as well, but, like, So I would love to own a self driving car.

[00:44:29] I would love that. Or there have been talks, this is one of the things I think that Cruz wanted to do, and who knows if we’ll get there, but like the fact that I can, at least in large swaths of San Francisco, take a robo taxi is promising. Um, but like, it would be cool if you had kind of like a zip car sort of thing where like you share ownership with number of people.

[00:44:49] So, you know, cause, you know, or, or even you buy the car, but like. It could be when you’re not using it, it could be used, you know, for, for taxi purposes or [00:45:00] whatever. Like, you know, um, maybe you don’t buy the car, but like you lease the car. I don’t, I don’t know if I would want to necessarily, unless I’m getting paid for it, I don’t know if I would want to volunteer something that I’m owning and that I’m, is a depreciating asset, uh, being used by others.

[00:45:14] But if it is significantly less money, And I have, you know, guaranteed hours I can use it or something else. Like that’s actually, I, I like that concept a lot of kind of like a, a zip car, you know, kind of thing, but, but, but matched with like a self driving EV, like that would be, that’d be cool. But yeah.

[00:45:33] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:45:34] WordPress Drama Unfolds

[00:45:34] Brett: Do you want to talk about WP Engine before we hit Grapptitude?

[00:45:39] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. Um, we, we should talk about the, the WordPress drama. Um, Because, uh, you’re mentioning blogging, Jeff, and like normally I would say to a lot of people I’d be like, Oh, well, you know, this is a great case for WordPress or whatever. Speaking of that, there’s a lot of drama happening in the WordPress community, even more than usual.[00:46:00]

[00:46:00] So the background, and this is not going to be completely exhaustive, I’ll find a link that probably gives the latest updates just because there’s too much of it. So please don’t at me for missing nuances. I’m, I’m trying to be fair here. Uh, so two weeks ago at WordCamp US, which is like the, the biggest, you know, like WordPress community event, uh, Matt Mullenweg, who is the CEO, um, and founder of Automatic, which is like the largest kind of like official WordPress company that the people behind WordPress.

[00:46:25] com and Jetpack and WooCommerce and all that stuff, um, He’s also the co founder and the BDFL, uh, benevolent dictator for life of the WordPress project. Uh, he gave his closing speech at, at WordCamp US and he spent it basically calling out, um, kind of like vultures in the open source ecosystem, people who are, Takers and who are not giving back to the community.

[00:46:54] And the, the main, um, uh, target of his, of his, uh, uh, comments was, [00:47:00] uh, the managed WordPress host, uh, WP Engine. And WP Engine was acquired by a private equity, uh, firm, um, Silverlake, um, in like 2018 for hundreds of millions of dollars. And apparently they, uh, make hundreds of millions of dollars a year. But according to, to Matt, based on whatever the, the notions of however you define contributions back to core, they donate only like 40 hours a week back to the open source project.

[00:47:25] So, you know, they’re making hundreds of millions of dollars. They’re only, you know, they’re donating very little back. And so he kind of went scorched earth a little bit, calling them out, basically encouraging people to potentially like move away from them. Um, And, uh, according to Mullenlug, he said that he’d been having conversations for months with WP Engine trying to get some sort of trademark licensing deal because I guess how they use the WordPress trademark on their website is potentially violating terms.

[00:47:54] I’m not a lawyer. I can’t speak to that. And so he was wanting to, you know, work out some sort of, A deal where either they [00:48:00] contribute time towards core, um, in the terms of like, you know, employee hours or, um, uh, a certain amount of their revenue, um, gross, um, to, to, um, uh, WordPress. And, um, he, so he calls them out, he gets kind of spicy in, in, in his words about it and then WP Engine is not happy.

[00:48:20] And so they send a cease and desist, which, you only made things worse. And so the cease and desist was basically like, don’t, you know, keep, keep my wife’s name out of your mouth and don’t talk about this stuff. And, and, uh, and so, um, Mullenweg’s response was then to block access to WordPress. org, which he personally owns and controls all WP Engine sites.

[00:48:44] And what that effectively means is that those sites can’t get updates to plugins or themes or security patches from the WordPress. org servers. So, after some backlash because regular people, you know, regular clients and agencies and people who manage [00:49:00] sites for WP Engine are impacted by this. There was some, you know, um, backtrack on that.

[00:49:05] So they’re like, okay, well, you can have access for like four more days so that you can build your own infrastructure to do this. Host, you know, a copy of the, the plugin, um, uh, directory and theme directory and serve updates. Um, so he did, he did that. Um, that’s actually kind of shitty because this is like a built in mechanism into WordPress.

[00:49:22] And in my opinion, it’s actually kind of a security issue because WordPress, it would be like if, if Debian said Ubuntu can’t access Apt. It’s basically like kind of how I think about it. Right. And, and I’m not saying that the WP engine shouldn’t be contributing back more because they. Absolutely should be, but I also feel like if this is a built in part of the ecosystem and this is how people get updates and how they get things, cutting people off, um, especially when you don’t make it easy in core to come up with a replacement is kind of a, you know, Not a great move, at least for your end users, putting aside [00:50:00] whatever the, the, um, uh, you know, merits are from the, um, uh, host itself.

[00:50:05] Okay. So he then continues to talk about this publicly and, uh, you know, Twitter spaces and on a couple of podcasts and YouTube channels and other things. And then WP Engine files a lawsuit against him personally, as well as Automatic and other things. And in the lawsuit, they start revealing some of their communications, which may.

[00:50:26] It looked like Matt was potentially trying to extort them for, for money, basically saying if you don’t give me this amount of money, then I’m going to go public with all this stuff. Um, again, I don’t, look, I’m not a lawyer, I don’t think there are a lot of merits in this lawsuit, but it certainly, all it does is escalate things.

[00:50:42] The, now the net effect is that there are a few plugins that WP Engine maintains like, um, Advanced Custom Fields, which is a very, very popular plugin that has been banned from the, um, WordPress, uh, plugin repository. So nobody can get updates from it, which sucks because again, built in [00:51:00] updates have been a feature for like 15 years now.

[00:51:02] 13 years. I’m not sure how long. It’s been a long time that you’ve been able to do automatic updates through the WordPress backend. And so individual users or individual site owners will have to figure out, you know, going through to, you know, download updates to, um, and, and the thing is, it’s not just WP Engine customers who use this plugin, like millions of people use this plugin because Custom fields is not built into WordPress core.

[00:51:25] Maybe it fucking should be. Anyway, um, so that’s been blocked. And then, um, uh, Mullenweg gave his employees at Automattic, basically said, Either you’re aligned with me or not. And if you’re aligned with me, game on. And if not, or if you have any other reason that you just want to bounce, I’ll give you 30, 000 or six months of salary, whatever’s higher.

[00:51:49] And like 160 people left the company. So like 8. 2 percent of the company left. And then there’s all kinds of blocks happening on, on Twitter and other things. [00:52:00] I don’t know. It’s sad. I feel like I feel like there are really valid reasons. I feel like there are no heroes here. And the only real losers are like the end users.

[00:52:12] Yeah. Because I don’t know.

[00:52:14] The Impact of Open Source Contributions

[00:52:14] Christina: I feel like we should be having a conversation about how much companies give back to open source, especially companies that profit tremendously off of it. And in WordPress, it’s, it’s, it’s web hosts who usually are frankly, pretty, you know, like parasitic. But

[00:52:30] Brett: sure. Well, you come from a company that has a great track record these days with open source. Oracle is one of the largest contributors to the Linux open source.

[00:52:42] Christina: hmm.

[00:52:43] Brett: And yeah, that is, if you’re going to sell open source software, uh, for the millions and millions and billions of dollars that the U S economy, like tech, big tech does, you [00:53:00] absolutely, it, it’s not free to you.

[00:53:03] It shouldn’t be free to you.

[00:53:05] Christina: Agreed. Agreed. The hard thing is, is that like the license terms, you know, you can’t really require that anybody give that. Um, and so the, the, the mechanism that, that, that Matt is arguing is that they’re violating the, the WordPress trademark. And, and I don’t know, you know, there may be some validity to that or not.

[00:53:23] I don’t know. It’s, you know, that lawyers can figure that out. I don’t know. The disappointing thing to me is just how this whole thing has escalated because it’s end users who frankly don’t care about, you know, Billion dollar companies fighting with one another. They want their software to work and then now their software doesn’t work or their plugins that they install, they don’t even know that a new version is out and they can’t do anything about it without going through, you know, jumping through a bunch of hoops.

[00:53:49] And

[00:53:49] Brett: well, when you are the default, like website framework for what percentage, like 60 percent of the

[00:53:58] Christina: 40%, but yeah,

[00:53:59] Brett: [00:54:00] 40%, 40 percent of the entire web runs on your software and they installed it because it was free and because it was actively maintained and they didn’t do anything wrong by choosing it. And when, what amounts to personal, like an ego dispute.

[00:54:20] If you boil it down, uh, like the drama behind it is affecting 40 percent of the web in ways that they did not make, they did not choose to put their money behind a certain horse. Um, they chose free software that was actively maintained and was making money on its own merit and not through their money and then to have the rug kind of pulled out from under you.

[00:54:48] Like, that’s, you, Matt, well, Matt, Matt Mullenweg has a certain amount of responsibility. to keep the web running at this [00:55:00] point with a 40 percent share of, uh, of the framework it runs on. That would be like AWS having like a petty dispute and just like cutting off services.

[00:55:13] Christina: which, which I mean, well, the irony there is that like AWS like has been like licenses have changed because of their refusal to give back to open source. But yeah, like

[00:55:22] Brett: Oh, really?

[00:55:23] Christina: oh, yeah, yeah,

[00:55:23] Brett: Oh, I didn’t know about

[00:55:24] Christina: yeah, the whole reason Elastic’s license changed, um, and I think Mongo’s and some other ones did too, is because basically AWS would just make a hosted version of their service, would contribute nothing back.

[00:55:35] Or they would make changes which would be beneficial to them, but they would because it was hosted. The way the GPL works is that technically if it’s a service, then you don’t have to give the contributions back. And, oh, it’s, it’s beyond shitty. Yeah, no, no. Amazon’s open source track record, um, it’s gotten better, but it’s not great.

[00:55:51] Um, although even Elastic has made some changes with some of their, their sourcing in, in the years since then. But yeah, I mean, you know, so, but. Like I [00:56:00] said, it would be kind of like, to me, the biggest thing was, I’m like, look, if you want to kick, if you want to, you know, go after them for the trademark stuff, if you want to publicly, you know, shame on the companies, I don’t have a problem with that.

[00:56:11] Um, I, some of the community people I think are like overly invested in, in WP Engine, which feels weird to me. I’m like, they’re not going to fuck you, bro. Um, I mean, unless you’re their, your employer, in which case, cool. But like, otherwise they’re, they’re a host just like anybody else. Um, but like If you want to, if you want to do that stuff, that’s fine.

[00:56:31] But I feel like cutting off access to the update servers when you don’t offer an easy mechanism for other people to things, kicking popular plugins that are very important out from, um, you know, getting updates like this is all stuff again. And again, like you’ve designed your system in a way that you actively have been hostile to people who’ve been like, well, what if we didn’t have this reliance on this wordpress.

[00:56:54] org system? Um, um, And so that, that’s where I have a problem with it. And then I [00:57:00] think that just kind of the, the knee jerk, like, anti response to anybody in the community who expresses concerns, like, I don’t think it’s a good look. And so, like I said, I don’t think there are any winners here at all. I don’t think there are any heroes.

[00:57:13] I think that the losers are the community. But the real fear I have is like, and I’ve never really thought this before, it’s, it’s like, Are we going to have some kind of schism, right? Because I don’t really think that you can have a viable WordPress fork. Like, I don’t think that can really happen. Um, I think that the money that would be required would be so much that people are like, Oh, well, what if WP Engine just forked WordPress?

[00:57:35] And I’m like, well, they could, but the whole, The point of the dispute is that they are not giving money back. So are, if you think that their response to this is going to be to invest hundreds of millions of dollars potentially into building a, and maintaining a fork, I’m sorry, but I think you’re, you’re wrong.

[00:57:54] I don’t think that they will do that. Right. So. Potentially you have people moving on to [00:58:00] other things or less secure things. You know, Ghost came out of members of the WordPress community who didn’t like its decision for various reasons, but it’s not code based at all. Um, and so I, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’s, it’s, uh, certainly, um, it’s like not ending.

[00:58:18] And I keep hoping that like, You know, cooler heads will prevail and that it will not be as bad, you know, as this is, but I just, I don’t know. Even though I’m not like an active WordPress user, I mean, I use it for some things. It’s too important for this to be

[00:58:36] Brett: Yeah.

[00:58:37] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:58:38] Christina: like, to crash and burn. I don’t know.

[00:58:40] Jeff: Definitely.

[00:58:42] Brett: I, uh, I, not that I wasn’t paying attention to what you were saying, but in the back of my head, I figured out our episode title.

[00:58:49] Christina: Fantastic, Helis.

[00:58:50] Brett: You ready? ISIS pickup lines.

[00:58:55] Jeff: wow.

[00:58:55] Christina: good. That’s really, really good.

[00:58:57] Brett: Thank you very much.

[00:58:58] grAPPtitude

[00:58:58] Brett: All right, you guys ready for some [00:59:00] Grapptitude?

[00:59:00] Christina: Yeah.

[00:59:02] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:59:03] Brett: Um, Jeff, you have your sound. I’ll go first. Um, I, we’ve talked about this app before, but I recently gave it a run for the first time in a few years, and it is NameMangler, uh, from ManyTricks Software, and Um, I, for a while I’ve just been using Forklift’s internal renaming tool which allows like Regex replacement and is satisfactory for most of what I do.

[00:59:33] But NameMangler allows you to batch rename files by dragging together, multiple actions. And you can even do custom scripts inside of it to handle like edge case renaming. And if you have a bunch of, well, and the metadata stuff where you can pull in, like, if you’re renaming a bunch of photos, you can pull in dates and locations and [01:00:00] dimensions and use any parts of those for, The final filename, which could allow you to come up with much more descriptive names than image underscore zero zero zero nine two.

[01:00:12] And instantly turn your folder of files into something, far more readable and usable. I’m using it right now to rename batches of files for my blog and I, I’m pretty blown away. It is, uh. And it’s really pretty.

[01:00:28] Christina: It’s so

[01:00:29] Brett: app.

[01:00:29] Jeff: pretty.

[01:00:30] Christina: Really pretty. Um, and just a note for anybody out there, um, it is available in the Mac App Store, or you can buy it from them directly and they’ll get more money. If, like me, you bought it many years ago, um, whenever the 3. 0 version was released from the Mac App Store, if you want to cross grade to the, um, non 3.

[01:00:48] Um, uh, App Store version. All you do is, um, launch it at least once from the App Store. Then, um, download the, um, [01:01:00] application. Do not move it to your applications folder yet, but, but move it to another folder, install it, launch it. And then you’re good to go. It’ll then give you like a temporary license, um, that’ll only work on that machine.

[01:01:11] So if you, you know, move to another machine or, or reinstall or whatever, you’ll have to redo this step. Uh, and then you can uninstall the, uh, Mac App Store version and move the other one to your

[01:01:21] Brett: Oh, I should do that with Marked. Like, Marked has a, you can get a free crossgrade from the MAS version to the Direct version from within Marked. You just go to, like, Help, Crossgrade, and it’ll, it’ll generate you a license as a Mac App Store user. Um, but then you have to, like, download and enter the license.

[01:01:40] And it would be really cool if people, if I could just be like, just download the, Just tell me the direct version because the Mac App Store version, the only difference is sandboxing.

[01:01:50] Christina: exactly.

[01:01:51] Brett: and when you’re dealing with like a markdown file that can include images from anywhere on the disk or one that can run custom processors, um, that have [01:02:00] to be like executable by the system, a sandboxing is just unworkable.

[01:02:04] So I cross grade people all the time.

[01:02:06] Christina: yeah, yeah, um, and I’m pretty sure, like, I can probably find after we get off, I’m sure people have written, um, ways that they’ve, um, you know, automated this, because I assume all it does is that it’s looking for the ID, you know, um, on, on the system, you know, wherever it would be, and then it’s just, you know, basically checking, does this exist?

[01:02:25] Yes or no? If yes, then unlock, right? Like, I’m

[01:02:28] Brett: Oh yeah, like the receipt, uh, App Store file. Yeah.

[01:02:32] Christina: And then once you’ve done that, like you can delete it and it doesn’t matter. Um, but yeah, so, uh, but yeah, Namingler, I haven’t used that in a long time. Um, but when I have used it, I just looked at it again. I was like, Oh, that’s really pretty.

[01:02:43] And, um, God, we’ve been giving them a lot of love lately because, uh, the new, uh, Moom, um, uh, is really too.

[01:02:50] Brett: many tricks makes good

[01:02:51] Christina: They make very good stuff.

[01:02:53] Jeff: Sure do. Yeah. Mine is not a maybe. I put it down as a maybe, uh, in our show, in our [01:03:00] notes. But, uh, I am, there’s this, um, it’s a, it’s a web app, but it’s also just kind of like an approach to personal finance called You Need a Budget or YNAB. They’ve been around forever. We’ve used them in our house forever.

[01:03:14] Um, Back when they even used to have an app you could download. Now it’s just a web app. Um, and I have been, I just decided to, we just kind of blew up our budget and rebuilt it in, in YNAB, like using the YNAB principles as much as possible. Let me tell you their entire podcast dedicated to this, their YouTube series dedicated to this, so I won’t get into the, into the weeds, but I will just say that as kind of budgeting software, and I used Mint way back in the

[01:03:41] Christina: I say, and the Mint, it was down.

[01:03:44] Jeff: yep.

[01:03:44] Um, it is so elegant. It is so well thought out. It is so constantly developed and updated. And if you are just kind of looking for something like some kind of way to wrangle and have like a single view of all of your, your world, [01:04:00] your credit cards, your bank accounts, your saving accounts, even if that’s all you want.

[01:04:04] It’s great for that. And then it has this whole like kind of framework for budgeting that we’ve been using for a long time. That’s durable enough that like, if you fall off of it, you can, you can get back up, um, and, and get going and it doesn’t all just kind of like implode. So anyway, they just do beautiful work.

[01:04:21] Um, and I, I really recommend taking a peek at it.

[01:04:24] Brett: What kind of, what kind of automation does it have?

[01:04:28] Jeff: Meaning, I mean, like, I don’t know if you mean like, does it import your accounts and shit, yeah, very, very solid importing of all, every account I’ve ever tried to put into it. Um, and, and if ever anything breaks, it’s because on the bank side, they did something Um, I’ve, I mean, it just like, it’s unbelievable how reliable, um, it is and how good communicators they are, if there is any little issue.

[01:04:55] Um, so yeah, it’s been. It’s been great. Yeah. It’s if you just wanted to go in [01:05:00] there, pull everything in and look at it, it’s kind of like,

[01:05:02] Brett: But like, can you like, can you categorize transactions? So future, future Yeah.

[01:05:08] Jeff: That’s the point of it. You put in your recurring transactions, you can categorize transactions, you can add targets. So you’re, you know, every paycheck to like send money here or whatever. Um, it’s great. And like rocket money, like I still think rocket money is over there running my imports.

[01:05:24] Uh, just, it’s so nice to just have a thing where you just import everything and you can just look at it at once.

[01:05:30] Christina: Yeah, I was ask it

[01:05:31] Jeff: can be nice.

[01:05:32] Christina: because, because Rocket Money is great for like the recurring stuff like you forget about. I didn’t know if any of those services have something like that built in, which would be cool. Like,

[01:05:39] Jeff: not to the extent, not at all to the extent Rocket Money does. You can kind of use it off to the side, uh, which is what I did when I just kind of did my Rocket Money run a couple of years ago.

[01:05:48] Brett: Oh, I Rocket

[01:05:49] Jeff: It’s amazing.

[01:05:50] Brett: use Rocket Money every

[01:05:51] Jeff: I need to actually go back to it cause I’m got some weird shit. Why do I have two one passwords?

[01:05:56] Oh, I I have two set up. I have two set up

[01:05:58] Brett: my, all, all [01:06:00] I’ve forgotten about,

[01:06:01] Jeff: Yeah, exactly.

[01:06:03] Christina: No, that’s awesome. I’m thank, I’m glad. Thank you for mentioning that because I’ve had this, like, in my mind I’m like, um, ’cause I don’t really use anything right now other than like a spreadsheet for certain stuff or, you know, just me, you know, eyeballing accounts and, I have, I should have a much better system.

[01:06:18] Um, so, um, I, I, but I’ve heard great things about, um, um, wine a so.

[01:06:24] Brett: for years I’ve heard great things.

[01:06:26] Jeff: really, it’s really great. Also just great exporting. That’s which is for me, any software I’m deep into, I better be able to export a CSV or whatever else nice and clean. And, and obviously it’s not rare with financial stuff,

[01:06:38] Christina: Well, no, but more well, it is and it’s not, right? Because, I mean, famously, the fucking Apple credit card, it was like six months before you could export transactions from the fucking card. Which is

[01:06:50] Jeff: Yeah,

[01:06:50] Christina: Insane. It is insane. I’m like, still now, like the fact that like, you know, you have to use your fucking iPhone to like get your transactions.

[01:06:57] There’s not like a web view. Maybe there finally is a web view, but [01:07:00] I’m like, what are you doing? Like it is, I mean, it’s fine. I, I basically only use that credit card for Apple purchases, which, you know, is, you know, You know, I still, it’s still spent thousands of dollars a year on it, but it’s not like a daily card or anything.

[01:07:13] And part of the reason for that is that like, you know, American Express, Chase, you know, Citi, all of them give you really good tools to export and integrate into those systems really well. Even if you’re not using, even if you’re, you know, like me and you’re just using your Excel thing, like at least I can export all my transactions and like Apple card, you would think.

[01:07:33] No.

[01:07:33] Brett: would think.

[01:07:34] Jeff: but we gave you widgets on your lock screen.

[01:07:36] Christina: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[01:07:39] Brett: Every time I see the abbreviation YNAB, I think of the Merlin podcast, You Look Nice Today.

[01:07:47] Christina: That’s

[01:07:48] Jeff: Oh man,

[01:07:48] Brett: and I don’t, I think it’s just the Y and then letters. I

[01:07:55] Christina: think I feel like, I think I get like it in NIMBY confused, even though like they’re that the [01:08:00] letters are completely different. Yeah,

[01:08:03] Brett: see an acronym, I just assume NIMBY. Ahaha I just assume, ah Neighborhood watch something.

[01:08:13] Christina: in my

[01:08:13] Brett: Um,

[01:08:14] Christina: Or maybe I know. Here’s what I get confused with. YIMBY. That’s what it is. Yeah. Cause yes, in my backyard, which is like the, um, the,

[01:08:21] Jeff: in my backyard.

[01:08:22] Christina: the alternative thing, which is like, yes, we need to build, which I actually agree with. But yeah,

[01:08:27] Brett: I am NIMBY on a lot of stuff.

[01:08:28] Christina: same.

[01:08:29] Brett: You can have my backyard. All right, Christina, looks like you have a fun

[01:08:32] Christina: I do. So this was one that I actually discovered yesterday and I was really excited to discover it because I was like, I probably would have had another pick, but I discovered this one and I was really excited about it. So it is a app. It’s a new app. It came out like a month ago. It’s called Prop Edit. It is in the Mac app store.

[01:08:48] It’s 8. And it is a editor for plist and JSON files. So basically it’s like a, an Apple property list, um, um, editor. Um, and it’s, and, uh, this is, uh, how [01:09:00] the developer describes it. PropEdit is a viewer and editor for Apple propriety, uh, property lists.

[01:09:09] It’s aimed at both software developers and end users who want easy access to the standard file types. So you can, you know, change any entry in the files, um, you know, property names, entry types, values can be edited freely. They can be removed, added, and sorted. And it handles, you know, nested depth. So basically this is a sandboxed and, they call it a simplified version of PrefEdit or PrefEdit app. And, and both of those have been around, like, like PrefEdit has been around since 2000 and PrefEdit app, I think, uh, you know, came out in 2011 and those are some of the oldest, you know, apps for working with property lists on macOS.

[01:09:47] Um, and. Uh, but there have been, you know, issues, I guess, they’ve made some changes so that you can get this in the App Store essentially. Um, so like PropEdit does not support direct work with the macOS preferences [01:10:00] system since they no longer allow that in the App Store. So instead it uses the JSON format, um, uh, next to plist.

[01:10:06] But uh, I, like I said, it was 8. I don’t have to edit like my plist often, but sometimes I need to look at something and I’m curious how it works. I’d actually, I think I even had a trial of, um, uh, PrefEdit before, and it, it’s fine, but I’ll be honest, it was a little more complicated than what I probably needed.

[01:10:28] Um, and so I, I, I bought this and it’s, it’s a really nice app. So if you fall into the category, they, they said of, you know, developers are enthusiasts and you occasionally need to, you know, mess with, with plist files, you know, hell yeah.

[01:10:43] Brett: So just for, for anyone listening who is a Mac user and doesn’t know why they would need to edit a plist file, all preferences for all apps on your Mac are stored in plist format. All of Your system [01:11:00] preferences from like your dark mode to your accent color to more esoteric stuff is all stored in plist format.

[01:11:10] So if you want to explore any of those settings at more of a system level, you need to be able to read and write plist formats. Um, and plist comes in both binary and text, and an app like PropEdit can read both binary and text

[01:11:27] Jeff: amazing.

[01:11:29] Brett: um, I am curious, uh, you said it can’t edit default preferences, but I assume it can still edit app preference

[01:11:37] Christina: right, right, so what it says is that it, um, uh, it can open and write the XML based stuff. Um, so that’s why they’re using JSON because the, um, macOS like changed things in 2012 for sandbox apps. So you can still open that stuff, it’s just it has to use the JSON. Um, rather than, than I guess, like, [01:12:00] the direct way.

[01:12:02] Brett: Cool.

[01:12:03] Jeff: I’ve, I’ve wanted something like this forever. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:12:06] Christina: because it’s useful for sometimes, like, when you are moving from, like, one system to another, and you don’t necessarily want to just move, like, the plist over. Automatically, because you’re like, maybe I do want to make a modification, but you’re like, okay, but what, what were my settings? Like, it’s just an easy way of viewing it, you know, if nothing else, even if it’s just as a viewer, right?

[01:12:25] Sometimes that’s all you need, but it’s also useful to be like, okay, well, now that I see it, how can I edit it? And there are some things like, obviously there are ways that many times, you know, you can change the settings, you know, end user or a command line, but if you can also just change, you know, like it in the file itself, even better.

[01:12:42] Jeff: Yeah, it’s awesome.

[01:12:44] Brett: All right. Good show, guys.

[01:12:47] Jeff: Good show. Good show.

[01:12:48] Brett: We had, we had talk of ISIS,

[01:12:52] Christina: Mm hmm.

[01:12:52] Brett: self driving cars.

[01:12:55] Jeff: ISIS driving

[01:12:57] Brett: like,

[01:12:57] Christina: we got it all.

[01:12:59] Brett: what a show, [01:13:00]

[01:13:00] Jeff: What a show! What a show!

[01:13:02] Christina: Brett’s plan for, uh, taking back, uh, you know, the bonus. Um,

[01:13:10] Brett: My plans for next year, um, yeah. All right. Well, you guys enjoy the weather. Have a a great rest of your weekend.

[01:13:20] Christina: you too. Get some sleep, guys.

[01:13:22] Jeff: Yeah, get some sleep.